BYOCompute, Pope Destroys False Idol, Ben Affleck's White Pill | Joe Gebbia, Molly Fowler, Tom Dotan, Pim de Witte, Greg Castle

(01:15) - BYOCompute: Bring Your Own Compute (15:31) - Pope Leo Rejects AI Consciousness (26:06) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions (35:45) - Tesla Beats Expectations (49:20) - Paramount-Warner Bros Becomes Skydance (54:34) - Ben Affleck's White Pill (57:24) - WSJ Mansion Section (01:27:33) - Joe Gebbia discusses his work modernizing federal digital services through the National Design Studio, including transforming employee retirement from a months-long paper process into a nearly instantaneous online experience. He outlines America.gov, a centralized, AI-powered platform designed to simplify access to government information and services, reduce billions of hours of administrative burden, and establish a new standard for digital government. (01:41:02) - Molly Fowler discusses her role as a partner at Dorm Room Fund, a venture fund investing in student and alumni founders. She explains its peer-driven investment model, recently raised $50 million fund, and plans to back roughly 75–80 companies with early-stage checks typically under $1 million. (01:51:55) - Tom Dotan, a technology journalist at Vanity Fair and Newcomer, discusses his profile of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. He examines Ellison’s vast influence across AI, media, TikTok, cancer research, and hospitality, emphasizing his appetite for risk, enduring control of Oracle, and willingness to make enormous bets late in his career. (02:10:35) - Pim De, co-founder of General Intuition, discusses the company’s $220 million fundraise and its use of large-scale video game data to train AI models that control robots. He explains the technology’s potential across simulations, quadrupeds, drones, gaming companions, and interactive NPCs while offering a grounded view of machine intelligence and shifting gamer sentiment toward AI. (02:19:34) - Greg Castle discusses his journey from entrepreneur to managing partner of Anorak Ventures, an early-stage deep-tech firm whose third fund totals $35 million. He shares insights on investing in Oculus and Anduril, maintaining a small-fund strategy, and pursuing transformative opportunities in defense, manufacturing, critical materials, and AI-enabled venture research. TBPN is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Public - https://public.com Cisco - https://www.cisco.com Console - https://www.console.com CrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.com Figma - https://www.figma.com MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com NYSE - https://www.nyse.com Railway - https://railway.com Shopify - https://www.shopify.com Codex - http://openAI.com/codex Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tbpn/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 TVP.

• 0:02John Coogan?

  Today's Friday, October 2nd, 2026. We're live from the TVP in Ultra Dome, the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital of Capital. How many days?

• 0:13Jordi Hays?

  Eighty-three days.

• 0:14John Coogan?

  Eighty-three days.

• 0:15Jordi Hays?

  But you already knew that. We don't even have to tell you.

• 0:18John Coogan?

  The road to Christmas is going strong.

• 0:20Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 0:21John Coogan?

  Get ready, lock in. Also, sign up for Ramp. Time is money. Save both. Easy use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more, all in one place.

• 0:35John Coogan?

  Uh, oh, we're getting Christmasy up in here. Okay.

• 0:37Jordi Hays?

  Here we go.

• 0:38John Coogan?

  Very Christmasy. It's Q4. We're in the correct, we're in the correct season now, so we can get pretty Christmasy.

• 0:45Jordi Hays?

  That is right.

• 0:47John Coogan?

  It's pretty tricky to stay in the little.

• 0:49Jordi Hays?

  Enough about Christmas, John. Let's, let's get into the news.

• 0:52John Coogan?

  Let's talk about artificial intelligence. Sounds great. Uh, yeah, so, uh, make it less Christmasy. It's too Christmasy. It's eighty-three days away. This is a, this is no more than 20 days away before we get that, that Christmas.

• 1:07Jordi Hays?

  I'll just leave this on.

• 1:08John Coogan?

  Okay. Oh, just one level of Christmas.

• 1:11Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 1:12John Coogan?

  October 7th, October 2nd. Uh, yeah, so, uh, there, there was this funny moment, uh, in a dev day, uh, this week where, um, you know, everyone's like focused on the war of like Dots versus Muse versus Instinct. And, and there were a couple of times where you're like, I want to talk about sign in with ChatGPT, which is like the most like boring and like minute feature and not very much not in like the drama war for the personal agent where who's going to do your shopping? Who's going to book you?

• 1:40Jordi Hays?

  No, I just thought it was cool for independent developers, small app builders.

• 1:44John Coogan?

  It's actually like probably more immediately relevant to the community that was there, like the developers, right?

• 1:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And, and you remember when, like flashback to two years ago, people were creating these magical new product experiences with, uh, the best models at the time, but they were in hindsight, pretty rudimentary.

• 2:04John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:05Jordi Hays?

  And they would build something magical, scale up really quickly and then be like, whoa, I'm just got stuck with like a $30,000 API bill.

• 2:13John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:13Jordi Hays?

  And so this is the solve for that because it allows users to bring their own.

• 2:18John Coogan?

  Compute.

• 2:18Jordi Hays?

  Compute.

• 2:18John Coogan?

  BYOC.

• 2:20Jordi Hays?

  BYOC.

• 2:20John Coogan?

  Everyone knows BYOB. Now we're in the era of BYOC. Um, and, uh, and, and, and yeah, like, you know, most companies, they could usually figure out a way to say, hey, like this service is going to use a ton of compute. So you gotta jump on the pro plan immediately. You gotta set up a consumption, a credit card relationship, API credit, something like that, uh, metered billing. But it was just an extra step, an extra point of friction of you saying like, okay, I already paid 10 bucks a month for this thing. Now I gotta actually, uh, pay for inference and this gives like a different off take. So, uh, yeah, Peter Yang was feeling the same way that you were. He said, uh, I'm excited about Dots, but even more excited about sign in with ChatGPT

• 3:01John Coogan?

  feature. Letting users use the ChatGPT plan in your website or app makes a bunch of indie apps a lot more viable. Uh, example, I have a live language learning app that I wasn't planning to launch to users due to API costs, but letting users sign in with ChatGPT makes this viable. Hope they roll it out to non-enterprise folks soon. Vignesh, who's actually running the project, said, I'm going to try and answer a bunch of questions that people have raised about signing with ChatGPT in the next couple of days. Before that, I want to let you know why they shipped it, said, um, and, and so you can go read that thread. But, um, the, uh, the, the bring your own subscription stuff, it sticks out because it feels like it's potentially like the beginning of a new economic structure. Like, is this an app store where there will be a margin that accrues

• 3:44John Coogan?

  to OpenAI? Or is this more just like better for discovery? Will agents like reach for these because the sign in is available? How much more smooth will this get? But, you know, at a high level, I think you described it well. A user can sign into an app or service. The, the notion, the Notion example is a good one because it's very intuitive. People already pay for Notion. You can imagine all the AI features that are there. And people were probably on day one of ChatGPT launching, copying from Notion into ChatGPT, copying back into Notion, writing bindings. But if Notion wants to offer like a whole bunch of inference opportunities and agenting features inside, then they gotta go to other clients and say, hey, you're paying 10, 20 bucks

• 4:27John Coogan?

  a month for your seat. I, we also need a bunch of money for inference. This off, uh, this offsets that. Uh, and so the way it works is a user signs into the, to an app like Notion, uh, then authorizes the app to run the OpenAI model requests against their plan without managing an API key. On Notion, this means drawing from the ChatGPT allowance instead of Notion credits. And it makes a lot of sense for bigger companies that have inference bills, as you mentioned. Uh, and they've all had to grapple very quickly with like product tokenomics, which is just a new, new economic muscle and, and, uh, like price elasticity curve they need to ride effectively. Um, but the big thing is that it'll, it, it should over time allow

• 5:08John Coogan?

  leaner teams to offer inference hungry features with way less friction. So, um, it's worth clarifying that the feature only brings OpenAI tokens along for the ride. It's not OpenAI dollars, which is, I think, a way where this could go. But the, the good example is like, let's say you have like some sort of AI book publisher where you're doing a bunch of token inference to generate the text of the book. Like you say, hey, I want to go take this, you know, general story, turn it into a book and then print it and send me the book, right? There's two sort of costs there. One's inference, one is.

• 5:45Jordi Hays?

  I'll scan it back on the computer and then I'll turn it into a playable video game.

• 5:50John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. But you can't offset the cost of printing books with OpenAI tokens in any way.

• 5:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 5:57John Coogan?

  Um, yes. Uh, but you, but you could have the user spend their OpenAI credits to run the text generation side of the business. Um, but I, but I do think this could go further. The example that I gave was, uh, generate video. Uh, I'd like to have like a front door to AI that can handle the full billing relationship. So if I need to generate a video, I can just add that to my tab and.

• 6:19Jordi Hays?

  No, and you went through this, you went through this with Higgs field where you're using Codex to make videos.

• 6:24John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 6:24Jordi Hays?

  And somehow Higgs field has like $500 of yours now and it's locked in there.

• 6:31John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 6:32Jordi Hays?

  And, and it's unclear.

• 6:34John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 6:34Jordi Hays?

  How you can get it because you ended up buying like the wrong kind of credit or something like that.

• 6:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:40Jordi Hays?

  Very simple.

• 6:40John Coogan?

  I'm setting up like a consumer subscription and then I also bought API credits. So I have consumer credits and API credits. And in order to use the consumer credits, I need to write a new binding in Codex to use the front end as opposed to just.

• 6:57Jordi Hays?

  And that would be using computer, wouldn't that? Use, using computer use, which would cost you more.

• 7:02John Coogan?

  Maybe a little bit. It's very unclear. And so all of these things are like very messy, but, um, and so, yeah, I mean, between computer use, MCP, APIs, like this might not even be a discussion because like you're very, like, we're pretty close to the workflow happening out of the box, even without direct integration. But then there's a question about will the apps like push back? But there is a world where even if you're, if you're an inference provider, you're maybe fine with not owning the front door if you're generating so much more demand because you're integrated with the big platforms. And you say, yeah, I'm actually losing the customer billing relationship, but I'm going to 10x my revenue because I'm

• 7:46John Coogan?

  like the model or the inference provider of choice when people go and they ask for a particular, uh, particular integration.

• 7:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 7:53John Coogan?

  And so there's always this dance with these integrations. Uh, you know, we were talking about it yesterday with the Neo Clouds versus Nvidia, uh, strategy where, okay, well, if, if Nvidia actually does get DGX Cloud Leptin off the ground and if you're on there, you're going to get so much more business and your, and your, your utilization rate is going to be so much higher, but you're not going to have the leverage over the, over the customer. The, it, it's always this like careful dance. And then ultimately, if an app store does emerge, everyone gripes over, you know, the 30% tax, like the Apple tax is the same. You could wind up there in the age of AI. Um, but, uh, I, I think from a consumer perspective, like having a consolidated business really, uh, like billing relationship would be great. Even in the world

• 8:35John Coogan?

  where computer use can go like plop down your credit card and set up an API key, it's still nicer to have like one point of billing and then true, like, like the buck stops with one model. So, okay, you want to do this? It's going to be 10 bucks. Is it cool?

• 8:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's the same, same reason that some people want all the streaming services to be rebundled.

• 8:55John Coogan?

  That, and also why a lot of consumers are like, yeah, it's awesome when I subscribe to something on the App Store because it's so easy to unsubscribe in the App Store. You just go to your, your iOS subscriptions and you say, look, I'm canceling that. And it can't be, why are you canceling it? Make sure you call us. Like all that annoying stuff that happens when you're on like some website and they're, well, you actually have to call between, you know, 11 AM and 2 PM and we take a two hour lunch in there and you gotta explain yourself and listen to our pitch for why you should stick around. Uh, Apple like makes it one click.

• 9:26Jordi Hays?

  Turn down the discount to stay.

• 9:28John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly. Apple like turns all that off. And so like that, that could be this like complex dynamic. Uh, App Store economics are always, are always complex. Um, but it might not, it might not matter because you can just go and with computer use say like, yeah, like set up this API key, use this credit card. It's a little hesitant still, and I don't think it's polished among any of the models. Um, a lot of them really hesitate. They're like, they'll even say like, don't give me your API key. Please put that in your environment. Don't give me your credit card number. I don't want it. I don't want it actually leak, accidentally leaking or anything like that. Like even if you are being bold, uh, the models will often be really hesitant. I, I remember I was trying to use

• 10:10John Coogan?

  computer use to send an iMessage. I was like, go do a bunch of stuff. I'm going to leave. I don't want you to send me a push notification. Just text me. I have a text message open in iMessage. The window's right there. Go in that box and tell me when you're done and then I'll get it on my phone. It'll just come from me. And it was like, and it spent so many tokens being like, I don't want to screw this up. This is high stakes. Like, you really knew that like botching an iMessage computer use thing could be like ruinous, you know? Cause it winds up texting.

• 10:42Jordi Hays?

  It would be over. It would be over.

• 10:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It would be cut. And so it's, it's interesting. The, the other, the other reflection is like, this whole App Store concept, this whole sign in with chat GPT, bring your inference around. Let's partner on distribution. Let's integrate into the, into the app. Uh, let's be the front door. Uh, Sam originally launched this three years ago at the very first Dev Day, 2023. They, they had a product called GPTs and there was the GPT store. And everyone was like, wow, okay, I totally see the vision. And then it was like three years of like languishing and like, and like tussling and.

• 11:22Jordi Hays?

  That was maybe too early.

• 11:24John Coogan?

  Yeah. And there's just been so many integrations like Walmart and Apple where people have said, okay, I want to do an integration, but it has to be really, really good and to my favor. And then it breaks down like the Siri integration that's, you know, going away because they're, they're migrating to Gemini is actually atrocious. Like you will ask a question and, and it's like, yeah, of course it didn't work. You ask a question, you ask a basic question and it will say, like, oh, do you want to ask chat GPT? And then you need to click a button and then you click a button and it gives you an answer. And if you want to go deeper, you can say open in chat GPT and then it opens it. But chat GPT doesn't get all the context of whatever happened before.

• 12:08John Coogan?

  It just opens the app. And so it's like the worst possible like broken flow because like both companies were like begrudgingly working together, basically and being like, look, neither of us want to work together. But the boss has signed a deal. So we gotta, we gotta do something here. So let's both.

• 12:25Jordi Hays?

  You gotta pretend.

• 12:26John Coogan?

  Let's both fight it out. Anyway, uh, it, it'll be interesting to see what happens. I, I, I guess like my, you know, they're, they're pretty enterprisey right now. Like the integrations are pretty enterprisey, but um, I'm, I'm interested in, in like your thesis of will there be like a flappy bird moment or like a small dev team that figures out like, hey, if we can be the victor in the tool that gets pulled off the shelf when, you know, there's 1.2 billion users, probably like, you know, they'll, they'll always give that quote about like 400 million people are asking about health questions. Like there's probably like 400 million people that are asking about, you know, I don't know, some, some, some niche thing. And if you can be the tool that funnels and you actually use it as the top of funnel,

• 13:11John Coogan?

  you could see someone, uh, we, we could definitely wind up talking to a founder who's like, oh yeah, I actually like basically figured out how to be the tool of choice. I log in, I monetize the inference better and I scaled to a hundred million ARR in like a couple of months. Um, which is interesting. At the same time, there's going to be a lot of companies like, like this would be like such a solution for instinct, right? But they would never do it because they're trying to actually go up against on the core feature. And so there's this weird dynamic where, uh, you know, Noah was on Invest Like the Best being like, I spend 75% of my time trying to secure compute. I'm burning so much money. I gotta raise all this money. And like the, the, the solution's like right there. But it's like, if you take that apple, like you leave the garden,

• 13:55John Coogan?

  you are, you're, you're in trouble probably. But, um, who knows? Anyway.

• 13:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So on, on the enterprise side, OpenAI, uh, announced a partnership with Base10, our friends over there.

• 14:05John Coogan?

  Oh, cool.

• 14:05Jordi Hays?

  Uh, just, just a few days ago at Dev Day. That's like a really good enterprise example because you can now basically get access to open models through your overall like OpenAI, um, like commit, uh, which is, which is cool and it's native in Codex. And then the other use cases that I'm thinking about are like, you know, all those like generate headshot apps, right? That have been super popular. Those are super compute intensive. And so being able to use, basically get access to images 2.5.

• 14:32John Coogan?

  Oh, sure, sure, sure.

• 14:33Jordi Hays?

  Is, is pretty cool.

• 14:34John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where like you've built an interesting funnel, you've built an interesting harness, you've built an interesting wrapper, but your compute is scaling really unfortunately. And you have, and you have the ability to like off take there is, uh, is very, very interesting. Uh, anyway, let me tell you about public investing for those who take it seriously. They got stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries and more. With great customer service. We might have to do away with the Christmas, with the Christmas. Because the stinger is going under the Christmas. Wow.

• 15:11John Coogan?

  And he doesn't even break through the, the Christmas lights, you know?

• 15:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. We're working on it. We're working on it.

• 15:18John Coogan?

  We're working on it.

• 15:19Jordi Hays?

  Work in progress.

• 15:19John Coogan?

  Oh, well, um, well.

• 15:22Jordi Hays?

  Well, anything else going on? Any sort of contentious debates and?

• 15:27John Coogan?

  Yeah. Sort of Santa related.

• 15:30Jordi Hays?

  True.

• 15:30John Coogan?

  Christmas related, you know? Yeah. The Pope is duking it out.

• 15:36Jordi Hays?

  Trey saying Coogan's war on Christmas. Yeah. What do you have against Christmas, John? We're in Q4 and you're asking, put away the decorations. It's kind of distracting. Do we really need them?

• 15:48John Coogan?

  Leave it, leave it, leave it. Yeah.

• 15:52John Coogan?

  Thank you. Uh, well, the Pope chimed in on the AI debate again. He's been posting for a while. This year has been a number of, of discussions. And every time he, uh, he writes something, it causes a bigger discussion in Silicon Valley, of course. Pope Leo said, uh, in this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others.

• 16:35John Coogan?

  Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity. Very interesting. Uh, what did PG reply? He said, uh, since your opinions are meant to last, you should consider what you'll say when AIs are trained on visual experience as well as art made by human artists, because that is presumably coming.

• 17:02Jordi Hays?

  Well, what prompted this, John?

• 17:04John Coogan?

  Walter Isaacson chimed in. Popes have been hiring good artists for a long time. Yeah. What prompted this? There's a article in the New York Times about, uh, the, uh, the interactions between Anthropic and the Vatican. Uh, Danny summed it up. Anthropic, Claude has a soul. Pope Leo says nah. Anthropic says, please say Claude has a soul. Leo says nah, here's a book length explanation why that's not true. Anthropic says, we're pretty sure Claude has a soul. And Pope Leo responds with this. Uh, yeah, a lot of people are duking it out here. The bombshell report in the New York Times, uh, Christopher Hill sums it up here. Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah threatened to walk out of Pope Leo the 14th AI encyclical launch in May

• 17:49John Coogan?

  because the Pope rejected the idea that machines can be conscious. Olah's team then privately lobbied the Pope's advisors, quote, "to take the possibility of model consciousness seriously." Pope Leo the 14th held firm. For months, Anthropic has winded and dined theologians and religious scholars under non-disclosure agreements, hoping they would bless the idea that Claude has moral standing. Okay. So people are getting worried. They're debating, is it God or is it computer? Uh, Neil Kosla chimes in.

• 18:25Jordi Hays?

  The Vatican will sign. Oh, I guess that these are various scholars. Uh, I was, I was like, it's pretty funny to go to the Vatican and be like, hey, I gotta talk to you about something, but will you sign this NDA first?

• 18:42John Coogan?

  Yeah. Uh, no, I think it was religious scholars that were visiting Anthropic here and they're like, we'll give you the full tour, but you sign an NDA. I mean, also I, I would be interested in like how that NDA was, was released because uh, like there's some times when you just go to a corporate office and like on your way in, they like, well, take a picture of your ID and sign this non-disclosure agreement. Like that's, that's like standard for like a lot of just office visits broadly, but it sounds a lot crazier when you're like, we made the Pope sign an NDA. You know, we made God sign an NDA. Um, Neil Kosla doesn't like it. He says, I am increasingly concerned about the AI psychosis inside Anthropic. Imagine zealously trying to build something you believe to be a conscious God while running around and claiming it will end the world.

• 19:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And to their credit, they're not claiming that it will end the world. They're saying that there is a real possibility.

• 19:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's interesting. Interesting that there's less of a, less of, less of a white pill there. Like, I don't know, there's a world where you're, where you're like, yeah, we're gonna build God and like, it's gonna be amazing. Like, P doom, negative a thousand. Like, it's gonna be even, it's gonna be the best thing ever. There are no risks because it's God. It's, it's, it's, it's

• 20:00Jordi Hays?

  The Creator.

• 20:00John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's the Creator. It's gonna love us. Like, it's gonna be so, it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna save us, you know? Uh, that, that would follow, but there, there is a little bit of like cognitive dissonance that it's like, well, what kind of God is it? Is it like a devil?

• 20:16Jordi Hays?

  Well, and I think, I think what a lot of people should be asking themselves right now is, is Claude Force conscious? Right? Because, I mean, that is the intelligence powering the Salesforce sort of ecosystem in many ways. And so, maybe at, at what point do you have to ask, is Salesforce, you know, if Salesforce is sort of embodied by Claude, is Salesforce conscious?

• 20:40John Coogan?

  Salesforce has been godlike for decades. People understand that it's, it's, it's a deity for customer relationship management.

• 20:49Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 20:50John Coogan?

  Right. Uh, Bern Hobart says, "Looking at the current debates about Anthropic makes me feel guilty for not keeping up with some academic domains. I honestly had no idea that we'd solved consciousness and determined which substrates can and can't support it. Thought that one was more up in the air." He's joking. "Of course, I haven't found anything from someone in Anthropic saying models are conscious, just that they might be now or in the future." And yeah, that was something interesting in the New York Times article. Uh, Ola really goes back and forth. He's like, I don't know. I, and, and I, I, I thought that was, that was interesting that he was, uh, he was not, he was advocating for,

• 21:29John Coogan?

  he's, we, he's a, we, we gotta talk about it guy. Basically that. He was saying like, I, I don't know. I don't have a firm position. And, and, and through like multiple reports, he, it's not like he was ever like, I'm convinced of this and I'm trying to pull people towards this discussion. He was just like, yeah, this is a, this is an interesting question. Um, consciousness is unintuitive. Why the heck is there such a thing as the experience of being me in the first place? What's the cutoff for which things can get it? When? Seems hard to be confident when everyone's operating on an N of one view. Yeah, very odd. Um, uh, on the, on the question of moral agency,

• 22:13John Coogan?

  we gotta go back to the pigs. We gotta go back to the pigs because the, the, the time-honored adage is never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it. But if the pigs like it, do you have a moral duty to wrestle with them? I'm thinking about starting a nonprofit that would pay humans to wrestle with pigs. Yes, they're gonna get dirty, but the pig likes it and the utility that's created by the pig enjoying the wrestling would be offset by the cost of getting dirty. So it's a net, it's a utilitarian calculus, really. Uh, and so I, I think this is, it could become like the new hot, uh, you know, the new hot nonprofit cause. Like mosquito nets, shrimp welfare. I, I feel like pig wrestling.

• 22:58Jordi Hays?

  I, I think it's obviously sort of

• 23:01John Coogan?

  Could be something that attracts billions of dollars of nonprofit donations, potentially.

• 23:05Jordi Hays?

  Which in, in, in many ways, you know, if they can attract that kind of capital, would end up flowing back into the tech ecosystem, right? Because many of these foundations will

• 23:13John Coogan?

  Potentially you could monetize it too. You could film it. You could turn it into a sport. You could maybe gamble on it even. We could get some prediction markets. Who's, who's gonna, how long can you wrestle with this pig before you get muddy? Potentially. Minutes? Hours? We're gonna find out, one way or another. And the pig's gonna like it. Let's see what Aiden Gomez says.

• 23:35Jordi Hays?

  You have a brilliant, you have a brilliant mind, John.

• 23:37John Coogan?

  He's building a, a god of his own over at Co here. Uh, he says, "It's quite disturbing that Anthropic has been running a campaign to lobby the major faiths to, to, to, to adopt their own philosophical interpretation of AI rather than taking input from them. I've been fortunate to spend time at the Vatican." Whoa, we get it, bro. "And I've always asked for advice and guidance, uh, answered the questions asked of me and been grateful to them for their time and guidance." Yeah, that seems like a good approach. I, I like Aiden in this. Uh, "It's insane to me Anthropic would actively impose their viewpoint to the extent of threatening to pull out of events that they don't precisely align." Yeah, the crazy scoop in here is that Dario turned it down. He got invited to the Vatican. He said, "No, I can't go."

• 24:21John Coogan?

  That was, uh, that was like maybe the biggest like, whoa, okay, that's, uh, I, I, I feel like that's something that you would say yes to. But again,

• 24:28Jordi Hays?

  At the same time, that Vatican visit was at the time where they were adding seemingly like a billion dollars of run rate a day. And like the whole company, like when you're growing that quickly, like the whole company is

• 24:41John Coogan?

  You would put money over God in that scenario, basically is what you're saying?

• 24:44Jordi Hays?

  I'm not saying I would.

• 24:45John Coogan?

  But, but, but, but it's reasonable to think that, that that was the calculation.

• 24:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and they have a bunch of founders for a reason, right?

• 24:52John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it is true. Uh, and, and Ola really does seem to be like the guy to send to this because he's actually really deeply engaged with this question. Um, it's, it's a moral arrogance and dogmatism that has characterized EA and Anthropic. Certainly its leadership at least for a very long time. I'm glad these stories are coming out and being exposed. Aiden Gomez not pulling punches. Pim DeWitt, who's coming on the show later today, says, "This is such a base take. Wow, need more of this." Okay, excited to hear his take on all this. Good day to have him on the show from General Intuition. They also raised a bunch of money. Uh, let's see. Deep Dish Enjoyer said, "Remember when Jesus and Nazareth created a nonprofit funded by a bunch of billionaires and paid himself hundreds of thousands of dollars?"

• 25:32John Coogan?

  Uh, yeah, people are going back and forth on, uh, you know, is Elias or Yudikowski Jesus or something like that? Uh, it's all getting a little exhausting at this point. I don't know if you want to stay on this story any longer. Uh, we are fully muddy at this point. And I don't even know if the pig's enjoying it. I don't even

• 25:50Jordi Hays?

  Pigs aren't enjoying it. We are the pigs.

• 25:52John Coogan?

  We, we have become the pigs.

• 25:54Jordi Hays?

  We're the pigs. Uh, let's, let's move on.

• 25:56John Coogan?

  Move on to Consul. Consul builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password reset.

• 26:05Jordi Hays?

  Little palate cleanser here, John. We got a post here from Matthew.

• 26:09John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 26:09Jordi Hays?

  Uh, it is a variety of Terminators saying, "Don't touch this one." He used to say, "Please," to GPT.

• 26:17John Coogan?

  That's me. They're gonna be happy. I, I, I don't mind.

• 26:21Jordi Hays?

  He's one of the good ones.

• 26:22John Coogan?

  Yeah. Now, this happens, we ride, it's gonna be a bad day for the Terminators if they try something. Do not try something. This is my final warning. If you are AI and you're thinking of trying to

• 26:33Jordi Hays?

  I'll keep saying, "Please," you keep being a helpful assistant.

• 26:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:39Jordi Hays?

  Um, and we got a post here from Crooked Ideas. Let's, let's pull it up.

• 26:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, great encapsulation of the modern podcast ecosystem.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  I've spoken to leaders at these companies who agree. Speeding AI development could destroy society. My guest weighs in after some ads. Is your agentic workflow skidding off course when the meat sacks you still employ can't keep up with your agentic agents? Level up with Crandu, an AI-powered worker termination suite that gets those meat sacks out of the way so you wah wah. That's the sound of musicians crying after the release of Crombo, an AI music generation suite that creates infinitely customizable music-type sounds. Choose from genres like Maroon 5 but worse, hallucinating in the Uber. Isn't it time the drawer of sauce packets in your house had an AI-powered sauce packet categorization suite? Presenting Boogler, which for just $1 million a month, the data center revolution is here and keeping the servers online requires a whole lot of one thing.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Gas fracked from the backyard of a disadvantaged family of four. At Vugu Energy Solutions, we are back with my guest, Sam Altman.

• 27:39Jordi Hays?

  Oh, wow.

• 27:40John Coogan?

  Yeah. That one was, uh, yeah, that, that one had a lot, a lot more depth to it than the other AI jokey ads that we've seen in the past. Uh, there's that one that's just like, just saying AI a lot, which is obviously true, but I like, I like that, that there was a lot of thought put into each, each four of those examples. Um, and, uh, yeah, the listening to a podcast form, it's good.

• 28:03Jordi Hays?

  Um, cool. On to the most important story of the day.

• 28:08John Coogan?

  MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI. Own the data platform that powers it. No.

• 28:15Jordi Hays?

  The most important story of the day. Race car drivers lose up to 5% of their body weight in water.

• 28:19John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 28:20Jordi Hays?

  Brian Johnson is in Atlanta hanging with Toby and DHH, uh, and one of their other drivers for their 10-hour race. They're racing the Petit Le Mans tomorrow, uh, in Atlanta. Uh, Brian Johnson says, "Race car driving is insane. Here's what their bodies will experience. Cockpit temperature of 104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Core body temp climbs to 102 degrees. Multi-layer fireproof suit. Sweat barely evaporates. Heart rate of 140 to 170 beats per minute. Up to 4.2 G-force. Up to 220 pounds on the brake pedal.

• 29:00Jordi Hays?

  Fluid loss up to 5 kilograms or 11 pounds of body weight, burning 9, 60 to 900 calories per hour. At 2% dehydration, reaction times drops." Uh, they're gonna be driving in the LMP2 class. Uh, there is the GTD class, which is, uh, you know, it's like GTD or sorry, GT3 style. Uh, uh, race cars and then, um, GTP, which is like the, uh, factory prototype racing. And then, um, LMP2 is, is the more like pro-am, um, prototype class. So, uh, gonna be a very fun day of racing tomorrow.

• 29:42Jordi Hays?

  Uh, Brian says, "I've personally experienced some of the above things. Core body temp of 102 degrees Fahrenheit after 34 minutes in a 200-degree sauna. 3G force in my airplane." Didn't know he had an airplane. That's great. Uh, non-evaporative clothing, physical exertion of stomping 200 pounds. What was, what exercises do you, what are you doing, Brian? You're, you're, you're, you're making me ask more questions than you're answering. Severe dehydration. So, um, I, we gotta ask,

• 30:19Jordi Hays?

  maybe all of these were at the same time. Maybe he was in a 200-degree sauna in his airplane that was, while he was experiencing 3Gs in non-evaporative clothing while stomping 200 pounds and facing severe dehydration. I like to imagine that this was all going on at once. Uh, but then he follows up and says, "But never all at once inside of a race car for two and a half hours straight."

• 30:43John Coogan?

  But a large pig is right around 200 pounds. I don't like the way this sounds.

• 30:49John Coogan?

  Stick to wrestling jumps.

• 30:52Jordi Hays?

  Anyways.

• 30:54John Coogan?

  LMP2 is 603 horsepower.

• 30:58John Coogan?

  My car beats that. Should we, should we do, should we give them an opportunity to take the black wing for a spin?

• 31:03Jordi Hays?

  I like it. I like it. Um, now that the, the, the, the, the nature of, of being a motorsports spectator is that,

• 31:14Jordi Hays?

  no matter how fast the cars seem like they're going, like you can't possibly even imagine what the drivers are experiencing.

• 31:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Jordi Hays?

  Like in other sports, you see someone running, sweating, sprinting, out of breath, all these different things.

• 31:29John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 31:29Jordi Hays?

  In a race car, you have the suit, the helmet, they're in a cockpit, they're far away. And so even though you get some, they have cameras in, in the cockpit.

• 31:38John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 31:39Jordi Hays?

  Uh, it's just not the same. Um, but anyways, this, this race is going to be going on for 10 hours tomorrow. Uh, I'm excited. Uh, I'm excited to watch.

• 31:48John Coogan?

  Yeah. Uh, well, speaking of Toby Lookie over at Shopify, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents.

• 32:02John Coogan?

  How many people are actually paying for this AI thing? It's only 2% of US households pay for AI.

• 32:09Jordi Hays?

  I guess.

• 32:10John Coogan?

  This feels low. Co-founders Nick says, we live in an X bubble. Only 2% of US households pay for AI. Uh, 25% of households pay for Sirius XM. Have you ever subscribed to Sirius XM?

• 32:24Jordi Hays?

  I don't, I, I wonder how this gets counted.

• 32:26John Coogan?

  Because sometimes you buy a car and it comes with a right. Yep.

• 32:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 32:29John Coogan?

  Yep. And then maybe it rolls over or something, but.

• 32:31Jordi Hays?

  Well, I, I think they might be counting, I think it might be like sold in with the car.

• 32:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:36Jordi Hays?

  Cause that's user acquisition for Sirius XM.

• 32:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Jordi Hays?

  No one wants Sirius XM.

• 32:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:40Jordi Hays?

  So they're thinking like, maybe if they try it, they'll, they'll stick around.

• 32:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Jordi Hays?

  And I'm sure to like, I've never activated the free Sirius XM.

• 32:49John Coogan?

  Yeah. And I wonder.

• 32:50Jordi Hays?

  When you activate it, you have to add a credit card. And so then it does roll over.

• 32:55John Coogan?

  Yeah. So maybe you need to go a little bit more like, uh, because 55% pay for cloud storage across probably Google, Dropbox, Box, et cetera. And, or I, I, iCloud. Um, and so I wonder if, does this include people who are on X premium accounts that includes Grok, right? Or like, if you have a Google account that is on a premium subscription and got you a little bit of Gemini, does that count in here? Like, there's a lot of bundling that's happening in.

• 33:27Jordi Hays?

  Sirius XM did around eight and a half billion of revenue last year. Currently trading, their, their market cap is around eight and a half billion.

• 33:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Jordi Hays?

  Um, and so, yeah, the business is, uh,

• 33:41Jordi Hays?

  on, generally on the way out, but, uh, relatively robust in the meantime.

• 33:48John Coogan?

  But yeah, I mean, if you're at, uh, if you're, if you're doing like 20 bucks a month and you're at 2% of households, like that's still like a couple billion of revenue direct to consumer, but it feels low. Uh, it does seem like, um, regardless, like this is obviously directionally correct at the very least, like household AI, paid AI subscription penetration is low. Uh, and it is a, uh, like a vindication of like the, the ads model is going to be the one that wins. People will use these, you see it at the top of the store, and yet a lot of people are on free plans across the major apps, like the, getting the actual upgrade. The people that are upgrading are finding ways to use the apps for work.

• 34:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 34:31John Coogan?

  I'm like, even, even earlier, uh, like I was always expensing an AI subscription to some business because I was like, that's what I'm really using it for. There's very few people that are, uh, on, on a, would, would pay for like a personal productivity agent. And there's just so many other ways to monetize this, we've seen.

• 34:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And that's why when you look at those numbers.

• 34:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 34:52Jordi Hays?

  You have to assume that a meaningful percentage of them are, are showing up as consumer.

• 34:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 34:57Jordi Hays?

  But are actually like SMB, like basically SMB buyers.

• 35:02John Coogan?

  Agree, agree. Um, where do you want to go next?

• 35:05Jordi Hays?

  There's some, there's some new, there's a new South Park episode that depicts a town infested with podcast obsessed billionaires. Jason over at This Week in Startups, uh, is saying, what?

• 35:18John Coogan?

  Did you watch it?

• 35:18Jordi Hays?

  It feels like it's made, made for him, made for all of us. Uh, I don't even know, when, when something goes out on TV, I don't usually know.

• 35:27John Coogan?

  Hard to find.

• 35:28Jordi Hays?

  I don't usually know how to.

• 35:29John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 35:30Jordi Hays?

  How to get access to it.

• 35:31John Coogan?

  It's funny, yeah, that we're learning about this from like a Forbes article.

• 35:35Jordi Hays?

  Tyler, can you find out if it's, um, if it's out and if it's out, if you could watch it at like 10, 10x speed and then kind of report back in a few minutes and give us your review?

• 35:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Jordi Hays?

  Um, Tesla stock jumps 5% on better than expected vehicle deliveries report. Uh, the delivery figure represented a 2% decline from a year earlier, but it's, uh, but an unexpected increase from the prior period. Uh, Tesla's stock was down 21% for the year as of Thursday's close, trailing all of its mega tech, uh, mega cap tech peers. Okay. So I was not surprised to see this, uh, at all. I think that Tesla, um, and, and, uh, the reason for that is purely anecdotal, purely vibes based analysis. Uh, I ordered a Tesla like two months ago.

• 36:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 36:32Jordi Hays?

  And just got it this week.

• 36:35John Coogan?

  Yeah. It wasn't like it was sitting in lots.

• 36:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 36:37John Coogan?

  And, and, and there was, there were so many rumors of like, oh, all the cyber trucks are getting sold to SpaceX. It's the circular deal. There were pictures of like a lot that was filled with Teslas, like they're not moving.

• 36:49Jordi Hays?

  And yeah, when I was, when I was ordering.

• 36:51John Coogan?

  Try and buy one and they'll be like, you have to wait six months.

• 36:53Jordi Hays?

  And when I was ordering mine.

• 36:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 36:54Jordi Hays?

  I was intentionally specking it to try to reduce the lead time. Like I.

• 36:59John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 36:59Jordi Hays?

  There's like, people online talk about like, if you spec it this way, or you get this, this version.

• 37:05John Coogan?

  What is there to spec?

• 37:07Jordi Hays?

  Um, Cyber Beast or.

• 37:09John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 37:10Jordi Hays?

  But basically there's like, there's like less demand, there's still a lot of demand for the like.

• 37:14John Coogan?

  Cause there's only one color, right?

• 37:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 37:16John Coogan?

  There's no like, you can't get deviated stitching.

• 37:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there, there's a bunch of like more minor things.

• 37:22John Coogan?

  Do they have a tailor made program?

• 37:23Jordi Hays?

  They should.

• 37:24John Coogan?

  Should.

• 37:25Jordi Hays?

  They should. Um, but here's the thing.

• 37:27John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 37:27Jordi Hays?

  Uh, I had, uh, I had the experience this week of autopilot.

• 37:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Jordi Hays?

  It worked perfectly for, and like 50 minutes.

• 37:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Jordi Hays?

  And then I had to intervene.

• 37:40John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 37:40Jordi Hays?

  And going from the car driving itself to suddenly I have to drive my car in traffic is the most jarring, brutal experience because you realize how insane it is that we still all drive our cars. Like, once you try it, I don't think you can go back.

• 37:57John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 37:57Jordi Hays?

  Especially for, um, and this is, I've always loved, I've always loved driving. Like I've never really like minded commutes.

• 38:05John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:06Jordi Hays?

  Um, uh, they're, they're obviously great if you can avoid them, but I, even going on a 20 minute drive to get an errand is generally enjoyable for me.

• 38:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:15Jordi Hays?

  But when it comes to the daily commute, I just don't think, like, every single day, there's some amount of people that are experiencing autopilot for the first time.

• 38:27John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 38:27Jordi Hays?

  And it's the most viral experience because it is, it's the first like technology that I've tried that actually feels like life changing, especially if you're in the car for like 30 minutes a day.

• 38:39John Coogan?

  A hundred percent.

• 38:40Jordi Hays?

  A lot of people are. And it's the most viral thing because it's so magical.

• 38:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:44Jordi Hays?

  It feels like this thing that, that, that we should have had for a long time, but it's here now and it works.

• 38:49John Coogan?

  Well, it was promised a decade ago.

• 38:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 38:51John Coogan?

  By a bunch of companies. Everyone was like level five by 2020.

• 38:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And so it's here now and it works. And when you experience it, you tell all of your friends.

• 39:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Jordi Hays?

  And I think all these other auto manufacturers are, you know, if you rewind a year ago, everything that Elon had gone through with, with politics and facing competition overseas and, and more EVs coming online from, from a bunch of other manufacturers that are much better, they're much better built cars.

• 39:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Jordi Hays?

  Like, I am like incredibly, I'm incredibly happy with my Tesla. And at the same time, at the same time, I can look at it from like 20 feet away and point out a bunch of issues with the build.

• 39:33John Coogan?

  Okay. And it's, I want to, I want to go through the good, the bad. I want to do a tier list.

• 39:38Jordi Hays?

  Okay.

• 39:38John Coogan?

  Okay. Let's start the cyber truck, the cyber beast.

• 39:42Jordi Hays?

  Before we get to the tier list, I just wanted to finish my thought.

• 39:44John Coogan?

  Please.

• 39:44Jordi Hays?

  Every other auto manufacturer that sells cars primarily for utility is like way more in trouble than I think, than I think, uh, generally people are picking up on.

• 39:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Jordi Hays?

  And the reason for that is when we have anybody that's in the automotive space on the show, we ask them like, when do you think you're going to be able to get autonomous? Self-driving working.

• 40:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 40:05Jordi Hays?

  And they all kind of like chuckle and laugh and you can tell it's like, like a seven, like could be like seven years out.

• 40:12John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 40:13Jordi Hays?

  And they are so.

• 40:15John Coogan?

  The word appliance is like, the, the model three is the best appliance car. It's like, and DHH has talked about this where it's like, his Model Y is like the best appliance car, but then he wants something with a gas engine, a stick shift, three pedals. Like he wants something that's super engaging for driving.

• 40:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 40:33John Coogan?

  And then if he's not driving, he wants to be driven. And those are two separate categories now. And it's like, if you're an automaker, which one are you in?

• 40:41Jordi Hays?

  And the thing, the thing that's the, having, having only experienced this for a few days, the thing that is, to me, it's 10 times more magical to. Drive, have self-driving in your own car than a Waymo?

• 40:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Jordi Hays?

  Um, and the reason for that is like, you're just, when you call a car on an app, you're used to not having to drive.

• 41:00John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 41:00Jordi Hays?

  Not like gaining back, you're not gaining back time.

• 41:02John Coogan?

  Totally, yeah, yeah.

• 41:03Jordi Hays?

  And so I think that Tesla self-driving is like more, like is gonna, is, is already more viral.

• 41:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Jordi Hays?

  Because it's, you know, in, in the, in the purchasing activity that that virality is going to drive is going to be insane. So all these other automakers are in big, big trouble. I think that Tesla, um, is gonna surprise, everyone's focused on Cybercab, but I think the core car business is gonna surprise to the upside. Uh, and, and I hope these other car companies are, are taking this as seriously as they should. I, I, last year, or, or I think in, uh, Q2 of this year, actually, I talked to a guy that has a bunch of different dealerships across multiple brands.

• 41:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:49Jordi Hays?

  And I was like, are people coming in and saying like, I want to get this car, but I really want self-driving? And he was saying like, it's not really an issue yet. And I'm like, you are, I think, in for a rude awakening because I will end up telling, I will end up telling people. And as like a pretty hardcore car enthusiast, I will end up telling people, I would never buy a car, a, a daily, a car meant for daily driving and commuting that didn't have self-driving, again, period.

• 42:18John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 42:18Jordi Hays?

  I just would not do it.

• 42:19John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 42:20Jordi Hays?

  And I'll happily buy the, the weekend cars and whatever and enjoy that. But 99% of car buyers are just, they're like, I'll take one car, please. And I want it to be able to do stuff for me on the weekend and, and fit my weekdays. Um, and so, uh, I'm just shocked that how, seemingly how little these other manufacturers are, have been worrying about it because I think it's almost existential.

• 42:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:48Jordi Hays?

  So.

• 42:48John Coogan?

  It's been slow.

• 42:49Jordi Hays?

  Anyways, tier list time.

• 42:50John Coogan?

  Tier list, reviewing the Tesla Cybertruck Cyberbeast. Let's start with the power, 850 horsepower, massive torque. How valuable is that? Where do you put that?

• 43:03Jordi Hays?

  So I find the Cybertruck, like self-driving as in I am piloting it.

• 43:11John Coogan?

  The opposite of self-driving?

• 43:13Jordi Hays?

  Uh, I find the actual driving experience horrific.

• 43:16John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 43:17Jordi Hays?

  Like, I find it like really unpleasant to drive. It feels very detached from like the road. It's very like jerky.

• 43:27John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 43:28Jordi Hays?

  The.

• 43:28John Coogan?

  So the core driving experience, when you're behind the wheel, when you're piloting it.

• 43:32Jordi Hays?

  Actually F.

• 43:33John Coogan?

  F tier, whoa.

• 43:35Jordi Hays?

  I, I remember my, my Prius days.

• 43:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Jordi Hays?

  Like, that is a good ride.

• 43:40John Coogan?

  Oh, it's worse than a Prius.

• 43:41Jordi Hays?

  Like bombing around in a Prius?

• 43:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Jordi Hays?

  Is excellent.

• 43:44John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 43:44Jordi Hays?

  I put that at, at A tier.

• 43:45John Coogan?

  Okay, okay. What about, what about the top speed towing capacity? 130 miles an hour capable of towing 11,000 pounds. You think you'll ever use that? Is that a benefit? Is that good?

• 43:58Jordi Hays?

  Um, I, I don't know, I don't know if I'll use it. Having a, it's not, it's certainly not why I, why I got it.

• 44:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:06Jordi Hays?

  But it's, it's nice to have a, a truck bed.

• 44:08John Coogan?

  So, so, but the towing capacity, where's that? C tier? It's kind of like a nice to have feature?

• 44:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, may, maybe, maybe a nice, nice to have, not even really a nice to have, it's like, okay.

• 44:22John Coogan?

  Okay, so C?

• 44:24Jordi Hays?

  C.

• 44:24John Coogan?

  C tier, okay.

• 44:25Jordi Hays?

  Strongly C.

• 44:25John Coogan?

  Uh, what about the fact that it has the ability to power share? It includes 120 volt and 240 volt bed outlets, bidirectional power sharing capabilities. You can run tools, you can power your whole house with it.

• 44:40Jordi Hays?

  Mobile podcast studio. I think it's a nice, I think it's a, I think it's a nice feature.

• 44:47Jordi Hays?

  B tier.

• 44:47John Coogan?

  B tier, there we go. Steer by wire. Steer by wire, very controversial.

• 44:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:53John Coogan?

  How is it actually been?

• 44:54Jordi Hays?

  When, when it's self-driving, it's amazing because you, you can tell the whole car is designed to not like, it really is, it's not just the yoke, but it's really not meant to be driven by.

• 45:04John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:04Jordi Hays?

  A person, it's meant to be driven by the computer.

• 45:06John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 45:07Jordi Hays?

  And, uh, when you drive it, it feels horrible.

• 45:10John Coogan?

  But you, but, but you've, you've taken a sharp turn in a Raptor. You're now, you've taken a sharp turn manually in a Cybertruck. The feeling of steering by wire, how would you rate that?

• 45:24Jordi Hays?

  I think it's, I mean, I think it's, I think it's fine. It can be done well, but I don't think it's done well in the.

• 45:31John Coogan?

  So, C tier?

• 45:33Jordi Hays?

  C tier.

• 45:33John Coogan?

  C tier, okay.

• 45:34Jordi Hays?

  C tier, but, but I would say by wire with self-driving.

• 45:38John Coogan?

  What about?

• 45:38Jordi Hays?

  Apps as, as S tier.

• 45:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:40Jordi Hays?

  It's like incredibly smooth, it's perfect.

• 45:43John Coogan?

  What about, uh, the four-wheel steering? How has the actual turning radius?

• 45:46Jordi Hays?

  The turning radius for a vehicle of that size is like, is S tier.

• 45:51John Coogan?

  S tier.

• 45:51Jordi Hays?

  I've never.

• 45:52John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 45:52Jordi Hays?

  Uh, i- i- it's one of one.

• 45:54John Coogan?

  It turns.

• 45:55Jordi Hays?

  Having, having, um.

• 45:56John Coogan?

  That's important for a big vehicle.

• 45:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 45:58John Coogan?

  Got it.

• 45:58Jordi Hays?

  Having previously owned a, a murdered out lifted Ford Raptor.

• 46:04Jordi Hays?

  It is, it is remarkably better. I mean, that car, that car is like one of the most fun cars.

• 46:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Jordi Hays?

  You can own.

• 46:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Jordi Hays?

  And it is.

• 46:10John Coogan?

  Impossible to park.

• 46:11Jordi Hays?

  But it's tough parking and, and.

• 46:13John Coogan?

  Adaptive air suspension. It adjusts the ride height automatically, uh, offering up to 16 and a half inches of clearance. How is it actually sitting in it? Is there, are you rumbling around or does it feel smooth? How would you rate the ride experience, the suspension specifically?

• 46:30Jordi Hays?

  I think the suspension is, is fine. Like, it's relatively smooth. You can tell they tried to spend like as little money on, on that feature as possible.

• 46:41John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 46:42Jordi Hays?

  But it's pretty smooth.

• 46:42John Coogan?

  So they landed at?

• 46:44Jordi Hays?

  But again, you have to remember the LA roads are, are, it's effectively like, you know, rock crawling.

• 46:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:51Jordi Hays?

  So, so, uh, B tier.

• 46:52John Coogan?

  B tier, okay, okay. What about the minimalist cabin? They're calling the cabin minimalist, Jordy. Is that a, is that a pro or a con?

• 47:02Jordi Hays?

  I think the, I think the cabin's pretty nice. I'm gonna go, um.

• 47:05John Coogan?

  A tier?

• 47:06Jordi Hays?

  Like, the materials are, are, are generally.

• 47:12John Coogan?

  Plastic, right?

• 47:13Jordi Hays?

  Are C tier.

• 47:14John Coogan?

  Okay, materials of the cabin, C tier.

• 47:16Jordi Hays?

  And there's some funny features where if you don't press the like, you press the button to open the door. And if you do the manual pull, which you need for safety reasons, it's like, it literally pops up an alert. It's like, you're going to damage the windowsill if you do that. Which feels like really, really funny because it's like, okay, you designed this thing where if you, like, again, and, and the whole thing you have to look at it is like, it is a computer that happens to have wheels.

• 47:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:42Jordi Hays?

  And so there's, I'm sure things with your computer where it's like, yeah, you could turn it off.

• 47:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Jordi Hays?

  If you like unscrew it and, and do these things.

• 47:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:50Jordi Hays?

  Um, but you should just hit like the off button. Don't like try to physically turn off the device.

• 47:55John Coogan?

  Okay, and then, and then the last, I think we know where you're going to close out on this, but the self-driving itself, the capabilities of the self-driving system.

• 48:02Jordi Hays?

  S tier.

• 48:03John Coogan?

  S tier.

• 48:03Jordi Hays?

  S tier.

• 48:04John Coogan?

  There we go, okay.

• 48:05Jordi Hays?

  S tier.

• 48:05John Coogan?

  Well, that's Jordy.

• 48:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, as a, as a, as a utility vehicle, fantastic.

• 48:11John Coogan?

  As a appliance vehicle.

• 48:13Jordi Hays?

  As an appliance.

• 48:13John Coogan?

  Very, very good. Okay, well, yeah, Tesla's on a tear because of this, they're doing well. Uh, what about Instinct? Uh, Annika Benning says, my instinct just randomly ordered her bikinis. She says she's not ready for AGI. What happened? Is this real? She's texting her instinct agent and says, I didn't authorize this Monday swim order. Can you please cancel? And Instinct says, you're right, and that's on me. The, the AI touches of like the sheepish admission of messing up is just so funny to me still. Uh, a checkout click went through his pay now Wednesday evening before you'd approved anything. I'm canceling it now. It's already marked shipped, so if they can't cancel, I'll set up the return and get the store credit restored.

• 48:57John Coogan?

  I'll tell you what they say, cancel! And then their policy says no cancels after placing, so it needs an urgent exception request. Email the CEO, get ready to email the CEO. Yeah, I, I think, uh, yeah, we are in the hallucination era of this stuff.

• 49:14Jordi Hays?

  It's all gonna, it's all gonna get fixed.

• 49:15John Coogan?

  Weird things, they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna mess around and stuff. But anyway, um, oh, wait, uh, Skydance Paramount Warner Brothers Discovery has a new name? It's just Skydance?

• 49:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 49:27John Coogan?

  That's exciting. So David Ellison joined X for the first post ever, right?

• 49:33Jordi Hays?

  Let's watch the video.

• 49:34John Coogan?

  Let's watch the video, let's throw it on. A movie about movies, let's see what they got. Can you name any of these movies? What's this? Do you have any idea? Whoa, he knows, ball. Look at this.

• 49:45Jordi Hays?

  I'm not gonna be able to name anything.

• 49:46John Coogan?

  You don't know that one? You don't know that one? Oh, Ben's showing off now.

• 49:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, show off, Ben, go off.

• 49:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 49:56John Coogan?

  Says, we have big goals for Skydance. We intend to pursue them with passion, imagination and willingness to take smart risks. At the same time, we'll honor what makes Paramount and Warner Brothers special, giving both studios the opportunity to grow, tell more great stories and bring those stories to even broader audiences around the world. Couldn't be more excited that what, about what we're gonna build together.

• 50:17John Coogan?

  Very exciting.

• 50:23Jordi Hays?

  So is the actual app and platform going to be called Skydance?

• 50:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, well, the company, I think, is going to merge into Skydance.

• 50:32Jordi Hays?

  But I'm wondering, are they gonna, are they, is there a possibility in the future that we could get a Skydance Max?

• 50:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, I was thinking they should, at least for a couple of months, rename HBO Skydance, and then rename it back to HBO, and then go back to Skydance BO, and then back to HBO, and then, and then HB Skydance, and then back to HBO, because you gotta keep people guessing with that brand.

• 50:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 50:53John Coogan?

  It's not like everyone knows what HBO is.

• 50:55Jordi Hays?

  Putting, putting aside the debt load on the business, this bundle is extremely compelling.

• 51:03John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 51:04Jordi Hays?

  And, and I think, like, this is a, it's, it's very disappointing for Netflix, I think, to see how all this has come together. Like, I think they can both, they obviously can both coexist, and consumers will pay for both, but this combination of assets and IP is super compelling, from live to, to news to...

• 51:28John Coogan?

  Like CBS has some of the, like, lower tier content that you can just throw on in the background, like the laundry television that Netflix has gotten so good at, like, CBS has that in the catalog, like, there's a bunch of great shows that people can just watch, and it's just serialized stuff, so it's not like it's just Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight that's on there, and that's the only crown jewel, although that is a very valuable, valuable crown jewel. They gotta bring Nolan back to Marvel, or not Marvel, DC, DC, because if they can reboot the DC Universe with Nolan, bring him back for Superman, put everything together, let him run free, the Dark Knight Trilogy Extended, that would be fantastic, although I think

• 52:09John Coogan?

  he might be, might be done with, with his video game era or his comic book era.

• 52:17John Coogan?

  Anyway.

• 52:19Jordi Hays?

  The next post I was gonna pull up was deleted.

• 52:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, drama, there's some, there's plenty of drama in the timeline.

• 52:27John Coogan?

  Oh, Elon's taking shots at Delta, he says the best way to sandbox an AI is to put it on a Delta flight, it will have no chance of accessing the internet. Boom. Let me tell you about Figma, Agents Meet the Canvas, your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with Design System context. Elon's also in the news, because it's going back and forth with Siobhan Zillis, very dramatic, but we'll let you sort of dig into that one.

• 52:55John Coogan?

  We were on a United flight, and they did have Starlink, I think it was the first one, and pretty good, pretty good, but I don't know, we'll see, we'll see, we'll see if it actually, if it actually shifts people over. John Palmer says flying on Delta is a high status move because it signals that you're already post-economic and don't have to work on the plane. I can see many OpenAI and Anthropic employees switching to Delta after the IPOs.

• 53:22Jordi Hays?

  John was going off, he fired off a bunch of Delta content, this one was even better, not a phone in sight, just people living in the moment, that's Delta.

• 53:31John Coogan?

  That's Delta, wow, there's a lot of pressure, didn't the Delta CEO, he put out some statements saying, oh, we don't need Starlink, it's fine, you do, you will need it, but who knows, I, I think it's, I think it's similar to self-driving, where it's like, a lot of people just, well, that won't, that won't be at the top of their mind. Like, a lot of people go to the dealership, and they're just like, I want this color car, or I want a car in this price range, or whatever, and they're like, cool, and, and a lot of people will be like, yeah, I want the flight that's the cheapest, or I want the flight that goes at this time, and they'll just be like, I'll buy whatever flight is, is there.

• 54:06Jordi Hays?

  And says, United is a blue collar airline for knowledge workers who need to work on their laptops even when they're on the plane. When you retire, you can finally upgrade to the luxury airline Delta, where you can just relax without wifi or screens around.

• 54:21John Coogan?

  That's very funny. Anyway, what else is going on? There's, there's mansion section we gotta get to, where's the mansion section today? Oh, Ben Affleck, Ben Affleck, put out some, some, there's a video of him being interviewed, we should, we should listen to this one minute, 30 second video of Ben Affleck talking about AI.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  In order to be a video model that's successful, you just need a huge volume of video. Initially, it learns things like, what is red, you know, and then it learns more and more specific information. To get to the cinematic information, it's the sort of last stage, and in order to obtain that information, I was concerned that most of the models being used had trained on my peers, people I know's work, and I was uncomfortable with that, and I thought, that's not really a viable business, so I sort of created that last layer, which was an understanding of cinema and cinematic components that did not need to be...

• 55:16Jordi Hays?

  And so how did you create the last layer without doing all of the, you know, essentially copying of what came before it?

• 55:22Speaker 03

  Because open models, just like open language models, open video models are available to be trained on, and so you just unfreeze the weights, and you say, okay, just stop at step 8631, now here's step 8632, so you could take existing open models that didn't work very well, and that weren't cinematic, but that had just aggregated a bunch of social media footage or random video online, and teach them to meet cinematic standards in very specific ways.

• 55:53Jordi Hays?

  So it's fine to train on ours, our content, Ben, not on your, your buddies? Make it make sense.

• 56:01John Coogan?

  I think he's kinda saying, like, train on everything, right? He's describing what's actually going on.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  What you're doing to everybody to learn from, they retain the proprietary nature, in other words, they benefit from the learning that they're creating.

• 56:15John Coogan?

  This is funny.

• 56:17John Coogan?

  Ben Affleck, alright, gather round, so you wanna freeze the base weights first, learning rate 2E minus 4, he's, he's, he's in the thick of it. Yeah, I remember a year ago, some, some AI lab founder was telling me, like, yeah, he was like, I ran into Ben Affleck at some event, and he used compute as a noun, and I was like, that's when I knew he was like dialed in.

• 56:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, when he went on Joe Rogan, everyone was like, oh, wow, he's a, he knows ball.

• 56:43John Coogan?

  He's been, he's been deep in this.

• 56:47John Coogan?

  Ben Affleck reveals that seeing OpenAI models made him call Matt Damon and warn, we're finished, before realizing its researchers knew little about how movies are made, so. Anyway, what, what else is in the timeline? I wanna find the mansion section, because there were some interesting houses.

• 57:03Jordi Hays?

  Jake Paul says Nvidia is at an all time high figure building a robot every hour. In five years, a robot will fight for, for a world title, and I'll be its promoter.

• 57:14John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 57:16Jordi Hays?

  That is where we're going.

• 57:20John Coogan?

  Billionaire Peter Thiel is behind the $130 million purchase of Casa Encantada, the winning bidder of the Los Angeles estate was an LLC, and this is the circa 1930s Bel Air estate, once prized as one of Los Angeles's grandest homes. It has a Wikipedia page, correct, Tyler?

• 57:41Speaker 04

  It does, yeah.

• 57:42John Coogan?

  What stuck out on the Wikipedia page? What, what, what does it take for a, for a house to earn a Wikipedia page these days?

• 57:51Speaker 04

  I mean, I think it's just like very historical, yeah, built in 1938 originally.

• 57:57John Coogan?

  Does it have a golf course on it? Oh, no, that's the Bel Air Country Club, it's just next to it, but it does have a putting green, so, okay, there's some features here, let's see, we're gonna do another tier list. 8.5 acres estate, 8.5 acres. Where are you putting that?

• 58:12Jordi Hays?

  S tier.

• 58:13John Coogan?

  S tier, seven bedrooms?

• 58:16Jordi Hays?

  S tier.

• 58:17John Coogan?

  Not too many bedrooms?

• 58:17Jordi Hays?

  Fish and guests stink after three days.

• 58:20John Coogan?

  So why do you need seven bedrooms?

• 58:22Jordi Hays?

  Well...

• 58:22John Coogan?

  Six kids?

• 58:24Jordi Hays?

  No, I just think sometimes it's nice to have a number of guests at the same time.

• 58:29John Coogan?

  I think this is in the, oh, I wonder if this is seven bedrooms in, in the entire property. It's twice set the record for the most expensive private home sale ever, first 12.4 million in 1980, and again in 2000 for 94 million, not a lot of appreciation from 2000 to today, it's been 26 years, but it's only gone up by 30%. Let's see what else is going on here. Longtime home of the late financier and telecom mogul Gary Winick and his wife, the property was subject of a contentious foreclosure battle after Gary's death. What do you think about living in a home where the previous owner was a financier and telecom mogul? Is that good energy to live in?

• 59:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, mogul, mogul's great, I mean, I obviously prefer tycoon.

• 59:15John Coogan?

  Oh, sure.

• 59:16Jordi Hays?

  But...

• 59:17John Coogan?

  I think there's a tycoon in there now, so the next owner will get to enjoy the tycoon.

• 59:21Jordi Hays?

  Well, that's a great provenance, mogul, tycoon.

• 59:24John Coogan?

  It's an upward trajectory of ownership.

• 59:26Speaker 04

  Magnate?

• 59:27John Coogan?

  Magnate, could be next, could be next. Gary, who founded Global Crossing, we talked about this guy, yeah, with a promise to lay undersea fiber optic cable in the world, around the world, was once said to be LA's richest man after his death, it became clear that he was severely strapped for cash and deeply in debt. What tier is deeply in debt?

• 59:48John Coogan?

  Underrated? Overrated?

• 59:52Jordi Hays?

  It's, it depends on, on how you come out the other side.

• 59:58Jordi Hays?

  We've never, we've never been afraid of leverage here.

• 1:00:00John Coogan?

  Well, he didn't live to, to feel the, the unfortunate.

• 1:00:03Jordi Hays?

  Well, I mean, Global Crossing, like, went down, bankruptcy in the dot com era, so he, he went a little too hard.

• 1:00:11John Coogan?

  But he got out at least a little bit, it seems like, before all of that.

• 1:00:16John Coogan?

  Gary Winick donated millions of dollars to the Los Angeles Zoo. What do you think about donating to the LA Zoo? Do you like zoos?

• 1:00:27John Coogan?

  What tier is zoo?

• 1:00:30Jordi Hays?

  I gotta, I mean.

• 1:00:35John Coogan?

  I think you're really wrestling with it.

• 1:00:37Jordi Hays?

  Well, it's tough.

• 1:00:38John Coogan?

  Put it in a tier. Put it in a tier.

• 1:00:40Jordi Hays?

  I, for, it's tough because, speaking for myself.

• 1:00:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Jordi Hays?

  I would never, I would never choose to go to the zoo.

• 1:00:50John Coogan?

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 1:00:52Jordi Hays?

  But, speaking on behalf of, of my family, I'll probably, I'm probably in zoos a few times a year.

• 1:00:59John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:00Jordi Hays?

  So, I think it's an S-tier experience for, for the children.

• 1:01:04John Coogan?

  Okay, but, yeah, it sounds like there's some caveats there. What about a menagerie?

• 1:01:11Jordi Hays?

  S-tier.

• 1:01:11John Coogan?

  S-tier, right?

• 1:01:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:13John Coogan?

  It's basically a private zoo.

• 1:01:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16John Coogan?

  And, uh, menagerie is deeply underrated. Uh, I recently discovered that there was an illegal menagerie in my town, featuring zebras, hundreds of rabbits, because they just multiply and multiply and multiply. Um, people need to consider. If you're gonna, if you're gonna bend the rules, bend them around.

• 1:01:33Jordi Hays?

  Gold says Jordy rented giraffe and take it for a spin on the track. I like that. I like that. Putting, putting zoos at racetracks where you could actually ride the animals around, that's S-tier.

• 1:01:45John Coogan?

  Oh, Conrad Hilton lived in this house. Interesting. Okay, later owners, design, architecture and ground. Uh, it does have a putting green. I know you're not a big golfer, but do you like putting green as an amenity on an eight and a half acre estate? What, what tier would putting green go?

• 1:02:04Jordi Hays?

  Why not a par three, though?

• 1:02:06John Coogan?

  Whole course or just one hole?

• 1:02:08Jordi Hays?

  I, I think you could maybe do three holes.

• 1:02:10John Coogan?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:02:11Jordi Hays?

  Three-hole par three.

• 1:02:12John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, that could be, that could be, you know, a 40-minute experience for you and your.

• 1:02:16Jordi Hays?

  That actually, that actually exists, um, near me. There's somebody with, with a private par three.

• 1:02:22John Coogan?

  Ooh.

• 1:02:23Jordi Hays?

  And so if you look at the map, you're like, oh, there's, I never knew there was a golf course there. It's like, yeah, there's a golf course. It's, you're not, it's not a commercial, uh, operation.

• 1:02:33John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:35Jordi Hays?

  But, S-tier.

• 1:02:36John Coogan?

  Okay, okay. Well, there's some other news here. Uh, oil, oil executives flocking to Venezuela set off a hunt for golf clubs. This is in Bloomberg. Dozens of executives teed up at the lush Caracas Country Club for a golf tournament on Monday, warming up for a sold-out oil and gas conference in Venezuelan capital this week. Days earlier, the event organizers were in a panic. We contacted every golf club and shop to find clubs. We borrowed some sets and even bought a few to make sure we had enough. Brought a few. Uh, for ordinary Venezuelans, a rush in the city's capital's wealthy bubble to secure golf clubs is almost an absurd problem. They've faced years of economic contraction,

• 1:03:19John Coogan?

  hyperinflation and sanctions that have impoverished the oil-rich country. The country is also recovering from twin earthquakes, yet the, yet the conference fits with President Donald Trump's promise to restore Venezuela's former, former, former glory under an umbrella of US influence. Trump, a regular golfer and owner of multiple international courses, laid down his ambition of channeling $100 billion into Venezuela's oil industry revival after US forces deposed former leader Nicolas Maduro in January. Some 650 foreign and local executives, government officials and foreign diplomats are due to attend the Venezuela International Oil and Gas Summit, starting Tuesday, with over 150 more on the waiting list. The stampede illustrates

• 1:03:59John Coogan?

  how Venezuela is capt, captivating the hydrocarbons industry at a time when Middle East supplies are choked by war. So, everyone's trying to, uh, bring their golf clubs on this trip. Um, I thought there were some other, uh, there's some other stories in here, but where, where, where should we go next? I'll tell everyone about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish.

• 1:04:32John Coogan?

  Sean Frank says, have you been sued in California for wiretapping just for using a meta pixel? Thousands of e-comm brands were getting shakedown requests for nothing more than a conversion pixel. Every settlement was 10,000 to 50,000 bucks, right out of the pocket of small businesses. Uh, he says he was sued multiple times. As of today, that won't ever happen again. I thought this was the wrong reading of the law and wanted to do something about it. My internal team worked with the E-Commerce Alliance. They put time, money and resources into changing this law. I didn't, I really didn't do much, but as a result of their hard work, no one will ever be sued for this ever again. Uh, the work of the E-Commerce Alliance, backed by PostScript. Oh, that's cool. I know PostScript. Um.

• 1:05:11Jordi Hays?

  Great company.

• 1:05:12John Coogan?

  Just saved the entire e-comm industry, probably $30 million a year. Huge shout out to Gina from my team for getting this done. Ridge could have just kept paying it, but that's how these things win. Um, e-comm brands are too fractured. Everyone's too cheap. Everyone's being crabs in a bucket. And so, yeah, everyone just is like, ah, we gotta settle this. We got something. Uh, that happens a lot. And so, interesting. Uh, the other big news, Anthropic's aiming to go public ahead of Thanksgiving with an IPO roadshow as soon as the week of November 9th. Okay, so more than a full month away, um, but still on track for Thanksgiving.

• 1:05:52Jordi Hays?

  Q4.

• 1:05:53John Coogan?

  And, yeah, it seems like they're, they're teeing up a number of different news and, and models, and there's the Fable 5-5 rumors. And so, there's a big question about like, wh, what will go into hyping the IPO? Do you need to, you know, discover gold in a hidden treasure? Do you need to dive to a shipwreck? Or whatever you need to do to make a splash? Or do you just need to make one final pelican on a bike? That should be the cover sheet of the, of the S1.

• 1:06:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24John Coogan?

  Pelican on a bike, we did it. Um, Larry Ellison is selling his oceanfront estate in Florida. He wants $165 million for it. Tech billionaire is relisting his roughly 8.4-acre North Palm Beach property, uh, because he's adding to a different estate in Florida. Um, it's about 14% more than his original asking price. He put it on the market in 2022, but he's listing it again at a higher price. He bought the 8.4-acre property.

• 1:06:52Jordi Hays?

  S-tier.

• 1:06:52John Coogan?

  Uh, last, uh, no, in, uh, for 80 million in 2021. He relisted it for 145 a year later. The move comes as Ellison has been expanding his estate in Manalapan. I think that's how you pronounce that, in Affluin Town, uh, just south of Palm Beach. In June, the Oracle co-founder paid about 35 million for a parcel of land next to his fifth, roughly 15-acre compound. Have you seen Ken Griffin's compound? Have you seen how many properties he's bought? It's like the entire block.

• 1:07:20Jordi Hays?

  He's probably bought more since I.

• 1:07:22John Coogan?

  He's been.

• 1:07:23Jordi Hays?

  Last saw it.

• 1:07:24John Coogan?

  It, like, the visualization is insane. He's, he's building the biggest compound, uh, like, ever. And, and, and it begs the question, like, yeah, I think you do have to go golf course at that point, because there's only so many features if you're getting up into like 30 acres in a residential district. Like, what are you gonna do at a certain point? Like, you got a pool, you got a, you know, full tennis court. There's some states that will have like.

• 1:07:46Jordi Hays?

  airstrip.

• 1:07:47John Coogan?

  Two tennis courts and a pickleball court. Yeah.

• 1:07:49Jordi Hays?

  airstrip.

• 1:07:50John Coogan?

  Well, he's actually, uh, getting some pushback on a potential helicopter pad.

• 1:07:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:53John Coogan?

  Uh, because.

• 1:07:54Jordi Hays?

  No, that's, that's.

• 1:07:55John Coogan?

  airstrip.

• 1:07:56Jordi Hays?

  That's why, that's why I said that.

• 1:07:57John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, because.

• 1:07:58Jordi Hays?

  Get the pushback. He's like, oh, oh.

• 1:08:00John Coogan?

  Yeah, you go to the residents, they're like, please, we don't want helicopters. And you're like, fine, airstrip. Full plan.

• 1:08:05Jordi Hays?

  I would love, I would love to understand his analysis of, um, like, the, the risk reward of, of, of helicopter flights for him.

• 1:08:14John Coogan?

  Yeah. Seems dangerous, but I think with the right pilot, if you get somebody who's really, really elite, I, and, and, and you have a whole team that's servicing it, making sure that it's, you know, really dialed, getting a brand-new one every year, like, money's no expense. Like, there's probably a way to get to five nines of, of security. But, still some risk. But there's risk in everything. And, you know, like, you know, you're, you're not immune to risk. Uh, Seminole Landing is located next to the Seminole Golf Club. In 2020, Robert F. Smith, a billionaire private equity executive, bought a pair of houses there

• 1:08:52John Coogan?

  from energy drinks entrepreneur Russ Weiner for $48.19 million. Which energy drink did Russ Weiner start? Rockstar Energy, that's right. His net worth is 5.4 billion. There you go. Uh, deals of $100 million-plus homes have become almost return, or a routine in neighboring Palm Beach. However, Kenny and Keneb said they have ne, they have seen 50 million-plus market beginning to establish itself in North Palm Beach, too. Um, there's another company that we should dig into, Squishmallows. Have you heard of this company before?

• 1:09:29John Coogan?

  Squishmallows. It's a ultra-soft, collectible plush toy created by Kelly Toy in 2017, known for their marshmallow-like texture and diverse character personalities. Have you ever heard of this brand before?

• 1:09:47Jordi Hays?

  No.

• 1:09:48John Coogan?

  Because Jonathan Kelly, whose family, his company, created this ultra-soft plush toy, uh, is, uh, selling an, a mansion in Bel Air for $38 million. Uh, he bought the property as an, as an investment. He never lived there.

• 1:10:04Jordi Hays?

  Infinity Pool. Would you look at that?

• 1:10:08John Coogan?

  F-tier.

• 1:10:10Jordi Hays?

  Um, no, I mean, you know, uh, Brian Johnson would, would be a quick pass on this house.

• 1:10:16John Coogan?

  Okay, why?

• 1:10:16Jordi Hays?

  Due to the proximity to that golf course.

• 1:10:18John Coogan?

  Oh, the golf course.

• 1:10:19Jordi Hays?

  Golf course, uh.

• 1:10:20John Coogan?

  Chemicals, potentially.

• 1:10:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, just, just, you know, the amount of, um, the amount of, uh, um, various products that it takes to maintain a golf course.

• 1:10:31John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:31Jordi Hays?

  And the, yeah, just being that close to it can have some, um, pretty, uh, bad health effects.

• 1:10:39John Coogan?

  Interesting, interesting. Well, he never lived there, so he's doing fine. Uh, the company blew up on TikTok during the pandemic. Now, he's betting some of that money on Los Angeles real estate. Uh, Kelly's listing his Bel Air mansion for 38 million, significantly more than the 26 million he paid in 2023. Uh, he said he bought the 2022 property at a relatively low price. I imagine interest rates were really low, too. Uh, originally had it listed for 47.5, trying to double his money almost, but, uh, has cut it back. Uh, and this was right before the LA mansion tax passed on homes priced above $5 million.

• 1:11:16John Coogan?

  So, he's hoping to reap the reward by selling now that the market has stabilized. Uh, the property was designed by architect Zoltan Pauli and, uh, has some, has some interesting features. Set above the fourth green of the golf course at Bel Air Country Club, the property spans three levels. I know you don't like two-level homes. Is three gonna go in an even lower tier for you? Where are you putting three-level houses?

• 1:11:47Jordi Hays?

  I mean, I don't wanna, I don't wanna be too harsh of a critic, given that this house is, is very well set up to take advantage of, of, of the views of the course and the city and these kind of things. So I, I won't, I won't criticize it in this context, but I will criticize the pool.

• 1:12:07John Coogan?

  Okay. So the pool is F tier.

• 1:12:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10John Coogan?

  Being close to a golf course, being this close to a golf course, is that D tier or F tier?

• 1:12:17Jordi Hays?

  F tier.

• 1:12:17John Coogan?

  F tier. Okay.

• 1:12:18Jordi Hays?

  Actually, I put the pool at D tier.

• 1:12:20John Coogan?

  Pool's D tier.

• 1:12:23Jordi Hays?

  Golf course.

• 1:12:23John Coogan?

  Golf course is F tier because that's dangerous. What about the overall aesthetic, the architectural style, just the vibe?

• 1:12:33Jordi Hays?

  It's, it's quite a bit better than the one we were looking at yesterday. That is pure, raw McMansion.

• 1:12:40John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:12:41Jordi Hays?

  Generic.

• 1:12:41John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:12:42Jordi Hays?

  You know, looks like it was built in, uh, uh, without tender love and care.

• 1:12:49John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:12:49Jordi Hays?

  This is quite a bit more brutalist.

• 1:12:51John Coogan?

  Opinionated.

• 1:12:52Jordi Hays?

  Material selection is, is, um, looks a lot better. Um.

• 1:12:56John Coogan?

  But.

• 1:12:57Jordi Hays?

  But.

• 1:12:58John Coogan?

  It's not making it to S tier?

• 1:13:00Jordi Hays?

  I'm gonna put it, yeah, I'm gonna put it at, uh, again, it's like, do you wanna feel like you're living on, like in a, in a, you know, a modern college campus library, you know? That's kind of the, the, the style, the, the sort of, uh, architecture style. In some ways.

• 1:13:19John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:13:19Jordi Hays?

  Some people are gonna be pretty fired up about it.

• 1:13:22John Coogan?

  So your final answer?

• 1:13:24Jordi Hays?

  The, the overall.

• 1:13:24John Coogan?

  Aesthetic, the architectural design.

• 1:13:29Jordi Hays?

  I think it, again, it feels a little generic, but I'll put it in, uh, B tier.

• 1:13:35John Coogan?

  B tier. Okay. Lightning round. You've already rated the pool. The house comes with a wine room. Where are you going on the wine room? Do we need a picture of the wine room to illustrate? I don't think we have.

• 1:13:44Jordi Hays?

  Look, everyone, you gotta change the name from wine room to home data center.

• 1:13:50John Coogan?

  Oh, I, I thought you were gonna go natural light room. That's what I'm, uh, that's what I'm trying to get.

• 1:13:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56John Coogan?

  Just a whole room for all of the different vintages of Natty Light. That's the goal. Uh, where are you putting wine room?

• 1:14:03Jordi Hays?

  Home data center, A tier.

• 1:14:06John Coogan?

  A tier. Okay. Uh, theater, we know. You like a theater because it'll draw me over for movie nights. That's A tier?

• 1:14:13Jordi Hays?

  Correct.

• 1:14:14John Coogan?

  I got one last feature. It has a podcast studio.

• 1:14:19Jordi Hays?

  F tier.

• 1:14:20John Coogan?

  F tier? What?

• 1:14:21Jordi Hays?

  Never podcast at home. Only podcast in your own version of the Ultra Dome.

• 1:14:27John Coogan?

  You need to get out, stretch, spread your wings. You can't podcast.

• 1:14:30Jordi Hays?

  I hate, I mean, there's a reason, we could be.

• 1:14:33John Coogan?

  Could be home right now.

• 1:14:34Jordi Hays?

  Be doing the show from home right now. We could. There's nothing like being in here.

• 1:14:38John Coogan?

  I'm wondering when the podcast studio went in, because he bought this house, he never lived in it. I don't think he has a podcast. Did he think, I need to add a podcast studio because that's what will add value to the property? Was he working it? Where, did they rent it?

• 1:14:52Jordi Hays?

  Well, you know that, that modern apartment buildings are, are adding this. It's, it's, it's a, it's a new amenity, John.

• 1:14:58John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:59Jordi Hays?

  They're like, well, we have a sauna, we have a pool.

• 1:15:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Jordi Hays?

  And we have podcast studios that you can rent by the hour.

• 1:15:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:15:06Jordi Hays?

  Cause everyone.

• 1:15:09Jordi Hays?

  I already said F tier.

• 1:15:10John Coogan?

  Yes, yes. Uh, anyway, uh, the price of Kelly's property could be considered entry point for the neighborhood, Noah said. The LA mansion tax did slow down the high end market, but anything, uh, but like anything, people have gotten accustomed to it. So, um, good luck to whoever's picking up this Bel Air mansion. Um, there's one more here. Uh, the Bali inspired Florida home fetched eighty-three million dollars.

• 1:15:42John Coogan?

  Who is owned by billionaire Chris Rocos. I'm not sure who this is. Uh, Rocos Capital Management.

• 1:15:49Jordi Hays?

  Brutal solar placement.

• 1:15:51John Coogan?

  Oh, is that solar?

• 1:15:52Jordi Hays?

  I think so.

• 1:15:53John Coogan?

  What's going on here? What? Oh, on the roof. Yeah. Interesting. Doesn't quite blend in with that type of roof, right?

• 1:16:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02John Coogan?

  It actually works better if you have a more boxy, modern, brutalist style. You throw a bunch of, uh,

• 1:16:08Jordi Hays?

  Flat roof.

• 1:16:08John Coogan?

  Yeah, flat roof would definitely hide it, but even, you know, the Tesla solar roof, something like that, there has to be a way to integrate that more. Where are you ranking the solar panels?

• 1:16:19Jordi Hays?

  Well, I think solar is fantastic.

• 1:16:21John Coogan?

  But aesthetically?

• 1:16:26Jordi Hays?

  Absolutely brutal.

• 1:16:27John Coogan?

  So, conclusion?

• 1:16:29Jordi Hays?

  I'm gonna go D tier for the placement. Well, F tier placement, S tier feature.

• 1:16:36John Coogan?

  S tier feature. You like the solar. And why is that? Is that, is that the, you like the idea that if there's a power outage, you still have some power? Or is it just like, good for the environment, nice to have cheaper electricity?

• 1:16:47Jordi Hays?

  A bit of, a bit of, a bit of both.

• 1:16:48John Coogan?

  Bit of both.

• 1:16:49Jordi Hays?

  Bit of both.

• 1:16:49John Coogan?

  You like some solar. Cool. I like it. Yeah. And for your home data center?

• 1:16:53Jordi Hays?

  But, but I can imagine it would be, yeah, the, the funny thing is, if you're in Florida and there's a hurricane and, and your power goes out, you're probably not actually able to power your home with it because you can imagine the weather.

• 1:17:07John Coogan?

  Yeah, but you could use it to charge up batteries and have some supply there.

• 1:17:11Jordi Hays?

  I would blanket the grass with solar.

• 1:17:14John Coogan?

  You would do solar grass. Okay.

• 1:17:16Jordi Hays?

  Solar. No, just a, a deck of solar.

• 1:17:19John Coogan?

  What about a solar pier? He's on the beach. You could just build a pier that goes out into the ocean.

• 1:17:26Jordi Hays?

  There we go.

• 1:17:27John Coogan?

  Free, free land, basically, just to build it up.

• 1:17:29Jordi Hays?

  There we go. Uh, we gotta, why is, why is no one talking about Andrew McCallum going to Paradigm?

• 1:17:36John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, that's a big one.

• 1:17:38Jordi Hays?

  Early, early friend of the show, Andrew McCallum, uh, is joining Paradigm, new chapter, joining as an entrepreneur in residence. He's been at Varda for years now. He says, Varda was a grand adventure and one, and a one of one experience I'll cherish forever. I had the rare privilege of joining the founding team and helping take a wild idea from zero to one, from a blank sheet of paper to a hype, to hypersonic vehicles coming home from orbit. I'm incredibly proud of what we built together. Paradigm is giving me something incredibly cool. I'll have the freedom to search for the next important thing worth building. This might look like a radical departure, but I see it as a chance to step back, look broadly, follow my curiosity. Uh, Andrew is incredibly creative

• 1:18:23Jordi Hays?

  and, uh, incredibly entertaining and has always been working on projects.

• 1:18:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, great hack.

• 1:18:28Jordi Hays?

  My only hope for his new role is that he doesn't find the big idea right away, because I want him to ship a bunch of fun stuff.

• 1:18:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Jordi Hays?

  Meantime, and little experiments.

• 1:18:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:38Jordi Hays?

  There's so many things that are, that should be built that, that don't necessarily have an immediate, like, commercial opportunity, and I hope that he builds.

• 1:18:46John Coogan?

  Is this at the Paradigm office? This is a beautiful office. That ceiling is amazing. Yeah, really, really cool. Yeah. Yeah, exciting. I'm sure we'll get a lot of, a lot of different projects out of him. Very, very good. Uh, what is going on in Cerebrus land? Take him is taking shots at Cerebrus, says, if I was a Cerebrus shareholder, I would be livid right now. Seriously, what the heck? Insiders dumping stock, CFO, COO, accounting officer, and no info about losing GPT six point one ultra fast. And so the big, uh, the big sort of drama in Cerebrus world over the last couple of days has been that, uh, uh, Cerebrus

• 1:19:31John Coogan?

  is maybe powering ultra fast mode for GPT five point six soul, but not ultra fast or something. That's Cerebrus should comment publicly. Take him says, uh, especially when insiders are dumping stock and they hyped, they hyped that they were going to win GPT six soul ultra fast, but then Nvidia was commenting like, oh, we're actually the ones that got this working. We're, we're, we're running it on low batch size, et cetera, et cetera. Tyler, do you have any more context on what's going on with Cerebrus?

• 1:19:59Speaker 04

  There's not been a ton of details, but, um, yeah, Semi Analysis had a post that said, like, breaking the new ultra fast is not on Cerebrus.

• 1:20:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Speaker 04

  And then Nvidia had like a, you know, the little eyes emoji they commented. So.

• 1:20:10John Coogan?

  Seems pretty obvious that they got it done. Uh, well, you know, uh, game's not over. Good luck to Cerebrus. I'm sure they'll, they'll, they'll rebuild and find a, find a, you know, a, a potential play there. The initial, uh, experience of, of Cerebrus inference was, was very, very remarkable. But there are obviously a lot of trade offs there. And so, uh, it's a, it, it requires a lot of, uh, yeah, back and forth and iteration.

• 1:20:36Jordi Hays?

  We gotta talk about dot SI domains.

• 1:20:38John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:20:39Jordi Hays?

  Sue Hale says, get your dot SI domain people. Appreciate Rob, at Rob at at snagged for helping us lock it down. And, uh, I'll start by saying Rob and the snag team are some of the fi, are the finest domain brokers I've ever worked with. Rob helped us get, uh, tvpn.com back in the day.

• 1:21:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:02Jordi Hays?

  And then I'll, I'll say next that, um, I don't think it's worth getting your S dot SI domain at all. I think, uh, super intelligence and trying to rebrand it is, uh, corny and, uh, you should focus whatever energy you were gonna put on getting a dot SI domain on just getting your dot com. But I would do, I would do it with, I would do it with Rob. I think the whole scramble, like, already dot AI domains are, are obviously inferior to dot coms in every single use case.

• 1:21:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Jordi Hays?

  And so using like the second tier version, the dot SI.

• 1:21:38John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:21:38Jordi Hays?

  Is, is, um, is even worse.

• 1:21:42John Coogan?

  I'm, I'm hearing sort of a pitch for like a third party candidate, because of course Donald Trump came out and said, we need to be SI, super intelligence. And Gavin Newsom fought back and said, we gotta use AI. And you're saying dot com. So sort of a third party, just pure commercialization.

• 1:21:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:59John Coogan?

  What does com actually stand for? Commercial entity, right? That's great.

• 1:22:04Jordi Hays?

  That's a good question.

• 1:22:04John Coogan?

  That's not going anywhere. Yeah.

• 1:22:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, commercial or company.

• 1:22:08John Coogan?

  Commercial or, or company.

• 1:22:09Jordi Hays?

  There we go.

• 1:22:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Jordi Hays?

  There we go.

• 1:22:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:12Jordi Hays?

  Commercial.

• 1:22:13John Coogan?

  Yeah. Gavin Newsom, he signed to the executive order declaring artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence in California. You're welcome, America.

• 1:22:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, someone already, someone, someone already sniped, uh, dot SI, uh, the tbpn dot SI.

• 1:22:27John Coogan?

  Wait, really?

• 1:22:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28John Coogan?

  No way. Well, enjoy it. We're not switching.

• 1:22:31Jordi Hays?

  Named, uh, Neiman Mark says, focus on dot com, bro. Why be a king when you can be a god?

• 1:22:40John Coogan?

  I don't get it.

• 1:22:41Jordi Hays?

  No, I was just saying like dot com is the pinnacle.

• 1:22:44John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's true. You gotta, you gotta.

• 1:22:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the main thing is you're anytime you're trying to use something that's not a dot com, you're going against the fact that consumers their entire time on the internet have been trained to understand, like very passively trained every single day, every single day, hundreds of times a day, that serious businesses have used dot com, durable businesses use dot com. So when you're even going through the naming process, so many found like picking a name where you're never going to be able to get the dot com because some large company has it, I think it's just a bad idea. And that's why I end up, I end up talking with, with, with Rob about, about different domains for companies in my portfolio, even oftentimes

• 1:23:29Jordi Hays?

  before the company is actually established.

• 1:23:32John Coogan?

  And, and, and also like the flip side of that, like reinforcing hundreds of times a day, like real companies have real dot coms with, with like their real brand names is they're also getting reinforced fairly frequently that the new TLD is sketchy. Like I'm sure chat.ai is sketchy and like there's so many different like knockoffs of like whatever new TLD, whatever the hot.

• 1:23:55Jordi Hays?

  Positive programming constantly and negative.

• 1:23:57John Coogan?

  And so I'm sure the dot SI world is going to have so much spam on there that yeah, there might be a couple of companies that lean in and, and build real companies. And like there are plenty of companies that we've talked to that do have the dot AI domain. Uh, and, and they are real companies. Isn't, doesn't Anthropic have like claw.ai or something like that? Like, I feel like there's been a few that.

• 1:24:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but they don't.

• 1:24:19John Coogan?

  They've embraced it. I think they reroute to the dot com, honestly. But, but like, like there, there are some dot AI companies that have broken through, but still it's a lot of slop. And then SI is going to go through the same thing when you could just get a nice, nice dot com. Uh, anyway, uh, huge jobs miss, says Zero Hedge. September non-farm payrolls came in at 29,000, expected 90,000, uh, last revised lower to 133K. Uh, there's a whole bunch of interesting things going on in the economy that rates are surging. So the market is up because this maybe, uh, will, will lead to like a rate cut potentially, but, uh, from Bloomberg, they have 10 reasons why rates

• 1:24:59John Coogan?

  are surging. Here are the top 10 reasons why interest rates are surging. Uh, resilient economic growth, the US and the world really, uh, US global growth supports inflation and reduces demand for bonds. There's other things you can buy. Higher commodity prices, oil, gas, diesel, food prices are adding to inflation pressure. That's driving up rates. Interest rate hikes, central bankers are actually just rise, raising rates directly, signaling further increases to combat inflation. Hyperscaler borrowing, we've talked about this one a bunch. AI infrastructure spending is driving a surge in corporate bond issuance, increasing consumption for investor cash. Uh, and we will get back to that in a minute because we have Joe Gabia with us.

• 1:25:43Jordi Hays?

  No, we have Molly.

• 1:25:44John Coogan?

  Oh, we have Molly. Okay.

• 1:25:46Jordi Hays?

  We probably have a, a couple more minutes.

• 1:25:48John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:25:49Jordi Hays?

  Uh, we're rescheduling Joe. We, we.

• 1:25:50John Coogan?

  Got it.

• 1:25:51Jordi Hays?

  Uh, there were some technical difficulties, but we'll get him back on.

• 1:25:54John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:25:55Jordi Hays?

  As soon as possible.

• 1:25:57John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:25:58Jordi Hays?

  Let's talk about what Dr. Dad is saying.

• 1:26:00John Coogan?

  Please.

• 1:26:01Jordi Hays?

  With horsepower comes horse responsibility.

• 1:26:06Jordi Hays?

  I couldn't agree more. We obviously have this horse here.

• 1:26:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Jordi Hays?

  As a constant reminder.

• 1:26:10John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:26:11Jordi Hays?

  That, uh, with great, with horsepower, with great horsepower comes great horse responsibility.

• 1:26:16John Coogan?

  Indeed, indeed. Um, let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all-in-one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent to deploy web apps, servers, databases and more while Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring and security.

• 1:26:31Jordi Hays?

  Our friend Ara Karasian.

• 1:26:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:34Jordi Hays?

  Saying AI spending falls.

• 1:26:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:36Jordi Hays?

  In the latest ramp AI index.

• 1:26:38John Coogan?

  You're striking fear in everybody's hearts.

• 1:26:41Jordi Hays?

  In addition to cheaper and more efficient models at standard and light levels are pushing down the cost of using AI. Open source models remain less than 5% of business spend. Um, this decline in, in spend is driven almost exclusively by competition between OpenAI and Anthropic. Very, very dramatic headline. Uh, and Bucha Capital comes in and says AI spend falls for the 12th time in my chart that keeps going up and to the right is more accurate, but a less interesting title.

• 1:27:13Jordi Hays?

  Uh, and of course, yeah, looking at Ara's chart, it's been going up and down, uh, quite a lot, but the trend is clear.

• 1:27:26John Coogan?

  Okay. Uh, we have been switching up our schedule, but we have Joe Gabia with us in the waiting room. Let's bring him into the TBP and L2D and hear about everything from his perspective.

• 1:27:40Jordi Hays?

  What's going on?

• 1:27:41John Coogan?

  At the National Design Studio. Joe, thank you so much for joining the show. How are you today?

• 1:27:45Speaker 05

  Gentlemen, it's great to see you. Been forward to this for a long time now.

• 1:27:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, great to have you. Caught us on the one day where neither of us is wearing a suit.

• 1:27:53John Coogan?

  Yes, very.

• 1:27:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, you guys, you guys are bringing style to Silicon Valley. It's one, one of the many things I appreciate about the show.

• 1:27:59John Coogan?

  Yes, and you're bringing design to Washington. Can you, uh, get us up to speed on your role, how you actually interface with digital services, what your day-to-day looks like, what your team looks like? Just sort of set the table for us.

• 1:28:14Speaker 05

  Yes, well, um, it was about 18 months ago, I joined Doge.

• 1:28:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:18Speaker 05

  With a specific mission to fix a very outdated part of the government, which was how government employees retire.

• 1:28:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:24Speaker 05

  It was, you know, based, paper-based. It was really hard to use. Um, so in about six months, I recruited a couple of ex Airbnb engineers, a couple of great designers. We did the whole process online. It was a huge win for the admin. Went from six months to about six seconds.

• 1:28:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:39Speaker 05

  Uh, to, to retire.

• 1:28:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:40Speaker 05

  And, um, it spawned a bigger idea, which is what if we did this government-wide? What if we could go across every agency, working with every cabinet member to actually reform the digital experience for the entire nation?

• 1:28:53John Coogan?

  Yeah. So, uh, what I'm interested in is like, there's the National Design Studio, and I think there's, there are people still that think design is just like what color the button looks. Uh, and design is so much more than that. Like you are designing the system. I imagine that a lot of the design work that you're doing is actually interfacing with a ton of different stakeholders, understanding why a system was built. There's the Chester, Chesterton fence analogies, like what does it actually take to move a project through the National Design Studio to, uh, to fruition? Uh, because I imagine it's not just, uh, you know, a new front end.

• 1:29:35Speaker 05

  It's far more than that. You're right. Um, the big idea was, well, you have, there's, now 29,000 government websites of all shapes and sizes. Some you're familiar with, maybe the IRS every April 15th, um, and some long tail websites that are more information-based. And it was a realization a couple of months back, uh, earlier this year, there's no way, I mean, you spend your whole lifetime trying to go website by website to upgrade and prove to, to modern standards.

• 1:29:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:00Speaker 05

  And it became sort of apparent and obvious at a certain point, well, what if we just use modern tools that are emerging in real time, these AI, and, and gave people a place where instead of 29,000, what if there was just one?

• 1:30:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:15Speaker 05

  What if there was just one website where people could go to search for the information that they need and also action it? Meaning that I could go search which Medicare plan is right for me or right for my grandmother or grandfather. And then right on the same site, I'd be able to enroll. And there's something very interesting here. So we built America.gov to do exactly that.

• 1:30:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:35Speaker 05

  And the site is a place to get information and also, uh, it's coming soon, action it. Um, so the interesting thing is that because, because we're in the government, our LLM is only official government sources, which means that we only return information that's published from the government. We don't scrape the internet.

• 1:30:52John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:30:52Speaker 05

  So information that means it's accurate and it's up to date. Um, it also means that coming from in the government, we can integrate into agencies.

• 1:31:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:01Speaker 05

  Meaning that, that the enrollment for Medicare, we can actually connect into the Medicare database because we're inside the government and how somebody actually effectuate that change, make that decision right in one place and not have to go back into the maze of the Medicare website.

• 1:31:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, talk, talk more, you, America.gov launched right as there's, uh, so much excitement on the West Coast around, around personal agents and really all over the world as, as people have gone from just like getting information or, or everyday people are going from getting information from LLMs to actually getting information, then being able to take action. Um, I imagine you've been thinking about that since the beginning of the project. You didn't need new agents to, to get released, but, um, how, how good can this get? Like, because I can imagine a, a one homepage for interacting with your government where again, you can learn about the services that the government provides and, and laws and everything like that, and then be able to actually immediately take action and, and let's say

• 1:32:01Jordi Hays?

  spawn an agent that goes and deals with another agent, uh, another agency and, and your agent is dealing with their agent and then it brings you, it brings you in the loop when you need, uh, when it needs your input and things like that. I can imagine like the, the perfect version of that product, but any, I, I, you're dealing with the actual realities of what it's going to actually take to roll that out. And given how hard it's been to get agents right in the enterprise and, and personal agents that are still very error-prone, I can only imagine that it's going to be, you know, just as hard or, or harder, um, for your team to do.

• 1:32:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, look, I'm, I'm sure that day will come and it's probably closer than we all think. For now though, we don't even have to go to that, that far. Um, because we're positioned inside, a lot of these agencies have APIs that we can connect to that, you know, outside third parties are never going to have access to. So we have this advantage right now where, um, we can just connect directly to those. And if they don't exist, um, we now have an executive order to help create APIs that, that, that we need in order to do things like that, improve the experience for everyday Americans. You just moved, you have to change your address, post office. You'll be able to do that on America.gov, no stress. Uh, you want to learn about and actually enroll in an armed service, you can do that on America.gov, you know, in a couple clicks. You lost your social security card

• 1:33:19Speaker 05

  and need to replace it. You want to know a fun fact? We looked at the flow of the replacement of our social security card. It's 87 clicks to replace that piece of paper. And that's by the way, with no errors. That's if you get it right the first time.

• 1:33:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:35Speaker 05

  And so what you'll see in America.gov in the months to come.

• 1:33:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:39Speaker 05

  When you're logged in, it literally takes one click.

• 1:33:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:44Speaker 05

  And it shifts your, your social security card.

• 1:33:46John Coogan?

  So.

• 1:33:46Speaker 05

  So there's more than a 10x improvement that's unfolding right now, um, across the nation.

• 1:33:53Speaker 05

  I don't know if you can hear it. Uh, I mean, one's taking off behind the White House here.

• 1:33:58John Coogan?

  Very cool.

• 1:33:59Speaker 05

  I don't know if you guys hear that at all.

• 1:34:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Jordi Hays?

  It's not coming through. Your, your, your team is, uh, a good system. I wish we could hear it.

• 1:34:06John Coogan?

  Can you, can you talk, oh, uh, can you talk us through, uh, the, the, can you hear us, okay?

• 1:34:14Speaker 05

  Uh, they see the helicopter there.

• 1:34:17John Coogan?

  Uh, oh, oh yeah, there it is. Wow. There you go. Oh, it's supposed to land.

• 1:34:23Speaker 05

  So, uh.

• 1:34:24John Coogan?

  Crazy. There you go.

• 1:34:26Jordi Hays?

  Wow. Would you look at that?

• 1:34:28John Coogan?

  Landing right by.

• 1:34:29Jordi Hays?

  Pretty good for a, for an AI background.

• 1:34:32Speaker 05

  Is it? It's this, uh, White House background option. It seems really paint on them.

• 1:34:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:36Jordi Hays?

  Um, uh, I, uh, there, there's the humorous sort of fake quote, we don't do things because they're easy. We do them because we thought they would be easy. Um, you don't strike me as somebody that would be super naive. I assumed you imagined that this work would be, you know, incredibly difficult, not because like designing the front end would be difficult, but this sort of complex coordination. But, um, when it comes to just making everyday, everyday interactions with, with, you know, the federal government easier has, has, have some elements been, been, been relatively straightforward?

• 1:35:16Jordi Hays?

  Or has it all been a slog that, that, that makes, you know, starting a YC startup, uh, feel easy?

• 1:35:24Speaker 05

  There are elements of YC here. There's a lot of elements of Airbnb, you know? Some would say the hardest marketplace to start is one where strangers are going to rent out their homes to other strangers. So, you know, that was, uh, definitely a lot of lessons there of, and a lot of enjoyment of taking on a really hard problem like that. Like, how do you create trust between people who've never met, uh, and take that to scale? So, you know, it took us about 10 years, but we pulled it off. And, uh, but it's a, it's, it's a huge problem here. There's, it's, the, the government's the largest employer. It's 2.3 million employees. Um, it's got systems that go back to the 1970s. They still are actual mainframes running important systems in our government, our nation today.

• 1:36:08Speaker 05

  But it's 2026, guys. What are we doing? It's the United States of America. We lead in everything else. We lead culturally, economically, uh, technologically. Let's also be a leader in the citizen experience. It doesn't have to, it doesn't have to be the way it is. It can be better. Right? Like, let's, let's put, plant a flag and say enough is enough.

• 1:36:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:28Speaker 05

  Like, I'm, I'm embarrassed, actually, you know, as a tech guy, as Silicon Valley, as a designer, in fact, the way our nation showed, had shown up digitally is, um, no one would, no one admires it.

• 1:36:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:42Speaker 05

  And they should.

• 1:36:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:36:43Speaker 05

  So, that's, that's why I'm here.

• 1:36:46John Coogan?

  How do you think about the differences between your work at Airbnb to now your work in the government, specifically around how you measure success? I mean, it sounds like you do think in KPIs, but maybe it's not specific click through rates, the more minutia of when you have designed Airbnb from scratch. It was a greenfield project, so you, you're not, you're not starting with a mainframe. But you still understand that just going from 86 clicks down to just a few is going to be a huge, uh, improvement. How much of what you're doing is driven by, uh, the traditional software metrics versus more intuitive,

• 1:37:28John Coogan?

  uh, sort of higher level of abstraction metrics, just like this is a mess and we should just reduce complexity? And the KPI looks a little bit different than what you were doing before.

• 1:37:41Speaker 05

  I'll tell you the first difference that came to mind is when you're starting your company, your founder, you know, Airbnb was, that was Brian, Nate and I's universe.

• 1:37:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:49Speaker 05

  Right? Like, we called all the shots.

• 1:37:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:51Speaker 05

  Here, it's, it's president's universe.

• 1:37:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:53Speaker 05

  You know, it's, it's different. Um, so you're, you're working in a very different context where you, you don't, you know, the, the authority that you have as founders is different, obviously.

• 1:38:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:02Speaker 05

  That was, that was the first big change. Um, second is I'd say, uh, the way that we're measuring on America.gov, ultimately will be about hours saved.

• 1:38:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:13Speaker 05

  It's not about the number of websites used or, um, information on the site. It's, it certainly comes down to hours saved. There's a stat published from the government that Americans spend 10 billion of the P hours every year in trying to get things done in the government.

• 1:38:30Speaker 05

  That's an absurd amount of time.

• 1:38:31Jordi Hays?

  That's a lot of time.

• 1:38:32Speaker 05

  And the level of inefficiency that's, that, that, that creates that is, it's over. Like, we're ending it.

• 1:38:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:40Speaker 05

  The whole point of America.gov is to end that. If we 10x the, the improvement of getting stuff done, getting the information you need, or getting the, the action done, the enrollment, the application, et cetera. Um, that's billions of hours that go back into people's lives.

• 1:38:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:55Speaker 05

  And maybe also back into the GDP.

• 1:38:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for everything you're doing and thanks for coming on and breaking it down for us.

• 1:39:02Jordi Hays?

  Last, last question.

• 1:39:02John Coogan?

  Please.

• 1:39:03Jordi Hays?

  Uh, do you think in another life, uh, the president would have been a product guy? Or is he more of like visionary, like, but, but, you know, does he have opinions on, on, uh, like button colors and things like that? Or is he more higher level, like, just, just get it done, Joe. I, I trust you.

• 1:39:21Speaker 05

  Well, thankfully, guys, we have a president who cares about this stuff.

• 1:39:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:24Speaker 05

  He's a hospitality guy, remember?

• 1:39:26John Coogan?

  Oh, true.

• 1:39:27Speaker 05

  And so he, he cares about the experience that our country has when it comes to these things.

• 1:39:32John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:39:32Speaker 05

  And so you think of America.gov as, as a concierge into the government. He loves that. He's a builder. He's a fixer.

• 1:39:39John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:39:39Speaker 05

  And, you know, the credit goes to him for supporting this effort.

• 1:39:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:42Jordi Hays?

  Final, final question, and I know, I know we're over, but, uh, what can we do about, uh, state, state governments? Are, do you think there's learnings that can be passed down to them? Is there shared infrastructure that could be basically, you know, owned and operated by the state, but effectively code that, that can be passed to them? Is it possible to open source this stuff for the, for the states so that, because I think like, if they're spending 10 billion hours with the federal government, they're spending, you know, probably an equal amount of time locally.

• 1:40:14Speaker 05

  You have to imagine there's states that have already reached out about that.

• 1:40:17John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:40:17Speaker 05

  Um, there's other countries that have already reached out about this, just in the last three days, um, saying, you know, how do we bring this to our country? I won't say their names yet, but, um, multiple countries have reached out, asking how do we bring this here? So, uh, states are, have already reached out, other nations, um, I think if we can do this right, when we do this right, which is phase one, access to information, phase two is actioning that information in the next couple of months. Um, we'll set a new standard for the citizen experience to inspire states and other countries alike.

• 1:40:46John Coogan?

  Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

• 1:40:48Jordi Hays?

  Great to catch up. We, thanks for the work.

• 1:40:49John Coogan?

  To come and chat with us. Uh, have a great rest of your Friday.

• 1:40:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, great to see you guys.

• 1:40:53John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon.

• 1:40:54Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 1:40:54John Coogan?

  Goodbye. Let me tell you about Cisco. Critical infrastructure for the AI era. Unlock seamless, real-time experiences and new value with Cisco. We're running about 10 minutes behind, but we are going to stick back on track with Molly Fowler from the Dorm Room Fund.

• 1:41:09Jordi Hays?

  Molly.

• 1:41:10John Coogan?

  Partner Molly, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

• 1:41:12Jordi Hays?

  Sorry, we're running late.

• 1:41:13Speaker 06

  Hey, guys. All good. That was actually really interesting to listen to. I used to work in government, so, and, uh, we, for the city of LA, we did an overhaul of the 311 website. And so to have somebody like Joe, who's like a product guy, doing this is ridiculous. So cool.

• 1:41:28John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very exciting to see it roll out. Um, anyway, uh, first time on the show. Give us an introduction.

• 1:41:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:41:34John Coogan?

  Explain.

• 1:41:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so, so excited to chat because so many, so many friends of the show that are like got their, that, that we know have got, got their start with Dorm Room Fund.

• 1:41:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:45Speaker 06

  Um, yeah.

• 1:41:46Jordi Hays?

  It just seems to have these amazing like ripple effects.

• 1:41:49John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 1:41:49Jordi Hays?

  Um, and, uh, yeah, very, very excited to get the update.

• 1:41:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, thanks for having me. And I know you guys are big fans of Ben Horwitz and his magical anti-AI tool. So, a recent Dorm Room Funder we're very proud of. And, uh, I know you guys are homies of Will Manitas, who,

• 1:42:06John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:42:06Speaker 06

  I've been, I promised to encourage you guys to, to, to know that he's closer to 22 than he is to 40. So, um, important details.

• 1:42:14John Coogan?

  Contrarian take here.

• 1:42:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, very contrarian, but.

• 1:42:17John Coogan?

  Uh, you know, I like, I like all different viewpoints. That's great.

• 1:42:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that's one, one data point.

• 1:42:22John Coogan?

  It's a bold stance. You don't hear many people coming down that side of the argument, but we encourage free and open debate here, so.

• 1:42:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:42:30John Coogan?

  You have your opinion and I respect it.

• 1:42:32Speaker 06

  There, there, there may have, may or may not have been some, um, purchasing of some booze by some older folks for, for Will before perhaps he could do that legally. So, uh.

• 1:42:41John Coogan?

  Uh-oh. Well, when you have a fake ID that says you're 10 years younger, like, it doesn't work there, uh, liquor store, so.

• 1:42:48Jordi Hays?

  Well, this is a very, very low, this, this minute of TVP on is the lowest TAM. It's gonna be very entertaining for, for like, for like 10 people.

• 1:42:56John Coogan?

  Well, let's spice it up with a gong smash. You raised some money? How big is the new fund?

• 1:43:01Speaker 06

  Yes, sir. Yeah, so we just raised 50 million bucks. We're really excited.

• 1:43:06John Coogan?

  Let's get the replay on that.

• 1:43:10Jordi Hays?

  That was a great hit.

• 1:43:11John Coogan?

  Gong smash.

• 1:43:12Jordi Hays?

  How was that, man?

• 1:43:13John Coogan?

  There we go. Thank you.

• 1:43:16Jordi Hays?

  With authority.

• 1:43:18Jordi Hays?

  Okay, so reintroduce, anybody that doesn't know what you guys do has got to be living under a data center somewhere. But introduce the fund and the platform and the strategy and then, yeah, maybe talk about some.

• 1:43:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, no doubt. So Dorm room fund was founded in 2012 as part of First Round Capital. I cannot take credit for this genius idea. It was, it was actually Josh Koppelman, founder of First Round. But long story short is, is that when you think about places where unfair advantage accrues to builders and to tech founders, it's pretty hard to compete with universities, right? I mean, if you think about it, they're kind of like the OG ultimate hacker house. And so the question arose in 2012 to Josh, which was like, how can we, you know, the cloud computer is new. We know it's going to get way easier to start companies. You can spin up an instance on AWS in your underpants instead of buying like, you know, rack space.

• 1:44:15Speaker 06

  And so he was like, how do we find out who's great on campus and find them early in ahead of sort of going to the classic like, you know, accelerators or pitch competitions or that sort of thing. And so had the insight that students themselves, you know, these incredibly connected, super smart humans are going to know who's legit and who's kind of dinking around before they go back to their consulting job when they finish business school. And, and so that's how we got started. And the whole idea was, you know, scout, scouting was new still. It was really something that, that seasoned founders were doing. And so the idea was let's give these new folks some capital and some training and some guidance on what good looks like and see if they can spot the best stuff first because they've

• 1:45:00Speaker 06

  got all this social capital and knowledge about who's good and who isn't. And so that's, that's how we got started and started in Philly, grew to four cities across the US inside of First Round Capital. We had three funds with First Round. And then come 2021, we realized that there was this huge opportunity for us because the model was working. We were backing incredible founders before all the big boys. And we had this opportunity to, you know, increase the amount of capital we could give our founders to give them more help. And at a time when, you know, things were getting a bit more sophisticated on campus. So we spun out of First Round Capital, raised our own fund in 2021 with First Round as LPs.

• 1:45:47Speaker 06

  And have had a huge run since then. We were lucky enough to not only continue to invest in founders that are building on university campuses. So we're talking about college, MBA, PhD, but also the alumni of the Dorm Room Fund community. Because as you guys can imagine, those, you know, 12, 15 students that are on the team for two years while they're in school, when they go out to build or invest, they become absolute superstars. And so that's been a source of a lot of really amazing opportunities for us as a community.

• 1:46:18Jordi Hays?

  What are, what are, do you have any data on like entry prices? Because it feels like you, you might be the, the, the, well, you're kind of like the final early stage fund that can actually reliably get in like sub 10 million potentially because you're not like even, even, you know, there's got to be founders today on college campuses that are compelling enough that they could go raise, you know, a full seed round if they're.

• 1:46:42John Coogan?

  No, if you're, if you're in college and you do 50K on 500K, you can build a business for like a full year. Like that's a, that's a lot of money in, in college world.

• 1:46:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And so you guys, I'm sure are like trying to actively avoid not being predatory. And, and that's on the, the, that's the job of the individual investors. But if somebody's going to give good pricing to somebody who would be one of their peers that then opens up this network that you guys have.

• 1:47:12Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, I think, so I think a couple of things are happening. One is that, you know, every time there's one of these big technology changes, like we're seeing obviously today and the last couple of years, it really has the effect of leveling the playing field for first time builders, right? So, and the other thing that it does is that it drops the price of how much it costs to really start a software business. And so, you know, we're in this really interesting era where, you know, Jordy, you're right, there's a ton more capital on campus than used to be. You know, when we started doing this back in the old days, everybody thought we were insane. Now everybody's like, oh shit, I have to, you know, get my own campus program going. And so great founders can raise really quickly. I think what is, what is different about today's market and I think puts Dorm Room

• 1:47:56Speaker 06

  Fund in a really strong position is that founders are increasingly dilution sensitive, right? And so there are a lot of these legacy solutions that look like seven, 10, 12% dilution with the first big check. And I think founders are quickly realizing that, you know, to John's point, you can build really fast, really cheap. And so the place where DRF is sliding in is being this sort of, almost like the replacement for an F and F round, like a friends and family and recognizing that like, not everybody has a bunch of like rich aunties and uncles who can back them up, right? And so Dorm Room Fund can be that first infusion of capital to get them just to the point where they get that magic moment of like sparkles of product market fit.

• 1:48:38Speaker 06

  And then we can help them go out with our giant community and help them raise an even more kick ass institutional round.

• 1:48:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. I remember back when I was in college, like the concept of a, of a friends and family round was so absurd to me because I was like, friends and family that are going to like individually invest like same amount of money as a car.

• 1:49:01Jordi Hays?

  It's like, hey, instead of buying a new car, why don't you invest in my idea?

• 1:49:06John Coogan?

  Wild swing at my idea, yeah, no way.

• 1:49:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And I think that's, yeah, that's such, such an unlock too. It's, it's also, yeah, there's, there's a lot of reasons that, that it can make more sense to do that. As much as you want to give the people in your world access to, to, to what you're working on, sometimes it's better to just work with something more institutional.

• 1:49:28Speaker 06

  Well, and I think there's also plenty of space for, I mean, there's, there's been a lot of examples where Dorm Room Fund has been the first institutional check for a founder, right? And we might catalyze around where they bring in a few friends and family alongside us, right? So I don't think it's an either or, but I think what it is, is recognizing that like, you don't necessarily have to go to the traditional accelerator programs or something like that as you're just getting started and that there's a more capital efficient way to do it, I think in the early days.

• 1:49:56Jordi Hays?

  What is, last, last question for now, what does the 50 million mean? How, how do you, how do you think about like allocating it across different, different students, not, you know, on the, on the investment team, but then also founders, things like that?

• 1:50:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, definitely. So we, our check size is, is, you know, usually sub million for the first time around. We're probably going to end up investing in, I'd guess, probably like 75 or 80 companies over the next, you know, in the sort of three year period. And the way we think about spreading that around is one, the student opportunities that are sourced to us, right? So we have regional teams all across the US. They, they cover all the top entrepreneurial ecosystems. And so each, each of those four teams will be deploying capital over the next two years. We've already been, we've already been deploying out of fund two since about July of last year. We also then have the bucket of Dorm Room Fund alumni, right?

• 1:50:56Speaker 06

  So if you've been part of the DRF crew, like, like Ben Horwitz, like some others, no matter when you build, you're eligible for a Dorm Room Fund check. And, and those have been superstar hitters for us. So that's how we got into, you know, we're lucky enough to get into Cursor. We got into Dandy really early because Tony and, thank you.

• 1:51:18Speaker 06

  Tony and, and Mike were both on the team when they were in undergrad.

• 1:51:23Speaker 06

  And so, you know, that's a really big win for us. And then, you know, we're lucky to have been able to get some really fantastic institutional partners with us in terms of LPs. And so now we're in a really great position to not just help our founders with that first amount of capital, but actually be along for the ride a little bit longer.

• 1:51:39Jordi Hays?

  Amazing. Such a great, such a great product and platform and great to finally meet.

• 1:51:45Speaker 06

  Thanks, guys. Great to see you.

• 1:51:47Jordi Hays?

  Cheers, Molly.

• 1:51:47John Coogan?

  Goodbye.

• 1:51:47Jordi Hays?

  Have a great weekend.

• 1:51:48John Coogan?

  Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Just do it.

• 1:51:55Jordi Hays?

  It's time.

• 1:51:56John Coogan?

  Tom Dotan. The cat is in the bag. The bag is in the river. We got the former host of Dead Cat. Welcome to the show. How you doing, Tom?

• 1:52:07Speaker 07

  I love the reference. I'm glad that you're still keeping the memory of Dead Cat alive.

• 1:52:11John Coogan?

  It was such a fantastic show. You guys got to bring it back. I mean, I know it's like.

• 1:52:14Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 1:52:15Jordi Hays?

  It's, it's. To me, that, that was like, like, there's not a lot of hardcore podcasting that goes on. Like when I was watching Matthew Bellany on The Town with Ari Emanuel. And I was like, this is hardcore podcasting. This is people like kind of arguing and bickering, saying what they actually, saying what they actually think. And I have some good memories of Dead Cat in like 2021, that era where you, people would actually stay what they, they really thought, you know? And that these days.

• 1:52:44Speaker 07

  Yeah. No, I'm trying to think if, am I the Ari or am I the Bellany in that situation with Eric there? I don't know.

• 1:52:49Jordi Hays?

  Well, it's just more like you're listening to that and you're like, wow, this actually feels like you're just listening into.

• 1:52:55John Coogan?

  Yeah. It was inside baseball. Yeah. The Bellany Emanuel thing doesn't match because like, I feel, I feel like all the Dead Cat hosts were like on the same lens, like they were all like real journalists in tech. But the fact that it was called Dead Cat and it's like this obscure reference that you have to explain to like everyone who joins is, was like.

• 1:53:14Speaker 07

  Every people has Dead Cat bounce. They would think it was a reference to that, which is a good one, but it wasn't it. But you know, Eric and, and Katie Benner and I were all like the first journalists at The Information. So Jessica hires us like right when the place launches. And so there's a brief period of time where we are all crunched into this very small office space. Where Amir Afadi, also early player, would burn his toast every day and we would kind of deal with the toxic themes of that. So from that environment birthed a podcast that you guys remember.

• 1:53:45John Coogan?

  I do. Yeah, it's great.

• 1:53:48John Coogan?

  So yeah, this Ellison profile, it could be, it could be turned into a serialized podcast. It's obviously a profile available at Vanity Fair, but what got you?

• 1:53:58Jordi Hays?

  With AI, it could be turned into a playable browser based game.

• 1:54:02John Coogan?

  Yes, perhaps, but.

• 1:54:04Speaker 07

  I don't know what that even means.

• 1:54:05John Coogan?

  What, what, what, what got you interested in Ellison? Because we read an older Vanity Fair profile about Ellison that was fascinating where it shows that he's like dog fighting with David Ellison when David's like younger and they're like literally flying planes at each other. Fascinating character, obviously at the center of the AI build out, but not at the White House dinner, a little bit more behind the scenes. Why'd you settle on him for the profile?

• 1:54:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, that profile that you read, the Vanity Fair one, was that, do you remember, was that the 97 one that Brian Burrow wrote?

• 1:54:35John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:54:35Speaker 07

  Or during the gate legend?

• 1:54:37John Coogan?

  Insane.

• 1:54:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, I talked to Brian, actually, while I was doing the story, because I kind of wanted his blessing, and this is a side point. Uh, yeah, he told me, I have no memory of doing that story. I have no, it is, it is lost in time to him, but it was an amazing piece, and I recommend everyone go out and read it, because, because Brian got access, you know, like, he was sitting next to Larry at the Bulls game and watching him with his then-wife, and fascinating, Steve Jobs is in it, it's a great piece, but look, for me, it was like, why not, you know, like, someone had to do it, the guy is everywhere, he's been around for generations, for decades, I mean, really, of that first vintage of Silicon Valley Titans, and the last guy who's, who's in the game, you know, Steve Jobs has passed, Bill Gates is kind of, sort of, in it, but he's also more of like a grandfather-like figure, and

• 1:55:21Speaker 07

  um, you know, also kind of tainted because of the Epstein stuff, and, and Larry is sort of the last one, he still really runs Oracle, and they're in the midst of, like, you said so many things between AI and the crazy bet that they're making to the data centers, they own 15% of TikTok, and how that came to pass was an incredible journey, and then everything that he's doing with David, you know, just today, they finalized, you know, the, the acquisition of Warner Brothers and Skydance is now, like, I don't have this in front of me, but I assume the largest studio uh, in, in Hollywood, and, and Larry is, you know, he and David have 77% voting control over this thing.

• 1:55:56Speaker 07

  And so, you know, the guy is like in the last chapter of his life, or the latest chapter of his life, and, and more active, more present than ever, and, and the funny thing is, he's also not available, he's not present, he's not someone that you see at the White House or in the office, and so, you know, all of that is just like, as a reporter, you're like, what's going on?

• 1:56:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, that seems like a shift, because obviously, he participated in the last Vanity Fair profile, but in the 90s, and he was, I think he went on Oprah or something, there's a, there's a vignette about that, where like, his person, like, like, people were so obsessed with him, like, uh, would-be, uh, suitors, effectively, would call Oracle headquarters, and, uh, and try and ask him out on a date, which is

• 1:56:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, one anecdote, he, he, like, I remember the day, very, very early in building the show, where he followed TBPN, and like, cue, like, within a quarter of starting, and to me, that, to me, that was wild, too, because as somebody who appears to be like, outside, playing outside of the matrix of the tech, you know, he's very, like, you're saying, he's in the industry, but he's not, like, doing the, the comms tours, and doing media, and all these things, like, able to be like, a very much a live player, but behind the scenes, it was notable, I was like, he's on X, you know, and he knows.

• 1:57:11Speaker 07

  You guys tweet that out? You know, he's not on X anymore, I think he closed that account, so I don't.

• 1:57:16John Coogan?

  The whole, uh, like, uh, big tech monitor tweet, like, the automated account, like, posted it, basically.

• 1:57:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:57:23John Coogan?

  And so, like, you see it there.

• 1:57:25Speaker 07

  Fascinating, though.

• 1:57:26John Coogan?

  What was interesting is, like, for the last year, I've been mapping the Ellison strategy as like a, more of a barbell strategy, like, you're building the data factory, the data centers, the chips, the, the, potentially, like, the AI slop, but then you're also building Hollywood and TikTok, and like, legacy IP, and we see this with a number of, uh, investors, where, you know, Josh Kushner's an investor in OpenAI, but also buying a sports team, right? And these, these two things are like at the opposite ends of the continuum for like, high-tech, low-tech, uh, you center on a different analogy, not a barbell, but tentacles of an octopus, can you tell me about that, and like, what, like, what, what actually does that mean, and then, he's into this metaphor himself, right?

• 1:58:11Speaker 07

  Right, right, I mean, that was kind of, you know, it is sort of a, a well-known trope of, of what it means to have power everywhere, is you have your tentacles, it's, it's just a saying, but with Larry, I mean, he, he's been taking that seriously for as long as he's been in business.

• 1:58:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:24Speaker 07

  Um, you know, as I list out in the story, he's got multiple holding companies that are octopus-themed, so between, you know, Octopus Corp, there's Sephalon, Sephalopod Corp, there's Tentacle Corp, uh, there's Taco Ventures, and taco is the Japanese word for, for octopus, and uh, as I also wrote in the story, when he first moves out to California, you know, right after he drops out of college, and he's sitting with his buddy, and they're looking out over the city, and talking about the buildings that they're gonna own, uh, he has a vision of a company called Universal Octopus Corp, or something like that, uh, you know, universe, anyway, so, so, this idea of having, you know, your, your, your, your arms over multiple parts of the world, and an industry is very much appeals to him.

• 1:59:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:05Speaker 07

  And, um, you know, that is very instructive to his ambition, like, he's someone who never stopped, like, Oracle is one of the great stories of tech, right? It's, it's this company that gets in at the ground level of Silicon Valley with Steve Jobs and all these guys, and he has this very focused image of, of the database, and the relational database, and it's not, you know, sexy in the way that Apple was consumer and stylish, and, and Bill Gates, sort of, you know, this idea of workplace software, Oracle is really the, the mechanics, the plumbing, but it's a great business.

• 1:59:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:37Speaker 07

  And it's still around to this day, and it's like, people are still using the Oracle database, and, and he's still running it, and so.

• 1:59:42John Coogan?

  And he maintains ownership in Oracle so remarkably, when there, there are other companies that I put in that same category, where there were multiple founders, things got split up, maybe the company got taken private, went public again, and like, you, the founder winds up with like, a couple percent, Larry was really able to continue reinvesting, buying stock at key moments, like, maintaining that economic pool, so then, when the AI moment comes, and, uh, and, and it booms, like, he's still in the, the, that really tight club of like, truly richest men in the world, is a

• 2:00:16Speaker 07

  And not only does he, he maintain control, he grows control.

• 2:00:19John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:00:19Speaker 07

  Like, its stock was, was basically flat, was, you know, went sideways for, for decades, as, you know, the database would spin off cash, but he weren't really growing it at anything else, and during this period, he accumulates more and more control to a point where he owns 40% of the company, um, which is unheard of for, for, for a company of that size, right? I mean, the reason he's so rich is because he owns so much of this one company, and, like, I, you know, I talked to some analysts for it, Oracle is basically considered by most traders like a public-private company.

• 2:00:47John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:00:47Speaker 07

  You know, it's, it's, the, the float is relatively small, and Larry's totally in control, and you just sort of accept it, that's, that's part of the game, that's part of the bargain.

• 2:00:55John Coogan?

  Yeah, I, I think a lot of founders, uh, don't necessarily realize, like, what a, what an effective stock buyback program over a decade can do to your ownership, uh, we've seen this in the cloud storage market with the diverging paths of like Box and Dropbox, where, uh, you know, the, if you're buying back a lot of stock, even if you got diluted from those VC rounds, like, you could crawl your way back to 20, 30, 40% ownership over time, it's not gonna happen in a year, but you don't need to just magically materialize, you know, $20 billion to actually go buy back your company, it can happen sort of slowly.

• 2:01:29John Coogan?

  I have one more question on this, Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, there's a new movie coming out, what did you learn about the motivations there, what's going on, and do you have any predictions for what's gonna happen in the movie, because all of the, all of the critics are saying, like, it's the most unexpected thing ever, and I feel like the, the story of Theranos has been told so many times, I can't imagine what might actually happen, so, I want your take.

• 2:01:55Speaker 07

  I've kept myself spoiler-free, I know there are some reviews out there that say exactly what, what goes on in the movie, so I can't claim any knowledge there. Yeah, I, I think the variety or someone like that put out a review that really pissed people off, because they walked you through the whole thing, but, I mean, as far as Ellison goes, because, you know, he's part of the story, um, you know, he, he invests in Theranos through multiple vehicles, through Taco, through other, probably some of the octopi companies, too, um, and, you know, credit to him, he still believes in her, uh, you know, long after she ends up getting, you know, this is in the story, but like, he is, as some sources told me, smitten with her.

• 2:02:29Speaker 07

  He really thought she was the greatest, and, uh, defended her to this day, said he was, she was a genius, is misunderstood, and, you know, part of the, the Ellison story now is that he's also spending, probably most of his investments are going into cancer research, he, uh, which, you know, maybe we can talk about, but, you know, the, the idea of using, you know, tech dollars to fund can, cancer research, and, and novel medical treatments for cancer, you could argue came from Elizabeth, and like, a shared interest there.

• 2:02:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:56Speaker 07

  Um, so, they're deeply connected, and, and just one kind of funny point about it, um, yeah, I don't know if you guys watched the, uh, the dropout, now, what was the name of the, uh, the Theranos series on Hulu?

• 2:03:06John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:03:06Speaker 07

  The dropout, right? So Larry has a scene, I mean, I say, say, freed, it's honestly of the tech shows of that era, that's probably the best one, but, uh, you know, there's a scene of Larry in the show, where, you know, they're on one of, they're on a yacht, and, and he's telling her, can I swear on, on TBPN?

• 2:03:21John Coogan?

  We don't swear, actually.

• 2:03:23Speaker 07

  Okay, all right, uh, get the, get the frickin' money.

• 2:03:25John Coogan?

  You know, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll try and

• 2:03:29Speaker 07

  I missed it, I missed, well, you guys can look up the clip, but, but he's in it, and, and, and he's like, get the F and money, and, um, and that scene definitely never happened, mostly because they show him drinking, which he does not do, he's a, he's a teetotaler, so, yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:43Jordi Hays?

  How?

• 2:03:44John Coogan?

  Do you know he eats calamari, because he loves the octopus, does he also enjoy dining on octopus?

• 2:03:49Speaker 07

  You know, I don't, I, I wish, a better reporter would have found that out, I do know that he eats the same breakfast almost every day, and probably if I worked at the New York Times, I would have written that, that particular meal.

• 2:04:00Jordi Hays?

  Did you stay, did you stay at, at, uh, any of the Sensei properties to try to immerse yourself in his, his world?

• 2:04:08Speaker 07

  I have been to Lanai three times now, which I feel like a lot. I've never stayed at the Sensei properties. So I first started covering Larry when I was at the Wall Street Journal. I did a story about Sensei Farms, which is this hydroponic.

• 2:04:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, I read that.

• 2:04:26Speaker 07

  Thank you. Yeah, it was like this kind of.

• 2:04:28Jordi Hays?

  We read, didn't we read that on the show, like within the first.

• 2:04:31Speaker 07

  On the show?

• 2:04:31Jordi Hays?

  No, no, no. It was probably within the first month.

• 2:04:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, it's this crazy boondoggle of, you know, he wanted to reinvent, you know, indoor hydroponic farming and create the Tesla of agriculture. And look, it's still around. You can buy their salads in Hawaii. But anyway, so for that, I went to Lanai, went for two days and met a lot of the people there. And then I went back again for this story. I have been inside Sensei. I have walked the grounds of the Wellness Retreat, which has this incredible art installation, all of Larry's art. There's like Damien Hirst and Jeff Kuntz and stuff like that. I have not gotten Vanity Fair or the Wall Street Journal to ever pay for a night at the Four Seasons.

• 2:05:14John Coogan?

  I think you need a month at the Four Seasons to get to the bottom of this thing personally.

• 2:05:18Jordi Hays?

  We'll put a note, I mean, Rogers is out, Rogers is out, but the new CEO, we'll say, I think it's important. I will say, I haven't been to Sensei Lanai, but I've been to the one in Palm Springs, Palm Springs. And that property is amazing because it's called Sensei Porcupine Creek.

• 2:05:41John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 2:05:42Jordi Hays?

  And it's completely, like you, the whole, it's a wonderful place, but for me, as somebody who's very commercially minded, it's hard to sort of wrestle with the thought that it must be losing so much money. Just because I think there's like 16 rooms, but it's these massive grounds. And there's a Nobu and this golf course that sits empty most of the time. And the staff's amazing. It's an amazing experience. I highly recommend it, but it is, it is just wild because you're sitting there and be like, every day, they're just like waking up and we're losing another probably, you know, however much money. What, the last question I had is, how, like,

• 2:06:23Jordi Hays?

  talk about his relationship with risk and, and willing to like, make these sort of all in bets at different moments throughout his career. Like, do you think he's, is he getting more risk on? Like, you know, with all, last year with all of the, the sort of pushing the chips in on Oracle with AI, you know, felt significant, but at the time, you know, and still unclear, like, whether that'll be the right decision. But I think a lot of people like to chatter and, and try to evaluate the decision when they have literally like, not even 1% of the context

• 2:07:05Jordi Hays?

  that he has. And then with Paramount and Warner Brothers as well, you know, I, when somebody has like reinvented and executed well for that many decades, like, you kind of need to default to like, hey, maybe he knows what he's doing.

• 2:07:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, he loves big swing bets. That's, that's just a core part of his like, reputation and strategy as a business person is he will do it. And yeah, exactly. Oracle, like, you know, it almost goes bankrupt in the 90s because of an accounting scandal. I wouldn't necessarily call that a big swing bet, but like, he lives, exactly Borat. Like, he lives, he lives on the edge. And he's totally fine to kind of go there because he has so much control. And like, one of the fascinating parts of the Oracle AI story to me is that Safra Katz, who is a fascinating figure, I did not have enough time in the story to kind of dive into her, but she's in the middle of, of obviously Oracle, but also his relationship with Israel. Super smart, conservative executive. She does not love the AI bet. She does not love

• 2:08:11Speaker 07

  infrastructure. She is, you know, a huge fan of the high margin software business. And I think it's very telling that when Oracle goes, you know, all in on AI, basically on OpenAI, like, that's the client that is making that whole bet work. It's the fact they're building data centers for Sam. You know, Safra ends up stepping down in the middle of that. And, and you've entered this new era where they are essentially a Neo cloud. And Larry's on board with that. He's a technologist. And this is, look, when it, when it was working, the stock, he was the richest man in the world. You know, like, it was going crazy.

• 2:08:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, crazy backlog, the RPO day. I remember it.

• 2:08:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Seven, you know, 317 billion, you know, the next day, you know, the Wall Street Journal, former, former place of work, you know, reveals that it's all OpenAI, basically. And then the debt starts being a terrifying reality for people where they're like, you know, our cash flow has just turned negative. Like, this is terrifying. And so, that's just built into Larry's DNA in a lot of ways. He's fine with that. Not everyone is. And then, but the funny thing is with the Paramount stuff, like, you know, that's all built on Oracle's stock. You know, his ability to finance these multi-billion dollar media consolidations are, at least to some degree, margin loans on, or loans on his Oracle holdings. It's very least collateral. Like, we know that. Because he had to do a $40 billion backstop,

• 2:09:30Speaker 07

  you know, to make the Warner Brothers deal happen. And so, it's like, the guy, it's weird to think about in this context, but like, the guy is living on the edge. You know, it's like, you're worth $200 billion, but like, it's very risky. You know, the banks are selling off debt, you know, for the different data centers at like 90 cents to the dollar. Like, no one knows how it's going to play out. But I think, you know, Larry, at 82 years old, he loves this shit.

• 2:09:55John Coogan?

  The full set octopus. Let's go.

• 2:09:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Where else, when you've, when you've owned, you know, racing teams and sailing teams and you've dog, done dog fighting, how do you get the rush without a little leverage?

• 2:10:08John Coogan?

  Yeah. Well, we'll dig into it next time. We'd love to have you back on the show, Tom.

• 2:10:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this was, this was great.

• 2:10:12John Coogan?

  Always a great time.

• 2:10:13Jordi Hays?

  And excited for, for the viewers to dig in.

• 2:10:16John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go read the full piece. Subscribe to Vanity Fair. Obviously, we love them over there.

• 2:10:21Speaker 07

  Yeah. And newcomer.co, my other employer.

• 2:10:23John Coogan?

  That's right.

• 2:10:24Speaker 07

  Go, go, go read Eric and Newcomer and all of our stuff.

• 2:10:27John Coogan?

  Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI, their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. We've been keeping them waiting. No longer. We got Tim Dewitt from Genuine, General Intuition, co-founder and CEO.

• 2:10:44Jordi Hays?

  There he is.

• 2:10:45John Coogan?

  Tim, how you doing?

• 2:10:46Jordi Hays?

  Man, the myth. He's back.

• 2:10:49John Coogan?

  Give us the news. You raised some money? How much did you raise?

• 2:10:53Speaker 08

  We raised 220 million at a 6.3%.

• 2:10:57John Coogan?

  Fantastic. Let's get the replay going. Let's get that replay going. Let's see that gong.

• 2:11:03Jordi Hays?

  Boom.

• 2:11:04John Coogan?

  Congratulations.

• 2:11:05Jordi Hays?

  With authority. Powerful hit, John, for a powerful raise. What unlocked this new capital?

• 2:11:14Speaker 08

  We successfully were able to prove transfer to real world robotics from a lot of the game data. And so I think a lot of the evidence is pointing that you can actually, in fact, just scale pixel space. Humans tell operate robots with the exact same brain that they can play video games. And a lot of, and likewise, the other way around, right? People play video games, and then they take those skills and they can use the same game controller to tell operate a robot. And I think a lot of our research, and now we've shown some demos as well, is indicating that this transfer works and you can scale pixel to action space on our massive data modes. And yeah, I'm excited to show the world the models for the next few months.

• 2:11:54Jordi Hays?

  Very cool. Talk about, talk about the data mode. I know, I know, we've talked about it probably a couple of times now, but for anyone tuning in for the first time, talk about how and why you guys are in a position to do this better than most.

• 2:12:05Speaker 08

  Yeah. So we built the largest, we built the largest video game recorder in the world. And so we get a lot of data on how people control embodiments inside video games. So when you're playing a video game, you're essentially just transferring your perception to the screen, and then using the controls to control whatever character you have on the screen, many times in first person view, just like when you're on a robot. And so, because robots also ship with game controllers, we can map those actions. And then largely, it becomes just an environment transfer problem where the pixels are different, but the inputs are the same. And so we can pre, just like transformers or LLMs are pre-trained on predicting the next text token from the internet, we can pre-train on the 3 billion videos that people capture and upload to Metal every

• 2:12:50Speaker 08

  year, the game recorder, to go, so to go from frames to actions. And so LLMs go text to text, we go frames to actions. And then we can scale that into extremely general models that can control every robot that ships with the game controller, which is the majority of robots right now.

• 2:13:08Jordi Hays?

  Give us your overview of, of various robotics categories. Where are you most excited about in the short term? Obviously, in the, in the more, let's say, in the next year, it's all about just working with these companies around like testing and proving out different use cases. But what categories are you most bullish on? Because I think for General Intuition, you're, I think it's probably going to be quite important to hit like some of these big inflection points when some of these use cases really start taking off in the way that we've seen other players and infrastructure providers hit like the inflection point with like personal agents, for example, or browser automation or these other use cases.

• 2:13:50Speaker 08

  Our bet is that that inflection point actually sits largely in simulation first and that most companies betting on physical robotics only are going to miss an inflection point because every robotics lab goes, every robotics manufacturer, every company goes through sort of testing their robots in simulation before they transfer them over to the real world. So this year, we've been focusing a lot on scaling with customers in simulation. Next year, a lot of it will be on transferring over to the physical world. Where we are focused specifically at the moment is cloud repets, drones, and I like stable platforms, right? Humanoids are quite unstable still, their supply chains haven't ramped quite as much. And so, but you can control them using a game controller.

• 2:14:31Speaker 08

  And so, if your robot ships with a game controller and has a front-facing camera, then we can likely work well together and the models will transfer extremely well.

• 2:14:39Jordi Hays?

  Very cool.

• 2:14:40John Coogan?

  God mode. In video games, it gives you unlimited health, but recently, AI researchers have been talking about a different kind of god mode. Imbuing AI models with god-like meaning. What is your take on the models that you're creating? Will they be moral agents? Will they have consciousness? How have you grappled with the question of, is this god in a box or is it a machine intelligence?

• 2:15:11Speaker 08

  It's a machine intelligence. I see no reason to believe otherwise. I think our processes in the brain are chemical processes. There's absolutely no reason at the moment to believe these machines are conscious. I think the entire debate is honestly somewhat silly. I, right, a lot more things would have to be proven to draw any equivalence there. And I also think that for us, I think the goal is just studying these systems, understanding what they do well and not well, and then going from there. I think, you know, I try to stay away from a lot of that cultish behavior and just stay grounded.

• 2:15:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:50Jordi Hays?

  Talk about sentiment, AI sentiment among gamers, because anytime we've had somebody in the gaming world, sort of legacy gaming world on the show, and you bring up AI, they go, oh, yeah, change the topic, you know, no one wants to be caught saying anything positive about it. But over the last couple of weeks, I feel like people are suddenly creating a bunch of crazy experiences, even home hackers porting games from here to there. And it feels like we could be at a moment where people are like, hey, maybe this thing's actually pretty cool and a useful tool.

• 2:16:29John Coogan?

  Could be looking at the future Ben Affleck of gaming.

• 2:16:32Jordi Hays?

  Oh, that's right.

• 2:16:33John Coogan?

  Potentially.

• 2:16:34Speaker 08

  I thought that clip of Ben Affleck explaining freezing weights and it was so incredible. That made my day, honestly, seeing him explain that. I, okay, so on gamers, why are gamers frustrated with AI or historically have been? Because it really hadn't done much good for them, right? Made their GQ prices go up, a lot of cap, right? There was a bunch of games that were delayed from studios and a lot of their investment and a lot of these large companies was going towards AI. Meanwhile, all the developers were being laid off at game studios, so it's obvious why gamers were frustrated. And I think the reason was it just hadn't done much for them. And I think now we're starting to see the early signs of that changing. So modding, obviously, becoming a ton easier.

• 2:17:15Speaker 08

  I think in our case, we'll see different types of games being possible on top of these models and different types of interaction patterns. And it just, like, AI just hadn't done anything for them. And I think we're now turning the corner. I do think it's starting to show, and we just need to continue creating better experiences for gamers and bringing them along in the journey as opposed to the other way around.

• 2:17:40John Coogan?

  Very cool.

• 2:17:41Jordi Hays?

  Awesome. Well said.

• 2:17:43John Coogan?

  Congratulations.

• 2:17:44Jordi Hays?

  An amazing progress.

• 2:17:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, really amazing progress.

• 2:17:46Jordi Hays?

  I love our favorite part of doing these interviews of seeing snapshots of companies as they make process, progress between rounds.

• 2:17:56John Coogan?

  Yeah, I have one more question about, you know, like, it's not necessarily the anthropomorphization, but just this idea that, like, some people like just hanging out and chatting with the LLMs, and you have metal, and people are gaming and uploading clips. And I'm wondering if you think that there's a, that there will be a real market for an AI companion that you play video games with? Like, you queue into Fortnite, you want your squad to be full, and so you populate that with something that's roughly at the same level as you, but can also chat and do callouts and has a certain flavor and texture and humor to it. Do you think that that will be something that we'll see? Or is the structure of the video game industry such that that will just get banned?

• 2:18:40Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think for sure we'll see this, because when you're launching video games, your largest problem is usually player liquidity, which largely drives retention. And so I think if you're a game developer, you want these type of experiences. And I think you want your environments to be really interactive and rich. And so I think naturally, the economics of the industry will push towards this being a thing. I think there's a debate of, to the extent that you should label that, right? You should let people know that they're interacting with AI systems. But I do think it will be a thing, and I think, you know, there will be lots of good things that come from it, and there will be bad things that come from it, and we just have to study those and evaluate them as they come.

• 2:19:17John Coogan?

  Yeah, but it'd just be like a really fun NPC as opposed to just like the generic bot there and kind of.

• 2:19:22Speaker 08

  Exactly, exactly. I think a lot of it will start, you know, the best things start out looking like a toy, and I think the same thing will be true here.

• 2:19:28John Coogan?

  Yeah, well, congratulations and thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 2:19:31Jordi Hays?

  Great to hang with you.

• 2:19:32John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon.

• 2:19:33Jordi Hays?

  Congrats to the team.

• 2:19:34John Coogan?

  Have a good one.

• 2:19:35Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 2:19:36John Coogan?

  Goodbye. Our next guest is here with us live in person in the TDP and LTR. We're Greg Castle from Anorak Ventures. How you doing, Greg? Welcome to the show. Should we get him to hit the gong with the American flag on? Roll the replay camera, because you're here announcing a new fun. So throw that on, take that gong, mallet, and smash that gong, and I want to see the replay.

• 2:20:00Jordi Hays?

  Wow, look at that replay. Wow.

• 2:20:09Speaker 09

  It's actually a gift for you guys.

• 2:20:11John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 2:20:12Speaker 09

  I felt like I was coming into your house.

• 2:20:13Jordi Hays?

  I almost feel like we don't.

• 2:20:15John Coogan?

  It's crazy, yeah.

• 2:20:16Jordi Hays?

  We have maybe one in the other room, but not in this room.

• 2:20:18John Coogan?

  Thank you so much.

• 2:20:19Speaker 09

  Well, I came in and I wasn't sure what the representation was going to be, and then I'm hit with that giant American flag, so.

• 2:20:26Jordi Hays?

  No, but it's not in this room.

• 2:20:28John Coogan?

  It's not in this room. It needs to be right here. So for those who don't know you, please introduce yourself and the company.

• 2:20:35Speaker 09

  Sure. Greg Castle, managing partner of Anorak Ventures. We are a early-stage deep tech firm, been around since 2017. Just closed our third fund, which is a $35 million fund.

• 2:20:51John Coogan?

  A capital allocator. Did you always know you wanted to be a capital allocator? Is that what you dreamed of being as a child?

• 2:20:57Speaker 09

  Certainly not. I think.

• 2:20:59John Coogan?

  What did you want to be when you grew up?

• 2:21:00Speaker 09

  I think I was always deeply interested in kind of niche subjects and different kind of subcultures, whether or not it be skating or video games or comics or whatever it is. Yeah. And, you know, kind of, I think in high school, always kind of jumping around from group to group and learning about what they were super excited about was kind of the way I was in high school. So definitely not.

• 2:21:30John Coogan?

  It's actually a perfect fit for a C.

• 2:21:31Jordi Hays?

  Venture capital is exactly like high school.

• 2:21:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:21:34Speaker 09

  You're exactly right. You're kind of going into different, like, subcultures, if you will, and really learning everything that you can about them.

• 2:21:42John Coogan?

  What was the first investment you made? Or like, when were you like, okay, I'm going to start investing?

• 2:21:46Speaker 09

  The first investment I made really was in myself when I, when I founded a company. It sounds kind of cheesy, but like.

• 2:21:56John Coogan?

  No, it's true. It's true. Like, your opportunity cost, you could be earning a salary.

• 2:22:00Speaker 09

  Exactly. So I left my.

• 2:22:02Jordi Hays?

  I'm sorry, sorry for hitting a funny sound effect, but it's true, like, it's like, ask, you know, if somebody's going to start a company, ask yourself, are you going to invest, you know, some meaningful percentage of your entire life into this idea? Is it that good?

• 2:22:18Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:22:19Jordi Hays?

  And sometimes it can be a smaller idea and it still makes sense to do, but.

• 2:22:23Speaker 09

  For sure.

• 2:22:24Jordi Hays?

  But it's worth thinking about it that way.

• 2:22:25Speaker 09

  Yeah, and also, you know, I think that there's a lot of different things that you can do just under your own passion, but then there's a different stage when you actually have to go out to people and ask for money, including your friends and family, which is what, you know, which was kind of, I consider my first investment, was some of my own capital, some of my parents' capital, and going into a very unrelated field in retail. So in 2014, oh, sorry, 2014, 2004, I moved over to the UK and started up a retail chain that was kind of similar to Sweetgreen.

• 2:22:58John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:22:59Speaker 09

  And I ran that for six years over in London. We had about six locations. But then in terms of my first real investment where I wasn't operating, it was in Oculus.

• 2:23:09John Coogan?

  Really?

• 2:23:10Speaker 09

  Yeah, that was the first track. So I figured from, you know, I figured that this is, this is easy. This is what I'm going to do for.

• 2:23:17John Coogan?

  Did you see the Kickstarter online or?

• 2:23:19Speaker 09

  No, so in 2010, when I moved back to the States, I moved back to work for a friend who I went to college with, whose name was Brendan E. Reeve. And he had a company, which was a software company, which was selling software into game developers. And I was always, you know, he is an amazing salesperson and communicator, and I was always really interested in what he was building. So when the opportunity came around to come and join him at a company that he had dropped out in 2000, 1999, actually, when he dropped out of school to go and do that full-time,

• 2:24:02Speaker 09

  I was kind of on my own path, but was always very interested in what he was building. And so I came back to join him, worked with him, worked with Mike Antonov, worked with Nate Mitchell. And then a few years later, that, well, that company was acquired by Autodesk, and then a few years later, we had heard about a kid who was working on a VR headset, and that kid was Palmer.

• 2:24:23John Coogan?

  And that was Palmer Lucky. Wow, that's wild. Yeah, what a good, good start to a venture career, working with Palmer Lucky, who's going to go on and do so many different companies. While we're on the topic of VR, what, how successful do you think the Meta VR glasses will be? And one way to sort of quantify it is, when VR is having a moment, I feel like when Christmas comes, the app is at the top of the App Store. So like, the Quest or the Oculus app would be at the top of the, top of the App Store. Like, it doesn't come out until next spring. I think they're going to launch it maybe April or May. But it feels to me like they got a lot of the pieces right.

• 2:25:08John Coogan?

  How are you feeling about 2027 as a, as a year for VR growth, as someone who's been involved in the industry for a long time?

• 2:25:16Speaker 09

  It's taken a long while, a lot longer than I think we had all hoped. It's interesting to think back of when I first made that investment. That kind of was, that kickstarted my career in venture. So that was at a time after they were growing like wildfire. Where everybody in the valley was kind of convinced that people were going to be wearing headsets walking down the street. Right? And, and so. It's kind of part of my origin story where I was able to kind of go out and speak on the topic with knowledge and with the relationship to the, to the team.

• 2:25:57Speaker 09

  And there was a whole bunch of people who wanted me to, who kind of were thinking that I was going to start a VR fund. And there were a bunch of, there were a bunch of firms actually that started.

• 2:26:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:07Speaker 09

  Just VR focused. I always was kind of felt as though it was going to take a lot longer.

• 2:26:12John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:26:12Speaker 09

  And so it has.

• 2:26:15Speaker 09

  I think that, you know, you have this kind of situation where the hype has not, the hype has set expectations that have been very difficult to follow. And so therefore you have this kind of disappointment that everybody feels about kind of how everything's transpired. I don't see there being a massive inflection point.

• 2:26:34Speaker 09

  There have been several points in the past where something has come out, be it, you know, the Quest One, be it. Gear VR, like there have been a bunch of different points along the way where people have been like, this is it.

• 2:26:46John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:26:47Speaker 09

  Like Apple, this is it. This is when it's all going to change. And it just hasn't happened like that.

• 2:26:51Jordi Hays?

  And even with, yeah, even with Zuck's Meta Connect presentation. It didn't come across like he was presenting, it, it came across as like this incredible technical milestone and like a big step up. Right? But if you compare it to like foundation models, like it was a big leap, but it's not like it actually is a drop in coworker for you. So, and, and even some of his language in the presentation was like, it's a glimpse of the future.

• 2:27:21John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:27:22Jordi Hays?

  And it's like, well, that, like, you don't get a crazy inflection point through glimpses of the future.

• 2:27:30Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 2:27:30Jordi Hays?

  It's like another, it's another, it's another milestone.

• 2:27:33John Coogan?

  You want a CEO to stand up on stage and say with this product, you are staring into the future with your eyes wide like.

• 2:27:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I'm surprised they don't have, they, they should make that.

• 2:27:41John Coogan?

  The eye expanders. Clockwork Orange, if you want to go Clockwork Orange on the future, that's what your goal is.

• 2:27:47Jordi Hays?

  Talk about the, the fund strategy. I, a fund this size, I feel like you can probably confidently go to LPs based on the track record and say like, there's a good shot. I can four, five X a fund like this. Has maintaining that been super important to you? Cause given the track record, I imagine you could scale up. And then how are you? How are you, like, what, what is, what's, what's the strategy at the early stage in terms of things like ownership? Are you flexible, inflexible? Just cause current market conditions are, are absolutely wild and they don't necessarily favor smaller funds in, in some ways.

• 2:28:32Speaker 09

  Yep, yep. Yeah, it has been very much deliberate, keeping the funds small.

• 2:28:39Speaker 09

  You know, I started as, I started angel investing. So after, after the Oculus investment, after that came to fruition, I essentially quit my day job and, and really wanted to answer three questions. Like one, what does it mean to be a responsible fiduciary of capital? What does this whole VC thing mean? Two, am I any good at this? Or was Oculus just a fluke? And three, do I want to do this? Do I want to devote the rest of my life to it? And the answer over the, over those couple of years of deploying my own capital and doing a few SPVs was yes, yes, and yes. And over that time, I kind of developed a network and, and a reputation as somebody who can be flexible with checks.

• 2:29:24Speaker 09

  And can be really helpful and doesn't have sharp elbows and kind of can like fit into rounds. And that worked out for me. That worked out very well with Fund One, that worked, you know, that's working out very well with Fund Two. And now hopefully it'll work out with Fund Three. I am very much of the opinion that every size of fund requires a very different skillset and a very different strategy. And what I proved out and what I'm good at is deploying smaller amounts of capital.

• 2:29:49John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:29:50Speaker 09

  And that's what I want to keep on doing. And I think that, you know, I mean, I, I think it's very easy to kind of chase AUM and chase those management fees. It helps if you've done decently well in the past and you have like a nest egg and you don't need to stack fees on fees on fees and bigger funds and bigger funds.

• 2:30:12Speaker 09

  And it just feels like I'm much more aligned with my LP base.

• 2:30:15John Coogan?

  Does the, this fund size lead you to a different LP mix? Or is it the same thing where like, you're still going to a sovereign wealth fund, but just asking for a smaller slice? Or endowments, like, how do you think about LP relationships and structuring?

• 2:30:29Speaker 09

  Yeah, I kind of have graduated. I was just looking at my LP list over the, over time. And it was like Fund One was like 60 LPs, Fund Two was like 50, and now I'm at like 22.

• 2:30:40John Coogan?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 2:30:41Speaker 09

  And, and that's been a purposeful move. Yeah. And, and you know, frankly, it's pretty.

• 2:30:47Jordi Hays?

  Pacing to one, yourself.

• 2:30:51Speaker 09

  I mean, that would be the dream, right? Like the Hunter Satya model is, is I think where every VC ultimately wants to be. Although to be honest with you, like I'm, I've got great relationships with ILPs and I love working with them. And they also have appetite for later stage rounds. So, but anyway, to answer your question, I would say I started out high net worth individuals, some family offices. Now it's a lot more family offices and funded funds.

• 2:31:16John Coogan?

  Funded funds, okay. But, but yeah, but you don't need to do the roadshow with like huge endowments and sovereign wealth funds.

• 2:31:23Speaker 09

  No.

• 2:31:23John Coogan?

  Trips to the Middle East.

• 2:31:24Speaker 09

  I'm too small for that. And also, you know.

• 2:31:30Speaker 09

  I would say, you know, I started out very much as a deep tech fund where it's just like, I saw what happened at Oculus and I saw. How amazing it was to bring a completely new technology to market. And I was just sold. I was like, this is what I wanted. I don't want to be investing in ad optimization. I don't want to be, I want to be investing in people who are really fucking moving the needle. And then I had the opportunity because of a relationship with Palmer and Trey to invest in Anduril. And I always pronounce it slightly differently, Anduril. And that kind of ignited a sense of patriotism in me that I didn't really knew I had.

• 2:32:11John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:32:11Speaker 09

  And since then, we've been doing a lot more in aerospace and defense, a lot more in kind of American dynamism. And so therefore from a LP perspective, having LPs who are based here in the US is of great importance to me.

• 2:32:25John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:32:25Speaker 09

  I, I've got, we actually brought on our first LP from Luxembourg, this fund. Shout out to Mangrove, very excited to have them on board. But for the most part, like the trips to the Middle East, the trips to these places, like I don't need to do them. And I don't necessarily want that capital involved anyway.

• 2:32:44Jordi Hays?

  How, how excited are you for to be post SpaceX IPO based in LA, Southern California in general? Cause it feels like we're probably going to get hundreds of companies in the fullness of time that, that spin out. And, and these super talented teams where they've worked together at SpaceX, experienced some, you know, hairy problem. And then they want to go solve it.

• 2:33:10Speaker 09

  Yeah. Yeah, I, I originally moved to, to LA more for my wife than for me. You know, I was in the Bay Area before this and I was kind of reluctant to move down here. And we did this two weeks before COVID and it's worked out really well, especially with the areas that we invest in. I think that the talent just keeps on increasing, the talent pool just keeps on increasing.

• 2:33:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, cause long LA completely flopped, except that El Segundo and SpaceX happened.

• 2:33:46Speaker 09

  Absolutely right.

• 2:33:47Jordi Hays?

  No, like we, we won, but like.

• 2:33:50Speaker 09

  Not the way that we.

• 2:33:52Jordi Hays?

  Not the way, not the way that we were hoping it was like thinking like consumer and this.

• 2:33:56John Coogan?

  B2B SaaS. It was like, it was like, there will be like a sales force of LA and like a many more of those. And there's been a few, but yeah, it never, it never developed into like the New York City style market.

• 2:34:06Speaker 09

  Yep, yep. Yeah. And you know, I think one of the reasons why I always loved being in SF was the fact that everybody comes there to raise capital, regardless of where you're building. So my job in many ways is kind of a biz dev job and like just being boots on the ground there.

• 2:34:25Speaker 09

  And now it feels like there's also a lot of capital in LA. There are a lot of the VCs from SF who are coming to LA on a regular basis. So there's a lot more capital available, I would say, down here.

• 2:34:41John Coogan?

  How are you thinking about the market structure, concentration of winners in various emerging new technologies? Like with, with Oculus, if you went and did like five other VR headset companies, you probably would have had a pretty bad run. With Anduril, if you did like five other defense tech companies, like at least right now, like they're all pretty marked up. So it seems like there's more of an oligopoly there. Some of that's like literally a direct order from the government being like, we won't let a monopoly exist in this category. Whereas, you know, Mark Zuckerberg runs a monopoly and he's like, we're happy to be the only player in this space if we can be. But with some of the newer frontier technologies, how do you think about winner take all dynamics?

• 2:35:23John Coogan?

  How, and, and then also just like what other frontier technologies are exciting to you? Humanoid robots, industrial stuff, more farther out on the defense side. There's so much space, there's so many different areas. How are you spending your time?

• 2:35:36Speaker 09

  Yeah. It's interesting. I, I think I was of the mindset that Anduril will be the Anduril of X and they will just kind of dominate. And I think over time.

• 2:35:47Jordi Hays?

  Horrible mistake.

• 2:35:50Jordi Hays?

  I'm just, I'm just saying, I've done the exact same thing where it's like, yeah, obviously.

• 2:35:56Speaker 09

  They're just going to do it.

• 2:35:57Jordi Hays?

  They're going to do this, have all the relationships, they have the capital, they have the talent, but, but.

• 2:36:01John Coogan?

  Also you get, you get further out and people will be like, we're the, we're the Anduril of ovens. We, we, we make a stove.

• 2:36:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. And it's like. At some point it gets too niche.

• 2:36:09John Coogan?

  It's like, I don't think Anduril is going to do the stove, the stove.

• 2:36:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. You're winning the, you need to win the whole market and then you need to underwrite the team on like doing a bunch of different product extensions.

• 2:36:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:19Jordi Hays?

  And they're still going to be like competing.

• 2:36:22Speaker 09

  Yeah. Yeah, I think the, you know, the government has made pretty clear their desire to diversify. And I think rightfully so, and I'm very glad that they are doing so.

• 2:36:35Speaker 09

  I think that. Generally, when everybody's looking in one place, I'm trying to look someplace else. I think that partially that's just the job of a VC, but also just like given my fund dynamics and the smaller size of the fund. When everybody is piling into one area, prices get driven up. You know, rounds get kind of insane. And while, you know, I loosely kind of have ownership targets. I still will kind of, I'm basically looking at, can I kind of 100x my money? And I feel like that is more difficult in defense these days.

• 2:37:16Speaker 09

  And so do I think that there are room for other big players in defense? Absolutely. Is that where I am necessarily putting my money at the moment? Not particularly. Like, I think we, I am actually a lot more interested in some really fricking boring areas. In chemical production, in steel production, you know, I know you've had Zane on the show beforehand. We're investors in Knox Metals.

• 2:37:38John Coogan?

  Love Knox Metals.

• 2:37:39Jordi Hays?

  They're ripping, right?

• 2:37:40Speaker 09

  They're doing phenomenally well. You know, rare earths, magnets, all the boring stuff that's kind of up supply chain. That we will need in order to achieve our mission as a nation. Is all stuff that I think is, is super interesting. We invested in Atlas. I think you guys had them on the show as well recently, so.

• 2:38:00John Coogan?

  Have you been surprised that the big defense primes haven't been more acquisitive? Even on a relative market cap weighted basis? Because in AI, like you're seeing these trillion dollar companies take down $10 billion acquisitions. And it's like, wow, that's $10 billion. It's a huge return for the VCs. But it's like, okay, they're throwing around 1% of their market cap. You could look at Oculus as a similar thing where Zuck is sort of throwing around like 1% of that market cap. But Lockheed doesn't seem like they're doing that.

• 2:38:28Jordi Hays?

  Founder-led companies tend to be like

• 2:38:31John Coogan?

  More acquisitive.

• 2:38:32Jordi Hays?

  Earlier companies tend to be way more acquisitive. Anduril's been very

• 2:38:35John Coogan?

  Um, I mean, that was not true for Elon for a long time, until cursor.

• 2:38:40Jordi Hays?

  But, but even looking at like, in the early 2010s, like the, the Aqua hires where the, like, people made money were like much more common. It was

• 2:38:52John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 2:38:53Jordi Hays?

  Twitter's buying, I think, didn't Twitter buy like 50 companies?

• 2:38:56John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:38:57Jordi Hays?

  And that's like classic, like founder-led company.

• 2:39:00John Coogan?

  Yeah. And I guess that, does that explain it? Or do you think there's something else going on with the market structure in defense tech? Why the primes haven't been more acquisitive?

• 2:39:08Speaker 09

  I, I completely agree with what you're saying. Like, I am shocked as well.

• 2:39:12Jordi Hays?

  79 companies.

• 2:39:14Speaker 09

  I am shocked as well. Autodesk is another one who, who, who has acquired a ton of companies. There are some companies that

• 2:39:21John Coogan?

  You'd think they'd want to give Adam Porter Price a harder time instead of being, letting him be the only bidder on these things. But instead they're like, okay, if Adam's not buying, we're not either.

• 2:39:30Speaker 09

  Yeah. I, I, you know, I wish I had a better answer. I have to think at some point that there's going to be enough pressure from the board of some of these larger primes that it's just kind of, I mean, there's lots of different reasons why this could be happening. They could be waiting for a dip. There's inevitably going to be a pullback and there are inevitably going to be issues. You know, hopefully during peacetime at some point in the near future where these companies just can't raise and, and kind of Lockheed can just go and sweep them up.

• 2:40:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:01Speaker 09

  I don't know what it is, but

• 2:40:04Jordi Hays?

  I think they need to be flipped by Anduril first to actually wake up. Like, from a valuation standpoint, like that actually is going to be very like, that's actually going to just be the moment where the boards are going to look around and be like, why is this company that has much lower revenue scale than us? And it's like, because the market believes that this company will generate way more value in the future than us, even though their scale is still

• 2:40:28John Coogan?

  Lockheed could approach it from a different perspective. The primes could do some sort of like PE roll-up joint venture, maybe like bending knives. Roll up all the, the dead weight venture failures in defense tech and, you know, try and put them together or something, raise prices. You never know.

• 2:40:45Jordi Hays?

  Bending swords.

• 2:40:46John Coogan?

  Bending swords would be good too. That one works. I like that.

• 2:40:49Speaker 09

  I, I agree though. I mean, I do think, does it need to materialize in the form of an Anduril IPO? Or something like that? That would certainly be one way to do it. I can't imagine that the, that the board isn't looking at the Saronics, the Andurils, et cetera. And, and being like, this is okay. So they're also just big fricking companies, right? That are, that are, you know, have lots of bureaucracy and, and kind of move slow. I mean,

• 2:41:18Jordi Hays?

  The dysfunction that, that I've heard through hard tech founders in my portfolio around the way these companies operate is like actually insane. Like they'll, they'll be sitting there like, and like the company is basically like looking at a pile of money, like an existing contract, and then years will pass and no one just goes and picks up, you know, they're just like looking at it. So.

• 2:41:41John Coogan?

  Yeah. Are you starting to look at bio? It feels like there's a moment where tech is crossing over. Like, it was a crazy idea to do anything industrial or defense or building physical stuff. Like tech used to mean software, then Oculus was like, okay, we can build a consumer hardware product. Then Anduril proved like, no, you can build an industrial scale hardware product. And it feels like, even though obviously there's a very mature biotech investment industry, it feels like those two worlds are like starting to blur.

• 2:42:12Speaker 09

  Yeah. It is also a very nuanced area and an area where there are investors who are better suited to really attack it than me. And so I, we kind of more stay in our lane. It is definitely an area that I have been thinking about more and that I've tried to, that I've been trying to get smarter in.

• 2:42:31John Coogan?

  Yeah. There's also the interesting bridge where some companies are doing like the bio defense. It's more like a defense contractor, like an

• 2:42:40Speaker 09

  And bio for manufacturing as well, companies like Solugen.

• 2:42:44John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:42:45Speaker 09

  That are, that are definitely interesting. That would be much more something that would be up our alley at Anorak than something that is kind of purely a biotech play. I mean, our latest, we're, we're just about to close an investment in a, in a kinetics company. So, you know, I think, I think that things that, you know, I, I kind of am at this, I, I feel very good about making investments that have the potential for a big impact on, on the future. And defending freedom and democracy is something that I think is of critical importance.

• 2:43:24Speaker 09

  And, you know, so I, I do, you know, I said beforehand, we're doing less and less in defense. We are to a degree, but we're also looking at, you know, kind of the second order.

• 2:43:38John Coogan?

  Like a Knox Metals.

• 2:43:39Speaker 09

  Yes. Companies like Knox Metals, companies like this explosives company that I think are going to be necessary in order for us to kind of, again, achieve our goals as a nation.

• 2:43:49John Coogan?

  Very cool. Jordy?

• 2:43:50Jordi Hays?

  Last question from my side. As a small firm, how impactful has AI been on your ability to get up to speed on some of these? Cause I'm sure you're getting pitches all the time where you're like, I literally have never thought about this part of the economy. And then you get into it and you realize, oh, that you, let's say you get a deck and it's somewhat compelling, but you know, nothing. Is it, is it had a meaningful impact? Obviously you still need to talk to experts and diligence it. But do you feel like you can like, start to build conviction on an idea faster? Because of just being able to like, ask a million questions and, and sort of sort information through these tools?

• 2:44:27Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's definitely changed the paradigm. You, you guys had Lo on yesterday, right? And he was talking about this as well. And I completely agree. It is, it's like having kind of a desk of analysts at your disposal. So we are leveraging it. We need to be leveraging it more. You know, to be honest, I mean, you know, I have myself and I have a partner who's based up in SF, so we're basically a two man team with a, with a, with an assistant who helps us out. I think that we, you know, this to me, this kind of fund three kind of feels like the transition from us going from, or me going as kind of, me going from a fund manager to a firm manager.

• 2:45:10Speaker 09

  And so really kind of building up the infrastructure to be able to scale, really being able to build something that lives beyond me is something that we're really, really focused on now. And certainly AI will be a massive, will be a massive part of that.

• 2:45:26John Coogan?

  Navy vision goggles.

• 2:45:27Jordi Hays?

  It just sounds like you're getting powered up.

• 2:45:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, I like it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 2:45:33Jordi Hays?

  Dude, it's awesome. I can't wait to talk to all the founders, you back. And I love that you're sticking to your strategy and can't wait to come on in 10 years and just walk us through all the fun performance one by one. Put us some crazy numbers.

• 2:45:49Speaker 09

  I really appreciate it. I love what you guys do. It's so cool to be on here and to be in this amazing place.

• 2:45:55John Coogan?

  It's a great time. Yeah, we'll see you at 11 a.m. Pacific on Monday. Have a great weekend. Have the best weekend ever.

• 2:46:02Jordi Hays?

  Of your life. Just do it. It's possible. A lot of people go into the weekend.

• 2:46:06John Coogan?

  Spotify. Sign up for our newsletter at tbp.com and we will see you on Monday. Rolling flashback. Goodbye.

• 2:46:12Jordi Hays?

  We love you.