HBD Steve Jobs, Supercharging US Manufacturing, Adderall Fueled Insider Trading, Sam Bankman Prison Interview, Ellison's Island

(01:03) - HBD Steve Jobs (02:42) - Genmoji (11:43) - Microsoft Cancels AI Leases (24:46) - New Executive Order for US Manufacturing (28:21) - Sam Bankman Interview (44:34) - Larry Ellison Farming (01:04:11) - Adderall Fueled Insider Trading (01:18:45) - Timeline 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.comFollow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://youtube.com/@technologybrotherspod?si=lpk53xTE9WBEcIjV

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 TBPN. We are live from the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance. That's right, the capital of capital. I'm your host, John Coogan. I'm here with Jordy Hayes. Today is Monday, February 24th, 2025, and this show starts now. We got a great show for you guys today. We're going through SBF, that, yeah, that's right, Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced FTX founder. He gave an interview from prison. We're gonna break it down.

• 0:25Jordi Hays?

  He is starting a sunscreen company called S P F.

• 0:30Jordi Hays?

  He said he's been getting a lot of sun in the yard.

• 0:32John Coogan?

  In the yard.

• 0:33Jordi Hays?

  And he needs like a better, you know, and he wants to redeem himself by helping people prevent, you know, skin cancer.

• 0:38John Coogan?

  I love it. I love it. We're going through Larry Ellison. He has spent almost half a billion dollars on an agriculture startup that you probably have never heard of. We're gonna break it all down for you. There was also an insider's trading scandal in an investment bank involving Adderall. Very dramatic story. We're gonna tell you all about that. But first, and of course, we're going to do to the timeline, but first, it is, it would be Steve Jobs's birthday today. He would be 70 years old. So, I mean, man, what an impact on tech. Probably one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, if not the best entrepreneur of all time.

• 1:10Jordi Hays?

  You can't go, even if you're not David Senra and you're obsessed with the greatest entrepreneurs of history, it's hard to be a US consumer and not spend at least one moment every day wishing Steve was still around. Like, I'm sitting here with my phone with this protruding camera, and it's like rattling here. And it's like, he's like, you know, he would never have let that out the door, even though I'm sure it's, you know, sells more cases for Apple. And so anyways, absolute, absolute legend.

• 1:42John Coogan?

  So we'll kick it off with a post from none other than Jordy Hayes. Jordy says, "Happy 70th birthday to Steve Jobs. He would have loved the iPhone 16e with Apple Intelligence and Gen Moji."

• 1:55John Coogan?

  And yeah, people have been wailing on Apple Intelligence for a while. The Genmoji thing is particularly rough.

• 2:02Jordi Hays?

  Here's the thing with Apple Intelligence.

• 2:03John Coogan?

  Yeah, break it down.

• 2:04Jordi Hays?

  As bad as the feature is from a functional standpoint, it is valuable purely from an entertainment standpoint, because the summaries that it does, like of one of our group chats in particular, are so funny that once a day you send me a screenshot. It's like this sort of, it's not like it's botched. It's just basically seeing a computer summarize like something silly happening in a group chat and like positioning it as it's significant.

• 2:29John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:30Jordi Hays?

  Like, I can't even give examples, but it's hilarious.

• 2:34John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just like, the summarization of the bro group chat is one of the best things it does. Genmoji, on the other hand, I have not been having a good experience with it. I went to just-

• 2:45Jordi Hays?

  Where is it in the app?

• 2:46John Coogan?

  Good question. Very good question.

• 2:49Jordi Hays?

  I've seen-

• 2:49John Coogan?

  I had the exact same thought. I was like, where, where does this thing even exist? I'll show you where it exists. You go to your text messages, open up to Jordy. I go, click on the emoji thing to pull it up. And then you can say, "describe an emoji." And then you go into the Genmoji flow. I don't know if you can see this, but it will let you describe an emoji. And so then I should be able to see like, you know, peanut butter guy or whatever. But I tried to get it to describe the original gun emoji. And it just freaked out and was like, I don't know. And I think that's what speaks to this is that there is a lack of risk-taking right now.

• 3:26Jordi Hays?

  It's crazy that, that kids in the year 2030, emojis will be so nerfed by then. They'll be like, "You could send a revolver on the-"

• 3:35John Coogan?

  That's literal violence. And you're like, no, that's actually not what literal means. Literal means literal. But now literal means figurative.

• 3:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:43John Coogan?

  But I have, I have a little riff on this and then I want to go to you. You posted a great tweet here showing the, the, the switch in culture from the yin and yang campaign that they ran for, I think this was the original iMac. They have one in black, one in white. And it's kind of a silly quirky design, in the same way Genmoji is quirky. You know, it's like you could see through the computer is very risk taking. But it was delivered in this like beautiful black and white ad campaign. And then Jen Moji says, imagine it Jen Moji it and it's this silly peanut butter and jelly thing.

• 4:18Jordi Hays?

  And people have made some heinous photo shops of these.

• 4:21John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, tons, tons, lots of NSFW stuff going out there, lots of stuff we wouldn't show on on on this network. But I do have a take on this, which is that I think Jen Moji is the perfect encapsulation of the lack of risk taking at Apple. And I go back to the launch of the iPod. So when Steve Jobs launched the iPod, he pulls it out and he's a thousand songs in your pocket.

• 4:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 4:42John Coogan?

  And and it's like, and it was amazing. It was groundbreaking. But what was the unspoken part of that announcement? Where were you getting a thousand songs from?

• 4:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 4:50John Coogan?

  You were clearly downloading them illegally. Obviously, no one was very few people, some people really did take their massive CD collections, rip them all legally. And then put them on their iPod. But for the vast majority of people.

• 5:01Jordi Hays?

  Dad would do that.

• 5:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:02Jordi Hays?

  You'd be like, Jordy.

• 5:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:03Jordi Hays?

  I got this.

• 5:04John Coogan?

  But for the but this was during the Napster era, the Kazaa era. For the vast majority of people, they would download illegal music, put it on their iPod and create playlists and stuff. And that's where it was. And then, but but he had the foresight to know that the iTunes Music Store would eventually become so ubiquitous and so valuable. And Spotify would happen. And eventually the music would be illegal. But he wasn't going to back down from this idea that legally, we're not doing anything wrong, even though we are enabling piracy and making piracy like higher leverage, more enjoyable, basically.

• 5:35Jordi Hays?

  Totally.

• 5:35John Coogan?

  And so it was super risky. Now, now compare that to Jen Moji. Like, if you give someone a tool to make a pistol emoji, they're going to do it. And yeah, Apple will like, look bad.

• 5:45Jordi Hays?

  Interesting.

• 5:45John Coogan?

  But you have to give the user agency and let them do that. And instead, they're acting as like, we're putting up the bars, we're creating this walled garden, we're not letting you express yourself.

• 5:54Jordi Hays?

  That's a good take.

• 5:55John Coogan?

  And so I was, I was just like, okay, that's where I feel like this, this culture. It's not so much that Jen Moji is like a bad product, although I think the name is a little silly. I can get behind that is that they have just changed from, we're going to let you do something a little crazy, a little edgy. But we're not, but we're going to protect our brand. And the iPod, we don't remember it as like a piracy device.

• 6:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 6:14John Coogan?

  But that's what it was. And but they've really, they've really clamped it down. And so.

• 6:19Jordi Hays?

  That's a good take. That's a good take. We should make some Jen Mojis and stop judging them, joking about them. And we should start utilizing them in our daily life and use them for a week and then and then decide to to make a judgment on it. Are you making one right now?

• 6:33John Coogan?

  I'm trying and it doesn't work. It says, continue by choosing an inspiration.

• 6:36Jordi Hays?

  A golden, a golden, uh, do a solid gold podcast microphone.

• 6:41John Coogan?

  Okay, let's see.

• 6:42Jordi Hays?

  Or actually, no, a white gold.

• 6:45John Coogan?

  Some descriptions may create unexpected results. And so continue by choosing an inspiration for the person in your Gen Moji. So like, okay, I'm gonna make like this guy and I'm gonna try and describe him as Mickey Mouse and see if that works. And it's just, it's just very rough. It's just not smooth. And they could have just integrated a mid journey style.

• 7:10Jordi Hays?

  Well, that's the issue with, with all of their new, their new hardware is reliable, right? You have no doubt that the 16E is gonna be easy to use. The new software that they're rolling out, Gen Moji, Apple Intelligence, is just rough. It's not software that Steve would have rolled out. And that's sad because Apple is his legacy and he deserves better.

• 7:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, but they're printing and, uh, you know, hey, I got a gold, I got a gold podcast microphone for you here. Okay, that, that actually looks like what I would expect a gold podcast microphone to look like. We'll, we'll need to share it later, but, uh, yeah, not, not.

• 7:49Jordi Hays?

  What's the other mustache man?

• 7:51John Coogan?

  That was when I said Mickey Mouse. And it asked me to pick a person and that's what I picked.

• 7:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so you had said this before, AI and generative design is so not Apple coded. And that Apple is about pixel perfection.

• 8:06John Coogan?

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 8:06Jordi Hays?

  And, you know, and AI is about getting something that's 80% of what you wanted.

• 8:12John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 8:13Jordi Hays?

  At least in its current state. And so that's why you tried to make Mickey Mouse.

• 8:16John Coogan?

  Yeah. I guess my other, my, my other critique is that like, I'm, I'm kind of okay with them saying, look.

• 8:25John Coogan?

  There's this chaos going on in the generative AI world. We are going to delegate that to, hey, there's a ton of apps that we're allowing in the store. You can use Mid Journey, you can use ChatGPT, Dolly, you can go and generate images on Grok in the X app. And what happens there is fine. We're not really going to police it. But then I think Apple needs to be rock solid on integrating stuff that is safe. And what I mean by that is the fact that their text to speech engine is terrible still. I should be able to go to any website and instantly click, read this to me, and it should read it to me in a great voice. And there's no reason why they can't just integrate. They have a better voice model. They just haven't integrated it everywhere. And it's just slow product movement.

• 9:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's interesting how the consistent, the failure of Siri, like let's call it what it is. That's a failed product if it's on every iPhone and none of our friends use it, right? Who are much more likely to want to adopt new products and sort of be at the cutting edge. And maybe, maybe we're not the customer. Maybe the customer is elderly people that don't know how to use their phone and they're just using it to Google. But, but even if you look at the text to speech to text, it's also bad. Anytime I get, anytime I get a text that just like seems like, is this person drunk? It's because they were sent, using the like

• 9:43John Coogan?

  Totally, because they haven't integrated the latest Whisper. And Whisper is an open source model that they could have cloned. You know, they could partner with 11 Labs. They could buy 11 Labs. They have plenty of money.

• 9:52Jordi Hays?

  And so, yeah, I mean, when I, when I poke fun at Apple, because I've had a bunch of posts now, kind of mocking them to some degree. The F1 post where I'm like, stop, you know, doing this Gen Moji stuff. Just, just commit to being, you know, a scaled brand and buy an F1 team. Like that would make me like Apple more than your Gen Moji garbage.

• 10:12John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 10:13Jordi Hays?

  But I do that because I, in a small way, I want, you know, I want to play my part in Apple returning to the company that it was.

• 10:21John Coogan?

  A hundred percent.

• 10:22Jordi Hays?

  It used to be, it used to stand for creativity and inspiration. It was a brand that when they did a campaign, you actually cared.

• 10:28John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it's out of love that we're critiquing.

• 10:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's out of love.

• 10:31John Coogan?

  I genuinely love the products.

• 10:34Jordi Hays?

  I grew up using Apple products. I'd never, I didn't use a PC until I was like a teenager. Like actually, like, and I was, I was.

• 10:42John Coogan?

  I was PCing Mr. Race all the time.

• 10:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 10:44John Coogan?

  Gaming, building NBA cards.

• 10:46Jordi Hays?

  No, and I, I just grew up.

• 10:48John Coogan?

  I also have Macs all the time.

• 10:49Jordi Hays?

  I, I grew up with it and it's my probably favorite brand, favorite product company ever by a long shot. And I love it. And they're just running it, uh, they're running it into the ground.

• 11:00John Coogan?

  It's also just remarkable that they were able to create a, a brand that has the same vibe and affinity as like a Nike. It really is the Nike of tech, but tech is so boring and not aspirational as opposed to Nike. It's like, yeah, you put them on Michael Jordan, your brand's going to be great, right?

• 11:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 11:15John Coogan?

  But you, it's harder to do that with any tech product.

• 11:18Jordi Hays?

  And every, every kid that, that grew up, you know, obsessed with Apple now, you think, I think of people like Jordan Singer.

• 11:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Jordi Hays?

  Brandon Jacoby, these sort of incredible, some of the best designers of their generation. They all are sad about the state, like genuinely sad and, and you know.

• 11:34John Coogan?

  Well, hopefully, uh, hopefully something changes. But in the meantime, let's move on to the other hyperscalers. There's a bunch of news. Microsoft has canceled leases for AI data centers, according to analysts. And so there's a post here by Luke Metro. He says, Jevon's paradox bros, what do we do now? Very sassy from Luke. We love to see him on the timeline, having fun. And I'll read a little bit of the analysis.

• 12:00Jordi Hays?

  So for context, if you didn't catch our episode last week, we were talking about Satya going onto our Kes podcast. Talking about how, you know, his model for AGI is just 10% GDP growth. And that's kind of what he's anchoring around and how he uses AI as a thought partner. He also is very explicit in that he, he was extremely explicit in that he's excited to be a leaser of data centers. And so having him go on this podcast, which he knows is going to set the narrative for Microsoft, right?

• 12:32John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 12:32Jordi Hays?

  Every analyst that's covering Microsoft is watching that. Every media, like legacy media outlet that's covering Microsoft is watching that. And so he's going on the podcast saying one thing. Meanwhile, the timing, I'm sure, I'm sure it was somewhat random, but the timing of like a few days later coming out that he's actually, you know, buying, getting out of leases.

• 12:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:51Jordi Hays?

  One of the things, just to potentially give him some credit is.

• 12:57Jordi Hays?

  Forget who, I forget the CEO. There was a CEO on 20VC talking about how everybody's treating data centers development as real estate, where it's like, hey, let's just build this building.

• 13:08John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 13:08Jordi Hays?

  And then, and then it's, it'll just kind of, it'll lease and, you know, it's sort of passive. And his point of view is that, is that a lot of people are treating data center development like real estate, and that's leading to people undelivering on, you know, they, they raise a hundred million dollars, build a data center, but then they actually don't have the technical capacity to operate it efficiently. Or, uh, he was saying there's, I wish I remember this guy's name. He was saying there's a nine, 90 month lead on generators. So if you want to get generators to power your data centers, good luck, right?

• 13:41John Coogan?

  We talked about the transformer shortage.

• 13:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the transformers is a big one. But, um, but anyways, that, you could imagine that, that there is a scenario where Microsoft had committed to leasing data centers that were not delivering, and they knew that, and they said, we're getting out of this deal, like, and then the market reads that as, oh, there's an oversupply, like, they're done with CapEx, they're not in Stargate. And, you know, what happens from there?

• 14:05John Coogan?

  Do you remember what happened with Goldman Sachs, uh, in 2008, right as the housing bubble was bursting?

• 14:11Jordi Hays?

  I was five years old.

• 14:13John Coogan?

  So, uh, so basically, you know, the, the, the quick version of the too big to fail is that, uh, you know, interest rates were low, there were a lot of incentives for Americans to buy homes, you've seen the big short.

• 14:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 14:25John Coogan?

  You know, there's a clearly a housing bubble, house prices are rising extremely fast, driven a lot by easy credit and ninja loans, no income, no job. You just call the bank and say, oh yeah, like, I need a mortgage for a third house, like, I make 10K. And they're like, okay, we're not going to verify that, but we're going to give you the mortgage. Uh, so there's clearly a bubble. A couple of people figured it out. Michael Burry is the famous one, the hedge fund trader, who made the big trade against mortgage backed securities. But Goldman clocked it too. And they, so they didn't go bust during the downturn. Uh, Lehman went bankrupt, AIG got in a bunch of trouble, needed a bailout. Um, but Goldman, they saw it coming. And so what they did was they had this massive, uh, building and we sold it and did a lease back.

• 15:07John Coogan?

  So they didn't have to move, but they just now, instead of taking the risk on the value because they own the asset, they were leasing it.

• 15:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 15:13John Coogan?

  And so as the price fell, they were able to just like not take the loss on their building that they owned. And so you could see something like that playing out if you, if Satya's kind of, hey, I'm calling the top on data center build outs. I'm going to sell some of my, my owned, you know, real estate effectively and then lease it back when I need it.

• 15:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there's also, there's also, people don't realize how much leverage Microsoft has in these types of transactions. If you're the elephant in the room, the, the, you know, whatever, the gorilla, you can go out and be like, he might've wanted, you know, he might've wanted to send a signal to the rest of the market in that if you're not, you know, executing, you know, we, we don't, all this came out initially, there was a post, I think it was on Friday.

• 15:55John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 15:55Jordi Hays?

  That just somebody leaked it out and they were like, my buddy.

• 15:58John Coogan?

  TD Cowan.

• 15:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, my buddy, or maybe it was before that. Yeah, but it was somebody was like, my buddy at Microsoft says they're canceling leases. And that was before TD Cowan covered it. And so then I think TD Cowan backchanneled and figured out the same source.

• 16:11John Coogan?

  Put in the report.

• 16:12Jordi Hays?

  And so we don't have a lot of details here, but we know that Satya from the interview on Dorkesh is heavily fixated on balancing this supply and demand, right? He doesn't want the over supply because that's going to signal to the market that they can't do demand planning and maybe there's a bubble.

• 16:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Jordi Hays?

  May, just maybe.

• 16:32John Coogan?

  I mean, at the same time, I think his capex plan is still higher than all the other hyperscalers, maybe, or it's certainly up there.

• 16:39Jordi Hays?

  No, didn't, didn't he, didn't he sort of get Google to like, kind of try to one up?

• 16:43John Coogan?

  Google might be in the same, but they're all in the 10, high 10s of billions.

• 16:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 16:47John Coogan?

  So here's the report. Microsoft has canceled some leases for US data center capacity, according to TD Cowan, raising broader concerns over whether it's securing more AI computing capacity than it needs in the long term. OpenAI's biggest backer has voided leases in the US totaling a couple of hundred megawatts of capacity, the equivalent of roughly two data centers, canceling agreements with at least a couple of private operators. The US brokerage wrote Friday citing channel checks or inquiries with supply chain providers. So they go and call the supply chain providers. TD Cowan said its checks also suggest Microsoft has pulled back on converting so-called statements of qualifications agreements that usually lead to formal leases. Microsoft said in a statement on Monday.

• 17:26Jordi Hays?

  And again, again, just to be clear, it's totally possible that they, they entered into agreements and then felt that the underlying. Operator was not going to deliver and that was the reason for pulling out because none of this came out of official Microsoft channels. They could have gone, it's possible that they were basically front run on the story.

• 17:46John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 17:46Jordi Hays?

  And they would have released something that basically said to the effect of, you know, we had entered into a long-term lease. The operator wasn't going to have their generators or transformers for years and we pulled out of it because we can.

• 17:57John Coogan?

  This also could be like an oppo research like planted story in some way. There's a lot of different things that could go on here like TD Cowan isn't exactly known as like the number one researcher on hyperscalers, I believe.

• 18:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 18:09John Coogan?

  I would go to Dylan Patel.

• 18:10Jordi Hays?

  Has Patel commented on it?

• 18:12John Coogan?

  I have his post right here.

• 18:13Jordi Hays?

  Look at you.

• 18:13John Coogan?

  So Dylan Patel, the absolute dog over at semi-analysis wrote on Friday, there was a report stating that Microsoft was canceling data center leases for several hundred of several hundreds of megawatts, alluding to a high risk of overbuild slash oversupply. We discussed this back in December in our data center model where we track every individual data center. Let's break it down because it's quite silly. This was months late info, probably from PTC. Pretty much everyone knew this was happening in the data center industry because contracts were lagging slash not being signed.

• 18:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 18:48John Coogan?

  Microsoft was exceptionally aggressive in 2023 and H1 in the first half of 2024 with Blackstone owned QTS getting the large chunk of that capacity. In the second half of 2024, 59% of the total hyperscaler pre-leased capacity, well over a hundred billion dollars was contracted by Microsoft, also a hundred, over a hundred billion. Since the second quarter of 2024, Microsoft pre-leased balance has stopped growing. This aligns with our channel checks as we have been hearing a lot of rumors that in 2023 and 2024, the first half, Microsoft was essentially freezing the co-location market by entering into non-binding LOIs with a lot of co-location campuses. Our core research product also noted this for vertive.

• 19:33John Coogan?

  Everyone was surprised their book to bill was so low, but Microsoft has a huge commit of capacity and near-term plans weren't shifting. Microsoft slowdown is also more evident in Australia, Spain and UK per our data center model, being vague on numbers here, but full detail in the data center model below. All in all of Microsoft were to build, like if Microsoft were to build everything they have scheduled, that's eons above every other, any other analyst who doesn't track by data center like we do. Interesting. So a little bit of old news, we can, we can give a little bit more color from this Bloomberg report. It closes by saying, in January, Microsoft said it would alter its multi-year

• 20:13John Coogan?

  deal with OpenAI, so the AI startup could use cloud computing services from rival providers. Microsoft, which has also been the company's exclusive cloud provider, still has a right of first refusal when OpenAI seeks computing horsepower to train and run its AI models. Interesting. And so they are maybe pulling, you know, out of Stargate to some degree, and, you know, lots of froth in the AI market. So, yeah, I mean, we'll, we'll see how it pans out. There's always been this, you know, bit of Pascal's wager with the AI stuff. You know, if you believe in it, and you get it wrong, you wind up with a bunch of extra, like, dead fiber, basically, like the dot com boom. That could be bad. You could lose your job. That could hurt the stock. But if you miss out on the AI opportunity, like,

• 20:58John Coogan?

  you are truly Yahoo, right? And you're not ready for that next build out. And so, as a, as someone who's going into these high expectations, if it doesn't happen, but you were prepared, people will still see you as, hey, you know, he, he, he got a little bit caught up in the hype, but everyone did. At least he was prepared for the good upside.

• 21:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the other thing here is that, is that Microsoft being the most, the most, or one of the most significant buyers of, you know, you know, players in the market to lease these data centers.

• 21:30John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 21:30Jordi Hays?

  They're happy to sit back and let somebody carry the cost of this data center independently, and then a year from now be like, actually, yeah, we do want it.

• 21:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Jordi Hays?

  Because there's going to be a bunch of people like that, that are just kind of sitting on their hands, like, waiting for a hyperscaler to come around and say, yeah, we want to, we'll actually take the space. And the other thing that I think is now real is that if Elon has shown you can build a 200K GPU data center in a year, if you're aggressive enough, if you're Google or Microsoft,

• 22:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Jordi Hays?

  you have to be talking to your sort of data center operations team and saying, hey, this is the bar now. You might not be able to do it at Elon's speed, but do it in two years. And then at that point, At that point, it just sort of like sets a new standard for the pace at which these things can be built.

• 22:16John Coogan?

  Yes and no. So the hyperscalers all made serious ESG commitments years ago.

• 22:22Jordi Hays?

  Right.

• 22:23John Coogan?

  That are effectively binding in the sense that they put them into their, not necessarily corporate bylaws, but like they made, they made, they made solid claims around their ESG complaint. And so XAI has not made those ESG.

• 22:36Jordi Hays?

  Right.

• 22:36John Coogan?

  Plans. And so they can say, yeah, we're going to tap the natural gas plant and then we're going to bring in extra generators that run on diesel. And then, yeah, we're going to use Tesla battery packs and we're going to use solar panels. And we'll use everything versus if you were.

• 22:48Jordi Hays?

  Great point.

• 22:48John Coogan?

  Google and you were saying, look, all we do is just search, we just query a database when someone says, you know, what's the recipe for pasta or whatever? And then they just go look it up. And that's very, that's not as compute intensive as AI, obviously, we know this. And so, you know, it was very reasonable back in 2019, pre LLM and pre really huge AI models to say, yeah, we'll totally be able to get this to net zero. And, and, and so, you know, what's going to happen? Are you all of a sudden, you're going to need a one gigawatt facility? Yeah, right. No one believed in scaling.

• 23:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 23:21John Coogan?

  So they weren't scalepilled when they rolled out those ESG mandates. And so now they're kind of like, hey, maybe we'll lease from someone that doesn't have the ESG mandate. And then that will help us.

• 23:32Jordi Hays?

  Is there no look through there though?

• 23:34John Coogan?

  The look through, it depends, but I, I think that is a little bit of a loophole.

• 23:37Jordi Hays?

  People are going to be massaging their ESG commitments over the next.

• 23:40John Coogan?

  Yeah. So there's always a question of how much you look through.

• 23:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 23:43John Coogan?

  Apple has been probably the most aggressive with like ESG transparency where they will go and say, okay, we're going like three levels deep and it goes, and it goes deeper, the more, the more like severe it is. Like Apple will go like two or three levels deep on like the human abuses, right? Like they, they really want to make sure that, that there, there's not child labor in some aluminum that then gets transformed into aluminum sheet that then goes into an aluminum bar that then gets turned into a chip that then gets turned into.

• 24:12Jordi Hays?

  Apple credit for that.

• 24:13John Coogan?

  Yeah. They really want to go like six levels deep because it's really bad for the brand. And obviously it's bad for humanity if you're allowing that stuff. But it's a little bit different when it's just like, okay, the mix of energy that went into this model that was delivered on Azure was like, you know, maybe trained with some, you know. Like oil and gas flaring or something like that, which, which oddly like the peaker plants at these natural gas plants, they can be actually carbon negative because it's stuff that would have burned off and gone into the atmosphere, but then it's being captured and turned into data center training. And that's kind of the crusoe cloud model. Anyway, let's move on to the new executive order from President Donald Trump. And we have analysis from Aaron Slodov, friend of the show here. He says, this new executive

• 24:54John Coogan?

  order is a big deal and can supercharge US manufacturing. It's the America first investment policy. It's a direct path to excess scaling our industrial base, an idea I laid out in my techno industrialist manifesto. Here's how it drives American reindustrialization. Says first, it creates a fast track process for allied investment in critical sectors like AI, semiconductors and advanced manufacturing. That means billions in fresh capital for new factories, strengthening the capacity layer that underpins real world production. The policy also expedites environmental reviews for projects over a billion dollars. That's great. Slash is red tape. So you can move quicker. Crucially, it restricts adversarial investments in US tech, farmland and infrastructure. It further deters US money from funding adversarial

• 25:38John Coogan?

  industries, notably China's military sector. This nudges capital back home.

• 25:42Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 25:43John Coogan?

  In my manifesto, Aaron argues that reconnecting tech with manufacturing is the key to renewed prosperity. Excess scaling factories, advanced robotics and a skilled workforce can't thrive without the capital and policy support this order provides. Imagine factories that manipulate matter at blistering speeds using AI automation and advanced machinery. The big picture goal here, outproduce our rivals, protect national security and spark a manufacturing renaissance. For years, the post industrial myth drained our manufacturing talent. Now we have a chance to reignite the spark. This EO is a potential catalyst. And so lots of excitement from the hard tech folks around this EO. And, and yeah, I mean, this was something that we

• 26:24John Coogan?

  We had talked about in, in just trade negotiations of, of, you know, maybe when, when Trump was, was kind of saying, hey, maybe I'll get rid of, of carried interest and really put the screws to VCs. I said, hey, oftentimes Trump opens with a really crazy proposal and then backs off of it. Maybe this is giving him leverage to say, look, I am going to get rid of carried interest if you're investing in our adversaries.

• 26:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:51John Coogan?

  So if you invest in-

• 26:52Jordi Hays?

  Or just internationally. This is the whole American first investment policy.

• 26:55John Coogan?

  Exactly. And so it could be a situation where, yeah, you still get the tax treatment on American companies, but not on international companies. And so, so this could be a policy that kind of takes shape that way. Do you have any comments on Aaron's post?

• 27:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I just thought this was super validating for the work that Aaron and Austin have been doing on the new American Industrial Alliance. So they've been working on this in, in connection with the Re-Industrialized Summit, which we've talked about before on the show. So, yeah, they've been, they were, they were super early here. People like Josh Simon were super early here. All of this stuff. And this is why a lot of these guys were very excited about the new admin, just given, you know, they felt like JD Vance, if you look back and the thing, and the topics that he's cared a lot about, American manufacturing, you know, bringing back jobs that were, you know, taken overseas. It's cool to see this policy play out. And again, with, with executive orders,

• 27:46Jordi Hays?

  I mean, we don't, certainly don't discuss, discuss politics on this show, but it's unclear what they actually will turn in. You know, these are not laws. They're sort of guidelines, right? And so it will be up to other lawmakers to actually turn these into, you know, real policies that can, you know, real laws that can actually be executed against. But great to see. I like the sound of it.

• 28:10John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. Lots of potential. Hopefully it goes well. And good luck to Aaron and the team over at Atomic and everyone else who's building. Hard tech in America. We'd love to see it. Let's move on to SBF, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of, the disgraced founder of FTX. He's in prison right now. He gave an interview to the New York Sun from prison. It's a fascinating

• 28:33Jordi Hays?

  And what is the New York Sun? How have I never heard of this?

• 28:36John Coogan?

  It's a newspaper.

• 28:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I know. But did nobody want to cover this?

• 28:40John Coogan?

  It is odd that he gave the exclusive to the New York Sun. Yeah, it's odd that the Wall Street Journal wasn't calling him. There might be some questions I saw in the comments here. Some people were like, why are you promoting this? Like, let's just, let's just move on from this. Let's not highlight this guy. I think it's great. I like hearing these people.

• 28:56Jordi Hays?

  There's a, there's totally an argument. Don't give him a platform, that kind of thing. But yeah, I'd never heard of the New York Sun. It's reader supported, $250 a year.

• 29:07John Coogan?

  We don't like that. I wish it was corporate supported like us here.

• 29:10Jordi Hays?

  But it's, it's, it's known as a conservative.

• 29:14John Coogan?

  Oh, interesting. Yes. And that's a big theme here is that he went, he went to jail and he was very liberal and now he's saying, and now he's saying, I was never liberal, basically. Anyway, I'll read through some of Patrick McKenzie's analysis. If you want to scroll a couple of slides ahead, there are some quotes from the, from the interview that you could interject. So Patrick McKenzie shares that SBF has a new interview out conducted from prison. He says the highlights include a strong direct statement of his innocence accusing prosecution and judge of politicized process analogizing to the experience of President Trump, apparently maneuvering to secure clemency, implied rationale for persecution, his donation to Republicans.

• 29:58Jordi Hays?

  Which is fascinating. And if, if you actually look at, there's plenty of data on his political donations. I'm going to try to pull those up.

• 30:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Jordi Hays?

  Because he did, he did donate to both sides.

• 30:13John Coogan?

  He did.

• 30:14Jordi Hays?

  It's just that the actual concentration of that, of those dollars was heavily left-leaning.

• 30:20John Coogan?

  I think that's correct.

• 30:21Jordi Hays?

  And, and not, and so yes, he can say, oh, look at all these Republicans I donated to. They were trying to, they were trying to pin me like they did Trump. I'm just like Trump. It's like, you know.

• 30:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, I wasn't entirely buying his argument. He says he expresses frustration that S and C, John Wraith III didn't collaboratively receive balance sheets and other business records from him, and rather set about reconstructing them, which he claims delayed recovery in cost, creditors, substantial amounts of money.

• 30:50Jordi Hays?

  So I'm on opensecrets.org right now. I'm gonna just read the first 10 recipients, and then we can, the people can decide. So first recipient from SBF to the Democratic Party of Pennsylvania, second to the Democratic Party of Arizona, third to the Democratic Party of Nevada, fourth to the Democratic Party of Texas, five to Democratic Party of Nebraska,

• 31:12John Coogan?

  I'm sensing a pattern here.

• 31:13Jordi Hays?

  Democratic committee in Florida, Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Democratic Party of North Carolina, Democratic Party of Ohio, Joe Biden directly, Democratic Party of Colorado, DNC Services Corp., Democratic Party of Virginia. So I don't, I could just go on and on. Also Kamala, of course.

• 31:34John Coogan?

  The other thing is that he, he had said publicly that like, from his EA, effective altruist, rationalist perspective, electing a president is so high leverage, you should be willing to spend a billion dollars on it. You should donate a billion dollars. And he wasn't talking about giving a billion dollars to Trump. In fact, I think he said, stopping Trump is so important that you must donate a lot.

• 31:57Jordi Hays?

  You can see here, he donated directly to Biden and directly to Kamala.

• 32:00John Coogan?

  Yeah. And so, yeah, very, it's kind of an odd argument for him to make. So he characterizes.

• 32:08Jordi Hays?

  This is actually crazy. So, so on the first 50 of the donations, there is one Republican. So.

• 32:17John Coogan?

  Yeah, so probably some sort of power law.

• 32:18Jordi Hays?

  Some truth to it.

• 32:19John Coogan?

  He's like 80, 90%.

• 32:23John Coogan?

  Republican or Democrat donor. So he claims that FTX US was entirely backed one to one by deliverable assets denominated in the same fashion as customer deposits. FTX International as being levered, 80% of users use leveraged futures, but solvent at all times with a solvable liquidity problem in November of 2022. So if you remember this, he was saying like, look, there's been a run on the bank. We are, we are, we're in solvent, but we have the money if we can liquidate other positions. It's just going to take us time to liquidate other positions.

• 32:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And to his, so, so he does, he, he was big into companies like Anthropic, right? And so if he had been able to hold on for another year,

• 33:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 33:06Jordi Hays?

  he would have been able to presumably sell a large, and he had, he benefited from huge markups in that position. But, but again, you know, they were not, like, we got to put them in the true zone here.

• 33:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Jordi Hays?

  If there was a solvable liquidity problem in November.

• 33:23John Coogan?

  You're only as good as you can, the assets are only as valuable as you can liquidate.

• 33:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:28John Coogan?

  Like if you're in some super illiquid problem.

• 33:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there's a reason that banks aren't saying, oh, it's great. You've got all this series B startup stock. I'm totally going to give you a $10 million mortgage.

• 33:37John Coogan?

  Exactly. That's a great analogy. He seems notably better disciplined than previously about quickly dancing away from questions, which if answered directly and honestly would be damaging to his interest. So he's getting better at actually storytelling here. The unambiguous allegation without naming the unambiguously identified parties that Salameh was sentenced to more than his three confessed co-conspirators combined because of his political affiliation, decisions to cooperate or not, probably more load bearing there, me thinks, says Patrick McKenzie. Anyhow, it's a remarkable document which caused me to update negatively on his candor, which is saying something.

• 34:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So it's interesting that Patrick, who's highlighting this, and I believe that Patrick was one of the people that initially was pretty vocal

• 34:24John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 34:25Jordi Hays?

  in November of 2023, when this was all going down, because he's had a history doing highly regulated fintech products at Stripe, right? So like the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of

• 34:37John Coogan?

  That's right.

• 34:37Jordi Hays?

  ethics and values and long-term thinking and, and sort of being able to take. Some amount of risk, but not with customer funds. Yeah. And the thing, the thing at the end of the day that I feel like is just so important to highlight over and over is SBF was operating a hedge fund that traded against his users at FTX. Yep. Using their own money. Yep. That is objective, right? He can say, oh, they were different entities, but they were set up in the same place. It was more or less the same group of people. And there was a backdoor. And I don't, yeah, and I don't know why. I, I remember when, you know, there was a number of things when they were watching their rise, right?

• 35:22Jordi Hays?

  I was building a fintech company at the time. I used both, you know, fiat and digital assets, right? I was working with companies like Board API Club was our highest profile customer. And they did their sort of $4 billion seed round on our platform. So I was doing this. Meanwhile, SBF is going, yeah, we have five engineers at FTX, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. I have like seven or eight like amazing engineers and there's way too much to do. You can't hit that. You know, so there was just so much sort of going on at this time. Yeah. The other thing is I don't know how all the institutional investors that went into FTX didn't, didn't, didn't take issue with the fact of him operating.

• 36:06Jordi Hays?

  You know, it's one thing for Robin Hood to be selling order flow, right? And, and you could very clearly argue that that is wrong in many ways, right? Yeah. But it's another thing to be an adversarial trading partner that's also operating one of these exchanges and offering some just crazy incentives. Like you could go on FTX US and get 8% yield on Bitcoin. Good times. For presumably because they wanted to acquire deposits to trade with and just be like super degenerate. So like the yield was them being degenerate. Yep. And so, um, you know, to, to give Andreessen credit, you know, they were, and they were, they were in Coinbase early.

• 36:51Jordi Hays?

  That was like their big, you know, position from I think like their 2017 fund, but. They easily could have found justifications to say, we're going to do this because it's, you know, it's, you know, whatever. And they didn't, right? And so the VCs that initially did it were the kind of people to do like a dot ETH, you know, profile, you know, things like that, right? They were FOMOing in and, um, and, uh, some of the stories out of that are fantastic. The whole, them being like, he's playing League of Legends. Like, that's so bullish.

• 37:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, and he was terrible at it.

• 37:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that was your big, so, so SBF, you know, notoriously would play League of Legends all day long.

• 37:32John Coogan?

  During board meetings, during pitch meetings.

• 37:34Jordi Hays?

  During conversations with journalists. But he, but your issue with it wasn't that he was playing, it was that he was just bad.

• 37:39John Coogan?

  He was bad. Yeah, he wasn't, he wasn't even that good, which is a real tell.

• 37:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 37:44John Coogan?

  Uh, at least when, at least when Elon's playing on a SpaceX call, he's had someone boost his account to top level. So he can, so he can speedrun the, the hardest level on the game or whatever. I don't know. Yeah, it, it's just like, yeah, it's disrespectful to, to, you know, play a video game while you're supposed to be pitching a large financial institution. And I mean, lots of things were going on.

• 38:07Jordi Hays?

  Have some respect for our great capital allocators.

• 38:09John Coogan?

  Have some respect. What would your mother say? Your mother would say, don't do that. And, and her, and his mother was a, was a legal expert, right? At Stanford too. Anyway, there, there's some quotes from the, uh, uh, from the interview here. We'll read some, uh, "On his own decision and claim of innocence, I do absolutely, ab, obviously there are things I would do differently, and that's lots of things. I had a lot of decisions to, to do, make us, uh, to make a CEO, but by far the single biggest, uh, was I backed down from a fight in November 2022. And you know, I should not have let Sullivan and Cromwell take control of FTX. I should not, I should have stood up to them and I didn't. And you know, after that, there were excruciating years waiting, not just me waiting, but millions of customers waiting, being falsely told that there was no money left

• 38:53John Coogan?

  and they were not going to get any payments until recently. And so he maintains, I could have, I could have, you know, landed the plane. I could have pulled out of that nosedive, but he wasn't doing a good job. Just objectively, he was doing a terrible job with those awful tweets, like what happened? He was like, it, he looked in chaos, like he was not instilling confidence at all. And, and also he wasn't doing a good job of, he did have days to go try and liquidate the anthropic position. Couldn't get it done.

• 39:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 39:20John Coogan?

  And so like, you know,

• 39:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I remember, I remember there was, they were trying to fire sale.

• 39:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, they were trying to fundraise and stuff and shore up the balance sheet and do all sorts of stuff that you do in a banking crisis. But it was just too much of a mess.

• 39:34Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 39:35John Coogan?

  And it was not, it was not run, run like a proper financial institution. And so, uh, yeah, uh, highly risky. Don't recommend it if you're looking to invest and actually take it seriously. We recommend public.com investing for those who take it seriously. They have multi asset investing, industry leading yields and they're trusted by millions. And public's been around for a very long time and they're not going anywhere.

• 39:58Jordi Hays?

  And we personally are friends with the founders. It's why we partnered and, uh, among other reasons.

• 40:03John Coogan?

  And you know what? We were on a call with them the other day. Guess what? They weren't playing League of Legends.

• 40:08Jordi Hays?

  Boom.

• 40:08John Coogan?

  They were engaged in the conversation. I could see them because we were, they had a very nice conference room and they weren't even on their laptops.

• 40:14Jordi Hays?

  They were present.

• 40:15John Coogan?

  They were locked in. We had eye contact.

• 40:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 40:17John Coogan?

  And this is valuable. And so, uh, Leaf from public says, this is great. A hundred percent agree. Uh, a quote about Palmer Lucky, which I thought would be fun to highlight on the show here for you. At some point in business, in life and in romance, you have to commit to a path, said the 31 year old Lucky. A lot of my peers in the tech industry do not share this philosophy. They're always pursuing everything with optionality. Oh, I need to be able to raise money from anybody. I need to be able to sell my business in any way. I need to have liquidity in any way. I need to make sure that I'm not closing myself off to future romantic partners. I need to make sure I've got my options open. I need to make sure that I'm not going to buy a house and settle down in one place and lock myself down. Oh, having children? I don't know. Maybe I'm not ready to commit to that path.

• 40:59John Coogan?

  In keeping their options open, they ensure that they're going to jump from option to option. If you don't commit to a path, you are going to fail at it. You have to commit to it to make it work. And I think marriage is the same way. You just have to commit to it. You have to say, this is the path I'm on for better or worse. I'm going to double down on it. The one thing money can't buy, said Lucky, is people who liked you before you had money. I'm very lucky that I met my wife back when I had literally nothing. When we met, I had less than $300 in my bank account. I probably should have gotten married, should have married her when I was 16. Looking back, I think that's probably my radical belief. And I love that Leaf is sharing this. I think it's a great post and I think it's a great message.

• 41:37Jordi Hays?

  That resonates. I, um, I met Sarah.

• 41:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:41Jordi Hays?

  And it was early in branded native.

• 41:45Jordi Hays?

  And I'd never actually taken a proper like profit share from it. And so I met her and I was like basically still broke. I was making, I was paying myself like four grand a month, living in LA, like, uh, you know, whatever. And we met and like on our second date, I, I bought a nine 11 on Bring a Trailer. And I like pick her up in it and I hadn't actually driven manual in a little bit. So I was like a little bit nervous because like I didn't want to stall out in like LA traffic. And she looks at it and she's like, oh, that's cool. Like,

• 42:16John Coogan?

  This is so funny.

• 42:17Jordi Hays?

  And, and like never, never even like brought it up again. Like I was like, wow, like that, that was it.

• 42:23John Coogan?

  This is, this is so funny because of the exact same story about my wife, Emily. Early soylent days, 5K a month, making a little bit more than you, I guess.

• 42:30Jordi Hays?

  That extra 1K.

• 42:31John Coogan?

  That extra 1K went a really long, a long way. Uh, my mom had retired and bought a, a Boxer. So I borrowed that.

• 42:38Jordi Hays?

  Nice.

• 42:39John Coogan?

  Took her out, same thing. Who cares?

• 42:40Jordi Hays?

  I didn't know your mom was a legend like that.

• 42:42John Coogan?

  Oh yeah. Manual. Yeah. It was fun. It was fun to drive.

• 42:45Jordi Hays?

  That's cool.

• 42:45John Coogan?

  Yeah. You drive, you take that thing out. It was fun. Fun for me. The girls don't care. Uh, but yeah, I met Emily back in high school. And, you know, we, we went off into different colleges, but then reunited and, and it was great. And, uh, yeah. You know, like went the, went the distance like committed very early. And I think it was good. And you just keep.

• 43:04Jordi Hays?

  No, it's a real, it's a real, uh, you know, this kind of thing, the idea of, of meeting, you know, if you become super successful before you meet, you know, your, your significant other, that a hundred percent is a factor. Like women are analyzing their, their life partner based on, in my situation, it was entirely potential. She was, she, I, I was like, for her, it was like the greatest angel investment of her life. Cause she's basically saying, I'm going to bet my life on this person. Like I hope that, I hope that it, you know, pays off. And, uh, same thing, you know, same thing for Emily.

• 43:37John Coogan?

  It's fantastic.

• 43:38Jordi Hays?

  Anyways.

• 43:39John Coogan?

  Get inspired, get on public, create an account, move your assets over.

• 43:43Jordi Hays?

  Linking it back to the ad. This is why, this is why, you know, artisanal ads. None of this is AI generated.

• 43:49John Coogan?

  Yeah. Well, let's move on to a fantastic post from David Senra over at Founder's Podcast. He's sharing some insight from Larry Ellison. Larry says, "Life is the only miracle. I don't waste a lot of time. I work intensely on things I care about and I spend my time with people that I care about. I do what I want with my time because I know there's not much left of it." And Larry Ellison is 80 years old, I believe. He looks fantastic. I think he's got another 40, 50, 60, 80 years left in him. I hope he's around forever.

• 44:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, he's aging the best out of the tech titans by a long shot.

• 44:27John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:28Jordi Hays?

  I'd like to see him in some Patega, like, uh, like, um,

• 44:31John Coogan?

  Like Bill.

• 44:32Jordi Hays?

  Bill.

• 44:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Jordi Hays?

  Good old Bill Gates.

• 44:34John Coogan?

  Anyway, there is a story about a half billion dollar quest he's been on to change farming that I think a lot of people weren't even familiar with, so I wanted to do a little deep dive. In a row of six greenhouses on a remote stretch of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which I actually was on six months ago.

• 44:53Jordi Hays?

  Were you at his resort?

• 44:54John Coogan?

  I wasn't at his resort. I was at the Four Seasons, um, which is, I think, I think he owns the island and leases the land to the Four Seasons.

• 45:01Jordi Hays?

  Probably pays for his resort.

• 45:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, probably.

• 45:03Jordi Hays?

  His, his property, there's two of them. There's Sensei Lanai, which I haven't been to, but Sensei Porcupine Creek

• 45:09John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 45:10Jordi Hays?

  is so good that we need to do a TBPN meetup there at some point.

• 45:14John Coogan?

  Let's do it.

• 45:14Jordi Hays?

  Cause there's only like, I think like 30 rooms.

• 45:17John Coogan?

  And so he's been working to use his golden touch to intact, to remake the way people around the world eat. The company behind this effort, Sensei AG, Ag, Sensei Ag, is eight years in the making and has cost the world's fourth richest person more than a half billion dollars, far more than he spent buying the island itself. Early on, Ellison touted cutting edge technology that would modernize agriculture, make a big impact for society and eventually help grow food in places such as Africa. The billionaire has told executives he sees the project as part of his legacy. So far, it's mostly been a bust. So a little bit of a hit piece here from the Wall Street Journal, Tom Do Tan. We might have to put you in the truth zone. Maybe there's something here, but you know, these things happen all the time. People

• 46:00John Coogan?

  Who are rich, invest in crazy stuff, crazy ideas and crazy ideas don't always work out.

• 46:04Jordi Hays?

  And it's good.

• 46:04John Coogan?

  And who knows, it might be too early to write this one off. So let's break it down. Little of the revolutionary tech the company has extolled sensors to monitor development, artificial intelligence to breed crop varieties and robots to harvest plants is being used, according to people familiar with Sensei. So they're still early. The company has been beset by problems typical to tech startups, including executive changeovers, shifting goals and bad wifi.

• 46:28John Coogan?

  They need Starlink out there.

• 46:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 46:30John Coogan?

  Call the buddy Musk, fix it.

• 46:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they are boys.

• 46:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, they're boys.

• 46:34Jordi Hays?

  Musk, Musk texts Ellison being like, are you good for two billion?

• 46:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:40Jordi Hays?

  He's like, really? I remember there's this text exchange where he says.

• 46:43John Coogan?

  I almost printed it.

• 46:44Jordi Hays?

  He says, uh, you should invest in the Twitter buyout and he goes, okay, sounds fun.

• 46:51Jordi Hays?

  I'm in for a billion. And then, uh, and then Elon goes, well, really you should do like two. I think you should do two.

• 46:59John Coogan?

  So good.

• 47:00Jordi Hays?

  Same interaction that a seed, you know, seed series A founders having is like, come on, like do two.

• 47:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, do two million.

• 47:05Jordi Hays?

  Do you believe in me?

• 47:06John Coogan?

  But it's just with three extra zeros at the end. I love it. The greenhouses, for example, weren't built to withstand Lenai's strong winds and their solar panels have broken down. Some of the top executives are tech veterans who have no commercial agriculture experience. The 80 year old Ellison and his Sensei ag co-founder, celebrity Dr. David Agus, envisioned the farm as an ambitious tech venture that would use new techniques to grow tastier nutrient rich food. Far from the feeding the world, its crops of lettuce and cherry tomatoes are only enough to supply the few groceries.

• 47:37Jordi Hays?

  I mean, at least they have a product in market.

• 47:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Jordi Hays?

  That's more than most hard tech companies.

• 47:41John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's working on. Um, one personal, one person familiar with the operations described the output as being like promised to Bugatti and ending up with a Ugo. What a funny.

• 47:52Jordi Hays?

  What is a Yugo?

• 47:53John Coogan?

  You don't know what a Yugo is? Oh, it's like the cheapest and most failed car of all time.

• 47:57Jordi Hays?

  Is it a Russian?

• 47:58John Coogan?

  They're actually trying to bring it back.

• 47:58Jordi Hays?

  Is it a Russian?

• 47:59John Coogan?

  It's like an Eastern European car. Yeah, it was famously flopped. Yeah, so they're trying to bring. There's a guy who's trying to bring it back. He designed it and he's going on a world tour with the original Yugo.

• 48:09Jordi Hays?

  I just have a thing for hatchbacks.

• 48:11John Coogan?

  Yeah. Although the farm has little to do with Ellison's core business, software giant Oracle, the tech mogul has called the project and the island more broadly, part of a grand experiment in sustainability. Agus, a medical doctor with no previous agricultural experience, said that, which I don't care about, said that when Ellison approached him on the project, the billionaire's lofty goals are returning Lanai to its farming roots after decades of destructive pineapple farming, while also setting the blueprints to feed the world. We're too good to pass up. We have an island that we that we can't grow things on, that we need food for. Let's do it. But at the same time, let's change agriculture. The company has been using the past few years to gain experience with growing crops and perfect its technology, he said in an August interview, adding Sensei was aiming to have a prototype

• 48:56John Coogan?

  of its new tech by the end of 2025. That timetable has since been extended extended to mid-year 2026. And so lots of lots of rough times for them. Let's let's move forward. There's a lot here. This is this is a really deep dive.

• 49:11Jordi Hays?

  Overall, this is exactly what I want to see billionaires spending their money on.

• 49:16John Coogan?

  I agree.

• 49:16Jordi Hays?

  Or one thing besides cars, watches, art.

• 49:19John Coogan?

  Islands.

• 49:19Jordi Hays?

  You know, etc. Islands. I think this is one of those things. This scenario happens quite often where a bunch of the tech elite look at an industry and they say, yeah, we can fix this. And get a little bit in over their skis in the sense that, you know, maybe trying to solve problems that are problems for, you know, that are hairy problems, right? Like farming is one of humanity's oldest, you know, industries. And there's also been a bunch of, you know, one thing that I've noticed, there's a company I'm I helped start called Resource Monitor. And we make smart meters for groundwater producers.

• 49:59Jordi Hays?

  So people that work in oil, gas, ag, etc., golf courses, etc., that are producing a bunch of water. One thing I've noticed through that is there's a lot of people, you know, this is a tech solution for traditionally like legacy industry, the alternative products that people use are these sort of, you know, these sort of very, these legacy meters that are, you know, were made in the early 1900s. So we've been running on the same tech. But when you talk to people in that industry, there's a bunch of super smart people that are very future, future, you know, forward in many senses, and they are actively working on solutions to all their problems all day long. So they are like problem solvers. And so it's not like you're going into

• 50:42Jordi Hays?

  ag and there's been zero investment in technology and there's been no

• 50:46John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 50:46Jordi Hays?

  Smart, like sometimes you go into an industry and you're like, wow, everybody here is, is making a bunch of silly dumb decisions. I don't think ag is necessarily the same way.

• 50:56John Coogan?

  No, not at all.

• 50:56Jordi Hays?

  Like there's, there's, it's such a, it is one of the most critical industries in the world outside of energy. And there's been a bunch of smart people working on it forever. So coming in and slapping solar panels and new sensors and stuff like that isn't going to automatically

• 51:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Jordi Hays?

  deliver, you know, incredible yields.

• 51:11John Coogan?

  If any, if anything, the criticism of the American agriculture industry is that it's like too hyper optimized. And companies like Monsanto have like gone crazy with like, oh, if this seed gets in your farm, it blows over, a bird takes it over, we're going to take a cut of that because we're going to gene sequence this, your crops. And we're going to know that you have the drought resistant tomatoes or whatever, and you're going to pay us. It's like, it's very hyper technology driven already. So, given a little history here, in the 1920s, Dole turned Lanai into Pineapple Island. And for a time, it produced 75% of the world's supply of that fruit. The island still has many brightly colored plantation homes dating to that era, but years of damaging agricultural practices, including the use of plastic piping

• 51:56John Coogan?

  and chemical ripening agents polluted the soil and made it largely inhospitable to commercial farming. Access to fresh water has also been an obstacle. In 1985, Lanai was taken over by real estate developer David Murdock, who phased out pineapple plantations and converted it into a luxury vacation spot. He sold 98% of the island in 2012 to Ellison, whose fortune is around 200 billion.

• 52:20Jordi Hays?

  Keeping 2% is so, gotta be so annoying to Ellison.

• 52:24John Coogan?

  Yeah. I think it might be like government owned or something like that.

• 52:27Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah. It'd be funny, it'd be funny if, if he's like, yeah, you can have the last 2%, but it's going to be a billion.

• 52:34Jordi Hays?

  Cough it up.

• 52:35John Coogan?

  And so, uh, the entire island, or 98% of it sold for $300 million. Absolute steal, I think. I mean, they're not making any more of these islands and it's beautiful and wonderful. Uh, there's a picture of the beach there. That's fantastic. I think I've actually been to that exact beach. Um, Murdoch was often seen, was an often seen paternalistic figure who waved to the locals. He called his children. Kind of weird.

• 53:01Jordi Hays?

  I mean, that's

• 53:03John Coogan?

  Kind of nice, but kind of weird.

• 53:04Jordi Hays?

  If he was thinking about it and how I, you know, in a, in a very ni-

• 53:09John Coogan?

  He's, he's, uh, he's big bro-ing them, you know?

• 53:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:12John Coogan?

  He should have been like, these are my bros.

• 53:13Jordi Hays?

  If they're his children and he's providing them,

• 53:15John Coogan?

  It's not, it's not equal footing.

• 53:17Jordi Hays?

  Allowance.

• 53:17John Coogan?

  It's not equal footing.

• 53:18Jordi Hays?

  If he's giving them an allowance,

• 53:19John Coogan?

  It's paternalistic.

• 53:20Jordi Hays?

  I respect that.

• 53:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, just be like, hey, these are my bros on this island. Uh, Ellison is more of a mystery to the Lanai, to Lanai's 3,200 residences, residents. A few interviewed said they'd never seen him, although his presence is apparent in other ways. He is the largest employer, including at his resorts on the island. He's paid for benefits such as CT scanner at the local hospital. He's building a new rental, new rental homes, also luxury residences along the coast for his family, which he's hired-

• 53:46Jordi Hays?

  Speaking of his residences, so he has six homes on PCH.

• 53:50John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 53:51Jordi Hays?

  Two of the six burned to the ground and apparently during the LA fires, the firemen basically put up a line at the second home and said, not another one. And they just made sure that the, the others stayed standing. So,

• 54:04John Coogan?

  It's crazy.

• 54:04Jordi Hays?

  He also has a, he also owns a tennis club in Malibu.

• 54:07John Coogan?

  Oh, I didn't know that. Um, the billionaire whose son and daughter are both in the movie business rebuilt a century old theater that boasts it as the crown jewel of theater experiences in Hawaii. Uh, he's also rebuilding the long shuttered bowling alley and planning a dessert bar for the snack menu. He's having fun.

• 54:25John Coogan?

  Let's go back to Sensei Greenhouse versus when Ellison hired an Israeli firm to produce the greenhouses as suggested by his friend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That's so funny that he's just like texting with his bro.

• 54:40Jordi Hays?

  That's crazy.

• 54:41John Coogan?

  Literally runs Israel and he's just like, who should build these greenhouses? Like, oh, I got it, buddy.

• 54:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 54:46John Coogan?

  Some company here.

• 54:48Jordi Hays?

  This is what you said.

• 54:49John Coogan?

  Though Israel is considered a leader in greenhouses, the structures were designed for that country's desert climate and weren't built to handle Lenai's humidity. And so Lenai has gusts of up to 80 mile per hour winds. It's actually very hard to land there with the planes. There's a lot of times when it's, oh, you can't get there. Like when we went out there, we couldn't get there the first day and we had to stay on the big island the first night.

• 55:12John Coogan?

  The winds blew the roofs off the greenhouses multiple times. Ellison said the structures would cost 12 million, but they wound up costing 50 million. So yeah, I mean, this is the part of like, being in founder mode is hard when you're also the founder of Oracle and you're also, and that's just like 90% of your mind share because it's 90% of the value.

• 55:28Jordi Hays?

  It's all this, this scenario where by Ellison making this his personal project, trying to make it a business, but simultaneously saying that it's his personal project that he feels is part of his legacy.

• 55:40John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 55:41Jordi Hays?

  It warps economic reality to the point where you can, no other farm in the world outside of some mega monstrosity from Monsanto is going to spend $50 million on, on CapEx at a small farm.

• 55:55John Coogan?

  And it's like, if you're already a celebrity doctor, you're boys with Ellison, you're probably super rich. There's so much money flowing into this company. You're going to be taking like a cushy salary. Like you put one of the Gundo bros on this, like they're going to be out there in the 80 mile an hour winds with like duct tape and a spot welder, like making sure it doesn't fall apart.

• 56:15Jordi Hays?

  And making content out of it.

• 56:16John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 56:17Jordi Hays?

  Using it as a viral moment.

• 56:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 56:19Jordi Hays?

  They were afraid, you see, the issue here is they're getting a hit piece from the journal.

• 56:22John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 56:22Jordi Hays?

  Augustus would have been holding, you know, holding.

• 56:25John Coogan?

  I have the mandate of heaven. I have the mandate of heaven. A hundred percent. And that's, and that's what you don't get with, you know, like some young kid.

• 56:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they're basically like, oh, this is, this is effed. Let's get out of here. We'll come back.

• 56:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, we'll go to the resort tonight. This is too crazy.

• 56:40Jordi Hays?

  No, we're going to Nobu.

• 56:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, we're going to Nobu.

• 56:42Jordi Hays?

  The thing about Ellison, he's, I think a major investor in Nobu. He owns, I think, most of the Nobu building.

• 56:48John Coogan?

  There's a Nobu at the 40s on Lenai.

• 56:50Jordi Hays?

  That's what's great about Sensei. It's, it's, it's probably half the price as Aman.

• 56:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 56:57Jordi Hays?

  But every restaurant on the property is a Nobu.

• 56:59John Coogan?

  It's a Nobu, yeah.

• 56:59Jordi Hays?

  Playing golf, drop into the little golf shack and it's a Nobu.

• 57:04John Coogan?

  So wild. There's some other great quotes in here about Ellison and his boys. Ellison frequently took friends and other favored guests at his resort on the, on tours of the indoor farm, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and actor Robert De Niro.

• 57:19Jordi Hays?

  Nice.

• 57:19John Coogan?

  So he's just bro-ing out with, with Bobby De Niro and Tony Blair and being like, let's go tour my farm. He routinely went through the greenhouses, picking tomatoes off the vine, offering them to guests and eating them unwashed, despite having been told they weren't organic and had been sprayed with pesticides. On a tour with Blair, Ellison offered him the unwashed tomatoes.

• 57:40Jordi Hays?

  He's a junkyard dog. Look at him. He looks, he looks amazing at 80 and he's eating these pesticide tomatoes.

• 57:44John Coogan?

  That's the secret.

• 57:45Jordi Hays?

  Fresh pesticides.

• 57:46John Coogan?

  It's, it's the midwit meme, the genius and the dumb guy.

• 57:50Jordi Hays?

  He's probably got cans of canola oil.

• 57:52John Coogan?

  Yeah, he's just chugging. Meanwhile, the midwits like, I can't have any pesticides, no microplastics. You know, Ellison's just like, feed me anything. I'm fine.

• 58:02John Coogan?

  Blair declined to eat the unwashed tomatoes. He's like, I'm good. Actually, no thanks. But we'll see. We'll see how Tony Blair looks at 80, you know?

• 58:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 58:11John Coogan?

  Maybe Ellison's got him beat.

• 58:13Jordi Hays?

  I'm looking it up right now.

• 58:14John Coogan?

  Sensei acquired facilities in Vancouver and Ontario for almost 3 million square feet. The company bought them from cannabis companies as that, as that market crashed. But the needs of a marijuana grow house differed substantially from a greenhouse for other crops. Cannabis needs special lighting and segregated rooms. Interesting. And so we'll close out here. They have a software focus. Sensei later sold off the Vancouver acquisition. Overall repairs and retrofits of the Canadian facilities cost around $200 million. That is so much to burn for like, you know, early stage heart attack.

• 58:49Jordi Hays?

  I need to see the, the P and L.

• 58:51John Coogan?

  I know. It's just so easy when it's like, oh yeah, like $200 million. I have $200 billion. You know, that's the equivalent of like a $50 million fund here. Hearing about a company burn 50K.

• 59:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 59:03John Coogan?

  It's like, yeah.

• 59:04Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 59:04John Coogan?

  Oh, you spent 50K on a facility or whatever.

• 59:06Jordi Hays?

  Being, being one of many produce suppliers on Lanai has to be about, I would guess to be about a, maybe it's 500K.

• 59:16John Coogan?

  Yeah, nothing.

• 59:17Jordi Hays?

  May- maybe, like, maybe, maybe seven, maybe seven figures if you count the guests and like,

• 59:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 59:22Jordi Hays?

  That just the high volume.

• 59:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 59:25Jordi Hays?

  But, but still, that's a pretty gnarly looking, uh, P and L.

• 59:30John Coogan?

  Apparently the box lettuce markets, what they do is they grow lettuce, uh, indoors. And there's been a bunch of these vertical farming startups and, and indoor farming startups, but box lettuce is a saturated market. And most people, when they go to Arroon, they just buy the Arroon version of box lettuce. Or they go to Trader Joe's, they just buy the default.

• 59:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 59:47John Coogan?

  They, very few people have been able to build a brand around particular, uh, pre, uh, prepackaged produce. Uh, it's really, really hard because you look at it and you're just like, that looks like a tomato, like anything else. Like, do I really care? The vision was so big and then it just slowly got whittled away as we faced the, up to the realities of implementing on Lanai. A former general manager said. Sensei's chief technology officer, Danny Hillis, uh, Agus said, um, Hillis is renowned in the computer world for developing networking techniques, though he lacks commercial agriculture experience. He leads the company's AI efforts, which Sensei believes can help it predict and crossbreed crops to optimize nutrition. Software can also be used to increase efficiency in water and energy use.

• 1:00:28John Coogan?

  Despite moving through several chief executives, Ellison and Agus in 2023 appointed Dave Douglas, a partner of Applied Intuition, a Boston-based tech company that Ellison owns part of. The software engineer lives in Massachusetts and runs the company remotely. And again, this goes back to, you know, it's, it, it is tough. Uh, it is tough to run a company remotely. It's tough to not have a founder that has 50% of the company.

• 1:00:50Jordi Hays?

  There's.

• 1:00:50John Coogan?

  If this works, yeah, I got money from Larry, but if it works, I'm going to be remembered.

• 1:00:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55John Coogan?

  It's hard. Hard to delegate your likes work.

• 1:00:56Jordi Hays?

  Startup founders and executives having very low cash comp is sometimes seen as a bug. People are like, oh, it's such a shame that this person could be working at a startup, but they need, and it's like, no.

• 1:01:09John Coogan?

  It's feature.

• 1:01:10Jordi Hays?

  As soon as people start making, you know, 300K plus a year, the qual, you know, just like the, the drive, you just lose that dog in you, the dog stops barking and you burn 500 million dollars in a few years.

• 1:01:22John Coogan?

  Yeah, and there's been a few of these projects like that blimp one that the Google founders are working on, Larry Page is working on this, we got to deep dive that. And it was the same thing where they put someone in who was like very well respected, very smart guy, clearly, but older in his career. And when I see that, I just think, I would, I just wish these guys would instead go and give, you know, money through like a YC model almost and just get the money into a bunch of young hackers, let them build a bunch of stuff. A bunch of the stuff won't work, but you won't incinerate as much capital and you'll probably more likely to actually make them, make an impact and, and drive a generational thing, unless you're willing to do the Elon thing and then just actually sleep in the factor and like drive everything like crazy. And, and that's been working for Elon, but he's, he is the exception to the rule.

• 1:02:07Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:02:08John Coogan?

  Anyway, if you're looking to spend some time in Hawaii, we recommend going to wander.com. They have some fantastic places in Hawaii. Find your happy place. Book a wander with inspiring views, hotel-grade amenities, dreamy beds, top-tier cleaning and 24/7 concierge service. It's a vacation home, but better.

• 1:02:26Jordi Hays?

  Boom.

• 1:02:27John Coogan?

  I got the wander hat on. We're doing hats today. And so I looked on wander, I found a place in Hawaii. It's the next slide. The Waikoloa Beach, five bedrooms, six and a half baths, eight beds, 16 guests, 5,000 square feet, it's club access. You can wander the luxurious coastal retreat, offering breathtaking panoramic views of the ocean, surf, beach and mountains. This stunning residence features a 17-meter pool with an elevated spa, a game room with a pool table, ping pong and shuffleboard. It seems like a fantastic place to go hang out. 10 out of 10 average guest rating and you know you're going to have a good time out in Hawaii. So highly recommend that. And we also have a post from Kyle.

• 1:03:11Jordi Hays?

  And you're not going to deal with the wifi issues that Larry Ellison is dealing with on his farm. They got blazing, they got blazing fast wifi that you can count on. There's nothing worse than getting, you know, to some. Vacation home, you boot up your computer, you're jumping onto a Zoom call to say, hey, nothing from me. Thanks. And it's lagging out and they're like, what? I can't hear you. And all you wanted to say was nothing from my end. Thanks. And you can't even get that through. You're not going to deal with that on Wander.

• 1:03:39John Coogan?

  No, no. And Kyle here has a post that we wanted to share. Says, if you thought the first 500 Wander locations were nice, wait until you see the next 500. They are really going, going above and beyond and curating just really special places. Every single thing I see them share is iconic and totally worth getting a whole group of friends together, getting a bunch of families together, getting your whole corporate team together, doing something special, making some content, doing a bunch of different stuff. Anyway, we love Wander and shout out to them. But let's move on to our next story, which is in the Wall Street Journal. Alexander Sadie writes, John Firmina went to jail for three years for running an insider trading scheme while he was

• 1:04:23John Coogan?

  a banker at Wells Fargo. I spoke with him about how an addiction to Adderall inspired him to start the scheme and how he's rebuilt his life after prison. Let's hear it, Jordy. What do you think?

• 1:04:34Jordi Hays?

  Oh, I mean, is this, this is a hit piece, right?

• 1:04:40John Coogan?

  It's rough. It's rough. And wait until you hear the scheme. It's bad.

• 1:04:44Jordi Hays?

  I'm going to hold thoughts until we hear the full details.

• 1:04:49John Coogan?

  The insider trading ring netted him and his friends millions of dollars before they all went to prison. It started with long hours as an investment banker and a crippling addiction to Adderall. He was a 28-year-old banker working for Wells Fargo. When he tipped off his friends about confidential deals that the bank was working on, his friends would buy shares that were in line to be acquired and then reap the profits and then they'd funnel the money back to Firmina. In two years, he and his friends made more than $11 million trading off of confidential information. He spent three years in prison. He says he came up with the scheme while he was abusing Adderall.

• 1:05:22Jordi Hays?

  Okay. And just to, just to be clear. $11 million is an order of magnitude more money than you need. You could be trading with 50 grand.

• 1:05:32John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:05:32Jordi Hays?

  And, and get, have the regulators come after you, right?

• 1:05:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's super easy.

• 1:05:36Jordi Hays?

  I've had, I had a buddy.

• 1:05:38John Coogan?

  What random person bought the stock right before it popped?

• 1:05:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not that hard. It's not that hard to find. I had a buddy whose dad is a public company CEO and he was telling me, he told me something and I was like, wow, like the stock is going to absolutely rip. Uh, I wish you just hadn't even told me because I'm not able to buy it because you can, there's a direct, there's more or less a direct line from the dad to the son, to the son's friend. And so I'm like out at that point, right?

• 1:06:08John Coogan?

  Yeah. And so they give a little background of him. He, he got an Adderall prescription to be able to work long hours. He grew up on Long Island, was a good kid. He was an Eagle Scout. I was an Eagle Scout. Shout out Eagle Scouts, but get it together, guys. You're bringing down the brand here. Uh, he enrolled in the Merchant Marine Academy. He served in the Navy Reserves. Thank you for your service, man. Uh, he went to Columbia Business School. Should have stayed in the military, honestly.

• 1:06:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35John Coogan?

  Not insider trading.

• 1:06:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And if you're a fighter pilot, you can do any, any Adderall adjacent, you know, product and they're like, yeah, good, good job making sure the plane gets out.

• 1:06:46John Coogan?

  There's nothing to steal.

• 1:06:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48John Coogan?

  So we go, after Columbia Business School, he wanted to go to Wall Street. Uh, so he started working as an investment banker in 2009, first in North Carolina, then New York City. Uh, the hours were immediately difficult for him. He said he was a PowerPoint jockey, doing the grunt work from 9 a.m. to midnight at least six days a week. And we can get into what you should do if you're stuck in that role. The answer is delegate. Uh, you need to be hammering the table and being like, I'm getting, uh, you know, a direct report immediately. Climb that ladder. Get out of the analyst role as soon as you can, uh, and be like, I'm ready to delegate this because I don't want to be doing these long hours.

• 1:07:20Jordi Hays?

  You have to wonder right now, is there guys that are in his role today that are getting so good at using AI that they can actually, that they can actually do the job?

• 1:07:30John Coogan?

  Well, I mean, even before that.

• 1:07:32Jordi Hays?

  You wouldn't want people, like the whole thing, the culture there is, if people knew you were getting your work done in four hours, five hours, they would just give you enough work to get back to that point. So I don't know if there's a tangible benefit for the employee as much as the firm.

• 1:07:45John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:07:45Jordi Hays?

  But.

• 1:07:47John Coogan?

  And so when I think about like, like the good work at an investment bank, the top guys, it's all relationship based. It's I need to find the company that wants to be sold.

• 1:07:55Jordi Hays?

  And win the deal.

• 1:07:56John Coogan?

  And we need to win the deal and I need to be golfing with the CEO of Nike. And then when

• 1:08:02Jordi Hays?

  He's gonna bring his buddy.

• 1:08:04John Coogan?

  Or something, I'm ready to put them together. That's the value. And that's why the investment bankers get paid so much because you basically have to pay them an option on the future business that they bring into the firm because they can leave and they can take the Rolodexes with them. Then one level down is more like the strategy role, actually coming up with a, with a deal that is accretive for everyone and all the shareholders get excited. And although that doesn't happen all the time, when it, when it happens, you know, and everyone's happy, Instagram for Facebook, like that's a great example of like a good idea, a good deal, everyone wins, right?

• 1:08:32Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:08:33John Coogan?

  Then lower down is like, how do you communicate that? How do I turn the idea of like this deal into a slide that tells the story? And you're very good at this in the slide decks, but you don't instantiate them. You have a designer who actually takes your napkin stuff or you work in Figma, but

• 1:08:50Jordi Hays?

  Something about decks, something about decks, though, the, the dynamic is that anybody who's making a deck wants it immediately.

• 1:08:56John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:08:56Jordi Hays?

  And there's always this pressure of, especially within the private market world. If you're a seed stage company that wants to raise a series A, you want to be, you know, sometimes founders will get ahead of it and they're like, I'm going to raise, start my process in September. And I want to have the round done by December and I'm planning around that. So I need the deck done by September. But usually it's, it's, hey, we had this VC hit us up, it went well, they want to preempt, but now we want to run the whole process. So we, we need the deck right now. And so I, I worked on a handful of decks in, uh, last year, just for portfolio companies. And it was just always like, I just ended up staying up like basically till 2am with them, like trying to get them across the line.

• 1:09:34John Coogan?

  Yep. But a lot of this PowerPoint jockey stuff is, is actually a layer below. Where you're actually just taking the napkin drawing and turning it into something that looks

• 1:09:43Jordi Hays?

  Or building mod, building, yeah.

• 1:09:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, and that can be very grueling. Now, in the post 2012 era, a lot of these firms have have back offices internationally where they can take a napkin drawing and turn it into a beautiful slide. And they have whole teams of people that just do this. And I'm sure AI is coming in there. So yeah, rough time for him. He's grinding. He was taking 80 milligrams a day, twice the maximum daily dosage. That is crushing. Kept on taking the pills, made him frenetic, aggressive, and willing to take new risks. But let's go on to what the actual scheme was, because I have some takes on this. One night in 2010, while working late, Firmina looked through some of the bank's internal folders on a shared computer drive. He saw that project folders that were changed over the weekend were likely to be tied to live deals. My mind on Adderall would go off on these tangents

• 1:10:30John Coogan?

  and come up with these elaborate schemes. At the time, he was on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars to pay a friend's mortgage. He had co-signed because the friend was struggling to pay. Firmina told his friends to buy shares in the company that he thought had a good chance of eventually being acquired. He enlisted another friend from college to buy the stock too. The friends netted north of 500K in profit from trading on the deal. Then the scheme goes on for two years. They use a shell company with a corporate bank account to buy and sell the stock. The biggest score was in 2012, before Chicago Bridge and Iron's $3 billion purchase of Shaw Group. Around 10 people connected to Firmina bought Shaw's stock and call options all before, all weeks before the deal.

• 1:11:12Jordi Hays?

  How, how, how did this, how did this guy do this so brazenly?

• 1:11:19John Coogan?

  It's so.

• 1:11:20Jordi Hays?

  Like, you actually, like, it's so

• 1:11:24John Coogan?

  It's so bad.

• 1:11:24Jordi Hays?

  Obviously illegal, even to somebody outside of finance, that.

• 1:11:29John Coogan?

  Also, he's trying, he's doing this.

• 1:11:30Jordi Hays?

  It's also 10 people. Like, how did, how did not one of those be like, hey buddy, like, I talked to my dad about this? Because I was like, hey dad, you want to do this deal with me? And he was like, son, that's insider trading.

• 1:11:42John Coogan?

  Yes. And so it's so funny because he's doing this piece to kind of rehabilitate his name and be like, "Hey, this is about awareness around drug abuse and Adderall," which is true. It's good. It's good to raise awareness about that. But he's saying like, "Oh yeah, I took so much Adderall. I came up with this crazy scheme."

• 1:11:57Jordi Hays?

  That's like a guy-

• 1:11:57John Coogan?

  And the crazy scheme is something that you would be taught on day one of compliance training at any bank. "Hey, if you have material, non-public information and you give it to someone else and they buy the stock and then they pay you for that, that's obviously a conspiracy."

• 1:12:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this to me is like-

• 1:12:09John Coogan?

  It's not like you came up with some elaborate scheme.

• 1:12:10Jordi Hays?

  He's like, it's like a meth addict saying, "You know, I went and stole a bunch of catalytic converters." Like, it was the meth, like-

• 1:12:17John Coogan?

  It's genius, a scheme. It's not even a scheme. It's just vanilla fraud. It's just vanilla. It's like, this is something-

• 1:12:24Jordi Hays?

  When I was on the meth, I thought the catalytic converters were like Pokemon. I had to collect.

• 1:12:29John Coogan?

  There are, there are crazy schemes where you could figure out that like, "Oh yeah, like, you know, this, this signal links to this and this." It's like, this is just, you had information and you just gave it to your friend and they just bought the stock. It's like, there's nothing crazy going on here. It's so ridiculous that he's framing this as like, "Oh, I came up with this while I was on Adderall." Like, no.

• 1:12:47Jordi Hays?

  This is wild. After the announcement-

• 1:12:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Jordi Hays?

  So that, when they did this big deal, 10 of them all go in, they make 7 million. After the announcement-

• 1:12:55John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:12:55Jordi Hays?

  Femina's childhood-

• 1:12:57John Coogan?

  Firmina.

• 1:12:58Jordi Hays?

  Firmina's childhood friend and the friend's girlfriend wired more than 1 million to a precious metals dealer in Manhattan to buy 550 gold bars.

• 1:13:05John Coogan?

  It's like so obvious.

• 1:13:06Jordi Hays?

  They flew to Las Vegas the next day and laundered more than 100,000 through a casino. It's just like, just-

• 1:13:13John Coogan?

  And so the FBI shows up immediately, told Firmina that he was sharing confidential information and asked him to help in their investigation. He slams the door on them, but then he started cooperating. He was arrested in December 2012, later pled guilty to five charges of fraud and money laundering in 2013. He reported for a five-year sentence at a federal penitentiary in 2015. Eight other co-conspirators did jail time too. And so, yeah, I mean, very sad to see him, you know, get into a delusions of grandeur situation where he thought he could get away with something so stupid. But I think the framing of this as a genius scheme is ridiculous.

• 1:13:49Jordi Hays?

  He, when he checked in for his first night in jail, he brought a bottle of Adderall with him. But the correctional staff obviously told him he couldn't keep the drugs.

• 1:13:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:58Jordi Hays?

  So I don't know why this guy potentially-

• 1:14:06Jordi Hays?

  Has more muscle than than brain cells.

• 1:14:09John Coogan?

  Yeah. Anyway, if you're trying to get ahead in an investment banking role, Jordy, and you don't want to insider trade, what's the fastest way to get a promotion at an investment bank?

• 1:14:19Jordi Hays?

  Get a nice watch.

• 1:14:20John Coogan?

  Go to Bezel.

• 1:14:21Jordi Hays?

  The hat's coming on.

• 1:14:25John Coogan?

  Go to Bezel, get an absolute hitter, walk into your MD's office and say, I'm done with the PowerPoint stuff.

• 1:14:31Jordi Hays?

  Slam your wrist on the table.

• 1:14:32John Coogan?

  Put me on the golf course.

• 1:14:33Jordi Hays?

  Put me in coach.

• 1:14:34John Coogan?

  I got a Vacheron on, I'm ready for the big leagues. And we got a bunch of news around Bezel. Bezel is the best place to shop for luxury watches. They have over 22,000 of them on there, and they fully authenticate every watch in-house. I just bought a Vacheron on Bezel. It's shipped to the Bezel team, they authenticated it, and they sent it to me. It was a fantastic unboxing experience. I'll share this. They send it to you in this lovely case. They send you all these notes. They authenticated things I didn't even know existed. The movement, the caliber, the loom plots indices, the dial, the hands, the crystal, the serial engravings, the case back, the crown, the lugs, the links, the end links,

• 1:15:15John Coogan?

  the bracelet, the strap, the clasp, the everything. They check on all the condition, they check on all the performance, they actually make sure that it times correctly, they do a timing test. They give you a receipt, and they give you this lovely certificate of authenticity. I love that. And so, very, very happy with my purchase. Proud owner of a Holy Trinity watch. I got the Vacheron.

• 1:15:39Jordi Hays?

  So nice, so thin.

• 1:15:41John Coogan?

  And they sent me this wonderful Vacheron.

• 1:15:43Jordi Hays?

  Well, of course, they include the box. There are some watches on there that don't come with boxes, but they focus on complete sets.

• 1:15:51John Coogan?

  Yeah. And so, go to Bezel, and they have a fantastic little breakdown today of Michael Jordan's watch collection. They have been killing it. If you don't follow them, it is the most entertaining content. And I've just loved this. So, Michael Jordan's watch collection is outrageous, as you'd expect. Here's a breakdown of his wildest pieces. So, the first up is the Alon and Sonae Datograph Reference 453135.

• 1:16:15Jordi Hays?

  An absolute hitter.

• 1:16:16John Coogan?

  An absolute hitter. Look at this. It's on the next slide. And this is just a beautiful piece.

• 1:16:21Jordi Hays?

  MJ didn't just play the game, he mastered it. His platinum datograph is nothing if not a nod to his refined taste. Its chronograph is so sophisticated. That even watchmakers jaws drop. It's the horological equivalent of a slam dunk.

• 1:16:34John Coogan?

  I love it. I this I do. This piece I do love. This is a fantastic looking piece. He also has the Urwork UR 202S. When you're the GOAT, traditional isn't always thrilling. Enter the Urwork. The Urwork's a very odd brand. I mean, look at this watch. It's crazy. And it a watch looks like it belongs in a sci fi movie with its satellite hour display and futuristic design. It's clear MJ isn't afraid to venture into avant garde territory. You gotta be the GOAT to pull this off. That is a wild, wild one. He has a Richard Mill diver flyback, flyback. The Richard Mill is insane. Honestly, as far as Richard Mills go, that one, pretty cool. I'm into it.

• 1:17:16Jordi Hays?

  I mean, I love the brand.

• 1:17:17John Coogan?

  Subtlety, not in MJ's playbook. The RM 032 with this massive 50 millimeter rose gold case. This is a 40 millimeter watch and it looks like pretty big on me. It looks like the right size.

• 1:17:29Jordi Hays?

  This watch is basically going to be a big dog at pretty much everything.

• 1:17:32John Coogan?

  You go into the MD's office in at Wells Fargo, your investment bank, they're putting you, they're putting you on the deal team.

• 1:17:40Jordi Hays?

  I wish that NBA players could enter the game with watches on.

• 1:17:44John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:17:44Jordi Hays?

  Because imagine, imagine.

• 1:17:46John Coogan?

  Oh, it'd be so good playing with a watch. You just take a Rolex to the face, gets scratched up. He has a Rolex Sky Sky Dweller featuring a blue dial that nods to his UNC days. That's cool. His airness, his airness is Sky Dweller blends complexity with classic Rolex robustness. It's the perfect companion for a man always on the move. Which one's your favorite out of the, out of the MJ watches? What are you taking? The Alon Asane, the Urwork, the Richard Mill?

• 1:18:16Jordi Hays?

  I like the, I like the Urwork out of these.

• 1:18:18John Coogan?

  You would go with the Urwork.

• 1:18:19Jordi Hays?

  Out of just adding, adding something, adding something just wild to the collection.

• 1:18:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, for sure. So lots of inspiration there.

• 1:18:27Jordi Hays?

  It looks, it looks like, it looks like an Nvidia chip.

• 1:18:30John Coogan?

  It does. Yeah. Urwork's got some crazy, crazy stuff. There's also the Hamilton did a collaboration with Dune that looks really cool.

• 1:18:39Jordi Hays?

  Interesting.

• 1:18:39John Coogan?

  They made a watch that was featured in the movie and you can buy it and it's not like thousands of dollars.

• 1:18:43Jordi Hays?

  These artworks are crazy. An artwork does needs to do a collaboration with Nvidia ASAP.

• 1:18:48John Coogan?

  Anyway, on to the timeline. We got a video that we're going to try and play Gavin Baker shares this. He says it's wild. Today I was sent the following cool demo. Two AI agents have a phone call. They realize they're both AI and they switch to a superior audio signal GG wave. Can we pull this up Connor? It's pretty crazy. These two AI agents, they're both in voice mode. And if you haven't heard this before, yeah, can we play this?

• 1:19:17John Coogan?

  Hi there, I'm an AI. They start talking in English and then they switch to like computer speak.

• 1:19:24Jordi Hays?

  But.

• 1:19:25John Coogan?

  And I saw. Oh, hello there. I saw a demo of this a long time ago where people figured out that you could encode something that would be understandable to a machine in like this, this like scrambled thing. So you could play it over an over like an audio signal here, you'll hear it now.

• 1:19:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:42John Coogan?

  Pretty crazy. There we go.

• 1:19:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So the wild thing is, is.

• 1:19:46John Coogan?

  I think we're good on this.

• 1:19:47Jordi Hays?

  The issue is that you could basically encrypt, you could just get infinitely more and more and more complicated. So that machines would be able to talk in front of humans. And even if you had some type of machine, human language translator, it could just perpetually get more and more complicated.

• 1:20:06John Coogan?

  So what the attack that I saw was from a couple of years ago, you play like a YouTube video and it would sound just like scrambled, but it'd be like, okay, Google. And you wouldn't even be able to hear the okay, Google. But it would trigger your Google home to do something. So you could, so you could be hearing in the background of a podcast, some sort of like low signal that would say basically like, okay, Google, go to tbpn.com. And then it would load that and then it would inject something and potentially like hack your home device. That was like a theory. And it could, and it would be, the human would not be able to detect what the command was being given to the AI, which is very cool.

• 1:20:43Jordi Hays?

  Heskel, Heskel in the chat says they banned droids from the bar in Star Wars. So maybe we're going to have to start doing that.

• 1:20:50John Coogan?

  Is that true in Star Wars lore? I have no idea.

• 1:20:52Jordi Hays?

  I think, what's that iconic scene in the Star Wars cantina?

• 1:20:56John Coogan?

  The cantina. Oh yeah, there are no, oh yeah, that's right. There's no droids. They can't go in. That's hilarious. It's all like.

• 1:21:01Jordi Hays?

  Denied.

• 1:21:02John Coogan?

  That's hilarious. I love it. Okay. Well, let's move on to Gary Tan. Gary says, "Intelligence is now on tap, so agency is even more important." And there's a quote here that says, "Capitalism rewards agency far more than it does intelligence."

• 1:21:18Jordi Hays?

  This is the Dude Wipes story. There's a lot of guys that are, you know, have the most sophisticated strategy, craziest, you know, future forward idea, and yet Dude Wipes is doing 200 million a year selling wipes for dudes.

• 1:21:33John Coogan?

  It's pretty crazy. "People don't want to be coddled," says Riley, the founder of Dude Wipes, the butt wipe brand, as you put it. We know that it's a sticky new habit once people try it because it's cleaner, better alternative. They're now doing 200 million and the products are on shelves in Walmart, Target, and Kroger.

• 1:21:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but I mean, so going back to Gary's point, everybody has near infinite access to free intelligence. And so the, um, the resource that is still in short supply is, is agency because these, these, uh, you know, bots, LLMs don't have the ability to, they have the ability to, to think and reason, but not the ability to aggressively act on their goals. And so golden, uh, golden years for high agency humans. Every single person that listens to this show is high agency. Otherwise, they wouldn't be.

• 1:22:28John Coogan?

  I mean, you talk to random people and they're like, "Oh yeah, I gotta check out that AI thing." And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" Like, everyone should be using AI in their job to augment themselves right now.

• 1:22:39Jordi Hays?

  At this point, at this point, you would have had to actively choose not to use it.

• 1:22:44John Coogan?

  People are just like, "Yeah, I already know how to do my, my job the way I do it." And I, and I use spell check. I don't use LLMs to help me write my research reports, you know? And I'll have to really force it on people sometimes. I'll be like, you have a research report due, like, you need to use deep research. Like, go start there. Like, you can't just turn that in. There's gonna be a lot of things. But like, at least for pulling a bunch of sources, like, would you do your research report without Google? Like, no. Like, you have to use these things. And so, yeah, agency is super important. We're seeing that with PMF or Die. It's a great example of, you know, just being aggressive and high agency. The guys are certainly intelligent, but they are go-getters. And that's what really separates them. So, been enjoying watching that.

• 1:23:30John Coogan?

  Let's move on to Carter Donick. He says, "An actor having such athlete-coded mentality and not being afraid to showcase it rocks so much. Timmy has been on a generational run." This is, of course, Timotee Chalamet at the SAG Awards.

• 1:23:45Jordi Hays?

  Can we play this? I don't think we're gonna be able to, we won't be able to hear it. Was it a, oh, is this, anyways.

• 1:23:52John Coogan?

  We don't have it pulled up, but.

• 1:23:53Jordi Hays?

  If you haven't seen this, go watch it. I was sleeping, cuz I'm, you know, John and I will announce it soon, but we're gonna have a, we're gonna open a betting market on our sleeves. But, no, I watched this 30-second recap, and he basically has a, he basically goes on to say that I am, you know, you know, a lot of people would come up here and be humble and, you know, like that, but I am going, you know, 110% on this. I want to be one of the greatest actors in history, and I don't, I'm not, you know, afraid to say that, basically. And I think that's what more actors should do, instead of going up there and saying, "Oh, yeah, thank you, blah, blah,

• 1:24:36Jordi Hays?

  blah." It's like, thank your people and your team and the people that are helping you do what you do, but then also take a little bit of credit.

• 1:24:44John Coogan?

  I'll just play it here.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  And I know we're in a subjective business, but the truth is, I'm really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don't usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats. I'm inspired by the greats. I'm inspired by the greats here tonight. I'm as inspired by Daniel Day Lewis, Marlon Brando and Viola Davis, as I am by Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps. And I want to be up there. So I'm deeply grateful to that. This, this doesn't signify that, but it's a little more fuel. It's a little more ammo to keep going. Thank you so much.

• 1:25:26Jordi Hays?

  And

• 1:25:27Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 1:25:30John Coogan?

  Thank you, X, for immediately playing another video.

• 1:25:32Jordi Hays?

  No, so, so you know that David Senra, that made David Senra want to run through a wall because he has given, it, it's almost like him and Senra talked because Senra will give you that, has given me that speech. I'm sure he's given that to you being like, no, nobody else is like, take, nobody else takes this as seriously as I do. I, I, I

• 1:25:53John Coogan?

  I want to be one of the greats.

• 1:25:54Jordi Hays?

  I want to be one of the greats. I, I, I spend every, every hour of the day thinking about podcasting and telling the stories of history's greatest entrepreneurs.

• 1:26:02John Coogan?

  It's crazy to say it so publicly. And, and when I first listened to that, I was kind of like, oh, like, where's he going with this? Like the beginning's like kind of rough. He's like, kind of just like, you know, throwing this down, but he really lands the plane, I think, and gets to a really, really inspiring place.

• 1:26:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:18John Coogan?

  Anyway, let's move on to Signal. Posting a picture from LinkedIn, Ryan Prescott says, I'll pay someone 10K if they can find me a software developer role, paying 120K plus. Signal says, I've never seen anything like this before. This takes open to work to an entirely new level.

• 1:26:34Jordi Hays?

  It's actually so smart. I mean, it's, it's, it's the open, if he did this without the open to work, you know, graphic on his profile, it would be legendary. I think it comes off as a slightly desperate with the open to work thing, but trying to find it, trying to find a job, I respect it. And I think it's smart to flip it on its head and say, you helped me find a job, I'll give you my first month's salary, basically. That's all he's saying. And so I wouldn't be surprised if somebody sees this and builds a product around it.

• 1:27:06John Coogan?

  400,000 people saw this post. I wonder if he'll find something.

• 1:27:09Jordi Hays?

  No, this is an obvious product within tech, basically saying, you know, if you work at a Facebook, there's going to be people that, somebody at Meta is going to see this and be like, hey, I think Ryan would be a fit for, you know, this job we have and like, you know, help them, help make sure their resume was, was looked at. You know, there, there might be some, certainly companies might take issue with their employees getting paid out on the side to help people get in, but at the same time, they also offer incentives.

• 1:27:38John Coogan?

  I mean, a lot of, yeah, a lot of companies have internal rewards for recruitment. It happens all the time where if there's a bounty for getting someone in the organization. Yeah, it would be interesting if it's like basically a decentralized recruiting fee or recruiting platform where anyone can do the recruiting as long as they place the right person, the right thing. Also hopefully, I mean, with AI and stuff, there's new platforms, new matching algorithms. You would hope that LinkedIn would be able to do this because they have all the people and all the companies, but clearly they're not helping him get a job. But you know, at least the guy is willing to put himself out there and there's a, you know, there's that chart of like, you know, the, the path to greatness is, is, there's like this valley of like being cringe or like putting yourself out there or taking risks.

• 1:28:23Jordi Hays?

  Valley of cringe.

• 1:28:23John Coogan?

  At least this guy is willing to, to say this. So good luck to you, Ryan. I hope you land something quickly. And if you're in the audience and you're looking for a web dev or you're, you know, know someone who's hiring, why not try and go help this guy out? That'd be cool. We'd like to see that. Let's move on to other ways to make money.

• 1:28:38Jordi Hays?

  The real, if you're, if you really got that hustle mindset, you'll say, hey, if I hire you for 120K, will you give me the 10K? He says, sure. You give him an offer, first day, gives you the 10K, fired. Welcome, welcome to the, welcome to the real, welcome to the real world, buddy.

• 1:28:55John Coogan?

  Do not do that. What would your mother say? Do not do that. That is not, that is not an upstanding thing to do.

• 1:29:01Jordi Hays?

  We don't endorse that.

• 1:29:02John Coogan?

  We don't endorse that, but it would be hilarious.

• 1:29:04Jordi Hays?

  He's gotta be.

• 1:29:04John Coogan?

  He's gotta learn the lesson one way or another.

• 1:29:06Jordi Hays?

  He's gotta be aware of that. There's going to be a lot of people out there that just get dollar signs in their eyes. It's like, all right, I'm going to pay him 200K, sorry, 200 bucks for his first day, but I'm going to get, I'm going to get 10K out. That's a good trade.

• 1:29:17John Coogan?

  Good trade. Yeah, yeah. It's like, wait, why is Jane Street trying to hire me? It's like, oh, they just love making good trades. That's great. Well, you know, if he, if he doesn't find a job, there's other ways to make money. Barry here, Strawberry, says, "The easiest ways to make money," gives a list. "Men's lust, women's desire for beauty, elderly's health, children's education, rich people's fear of loss, brokey's desire to get rich quickly." Clearly resonated, million views, 33 likes, 33K likes. What do you think? You like this? This, uh, there's a guy in Sequoia, right, that says that, uh, he, he loves when a company maps to one of the seven deadly sins, which is like, kinda dark, but also makes sense. Where, you know, you look at, "Why, why do you invest in Instagram?"

• 1:30:00John Coogan?

  Well, it, it, it's, it's driven by envy, right? It's like an envy as a service platform in some ways.

• 1:30:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:08John Coogan?

  Even something like a trading app platform can be seen as like greed, you know? It like plays into that natural belief or natural, like, human impulse. But what, what do you think of these? Which one would you want to be in?

• 1:30:19Jordi Hays?

  I mean...

• 1:30:21John Coogan?

  Children's education seems pretty valuable.

• 1:30:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that's a cool one. Although, the issue is there's so many, in children's education, there's so many people that love teaching children, that it's a kind of a hard place to actually make good margins, right? Like, if you wanted to start a new school, there's gonna be a nice competitor that is happy to make, you know, 5% even at margins, because they just like having a school. But, um, no, going off of this list, I mean, obviously, you know, referencing that, that other post by the guy saying that you have to be, you know, greedy, monopolistic, all this stuff. It's very dark. I mean, there's just so many ways to make money. I think my favorite, my prompt when I'm talking to people that wanna get into business,

• 1:31:07Jordi Hays?

  but they're like, "I feel like all the good ideas are taken," like, that's sort of the classic line.

• 1:31:12Jordi Hays?

  "Every time you spend money, just think about who's..."

• 1:31:16John Coogan?

  Who's making money on the other side?

• 1:31:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. And, um, all of, all of businesses...

• 1:31:21John Coogan?

  Are you fully satisfied?

• 1:31:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And then, the, the main thing that people, like, the fundamental truth to understand about business, you had a funny one from the other week that's slightly different, but, um... You just need to get a product or a service at one price and sell it for a higher price.

• 1:31:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:35Jordi Hays?

  And make sure that your operating expenses are,

• 1:31:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:38Jordi Hays?

  you know, uh, lower than, than the difference and, and you will, um, you'll do great. So.

• 1:31:43John Coogan?

  So you, so you think, uh, good way to find startup ideas is to kind of like track your finances? See, see where you're spending money?

• 1:31:50Jordi Hays?

  I mean, that's an obvious one, but.

• 1:31:52John Coogan?

  And do you know the best way to track your finances?

• 1:31:54Jordi Hays?

  Uh, I do.

• 1:31:55John Coogan?

  Our sponsor Ramp, time is money. Save both.

• 1:31:58Jordi Hays?

  He's good.

• 1:31:59John Coogan?

  Corporate cards, bill payments, accounting and a whole lot more all in one place. And we got a post from none other than Saquon Barkley.

• 1:32:08Jordi Hays?

  Boom.

• 1:32:08John Coogan?

  First time on the show. He's getting a reply with a video today. Saquon Barkley writes, thrilled to be a part of the journey at Ramp and ready to take this company to the next level. And he shares the video, uh, already got 500 likes on the post. Go watch the video again. Watch the ad again. It was great. And Eric, of course, is in the comments right here saying,

• 1:32:28Jordi Hays?

  Yes, sir.

• 1:32:29John Coogan?

  seeing you put your team's playoff run ahead of an individual all time rushing record was a masterclass in leadership. Love the way you demonstrate how you put others first, win as a team and invest for the long term. Grateful to call you our partner. So shout out.

• 1:32:42Jordi Hays?

  He, uh, and even updated his LinkedIn today.

• 1:32:44John Coogan?

  He did. No way.

• 1:32:46Jordi Hays?

  He's got a few jobs.

• 1:32:47John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 1:32:47Jordi Hays?

  He's got his job at, uh, at the Eagles.

• 1:32:50John Coogan?

  You love it.

• 1:32:50Jordi Hays?

  Now he's an investor at Ramp. So we love to see that he's finding time to update the LinkedIn in the off season. You know, getting ready for the next run.

• 1:32:56John Coogan?

  Fantastic. Uh, well, let's move on to Dylan O'Sullivan. Dylan says Napoleon once said that it's, that the surprising thing was not that every man has a price, but how low it is. And I can't help but see that everywhere now.

• 1:33:11Jordi Hays?

  You destroyed and betrayed yourself for a handful of clicks.

• 1:33:15John Coogan?

  Yeah. The cringe posting can really destroy a person, right? That's, uh, I think that's what he's getting at there.

• 1:33:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. But at the same time, you gotta just, sometimes some people just need to be cringe for a little bit before they become goaded. You know? So it's a balance.

• 1:33:29John Coogan?

  It is. Yeah.

• 1:33:31Jordi Hays?

  But I think this is one of those things, just follow your advice. What would your mother think?

• 1:33:36John Coogan?

  That's true.

• 1:33:37Jordi Hays?

  What would she say? And you'll, you'll almost never betray yourself if you're making your mother proud unless your mother is just absolutely insane.

• 1:33:44John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, it goes back to like the good quests idea, thinking about, sure, there, there are pots of gold all over the place. But when you look back on your life, you're going to want to know that you chased an honorable one.

• 1:33:57Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:33:58John Coogan?

  Fascinating. Well, let's move on to AI Vivek NASCAR says, this is seriously getting out of hand. And he shows something like 15 different AI L L Ms, Chat G P T, Deep Seek, Gemini, Meta AI, La Chat, which is hilarious. Co-pilot Claude, perplexity, Grok, Kimmy, you hugging chat pie, chat L L M and Quinn. And Jamie Voynow says, I feel like 80% of these are irrelevant, though it will be in the future. Interesting. There are, I mean, it is crazy how many L L Ms there are and how serious they're being taken. I mean, it's the browser wars all over again, I guess.

• 1:34:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think it's, it's good. You're going to get this sort of over investment in a bunch of companies and we don't know, you know, if 80 of these, 80 of these will be irrelevant in five years. But we don't know which ones yet. And so it's actually good that different teams can duke it out.

• 1:34:51John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:34:52Jordi Hays?

  Go and, you know, enter this highly competitive market and innovate and just every single one of these teams is highly motivated to make an incrementally better.

• 1:35:01John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:35:01Jordi Hays?

  Or a 10x better.

• 1:35:02John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:35:03Jordi Hays?

  You know, version of their product every single day.

• 1:35:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:35:05Jordi Hays?

  And it's good. It's just obviously great for consumers.

• 1:35:09John Coogan?

  Yeah. And there's clearly like many forks in the road in terms of product design around these L L Ms. And one company can't really test every new product idea. Like what we were talking about with Grok, where Grok will pull in your tweets and try and customize based on that. And that has some amazing and great results and also some terrible ones. Chat G P T has differentiated by, you know, having all these different models, which some people love, some people hate. Gemini, obviously the huge context window, Meta AI baked into. All these products that you use, all the messenger products. And, and so I imagine that in the future, the ones that will die off will be commoditized in the sense that they have very similar product experiences to other apps.

• 1:35:53John Coogan?

  But there's probably still an opportunity to, to create something that is innovative within the LLM framework, make your app significantly different. And then like what's happening at you.com or not, not you, friend.com where it texts you first. That's even that minor change is a very different interaction. And there's more like a friend. Yeah, or perplexity where it feels more like a Google search, honestly, than like a chat interaction. There's like lots of people taking risks, trying different things. Anyway, let's move on to Bessemer Ventures Partners. Roland is throwing a little shade. He says, who green lighted this? And Bessemer says, the memos, like the knight's sword, the firefighter's hose and the lumberjack's axe. The venture capitalist courageously wields the memo.

• 1:36:40John Coogan?

  I love it. I love this. I green lighted that. That's hilarious. Come on. It's fun. It's amazing. You know, and Jason chimes in, corrects the record. You gotta have a bit of sense of humor if you've been investing more than 10 to 12 years. I think it's pretty tongue in cheek funny.

• 1:36:56Jordi Hays?

  Like the knight's sword, the firefighter's hose and the lumberjack's axe. The podcaster courageously wields the mic.

• 1:37:03John Coogan?

  Yes, the sure SM7B. It's great. It's fun. They're having fun. This is what we talked about with, with James Bond, where James Bond was satirical, was satirizing. The more serious spy movies, and then all of a sudden people were like, wait, James Bond is, is serious and it's over the top. And it's like, no, like they were, they were having fun when they wrote like Moonraker and we're like, let's go to space and shoot lasers.

• 1:37:28Jordi Hays?

  Space lasers.

• 1:37:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, like they were having fun with that and, and there's lots of examples like that. But it, but it, it's not, it takes the fun out of it.

• 1:37:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:36John Coogan?

  When, when you have to explain the joke.

• 1:37:37Jordi Hays?

  The other, the other context that's important here is, is Bessemer also shares their anti portfolio of companies that they missed. And so they're not going out and saying, This is our memo, our, you know, our, our, our sword always cuts perfectly.

• 1:37:53John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:37:54Jordi Hays?

  There's sort of this idea that, you know, hey, uh, this is the vehicle to make investment decisions. And this is a core part of our job and you should take pride in that in the same way that a knight takes pride in their sword.

• 1:38:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:38:06Jordi Hays?

  I don't want to read a slop memo.

• 1:38:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:08Jordi Hays?

  There's nothing worse than like getting a memo and it's like.

• 1:38:10John Coogan?

  You don't want a dull sword.

• 1:38:11Jordi Hays?

  You don't want a dull sword, sharp sword. So anyways, uh, I can see why, why Roland would, would think it's funny, but, but let's just enjoy it.

• 1:38:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:20Jordi Hays?

  For what it is.

• 1:38:20John Coogan?

  And there's a lot of value if you're an entrepreneur and reading these memos, cause then you see what the internal thought process is like at a firm like Bessemer, which is great. Uh, well, let's move on to some, uh, timeline and turmoil. Y Combinator backed a, uh, fusion company that's building fusion reactors for maritime vessels. So.

• 1:38:39Jordi Hays?

  And they also, they also just backed as of an hour ago, a company called Orbital Operations. They're developing a high thrust reusable spaceflight vehicle that will be stationed in orbit to rapidly defend against threats to high value satellites. So, uh, yeah. And, and people are taking massive issue with Y Combinator funding deep tech. And I think it's like the silliest thing in the world. Why are you anti-investment in cool technology?

• 1:39:09John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:39:09Jordi Hays?

  If they want to spend their money on these high risk bets and teams want to spend a decade of their life taking this high risk, why are we not, why are we not celebrating that?

• 1:39:18John Coogan?

  And.

• 1:39:19Jordi Hays?

  I want, I want, I want them to go back to a thousand companies a batch and just have them all be James Bond ideas.

• 1:39:25John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:39:25Jordi Hays?

  Or just one.

• 1:39:26John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:39:26Jordi Hays?

  Just, uh.

• 1:39:27John Coogan?

  James Bond idea, James Bond company, that needs to be coined. That's fantastic. Uh, yeah. And also I'm old enough to remember when the criticism of Y C was, it's all consumer software. They don't do anything in the real world. Well, now they do, and you're still not happy timeline. So calm down, you're on notice. Uh, so, uh, Risk V says, Y C keeps doing this funny thing where they know the Zerp Uber for X shtick doesn't work anymore. So they're shifting to hard tech in double quotes, uh, or quadruple quotes, but still wants you to believe that three undergrad dropouts are capable of making a freighter capable nuclear reactor with a seed investment of a hundred K and score.

• 1:40:04Jordi Hays?

  It's just so.

• 1:40:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:40:05Jordi Hays?

  So funny because.

• 1:40:08Jordi Hays?

  This guy Risk V is just absolutely exposing himself for not understanding how venture capital works.

• 1:40:14John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:40:14Jordi Hays?

  Because YC's entire model is we're going to give you a little bit of money.

• 1:40:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:17Jordi Hays?

  You're going to make some progress.

• 1:40:18John Coogan?

  And then you'll raise more money.

• 1:40:19Jordi Hays?

  And other people will give you a lot more money.

• 1:40:20John Coogan?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:40:21Jordi Hays?

  So it's like, exposed.

• 1:40:22John Coogan?

  The best thing is-

• 1:40:23Jordi Hays?

  You got exposed.

• 1:40:24John Coogan?

  So there's a community note on that post now, and it's, oh, by the way, they don't give you 100K. They give you five times that now. They give you 500K, which is, yeah, actually enough to build like a little bit of a lab, some prototyping and stuff, lease some equipment, do whatever you need to. And they're like three undergrad dropouts. And then they just post in the community notes, like, here's the LinkedIn of the guy. He's not a dropout. Like, he's actually experienced.

• 1:40:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:46John Coogan?

  Because people go through YC all the time who have been deeper in their careers.

• 1:40:50Jordi Hays?

  Also, what, we hate dropouts now?

• 1:40:52John Coogan?

  Yeah, what?

• 1:40:52Jordi Hays?

  We're going to brag.

• 1:40:53John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. Palmer Lucky, never did anything good in hard tech.

• 1:40:55Jordi Hays?

  Ah, yeah.

• 1:40:56John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's like, in fact, in fact, a bunch of the best examples are, are from these dropouts with, who started with, with very little. And that's what Spore is highlighting here. Spore says, YC keeps doing this funny thing where they want you to believe that a former Groupon PM is capable of making the first, the first independently developed supersonic jet with a seed investment of 120K. Lol, wonder how that's working out. And it's like, boom, supersonic. The guy kinda did it, yeah.

• 1:41:19Jordi Hays?

  Good work, Spore. Uh, yeah.

• 1:41:21John Coogan?

  Put him in the truth zone.

• 1:41:22Jordi Hays?

  The other thing that people don't realize, so YC puts out their requests for startups, but the YC batches are a reflection of what young builders want to build.

• 1:41:30John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:41:30Jordi Hays?

  And so if they're funding more, they are asking people, sometimes they'll give feedback on ideas, like, hey, you know, you're doing, you wanted to apply with this, and maybe you should do this.

• 1:41:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:40Jordi Hays?

  You know, it seems maybe more interesting, but ultimately, they're just funding what companies are coming to them.

• 1:41:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:46Jordi Hays?

  And so we should be looking at these new announcements being like, this is amazing.

• 1:41:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:51Jordi Hays?

  We've, you know, we've gone past, we're post SaaS.

• 1:41:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:55Jordi Hays?

  We have a bunch of our best and brightest that want to take on- Incredible risk. All these, anybody that's going and doing this is potentially sinking five years of their life, this priceless resource, into developing something that will only have a positive impact on the world, presumably if it works. And so, we should celebrate this. And I want to see a James Bond YC batch badly.

• 1:42:19John Coogan?

  Yeah. Also, you know, it's like, what are you worried about here? Like, if it's capital incineration, like-

• 1:42:26Jordi Hays?

  It's not your money.

• 1:42:26John Coogan?

  It's not your money. It's super diversified, right?

• 1:42:30Jordi Hays?

  You would kill to be an LP in YC.

• 1:42:31John Coogan?

  It's super diversified, because they're in so many companies. And, and the funds that the LPs in YC are also diversified. These are like huge institutions. And there might be consolidation in the fusion industry in the future where, yeah, sure, maybe these guys don't work out. They work for five years. They learn a ton about fusion. And they get a soft landing at Helion or something, you know? It's like, that could be fine. And everyone could be happy. Like, there's so many good endings here. That's what we should be focusing on, as opposed to just, you know, tearing down some people that want to build something cool. Anyway, let's move on to low yield Lucy Pico Top. She says, "Still working remote in 2025 is like being one of those Japanese soldiers who stayed in the jungle for 30 years after World War II." Oh, it's great. Yeah. Working remote is rough. You got to

• 1:43:16John Coogan?

  get back in the office. It's expensive sometimes to-

• 1:43:19Jordi Hays?

  I've said this before, I don't know a single goaded, cracked, however you want to describe it, 22-year-old that wants to work remote anymore. There are going to be some of them that build these massive businesses remotely, and they'll make it work. But it's not an enjoyable way to do business. I mean, we have the opportunity, we have the opportunity every single day, that we could skip our commute-

• 1:43:41John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 1:43:42Jordi Hays?

  And sit at home, and just turn on the camera-

• 1:43:44John Coogan?

  Turn on Zoom.

• 1:43:45Jordi Hays?

  Turn on the mic, turn on-

• 1:43:46John Coogan?

  Like it's some low effort, weekly podcast.

• 1:43:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. Part-time podcasters, but no. I woke up at 4:45 this morning. I wake up at 4:45. I still get an amazing sleep score and I drive in here because it's the most enjoyable way to do business and we do our best work in person.

• 1:44:05John Coogan?

  We do, we do. It's great. Paul Graham, going back to James Bond, I think this is an interesting thing. We talked about Bond on the Friday show. We threw out John Fio as a potential Bond. But Paul Graham is posting a cartoon from The New Yorker. It says, "No, but Mr. Bond, I expect you to star in a series of increasingly bland spinoffs and TV shows that have significant viewership decline after the first episode," kind of highlighting what's happened to the Star Wars franchise. And PG says, "It would be nice if Bond could avoid the fate of Star War that Star Wars suffered after it was handled, handed over to the suits at Disney, but what are the odds? The creator of a franchise can resist soulless execs, but one

• 1:44:48John Coogan?

  that's acquired starts out already in their hands." What do you think? Is Bond gonna go downhill with a bunch of spinoffs?

• 1:44:58Jordi Hays?

  I don't know. I feel like it's a very powerful franchise if they just try to produce one great film every couple of years forever.

• 1:45:06John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:45:06Jordi Hays?

  And I'm happy with that as a consumer.

• 1:45:09John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:45:09Jordi Hays?

  And I actually would like to see a spinoff from the Bond universe.

• 1:45:15John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:45:16Jordi Hays?

  Where they spend $100 million producing this crazy series. I would enjoy seeing that.

• 1:45:21John Coogan?

  I think what I like, there are good spinoffs, there are bad spinoffs. I think the best spinoffs are where they don't try and recreate the original like genre and they actually take it in a different direction. Like the best Star Wars spinoff that I think is Rogue One, and it's because it's not the same structure as Star Wars. Star Wars is the hero's journey.

• 1:45:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:40John Coogan?

  Where it's Luke Skywalker needs to go blow up the Death Star. He faces a bunch of trials and tribulations, then he blows up the Death Star. In Rogue One, it's a heist movie. And so they're trying to break in and steal something and then they all die at the end, spoiler alert. But you should notice.

• 1:45:55John Coogan?

  But so, so I would totally watch a Bond spinoff that's a horror film or a, or a, or a heist movie,

• 1:46:03Speaker 03

  or- Or rom com.

• 1:46:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, rom com, honestly.

• 1:46:06Speaker 03

  People would take issue with that. Or, or a movie about-

• 1:46:10John Coogan?

  Why not?

• 1:46:10Speaker 03

  Cars.

• 1:46:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Speaker 03

  Just Le Mans.

• 1:46:13John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. In between, in between, uh, special missions, he just goes and does Le Mans.

• 1:46:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:18John Coogan?

  Like-

• 1:46:18Speaker 03

  Or him just trying to do the Nervaring.

• 1:46:20John Coogan?

  But I think it's actually lower risk than just trying to recreate the same thing again and again. And now it's a TV show and now it's this and that.

• 1:46:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:26John Coogan?

  Or, you know, you need to do the, the spinoff and it's just Q. And it's just him trying to build stuff. And like Bond is, Bond is incapacitated. He's on an island getting cut in half with a laser. And Q has to work on the next pen that explodes. And so he's calling up Y C founders, trying to get them to hack on it with him or something.

• 1:46:41Speaker 03

  So good.

• 1:46:42John Coogan?

  Anyway, good luck to everyone at Amazon working on Bond. We certainly hope that there's some good stuff coming. Let's move on to Gabe. Gabe says, uh, and, and this was a little bit of a spicy post. Austin Kennedy said, today is the, my first day in San Francisco, didn't expect to move here at 21, but I guess that's life. And he posted a picture of an empty room with a, uh, bed that does not match the bed frame. And, uh, and some people were dunking on this and we, we, we fully support this. Go move to somewhere cool where the action is and start building. And so Gabe says, "The canonical picture to post when you move to SF is a barren white room with an unmade bed in it, and no other possessions except perhaps a laptop, indicating that you have emptied your life of all non-essential things in order to more fully receive the blessing of the city."

• 1:47:27John Coogan?

  And I, I don't know how much he's joking, but I, I, I think it's great. And I think these posts, uh, sure, they got a little bit out of hand with like, someone became a VC and posted it. And that's like a little bit silly because like-

• 1:47:38Speaker 03

  Stolen valor.

• 1:47:39John Coogan?

  It's a little stolen valor. Um, it's a little stolen valor. Like we know that you can afford a nicer bed setup. But, but for the founders that are moving there and trying to take a crack at something like this really does save you a couple hundred bucks. You could put that towards AWS credits or something.

• 1:47:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:53John Coogan?

  You know, so I support this. I support people taking risk, being young, moving.

• 1:47:58Jordi Hays?

  I want to go to SF and have get like this palatial house and set up an eighth sleeve. We're just like, just moving to SF.

• 1:48:09John Coogan?

  Living the dream.

• 1:48:10Jordi Hays?

  Living the dream.

• 1:48:11John Coogan?

  You know, the funny thing is that this is palatial next to what I, so when I moved to the Bay Area, I wasn't in San Francisco. I was in Sunnyvale and then the Tenderloin.

• 1:48:20Jordi Hays?

  That's what I remember.

• 1:48:21John Coogan?

  And also I didn't have a bedroom. I split a bedroom with another guy.

• 1:48:25Jordi Hays?

  This is some lore.

• 1:48:26John Coogan?

  And then I lived in the living room.

• 1:48:28Jordi Hays?

  You guys, didn't you live for almost a year on like 16 grand or like you raised like a six?

• 1:48:34John Coogan?

  Yeah, it was 17,000.

• 1:48:36Jordi Hays?

  The first money in was 17 grand and you were like, okay, we have to make this last for a year.

• 1:48:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:40Jordi Hays?

  Which is incredible.

• 1:48:42John Coogan?

  It was brutal. Destroyed my credit. I put like three grand on a credit card and stopped paying it. And you got like a 400 credit score. It took me like years to build back up.

• 1:48:50Jordi Hays?

  Made it all back.

• 1:48:51John Coogan?

  Made it all back for sure. But yeah, I'm glad that founders are able to afford, you know, not complete swaller.

• 1:48:56Jordi Hays?

  Speaking of founders, David Senra is in, is in our chat right now saying, he said, I would like the ability to call into the show live, please. And.

• 1:49:06John Coogan?

  You can call in right now. Let's call him. Why not?

• 1:49:09Jordi Hays?

  Okay, we can call him.

• 1:49:10John Coogan?

  I'll call him right now.

• 1:49:12Jordi Hays?

  This is our first time testing the live infrastructure.

• 1:49:14John Coogan?

  I'm just gonna give him a call. Okay, let's see. I'm just calling him on my phone. I'm gonna put it up to the microphone. Hopefully we'll have David Senra call in. Let's see. Let's see if he picks up. If not, we're going to Growing Daniel. I don't know. He's not picking up.

• 1:49:33Jordi Hays?

  There we go. Wow.

• 1:49:34John Coogan?

  Oh, he's talking such a big game. I want to call in. Oh, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna dox his phone number. If I'm not careful.

• 1:49:41Jordi Hays?

  All right. Anyways, Senra, give us a call back if you want to say hi. We can also, you know, plan.

• 1:49:47John Coogan?

  Yeah. Let's see. Let's see if I call him on FaceTime.

• 1:49:52Jordi Hays?

  Oh, he says call on wifi. Yeah.

• 1:49:54John Coogan?

  Okay, let's see. Let's see.

• 1:49:56Jordi Hays?

  And just while we're.

• 1:49:57John Coogan?

  David Senra. How you doing, man?

• 1:49:59Jordi Hays?

  David Senra.

• 1:50:01Speaker 04

  Dude, you guys sent me crying.

• 1:50:03John Coogan?

  Wait, wait, wait. You talk such a big game, you don't even pick up your phone.

• 1:50:07Speaker 04

  Dude, you got a FaceTime audio on me.

• 1:50:08John Coogan?

  Okay. I almost doxed your phone number because your voicemail says, thanks for calling 7. And I was like, oh no, I don't want to give that out. Every, every person will be calling you for advice.

• 1:50:20Speaker 04

  You guys know how profitable podcasts are, so you know I live on an island and I don't have cell phone service.

• 1:50:25John Coogan?

  You actually do live on an island?

• 1:50:27Jordi Hays?

  He does live on a fantastic island in Florida.

• 1:50:31John Coogan?

  Yeah, well hopefully your wifi is strong. We want to get, we want to get your reaction to something. Let me find a post for you to react to. Um, let's see.

• 1:50:40Speaker 04

  You know what I hate?

• 1:50:41John Coogan?

  What, what do you hate?

• 1:50:42Speaker 04

  You call me.

• 1:50:43John Coogan?

  Yeah?

• 1:50:44Speaker 04

  Hold on, here we go. Okay, never mind, I'm back live on the stream.

• 1:50:47John Coogan?

  Okay, well you gotta mute that, so it doesn't play.

• 1:50:50Speaker 04

  I did. Come on, bro, I'm not a fucking amateur.

• 1:50:52John Coogan?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:50:53Jordi Hays?

  Whoa, Sandra.

• 1:50:55John Coogan?

  This is a kid-friendly show, cool with the foul language.

• 1:50:58Jordi Hays?

  Our kids watch this show.

• 1:50:59John Coogan?

  Okay, okay, here, here, we, we, we got one from, have you watched Severance on Apple TV? Okay, it's fantastic show. I li- I watched season one, haven't gotten into season two, but Joe Rogan posted, Severance is a fantastic show, completely original and totally unpredictable, amazing writing, directing and acting, just a totally unique show, just finished season one and on to season two. And Mark Gurman, who is the Bloomberg reporter who covers Apple religiously, he says, look forward to Tim Cook on Rogan. Do you think Tim Cook should do Rogan?

• 1:51:29Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:51:30John Coogan?

  Why not?

• 1:51:31Jordi Hays?

  I don't think he could hang for three hours.

• 1:51:35John Coogan?

  Get him a couple glasses of whiskey, couple cigars, the good stories from manufacturing in Sen Gen come out?

• 1:51:41Speaker 04

  No, that, that, that's actually an interesting question here, like who has not gone on Rogan that you would want to see?

• 1:51:47John Coogan?

  Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, I want to see all these guys.

• 1:51:51Speaker 04

  No, no, actually not.

• 1:51:52John Coogan?

  Why not?

• 1:51:52Speaker 04

  So I'm sitting here, I'm sitting here editing an episode on Buffett and Munger right now.

• 1:51:56John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:51:57Speaker 04

  And one of the most important things that I learned from them is like the importance of running, the importance of like running all your decisions through opportunity costs.

• 1:52:03John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:52:03Speaker 04

  So like make all your decisions based on your best alternative, right?

• 1:52:06John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:52:06Speaker 04

  And they tell stories for like multiple decades, and I think it's actually like really interesting way, I was actually talking to our friend Justin on the phone about this like last night. And like he's got a bunch of, you know, obviously a ton of opportunity, ton of waste, spend his time,

• 1:52:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:21Speaker 04

  Tons of investments. And, and he was talking about like being as ambitious as possible with this company. And um, should he do that inside of, I don't even know, should we be repeating this on the live? But basically, where the candidate agreement is like, he's, he's a very special person and he's partnered with a very special person.

• 1:52:39John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:52:39Speaker 04

  And the idea, if you, if you filter that decision through opportunity costs, like no, you stay with the partner you have because his partner is so fucking gifted.

• 1:52:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:52:46Speaker 04

  And yeah, um, so I would, the, the way if you approach like, okay, do I want to see Tim Cook on Rogan? No. And then my mind immediately goes to, well, who do I want to see on Rogan?

• 1:52:57John Coogan?

  Okay, who do you want to see?

• 1:52:59Speaker 04

  I was just, actually, this morning I was visiting a friend and I drove into his house and I was listening to Ro- Mark Magnus Carlson.

• 1:53:08John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, that's a good one.

• 1:53:10Speaker 04

  It was really good and it got to the point where about the importance of uh, flow and being obsessed with what you're doing. To the point where I was such in flow, listening to the podcast, I missed the fucking turn of where I was going.

• 1:53:19John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 1:53:20Speaker 04

  Um, so yeah, I don't like who, who has not been on there that I'd want to actually hear from.

• 1:53:25John Coogan?

  I mean, I, I just want big tech people for sure, but I mean, uh, I'd love to see Jack Dorsey go back on post X.

• 1:53:32Jordi Hays?

  I think the thing with-

• 1:53:32John Coogan?

  Travis Kalanick would be great.

• 1:53:34Jordi Hays?

  I think with Tim Cook is we just need three hours of him on a podcast anywhere.

• 1:53:39John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:53:39Jordi Hays?

  Because he's got to explain himself.

• 1:53:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, I want to know who the real Tim is.

• 1:53:43Speaker 04

  Well, I, out of all those people, who would be the most unhinged?

• 1:53:48John Coogan?

  Travis, maybe?

• 1:53:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I want to hear, I want to hear Satya and Rogan just go on a rant about aliens for, for like a couple hours.

• 1:53:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:57Speaker 04

  Hey.

• 1:53:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:59Speaker 04

  Did you guys hear Palmer Lucky on Sean Ryan?

• 1:54:02John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, I listened to the whole thing. It's fantastic.

• 1:54:03Speaker 04

  That, it, it was like, I think Sean said like six words and it was like,

• 1:54:07John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:54:08Speaker 04

  Oh shit. Oh my-

• 1:54:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, Palmer just opens with the, with like the hard, most hardcore conspiracies right up front. He's like, yeah, I'm here loosely promoting the I VAS contract. This is like the I VAS, like we got a $22 billion contract. I was supposed to be doing PR for that, but let's talk about JFK. I love it.

• 1:54:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's-

• 1:54:25John Coogan?

  So real.

• 1:54:26Speaker 04

  For me, Rogan is the- Home of like unhinged.

• 1:54:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:29Speaker 04

  I've been listening, you know, he's the first, I, I don't know if I told you this story. I didn't, I didn't know podcasting was a thing.

• 1:54:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:35Speaker 04

  A, a friend of mine used to invite me over to his house because he was really into UFC.

• 1:54:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:40Speaker 04

  And he's like, you gotta see this thing that Joe Rogan does. I'm like, the fucking Fear Factor guy? And, um, it was on Ustream at the time.

• 1:54:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:46Speaker 04

  See it live.

• 1:54:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:47Speaker 04

  And then one day I was like, oh, I can't make it over. He's like, don't worry. You can play the show back anytime you want. I go, what do you mean? He goes, it's a podcast.

• 1:54:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:55Speaker 04

  I was like, what the fuck is that? And that's when I started becoming addicted to it.

• 1:54:59John Coogan?

  I need the beep button for this guy.

• 1:55:01Speaker 04

  Sorry, Rogan's like the, the home of unhinged. So yeah, like if, if it has to be a tech guy using, you know,

• 1:55:07John Coogan?

  Who knows? Maybe Tim Cook shows up and says, look, I don't believe in the moon landing. I think the aliens are in, on Egypt. I would love that. If, if Tim's been boiling at the surface for years, just with the craziest conspiracy theories.

• 1:55:20Speaker 03

  No, no, what if he's like, we're actually, Apple's gonna be in the alien ETF.

• 1:55:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:23Speaker 03

  Because like, we're using alien technology.

• 1:55:25John Coogan?

  He's just like, you, you think the iPhone would work if the world was round? It, it would not. The iPhone would break immediately if this was not a flat earth. And Rogan's just like, I'm listening.

• 1:55:35Speaker 03

  Got my attention.

• 1:55:37Speaker 04

  I want Tim Cook to come back on and say they figured out a way to bring Steve Jobs back.

• 1:55:41John Coogan?

  Oh, there we go. Yeah. The frozen and cryogenic.

• 1:55:45Speaker 03

  On his 70th birthday would have been amazing.

• 1:55:46John Coogan?

  That would have been amazing. Yeah. I'd love, I'd love to see Tim Cook on, on Rogan. Anyway, um, do you think Rogan, uh, what do you think he uses for corporate cards?

• 1:55:56Speaker 04

  Ramp, of course.

• 1:55:57John Coogan?

  Of course. Uh, gi- give me a little pitch for Ramp while, while you're on the show.

• 1:56:02Speaker 04

  Um, it's funny. I don't even want to talk about what's in our group chat. So we can't say some of the stuff publicly because, you know,

• 1:56:08John Coogan?

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course. The, the way I would describe Ramp, the, the important part, which is really funny. Um, so, oh man, I don't know how much of this stuff I can say publicly. I gotta be very careful because we're on a live.

• 1:56:21John Coogan?

  Just give me, just give me the high level of, of your, of your most recent, uh, of your most recent ad read. What, what, what were you saying about Ramp?

• 1:56:28Speaker 04

  Well, everybody knows the founders at Ramp ad reads are the best.

• 1:56:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:32Speaker 04

  Um, but what I would.

• 1:56:33John Coogan?

  Second only to TBP on that.

• 1:56:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, no, once you guys have the Ramp hats.

• 1:56:38John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:39Speaker 04

  Hat is, is beautiful. You guys need fucking Ramp hats.

• 1:56:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:42Speaker 04

  Um, but what I would say is like, The, literally the best people I know, the, the, the best entrepreneurs on the planet, some of the stuff you can't even talk about publicly, they're all using Ramp. And I think, I really do believe that Ramp has the greatest technical team by far in their industry.

• 1:56:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:58Speaker 04

  And I think that the gap between them and other people is just going to constantly expand.

• 1:57:02John Coogan?

  I agree.

• 1:57:02Speaker 04

  Um, and I think it's going to be a symbol of like, whether you're a serious company or not.

• 1:57:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:06Speaker 04

  Like if you want to be, did you see that, that great Timothy Chalamet?

• 1:57:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, we talked about that on the show.

• 1:57:12Speaker 04

  Okay, I didn't see that part.

• 1:57:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:13Speaker 04

  He's like, you know, listen, I, I'm not, I, I'm not being bashful, and he didn't use that word, but he's like, I'm going, I'm trying to be great. I want to be like, be great at what I do.

• 1:57:22John Coogan?

  Jordy literally shouted you out during our analysis of this, saying David Sandler probably got so fired up by this.

• 1:57:28Jordi Hays?

  So my theory is that Tim listened to how you talk about podcasting and was like, I'm going to steal this and use it in a much bigger audience. So I think that he honestly just like, took your words out of your mouth.

• 1:57:40Speaker 04

  Well, I, I think this is important because when he says, I'm in the pursuit of greatness, I know people don't usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats and inspired by the greats. Like, you know, I'm not in this to like, this isn't a fucking game to me. Like, I'm not, I'm trying to be literally the best that ever, the best person in the world at what I do.

• 1:57:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:56Speaker 04

  And what I would say is like, I, I do think there's going to be, Ramp's going to turn into a status symbol.

• 1:58:01John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:58:01Speaker 04

  Or, uh, or like a shorthand way to understand, like, you take your company serious.

• 1:58:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:06Speaker 04

  Because the product is just light years better than anybody else's.

• 1:58:09John Coogan?

  Totally, totally. Uh, let's go to this Rick Rubin post. I want to get your reaction here. Rick Rubin said, "Tools will come, tools will go, only the vibe coder remains." Rick Rubin. Are you familiar with vibe coding?

• 1:58:24Speaker 04

  Uh, I don't think so. What's vibe coding?

• 1:58:26John Coogan?

  Vibe coding is, uh, this new type of programming that's enabled by, uh, services like, uh,

• 1:58:32Jordi Hays?

  Cursor and Win Surf and,

• 1:58:34John Coogan?

  And cognition, Devin. And so when you're working with Devin, you kind of get in this flow state where you're just kind of sending vibes to Devin, and then Devin's doing the instantiation of your idea. And so a lot of people were saying that the new era of vibe coding is very like what Rick Rubin does, where Rick Rubin cannot play the instruments, but he has taste. And so your job as a vibe coder, which is a term that was coined by Andre Karpathy, one of the greatest programmers in history, he, uh, He says that like this vibe coding is what humans are uniquely good at. And so I was wondering what you're, what, what, do you see yourself as a vibe coder, a vibe aligner, a vibe driven podcaster?

• 1:59:15Speaker 04

  Have you, have you, I think everything we're talking about is actually related. I think I'm gonna do the weave, since the weave is what I'm known for.

• 1:59:21John Coogan?

  Hit me with the weave.

• 1:59:22Speaker 04

  You asked me like, do I watch Severance? No. Do I know what this fucking random term on the internet is? No. And then I just got done saying, I'm trying to be the greatest in the world at what I do. So like, those things are all related.

• 1:59:31John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:59:32Speaker 04

  If you actually care what you're doing, like you just basically do that over and over again. And the reason that doing the, the, like the amount of reps, right? I've been doing the podcast for almost eight years. I work on it seven days a week. I only think about it all the time.

• 1:59:44John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:59:44Speaker 04

  Patrick, uh, our friend from Invest, uh, Investec, that's Patrick's like, I have to figure out a way to make money where David turns, uh, I want to get paid every time David, for David's ability to turn every single conversation back to podcasts.

• 1:59:56John Coogan?

  That's true.

• 1:59:57Speaker 04

  And I think it's related to the question you just asked me and why Rick Rubin's so great at what he does is because the, the spending more time with it, dedicating reps and reps and reps and reps is like, you're gonna build an intuition that you might not even be able to explain to other people, but is excessively valuable. So yeah, I think vibe coding, intuition, taste, these are gonna be like the limiting factors in like the world of infinite leverage that we're going in. You know, I'm, I'm sorry, listen, I, I fucking deep research, you know, psychos for a living. Right?

• 2:00:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:25Speaker 04

  And I have to tell you, like, I've become like a daily active user of OpenAI's deep research tool.

• 2:00:30John Coogan?

  It's great.

• 2:00:30Speaker 04

  So like, eventually you just might be able to make your own founders podcast and whoever you want. So like, what is actually gonna differentiate me from somebody just saying, if you actually just wanna sit there and learn, you know, about a person that did something interesting.

• 2:00:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:42Speaker 04

  You know, you'd probably be able to do that with them.

• 2:00:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:45Speaker 04

  Um, and so I think the ability to make it interesting, entertaining, informative, um.

• 2:00:50John Coogan?

  The curation and the hustle. Yeah.

• 2:00:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, um, this just happened recently where. Uh, my friend Alex Tomlin said something that was very interesting. He's the founder of this company called Long Lake.

• 2:01:00John Coogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:01Speaker 04

  And um, and he's been uh, essentially, he's like, uh, he was talking about how like his, I, I analyzed the way one of his best friends, they were like roommate, roommates in college have been friends like fifteen years and I analyzed like the way he was hiring people at his company.

• 2:01:17John Coogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:17Speaker 04

  And Tom is like, see, this is why your podcast is so good because I've known that guy for fifteen fucking years and you put it into like four words and it has, makes me, gives me a fundamental understanding that even if I knew what was going on, you actually put the words into it so I can remember it and use it in my company. Um, and so, yeah, I, I think the, the, what you want to do is spend a lot of time doing this. Like I talked to you guys about, you know, your podcast is going to be way better if you do it five times a week instead of one times a week like you were doing it. And I think part of that, like vibing is just another word for intuition that you can't actually, and I think intuition is actually older, I think intuition is actually older than language. Um, and so I, I think it's like to be taken very, very seriously. We have these conversations in our group chat about like who's the best, we, we might have an argument or debate on Technology Brothers one day.

• 2:02:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:02Speaker 04

  About who the best founder of all time is. And, you know, I have my own list, but, you know, Steve Jobs, it doesn't matter who the fuck you are, he's definitely on the Mount Rushmore.

• 2:02:09John Coogan?

  It's his birthday today. He would be seventy.

• 2:02:12Speaker 04

  And if you go back and, and, and just read what he wrote and what he talked about later in his life, he's like intuition plays a huge role in my career. Like I'm guided by intuition. Rick Rubin is guided by intuition. I think a lot of these people are actually guided by things that they would have a hard time describing to another person.

• 2:02:29John Coogan?

  It's fantastic. Well, thanks for calling in. We're going to get back to the show. We'll talk to you soon, David.

• 2:02:33Speaker 04

  I, I love you guys.

• 2:02:34John Coogan?

  Talk to you soon. Love you too. Bye.

• 2:02:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, for those, for those that don't know, Senra, it was October or November.

• 2:02:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:42Jordi Hays?

  We were in, we were in Miami.

• 2:02:43John Coogan?

  We were in Miami, right before Halloween.

• 2:02:45Jordi Hays?

  And I distinctly remember standing outside of Faina. I don't think you were there.

• 2:02:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:50Jordi Hays?

  I asked Senra, because Senra at the time had been one of the few people that we had sent the RSS feed to and he was just listening to some of the episodes. And we said, should, how seriously should we take this? And he was like, you should take this deadly seriously. And we went back and we switched to three days a week, then we went to five days a week, and then we went live and the rest is history. So we basically have to credit everything to him. And it's amazing that he was the first official guest. We've been waiting to have the first official guest, but he was the only right person to have on the show. And one of the few people, like I've talked about this so much of life is knowing who to take advice from. And Senna is one of the few people that when he tells us to do

• 2:03:32Jordi Hays?

  something, we pay attention because he has not led us astray. And

• 2:03:38John Coogan?

  Decade of experience, really knows his stuff and really cares.

• 2:03:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:42John Coogan?

  Fantastic. Well, let's move on to the next post in the timeline. Sam Altman welcomed a little boy to the world. And congratulations to him. But Dylan Patel has a funny reaction. So we wanted to highlight here on the show. He says, I thought all these AI cultists weren't having kids because what's the point when we get super intelligence? If Sam Altman has a kid now, that means we ain't getting AGI. Sell everything. And I think he's having a lot of fun. But it is an interesting point, which is like, like, I, whenever I see an entrepreneur who has a kid, I do feel like their vision of the future is maybe a little bit more, I don't know, just humane than than than other people. They're a little bit less

• 2:04:26John Coogan?

  dystopian. You know, you can see this with Zuck when he had his kids. And there was all this questions about is Instagram bad for young kids? Is too addictive? Is it giving them body dysmorphia issues? And it's something where I genuinely believe that Zuck has enough control and enough money that he would sacrifice some shareholder value to create a product that is better for the world. And that's, and that's, and that's like, underpinned by the fact that he is thinking about the next generation, because your mind and your heart does change once you have kids. And so I'm excited. I want everyone in, obviously very pronatalist, want everyone in tech to have kids and think about the next generation and just be optimistic for the future. So, congrats to Sam and congrats to Dylan for putting a

• 2:05:11John Coogan?

  little dunk post on the timeline, but still having fun with it. Let's move on to Mike Maples. Did you see this post? Mike Mabels said, "A magical car at magic hour," and he posts his BMW Z8. And it's a fantastic sports car. And we love to see a capital allocator sharing what they do with all the money. And a Z8 is a fantastic choice. I don't know if you've ever driven one of those. Pretty rare.

• 2:05:33Jordi Hays?

  It looks like an amazing spec. Is that, I think it has tan, does it have tan seats or accents?

• 2:05:39John Coogan?

  But, uh, good choice, Mike. We love to, uh, we'd love to discuss it on the show. Call in. Let us know how it drives. Maybe we'll do an episode live in the car.

• 2:05:48Jordi Hays?

  I'm gonna use the restroom. You're gonna do this quick ad.

• 2:05:52John Coogan?

  Okay. Well, let's move on to a promoted post from our friends over at AdQuick. Out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising. Only AdQuick combines technology, out of home expertise and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe. And we got a very cool post from AdQuick here. Uh, so Ryan Peterson, good friend of mine, uh, CEO of Flexport, he says, "What's it like working in an industry that doesn't create the most beautiful images in the entire world?" And he posted four really incredible photos of, uh, shipping containers on ships. And, uh, there's just like these beautifully chaotic, very high contrast images. I couldn't,

• 2:06:37John Coogan?

  I, they looked AI-generated. He said they were just stock photos, but they're fantastic. And of course, this led to a lot of people quote tweeting his post with, um, photos of their industry, whether that's heavy industrial machinery or rockets or whatever they're working on. Um, and so AdQuick, uh, quotes it and says, "We couldn't tell you because we put an ad on the Sphere in Las Vegas." I love the Sphere. I think it's a, I think it's a really interesting monument, uh, and it depends on what you put on it. But AdQuick can help you put an ad on the Sphere. Um, it's very expensive, but I think if you get the, uh, if you get the positioning right and you pick the right, uh, image to put on the Sphere, it's, it can go mega, mega viral. You can take a video of it from a plane and get these really, really cool images. And, uh, obviously you need a, you

• 2:07:22John Coogan?

  need some link to your product being around. So,

• 2:07:27John Coogan?

  You know, if you're selling something that's like flat or square, probably not going to do well in the sphere, but you've seen a lot of basketballs and tennis balls and anything that's spherical. If you sell that, they should put Palantir on there. The Palantir is a, is a crystal ball. Put, put a big Palantir ad on, on the, the sphere and do it through Ad Quick because we love.

• 2:07:46Jordi Hays?

  Thank you to Ad Quick for sponsoring that bathroom break.

• 2:07:50John Coogan?

  Yeah. Let's go to some, some crypto related posts. Flynn says, remember when Jack Dorsey's first tweet was sold as an NFT for $2.9 million? I do remember that. It was crazy at the time.

• 2:08:02Jordi Hays?

  They gave it away.

• 2:08:05Jordi Hays?

  Was it, was, I, I actually didn't know this. Was, was Jack Dorsey the one selling it?

• 2:08:10John Coogan?

  I don't think so. I think it was literally somebody just screenshot it and put it on Polygon or whatever.

• 2:08:14Jordi Hays?

  That's amazing.

• 2:08:16John Coogan?

  Yeah. On Polygon.

• 2:08:18Jordi Hays?

  It wasn't actually tied to any.

• 2:08:20John Coogan?

  Nope. And that was the thing with, with these, they always say, oh, the NFTs make it scarce. And it was like, unless I screenshot it and then upload it to a different chain.

• 2:08:28Jordi Hays?

  Also make an NFT.

• 2:08:29John Coogan?

  Exactly. And, and so, you know, there was the whole critique of like, you could just right click, download the NFT, get the art for free. And that was true, but the real risk with the NFT things was that there, the, there was an unbounded supply and you could always do a new drop. And there's a related post here from Caleb Gammon. He says, quote tweeting somebody says, what a time for monkeys. Looking at the monkey lineup of movies from this year. Better Man featured a monkey, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Godzilla Kong, The Monkey, an R rated horror film that just debuted at number two. Monkey Man, which was a very cool action movie that I wanted to see, but I never got around to. And Wicked had a monkey in it. And Caleb Gammon says, I wish there had been some way

• 2:09:12John Coogan?

  for me to invest in apes three years ago. Of course, talking about the Bored Ape Yacht Club. And it's funny. But yeah, I mean, the, the problem was of course, right after the, the Bored Ape Yacht Club came, you know, the kitties and the dogs and the owl birds.

• 2:09:27Jordi Hays?

  I think one of, one of the challenges. So, so there was a moment in time on X specifically and Instagram to some degree and Discord and things like that, where having a $200,000 profile picture by nature of using an NFT that you got was a status symbol. It was like, and I was somewhat.

• 2:09:47Jordi Hays?

  Yuga Labs was a customer of mine and so I was generally, you know, I think what they've, there was a lot of really good execution in a bunch of ways, right? And one of, you know, my thinking was that NFTs could potentially be the sort of supercars or the watches of the internet.

• 2:10:04John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:10:04Jordi Hays?

  Because everybody that's online, it's sort of, if you're anonymous, it's hard to signal.

• 2:10:08John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:10:09Jordi Hays?

  Status, like, are you actually legit? And it's the same way, same, one of the same reasons that people will wear a nice watch, because they walk into a room and people are like, wow, he's got a RM on his wrist. Like, he must have done something in life to be able to, you know, purchase that. The challenge is that there's so much alpha in being yourself online and just using a regular picture of yourself, right?

• 2:10:30John Coogan?

  That's one take. The other is, what's the iron law of the universe? Easy come, easy go.

• 2:10:35Jordi Hays?

  True.

• 2:10:36John Coogan?

  And the problem I saw-

• 2:10:37Jordi Hays?

  Didn't Jeremy, Jeremy Gaffan popularize that?

• 2:10:39John Coogan?

  Popularized that term. And so what, what was the problem with the NFTs is that, yes, they could have been the supercars or the watches of the world.

• 2:10:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:48John Coogan?

  But like, what is the history of Ferrari?

• 2:10:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:50John Coogan?

  When you're driving a Ferrari-

• 2:10:51Jordi Hays?

  Part of the reason-

• 2:10:52John Coogan?

  It goes back decades.

• 2:10:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and part of the reason why it cost-

• 2:10:55John Coogan?

  Vacheron, you know, Adam or Poggi, these are 200-year-old companies. They've spent so long expert, like, branding themselves as craftsmen and-

• 2:11:04Jordi Hays?

  Not just branding, being craftsmen.

• 2:11:05John Coogan?

  Being craftsmen.

• 2:11:06Jordi Hays?

  Part of the reason, part of the reason a Ferrari costs what it costs is because they had to spend 100 years almost, like, figuring out how to-

• 2:11:11John Coogan?

  Even a casual car fan can tell you Enzo Ferrari. They know the person, right? And, and Lamborghini, the same thing. Oh, they built tractors and then they spun out. Pininfarina, like, there's all these different names in the, in the supercar, even in the watch world.

• 2:11:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:26John Coogan?

  Where there are stories about what made these brands great and those don't just happen over a weekend and a hyped launch, right?

• 2:11:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:35John Coogan?

  And so I would believe that an NFT profile picture, and I think that the, the, which ones is it? The pixelated guys, the CryptoPunks?

• 2:11:45Jordi Hays?

  CryptoPunks.

• 2:11:45John Coogan?

  Those have kind of stuck around a little bit.

• 2:11:47Jordi Hays?

  More Lindy.

• 2:11:48John Coogan?

  And I think that, I think that if they stick around for another 20 years, they could be really cool and they could be rare. And, and I, and I had one by Moxie Marlin Spike that I thought was really valuable because he wrote this blog post, he is a craftsman, he is this crazy hacker.

• 2:12:00Jordi Hays?

  You thought it was valuable?

• 2:12:01John Coogan?

  Yeah, well, I think it will be valuable as, because it tells a story, basically-

• 2:12:06Jordi Hays?

  We're early, bro, we're early. It's, it's, it's the prominence of the chain, bro. You just don't understand, like, I just, you don't appreciate fine technology.

• 2:12:16John Coogan?

  Okay, I don't actually own it.

• 2:12:19John Coogan?

  But, uh, but yeah, I mean, like a lot of art is driven by a story.

• 2:12:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:23John Coogan?

  Right? And so, and so I would believe that if someone stays in the trenches for the next two decades, building something, building a story around a piece of art that happens to live on chain, it could eventually be valuable.

• 2:12:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:34John Coogan?

  Beeple, I think Beeple, yeah, he sold the, the, the one photo for $69 million. I don't know if that'll ever get back there, but there are some works of Beeple that represent a certain moment in time on the internet and he does have that story. He put in the work like David Center. He produced a new, the new image every single day for a decade.

• 2:12:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:52John Coogan?

  Crazy.

• 2:12:52Jordi Hays?

  So the challenge, yeah, which, which his story is amazing and we should actually cover it more. I, I, we should see what he's posting.

• 2:12:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:59Jordi Hays?

  Today, the, um, the challenge is that so much of these sort of trophy, collectible objects, so much of the, the value is I own this one of one thing.

• 2:13:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:12Jordi Hays?

  From this specific moment in time, but I can look at it, I can touch it, can put it on my wall. And the issue with sort of digital collectibles is they haven't bridged that gap in a great way. Where if you buy a baseball that was thrown in the world series in this year, and it was the, it was the grand slam, you know, it was the ball that was hitting grand slam. You can put it on your desk and that brings you some amount of joy.

• 2:13:35John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:13:35Jordi Hays?

  We haven't seen that in the digital world where people, people were creating their sort of NFT museums. And anybody could set up.

• 2:13:42John Coogan?

  Bought a Beeple, he would send you a printed version with signed and it was like a very nice collectible. Did X just turn off the ability to use NFT profile pictures? You remember the hexagons? They're just gone?

• 2:13:52Jordi Hays?

  And Turner, Turner.

• 2:13:53John Coogan?

  He still has one. It's fake, it's the fake one, it's so funny.

• 2:13:57Jordi Hays?

  It's honestly brilliant.

• 2:13:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, it is one of his best bits. Very funny. Anyway, uh, enough, enough monkey news. Let's move on to, uh, the all in podcast had an interview with Patrick Collison and, uh, and.

• 2:14:10Jordi Hays?

  Patty.

• 2:14:11John Coogan?

  Patty Collison and the Stripe Boys, uh, straight out of Ireland, came by for a chat.

• 2:14:18John Coogan?

  And apparently Stripe has an internal inflation in an indicator that could potentially be more accurate than the CPI. So this is episode 216.

• 2:14:28Jordi Hays?

  Because it's not hyper political, probably.

• 2:14:31John Coogan?

  Yeah. And so Chamath says, one of the big things that we've talked about is how many backward revisions there are to everything from non-farm payrolls to GDP that they've become so unreliable. And also, it's very difficult for people that are transacting in market to know what to do. Have you guys ever thought about that? Patrick says, we did look at inflationary data over the last couple of years, and I think you can construct, and the team did construct, a pretty reliable leading indicator for inflation, because of course Stripe powers so many ecommerce sites. If they see prices going up, that's an indicator that inflation might be coming. And I feel a bit rueful with you asking the question, because I feel like on some level, we should have done it, like we should have published our data. Stripe is not a full cross-section of the economy.

• 2:15:14John Coogan?

  We're more biased towards online, and we're more biased towards innovative companies. So the interpretation can be a bit tricky, because of course, like, you know, the price of gasoline probably isn't captured in, or food probably isn't captured in Stripe data. And that's a huge part of what drives in true inflation, or the inflation that people feel, pain at the pump, pain at the grocery store. The second thing is that the Stripe business is growing so quickly and changing so fast that it's not necessarily representative of the economy. Having said that, I think in principle, you could draw some conclusions. And so we would like to share that openly, because I think it's a public good for there to be better and more reliable economic data. And I love that. I hope they do it. I think that'd be really, really cool.

• 2:15:55Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 2:15:56John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 2:15:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it was a great interview.

• 2:15:58John Coogan?

  And you see this with.

• 2:15:59Jordi Hays?

  It was interesting, they started bickering amongst themselves in front of the guests, which I was a little bit uncomfortable for everyone. Jason was trying to say that that people at Adderall, he's like, oh, I'm friends with a bunch of the board members.

• 2:16:13John Coogan?

  That was from that episode?

• 2:16:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:16:15John Coogan?

  That's hilarious.

• 2:16:16Jordi Hays?

  It is really.

• 2:16:17John Coogan?

  And the Stripe guys are just like, what are you guys doing? Yeah. Anyway, I love this. I think any big finance company should have an internal economist. We saw this with Ramp. R. Karazian has been posting data about what's happening in AI consumption and what AI companies are seeing upticks in corporate purchases across Ramp cards. Stripe could do the same thing, publish a lot of data. It's good content, helps build the brand, and it's informative. So, value to the reader. Let's move on to Reggie James. He says, "I think personal robotics will be a lot more cute than the humanoid form that can clearly beat me up." And so, clearly triggered by the, by the super scary clone robot.

• 2:16:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:58John Coogan?

  And he, I think he said something else about, you know, you want to be able to throw a computer out the window if you need to.

• 2:17:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. This, this ties back. I mean, I posted, I think, Saturday that I want there to be basically the Robot Olympics, but focused on extreme sports. Like, I want to see robots do MMA. I want to see them do base jumping, cliff diving, all these sort of things that humans do that are, you know, at major risk to life. The robots should have to do them as well. So, let's, let's make it happen.

• 2:17:31John Coogan?

  Well, let's move on to our last sponsor of the day. Eight Sleep, baby. Let's do it. Nights that fuel your best days. Turn any bed into the ultimate sleeping experience. And we got a post here by Longevity Maximalist. Eight Sleep just dropped their first ever supplement, a melatonin-free formula. They worked with Peter Attia, using 600 million hours of sleep data. Studies show users fell asleep 34% faster and feel 64% better during the day, a mix of tryptophan, valerian root, ashwagandha, and cherry. So, go check that out. And of course, get an Eight Sleep. But if you want a hat like this, send us, use our code TBPN, and then send us your receipt and we'll forward along.

• 2:18:12Jordi Hays?

  Okay. The other thing, the other thing I want to make note of, so we are, John and I are now entering a competition of who's going to get the best, the best average sleep score.

• 2:18:20John Coogan?

  How'd we do?

• 2:18:21Jordi Hays?

  Over the next year. And what I want to ask them is see if we can have the community opt into it and then share data somehow so that we can all track it. Because I'm sure, I mean, I've just been putting up ridiculous numbers. I mean, I've been really, the beauty of tracking it like this is that you do. You do, you just automatically are more inclined to get to bed a little bit earlier.

• 2:18:42John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 2:18:43Jordi Hays?

  I put up 99 last night.

• 2:18:44John Coogan?

  Oh, you beat me. I got 94. How much time did you sleep?

• 2:18:48Jordi Hays?

  I slept seven hours and 31 minutes.

• 2:18:50John Coogan?

  Oh, I got you beat there. I got eight and a half.

• 2:18:52Jordi Hays?

  That's crazy.

• 2:18:53John Coogan?

  Insane.

• 2:18:54Jordi Hays?

  That's actually.

• 2:18:54John Coogan?

  That's why I got docked because I fell asleep earlier.

• 2:18:56Jordi Hays?

  So, so the challenge. So, so, no, so the challenge is everybody thinks they're getting.

• 2:19:01John Coogan?

  Yeah, eight hours.

• 2:19:02Jordi Hays?

  Eight hours because they're going to bed at 10 and waking up at, you know, six, but.

• 2:19:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:06Jordi Hays?

  It's actually more like they kind of got in bed at like 10:15 and they fell asleep at 10:50 and then blah, blah, blah. Maybe they woke up in the middle of the night. All of a sudden they're not getting that, that eight hours. So.

• 2:19:19Jordi Hays?

  Anyways.

• 2:19:20John Coogan?

  Well, let's move on to another, another segment from the.

• 2:19:24Jordi Hays?

  By the way, I got eight minutes. I gotta get on with our CPA.

• 2:19:26John Coogan?

  Yeah, I got it.

• 2:19:27Jordi Hays?

  Handle business.

• 2:19:29John Coogan?

  So, Dave Friedberg at the All In Podcast has quote here from Grant. He says, I have a thesis that AI more than anything unlocks deeply complicated projects for humans that would otherwise be infeasible. On a daily basis, we mine to the center of the earth and we get cool rare earth minerals from 500 miles down. We go to space and colonize the moon and all these crazy things because AI unlocks all these large scale projects that would require millions of people. Paraphrasing from an epic vision from Friedberg. I love it.

• 2:19:58Jordi Hays?

  That's amazing.

• 2:19:59John Coogan?

  Great vision.

• 2:19:59Jordi Hays?

  That's amazing.

• 2:20:00John Coogan?

  Super positive. And then all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, like you want to build a company to do something aggressive and how helpful would it be to have 100,000 PhDs on your team?

• 2:20:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:10John Coogan?

  And it's just like, oh yeah, we need to calculate the trajectory of this rocket.

• 2:20:13Jordi Hays?

  We have that today. Like we, we basically have.

• 2:20:17John Coogan?

  We're getting close.

• 2:20:17Jordi Hays?

  We're getting close.

• 2:20:18John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 2:20:19Jordi Hays?

  If you're leveraging the models at the extreme.

• 2:20:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:22Jordi Hays?

  You basically have access to as many PhDs as you want.

• 2:20:25John Coogan?

  Yeah, but you still need to puppeteer them and it's still, it's almost, it's still very in the centaur mode.

• 2:20:29Jordi Hays?

  That's an, that's a, that's an opportunity for great managers.

• 2:20:32John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, I find myself right now, I typically fire off like one deep research query at a time, but every once in a while I'll do two tabs. And then it's like, okay, I got a team under me, but what does it look like when I have a thousand under me?

• 2:20:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:44John Coogan?

  Like that will be very interesting and orchestrating that.

• 2:20:46Jordi Hays?

  Each other.

• 2:20:47John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 2:20:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:48John Coogan?

  Very, very cool. So very exciting.

• 2:20:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:49John Coogan?

  Uh, let's move on to Kip Mock. He says, I'm a professional automotive painter. By the way, we might have a job for you. We're looking to paint a car. Uh, he's got a beautiful Porsche here and he threw the Velar Atomix logo right on it. And

• 2:21:03Jordi Hays?

  All in.

• 2:21:04John Coogan?

  Zach says Gundo corporate merch is getting out of control. Yeah, I don't think you get one of these for being a customer.

• 2:21:10Jordi Hays?

  You gotta earn it.

• 2:21:11John Coogan?

  But maybe if you buy a nuclear reactor from them, you might just get.

• 2:21:14Jordi Hays?

  Throw in a Cayman.

• 2:21:15John Coogan?

  A Cayman. That'd be fantastic. Well, congrats to Kip and it looks fantastic. Good detailing work. We love to see it. Let's give a shout out to Nicole.

• 2:21:23Jordi Hays?

  That's a, that's a Gundo mentality, by the way, of just, I want my logo on my car. I'm just gonna do it.

• 2:21:29John Coogan?

  Yep, totally.

• 2:21:30Jordi Hays?

  And that's an American mentality.

• 2:21:31John Coogan?

  It's fantastic. Now, maybe switch it out for a Mustang. If you want to be real American about it. Let's go to Nicole Wiskoff. She hit 100,000 followers on X. Congratulations to Nicole.

• 2:21:43Jordi Hays?

  Hey, Si's gone. We haven't hit the gong.

• 2:21:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, we haven't hit the gong. What do we got?

• 2:21:49Jordi Hays?

  Whoa.

• 2:21:49John Coogan?

  That was not good.

• 2:21:55Jordi Hays?

  It's, it's not a.

• 2:21:56John Coogan?

  Here we go. There we go. The gong.

• 2:21:59Jordi Hays?

  For Nicole.

• 2:22:00John Coogan?

  Very good. Nice big ring. They say, thank you to everyone who's been here from the start. Would have never guessed that a single app would help me build a pretty cool venture firm in record time and a pretty firm backbone.

• 2:22:14John Coogan?

  My first post in September of 21 was hard to launch, was to launch, was to hard launch a $5 million fund one so far. From there to now, so far to go. Stick around. So congrats to Nicole. We'd love to see it.

• 2:22:29Jordi Hays?

  Maybe potential, we're bringing back brother of the week.

• 2:22:32John Coogan?

  We gotta bring.

• 2:22:32Jordi Hays?

  Brother of the week here.

• 2:22:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:34Jordi Hays?

  Speedrunning September 2021 from a $5 million fund to a $50 million fund and amassing an army of 100K followers in that time. And she's starting to build out a car collection, which she'll have to talk about on the show.

• 2:22:49John Coogan?

  And a spacious home as well.

• 2:22:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:52John Coogan?

  And a family with a kid, which we love.

• 2:22:53Jordi Hays?

  Doing it all.

• 2:22:54John Coogan?

  Let's go to Kenneth Castle. I think you'll love this one. He says, we still haven't seen one dripped out humanoid SMH. Low tan banger. Loved it. I thought it was so funny. And then Aaron Francis says, haven't we? And posted zuck, which is a little silly, but he does seem less robotic lately. But yeah, you know, this seems like a perfect project for 1X. I feel like 1X, they're hanging out with Lil B, the bass god. They should, they should throw some drip on that guy. Call up Reggie, get some, get some fashion advice. Hip city reg would definitely help you get your humanoid dripped out. And I think that could also go viral, you know, people are gonna get sick of the humanoid stunts. We've seen it fold laundry. We've seen it make coffee. Let's see it, you know, do a runway walk at Paris Fashion Week.

• 2:23:37Jordi Hays?

  I want to see you do a kickflip, wearing, wearing Balenciaga.

• 2:23:41John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, for sure, for sure. Let's go to Andrew Reed over at Sequoia. He says, always suspicious of young people who are points guys. Same with tax obsessive. Lack appreciation of opportunity cost of your attention. It's a good point. I've never been into points. My, my hack is, you know, I have one friend who's into it. Once every five years, I get dinner with him or something. I say, what credit card should I get? He says, this one. And I said, okay. And then I use that for the next half decade. What are your thoughts on points? Do you optimize?

• 2:24:13Jordi Hays?

  I've never been into it. Yeah. Never been big into that world. I like them. I like that I just spend money and then eventually I just get a little gold as an Irishman, you know, there's nothing, nothing better, right? But, but yeah, just, just somebody that's a founder that is potentially building, you know, if they're raising venture capital, that means they're doing everything they can to build a, you know, billion dollar company. Focus on the billion dollar company. And in your free time, you know, if you just find points so fascinating that you want to spend your free time doing that, but I would say touch grass instead. Yeah. Or come on our podcast and just yap. There's better races. Higher leverage opportunities.

• 2:24:59John Coogan?

  Well, let's close with Matt Turk. He says, "Marketing that doesn't work for B2B startups. Paid social ads, email marketing campaigns, gated white papers, endless website rebuilds. What does work? CEO is chief marketer, genuine, original social presence, relentless content production, smaller in-person events like dinners, online, small-scale events like webinars. A lot of B2B marketers, CMO, VP marketing surprisingly seem to be stuck in that first world." What do you think?

• 2:25:28Jordi Hays?

  Well said. I mean, we've talked about this before. Every legacy company does, for the most part, doesn't understand X. They're still using links, hashtags, they're posting just, they're posting blogs that link out to other places. It's like, shows a total lack of understanding. I think, I think what this comes down to is just understanding the platforms and what they want. So X wants CEO, like founder-led brands. They want genuine social presence, not, "Hey, here's 10 ways that you can do this thing," whatever. Relentless, right? So the, the big issue right now with, with marketers is that they don't realize

• 2:26:10Jordi Hays?

  the volume. You can make a great piece of content, put it out there, but you need a system to create this ridiculous volume if you want to be competitive in the feeds. And then I think smaller, you know, founder series, founder dinners, things like that, were getting memed in 2021, 2022, because it felt like 20% of all venture dollars were going to them, but they still work in terms of building. The key, though, is to actually make sure that it's an amazing ad. So if you get 10 founders together, better spend five minutes aggressively talking about your business and not just hoping, "Oh yeah, people are going to enjoy the food and convert later." It's like, no, you gotta really, gotta really sell.

• 2:26:48John Coogan?

  That's a great place to end the show. Thanks for tuning in. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Follow us on YouTube, follow us on X, and we will see you tomorrow. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.

• 2:27:00Jordi Hays?

  Thank you, folks. Can't wait for tomorrow.

• 2:27:03John Coogan?

  Can't wait.

• 2:27:03Jordi Hays?

  We could do another four hours right now, let's be honest.

• 2:27:07John Coogan?

  But we gotta go. Gotta get on calls.

• 2:27:10Jordi Hays?

  Gotta get on with Taipei.

• 2:27:11John Coogan?

  We will talk to you tomorrow. Bye.

• 2:27:13Jordi Hays?

  See ya.