How Jack Altman Hit 100x Growth With Uncapped: AI, VC, Founders

Jack Altman https://x.com/jaltma built Lattice into a multi-billion-dollar category leader, raising hundreds of millions along the way. Now he runs Alt Capital, backing 25 bold AI startups out of the $150M AUM fund III. This includes existing portfolio companies like Antares, Owner.com, David AI, Retell AI and more. In addition to that, we breakdown Jack’s new podcast Uncapped, which recently reached escape velocity in just 14 episodes after interviews. Uncapped is a podcast where Jack interviews founders and investors he genuinely admires, using those conversations to publicly explore the inner workings of venture capital. Legendary guests include Marc Andreessen, Keith Rabois, Gary Tan, Josh Kopelman, Elad Gil, Aaron Levie, Qasar Younes, Elad Gil, Adam Guild, and of course, his brother Sam Altman. In this episode with Molly O’Shea https://x.com/MollySOShea, he dives into: • why there’s no such thing as a “right strategy” in VC • how your board shapes your long-term trajectory • what AGI could mean for our world, and more (00:00) Trailer (00:59) Welcome Jack Altman! (02:12) Founder to VC & now Podcaster (05:48) Learnings from hosting Uncapped (12:50) The Marc Andreessen Podcast (14:10) Brex’s Full-Stack Product Suite (18:24) Securing an allocation in hyper competitive rounds (20:04) What is it like being a founder in today’s environment? (24:13) Will model companies grow even bigger? (33:50) Sam Altman & The AGI Timeline (39:44) Are energy companies the next gold rush? (43:13) Silicon Valley: More Talent Acquisitions Abound (44:40) Alt Capital’s Investment Portfolio (46:40) What’s it like being a high performer? (48:00) Espresso obsession & Pokémon cards? Brought to you by: Brex https://brex.com/sourcery—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, and travel. As a Sourcery listener, you can unlock up to $500 toward Brex travel or $300 in cash back, plus exclusive perks to help you move even faster: https://brex.com/sourcery Kalshi https://kalshi.com/sourcery—The largest prediction market and the only legal platform in the US where people can trade directly on the outcomes of future events: https://kalshi.com/sourcery Fourthwall https://fourthwall.com/—The #1 way to sell merch online — Fourthwall is the easiest way to launch a fully branded merch store—used by big brands like MKBHD, Acquired, & even the Smithsonian. 100+ products. No upfront cost. Visit Fourthwall to start today: https://fourthwall.com/ Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc/ Connect with us: 1. Jack Altman: https://x.com/jaltma 2. Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 3. Sourcery: https://x.com/sourceryvc

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There are companies now that look like they could become so large. OpenAI, SpaceX, Stripe, Databricks, Androl. That could be the answer that solves this venture arrogance score riddle. The temperature on the whole market has definitely risen. If you're Meta and you think another trillion dollars can be unlocked by a particular team, your willingness to pay is very, very high for that. I think the model companies will be ridiculously big. It's also what I think is the best place for venture in 2025 to be investing because you're basically investing behind the fundamental belief that AI is going to start to do jobs.

• 0:31Molly O'Shea?

  You recently had Sam Altman on your pod. Were you nervous?

• 0:35Speaker 00

  No, definitely not.

• 0:38Molly O'Shea?

  Why?

• 0:39Speaker 00

  Why would I be nervous?

• 0:40Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  It's my brother.

• 0:42Molly O'Shea?

  He's your brother?

• 0:43Speaker 00

  Stop.

• 0:44Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 0:45Speaker 00

  You're joking. Would this have changed the line of questioning if this had been connected before?

• 0:49Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask about like OpenAI and like, what do you think is gonna happen? When is AGI gonna happen?

• 0:54Speaker 00

  It's gonna happen. They're doing great.

• 0:56Molly O'Shea?

  It's gonna happen? Jack Altman, welcome to Sorcery.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  What's up? How's it going? It's nice to be on this side for once.

• 1:03Molly O'Shea?

  I know. I couldn't think of any perfect, more perfect way to bring someone else on than like another podcaster.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  No prep. It's great.

• 1:11Molly O'Shea?

  No prep at all?

• 1:12Speaker 00

  I love being here.

• 1:13Molly O'Shea?

  Well, hopefully we can like make some sort of cross collab with Uncapped because now you're crushing it.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know. I'm doing something.

• 1:20Molly O'Shea?

  You're doing something.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  It's fun though.

• 1:21Molly O'Shea?

  I want to get into this though. It's like, what is the strategy behind it?

• 1:24Speaker 00

  I didn't have a strategy. I don't know that I have one. I think on some level I was just like, it's a fun thing to do. I had done a bunch of podcasts in the past, like during Lattice and stuff, but I was sort of just like, this seems fun. And it's like a good excuse to meet interesting people. And I'm a year and a half into venture and I was like, this is like a good excuse to get to learn from people who do venture. And I'll be able to ask them a bunch of questions that would be super awkward for me to ask them if I was like seeing them for coffee. But now because the cameras are on, I get to just like grill them. So I didn't really have, and I don't think I really do have a strategy per se. I'm sort of just following my interest.

• 2:04Molly O'Shea?

  So you're newer to venture. Max mentioned that. He's also newer to venture. Shout out to Max. Thanks for some great questions. The cooler Altman brother. So you just kind of started back into this world of VC. How are you thinking about the transition between like founder to VC?

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Talking about the podcast, one of the things that has struck me, talking to all these awesome people, is that there's a lot of ways to do it. And for every great person who tells you that the right strategy is X, there's somebody who will tell you that the right strategy is the opposite of X. And so to me, that's actually pretty liberating to realize that you can be really good or probably really bad at this job in any way that you want to do it. And so my sort of guiding principle on most professional things is to sort of go towards what interests me and what I like. And I think that like, that'll end up making me become more likely to get good at it.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  So, you know, it's evolved even over the last 18 months, but like, that's sort of my conclusion is there's like, no right or wrong way to do it. And as long as you, you know, find your path and hone something in, there ought to be a way to do well.

• 3:18Molly O'Shea?

  And you're learning from some of the greatest VCs. So far, you've had headliners, like if we had a Coachella lineup, these would all be headliners. You've had Marc Andreessen, most recently.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  He's great.

• 3:29Molly O'Shea?

  Keith Rabois, Josh Koberman, loved the hot take in Josh Koberman's, Eli Gill, Sean McGuire, Gary Tan. What was it like with each of them? Like, what's your main takeaway?

• 3:41Speaker 00

  They're sort of like what I was mentioning, like, they're all so different. And even among those names, you know, like, what the hot take that you're referencing, I'm guessing from Josh, at first round was basically around like the venture arrogance score and that like, big fun math, just like dozen math. But then you hear perspectives from people with much larger funds who, you know, have a totally different take on things. And there's people in the middle, and we can, you know, talk about that too, where, you know, Marc Andreessen mentioned that there's basically this barbell where you can either be really small, you can be really big, the middle is not there. But I had a guest recently that I haven't posted yet, who, you know, we didn't talk numbers, but I would say is in the middle of the barbell and is like a really good investor. So.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  One of my sort of just takes from meeting all these people is basically that there's just so many ways to build companies to do venture. But each of them had their own like really interesting thoughts on everything.

• 4:37Molly O'Shea?

  So there's no distinctive strategy. It's just you have to have.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  I think you have to have a strategy, but there's many strategies that can work. But I do think you have to have a strategy.

• 4:45Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. How do you go from such strong opinions to applying that to your own fund?

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Two things. One, the way I think about learning from people, and this is how I thought when I was founder building Lattice, it's how I'm thinking now that I'm very fresh eyed into venture and consider myself fully in learning phase. But even still, I'm not looking for advice from people in order to actually dictate what I'm gonna do. I'm just looking to be as informed as I possibly can, but then I'm gonna like follow my own kind of, you know, goals and principles about things. I'd also say that in general, I think in some ways, all of this strategy stuff is a little bit over-determined. And on some level, you either invested in a great company with a meaningful

• 5:33Speaker 00

  size, or you didn't. And I think that it's easy to get lost in all this other stuff. But what it really comes down to is like, did you back special companies? And if you did, it kind of will work out. And if you didn't, it kind of won't work out.

• 5:47Molly O'Shea?

  I want to get into more specifics from the pod with Mark later on. But first, I want to bring up some of the founders you've had on as well. You've had great founders. I'm sure some of them are portfolio companies. You've had Aaron Levie of Box, Adam Gil of Owner. And then you've also had someone named Sam Altman. So what have you learned from the founders?

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. And there was, and Castor at Applied was amazing, too. To me, talking to the founders is actually where I learn the most, most of the time. I really love talking to venture investors, too. But it's sort of like. You know, there's this really great quote about like, you know, when artists get together, they talk about turpentine. When like art critics get together, they talk about like form and function and whatever. And I think that's very true. And I think there's a lot to learn from sort of both altitudes. But to me, the founders who are running companies are the ones who are close to the metal and who really understand the market in like the much more nuanced ways.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  And they also go so much deeper in a particular area. So like Jordan from Antares, you know, talking about nuclear and unbelievable depth, or Adam at Owner, who is just like unbelievably obsessed with this one particular, you know, vertical. And he knows his customers at restaurants inside and out, or Caseret Applied, who is just, you know, a total student of company building. Obviously, Sam knows about, you know, AI. And, you know, he kind of is operating at both a high level and, you know, very, very close to the company, just given the shape of OpenAI. But for me, those, those conversations, I just learned so much because you're talking like a true expert.

• 7:26Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, it makes a huge difference. I feel like when I have VCs on, like, I don't need to prepare as much. Like, I feel like I know the language kind of well. But when you get on with a founder, there's such extreme expertise behind it.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:39Molly O'Shea?

  You have to do real research. You have to like be able to follow up with questions.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 7:42Molly O'Shea?

  Like, it's kind of hard.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  It's also a big part of what informs my view, that it's very unlikely for VCs to help in ways that have to do with the actual company.

• 7:51Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Or like the product. I think like what, like, there are things you can do, but VCs by nature are like, you know, a mile wide and inch deep. And founders are like, you know, the inverse of that. And so I think it's really hard to, you know, there are certain situations where a specialist investor knows a ton. It's really hard to know more than great founders about what they're doing.

• 8:13Molly O'Shea?

  Conceptually speaking, I feel like VC is always related to sports. But what you're building is kind of like a highlight reel of your conversations. And whether it's like with the investors or like with the founders and like grasping a point in time. Do you, do you think back of like how each of these conversations draws out to a greater narrative? Because having a podcast now is like, is a really unique thing. And it's also kind of a special experience to like capture these moments.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  Totally. It's really lucky. And It's coming together in a funny way because now as time has gone on, I, you know, and I've done, I guess, like 12 or 13 of these, I'm seeing a lot of common threads between people and like similar ideas keep coming up, but with like different takes. And so I am getting to build a little bit of like a through line. Like I'm not trying to connect the dots, you know, too early here and I want to talk to like way more people. And, um, but yeah, I do think there's, there's, there's something there. I think, um, I think one of the things that I've enjoyed the most is that, you know, I haven't published it yet, but like I talked to Vinod recently and the history that he has in Silicon Valley and just the depth

• 9:23Speaker 00

  of knowledge he has just earned over decades. I really enjoy that. And so, you know, like I'm relatively speaking early to all of this in my career. And, um, I think getting to hear from people who have lived through many of these cycles and changes and, um, that they can still be so optimistic about the future after all of that time. It's like really, it's really inspiring. So, yeah.

• 9:48Molly O'Shea?

  What's the most critical thing you've learned from founders?

• 9:52Speaker 00

  For me, when I think about what I've learned from the founder podcasts, assuming that's what you mean, it's less about the things they've said and more about observing what they're like when they talk about their companies. And, um, these great founders are just so, um, they're so, they're so obsessed. They're so like inspired about what they themselves are doing. And they have such, um, there's like a clarity and confidence in what they're building that I find like gives me a lot of energy. And so I think it's less learning about like specifically what they've said and just kind of like the, you know, gestalt, gestalt, however you, what is that word?

• 10:31Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  I'm gonna start that over.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  And more just about the bigger picture of like the way that they talk and think. Um, that's what really gets me inspired.

• 10:41Molly O'Shea?

  Drawing out the broader podcast landscape, we are, we might be in bubble territory.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  There's a lot of podcasts, yeah.

• 10:48Molly O'Shea?

  I kind of.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm part of the problem.

• 10:50Molly O'Shea?

  You're part of the problem. I'm part of the problem. We're all the problem.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  It's fun though.

• 10:54Molly O'Shea?

  It is so fun. The macro kind of like theme of podcasts right now is everybody has a podcast. OpenAI just started one, Stripe just started one, you have one, I think Sam started one, Mark has one, Turpentine, A16Z, everyone, everyone has one. What's your perception on this? Like, is this bubble gonna last? Like, where does this go?

• 11:20Speaker 00

  Well, there's two possible answers. One would be like, there are too many and everybody needs to chill. And like, people are not, there's only so many hours in the day and people don't wanna watch more podcasts. Which is, well, like, you know, I had a lot of people tell me that when I was starting. I was like, yeah, I don't care, it's fine. Like, if people don't watch it, it's okay. So there's that. And I guess on some level, like, for all those podcasts, it's a little bit, you know, it's kind of low stakes on some level. Like, so there's that. But the other side would be like, you know, there's also a lot of restaurants, but there's a lot of people who like, need to eat food. And there's a lot of days that are gonna eat food. And so like, it's possible that podcasts are similar, where it's just like, people enjoy them and there's actually not enough yet. There should be 10 times more. So, I don't really know.

• 12:04Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know either. But what stood out to me about yours is like, it seems like you genuinely enjoy it. Like, it seems like there's an authentic love and like, excitement around the conversations you're having, the quality of it. Like, you started out and you put out really high quality product. Like, the set's really good, the conversations, the questions, the guests, like, it's all great. And then recently, you had Mark on. And it seems like from that, you've hit your escape velocity and you're really growing.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Well, anytime he talks, there's just so much to pull from it. It's like, when I was talking to him, I was like, this is unbelievable. Cause I'm like, talking to like, an informed tech positive encyclopedia. You know, it was amazing. So, it makes sense that anytime he talks, like, a lot of people wanna hear it.

• 12:50Molly O'Shea?

  Were you nervous?

• 12:51Speaker 00

  No, I wasn't nervous, it was fun. I loved it. I could've gone for two more hours.

• 12:55Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was great.

• 12:56Molly O'Shea?

  How do you prepare for that?

• 12:58Speaker 00

  I didn't, I don't, so I actually don't prepare that much for these. By the time I'm inviting people, I mostly already am so interested in so many things about them that I don't need to do that much. And what I've found in general also is that like, I don't stick with my questions anyway. So I make them, you know, but I kind of get lost during the conversation and, you know. To me, following what the person's talking about and then going deeper with them is, that's what I want to do. And so my North Star for this whole thing is just like, I'm gonna have the conversation I want to have. I'm not like trying to take it in a certain place. And for me, most of the time, what I, the conversation I want to have evolves halfway through it. So, so I've ended up not preparing that much. I think also similarly though, like there's some people

• 13:41Speaker 00

  who, when they like do public speaking, they need to like prepare every word and practice it ten times. There's some people don't prepare at all. I actually think the worst is like the middle ground. So I'm kind of always been on the far, the far unprepped side.

• 13:54Molly O'Shea?

  Going back to the barbell.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  Back to the barbell. It's all about barbells.

• 13:58Molly O'Shea?

  It's all about barbells.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  It's like two by two matrix. Like gotta have some picture people can think about whether it's true or not.

• 14:05Molly O'Shea?

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• 14:50Molly O'Shea?

  Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, ServiceTitan, Hims, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid, trust and use Brex. Start today at brex.com/sorcery. That's B-R-E-X dot com slash sorcery. I want to go now into Mark's pod with you. It was super dense. Like you're entirely correct. Like it was super dense. I think I've listened to it like twice now. Cause I'm like, what is?

• 15:17Speaker 00

  Happening. We can talk about multiple of of the topics, but like, I guess let's start with the barbell one. Yeah. What were your biggest takeaways with that? I really like the positioning that he puts around it. Like, it puts shape to this concept, and it's a good, it's a good framing around Josh Koppelman's that like, you know, there's this venture math thing that was kind of posited first, that like, the funds kind of seem too big. And you know, if you're a $10 billion fund and you want to get a 3X, like, where are you going to find it? Like, you got to own 10% of SpaceX, like, good luck. And that that makes sense. But I do think that there's, there's another narrative on the, on the other side that I think I actually believe in as well. So when I think

• 16:01Speaker 00

  about firms like, you know, Andreessen is amazing, I think about Founders Fund, I think about Thrive, think about Green Oaks, I think about these firms that are able to get huge positions in companies that are big. And the sort of, the contrarian bet, let's say, for them, is not that they believe this company is good and the less, the rest of the market believes that it's bad. It's that they believe harder that it's good. And so if you're investing a lot of money in Androl, 30 billion, everybody believes Androl's a great company now. But how hard do you believe that? Do you believe it's going to be a $300 billion company and so on? And so I do think that there is this, there's this sense in which there are companies

• 16:42Speaker 00

  now that look like they could become so large, OpenAI, SpaceX, Stripe, Databricks, Androl, many more. That could be the answer that sort of like solves this venture arrogant score riddle. And if the strategy includes just placing huge bets on those companies later, the math could all work. And so to me, I liked that framing. The part I'm least sure about with the framing is that the middle shouldn't exist. That I don't know if I have clarity on that yet. The reason is, I still think that a series A or B or C founder, for the most part, is going to pick a partner that they really like, a brand that they trust and respect, a team that they think can help them, and like, a price that works.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  And I don't know if the founder cares whether that fund is 200 million, 1 billion, 3 billion, 7 billion. Like, I just don't think that the middle can't exist necessarily. But, you know, it's a provoking thought.

• 17:35Molly O'Shea?

  What's, could you explain more on the middle? Like, what is this middle ground that he's talking about?

• 17:39Speaker 00

  Well, I think basically what he's saying is there's, there's specialists, which either means that your special, you know, your specialty is a sector or a stage or a way that you help companies. And so you're like a boutique, you know, like this is like the Gucci and the way he described it. Or you're hyperscale. You are resources and your power and your, you know, access to, you know, the world, your access to the government, et cetera, because you have all this institutional strength, which I buy that too. And I think what he's talking about is that in the middle, you're trading off both the ability to be a specialist and you're not big enough to be, you know, institutionally powerful like that, which is, which is a believable, a believable description of the world.

• 18:24Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think it takes to win one of these hyper competitive rounds now?

• 18:29Speaker 00

  I think it's different in each case. There's not a single threaded answer. There's a few, there's a few answers that I think the, the best founders that have all the choices in the world can have. For some of them, they pick based on, you know, round dynamics and price and valuation and low dilution and all the rest of it. And I think that that's actually like, there's nothing wrong with that, particularly if you're an experienced founder and you're like, my VCs aren't going to help me that much anyway. And my company's brand is already bigger than, you know, most of these VC brands. And so I don't need to even have theirs help me get forward. It's pretty rational, you know, so long as you think the money's not like reputationally, you know, damaging or the investor's going to be

• 19:12Speaker 00

  a pain in the ass for you or whatever. So that's one bucket. Another is people picking based on brand, which I think is super logical as well. You need to hire people. You need to, you know, win customers. You need to get downstream capital. You need to basically just like take the action out of the room and have an aura that your company's the leader in the space. And so having Sequoia do your round implies that very smart investors who themselves have lots of options picked you. So I think that's one. And then sometimes people pick based on who they like, you know, who do they connect with? Who do they want to go through the journey with? Who do they want to be the person that they're going to call on the phone every other day as a board member? Who do they think can be useful to them? And I think all those reasons can happen.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  I think different founders have just like different tastes and sensibilities on this stuff and there's not a right answer.

• 20:00Molly O'Shea?

  Vibes.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. Vibes.

• 20:04Molly O'Shea?

  Well, you're also a successful founder. You raised hundreds of millions of dollars. This was, you know, a couple of years ago. Now, fast forward, like, the environment's totally different. If you were in the founder's seat today, do you think you'd be pulled by one way or another?

• 20:19Speaker 00

  I think I now would be, um, I would be mostly focused on people I liked and terms that I liked, to be honest. I would still want to have, you know, good firm brands and everything like that, but, um, one of my learnings with Lattice was that, like, you're in particularly your board, all your investors, but mostly your board members, that's where you're really picking somebody who's going to be with you as a through line through the company. And it's hard to see it when it happens because you're just in a frenzied round and you're just like, there's like, you know, competing term sheets and you're, you know, when you're on the, when you're on the, the good side of that as a founder, it's like, you know, it's a bit of a rush. It's also a bit stressful. And, um, it turns

• 21:04Speaker 00

  out, though, that what you're picking is somebody who's going to be there with you longer than most of your employees are going to be with you. And you're going to talk to them about stuff that you're not going to talk to your employees about because you can't. So, um, I think I would, that would matter a lot to me if I did it again.

• 21:18Molly O'Shea?

  Most founders, early-stage founders, don't have that kind of foresight. What advice would you give to them for picking board members?

• 21:26Speaker 00

  My advice on it would basically be like, um, it doesn't matter so much at your seat, to be honest, because those investors are with you, you know, tightly for a couple of years, but in the fullness of time over the course of the company, it's, it's less. But I think once you get to your board, I would just make sure it's somebody that you want to spend time with. Because you spend, over the years, you end up talking to them about a lot of high-stakes stuff, a lot of times.

• 21:52Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. You also mentioned terms. Terms right now are crazy and valuations are crazy.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:01Molly O'Shea?

  What is your sweet spot for, you know, packaging up a deal?

• 22:05Speaker 00

  You mean like where am I investing?

• 22:06Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  I'm doing seed and Series A. I've been doing more Series As lately for whatever reasons, but, um, I'm going roughly early-stage because my fund's not that big. I do think terms are crazy. And however, I'm not sure that I'm not sure that this vintage isn't really good. You know, and maybe I'm drinking the cool. I'm trying to like only cautiously be super optimistic, but I my instinct is that I want to be really optimistic right now because I do believe that we're in a super cycle. And I do believe that this is like, you know, Sam called it a scientific discovery. And I do believe that and that this like, a real thing happened that's unlocking a huge amount of innovation and value. And like, you know, millions of jobs are

• 22:49Speaker 00

  going to be done by AI, which I don't see that as being replaced by. I mean, I think they're going to be done by. And then that means people are going to unlock more economic value on top of that. So I'm really bullish. But, you know, at the same time, I'm like, these valuations are are high. Private markets and public markets are kind of disjointed. And so like, there's a sober part of me, too. But I'm pretty optimistic still.

• 23:11Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. How do you price that?

• 23:14Speaker 00

  I don't know. You tell me. I have no idea.

• 23:16Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  I felt, you know, you on some level, the market's the market. And we, for better for worse, we exist in a very competitive market where there's a lot of options for founders. And what that means is that, you know, you might be able to get some discount if you've got value of the founder wants a slightly sober, you know, valuation on some level. But it's not rational for a founder to take a 50% discount, even if the 50% discount is itself too high. So I think you kind of just on some level have to play the game.

• 23:47Molly O'Shea?

  At Alt Capital, what kind of check sizes are you writing?

• 23:51Speaker 00

  The biggest we've done is like 12 million. Smallest is like one. So that kind of range.

• 23:58Molly O'Shea?

  How many deals do you do a year?

• 24:00Speaker 00

  We'll do probably 25 in the fund. So 12 ish.

• 24:06Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  So yeah.

• 24:08Molly O'Shea?

  Pretty good pacing.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:09Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:10Molly O'Shea?

  It's exciting.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's great. I love it.

• 24:13Molly O'Shea?

  So how do you think about the broader AI landscape? I know you went into this with Mark pretty deeply.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Well, I think the model companies will be like ridiculously big, but I don't, you know, from a alt perspective, I'm, you know, we're not investing in them.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  I know less about infrastructure. I have less perspective on it. So we haven't really done a lot there. And then applications are just like the obvious place for me, both because of my background, but it's also what I think is like the best place for venture in 2025 to be investing. Cause you're basically investing behind the fundamental belief that like AI is going to start to do jobs. And if that turns out to be true, it's going to be huge.

• 24:52Molly O'Shea?

  That's a good segue. Okay. So we have a Kalshi market on a number of jobs. Do you think like are gonna get taken out? I'll, I'll blend this in.

• 25:02Speaker 00

  Taken out or done by AI?

• 25:05Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. Well, there's like, there's two, two approaches to this. So there's, do you think there's going to be more tech layoffs this year than in 2024?

• 25:17Speaker 00

  No.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  I guess not.

• 25:20Molly O'Shea?

  No?

• 25:21Speaker 00

  Not necessarily.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  I think a lot of what's happening right now is people are buying AI and then

• 25:29Speaker 00

  just hiring less.

• 25:33Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  What does Kalshi say?

• 25:36Molly O'Shea?

  Let's see. Kalshi says there's going to be a 64% chance.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  All right.

• 25:41Molly O'Shea?

  You know, yeah. The other fun one with this is what do you think the unemployment rate will be in 2030 with all this AI?

• 25:51Speaker 00

  I think it will be somewhat higher, but not ridiculously higher. I also think unemployment numbers are like really hard because the reporting will change. And so what I don't know is what things will count as jobs. Who will be considered, you know, wanting to be in the workforce and is not versus who will be just, you know, deciding to, well, fewer people decide to be in the workforce. But, you know, if you ask the inverse of the question, I think AI will be doing tens of millions of jobs in the US by then that are currently being done by a person.

• 26:29Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. Kalshi has a like 8.7% unemployment.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  That seems believable.

• 26:34Molly O'Shea?

  Pretty high.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  It's possible though. Yeah. But.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Again, I think so much of it's going to come down to like how the numbers calculated and described and things like that, too. But I do think that like, there's a lot of jobs right now that look to me like they're going to structurally go away in favor of AI. And so there's a timing thing where I don't believe that in the long term, people won't have things to do. But there's going to be people who are trained in a certain thing that are going to need to retrain and that will take time.

• 27:05Molly O'Shea?

  There's like two main funny kind of arguments around like the proliferation of AI depleting jobs. One is what skills are humans going to have left? Like if we have nothing to do? And then the other one is like, okay, everything's automated, no one really has a job. What do we do for the people in lower income that, you know, are maybe priced out of the workforce or maybe it's like middle of the market, too?

• 27:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:33Molly O'Shea?

  Do we go to UBI? And do we just start supporting people? So based off those two things, like one, what do you think's going to happen if all of our skills are replaced? What are our new skills going to be?

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Well, it's hard to guess. You know, if you go back to like agriculture time, like, you know, there's a lot of people doing agriculture then and like thinking forward to like what people are doing now is a sort of ridiculous exercise then. You know, it's like none of the jobs that like, there's so many layers of abstraction that everything has been built on that people that most of the economy is doing now that like wouldn't have even computed then. You know, like there weren't computers, there wasn't the internet, there wasn't all this stuff. So there's, there's, it's, it's probably as hard to forecast as forecasting, you know, today's software engineering job was in agriculture times, which is just like, there's so many layers between what's getting done there. So I think it's very hard to guess.

• 28:29Speaker 00

  On the UBI thing. My hot take is there's already a reasonable amount of UBI and it's just in the form of, you know, companies employing people that the job is either zero productive or counterproductive. And so like, that's actually like a form of it that that already happens. I think it will be very difficult to get the government to go to national UBI. So I don't expect that to happen sort of like in time, relatively speaking. Imagine tomorrow that getting put in place. Like, it's like, good luck. Like, it's extremely hard to make that kind of thing happen at a government level. And I think it is unlikely to happen until there's like a big problem,

• 29:09Speaker 00

  unfortunately. So that's less, I would not guess that that solves things and sort of the time scales that we're talking about here. I think that people will still have things to do, but I also buy the argument that like, there will just be more, there will be more total resources in the world. Like, more stuff will get done for a less amount of human work. And that might just like be a good thing. Like, it's a good thing now that we have like caterpillar machines digging stuff up so that we don't have a lot of people that have to do it. And maybe it's a good thing that a lot of, you know, monotonous jobs that people don't love, that take them away from their families are going to get done by a computer. And, you know,

• 29:53Speaker 00

  hopefully, the arc of time is that people get to do more and more interesting things over time. And maybe in this, in this case, it'll include they're doing it for non-economic reasons, but I, I'm such an optimist that I just believe there will still be stuff.

• 30:07Molly O'Shea?

  And we still don't know what hardware device OpenAI and Johnny I will create and what kind of new economy that will bring.

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think like in general, the idea that AI can be, you know, with you all the time and sort of helping you as, you know, you have amazing conversations or important work meetings, helping that not go to the ether should be very valuable, too.

• 30:30Molly O'Shea?

  There's actually like really interesting trends coming out. Like, I just did a whole breakdown, like psychotically this morning on the BG2 pod at COTU.

• 30:42Molly O'Shea?

  Co2 and Ultimater did like a bunch of different surveys and data science around OpenAI's traction and daily active users against social platforms. So they're comparing it against like, okay, there's like a resource, like a learning tool for knowledge, and now it's outpacing viral like brain rot content.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Probably.

• 31:04Molly O'Shea?

  It's a really, I mean, it's like, actually like, makes me pretty optimistic about it all.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  For sure. Yeah, I mean, I think social media is like a huge problem. I think actually in some ways like, you know, you're talking about the podcast, you know, being everywhere. I think there's this big trend, partially as a result of social media, where the truth is like super murky and super up for grabs right now. And I think that's part of what contributes to tech and media's fighting. I think it's part of what contributes to the like go direct thing in a, you know, sort of indirect way, I think is part of why you see more podcasts. I think like right now, social media is, you know, there's a lot that's really good about it. And there's a lot of things that are not so good about it. And the cat's out of the bag. And one of the ways that the cat, one of the things the cat's

• 31:49Speaker 00

  out of the bag on right now that I don't think we have societal resolution to is just that like, the truth is up for grabs now, which I think is a bad thing.

• 31:58Molly O'Shea?

  Podcasts.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  The podcasts aren't trustworthy. You know, I'm not trustworthy. I'm not claiming I'm it. And I'm not, I'm also not, so I'm definitely not, but even a journalist, you know, even an individual who is approaching podcasting in a more journalistic way. Like, there's no reason to, there's no particular reason to trust any individual, you know, like, maybe biology would say something here about crypto and that there's some like collective, you know, trust in numbers thing that is possible with citizen journalism and whatnot. But this is one of the like unresolved unsettling things in society to me right now.

• 32:30Molly O'Shea?

  Have you watched Mountain Head?

• 32:32Speaker 00

  No.

• 32:32Molly O'Shea?

  You didn't watch it?

• 32:33Speaker 00

  I didn't watch it.

• 32:34Molly O'Shea?

  I mean, it was, it was pretty bad, to be honest. But I watched it for the cultural learnings and just to be a part of it. But it was launched.

• 32:45Molly O'Shea?

  It was published, I think, around the same time as Google VO three. Same kind of narrative is like, okay, there's like a super high power like tech founder. He releases this social network tool that creates any sort of generative AI video and like just pure deep fakes and it causes like global unrest, wars, like terrorist attacks, like all this kind of stuff. Which, you know, it's really funny that they launched that right around the same time as Google VO like I wonder if there was some, you know, coincidence there, you know? Are you at all worried about deep fakes?

• 33:22Speaker 00

  It's not good. It's not, it's not the highest thing on my list of concerns with AI, but it's not good. Yeah. Like it's one of the obvious vectors of attack and, you know, security threats and you're pretending to be a family member who needs help or just like, you know, public humiliation or like it's got a lot of issues. Yeah.

• 33:42Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, so we'll get you to watch Mount Head next time so we can gossip about this.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  Great.

• 33:48Molly O'Shea?

  I think this might be one of my most critical questions of this conversation. You recently had Sam Altman on your pod. Were you nervous?

• 33:56Speaker 00

  No, definitely not.

• 33:59Molly O'Shea?

  Why?

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Why would I be nervous?

• 34:01Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  It's my brother.

• 34:03Molly O'Shea?

  He's your brother?

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Stop.

• 34:05Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 34:06Speaker 00

  You're joking.

• 34:07Molly O'Shea?

  No, wait, are you?

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Sam Altman, Jack Altman.

• 34:10Molly O'Shea?

  You guys are related.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  This in the podcast, that's really good. Please keep this in.

• 34:14Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. That's crazy.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's my brother.

• 34:17Molly O'Shea?

  So you've known each other for a while?

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  This is good. I'm actually really happy to hear that. This is great.

• 34:25Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  That you did, that the connection wasn't there, but yeah, that's right. So no, I wasn't nervous.

• 34:30Molly O'Shea?

  How'd you prepare? You don't prepare.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  I don't prepare and I definitely didn't really prepare for that one.

• 34:35Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, interesting. What'd you talk about?

• 34:38Speaker 00

  Would this have changed the line of questioning if this had been connected before?

• 34:41Molly O'Shea?

  I think so.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:43Molly O'Shea?

  Now I just want to ask like personal childhood questions.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, what were you gonna ask about Sam before this?

• 34:48Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask about like OpenAI and like, what do you think's gonna happen? When is AGI gonna happen?

• 34:53Speaker 00

  It's gonna happen, they're doing great.

• 34:54Molly O'Shea?

  It's gonna happen?

• 34:55Speaker 00

  I don't know, I'm just kidding.

• 34:56Molly O'Shea?

  When's it gonna happen?

• 34:58Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 34:58Molly O'Shea?

  What do you know?

• 34:59Speaker 00

  I don't even know exactly what AGI means.

• 35:01Molly O'Shea?

  You don't know what AGI means?

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Not exactly.

• 35:03Molly O'Shea?

  Really? No.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 35:08Molly O'Shea?

  So what was it?

• 35:08Speaker 00

  It's gonna keep getting smarter. It's gonna keep doing great.

• 35:11Molly O'Shea?

  Are you gonna have AGI?

• 35:13Speaker 00

  What do you mean?

• 35:17Molly O'Shea?

  I'm just joking too much. We've actually heard that Max is the cooler brother.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  That's what Kelsey said. Do you want to pull the thing?

• 35:23Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. What do you think the, what do you think the current odds are on that?

• 35:27Speaker 00

  That he's the coolest?

• 35:28Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. So he

• 35:30Speaker 00

  Cause I'm gonna get meme stocked on it.

• 35:32Molly O'Shea?

  It's pretty high.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  Probably like 90, but it's high enough that I don't feel bad because that's not a real number.

• 35:38Molly O'Shea?

  What?

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Like if it were an honest poll, it would be, even if you were winning, like politicians win like 60, 40, it's a landslide. You know what I mean? If it's that high, it's like, I'm

• 35:50Molly O'Shea?

  Questionable?

• 35:50Speaker 00

  It's just a troll.

• 35:51Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  I'm not gonna feel bad about it, but now that I say this, it'll probably go to like 95.

• 35:57Molly O'Shea?

  I think it'll be pretty high up there.

• 35:58Speaker 00

  It's fine. He is cool.

• 36:00Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. He's gonna make his debut sometime this, this year, I think.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, you should have him on here.

• 36:06Molly O'Shea?

  We're, we're definitely booked. I met him actually at, um, Heretic on last October. Amazing event. Highly recommend. Mike Solana pulls off like the best tech event ever. It's not a conference.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've heard it's great.

• 36:19Molly O'Shea?

  But it's Heretic on.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  It's great.

• 36:22Molly O'Shea?

  So we've been planning, we've been trying to plan. When is, when is the Max debut gonna happen?

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Get him out here.

• 36:27Molly O'Shea?

  Speaking of that, do you think he's gonna have a podcast soon?

• 36:31Speaker 00

  It'd be great if he did. I wanted him to come on mine. I'm still working on it.

• 36:35Molly O'Shea?

  What are you gonna talk about?

• 36:36Speaker 00

  I'll talk about whatever. He's just great to talk to. I mean, yeah, he's just like a, he's got all kinds of hot takes. I want to get him to say all his spicy stuff. Hard though.

• 36:45Molly O'Shea?

  I know, I know. From your conversation with Sam, like more seriously, you guys were talking about AI and its impact and what, what were the biggest impacts that you guys pulled? I don't want to put words into your mouth.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  I think the the obvious one is just that it's going to um it's on a trajectory to basically do the vast majority of current jobs that are um that are sort of done by, you know, sort of white collar work, let's say. Um it's going to be able to do most things that people do whose job is predominantly typing, talking, you know, having meetings, et cetera. Um and that's great. Like, it already is really good at programming. It's really good at having voice conversations. It's great at chat. And it seems very likely that it's going to just keep moving down the list and become good at being a lawyer.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  It'll be good at being a doctor. It'll be, you know, good at being a structural engineer. And that's great. The other thing that will be interesting is at some point it'll become embodied and it'll be good at moving stuff around. And this, you know, podcast studio will be set up by a humanoid that's capable of just bopping around and doing it all. And it'll have dexterous little hands and it'll put the mics in the right place and it'll hit, you know, record. And that's cool. So I think on some level, when you think about it, unless you have a thesis for why technological progress will stop, and then you just, you know, are willing to sit with like the sci fi conclusions of it all, seems like that's where we're going. So to me, that's like, you know, an obviously huge deal.

• 38:21Molly O'Shea?

  It sounded like Sam was also really excited about the scientific impact of it all.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Totally. Like, if it can discover new therapies and if it can, you know, you can imagine a world where life expectancy starts to trend up over time. You know, I think this will take longer. But if you're, you know, doing billions of brilliant, you know, principal investigators, you know, scientific research simultaneously on a server somewhere, we could be discovering amazing stuff. So that's super promising. It also could lead to, you know, the ability to go to space more easily or to, you know, be smarter about capturing solar energy or, you know, there's like amazing possible outcomes from it.

• 38:59Molly O'Shea?

  What are the biggest constraints?

• 39:02Speaker 00

  It seems like even aside from the AI, it seems like there's like just regular robotics work that still has to be figured out. On science, I don't know what is, you know, between here and it discovering a cure for cancer, but obviously there's like more intelligence to go to get there. Um, so like it's, you know, at the moment, the things that AI is Unequally good at, I would say, are coding and chat and, you know,

• 39:30Speaker 00

  some auxiliary things, you know, around, you know, parsing information and summarizing and things like that. But it seems like it'll get good at everything.

• 39:37Molly O'Shea?

  Infrastructurally, it seems like there's a huge power and energy constraint. I know you've invested into some nuclear companies, so could you share more about that?

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, energy is going to obviously be essential because, you know, you look at the chart of how, you know, energy is going to be consumed by AI and it's just, you know, it's a big deal.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  On the nuclear side for that, you know, fusion and that getting properly figured out, I think is going to be the bigger impact for like grid level power. Fission, which is what, you know, the company we invested in, Antares, that's super important, too. I think like, you know, we had a huge societal fumble on nuclear, like over, you know, the last 80 years. And bad things happened militarily and obviously there are also, you know, you know, nuclear power plants that went super wrong. But from an energy perspective on like an AI scale, I think like fusion unlocking is a really big deal.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  But there's like a lot of energy in general, like there's a lot of energy sources in general, like solar is getting good too, like wind isn't, you know, there's like a lot there.

• 40:52Molly O'Shea?

  In this competitive environment, we've been seeing big numbers toss around and strategies kind of

• 41:03Molly O'Shea?

  shape and in pretty absurd ways. In particular, in this conversation, you guys were talking about the Meta deal and how Meta has been trying to poach some of OpenAI's talent. And then also this meta-scale AI scenario. So what were your takeaways from that?

• 41:21Speaker 00

  The temperature on the whole market has definitely risen, both, you know, the numbers from, you know, VCs, what people are paying, the lengths people are going to to compete now. You know, in scales market in particular, I'll give a shout out to a, you know, portfolio company of ours, David AI, which is like, you know, voice data. And they've, that, that market in general has seen unbelievable just pull. Like the, the, the demand from the model companies to get good, clean data that they can use is like a huge competitive advantage and it's like super critical. And so, you know, seeing that market pull for companies like David and others does,

• 42:06Speaker 00

  it helps me understand why Meta was willing to, you know, go so hard at this problem. Obviously, there's also just like a big talent work component to everything. But in general, I think everything we're seeing now is sort of gloves off. This is the most important thing and so their regular rules don't apply type of energy.

• 42:27Molly O'Shea?

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• 43:11Molly O'Shea?

  You think there's going to be more acquisitions?

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure.

• 43:14Molly O'Shea?

  Super safe, super intelligence?

• 43:17Speaker 00

  I just think, you know, and some of these acquisitions are for talent. And, you know, people paying whatever it takes to get the people that they think can unlock. You know, if you think that if you're Meta and you think another trillion dollars can be unlocked by a particular team, your willingness to pay is very, very high for that. So I think you'll see that. I think you'll see, you know, acquisition of companies in general. So, yeah.

• 43:37Molly O'Shea?

  I mean, do you think that's why those companies came out the gate raising billions of dollars at billion dollar valuations? They all came out swinging like Thinking Machines and SSI. Those are insane numbers. I can't think rationally like an investor investing in that and thinking they'd get a return.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  Well, maybe, but you know, maybe you hit another anthropic and you know, it's a big market where it's not just open AI. So there could be some of both in there. And you know, if you're an investor and you're thinking about like a distribution of possible outcomes, some of them include a crazy aqua hire that's, you know, at an insane valuation and some of them, you know, include, you know, it turns into an anthropic type company that's, you know, got a big business in its own right. So I don't know exactly. I agree that valuations sound really big, but the outcomes are so big. So I don't, I don't know how to think about it either. It kind of gets into these abstract places that are hard to think about.

• 44:31Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. Gucci.

• 44:33Speaker 00

  Gucci or scale.

• 44:36Molly O'Shea?

  The end of the barbell.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Exactly. The other one, maybe.

• 44:39Molly O'Shea?

  Weaved these in a little bit, but I want to break down your portfolio a little bit more with alt capital. You've made some awesome investments to date, so they have, they, they have been awesome. Could you break down some of those companies?

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Sure. We were talking about David, which is like voice data. I love voice in general. Another company that we've invested in is a company called Retail. That was actually our first investment of the fund and they basically help companies build voice agents inside their own applications. It's like an amazing team and they just, you know, that, the market pull there is astounding. And it actually makes sense because you look at, you know, like a Y C, a recent Y C batch where obviously we know everything is like, you know, it's all AI, but a lot of voice is like really working, like applications where you can have like a dentist office, like calling and setting appointments, or you can have a, you know, customer support, you know,

• 45:35Speaker 00

  channel, or you can like do outbound sales or like a million other things, you know, you can navigate a phone tree. I think voice is like, just like an amazingly powerful thing. We, we also have, I guess, a not, not yet announced series A and a company that makes a ton of use of voice. So voice in general is something I, I really like. We really like AI for sort of verticals that we think don't have, you know, as much technology in the first place where you can actually kind of leapfrog and get into, you know, a whole new echelon of productivity for like law firms, like we invested in Legora or like finance firms. There's a company called Roco. I think that kind of stuff where. You know, you have industries that were not adopting as much software as say like Ramp,

• 46:20Speaker 00

  going all of a sudden to like a really great AI platform, like a lot of really good stuff can happen. So that's another cool one. We talked about Antares and nuclear. So yeah, I mean, it's mostly been AI, to be honest. Yeah.

• 46:34Molly O'Shea?

  Surprise.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Surprise. Very, very, very unique.

• 46:38Molly O'Shea?

  Well, as we wrap up, we're gonna cover like a couple of different things, but first I wanna cover more on the personal side. You're a high performer. Like, let's be real here. You've operated a billion dollar company, a multi-billion dollar company, you've raised hundreds of millions of dollars. You're now an investor and a podcaster. This is a lot

• 46:58Speaker 00

  The podcast.

• 46:58Molly O'Shea?

  to manage. You definitely have a type A personality. High performers typically obsess over one thing or another, but what is something that you obsess over?

• 47:08Speaker 00

  You know, what's funny, and that's nice. So thank you. The, I, I, I think one of my weaknesses actually is I seem like I would be somebody who is obsessed in tracking things. And I'm kind of, I, I realized at some point that my nature is to sort of just like, go about my day without much of a plan and just do what's in front of me and just like trust myself to like do the next thing. And I don't think that's a strength. It's just like a thing about me and I, I think I've basically just embraced that over time, but I'm like a not obsessive person in general. And you know, that comes with some, I actually think that that leads me, it makes investing a nicer fit in some ways. But yeah, I'm not very obsessive.

• 47:53Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. Not obsessive.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  Not really. I think I'd be better if I were, but I'm not.

• 47:59Molly O'Shea?

  There are two topics that Max wanted me to ask you. One of them is making espressos.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  So, okay, that's good. After.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  After, you know, starting the fund and leaving Lattice, I was like, and I took one month in between, not even, but I took like a couple of weeks in between. But I kind of went into venture, thinking that it wasn't going to be like a real job, which turned out to be wrong. I actually am pretty busy. But I went in, I was like, oh, I'm gonna have so much more time for hobbies. To be clear, I do have more time for hobbies. Like, running a company is like dramatically harder than being an investor. And my first one was coffee. So basically, like, as soon as I made the change, I like treated myself like a nice espresso machine. And I just like, I didn't go like all the way down the coffee rabbit hole, but I went like halfway down, which is like still pretty far. And then I just like plateaued there and I really enjoy it. And I still make like, you know, for me and my wife,

• 48:53Speaker 00

  and I make probably five espresso shots a day at home and it's great. I love it.

• 48:57Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, my God.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  I know. So I've really got to dial it in now. Yeah.

• 49:00Molly O'Shea?

  Have you watched Curb Your Enthusiasm?

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:03Molly O'Shea?

  What about the beans?

• 49:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's good.

• 49:05Molly O'Shea?

  How are the beans?

• 49:06Speaker 00

  The beans are great.

• 49:08Molly O'Shea?

  You have a good, you have a good source.

• 49:10Speaker 00

  I use land and water.

• 49:13Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  They're my favorite.

• 49:14Molly O'Shea?

  I'm gonna have to look that up.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a dark roast.

• 49:17Molly O'Shea?

  Dark roast?

• 49:17Speaker 00

  That's what I like, yeah.

• 49:20Molly O'Shea?

  The other, the other thing Max wanted me to ask was Pokemon.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was another recent bit because my, um, my wife's mom found all of her Pokemon cards from childhood. And it turns out that all the Pokemon cards from like 1999 are like super valuable now. And our mom threw, we had, we had them all. We had like all these amazing cards that are now super valuable. They were just like sitting in a basement and then five years ago or something, you know, mom cleaned out. It's okay.

• 49:52Molly O'Shea?

  No.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  You mom. But my wife's mom had them, so she sent them and that was kind of fun. Then it led to a little resurgence and my five-year-old's super into Pokemon now, and so that's fun.

• 50:01Molly O'Shea?

  Do you have a favorite Pokemon?

• 50:04Speaker 00

  No, I'm, I'm an adult, so I'm just past it. No, I'm just kidding.

• 50:08Molly O'Shea?

  You're never too old to have a favorite.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  No, I actually really do like Pokemon. It's fun. It's like, um, like my five-year-old asked me if I had a favorite color. And I was like, I don't. And he's like, why not? And I was like, I don't know. When you're an adult, you just like, you maybe don't have a favorite color anymore. Just like, well, just one of those.

• 50:24Molly O'Shea?

  You just don't care about things anymore.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  Fine.

• 50:27Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, gosh. Okay. Well, Jack, as we wrap up.

• 50:32Molly O'Shea?

  What are you most looking forward to this year?

• 50:35Speaker 00

  Honestly, I'm looking forward to like everything right. Like I'm just like in a phase of my life right now where like everything feels, you know, I feel very grateful for everything. Like I've got like an awesome family. I love my work. I've got great friends. So I'm just like, I like look forward every day right now, which is very lucky.

• 50:52Molly O'Shea?

  That's beautiful. That's amazing. It was a pleasure having you on.

• 50:55Speaker 00

  It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Bye.

• 50:57Molly O'Shea?

  From one podcaster to another.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  You're gonna have to come on mine now. That'll be next.

• 51:01Molly O'Shea?

  Done. Thank you. Cool.

• 51:04Speaker 00

  Sweet.

• 51:05Molly O'Shea?

  Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.