Trump's Tech Career, Power Tools, Say His Name, G650 vs BBJ

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

• 0:00John Coogan?

  Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. Today, we are telling the story of Donald Trump, not because it's the day before the election, not because this is a political show, this is a tech show, we never discuss politics.

• 0:14Jordi Hays?

  I don't actually think a single political subject, I don't think we've, we have yet to cover a single political topic.

• 0:21John Coogan?

  I'm blissfully unaware.

• 0:22Jordi Hays?

  And we're not going to start today.

• 0:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, not going to start today, but we are covering Donald Trump today, not because he's the former president, not because he's running for president again, we are covering him because he is a tech founder. And we need to talk about the technology angle of the tech company he started, Truth Social. I've had a running joke for a while with a bunch of friends that, you know, Donald Trump might be the best tech entrepreneur of the last two or three years, and yeah, obviously, it's, it's a kind of a silly thing because people don't think about Trump as a tech founder, but if you actually look at the numbers, I couldn't name another company that got to a $10 billion valuation in tech in less than two years in this recent cycle.

• 1:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's one of those things, you can, you know, saying, is somebody good or bad? Is usually very objective, but in this case, there's metrics that we can discuss, and going from zero to 2 billion in two years.

• 1:24John Coogan?

  10 billion.

• 1:25Jordi Hays?

  Sorry, zero, zero to 10 billion.

• 1:27John Coogan?

  The stock's at 6 billion now.

• 1:28Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:28John Coogan?

  And it's been three years, I guess.

• 1:30Jordi Hays?

  It's a little bit volatile, which we'll get into, but.

• 1:33John Coogan?

  But it's crazy because everyone did expect it just to completely rug and be worthless, and I don't know, maybe that'll still happen, nothing here is financial advice, but it's, it's just a fascinating story of like how one of these major celebrity deals gets done, how people as big and larger than life than, than Trump work, and there was a big deep dive in The Economist that we're going to kind of use as the backbone of research.

• 2:00John Coogan?

  Truth Social called it a hit piece. I think it's actually pretty neutral. You come away from it just kind of learning some things. There's some good, there's some bad, and we'll kind of go into what that hit piece means. But let's, let's start, you know, back in 2016, Trump was kind of this outsider candidate. He was the first, I think he was the first president to never hold elected office of any kind before winning. And he ran this very unorthodox campaign, tons of just posting on Twitter.

• 2:29Jordi Hays?

  Only the best.

• 2:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, I think.

• 2:30Jordi Hays?

  Why would you want any other role?

• 2:31John Coogan?

  I think at one point, he was posting something like 40 times a day. And I think during his presidency, he posted something like 50,000 times or something like that.

• 2:40Jordi Hays?

  He puts us to shame.

• 2:41John Coogan?

  I know, legendary poster.

• 2:42Jordi Hays?

  And he had been on the record on, there's like a very specific interview, I think it's back in the 90s, maybe early to, I think 90s, maybe 80s, where he like explicitly says, like, I wouldn't want to be a part of, you know, public office.

• 2:59John Coogan?

  Really?

• 2:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:00John Coogan?

  Oh, I don't know that. Interesting. I know that, I mean, he's had like an obsession with the media and kind of understood, understood the, like, the asymptotic returns that come from being a media personality for a long time. He had this rule early on that was like, he would never turn down an opportunity to be on TV.

• 3:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:18John Coogan?

  No matter what it was, even if it was going to be bad, he was like, I just want the exposure. I, because exposure is just so important.

• 3:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, he's the original, like, he's the poster child of like, no attention is bad attention.

• 3:31John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 3:31Jordi Hays?

  Almost.

• 3:31John Coogan?

  Yep. Yeah. And he, and there's that story about how he like fought tooth and nail to get on the billionaires list, on the Forbes list. And it was like.

• 3:38Jordi Hays?

  Everybody else, all the other billionaires.

• 3:40John Coogan?

  Or like, don't put me on that.

• 3:41Jordi Hays?

  Like, like paying to get taken off of it. He's just like, whatever.

• 3:44John Coogan?

  I don't want to be a hostage.

• 3:45Jordi Hays?

  Whatever the price. Yeah.

• 3:46John Coogan?

  You know, I don't want to be extorted. And Trump's like, please. But yeah, I mean, during the, during the Trump administration, or during like, one of these sagas, there's always a question about like, what is Trump actually worth? And there was always, and he, his, his argument was like, well, I'm a billionaire because I have like brand equity.

• 4:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 4:03John Coogan?

  And it's very funny because now, he's kind of converted that brand equity in some way to this like meme stock. And it's like, you know, it's kind of liquid, and he kind of does have a lot of money now. So it's hard, it's much harder to make the argument that he's not a billionaire now.

• 4:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I think he had gone through in, you know, he had seen how owning a business is a great way to convert influence into EBITDA, right? Where like there was like a huge amount of the the pressure over the years and sort of naysayers were saying, oh, he uses Mar-a-Lago as a way for people to buy favor with the Trump family in a similar way that, um, you know, Hunter Biden has has had an esteemed art career as well.

• 4:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:49Jordi Hays?

  Um, which is, you know, one could argue that that's another way.

• 4:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 4:54Jordi Hays?

  Um, but I think that could get a little political.

• 4:55John Coogan?

  Yeah, so I think the whole story starts essentially right after January 6th. Massive riot at the Capitol, lot of pressure on Trump and the tech community kind of comes together and deplatforms him all simultaneously. He gets his Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Snapchat and his beloved Twitter account. Um, he gets kicked off of all of those and he got deplatformed from like Shopify and a bunch of other things. I think there was a rumor at the time that they were like all the CEOs were just in a group chat together. And so there were, there was a little bit of moment where it was like, okay, shutting down this, he's still the sitting president because the inauguration was on the 20th. Um, kicking the, the, the sitting president off of social media is cra- is a crazy move.

• 5:40John Coogan?

  So they had to all be in like unison and be like, yeah, we're all going to do this.

• 5:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 5:44John Coogan?

  Um, and a lot of, a lot of pushback at the time, even though January 6th was really crazy, but what's interesting is that within just a few days, like there was a plan in place for Truth Social. So, um, this all, this all started when a pair of former contestants on Trump's reality TV show, The Apprentice, Wesley Moss, who's a financial advisor and actually has a YouTube channel with like 20K subs, this guy Wes Moss, uh, he talks about like how to retire early, um, and, uh, and this.

• 6:16Jordi Hays?

  How to retire early.

• 6:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Jordi Hays?

  Back a company to 10 billion.

• 6:19John Coogan?

  Wait until you hear the end of the story. I'm not kidding. Uh, and then Andrew Dean Latinsky, who is a Harvard grad, he now goes by, uh, Andy Dean, I think, um, and has a radio show. Um, but these two guys, these two former apprentice, uh, contestants show up to Mar-a-Lago and over, uh,

• 6:42John Coogan?

  They meet with Trump on January 26th, so just six days after January 6th. Like, the dust has very much not settled.

• 6:49Jordi Hays?

  Not wasting any time.

• 6:50John Coogan?

  And they, and they meet with him, they share cheeseburgers, and they describe their vision for like Trump's new media empire. Which is crazy. I mean, my, my takeaway is obviously like, you know, uh, working with Trump is like, you know, like extremely volatile. There's a lot of things that could go wrong, but um, the, the takeaway for me is just like, if you have the opportunity to go to like a billionaire's mansion who has like an insane amount of some sort of cornered asset in Trump's, in Trump's case.

• 7:16Jordi Hays?

  Social capital.

• 7:17John Coogan?

  It's like social capital, but even if it's like somebody who's like, oh yeah, they're sitting on like massive forest reserves or like water rights. And like, you have a chance to go there and sell them on a vision for like,

• 7:26Jordi Hays?

  How to leverage that.

• 7:27John Coogan?

  Next.

• 7:28Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 7:28John Coogan?

  That's going to be extremely, extremely valuable.

• 7:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's an example of, you know, the market is efficient in some ways, but deeply inefficient in other ways.

• 7:37John Coogan?

  Yep, yep.

• 7:38Jordi Hays?

  I have a friend who is a health and wellness influencer, and basically the first person that came and pitched him on doing a supplement company. He was just like, sure, that sounds great.

• 7:47John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 7:47Jordi Hays?

  The business does like, you know, millions of dollars a year in revenue now.

• 7:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Jordi Hays?

  So you can just do things, you can just pitch things, right? And these guys, like, you know, had they waited even another few weeks, maybe the opportunity never would have happened.

• 8:00John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. It's not like these guys were like ex-Facebook, ex-Twitter, like really established in social media. They just had the connection to Trump through the show, clearly like a lot of energy, and you'll see that throughout this, this story. Like, the, the dates, we'll go over the dates, and it's like major milestone every like three months. Like, the speed of execution here is, is very remarkable, faster than what I would think would be possible, given the scale of the operation. So they go to, they go to Mar-a-Lago, they, they, they pitch it, and they kind of break down this idea of this Truth Social new media offering. They're talking about a streaming service, online payments network, a social media platform, and can you guess what the deal terms were?

• 8:42John Coogan?

  This is fascinating to me because we know a lot of companies that have done deals with celebrities. And it ranges all the way from like, oh, we just paid them a CPM deal and they posted on their Instagram to, oh, we gave them a couple of points of equity to like these 50/50 deals that happen every once in a while. I know some people that just did one of those. In this case, Trump got 90% of the new company.

• 9:04Jordi Hays?

  Which in hindsight is very fair. Considering that the real enterprise value is, there's almost a direct line between the company's enterprise value and Trump's social capital. And you can see the fluctuations there. It's interesting, I would love to, I don't know if this will ever be shared, but I wonder if there were other competing bids? And people were like, there's no way we can give him 90% of the cap table. Like, that would never make sense. And those people left like a billion dollars on the table, basically.

• 9:31John Coogan?

  Yeah, for when it was trading at 10 billion, it's literally a billion. And so these guys got, I mean, they split the rest. So I think Wes and Andy got maybe 5% each. And then, of course, there were dilution and equity grants after that. But still, like, when you think about where they were going, and they clearly had a vision of like a billion dollar, multi-billion dollar exit, essentially. Like, pretty good terms for not, you know, for like a couple of years of work, basically. And so they are trying to set up financing, but instead of going, I think they actually did pitch this in the valley. And I think some VC firms passed on like a traditional deal. But very quickly, they go straight to-

• 10:11Jordi Hays?

  Because the VCs would look at it and be like, alright, you have a non-operating partner with 90%.

• 10:17John Coogan?

  It just violates every rule.

• 10:18Jordi Hays?

  Doesn't back out. Yeah, you would have to be very contrarian to do it.

• 10:21John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, extremely. And then there's also all this volatility about like, okay, well, if Trump runs again, maybe he'll deprioritize Truth Social. Or if he wins, then that could invite a whole bunch of other scrutiny. It's like, there's so many failure modes, it totally makes sense not to do it if you're a traditional VC. Even if you're hunting for like, oh, something that's edgy, it's still really risky. And so they decided to go the SPAC route. This was 2021, SPACs were like super, super hot there. I I I actually haven't been involved in a SPAC. I know you know some guys who've done them. But I think most people think about a SPAC as like going public in the sense that like the company drives the process and says like, we are going public. Okay, like now we have done that.

• 11:06John Coogan?

  But with SPACs, it's much more like, like the SPACs exist. There were like three hundred and twenty-six different SPACs, which are these, you know, special purpose acquisition companies. They're holding companies, blank checks. So they they IPO the company with like basically no financials. So it's a very simple process with the SEC. It gets approved. It has a stock ticker, but it's just trading at the value of the cash. And then they go and acquire a business that exists. And then, once they, once they do that acquisition, they can rebrand or rename the ticker. And then the company's public. So the company doesn't need to go through all the traditional process and all the oversight. So it happened a ton, a lot of them.

• 11:42Jordi Hays?

  Beautiful financial innovation.

• 11:44John Coogan?

  Incredible. And I'm sure it'll be back. And it actually, like, SPACs are not entirely new. Something that was like revitalized in twenty twenty, twenty twenty-one. They've existed for a while, these like reverse mergers. But Moss and and and Litinsky, Andy and Wes, these guys start calling all the different SPACs that are out there to try and get them to bite on the Truth Social deal. And so they call three hundred and twenty-six candidates, which is hilarious because you know Chamath got a call.

• 12:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 12:14John Coogan?

  Because he had like seven different, he had like IPO A, IPO B, IPO C, IPO D at the time. And they were definitely like.

• 12:20Jordi Hays?

  You would have kept going, too.

• 12:22John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. Like, you have so many of these, like, let's, let's do it. But everyone passed, essentially, for, for reasonable reasons. Liberals wouldn't touch it. Even those who agreed to meet were wary. Many said no right away. At least one person yelled. Like, get out of my office. I don't want anything to do with you. There's this funny quote.

• 12:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you have to think about how toxic the Trump brand was then, right?

• 12:47John Coogan?

  It was post-Jan 6th.

• 12:49Jordi Hays?

  Couldn't have been more.

• 12:50John Coogan?

  Now there's been this like.

• 12:51Jordi Hays?

  Anybody, anybody that was passing, like, had, like, infinite reasons to pass, even if they thought it could do well.

• 12:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Jordi Hays?

  It just almost wasn't worth the career risk for anybody to go and do that.

• 13:01John Coogan?

  Even the people who liked Trump and maybe they supported him in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty, it's like, it was very clear that Trump's like star was waning at that moment. This whole twenty twenty-four cycle has just been like. A surprising revival of the Trump brand. But there's

• 13:16Jordi Hays?

  And a case study on the human spirit.

• 13:18John Coogan?

  Yes, yes. But there's this interesting quote from Meredith Merger, which was one of the SPACs that like talked on the record about it. Said, I was like, I don't want to be on half the country's radar. I don't want anyone looking up my name. I have kids. And he said, once he started to dig in, he was like, it looked like a quick cash grab rather than a long lasting business venture. We don't do the cult of personality thing. And so, you know, Adam and Wes start, they keep calling it. Eventually they find this guy, this swaggering Miami based investor named Patrick Orlando. What a great name for a guy based in Florida. Patrick Orlando.

• 13:55Jordi Hays?

  Indomitable determinism.

• 13:56John Coogan?

  Essentially, it's great. And so

• 13:59Jordi Hays?

  It'd be great. We gotta, we should do a deep dive. He might be brother of the week at some point.

• 14:03John Coogan?

  Maybe, yeah. And so Patrick Orlando had already taken one of these blank check companies public. He was sitting on a SPAC. It's a search fund. It's just like the Harvard MBA that raises 10 mil to go buy some HVAC company, but on a much bigger scale, raising maybe 100 million and then, and then going and finding the, the business. And during this

• 14:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this time there was so, people that, all those hundreds of SPACs out there were going and hitting up every possible, like they were, there was way more SPACs than there were qualified companies, right? And so

• 14:38John Coogan?

  I was golfing with an investment banker around this time and, and he was like, oh, like your company Lucy might be a target for a SPAC, right? And I was like, no, like we're like pretty small still. Like this wouldn't make sense. We wouldn't want to be a public company.

• 14:51Jordi Hays?

  He's like

• 14:52John Coogan?

  And he was like, and he was like, well, what's wrong? Like, is your cost structure not big enough? That was the problem. It wasn't the revenue. It was like, but if we could have justified, like, oh yeah, we're burning 100 million dollars a year, so it totally makes sense. That would have been justification to SPAC, not the revenue. Cause the revenue is immaterial.

• 15:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and there was, there was so much capital available at that time. It basically was a last resort for most companies where if you couldn't really go public and you couldn't access private capital.

• 15:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:21Jordi Hays?

  That was the best route.

• 15:23John Coogan?

  Yeah. And then also like

• 15:25Jordi Hays?

  Which had a huge adverse selection problem.

• 15:28John Coogan?

  Yeah. And also that I feel like there'd just been this massive drought in like liquidity for VC funds. For a long time where like the companies were all marked really high and they were great, but there was just no actual payouts to any LPs. And so if you had like, maybe you were holding on to some power law winners that would like IPO properly, but if you could get some early liquidity and just kind of clean up your portfolio by spacking a bunch of things, that felt pretty good because you could distribute the shares. Now, of course, what happened was that a lot of these companies got locked up and then the stocks tanked and so the LPs got dumped on and didn't really wind up with anything good. But, um, but yeah, I mean, around this time, like Trump was really, really anxious to rejoin social media and just kind of get his content game back up.

• 16:07Jordi Hays?

  He's a poster.

• 16:07John Coogan?

  He's a poster.

• 16:08Jordi Hays?

  He's a poster, just like the founding fathers.

• 16:10John Coogan?

  I, I didn't know he did this, but he, he started a blog called From the Desk of Donald J. Trump. And, uh, and, and he was thinking about like going direct and kind of doing his own thing. Um, and there was a lot of tension about this deal, but eventually they got it done. And so on June 4th, 2021, Trump in Orlando signed a preliminary agreement to work together as far as Moss and Latinsky were concerned, that the money was coming. Now all they had to do was build the company. So think about this, Jan 6th, insane riot, like the worst press for anyone in the entire world, like.

• 16:42Jordi Hays?

  Really dark time.

• 16:43John Coogan?

  Getting impeached, I think around that time too, like very quickly, like just miserable. The Jan 26th, they meet, have cheeseburgers at Mar-a-Lago and are like, let's do this thing. And then June 4th, less than six months later, they're like, okay, we have the money lined up, we're going public with this company.

• 16:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 16:59John Coogan?

  Insane. You can just do this. It's crazy. Um, so.

• 17:02Jordi Hays?

  Cheeseburgers, he could have been having cheeseburgers at the Rosewood.

• 17:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Jordi Hays?

  Instead he was on the, in Florida.

• 17:08John Coogan?

  Mar-a-Lago.

• 17:08Jordi Hays?

  At Mar-a-Lago.

• 17:09John Coogan?

  And so, uh, they bring in on this guy, Josh Adams, who doesn't exist online. And he brings on Billy Boozer as technology officers. And so.

• 17:19Jordi Hays?

  Great names.

• 17:20John Coogan?

  Billy, I know, Josh Adams and Billy Boozer. So Billy Boozer's a, a, a tech guy. And they start building this, uh, this group of software developers because they're actually going to go, going to go build this thing now that they have the funding lined up. And so they're doing a lot of interesting things. They're working out this WeWork in Atlanta. And, uh, and, and, and like, it's basically all like. Tech developers, engineers who have dropped out of society, or hardcore libertarians, or living off the grid, and then the entire management team is just former apprentice.

• 17:52Jordi Hays?

  Stars.

• 17:53John Coogan?

  Stars. It says, "At one point, there were three or four of the people there were contestants on The Apprentice." So they're just like, "Okay, we need somebody in a suit to do biz dev, get a charismatic person who's been on TV." It's kind of genius. I really think we need a new apprentice.

• 18:12Jordi Hays?

  It is funny, though, because that's kind of how hiring generally works. It's like, "Oh, yeah, I worked with this guy like six or seven years ago. He's good, I trust him. He's just the best guy for the job that you're aware of at that time." And all it takes is one text message and a call, and he's like, "Cool, let's do it."

• 18:28John Coogan?

  Yeah. We really need a new apprentice. Maybe we should do it. Something that's like Mr. Beastified for the next generation. Hit us up in the comments if you want to be on our apprentice show. And then they bring on this remote software engineer from Macedonia, and they're basically forking Mastodon. Are you familiar with this open source project? And so they're using a lot of that as the base code to build the network. And it's pretty janky in the early stage, very much like a fork of this thing, doesn't really look really good. But they all have faith that Adams and Boozer and these other guys will fix it up before they launch.

• 19:10Jordi Hays?

  Move fast and break things work for Meta. It'll work for Truth.

• 19:13John Coogan?

  Yeah. And so a lot of people at the company are basically just blackpilled on social media generally because of the deplatforming. And so they're all there on a mission, just saying, "Okay." It seems like they all support Trump generally, but they're more there about free speech and the importance of an open platform. And that's kind of how all these things get started. Even Mastodon, I think, got started in the same way. Blue Sky had the same thing. And there's been a couple other... There's so many of these clones at this point. I think Jack Dorsey's working on a new one. There's that crypto one. And and and the whole

• 19:52Jordi Hays?

  Farcaster.

• 19:53John Coogan?

  Farcaster, yeah, and the whole and the whole plan is always like, we're gonna be more open, more consistent, less, you know, mercurial about the policies and whatnot. And so, uh, these, the, the, the developers, they, they're quoted here saying, they found it outrageous that Twitter had suspended Trump's account. The problem, as they saw it, was pressure from corporate advertisers, whose play it safe attitudes, Adam summed up as, you can't put our brand right next to the guy that's saying all the mean words. And I kind of get that, like, you know, if you're at, if you're at Twitter and, and every advertiser is calling you, like, I don't want my, I don't want my ads appearing next to Trump. But what, what I always found weird was like, the advertisers never had a problem advertising

• 20:35John Coogan?

  in the middle of like a Trump rally that was being advertised, or that was being broadcast on NBC or at CNN. It was only later when it was like, okay, Trump's like this really

• 20:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's kind of a cop out of being like, oh, we're getting all this pressure from this other group. And you're just like putting the, putting the blame on them versus taking responsibility as a platform. Cause it's, it's a lot, you know, having like a programmatic ad is just dramatically different than a podcast ad.

• 20:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Jordi Hays?

  Where there actually, actually is like an endorsement happening.

• 21:03John Coogan?

  Yeah. And you, and you'd think that like, yeah, people would be able to segment out like, okay, this ad clearly is not related to this, in this incendiary tweet. And usually like, if you're an anti-Trump guy, like, the algorithm will serve you like the quote tweet that's dunking on him.

• 21:18Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 21:19John Coogan?

  So like, you're, it's not, it's very rare that you're seeing just like, pure Trump tweets that are like

• 21:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and the platforms, you have to imagine there's millions and tens of millions of people who would only use the platforms to consume Trump content.

• 21:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:34Jordi Hays?

  And so the plat, it wasn't the platform's incentive to boot him, right? Cause they're just in the business of capturing attention and monetizing it.

• 21:41John Coogan?

  And that was the story of All of the Trump rallies that got broadcast on CNN and NBC prior to the 2016 election. Like that, those were phenomenal for ratings. So everyone had these incentives aligned to promote Trump. And he got so much earned media and so much free press just because he was like the clown who was polling at like 3%. But then he won and everyone was like, oh shit, we should probably like not do that if we care about, you know, blocking him from being the president.

• 22:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 22:07John Coogan?

  And so now he's been much more like, you know, constrained, um, although he's made obviously a comeback in the 2024 cycle. And he's been much more platformed this time around, uh, mostly due to X and, and other like podcasts. Obviously did like a million podcasts and hasn't had any problem with those. Like, it is, it is weird because, you know, technically like when, when Andrew Tate got deplatformed. It wasn't just that they banned the Andrew Tate accounts. They actually would ban like Tate Fan Club number 65 and that.

• 22:37Jordi Hays?

  Cause that was his whole acquisition strategy was this like affiliate.

• 22:41John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 22:41Jordi Hays?

  Model.

• 22:42John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 22:42Jordi Hays?

  Where anybody could monetize the Tate brand.

• 22:45John Coogan?

  Yep. And so he would go on a live stream, talk for like three hours. His little minions would like clip it and then go viral with those and then be selling.

• 22:53Jordi Hays?

  A lot of those people that were clipping had more ARR than average YC batch.

• 23:00John Coogan?

  Yeah. But, uh, but, but that was like a, that was another like unique like moment in like, you know, platform censorship or deplatforming. Because it wasn't just Andrew Tate's account that got banned. It was, uh, it was people that were posting Andrew Tate content. And so there was a worry at the time that the same thing would apply to Trump. And if Rogan had Trump on, Rogan would lose his YouTube account. But that didn't happen because I think there was just like too much pressure, too much pushback, which I think is good. Because like Rogan should be able to talk to whoever he wants.

• 23:29Jordi Hays?

  It's also very different that the Tate minion accounts were purely trying to sell Andrew Tate courses. Whereas if Joe Rogan is covering something in the news, it's just news.

• 23:40John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly. And so the first decision that they really have to make at Truth Social is the, is kind of the monetization model, like the business model. And so they, they have this, they don't want pressure from advertisers because that was the whole thing that started this problem with, um. With Trump getting kicked off of all the major social media platforms. And so they were thinking about either charging for the service itself, like, you know, $10 a month just to go on it, like Spotify, or do something else. They had this idea and they landed on this business model similar to the one used by Twitch, the video streaming site where most of the content is free, but fans can tip or subscribe to creators and the site takes a cut of that.

• 24:21John Coogan?

  And this is an interesting question that I think I keep coming back to as I dig into the Truth Social story is like, how much, like, whether you think it went right or wrong, that's kind of an exercise for the listener. But the question is, is, are the problems or benefits due to strategy or execution?

• 24:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 24:43John Coogan?

  Because I think that if you went to like, you know, Ben Thompson, who studies, you know, these platforms at Stratechery and asked him, you know, what the best business model is for a social network, he would almost, he would want you to push to like the extreme ends. And that's what he was advocating for on Twitter. He was saying like, you either need to be completely free and tons of ads that are really well targeted and kind of be the aggregator like Meta. And that's why Meta has done really well, even post ATT. And when Apple pulled back on all the targeted ads, Apple's, Meta's been doing really, really well, or you need to be completely closed, pay only, paywall only, like what Ben does at Stratechery.

• 25:25Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 25:26John Coogan?

  Where, you know, you only pay for everything.

• 25:28Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and Trump could have thrown up a Substack and gotten to nine figures of ARR very, very quickly.

• 25:35John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:35Jordi Hays?

  But he wouldn't, it would have taken much longer to become a billionaire that way.

• 25:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 25:39Jordi Hays?

  Unless he, you know.

• 25:40John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:41Jordi Hays?

  And in many ways, like, Truth Social fits into the theme of Trump's life, which is, he is an entertainment brand.

• 25:50John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 25:51Jordi Hays?

  Right? And Truth Social is an entertainment experience in that you can go on there and see funny things and laugh and retweet things and things like that. But now it's become an entertainment product in the form of a ticker symbol where it just provides, you know, Daily entertainment in the form of watching the number go up or down.

• 26:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Jordi Hays?

  Usually very dramatically.

• 26:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's a meme stock. And so it's interesting because it seems like at the time, there was a debate between the executives, like the apprentice business guys and the developers and the software engineers who were more on like a.

• 26:28Jordi Hays?

  What's new?

• 26:28John Coogan?

  They're more like missionary versus mercenary.

• 26:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:31John Coogan?

  And so the missionaries who are very all about like openness and durability and censorship resistance, they don't want to do an advertising model. And they actually say here that, that, you know, for many users, ads and other profit boosting ploys had ruined the experience of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. And I think that's an incredibly incorrect take.

• 26:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:58John Coogan?

  I think that.

• 26:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this is, we've talked about Jordy's Law, right? Which is the higher quality of the content, the more ads you can jam in it. And if you have a media product and you can't put a lot of ads in it, it usually is just not that great of a product.

• 27:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, and also, I mean, there's the real, there's the revealed preference, which is that every Facebook and Instagram and Twitter user says, oh, the ads are so bad. And yet they keep logging on way more than they would if they paid.

• 27:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, with X, I want the ads to get better.

• 27:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Jordi Hays?

  I want more targeted ads.

• 27:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:27Jordi Hays?

  The only reason I'm annoyed by ads on X is I'm like, this isn't relevant.

• 27:31John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's very clear that the whole iOS privacy, app tracking transparency thing was just political infighting between the big tech companies. I don't want to see bad ads. I want to see good ads for things that I'm shopping for.

• 27:43Jordi Hays?

  I like when I'm talking with my friends about something and then.

• 27:46John Coogan?

  Something pops up.

• 27:47Jordi Hays?

  An hour later, I get an ad for it. It's like a bookmark that I never had to, it's, you know, it's like.

• 27:52John Coogan?

  I actually, I actually know people that if they're, if they're shopping for something, they're like, okay, I need to make a decision about like which printer to buy. They'll go just like visit all the printer websites.

• 28:00Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 28:00John Coogan?

  And then it's like, they, they hold court on Instagram. And they're just like, come to me, you know, oh, like I, I've been doing some research on, you know, which, which jitter free coffee company I should buy. Let me visit all the websites and then they'll all advertise to me. And whichever has the greatest ads, I'll buy. But, but, but I don't need to make a decision based on your website. I'm going to make the decision based on your ads.

• 28:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 28:20John Coogan?

  Which is very interesting.

• 28:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 28:22John Coogan?

  But then, I mean, the other thing is that. Ads are just much better at price discrimination. And so if you have, if you have a billionaire in your audience and you also have a college kid in your audience and you're charging $10 a month, they both pay $10 a month.

• 28:37Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 28:38John Coogan?

  But, but if you're doing an ad-based model, you'll get $1 in ads from the college kid and you could get $1,000 or $10,000 from the billionaire.

• 28:46Jordi Hays?

  Worth of value.

• 28:47John Coogan?

  Because it's targeted, you're going to be able to target more premium ads.

• 28:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 28:51John Coogan?

  And so that, that price discrimination really, really maximizes value capture for these, for these digital platforms. And that's why ads really are like the end-all, be-all of monetization strategies for these companies. And it's interesting, do you know Dalton Caldwell at Y Combinator? He's a, he's a YC partner. He started a company called apple.net. Do you remember this?

• 29:11Jordi Hays?

  No.

• 29:11John Coogan?

  Back in, I want to say like 2012 or something.

• 29:14Jordi Hays?

  Still in high school.

• 29:15John Coogan?

  Yeah. He, he started a paid Twitter. It was, it was, you know, you had to pay to use it. And the whole idea was that the money would go to developers who'd be able to develop things on top, kind of like Farcaster where it's like open. And, and he had a really tough time with it because it was hard to, to get that viral growth. Whereas with Twitter, it's like you can always hear a news story and be like, oh, I should get on there. And then you're on. And then the more you use it, the more money they make. And the money that they make is directly proportional to the amount of time that you spend on the site and the, and your wealth essentially. So if you're buying, you know, Rolexes and Lamborghinis, they're going to make a lot more money from you than somebody who's just, you know, shopping for Candy Crush or whatever.

• 29:57John Coogan?

  But yeah, it's, it's, it's fascinating. They also had this crazy struggle with their tech stack because they didn't want to get deplatformed and like rugged by one of the tech companies. Do you remember the Parler situation?

• 30:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:07John Coogan?

  Where Parler was on Amazon Web Services and because a bunch of the January Sixers were on Parler organizing.

• 30:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 30:14John Coogan?

  Parler just got booted. And if you just lose your hosting provider, you're not going to be able to move over like just instantly.

• 30:20Jordi Hays?

  This is what Matt from Anti-Metal was originally working on, which is like a decentralized crypto-native cloud, which at that moment, that's what the original. Anti-metal was, which made a lot of sense.

• 30:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:32Jordi Hays?

  And it turns out, um, they ended up evolving the company.

• 30:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:35Jordi Hays?

  Into what it is today because there was only a tiny, tiny, tiny group of companies that actually needed decentralized cloud.

• 30:43John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 30:43Jordi Hays?

  And they weren't necessarily the customers that you actually wanted.

• 30:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Jordi Hays?

  But in that moment in time, it felt like, oh yeah, cloud should be decentralized.

• 30:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:50Jordi Hays?

  And accessible regardless of like your, the political leanings of the platform.

• 30:54John Coogan?

  Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It's ve- it's very niche. I've seen it work in, there's this, uh, there's this rendering network for CGI where, uh, every, every CGI artist has a really beefy computer, but they're not always rendering out their projects.

• 31:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 31:08John Coogan?

  So they can share render time between the computers. So the computer's basically always rendering.

• 31:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 31:13John Coogan?

  And then they're rendering your project while you're rendering their project. And there's like render tokens in between. They have like a crypto thing. And I think it's, I think it's been like one of the more successful like use cases, even though it's kind of a small market. Um, so then, uh, they, you know, they're hiring more people, um, to, to scale up the company and like actually build this thing. Um, they hire this interesting guy, uh, this Baptist of South Asian descent named Justice Eben, uh, who was canceled for tweeting, "God smites unbelievers." Isn't that crazy? Like, he was an engineer at some company and another engineer posted on Reddit complaining

• 31:53John Coogan?

  about him. And he was disowned by his friends and called a bigot and a fascist by strangers. And what's weird is that like, based on that response, I feel like he must've tweeted something crazier. Like tweeting, I feel like some, some, you could go tweet, "God smites unbelievers" uh, right now, and people would be like, "So true."

• 32:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 32:11John Coogan?

  Or like, isn't that just like a straight up quote from God, from Bible?

• 32:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 32:15John Coogan?

  Like, that's not like that controversial, I think, but.

• 32:17Jordi Hays?

  I guess the intention matters.

• 32:18John Coogan?

  Yeah. But he had, he had a very, he had a very bad go of it. And so he was one of those people that was like really driven by the mission, right? Um, and then, uh, it says, "Also among the other recruits was Ryan Lackey, a libertarian programmer who'd been working since 1990s to stop what he thought of as excessive corporate and governmental interference on the internet." And, uh, do you recognize this guy? Ryan Lackey?

• 32:40Jordi Hays?

  Looks like a boss.

• 32:42John Coogan?

  I know.

• 32:42Jordi Hays?

  That guy could.

• 32:42John Coogan?

  I interviewed him, I interviewed him in Miami, yeah.

• 32:45Jordi Hays?

  This, not this year?

• 32:47John Coogan?

  Yeah, this year.

• 32:48Jordi Hays?

  Really?

• 32:48John Coogan?

  Yeah, I interviewed him about prepping, yeah.

• 32:51Jordi Hays?

  Oh, that's.

• 32:52John Coogan?

  This is him, yeah, and I mean, he has a wild, wild story. He, he was a civilian who went to Iraq during the war just to build a business. Like, he wasn't in the military, he just went there to install satellite communications and take like really small like DOD contracts here and there. So like, the, the army would be like, oh, we have some forward deployed base.

• 33:13Jordi Hays?

  That's a guy, if he opened up a safe at a hundred.

• 33:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 33:17Jordi Hays?

  You'd, you'd, you'd enter at any price.

• 33:19John Coogan?

  And, and you know, you know, Sealand, that like offshore, offshore concrete platform located in the North Sea, seven miles off the English coast? He went there and installed a server farm there, and he was like doing their like IT.

• 33:32Jordi Hays?

  Amazing.

• 33:32John Coogan?

  Isn't that crazy? Uh, yeah, so he, so he was there, I think he was doing like security and stuff. They had a man who worked at Apple, they had a bunch of other people, basically just like, uh, the outcasts of tech like all come together in this WeWork in Atlanta.

• 33:45Jordi Hays?

  The black sheep.

• 33:46John Coogan?

  The black sheep, exactly. And it's very funny because they start like colliding with each other in very interesting ways because they're all like, they're, they're all similar in how fringy they are, but they're all different fringes. So there's one guy who describes.

• 33:57Jordi Hays?

  Strong opinions strongly held.

• 33:59John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, so there's one guy who describes himself as a, a literal communist.

• 34:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and a vegan.

• 34:05John Coogan?

  And a vegan, and, and he gets it, and, and then like Eepen, the guy who tweeted God smites unbelievers, uh, was observed proselytizing to his colleagues, particularly Gleason, the vegan communist. Which is so funny, because it's just like, you have all these like black sheep, and they're all just like fighting in this chaos pit.

• 34:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's, it's not just like a group of people with differing views that are all like happy to be around people with differing views.

• 34:31John Coogan?

  No.

• 34:31Jordi Hays?

  A bunch of people that are like, no, I am right.

• 34:33John Coogan?

  I'm right, like, we need no government at all, or we need a complete government, like.

• 34:37Jordi Hays?

  We're gonna argue until we figure this out.

• 34:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But probably some interesting conversations. But then there's this anecdote about how, so it's all just like chaos in this WeWork, like trying to build this thing, like forking open source projects, like working so fast. And then like when Patrick Orlando, like the big investor, the SPAC owner comes by, they have to like bring all the remote workers in to like make them look bigger and like put up big displays and like play Trump clips on their TVs to be like, this is a real office. Like this is, this is like a real deal. And like the former employees.

• 35:11Jordi Hays?

  Why is there no Hollywood documentary on this yet, by the way?

• 35:14John Coogan?

  Well, I mean, that's the whole reason I want to do this story is because, you know, as much of a joke as it is, like, like this does deserve a profile in Bloomberg. Like the information should be telling this story because it's one of the most interesting stories in tech in the last few years, like.

• 35:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I don't need the fifth mockumentary of WeWork. I want the first of Trump Social.

• 35:35John Coogan?

  Yeah, Trump Social.

• 35:37Jordi Hays?

  I'm sorry, Truth Social. Freudian slip.

• 35:39John Coogan?

  Totally, totally. And I mean, these interactions are so funny. It probably, it probably should be like a mockumentary or some sort of movie because it's so.

• 35:49Jordi Hays?

  No, it should be a very serious documentary about a very serious technology entrepreneur, entrepreneur.

• 35:54John Coogan?

  It should.

• 35:54Jordi Hays?

  Named Donald J. Trump.

• 35:56John Coogan?

  I think Trump should go on the circuit with Emily Chang.

• 35:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 35:58John Coogan?

  We need an Alex Conrad piece. Get him.

• 36:01Jordi Hays?

  Alex, if you're listening.

• 36:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, do it.

• 36:03Jordi Hays?

  Your move.

• 36:05John Coogan?

  And so, and so there, like the tech people keep bringing like the Trump Organization, like ideas for like how to, you know, juice engagement on the site. And one of them is so funny. So they told Trump about the possibility of giving early adopters of the site a digital badge, something similar to Twitter's Blue Tick. Trump thought he was talking about making physical badges like a sheriff's five-pointed star and mailing them out to users. Which is like actually what they should have done.

• 36:32Jordi Hays?

  People would pay for that.

• 36:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, they should have done that. It would have been so good. It would be such a collectible to get like the original Truth Social. Have you ever used Truth Social? I actually signed up. I created an account just to see like what's going on there. It's chaos.

• 36:46Jordi Hays?

  I feel like I get the core content in the form of screenshots that are then posted.

• 36:51John Coogan?

  Not even. There's very little that like actually makes it its way over because it's all so boring.

• 36:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 36:58John Coogan?

  It's all just like, and the ads are particularly funny because they're all like ads for like third party un- unpaid for. Or what's it called when you don't like register a trademark? You're not paying, the money doesn't go to Trump, but it's like a Trump t-shirt basically.

• 37:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 37:13John Coogan?

  And he's just like cool with it because like whatever. But they're all, they're all framed. Like the, the ad strategy there is basically to put up a poll, like a fake poll. And the poll will be like, do you support Donald J. Trump? And it'll be like, hell yes, or like no. And no matter what you click, it's just an image. So no matter what you click, it takes you to the next thing. It'll be like, do you want to take back the country from the corrupt Democrats? And it'll be like yes or no. You can click no, it'll still take you to the next thing and it just takes you to checkout. So like a $60 t-shirt or like a coin or something that's like.

• 37:44Jordi Hays?

  Well, maybe that's a good segue into their monetization and, and kind of the numbers they're putting up.

• 37:49John Coogan?

  Tell me, you have some?

• 37:50Jordi Hays?

  No, no. I mean, we, I mean, you, you'd pulled up their chart earlier.

• 37:55John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:56Jordi Hays?

  How they've done about a million dollars of ad revenue in the last 12 months.

• 38:00John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. Last 12 months.

• 38:02Jordi Hays?

  They're not, they're, they're post monetization.

• 38:05John Coogan?

  It's a story of orders of magnitude.

• 38:06Jordi Hays?

  Unclear if they're focusing on monetization or if it's just sort of happening by nature of being a big technology platform.

• 38:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:14Jordi Hays?

  But I'll let you get.

• 38:16John Coogan?

  I think the numbers are, in the last 12 months, they did a little over a million dollars in revenue. They EBITDA was negative 100 million. Net income was negative 400 million, roughly 380. And it's almost a $10 billion company. So you can think of it as like.

• 38:33Jordi Hays?

  It's a growth story though.

• 38:34John Coogan?

  It's a growth story.

• 38:37John Coogan?

  Um, it's wild. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, they wind up building the site and it's actually like a very simple front end. It's like a direct clone of like every Twitter clone ever, but the backend's like extremely complex because they need to have like two providers for everything, like two databases, two, you know, front end or two, two, like, uh, I forget what they call it, like a CDNs. Because like

• 38:57Jordi Hays?

  Trump's the uncancellable man.

• 38:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:59Jordi Hays?

  And he had to have the equivalent.

• 39:01John Coogan?

  Backend.

• 39:02Jordi Hays?

  Social media platform.

• 39:03John Coogan?

  Basically.

• 39:03Jordi Hays?

  Distribution engine.

• 39:04John Coogan?

  Yeah. So, so, so they're, so they're building all this and like, I think at a certain point, I, I think this happens a lot with like the Trump projects where it's just like, he's at Mar-a-Lago, somebody says, hey, I'll give you 90% of this business. And he's like, yeah, go for it. Like, like we'll see what happens. And then they came back with like the SPAC offer and he's like, okay, this is getting interesting. And they come back with like a site that's like kind of working and like, oh, okay. Like maybe I should go deeper. And so then the Trump-

• 39:24Jordi Hays?

  I can imagine him like hammering out a tweet, you know, not a tweet.

• 39:31John Coogan?

  A post, a truth.

• 39:32Jordi Hays?

  A truth. And hitting send for the first time and seeing it lag for like 20 seconds and then posting me like, not bad.

• 39:41John Coogan?

  Not bad.

• 39:42Jordi Hays?

  Cause he grew up in the era, like he came, like, he became relevant in the era that it was really hard to build software products. So he had probably had other attempts and been like, this is really hard. And so just having a working product, he was probably pretty excited about it.

• 39:54John Coogan?

  Well, you know, he's a printed email guy.

• 39:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 39:57John Coogan?

  He doesn't, he doesn't do email on the computer. It's all, it's all printed out for him. And then he just says, okay, yeah, respond to this, this way.

• 40:03Jordi Hays?

  That's great.

• 40:04John Coogan?

  Um, and so, you know, I think, I think as, yes, for sure. Uh, I think as, as things start to get a little bit more real, um, the, the rest of the Trump org kind of descends. So Eric Trump-

• 40:17Jordi Hays?

  They all start wanting a piece.

• 40:18John Coogan?

  Shows up and wants a piece and, uh, Don Jr. Wants a piece as well.

• 40:22Jordi Hays?

  Melania wanted a piece.

• 40:23John Coogan?

  Melania wants some shares. Um, and, uh, and they kind of go back and forth. They're fighting with, uh, Latinsky and-

• 40:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they tried to go back on the deal, right?

• 40:33John Coogan?

  And Wes Moss. Well, yeah, they try and go back on the deal and they try and say like, you know, oh, that, that thing you, we signed that term sheet for 90%. Like that wasn't accurate. Like we don't want you to run this thing. Like, you know.

• 40:43Jordi Hays?

  Which is funny because it was already so aggressive. How do you get more aggressive than that when it's-

• 40:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:49Jordi Hays?

  Yes, it would have still made sense for them to do it, even if they had a point at the company.

• 40:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Jordi Hays?

  But going, trying to take them from 10. Ten down to, I don't know.

• 40:58John Coogan?

  And so they, so they issue another 3% of the company to the Trump org. They didn't give any to Melania. I assume it's just like dilution on top of the existing structure. But what's really interesting is that like Litinsky and Wes Moss, like the original guys, even though they only own 10% of the company, they must have had some block right or something, or like the board must have been structured in a way that they could, because otherwise we would just be hearing about like, and then they were gone and like, then they lost all their equity and like, that didn't happen. Maybe it was just like legal threat, but.

• 41:26Jordi Hays?

  They knew what they were doing on that fateful cheeseburger meeting.

• 41:29John Coogan?

  They were like, we will give you 90% of the economics, but we want, we want to gain.

• 41:32Jordi Hays?

  They were on the, they were on the apprentice. They learned from.

• 41:36John Coogan?

  The best.

• 41:36Jordi Hays?

  Donald himself. How do you, so Donald's probably sitting there being like, they're using my moves against me.

• 41:42John Coogan?

  Yeah. And so like as, so they sort all that out and as they, as they're starting to build, they, they do wind up partnering with Rumble. Which is like the, the, the YouTube competitor. That's actually like fairly big. I, I know some people that have worked there.

• 41:56Jordi Hays?

  Also public, right?

• 41:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, I think it's a public company. I think it was another SPAC and.

• 42:01Jordi Hays?

  They acquired.

• 42:02John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 42:03Jordi Hays?

  Our peers over at All In. I think Rumble acquired Colin, which is cool.

• 42:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:09Jordi Hays?

  Little cameo from Saks.

• 42:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. And so they, they, they, they do have like a more robust tech stack than some of the other partners. And so the idea was, okay, maybe we get on Rumble, they can host our, our data. But at the time, Rumble, Rumble hadn't been struggling with like deplatforming as much. Cause most of the stuff they host, I mean, they host like Barstool, they host, uh, who's that guy from Get Him to the Greek? You know that guy?

• 42:35Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:37John Coogan?

  Yeah. He's like some sort of like former comedian, now like a podcaster, Russell Brand. That's who it is. So they host Russell Brand. These people aren't like completely agitating and being like, take to the streets. They're not the most aggressive. So I think they, I think Rumble has not had that many problems.

• 42:52Jordi Hays?

  Rumble's kicking themselves for not doing, you know, trying to make a billion dollar bid for truth at that moment in time.

• 43:01John Coogan?

  A lot of the other companies were like Gab or Parler and Getter at this time were both talking to Trump about like, hey, why don't you come and make this one your home? Cause we already built it and we'll give you, you know, some sort of percentage.

• 43:14Jordi Hays?

  They didn't realize it's not about the tech, it's about the distribution.

• 43:17John Coogan?

  Yep. That and and they and you know that Parler and Getter, we're not going to be like, yeah, take ninety percent of our company.

• 43:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 43:23John Coogan?

  There's just no way.

• 43:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 43:24John Coogan?

  They're probably like, oh, we'll give you five percent and we'll pay you a bunch and you'll get all this stuff, but like, there's just no way.

• 43:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 43:30John Coogan?

  That even, you know, on- once they built it, there's just too many people around the table, too many people on the cap table. So it's just impossible.

• 43:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 43:36John Coogan?

  But then on October twentieth, so we're still less than a year out, the day the world was meant to learn about the merger and the existence of Truth Social, Trump summoned Latinsky to Mar-a-Lago, and in a twist worthy of The Apprentice itself, the former president said he was once again considering a deal with Getter and asked Latinsky to convince him that Truth Social was better. Somehow, Latinsky got Trump to sign the merger agreement.

• 44:00Jordi Hays?

  Wow.

• 44:01John Coogan?

  Legend, like.

• 44:02Jordi Hays?

  Legend.

• 44:02John Coogan?

  You get called and it's just like, actually, I'm bailing on this thing, like, get out of my office, and he's just like, wait, wait, wait.

• 44:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 44:07John Coogan?

  This is gonna work.

• 44:08Jordi Hays?

  He was summoned.

• 44:09John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:09Jordi Hays?

  That was a long, that was a long flight.

• 44:12John Coogan?

  So it worked. Or land, you know, or land, Patrick Orlando goes to the Atlanta WeWork with a magnum of vuv kikko, and they pop out the champagne, and the press release goes out that evening. And the, the.

• 44:25Jordi Hays?

  The rest is history.

• 44:26John Coogan?

  They call it Trump Media and Technology Group, and the plan is to give a voice to all. The tech team were excited to be able to tell friends and family what they'd been working on. The press release claimed that Trump's new media offering would be worth one point seven billion dollars, but within twenty-four hours, the stock market valued the SPAC at ten times that amount, seventeen billion. So total meme stock for a minute. Obviously.

• 44:46Jordi Hays?

  For a minute.

• 44:47John Coogan?

  It goes down, but, you know, for not, for, for not much.

• 44:50Jordi Hays?

  I think it's still that.

• 44:51John Coogan?

  But, but, but even, even at that one point seven billion, you know, that makes Trump a billionaire, just on that one deal. Because he owns, I, I, and now he owns sixty percent, but, you know.

• 45:00Jordi Hays?

  Undeniable.

• 45:01John Coogan?

  At that point, it was, you know, still more, but it was enough to be.

• 45:04Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it was kind of interesting timing for this election because that was a lot of what people would try to pin him on and say like, oh, you're not a real billionaire, right? But now it's just like, check the market cap. You can run the numbers yourself.

• 45:20John Coogan?

  Yep. Yeah, and even though like a lot of it's locked up, I'm sure he can borrow against it. I'm sure there's some sort of collateral. He's probably gotten some out and will get more out and stuff. So, yeah, it's fascinating. And so they launch and there's a bunch of like, you know, negative press and they get attacked. And at one point, they, one of the companies that's providing their backend technology actually does close Truth Social's account. But because the tech team had built these backups, they were only down, it affected 8.5% of their traffic for three minutes. That's it. Pretty crazy.

• 45:51Jordi Hays?

  These guys are better than.

• 45:53John Coogan?

  Cracked.

• 45:53Jordi Hays?

  Cracked, yeah.

• 45:56John Coogan?

  It's like insane. And so, of course, that's, they're, they're not, they're not done yet because, you know, friend, dear friend of Donald Trump, Gary Gensler pops up to hit them with a lawsuit, saying that the, the SPAC was illegal because his, his view was that Orlando had SPAC'd with the idea of acquiring Truth Social and you can't do that. You have to truly set up a blank check and not know. And so if there's evidence that it's like, oh, you're gonna SPAC IPO G to acquire this company, then that would mean that you should just SPAC, you should just go through the normal process. A regular IPO.

• 46:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 46:37John Coogan?

  But if you truly SPAC the blank check and then you get the call and you're like, okay, this is what I'm searching for, I'm going with it.

• 46:43Jordi Hays?

  Is that lawsuit still?

• 46:44John Coogan?

  It's settled.

• 46:45Jordi Hays?

  Settled.

• 46:46John Coogan?

  We'll get there. But it did settle and now everything's above board, hilariously enough. And so, of course, like, there's a, there's a bunch more problems that happen. People figure out that the company's working out of this, we work in Atlanta. And so, you know, tons of Trump haters are like doxing people and taking photos outside and they're really worried about, you know, threats to their lives, which should have been predictable if you go work for this.

• 47:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, why were they not in Trump Tower?

• 47:16John Coogan?

  Seriously, they should have been somewhere like secure, I would think, something. I don't know. Work out of Myerlago, I guess, or something. But, but now that like the, the SPAC is going through, it's, the, the parent company was now the most valuable SPAC in history. And all the tech workers, basically, you know, consider the Apprentice guys like they're de facto bosses, even though it seems like all the titles are pretty, pretty vague.

• 47:42John Coogan?

  The employees learn that there's going to be this new guy running the company, essentially a CEO, and it's Congressman Devin Nunes.

• 47:50Jordi Hays?

  Of course.

• 47:52John Coogan?

  Yes, and, and of course.

• 47:53Jordi Hays?

  As one does, once, once you, once you, once you've gone public, you usually go try to find a, a great congressman to run your company.

• 48:01John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, what, what a dream, but Nunes had an interesting background, so he, he was, he spent two decades representing a rural area in California, and was best known as, for his time, as the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee during the investigation into Trump's alleged collusion with Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. And at that time Nunes had accused the entire intelligence community of a conspiracy to take down Trump. So like, he was the one congressman, or like the main congressman who was like pushing back against the Russiagate stuff. And so that probably won him like a ton of favor with Trump, because he's like, you went to bat for me on this one committee, like, thank you, I'll work with you in the future.

• 48:44John Coogan?

  And so, you know, true social employees like respected him for that, but they were kind of like, what is this non-tech guy doing, running our company? One, one person said, this is like going and hiring a high school baseball coach to be the CEO of Microsoft. And I love that, love that quote, because they're like, we are Microsoft.

• 49:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 49:03John Coogan?

  You run like, you run like a website that pulls in a million dollars a year.

• 49:08John Coogan?

  There are like indie hackers that are doing better than you. And you're comparing yourself to a business that's worth a trillion dollars, but respect, respect. And so it's like, maybe he's actually qualified to run this, who knows, like, it's such a small operation, you know, whatever. So he doesn't comment in this Economist article, but there's a bunch of interesting stories about him kind of going back and forth. And interestingly, like, while he was there, he pushes for advertising as soon as possible.

• 49:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 49:35John Coogan?

  So again, it's like, this guy's completely unqualified, like, all the employees, all the disgruntled employees who spoke to the Economist for this article are like, they're like, oh, he's so unqualified, he was the worst boss, he was terrible, but like. I keep seeing like some of the decisions he's made and I'm like, these seem reasonable. Like advertising is the correct business model and you should run fast. And so there's a lot of, like the new CEO told the team they needed to work harder because a lot of money had been spent. Like, that's true. Like, they were burning a lot of money.

• 50:00Jordi Hays?

  Facts.

• 50:01John Coogan?

  Like, he said that they needed to do advertising as soon as possible. That's also true. Like, it's like, kind of odd to say because, yeah, he doesn't have the traditional background, but it seems like he kind of made the right decisions.

• 50:11Jordi Hays?

  A lot of business is common sense.

• 50:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, and so, and so the tech guys are like, are like Adams and Boozer are like really pissed because they, they really don't want to do advertising. They're like, let's get, let's get, like, like, and they're comping themselves to Facebook and Twitter. They're like, Facebook and Twitter didn't have ads when they launched. But, you know, just like, they need, they need, they need a growth story.

• 50:28Jordi Hays?

  It's that balance between, yeah, revenue and just traction, right?

• 50:34John Coogan?

  Yeah, there is something to be said for that where it's like, would the stock be trading even higher if people weren't like, they only have a million dollars. It's like, well, they haven't even started monetizing yet.

• 50:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:42John Coogan?

  Who knows? Maybe their first month would be a hundred million dollars.

• 50:44Jordi Hays?

  It probably, it probably would. I actually think it would.

• 50:46John Coogan?

  Be trading higher.

• 50:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, because if you, if somebody told you, I was shocked when you told me that they had a million dollars of revenue.

• 50:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 50:55Jordi Hays?

  Right? Like, it seems like you would intentionally have to be trying not to monetize to only have that much revenue on that much attention.

• 51:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Jordi Hays?

  Right? Like, it's a terrible conversion of attention to...

• 51:07John Coogan?

  I mean, as a political candidate, Trump has raised like almost a billion dollars, right? Just by asking for donations.

• 51:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 51:13John Coogan?

  So you would assume that if you went on there and was like, I'm gonna give you at least some sort of product. Maybe it's like a badge or something. Like, he would be able to get like, the tens of millions, hundreds of millions, something.

• 51:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, or the physical pin.

• 51:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, something, you know, you would think, if he's just selling stuff, you'd be able to get more because you're monetizing the same attention. But it's just very different when it's this like ad platform. But, um, yeah, very, very interesting. So, uh, at long last, the app was released to the public on February 21st, 2022. So it's just over a year from that, like, dinner at Mar-a-Lago over cheeseburgers. It really is fast execution. Like, you, you, you, you have to admit it. And it's interesting comparing it to like Quibi. Do you remember that company?

• 51:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 51:51John Coogan?

  Like, they spent like, what, six years in like stealth, raised all this money?

• 51:55Jordi Hays?

  Toiling away.

• 51:55John Coogan?

  And it just like went nowhere. It's like, at least they're down to fail fast. Like, respect that.

• 52:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 52:01John Coogan?

  Um, but of course, the launch is like a mess and like hundreds of thousands of people spent days on the waiting list trying to sign up. Once in, they encountered glitches galore, error messages, broken links. One page on the website misspelled truth as T R U H. Just like general like chaos, which is, which is normal.

• 52:19Jordi Hays?

  It's all normal stuff.

• 52:20John Coogan?

  But by the end of the week, Truth Social was number one on the App Store. I'm sure they got a call from Nikita Beer.

• 52:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. I'm sure Nikita was actually, I'm sure they had, they were spending eight figures on intro just for Nikita, just to get his advice. Yeah.

• 52:37John Coogan?

  But again, like, just to remind people, the, the App Store is a measure of like, uh, of acceleration, not absolute numbers. So, so i- i- i- if you're, if you're, if you launch and you grow very fast, then you'll rank higher. It's much harder for, uh, a product.

• 52:51Jordi Hays?

  Establish that.

• 52:52John Coogan?

  Yeah, an established app like Facebook to be number one because they're not necessarily growing as much. Um, but more than eight, eight hundred and sixty-six thousand people installed it in the first week. Instagram, by comparison, only signed up about a hundred thousand users in its launch week. Such a bad comparison.

• 53:10John Coogan?

  Such a bad comparison because like Kevin Systrom was in, was like an awesome guy in tech, but he was like an intern at Twitter. No one knew who he was.

• 53:18Jordi Hays?

  And they knew if you actually want to create a super engaged social platform.

• 53:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, you want to start small.

• 53:21Jordi Hays?

  Start small, get the right users. Don't, don't, don't just like sign up as many as you want.

• 53:26John Coogan?

  I like that this journalist is writing it like it's a dunk. Like, oh, like, you know, like.

• 53:29Jordi Hays?

  Got him. Got him.

• 53:31John Coogan?

  It's like, yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Um, uh, but, uh, so, so, so at this point, like, it is a pretty good launch. They're number one in the App Store. Maybe Trump's popularity and widespread frustrations with big tech really could fuel a major new platform. Um, and so, uh, two weeks later, on March 11th, the terms of Nunez's contract were finalized. He would make seven hundred and fifty K in his first year, plus bonuses and shares in the company. And then some other people came into the, the company as well. Um, but, uh, uh, they're working 20 hours a day for six straight months. They said they didn't see their families. Like, they're really grinding to like make this work, but there's just total chaos.

• 54:05Jordi Hays?

  They really took all the core lessons from Silicon Valley history in the prior decade and just implemented them perfectly.

• 54:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 54:15John Coogan?

  But obviously, things are chaotic. There's disgruntled employees who are like literally destroying code, like erasing servers and stuff on their way out. That's like a wild thing to do. Also, like, super illegal. And like, you could face like a bunch of like civil penalties if you do this. Interestingly, a bunch of a bunch of ex-employees like wouldn't talk on the record for this because apparently in the NDA that you sign with Truth Social, you, there's a $5 million penalty. I'm gonna start putting that in the NDAs that I send to VCs. Like, hey, if you want to see my pitch deck, it's a $5 million fine.

• 54:52Jordi Hays?

  If you screenshot the doc.

• 54:53John Coogan?

  If you screenshot the doc, then yeah, get out of here. And so, the, some of the tech people start leaving, the general counsel, Adams and Boozer, and a lot of people are like, oh, this is like the beginning of the end. The stock went down by 10%.

• 55:07Jordi Hays?

  Bad call.

• 55:07John Coogan?

  Yeah, the stock went down by 10%, and then another 10% the next day when, when the tech people quit. But obviously, it's like gone back up. And there's this like discussion now about like the pre Devin Nunes era and the post Devin Nunes era. Because Nunes relocated the Truth Social offices to Florida, moved all of Truth Social's data over to Rumble's nascent cloud service, signed the company up for Rumble's new ad platform. And again, this seems like, you know, maybe it's controversial and the employees didn't like it, but those all seem like really, really smart moves. Like, building a new ad platform is genuinely very hard. And I remember when, when Netflix announced that they were going to be doing ads, they wanted to do everything like in-house and very bespoke.

• 55:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there's apps on the App Store with tens of millions of users that use other ad networks to monetize because it's just...

• 55:56John Coogan?

  There's more liquidity.

• 55:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 55:58John Coogan?

  Exactly. And so, like, if it's, if it's something that people, I don't know if Netflix wound up actually partnering with Microsoft to do the, the ad network. I think they were going to do like the Bing ad network, which obviously is very robust, has great matching algorithms and lots of liquidity. But if it's potentially good enough for Netflix where Netflix would at least consider it and analysts like Ben Thompson would recommend it, like obviously it's right for this tiny company that has just a few employees like and is only a year old to like not try and build everything in-house, especially if they have a friendly company with Rumble that's down to partner with them. So again, very, very interesting where like, I think the execution was good. I think the strategy might have been a little, a little lacking just in the, and this is something we should discuss more about, like, you know, is building

• 56:43John Coogan?

  a new social network the right strategy for Trump generally? Or should he have just done the Substack?

• 56:49Jordi Hays?

  I think it was a, it was just a timing thing. When they decided to do this, it was absolutely the best possible product to build.

• 56:59John Coogan?

  And he didn't know that Elon was gonna buy Axe.

• 57:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 57:02John Coogan?

  And so he didn't know that he was gonna get his account back. He didn't know that he was gonna be able to go on Rogan on.

• 57:06Jordi Hays?

  Has he gotten his?

• 57:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 57:08Jordi Hays?

  He's gotten his other accounts back.

• 57:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has, he has, I think he has pretty much all of his accounts back.

• 57:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 57:14John Coogan?

  And, and he's been able to kind of do everything, which has somewhat taken the air out of the true social balloon because he, it's not as existential to him.

• 57:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, a lot of people, a lot of people thought that it would already be a zero, like full on zero.

• 57:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 57:28Jordi Hays?

  And certainly not.

• 57:31John Coogan?

  Yeah. So they kind of changed their, they changed their startup culture. It used to be agile teams and horizontal management. Nunes imposed a top-down structure in which workers were siloed into small groups under different managers. Again, like

• 57:45Jordi Hays?

  Makes sense.

• 57:45John Coogan?

  Reasonable, like sometimes that's the right thing. Sometimes you want something that's very flat and horizontal. Sometimes you want something that's a little bit more vertical.

• 57:51Jordi Hays?

  You have to wonder was there, was Nunes in group chats with highly competent tech CEOs being like, hey, what would you do in this situation? And they're like, yeah, I would silo things out, move from being a horizontal structure to like, you know, kind of verticalizing the management teams, like have, build out these different functions. Like you're really gonna wanna have a trust and safety

• 58:11John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 58:12Jordi Hays?

  department. That's important for any social media platform.

• 58:15John Coogan?

  Totally possible.

• 58:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I guess, I guess from here, where does?

• 58:19Jordi Hays?

  Going into tomorrow, we don't talk about politics on this show, but what happens to Truth, you know, if Trump is elected, is the most natural next step for the US government to acquire the platform and use it as sort of a digital town square for citizens? Or where does Truth Social go from here?

• 58:40John Coogan?

  I have no idea.

• 58:41Jordi Hays?

  Is it purely an entertainment product?

• 58:43John Coogan?

  It feels like it's like bear cases on both sides.

• 58:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 58:46John Coogan?

  Because if he wins.

• 58:48Jordi Hays?

  Stuck between a bear case and a bear case.

• 58:50John Coogan?

  I mean, if he wins, he doesn't need this liquidity injection as much anymore. So, I mean, this is, I think Peter Thiel had a quote in, who's that Axios guy? I forget, but he was doing some interview.

• 59:02Jordi Hays?

  Dan?

• 59:03John Coogan?

  Yeah, Dan Primack. And he was doing some interview and it was, the question was like, what's going on with Truth Social? And Peter was basically like, I think it's some sort of like, you know, sneaky way to transfer wealth to get around like campaign finance rules. And so, and so that becomes less of an incentive. Like, if you want Trump to win and you want him to have wealth so that he can borrow against that and finance his campaign, or something like, something along those lines, even though he's locked up and hasn't sold the shares yet, it's like, clearly having a $4 billion asset is valuable when you're running for, when you're running for president. But, but after, if he wins, then, okay, you don't need to pump the stock anymore. And if he loses, it's like, maybe he becomes less relevant. He's not deplatformed anymore.

• 59:47John Coogan?

  And it's not like if he loses, he'd be deplatformed again unless he tries some January 6th stuff again, which would be crazy.

• 59:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 59:53John Coogan?

  So, I don't know. It is, it is tough.

• 59:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's, it's certainly a much easier long if he wins tomorrow, because it's just another half a decade.

• 1:00:04John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Jordi Hays?

  A lot of attention and relevancy.

• 1:00:07John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:00:08Jordi Hays?

  And... And it and and I guess the historical ways that presidents would monetize their attention would. I'm going to be president and then I'm going to I'm going to write a book and then my wife's going to write a book. And our, you know, son is going to write a book and every sort of member of and that that's like very like 20th century way to monetize attention and still works generally well.

• 1:00:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Jordi Hays?

  But it could be, you could imagine a future where every president, uh, you know, just ends up creating a social media platform. Cause that's, that's, that, that becomes like the, the right way. Like, would you, I think Kamala could probably drive, if she created a social media app after losing.

• 1:00:51Jordi Hays?

  If she, she were to lose, uh, I think she could get a, uh, you know, 50 million downloads, right?

• 1:00:57John Coogan?

  Probably.

• 1:00:57Jordi Hays?

  I would, I would sign up for that.

• 1:00:59John Coogan?

  Well, you know, this isn't the first celebrity social media company. Jeremy Renner cloned an Instagram and had the Renner, the Jeremy Renner app that you could install. And it was just his Instagram feed. Isn't that insane? And you had to subscribe to just see Jeremy Renner posts. And then he would like post like extra photos, but it was just like his feed. So it's just like, I'm surfing today. I went to the gym and he and like the Jeremy Renner fan club was just like on his app. And then he eventually shuttered, shuttered it. But I mean, you could imagine like in the same way that Substack, like a lot of people are completely, they, they, they follow some writer and they're completely unaware that like Substack is the underlying technology. They're just like, oh, I love, I love not boring.co, right?

• 1:01:43John Coogan?

  And I just, and this guy, Packy is great. He must have built this website, but he's using the Substack infrastructure. You could see, you could see that, you could see that happening in almost every vertical where it's like, oh, you're using Vimeo to power a website.

• 1:01:56Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 1:01:57John Coogan?

  It's like a YouTube.

• 1:01:57Jordi Hays?

  Or Substack allows you to just generate your own app at some point.

• 1:02:01John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be interesting. So it's like you're on Substack.

• 1:02:05Jordi Hays?

  The not boring app.

• 1:02:06John Coogan?

  I mean, I talked to the Substack guys about other media formats and they allow you to upload podcasts and they actually do allow you to upload videos. So it is possible to run like basically your own private video feed, like your own YouTube on Substack. And you could have someone just like have that, you know, okay, they're, they're subscribed to your.

• 1:02:25Jordi Hays?

  The Technology Brothers app.

• 1:02:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:02:28Jordi Hays?

  We'd like to own that real estate on your home screen.

• 1:02:30John Coogan?

  Yeah. But let's let's close out before with the like the the the the ending of the SEC fight. So even though like the the SPAC was trading and successful because of the SEC lawsuit, the acquisition wasn't approved. And so you weren't technically investing in Truth Social.

• 1:02:53Jordi Hays?

  Interesting.

• 1:02:54John Coogan?

  You were you were investing in

• 1:02:55Jordi Hays?

  The idea.

• 1:02:56John Coogan?

  in a SPAC

• 1:02:57Jordi Hays?

  Potential.

• 1:02:57John Coogan?

  that had like a contract in place to acquire this company but didn't actually own any of the assets yet because the acquisition hadn't been approved by the SEC. And so there's this lawsuit that says, you know, hey, it was illegal for you to do this SPAC and this acquisition, we're going to block the acquisition. But on March 24th, more than three years after Latinsky and Moss got Trump to agree to their plan, Trump Media and Technology Group's stock debuted on NASDAQ. They settled the case with the SEC for an $18 million fine in July of 2023. And it's very

• 1:03:28Jordi Hays?

  That's a big fine.

• 1:03:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, it feels like a big fine, but

• 1:03:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. Not in the context of the market cap now, but

• 1:03:35John Coogan?

  But that does seem like a big fine.

• 1:03:36Jordi Hays?

  That's like a significant fine.

• 1:03:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, I I I I guess they were just like, yeah, negotiating and figured out that was like a a number that they

• 1:03:42Jordi Hays?

  Gary's bonus got was big that year.

• 1:03:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. And so they get it approved and and and at that point, like the the stock actually becomes like the DJT ticker or something. I think it was DWAC before like Digital World Acquisition Company or something. DWAC was the was the SPAC name before. Yeah, it's a very funny name. So so so so they get through. Matt Levine has a good quote in here. You know, Matt from Bloomberg. He says that the regulatory body might be sort of worried that this thing will be a big bust and he's using the early merger talks as an excuse to prevent Donald Trump from dumping it on retail investors. So it's kind of like they're they're like, maybe the SEC didn't actually have that strong of evidence that Orlando and Trump were talking before IPOing the SPAC.

• 1:04:30Jordi Hays?

  And we don't know how much the there's a huge incentive for all the Trump insiders to keep the party going

• 1:04:38John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:04:38Jordi Hays?

  through the election.

• 1:04:39John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:04:40Jordi Hays?

  Because if the stock had, there was a couple of moments where it looked like it was going to zero.

• 1:04:44John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:04:44Jordi Hays?

  And if it had, how that would have actually created, that would that would have been potentially the biggest risk factor for the campaign is a bunch of Americans being like, I lost a bunch of money because of Trump. And he's, maybe he is the scammer that the media like says, right?

• 1:05:00John Coogan?

  Yeah. And so they they celebrate the the NASDAQ listing with it's funny it's on the NASDAQ. It feels so serious for what this is.

• 1:05:09Jordi Hays?

  Back in Mar-a-Lago.

• 1:05:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, back in Mar-a-Lago, they have the actor John Voight and Truth Social branded cookies. That first day, the share price touched seventy-eight dollars, making the company worth about fifteen billion, more than doubling the former president's personal wealth. Moss and Latinsky, the two guys who started this whole thing, were unable to profit from the from the moment. However, as they were locked up, they were locked in multiple lawsuits with Trump Media and Technology Group. The company argued that their initial deal with Trump was void and they had forfeited their shares because they had run the company so ineptly. And that was interesting because it's like it was so it's a short thing. I wonder if there's like a vesting cliff that they were trying to like, you know, push them towards or something like that. If they had like some some one-year vest and they barely made it over, that could be like a point of contention.

• 1:05:53John Coogan?

  I don't know, but it all worked out because they they settled those lawsuits and Moss and Latinsky won their litigation with the company and cashed in all nearly all their shares, together pocketing around a hundred million dollars. Wow, not gonna have to do YouTube anymore.

• 1:06:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that explains why he retired early.

• 1:06:13John Coogan?

  Retire early, seriously. And so.

• 1:06:17Jordi Hays?

  I wonder if you got a as part of the settlement, he got a complimentary lifetime Mar-a-Lago membership.

• 1:06:23John Coogan?

  He either got a lifetime membership or a ban.

• 1:06:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26John Coogan?

  One or the other.

• 1:06:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27John Coogan?

  It was a high standard deviation outcome.

• 1:06:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I feel like Trump would be fine with them still going and spending money on the property because it would just be his way to be like, I still like.

• 1:06:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Jordi Hays?

  I'm your daddy.

• 1:06:39John Coogan?

  Yeah. One current employee messaged a group chat of former and current and former Truth Social staff saying that Nunes had claimed that Moss and Latinsky had stolen shares, leaving nothing for anyone else. His colleagues responded with crying with laughter emojis, suggesting that they didn't take this idea seriously.

• 1:06:57Jordi Hays?

  As if they were all, all the shares were sitting in the office somewhere and on the way out, they just grabbed them.

• 1:07:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:07:03Jordi Hays?

  A bunch of, I feel like, I feel like if any organization was still running on physical paper stock certificates, it would be, it would be true social.

• 1:07:12John Coogan?

  It is funny because it's like, everyone is saying like, oh, this is like a mess and like, you know, like it's poorly managed and it's like fake, but then they're like, but also the money's real and I really want a piece like you screwed me out of this like very legitimate thing. Like they can't, you can't have it both ways, guys. You can be like talking trash in the media or you can have your payout. Lesson learned there. But Trump has insisted he won't sell his shares, which now amount to about 60% of the company, which is very uncommon for a tech founder who starts a tech company, IPOs it in two years. Very, very rare. But then.

• 1:07:46Jordi Hays?

  It just shows that he's mission oriented.

• 1:07:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:49Jordi Hays?

  Right?

• 1:07:50John Coogan?

  And they could, yeah, all of these, these ex-employees are really trashing it. They could probably have a hundred million people on the platform if they had any intelligence whatsoever. But again, it's like, is this a question of intelligence? Like, is this a question of strategy or execution? Like, is it?

• 1:08:05Jordi Hays?

  Are they running it as a company or a financial product?

• 1:08:07John Coogan?

  Is the product the stock or is the product the website?

• 1:08:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And I think we know the answer.

• 1:08:12John Coogan?

  Yes. And so, yeah.

• 1:08:16Jordi Hays?

  It's, it's basically fintech, right?

• 1:08:20Jordi Hays?

  It's technology that enables a new way to

• 1:08:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:25Jordi Hays?

  trade on Trump's social capital.

• 1:08:27John Coogan?

  There's this very interesting quote from Billy Boozer here. He says, "I had to step away from, from a role that I felt God made for me due to ethical and moral, moral concerns. It shook me to my core. Sometimes those who share your beliefs might exploit you for financial gain." And I think that there's a lesson here about like, like, we hear about these venture capital firms that are very difficult to work with and they're notorious for like firing, firing founders. And yet, when I talk to very, very aggressive founders, oftentimes they're fine getting in the ring with a VC with a bad rap.

• 1:08:59Jordi Hays?

  They trust themselves.

• 1:09:00John Coogan?

  They trust themselves and they're okay. They're like, I'm willing to get into the Gladiator arena. I'm the lion. They need to be worried. And I think that there's something here where like the, we're like. You know, i- i- i- is, it is clearly public knowledge that these are some of the most hard negotiating people in the world, but if you go in and you play your cards right, you can wind up with a hundred million dollar payout like those guys did. And so, maybe they will wind up hanging out at Mar-a-Lago in a little bit. But...

• 1:09:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think it's one of those things like five, 10 years from now, they'll, if they were to see Trump, they would shake hands and wink.

• 1:09:38John Coogan?

  Be like, yeah.

• 1:09:38Jordi Hays?

  It would just be like, it would be like that first, that first-

• 1:09:41John Coogan?

  We had one hell of a boxing match.

• 1:09:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. It was like, yeah, going back to that fateful bite of the first burger.

• 1:09:47John Coogan?

  Yep. Exactly. And then the article closes with a, an epilogue about now, now Trump has moved on to a cryptocurrency part, project called World Liberty Financial, Financial.

• 1:09:59Jordi Hays?

  I had somebody, I had somebody bring up, would any of this have been possible without Diet Coke? Like, if you took, if Diet Coke didn't exist, could, could this entire story have existed? And I think you could make an argument that, um...

• 1:10:13John Coogan?

  Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

• 1:10:16Jordi Hays?

  That's a good place to end.

• 1:10:17John Coogan?

  Well, that's the story of Truth Social, the truth about Truth Social. Hope you enjoyed it. Um, let's move on to some, uh, tweet reactions, but first, I need to tell you about Citadel Securities. Citadel Securities is the leading global market maker committed to creating the most efficient and transparent markets. They provide liquidity across a diverse range of financial instruments, including equities, options, and fixed income, ensuring traders and investors can execute orders seamlessly at the best possible prices. Leveraging cutting-edge technology and quantitative strategies, they optimize trade executions for tighter spreads and improved market efficiency. Whether you're an institutional investor

• 1:10:57John Coogan?

  or a startup building a retail brokerage, Citadel Securities consistently delivers unmatched performance in an industry where speed and accuracy are paramount. Discover how they're shaping the future of finance by making markets more accessible and efficient at citadelsecurities.com. That's citadelsecurities.com. Now, back to the show. Did you see that, is it Bowery Farming failed?

• 1:11:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20John Coogan?

  Uh, Yoni writes- It really sucks that Bowery farming failed. I always was rooting for Bowery because it felt like it could actually make a difference on nutrition and climate change. Here's why from my outsider's perspective that it was so hard. Growing a single crop that's both undifferentiated to consumers and low margin lettuce is cheap. Sold through wholesale wall of lettuce at Whole Foods means it's even worse for margins. They scaled super quickly, building and flying the plane at once doesn't work in the physical world like it does in software. While owning the local operations and needing to be good at lots of complex things simultaneously, tons of CapEx that they paid for themselves. If you inverted each of those factors, you'd wind up with a multi-crop, full basket, sold directly to consumers, basically a CSA, operated as a franchise.

• 1:12:04John Coogan?

  Hmm, interesting. I hope this won't dissuade others from trying to innovate and transform our food system. It's a worthy effort. Yeah, I remember seeing vertical farming stuff and uh, never, never dug in too much, but uh.

• 1:12:17Jordi Hays?

  Good, good take from uh.

• 1:12:20John Coogan?

  Yoni?

• 1:12:20Jordi Hays?

  Yoni as, as usual. Uh, I think the real question that comes away from it is what was the actual strategy, right? Cause I've had the product. It's a good product. I remember buyer, buying Bowery lettuce and being like, this is good lettuce.

• 1:12:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Jordi Hays?

  But I never, you know, I don't shop for groceries.

• 1:12:43John Coogan?

  So it was Bowery branded lettuce?

• 1:12:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so they were like fully verticalized. So you could go into Whole Foods and like buy their lettuce.

• 1:12:49John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:12:50Jordi Hays?

  That they had cultivated using their technology and eventually sold. But you have to wonder like, yeah, what's the strategy? It's like the lowest possible margin product. It's deeply, deeply competitive. It's really difficult to sort of like differentiate because if I wanted to start competing with Bowery, I could go get a small plot of land and just obsess over making lettuce and create like the same. Quality of product with with a much different cost structure. And so, yeah, it's one of those things like, how would you have, you know, you obviously couldn't value a farm that was producing at Bowery's scale at $2 billion, right? I don't know a lot of

• 1:13:33Jordi Hays?

  sort of mid-level, mid-market farms. So it's like, you have to wonder, they were last valued at $2 billion. What was, were they pitching at the time, hey, we're creating this technology stack that other farms can use? Yoni and Slows like have a big thesis around verticalization, which is like, if you have this technology, like, don't just sell the technology or the software. Like, sell the end product. But that's interesting. You know, they were involved with a company that, they were involved with a company that made software for parking garages. And the software company just ended up buying one of the largest parking garage management companies so that they could

• 1:14:17Jordi Hays?

  own more of the value chain, basically. And so I would have loved to see Bowery's last pitch deck of being like, why are we worth $2 billion selling lettuce, right? Because you have to imagine the the actual net revenue on selling that lettuce. Like, if if somebody was running like a farm, you know, let's say somebody's running a vineyard and they're like, yeah, like, we spent like 3 billion, or we spent like $3 million last year to do 1 million of of revenue. You'd be like, okay, like, cool, like pet project.

• 1:14:47John Coogan?

  Do you think they should have gone up market? Have you seen that Omakase strawberry company? It's like $50 a strawberry or something.

• 1:14:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so I'm excited to see.

• 1:14:55John Coogan?

  Starting with that seems very interesting because like, it's so high-end, it's going to be only consumed by like celebrities and like, it's going to be very Instagrammed, but you're also going to have so much breadth to like, tell your story. Whereas if you're just, if like, yeah, there's this cool story where the lettuce was vertically farmed, but then it just comes in a standard lettuce pack.

• 1:15:13Jordi Hays?

  Still tastes like lettuce.

• 1:15:13John Coogan?

  Still tastes like lettuce. Whereas the Omakase strawberry, you open it up, it's like a, it feels like sugar fish, right?

• 1:15:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think that that is what they absolutely should have done. I think there's a bunch of interesting angles to do like exotic fruits that are almost like desserts. And so if they were, the key thing, though, For Bowery would be like, how do you justify charging four to five to 10 times as much for the same product? Which is what this?

• 1:15:38John Coogan?

  I got a box of Asian pears once from someone and they were so juicy that I kept choking on them. I would take, I would take a bite and it would just explode with like, like pear juice.

• 1:15:50Jordi Hays?

  You call your parents?

• 1:15:51John Coogan?

  And I'd be like coughing, like, oh my god.

• 1:15:53Jordi Hays?

  You guys gotta try it.

• 1:15:54John Coogan?

  It was amazing. They were so good. And, and, and it's something where I'm sure they were like, you know, 10 times the price.

• 1:16:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but you have to like, to make something like this work where Bowery's investing what I'm sure amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars in R and D and facilities, all this capex, you have to be able to tell a story of, oh, we're going to be able to, we're going to be able to expand, you know, our core product from a 20% gross margin product to a 90% gross margin product. And yeah, I just, I, I,

• 1:16:29John Coogan?

  It's also interesting because there's, there's like some other competitors that don't feel like they should be competitors, but they are. I'm thinking of like Rainmaker flooding different areas like terraforming. It's like, yeah, maybe we're running out of farmland, so we need to go vertical in cities, or we need to turn the desert into farmland. And if we do that, it's like, okay, well, all of a sudden the price of farming lettuce is going to go way down. If we can just figure out how to get water there. There's another plan to reroute the Colorado River. If we switch California to nuclear powered desalination. So what, so California gets the water from the ocean, desalinates it, uses that for Californian farmland. And then the Colorado River goes through Nevada to New Mexico and Arizona. And all of a sudden Nevada and Arizona.

• 1:17:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that was one of my favorite talks at HortaCon. Yeah, I think, I think what's interesting that where I'd end with Bowery is that this was one of the last. Maybe is one of the last super high-profile failures from the D to C era because Bowery was a company that the big branding agency is like the Red Antlers.

• 1:17:32John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 1:17:33Jordi Hays?

  And I believe, I don't remember if it was Gin Lane or Red Antler that did it. But I think it was at a time where you could take any sort of product, slap a, you know, get Emmett from Gin Lane or Antler to like, give you this like, half a million dollar brand treatment. And then people are like, oh, this is investable now. Right? Like, people investing in Allbirds because it had a cool story.

• 1:17:56John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:17:56Jordi Hays?

  And narrative and visuals, but then, oh, at the end of the day, you're selling shoes.

• 1:18:01John Coogan?

  Yep. Yep.

• 1:18:04John Coogan?

  Do you see this Martin Shkreli tweet? "Defend capitalism everywhere, every time. Be willing to die for it. Civilization collapses without it." And then someone chimes in.

• 1:18:14Jordi Hays?

  This is something that we could frame and put on the wall, and then it says like, Thomas Jefferson, and then Martin Shkreli.

• 1:18:20John Coogan?

  Yeah. I love this because like, the first reply is, "Civilization actually collapses, well, when it lacks strong sovereign institutions, social cohesion, and resilience to external threats." And Martin just says, "No."

• 1:18:34John Coogan?

  Mugged.

• 1:18:34Jordi Hays?

  Strong opinion, strongly out.

• 1:18:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, no, I just think not enough people are saying this.

• 1:18:40John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:18:41Jordi Hays?

  And I think it's now becoming a normal view within our hyper-online technology world, but outside of, you know, my little brother, I've had to talk with him in the last year, being like, no, capitalism is actually good. It's like, if you look at all these different categories, whether it be education, or healthcare, or housing.

• 1:19:06John Coogan?

  Life expectancy.

• 1:19:07Jordi Hays?

  Capitalism, life expectancy, capitalism is the driving force that enables improvement in those areas. So ultimately, you have to imagine that it's fairly good. So it's one of those things that feels obvious, but like, I actually think is worth talking about because there, there, we were, our generation was.

• 1:19:26Jordi Hays?

  The generation that grew up where it was okay to be in the classroom and a kid, you know, I remember in college would be like, consumption is bad, all, you know, and it's just sort of this like decelerationist like view that leads to Western Europe, which I like to vacation in, but I certainly don't want to live there.

• 1:19:46John Coogan?

  Don't want to invest there.

• 1:19:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's interesting. Capitalism for a long time faced like assaults on both sides. There was like the communism, like we need to go back to, you know, like real communism has never been tried. We need to go back to like, you know, Soviet era communism or something like that. But then there was also like the accelerationist like techno version of anti-capitalism, which was like, we're going to get AI and robots and UBI. And are you familiar with FALC, fully automated luxury communism? This idea that, yeah, this, there's like a bunch of sci-fi stories about this. Also like political philosophers about it. And that one actually makes kind of a decent amount of sense, although there's all these questions about like, how incentives would work in that case. But, but, but that did take hold in a lot of Bay Area people where they were like,

• 1:20:30John Coogan?

  well, yeah, maybe if we can just have the robots do everything, we'll live in the time of abundance. And so there won't need to be, you know, we won't need to allocate resources because we'll have unlimited of everything and you can just snap your fingers. Although there's always a question about like, okay, well, what about?

• 1:20:43Jordi Hays?

  Luxury communism.

• 1:20:45John Coogan?

  Luxury communism. It is a good.

• 1:20:47Jordi Hays?

  Communism needs a rebrand.

• 1:20:48John Coogan?

  Yeah, it is a good, it is a good take and it's certainly preferable to, you know, terrible communism or something. But, but then there's still a question about like, okay, well, there's only so much beachfront property. Even if you create like the metaverse or you got other worlds.

• 1:21:01Jordi Hays?

  Certain things will always be scarce.

• 1:21:03John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's very hard to imagine a world where it's like, oh yeah, I can just like, get an island in the middle of the ocean on demand. Like, okay, maybe you have some sort of crazy like micro robots that can just do that. But it's like, it's very odd.

• 1:21:16John Coogan?

  So the Sean Frank, good friend of the pod, says, Virgin Run Club versus Chad Walk Enjoyer.

• 1:21:25John Coogan?

  And the Virgin Run Club says.

• 1:21:28Jordi Hays?

  You gotta give some credit to Will Monitis for being an early major proponent of the Chad Walk Enjoyer.

• 1:21:36John Coogan?

  He was, the Lindy Walk, yeah.

• 1:21:37Jordi Hays?

  The Lindy Walk, yeah. He would, you know, frequently tweet that he was going on a 30 mile walk around Manhattan. Uh, and, you know, shortly after that had a nine-figure exit, so.

• 1:21:49John Coogan?

  He, he actually psy-locked me into that. The last time I was in Manhattan, I walked the entire island, like from like, I don't know, 91st Street down to the Wall Street and back. And it was amazing. Like, like, you, you spend like two or three hours walking. I mean, particularly in Manhattan because the entire city like turns over. And you watch people leave work and then start settling in, getting dinner, and then the nightclub scene. It's insane. It's like one of the most fantastic cities in the world. Um, also, are you, are you aware of how, uh, a lot of like the best bodybuilders are doing cardio these days?

• 1:22:24Jordi Hays?

  The hybrid athlete.

• 1:22:24John Coogan?

  It's all walking. It's all walking, yeah. Yeah. Um, I forget Chris Williamson was doing a video with somebody, uh, it's called like Seabum, Chris Bumstead, you know this guy? So he is a fantastic bodybuilder. His cardio is 45 minutes of walking on an inclined treadmill.

• 1:22:40Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:22:41John Coogan?

  And it's amazing. I've been doing it because there's never an excuse where you're like, oh, I don't really want to sprint right now. But everyone can get on a treadmill and just start walking. And then 45 minutes in, you're like, okay, I actually burned a lot of calories. I'm actually exhausted. There's a lot to this because it's inclined. But it's very, it's very hard to stop.

• 1:22:57Jordi Hays?

  We bought our house specifically because it's the best walking in Malibu, right? There's like this amazing walk path.

• 1:23:03John Coogan?

  It's fantastic. Saghar, good friend, says 12 days until clocks. This is actually an old tweet, but it's relevant because we just went through daylight savings time. 12 days until clock shift forward, dooming the productive class to dark mornings for months. Also, people can drink outside one hour later. Team standard time. So I guess we're actually in standard time now. We went back. So he's excited now that we're back on standard time. Um.

• 1:23:30Jordi Hays?

  Contrarian to be excited about the, uh.

• 1:23:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, but he hates going to daylight savings time because then if you wake up early, it's dark.

• 1:23:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38John Coogan?

  But I, and I agree with this, like, I think the switch is always like super disruptive, especially if you have kids and a family, like, it just throws everything off.

• 1:23:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:45John Coogan?

  You do so much to train the kid to go to sleep at a certain time, there's circadian rhythms off.

• 1:23:48Jordi Hays?

  Our four-month-old.

• 1:23:49John Coogan?

  It's awful.

• 1:23:50Jordi Hays?

  Is now deciding, he went from, she went from waking up at seven, 10 a.m. to now 6:10 on the dot. And it's like, okay.

• 1:23:59John Coogan?

  But I will say, like, last week when we were at the tail end of daylight savings time, I got into the office at like five or six and it was perfectly dark outside. And I could watch all the buildings in downtown like light up and like, oh, it's just beautiful, watching the sunrise. Like, there's nothing like watching the sunrise from the top of like.

• 1:24:17Jordi Hays?

  From the office.

• 1:24:18John Coogan?

  From the top of like, when I worked at Bain Capital, I would get in before everyone and I would go around, like, set up conference rooms. I was like an intern and I would always be on like the top floor of this building right as the sun rose and it was like so inspiring.

• 1:24:31Jordi Hays?

  Seeing the sunrise over your think pad.

• 1:24:34John Coogan?

  Amazing.

• 1:24:34Jordi Hays?

  Is an out-of-body experience.

• 1:24:36John Coogan?

  Literally over your, over your Polycom. Every, this was like 2012 or 2010, every, every single office at a Polycom. It was great. Uh, the other stuff too, I gotta dig in. Okay, so Goblin says, um, uh, wait, what the hell? I asked Claude if he noticed any patterns in my aura data, data versus the health data I've been logging and he's like, my summary. Oh, sure, your, your HRV, heart rate, uh, drops.

• 1:25:06Jordi Hays?

  Heart rate variability.

• 1:25:07John Coogan?

  Greater than 20% from baseline a day or two before the migraine starts. If it gets below 40, you can be pretty sure one's coming. And then there's a community note that says, this seems to have been a hallucination as per the author. But it's like some sort of like deeper truth.

• 1:25:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so I, I think that, I think what's interesting here is like.

• 1:25:29John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:30Jordi Hays?

  Greater health comes from greater understanding of yourself and the various inputs that drive your health, whether that's, oh, I feel a lot better at 5:00 p.m. and I have more energy at 5:00 p.m. because I walked in the morning.

• 1:25:41John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:25:41Jordi Hays?

  And so this sort of quantified. Self movement.

• 1:25:44John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:25:44Jordi Hays?

  Has been allowing people to understand themselves better, whether that's getting your biomarkers tested with function, or you're using your Oura ring or things like that. And I just think like incredible, incredible things are going to come from having more quantifiable data.

• 1:26:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:01Jordi Hays?

  And then having a effectively a team of brilliant longevity and performance doctors that can analyze that data for free. The thing that we keep coming back to about what's actually interested, interesting about AI today is intelligence as a service. And so if you want to work with the leading longevity specialists in the world, a lot of them charge like 150K per year just to be in their sort of program.

• 1:26:32John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:26:33Jordi Hays?

  And it's going to be really incredible when the average person with their $10 a month Oura ring can get even better care from this team of digital specialists than, than some, you know, public company CEO that's using David Sinclair's like, you know, longevity program or whatever.

• 1:26:53John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, it does seem valuable. I, I think for certain people, they need an algorithm or a doctor to tell them something, or they need the quantified, quantified self data to tell them something. But I always worry that there is a loss of value in not just being in tune with yourself. Like, like the sleep tracking is fine. It's good. Sleep's really important. If tracking it helps you get more sleep, that's great. But you should be able to just ask yourself, are you sleepy?

• 1:27:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And there's a, there's a company that's building a smart AI toilets to analyze your urine and your feces.

• 1:27:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:28Jordi Hays?

  Called Throne.

• 1:27:29John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:27:29Jordi Hays?

  And they're bringing the quantified self to your toilet, basically. So it's like understanding yourself through your waste.

• 1:27:37John Coogan?

  I could see some of that being, being valuable because that's a little bit harder to tell than just like, did I get a good night's rest?

• 1:27:42Jordi Hays?

  We'll get it. We'll get it set up in the studio.

• 1:27:43John Coogan?

  Okay, perfect.

• 1:27:44Jordi Hays?

  You can, you can be like, every time I have a really good bowel movement, the next pod, I have some absolute bangers.

• 1:27:50John Coogan?

  Yeah, banger. It's great. So Alexander says, bachelor's in the 1950s. And he posts a, what's a screenshot from a book or a picture from a book? Men were also pressured into acceptable family roles since the lack of a suitable wife could mean the loss of a job or promotion for a middle-class man. Bachelors were categorized as immature, infantile, narcissistic, deviant, or even pathological. Family advice expert Paul Landis argued, except for the sick, the badly crippled, the deformed, the emotionally warped, and the mentally defective, almost everyone has an opportunity to marry.

• 1:28:27Jordi Hays?

  I thought this was relevant. I was gonna ask you, does...

• 1:28:30John Coogan?

  It certainly resonated. 11K likes.

• 1:28:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, do you think that people started treating you differently once you had kids? Because there's just a certain sense of...

• 1:28:40John Coogan?

  Responsibility.

• 1:28:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, just responsibility when somebody is working for more than just themselves and has like more on the line that comes from a family. Like, I do think there's this sense of, there is a sense of like, you bring a new sense of seriousness to your work.

• 1:28:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 1:28:59Jordi Hays?

  That I don't think you can have. I think, I think, I looked at this and somebody, it's fairly easy to have a pretty good life if you are just a bachelor and you're living in your luxury apartment in New York and you have a job and whatever and you can do your run club and all this other stuff, and life gets infinitely more challenging once you have children in the mix and other sort of people that you're responsible for. So I think that I wanted to cover this because I think we'll actually come, we're gonna see a shift back where, you know, Keith Raboy was in the news recently for saying you shouldn't

• 1:29:40Jordi Hays?

  hire anybody over 30, but I could imagine they're getting to a point where the tech world starts looking at people that are, you know, that are... Forty without children and being like, oh, like, I don't know, like, if, you know.

• 1:29:54John Coogan?

  Well, I mean, when I got to Silicon Valley in 2012, there was, there was a blog post by PG and he, and he said that it was, it would be hard for a founder to be married with kids.

• 1:30:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:07John Coogan?

  And it was somewhat controversial, but it felt pretty consensus at the time, like a lot of people agreed.

• 1:30:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:14John Coogan?

  And I think that's, that's maybe true for first companies, but if you're already like, like, I've never had a job that wasn't an entrepreneur, so.

• 1:30:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:25John Coogan?

  It's like, it's kind of just like the career of the entrepreneur is, is a little bit more, there's less of like a leap, like, I don't feel like, oh, if I'm going to start a new company, I'm going to like, lose this stable corporate job, because that's not a thing that exists. What's interesting about this is that it, it, I feel like it's resonating, it got so many likes, because it's part of this like very trad revival, like, let's go back to the way things were, right?

• 1:30:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:49John Coogan?

  But, but I, other than that example with PG, it's hard for me to remember, like, when I was 20, what were the 35 year olds or the 40 year olds saying about starting families?

• 1:30:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00John Coogan?

  Because I, I think that it was out of vogue and now it's kind of back in vogue.

• 1:31:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I just, I think there's always this oscillation between two extremes, and it almost feels like right now, we're in a healthy middle ground, where everybody's like, yeah, kids are a ton of work, having a family is a ton of work. It is a distraction from product, finding product market fit.

• 1:31:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:21Jordi Hays?

  But there's this like, more of like a middle ground where you have, um, a good example of is like, Asaya, Asaya from Valor has like a bunch of kids, right? And, and like, you could argue that he will be more successful because he has like, a small army that's depending on him.

• 1:31:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:38Jordi Hays?

  To perform.

• 1:31:39John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it's certainly motivating.

• 1:31:41Jordi Hays?

  Fail.

• 1:31:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, and I, and I, and I do think, there's probably something, I mean, I remember when I, when I, like, first made like, a significant amount of money, talking to my father in law about this, and I was like, well, I made like so much money, I could like retire now, and he was like, no, you can't. He's like, you don't understand how expensive kids are. You don't, you don't understand like how much money you actually need.

• 1:32:00Jordi Hays?

  As a car guy, I think of it in the, I think every time I see like a buddy with like a, I have a friend who's like thirty-one. And he's got like six cars that could be considered supercars. And I just look at that and as I'm like, for every one child, you could basically support two supercars. So I'm like, I'd probably be doing the same thing.

• 1:32:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's great. Uh, let's go to Vittorio. Vittorio says, who even uses Teams and posts a screenshot of Microsoft Teams versus Slack daily active users? And Teams is like absolutely ripping and Slack is more or less flatlining. And I mean, I think the answer is like normies, like everyone who uses Outlook and just a normal job, they show up and the computer's just there. And they're not on some slick MacBook working from a coffee shop. They just go to work. They have a badge. They sit in a cubicle. And their boss says, this is your tech stack. Here you go.

• 1:32:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this is a.

• 1:32:56John Coogan?

  This is a very startup tweet.

• 1:32:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:58John Coogan?

  I don't know why.

• 1:32:59Jordi Hays?

  This is a warning to all the technology brothers that are thinking about their product in the context of, oh, we're going to build a Slack integration.

• 1:33:07John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:33:08Jordi Hays?

  Right? Because so much of enterprise software just ties back to communication, Slack, email, email being like the bedrock of all, uh, all software products. I think that, uh, yeah, I remember, uh, I once built an internal tool to track how much time people were spending online on Slack. Cause it's a really good proxy.

• 1:33:30John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:33:30Jordi Hays?

  For how much time somebody's spending at their laptop.

• 1:33:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:33Jordi Hays?

  And so, um, never got to building Teams because it wasn't relevant to me, but I think that is, it's the building for the Teams market. That's going to justify your unicorn, unicorn valuation, not purely the Slack.

• 1:33:47John Coogan?

  There is something interesting about Teams versus Slack, which is that, uh, with the recent defense tech boom. Being a company that has to use Teams because of ITAR is like a little bit of a status symbol. And people, founders flex about it because they're like, oh, I know that Slack, I'm a product guy. I know that Slack is a better product. I hate using Teams, so I can like complain about this publicly. And everyone will know that like my work is so important.

• 1:34:12Jordi Hays?

  I have to be on Teams.

• 1:34:13John Coogan?

  I can't use Slack because it's not ITAR compliant.

• 1:34:15Jordi Hays?

  I was on a Teams call for deterrence this morning.

• 1:34:18John Coogan?

  Yep. And you probably felt great.

• 1:34:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the other, yeah, I felt, I felt like a patriot.

• 1:34:23John Coogan?

  Felt important, exactly.

• 1:34:23Jordi Hays?

  Now, the other thing with this chart is what would it have looked like if Salesforce hadn't?

• 1:34:27John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the other thing is that it's just bundled into the distribution. So.

• 1:34:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but also, but also if Stewart was running Slack, you have to imagine he would have, that chart would still be going up.

• 1:34:37John Coogan?

  Founder mode.

• 1:34:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, tough. Daniel says, we need to double the fluoride in the water and add Ozempic and Adderall too. This is insane. Seventy-two thousand likes. What a banger. This guy is just like a god tier poster.

• 1:34:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:53John Coogan?

  It's just like, we were talking about this, seventy-two thousand, that's so many likes.

• 1:34:57Jordi Hays?

  Almost inconceivable. Most, most people have a tweet that gets seventy-two thousand impressions. And they're like, oh, I'm gonna retire.

• 1:35:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly. This guy, he doesn't need to raise money anymore for his company. He can just fund it off the creator payout.

• 1:35:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:10John Coogan?

  He's good.

• 1:35:10Jordi Hays?

  His, his, I.

• 1:35:11John Coogan?

  Generational wealth coming to him.

• 1:35:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, for him, the balance is making sure that his, his MRR grows faster than his Twitter payouts.

• 1:35:17John Coogan?

  No, no, no, no. Just grow the creator payouts. We'll see you at Amon, bro.

• 1:35:20Jordi Hays?

  Subsidize, yeah, subsidize.

• 1:35:22John Coogan?

  Let's see, Christie's.

• 1:35:23Jordi Hays?

  AI for cops product. No, I think.

• 1:35:26John Coogan?

  But you're, so you're anti-fluoride.

• 1:35:28Jordi Hays?

  Anti-fluoride, but, but in general, I think there, there's a much bigger debate to be had around fluoride. And fluoride usually gets, I talked about this at Hereticom, but usually gets all of the shade. When in reality, it's the fact that a lot of the pipes in the US water infrastructure are lead-based. And so that's just channeling lead into every household. And fluoride makes lead more bioavailable. So when you're, when you're having fluoride alongside lead, you're just absorbing more of it, which could, could account for the.

• 1:36:03Jordi Hays?

  You know, what are, what, you know, IQ downsides of fluoride consumption. But, um, but yeah, I think if, if the United States was really a serious country, we would be thinking about more proactively about medicating the population through the drinking water.

• 1:36:16John Coogan?

  Directly, for free, yeah.

• 1:36:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's like the world's perfect delivery mechanism. Everybody drinks water.

• 1:36:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:22Jordi Hays?

  So if you want somebody to be on a certain substance, then put it in the water.

• 1:36:26John Coogan?

  This is genius because like this tweet could have just said like, oh, Ozempic is so amazing. We should put it in the water. Like, that's just a phrase that people say when something like a miracle cure. But he wound up like having the most incendiary thing possible, double the fluoride, but then also adding Ozempic and Adderall. So there's a ton to latch on to.

• 1:36:43Jordi Hays?

  Whoever decided, there's a lot of countries that have stopped fluoridating the water.

• 1:36:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:46Jordi Hays?

  In the United States, we, it's, it's regulated effectively, but every single year we're effectively deciding to continue medicating the population through the fluoride in the water.

• 1:36:57John Coogan?

  Wow, look at this, seventeen likes. This is an undiscovered gem. Waleed says, tons of young girls are using ChatGPT to manifest. Looks like OpenAI is acknowledging it on their official TikTok. So I guess ChatGPT is reposting, the ChatGPT TikTok account is reposting this and people are using, I don't actually know that much about manifesting. This is the, uh, the secret, right? Where you just, I, I will be wealthy, I will be at Aman, I will be at Aman, I will be at Christie's.

• 1:37:22Jordi Hays?

  No, you, you don't say, you, you don't say, I will be, you say, I am at Aman.

• 1:37:26John Coogan?

  Oh.

• 1:37:27Jordi Hays?

  I am wealthy, right? Present, present tense, right? No, but this is, this, this is relevant because this is the bull case for OpenAI, right? They're not saying, you know, people on TikTok are using Claude to manifest, right? They're using ChatGPT.

• 1:37:44John Coogan?

  It's the new brand.

• 1:37:45Jordi Hays?

  It is, it's the name.

• 1:37:46John Coogan?

  It's the Kleenex for AI.

• 1:37:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Kleenex of AI.

• 1:37:49John Coogan?

  It is, it is, it's just like, ask someone on the street, how do you, how do you use AI to do your homework? ChatGPT.com.

• 1:37:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, it's almost like Google, Google for search, where like, if that plays out within AI, it's just like, when I want AI, I go to openai.com/ChatGPT.

• 1:38:05John Coogan?

  I mean, Sundar was correct when he said, competition is only a click away, and yet, Google has a massive monopoly. Why? It's just the place that you go.

• 1:38:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:13John Coogan?

  It's the default. I do think that there's something very interesting about AI for these kind of squishier use cases like astrology, manifesting, personality tests, that type of stuff, because the hallucinations are fine.

• 1:38:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:27John Coogan?

  Like with code, there's like a right answer, so it can test itself, so it's very good at that. But then it's always, it's always tough in the middle. But when you get out into just like the, are you familiar with the P T Barnum effect, this whole thing? So the Barnum effect is this series of like, uh, statements that I can make about you that feel very personalized, but actually apply to everyone. So I can say, like, uh, you have a complicated history with your family. And who doesn't?

• 1:38:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:55John Coogan?

  But you're like, oh, my God, you know me. Or, or like, you believe you deserve more in life, something like that. And you'll be like, oh, my God, I do. And so a lot of like tarot card readers, palm readers, psychics, they use that P T Barnum effect. But AI can use that very effectively and it can feel like, wow, the AI really knows me, even though it's maybe just hallucinating or applying like heuristics that are basically apply to everyone. But everyone just wants to hear a pump up speech and that's valuable.

• 1:39:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and this, and, and if, if that trend is real, there's a really big business. There's a hundred million dollar business to be built on just being like AI for manifestation.

• 1:39:30John Coogan?

  Rapper.

• 1:39:31Jordi Hays?

  Rappers.

• 1:39:31John Coogan?

  Rapper, for sure. Although it might get, it might get baked into one of the existing companies like, uh, CoStar could, could integrate something like that.

• 1:39:38Jordi Hays?

  Totally, but I think that these products are so engaging.

• 1:39:41John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:39:42Jordi Hays?

  That.

• 1:39:42John Coogan?

  They can stand on their own.

• 1:39:43Jordi Hays?

  You can stand, you can spin it up and it can stand on its own.

• 1:39:46John Coogan?

  Probably not super venture backable, probably not a ten billion dollar company, but phenomenal business if you get it right. I firmly agree. This was, this was one of the pitches when I went on my first million. I was like, exploit the Barnum effect to create an AI app rapper.

• 1:39:59Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:40:02John Coogan?

  I don't even know how to pronounce this. Tior taxes? Tior taxes says, "An incredible thread on Musk. Very rarely I see something like this from someone who is not a blind fanboy. T O D R. Some people are larger than life, than the self-reinforcing ugly pettiness of it. You wrongly assume this is a triviality to brush aside. They can do it for real." And it's a quote tweet of somebody from Olivia that says, "If you can't model leviathans walking through the world, you're gonna make some pretty bad mistakes." And it's just a deep analysis of Musk. It's interesting. I like the, I've always liked the take that Elon is both, you know, P T Barnum, the circus man, the showman, and he's also Thomas Edison, the inventor.

• 1:40:45John Coogan?

  And he's solid on both. So, and that really breaks people's brains because they want to latch on to just one. It's like, yeah, he does announce products before they're ready, and he is wrong on those. But then he's also a great engineer, great manager, and can build real stuff, like the cars drive, the rockets land. And so even if he's saying some wild stuff that might be wrong in the short term, it's like, both are true. What was your take from this, though?

• 1:41:13Jordi Hays?

  It's hard because I actually think.

• 1:41:15John Coogan?

  There's like a million tweets in there.

• 1:41:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, a million takes.

• 1:41:19Jordi Hays?

  But yeah, I think, I think what you take away from this is that he's incredibly complicated. And the people that just want to pin him as doing like the cringe stuff where he's like jumping on like the stage. And oh, he's not just an engineer. He's not just a poster. There's so much, there's so much depth to it all. And yet, the thing that, we had, we had a listener comment on one of our posts this morning, saying that basically like very bearish about Axe. And your take, which I think is the right take is, Elon has a history of just making stuff work and making money. So at this point in his career, betting against him is just like generally stupid idea.

• 1:42:04John Coogan?

  Yeah. It's interesting. Um, Ally Taylor says, I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit it, but I genuinely find ChatGPT to be helpful and supportive when I'm anxious.

• 1:42:16Jordi Hays?

  This is back to the barn effect.

• 1:42:16Jordi Hays?

  Another thin wrapper opportunity. Yeah. I would be, there's probably already fifty million dollars of ARR worth of these sort of like ChatGPT therapy products that are just out there printing. Yep. And they're not in, they're not even being talked about because it's just like two engineers, like just shipping.

• 1:42:34John Coogan?

  I mean, the first version of this was like all the Riz apps. Did you see these?

• 1:42:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:37John Coogan?

  So I, I talked to a kid.

• 1:42:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think I met that guy too.

• 1:42:40John Coogan?

  D- DM me and was like, hey, I'm building this like ChatGPT wrapper for, uh, you know, how to talk to girls on dating apps. So you'll copy what they said and it'll recommend what you should say.

• 1:42:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:51John Coogan?

  And, and I was like, that sounds great, kid. Like, good job building something that people want clearly. Like, you have some users, like, just go monetize it right now because the whole ChatGPT wrapper thing is gonna be a bad meme. Don't bother with status symbols in Silicon Valley and trying to raise money. And he comes back to me like a month later. He's like, we're doing a million a month.

• 1:43:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he ended up joining, if we're, if we're talking about the same people, he ended up joining HF Zero.

• 1:43:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:43:15Jordi Hays?

  And now he's building a self-improvement sort of community platform product.

• 1:43:19John Coogan?

  But that, but that initial, that initial experience of being young and making money is so valuable.

• 1:43:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:25John Coogan?

  And, and then, and then taking someone who can, A, build a product, get it to market, figure out the marketing, like do the, I think he does the growth hack on, on TikTok.

• 1:43:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:35John Coogan?

  Like the motion of like getting the Stripe account growing, even if it rugs and like, oh, you got killed by ChatGPT. If you're a twenty year old and you're making a million dollars, even for just one month, and then you make nothing, it's like, it's gonna be so much easier to stand back.

• 1:43:47Jordi Hays?

  Now you can fund your.

• 1:43:48John Coogan?

  Go read Zero to One, figure out what actually a monopoly business is, but you have the experience of launching, building, coding, hiring, firing, all these different things. And then you can go build the real generational company, but you actually have the, something under your belt instead of just being like, oh, I went to school.

• 1:44:02Jordi Hays?

  And, and VC's pattern match. So when you go into your, and if, when you have the right idea and you can go in and you could be like, yeah, when I was twenty one, I built a million dollar ARR.

• 1:44:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:12Jordi Hays?

  ChatGPT wrapper.

• 1:44:13John Coogan?

  Show me a high school diploma and a.

• 1:44:15Jordi Hays?

  For a period of time, it was like, oh, he traded sneakers.

• 1:44:19John Coogan?

  Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:20Jordi Hays?

  Ebay and then it was like, oh, he created like a Shopify store and now he created, he or she created a thin wrapper on GPT. And if you didn't do that, like, it's kind of bearish.

• 1:44:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:30Jordi Hays?

  So, word of advice to the younger technology brothers, both male and female in the audience.

• 1:44:37Jordi Hays?

  Go make a million dollars with a thin chat GPT wrapper.

• 1:44:40John Coogan?

  Don't fall for the, the psy op that VCs are putting upon young founders that, oh, you have to build a generational company that has a monopoly thesis like immediately. Like, if you're young, just go build something cool.

• 1:44:51Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:44:53John Coogan?

  Eric Katakana says, actually insane how Steve Jobs was the singular successful ideas guy in the entire history of tech companies.

• 1:45:04Jordi Hays?

  Until John Fio.

• 1:45:06John Coogan?

  Three, yeah. Seven point three K likes clearly resonated.

• 1:45:11John Coogan?

  I don't know how true this is. It's such a weird thing. Like, who's an idea guy?

• 1:45:14Jordi Hays?

  Idea guy is, ideas guy is such a funny way to slander somebody because among certain groups, being able to generate great ideas is like the highest, like, it's like the highest status thing.

• 1:45:28John Coogan?

  Especially in the AI era.

• 1:45:30Jordi Hays?

  And in, and in many ways, like, you, there's, you could totally make a case that Elon is an ideas guy, right? He thinks of really big ideas and then he brings together smart group of, groups of people to go and do that. And yeah, he's adding fuel to the fire and pushing people and questioning everything and all that stuff. But at its core, he's an idea guy.

• 1:45:49John Coogan?

  Yeah, for sure. And I mean, it's like, where is the line? Like, is Zuck a, an ideas guy? It seems like he is, like, the most value he creates there is ideas, right? And it's more like Will almost, like, he's in founder mode. So, like, he, he didn't have the idea for the metaverse or the idea for VR, but he had the will to be like, we're actually gonna go do 10 billion of CapEx on this or AI or something.

• 1:46:11Jordi Hays?

  Anybody that's using, calling, saying idea guy as a way to slander.

• 1:46:16John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:17Jordi Hays?

  Is usually the kind of person that is mad. Because they see an idea and they're like, oh, that's a good idea. Like, I thought of that.

• 1:46:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, but I didn't do anything with it.

• 1:46:26Jordi Hays?

  But I didn't do it.

• 1:46:26John Coogan?

  Yeah, so it's not just having the ideas, it's actually being able to like, believe in them early. Like, there's plenty of ideas that I've had, that I've seen the incarnation of a few years later and been like, wow, that's like, a really, that, that was a good idea. But there's a massive difference between having the idea and actually taking action on it and going and, and going. Even, even just betting on the market. There's been so many times where I've been like, oh yeah, like, I do feel like Nvidia is like way underpriced right now and bought like a thousand. And I'm like, let's go. I should have sized that like way differently.

• 1:46:54Jordi Hays?

  One year of college tuition.

• 1:46:55John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly. I should have sized that way differently. Like, having conviction in your ideas is, is, is just as important. Um, and, and I think that's what, that's why Steve Jobs is successful because he, he has the idea that, you know, you don't need a keyboard on a phone. But then he screams at anyone who says we have to have a keyboard and demands that it doesn't have a keyboard.

• 1:47:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:17John Coogan?

  To a thousand employees that are all have like little subtle soft power realms. And there's a designer over here who has a bunch of friends and you can't fire them and they're going to push back and like, there's going to be all these things. So it's like actually bringing the will of like the founder mode to, to, to, to make your ideas actually happen.

• 1:47:33Jordi Hays?

  And getting, and being lucky with the timing. There's a, there's a, Justin Mar's brother, Nick, uh, one of, you know, the other co-founder of, um, Kettle and Fire. He has a new company that is disrupting the legacy CPG testing companies.

• 1:47:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:49Jordi Hays?

  And when I saw the deck, I was like, this is like super obvious. Like, wanted to invest, uh, would invest in anything he does. But, um, saw it and I was like, yeah, this is super obvious. I'm surprised nobody had really taken this on. But I'm sure a lot of other people had the idea, but a Nick and his co-founders came together at a very specific moment in time when there was a bunch of new regulations happening in the baby product market and new testing requirements. And so it created this sort of perfect moment to build Light Labs, which will now probably end up being a really massive company. And a bunch of other people will look at it five years from now and be like, oh, I could have thought of that.

• 1:48:31John Coogan?

  Let's go to the squirrel story. I know we don't talk about politics, but this is, this is animals.

• 1:48:36Jordi Hays?

  It seems to have.

• 1:48:38John Coogan?

  Broken through. So, uh, the Associated Press writes, "An orphaned squirrel who became a social media star was euthanized after being seized from home." And Mike Solana quote tweets it with, say his name. This wasn't even the biggest Mike Solana banger about this.

• 1:48:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:55John Coogan?

  He, he quote tweeted another video of like, yeah, this one. Uh, he quoted a video breaking down the squirrel. Uh, it was like all the best clips of the squirrel and, uh, it just says, "This is what they took from you." The Elon quote got 150 million views. That's like everyone on X right now.

• 1:49:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:12John Coogan?

  Like every single person saw this.

• 1:49:14Jordi Hays?

  Every, this meme was just a good way for posters to cash in.

• 1:49:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:20Jordi Hays?

  Because like Pat, Pat, uh, Blumenthal.

• 1:49:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:23Jordi Hays?

  Was like, sent me one and he sent two and one of them got like 11,000 likes or something like, something ridiculous.

• 1:49:31John Coogan?

  Wild.

• 1:49:31Jordi Hays?

  I think, I think the real story is that, uh, the, uh, squirrel was a content to commerce play for this guy's OnlyFans. And so having, uh, the squirrel become a hero of the conservative movement.

• 1:49:46John Coogan?

  Very odd.

• 1:49:46Jordi Hays?

  Is a bit, uh, shaky ground to build on. Cause if you look, uh, if you dig below the surface at all, it's OnlyFans.

• 1:49:55John Coogan?

  Odd funnel.

• 1:49:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:57John Coogan?

  Funnel. Many, many content plays are, many Instagrams are just fronts for, fronts for OnlyFans. Um, are you familiar with Gelman amnesia? I think we've talked about this. So Gelman amnesia is this idea that like, let's say you're like, you know, a world expert in like structured credit. And you pick up like the Wall Street Journal and they write an article about what you're a world expert in and they get some facts wrong. Then all of a sudden, when you read an article in the same newspaper that, that isn't about your expertise, you're like, well, if they got my thing wrong, maybe they're getting the thing that I don't know about wrong. It's kind of like the glass shattering and you realize like, oh, there's all this like, like things aren't just broken in my world. They're broken everywhere.

• 1:50:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. It was like my dad reading an article about me in the New York Times, you know?

• 1:50:39John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:40Jordi Hays?

  Oh, wait, maybe this isn't like the, you know, bastion of truth.

• 1:50:44John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly. Uh, and so I feel like this was a huge Gelman amnesia moment for a lot of normies who just like animals. Because they're like, if the government could mess this up, like aside from all the laws, aside from whatever happened. Just the idea of like euthanizing an internet famous furry animal is like comms nightmare 101.

• 1:51:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:06John Coogan?

  Like you should never do that ever because they have virality and cuteness. And that's like all you need. So you know that there's going to be a backlash. You should know. And so, and so if, if the government can mess up that, then maybe they can mess up the war in the Middle East. Or, or the Vietnam war. And so it's very easy to look at this and then realize.

• 1:51:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Oh, the government can.

• 1:51:27John Coogan?

  And that's Elon's point. Government overreach in action. And it's like, it's such a minor thing. And it's like, yeah, I don't want a squirrel. This is never going to happen to me. But it's like, if, if, if they can get this that wrong, like maybe they can get something else bigger wrong. That does affect you. And I've talked to a lot of people in defense. I've seen this at the FDA where it's like, like a lot of the defense people are like, well, I went really deep dealing with the DOD and I saw how broken that was. And I wound up starting the company. But that led me to believe that not, it's not just the DOD that's broken in their procurement. It's also the State Department, the Department of Agriculture and all of these different agencies that all have like similar levels of rot.

• 1:52:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, like Boeing, Boeing, you know, has their issues with their planes, but they're also selling like 150K like soap dispensers.

• 1:52:11John Coogan?

  Yep. Yep.

• 1:52:12Jordi Hays?

  You know, to the government.

• 1:52:13John Coogan?

  Yeah. It's very hard to be like, oh yeah, we are excellent, everything, but just the one problem you're hearing about. Usually like there, where there's smoke, there's fire. Uh, it was funny because I was watching this video of this cute squirrel videos. I was watching it with my three year old and he was just dying laughing, just like so cute, just like, oh my God, look at this squirrel. And I'm like crying because I know how it ends. And it was just like, I was like, oh my God, this poor squirrel. And like, I'm like tearing up and he's just like dying laughing because he just thinks it's like a cute squirrel. And I was like, damn, like, yeah. When it, when you find out, you're going to be like the most hardcore libertarian ever. But I'm not going to tell you, uh, you can listen to the podcast in 10 years and you can figure out what happened to the squirrel.

• 1:52:56John Coogan?

  But wild. Oh yeah. Here's the soap dispenser story. So praying for exits. Uh, good buddy says, uh, posts a screenshot of an article about Boeing. Says Boeing cleaned up on air force parts, including soap dispensers marked up 8,000%. Wow. Oh, yes. Good old government accountability. Hundred and fifty K for soap dispensers certainly seems correct to me.

• 1:53:17Jordi Hays?

  So this is why I'm excited about, uh, do you know Kimia?

• 1:53:21John Coogan?

  The AI thing.

• 1:53:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So, so our friend Kimia is building a company that allows anybody to find and bid on government contracts.

• 1:53:29John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:53:29Jordi Hays?

  And what's going to be really interesting about that is by introducing, there's a lot of contracts out there that the government gives out that basically don't have much competition.

• 1:53:37John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:53:37Jordi Hays?

  If Boeing goes to them and they're like, we have these soap dispensers and we're Boeing and you buy a lot of stuff from us. So why not spend, these are great soap dispensers. They're only a hundred thousand dollars per dispenser. Seem, might seem like fine. Uh, nobody gets fired for buying Boeing, but then if there was another bidder in the mix being like, I will sell you a soap dispenser for five hundred dollars.

• 1:53:56John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:53:57Jordi Hays?

  And so Kimi, Kimia is like arming the, uh, all the people.

• 1:54:01John Coogan?

  All the drop shippers.

• 1:54:02Jordi Hays?

  All the, yeah, basically like.

• 1:54:03John Coogan?

  Basically.

• 1:54:04Jordi Hays?

  I, I, I legitimately. Yeah. So I, I, and this is, what I talked to him about is like, his company will be very successful if he can inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs that want to go and be government contractors.

• 1:54:17John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:54:17Jordi Hays?

  Cause it's very tangible, right? It's actually easier to go and make money selling to the government than it is to buy something on AliExpress, get it sent to you. Mark it up, get the Facebook ad when you could just like product or service and customer, product, service and customer. Right? So.

• 1:54:34John Coogan?

  It's great.

• 1:54:34Jordi Hays?

  Uh, I think, uh, predicting out the next couple of years, Kimia is going to start a, a similar to what Shopify did.

• 1:54:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:41Jordi Hays?

  A new movement amount around government contract.

• 1:54:43John Coogan?

  Are you familiar with the story of TransDigm?

• 1:54:45Jordi Hays?

  No.

• 1:54:46John Coogan?

  Oh man, it's, it's fantastic. So, uh, it was profiled in this four-episode limited podcast from Patrick O'Shaughnessy, uh, host of Invest Like the Best, a separate podcast called 50X. And it's a fantastic deep dive into this company. It was, uh, it was like the least Silicon Valley company, private equity, buy up, roll up.

• 1:55:09Jordi Hays?

  Amazing.

• 1:55:10John Coogan?

  And then it goes from like five hundred million to five bill, uh, five billion to fifty, there's like, there's like 50X of gain. And that's why it was profiled in the show. But the four episodes are like the CEO who, who like was running the company, then the lead investor in the private markets, then back to the CEO for a second interview about taking it public and what they did next. And then the lead investor in the public markets. So you get this like very back and forth. It's just fascinating. And the first time I listened to it, I was like, this is like the craziest jargon because. You think you're like taking crazy pills because they're like, so what's your secret? And he's like, well, we raise prices and we cut costs. And it's like, and he says, and they talk about this for like 20 minutes and you're like, okay, get to like the crazy one trick that everyone hates, that's so secretive.

• 1:55:53John Coogan?

  And, and really it's just like super operational efficiency. Go in, playbooks.

• 1:55:57Jordi Hays?

  Literally stuff that you can learn while getting a Harvard MBA, which is raise prices and cut costs.

• 1:56:02John Coogan?

  But Charlie Munger was asked about this on an Invest Like the Best episode, like, what do you think of TransDigm? Like, would you ever invest in this company? And he was like, no, I think it's unethical. And the reason is because a lot of the way that TransDigm makes money is they go, like they, they make like all of the seat belts on planes. So you know, if you go on a Boeing or an Airbus, when you buckle your seatbelt, it's all the same clock, right?

• 1:56:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:24John Coogan?

  They're doing the toilets, all the toilets are the same, all the seats are the same. And all of that stuff, they make like, you know, some sort of fan blade that goes in like every motor. And so what they'll do is they'll get intellectual property around that, get a small monopoly on one single part. And then once they have a contract with the government, they'll raise the price. So their margins are really good. And I don't think they ever get this egregious, but what they'll do is they'll say like, okay, yeah, like we sent you this part for like a dollar. It costs us 50 cents to make, but the next batch is going to be like a hundred bucks. And the government's just like, ah, a hundred bucks, like whatever, like that's so little, it doesn't matter. But they're buying a lot. And then all of a sudden, TransDigm starts making a lot of money. And so it seems like very rent extracting.

• 1:57:01Jordi Hays?

  The government has budgets, but no profit incentive. Nobody working in the government really has this sort of profit incentive.

• 1:57:08John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly. But it's fascinating. It's a very, very contentious company. Like some people love it, some people hate it. It's a fantastic financial story, but it's just like under discussed in my opinion.

• 1:57:18Jordi Hays?

  Meanwhile, they're running Seize Candy and they're like, we raise prices seven percent every single year, no matter the market conditions or anything else.

• 1:57:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, brand monopolies are okay, I guess.

• 1:57:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, brand monopolies are fine.

• 1:57:28John Coogan?

  Everyone, everyone has their preferred monopoly that they're like, this one's natural and the other ones aren't. And all the other ones should be broken up, but my monopolies are good. Monopoly is for me, but not for thee.

• 1:57:40John Coogan?

  Let's go to Jack Prescott. He says, "Whatever happens after the earning call, the mission and focus will remain the same. Execute and deliver, protect the West." Palantir.

• 1:57:50Jordi Hays?

  Should we do a live reaction to?

• 1:57:52John Coogan?

  The earnings? Oh, did the earnings just happen today?

• 1:57:54Jordi Hays?

  I think they were today, yeah.

• 1:57:56John Coogan?

  I love Palantir. Fantastic company, very interesting business.

• 1:58:01Jordi Hays?

  Earnings per share beat 10%.

• 1:58:03John Coogan?

  There we go.

• 1:58:04Jordi Hays?

  Uh, no, no, I don't think that, I don't think it's actually.

• 1:58:07John Coogan?

  They're trading really well. They're, they're, they're trading like a tech stock now, which is fantastic. Uh, I think they broke a hundred billion. I saw this insane, uh, chart that Shamsankar sent me. Uh, the, it was like, e- every company in defense, all the primes, their market cap, and then their employees. And Palantir is like fourth by market cap, and they have 3,000 employees, and every other company has like over 100,000 employees.

• 1:58:32Jordi Hays?

  Crazy.

• 1:58:33John Coogan?

  It's remarkable. Like, do more with less.

• 1:58:35Jordi Hays?

  The, um.

• 1:58:36John Coogan?

  It's good stuff.

• 1:58:36Jordi Hays?

  It's interesting, Google is not up to date. It should be probably on perplexity. Let's actually compare this.

• 1:58:43John Coogan?

  Just open the Bloomberg app.

• 1:58:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:45John Coogan?

  Just, just.

• 1:58:46Jordi Hays?

  We need to get, we need to get a terminal on the desk.

• 1:58:48John Coogan?

  Terminal right here.

• 1:58:49Jordi Hays?

  Uh.

• 1:58:51John Coogan?

  But.

• 1:58:52Jordi Hays?

  But yeah, it's interesting that Yahoo is up to date.

• 1:58:55John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 1:58:57Jordi Hays?

  And yet perplexity is quite up to date.

• 1:59:00John Coogan?

  There you go.

• 1:59:01Jordi Hays?

  So congratulations to.

• 1:59:03John Coogan?

  All Palantir shareholders.

• 1:59:04Jordi Hays?

  Palantir sales beat, stock up 13%.

• 1:59:09John Coogan?

  13%, wow, so it must be over 100 billion now.

• 1:59:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:12John Coogan?

  That's fantastic. I was, uh, I was at a defense tech, tech event in DC. And, uh, Shamsankar, the CFO, who's been there since like day one, he might be a co-founder, like first employee. Uh, he gave this great talk about Palantir and what they're building and, you know, how they want to work with startups and whatnot. And somebody asked this question, like, "Oh, well, you've, uh, you've raised like, you know, $4 billion in the private markets, and your revenue's only like $4 billion. So like, aren't, isn't this like a failure financially?" And he was just like, "Oh my God, like, you don't understand, like, the first thing about finance." The guy was from, uh, out of the country, he was from like France, something like backwater like that. And, uh, and, and so the next question I asked, I raised my hand, I was like, uh, "So you've raised, uh, only, you've raised only $4 billion,

• 1:59:55John Coogan?

  and yet your company's worth like more than 10 times that. Like, how do you make it look so easy?"

• 2:00:00Jordi Hays?

  Their P E ratio is two hundred and forty three.

• 2:00:06John Coogan?

  I mean, software and they and they have an amazing A I story, right? Because they have like all this private data that no one can get into. And so it's like they're going to be able to sell like very differentiated products.

• 2:00:15Jordi Hays?

  I think there's. I think there's that's a potentially a trillion dollar company.

• 2:00:20John Coogan?

  I mean, Karp is just founder mode like he's the embodiment of it. And it's like, don't bet, don't bet against that, seriously. Steve Weisner says email marketing is dying. Google ads are dying. Cold calls, well, are dead. Not sure people fully realize we're at a huge inflection point for marketing. Got to think differently about how to reach your customers.

• 2:00:43Jordi Hays?

  So. What's interesting, so what's interesting about this is that it feels like a lot of sales is all going to go back to relationships.

• 2:00:55John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:00:55Jordi Hays?

  And so the truly gifted salesperson that's just good at making people like them and wanting to do business with them is actually going to excel, even in a world where as a small company, you can have an army of like online digital clones that are just selling constantly. And it feels like people may only start responding to like a personal message of being like, hey, like the C E O of this company wants to meet you. Like, let me know if you're down for a conversation. And it's like, sure. Yeah. So it's like going back to Senna's point and like core learning from studying the history's greatest entrepreneurs, like relationships around the world.

• 2:01:31John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:01:31Jordi Hays?

  And in an era of A I, that will become even more the case.

• 2:01:37John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:01:39Jordi Hays?

  You can't disrupt the chat that just like people like to do business with.

• 2:01:43John Coogan?

  I think there's an interesting thing that this tweet misses, which is like, a lot of these things companies have moved on to, like this doesn't even acknowledge like owned media going viral on TikTok, doing stunts, being really good at press. Like there, there are areas of marketing that stills are like, they might die off in the next few years, but he didn't even really capture like the tail end of this marketing. But I agree with your point.

• 2:02:06Jordi Hays?

  And it's interesting because he's direct response. Marketing seems to be working better than ever, like Meta is getting so optimized that I buy products on a weekly basis from companies I've never heard of because they serve me an ad for a highly relevant product.

• 2:02:20John Coogan?

  That's good.

• 2:02:21Jordi Hays?

  And that still seems to work and Meta is figuring out a way that even though C P Ms have gone up dramatically. Like the ads still work, like you can't brute force a stupid product into being really big like you could like a decade ago.

• 2:02:35John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:02:36Jordi Hays?

  But the ad platform is like getting better and better. But yeah, I think what this misses is like you are going to need to figure out how to get high quality attention for your product or your business. And there's, and you're not going to be reliant on this like tool set that everybody has access to.

• 2:02:55John Coogan?

  Yeah, I, I think people miss this with like the, the AI spam or like AI sales agents is like, there's going to be an arms race and just as fast as the AI spam increases, like so will the AI filtering. It's that classic, like there's this webcomic that's like, oh, this is amazing. This, this, uh, this AI, I just type one bullet point and it turns into, it turns it into this like really long email. And then on the other side, it's like, this AI is amazing. It turns this long email into just one bullet point. And it's like, the relationships are built on just like text messages between two people that are just like, do you want to do this deal? Yes or no? It's like thumbs up and that's the end. So, uh, so, so I, I, I, I'm very skeptical about like the spam being a good path.

• 2:03:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:39John Coogan?

  Unless there's something like you really found some weird edge and you're just like, but it's gonna be short-lived.

• 2:03:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. The other thing that's cool is now that anybody can, uh, anybody can be like a pretty competent developer.

• 2:03:51John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:03:51Jordi Hays?

  I, a founder of my portfolio who's not the CTO of his company, like almost won a hackathon this last weekend just by using all of like the publicly available tools. And so what's interesting to that is it's the, the really talented marketers of today going forward are going to be looking more like engineers. Where historically, the really sophisticated marketing organizations like Ramp as an example.

• 2:04:15John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:04:15Jordi Hays?

  They have like a lot of engineering involvement in the marketing activity that they're doing. And so you have to imagine that the new marketers are not, the, the, the best marketers are not going to be like the affiliate marketers or like, I'm really good at AdSense. Because that's all just like automated now. It's like, I'm actually writing code to better find and.

• 2:04:36Jordi Hays?

  Attract and do all, you know, customers.

• 2:04:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, that's very interesting. I like that. Boring Business says, "Good times create high EBITDA multiples. High EBITDA multiples create bad times. Bad dimes create low EBITDA multiples. Low EBITDA multiples create good times."

• 2:04:52Jordi Hays?

  So I think this is a funny tweet, but I have to say that I feel like it is great. Good CEOs create high EBITDA multiples. High EBITDA multiples create sloppy CEOs. Uh, bad CEOs create low EBITDA multiples and, uh, low EBITDA multiples, uh, create opportunities for good CEOs.

• 2:05:13John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, it's kind of like the wartime versus peacetime CEO thing a little bit. I think that there's, uh, I, I, I think what, what, I mean, uh, what needs to be like unpacked about the wartime CEO is just that there's like a million different wars that you can fight. There's like, there's like the war of like, my company is dying and I need to like fire people, cut costs, and just like, keep this thing going.

• 2:05:39Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 2:05:39John Coogan?

  To like make it to the next fight. And that's what, that, that, you need a wartime CEO to get through that hard, hard time. But then you also need a wartime CEO to go back on the offensive.

• 2:05:49Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 2:05:49John Coogan?

  So there's like defensive wartime CEO, o- offensive wartime CEOs.

• 2:05:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:53John Coogan?

  And they're both wartime CEOs.

• 2:05:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the, the good example right now is Sundar at Google spending the last 10 years.

• 2:06:02John Coogan?

  Everyone says he's like the classic peacetime CEO.

• 2:06:04Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, he's making so much money. Every employee's making a lot of money. The shareholders are doing well. Everybody's just kind of coasting and then you, it's like, boom, Sam Altman comes in and laps you on AI. All your AI products internally suck. Sam Alt, everybody loves Sam Altman's products. Boom, you make room for the, the perplexity guy, which is becoming a legendary ship poster.

• 2:06:26John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:06:26Jordi Hays?

  Himself and, uh, has a very high, it's extreme EBITDA multiple for his business today. Um, and, uh, so yeah, it, it, it's the, um, relaxed CEOs creating opportunities for cracked CEOs.

• 2:06:43John Coogan?

  Yep, I think that's right. Uh, Atlas says, amazing. Now we have LinkedIn thread guy goon entrepreneur influencers depicting an AIGF in front of the giant goon tower in Dubai, the goon capital of the world. We are still so early and it's another one of these. We talked about this before. I created this AI influencer in two minutes. It's making me $3,000 a month and I only worked 60 minutes a day. Let me show you how to get started and of course it's selling a course.

• 2:07:13Jordi Hays?

  There's like an entire economy of people selling courses on how to make your, your like army of, uh,

• 2:07:21John Coogan?

  Well, you know that-

• 2:07:22Jordi Hays?

  And I just wanna see, I like, if somebody's watching and, and they can send me their Stripe dashboard showing that their goon influencer, goon influencer is actually making money, like I'll shut up. But until then, I'm just gonna keep calling this stuff out because-

• 2:07:39John Coogan?

  Well, the dashboard shows that the courses are selling. You know Andrew Tate-

• 2:07:42Jordi Hays?

  I love how this guy too, his username is at creatine underscore cycle. And I wonder with this quality of posting, I'm guessing he stopped cycling and he's just always on it.

• 2:07:53John Coogan?

  Always on it, yeah, always on it. Um, well, you know that, uh, like when you join Andrew Tate's like, you know, club to, you know, become like a entrepreneur or whatever, he had like most, most of like the fake guru entrepreneur hustle core, core seller guys have like one thing. They're like, I'm the real estate guy. I get you in my funnel. I talk about how I became rich through real estate and then you will eventually pay for my course or like my in-person thing to learn how to do real estate. Or there's a different person that does it for crypto or there's a different person that does it for, you know, Shopify sites or whatever. Andrew Tate does all of them.

• 2:08:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:29John Coogan?

  He doesn't do just one. You go in and there's like eight modules and it's like learn crypto. One of them is Forex trading. Another and then and then as soon as AI got big, he has an AI module. So you can become like an AI influencer like this guy might be like downstream of Tate in some ways.

• 2:08:45Jordi Hays?

  That's crazy.

• 2:08:46John Coogan?

  Fascinating.

• 2:08:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's smart going multi-product Tate has so much.

• 2:08:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:49Jordi Hays?

  Attention and such a crazy funnel, I'm sure that.

• 2:08:52John Coogan?

  He understands that the product shifts, but people are just buying the attitude and like the brand.

• 2:08:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:58John Coogan?

  And it doesn't matter what the product is.

• 2:09:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:00John Coogan?

  You know, they can sell anything. It's wild.

• 2:09:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:03John Coogan?

  Let's look at Cody Norquist. He said he traded in his Tesla, zero regrets. He bought a extremely depreciating Range Rover. That will probably be worth half as much in in six months.

• 2:09:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I just, I don't know if this guy's in tech, but I do think that this is the beginning of a trend where tech people discover luxury products. And they're like, wow, these are actually pretty nice. I never, well, I never even thought of going to a non-Tesla dealership.

• 2:09:29John Coogan?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 2:09:30Jordi Hays?

  I went, you know, I tried my friend's Range Rover and wow, this actually feels like pretty good, you know? It's like, you know, those tests that they do in cars where they like touch all the buttons and plastic and stuff like that? And there's something about, yeah, like you can't like I, my driver, the guy that I used to get to and from the airport. He, I had to tell him like, don't pick me up in a Tesla because he has a Tesla and he has like a, uh, just like a regular like black car or whatever. And being in the Tesla one, everything feels like cheap and kind of wonky and I just don't like it. The acceleration is the other thing. But yeah, I just don't, it's just not a luxury product and I don't want to be in them.

• 2:10:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:14Jordi Hays?

  Um, and so now that not only are there other like electric products out there, but this like sort of prevailing narrative that maybe gas cars aren't that bad.

• 2:10:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:24Jordi Hays?

  And um, I just think that if this trend continues to play out, it'll be good for San Francisco because people aren't going to want to get. It's really expensive to replace a Range Rover window that's been shattered by somebody that's breaking into your car. Tesla, you know, you can just eat it. It's like.

• 2:10:43John Coogan?

  I I do think that one of the most underrated near term bull cases for Tesla is just actually filling out the product portfolio.

• 2:10:52Jordi Hays?

  Totally.

• 2:10:52John Coogan?

  There's no reason why they can't do like a Mercedes S class, a supercar, which they've been talking about. But even just taking a Model S and being like, everything has like wood and like, and like real metals and stuff. Like, yeah, it costs twice as much.

• 2:11:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:06John Coogan?

  But you know, it's the luxurious.

• 2:11:07Jordi Hays?

  They don't have a minivan.

• 2:11:08John Coogan?

  They don't have a minivan. They don't have a station wagon. They don't have a convertible currently. They don't have a full size SUV. Like, they're, they're just like missing a bunch of pieces. But then also within the range, you know, like Mercedes has done a great job having like the S class, the E class, the A class.

• 2:11:22Jordi Hays?

  And the whole.

• 2:11:22John Coogan?

  In the S class, like, it feels different when you're inside. Like, even the leather stitching is different than an A class. And that's not that hard to do. It just hasn't been a priority because the whole thing has been economies of scale, economies of scale around the batteries, around the acceleration, the self-driving. But if you get to a point where you can buy something and it's like, okay, yeah, I'm getting the, the model, the Model X, but with the upgraded package that takes it to Range Rover level of luxury. Like, it's game over because it's going to be so much safer than a Range Rover when you're driving with the self-driving and stuff like, but you're just not gonna, unless you, unless you have a driver who's better than the self-driving. But I don't know. I, I think the self-driving might be there.

• 2:11:59Jordi Hays?

  And that will be good for the whole Tesla brand.

• 2:12:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:02Jordi Hays?

  If there are products that genuinely feel like luxury.

• 2:12:07John Coogan?

  Everyone's been talking about, oh, they need to go down market to like the $25,000 car. But maybe they actually need to.

• 2:12:11Jordi Hays?

  Basically there.

• 2:12:11John Coogan?

  They're already basically there because you can buy a depreciated Model 3 for around 25. But, but what you can't buy is, is a Tesla that has the luxury features of like a Rolls Royce. And they're, and they're, and Lucid Air kind of came in as like the top, upper market, but they could just crush Lucid with like a slight tweak to the interior.

• 2:12:29Jordi Hays?

  Tesla built a $400,000 car.

• 2:12:32John Coogan?

  People would buy it.

• 2:12:32Jordi Hays?

  It would be amazing, right?

• 2:12:34John Coogan?

  People would buy it.

• 2:12:34Jordi Hays?

  It would be, yeah, it would, it would, it would start displacing. I'm sure that has a much bigger market than the purusangue, right?

• 2:12:41John Coogan?

  Totally, totally. And I think the, I think the design language is evolving in a, like, the 3S, X, Y, like, those all have like very neutral, unoffensive looks. The Cybertrucks in the exact. Opposite direction, but the Cybertruck showed me that they could build something that's like as iconic as a Huracan design or something like that. And so if they can bring some of that to like, what does, what does, you know, Tesla's edgy next generation design language look in a luxury sedan? Or a full-size SUV like, like Escalade, I think they had a timeless design and they've ridden it so long now that even with the electric, the, the new electric. Escalade is, I think, one hundred and eighty K. Tesla should get in there and be right at one hundred and eighty K.

• 2:13:24John Coogan?

  But see, okay, when you, when you run the company like Elon does, you can probably put even more crazy stuff in there, right? Cause you can get into like, like, you know, operational efficiency around how he's acquiring like the wood and tell a story there. There's probably something really interesting that could happen.

• 2:13:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:39John Coogan?

  Anyway, let's move on to David Holes, founder of Mid Journey. Love this guy. Played a StarCraft with six friends last night. It was a free-for-all. We added two AIs to fill out the eight-player map. We spent the whole game fighting each other while the AI slowly took over and suddenly were too powerful and beat us all. A lesson in AI safety.

• 2:14:00Jordi Hays?

  I think this is a great example. It also, I used to play StarCraft.

• 2:14:06John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 2:14:07Jordi Hays?

  Quite a bit.

• 2:14:07John Coogan?

  I didn't really play it.

• 2:14:08Jordi Hays?

  And I was diamond ranked and like pretty good. So I would usually smoke the bots, but I have some distinct memories where you're just like, oh my God, I just got steamrolled. By like, you, you think that you're like winning basically and you're just on one side of the map and then just like this.

• 2:14:25John Coogan?

  The wall comes towards you.

• 2:14:26Jordi Hays?

  And that could be like what we're doing right now, which we're like, oh, look at like the cute LLM and like, oh, I just generated this funny picture of like a squirrel meme.

• 2:14:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:35Jordi Hays?

  And then you just get steamrolled by the AI.

• 2:14:37John Coogan?

  Yeah. I wonder what AIs he was using, just like in-game AIs or something third-party?

• 2:14:42Jordi Hays?

  Well, every video game has their.

• 2:14:44John Coogan?

  Of course.

• 2:14:45Jordi Hays?

  They've had like their AI.

• 2:14:46John Coogan?

  But those AIs, I believe, have never, maybe they cheat or something, but there was the story with OpenAI. They had the Dota team. And then they did a StarCraft thing as well where they were able to beat the, like the world champions. And for that, I think they had a specific. Restriction where they they they interact with the game via an API, but they still limited the actions per minute. So they couldn't just get like inhuman reactions. And then also, the API lets you see like beyond the fog and they wouldn't, they obviously wouldn't do that because it's cheating. So they they like, they they nerf the AI. They make it like, they kind of level the playing field, but the AI still still wins. And so like, you kind of should expect the AI to win if you're going like, no, no chess master expects to beat an AI at chess.

• 2:15:30Jordi Hays?

  But yeah, it really makes it is the re, it's like, kind of, it's great because it's a meme, but at the same time, it makes the case for these AI doomers that are like, guys, we need to stop fighting among ourselves. And it needs to be more of like the humans versus AI. And like, we need to take this seriously. And that was more convincing than any like essay that I've seen from them.

• 2:15:53John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 2:15:53Jordi Hays?

  Which are really easy to be like, nah, like, cool story, bro.

• 2:15:56John Coogan?

  Yeah. I I mean, David just has great takes on all this stuff. Like, he is pretty like AGI pilled and, but he has like very nuanced takes. He's not just like out there like saber rattling and like having a conniption fit every two seconds. Why did you, how did you select Joshua Steinman? We are, good morning, we are going to win.

• 2:16:14Jordi Hays?

  Okay, simple.

• 2:16:15John Coogan?

  This is not a new tweet. He tweets this every single day.

• 2:16:17Jordi Hays?

  Tweets it every single day.

• 2:16:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:18Jordi Hays?

  Not even a particular banger. Uh, some of them ended up, some of them, it's funny watching like the algo just like picks some up more than others. But the reason I included it is that I see these like every three, four days. And every time I see it, I'm like, nice. So anyways, I just included it because it's American.

• 2:16:38John Coogan?

  Thank you for your service.

• 2:16:39Jordi Hays?

  And I do think it's a public service and it's, and it's kind of, it's an example of like marketers that think like, oh, like, we're being too repetitive with this messaging, where now I just associate Steinman with winning.

• 2:16:53John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:16:53Jordi Hays?

  And being committed to winning. And it makes me want to back whatever he does. And being optimistic, right?

• 2:16:59John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 2:16:59Jordi Hays?

  And it's, yeah.

• 2:17:00John Coogan?

  He worked like in the Trump administration, is very pro-Trump and and never faltered when the polls weren't going his way. Like, he really believes, like, he's, he's a big fan. Also, I mean, it's his version of like the Jocko Willink thing. He posted this at six 16 a.m. And as we know, the most important thing is not waking up early, it's getting on Twitter early.

• 2:17:19Jordi Hays?

  And posting.

• 2:17:20John Coogan?

  First thing, get on X, post. This is key. Will Monitis says, having a full-time Bible instructor instructor is the new private jet.

• 2:17:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and.

• 2:17:33Jordi Hays?

  Prest, uh, no, I think, was it, no, Preston quote tweeted for you about something else, but um, no, uh, I think this is relevant because, uh,

• 2:17:43John Coogan?

  We know some people with full-time Bible instructors.

• 2:17:45Jordi Hays?

  Some billionaires with full-time Bible instructors and it just shows that even a, a product like the Bible that is available to everybody and been analyzed, uh, you know, over and over and over and over for generations, uh, it's still worth hiring, you know, a tutor and learning, even if you have the time to study it intensely, so.

• 2:18:09John Coogan?

  Yeah, there's also an interesting thing where like, even if you're the most like atheist skeptic about the Bible, it's a valuable text just because it's so old that it's been copied again and again and again in, in so many different stories, like The Lion King or whatever. And so the first thing a child learns, the first story that a lot, that a child learns is like a hero's journey that's derived from the Bible. And so if you can go to the source text, text, understand like the, the, the, the way the story and the narrative is structured, that gives you power in storytelling and also understanding like what resonates with people.

• 2:18:45Jordi Hays?

  Our mutual friend who is a Bible instructor to the global elite, uh, his main point is that if you don't understand the Bible, you're going to miss so many other things when you're reading some random story like The Lion King. It's like, oh, well, like.

• 2:19:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, it does just improve like, you know, your edification and your enjoyment of, of other literature. So yeah, get the full-time Bible instructor, although I don't know, maybe with AI, uh, it'll be on demand soon. Uh, some of those Bible apps like print money. Like it's a good business. There's a few. And then there's that company, Angel Studios, one of the most underrated, uh, media companies that does really well.

• 2:19:25Jordi Hays?

  Really?

• 2:19:25John Coogan?

  Yeah, Christian, uh, like they, they did an adaptation of the Bible, that, uh, was like HBO level cinematography and, uh, and did really well. And they produced a number of, uh, of films that are all like, uh, related to Christian themes and, um, But more interestingly, like, the business has just become very, very good.

• 2:19:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:47John Coogan?

  Uh, and they've done, they've done very well and they

• 2:19:49Jordi Hays?

  It's an interesting business to try to monetize. There's um

• 2:19:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:52Jordi Hays?

  A podcast called The Bible Project that I listen to that's totally free. They don't do ads, but it's donation based, which is like

• 2:20:00John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:20:00Jordi Hays?

  Um, at what point should they just become a church?

• 2:20:02John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:20:03Jordi Hays?

  Right? Um, an online church effectively.

• 2:20:07John Coogan?

  That's cool. Just pay what you want.

• 2:20:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:09John Coogan?

  Uh, power tools are making a comeback. Julian Fried, Fried says, the power tool renaissance is underappreciated. It's a great time to be alive if you are someone who likes making things.

• 2:20:22Jordi Hays?

  And quote tweets someone. This is, I share this because it's funny, because tech guys whose only tools has been The phone. Phone and a laptop are now discovering that there's the democratization of super high quality power tools that has been happening like in the background and there's like entire religions oriented around the different brands of power tools and whether you're like a Makita guy or Milwaukee guy.

• 2:20:52John Coogan?

  I've seen those memes that are like

• 2:20:53Jordi Hays?

  And the guys that have their drills like fight each other where they like attach two of them and they just like

• 2:20:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:59Jordi Hays?

  Um, so

• 2:21:00John Coogan?

  I haven't gone down the power tool, like, uh, you know, rabbit hole and watched a thousand hours of some YouTube.

• 2:21:06Jordi Hays?

  I feel like I got to like Tim Ferriss pill where Tim's like mindset was like if, if something, if you can hire, if you make five hundred dollars an hour and you can hire somebody to do, do the job for a hundred dollars an hour.

• 2:21:21John Coogan?

  Nick Huber.

• 2:21:22Jordi Hays?

  Now, when I'm doing stuff, yeah, Nick Huber's like, why would you stand on a ladder?

• 2:21:25John Coogan?

  It's dangerous.

• 2:21:26Jordi Hays?

  It's, it's a good point. Now, when I'm doing, like, if I do something around the house.

• 2:21:31John Coogan?

  Glory?

• 2:21:31Jordi Hays?

  And I do like, yeah, glory, household glory. I find that, uh, I think women are attracted.

• 2:21:37John Coogan?

  I agree.

• 2:21:38Jordi Hays?

  You know, when I, when I can like use a hammer, uh, Sarah's like, nice.

• 2:21:43John Coogan?

  I, I remember on one of my first dates with my now wife, like, went over to her sister's place, changed the light bulb. Everyone was like, this guy's God.

• 2:21:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:52John Coogan?

  It was amazing.

• 2:21:52Jordi Hays?

  Marry this man.

• 2:21:53John Coogan?

  Yeah, fantastic. I gotta up my power tool game. I need, uh, I need to build out a good rack.

• 2:21:58Jordi Hays?

  Get some, I think we should

• 2:22:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:01Jordi Hays?

  Create some space on the wall.

• 2:22:02John Coogan?

  Uh, Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine posts twenty five years ago today, the Battle of Los Angeles, the cover art for that, uh, that Album that has Bulls on Parade and a couple of really hit songs. And Orin McIntyre quote tweets and says, "You have the same political beliefs as BlackRock and Citibank."

• 2:22:22Jordi Hays?

  I think he was trying to dunk on him, but your point of view is that...

• 2:22:25John Coogan?

  I love Rage Against the Machine and I love BlackRock and Citibank.

• 2:22:28Jordi Hays?

  There you go.

• 2:22:29John Coogan?

  So, what a match made in heaven. I'm glad. Welcome to the club, Tom. If you have the same, if you have the same political beliefs as BlackRock, you're a friend of mine. It's great. Yeah, it is kind of odd that people try and dunk on this, like, like...

• 2:22:44Jordi Hays?

  I guess it's a good way to get people to question their beliefs.

• 2:22:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:48Jordi Hays?

  Because if somebody thinks that organizations like BlackRock and Citibank are inherently bad, and then you tell them they have the same set of beliefs as that group, then it is a good,

• 2:23:02Jordi Hays?

  at least, thought starter in their mind to be like, hmm, maybe I should have a more open mind around certain things.

• 2:23:07John Coogan?

  This is also one of those interesting tweets where like, I can't quite tell if this is a leftist or rightist tweet, uh, critique. Like, it could be like, you believe, you like Citibank and they like ESG and DEI, so you suck. And I, and like, you should be more right-wing. Or it should be like, you like the capitalist, BlackRock and Citibank, you should be more left-wing.

• 2:23:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:27John Coogan?

  And it's like, I don't really know, but all I know is BlackRock is...

• 2:23:30Jordi Hays?

  Basically, it kind of makes sense, like, raging against, like, BlackRock is the machine, right? So it's saying like, if you're raging against the machine, yet...

• 2:23:40John Coogan?

  You shouldn't be aligned with the machine.

• 2:23:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you're aligned with the, you're stimulating the machine, you know?

• 2:23:45John Coogan?

  But who knows? Maybe BlackRock and Citibank are raging against the machine, the machine of stagnation.

• 2:23:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:49John Coogan?

  The machine of under-financialization.

• 2:23:52Jordi Hays?

  BlackRock created Burning Man, which is...

• 2:23:55John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 2:23:55Jordi Hays?

  It is the foundation on which Burning Man was built.

• 2:23:58John Coogan?

  Yeah. The machine of a lack of financial products. I wouldn't want to live in that world. It'd be a disaster.

• 2:24:06Jordi Hays?

  How long, how long until we go viral for being the podcast bros that's

• 2:24:11John Coogan?

  That loves capitalism.

• 2:24:12Jordi Hays?

  No, no, that say that BlackRock created BlackRock City.

• 2:24:15John Coogan?

  Eventually, we'll get there.

• 2:24:16Jordi Hays?

  It's gonna happen.

• 2:24:17John Coogan?

  There's, there's like a cottage industry of, of YouTubers that just put out endless like hit pieces on BlackRock being like, "Did you know that they own everything?" And they don't understand how like fund of funds or ETFs work. It's so hilarious. And you watch someone fall into that trap and you're just like, "Oh my God, take one economics class, please."

• 2:24:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:35John Coogan?

  It's really bad. Anyway, Colin Mickles says, I hope I'm pronouncing that correct, Michaels, maybe Colin Michaels? "Few learn that SpaceX prices their launches way higher than it costs them to launch. They're essentially reaping thirty to sixty million dollars in profit each launch. Blue Origin existing is extremely good for the commercial space market. Bezos is notorious for downward price pressure." And then he has to follow it up with an apology, kind of, "I underestimated how many people would misinterpret this tweet, lol." I don't know what they were misinterpreting. It seems pretty basic, but, um, I mean, everyone knows that SpaceX is like way ahead of Blue Origin, but you know, competition is good. And if you like,

• 2:25:14Jordi Hays?

  Competition is good.

• 2:25:15John Coogan?

  If you like going to space, I mean, it is for losers, so wouldn't want to be a, as a SpaceX bull.

• 2:25:19Jordi Hays?

  We'll get to that later in the pod.

• 2:25:21John Coogan?

  As a SpaceX bull, you know, maybe you don't want to encourage thing. I, I do, I do love when these, uh, the, the Musk-Bezos rivalry in some ways is just so entertaining because they have, they have warring properties like everywhere, right?

• 2:25:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:36John Coogan?

  They both have car companies because Bezos was like one of the biggest backers of Rivian. And then they have, and then they have rival space companies. Obviously, everyone knows about that one, SpaceX and Blue Origin. They also have rival media efforts because Bezos owns the Washington Post and Elon owns X.

• 2:25:49Jordi Hays?

  Wait, but the way that you just said all of this and it kind of makes it seem that Elon is mugging Bezos at literally every single one of these. Washington Post, Tesla, Rivian.

• 2:26:00John Coogan?

  Except in, you know,

• 2:26:00Jordi Hays?

  Commerce.

• 2:26:01John Coogan?

  Commerce.

• 2:26:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:26:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but it's, I don't care about, I don't, I mean,

• 2:26:06John Coogan?

  It's because,

• 2:26:06Jordi Hays?

  I care about, I care about what Bezos is doing with his money now.

• 2:26:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:10Jordi Hays?

  And if you're repeatedly getting mugged.

• 2:26:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:12Jordi Hays?

  While.

• 2:26:14Jordi Hays?

  You have to imagine, though, that his performance across all those things is going to improve as his testosterone levels have climbed month over month for the past five years.

• 2:26:23John Coogan?

  It seems like it's happening at the Washington Post. A lot of changes there. Seems like he's improving that. Maybe Blue Origin, you know, becomes a big space launch provider.

• 2:26:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but it's, yeah, I think that would be amazing for humanity.

• 2:26:34John Coogan?

  I think Rivian's holding up okay.

• 2:26:36Jordi Hays?

  Olivia Rodrigo, whatever his name is.

• 2:26:39John Coogan?

  There's, there's another one too. But, yeah, I mean, I, I think Bezos is a little bit more of like an old school, like mega billionaire where he sees the side projects very much as like side projects where it's like, get somebody to do something, go and show up, like.

• 2:26:55Jordi Hays?

  He's not on the factory floor at Rivian.

• 2:26:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, Elon, it feels like when he does something, it's like he's putting his life on the line for it. And it's like, almost, you, a lot of people, this is a critique, will say like, well, like, I, I, I actually just care about the space thing. I would, I would be fine with him not spending time on media. But Elon's like, I'm going to personally make this change, the way this company works significantly. I'm gonna go and rename it. I'm gonna do all this crazy stuff. And for Elon, it's like, he only has one mode. Elon doesn't like angel invest.

• 2:27:23Jordi Hays?

  Renaming, renaming Twitter has, the decision has grown on me quite a bit. When it happened, it was like one of my favorite brands, even though it was flawed.

• 2:27:32John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:27:32Jordi Hays?

  And it was very painful, like for years, I would just input, I guess not that long, but I'd still put twitter.com.

• 2:27:40John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:27:41Jordi Hays?

  And more and more, it's feeling like, yeah, coming in and making it, um, just making it your thing actually makes sense in the context of Elon.

• 2:27:50John Coogan?

  Yeah, there's that saying, like, uh, like, when there's a change of leadership, the company needs to be refounded.

• 2:27:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:57John Coogan?

  And that's certainly what Elon did.

• 2:27:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:59John Coogan?

  Change, even changing the name, change all the people, change everything. So that it's like, but he had to do it because, as we talked about with the Truth Social thing, like. Having a network is very, is, is very important and it's very resilient.

• 2:28:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:13John Coogan?

  And even, even if the servers did go down, which was like a big FUD thing for a while, like, people would have opened up that app. That's where they go.

• 2:28:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:21John Coogan?

  And it's very hard to get people to move, even though people tried to move to Blue Sky.

• 2:28:25Jordi Hays?

  We should do a deep dive on threads and how that's actually working.

• 2:28:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, it is, but it's very different.

• 2:28:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:31John Coogan?

  It's working for a separate market.

• 2:28:32Jordi Hays?

  Subculture.

• 2:28:33John Coogan?

  Completely separate product.

• 2:28:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:35John Coogan?

  Um, but yeah, cheers to, cheers to both Elon and Bezos. I love you guys. Uh, another Steinman tweet, gotta love it. A hundred K views. Uh, it's a quote tweet from Arma who posts a picture of the reception desk at General Motors Technical Center in 1965. Interior by architect Eros Serenin and, uh,

• 2:28:56Jordi Hays?

  It's crazy because this view looks like a nineties sci-fi.

• 2:29:00John Coogan?

  Totally, totally.

• 2:29:01Jordi Hays?

  That's like super ahead of its time. And they were probably, the nineties sci-fi movie was just referencing.

• 2:29:06John Coogan?

  Them.

• 2:29:07Jordi Hays?

  General Motors.

• 2:29:07John Coogan?

  Because they had the, they had the technologists, they had the money, so they just went and sent it.

• 2:29:11Jordi Hays?

  Return.

• 2:29:11John Coogan?

  And I'm sure it was like the most delightful place to work. If you were an engineer, you were like, this is beautiful.

• 2:29:16Jordi Hays?

  And so inspiring.

• 2:29:17John Coogan?

  This inspires me. I want to go build great stuff there.

• 2:29:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:19John Coogan?

  It's fantastic. So, uh, Steinman says Detroit was fire back in the day. Then politicians decided shipping jobs to China was more important than the American industrial base. Uh, making it political, bro. We don't talk about politics on this show.

• 2:29:31Jordi Hays?

  Not on this podcast, but we'll, we'll highlight some good aesthetics.

• 2:29:34John Coogan?

  We will love some great aesthetics.

• 2:29:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I'm really excited for this new generation of hard tech and defense tech companies.

• 2:29:40John Coogan?

  They're gonna do stuff like this for sure.

• 2:29:41Jordi Hays?

  They're gonna do stuff like, we're gonna do this at deterrence.

• 2:29:43John Coogan?

  Right now it's messy, like, you know, sleeping on the floor of the warehouse, but it will be beautiful. And there are some companies, I, I forget if it's Airbnb.

• 2:29:51Jordi Hays?

  Like when, when Lockheed Grooms Robotics Company.

• 2:29:55John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:29:55Jordi Hays?

  It will have like a robot.

• 2:29:57John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:29:57Jordi Hays?

  Playing a symphony.

• 2:29:58John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:29:59Jordi Hays?

  In the entryway.

• 2:29:59John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:30:00Jordi Hays?

  Like, um,

• 2:30:01John Coogan?

  Beautiful.

• 2:30:02Jordi Hays?

  They're welcome to use this idea. Just throw some shares to technology brothers.

• 2:30:05John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 2:30:06Jordi Hays?

  Um,

• 2:30:07John Coogan?

  There is, there is a company that made, I, I feel like I read it in a hit pieces, like, oh, they spent too much money on this, but, uh, they, they built a full replica of the, uh, Doctor Strangelove. Uh, how I learned to love the atom bomb. There's this, it's Stanley Kubrick film and there's this iconic, huge boardroom where all of the military leaders are, are meeting. It's this massive, massive boardroom.

• 2:30:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:29John Coogan?

  That's huge.

• 2:30:30Jordi Hays?

  The closest.

• 2:30:30John Coogan?

  It's like fifty people.

• 2:30:31Jordi Hays?

  Is the closest.

• 2:30:32John Coogan?

  They like built a, a replica of it.

• 2:30:34Jordi Hays?

  Is the closest example to this, like the Scale AI office, I haven't been, but isn't it pretty iconic?

• 2:30:40John Coogan?

  I've been, it's, I, I, I don't know if I've been to the newest one. Um, it was beautiful, but it didn't, like, the thing of it stand, like, this stands out.

• 2:30:48Jordi Hays?

  Still a little SF Conan.

• 2:30:48John Coogan?

  This stands out. No, it's just like, it's just like, it's hard to differentiate because like, there is some practicality, like, like, this, this, um, this, like, entryway desk is like the most impractical thing. There's so much, like, wasted space here, but that's exactly the point.

• 2:31:03Jordi Hays?

  I love how the woman is sitting like on an island, basically, in a bowl.

• 2:31:06John Coogan?

  In a bowl, it's fantastic.

• 2:31:08Jordi Hays?

  And it's like, you can't get within five feet or whatever.

• 2:31:11John Coogan?

  No, yeah, it's, it, it, it's great. So, yeah, making like bold design decisions like that, that are, they go against the, the obvious optimization of like square footage. Like, it is gonna cost you more to do this, but it's gonna make a statement and it's gonna be more important to the business long term.

• 2:31:24Jordi Hays?

  Maximal, maximalism.

• 2:31:25John Coogan?

  Yeah. Red Bull Futurist writes, I want a dozen kids.

• 2:31:30Jordi Hays?

  Uh, this guy's awesome. Uh, he's a rocket scientist.

• 2:31:34John Coogan?

  Oh, really?

• 2:31:34Jordi Hays?

  Or an emerging rocket scientist. I think he's, uh, involved with SpaceX.

• 2:31:38John Coogan?

  Also caffeine connoisseur. Respect.

• 2:31:39Jordi Hays?

  Caffeine connoisseur, Excel enthusiast.

• 2:31:43John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 2:31:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I, I, I think this is hilar- like, I pulled this out because, uh, ten years ago, he would have been ostracized for saying something like this. It would have just been so random, but the pro-natalist movement is like now becoming like the nor- like the new norm.

• 2:32:03John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:32:04Jordi Hays?

  At least within the tech community, and I think it's great because I hope Red Bull Futurist, uh, goes and has twelve children.

• 2:32:11John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:32:12Jordi Hays?

  Because they're all gonna be a bunch of smart little rocket scientists and, uh, will probably create the companies that topple SpaceX and Blue Origin monopoly on space.

• 2:32:24John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, the trick is just like breaking free of the memetics around like what it takes to have a dozen kids. Like, yeah, you probably need to live on a ranch outside of a major city. Probably not raising a dozen kids in Manhattan unless you're a trillionaire. But if you're willing to go live in some interesting place and, you know, set your life up to be, oh, there's a couple other families there with lots of kids and we homeschool or something, or we do something interesting and like, you know, we've designed our life with that being the KPI, that's the priority, well, then it becomes very easy. Everything flows from that.

• 2:32:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:54John Coogan?

  So shout out Red Bull Futurist. High Yield Harry, great fintech influencer, writes, "Oh, you just ran the NYC marathon? That's sick, dude. I just spent all day building an investment memorandum that no one is going to read."

• 2:33:09Jordi Hays?

  So I feel like High Yield Harry and some of the other folks from his generation of posters, like basically it almost, it's like, they, it seems like there's infinite competition now from these sort of new posters.

• 2:33:23John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:33:24Jordi Hays?

  And yet, these guys are like, pretty stable. Like, they've got, like, they're like posting, you know, regimen, and, you know, it seems like they've kind of broken above the noise where you see a post from High Yield Harry now, and you know that it means something.

• 2:33:38John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:33:39Jordi Hays?

  You know, it's not just, it's not just a shitpost anymore.

• 2:33:42John Coogan?

  It's a little blackpilled, though. I feel like if you write an investment memo, someone should read it. Come on, man.

• 2:33:46Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but I think it's more, I think he's more saying, you know, "Look, when I write a memorandum, people put in size. They're not worried about what it says. They know I wouldn't write it if it wasn't worth..."

• 2:33:57John Coogan?

  They just see the attachment and they wire it. They don't need to open it.

• 2:34:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they go straight for the wire and shit.

• 2:34:01John Coogan?

  Okay, I like this. This is a little bit more optimistic than what I was thinking. It was very like, low-level analyst-coded, where it's like, "I'm doing kind of make-work, and this sucks." That's how I read it at first, but I like your interpretation more.

• 2:34:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I gotta, I gotta go long, Harry.

• 2:34:15John Coogan?

  I love it. I love it.

• 2:34:17Jordi Hays?

  Early, early fintwit.

• 2:34:18John Coogan?

  Mostly just anything to avoid watching the New York City Marathon. I was on the phone with somebody yesterday. They were like, "Oh, call me after. I gotta watch the marathon." And I picked up the phone, and I was like, "I'm gonna keep it real with you. Watching a marathon sounds like the most boring thing I could possibly imagine." I'm not, I'm already not that into sports.

• 2:34:33Jordi Hays?

  The only way that you should be watching a marathon is if you're significant others in it. You're betting on it. Or you're running in it.

• 2:34:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:34:41Jordi Hays?

  The best way to watch a marathon is by running in set marathon.

• 2:34:45John Coogan?

  To be fair to my buddy, I did, I, he did have a friend in it, and he was like cheering the friend on and stuff.

• 2:34:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, well, even, even, no, a friend. Watching your friend, it's like, if you're watching a friend run a marathon, like, it better be like, some like, blood, like, relative connection, and even then, it's cringe. But even look at the Spanish, when they go to a bull run, they're not just watching.

• 2:35:03John Coogan?

  They're running.

• 2:35:03Jordi Hays?

  They're running with the bulls, right?

• 2:35:05John Coogan?

  That's great, yeah.

• 2:35:06Jordi Hays?

  So, let's bring bull runs back.

• 2:35:08John Coogan?

  Bull run, yeah, replace the New York City Marathon with bull run.

• 2:35:11Jordi Hays?

  Or just put a bull into the marathon.

• 2:35:13John Coogan?

  For sure, for sure. Yeah, New York City talks this big game, "Oh, we have Wall Street Bull. We're all into bulls." Prove it. Bull on the street. Turn it loose. Turn it loose today. Turn it loose now. I want, I want a New York City bull run.

• 2:35:27Jordi Hays?

  Let, let the marathon go. Give them a one minute head start.

• 2:35:30John Coogan?

  One minute, and then release the bulls. Yeah, no slackers.

• 2:35:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, not just one bull, like 10, 10, 20.

• 2:35:37John Coogan?

  You better be running 600 miles.

• 2:35:38Jordi Hays?

  And make every, make every person running the marathon wear red.

• 2:35:41John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, that's great. Yeah, no, no slack. We need to step up the, the expectations of the NYC Marathon. Let's do it. Um, another Palantir, another Palantir tweet, little bit more of a shit post. I like this one though. But you know it's good because the other one was, didn't have the badge. So it was just a fan, like a stock, uh, guy who owns the stock. This has the employee badge. So, uh, uh, Eliano Yunus says, with a lot of Palantir merch now out in the wild, here are some ground rules to follow when sporting the logo. No drugs, no fighting, no theft, no more than two beverages, no elliptical, no kipping pull-ups.

• 2:36:23Jordi Hays?

  Why, why is he singling out kipping?

• 2:36:26John Coogan?

  Oh, because it's a CrossFit thing. It's where you fake it.

• 2:36:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that's really good. I, I thought, I, I was thinking, I was thinking muscle ups because I've never done a kipping. I only do muscle ups.

• 2:36:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, of course. Strict, strict muscle ups.

• 2:36:38Jordi Hays?

  Strict muscle ups. No, no, you know, sort of like movement. Um, yeah.

• 2:36:43John Coogan?

  Thank you for doing your part.

• 2:36:43Jordi Hays?

  The reason that this is relevant is like, when a company crosses a hundred billion dollars in market cap, does it become a religion? Cause like, he's kind of acting as like a priest of saying like, this is good and right and this is wrong. But I think it's a good.

• 2:36:59John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, it is legitimately valuable to be like, you know, this merch is out in the world. We want to like, set a tone for like, what it means to have this. And, you know, some of this is a joke, but some of this is very real. And so I like that he's like enforcing a brand standard, like a little bit more broadly. And hopefully people got the message. If I see someone doing kipping pull-ups in a Palantir shirt, it's over. I'm going to show them this tweet. I'm going to print it out.

• 2:37:23Jordi Hays?

  Let's keep it, let's each keep a copy in our wallet.

• 2:37:25John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly. For when we run into somebody from Palantir. Uh, I mean, Palantir, fantastic team. I, I, I, from some random content thing, I got a DM from a kid who just like graduated from some school and went to Palantir and it was like, it's still a cut above. It's like a 20-year-old company. Like you just don't see that anywhere else. It's wild. Simp for Satoshi, I am ginger trash says, by the way, polymarket will become a way to short startups post-election. The financial primitive is finally here.

• 2:37:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I think what's

• 2:37:59Jordi Hays?

  what's interesting about this is that, you know, having the news around Bowery today is like, okay, it's just a $2 billion company that's was that's now as of whatever this last week worth zero. The thing that, uh, that so I really hope this becomes true because it'll provide a lot of content for us and we'll be putting some size on the platform.

• 2:38:21John Coogan?

  For sure.

• 2:38:22Jordi Hays?

  The, the interesting thing though is that the private markets effectively have legalized insider trading.

• 2:38:29John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:38:29Jordi Hays?

  Already, right? All the private markets are is like using inside knowledge on companies, teams, founders, and placing bets accordingly. And so we'll, we'll be extremely chaotic about this is that.

• 2:38:41John Coogan?

  Bring short pressure.

• 2:38:42Jordi Hays?

  Like if this actually happens, companies will have to be like employees. You are legally not allowed to trade the company's polymarket because like it'll be like

• 2:38:54Jordi Hays?

  that you'll see so much activity of like, right? Leading up to a big product announcement. It's like, oh, $20 million just got placed on polymarket, right? And so hopefully this doesn't lead to more, like if this actually plays out, it'll be, it'll lead to a lot of pressure around the private.

• 2:39:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, we've just reinvented.

• 2:39:11John Coogan?

  Yeah, we just, we just reinvented stocks from first principles, LMFA, yes. Well, you know how they do this for like, uh, so death pools are like illegal. You can't bet on someone dying because then you have this really perverse incentive to like go kill them, obviously. Um, but on polymarket, there are a number of contracts that are like, uh, this person will still be the leader of, you know, Hamas by this date. And so it's like we, well, they could step down, but really what you're betting on is like, are they going to get taken out? And so there, there's a bunch of like, you know, uh, you know, proxy stats that you could probably build to, to get there where you say like, uh, this company's domain will still be live or like this company where you're not like truly betting on just the stock going down, but it's like some proxy for them.

• 2:39:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the real, the cool thing would be the real meta stuff around polymarket where like, will polymarket do 100 million in volume on this month in 2025, right? Because like you're. You're able to bet about the platform on the platform and it's if it's on chain then it's all like verifiable. But then there's also the incentive of like, okay, if I put a bunch of size into this into this bet, then I could just artificially create the volume.

• 2:40:27John Coogan?

  What's interesting is that like there are already poly market markets that are direct representations of liquid financial markets. Like one of the most like popular categories that I see is like, will Bitcoin hit 80K in December? And it's or will Bitcoin hit 100K by the end of the year? And it's like, you could just buy Bitcoin. Why are you betting on this in this weird way? Um, but that's kind of an effective way to short Bitcoin, I guess. Um, it's some sort of like proxy. It's not perfect. And so I, I could imagine this, but for a lot of startups, like the liquidity is just not going to be there. Because there just aren't going to be that many people that care about some series A company that like is got some.

• 2:41:05Jordi Hays?

  VC platform teams have entire teams.

• 2:41:08John Coogan?

  It would be funny if there was like a VC.

• 2:41:10Jordi Hays?

  Propping up their, their portfolios, like poly market accounts.

• 2:41:13John Coogan?

  Yeah. Um, yeah, the insider sharing will be crazy. I, it would be interesting to see a VC be like, yep, we're pivoting to like long, short.

• 2:41:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:20John Coogan?

  Like we are a long, short fund like, and like, like we will, we will be going long one company and we will be going short the other companies. Because we think our founders are going to win. And so we're, we're investing a $20 million series A and we're putting $10 million on poly market on shorting all the other companies. Crazy. Um, we already did Bowery. Let's do. Bayslord says, how do we get a new elite in America? I think this one is broken. Seems like we're in the midst of a power shift. No technology trends to disrupt established hierarchies way more than it cements them, I think. We are, I don't aimless post. Um, yeah, the, the new elite thing. I, I was talking to somebody about this, how.

• 2:42:00Jordi Hays?

  This is. This is the story of Elon, makes a bunch of money in tech.

• 2:42:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:42:06Jordi Hays?

  Starts owning everything.

• 2:42:09John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:42:09Jordi Hays?

  All the, like, these super important robot taxis.

• 2:42:12John Coogan?

  But doesn't just wind up laundering it through a bunch of nonprofits.

• 2:42:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and then buys the biggest, one of the biggest media companies in the world.

• 2:42:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:19Jordi Hays?

  A social media company.

• 2:42:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:20Jordi Hays?

  That is the story.

• 2:42:22John Coogan?

  Yeah. He's doing impact investing, even though, like, some people might not like the impact that he's having, like, he's, he, he, he's putting his wealth to work in, like, very specific targeted ways.

• 2:42:31Jordi Hays?

  Investor.

• 2:42:32John Coogan?

  Essentially, much more than like, you know, oh, diffusing a billion dollars through a bunch of nonprofits that are kind of like moving the needle one for sound. Plastic straws.

• 2:42:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I saw someone else say, like, because Elon, I guess, was like helping bust people into Pennsylvania or whatever. And somebody was like, we have our George Soros.

• 2:42:48John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:42:49Jordi Hays?

  And it's like, yeah.

• 2:42:51John Coogan?

  But, I mean, the other thing that's underrated about, like, elites is, is when you, I, I think when people go back to, like, the, this idea of, like, we need better elites, we need the older elites. It's like, back in the 17th century, 18th century, early 19th century, the elites were the ones who would go and build Hearst Castle, Versailles. They'd build these, like, massive houses, and then they would, and then they weren't just, like, perfect boxes of glass that were memetic with everyone else, and they just wound up looking like track homes. They were like these very unique expressions of wealth. And then, when they, when they turned over, it didn't make sense for anyone else to maintain them, even the descendants, and so they became museums.

• 2:43:30Jordi Hays?

  Public.

• 2:43:31John Coogan?

  And libraries.

• 2:43:31Jordi Hays?

  Goods.

• 2:43:32John Coogan?

  And, yeah, and like, there, there's so many stories of, of this where.

• 2:43:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the Getty is that, right?

• 2:43:37John Coogan?

  Exactly. Like, uh, the Getty, the, uh, what's the other one in Pasadena? I forget. Um, the Huntington, it was a house. The guy was so rich, he was a railroad baron, oil, oil, oil baron. He built train tracks that went to his house. Because he wanted to just be able to, oh, I want to take the train to New York.

• 2:43:54Jordi Hays?

  This is, this is Elad Gil and his new monument company.

• 2:43:59John Coogan?

  New monument company. This is Nat Friedman.

• 2:44:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:01John Coogan?

  With his, with his, like, one-off projects, the scrolls. These are dividends that get paid to society and, and pay back in probably better ways than most of the other things, because they build the brand and founders want to work with them, and so they get better deal flow. So it actually is rational.

• 2:44:15Jordi Hays?

  This guy, uh, go and message your favorite elite, which you can DM them on Twitter.

• 2:44:20John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:44:21Jordi Hays?

  And just pat him on the back. Say thank you for, for.

• 2:44:24John Coogan?

  Doing something good with the money.

• 2:44:25Jordi Hays?

  Good, yeah.

• 2:44:26John Coogan?

  Something interesting. Yeah, something interesting that will live on beyond you. I mean, Bezos is doing that with the long now thing, the, I think that's what it's called. He's building this clock in this mountain that will allow, it'll keep time for like a million years. And it's just like this really heroic, you know, engineering project. Yeah, it's just like this heroic engineering project and it's something that like everyone right now is like, oh, the project's not going well. Oh, it's not working. You know, it's like this massive mega project, but then it'll probably work, but in the next 20 years, you know, it just takes time. And then it'll just be this thing that people go visit.

• 2:44:58Jordi Hays?

  If you want eternal time, if you want eternal time, have a little patience.

• 2:45:01John Coogan?

  Have a little patience. Um, let's get that one. Um, men only want, let's see, Dylan Morris says, men only want one thing and it's disgusting. Who wants to split this with me? And it's on biz by sell, award winning sailboat manufacturing business in San Luis Obispo County. And it's going for 495 K and a cash flow 75 K and they build sailboats.

• 2:45:24Jordi Hays?

  That's, um, that's a tough, uh.

• 2:45:30John Coogan?

  Would you split that with him?

• 2:45:31Jordi Hays?

  I, I'm not going halves on that. This, we talked about this last time.

• 2:45:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:36Jordi Hays?

  Buying a company with less than half a million of cash flows.

• 2:45:38John Coogan?

  Buying a job.

• 2:45:39Jordi Hays?

  Buying a job. And this one, if you split it with a buddy, it's buying the minimum wage job.

• 2:45:43John Coogan?

  30 K, yeah.

• 2:45:44Jordi Hays?

  You could just work at Chipotle and then like go and like build sailboats for fun on the weekends.

• 2:45:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:50Jordi Hays?

  I think businesses like this, like we need a movement around entrepreneurs and retiring boomer operators to be like, I'm hiring an apprentice to learn my trade and take over my business. And I will give it to you on a seller note.

• 2:46:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:05Jordi Hays?

  Over the next 15 years, if you come in and operate it, cause like the only way that I could see this business even maybe being sellable is if a smart enterprising, um, search funder out of Stanford goes and decides I'm going to roll up all the mom and pop sailboat manufacturers.

• 2:46:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:23Jordi Hays?

  And create a monopoly.

• 2:46:24John Coogan?

  Or put a, put a gun on it and raise some defense tech money.

• 2:46:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:28John Coogan?

  Let's go.

• 2:46:28Jordi Hays?

  Put a gun on it. No, I think, um.

• 2:46:31John Coogan?

  Slap a 50 cal on the front. I actually know a guy who sailed sailboats all around, uh, like the, he would sail like all the way from California to, uh, Australia. And he actually did have a 50 cal on the front because he was worried about pirates.

• 2:46:46Jordi Hays?

  Smart.

• 2:46:46John Coogan?

  And he would be able to like fire off warding shots if something happened because when you're out there alone, like anyone could just come up to you and what are you gonna do? Call the cops? They'll be there in two days. It's like, that doesn't work.

• 2:46:55Jordi Hays?

  Two days, the SOS?

• 2:46:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, no.

• 2:46:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, you're on your own.

• 2:46:58John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. Uh, John Palmer, uh, says, I feel like joining the WorldCoin team is kind of like the crypto dev equivalent of joining the Marines. People join there and you, then you never hear from them again because they're just grinding. Strong men create good times, et cetera. What do you think about WorldCoin? The eyeball scanner.

• 2:47:20Jordi Hays?

  The eyeball scanner.

• 2:47:21John Coogan?

  Very dystopian, but I'm, I, I'm, I'm always like, I'm just bullish on Sam projects and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm interested to see like, kind of like the, the manifestation of that idea.

• 2:47:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you haven't, I feel like you don't hear, the other thing about it is like, I feel like a lot of WorldCoin activity is just happening overseas.

• 2:47:39John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:47:39Jordi Hays?

  So like these devs are like being deployed to Africa, just like scanning eyeballs and like doing it more efficiently.

• 2:47:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:46Jordi Hays?

  Um, but yeah, I think, uh, I'm, I'm excited to like hear more about, like.

• 2:47:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:52Jordi Hays?

  It's so, it's so dystopian in a way. You would only do it if it was like, you thought it was really important work, so.

• 2:48:00John Coogan?

  I mean, it does feel like in line with Sam's idea of like, okay, in the future, we need UBI, we need it to be a global UBI. It is truly the fully au- fully automated luxury communism concept of like, how do you distribute wealth to every single human individually? Like, well, you need something that's, you know, identifiable on a human basis and then has its own internal currency that can then be distributed and redistributed endlessly.

• 2:48:27Jordi Hays?

  We should get a WorldCoin orb.

• 2:48:29John Coogan?

  I'm down.

• 2:48:29Jordi Hays?

  WorldCoin can sponsor the orb.

• 2:48:31John Coogan?

  I'm down. Um, Anabiology says, whenever something is PFAS free, non, non-toxic as a, as a non-stick pan, it usually just means they replace the thing that we studied and we know is bad with something that is unstudied. So we don't know it's bad yet.

• 2:48:51Jordi Hays?

  I love this guy. I uh, he's got a really cool company in the cancer research space, like reviving a bunch of lost, sort of like esoteric knowledge around cancer and like bringing it back. So anyways, this guy's like brilliant, building something really cool. I've gotten, personally gotten some like great health tips from him via DMs.

• 2:49:15John Coogan?

  He gives this example, stainless steel, lowest aluminum possible, corning glass, cookware, copper are all better if untreated. Cast iron kind of sketches me out because of the seasoning process. You just perma burn fat onto an oxidizable surface. And even if the fat is non-toxic, excess iron. So he goes on and, and yeah, it's an interesting thing. There's always this like rat race of like, let's get rid of one thing. Oh, oh, we introduced a new, a new bad thing. Like we got rid of lead and then we wound up with microplastics.

• 2:49:43Jordi Hays?

  It's hard because so many things that are, so many products of modern manufacturing processes and the things that we expect out of products end up being just deeply toxic by their very nature. And so it's really hard to shop for modern, any, any sort of consumer good now. Like you have to be hyper, you have to be hyper aware of it and, and even look like glass is superior to plastic. In pretty much, I don't know, in pretty much every single way, except for it's weighed and it's shattered and all the health concerns and all, you know, it's sort of like safety concerns, I mean.

• 2:50:26Jordi Hays?

  So yeah, I think, I, I think that there should be a deep tech company that tries to create. Like the issue is the consumer packaged goods entrepreneur that's like, I want to make a microplastic free version of blank. Or I want to make a non-toxic pan. They don't have time to do a 10 year science experiment on creating a new material. We need more teams that are trying to create totally new materials that are non-toxic that can be used for everyday consumer goods. So somebody out there wants to spend a decade developing new materials for consumer goods that are non-toxic. We will, we will back you.

• 2:51:07John Coogan?

  Molson Hart says, if you get rich when you're young in America, you will live in a neighborhood that is ninety percent old people you cannot relate to at all. Eight percent young people with family money that you can't relate to. And two percent with a fellow Uber mensch that you can break bread with. Same goes for, same goes for country clubs. It's pretty funny.

• 2:51:27Jordi Hays?

  It's pretty accurate.

• 2:51:28John Coogan?

  It's very true.

• 2:51:29Jordi Hays?

  Uh, I think what's interesting is you have this, at least in my neighborhood, you have this balance of people that have moved into the neighborhood in the last five years. And then people that are multimillionaires because they bought their house like twenty to thirty years ago.

• 2:51:46John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:51:46Jordi Hays?

  And the tension between those groups is crazy.

• 2:51:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:50Jordi Hays?

  Right? Because like, they just want very different things. Um, and so, yeah, but I think, I don't know, there's, there's a lot of alpha and just going and being in a place where you're the younger person with energy that's still in, in the trenches, basically, because all those other people just want to back what you do, basically.

• 2:52:13John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I, yeah, when I moved into my neighborhood, I was like, we met our neighbors and I was like, oh, they're about the same age as us. And my wife was like, they're fifteen years older than us.

• 2:52:24Jordi Hays?

  No, this, this happens like, I don't know, with Sarah and like her mom groups, like, the other moms in her group will be like fifteen, yeah, ten to fifteen years older and they're just like, there's like a pretty.

• 2:52:39John Coogan?

  Lifestyle.

• 2:52:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, well, same lifestyle, just totally different.

• 2:52:44John Coogan?

  Era.

• 2:52:44Jordi Hays?

  Era, yeah.

• 2:52:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think the lesson is like, is like, that is not a criticism. That it, like, the, the nice thing is still the nice thing.

• 2:52:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's sort of like.

• 2:52:54John Coogan?

  You shouldn't be like, oh, okay, because everyone else who's like in my world, like, lives in like a high rise, like, that's what I should do.

• 2:53:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:00John Coogan?

  It's like, no, it's okay to go be like the odd one out at the country club or the odd one out in your neighborhood. Like, that's fine. Just do it and meet the old people and it's fine.

• 2:53:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think there's a lot of people that are, are in environments where they're the young person and they build their entire identity around that. And then they wake up one day and they're like, wait, like, I'm the older person in the room. And you actually always want to perpetually be the youngest person in the room, but then you go from. The workplace to the neighborhood to, you know, and you want to like stay on that.

• 2:53:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:53:31Jordi Hays?

  Very American trajectory.

• 2:53:32John Coogan?

  It's great. Number Runner, Run the Gums, says ambition is just rage channeled. And Dan says real AF.

• 2:53:42John Coogan?

  You think that's accurate?

• 2:53:43Jordi Hays?

  I don't.

• 2:53:45John Coogan?

  Rage?

• 2:53:46Jordi Hays?

  I don't, I feel like I've never gotten the feeling that Donald J. Trump is, has internal rage. I think he more just like likes being, likes attention and likes winning. And those are like the core motivations.

• 2:54:04John Coogan?

  That's funny because there's like a book about him that's literally called like Fire and Fury. And it's like, it makes the case that he's driven entirely by rage. It's an odd, odd pick. I, I, if you wanted to pick someone who's like peaceful but extremely ambitious, I think you'd go for like a Zuck or like, uh, like a Steve Jobs who like, don't seem very like rageful, but I guess you hear stories.

• 2:54:24Jordi Hays?

  But I feel like you hear more stories about, uh, like I can think of that, that exchange that Zuckerberg had in the early Facebook days where somebody's like, where he's like, yeah, these people just like give me their, the person's like, they just give you all their data. And he's like, yeah, these fucking idiots, like trust me for some reason.

• 2:54:43John Coogan?

  But is that rage?

• 2:54:44Jordi Hays?

  Is that rage? I don't know. But you don't hear stories of like Trump on the, like raging out at people, right? Like he sort of gets, I don't see it as rage.

• 2:54:57John Coogan?

  It's certainly like one, one path to ambition, obviously. We hear a lot of stories of people are like, they've been wronged, they've been hurt. But I think people really like boiling this down to just like a single precursor. It's like, you have to have a chip on your shoulder to do anything. You have to have rage. You have to have been wronged. You have to come from a broken home or something like that.

• 2:55:17Jordi Hays?

  Chips on shoulders, put chips in pockets.

• 2:55:19John Coogan?

  It's like, it's certainly true that there's some, but there are a bunch of exceptions there. I don't know. It's a good one.

• 2:55:25Jordi Hays?

  If you, if you have rage inside, at least use it to create value for shareholders.

• 2:55:30John Coogan?

  Oh, this is a great one. I love this. Trivian says, a friend was at a cafe in San Francisco and said cursor crashed on his laptop. I like that he's just like saying this out loud, I guess. And it says, a cursor co-founder was walking by at that very moment and offered to debug. This company is sticking around. This is, is this, is this an ad? Like, because this seems a little bit impromptu.

• 2:55:52Jordi Hays?

  Cursor crashed.

• 2:55:53John Coogan?

  Cursor crashed out loud and then it just happens to be a cursor co-founder.

• 2:55:57Jordi Hays?

  In the middle of the blue ball.

• 2:55:57John Coogan?

  I mean, talk about a great marketing stunt if this was like planned. I don't think it was. It seems ridiculous. It seems, this is the type of thing that happens in cafes in San Francisco.

• 2:56:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you saw the other, there was something last week with a, with a guy who was like in a SF, like cafe with just like a thing on the other side of his laptop. That's like marketplace startup, have revenue, raising pre-seed, say hi or whatever. And it's like.

• 2:56:21John Coogan?

  Wait, really? So if you looked at his, if you looked at his laptop?

• 2:56:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, people were taking pictures of, there was like only an SF. But yeah, I just think there's a reason that like half of the super important companies in the world come out of that area. And it's because the density of like-minded people and the overlap that you can have with customers on a day-to-day basis.

• 2:56:41John Coogan?

  I, I remember when I lived in San Francisco, I went to a cafe. I didn't work from cafes very often, but I, I went to a cafe, maybe just to get a coffee. And I ran into David Hole's co-founder at Leap Motion. And I remember him just talking to me and I was like, oh, I love what you're working on. Like this is super interesting. And he was like breaking it down. And, uh, yeah, this is like, like way back in the day when he was working on this, like it was hand tracking for VR.

• 2:57:02Jordi Hays?

  Right.

• 2:57:02John Coogan?

  That was David's first company. Fascinating. That's just like the type of thing that happens. Serendipity. Uh, San Francisco is a serendipity magnet.

• 2:57:12John Coogan?

  David Zagaynov says, realizing the reason they call it hard tech is because this is really hard. Makes for a nice moat, though. And then Dylan just says, nah, bro, that's not why. And then he says, this is why. And I, and next week I got cut off.

• 2:57:26Jordi Hays?

  I like, I like this. I like this because. Because it reminds me of like two cattle ranchers being like makes for a nice moat though.

• 2:57:37Jordi Hays?

  This cat raising cattle ain't easy, but pays the bills.

• 2:57:40John Coogan?

  It's a life.

• 2:57:41Jordi Hays?

  It's a life.

• 2:57:43John Coogan?

  Love it.

• 2:57:44Jordi Hays?

  So yeah, I uh, maybe we do a deep dive on why hard tech's called hard tech. But um, but yeah, it's definitely is real. It's sort of nominative, nominative determinism. Shit's hard, you know?

• 2:57:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. I mean, everything's just slower, right? Like you need a part that could delay you a week. There's just like a million things that could go wrong. Interacting with the physical world and then heavily, heavy regulation.

• 2:58:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:08John Coogan?

  So it's just like you have two really tough factors that you can't move at the speed of, of bits. You have to move at the speed of atoms and.

• 2:58:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, when things break, they break.

• 2:58:17John Coogan?

  Physically break.

• 2:58:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:19John Coogan?

  Rough, rough. But I think the, the hard tech and hard is hard meme. I think it, I was around when I was in Y C. And I think it was probably true initially and then a psyop after a little bit. Not like an intentional one, but like a negative meme where there was a time when it ceased being hard. Because just the capital markets were ripping so much and technology had gotten better and there were, there were a bunch of ways to like, do hard tech adjacent things, whether it's white labeling or partnering or doing a bunch of different things. And that's when the first boom of hard tech started. And now we're all talking about it, but all the big companies are like 10 years old. So like clearly hard tech wasn't hard eight years ago when some of the big companies were getting started, but everyone was repeating the mantra.

• 2:59:05Jordi Hays?

  The interesting thing is like this new generation of hard tech companies. So I have, portfolio company called Shinkei, which uses robots to kill fish using the traditional, uh, methodology that Japanese fishermen would do. And it's done in a way where they. This basically insert like a needle into the back of the fish's brain. And it and when you kill a fish that way, it doesn't, the fish doesn't release all this cortisol and other stress hormones that make the fish age more rapidly. And the interesting thing about that is you're they're going to a market with like very little innovation, not a lot of competition. But then they're going to build this system that other people are going to realize, oh, that's a really good business.

• 2:59:50Jordi Hays?

  But then if you want to go compete with Shinkai in five years, you're going to be going up against a company that can spend way that's still very young, that can spend way more money on R and D and sales and marketing and distribution and has better cost structure and all this stuff. And the real hard tech is going after like a five to 10 year old hard tech company that's competing in the same exact category of as you.

• 3:00:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:15Jordi Hays?

  That has more resources, that has more learnings, that has more customer relationships. And like, so that's the real, that's the hard, hard tech.

• 3:00:22John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Let's go to Ivan Zhao. Zhao?

• 3:00:28John Coogan?

  Ivan says, why do Americans always vote on Tuesdays? Because 1800 citizens needed a full day's horseback ride to reach polling sites after Sunday church. Pretty amazing that this democracy runs on horse and buggy software in the age of the internet and AI. That's a very interesting thing. I didn't know that. Super Tuesday, yeah, every Tuesday, right? Because you need a full day. Wow.

• 3:00:50Jordi Hays?

  Full day.

• 3:00:51John Coogan?

  But you can't miss the church.

• 3:00:53Jordi Hays?

  I feel like if you rode a horse.

• 3:00:55John Coogan?

  He's the founder of Notion, right?

• 3:00:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. I feel like if you rode a horse to a polling site today, you would end up in a very viral video.

• 3:01:01John Coogan?

  For sure.

• 3:01:01Jordi Hays?

  With the police, like breaking the horses. Like, it'd just be very dark. But no, I, I thought this was interesting because I, I hope that the Ivans of the world end up building software like, you know, more like out of the last week, it seems like there's been a lot of failures on the software side.

• 3:01:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:21Jordi Hays?

  In regards to, you know, polling and, and, and voting specifically. And so if the voting and polling software of the future looks more, looks and feels more like Notion, I think that'll be a win for democracy.

• 3:01:38John Coogan?

  Is the digital polling ever coming? Like, we're so far, we're just so deep in this, I feel like we never, we, I'm so blackpilled out, I feel like it'll never happen. It should be so simple. But then again, uh, I was reflecting on the fact that maybe like ten or fifteen years ago, there was this, there's all these stories about, oh, well, in Japan, they're like this cashless society. They have this great NFC technology. You just take your phone, you can tap to pay, you can tap for your ID. You can tap to get on the subway or whatever. It's just all digital. And it's like, why can't we have that in America? Things are so backwards. But then, like, for the last month, I haven't carried anything other than my phone, and it's been fine.

• 3:02:21John Coogan?

  Cause the DMV finally moved over, there's an app for it. You can just pull up your driver's license there. Every single place takes Apple Pay now. And so we finally have caught up, so maybe it'll happen with the digital voting. Probably not in the next election, though.

• 3:02:35Jordi Hays?

  The next election.

• 3:02:35John Coogan?

  And then also all the skepticism about the, the integrity of elections. Like, one party is gonna fight it tooth and nail.

• 3:02:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:43John Coogan?

  Whoever's, whoever's, you know, more pissed about the lax election.

• 3:02:47Jordi Hays?

  I really think it's boomers.

• 3:02:48John Coogan?

  You think so? Boomers aren't into it?

• 3:02:50Jordi Hays?

  I think boomers don't get enough hate in general.

• 3:02:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:54Jordi Hays?

  Like, we need to be slandering boomers more.

• 3:02:57John Coogan?

  Add it to the list, enemies.

• 3:02:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, add it to the list, Ben.

• 3:03:01John Coogan?

  So Eliza says, people shit on the YC ecosystem, shilling to each other, but the underlying concept is actually beautiful. Twenty to thirty somethings a year. Twenty to thirty somethings, uh, founders buying SaaS from other twenty to thirty something year olds. We speak the same language, we run at the same speed, and it's really nice. This is for sure true. Love it.

• 3:03:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think I, I think I pulled this out, cause I invested in Eliza's company.

• 3:03:27John Coogan?

  Oh, cool.

• 3:03:28Jordi Hays?

  And we, uh, we promote, uh, we.

• 3:03:31John Coogan?

  We shall for the.

• 3:03:32Jordi Hays?

  We shall, we do promote companies that we hold securities in.

• 3:03:35John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 3:03:36Jordi Hays?

  But yeah, I think, uh, It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful thing, an entire economy that is dependent on itself.

• 3:03:44John Coogan?

  Also, I mean, like, people always say this about like, oh, the, the, the, the YC hack is like, you get into YC, you start some SaaS company, sell to all the other YC companies, your revenue spikes. And it's like, is it a good company or not? But I haven't heard about that many stories of like, oh yeah, that company, like their revenue totally collapsed because it was all fake, like YC revenue. Like, if you, if you're in YC and you can sell to, yeah, if you can sell to Airbnb and Stripe and Coinbase, like, that's pretty durable revenue. And even if it's just a bunch of startups, like, there's enough that you could cobble together. Like, it's not like YC has ever had a situation where it's like, oh, all of the companies went, went out of business all of a sudden. Like, most of them are fine.

• 3:04:23Jordi Hays?

  Cause they're in such random industries.

• 3:04:25John Coogan?

  It's so diverse, yeah. It's actually like a fairly diversified revenue stream if you're selling to like, all the YC companies. It's almost better than being like-

• 3:04:32Jordi Hays?

  It's actually more like, one of YC's, like, moats is that if you could be in YC and you don't go in YC, and then somebody that's competing for your, in your same category does,

• 3:04:42John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 3:04:43Jordi Hays?

  There, the loyalty is like, very real.

• 3:04:45John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 3:04:45Jordi Hays?

  Like, they are going to use your competitor out of, at least in the early days, until like, it's very clear who the best product is.

• 3:04:53John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. We were talking about some company-

• 3:04:56Jordi Hays?

  If there was, if somebody, like, the real, the only threat that we have with Technology Brothers is two other guys that look like us, that are NYC, that, that take the 700K.

• 3:05:06John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:05:07Jordi Hays?

  And then they just have all this alpha from being NYC.

• 3:05:11John Coogan?

  Maybe we should go through YC. We, we talked about some company that was like, highly, highly volatile. It might have been like a real estate company or something, but it's like, all of their revenue came from something that was like, super cyclical. This happens with hiring companies a lot. They're like, doing great in a bull market, and then as soon as the rifts start and all the companies are laying off, their revenue just goes to zero because no one's hiring, so no one's paying for hiring platforms. Because there's just plenty of, of, of applications coming in, when it's not a tight job market.

• 3:05:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:40John Coogan?

  And so, you know, like, that, that's an example of like, if you can be, if you can have a diversified revenue stream of, of, it's like, oh yeah, well, like, the market overall is selling off. And it's a little bit tighter, but there's still this one company that we sold to that's growing because they're in some interesting industry and they've kept us on as a client. You can actually be pretty, pretty good.

• 3:05:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:57John Coogan?

  Let's stay on Y C. Let's go to Jared Friedman, partner at Y C says, uh, today I learned Saudi Aramco was started at two twenty five Bush Street in San Francisco because Ryan Peterson says every company in the world worth more than one trillion dollars was founded on the west coast, including Saudi Aramco, which was started in the same building as Flexport here in San Francisco. That is crazy stat. West coast.

• 3:06:18Jordi Hays?

  Long California.

• 3:06:19John Coogan?

  All the innovation in California.

• 3:06:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, all the innovation in the world.

• 3:06:22John Coogan?

  Maybe it flips at some point, but.

• 3:06:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I think, I think, uh, I think Nikita elsewhere on X was making the point that it's because on the east coast, a lot of power and resources go towards like prestige and people that have, you know, degrees where S F and California are more egalitarian, where if you're talented and hardworking, you can get resources and opportunity. Who knows? But I love it. And I think that we should, uh, we should, California should be more proud of founding Saudi Aramco.

• 3:06:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:58Jordi Hays?

  It's very American.

• 3:06:59John Coogan?

  It is.

• 3:07:00Jordi Hays?

  I wish, I wish the state did a little like, you know, one on 10 into the Saudi Aramco precinct. That would solve our budgetary issues right now.

• 3:07:10John Coogan?

  Fantastic.

• 3:07:11Jordi Hays?

  Nice cash flow.

• 3:07:12John Coogan?

  Well, I mean, I, I, we, we should do a deep dive on the Saudi Aramco story because I'm pretty sure that was like the, the ownership of that company was like fought with wars.

• 3:07:20Jordi Hays?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:07:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, I'm pretty sure like it was a big deal when it got like nationalized. It was not like a, it was not just like a, oh, they decided to move over to a different country. It was like, we, this oil is in our ground and it's ours. Uh, Eric Raymond says, you can just make things. This is my massive white pill about the revolution in small scale manufacturing that's going on right now. The immediate, immediate trigger is a story I read about a guy who was annoyed that his wife needed a wheelchair and the designs were all crappy and hideously expensive and made in China. So he booted up a small factory that now builds custom wheelchairs, delivering them for about a thousand dollars a pop, undercutting the Chinese by a factor of five. Amazing. This guy is gonna, gonna do one of the D O D contracts you mentioned. Like

• 3:08:01Jordi Hays?

  Really?

• 3:08:01John Coogan?

  No, I just imagine.

• 3:08:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:03John Coogan?

  If he can.

• 3:08:04Jordi Hays?

  Government contracts.

• 3:08:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, if he can spin up a small factory that builds custom wheelchairs for a thousand dollars a pop, like, he could go and get the Boeing contract that's selling a soap dispenser for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And very, he clearly has the skill set to deliver a high-quality product at value.

• 3:08:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:20John Coogan?

  So, get this guy on that platform ASAP.

• 3:08:23Jordi Hays?

  The original promise of 3D printing where people were like, oh, you're gonna just be able to buy something online and 3D print it in your office or whatever. And like, I think that will basically come true, but it won't necessarily look like people imagined it. It'll just be localized manufacturing, talented, small companies, et cetera.

• 3:08:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:48John Coogan?

  Let's go to Austin, is it Reeve? Austin Reeve, founder of Morning Brew?

• 3:08:53Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 3:08:54John Coogan?

  He says, "The New York Times Tech Guild went on strike today. As a reminder, here are their demands: a ban on scented products, unlimited break time, pet bereavement, mandatory trigger warnings when discussing events in the news."

• 3:09:07Jordi Hays?

  It's funny, because they were way ahead of, does, um, does it have to be your pet? Or could it be a squirrel owned by someone else?

• 3:09:14John Coogan?

  I need some time off, for sure. This is, this is like such bait, like, yeah. Because like, clearly, clearly their demands were more than just this, come on. Like, they're obviously.

• 3:09:24Jordi Hays?

  Austin's good at, he didn't.

• 3:09:25John Coogan?

  He knows content.

• 3:09:26Jordi Hays?

  He knows content.

• 3:09:27John Coogan?

  He knows content. But yeah, it's very silly, but also, half of these things are like, you know, the, the, the read here is like, oh, they're all like, left-wing demands. Like, they're like special snowflakes that need trigger warnings. But then, also, half of these are like, I could see the right wing adopting these, because like, oh, the scented products have, have microplastics, so we can't have scented products anymore. Or like, yeah, we need to bereave our squirrels, so like, I need time off.

• 3:09:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:09:51John Coogan?

  I don't know, it's like, a little bit of like a horseshoe.

• 3:09:53Jordi Hays?

  The real, I guess the perplexity CEO did a PR push today, saying that he would happily replace all of their writers with AI. Like, he did, he did a piece today.

• 3:10:05John Coogan?

  He's just becoming a shit poster? Oh, wait, oh, the New York Times. Oh, yeah, because they're, they're in a battle. They're in a legal battle, New York Times and, and perplexity, I'm pretty sure. Or maybe Wired, or one of the big publications for the scraping and whatnot.

• 3:10:17Jordi Hays?

  But it is kind of funny that the New York Times, they purposely chose to go on strike the day before the election as a way to like.

• 3:10:27John Coogan?

  Oh yeah, because the tech guild is, so they do the software development and they do like the, the New York Times Needle, which will be getting like the most traffic tomorrow.

• 3:10:36Jordi Hays?

  Ever.

• 3:10:37John Coogan?

  Right? It's going to be like the highest demand. They do cool like visualizations. Some of the tech people are actually really awesome.

• 3:10:42Jordi Hays?

  They know they're, they know when they have some leverage and they're willing to twist the knife, you know?

• 3:10:47John Coogan?

  But yeah, I mean, I imagine they'd be able to give on that if they got a pay bump, maybe. This is a good one. Let, let's do Linus. So the creator of Linux, Kakashi says, "The creator of Linux has publicly voiced what I've been saying for the past two years." The Linux creator Linus Torvald, quote, "AI is useless. It's 90% marketing." While he ignores AI for now. It's all hype.

• 3:11:12Jordi Hays?

  So the reason that this is easily refutable is that we've only ever recorded one podcast together in person. The very first one and every other episode of this podcast has been AI-generated, powered by Delphi.

• 3:11:25John Coogan?

  Uh, it's funny because it's like the classic, like, uh, you know, programmer mistake of like, marketing doesn't matter.

• 3:11:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:11:33John Coogan?

  In my opinion. So it's like 90% is marketing. Like, let's talk about Nike. Is that a valuable company? Does that bring people joy? Is it valuable?

• 3:11:42Jordi Hays?

  90% marketing?

• 3:11:42John Coogan?

  It's 90% marketing, of course. And that's okay. Like, some things are marketing-driven and that's okay. It creates value and, and everyone is happy. The shareholders, the employees, the customers, everyone's happy.

• 3:11:53Jordi Hays?

  The athletes.

• 3:11:54John Coogan?

  It's like, what? This is a, this is the myth of, the myth of consensual capitalism. Like, oh, like, I didn't consent. It's like, no one cares. No one cares that it's just marketing. Like, it's fine. But I, I, I get that we're saying to a deeper level, like, you know, we want more AI innovation. Like, it should be good. A lot of the products are kind of bad, but still, you know.

• 3:12:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but you have to, to have, to fundamentally believe this. You have to have, you have to believe that all the AI products that we're using are not AI products.

• 3:12:22John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 3:12:22Jordi Hays?

  Because the products, many of them are, are magic, right? Like, they really feel like magic.

• 3:12:31John Coogan?

  Let's go to the last one with AI. Sujit Indap says, "Nobody, blank, Wall Street slash Silicon Valley. What if a private credit bubble was combined with an AI bubble and then Nvidia-related party transactions were thrown in just for fun?" And he's talking about how, I believe Nvidia is now doing deals.

• 3:12:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there's huge amounts of credit being extended that is backed by GPUs.

• 3:13:00John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 3:13:01Jordi Hays?

  His core, I think, complaint, from what I can tell, is that GPUs are very rapidly depreciating assets.

• 3:13:09John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 3:13:09Jordi Hays?

  It's one thing to extend credit against a house, which is relatively stable, or you know, an appreciating asset, but extending huge amounts of credit against GPUs is like, you know, would be like really levering up a car and then driving it a ton while the cars were sort of like improving very rapidly, so much so that a car would be almost worthless after three years.

• 3:13:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:34Jordi Hays?

  Whereas a car is gonna have some value for 20 years.

• 3:13:37John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 3:13:38Jordi Hays?

  Granted, as long as it doesn't sort of...

• 3:13:39John Coogan?

  Well, the other flip side here that I see people criticizing is this idea that like a startup will go and raise a $10 million Series A and go and get $90 million of Nvidia credits.

• 3:13:51Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 3:13:52John Coogan?

  And then they'll announce a $100 million fundraise. That looks like, you know, an in-kind, related-party transaction from Nvidia. They get $90 million more revenue because the startup will use it, but it's kind of like, you know, where did the money was kind of created out of thin air.

• 3:14:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I feel like, Bill...

• 3:14:09John Coogan?

  But, the thing is, is that this also happened in the dot-com bubble, where a lot of the telecom providers were funding a lot of dot-com startups and giving them like preferential access to bandwidth early on. But, the thing is, is that, like, so, it's like, AI is overrated in the short term and underrated in the long term. This could lead to a bubble that pops, but it still could be amazing that all this stuff gets built out and there's all this infrastructure. And that's exactly what happened in the dot-com boom. There was a lot of dark fiber, and that's what enabled Google to grow so fast, because even though the internet bubble had collapsed, the infrastructure was there, so when the right product came along, it was able to go super wide and super fast.

• 3:14:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. I feel like Bill Gurley has a nose for bubbles, like he just can smell bubbles. And he's been harping on the, um, uh, he's been harping on the Nvidia related party transaction thing for quite a while.

• 3:15:06John Coogan?

  Yeah, interesting. Let's move to audience Q and A. We have one question and we'll wrap. Hey, John and Jordy, I've been running a Fortune 500 tech company for about a decade now and wanted to get your take on the next jet I should purchase. I currently own a Gulfstream G650 ER extended range, but have been thinking about upgrading to a Boeing business jet. What do you think I should go for? What do you think?

• 3:15:30Jordi Hays?

  Look, this, I, I think it's less about the shell and more about what you do with the interior, right? And so I think whether it's a Boeing business jet and you want to be able to bring, you know, your, your potentially entire polycule or extended family, um, or you're going, you're going to stay with the Gulfstream, I would just think about, even if you keep your same Gulfstream, redoing the interior on like a fairly frequent basis, right? Cause it's kind of like redoing the inside of your house. Like you walk in, it feels like this new, it feels like a new house, even though it's the same, um, uh, same

• 3:16:10Jordi Hays?

  kind of core shell or whatever. Um, but really I, I would feel, um, bad advising any one direction and would put, uh, you know, tell them to go talk to Preston Holland.

• 3:16:24John Coogan?

  Oh, sure.

• 3:16:25Jordi Hays?

  Expert, um, on private jet guy. And he's our private jet guy.

• 3:16:30John Coogan?

  Yeah. I have a, I have a little bit more of a point to take. So I, so I, I think I know who wrote this in. And, um, it's, it's really about like what your lifestyle is. So, so for those who don't know, the, the Gulfstream is probably the most popular private jet. Elon, Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, they all have Gulfstreams. Uh, the Boeing business jet is essentially a white labeled Boeing plane. So you can get a 737 MAX, like the thing that you fly on United, you can just have that privately. You can have a seven, you can have a Dreamliner and a lot of heads of State have these, you know, Saudi princes. You can think of Air Force One as kind of a Boeing business jet, although it's owned by the military. Trump flies on a BBJ, a Boeing business jet.

• 3:17:14John Coogan?

  But if you think about what, what's the difference between a CEO of a large company and a head of state? Well, the head of state is bringing an entire delegation to another country, a lot of international travel, and always landing at a major airport. So you're going from DC to London. Those are huge, huge airports. When you're just a CEO, A, you don't need to bring your entire company with you when you go to do a deal. A lot of the biggest deals, it's just, you know, Zuckerberg and Kevin Systrom going for a hike. And so if they have to be meeting in Sun Valley, they can just fly in very easily. You don't need to worry about is the landing strip too small or too big? So you can get to much more remote locations, can still bring your whole family. And but for, if you're thinking about, you know, running a political campaign now,

• 3:17:58John Coogan?

  then you need to be thinking about, okay, I'm going to be in every major airport because I'm going to be campaigning in swing states. And they're all going to have huge airports, so I can land and I can bring my entire staff, my entire team with me. And when I get off the plane, we're going to hop in a bunch of black SUVs. And I'm going to bring my writer, my speech person, my makeup artist, my comms person, my finance. You're going to bring the, my lawyer is going to be with me all the time. And so you really need to think about like what your lifestyle is like and what it's going to be like over time before you make that decision. But I would probably, based on what I know, I'd stick with the Gulf Stream. But that's our show. I gotta hop on with Taipei soon. I think we're gonna wrap. So thanks for watching.