Cursor Acquisition Closes, Bezos x Liverpool, Flying Roadster, Car Week, Gen Z Trends & More

(01:16) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions (16:37) - Cami Clark's Anthropic Influence (31:35) - South Korea Cracks Down on ETF Frenzy (37:58) - Flying Tesla Roadster (56:42) - Mansion Section (01:07:50) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions (01:16:30) - Gen Z Makes Pickle Flavor Explode (01:22:12) - Gen Z Fashion Takes a Hit (01:24:24) - CalTech Builds a "Fraud Squad" (01:28:39) - Bezos Buys into Liverpool (01:30:38) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions TBPN is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Public - https://public.com Cisco - https://www.cisco.com Console - https://www.console.com CrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.com Figma - https://www.figma.com MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com NYSE - https://www.nyse.com Railway - https://railway.com Shopify - https://www.shopify.com Codex - http://openAI.com/codex Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tbpn/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

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

• 0:00Jordi Hays?

  You're watching TVP.

• 0:02John Coogan?

  Today is Friday, August 14th, 2026. We are live from the TVP and Ultra Dome, the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital of Capital. Oh, we got.

• 0:15Jordi Hays?

  That's our, that's our zoomer intern.

• 0:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:19Jordi Hays?

  He's headed back to school.

• 0:20John Coogan?

  Let me tell you about ramp.com really quick. Time is money. Say both. He's used corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place.

• 0:32John Coogan?

  We gotta, we gotta play the see you again. Goodbye. Like he passed away. This is the, this is the saying goodbye to our intern Ben Macklin.

• 0:44John Coogan?

  I want, yeah, we need an AI video of me and him in sports cars, driving along the Pacific Coast Highway. And then we reach a fork in the road and he goes off to Canada and Jordy goes to Malibu or something. But every time this song, this song hits, it's a good one. It's a good one. Anyway, we're very, very sad to good, say goodbye.

• 1:06Jordi Hays?

  End of an era, but the story's not over.

• 1:08John Coogan?

  Man, Ben Macklin, one of the greatest to ever do it. Yeah, the story's not over. Anyway, there are a ton of stories that are not over. We're going to take you through a bunch of them. First is that we received a Renaissance painting in the mail from a company called Gamut. They posted a video. We can play their little clip of how they put this together. Very funny go to market strategy. It got our attention. We opened it up. I'm like, what is this huge box that's addressed to us? Turns out it's an AI image of me and Jordy dressed as Renaissance medieval knights or something banging a gong, got the horse in there, got a bunch of different stuff. I would go Ben Macklin stand up over this, but it's a close second. It's a close second. Very disrespectful to, to, to Ben

• 1:51John Coogan?

  Macklin's pop up.

• 1:54Jordi Hays?

  He's gone.

• 1:55John Coogan?

  He's gone. Anyway, can we play the video of the, we asked Gamut agents to make Renaissance portraits of 130 startup founders, found the founders, sourced their photos, ordered the paintings, found their offices, mapped the delivery route. Very cool workflow for go to market for attention.

• 2:14John Coogan?

  And, and funny, they're having, they're, they're dressed up in costumes. They're having, they're having fun filming this. I feel like we are entering a new era of startup launch video. The vibe real meta is dead and this is unique. And the next one we're going to show you is unique too, in my opinion. Now, there are some drawbacks with this, you know, it, it will lose its luster if everyone in the world receives a Renaissance painting. It'll be a little bit, it'll get stale for Agarwal. I love it. But this is great. I

• 2:55John Coogan?

  think this is so fun. And this goes back to Sam Blod when he was at, was it Brax or he was working with Parker Conrad at Zenefits or something like that? He said that he was in the go to market role. He was trying to get on the phone with companies and sell them either corporate cards or HR services at the time. I forget which company he was with, but he would send a box of champagne, a bottle of champagne very nicely. And he said that the, the return, the uptake on, yeah, I'll hop on the phone with Sam.

• 3:24Jordi Hays?

  People are saying he invented corporate gifting.

• 3:27John Coogan?

  Basically, I mean, that's the, he's sort of the one that pushed it another notch up. Obviously corporate goes back decades.

• 3:35Jordi Hays?

  Preemptive.

• 3:36John Coogan?

  Preemptive corporate gifting. And I think he systematized it a little bit more than most people do. And Gamut seems to have built an agent that allows you to do just that. So congrats to the team over there on the.

• 3:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Fascinating, fascinating piece of AI slop. But when you put it, when you bring it into the physical world, it's, it transcends. It becomes something more than slop.

• 4:01John Coogan?

  I want your review on this coinage that I heard from my co-founder Lucy. When AI slop is good, it's AI slap. Cause it slaps. Specifically with regard to Suno songs.

• 4:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I like that.

• 4:16John Coogan?

  You're like, not quite there. But anyway, you're, I want the production team to tell me if this video, which is not AI slop, slaps because it is an adaptation of obsession from Jerry Zhang over at Lemma Y C F 25. What does F stand for?

• 4:35Jordi Hays?

  Fall.

• 4:36John Coogan?

  Fall 25. Oh, cause they do quarterly now. Anyway, let's play this.

• 4:40Jordi Hays?

  Bob.

• 4:40John Coogan?

  Yeah. F.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Can we not talk about that right now?

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Sorry. It's the second time they texted me that. I'll be right back.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  What is it, dude? I'm busy.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Okay, so.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  What is it?

• 4:59Speaker 04

  I looked into your out of office emails and she sent out replies to all 30,000 emails in your inbox.

• 5:04John Coogan?

  Now you haven't seen obsession.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  I told her to only reply to emails when I'm out of.

• 5:08John Coogan?

  But the production team has?

• 5:10Speaker 04

  Look, you know, it's my job to surface these kinds of failures for you. And it may suck.

• 5:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think it's in the same restaurant too.

• 5:16John Coogan?

  Looks very similar.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  It's either a lack of guardrails or.

• 5:20Jordi Hays?

  Same location.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  I don't know, man. I'm gonna pull the traces and look into it for you.

• 5:36John Coogan?

  They nailed the production, like the lighting, cinematography, identical.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  I don't think I could function without your prompts.

• 5:51Speaker 05

  Calling tools on my behalf.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  Without any human oversight?

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Yes, without any human oversight.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Nika?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:06John Coogan?

  This is a little slow, so I'm going to tell you about Railway. Railway is the all in one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agents to deploy web app servers, databases and more while Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring and security. It definitely has the pacing of a Hollywood film. Maybe we need to go back to the vibe real era.

• 6:22Jordi Hays?

  What's the product? It's, it basically monitors agents made by other companies.

• 6:28John Coogan?

  Jerry says agents are taking on real economic work as runs get longer. Mistakes become expensive at best, catastrophic at worst. Today, teams find out from user complaints or never. Monitoring tools only catch what you told them to watch for. So you set up the judges, you trace the issues yourself, but agents will always fail in ways you didn't predict. That's why we built Lemma. Lemma understands what your agent is supposed to do. So it surfaces failures you never defined automatically. So Lemma sits there, watches everything that goes on. Oh, there's something that seems really odd because it's basically taking the whole context of everything that's happening in the organization and saying, okay, well, you just sent out a hundred thousand emails. Like, was that the right thing? You should probably flag this. This seems like an uptake in, like you would see,

• 7:13John Coogan?

  if you start seeing an insane amount of traffic on a specific product detail page on your, your e-commerce site, it might be that, oh, something's.

• 7:20Jordi Hays?

  Or coupon code.

• 7:21John Coogan?

  Or coupon code. It might be that something's going viral on this particular SKU. Maybe you need to buy more inventory. In the best case, maybe you're being spammed or, or scammed in some way. Or maybe you accidentally priced your product at one cent instead of $1. And so, or $100. So people are buying it and you need to fix that. This will do that across the entire organization in theory. Production team, what do you think about the, the, the obsession knockoff as startup launch video?

• 7:45Jordi Hays?

  I thought it was pretty good.

• 7:47John Coogan?

  Rave review.

• 7:49Jordi Hays?

  Looks like the movie. Mike, Mike disagreed.

• 7:51John Coogan?

  Oh, Mike disagreed. Shots fired. Wrong lens. What we got?

• 7:55Jordi Hays?

  I don't know.

• 7:56John Coogan?

  Take some shot.

• 7:58Jordi Hays?

  He said colors off.

• 7:59John Coogan?

  Oh, the colors off. Okay. Okay. Well, the experts have waited. So anyway.

• 8:06Jordi Hays?

  No, I mean, I can see a new meta of startups just recreating iconic movie scenes.

• 8:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 8:11Jordi Hays?

  To promote their products.

• 8:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Jordi Hays?

  But I don't know.

• 8:16John Coogan?

  Like if you're growing, like if you're growing human tissue, you recreate Michael, Michael Bay's The Island to show the, just recreate the dystopian scenario that you're creating. No.

• 8:25Jordi Hays?

  It's exactly like that.

• 8:26John Coogan?

  No, there is something to that where obsession is a horror film. It's very scary. And so the, the, the enemy of the product is shown, like the Lemma is the guy on the phone in obsession. Basically there's this curse and the woman becomes obsessed with the man and the guy's friend calls him and says like, hey, your girlfriend is acting very, very weird. Something's going on. You need to break up with her. You need to rethink this. And so Lemma is the friend in this scenario, but it is a horror shot after all. So it does.

• 8:59Jordi Hays?

  And the woman is the agent.

• 9:00John Coogan?

  The woman is the agent.

• 9:01Jordi Hays?

  Rail.

• 9:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, the agent that has gone off the rails. And so there is, there is a little bit of like, you leave with the feeling of a horror film, which is so just on a generic brand experience side. I'm like, uh, but that's kind of the emotion that they wanted to deliver, right? Was like, imagine.

• 9:19Jordi Hays?

  Agent sending.

• 9:21John Coogan?

  Something really bad in your organization. So not, not an unreasonable, not an unreasonable scenario. Anyway, there's, there's debate between Corgi and Sheil Monat on the Corgi becoming an issuer of the ETF business. Sheil says wild that Corgi, the insurer is in the ETF business. ETFs are mostly distribution plus branding. So if you can manufacture them cheaply, I get launching a ton and seeing what sticks. And they really are spraying, here are some of them, coffee, energy, drinks, ETF, New York City companies ETF, beauty ETF, BNPL ETF. They have a gambling ETF, a surveillance ETF, a US war machine ETF and

• 10:03John Coogan?

  lifestyle brands. They combined for $25,000 in gross fees, but they have a hit semiconductor photonics. It's 506 million of the 914 million Corgi AUM and generates $1.8 million a year in gross fees. That feels like really big scaling very quickly for a company that's as young as Corgi. So it seems like the product is working at this point. I don't know. People were, people were going back and forth on like, is this a, is this a pivot? We thought they were an insurance company and other in ETF company. But I don't know. Did you dig into any more of this story? Because Nico from Corgi did fire back.

• 10:41Jordi Hays?

  Nico fires back. He says, you should never work with VCs who devote their time to dunking on startups on X. Taking money from Sheil's fund is a hugely negative symbol for the startups who do that for this reason. He is bad for the ecosystem and this is, this behavior is a pattern of his.

• 10:58John Coogan?

  It was Sheil dunking? It felt like he was saying just.

• 11:03Jordi Hays?

  I don't think he was dunking.

• 11:04John Coogan?

  Of course.

• 11:04Jordi Hays?

  I mean, I, I, I think that Sheil has probably.

• 11:07John Coogan?

  I mean, it's a stupid fund is one of the most lucrative for Corgi. Okay. Yeah.

• 11:14Jordi Hays?

  I think Sheil has probably made other comments about

• 11:17John Coogan?

  Okay, okay.

• 11:18Jordi Hays?

  Historically, and so.

• 11:19John Coogan?

  Shots fired.

• 11:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah, well, they're, I don't, I don't, I, I think Sheil is just genuinely very curious.

• 11:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Jordi Hays?

  And Nico, I don't think likes the, um, likes the attention.

• 11:31John Coogan?

  Yeah, the critique. So Sheil said, I'm not sure why you are so defensive. I literally said the same thing as you. In my opinion, lunch, launching a bunch of ETFs cheaply and seeing what sticks is a reasonable strategy if your costs are near zero. And Nico says, no, it's a pattern of behavior. And rather than your own statements, you try to hide behind being imprecise or vague with your language selectively pointing out a bunch of new ETFs without traction yet and pointing out FDRX, lower AUM, while ignoring our unleveraged version FDRS, which has 90 million of AUM, uh, shows this is another dishonest, selectively vague post against us like your previous comments regarding our underwriting. So they're going back and forth and, uh, there's a whole, the timeline's been in turmoil over Corgi for a while.

• 12:14John Coogan?

  Uh, they do the cafes, they get a lot of attention, but, uh, in general, uh, it does seem like they've broken through and it feels like there is a real product and insurance is a, is a product that can actually grow and it's much less.

• 12:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and insurance and ETFs are pretty much all come down to marketing and distribution.

• 12:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:33Jordi Hays?

  And so, but yeah, but, but yeah, very feel like very different businesses to be in. And so I wonder what, I wonder what the thinking is.

• 12:41John Coogan?

  And I, I mean, for most business insurance, you can get, uh, you can get in trouble if you are, uh, if you have a lot of correlation across the portfolio of insurance policies and you're loaning to an industry that will face like a secular downtrend at the same time, like mortgage reinsurance, for example, was the big example during the financial crisis. But, um, if you're writing up, if you're writing a, like a directors and officers insurance to a startup, uh, it's hard to imagine a situation where there's a massive drawdown across the entire portfolio, all simultaneously, at least in my mind. But I don't know, I don't know, because it's not like they're insuring against, uh, like startup, like, like the market weakening and, uh, and startups

• 13:25John Coogan?

  going bankrupt. Like, like if a startup goes bankrupt, they do stop paying their premiums, obviously, but it's not like there's a, uh, like, like, like an insurance broker has to pay out a settlement. That's a different thing. Uh, it would be, uh, the, the, the difference would be if you're doing like a ton of cybersecurity, uh, a ton of cybersecurity insurance, and then all of a sudden there's way more cybersecurity attacks, which honestly, in the AI era, maybe that happens. Maybe there are more cybersecurity incidents. There was the Trezor incident recently, and it does feel like there's an uptick of that. Obviously, the AI models are more capable than ever. There's open source models. Um, and so you could see, uh, you could see more risk or, or just different underwriting of cybersecurity policies in the modern era, but.

• 14:08Jordi Hays?

  Martin Scrawley says, I stand with Corgi.

• 14:10John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 14:10Jordi Hays?

  And Nico says, thanks, Martin. Fun fact, when I was in high school, my friends and I wrote you letters when you were locked up, sending, uh, letters to prison. You had a huge impact to, uh, to a generation of young entrepreneurs. Um, and, uh, it looks like Elizabeth Holmes also replied, it is amazing to see how many young, hungry founders write.

• 14:33John Coogan?

  I've never written anyone a letter who's been in prison. I've also just never written a letter at all, but, uh,

• 14:43John Coogan?

  I mean, I don't, I don't know. I, I send text messages and emails. I don't really write letters, but, um, there was one person in prison that I wanted to, and I was like, oh, we should.

• 14:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, my, my memory of, of processing, uh, Scrawley's whole Pharma Bro saga during that, during that time, which I thought he seemed pretty entertaining.

• 15:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Jordi Hays?

  Definitely a rascal, but.

• 15:09John Coogan?

  And, and the actual like underlying elements of the case were sort of outside of the tech world because it was, uh, like a hedge fund issue, um, and an accounting issue. I, I, I was interested in getting to the bottom of the Elizabeth Holmes story, but mostly mechanically, like, how can you post on Twitter while you're in prison? That feels like the first right that they would take away. Uh, otherwise, if you can post on Twitter, like what, what's the punishment? What, we're not really punishing people. No, like lock me up. Just don't take away my account. I got a scroll. Um, but it does seem like there was an intermediary there and that was discovered pretty quickly and that was transparent. And there's a flow of emails that go back and forth. And so there was a delay, um, but it was an, it was an interesting discussion nevertheless, but, uh, not, not necessary.

• 15:54John Coogan?

  There was also that very weird, uh, Tucker Carlson interview with SBF. You remember that? Where like he was able to do a, like a sort of a podcast interview, like over the phone. And I think that that is not okay within that.

• 16:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think he got in trouble for that.

• 16:08John Coogan?

  I think, I think SBF got in trouble with that. But even then, SBF has been trickling out tweets for the last few, couple of years, uh, mostly taking victory laps on his, uh, on his, uh, startup portfolio and his investment strategy. He, of course, uh, was an investor in Anthropic and is up like a bajillion dollars on that trade. Um, although it, the position was sold, I think. So it's, it's more of like a fantasy football portfolio at this point. Anyway, let me tell you about Cisco, critical infrastructure for the AI era. Unlock seamless real time experiences and new value with Cisco. Uh, speaking of Anthropic, there is an article in the Journal, the, uh, the information has been reporting on, uh, even Claude is in the dark about Dario Amade's wife and her influence at Anthropic. Cami Clark, who started what she called a revolutionary porn company where she sought investment from Jeffrey Epstein, keeps a low profile,

• 16:53John Coogan?

  but is a key advisor to the AI chief. It's, uh, it's coming IPO could top trillions. And so, um, this is, uh, so his wife has, uh, you, the, the actual lineage here was, uh, Dario mentioned that he was married, uh, I believe to, uh, to, on a Bloomberg podcast, I believe, um.

• 17:15Jordi Hays?

  That was recently?

• 17:16John Coogan?

  The Circuit, I think. That was recently. Um, but there was, there was, it was never public who this person was. And then, uh, I believe Corey Weinberg over at the information included Cami Clark's name in a Dario profile that he published last week. And people were sort of like, oh, this is new information. We haven't seen this. And of course, there's all the debates over, is this necessary? Is this like in the public interest? At what level of power does it make sense to report on someone's life? Uh, obviously a lot of people are like, yeah, keep my name out of your mouth. Like, don't, just don't report on, don't report on my personal life. We can talk about my business, but, uh, my personal life is just annoying because now you need more security.

• 18:00John Coogan?

  Now you need more, all, all sorts of different things that can come up from these things. But, um, lots of people are debating this on the timeline, like i- i- is, is Anthropic systemically important at this point? Is it, is it such an important company that, uh, it does merit this? And certainly it met the, the editorial criteria for the Wall Street Journal and the information who take this stuff, uh, pretty seriously. So, uh, Clark doesn't work at Anthropic, but she is often seen sitting front row while Dario Amade talks at events such as Davos, or can be found chatting up investors at gatherings like, uh, Allen and Company Conference in Silicon, in Sun Valley. Uh, she acts as a sounding board and strategic advisor for Amade. According to people close to the company, she also brought Anthropic, a key early investor,

• 18:40John Coogan?

  former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, whom she had dated as it was getting off the ground in early 2021, some of the people said. Despite her influence, there are scant details about Clark online. There's one YouTube video of her pitching an earlier startup that's still up. She's on stage for about five or 10 minutes and sort of gives a, uh, it's like a health company that she pitches, uh, and it's a pretty good, pretty good pitch. She has a couple of note cards and sort of goes through it, but that's the only thing that's really online anymore. Uh, the pair married in 2022, apparently in Italy. Uh, but Amade's Wikipedia page didn't say he was married until this summer and doesn't say to whom. Searches for Dario Amade's wife on Google often turn up a photograph of his sister Daniela Amade, who helps run the company.

• 19:22John Coogan?

  Uh, even Claude, Anthropic's AI chatbot, responds to queries by saying Dario Amade's marital status doesn't seem to be clearly confirmed. That is extremely good because there's always this fear that when you're using an AI chatbot, the, whatever you say will be baked into the next training run and that the personal details will get leaked into the, into the model. And so like, if I'm saying something about Jordy, like you could look up something about you and, and it would just show up and leak in the model. So good, like, I think that this is like, there, there, there's the whole, like, you, should you be more transparent question?

• 20:00John Coogan?

  But, uh, just in terms of actual, uh, uh, like removing personally identifiable information from data that goes into training runs. Obviously, if you work for the company as CEO, you probably have fully private, don't train on anything I ever say ever. Um, but just, uh, just good that it didn't leak through the actual model. Um, so the Wall Street Journal writes, as Anthropic hurtles towards an IPO that could top two trillion as soon as this fall, Clark is one of the most influential voices shaping the decisions of the CEO at the forefront of the AI industry. A revolution remaking all aspects of work and life that simultaneously thrills and terrifies most of the public. Yes, uh, that is 100% accurate. Uh, it's a remarkable rise for a woman who didn't graduate from college,

• 20:44John Coogan?

  had a previous brief marriage at age 20 to a man more than 40 years older, and once declared bankruptcy. Her career included co-founding a women-focused, quote, free luxury porn company that she unsuccessfully tried to persuade convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to invest in and started a, quote, women, uh, a social, a women's social dieting app that morphed into a women's healthcare AI company. That was the video that I saw on YouTube.

• 21:13John Coogan?

  She made connections with powerful people, including Schmidt, whom she brought into Amade's orbit. The billionaire left his roles at Google and parent Alphabet in 2020. Oh, I didn't realize he was out in 2020. And transitioned into investing in tech startups, among other things. She also tried to persuade Schmidt to back a venture fund she would run with him to invest in Anthropic and other AI companies, although that didn't move forward. Claude, the company's chatbot, is now the chief.

• 21:39Jordi Hays?

  Interesting, interesting differentiated name for a fund. I think it was the mother of AGI.

• 21:45John Coogan?

  Mother of AGI. Extremely AGI-pilled name for raising a fund in 2020. Not people, not many people were taking that term seriously. It is, it is a good name. Mother of AGI Fund. The goal was, quote, "to be an elegant solution to formalize Kami's involvement in Anthropic, Dario's company, and manage Eric's investment and invest in the AGI ecosystem." But I don't think it ever went through. Others at Anthropic, including Daniela Almedé and other co-founders, didn't support the plan, according to people familiar with the matter, and it didn't move forward. By the end of the year, associates said they recall seeing what looked like an engagement ring on Clark's hand, and not long after, the couple wed in Italy. Clark, known for being social and outgoing, has interacted with politicians and investors

• 22:30John Coogan?

  on behalf of Almedé, chatting with them and bringing them over to meet her bookish husband at conferences and events. There's also some interesting details in here about her relationship with Ivanka Trump at the Sun Valley Conference in July, where she spent much of the week by her husband's side. She had lunch with Ivanka Trump, a friend, and chatted with Jared Kushner, whom Almedé had approached earlier in the year to invest. People familiar with the matter said. So, a little bit of more nuance around the relationship between Anthropic and the administration. Obviously, the Department of War dust-up was a big drama cycle earlier this year. There's already communication between the two, or the two entities to sort of, you know, maybe smooth things over. The, the interesting post that this made me think

• 23:15John Coogan?

  of, this whole conversation, was from Patrick Collison, back in March, March 11th. And I don't remember what was going on on March 11th, but I imagine it was some open AI drama. But he said, "There's a lot of unevenness in how much attention, internal drama, and palace intrigue gets across different organizations." And we were joking, there was like, "Why is no one writing hit pieces about Stripe?" Because he's like, because it's just like, "Me and my brother, running a really clean ship, and no one really complains. And there's never been a, there's never been a coup, and we just refused to take the company public and just grow the business."

• 23:52Jordi Hays?

  Building payment rails.

• 23:53John Coogan?

  Yeah, we're, yeah, we put the payment rails in the bag, sir.

• 23:56Jordi Hays?

  Honestly, if, if Stripe is as successful in the fullness of time as I think it will be, there will be probably insane online conspiracies about, about the Collisons.

• 24:08John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:09Jordi Hays?

  Who are these two brothers?

• 24:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, sort of a Hibernian conspiracy. They're Irish. Barack Obama part Irish, right? Goes pretty deep.

• 24:20Jordi Hays?

  Wow. Deeper than I thought.

• 24:22John Coogan?

  Yeah. That's when the company got started. Is that a coincidence? Who knows? Dig in. Patrick Collison went on to say, "As far as I can tell, this is substantially a math, a matter of path dependency. We know the characters in the sitcom of certain organizations, but not at others. And this creates self-reinforcing lock-in effects. How much does one hear about the power struggles at Chevron or the Department of Agriculture?" I would love to read about the power struggles at Chevron or the Department of Agriculture. We need a, we need a banned PDF or a tell-all book, the next Sebastian Malaby or something. I don't know. Or maybe, I don't know, who else, who else can, can tell a great business story?

• 25:06John Coogan?

  Maybe, we'll have to dig into it. There is even significant heterogeneity between ostensibly similar companies within sectors. And so, I, I took this at the time and sort of wrote a piece about this, calling, calling it like tall poppy syndrome, coming to America, just this idea that, that the intention of the public is intensely focused on like the hottest company at the time, and then all the arrows get directed at that. I think, I think that's something that's happening at this point. I said at the time, "Years ago, I was talking to an American venture capitalist about New Zealand and asked him about the startup community there. The country is beautiful, highly developed, democratic.

• 25:49John Coogan?

  It consistently ranks among the world's most stable, wealthy, well-governed societies. Certainly worth visiting, but could, but could New Zealand produce a power law company one day? Like, are we gonna hear, like we've seen with Spotify, and there's been a number of other companies, certainly in China, they have a number of, you know, Decacorns and Centacorns over there, huge companies. Will we ever see one out of New Zealand? It seems to have the recipe." And he said, his assessment distilled down to something along the lines of, "They are suffering from a bad case of tall poppy syndrome. Put simply, individuals who achieve visible success are criticized, attacked, or socially cut down because they stand above the others." The metaphor should be obvious, but when you cut the tallest flowers in the field, the surface appears even. Anthropologists

• 26:32John Coogan?

  even call this leveling behavior in hunter-gather societies. Good hunters might be mocked, discouraged from bragging. Sharing would be encouraged to prevent resource concentration. There's nothing all that bad about a preference for humility. America has long been suspicious of Lamborghini-driving, self-promotional Instagram course hustlers, and for good reason. They're usually selling overpriced junk food. But the strong form of tall poppy syndrome leads to slower startup formation, fewer truly, fewer truly scaled companies, and ultimately a talent exodus or brain drain. America has never had this problem, and I don't think we're particularly close to developing a crippling case of tall poppy syndrome anytime soon, but it's worth understanding how these leveling behaviors shape the narrative in tech. And I think that's a little bit of what's happening right now. Will this affect

• 27:17John Coogan?

  the IPO? Will this affect the stock price? Like, probably not. But John Stokes was sort of laying out why he thinks this piece was worth, you know, writing. He says, "Counterpoint, it's vital and overdue. Anthropic itself laid out the stakes very publicly as follows, quote, 'Our product is a god..." And this is not an actual quote, but I guess this is like the vibe that he in particular picked up on.

• 27:44Jordi Hays?

  A pretty effective summary.

• 27:46John Coogan?

  He says, "Our, our product," talking about Anthropic, "is a godlike intelligence that will rule over you. See how our staff endows it with morality. We even deigned to consult the Pope. Okay, so let's look at your morals," he says. "This crowd can screech about the object level, like, is the company making money? What are the margins? The more important details about risk, as opposed to the morals." But John Stokes says, "By their own terms, they made morals and virtuous behavior the object level in the AI debate. That's literally Anthropic's whole frame. So why are the morals of the people who are giving AI its morals not fair game?"

• 28:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. If anything, it feels like it disrupts some of the brand positioning around morality, makes that maybe less effective. It is, it is fascinating, in my view, that this kind of coverage didn't happen like a long time ago.

• 28:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, but that's normal for the, for the, for the mainstream media. Like, Anthropic was not an interesting company to write about at the Wall Street Journal or the information, even like last year. It was like a, I mean, it was a great company.

• 28:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but even like the images that are in the Wall Street Journal piece are from February, right? Where they're together. And you would think that somebody would have asked, "Who's this person that Dario is holding hands with?" And then tried to get a little information. And the internet was mostly scrubbed, but you could just look up her name in the Epstein files, public federal database.

• 29:22John Coogan?

  It actually did hit the timeline. Someone was just digging through the Epstein files in February and posted it, but didn't make the actual connection, which is very, very, very interesting. They were just like, "Here are all the crazy interactions that I found while digging through the files." And this was one of them, that, the actual interaction. But they didn't piece it together fully. It, it, obviously, the context of being in the Journal is a very, very different thing. Anyway.

• 29:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Anyways, probably overall, mostly just bad for the AI industry overall.

• 29:57John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. Nick Carter sort of summed it up here. He said, "Remember, if Anthropic wins and Close Source wins, these are the people that will get to write the morality rules for the entire planet." And so, it maybe is worth interrogating the morality, seeing where, if you agree with it, with this stuff or not. You know, this is, this is the beauty of America. You get to read the information, the freedom of the press, and then decide where you sit on all of this. The, in terms of how bad this is for the AI industry, it still feels like it ranks below data centers and below, like, ripping up old books. I don't think this will get that much. traction online, but I don't know. Like the, like there is a whole class of like political commentators

• 30:40John Coogan?

  that are hyper fixated on like the Epstein class. And so like this could grow, but it feels like it's arms distance enough. It's not Dario, it's his wife, and it's not, it's not her, you know, going to the island. It's her emailing him for fundraising that they didn't actually do a deal together. And so there's like a number of steps removed as opposed to with the other stories. It's much more like this data center came to town and is dirty and I don't like it. And so you post a video of that and that's like much more direct. So of the pushback, this feels like it will, it will rank lower, but I don't know. We'll, we'll, we'll see where this goes. Obviously it's, it's tearing through tech today. But we'll, we'll see if this is something that has a long-term impact on the

• 31:25John Coogan?

  industry or anything like that. Anyway, let's move on to something else. Public.com investing for those that take it seriously. Stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries and more with great customer service. And there's a story that I didn't even remember to put in the timeline, but it is related to, to trading stocks publicly. South Korea is ordering new investors to take classes. Did you see this? Whoa. Okay. So it's time to study the blade. Literally. This is a

• 31:52Jordi Hays?

  cultural pastime. This is crazy. You're gonna learn how to use leverage. Yes, basically. There's

• 31:57John Coogan?

  going to be so South Korean retail investors must now create, complete a week-long course before

• 32:04Jordi Hays?

  long.

• 32:04John Coogan?

  A week-long course before they can start trading a in single stock funds as regulators tighten restrictions on products blamed for exacerbating wild swings in one of the world's most volatile stock markets. So the move follows an extraordinary boom and subsequent correction in South Korean equities. The COSPI rose 76% in 2025 and then doubled again this year, peaking at more than 9,300 points in June. Retail investors poured a net $70 billion into the market. And remember, South Korea is not nearly as big as America. And so they were all YOLO-ing effectively into the AI-driven

• 32:46John Coogan?

  rally like chipmakers, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics. The rise coincided with government efforts to boost the market. Single-stock leveraged ETFs in the two companies were introduced in late May, allowing investors to magnify bets on Korea's semiconductor champions. Then, at a press conference on June 8th, President Lee Jae Myung said that the market was still, quote, "somewhat undervalued despite having hit about 8,000 points." So you have the president of the country being like, "We got room to run. Now is a generational buying opportunity."

• 33:24Jordi Hays?

  I wonder, I wonder if he'll also get into selling early access to his comments on the market.

• 33:30John Coogan?

  Maybe, maybe.

• 33:31Jordi Hays?

  Just the new meta. A lot of people have been sort of disgusted and disappointed by that kind of behavior.

• 33:39John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:39Jordi Hays?

  Here. Yeah. But maybe it's just the new normal.

• 33:42John Coogan?

  So the rally unraveled in July with the COSPI falling 22% for its worst month since the global financial crisis. The Finance Ministry announced measures to limit access to leveraged ETFs. Many retail investors have suffered significant losses in single-stock leveraged ETF craze and their perception of those products has changed. Investors bought Samsung and SK Hynix leveraged ETFs in late May and held them until mid-July. They lost about half their money. New investors in single-stock leveraged ETFs must now complete at least one hour of simulated trading a day for five days. So it's not a 40-hour course. It's one hour a day of simulated

• 34:24John Coogan?

  leveraged trading for, for five days straight. Then you will be allowed to trade on these platforms. So.

• 34:34Jordi Hays?

  Also mandatory military service. So now they have mandatory day trading.

• 34:38John Coogan?

  Mandatory, mandatory everything.

• 34:40Jordi Hays?

  At the end, at the end, they go, "That wasn't a simulation."

• 34:45John Coogan?

  You were trading the real market. It's Ender's Game in Korea. You, you, you just, you just secured a generational bag. That was real money you were trading. I wonder, I wonder, it'll be very interesting to look at the data from what the, what the traders do in simulation versus reality. Like, do they take more risk because they know it's play money? Are they, are they actually learning?

• 35:08Jordi Hays?

  When I'm on a, and I'm, when I'm in a racing simulator, I do drive a bit different than when I'm actually on the track.

• 35:15John Coogan?

  Okay. Okay. We'll see.

• 35:17Speaker 06

  Presumably this would like teach the wrong instincts, right? Because if you're, if you've sit there five days in a row for an hour.

• 35:23Jordi Hays?

  Obviously, obviously they're trying to show people that if you are trading with leverage, you just lose a lot of money often.

• 35:28John Coogan?

  You're just gonna get wiped out. So you're like, okay, I got wiped out on day three. Now I'm not going to get wiped out when I go into the real market.

• 35:34Speaker 06

  Wouldn't you want to like instill like, you should just go, you should just buy and hold, right? But if you just sit there an hour every day, like, you're not just gonna watch, like press buy and then sit there. Yeah. It's gonna like teach you like, oh.

• 35:44John Coogan?

  You're gonna be doing zero day actions for sure. You're gonna be going crazy. So a quote from a Seoul resident in Boston.

• 35:52Jordi Hays?

  Funny to think about. If you were, let's say, if, if as a, as a team, we were forced into the date, into a week-long day trading course, you know that we would probably have some side bets on who could run it up.

• 36:08John Coogan?

  For sure, for sure.

• 36:09Jordi Hays?

  As high as possible in simulated trading. And so.

• 36:15John Coogan?

  We were really close to actually doing that and having that be like a show segment between the retail corner.

• 36:21Jordi Hays?

  Retail corner.

• 36:22John Coogan?

  The retail corner. He, he was having some, he was having some wild swings. But a Seoul resident in South Korea who lost money said this. He said, "It does feel a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, though it's better than doing nothing." Saying like, "I already lost it all. I don't need a course."

• 36:43Jordi Hays?

  Is that a real quote?

• 36:44John Coogan?

  It's a real quote.

• 36:45Jordi Hays?

  That feels very borrowed from like the American South.

• 36:48John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's great. It does feel like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. I like this. We gotta take a trip to South Korea. However, there are signs that tighter market regulation is cooling the market. Daily turnover in single, single-stock leveraged ETFs on July 30th fell from 12 trillion to just 70 billion. So that's a huge drop-off, 90% down on the actual trading volume. And for Yoon, the South Korean resident who lost money, it has done little to restore faith in policymakers. Investors like us have grown increasingly resentful. Trust in

• 37:28John Coogan?

  the government has been severely shattered. He was counting on the government to stop him from going too crazy in the financial markets and they did not. And he's upset about it. He's, he's not happy. So interesting, interesting development. We'll see where it goes. Let me tell you about console.com. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT HR and finance support, giving employees instant resolution to access for access requests and password resets.

• 37:58Jordi Hays?

  John, it's time to talk about Car Week.

• 38:03John Coogan?

  Okay, let's do Car Week.

• 38:04Jordi Hays?

  First, before we talk about Car Week, we're gonna talk about Tesla nears unveiling of radical new flying Roadster. So if you remember, probably around six months ago, whenever Elon did his last appearance on Joe Rogan, he was alluding to the idea that the Roadster might be able to get a little bit of airtime. Yeah. Anybody that is done driving in the back country knows that all cars can get airtime. But I don't think that's what he was alluding to. I don't think that's what he's alluding to. I think, I think he was alluding to some set of features that allow it to.

• 38:40John Coogan?

  Fly.

• 38:40Jordi Hays?

  Fly. Yeah. And what I don't know what we're gonna, I don't know what flying is.

• 38:44John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 38:44Jordi Hays?

  Right? Is flying an inch off the ground? If you're, if you're moving it at 100 miles an hour, maybe.

• 38:50John Coogan?

  Maybe. So there is a Chinese car that can jump over a pothole. Extremely relevant for Los Angeles. We gotta get this car here to change all the tariff rules. But some sort of, I think it's a BYD, can, can actually change the suspension so aggressively that it can jump while traveling. And, and we said like, okay, the gauntlet has thrown down. Jumping is not enough to go viral. Jumping will not satisfy the criteria of, you know, flying. So it has to be able to, you know, probably go more than six inches off the ground, maybe a full foot off the ground. It has to be able to stay off the ground for, I don't know, a few seconds, 10

• 39:32John Coogan?

  seconds. My speculation was that it would be able to use the, use the thrusters to lift off the ground and parallel park directly in. That was my prediction for something that would satisfy flying without actually being just, oh, you can just fly it from Malibu to LA. Yeah. Like I, I think that that's probably not in the cards, but I think that it has to have a crazy demo. It has to look crazy. It has to have crazy stats, but it also has to have a crazy viral video demo where you show it and you're like, wow, no other car can do that. Not even close. But the information has the.

• 40:08Jordi Hays?

  The crazy thing is that even as far back as eight years ago, there were patents that Tesla filed related to using effectively rocket-style thrusters in a vehicle. And people were already kind of chattering around then. Is Tesla gonna make some type of car?

• 40:27John Coogan?

  The collab, the SpaceX collab. They have the rockets.

• 40:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. The, the SpaceX, if Tesla comes out with a Roadster that has a SpaceX, it's like basically.

• 40:38John Coogan?

  Merlin engine on it.

• 40:40Jordi Hays?

  Some type of SpaceX engine. There's probably, I would put it, now that the company's public, there's probably. 10,000 buyers for that car. Like you can imagine a lot of people.

• 40:53John Coogan?

  It's 20 times the Audi new Velary. It's pretty wild.

• 40:57Jordi Hays?

  Well, the Audi new, the new Velary is like intentionally.

• 41:00John Coogan?

  Yeah. You know, the other thing that they could do is they could go out to the salt flats and they could set the, the world's speed record, the high speed record. Because a rocket engine on the back of a Tesla going in a straight line would, they could probably break the speed of sound. And that would be amazing. It wouldn't necessarily fit the flying criteria, but it'd be flying across the salt flats. So I, I'd give it credit. Uh, but it needs a crazy twist, I think.

• 41:25Jordi Hays?

  Between Elon's promises, this is Grace K. in the information this morning. Between Elon's promises of super nimble robots and interstellar colonization. The billionaire has spent plenty of time over the last decade hyping up another ambitious effort, the next version of the Roadster. The sporty electric vehicle that first put Tesla on the map. At first he said he wanted the vehicle to be the fastest production car in the world. Then he said he wanted it to be crazier than every fictional James Bond car combined, and he wanted the car to be able to fly.

• 41:53John Coogan?

  Don't the James Bond cars have guns and missiles on them?

• 41:56Jordi Hays?

  Yes, they do. Ejector seats.

• 41:58John Coogan?

  I mean, I guess you could get a, like in order to buy the Tesla, you have to have an FFL. You have to have a firearms dealer license.

• 42:07Jordi Hays?

  Oh, a dealer license.

• 42:08John Coogan?

  Dealer license.

• 42:09Jordi Hays?

  Okay. So it's basically a gun store on wheels.

• 42:12John Coogan?

  Exactly. Because.

• 42:13Jordi Hays?

  That would be very American. That would be very Texas.

• 42:16John Coogan?

  You can't get automatic weapons. You can't get silencers. All these things are heavily restricted. But if you go through the process to become a gun store, you can get a lot more crazy stuff. So maybe, maybe that's just the process.

• 42:29Jordi Hays?

  Directive sent Tesla designers down a rabbit hole that lasted years to laying the car's release. The company first showed a prototype design of the vehicle and began accepting reservations for it in 2017. Since then, it has chucked that design completely and come up with a new one, which hasn't been publicly revealed. That could change soon. Tesla is currently planning an unveiling of the new design, which could happen as early as this month. I was trying to figure out, is there any world that they do something at, at car week happening right now?

• 42:57John Coogan?

  Where are we on Tesla?

• 42:58Jordi Hays?

  Feels very, very unlikely. It feels like much more like Elon to do his own event and not compete for attention.

• 43:07Jordi Hays?

  That event will include an elaborate stunt showing off the flying capabilities of a limited edition version of the Roadster. The result of a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX. The demonstration is expected to take place at SpaceX's testing site in McGregor, Texas. As recently as a few months ago, Tesla's plans for the demonstration were like something out of a science fiction movie. They involve showing the vehicle racing onto a magnetized roller coaster like ramp and driving upside down before riding itself and hovering in the air. Three people said. Previously, Musk has said the vehicle's ability to fly would come from cold gas thrusters developed with SpaceX. Still, there's uncertainty about what Tesla will actually show at the event. Did you hear that, John? I'm gonna read it back.

• 43:49John Coogan?

  Tell me.

• 43:49Jordi Hays?

  A magnetized roller coaster like ramp, driving upside down before riding itself and hovering in the air.

• 43:57John Coogan?

  Sorry. I, I need you to read that for a third.

• 43:59Jordi Hays?

  They're, they're, they're making a Hot Wheels style.

• 44:02John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 44:03Jordi Hays?

  Roller coaster loop.

• 44:04John Coogan?

  And this is what leaked? This is crazy. I love it though.

• 44:10Jordi Hays?

  No, I absolutely love it. I love it.

• 44:12John Coogan?

  This is awesome. This is amazing. What is mag? Okay.

• 44:18Jordi Hays?

  Musk told some Tesla staffers in recent weeks that the demonstration will be difficult to pull off and could go awry, but it will be entertaining regardless.

• 44:28John Coogan?

  Such a.

• 44:29Jordi Hays?

  It couldn't be learned whether Tesla will show the event live or share recorded footage. All spectators at the event will be stationed several hundred yards away from the vehicle because of potential damage to their eardrums. Cold gas thrusters generate high pressure gas that can create significant noise and vibrations. According to Jay Kim, a professor of air dynamics at the University of Southampton. As a result, the car will be remotely operated without anyone inside the vehicle. Okay. This feels like we're getting farther and farther away from a production car.

• 45:05Jordi Hays?

  Hundreds of yards away, remotely operated, might go terribly.

• 45:10John Coogan?

  Can you imagine getting?

• 45:12Jordi Hays?

  He's just reinventing rockets.

• 45:14John Coogan?

  Honey, would you mind running out and grabbing a gallon of milk?

• 45:18John Coogan?

  Let me start the cold gas thrusters. Boom. All the windows break in your neighborhood. Let me pull out the car.

• 45:27John Coogan?

  That'd be very, very funny. Is that the end of that story?

• 45:30Jordi Hays?

  That's all, folks.

• 45:32John Coogan?

  Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content or automating business workflows. Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish.

• 45:46Jordi Hays?

  Back to the story, Tesla could use some reinvigoration at the moment. Its stock has lost nearly a quarter of its value this year. Oh, maybe, you know, we, we've had this, you know, you've had this theory for like over a year now that if, that if Tesla and SpaceX are going to merge. Elon owns a lot more of SpaceX. So you would want Tesla to be at a lower valuation. Maybe.

• 46:07John Coogan?

  This feels like a pump though. This feels like this.

• 46:09Jordi Hays?

  No, but if, if it's a spectacular explosion, then, then maybe, then maybe, then maybe, you know, the stock drops and the next day he goes, okay.

• 46:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Jordi Hays?

  Time to, time, time to buy.

• 46:23John Coogan?

  So wait, do, do the original reservations still get you to the front of the line of this thing?

• 46:28Jordi Hays?

  They better.

• 46:29John Coogan?

  Because I'm, I've been so close to putting down a reservation multiple times, being like, I think.

• 46:34Jordi Hays?

  I think you should. I think you should.

• 46:35John Coogan?

  It's gonna be a decade, but when it comes, it's gonna be so hilarious and unique. I mean, like, is it legal to drive in the United States? No. Do I need to contact the FAA before I turn it on? Yes. But is it a one of 10,000?

• 46:50Jordi Hays?

  Well, so you can still register for a Roadster.

• 46:54John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 46:54Jordi Hays?

  You have to put 45,000 down.

• 46:58John Coogan?

  Yeah. It was like 200 bucks originally.

• 46:59Jordi Hays?

  Actually, no, it's 50, 50, 50K, 5K immediately. And then you gotta send a wire.

• 47:05John Coogan?

  The same amount of money you can come and book a plug for Plug Walk, right?

• 47:10Jordi Hays?

  Roughly.

• 47:10John Coogan?

  I think so. That's the number. Um, well, in other car news, Porsche heard you loud and clear. They're bringing back the manual for the Carrera S. The 911 Carrera S is back with a manual. It's North America exclusive MT package for 2027, six gears, 473 horsepower. That's pretty, that's a little bit higher than some of the models. Not bad. And loads of features. All the details are over at motorone.com. Jason Freed's very happy to hear this. What do you think, Jordy?

• 47:44Jordi Hays?

  I like it. My first sports car, a manual 911.

• 47:49John Coogan?

  Manual 911. Here it is back.

• 47:51Jordi Hays?

  Makes a lot of sense. They're listening. They're listening to their, they're talking to their customers.

• 47:55John Coogan?

  Coupe is 170K. Yeah, they really are. And, and it's, it's odd because I feel like the Porsche brand is strong. I feel like they've had some misadventures in, in the EV market, but in general, like the actual results of the new Cayenne EV Turbo S are insane. I think zero to 60 in like plaid territory, like two seconds.

• 48:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. If, if it had self-driving anywhere near Tesla's, it would be way more popular.

• 48:20John Coogan?

  Maybe that's it. Because we've seen that like the, the, the financials of the company are beaten up, but the brand still is very solid. They haven't, they haven't, they haven't had their like luché moment where everyone's like, oh, this one looks bad, you know? They haven't had a backlash to the core visual brand, which I think is so important for longevity in this category. And so I, I, I think this will be successful. And people have been asking for this. The 911 ST sold very well. I think it's over a million dollars a car now. And I still don't fully understand how all of the, all the different manual options fit together across the portfolio. The ST seems like very exclusive, but I can't off the top of my head.

• 49:00Jordi Hays?

  Well, then you have the sport classic, you have the R.

• 49:03John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. There's a few manual options, which I think is good. But when the ST came out, it was sort of branded as like the only way to get the full throated Porsche experience in a manual. And so that's why.

• 49:16Jordi Hays?

  There's also the T, which is manual. So, so they've been offering a variety of ways to get in to a manual.

• 49:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Jordi Hays?

  Transmission 911. Ferrari is also out with the Ferrari CZ26.

• 49:30John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 49:31Jordi Hays?

  Temporary reinterpretation of the high-performance Berlinetta concept through a pure and highly technical formal language. It's a special projects car.

• 49:41John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 49:41Jordi Hays?

  Uh, it develops a new stylistic identity, starting from the supercar features of the SF90 Stradale. Defined by a direct distinctly horizontal design and a highly distinctive two box silhouette.

• 49:54John Coogan?

  It looks a lot more restrained than the, than the standard SF90. I think this looks cool. Yeah.

• 50:01Jordi Hays?

  More refined version of the SF90.

• 50:03John Coogan?

  Looks nice. I wonder how many, is, is, so the overall bodywork of this hashtag Ferrari one-off design. So are they just doing one of these and they're showing off at car week? They're just doing one?

• 50:16John Coogan?

  One of one feels like.

• 50:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. I, so far I haven't seen anything out of Ferrari.

• 50:22John Coogan?

  From car week? There's a bunch of other things. There, McLaren is introducing a first concept of its kind.

• 50:28Jordi Hays?

  Kind of stealing the show.

• 50:30John Coogan?

  Mcl 6GT, a contemporary realization of Bruce McLaren's original road car vision. The Mcl 6GT embodies the pioneering spirit that continues to shape McLaren.

• 50:42Jordi Hays?

  Let's get some sound here.

• 50:43John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:45Speaker 07

  True connection has to be real. Failed in every.

• 50:49Jordi Hays?

  Notice how the, the ad is shot vertically.

• 50:53John Coogan?

  Oh, and they dropped it in square.

• 50:56Jordi Hays?

  I love, I love the, the, the front end.

• 50:59John Coogan?

  Looks beautiful. Why did they upload it square on Instagram or on, on X?

• 51:06Jordi Hays?

  No, I think this is just how X handles.

• 51:09John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 51:10Jordi Hays?

  Vertical video now.

• 51:11John Coogan?

  Oh yeah, it is. Interesting. They, they blur the background. It kind of blended in. Interesting.

• 51:21Jordi Hays?

  You see that? That's a little bit of a jab at Ferrari.

• 51:24John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:25Jordi Hays?

  Annual gearbox.

• 51:26John Coogan?

  Yeah. Cause they have the angle by wire. Okay. It's a nice shot.

• 51:38Jordi Hays?

  Again, is this?

• 51:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 51:41Jordi Hays?

  Oh, they're saying register your interest. So maybe they make a number of these.

• 51:46John Coogan?

  Waitlist maxing.

• 51:49John Coogan?

  What else we got? Anyway, if you're designing a car-

• 51:51Jordi Hays?

  There's some other-

• 51:52John Coogan?

  Do it in Figma. Agents, meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with Design System contacts. Aston Martin also launched the Valen. Say they does need an introduction. It interrupts.

• 52:06John Coogan?

  It kinda does need an introduction. I've never heard of this before. The most powerful front-engine V12 car in our history, limited to 150 cars worldwide for the purists. And so there, uh, this is off of the Vanquish platform presumably, but 150 versions of this.

• 52:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it looks, I mean, again, uh, looks, I think, very cool.

• 52:27John Coogan?

  Yep, no manual.

• 52:28Jordi Hays?

  They specced it in a, in a way that, uh-

• 52:32John Coogan?

  It's fun to have these at car week.

• 52:33Jordi Hays?

  I don't, I don't necessarily love, but-

• 52:35John Coogan?

  You don't?

• 52:35Jordi Hays?

  It, it's, it, it feels-

• 52:38John Coogan?

  Is it the color or the gradient?

• 52:40Jordi Hays?

  It feels very close to the Valor. They also had the Victor at some point.

• 52:45John Coogan?

  We have a bunch of these.

• 52:45Jordi Hays?

  Um, and, uh, anyways, I don't, I don't know what Aston needs to do to really get back in the game. I think the, their primary challenge is at the lower end of the market.

• 53:02John Coogan?

  Shouldn't they make that Cod Mobile?

• 53:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they should actually make that instead of just making it playable in the game.

• 53:09John Coogan?

  It is, it is weird that no one right now is going after what the Audi R8 was, like a, a, a, a more affordable supercar. All of the luxury car, supercar, hypercar manufacturers seem to be going up market with $500,000, million dollar cars, but there's, and even the new Veyron is up at 500, 600, 700,000, right? Like, I, if Audi makes a supercar, you would expect it to be cheaper than the 296 from Ferrari, right? Like, cause that's what the, that's what the R8 strategy was. The R8 was cheaper than the Ferrari of the day. It was cheaper than the Lamborghini of the day, or the base model. So it was like, if you, if you want a more affordable supercar with the Audi back-

• 53:52Jordi Hays?

  With inflate, with inflation, you could have seen Audi making a $400,000 supercar, right? The new Veyron is much more limited, comes in around 700.

• 54:04John Coogan?

  It'd do a lot cheaper than that. I mean, the ZR1X, like, like-

• 54:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but that doesn't, every, every Audi is, is being priced higher than whatever the Chevy, Ford equivalent is.

• 54:17John Coogan?

  Exactly. So, so, so, yeah, okay, maybe you're right. Like, slice in between a ZR1X and a 296, that's where I would put the new Veyron, or the, the Audi Halo car.

• 54:29Jordi Hays?

  I just think it needs to be priced somewhere around where the Temerario is.

• 54:34John Coogan?

  Is it more expensive than the Temerario?

• 54:35Jordi Hays?

  It's almost double.

• 54:36John Coogan?

  That's an odd choice, I think. It should-

• 54:39Jordi Hays?

  But it looks like a spaceship. I got to see it in person on Monday. It is even better looking in person. Uh, it's a very special car.

• 54:50John Coogan?

  Does it get absolutely mugged by the 2027 Mustang Dark Horse SC convertible?

• 54:56Jordi Hays?

  Maybe for you.

• 54:57John Coogan?

  America's back, baby. Well, you have to wait for the Tesla Roadster. Ford's got you covered with a 5.2 liter V8 with 795 horsepower, which is probably nothing compared to what the Roadster will have, uh, and 660 pound feet of torque, feeding the rear wheels via seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. The MagnaRide suspension has a less aggressive tune than the coupe, and the convertible won't be offered with the coupe's hardcore track package, but, uh, fun for the Mustang fans. Mustang's been doing some special additions too. They got the, they got a bunch of different, really, really high-tier, uh, options out there. Um, Cadillac introduced the V1 concept.

• 55:36Jordi Hays?

  Ben, Ben says, "Still looks like a vacation rental."

• 55:42John Coogan?

  Yeah, people in these have it hurts. Uh, Cadillac revealed the V1 concept. It's a limited production model based on the LMDH race car. Uh, it's powered by a 5.5-liter DOHC V8, an electric motor, good for 830 combined horsepower. Looks like a, like a full-on race car. Um, Cadillac's done this before with the CN, their hypercar prototype that they never released. Uh, would be very cool to see them make a, a road-going version of this, like the Valkyrie, but, uh, feels like a big stretch for the brand and the company, right? Um, I would be surprised if we, if we see this, uh, make the, make the rounds, but people are, people are excited about it. I mean, the ZR1X was a big moment

• 56:24John Coogan?

  for the American carmakers in the, uh, in the, the supercar market, and so, you know, there are, uh, there's a chance, there's a chance this comes out. We'll see. Um, in other news, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds, online, in-store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents. Did you know, Jordy, it's now cheaper to buy, it's now cheaper to buy a private island than a house in Palo Alto?

• 56:53Jordi Hays?

  Finally.

• 56:54John Coogan?

  This is crazy.

• 56:55Jordi Hays?

  We've been waiting for these lines to cross.

• 56:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, no, it's actually cheaper to buy a private island than a house in Palo Alto. Earlier this week, Chris Backy, uh, highlighted a real estate listing for a five-bedroom, five-bathroom, 5,000-square-foot home in Palo Alto, asking $16.5 million. We gotta pull a picture of this thing because it doesn't look like a $16 million house, and I think that's why this image from Chris Backy went so viral, because it specifically looks just like a normal house that might be a million dollars or $3 million, but in fact-

• 57:29Jordi Hays?

  Can you share it in the chat?

• 57:31John Coogan?

  Where is it? Let me see if I can pull this up. Did we not, uh, this? Let me put, let me put this up. Um, here we go. Boom. Or here.

• 57:43Jordi Hays?

  Here it is.

• 57:43John Coogan?

  There we go. Um, and so, I mean, 5,500 square feet, that's a lot. And Palo Alto is obviously on an absolute tear on the back of the AI boom, but $16.5 million is a lot of money, and, uh, you can get a private island for this.

• 57:58Jordi Hays?

  For this shape.

• 58:00John Coogan?

  Yeah, it just looks like one normal house, please, to me, right?

• 58:06Jordi Hays?

  One starter home, please.

• 58:07John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly. I, even though it's very clear that there's a lot of stuff going on in the back, obviously, from the front, the silhouette doesn't look like a 5,000-square-foot house, um, but clearly that extends, and there's probably lots of land back there and all sorts of things, but, uh, when you're, when you're bidding against Mark Zuckerberg, uh, you gotta pay a pretty penny. Bay Area real estate has been expensive for a long

• 58:28Jordi Hays?

  It's like a quarter acre, too.

• 58:33John Coogan?

  Bay Area real estate has been expensive for a long time, but prices at the very top of the market have become especially eye-popping. One factor is the enormous amount of new wealth being created by the AI boom as employees of, at companies like OpenAI Anthropic turn startup equity into fortunes and pour some of that money into local real estate. The result is an absurd new benchmark for Silicon Valley housing prices.

• 58:55Jordi Hays?

  Ben is on his hair today. He says, "Wow, there's a patio."

• 58:59Jordi Hays?

  No pool, but there's patio.

• 59:01John Coogan?

  For $16 million, no pool?

• 59:04Jordi Hays?

  On a quarter acre?

• 59:05John Coogan?

  That is, that's crazy. I wonder where this one will land.

• 59:09Jordi Hays?

  No garage either.

• 59:10John Coogan?

  Wait, no garage?

• 59:14John Coogan?

  At this, at this price, it's like, like, like, you could actually be driving like a hypercar, uh, for like 10% of the house price, you know? Like, if you live in a, if you live in a, uh, if you live in a $1.6 million house and you drove a $50,000 car, no one would be like, "Oh, wow, that's so crazy," right? But if you live in a $16 million house and you drive a $500,000 car, people would be like, "Okay, that kinda matches." Except you pull up to this thing in a, in a Revuelto or something, or an SF90, and people are like, "What? You don't even have a garage to park it in?" Anyway, uh, the result is an absurd new benchmark for Silicon Valley housing prices. There are actual private islands around the world that cost less than a house in Palo Alto. In June, a 4.5-acre

• 59:59John Coogan?

  private island on North Carolina's, uh, Lake Norman sold for $12.5 million. You can pull this one up.

• 1:00:06Jordi Hays?

  The agent on the listing says it has a unique feature, a glass-encased staircase.

• 1:00:12John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:00:12Jordi Hays?

  You don't see that much in a, in a modern McMansion.

• 1:00:16John Coogan?

  Which are you going with? The, the Palo Alto home or this private island?

• 1:00:21Jordi Hays?

  John says, chat is saying 16 mil, turned it down, had to live there for this decade.

• 1:00:31Jordi Hays?

  The payment, the payment calculator, look, if you put 20% down, you're only spending $105,000 a month.

• 1:00:39John Coogan?

  That's so much money.

• 1:00:42Jordi Hays?

  Yikes.

• 1:00:42John Coogan?

  That's true golden handcuffs. So this, so this 4.5 acre private island in North Carolina sold for $12.5 million and it includes a roughly 13,000 square foot mansion on it. It was originally purchased in the 90s for 1.5 million. The Financial Times also reported in March on a 600 acre private island in Fiji listed for $12 million. That island comes with a six bedroom residence built near its highest point with panoramic ocean views, along with a library, barbecue area and swimming pool. There are also five beaches, staff quarters and a deep water jetty. This, I'm gonna put all these in there. Let's see. This one is, is pretty crazy.

• 1:01:27John Coogan?

  There's only one image of this particular island estate, but the Financial Times was on a tear. They, they, they really reported on a bunch of these. If 600 acres for your private island is a little excessive, there's another option in Fiji. Mansion Global reported in March that the founder of a cannabis company and his wife were selling Vawa, a 75 acre private island, that is so many acres, even 75 acres is so much for 15 million. Still 1.5 million less than the Palo Alto house. So if, if you, if you are in Palo Alto, you've really got to negotiate for remote work because you could be working from Fiji. The Vawa house includes several Olympic sized natural swimming holes and a 5,500 square foot main house

• 1:02:11John Coogan?

  built around an open plan, living spaces surrounded by walls of glass. It's bedroom suites, have outdoor bathrooms and private outdoor spaces overlooking the ocean and jungle. And it's a fascinating story showing what went into building this compound. We can scroll through some of these, some of these images because this family really, it seems like it was sort of a labor of love situation. So an eclectic travelogue had always been a top priority for the walkers. The Los Angeles based family of four are self-styled globetrotters whose wanderlust meant they never vacationed in the same place twice. They never went back. Vawa island is a 75 acre drop in the Pacific Ocean at the northernmost tip of the Yasawa Island Archipelago and north of Nadi International Airport.

• 1:02:55John Coogan?

  It is so far to get to Fiji, but people love it out there. We saw the island and even though there was nothing there, we just knew there was something really magical about this place and we had to go back. So we were sitting on a beach and saw this little island in the distance. This sounds really, we then got picked up by a local boat and taken there. We went around the island and the locals said it had been deserted for a while. After meeting with the local elders of the tribe to discuss the finer points of the purchase, the walkers purchased a leasehold and the project of a lifetime. So a lot of these different countries and island nations, they won't actually sell you the property. What they'll do is they'll sell you a lease for 85 years. Like, so it's within your lifetime, but then it eventually goes back to the, to the, to the government.

• 1:03:41John Coogan?

  It was like a boyhood dream, Barry said today, that pristine parcel is home to a luxurious hideaway, built with a modern Malibu aesthetic crafted by Danish architect, constructed by Australian builder and carried by a Californian family. The project took approximately five years with a pandemic and the distance from home adding complexity. And so.

• 1:04:00Jordi Hays?

  So I've never done a proper trip to Fiji, but I did have a 18 hour layover there once on the way to Bali.

• 1:04:08John Coogan?

  Do you count that as visiting Fiji?

• 1:04:10Jordi Hays?

  I count it because I went, I left the airport, I got on a boat and I took it to a small, relatively deserted island and I just hung out there for a few hours and then took the boat back and then went to the airport and left.

• 1:04:27John Coogan?

  Do I have, I don't think I have very nice on here. Anyway, Tyler, you figured out the optimal route. Yeah, great success. You, you figured out the optimal route to visit every state. Is that correct?

• 1:04:40Speaker 06

  Yeah. So basically the, the idea, well, the rules we said is if you land in like a grassy area and you step out, that counts as visiting the state.

• 1:04:48John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:04:49Speaker 06

  So basically the optimal strategy, if you want to hit every state is you basically land at the intersections of states.

• 1:04:54John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:55Speaker 06

  So you only need to land 21 times to hit all 50, right? So in lower 48, it's only 19 times.

• 1:05:00John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:05:01Speaker 06

  But you can hit these kind of like tri-point areas, right? You think, think of, there's kind of the quadrant in the southwest, you can hit four states at once.

• 1:05:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08Speaker 06

  And you can do it presumably within an hour, or sorry, within 24 hours.

• 1:05:13John Coogan?

  Within 24 hours?

• 1:05:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:15John Coogan?

  But you have to go to Alaska and Hawaii. So this is just lower 48?

• 1:05:18Speaker 06

  No, no, this is all 24.

• 1:05:19John Coogan?

  You can, but you would need a plane that can fly at the speed of sound, but also land or like near the speed of sound. Like you can't do it in like a Cessna. You must, you, you have to do it in like a Gulfstream, but then you also have to be able to land in a cornfield, basically?

• 1:05:33Speaker 06

  You can use like a normal, slightly larger plane than like a private plane.

• 1:05:39John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:05:39Speaker 06

  But you don't need the insane.

• 1:05:40John Coogan?

  What type of plane are you, are you landing in a cornfield, but also making it to Alaska in?

• 1:05:46Jordi Hays?

  Tyler, Tyler, would you be willing to attempt this route with your current plan? Because right now it just feels like you're.

• 1:05:54John Coogan?

  You're instilling a lot of confidence, buddy.

• 1:05:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Trace says the Pilatus PC 12 has you covered. Pilatus PC 12 is not probably fast enough to actually break a record, but the PC 24 is the, is, is sort of the, the cousin of the PC 12. That is an actual jet that will let you land on dirt runways. And so I think that the PC 24.

• 1:06:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, PC 24 is, is what I had as well. A lot of PC 24.

• 1:06:21Jordi Hays?

  But you said big, it's, it's not even, it's like a relatively modest plane. You can't even cross the Atlantic with it. You were saying it was a bigger plane.

• 1:06:32Speaker 06

  Well, you know, relatively.

• 1:06:36John Coogan?

  Pure slop. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike.

• 1:06:39Jordi Hays?

  You gotta, you gotta, you gotta work on this plan.

• 1:06:41John Coogan?

  Your business is AI, their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches.

• 1:06:47Speaker 06

  You're starting in Maine and you're ending in Hawaii.

• 1:06:49John Coogan?

  Okay. So you go from basically like Washington to.

• 1:06:53Speaker 06

  In New Hampshire, you're kind of going.

• 1:06:55John Coogan?

  But you're going in the Pacific Northwest last, then Alaska, then down to Hawaii.

• 1:07:00Speaker 06

  You're basically starting, you're going directly south. So you're in all east.

• 1:07:03Jordi Hays?

  Ryan says you need to hire a pilot from Sinaloa. True, true.

• 1:07:08John Coogan?

  I think you're going to run into a lot of trouble. I think you'll probably get arrested the first time you land in a cornfield in the intersection of three states and they wonder what you're doing.

• 1:07:17Jordi Hays?

  I don't think with Tyler's plan, I don't think there'll be enough time to.

• 1:07:20John Coogan?

  Some demolition ahead of time?

• 1:07:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23John Coogan?

  Oh, so that you can actually land on the corner?

• 1:07:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25John Coogan?

  Cause a lot of these, a lot of these corner intersections are like tourist traps where they have like a, a sign on the ground, like you're currently standing on four states at once. And you can't just land there and bulldoze all the, all the tourists who are taking pictures. That doesn't make any sense.

• 1:07:40Speaker 06

  Well, I don't think we stated that before. That, that wasn't allowed.

• 1:07:43John Coogan?

  Misaligned. This is misalignment right here. Terrible. Anyway. The good folks over at the Acquired FM, Acquired Podcast, revealed a very interesting fact that we wanted to share here. The highest grossing piece of entertainment ever isn't Avatar, Avengers, Titanic.

• 1:08:06Jordi Hays?

  Chad says, stop hazing our zoomers.

• 1:08:09John Coogan?

  Well, we got more Gen Z's, uh, uh, Gen Z hazing articles because there's a whole article in the New York Times about how Gen Z doesn't know how to dress. They're just taking shots at Gen Z for acting like they've never worn clothes before or something is the headline. So very funny.

• 1:08:25Jordi Hays?

  My, uh, we, we was driving around with, with my lovely wife yesterday and, uh, we passed like what looked like a group of high school boys and she said, why do they all look like they're dressed like criminals?

• 1:08:42Jordi Hays?

  They had these like big like glasses that like look like, uh, what, something you might wear if you really didn't want people to know.

• 1:08:49John Coogan?

  True unk status. Why is Ben McLean getting an American flag wrapped around him? Is this just the style now?

• 1:08:57Speaker 06

  This is my go away gift. This is my, yeah, I'm going back. I had to get a flag before.

• 1:09:01John Coogan?

  Okay, there you go.

• 1:09:01Jordi Hays?

  Wearing that on the flight?

• 1:09:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Speaker 06

  The whole way, full time.

• 1:09:06John Coogan?

  Well, let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI. Own the data platform that powers it.

• 1:09:15Jordi Hays?

  Ryan says if you can't haze Gen Z, why be unk?

• 1:09:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, good point.

• 1:09:19Jordi Hays?

  Good point.

• 1:09:20John Coogan?

  Okay. Anyway, so the highest grossing piece of entertainment ever. It's not Avatar. It's not Avengers. It's not Titanic. It's not Seinfeld. It's not even Grand Theft Auto. It's the Lion King musical. Thank you. It's The Lion King Musical. The Lion King Musical is the highest grossing piece of media entertainment ever. Absolutely insane. Since debuting on Broadway in November of 1997, Disney's stage adaptation has grossed more than $11 billion worldwide, maybe more than 10 billion. It's a ton. It's the highest grossing stage production ever, and by box office revenue, it's the highest grossing entertainment title in history.

• 1:10:03John Coogan?

  For comparison, Avatar is the highest grossing movie ever, has made only $3 billion at the global box office. The Lion King passed the previous record holder, The Phantom of the Opera, all the way back in 2014, when its cumulative gross was already $6.2 billion. I had no idea there was so much money in Broadway. So, the question everyone's asking, how is this even possible? Like, yeah, The Lion King Musical, it's popular, but Avatar was like a cultural moment. Everyone saw it. But it's because The Lion King Musical is not just one show, it's much more complicated than that. It's this entertainment machine. So, since 1997, there have been-

• 1:10:41Jordi Hays?

  So, it's not just a show, it's a machine?

• 1:10:43John Coogan?

  Basically.

• 1:10:43Jordi Hays?

  Wow.

• 1:10:44John Coogan?

  It's 30 different productions around the world, spanning more than 100 cities-

• 1:10:49Jordi Hays?

  It's like a soap slop.

• 1:10:50John Coogan?

  And 24 countries. So, the show runs on Broadway, but also London's West End, Japan, Germany, Australia, alongside North America, international touring productions. So, you can see it in multiple places at the same time. More than 127 million people have actually seen it. And unlike a movie, the same piece of entertainment can keep selling thousands of expensive tickets every night for decades. So, the Broadway production alone performs eight times a week. In one week this June, it sold 12,670 tickets, grossed 1.94 million from a single theater. And then you scale that model across multiple productions simultaneously.

• 1:11:31Jordi Hays?

  And are all these productions paying royalties back to Disney?

• 1:11:35John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:36Jordi Hays?

  So, you're thinking what I'm thinking?

• 1:11:38John Coogan?

  What are you thinking?

• 1:11:39Jordi Hays?

  Thrive Eternal comes in, they spin out, The Lion King IP, Bob Iger-

• 1:11:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Jordi Hays?

  Gets a piece back.

• 1:11:47John Coogan?

  Yeah. So, 75 bucks a ticket.

• 1:11:49Jordi Hays?

  Then, like Gabe says, then they take it public.

• 1:11:52John Coogan?

  Maybe, maybe. I think this is like core to the Disney IP strategy. Like, they have other Broadway productions already in the works, already in production, and will have many more as different pieces of intellectual property take flight and actually find their footing. Of course, not everything's going to be as much of a smash success as The Lion King has been, but it's crazy. It's a 29-year run, selling $75 tickets on average every night across the globe for 30 years almost, which is crazy. And so, you can take the same story, perform it eight times a week, duplicate the production around the planet, and keep doing it for an entire generation. Do that successfully for three days, and you can make more money at the box office

• 1:12:37John Coogan?

  than any movie ever made. I was always thinking that someone would do this for music, sort of like you'd need to set up the musical act as a multi-stage production. But you know Deadmau5 performs with a helmet? Deadmau5, the EDM artist?

• 1:12:55Jordi Hays?

  Oh, you mean Deadmau5?

• 1:12:57John Coogan?

  Deadmau5, yes. So, when Deadmau5 performs, he is there in person, the actual artist, and he's wearing a helmet, so you don't know that it's him. And of course, you trust that it's him because he doesn't perform in multiple places at the same time. Same thing with Tiesto. But there are other artists that have donned the helmets. I think Marshmello is one, there's a few others that do this sort of thing, even going back to Slipknot. Daft Punk, exactly. But if you could start a musical act that embraced the idea that it could be in multiple places at the same time, it could effectively have multiple residencies.

• 1:13:36John Coogan?

  So, the artist, even though it was multiple people, could be performing in New York and Las Vegas and Miami all at the same time, have residencies everywhere, and bring in way more revenue on top of the IP. And then the artist themselves doesn't need to travel. Of course, that's like sort of sacrificing what it means to go to a Deadmau5 show, so you probably don't command as much of a premium. But it would be interesting to see if someone in the musical arts-

• 1:14:04Jordi Hays?

  Dylan says this is just the Blue Man Group strategy. It's not always the same blue men.

• 1:14:12Jordi Hays?

  Mind blown.

• 1:14:13John Coogan?

  Yes, the Blue Man Group has changed over. I don't know, are there any examples of the Blue Man Group performing in two different places at the exact same time with different blue men? I think that they have a single cast that rotates, and they don't actually perform in multiple places at the same time. But that's the Blue Man Group V2 is what I'm maybe hoping for. Anyway, what else is going on? The Cursor deal closed, that's a big story today, although it's been announced several times that this was happening, but Michael Truul took to the timeline to announce that the deal has in fact closed.

• 1:14:55John Coogan?

  Gork is imminent, Grok Gork is coming, they're doing it.

• 1:15:01Jordi Hays?

  This is the largest acquisition of a venture-backed, like, private company?

• 1:15:06John Coogan?

  Yes, and it must be probably the highest IRR VC investment of all time. Maybe, there's probably something shorter term, that was like one month and then an acquisition, but it certainly is close to that.

• 1:15:23Jordi Hays?

  Previously, the record was Wiz, $32 billion, Google, so nearly double.

• 1:15:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, Michael Truul said-

• 1:15:35Jordi Hays?

  There is some, it is funny to think about, just given the dynamic between Elon and Sam, OpenAI Startup Fund, I believe, was the seed investor in Cursor. Meaning that-

• 1:15:50John Coogan?

  OpenAI shareholders own-

• 1:15:51Jordi Hays?

  Now, yeah.

• 1:15:54Jordi Hays?

  But absolutely incredible outcome, and I think already people are realizing just how much, how necessary it is for SpaceX's hopes at the application.

• 1:16:08John Coogan?

  Michael Truul, one of the greatest Zoomers to ever do it.

• 1:16:11Jordi Hays?

  Truly.

• 1:16:12John Coogan?

  You gotta give him, you gotta give him credit, you gotta give credit to all of Gen Z for putting up amazing numbers, but you also gotta take some shots at Gen Z because apparently snack companies are coating everything in pickle flavor for Gen Z. Is this true? Do you like pickles?

• 1:16:29Jordi Hays?

  I wouldn't say I'm a big pickle guy.

• 1:16:30John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:16:31Jordi Hays?

  Say, but-

• 1:16:32John Coogan?

  Well, apparently snack companies think you are, because there's a deluge of sour, briny snacks that have infiltrated the market, and apparently it's your fault, Tyler. Pickle-flavored ramen, pickle-flavored beer, pickle-flavored Sauvignon Blanc wine, pickle-zested ice cream. A certain flavor profile is exploding, it's sour, it's briny, it's huge on social media, and it's coating everything in its paths, says The Wall Street Journal. "We're just in a golden era for pickle-flavoring," said the vice president of the Fresh Food Group at Circa. "Never in my life would I imagine cotton candy with pickles."

• 1:17:12Jordi Hays?

  When you were a kid, did you ever take a little sip of the-

• 1:17:16John Coogan?

  The juice, the pickle juice? Hmm, not really.

• 1:17:19Jordi Hays?

  No, I did.

• 1:17:21John Coogan?

  Like, just once to experience, or was it like a daily thing? You would enjoy it?

• 1:17:25Jordi Hays?

  You're there.

• 1:17:26John Coogan?

  I like a pickle, but I don't know, the juice I can pass on. I'm not a big-

• 1:17:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, anytime I meet people that are seemingly super into pickles, I just assume they haven't, they don't realize they can put a lot of salt on anything.

• 1:17:39John Coogan?

  Oh, you think it's like a vehicle for delivering salt?

• 1:17:41Jordi Hays?

  I think it's like a-

• 1:17:42John Coogan?

  Yeah, you're just maybe sodium deficient or craving some sodium, and you want an excuse, and a pickle is just a way to get your salt fix.

• 1:17:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's a vehicle.

• 1:17:50John Coogan?

  Okay, well, people certainly associate the flavor with saltiness, so it's going all over the place. In the last few years, nearly every snack food giant and retailer has piled on the trend, and for good reason, pickle-flavored items are flying off the shelves. According to data from Circa, pickle-flavored snacks grew 30% in sales over the past year, compared with 3.8% growth in the snack category overall. The same category, the same goes for categories that don't seem traditionally fermentation-forward. Pickle-flavored trail mix grew by 10% as opposed to 4% for the general category. But some of this growth may come from an influx of new pickle-flavored-

• 1:18:28Jordi Hays?

  Off the base of $1.

• 1:18:31John Coogan?

  That is a crazy, crazy item. Whole Foods began selling daily crunches dill pickle sprouted almonds in 2024 and within a year and a half, the product saw an 812% growth.

• 1:18:45John Coogan?

  Foundation lab numbers.

• 1:18:47Jordi Hays?

  The greatest pickle car in NASCAR.

• 1:18:49John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:18:49Jordi Hays?

  That is a car to follow.

• 1:18:52John Coogan?

  PepsiCo released flaming hot dill pickle Cheetos in 2025 and made them a permitting permanent offering this year after the company said it became the fastest selling limited edition flavor in the brand's history. Retailers say one group is fueling the trend, a cohort they're most eager to capture. It's Gen Z. Last year, last summer, Hormel Foods, the company behind Spam and Skippy Peanut Butter, cited Gen Z, the ultimate target market for snack brands as the inspiration behind the launch of three dill pickle products. Dill pickle corn nuts, dill pickle cashews and dill pickle flavored Hormel pepperoni. This is too much dill pickle. I can't, I can't say pickle anymore. It's, it's really getting on my nerves.

• 1:19:34Jordi Hays?

  It's over.

• 1:19:34John Coogan?

  Let's move on to Alex Cooper. Alex Cooper raising a ton of money. Podcast is doing well. Media company is doing well. Her beverage brand is doing unwell. The brand unwell ceased operations, announces winding down a day after unwell's media business took investment at a $500 million valuation. Should not be a surprise. Clearly new money coming in, new strategy, focus.

• 1:19:59Jordi Hays?

  Should have made it pickle flavored.

• 1:20:00John Coogan?

  Content, maybe, maybe. But Andrea took a victory lap two years ago. She posted unwell by Alex Cooper, prime, but for the hotties. How much time do we give this brand before it inevitably flops and goes on the chopping block? Two years, it seems, is what wound up happening. It was, uh, maybe they just didn't get the right team in there. It does seem like it's hard because you only have so much ad inventory. And if you're running the Call Her Daddy podcast and you're getting a lot of impressions, if, if there is someone like you could promote your product, but every time you do, you're not promoting another product that might pay you a higher CPM, might be able to monetize those listeners better.

• 1:20:42John Coogan?

  And so you have this tension between, okay, well, there might be a VPN company or a credit card company or all sorts of different companies that might want to come in and pay, you know, a million dollars for a sponsorship with, with Call Her Daddy. And are you going to be able to move a million dollars, not just a million dollars of profit, of product, but a million dollars worth of product to justify the profits? So will the LTV that you generate from running those ads that you're taking off the, off the inventory stack actually math out? I think a lot of influencers wind up with that. They think they have unlimited distribution, but they don't.

• 1:21:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's interesting branding challenge to have unwell.

• 1:21:24John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:21:24Jordi Hays?

  Uh, as the brand of the drink, not, not, not the best association.

• 1:21:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, I think you're right. There's something like subliminal, like what I was picking up on with the obsession remix video where I just come away a little bit unsettled. Seeing a brand name unwell in my face, it's just going to stick in my brain a little bit, but oh well, we'll see where it goes. It feels like she's doubling down on media, TV shows, potentially movie studio, other podcasts. There's a lot of other things that are going there that are clearly can be focused in the line of what the unwell network does well. So we'll see where it all goes. Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.

• 1:22:13John Coogan?

  So the New York Times put out a hit piece on Gen Zers, says Gen Zers dress like they've never worn clothes before. Time was, if you wanted to know what people's deal was, you read their clothes. As a young man working at a then popular street fashion magazine, I used to relish taxonomizing people by what they had on. I could tell you had, I could tell you at a glance what kind of music they listened to, whether they worked, what they'd be like in bed, what sort of beer they would drink, all from the cut of their pant leg or the razor guard number on their haircut. Fleece jacket pullover, white ball cap pulled down way too far over the eyes. That's a jock.

• 1:22:55John Coogan?

  Torn up gray hoodie over enormous jeans whose cuffs are soaking up puddle water. That person smokes weed. Same hoodie, but sleeves pushed up past the elbows. Watch out, that's the universal signifier for men. These days, this person is really judgmental. These days, I'm a middle aged man who works the door at a bar in Chicago that is reasonably popular with the youths and I'm routinely flummoxed by the sartorial flotsam that comes packing itself in. The other night, a guy.

• 1:23:24Jordi Hays?

  This not, is this not overall that just the, one of the oldest sort of stories of all time, which is like old person says that young kids.

• 1:23:34Speaker 06

  Old man yells at clouds.

• 1:23:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, this is old man yells at clouds. Yeah, it's a good point. It's a good point, but I don't know. I just wanted to take another shot at Gen Z.

• 1:23:45Jordi Hays?

  I mean, I do, I do think it's, I do think it's funny that Tyler dresses like the, like 2016 kind of like frat. Style, like boat shoes.

• 1:23:59John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:24:00Jordi Hays?

  I mean, he looks sharp every day, but, uh, but yeah, you guys missed, but put the shoes up on the desk. Let's get the shoes up on the desk. Throw them up. It's Friday. Let's get a side profile of the shoes, the Sperrys.

• 1:24:15John Coogan?

  Ooh, I like that. There you go.

• 1:24:18Jordi Hays?

  Sperry mode.

• 1:24:22Jordi Hays?

  All right, that's enough of that.

• 1:24:23Speaker 08

  King in the castle, king in the castle.

• 1:24:26John Coogan?

  Uh, next intern challenge. Get into Caltech because they have a fraud squad. This is the red team. We need to red team their fraud squad. The fraud squad at Caltech will catch you if you lie on your application.

• 1:24:39Jordi Hays?

  They're saying make America preppy again.

• 1:24:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:42Jordi Hays?

  I think that you could be early to a new prep super cycle. A Sperry super cycle.

• 1:24:50John Coogan?

  Super cycle. Funniest thing. College investigators vet every admitted student's applications as schools nationwide battle AI fueled cheating. So now we got to put it to the test. Can you cheat your way through a PhD at Caltech, Tyler? I want to see if you can do it. At the California.

• 1:25:09Jordi Hays?

  Troy from Cluley says challenge accepted.

• 1:25:13John Coogan?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. A little known band of admissions.

• 1:25:15Jordi Hays?

  New benchmark.

• 1:25:16John Coogan?

  New benchmark for Cluley for sure. Uh, scrutinizing the fonts on science fair certificates, checking addresses on high school transcript and analyzing signatures on awards. Known as the fraud squad, these investigators in char, are in charge of vetting applications to the highly selective STEM focused school, which admitted less than 4% of its 11,000 applicants for the incoming class. Caltech created the team two years ago, partly in response to a rising number of anonymous accusations of dishonest applications. Four person team inspects every submitted, uh, every admitted student's applications, taking nothing from granted, nothing for granted. They scour the internet to confirm obscurities, contact competition officials and high school

• 1:26:00John Coogan?

  coun, counselors and use a video interview program to suss out students' research claims. As elite colleges as such as Caltech, uh, at elite colleges such as Caltech, admissions have become more competitive and, and applications are increasingly complex. Some requests, some requests, long lists of accolades, research competitions, awards, independent projects that colleges can find harder to verify than grades and test scores. At the same time, technology like AI makes it easier to falsify submissions and for young people, the stakes often feel higher than ever. I don't think everyone's lying, said Nick Lee, senior assistant director for undergrad admissions and a fraud squad member, but I can't let a small portion of the pool of

• 1:26:43John Coogan?

  our admits ruin all the greatness in the other percentage. Can't let one bad apple spoil the bunch, I think is the phrase. Many schools review applications for accuracy, but tend to dig deeper only when something seems off, such as if a student's essay mentions an award winning robotics team, but the recommendation letters don't. So they're looking for needles and haystacks. Interesting. Do you think you could do it? Do you think this is fraud proof, Tyler? Or you think you?

• 1:27:12Speaker 06

  I mean, there's like.

• 1:27:14John Coogan?

  Still on the shoes. Still on the shoes.

• 1:27:17Speaker 06

  I think there's a lot of things like, it seems like the, the solution here is you just only do the SAT. Anger.

• 1:27:23John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:27:24Speaker 06

  You can basically get rid of all of these like fishy research things, you know, you hear about like some stories where it's like they had their first research paper when they were like 11 years old. It's like clearly.

• 1:27:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:34Speaker 06

  Very fake.

• 1:27:35John Coogan?

  Just like the parents doing it or the AI doing it or something. I don't know.

• 1:27:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, tricky. Nothing like the I am out to separate the wheat from the chaff. Well, over at Thrive, uh, there's a big scoop from Natasha over now.

• 1:27:52Jordi Hays?

  Natasha's been on its hair.

• 1:27:53John Coogan?

  She's at Bloomberg Technology. Um, Thrive has invested $250 million in Amazon, according to a securities filing, as the firm expands its public market strategy to back some of the world's largest companies benefiting from AI. I didn't realize that Thrive had this significant of a public book. I mean, I guess some of this was probably SpaceX pre-IPO, uh, that shifted over to the public book, but.

• 1:28:15Jordi Hays?

  Well, I think this is, uh, part of a, like, new focus.

• 1:28:20John Coogan?

  Sure, sure. Uh, so Thrive Capital, at the end of Q2, owned $3.2 billion with a SpaceX, $250 million of Amazon. They still got some Oscar Health, 180 million of that. They own Shopify and Figma. Um, they trimmed Carvana and StubHub, um, but are still long, lots of stuff in the public markets. Um, anyway, what else is in the timeline?

• 1:28:46Jordi Hays?

  Another news, Jeff Bezos bets on sports with Liverpool deal. Billionaire to become a part owner of the Premier League team valued at more than $7 billion.

• 1:28:59Speaker 07

  Another one.

• 1:29:00Jordi Hays?

  Uh, the billionaire founder of Amazon is among a group of investors that agreed Friday to buy a minority stake in Liverpool Football. The consortium is acquiring about a 33% stake in Liverpool, Liverpool in a deal that values the Premier League team at more than $7 billion. Uh, the deal is the latest example of the enduring appeal of top professional sports teams from the world's wealthiest. Uh, the consortium buying a stake in Liverpool is led by Amit Batia, son-in-law of Indian steel tycoon. Let's give it up for tycoons. One of the best, one of the best words, one of the most underrated words, tycoon. I'm trying to bring that back.

• 1:29:40John Coogan?

  Very aspirational. You know, you've made it when you're a tycoon.

• 1:29:43Jordi Hays?

  Bezos is participating in the deal through K5 Global.

• 1:29:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:48Jordi Hays?

  Uh, a firm that.

• 1:29:50John Coogan?

  Term of, or tycoon has got to be above billionaire. Cause there's plenty of people that they start a company, they get lucky, they sell it at the top.

• 1:29:56Jordi Hays?

  But I would say that Michael and Brian, GPs over K5 are, are emerging tycoons.

• 1:30:02John Coogan?

  I think so.

• 1:30:02Jordi Hays?

  I think they're on the path to being tycoons.

• 1:30:04John Coogan?

  I think so.

• 1:30:04Jordi Hays?

  Would you rather be a tycoon or a magnate?

• 1:30:07John Coogan?

  Ooh.

• 1:30:07Jordi Hays?

  I think, I think magnate's underrated.

• 1:30:09John Coogan?

  Magnate is.

• 1:30:11Jordi Hays?

  Tycoon is more aura.

• 1:30:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, tycoon feels like you really control the industry. Magnate feels a little bit like, could be Scion adjacent potentially, you know, might just be, might just be important, but one of many. Tycoon is singular, little more, little more singular in its dominance of the industry. I like a tycoon. Anyway, uh, CRM tycoon, Mark Benioff hit the timeline with a question. Should Salesforce rebrand as Salesforce Slack to capture its AI era power in bots, coding and.

• 1:30:46Jordi Hays?

  Let's watch this video, cause this video is sure to fire you up.

• 1:30:51John Coogan?

  Okay, let's do it. Salesforce Slack. That's a bit of a mouthful. Let's see. Salesforce. One of the greatest names ever. Salesforce. Forceful. I love Salesforce. They do a lot more than sales though. And a lot of people use Slack. So which way we're going? Okay. Ooh, good license.

• 1:31:24John Coogan?

  Hmm, some good brand exploration.

• 1:31:28Jordi Hays?

  Wait, put him on the tower. Put him on the tower. Stew it.

• 1:31:33John Coogan?

  See it. Nothing happened?

• 1:31:37John Coogan?

  Ooh, okay.

• 1:31:38Jordi Hays?

  You put him on the tower.

• 1:31:39John Coogan?

  Oh, we did. He already did?

• 1:31:40Jordi Hays?

  AI.

• 1:31:41John Coogan?

  Okay. I can't tell if it's BFX or not.

• 1:31:46John Coogan?

  Salesforce Slack. Salesforce Slack.

• 1:31:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So interesting response. Currently 68% of the voters say no.

• 1:31:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:54Jordi Hays?

  They're rejecting Salesforce Slack.

• 1:31:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:57Jordi Hays?

  Uh, it is a mouthful. I do think Salesforce is iconic. I understand Mark's position, right? He's battling.

• 1:32:04John Coogan?

  Why not?

• 1:32:04Jordi Hays?

  SaaS apocalypse narrative.

• 1:32:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:32:06Jordi Hays?

  Uh, Slack is, uh, no one's been sitting there saying, you know, we're going to move off, uh, Slack.

• 1:32:13John Coogan?

  No intern has ever tried to vibe code Slack here.

• 1:32:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it is funny. You can, you can one-shot a, a version of Slack.

• 1:32:21John Coogan?

  But adoption was tricky. High churn. We didn't use it. It, it looked like Slack. We, we tried to vibe code Slack. And the product looked really good. It even added video calling, which was sort of crazy functionality. It's certainly there.

• 1:32:34Jordi Hays?

  Sebastian says Jordi does not remembering Metallica songs in front of Mark keep you awake.

• 1:32:38John Coogan?

  Yeah. Um, why not Slackforce? Why not just call it Slackforce? Is that bad? Am I on to something or no? Slackforce. It's less wordy than Salesforce Slack. But it hits both Slack and Salesforce. Still forceful. Yes, no? If you had to pick Salesforce Slack or Slackforce, which one are you going with?

• 1:33:05Jordi Hays?

  Sales.

• 1:33:06John Coogan?

  Vote over there.

• 1:33:08Jordi Hays?

  What about just the San Francisco Slackers?

• 1:33:12John Coogan?

  The San Francisco Slackers. What about just force.com?

• 1:33:17Jordi Hays?

  What about S.com?

• 1:33:19John Coogan?

  S?

• 1:33:19Jordi Hays?

  Salesforce.

• 1:33:21John Coogan?

  Nah.

• 1:33:21Jordi Hays?

  And Slack. The one-letter domain?

• 1:33:23John Coogan?

  I like just going force. Just force.

• 1:33:27Jordi Hays?

  Force would be a great name for a workplace messaging tool.

• 1:33:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, force. It's on force. It's on Bebo. Did you check force?

• 1:33:40Jordi Hays?

  I sent you a message on force.

• 1:33:42John Coogan?

  How'd you get that project done? I forced it. I forced it down the throats of my employees. I was forceful. You're being a little forceful right now. A little bit too many messages on force.

• 1:33:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, uh, best estimate of Slack's current revenue is in the two, two, two and a half billion dollar range. Salesforce overall revenue is, uh, north of 40, right? Still, uh, not a huge amount of the revenue. Um, but clearly, you know, that video, they've done a lot of exploration.

• 1:34:15John Coogan?

  Yeah, they're, they're thinking about it.

• 1:34:16Jordi Hays?

  They're thinking about it.

• 1:34:17John Coogan?

  So between, final answer, between Salesforce, keep it classic, force, force.com, Salesforce Slack and Slackforce, which one are you going with?

• 1:34:32Jordi Hays?

  Salesforce.

• 1:34:33John Coogan?

  You're, you're staying with Salesforce. What about you, Tyler?

• 1:34:35Jordi Hays?

  Salesforce.

• 1:34:36Speaker 06

  I like Slackforce.

• 1:34:36John Coogan?

  You like Slackforce?

• 1:34:37Speaker 06

  I think Salesforce Slack is the worst of all those.

• 1:34:39John Coogan?

  Okay, okay. You would rank that?

• 1:34:41Jordi Hays?

  I think that, I think that Salesforce is, and I, is, is an iconic brand that's rate, waiting to be revitalized. I think some of the marketing historically has just been, uh, somewhat, uh, I'm not going to say it. Uh, boomer coded, said it. Um, like just the random, just the random, like Matthew McConaughey being, you know.

• 1:35:06John Coogan?

  Iconic.

• 1:35:06Jordi Hays?

  Um, he's, he's iconic, but, uh, I think that there's more that they can do to.

• 1:35:12John Coogan?

  It does, when I see it.

• 1:35:13Jordi Hays?

  Properly cherish the Salesforce.

• 1:35:15John Coogan?

  Yeah, when I see Matthew McConaughey in a Salesforce ad, I do think I need to buy a Lincoln Navigator, which is maybe like a bad sign.

• 1:35:23Jordi Hays?

  Oh yeah, cause he's also.

• 1:35:25John Coogan?

  Yeah, he has that amazing Lincoln where he's driving, giving the talk. Uh, it's such a good ad. And that one was such a good ad that it was parody in, in SNL, uh, by Jim Carrey, I believe. And so it had a whole like meta story to it. It really broke through.

• 1:35:38Jordi Hays?

  And so I think what you're getting at is they need to get, you know, Timothy Chalamet or, or Jacob Elordi to be the new face.

• 1:35:45John Coogan?

  That'd be great. Yeah.

• 1:35:45Jordi Hays?

  Someone, someone, a zoomer.

• 1:35:47John Coogan?

  Yeah, zoomer actor would be good. Uh, fifth option. What if he rebrands the whole thing to just Benioff and Co?

• 1:35:55Jordi Hays?

  I like that.

• 1:35:56John Coogan?

  Would that be your top?

• 1:35:57Jordi Hays?

  Buy Benioff.

• 1:35:58John Coogan?

  Benioff, Benioff and.

• 1:36:00Jordi Hays?

  Software solutions you can depend on.

• 1:36:02John Coogan?

  He's a singular founder, CEO, you know, he's not a hired gun. He's not going anywhere. It's his one major project. He doesn't have other companies.

• 1:36:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, another point. They just had Mr. Beast do a commercial though, according to Jay. Uh, yeah, the, the challenge is like that. That commercial, I don't, I don't know any people that, that unironically watch Mr. Beast that buy enterprise software.

• 1:36:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:28Jordi Hays?

  And so it just felt like super random.

• 1:36:30John Coogan?

  Well, I, I unironically watch Mr. Beast, but as a student of the craft of YouTube video creation.

• 1:36:36Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 1:36:37John Coogan?

  And I will be like, wow, okay. How is he using CGI? How is he editing?

• 1:36:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but, but the, the majority of, the majority of the audience are not sitting there saying.

• 1:36:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:46Jordi Hays?

  Oh, Mr. Beast, I gotta use Salesforce CRM because Mr. Beast promoted it.

• 1:36:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:52Jordi Hays?

  They're not thinking about CRMs.

• 1:36:54John Coogan?

  There's a little bit of like, I guess if you get people really young and they get to work and they're in Slack, they have a positive connotation. They go and start companies and they start with Slack and then they grow from there, but that's a long.

• 1:37:07Jordi Hays?

  JR says Salesforce by Benioff.

• 1:37:12John Coogan?

  Benioff.

• 1:37:12Jordi Hays?

  Sales by Benioff.

• 1:37:13John Coogan?

  Sales by Benioff is like a high fashion, like Mark by Mark Jacob.

• 1:37:17Jordi Hays?

  Mark by Benioff.

• 1:37:19John Coogan?

  Mark by Mark Benioff. Slack by Mark Benioff. He didn't even start the company. Yeah, I would not give up. I, I, Salesforce, I still think Salesforce is a great name.

• 1:37:31John Coogan?

  Anyway, uh, okay. So, uh, let's go to Mitchell Hashimoto, founder of Hashimoto, HashiCorp. Uh, he says, "It's so incredi-- I'm so incredibly tired of seeing low effort AI-designed webpages. I basically bounce off any new product immediately when I see it. Never get a chance to judge the product itself. Lots of thin lines, glowy styles, inconsistent fonts, lots of monospace. You know who you are." Noddy, noddy. And Jordan Singer says, "This is an instant sign that I won't want to use your product. If you can't take the time to craft something that should sell me, I can't trust that you took the time for the rest of the product." Interesting. What do you think about slop pages?

• 1:38:11John Coogan?

  I think the AI-designed webpages are best when it's part of the point. Like, it's, it's, it's like, it's specifically like a product that would never exist without slop generation. And so it's like, oh, you made a whole--

• 1:38:30Jordi Hays?

  Part of it is you can--

• 1:38:31John Coogan?

  Interactive video game for your friends.

• 1:38:33Jordi Hays?

  You can figure out a unique design and still implement it quickly using AI. But if you just, just try to one-shot it, then--

• 1:38:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:42Jordi Hays?

  It's low effort.

• 1:38:43John Coogan?

  It's the same thing with like, uh, the, the, the Suno story of like, I'm not really listening to like, actual heavy metal generated by Suno, but give me a song about John Quinn, the most feared lawyer from Quinn Emanuel, that's heavy metal, I'm in. And I actually am listening to that song, but only because it can only exist in the context of the AI--

• 1:39:04Jordi Hays?

  Tetra says, "Depends on who you're selling to. Ninety-nine percent of the time, ugly sites perform better." Uh, good point, but I would say that these AI-generated websites are trying to look like super beautiful, interactive. I would actually like, um, uh, you know, the, the, the AI website that you generated, uh, Berkshire. Uh, you generated like a clone of Berkshire.

• 1:39:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:30Jordi Hays?

  Um, that probably would perform well--

• 1:39:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:34Jordi Hays?

  If you--

• 1:39:35John Coogan?

  It also would have taken like five minutes to hand code because it's such a simple website. But, uh, it was fun. And it was my first introduction to like vibe coding, like a front-end website and based on a style guide. Um, I've since gone on and built other, uh, vibe-coded websites. And, uh, I don't try and act like they're not vibe-coded, like they lean into the idea of, uh, of the fact that this is a website that would never exist in reality and only makes sense as a, as a vibe-coded product. Um, speaking of vibe-coded products, if you vibe-coded a product and you're trying to launch it, don't use another AI company's--

• 1:40:12Jordi Hays?

  Phone Farm.

• 1:40:14John Coogan?

  Phone Farm?

• 1:40:15Jordi Hays?

  There's--

• 1:40:15John Coogan?

  It's Phone Farm.

• 1:40:15Jordi Hays?

  Oh, is that where you're, I thought that's--

• 1:40:17John Coogan?

  No, I was talking about this post where someone tried to introduce, uh, like Claude for marketing and they're clearly using the Claude trademark against Anthropic's--

• 1:40:24Jordi Hays?

  No, but, but what I'm saying--

• 1:40:25John Coogan?

  Don't do--

• 1:40:26Jordi Hays?

  No, I, I mean, part of why I think it was maybe deleted is that they delete, the video was deleted now, but this was a video of a company that made basically a robot that you put over a real phone and it's an undetectable way to drive engagement online--

• 1:40:43John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:40:44Jordi Hays?

  Uh--

• 1:40:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:46Jordi Hays?

  Using, using phone farms, basically.

• 1:40:48John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:49Jordi Hays?

  Uh, so this company is called phonefarm.ai is the website. Uh, and they say, "Run unlimited accounts on autopilot. Post 10,000 videos a day." So if you're a creator out there, you're trying to put out a 10,000 videos, really trying to, um, you know, get your reps in. You could just do that in a day. You don't need to spend years honing your craft or anything like that. You just do it all at once. Um, but yeah, it does seem, uh, yeah, it's so funny the way they sell this viral content manufactured. Um, this has been going on a ton with, uh, launch videos where you'll

• 1:41:28Jordi Hays?

  see a launch video that, that just has, you know, thousand, like a thousand, uh, reposts and there's not really any real engagement. So I don't think this stuff works and you're not really tricking anyone except other bots.

• 1:41:44John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:41:45Jordi Hays?

  Uh, here's the video. Let's pull it up.

• 1:41:50John Coogan?

  Let's see.

• 1:41:50Jordi Hays?

  It's coming.

• 1:41:51John Coogan?

  Cell phone. Oh, that's a good one.

• 1:41:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, here we go. Look at this, John.

• 1:41:55John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:41:59John Coogan?

  And is this a device that you can buy? Or is this a service that you pay them to do?

• 1:42:05Jordi Hays?

  You can, uh, it sounds like you can get a, a cloud version of it, but you also-- It sounds like they'll also sell you the robot.

• 1:42:12John Coogan?

  This is the dead internet thesis now. It's not just dead area, dead internet theory. It's how do we make money off of this?

• 1:42:22John Coogan?

  Is there any good use of this technology? What is the white pill?

• 1:42:31John Coogan?

  It seems extremely adversarial. The best I can come up with would be--

• 1:42:37John Coogan?

  as a joke, sending you a thousand positive comments on your last Instagram post or something. And you're just like, why is this going viral? But even that is likely to sort of nuke your account when it's discovered that you're followed by bots and stuff.

• 1:42:53Jordi Hays?

  Internet reality.

• 1:42:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:55Jordi Hays?

  Cooper, no white pill.

• 1:42:57John Coogan?

  We're trying, buddy. We're trying here. We're doing our best. Um, testing, testing, quality assurance testing. If you are Instagram, you want to run your app across a bunch of different devices for a very long time, see if there's a memory leak, uh, having, uh, a bunch of phones in the cloud makes sense. So testing, testing is, uh, is the, is the only viable white pill here, maybe? I don't know. Can you come up with that?

• 1:43:29John Coogan?

  No. Yeah. I don't know.

• 1:43:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, rough.

• 1:43:34John Coogan?

  Rough. Anyway, uh, speaking of cell phones--

• 1:43:37Jordi Hays?

  Just do, uh, make, make great things. Do, make content that's interesting.

• 1:43:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:44Jordi Hays?

  And, uh, you'll get real attention.

• 1:43:46John Coogan?

  This is--

• 1:43:47Jordi Hays?

  The funny thing with, the funny thing with, yeah, the funny thing with, uh, like, people are very immune to this stuff right now. So if they see a product launch and it has 5,000 likes and a thousand reposts--

• 1:43:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:58Jordi Hays?

  They're still human.

• 1:43:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:00Jordi Hays?

  If they, maybe it makes them like engage more for a second with the content because it's in their feed. They're like, what is this? But the thing still has to be great.

• 1:44:10John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:10Jordi Hays?

  And if you make something great, you'll just naturally get the attention as a byproduct.

• 1:44:15John Coogan?

  Yeah. Good point. Uh, well, this is a good post to close on. Cell phone. Self-own. They played us for absolute fools.

• 1:44:25Jordi Hays?

  Banger.

• 1:44:26John Coogan?

  What did they mean by calling the cell phone so close to self-own? Uh, no. Have a great weekend. Have a great rest of your Friday. Have a great two weeks. We're taking a vacation. We will be back in September, everyone. Play the wah-wah. Uh, no, we, we, uh, the, the end of August, we are taking a two-week break from the show. We'll be--

• 1:44:53Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 1:44:54John Coogan?

  Back in September. We have--

• 1:44:56Jordi Hays?

  New season.

• 1:44:56John Coogan?

  Crazy stuff lined up for the new season. We're very excited for that. We will be back in September. So sign for our newsletter. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Say goodbye to Ben Macklin. Uh, he's--

• 1:45:10Jordi Hays?

  We'll see you next summer, Ben.

• 1:45:12John Coogan?

  And we will be back in the fall for fall, for fall.

• 1:45:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I know. It, it, it's, um--

• 1:45:19John Coogan?

  Very Euro-coded of us.

• 1:45:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's, uh, it's, um, it's, um, we don't enjoy, we don't enjoy taking time off around here. Uh, we rarely do.

• 1:45:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:29Jordi Hays?

  But we think it's important to give, uh, the whole team a, a proper, uh, break. Uh, this work is relentless.

• 1:45:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:37Jordi Hays?

  Uh, you cannot, you cannot rest on any laurels, even if you have a bunch of laurels at the office. You start resting on them, there's no show. Uh, and so we figured it'd be good to let, uh, let the whole team, uh, take--

• 1:45:50John Coogan?

  Regret.

• 1:45:51Jordi Hays?

  Take some time away. And, uh, I can't wait to be back.

• 1:45:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:55Jordi Hays?

  Already. We love, we absolutely love what we do.

• 1:45:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 1:45:59Jordi Hays?

  And, uh, it's a blessing. And counting down the days.

• 1:46:03John Coogan?

  Counting down the days.

• 1:46:04Jordi Hays?

  Just, just, just like, how many more sleeps is it?

• 1:46:07John Coogan?

  Sixteen, seventeen.

• 1:46:09Jordi Hays?

  Something like that.

• 1:46:09John Coogan?

  Something like that.

• 1:46:10Jordi Hays?

  So we'll be reminding the team every day, just 16 more sleeps, everybody.

• 1:46:15John Coogan?

  Have a good week. Have a good next--

• 1:46:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Enjoy the, enjoy the last couple of weeks of like proper summer. I feel like September comes around, it's over.

• 1:46:22John Coogan?

  It's over.

• 1:46:23Jordi Hays?

  It's time to get back in the mines.

• 1:46:24John Coogan?

  We will be back.

• 1:46:26Jordi Hays?

  We'll see you soon. We love you guys. Cheers.

• 1:46:30John Coogan?

  September first.