Meta Just Bought Moltbook… The Internet for Machines Is Here NOW

Neil and Eric discuss Meta hiring the team behind Moltbook, a social network for AI agents, and what it signals about the future of marketing to bots. They break down why adaptability in the AI era matters more than intelligence, and how marketers are already positioned to succeed. The conversation shifts to personal strategy, with Neil doubling down on brand building while Eric goes all-in on AI. They also explore work-life balance, long-term priorities, and why consistency and resilience are key to business success. Key Takeaways: Marketing to AI agents is the next big shift Brand building remains a long-term moat Consistency and resilience drive success Chapters:(00:00) Meta hires Moltbook founders(00:32) Rise of AI agent networks(01:13) Marketing to AI agents(01:41) Adapting to AI change(02:23) Branding vs AI focus(04:42) Know your strengths strategy(06:16) Work hours and priorities(07:27) Family vs business tradeoffs(10:49) Wealth vs quality of life(15:20) McDonald’s CEO content lesson(16:34) Power of consistency

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw that.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  This is interesting to me. So just to explain, Moltbook was a social network. It's called Moltbook to kind of be like Facebook, but it looked more like a Reddit. It was like a Reddit where the bots, the agents could talk to each other. It's like all these claws talking to each other, and they're like upvoting, downvoting. And, um, it's interesting to me because it's not like they had a lot of users or whatever, but, um, 1.6 million active agents in under six weeks, okay, that's a distribution signal, right? So, um, Meta didn't buy, they didn't just buy the app, uh, they bought the founders. They bought, um, there's two guys, oh, Ben Parr, wow, I didn't know that. That's crazy. Remember Ben Parr from Mashable?

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Mm-mm.

• 1:17Speaker 00

  So like-

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Pete Cashman, I remember him.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  I don't know who that is. Oh, yeah, he's the CEO, right?

• 1:21Speaker 01

  He was the founder, yeah.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  So, okay, interesting. So Meta hires dual behind Moltbook. So I don't know if there's necessarily like a big acquisition tied to this, but I do think that Zuckerberg does a good job with figuring out where trends are going. And I do think you're gonna need like an eBay for agents. I do think you're gonna need a social network for agents. I think you're gonna need a place to, uh, hire agents and things like that, review agents, like a G2 for agents. Uh, that's all happening. And so you and I, as marketers, we're gonna have to very quickly figure out how to market to agents.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's gonna be huge. But I think marketers will do really well with marketing to agents because they kinda already do without knowing because they're already marketing to bots, algorithms.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  And bots are trained off of humans.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  I actually think it's a really easy transition. I think marketers are some of the best people set up to market to agents.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  You know, I read something recently about how the most important thing with this AI era is your relationship to change. It's not like how smart you are or whatever. It's more so like you could have a 15 year old that doesn't want, that's very against this stuff. Right? It's, oh, this is taking too much water, too much electricity. Okay, so they'll never use AI. Or you might have someone in their 50, 60, 70s that are just really on top of this stuff, right? So really is your relationship with change and how adaptable you are. And usually that's a good, if you're very entrepreneurial, usually your relationship with change is good because you're used to chaos.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  I also believe that one of the key things to succeeding in this new era, at least in marketing, is knowing your place in life. And I'll give you guys a prime example of this. Eric is more of an early adopter and gung ho on AI than I am. I still love AI. I'm not as gung ho as Eric. My eyes are, you know, was it watering or dry? What did you say at the end of every night?

• 3:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, watering.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Or hurting, your eyes are hurting. His eyes are hurting every night.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  Very painful.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Yes, very painful. I don't have that problem. I'm not using AI as much as Eric where my eyes are hurting every single night before I go to sleep.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Now, I was talking with a friend of mine and they're just like, dude, you know, with marketing and companies and agencies, AI is gonna shift a lot of things. I'm like, yeah, it's gonna shift a lot of things for many industries. And he's like, okay. So he's like, so what are you gonna do related to AI to stay on the cutting edge? And I'm like, what am I gonna do or was my organization gonna do? And he says, no, specifically, what are you gonna do? And I said, well, I already have people who are empowered and are leveraging this technology and are big on change and are pushing it throughout the organization. He's just like, yeah, but what are you doing? That's your people. And I'm like, I'm focused more on branding. And he's like, why are you focused more on branding when all these changes are happening in AI?

• 4:14Speaker 01

  And I'm like, with all these changes happening in AI, I think the one thing that is still priceless and is the moat in business and in marketing is your brand. And I think that is very hard to replicate. It's very hard to build and I'm doubling down on building our brand and making it as big as possible, even though it's hard, because I think that's going to be very valuable. Five, 10 years from now, especially in a world of AI where there's less differentiation between corporations.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  Actually, this is important because Neil earlier, right before he said this was you have to know yourself. And I know Neil's style is, we've talked about this before. Neil's style is he's not going to be the first boat, but he's going to be the one that parachutes in. So what he knows very well, that won't be replaced by AI is brand. So double, triple down on that right now. And because Neil's personality is, hey, let's kind of wait and see what happens. But I also, I have no doubts with Neil too, because once he sees something, the way he bets, he presses the bet is pretty up there, probably number one or number two, from what I've seen in my, in my world. So I'm not worried like once he's like, once he's like, okay, on the, he's working on brand. He's like, okay, this is like really affecting the company. I'm all in here, so there's no concerns, right? So for me, I'm a little different where I'm like, I rather, I, I feel like I'm playing a video game right now. So I'm all in on it. I'm burning my eyes out every day.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  So the point is you have to know your own personality over time. You shouldn't try to adapt to what other people are saying, because you are you at the end of the day. And whenever you try to be something else, you actually end up hurting your company and you hurt yourself too, because you're not being authentic to yourself.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and no doubt, like if I look at Eric and his life, we're also in two different phases of life and you need to know yourself really well, like Eric was mentioning. I can't do what Eric's doing. I don't have the ability, I don't know how many hours he's working. My guess is you're probably working 70 to 80 hours easily, 80, probably 80 plus a week.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  I don't even count anymore. If my eyes are hurting, just that's how hard I'm working.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  But Eric's not doing this five days a week. He's doing this seven days and he's easily working 12 hours a day is my guess. So let's call it Eric is working 80 plus hours a week right now. I work a lot more than forty. I don't know how many hours I work. I probably work around sixty hours a week. I'm taking a guess here, right? I don't have it in me to work eighty hours anymore like I used to when I was younger.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  I think Neil's probably sixty, seventy hours, but that being said, we both think about business all the time, so just leave it at that.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  I do think once this starts to like really move over to you, I think you're gonna jack it up. And you're not even gonna know that you're working that hard. I'm just like, I don't feel like it's painful. My eyes are painful, but like I'm just so sad that my eyes hurt at the end because I would just keep going, you know? Like you see a lot of these guys on X, I think it's Gary Tan and all these other people, they're cranking until like two, three AM or so. I'm like, I can't do that anymore. I just, I need to go to bed at nine.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  So what changed me, and I don't ever think I will go back to the eighty hours. I, Eric mentioned I probably do sixty to seventy. I do try to cap it around sixty. I don't track it perfectly, but I do try to cap my hours at sixty. And it was because of an extra that Eric sent me, it was a year or two years ago. And I don't recall exactly what the X post said, but it was something around passing away, you know, your kids and memories and what they're gonna love you for. It's not gonna be for all the money that you give them. It's gonna be like time and attention. And I, I literally have no clue what the exact post was on X. Oh, go for it, Eric.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  So if you, did you save it on your phone, by the way?

• 7:45Speaker 01

  I did not.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  So I'll send it back to you, okay? Because Neil needs, you need to save this as your wallpaper. I, I just searched IRR and kids because you mentioned the keywords there, okay? So good to know SEO. So the thing I sent, I sent this to Neil in, this is October twenty eighth of twenty twenty four, okay? So two years ago roughly, one and a half years. A thirty-one percent IRR, so internal rate of return, isn't good if your twen- your two twenty-something daughters don't want to spend time with you. Hey, you know what I'll do? I'll work really hard when my kids are young, because when they're a little older and they actually know what's going on, then I'll have made enough money and I'll hang out with them then. Good point. But one thing though, they don't want to hang out with you then for two reasons. Number one, you weren't hanging out with them earlier. Number two, they have other things that they want to do.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Let's say you stay up until seven PM and maybe you can close a sale or have another conversation with your LP. Limited partner. You'll see the benefits right away. While if you go home, maybe you go do bath time with kids and bath time is chaos. Bath time, you don't see any tangible benefit from going. But the sale or a conversation you do from 6:30 to 7:00 PM, sure, it's tangible. But 20 years from now, you're not going to give a shit. Whereas if you had a bath time every night, your kids are going to remember. It's something you look back on and think this was the real knowledge. I'm glad I didn't do the things that were in front of me, but I chose to do, I choose to do what's important. So let the IRR percentage be lower than 31. But have your two 20 something daughters feel like you are the best dad.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  And that was probably the best thing Eric has ever shared with me in my whole life. He shared a lot with me and provided me a lot of amazing stuff over the years. But that changed my life. And that is why I'm not working at night until my eyes are hurting. Now, when I'm traveling, which is probably more than half the time, it's a different story. Some, you know, like I'll go to Europe next week. I'll work 14, 15 hour days because I work both time zones and I'll do that for five days straight. So those, when I'm traveling, my hours just explode. When I'm home, which is probably a third of the year at this point, I try to really limit my hours because my daughter will tell me things like, you don't, you haven't come to any of my school functions. The other parents do. Do you not love me? Right?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  So, and sometimes I can't. Yeah, night to the heart. And sometimes I can't because my travel is already pre-booked, sometimes six months in advance and I get a calendar notification two weeks in advance before her school thing. And she's like, you're not there to see all my progress. And I'm like, I appreciate it. Mommy's gonna end up, you know, taking a video of it and sharing it with me or we'll FaceTime, right? But I'll do things like I'll hover dress up and my son dress up and my wife. And like, I'll take them all out to dinner, no phones and go to a restaurant and spend quality time because. Do I want to make more money? Yes. Do I think I'm ever going to be rich like Bill Gates or Elon Musk? No. One, I'm not that smart. Two, I also don't have the work ethic in me to like, some of those guys just work and they only work.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  And that's it. Although Elon does spend some time with family and shockingly for how wealthy he is, it's kind of crazy how much time he's able to spend with his family.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  Spend a lot of time with him.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, I'm just not able to do.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  Neil, Bill Gates' net worth as of February 2026 is 107 billion. I think you have time to compound.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  I don't think I'll ever get that high, right? Like, that's really high, but I'm happy enough at this point. Yes, I do want to make more and I work hard to make more because I'm never satisfied, but at the same time, I'm willing to make less. And Erica was the one who sent this to me to have a better relationship with my kids. Because I don't think 30 years from now, I'm going to still be grinding it out. I would want to spend time with my kids.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  So, okay, I'm just looking at the math over here. Okay, let's just, I'm going to say hypothetical math over here. I don't know, man. But keep in mind, um, Bill Gates reached the 100 billion in 1999. He's given away a lot of money since then, right?

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of money.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Divorce and all that, right?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  He would have been a trillionaire if he didn't sell his stock.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  Exactly. Steve Vomer didn't sell his stock.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's worth more than Gates.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  So, by the way, I'm not going to reveal any numbers for Neil, just for privacy, but I, it, it, it's possible, Neil, within 25, 30, 50 years. It's possible.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I, I'm okay having less zeros for a better quality of life with my children.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  But by the way, I, I sent that to Neil back then because I was worried that he might go too, too far on money because, but, but, so that, that's why I sent it, so.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a problem with my son now. He's gone too far on money.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  Well, where do you get that from?

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. So he's four and, uh.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  Dude, at four years old, we never even thought about money.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Dude, he stacked up thousands and thousands of dollars in cash, counts his piggy bank cash every single day and.

• 12:24Speaker 00

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• 12:59Speaker 01

  He won't go out, he doesn't, like when I was in Hong Kong and India, I was like, what do you want me to bring you back? Candy? He's like, no, bring back the money. I was like, why do you want money? He's just like, candy's cheaper than the money. Give me the money. Okay, so then he's negotiating how much I have to give him and every day it increases. Cause then if I don't pay him on that day, he adds interest. I'm like, I can't pay you. I'm in Hong Kong. He's just like, that's your problem. You should, you should be here to give me the money.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  Oh dude, he's gonna be an investor.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  And then when I talked to him about going out to dinner, he doesn't like going out to dinner. He's been telling my wife and I that, no, I don't want to go out to dinner. And I figured out why two days ago.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  Why?

• 13:39Speaker 01

  I asked him, I'm like, I'm like Emma, which is my other daughter or my daughter.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Your other daughter.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  My, my boy's William, but Emma told me, I asked Emma, I was like, yeah, William doesn't want to go out to dinner. Cause she's like, we should all go out together on, for a specific occasion, you know, for their graduation. I was like, but William doesn't like going out to dinner. And she's like, do you know why, Dad? I'm like, why? I've never asked him. She's like, he doesn't like going out because of restrooms. Restrooms are dirty. And I was like, oh, he got that from me because I'm so OCD.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Oh my god.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Like I won't go on an airplane bathroom.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Right?

• 14:10Speaker 00

  You don't?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  14 hours?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  I'll hold it.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  What?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  You crazy?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  I'll go pee if I need to, but I.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Exactly. I'm like, you can't hold your pee that long.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, but Emirates is, cleans us a little bit different.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  How often do you get Emirates?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Not that often.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  And now you ain't going in that direction.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  That's true because of the war.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  So I asked William the other day, I was like, do you not like going to restaurants because the bathroom's dirty? He's like, no. I was like, so then why don't you want to go restaurants? He's like, it's expensive. It costs money. I was like, well, eating at home costs money too. We have to buy groceries.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  But you're not paying, he's not paying for it.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Correct. He's not paying on either, but he said it costs less money to eat at home.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, I like that.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  I was like, but I can't get him to spend money. He doesn't spend his money on anything. He doesn't want to buy anything. He just wants to collect it. And he's like, I want to start a business.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  You should have him read the book, The Dundo Investor. Doesn't Dundo mean cheap?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Uh, Dundo, I think means job.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Okay. The great.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Is it, does it mean job? I don't know. I should know this. I don't know.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  The Dundo Investor is from Monish Prabari.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I read it.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a great book. And so if it's, it's, it's very practical. Dude, I, I think he's, William's just gonna be an investor and we should just give him all the.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Dundo means, uh, du- a Dundo investor follows a low risk, high return framework. Often summarized as heads I win, tails I don't lose much.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  Oh, no, no, no, no, no. We gotta do heads I win, tails I also win. Yeah.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  But his latest business idea, I, I, my wife doesn't want to repeat it. It's actually a good, it's related to ice cream. But he told me, eh, it has to make money. And I said, well, if it loses money. And then he said, it'll be your money if it loses. I was like, oh, that's not fair.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Ice cream is considered a superfood. Um, by the way, speaking of ice cream, speaking of bad food too, um, so let's talk about the McDonald's CEO for a moment.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Yes, I think this should be our last topic.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  This will be the last topic, because I really need to pee. Um, so TMI, but, um, so you've seen the McDonald's video where he had the fourteen million view one where he like eats the Big Mac and he takes like a bite. He's like, oh man, that's so good. He like quickly puts it away.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  And it was a small bite. It was like a mini bite. He's like, didn't even touch it, right?

• 16:19Speaker 00

  So, so like this one over here, the big arch, that's where he takes the bite, right? But if you look at his Instagram, one point one million, six hundred thirty-two million, uh, sorry, six hundred twenty, thirty-two K views, two point eight million views. But look, he's not talking about anything that interesting. Look, tough love with the McDonald's CEO. McDonald's CEO on the best advice he was, and he's really boring and really dry. I'm not saying I'm that entertaining, but it, it's just like he's sitting in office doing these, right? And. The main thing is that for like four years or so, most of his videos average like 20 to 40K views. Which is pretty good, right?

• 16:52Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 16:53Speaker 00

  But for consumers, like he can get a lot more views. But he's just been so consistent over time. And Dicky Bush over here saying, "A lot of executives would have seen that as a waste of time and given up." But he stayed consistent, boom. One gets 14 million views and everything else blows up. And then everyone else on social media is talking about it for like a week or so. But the lesson is consistency. Whenever you're creating content, it comes down to consistency.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  It really does. And I would actually say if we had a bottle up the main reasons Eric and I have done decently well. And when I say decent, you know, compared to the Mark Zuckerers of the world, of course, we didn't perform well financially.

• 17:31Speaker 00

  We did alright in the normal market.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Correct. And the reason I would say that is consistency, in which we've been doing it for a very long time. And persistent, we never really gave up. We just keep going and going and we're okay getting, you know, kicked and, you know, thrown to the ground and we just get back up and keep going.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  If that's one thing, this is probably one thing for both of us. If this one thing that we're really good at, it probably is just resiliency.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  And that's all you need in business, really. If you're like, if you have like half a brain and you're just resilient and you keep going, I think most people just give up too early.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  But it's not just the resiliency, if it's resiliency combined with learning from our failures. Cause not only are we resilient, but we try and we do really try, but sometimes we don't follow through on this. We try to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Sometimes we'll make the same mistake over and over again, like three, four times, but eventually we learn and we stop making it.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. So hence, that's why we're not Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, because they probably just learned once and they're good. Anyway, that's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you later.