AI Boom Reality Check, Jobs Boom, Cybertruck Scrapped | Praveer Melwani, Keller Cliffton, Rahul Sonwalkar, Max Siegelman, D.A. Wallach

(01:33) - AI Boom Reality Check (16:00) - Jobs Boom (21:56) - Hedge Fund Selloff (24:12) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions (26:50) - Cybertruck Scrapped (38:02) - WSJ Mansion Section (46:31) - Praveer Melwani is the CFO of Figma, the collaborative design and software development platform. He oversees the company’s financial strategy, operations, and long-term planning, helping scale Figma through its rapid growth and transition into a publicly traded company. He is also an advocate for using AI to transform corporate finance and automate business workflows. (56:36) - Keller Cliffton is the co-founder and CEO of Zipline, the autonomous drone delivery company transforming how medical supplies, food, and consumer goods are transported. Zipline began by delivering blood and vaccines to remote hospitals in Rwanda and has since expanded across four continents, partnering with companies like Walmart and Uber Eats. The company recently raised $1.5 billion at a $21.5 billion valuation. Before founding Zipline, Cliffton studied at Harvard and was a professional rock climber. (01:11:45) - Rahul Sonwalkar is the founder and CEO of Julius AI, an AI-powered data analysis platform that allows users to analyze spreadsheets, generate visualizations, and perform complex statistical modeling using natural language. A Y Combinator alumnus and former engineer at Uber and Facebook, he has grown Julius to more than 2 million users and raised $10 million in funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. (01:20:00) - Max Siegelman is the founder of Siegelman Stable, a luxury sportswear and streetwear brand known for its vintage-inspired hats, apparel, and celebrity following. Launched in 2020 as a tribute to his family's horse racing business, the brand has gained popularity among figures like Kendall Jenner, Justin Bieber, and Aaron Judge, with collaborations spanning major sports teams and fashion. A portion of the brand's proceeds supports equine therapy programs. (01:40:05) - D. A. Wallach is the co-founder and general partner of Time BioVentures, a venture capital firm investing in biotechnology, healthcare, and breakthrough medical technologies. He was an early investor in companies including Spotify, SpaceX, and Neuralink, and previously fronted the indie rock band Chester French, which was discovered by Pharrell Williams. He has since become a prominent investor focused on transforming medicine through innovative biotech startups. TBPN is made possible by: Ramp - https://ramp.com Public - https://public.com Cisco - https://www.cisco.com Console - https://www.console.com CrowdStrike - https://www.crowdstrike.com Figma - https://www.figma.com MongoDB - https://www.mongodb.com NYSE - https://www.nyse.com Railway - https://railway.com Shopify - https://www.shopify.com Codex - http://openAI.com/codex Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tbpn/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You're watching TVP.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Today is Friday, November 6th, 2026. We are live from the TVP and Ultra Dome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.

• 0:13Speaker 00

  So good to be back.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  So good to be back. Everyone was saying we sold the Ultra Dome. We were down so bad yesterday that we couldn't possibly maintain the Ultra Dome. It's simply too much. But of course.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Brutal week of travel.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  We've been saving time and money since day one, of course, with Ramp. Let me tell you about Ramp. Time is money. Save both. Easy to use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting and a whole lot more all in one place. No matter what the stock market's doing, you gotta maintain your Ultra Dome. This is key. Yeah, brutal week of travel, crazy, crazy time. Stocks are up now, so Vlad went to the trenches, fixed it.

• 0:48Speaker 00

  Never doubt it. Never black pill.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  He fixed it, yeah.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  Always catch a falling knife.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you want to try? You want to try? You think you can catch a falling knife? A lot of people say, never try to catch a falling knife. Why don't you try, Jordy? Oh, he did it. He did it. It's not that hard. Of course, you might cut yourself on a true falling knife. That's a plastic cutlery.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, you just need to know how to catch a falling knife.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  You know why they say don't.

• 1:13Speaker 00

  It really should be, don't catch falling knives if you're not an expert in knife catching.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you didn't cut yourself, but you got microplastics all over your hands right now.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  I'm not too worried about it. I'm worried about, like personally, the microplastics reaction to my.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  To me.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. No, a bad day on Wall Street yesterday. Wall Street got a $2.5 trillion reality check with historic rout of tech stocks. It was the worst day on record since June 5th, 2026, a couple of months ago, when it was 1.87 trillion. Before that, you gotta go all the way back to April 3rd of 2025, when they lost 1.74 trillion. Then back to April 4th, the day after, when it was 1.58 trillion. The numbers are big, because there's been a lot of growth, a lot of inflation, a lot of big numbers racking up. The economy is big, the market is big, and so the numbers

• 2:08Speaker 01

  get big when the percentages move. But yeah, yesterday was crazy, 5% down. Not typical, but you know, looking better today. NASDAQ's up 1.38%. Seems to be holding. It's not entirely a falling knife. If you caught it this morning, you're doing okay. Who knows what happens next week, but.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Somebody, Daniel in the chat said, app is up so much. And I went to look at it and thought there was a bug, because they're up 67% in the last five days.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  What? App level?

• 2:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, up another, up 10% today after earnings.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  Vlad's over there crushing it.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Wow, this is crazy. For such a big company, $131 billion company now, wild, wild swing at that scale. Typically, not something you're seeing constantly. So to recap for yesterday, two days after the midterm elections, swept a block of artificial intelligence skeptics into power. The new reality slammed into Wall Street. We still can't figure out exactly why things are happening in the order that they're happening. Feels like everyone knew the results of the midterms, knew what was going on in Texas on Wednesday, and yet they waited till Thursday to sell. So, little bit of like digestion of the narrative maybe, because of course, on Wednesday, stocks actually rallied. What did I see on the back? What's

• 3:30Speaker 01

  going on? The road to Christmas?

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Look at this.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Oh, we got, we got Santa Claus orbiting the earth.

• 3:35Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Oh, he goes around, okay.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  Now we gotta wait for a few seconds.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  We gotta do the Christmas countdown. I think we're at 48 days.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  There he is. Coming around.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  The official countdown, the road to Christmas, 48 days until Christmas. Just a hairs brought away. The first spam email was 48 days, 48 years ago? Wow, that's crazy. How far we've come?

• 3:59Speaker 00

  So, I almost feel like we gotta put ourselves on the naughty list.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Why?

• 4:03Speaker 00

  Because we were so ahead of Christmas, right? We were sort of front-running.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  The rest of the market. And I was at dinner Wednesday night, and I'm walking around, and there's like a three-story-high tree.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  That's already up.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  In Beverly Hills.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  And we're sitting here, there's not a single.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Short sellers and John and Jordy.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  There's not a single, this is our new naughty list.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  You gotta zoom in on that.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Courtesy of producer Ben.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  But you know, some people, I think we're gonna be coming back to this a lot over, you know, in the sort of final days, final hours.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Helping Santa out. We're Santa's little helpers.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  We're helping him out.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  We're trying to get back on his good side. On his good side, because again, we started so strong, and then all of a sudden, there's trees going up all over the country.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  And we're sitting here, treeless in the Ultra Dome, right?

• 4:49Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Just got complacent, so.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  It's actually crazy. So yeah, for today, we'll rank our stories. Are they naughty stories or nice stories? Where are they going? Where are the key actors in the stories going?

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Mike Bird had a good post today. I'm tempted to put him on the nice list for it. He said, could be.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  This is contention.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  Could be quite a buying opportunity here if stocks bounce back. Not if they sell off further, though.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Great. Great. That is my quant. Let me tell you about Consol. Consol builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. Moving on, what else is going on in the market?

• 5:28Speaker 00

  This was, this was great.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  What happened?

• 5:30Speaker 00

  Brian says, there is a nuclear war. Just four humans remain. One is Gavin Baker. He is telling you how this is actually good for AI stocks. And Gavin responds and says, we would need a lot of robots and GPUs to rebuild civilization.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Good point.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Got a point.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  He's got a point. I think Gavin Baker's going on the nice list. The Anthropic IPO, the Financial Times, AlphaVille over there is questioning where it will get out. $2 trillion was floated originally, then that was retreated to maybe 1.5. Now there's, you know, people going back and forth around, maybe it's 1.3, maybe it's 1.2, maybe it goes back up, who knows? Perhaps you're old enough to remember yesterday when Wall Street's stocks posted their biggest gain in three months as investors bet that the Democrats' resounding victory in the US midterm elections would cause policy gridlock in Washington. Maybe you can recall when inflation fears were damp by Brent Crude closing yesterday's US session

• 6:27Speaker 01

  below $100 a barrel for the first time since September, and when a nearly 11 basis point tightening of the Franco-German 10-year spread signaled optimism in Europe. You might even remember when the NASDAQ composite advanced by 1.4%, literally yesterday, when tech mega caps outperformed amid a rotation from the weakest of AI names that meant selling was contained among semiconductor stocks, neo-clad developers, and politically exposed plays like SpaceX. And so, you can see in this Financial Times article, the heat map, there's obviously a lot more pain on the chip side than on, you know, the broader tech community. And we saw that with like the hyperscalers. They already have a lot of data centers built. They might do very well. They have other businesses. Apple, not really

• 7:11Speaker 01

  affected by the midterms. Tim Cook, John Turnus, they played the, they played the whole political chaos very well, going to the movie screenings that they need to go, but not getting too glazy with it. And it's balanced out, and the market seems to be rewarding them. But AlphaVille continues over at the Financial Times. It's a fine time to test, it's a fine time to list shares if you're Anthropic. You might remember having read in the Wall Street Journal less than a day ago. But chances of an IPO have crumbled on Polymarket. It's now down to a 49% by November 24th, which was the week before Thanksgiving, when the,

• 7:54Speaker 01

  when the latest rumors were swirling. This on Polymarket was up at 70, 75, 72%, now down at 49%. Still 50/50. It could happen. And you saw some, some positive notes from Anthropic coming out about RSI progress, a lot of debate from the meter folks, like the science, the technology, the capabilities are still advancing. But it's still just a crazy tumultuous time to go into the market. And, you know, what was a ton of optimism around the S1, really financially healthy, a lot of cash on the balance sheet, really good Q2, see where Q3 came out. Q3 was weak, but then boom, they came out with the 80 billion ARR number. Good stuff. But still, like, the market is what the market is. And

• 8:39Speaker 01

  I don't think very many bankers recommend jumping in the water when it's this tumultuous. So, we'll see where they go. It feels like 50/50 is pretty accurate. Those of you with even longer memories might recall the numerous years that we in the media have been pontific.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, the only, the only, the interesting thing about the debate around where it actually goes out at is.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  It could end up being like the the general market sell off. If that means that a bunch of people that have wanted to invest in Anthropic for years have an opportunity to like, you shouldn't have less conviction in the company now than you did four months ago.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  True.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  Just because some infrastructure names are selling off.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Maybe that's why.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  And so if you if you liked this company.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  They're back.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  In summer.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  You should love it now because you potentially are going to get in at a massive discount.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  To if the if the sort of overall AI infra trade had continued through the end of the year.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, rough on the VCs who might not get to distribute at 2 trillion. They might have to distribute at 1.3 or 1.5 trillion and not get the full, full mark, but still very good for the ones who did get in. Something kind of, something about FT attaching a Google screenshot of stock market charts is kind of trashy. It is funny that they don't have like their own built in widget, but I think Google charts are really good. I share these all the time and I think that they did a really good design here. And when I'm on other websites that have stock charts, it's sometimes like they're too cluttered or it's too pro or has candles and all these crazy things like I always just wind up typing, you know, the company name and then market capping Google and I still, I still use this.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  But it does feel a little off brand, but I don't think this was, this is Alphaville, which is a blog on the FT. It's not the official FT's publication workflow, so probably goes through like a slightly modified CMS or, or just, you know, they can just rip whatever they want. Anyway, Claude is bearish on Anthropic. You saw this? If you ask Claude what the fair.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  I think it's not bearish, it's just humble.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Humble, yes, okay. So Claude thinks that the fair market cap for publicly traded Anthropic is somewhere between 500 billion and 800 billion, which is about half of where they've been rumored to be going out at. And Dizzy had a good take here. The Mahdi is too humble to say he's worth 2 trillion. Even more reason to know that he is. I love it. I love it. Anyway, I'm sure we'll be following this over the rest of the month, couple of weeks more to see if there's stabilization in the market. You know, getting out at 1.5 seems totally doable. What's James Chanos saying about all this? He says, I can't shake the feeling that selling your high beta tech stocks already down 40 to 70% to buy low or no growth consumer names at 30 to 100x earnings might not be

• 11:31Speaker 01

  so smart either. So if you're.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  You're going to tell me that, that buying Monster at a 42 PE isn't smart?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Monster Energy?

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  42 PE, that's nice.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  90 billion dollar company.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  It's crazy. Take him is still bullish. He says, the Texas governor-elect does not hate data centers. When asked by CNN Jake Tapper about today's stock market decline, AI investors worries and fears about the economic consequences of her data center policy. Gina said this, we have always been pro-business in the state of Texas, but what changes now with me as governor is it has to be a partnership that benefits Texans. And right now, what has happened is data centers have moved mostly into rural communities and there are no rules and laws to protect Texans. There certainly must be some rules and laws, but Texans are being taken advantage of, she says, to the difference, we have to have laws. So she wants to move forward, but with a new negotiation.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Take him says two words, buy stocks. Let's go.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  Today is.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Eternal, eternal optimist over there.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, what did he say last night? He in, in his, in the preview of his Substack, he just said, buy the dip.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Hmm. Captain pulling knife, skill issue if you can't.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, we, we practiced this morning. Obviously, we did, we caught a knife live on the show.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Showed that it's possible.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, but we were listening to a talk yesterday and the, the individual was basically saying like, we're entering the era of stock picking. Like you could basically just buy anything over the last year or two.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  And do quite well. And maybe it's time to buy the dip because almost everything is traded down.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  But you got to pick the right ones.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that, that was the same, like the stories that we tell about the storied tech firms, like the, the really successful venture capital firms of today all were in, no coincidence, like Google, Amazon, right? They were in the right place through the dot com crash. So even if you wind up in a, in a total reset of the market, you would, you would definitely expect that there's a couple new effectively hyperscalers that make it through. Daniel Newman had this very interesting visualization of dot com versus AI, tracks very closely and then gets crazy at the end. Let's pull this video up, but while we're pulling that up, let me tell you about Cisco. Critical infrastructure for the AI era.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Unlock seamless real time experiences and new value with Cisco. Dot com versus AI. It looks identical for a minute and dot com there is on the top, the orange line doing well, crossing, they're going back and forth, going back and forth. And then here we are today with a sell off and then dot com keeps ripping. Look at that. So from start to finish, dot com produced something like, what, what's the final? The final tally is 100 something X, 151 X. And at the last close, this AI peak is at 16 X from the baseline.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Depends on where you start the baseline, but looking at the, some of the Korean stocks has been particularly crazy. I was looking at, I think it was the CUSP index over time is, let me see if I can just throw this in because it's a, it's a crazy, crazy chart. Let me see if I can drag this in. Uploading image, here we go. The, yeah, pull up the, the image, a screenshot from Google, of course. There's nothing better. Where else, where else are you going to go for a quick screenshot? Look at this, the CUSP, this is the, the Korean index, complete store of value for

• 15:35Speaker 01

  like 20 years and then just completely vertical and then right back down.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, peaked at 9,114, now sitting at, at roughly 5,000.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  5,000, yeah. Anyway.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  Jobs, we got to talk about jobs.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Talking about jobs.

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Geiger says, jobs in October came in higher than all 80 forecasters in Bloomberg's survey predicted.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Well, you shouldn't have been forecasting, you should have been predicting big.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  On your favorite prediction market.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  Just kidding. Unemployment rate is back down to 4.1.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Good news.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  I still have trouble getting excited about any jobs report just because it's just my default assumption is that it gets revised down massively in a few months.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  And so hard to, hard to hit the gong over.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  But we've had some good ones and they haven't been revised negatively.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Yet.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  In like six months. And then we've also talked to the ADP folks and the Gusto and a whole bunch of the payroll companies and they all match what's tracking. I think in general, we, we can read this as, as a good thing. The really interesting thing is that there's 19,000 new manufacturing jobs. So for a long time, anytime we got a good jobs report, it was always like, okay, more healthcare for old people, more, you know, that's how, it doesn't, it feels important, but it doesn't feel like any big change structurally in the economy. It's just, okay, we're aging, we're taking care of our old people, which is important, but it's not a new area of growth. We're not going to look in, look back in, in 50 years and be like, wow, the, the expansion

• 17:21Speaker 01

  in healthcare really changed what America was doing. Manufacturing, on the other hand, is a huge thing, can unlock new technologies, new vehicles, new capabilities, new defense. Like there's so many different things that you can do. So very, very good. We, we, we love to see it. 165,000 jobs added in October and the numbers. So the, the economists were predicting 59,000 jobs. They got absolutely blown out by 165K. So the unemployment rate now is 4.1%.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  And the, the, the Fed is pricing in or expecting another rate hike, which is, you know, fighting off inflation, but still strong job market, good place to be in for the US economy. Dico said that the drop in the unemployment rate was especially notable, given that the labor force participation rate, the share of the working age population that's either working or looking for work picked up last month, which is good. So the, what, what you always want to avoid is a situation where, yeah, unemployment went down, but it's because no one's even looking for a job. Everyone's just chilling at home, relaxing, I guess. Instead, people are, people are entering the workforce, they're saying, I'm ready to work, I want a job and they're getting jobs.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  So it's that balancing factor that's really key. That's an indication that more people were entering the labor market and finding jobs. Torsten Slok, who I mentioned to Joe Weisenthal at our New York Stock Exchange show, he's the chief economist over at Apollo. He pointed out that the unemployment rate has now been under 5% for roughly five years. That puts it just short of a record 64 month stretch from 1965 to 1970. I was doing some, some economic history research the other day about, you know, the, the GDP projections, you know, the most ambitious ones are what, like 30% GDP growth sustained over some period? That has like never happened in human history.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  I was looking back through like, what, what has been the best decade for GDP growth of any country, anywhere in the world? China has been 10% for a long time. That's great. What does it take to get to 20%? It has happened twice. Equatorial Guinea is one of them and Guyana is another one. And both of those were countries that found offshore oil reserves where they could basically just sell them instantly and say, hey, come get the oil. You don't even have to rely on our infrastructure. You just show up, start drilling, take it and we will tax it and we will, and it counts as our GDP because we're, we're, we're producing the oil here.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  So Equatorial Guinea at one point had like 99% of their economy, oil exports or something. That's something crazy.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  You wound up being sort of a mixed bag like because it was like, you know, kind of like free money and it just kind of happened offshore. It didn't really revolutionize everything. It didn't take them from, it's not like they became Singapore, you know?

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Uh, but it was good and they did, the government did get that money.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  China did peak at fifteen point two percent.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  For like a year.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  For one year in nineteen eighty-four.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it is, it is very difficult to, to find a historical precedent for sustained twenty plus percent growth. Now you could say that like in an intelligence explosion, it's kind of akin to finding oil. It's this like, it's this, it's this like tokens that you can use for economic value. Same thing with oil. You can use to move things around. You can deploy it in the economy in so many places that if you can produce it, it's like the bullish, it's the most bullish case. But it was just funny because like it is extremely rare to find, to find an example of north of twenty percent. I mean, that's a huge amount of economic growth, especially for any, any country that's at all at scale. It's really, really.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Can you think about how electric it would be?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  It'd be amazing. Be, yeah, it'd be, it'd be incredible.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  It would fix me.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  It would, it would. Well, hopefully it happens. Lots to do though, lots to deploy, lots to unhobble. The models need to get even better and they need to be adopted.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  If you were a hedge fund just hoping to survive to get to thirty percent sustained GDP growth in the United States. You maybe didn't do that well this week because you may have exploded.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of, a lot of headlines about hedge funds.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  They wanted explosive growth and they exploded.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  They got the exploded part, but that's it. Has any, have any of them actually blown up fully? Like had to sell order books or sell, sell holdings and blocks and do any of that?

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Well, I think that was certainly happening yesterday.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  It might be happening like over the course of the next couple of days. Cause a lot of these are running leverage and so at the very least, if their book is in semis.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  This was in, this was in Bloomberg. So hedge fund Vara plunges thirty-three percent in brutal October for AI stocks.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  That's so much.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Coffey's hedge fund Kirkswold had worst ever month in October, while I to return some capital following brutal October. X more money manager to return cash from his hedge fund. Millennium taps X Citigroup banker. That's something else.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  Anyway.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Millennium hired a Citigroup banker to lead India operations.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  They're just expanding. They're like, do nothing, win, I guess. They're doing fine. Yeah. A hedge fund trading.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting. So there's a hedge fund coach, Denise Scholl, had multiple clients just cancel their appointment yesterday. It's like one of those things like if you're in the middle of chaos, you often don't necessarily need to just talk it out for an hour. You need to solve your problems in real time and you can, you can figure out what happened later. So I think that makes sense.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Well, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify has the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds, online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  Endowment Eddie said, do wellness checks with your public equity T M T friends today. They need you, but not lead edge capital. Hearing public fund is up thirty-two percent gross year to date and down only one point two percent yesterday.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  That's sick.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  Owning tech that trades at single digit ARR and low double digit CF multiples works after all.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. Contrarian.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Some of the last contrarians.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  It's great. Great.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  We have some big stories that we, we need to, we need to get into. So

• 24:17Speaker 00

  wildlife at our new LA wildlife bridge couldn't wait for the ribbon cutting.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Really?

• 24:24Speaker 00

  A coyote has become the first documented animal to use the Wallace Annenberg wildlife crossing over the one-on-one freeway. So again, we were once minorly canceled over, over talking about this bridge, which we're very much in favor of, but effectively a mega project, you know, this thing has been in the works for years and years and years and years. And it seems, I mean, I'm kind of, it feels a little, feels a little cyberpunk. You know, you have this like massive structure and then they just try to trick the animals into thinking like this is just a

• 25:00Speaker 00

  normal hillside crossover. But really, really fantastic news. I think it's, you know, coming in well north of a hundred million dollars for this bridge.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  But that's not bad. I, I, I, for some reason I had earmarked it like ten billion. So you're telling me it's a hundred mil, I'm, I'm, I'm one hundred percent in.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. The crazy thing is I don't know how you actually get down because there's like a two-story drop.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Well, they're gonna build more of the bridge to like smooth it out, but I think they should.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  It's crazy because it's like you, you would, you would think that the right thing to do would be able to build like a bunch of small bridges. You know, but maybe animals just like.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  One million dollar.

• 25:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe animals talk amongst themselves and they're like, yeah, there's an amazing bridge down the one-on-one over here. You gotta check. It's a little bit out of the way, but like it's just so scenic, you know?

• 25:48Speaker 01

  I wonder if the bridge is too narrow, the animals won't think that it's for them and it needs to kind of blend in and feel like a continuation of the, the hillside there. But I mean, I, now that they're giving bridges away for a hundred mil, I'd build a hundred more.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  Thousands of animal bridges and, and but, but had data centers inside them, secret data centers.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  I would be very much in favor of building a bridge every mile at this size and scale or build, build, just cover the, cover the freeways entirely. Just put them, I mean, if you can't build them underground.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  You want to be.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Build them, just build a continuous bridge.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  You don't want to see.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  I don't care. I'll turn on the lights in my car. It's fine. I drive in the night all the time. It's no big deal. Like that does not matter to me at all. I don't, I don't need, I'll have, I'll.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  So you want, you want California to earmark.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Turn the entire one-on-one into a giant.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  You want California to earmark a few hundred billion dollars.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, why not? We got the money. We got the people. We'll just build it.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  We don't, we don't have the money. The state is, the state is broke.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  We're doing fine. We're doing fine.

• 26:51Speaker 00

  This is big. This is big. The cyber truck is being scrapped. I.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Came in at the perfect time. I now have a one of seventeen thousand.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Wait, they only ship seven, is that the actual number? How many did they actually ship of these? Because seventeen thousand is not a lot. I mean, that's, that is actually somewhat limited. Where?

• 27:15Speaker 00

  They sold twenty thousand in the last year. It's not limited at all.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Seventy-three thousand cents delivery started in late twenty twenty-three. So you have one of seventy-three thousand.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

• 27:27Speaker 01

  It's going into.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  That if I can just keep it in pristine condition for the next hundred years.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  Hundred years.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Pull it out.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Pull it out.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  Like a low mileage example, only one of seventy-three thousand.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's really, it's really disappointing. It's really disappointing because I was hoping that this would have enough.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Chad is saying, C M C is saying, ah, so Jordy is a collector of swords. Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  I'm in favor of collecting things that you can have like a wonderful experience with.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was really hoping that they would take this and be successful enough to do the cyber SUV, do the three-row like the excursion built on the truck platform.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  At the end of the day, I love the car overall. It is really like horrible in so many ways and should like what I actually love about it is it should never have shipped.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  It really should never have shipped. The build quality is, is really bad. The, it, it's like very dangerous. Like I'm, I'm constantly kind of on edge when I'm around it, you know, and like trying to tell other people that might be around the car like, hey, that's like effectively a knife's edge. Like keep your fingers away from here or there. You can, and again, you can see issues with the car from like twenty feet away. And that's just like how the car came. So it really never should have shipped, but I'm glad it did because it like looks completely insane.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  It actually drives, again, it doesn't feel nice to drive it yourself, but when the computer's driving, it's, uh, it's, it's really fantastic. So I will cherish mine. And, uh, yeah, your options are just getting more and more limited.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  I know.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  If you, if you want to be in the.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  They're just gonna sell one car in a few years. I mean, I guess they're just gonna sell cyber caps.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  I don't think it's, um, I don't think it's ugly. I think it's like very unique looking and it's not for everyone and it's completely insane.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  I mean, when this dropped, people were like, it will never ship looking like that. It's impossible. It's illegal. People were worried that the hard edges would cause like major damage in, uh, to pedestrians. And I haven't heard about that many incidents involving cyber trucks. I, I don't, I still don't understand what you can get approved and what you can't, but, uh, what, what a saga. They actually did ship it and it's out there. Um, in the end, few people bought the stainless steel cyber truck and now its days are numbered. Production will wind down next year. Uh, it is the latest indication of Tesla's swift shift away from selling traditional cars towards autonomous vehicles and robotics.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  Wow. So in twenty nineteen, they were targeting annual production of a quarter million a year or a quarter million.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  They did not hit that. And also they were targeting like.

• 30:14Speaker 00

  And then they, long-term, they were talking about five hundred thousand a year.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And wasn't the original price in the forty thousand dollar range, fifty thousand? It was supposed to compete with like a Raptor or like a Ranger or F one fifty.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I'm sure they could have sold. An insane amount at that price range.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's just too expensive, even for them with all the with all the efficiency. But Cybertruck ditched the traditional boxy pickup design for sharp angles and stainless steel body, said to be inspired by the iconic DeLorean DMC 12, the flying car in Back to the Future. Tesla's photos and promotional materials gave a hint of the Cybertruck roving around another planet, a clear nod to Musk's own spacefaring ambitions. Cybertruck, so yeah, he said the entry level car rear wheel drive would start at $39,900. That is very, very cheap for a four door truck. He claimed it could outperform a 911 and showed a video where it won a tug of war against

• 31:16Speaker 01

  a tethered Ford truck. The body was said to be bulletproof to a nine millimeter handgun with armored windows glass to boot. The first crack in the Cybertruck image was a little literal one at the debut.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  That was crazy.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Tesla chief designer friends.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  It is amazing that every single iconic tech CEO has had like the most brutally botched demo.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  True, true.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  Like, yeah, happens, happens to the best of them.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Indeed, indeed. When sales began in 2023, prices started at roughly $61,000. That's not too bad. About 21,000 more than Musk Musk originally claimed. The CEO conceded that Tesla dug our own grave with Cybertruck. Yeah, there, there's definitely an intermediate design. It was also just so odd to just completely redo the design language and not bring any of that to the Model Y. Like there is, like, there are plenty of like boxy crossovers that look like even like a Range Rover, some Hyundai and Kia has been adopting more boxy language. The G-Wagon has boxy language.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  You could pull some of that over and they were like, no, these are two completely different brand styles, right? And they, and they introduced new model wise, new model, they did a whole refresh during the Cybertruck era and didn't bring any of that design language over. They could have evolved it more. I mean, I guess they brought the light bar, but that's about it.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, still no, just give me a classic SUV.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, just a full size SUV that competes with the Navigator or an Escalade or a Yukon or a Suburban. There's like so many, and I mean, it's the same thing with the F-150.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Well, we got to talk about the Yang Wang U9.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Boo.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  The Yang Wang U9 Extreme hit 503 kilometers an hour on a closed stretch on Abu Dhabi's E11.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  So it's over for over 300 miles an hour.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, this can be.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  500 kilometers an hour.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  Just over 300 miles per hour.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  Really, really.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  That's Koenigsegg.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  Do they have a video of it?

• 33:40Speaker 01

  And do we know how much this costs? Like, what, what is it? The U9 Extreme, is that what it's called?

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Is this a production car?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't know. I, I, I think it will be. I think it will be. Um, let's see.

• 33:56Speaker 00

  Is this the video? Let's see it.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Let's see it.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  Warming up the tires.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, there you go. I saw this video. This is crazy. This warming up the tires here. It's funny to be doing that like during your run and not have it, not have the video start there, you know? Going up and down. So this is a $3 million car, I guess, the Extreme. So it is in Koenigsegg territory, so not, not competing with a Tesla Roadster anytime soon. Although who knows where the, we actually have no idea where the, where the Roadster pricing will land. But yeah, Elon definitely has work cut out for him with the Roadster. If he wants to set a record here, he's got to get up to 300 something at least. And that was always debated with the Plaid.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  The Plaid was marketed as being 200 plus miles an hour, and I think people had some trouble getting them up there on road tires, on street tires.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  But it was certainly, certainly possible. Uh, 20 million won, 2.9 million at the April 2026 Beijing Auto Show. There's only 30 of them that have been, have been produced. So interesting, sort of like a one off stunt, but impressive, impressive nonetheless.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  What's crazy is this E11 highway that they're on.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Just, I think goes between, it goes between Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Like it goes all along the coastline, so they must've shut it down. So obviously they appreciate.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Look at those, look at those telephone poles going by. Crazy to be in the left lane.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  And they have crazy automated speed cameras all over the country.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  That is crazy. He's really pushing it. He's, he's gonna hit it. Here we go.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Really slowing down towards the end.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Incredible, incredible demo of electric performance. That would be terrifying if you get in a crash. That's, that's very, very fast. Hacker News was actually very bullish on the Cybertruck when it was announced. Uh, there's a comment here from 2019, there's a truck guy who's owned a lot of trucks and currently owns a 2017 Ram 2500.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Is a truck guy on Hacker News?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  A Land Rover Defender 110, I'm telling you right now, this is gonna kill it. This is the Suburban status item of 2022. I want to buy this right now. This has nearly the towing capacity of my Ram and will smoke my wife's Audi on the track.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Why are you taking a Cybertruck to the track? Or, I mean, I don't know what Audi it is.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  The whole thing is like, if they could have made this product for 40K, probably would have sold.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  You know, 40K, I mean, the Extreme, the Extreme design is still a choice. It's such a choice. Like you just limit your TAM because like, even though, I mean, the G-Wagon has like an iconic silhouette, but you, if, if you're in a community where everyone has one, you start wanting something else. You just want something different. You just want a different style. And then also the, the politics thing obviously really restricted it because you have, you have the, the like Democrat community buyers who liked the, the environmental friendly angle and have the disposable income sometimes.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Are like, I'm out for, for political reasons. I forgot that Tesla's also a CPG company. They have, they have a tequila brand, Tesla Tequila. Vittorio has taken mezcal, mezcal shots in your honor, because he loves the Cybertruck. Let me tell you about Figma Agents. Meet the canvas, your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. The Surf community is selling manmade waves to homeowners. I know you're gonna have a lot of opinions about this. Waco Surf, it's a 500 acre development in Waco, Texas. Developers in states like Texas, Utah, and Arizona are betting that manmade surf lagoons will lure wealthy buyers despite high construction costs and steep monthly fees.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  So are you in search of a vacation spot for surfing with your family? Clint Tasset was, and he put down a $600,000 deposit last year on a $1.8 million lot in Cabo, Mexico, a place renowned for its coastline, but he doesn't plan on surfing in the ocean there. Instead, the $3 million house he builds will be across the street from the beach at this location, the Cabo Rail Surf Club, a private residential club next to an artificial lagoon with a wave machine. In the lagoon, you won't have to wait for waves and battle other surfers. There will be no sharks, jellyfish, rocks, or bad currents. He's promised multiple good waves a session, as big or small as he wants. It's approachable, said Tasset, 46, who lives just north of Denver and founded a digital

• 38:57Speaker 01

  marketing company. If you can lie on a board and move your arms, you can get in. He plans on surfing there with his wife and two kids, age 13 and 15. There's some interesting photos of them building this development. Thanks to advances in wave pool technology, manmade surf lagoons are becoming the latest amenity. Uh, high end housing developers are using to lure buyers instead of golf courses, ski mountains, or lakes. These development, these developments, often with custom built homes and members only clubhouses, offer surfing as the main activity. Whether these capital intensive projects can be financially successful, however, remains to be seen. At least one planned project has already faltered. Are you, you're, you're in favor of these? What do you think?

• 39:38Speaker 00

  Uh, love wave pools.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  Cannot imagine buying a property down in Mexico, off of the beach, right next to like a chlorinated pool. And I, and this is coming from somebody who loves surfing.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Loves surfing wave pools. I just do not, I don't understand. Like the ocean has so much more to offer than just surfing, right?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  Sounds amazing.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you can always go to the.

• 40:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, let me get in my car. I'm in Mexico. Let me get in my car and drive to the beach.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:08Speaker 00

  Like you, you're buying a place in Mexico because you love surfing and you're gonna be not near the, like not near the ocean?

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't, I'm like, I'm, I'm very, very confused.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  I mean, these.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  By these.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  These make a lot more sense where they're like, they, they, they call out a couple of their places that are where they're building them in.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  So yeah, Waco Surf, Waco Surf.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Texas.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  Is gonna be a development outside. How far is Waco from Austin?

• 40:40Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  I think it's a couple hours.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  You'd visit on weekends after work sometimes flying his private plane.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Two, just under three hours by train for you, John. For me, it would be like an hour and 30 minutes by car.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:51Speaker 00

  Train. And you love trains?

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like trains.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  And you, don't you want to build it like a mini train on your property?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  That would be amazing, yes.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Um, but yeah, I just don't under, like, again, I, I just was at the new wave pool in Palm Desert, had an amazing time, but I had no desire to like live right on the pool.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Look at, look at Zion Shores. This is in Utah. You're so far away from the ocean. You're there, you're in Utah, maybe you're gonna go skiing sometimes in Utah, but then you also want to be able to go to the wave pool.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  Not, not loving it. He says, this, this is perfect for the NPCs.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  You got eight million dollars to spend on a on a wave pool property in Utah. He plans to build a 2,700 square foot home there for Parkinson's. Means a few hours drive to surf instead of flying to the coast. His wife and seven children aged 10 to 14. I mean, with that big of a family, getting out to the coast, that's going to be a that's going to be a hassle. So bringing the surf to you, not a bad trade. Controlled waves mean they can all do the sport together. The 130 million dollars Zion shores project came to develop, came together after developer Cody Larkin installed a continuous surf wave, a continuous wave surf machine in a lake in 2021 at one of his residence communities in Utah.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  He was shocked to see that the surf wave was far more popular than water skiing or wake boarding. Everyone would spend almost all their time there. Half of the 56 residential lots at Zion shores have sold since development started a year ago. There is a $500 a month. The HOA fee per house, and that doesn't include surf fees, which range between $30 to $200 an hour. What are you paying? Why are you paying more per hour? Is that like, I want a bigger wave and so they charge me more?

• 42:44Speaker 00

  They they have different pricing based on time, like they have like their their sort of peak rates.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  And then, yeah, there's there's sessions that basically take a lot less energy and you can put more people in the pool.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 42:56Speaker 00

  Versus certain settings are going to be like bigger waves.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. So that might be energy cost.

• 43:01Speaker 00

  Fewer number of waves.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  And so they can't monetize it as well.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  The crazy thing with with all these wave pool projects is like you're making your you, there's all this capex going into the actual technology that generates the waves.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  And so if you're buying a home, you have to have conviction that the operator is going to continuously update.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  The technology, because the pools that I was surfing two years ago are not fun anymore in comparison to the pool that I just surfed.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 43:30Speaker 00

  It's just like, yeah, such a big leap.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Really?

• 43:33Speaker 00

  And so you kind of always, if you're really into surfing pools, you kind of always want to be on the pool that just got built.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  It's sort of like a fast takeoff scenario.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  Like we're seeing.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  I saw one that has.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, no one's like, I gotta get access to GPT four or five anymore.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  There's a few people out there, but.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  I I saw one that has like basically a train car that moves along a track and creates the wave. I don't know if that's older.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  The chat, the chat is not.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 44:01Speaker 00

  Not liking, not liking the pools.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  No, guys.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  Let's let's go into the Wall Street Journal comment section.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  What do they say?

• 44:09Speaker 00

  Michael says, I grew up around Malibu as both a surfer and a scuba diver. To me, this has no appeal, just as swimming in pools has no appeal compared to ocean and lake swimming.

• 44:20Speaker 00

  I just find it a bit odd to see them being built in places that have water supply issues.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  The coolness of surfing ain't the waves, says Eric. That's just the feather in the cap. The real joy is witnessing nature. I agree.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Well, if you don't want to be outside, you can go in an underground bunker, because there's an Arizona compound with an underground bunker that is listed for sale at 55 million dollars. Might be the most expensive bunkie in the world. The Paradise Valley home is equipped with an AI surveillance system. There, if it sells.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  Selling the flock.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Flock your house, yeah. This would be the most expensive house ever sold in the state of Arizona. It's being sold by an investment group who purchased the property for 33 million last year, and they built it in 2024. It spans two and a half acres. The estate includes a four bedroom main home, two bedroom guest house, recreational shed that has a sports court golf simulator and underground bunker.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  Pull up this, uh, pull up this slide going into the pool. This thing is insane.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  I, this is going to someone on the Suns.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Shooting range.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  This is certainly going to someone on the on the Suns basketball team.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Oh, you think so?

• 45:39Speaker 00

  I would assume so.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, I was gonna say AI researcher for sure. Bunker.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  All the AI researchers in Arizona. SpaceX does have a new data center.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  Being built out in Arizona.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Paradise Valley is home to the most expensive zip code in Arizona, according to listing agent Katrina Barrett. And the last one was, you know, 40 million.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, friend.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  This is a crazy.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  A friend's dad had a place in Paradise Valley, bought it, instantly got offered two X by an NBA player.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  No way.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  Paid, and it was already like one of the nicer homes, so.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Well, it seems like a lot of fun, a lot of fun, underground bunker, a lot of cool things you can do.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  Well.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it. And we are joined by Figma's CFO, Paul Wani. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

• 46:35Speaker 00

  What's going on?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for taking the time.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Excited to be here.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Coolest looking CFO in the business. I I expected nothing less.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, where's the suit? Aren't you a banker effectively?

• 46:48Speaker 00

  No, he's not like the other CFOs.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  He's ta, he's got taste. It's a new moat.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  Even for CFOs, you know, at least at Figma.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  That's good, that's good.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  We try, we try.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Uh, enough with the glaze. How'd the quarter go? Take us through the results. What stands out? How's Figma doing?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm really proud of how the team executed. We, you know, we put up 391 million in revenue. We grew the business 43% year over year.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Uh, our net dollar retention rate sat at, you know, 131% to above 130% for some time now.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  But what what's been really fun to see is just the, you know, the rapid acceleration and movement of of a number of our different AI products and features. So we GA'd our our Figma agent product on October 6th. We've seen credit consumption, you know, through that, through that GA through the end of October up, you know, two and a half X.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Folks are looking for ways to, you know, really go deep in Figma and really find ways where they can deepen their deepen their workflows. And maybe the last one I'd call out, you know, I'm really proud of how we've been executed on the MCP side. So, you know, our MCP server is up, you know, to about just over a million weekly active users at this point. We grew it, uh, overall usage 3X and overall write back usage to the canvas, which is, you know, just shows you how valuable Figma is as a as a core medium there, about 4X. So, um, lots of momentum on that part of the business.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  What, uh, how is the overall market expansion working its way through Figma? Like, I can imagine that there's some people that are, uh, you know, for their first time, they're getting into making digital products, and some of them might flow into Figma, some of them might flow into an agentic workflow or an MCP interface, and they might not even know. Other people might be expanding their usage because they're they're creating new products. Like, what is the shape of the growth in demand?

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I think the way you're describing it, it's kind of how we feel it. We both have an opportunity to go broad. A whole bunch of the new use cases are now enabled via the AI products that we shipped. So, you know, you you historically maybe would have needed to lean on a designer or developer as your hand in order to communicate or build an idea. Now, through prompting a natural language, you can, you know, you can sit in Figma make and, you know, have your ID, have your idea then be rendered for you. It's really empowering to PMs, it's really empowering to marketers, user researchers, it's giving more reasons for folks to hold a full seat, you know, where that where that would have been a little bit of a tougher sell, you know, even a couple of years ago. And I, and then to your point on the MCP side, you know, I do think that the ways in which the people are working are shifting very rapidly. I think it's, you know, it's been really interesting.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  We've added over 20 MCP partners over the course of the quarter, and, you know, we continue to, we continue to open up how we can work with others there and kick off different workflows. And it's not just that, you know, we're bringing more context in, it's actually starting to kick off first party agent workflows on the canvas. It's about 5% of all credit consumption in the quarter was actually orchestrated via MCPs. So there's actually people kicking off a first party workflow, which is pretty unique.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  How how mature is the, uh, the thinking around the billing relationship around MCP? Because, uh, I have been hungry for integrations that flow through to an agent of choice with that I already have a billing relationship with.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  And, I mean, I guess the agent can just like set up my credit card over there, but it seems like there's an opportunity that could be good for everyone involved. It's a little dicey, could be App Store-ish, could be bad, but and frustrating, but I'm wondering how you're how you're dealing with the trade off of what happens if someone goes to ChatGPT and then says, I want to use Figma, go design it in Figma, and then charge my OpenAI account versus take my credit card over to Figma and put it there? Like, how are you dealing with the trade offs and opportunities and risks there?

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, just just to start, I think what we're what we're seeing is that, um, by virtue of how we've orchestrated our our MCP, we've actually given people more reason to hold a full full seat than, you know, in prior cycles. So that has driven a benefit in the number of new new paid team conversions, the amount of, you know, folk folks that are holding a paid seat. We've we've also found, though, is that, you know, um, what folks are really trying to do is, uh, you know, if they're going to kick off a first party workflow in Figma, what we're doing with the first party agent in Figma has got to be, has got to, um, be of higher quality, leveraging unique context that that we own. And in doing so, they're actually getting value from, you know, leveraging the the AI features in Figma. You know, what what has, what the reality is today is that MCP usage, as we've tracked

• 51:23Speaker 02

  it, you know, through the business, is leading to higher retention, uh, more expansion within accounts. And then as you start to put the math together on the credit consumption side, you know, I think that our ability then to farm to different subagent workflows is going to be increasingly more important.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's this interesting dynamic right now where if like people are sending agents to your product. It's, it can be an indicator that that there's functionality that that that you're not building. I was talking to, uh, some people at a, at a. Like a financial institution this week and obviously every finance company in the world is dealing with people like sending their agents to like go poke around and do things in their product and they're like scared about that for for good reason. But I was telling them this is just a signal that like you need to do a lot more in your product to to have that same functionality. And I think that's what you guys have been doing for like, you know, the last two years is like make sure that that the same like sort of like intelligence is available wherever you're sort of like starting a project from.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  I also think you have to think about, you know, what are the things that you can do with lower latency, higher quality and lower cost on your platform that makes it better for for a user to feel like they should be leveraging your first party, first party, you know, AI use cases. So we've been developing a first party model now for for some time, you know, we doubled the amount of actions that are powered by that first party model over the course of the quarter. And we hold a whole bunch of unique contexts of our file system of, you know, the the Figma architecture so that we can actually build a smaller model that's lower latency and work through those tasks much faster.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  So I think you have to think workflow when you think about like, what are the things that you really want to own and where are there areas where it's it's helpful to, you know, almost use the MCP as an acquisition vehicle or rather part of part of the process versus feeling it like like it's combative in any way.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  What is it like doing an earnings call? When there's all this chaos going on, but it feels like you have a pretty clean story like there's like the semi trade is like going is getting nuked and then there's the midterms and it feels like you're just presenting like the business is still working, we're still growing, everything's moving along. Do you have to answer questions for to investors about what's happening in the market broadly? Or are you able to kind of just stay focused on the core metrics?

• 53:38Speaker 02

  I mean, I think you definitely take the context of where the world is because you recognize what are the things that people that are on people's minds and how you can orient the story in a way that, you know, is both appealing to the way that they're thinking, but then, you know, also is additive in the framework of how they how they view Figma. So yeah, we go through a bunch of fun back and forth just to brainstorm. What are the things and themes out there? But but I think outside of it, you're right in that like our story is clean. I think we've been really, really clear that we're focused on the long term here and we'll make investments. One of the things we did over the course of the quarter was reprice our credits.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  We actually doubled the allotment that folks get on our pro plans and grew the allotments on our organic price plan 60% because we knew that in doing so, as we experimented our way in there, it would drive credit consumption and, you know, Javon's paradox was starting to play out for us. And so I think we need to be long term oriented. We need to kind of like stick to our guns there. And I think it's the consistency and the consistency of our our execution that I'll, you know, that I want to be able to use as a tracker to to point back to point investors back to and we got to keep blinders on and keep going.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 54:42Speaker 00

  How are you thinking about token budgeting? There was a headline this week that I guess Apple is sort of like doing reductions or like adding a lot stricter limits on how much engineers specifically can spend via via API on a day to day basis. But what's been what's been your philosophy and approach today? Like knowing Dylan, he doesn't seem like somebody who would want to be like, you know, like he wouldn't want to have like blanket rules around some of this stuff, but but I'm curious. It's a it's a tough challenge.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that I think you need to take a little bit of an iterative approach there. So, you know, setting soft limits, giving yourself an ability to really understand what's going on with your, you know, across your across the entire company and using that to feedback into the overall strategy and implementation of what you're doing. I think one of the reasons why we, you know, we raised our out profit guide for the full year by 30 million is because we found opportunities to be more efficient, both in how we're serving our, you know, our our AI products for our users, while also then running our business more efficiently, you know, we found some of our engineers who were previously spending, you know, tens of thousands of dollars be able to run, you know, run similar similar tasks that they had for for fractions of that. As they start to, you know, come up with different leverage, different model types, leverage different architectures, and then they start to share that information with others.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  We just hired a CIO who joined us from Coinbase, a guy named Casper Swanson, who I'm really pumped to be working with. And so a lot of that same thought they had there at Coinbase, where, you know, we also are of similar similar minds. So, you know, we'll be able to to see what we get up to over the next little bit.

• 56:16Speaker 00

  Awesome. Well, great to meet you. Thanks for jumping on.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one. Goodbye. Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. I want to change the world, raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. And our next guest might be there any day now because Keller Cliffton over at ZipLine has been on an absolute tear. Back on the show for the fourth, fifth, sixth time. I can't keep track. Keller, how are you doing? Congratulations.

• 56:42Speaker 00

  The key goings landed.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  What's the latest?

• 56:45Speaker 03

  Good. Yeah.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Give us the latest news. I want to hit the gun.

• 56:49Speaker 03

  We've been busy. I'm I'm standing in our factory, which we just quadrupled in size and we

• 56:54Speaker 00

  Again?

• 56:54Speaker 03

  quadrupled the, yes, again.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Four hits.

• 56:58Speaker 03

  We

• 57:04Speaker 03

  This is basically like end of line. So you can see aircraft that are waiting to go out into commercial operations here. You know, ZipLine, ZipLine builds, keep in mind, so in this space, we not only build the aircraft, but we build the droid, the small robot that we're using to deliver to people's homes. We build all of the ground infrastructure, the docks, which is what charges the aircraft, and we build the drop boxes, which is sort of how we integrate with partners like Walmart or you know, any of the other large buildings that we're integrating with. So all of these sub assembly stations are where we are. Let me try to turn the phone here. All of these sub assembly stations are where we're building. You can see motors here.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Latch assemblies. These are all basically feeding the main line. Team's on lunch break right now. But the vehicles are flowing down this line. You can see, you know, paraland tubes, rotovators. There are 43 major sub assemblies on the aircraft, 700 main components.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  I love how you could be just making up random words right now.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, show us the turbo and cabulator. Where's the turbo and cabulator now?

• 58:14Speaker 00

  What about the discombobulator?

• 58:15Speaker 01

  The discombobulator.

• 58:16Speaker 03

  The discombobulator.

• 58:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe I will. Maybe I will just troll you guys next time.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  You gotta slip something in to let people know. For the real heads, they'll be like, wow, these two young guys really.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  I knew they were non-technical.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  This is my Dunning Kruger moment or Gelman Amnesia moment, right?

• 58:36Speaker 03

  So this this used to be like the entire space and now this is a quarter of the space. So, yeah, so this is the, this is the what we're moving into. So this is bay two. So it's bay one, bay two, and then bay three and four are through there. I'll show you guys battery manufacturing, but it's going to take me a minute to walk over there.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Is this in Texas?

• 58:58Speaker 03

  No, this is all right next to SFO.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Oh, it's next to SFO. Okay, that's right. But you are delivering in Texas.

• 59:04Speaker 03

  It might be the biggest building.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Most of our commercial operations today are in Texas. But we, yeah, the factory is right here next to headquarters and we have 1,000 people across avionics, aerodynamics, mechanical engineering, firmware, software, autonomy, building all the different systems that are that are required to kind of operate these, the service at scale. We, yesterday, we announced a $1.5 billion financing at a $21.5 billion valuation.

• 59:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, we we we also announced that we're expanding nationally with Walmart, starting with 300 super centers in the largest autonomous vehicle contract in human history. So, you know, it's kind of cool. You know, I was posting on X yesterday. You know, for the first three or four years of ZipLine's history, people didn't even think we were like an economic venture, you know, like we were, we were operating in Africa, delivering platelets and blood transfusions. And I think that, you know, in retrospect, it was helpful that we got all that experience, spending a decade, getting to operate outside the US, figuring out how to make these kinds of systems reliable, safe, unit economic.

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  But, you know, now that the system is scaling everywhere, it's just becoming obvious this is going to be one of the biggest industries in the world. Automated logistics is going to have a big impact on. This is the battery manufacturing. We used to do this with a supplier. But this is, this is now a little bit of what we're doing because it'd be cooler for you guys to see the teams here. But this is where we're building the batteries on the zip as well as on the droid. Those are droid batteries there. We're doing all the battery welding back here. Bought these machines on eBay. We had a supplier who was doing this for us in San Jose and they kind of shit the bed. And so, you know, we just very quickly decided like, all right, like we'll buy some machines on eBay and do it here.

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  Do it ourselves.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Ourselves. I love that. That's great. What what's the biggest, what's the biggest driver of Walmart adoption? Is it, is it like food or medicines or toilet paper? Like what are people actually buying? Like what's the what's the power loss skew?

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  So the crazy thing is like, we had no idea if this was gonna work at all. When we were launching the service on January 15th of last year.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  We deliver 90,000 of the 100,000 SKUs in a super center.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  So we deliver two rotisserie chickens, birthday cakes, you know, 36 eggs.

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  Birthday cakes.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  My girls love.

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  That's high risk.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  No, but keep in mind, like, we're delivering super gently, like, into your backyard. You know, customers order attachment pieces for garden hoses. We deliver prescriptions. So you get almost everything delivered in this way.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  It's hugely popular with college students. Um, you know, I, I posted a couple of weeks ago, a video of a bunch of college students having like a pool party on the seventh floor of an apartment building. And they just have ZipLine delivering directly next to the pool.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  I feel like, I feel like it's very natural, you know, growing up playing Call of Duty, I'm very, very, you know, used to just calling in.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  An airstrike.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Not airstrikes.

• 1:02:17Speaker 03

  You know, your drone, your drone supply drop.

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, supply drop.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  It's like, that was probably the first way that I bought things.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, in the virtual economy, essentially. Yeah. You, you trained in simulation for years to prepare yourself for ZipLine. That makes sense.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  But by the, but by the way, like hugely popular with college students who, you know, a lot of times they may, you know, they're living on the apps, uh, may not even own a car. Also hugely popular with nursing homes. Like, I would not have thought these would be, you know, early adopters, but all of these grandmas and grandpas are super comfortable with like Apple Pay and Face ID. And it's huge, man. Like, in these nursing homes, a lot of these folks are not that mobile. It's a really big deal to get whatever you want delivered in five to 10 minutes. It's also really popular with young parents who, you know, if you got a sick kid at 2:00 AM and you need to order something, being able to, again, get something delivered in 10 minutes is, um, is a big deal.

• 1:03:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, the chat is saying, uh, tactical birthday cake deployed and tactical Chipotle inbound.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. But I mean, you know, you guys should come visit in person sometime. But this is just giving you an example.

• 1:03:23Speaker 00

  No, I didn't realize you were right at SFO. We were.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  It's so easy.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  We had, we were there and back yesterday.

• 1:03:28Speaker 03

  And look, this is, this is, this is, this is a live stream of a site. So this is Rowlett, Texas. You can see all the aircraft on the sky map. So there's one, two, three, four, five, six or seven deliveries happening simultaneously here. This delivery just came in. It was just routed. See an aircraft picking up from a business here, delivering down to this home. Oh, look, you guys, can you see this? I'm gonna hold it still. Do you see the zip landing there in the back?

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  That's all, that's all happening live.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Wow, that's crazy.

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  This is all live video. It also looks like this zip is pre-flight. Oh, yep.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  That's really cool.

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  Aircraft coming in to land. Can you see it?

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  I'm sure, I'm sure it's not great, but, uh, yeah, exactly. Uh, so anyway, um, you know, this system operates from 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM, seven days a week, uh, every single day of the year, including Christmas and New Years. Oh, look, you guys see a zip? Uh, actually, it looks like you guys are gonna see multiple zips taking off here to go make deliveries. You see the zip taking off there?

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  Um, so this is just constantly, oh, see the second zip taking off?

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  This is not planned. This is not planned, you guys. Not planned. And just, you know, giving you a sense for like how busy these sites are.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  As they're delivering.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  It's so crazy.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  Just because, because.

• 1:04:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's all real. And by the way, that's one of 35 sites. That's one of 35 sites in the US. Like, that's just one site. You know, we're building 20 sites per metro, doing a million deliveries per metro per year right now.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  Uh, so insane that this is what, I mean, how many times has this been depicted in like science fiction?

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  And like your own mind and everyone, like, everyone has just had this idea that this is this sort of inevitable future. And yet, like, I love how open you are with it because it doesn't seem like you're worried. You're like, yeah, go, you can try to copy us or do what we do, but it seems like it's so hard. You're just not really that worried about giving people a little, uh, inside look at, at the business.

• 1:05:16Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, you know, there were companies with like, you know, trillions of dollars of capital trying to build this for the last 13 years. And, um, yeah, I do think that the technology wound up being harder than people were expecting. Um, you know, any safety critical, highly regulated market that involves like hardware and weather and safety and, you know, all the necessary testing. It takes time. It takes a really dedicated focus team. And like autonomous cars, I think it wound up being harder than maybe investors were thinking. Um, and yeah, so I think we, you know, we've always kind of thought that, uh, the competitive advantage of the company is the, is the team

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  focus, our ability to be practical and get into the real world quickly and learn by doing. So, yeah, you know, we've, we've tried to generally build in the open.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Uh, I mean, the partnership with Uber makes a lot of sense. Uh, walk me through the Salesforce partnership. Is this, uh, are we gonna be able to deploy champagne when deals close autonomously? Send, uh, send another business partner a steak dinner so we can, uh, do business together? How'd that come together?

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  Well, with, with Uber, you know, we announced a cool thing. So I was actually just giving this tour that, you know, showing you guys around. I was giving this tour to, um, to Dara a couple of weeks ago. And, uh, you know, agreeing to them, basically forming this vision to do a million deliveries a day together. That's a quarter of their deliveries in the US via Uber Eats.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  Um, it's, uh, you know, delivering in this way, you can be 10 times as fast, uh, less expensive, zero pollution, less traffic for neighborhoods, quieter, safer than car-based delivery. Um, you know, the advantages, the biggest advantage is that you're having an in-restaurant experience at home. And, uh, and what we are seeing, when you look at the demand, uh, just in Dallas, for example, is that if you were extend that demand to the rest of the United States, you had 10x the size of the delivery market. Um, so there's so much latent demand here. Um, that, you know, it's, it's similar. If you remember when Uber was launching in, uh, the Bay Area and everybody was like, oh, even if Uber's 50% of the size of the taxi market, it'll only be a $20 billion company.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy.

• 1:07:31Speaker 03

  But, you know, it turns out that like, it's now 10x the size of the taxi market.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, no. It ma, it makes so much sense for, uh, delivery. Are you, uh, are you like just taking off the, the ZipLine hat?

• 1:07:42Speaker 00

  Like, for me, for me, like, I'm just, I'm waiting for this to roll out broadly in California because I love FAW. It's like one of my favorite foods. We don't have any FAW restaurants in my town.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  And so it's like a 35-minute drive to the closest place and it's not that.

• 1:07:59Speaker 03

  Where do you live? Where do you live, Shorty? Can you just, let's just dox you right now. Where, where exactly do you live?

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  Well-known. I live in Malibu.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  So flying over those mountains.

• 1:08:09Speaker 03

  Well, we're launching LA, LA, LA is early next year.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  Well, we're, well, our studio is in Hollywood, so I imagine we'll be in the delivery zone for that.

• 1:08:17Speaker 00

  I need FAW airdrops starting.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  In November, November through, you know, February.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  But, uh, make sure you prioritize Pasadena over Malibu because Malibu is kind of second.

• 1:08:27Speaker 00

  Hit that, hit that FAW button.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  This one?

• 1:08:29Speaker 03

  All right, you got it, you got it, John.

• 1:08:33Speaker 03

  But no, I mean, one, one, one, one interesting point on this, I think it's particularly relevant for LA is that, um, you know, ZipLine delivers out to way further than cars are typically willing to deliver out to, which means that you actually see like 10x the selection in terms of restaurants. So for us, for example, you know, my wife is like a huge fan of Din Tai Fung and we never eat there because it's far away. But one of the advantages of this is you can, you know, you can go 10 times faster, but you can also go a lot farther, uh, which means that you get access to a whole bunch of different, um, like amazing options or brands that you wouldn't have access to with car-based delivery.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, 10 times faster? Is that like 300 miles an hour?

• 1:09:13Speaker 00

  The five-course meal in your home and it's just there each being delivered.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  One at a time? Maybe, yeah.

• 1:09:20Speaker 03

  We actually do that. Yeah, we actually, we actually do that.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  Course it out for me. Assembling your basket.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  Think about it. If you're having like a big dinner party for 10 people, you know, the idea that you have all the food delivered and it just sits there and gets gross and cold over the course of an hour, um, is not, not how the future's gonna work.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  I love it. I love it. So future-proofed.

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's been amazing. I've, I've, I've loved every, like, just getting, getting all these snapshots.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been really fun.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  History has been, uh, has been awesome.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Speaker 03

  You guys are welcome to come, I mean, definitely come visit the factory next time you're in the Bay Area.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  They will.

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, we have, we have to build 50,000 aircraft a year here.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:09:57Speaker 03

  And, you know, so it's gonna be, and yeah, this, I think the scale of growth, like, there's so much that America can do in terms of aerospace over the coming years. And I think, you know, there are a lot of people who have thought, oh, you know, the US is losing in terms of drones. Like, the US might be losing in terms of, you know, four-pound quadcopters.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  But these are like totally different classes of vehicles and, um, you know, it's all to play for. And this kind of infrastructure matters a lot in the US. It also matters in all these other countries that are gonna decide whether they're gonna build on top of like the US tech stack or one of our adversaries' tech stacks.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:30Speaker 03

  And it's really probably only two options. And so, you know, it's really, um, I don't know. It inspires me. Like, this is an area where America is winning and, um, and there's a lot of hard work to do. And, uh, to see the technology now scaling very quickly in cities across the US and, you know, benefiting families, letting families spend more time with their loved ones, less times having anxiety about errands. Um, it's gonna have a big impact.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  I love it. Thank you for what you're doing.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Backing up the truck. Great talking here.

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  We have a speaker, we have a speaker on the next-gen droid. Should we like play the Call of Duty?

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  You definitely need.

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  Uh, sound, sound files.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  How about this?

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  I think you might.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  After you get your second delivery, it hits.

• 1:11:09Speaker 00

  Scare people.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Another one.

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  I think you might, it might be a little too scary for the general population, but you can, if we can set that in our preferences.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  Successful delivery.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  Keller, uh, give our team the best. Incredible progress. Can't wait for the next update. And we'll, we'll see, we'll, we'll stop by next time we're in the city.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Goodbye.

• 1:11:30Speaker 03

  Awesome, you guys. Thanks.

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  Good man.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  Let me tell you about public invest across all asset classes automate anything with AI agents run trading strategies risk management money movements and monitor markets with AI agents for invested on public

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  speaking of finance

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  speaking of finance hi finance we got Rahul Sunwoker Julius AI

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  here he is

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  looking absolutely diced and shredded as always how you doing Raul

• 1:11:56Rahul Sonwalkar?

  doing fantastic how are you guys

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  we're doing great

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  it's great to see you

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  always good to have you on the show take us through the latest in your world in Julius's world in San Francisco take us wherever you want to go

• 1:12:08Rahul Sonwalkar?

  all right so we just released deep finance it's the first ever long horizon high finance benchmark okay so the goal is to see how good models do on real world big deals that you would see in investment banking and private equity

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  we love this

• 1:12:28Rahul Sonwalkar?

  money moves exactly yeah so we had we work with experts who have experience from firms like Evercore JP Morgan UBS and Harvard Business School yeah to help build this benchmark so we can understand how good the frontier models are yeah an actual real deal yeah so

• 1:12:47Speaker 00

  so how does it like like uh it's very cool but like I'm very curious how this like the the complexity in a deal ends up coming you know you let's say post term sheet I don't know where you kind of try to start in in

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  yeah where does this start where does this end

• 1:13:05Speaker 00

  the complexity comes from like the you know emotional dynamics between all the different individuals involved and combining all these different preferences and so how did you have to like simulate the interactions that come after you go from like a term sheet into the actual you know let's say like purchase agreement in the case of um you know uh an M and A deal

• 1:13:27Rahul Sonwalkar?

  exactly so what we start with is real bare bones data room with a lot of messy data you know what what is an actual deal look like an actual deal looks like hey we are looking at this company here's a bunch of files and a bunch of data go figure out if it's worth pursuing this deal what does that look like can we take this to the investment committee it's a super high level open ended instruction and we want to evaluate these models on is well can they fully understand the business in a way that a private equity or investment banking professional would do they just look at revenue and just assume that okay that's the revenue or do they actually go trace

• 1:14:08Rahul Sonwalkar?

  the revenue down to the to the numbers to the sources and see if it all adds up in real world you see a lot of discrepancy yeah you see like the management report one number and the other report another number and then when you actually do your own math you find out that it's something else yeah and the models deal with that complexity so these workflows are actually designed um to to reflect that real world complexity so there's you know a lot of emails in the tasks there's raw data there's some financials and then the models are tasked with coming up with a mo in a financial model like a DCF an LBO model sure and come with a memo to go pursue a deal or not

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  how do you think about the the business impact for Julius on this I mean it seems like you're getting close to maybe you already have built like an RL environment around this you could sell that to a big lab you can use it to partner with other model companies to fine tune things you can integrate it directly into your product uh build a harness around it like there's so much that you can do once you have the data once you understand the problem how are you planning to to actually deploy it for financial gain

• 1:15:19Rahul Sonwalkar?

  absolutely to be honest with you don't know okay we just launched Julius research and the goal of Julius research is to go pursue interesting problems that are relevant Julius and we think are going to help impact uh the model progress on on on knowledge work right and so one of the things we did with with this launch is we specifically did not measure the models on our own harness we use the native CLI so for opening I models we use Codex sure for cloud models we use Claude code yep um and just to be independent and really understand where the models are and so that's the first step is pursue the curiosity and see if we can build the first ultra long

• 1:16:00Rahul Sonwalkar?

  horizon benchmark for finance workflows and we did and now what we're doing is understanding where those different models stack up what are the different idiosyncrasies and how these models pursue uh these tasks yeah uh so one of the things we noticed is models that are really good at coding you know they tend to search a code base right they didn't search a code base to understand it that doesn't always work in finance if you just search for revenue in the documents yep and you see a number you can't just assume that's the revenue you have to see if it all adds up yeah and so um

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  well many many modern dealmakers aren't even looking at the revenue they just ask like who else is in uh over text message and then that's their criteria you you should fine tune a model on that just ask yes ask who's who's who's leading and then uh and that's the entire that's the entire criteria

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

  oh you want me in the round which round which one

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  am I in the tranche we'll figure it out uh yeah what uh can you get me up to speed on the latest and greatest in thinking machines world uh sort of a quiet company there's a a leak that it sounds like they're they're closing the round five billion at forty incredibly impressive uh some of the open source models have been really good I heard that they're the biggest partner to uh to Ray Dalio's fund I believe is that right um but it seems like there's some traction there you have some data what's the latest in TML world

• 1:17:24Rahul Sonwalkar?

  yeah so we actually what's interesting is that they released inkling too small yesterday yeah which is the same day we released our evals yeah and so our evals weren't public when they trained this model interesting and when we ran their model on our evals we found that it's actually the best American open source model yeah and second best open source model overall yeah after Kimi uh and so that's really impressive yeah especially if you see the leap from inkling one to inkling two yeah in matter of months that's really impressive I think things are really really starting to work there um and um especially if they're working with Ray Dalio's fund um I can

• 1:18:09Rahul Sonwalkar?

  see why understanding how good their models are at finance sure is important and also it's open source so that doesn't mean that this is just how good including two small is going to be you can actually both train it could be even better

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  yeah and a lot of financial institutions might want to have data sovereignty they might already already they might already have their own infrastructure in in many cases and so uh it's it's interesting that you're seeing like the bleed over of whatever they're doing with their you know uh very secretive financial partners that they don't talk about it's sort of leaking in their open source models which is great because then that's something that everyone can benefit from and it also serves as top of funnel uh yeah it's exciting it's exciting to see uh well

• 1:18:51Rahul Sonwalkar?

  exactly I mean

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  yeah please

• 1:18:54Rahul Sonwalkar?

  I was gonna say you know uh especially with American open source models I think that ecosystem really needs to catch up and it's so impressive to see that it's even better than nematron from Nvidia yeah because that gives institutions even government agencies and private companies more conviction that they can actually both train these models and and not

• 1:19:14Speaker 00

  also the other thing is like yeah it's impressive because you assume that that uh like distillation isn't like the the the main sort of like advantage yeah of of of a team right just because uh obviously Nvidia and thinking machines are going to have way more scrutiny around yeah how they're actually creating these models so it's very impressive

• 1:19:36Rahul Sonwalkar?

  major white bill

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  major white bill I like it well thank you so much

• 1:19:41Speaker 00

  not a lot of those around these days

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  we needed that

• 1:19:43Speaker 00

  when you see one grab a glass of water take the white bill

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  have a great rest of your day

• 1:19:48Speaker 00

  good to see you dude

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  have a great weekend we'll talk to you soon Raul goodbye uh let me tell you about CrowdStrike your business is AI their business is securing it CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches we have our first in-person guest how you doing welcome to the show

• 1:20:03Speaker 00

  look at us we're kind of twins right now

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  you guys are twins ooh Eagleman stable okay introduce yourself for everyone

• 1:20:13Speaker 05

  Under of Siegelman's stable. Thank you for having me.

• 1:20:16Speaker 00

  It's great to have you.

• 1:20:17Speaker 05

  Look at you, you're in these hats, you look good.

• 1:20:19Speaker 00

  There we go, there we go.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Actually, yeah, this is fantastic.

• 1:20:22Speaker 05

  The business, yeah, we're a contemporary luxury fashion brand, uh, based in New York, uh, started in twenty twenty by accident.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20:29Speaker 05

  I was doing creative consulting, uh, and marketing for some athletes and music artists. I was also head of, uh, social media and cultural relevance for Outfront Media.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:39Speaker 05

  Billboard on the desk, love to see it.

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:41Speaker 05

  Some out of home.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Speaker 05

  And then in the pandemic, started making hats and sweatshirts with my dad's racing stable logo. He trained racehorses his entire life. He also used his racehorses for equine therapy programs for

• 1:20:52Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 1:20:52Speaker 05

  special needs kids, veterans with PTSD, inner city youth programs. Invested three hundred bucks, made some hats and sweatshirts, gave it to family and friends.

• 1:21:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, but like the, the, some of the friends.

• 1:21:03Speaker 05

  Well, that was the next part, yeah. Some of those, uh, well, the, the first run was like real family and friends.

• 1:21:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:10Speaker 05

  And then I started posting them and some of the friends you're alluding to.

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:13Speaker 05

  Uh, were hip hop artists, NBA guys and all that.

• 1:21:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:17Speaker 05

  And so I did another three hundred dollar run and that's when it started to get interesting.

• 1:21:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and you're on the show, you're on the show, obviously, because in, in part because we've had, uh, horses have been a big part of our show.

• 1:21:30Speaker 05

  I see that. I almost took, the, the first thing I saw when I walked in was a harness racing picture in the, in the room. And then in the bathroom, there's another one.

• 1:21:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:38Speaker 05

  Never have I ever seen this anywhere I walk in, in my house, or my parents' house.

• 1:21:42Speaker 00

  We love horses, I, we, you know, I, John doesn't have any daughters, but I, but I say, you know, if your daughter's not a horse girl by five, you failed.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51Speaker 00

  As a father.

• 1:21:51Speaker 05

  Or you're lucky.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, also, my sons are way too big to be jockeys even, so I think they'll

• 1:21:57Speaker 05

  Did you ever Drivers in harness racing, like my dad's my size.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:22:01Speaker 05

  Uh, so you can be

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Full size.

• 1:22:03Speaker 05

  Bigger. I think jockey and like thoroughbreds gotta be

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:05Speaker 05

  A little bit smaller, but yeah.

• 1:22:07Speaker 00

  Um, very cool. What, uh, so you grew up going to a bunch of races and stuff?

• 1:22:11Speaker 05

  You'd think I did a lot of that. I like, I think people would think I, I ride a horse every day. Like, I grew up forty minutes outside of Manhattan.

• 1:22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:18Speaker 05

  Uh, most of my friends' parents, like, were lawyers or doctors or worked in the city. My dad trained racehorses, so like a little bit different. So I had more access to it, probably didn't take advantage of it much as I could have.

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Speaker 05

  And then I think once this started, I started to like realize it and appreciate it a bit more. And so

• 1:22:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Speaker 05

  I probably spent more time with horses in the last five years than I did in my previous.

• 1:22:38Speaker 00

  Totally. That's how it works sometimes. Uh, when, when did you actually go full time on the business?

• 1:22:43Speaker 05

  Three years ago.

• 1:22:43Speaker 00

  Three years ago?

• 1:22:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:44Speaker 00

  And what was there, like, a certain, like, dollar amount that you felt like?

• 1:22:48Speaker 05

  It's a good question. I was like

• 1:22:49Speaker 00

  Cause the challenge is like, if you have other income and you're trying to build a brand, there's some incentive to just keep doing the other things. You can buy more and more inventory.

• 1:22:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, uh, I had, I had it pretty good because I reported directly to the CMO of Outfront Media. She was amazing and let, and like knew what I was doing.

• 1:23:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:06Speaker 05

  And it was like for fun on the side, but like, we were doing drops on like a Friday, like by myself and then my, my wife now is creative director. As we had first started dating and we were doing good money on a Friday. Two Fridays, I'm making, uh, my salary here. But I kept, I kept reinvesting it for like three years.

• 1:23:25Speaker 00

  He's like, hey, can you help me out with this thing? You're like, watch your, watch your town.

• 1:23:29Speaker 05

  I mean, yeah, so, uh, now she runs the show, she's the boss. And so, um, and she's the, the real creative talent behind it.

• 1:23:37Speaker 00

  Like, I never wanted to get into fashion. Boss over there.

• 1:23:39Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, got it, got it, yeah, yeah, yeah. She was like a second mom to me. She was great. Um, uh, but yeah, I think we got to a point, honestly, like the biggest, everyone was like, you gotta go full time, you gotta go full time. Honestly, Gary Vaynerchuk was the one who pushed me, but

• 1:23:53Speaker 00

  Let's go.

• 1:23:53Speaker 05

  Dude, now's the time. I know he was on recently, so, but, um, but yeah, I think there was a lot of moments. I was like, all right, let's do it. And then I think it took it to a whole nother level when we started doing this full time.

• 1:24:04Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:24:04Speaker 05

  But we were a team of three when we started this year. We're a team of six now. So it feels like I already need, it's already not enough people.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:12Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:24:12Speaker 05

  But it's been like a whirlwind of something that was never expected and a quick fashion education and business application, so.

• 1:24:18Speaker 00

  Go for it.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  I, I just wanted to know about the, like, the distribution mix over time.

• 1:24:22Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Uh, just, uh, building the brand, what, what, what you stayed away from, what you leaned into in terms of?

• 1:24:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think now, like, it, it was a hundred percent DTC through our own website when we first started.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:34Speaker 05

  Uh, we were given opportunities to be in some bigger retailers and I wanted to protect the brand and wanted to, um, be really in control of everything and anything.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:44Speaker 05

  Uh, I still am probably in too much control and maybe hold us back from a bit of growth, but like, with understanding, you go through phases of business and some things make sense at certain points.

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:24:54Speaker 05

  So I think like at first, a hundred percent DTC.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:57Speaker 05

  We did a pop up probably too soon in twenty twenty two. My wife and I built the whole thing out in Williamsburg.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Okay, so did you, you did a short term rental on a physical space, like a couple hundred square feet?

• 1:25:08Speaker 05

  A pandemic, gimme, empty space, wasn't being used. We outfitted out with literally things I was finding in my parents' garage, like in the trash.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  furniture and stuff.

• 1:25:16Speaker 05

  It was the best fucking thing of all time. Can I curse on this show?

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19Speaker 05

  It was the best thing of all time.

• 1:25:24Speaker 05

  And then like fast forward to where we are now, the pop up model is unbelievable for us.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:25:29Speaker 05

  Uh, and so we open next week for five weeks in Soho in New York.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:25:33Speaker 05

  Uh, a pop up in, uh, that will be amazing for us. We use the space as an event space outside of retail hours for dinners and other stuff.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  What is your opinion on line culture in New York, lines outside this?

• 1:25:46Speaker 05

  What are you waiting for?

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  Is that, yeah, yeah, but, but i- is that a sign of success? Is it a requirement for success? Or is it something actually you want to avoid and it's a sign that, okay, you didn't quite match demand with supply? What's your thinking?

• 1:26:01Speaker 05

  Uh, it's, it's a mix of both.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:26:02Speaker 05

  I think one is like, does the size of the store fit?

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:05Speaker 05

  The other thought on that same thought is like, what's the experience for the customer?

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:26:09Speaker 05

  If the experience for the customer is I'm in a packed store and it's miserable.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:12Speaker 05

  Get me out.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:13Speaker 05

  You don't want that.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:14Speaker 05

  And so there's a, there's a balance. Like, is a line amazing? Yes.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Speaker 05

  If we have a line, like, I will bring out coffee. I will bring out stuff to like people waiting, cause I appreciate them waiting. I'm not a line person.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:25Speaker 05

  But like, there is a bit of like, let's keep a line. It looks good, but it's also the balance of, you don't know, on the business side is like, I wish I could have more salespeople in here helping you guys out and I want this experience to be just as good for you as it is for you and the next person.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:38Speaker 05

  And so it's, it's a balance, but line culture is

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  What's the coolest, uh, thing that you're putting into the decoration, to the design of the?

• 1:26:46Speaker 00

  You got a truck in there?

• 1:26:47Speaker 05

  Do a truck?

• 1:26:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  Truck or?

• 1:26:48Speaker 05

  Uh, we're, we're putting a sulky in this one, which will be our first time putting a, a sulky in the back, in, in a store.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Will it be for sale if someone comes in and they demand to buy?

• 1:26:57Speaker 05

  I always say it's a price for everything.

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you.

• 1:27:00Speaker 05

  So, so

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  I am one hundred percent agree.

• 1:27:03Speaker 05

  We have this trophy that we put in all of our pop ups.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:06Speaker 05

  And my mom, we, in Chicago, was our first pop up this summer that we did for the first time. There was a trophy on the table.

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Speaker 05

  And someone comes in, they're like, how much for the trophy? It's like, oh, I can't sell it, like.

• 1:27:15Speaker 00

  Family heirloom?

• 1:27:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's my, it's one of my dad's trophies. My mom, like in the back, it's like, we got more. I'm like, dude, let me at least get the price before we say it's over. But there, I mean, there's, there's things that I've sold in the store that aren't actual things that we make and sell. So like, sure, come on in and

• 1:27:33Speaker 00

  Shopify, add new SKU.

• 1:27:36Speaker 05

  Shopify, great partner, by the way.

• 1:27:39Speaker 00

  That's great. How, uh, like, what, what is your, how do you think about timelines for building a business? Building a true luxury brand is possible. You just need thirty, forty years, it feels like, right?

• 1:27:53Speaker 05

  You need time. I think like the biggest misconception is like, how fast can we get to the biggest point? And like, for us, it's never been a sprint. It's always been a marathon. Uh, we've never been in a rush to get to the next thing.

• 1:28:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:05Speaker 05

  Though it feels like it on a daily basis, like the amount of inbound.

• 1:28:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, you have to move quick, but understand that like, there's a million things you could do to juice your revenue this year that would ultimately

• 1:28:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's the long play for us.

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  Costco.

• 1:28:18Speaker 05

  Uh, and it's a business decision. Like, there's, there's brands that launch and it's like, how much can we make in a year and can we sell it?

• 1:28:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:23Speaker 05

  That's not the game we chose, which is probably the harder, long game, but, uh, I think for where we want to sit as a business, as a luxury brand, it's the right thing to do.

• 1:28:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, how do you, um, yeah, where, what other, like, is thirty percent of your revenue coming from New York? Is it more? Is it, is it less?

• 1:28:42Speaker 05

  I mean, New York's definitely like our top, our top markets, like New York, LA, Chicago, Dallas, and it's crazy, we haven't done anything in person here yet, but

• 1:28:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:49Speaker 05

  Hopefully announcing soon that early twenty seven, we will, uh, maybe.

• 1:28:53Speaker 00

  What about like all of the, the, the Idahos, the Montanas, the, the Wyoming's?

• 1:28:58Speaker 05

  Listen, there's still good markets for us. I think like the appeal of just the look of a horse, and I also understand that our price point is on the higher end. Like, a seventy six dollar hat is not a cheap item.

• 1:29:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:08Speaker 05

  And that's our lowest priced item, maybe not like a keychain or something like that. Um, but when we first started and I was embroidering on blanks, it was forty two dollars. I was, we were in a factory in downtown LA yesterday and I said, the appreciation I have for an eight ninety nine t-shirt in Target is completely different than you asked me about an eight ninety nine t-shirt in twenty ten, before I was even part of the fashion industry.

• 1:29:30Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:29:30Speaker 05

  All the investment that goes into that from the time of the person making the tech pack to the pattern cut, to all of that, like, that's money.

• 1:29:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Now, we were doing our first ever merch release this coming Thursday.

• 1:29:41Speaker 05

  Awesome, that's hot.

• 1:29:41Speaker 00

  And, uh, it's crazy looking at the numbers, like our costs for the items and like, again, the merch is for us is not a way to make money. We just want, like, we enjoy making the products, uh, but it's crazy looking at our cogs and thinking like, if we were running a brand, the level to like, the amount we would have to mark this up to, to be in business is just crazy. And obviously, we're not at scale. We're making like a hu- a couple hundred of this, a couple hundred of that, but, um, it's, uh,

• 1:30:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, it kind of goes back to like the distribution. It's like, it's why a lot of brands fall into wholesale and why it makes sense. They're buying a big bulk. That helps get your price down. Uh, and it's also marketing and awareness and just sales in general, which helps you hit that middle America that you're also talking about.

• 1:30:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, what about, what about paid media? I, um, there's a big New York brand that's, that's, uh, like, trying to sell right now. Like, everyone listening would know it and they, and I didn't really realize, but they're effectively spending like, not, not actually zero, but effectively zero on the paid media. Like, they don't spend like

• 1:30:45Speaker 05

  What would you consider effectively zero?

• 1:30:47Speaker 00

  Like, I just mean, like, maybe there's something you could classify as a paid media budget, but they don't have like ads running at all.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  Protecting the Google keyword or something?

• 1:30:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, some, some, something like, something like that to prevent like, you know, scammers, yeah, but, but they're not, it's not part of the strategy at all. It feels like It feels like the right approach is like some, you know, some middle ground where you're not.

• 1:31:09Speaker 05

  We, we have been to date like a non-spend on that. We have started recently like testing some stuff out on Google and on Meta. I think it's like an amazing brand awareness opportunity. Like you're kind of missing out if you don't.

• 1:31:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:23Speaker 05

  It's like when we first started, the whole, the whole part was like scarcity is your marketing. You end up on secondary markets at a high value.

• 1:31:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Speaker 05

  That's still a piece of our business when we do some like collaborations and special projects.

• 1:31:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:34Speaker 05

  And then you phase into other parts. And so at some point, you're kind of missing out on your own business growth by not doing some of that. So we do it at a very, very small scale, but a lot of it is awareness. So we'll, we'll push that our pop-ups opening in New York in a 50 mile radius of New York City in the next week.

• 1:31:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:53Speaker 05

  Things like that.

• 1:31:54Speaker 00

  What about, uh, what are you doing on the, where, where can and do you spend dollars? It's like maybe non-traditional channels outside of retail. Like are you partnered with any like various groups or athletes on the, on the like equestrian side?

• 1:32:12Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, we've never paid anyone to ever wear our stuff. Uh, we've had this like amazing organic adoption of athletes. Obviously majority like New York, uh, like the best quote of the NBA run was like, we've become an additional logo of the New York Knicks.

• 1:32:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  How did that come together?

• 1:32:30Speaker 05

  Uh, we started doing a local license with the Knicks, meaning like there's no like paperwork. It's like they put in a wholesale buy. We sell in arena only. We can't sell through our channels or in person. Uh, and we built up this relationship with them that was this in-person release.

• 1:32:43Speaker 00

  And you knew they were gonna win the championship.

• 1:32:46Speaker 05

  Well, it's a risky take. Yeah. I mean, when Jalen first moved to New York, he became just like an organic fan of the brand, started wearing our stuff. And like we became ride or dies before he was Jalen Brunson.

• 1:32:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:56Speaker 05

  Uh, and so, so yeah, it's like a little bit of risk and luck and like relationship building. I think a lot of businesses are built on relationships before you start spending money.

• 1:33:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:33:04Speaker 05

  Uh, and so, so we've done that, uh, with the Knicks over the last couple of years, which has been an amazing partnership. Um, we just, uh, did a deal with Mitchell and Ness will now allow, and we haven't rolled anything out yet. Uh, that allow us to kind of do any team, any league. Uh, and so we'll start to do some more licensing opportunities, not just NBA and MLB, which we've done before, but other ones, uh, which we're super excited about. And they've been an amazing partner from the start.

• 1:33:29Speaker 00

  What about other, uh, other brands? Have you done it? I don't, can't.

• 1:33:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, we, we've done collabs with other brands. Um, we've, we also like, we've done Super Bowl last three years or four years with Don Julio 42. We're talking to, we're talking to an auto partner now about a long-term deal. Uh, and so I think like there's a little bit of a shift that's like, how many collabs can you do? And we try and release two things every month, whether it's our own season plus a special project or a collab, uh, doesn't matter how big or small it is. And so we've done a lot of these smaller, quick release collabs. And I think where we're at now is maybe let's say phase four, where it's these longer-term partnerships where you can put out uh, more releases over time or include them within seasons. And so like verticals like

• 1:34:14Speaker 05

  auto and luxury travel goods and things like that. I think are the things you're gonna start to see come about over the next couple of years.

• 1:34:21Speaker 00

  What about with other fashion brands, luxury brands?

• 1:34:25Speaker 05

  Uh, we haven't with any other. We have been in conversations with some that are very exciting.

• 1:34:31Speaker 00

  Like I feel like you guys should hold out to work with, like you gotta go straight to the top.

• 1:34:37Speaker 05

  Name a brand.

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  Tap out.

• 1:34:38Speaker 00

  No, I, I just think there's a lot of, there's a lot of brands that like would, would basically want to tap into this like overall interest in like country like aesthetics.

• 1:34:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:50Speaker 00

  That are maybe like, like, you know, basically older school luxury brands that would want to figure out a, an angle to do it in like

• 1:34:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:57Speaker 00

  A more authentic way than just doing a show that's like, kind of like equestrian themed.

• 1:35:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think like.

• 1:35:02Speaker 00

  But I can imagine like there's brands that would have like having horses actually walk in a runway show would be like insane, right?

• 1:35:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. It's like you're in our office. Uh, I think like those brands that fall under LVMH, those brands that fall under Keen Group that you're kind of alluding to, I think like we're one big project with one of those away from being recognized. Maybe more so in that bigger luxury space. But again, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. And so I think like we've been in good conversations so that we've been noticed.

• 1:35:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:29Speaker 05

  And I think like we'll just continue to stay our path until it's the right time for it. So.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 1:35:33Speaker 00

  Love it.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  What do the AI companies need to do to beat Vinted in the App Store? Do you have any idea why Vinted is so dominant?

• 1:35:41Speaker 05

  I, I don't, but honestly, the amount of AI that we use in our office on a daily basis, especially our CEO and lawyer is definitely watching because he's a big fan. Uh, does.

• 1:35:51Speaker 00

  Thank you. Thank you for your service.

• 1:35:53Speaker 05

  Uh, but not even just him. Even my wife is creative director, like building these things, um, in Claude that fills into Monday and like the amount of things that we do and optimize as a six-person team, but it kind of feels like we need more people.

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  Stay focused on.

• 1:36:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so, um, it's, it's been a big help for us. On the design side, like we haven't much yet, but it's coming, I'm sure.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  But on the operations side, it's huge.

• 1:36:17Speaker 05

  Yes, very much so.

• 1:36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, anything that like can be hand drawn, like it feels like it will feel like, you know, it will just naturally feel more right. And then if you can hand draw something and then reproduce it across.

• 1:36:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, one of the, the graphic designers we use is still all hand drawn. I think there's something really good and special about that. And like going back to this logo, like.

• 1:36:37Speaker 00

  Those are my favorite designs ever to get back is like something that, uh, as much as I love Figma, like when a designer actually like draws something out and then you can see like that, just like organic, like you can, that has like much more character.

• 1:36:50Speaker 05

  The human touch.

• 1:36:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:36:52Speaker 00

  Other, uh, other SKUs, like, like, like, are you guys gonna do a bunch in like leather bags, leather goods?

• 1:36:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, we haven't played in the bag game a bunch. I think the only leather pieces we've done is like belts and, uh, maybe card holders, wallets, passport holders, like the, the smaller accessories. Um, I think, uh, like the focus for us, like people know us mostly for headwear. Uh, so the focus for us over the last couple of years is building into our like luxury ready-to-wear. Uh, we've done suits in May. I made a tuxedo and a suit for my wedding. My wife made her dress. So like maybe what, uh, wedding wear is, is on the horizon.

• 1:37:28Speaker 00

  Cool.

• 1:37:28Speaker 05

  Not yet. That's not like an announcement. It's not happening. Uh, but like, uh,

• 1:37:32Speaker 00

  Except for me.

• 1:37:32Speaker 05

  I'd say the focus for us has been like the ready-to-wear, the outerwear, the luxury loungewear. Um, and like, kind of like your everyday wear. And, and again, it's, it's not a rush.

• 1:37:41Speaker 00

  Jackets, fantastic.

• 1:37:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's part of our, our fall, winter coming out soon. We had Jadakiss in our fall, winter, uh, release. It was great. He made us look good. Um, but yeah, and that's been the focus and we'll continue to expand it, uh, and do some more probably female specific SKUs too. Like I think a lot of people see us as a very male dominant brand where we're like pretty close to 50/50, which is a good spot to be at. So.

• 1:38:04Speaker 00

  Very cool.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Our hats somehow like building a brand on easy mode to some degree because the hat is one item where the logo is expected.

• 1:38:16Speaker 05

  It's the billboard of your head.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  The billboard of your head. But, but I mean, even, but if you're, if you're doing jackets, you can, you can put a logo on it, but there's plenty of jacket brands that don't have a logo.

• 1:38:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:25Speaker 00

  Also one size.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  But you can wear a hat every day.

• 1:38:27Speaker 00

  One size is massive too.

• 1:38:29Speaker 05

  Difference.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  So was that, was that, was that, uh, thought through? Was it happy cha, happy circumstance locked?

• 1:38:35Speaker 05

  Pretend I'm smart and say it was thought through. But I think it was, it was more like, I've always been a hat guy my entire life, even when I was a kid.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:38:40Speaker 05

  And so it was like, it was a hat and a sweatshirt.

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:43Speaker 05

  I didn't know anything about fashion, anything about clothing. And I was like, oh, I like this blank.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:47Speaker 05

  Like I remember Auto 069, that's the blank I bought. That's what I embroidered on.

• 1:38:52Speaker 00

  Oh, TTO?

• 1:38:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:53Speaker 05

  Uh, a ton of brands for merch for a restaurant or whoever. And then I think at first we were using like Gildan crewnecks that we were printing on. Like literally the first person to wear something of ours was Gunna, posted on Instagram and music studio. He was wearing like probably $5,000 pair of leather pants and like a $9.99 Gildan with our print on.

• 1:39:11Speaker 00

  The funny thing is like Gildan, Gildan used to be like people would use that to drag brands.

• 1:39:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:16Speaker 00

  And then I discovered that like Gildan has some like amazing like silhouettes and, and fits. And I would just go, I know I was 22, I'd go on Amazon. I'd be like, give me like 30 Gildan blanks.

• 1:39:29Speaker 05

  Heavy weight.

• 1:39:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would just wear them, you know?

• 1:39:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, all I wear now is like our blank samples.

• 1:39:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:39:35Speaker 05

  I only get the fucked up stuff and the blanks.

• 1:39:39Speaker 00

  Organic. Awesome. Well, dude, thank you for.

• 1:39:41Speaker 05

  Appreciate you having me. Yeah.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for coming on.

• 1:39:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Appreciate it.

• 1:39:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Hopefully. Do you notice George's bag of hats? Look at, take it to where that hat.

• 1:39:49Speaker 00

  Whoa, time is money. Save both.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

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

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Great to see you. How you doing, man?

• 1:40:08Speaker 00

  The man.

• 1:40:09Speaker 05

  Outstanding.

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  Welcome to the show. Welcome. Guys, this feels so good. Yeah. I mean. Overdue. Ultradome.

• 1:40:15Speaker 00

  Ultradome.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, Ultradome. And we've got, uh,

• 1:40:18Speaker 06

  Socialist mayor in LA.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:40:20Speaker 06

  But you guys are waging a capitalist revolution here in the whole of Hollywood. I just feel very lucky to be here in the midst, so.

• 1:40:26Speaker 00

  A capitalist revolution? No one talks about capitalist revolution.

• 1:40:29Speaker 06

  It's the underdog now, so.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, we are.

• 1:40:32Speaker 00

  You gotta rise up, rise up.

• 1:40:34Speaker 06

  Congratulations on it.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  We're strong.

• 1:40:35Speaker 00

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna fight back by setting up a street food stand with just steaks.

• 1:40:41Speaker 06

  Caviar. Steaks with a little bit of gold leaf.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  Or, or, or a private credit stand that's unpermitted and, and outside of Dodger Stadium. And when someone stumbles out, they can get a hard money loan against their property or something like that.

• 1:40:55Speaker 00

  Or there's.

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  Finance data center.

• 1:40:57Speaker 00

  Revenue.

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, whatever they need to do.

• 1:40:58Speaker 00

  Top line revenue.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Whatever they need to do.

• 1:41:00Speaker 06

  Loans.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  Loans, for sure.

• 1:41:02Speaker 06

  Doing some loans.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Debt and finance.

• 1:41:03Speaker 00

  Love it, love it.

• 1:41:05Speaker 06

  It's, it's actually finance.

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  Finance, yes.

• 1:41:07Speaker 06

  I think you guys know that. I've heard it seen earlier.

• 1:41:08Speaker 00

  We try to say it properly.

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  The fortress of finance.

• 1:41:11Speaker 06

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  Uh, introduce yourself for the viewers.

• 1:41:14Speaker 06

  Well, I'm, I'm DA Wallach. I'm a big fan of TBPN and, um, that's my primary identity.

• 1:41:20Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:41:20Speaker 06

  But in terms of my, uh.

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  First and foremost, a fan.

• 1:41:23Speaker 06

  Vocation.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:41:24Speaker 06

  I've had two careers. I was a, I was a rock musician.

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:27Speaker 06

  That's what brought me to LA.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:29Speaker 06

  And then over the past 15 years, I've, uh, become a professional investor.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:33Speaker 06

  And I run a biotech, uh, and healthcare focused firm.

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:38Speaker 06

  And then I, I love finance.

• 1:41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:40Speaker 06

  So we can, we can talk anything, whatever area you guys wanna take.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Maybe give a little brief overview of the investing milestones, the career, like at what point did you know, okay, it's working?

• 1:41:51Speaker 00

  Also, yeah, how did you, how did, how did, how did you just stumble into, like, what, at what point did you decide, you know, I'm, I'm ready to become an allocator?

• 1:42:01Speaker 06

  I'll give you some deep history.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:42:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:03Speaker 06

  So, and I'm gonna tie this into a recent guest you had, Jimmy Iovine.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:07Speaker 06

  So I was a college student.

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:09Speaker 06

  I got a call on my cell phone from Kanye West.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:42:12Speaker 06

  And he said, come out to LA this weekend.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:42:15Speaker 06

  And I landed here and we, we were, we spent the weekend not far from this studio, the Ultra Dome at the record plant. I understand you guys work out near this.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:42:23Speaker 06

  Right across from the record plant, there was a glory hole facility called The Zone.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:42:28Speaker 06

  Didn't go there. I didn't go there. I went into the record plant.

• 1:42:31Speaker 00

  Okay, good, good context.

• 1:42:32Speaker 06

  And, um, and then we ultimately got signed by Jimmy.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42:37Speaker 06

  To Interscope Records, which he ran at the time.

• 1:42:39Speaker 00

  Was Kanye, like, just told?

• 1:42:41Speaker 06

  We, we ended up in a bidding war.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:42:43Speaker 06

  My first experience of real finance.

• 1:42:45Speaker 00

  There we go.

• 1:42:46Speaker 06

  A bidding war between Kanye and Pharrell. And Pharrell had a partnership with Jimmy Iovine at Interscope.

• 1:42:52Speaker 00

  You were a college kid at this point?

• 1:42:53Speaker 06

  I was a college kid. I was, I was a senior.

• 1:42:55Speaker 00

  You hadn't technically dropped out yet?

• 1:42:56Speaker 06

  No, I never dropped out.

• 1:42:57Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:42:57Speaker 06

  And we got so lucky with the timing.

• 1:42:59Speaker 00

  Shots fired.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  Were you studying music, bio, investing?

• 1:43:02Speaker 06

  No, no, no. My, my degrees are in African-American studies.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:43:06Speaker 06

  And, um, I have a minor in Kikuyu, which is a language spoke in, in central Kenya.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:43:13Speaker 06

  It's a Bantu language, not, uh, not too distant from Swahili.

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  Got it, okay.

• 1:43:17Speaker 06

  And, um.

• 1:43:18Speaker 00

  Do you still know how to say, uh, one beer, please?

• 1:43:21Speaker 06

  I don't know how to say that. I could say, you know, "Oh, how do I go?"

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:43:24Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:43:25Speaker 06

  "Wim wega." You know, these are some, some of the things that I would say if I met a woman in a, in a strange place.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:43:30Speaker 06

  So, I'm out here.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:32Speaker 06

  We get this record deal and as a, as a young artist.

• 1:43:36Speaker 00

  What does, what does the first record deal look like when you're a college kid and you're in a bidding war?

• 1:43:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, first off, you gotta lawyer up.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:43Speaker 06

  First rule of business, right?

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:43:45Speaker 06

  So we lawyered up. We had a great lawyer called Owen Sloan, Frank Zappa's old lawyer, Elton John's old lawyer.

• 1:43:51Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 1:43:51Speaker 06

  And we said, Owen, we need you to talk to these guys. We need you to get something done.

• 1:43:54Speaker 00

  You kinda sound like an industry plant.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:56Speaker 00

  I just rolled into LA, I got the top lawyer.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  I got the best lawyer on with Pharrell and Kanye.

• 1:44:01Speaker 06

  It was, it was a soft, it was a soft landing.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:44:04Speaker 06

  And, um, what does the deal look like? Well, the record industry was in a transitional moment at that time. What, what people had realized was you were decreasingly making money off of the music itself.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:17Speaker 06

  All the income was coming from touring, merchandise, endorsement deals, that kinda thing.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:22Speaker 06

  And so what the record label started to do was so-called 360 deals.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  360 deals, I remember these.

• 1:44:27Speaker 06

  We got one of the last non-360 deals. So the whole fight with the label was to sign a non-360 deal.

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:44:35Speaker 06

  At the moment that they were trying to default everyone into that.

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:44:38Speaker 06

  So we signed this deal.

• 1:44:39Speaker 00

  And, and.

• 1:44:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Speaker 00

  The three, the, the complaint around the 360 deal is that an artist effectively ends up as like an indentured servant.

• 1:44:48Speaker 06

  You're just giving the man more of what you make, right?

• 1:44:51Speaker 00

  And there's literally.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  Cause they're only helping with the album, but then you go and do a movie and they take a little cut of that or something.

• 1:44:57Speaker 00

  And it's like, there's literally no way to make money without the big man getting.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Getting his cut.

• 1:45:02Speaker 06

  At that point.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, cause it's 360. I mean, they get a, they get a slice of everything.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:45:06Speaker 06

  So anyways, it's not unlike being a little company with a big venture fund investing in you. As an artist, you get signed to one of these big conglomerate record labels and now you're one of a hundred artists.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:45:18Speaker 06

  And you're vying for their attention, their investment, their promotional muscle. And so one of the only sort of sources of leverage I had with Jimmy was I said, I can introduce you to Zuckerberg.

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45:29Speaker 06

  Cause I had gone to school with him. So I was like user 2005 on Facebook. I mean, I was literally on Facebook the night it came out.

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:37Speaker 06

  My first investment lesson was failing to invest in Facebook, right?

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:45:42Speaker 06

  And, um, you know, I mean, in retrospect, I was so stupid. I was going and having burritos with Mark.

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:48Speaker 06

  And all I cared about was getting his permission to spam people to promote my band. And, you know, much.

• 1:45:54Speaker 01

  That's what you're asking for instead of an allocation.

• 1:45:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:57Speaker 06

  So, so anyways, I bring him up to Silicon Valley to meet with Zuckerberg.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:04Speaker 06

  And in that meeting, I learn about Spotify.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:46:09Speaker 06

  One of Mark's right-hand guys at the time, Dave Morin.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:12Speaker 06

  Also a Silicon Valley.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  Been on the show?

• 1:46:14Speaker 06

  Dave Morin tells me about Spotify. He says, I can get you an account. And at the time, it was only available in Sweden cause it hadn't been legalized in the other markets.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:46:23Speaker 06

  And I started using this product and I was just like, this, I know enough about the music industry. This is gonna work.

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:30Speaker 06

  And so that was my first investment. And then I became the artist in residence at Spotify.

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:46:36Speaker 06

  And I very nervously.

• 1:46:38Speaker 00

  First investment is crazy. You're like, I should've invested in, I should've invested in Facebook.

• 1:46:43Speaker 01

  Missed it.

• 1:46:44Speaker 00

  Said I was focused on spamming, but I got Spotify.

• 1:46:46Speaker 06

  It, uh.

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  That's really good.

• 1:46:48Speaker 06

  You know, better lucky than smart.

• 1:46:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:50Speaker 06

  And, uh, and, and then I thought, wow, investing's really easy.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:55Speaker 06

  Cause it's just like, you know, I'd read a Peter Lynch book.

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:58Speaker 06

  One up on Wall Street or something.

• 1:46:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:59Speaker 06

  You know, it's just, he talks about in that book, you just go into the grocery store and you see Leg's Hosiery is sold out.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  You buy it.

• 1:47:06Speaker 06

  If the container's empty, this thing must be working.

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:47:08Speaker 06

  And you go buy the stock or whatever.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:11Speaker 06

  You know, I, it's probably pretty smart.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's still good.

• 1:47:14Speaker 06

  That was how I thought about it.

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:16Speaker 06

  And then it was a, it was sort of a golden era, as you guys know, of startup formation. So I met Elon really early, invested in SpaceX in 2013 or something like that. And I found Ripple really early.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:47:28Speaker 06

  But I also missed some good ones.

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:47:30Speaker 06

  You know, if I, if I knew which ones were gonna work, I only would've done those.

• 1:47:33Speaker 00

  Sorry.

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  There we go, nailed it.

• 1:47:34Speaker 06

  Let's go. Let's go. Let's go, boys. Great success. TBPN, Ultra Dome.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now you've made it. Now you've arrived. This is the moment.

• 1:47:44Speaker 06

  It was all.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  It was all in service of this.

• 1:47:46Speaker 00

  I've gotten the, I've gotten the story one-on-one, but you're, you're, you know showbiz, so you're really just like.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  Italian's better.

• 1:47:51Speaker 00

  Perfect delivery. But then how, how did you end up, you, you, you back all these incredible companies and then you're, and then you're like, I wanna go into biotech? Was like, you gotta be honest. Was like, was biotech investing like the hottest thing? Was it like the web three or the AI of the time? And you were like chasing the hot thing or was there?

• 1:48:10Speaker 06

  No, I'd say it was decidedly not hot.

• 1:48:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:12Speaker 06

  And, and.

• 1:48:13Speaker 00

  No, but it's gone through periods where it, it hasn't, over the last 20 years, it's gotten.

• 1:48:18Speaker 06

  Oh, it goes up and down. It's a very cyclical industry, very rate sensitive industry.

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:23Speaker 06

  And, um, when I got into it, you know, I, I was just kinda trying to get the big directional bet right. You know, I thought if you were starting in venture in the seventies or the eighties, basically all you had to do right was call computers.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:36Speaker 06

  If you just said, computers and then internet.

• 1:48:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:48:39Speaker 06

  You'd probably do okay.

• 1:48:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:41Speaker 06

  And so I thought, well, what's gonna happen over the rest of my career? And it seemed like maybe life sciences would be the most dramatic area.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:51Speaker 00

  You were wrong.

• 1:48:51Speaker 06

  Few years into it, it's probably still computers.

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's still computers.

• 1:48:54Speaker 00

  And then a few years later, software as a service. And then a few years later, mobile.

• 1:49:00Speaker 06

  This is, I mean, look, we.

• 1:49:01Speaker 00

  But now you look like a genius.

• 1:49:03Speaker 06

  It's, well, I don't know. It's, it's kinda, it's, it's, it's happening, but it's happening slowly.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. What is actually happening?

• 1:49:09Speaker 06

  Well, what's happening is, I, I think the fulfillment of a lot of promises that people saw 15, 20 years ago conceptually, which were like, medicine's gonna become preventive.

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:49:21Speaker 06

  Right? It's not just gonna be an industry that's focused on people once they're sick.

• 1:49:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:49:25Speaker 06

  The addressable market is not just sick people, it's all people.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  And GLP-1 is probably the best example of that.

• 1:49:30Speaker 06

  GLP-1 is the first blockbuster.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Preventative.

• 1:49:33Speaker 06

  Preventive medicine. You could call this maybe the first longevity drug.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:37Speaker 06

  In some regard, cause it's gonna reduce all the other risk factors for the other diseases that get us.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:49:43Speaker 06

  And there's gonna be a lot more of that to come. So I think the industry is increasingly consumer focused. You see that in the strategies, say of Eli Lilly, which is the leader.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:49:52Speaker 06

  In the GLPs. Their strategy is they wanna have a whole pharmacy shelf of different profile products that fit the needs of different customers. So.

• 1:50:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's interesting, like, you can imagine.

• 1:50:07Speaker 00

  A lot of people, they go and, you know, they're, they're in a, a medical setting and they're like, are you currently taking any medications? And like, if you're under forty, I think a lot of people are hoping, or fifty, they're like, no. You know, hopefully the answer is no, otherwise you already have like-

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  Cause they're off cycle and they're not on deep all the time.

• 1:50:23Speaker 00

  John is-

• 1:50:23Speaker 06

  Now I'm Wolverine stack.

• 1:50:24Speaker 01

  Wolverine stack.

• 1:50:26Speaker 06

  Wolverine stack and cigarettes.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:28Speaker 06

  We're good.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I'm a doctor.

• 1:50:30Speaker 06

  It's changing. So basically the not sick are now part of the addressable market of pharmaceuticals. That's a big shift. And, and then, you know, the, the slower but really important work that never ends is trying to chip away at these horrible diseases that kill all of us.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:50:45Speaker 06

  And in the past decade, a number of cancers are now curable diseases. So you can see it around the margins, but slowly but surely the industry is making progress and solving these really big problems.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:58Speaker 00

  All right. So let's, let's, you know, we're all thinking about it. AI.

• 1:51:02Speaker 06

  Yeah. What's, uh, what is that?

• 1:51:05Speaker 00

  It's sort of the elephant in the room.

• 1:51:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:51:08Speaker 00

  I gotta, I gotta ask you about it.

• 1:51:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:51:10Speaker 00

  Um, no, but, but I want to get right into it, which is like, you know, people are talking about where the next leg up comes in AI revenues. Simple answer is just like continued diffusion through a bunch of different businesses and consumers, whatever. But obviously people think life sciences and biology is going to be pretty big. See that signaled from the labs. You see that signaled from, you know, Demis and the work that he's doing. Um, and, and now I saw for the first time this week, somebody like say, global R and D spend is some number of trillions of dollars. Like AI can easily capture twenty, thirty percent of that.

• 1:51:49Speaker 00

  And that was the same exact like logic of like, looking at like white collar work, which was like, oh, like this much spending. So of course AI, because AI can do some percentage of that. Um, and the question I, I keep coming back to that I'm curious to get your thoughts on is, say I am a drug discover, you know, my, I'm in the drug discovery business or I'm a pharma company. And I come up, like, I can use the models to come up with like a thousand new ideas.

• 1:52:22Speaker 00

  There, we are so far, it seems, from being able to simulate the human body perfectly enough that you can like close the loop. Where it's like, cool, I have a thousand new ideas for drugs and now I'm going to simulate the trials for them. And tomorrow I'll know if we have a, a hit drug, right? I assume that eventually we would be able to like simulate human biology well enough that we don't need to run a five-year human trial to figure out if the, our idea is valid, right? But like, the problem is right now, if, if I'm Eli Lilly and I'm using, you know, the latest models, great, I came up with a thousand new ideas. That's like, potentially, that's like many, many billions of dollars of new money

• 1:53:05Speaker 00

  that I need to then go spend on figuring out if they're valid. And so you're back to this idea of like, well, we can only take so many shots, you know, we can only actually run with so many of our ideas.

• 1:53:16Speaker 06

  Oh, that's right. I mean, that's, that's the bottleneck is the only way to find out if things are safe and effective is in a-

• 1:53:22Speaker 00

  But like, was the bottleneck ideas?

• 1:53:25Speaker 06

  No, the bottleneck is not ideas.

• 1:53:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Speaker 06

  The bottleneck is translation.

• 1:53:27Speaker 00

  But, but like the potentially exciting thing is that as you see like, things like Navier-Stokes fall, maybe there's just things that humans have been missing and like, we'll get a bunch more new ideas. And again, we're not bottlenecked on ideas, but maybe we'll just get some like better ideas. Is that?

• 1:53:46Speaker 06

  Well, I think, I think we almost certainly will get better ideas. And as with all the other AI opportunities, it's both going to come from the AI generating ideas and from the AI giving leverage to really smart scientists who were trying to come up with ideas before, but now are going to be supercharged in their effort to do that. I think the, you know, the, the, the sort of challenge right now, even before AI, was that we have a super abundance of good ideas for new drugs. And you can go look at any university in America or now in China and Europe, great science everywhere.

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  It happens every time a new blockbuster drug comes out, I do the, the research on where it came from. It's like, well, this guy invented it in the eighties and then it was, we're used to some really small thing in the nineties. And then they finally got it to scale in the twenty teens.

• 1:54:33Speaker 00

  Or they were using it for this other thing and they realized it was actually having other impacts.

• 1:54:37Speaker 06

  The GLPs are one of those stories, right? And it's, it's kind of indictment of the startup ecosystem, the biotech world, that didn't come from a startup.

• 1:54:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:54:46Speaker 06

  Right? I mean, the story in big pharma has been all the new drugs come from M and A.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  Yep, totally.

• 1:54:51Speaker 06

  Um, but the GLPs are the biggest and they didn't. They were like a twenty-year, you know, hard one project inside of big pharma.

• 1:54:59Speaker 00

  They came from the Gila monster.

• 1:55:01Speaker 01

  That's-

• 1:55:02Speaker 06

  Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:55:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:04Speaker 06

  Um, so I, I, I mean, look, there are a ton of good ideas out there. The challenge is how do you prove whether they're safe and effective in humans? Which is to your point, it's very time consuming, it's very costly. And AI, from the standpoint of a big pharma company, is going to chip away in, you know, incremental ways at a million different things.

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  Speed up data analysis, speed up capture of notes from the trial.

• 1:55:32Speaker 06

  It's everything.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  FDA filings, legal and finance.

• 1:55:36Speaker 06

  It's going to be incremental and you're going to add up a lot of tiny efficiencies that accumulate. And it's going to look more like, oh, maybe a drug's development time goes from twelve years to eleven years and then maybe to ten years. Now, the average blockbuster drug is selling, I think, three billion dollars a year. So, uh, you know, more or less every day you can accelerate its time to market is worth millions of dollars for a sponsor.

• 1:56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's valuable.

• 1:56:04Speaker 06

  So, you know, anything you can do with AI is going to be a great thing for the industry. But is it gonna cure cancer overnight? Is it gonna solve aging overnight?

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:13Speaker 06

  Those are sales pitches.

• 1:56:14Speaker 01

  How are you set up to invest? Do you, do you, do you trade in the public markets? Do you have a fund? Do you have restrictions? Like where, where do you see opportunity? Because, uh, like the GLP-1 trade, again, not in the, didn't really happen in the private markets. Of course, there were a lot of private market beneficiaries, but, uh, how, how are you investing structurally?

• 1:56:34Speaker 06

  We do both. So we have a private fund and then we've got a hedge fund.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:56:37Speaker 06

  And, you know, the, the, where the risk return is more attractive, changes over time.

• 1:56:42Speaker 01

  I can imagine.

• 1:56:43Speaker 06

  Again, this industry is very sensitive to rates.

• 1:56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:46Speaker 06

  So when you've, you know, when you're in a secularly rising rate environment in general, it's tough for biotech.

• 1:56:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:56:53Speaker 06

  You think about it.

• 1:56:54Speaker 01

  Cause the earnings are far away.

• 1:56:55Speaker 00

  So we need to go back to ZIRP for humanity.

• 1:56:57Speaker 06

  We need to go back to ZIRP. That's, that's the bottom line. So, and, and I'm, uh, I'm buying all the long dated treasuries I can, but it's not, it's not moving.

• 1:57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like, I feel like a Fed chair who came out and was like, we need to lower rates to save lives because it's, we're going to cure cancer if rates are low. That's a really effective message.

• 1:57:15Speaker 06

  It's a good pitch.

• 1:57:16Speaker 01

  It's a good pitch.

• 1:57:16Speaker 06

  I think it's better than like, oh, we need AI to add two percent real GDP growth a year, which to me is tall order.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, I was, we were talking-

• 1:57:25Speaker 00

  Uh, what's going on in the, like, biology and pharma data markets? Like, is there, is there-

• 1:57:32Speaker 06

  It's a good question.

• 1:57:32Speaker 00

  Is there old companies that were dead and long, effectively long gone that are being like, you know, that are suddenly worth something because they, they had a bunch of, you know, they did a bunch of trials on something and that, and that data is valuable. And, uh, and then I have a follow-up question.

• 1:57:48Speaker 06

  Okay, so when, when DNA sequencing first kind of hit the scene several years ago, there was this first wave of data is valuable as a, as a market story. And I would say-

• 1:58:01Speaker 00

  It's a new oil.

• 1:58:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like the new, like, you know, oh, the pharma, if, if we do a startup and all we do is we generate a boatload of data, maybe some big pharma is going to come and buy us for that data, cause they're going to mine new drugs out of it. There's really, to my knowledge, only one or two instances of that working. Amgen bought something called Decode, which is really interesting. Decode was a sequencing project for basically everyone in Iceland.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:58:26Speaker 06

  Okay, so interesting, quite genetically homogeneous population. But that was good in some ways in terms of what insights you could derive from it.

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:58:34Speaker 06

  I believe it was from the Decode data set that they actually figured out the mechanism for, um, one anti-cholesterol drug that's been very successful.

• 1:58:46Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:58:46Speaker 06

  And, um, and, and that still has benefits that will be harvested for years to come.

• 1:58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:52Speaker 06

  Now, the new thing that's happening is the AI labs are prospective buyers of biological data sets. And, you know, there's varying levels of sophistication inside of those companies. So Anthropic, a couple of weeks ago, announced a number of partnerships with biotech companies. They're all trying to sell to the big pharmas in various ways. And as with all these questions of data sovereignty and so forth, you know, the pharmas are a little bit in a difficult place.

• 1:59:21Speaker 00

  Apprehensive.

• 1:59:22Speaker 06

  You know, they want to be innovative, they want to tell the street, they're doing everything on AI, but then they are a little guarded about their data. So I think it's going to be very interesting to see both how the big players decide to treat their own proprietary information and also how much the labs are willing to spend because, right, they've exhausted the internet. They're paying Merck or whoever else to go and, you know, generate expert style data. But this biological data, which really is intrinsically big data, I mean, it's, you know, your, one experiment might create petabytes worth of information. You know, it, it, they think is an interesting place for them to try and suck up.

• 2:00:02Speaker 00

  How, how is, how, how do pharma executives view, well, like, what is their general view on the rhetoric within the tech industry around, you know, I think like this year, everyone in AI was like, ah, we really should cure cancer to help our popularity.

• 2:00:19Speaker 06

  And they're smoking cigs now.

• 2:00:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No sunscreen, all this stuff. But, but like, what, what is like the, the, the sort of like pharma view on the rhetoric within tech? Do they laugh at it? Cause they're like sitting there being like, we've been curing cancer and, you know, helping.

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  We're hated.

• 2:00:34Speaker 00

  And we're just like that.

• 2:00:35Speaker 06

  Yeah. I, look, I, I think there's, there's a mix of naivete and sophistication among the AI folks. So when they hear AI people say smart things, they go, cool, yeah, let's run at it.

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 2:00:47Speaker 06

  Everyone respects Demis.

• 2:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:50Speaker 06

  But when Demis says we're going to cure all diseases in 10 years, I think people who have, you know, two PhDs and have been doing this for 40 years ago, come on, man, like, one, you're giving a sort of false hope.

• 2:01:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:01:00Speaker 06

  To a lot of people who are legitimately out there suffering or have a loved one who's on death's doorstep.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:06Speaker 06

  Like, that's a little messed up.

• 2:01:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:08Speaker 06

  Um, but on the other hand, they also just think like it's not.

• 2:01:11Speaker 01

  Well, he might be long tobacco stocks, so maybe he's pushing.

• 2:01:15Speaker 06

  I mean, I think it's an open question.

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  Pushing it's okay to smoke, you go long.

• 2:01:19Speaker 06

  Wolf and sheep's clothing hedge fund manager.

• 2:01:21Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 2:01:22Speaker 06

  This has been a very long game that he's been playing.

• 2:01:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. Occam's razor.

• 2:01:26Speaker 00

  Occam's 4D razor.

• 2:01:28Speaker 06

  I think it's.

• 2:01:29Speaker 00

  Um, what about, what about, um, robotics in a, in a lab setting in, or like, um, uh, Kevin, like Kevin Weal has his, his new company trying to sort of reshore, uh, stuff on the, uh, the R and D side, but, but like, that's been happening, like people have said, like, we should automate labs.

• 2:01:52Speaker 01

  Every time someone picks a bottleneck, goes and builds a business around it, the biotech community is like, that actually wasn't the bottleneck.

• 2:01:58Speaker 00

  Well, no, no, but I, but Kevin's, Kevin's like strategy, I think, is more, is honestly like a, like a national security angle.

• 2:02:07Speaker 01

  Totally. I think it's super valid. I, I just think the biotech community is fantastic at getting something from the tech community and be like, yes, that is what, that was a bottleneck, but we have actually 12 more bottlenecks for you to work on.

• 2:02:18Speaker 06

  Okay. I mean, this gives us a chance to talk a little bit about China.

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  Please.

• 2:02:22Speaker 06

  You guys love China.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  Huge fans. We got the dog over there for China.

• 2:02:25Speaker 06

  Thank you. So the, the, in a way, a bigger, a bigger shift than AI for the biopharma industry is the rise of China.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:37Speaker 06

  This is real. Like this is.

• 2:02:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:39Speaker 06

  Already material. This is already changing the whole industry. So what's happened is over the past, like, let's call it five to 10 years, China has both invested tremendously in early stage development, like discovery work.

• 2:02:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:51Speaker 06

  So this is the idea generation part and then pre-clinical biotech, um, outsourced labor. So before you take a drug into a clinical trial, you got to run it through this whole battery of tests.

• 2:03:04Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03:04Speaker 06

  You're testing it in mice, maybe non-human primates, you're doing a lot of laboratory work, you're trying to characterize this thing as well as you can to minimize the risk to people.

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03:14Speaker 06

  And then in the US, you take it to the FDA and you ask for permission to go and put it in people.

• 2:03:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03:19Speaker 06

  In China, what they have tried to do is all of that work at a quarter of the price.

• 2:03:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:27Speaker 06

  And, and because the big pharma companies are multinationals, you know, increasingly they've been comfortable doing that work in China. And just like any outsourcing, if it's faster and cheaper, why not send it there?

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03:38Speaker 06

  Now, it also turns out the quality of the work is outstanding because guess who's doing it? A lot of Chinese scientists who got their PhDs in the United States and then we kicked out because we're idiots.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:03:48Speaker 06

  So we've got all these, that's what I'm talking about.

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 2:03:52Speaker 06

  I mean, that's what it sounded like, right?

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:54Speaker 06

  That's what it sounded like. So Stephen Miller out here kicking ass.

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:03:57Speaker 06

  Our new, our new, uh, chief of staff, congratulations. By the way, I hear Susie Wiles is going to be joining TVPN as of next week. That's huge for you guys.

• 2:04:05Speaker 01

  I don't even know what's going on there.

• 2:04:07Speaker 06

  So, so China is ascendant and now.

• 2:04:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:12Speaker 06

  The lifeblood of big pharma, which is buying new drugs from little biotech companies.

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:16Speaker 06

  Now they are buying double digit percentages of their new drugs from China. [music] That's what, that's what I said when I heard this.

• 2:04:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:27Speaker 06

  And it's, it's a normal reaction.

• 2:04:29Speaker 00

  You want them to buy.

• 2:04:31Speaker 06

  I want to buy American.

• 2:04:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:04:32Speaker 06

  A new balance, you know, buy American, make American, buy American, whatever.

• 2:04:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:04:36Speaker 06

  So this is, this is a big story and, and like, as with a lot of outsourcing, the potential to bring.

• 2:04:42Speaker 00

  Well, so, so here's, here's, here's like.

• 2:04:44Speaker 06

  You got automated.

• 2:04:45Speaker 00

  We potentially, so automation is one thing. The other thing is like so much general excitement around AI is going to push it, it's already pushed a huge amount of capital into bets that traditional biotech investors would be like, I've never, I would never, I could never underwrite that, right?

• 2:05:01Speaker 06

  Sure, sure.

• 2:05:01Speaker 00

  Because all the econ, not because like, we're dealing with like, you know, the singularity and super intelligence and curing all disease within 10 years, when you just have sort of like big ideas about things and they're not like based around, you know, decades of investing in the category. And so I would say that that's like prop, maybe the way that America saves itself by having a bunch of new investors that aren't like experts just flood the space with capital.

• 2:05:28Speaker 06

  Crazy stuff.

• 2:05:29Speaker 00

  Because even if we get, if we get.

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  Flows the right way.

• 2:05:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, we, we overbuild or we get, you know, we, a bunch of, a ton of zeros as always, where we get four or five new companies that become like, you know, flagship, you know, public, public companies that, that solve some of these issues. Is that like?

• 2:05:45Speaker 06

  Look, I, I think that'd be great. I will say the Chinese approach to AI generally and the biotech seems very different and I must admit, I think it's more intelligent.

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:05:54Speaker 06

  Which is, you know, writ large, China's strategy is make AI free, cheap and good so that every business person in China can use it and out compete whoever else around the world wants to give a run at some thing.

• 2:06:05Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 2:06:06Speaker 06

  Here.

• 2:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:07Speaker 06

  We're in a way, we're throwing crazy venture money at these like millennium problems, right?

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:13Speaker 06

  These insane, like, oh, this would change everything. Now, I agree. If any of them works, it's worth it.

• 2:06:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:18Speaker 06

  But it's kind of odd to me that we're not focusing AI on the low skilled labor first.

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:06:27Speaker 06

  I mean, call centers, everyone, that's the first example. Call, of course, it makes sense. Like, why wouldn't AI replace all the call centers? But, you know, part of the challenge with biotech is it's like, okay, this is supposed to replace white collar labor. So let's start with the most educated, most sophisticated form of human capital that exists.

• 2:06:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:48Speaker 06

  Like, a, a big pharma, and I'll be the first to say, like, they're, they're big companies. They're bloated, they're inefficient, they're bureaucratic, all of that.

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:56Speaker 06

  They employ more PhDs.

• 2:06:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:58Speaker 06

  Than any companies in the world.

• 2:06:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:00Speaker 06

  Okay? And they're, they're not idiots.

• 2:07:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:02Speaker 06

  So it's like the Silicon Valley is going to come and show the graybeards how it's done.

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  It's sort of silly.

• 2:07:08Speaker 06

  It's, it's going to fall.

• 2:07:08Speaker 01

  What do you think of the, the electronic lab notebook, like the dev tools play in biotech?

• 2:07:14Speaker 06

  Benchling.

• 2:07:14Speaker 01

  Benchling. I, I was, a lot of people were pitching like, oh, there'll be like a cursor for bio. And I was a little skeptical in the short term of that because, uh, VS Code is open source and so Cursor was able to fork it. That doesn't really exist in the, I don't know what you're just doing.

• 2:07:31Speaker 00

  Just added a little Christmas lighting.

• 2:07:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:07:32Speaker 01

  Oh, perfect, perfect.

• 2:07:33Speaker 06

  It's nice.

• 2:07:33Speaker 01

  Um, but, uh, but, but there, there isn't like an open source software stack for bio that I'm aware of, but at the same time, software development's so cheap now, maybe you could bootstrap that quickly. Like, is there, is there a play for software for bio that you're excited by? Or is it kind of just like a sideshow? Cause it feels like an answer to your question of like, how can you make things more efficient without needing to go after the, the, you're not trying to replace the Nobel Prize winning PhD, you're just trying to make the average lab technician more efficient.

• 2:08:03Speaker 06

  Right. Look, I think in principle, it's the right kind of thing. It's like go after the prosaic stuff.

• 2:08:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:08Speaker 06

  So for example, big pharma is already seeing a lot of yield increase when it comes to manufacturing process.

• 2:08:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:08:15Speaker 06

  You know, put cameras over the whole manufacturing line. You can do quality assurance much faster, that kind of thing.

• 2:08:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:08:20Speaker 06

  What you're talking about is the very early stage, just academics or researchers working in the lab.

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:26Speaker 06

  Historically, I'd say the bounty has been quite small for software.

• 2:08:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:08:33Speaker 06

  In biotech.

• 2:08:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:34Speaker 06

  They're really.

• 2:08:34Speaker 01

  Just IT spend is low relative to revenue.

• 2:08:36Speaker 06

  It's low and it's all open source, right? Because it's.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:08:39Speaker 06

  It's, it's, you know, a, a pipeline to analyze genetic.

• 2:08:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it might just be like a iPython notebook.

• 2:08:45Speaker 06

  It's a lot of notebook, Jupiter notebooks and stuff.

• 2:08:47Speaker 01

  Jupiter notebooks.

• 2:08:48Speaker 06

  You know, it's all, comes out of some lab at MIT, some guy needs to do an experiment, he writes the code for it.

• 2:08:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a little library for this.

• 2:08:55Speaker 06

  And I think there's also that kind of ethos, which isn't unlike software development where people just, you know, they're trying to cure disease.

• 2:09:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:02Speaker 06

  There's kind of a bias against being a proprietary.

• 2:09:06Speaker 01

  SAS guy.

• 2:09:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, like being.

• 2:09:08Speaker 01

  So you're saying the industry needs a Marc Benioff.

• 2:09:10Speaker 06

  We, every industry needs a Marc Benioff. We need a, we need a dream force of, of biotech. We need.

• 2:09:15Speaker 01

  That would be electric. Metallica.

• 2:09:17Speaker 06

  We need Tony, we need Tony Robbins.

• 2:09:18Speaker 01

  We need Metallica onstage.

• 2:09:19Speaker 06

  We need all of it.

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:09:21Speaker 00

  Love it. Uh, what?

• 2:09:24Speaker 06

  Ice.

• 2:09:25Speaker 00

  On the regulation, on the regulation side.

• 2:09:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:09:27Speaker 00

  If you were running the show, which I'm sure you could get a job, admin, I don't know how long you'd la, I don't know how long you'd last.

• 2:09:34Speaker 01

  Any, any admin.

• 2:09:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:09:35Speaker 01

  Lucky to.

• 2:09:36Speaker 00

  But, uh, but, but what would you do? What would you do?

• 2:09:39Speaker 06

  If I were a regular, it's a good question.

• 2:09:40Speaker 00

  Bailouts for my whole portfolio.

• 2:09:42Speaker 06

  Listen, I think.

• 2:09:48Speaker 00

  We need to bail out my early stage book from my 2015 vintage.

• 2:09:53Speaker 06

  There are, uh.

• 2:09:58Speaker 06

  The, the, the United States FDA plays a really important function globally.

• 2:10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:05Speaker 06

  Because everyone trusts us to be hard asses about drug safety and.

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and everyone else just, and you'll see, yeah, they just draft off of us.

• 2:10:14Speaker 06

  You know, go to a pharmacy in India, like just, you know, and they've got great scientists in India, but go into a pharmacy in India and, you know, roll the dice on whether the thing you're buying is, is what you think it is, whether the post is, all that. So the FDA, I think, does a really nice job keeping patients safe, making sure we trust the medicines we're getting. It's not perfect.

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:36Speaker 06

  The debate from the sort of tech libertarian wing, and this goes back to Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman's view was the FDA should only clear drugs on safety.

• 2:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:46Speaker 06

  And let the consumer decide whether efficacy is there.

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:10:50Speaker 06

  Right now, for the FDA to approve a drug, they got to believe that the company has proven it is both safe and effective.

• 2:10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:57Speaker 06

  And more effective typically than placebo.

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:59Speaker 06

  And then for the government to pay for that drug, they often want to know it's more effective than the drug it's competing with or replacing.

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:11:06Speaker 06

  Why spend more on something that doesn't work as well?

• 2:11:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:11:08Speaker 06

  So, you know, we're in a place right now where this is being challenged by consumer health, wellness, peptides, and there are a lot of people out there buying peptides from compounding pharmacies that may not be safe, that may not be effective, probably aren't.

• 2:11:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, you have that horrible batch of D-ball.

• 2:11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, what's been going on with you? How's that, how's that rash?

• 2:11:31Speaker 01

  That's the, that's the.

• 2:11:32Speaker 00

  No, I know, but it's some kind of sketchy pharmacy.

• 2:11:35Speaker 06

  Well, you were short before you started these peptides.

• 2:11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that and the, and the leg lengthening surgery. There's been a couple of things that have stacked up.

• 2:11:44Speaker 06

  So, you know, I, I wouldn't go that far. I would, I wouldn't, I wouldn't just let it free because the bottom line is this stuff is really complicated. It's, it's not unlike finance.

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:55Speaker 06

  Because in finance, everyone's trying to save.

• 2:11:58Speaker 00

  So you're saying like peptides are like the web three of biology?

• 2:12:01Speaker 06

  Peptides are the hyper liquid of biotech.

• 2:12:04Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:12:05Speaker 06

  Right? And, and it's like, I like that maybe, you know, maybe it's a good thing.

• 2:12:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:12:11Speaker 06

  That perps on CalShe can allow us to bet on whether you're going to uncross your legs in 10 seconds.

• 2:12:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:12:18Speaker 06

  Right? I mean, I know people watching at home would like to.

• 2:12:22Speaker 01

  Boom.

• 2:12:22Speaker 06

  There we go. I knew it.

• 2:12:23Speaker 01

  Hit it big.

• 2:12:24Speaker 06

  So, you know, people can send me the cut.

• 2:12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:26Speaker 06

  My PayPal.

• 2:12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:28Speaker 06

  Um, we'll put, you'll put that up on the, on the screen.

• 2:12:30Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:12:30Speaker 06

  But it's like, you know, I think it's, I think it's kind of dangerous, right? And we, we have an SEC for a reason. Like we, it is paternalistic.

• 2:12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:38Speaker 06

  The FDA is paternalistic. The conceit of it is this stuff is complicated and we don't want people to get swindled by snake oil salesmen.

• 2:12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:46Speaker 06

  And, you know, peptides are, in many cases, snake oil.

• 2:12:50Speaker 01

  Yep. Interesting.

• 2:12:51Speaker 00

  So what's your stack?

• 2:12:53Speaker 01

  The Wolverine stack.

• 2:12:54Speaker 06

  Let's start with a couple of Diet Cokes every morning, a couple of fridge cigs and take it from there.

• 2:12:59Speaker 00

  Take it from there.

• 2:13:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:13:00Speaker 00

  Uh, this was amazing. I'm so glad we get to go to lunch right now to continue, to continue.

• 2:13:05Speaker 06

  I'll be back next week and every week thereafter.

• 2:13:07Speaker 00

  You're, you're always, you're literally welcome any day.

• 2:13:10Speaker 06

  It's a real pleasure.

• 2:13:11Speaker 01

  This is fantastic.

• 2:13:12Speaker 00

  This was fantastic.

• 2:13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's close out the show. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Sign up for our newsletter, tbpn.com and we'll see you on Monday at less.

• 2:13:20Speaker 00

  Have the best weekend of your life.

• 2:13:21Speaker 01

  Goodbye.