EP 8: AMC’s Gold Mine, The Business of Memes, Glossier Article, and We’re Joined by Packy McCormick and Roseanne Wincek

3:34 - AMC Invested in a Gold Mine, Unfortunately Literally 8:16 - Can You Build a Business on Memes 19:03 - Roseanne Wincek Joins 21:27 - Glossier Article and How Takedown Pieces Are Cattier Than What the Takedown is For 41:17 - Google Employees Aren’t Happy Despite Excessive Foosball Table Access 46:57 - Remote Work Makes it Too Easy to Send Me Angry DMs Bloomberg - AMC bought a Gold Mine: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-15/amc-bought-a-gold-mine Adam Aron Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Aron Marc Andresen tweet: https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1504548145643995142?s=20&t=kxCISRROo_mtX1kn21OOGQ Packy Shopify/Apple tweet: https://twitter.com/packyM/status/1407008886863826946?s=20&t=kxCISRROo_mtX1kn21OOGQ Logan passing no Doordash/Airbnb: https://twitter.com/loganbartlett/status/1337055925371342848?s=20&t=kxCISRROo_mtX1kn21OOGQ Logan autograph tweet: https://twitter.com/loganbartlett/status/1500917755016409088?s=20&t=kxCISRROo_mtX1kn21OOGQ New hire asking for board seat: https://twitter.com/MarkBeylin/status/1499169946907164676?s=20&t=kxCISRROo_mtX1kn21OOGQ Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

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

• 0:03Logan Bartlett?

  Welcome to the eighth episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. I'm your host, Logan Bartlett, and I am joined today by my esteemed co-host, the George Costanzo of Venture Capital, Zach Kukoff, and a special guest appearance on the pod, Mr. Not Boring himself, Packy McCormick. How are we doing, guys?

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Packy, first ever guest on the pod. I mean, I really appreciate it. I was feeling left out from Ban Crypto, so to be the fourth white host on this podcast is really not.

• 0:31Logan Bartlett?

  That's right, yeah. What did you, what did we say before we came on? We're two Asian men away from being the Ban Crypto team, is that right?

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Two Asian men and one, one white man.

• 0:41Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. So, so for people listening, Nikita is on a flight, I think, down to Mexico for a vacation this week. So, we asked for a pinch hitter. Packy and I have known each other, actually, at this point, dating back 12-plus years, I think. We were, we were in New York together as young 22-year-olds, bright-eyed and not yet wise to the world. And somehow our paths have collided now into this, into this tech universe. So, yeah.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  We had some fun. We, we took party buses down to the beach together.

• 1:18Logan Bartlett?

  I feel like that was your, that was your original business, like.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  That was my original startup, yeah. It was, was, I would run party buses from New York to the Jersey Shore, to the Hamptons on the weekends. Logan would be sitting there, either in the house, once we got down, or sometimes, I think, even on the bus, on his laptop, doing investment banking work.

• 1:36Logan Bartlett?

  That's right. I feel like I stayed with your family once while we were down there. We had like a beach house that was, whatever, like 20, 22-year-olds or 23-year-olds.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  No, no, it was better than that. It was a two-sided house with, one side of the house was 35 girls and the other side of the house was 35 guys. It was, we were so much cooler then.

• 1:56Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, that, yeah, I can't believe we actually did that. That was, yeah, very, very interesting. But Packy, have you ever told the story? I mean, has the, has Throgo ever made an appearance at some point? And like how that all led to Not Boring as an entrepreneurial endeavor?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if it's necessarily a straight line led to Not Boring, although it helped me get a job at Breather, because our CEO is an iconoclast and didn't want, didn't want an investment banker, but because I had done some, like, really shitty startup, I think that, that helped startup, like, quotes, if you're listening at home. You know, really shitty thing on the side that helped me get the job. And then, you know, here we are six years later and I'm here. The other story we haven't told is that Logan and I also went to Alabama to watch, uh, watch my tide, it became my tide that weekend, just absolutely destroyed the Vols. And I've never seen Logan, or maybe anybody, as sad as he was sitting in the stands as Alabama just picked Tennessee.

• 2:50Logan Bartlett?

  Here I am, sitting in like this ridiculous 1996 Tennessee polo after, uh, after Tennessee had a good first round showing in the March Madness tournament. But I had actually, I had actually forgotten that. Sometimes on Facebook, that picture will reemerge of us in Alabama, like you and Kirk in, uh, in like Alabama gear, me in some oversized pants and, uh, and some Tennessee polo. Well, thank you for, uh, thank you for joining us. The first guest that we've had, well, um, I, I think the level of, you, you have a observational lens into this weird world that we live in that, um, I think, I think will bring in a unique angle here. So thanks for coming on.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  My pleasure. I, I hope not to disappoint. This will be fun.

• 3:34Logan Bartlett?

  So, uh, the first topic we wanted to hit this week is AMC, one of the OG meme stocks from a year ago, invested $28 million into Highcroft Mining Holding Corporation, which owns a 71,000 acre mine in Nevada. AMC reports that they are sitting on some 15 million ounces of gold deposits and some 600 million ounces of silver deposits. Their CEO, Adam Aaron, characterized the investment as a bold diversification move. He went on to say, "Our strategic investment being announced today is the result of having identified a company in an unrelated industry that appears to just be like AMC of a year ago." So went on, they got criticized by a bunch of, uh, people.

• 4:16Logan Bartlett?

  Michael Pachter of Web Bush called the move idiotic, specifically pointing to AMC's debt. He said, "It's embarrassingly stupid. By that, I don't mean investing in a gold mine is embarrassingly stupid. I mean that it's inappropriate for a movie theater to step so far out of their core business and into something completely unrelated that will not drive any traffic to theaters." Packy, do you have any, any thoughts on this as our, uh, as someone very attuned to the, uh, to the meme world of investing?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Malavine in one of the best articles that I've read recently on anything, not just this topic, compared it to kind of like the meme stock final exam, like 2022 was a lot less fun in the markets, 2021 was so much fun, there are meme stocks everywhere, there are SPACs everywhere, and this has everything. Highcroft was itself a SPAC that had some absurd projections about its silver and gold production that it would have in 2021. In 2022, it's fallen like deeply, deeply, deeply short of that. It actually isn't producing any silver or gold right now. And he also said he had this great line about Warren Buffett. He said, "One way to interpret this is that Adam Aron is the sort of Warren Buffett of

• 5:24Speaker 01

  meme stocks. Yes, sure, in the sense that he is now apparently building a diversified conglomerate of unrelated businesses, but also the basic way that Warren Buffett works is when he announces an investment in the stock, that stock goes up. He knows that, and companies know that, and he charges them for it." And I think it's a really funny way of viewing AMC's role. It's never going to work. Like, this falls apart so quickly, but it is funny to view AMC that way.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  I like, I'm with you, Packy. I just can't imagine a world where anyone ever looks at this outside of the lens of meme stock investing and thinks it's a smart choice. Like, it just doesn't make any sense for me at all.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you've said it there, like, outside of the lens of meme stock investing is just not a way that anybody would ever look at this, but I think that Highcroft's stock has already come down. It's still up 250% over the past couple of weeks, I guess, as whispers and their buying started getting out. So it's successful there. There's another piece of this, which apparently is they had a $5 million, $500 million offering ready to dump on retail as well. And so they're probably unloading some of that. And so they're hoping that the same thing that happens to an AMC happens here, which is a business that was in deep, deep, deep trouble, might actually raise the equity cash that it needs to raise to get out of that trouble. If they pull this off again, maybe there is an actual

• 6:45Speaker 01

  path where AMC just does this and that's its job, but it will be very interesting to see if retail falls for this.

• 6:50Logan Bartlett?

  It's pretty funny, this guy, Adam Aaron, like, I was looking up his bio and he seems like once upon a time, he was a pretty serious dude, like, he was a, he's a co-owner of the Sixers, he was their CEO before that, he was the president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line, he was the CEO of Vale Resorts, and like, I just, he's 67 years old and he went to Harvard, cum laude, like, government major, and defined himself as like, a strategy leaning into this crypto, or this meme stock world as a way of financing like, debt and to cover their obligations. I just wonder if he's sitting there being like, what the fuck did I get myself into? Just like rubbing his hand into his eyes, being like, I think there's a path here and it involves leaning into the joke and investing in gold, right?

• 7:35Logan Bartlett?

  Like, what's actually going through this guy's mind right now?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  I think COVID broke a lot of people's brains, and I can't even imagine being in the center of one of these huge meme stock plays. I can't imagine it, it doesn't just warp for the rest of your life the way that you view the world, and that any real hard work that he's put in, in his previous 66 years before this, seems kind of silly when you could just sit there and become a meme and make, and add billions and billions and billions of dollars to your market cap, so I think it's probably as much that as anything else.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  It's more depressing than silly, like, imagine how, what it feels like, imagine, by the way, like, you're starting your career right now, and the options are, do you want to come share to college and work really hard and build a traditional career? Or do you want to fuck around and find out and see if you can build a huge business that way? Like, I can't imagine being a fresh grad and not picking option B, fuck around and find out, when you look at the most, well, some of the most, at least, successful people in the modern economy, who have made phenomenal, phenomenal fortunes by fucking around.

• 8:33Logan Bartlett?

  Well, you can take the wrong lessons from Elon too, and be like, look, the richest man in the world is just fucking around on Twitter all day, forgetting that he launched a space company, an electric vehicle company, a solar company, and a boring company, but, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people do take that wrong, that wrong lesson.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  But I think for every Elon, there's 15 Adam Aaron, right? Like, how many people are gonna say, sure, I'll do the thing of working really hard, launching five different companies, and maybe on top, I'll sprinkle in some engagement, enthusiasm with the meme world, versus how people say, hey, the core of what I'm gonna do is be a fun meme, and maybe on top, I'll sprinkle in the occasional bout of hard work.

• 9:07Logan Bartlett?

  I'm actually kind of surprised there aren't more, like, this guy's 67 years old. He's kind of an old white man that, you know, went to Harvard from Philly. And I'm surprised, and then there's Elon on the other end of this extreme, who's this South African, multi-company entrepreneur, founder. And clearly, they're both leaning into jokes in very different ways, right? But there aren't that many founders in between, really. Like, there isn't a $4 or $5 billion public software company that I know of that's out there just, like, trolling with their stock or whatever. It's sort of like, there's one Elon, and then there's a handful of, like, random people at the edges. And so I wonder if there's going to be, like, more and more of these people that are embracing the shtick and leaning into this.

• 9:51Logan Bartlett?

  And I'm kind of surprised there haven't been to date.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  We know that there's an incredible amount of institutional pressure that gets put on you the closer you get to becoming a public company CEO. So the idea that anybody who is serious enough to start and grow a business could also be the right kind of weird to actually go out and run a meme stock or go out and actually run a meme engagement. It's sort of like threading a very small needle of people. I actually don't know if it's even structurally possible to get there.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I mean, to look at your Twitter, kind of before and after going to a larger fund, right? Like, you got way less fun.

• 10:23Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  I'm surprised you're looking to do this.

• 10:25Logan Bartlett?

  That's exactly, Zach. You know, Zach, Zach, Zach went one way, I went the other. I went from a, uh, a firm in which I had more constraints to one that liberated, uh, my ability to post on Twitter a little bit. And I, I will say, one of my partners gives me a hard time. He blames me for, like, breaking 10 VCs' brains. And now there's, like, all these shitty versions of, like, meme posters out there in VC. And he's always like, "This is your fault." He'll send me some terrible joke that someone's making, and he's like, "I actually personally blame you for this." Uh, and it's a pretty running bit internally.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Who do you think is, like, the worst at this?

• 11:01Logan Bartlett?

  The worst at posting on Twitter?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the worst at playing the Logan game.

• 11:06Logan Bartlett?

  The Logan game, yeah. I'm glad. I want to embrace that specifically. You know, I would say the, initially, the one that we've talked about in the past that just sort of willed their way into it, obviously, was Mark Andreessen. That sort of was out there and it seemed like went from not posting at all to like discovering what a meme was. But the guy's obviously very bright and so his feedback loop and how he iterated on it, like the progress he made in a very short time. He started with this very raw MVP of shitposting and then like he took feedback and actually built up. And so now it's actually far more entertaining. When we started this podcast eight weeks ago or whatever, it was at the like peak of cringe. We could probably come up with some like, you know, slope of enlightenment or some Gartner like rise of where it was. But he's actually gotten to be a decent follow with good entertainment.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  I actually would argue that even peak cringe Mark was pretty good. Like if Pac usually asking who are the worst of the worst? Like even in Mark's trough of disillusionment, right? I would still take Mark posting over like 80% of the VCs who we know, even with the help of ghostwriters, are still not as funny. I'll put it this way, I don't feel like they're as funny as me post joining a regulated group, let alone Logan, who is in the Wild West of like shooting from the hip.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  I mean, I think the fun thing about Mark's tweeting was, you know, Jack came out in that battle and was just having more fun, clearly, doing it than anybody on the A16Z side. And then it looks like they're just like, wait, we could just have fun and win this thing. And then Mark has just had as much fun as humanly possible on Twitter for the past couple of.

• 12:34Logan Bartlett?

  It's amazing. I mean, it's honestly, it's amazing you get to that point where you just really don't care what anyone thinks. And the weird feeling that these people have with millions of followers, just that they put something out and the number of people that have notifications like are instantly engaging with it. It must be such a weird hit of dopamine to your brain, like to have this and then instantly like Elon posts something and every single thing he posts have hundreds of thousands of likes and like instant engagement. I just think how weird that must feel as a thing. And so I actually like that Andreessen's like having a good time, you know, messing around. Now, I think at times he walks the line of bully, which I've certainly been accused of as well.

• 13:16Logan Bartlett?

  But I, you know, I think he has a much bigger pulpit and more influence than I do in that regard. And so at times I feel like antagonizing some of these founders isn't the best look, but yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  I mean, we know that he's having a good time. I will say, we're gonna talk about Glossier later, but did you guys see what he posted about Glossier, where he posted a screenshot of his shopping cart, adding a bunch of stuff after the article came out? Like, that's-

• 13:39Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Right, that's what I love. I love that kind of interesting posting. Like, there's a way to do it that, I think, doesn't feel like bullying, right? There's a way to do it to use the bully pulpit that's supportive. And certainly, we all missed the mark on that, but hopefully, uh, your brain isn't broken enough by the constant dopamine hit of having thousands of people simping for you in your replies, that you don't forget how to be positive.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I can speak as someone who has like, three or so times as many followers as Logan. It's, it's a real kind of constant dopamine-

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Did you see how subtle, you know, subtle, Packy, work that out? It's like, as someone who's actually far more popular than Logan Bartlett myself, I can tell you, my brain isn't nearly as broken as his.

• 14:20Logan Bartlett?

  Packy, I can only ima- I mean, you've had quite a glow up here, though. I, I can only imagine the early days of shouting into the void here, now two years later. I mean, what was your Twitter follower count, whatever, two years ago? Was it, did you have a couple thousand?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  So when I started, like, writing, and I did a, per my last email first, when I started doing that, I think I had like, 300 followers. And I-

• 14:40Logan Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Tweeted about, like, the Eagles, uh, and stuff like that. And then, it took a year, and maybe I got to like, 500 followers, and then I started doing Not Boring full-time, and then it's, it's kinda grown. But, it does get weirder, right? Like, you know, everybody always says that over 10,000 is where it shifts, and for me, and you'll learn this one day, maybe, over 100,000 is where it really, it really felt like it shifted in a pretty big way. Um-

• 15:05Logan Bartlett?

  What was the shift? Like, what was the, what broke your brain? I mean, I know, obviously, you're not the same person, you know, your, your ego is so big, and your, your head, and all this stuff, as you were-

• 15:14Speaker 01

  A lot of brain padding.

• 15:16Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah. Just, is it, everyone gassing you up every time you post something, or what?

• 15:21Speaker 01

  It's not that as much. The, the thing that I think is tough, is that things leave your, like, circle of people who know you-

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  -much, or quickly. And so the one that actually broke my brain, because there was like, it was a very weird one where I made a joke about Apple or Shopify being worth more than Apple, just based on like their share prices. And the amount of people who got on there and called me an idiot for not understanding the difference between a share price and a market cap. And like, just little things like that.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Where I know that I know the difference between those things, and it still kind of felt weird and hurt a little bit. It was, that was the one where I was like, wow, this can get really weird.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  I've had a couple of those. I had one where I tweeted something about superhuman. Remember the controversy a couple of years ago over the superhuman email location tracking?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  I tweeted something to the effect of like, you know, every marketing tool you've ever been exposed to is exposing your location. Superhuman's not the problem here. Something like very mild to that effect. I had people sending me like death threats over that one. That was like the worst, the context bubbles ever been broken. And then the other harmless side, it's like, I did the dumb tweet about, you know, Jeff Bezos can give every American a billion dollars or whatever, some like dumb thing like that. And that went a lot of people, a lot of math explainers coming into my mentions, hoping to teach me basic arithmetic.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  I know. Part of it is like the personal thing where you're like, no, no, that's not what I meant. And part of it is like, you weep for humanity a little bit, that like, there's so many people out there who, one, both don't get the joke, but then like, two, are big enough assholes to feel the need to like, tell you how wrong you are. It like, it does make you a little bit sad about humanity.

• 16:52Logan Bartlett?

  That's, I always really enjoy that though. Like the circle of, when you get to a certain amount of followers, that there's a circle of people that are in on the joke and like it. And then you, you feel it when it's escaped that cocoon. And like, you know, I remember I posted an email there, I think on the same day Airbnb and DoorDash went public. And I posted a fake email that I was passing on both of the CEOs at the same time, right? And I was like, listen, my G5 wifi is cutting out. And like, so I just figured I would consolidate the past emails. Um, and then I tweeted out like, so proud to have been there from the early days or something. And it started and you could see it. It was like starting to get there and you could tell it was kind of taken off. And I knew it was going to hit some escape velocity in which people were going to get very upset about it.

• 17:37Logan Bartlett?

  And so I leaned into the joke and then I got people. This is very meta, but then I had people upset that I wasn't correcting people and like embracing information and stupidity on the internet, right? And it's just like, all these things end up being very meta and navel gazy.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  You had one of those about this even podcast where I saw that happen. You tweeted something that was like, obviously a fake text between you and a drizzly delivery person. You know, offering to give your autograph as a host of the pod. Remember, like, I saw that in my timeline a couple of times. People kept engaging with it earnestly and I'm like, how? Like, I could not believe someone read that and thought, well, maybe Logan's ego is so big that he does think the drizzly guy is.

• 18:16Logan Bartlett?

  Honestly, I mean, everyone thinks it's like, you know, life of a podcaster is just like, women being thrown at you and, you know, parties all the time and all of that. And I get how you could be confused about the autographs that people would want from you as like, you know, a, as a very modestly successful podcaster. But I thankfully have been able to keep my, keep my, you know, roots about me.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's funny. It's, it's us, the Red Scare Girls and the Come Town Boys who just constantly are being chased by people everywhere we go.

• 18:45Logan Bartlett?

  Are you not the Come Town Boys?

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, did you not realize? We actually are, are part of the shit the dirtbag left as well. People always forget that about us.

• 18:54Logan Bartlett?

  Roseanne Wincek, who has been a longtime friend of mine, and we've collaborated on a number of deals over the years. She was a partner at IVP for, for a number of years and now has recently started her own fund, Renegade Partners. Roseanne, do you want to give a quick, quick intro?

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Hey guys, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I've known Logan. And we used to hang out a lot more when he was like bugging me to mark up his deals. Doesn't do that too much these days.

• 19:25Logan Bartlett?

  That's what Tiger.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  Really? No, now you should be marking up mine because we like switched.

• 19:29Logan Bartlett?

  I know, I know.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I was previously at IBP. I'm one of the two founders of Renegade Partners, an early-stage venture firm.

• 19:38Logan Bartlett?

  And Roseanne sat on the board of Glossier for four years?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Uh, we, I invest, we invested like September of 2016 and I left at the beginning of 2019.

• 19:50Logan Bartlett?

  Got it.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  And Roseanne, how big do you have to get in terms of AUM to be a target of your very own hippies?

• 19:57Speaker 03

  I don't know. If you guys could find out for me, like, that would be great.

• 20:00Logan Bartlett?

  Hopefully we'll get some, we'll get some contributions from people weighing in on like when they're really chomping at the bit.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  To take me down.

• 20:06Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. As, as much fun as we thought, three straight white men weighing in on the issues of female founders being written about hippies. We thought it made sense to have someone else with a little more credibility on the subject join us here. So, Roseanne, thanks for coming on.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. You have fancy, you have a whole fancy setup for the mic there, too.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  I do. I, I don't know how much you guys can see, but I joked that this is like my OnlyFans setup because I have like the.

• 20:32Logan Bartlett?

  Okay, okay. Uh, that's great. Uh.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  And also, we, we just added a woman to the team here faster than Bane did, I have to say.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  That's gonna get a little bit subtle. You can't make that joke.

• 20:48Logan Bartlett?

  No, no. Listen, I, so last week, just for a little inside baseball, uh, so last week we had a bit. Lydia Helton had already joined Bane Crypto from our team. And so we were talking about it last, last week. I knew she had joined. And so we had this like extra three minutes of the pod, sort of talking about her joining and me being like, guys, why didn't you just wait a fucking week to announce her joining, right? And then I realized we were gonna run it before she actually joined. And so I didn't want to like front run her announcement. And so we had to cut it. But lost to the archives is, uh, is, yeah, one of our, uh, one of our former employees joining, joining Bane Crypto. So.

• 21:27Logan Bartlett?

  Good. Well, let's dive in. Well, Roseanne, uh, thank you for, for joining us. I, uh, I, I think one of the things that we wanted to get your, uh, insider take on was, uh, an article from. Business Insider this week, and it was about a company in which you were formerly, or were invested and formerly on the board, entitled How Glossier Founder Emily Weiss's Tech Dreams Derailed the Hottest Millennial Beauty Brand. So I'll read a little bit here for people that didn't have a chance to read it, and we'll link in the show notes, but they went through and said Glossier is valued at 1.8 billion. Financial success belied a sometimes chaotic, unstable work environment, according to 17

• 22:10Logan Bartlett?

  former employees who has recently, as January, worked at Glossier's New York headquarters. They describe a founder who sometimes overvalued employees' social media clout. Editors note on this, like, social media is pretty important, obviously, so I, I mean, you know, if it's Twitter followers, then I think I'm on board. But in appearance and whose years-long obsession with transforming the beauty brand into a tech company sparked internal tensions. New hires from Facebook and Amazon clashed with veteran employees, while Weiss's nebulous vision for an in-house social e-commerce platform led to stalled progress and wasted resources, they said. So they kind of went through the whole thing. I guess this is a little bit of a, it's a little bit of a recurring trope at this point

• 22:52Logan Bartlett?

  that female founders get these takedown pieces that ultimately get run about their business, and it feels like something that seems to happen too often. So Roseanne, would love to get your take about how media covers female founders in general, or Glossier specifically?

• 23:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I'd rather talk in general. I mean, I just think, I don't know, I tweeted about it yesterday, but like, I didn't want to like retweet it or give it like any additional, like that, like article any additional pull or reach, not that I have like followings like you guys, right? I am like, you know, hanging out like 3,000 Twitter followers.

• 23:28Logan Bartlett?

  You missed a lot. I missed a long bit of us all navel gazing about our Twitter followers, so that's actually going to work in very nicely.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  I don't know who this "we all," you missed Packy navel gazing about his Twitter followers. Man comes over, I'm on one minute, and he's like, "Oh, by the way, I have a fuck-ton more followers than the rest of you have combined," so you all get fucked on this pod.

• 23:49Logan Bartlett?

  Packy McCormick, 50x of Roseanne's Twitter followers, yes. Wow, that is, the fact is actually very true, yeah. Yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  First time I call you like 50.

• 23:59Logan Bartlett?

  Good point. Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  So 50x Packy from now on.

• 24:03Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. That's we'll do it. We'll, we'll, we'll do an intro.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  10x engineers, 50x Packys.

• 24:08Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  I mean, I don't, I feel like this trope is just so, A, like, how is this even news, right? Like, all this stuff, like, A, they're always female takedown. They're always female founder takedowns. Like, yes, there have been male founder takedowns, but they have to do with, like, generally, like, fraud, right? Or, uh, you know, when there's, like, real bad things happening. I feel like female takedowns are just about, like, oh, like, disgruntled or, like, former employees that are no longer with the company, speaking on the record anonymously. Like, how is that news? And, like, people are trying to do hard things, and it's hard, and not all of them work. Like, what do you want somebody to do?

• 24:45Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, and I think.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Or, I mean.

• 24:48Logan Bartlett?

  When we talk about the list of, like, the recurring nature of this, so I, I compiled a little list here, and all of them are different, right? But it is, I mean, as a percentage of, of negative stories that get covered about founders, uh, it's definitely disproportionate. And so the ones that I came up with, Theranos is obviously kind of its own beast, but then, uh, Away, uh, the luggage company, The Wing, Outdoor Voices, Modern Health, Spring Health, Museum of Ice Cream. So it's honestly, I mean, it's probably a smaller fraction of female founders that haven't had a takedown piece written about them at this point.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  But it feels like you could write something about any founder, right? Because Roseanne, to your point, like, every startup is hard to build. We all know that. Like, every startup is gonna have cultural rough patches. So the head scratcher is, like, if you assume that every startup could have a piece written like this, the motivation to go after only female CEOs or predominantly female CEOs, it, it makes it feel far more malicious.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  I mean, I think it just, like, sounds like more salacious. And what's so funny to me about all of these is that, like, they always bring up, like, pettiness and cattiness. And I'm like, this article is just pure pettiness and cattiness. Like, hot, huddled, like, what the hell, right? Like, it's like, you're, this is like what you're complaining about, and in the, in that, exactly, and this is your medium, right? It's like, it's just so, like, ridiculous to me. And actually, I remember, like, when Away happened. Like I had two of my male CEOs text me and be like, shit, I've written like, I've written slacks like that of like,

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  PTO until, you know, uh, until like, you know, there aren't like, until there's no longer a ticket backlog. And they were like, is some, like, is somebody going to publish this? And I'm like, no, don't worry. Right? Like, you're a dude. Um, but I don't understand like why, like, I don't know. I don't understand like why, like, why people also think it's an interesting story. Um.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  The Spring Health one was the least interesting ever to me. Like, you know, like at least there were fired employees and some of the other ones. And the Spring Health one, it was really kind of just like, the CEO and the marketing person were like kind of pushing back and forth on what the marketing goal should be. And like, he wanted to sandbag it and she wanted to be more aggressive, which is, I think has never not happened between a CEO and a head of marketing in the history of companies. And that was like the core piece there. And like, that his team had worked hard then because of that. Like, there was nothing in that one. That was absurd. But I mean, the way when my brother actually was at away when, when that one happened, he was totally, totally team Steph, uh, in that, that whole kind of situation. Cause he was like, look, the people who got fired, many of them got fired for a reason because they were like attacking other employees.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  The, it's the CS lead who got, you know, who was kind of upset in the story, wasn't hitting his numbers at all. Like there's very clear metrics. Like there's all this stuff that happens that obviously doesn't get reported on. And then the story is like this female founder is, is, you know, out of control and it just is, is wild that that story keeps happening.

• 27:46Logan Bartlett?

  I, so in full disclosure, I was, I, I've known Steph for, uh, probably as longer than I've known Packy. Uh, and so this is dating back, whatever, 12 years. And, uh, was actually an investor in, in a way. And so, I mean, she's, she's a friend of mine. And as all this stuff was going on, it's just, it's, it's, it's ridiculous. The same terms that get used for men, like get flipped on their head for women. And I don't think it's just reporters doing it. If you go read Glassdoor, I think some of the terms that employees will also use, like about the, about the female leader, it's like a male will be irreverent versus a female will be vulgar, right? Like a, uh, male will be introverted. A female will be standoffish. Like one will be hard charging. The other will be like a psycho, right?

• 28:31Logan Bartlett?

  And it's like all these things that are just veiled in more negative sentiment and how people talk. And then the, These are coming from somewhere, right? There's like kind of a formula that exists. It feels like there's a bunch of focus on the rise. I feel like in general, society only wants to hear the rise and the fall. Like, those are the only stories that exist. It's like, you build someone up, and you take someone down, and then you build someone up again. And that's true of Tiger Woods, it's true of Kanye West, it's true of, you know, whoever, right? Lance Armstrong. And so I feel like the way these narratives play out is like, build up expectations, wait for company to hit speed bumps, like, find former employees, get them to talk, and like, particularly if they're recently laid off. And then like, the culture gets compared to Mean Girls.

• 29:16Logan Bartlett?

  And then you magnify like, normal business things, like, put a microscope on it and take it out of context, right? And like, all of them sort of follow that same formula in some way.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  And like, I just don't understand how that's like, compelling anymore, right? And I think a big part of it too is that like, in that rise, I kind of got into it with somebody on Twitter about this this morning, like, you know, it's like, oh, when people get all this attention on the rise, it's like, it's because they're made out to be these like, perfect, like, godlike humans. And then it's like, no, they're just people and they're flawed, like, we're all flawed, right? Like, we all have ups and downs, and like, this is all hard. And, but I think like, it's like, you can't have one without the other, right? Like, you need to have that like, hype cycle to like, get these people up there. Because otherwise, it's not interesting to tear them down if nobody knows who they are.

• 29:58Logan Bartlett?

  Roseanne, specifically about Glossier, like, Emily Weiss had this very polished image, right? And to some extent, she represented so many idealistic, even the article, it sounds like, you know, employees treated her in this messianic kind of way, right? And they just so looked up, they followed into the gloss all the way through. And so, is it, is it somewhat that these reporters want to report on any deviation from like, the narrative? Or is it just that, is it, is it like that, hey, it's not as perfect as it seems? And they want to poke it in some way? Or do you have any perspective on that?

• 30:38Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I think a lot of this is that like, when, like, when the press kind of presents like, any of these people, like, any of these leaders, to, you know, like, you know, publicly, it's like, everything is perfect about them, right? Like, they have these like, perfect homes and perfect lives and, you know, perfect partners and children and families and all of these things, right? And so, it's, you know, it just kind of like, I think it just opens the door for all of these like, pokes and holes. And I think that- I mean, I just like would think, I think when you like interview, right? Like, I mean, Pachyder earlier points about like a way, right? When you interview former staff or people who aren't, you know, who aren't performing at their jobs at like anonymously, right? Like, they can say whatever they want because it's not going to be tied back to them.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Like, you know, those, to me, those are just cheap shots.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting. This is not a point about any of these companies specifically, but more generally, like, the one thing I will say is startups, we all know, use vision so much to hire that when you sell a bunch of 22-year-old fresh grads on changing the world and convince them that they're going to be making a major impact, and it doesn't matter what the company actually does, right? But that's the pitch you've given them. Whenever you ultimately come back to them and have anything that goes off the rails culturally, an employee who underperforms, whatever the normal speed bumps that we know companies face are, it becomes magnified because the expectation has been set so high.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  So not, this is not about glossy or any company in particular, but like, we know, certainly in Logan and I and Roseanne and all of our portfolios, like, we know folks use the lure of vision to get people to come work for them versus going and collecting a check at Fang.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  I mean, I think it's not only like, yes, people sell vision and also like entrepreneurs as a class of humans like have to be compelling and have to be people that, you know, others want to follow. But also, you know, when you are hiring a bunch of 22-year-olds and they've never had, like, this is their first or maybe second jobs. Like, if you think about like, oh, what's my worst job experience in this? Or like, you know, what's the, my job experience and this is 100 or 50% of it, right? Like, everything feels like a big deal, right? And you feel like old person like me and like, you just kind of start rolling with the punches because you realize like, this shit happens all the time, right?

• 32:50Logan Bartlett?

  That's what I think is so interesting about these, these things is like what the reporting on, for the most part, it's like normal business stuff that you could talk about a small company. And so it always sounds very, uh, just like, like an alien has dropped into startup culture. And it's like, everything that gets reported makes it sound like it's this sensational thing. But I feel like the reporters are just so outside of like how startups actually run. And to some extent, I don't know, I mean, I was, I, I got such a kick out of some of the stuff they reported on in this. But like, for example, they, they went on like a full paragraph about how clean a desk needed to be. Or they they spoke for a while about, I'll just read the excerpt.

• 33:33Logan Bartlett?

  "Inside a sprawling executive conference room that Weiss often worked from, around showstopping fish tank that bulged out from the wall, often sat empty. I think it had fish in it for a short period of time before they were taken out or died, a former employee said, adding that the tank had water filtration issues. Sometimes a paper insert from a photo of marine life was placed instead." And it's like, what are we talking about?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  At the time, that was a funny joke that somebody in the office played and like, put up a picture of a fish. It wasn't like an evil corporate thing.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was like, you know what? Let's kill the fish and then let's put like some art of fish to remind everybody.

• 34:12Logan Bartlett?

  Do you think, do you think, are they like trying to build a metaphor of like, you know, like, is this supposed to be something that they tie back of like, life is, you know, startup life is short and fish don't survive and neither might startups? Or is it just-

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Were there something fishy going on at Glossier?

• 34:27Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  No, I'm just like, I, Logan, I think your first point is like spot on. It's like, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, these people, they use Slack and they'll email after 5pm. And oh my God, that's a startup, right? Like, I think it's like, or it's like, oh, there's a, like, there are tons of companies, tons of companies that make you have your desk be cleaned, right? Or that won't let you talk on your desk. Like, it's not like that's new or been like introduced everywhere. There's plenty of companies that like had fish tanks that don't have fish in them anymore. There are lots of fish tanks in the world that no longer have fish. Like, how is that news work?

• 34:56Speaker 02

  But this is the problem, right? If you're, if you, if your job is to go out and find sensationalistic stories, and Packy, as the only quasi-journalist here, I'd be curious to get your take. But like, if your job is to go out and find sensationalistic stories and you tweet every morning, "I'm eager to hear from X employees of company Y or company Z," right? And, and all you get are comments from employees who have left this company, voluntarily or otherwise, of course you're gonna only hear ridiculous shit. You're not talking to people who are happy. And we know the silent majority of these employees are probably perfectly content in their jobs, not going and talking to folks who are reaching out to them on Twitter.

• 35:32Speaker 03

  Or they're, I'm sure they're getting reached out to by people who are happy or have good things to say, but that's just

• 35:37Speaker 02

  I don't even know if they are. I actually don't even know if they are. What do you mean?

• 35:41Speaker 03

  I'm sure in their reach outs, they like get some people who are positive.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  I tend to, I mean, I'd be curious to think like, if you tweeted, if you're a reporter and you tweet, I want to hear from X employees of company Y about crazy stories, right? Or about, or how is your experience working? The kind of person who's motivated to reach out, I have to imagine it's like 90, 10 negative, positive.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  And it's also what I would imagine happens is there's probably a group chat of those former employees going on where they're like, hey, this person reached out. Are you going to talk? Are you going to talk? And so I do think there's like, kind of that social kind of reinforcement that happens where like the group of people who are negative and fired and have nothing to lose, all tell each other that they're going to go on. And then people who are there and happy are like, I'm not going to risk my job that I like.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Talk to Insider about their 17th female hit piece in a row, which by the way, the last two were Insider. I don't know how many of those on the list are Insider pieces. They also, I think, found a formula here and like the

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Really cynical view of this is not just like the, to take down of the woman piece sells. Cause you know, that's kind of on all of us. We, you know, we read these pieces and they write what we read. But the other thing is I think there's a meta point now where they know that they're going to get everybody pissed off. And that Glossier article had a hundred times more readers than if it weren't a hit piece on a female CEO for the 50th time in a row, because everybody's talking about that point. And so everybody's reading it now.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  I hate to talk about the business incentive, but think about the incentive for the reporter too, right? I'm going to write my hit piece on company X. I'll sell my book proposal about company X, if they're influential enough. I'll get my Brian Koppelman Showtime show about company X, right? And maybe God willing, I'll win an Oscar. Like that's the, or whatever, an Emmy. Like I, I don't know that that's necessarily what's at play in this specific story, but like, there certainly is a pipeline of negative coverage to book proposal to television that we've seen play out.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Out of the glass.

• 37:28Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. Don't, don't, yeah, don't give people shortcuts of how to, how to come up with stuff here. I think, I mean, honestly, this is the way I feel about social media in general, but media especially, is like, it's actually a reflection of us and of society in so many ways. And so the reason that there are these, it's like so self fulfilling, right? And we're talking about it now. And Roseanne, you did a good job of like, not sharing the thing, but it's totally circular and it compounds on itself of like, they wouldn't keep doing these if they didn't keep getting attention if it wasn't good for the business, right? And so that's why I always feel like I'm a Facebook defender, because I'm like, well,

• 38:08Logan Bartlett?

  maybe humanity wasn't meant to connect all the weirdos together, right? And like, maybe that's on, maybe that's on humanity. And I realized Facebook should do a better job of like, trying to constrict flow of information and all that. But I was like, we need to acknowledge that there are like, a lot of fucking freaks that exist in the world. And like, connecting them with other freaks, isn't going to lead to good outcomes, right? And so I think these are all kind of go back to business incentives.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  It's that. And there's also like, there's algorithms that like, are fairly easy, like, it kills me now. And I've tweeted about it recently, like, it kills me now that it's so easy to say, here's 10, anything, colon, on Twitter, and then do a thread on it. And it's going to get thousands and thousands of likes. And there's a disappointing amount of humans who are like, just down to go play into that format in order to, to grow. And so I think like, as, there's like, some relationship between how easy it is to figure out the algorithm, and then like, just how many people are gonna go do what the algorithm says, no matter what that thing is, uh, which I think probably is a play, there's like, some meta algorithm to play with the inside of Facebook too.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Well, I think our like, I think social media is like, such a great, like, it's like, a perfect reflection of like, our brains, right? Because like, basically, like, the things that get us riled up are all the, like, all the stuff that like, hits our amygdala, right? Our like, little animal brain that only knows how to be angry, like, doesn't have any critical thought. Like, it loves to get stuff like, really, like, that's like, short and fast, right? And like, just piss you off, right? And that's like, that's what's engaging, right? So it's just like, I don't know, I feel like it's... Such a like, yes, a reflection of humanity to your point, Logan, but also just like a reflection of like, yeah, our brains are not ready for like, are not have not evolved to this. And basically, it's just like an anger.

• 39:47Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, nuance gets lost in everything here, but I insider is just waiting, chomping at the bit to take down some female influencers. So, Roseanne, I hope you can get there. Yeah, just so they can continue to drive clicks.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  That's why I keep my Twitter follower count low so that, you know.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  That's cancellation.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  She's gonna take me down. Nobody cares.

• 40:09Logan Bartlett?

  You have to get through a certain point pretty quick because you run the risk in the like some thousand or like some thousands of followers, you really run the risk of being canceled. But then you get to the, you know, some point that you can just power through it, right? And people forget. So, Roseanne, anything else that you want to hit on this? Like any points you want to convey that we didn't sort of get to?

• 40:29Speaker 03

  I don't know. I mean, actually, guys, like you led warm my heart today because, you know, this conversation was like the conversation that like, the groups like groups of women are having all the time. And like, here you guys say it.

• 40:39Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, that's good. Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Let's definitely. Telling us the best male feminists in the world in the clip this week. That's like, just make sure we keep that just in circulation, please.

• 40:50Logan Bartlett?

  My pink hat over here that.

• 40:53Logan Bartlett?

  Four white guy hosts, but like really good.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  But like really good. We're the but we're some of the good ones, Packy. Don't worry.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  Not on that.

• 41:02Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, that's actually my brand is not like B C's, but also not like the other men, you know, I'm like, I'm just different than that. So, another thing we wanted to hit this week where Google employees, CNBC had an article about Google employees are becoming unhappy with pay, promotion and execution, survey results show. So, Google's annual employee survey came out called Google Geist, and it showed that a growing number of staffers don't view their pay packages as fair or competitive with what they can make in a similar role elsewhere. They're also questioning their employer's ability to execute. The surveys were taken in January and released to employees last week. CNBC reviewed the results from

• 41:42Logan Bartlett?

  the company overall as well as individual groups. In addition to this, Google is about to bring most of their employees back into the office. The numbers here briefly, only 46% of survey respondents said their compensation is competitive compared to similar company, similar jobs at other companies. That was down 12% from a year earlier. And 56% said their pay is fair and equitable, which was a drop of 8% from the year prior. So I will say something in this in general is, so I think you guys know we have a TikTok presence as well. And we made a joke about Google engineers being privileged in their pay packages and their benefits and all that.

• 42:26Logan Bartlett?

  And I'll tell you, that is a group that will get very riled up. We kicked the hornet's nest and we got a lot of comments back from people. It was, it was very angry. So do you guys have any opinions on this on Google?

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Who are the 50% of people at Google who think they can make more money for working three hours a day somewhere else? Like, I love my Google friends, I really do. But like, one of my Google buddies, who now has since left and is a founder, when he was a PM at Google, he was rolling in around 10:30, 11:00, getting in a quick workout and breakfast, doing maybe two or three hours of work, right? Getting a haircut on campus or doing laundry, whatever, then leaving by like four to beat traffic. What is the job that pays you like mid-six figures to work four hours a day somewhere else? And can we all have that job? Because I would love to find out what it is.

• 43:17Logan Bartlett?

  I was gonna say, the thing doing the most work in all of this was the similar, similar role elsewhere. Nobody else has a similar role to what Google does. I was talking to some of these a couple of weeks ago. And this is not like revolutionary, but it was like by far the company that could slash the highest percentage of its employee base and not see a single bit of hit to the business is Google. That you could probably, you could probably cut Google down to what? 500 employees and probably even less and retain like 98% of the performance of the business? So it's just like very funny that they have all these people kind of hanging out, doing nothing at Google.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Hey, there's probably

• 43:56Speaker 01

  complaining about it.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  There's probably a direct correlation between like amount of internal company drama and employee free time. Like if your employees have so much time, they can get into like message wars on the internal message board, they probably aren't working as hard as they could somewhere else.

• 44:13Logan Bartlett?

  That's always my favorite trope. By the way, there's always videos about like boomer worker, uh, talking to young worker. And it's like, hey, I think I'm going to take this weekend off because I'm gonna, uh, drop dead. And then the, like, young employees like, so I think a VP title is probably commiserate with my work. And I'm just wondering after three or six months, what's your promotion cycle, right?

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. By the way, Logan, to your point, do you guys remember that Twitter thread that was going around of the guy who interviewed the startup founder who interviewed the kid? And he was like, the, the like 22 year old asked him for a board seat as part of the negotiation for an IC role?

• 44:47Logan Bartlett?

  Yes. I honestly, you have to shoot your shot with that stuff. I, I honestly, I think if someone came in to me and said like, hey, you know, I would like to own half the LP relationships. I'd be like, well, it's an interesting ask. I mean, no, obviously, but it's an interesting, I respect the ask, right?

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Logan's future analysts are gonna be like, I actually want to be on management committee. So how do we make that happen? Like, I really would like to be part of the management company now.

• 45:11Logan Bartlett?

  Is it a two or three year path to, uh, yeah, to investment committee on this? You know, it's, it's interesting though. I mean, I, one of the things that was kind of buried in all of this is that Google is bringing people back to work in person, right? And I, I do think that's going to be particularly interesting of, I was talking to a recruiter recently and they were saying, you know, a lot of people, uh, not only have people joined into remote work, right? Over the course of the last, whatever, two years, but there's actually a lot of people that have entered the workforce, having never been a part of office culture at all, right? And so for us, it's like, hey, this distance thing that we remember and we remember all the benefits and trade offs. But like, it's

• 45:53Logan Bartlett?

  interesting of getting people to actually go back into the office. It's going to be funny to see how lavish the perks are that they have to like, you know, the foosball doesn't really work as like the only thing you can use anymore. It's going to need to be, I mean, I don't know where Google could take it to, but they have massages back when in-office culture was like a normal thing. Like, what are they going to need to do to get these employees back in office now?

• 46:18Speaker 02

  I think that's one way of looking at it. The flip side is if you're starting your career remote, how lonely must that be? Like, if I was starting my career in a remote work sense, I would be desperate. In fact, I am desperate to go back to an office every day because I would miss, or I would crave the ability to talk to other people who do this job or do my job in a, in a relative way.

• 46:39Logan Bartlett?

  I'm laughing like craving human touch. Like I would crave, you know, I just want to be around humans. Honestly, the remote work absolutists, it's such an interesting thing. Talk about another like hornet's nest to kick, but we've, we've walked into that before and there's so many people that I got notes when we talked about remote work that someone said, "Love the pod, but you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about with remote work." And I was like, "Oh, interesting." I mean, there's a lot of things I don't know what I'm talking about, but like, you know, I'm a man with a microphone, so obviously I deserve a podcast, right? And so it's, but it's just so funny how angry people, of all the topics I've gotten like backlash on, remote work and then Google, like culture are the two that I've gotten people by far the most angry at me.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  I get the most toxic takes about remote work. I had a tweet on viral where I tweeted something along the lines of if you're a fresh grad coming out of undergrad and you're starting your career remotely, you're probably taking a career hit if you work remote versus working in person. And the amount of people, first of all, the amount of 22-year-olds, to my point a second ago, who DM me privately and were like, "Yeah, I'm feeling the work hit," was astronomical. The amount of people who were like posturing for likes in my replies by talking about, you know, "I'm an evil person for thinking about to go into the office every day," it was insane. I couldn't believe the backlash. And then I couldn't believe the gap between the people who were actually living this, who were craving the ability to go in office and be mentored and have a cohort of folks around them versus the

• 48:09Speaker 02

  folks who were, you know, like it's like a religion, who had taken religion on working remote and now wanted to push for it.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  I think in both remote and Google too, there's probably the segment of people who are like, you know, shut the fuck up, don't ruin this for us. Cause like, some people are super, super happy. And that's probably, you know, older people, certainly like me, I have my kid here. This is great.

• 48:28Logan Bartlett?

  No one likes to fulfill the virtues of remote work more than like comfortable 36-year-olds or 38-year-olds, like making 500K or whatever a year, right? Meanwhile, these 22-year-olds are like, living in New York with five roommates and they're jammed into shoebox apartments. And like, you know, they can hear each other through the fake walls they've put up. And we crave human contact.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  I'm desperate to get into the office and not be in my like triple subdivided living room situation with me in my like one shitty fake house plant that I'm trying to keep alive.

• 49:00Logan Bartlett?

  Thank you so much for joining the eighth episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. A special thanks to Roseanne for coming on, as well as Packy for filling in for Nikita today.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  That was a lot of fun. I do this anytime.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's good. If you've already told Nikita that he's gone.

• 49:16Logan Bartlett?

  Perfect. So Zach and I will be back next week with either Packy or someone else we bring in. So listen in for the ninth episode. Appreciate everyone joining.