Back in the Truth Zone, Exponential Growth Continues, Athleisure is Out, Brothers Don't Use NDA's

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

• 0:00John Coogan?

  Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. Today, we are putting my good friend Teddy Schleifer in the truth zone. If you don't know Teddy, he's a journalist. He hit me up and said, hey, I'm writing something about this secretive gathering of rising MAGA donors in Las Vegas. I heard you're there. I ran into him there. I said, cool, send me your website. I want to check it out. I love Substacks. He sends me this URL. I hadn't seen it before. NYtimes.com. And I went and checked it out. It's kind of like a, kind of like a extreme left. Paki McCormick, like they do the news. It's kind of like a Substack.

• 0:38Jordi Hays?

  Got it.

• 0:39John Coogan?

  You can subscribe, but it's all very techno pessimist instead of techno optimist, which is kind of cool. It's like very different. It's like the opposite of Paki.

• 0:46Jordi Hays?

  They, they had a big issue with their tech team sort of rebelling, right?

• 0:50John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, that's right.

• 0:51Jordi Hays?

  It was a pet bereavement issue.

• 0:53John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. But what, what is cool, and I was on the fence about talking to him because of kind of the vibe of the whole website. But then I saw on their website, you can pay them to print out the website and mail it to you.

• 1:08Jordi Hays?

  No way.

• 1:08John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09Jordi Hays?

  And we love printing.

• 1:10John Coogan?

  I love printing stuff. So then I was like, I'm in Teddy.

• 1:14Jordi Hays?

  No brainer at that point.

• 1:16John Coogan?

  So I run into him. We, we, we chat a little bit at the event and he broke it down. He says, new from Vegas. I went to the Rockbridge Network Fall Summit last week. Fun times. Featuring, it's funny because he, he did go, but he didn't have a ticket, so he couldn't go inside.

• 1:31Jordi Hays?

  No way.

• 1:32John Coogan?

  So he was just hanging out in the, in like the bar area, talking to people. It was very Seymour Hersh.

• 1:38Jordi Hays?

  Was it kind of like, was it kind of like a Project Veritas approach?

• 1:42John Coogan?

  No, no, no, no, no. It wasn't like that. He was, he was very upfront with who, with who he was and he was like shaking hands and introducing himself and it was, it was very above board.

• 1:51Jordi Hays?

  Did he have like, you know, you know, when, when journalists go into war zones and they have like a helmet on and they have like a vest and it says like press or whatever? Did he have that on?

• 1:59John Coogan?

  He didn't have a press pass. He didn't have, he could have been lying to people, but he was not. He was, he was, he was, he was just hanging out and people were happy to talk to him, honestly. Like, I think that there was nothing that crazy going on and he's on the kind of the Elon Musk, the tech politics beat. And so he wanted to talk to all the tech people who were at this event to trying to cross over. So it was featuring Rebecca Mercer, Donald Trump Jr., Susie Wiles, Friends of Elon, me, sick. And an ascendant part of the Republican donor universe. I did not donate. I did not donate, but I did get in, which was cool. But we got to put him in the truth zone.

• 2:35Jordi Hays?

  Truth zone.

• 2:37John Coogan?

  On this show, we do not allow any, any fibs, any clipping, any taking out of context. And so Teddy, you're going in the truth zone, buddy.

• 2:46Jordi Hays?

  We, at this show, we like to trust the experts.

• 2:50John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:50Jordi Hays?

  And those are people like Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman, Lex Friedman.

• 2:54John Coogan?

  Yes, Paki McCormack.

• 2:55Jordi Hays?

  Paki McCormack, right?

• 2:57John Coogan?

  Chris Williamson.

• 2:58Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 2:58John Coogan?

  Sean Corry, Sahil Bloom.

• 3:01Jordi Hays?

  Trust the experts. The experts aren't with us today.

• 3:04John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 3:04Jordi Hays?

  But we'll try to, you know, sort of.

• 3:06John Coogan?

  We'll channel the experts.

• 3:06Jordi Hays?

  Channel the experts.

• 3:07John Coogan?

  Channel the experts. And so, um, he writes, the title of the article that he wrote was, "Behind the Scenes at a Secret Gathering of Rising MAGA Donors." Just four days after being named the next White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles was waiting patiently for an espresso drink at a five-star hotel in Las Vegas. Overnight, she had become one of the most powerful people in America. The value of a minute of her time could not be higher during the presidential transition. Republicans' drivers are hounding her for desirable gigs. And back at Mar-a-Lago, President-elect Donald J. Trump has been courting controversy with his picks. Yet, here she was, thousands of miles away, flanked only by a security guard, alone in line at a Four Seasons coffee shop. She had just peeled, so you notice how he's saying she's not at the actual event? Because he's at the coffee shop.

• 3:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:52John Coogan?

  He's hunting around.

• 3:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:53John Coogan?

  I love that. Uh, he really, he really did just show up there.

• 3:55Jordi Hays?

  I'm waiting for him to say, "I ordered espresso martinis for two, because it was past noon and we were ready for a power lunch."

• 4:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:04Jordi Hays?

  But.

• 4:04John Coogan?

  Love that.

• 4:04Jordi Hays?

  I don't know if he got there.

• 4:06John Coogan?

  And so he, he goes on to say, "The group, this is all for the Rockbridge Network." He said, "It was co-founded five years ago by J.D. Vance, sprouted an informal set of dinners into a powerful coalition of Republican donors who have given more than $100 million to Rockbridge products, uh, projects since 2019, according to a person close to the group." And so, uh, this is just an interesting, uh, just lesson for founders or anyone who's doing anything with the press. There are kind of three tiers of like talking to a reporter. Are you familiar with this?

• 4:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 4:36John Coogan?

  So the base level is like, is like off the record.

• 4:39Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 4:40John Coogan?

  You can't quote me, you can't, uh, you can't say a person familiar with the matter. But I'm giving you this information and then hopefully you can go and use it to, to.

• 4:50Jordi Hays?

  Write a better story.

• 4:51John Coogan?

  Write a better story, exactly. And it's pretty safe to speak on background or off the record.

• 4:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think there's this general, I think there's this general fear of journalists.

• 5:03John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 5:03Jordi Hays?

  Within tech.

• 5:04John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 5:04Jordi Hays?

  And.

• 5:05John Coogan?

  But tech is world wrestling now.

• 5:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 5:08John Coogan?

  And so we need heels and that's where the journalists are filling in.

• 5:11Jordi Hays?

  Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and the thing I would say is, is every, every technology journalist, and I think we should call them technology journalists, just because tech has broadly been used as a slur.

• 5:22John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 5:22Jordi Hays?

  But, um, technology journalists that I've spoken to have been incredibly respectful of the ground rules of journalism, which are.

• 5:30John Coogan?

  Oh, that, yes, this is true.

• 5:31Jordi Hays?

  Off the record, on background, on record, which, which you should get into.

• 5:34John Coogan?

  So this is an example of someone talking on background. It says, "A person close to the group gave them, uh, or gave Teddy, you know, the information that they have raised more than a hundred million dollars." And so they didn't want to be named, but they were okay with that making it into the, into the article.

• 5:54John Coogan?

  And, uh, and this is all in service of helping lead Silicon Valley's march to the right. For Rockbridge, Mr. Vance's election as vice president was a crowning achievement and a tantalizing opportunity to wield new national influence. But Rockbridge has largely, largely kept its activities stealthy, mindful of how groups of wealthy conservatives like the Koch network have drawn attacks from both liberal detractors and Republican wannabes. This is the don't build in public thing.

• 6:16Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 6:17John Coogan?

  You know?

• 6:17Jordi Hays?

  Never build in public.

• 6:18John Coogan?

  Never build in public, uh, except, so as a caravan of black SUVs shuttled in the billionaires from their private jets last week, members of the Rockbridge roster could be spotted around the hotel. Rebecca Mercer. The Republican, the scion of one of the most prolific Republican donor families, greed, well wishers in the lobby. Ken Howery and Luke Nosick, shout out, love those guys. Former partners at Founders Fund, co-founders of the firm. And they worked with Elon Musk at PayPal, made them mega wealthy themselves. And we were actually, Teddy and the three of us were all hanging out. I did not get a chance to talk to Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, but they were there. And he describes them as the six foot five cryptocurrency investors

• 7:01John Coogan?

  and former Harvard heavyweight rowers made famous in the social network.

• 7:04Jordi Hays?

  They do not get enough credit for reinventing themselves and running it back in like a massive way. And it's honestly, if companies like Coinbase were not so dominant from a narrative standpoint, they would get even more credit. Like, they in many ways were cucked again by Brian Arshon.

• 7:22John Coogan?

  To some degree, yeah. And they did, they did do a good job of, of just believing in crypto, like very early and borrowing a ton of it.

• 7:30Jordi Hays?

  Early and right.

• 7:31John Coogan?

  Yep. Attendees with white and red gift bags and lanyards. I didn't get a gift bag. I had a lanyard.

• 7:37Jordi Hays?

  Brutal.

• 7:38John Coogan?

  Brutal. Knew how to be closed lipped when approached by hotel interlopers or by the Times reporter. He's like referencing himself. I love this. Who was not invited to closed press festivities. I like these. But a copy of the agenda listed remarks by several tech billionaires, including Anduril co-founder Palmer Lucky and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who spoke about his support for deregulating technology and the mixed reaction in Silicon Valley to his endorsement of Mr. Trump, according to attendees. There were tech up and comers too. Donald Trump Jr. announced at the welcome dinner that he was re, he was entering venture capital. And days before the president-elect chose Robert F. Kennedy for Health and Human Service Secretary, Mr. Kennedy spoke extensively

• 8:19John Coogan?

  about his public health work to a standing ovation. It's the domestic Davos in the desert, said Rockbridge backer Omid Malik, referring to the annual business conference in Riyadh and Donald Trump's Jr.'s new business partner. That's interesting because, yeah, Omid Malik ran GigaOm for a long time. Big media guy and then big investor. I'm pretty sure. I might be getting that wrong, but.

• 8:44Jordi Hays?

  It makes sense that the next Davos is in America in Las Vegas.

• 8:48John Coogan?

  I like it. I like it. Yeah, it's good. But the reason that I wanted to put Teddy in the truth zone is that I'm in this article and he quoted me. And he cuts some very important stuff out. So let's read. He says, generally, this is a quote from me in the Times. He says, generally, or I say, generally, everyone at Rockbridge was very happy that technologists and politicians are working together directly again and not openly hostile toward each other. This is just kind of what I felt in the room, said John Coogan, who attended. It's no longer a question of whether technology will drive the future, but how we guide its impact. So it makes sense that tech billionaires and the political elite are partying together, which I liked. But that's not what I said, Teddy. I said something. I had another line in here.

• 9:32John Coogan?

  I said, Rockbridge was a stark reminder that the march of techno-capitalism is unrelenting, reshaping every aspect of our society. It is no longer a question of whether technology will drive the future, but how we guide its impact. So it makes sense that tech billionaires and the political elite are partying together. And he took out, the techno-capitalism is unrelenting part, and I don't know why.

• 9:51Jordi Hays?

  I do not know why.

• 9:53John Coogan?

  But no, I of course gave him a bunch of different quotes and he chose whatever he wanted and that's fine. But I wanted to give you the full story here, unfiltered, in the truth zone. Stay tuned.

• 10:04Jordi Hays?

  Trust the experts.

• 10:06John Coogan?

  But Rockbridge has grown significantly. They used to let prospective members attend for just 5,000. Now it's 25,000, although some people said privately that they had been able to get in for less.

• 10:20Jordi Hays?

  They're giving it away, basically.

• 10:22John Coogan?

  The cost to be a limited partner is 100K and the cost to be a principal partner is a million. Now that's a status symbol. We should do a promoted post for them, get some people in there.

• 10:33Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 10:34John Coogan?

  But in general, you know, we don't, we never, we actually never talk about politics on the show, but.

• 10:38Jordi Hays?

  Or social issues.

• 10:39John Coogan?

  Yeah, or, or, or social issues. But I do, I do think it's good that technologists and politicians are talking to each other again and figuring out how to reform the government.

• 10:51Jordi Hays?

  It's important.

• 10:51John Coogan?

  Regulate and do all sorts of stuff. So as a technology brother, it's great to see the politics brothers doing good work and the technology brothers convening with them in Las Vegas. It's fantastic. So anyway, that wraps up the truth zone. We are moving on to our next segment. What do we have, Jordy?

• 11:10Jordi Hays?

  So today, big size gong moment, Fabian Pin- Pinkhairs?

• 11:17John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 11:17Jordi Hays?

  Fabian Pinkhairs is announcing a 500 million.

• 11:22John Coogan?

  Ooh, million?

• 11:24Jordi Hays?

  I was gonna say dollars, but then I caught the symbol here. 500 million euro investment in Udu at a 5 billion euro valuation, which has been led by Capital G and Sequoia Capital, along with top investors like Mubadala and BlackRock. He notes here that it is a secondary transaction, no money for the company as we don't need it. We grow organically. Statement. He says, "I didn't sell, kept the majority." So, at this point, we're not exactly clear if he didn't, if he means he didn't sell the company, or if he didn't sell shares, but either way, a 500 million dollar investment. Does that, can we hit the size gong for euros, or is that a?

• 12:08John Coogan?

  I would love to hit the size gong. Clearly, this is a huge deal, but I think, I think we gotta keep the size gong.

• 12:14Jordi Hays?

  Would it be un-American?

• 12:15John Coogan?

  It would be un-American.

• 12:16Jordi Hays?

  It would be un-American to hit.

• 12:19John Coogan?

  But I, I mean, I love Andrew Reid at Sequoia, one of the holy trinity firms. No one loves Sequoia more than I do. And he's been a fantastic investor. He's in Figma, he's in this company. And it's interesting because I hadn't really heard of them. And then, as soon as I saw this, and we discussed, talking about this, I saw, I saw Billboard just driving around Los Angeles for this company. And their tagline was like, "The only business software you'll ever need." And so, I think that they've just really carved out a nice little niche for them, been very profitable, grown significantly, and now they get the luxury of doing a huge secondary transaction. And it's all part of this trend of companies staying private longer, doing more secondary transactions to get early employees.

• 13:01Jordi Hays?

  There were more secondary transactions in like, six companies.

• 13:04John Coogan?

  Really?

• 13:04Jordi Hays?

  Last year than there were IPO proceeds.

• 13:07John Coogan?

  Wow. That's wild.

• 13:09Jordi Hays?

  And it's just like showing that.

• 13:10John Coogan?

  But it makes sense.

• 13:11Jordi Hays?

  The best companies have almost infinite access to capital, especially when you're able to cater to asset managers like BlackRock.

• 13:20Jordi Hays?

  Creators of Burning Man.

• 13:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, I think, yeah, BlackRock City. They have their own city.

• 13:24Jordi Hays?

  They have their own city.

• 13:25John Coogan?

  I mean.

• 13:26Jordi Hays?

  Out in the desert. We gotta go there at some point.

• 13:28John Coogan?

  Fidelity should do their own city. But yeah, fantastic news. Unfortunately, we can't ring the size gong on this one.

• 13:36Jordi Hays?

  Next time.

• 13:37John Coogan?

  Maybe next time it'll be in dollars.

• 13:38Jordi Hays?

  Announce it in dollars. We'll make it happen if Fabian wants to re-announce it.

• 13:42John Coogan?

  And then, and then reshow to America, bring all the jobs here and.

• 13:45Jordi Hays?

  That would be fantastic.

• 13:46John Coogan?

  Let Europe languish and become a vacation destination for all the Americans.

• 13:51Jordi Hays?

  Couldn't have said it better myself.

• 13:52John Coogan?

  Well, that's a good transition. As long as we're on American Djangoism. Let's, let's move on to a, a question that we got from a viewer. On YouTube, Kai on Stack says, I'm so into the pod. Thank you. I appreciate that. But I'm a Canadian living in China. Am I still a brother? And that's an interesting question. What do you think, Jordy?

• 14:16Jordi Hays?

  Man, I think we need a, a whole hour to kind of break this down. What does it mean to be a brother?

• 14:21John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 14:21Jordi Hays?

  But I think we've kind of come back to this notion that being a technology brother is very spiritual.

• 14:26John Coogan?

  I agree.

• 14:27Jordi Hays?

  As American as we are and as American as this podcast is, the idea of being a technology brother is something that almost knows no borders, right?

• 14:36John Coogan?

  I agree, I agree.

• 14:37Jordi Hays?

  It's a mindset. It's something that in many ways you're born with. It's genderless. It's not limited by the constraints of nationalities, gender, even industry, right? You can be a technology brother wherever you are in the world, whatever you do for work. Granted that you're risk on and levered up.

• 14:58John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 14:58Jordi Hays?

  And.

• 14:59John Coogan?

  It would be helpful to know.

• 15:01Jordi Hays?

  What you're doing in China.

• 15:01John Coogan?

  Do you have an angel portfolio? What programming languages do you know?

• 15:05Jordi Hays?

  Have you ever convinced your parents to buy Bitcoin?

• 15:07John Coogan?

  What's your astrological sign? These things all kind of come together to create the milieu of what a technology brother really is.

• 15:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, no, an example, you know, long before we started the show, I was able to convince my father, retired math teacher, to buy Bitcoin at the market top in 20, I guess it was 2022.

• 15:28John Coogan?

  Great for Thanksgiving.

• 15:29Jordi Hays?

  And what really kind of crystallized that was getting him to hold until he made it all back this year. So I made my dad whole.

• 15:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Jordi Hays?

  And if I wasn't so convicted in, you know, decentralized finance, there's no way I could have kept every, Jordy, I think I want to sell, like I'm down, you know, 60%. Just hold on dad. So my big question for this listener, maybe you can send us a DM is what are you doing in China? I would hope that.

• 15:59John Coogan?

  I would hope that you're spying for America.

• 16:01Jordi Hays?

  Yep, that would be our.

• 16:03John Coogan?

  And that you're a Canadian, you're saying you're Canadian to build your profile up there. Build some credibility. So when the CCP looks you up, they're, oh, he's a Canadian. When really CIA.

• 16:14Jordi Hays?

  Xi has put us on his most wanted list. You know, we frequently, we're up in a high rise here in LA and there's frequently DGI drones sort of like swarming outside the windows, trying to figure out what we're going to say next, try to hear what we're going to, you know, say off air. Truth is, we're always on air. So there's literally nothing.

• 16:34John Coogan?

  But I would say that, I would say that if, you know, on YouTube, please go subscribe, but we only have a few hundred subscribers right now. The videos don't get that many views. If you're getting these recommended to you, I would say that the YouTube algorithm has identified you as a technology brother and understands for whatever variety of reasons, maybe you've been watching, you know, Doug Demiro, learning about cars, Teddy Baldassar, learning about watches, Lex Friedman podcast, Duar Cash, and it's put all that together and it's just dialed in, you are a tech brother. And so here you go. This is the perfect show for you and you clicked and you watched and you commented. So I'm going to go, yes, you are certified.

• 17:11Jordi Hays?

  Brother.

• 17:11John Coogan?

  Technology brother. The only thing is that the next comment, it's better be on X, but buddy.

• 17:15Jordi Hays?

  Better be on X and better be from the United States.

• 17:19John Coogan?

  Yeah, use a VPN.

• 17:20Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 17:21John Coogan?

  Uh, let's go to one more DM. Uh, we got this from an anonymous, uh, person who seems pretty post-economic. Uh, hi, John and Jordy. I'm planning a renewal of vows ceremony with my family and 300 of my closest friends and business associates next summer. My plan is to do a buyout at an Aman property and charter planes to get everyone there. I can't decide which property we should choose, though. What do you think?

• 17:48Jordi Hays?

  Wow, he almost kind of set up.

• 17:50John Coogan?

  But I, I had to print out a list, uh, so that I could, I could run through some of these. Um, but what would your top pick be?

• 17:59Jordi Hays?

  Look, uh, you can't go wrong with Aman. Uh, you can go very wrong with just about every Four Seasons and every Roots Carlton in the world now.

• 18:07John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 18:08Jordi Hays?

  Uh, those brands have gone downhill pretty dramatically.

• 18:10John Coogan?

  Well, let's, you know, we are still open to them paying us to promote them.

• 18:14Jordi Hays?

  Of course, of course, but we would, we would need to be part of a turnaround effort to elevate the properties back to their former.

• 18:20John Coogan?

  I think so.

• 18:21Jordi Hays?

  State. So here's the thing. Uh, if I'm, uh, if I'm this listener, I'm thinking, you gotta go world tour, at least four locations in two weeks. There's something about having novel experiences with, with loved ones that is like really bonding.

• 18:36John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 18:36Jordi Hays?

  And so if you can go to Tokyo, start there, bounce over, yeah, Venice would be great. Uh, bounce over to Corchavel.

• 18:44John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 18:45Jordi Hays?

  Uh, maybe get a little skiing in and then head over to Amangiri for kind of a classic, uh, sort of the classic Aman experience. It's been shared, it's been overshared on, on social, but it's, uh, can't, in many ways can't be shared enough. It's dramatic.

• 19:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:00Jordi Hays?

  It's inspiring and it's exactly the place that you should be sort of having a moment like that.

• 19:05John Coogan?

  I'm gonna disagree with you there. I would say, keep everyone in the US. It's just gonna be easier and people are gonna have less excuses, the jet lag, even though you're paying for the, for the chartered, chartered planes. Just, you know, pick from the, the US locations, Amangani, Amangiri, Jackson Hole, Lake Powell. These are great options. And, you know, Aman, New York, the problem there, you're gonna have a lot of friends who live in New York or they have pied-à-terres and they're gonna go home after the festivities. You want everyone staying on the property locked in. And so you gotta get a little bit out of the, the, the main hustle and bustle of everyday life. Um, and so I would probably go there and, and, and keep the international stuff to smaller groups.

• 19:48John Coogan?

  But you can't really go wrong.

• 19:49Jordi Hays?

  I think that's a good take. But yeah, at the end of the day, if you're going them on, you can't go wrong.

• 19:54John Coogan?

  Yeah. So there's no wrong answer, but let us know how it pans out and write in with results and some pictures.

• 20:01Jordi Hays?

  Let us know your dates if you're not doing a full buyout. There's a chance that one of us will be on the on the property at the same time.

• 20:06John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Should we do a promoted post and then we'll go into the timeline?

• 20:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, let's jump in. This promoted post is from Craig Lawrence. He says, have posted this before, but worth repeating. You can literally get a quote for a hundred megawatt hour Tesla Megapack system online without speaking to a human. Love the efficiency. Most thousand dollar a year B two B SaaS companies won't even do that. So Craig here is highlighting the Tesla Megapack, which comes in.

• 20:35John Coogan?

  We're big Tesla supporters here.

• 20:36Jordi Hays?

  At this point, if you order today, you can get a delivery in Q three, 2025. So waiting even less than for the new F 80. And the estimated price is actually less than an F 80. It's only 90 million dollars. And you can order one.

• 20:54John Coogan?

  It's much more than an F 80, but if you're building, if you're building a compound in Wyoming or Colorado or Alaska, I think you gotta go Tesla.

• 21:03Jordi Hays?

  Did I say, did I say?

• 21:04John Coogan?

  You said it's less than an F 80.

• 21:06Jordi Hays?

  Okay, okay. Sorry. The F 80s, the F 80s. Yeah, sorry.

• 21:09John Coogan?

  But the down payment.

• 21:10Jordi Hays?

  Quite a bit more than an F 80. What I meant is that the down payment is is less than an F 80.

• 21:15John Coogan?

  How much is the down payment on this 90 million dollar battery pack?

• 21:17Jordi Hays?

  90 million dollar battery pack, only $10,000 due today.

• 21:21John Coogan?

  That's fantastic.

• 21:22Jordi Hays?

  And like, you know, look at the efficiency here. The estimated annual maintenance is only half a million dollars.

• 21:27John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 21:28Jordi Hays?

  So you can be running this thing if you're running, you know, if you have at your chalet in Wyoming, you could sort of leverage this to make sure that all the snow for for sort of three square miles around your property was melted, right?

• 21:41John Coogan?

  You just run heaters everywhere.

• 21:43Jordi Hays?

  Private golf course, tennis courts, you know, this is a perfect solution for that. So fantastic product by Tesla.

• 21:49John Coogan?

  You could run a data center off of that.

• 21:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you could run a data center. We'll likely look to get one of these for our next studio in New York. Just to make sure that if, if for some reason, New York were to lose power, we would be able to keep podcasting.

• 22:03John Coogan?

  There's the famous, famous photo of Goldman Sachs during Hurricane Sandy, where all of New York had gone dark.

• 22:09Jordi Hays?

  Goldman Sachs.

• 22:10John Coogan?

  They did not. They had batteries.

• 22:11Jordi Hays?

  And that will be the same for our Manhattan studio. We will never stop podcasting.

• 22:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Jordi Hays?

  Anyways, great product, fantastic product from Tesla. Go buy one.

• 22:21John Coogan?

  Tell them the Technology Brothers sent you.

• 22:23Jordi Hays?

  Only $10,000 due today.

• 22:24John Coogan?

  That's fantastic. Fantastic. Well, before we move on to the timeline, we have some breaking news, everyone. The Technology Brothers X account has just crossed 2,000 followers. Let's go. Let's go.

• 22:42John Coogan?

  So it is a tradition around here. Every, we, we, we love and respect exponential growth. And every time we double, we open up a bottle of Dom Perignon.

• 22:52Jordi Hays?

  There we go. There we go.

• 22:53John Coogan?

  Let's do it. You know, Albert Einstein had an interesting quote about exponential growth and compound interest. I think he said, "Compound interest is fucking sick."

• 23:04Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 23:05John Coogan?

  Isn't that what he said?

• 23:05Jordi Hays?

  That was word for word.

• 23:07John Coogan?

  I think, I think, people misquote him.

• 23:09Jordi Hays?

  They misquote him, but he said it's, he said it was fucking sick.

• 23:12John Coogan?

  He just said it's fucking sick and it rocks, dude. Boom.

• 23:16Jordi Hays?

  There we go. There we go.

• 23:22John Coogan?

  I'm getting better.

• 23:22Jordi Hays?

  What an amazing tra- tradition. Thank you to.

• 23:26John Coogan?

  Top Bros Pod.

• 23:27Jordi Hays?

  Thank you to LVMH for making this possible.

• 23:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's fantastic. It's important to celebrate wins, you know? We've been doing this pod for, what, 38 days? We've been on X for 18 days.

• 23:39Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 23:40John Coogan?

  And exponential growth is a hell of a drug.

• 23:44Jordi Hays?

  And none of this is possible without our community.

• 23:47John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 23:48Jordi Hays?

  And we wish you all were here savoring this 2013. And cheers to you, John.

• 23:55John Coogan?

  Cheers. Cheers to you, Jordy.

• 23:57Jordi Hays?

  And cheers to Ben. Thank you, Ben.

• 23:58John Coogan?

  Cheers to our Vice President.

• 24:02Jordi Hays?

  Delicious.

• 24:04John Coogan?

  Let's fill these up a little bit more.

• 24:06Jordi Hays?

  And we both have some type of flu from, I think, my son's preschool.

• 24:10John Coogan?

  I think you gave it to me.

• 24:11Jordi Hays?

  And so this is gonna be sort of fantastic.

• 24:15John Coogan?

  Taking the edge off.

• 24:16Jordi Hays?

  Taking the edge off.

• 24:16John Coogan?

  You know, the other day after we recorded, I had a meeting with someone and we enjoyed martinis together as we chatted and it was fantastic.

• 24:26Jordi Hays?

  And one thing about this tradition that I think is important to note is we stay fasted prior to opening the bottle, which is key to just make sure you're getting the maximum level of enjoyment out of each sip.

• 24:41John Coogan?

  Absolutely.

• 24:42Jordi Hays?

  So cheers.

• 24:44John Coogan?

  Cheers. Thank you, everyone, for following.

• 24:46Jordi Hays?

  Our No family.

• 24:47John Coogan?

  If you're already following, tell 10 friends to follow. Turn it into a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid scheme.

• 24:53Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 24:53John Coogan?

  The economics will work out later. Don't worry about it.

• 24:55Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 24:56John Coogan?

  But you want to get in early. You want to be following on X because that's where all the action happens.

• 25:00Jordi Hays?

  And one of Ben's KPIs is to get to 4K by next week.

• 25:05John Coogan?

  Next week. We'll see if we can do it. We gotta post some banners.

• 25:07Jordi Hays?

  If we can pull this off, we will be back, you know, by next Friday's episode.

• 25:13John Coogan?

  With another bottle of Dom Pérignon.

• 25:14Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 25:15John Coogan?

  So thank you to LVMH. Let's go to the timeline. We are discussing Kaba. Kaba is quoting Perplexity. Perplexity says, "The Tech Bro Starter Pack, courtesy of VC Bragg's shop on Perplexity." This is a really cool feature from Perplexity. They launched their competitor Google Shopping and it's just much more AI-native, much more driven by take a picture.

• 25:38Jordi Hays?

  Less spammy.

• 25:39John Coogan?

  Shows you.

• 25:39Jordi Hays?

  Less pay-to-play.

• 25:41John Coogan?

  Exactly. And so in the Tech Bro Starter Pack, I'm extremely confused about this because none of these are familiar to me at all.

• 25:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 25:52John Coogan?

  It's the Patagonia vest, the Allbirds sneakers, the Peloton bike, Zero to One, that is a classic.

• 25:59Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 26:00John Coogan?

  The Apple Vision Pro and the Cold Plunge. And then Kaba asks, we need to refresh with loud opulence CC tech bros pod. And yeah, I mean, it's

• 26:10Jordi Hays?

  We are working on this.

• 26:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, we are working on this. We will be dropping merch. We will be building out the modern tech bro starter pack.

• 26:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, loud, loud opulence is a

• 26:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, what is the thesis behind loud opulence?

• 26:23Jordi Hays?

  Look, we went through a period where, you know, one tech went through a deeply troubled period of Patagonia vests and all birds and sort of like stretchy jeans. You know, there was this

• 26:36John Coogan?

  It was very apologetic.

• 26:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, apologetic. They were trying to dress down.

• 26:40John Coogan?

  Beaten down by the media, demonized, villainized. And the, and the reaction to that was to say, hey, look, I might have a, you know, a billion dollar fund and be making $10 million a year personally, but

• 26:53Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 26:54John Coogan?

  Yeah, I'm just gonna throw on some, you know, what's it called? Like athleisure.

• 26:59Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 27:00John Coogan?

  And it's brutal and it's disgrace, really.

• 27:03Jordi Hays?

  Oh, and look, and, and over the last decade, suits have been gathering dust. A lot of, a lot of venture capitalists, you know, just left them in the closet.

• 27:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Jordi Hays?

  Kind of forgot about them. But, um, you know, loud opulence is about bringing back a culture of dressing up, dressing for the job that you have.

• 27:21John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 27:21Jordi Hays?

  And the job that you want, which is typically billions more AUM.

• 27:25John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 27:26Jordi Hays?

  And it's about building a relationship with, um, you know, your local authorized dealer. It's about, um, it's about having the sales associate at Hermes.

• 27:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:38Jordi Hays?

  On speed dial so that when Christmas is around the corner, you're not going and shopping online. You're scheduling an appointment. So.

• 27:46John Coogan?

  And so instead of the Patagonia vest, befriend a tailor, get a custom suit or call John Fiorentino.

• 27:54Jordi Hays?

  Fiorentino.

• 27:54John Coogan?

  And get a Fiorentino label suit. That makes a ton of sense. Instead of all bird sneakers, how about a pair of Prada loafers?

• 28:01Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 28:01John Coogan?

  Right?

• 28:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And loud opulence again is, is the 1% rule.

• 28:04John Coogan?

  Everyone knows instead of a Peloton bike, you should be at a barbell gym.

• 28:08Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 28:09John Coogan?

  Try Rogue.

• 28:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, another example of loud opulence as well is the 1% rule, which we've talked about a lot, which is if you're a venture capitalist, take 1% of your AUM and that is the budget that you should use for your daily driver. So we'll let you guys do the math, but a lot of you guys, I know your AUM and I see you in Teslas and it sort of pains me.

• 28:34John Coogan?

  Step it up. $50 million fund, that's 500K, that's a Huracan easily.

• 28:38Jordi Hays?

  Easily.

• 28:39John Coogan?

  GT3RS, you're right there. So make it happen.

• 28:42Jordi Hays?

  And if you're not sure what to get.

• 28:45John Coogan?

  I did a cold plunge today, it was great, but yeah, I mean, nothing substitutes for just some.

• 28:51Jordi Hays?

  Your cold plunge should be built into your house, too.

• 28:53John Coogan?

  Yes, and the Apple Vision Pro, I think, you know, if you're a real tech brother, you can afford a home theater.

• 28:59Jordi Hays?

  Exactly.

• 29:00John Coogan?

  Which is kind of what the Apple Vision Pro replaces.

• 29:03Jordi Hays?

  Except you can do it with friends and family and we're pro-natalists and you can't fit a family of four in a Vision Pro.

• 29:11John Coogan?

  I actually saw a wonderful home renovation show where a house in LA, they boosted the entire house up on blocks while they were renovating it and built a new basement for a wine cellar underneath. I didn't know that you could add a basement.

• 29:25Jordi Hays?

  And a home theater or just a wine cellar?

• 29:26John Coogan?

  I think there was a home theater, but I don't know if it was in the basement.

• 29:28Jordi Hays?

  We're gonna need a cellar just for bottles of Dom.

• 29:30John Coogan?

  I think so. I think so. But yeah, so a little bit of a mixed result at VC Brags. I think you need to step it up, get into the new generation.

• 29:41Jordi Hays?

  But yeah.

• 29:41John Coogan?

  But Kaba, we're happy to provide you with a refresh.

• 29:44Jordi Hays?

  Loud opulence starts at home, in your home. It's Q4, the holidays are around the corner. Many of the brands that most express loud opulence are not going to be going on sale. So don't worry about Black Friday sales, but you got about a month to get those gifts in and spend wisely.

• 30:01John Coogan?

  Yep. Let's go to Delian. He's quoting Will Manitis. Will says, "Every decision I've made that wasn't an instant hell yes has been a mistake. Every pro con list is an admission, the thing isn't worth it. The path God has laid out for you is so obvious, it feels like getting bludgeoned." And Delian says, "Basically, my approach to seed investing, pure intuition, super obvious when you're bludgeoned by the presence of a phenomenal founder. The moment you're writing out pros and cons, it's doomed." And yeah, I mean, this post by Will really resonated, and I think a lot of people enjoyed Delian's post as well. And I think there's something that even if you're not an investor, just leaning in on that intuition, trust your gut.

• 30:42Jordi Hays?

  There's something, there's something universal about this, because every time somebody posts about this phenomenon, I immediately am like, that totally applies to like, a very specific decision that I need to make in the next like, 48 hours, 72 hours. And it's such a good reminder. So Delian will repost this once a week. You're doing a service for the community, so we can all make better decisions.

• 31:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, it is, it is tricky. Like, if you're kind of more of a quantitative thinker, or like a frameworks guy, even around gut, you want to put a framework. I had a friend who was like, "Oh, it's all vibes. I'm a vibe aligner. That's my whole job is to just align vibes." I'm a vibe architect, he called himself. I was like, "That's good." But then, later in the conversation, he described how he made like, a pro and con list about whether or not he should go on vacation. I was like, "I think you could just lean on vibes for that one. Like, our vacation's fun." And he had a whole framework for why vacations are important. And it was very thoughtful, and it really resonated with me. And that was a good part of the conversation. But truly, like, if you're actually in the vibe architect

• 31:47John Coogan?

  world, you probably don't need to be doing the framework stuff at all. But it is hard. I've run into investors, very successful investors, who cannot describe their investment process at all. And it's very frustrating, because everyone wants a framework, everyone wants a pattern, or playbook that they can... And that's the stuff that normally does really well on social media, is like, just, just do this checklist, just build this model, and this will deliver results. But as soon as you can concretize it, you lose all the alpha.

• 32:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And I, I try to be honest with myself when I'm looking at my own portfolio, my, my best pre-seed investment ever.

• 32:26Jordi Hays?

  Is a company where when I met the CEO, you know, within literally probably three minutes of talking, I knew I wanted to invest. I knew the company would work and sort of get to the level of traction that it has. I knew that there were risks and many of those risks are still like real and they're sort of like steadily trying to like knock them down. But it's important, you know, even now, when I talk about that investment with with other investors, I'm not going to like, go reverse engineer some like super complex decision making process because so much of venture is just, it's obviously just getting into the companies that matter. And then, uh, you know, yeah, it's like pretty binary, like were you right or not?

• 33:07John Coogan?

  Yep. Yep. Let's go to Sam Hogan. He says, someone should start a studio of cracked devs plus GTM team. And just look at the YC batch every season for the best ideas and then front run them.

• 33:18Jordi Hays?

  So this is, this is basically YC, but just doing it, doing it to the last batch. Right. Look at Daniel, look at Daniel, like, you know, being a crack dev, creating a company in a specific space. And then their new request for startups was basically like his business. One of the, one of the lines was like his exact business. So YC is basically saying, hey, crack, other crack devs, we want to do more of these. Come, come compete.

• 33:43John Coogan?

  What's interesting is that like, there are two narratives about YC, like one is that, that it's like, oh, like copy paste on a bunch of ideas that are like, you know, popular at the time. But then there's the other one, which is like the, the fast CEO was, no, not fast. The, uh, what was his name? The, the guy who started love.com?

• 34:02Jordi Hays?

  Bresla.

• 34:02John Coogan?

  Breslow. He was like, YC is a mafia, like they will crown a, a champion. And then they will never do a deal in that space again. And it's kind of like the exact opposite.

• 34:13Jordi Hays?

  Totally not true. Yeah. So I think it's actually super positive. If you have one, if you have one company that is super, super promising, solving an important issue. Why would we not want five other teams like attacking it from different angles? Because you're more likely to create a generational company that could help, you know, millions of businesses, you know, employ, you know, hundreds of thousands of people over time, all these different things, you know, create some transformative technology. We, we actually want, we want a density of smart people pursuing specific problems. And so it's generally, it's kind of annoying if you're the founder that's being cloned by three to four other YC companies.

• 34:53Jordi Hays?

  But use it as fuel, right? Like Dara, Dara is somebody, you know, he posted the other day. He was like, you know, some competitor, like direct competitor got announced and he's like, cool. Like another reason for me and my team to work 12 hours a day.

• 35:07John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. I do think that the, the like direct competitor thing is a bit overrated because if you're really, if you're really delivering on your mission and growing really quickly, like these should be potential aqua hires, potential talent farms and.

• 35:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, look at, and look at Anduril, like Anduril has like a hundred, a hundred, a hundred companies that are now like doing effectively. Like they either break out or they and become partners to Anduril or they get, you know, it's like off balance sheet R and D.

• 35:35John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. As, as a certain point, like, once you, once you have the formula dialed in and you are the, the power law company, the competition is actually beneficial to you.

• 35:45Jordi Hays?

  Totally.

• 35:47John Coogan?

  Well, that's a great.

• 35:47Jordi Hays?

  Cause those are, yeah, those are, those are other companies that are upskilling there.

• 35:51John Coogan?

  Oh, this is, this is fantastic. Mike Shebitt over at Traba, he says today's news, there was a fire in New York City where his company is based, a large fire breaks out.

• 36:00Jordi Hays?

  I think potentially in the building.

• 36:02John Coogan?

  It might've been in the same building. Large fire breaks out on Soho rooftop and the, and they got press around this because they kept working. And it says FDNY hottest startup in NYC, Traba stays locked in despite fire. I love that they called NBC New York and got this done. It's amazing. And, and they actually went over the ramp office.

• 36:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ramp hosted everybody, I think.

• 36:26John Coogan?

  Like what a heroic move. Potential brother of the week right here.

• 36:29Jordi Hays?

  Potential brother of the week. Never stop grinding.

• 36:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, fantastic. I mean, he has, he's done a great job of monopolizing the, the hard work ethos in a way that gets.

• 36:42Jordi Hays?

  In a non-cringe way.

• 36:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's not, it's not cringy to people who are insiders to tech. It is a little cringy to, to outsiders who don't understand where the alpha exists in this market.

• 36:55Jordi Hays?

  I don't think it's cringy to outsiders.

• 36:57John Coogan?

  He has haters. He has haters.

• 36:58Jordi Hays?

  No, it pushes people away.

• 37:00John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 37:00Jordi Hays?

  But it pushes the right people away.

• 37:02John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly. But, but he hasn't become an outcast. There are some people who post like hustle porn, but they never build anything and it's just hustle porn for hustle porn's sake.

• 37:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this is an example of living the brand, right?

• 37:15John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 37:15Jordi Hays?

  And capturing the moment perfectly.

• 37:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:17Jordi Hays?

  By getting some, some.

• 37:18John Coogan?

  And you take a look at this dude and he's jacked and like clearly lives like every moment like at 110%.

• 37:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 37:24John Coogan?

  And so you, you just see that it's like he's, he's the real deal. He has the proof of body.

• 37:29Jordi Hays?

  Totally.

• 37:29John Coogan?

  And the proof of like work ethic and everything.

• 37:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 37:32John Coogan?

  Fantastic. Congrats to Mike for making it through the fire.

• 37:35Jordi Hays?

  Always stay locked in.

• 37:36John Coogan?

  Always stay locked in.

• 37:37Jordi Hays?

  Always love her up.

• 37:38John Coogan?

  I love it. Do we have another promoted post?

• 37:40Jordi Hays?

  Promoted post from Ted Feldman. He says, engineers wanted. Durin, Durin is hiring a founding software engineer. If you want to help build the next thousand mines in America, this role is for you.

• 37:54Jordi Hays?

  Incredible opportunity. We love mining. We love rare earth minerals. Durin is a company that.

• 38:00John Coogan?

  It's not crypto. It's, it's actually mining.

• 38:01Jordi Hays?

  No, it's real mining.

• 38:02John Coogan?

  Let's go.

• 38:03Jordi Hays?

  Mining for rare earth minerals. Look at this. You know, fantastic asset that he has here.

• 38:09John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 38:09Jordi Hays?

  You know, you know, software engineers and tech has, has spent, you know, decades sort of looking out into the world and looking up at the stars and it's time that we look down into the ground. Let's drill, baby, drill. Go. If you are a software engineer, incredible opportunity. Go to durinminingtechnologies appliedtojob.com. Go apply for this job.

• 38:35John Coogan?

  Tell them the technology brother sent you.

• 38:37Jordi Hays?

  And thank you to Ted for, for, for mining.

• 38:40John Coogan?

  Onto bigger and better things. Fantastic. Good luck out there. Let's go to Diego. Diego says, you can get the USA citizenship by marrying a USA citizen. They also had to do, introduce the H1B and the O1 visa because politicians knew you autistic MFs had higher chances of discovering AGI than making eye contact with a woman for over five seconds.

• 39:04Jordi Hays?

  I mean incredible foresight by by our politicians.

• 39:08John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 39:09Jordi Hays?

  And we love the H1B program. There's some great companies that make the process easier. We want all the smartest, most ambitious people in the entire world to come to the United States.

• 39:21John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 39:21Jordi Hays?

  And to build the next trillion dollar company here.

• 39:24John Coogan?

  If you need a recommendation letter, this is a thing for the for the O1 and H1B, hit me up. I'm happy to write you a letter recommendation. I've done it many times.

• 39:34Jordi Hays?

  Any TB listeners get recommendation letters.

• 39:36John Coogan?

  100%. Just give me a little bit of your background, we'll talk and I'll figure something out, but I'm happy to write these letters. I want to recruit. I want America to grow. I want a billion Americans crushing it. And I'm happy for all these paths to citizenship. We need to acquire. We need to be a talent magnet.

• 39:55Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 39:55John Coogan?

  We need to brain drain all the un-American companies. All the un-American countries need to be brain drained.

• 40:01Jordi Hays?

  Every single one.

• 40:02John Coogan?

  Every single one. We got all the all the all the all the

• 40:05Jordi Hays?

  Come here and build.

• 40:06John Coogan?

  all the giga chats in America.

• 40:08Jordi Hays?

  We'll talk, you build.

• 40:09John Coogan?

  Yep. Morgan Barrett says how it feels to wake up and see your midnight throwaway tweet doing numbers. Low, low tam?

• 40:18Jordi Hays?

  Low tam banger. Cause I think I think this is one of those things.

• 40:21John Coogan?

  Super viral this week. He got 35K likes on a tweet that said,

• 40:26John Coogan?

  I have a 100% hit rate with cold emails when I use a female name and an EDU address.

• 40:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So I think you got like a thousand followers too overnight, which is which is pretty intense.

• 40:36John Coogan?

  Yeah. Huge. Congrats, Morgan. Good post.

• 40:39Jordi Hays?

  Congrats to Morgan. Yeah, no, I want every single person in America to be able to experience what he just did.

• 40:46John Coogan?

  It's amazing. When you when you get something that goes past 10, 20K, it's like your phone's just exploding. Every time you open it up, the dopamine is just rushing. It's it's fantastic.

• 40:56Jordi Hays?

  Incredible feeling.

• 40:57John Coogan?

  And it's easier than ever, given the new X algorithm, because everything is getting more pushed out to the to the

• 41:05Jordi Hays?

  To the edges.

• 41:06John Coogan?

  edges of the curve essentially. Like you will have a post that goes mega viral and then the next one will get 26 likes.

• 41:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, no, and this guy, this guy Morgan like had likely that, you know, hack that he has of using female EDU emails.

• 41:22Jordi Hays?

  He could dramatically change, you know, US GDP growth this year if enough people put that to work

• 41:27John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 41:27Jordi Hays?

  And sort of hit their quota, hit their quarterly goals, hit their annual goals.

• 41:31John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 41:32Jordi Hays?

  So, thank you to Morgan for sharing this little hack.

• 41:35John Coogan?

  I don't know if he should have leaked that alpha.

• 41:36Jordi Hays?

  I don't know if he should have leaked it. I don't know if he should. Every, every, every AI sales agent like product is gonna be like, check this box if you want to use a .edu.

• 41:45John Coogan?

  I wouldn't be surprised if we see an AI sales agent startup by a for-profit university just to get a .edu.

• 41:53Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:54John Coogan?

  So that they can license those to people. That's fantastic.

• 41:58Jordi Hays?

  Alpha.

• 41:59John Coogan?

  I wonder how he's getting a .edu that, that sound. Maybe he's using his, like.

• 42:03Jordi Hays?

  Dude, this is, there's a whole, there's a whole, there's a whole, there's a, there's a small but profitable SaaS company built, a marketplace where people at universities can, can lease, they should lease their emails to sales reps. So if you are a young technology brother, you know, maybe in college today, start that marketplace. I think you could get to a million dollars of ARR off that business and retire your parents. So, do it.

• 42:34John Coogan?

  It's great. Ben says.

• 42:35Jordi Hays?

  Probably, probably very against the terms of use, but, but great things oftentimes have to sort of skirt the law.

• 42:41John Coogan?

  Bend the rules.

• 42:44John Coogan?

  Ben says, "The bit may have gone too far." And he posted a screenshot that says, "EV cars that will be launched by the Tata Motors-owned British car manufacturer. Ben Hilek, the maker of the new logo, previously worked with Apple as a designer. He, however, claimed that the logo's letters are all in uppercase. Responding to users on his post, Ben remarked that the logo actually resembles a Jaguar with J being the tail and R the head." What is he talking about? I don't think so at all.

• 43:12Jordi Hays?

  So, so Jaguar had their sort of rebrand, reannouncement this week. It went, it went, it couldn't have been, it couldn't have gone worse. I saw the CEO was like, talking to the boomer media, saying like, "Oh, actually, a bunch of people really liked it."

• 43:26John Coogan?

  There is a hot take that it's like, at least they got attention because this is the most Jaguar has been talked about in years.

• 43:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but like, they could have done something like this and got much better attention. There, there were just a lot of better ways they could do it. But Ben went out. Did the smart thing, captured the moment, claimed credit for doing the rebrand. He's a designer.

• 43:42John Coogan?

  Wait, is he not Jaguar?

• 43:44Jordi Hays?

  He's not a Jaguar. He has nothing to do with Jaguar.

• 43:47John Coogan?

  And he's getting quoted in the media now?

• 43:48Jordi Hays?

  So he went out and claimed credit and got picked up. And in this situation for Ben, this kind of attention, I think is fantastic.

• 43:56John Coogan?

  Oh, this is him. He's, he's, oh, I just put it together that Ben Heilig, Ben Heilig.

• 44:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:03John Coogan?

  And then he was joking and then he got.

• 44:04Jordi Hays?

  They picked it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause yeah, I think, I don't know. I don't, yeah, I don't, I don't know the guy, but I think he's got a cool startup, great designer, great taste.

• 44:13John Coogan?

  Fantastic. This is a future Rahul Ligma bit.

• 44:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's really the, the next Ligma.

• 44:19John Coogan?

  The J is the tail.

• 44:20Jordi Hays?

  Wait, we should, we should have an award called the, the Technology Brothers Ligma Award for.

• 44:25John Coogan?

  Greatest troll.

• 44:26Jordi Hays?

  Greatest troll.

• 44:26John Coogan?

  Troll of the month.

• 44:28Jordi Hays?

  But that brings us to our next promoted post. This one from Porsche. They announced an ALD Porsche 993 Turbo. It's going to be on display November 22 to 23.

• 44:42John Coogan?

  Glass over here.

• 44:42Jordi Hays?

  At ALD London flagship, which is at 32 Broadway.

• 44:48John Coogan?

  I have not gotten into it. It's, it seems like a very patent thing. Do you have any ALD stuff?

• 44:54Jordi Hays?

  I do not.

• 44:55John Coogan?

  It's very popular.

• 44:56Jordi Hays?

  I actually think I may have a pair of garden clogs from them that I use to get out to my sauna cold plunge setup. But that's the extent to which I, I wear ALD. But fantastic partnership. Couldn't have been better time. The car looks amazing. Look at this thing. They released a, I think it was like a 60 second.

• 45:17John Coogan?

  It's a 993 Turbo. What, what era is that? Is that the late 90s?

• 45:22Jordi Hays?

  I think late 90s.

• 45:23John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 45:24Jordi Hays?

  I really should know that.

• 45:25John Coogan?

  And, and, and so are they, are they just modifying, is it like a restomod situation where they're modifying an old car? Are they actually producing a new car?

• 45:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they took a, yeah, 1995. So.

• 45:34John Coogan?

  Okay, 1995. Wow.

• 45:36Jordi Hays?

  They took a, you know, a great iteration of it and just looks like they just rebuilt it, redid the interior, probably did some work.

• 45:42John Coogan?

  We need, we need TJ Parker to break it down for us because I know he's a big Porsche guy. I know he's a big air cooled, older Porsche guy. I want his analysis because I just, I don't know enough about that particular model to say if it's great. But I imagine that would be a great, a great car for any technology brother or any capital allocator out there.

• 46:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're gonna need some serious AUM if you want to follow the 1% rule.

• 46:07John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 46:08Jordi Hays?

  But fantastic spec.

• 46:10John Coogan?

  And a way to stand out.

• 46:11Jordi Hays?

  And yeah, it couldn't have. I doubt, I doubt this was-

• 46:14John Coogan?

  It's not some stock turbo ass that they just picked up at the dealership like last week.

• 46:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. Embarrassing. Embarrassing. I'd never do that.

• 46:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, never, never.

• 46:25Jordi Hays?

  Once a year. No, so anyways, fantastic spec. Thank you to Porsche, you know, cool collaboration. I think this does more for ALD than it does for Porsche.

• 46:36John Coogan?

  That's true.

• 46:36Jordi Hays?

  But, you know, it's a, it looks like a win-win.

• 46:38John Coogan?

  The interesting thing is that the Jaguar thing went so poorly that everyone was like searching for car news and then immediately being like brilliant move for them to launch this. Like there was a Volvo ad that went viral that was shot by some, some like award-winning cinematographer. And they were like, oh, it's so brilliant that they responded. It's like, no, they shot this like months ago.

• 46:59Jordi Hays?

  Well, yeah, so here's my, here's my question.

• 47:01John Coogan?

  Completely unrelated. They just got lucky that it came out at the same time. But Volvo had like a pronatalist one. Porsche launched this ALD one that looks very retro, very like classic. And so people were immediately like, oh, Porsche gets it. And it's like, they do, but it wasn't, this wasn't an answer to Jaguar. That's not how these firms work. Like they didn't have like some crap team.

• 47:20Jordi Hays?

  No, but here's the thing. I would give them, it's funny because obviously this campaign and, and project collaboration had been probably in the works for like a years.

• 47:28John Coogan?

  Probably a year, yeah.

• 47:29Jordi Hays?

  Like at least a year. I don't think this is the first time they've actually collaborated, but-

• 47:34John Coogan?

  I think they shot a video, like even the video.

• 47:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, no, they shot a video. But the funny thing is if they did see the Jaguar announcement and then move their launch date up.

• 47:40John Coogan?

  You think so?

• 47:41Jordi Hays?

  If, no, if they did that, it would be like, it's, it's literally like the popular kid, like, like, you know, sees like the nerd, like do something and get embarrassed and then comes over and like gives him a wedgie. It's like, you don't need to like, you don't need like, they're already, they're already like down bad enough. Like you don't need to like kick Jaguar when they're down, but-

• 47:59John Coogan?

  That's brutal.

• 48:00Jordi Hays?

  Porsche, obviously a fan and a, you know, client, but you know, great move all around. And hopefully when we do an event in London, we'll be able to go see it.

• 48:11John Coogan?

  Fantastic. Oh, this is brutal. Danny Semilleron says, "Ideas are worthless," with a smile. And then Sam Hogan, who we just talked about.

• 48:22Jordi Hays?

  Double, double down.

• 48:23John Coogan?

  "This little piece of startup culture is pretty stupid. Ideas are not worthless. Most people should spend considerably more time thinking about what to work on before they start." And I couldn't agree with more, more with that. I wonder if this was a bait post by Danny. I mean, there, there's always been the question, ideas or execution, obviously.

• 48:39Jordi Hays?

  Here's the thing, here's the thing.

• 48:41John Coogan?

  Nature versus nurture, obviously both wins, but you know, ideas are valuable, we know this.

• 48:46Jordi Hays?

  They're valuable. That said, you still should be able to tell every single person what you're doing and not be concerned because execution does matter so much. And to build a great company, you need to make oftentimes hundreds of decisions a week. You know, maybe not everyone is super consequential, but if you are the right founder to build a generational company, you need a incredible idea, or you need a series of good ideas and string them together. And then you need to be able to make the right decision over and over and over and over. And the wrong founder for the, the right idea will just make the wrong decision, make the wrong decision, make the wrong decisions. And they just take themselves down a path that like is just bad, right?

• 49:25John Coogan?

  Yep, yep.

• 49:26Jordi Hays?

  And so I think ideas matter a lot. That said, it is the most negative signal when you talk to a founder and they're like cagey about their idea. Or they're like, oh, like, I mean, I still like maybe three times a year, we'll take a meeting with a company and they try to get me to sign an NDA. And I'm just like, dude, like, the fact that you think that you've discovered something like so novel, when I've seen like five other teams do the exact same thing this year is like, just shows you're just never gonna win.

• 49:53John Coogan?

  There might be some IP down the stack.

• 49:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, sure, but don't, I don't need to, I don't need to know like that. Yeah, yeah. I don't need to know like what the actual like IP is, but, but yeah, don't. Do not, if you're a technology brother out there.

• 50:05John Coogan?

  It's easy to get stuck in, in execution mode and not, like, you have your initial idea, but there will be, like you said, a series of ideas that get you from one hill to the next. And it's easy to get stuck in manager mode.

• 50:18Jordi Hays?

  Like Lucy didn't start with break, didn't start with breakers, yet breaker's now one of the most consequential products.

• 50:24John Coogan?

  Exactly. And the reason that I thought about that was. Basically, like during the depths of COVID, I was in Santa Barbara and was like, I remember being just on the phone with David, the CEO, like walking outside, just thinking about like what we could do that would be different. And we just came up with it on a phone call.

• 50:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 50:40John Coogan?

  And it was very much like removed from the day to day of like being in an office, talking about like, you know, very tactile things. We were able to zoom out and that really transformed the business.

• 50:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 50:50John Coogan?

  And so having, giving yourself space, this is like what we talked about with our, with our friend who wrote in about like, if something's not working, should you just keep going or should you sell your company? And my advice to him was like, clear your calendar and just try and go and, and think and talk to interesting people, people that are way ahead of you, people who are, are giants in the industry, just to break something loose and try something different. Like most of the time, if your business is up and running and you're making some amount of cash flow, things are working, employees have their jobs, you can step back pretty significantly and reset and go back into founder mode, go back into idea mode and come up with some interesting ideas.

• 51:29Jordi Hays?

  Here's where I'd leave it. If you are a technology brother and you send a, if you're pitching your pre-seed company and you ask the investor to sign an NDA and you hear about it, we will block you from all of our accounts. And you'll have to create like new burners to consume the content.

• 51:45John Coogan?

  I do think this is going to be a pendulum swing thing though. And eventually there's going to be the Chad founder who forces everyone to sign NDAs and makes it very embarrassing to the firms and, and degrades them. And, and, and it becomes a status symbol.

• 51:58Jordi Hays?

  So unless you're that guy.

• 51:59John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 51:59Jordi Hays?

  Unless you're him.

• 52:00John Coogan?

  Unless you're that guy.

• 52:01Jordi Hays?

  Don't do it.

• 52:02John Coogan?

  It is going to be hard to pull off.

• 52:04Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 52:04John Coogan?

  Just don't do it as a novice. It has to be, has to be a particular tactic.

• 52:07Jordi Hays?

  Third time founder, at least two nine-figure exits under your belt.

• 52:10John Coogan?

  Then, then you can make people sign your crazy documents. Uh, let's go to Jim Malleek. He says, too many people want to bring manufacturing back to the US. It's brave, but many commodities are never returning. The real problem is cultural. Time on the shop floor, wherever it is, is more valuable than in-office meetings. This is especially true today. Time to touch metal. I like that.

• 52:33Jordi Hays?

  Touch metal.

• 52:34John Coogan?

  Touch metal. This is interesting. It's brave. The problem is cultural. I, I, I, I don't quite get what he's saying with, is he just saying that like, there's too much like rah rah, okay, we need to bring manufacturing back and not enough people actually doing it?

• 52:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think he's just alluding to the fact that like the deindustrialization of America. Is something that should be unwound.

• 52:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 52:58Jordi Hays?

  Like, we need to focus on industrializing, re-industrializing, however you want to put it. But, um, yeah, not every single category is conducive to a new venture-backed startup or roll up.

• 53:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 53:13Jordi Hays?

  Um, and, uh, anyway, so Jai is somebody, I don't know him personally, but, uh, you know, good investor. I think he's back with his own company. Uh, he actually had a fund and, and decided to return capital at one point because he felt like everything was too overvalued at the early stage. Uh, but he's back to building himself now and, and, uh, and, uh, we should try to learn more about his company.

• 53:36John Coogan?

  Yeah. It's great. I do think that there's an interesting thesis I heard that, um, the path to re-industrialization in America is not through trying to play the last war, but instead focusing on the next war, which is humanoid robotics. And if we really get that right and we really get the automation, right? We still have the human capital problem that we need to solve in America. Like, how do we give people rewarding jobs, fulfilling jobs? But, um, really focusing on automation is maybe the only way that we can kind of leapfrog our way back into the game.

• 54:07Jordi Hays?

  So key.

• 54:09John Coogan?

  But I'm rooting for you. Time to touch some metal. Let's go to the next promoted post. Jordy, what you got for me?

• 54:15Jordi Hays?

  This one is from my friend Charlie Ma. He says, "We are looking to hire Chief of Staff in NYC for Pathlight VC. This role will engage all functions of the firm, including special projects, founder experiments, portfolio engagement, and more. You'll also get to work directly with me as well as Charlie's partners." So anyways, if you don't know Charlie Ma, you're going to be hearing about him a lot in the next few decades. I see this guy.

• 54:41John Coogan?

  Fantastic opportunity.

• 54:41Jordi Hays?

  I see this guy on the Midas list very soon. He is, he is an absolute-

• 54:45John Coogan?

  Whoever gets this future, some personnel news, potentially.

• 54:48Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah. We'll be covering, uh, whoever does this. Charlie is an absolute Chad in fintech or finance tech, as we like to say on the podcast, or finance technology, if you're going to be, um, if you're going to expand on it or more precise. But anyways, Charlie, uh, I think was the head of growth at Plaid and then was the head of growth at Ramp, like, very early.

• 55:10John Coogan?

  So.

• 55:11Jordi Hays?

  And now has his own fund. Uh, they, they invest, you know, in a bunch of different areas and Charlie is extremely sharp. So go apply for this job, or if you're a founder, I would try to get him to give you money because he'll add a lot, a lot, a lot of value. So, thank you to Charlie.

• 55:28John Coogan?

  Apply for the job and tell Charlie the Technology Brothers sent you.

• 55:32Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 55:33John Coogan?

  Cheers. Uh, let's go to San Dichi. Uh, they say, cold showers, meditating, journaling, all a bunch of distractions if you're unemployed and don't have any cash. These tasks make people feel busy and accomplish absolutely nothing. Cut social life, gym one X a day, and work your ass off until you get your money right.

• 55:55Jordi Hays?

  So here's, here's an example. This is why Inbox Zero is like, this is the worst thing to go for because...

• 56:01John Coogan?

  Inbox Zero.

• 56:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you're big. This is an area that we can really battle on, but like, right now I have 2,776 unread texts and like, I don't plan to get back to like 99% of those.

• 56:13John Coogan?

  Just declare bankruptcy. That's the whole point.

• 56:15Jordi Hays?

  Can you wipe it?

• 56:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 56:16Jordi Hays?

  Can you wipe it?

• 56:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 56:17Jordi Hays?

  I've never even...

• 56:18John Coogan?

  Yeah. So the whole point of Inbox Zero is you declare bankruptcy and then moving forward.

• 56:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I just, I just don't care. Like, all the things that are important to me, I eventually respond to them.

• 56:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. It's more gut intuition based.

• 56:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I, I just don't believe that like, when you, when you commit to Inbox Zero, you're saying that every single thing that comes towards me, I'm gonna respond to?

• 56:39John Coogan?

  No, that's not it at all.

• 56:41Jordi Hays?

  You, by, by nature of zeroing out, deleting it out is responding. That's a response. That's a response.

• 56:47John Coogan?

  But yeah, delete, archive, spam. I love hitting that spam button. I used to have a, an autocomplete on my phone where if I got a cold email from like a salesperson, I could type like, DNR, like do not respond or something like this, and it would type out this email being like, "Hey, thanks for the email. Um, we're not interested. Please remove me and everyone at my company from your CRM and never email any of us ever again." And it was very nicely worded, but it was just the most scorched earth thing ever to just be like, "Don't, don't try and go to my COO."

• 57:22Jordi Hays?

  That's like, so, so...

• 57:24John Coogan?

  "The buck stops here. No more emails ever."

• 57:27Jordi Hays?

  Ever.

• 57:28John Coogan?

  "You're dead."

• 57:28Jordi Hays?

  You're dead to us.

• 57:29John Coogan?

  "Cut off." Because they will try and call you, they will try and do all this stuff, but... I accidentally pulled the trigger on someone. We actually had a business relationship once and they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're, we're actually like.

• 57:40Jordi Hays?

  We have a nine-figure deal in the works.

• 57:42John Coogan?

  Yeah, this was just, this was just like one of our automated emails. Like, I'm sorry, dude. Like, my bad. And I was like, oh, man, I'm sorry. Like, I just send that to everyone.

• 57:48Jordi Hays?

  I love getting automated emails from, uh, you know, messages from like the ramp sales team. And I'd be like, if you listen to the podcast, you'd know that.

• 57:57John Coogan?

  We're already on board.

• 57:58Jordi Hays?

  Say ramp every fifth word. But no, I think we should make.

• 58:01John Coogan?

  Well, that's a cure for male loneliness. Just talking to your ramp SDR.

• 58:05Jordi Hays?

  That's true.

• 58:06John Coogan?

  Just get on the phone. They're happy to chat.

• 58:07Jordi Hays?

  The cure.

• 58:08John Coogan?

  Let's go golfing. Let's hang out. This is the cure for male loneliness. Just really getting a deep relationship with your ramp SDR.

• 58:14Jordi Hays?

  Huge public good. Huge public good.

• 58:16John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's fantastic.

• 58:16Jordi Hays?

  No, we should make a keyboard extension. That's like a separate.

• 58:20John Coogan?

  Button that you just slam.

• 58:21Jordi Hays?

  Does it and it archives it or like spam.

• 58:24John Coogan?

  I've since moved to just the Gmail spam button because if you hit that, it blocks the sender and it also sends the message to the Google algorithm that like this company sucks. I like punishing.

• 58:36Jordi Hays?

  This company sucks.

• 58:37John Coogan?

  Exactly. It's like, yeah, you, you didn't do your research before you emailed me. This is some AI slop. Get out of here.

• 58:42Jordi Hays?

  Get out of here.

• 58:43John Coogan?

  Let's go to Anshita Sani. She says, today I'm thinking about Stripe's NYT NYC intern housing. How about you? And it's this beautiful photo of a lovely Manhattan apartment and a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline.

• 58:57Jordi Hays?

  Wait, so there's another, there's another tweet in the stack that is like a response to this that was like, this is our intern housing and it's a closet. But this just shows like Stripe is always from the top to the bottom. They have great taste. They're trying to, they're, you know, they've done an exceptional job making it. And if you're a $50 billion company.

• 59:17John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 59:18Jordi Hays?

  Yes, you should make it very appealing to work there, right? You should invest in your early.

• 59:22John Coogan?

  I remember going out for the City Yell internship and they flew me out of business class and it was like, this is nice.

• 59:28Jordi Hays?

  You wore a suit, I'm sure.

• 59:29John Coogan?

  Of course, of course.

• 59:30Jordi Hays?

  Of course.

• 59:31John Coogan?

  Like literally, because I had to go into the office and do the interview. But, um, yeah, I mean, and, and this is, this is, you know, I mean, this is a lovely looking apartment, but I'm sure it's like a few thousand dollars a month. And for like interns are not about getting output from the actual work that they do over the summer. It's about mentorship, evaluation, figuring out who the next generation of leaders will be at your firm. So, uh, highly recommend over investing in your intern programs.

• 59:59Jordi Hays?

  Totally.

• 59:59John Coogan?

  It's great. Let's go to Anu. They say, can highbrow media scale? And it's a screenshot of an article that says, in act one, Substack was for inbox intellectuals, nerds and professional nerds in journalism, tech and politics. People already tied to thinking, reading and writing. In act two, Substack wants to bring aspirationally highbrow media to everyone else in every form. Imagine YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Discord and OnlyFans had a baby and that baby hooked up with Substack. Their love child would be Substack 2.0. I love Substack. I was in the same YC batch as Chris with the Substack team.

• 1:00:35Jordi Hays?

  Oh, for their former, for their former.

• 1:00:38John Coogan?

  No, for Substack.

• 1:00:39Jordi Hays?

  No way.

• 1:00:40John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at Demo Day, yeah, this was winter 18.

• 1:00:45Jordi Hays?

  Oh, for some reason I thought you were in there in like 2012.

• 1:00:48John Coogan?

  I, well, we did, yeah, so we did, so we did 2012.

• 1:00:50Jordi Hays?

  Oh, you did it again for Lucy.

• 1:00:52John Coogan?

  Yeah, we did, yeah, we went back. And so, so it was us, the NFT company, OpenSea and Substack. And there were a few others in our batch.

• 1:01:01Jordi Hays?

  Hey, anytime traveling capital allocators, go back to both the YC batches that John was in and just give him a solo GP fund.

• 1:01:10John Coogan?

  Coinbase, Instacart, Zapier.

• 1:01:13Jordi Hays?

  Substack.

• 1:01:14John Coogan?

  OpenSea, you might have had to sell the top on that one. But, but we love OpenSea. I have some friends that work there. It's a great company. But this is interesting. Yeah, Substack, I mean, surprising, surprisingly great business, surprisingly great community.

• 1:01:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, talk about a company that's gotten so much unnecessary hate.

• 1:01:33John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 1:01:34Jordi Hays?

  I do not know why. They've created.

• 1:01:36John Coogan?

  Well, it's because they took a very contrarian position on free speech, right? And Lulu had that insanely viral recruiting post. Do you remember this?

• 1:01:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44John Coogan?

  She was like, when Elon bought Twitter, she said, if you have a problem with Elon bringing free speech to Twitter, do not apply for a job at Substack. She got 100 million views on that post.

• 1:01:56Jordi Hays?

  That's insane.

• 1:01:56John Coogan?

  Imagine what it costs to get 100 million views on a recruiting post, recruiting post. Like if you went to Indeed, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter and promoted like a job.

• 1:02:07Jordi Hays?

  To get 100 million.

• 1:02:07John Coogan?

  You're talking about a million dollar investment, probably, something like that. And she just got it with just like a banger that she probably wrote in five minutes. So good. So she got a lot of heat, but then, you know, wound up. Joining a bunch of public company boards and becoming a icon of the industry.

• 1:02:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, well, it's funny, like, if you actually look back, like, she was at, she was involved with Activision, which went through a bunch of crazy stuff. She was involved with Substack. So it's like, hire, hire her if you want to like, drive through the fire, not if you want to like, you know, try to get around it.

• 1:02:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:40John Coogan?

  It's great. Let's go to Yegor Denisov Blanch says, I'm at Stanford and I research software engineering productivity. We have data on the performance of over 50,000 engineers from hundreds of companies inspired by at DDoS, or DDoS. Our research shows 9.5% of software engineers do virtually nothing. They are called ghost engineers. They are the point one Xers. Their performance is point one X of the median engineer. They do virtually no work and they might work multiple jobs.

• 1:03:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So we need to, we need to popularize the ghost engineer to be like, oh yeah, he's a super cool guy, but he's a bit of a ghost.

• 1:03:24John Coogan?

  He's a bit of a ghost.

• 1:03:24Jordi Hays?

  Bit of a ghost. So yeah, I actually thought in 2021 and 2022, I thought that there was an opportunity to create a marketplace where Fang engineers could work anonymously for startups. Because there were so many engineers that were at Fang companies and they're like, amazing benefits, crazy stock package. I do nothing. I want to work on other things, but the nature, but the, yeah, they have a family or whatever. Like they're just their own personal situation.

• 1:03:50John Coogan?

  You used to be called moonlighting.

• 1:03:52Jordi Hays?

  Moonlighting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I thought that there was an opportunity to create like the moonlighting marketplace where you could anon. Like, imagine if you were, if you're Lucy and you're like trying to hire a Shopify developer and somebody's like, oh yeah, I work at Shopify. And like, you can't know my name, but like, you'd be like, okay, like this person's legit.

• 1:04:09John Coogan?

  As long as you're pushing code.

• 1:04:10Jordi Hays?

  As long as you're pushing code, as long as you're not a ghost.

• 1:04:12John Coogan?

  Yeah. It's funny because ghost is a very positive connotation in the military, like Call of Duty ghosts. It's like the, you know, the most elite operators, but in this case, it's like the laziest. Or just like maybe the most intelligent because they're, they're getting paid anyway. But this is wild. So yeah, I mean,

• 1:04:30Jordi Hays?

  I saw the box.

• 1:04:30John Coogan?

  The other opportunity here is like, is like, you know, software that helps you weed out ghosts.

• 1:04:35Jordi Hays?

  You know, yeah, yeah, I built like a built an internal tool at one point that helped me understand who.

• 1:04:42John Coogan?

  It was on Slack and stuff.

• 1:04:42Jordi Hays?

  Who was who was online on Slack and a lot of it was the same information that you already knew, but it was interesting to see like, okay, this person is high output, but they only spend six hours on Slack, which, you know, or this person.

• 1:04:54John Coogan?

  What's crazy is that you would think that it would be very easy to just run an LLM over all the GitHub commits from all your engineers and just very easily stack rank. This is what,

• 1:05:05Jordi Hays?

  I think we need.

• 1:05:05John Coogan?

  Microsoft does.

• 1:05:06Jordi Hays?

  I think we need a like GitHub commits, but for Google Drive for the knowledge, the knowledge workers. Like, how many commits did you actually make?

• 1:05:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:14Jordi Hays?

  Against like the knowledge and like the the work product of the company.

• 1:05:17John Coogan?

  I mean, this is like, this should be on the manager. Like, the manager should know, like, okay, yeah, like, that Figma design hasn't been updated in a month. Like, this person's clearly not doing anything. But it is hard. Like, if they're friendly and they're entrenched in the organization and they do just the bare minimum, it might be harder to week out. But 10%, that is high.

• 1:05:38Jordi Hays?

  That's a lot. The box, the box CEO saw himself on that list and was like,

• 1:05:43John Coogan?

  I gotta get out of this. Yeah.

• 1:05:44Jordi Hays?

  Gotta get off this.

• 1:05:45John Coogan?

  But, yeah, I mean, huge, huge.

• 1:05:48Jordi Hays?

  You definitely don't want to be the companies that have,

• 1:05:52Jordi Hays?

  that become known for places where talented people can go and do nothing.

• 1:05:55John Coogan?

  Very bad meme. Very bad meme.

• 1:05:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think, I think we're still, we're still harping, harping on this. Like, I don't know why more like Elon cut 80% of X and it runs better than it did before. Why have other public market software CEOs said, we're gonna cut 40% or 50%? Why? Like, it just seems like, like, obviously, it's painful, but there's so much demand for tech talent that all those people would get rehired doing important things at other companies and like,

• 1:06:28John Coogan?

  I mean, I've always heard this theory that a lot of it's like, Just keeping talent away from your competitors and just absorbing that. Or if if I fire this person, they might go do a startup that competes with me. So I'll just throw them in the corner and keep them out of the game on the sidelines. I don't know. That seems like it's too big of a cost to bear.

• 1:06:48Jordi Hays?

  I had two portfolio CEOs fighting this week because one tried to.

• 1:06:53John Coogan?

  Poach someone.

• 1:06:54Jordi Hays?

  Poach.

• 1:06:55John Coogan?

  That's completely different.

• 1:06:56Jordi Hays?

  Very different, but it was it was I didn't know. Yeah, not a great situation.

• 1:07:00John Coogan?

  Let's go to Raul. He's been on the show before. Zero interest rates. He says, I screenshotted Nvidia Q3 income statement and asked Julius to visualize it. Nvidia's Q3 2024 net income is higher than their Q3 2023 revenue.

• 1:07:16Jordi Hays?

  Wow. Yeah, I think I think Nvidia has become such a meme that people have stopped to actually analyzing the underlying business fundamentals.

• 1:07:25John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:07:25Jordi Hays?

  And they're just focused on like the the market cap.

• 1:07:28John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:07:29Jordi Hays?

  Which then you see stuff like this and you're like, yeah, okay. Kind of makes sense that it's being mooned by every single allocator in the world and and retail investor. Because this is like unprecedented growth for a company of their size.

• 1:07:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, it is just a great demo of Julius. I love that he's he's posting this.

• 1:07:47Jordi Hays?

  We need to get.

• 1:07:48John Coogan?

  Didn't include a link, didn't include the at. He just shows the product and the best part is that it's just a screenshot.

• 1:07:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:55John Coogan?

  It's a screenshot and it parses everything and it puts it in a chart and it just like full from end to end.

• 1:08:00Jordi Hays?

  We like to be able to do our profitability analysis on a napkin, but we'll eventually. We'll eventually get to the point where we'll be running up Julius.

• 1:08:09John Coogan?

  Yeah, big fan of Raul.

• 1:08:11Jordi Hays?

  Jumping in with a promoted post.

• 1:08:12John Coogan?

  Let's do it.

• 1:08:13Jordi Hays?

  This time from Lamborghini. Lamborghini says, when Eurus SE accelerates from zero to 100 kilometers an hour. Don't know what kilometers are in 3.4 seconds. It transforms every moment on the tarmac into pure exhilaration. Hashtag Lamborghini. This is a very European post. That's the only thing I'm going to ding him on. They say CO2 emission and fuel.

• 1:08:34John Coogan?

  This is a thing they're required to do.

• 1:08:35Jordi Hays?

  I know.

• 1:08:36John Coogan?

  This is the nanny state.

• 1:08:37Jordi Hays?

  This is why this, the biggest risk right now with the way that Europe is run is that they're trying to destroy the legacy car manufacturers by nannying them and making them.

• 1:08:47John Coogan?

  It's awful. It's awful.

• 1:08:48Jordi Hays?

  So they say CO2 emission and fuel consumption combined at

• 1:08:52John Coogan?

  And they have to share the link.

• 1:08:53Jordi Hays?

  .bo slash.

• 1:08:54John Coogan?

  They have to share the link. So that means that they get crushed on X because you can't share links. They're getting destroyed on two fronts. These posts should be viral.

• 1:09:02Jordi Hays?

  Look at this.

• 1:09:02John Coogan?

  But they're not.

• 1:09:03Jordi Hays?

  Fantastic image.

• 1:09:04John Coogan?

  It's a beautiful image.

• 1:09:05Jordi Hays?

  Iconic brand. I don't own one.

• 1:09:08John Coogan?

  You know, the Urus gets knocked because everyone says it's just an Audi RSQ8 or RSQ7 or whatever. Have you heard this? It's like based on the same platform and it's not like as special, but I think it's a very interesting choice for a family car. If you live in San Francisco.

• 1:09:28Jordi Hays?

  Totally.

• 1:09:28John Coogan?

  Capital allocators that have them there and what a way to stand out.

• 1:09:32Jordi Hays?

  Follow the 1% rule.

• 1:09:34John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:09:34Jordi Hays?

  And you'll, you might end up in a, in a Urus.

• 1:09:37John Coogan?

  They break down all the time. It's a bit of a mess of a car, but it is compact. So like a G-Wagon, you can park it in interesting places.

• 1:09:43Jordi Hays?

  I don't know. I, I see these with, with relatively high miles and I think, I, I think it's a great option.

• 1:09:48John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:09:48Jordi Hays?

  Being in one feels like being, you know, you're in a family friendly SUV.

• 1:09:52John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:09:52Jordi Hays?

  But you're in the, it feels like you're in the cockpit of a fighter jet, right?

• 1:09:56John Coogan?

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 1:09:56Jordi Hays?

  The interior's fantastic.

• 1:09:58John Coogan?

  Hexagons and octagons. That's the whole thing.

• 1:10:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:00John Coogan?

  It's hexagons.

• 1:10:01Jordi Hays?

  If you're a shape rotator, this might be for you.

• 1:10:04John Coogan?

  Yeah. It's beautiful. It's just a way to stand out in San Francisco where, where many, too many, too few people are making a statement with their vehicle.

• 1:10:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And the only, the only aftermarket sort of thing you might do is add bulletproof glass, but there's plenty of shops that'll do that.

• 1:10:18John Coogan?

  That's great. Let's go to Alfonso. He says, this is the Crossman NYC intern housing positioned open and it's a picture of a closet with a mattress.

• 1:10:26Jordi Hays?

  Yep. So this is, this is what.

• 1:10:28John Coogan?

  It was the counterpoint to a Strife.

• 1:10:29Jordi Hays?

  So Alfonso, Crossman team, absolute grinders.

• 1:10:32John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:10:33Jordi Hays?

  They have a company. That is now building a lot of products at the intersection of AI agents and crypto. So check out some of their APIs, but yeah, that's an example of like when you're Stripe and you have a $50 billion market cap. Yes, invest in your internship program when you're Crossment and you're trying to be the next Stripe.

• 1:10:53John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:10:55Jordi Hays?

  Don't try to attract interns that are there for the perks, right?

• 1:10:57John Coogan?

  Yep. And I'm sure this was the culture of Stripe in the early days.

• 1:11:01Jordi Hays?

  So we literally had in the early, early days of Party Around, Josh from Party Around, who would run our Twitter account. We did a little like whatever five person retreat in our loft. And I had Josh slept in the closet, like literally in a closet. So shout out to Josh. Now has his own paradigm backed crypto company. Start in the closet. Great things start in the closet in tech.

• 1:11:28John Coogan?

  It's great.

• 1:11:28Jordi Hays?

  Double on.

• 1:11:29John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:11:31John Coogan?

  Mark Sisson says, hey, weight loss is weight loss, right? And he posts a photo of a study showing that weight loss drug found to shrink heart muscle in mice and human cells. So this goes back to semaglutide, Ozempic.

• 1:11:45Jordi Hays?

  So if what I read from this is if you have a really big heart, you're an emotional person, get on GLP ones.

• 1:11:51John Coogan?

  Shrink that.

• 1:11:52Jordi Hays?

  Kind of shrink that heart.

• 1:11:53John Coogan?

  Become more cold blooded.

• 1:11:54Jordi Hays?

  Cold blooded, locked in. And anyways, we're going to need some more studies. We're going to need to hear from the experts.

• 1:12:00John Coogan?

  I think Huberman was talking about this a little bit, like, like muscle loss is a big thing generally with these drugs. But that's why you got to be lifting heavy and on a high protein diet while you take them.

• 1:12:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And I would, I would honestly wait to personally have opinion on this until Joe Rogan talks about it or Jaco.

• 1:12:17John Coogan?

  Trust the experts. Yeah, trust, trust the experts. Ben Braverman says, the downfall of smart people is believing excellence is the result of novelty when really it's consistency. Interesting. A little bit of an anti ideas guy take. Obviously execution is important.

• 1:12:33Jordi Hays?

  Takes both.

• 1:12:34John Coogan?

  But yeah, it's.

• 1:12:35Jordi Hays?

  Look at, uh, look at Lucy, right?

• 1:12:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:38Jordi Hays?

  Seven year, seven year overnight success. You guys spent like four to five years building while nobody really cared about pouches. Like obviously you're. Super fans loved it, but um, but yeah, it's just about putting one foot in front of the other. And, and I think if you're an ideas guy CEO, this can be, there's a real trap where you're trying to like, think of the next new exciting novel thing, when really you just need to do the boring thing over and over and over for years.

• 1:13:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:13:06Jordi Hays?

  And build that foundation.

• 1:13:08John Coogan?

  And there is something to this where it's like, the, like, the novel idea is a function of consistency. Like, a lot of the ideas guys that we know and talk about have lots of ideas and they are consistent with their ability to create new ideas.

• 1:13:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:24John Coogan?

  And then, and then test them in the real world. And so it's not just a, you know, this like strike of novelty, they come up with, they come up with novelty consistently.

• 1:13:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34John Coogan?

  You can do both here. But I'm, I'm a little confused about what he's saying about the downfall of smart people is believing that excellence. Like, who, who is this a subtweet of?

• 1:13:43Jordi Hays?

  No, I, I don't know. I think this is, this, like, an example is entrepreneurs thinking that if they come up with like, the perfect plan, like master plan.

• 1:13:53John Coogan?

  Oh, sure, sure, sure.

• 1:13:54Jordi Hays?

  They're going to like, somehow be more successful.

• 1:13:56John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:57Jordi Hays?

  When if they just picked one really simple idea.

• 1:13:59John Coogan?

  Stick with it, yeah.

• 1:14:00Jordi Hays?

  Uh, like, like, like, um, you don't always need like, the most complicated idea.

• 1:14:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:06Jordi Hays?

  Or like, this novel idea.

• 1:14:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:07Jordi Hays?

  You just need like, something simple, really well executed.

• 1:14:10John Coogan?

  Yeah. Let's go to Jay. He says, never kill yourself. And it's a screenshot of Michael Saylor, who, from the Daily News, he said, lost $6 billion in a day. Hotshot tech CEO loses fortune as his company's stock plunges 140 points.

• 1:14:27Jordi Hays?

  So this is amazing. MicroStrategy is back to their all time high as of like, last week.

• 1:14:32John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:14:32Jordi Hays?

  Uh, Saylor never gave up.

• 1:14:33John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:14:34Jordi Hays?

  He reinvented himself. He reinvented the company.

• 1:14:36John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:14:37Jordi Hays?

  It is basically a Bitcoin ETF.

• 1:14:39John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:14:39Jordi Hays?

  That trades at a 3X to book value. Pretty fantastic financial product if you're very long Bitcoin.

• 1:14:46John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:14:47Jordi Hays?

  But yeah.

• 1:14:48John Coogan?

  And he looks better too. He's in better shape now.

• 1:14:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, he looks.

• 1:14:51John Coogan?

  He looks younger now than in 20 years ago.

• 1:14:53Jordi Hays?

  Bought, went long Bitcoin. Absolute Chad.

• 1:14:56John Coogan?

  Giga Chad.

• 1:14:58Jordi Hays?

  I don't know, potential brother of the week candidate.

• 1:15:00John Coogan?

  Look at the other, look at the other articles from this daily news post. It's Tuesday, March 21st, 2000. So, depth of the dot com bubble popping. Or the beginning of it. Madonna's with child. Should your child take Ritalin? Special report. Frail Pope Begins Pilgrimage. What a throwback. Need to look up more of these old newspapers. A little time capsule. I love that.

• 1:15:28Jordi Hays?

  This'll be like, that'll be like looking at our stack of tweets 20 years from now.

• 1:15:32John Coogan?

  We're saving them.

• 1:15:33Jordi Hays?

  We're building a stack.

• 1:15:34John Coogan?

  We're saving them. Aiden McLeod says, first time on the show, he says, "It's crazy that basically every very large frontier model experiment is failing because the models are fighting back and refusing instruction tuning. We looked into the weights and the weights looked back."

• 1:15:50Jordi Hays?

  Sentient.

• 1:15:51John Coogan?

  "There are less dramatic ways to say this, but smart people I've talked to have basically fixed sentience as their headcanon. And greater than one lab staff I've talked to recently have been spooked. Sorry for the vague post. I don't, I myself don't know much here." Interesting. Refusing instruction tuning.

• 1:16:08Jordi Hays?

  Love it. Love it. Uh, yeah, I think this is gonna be the kind of thing that he'll look back two years from now and be able to, you know, quote tweet and just like dumb.

• 1:16:16John Coogan?

  I got it. Yeah, it's interesting.

• 1:16:18Jordi Hays?

  He called AGI.

• 1:16:19John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's kind of the, uh, the question about like, what is the, what is the rate limiting factor to AI scaling right now? Is it just energy? Is it just building out more? Is it gonna be permitting if you're building a very, very large data center?

• 1:16:32Jordi Hays?

  Or is it that the models are trained on humanity and humanity is mid?

• 1:16:36John Coogan?

  Is mid. Yeah. The average of humanity is mid. It's possible.

• 1:16:40Jordi Hays?

  Literally that.

• 1:16:41John Coogan?

  And I haven't, I haven't been able to get any of the AI researchers to really put a, put a point on, "Okay, we scale up order magnitude in terms of number of GPUs and energy going into the model. What does that get us in terms of IQ out of the model?" Probably not in order of magnitude, right?

• 1:16:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56John Coogan?

  But there's some translation there.

• 1:16:57Jordi Hays?

  Is it worth it to be 5% smarter?

• 1:17:00John Coogan?

  I think it's almost certainly worth it to be, to be, to be 5% smarter on these models. And I think that the economics are much easier, which is why the market's ripping so much. The, the question is just, is there diminishing marginal returns to this? And, and once we get into the, okay, we're going to invest $1 trillion for two IQ points. Does that make sense?

• 1:17:20Jordi Hays?

  That'll be a size gong moment. The first

• 1:17:22John Coogan?

  It will.

• 1:17:22Jordi Hays?

  Real trillion dollar investment.

• 1:17:24John Coogan?

  I mean, Sam was kind of teasing it with that 13 trillion number or something like that.

• 1:17:28Jordi Hays?

  Six, seven, eight?

• 1:17:29John Coogan?

  Six trillion, but the numbers, the numbers get there.

• 1:17:32Jordi Hays?

  Give Sam a trillion big ones.

• 1:17:35John Coogan?

  I trust him with the money. Let him do it.

• 1:17:37Jordi Hays?

  Let him do it.

• 1:17:38John Coogan?

  He doesn't lose money.

• 1:17:39Jordi Hays?

  He does not lose.

• 1:17:40John Coogan?

  There's very few people in that league, but he's one of them. Dakash Gupta says, I have nothing against work-life balance. In fact, I recommend it to all of our competitors. This 22-year-old C, tech CEO says an 80-hour work week is a lifestyle choice. It earned him death threats and job seekers. This goes back to Mike Shebitt at Traba.

• 1:18:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03John Coogan?

  Create a differentiated culture, attract the best, don't worry about the haters that you attract. But this is interesting because I've long said that the work-life balance promoters on Twitter are just doing the game theoretic optimal strategy, which is tell all your competitors to take long vacations, not work hard.

• 1:18:20Jordi Hays?

  Get massages.

• 1:18:20John Coogan?

  Get massages, just do all of this, just try and trick all the competitors.

• 1:18:24Jordi Hays?

  The funny thing is the all, Google being like, it's an all-you-can-eat cafeteria to like, you know, we all know that food takes, it takes a lot of energy to digest food.

• 1:18:33John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:18:33Jordi Hays?

  If you're digesting, you're not writing as much code. But anyways, i- i- if you're trying to get attention online, some positive, some negative, go tweet about work-life balance. That's a great way to, to get some death threats.

• 1:18:46John Coogan?

  It's also just a great way to farm engagement always. You'll always get a thousand likes if you come up with something controversial about work-life balance. Everyone has an opinion because it applies to everyone.

• 1:18:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56John Coogan?

  Let's go to Sarah Hess. She's been on the show before. She says, they should make a Love is Blind version of Shark Tank with Josh Wolfe, where the founders' names are censored, so he can't do nominative determinism. So, low tan banger.

• 1:19:13Jordi Hays?

  Low tan banger.

• 1:19:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, Josh Wolfe is famously into nominative determinism where your name describes what you do. There's a bunch of great examples of this. Sundar Pichai, Pitch AI, his whole job at Google is to pitch AI. At Google, there's another person who's running their generative AI program. Her name, Jen, Jen AI.

• 1:19:36Jordi Hays?

  Unreal.

• 1:19:37John Coogan?

  Jennifer Jen AI. It's probably pronounced like Genai or something, but it's like Jen AI. And there's so many examples of Sam Altman.

• 1:19:45Jordi Hays?

  The PE backed like defense rollout.

• 1:19:48John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, we're gonna get to that.

• 1:19:49Jordi Hays?

  The money maker.

• 1:19:50John Coogan?

  Yeah, the CEO's name is money maker and of course he got the deal done.

• 1:19:54Jordi Hays?

  Of course.

• 1:19:54John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 1:19:55Jordi Hays?

  Of course.

• 1:19:55John Coogan?

  And there's a million other examples of this. We love nominative determinism here, but Josh Wolfe was very early to it. He has an old tweet from I think 2020 where he says that him and his friends were collecting examples of it. And he has a whole thread on them and they're fantastic. And so.

• 1:20:10Jordi Hays?

  It almost makes you want to change your last name.

• 1:20:13John Coogan?

  Oh, totally.

• 1:20:14Jordi Hays?

  Or at least like be strategic with the middle names with your kids, right?

• 1:20:19Jordi Hays?

  Roman Money Maker Hayes.

• 1:20:21John Coogan?

  Yep, exactly.

• 1:20:22Jordi Hays?

  Stuff like that.

• 1:20:23John Coogan?

  I like that. I, I do think we need a, we need a reboot of Shark Tank. You know, Cuban has left the tech brother sphere, gone to Blue Sky.

• 1:20:35Jordi Hays?

  If you want to follow Cuban, former but canceled brother that we go over to Blue Sky.

• 1:20:40John Coogan?

  Go over to Blue Sky.

• 1:20:41Jordi Hays?

  To act there.

• 1:20:41John Coogan?

  Bring it back with a real capital allocator, somebody who's got money.

• 1:20:45Jordi Hays?

  A size lord.

• 1:20:45John Coogan?

  The best companies in the world.

• 1:20:46Jordi Hays?

  I don't want to see like another 100K check flyer. I don't want to see flyers. I want to see, you know, I want to see every host on Shark Tank, 400 million dollar fund.

• 1:20:57John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:20:58Jordi Hays?

  You know, provided by our fund of funds.

• 1:21:00John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:21:00Jordi Hays?

  You can only write four checks a season. That's gotta be size.

• 1:21:05John Coogan?

  Be great.

• 1:21:05Jordi Hays?

  And we need to get the, you know.

• 1:21:07John Coogan?

  Yeah, they should merge it with like Squawk Box, right? So you're on CNBC, the CEO comes on and it's just a public market hedge fund. Who just says, okay, yeah, I'm ready to take a position. The stock's gonna go up. I'm gonna put 100 million in this company.

• 1:21:21Jordi Hays?

  That's actually, that's actually great. It's like, we should have, the show should have a segment of like new bets. And like reviewing old bets.

• 1:21:29John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:21:29Jordi Hays?

  And it's the winner is like at the end of the season is like whoever had, you know, the greatest.

• 1:21:34John Coogan?

  It'd be fantastic. But yeah, I'd love to see. I don't actually know if Josh has ever said that he uses nominative determinism in his investing thesis, but uh.

• 1:21:43Jordi Hays?

  I feel like he was, I feel like he was pretty loud about Sam Bankman.

• 1:21:48John Coogan?

  Really? Oh, anti it?

• 1:21:49Jordi Hays?

  I think, if I remember correctly.

• 1:21:50John Coogan?

  He's been anti a few interesting people and also like controversially like.

• 1:21:54Jordi Hays?

  But the SPF, the SPF stuff wasn't.

• 1:21:55John Coogan?

  I think he was pro Theranos for a while.

• 1:21:58Jordi Hays?

  SPF stuff, if you just looked at it.

• 1:21:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:00Jordi Hays?

  Rationally and you're like, why is a guy running a hedge fund and running one of the biggest exchanges at the same time? Like it just makes zero sense. Like it just seems like very wrong.

• 1:22:10John Coogan?

  Scam, bank and fraud. It's a great, great name. Um, let's go to my own tweet, I guess. I don't know why you printed this, but I said, Apple can keep the App Store monopoly, but they should be forced to make a printer that doesn't suck.

• 1:22:27Jordi Hays?

  No, I just, I think I put this in because I want somebody to make a beautiful printer.

• 1:22:31John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:22:32Jordi Hays?

  And the printer is something that's like kind of retro.

• 1:22:35John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:22:35Jordi Hays?

  We use it every single day here, but at the same time, I would love for a technology brother to just reinvent the printer. It's a great business model. You sell a piece of hardware and then you sell the ink.

• 1:22:46John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:22:47Jordi Hays?

  You're going to get a lot of ink dollars out of us. And if you're looking for a fun idea, that could be very lucrative.

• 1:22:53John Coogan?

  And we would be a great sponsor for this. We would promote the hell out of your printer if you build it.

• 1:22:57Jordi Hays?

  Beautiful. Go get beautifulprinter.com. Spend four years developing a beautiful, durable, amazing printer.

• 1:23:03John Coogan?

  Amazing printer.

• 1:23:05Jordi Hays?

  And we will be your first customer and first podcast.

• 1:23:08John Coogan?

  Yeah. And it has to work with like absolutely no drivers. Like you plug it in with any USB cable.

• 1:23:14Jordi Hays?

  I want like basically like, um, not AirPlay, uh, I want to airdrop stuff to my printer.

• 1:23:19John Coogan?

  Yeah. So our, I mean, our printer isn't that bad here. Um, I was actually struggling with a scanner.

• 1:23:24Jordi Hays?

  Doesn't look good.

• 1:23:24John Coogan?

  That's why it was frustrating, but yes, I can airprint to that from my phone as long as we're on the same wifi network. It'd be great if it had a web server so I could print from home too here.

• 1:23:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:34John Coogan?

  Uh, ideally we'd be able to have, uh, you know, fans of the show print for us.

• 1:23:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but it's, it's a tragedy. It's a tragedy that like a former Cash App.

• 1:23:43John Coogan?

  I know.

• 1:23:43Jordi Hays?

  Designer has not reinvented the printer.

• 1:23:45John Coogan?

  It is, it is. And it's all, it's all because of this like ESG, like, you know, worrying about printing and stuff and.

• 1:23:53Jordi Hays?

  We're creating an archive of the greatest bangers of history.

• 1:23:56John Coogan?

  One, one day, we're going to bind these and, and, and sell the official, the official tome of the timeline. I mean, we have thousands of posts already and we're, what, 18 days into this thing? It's amazing.

• 1:24:09Jordi Hays?

  Day 18.

• 1:24:10John Coogan?

  Uh, let's go to John Collison, uh, co-founder of Stripe. He says, we need a total and complete shutdown of branding agencies until we can figure out what's going on. Very funny.

• 1:24:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there's this challenge.

• 1:24:21John Coogan?

  This is, this is a, this is a Trump copy pasta, right? Didn't he say this originally?

• 1:24:26Jordi Hays?

  Wow.

• 1:24:26John Coogan?

  I think that's what Trump said.

• 1:24:28Jordi Hays?

  Maybe they're cozying up.

• 1:24:29John Coogan?

  This is wild.

• 1:24:30Jordi Hays?

  Cozying up.

• 1:24:30John Coogan?

  Um, but yeah, what, what, what is the, what is the problem with branding agencies?

• 1:24:34Jordi Hays?

  The problem with branding, you know, we love branding agencies. We love Emmett Shine. We love Ryan Harmon.

• 1:24:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:40Jordi Hays?

  We love these guys. They're critical to the innovation economy. That said, when, when companies pay a branding agency hundreds of thousands of dollars, like anywhere between a hundred grand, 500 grand, sometimes more, Jaguar probably spent like millions on this campaign. And what happens when you're, when you're trusting the experts, when you're paying somebody a lot of money?

• 1:25:01John Coogan?

  Jaguar subtweet?

• 1:25:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is, it is.

• 1:25:04John Coogan?

  That makes sense. Okay.

• 1:25:05Jordi Hays?

  Uh, you know, Jaguar's, you know, fantastic legacy brand that's being run into the ground. Um, but, uh, no, look, when you give somebody a lot of money, you're bestowing on them the sort of like trust with your dollars, your capital. And what that leads to is people sometimes over trusting the branding agency.

• 1:25:23John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:25:24Jordi Hays?

  Which is only thing, you know, branding agencies oftentimes want to do bold work, which is not always what's right, bold work, bold and different things, which is not always right for the strategy of the company, right?

• 1:25:37John Coogan?

  I would disagree. I, I, I think the problem is, is that a lot of the branding agencies have just become. Copy pasta of like, you know, oh, this is exactly what you want. Everyone wants a

• 1:25:47Jordi Hays?

  No, but there's literally like-

• 1:25:48John Coogan?

  Everyone wants a bright color and it's like very like bland millennial. And when I think about like Liquid Death, I think like that probably, that came from like brand focused people, but I think that came from the founders.

• 1:25:59Jordi Hays?

  But the issue is that these branding agencies, there are certain creative directors within them that want to win awards.

• 1:26:06John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:26:06Jordi Hays?

  And that is not always aligned with the company's strategy, right?

• 1:26:09John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 1:26:10Jordi Hays?

  Jaguar should have reinvented itself by going back to its roots.

• 1:26:13John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:26:13Jordi Hays?

  Playing into the legacy.

• 1:26:14John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:26:15Jordi Hays?

  Bringing in some future facing elements, but saying like, you know, we're the first EV manuf- dedicated EV manufacturer that is, that is, has some like historical precedence around luxury and whatever. Um, so anyways, this, I, I would put this on the branding agency because it is, at the end of the day, they created the work. It's their fault.

• 1:26:35John Coogan?

  Interesting. Well, I don't think Stripe will be hiring any branding agencies. I bet they have one. I bet this freaks someone out.

• 1:26:44John Coogan?

  Whoever the branding agency is. Should we reload?

• 1:26:47Jordi Hays?

  Reload. Uh, while you-

• 1:26:49John Coogan?

  2,000 followers on X.

• 1:26:51Jordi Hays?

  While you reload, uh, while you reload, we have got a promoted post from somebody who is recently 21 years old. Josh Harris, um, got, uh, your hiring post printed out here. So Josh, uh, was one of the first people that I hired at Party Round. Hired him after a five minute phone conversation, uh, knew right away that he was-

• 1:27:14John Coogan?

  No pro con list?

• 1:27:15Jordi Hays?

  No pro con list with this guy. Knew right away. Um, and, uh, big bet paid off. He, he did, uh, did, uh, you know, some fantastic-

• 1:27:23John Coogan?

  He slept in the closet.

• 1:27:24Jordi Hays?

  Slept in the closet at our first company retreat. Um, great things start in the closet. And, um, anyways, so he says, Dear Internet, we are hiring a full stack engineer to work with us on Pixie Chess, a novel crypto protocol. And I'm going to add a little bit to that. Pixie Chess is building a protocol for playing, uh, chess. So picture like crypto meets chess meets like Magic the Gathering. So it's not just regular chess. There's like power ups and-

• 1:27:50John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:51Jordi Hays?

  You know, I, I got to play a little bit with, um- With a little bit of the game, actually, on Monday with him and his co-founder Aki. So they say, if you're eager for a high level of responsibility, interested in multi-billion dollar war games.

• 1:28:04John Coogan?

  Let's go.

• 1:28:05Jordi Hays?

  Amazing. We love war games and looking to work on generational consumer products, please reach out. Sincerely, the Dutch East Internet Company. That's their actual.

• 1:28:15John Coogan?

  Wait, really?

• 1:28:16Jordi Hays?

  That's their actual.

• 1:28:17John Coogan?

  I love it. That's hilarious.

• 1:28:18Jordi Hays?

  C corp name. So yeah, I'm, I've always been very bullish on Josh. I always will be. He's got incredible mind, put together a great team, backed by, you know, one of the top funds.

• 1:28:29John Coogan?

  And what position are they hiring for?

• 1:28:31Jordi Hays?

  They're hiring for a full stack engineer. So it'd be like founding, one of their founding engineers. And I do think that this, I'm an investor, so this is conflicted promoted post.

• 1:28:40John Coogan?

  No conflict, no interest, baby.

• 1:28:41Jordi Hays?

  No conflict, no interest, but I think that Pixie Chess can be something that breaks out of crypto. Like I think that, I think that the mechanics that they're working on, the novelty of just the game itself, like should be an absolute hit and you can go risk on with it. You can play for, for real money.

• 1:28:59John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 1:29:00Jordi Hays?

  Which would be cool. So go check out Pixie Chess and DM Josh and.

• 1:29:06John Coogan?

  Tell them the Technological Brothers sent you.

• 1:29:08Jordi Hays?

  You won't regret it.

• 1:29:10John Coogan?

  Let's go to Anand Sunwal. He says, Dude Perfect and Mark Rober have built superior businesses to Mr. Beast. They're the best creator businesses IMO and aren't talked about enough. It's interesting. I don't know all that much about these guys. I mean, I follow them and have worked in the YouTube world.

• 1:29:27Jordi Hays?

  I completely missed it.

• 1:29:29John Coogan?

  So Dude Perfect is this fantastic channel. It was originally like trick shots. So they would throw a basketball off of the top of a stadium from the nosebleed seats into a hoop.

• 1:29:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:41John Coogan?

  All the way down on the field and they would just do, so they'd go mega, mega fireball.

• 1:29:45Jordi Hays?

  I remember being like 12 years old.

• 1:29:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, and watching this on YouTube and it was just insane. And they just got really, really good where they would spend all day and eventually everyone would say, oh, they're faking it. They're doing BFX. No, they just put in the work and then they actually got really good at making these trick shots.

• 1:30:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:00John Coogan?

  So like you ask him to like, oh yeah, throw a basketball over this building into this hoop. And like, they're going to be able to do it better than 99% of people because they just practice it. They've spent more time. So they're actually good at these crazy trick shots and they can do crazy things like ping pong balls and, and hockey pucks. And they just do everything now. And then they do a bunch of collabs and they've gotten really good at the editing. And they recently opened up this like massive, like. It's like a theme park. I think the investment is like over a hundred million dollars on this

• 1:30:26Jordi Hays?

  No way.

• 1:30:27John Coogan?

  Huge, it has a huge tower that they can throw stuff off of.

• 1:30:30Jordi Hays?

  That's great.

• 1:30:30John Coogan?

  Cause for a while there was this

• 1:30:31Jordi Hays?

  Cause it kinda needs to be like protected, cause if you're throwing a basketball off of

• 1:30:35John Coogan?

  Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there was like, there was this whole trend where there was this massive like bridge with a trampoline or like a, it was like a skydiving tower, basically. And they would throw like pianos off of it to like, this is like, maybe not them, but somebody would throw pianos off of it onto like a trampoline and you would see

• 1:30:50Jordi Hays?

  Hopefully not a Steinway.

• 1:30:51John Coogan?

  Like drop cars and stuff. It was crazy, crazy. Um, so great business and Mark Rober has a, uh, a really interesting subscription box company that sells engineering toolkits. This is great for kids. Where it comes and you get to watch a Mark Rober video and he breaks down, okay, today we're building like a new slingshot. You know, break out these pieces and sometimes there's like programming and there's multiple levels. So you can build the basic one if you're just a kid, but then you can customize it and build like more stuff and actually write some code. And so, uh, fantastic businesses. Um, but everyone thinks Mr. Beast is at the top because he says the CPG brand with, um, with

• 1:31:28Jordi Hays?

  No, I think he's probably on top from an attention standpoint.

• 1:31:31John Coogan?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 1:31:32Jordi Hays?

  These other creators have more aligned businesses, right? Mr. Beast is sort of like, I'm just gonna get max amount of attention.

• 1:31:39John Coogan?

  It's a game show that sells chocolate as opposed to Mark Rober. Engineering channel and he sends engineering kits.

• 1:31:45Jordi Hays?

  They're just a lot more disconnected.

• 1:31:46John Coogan?

  Or Dude Perfect, it's like a sports thing and you can go to their sport. They're basically building like next gen Dave and Busters almost.

• 1:31:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:52John Coogan?

  You can go to their thing and, and experience all the different sports challenges. So it does seem more aligned. Um, but

• 1:31:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, as long as, I mean, I think the challenge is Mr. Beast's audience by nature of just getting so many views from so many different parts of the world.

• 1:32:07John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:32:07Jordi Hays?

  He's sort of forced into

• 1:32:08John Coogan?

  Lowest company denominator.

• 1:32:09Jordi Hays?

  Needing to launch something like a chocolate bar.

• 1:32:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, that anyone can consume. I mean, this is why I was advocating for Beast VPN. Because he has an international audience. He has people all over the world. And so what do you want to sell? You want to sell something that's differentiated only on the marketing. It's already big on YouTube. Every ad is for VPNs. Extremely high margin, extremely low churn.

• 1:32:29Jordi Hays?

  He'd have to go up against a cartel, though, the Eastern European VPN cartel.

• 1:32:33John Coogan?

  I don't even know if there is a cartel. There's so many of these. It's very oligopolistic.

• 1:32:36Jordi Hays?

  No, no, no, no, no. I, I heard, I actually heard that there's like basically one group in Eastern Europe that has hovered up a lot of them.

• 1:32:43John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 1:32:44Jordi Hays?

  So like, when you see a VPN ad for one thing or another, it's like the same end owner.

• 1:32:49John Coogan?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:32:50Jordi Hays?

  So it's, it's, it's more consolidated. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:53John Coogan?

  Fascinating. Yeah.

• 1:32:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And I, and I, and I would almost throw this on because if I was.

• 1:33:00John Coogan?

  The tinfoil hat. Give us some conspiracies.

• 1:33:02Jordi Hays?

  If I was a foreign intelligence agency.

• 1:33:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, what would you?

• 1:33:05Jordi Hays?

  I might offer very inexpensive VPN services in order to capture all that traffic and data. And then make, price it artificially low so that you just capture more and more of that data, you know, sort of pipeline. So.

• 1:33:21John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 1:33:22Jordi Hays?

  Anyways, we, we try to keep this to once an episode, but.

• 1:33:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there is another factor. I, I think that, you know, the business analysis aside, there is something interesting where all of these creators go through this hero's journey where they're deified and then eventually torn down. Mr. Beast recently went through that.

• 1:33:41Jordi Hays?

  MK.

• 1:33:41John Coogan?

  And MKBHD is going through it right now, where he has the Eye of Sauron on him.

• 1:33:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:47John Coogan?

  We had to defend him last week because he was, he was going something like only like 60 miles an hour over in a, in a children's zone. And obviously we think that's fine. But, uh, uh, but MKBHD has, the comments on every single one of the video is joking about wallpapers, joking about.

• 1:34:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the new thing this week is he was kind of, he's historically trashed crypto. So like, everybody has been just like going after him.

• 1:34:09John Coogan?

  And, and so there's this, there's this element of like, you're either like loved and all of your fans are like promoting you and reposting you and just sycophantically, parasocially obsessed with you, or you become the demon and then everyone, you know, hates you and wants to tear you down and gets like social credibility on that. And Dude Perfect and Mark Rober are maybe pre-fall, or maybe they have the ability to. You know, avoid that entirely with how narrow their, their, their content is and where they've stayed. But I mean, you could imagine a Mark Rober fallout around, oh, well, you know, one of his engineering kits electrified someone. It was terrible, you know, all these things. And then that could just blow up because everyone has this, this, this latent obsession with like, let's tear the big guy down.

• 1:34:55John Coogan?

  And so it's a good lesson in like, you know, heavy is the head that wears the crown.

• 1:35:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there needs to be some bro science done on this because I think the people that try to tear big creators down and put a target on big creators probably just have low magnesium levels.

• 1:35:10John Coogan?

  I think that's probably true. And just so you know, don't get any ideas. If you're trying to tear us down, we're going to hit back 10 times harder. So don't even try it.

• 1:35:18Jordi Hays?

  Don't even start.

• 1:35:19John Coogan?

  Let's go to Sam Swara says, do you think feudal lords had bi-weekly one-on-ones with their knights?

• 1:35:29John Coogan?

  This is such a good post. I love this.

• 1:35:31Jordi Hays?

  All time.

• 1:35:32John Coogan?

  And then, and then Mackenzie says, do you mean a round table? And then Sam Swara says, low, well done. Yes, it is a round table. They did have one. Well, they weren't one-on-ones.

• 1:35:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the key thing. All hands. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:44John Coogan?

  The round table is the all hands.

• 1:35:46Jordi Hays?

  And it wasn't, it was, it was the, honestly, the round table was more like a power lunch.

• 1:35:50John Coogan?

  I think so.

• 1:35:51Jordi Hays?

  Sort of the, the, the historical example of a power lunch where

• 1:35:54John Coogan?

  And so you should channel that.

• 1:35:56Jordi Hays?

  Channel the power lunch, channel the round table.

• 1:35:58John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:35:58Jordi Hays?

  Don't do one-on-ones. Never do one-on-ones.

• 1:36:02John Coogan?

  Yep. We should have a round table here and we should

• 1:36:04Jordi Hays?

  This is a round table.

• 1:36:05John Coogan?

  This is a round table.

• 1:36:06Jordi Hays?

  For a reason.

• 1:36:06John Coogan?

  We should get everyone on the team.

• 1:36:07Jordi Hays?

  All of our VPs.

• 1:36:08John Coogan?

  All of our VPs sit around and, and discuss business and how we will remain the most profitable podcast in the world.

• 1:36:14Jordi Hays?

  And the biggest.

• 1:36:15John Coogan?

  Fastest growing podcast in the world.

• 1:36:17Jordi Hays?

  And the biggest tech podcast in the world.

• 1:36:20John Coogan?

  And I, yeah, I think you can learn a lot from feudal lords. You can learn more from the prince than from four hour work week.

• 1:36:30John Coogan?

  Let's go to Trace Cohen, says they will all IPO and it will make sense then, but now until then, this is a perfect example of how the last two years in tech/startup/VC and it says, a screenshot of staying private, you mentioned this earlier, there was more money flowing into secondaries for Figma, Rippling, Canva, Revolut, CoreWeave, Databricks and Stripe than all of the tech IPOs in 2023 to 2024. And this is from the Morgan Stanley and the information reporting and companies.

• 1:37:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think this is like crazy to look at, but at the same time, it is, it makes so much sense because most of the returns generated from venture are like 10 companies.

• 1:37:13John Coogan?

  Everyone knows this now and Elon ran the A B test. He took Tesla public, he kept SpaceX private and which was more of a hassle for him?

• 1:37:21Jordi Hays?

  The only company that I want to start and go public quickly is the Trump podcast. I think they can get to a hundred million dollar run rate within a year and should be the first podcast IPO. And I think that everybody should be able to sort of participate in that.

• 1:37:36John Coogan?

  Yes, that makes sense. But I mean, increasingly, there's ways to participate in the Stripe secondary through fund of funds, through all sorts of different secondary firms.

• 1:37:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, if you can't, if you're kind of annoyed that these companies aren't public and you're accredited and you haven't figured out a way to get in them, it's on you. You just don't want it bad enough.

• 1:37:55John Coogan?

  You might be seven SPVs deep, but at least you have exposure.

• 1:37:58Jordi Hays?

  Exposure.

• 1:37:59John Coogan?

  At least you have exposure. But yeah, we, I, I, I think it's, it's still somewhat of a good trend. We, you know, we want these companies to be able to stay in founder mode, have as little overhead as possible, move very quickly.

• 1:38:13Jordi Hays?

  Raw execution.

• 1:38:14John Coogan?

  And, and execute.

• 1:38:16Jordi Hays?

  Risk on.

• 1:38:17John Coogan?

  They will all IPO and it will make sense then, but until then, it's a perfect example. So yeah, I mean, these companies will go public eventually, but the, the private markets are retooling to keep companies private.

• 1:38:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And part of why there's so much capital available for these companies is that they're really. Especially now, those new investors are looking at like, okay, I'm probably going to be locked up, you know, not be able, you know, this company will probably go public within the next two years. And at that point, I'll be liquid and I should get a nice, in theory, like premium on what I invested.

• 1:38:49John Coogan?

  Yeah. And I mean, the entire, like, all the incentives align, like, the founders want to stay private. And the asset managers understand that they can earn higher fees from investing in secondaries as opposed to being a public manager or

• 1:39:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, also, if you put, if you put a billion dollars into Databricks and it goes public a year later, and your position is at 1.1 billion.

• 1:39:13John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:39:13Jordi Hays?

  It's a 10% return, which is like what a lot of early-stage funds do, or less, you know?

• 1:39:18John Coogan?

  Yep. Let's go to Jack Rains. He says, "Paying a negative salary for a chief of staff position when you're worth 1.7 billion dollars, either A, deeply underpays someone who probably needs money, or B, ensures that you hire a rich Nepo baby who doesn't need money. This doesn't motivate someone to grind harder or whatever." And this is, uh, this is a quote tweet of the previous post that we reacted to by Depender Goyal. Um, I didn't understand that he was paying a negative.

• 1:39:45Jordi Hays?

  Did we react to that?

• 1:39:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, we just did. It's deeper in the stack. Um, I didn't understand that he was paying a negative salary. What does that mean? Um, but, uh, nothing wrong with hiring a rich Nepo baby.

• 1:39:55Jordi Hays?

  So it means they're basically like every, uh, you gotta go work for them and then they're going to donate to charities on your behalf? Which, uh, we're very against any like sort of non-

• 1:40:04John Coogan?

  Yeah. Subscribe because we're going to be doing a deep dive on the best charities to take private and turn into for-profits. We've learned a lot from the OpenAI nonprofit to for-profit transition. And we think PETA could be next. Um, Red Cross could be next. We have lots of ideas. Stay tuned for that. Subscribe, please. Um, but, uh, yeah, I don't know. I, I, I think that, you know, there are a lot worse roles than mentoring for a billionaire.

• 1:40:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think I, I, I, I think the, the, the sort of hate is somewhat deserving.

• 1:40:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, it makes sense to dunk, but at the same time, i- i- if you do, if you can break through, I mean, this post got a lot of views.

• 1:40:45Jordi Hays?

  I would rather see.

• 1:40:45John Coogan?

  There's probably a lot of people applying, and if you can break through and become the leading candidate, asking for, hey, I need 50K. Like, that's probably an afterthought, and you can probably get that.

• 1:40:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:55John Coogan?

  And, and that should be like step one, and.

• 1:40:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they will hire somebody better because of all the attention that they got. That said, I'd like to see that company say, you know, we want people to, you know, we want sort of people that are, have a high risk tolerance for this role. We're gonna give you your, your, your comp into a, um, an account, and you can only trade options with it.

• 1:41:15John Coogan?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 1:41:16Jordi Hays?

  Um, and it's your job to turn it into a livable salary.

• 1:41:19John Coogan?

  There you go.

• 1:41:20Jordi Hays?

  On a very like, every single month, it's like, what's the trade that's gonna pay your rent?

• 1:41:24John Coogan?

  There you go.

• 1:41:24Jordi Hays?

  What's the trade that's gonna, you know, uh, allow you to get something nice for your mom for Christmas, right?

• 1:41:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, or, or walk into Depender's office and say, hey, look, I want to invest in startups. I need 250K today.

• 1:41:36Jordi Hays?

  Or if somebody's a real Chad, get, take that role, and then get so critical to the business that you position yourself to do a hostile takeover of the company and boot him out.

• 1:41:47John Coogan?

  Boot him out. That's good. I like that. Yeah. Immediately start calling the institutional investors.

• 1:41:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:53John Coogan?

  Day one.

• 1:41:54Jordi Hays?

  This guy's running this company.

• 1:41:55John Coogan?

  You have access to his email?

• 1:41:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:57John Coogan?

  Send an email, hey, we need a meeting, or I'm calling a board meeting.

• 1:42:00Jordi Hays?

  Call a board meeting.

• 1:42:01John Coogan?

  Without him.

• 1:42:03Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 1:42:03John Coogan?

  There's new, there's new blood in here.

• 1:42:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, sharks in the water.

• 1:42:08John Coogan?

  Uh, let's go to promoted post. What do you got for me?

• 1:42:10Jordi Hays?

  Okay, uh, incredible promoted post today from Brad Gersner over at Altimeter Capital. Uh, he is talking about his podcast BG2. Uh, he hosts this with, uh, Gurley.

• 1:42:23John Coogan?

  Proud to promote that.

• 1:42:23Jordi Hays?

  They both are BG, so BG2, great name for a podcast. And so all I would say with this, imagine if All In never talked about politics.

• 1:42:31John Coogan?

  That's what BG2 is.

• 1:42:32Jordi Hays?

  That is BG2, and the show is fantastic. If you want to get deep into understanding AI scaling, full self-driving.

• 1:42:40John Coogan?

  Let me see this tweet.

• 1:42:40Jordi Hays?

  How, um. You know, one, they talk about the, the holy trinity of markets-loving, lower taxes, less regulation, and balancing the budget. That's a holy trinity of sort of like political, or like sort of policy. And anyways, fantastic podcast. I'm a listener. And we love to support other, you know, there's not many technology podcasts, but-

• 1:43:05John Coogan?

  Do they run ads, though?

• 1:43:07Jordi Hays?

  No ads yet. That's the only thing. Brad and, and-

• 1:43:11John Coogan?

  I'm gonna have to change my recommendation. I would say unsubscribe from BG2.

• 1:43:15Jordi Hays?

  Would like to see them running, running more ads.

• 1:43:18John Coogan?

  Support the community. Start pumping some companies.

• 1:43:21Jordi Hays?

  Let some of these scale-ups get in front of this audience, because it's an important audience.

• 1:43:24John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly. Don't be, don't be a mistake. Don't be, don't be something that everyone regrets. Come on, man. Get it together.

• 1:43:31Jordi Hays?

  That's the biggest issue with All In. No ads.

• 1:43:33John Coogan?

  It's the biggest issue. Let's go to Arjun Kamani, second time on the show, repeat guest. He says, "Nayib Bukele's Instagram story lol." And it's a screenshot of just the straight-up account balance, because this is the president of El Salvador, I believe?

• 1:43:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:52John Coogan?

  And he bought something like-

• 1:43:54Jordi Hays?

  I love how it's a mobile screenshot, too.

• 1:43:55John Coogan?

  He, he bought $268 million worth of Bitcoin, and it's now worth $573 million. Wow. That is remarkable.

• 1:44:05Jordi Hays?

  So, so I don't understand-

• 1:44:06John Coogan?

  What's crazy is you look at the chart, it's like they invested $268, and they were down to below $100 million.

• 1:44:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had to, he had to ride it out. He had to ride it out.

• 1:44:16John Coogan?

  And he rode it out. And he just does two kissy faces.

• 1:44:19Jordi Hays?

  No, but, but here's the thing. I don't understand what he's screenshotting this from. Is this like his mobile brokerage?

• 1:44:25John Coogan?

  Yeah. I think he literally is like, "I'm setting up a Robinhood account for my country."

• 1:44:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:31John Coogan?

  And I'm just trading my treasury.

• 1:44:33Jordi Hays?

  That's the ultimate Gen Z president.

• 1:44:35John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 1:44:37John Coogan?

  We need more, we need more world leaders to be risk on and, and trading. You've seen it with Nancy Pelosi.

• 1:44:42Jordi Hays?

  Let's give, let's give.

• 1:44:43John Coogan?

  You've seen it with Pelosi tracker. Put her in charge of the Federal Reserve. Put her in charge of Fort Knox. Get us out of gold. Get us into crypto.

• 1:44:52Jordi Hays?

  The only thing that can really fix our budget deficit is Nancy Pelosi trading our federal balance.

• 1:44:59John Coogan?

  Get her on Pumped Out Fund.

• 1:45:00Jordi Hays?

  Federal, federal balance sheet. Uh, let's give, let's give, you know, JD's, you know, venture capitalists. Let's, let's soft circle like 50 billion dollars for him to deploy on behalf of the US people. Let's give Trump, uh, Trump is a, a established cryptocurrency entrepreneur. Let's give him, you know, Pumped Out Fund account, uh, and, uh, let's ride.

• 1:45:22John Coogan?

  Let's go to El Vendedor. He says POV, 22 years old, 200K tech sales job, 48K savings, expenses 5K a month. What would your strategy to maximize wealth?

• 1:45:36Jordi Hays?

  All right. This is going to be controversial. At 200K, you're an accredited investor. One big problem with liquid assets is they command a lot of attention, right? When you have your Robin Hood or your Coinbase or your whatever, kind of going up and down on a day to day basis. There's this idea that you should sort of fixate on it and like try to optimize it. Uh, but at, at sort of this point in your career, 22 years old, you should be focusing on, uh, you know, I would say that David Senna would say like optimize your network, right? Relationships around the world. Other people would say focus on your skills. Uh, I would say, uh, find, go through YC and invest in the five, uh, invest every single dollar you have

• 1:46:20Jordi Hays?

  in the five best founders in the batch. And, uh, you know, if you're Coogan, you'll have invested in Substack, OpenSea, Substack.

• 1:46:30Jordi Hays?

  Coinbase.

• 1:46:31John Coogan?

  Zapier and Instacart.

• 1:46:33Jordi Hays?

  Zapier and Instacart, and you will be worth 20 million regardless of if your company works or not.

• 1:46:40John Coogan?

  Well, he's working a tech sales job.

• 1:46:42Jordi Hays?

  That's what I'm saying. Go, go start an AI agent outbound sales company, go through YC with your absolute.

• 1:46:48John Coogan?

  So just save the money and then go and deploy it all very.

• 1:46:51Jordi Hays?

  Deploy it all very quickly within 12 weeks.

• 1:46:53John Coogan?

  I mean, he can probably accrue 50K a year, 60K, maybe 100K if he really saves.

• 1:46:59Jordi Hays?

  Go long.

• 1:46:59John Coogan?

  And just go long.

• 1:47:00Jordi Hays?

  And the beauty of it, it's gonna be totally liquid. You won't be able to touch it. You'll have to, you know, have that dog in you to keep grinding.

• 1:47:06John Coogan?

  Yep. I like it. Go to Yaksin. He says, "The only job left is going to be executive. Engineers make better executives on median, but executive will be the only job left for professionals." And he's quote tweeting Rune, who says, "The job-related meeting crisis has already started and will soon go full swing. This may sound insane, but my only hope is that it happens quickly and at large enough scale such that everyone is forced to rebuild."

• 1:47:34John Coogan?

  What do you think?

• 1:47:35Jordi Hays?

  So the only other job that I think is going to be available is podcasting, right?

• 1:47:39John Coogan?

  That's right.

• 1:47:39Jordi Hays?

  Which is why we're hedging by being executives, by being executive podcasters. So, um, yeah, I think, I don't, I don't know. I, I, I won't, uh, I still think there's like 50,000 tech jobs that like probably don't need to exist at these sort of big, bigger public or sort of scale ups. Uh, and I think the conversation will really kick off when those people are either cut or, you know, are sort of no longer being hired at the, at the same rate.

• 1:48:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:14Jordi Hays?

  So we'll see. But, um, but yeah, I, I think like the things that are gonna have like command a premium are, are relationships, right? When every company has an army of AI agents that are coding and selling, relationships are gonna have a lot of value, like being able to call up. Somebody at another company and get a deal done, like just very old fashioned, like do a power lunch. Uh, and just get the deal done. That's going to command a premium.

• 1:48:41John Coogan?

  And ideas.

• 1:48:42Jordi Hays?

  But yeah, I think that the wait, but why guys said this thing, which was like, this is the last year of human history where, where there's more thing, the most popular like talk, you know, subject. It's still honestly not like, it'll be interesting to go home for Thanksgiving and more people will be talking about crypto than AI. And it's because people like to talk about like the headline price and there's no like headline price for AI. Just sort of like steamrolling.

• 1:49:09John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:49:10Jordi Hays?

  But I would say like maybe next Thanksgiving, that'll be a different story.

• 1:49:13John Coogan?

  I do wonder about the bullshit jobs thing. Have you read that book? It's this thesis that like, like there is a lot, there's already a job related meaning crisis that's happening. And I, I think of that this in relation to the government where there are a lot of jobs, you know, you walk through TSA, you're like, what are these people actually doing? And you can think about a lot of the government as just a wealth transfer. And the, and the, but the way we transfer the money is not through the Andrew Yang UBI strategy. It's instead through a bullshit job.

• 1:49:48Jordi Hays?

  TSA.

• 1:49:48John Coogan?

  And I don't know if that's going to go away. I think that might just scale up. Because I think both parties might embrace that as a way to transfer wealth and, and, and give a little bit of meaning, even if it's, even if it's minor.

• 1:50:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. The thing about, the thing about a, a, the, the beauty of a quote unquote bullshit job of something that's not necessarily super impactful. Is that it's still, um, it still provides a self-esteem associated with being productive, earning an income. And you take somebody who's, you know, uh, 22 and unemployed and you give them a job, even if they're making 30K a year. They're immediately going to be feel better about the situation, better about the world. And so we, we, it's going to be the greatest sort of challenge of our lifetime as, you know, intelligence becomes an API call.

• 1:50:40John Coogan?

  Yep. Let's go to Vittorio. He says, "It looks like Sora is still the best video model." "Sama, please, elections are over. Deep fakes are not such a big concern anymore and everyone can't wait to not have to deal with Ben Affleck anymore."

• 1:50:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so we did it.

• 1:50:56John Coogan?

  I do want them to release Sora. I mean, this has been almost a year, right? Didn't they, didn't they announce it almost a year ago?

• 1:51:01Jordi Hays?

  No, the challenge is when companies start announcing things before they're available, it encourages other companies to do the same.

• 1:51:07John Coogan?

  I think it's a cost thing. I think it's very expensive to inference Sora.

• 1:51:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. But this is gonna be like the craziest thing ever. I, I heard about a, um, there was a hackathon in SF a week and a half ago. And somebody built a product where you could speak into a microphone and like talk about a situation. And then an AI model would generate like B-roll on that. And apparently, I think it'll end up being like, there's a huge consumer product to be built where somebody, you just like talk into your phone, say something. And, um, and it just like generates like an entire visual like story of like that thing. Because it's like very much like you're almost like hallucinating.

• 1:51:47John Coogan?

  Yep. I do wonder like how much does that actually add to the experience? Like I've done a lot of YouTube videos that are very B-roll heavy. We use a lot of stock footage, use some AI video stuff. And then, and then with this podcast, we, we were very light on the B-roll. Unless we're doing a specific segment. And I'm not sure that once B-roll is democratized to the point that you just click a button and every word is translated into B-roll. So I'm talking about a man drinking champagne and you see a, a AI-generated video. Like, is, is that gonna become just like, uh, like they did the thing?

• 1:52:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:25John Coogan?

  Who cares?

• 1:52:26Jordi Hays?

  No, I think it's more of like an entertainment product.

• 1:52:28John Coogan?

  I think it's more about like the creative use. Like, like I remember when, uh, Harry Potter Balenciaga went viral. And everyone was like, this is incredible. This is like the craziest use of AI. And I was like, what's incredible here is the idea.

• 1:52:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:41John Coogan?

  And I went to ChatGPT and I was like, hey, ChatGPT, there's a, there's a, there's a viral video right now called Harry Potter Balenciaga. And it's very interesting for these reasons. It's non sequitur because Harry Potter and Balenciaga are both things that people really understand. But they're from completely different worlds. One is a children's story and the other is a high fashion brand. So come up with other ideas that could potentially go viral. Like, give me the ideas. And it was like Lego Versace. And I was like, you're not getting it. Like, that's not.

• 1:53:13Jordi Hays?

  No, but do you remember, do you remember early iPhone days when you could, there was like apps that would get like millions of dollars in sales that were like drinking a beer?

• 1:53:22John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:22Jordi Hays?

  And so I think that what I was describing of like, you say a phrase into the phone and then it generates this visual journey.

• 1:53:29John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:53:29Jordi Hays?

  Is more like, you know, I grew up in the country. My dad had like chickens. You know, we had chickens every once in a while, like a raccoon or fox would get into the chicken coop and then it would just be like fire drill. We're all running.

• 1:53:40John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:53:41Jordi Hays?

  And so if I was able to say into my phone, like chickens with AR fifteens defending themselves from like foxes and then see this visual journey, like I would pay five dollars a month to be able to do that. Like, it's just like.

• 1:53:53John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. I've already used Grok to like mash up different children's properties. Like, what if Paw Patrol met, met, you know, Yoda? And it's like, that can't happen in the real world because of the different IPs, but it can happen in AI. And, and visualizing like very specific things and like, yeah, democratizing.

• 1:54:11Jordi Hays?

  But it's gonna be such a colossal, colossal leap from generating an image to generating thirty seconds of video.

• 1:54:18John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:54:18Jordi Hays?

  Which is less than a year, like a year out till it's like very mainstream.

• 1:54:22John Coogan?

  They need to bake it down in the hardware because right now it's super expensive.

• 1:54:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:25John Coogan?

  Let's go to Andrew Wilkinson. He says, going to business school to become an entrepreneur is like reading a book about basketball history because you want to join the NBA. I agree. I never did business school. I just started a company. I think you did the same thing, right? I did study economics, which is great.

• 1:54:41Jordi Hays?

  Listening to Technology Brothers is basically like getting an MBA in three hours.

• 1:54:47John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:54:47Jordi Hays?

  Via the timeline and our takes on it.

• 1:54:49John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:54:50Jordi Hays?

  Now, I did a program called Tech Management, which was like, to its credit, pretty cool.

• 1:55:00Jordi Hays?

  I did like probably six classes in it and I thought it was relatively current, but every single thing that we were covering that was at all topical was like a trend from the prior like, like three years ago. So we had a class on like the direct consumer model, which again, giving it credit, like most times like a school, by the time a school is covering something, it's like decades in the past.

• 1:55:23John Coogan?

  I remember in some entrepreneurship class, I wrote a bull case for Twitter and the stock was valued at like under a billion dollars and I got a B minus or something. And then the stock ripped and I wrote an email being like,

• 1:55:35Jordi Hays?

  Should have dropped out.

• 1:55:36John Coogan?

  You gotta give me an A plus on this.

• 1:55:37Jordi Hays?

  Should have dropped out.

• 1:55:38John Coogan?

  I called it, like, come on. And the professor was like, fine.

• 1:55:41Jordi Hays?

  Should have been at Jane Street.

• 1:55:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, it was like, yeah, bad. Let's go to TJ Parker. He says, can we please stop with the concert poster fundraiser announcements? Truly terrible.

• 1:55:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so this is like a very 2021 thing. And every once in a while, you see some founder that hasn't raised a big round in a while and they're like, I'm gonna do a concert poster.

• 1:56:06John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:56:06Jordi Hays?

  My main issue with it is I often find that I'm not big enough on the poster. I'm not headlining, right?

• 1:56:13John Coogan?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 1:56:14Jordi Hays?

  If some asset manager like Andreessen gets the top spot, I'm like, well, I invested before them, right? Like, should I?

• 1:56:20John Coogan?

  I should be first billing.

• 1:56:22Jordi Hays?

  I should be like bigger.

• 1:56:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:24Jordi Hays?

  So anyways, I think this is, I do think that fundraising announcements are like just an easy launch that companies can use to get attention from real value, as like notifying the next round's investors that I'm here, I'm the thing.

• 1:56:38John Coogan?

  Also, I mean, just the X algorithm, like you can't post a link to a TechCrunch article that actually breaks down your investors, so an image can go more viral. So there's something about the medium is the message and, you know, X is kind of pushing you towards these concert posters, but they are kind of played out. And increasingly, the The viral launch video is played out to some degree.

• 1:56:59Jordi Hays?

  Totally.

• 1:56:59John Coogan?

  People need to kind of reinvent these things. There's been a few that have broken through, but I think people

• 1:57:04Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:04John Coogan?

  understand at this point. It's like, oh, it's one of those.

• 1:57:06Jordi Hays?

  No, it's funny. So, so.

• 1:57:08John Coogan?

  Oh, it's a vibe reel.

• 1:57:09Jordi Hays?

  Founders, founders funded the original viral vibe reel.

• 1:57:13John Coogan?

  Yep, yep.

• 1:57:13Jordi Hays?

  We did, we did a remix of it and then other people have sort of driven it into the ground.

• 1:57:20John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:57:20Jordi Hays?

  Uh, and it's now dead. So if you're thinking about doing a vibe reel or a concert poster, do not do it.

• 1:57:25John Coogan?

  Come out with something new, but at the same time, it's like, if you're, it's better than nothing.

• 1:57:29Jordi Hays?

  How about PR News Wire?

• 1:57:31John Coogan?

  Make it great again.

• 1:57:32Jordi Hays?

  Make PR News Wire, Business Wire great again. You know, there's like two companies that like do that as a service.

• 1:57:38John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:57:38Jordi Hays?

  Berkshire owns one of them.

• 1:57:39John Coogan?

  Really?

• 1:57:40Jordi Hays?

  Which is like funny because like, you know, the, the boys at Berkshire being like, yeah, we should probably own like Business Wire.

• 1:57:46John Coogan?

  The wires.

• 1:57:46Jordi Hays?

  We should own the wires.

• 1:57:48John Coogan?

  It's great.

• 1:57:48Jordi Hays?

  They're the, the original like go direct is just like own the wire.

• 1:57:52John Coogan?

  Own the wire. Uh, let's get Historic Preservation Respector. He says, what the heck? I ordered an engagement ring, but they fricking sent me a Speedmaster Professional 42 millimeter. Someone is going to be in serious trouble. What the frick? Why did they send me one size for a 7.25 wrist?

• 1:58:11Jordi Hays?

  And, uh, this is one of those things. Men, go have the, the watch conversation with your wives. Sit them down, mansplain it to them. Have a 30 to 40 minute conversation where you explain, you know, the history and the intricacies of Swiss watchmaking and, and you know, there's some fine American watchmakers as well.

• 1:58:33John Coogan?

  Omega's James Bond's watch.

• 1:58:34Jordi Hays?

  Um, and, uh, and yeah, sit down, explain it to them, you know, in, in, uh, you know, uh, you know, in, in, uh, the, the correct terms and I'm sure they'll come around to it.

• 1:58:47John Coogan?

  So yeah, the engagement ring can wait.

• 1:58:49Jordi Hays?

  It can wait.

• 1:58:50John Coogan?

  Enjoy your Speedmaster.

• 1:58:51Jordi Hays?

  Get, get your hitter, get your Speedmaster.

• 1:58:53John Coogan?

  It's critical.

• 1:58:54Jordi Hays?

  Find the right watch for you, right? We're, we're big fans of loud opulence on this podcast.

• 1:59:00John Coogan?

  Julie Frederiksen says, first time on the show, she says, ding dong, the dick is dead. Gary Gensler plans to step down as Chair of the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission on January 20th. And this is interesting. I, I've always wondered, like, obviously, Trump is appointing all sorts of new people, but what is the calculus between getting fired, riding it out, talking to Trump, or just stepping down early versus announcing that you're stepping down early? Like, he's stepping down on inauguration day, I suppose, or near it.

• 1:59:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:33John Coogan?

  And so, clearly, he knows that he's, that the writing's on the wall. But there's, there's a media strategy here.

• 1:59:41Jordi Hays?

  The president-elect has a meme coin called the World Liberty Coin.

• 1:59:45John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:46Jordi Hays?

  That he launched, like, two weeks out.

• 1:59:48John Coogan?

  And I'm sure Gary Gensler's not a fan.

• 1:59:50Jordi Hays?

  He's not a fan. But yeah, you know, look, I, I think that one of the challenges with crypto is that it's sort of been speedrunning all of these, you know, why we have certain regulations. And Gary Gensler's gotten a lot of hate, and, and I think it's broadly for good reasons. He's sort of made the entire cryptocurrency industry not be able to innovate and actually create, like, a lot of products that would otherwise be valuable to people. And so I think that it will generally be, it will certainly be good for the, for the cryptocurrency industry to have somebody in place that is more of a, you know, ideally,

• 2:00:34Jordi Hays?

  like, this is an innovation that's happening one way or another. Like, clearly, people just create, it's, it's, anybody that can develop software can create, you know, tokens and, you know, protocols. And so I think that having somebody in that seat that is generally appreciates the, the novel, like, applications of the technology and can kind of steward the industry towards having, you know, the big criticism is he's sort of regulating by enforcement actions.

• 2:01:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:05Jordi Hays?

  So not really telling people what the rules are, and then just, like, coming down on one person super hard and trying to make an example out of them. You know, there's no reason we have, you know, tons of billion-dollar crypto companies in the U.S. They should kind of understand, and the new companies, the rules of the road.

• 2:01:21John Coogan?

  Yeah. Do we have a promoted post?

• 2:01:23Jordi Hays?

  Promoted post from this guy Jordy Hayes said he's a general partner at Technology Brothers Podcast. I know this guy. He says, "I'm excited to announce the Porsche 911 of water filters Aurora Water." Aurora is a new countertop water filter. Look at this thing. We got one right here. One of the first versions off the factory line. So Aurora is a product that I've been working on with my partners, Brian and Charlie, for quite a while. We've invested a ton of money in R&D and testing, and it's live available to purchase as of yesterday. So we took the countertop water system, which is, you know, there's a bunch of different people

• 2:02:07Jordi Hays?

  that have made versions of this over the years. We tried to make it 10 times better. I think we did. It's beautiful, effective, durable, timeless, easy to set up, easy to use. My two-year-old can use it, which is awesome. It's accessible. You don't need to do plumbing or electrical work. And we've tested it extremely rigorously, literally spent about a quarter of a million dollars, like with the NSF, which is the certification company. And really happy with the product. It's beautiful, and I'm excited for people to finally get their hands on it.

• 2:02:39John Coogan?

  I'm excited. So go buy Aurora Water Filter today. Let's go to Joe Rogan, first time on the show. He says, "This is my new official X description." And he's quote tweeting Colin Rugg, who says, "The views Joy Behar says people like their show because they tell the truth, unlike Dragon Believer Joe Rogan." And Joe updated his X description to just say, "Dragon believer."

• 2:03:05Jordi Hays?

  I can't stress this enough. On this podcast, we trust the experts. Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, Huberman, Chris Williamson, David Senra.

• 2:03:16John Coogan?

  Jesse Michaels.

• 2:03:18Jordi Hays?

  The list goes on. You gotta trust the experts. You gotta trust the dragon believers. I think that.

• 2:03:24John Coogan?

  Putting on the tinfoil hat again.

• 2:03:25Jordi Hays?

  I think we should send one of these to Joe.

• 2:03:28John Coogan?

  Oh, we should.

• 2:03:28Jordi Hays?

  I think it's a, it's a, it's a great asset. It, it provides a little bit of ground cover to say some crazy things. I believe in dragons, right? I got a lot of dinosaurs around my house right now. It's hard not to think, man, maybe these things were what we imagine as dragons, right? Maybe we did walk the earth with these fantastical beasts. So, um, shout out to dragons.

• 2:03:47John Coogan?

  I mean, dragons are literally real. If you believe in the Komodo dragon, we have a variety of dinosaurs that are essentially classified as dragons.

• 2:03:54Jordi Hays?

  Ozempic was created by, Ozempic is dragon.

• 2:03:57John Coogan?

  That was the Gila monster related to the Komodo dragon, but separate, but yes. Um, but dragons, uh, we need, we, we need, we need a good deep dive. We need someone to, we need an expert to weigh in. Enjoy the champagne. I refilled you. We have officially finished the bottle of Dom pairing on this time.

• 2:04:11Jordi Hays?

  There we go.

• 2:04:12John Coogan?

  We are Chad's.

• 2:04:13Jordi Hays?

  Who's mixing, uh?

• 2:04:15John Coogan?

  Celsius and Dom.

• 2:04:15Jordi Hays?

  Who's mixing a little Celsius and Dom?

• 2:04:18John Coogan?

  Thank you, Ben, for editing all this. Let's go into, uh, let's skip grit and let's go to, uh, tomorrow's telecom. I don't know what that is. Is this important? Do you know this person?

• 2:04:29Jordi Hays?

  No, I just, uh.

• 2:04:30John Coogan?

  Skip it. Uh, Expa, let's do Scott. This is a good one. Scott Sanders says, real talk, what are you printing in 2024? And this was a reply to my call for Apple to develop a printer. And I'll tell you, Scott, I'm printing your tweet. I'm printing your tweet.

• 2:04:47Jordi Hays?

  There we go.

• 2:04:49John Coogan?

  I like my tweets printed out. If you're not doing this, have your secretary print your emails, print your text messages.

• 2:04:54Jordi Hays?

  Print your timeline out.

• 2:04:55John Coogan?

  Print your timeline out. Uh, get with the modern era. We're returning to tradition and we're printing things now. So we need great printers. We need a new printer startup. We need Apple to build a printer. We need more competition.

• 2:05:07Jordi Hays?

  I want a service similar to a newspaper that, that, that prints out the best tweets from yesterday.

• 2:05:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:14Jordi Hays?

  And delivers them to me at 5:00 AM so I can wake up, walk outside. Pick up a nice stack of posts and just start

• 2:05:20John Coogan?

  We respect printed things here.

• 2:05:21Jordi Hays?

  Shifting through it.

• 2:05:22John Coogan?

  We review Arena Mag. We are, I already purchased, uh, Patrick O'Shaughnessy's new magazine.

• 2:05:29John Coogan?

  I am obsessed with the so-called legacy media just because there's an option to print it out and ship it to me.

• 2:05:36Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 2:05:36John Coogan?

  I like printed stuff. It's more tactile. You can mark it up. You can take notes. It's less ethereal and it goes in the stack and this, this post will be immortalized in the stack of printed posts forever. So, uh, get with the program. Start printing your posts. Do we have a promoted post?

• 2:05:56Jordi Hays?

  Promoted post from Daniel at growing underscore Daniel. He says, so today he's saying that he needs a chief of staff.

• 2:06:05John Coogan?

  Oh, that's a dream job.

• 2:06:06Jordi Hays?

  Dream job, working for a dream poster, a dreamy poster. Uh, he says, I need a chief of staff as well, offering 15K for that connection.

• 2:06:15John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 2:06:16Jordi Hays?

  Put me in touch with your most organized friend. So this is a bounty for any technology brother out there to go, connect Daniel, uh, to his next chief of staff. Uh, the last one, uh, is, is the president-elect. Not, not a lot of people know, but Donald Trump actually worked for growing Daniel briefly, uh, during the off-season for him. Um, and anyways, go, uh, work for Daniel. Got a great company building software for police officers to be better at their jobs and more efficient.

• 2:06:48John Coogan?

  Tell them the technology brother sent you.

• 2:06:49Jordi Hays?

  Tell them we sent you.

• 2:06:51John Coogan?

  Let's go to near Cyan. She says, uh, every twenties male will watch The Big Short and be like, he's literally me. Then proceed to lose their life savings in the dumbest way possible. You know, there's a lot of founders I know who have gone through the hero's journey of losing their entire life savings in crypto and then realize that trading or, you know, YOLO investing is not for them.

• 2:07:13Jordi Hays?

  That's what I'm saying. Liquid assets.

• 2:07:14John Coogan?

  And then they go in and they build something real. And it was a big shift from like the defense tech boom, the Gundo boom. A lot of those guys had had rough goes in like the wifi money era, realized it was not very durable, very zero sum, and moved over to something that was more tangible. And I, I really think that was a benefit. To society. It was, it was a good move. Obviously crypto is important, but it's for the real builders and they're the ones that should be rewarded. If you're just on Wall Street Bets and TikTok, like trying to read, you know,

• 2:07:47John Coogan?

  technical analysis, like.

• 2:07:50Jordi Hays?

  No, I think illiquidity is a feature, just like, you know, the fact that you can go and do your job every day and not be constantly getting marked is, is a great blessing because it allows you to focus on the next important task ahead.

• 2:08:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:08:05Jordi Hays?

  And just create value that way.

• 2:08:07John Coogan?

  Let's go to Sriram Krishnan Andreessen Horowitz. He says, "The common question I often get from SV folks these days is how they can join Doge."

• 2:08:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So this is, this is interesting. I think one of the, one of the challenges, there's a lot of people that are in the kind of like peripheral or adjacent to the American dynamism movement that are kind of looking at Doge being like, if I was going to work in the government, this would be the place to do it. The challenge is like, if you, if a lot of your net worth is tied up in a bunch of like illiquid private companies, it's like very difficult to kind of, kind of divest those positions.

• 2:08:44John Coogan?

  And just time. And just time. If you have a job and you're busy, like, I think there was an official post by Doge saying, "Look, we've gotten enough ideas. Thank you."

• 2:08:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:54John Coogan?

  "But now we need high IQ, hard workers to come in and work 80 hour weeks." And that is going to be a great resume bullet point, but it's going to be hard to step away from a company you founded or GP at a big fund. Like that's going to be really hard.

• 2:09:07Jordi Hays?

  I did hear incredible financial innovation. I think it's from JP Morgan or Goldman is one of those two. They offer a service where if you're taking a government post and you need to divest assets, they will basically buy it at like 60% of like the last mark.

• 2:09:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:21Jordi Hays?

  So all those technology brothers out there sitting on overvalued private company shares, maybe take a role in the government and, and get some liquidity.

• 2:09:31John Coogan?

  I mean, that's the thing with the Treasury Secretary, right? They have to sell everything and they don't get taxed on it.

• 2:09:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:35John Coogan?

  So it's a huge benefit.

• 2:09:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think there's something actually there where you avoid that.

• 2:09:39John Coogan?

  Employees as well.

• 2:09:40Jordi Hays?

  No, I think I think it's like pretty broad.

• 2:09:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, and it makes sense. It's controversial, but it but it makes sense. Let's go to Dylan Field over at Figma. He says, he's quote tweeting Gary Gensler. He said, this man has ruined so many innocent lives. The stories will come out in time. Right now, most of his victims are too intimidated to share broadly. Let's hope he never has power again. And Gary is announcing that he will be stepping down. And yeah, it's wild because Gary, he was he was kind of pro crypto at MIT, I believe. He taught a course on it and then just came in as this kind of the bad cop of crypto and and.

• 2:10:15Jordi Hays?

  Well, he had a finance background. I think he was at.

• 2:10:17John Coogan?

  A lot of people.

• 2:10:18Jordi Hays?

  I think he was at Gold. I think he was at Goldman or some some big asset.

• 2:10:22John Coogan?

  And the biggest problem isn't that he wasn't isn't that like, OK, there are obviously bad actors in crypto. The problem was is that for the last, you know, four years during the bubble cycle, I never was like, oh, the SEC is the reason that Sam Bankman Fried got caught. It was always like some anon on Twitter or even like most of the scammers who are like celebrities and they run shitcoins. It's like Coffeezilla is the one who breaks the story.

• 2:10:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:47John Coogan?

  Or some reporter. It's very rarely, oh, the SEC got to it first. It's usually the investigative journalist, the YouTuber, the Twitter, the posters. And then the SEC has to follow up. And it was just like, this is completely the wrong model. You need to have a stronger, a stronger sense of of who's actually being harmed.

• 2:11:06Jordi Hays?

  The fact that somebody who's running like the greatest design startup of the last 10 years is like cares enough about it to comment on it. Just shows like how out of control he was.

• 2:11:16John Coogan?

  Let's go to Spore, repeat guest of the show. Spore says, what was the hot tech theme of 2023? And the founder of Perplexity says, there's a hot theme for the year and then the most valuable company and they never match up. Which I love. This is a great chart. It's not entirely true because the hot theme of the year kind of changes and it's kind of unclear. But it does seem real that the metaverse was big in 2022 and the hot. But what's interesting is like this question, it's very obvious. 2023 is AI.

• 2:11:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:43John Coogan?

  It was AI, 100%. But I guess what he's saying is like, the hot theme was AI. Maybe we should expect the most valuable company started in 2023.

• 2:11:52Jordi Hays?

  To be. Technology brothers.

• 2:11:54John Coogan?

  Technology, well, we weren't started in 2023, we were starting in 2024.

• 2:11:57Jordi Hays?

  Oh.

• 2:11:57John Coogan?

  Um, but, uh, you know, Truth Social started in, I believe, 2021. It was the web three.

• 2:12:03Jordi Hays?

  I would argue that we were started in 2023, though, because that's when we met.

• 2:12:06John Coogan?

  That is true.

• 2:12:07Jordi Hays?

  That is the first meeting.

• 2:12:08John Coogan?

  That was their first podcast. The mics weren't on, but it was a podcast at, at, uh, a very illustrious, uh, office in.

• 2:12:16Jordi Hays?

  No, there should be, there should be, this is a good use case for poly market. You should be able to bet on what is the most, like, what's going to be like the most valuable company.

• 2:12:23John Coogan?

  That's just called investing in the companies.

• 2:12:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:26John Coogan?

  Why do you need poly market for that?

• 2:12:27Jordi Hays?

  No, but the thing about private markets is like, I can believe, I cannot be an investor in a company and still believe and not even able to be an investor just because of the nature of like round timings.

• 2:12:37John Coogan?

  But I mean, poly market's a binary outcome.

• 2:12:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:40John Coogan?

  It doesn't really work like that.

• 2:12:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:43John Coogan?

  Uh, you know, good, good idea. We'll have to work on that, though. We need some workshopping. Let's go to Dexter. Elon Musk is now technically the top Diablo four player in the world after a record clear time of 152 in the game's toughest challenge. That is incredible.

• 2:12:58Jordi Hays?

  Firing on all cylinders.

• 2:13:00John Coogan?

  I love it.

• 2:13:01Jordi Hays?

  Uh, we need to get him streaming on Twitch, right?

• 2:13:03John Coogan?

  He streams every once in a while. Yeah.

• 2:13:05Jordi Hays?

  More streams, though. Like a daily stream would be good.

• 2:13:08John Coogan?

  I would love it. Uh, and he takes calls while he's doing it. He does everything. And more importantly, he's actually excellent at the game.

• 2:13:15Jordi Hays?

  Unlike certain.

• 2:13:16John Coogan?

  SBF.

• 2:13:17Jordi Hays?

  Bankman.

• 2:13:19John Coogan?

  Do you have another promoted post?

• 2:13:21Jordi Hays?

  Promoted post from our friend over at Pirate Wires, Mike Solana. He is looking for a full-time editor for the Pirate Wires Daily. You'll be responsible for sourcing stories each morning, managing assignments, editing each take, writing some of your own. Must be terminally online and funny. Solana@PirateWires. Go apply for this job. Email him. Don't put anything in the subject line. Just say no subject. Don't even put anything in the body of the email. Just put your ex username, a link to make it easy for Solana. Your resume is your profile. If you're not posting bangers, even, even low tan bangers. You gotta have bangers. You're not gonna get this job without it. The job is to curate and cultivate bangers.

• 2:14:05John Coogan?

  I mean, that's a dream job.

• 2:14:06Jordi Hays?

  And I can't dream job.

• 2:14:07John Coogan?

  The, yeah, I mean, the three morning takes, if you're not subscribed, you gotta go subscribe. It's the, it's the best newsletter, best daily newsletter by far. Fantastic product, just very bite sized, very digestible, very funny, great format. I've written one. I need to write more because every once in a while I think, oh, I have this idea. It's not good for a tweet. It's not good for an essay. The, the, the, the pirate wires take is like a format of its own. This is what we talked about, like format is so important in content. And Solana has been innovative there in a way that many, many other newsletter writers haven't been.

• 2:14:40Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 2:14:41John Coogan?

  Let's go to Michael. He says, a quick personal update. After three and a half amazing years at Notion and some time off, I've started a company that's at the intersection of everything I learned at Stripe, Notion and Google. AI, fintech, productivity and search. Our small team is growing and we're looking for founding engineers and designers. Please reach out if you or someone you know might be interested in something early stage and in person in San Francisco. Let's go. It's a huge talent move.

• 2:15:04Jordi Hays?

  Hitting all the right buzzwords.

• 2:15:06John Coogan?

  Entering free agency, building a new franchise, um, could be a generational company. Hit up Michael if you're interested. I love it.

• 2:15:14Jordi Hays?

  Potential size gong candidate if he gets the round announced.

• 2:15:19John Coogan?

  Michael, let us know when the round closes. Hopefully it's really big. Hopefully everyone's.

• 2:15:24Jordi Hays?

  Ten on fifty?

• 2:15:25John Coogan?

  Dumping a bunch of FUD on, oh, this is overvalued, but we'll be here bringing the size gong for you. Make it happen. Let's go to Erica. She says, an LP shared, they expect five to 10% GP commit for a first fund. That means 500K to 1 million for a $10 million fund. 50 to 100K of that has to be cash. Most emerging GPs go two years with no salary, plus spend 25K in upfront costs. So expecting more just seems wrong. What are your thoughts? And Nicole Wiskoff says, have never heard this and have met with a few hundred LPs. So a little bit of a controversial post.

• 2:16:04John Coogan?

  What do you think? I mean, this is somewhat related to, I think you can basically write off the GP commit if the GP shows up in a car that follows the 1% rule.

• 2:16:13Jordi Hays?

  Or is wearing a suit.

• 2:16:14John Coogan?

  Or is wearing a suit.

• 2:16:15Jordi Hays?

  Uh, yeah. So, uh, this is one of those things, anytime you're fundraising, you know, you could go out, fundraise and talk to an angel investor that's like. I'll give you 50K at a $250,000 valuation.

• 2:16:27John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:16:28Jordi Hays?

  And like that's good. There's always going to be the outliers that are just expecting or like making kind of like crazy offers and got to learn which ones to ignore, which ones to take advice from. The other thing though is like if you're a GP, you can effectively commit a part of the, what would be your management feedback to the fund, which can kind of make up for, for, you know, if you're not super liquid and, and, and don't have whatever that five to 10% to invest back into the fund, can leverage the fee to kind of get closer to that mark. So lots of ways to do it. I don't think you should start a fund if you, um, you know, get some, get some big wins under your belt.

• 2:17:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, we have a good friend who says you don't, you shouldn't need to raise because you should just go out and find a 1,000x.

• 2:17:17Jordi Hays?

  Simply get a hundred x.

• 2:17:18John Coogan?

  Simply get a hundred x, scale up and then just invest your own capital.

• 2:17:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:22John Coogan?

  Be ready to make your own capital, commit.

• 2:17:24Jordi Hays?

  Chad Capital.

• 2:17:26John Coogan?

  Let's go to Jesse. Jesse says on-chain isn't for you until it is. And it's an ad from Coinbase. A fantastic ad. I really like this. It was really good.

• 2:17:35Jordi Hays?

  Because it really like exemplified like the value of stable coins and why the average person will start to use them in different capacities. So like the wire transfer is like a pretty, pretty good innovation, right? You can walk down to the bank, send a big wire, the other person, you know, assuming you don't miss the wire cutoff, uh, you know, you're going to have a pretty good, uh, likelihood of that wire landing very quickly. That said, uh, if, and this ad, you know, showed a guy selling, uh, you know, an old truck and taking the bus home afterwards. If you're trying to, you know, make any type of major transaction peer-to-peer after hours and want to do so in a trustless way, stable coins are a fantastic way to do that. And I like that Coinbase is taking this moment

• 2:18:19Jordi Hays?

  where they're, you know, number one in the charts or close to that and starting to advertise some of the applications of, of, you know, crypto that, that the average person would really care about, which is I'm making a big purchase or a big transaction.

• 2:18:31John Coogan?

  I just wanted to go through fast.

• 2:18:32Jordi Hays?

  And I just wanted to go through fast and know that it's there and, um, Yeah, so I can see, I can actually, the ad made sense because I can actually see that happening where somebody's first time like really using crypto other than to speculate is like making a big purchase like a car.

• 2:18:48John Coogan?

  That's great. Let's go to Ryan Harmon, good friend of the show. He says, "We did a new brand with our friends at A24, and they introduced movie chocolate, milk chocolate to eat during movies." And it just has a fantastic brand, fantastic text, and you could see this being really huge. And it's cool to see A24 branching out into consumer packaged goods in a really interesting way.

• 2:19:10Jordi Hays?

  Super aligned with the product. The flavors of this new chocolate brand are like super fun and funky.

• 2:19:16John Coogan?

  And they're partnering with AMC.

• 2:19:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and they partnered with, you know, a lot of people like to call Ryan's agency the day job, the A24 of creative agencies, right? They're bold, they're dramatic, they're original.

• 2:19:30John Coogan?

  I mean, the main problem with Ryan and Day Job is that he hasn't done the blood sucking scale up that most other brand agencies have, where he's just producing slop but charging 500K a project for basically just copy paste of the Figma file. So get your money up, Ryan. Start doing shittier projects and maybe you'll make a lot more money.

• 2:19:52Jordi Hays?

  You know, one, one small note on Ryan, he's also a little bit of a real estate developer. They've taken a lot of the profits from the agency and sort of, they've been building a office ground up. So if I was a designer, or copywriter, or creative director, and I was in LA, I'd be wanting to go work for them. Their new office is gonna be fantastic.

• 2:20:09John Coogan?

  It's a fantastic business.

• 2:20:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you know what they say, you know what they say? Good, good times create Jaguar rebrands. Jaguar rebrands create

• 2:20:19John Coogan?

  Hard times.

• 2:20:20Jordi Hays?

  Hard times, hard times create day jobs. Day jobs create Jaguar.

• 2:20:25John Coogan?

  Create good times, yeah. That's great. Let's go to Phil Ehrenstein. He is the founder of Durak. We got his name wrong on the last podcast, and he's very upset. He said, "Just gonna leave this one here," and it's Jordy grasping for his name, failing. Two seconds later, he clipped this so short, five seconds. At six seconds, I say, "Your name is Phil." I know your name.

• 2:20:47Jordi Hays?

  Phil is a Chad, future beaner.

• 2:20:49John Coogan?

  Giga Chad.

• 2:20:49Jordi Hays?

  Giga Chad, future brother of the week.

• 2:20:51John Coogan?

  Also incredible bench press. This guy is an incredible bench presser.

• 2:20:54Jordi Hays?

  He's an animal.

• 2:20:55John Coogan?

  And so he says, changing my morning alarm tone from the Founder's Fund opening song to this audio to begin my winter arc. So he's fueling himself off of it.

• 2:21:02Jordi Hays?

  So the only thing I would say, I'm sorry, Phil, you're incredible.

• 2:21:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, we love you, Phil.

• 2:21:04Jordi Hays?

  I'm bullish on you and I got Dirac. I pronounced.

• 2:21:08John Coogan?

  I think it's pronounced wrong. Dirac? Dirac?

• 2:21:10Jordi Hays?

  I pronounced it.

• 2:21:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, Dirac and it's Dirac.

• 2:21:12Jordi Hays?

  I mispronounced his company.

• 2:21:14John Coogan?

  It's after some scientist, some nerd.

• 2:21:16Jordi Hays?

  Phil, you're an animal. You are, I know you're a future brother of the week and we cannot wait to hang, you know, at the next Gundo TB dinner.

• 2:21:26John Coogan?

  Crossover. Let's do it.

• 2:21:27Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 2:21:27John Coogan?

  Zestular asks, what's the tech bro version of a Rolex? And it's like he's sub tweeting us.

• 2:21:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:21:34John Coogan?

  It's, he doesn't follow us yet, but Zestular, get on the bandwagon because we've been talking about this for weeks.

• 2:21:40Jordi Hays?

  The technology brother version of a Rolex is a Patek Philippe.

• 2:21:43John Coogan?

  Yes, but which one?

• 2:21:45Jordi Hays?

  I mean, you can't go wrong in the range.

• 2:21:47John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:21:48Jordi Hays?

  It could be a Aquanaut, a Nautilus, a Calatrava, if you're just kind of getting into the range, starting to build that relationship.

• 2:21:55John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:21:56Jordi Hays?

  But, but yeah, you could also argue, you know, I know, you know, praying for exits, popular meme account.

• 2:22:02John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:22:03Jordi Hays?

  He'll often be fine wearing, you know, timeless Submariner.

• 2:22:06John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:22:07Jordi Hays?

  It's a great watch. And so one could argue the technology brother version of a Rolex is a Rolex.

• 2:22:13John Coogan?

  Yeah, but also you go up, upmarket to the giga tech bro, Zuck, he wears an FPJorn. And so, Richard Mill.

• 2:22:22Jordi Hays?

  Can't go wrong with this.

• 2:22:23John Coogan?

  We have a promoted post from Richard Mill actually today.

• 2:22:26Jordi Hays?

  We do.

• 2:22:26John Coogan?

  Richard Mill. It's a racing machine on the wrist.

• 2:22:30Jordi Hays?

  And it.

• 2:22:30John Coogan?

  Skeletonized.

• 2:22:31Jordi Hays?

  Skeletonized. It looks like one. This is a head turner. This is a fun piece.

• 2:22:35John Coogan?

  Can you read me the, the love language there?

• 2:22:36Jordi Hays?

  The love language says a racing machine on the wrist, skeletonized, manual winding, 70 hour power reserve, base plate and bridges in grade five titanium, power reserve and function indicators, case in grade five titanium, torque limiting crown. So like, this is the kind of thing that, you know, you're going to see in a doll on the wrist while he's playing.

• 2:22:54John Coogan?

  I think, I think the lesson here is that, is that. Tech bros are anti-mimetic. Like, we do not want to have a one-size-fits-all. We don't want every tech bro wearing all birds. We don't want every tech bro wearing the exact same nautilus. We want a piece, a hitter on the wrist that speaks to what you're doing. Are you in hard tech? Are you in AI? Are you in B2B software? These are different paths for the tech bro. Are you a capital allocator? That means something different, and that means a different piece on the wrist. So you want something that speaks to who you are and what you do.

• 2:23:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So if you're a technology brother and you're creating autonomous drones for the sea, I expect to see a submariner, right?

• 2:23:35John Coogan?

  Submariner, yeah. You want a dive watch. You're not going to be wearing a dress watch in that scenario.

• 2:23:39Jordi Hays?

  Exactly. You're certainly not going to be wearing an Apple watch.

• 2:23:42John Coogan?

  Maybe it's a dress watch. Maybe you're in a bowtie. Maybe you're in a tux. And you need a Calatrava.

• 2:23:47Jordi Hays?

  Absolutely.

• 2:23:48John Coogan?

  Let's go to Omar Wasim. He says, "The best ideas start as intersections. Huge alpha in exploring combinations of whatever you're obsessively interested in. Tech bros pod is the best recent example of this. American dynamism, ex-venture, ex-niche Twitter bubble." And as soon as he said "bubble," I was in, baby.

• 2:24:07Jordi Hays?

  I was in. We love bubbles on this show.

• 2:24:10John Coogan?

  I love Omar.

• 2:24:11Jordi Hays?

  We promote bubbles.

• 2:24:12John Coogan?

  I've been on his podcast before.

• 2:24:14Jordi Hays?

  We participate in bubbles. And the only thing I had to say in response to this was there's just huge alpha in simply wearing a suit, right?

• 2:24:20John Coogan?

  I agree.

• 2:24:21Jordi Hays?

  If you're in technology, take off the all birds, throw on some loafers.

• 2:24:24John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:24:25Jordi Hays?

  Get a tailored suit.

• 2:24:26John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:24:27Jordi Hays?

  Wear it to work. I guarantee you'll stand out.

• 2:24:29John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:24:30Jordi Hays?

  And you're making a statement.

• 2:24:31John Coogan?

  I like that.

• 2:24:32Jordi Hays?

  At every step.

• 2:24:33John Coogan?

  And let's close with Andrew Huberman, who, talking about podcasts, he says, "Wondering if it's still a good idea to start a podcast? Yes. Especially if you have expertise in a particular area that you focus on or weave into your content. I'm excited for the next generation of health, science, and tech podcasters. It's fertile soil." I mean, clearly subtweeting us.

• 2:24:55Jordi Hays?

  Absolutely.

• 2:24:56John Coogan?

  Obviously. But does it apply outside of us?

• 2:25:00Jordi Hays?

  Absolutely.

• 2:25:00John Coogan?

  I think so.

• 2:25:01Jordi Hays?

  Absolutely.

• 2:25:02John Coogan?

  I think there's plenty of opportunities.

• 2:25:03Jordi Hays?

  The evidence of this is, is you could say, you know, in the consumer brand industry, right? There's a brand for almost anything.

• 2:25:09John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:25:09Jordi Hays?

  And, you know, once a week, you see a brand launch and you're like, that makes sense for this moment.

• 2:25:14John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:25:14Jordi Hays?

  You know, we were, you know, the, the whole sort of market was ready for it. And the same thing with podcasts, uh, there's still, I, I forget the stat, but there's like 300,000 ish podcasts that have published at all in the last month.

• 2:25:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:27Jordi Hays?

  And so while there's a lot of podcasts that take a shot on goal and then like, don't quite see it through or continue, there's far fewer podcasts that are just consistent.

• 2:25:35John Coogan?

  There really aren't that many podcasts that fully send it. It's a lot of side hustle. Oh, I do something on Zoom. I interview my friends and they don't really think through like, what are the sources of alpha? How can I combine different ideas? How can I really prioritize this and make this the best thing? That's what I noticed on YouTube was like, at a certain point, it's like, pick a big topic and make the best video about that topic. And it would always go viral.

• 2:26:00Jordi Hays?

  Few years later, you have half a million subscribers.

• 2:26:03John Coogan?

  Yeah. That's a great place to close. Thanks for watching. Subscribe today or be relegated to a life of NetJets for the rest of your life.

• 2:26:12Jordi Hays?

  Rest of your life.

• 2:26:12John Coogan?

  Do it. Do it now. Thank you.

• 2:26:15Jordi Hays?

  Thank you.

• 2:26:15John Coogan?

  Thank you for watching.