The Switzerland of AI, Roblox Short Sale, Google's AI Podcast

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

• 0:00John Coogan?

  Good. Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. Today, we are talking about a number of news stories. The big one, did you see the Switzerland of AI? Switzerland is like the neutral party in the financial sector, like they don't really take sides. Well, Malaysia has emerged as this neutral place where all, every company, regardless, yeah, all the AI companies are building data centers there. Because it's right next to Singapore, which is a massive trading hub. But then it's also independent between like China and America.

• 0:40John Coogan?

  They haven't picked a side, but because they're connected to Singapore, it's like very easy to get to. But then they also have the like some of the largest concentration of undersea fiber cables.

• 0:52Jordi Hays?

  Beautiful.

• 0:52John Coogan?

  So it's just like, it's just like a huge, huge.

• 0:56Jordi Hays?

  I want to go scuba, I want to go scuba dive in Malaysia and dive to alongside the underground cable. Just like sort of like, you know, like, you know, those shots of scuba divers where they're like touching a whale? Like imagine like touching the underground cable.

• 1:12John Coogan?

  Information super hub.

• 1:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And just like downloading all of that, like.

• 1:16John Coogan?

  The power.

• 1:17Jordi Hays?

  Power.

• 1:19John Coogan?

  Look at how close it is to Singapore. Johor, that's the spot.

• 1:25Jordi Hays?

  Johor.

• 1:26John Coogan?

  And so they're.

• 1:26Jordi Hays?

  They're where we're going for the holidays.

• 1:29John Coogan?

  They're like a couple of years away from having the same amount of energy capacity as Northern Virginia, where like all the major AWS hubs are. And it's interesting because a lot of, a lot of the reason why the data centers are being pushed overseas is because of the ESG.

• 1:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:47John Coogan?

  Things like a lot of the big tech companies, they made ESG commitments. Have you heard this, that XAI just didn't make any ESG commitments? So they're just burning coal to just pump energy into this latest trading run.

• 1:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:00John Coogan?

  It's very fascinating.

• 2:02Jordi Hays?

  Whatever it takes. It's a war between good and evil.

• 2:05John Coogan?

  I've talked to some AI founders who are like, kind of worried about like the climate stuff.

• 2:11Jordi Hays?

  Just the demand for coal.

• 2:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, just because like, there's just no way that we can ramp up everything else, even though.

• 2:16Jordi Hays?

  That's, that's the irony of Elon, like, being the dominant player in clean tech. And then also burning.

• 2:24John Coogan?

  Potentially.

• 2:25Jordi Hays?

  Potentially burning coal.

• 2:27John Coogan?

  People like, looked at like, the satellite images of like, what he's building and like, there's just not enough power from the grid there to do what he says he's gonna do. So it's just like, very clearly, they're just gonna, you know, set up as many generators as possible and then also pull from the grid and then also build solar and nuclear. Like, just throw everything at it because it's like, so important. It's like, total land grab.

• 2:46Jordi Hays?

  Somebody's gotta do it.

• 2:47John Coogan?

  Yeah. What else do, uh, did you read in the journal today?

• 2:51Jordi Hays?

  Oh, in the journal. Where to start?

• 2:55Jordi Hays?

  Where to start?

• 3:01John Coogan?

  I thought this article on, uh, on the American guns that the Mexican cartels covet was interesting. Did you see this?

• 3:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:09John Coogan?

  I don't, I don't actually know when this printed. I think this ran over the weekend. But apparently, uh, Mexico is engulfed in a wave of criminal violence and disputes between rival drug gangs. And US weapons are fueling the Bud Death. So there's just, I, I, apparently like, a group of US dudes who buy American weapons and then sell them overseas.

• 3:29Jordi Hays?

  Well, you've seen the videos where it's a cartel and, and there's like, they do this sort of like, show of force for the bosses, who are usually nowhere near like, the private armies. But I've seen videos where they're just like, walking and there's just like, a line of like, paramilitary guys with the trucks that are like, branded with the cartel. And it's just like, literally like, you can walk and, and pass like, 500 trucks. Like, and it's all like.

• 3:57John Coogan?

  It's like, it's like a North Korean or Chinese show of force.

• 4:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's like Ford Raptors that have like, turrets on the top.

• 4:03John Coogan?

  It really does seem like the cartel is like, almost equal in power to like, the actual military at this point.

• 4:10Jordi Hays?

  That's the biggest. That's the big, I don't actually think, I end up watching, I end up putting on like YouTube to fall asleep and I always have to put on something that's interesting but not really that relevant to my life and so what I'll do is I'll put on this, there's this podcast that only goes like super, it's like a two hour podcast every time with like some journalists that's just been covering the cartels for 20 years and they just talk, it's basically like reality TV for cartel life and so that's how I, for some reason it puts me to sleep and sort of like a calming, like you know, hearing about the rise and fall of these sort

• 4:51Jordi Hays?

  of drug lords is like relaxing to me and yeah, I mean the biggest headline is that I think in the last presidential election, there was 37 candidates that were murdered, assassinated in the lead up to the new president.

• 5:07John Coogan?

  That's so insane.

• 5:09Jordi Hays?

  And that's just, that's a little concerning. I think it's totally, I don't think it gets enough attention just how out of control Mexico is and they're a stone's throw away.

• 5:26John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean I have an employee who works in, who lives in Mexico and you know, he lives in like a safe neighborhood and it's fine.

• 5:32Jordi Hays?

  Oh yeah.

• 5:33John Coogan?

  But it definitely seems like there's like, you know, a lot of conflict going on. The thing that blew me away about this article is that, like I was expecting like, okay, maybe AK-47, like you hear, you think like American guns that are fueling the Mexican cartel and you think like AR-15, right?

• 5:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 5:52John Coogan?

  Maybe AK-47. They start off with the minigun. The six-barreled, machine-fed weapon can destroy a small car in minutes. It's reserved for high-profile.

• 6:01Jordi Hays?

  Whoever, the editor, yeah, I don't think it's gonna take minutes for a minigun.

• 6:06John Coogan?

  But it's like, not everyone has the ability to use these sophisticated weapons. The Mexican military seized the first minigun from a crime scene in 2018, according to the military documents released by the nonprofit.

• 6:17Jordi Hays?

  Oh, it's a status thing, just, just like a Patek is a status.

• 6:23John Coogan?

  Well, they go into that. The Zapata El Jefe and El Grito pistols are Colt 38 supers and. It's like having a scepter or a crown for a king. And so they actually have different weapons for specific tiers. So if you're the lowest ranking cartel member, you get the Beretta 22 pistol. If you're a little bit higher up, you get the AK-47, the goat's horn, as they call it. Rocket launchers, the M72 law anti-tank rocket. It's like, I don't understand how they get these. And they're saying that, the whole point of this article is like, these are American-made weapons that are in the hands of Mexican cartels.

• 7:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 7:05John Coogan?

  But I can't get, I'm an American citizen, I can't get my hands on a

• 7:08Jordi Hays?

  On a MiG.

• 7:09John Coogan?

  On a belt-fed M249 saw.

• 7:12Jordi Hays?

  Or a rocket launcher.

• 7:12John Coogan?

  Right, or a rocket launcher. But I mean, maybe the Barrett, you can buy a Barrett, which is the, you know, armor-piercing sniper rifle.

• 7:20Jordi Hays?

  You know, my neighbor's truck was recently stolen out of his driveway. It had the keys in the truck.

• 7:26John Coogan?

  Maybe he needs a rocket launcher.

• 7:27Jordi Hays?

  No, no, but the thing that was interesting is it was immediately driven to a harbor in Northern California, and it was hours away from being shipped allegedly to Mexico. And so there's this whole, and it was like a, you know, blacked-out Ford pickup truck. And it's just so easy to imagine that truck taking a relatively short trip down the coast, like pulling into a port in Mexico and being rebranded to, what is it, the CJ NG cartel.

• 8:01John Coogan?

  Were you the one that was telling me about the, there was some guy who had like a, you know, a window company and he had his like logo and brand on his truck. And then eventually he sold it and it wound up like in an ISIS video with like his brand and phone number on it. Because it just got sold or stolen or something.

• 8:19Jordi Hays?

  Not all attention is good.

• 8:23John Coogan?

  People probably know that he's not involved, but still, very, very wild. And then they have, they have something else here too, yeah. The belt-fed saw is the prize weapon for top drug lords in Mexico. That weapon denotes status with the security details of Mexico's biggest drug lords wielding.

• 8:44Jordi Hays?

  You know, it does feel like-

• 8:46John Coogan?

  It's like a Gucci bag. It's more of a way to recognize who's in charge of the cartel teams. Who's the boss? Who's the closest to leadership?

• 8:54Jordi Hays?

  The new Hermes. Basically, yeah. Is a bolt-fed.

• 9:01John Coogan?

  I mean, this was, the Barrett sniper rifle. I mean, just the fact that they're like, actually considering, like, how do we take out vehicles? Is like, so next level compared to the crime that we see in America. Barrett's are only assigned to mid-level gang members, some trained in special combat. It's like, they have their own SWAT teams, they have their own special forces in the cartel.

• 9:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 9:25John Coogan?

  It's just so crazy.

• 9:26Jordi Hays?

  Well, you know about, what is the?

• 9:34Jordi Hays?

  It's not El Mencho, who's the guy?

• 9:45Jordi Hays?

  So there's this guy.

• 9:48Jordi Hays?

  This guy, Ismail Zambata, otherwise known as El Mayo. And he allegedly was like a ghost for decades, but the theory is that he was the guy behind El Chapo. Like, El Chapo was sort of like the front man and got all the attention and all the like, all the drama was always seemingly around El Chapo.

• 10:09John Coogan?

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 10:09Jordi Hays?

  But El Mayo was allegedly calling the shots the whole time. He was like, I believe he was an accountant prior to becoming, you know, a drug lord. And, or had some type of, you know, he was like the finance, he was like the CFO, basically, but the one that was actually calling the shots. The drama is that very recently, over the summer, he was flown over into, I believe it was, El Paso with-

• 10:44Jordi Hays?

  And it was basically initiated by one of El Chapo's sons and basically abducted him in Mexico, flown him over to El Paso. And the theory is that El Chapo's son was coordinating with American drug enforcement groups. And so it's been sort of interesting for me as a spectator to go from watching Netflix and watching Narcos, which is probably the last show that I watched to completion on Netflix. And YouTube has just sort of picked up all of that. So instead of watching this thing unfold that happened 20 years ago, you can now go

• 11:27Jordi Hays?

  on YouTube and basically in real time, cover the drama that's unfolding within the cartels. And there's this whole cottage industry of people that are basically small business owners, like media operators, that are just like have an entire career built around covering the cartels in real time.

• 11:45John Coogan?

  Reporting on them.

• 11:46Jordi Hays?

  Basically like reality TV.

• 11:48John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 11:49Jordi Hays?

  And because of the emergence of the iPhone and cell phones in general, there's now like real time, relatively high quality video footage. Somebody sent me a very dark video of a cartel ambush in basically high definition where these five guys are sitting on a ridgeline and they're just like watching their ops approach and they just straight up just kill them all. And they're all just filming it, like they're all like looking like full members of the military.

• 12:27John Coogan?

  I mean, it's propaganda war as well, like they want to appear strong in addition to being strong.

• 12:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and it's just wild, the state of...

• 12:36John Coogan?

  Have you picked up on any riffs within the creator community? Like, is there someone who's like clearly more pro cartel or like maybe on the go?

• 12:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, like the information warfare.

• 12:46John Coogan?

  Yeah. Because that happens in like, I mean, if you look at, if you do like China research on YouTube, you will see occasionally there's an American who like goes over there and is like very pro-China all of a sudden. It's like, okay, like you're probably being paid.

• 12:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and there's the... The whole emergence of faceless YouTube channels has created this environment where it's a perfect battleground for information warfare because you can create this clickbaity video that's like, here's why the United States should stay out of the South China Sea. It's like 20 minutes of like, pretty highly-produced content that's fairly convincing. And then you look in the comment section, it's like, nice try CCP, you know, and it's like 300 likes, it's like the top comment. But then like, half the people watching it are just like going off their, you know, the people don't realize that most, I think it's like 50% of YouTube viewership is on TVs.

• 13:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Jordi Hays?

  And it's not as comment-oriented.

• 13:42John Coogan?

  Yeah, not comment-oriented, or just autoplay, next thing.

• 13:44Jordi Hays?

  It's autoplay, so they're just like watching this and it's, you know, basically like television.

• 13:49John Coogan?

  I mean Netflix can be like that too, like, wasn't there, there was some like 9/11 conspiracy documentary that was on Netflix that was like, pretty debunked.

• 14:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 14:02John Coogan?

  And they will, Netflix will put stuff out that's about like, supervolcano, and it's like, there's this weird like blend between like, the like, you know, UFO hunters, ghost hunters, like, it's fun, and then it gets into like, okay, is this like propaganda? Is this like, does this have an agenda behind it?

• 14:18Jordi Hays?

  Total, I mean, there's a long history of, like, people think about information warfare playing out through traditional like, print media, online media, you know, New York Times, etc. And there's decades and decades of evidence that various groups have, go the length to get highly-produced films made, including the same group producing six different films, just with, that all have different takes and angles and like, objectives, just to make it super confusing.

• 14:51John Coogan?

  Different target audiences.

• 14:52Jordi Hays?

  Different target audiences, and also to just make it super confusing.

• 14:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Jordi Hays?

  And, so that's certainly is happening on, you know, legacy media with like, films and documentaries, but is obviously happening on YouTube now.

• 15:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Jordi Hays?

  Anyways, back to, not to get too far into the politics.

• 15:13John Coogan?

  Conspiracy line.

• 15:14Jordi Hays?

  Emerging cartel politics, but should we talk about some technology?

• 15:20John Coogan?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 15:21Jordi Hays?

  Our favorite topic on the show.

• 15:23John Coogan?

  What's the, what's the first?

• 15:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, where to start.

• 15:27John Coogan?

  Bill blogs or Google?

• 15:29Jordi Hays?

  We could, uh, we could start with Roblox.

• 15:32John Coogan?

  Let's do it.

• 15:32Jordi Hays?

  You were playing, what were you playing last night? Forget the game, you were playing Run from Diddy Simulator.

• 15:39John Coogan?

  Run from Diddy, the, the, the Roblox minigame.

• 15:41Jordi Hays?

  Right after you were playing Escape from Epstein Island.

• 15:45John Coogan?

  I have never actually played Roblox.

• 15:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's always, anytime.

• 15:49John Coogan?

  I have tried Fortnite once and I tried Minecraft just to kind of know like, okay, what is this thing? Didn't find them like deeply entertaining or anything, but.

• 15:57Jordi Hays?

  It's almost, oh, if you're very online.

• 16:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:01Jordi Hays?

  And there's this thing that allegedly is just so dominant, like massive.

• 16:05John Coogan?

  You gotta like learn about it. Like I read the Matthew Ball piece on.

• 16:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so you learn about it, but, but when somebody's saying like 10% of the world plays this two hours a day, you know, it's not actually that extreme with Roblox. But then you don't know anybody, you know, Roblox target audience is younger.

• 16:23John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 16:23Jordi Hays?

  But that was the case. There was also this calendar app that SoftBank backed, if you remember, that like was claiming to have like, they were claiming, I think it was called IRL.

• 16:32John Coogan?

  Yeah, IRL.

• 16:33Jordi Hays?

  And they were claiming to have like an egregious amount of users.

• 16:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, and they were basically just cooking the books.

• 16:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, never once knew of anybody using it. There was the same thing for this.

• 16:44John Coogan?

  I think Nikita Beer called them out pretty early too.

• 16:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there was some app that I think Benchmark backed that was like a college finance app that was again, the same thing. Turns out it was like, they had some incentive where if you signed up for an account, you got $5, but like you could just sign up like infinitely.

• 17:01John Coogan?

  Tons of fraud, where like maybe yes, there is technically an email address in the database, but it's fake.

• 17:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and like Roblox is.

• 17:07John Coogan?

  There was also that company that sold to JP Morgan or something. You remember this?

• 17:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 17:11John Coogan?

  She was on 30 under 30.

• 17:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 17:13John Coogan?

  And, uh, yeah, I mean, but this isn't, this isn't, is this, is this an allegation of fraud or just that like the stock is mispriced? Like Hindenburg is just a short seller, right?

• 17:24Jordi Hays?

  So Hindenburg did something similar. Like I think that they, like my, my opinion on Hindenburg is they could almost write their reports on any company because.

• 17:39Jordi Hays?

  There's always like, like I'd love to see a Hindenburg research report on Apple, like intentionally degrading iPhones in order to drive sales velocity, right?

• 17:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:49Jordi Hays?

  Like, we all know that for some reason or another, your phone starts getting materially worse after about 18 months.

• 17:56John Coogan?

  Like, every company has a most aggressive tactic.

• 18:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 18:00John Coogan?

  Like, whatever their most aggressive tactic is, you wanna see that detailed?

• 18:04Jordi Hays?

  And in the case of Roblox, they're repeatedly claiming that 50 million people are playing Roblox every single day, and they specifically were wording it as people

• 18:13John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 18:13Jordi Hays?

  instead of daily active users. And they were almost using those interchangeably, but it sounds a lot better to say people.

• 18:22John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 18:23Jordi Hays?

  Because it's like, those are real people that might have purchasing power. And it turns out that they were well aware that many people had alts, meaning one person with 10, 20 accounts that were used for different purposes.

• 18:36John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 18:36Jordi Hays?

  And they had internal tooling in order to determine who, like, who the actual person was behind those 20 accounts were.

• 18:46John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 18:47Jordi Hays?

  Yet, they were still willing to call those 20 accounts people when it came to reporting.

• 18:51John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 18:53Jordi Hays?

  So, ultimately, I mean, I think all the issues that they call out are all the issues that happen on any video game with user-generated content, right?

• 19:02John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 19:02Jordi Hays?

  The concerning thing is that it's a game, it's a video game for kids, and maybe creating like a sandbox. Like, you remember people, like, there was, even Minecraft is like, pretty like, you're in this world, you can build blocks, and it's pretty contained, but then you could build like a statue of a huge penis, you know?

• 19:19John Coogan?

  Yeah, sure.

• 19:20Jordi Hays?

  And like, there's almost nothing you can do to stop that, I feel like, as a game. I think with Roblox, when you give people the ability to effectively build games within the games, and they're creating games like Palestine and Israel Hangout.

• 19:34John Coogan?

  Oh, my God.

• 19:36Jordi Hays?

  LGBTQ plus vibes.

• 19:40Jordi Hays?

  Guns work at a hospital. You know. I think it's all.

• 19:45John Coogan?

  There's been a couple of backlash to Roblox, like on YouTube, I've seen people kind of say that there's like kids that get hooked into like the developer ecosystem, don't get compensated fairly. Like, there's been a lot of like, there's been various waves of like, you know, oh, like criticism, but it seems like the stock is doing well and that's why Hindenburg is like chiming in. Cause they're primarily like a short seller, right? Like, are they publishing this after taking a short position? Is that what we're always supposed to assume?

• 20:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that's, that's.

• 20:10John Coogan?

  Okay. Do you have any idea like how big this fund is? Hindenburg Research, it has such like a meme-y name and they're so like big on Twitter that I feel like it's.

• 20:18Jordi Hays?

  What if it's like a $10 million fund?

• 20:20John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it almost feels like it could just be in a non-account, but I think it is actually a research firm. Because it was in the Wall Street Journal, like in, in this, it says.

• 20:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think, I think the, I think the real, the one thing that you can focus in on is what is the, is, is part of the engagement because the games are so extreme? Because looking at these games, Beat Up People Outside of 7-Eleven has 900,000 visits.

• 20:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 20:48Jordi Hays?

  Beat Up the Pregnant is another game. Guns Work as a hospital, Guns Work at a Hospital has been played 1.6 million times.

• 20:57John Coogan?

  What's interesting is like, is like, I, I understand that if you like, I mean, no, Hindenburg is not saying that they don't have millions of users, like they clearly do have millions of people.

• 21:07Jordi Hays?

  I guess, yeah.

• 21:08John Coogan?

  But even, even if you have millions of people, like years ago, it was a reasonable thing to say like, well, you would have to hire tens of thousands of people to just sit there and watch everything to like monitor this for trust and safety. But now we have LLMs, like you can just take every string of text.

• 21:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 21:23John Coogan?

  Try to guide it, right? Like look through it.

• 21:26Jordi Hays?

  It's funny because there's a lot of ways you could make a bear case for the business, which is that, you know, user turnover is going to be high. People certainly age out of this. You have 50 million DAUs and you're not making money. Like Call of Duty does not put out a game. And have 50 million people playing it and not make.

• 21:46John Coogan?

  Milk seed immediately, money on the first sale.

• 21:49Jordi Hays?

  You have to imagine that like other gaming companies look at Roblox and they're like, ha, ha, you have 50 million people and you don't make any, like, you have zero earnings. And so I think that there's a lot of ways to critique this business. I mean, the, the, the big thing to me is if you make it, it seems like you could make it pretty easy to eliminate games that were explicitly political and just wrong. Guns Work at a Hospital, like, is that a game that we should be encouraging kids to play?

• 22:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, and that's something that's so easy to catch with an L L M. You just throw it through and like the, the most basic, like Lama model.

• 22:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, like, should you be able to, should you be able to name a game Palestine and Israel hang out? Like, it's not the town, this is a video game, right? It's not the town square.

• 22:36John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 22:36Jordi Hays?

  Nobody's arguing.

• 22:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:38Jordi Hays?

  And so I don't think that.

• 22:39John Coogan?

  Yeah, and no parents of kids who play Roblox are like, freeze, we're just so.

• 22:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so it's almost like when, we should, we should play the game one episode. But like, should you be able to create a game and publish it under something called Survive Diddy? And would those games get any users at all if they didn't have the word Diddy in it? Probably not, right?

• 22:58John Coogan?

  No.

• 22:59Jordi Hays?

  So like, it's part of like, children, children are innately drawn to offensive things.

• 23:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 23:06Jordi Hays?

  Because it just makes them like giggle and makes them whatever.

• 23:09John Coogan?

  I do wonder how much of this is driven by adults being creepy versus kids being edgy? Because it's totally possible that a 13 year old is being edgy because they're edgy on Instagram.

• 23:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I think, I think these games are just less malleable when we were kids, right? Like, kid, you might, like, whatever, in Call of Duty, for example, like, people would try to make it to write a swastika, you know, in the game. But they would eventually like, they would figure out how to like stop people, they would patch it. And so, but when you create these open sandboxes, it's sort of.

• 23:47Jordi Hays?

  If you're creating a metaverse, the same slime and sort of offensive things that happen in the real world are going to be recreated within the metaverse.

• 23:55John Coogan?

  I wonder if there's like an opportunity for something that like an app, like a child safety app that you could put on like your kid's computer, kid's iPad.

• 24:04Jordi Hays?

  Strap it to their Orion headset and it just like blacks. That's Orion, Orion, Orion.

• 24:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, but it just, it just takes a picture of the screen like every 10 seconds and just says like, is this offensive?

• 24:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 24:17John Coogan?

  Is this offensive? And it's just asking the, the, the model like, is this offensive or is this, is this, is this inappropriate for the age? And it can capture like text or images or, you know, a penis in Minecraft, like anything like that can all be processed. There's been, there's some company called Rewind that does that, but just for like your, your second brain.

• 24:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 24:38John Coogan?

  You know, it like takes a picture of your screen and then you can, and I think Microsoft might have a feature for this too, where you can say like, okay, I think like two weeks ago I was on a website of a short selling firm, but I can't remember the name. And he'll just be like, oh, Hindenburg Research, right?

• 24:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 24:51John Coogan?

  But.

• 24:52Jordi Hays?

  There was even a, there was a, I feel like there was a Black Mirror episode years ago that, that had something where kids, it was like a software update you could give to your kids where anything scary or wrong, they wouldn't blur. So the dog would be like barking, like really like trying to like kill you and the kid would just be like.

• 25:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's kind of creepy.

• 25:13Jordi Hays?

  And we're probably headed, we're probably headed towards that.

• 25:16John Coogan?

  I mean, the, the steel man here, I mean, the, the journal has the Roblox revenue versus net losses and revenue is accelerating and net losses over the last three quarters are declining. So they went from almost 400 million in net losses to just over 200. So the share price is stable at 40.

• 25:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, should we look?

• 25:39John Coogan?

  Down from 140, though.

• 25:40Jordi Hays?

  Should we? Let's see what impact this actually had.

• 25:44John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, did it move the market? Or it moved the market for Roblox stock?

• 25:50Jordi Hays?

  So, on September 24th, it was trading at $47 a share. And when was this?

• 25:56John Coogan?

  This came out yesterday. It's October 7th or October 8th.

• 26:00Jordi Hays?

  So, the stock is actually up.

• 26:02John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 26:05Jordi Hays?

  The stock, okay, over the last three days, it's down 2.9%. But today, it's up 3%. So... That's the thing, I don't...

• 26:17John Coogan?

  It was priced in.

• 26:18Jordi Hays?

  It was priced in, yeah.

• 26:20John Coogan?

  Everyone who owns a stock is like, yeah, I know that, I know that half the people are fake, and it's a cesspool, but I don't care. Because I'm still optimistic that we print cash flow in five years.

• 26:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the question is like, does this become? I guess the question is, does Snapchat not make money because of its user base or because of the way that it's run? Because you could argue that Roblox's user base is even worse in many ways, in terms of willingness to pay, just from, from an age standpoint.

• 26:50John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:53Jordi Hays?

  But it does seem like they're trending towards probably making a lot of money. My concern is how ephemeral, how ephemeral are video games? Especially as they just get easier and easier to create.

• 27:06John Coogan?

  Well, I, I wonder, I wonder how much video game revenue is essentially gambling-driven? In the sense that Call of Duty has this monetization arc where the first game comes out, it's 60 bucks, 70 bucks, maybe there's a hundred dollar for like, you get a little bonus skin for the day one edition. And then over time, they introduce loot crates that are effectively gambling, where, I mean, you're not winning money, but you're winning like, good skins for your guns, or like, rare items, right?

• 27:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, what's, what's the word? It's sort of, the official word for it is?

• 27:45Jordi Hays?

  Variable reward, right?

• 27:46John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 27:47Jordi Hays?

  So it's like you just might get something or like, oh, you know, and you're doing it live in the headset.

• 27:52John Coogan?

  And so that clearly has more of a dopamine rush than just, okay, I bought this, I bought this skin for $5 or the one that's $100, I paid $100 for. It's like for $10, you could win either. And I wonder if you look at, you know, the revenues of the gaming companies, like how much is driven by those day one salespeople just paying 60 bucks versus the whales that wind up? Because for the mobile games, like they're free upfront. They make no money from non gambling and it's all basically like a pay.

• 28:20Jordi Hays?

  The only apps making money day one are wallpaper apps.

• 28:24John Coogan?

  So, but, but that's, but that presents a like a really tough challenge for Roblox, right? Because if Roblox wants to, every time they introduce something that feels like gambling, they're going to feel the pain 10 times worse because their target market's kids. Whereas Call of Duty, it's like 40 year old hardos. It's like, yeah, of course, like, you know, dad's gonna gamble on some skins because like he's having fun and whatever.

• 28:47Jordi Hays?

  Dad's gambling again.

• 28:49John Coogan?

  Dad's gonna find a way to gamble one way or another. If it's on Call of Duty, you know, outfits for his character, like that's not as big of like a national news story as like 13 year olds are gambling on Roblox skins. So, so like, how can they, I mean, they can, they can, you know, pay wallet and age gated and stuff, but like, I mean, they're making a ton of money. Like they're making like, I think it was 800 million dollars last quarter. It's pretty good, but I wonder if they're going to run into problems like really ramping it up.

• 29:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the question is, is Roblox digital Legos? And does it have enduring brand value that they continue to monetize? Because it certainly looks like digital Legos. Like, I don't know if you, it basically like they took Legos.

• 29:30John Coogan?

  I've seen videos where people have recreated other games in Roblox and it doesn't look like Roblox at all. It's crazy.

• 29:36Jordi Hays?

  Right, but the core entry point, the cover art is like, hey, we're online Lego.

• 29:42John Coogan?

  And it was a very similar strategy for Epic Games and Fortnite where Epic Games created Unreal Engine where you can design any game from Gears of War to, you know, the new Halo is going to be in Unreal Engine. But then Fortnite is also more accessible. You can kind of design like a little custom game if you want, if you're not technical or whatever.

• 30:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think the, I think the issue with Hindenburg is this seems like a business that's way more impactful if you're doing.

• 30:12Jordi Hays?

  One report every two years and just taking these like massive, very concentrated position. Whereas like this almost feels like a stretch, right? Because you're trying to pin them, you're trying to pin them, you're trying to pin them on. Yeah, like they had, they honestly did damage to Square.

• 30:30John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. Was that what it is?

• 30:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 30:33John Coogan?

  Cause I remember like hearing about them for the first time and thinking like, oh, the name. I mean, the name implies like the Hindenburg, like it's a disaster. It's like world historic, like we have discovered something that's going to absolutely blow up. And so their name is like, this is a five alarm fire, right? And if they are talking about something that's mispriced by 20% or the DAUs are off by 50%, but the revenues are still okay. It's not quite as hard hitting as like, is this the Hindenburg? Or just like a blimp that needs like a refuel of gas or something?

• 31:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so they're putting out usually a couple of these a month.

• 31:12John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 31:12Jordi Hays?

  Which I didn't know.

• 31:13John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 31:13Jordi Hays?

  But it's like, it's like maybe like six a quarter, five a quarter or something like that. At least if you look back historically.

• 31:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 31:21Jordi Hays?

  And so I think it's actually just they're constantly doing this. And most of the time they're going after companies that are like, like you don't know about. And they're genuinely doing bad stuff. But then for them, from a marketing standpoint, it's like, it's this battle with,

• 31:40Jordi Hays?

  for attention, right? They're like, everybody's addicted to attention. And so we should try to, we should try to invest in Hindenburg and see what their, see what their process looks like.

• 31:53Jordi Hays?

  I wonder, the only thing that would genuinely be cool is if it was like, it was all their own money.

• 31:58John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:59Jordi Hays?

  You know, and they were just like, yeah, like we just do this for ourselves. And we just share what we find, basically. But it's interesting to see like, they're basically a media company. That happens to monetize through shorting.

• 32:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 32:12John Coogan?

  I mean, there were many media companies that monetized through logging.

• 32:15Jordi Hays?

  Logging, right.

• 32:16John Coogan?

  They're going along.

• 32:19John Coogan?

  They're they're just merely on the dump side.

• 32:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 32:22John Coogan?

  They're not on the pump side. Yeah, I always, I I think it it must be such a nightmare to get all of that through legal and figure out what they can and can't say. Because you're putting out this, you're kind of front running this information, you're you're

• 32:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 32:37John Coogan?

  somewhat manipulating the stock, even if everything you say is true, like you're moving the market.

• 32:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you have to assume that every single company.

• 32:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Jordi Hays?

  Like, they must get sued like eighty percent of the time.

• 32:48John Coogan?

  I would imagine.

• 32:49Jordi Hays?

  Because unless a company is such a dumpster fire, they're like, we have bigger battles to fight.

• 32:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:54Jordi Hays?

  If the CEO that's the target gets attacked, if he wants to.

• 33:00John Coogan?

  They're gonna find something in your pick in there, like, oh, this is actually wrong. That person that talked to you is wrong. Yeah. It's tricky, very tricky.

• 33:12Jordi Hays?

  Really, really wild.

• 33:15John Coogan?

  Should we move on to Google?

• 33:17Jordi Hays?

  It'd be, okay, last thing. If people did Hindenburg for venture funds, that would be so gnarly.

• 33:24John Coogan?

  There's no way to monetize it.

• 33:25Jordi Hays?

  Just, uh, no way to monetize it, just purely for, like, if you had, like, spite Hindenburg, you know? Like, somebody wants to take down a certain fund, so they publish, like, fifteen reports to make it look legitimate and then just drop like a bombshell. And they're like, this fund, fund four, is gonna do like negative, you know, is doing, gonna do like a point one X, right? And they just go company by company, company.

• 33:53John Coogan?

  So bad. I was thinking about that during the last cycle, like, do you think there's anyone who raised, like, some, like, fifty million dollar fund and will return zero? Not like zero percent gain, like, won't return a dime. Like, like, the liquidation value of all the companies was zero.

• 34:10Jordi Hays?

  It must happen.

• 34:11John Coogan?

  It must, it must happen.

• 34:13Jordi Hays?

  I mean, I don't know.

• 34:14John Coogan?

  Because most companies, it's like they return like 10 cents on the dollar or something, you know? There must be at least one that shuts down early.

• 34:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:21John Coogan?

  But a point one would be astronomically bad. It's possible.

• 34:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, sometime we should cover some of the actual data on, because like venture as an asset class gets just, you know, constantly attacked because like the bottom quartile is just genuinely so bad. But like, from what I, from what I've seen across like a few different reports, it's actually like the, the median is like not that bad. It's like maybe not as good as a median private equity fund.

• 34:52John Coogan?

  There's tons of, there's tons of venture folks who have been in the business for 20 years and are, they, they have never had like a banger breakout deal, but every deal is structured at a good price. And they run their business very well. They haven't overscaled their funds and they make a decent, you know?

• 35:09Jordi Hays?

  A decent living.

• 35:09John Coogan?

  Decent living.

• 35:10Jordi Hays?

  Enough to have the house in Aspen, the house in Montana, the house in.

• 35:15John Coogan?

  Oh man, speaking of the house in, in Aspen, I couldn't print this one. Uh, and I was hoping it would be in the journal today, but this is like one of my favorite articles I've read. So apparently people in like high mountain towns are pumping in oxygen into their houses. Have you seen this?

• 35:35Jordi Hays?

  No.

• 35:35John Coogan?

  It's the coolest thing. So I have this saved. The wealthy are paying big money to pump oxygen into their mountain homes. So there's like these home oxygenation startups now that, um, I'll just read you some of this. So.

• 35:48Jordi Hays?

  It brings it down to sea level, basically.

• 35:51John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly. So, uh, this guy Kevin Rost built a new mountain home at, on a ridge at 10,500 feet in Telluride, uh, so high that in the winter, it's only accessible by gondola. And it's so high that some of these guests struggle to acclimate. For those guests, Rost installed.

• 36:07Jordi Hays?

  10,000 is crazy.

• 36:09John Coogan?

  It's really high, really high.

• 36:11Jordi Hays?

  Like athletes go and they fight in. You know, Utah.

• 36:15John Coogan?

  It's like two miles.

• 36:16Jordi Hays?

  And they're out of breath in five minutes.

• 36:17John Coogan?

  Not just one mile.

• 36:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 36:20John Coogan?

  So he has a home oxygenation system in every bedroom of the 12,000 square foot house. This guy is a badass. I was thinking we should do a segment of like the tech bro of the week, like the person we give a shout out to.

• 36:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:32John Coogan?

  And this is definitely my pick this week.

• 36:34Jordi Hays?

  The only critique is that it's coal powered.

• 36:38Jordi Hays?

  It's just you see the smoke drifting off.

• 36:41John Coogan?

  Yeah. For those guests, Ross installed a home oxygenation system in every bedroom of the 12,000 square foot house. Now 10 oxygen enrichment machines located in a storage area. Pull oxygen from the air outside and pump it into four bedrooms and a bunk room through blue tubing built into the walls. It makes the rooms feel like it's at 3,000 to 5,000 feet above sea level, not two miles.

• 37:03Jordi Hays?

  We need that, but for Galaxy gas.

• 37:07John Coogan?

  This dude is a boss. He's 59. He retired as the owner of a pipe fitting company. Like some business that you've never heard of, but clearly just crushed it. He and his wife, who's 58, moved there last December. And he wants to have his friends come visit, but he doesn't want them to spend like three days like acclimating.

• 37:25Jordi Hays?

  Right.

• 37:26John Coogan?

  So they can come and hang out. So he spent 18 million on this house, took two years planning and six years of construction. And now he's just completely ready to just like.

• 37:35Jordi Hays?

  He gets, he's got to take the gondola to get, to get there.

• 37:38John Coogan?

  Yeah. And, and then they profile a bunch of other people who have done the same thing. And apparently it's just like really, really popular right now.

• 37:45Jordi Hays?

  See, that's proof that you don't need to work in tech to be a technology brother.

• 37:49John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 37:50Jordi Hays?

  It's about how you leverage the tech.

• 37:51John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly. He's putting the tech to work. So each, each enrichment, each enrichment machine costs 15K. It would have cost 75, but today's price is 150. And a single unit can enrich about 2,000 cubic feet. There's, there's these funny ones where he's, where it's like, this dude's bedroom was so big, he needed six of them or something like that. But man, all these other people, uh, they, they, they, this, this whole article is just like a world tour of like sick dudes, basically.

• 38:21Jordi Hays?

  Right. I need the, I need the, the, the video of him on his like heli pad, just like, you know, like punching, like, you know, shadow boxing.

• 38:31John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:33Jordi Hays?

  He's like, this is why I laid all that pipe throughout my life.

• 38:36John Coogan?

  I, I've been to some like high elevation, like ski towns for like ski trips and I've never had problems acclimating, but I wonder if that'll get worse with age. Like they're, they're describing it in the, in the article, like you get headaches and stuff and I've never had a problem with that.

• 38:50Jordi Hays?

  I remember as a kid backpacking trip with the family, getting, going up to a, you know, high elevation in whatever, five, six hours and, you know, being in the tent, throwing up.

• 39:04John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 39:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I, I've gotten that before. I just personally would never oxygenate my house because the low oxygen concentration would just inspire me to grind harder.

• 39:14John Coogan?

  I, I was thinking.

• 39:16Jordi Hays?

  I need to be harder to kill.

• 39:17John Coogan?

  There was somebody else who, I think Nat Friedman just posted that he has a hyperbaric chamber. And I was wondering, do you know if Brian Johnson sleeps in any crazy like hyperbaric chamber thing? I feel like when you go full tilt biohacker, you're doing something to the, to like the air mix while you're sleeping.

• 39:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:38John Coogan?

  You're, you're a big air filtration guy, right?

• 39:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah, I have these things in my house. I think it's called, um, let me get the name right. Yeah, uh, IQ Air, it's a Swiss company. And they, they look like old school, like fax machines. It's like the ugliest thing in the world. Um, but yeah, they're like hospital equipment, like it's not, um, certainly not cool looking. But, um, yeah, I think you want to be filtering your air. People don't know this, but, but your air is, the air quality is almost always worse in your house than outdoors, which is somewhat counterintuitive, but there's.

• 40:15John Coogan?

  I mean, the air quality is much better in Malibu than like core LA too, right?

• 40:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, in general. Um, just getting, just being on the coast. But it's still, you're still, the air quality is still much worse inside. Um, and I think, yeah. And the only way to really make it better is like through filtration, but also diluting the air with outside air.

• 40:38John Coogan?

  Oh, sure.

• 40:41Jordi Hays?

  But yeah, hyperbaric chambers, I haven't, I've spent a little bit of time in them, but it's one of those things like it feels like a pretty marginal benefit unless you're gonna sleep in one.

• 40:51John Coogan?

  Yeah, I think, I think Nat Freeman said he had psoriasis or something that he was fighting. And the hyperbaric chamber made his symptoms go down by like 90%. It was like very intractable, like he tried a bunch of things and this was like the one thing that worked. So like if you have a problem like-

• 41:03Jordi Hays?

  Going to sleep in the chamber would be cool.

• 41:05John Coogan?

  I don't know if he's actually sleeping, but like, like I've heard that people do that.

• 41:09Jordi Hays?

  Like the next step for eight sleep is like the dome, like bed chamber.

• 41:13John Coogan?

  I thought they were building something like that.

• 41:14Jordi Hays?

  Damn, putting their roadmap on blast.

• 41:16John Coogan?

  No, I like that.

• 41:18Jordi Hays?

  I think it'd be cool.

• 41:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 41:21Jordi Hays?

  I think we should probably record in a, in a, in a chamber.

• 41:24John Coogan?

  In a chamber. Well, there's a, on the, on the 11th floor, there's some sort of a cryo chamber.

• 41:30Jordi Hays?

  Here?

• 41:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Jordi Hays?

  Classic Jonathan Club.

• 41:32John Coogan?

  There's some like, there's some company that does like regenerative medicine in the building.

• 41:40John Coogan?

  Have you seen Notebook LM? It's gonna put us out of business, bro.

• 41:44Jordi Hays?

  Oh, the-

• 41:45John Coogan?

  The Google AI Generation podcast?

• 41:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:48John Coogan?

  And it's two people talking about whatever you want them to talk about?

• 41:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 41:50John Coogan?

  It sounds pretty good, but it sounds like the most generic like Wikipedia article ever right now.

• 41:58Jordi Hays?

  And it's just trained on Reddit, so it's so, it's like the most-

• 42:03John Coogan?

  I think you can put in whatever you want and steer it to whatever.

• 42:07Jordi Hays?

  So my wife's boyfriend was telling me the other day, like, wait, what?

• 42:12John Coogan?

  It's just the most redditor podcast. Now, have you listened to, have you spent, like, what's the longest amount of time you've spent like consuming AI content?

• 42:24Jordi Hays?

  So I think it's on YouTube.

• 42:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:26Jordi Hays?

  On some of these videos that a topic seems really appealing and it's like- The video is clearly set up in a way to draw you in to get the click. And then you get through like a minute and you're just like, oh, like this is like AI slop.

• 42:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Jordi Hays?

  And I think that there's like a very real thing happening on YouTube where there's the sort of like, people are drawn to like the artisanal videos, right? It's like, I like, I love that you keep doing like real voiceovers. I love your edit, you know, like, and, and so there's this, there's like this, their content is going from being like all handmade artisanal content to now this sort of like mass produced, mass manufactured. It's the same thing that happens with like clothing, right? Like, you know, you know, you can go and get the, the Cuccinelli of content, right? This like handmade craft led content. And but yet there's going to be like, probably like 90% of content consumption will eventually become this sort of like slop.

• 43:27Jordi Hays?

  Just like mass produced, just curated, you know, it's, it's like Fashion Nova putting out, you know, seeing one, seeing a, a, a luxury brand drop something, the next day shipping the carbon copy of it.

• 43:42John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 43:43Jordi Hays?

  And why would that not happen with content? Because I'm sure there's already channels that when, um,

• 43:50Jordi Hays?

  I don't know, like the needle drop, Anthony Fantano on YouTube. So Anthony Fantano puts out a music review. Somebody just clones that content, repost it immediately and like makes a better clickbaity title and gets like more views. Right? And so a lot of consumers will just keep watch, you know, they're just like so in the, the, um, being like, you know, just navigated through that, through the algo. And you're going to have to be like, the way to fight back is to be like, no, I'm getting that good artisanal.

• 44:25John Coogan?

  Yeah, well, I mean, there could be like taste, but then there's also like a price gate on the clothing, right? Like, like the artisanal clothing is more expensive. So, so the monetization works out, like the fa- the fast fashion and the LVMH stuff is like similar market cap, probably. But wildly different profit per, per unit.

• 44:48Jordi Hays?

  Peter Zeihan, do you know Peter Zeihan? He, he just went full paywall on YouTube. He, he put out a video and he's like, this is my last video doing. And that's kind of interesting because like the guy's got

• 45:00John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 45:01Jordi Hays?

  Incredible insights and takes and I'm sure some of them are like have conflicts and are influenced by various parties and he has certain narratives he likes to push, but

• 45:10John Coogan?

  He probably still do some

• 45:12Jordi Hays?

  No, it seems like

• 45:13John Coogan?

  Stuff as like lead gen for the paywall, but yeah.

• 45:16Jordi Hays?

  Every comment when he announced it was basically like, okay, see you never, bro.

• 45:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, it is tricky. Yeah, there was this one YouTuber called Jake Tran. Have you heard of this guy? He's like, he's like business video essays and he tried to pull himself. So he pulled himself out of like the editing and had a team writing and editing everything, but he was still doing the voiceover. And he was, so he would just record the voiceover and he wanted to pull himself out of that. So he started just recording the intro and then handing it off to another voiceover artist to do it. And everyone was like, why aren't you even voicing your own things anymore? Like this is so fake. And it's, and it was like, he was just two years too early because the AI voice clones are good enough now that no one would notice if he used an AI voice clone. He might be now, I don't know, but I think they've kind of got burnt out on it.

• 46:04Jordi Hays?

  There's just gonna be a whole cottage industry of people on YouTube that just like, watch the video first. Run like run some analysis on it to determine if it's like artisan.

• 46:16Jordi Hays?

  And then just be the first comment to be like.

• 46:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, it does seem like there's, there's maybe like, I don't know if there's an analogy with the clothing thing, but there is some sort of like barbell where yes, you might want like the artisanal content for something that's like really entertaining and novel and interesting and unique. But then if I'm like, if I just want to know about a topic that I don't know anything about and I can just like search it and get a, you know, Wikipedia article or listen to that as a podcast, like why not? I'm a big fan of like, like the consumer gets to choose the format that they consume the content in.

• 46:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 46:50John Coogan?

  So I can say, I want this, there's a podcast here, I want you, AI, I want you to transcribe it because I feel like reading. Or, or there's a book here, I want to consume this in the form of a video. Like make that for me and just translate it because that's where the AI models are really, really good when they're just swapping things over from one thing to the next. It's hard for them to do like truly novel new things, but they're pretty good at just like translation, transform, transformation, right?

• 47:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 47:15John Coogan?

  But yeah, I mean, glowing endorsement from Andre Karpathy. He said he loves it. I listened to the one on Arnold Schwarzenegger and it was kind of like, it was a little not that great.

• 47:25Jordi Hays?

  I think the thing that's interesting about that is the applications in education are wild.

• 47:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:33Jordi Hays?

  If I'm, so imagine this, I'm a college student and I'm going into an exam, you know, in five hours. And I know nothing about a topic, right? And it's gonna be like, you're gonna sit down and have to write an essay. There's three topics. There, you remember in college, it'd be like, there's these three topics, you're gonna have to write an essay about one of them, right? So imagine, I'm a, I'm a college, you know, like gym bro. I'm going into this essay in five hours. I'm like, okay, I got five hours. And I tell my notebook LM, I'm like, you know, make me a podcast about the signing, the events that led up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Forty minute podcast, I just listen to it.

• 48:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Jordi Hays?

  And the recall on that is crazy, even if you're just like, you know, benching in the gym. And so I think that, I think the applications in these sort of like, you know, I don't wanna listen to notebook LM talk about antitrust, you know, you know, situations within tech, right? Because the part of listening to takes about that kind of thing is you want the host to have some insider information that's not publicly available. But if you're just talking about like history and trying to learn about like, why, why is, you know, why, why, who would benefit more from keto versus intermittent fasting?

• 48:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:51Jordi Hays?

  And then having those two people like talk about that, you can learn a lot.

• 48:54John Coogan?

  It does seem like there's a lot of alpha in the content around like edginess or comedy or anything that's like, that's like, would be censored by most LLMs, so they can't produce it well. Or just comedy in general is novel. Like, I even tested like, tell me a joke on like the latest and greatest like, you know, GPT-01. And it was terrible. Like, it's not even close.

• 49:20Jordi Hays?

  I think it's a zinger.

• 49:20John Coogan?

  It's just not getting anywhere near, not making any progress there, but it's incredible at math and like a whole bunch of other things that it's

• 49:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 49:27John Coogan?

  supposed to be good at. But the

• 49:32John Coogan?

  There is something else to be said for like content that where the AI seems to be really, really bad about surfacing new facts and and a lot of reporters will say this where like, oh yeah, like L L Ms can like write articles now, but like that's not really what reporters are doing. Like when a reporter writes up an article, that's like the last five percent of the work that they've been doing, like ninety five percent of the work is like collecting new facts that don't exist on the internet and don't exist anywhere because they talked to someone, they got a fact out of them, they got information and they corroborated it. And so there's still value in like surfacing that fact, but there is a question about like, how do you monetize that? Like you need to set up a really like tough paywall because like if you're as soon as that fact gets surfaced in your article, boom, you're going to be cloned in a million

• 50:16John Coogan?

  places immediately and other people are going to try and monetize that. Like that's going to be really, really tricky. Already people do that all the time where it's like someone gets the scoop and then it's reposted immediately, just like changed up a little bit for some other like rag. But I don't know. It's interesting. Oh, well, what else should we talk about?

• 50:34Jordi Hays?

  Should we talk about venture funds?

• 50:35John Coogan?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, C O D giving back money.

• 50:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So my, I mean, I actually don't know a single person at C R V. I have some portfolio companies that have, you know, spoken to them over the years and, you know, more recently. But ultimately, what this comes down to is I haven't seen, I cannot recall C R V being in a headline like within the last twelve months about anything. And they effectively chose to make their biggest media moment. They chose to make their biggest media moment giving back money, which I feel like as a venture fund, all of your marketing should be towards founders, just one customer and then, you know, L P's, which is your other

• 51:21Jordi Hays?

  customer and going out and making the, the, the only thing I can recall about C R V now, aside from interactions portfolio companies have had with them. Is that they decided that they didn't have places to invest money and like the whole strategy that they had raised around.

• 51:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 51:39Jordi Hays?

  And so, one, it almost feels like they're traders to go to the New York Times and feed them, you know, because-

• 51:45John Coogan?

  Well, are you sure that's what happened? Because it's totally possible that they announced this to their LPs and their LPs leaked it immediately. Like, that's where most of the venture fund news-

• 51:52Jordi Hays?

  Okay, but if you pull up the article-

• 51:55John Coogan?

  Oh, it's like they're commenting.

• 51:56Jordi Hays?

  It's their four partners in the picture. They decide, they just, they made the decision to have the New York Times come and photograph-

• 52:04John Coogan?

  It's a new photo. It's not like just their default, like, they pulled it off the website.

• 52:08Jordi Hays?

  Okay, we should-

• 52:09John Coogan?

  Because that could be the thing, you know?

• 52:11Jordi Hays?

  Here's why I think it's a New York Times picture.

• 52:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 52:15Jordi Hays?

  Is because, one, it's in their style.

• 52:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 52:18Jordi Hays?

  And, and two-

• 52:20John Coogan?

  They look sad.

• 52:21Jordi Hays?

  They look sad.

• 52:22John Coogan?

  I knew you were gonna say that.

• 52:23Jordi Hays?

  Which is normally what the New York, they're like, hey, like, act like your dog just-

• 52:27John Coogan?

  Smile for 90% of these and then, oh, let's do one serious and sad.

• 52:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:31John Coogan?

  Okay, that's the one we're using.

• 52:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 52:33John Coogan?

  Classic.

• 52:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so, yeah, it's Ryan Young for the New York Times.

• 52:37John Coogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 52:38Jordi Hays?

  It's written by Erin Griffith.

• 52:39John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:40Jordi Hays?

  Who we know has a history of saying that she's gonna position a story one way and then putting it that way.

• 52:45John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 52:46Jordi Hays?

  But the idea to go to Erin Griffith and their comms agency, whoever they're working with for PR, because I would assume they are, be kinda weird to affirm that size not.

• 52:55John Coogan?

  I mean, they probably knew that it was gonna leak for the LPs, so like-

• 52:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but it's just like, why, I don't, nobody, did they want a pat on the back? Like, do they want to be acknowledged for, like, to me-

• 53:07John Coogan?

  It's a little late, I mean-

• 53:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's a little late, one, it's two years after similar decisions were made.

• 53:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 53:15Jordi Hays?

  And I just don't know, I mean, and the other thing is that, I don't know, I don't know, I have no idea the mechanics of it, but it's not like they had the money in their bank account and they were like, giving it back. It's that they didn't make the capital call.

• 53:33John Coogan?

  The capital call, yeah.

• 53:34Jordi Hays?

  So, you'd basically, the same article as CRV resizes their growth fund.

• 53:40Jordi Hays?

  Okay.

• 53:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 53:41Jordi Hays?

  Is that a story? And is that what you want to be covered about?

• 53:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Jordi Hays?

  Like, could you not think of anything else?

• 53:46John Coogan?

  It kind of presumes that the reader doesn't understand the concept of a capital call. Like, the New York Times

• 53:52Jordi Hays?

  Well, and that's the New York Times audience.

• 53:53John Coogan?

  Reader definitely thinks that if a venture fund raises a billion dollars, they have a billion dollars in an account somewhere.

• 53:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And that the VCs like took 50% of it.

• 54:03John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:04Jordi Hays?

  Or that it's 90% their money.

• 54:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 54:06Jordi Hays?

  Or it's all their money.

• 54:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 54:07Jordi Hays?

  That's the average. So, yeah, I think, I think giving Erin Griffith ammo to make, to paint tech in a bad light as her tech is just like this disaster.

• 54:17John Coogan?

  Falling apart.

• 54:18Jordi Hays?

  Which is like her entire

• 54:19John Coogan?

  Venture's not working anymore. Funds are giving it back. You think that's the, the goal here?

• 54:24Jordi Hays?

  That's always the angle, right?

• 54:25John Coogan?

  I know, but I mean, for, for every one of these articles, there's 10 that are like, oh, SoftBank's back in the game, baby. Like, let's go.

• 54:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 54:33John Coogan?

  Adam Newman's raising again.

• 54:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but I don't think, yeah, does, but Erin, Erin would cover that same story

• 54:39John Coogan?

  There are more we're so back stories right now than it's so ever, for sure.

• 54:44Jordi Hays?

  New York Times is not doing we're so back stories, though.

• 54:46John Coogan?

  No.

• 54:47Jordi Hays?

  Like, it's always like, Adam Newman is back.

• 54:48John Coogan?

  Yeah, in a bad way.

• 54:52Jordi Hays?

  Adam Newman is gonna make a bunch of ugly buildings beautiful again. Here's 10 reasons why we hate that.

• 54:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:59Jordi Hays?

  No, so anyways, I, I just, like, I respect them making this a business decision. If I, if I were CRV, though, I'd be like, how can we get a story that's gonna be big, that actually makes us seem like alpha Chad's?

• 55:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 55:14Jordi Hays?

  And, you know, saying that we have no places to deploy is not, you know, I don't know. Why don't you, why don't you do a hostile takeover of a Caribbean nation, you know?

• 55:26John Coogan?

  Or would

• 55:27Jordi Hays?

  Like, how much, what could they have done with 275 million in Haiti? Right? Could they have returned?

• 55:33John Coogan?

  Well, General Catalyst is buying a hospital network. You saw that?

• 55:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:37John Coogan?

  That's crazy. Like, that, that is like the kind of bold move that gets you like crazy in your mind.

• 55:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so, but, but here's, here's the thing.

• 55:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Jordi Hays?

  They are still investing out of their core $1 billion early-stage fund.

• 55:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 55:49Jordi Hays?

  And so

• 55:52John Coogan?

  What was the select fund? It was just like their growth fund?

• 55:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 55:55John Coogan?

  It's interesting that their growth fund was like so much smaller than their, than their early-stage fund.

• 55:59Jordi Hays?

  Well, that's why it's like, I think you guys might have bigger problems than, than just having too much money.

• 56:05John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, maybe they just hired some growth people and the growth people don't want to do it anymore or didn't work out or something.

• 56:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, anyways, I hope they generate massive returns for their LPs and, and have, you know, massive carry checks.

• 56:19John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 56:20Jordi Hays?

  I would never root against any firm, even if I think they're comps. Any, any allocator, even if, and I hope we see these guys on the Midas list for this decision, right? Like, maybe like they have such a banger in the first like half of the fund that they're just like, no, like, let's just let this, like, let's just let this ride. You know, maybe that's the whole thing.

• 56:38John Coogan?

  That might be smart, yeah. Maybe they got something good, good in there.

• 56:41Jordi Hays?

  They got something good. What could they, what could they have in there?

• 56:44John Coogan?

  You'd have some, you'd hold some cash back to do the next, do the series, the series Z. You gotta wait for the series Z.

• 56:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, anyways.

• 56:52John Coogan?

  That's where the money is.

• 56:52Jordi Hays?

  Reed, Murat, Sar, Max.

• 56:55John Coogan?

  Adam Newman, he's back, baby.

• 56:56Jordi Hays?

  He's so back.

• 56:57John Coogan?

  I, I thought he was doing something else, like the real estate roll-up. Is this a new, new thing or is this just a rebrand?

• 57:03Jordi Hays?

  This is a new coworking thing. I think he was doing multifamily.

• 57:05John Coogan?

  Was that Flow?

• 57:06Jordi Hays?

  Flow is multifamily.

• 57:07John Coogan?

  And now this is called Workflow.

• 57:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 57:10John Coogan?

  Avoids the specific business model that got his original coworking company into trouble.

• 57:14Jordi Hays?

  Is it just a management company? I didn't actually read the article.

• 57:18John Coogan?

  I was just like, this guy's sick.

• 57:19Jordi Hays?

  Dude, this is, this is, the reason Technology Brothers is just Twitter and podcasts is because no one's reading the article. And we're just like, still just speculating.

• 57:28John Coogan?

  All I know is that one of my friends ran into him at a party and he wasn't wearing shoes. And I was like, yep, that's on brand.

• 57:34Jordi Hays?

  Some things don't change.

• 57:35John Coogan?

  Yep, exactly.

• 57:35Jordi Hays?

  It wasn't actually a zero-interest rate phenomenon.

• 57:38John Coogan?

  It wasn't.

• 57:39Jordi Hays?

  It was.

• 57:39John Coogan?

  I mean, he, he captured so much of the love with their secondaries, like. Like to write him off like he's not in jail. I don't think he got sued or anything. He wound up with a billion liquid or something like that.

• 57:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 57:52John Coogan?

  And so he's gonna make a play at some point. He's gonna try and do something. I just wonder what this will be.

• 57:58Jordi Hays?

  Somebody told me his jet was on the market.

• 58:00John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 58:01Jordi Hays?

  Maybe he just, maybe he just, uh.

• 58:03John Coogan?

  Well, they're coming out with a new one, so you know, gotta sell the old one.

• 58:06Jordi Hays?

  Right, right.

• 58:07John Coogan?

  The, I think the G six fifty is like, you know, no longer the hot commodity.

• 58:10Jordi Hays?

  Phasing out, phasing out, yeah.

• 58:11John Coogan?

  You gotta go to the seven fifty or something like that.

• 58:13Jordi Hays?

  I didn't know this, but apparently I think his jet was black.

• 58:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 58:17Jordi Hays?

  And apparently that hurts the performance quite a bit.

• 58:20John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, a huge amount, a huge amount, because you're just attracting so much. So you have to like run the A C constantly, I think, and it.

• 58:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but it's also just so cool. Like, it's much cooler.

• 58:29John Coogan?

  Yeah. Michael Jordan's jet is also black. And it's like a crazy paint job they spend a ton of money on.

• 58:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:34John Coogan?

  Wastes.

• 58:35Jordi Hays?

  And it adds like an egregious amount of weight.

• 58:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 58:38Jordi Hays?

  From the density of the paint or whatever.

• 58:40John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. Silly.

• 58:43John Coogan?

  Should we go through some of these more tweets? I got, I got a whole stack here. I printed them all off.

• 58:48Jordi Hays?

  Do we, is this the same stack?

• 58:50John Coogan?

  No, no, no. Oh, sorry. I, I don't have the same stack. We'll just pull them up one at a time.

• 58:54Jordi Hays?

  Okay.

• 58:54John Coogan?

  So the first one is from Signal. I, I, I never say these anon names out loud, and then I do, and I realize like I have no idea. But he says, um, the gap between the very rich and everyone else is actually shrinking drastically over time due to hyper capitalism in tech. You drink the same Coke as a billionaire. You use the same iPhone as a billionaire on the same network. You use the same, exact same tools as a billionaire, E G chat G P T. There is no special ultra-rich person versions of software or apps. You read the same garbage online as a billionaire. Definitely true. You shitpost in the same fashion as a billionaire on the same networks. A billionaire shits in the same type of toilet as you do. You're afforded roughly the same healthcare as a billionaire, assuming you have insurance with marginal differences.

• 59:36John Coogan?

  You can roughly go travel to any place like a billionaire can, private versus not. And then P G actually had the top reply and mentioned that he'd written about this in two thousand and four, which is kind of funny.

• 59:46Jordi Hays?

  Got him.

• 59:46John Coogan?

  Mind the gap.

• 59:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't think things have changed that much. I mean, I'm gonna do like a very short of like shaky analysis of this, but. If you went back hundreds of years ago and you had like a king and peasants.

• 1:00:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Jordi Hays?

  Like they're both, you could argue, you use the same stone for your wall. And it's like, your bread was milled with similar grain.

• 1:00:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Jordi Hays?

  And it's like, and your wine also gets you drunk.

• 1:00:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Jordi Hays?

  And it's like, well, the things that were truly luxuries were like, oh, the king has like this little meager supply of like this certain spice.

• 1:00:23John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:00:23Jordi Hays?

  And it's like, that stuff still exists, right? Like I can go, you can go and get like blueberries that were handpicked.

• 1:00:29John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:00:30Jordi Hays?

  You know, in Japan.

• 1:00:31John Coogan?

  Omakase strawberries.

• 1:00:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and, and I would argue that, you know, the, the, you know, early, you know, first job out of college product manager that's going to sugar fish is not eating the same fish that we do. When we go out to get sushi. I'm kidding. No, they're not eating the same fish. They're not eating the same fish that somebody who's having, you know, hosting a dinner party at their house and like having like some sushi chef from Japan like who flew over. It's just not. And so I don't know if you could argue like, you know, the peasant is says to the king, but sir, my wool, I, I sure, you know, I, the wool in my sweater is the same as yours. Are we not so different, you know?

• 1:01:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Jordi Hays?

  I do think that, that, that this actually goes back to Warren Buffett eating C's, you know, candy and being like, like he's the original one of this. Obviously he's known for sort of like eating down in some ways. But yeah, I think it's just like.

• 1:01:33John Coogan?

  Ultimate longevity hack.

• 1:01:35Jordi Hays?

  I think that the takeaway from this is that capitalism rips.

• 1:01:38John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:01:38Jordi Hays?

  And we should encourage it and support it.

• 1:01:41John Coogan?

  There is an interesting thing here where like, if you are a billionaire and you want an iPhone or you want chat GPT, like you at some level need some sort of competition or you need some other. Other people in the economy. It's like you can't just have one person with all of the assets. Like there's some sort of wealth equality that needs to happen in the economy.

• 1:02:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04John Coogan?

  Such that like, like, you know, like the richest man can't make the best film happen and the best album and all of these things like there needs to be a lot of other people building and doing other stuff. Like it really is like a, a, a society that bounces off of each other, which is like important to get like the innovation that then becomes like evenly distributed over time.

• 1:02:25Jordi Hays?

  Right.

• 1:02:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Jordi Hays?

  Right.

• 1:02:27John Coogan?

  It's interesting. I don't know. Well, should we go to China?

• 1:02:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think the cool thing, the last thing I would say on that, I was talking to a founder on Monday who has a candy company.

• 1:02:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Jordi Hays?

  And the, the thing that's genuinely cool about all this stuff is like, like the thing about the accessibility of all these things is being a billionaire doesn't make the iPhone more enjoyable.

• 1:02:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Jordi Hays?

  Somehow like there's not even really apps that you can get, right?

• 1:02:57John Coogan?

  Well, not yet, but once we launch our wallpapers app, the I'm Rich wallpapers app, there's a $10,000 subscription.

• 1:03:04Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:05John Coogan?

  There you go.

• 1:03:05Jordi Hays?

  I think it's a thousand a month is the cap.

• 1:03:07John Coogan?

  Thousand a month.

• 1:03:08Jordi Hays?

  But it's good 12K ARR per.

• 1:03:11John Coogan?

  Well, you just know you have the most luxurious wallpaper in the world.

• 1:03:15Jordi Hays?

  Coming soon. Um, but yeah, it's like, it's just that that is all the evidence that you need. Imagine how much people would be in uproar if you could go down that list and be like billionaires have this and I don't billionaires have this and I don't billionaires have this. And even given that situation, the dominant sort of like political view that gets votes seemingly is let's tax the 1% more even though, or let's tax, tax the 10% more even though they already pay like 80% of federal income taxes.

• 1:03:48John Coogan?

  Yeah. Interesting. I have a friend who is a sugar fish hater and he once referred to it as like the McDonald's of sushi. And I was like, now you're speaking my language. I love that.

• 1:03:59Jordi Hays?

  I love that.

• 1:04:00John Coogan?

  That's amazing.

• 1:04:01Jordi Hays?

  Let's go when they open.

• 1:04:02John Coogan?

  Delicious. You didn't have to convince me.

• 1:04:05Jordi Hays?

  Low quality, but presented well.

• 1:04:07John Coogan?

  Repeatable. It's good. You saw this, that Huawei in China built a European city.

• 1:04:17Jordi Hays?

  Right.

• 1:04:17John Coogan?

  This is so.

• 1:04:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I mean, we're going. That's where our Asian studio has to be.

• 1:04:21John Coogan?

  It's amazing.

• 1:04:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, why can't we do that?

• 1:04:25John Coogan?

  I mean, I think it would be probably cultural appropriation or something. I mean, we kind of do it.

• 1:04:28Jordi Hays?

  It's effectively our culture.

• 1:04:30John Coogan?

  Well, no, no, if you did the opposite.

• 1:04:32Jordi Hays?

  No, no, no. Yeah, I'm not saying build the Great Wall. I'm saying like.

• 1:04:34John Coogan?

  But we kind of do that in the sense that there's like Chinatown and Japantown and Koreatown. But, you know, we don't take it to this level. Like, it'd be so sick if like Chinatown in New York City just looked like the Forbidden City in Beijing.

• 1:04:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Imagine in Manhattan, just rolling up.

• 1:04:49John Coogan?

  Yeah, it'd be amazing. Or like you go to like Little Tokyo.

• 1:04:50Jordi Hays?

  The bus looks like a.

• 1:04:51John Coogan?

  And it like looks exactly like Tokyo.

• 1:04:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the bus looks like a dragon, you know, like.

• 1:04:56John Coogan?

  Be amazing.

• 1:04:57Jordi Hays?

  See Winnie the Pooh walking around.

• 1:04:58John Coogan?

  But this architecture is just, it's just so iconic. Like, you see it and you're just like, that looks like Europe.

• 1:05:03Jordi Hays?

  Inspired.

• 1:05:04John Coogan?

  Yeah. It's just beautiful.

• 1:05:08John Coogan?

  But what a crazy, what a crazy choice by Huawei to just like.

• 1:05:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, Huawei.

• 1:05:12John Coogan?

  Send it. 25,000 people work here. It's like acres and acres and acres. Like, you can just walk around this city for like, you know, hours and just only see Italian, French and German architecture.

• 1:05:23Jordi Hays?

  More residents than the entire town.

• 1:05:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Jordi Hays?

  Double the residents of the entire town that I live in.

• 1:05:30John Coogan?

  I don't really know why I pulled this up. It just, it's like crazy.

• 1:05:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Honestly, let's, we'd like to see more of it. I think the XL campus will look similar.

• 1:05:39John Coogan?

  Should we talk about the All In podcast?

• 1:05:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42John Coogan?

  How, how do you warm up for your All In podcast listens?

• 1:05:48Jordi Hays?

  Sunning my perineum.

• 1:05:50John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:51Jordi Hays?

  You know, both legs back in sunlight, just to kind of like get the chi going, you know, to make sure that when Jason starts, you know, talking, I want full alignment.

• 1:06:02John Coogan?

  Are you listening on like AirPods Max, AirPod Pros? Or are you listening on more of a wired headphones? But or do you do like a full like stereo system setup?

• 1:06:11Jordi Hays?

  Cause All In's toxic enough, I don't also want the toxic EMS, right? Like, the, the relationship dynamics of the show are already so, you know.

• 1:06:22John Coogan?

  You don't print it on vinyl and just play it at home?

• 1:06:26Jordi Hays?

  That's a good.

• 1:06:26John Coogan?

  I think that's the right way to listen to it.

• 1:06:28Jordi Hays?

  That's, that's our next drop is, is, is last week's All In episode on vinyl.

• 1:06:34John Coogan?

  On vinyl. And just like.

• 1:06:35John Coogan?

  We should definitely do that, the greatest hits.

• 1:06:38Jordi Hays?

  We might, let's, let's cut this out. We don't wanna, we don't wanna do this. Actually, no, we can leak it. Our, our five listeners, they can get a little preview.

• 1:06:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, I like it. Let us know in the comments if you want the All In podcast on pressed vinyl.

• 1:06:53Jordi Hays?

  This is, this is gonna be like a, a great journey for us, cause we're gonna find some guy in Brooklyn, who's like the last guy, just making like handmade vinyl records. Artisanal vinyl.

• 1:07:04John Coogan?

  I think having like the Trump episode, or like the Elon episode on vinyl is just, it's so high status for a tech bro. And there's this big problem.

• 1:07:13Jordi Hays?

  Especially with the, like, like, there's something so, like a record, the packaging and everything, it's like, it was the epitome of like album art, when you could just like hold it.

• 1:07:27John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:07:27Jordi Hays?

  And just like, you know, seeing the zoom screen of like Jason and all the guys.

• 1:07:32John Coogan?

  The All In, like the podcast logos, they're square, cause they show up in your podcast feed square, and that fits just perfectly on the line of, you know, cover. But, I mean, I think everyone is kind of circling around the same conclusion around the All In podcast that, you know. It hasn't lived up to the expectations of what people thought it could be, unfortunately.

• 1:07:52Jordi Hays?

  In terms of?

• 1:07:53John Coogan?

  Profit, mostly.

• 1:07:56John Coogan?

  I mean, I love what they've done politically, genuinely. I think it's very good. I've talked to, I talked to a literal congressperson who was like, I get my takes from the All In podcast, which-

• 1:08:07Jordi Hays?

  That's good.

• 1:08:08John Coogan?

  It's very good because previously they were getting it from Kara Swisher and Recode.

• 1:08:12Jordi Hays?

  That's good for venture capitalists.

• 1:08:13John Coogan?

  Huge step forward. Like, these are, like, people joke about all the different All In guys or whatever, but seriously, like, they're all on the same team, which is the most important thing. And even though they have a little infighting about politics, that doesn't actually matter. What matters is that they're all capitalists and they're all capital allocators and they all care about founders and business and like, good things. They're not insane.

• 1:08:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36John Coogan?

  And so, I mean, it is a huge thing, but it just sucks that they don't have ads.

• 1:08:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:41John Coogan?

  I think everyone expected when the show got big, like, this would be a place where the best ads and the ad rates would be super high and they'd be making a lot of money.

• 1:08:49Jordi Hays?

  Six-figure CPMs.

• 1:08:51John Coogan?

  Exactly. But they just haven't lived up to it. And I think that's why it's more important than ever that a show like Technology Brothers exists, a show that focuses on profit over-

• 1:09:00Jordi Hays?

  Profitability over-

• 1:09:01John Coogan?

  Listener satisfaction or-

• 1:09:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:03John Coogan?

  Audience size or any, or even political influence.

• 1:09:06Jordi Hays?

  In-person community, community.

• 1:09:08John Coogan?

  Exactly. All of that stuff, you can put that all to the side.

• 1:09:09Jordi Hays?

  Metrics that don't- Yeah, they're posting about-

• 1:09:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:13Jordi Hays?

  While they post pictures from their conference-

• 1:09:15John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:09:16Jordi Hays?

  We'll be posting our P and L.

• 1:09:17John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:09:18Jordi Hays?

  We'll be posting our Stripe dashboard, screenshot it.

• 1:09:21John Coogan?

  Everyone loves, oh, my podcast is this in the rankings or has this many stars and reviews. No. What's the EBITDA? How much money are you doing? What are you cash flowing? These are the important metrics for a podcast.

• 1:09:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And per listener, right?

• 1:09:35John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:09:35Jordi Hays?

  Like, it's not just gross. It's-

• 1:09:37John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:09:37Jordi Hays?

  On a per listener basis, what are you taking home?

• 1:09:40John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly. So-

• 1:09:42Jordi Hays?

  And are you levering up? That's the other thing with podcasts, not using leverage.

• 1:09:46John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. It's insane that they're not.

• 1:09:47Jordi Hays?

  It's insane that they're not, right?

• 1:09:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51John Coogan?

  So yeah, I mean, I see them, I see us kind of as a spiritual successor to the All In Podcast.

• 1:09:57Jordi Hays?

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:57John Coogan?

  Kind of finishing the job.

• 1:09:59Jordi Hays?

  Focusing on what matters.

• 1:09:59John Coogan?

  Exactly, like doing what they couldn't figure out.

• 1:10:03Jordi Hays?

  And honoring it through, you know, paying homage to some of their most iconic episodes through vinyl releases.

• 1:10:11John Coogan?

  Vinyl releases. Exactly. That's great. Should we talk about the Zuckmobile?

• 1:10:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this was, this was amazing. There's a lot of words that you could describe Zuck's era that I won't say.

• 1:10:24John Coogan?

  So give the, give the overview. It looks, so Zuck posted pictures on Instagram of him. He has purchased and customized his and hers Porsches. One is a sports car, looks like a 911, and the other is a Cayenne SUV.

• 1:10:41Jordi Hays?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't disrespect Zuck's choice. That's a GT3 Touring.

• 1:10:44John Coogan?

  Oh, it's a GT3 Touring. But it's not, is it manual? Is it the ST?

• 1:10:49Jordi Hays?

  I think he said it's a manual.

• 1:10:50John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:10:50Jordi Hays?

  No, it's not an, I mean, the Tourings are all manual, to my knowledge, or maybe you can get it in.

• 1:10:56John Coogan?

  I thought the ST was the GT3 manual. I thought that was the whole point of like the ST, that's why it exists. But maybe it's like, it's more just like analog.

• 1:11:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:06John Coogan?

  But anyway.

• 1:11:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so, so right away, right away, it's cool. Somebody, I saw somebody else saying, I don't know if it was this tweet, but like, he's sort of realizing that him doing this is not cool to other billionaires, but it's cool to the average Instagram user.

• 1:11:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's what the tweet is, is I think what Zuck realized is that the norm of avoiding ostentatious displays of wealth is entirely about intra-elite social status, and common people actually love stuff like this. And this is 100% accurate.

• 1:11:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so the, so the.

• 1:11:35John Coogan?

  Plus, there was this whole like fake thing for a long time, like SBF drove a Civic and was like, I'm not doing it for the money. And it's like, he was the most in it for the money and completely fraudulent, and so it's okay.

• 1:11:45Jordi Hays?

  And Zuck was doing like, I'm smoking meats.

• 1:11:47John Coogan?

  Yeah, I'm just in my backyard, and it's like, dude, everyone knows your backyard is sick. Like, it's fine, like, just let us enjoy vicariously how sick your backyard is.

• 1:11:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:57John Coogan?

  We want to see you surfing and stuff.

• 1:11:59Jordi Hays?

  My whole thing is like, the, you've gone and told the entire world that your wife drives.

• 1:12:07Jordi Hays?

  A turbo GT minivan and it's a one of one. And so what is the actual usability of it? Like, I don't understand, is she pulling out of the Zaka State to pick the kids up from school? And there's like this military convoy in a helicopter?

• 1:12:21John Coogan?

  Maybe.

• 1:12:21Jordi Hays?

  And she's just like, I love living my regular, you know, minivan mom life.

• 1:12:26John Coogan?

  Well, you know, you know, like the standard billionaire like setup? It's like two black SUVs outside of everywhere that you go.

• 1:12:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:34John Coogan?

  And so you walk outside, there's always two. So if one breaks down, you can get in the other one. But then also like, you don't know where they are essentially. That's just kind of the standard equipment.

• 1:12:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42John Coogan?

  If I was a billionaire, two Ford Raptors.

• 1:12:45Jordi Hays?

  Two Raptors.

• 1:12:46John Coogan?

  Two trucks for sure.

• 1:12:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47John Coogan?

  For sure.

• 1:12:48Jordi Hays?

  Except, except the Raptor as a former Raptor owner is like really not that practical. Like it's just not, the cabin's just not that big. So it's not like you can like, unless you want to be in the front street.

• 1:12:59John Coogan?

  Wesco's custom to stretch it.

• 1:13:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:01John Coogan?

  It is a truck bed.

• 1:13:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. The, um, I'm very pro minivan. I've told you this, I recently purchased a minivan, a Mercedes Metris. Uh, very popular in Europe, less popular here, mostly used as an airport transport vehicle. I've been loving it, like just walking up to your car, pulling the door and having the door go out. It's, it's very, very practical.

• 1:13:23Jordi Hays?

  My only critique is the color choice. I think chalk is the worst modern.

• 1:13:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Jordi Hays?

  Porsche, you know, color option. The putty color. Um, I love how we have to tweet in black and white. But yeah, it's a rough, it's a rough color. Like if you're going to do that, why not do like the.

• 1:13:39John Coogan?

  Fun color.

• 1:13:39Jordi Hays?

  The like, um, python green.

• 1:13:41John Coogan?

  I, I've been looking at the, the new VW bus. Have you seen this thing?

• 1:13:45Jordi Hays?

  No, is it the electric one?

• 1:13:46John Coogan?

  It's electric. It's called the ID Buzz and it comes in these really.

• 1:13:50Jordi Hays?

  It's coal powered.

• 1:13:51John Coogan?

  Well, the electricity that he uses is from coal.

• 1:13:53Jordi Hays?

  Right.

• 1:13:54John Coogan?

  So, um, it's, uh, it, it has the sliding doors like a minivan, but it's a bus. So it doesn't read as a minivan fully. It reads as like something weird and different. And then it comes in like these crazy color ways. And I was even thinking of getting it wrapped in like something more fun.

• 1:14:07Jordi Hays?

  So that.

• 1:14:08John Coogan?

  I think that the optimization when you're a parent is just like, get the car that will be fun for the kids.

• 1:14:13Jordi Hays?

  My optimization was extreme practicality. And when they have the Arowan smoothie and they're throwing it around the car, that I'm not worried about it getting on the leather.

• 1:14:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Jordi Hays?

  You know, I just don't care. I'm just like, throw it, throw it on the ceiling, throw it on there, throw up. You know, like do whatever you want to.

• 1:14:33John Coogan?

  I mean, I've been, I've been. Testing the waters with like, what car should I get based on my three year old's opinions?

• 1:14:39Jordi Hays?

  That's great.

• 1:14:41John Coogan?

  So I'll do like an A B test, like which one do you like more? I'll show them two images. And the car that beats everything else, can you guess?

• 1:14:50John Coogan?

  Red Cybertruck.

• 1:14:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I was about to say Cybertruck.

• 1:14:53John Coogan?

  The Cybertruck, it was designed by a three year old and it gets a three year old going.

• 1:14:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:57John Coogan?

  And one of my friends was like, the Cybertruck is the most, like, it's the most, it's the most perfect example of a car that matters to only, it matters only to people who don't matter, right? It's like, it's cool to people who aren't wealthy or serious, right? And I'm like, but it matters to three year old boys.

• 1:15:16Jordi Hays?

  Which is arguably for us as fathers.

• 1:15:19John Coogan?

  He's the only guy that I care about. I don't care what some, you know, random person thinks about my car. I care what my son thinks about my car and is he pumped to get in and go on adventure?

• 1:15:27Jordi Hays?

  No, most of my car purchasing has been driven by my, my inner child.

• 1:15:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:33Jordi Hays?

  Right?

• 1:15:34John Coogan?

  That's why I got the wagon. It has the reverse three seat, like rear view seat. That was always a hit when I was a kid. I'm like, it'll be a hit for these kids.

• 1:15:41Jordi Hays?

  And when I got, when I got a Raptor, I, so I got this murdered out Raptor that had been lifted and tinted. And it was like, what is the truck that like the five year old me wanted?

• 1:15:54John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:15:55Jordi Hays?

  And I didn't have because my parents drove two Priuses. It was like, what do you want to, what car should we take to school today?

• 1:16:01John Coogan?

  My parents drove two Civics.

• 1:16:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I was like, do you want to take this, the white Prius or the gold Prius? And I'm like, no.

• 1:16:07John Coogan?

  They get a white and a gray or silver Honda Civic or a white Honda Civic.

• 1:16:12Jordi Hays?

  And so as an adult, I have some purchasing power and I'm like, what, what, what am I gonna get? And I started, I, I, I basically like had to train Sarah on it for a year. Every time I'd see a Raptor, I'd be like, that is a good looking truck.

• 1:16:26John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:27Jordi Hays?

  And it would basically like, she was like, the first like 10 to 20 times, she goes, absolutely not, I hate that. And then I kept saying it and I started to break through.

• 1:16:38John Coogan?

  I did the same thing. My, my, my wife knows like nothing about you, but she knows that you owned a Raptor. And I've, I've told her that Raptors don't depreciate like as much as other cars. And so whenever she sees a Raptor now, she's like, I know that that car doesn't depreciate.

• 1:16:50Jordi Hays?

  It's a practical decision.

• 1:16:52John Coogan?

  And, and she's like, I hate that you've like, Taught me all these stupid car things because now I'm like noticing red brakes or like when a car has four, has four tail, four exhaust pipes. She was like, yeah, yesterday I saw a BMW that didn't have any like decals on it. It had been de-badged and I was like, oh, like there's something under the hood there. It's clearly modded. And she was like, I don't need to know this. Like, why is this in my brain?

• 1:17:16Jordi Hays?

  Why is this in my brain? Yeah, I could be using this for other things. No, but unfortunately with the, the Raptor, the ultimate challenge and the reason that I got rid of it was one, because parking in the average LA parking lot with a Raptor, one, can't fit in any parking garages, which is also just a general issue in LA. But two, anytime you're meeting with somebody that doesn't know you already, their first assumption is that if you pull up any lifted, murdered out Raptor is that you are a total dickhead. And so like trying to, I just realized there was this period of like, I had to like overcome that. And I was like, this is kind of a waste of time. Like, I'd rather somebody pull up and sort of like, people, you know, people.

• 1:18:00John Coogan?

  It is tough because there's no American car right now that sends just like a neutral signal. Like, if you're in like a Mustang, you're a Mustang owner, Corvette owner, et cetera. Like, Raptor, same thing. If you're in a Tesla, people have all these weird mixed things. Like, it was either like your total like green, like tree hugger, or now it's like you're a Trump supporter.

• 1:18:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. We bought this before we knew what a bad guy he was.

• 1:18:24John Coogan?

  That thing. Well, I mean, my hot take is like Elon is getting so like right wing pilled that he's gonna make a V12 Model S.

• 1:18:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:34John Coogan?

  With a gated manual and a straight pipe exhaust. I think that'd be incredible. He's just like, yeah, you know what, like, you know, like, I didn't get any credit for, I didn't get any credit for the whole EV transition anyway. You guys don't like these EVs, so now I'm doing ICE cars.

• 1:18:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it is pretty wild that the Cybertruck is seemingly selling very well.

• 1:18:57John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:58Jordi Hays?

  Yet it would sell even better if it was just like-

• 1:19:01John Coogan?

  If it wasn't controversial, yeah.

• 1:19:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, if it was more controversial.

• 1:19:04John Coogan?

  So, yeah, we have this one. S and P Global Mobility says Tesla delivered 5,175 Cybertrucks in July. This is a 61% month-over-month increase. They also estimate that the rest of the electric pickup truck market sold only a combined 5,500. So Tesla's like 50% of the market.

• 1:19:22Jordi Hays?

  Here's something that's funny about Tesla. So there's a founder, a classic thing if you're a founder, and you either raised a bunch of venture capital, I guess, in the case of this other tweet, or there's a founder of a company that's actually doing really well, and he bought a Foundation Series Cybertruck thinking that, okay, there's just gonna be a limited release, like if anything's gonna hold value. It's this one. Tesla has completely ignored that that was ever supposed to be limited and sort of like foundational, like first number of orders.

• 1:19:55John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:19:56Jordi Hays?

  And they're continuing to produce them at full clip.

• 1:19:58John Coogan?

  What's the difference between a Foundation model and just a regular one?

• 1:20:01Jordi Hays?

  I don't know the design differences, but I think it was sold through as a limited, you know, edition. Like you got the first Cyber, you know, like one of the first one. Yeah.

• 1:20:10John Coogan?

  It'll be the one that like, it'll be the one that-

• 1:20:12Jordi Hays?

  But it was at a significant, let's look at-

• 1:20:15John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I still love them. I think they're just beautiful. And I smile every time I see them around, and my son smiles every time I see them around. And I think they're just funny looking, and I want more aggressive cars like this. I really like that Hyundai that's coming out. That one is crazy. Well, yeah, so they put the electric powertrain in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. And it's the guy who did the BMW M series. And what letter comes after M? It's N. So he went over there, put out the N-division, and he created like digital- DCT basically, like dual clutch transmission. And it has engine noise and all the car guys that have driven it are like, it's incredible.

• 1:20:58John Coogan?

  Like you, you forget that you're not driving like a manual or like a

• 1:21:02Jordi Hays?

  Right.

• 1:21:02John Coogan?

  actual engaging car. And now they're going to put that in this Hyundai Vision 74 thing. That like, it looks amazing. It looks like something out of Back to the Future. Have you seen this thing? It looks really good.

• 1:21:13Jordi Hays?

  I didn't know that. I thought that was just a concept car.

• 1:21:15John Coogan?

  It, it, so it was a concept car. And they were going to do it with some crazy powertrain that was like hydrogen. Have you seen this thing? Hydrogen cars. And they, and they yanked that. They're doing the electric. I think they're going to do an N model. So it'll have like 700 horsepower and, but it'll be like 50K or something. So you'll be able to track, track on it.

• 1:21:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33John Coogan?

  Uh, and it'll just be like so funny and look so cool. Uh, and I think it's going into production. They're trying to get it live by 2029, which I think is believable based on Hyundai. Like, I think that they're like pretty serious. It's out of concept car territory now.

• 1:21:46Jordi Hays?

  There's nothing better than when a car manufacturer wakes up out of their stupor.

• 1:21:50John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:51Jordi Hays?

  Cause like every car manufacturer is pretty much a legacy company.

• 1:21:54John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:54Jordi Hays?

  Except for Tesla and whatever Rivian.

• 1:21:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:57Jordi Hays?

  And when it, when, when these companies wake up, I would give the example of like Toyota with their Land Cruiser. It's like, hey, let's take like one of our most loved cars ever. And let's just like run it back.

• 1:22:08John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:22:08Jordi Hays?

  And like make it modern and make it cool. And people love them and you know, like you know that it's going to be like a Toyota. It's like, it's great. They did the same thing with the Lexus, effectively the same version of the car that has, I guess it's like slightly, I don't know.

• 1:22:23John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. The modernized one.

• 1:22:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Um, and then the VW that you mentioned, the van, like

• 1:22:28John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:28Jordi Hays?

  There's nothing like, cause

• 1:22:30John Coogan?

  There's nothing exciting in VW's portfolio other than this thing.

• 1:22:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you take the legacy of these amazing

• 1:22:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:36Jordi Hays?

  pro- iconic products and you just, somebody like wakes up one day at these manufacturers and they're like, hey, we should actually like

• 1:22:42John Coogan?

  The problem is

• 1:22:42Jordi Hays?

  do something cool or novel.

• 1:22:44John Coogan?

  I think VW got like the marketing right, but I think the car is actually pretty trash. Like I think the range is really bad and the price is way too high. So I think like objectively, it's not a good of a car, but it's a cool idea. And I'm glad that they're like going in that direction, at least being fun. Um, speaking of Cybertrucks, did you see this, uh, this startup promotion? Um, this guy was announcing the latest version of a company called Bastion. And instead of spending a bunch of money on a video, we decided to do something more impactful, giving out free rides across New York City in our branded Cybertrucks. Um, details on the launch or how to grab a ride below.

• 1:23:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so I never want to hate on anybody trying to create value in the world, but this is just like so whack. It's like, I now know that you were giving rides in a company Cybertruck, which why do you have a company Cybertruck? As a crypto infrastructure company?

• 1:23:32John Coogan?

  Oh, is that what they are?

• 1:23:33Jordi Hays?

  And I don't know what.

• 1:23:34John Coogan?

  So, yeah.

• 1:23:35Jordi Hays?

  I had to go deep. I don't know what you do.

• 1:23:37John Coogan?

  I don't know what they do.

• 1:23:37Jordi Hays?

  It would have been much more impactful to.

• 1:23:41John Coogan?

  Do something related to that, like.

• 1:23:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:43John Coogan?

  Okay, like, you know, this is like, what are the themes of your business? Security, regulation, money, infrastructure, like crypto, like it's got to tie to that somehow. Whatever stunt you do, needs to be something of like around that.

• 1:23:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, if you're building, like, there's so many things, like, back in the Party Round days, we did something where we were like, hey, reply with your like address and we're doing an airdrop. And then we airdropped NFT ads for Party Round into everybody's wallets, which you would then have to pay money to get. So we just sent them to like the CEO of Figma and like all these other crypto people. So it's like, cool. Now like there's a, and it just said, this is an ad for Party Round. And it was like in like comic. And so it's like, there's so many things you could do.

• 1:24:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:28Jordi Hays?

  But I'm like, okay, like I could take the subway or I could like text the Bastion hotline.

• 1:24:34John Coogan?

  I mean, even even if they were just like, okay, text them and we'll send like, I don't know if this is like a security company. It's like, okay, text them and they'll bring like a like 25 security guards will like follow you around or something like that.

• 1:24:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47John Coogan?

  Something that's a little bit more like tied to like security. It it feels like this should be about like a transportation company. Like, are you launching like a Lyft competitor or something?

• 1:24:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, or you do something like this during a conference.

• 1:24:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:58Jordi Hays?

  So that at least there's like more like that. I'm just thinking like you're driving around Soho and you see this like Cybertruck.

• 1:25:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:05Jordi Hays?

  And you're like, okay, cool. And they probably got like 10 rides in throughout the day.

• 1:25:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:11Jordi Hays?

  And.

• 1:25:12John Coogan?

  I do like the idea of like, if you're a founder and you're picking a car and you just happen to buy a Cybertruck, like throw your logo on it.

• 1:25:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19John Coogan?

  Like, I think that's really positive.

• 1:25:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's a good way to get cheap attention if that's a car that you personally want to own and drive.

• 1:25:26John Coogan?

  But you can put it on whatever car you own. If you have a Ford Raptor, throw some, throw a rap for your company on there. Like, that's funny and cool. And then when you pull up, people are like, yeah, you stand out.

• 1:25:36Jordi Hays?

  It's funny that when you think about wraps as like a unutilized ad inventory.

• 1:25:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:42Jordi Hays?

  The issue is that the people that would wrap their car with something for like a nominal amount of money are gonna have like not so great cars that you wanna associate with.

• 1:25:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:51Jordi Hays?

  But like, it would be a funny thing for, like, like only-

• 1:25:57John Coogan?

  Imagine if Zuck wrapped the Porsche with like, you know, oh, like, buy my Meta Ray-Bans.

• 1:26:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be cooler.

• 1:26:05John Coogan?

  That would be cooler than just like-

• 1:26:06Jordi Hays?

  A GT3 RS with the Orion-

• 1:26:09John Coogan?

  If it was just like, like, all of his different products, like, download Instagram here, QR code.

• 1:26:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:14John Coogan?

  Just really tacky, like-

• 1:26:15Jordi Hays?

  No, I did that. I did that with, uh, our, our old CTO is like into like racing.

• 1:26:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:22Jordi Hays?

  I was like, let me, do you have any sponsors? Let me sponsor your car. I got, put five of my companies up there.

• 1:26:27John Coogan?

  It's great. Yeah, it's cool.

• 1:26:28Jordi Hays?

  It looks awesome.

• 1:26:28John Coogan?

  It also just looks cool, yeah.

• 1:26:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it just makes the car look cooler.

• 1:26:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:32Jordi Hays?

  That's an example of, of capitalism in action is putting a bunch of stickers on a car makes it look cooler.

• 1:26:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:40Jordi Hays?

  That's amazing. That's, that's the power of advertising.

• 1:26:44John Coogan?

  Yeah, I like that. Um, you saw this tweet?

• 1:26:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so this is, this is, this is so, this is just like so funny in, in so many ways because for some reason, like, all the AI slop threat accounts have all decided that like this is the new scam and it's-

• 1:27:02John Coogan?

  Break it down. Tell me what the tweet says. Tell me-

• 1:27:05Jordi Hays?

  There was like thirty of these tweets that are basically saying AI models are earning over, AI influencers are earning over $5,000 per month. Meet Emily, a 21-year-old model who was brought to life by AI. Now you can create your own AI influencer in minutes. Here's how. And I think it's cool technology, but to me, this just makes me go long, like, actual influencers because one-

• 1:27:36Jordi Hays?

  People don't really realize, but like you can have a hundred thousand followers on Instagram, being like an Instagram model and like make like below minimum wage because like unless you're genuinely influential and cool and brands like actually think that by working with you, they're going to elevate their brand, the best that you're getting is like free product.

• 1:27:56John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:27:56Jordi Hays?

  So I'm imagining like all the guys that were doing like drop shipping stores 10 years ago and like didn't, it didn't really work and they're looking for their next thing.

• 1:28:04John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:28:04Jordi Hays?

  Are now like, I'm going to make an army of AI influencers. And they're just like going to be like slaving over like creating like the perfect like all, all this content because it's obviously like.

• 1:28:15John Coogan?

  It's perfectly competitive.

• 1:28:16Jordi Hays?

  These people are competing against other influencers who are, have a real connection with their audience, have years and years and years of sort of like a relationship and genuinely are creating like artisanal content.

• 1:28:29John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:28:30Jordi Hays?

  And anybody that's going out and saying you're going to make $60,000 a year with your AI slop influencer that's like has no opinion, um, and all these courses are for sure going to say like, if you can just get one AI influencer that's making 5,000 a month and then you scale.

• 1:28:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:48Jordi Hays?

  To a hundred or a thousand, you could be making $5 million a month from your AI like influencer business.

• 1:28:55John Coogan?

  Well, that's where the money is. So that guy's promoting a course or something or like a product, something like.

• 1:29:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:00John Coogan?

  He's selling the product that allows you to do this, but you know what's really interesting is that that video there is an actual human. It's not AI generated.

• 1:29:08Jordi Hays?

  Really?

• 1:29:09John Coogan?

  He's just saying that it's AI generated because obviously if you use a real person, it looks even more real.

• 1:29:16Jordi Hays?

  Real.

• 1:29:16John Coogan?

  And there's no, there's no risk of like slopification.

• 1:29:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:19John Coogan?

  Because everyone's like, oh, wow. Like he was able to make a girl where the hands are perfect and everything. There's no, like the hair isn't like transforming or anything. There's no like, there's no artifacts.

• 1:29:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:30John Coogan?

  So he must have the best tech in the game.

• 1:29:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:32John Coogan?

  I gotta go with this guy. That's what I think. At least that's what the community notes said when I dig in.

• 1:29:36Jordi Hays?

  Really?

• 1:29:36John Coogan?

  Yeah. I'm like, I'm like, did I tell you this? I'm like, I'm like community notes admin now.

• 1:29:42Jordi Hays?

  Let's go. Let's go. You're the new Wikipedia mafia.

• 1:29:46John Coogan?

  I am. So, so I can go in and like rate all the community notes. I can write community notes. I can do all that stuff.

• 1:29:52Jordi Hays?

  You should communicate, community note all our posts.

• 1:29:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:55Jordi Hays?

  Just say, technology brothers is not, not the most profitable podcast.

• 1:30:00John Coogan?

  Yeah, because if you get a community note, then it will be more viral. Because they'll be like, oh, they got dunked on. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:30:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So, I mean, Trevor McFedry is like already tried to do this with Brad back in the day.

• 1:30:11John Coogan?

  Oh, I don't know this.

• 1:30:11Jordi Hays?

  Like, he made an AI influencer called Will Michaela.

• 1:30:14John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:15Jordi Hays?

  Had genuine, like, million followers, like, really cool collaborations, like, really good execution over a long period of time. He sold the company to Dapper in like 2022. And I would just like, but they were approaching it from like world building and actual storytelling. It's not like, give me a TikTok girl like that's between the ages of 22 and 25. And make them dance to the most viral songs. It's like, okay, like, I'm just, I'm very bearish. But happy that the course bros have a new, have a new.

• 1:30:54John Coogan?

  A new grift.

• 1:30:54Jordi Hays?

  Product to sell.

• 1:30:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:57Jordi Hays?

  One of my, one of the guys I was hanging out with, that a buddy of mine, this guy, Kimia, who sold his last company to Ramp. He's building, he's building software to, like, basically an AI agent to like find and win government contracts, which is cool. So we've been talking about like, how do you create this sort of like cottage industry around people basically showing other people how to find and win government contracts. And then, you know, in the same way that Shopify benefited, I think Shopify, maybe it was you that said, I don't know if Hindenburg ever covered Shopify.

• 1:31:33John Coogan?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 1:31:34Jordi Hays?

  But, you know, basically, there's, his business will be massively successful if you get all these bros being like, millionaires are being made by government, through government contracting, which I'm actually very, think is very positive. Because if you get a bunch of like smart, young hustlers that are going to compete for contracts to do like toilet paper for like the penitentiary.

• 1:31:55John Coogan?

  It's kind of like the old war dogs.

• 1:31:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's like, well, it actually increases competition and lowers the, the cost for the taxpayer.

• 1:32:02John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:32:02Jordi Hays?

  And the government. So anyways, I hope that that becomes.

• 1:32:05John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's kind of related to like the rise of the rest thing that you've been talking about. Did you see that announcement from Valenor?

• 1:32:14John Coogan?

  Julie Bush put this out, have you seen this?

• 1:32:15Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:16John Coogan?

  This incubator?

• 1:32:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, is it an incubator?

• 1:32:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, everyone's kind of confused about what it is, but it's like, you know, maybe incubator, maybe holding company eventually, maybe some of the companies live inside. I think it's still pretty early, but.

• 1:32:29Jordi Hays?

  Did they raise money?

• 1:32:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:30Jordi Hays?

  Is she a part of the Bush family?

• 1:32:32John Coogan?

  Oh, I don't know. Maybe.

• 1:32:34Jordi Hays?

  That's some lore. If Ben was here, he could quickly confirm that. Because that would be like the ultimate, like if Jeb Bush is the lead investor.

• 1:32:42John Coogan?

  I was thinking about how there's like so few neo cons anymore. They're just, they're kind of a dying breed. Everyone's like, you know, you're either like a right wing nationalist or like you're like left wing pro war, but there's no like right wing pro war.

• 1:32:55Jordi Hays?

  Dick Cheney's still, he's still around.

• 1:32:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, but he's like crossing the aisle now, right?

• 1:32:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, he endorsed Kamala.

• 1:33:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:01Jordi Hays?

  But he's just pro war.

• 1:33:02John Coogan?

  He's just pro war.

• 1:33:05John Coogan?

  But, uh, but yeah, I, I think, I think the main, the main value prop for Valenor is like if you're just a talented founder, but you don't know anything about distribution, you don't know anything about government contracting, like they will, in exchange for equity and cash, like standard YC deal type thing.

• 1:33:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:22John Coogan?

  They give you the, the tools to get your first contract.

• 1:33:26Jordi Hays?

  That's super cool.

• 1:33:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:27Jordi Hays?

  Which I think is, yeah. Because I, I just think it's about the reason I heard about a guy who, who is a, basically makes like millions of dollars per year as the guy that California contracts to when they need to move like protected bird eggs from like one location that's getting developed to another. And so like the, that should not be a million dollar contract, right?

• 1:33:52John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There should be three companies bidding over that aggressively to get the price down.

• 1:33:57Jordi Hays?

  Because think about it, think about if you went to like some environmental studies student and he was like, hey, do you want to take a six month course on how to transport like, you know?

• 1:34:05John Coogan?

  Endangered bird eggs.

• 1:34:06Jordi Hays?

  Endangered bird eggs. They're like, cool. Okay, now you can do this and it pays a hundred and fifty dollars per day.

• 1:34:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:13Jordi Hays?

  And it's contract based and like you've gone from a multi million dollar contract to like, okay, now we're paying like entry level like people to do this.

• 1:34:22John Coogan?

  Yeah, like what it actually deserves.

• 1:34:23Jordi Hays?

  And so I think more competition is good and it's so opaque and inefficient that.

• 1:34:31Jordi Hays?

  Can't possibly be very competitive, right?

• 1:34:33John Coogan?

  We were talking about this with like the, you know, the SpaceX narrative is like, um, is like, you know, it's the power law winner. I think it's like a hundred and fifty billion dollar company and, uh, it's great. And the, and, and Anduril has kind of like carved their, their brand out as like the power law winner in defense tech broadly. But there, there still remains the question of like, they can be the power law winner and defense tech can not look like the phone market. It can look like the SaaS market in the sense that like, yes, they are the power law winner in the sense that like they're the sales force, they're the biggest company and maybe they're the prime.

• 1:35:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but look at the CRM market. You still have Salesforce and HubSpot.

• 1:35:20John Coogan?

  Exactly. There are still a lot of other companies that like do fantastically. And I, and I also think like, there's this, there's this very broader element of like Anduril is like, is like a prime and does like, you know, DOD contracting. But when people think about like defense tech and hard tech, it gets so broad that people wind up like Augustus with weather modification is like kind of in that milieu and yet like not competitive at all.

• 1:35:48Jordi Hays?

  He just called me from the Caribbean.

• 1:35:49John Coogan?

  Really?

• 1:35:49Jordi Hays?

  The winds were howling. He's like, don't tell anybody where I am right now. You're not going to believe this. He's just in the eye of the storm, just like.

• 1:35:57John Coogan?

  He's fighting, he's fighting for his life right now.

• 1:35:59Jordi Hays?

  No, so I think the reason that defense tech is not going to be, or I would hope that it doesn't become the monopoly that Anduril is sort of implies is that.

• 1:36:14John Coogan?

  Oh, that's perfect. Yeah.

• 1:36:17Jordi Hays?

  The reason that I don't think it'll be the monopoly that they like, sort of like philosophize.

• 1:36:22John Coogan?

  It can be monopoly over like what they do.

• 1:36:25Jordi Hays?

  One of the stated goals of the DOD and the government in general is vendor diversity.

• 1:36:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean Palmer told me that directly. He said like, the government will not allow us to be a complete monopoly. Exactly.

• 1:36:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:37John Coogan?

  Um, but they can still be the greatest like value creator. ...event in defense technology over the past sixty years, right?

• 1:36:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:47John Coogan?

  Which is like a huge win for everyone.

• 1:36:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48John Coogan?

  And I think the even cooler thing is like, like, I think about that that guy who's doing that stove, the impulse stove, and have you seen this? He, it's basically like a stove that has a ton of batteries in it, so it can, it's an electric stove, but it can heat up like a pan very quickly, be very precise. And he's always like cooking steaks on Twitter and being like, I cook the perfect steak using my stove. It's very cool. And it's something where it's like, I don't know if that would get funded without Anduril, even though it's like not in defense tech at all. Anduril just kind of like shook the tree to be like, hey, it's okay to take risks on hardware. Cause for so long, the meme was like, hardware is hard. Like Pebble had such a bad go at a Y C. There were so many companies that tried and never really got to escape velocity.

• 1:37:32John Coogan?

  Now people are like, okay, we're gonna take a shot on it again, just with whatever. And that means like new fridge companies, new camera companies, new phone, like new devices. Like, and I just think like,

• 1:37:41Jordi Hays?

  I have one.

• 1:37:41John Coogan?

  More of those.

• 1:37:42Jordi Hays?

  I have one that's relevant to the show. Maybe we should, maybe we should fund it. I want somebody to make me the world's most beautiful print, office printer.

• 1:37:52John Coogan?

  I just bought this printer and it's black and white. My wife was like, where'd you buy this?

• 1:37:55Jordi Hays?

  So when you think about a printer, it's like basically the perfect business model. It's like this sort of like,

• 1:38:00John Coogan?

  Razor and blade?

• 1:38:01Jordi Hays?

  Up front, yeah, razor and blade. But I was driving over here and I got, I got an email that was like, can you like print this out and scan it and like return it or whatever? And I'm just like, oh, that's like super annoying. I don't know, I don't have a printer. I'd use like the like postal place.

• 1:38:20Jordi Hays?

  And, and so I was like, oh, now I need to buy a printer. And I'm like, well, like I need it to fit like the aesthetic of my office. And like, I'm like, okay, now I'm gonna be like on HP's website being like, what's the least ugly printer? But then it's like, okay, like some things just don't die. And in the same way that like vinyl records are probably like, you know, they're not as big as they were at the peak, but they stabilized and like there's just like people with, you know, various. It's like, I would love to be able to buy like a beautiful printer.

• 1:38:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:48Jordi Hays?

  And like I'll sign up for the like, you know, yearly subscription.

• 1:38:52John Coogan?

  You need to do it with somebody who's really cool and who the

• 1:38:58John Coogan?

  Board of Directors at Apple actually just wants to hang out with.

• 1:39:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:02John Coogan?

  Sell the company like.

• 1:39:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:03John Coogan?

  Because like it should live, that clearly should live within Apple. They will never do it.

• 1:39:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:09John Coogan?

  Probably for ESG reasons because it's printing paper and it's.

• 1:39:12Jordi Hays?

  But that would be, that would be like MKBHD, like make a printer.

• 1:39:17John Coogan?

  Cool.

• 1:39:18Jordi Hays?

  Like the, the tech guy makes the, the beautiful like.

• 1:39:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:22Jordi Hays?

  I'm really bullish on hardware that is like just extremely analog.

• 1:39:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:29Jordi Hays?

  Right? Like I want, like it's in the same way that the highest.

• 1:39:32John Coogan?

  Teenage engineering.

• 1:39:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, like, but like the most like Bentley when they're making new cars are like, we know that our customers like.

• 1:39:39John Coogan?

  Switches.

• 1:39:40Jordi Hays?

  Switches and like stuff like that. And so, and it's the same reason that like my least favorite technology company of my life is Sonos because you made this like beautiful looking speaker that is like, you know, very ugly to use and experience as a user. From the setup to like, it's not syncing anymore to.

• 1:39:59John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:40:00Jordi Hays?

  Why are these three speakers playing, but like that one's not and like, oh, one of them's not connected to the internet. And it's like, I'm gonna like take, I, I donated some Sonos speakers, but I'm now wishing that I brought them to the gun range. Cause it would bring me joy to just like blow up like my Sonos speakers.

• 1:40:20John Coogan?

  It is crazy how like, they're a pretty big company and.

• 1:40:25Jordi Hays?

  They deserve to get mauled by Apple.

• 1:40:27John Coogan?

  They need Hindenburg research. We tried the product. It actually is confusing. Not the entire report.

• 1:40:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they said that people were playing music every day, but it disconnects all the time.

• 1:40:38John Coogan?

  Disconnects all the time. But it, it really is a testament that like, in order to do the, the absolute like top tier software engineering where stuff just works. Like you actually have to be a trillion dollar company like, like Apple.

• 1:40:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:51John Coogan?

  A $10 billion company just can't do it.

• 1:40:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:53John Coogan?

  Especially if it's an older.

• 1:40:54Jordi Hays?

  So do it, do it slightly analog.

• 1:40:56John Coogan?

  Companies like, like Ramp obviously has built something that's like, they're, they're punching way above their, their size in terms of like the quality of the software. But it is, it is extremely hard. It's craftsmanship to build like great software that actually works all the time. Like.

• 1:41:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:11John Coogan?

  Anytime you break those expectations.

• 1:41:12Jordi Hays?

  Well, it's a firmware where anytime you're getting into like.

• 1:41:16John Coogan?

  Yeah, the crossover is really hard.

• 1:41:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:18John Coogan?

  Between the, the hardware and software. Um, did you reread this one? Mark Andreessen?

• 1:41:24Jordi Hays?

  This is so, this is so real.

• 1:41:29John Coogan?

  What did he say? He said, overheard in Silicon Valley, every company should add this question to their interview loop. It's fine if you have gone to Burning Man, but are you currently going to Burning Man?

• 1:41:40John Coogan?

  I think he means like on an annual cadence, right?

• 1:41:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:45John Coogan?

  Burning Man? I mean, I know why he hates it. Extremely high NPS, but can't invest in it.

• 1:41:51Jordi Hays?

  That's it.

• 1:41:51John Coogan?

  Because if you ever talk to somebody who goes to Burning Man, dude, you gotta go. It's so amazing.

• 1:41:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:58John Coogan?

  Extremely high NPS.

• 1:41:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:00John Coogan?

  But they haven't scaled, they haven't monetized.

• 1:42:03Jordi Hays?

  So two things, two things I, you've effectively had, you know, almost going on a decade of having the ability to do it without the desire to do it. And I would say ayahuasca and Burning Man.

• 1:42:20John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:42:21Jordi Hays?

  And ultimately, both of them were sort of intuitively demonic. Ayahuasca is like, hey, I'm gonna go take a plane 12 hours into the jungle to get one-shotted by some jungle demon. And then like, hope that it cures me, right? And then come back with like, okay, now I'm dealing with whatever like trauma I was trying to deal with and the trauma of my jungle demon. You know, who's calling me?

• 1:42:47John Coogan?

  What's under discussed in the ayahuasca debate? Lex Friedman didn't get one-shotted. I just listened to a recent podcast of him with the cursor team, you know, these like AI, it's like a coding IDE. It was just classic Lex. There was nothing changed. It was fine.

• 1:43:04Jordi Hays?

  What do you mean? You're saying he did it and then came back?

• 1:43:06John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. There was a whole arc where he like went into the jungle. He like took a bunch of time off. He like, I think he grew a beard and I think he, in a conversation with Elon, said he took like a mega heroic dose. Maybe it wasn't ayahuasca, but I think it was. He did some sort of like shamanic retreat and he came back completely fine, has done a bunch of interviews and he's just normal.

• 1:43:25Jordi Hays?

  Here's the thing with psychedelics. If you're going into a psychedelic experience and you're highly stable and you're in a good place, then you come out of it being like, cool.

• 1:43:33John Coogan?

  I'm good. I don't need a change.

• 1:43:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. If you go in an unstable place trying to make it fix you. It's different to go into it being like, I'm gonna have this cool, unique experience.

• 1:43:44John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:43:44Jordi Hays?

  And maybe I like come out with a different perspective, but going in being like, please, Jungle Demon, fix me.

• 1:43:50John Coogan?

  Yeah. Well, this was the Daniel thing, it was like, it's a sorting function. And it's dangerous for Mark to invest in pre-sorted founders. And then he should actually only invest in founders that have done the ayahuasca and not been one-shotted.

• 1:44:06Jordi Hays?

  And still are doing enterprise SaaS.

• 1:44:07John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:44:08Jordi Hays?

  Those are the generational founders.

• 1:44:10John Coogan?

  Those are the killers.

• 1:44:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so anyways, I think that if you think about things that are sort of like, sort of intuitively demonic, going and taking a poison and throwing up for 12 hours in a hut in Peru and like being visited by a spirit that is like making you face like your greatest fears, that sort of seems like maybe not the thing that the average person should do. It'd be like, you wouldn't be like, oh, I'm gonna go get an exorcism in Louisiana in the swamp, you know? It's like, how different is that than like going to Peru?

• 1:44:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:53Jordi Hays?

  So if a founder calls you up and says, hey, I'm gonna be offline for the next couple of weeks, I'm going to Louisiana to get an exorcism, and it's like kind of in this hut swamp, it's gonna be really dark, it's with somebody I don't know, I'm paying them a lot of money, I'm not really sure what I'm getting in return, there's gonna be other strangers there that I don't know that are also dealing with their own traumas, you'd be like, hey bud, I feel like it's my duty to tell you to not do that. And then also if somebody was describing, hey, I'm gonna go into the desert, this place called Black Rock, is it Black Rock City?

• 1:45:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:32Jordi Hays?

  No, is it?

• 1:45:33John Coogan?

  Black Rock is the investment front.

• 1:45:34Jordi Hays?

  Black Rock.

• 1:45:35John Coogan?

  I think it is Black Rock City, isn't it?

• 1:45:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, so I'm gonna go to Black-

• 1:45:38John Coogan?

  Is it affiliated with Black Rock?

• 1:45:41Jordi Hays?

  Oh my god, we just put it together.

• 1:45:46John Coogan?

  That's our all-in-conference, Black Rock City.

• 1:45:49Jordi Hays?

  Black Rock's shorting tech massively, and they're funding the thing that's one-shotting all the right technologies.

• 1:45:56John Coogan?

  Is it actually called Black Rock City? That is ridiculous if that's what it's called. Black Rock City.

• 1:46:07John Coogan?

  Black Rock City.

• 1:46:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's the playa.

• 1:46:10John Coogan?

  The playa. Burning Man, Black Rock City.

• 1:46:12Jordi Hays?

  Oh my god.

• 1:46:14John Coogan?

  Well, now I gotta go. If Black Rock's involved, I love Black Rock.

• 1:46:17Jordi Hays?

  I love Black Rock.

• 1:46:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, Black Rock is a phenomenal institution.

• 1:46:21Jordi Hays?

  No, but if somebody said, "I'm going to Black Rock City."

• 1:46:24John Coogan?

  You think Larry Fink's ever been? And he's like, "This is my city." He's the CEO of Black Rock.

• 1:46:28Jordi Hays?

  Uh, I bet he's dropped in.

• 1:46:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:30Jordi Hays?

  He's flown in the PJ and like landed and he's like, "I run this place."

• 1:46:34John Coogan?

  I run this place.

• 1:46:35Jordi Hays?

  I run this place. He harvests the energy, like, what's the like of the Harkonnen mode? Where he's like in like, he's in like a bathtub in Black Rock City? And he's just like fully locked into the energy of the playa and he's just taking it and then he goes back to New York. And he's like, "I have what I need."

• 1:46:50John Coogan?

  And he has his glimmer terminal.

• 1:46:51Jordi Hays?

  But if somebody told you, "Hey, I'm gonna go to the desert with a bunch of people I don't know." All sort of western norms are thrown out the window. People are gonna be dressed up in, you know, lingerie or just naked. And then everybody's gonna do a bunch of drugs and have sex, you know, with strangers. You would say, "Hey, uh, I don't know, is like, that the best use of your time?

• 1:47:14Jordi Hays?

  Have you done hard drugs like that before? Like, should you combine hard drugs and sex with random strangers?" You'd be like, so...

• 1:47:21John Coogan?

  I don't think everyone does everything there.

• 1:47:24Jordi Hays?

  Right, but like the people...

• 1:47:26John Coogan?

  There are some people that just go and DJ and stuff.

• 1:47:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but let's, let's be honest. Like, the people that are coming back being like, "Dude, you got it." Those are the ones that have been, you know, occupied by the demons and are now, are now trying to spread that, right?

• 1:47:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:39Jordi Hays?

  So, anyways, I think like, if you just say it out loud, it all makes sense why maybe the average person shouldn't do it and they should just like go to church or something, you know? Like, try, try...

• 1:47:50John Coogan?

  Well, it's like the fork in the road meme. There's like Black Rock City and then there's Black Rock HQ.

• 1:47:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:55John Coogan?

  And you just wanna show up to Black Rock HQ and start grinding up the ladder.

• 1:47:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, it's almost like, you could go to the jungle and do hard drugs with a sketchy shaman or you could just put on a suit, right? And like, would putting on the suit give you the real effect that you wanted? Which is just like feeling good and just like looking good and just like doing good?

• 1:48:20John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:48:21Jordi Hays?

  Probably, right? Like, you could go to Burning Man or you could just put on a suit.

• 1:48:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:25Jordi Hays?

  And just like... Hit the spreadsheets, you know?

• 1:48:28John Coogan?

  Hit the spreadsheets.

• 1:48:28Jordi Hays?

  It's like, it's people that are like, I don't tip male waiters, like hit the oil rig.

• 1:48:33John Coogan?

  Hit the oil rig. I've never heard that.

• 1:48:37John Coogan?

  That's really funny.

• 1:48:38Jordi Hays?

  Or it's like, dude, don't go to, don't.

• 1:48:42Jordi Hays?

  It's like, don't go to, don't go to Black Rock City, like put on a suit and go to Black Rock.

• 1:48:47John Coogan?

  Go to Black Rock, yeah. I can't believe we just realized that. I've heard about Burning Man for so many years, never put it together. Black Rock's buying everything. Oh my god. They own the entire economy, including the burners apparently.

• 1:49:00John Coogan?

  Well, speaking of getting on the grindset, do you use a set of apps to build a second brain?

• 1:49:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. This, this, this is, um, this is so.

• 1:49:11John Coogan?

  It's the midway.

• 1:49:11Jordi Hays?

  So good. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:13John Coogan?

  Everyone, everyone has this at the midway.

• 1:49:14Jordi Hays?

  So I will say, I can't completely roast this because I use the Bear app, which is just like a notes app that I think is slightly better than notes. But I do have just like a bunch of notes and a lot of them get lost and it's fine and like.

• 1:49:30John Coogan?

  It is, it is easy to like roast this because it's like kind of like this over optimized thing, but um, like it's totally reasonable to like have some organization in your life.

• 1:49:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:40John Coogan?

  It's just like, don't go crazy with it.

• 1:49:41Jordi Hays?

  It'd be like somebody, like it'd be like a guy in Mad Men being like, check it out, all my filing cabinets, you know?

• 1:49:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:49Jordi Hays?

  And he's like, I use this one for like important, you know, documents and I use this one for like pictures of my family.

• 1:49:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:56Jordi Hays?

  It's like.

• 1:49:57John Coogan?

  I mean, there, there's something where it's like, I, the problem is, is that just like, from the context here, just seeing this in the form of a tweet, like I know that this person is like selling a course and like their like second brain is like their life and this is all they do is like organize.

• 1:50:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:15John Coogan?

  And it's like this self referential thing where like they're in the business of organization as opposed to what I really want to know is I want to know like, what is Elon's version of this? What's Zuck's version of this? I just want to know like, what are the actual.

• 1:50:27Jordi Hays?

  And I think it's.

• 1:50:28John Coogan?

  Black Rock, like what is on his phone?

• 1:50:30Jordi Hays?

  The high powered version of this is just like having really talented people around you that you delegate important things. Things too, right? It's like the executive assistant, it's the driver.

• 1:50:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:39Jordi Hays?

  It's the.

• 1:50:40John Coogan?

  It's really just one app, it's the phone, it's the phone book and you just call the person and they pick up because they know it's important.

• 1:50:46Jordi Hays?

  It's the COO that you've worked with for twenty years that like you're you're like, I'm not going to do this deal if if this person's not involved.

• 1:50:54John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, at the high level, I've I've always noticed that like. The really, the really big guys, they always just like, oh, I'm like, oh, I have an app for that. They have a person.

• 1:51:04Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:04John Coogan?

  It's like, I have DoorDash, they have a chef.

• 1:51:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:07John Coogan?

  It's like, oh, I have Zillow, they have a person that buys real estate for them.

• 1:51:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:11John Coogan?

  Full time person that just goes around hunting for real estate deals.

• 1:51:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:15John Coogan?

  Like, oh, like, you have, you know, the United app, they have a private jet with a pilot. They just call. And so it's just their phone book is like, they want to do something, okay, call the call the driver instead of Uber.

• 1:51:28Jordi Hays?

  I got, I got a good advice from.

• 1:51:31John Coogan?

  Maybe the billionaires aren't so similar.

• 1:51:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. You have apps, we have people.

• 1:51:36John Coogan?

  They still have access to like the same things, it's just like at a different level.

• 1:51:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I got really good advice from. Like.

• 1:51:47Jordi Hays?

  One of the the GPs at Andreessen after they invested, because I was like, oh, we we raised a lot of money now, we like, should be like, we're like a real company. And I was concerned because I'd never worked at a company the size of my company. So I had no like real like, well, how should the meetings flow?

• 1:52:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:07Jordi Hays?

  When should we do meetings like this? And so I was asking him, I was like, trying to figure out like. What the ideal like meeting structure throughout a week was, and he was just like, dude, just like build, just build the product, like just build.

• 1:52:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:20Jordi Hays?

  Like, sell the customers, build the product, like, none of that stuff really matters until, like, you know, and that's sort of like common Silicon Valley advice. But sometimes you need to hear it at the right time. And I would just ask like, I would just like ask this guy like, cool, like, like. How much money did you make in the last sixty days, not from selling courses on your second brain?

• 1:52:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:41Jordi Hays?

  And if the answer is like zero, then it's like, okay, this is just like.

• 1:52:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:45Jordi Hays?

  You're. Course bro.

• 1:52:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, the the the the course bro definition is always quantitative. It's did you make more money from content? I remember watching somebody who was doing real estate content like how to invest in real estate. And he was like, I made three million dollars and I'm a real estate guy in LA. I made three million dollars last year. And his breakdown was he made fifty K as a real estate broker and two million nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars as a YouTuber. Isn't that crazy?

• 1:53:10Jordi Hays?

  That's amazing.

• 1:53:11John Coogan?

  And he like put this, this was in like a CNBC like published like they broke down all of how how he makes it. And I was like, this is hilarious and ridiculous.

• 1:53:20Jordi Hays?

  Seems like the only person that would ever like make content like that.

• 1:53:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:25Jordi Hays?

  That actually makes money from business is like Alex Hormozi.

• 1:53:28John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:53:29Jordi Hays?

  Where he's like, here's how I like run my day. But then he's actually like owns a bunch of like profitable businesses.

• 1:53:37John Coogan?

  What else should we talk about?

• 1:53:41John Coogan?

  Light bulbs, probably got to wrap up soon. Oh, I wanted to do this, uh, I wanted to do this investment memos versus decks. I thought this would be a good Q and A. You're a big deck guy. Investment memos are trending. This, uh, this tweet from Mercedes Bent says, I'm seeing more founders put together investment memos as fundraising material. It's a good idea, but too many of them read like book report summaries. Founders, if you're going to write a memo, make sure it reads like a thesis, how you developed your thesis, your unique vision for the future, assumptions you make that could be tested, risk to your thesis, et cetera. So what's your take on on investment memos versus decks?

• 1:54:16Jordi Hays?

  Huge mistake to go into a round with no deck. Because the visuals are so important to the storytelling that if you just have this like text and like, you know, twenty paragraphs in a row, it's just like so boring. Because if you have one, one image, where are people's eyes going to go to? And I think people don't realize like, I'm not reading your memo. I'm not reading your master's thesis on your business before I've even met you. Because it doesn't matter if it's a good thesis, if I have a five, ten minute conversation with this person. And the person sucks, I'm not gonna, nothing's gonna happen, right? Like that happens all the time with investors where it's like the right idea and the wrong team and you can't invest.

• 1:54:56John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:54:57Jordi Hays?

  And so I think that the reason to write a memo. And this is, this is the core reason to write a memo is to give the investor something that they can copy and paste into make their own memo.

• 1:55:10John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:55:11Jordi Hays?

  So write it as though they're writing it to their investment committee, their partner meeting, whatever the thing that they're going to share around.

• 1:55:19John Coogan?

  Same thing for press releases. If you do the journalist's job by giving them an interesting story, giving them interesting quotes.

• 1:55:24Jordi Hays?

  Give them the angles.

• 1:55:25John Coogan?

  Give them the photos, give them the stuff, like make it easy for them, then they will be more likely to write.

• 1:55:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but I think like, I really think people are doing it on hard mode if they're almost all products are visual, whether it's software, hardware, some IRL thing, huge visual component and like, it doesn't give the visuals enough credit.

• 1:55:45John Coogan?

  There are also some VCs that just like demand a deck every time. And so it's like, why would you just pitch a subset of VCs by being hard on like, oh, I only do that?

• 1:55:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Well, I don't think any legitimate VC is saying, I won't talk, I won't, Keith.

• 1:55:59John Coogan?

  Keith Roy.

• 1:56:00Jordi Hays?

  Demands that.

• 1:56:01John Coogan?

  I'm pretty sure he, I'm pretty sure he, like generally, he won't take a meeting.

• 1:56:04Jordi Hays?

  But he will also.

• 1:56:05John Coogan?

  He won't take a meeting unless he sees a deck.

• 1:56:07Jordi Hays?

  He'll also invest 20 million into somebody he knows really well without any materials.

• 1:56:12John Coogan?

  True.

• 1:56:14Jordi Hays?

  So yeah, I just think like that debate always comes up and one is not, they just have like very different use cases. I also on average.

• 1:56:22John Coogan?

  In fact, building the memo can often like does lead to the deck being stronger when you build it, right?

• 1:56:28Jordi Hays?

  Totally, totally. But yeah, it's just like not one or the other. I think the, I think the right combination that feels a little bit less like try hard almost, because sometimes when somebody's like writing some like super extensive memo, you're like, you should be like doing like something else, like your seed stage, your pre-seed company, like you don't know any of this. But like FAQs, I think work really well where it's like, you basically create like, what are the 10 most common questions that somebody asks? How are you different than XYZ competitor?

• 1:56:58John Coogan?

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 1:56:58Jordi Hays?

  And you just answer all those. And then as you get more questions in your raise, you just add them to the list.

• 1:57:02John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:57:03Jordi Hays?

  And then by the end, you have this like document that you can just share with everybody.

• 1:57:06John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:57:06Jordi Hays?

  And then that like, again, is helping them do their jobs. So they're at their investment, their partner like meeting, talking about it. And somebody's like, well, we looked at this company and they're doing great. How is it different? And they're like, well, here's how it's different.

• 1:57:19John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:57:20Jordi Hays?

  So you're just like making the job easier for your. Potential investor who, if they invest, will become your partner. So you're already like, should be acting like you're on the team.

• 1:57:30John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:57:32Jordi Hays?

  So that's, that's how I would advise people to approach it.

• 1:57:36John Coogan?

  I like that. That's a good place to close it out.