Shaun Maguire, Harry Stebbings, Blake Anderson, Sean Frank, Adam Ryan, Connor MacDonald, Perplexity $18B Valuation, Tornado Cash

TBPN.com is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Eight Sleep - https://eightsleep.com/tbpn Wander - https://wander.com/tbpn Public - https://public.com AdQuick - https://adquick.com Bezel - https://getbezel.com Polymarket - https://polymarket.com Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://youtube.com/@technologybrotherspod?si=lpk53xTE9WBEcIjV (01:18) - Perplexity Raising at $18B Valuation (17:00) - Big Screen VR (25:00) - Tornado Cash (32:25) - Harry Stebbings (48:50) - Adam Ryan (01:04:00) - Blake Anderson (01:32:05) - Shaun Maguire (02:03:24) - Connor MacDonald (02:20:58) - Sean Frank (02:38:28) - The Timeline

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

• 0:00John Coogan?

  You're watching TBN live. It is Friday, March 21st, 2025. We are live from the Temple of Technology.

• 0:07Jordi Hays?

  Fortress of finance. The capital of capital.

• 0:10John Coogan?

  This show starts now. Jordy, what's going on on the desk? There's a bottle of Dom Perry on there. It's not a Dom episode. What's going on?

• 0:17Jordi Hays?

  Uh, our friends over at Slow preempted our Dom episode. So they said, hey, the growth this week has been tremendous. We wanted to have the next Dom episode be on us. So thank you to Sam, Yoni.

• 0:32John Coogan?

  They're kind of in the business of extrapolation.

• 0:34Jordi Hays?

  Over at Slow and Jack, of course. So yeah, they're just, you know, basically preempting our Dom episode. So yeah, we'll have to.

• 0:43John Coogan?

  I got very excited when I saw this. I love, I love a nice bottle.

• 0:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. When I was opening it, like the way the box was, I thought somebody sent me a plant.

• 0:51John Coogan?

  That's great.

• 0:51Jordi Hays?

  And there we go. So thank you, guys.

• 0:54John Coogan?

  This is 2015 bottle.

• 0:56Jordi Hays?

  Very tempting, very tempting. It is a Friday, very tempting to crack into it, but we like to do Dom episodes on Monday.

• 1:01John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:02Jordi Hays?

  Sort of power lunch, start the week strong. But thank you to the Slow Ventures team.

• 1:07John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 1:08Jordi Hays?

  And let's get into the show. We got some great guests today.

• 1:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, we got some great guests for you. I think we have four different guests coming on in about half an hour, but we're going to rip through some news. There's a ton of stuff to talk about. First up, Perplexity is in early talks for a new funding round at 500, they're raising between 500 million and a billion dollars at an $18 billion valuation. I mean, you gotta kick it off with a size gone for perplexity. Absolute dogs.

• 1:35Jordi Hays?

  Absolute dogs. Uh, big numbers.

• 1:37John Coogan?

  They'll be doubling their valuation from December.

• 1:41Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 1:41John Coogan?

  And it's March, so that's three months, double. ARR is also nearly $100 million. Not too bad. Uh, let's break it down. Let's read this little Bloomberg article.

• 1:51Jordi Hays?

  And we'll say that I feel like the posters didn't like this, but we can wait for some of the reactions.

• 1:57John Coogan?

  Mixed. I found some very positive posts in here. We'll get to, I found some more critical posts. We'll break it all down. Uh, we'll give our take. Uh, so. Perplexity AI, a startup building artificial intelligence search engine to compete with Google, is in early talks to double its valuation to 18 billion in a new funding round. The company has discussed raising as much as 500 million to 1 billion in the round. Founded in 2022, it's a pretty young company, just three years old. Perplexity has emerged as one of the most prominent startups using generative AI to rethink core internet services. Last year, Perplexity tripled its valuation from one billion to three billion and then tripled it again several months later. A sign of the immense investor interest in all things AI.

• 2:41John Coogan?

  This new eighteen billion dollar valuation would include the amount raised in the round, so that's a post-money valuation. But still seventeen billion pre-money isn't that bad.

• 2:51Jordi Hays?

  What's pre or post among billions?

• 2:53John Coogan?

  At this point, it doesn't really matter. Their ARR is nearly a hundred million. Perplexity said it had more than fifteen million active users. They're facing growing competition from Google and OpenAI in its core search business. OpenAI rolled out a search product to all of its users of its chatbot, ChatGPT. And of course, Google has those AI-generated auto-fill answers. I forget what their product name is for that. But basically, when you go to Google, you get a AI-generated AI.

• 3:23Jordi Hays?

  And they count all of those as Gemini users?

• 3:25John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 3:26Jordi Hays?

  Which is cool, too. It's great.

• 3:27John Coogan?

  It's cool, yeah.

• 3:28Jordi Hays?

  If you're optimizing for usage, it's great if you are literally Google. And anytime somebody Google searches, you can sort of add it, put it on the.

• 3:37John Coogan?

  I mean, this is what's happening with Llama, too. I mean, like, Llama is forked into WhatsApp and stuffed into Instagram.

• 3:44Jordi Hays?

  Put it in there.

• 3:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's the number one LLM. It's the one people are talking to. Let's talk about the backers. Perplexity is already backed by SoftBank, Vision Fund II, Nvidia, Amazon.

• 3:54Jordi Hays?

  SoftBank getting in early in this case. Oh, don't they have some big? I think SoftBank is a big customer, too. They're doing this thing where they're sort of investing and becoming heavy users, dog fooding the product.

• 4:09John Coogan?

  Well, we should have the founder on, because I mean, he's a very interesting, he's a very interesting figure, very interesting poster. And obviously, I mean, I've used the product. I'm not, I'm not like a daily active right now, but I think, I think it's cool. And I think we'll get into this later, but Sam Altman was just on Stratechery interview talking to Ben Thompson. And on there, Ben really tried to nail him down on where the value is going to accrue in AI. Is it going to go to the application layer or the model layer? And this has been the big debate with all the new foundation model companies. And Sam. And it's funny how it's funny how Ben like phrases it to try and kind of like nail him down. I'll actually pull up the exact post. It was from Tane.

• 4:52Jordi Hays?

  According to perplexity, SoftBank Vision Fund II invested between 10 and 20 million in perplexity as part of a larger $250 million funding round. This was back

• 5:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Jordi Hays?

  last year. And so SoftBank has gotten almost a 5X, I think, on this, more than a 5X potentially on this. So.

• 5:10John Coogan?

  Another size.

• 5:11Jordi Hays?

  Hit the size gong for that.

• 5:12John Coogan?

  So, uh, so Ben Thompson was interviewing Sam Altman, trying to get to the bottom of, does the value accrue to the model layer or the application layer? And he can't just say that. So of course he has to, you know, come up with a good question. And he asks Sam this. He says, what's going to be more valuable in five years? A 1 billion daily active user destination site that doesn't have to do customer acquisition, wink, wink, wink, chat GPT app installed on everyone's phone already in the home row on my phone, or the state of the art model? And Sam Altman says, the 1 billion user site, I think.

• 5:46Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 5:46John Coogan?

  And so Sam is now, you know, he was at the forefront of the state of the art model race. Now he is somewhat acknowledging that the value might accrue to the application layer. And he is actually, this is

• 6:00Jordi Hays?

  I think he's more than acknowledging that.

• 6:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:02Jordi Hays?

  He is

• 6:02John Coogan?

  He's pushing that narrative now because

• 6:04Jordi Hays?

  I think he views it, and we've talked about this before, the reason that Elon, Elon can train a model fairly, he makes it look easy to train a model that's competitive with OpenAI, much harder to get an app that will, is pacing towards having a billion, you know, users. And so that says it all.

• 6:22John Coogan?

  Yeah. So it's like, if you have distribution through X, you own X, or you own WhatsApp, or Instagram, or you own Google.com, you're going to do very well. Harder to bootstrap a new destination site with billions of users. We saw on the perplexity numbers, 15 million active users. That's a ton.

• 6:41Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 6:41John Coogan?

  But they got to grow that. They got to get into the billions because that's where the consumer tech apps really play.

• 6:47Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 6:48John Coogan?

  But it's interesting. Yeah.

• 6:50Jordi Hays?

  They call it the B-zone.

• 6:51John Coogan?

  The B-zone.

• 6:53John Coogan?

  But yeah, I mean, it's interesting because like for a long time, the the the hater, the Sam haters were very much like, oh, like he's like, all the value is going to accrue to the to the application layer, not the model layer, and he's stuck on the model layer. And now he's kind of like pivoting his argument and the narrative is kind of shifting. And now it'll it'll just be interesting to see how that plays out because it seems like.

• 7:15Jordi Hays?

  Oscillating back and forth.

• 7:16John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it's always unclear. It's like, it's like, is the CEO spinning a narrative?

• 7:19Jordi Hays?

  Because because Ilya's saying is.

• 7:21John Coogan?

  Or is it the truth?

• 7:22Jordi Hays?

  Is, yeah, you guys can have fun at the app layer.

• 7:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Jordi Hays?

  I'll see you, I'll see you at ASI.

• 7:27John Coogan?

  See you at ASI, yeah. Anyway, I wanted to go through some reactions to perplexity in general. Our buddy Emmett Shine said, this was a couple of months ago, but he said he set up perplexity as my default search tool within Arc. I use Claude for creative work and ChatGPT for general larger processing work. I like perplexity's multimedia's results for search. So far, so good. And in the little video he shares, what's he searching for? Aurora PFAS filtering. I thought that was really cool Easter egg. He's doing a little shout out for for our friends over at Aurora.

• 8:01Jordi Hays?

  Well, Emmett did Emmett did the branding for Aurora.

• 8:04John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 8:04Jordi Hays?

  So he's.

• 8:05John Coogan?

  I just thought that was really fun.

• 8:06Jordi Hays?

  And he's a shareholder.

• 8:07John Coogan?

  Oh, there you go.

• 8:07Jordi Hays?

  So it's sort of like, you know, one hand washes the other.

• 8:09John Coogan?

  The other, yeah.

• 8:10Jordi Hays?

  Which we love.

• 8:10John Coogan?

  Little cycle. Ash Aurora has a funny post here saying, at this point, perplexity not raising every six months is a bear market signal. But yeah, I mean, if you're on a tear.

• 8:21Jordi Hays?

  They've set the bar, they've set the bar high.

• 8:23John Coogan?

  And if you're trying to go after Google, if you're trying to go after a trillion dollar company, yeah, you're going to need a lot of capital, you're going to need a lot of aggressive growth targets. So it's not an unreasonable strategy if you're underwriting it against.

• 8:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 8:35John Coogan?

  We're going to be the next Google, but it is a high valuation.

• 8:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and on the next, Arvin, the CEO says on the next post, perplexity will make Apple intelligence work. So.

• 8:47John Coogan?

  That seems, that seems obvious. That seems like true, like he's not bluffing there.

• 8:50Jordi Hays?

  In many ways, perplexity, the team at perplexity would do a much better job leveraging the power of Apple.

• 8:59John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 8:59Jordi Hays?

  And their position in the market than Apple's current AI team.

• 9:02John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 9:02Jordi Hays?

  So I can, there is a world where. There's a world where Apple, you know, has to like pay a huge premium to just buy a great AI product team.

• 9:12John Coogan?

  Which is not in their DNA at all. I don't think they've ever done a multi-billion dollar acquisition. It's super, super rare.

• 9:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but but they're also but but you're you're thinking, you know, Apple's evolving as a company. They they're not.

• 9:25John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 9:25Jordi Hays?

  They're not seemingly in a position now where they're able to do deep innovative.

• 9:30John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 9:31Jordi Hays?

  You know, visionary work.

• 9:32John Coogan?

  They're shuffling. They're shuffling.

• 9:33Jordi Hays?

  They're shuffling up. And if Apple was ever going to move from a, hey, we just, we do all of our R and D in-house, we, you know, we don't sort of acquire teams, et cetera.

• 9:45John Coogan?

  This would be a big shift.

• 9:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it would be a big shift, but it but it might be something that over time, you know, I don't think if Apple paid $20 billion to acquire perplexity today, that the the market would love it.

• 9:56John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 9:57Jordi Hays?

  But you could see a world in the future where, you know, something like that could make sense.

• 10:03John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, the shareholders would be like, Apple, what are you doing? You you wasted like six weeks of cash flow on this company. What are you doing?

• 10:10Jordi Hays?

  No, it's but honestly, I think it's more like, I forget the actual number, but.

• 10:15John Coogan?

  I mean, they have like 80 billion.

• 10:17Jordi Hays?

  I ran the numbers on like Tim Cook's comp versus like how much money they make and like Tim Cook like barely makes like, you know.

• 10:23John Coogan?

  A day's cash flow.

• 10:25Jordi Hays?

  Poor guy.

• 10:26John Coogan?

  Poor guy, poor guy.

• 10:27Jordi Hays?

  But you know, the the dynamic here that's interesting, him saying, we're going to make Apple intelligence worth, Apple makes $20 billion a year from Google.

• 10:35John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 10:35Jordi Hays?

  Through their search integration.

• 10:37John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 10:37Jordi Hays?

  So for Apple to want to integrate, I'm sure that there's something related to that contract that would that would prevent.

• 10:44John Coogan?

  Well, they also have a, Apple has a deal with ChatGPT.

• 10:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 10:48John Coogan?

  And in theory, you can ask Siri to go to ChatGPT and you can actually, on your phone, if you're on the latest OS, you can add your ChatGPT Pro credentials. And it basically uses the consumer API key to send the query to ChatGPT. Should be a great experience. I can never really get it to work, though. It it still gets confused about where to route the query, which is really rough. They I think they're just so spoiled from the experience of Google where it was just.

• 11:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 11:17John Coogan?

  There's just this one little bar in Safari and then they routed to Google and that's the end. Uh, and this is a much more nuanced consumer experience. Um, but clearly a a a strong deal between Apple and perplexity would be transformative for perplexity.

• 11:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 11:32John Coogan?

  Uh, and so good luck to him as he tries to hunt that down. Uh, should we go to near? This is a great post.

• 11:37Jordi Hays?

  Great post.

• 11:38John Coogan?

  It's just like tangentially related to perplexity, but I like it. Uh, every man has a stack. For some it's creatine and magnesium. For other it's Arch Linux and Vim. Some just answer perplexity and Claude. Others have Vercel and Cloud Fair, Cloud Flare, or Engine X and Redis. Some guys will even say Bitcoin and Ether. The essence of being a man, you must have a stack. I love that.

• 11:59Jordi Hays?

  My daily show stack is very much Lucy and Yurmatte.

• 12:03John Coogan?

  I'm on the Celsius and and the nicotine pouches and the creatine and uh, some chat GPT here and there. A lot of X, X that I would say is in my stack.

• 12:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 12:15John Coogan?

  And uh, and a stack of weights in the in the weight room beforehand. Um, this is, this is a very funny post, but but I agree. Uh, and then there was this interesting uh, perplexity ad. They're doing, it's like Apple level cinematography when I saw this. So they, uh, this is from a few days ago, March 17th. Uh, perplexity just dropped its first celebrity ad starring Squid Games Lee Jung Jay. I print botch, I botch that pronunciation, I'm sure. Um, anyway, uh, he's the guy from Squid Game, we love him. Uh, the AI search startup takes a jab at Google. They call it Pugel with a cheeky line, don't use glue, which was a reference to.

• 12:54Jordi Hays?

  Gemini.

• 12:55John Coogan?

  A very niche Gemini hallucination, suggesting that you should eat glue on pizza.

• 12:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, something related to mozzarella.

• 13:01John Coogan?

  Yeah, and then Katie Nuttopolis over.

• 13:04Jordi Hays?

  What I like about Arvind is he's not willing to poke the bear.

• 13:08John Coogan?

  No.

• 13:09Jordi Hays?

  So in the case of Google.

• 13:10John Coogan?

  He's not afraid to poke the bear.

• 13:11Jordi Hays?

  He's not a, so yeah, sorry, he's not afraid to poke the bear. He uh, will clear, you know, frequently get in in Sam Altman's uh, you know, comments and just.

• 13:19John Coogan?

  Gets a little spicy, sometimes he goes a little bit too far, but I like a challenger CEO.

• 13:24Jordi Hays?

  It's like a, you know, you're fighting with a bull.

• 13:26John Coogan?

  And just from a comms perspective, we should talk to Lulu about this, but I think like, there's something about when someone is so much bigger than you. Your downside is so limited because if they reply to you at all, you're blowing up because it's like, oh, you were acknowledged by the gods.

• 13:39Jordi Hays?

  He probably runs the numbers on what percentage of chat GPT's users can I sign up for my product? If I get Sam to reply to me.

• 13:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Jordi Hays?

  So let me just do whatever it takes to get the.

• 13:49John Coogan?

  Poke the bear, poke the bear.

• 13:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, uh, yeah, this, this article was, I mean.

• 13:54John Coogan?

  Can we pull up a little bit of this ad, Ben? Because it was a little controversial, so token bender here quote tweets this and says perplexity seems to be on a path to be a case study. I will not elaborate, but look at, look at this ad. This is beautiful. It's really, really well done. And, uh, I mean, the lighting, everything, the sets, like this feels like it would be at home with Apple. But I think people are a little bearish on this because it's like, oh, they're spending too much before they have like true breakthrough consumer adoption. Feels like a Superbowl ad. People are always really skeptical about like, oh, you're advertising too much, but it's like, this is a consumer war. You gotta get people, you gotta, you gotta get people.

• 14:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 14:34John Coogan?

  On, um, and I think it's, I, I think it's fun. I think it's a well-produced ad. So he goes to Pugl and does not get a good result. Uh, and I mean, they, they clearly made the font smaller.

• 14:46Jordi Hays?

  I've never watched this show.

• 14:47John Coogan?

  Oh, you never watched it? Yeah, I watched it. It was pretty good. It's very funny because, because they, they, they created like a fake Google and they clearly sized the text down. So it just looks like a complete wall of text. Whereas when, when he uses perplexity here.

• 15:01Jordi Hays?

  Just like a single answer.

• 15:02John Coogan?

  It's just like very clear, much larger text.

• 15:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they're trying to be an answer. I, I like their positioning as an answer engine.

• 15:06John Coogan?

  It's a good phrase and they also have nice, nice merch. There's been some cool like coffee cups I've been seeing on the timeline that are pretty cool. Clearly like, uh.

• 15:15Jordi Hays?

  No, the, the, the token bender.

• 15:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Jordi Hays?

  Line was in reference to perplexity launching a venture fund. And the response at the time was, hey, I don't even think they were in the top 25 apps in their category at that point. And so the pushback would be like, why do you have a venture fund?

• 15:32John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 15:33Jordi Hays?

  You know, you should just focus on the product, but, um.

• 15:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they're getting attention. They're getting users. They're 16 in the charts right now.

• 15:39John Coogan?

  If I have to go long, short on this, I would go short. Perplexity Venture Fund, long perplexity cinematic ads. Because you're trying to get consumers to use it. It's much, you have to do this crazy dance of logic.

• 15:52Jordi Hays?

  And we saw all the big-

• 15:52John Coogan?

  We'll invest in this company and then our product will become better.

• 15:55Jordi Hays?

  All the ads, all the ads.

• 15:56John Coogan?

  Those ads work.

• 15:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, all the ads from the Super Bowl, from the big AI players, the Googles were very mid. Like very, I don't remember any of them at this point. I remember bits and moments.

• 16:07John Coogan?

  I remember the OpenAI one.

• 16:09Jordi Hays?

  The OpenAI one was cinematic and cool.

• 16:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, but for a lot of these, it's just like, you gotta just remind normies that you exist. And hey, yeah, you should try this out, you know, if it drives installs.

• 16:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this marketing is better for the average American.

• 16:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Jordi Hays?

  Perplexity's new ad than the OpenAI sort of sun god, black sun.

• 16:32John Coogan?

  Yeah, the black sun was weird.

• 16:33Jordi Hays?

  Worshiping the black sun, we're all, we're all turning into bits.

• 16:36John Coogan?

  Anyway, you do an 18 billion dollar, you raise a billion at an 18 billion dollar post. Let's say 800, 900 million of that secondary. What's the first thing you're doing? You're heading over to Bezel, right? Yeah, Bezel.

• 16:48Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 16:48John Coogan?

  Get Bezel.com, shop over 23,500 luxury watches, fully authenticated in-house by Bezel's team of experts.

• 16:55Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 16:56John Coogan?

  Pick something up.

• 16:56Jordi Hays?

  And- We love you, Bezel.

• 16:57John Coogan?

  In terms of other amazing wearables, we got breaking news from big screen VR. They launched the Beyond 2. I am so excited for this. This is just a fascinating story of a company that's just been grinding in VR for so long, so hard.

• 17:15Jordi Hays?

  I hate to take anything away from big screen, but I almost forgot briefly about that soul reader company.

• 17:21John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, that's Trey's company. I have one. E Ink Screen, very different product.

• 17:27Jordi Hays?

  But that's, that's what I want. Are they selling, are they delivering it?

• 17:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can get a soul reader, you should.

• 17:32Jordi Hays?

  That's great.

• 17:33John Coogan?

  Soul Reader is great right before bed.

• 17:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 17:35John Coogan?

  Because you just throw it on, it can pull in articles, it can pull in eBooks and stuff. I read, I read the driver, that story about Cannonball on the Soul Reader.

• 17:45Jordi Hays?

  Nice.

• 17:46John Coogan?

  It's great, great. Alex Roy.

• 17:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, my main thing is I'm falling asleep.

• 17:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:49Jordi Hays?

  I, right now I do a lot of audio. Yeah, you don't want light.

• 17:52John Coogan?

  So it's just, it's very, it's very warm color temperature. There's no blue light.

• 17:57Jordi Hays?

  So base.

• 17:57John Coogan?

  And so you'll just fall asleep in like five pages. It's honestly hard to finish.

• 18:00Jordi Hays?

  I'm sorry to the big screen. We got sidetracked here.

• 18:02John Coogan?

  It's a very different use case.

• 18:03Jordi Hays?

  No, no, I know.

• 18:03John Coogan?

  It's a very different use case. So with big screen, it's for this like really immersive, like Ready Player One style VR. And it's so, so light. They, they launched the big screen one last year, or maybe the year before. They launched the big screen beyond two just a few days ago. We're trying to have the, the CEO on soon to talk about it. And actually, one of my friends, Kyle Russell, works over at big screen now too.

• 18:26Jordi Hays?

  Nice.

• 18:26John Coogan?

  So it's 107 grams, which is phenomenally light. And John Carmack, when he was at Meta, working on their headsets, said that the key to creating consumer adoption of VR was, I think he said like a hundred dollars, 100 grams. So if you make it super light and super cheap, people will just start throwing it on. And there's a bunch of interesting posts that we'll go through here. But they're, they're claiming breakthrough optics, 116 degree field of view, edge to edge clarity, a massive sweet spot, reduced lens glare, increased brightness and eye tracking improved for shareability. We added adjustable IPD, so you can adjust where the lenses actually go over your eyes. You can give it to a friend.

• 19:06John Coogan?

  The first version was, they would actually like 3D print your face onto the mold. And we should pull up the video if we can, Ben, to kind of show.

• 19:17Jordi Hays?

  That's cool. They're shipping in less than a month.

• 19:20John Coogan?

  Oh yeah. And, and the demand was crazy. I think they sold twice as many as the previous version.

• 19:25Jordi Hays?

  How does it integrate?

• 19:26John Coogan?

  Take a look, take a look at this thing.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Any headset in the world. And our community loved it with Beyond becoming people's daily driver VR headset for VR chat, racing sims and other VR games. But our community's been asking for more, asking us to push further on optics and a wish list of new features. After years of cutting edge research and development, we're unveiling our most advanced product yet, big screen beyond two.

• 19:52John Coogan?

  Let's go.

• 19:53Jordi Hays?

  Let's go.

• 19:54John Coogan?

  I'm so hyped.

• 19:55Jordi Hays?

  I'm never taking these off.

• 19:56John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 19:58Jordi Hays?

  That looks very cool.

• 19:59John Coogan?

  Yeah. Somebody actually did a teardown of this headset, too. They like cut out even more stuff and got it down to like 60 grams, which is like nothing. Feels like just having like a pen on your face, basically. But I mean, the weight thing, this was the number one complaint about the Apple Vision Pro. They've just gone completely the other direction to give you a super, super light headset. Now, they've made a bunch of sacrifices to get there. Like you, I'm pretty sure this thing has to be powered by a computer. It has to be plugged in. There's a bunch of different things that you have to do. It's for a prosumer or kind of a developer almost. But I want to figure out how to get this rig built out really, really easily with maybe

• 20:38John Coogan?

  some small Mac Mini powering it or some Nvidia box that I can just use super simply and just have this wonderful experience. So, but Palmer Lucky has actually been a big proponent of what big screen is doing. He wrote, "We're on the path," or he was interviewed and was talking about it. "We're on a path where we can make virtual reality devices that provide matrix level immersion. The big screen VR costs $990 and it weighs one-fifth of the Oculus Quest Pro. Apple headset display is the next generation for the same company." And so he was interviewed by Peter Diamandis and talked about how excited he was about that direction. And Carmack was saying the same thing. We mentioned this.

• 21:23John Coogan?

  "Big screen beyond feels like a prop from a futuristic movie, but it works far and away as small as a leg."

• 21:29Jordi Hays?

  I really want to do sim racing in here.

• 21:30John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 21:31Jordi Hays?

  We have to, in the new, in the new studio, we're racing a sim race setup. Like the most ridiculous rig.

• 21:36John Coogan?

  I went, there's a place in Pasadena that has like full sim. It doesn't do VR because I think people get sick and it's kind of gross to show them.

• 21:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 21:44John Coogan?

  But they have full VR, full like, you know, three screens. And it was fun. I was at Laguna Seca racing, racing some Porsche Cup car. And it was fun putting up latimes. The, I think I was on the simulator for like an hour. It just blew, blew right by. It was great. Avi Schiffman chimed in. This is an interesting old quote from Steve Jobs. Steve said, "There's no such thing as headphones for video." Steve Jobs would have turned 70 today and I can't help but wonder what he'd think about the early steps for Apple Vision. Avi says, "Apple should have made something closer to big screen beyond's tiny, tiny little goggles." Just a more immersive content viewing experience that fits into the Apple ecosystem is enough. It didn't need apps and neither did the watch.

• 22:29John Coogan?

  And that's a really, really good point. You just put it on and it's just whatever's on your phone is just boom, right there. There are, there are a couple of companies that are not even doing VR. It's just basically a big TV screen and you, and it has the form factor of like sunglasses. And so if you're on a plane, you want to watch a movie on a huge screen, you just throw those on. Uh, there's a couple of companies, but they're all like a little rough around the edges.

• 22:49Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 22:50John Coogan?

  Soon, uh, but just to put the weight in perspective.

• 22:53Jordi Hays?

  This is crazy.

• 22:53John Coogan?

  Kyle Russell, my buddy shares this. He says, even the tiny iPhone SE weighs more than the big screen beyond at 144 grams. And back in the day, do you remember those uh, VR headsets that were like, you literally slot your phone. It was Google Cardboard. And so you'd slot your phone into a holder and then strap that to your face. Yeah. Yeah. And there was another one, the Samsung VR, something you, you needed a Samsung phone. You put that in there and then you just bought the lenses. And there was this idea that like, your phone would be driving the VR experience. Never quite got there, um, but you can go even lighter if you're just purely focused on VR like big screen is. And then Kyle also shares a little meme from the big screen team discord.

• 23:36John Coogan?

  Uh, silence optics engineer, a physicist is talking because clearly internally they're always bumping up against the limits of physics. It's very difficult. That's the number one constraint for these companies.

• 23:46Jordi Hays?

  I can't believe how cool this thing looks. This is again, this, this is why we need new science fiction for the products from like 40 years from now. Because this feels like a device out of, um, you know, snow crash or something like that.

• 23:59John Coogan?

  We're going to check the box and then, and then we're going to need to move on to the next, but next big thing. Uh, but I'm excited for, for VR to finally, uh, get here and I can't wait to get my hands on a big screen beyond two. We'll have to do an unboxing on the show.

• 24:11Jordi Hays?

  If big screen wants their next million customers, what should they do?

• 24:15John Coogan?

  They gotta buy billboards.

• 24:16Jordi Hays?

  Immediately.

• 24:17John Coogan?

  Immediately.

• 24:18Jordi Hays?

  Immediately. We gotta figure out how many billboards are on the 101.

• 24:21John Coogan?

  Small device, massive billboard.

• 24:23Jordi Hays?

  A power play is to just get every billboard.

• 24:26John Coogan?

  Get every billboard right around Cupertino, really let Apple know, hey, we're putting the screws to you.

• 24:31Jordi Hays?

  We're home.

• 24:32John Coogan?

  This, ours weighs nothing, yours weighs more than the truck.

• 24:36Jordi Hays?

  You can't make even, you can't make your, your 29th generation iPhone weigh.

• 24:44John Coogan?

  Does your neck hurt?

• 24:44Jordi Hays?

  A brutal mugging.

• 24:45John Coogan?

  A big screen beyond. I want to see it on an ad quick billboard. Out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising. Only ad quick combines technology, out of home expertise and data to enable efficient seamless ad buying across the globe. Uh, anyway, you see the tornado cash news?

• 25:02Jordi Hays?

  Uh, yeah.

• 25:03John Coogan?

  This has been a story that's been developing for a while and it's, it feels like tracking, it's kind of hard because it's moving in slow motion. There's been little, uh, basically just to set the level set on tornado cash tornado cash. It was a, uh, I believe like an Ethereum contract. It was just code, but it would allow, allow you to deposit, deposit crypto. It would get basically like tumbled around with all the other mixed in with all the other tokens.

• 25:28Jordi Hays?

  They jam it in the smart contract, turn the blender on.

• 25:31John Coogan?

  Yep. Turn the blender on.

• 25:32Jordi Hays?

  Let it run for.

• 25:33John Coogan?

  And then you can come back later and kind of sneak it out. No one knows who's taking what. And it's like, basically like money laundering on the blockchain, but it was a big question because although it was used by criminals a lot.

• 25:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 25:46John Coogan?

  Is math a crime? And a lot of the libertarians and a lot of the crypto folks were like, privacy is important. That's why we got into this whole game. What are you doing? The, I believe the, the founder was arrested and has a court case coming up. Uh, but the most recent news that just dropped today is that, uh, tornado cash has been removed from the OFAC sanctions list, along with many other addresses. Shout out to Brian Armstrong and Coin Center for suing the government in court and winning for your human right to privacy. Beware, many front ends to tornado are fake and scams and will empty your wallet. So,

• 26:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:21John Coogan?

  you know, it maybe don't try and use this, but, uh, from a libertarian political perspective, uh, everyone's celebrating in that crowd.

• 26:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this seems like a win for human rights and, uh, law enforcement will still be coming after the criminals that try to use tornado cash.

• 26:39John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 26:40Jordi Hays?

  Uh, in many other ways.

• 26:42John Coogan?

  As they do with, uh, you know, Ross Ulbricht using Bitcoin.

• 26:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:45John Coogan?

  The, the, the problem is that like tornado cash was a lot harder to track than, than Bitcoin. There still are ways to.

• 26:50Jordi Hays?

  Little insight. So, uh, former teammate of mine and friend Dylan Abriscado is the founder of, of, uh, this online survivor style game called Crypto The Game.

• 27:00John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 27:00Jordi Hays?

  He ran, I think it was the first or second, season two.

• 27:04John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 27:05Jordi Hays?

  Before they were acquired by Uniswap. The winner of the season won all this money from playing the game.

• 27:11John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 27:12Jordi Hays?

  And then donated it to the legal defense for Tornado Cash. And so.

• 27:17John Coogan?

  Yeah, huge support from the crypto community.

• 27:19Jordi Hays?

  Just a very.

• 27:20John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, Brian Chow here at Psycho Sorts says the Tornado Cash founders are political prisoners. The case against them should be immediately dismissed. This is a couple of months ago. And there's a little breakdown from one of the founders, Roman Storm. Great name, Tornado Storm. Wow. He says, my name is Roman Storm and I am one of the founders of Tornado Cash, a non-custodial privacy protocol. I am being prosecuted for writing open source code that enables private crypto transactions in a completely non-custodial manner. Meaning his company never takes ownership over your crypto. It's the opposite of a bank. It's not designed to be like Coinbase. It's merely a smart contract.

• 28:01John Coogan?

  This prosecution represents a terrifying criminalization of privacy. The charges against me threaten to criminalize software development itself. If successful, the implications could extend far beyond the crypto industry, impacting every software developer. I face up to 45 years in prison on charges, including operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, conspiracy to commit money laundering and sanctions evasion. This case has already had a chilling effect on developers working on software tools. Recently, a developer filed a lawsuit against the DOJ seeking relief because my case has made them fearful of releasing new software. And so this has been very, very controversial. Vitalik actually chimed in, no man left behind. Roman Storm and Alex Pertsev next. Tornado Cash itself won an important case today.

• 28:47John Coogan?

  And the, the, the whole crypto community is behind this. There is a flip side to this that we should talk about, which is that there, the allegations are that, you know, maybe this, like this operation was profiting off of the money laundering in like a maybe more criminal way. And I think that's what they're alleging, but.

• 29:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this has always been the challenge with crypto where you have these sort of open source on-chain protocols.

• 29:15John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 29:16Jordi Hays?

  In many ways can operate. autonomously.

• 29:20John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 29:20Jordi Hays?

  Yet they have to, they end up building sort of front end services.

• 29:25John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 29:25Jordi Hays?

  That have to, that end up using like AWS.

• 29:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 29:29Jordi Hays?

  And there needs to be some company that sort of like puts a ramp card down. And probably not ramp in this case, but you know, has to put a card down or pay for these services. And so then you have to look at what is the company that is, you know, a US or some type of corporate entity that can pay USD for services. And then what is the protocol? And this is why in crypto, they historically would have the sort of foundation that that sort of manages the protocol. And then there's usually a C corp that sort of engages with the foundation. You know, it's like very, very complicated structures, which is why all the big crypto funds would have these pretty massive internal legal teams to help their portfolio companies think through this.

• 30:11John Coogan?

  Yeah. I think in general, I'm pro privacy, but anti money laundering. But it's, it's obviously very.

• 30:18Jordi Hays?

  Vivek commented on it apparently and says, you can't go after the, you can't go after the developers of code. What you actually need to do is go after the individual bad actors who are breaking the laws that already exist.

• 30:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, that makes sense. It's like, you don't go after, you don't try and like lock up Satoshi for creating Bitcoin. Even if you could find him, you go after Ross Ulbricht for creating the platform.

• 30:36Jordi Hays?

  So Vitalik, the creator of Ethereum, said, no man left behind. Tornado Cash itself won an important case today and the founders are next. So yeah, interesting that, you know, just because Tornado Cash was able to sort of beat, beat their case, doesn't mean the founders are fully out of the woods yet.

• 30:56John Coogan?

  I think the case is going to trial in April, so we'll have to track that.

• 31:01Jordi Hays?

  Crazy.

• 31:02John Coogan?

  But if you want to avoid money laundering at your company, if you want to avoid waste at your company, you should go to ramp.com. Time is money.

• 31:07Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 31:08John Coogan?

  Save both. Easy to use corporate cars, bill payments, accounting and a whole lot more, all in one place. Go to ramp.com.

• 31:12Jordi Hays?

  They got, you can see on this image here, you got a little picture of Saquon.

• 31:17John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:17Jordi Hays?

  It says, keep your team focused on the game, not expenses. We're going to get Saquon on the show.

• 31:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Jordi Hays?

  It's only a matter of time. Excited to have him on. He can teach us about. Football.

• 31:27John Coogan?

  And investing, apparently, because he's a fantastic investor.

• 31:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:31John Coogan?

  He's in Ramp and Andorol now.

• 31:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, he just got into Andorol.

• 31:33John Coogan?

  He's just racking up wins.

• 31:34Jordi Hays?

  He was over at the Andorol offices. Huge alpha, just being a pro athlete and getting into the non, the typically non sexy categories.

• 31:43John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 31:43Jordi Hays?

  It's normal for an athlete to be like, you know, we've got an NBA player and like Rora.

• 31:47John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, protein powder, but that's very competitive.

• 31:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the real alpha is saying, no, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna become an American dynamism investor.

• 31:55John Coogan?

  Fantastic. Well, speaking of guests, before we have Saquon on, we got a whole bunch of guests hopping on right now. We got Harry Stebbings coming on.

• 32:03Jordi Hays?

  The king of Europe.

• 32:04John Coogan?

  The king of Europe.

• 32:06Jordi Hays?

  The king of Europe, Harry Stebbings. Harry sent a nice note on the timeline yesterday.

• 32:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, he's been super supportive.

• 32:13Jordi Hays?

  It's interesting, I was DMing him with him a little bit, and I'm sure he's gonna be in the waiting room any second, but on how, he's in the waiting room?

• 32:22John Coogan?

  Yeah, he was saying he listens to the show, and I think we finally made a show.

• 32:25Jordi Hays?

  There he is.

• 32:26John Coogan?

  That's long enough for his marathon walks, because the guy's putting up 40,000 steps a day. How many steps have you racked up today?

• 32:34Speaker 03

  I do 50,000 now, so every night.

• 32:36John Coogan?

  50,000!

• 32:36Speaker 03

  I run like two and a half hours, and I listen to you on the walk.

• 32:40John Coogan?

  That's fantastic.

• 32:42Jordi Hays?

  We got it, so just let us know when we need to go from three to four hours.

• 32:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, just bump it up.

• 32:47Jordi Hays?

  Because we want to pace with your walking, your steps.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Honestly, I walk with my mother on the weekends. If we could do weekend additions also, it would save me having to talk for six hours.

• 32:58Jordi Hays?

  I love, it's been, it's awesome to see your relationship with your mom. It sometimes makes me feel like a bad son, because I don't walk for that many hours with my mother. But I was just saying, you had a nice message yesterday on the timeline.

• 33:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, thank you for the support.

• 33:13Jordi Hays?

  It's interesting, you know, the shows that we really respect, all of them are highly ephemeral, right? Like, they're shows that aren't really oriented around the news, they're oriented around individuals, people, companies, et cetera. And ours is the exact opposite, right? Like, it would be kind of crazy to go back and listen to.

• 33:33John Coogan?

  The back catalog, it's kind of crazy, right?

• 33:35Jordi Hays?

  Sometimes we'll talk about a story that maybe is more evergreen, but you've built up this sort of crazy catalog of some of the most amazing investors in venture ever. I wanted to have you on for a few reasons, but really to give you an opportunity to talk about Project Europe. We joked on the show that Until you guys came out with this new program, the Project Europe that most VCs thought about was planning their sort of trips to Saint-Tropez over the summer. But you guys are taking it back.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Do you know what? We're taking it back. We also have Paul Dofino.

• 34:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  Fundamentally, the world has decided that Europe has, you know, lost innovation. We've lost entrepreneurs. And I meet great founders every day. And do you know what they're told? You've got to move to the valley. And I'm like, you don't have to move to the valley. You can build a massive company here. And I think bluntly, we need to change the vibes. Vibes is everything. Elon, you like him or you don't, the guy knows how to master vibes.

• 34:37Jordi Hays?

  There is master.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  And for us now, we've told our young entrepreneurs that you should leave, that you should build a company elsewhere. There's a guy, Gary Stevenson, who is blowing up in the UK, who tells young people that bluntly, it's the system's fault. It's not your fault. And it, you know, there's nothing you can do about it. There is. I was, guys, 10 years ago, I had no money. I was a kid in a bedroom. Today, we manage over $750 million, the show and the media companies, multi-multi-millions, because of the internet. I'm not doing that as a me. It's the internet and the empowering

• 35:15Speaker 03

  nature of, I DM'd Marc Benioff 53 times before he came on the show.

• 35:23Jordi Hays?

  I, I, we, by the way, we remind, sometimes we'll message a friend about coming on the show and they like, don't get back right away. And I'm like, I gotta channel Harry right now.

• 35:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 35:34Jordi Hays?

  I just gotta hit him up again. And it's important to share those, a lot of people would just, you know, have the temptation to make it look easy.

• 35:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Jordi Hays?

  And say, oh yeah, I just messaged Marc Benioff and he just like popped on. It was easy. But it's important to remind people that that persistence is what creates greatness.

• 35:49John Coogan?

  Totally. I mean, Logan Bartlett's the same way. I think he, I think he DM'd, he, he said he emailed SBF like 15 times to try and get him on the show. And I was like, I don't know how you could do that. It feels so awkward to me, but you've clearly like broken it down and it's paid off massively.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  But you know what? You've got to get innovative. I use suno.ai to write songs about people and then I send them to them. So I'm like, you know, write me a song asking John in a like male folk guitarist tone about the future of M and A. And then I'll send it to them. I promise you, you're the only one who's going to do that.

• 36:22John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's so important in like fundraising, sales and you know, even growing a podcast is all the same thing.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Oh my God, totally the same thing. But on Project Europe, yeah, it was like the doom loop just pervasive. And I have so many friends in the US who are just like, Europe dude, like, why are you still there? It's just, it's just not true.

• 36:42Jordi Hays?

  But the timing, but, but the timing seems incredible. You've been, you know, banging the, the, the European drum for a while now, but it does seem like even in the last month, almost there's been this sort of shift and that's sort of potentially coming from this, you know, the US is getting into trade wars with our neighbors or some of our closest allies. There's just sort of like nationalism happening around Western Europe kind of waking up, you know, people are, there's more, you know, the people are talking about what is going to be the anduril of, of Europe. You know, I'm sure you're looking at some of these companies, but the timing seemed great.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  I think we're going through this intense period of deglobalization and what happens in intense periods of deglobalization is intense patriotism. And I think we're at the start of that now where absolutely we're starting to see Europe once again, get a little bit more patriotic. It's funny you said there about like the anduril of Europe. It's Helsing. And my favorite thing is when you see defense funds and you're like, no, no, I don't, don't quite know if defense is quite the category. It's more like anduril and Helsing.

• 37:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Very cool. Uh, do you, I'm curious, you, you run your fund, you run the, the media business. Do you LP into other European funds? Are you trying to kind of create a sort of like, I imagine one of the benefits, a coretzu, no, but one of the things here in America is great. If, if I've got a buddy who's raising a pre-seed round. I talk to them, I'm like, okay, I know 30 people that could lead this pre-seed round. Like, don't worry if any one person says no, like, you're gonna get a yes, just talk to a bunch of people. But I imagine when there's probably not 30 London pre-seed funds that you kind of, at the moment, but maybe there should be, or maybe there are.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  I mean, I don't actually LP really into other funds, just because with the network from the show, if I LP'd into one, I'd have to LP into all of them. And so I find it easier to say, just like, I'm sorry, I can't do LP checks. Otherwise, you end up being Marc Andreessen, where like, I don't know a fund that Marc Andreessen is not in. I've been pitched so many funds where Marc is an investor. And so, listen, he has more money than me and can afford to do that. I couldn't do 100 funds.

• 38:50John Coogan?

  Can you tell us a little bit about the patriotism in Europe? Is there, are there layers to this where, you know, a Spanish company will only want to raise from Spanish investors and say, hey, get this British guy out of here? Or is Europe kind of solidified in the same way that the United States is kind of a block? Even though, obviously, there's a difference between Florida, New York, and California?

• 39:13Speaker 03

  I would say that Europe has solidified completely. There's definitely not this kind of isolationist element of like, oh, Spanish versus Italian versus whatever. And Jesus, even the English and the French are getting on these days. That goes to show just how much of a united front it is. And I think especially in the wake of, you know, the divide that's growing between the US and Europe, that becomes ever stronger, that unified country element of Europe. And so I don't see that at all, and Europe really stands as a block. And I think you see that in how people have responded to Project Europe. And we've had, you know, thousands of applications. I started with 25 founders, and I was like, hey, I'll go get 25 founders, they're amazing,

• 39:56Speaker 03

  and they will, you know, write a check into this vehicle to back the next one. We literally went to 150 in three days. We've had another 300 to 400 requests to be in. There's a legal cap of 250, so we can't actually do it.

• 40:11Jordi Hays?

  Capt.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  It was amazing.

• 40:13Jordi Hays?

  Talk about, when you were an early investor in Lovable, they've seen ridiculous growth. It's one of those charts that's not really, you know, a line, it's more like a wall. Was that, talk about that round, how that came together. Are you getting these companies? Like weeks earlier than American, you know, investors that would that would want a shot at it. Is it is it months? You know, talk about your edge in Europe on the ground.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, 100%. Loveable is a great example of a global company that's being built from Europe and Sweden in particular. Their numbers are insane. They're growing, you know, 2.3 to 2.5 million ARR per week. Their retention is better than ChatGPT's at over 85%. I mean, it is a monster and their retention is really important. It is not sugar high AI revenues. And so phenomenally impressive. Listen, Anton is quite obviously brilliant. I think we over exaggerate how difficult our role is as venture investors. Our role is to invest in the 1% and generally the 1% I find is quite obvious.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  And so when I met him, it was pretty apparent that he was bluntly creating an entirely new category. I've learned one thing in investing, that when you're able to make your customer a superhero, it generally works very well. Nike is a good example. Everyone's an athlete. That message is empowering. Shopify, everyone's an entrepreneur. And Loveable allows anyone to build a website. My mother, who has a bakery, uses Loveable to make her bakery website. That is incredible.

• 41:55Jordi Hays?

  I I love your commentary on just the website market in in general, the sort of, you know, you've got the framers, the web flows, you know, all these different platforms. It's felt over the last few years. Yeah, it's felt over the last few years. If you just waited for, you know, Webflow to kind of become four years old, then you could create the framers and then you could do the Loveables.

• 42:14John Coogan?

  It's been like the unending goldmine, honestly.

• 42:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and it seems like the.

• 42:17Speaker 03

  You've got a couple of different segments here that I don't think people are really talking about enough, which is like you've got the number ones, which is P owned, larger, older players. Now, they are in a lot of trouble. They've lost innovation. They've lost product centricity.

• 42:35Speaker 03

  They're in a real world of pain. I'm really looking at a lot of the PE board assets, your Anaplan's, your Coopers of the world, thinking, wow, you were bought at the height of the market. You don't have the founder as the CEO. You've lost product centricity. This is going to be a really tough slog to get back to that acquisition price. And they know that. And then the second that no one's talking about either is this really worrying segment. This is almost what I'm most worried for. Fifty million to 200 million air or SaaS businesses that are growing in the teens. And they're not profitable yet, or they're barely profitable. They are not acquisition targets for PE. Those are not good enough numbers. They're not good enough to IPO.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  What happens in that case? And there's a lot of these companies. That is a really dangerous chasm to fall down that I don't think many people are talking about.

• 43:29John Coogan?

  What about just the broader market? We're seeing a pretty significant sell off in the US. Is Europe seeing something similar? I haven't been tracking it very closely.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  When you say sell off, what do you mean?

• 43:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think he's talking public equities, but I mean, in your position, do you, as a venture investor, probably don't care. But I even talk about maybe just like pricing in the early stage market, which is probably what you're more clued into.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  I mean, there's so many things here. I think one thing that no one's doing, I'm so shocked about it. It's like bluntly how LPs are responding to a lot of the endowment policy changes enacted by a Trump administration. I mean, like, this is a very, very difficult position for a lot of endowment funds to be in. They're forced to rethink a lot of their private allocations. And that will significantly impact managers' abilities to raise funds this year.

• 44:23John Coogan?

  Can you step back and explain exactly what the change is?

• 44:27Speaker 03

  Well, so you're seeing essentially the Trump administration reduce a lot of the budgets that they're able to have to their privates. And so you're seeing that reflected in how they're engaging with new managers. When I speak to a lot of endowments today, they're simply not adding new managers and they're even trimming their existing. And so I think that's bluntly gonna really impact the amount of new managers that we see this year. In terms of pricing, honestly, it's higher than it's ever been for the clearly great assets. And there's a lot of people who come and say, oh, it's so unfair, it's so unfair. I understand that for a lot of the market, you're not coming out of Stripe or Facebook or you name it.

• 45:09Speaker 03

  But if you are, you have more money than ever before and the prices are honestly higher than ever before. The prices are absolutely nuts today. And so you either have to be, if you want to win in vantage state, you have to be one of two things. I believe I'm a better picker than anyone else and can find diamonds in the rough. Or I believe that I am such attractive capital that I can win a beauty contest and still pay a very high price but beat everyone else.

• 45:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Do it all at the same time. No, I think that was it. It's funny, like, any investor who's claiming, you know, complaining about high prices is just like, just price every investment perfectly and never miss. Put up a great fund.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  But by the way, entry price really matters. When you look at Wiz and Insight, something very timely, you know, their entry price was very high. And so people are really shitting on it as an investment, saying like, oh, it only returned a third or a quarter of their fund. It's not, it's just that the entry price was so high.

• 46:10Jordi Hays?

  Well, talk about that. I'm curious, do you know any dynamics? Cause I was wondering, imagine you're the partner who leads, you know, $200 million investment, turns it into $2.5 billion. And then you're kind of waiting around for your other partner saying like, I kind of did the heavy lifting here, but I need you guys there, cause they're not in carry yet. Is there a scenario where that partner doesn't really see? Much of a personal benefit from having, you know, returning $2 billion?

• 46:36Speaker 03

  I mean, let's just say, I think they'll be getting a pretty big bonus at the end of the year. So I'm not too worried about them.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  But I mean, it is just testament to the like fun size matters.

• 46:48John Coogan?

  The scale's massive. It's never been bigger.

• 46:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:52Jordi Hays?

  All right, Harry, there's a lot more to talk about. We'd love to have you on again. Go enjoy dinner. Thanks for coming on late.

• 46:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, we appreciate you coming on late. We really appreciate it.

• 46:59Jordi Hays?

  Fantastic to have you.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  Guys, honestly, you are fantastic company on the walk. Always let me know what I can do and huge love, guys.

• 47:06John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 47:06Jordi Hays?

  Thanks so much.

• 47:07John Coogan?

  Talk to you soon.

• 47:07Jordi Hays?

  Enjoy your evening. Cheers. Yeah, I was coordinating timing with him and being in London.

• 47:13John Coogan?

  Well, it seemed like he got to a great podcasting studio.

• 47:15Jordi Hays?

  He's locked in.

• 47:16John Coogan?

  He's locked in.

• 47:17Jordi Hays?

  He's locked in.

• 47:17John Coogan?

  He'll love it.

• 47:18Jordi Hays?

  Overtime, overtime, we're gonna get the dallians like a permanent sort of like hub in the office. Just say, come flip on the lights, you'll be live.

• 47:25John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll set it up. The remote studio. I mean, that's what the big TV channels do. It's like, oh, if you're doing a spot on, you know, NBC, go to the local NBC affiliate in your town and we'll have a green screen and a great microphone and a and a teleprompter for you and you'll look great if you can stop by. Anyway, we got Adam coming on the show in a couple of minutes. Give me some background on Adam. How'd you meet him and what does he do?

• 47:53Jordi Hays?

  The godfather of media, Adam Ryan.

• 47:58Jordi Hays?

  That is a bold intro. So Adam Ryan's a very good friend. I was actually on the board of his company in the, through the Series A.

• 48:08Jordi Hays?

  And he, prior to that, was at The Hustle. He like ran sales there, eventually was the, I think, the president and the COO.

• 48:15John Coogan?

  Got it.

• 48:15Jordi Hays?

  Under Sam Parr. He also was at Under Armour when they acquired MyFitnessPal. So he's just been kind of like right in the, he also was at, he was at Spice Works as well. So he's always been at kind of the intersection, intersection of like software and business, media and content. And so he can talk a little bit about Workweek. And then I wanted to get him on to talk about the TechCrunch acquisition that happened today. Uh, which uh, there's a lot of turmoil on the timeline.

• 48:43John Coogan?

  Has the number actually leaked or is that private information?

• 48:46Jordi Hays?

  It's private information. Um, but uh, we got him ready?

• 48:49John Coogan?

  But should we be ringing the side?

• 48:51Jordi Hays?

  There he is.

• 48:52John Coogan?

  That's the question. That's what we'll ask Adam. Adam, uh, we heard TechCrunch was bought. We have this beautiful, we have this beautiful gong right here. Uh, should we ring it or not?

• 49:03Speaker 04

  I think this is like a poor noise champagne bottle situation. It's time to ring it.

• 49:07Jordi Hays?

  Okay. Okay. We'll hit it. We'll hit it. Um, but uh, great, great to see you, Adam. Um, I just want to say you always thought that I would be good at uh, podcasting and always believed in me. So uh, you know, thank you for that. You were the first person to say.

• 49:24John Coogan?

  You have a Facebook podcast.

• 49:25Jordi Hays?

  You should be podcasting. So uh, but it's great. Uh, I, I gave a quick intro earlier, but it'd be great to have it in your words. And then I want to kind of get into the news.

• 49:34Speaker 04

  Jordy, I think I uh, sent you a contract uh, uh, once to become a podcaster. So uh, we can talk about, uh, we can talk about that. Uh, but yeah, it's a big fan of the show, guys. It's been, been amazing. Uh, and I've never seen Jordy just uh, in his natural element of uh, getting to shoot the shit all day. It's a, it's a perfect, it's a perfect job.

• 49:55John Coogan?

  It's fantastic.

• 49:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 49:58Speaker 04

  So work week is, uh, imagine if LinkedIn uh, was only for people that were verifiably in your profession. So think about uh, if you're in econ or on a hospital system, um, or HR, uh, you have a platform, uh, social media platform that's built just for you. Conversations there authentic, uh, around your lingo. You get it. Similar to what this podcast is all about. Actually, I think this is why we all like it as founders is you guys talk like us. You think like us. Uh, you bring that out and we've built that uh, in a social media platform. Um, so that's largely what we do. I think. One of the areas that we've focused on is like, if I wanted to go launch an HR

• 50:43Speaker 04

  social media platform, I would never have a shot to do it. HR people would not listen to me. And so our go to market is to partner with operators, practitioners in these industries and have them create newsletters and podcasts that then help us build an audience to to drive to these these memberships in the future. So that's that's most of what what we're up to nowadays. And previously, as Jordy said, the Hustle, MyFitnessPal, and Spice Works kind of at various different points of of media.

• 51:14John Coogan?

  Cool.

• 51:15Jordi Hays?

  Amazing. Let's jump right into into TC. You know, we've talked about this on the on the show before. They were owned by, what was it, AOL, Apollo, the private equity fund bought AOL. It seems like at some point, there would be an incentive to sort of dismantle AOL, the underlying assets. And I imagine that Apollo doesn't want to just hold that position forever.

• 51:43Jordi Hays?

  Maybe just talk about kind of the history of maybe why you think TechCrunch has really just struggled. I think it was owned by it was it was owned by Verizon.

• 51:52John Coogan?

  I'll give you some background. So founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington, Parker, Partners of Archimedes Ventures. Eventually, they went under the Yahoo umbrella after its former parent AOL and Yahoo were acquired by Verizon. So it became a Verizon company. And then Verizon sold to Apollo. So it's been private equity back since 2021. And now it has been sold to Regent, a media investment firm.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's it's the property. It's like the hot potato that no one wants, right? It's just been sold and sold and sold. But I mean, I think the the the through line is looking, if you look at their search interest on Google Trends, they peaked. Any guess what year they peaked of search interest?

• 52:37Jordi Hays?

  2012.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  2011, good guess, Jordy.

• 52:41John Coogan?

  2011, wow.

• 52:42Speaker 04

  Uh, 2011 was the peak of their search history. Today, their search history is essentially the equivalent of what they had in June of 2006.

• 52:50John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  And it's just been a depreciating distressed asset for 12 years. And that's why it keeps getting tossed around and, you know, um, I actually think it's the, they're an interesting one to study though. Cause like, what, why were they so good? And they were so good because they figured out one move that was just awesome, which was building relationships with VCs in Silicon Valley, breaking the news, having mom be proud, creating the cycle, keep going.

• 53:21Jordi Hays?

  The mom be proud engine.

• 53:23John Coogan?

  It really is true. When you start a company, it's so fake for so long. Even if you go to your parents and you say, hey, I got $2 million from Andreessen Horowitz. They're like, who? That's not Bank of America.

• 53:33Jordi Hays?

  And at some point.

• 53:34John Coogan?

  And so you get the, you get the TechCrunch article and you can send it to your family and be like, hey, I'm in business. I'm a real person.

• 53:39Jordi Hays?

  At some point, I, I had one funny TechCrunch story. So we announced our seed round from Andreessen and we simultaneously launched our pre-seed. It was this awesome moment. We had been in the timeline a lot and TechCrunch agreed to cover the story. They didn't tell us when they would release it. They didn't even tell us they were for sure going to cover it until like a couple of days before. And then when they did release it, they refused to use our product imagery or any assets that we created. And they used a stock image of a birthday cake. And we were just like, hey, like, we're really excited about the article and like, we want to share it broadly, but like, this is not on, you know, not on brand for us. And like, feels kind of random. And they like fired back and they were like, you're not, you don't, you're not a writer here, like, don't.

• 54:22Jordi Hays?

  And it was like very hostile and it left this like terrible taste in my mouth. And I was like, okay, I'm never talking to TechCrunch again. Uh, and I think a lot of founders have had that sort of frustration where it's like, hey, I, you, we still love the TechCrunch brand. Cause like for me, I grew up reading it. I, I remember just as a kid going to the homepage and being so excited. And I think it has like a ton of potential as being a place to inspire entrepreneurship. But the falloff is potentially that, and this is like the entire work week thesis is that, uh, business people, whether you're an investor or founder, et cetera, want to.

• 54:57Jordi Hays?

  Like learn from other business people. And so at some point along the road after Michael Arrington, I think was out of the picture and he was private equity owned, they maybe stopped hiring sort of founders or people that just deeply loved venture. And it sort of coincided with this explosion of just like, you know, content creators broadly within venture capital that, you know, Packy would start breaking fundraising news and you knew if you work with Packy, he was gonna, you know, publish it on the day that he said he was. He was gonna make you look good.

• 55:30John Coogan?

  And actually deep dive it in a much deeper level than you would ever see on TechCrunch.

• 55:33Speaker 04

  Right. And I think the other piece of that, like two things they, I think they really screwed up. Like one, when you build the, your actual best product, which was their like fundraising breaking news around the relationships with investors, you can't write anything that's actually like deeply critical even in the future. And what they did was they got stuck in middleman land of like, you can have like the Axios, Sarah Fishers of the world, Packys that are like, hey, I'm here to like tell a good story, a real story, but like to support you or like hard hitting journalism, like I'm gonna like go say the thing that no one wants to say aloud.

• 56:11John Coogan?

  The Wall Street Journal, John Kerry, Rue, like he broke Theranos, like he's a serious investigative journalist in the business world.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  They tried to do both and you just can't win in the middle. Like, and I think today, like either your editorial and your audience, like it can't be rounded anymore. It has to be pointed and like you have to be like, this is what we stand for. This is what we do. This is who we support. If you're like anywhere in the middle, you're just gonna get forgotten. And I think they, they lost that like 10 plus years ago.

• 56:38John Coogan?

  I mean, looking at their X account, they have 10 million followers on X and their announcement, 19 likes on their announcement that they have been sold, which is like big news in their own world and it's just so rough.

• 56:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's interesting. You know, we had heard months ago that it was for sale and was trying to find a buyer and, and I do think the actual purchase price came in a lot lower than, than what, what they had hoped. But, but what I can imagine happens now is whoever this guy, I don't know the guy who bought it, but I imagine he. Basically fires everyone because I can't imagine that that uh.

• 57:16Speaker 04

  He's he's not going to so Regent is a private equity firm that owns a bunch of logos that 15 years ago were cool. And his playbook is and TechCrunch put this in their own press release. You know, they're they I think their cheesy ass line was like this is this is a software update, not a system restart. But he said he's not firing anyone, but he owns a bunch of different logos and publications that are typically distressed assets. And I kind of see it as like they're they're hoping he his playbook is like I own 50 of these. If I can make a few of them a little bit better, flip them in five years. And so I don't think they're actually going to probably fire a ton of people.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, I think it's actually going to continue the path of not being relevant or good. Because they're going to not lose money and I think they need a whole restart to do that.

• 58:09John Coogan?

  Let me give a little overview of who they own at Regent, computer world, network world, CIO magazine, CSO magazine, Mac world, PC world, IT world, Rate My Professors, Cheddar News, Military Times, Defense News, Marine Times, Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times. So a lot of like these hyper verticalized, small trade publications they've put together. And then they own some stuff in fashion as well, and then industrial and consumer products as well. But and it says that they were in super cuts for a while and then they.

• 58:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I saw that. I saw that too. That was a fun. I was like, actually, I'd like to hear that story. But I mean, the I think, you know, when was the last time you heard a founder now say like, I can't wait for TechCrunch to like break my story? And I think that's like the core of what's going on.

• 59:00Jordi Hays?

  Founders would still want them to break the story, but it's hard to get them to respond, even if you have something that's somewhat newsworthy. What else is going on in media today that you you find interesting? I know you wrote earlier this week about the SKIMS, which was like a hustle era, super hot, you know, newsletter that that sold. How did that go? Is there any takeaways from it?

• 59:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, they, you know, they started 2014. Oprah said she loved it. Reese Witherspoon, Chelsea Handler, kind of like went on this, raised like 25 million from 21st Century Fox, bunch of good companies. Also hit their search interest peak in 2016. So I think with them, they had a great business. They were probably seven years too late. I think that's a founder not, founders not selling at the right time than like being bad builders and their time had passed. But I don't think they crossed the prep stack. So, you know, 12 plus years down the drain for them and pretty sad considering one time they were, they were a household name among, among like millennial women for a few short years. But yeah, that happened this weekend. I think that's what we're seeing. It's like, it's

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  the onslaught of like, if you're not loved, you're out. And none of these people that are getting sold today, like have people that are truly like logging in every day and loving what they're seeing.

• 1:00:19John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, last question, then we'll let you go. What do you think the founders of the skim should have done differently? It was, is there a path where this could have been a great cash flow engine if they'd not raised and kind of run it more as just making them influencers? Could they have been the next, you know, Call Her Daddy or something if they'd played that differently? What do you think?

• 1:00:39Speaker 04

  I do think they were more of a faceless institution than they probably got credit for, which is kind of against my belief of what you have to be today. I think you have to have individuals at the forefront. But also, my interesting analysis there, from 24, their press release was like, our advantage is that we're low tech. In 2018, when they announced their series B, they said, at the heart of what we do is technology. And I think there's like, it's okay today to just admit who you are and what you do. And they tried to be something they're not, which is a technology company. I think they wasted tons of capital trying to do shit that they have no idea how to do. And they should have just kept with building content for women their age and building, creating for themselves and they would have been just fine.

• 1:01:22John Coogan?

  Yeah, that makes tons of sense.

• 1:01:23Jordi Hays?

  Did you follow anything? Last question on my side for now, and would love to just have you back on when there's, when there's media, you know, headlines. The, did you follow, so, Call Her Daddy, like, you know, had all this big, big issues with Barstool because they just weren't really getting a good deal. Alex Cooper eventually leaves, starts her own network, does very well, but then creates this sort of new superstar in Alex Earl. And then Alex Earl like announced this quarter that she's leaving. Do you think it's possible to build networks anymore long-term? Or with these sort of like, you know, scaled networks, do you eventually just lose, you know, your best talent? How does that work?

• 1:02:08Speaker 04

  Uh, I think it depends. I mean, the Alex Earl one's interesting. I was confused because she was already a superstar. I mean, she was like, uh, she was already making like a few million a year, um, pre Alex Cooper. I think, um, what the net, what the best networks do, I think is find emerging talent, um, um, early, early, uh, like in pre-seed stage essentially is like a content creator. Um, and, uh, to keep them, and I think there's been plenty of good examples. I mean, everyone talks about Barstool leaving, but like Big Cat, PFT, and all those guys are still there, um, and drive most of their revenue actually, and always have. And so what would happen, how'd they do that? They get paid a lot of

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  money. Um, and, uh, they feel like they're treated fair. And I think that's like at the core. Um, not everyone wants to do everything. And I think when you're, when you're building out those networks, the only way to keep talent is I think to talk to the talent and be like, what, what kind of life do you want? What, what kind of pay do you want? And you've got to build for that. Um, and I think, uh, if you look at TV, they actually, this is what people should take away is like Stephen A. Smith just got a fucking whopper of a deal. They kept him, but he, they like knew what he needed. He wanted to be the high, he wanted to get the highest contract. TV's done this really well for a long time. Friends cast, giving them their new contracts to keep them together. Those are all innovative contracts to keep talent. I think to do, to sustain, you have to kind of take that same approach.

• 1:03:34John Coogan?

  That makes a ton of sense. Well, thanks for stopping by. We'll talk.

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  Thanks, guys. See you later.

• 1:03:38Jordi Hays?

  Talk soon.

• 1:03:39John Coogan?

  Bye.

• 1:03:41John Coogan?

  Very interesting.

• 1:03:41Jordi Hays?

  Nice.

• 1:03:42John Coogan?

  Uh, who we got next coming in?

• 1:03:44Jordi Hays?

  Adam's always, uh, he's never, he's never pulled punches in his writing. He's got a great newsletter where he just kind of, uh, says it how it is in media. Uh, cause he's been in the trenches, right? He built a million subscriber list while at the hustle and it's certainly not easy. Uh, we got Blake Anderson coming in from the cage live from New York city where he's been, uh, in an apartment for 33 days straight.

• 1:04:09John Coogan?

  How you doing Blake? Can you guys hear me? We can.

• 1:04:12Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 1:04:12John Coogan?

  Welcome to the show. They can hear me, but I cannot hear them. Okay. Try it again.

• 1:04:18Jordi Hays?

  Check, check, check.

• 1:04:19John Coogan?

  Y'all say something?

• 1:04:20Jordi Hays?

  Check, check, check.

• 1:04:20John Coogan?

  Go to public.com investing for those who stay seriously. Multi asset investing, industry deals, funded by millions.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, like can you play music and do you hear it in your iPods?

• 1:04:31John Coogan?

  We got stocks, bonds, treasuries, options. Can you hear that?

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it has speakers.

• 1:04:36John Coogan?

  What about eight sleep? I know you guys are sleeping on eight sleeps out there, nights that feel your best days. How do I sound? Turn any bed into the ultimate sleeping experience. Go to eight sleep.com slash T B P N. Can you hear that Blake? Yes, I can. Okay, cool. What about get bezel.com? Can you hear, can you hear that? I can hear that.

• 1:04:54Jordi Hays?

  Blake's a watch, Blake's a watch guy.

• 1:04:56John Coogan?

  Ramp.com. How about, I was about to ask about ramp. Could you tell me about them? Yeah, ramp, I mean, time is money, so save both. Go to rank.com. Is like, you can hear that? Okay, good.

• 1:05:05Jordi Hays?

  Are we good? I think, I think we're in a good spot. Uh, Blake, Blake, alright. Okay. Uh, Blake, it's great to have you on the show. Uh, it's a big day today. Thank you for taking the time. Uh, you haven't been, I think everybody here is very familiar with you just from, from PMF or die and everything. You haven't left, uh, the cage for 33 days. Today you're launching the app and, uh, maybe you start to, you know, get a sense that freedom might be on the horizon.

• 1:05:32John Coogan?

  Freedom might be on the horizon.

• 1:05:33Jordi Hays?

  But yeah, talk to us. How are you feeling?

• 1:05:36Speaker 05

  You know, I'm I'm feeling very stressed out. I'm I feel like I have this pit in my stomach that is not going away for anything. And I think that the only way that I can release that is achieving PMF. And if I do not achieve PMF, I think I'll be in a very dire spot, you know.

• 1:05:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, we're gonna have, we're gonna have the the audience will get to to vote on the sort of fantasy football style punishment, like you might have to do pink, pink hair or something like that. Yeah. No, but we we're we're believers. Why don't you break down 10x in your words? Maybe just start with kind of the the manifesto. It feels like the the app is, you know, extremely timely with everybody sort of realizing that one of the biggest opportunities with AI today is giving everybody, you know, a tutor. But yeah, tell us about 10x in your words.

• 1:06:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that the power of AI education cannot be understated. Everything that I've built has been on the backbone of AI. And yet, at the same time, I have so many friends that constantly ask me how they can use AI to learn more efficiently, to learn how to code, to learn how to market, to learn how to do anything, any digital skill.

• 1:06:48Speaker 05

  And I don't think that there exists a platform that's kind of synonymous with AI based learning. And this was the general background thesis on building 10x. And next came the medium, right? What is the form factor? And so the original form factor with how we are launching and the version that's going on the App Store this evening is a Duolingo style learning path where you can select your skill and progress through the foundational knowledge needed to learn how to code with AI, market with AI, you know, build a business with AI. And so that is one key function of the application. Additionally, we have the ability to custom generate lessons. So you can generate a 15 minute podcast on anything that you want to learn about.

• 1:07:31Speaker 05

  I find myself going down these like interesting podcast rabbit holes on Spotify. And what I found is that, uh, once you get past the very base layer of any sort of, uh, any sort of domain, it could be machine learning, it could be complex systems, it could be American history. Uh, it's very difficult to find the sort of custom tailored information to to progressing to that next step. And TEDx provides that for people. Additionally, you can track your skill progression over time as well as chat with a chat GPT, Grok like, uh, basic chatbot within the application.

• 1:08:03Jordi Hays?

  Very cool. I saw a post earlier today from this guy, Chris Pike, who's over at Pace. He says, "When elite universities uploaded all of their courses online for public consumption, we collectively realized that the limiting factor for global intelligence is not access to information, it's motivation." What's your read on how motivated is the next generation of builders? Who the initial 10x app is like, how do you make somebody, how do you turn somebody into a developer, right? Who right now maybe knows nothing. Do you feel like there's like, like just a ridiculous amount of motivation that doesn't necessarily have like a pathway yet? Do you see that 10x is like, hey, here's how you go from zero to builder?

• 1:08:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, so one of the most popular questions that I get on social media is, "How can I learn to use AI? How can I learn to code nowadays?" And there doesn't seem to be any resources that are really constantly up to date with the newest and best techniques. In addition, if we look at what Duolingo has done for language learning, the big thing that they've done is they've gamified it, they've made it fun. And I think that that's in line with your point regarding motivation. And so right now with 10x, it is significantly more enjoyable to learn through 10x than through a basic standard chatbot, though obviously we have the chatbot embedded within. But going forward, one of my primary North Star metrics is how much dopamine do you feel rushing into your brain when you hear those little sounds and get that XP and see

• 1:09:33Speaker 05

  yourself level up?

• 1:09:34Jordi Hays?

  Do you have, do you have haptics yet? Or you got, you got the phone vibrating or is that rolling out soon?

• 1:09:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, we've got, we've got haptics. But you know, I don't, you know, haptics are just, just a small step in a very big mountain in competing with Instagram and TikTok. Because you know, my view for the 10x mobile application is that it might not be the platform that you sit down on and use for three hours straight, but it certainly can fill the latent space in your day instead of Instagram and actually put it towards something productive.

• 1:10:04Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, talk about, talk about the concept of like, character building and sort of leveling up your character. Because a big part of 10x is like, okay, I'm a character, I'm Jordy, I can go on 10x and like, level up my character to learn how to code. That's awesome. Was there a specific video game or anything that inspired you as a kid that you were super into, like that you got maybe way too into? Was it, I think World of Warcraft was probably way before your time.

• 1:10:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Jordi Hays?

  Was there any specific?

• 1:10:33Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So I would say Skyrim was a big one. So not to be confused with World of Warcraft. The big difference in terms of the type of person that played this game. Now that that said, no, um, I, I, I think that games where you can see your skill and, and level progression over time are just inherently so much more addicting. Skyrim, Madden, FIFA, um, uh, even Minecraft and a bunch of these different mods that I would use when I played as a kid. Um, and that was essentially the thesis behind UMAX and what made it go so viral is the ability to scan your face and get this sort of like six factor rating system about like your skin quality and your jawline and like your overall attractiveness and potential.

• 1:11:15Speaker 05

  And so in its current form, it's just XP based, but moving forward, I think that really interesting thing that we can implement is the ability to, uh, take these sort of preliminary challenges and quizzes to assess your current skill position. And then make this into more than just a system to come and learn statically and linearly, but something that can dynamically update based on where you're at, where you're progressing and then become somewhat of a status symbol, right? Right now, we all know the term 10x engineer, you know, uh, I want, I want a nine, a level 99 in 10x to be, to be a hallmark of, of somebody who, who has agency in this post AI world.

• 1:11:54Jordi Hays?

  Love it. Uh, talk about your go to market. Uh, I know you, this is historically how you've grown your apps is sort of leveraging these sort of short form video platforms. You're taking all that learning and, and, uh, you know, channeling it into 10x's GTM. Are you doing anything different this time or is it the same playbook that you've sort of happily shared with the world? Because it's, it's easy to talk about, it's hard to actually do.

• 1:12:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, you know, I think that 10x is inherently less viral than the previous products that have built. Now that said, has so much more long-term upside. And so if I were launching a RISGPT right now, it'd be like done, wraps. I'd be, I'd have completed it. I'd be at a million ARR. But, um, I'm trying to build a big business here and I really believe in the long-term mission. Now that said, I, I, I think that I'm taking a lot of the learnings that I've had from my previous applications and figuring out how to, how to make something that isn't inherently as viral or maybe like, uh, you know, scandalous into something that, that people really resonate with and still can go viral on organic platforms. And so. You know, I think that one of the big marketing messages that we have is you won't be replaced by AI.

• 1:13:03Speaker 05

  You'll be replaced by somebody using AI, learn to use AI. Now that's inherently a little bit scary and like digs into insecurity. And I think that that'll be, uh, that'll be conducive to, to, to, uh, you know, engagement on, on these social platforms. We're split testing a ton of different niches. We're working with self-improvement creators, with AI and tech creators. We're working with OnlyFans creators. And so we've got the, we've got the whole roster.

• 1:13:27Jordi Hays?

  This is what you were saying before, that, that somebody logs on to OnlyFans for whatever reason. Uh, and then it's like, hey, why don't you learn how to code? When are you, when are you, uh, I know you're, you're launching today. Uh, I got the preorder page pulled up. When do you think, when do you think you're, when do you think you're going live? Uh, cause I know you probably still have some stuff to do there.

• 1:13:48Speaker 05

  No, we're going live immediately after this call.

• 1:13:51Jordi Hays?

  Amazing. Okay. Everybody listening, Blake really wants to see the sunlight. He wants to surf. He wants to go hiking. Go download the app.

• 1:13:59Speaker 05

  I just changed my bio real quick to, um, my, my, uh, ex bio, which used to be MJ of AI apps. And then everything, it's now, I haven't left my apartment for 33 days. Please download so I can surf and hike.

• 1:14:12Jordi Hays?

  I love it. All right. I'm putting it, I'm putting it in the chat right now. You're the man, Blake. Good luck today. We will, uh, we'll talk to you later and excited to see, I, I see Sam Sheffer in the background there. He's collecting all this footage. I can't wait to see the documentary on it. It's gonna be amazing and, uh, Godspeed today.

• 1:14:29Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me, guys. Peace out.

• 1:14:31Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 1:14:31John Coogan?

  Bye.

• 1:14:33John Coogan?

  What a hilarious project. So chaotic. Thirty-three days without going outside.

• 1:14:39Jordi Hays?

  I mean, they do have the roof deck.

• 1:14:41John Coogan?

  I know you haven't seen The Shawshank Redemption, but when he gets out of prison and he's just being like.

• 1:14:45Jordi Hays?

  They do have a little sunlight.

• 1:14:47John Coogan?

  It's beautiful. Yeah, I guess he can go outside.

• 1:14:50Jordi Hays?

  There's somebody in the chat says, if he fails, he has to, this is Rusty Pitchfork. If he fails, he has to buy a Dodge Charger EV and use it as his daily driver.

• 1:15:01Jordi Hays?

  Ah, brutal.

• 1:15:02John Coogan?

  So much fun. Um, well, should we go to one more story? Cause we have Sean McGuire joining in 15 minutes, but I think we got enough time to break down the billionaire who just bought the Celtics. He doesn't have a Wikipedia page. No one knows about this guy. Uh, Sean Purry said, "The Celtics just sold for $6 billion to a guy with no Wikipedia page. Money talks, wealth whispers. Send tweet." I love Sean.

• 1:15:27Jordi Hays?

  And it does crazy numbers.

• 1:15:29John Coogan?

  It does crazy numbers.

• 1:15:29Jordi Hays?

  I love when you, I love when you can drop something that's, um, when you can drop something that's just like very niche, like only for your fellow posters. And it still does numbers.

• 1:15:39John Coogan?

  It's also great because like Sean's been on the show, you know, obviously we're notorious yappers and basically the opposite of whispering, but we love wealth, so we'll break it down. William Chisholm was a complete unknown to sports fans and most private equity investors until earlier this week. He just bought the Boston Celtics for 6.1 billion. By the time they're ready to spend their billions, most sports owners are already celebrities in their own right. Wall Street titans, CEOs of prominent companies, heirs of America's richest families. But when the most prestigious team in the NBA was sold for $6 billion, a record price for a pro sports franchise, the most shocking part of the deal wasn't how much the buyer paid, it was the person who bought it. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Uh, William Chisholm, the little known managing partner of a little known private equity firm,

• 1:16:24John Coogan?

  will become the new owner of the Boston Celtics after agreeing to purchase the team from Wic Gruzbeck. The party's announced on Thursday. The deal stunned NBA insiders and private equity investors and even Chisholm himself. "You think of me at eight years old, 10 years old, watching the Celtics and never dreaming that this could possibly happen. It's just a pinch me moment."

• 1:16:45Jordi Hays?

  Amazing.

• 1:16:46John Coogan?

  Chisholm has a far different public profile than other NBA owners, especially those who have splurged on teams in recent years. He's nowhere to be found on Bloomberg or Forbes' billionaires list. Little L for Forbes there. They missed a big one, uh, before the sale was announced.

• 1:17:00Jordi Hays?

  He paid to stay off the list.

• 1:17:01John Coogan?

  Yeah. He's getting on there now. He didn't have a Wikipedia page.

• 1:17:04Jordi Hays?

  So this line from Bill Simmons, "We know so little about this guy, I don't even know how to pronounce his name."

• 1:17:09John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's Chisholm apparently, not Chisholm, Chisholm. Chisholm, whose firm Symphony Technology Group, invests in technology groups, intel- technology companies that handle cloud security software or run job search platforms, has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal exactly once, when STG bought the construction data unit of McGraw-Hill. "We look forward to helping the business achieve the next level of success," he said.

• 1:17:33Jordi Hays?

  Amazing line.

• 1:17:35John Coogan?

  Goaded.

• 1:17:35Jordi Hays?

  No, no private equity bro has ever said something like that before.

• 1:17:38John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:17:39Jordi Hays?

  Except every time if they don't actually want to make a comment.

• 1:17:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, you could have just said no comment, but he's on record with the Wall Street Journal, just once. "Now the man whose firm invested in companies called Onclusive, Reich and Keltra has a slightly more recognizable brand to his name, the Celtics. Chisholm, who grew up in north of Boston in Georgetown, Massachusetts, has spent his professional life far from the spotlight. He attended Dartmouth as an undergrad, received his MBA from UPenn Wharton. He worked at a private equity firm, Bain Capital. I wonder when he worked at Bain, probably pretty, probably in like the 90s or something. And then set off to start his own private equity firm, STG."

• 1:18:19Jordi Hays?

  You were at Bain.

• 1:18:20John Coogan?

  I was at Bain, but in 2010, I think.

• 1:18:23Jordi Hays?

  Do you have like a Bain alumni chat that you're part of?

• 1:18:26John Coogan?

  Definitely not. I would not be in that. No way. But.

• 1:18:32Jordi Hays?

  You could have made a generational run at the top, for the top spot.

• 1:18:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:36Jordi Hays?

  You've got the height for it.

• 1:18:37John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:18:38Jordi Hays?

  They would have just said, hey, we gotta push this guy through.

• 1:18:40John Coogan?

  The height thing is real there. I was working out at the, like the corporate gym at Bain Capital once, when I was interning there. And one of the big shot MDs comes in, is on the, the exercise bike. It was just like, you, like me, race right now. And it was just the most like mogging ever. And he's like, I could put up, it was like the fan bike. He's like, go as hard as you can. I can do 21 units of electricity or whatever. He had some weird metric that he was benchmarking against. And he just wanted like the, the young guys to see like, oh, like push me harder, you know, because he's like a 60 year old guy. Yeah, really competitive. I loved it.

• 1:19:12Jordi Hays?

  Love it.

• 1:19:12John Coogan?

  STG, which Chisholm co-founded in 2002, invests in companies your average hoops fan have never heard of. But it positioned Chisholm to strike when the opportunity of a lifetime came calling. "The capital to put something like this together is frankly the easy part," Chisholm said.

• 1:19:29John Coogan?

  After striking the largest deal in pro sports history, it's getting the right folks around the table. The investors alongside Chisholm include current Celtics minority owner, Rob Hale, related companies, President Bruce A. Beal, and investment firm Sixth Street. The Celtics shines a light on the changing financial landscape of professional sports.

• 1:19:47Jordi Hays?

  I bet this was, this was done over a group chat or around a golf.

• 1:19:53John Coogan?

  Probably. Before the Celtics deal, the last three NBA teams that changed hands were sold for between three and four billion. So the price is soaring. The league recently allowed, the league recently allowed private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds to buy team stakes. So they're allowing more capital in, the price goes up. It's just supply and demand. It's fascinating because the narrative around the NBA is that they've lost ground to the NFL. Then there's also this larger narrative that just professional sports are falling off and becoming less relevant. And yet, prices have never been higher.

• 1:20:29Jordi Hays?

  Yep. Yeah, these are trophy assets. They've, they've, you know, over the last 20 years, they've been fantastic investments, but they don't need to make money to be valuable.

• 1:20:40John Coogan?

  Yep. Based in Menlo Park, STG manages just under 12 billion in assets, according to PitchBook. I wonder how much of that is his because he's putting a lot of money into this deal. Chisholm's backing from Sixth Street drew some shade throwing from current Celtics minority owner, Steve Pegli, Pegluca. I'm definitely mispronouncing that. And I bet all the sports fans know exactly how to pronounce his name, who would also be leading a group bidding to buy the team from Gruzberg. "We had no debt or private equity money that would potentially hamstring our ability to compete in the future," he said in a statement on Thursday. The former co-chairman of Bain Capital is no stranger to private equity. Oh, so both of the guys that were building on the deal are Bain alums. It probably was a Bain chat. You're right.

• 1:21:23Jordi Hays?

  Bain chats.

• 1:21:24John Coogan?

  He said, "He and his group would remain at the ready if the announced transaction does not end up being finalized." We'll see if this Chisholm guy actually has the money. He's throwing down the gauntlet. If you have one false step, I'm hopping in with my deal. Chisholm attended Celtics games as a kid, sitting in obstructed view seats in the rickety old Boston Garden. So when he learned that the team of his dreams was available, he didn't take, didn't take long to make up his mind about pursuing it. It was certainly a discussion with my wife and family for about a second.

• 1:21:57John Coogan?

  Hey honey, hey honey, I know you're working on dinner, but can I spend 6 billion on the Celtics? Oh, okay, cool, cool, got it. Yeah, okay, at least we talked about it. Yeah, great. Chisholm said that-

• 1:22:08Jordi Hays?

  Every, every husband has gone through that at some point.

• 1:22:11John Coogan?

  Yes, yes. The GT3RS, or the Adam Arpaian Royal Oak. You know, these are conversations that you have to have as a family. A little family meeting. Hey, I'm buying a $6 billion sports team. Let's go. He said a central goal with the Celtics is to maintain its current success. Under the previous leadership, the team won the 2008 championship and added another last summer. This season is well positioned to become the first repeat NBA champion since 2018. To that end, Chisholm agreed to an unconventional arrangement. Gruzberg is to remain the team's governor, leading its team operations through the 2027 to 2028 season. Chisholm referred to that decision as an intelligence test. "Why would you want to mess with that?" Chisholm said. "That is working at every level."

• 1:22:56John Coogan?

  When Chisholm does take the reins of every part of the Celtics organization, though, he is confident that what put him in the position to buy the team will let him hold on to its winning ways. In our little way at STG, we've done that too. They've done it in-

• 1:23:09Jordi Hays?

  So many good lines in here.

• 1:23:10John Coogan?

  They've done it in higher job platforms, apparently, and now he's doing it in sports. Very fun story. Anyway, one day you'll be able to trade shares in these, in these teams. Hopefully you'll be able to do it on public.com, investing for those who take it seriously.

• 1:23:25Jordi Hays?

  What's the-

• 1:23:26John Coogan?

  Go to public.com. But we gotta move on to, we talked a little bit about Wiz. I don't know if you want to do some timeline, we got seven minutes, but Sean McGuire's hopping on. We can talk to him about Wiz as well.

• 1:23:37Jordi Hays?

  I just was curious, what are the publicly traded sports teams?

• 1:23:42John Coogan?

  I don't know.

• 1:23:42Jordi Hays?

  There is the Atlanta Braves, the MLB.

• 1:23:45John Coogan?

  Really? You can just go buy shares?

• 1:23:46Jordi Hays?

  That's Major League Baseball.

• 1:23:47John Coogan?

  Okay, yeah. Thank you. Good clarifying.

• 1:23:50Jordi Hays?

  Just our audience follows business like sports, so you gotta clarify these things. Manchester United, it's got some shares on the New York's-

• 1:24:01Jordi Hays?

  I'm looking it up because I wonder how these things so

• 1:24:05Jordi Hays?

  Man U is trading it at 2.3 billion on the NASDAQ. You can go buy that on public. Madison Square Garden.

• 1:24:13John Coogan?

  Oh yeah, I guess the MSG group, but that's the garden. That's the actual like holding company for all the different media assets founded by James Dolan, who also, or I guess his dad founded it, but then he runs it and James Dolan created the sphere.

• 1:24:29Jordi Hays?

  Oh, interesting. So the Green Bay Packers have done sort of these public offerings, but they're not doing it anymore. But I have a special announcement. It is Jeremy Gaffon's birthday.

• 1:24:38John Coogan?

  Oh, happy birthday, Jeremy.

• 1:24:39Jordi Hays?

  And I figure we could sing him happy birthday. Ready? Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to Jeremy. I hope you find a special situation today. We love you, Jeremy.

• 1:24:55John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 1:24:56Jordi Hays?

  You deserve all the success in the world. You're still a young whippersnapper.

• 1:25:01John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:25:01Jordi Hays?

  And you have such a bright future.

• 1:25:02John Coogan?

  Yes. May all your deals go through and 10x.

• 1:25:05Jordi Hays?

  10x. That's right.

• 1:25:06John Coogan?

  Much like this Wiz deal, which did more than 10x. It turned into a $4 billion windfall for Index Ventures. They're set to earn a 250-fold return on seed money in a startup Google has agreed to buy. And the partner on the deal is Sider Shaw. And Shaw got the call he had been waiting for on his 37th birthday in January of 2020. A promising Israeli cybersecurity founder that he had been asking for years to launch a company was in need of funding. It's, it's time, said the voice on the other end of the line. Shaw kicked in 3.5 million on behalf of Index Ventures. Flash forward five years and that original seed money earned a 250-fold return this week,

• 1:25:49John Coogan?

  turning into an $875 million stake when Alphabet agreed to buy Wiz for $32 billion. And Index didn't stop at its first check, folks. It went turbo long. It put more money in Wiz during every subsequent funding round. Let's hear it for the folks at Index. They built up a 13% stake. In total, Index has turned its $240 million investment into 4.3 billion. You'll love to see it, folks.

• 1:26:19Jordi Hays?

  So Bryce, over at Indy, Bryce Roberts, friend of the show, taller than you, I believe.

• 1:26:25John Coogan?

  I don't think so.

• 1:26:26Jordi Hays?

  Really?

• 1:26:27John Coogan?

  I don't think so.

• 1:26:27Jordi Hays?

  Sit up next to him.

• 1:26:28John Coogan?

  But nice try, nice try.

• 1:26:30Jordi Hays?

  And yeah, he broke down. The challenge here is how many they need. They just need so many. This is, this is the biggest software M and A transaction in history.

• 1:26:43John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:26:44Jordi Hays?

  That's crazy.

• 1:26:45John Coogan?

  And, and we'd been on a dry spell since the WhatsApp acquisition for a decade.

• 1:26:49Jordi Hays?

  That was like 25 billion or 30?

• 1:26:52John Coogan?

  I think it was like 16, but yeah.

• 1:26:54Jordi Hays?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 1:26:55John Coogan?

  So this is double that.

• 1:26:56Jordi Hays?

  Which is crazy. So Figma would have been the next, actually the next biggest.

• 1:26:58John Coogan?

  Figma would have been the next.

• 1:27:00Jordi Hays?

  And the crazy thing is, is Index or Insight needs like 10 of these to have a.

• 1:27:07John Coogan?

  A 5X fund.

• 1:27:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:08John Coogan?

  Because it's a, it's an $8 billion fund that they're investing out of. Although, was that the case for this particular seed fund? Because their seed fund, it might be a different vehicle. Who knows?

• 1:27:17Jordi Hays?

  Either way, huge win.

• 1:27:19John Coogan?

  They made a lot of money. But yeah, we talked about this with Harry. It's possible that like they still gotta do more work. Can't retire to the slopes just yet, Index. Keep it grinding. Find five to six more whizzes. Come on, do your job.

• 1:27:32Jordi Hays?

  And I'm excited to ask Sean about.

• 1:27:34John Coogan?

  Yeah. Cause Sequoia was also big in whiz.

• 1:27:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:37John Coogan?

  Yep. Success stories such as these were once dime a dozen during the go-go years of Silicon Valley, when massive startup exits dominated the headlines and made being a venture capitalist one of the hottest jobs in finance. These days, the IPO market is dreary. Prized startups such as Stripe and SpaceX have chosen to stay private for over a decade, putting their investors in a perpetual holding pattern as they await a chance to cash out. Doesn't really matter from a fund performance perspective. For most LPs, they're happy to hold on to Stripe and SpaceX shares at a high, at a high mark. They don't really mind that, but still it's an important factor in terms of getting cash out of these things.

• 1:28:14Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 1:28:14John Coogan?

  Regulators meanwhile have become more cautious about blessing acquisitions. Google's whiz deal still needs regulatory approval from the Trump administration. We talked to Joe Weisenthal about the new head of the FTC, the new Lina Khan. And it seems like they will probably be more friendly to M and A.

• 1:28:29Jordi Hays?

  If this deal gets blocked, venture is dead.

• 1:28:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:32Jordi Hays?

  It's over.

• 1:28:32John Coogan?

  It would be very, very rough.

• 1:28:33Jordi Hays?

  It's all over.

• 1:28:34John Coogan?

  It's so over if that gets blocked. But, but this is a weird one because it's not.

• 1:28:40John Coogan?

  It'd be very hard to make an argument about a monopoly in the cybersecurity cloud market. Obviously, we've talked about how Google is third in cloud. They're not even first. When you look at Adobe and Figma, Adobe is the number one creative suite of apps. And so

• 1:28:54Jordi Hays?

  It's not like Wiz is going to be competing with Google's core business.

• 1:28:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly. It's not really consolidating the search market. I'm sure Amazon and Azure both have cybersecurity products that compete directly with Wiz. And so it would be harder to make the argument, at least I think it would be. We'll see what happens. The review process itself could take years to conclude, so don't buy those vacation homes just yet. If the Wiz deal proceeds, investors hope it will pave the way for similar startup exits in the future. Getting the call, when Shaw received Asaf Rappaport's call, the entrepreneur and his three co-founders hadn't yet settled on a name or a specific plan for the startup beyond wanting to go big in the fast-growing world of cybersecurity. The how and what Shaw said was still waiting to be discovered.

• 1:29:39John Coogan?

  In his head, Shaw called the startup Asafco, a testament to his conviction in Rappaport, the founder. "It was completely unexpected. It was completely expected and unexpected at the same time because I had been waiting," Shaw said of the 2020 call. Shaw's hunch about Rappaport, a dog lover and veteran, which we talked about, they have dogs at the office. And I believe their dog is the chief dog officer or something like that. And a veteran of the Israeli army's elite cybersecurity unit dated back to 2014, when Shaw backed Rappaport's first startup called Adalum. It was later sold to Microsoft for a disappointing 320 million. But I love the Wall Street Journal. But Shaw felt he had spotted an entrepreneur of rare talent after the call.

• 1:30:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, when someone sold 320, they're in a position where they've gotten tons of experience. They've known how to run the full playbook, probably hired a great team, can build a team very quickly. And they probably want to go bigger, maybe two orders of magnitude bigger, which is exactly what they did. And they exited for 320 million, the first one, 32 billion, the next one, it's exactly 100 times as big. Awesome. You love to see ambition like that.

• 1:30:49Jordi Hays?

  We love to see it. Should we talk briefly about the OneX and Nvidia?

• 1:30:52John Coogan?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:30:52Jordi Hays?

  They're doing a research collaboration. Did you see the, you pulled a picture?

• 1:30:56John Coogan?

  All I saw was the picture of the robot holding a jacket. But I thought it was cool.

• 1:31:00Jordi Hays?

  I mean, insane aesthetics.

• 1:31:04John Coogan?

  Insane aesthetics.

• 1:31:05Jordi Hays?

  It almost feels like out of sort of Yeezy, Yeezy inspired to some degree.

• 1:31:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, we're getting somewhere with this where it doesn't look uncanny valley creepily human. It looks more friendly. It doesn't look terrifying. It's not as scary as some of the purely Terminator ones.

• 1:31:20Jordi Hays?

  It would still be weird to have this thing walking around your house at night while you're sleeping.

• 1:31:25John Coogan?

  But I could get used to it. This is, this is the friendliest looking humanoid I've seen so far, I think.

• 1:31:31Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:31:32John Coogan?

  But I like it.

• 1:31:32Jordi Hays?

  So anyway, so developing AI for humanoid robots involves tackling many open research challenges and safety, dexterity, visual understanding and much more. It helps to compare notes with other labs tackling similar challenges in order to accelerate progress towards a future of Neos doing all the tasks needed to keep your home in order autonomously. To that end, I like 1X's focus on the home.

• 1:31:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:53Jordi Hays?

  It's obviously going to matter a lot to just like pick a.

• 1:31:57John Coogan?

  Focusing on the home is just critical. I, I like 1X's focus on the home. I like Wander's focus on the home. I could imagine having a Wander with a 1X in it.

• 1:32:05Jordi Hays?

  We got Sean Maguire himself. He's back.

• 1:32:08John Coogan?

  Welcome to the show.

• 1:32:10Shaun Maguire?

  What's up, team? I didn't wear a Counter-Strike t-shirt this day. I let you down. Sorry.

• 1:32:13John Coogan?

  You're still looking good. It's great.

• 1:32:16Shaun Maguire?

  I'm as good as you guys. And whoever, that lady that, anyone that comments on your hair is just jealous.

• 1:32:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:23Shaun Maguire?

  You guys are very good looking men.

• 1:32:24John Coogan?

  Everyone, everyone on the call has, has good hair. But I mean, it's been, it's been a rough week. Sequoia is only making like a few billion dollars these days off of these acquisitions. What are you going to do to turn it around after the Wiz acquisition kind of fell so short of expectations?

• 1:32:42Shaun Maguire?

  Yeah, you know, it's, it's been a tough one, you know, five, five years after investment to pretty mega outcome.

• 1:32:50John Coogan?

  What are you gonna do?

• 1:32:52Jordi Hays?

  Congratulations. Breakdown. I'd love to hear the, the quick highlights of, of meeting the team and, and how that, that investment came together. And then what you think from your view, how they were able, because we, we talked about this yesterday. The, the Wiz team, the reason they were able to get such a tremendous price, or one of them, sure, multiple, is because they just were growing so quickly and getting so much traction that they didn't need to sell. So it's, you know, they had infinite optionality. But how do you think they pulled this off?

• 1:33:25Shaun Maguire?

  So on the team, I mean, Gilly Ranon and my partner Doug Leoni get all the credit. They are both absolute legends. So the backstory there is Sequoia used to have Sequoia Israel. Gilly was one of the three partners there. Gilly is an insanely talented guy and he started his own fund called Cyberstarts, which we seeded. And early on, meaning like Sequoia invested in his fund, which we don't do very often. And Gilly called up Doug, said, I have the next one. And, you know, it was Asaf and the team. Doug holds like four of us into a rapid fire meeting.

• 1:34:10Shaun Maguire?

  I was in that first meeting. And, I mean, to be very honest, the learning I personally got from watching Doug operate here and like getting to see, like a phone call from Gilly of I've got the next one with these crack, like crack team to multi-billion dollar gain five years later. Like, it's really hard to explain how much learning goes into that. But I think there is a lot of really interesting stuff from the beginning here. And so this is my recollection, different people have different recollections. But basically Doug got the call, set up the meeting. Four of us joined from Sequoia.

• 1:34:52Shaun Maguire?

  The team had, it was obvious how insanely good the team was. You know, they had sold their last company to Microsoft and they're basically running cloud security there. And they had, I mean, they had a very strong point of view on what the problem was. The problem was cloud security. No one had solved cloud security. They had very, they had like an extreme articulation around the problem. But they didn't really know how they were going to solve that problem at the time. And so they had, they had a really clear insight into the wedge into the market, which was mapping that basically people don't even know what assets they have in their cloud environments. And so the first thing they're going to do is they'd figure out how to map people's assets

• 1:35:37Shaun Maguire?

  kind of outside in, so you can tell a customer in a first meeting, this is everything you own, you know, and therefore these are vulnerabilities. But the original idea of how to solve the problem after that wedge in was Like basically a networking solution, like a zero trust networking solution. And so it's, I wouldn't say it was a pivot because it was, they had identified the problem they wanted to solve. But the actual solution changed dramatically in the first few months. And so, you know, people talk about like market versus team. This was a market and team. But I think it's interesting how like the idea changed so much in the first few months.

• 1:36:21Shaun Maguire?

  And I, I think it-

• 1:36:23Jordi Hays?

  But digging in a little bit more, you guys made the first investment, was it 2020?

• 1:36:29Shaun Maguire?

  Yeah, it was, it was called January, February 2020.

• 1:36:32Jordi Hays?

  Okay, in 2020, was the average venture capitalist believing that no one had solved cloud security? Or is that something that you had to really be in it, running it at Microsoft to realize that it wasn't a solved problem? Because, you know, I think the market was reacting to the news saying, wait, does Google not, did they not have a coherent like-

• 1:36:53John Coogan?

  Oh, they didn't think about security at Google? Like this, that's why they did this deal? What was going on before?

• 1:36:58Jordi Hays?

  But yeah, was it, was it-

• 1:37:00Shaun Maguire?

  Really good question. And it's funny, I mean, I personally have like an extreme background in this space.

• 1:37:07John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:37:08Shaun Maguire?

  I had started a company called Expanse, originally KDM, a long time ago, started in 2012. And to be very candid, like we were a precursor company to Wiz, like basically directly. And we started off in an on-prem era. And so doing like the mapping of on-prem networks from the outside in and like our primary value proper, like our sales wedge. We would show up and we already knew people's networks and their vulnerabilities when we would show up. And so like, I personally had a prepared mind, but I, I think very few people, there was this extreme skepticism of the cloud has been around for 15 years. Why, like, why is cloud, why now? Like, why is cloud security not solved?

• 1:37:50Shaun Maguire?

  But I think to anyone that was like a practitioner, it was clear it was not solved at all. And I think the, the lesson is that, like, the way I think about it, the cloud penetration was still very, like, very low in call it 2015. If you look at like total percent of like compute in Fortune 500 companies, I don't know what it was in 2015, but it's probably like- Five percent or seven percent or something, that'd be my guess. And by the time you got to 2020, it was a much bigger fraction. And so it's like, I think we had just flipped where customers and buyers in their heads, if only like five percent of your

• 1:38:33Shaun Maguire?

  network is cloud, you care more about securing the on-prem than the cloud. And if you're a second-class citizen, like you just, it doesn't really get done. By 2020, cloud was like the first-class citizen. It was by far the most important thing to secure. And no one had, everyone before had had us, including my own company. Like, we started with an on-prem solution, then we started to bolt on a cloud solution. And our cloud solution wasn't very good because that's not what we started. And so to come in and only do cloud, that lets you have a way better product experience for the cloud. And they just, they entered the market when it was, you know, call it, maybe not in terms of total compute, but forty, fifty percent of the mind share in an org had become

• 1:39:17Shaun Maguire?

  cloud. And then they were able to grow with that as it went from there. And so it's just that something can happen, like the cloud can get created, but it may not be the right time for, to build like the cloud security business for another fifteen years. You have to wait for maturity of the market and all that. And I think they just timed the maturity perfectly. And then the last thing is, you, you need to solve this from the outside in. Like, you can't, Microsoft can't solve this themselves. You have to have a solution that is kind of looking at all clouds and looking at the entire industry because people are multi-cloud, they work with multiple vendors. And like, I, I, I think that this has to be,

• 1:40:01Shaun Maguire?

  you have to have, Wiz like very much came with the, the right approach for that time.

• 1:40:08Jordi Hays?

  That makes sense. Can you talk about Kella? Got announced a few days ago, I think five days ago, a very high-profile round. I heard about it, I think, last year at this point. So it's probably, they're probably already getting, you know, preempted on the, on the next one. But talk about the team there. How quickly did you know that you wanted to, to back them?

• 1:40:27Shaun Maguire?

  I mean, basically, we're killing, killing it in Israel, or maybe the wrong language. We're, we're investing very well in Israel.

• 1:40:37Shaun Maguire?

  Anyways, so Kella, my partner David Kahn led the investment and I'm his wingman there.

• 1:40:45Shaun Maguire?

  Kella's another amazing team. We have known kind of one of the two primary co-founders, Alonzo for quite a long time. He was an absolute legend. You know, one of the things we've been doing in Israel is, and actually like when we make a bigger point about Israel. One of the things that I think is very unique about Israel right now compared to most other places. It's much easier to concentrate talent in Israel than it is as like a Stanford spinout. Let me unpack that. Like if you go back in time, basically every, every great company I can think of in the past has done a phenomenal job concentrating talent. You know, if you think about Palantir,

• 1:41:29Shaun Maguire?

  like they got all the best people out of Stanford in a few year range. If you think about Google, like they got all the best people, you know, 10 years prior and after the dot com crash, they went and Aqua hired a bunch of the best teams. They brought in Jeff Dean and like they scooped up a bunch of the best talent after the dot com crash. If you think about, you know, PayPal, obviously the PayPal mafia, like they had concentrated insane amounts of talent. SpaceX in the early days, like anyone in the world that wanted to work on rockets, like there was only one place to go and they went to, you know, SpaceX and the best companies concentrate insane amounts of talent early on.

• 1:42:11Shaun Maguire?

  For a bunch of reasons, I think it's become much harder to concentrate talent spinning out of like Stanford or Harvard or wherever than it used to be. I mean, one, like to be very blunt, one is these universities have become like, they basically lost meritocracy and they lost, you know, like there's great inflation. You don't even know where you stand relative to other kids. Harvard last year implemented their first ever remedial math because there are people coming in that don't know algebra because they dropped the mission standards. It's just the truth. It's crazy. Like they dropped the mission standard so much. And so like the people coming in are no longer as good. And then there's great inflation. So you don't even know who the absolute most crack people are. If you go back to like, call it the

• 1:42:57Shaun Maguire?

  Eighties and onwards for a while Harvard had this insane math class called math fifty five. Math fifty five was legendary in the math community. It's like, you know, probably fifty percent of the people that even finished the class went on to be math professors. It was something that you would basically learn like a whole undergraduate math curriculum in one year. So you could just do graduate classes and research after.

• 1:43:24Jordi Hays?

  Is that is that class like Y C where the if you enter into it, you're kind of doing it for twelve hours a day type of thing? Is it that intense or is it?

• 1:43:34Shaun Maguire?

  It's it's the only it's the only thing you do when you're at Harvard, like if you're in that year. It's like Bill Gates actually did math fifty five and so did a bunch of the other kind of Microsoft founders. The like the fact that they did math fifty five and survived as say, computer oriented people rather than pure math people and that they went and started a business. That that calling card let them recruit anyone from Harvard, like anyone they wanted would go work for them just because like people knew how smart they were because of math fifty five.

• 1:44:11Shaun Maguire?

  It's like these things are actually very important as like signals to other smart people that this person's on a level above me. And so therefore, like I should lower my ego. Like I was not able to finish math fifty five, you know, you know, some hypothetical person like tries math fifty five, gets absolutely smoked, weeded out in the first week and then, you know, Bill Gates crushes it. And so they want to go work for him. We don't have that as much anymore at Stanford and Harvard, etc. There also just weren't as many companies getting formed back then. And so, you know, the ones that actually did get formed, you know, I'm I graduated college two thousand and seven. Facebook was the hottest company in the world, kind of when I was an undergrad and.

• 1:44:56Shaun Maguire?

  At the time, I think Zuck is probably two years older than me. There were basically no startups coming out of Harvard at the time. And so like everyone that was good, that would consider a startup or was technically brilliant, like they would just go recruit them. Um, now there's like 50 and so the talent gets spread across all of them. In Israel, there is still this insane concentration of talent. And it comes from, this is my weave, this is my Trump weave coming on. Yeah. There's this insane concentration of talent that comes from the fact that because everyone goes into the army. There's extremely rigorous selection of people for the army and call it from an intellectual standpoint, there's like

• 1:45:40Shaun Maguire?

  60 slots for the most prestigious best thing. And there's like extremely rigorous vetting to get those slots. And so the people that go do that are already kind of selected on a totally different level than most other people. And then out of those 60 people, one or two will emerge as like the apex. You know, alpha men or women that just do insane work and are geniuses and everyone else wants to follow. And so when they come out of the army. They are really able to concentrate talent in a way that is basically impossible.

• 1:46:19Shaun Maguire?

  If all you've done is gone to a school that has like, if you know, if you've gone to school that has pass fail grades and and your admissions like process is basically non meritocratic and like an essay. Um, and so anyways, like with Kela. I mean, if you go back to Wiz, like the Wiz founding team were absolute legends, like psycho level legends. Um, in Israel and therefore able to concentrate insane talent. In the first couple of months of the company, like basically day one, they hired 20 people that were ultra elite. And it's just like, when you're that good and everyone knows it.

• 1:47:00Shaun Maguire?

  You can bring in these incredible people from day one and Kela is of this mold as well.

• 1:47:07Shaun Maguire?

  You know, like a lot of people know what, VCs are now learning what Talpiot is. Talpiot is kind of one of the most elite horses in Israel. It's people, people that have extreme aptitude in mathematics, physics and leadership ability.

• 1:47:24Shaun Maguire?

  And so three of the four Wiz co-founders were Telpiot, Alonzo, one of the Kela founders, is also Telpiot. And so like, there's the the Telpiot mafia, and he's especially highly regarded there. And so anyways, they've done an incredible job concentrating talent. And, you know, Alon teamed up with this woman, Hamutal Meridor, who complimented him perfectly. She'd been at Palantir for a long time. And she's like, really, obviously, when you're working, when you're a defense tech company, you need two things. You need to build great technology, but you also need to be able to sell it. And you need to understand like government, sales,

• 1:48:05Shaun Maguire?

  government procurement. And Alon is a genius at building great technology. And Hamutal is a genius at, you know, selling it and navigating government relationships. And for this, I think, both Palantir and Androld did this unbelievably well. They kind of established this playbook.

• 1:48:20John Coogan?

  Well, related to that, what is your take on the latest continuing resolution? It seems like there's not this massive increase to the defense budget that some, you know, defense tech startups were hoping for. Maybe there's money that's going to shift around. But what is your advice to maybe young defense tech founders that are hunting for that first program of record, looking for some some government money in the new era?

• 1:48:44Shaun Maguire?

  It's so crazy that we're having this conversation. Like, you would have told me 10 years ago that someone's going to say in like a live podcast, what do you say the young about is hunting for a program of record? That language, you know, this was like, you are an alien 10 years ago.

• 1:49:04John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:04Shaun Maguire?

  Yeah. Look, I would say to the young founder that's hunting for a program of record, only one or two of you a year are going to do that. And it's going to be like of new companies. And it's really hard. And it takes both having great tech and great, you know, government BD. And so don't under invest in either of those.

• 1:49:33Jordi Hays?

  Used to be extremely difficult to raise venture capital.

• 1:49:37John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:49:37Jordi Hays?

  Now it's seemingly very easy to raise venture capital.

• 1:49:39John Coogan?

  And harder to get.

• 1:49:40Jordi Hays?

  The hard part is to, in this category.

• 1:49:42John Coogan?

  And I want to hear your take on dual use. There's a, there's a theory that we were kicking around yesterday, talking about, well, maybe you're better off if you're a dual use company. We talked to a satellite company, Albedo. Obviously, they do imaging of the earth at 10 centimeter scale. That has military applications, but that also has commercial applications. So if the DoD money doesn't come quickly enough, maybe they go sell it to hedge funds and oil and gas companies. Do you think there'll be a shift in VC or defense tech VC towards, I want a little bit more of a dual use story earlier, just to hedge against defense budgets?

• 1:50:20Shaun Maguire?

  So it's kind of crazy that you're asking me these things because the company I started was a cybersecurity company that was basically a worse precursor to WIZ.

• 1:50:32John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:50:33Shaun Maguire?

  At where it was dual use and, you know, about two thirds of our revenue was from the US government and one third was enterprise. And so it's like, it's these maximum two sets of overlap of the threads you're asking.

• 1:50:50Shaun Maguire?

  I think, I mean, like with our company, everyone told us you cannot be Gov only, it has to be dual use. That's what every investor told us, every expert. And so therefore we did it because we wouldn't have been able to raise money otherwise. But I think dual use is kind of a mirage. Like it's, it can be great, but I think you have to, I think we're entering an era where investors are okay with just government sale companies. Single use. And I think you just have to do what's best for your company and what's best in any given moment.

• 1:51:29Shaun Maguire?

  If it's natural for your company to be dual use because the product is basically the same in both, you know, enterprise and Gov, then do that. But if it's, if it's going to like really cost you on one side to do the other, then I would just not do it early on. And like with Palantir, I don't know, I was never in the building at Palantir. I don't know the story that well.

• 1:51:51Shaun Maguire?

  But my kind of my understanding was that early on, they had way more pull with the government than with enterprise. And but like they tried to do both. And I think with founder, there were different points in time where they had way more pull with the government than with enterprise and times where they had more pull with enterprise than with government. But I think there was pressure on them to always be doing both. And I would just say lean into wherever you're getting a lot of pull right now, but don't close the door on the other.

• 1:52:19John Coogan?

  Yeah, it depends on the product. I mean, obviously, Microsoft Teams is ITAR compliant, right? Like, is it a dual use technology? Yes, I guess, but then.

• 1:52:27Shaun Maguire?

  Well, Windows XP or like Windows 95 is whichever ones are still certified to run, you know, none of that. At least when I was in the DOD, like the most current operating system was from the 90s.

• 1:52:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:40Jordi Hays?

  Crazy. There was allegations in a lawsuit of corporate espionage earlier this week. I don't need you to or want you to comment on that incident. But do you think that corporate espionage is is a sort of potentially broader issue in Silicon Valley, something that needs to be taken more seriously? Or is this just sort of like a, you know, one off sort of crisis?

• 1:53:03Shaun Maguire?

  Oh, man. Well, I I think that Elon was right when he said the most most entertaining outcome is the most likely. That's just been true on every level. It's like second law of thermodynamics.

• 1:53:20Shaun Maguire?

  Look, I I don't have a super strong point of view on this, but I'll just say, I think that nation state espionage in Silicon Valley has been much, much bigger scale than people have understood for at least the last decade and probably beyond that. And, you know, Delian yesterday, whenever I think he's right, like if you're.

• 1:53:43Shaun Maguire?

  If you're a hardware company, just go try to compete on the merits of the hardware and obviously do what you can to protect your

• 1:53:52Jordi Hays?

  IP.

• 1:53:53Shaun Maguire?

  IP and data assets and everything, but like at the end of the day in hardware, you're going to win on the merits of the product. On the software side, I think you have to be a little bit more concerned, but it's just in in hacking. There's this expression, you want to be a target of opportunity. Sorry. You want to be a target of choice, not a target of opportunity. Meaning like if some nation state says, we are going to hack this company, like they can hack anyone. But you don't want to be like the slow pack animal that's just like the target of opportunity. You're the slowest gazelle.

• 1:54:31John Coogan?

  Taken down by the North Koreans that are stealing your crypto or something like that. You're going to X the everything out?

• 1:54:37Jordi Hays?

  Well, yeah, I'd love to give you another victory lap on X, because I think last time we came on, it was rumored that there was this new announcement. But but before that, could you talk about what's your sort of takeaway from the incident with the NASA astronauts? We're very happy to have them back here on Earth with the dolphins. But, you know, is there any learnings that you think, you know, that that, you know, the space industry should be taking away from that broadly? And, you know, NASA in general?

• 1:55:05Shaun Maguire?

  So I might have mentioned this guy before, but one of my closest friends from Caltech, his name is Casey Hanmer. He's a Berlin guy. He's a, you know, prolific blogger. I mean, he's a very, very smart guy. He has been saying for, so he worked at JPL and he's been saying for many years that

• 1:55:29Shaun Maguire?

  this is not what he's been saying. So I'm sorry, Casey, I'm making this more provocative than what you actually said. But he's basically said that NASA has been underestimating SpaceX and that it's in NASA's interest to kind of.

• 1:55:41Shaun Maguire?

  Understand and anticipate like just how fast the progress of SpaceX is. And what he actually said is that they're underestimating Starship. And that Starship is gonna really change what's possible in the future and that NASA has been still designing missions with the constraints of ten, twenty years ago, which is when launch costs are in the limit infinity and there's very few slots per year, then like the like the economic rational thing is to spend close to infinite money, making sure that your satellite works the first time. Because the launch cost dominates in the return math.

• 1:56:23Shaun Maguire?

  Uh, infinity divided by infinity or whatever, but you know, if you have any, any large constant number divided by infinity, um, is zero. So anyways, like they, they've been, had this state of mind that launch is precious, that there's, it's, it's infinitely expensive, there's very little of it. I think NASA needs to get in the state of mind that launch is becoming abundant. You know, in the future, it's going to be in the limit going to zero. Like, like literally, if you go twenty years from now, I think that, I mean, Elon has said that the forecast for Starship are something like twenty dollars a kilogram or something like that.

• 1:57:02John Coogan?

  Just the fuel cost, basically.

• 1:57:03Shaun Maguire?

  Yeah. Used to be a hundred thousand dollars a kilogram. And so I just, we have to get in this mentality that like SpaceX is not, SpaceX is not just Elon. SpaceX is an incredibly well-run company that has like a very diverse set of leadership and, you know, very robust, um, you know, team. And that they are bringing insane capabilities to bear that will deeply, deeply benefit NASA. Um, and we need to intersect the future, not the present or the past.

• 1:57:38John Coogan?

  I love it. Uh, can you talk a bit, a little bit about, uh, I mean, we talked about the X funding last time, but I want to know about. X is clearly on the warpath to becoming an everything app. We're basically running the entire show on X now. We have group DMs for how we organize the show and stuff. It's been a really robust platform for us. But I see that they're rolling out payments and all sorts of different features. There's always been this narrative that an everything app can only happen in the East. It's America.

• 1:58:08Shaun Maguire?

  Happened in China 10 years ago.

• 1:58:10John Coogan?

  Exactly. So can you lay us out like, what are the hurdles? What are the milestones? What are the opportunities for X to become a really like really fully realize the vision?

• 1:58:24Shaun Maguire?

  It's not my place to fully lay this out. I'll let, you know, I'll let Elon do that. He's pretty good at setting vision on things. But I think people are going to be, look, X has been underestimated the last few years and not by you guys. Like you guys are part of the small cohort of people that realized the eighties was a great decade. And, you know, and, and that America is the greatest country in the world. And that X was the place to be the last few years. But, but a lot of the world's been underestimated and I'm, I'm very optimistic about where it's going the next few years.

• 1:59:05Shaun Maguire?

  And I'll, and I'll just say like, instead of saying the roadmap, I'll say the company has had to sense to take private. There's been like a few years of like fixing the foundation of the company. And we're starting to enter the era where like the foundation is strong. And they get to now like actually build on top of this new strong foundation. And so I think we're going to see, it's like, the progress has been below the ground the last two and a half years. It's about to go above the ground where we all see it.

• 1:59:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, a lot of the, a lot of the products that got. Built or rolled out were just things that had kind of been on the shelf and maybe were like not really launched for whatever internal political reason. Elon kind of got all those out the door and I feel like the app's been working really well. The algorithm's been more satisfying than ever. I feel like I'm seeing really interesting content, so I've been satisfied. What you got?

• 1:59:56Jordi Hays?

  One more question. Do you think M&As really, you know, is the Wiz acquisition, it still has to be approved from what I know, but is M&A, you know, really back on the menu? Do you feel like, you know, when you're talking to some of these later stage founders that are exploring, you know, thinking about the future and saying, does an IPO make sense? Does some type of strategic acquisition make sense? How are you thinking about this personally? I'm sure your general advice is just be a great company and grow really fast and you'll have a lot of optionality, but do you have a sort of a feeling about where things are going?

• 2:00:33Shaun Maguire?

  Not about Wiz at all. My general kind of M&A view is I think there's two things that people are looking for. They're looking for guidance that things will actually be approved. And it's not just in America. There's also like for most companies, European regulatory approvals and that has been the bottleneck for quite a few M&A deals in the last few years. So I think it's like greater clarity on the global US and Europe, but everywhere kind of regulatory approvals. And the second, I think there's still like when I, when I talked to bankers or anyone

• 2:01:16Shaun Maguire?

  in the last six weeks, there's a lot of macro uncertainty. Like people are very nervous about tariffs and very nervous about, you know, like Doge and kind of people don't want to go do a big M&A transaction when the markets can change 20, 30%, you know, either way quickly because it just, you don't know exactly what you're underwriting.

• 2:01:48Jordi Hays?

  This happened with Square and Afterpay or whatever. They bought Afterpay for like 20, 30 billion dollars, some crazy number, and then Square was worth something like that like a year later. You know, it's just like.

• 2:02:02Shaun Maguire?

  Yeah, look, those are the two, those are the two things. I think if, if we get clarity, like favorable clarity on those two things, then I think M and A will rip. But it requires both.

• 2:02:15John Coogan?

  Well, the new head of the FTC, Andrew Ferguson, is out doing podcasts. We'll have to have him on the show. Maybe he can join and we can put the screws to him and say, let's do some deals, Andrew.

• 2:02:25Shaun Maguire?

  He's not coming on after that comment.

• 2:02:29Shaun Maguire?

  Anyway, thanks for having me, boys.

• 2:02:31John Coogan?

  Yeah, thanks for stopping by.

• 2:02:32Jordi Hays?

  Have a great, have a good weekend.

• 2:02:33Shaun Maguire?

  I've got to say, you guys are crushing it. Keep going. Absolutely crushing it.

• 2:02:37Jordi Hays?

  Thank you for being a part of it. Good man.

• 2:02:39John Coogan?

  Bye.

• 2:02:41Jordi Hays?

  Very cool.

• 2:02:42John Coogan?

  It's great. It's always difficult to get him in trouble with Sequoia Regulatory.

• 2:02:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that's the challenge of being an RIA.

• 2:02:49John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, we, we're, we're getting better at it.

• 2:02:51Jordi Hays?

  We should have a, we should have a button.

• 2:02:54John Coogan?

  A cone of silence.

• 2:02:55Jordi Hays?

  We should have a button that we hit before. This is not financial advice.

• 2:02:57John Coogan?

  This is not financially advice. And then we have to beep each other because I lean into it so often because I think I'm just asking like, hey, do you think the Tesla is a cool car? And he's like, that's a public company. I can't talk about it. But, but still lots of great insights and always a fun conversation with Sean. And speaking of Sean's, we're having another Sean on the show. Sean from Ridge. Is he in the temple?

• 2:03:19Jordi Hays?

  There you go. Oh, no, we got Connor. Connor's first. Surprise. Surprise. We got Connor. Uh, so for those that don't know, you, I'm sure everybody already knows. So Connor and Sean are business partners and

• 2:03:36Jordi Hays?

  leaders over at The Ridge, dear friends of mine. Connor, I wanted to have you on for a bunch of reasons. One, because I knew you were going to dress for the occasion.

• 2:03:44Speaker 07

  Dude, of course.

• 2:03:46Jordi Hays?

  Looking sharp.

• 2:03:46Speaker 07

  Showing some respect to TVP and.

• 2:03:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, respect.

• 2:03:49John Coogan?

  And little, little fun fact, piece of lore for the fans. In our first launch video, when you see us having dinner and drinking wine, Connor was at that dinner with us.

• 2:03:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:00John Coogan?

  And he is pictured, he's the shoulder that you see us over.

• 2:04:03Jordi Hays?

  Fantastic cameo.

• 2:04:04John Coogan?

  Little cameo.

• 2:04:06Speaker 07

  Early, early technology brother supporter for sure.

• 2:04:09Jordi Hays?

  Thank you. We appreciate it. And now you're on the show. Welcome. It's great to have you on. I, I wanted to get a, a kind of a market update on how performance marketers are thinking about the various platforms and planning for the rest of the year. We've lived in a world, you're also a young adult, but our, our entire lives have just been every single year ads get more expensive. So you kind of need to plan around that to some degree, but you're very plugged into the sort of e-commerce space broadly. There's challenges in e-comm on the sort of tariffs side, but there's all, there's sort of this like sort of dual pressure. It's hard to get products. It's expensive to get products. It's expensive to sell them.

• 2:04:52Jordi Hays?

  Maybe I'd love just sort of like a high level, sort of like market update around how you're thinking about the different ad platforms. And, and maybe we can get into like where you're finding an edge. Obviously don't give, you know, give away the stuff you were doing like nine months ago. Yeah, exactly.

• 2:05:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. No, perfect. So to take a quick, quick step back. Yeah. Ridge is a direct to consumer brand. As Jordy mentioned, the last 10 years, it's gotten harder and harder every year. I think D to C acquisition has been like a war of attrition. Things get more expensive. You're reaching that new marginal buyer who's harder to acquire, more expensive. It is, uh, it's been a, a, a difficult environment to scale. And as a D to C brand, regardless of kind of consumer sentiment. I think what we're facing right now, clearly what all the data is telling us is that not only are things getting more expensive, ad platforms are performing worse. There's restrictions on privacy, but I think people are spending less money. And when it comes to the business of selling minimal as well, it's like I do, that, that's become increasingly difficult.

• 2:05:48Speaker 07

  So I've got two quick data points, one anecdotal, but there's a great, um, there's a great service called D to C index.com. And they have something called the, the direct to consumer confidence index. So it's like a stand-in for CPI, which has like. You know, they only take that snapshots of data sparingly throughout time. DTCCI is measuring the sentiment of consumers every single day. And on the 18th or just a couple of days ago, consumer sentiment about the economy dropped to the lowest level since October 14th of last year. To paint the picture of how are people feeling about spending dollars today? Um, the second point that I have is from our contact at Meta, who described the current climate for D to C brands, at least the growth oriented ones, as a quote unquote bloodbath.

• 2:06:29Speaker 07

  So that's my, that's my quick, uh, that's my quick performance update is, uh, that, that is what we're working with. Um,

• 2:06:37Speaker 07

  so I can talk, uh, maybe what we're doing to, to, to work through that a little bit, if that would be helpful.

• 2:06:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that'd be great.

• 2:06:42John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:43Speaker 07

  Yeah, amazing. What is working right now? Um, so actually with a little more doomer news and then I'll get into what's working. Um, consumer's tougher, that makes everybody's lives harder. On top of that, I think there's been changes within Meta that makes everybody's lives more difficult. Um, and people like to poo poo the, the importance of Meta, but it's like, you know, there's that stat. It was like 40% of every VC dollar went into Meta advertising. It's like 30% of all digital dollars spent, something like that. Um, so when Meta is worse, it's, it's harder for everyone. And right now we're at this point in time where it feels as if the Meta platform in and of itself is not doing what it used to do. Um, they began kind of waiting outcomes differently. It's become more middle and bottom of funnel to say, um, you know, it's serving, serving to warmer and warmer audiences.

• 2:07:28Speaker 07

  And us as marketers or, or, or, you know, growth people, like we want to be driving incremental results. Meta is harder to get that done with, uh, at least in the way that it has always been. So that gets to what has been working. Um, we've basically had to completely change our strategy.

• 2:07:45Jordi Hays?

  Real quick, Connor, why is Meta worse? Is it, is it stuff that they, that they sort of need to do? Or is it stuff that they did and that it was sort of the, the unintentional effect is that the ad product gets worse for advertisers? Like, why is it, why is it happening? And are your, uh, contacts at Meta saying, hey, we're, we know this is not great. And we're actively trying to get back to where we were. Or is it just get used to it? This is the new normal.

• 2:08:16Speaker 07

  Totally. Yeah. No, some of the things are out of Meta's control. Like Meta's obviously gotten less efficient post iOS 14, which was when Tim Cook and Apple really put a lot of restrictions around what data did Meta have access to. At that point, you went from, as an example, being able to optimize for a 28-day outcome. So if you're optimizing for a purchase that could happen over 28 days, and Meta could attribute that purchase to itself, now that's just a seven-day period, right? So now it's like a much smaller period. You have fewer or less ability to exclude the customers that you want. And Meta's began weighting these click-based outcomes. So all of those things together means Meta's only able to attribute orders to the platform on a shorter timeframe, there's less exclusions, and it's

• 2:09:00Speaker 07

  serving to people who have already seen your ads. If you're trying to introduce new people to your brand and actually generate awareness, generate intent, and drive incremental orders, that's just a harder environment to do it within. And those are like, that's half things that are out of their control. And then part of the things that I mentioned are within Meta's control, and I think they are trying to address. So the answer to your question, Jordy, would be a combination of the two.

• 2:09:24Jordi Hays?

  Yep, that makes sense. Anyways.

• 2:09:25John Coogan?

  I have a question on AI ads, not AI-generated ads, but actual ads in LLM responses. Perplexity is starting to monetize by allowing advertisers to inject advertisements into, you ask perplexity, what wallet should I buy? Boom, Ridge Wallet ad. People are proposing that OpenAI will do this as well in the ChatGPT app. Are you thinking about that? Will that be something that you're testing this year, if you're not already?

• 2:09:55Speaker 07

  Well, I will say, I just got off a phone call with the VP of Growth at Ramp, George Banachi. He wanted me to remind everyone that if you're looking to save time and money, go to ramp.com/TVBN.

• 2:10:05Jordi Hays?

  There we go.

• 2:10:06John Coogan?

  Save both, thank you.

• 2:10:08Speaker 07

  Yeah, uh, but no, we were talking about, we weren't actually talking about paid ads in perplexity. What we were talking about was SEO optimization within chat responses, which is not something we've done a lot of so far. It's one of the things as a more established brand, I think we immediately benefit from.

• 2:10:25John Coogan?

  Of course, there's already Reddit comments about you, right? And so Reddit gets baked into all the L L Ms and you already pop up.

• 2:10:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, totally. So we, I don't think we have to focus on whatever you want to call that, like L L M SEO optimization versus someone else's less established. But I think over time, as people attach on to that as a opportunity, then we'll have to pay more attention there. But I'd be more interested in it from a organic, a quote unquote, organic perspective versus the paid ads on perplexity.

• 2:10:52John Coogan?

  Okay, interesting, interesting.

• 2:10:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, do you feel like the, the, the sort of e-commerce industrial complex like needs another great ad channel right now? Like, it seems like throughout the history of selling products online, like, things have gotten a bit rough and then, you know, we got Instagram or then we got Reels or then we got, you know, TikTok or whatever. And it just seems like in order to like, keep the, you know, keep, uh, keep growing, there, there always needs to be that sort of next platform. And could that be L L Ms? Like, right now, I don't see a lot of, from, from my lens, it's not commercially oriented searches happening on Chat G P T. People still discover products on places like Instagram.

• 2:11:38Jordi Hays?

  And then they ask Chat G P T, how do I make a good quesadilla maybe? But it's not like, there's not a lot of commercial intent there. But do you think, do you see a world in which L L Ms can be that next, like, you know, 10x ad platform? Or do you just think it's a different?

• 2:11:56Speaker 07

  Um, probably, I wouldn't say a 10x ad platform. I think the, the important distinction is like, uh, there are certain brands and, and, and, and industries that benefit from like these high intent channels, right? You are looking for a mattress or you are looking for insurance. They're the ones where as people discover those products through L L Ms, like, that's probably a massive opportunity for them. How many people on a daily basis are going to be searching for men's wallet in Chat G P T? I don't think is going to move the needle on our business. What has moved the needle are these like discovery channels, which was like when Snapchat was introduced or a TikTok or whatever else is how can we get out in front of millions of people and say, hey, we've got a better wallet than you currently own. You know, they're supposed to launch ads in Meta's threads. So we'll hold out hope. Maybe, maybe that's the 10x ad platform.

• 2:12:41Jordi Hays?

  There we go. You never know. There's always a bull market somewhere.

• 2:12:45John Coogan?

  I love it. We had, we, we had Kenon Davison on from Icon. His company helps D to C companies like yourself build and scale out AI ads. Not fully ad generated, a lot of repurposing content. Can you tell us a little bit about how AI is incorporated into the creative workflow? Who's actually doing this work on your team? It seems like it's probably still like a centaur model where there's a human working with an AI editor of some sort, but can you break down the creative workflow and how AI is impacting that right now?

• 2:13:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, awesome. And I'll start with, you know, from a performance perspective. I think one of the most important things we've been able to do is scale up our content creation.

• 2:13:27John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:13:28Speaker 07

  Um, so that those are like one in the same. Um, we have two performance creative strategists on our team who went from manually concepting to writing briefs, to sending out to creators, to receiving that content, to editing it, to creating ads. We're trying to like truncate that all down via AI. So you can imagine the further upstream parts of the creative process, the concepting, the briefing is, we're probably doing five, 10 times faster and probably more with more novelty than we were otherwise, just because it's easier to ideate with something like, we use Claude mostly. We found it to be very helpful in that sense. So that's really benefited the, the ideating process and has speeded up, sped up that, that, that workflow quite a bit.

• 2:14:11Speaker 07

  I'm a big fan of Icon and Canon, and they're a really cool example of once we've generated all of this content, how do you go zero to one on like some new concept? We have thousands of hours of, of content just laying around in Google Drive. So how do we repurpose that and kind of like elongate the value of that? And Icon's been cool in that because it is basically an AI video editor. We can say, hey, we want a concept to appeal to 40 year old men in flyover states. And it will put together a concept and kind of piece together and stitch together the content to do that.

• 2:14:42John Coogan?

  Got it.

• 2:14:44Jordi Hays?

  Do you have another one?

• 2:14:45John Coogan?

  No, I was gonna make a joke about asking Siri to buy me a wallet with high-grade materials, lifetime warranty, and a 99-day risk-free trial. But I don't think Apple Intelligence can do it yet. But maybe Operator can, I don't know.

• 2:14:59Jordi Hays?

  I had one more. How are you thinking about sort of activations and stunts and things like that? Ridge is at a scale, once you're doing hundreds of millions of revenue, you can start to think about, oh, should we sponsor a NASCAR team? Should we do this? You have a big partnership with them.

• 2:15:15Speaker 07

  A racehorse.

• 2:15:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:16John Coogan?

  Jordy's thinking about getting a Bentley Continental GT Speed, and I thought you could wrap it with a Ridge Wallet logo and maybe help him with the payment on that as he commutes in.

• 2:15:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that'd be great. You can have, it'll just be $3,000 a month.

• 2:15:32John Coogan?

  Yes, exactly.

• 2:15:33Jordi Hays?

  No, but how do you think about these sort of bigger stunt marketing? And is it just brand marketing? Or do you historically just see, like, how do you think about attribution?

• 2:15:43Speaker 07

  Well, we're kind of gearing up for right now from a stunt marketing perspective. Each year we do a sweepstakes. So last year, we did a 24-karat gold-plated Cybertruck that we gave away, or a Tennessee Velociraptor. Yeah, so that's what we did last year. And I think each year, we're just gonna try to raise the stakes. That's kind of the name of the game. So what we're doing now is we're gearing up for that. Can't share too many details, but we'll have more cars, bigger activations. That'll be live in August, so everybody can look forward to it.

• 2:16:08John Coogan?

  I feel like the last one, it went really far because I think I saw MKBHD do something with it. But then later, like Doug Demiro was auctioning it off. And I saw, and I was like, we're now like four steps away from the Ridge guys, but I'm still seeing Ridge on all of this stuff. Like, how did this happen? Was that kind of intentional that you talked to multiple influencers? And you said, okay, you're gonna have it for a day. You're gonna have it for a week. You're gonna auction it off. Was that the plan?

• 2:16:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, totally. So that was a part of the plan. Some of it was serendipitous. So we had realized the year before, hey, if we can get the car in a YouTube creator's video, things just perform like three times as well, which is like no real surprise. So the game last year was just like, yeah, how do we coordinate getting one or both of these trucks in as many videos as possible? The serendipitous part was I had this the Cybertruck here in Salt Lake and Jerry Rig Everything, who has a very big tech channel.

• 2:16:59John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:16:59Speaker 07

  Uh, tweeted, he said, hey, does anybody in Salt Lake have a Cybertruck that I can use for a project? And we were like, hey, we do. Um, and that's how we got into his 24 karat gold plating video. Uh, so that kind of started it. And then we got it in a Marquez video. We had it all over the place. We made it in 20, 24 videos. Colin and Samir did a, did an ad read in the truck, which was really cool. And then to top off the campaign, the winner selected, uh, the cash, actually. So they didn't take either car. Um, but we were able to auction off the 24 karat gold plated Cybertruck on Doug Demiro's Cars and Bits. So it was a very YouTube heavy campaign, which was very fun.

• 2:17:34John Coogan?

  Is it tricky running these, uh, sweepstakes? Because I think legally you have to be, you have to say no entry required. Anyone can just write in and then people can kind of like batch mail in a thousand entries. I remember hearing stories about, uh, someone at Caltech, in the very early days of the original photocopier, figured out that McDonald's monopoly didn't require any purchase, no purchase necessary. So they dropped off like thousands and thousands of pages of like, I would like to enter the contest. And they got like every single code back. And then they changed their rules or something like that. But, uh, what, what do you think about in terms of like manipulation of these sweepstakes? Is that a risk at all? Or is it pretty standard these days?

• 2:18:13Speaker 07

  We use it. We use a third party legal team who like runs sweepstakes professionally. So I think we're relatively buttoned up. You, we have the, uh, you have to be able to mail in. You've got some free entries on the site. Um, we, we, we are able to see some people trying to game it. Um, we had this like, yeah, yeah. So we were able to take care of that. Um, but otherwise it's very above board. We're not doing any like sort of, uh, McDonald's monopoly sort of schemes over here.

• 2:18:38John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. You can get in trouble if you're, if you're running an unregistered lottery. You want to stay away from that. Run, run a clean game.

• 2:18:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Last question I have, because you're talking about a bunch of these different creators you're working with. You guys have your, uh, MKBHD kind of like core partnership. Uh, I grew up at a time like following the surf industry where every surf apparel company had like, you know, their core ambassadors and they had other people on the team. And then they had the people that were trying to like, you know, uh, you know, just more like development side. Is there a world in the future where Ridge has effectively, you sponsor a ton of creators. So you're just like spending money across all these different channels. But is there a world where Ridge has like a proper team of ambassadors that are just sort of like in a more serious way, like representing Ridge within industries, helping with product development?

• 2:19:26Jordi Hays?

  Or is it the kind of thing that makes sense to do with like one tent pole kind of creator? And then everyone else is just more a commercial relationship?

• 2:19:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think it's a combination of both. I mean, we went from kind of the spray and pray approach. We've sponsored thousands of creators and billions of views. And now our goal is to just do deeper integrations with, with creators over longer periods of time. Marquez being like, Marquez being the flagship example of that. But I would love to assemble like an Avengers team around him of cool creators and celebrities.

• 2:19:54John Coogan?

  That's very cool. We'll reach out if you're that creator.

• 2:19:57Jordi Hays?

  Where can people find your podcasts?

• 2:20:01Speaker 07

  Oh, Marketing Operators. You can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts. Only, only weekly, so that we're not putting out that much content. But, uh, we're, but well monetized. You guys would appreciate that.

• 2:20:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, you do have ads, which is great. We'd be very worried. We probably wouldn't have you on the show if you didn't have some ads.

• 2:20:18Jordi Hays?

  Are you guys going to be sponsoring the All In Summit? I know you, uh, are you, are you even running that back this year? That's the one place they allow ads, so it's, it's a great place to be.

• 2:20:28Jordi Hays?

  But, uh, but yeah, TBD still?

• 2:20:30Speaker 07

  TBD. Yeah, we got a sweet deal on it last year. If that comes about again, maybe.

• 2:20:34John Coogan?

  Cool. Well, good luck.

• 2:20:35Jordi Hays?

  Good luck. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming on, Connor.

• 2:20:37John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon. Bye. So what's the?

• 2:20:41Jordi Hays?

  An absolute dog.

• 2:20:42John Coogan?

  An absolute dog. Uh, what's the, what's the word on Sean? Is he joining or should we move on to some timeline?

• 2:20:47Jordi Hays?

  I mean, we can start some timeline and then when he's in the waiting room.

• 2:20:50John Coogan?

  I like timeline.

• 2:20:51Jordi Hays?

  He's coming in right now.

• 2:20:53John Coogan?

  He's coming in hot. We got Sean Frank from the Ridge Wallet, back to back Ridge Wallet guys today. Welcome to the show, Sean.

• 2:21:00Jordi Hays?

  Look at that microphone. That thing is serious. Do you podcast?

• 2:21:04Sean Frank?

  Dude, I am so happy to be in the capital of capital, the fortress of finance. This is, this is my, my zen garden. I do podcasts. I just want to say, I was listening before I jumped on. That last guest you had does not work at Rich Wallet.

• 2:21:19John Coogan?

  Never seen him before.

• 2:21:20Jordi Hays?

  Just been LARPing. He's got the LinkedIn set up. He's got all the wallets, everyone.

• 2:21:25John Coogan?

  He actually works for a rival wallet company and he's been selling secrets on the side.

• 2:21:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there, there's an alt, I mean.

• 2:21:31John Coogan?

  Are you worried about spying at Ridge?

• 2:21:33Jordi Hays?

  No, Ridge has had so many knockoffs over the years and from all different parts of the world. There's an alternate reality where like 10 years ago, like Sean and Connor like, uh, you know, have a blood feud. And then like Connor goes and works at one wallet company and Sean does the other. And then like, they're just always like the same because they're like, you guys are like yin and yang in terms of like, I think like being good.

• 2:21:57Jordi Hays?

  Anyways, great to have you on the show, Sean. How's your week going?

• 2:22:00Sean Frank?

  I'm good, man. Um, yeah, Connor is my rippling. So I'm dealing the scenario and I'm going to, I'm going to steal all the secrets.

• 2:22:10Jordi Hays?

  The rippling to my deal.

• 2:22:13John Coogan?

  We, we want to talk about.

• 2:22:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I, I wanted to just, uh, have you guys both on to just get a, a high level read on what's happening in e-commerce. It's certainly hasn't been a, a easy start to the year with the tariffs. I, I mean, technology companies are, are in a pretty good spot if you're just selling SaaS. Worried less about, um, the impacts of, of, of all these different sort of policy decisions.

• 2:22:40Jordi Hays?

  You know, talk to us about how the start of the year is gone. We had you on the, you were one of our very first guests, but I feel like a lot has transpired between, uh, then and now.

• 2:22:49Sean Frank?

  Totally, man. And I changed my mic. So hopefully this sounds better for you guys.

• 2:22:52Jordi Hays?

  Sounds fantastic.

• 2:22:54Sean Frank?

  Dude, I'm reading chat on the, on the right-hand side. So I'm here to support.

• 2:22:59Sean Frank?

  Dude, the biggest thing about tariffs is just the uncertainty and the rollout. So like, we're friends with a lot of nine-figure brands and. Everyone would like to bring stuff to America, right? But that is a, that is a two to four year manufacturing timeline, right? Ridge has been working on our US factory and our capacity for like two and a half years and I can currently make 20,000 units a month. Okay. I sell 50,000 units a month, right? And in peak, I sell way, way, way more than that. So it is just, I've not been able to keep up with demand. And maybe in four years, I could get there. But with all of the whiplashing on tariffs, it's very hard to know what to

• 2:23:40Sean Frank?

  invest in. And what that leads to is just me hoarding capital right now. Like, I'm not going to do distributions. I'm not going to hire anybody. And it's really this freeze because I don't know where the puck's going, right? We had tariffs come in, tariffs come out, tariffs come in, tariffs come out. Section 321 was stopped and now it's back on. It's just very hard to make a decision when you don't know what's going to happen in two weeks.

• 2:24:07Jordi Hays?

  What are you seeing situations with brands that have less of a, you know, that have less of a sort of fortress balance sheet where there's like actually, you know, like, I imagine there's certain brands that are kind of running the calculus of like, are we even going to make it to Q4 with how this is going? What's kind of like the chatter in the industry?

• 2:24:32Sean Frank?

  Yeah. So there's been like five years of bullshit when it comes to D to C, right? Like, you know, there was COVID, which was really good for some people, horrible for some people. Famously, away sales dropped 90% because people stopped traveling, right? And then you have tariffs. It's just the latest flavor in this. You know, there was iOS 14 issues and everything else.

• 2:24:54Jordi Hays?

  Interest rates with credit cards going up, you know, it's going to hurt consumers.

• 2:24:59Sean Frank?

  Totally, dude. Yeah. I mean, you're talking about credit cards. BRX very famously was an e-commerce credit card provider and they shut down all the credit cards when COVID happened. So that's why I'm so glad you guys work with Ramp. The better of the credit card providers. No. So.

• 2:25:18Sean Frank?

  What we're seeing right now is a wave of shutdowns in smaller sub $10 million brands, right? Like, that's always been a trend, but it's really ramped up the past like three to, probably the past three months since Trump got elected, because they just can't absorb tariff costs. Like, things were on the water, right, to be brought into America, and then costs went up 25, 40% for these people. And when you add that in with everything that's happened, you know, iOS changes, advertising changes, consumer being softer, there's just a wave of bankruptcies and shutdowns happening. So if you haven't secured financing, if you don't have a solid balance sheet, it's just a really, really hard time to be trying to sell stuff on the internet.

• 2:26:01Jordi Hays?

  Talk about Solo Brands. They're currently being priced at $12 million on 450 million of revenue. They're not profitable. I have to imagine this is a tariff thing, but like, we were trying to figure out what was going on with the company.

• 2:26:18John Coogan?

  Did you track this at all? It's like, the numbers just don't make sense to me whatsoever.

• 2:26:22Jordi Hays?

  Sean is like, Sean's got his finger on the buy button. It's like, I could just buy like the every, every share.

• 2:26:29John Coogan?

  Because they also own Chubbies. It's like a pretty popular men's fashion brand, too. And they're doing like 100 million in sales over there, too.

• 2:26:37Sean Frank?

  So I know Solo so intimately. I know Spencer, the original founder. I know Bertram Capital, the private equity group that bought them. I know Summit, the private equity group that bought them from the private equity group to take them public. They had a roll-up strategy. They overpaid for some assets, and they've depreciated all of them except for two. So they have Solo, which makes the stoves, and they have Chubbies. And they used to not break out revenue. The last quarter was the last quarter they actually broke their revenue out. And what you have is Chubby does roughly $100 million in sales and is EBITDA positive. And then you have Solo, which is a shrinking business, shrinking 25% year-over-year, losing, you know, $50 million or whatever. And the reason why the market kept so low is they have

• 2:27:21Sean Frank?

  so much debt on that business. I think it's over, over $250 million in debt for a shrinking business that loses money. So, you know, they will sell Chubbies. That, like, when you break out the finances like that, that's, they're looking for someone to buy that asset to pay down some of this debt. And then they're, they're just a take private. It is just, somebody will swoop in. Does it happen before or after bankruptcy? That's the whole challenge, right?

• 2:27:45John Coogan?

  Yep. Yeah, because you're not just going to pick that up for 12 million bucks. You're going to pick up 250 million dollars of debt with it potentially. And that's a big, that's a big decision. You got to be ready to do something with that, right? Refinance that or pay that down somehow, right?

• 2:27:59Sean Frank?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, the obvious suitor is Yeti, but there's a bunch of outdoor rollups. I mean, there's, it's one side that's, somebody, it makes sense to own that asset, but it's just, it's a, it's really, really hard to be solos of right now.

• 2:28:13John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's rough. Well, good luck to them.

• 2:28:15Jordi Hays?

  Is, do you believe there's potentially another ad platform on their horizons that will save the industry, swoop in and provide cheap ads that allow everybody to scale efficiently again? Everyone in DTC, just one more ad platform to bang, or just one more. Yeah, I mean, I mean, we, you know, you guys have talked about this a bunch, right? Ridge benefited massively from the rise of just meta platforms and being able to buy cheap ads and scale very profitably. But what's your conviction level? Are LLM's gonna, LLM ad networks going to be a thing? Or are you, are you short there?

• 2:28:54Sean Frank?

  Well, they will find a way to monetize, right? I mean, Google is the most profitable, best business on earth, 80 billion dollars in fucking revenue or whatever. It's all straight profit. And it's all just people searching and then getting in the middle of that. So, you know, if you're ChatGPT or Perplexity, you could probably build an amazing, you know, sales business on top of that. But dude, this year, Meta, Meta's working. Like last year, Meta did not work and we are giving so much of our money to the big blue beast. And we're spending more today than we spent in December, right? It's just because I think they're taking AI seriously and they're really trying to bring AI across their ad, like their ad networks. They do have threads, that's new ad space, right?

• 2:29:39Sean Frank?

  You know, Twitter is looking to highly monetize its ad space. I think their daily users are going up. Famously, there's Reddit, which has never been able to monetize well. The revenue per user is dog shit. So all we're hoping for is that AI helps people. Bring the power of the Facebook Ads Engine to more places. We think AppLovin did that in Q4, but just more ad space to be more higher powered. And unfortunately, if we're in a recessionary environment, the first thing they get cut is marketing budgets and then Ridgewell swoops in to buy those cheap CPMs. So podcasts crushing it right now. It makes so much sense why Ramp, Bezel, Wander, Public.com, Adquick, Eight Sleep are sponsoring

• 2:30:22Sean Frank?

  this podcast because podcasts, that's for us, crushing right now.

• 2:30:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:26John Coogan?

  I love it.

• 2:30:27Jordi Hays?

  What's your take on, I need to re-download Threads. I deleted it because I'm just so loyal to the everything app. But are you using it at all yourself? Do you think it, do you, do you think it will be like, if anybody could make the sort of like text heavy format, the sort of conversational format be have good ad units, it would be Meta Platforms. Are you guys spending, like, can you spend on Threads yet? Are you getting invited to spend on it soon?

• 2:30:56Sean Frank?

  So I don't use Threads. I'm trying to spend less time on the internet, dude, trying to touch on that delicious sunshine. It's been hitting my face lately. But dude, never bet against Zuck. You give him, you give him pixels, he will monetize them. So if he's got users, he's going to monetize it. The rumor is that Threads ads are coming in Q4 of this year. And with that, they're also going to better monetize messaging and WhatsApp in general. So, you know, WhatsApp still has 100 million users in America. Like, if you're not logged in every day using it, a lot of people are. And they do have, you know, just DMs and everything that hasn't been monetized. So Snapchat lost messaging ads last Q4. Whatever Snapchat does, Meta will just scoop up and do it too.

• 2:31:41Sean Frank?

  So we got more ad units coming, guys.

• 2:31:44Jordi Hays?

  Are you long, are you long or short? Apple ever doing an ad platform? You'd think that they sort of like handicapped the American online ad industry. It would have been nice if they had offered up like, you know, a stick and a carrot at the same time. Is there any, you know, if Apple's entering this era of just like, you know, toll road operations, you know, squeezing margin everywhere, getting these sort of incremental fees? Do you see a world where?

• 2:32:11John Coogan?

  They do App Store ads.

• 2:32:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, App Store is obvious.

• 2:32:14John Coogan?

  But not much for direct to consumer companies, if I'm correct.

• 2:32:17Sean Frank?

  So my wife was interviewing for a role at Apple years ago and she she when you interview at Apple, they make you do these like presentations and her presentation was the advertising opportunity at Apple and they, you know, the executives there were very much like, we're never going to do that. Like that is so, so against who we are. But then, you know, what we've seen in the past two years is that no, they're actually totally, it'll, it'll be, it'll be an ad exchange, right? So I don't think they'll actually monetize any of their ad space. They have the App Store, right? They have, you know, Apple TV, they have, you know, iMessage is a social network. I think we all spend way more time on iMessage than anything else. They won't monetize it, but they will sell your data. And that was the whole iOS 14

• 2:33:01Sean Frank?

  breakdown, right? Is that Apple wanted to, they wanted revenue from Facebook in exchange for that data and Facebook said no, so they shut it down. So it, they will get a, they will get probably $40 billion in the next two years from just ad data exchange. I think that's tracking.

• 2:33:18John Coogan?

  They have your phone number. They should, they're two AI telemarketers. Like they have your phone number. So you pick up your iPhone, it's just ringing and it's just an ad on the phone.

• 2:33:27Jordi Hays?

  Hi, this is Sean Frank here. I was just calling to see if you want to.

• 2:33:29John Coogan?

  If you're interested in the original.

• 2:33:30Jordi Hays?

  And it's just AI Sean. Last, last question. Are the, are the various platforms treating you nicely enough? Are they taking you out to dinner as frequently as they should? Do you feel like you have, do you, do you feel like they're, you know, you, you're a huge customer for them and client?

• 2:33:50John Coogan?

  Didn't Ramp send you like a huge like tombstone for how much ad you've spent? Has, has Meta sent you anything?

• 2:33:56Sean Frank?

  No, dude. I mean, I, I think I'm at, you know, over a quarter billion dollars in Meta spend. So I'm, I'm waiting to get to a billion and then maybe, maybe they'll give me, you know, maybe, maybe just a cameo for Mark Zuckerberg being like, hey, man, I appreciate all the work you're doing. But no, I did Ramp. Ramp's a great partner. I got a little tombstone from them.

• 2:34:15John Coogan?

  I love it.

• 2:34:16Sean Frank?

  You know, Snapchat is the, in terms of like understanding and client relations, I think they're best in class. Dude, Evan Spiegel, super involved in the ad platform. I've, I've, I've had lunch and breakfast with him probably three or four different times. And he's, he's just like, how can we get these ads to work? That's all he cares about. So, yeah, dude, uh, lo- love all of the network. Also Shopify is the best partner out there.

• 2:34:42John Coogan?

  That's amazing. Uh, one, uh, one breaking news story that I want to get your take on, uh, DoorDash and Klarna signed a deal where customers can choose to pay for food deliveries in interest-free installments. There's a lot of chatter on the timeline about this. I know Ridge Wallet has Afterpay installed, Shopify integration. What's your take on, uh, paying with your, paying for your Chipotle burrito over several years?

• 2:35:09Sean Frank?

  Well, so the previous guest you had on, a good friend of mine, Connor, we lived together. And when, when these things rolled out, he was, he was so bullish. He's like, dude, I can smooth out my, my, my burn. He's like, everything should be financed, interest-free, everything. Take advantage of the, the Zerp environment. Surprisingly, we see a large percentage of our purchases go through a firm. It's probably 15% of all purchases are running through a firm. So, they, they do do serious revenue. There is needs from consumers and I think people, it's probably, it's probably more bearish for the credit card industry than anything else. Like, like, alternative merchant provided financing, eating high interest rate credit cards. Uh, who pays for it in that transaction?

• 2:35:51Sean Frank?

  A firm takes a higher payment processing rate than Visa does. So like, that's how they're actually funding this whole exercise. Do I think people should ha- should be putting Chipotle burritos on layaway? I do not think that's a good purchase. So that makes me very, very scared. And the memes have been great.

• 2:36:09Jordi Hays?

  For me, it's such a contradiction because like leverage is awesome and then burritos are awesome. So like you would think you're putting them together would, would be, you know, this sort of 10x experience, but it feels very dark.

• 2:36:18John Coogan?

  Risky. And, uh, What about, uh, like conversion rate effects for Ridge? When you rolled that, do you remember when you rolled that out? Was there actually a lift in, in conversion or revenue that you could see? Or is it just something you kind of feel builds like a better customer experience over time when you roll out something like Afterpay?

• 2:36:36Sean Frank?

  So the reason why we did it is because, you know, at one point, not that long ago, 2020, 2021, e-commerce was the hottest industry. Everyone was rushing into it. The glory days, all of those providers would pay you money to actually add it to the website. So I think it was either Klarna or a firm gave us $50,000 to have it as an option on that. Wow, that's awesome.

• 2:36:58John Coogan?

  And then also, I mean, Ridge's product portfolio has grown a lot. Like, you could easily wind up checking out with, you know, a whole Christmas gifts of luggage and wallets for a lot of people wind up in the several thousands. And at that point, you know, yeah, doing some after pay makes a lot of sense.

• 2:37:13Sean Frank?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, if, you know, everyone listening is probably billionaires, you know, multi-billionaires. But if you need to get gifts for your staff, ridge.com/shawn, use code Shawn for 10% off. There you go, guys. Fantastic.

• 2:37:26Jordi Hays?

  Shawn, I love you. Good luck in the trenches. And hopefully there's not news in the next week that is so dramatic that it requires us to call our e-commerce correspondent. But if there is, expect a call.

• 2:37:40Sean Frank?

  You know what? I would like to go on your guys' payroll as the e-commerce correspondent. I'll get a whole outfit and I'll just, I'll be out there in the warehouses telling you what's going down. So I appreciate you guys. Goodbye.

• 2:37:50John Coogan?

  Well, I don't know about payroll. I mean, we're trying to be the most profitable podcast here, but we'd love to have you on.

• 2:37:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, we'll do it if you quit. We'll do it if you, if you quit your show.

• 2:37:57Sean Frank?

  No, sorry.

• 2:37:58Jordi Hays?

  If we can buy, if we can acquire, if we can acquire your show, we can, we can work out a deal. You don't have to do, all you gotta do is turn on, all you gotta do is turn on Zoom.

• 2:38:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:08Jordi Hays?

  There you go.

• 2:38:08Sean Frank?

  I was, I was gonna pay you guys.

• 2:38:10John Coogan?

  Oh, now we're talking. Okay. Now, now, now we're doing deals.

• 2:38:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this is the Klarna firm strategy.

• 2:38:17John Coogan?

  Yeah, you can pay over time.

• 2:38:18Jordi Hays?

  Uh, great to see you, Shawn.

• 2:38:19John Coogan?

  Great to see you.

• 2:38:20Sean Frank?

  Bye.

• 2:38:21Jordi Hays?

  Uh, our, our new studio, if it goes where we think it's gonna go, will be much closer to Shawn.

• 2:38:26John Coogan?

  Oh, fantastic. You can just pop by. That'd be great.

• 2:38:28Jordi Hays?

  Drop in.

• 2:38:29John Coogan?

  Well, should we finish up with some timeline, wrap it up and get out of here? Because we actually got to see some new studios in 20 minutes and I think they're about 40 minutes away. So we are fully screwed.

• 2:38:38Jordi Hays?

  Fantastic.

• 2:38:39John Coogan?

  Anyway, there's some new poly market, very exciting. Will Jesus Christ return this year? What do you think, Jordy? Is that 3% chance? Are you long, are you short on the return of Jesus Christ?

• 2:38:52Jordi Hays?

  I, I, I don't feel ready to, to make a bet, although I would like to talk to the, to the 3% that are going long and just try to see if we could get some, some insights.

• 2:39:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, I bet the comment section is very valuable there.

• 2:39:07Jordi Hays?

  Politics, but we never said we wouldn't talk about religion.

• 2:39:11John Coogan?

  Fantastic. Anyway, let's move on to LinkedIn has discovered loot boxes. Kevin Quach shares that jobs are being recommended that are just some from stealth startups. And so you apply to the company and there's two, there's two jobs that look identical. It's chief operating officer at a stealth startup and chief operating officer at another stealth startup. And so you, you, you click, you apply, you might wind up at the next Decacorn. You might wind up at something that's bankrupt in six months, but it's a lot of fun.

• 2:39:45Jordi Hays?

  Speaking of unknown stealth startups, I have a portfolio company, Stealth Robotics Company.

• 2:39:51John Coogan?

  Is that the name of the company? Stealth Robotics? Because that's a good name.

• 2:39:54Jordi Hays?

  That'd be a good name.

• 2:39:55John Coogan?

  I mean, why not?

• 2:39:56Jordi Hays?

  It's not, but.

• 2:39:57John Coogan?

  Coming out of stealth.

• 2:39:58Jordi Hays?

  They're going to be coming out of stealth later this year, but they are absolutely ripping. And in a very interesting category, and that's really all I can say, but they're hiring for a ton of different engineering roles. And if you are in the market to join a robotics company or you want to learn more, DM me on X. I will connect you to the team.

• 2:40:19John Coogan?

  Well, we got some quick hits because there is more news that I want to make sure we cover because we'll be going deeper on these stories next week. First off, we didn't get a chance to talk to Sean about this, but Sequoia, Sequoia Capital has stepped in and backed Elon Musk in his Delaware battle. A comment from Sequoia, rare. They say Delaware law should not subject founders to heightened scrutiny for being an asset and benefiting to all and benefit to all stockholders. And so if you haven't left already, leave Delaware is the, is the, the, the comment from the account, leave Delaware. And so I want to get, I want to go deeper here. I want to know exactly what it takes to leave Delaware. How many companies are actually moving, where they're moving to? The Texas Stock Exchange, all these different things that are going on.

• 2:41:03Jordi Hays?

  Isn't it?

• 2:41:04John Coogan?

  I want to know what's going on.

• 2:41:05Jordi Hays?

  Something crazy, like half of Delaware's like tax receipts are from.

• 2:41:11John Coogan?

  I think it's more than half. I think they, I think the, the state makes like all of their money.

• 2:41:14Jordi Hays?

  So I want to see, and, and didn't this, I'm pretty sure the, the governor was like going on.

• 2:41:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:21Jordi Hays?

  Tell, uh, television and kind of mocking. So anyways, they got it. They got to really turn this around.

• 2:41:26John Coogan?

  We'll see.

• 2:41:27Jordi Hays?

  Unless they want to be relegated to obscurity. I always wanted to vacation in Delaware, the home, the home of the C corp.

• 2:41:32John Coogan?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:41:33Jordi Hays?

  Just because I, I just love business and I respect the, you know.

• 2:41:38John Coogan?

  If they're going to, if they're going to have a Hall of Fame of business, that's where it should be.

• 2:41:41Jordi Hays?

  Biblical home. Yeah, yeah. The, the.

• 2:41:43John Coogan?

  The ancestral home of the, of the corporation.

• 2:41:46Jordi Hays?

  The Business Hall of Fame.

• 2:41:47John Coogan?

  In Delaware, we should build it. Uh, let's go to Sheil Monat. He says, exit mania is upon us. $2.6 billion exit for next. Exit mania. Exit mania coming soon. Like WrestleMania or.

• 2:42:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, we gotta have Sheil on to talk about exit mania.

• 2:42:03John Coogan?

  So Next Insurance, uh, the rumor is that it was eight X revenue, 14 and a half X 2024 gross profit. They got scooped up by Munich Re for 2.6 billion. Congrats to them. A little size gone moment for the folks over at Next Insurance. You'll love to see it. Lots of M and A stuff going on. Let's also move to more news about Apple. We've been talking about the Apple intelligence delay on repeat for the last few weeks. Well, now they're getting sued. They're facing a false advertising lawsuit over Apple intelligence delay.

• 2:42:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you never know how much to read. This is a pretty wild ad. You never know how much to read into this kind of lawsuit because they'll, you can just sue anyone or anything for anything at any time. So this could just be a

• 2:42:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:48Jordi Hays?

  Money.

• 2:42:48John Coogan?

  I mean, it could literally be like

• 2:42:49Jordi Hays?

  I don't know how many

• 2:42:50John Coogan?

  class action settlement where everyone gets 75 cents, but it's bad press and you know, Apple hates bad press. So they're shuffling executives around. We covered that yesterday and I'm sure the folks at Apple are thinking about how to handle this crisis. They probably need to call Lulu, who will be on the show on Monday. Anyway, Gary Tan, he says, this is the golden age of building. He shares some news from CNBC. Why combinator startups are the fastest growing, most profitable in fund history because of AI.

• 2:43:16Jordi Hays?

  You think, did CNBC get the scoop from us?

• 2:43:19John Coogan?

  Probably from us.

• 2:43:20Jordi Hays?

  When Gary was on the show?

• 2:43:21John Coogan?

  They shouldn't have quoted us, but you know.

• 2:43:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:22John Coogan?

  For attribution.

• 2:43:23Jordi Hays?

  We'd like our scoop.

• 2:43:24John Coogan?

  Attribution required on everything we say, although who knows if we will give you attribution when we cover you. We'll try, we'll try, we'll do our best.

• 2:43:32Jordi Hays?

  We'll, we'll at least do a sponsor acknowledgement.

• 2:43:34John Coogan?

  Yes, definitely, definitely. Yeah. Who's advertising on this CNBC landing page? We'll, we'll shout them out. Anyway.

• 2:43:42Jordi Hays?

  We got some great math by Christian Kyle.

• 2:43:45John Coogan?

  This goes viral every time he posts it. It's insane.

• 2:43:48Jordi Hays?

  Sounds great.

• 2:43:49John Coogan?

  He just knows how to play the hits so well.

• 2:43:51Jordi Hays?

  My three month old son is now twice as big as the day, as when he was born. He's on track to weigh seven and a half trillion pounds by age 10. Great. And it's awesome that this is definitely, this is the first time his, his, uh, his son has been on TBPN, but I'm sure he's going to be an absolute Chad hard tech founder someday.

• 2:44:12John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:44:13Jordi Hays?

  We'll be interviewing him by the time he's, you know, at least a teenager.

• 2:44:17John Coogan?

  So he posted this once on X. It got 100,000 likes easily. He just posted it again, got another 100,000 likes. It's made its way over to Reddit, got, become the front page of Reddit over there. People love math jokes like this and exponentials. Very fun. What else, what else should we cover from the timeline? Saquon Barkley is in Andorl now. That's exciting. He says, "Thank you to Paul

• 2:44:41Jordi Hays?

  Hit the gong for that.

• 2:44:43John Coogan?

  And the entire Andorl team for having me out. Couldn't be prouder to be an investor.

• 2:44:47Jordi Hays?

  I mean.

• 2:44:47John Coogan?

  A lot of people wore Eagles gear at Andorl headquarters that day. That's a lot of fun.

• 2:44:51Jordi Hays?

  Saquon, pull up the Founders Fund portfolio page and then just DM every, every single CEO. Because if you look at Founders Fund fund performance, Arfa Rock leaked it. And he was quote quoting Harry Stebbings, who earlier this month says, "I've never seen such institutional demand for fund than the current demand for Founders Fund growth fund." And the reason for that is they are putting up incredible numbers. And I will say this because John.

• 2:45:23John Coogan?

  Can't comment.

• 2:45:24Jordi Hays?

  Can't comment, but I can comment. And this is the kind of performance that you're pleased when it's leaked. So.

• 2:45:32John Coogan?

  Inspiring to the whole community.

• 2:45:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So Saquon, go hit up the FF portfolio. Get in however you can. We got a post from Jason Levin. We'll close it off here.

• 2:45:44John Coogan?

  Let's do it.

• 2:45:45Jordi Hays?

  Jason says, "When TechCrunch gets acquired by a PE firm to be chopped up for parts."

• 2:45:50John Coogan?

  This is a very creepy deep fake. It's pretty good.

• 2:45:53Jordi Hays?

  Is that?

• 2:45:54John Coogan?

  There's a little bit of me in there.

• 2:45:55Jordi Hays?

  And is that?

• 2:45:57John Coogan?

  It's from The Shining. Here's Johnny.

• 2:45:59Jordi Hays?

  It's you.

• 2:45:59John Coogan?

  It's me as Jack Nicholson in The Shining, breaking through the wall with an axe because he's gone insane. I think that's the story of The Shining.

• 2:46:09Jordi Hays?

  Well, yeah, we love private equity and we love.

• 2:46:12John Coogan?

  Compare it on the, on the street.

• 2:46:15Jordi Hays?

  We love private equity. We love when companies get bought by private equity.

• 2:46:20John Coogan?

  Yeah, very pro private equity.

• 2:46:21Jordi Hays?

  Especially when they're potentially, you know, competing for attention.

• 2:46:24John Coogan?

  And I mean, if you're the private equity firm that bought it, we have a genius idea to turn it around. We've said it before, turn it into a lifestyle magazine about skiing. That's how you get the capital allocators back on board.

• 2:46:35Jordi Hays?

  And that's a great way to leave it. We should, we should have the new.

• 2:46:38John Coogan?

  We should go skiing right now.

• 2:46:40Jordi Hays?

  I should go skiing with the acquirer and break down the plan.

• 2:46:44John Coogan?

  The plan to turn TechRush.

• 2:46:46Jordi Hays?

  Thank you for tuning in today. It is a pleasure to do the show. We're pretty bummed. It's the weekend.

• 2:46:52John Coogan?

  It's not normally 21 hours and we'll be back 21 hours. And that's what I think just 21 hours. And now it's like almost 72 hours.

• 2:46:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:59John Coogan?

  68 hours, 70 hours.

• 2:47:02Jordi Hays?

  We'll just be brooding.

• 2:47:03John Coogan?

  It's going to be rough, but we'll get through it, folks. The timeline's always there. We'll still be posting. We'll be posting clips. Follow us on X. Review us on Apple and Spotify and enjoy your weekend.

• 2:47:14Jordi Hays?

  Thank you.

• 2:47:14John Coogan?

  Thank you.