New OpenAI Competitor, Airbus vs Boeing, LVMH and Trump, Meme Coins are Cooked

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

• 0:00John Coogan?

  Welcome to Technology Brothers, the number one live show in tech. Today is Wednesday, February 19th, 2025. We are live from the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. This show starts now. We got a great show for you today. We're breaking down Velar Atomex, Isaiah Taylor's company. They raised a banger 19 million dollar seed round. Then we're moving on to Mira Maradi.

• 0:31Jordi Hays?

  That's awesome. I knew they were raising around. I didn't know what they were calling it.

• 0:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:35Jordi Hays?

  So it got me good. You got my like authentic reaction. There's just nothing, there's, there's no better humor to me than raising around and then like naming it something that like breaks the sort of generalized narrative.

• 0:49John Coogan?

  Of course.

• 0:50Jordi Hays?

  Like 19 million dollars is just a typical series A.

• 0:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:54Jordi Hays?

  And businesses, if you raise 19 million dollars will be evaluated as though you raised a series A.

• 0:59John Coogan?

  Yeah, of course, of course.

• 1:01Jordi Hays?

  But calling it a seed is just so Chad. Isaiah's Chad, Kip is a Chad. We gotta go and actually, we should just record a remote pod like from there.

• 1:09John Coogan?

  We're doing a demo, we should livestream it.

• 1:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that today?

• 1:12John Coogan?

  No, no, I don't know if it's today, but we'll, we will, we'll definitely be covering the company and we'll break that down. We're also going through Mira Maradi's new company. It has a name, it's called Thinking Machines and the website is thinkingmachines.ai. Don't use a www. www dot thinkingmachines.ai does not resolve. You have to drop the www.

• 1:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so if you search thinking machines right now, it'll pull up their website. But if you click on the website, it will say this site can't be reached. So you then have to go into the URL box and delete the www part.

• 1:49John Coogan?

  Got it.

• 1:49Jordi Hays?

  Hit return and then you'll get the website. So.

• 1:51John Coogan?

  Do they have?

• 1:52Jordi Hays?

  Let's hope they're better.

• 1:53John Coogan?

  Do they have like technology people on the team yet?

• 1:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, maybe they, I mean, I know.

• 1:57John Coogan?

  Fundraising people.

• 1:57Jordi Hays?

  Mira is the CEO now.

• 1:59John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:59Jordi Hays?

  So maybe they don't have a CTO and maybe they just.

• 2:01John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, not, not some of the greatest programmers in the world working there. Anyway, IT can be a challenge even for the greatest companies. I mean, OpenAI was struggling with the login page for a while. Remember when ChatGPT launched, like it wouldn't keep you logged in, so you had to keep logging in with Google.

• 2:18Jordi Hays?

  So.

• 2:18John Coogan?

  Very annoying. Anyway, we're breaking down LVMH and how Bernard Arnault is dealing with the Trump presidency. And then we're going to talk about Airbus and how they're coming for Boeing. It's an international, global fight in the race for an airline that doesn't crash all the time. And then we're going to break down the timeline. So let's go to Isaiah Taylor. We got some breaking news. Congratulations to Valar Atomics.

• 2:42Jordi Hays?

  Big, big.

• 2:42John Coogan?

  Isaiah says, I'm excited to announce a $19 million seed round led by Riot Ventures, who you know some of those dudes over there.

• 2:48Jordi Hays?

  Dear friend.

• 2:49John Coogan?

  Initialized Ally Corp with participation from amazing new partners such as Steel Atlas, Day One Ventures, Stiffle Bank, Naval, Balaji, and Charlie Songhurst. We've also completed

• 2:59Jordi Hays?

  We got all the boys.

• 3:00John Coogan?

  Two important milestones. Yeah, absolute dogs in there. Great. So Isaiah says, first, we have completed the construction and pressure certification of our thermal prototype Ward Zero at our Los Angeles facility. The fastest in history, a thermal test unit has been developed and built. Ward Zero will be unveiled next week at an exclusive event in LA. So that's, that's next week. Hopefully, we can go. If we can't, we'll be live streaming it and covering it here on the show. Second, we're also excited to announce a coordinated research project with the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute. The goal of this project is to develop and deploy Ward One, our first nuclear reactor and the world's first operational Gen IV micro reactor. This is just the beginning. The goal of Valar Atomics is to make the

• 3:44John Coogan?

  world's energy by building nuclear reactors at planetary scale. To do that, we must

• 3:48Jordi Hays?

  That's such a

• 3:49John Coogan?

  a pace.

• 3:50Jordi Hays?

  That's such a great tagline. Make the world's energy.

• 3:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:52Jordi Hays?

  Very simple.

• 3:53John Coogan?

  You almost expect it to be like, make the world's energy cleaner, or make the world's energy more.

• 3:56Jordi Hays?

  Just make the world's energy.

• 3:57John Coogan?

  Period. Yep.

• 3:58Jordi Hays?

  Period.

• 3:58John Coogan?

  He's in the energy business. To do that, we must set a pace of building and iteration to rapidly scale and commercialize our reactor architecture. Today, we set that pace. I can't overstate my gratitude to the Valar, to the Valar Atomics team. In the last 12 months, they've proven themselves to be, to not, to be not only one of the most talented engineering teams in the world, but also the most determined. I'm inspired to work with them every day and to bring their work to you. Huge thank you to everyone who participated in the seed. Delian from Founder's Fund is in the comments saying, congrats, Isaiah. Santiago, good friend of the show, noted Hank.

• 4:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So if you remember, I don't know.

• 4:38John Coogan?

  This is great stuff, team onward.

• 4:40Jordi Hays?

  I don't know why, I don't even remember exactly why, but we owe Kip, who's on the Valor team, a bottle of Dom for something that he did last year. You remember that?

• 4:49John Coogan?

  It was for like a brother of the week.

• 4:50Jordi Hays?

  Brother of the week. I think we were going to hand deliver it and then he had to go to the Philippines for a while.

• 4:54John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 4:55Jordi Hays?

  Couldn't do it.

• 4:55John Coogan?

  That's right.

• 4:56Jordi Hays?

  So congratulations to the whole team and congratulations to Kip because we are going to be coming to the Gundo at some point to deliver you a bottle of Dom.

• 5:06John Coogan?

  A bottle of Dom, Perry Young.

• 5:07Jordi Hays?

  Well deserved.

• 5:08John Coogan?

  It's fantastic. Yeah. Well, congrats to the whole team over there. Excited to see what they build next and get that stuff rolled out. Lots of exciting stuff going on in nuclear. I think like the big, the big question is always like, like nuclear was, was so contrarian and so like offensive to venture capitalists that even like a few years ago, it was something that was uninvestable. And so you couldn't really raise any money, even if you were experienced. Isaiah is obviously like on the younger side, more of like the, the, the new like outside the box thinker.

• 5:37Jordi Hays?

  He's got a few kids, so that automatically adds a decade.

• 5:41John Coogan?

  It does.

• 5:42Jordi Hays?

  If you're in your twenties in tech and you have a few kids, people will treat you as though you're a decade older.

• 5:46John Coogan?

  That's true.

• 5:47Jordi Hays?

  I feel like I benefited from that to some degree, just because you know, having kids, it's just, you are a different person after you have kids.

• 5:55John Coogan?

  Yeah. But my point here is that like, uh, nuclear energy as a category for venture capital investment was extremely difficult to get done, contrarian, not, not easy by any means, very hard to finance, very hard to build. O'Klo went through like years and years and years before spacking. And now it's like the hottest category because everyone's worried about AI and, and the energy generation for data centers.

• 6:19Jordi Hays?

  It really is like in a, in a environment that is, you know, you, in a world where there's maybe less regulations around nuclear, 10 years from now, nuclear energy technology companies will be tremendously more valuable.

• 6:32John Coogan?

  Of course.

• 6:33Jordi Hays?

  So like that is like the main, that's like the main sort of thesis right now. And so you could have, when, when Isaiah was. Starting the company, you have to imagine that in his view, a lot of the stuff that we're seeing now is sort of obvious at the time.

• 6:46John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 6:47Jordi Hays?

  Which was like, we actually need a lot more energy. Nuclear energy was demonized, if you remember. Somebody told me this, the woman that talks about like that's super pro-nuclear on TikTok. Like she was at one of the first-

• 6:58John Coogan?

  Isabel Bumek, I think.

• 6:59Jordi Hays?

  So she was apparently at one of the first Hereticons. But then this year, like being pro-nuclear wasn't heretical at all.

• 7:07John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 7:07Jordi Hays?

  It was just like the default take.

• 7:09John Coogan?

  So she was just kind of hanging out. She was like, I don't really have any new like things to bring you because like you guys all agree with me now. Uh, yeah, it was great. Uh, so now like the problem is, is like, we need the energy today. And even fast teams that move really quickly like Isaiah's, uh, you know, you can't build these things in a weekend. Uh, and so now we're in this weird scenario where, you know, everyone in the AI world, all the data center build outs are like, hey, this stuff can't come to market fast enough. And it's like, hey, you know, the VC should have been back in this a decade ago instead of kind of sitting on their hands. Anyway, uh, quick size gong for Isaiah.

• 7:43Jordi Hays?

  Boom.

• 7:43John Coogan?

  Congratulations.

• 7:44Jordi Hays?

  Great connection there, John.

• 7:45John Coogan?

  Thank you. Um, well, let's move on to, um, Thinking Machines. So, uh, should we do the overview first and then we'll give a little bit of background on, on Mira? Uh, Thinking Machines launched their website, thinkingmachines.ai. Reminder, don't use the WWW, it will not resolve.

• 8:04Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 8:04John Coogan?

  Uh, Thinking Machines Lab is an artificial intelligence research and product company. Interesting because notably, Ilya Sutskever, SSI, is not a product company, purely focused on, on, uh, on super intelligence directly. Um, we're building a future where everyone has access to the knowledge and tools that to make AI work for their unique needs and goals. While AI capabilities have advanced dramatically, key gaps remain. I agree. Uh, the, the scientific community's understanding of frontier AI systems lags behind rapidly advancing capabilities. Knowledge of how these systems are trained is concentrated within the top research labs, limiting both the public discourse on AI and people's public, people's abilities to use AI effectively. And despite their potential, these systems remain difficult for people to customize

• 8:49John Coogan?

  to their specific needs and values. To bridge the gaps, we're building Thinking Machines Labs to make AI systems more widely understood, customizable and generally capable. That was not very gripping copy, if I'm being honest. Uh, what did you think, Jordy?

• 9:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you can tell they're not marketers.

• 9:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Jordi Hays?

  But the aura around Mira and the business and the team is so strong that it almost doesn't matter.

• 9:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Jordi Hays?

  Like, they clearly like, didn't even set up their domain properly. Like, they don't want to have, like, I look at them as like, probably being in a similar boat to SSI.

• 9:24John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 9:25Jordi Hays?

  Where SSI, by being the first to kind of come out and say like, we're not going to do any marketing or really any launches, or we're not going to release any products until we have EGI or safe, you know, superintelligence.

• 9:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:36Jordi Hays?

  They kind of like, took that opportunity and I bet you Thinking Machines is like, I wish we did that.

• 9:44Jordi Hays?

  But, uh, but yeah, again, like, this is one of those things. If this was, if this was the first foundation model company, it would be gripping. But this is like, language you could just copy and paste it onto any

• 9:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean-

• 9:58Jordi Hays?

  website or hiring page.

• 9:59John Coogan?

  At this point, you know, there, I want to issue a challenge. If you're an OpenAI co-founder, I challenge you to start a company that's not a foundation model.

• 10:07Jordi Hays?

  Well, actually, so I was corrected. So Mira was actually not a co-founder of OpenAI.

• 10:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 10:12Jordi Hays?

  She just served as a CTO in many ways.

• 10:14John Coogan?

  But like, is it possible to work at OpenAI and then leave and start?

• 10:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, your idea was to start like a supplement company.

• 10:21John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 10:21Jordi Hays?

  Just like, it would actually, there's, there's a lot of alpha in doing the thing that, that doesn't make sense from a narrative standpoint, right? Because if Mira Mirati had a supplement company, I'd be like, I'm buying all my supplements from this. Because like, she would only work on this if it was like, the most-

• 10:37John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 10:39Jordi Hays?

  Important work.

• 10:39John Coogan?

  She's glimpsed the machine god and said, we need more creatives.

• 10:43Jordi Hays?

  It's always been underpriced to be diced.

• 10:45John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly. And so, yeah, I mean, the, the question is like, you know, obviously, there are so many companies working on this exact problem right now.

• 10:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 10:55John Coogan?

  We, we, the only thing that's interesting here is like, where are they contrasting from the others?

• 11:01Jordi Hays?

  And it's now established that they will, like, Thinking Machines will have a state of the art model in probably a year.

• 11:08John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 11:09Jordi Hays?

  You would have to imagine that it's actually, so Elon had this sort of infrastructure advantage. And in many ways, Mira has like, the actual hands-on, she's a technical CEO who's going to know exactly how to basically- You know, get back to the point where she was with OpenAI, right?

• 11:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Jordi Hays?

  So it's not like starting over from zero.

• 11:28John Coogan?

  So the question is, yeah, do they, do they try and build something, a cluster? Do they try and work with one of the hyperscalers? There's a ton that would be happy to work with her, I'm sure.

• 11:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 11:37John Coogan?

  Because it gives them more leverage. Because even if you're, if you're like, oh, we're, yeah, we're Amazon and we have, I think Amazon does have a custom like TPU to style chip.

• 11:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 11:45John Coogan?

  And they are loosely aligned with Anthropic, but why not work with thinking machines and get more leverage over the Anthropic relationship?

• 11:52Jordi Hays?

  If we've seen anything that...

• 11:53John Coogan?

  And so what, and what does that mean?

• 11:54Jordi Hays?

  The hyperscalers and the model companies are willing to just intermingle and mix.

• 11:57John Coogan?

  Of course, of course. Yeah. And it's for, it's for good reason. So it's like, yeah, if I'm Amazon and I say, hey, you know, thinking machines, yeah, go out and raise $500 million. Send 100 million all over to me and yeah, I'll give you 20K GPUs and let you train a frontier model. The more interesting thing is like, where does the product go? Because I do think that there is really interesting opportunity for different product functionality and different problem solving there.

• 12:24Jordi Hays?

  It's interesting because their website, AI that works for everyone, emphasis on human AI collaboration. Okay, that, that's exactly how ChatGPT, more flexible, adaptable and personalized AI systems. Okay.

• 12:39John Coogan?

  You're not telling me anything here.

• 12:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, maybe you're adding.

• 12:43Jordi Hays?

  Like, it does seem that ChatGPT is flexible, adaptable and can be very personalized if that's what you want out of it. So.

• 12:52John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, honestly, this, this reads like an oil guy. It's like, this is commoditized and it's like oil, like our vision is to like provide energy that will power industry and automobiles for generations.

• 13:04Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 13:05John Coogan?

  It's like, just like every other oil company, right?

• 13:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 13:08John Coogan?

  And it's like, that's probably profitable. Congratulations, you're going to make a lot of money, but like, you're not doing anything new here necessarily? I don't know.

• 13:16Jordi Hays?

  It's interesting too. They say science is better when shared, so they're not committing to being open source.

• 13:22John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:22Jordi Hays?

  But they say, we plan to frequent, frequently publish technical blog, post, papers and code.

• 13:28John Coogan?

  So the whole open source thing seems extremely fake now by this. And also, the whole idea that it's like SAM versus a unified block of anti-SAMS is also completely debunked because it's like, why don't all you guys just go work at Anthropic? Or SSI? Why? Why do you all have your own companies? Oh, well, like, it was probably drama between everyone here. Like, everyone's like...

• 13:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but like, so look at the current team. I'm just gonna read some people out because it's absolutely stacked. Alex Gartrell, former leader of server operating systems at Meta, expert in Linux. Alexander, co-creator of advanced voice mode at OpenAI and Segment Anything model at Meta, previously post-modal, multimodal post-training lead at OpenAI. Andrew, this is just in alphabetical order, by the way. Andrew Tullock, ML Systems Research and Engineering, previously at OpenAI and Meta. Barrett Zoff, who's a CTO, formerly VP of Research, post-training at OpenAI, co-creator of ChatGPT.

• 14:31Jordi Hays?

  Next guy, Bryden, formerly post-training researcher at OpenAI. And if you just go down the list, it's basically like the founding, you know, some of the most important people to work at OpenAI.

• 14:43John Coogan?

  The question is just, does this actually matter? Because in 2005, you could have gone and said, hey, we're getting people from Bell Labs and Yahoo, and we're getting people from AOL and all the top people, and we're gonna have them build a social network that's better than Facebook. And it was like, nah, it didn't really matter. Like, it was actually just like, a couple of college kids could actually innovate and create something that took off. And it took off so hard that even when Google threw tons of resources at it for Google Circles or whatever their product was called, that failed. And then whenever somebody else came up, Isak would just like buy it. And I don't know, it's like, how much does the crazy stacked engineering team matter when it seems like there's a ton of crazy stacked engineers that

• 15:28John Coogan?

  they're over in China building DeepSeek and they're at XAI and they're at the Anthropic? And like, we keep hearing that every single team is stacked and they can produce a frontier model in a week.

• 15:36Jordi Hays?

  Well, yes, I mean, just going to, I'm still down the list. I'm gonna skip a bunch of people. Luke Metz, research scientist and engineer, co-creator of ChatGPT. It's like, when you're putting the co-creator of ChatGPT, like, deep in your team list, and not even giving him a picture, that's when you know the team's stacked, so.

• 15:53John Coogan?

  It is stacked.

• 15:54Jordi Hays?

  Like, in many ways, they should just have their logo and then the current team and like, skip all of this jargon-y stuff, because like, that would be more, that would be more meaningful. But imagine the pressure right now on existing OpenAI employees, no matter how long they've, they've, they've worked there, and how, how big their, their plans are.

• 16:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Jordi Hays?

  You don't just have like, one heavily funded competitor from a former team member that's recruiting you. You, you could potentially have four or five heavily funded foundation model companies, not even talking about perplexity and sort of like app layer companies that are trying to recruit you at all times.

• 16:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:32Jordi Hays?

  So it's just like the craziest dynamic, and they will make documentaries about all of this.

• 16:40John Coogan?

  For sure. Well, she's got the stone-cold gaze in the Guardian. Let's move on to the profile of Mira, because I think she has an interesting background and history.

• 16:54John Coogan?

  Let's do, "How OpenAI interim chief Mira Maroti helped launch AI into the mainstream." "Born in Albania, former chief technology officer is charged with calming the waters after ouster of Sam Altman. When Mira Maroti made an appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah last October, OpenAI was just a month away from releasing ChatGPT." Do you wanna, yeah, like, skip, skip around here?

• 17:19John Coogan?

  "Maroti, as the chief's comp, as the company's chief technology officer, has been in charge of leading the teams that were pushing out the artificial intelligence chatbot that would throw the AI technology and debate over its usage into the mainstream." On his show, Noah asked Maroti how she grappled with the implications AI has for jobs. I gotta cough. You can keep reading.

• 17:42Jordi Hays?

  Implications.

• 17:46John Coogan?

  She says, there were a ton of questions that we're wrestling with every day. Little did anyone know that a year later, a person whose job would be affected would be Maroti's boss, Sam Altman. Now, Maroti has replaced the rising star as CEO. Oh, she was CEO for a while. I forgot about that. That's crazy.

• 18:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 18:03John Coogan?

  So many people have been CEO of OpenAI.

• 18:06Jordi Hays?

  There was a, what do you call it? Musical chairs for a bit there.

• 18:11John Coogan?

  Musical chairs, for sure.

• 18:15Jordi Hays?

  In a surprise statement, the company's board of directors said on Friday that Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board and that it lost confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI. That line, not consistently candid, is just so perfectly general, like legal speak.

• 18:36John Coogan?

  And they never, and they never came out and said what it was.

• 18:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 18:38John Coogan?

  That's the crazy thing, is that all the, all the back channel communications.

• 18:42Jordi Hays?

  It's also not necessarily.

• 18:43John Coogan?

  Wait until you find out. Wait until you find out. You're gonna, you're gonna side with us. And then it was like, he launched the best consumer product ever without really telling us. It's like, who cares?

• 18:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so questions remain over exactly what happened between Altman and his company's board, which includes respected technology researchers and business leaders. But the board said that Maroti can provide the company with a smooth transition as it looks for a permanent replacement. And then they like immediately added Emmet.

• 19:15John Coogan?

  Yeah, Emmet was in for a while.

• 19:16Jordi Hays?

  In there.

• 19:17John Coogan?

  For a few days.

• 19:17Jordi Hays?

  Which lasted, yeah, for a few days.

• 19:19John Coogan?

  And then Sam was back.

• 19:20Jordi Hays?

  So anyways, here's some backstory. Maroti joined the company in 2018 as Vice President of Applied AI and Partnerships, positioning herself to play key roles in the company's development of its AI chatbot systems and Dolly, which uses AI to create artwork. She was promoted to Senior Vice President of Research Product and Partnerships in 2020 and to Chief Technology Officer in 2022.

• 19:40John Coogan?

  That makes no sense to me because ChatGPT launched, or GPT-3, which was barely commercial, launched in 2022. So like, the first two years, Vice President of Applied AI and Partnerships, like.

• 19:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 19:56John Coogan?

  I don't know. That's interesting. Like, they must have known that the products were going to become highly commercializable on track. I don't know. It'd be interesting to hear, like, what she was doing at that time, because it makes, it totally makes sense that it's like a go-to-market role, almost. But everyone else was very surprised. They're like, oh, this research lab has something that they're selling now. Like, this wasn't in the plan. This is so, this is so, like, shocking. But it's like, eh, maybe they knew back then that, yeah, like, companies would want to generate art for ads, or whatever. Like, they need to vend Dolly into places. Anyway, that's interesting. Given her long tenure and close engagement with all aspects of the company, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified for the role and

• 20:37John Coogan?

  anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO. So, this, this profile was written, like, during the turmoil, basically, in The Guardian. I guess this was November of 2023. Let me give a little bit of backstory on her. That's kind of interesting, actually. Born in Albania, Maradi moved to Canada when she was a teenager to study at an international school on Vancouver Island. She got a mechanical engineering degree from Dartmouth and eventually made her way to San Francisco, where she would lead product and engineering teams at Leap Motion. Did you, do you know the story of this?

• 21:11Jordi Hays?

  Well, I mean, the whole, like, narrative of just being born in Albania and then ending up as in America, raising billions of dollars and being at the frontier of innovation is just

• 21:21John Coogan?

  Legit.

• 21:22Jordi Hays?

  is, is one of thousands of, you know, any, any sort of, like, hardcore anti-immigration people is one of, you know, thousands, but a very high-profile example of why immigration has made America such a dominant force in technology.

• 21:38John Coogan?

  It's just, it's just a very unique thing about America, that someone can come in and become

• 21:43Jordi Hays?

  We need to, we need to reposition, the pro, the super pro-immigration people need to reposition immigration as brain drain.

• 21:50John Coogan?

  Oh, totally.

• 21:51Jordi Hays?

  And just being like, we are draining the, any competitive, potentially competitive economy of, like,

• 21:56John Coogan?

  I mean, that literally is what Elon's position is with the H1B stuff. But the reason I want to talk about Leap Motion is, you know who the CEO of Leap Motion was?

• 22:04Jordi Hays?

  Uh, I don't, I don't.

• 22:06John Coogan?

  David Holes.

• 22:06Jordi Hays?

  No way.

• 22:07John Coogan?

  Founder of Mid Journey.

• 22:08Jordi Hays?

  No way.

• 22:08John Coogan?

  And so, and Leap Motion was, I mean, great company. It was a hand tracker for virtual reality. So it was this little like USB stick looking device that then you would put your hand over and it would track your hands. You could put it on the front of a VR headset and very like DIY it into the Oculus back in like the hacker days and it could do some basic hand tracking. They tried to sell the company to Apple. They get completely rugged. Apple had, uh, Apple had like

• 22:32Jordi Hays?

  They like reengineered it.

• 22:33John Coogan?

  Printed like, "Welcome to Apple. Here's your email. Here's your corporate badge for everyone at Leap Motion allegedly," uh, or like according to the reporting. And the deal fell through at the last second because I think David Holes went in and was like, "I don't like this corporate structure. Like, I'm not gonna, I'm down, I'm not down. Like, I'm out."

• 22:51Jordi Hays?

  No way.

• 22:51John Coogan?

  Yeah, something like that. He like turned them down and it was like kind of a mess. But then clearly he had just like incredible abilities to build and be a founder because even though Leap Motion, it wound up being kind of like an acquired or a different company and kind of sold.

• 23:05Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 23:05John Coogan?

  But it's just crazy that she, yeah, yeah, that's Leap Motion. It's just crazy that she led product and engineering teams at Leap Motion because David Holes, it's like all the top technical talent in the valley essentially wound up working on AI eventually. They all, they all moved over there. Um, and so then she goes to

• 23:26Jordi Hays?

  They didn't move into crypto?

• 23:29John Coogan?

  Not many. Uh, all the best marketers moved to crypto, which we'll talk about that. We have a story on that one. It's great from Nick Carter. During a brief stint at Tesla, she played a key role as a product, senior product manager in the development of the electric car maker's Model X. And so this is another interesting like sliding doors moment. She probably had meetings with Elon at some point.

• 23:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 23:48John Coogan?

  Now she's probably got Elon's phone number. Again, you're leaving OpenAI.

• 23:54John Coogan?

  Why don't you go to XAI? You gotta start your own thing. It's just interesting. Like, there's one narrative where it's like, hey, all of these people are super talented. They're all super entrepreneurial. They all want to run their own companies, get more equity. It makes more financial sense. Um, but if it was truly like mission driven on like Sam was too chaotic, he must be stopped. You would create an alliance, right? You would have to.

• 24:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 24:19John Coogan?

  But they're not doing it.

• 24:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 24:22John Coogan?

  The revealed preference is that actually this is commoditized and this is just about money. That's my take on it.

• 24:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, or wanting control. The other, the counterpoint to that is wanting control over what will be a super valuable, important commodity.

• 24:36John Coogan?

  Asset. Yes, exactly. Commodity, though. Not, not this like god war.

• 24:39Jordi Hays?

  God.

• 24:40John Coogan?

  Because if we're really going to war over this and the, and the robot army, it's like, do you really think you want to have the fifth strongest army when Elon and Sam are like warring? Or, or should you just, or should you just create, or should you just pick a side now?

• 24:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 24:56John Coogan?

  And actually go and win. So the game theory here, I think, I think suggests that this is more about money than mission. In, in general. That's my take.

• 25:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 25:06John Coogan?

  Anyway, Maroti told Fortune Magazine earlier this year that growing up in

• 25:10Jordi Hays?

  The other, the other side of it is all these people are already so post economic that, that potentially, potentially there is still an angle of, once you have more money than you could ever spend in your life.

• 25:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Jordi Hays?

  Do you want to just, just do the work that you really want to do without worrying, dealing with the, the sort of BS of, of having a crazy.

• 25:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 25:38Jordi Hays?

  Boss that you don't necessarily trust, or you don't like, or whatever, right?

• 25:41John Coogan?

  In some ways, this is like, uh, getting a tenured position in a, at like a Stanford.

• 25:46Jordi Hays?

  At a research lab.

• 25:47John Coogan?

  Yeah. But you, but you cannot do that because Stanford will never give you a billion dollars to build a 20K GPU cluster. So doing the work of, of academia now takes the form of a venture backed.

• 25:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, there, there's a totally a world where some of these foundation models, spinouts from OpenAI just kind of twiddle their thumbs and, and do cool research, but just never reach sort of commercial. I, I'm not expecting that out of thinking machines or, but SSI seems like it could be a good candidate for that.

• 26:14John Coogan?

  There were a couple of those. I mean, I mean, the sort of character, right? Where, where it's like the guy kind of was like, oh, I got like insane product market fit, but I don't really like the market, so I'm out.

• 26:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:24John Coogan?

  I mean, that was the read for, for a lot of people that said that. I, I don't know.

• 26:28Jordi Hays?

  Potential one shot.

• 26:29John Coogan?

  But the guy, I mean, he just did Dorkesh, like, uh, gnome. He's, he's, I mean, he seems like legitimately like a computer science genius.

• 26:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 26:35John Coogan?

  And so like, yeah, that guy should just be doing like computer science. He doesn't need to be worrying about like, how can we squeeze more, more pennies out of these like? Gooners that are like customers, basically like it's not, it's not important work to him. And that's fine. And that's the nature of capitalism in America. And to be clear, I'm not, I'm not saying, oh, there, these people are in the money, in it for the money. And that's a black pill. I'm saying it's a mega, mega white pill. Like it's the best outcome here. It means that AI is going to go extremely well. It's going to generate a lot of economic value. It's not going to be some chaotic, you know, apocalypse situation. Because if you think it's the apocalypse, you don't act like this. That's my take is like, this is not, this is not the behavior of somebody who has like, what did Ilya see?

• 27:18John Coogan?

  You know, oh, like he saw like he glimpsed into the ASI and realized that like, we were all going to be killed. It's like, no, that was a marketing stunt. That era is over. And now we are in the oil extraction and commoditization perspective. And yeah, go get the money. It's great. I encourage everyone to do this. This is fantastic. Get the bag. I'd already been working in AI applications at Tesla, she told Fortune, but I was more interested in general intelligence. I wasn't sure it was going to happen at that point, but I knew that even if we just got very close thing, the things we would build along the way would be incredible. I wanted to be part of that. Maroti has often spoken publicly about AI's power as a tool echoing sentiments expressed by Altman,

• 28:02John Coogan?

  a key champion of AI technology in a world that has grown skeptical about the company's technology. There are a lot of hard problems to figure out. How do you get the model to find the thing, to do the thing that you want it to do? 100% true. Satya Nadella is in here talking about pumping up Maroti. Cause I think he at that point was saying like, yeah, kind of bullish on her. As a result, he wrote, Mira has helped build some of the most exciting AI technologies we've ever seen. Obviously true. I mean, she's like clearly a goaded product and AI manager. Like there's no question about that. Interesting. Well, we will see where it goes from.

• 28:36Jordi Hays?

  It's interesting that Microsoft didn't invest in thinking machines.

• 28:39John Coogan?

  I don't actually know.

• 28:40Jordi Hays?

  At the time, at the time, it seemed like, it seemed like Satya had more loyalty to OpenAI.

• 28:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Jordi Hays?

  And then more recently, you could imagine Microsoft would make direct investments in potential competitors, given that OpenAI is working with Oracle and other companies that are now competitive again with Microsoft.

• 29:03John Coogan?

  It seems like Mira and Ilya left around the same time. Ilya is raising, what, a billion with 500 from Green Oaks coming in? And Mira, it says here, I don't know how true this is, can you look it up? It says secured significant venture funding over $100 million to support capital intensive large scale model training. So

• 29:22Jordi Hays?

  This is interesting because that's a

• 29:24John Coogan?

  Compared to Ilya, but who knows? I mean, a billion dollar deal can come together in like two seconds in Silicon Valley these days.

• 29:32Jordi Hays?

  No, it's possible. It's possible she's just throwing a bone to a handful of early partners and then she's going to do the one on five billion, like, you know, in a month.

• 29:41John Coogan?

  Yeah. And like, the crazy thing is that like, but I don't, I don't, I don't think it might not be a bad deal. I mean, obviously everyone's pointing to like the dot com narrative, being like, oh, there's going to be one power law winner and all this. But if it's commoditized, you know, maybe, maybe you just got to go drill the wells, get the GPUs, just buy a bunch of GPUs. I don't know. We'll see. Anyway, that's the story of Mira. Is there anything else we should cover in here? It's pretty interesting. I mean, departed in 2014 and then founded immediately. I'm just so fascinated by the fact that like, it's just model company after model company after model company. And like, just they all seem to believe the exact same thing, which is like, these models are highly versatile.

• 30:26John Coogan?

  But they also don't believe that this will be a power law win.

• 30:31Jordi Hays?

  Are you a DAU of more than one?

• 30:34John Coogan?

  LLM? No.

• 30:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 30:35John Coogan?

  Only ChatGPT is on my home row.

• 30:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 30:38John Coogan?

  And then I use, I have Gemini Pro Plus, like, that I can find. When I find it, I can use it sometimes, but it's very hard to access. And I use that if it's like in just a book, because it has a million, million token context window. So that one feature is something I use. Perplexity every once in a while, Grok every once in a while, in X. I do like Grok for image generation is fantastic because there's no guardrails. So it'll just generate like, oh, you want a picture of Tom Cruise, you know, fighting Mickey Mouse? Like, no problem. Which is like, I think actually fine because it's very transformative and it's clearly satirical.

• 31:20John Coogan?

  But all the other LLMs are terrified of IP infringement. And I think Disney and all the IP holders are like, yeah, actually, we don't want to get in in a legal battle with Elon Musk, the president's first bunny.

• 31:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the other thing is that Elon will post through, he will, he will post, like, every lawyer would advise Elon, please don't call Sam Altman a scam artist during the lawsuit, because then Sam can go out and like sue for huge damages. He could say, you know, you prevented this $2 billion investment or whatever.

• 31:59John Coogan?

  There's a million ways to go wrong.

• 32:01Jordi Hays?

  But Elon, being the world's richest man, is willing to just take that risk. And so he would do that to a major corporation, too, right?

• 32:09John Coogan?

  Well, I mean, just, he said F you to, what, to like Disney and all the major, to Bob Iger, just for stopping advertising. Not even like a suit. Just saying like, hey, look, X is getting a little wild for our brand. We're not gonna advertise there. And he was like, I have a message for you. And he flicked them off at that Dan Primack thing.

• 32:30Jordi Hays?

  F off.

• 32:31John Coogan?

  Yeah, F off, right?

• 32:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 32:32John Coogan?

  Crazy. Yeah. So, you know, I'm glad because sometimes, you know, the four-year-old son asks for a picture of a DreamWorks character interacting with a Disney character.

• 32:45Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 32:46John Coogan?

  And you know what? I'm happy to abide. And you're gonna have to come after me, DreamWorks and Disney, because you know, sometimes Mickey Mouse wants to hang out with Shrek.

• 32:57John Coogan?

  I think those two are in different IP worlds, but they shouldn't be, and I should be able to instantiate them. And I think it's very additive, and it's not a replacement for the real thing. It's clearly, clearly additive. Anyway, speaking of intellectual property and luxury goods, kind of, let's go on to the French billionaire working his Trump ties to spare his luxury empire. That's right, we're talking about LVMH and Bernard Arnault. Let's kick it off. Jordy, what you got?

• 33:24Jordi Hays?

  Yep. The day after President Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania last summer, he received a call from a familiar French voice. It was Bernard Arnault, owner of the globe-spanning luxury empire. Arnault wanted to check in on the man he had known for decades. Trump was also in the middle of a fierce presidential campaign, as well as several criminal proceedings. The phone call from Arnault sent a clear signal. The luxury titan was sticking with Trump through thick and thin. With Trump now in office and warning of steep tariffs on European goods.

• 33:55John Coogan?

  Oh, the tariffs.

• 33:56Jordi Hays?

  The question, yeah, of course. The question is whether Arnault can leverage his connection to keep his luxury conglomerate out of any trade wars. Trades would be a blow to Arnault's empire, whose largest market is the US, equal in size to all of Europe combined. Trump has called the European Union's trade surplus with the US a quote-unquote "atrocities," but he also leans on personal relationships to guide his policy, as every businessman in the world does. The ties between the families are extensive, dating to when the two patriarchs were up-and-coming property developers in Manhattan. That's a whole other side of Arnault's story. He was like in the real estate development world, in the construction industry back in France. So Arnault's second eldest son, Alexander, has become friends with Trump's

• 34:40Jordi Hays?

  son-in-law Jared Kushner. Ivanka Trump, also funny story. I made a, so back in 2021, we launched Helpful VCs, which was that NFT project, where we made 400, you know, crypto-punk style, you know, NFTs, and we list, we put them online, and we said, any VC that reposts this in the next four hours gets theirs for free, otherwise we're gonna auction it off. So of course, every investor... You know, NFTs were starting to become popular. They were like, I'm not letting my NFT get auctioned off to someone else. Everybody reposted it. Super viral. Alexander saw it and then one of a mutual friend of ours hit me up and he was like,

• 35:22Jordi Hays?

  "Hey, could you, Alexander wants to make a crypto punk style NFT for his dad, Bernard. Could you make him one?" I was like, "Sure. It costs like 50 bucks." I was like, "Here you go." So anyways.

• 35:36John Coogan?

  That's an amazing story. I had no idea.

• 35:38Jordi Hays?

  Anyways, because Alexander had, was tapped into Web3 and had done some stuff with Tiffany's.

• 35:43John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:44Jordi Hays?

  They kind of, I think, approached it in the right way where they dipped their toes, but didn't go like, you know, they weren't saying like, "GM, wag me" and stuff like that. So anyways.

• 35:53John Coogan?

  Alex Sequoia, do you remember that? Sequoia rebranded as like the Web3 faucet mainnet thing for like a week. And it was like at the actual top and then the, and then the SBF FTX thing happened. It was like, okay, back to normal. Back to the basics.

• 36:07Jordi Hays?

  Amazing. Ivanka Trump is a friend of Arno's daughter, Delphine, and a devotee, devotee of Dior. The brand Delphine oversees the CEO. So for those that don't know, Bernard has done a fantastic job of getting his, all of his children, like, running different brands in the empire. So she runs Dior, the Arno's conglomerate, even pays rent to the Trump Organization, which is the landlord for LVMH's Louis Vuitton store in Midtown.

• 36:31John Coogan?

  So does LVMH do cosmetics? Because you were talking on the last show that Melania should do a cosmetics line. If she doesn't have one already, she might. She did one. There we go. Yeah, that seems obvious. Okay. I'll continue here. During Trump's first term, Arno's decision to expand handbag production in the US and publicly promote the move with Trump helped the luxury industry largely avoid an initial wave of tariffs that hit other European sectors. Why are you laughing?

• 36:59Jordi Hays?

  I just think it's, it's the funniest game of checkers where for no, it's like, I just. I just really don't want to get tariffs like, okay, open up production in the US.

• 37:13John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:13Jordi Hays?

  I'll text it to Trump. Hey, do you see what we did?

• 37:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 37:16Jordi Hays?

  Like, here's why you shouldn't, you know, slap like a 15% tariff.

• 37:20John Coogan?

  Trump left office before a second salvo of tariffs could take a, take effect. Those levies, which some dubbed the LVMH tax, were designed to hit luxury goods in retaliation for a French digital tax affecting US tech giants.

• 37:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 37:32John Coogan?

  Hey Bernard, you gotta get it together over there.

• 37:34Jordi Hays?

  Get it, get your house in order.

• 37:35John Coogan?

  Ban the cookies. Let's cool it with the cookies.

• 37:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 37:38John Coogan?

  The cookie banners.

• 37:40Jordi Hays?

  The cookie thing is just, I made a joke about it when I was in France in late December, early January, and it just is so over the top.

• 37:49John Coogan?

  It's insane.

• 37:49Jordi Hays?

  It's just, it just is.

• 37:50John Coogan?

  He should be running, Bernard should actually do this because think about it. You walk in the Louis Vuitton store, are they gonna be like, hey, just so you know, like, you're in a store right now. Hey, there's a store, you might have an opportunity to buy something. Can you please like sign on this line that like you're looking at merchandise and you're in a store? So it's like, yeah, I know I'm in the store. I know I'm on a website. I know the cookies exist. Like, why am I clicking a button for this?

• 38:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 38:09John Coogan?

  It's unnecessary.

• 38:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 38:11John Coogan?

  And it's the same thing that you would never see that in a luxury environment.

• 38:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 38:15John Coogan?

  And Europe seems hell bent on making their entire internet.

• 38:20Jordi Hays?

  You have to imagine that Arno.

• 38:21John Coogan?

  Low class and vulgar.

• 38:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you have to imagine that Arno is inspired to some degree by Elon and that if you have billions of dollars, you absolutely can influence the outcome of an election and make sure your guy.

• 38:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Jordi Hays?

  Is in. So yeah, again, a lot of like, the obvious thing, if you're trying to avoid tariffs is to show Trump, look, we're investing in America, you know, we're gonna, you know, develop, you know, production locally. This is an important, you know, sector. But, but then the, the sort of more complicated way to do it is to say like, I'm gonna fix, fix French governance.

• 38:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 38:55Jordi Hays?

  And like, I'm gonna get my guy in and I'm gonna make sure we're not like launching these taxes on American, you know, digital.

• 39:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Jordi Hays?

  Goods and products.

• 39:02John Coogan?

  I still wonder like, LVMH tax, I guess it's still hanging, hanging over Arno's business empire, it says here, like. Of all the things to tariff, that seems like the safest.

• 39:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 39:13John Coogan?

  Not just because like luxury goods aren't important, but literally because like they're not price sensitive in the same way, like they're not price elastic. And so, uh, you know, if you tax cigarettes, people consume the exact same amount of cigarettes. Like it's fine to tax cigarettes, basically.

• 39:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 39:27John Coogan?

  And it's the same thing for luxury goods. I would imagine that if, if they, if there's a tax on Louis Vuitton stuff, the price goes up, it becomes even more exclusive. They sell roughly the same profits, aren't majorly disrupted versus if you're taxing, you know, cheap.

• 39:44Jordi Hays?

  No, the, the main, the main thing is.

• 39:45John Coogan?

  A little bit. It's like, all of a sudden, the American stuff becomes competitive again.

• 39:48Jordi Hays?

  So I was reading an article in the journal about, about the Chinese, like LVMH's opportunity in China right now. And they have basically, there's already luxury inflation that they set.

• 40:00John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 40:00Jordi Hays?

  The thing is that if, if prices have to go up, Bernard wants to be the guy that's raising prices and capturing that additional thing. He doesn't want to be raising prices because you have to account, you know, for this tariff. Or you don't want the consumer to be absorbing more costs because of

• 40:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:17Jordi Hays?

  Something that's not your margin, right?

• 40:19John Coogan?

  I feel like, yeah, like, uh, there's so many places where I would probably be pro tariff just to make the American local industry more competitive.

• 40:29Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 40:30John Coogan?

  You know, we talk about drones, we talk about, uh, you know, DJI versus GoPro. We talk about, um, you know, all, all sorts of hardware stuff, unitry versus Boston Dynamics, all these different things with, could, could, or the Tesla Optimus. Uh, but what, like, you know, like a lot of these, I was looking at like, you know, Swiss watches versus American watches. Like there's one guy who makes bespoke watches really in America.

• 40:57Jordi Hays?

  You're on the list. You should, you should actually make sure you're on.

• 41:00John Coogan?

  I really should.

• 41:01Jordi Hays?

  On the list because it's going to be like a decade.

• 41:03John Coogan?

  RGW or RGM, I think RGM, uh, out in Pennsylvania. And then there's Hamilton, which is like a great and historical organization, but they're not at the same level as the Swiss guys. So it's like, if you tax that, it's like Patek, Vacheron and, uh, and Audemars Piguet are still like, they're only games in town at that level. And I'm, and I'm wondering like, if all of a sudden Louis Vuitton is more expensive. What is more competitive in America?

• 41:32Jordi Hays?

  Like, yeah.

• 41:33John Coogan?

  Do we just start rebuilding? Maybe it'd be an opportunity for an American new luxury line to pop up.

• 41:39Jordi Hays?

  The thing about luxury, though, is it takes 100 years to actually build a luxury brand.

• 41:43John Coogan?

  Whereas, whereas if an American entrepreneur came out today and was like, I have a drone that's just as good as a DJI, not even better, just the same, same price, we're price competitive, and, and I would buy that one, obviously. But right now, it's like, okay, if I need a drone, like, it has to work, I have to go with DJI.

• 42:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 42:01John Coogan?

  Because the other, the other, the other one is one from America that doesn't work and, and costs twice as much. Anyway, let's move on. The article mentions China. LVMH is counting on strong US demand to power its growth in the coming years after sales in China, the second biggest market, plunged around 20% last year.

• 42:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 42:20John Coogan?

  And you were telling me something about that.

• 42:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, so.

• 42:23John Coogan?

  It tracks with iPhone sales perfectly, right?

• 42:25Jordi Hays?

  So many luxury product companies had been dependent on China for the vast majority of their growth over the past decade, and that just like slammed basically to a halt and is contracting now. That has to do with like economic issues in China, also the Chinese consumer kind of like finding their way and there being actual consumer brands in China that are starting to be compelling.

• 42:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:46Jordi Hays?

  To people locally, but, but yeah, there's Kering Group, who, whose sales were down like 30% or something like that, so.

• 42:54John Coogan?

  In China?

• 42:54Jordi Hays?

  In China.

• 42:55John Coogan?

  Okay. That's interesting. I'd love to know how LVMH is doing over the past year to 10 years, if you could look that up on public. But there's some interesting information here. LVMH operates 14 factories in the United States already and is planning to pump more money into Tiffany, the iconic American jeweler it acquired in 2021.

• 43:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so in 2024, Kering sales in Asia Pacific, including China, declined 30% due to weakened demand. And so there's, there's, this kind of caught people off guard to some degree because there's a bunch of stores that are already like badge, like have the branding of whatever, you know, sort of luxury brand is going in there and just nobody's moving in. Or, or they're open and like people just aren't coming through, so. Really tough scenario right there. Apple's having the same issues. Their sales are down almost double digits as of last year in China. And again, part of the reason for that is that the iPhone in China is more of a luxury product than it is a utility. And we talked

• 43:57Jordi Hays?

  about this yesterday off the show, but Apple has huge advantages in the US. They have their moats, which is like messaging, payments, the developer ecosystem. They don't have that in China because of WeChat and these sort of super apps. And so if somebody can just trade for a cheaper phone and get like 99% of the utility that they would get from an iPhone.

• 44:18John Coogan?

  Whereas if you go off iPhone right now, it's like you're losing your iPhoto storage, you're using all your group chats, you're losing your calendar.

• 44:24Jordi Hays?

  Bunch of apps.

• 44:25John Coogan?

  Bunch of apps just won't work anymore. It is very, you're very locked in. So this is fun. He went to the inauguration ceremony and sat next to Bezos and Musk, who he's been like going up and down. That is the richest man. He recently was knocked off and Elon is the richest one now. But he was flanked by his wife and two of his five children. Who would refuse an invitation from the President of the United States to attend their inauguration? Arnault told reporters, besides, I've had a longstanding relationship with him. Like, we're best buds. I love him, which is probably true. This article is based on interviews. Arnault first crossed paths with Trump when the Frenchman was living in New York in the

• 45:09John Coogan?

  early 1980s. Arnault had left France after the election of François Mitterand, the first socialist president of France's modern republic, led to higher taxes and the nationalization of Swaziland, the French economy. He literally did the meme. If Trump's elected, I'm going to Canada. If Kamala is elected, I'm going to France. And he did that. He was like, there's a socialist here. I'm bouncing. I'm going to New York. And it must have paid off for him because he said he didn't own a single luxury brand at the time. Instead, like Trump, he aspired to become a real estate mogul. He opened offices at Rockefeller Center while Trump Tower was being erected on 56th and 5th. Arnault met Trump for the first time at a charity dinner at the Plaza Hotel in the early 80s, years before Trump acquired

• 45:54John Coogan?

  the storied hotel. Trump was the embodiment of a distinctly American form of luxury, one that splashed brand names in bold based font on everything from buildings to jets. Loud opulence.

• 46:06Jordi Hays?

  Loud opulence. Really the creator.

• 46:10John Coogan?

  Arnaud's most high-profile investments were on the Florida coast. U.S. real estate, however, was difficult terrain for the Frenchman who struggled with an unfamiliar market. When Mitteran's cash-strapped government made a U-turn toward a more business-friendly policies, Arnaud returned to home.

• 46:24Jordi Hays?

  That's so dirty. You're only business-friendly when you're cash-strapped? Oh, now you wanna?

• 46:30John Coogan?

  I mean, that's the Thiel thing is like, is like even the socialists would say, "You gotta let the capitalists make some money before you can redistribute it."

• 46:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 46:39John Coogan?

  So like, it doesn't make sense to do socialism in a 2% GDP growth economy. You need to get to 10% GDP growth. And that's like where all the AGI socialists come from, is they say, "Hey, look, yeah, like, UBI sounds crazy now, but when we're growing GDP 10%, there's gonna be so much money flowing around, it'll be easier to pay for UBI. Everything will be paid off." Anyway, you know, these guys are futurists. When Arnaud resurfaced in New York in the late 1980s, it was the purveyor of a different kind of luxury. Arnaud had purchased Christian Dior, and he was fighting for control of LVMH. He had garnered a reputation as France's sharp-elder dealmaker back in France, drawing comparisons to Trump himself. Arnaud and Trump shook hands at a party at the Metropolitan

• 47:23John Coogan?

  Club in 1989. Arnaud had helped sponsor a black tie event for the French luxury industry at the Metropolitan Club in Manhattan. They shared a table, according to video of the event, and Arnaud is seated next to a bejeweled Ivana Trump, as Trump beams as he arrives at the table to shake hands. Arnaud continued snapping up fashion and luxury brands, including American ones like Marc Jacobs and Donna Karen. The real front lines of the expansion, however, was the U.S. real estate market. It was like a game of Monopoly. Arnaud's brands needed to occupy prime locations in America's most exclusive shopping corridors, talking about Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, just around the corner of Trump Tower, Bulgari.

• 48:08John Coogan?

  Et cetera. And so he goes on an absolute tear.

• 48:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And if you haven't already, go listen to the acquired episode of LVMH because the story is just. Yeah, the I honestly have listened to both. So I'm probably have overlapping narratives. But um, but yeah, both of those episodes are fantastic and they give you um, just just learning about Arnaud. Just an absolute, he didn't certainly didn't lock into being at one point, the world's richest man.

• 48:40John Coogan?

  Well, let's close out with this, like how the taxes are actually shaping up to see, you know, what the prediction is for how LVMH bears going forward in the Trump 2.0 administration. In 2019, the Trump administration imposed tariffs of seven on 7.5 billion worth of European goods in retaliation for EU subsidies to Airbus. The duties targeted aircraft, cheese and alcohol like wine and scotch. Bad news for the French diet, the French diet paradox.

• 49:08Jordi Hays?

  Justin Maris.

• 49:09John Coogan?

  Luxury items like champagne and handbag and handbags were spared. Thank God.

• 49:16John Coogan?

  Dom Perignon.

• 49:17Jordi Hays?

  Some people scratching their heads.

• 49:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, at 250, 350 a bottle, you know, you put tariffs on that. We're going to be making January 6th look like a picnic.

• 49:29Jordi Hays?

  A baby shower.

• 49:30John Coogan?

  A baby shower. Yeah. The day before the tariffs were enforced, Arnaud and Alexandre boarded Air Force One with Trump en route to Johnson County, Texas to inaugurate the new Louis Vuitton workshop in Texas.

• 49:46Jordi Hays?

  Notice how they say workshop. They don't say factory because a lot of it is actually still done by hand.

• 49:52John Coogan?

  Interesting. LVMH invested $50 million in the facility with plans to hire 1,000 employees within five years. The bags produced here in including the never full Neo New and Metis. I'm not familiar with these bags, bear the label, made in the USA. When a French reporter asked Trump why he was slapping levies on wine and cheese while ignoring champagne and leather goods, Trump said he had been discussing the issue with Arnaud. "I can't tax him because he moved to the United States. He was very smart. He was way ahead," Trump said. That's a good point. I mean, it's the dealmaker guy. Like, it seems like corrupt, but at the same time, it's like, the whole point is, what does America get out of this trade deal?

• 50:35John Coogan?

  And there are a number of things. There are money from tariffs or jobs in domestic manufacturing. And so, you know, Trump says like, "Hey, I threatened him. He played ball. And so, I have to..."

• 50:47Jordi Hays?

  "I can't tax him."

• 50:47John Coogan?

  "I have to back down." Yeah, like, that's the point. It is, it is also tricky because like, champagne, how are you gonna move that? Like, you can't move that to Texas, I don't think.

• 50:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 50:59John Coogan?

  Trump's presence at the unveiling caused consternation at Louis Vuitton's offices in Paris. Nicolas Guesquere, Louis Vuitton's artistic director for women's collections, wrote on Instagram, "Standing against any political action, I am a fashion designer refusing this association." It's like, kind of a reasonable thing to say. He's not that crazy. But yeah, obviously, there's a lot of people that work at LVMH that are not down with the MAGA bros. And so, they're gonna have a rough time. Pulling Trump aside, Arnaud confided plans to make a major investment in the United States. He didn't say what, but days later, LVMH made, went public with a bid for Tiffany's.

• 51:40John Coogan?

  The roughly $16.2 billion deal was the biggest acquisition of Arnaud's career. And with Tiffany's flagship store, LVMH now controls 304 corners.

• 51:51Jordi Hays?

  And Tiffany is a flagship American luxury brand.

• 51:52John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 51:53Jordi Hays?

  There's not really any, can you think of any that actually...

• 51:56John Coogan?

  The Comme des Garde, and it's not an American brand.

• 51:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 51:58John Coogan?

  Yep. And so, I don't know who owns Cartier, but, you know.

• 52:02Jordi Hays?

  LVMH.

• 52:03John Coogan?

  Wait, really?

• 52:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 52:03John Coogan?

  You're kidding?

• 52:04Jordi Hays?

  No.

• 52:05John Coogan?

  They own both?

• 52:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 52:07John Coogan?

  The most monopolistic thing, like, yeah, like, where is...

• 52:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so Cartier is owned by Richemont, but Bernard owns a big stake in Richemont.

• 52:22John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 52:22Jordi Hays?

  So it's indirect.

• 52:24John Coogan?

  Yeah. Where's Lena Kahn on this? She's probably buying luxury watches and she's like, you know what? Let him.

• 52:30Jordi Hays?

  Oh, sorry.

• 52:33Jordi Hays?

  So actually, I take it back.

• 52:36John Coogan?

  Okay, break it down.

• 52:37Jordi Hays?

  I was spreading, I was just spreading misinformation. The size of Arnaud's stake, when he, when, when he acquired it was undisclosed. Bernard holds it in his words as, as an investment.

• 52:49John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 52:50Jordi Hays?

  The thing is, is Arnaud has a history. If you listen to the founders podcast episode, he will just start, he'll want to buy a company or he just starts buying the stock.

• 52:59John Coogan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 53:00Jordi Hays?

  So this is what he does.

• 53:01John Coogan?

  He's basically on his version of public, just like ripping little checks here and there. Dollar cost averaging in.

• 53:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. He's dollar cost averaging in and, and it's totally possible like he just doesn't even want to own all of Richemont. But anyways, he sees it as an investment, not, he's never said, oh, I'm going to try to take this over.

• 53:19John Coogan?

  So he doesn't have a controlling stake, but he does have a stake.

• 53:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 53:21John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 53:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 53:23John Coogan?

  So, yeah.

• 53:25John Coogan?

  No matter whether you go Cartier crash or Tiffany Patek.

• 53:29Jordi Hays?

  But it's interesting because Richemont, Richemont also owns Van Cleef.

• 53:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 53:34Jordi Hays?

  Which you know that Arnaud, it's such a hot, you know, brand, especially right in this moment. Men and women are wearing it. You know that, you know that he, he wants.

• 53:46John Coogan?

  He wants.

• 53:46Jordi Hays?

  He wants it, but then they also own like IWC.

• 53:49John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 53:50Jordi Hays?

  Piaget, like maybe he doesn't want those.

• 53:53John Coogan?

  Piaget's great.

• 53:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 53:54John Coogan?

  IWC, I'm not a big fan of it.

• 53:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 53:57John Coogan?

  I mean, good pilot watches. You can't hate them. So let's see.

• 54:02Jordi Hays?

  It's such a funny thing, being a public company and just having somebody text you that says, hey, don't want to ruin your day, but Bernard Arnaud just bought, you know, bought 6% of the company and we're hearing he's making other bids.

• 54:17John Coogan?

  It is, it is very, very funny.

• 54:21John Coogan?

  Anyway, so now that LVMH was Trump's tenant and Arnaud needed to extend his conglomerate stay into the brick building. Once the Tiffany flagship store reopened, Arnaud wanted to temporarily move Louis Vuitton's flagship into the brick building while its permanent store underwent a sweeping renovation. Arnaud dispatched Alexandra to New York to become the number two executive at Tiffany on January 6th, 2021, the same day that Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Just coincidence. By the time he left office, Trump was widely considered a pariah among the business elites. Alexander Arnaud was the exception. The young executive and his wife died with Trump in 2023 at Mar-a-Lago.

• 55:04Jordi Hays?

  So for any of our listeners that are under five years old, it's hard to even, our kids listen to this from time to time. It goes on in the house. People don't, you know, these five year olds don't realize that, that Trump was a pariah.

• 55:19John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 55:20Jordi Hays?

  Just in, in 2021, every, like, he would probably call somebody like Jeff Bezos and Jeff Bezos would just like not pick up.

• 55:28John Coogan?

  I never need to, I never need to think of that ever again.

• 55:31Jordi Hays?

  Like, hey, sorry.

• 55:32John Coogan?

  Been removed from politics.

• 55:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it was just fully removed. And so the inauguration this time was just hilarious in that everybody came to kiss the ring.

• 55:41John Coogan?

  And all these, yeah, imagine, we talked about this with the, you know, decision to deplatform Trump. It's like, everyone in that group chat was like, yeah, there's definitely never going to be any negative repercussions from this. And then four years later, they're like.

• 55:56Jordi Hays?

  And then even, even a year later.

• 55:58John Coogan?

  He has infinite leverage over us.

• 56:00Jordi Hays?

  And then a year or two later, there's this really viral post that's continued to go viral with somebody saying, it's crazy that we just deplatformed Trump. And there was just like, literally no consequences. It's just like, oh, we just lose the election in a landslide.

• 56:16John Coogan?

  Yeah, I forget who that is, but yeah, it's, it's great. I can't tell if they were joking. I think they might've been joking when they posted that.

• 56:23Jordi Hays?

  But who knows?

• 56:24John Coogan?

  But it is hilarious because obviously there were very serious consequences, but not for the LVMH organization and the Arnaud family because Alexander is a young man on the move. Trump wrote in a social media post at the time, "We were celebrating the deal we made." Alexander Arnaud, actress Gal Gadot, and Tiffany CEO Anthony Ledoux cut the ribbon at the reopening of Tiffany's flagship store in 2023. Louis Vuitton's Fifth Avenue store transferred to the brick building, turning it into a department store-sized temple of commerce.

• 56:56Jordi Hays?

  Temple of commerce.

• 56:57John Coogan?

  We love temples of commerce. Giant sculptures of a giraffe and ostrich were added to the facade of the building. Very cool. And so after Trump won the election, Arnaud moved Alexander to Moet Hennessy, LVMH's drinks division, which generates much of its revenue as in the US, which generates a lot of its revenue in the US. Alexander took over as the unit's number two official this month, but people familiar with the matter say he's being groomed to eventually take the top job at Moet Hennessy. The drinks business faces more difficult straits than the conglomerate's leather goods and fashion divisions. Drinks have much thinner profit margins, making it harder for them to absorb any additional levies. So we gotta keep buying.

• 57:43John Coogan?

  Dom?

• 57:43Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 57:44John Coogan?

  That's really important. We're going to save this company here on the consumer side.

• 57:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and there's a lot of talk around who's, who's Arnaud's favorite boy?

• 57:52John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 57:52Jordi Hays?

  Child, right? And so the way that, the way that he's sort of moving Alexander around the empire, sort of training him up.

• 58:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 58:01Jordi Hays?

  Presumably, like, he seems like the leading candidate for becoming the top dog, but

• 58:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Jordi Hays?

  Again, we're not

• 58:07John Coogan?

  It's exciting.

• 58:08Jordi Hays?

  Don't quite know yet.

• 58:08John Coogan?

  And so you can't shift, as we mentioned, you can't shift champagne and cognac, cognac production to the US.

• 58:16John Coogan?

  I think legally, like,

• 58:19John Coogan?

  France has rules that link appellations of wine and liquor to specific regions of the country. And so it's only champagne if it comes from the champagne region of France.

• 58:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 58:28John Coogan?

  It's like a legal term. For now, LVMH executives have been carefully mapping its exports across every customs code category, tracking their exact locations in the shipping process. So the company can quickly determine its exposure to the moment any tariffs take effect. And they're gearing up for more investments in Tiffany. LVMH is spending 10 times more on Tiffany stores than its previous owners and more than twice as much on marketing. Wow, that's a huge investment.

• 58:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 58:56John Coogan?

  That's crazy. Yeah, maybe a Tiffany store in every, in every, every city in America. Whatever people say, the Tiffany, the Tiffany CEO Anthony Ledru says, this is shaping up to be a very pro-business president. So they're coming out marking their claims.

• 59:11Jordi Hays?

  Never hurts to be pro-business.

• 59:12John Coogan?

  Pro-business. Should we do, should we do some, some jet battling? The airplanes have been crashing.

• 59:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 59:20John Coogan?

  It's been very devastating, very sad. Fortunately, no one was killed on the last plane crash. But it did flip over entirely and the wings broke off, which is not good. Seems like pilot air that came in too fast.

• 59:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Do you want to talk a little bit about, you don't need to name the individual, but, but a pilot that we know was kind of breaking down.

• 59:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, I'll just read the texts. This is hilarious. So we're talking about the, the, the crash and my buddy who flies planes says, he thinks it's going to be very stupid for the next five years. Have you seen the video? Have you seen the clear video of the crash? The guy just landed way too hard. Literally nothing wrong with the plane. The weather looks totally fine. Just way too high of a descent rate, which is crazy, since you have way higher air pressure when it's cold, clear day. And Toronto is basically at sea level. Like, bro, these are basically the ideal conditions to land a jet other than the snow on the ground. But that seems like that wasn't a factor. Yeah, because as soon

• 1:00:24John Coogan?

  as they come in, before they even touch the snow, the wheels just break off the plane. And so clearly they came in way too hard. And, and he closes by saying, like, if you told me what You need to land a jet. What would your favorite conditions be to choose? I'd basically choose these exact weather conditions, cold, clear day at sea level. And so, yeah, what a, what a mess. Very, very silly.

• 1:00:51Jordi Hays?

  But anyway, so this, this story kind of ties into the, um, to the last one in some ways because Europe had been subsidizing Airbus. And so this is just this great battle of commercial, you know, airplane manufacturers that's playing out.

• 1:01:07John Coogan?

  And it seems like, it seems like it's worked for them or something. Something's going right at Airbus because the Airbus.

• 1:01:12Jordi Hays?

  Well, is it just that so many things were going wrong at Boeing?

• 1:01:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Jordi Hays?

  Because it's possible if they were just not even executing that well, but just like prioritizing safety.

• 1:01:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:22Jordi Hays?

  Durability of the planes.

• 1:01:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, and that's it.

• 1:01:26Jordi Hays?

  Pilot training.

• 1:01:27John Coogan?

  Maybe, maybe the safest European.

• 1:01:29Jordi Hays?

  Rigorous hiring.

• 1:01:30John Coogan?

  Like just works, I guess.

• 1:01:33John Coogan?

  Or maybe they're not getting brain drained, you know? Like Airbus might be the hottest ticket in, in Europe, whereas in, in, in America, you know, a lot of the great Boeing people probably went to work at SpaceX, et cetera. Anyway, uh, the European company started delivering the new aircraft, the A321 XLR late last year against a backdrop of manufacturing upheaval and financial strain at its American rival. So far, the XLR has racked up more than 500 orders, many from airlines looking to replace older Boeing planes. And can you pull up on public, like, just give me the size of the prize, like market cap for Boeing? What's happening with the stock over the last couple of years? Market cap for Airbus, just to give me some ideas.

• 1:02:15Jordi Hays?

  I'm gonna pull, I'll, I'll send some screenshots to.

• 1:02:17John Coogan?

  To Ben, maybe share? Okay. Uh, I'm gonna keep reading and then you kinda do some deep dive in. The jet's success is one of the starkest signs yet of the diverging fortunes of the two companies with Boeing's troubles leading to gaps in its product lineup that are now being exploited by Airbus. It is also a warning of a bigger threat looming while Boeing is strapped for cash. Airbus is increasingly investing in entirely new generation of aircraft that could shape the duopoly for decades to come.

• 1:02:46John Coogan?

  Very interesting.

• 1:02:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so one, one thing right away with, with Boeing, sort of a narrative violation, but they're somehow up 11, they're, they're up 11% in the past 12 months, which you just, based on all the headlines.

• 1:02:59John Coogan?

  You would not expect that.

• 1:03:00Jordi Hays?

  You just wouldn't expect that.

• 1:03:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Jordi Hays?

  They've had like a very rocky, you know, they went, they, they, they got, you know, badly, um, they badly, you know, their, their stock suffered, obviously with, with, you know, COVID and everything like that. And then it's basically just like

• 1:03:16John Coogan?

  And then the 737 Max.

• 1:03:17Jordi Hays?

  Never actually, never actually fully recovered. So they're still,

• 1:03:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Jordi Hays?

  They're still down.

• 1:03:21John Coogan?

  From peak.

• 1:03:22Jordi Hays?

  They're down 27% over the last five years. So

• 1:03:25John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:25Jordi Hays?

  Pretty meaningful dip. On the other hand, you have, you know, Airbus, which on the, you know, five years up 30%. So they're almost inverted in that sense.

• 1:03:35John Coogan?

  So American Airlines and United Airlines have chosen the Airbus's XLR to replace their Boeing 757 fleets.

• 1:03:43Jordi Hays?

  And again, as a consumer, if I'm looking at two flights, I don't really have that much loyalty to airlines, to be honest. I just kind of like try to book

• 1:03:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Jordi Hays?

  The best flight. Um, the, but I do kind of pay attention if there's two flights that are exactly, you know, pretty much exactly the same. I just go for the Airbus.

• 1:04:03John Coogan?

  That's crazy.

• 1:04:03Jordi Hays?

  And so it's totally possible that, that these airlines are saying, consumers don't want to be flying on Boeing. We need to adjust our fleet.

• 1:04:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Jordi Hays?

  To fit their, their concern.

• 1:04:14John Coogan?

  It's crazy because like, yeah, I mean, you go one level deeper in the stack and like, you know, no one cares that it's like, oh, this is a Rolls Royce engine or like this is a,

• 1:04:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22John Coogan?

  Transdime seat buckle. But most people don't know who makes what planes when they get on a Delta flight or an American Airlines flight. But it's, you know, something going, you know, something's going bad when people start caring about who, what, who, what the plane manufacturer is. But it has been a mess and there's been a lot of negative press, uh, even though just on the safety statistics, like Boeing is still like very, very safe. Um, but it's just the, the,

• 1:04:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49John Coogan?

  The vibes feel off.

• 1:04:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52John Coogan?

  The new model, the latest in its A320 family of aircraft, has another advantage. It doesn't have much competition. Boeing discontinued the 757 in 2004 and shelved plans to build a new aircraft that would have competed directly with the XLR in 2020. The US company's main rival aircraft, the 737 MAX 10, is years behind schedule, awaiting signature from the FAA.

• 1:05:15Jordi Hays?

  If all but a handful of people are let go from the FAA, it's possible that they would just give it, no, they'd give it a rubber stamp because they're like, hey, we really don't have time to deal with this.

• 1:05:27John Coogan?

  It hasn't been all gloom for Boeing. The company in December announced a landmark order for up to 200 MAX 10 jets from Turkey's Pegasus, a carrier that predominantly operates Airbus jets. So they are flipping some people. America Airlines also doubled down on its commitment to MAX 10 with 85 new orders last March. And Airbus isn't without its own problems. Supply chain issues have limited the company's plans to turbocharged production and meet booming demand in the wake of the pandemic. This month, Airbus said it was delaying a long touted hydrogen powered jet. Oh, I had no idea they were even working on that. Anyway, in the five years since 2019, Airbus has spent some 12.9 billion on R and D. Boeing's plane making business has spent 8 billion.

• 1:06:11Jordi Hays?

  You know, this is such an example of like going back, this month Airbus said it was delaying a long touted hydrogen jet, hydrogen powered jet. You didn't even know this was happening. Clearly, you know, the reason that, you know, if you could go back and invest in Tesla years ago, the bull case would be like, this is a big company, very focused on innovation that's going to continue to try to reinvent itself. And these airline manufacturers, you know, these aircraft manufacturers, commercial aircraft manufacturers don't seem like the reason they trade at like 2X revenue is because they have no. Real like they're not really showing, hey, we're committed to innovation. We want to, we want to build the next platform.

• 1:06:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Jordi Hays?

  And anyways, it's just, it's just interesting to think about.

• 1:06:56John Coogan?

  At a large, late-stage company, people's incentives aren't their lifetimes. They're like, I'm here for a couple of years, or I'm here for a decade. I'm building my career, but I'm later in my career. Maybe I'm going to retire in 10 years. Maybe I'm going to retire in 20 years. Elon's thinking like, I'm going to run SpaceX in a thousand years and I'm going to be the president and king of Mars. And so, you know, whether or not it's true, he's certainly thinking long-term and that leads to a very different style of decision-making than the guy who's just like, okay, to really get my retirement package, or to get my bonus, or to get my promotion, I got to put out a press release about some fake thing and get some McKinsey consultants to say it's real.

• 1:07:34Jordi Hays?

  Hydrogen-powered jet. Oh, we're delaying it, but.

• 1:07:37John Coogan?

  And then pump the stock a little bit and then pull back from the last second and say, it was actually never really a thing. It was just a, what's the term? It was just an art project. It was just performance art.

• 1:07:48Jordi Hays?

  Performance art.

• 1:07:49John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. What if they, what if they come out and say that in the next press release? Oh, that hydrogen jet? That was just a bit of performance art.

• 1:07:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56John Coogan?

  It's a side project.

• 1:07:58Jordi Hays?

  This is why Boom Aero could end up being, you know, their recap could end up being like the best investment ever is because if they can pull it off, then these big, either Boeing or Airbus will have to come in and buy it, or they'll just sell directly.

• 1:08:10John Coogan?

  Yes. And for everyone who's saying, oh, Blake's probably like, the CEO of Boom is like, is super diluted now. Like, you know, it's going to be rough for him. If he really starts crushing and like delivering, delivering in a serious, serious way.

• 1:08:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24John Coogan?

  He can reincorporate in Texas and do the Elon thing and be like, I want 25% of this company and I'll, and you'll give it to me if I hit, you know, 100 billion market cap.

• 1:08:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36John Coogan?

  And all the shareholders will be like, absolutely, because it makes perfect economic sense, just like it did with Tesla.

• 1:08:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:41John Coogan?

  And so, you know, if you're, if you're a founder and you're diluted, you're kind of down but not out.

• 1:08:48Jordi Hays?

  You have.

• 1:08:48John Coogan?

  Don't give up because you can always get back in the game.

• 1:08:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:51John Coogan?

  This is a new thing.

• 1:08:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:52John Coogan?

  Wasn't the case for a long time.

• 1:08:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, Paul, you can imagine Paul Graham being a big part of that round, presumably, and the other investors. I'm sure they were. Thinking we need to make sure that Blake is incentivized to triple down. You know, when many people would have given up already.

• 1:09:06John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, but I obviously the investors need like financial downside protection and like they need to own what they own.

• 1:09:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:12John Coogan?

  But at a certain point, it just becomes about the share price and you know, it can be accretive to issue the CEO or the founder CEO. A ton more equity.

• 1:09:19Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:19John Coogan?

  In the sense that like, yes, you will be diluted as a shareholder, but if the price goes up and you make money.

• 1:09:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:24John Coogan?

  Everyone's happy. Anyway. Airbus has been working on lightweight airframes, fuel efficient engines and even folding wings.

• 1:09:33John Coogan?

  That sounds real. That's after that definitely sounds like something that's gonna happen.

• 1:09:36Jordi Hays?

  Hey, we're gonna have folding Android phones or we already have them. The natural evolution is.

• 1:09:40John Coogan?

  Don't worry. The folding wings are definitely coming. It's right around the corner, 2030. Everyone says if you're ever in business and you and somebody asks you like, oh, when's that crazy thing gonna happen? Just be like, we're a few thousand days away. Yeah. They're basically saying the same thing. Yeah. 2030 for sure. It's definitely gonna happen.

• 1:09:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:58John Coogan?

  If it's 2040, it's no big deal. No one's gonna be mad at you. No one's gonna remember what you said in 2025 and 2030. It's five years later. It's a lifetime. Uh, anyway. Folding wings, that'll be, yeah, maybe they should just flap them. Make, let's make birds, giant albatross birds.

• 1:10:15Jordi Hays?

  The wings flap. Make the wings flap.

• 1:10:19John Coogan?

  We spend more time arguing with.

• 1:10:20Jordi Hays?

  Like an ornithopter, right?

• 1:10:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly. From Dune. That'd be great. Anyway. Boeing isn't in a financial position yet to launch a new aircraft, so they're kind of getting stuck and Boeing could get in a situation where their old plane sucks and the new plane, they can't afford to launch it. And so lots of risk around Boeing, but the stock is up. It was oversold and clearly people are, you know, optimistic that something will happen here. But let's, let's figure it out.

• 1:10:48Jordi Hays?

  It's not great when they're saying we've got a little, we've got to spend a little bit more time, more focus on getting ready. Getting the business back to generating cash.

• 1:10:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Jordi Hays?

  So that we have the cash to support new airplane development. That's just not good. How is the, how is the stock trading up on, on just that narrative?

• 1:11:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:09Jordi Hays?

  Hey, we're not making money.

• 1:11:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:10Jordi Hays?

  We're a hundred and forty billion dollar company. Nobody trusts our airplanes anymore.

• 1:11:15John Coogan?

  Boeing CEO.

• 1:11:16Jordi Hays?

  They're falling out of the sky.

• 1:11:18John Coogan?

  It's just like.

• 1:11:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, we definitely got to focus on getting ready.

• 1:11:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, I think what's going on here is that profit is equal to revenue minus costs. And we need revenue to go up while costs go down, so we increase profit. And everyone's like.

• 1:11:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so, so just to give everybody context, I have the full public page pulled up here. On 66 billion in TTM revenue, they've lost about $9 billion. So.

• 1:11:48John Coogan?

  Rough.

• 1:11:49Jordi Hays?

  Not looking.

• 1:11:51John Coogan?

  Anyway.

• 1:11:51Jordi Hays?

  Great.

• 1:11:52John Coogan?

  Good luck to them. Hopefully, they can go pick up some startups, do some acquisitions.

• 1:11:58Jordi Hays?

  It would actually be.

• 1:11:58John Coogan?

  Let those founders run the company. That's what I want to see.

• 1:12:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, at a certain point, you just, you want any great American company.

• 1:12:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:06Jordi Hays?

  Boeing, in the fullness of time, is a great American company.

• 1:12:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10Jordi Hays?

  That said, it clearly needs somebody like Elon.

• 1:12:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:14Jordi Hays?

  I wish.

• 1:12:15John Coogan?

  Everyone always says that.

• 1:12:15Jordi Hays?

  And that's the bull case for Elon, just having a bunch of children.

• 1:12:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Jordi Hays?

  Is that, one, if we need more Elons.

• 1:12:22John Coogan?

  Now, I think we can get other people. I would say the wildcard move. They should, Boeing, how much, how much cash do they have on their balance sheet, like a billion dollars? They should just go buy.

• 1:12:32Jordi Hays?

  Dude, I hope they have more than that. They're losing almost a billion a month.

• 1:12:36John Coogan?

  Burning a billion a month. Yeah, I mean, on the other hand, people are like, oh, these AI people are raising too much money. Boeing's out there burning a billion a month. If Boeing's burning a billion a month, and you're only burning 50K a month.

• 1:12:51Jordi Hays?

  They've got, Boeing has 26 billion on their balance sheet.

• 1:12:53John Coogan?

  Take five of that. Go buy Boom. Blake Scholl, get in the CEO seat. You're running Boeing now.

• 1:12:59Jordi Hays?

  Better plan.

• 1:13:00John Coogan?

  You gotta make better plans.

• 1:13:01Jordi Hays?

  Make them flap. Make them flap.

• 1:13:02John Coogan?

  No, no, don't make them flap. Make them real. Make them good. Stop with the flapping.

• 1:13:09Jordi Hays?

  I want the like.

• 1:13:10John Coogan?

  The ornithopter mode. Ornithopter mode. Ornithopter mode. Yeah, I like this plan. I think we can turn this around. This is why we should have an activist hedge fund. So we can come in, start putting pressure. Maybe we gotta get Bill Ackman. Send Bill Ackman a post, hey, we're taking Boeing private. We're buying Boom. We're putting Blake Scholl in the, in the Boeing CEO seat. Crazier things have happened in the business world. You heard it here first, if it happens. What do you look at?

• 1:13:41Jordi Hays?

  I just realized there's that Apple launch event.

• 1:13:43John Coogan?

  Oh, is that happening now?

• 1:13:45Jordi Hays?

  Nikhil in the chat says, did we cover it yet? We have not covered it yet.

• 1:13:51John Coogan?

  Ben, if you want to print off an article or pull up some slides for us, do that. But while we're preparing for that next segment, Jordy, I'd love for you to take me through Nick Carter and his and his post on meme coins being unquestionably over.

• 1:14:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, here's, you know, a lot of people over the last week have been saying our meme meme coins dead. There was a time that felt like NFTs were just inevitable and they were going to take over the whole economy. And.

• 1:14:23John Coogan?

  I mean, it just feels like meme coins are like the least dead they've ever been in history from my perspective, because the president just launched one. And so I feel like we're still like, yes, maybe you can call top if you're really, really sharp like Nick is. But in general, I think for like normies, they're just like, whoa, like these meme coins are like serious.

• 1:14:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And so, well, he actually gets into this. There's some really good, interesting. So, so the, the narrative within crypto right now are that meme coins are dead. They're seen in these sort of extractive zero sum games, right? Balligy came out and was like PvP. These are PvP projects. There's no value creation. It's just value sort of transfer between people that are, you know, early and people that are later. Right. And like people that's bought and sold at the right time and the people that bought and sold at the wrong time.

• 1:15:08John Coogan?

  And we've taken this stance. We have said that launching a crypto coin is or meme coin is low class and vulgar. What would your mother say? We've said that, you know, we, we, we have, we have generally been fairly harsh on, on the, on the crypto.

• 1:15:23Jordi Hays?

  And so, and so the last, and it's, and it's interesting because, you know, even today, a company that I backed at Preseed just announced a huge, their second round from Andreessen crypto called Universal Assets. So like, there's a bunch of good stuff happening in crypto, but it does feel like meme coins had sort of. The obvious top was the president launching a meme coin.

• 1:15:43John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:15:44Jordi Hays?

  And then kind of where do you go from there? And so there's been a bunch of drama with the Libra coin.

• 1:15:49John Coogan?

  Javier Malan.

• 1:15:50Jordi Hays?

  Javier, who like just kind of promoted it, but wasn't necessarily a part of it.

• 1:15:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Jordi Hays?

  Sort of reflected poorly on him. And then now this week, it's been interesting. Dave Portnoy has just like gone heavy into meme coins, just launching a bunch of coins and sort of getting on these sort of live chats on X. And just like him, you know, looking like classic disheveled, you know, yelling at sort of cartoon profile picture people. But let's get into this post and we'll cover some of these other issues.

• 1:16:18John Coogan?

  Funny that Trump has to pay short term capital gains on Trump coin.

• 1:16:22Jordi Hays?

  Wow, that's right, because he was just selling into.

• 1:16:25John Coogan?

  Because they sold them like two days. It's like.

• 1:16:28Jordi Hays?

  Ordinary income.

• 1:16:29John Coogan?

  It's just ordinary income. Yeah.

• 1:16:31Jordi Hays?

  Okay, so Nick Carter says meme coins are unquestionably over. Obviously, they won't fully disappear, but the trade is gone. Reason being, the entire premise of meme coins that was that there were fair launch opportunities where John Retail had just as good of a shot at making money as the funds and VCs. So for a while, it was these sort of ICOs that were sort of public, but they also had some sort of more institutional capital. And then you had these heavily sort of VC backed projects like Solana, for example, like raised a bunch of venture capital before they ever were sort of widely.

• 1:17:07John Coogan?

  Distributed to like a distributor.

• 1:17:08Jordi Hays?

  Distributed. And so, you know, after going through this era of like VC coins that are getting, by the time they go public, basically on the chain, they're, you know, trading at these crazy valuation meme coins. You could get in at $10,000 market cap. And then if it goes to a million, like, you know, you've got a ridiculous return. So anyways, this was the entire substance of the claim made by the meme coin boosters. The coins had no purpose beyond their launch mechanic. They weren't sold as a product in their own right. But rather as an alternative to high, fully diluted value VC-backed coins. Those have their own problems, of course, but their issues did not make meme coins any more worthwhile. And the meme coin trade was entirely based on a claim that was ultimately exposed as a lie,

• 1:17:52Jordi Hays?

  that the casino was at least fair. It was evident that this wouldn't last, and once meme coins became a big sector, semi-professional entities would emerge to cut pre-launch deals, trade on insider info, snipe launches, meaning like just buying something super early that you know is going to be big. The quoted tweet dives into those details. For all of Hayden's sins, and Hayden is the guy that did the Melania token, and then he did the Libra token. He's done more to expose the corrupt meme coin sector than anyone else. And he should be commended for that at least. So he basically did a bunch of stuff that people are like, what are you doing? This is terrible. And then he went and talked for hours with Dave Portnoy, with Coffeezilla. And so the Malay coin was the most obvious example of this.

• 1:18:34Jordi Hays?

  Opening at a billion and going up to four billion in minutes, clear proof that people were playing a rigged game. So presumably Hayden sold, you know, basically sold a bunch of the token before launch, basically saying that as soon as we launch this, it's going to be worth a billion dollars. You're going to be able to sell into that and it'll go up to, you know, a multiple of that. Nick says, but it's just the latest in a series of unfair and botched launches. The casino didn't take a slight edge. It was more like 90, 10 in favor of the house, right? So where to now? Like, just to make it very clear, if it was 90, 10 odds in Vegas, people would stop going. Cause there just wouldn't be the story, it'd just be way less entertaining.

• 1:19:16Jordi Hays?

  And so Nick's entire thesis is if you're 90, 10 in favor of the house, people will just stop playing the game. So he goes, so where to now? Meme coins are cooked. There will still be launches and probably some winners, but the meta is done. Crypto historically has always been about these metas, right? It was DeFi summer, then it was like the NFT boom, then it was meme coins. And so retail will still be farmed here and there, the little pay pigs.

• 1:19:47Jordi Hays?

  As many, as many are not extremely online and unaware of how extractive the sector is, but the countless coterie of scandals in meme coin land will turn off the smarter investors and eventually the mass market. So his position here is that there's, the people that are on X right now and on Discord and Telegram and all these platforms. They know that like meme coins are cooked.

• 1:20:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:10Jordi Hays?

  And they're now becoming way more wary of like some of these bigger projects. In many ways, like Trump, like if you just bought Trump in the first 20 minutes of when he announced it, you did really, really, really well.

• 1:20:22John Coogan?

  And it's crazy because I, I feel like, like in the retail sector, like in, in like, in like Wall Street, like there is a thesis for like, uh, okay, the US government can give you a corporate bond or a government bond. Then you get three, three to 5% or something. And then a, a large corporation like Apple just makes money, makes money, makes money. And you buy a share of that and they give you a little bit of the money. And so it's very like logical, there's very clear value creation there. And then, and then yes, you do get the crazier stuff where it's like day trading very rarely works out. Because it's so financialized and so professionalized that it's like, yeah, you're going up against fucking Jane Street. Like, yeah, right.

• 1:21:04John Coogan?

  Pardon my language, but, uh, and then, but then on the flip side, you have people like Warren Buffett who espoused just like general buy and hold strategies that, that do tend to work out for retail in, for most people. And it, and it does kind of work. And with, with the crypto stuff, I guess something like similar does exist with just like stack SATs and buy Bitcoin versus like trade meme coins. But when I see the meme coins, like I can write the algorithm in my head, which is like, set up a bunch of servers that are scraping Trump's Twitter and watch for any crypto launches. If there's a crypto launch, immediately go buy that, right? Thank you. Immediately go buy that. Like that, and, and you could do that for Melania, you could do that for Baron.

• 1:21:48Jordi Hays?

  And there's people that actually have set up the snipers that Nick is talking about. It's actually, they're looking at the chain itself.

• 1:21:56John Coogan?

  And seeing, okay, the person that did Melania is working on a new thing. It's probably big, so let's buy some of that immediately.

• 1:22:01Jordi Hays?

  Or hey, this thing just got created and a hundred thousand dollars flowed into it. Buy it with size.

• 1:22:06John Coogan?

  Exactly, exactly. And so all of that seems super easy to, to make algorithmic. And so I don't know why as a retail investor, you would ever want to play in that unless you truly had inside information.

• 1:22:17Jordi Hays?

  So anyway, so Nick says meme coins are cooked. Second point, conventional L1, L2, DeFi token launches will continue, but I'm noticing funds and founders shying away from high pre-launch valuations, mindful that end buyers are wary of these high FTV, low float game. And so what high FTV, low float means that this is basically the Trump, Trump coin, right? So there's like this crazy sort of fully diluted value in that if you released every token onto the market, that would like if you, if there's a billion tokens, you know, and this is the price, this would be the market cap. But then what they end up doing is there are only, there's only a number of like 20% of that actually circulating. So it helps support the price.

• 1:23:00John Coogan?

  But I mean, that happens when a company goes public.

• 1:23:02Jordi Hays?

  Sure.

• 1:23:02John Coogan?

  And the reason you hire an investment bank is because they're trying to do price discovery in roadshows with large investors. So they go to State Street, they go to Fidelity and they say, hey, the company is doing, here's the DCF, here's the huge model. We think this is where it should trade. What do you guys think? Okay, let's do an auction. Let's auction off this block and then get it and then unlock more of the shares. Like this has been a solved problem and somehow crypto reinvented it. But the problem is, is that like the whole point of an IPO is like typically to raise money. So you're raising money, you're offering the public and then, and then the reason why you want an accurate price is because if the price is, the price is too high, yeah, your cost of capital is lower, you raise more money, but then your stock tanks and everyone's like, your company sucks. On the flip side,

• 1:23:47John Coogan?

  if you price too low, your stock pops, but you're like, hey, we only got a hundred million dollars in our IPO and we gave up 10% of the company. Like what happened? And that's why Bill Gurley is always upset about that.

• 1:23:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:58John Coogan?

  But the problem with meme coin is that like, you don't need the money for anything, right? Like, is there a point to this?

• 1:24:05Jordi Hays?

  Well, presumably like, you know, this guy Hayden.

• 1:24:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Jordi Hays?

  With Libra Coin managed to generate a hundred million dollars. And what, what Dave Portnoy was pressing him on is like, Whose money is it? Like, where did that come from?

• 1:24:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:19Jordi Hays?

  And so you'd be sort of waffling on that.

• 1:24:21John Coogan?

  Like, like, a good example would be like, um, you know, like Uber goes public. They raise money.

• 1:24:28Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:29John Coogan?

  Now they're public. They can issue debt easier. They get lower cost of capital. And so what is Uber? They're profitable now, but if they need to raise more money, they have access to the public capital markets. And then they can do things like try and build a self-driving car or hire a bunch of engineers to make their app better. Like, there's obvious things. But like with a meme coin, like where the money doesn't go towards anything. Like the project is done as soon as it's, as soon as it's shipped, right? Like, there's no, there's no, so the price discovery doesn't even matter.

• 1:24:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:57John Coogan?

  It's just, it's just a wealth transfer. I don't mean, maybe I'm missing something.

• 1:25:00Jordi Hays?

  The price is almost a function. No, like, I mean, that's, that's Nick's broader point is that the coin's purpose was the launch mechanic.

• 1:25:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:09Jordi Hays?

  And then the product is the price. So when the price is good, people love the product. They're like, I love this product. And then when the price is not so good, then they, they start to take some issue with it. And it's interesting. So what Nick is saying is like, you know, these rounds are happening in the private market. So I've done, uh, I've made probably five-ish investments in sort of digital asset-related startups. Was lucky to be in this company that, that launched today.

• 1:25:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, we have.

• 1:25:37Jordi Hays?

  Universal Asset, we'll, we'll cover it in a bit. I was like in the seed round of Farcaster, which is a billion dollar, you know, um, protocol now. But over the last year, I've been pitched these rounds that are, that are, this is our pre-token launch round. The round is happening at $700 million. Here's the comps. We think we're going to be able to go out at $2 billion. It's like an easy, you know, multiple on your money. Like, that's how these things are being pitched. Is this sort of pre-IPO round? You only have to hold, you're only liquid for a year. And then you get this like quick, you know, potentially pop.

• 1:26:11Jordi Hays?

  So Nick says next, he says crowdfunding platforms like Echo will thrive. So Echo is like Angel List-esque platform for the crypto world. They do, um, effectively SPVs. They have accreditation, KYC, all this stuff that's important for companies that their, their narrative is like, let's help these, um, private crypto rounds that are pre-token, be more community oriented. So enable, you know, 200 people to invest in something that. In a perfect world, Andreessen would be like, we're taking that entire round. But people started to, you know, think poorly about these VC coins. Another interesting point, this is, this is a really interesting one. So he says, "Flight to Quality: Part of the reason meme coins were attractive was because they promised

• 1:26:53Jordi Hays?

  nothing and were thus considered exempt from securities law."

• 1:26:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's the thing with Melania token, right? Like, it's not like she said, "Hey, I'm issuing a token and we're going to build a protocol that will allow you to like, get exclusive access."

• 1:27:07Jordi Hays?

  You're not going to earn from it.

• 1:27:09John Coogan?

  There's nothing. It's not a financial product. It's just a, it's a meme.

• 1:27:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:13John Coogan?

  And that's actually what they, they don't even call it a token or a coin. They call it, "MelaniaMeme.com is now live." It's just a meme.

• 1:27:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So Nick says, "We have a progressive SEC that is already crafting rules to allow for compliant issuance of tokens and presumably an equity-light disclosure regime for issuers. This means that we don't have to bother with fake decentralization, which is these protocols that are like, "Oh, we're set up in the Maldives and then we have like our, you know, NGO over here in Africa."

• 1:27:44John Coogan?

  NGO.

• 1:27:46Jordi Hays?

  That's basically what.

• 1:27:47John Coogan?

  USAID is getting in on this one.

• 1:27:51Jordi Hays?

  But anyways, so the idea here is that these tokens that couldn't have fees associated with them because that would position them as like blatantly a security, they'd be able to actually return capital to users in an interesting way and actually start to function more like equity.

• 1:28:05John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:28:06Jordi Hays?

  Because a lot of people would say like, "Oh, this token has to be worth money because it's connected in some way to this company and they're worth a billion dollars." And the reality is, is like, they're totally disconnected, right?

• 1:28:18John Coogan?

  The whole point of why you buy stock or preferred stock in a corporation is that it gives you a legal right to the stream of cash flows.

• 1:28:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:28John Coogan?

  That's, that's why.

• 1:28:29Jordi Hays?

  It's pretty awesome.

• 1:28:30John Coogan?

  It's like, if you own, you know, 1% of Berkshire Hathaway, you get 1% of the profits in that they dividend out. And now there's a lot of other structures that can happen and the money can flow around a lot of different ways. The board can vote to reinvest those assets, but. In general, you have a claim on the financial assets, both on the balance sheet and in the and in the cash flow statement.

• 1:28:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. So Nick ends on a positive note. He says, there's no reason to be upset. A sense of gloom and cynicism pervades crypto right now because meme coins in a sense were considered the last fair terrain where anyone could make money. This illusion has been shattered. He basically is saying the trade of the next few years is just to be like, where is there actual sort of like on-chain cash flows happening and just buy those tokens, right? Because then this fee switch can be turned on and you can actually earn, you know, cash flows based on your ownership of said token. So basically like this could be the end of crypto and meme coins are mainstream now. There's going to be less of the, I just bought this token and now I'm worth $10 million type of thing and more so it'll bring a level

• 1:29:35Jordi Hays?

  of if you, you can, you're going to be able to make money on chain.

• 1:29:39John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:29:39Jordi Hays?

  But you're going to be more like a day trader who's either getting super lucky, taking a lot of risk or being highly methodical and taking the sort of long-term value-driven approach to investing. So there's going to be

• 1:29:51John Coogan?

  It's a good top call, honestly.

• 1:29:52Jordi Hays?

  I think like the next meta is going to be crypto value investing where you're kind of looking at these protocols and saying, okay, where is there income being generated on chain and how can I, you know, basically own that and compound on it? And I'm sure a lot of people do very well, but it just looks more like traditional stock or bond investing or alternative asset investing than

• 1:30:16John Coogan?

  Well, let's close out with this growing Daniel post and watch out. There's some bombshells in there. You got to censor. He's got a little bit of a

• 1:30:23Jordi Hays?

  Daniel says, I think crypto permanently damaged tech in weird ways. Just a huge influx of very uninteresting, greedy

• 1:30:30John Coogan?

  R words.

• 1:30:31Jordi Hays?

  R words. And when crypto went bust, they rolled into AI and now every AI founder I meet, except for a handful, seems like total dimwits. F crypto, man. 10K likes. So

• 1:30:43John Coogan?

  10K now.

• 1:30:45Jordi Hays?

  View hidden replies for insane crypto bot trash.

• 1:30:49John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:30:49Jordi Hays?

  Absolute S word. Technology built by S companies for a S community.

• 1:30:58Jordi Hays?

  It is funny that the, that the, like, if you post a lot on X, you're gonna have, even if you have nothing to do with crypto, you're gonna have, you know, hundreds of messages a week from people being like, "Hey, boss, I've got a meme coin."

• 1:31:11John Coogan?

  I have a, I have a bot that replies to every single one of my posts with some sort of like ChatGPT spinoff, but it always tries to steer the conversation towards some Solana thing that I haven't seen. And so most of the time, it just gets muted and I don't follow it, so I don't see the notifications. But every time I actually click, I'm like, "Oh, that's weird. There's someone like tracking me." Uh, yeah. "What would your mother say? Lots of messiness. Uh, go build something real." Uh, do you want to go through GoTIA? Do you want to do that?

• 1:31:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, let's talk about a, uh, a, a group of, a group of, yeah, let's hit the size gong. Uh, GoTIA's phenomenal poster as well. Um, and, uh, anyways, um, so, um, uh, so anyways, GoTIA, I, I ended up backing this team in 2021. So basically had to have been close to, um, maybe 2020 even, but like close to, close to four, probably four plus years ago. Um, and they have just iterated and made pivots. They were starting and building

• 1:32:24Jordi Hays?

  an on-chain index. And one of the, I think, generalized issues they had was they couldn't really hard launch in the US. You had, they had to like make it available. And a lot of crypto wealth is still in the US, even though our regulatory environment wasn't friendly. So they ended up kind of evolving the business into what it is today, which they're announcing. Um, and, uh, so anyways, I'll read it out. So, uh, universal.xyz, universal fundamentally improves how assets move and trade on chain. You can now trade spot assets like, uh, SUI, I think it is, SUI, Doge and XRP directly on your preferred chain without bridges or centralized exchanges. The problem is simple. Crypto is fragmented. So many chains, so many assets. If you're trading on base but want exposure to something

• 1:33:07Jordi Hays?

  like Sol, Doge or XRP, you have to bridge or find your way back to a centralized exchange. This creates unnecessary friction for your users and severely limits which, which assets developers can use. Universal solves this with U Assets wrap tokens that are backed one to one by verifiable reserves held in Coinbase Prime. Each U Asset can be natively minted and redeemed on-chain across any supported chain. Since going live, U Assets has already seen over 850 million in trading volume. So that's crazy. They seem like very pacing towards a billion dollars very quickly.

• 1:33:40John Coogan?

  That's great.

• 1:33:41Jordi Hays?

  Traders, this can mean you can finally trade 80-plus new assets without leaving your preferred chain. No bridges, no centralized exchanges, no fragmented liquidity, and you can put your assets to work in DeFi. This is really cool. A lot of investors have experienced this before. Sometimes you don't really know what your portfolio company is doing. I certainly didn't fully understand the new development, but they've evolved and clearly iterated and are building something awesome now. So congratulations to GoTA and the rest of the team. They have just, I commented, incredible showing of grit across a crazy few years because there were so many moments where I'm sure their loved ones were basically saying, "All right, guys, hang up the hat."

• 1:34:24John Coogan?

  If you're in Web 3, pivot to AI.

• 1:34:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:27John Coogan?

  I'm sure that was a lot of pressure.

• 1:34:29Jordi Hays?

  Like you gave this a good run, but like it's over kind of thing.

• 1:34:32John Coogan?

  Yeah. That's great for them.

• 1:34:34Jordi Hays?

  Very cool.

• 1:34:35John Coogan?

  Very exciting. We got more funding news. Seronic raised a $600 million Series C from Andreessen Caffeinated, 8VC, General Catalyst, Allod Gill. Little bit spicy on the timeline since Delian called Allod out. For Allod Gill, his whole thing is like the index companies. He wants to buy the one company in the space that's the power law winner. Allod's obviously an investor in Anduril. Andreessen's an investor in Anduril as well, and now they're investing in another defense tech company. But we'll see. Maybe there's room for two power law winners in this space. But congratulations to everyone

• 1:35:19John Coogan?

  over at Seronic. And $600 million, I mean, that's a lot of money. Got a real good size going for that.

• 1:35:25Jordi Hays?

  Boom, boom, boom.

• 1:35:26John Coogan?

  So, congrats to everyone over at Sironic.

• 1:35:30John Coogan?

  Let's move on.

• 1:35:30Jordi Hays?

  I just love to see SoloGP's leading gig around.

• 1:35:35John Coogan?

  Always.

• 1:35:35Jordi Hays?

  It's just, it's just the best.

• 1:35:37John Coogan?

  Always. I love just seeing. And it is cool. I mean, a lot's point was that, yeah, like, shipbuilding capacity is way under, way under. We need more shipbuilding and that's what Sironic's focused on. Let's move on to, the Humane AI pin is winding down. Did you see this? HP is acquiring the team IP and software for $116 million. We've been talking about this. Make printers great again. We have a Brother printer. It's pretty good, but it could be a lot better.

• 1:36:09Jordi Hays?

  Of course, we have the printers, the brand is actually called Brother. It's not just our nickname for it.

• 1:36:13John Coogan?

  We don't just have one printer. We actually have three printers. We have some very nice printers. We have, we're big into printers.

• 1:36:20Jordi Hays?

  The name is Brother USA, by the way, if you want.

• 1:36:23John Coogan?

  And so this, yeah, shout out to Brother and shout out to HP, Hewlett Packard. Let's see. I think it's funny that HP is known for like, printers now, because they used to be like the premier maker of computers. I actually know someone who's like a descendant of Bill Packard. And it's.

• 1:36:41Jordi Hays?

  Oh, Bill.

• 1:36:42John Coogan?

  Yeah. And, I mean, HP has an incredible founding story. There was a, oh, who was it? Some, some guy? Who fought in World War II or worked at, World War II in MIT's radio lab, created radio systems to detect bombing runs to defeat the Germans. Goes out to Silicon Valley, teaches at Stanford. And two of his students are Bill Hewlett and David Packard. And he's like, you guys should start a company. And they started HP. And it's just like, massive, massive company. But they have acquired Humane. Humane had raised maybe like $200 million. They launched that AI pin.

• 1:37:26John Coogan?

  That was kind of a problem and a solution in search of a problem. Didn't really get a lot of traction.

• 1:37:32Jordi Hays?

  It was more, it was more, felt like a experimental, cool art project.

• 1:37:39John Coogan?

  It was also weird because it was like AI was clearly tacked on at the last possible second. Because originally, it was like their. Apple folks and they left Apple and they're like, we're making the next Apple device. But every decision that they made with this PIN was hyper aware of Apple's monopolies. And that created a very, a very like compromised experience. So it could, it could receive text messages, but they knew that they couldn't integrate with the iPhone. Because, so there were plenty-

• 1:38:11Jordi Hays?

  So wasn't it a different number?

• 1:38:13John Coogan?

  Yes, you had to get a different phone number. So, hey Jordy, send me a text message and don't forget to save the other number for my humane AI PIN. In case you want to text me while I'm wearing the PIN. Like it clearly makes no sense from a UX perspective or UI perspective. But it makes sense if you're thinking like 25 steps ahead and you're saying, well, if we do integrate with Apple over Bluetooth, they will have complete control over us. And we will never be able to defeat them. And so clearly they were thinking, let's not make just like a cool consumer hardware company. Because there are plenty of those, let's try and disrupt Apple. And so we have to rethink everything from first person. It was just a mess.

• 1:38:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and there was, there was, you could look at the, so clearly very talented builders, designers, like had a big vision. And I love, I love that in general, we're, the ecosystem is broadly supportive of people taking these big swings on projects that are ambitious and maybe prone to fail, right? We want 10 of these to fail. We don't want them all to fail, but it's fine if 10 fail and one works, right?

• 1:39:20John Coogan?

  But I want, but I want more friend.com stuff. Where it's like, you give a kid a couple million bucks and he goes and he tries to launch it in 12 months.

• 1:39:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:31John Coogan?

  Not, these guys were burning $200 million for like a decade. And I care more about the time honestly than the money. That's just so long. It wasn't exactly 10 years, but it was just a long time.

• 1:39:41Jordi Hays?

  My main point with humane is you could objectively analyze the humane PIN.

• 1:39:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:48Jordi Hays?

  And determine that it was never going to be a hit consumer product.

• 1:39:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:52Jordi Hays?

  And the issue is that the team had so much time and money invested into it.

• 1:39:55John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:39:56Jordi Hays?

  They had to like go put on clown makeup and like go out and be like, look, like this is the next big thing. And you could just- Consumers are too smart. They're like, wait, it's a second number and it doesn't fully replace my phone, but it's sort of additive. So I still need my phone.

• 1:40:10John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:40:11Jordi Hays?

  But what like, how am I going to actually use this? This doesn't really make any sense.

• 1:40:14John Coogan?

  It was innovation theater. It was, they were larping as Apple.

• 1:40:18Jordi Hays?

  They were larping as Apple.

• 1:40:19John Coogan?

  They literally dressed up like Steve Jobs, did an Apple style keynote and said all the words that Apple says.

• 1:40:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:26John Coogan?

  Except that's not what makes Apple successful.

• 1:40:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:29John Coogan?

  What makes Apple successful is that they had first mover advantage to like a revolutionary platform, the iPhone. And then they locked everyone in. So it doesn't matter if they've just bumped the camera specs to megapixels, you're going to buy it anyway.

• 1:40:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:42John Coogan?

  And, and that's just a different, it's a different business. It's like a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Apple powerful.

• 1:40:47Jordi Hays?

  It was validating for, for me because at times you're like, am I crazy? Why are the, we won't name these investors, but, but you're like, why are these people putting in so much money? And you could say, oh, it's just a team bet. You know, they have some like real innovative technology here and maybe that's worth something. But it's the same thing that my, my reaction to Quibi, which also, you know, the thing about these companies that, that have raised a bunch of money or super high profile, they tend to actually fail fairly fast in the sense that Quibi shut down, was it months after starting?

• 1:41:19John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:41:19Jordi Hays?

  They were like, and Quibi's fundamental flaw was they were like, everybody's watching these short form, vertical videos. We should shoot highly produced, short form, vertical video cinematic movies and TV shows, not realizing that you're competing with every single person with a cell phone who can make more entertaining, more topical.

• 1:41:37John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:41:38Jordi Hays?

  And, and you're competing, Quibi's not competing with Netflix. They're competing with Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube, you know, X.

• 1:41:46John Coogan?

  Yeah. And that's what friend.com understands. Anyone can fine tune an LLM. Anyone can go to Llama and make the LLM sound weird. And so he's been making a bunch of weird decisions that add up to something that seems differentiated and is not just going to show up in your, in your Siri anytime soon.

• 1:42:04Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:42:04John Coogan?

  Speaking of Quibi, Blake Robbins, if we go forward, probably 20 posts, he says, random thoughts. Turns out Quibi. Could have worked if it had just focused on soap operas. Real short is doing forty million dollars per month for vertical video. I don't know anything about Real Short, but people are saying this is a narrative violation. One guy says too bad their output is pure slop, but it's working, which is really, really interesting.

• 1:42:29Jordi Hays?

  They're doing forty million a month?

• 1:42:31John Coogan?

  Forty million a month. Real short, never heard of it, but someone figured out and cracked it. And yeah, I mean, it's the same story with Quibi and Humane.

• 1:42:42Jordi Hays?

  Okay, but, okay, but these stories are like total slop. So their new release, they have Take Me Hades, I'm dying. When her sister gets bat blackmailed by a ruthless sex club owner. Dakota James is desperate, blah, blah, divorce me one last time. Haley Bildner, a successful NYC CEO engaged to a billionaire politician is shocked to learn. The air, this is another one, the heiress and their, the heiress and her possessive bodyguard. So it's just like, it's basically romance novels turned into these like, seemingly like low.

• 1:43:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, but so, I mean, this is a weird thing where, where they were willing to do this thing. What is the counter positioning here against Quibi? Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is the founder of Quibi, would not touch this for ethical reasons, for aesthetic reasons. And he missed out on a forty million dollar a month opportunity.

• 1:43:41Jordi Hays?

  This is like basically pornography for, in the same way that romance novels are. This, this show is called Pregnant by My Tough Daddy CEO, which I don't even want to say.

• 1:43:53John Coogan?

  Bleep all of that.

• 1:43:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:55John Coogan?

  Bleep all of these. This is, this is not family friendly content. Is it AI generated or is it actually shot?

• 1:44:02Jordi Hays?

  Technically, we don't know what the story is about. It could be.

• 1:44:05John Coogan?

  I don't know. I don't like it. The vibes are off.

• 1:44:06Jordi Hays?

  Terrible vibes. Terrible vibes.

• 1:44:08John Coogan?

  Terrible vibes. Blake.

• 1:44:10Jordi Hays?

  So now we know why they're doing.

• 1:44:12John Coogan?

  Forty million dollars a month. What did it cost them? Well, there's a good question. What do the founders of Real Schwartz Mothers think about them?

• 1:44:19Jordi Hays?

  Because we should reply and say, Blake, where should we start in the catalog?

• 1:44:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:27Jordi Hays?

  But that's interesting. So the thing is, is like, these, these sort of like, low-class and vulgar novels sell really well.

• 1:44:33John Coogan?

  It's the same thing as character AI.

• 1:44:34Jordi Hays?

  These sort of TikTok.

• 1:44:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:36Jordi Hays?

  Book clubs and stuff like that.

• 1:44:38John Coogan?

  People like this stuff.

• 1:44:38Jordi Hays?

  So slop sells.

• 1:44:40John Coogan?

  Anyway, promoted post, we got a promoted post from Porsche. The 911 ST, this limited run vehicle is up for auction with the entire winning bid supporting the Red Cross response to disasters through the United States. Now, that's great because the Red Cross, we've been talking about this, might go through a for-profit transformation, which would be huge. The auction is live now through February 20th in partnership with RM Sotheby's Sealed. So obviously, a lot of the viewers of this are going to be at Sotheby's probably this weekend. And so, take a look at this 911 ST. If you're not familiar, the ST, of course, is a manual analog. Essentially, you know, this is a Carrera GT level performance vehicle with true driver engagement.

• 1:45:23John Coogan?

  Beautiful vehicle. Highly recommend picking this up if you're looking for a daily, something to show off, something to have, to make your commute a little bit more exciting. Anyway, let's go back to the timeline.

• 1:45:33Jordi Hays?

  ST is a great, just sort of commuter, underrated commuter.

• 1:45:37John Coogan?

  Yep. And so the Carrera T is out now, a little bit cheaper, I think 160, 180.

• 1:45:42Jordi Hays?

  No, no, no, no. It's way less. I mean, after, you could probably get it up there with options, but you can get a Carrera T for probably one.

• 1:45:49John Coogan?

  They raised the price, though.

• 1:45:51Jordi Hays?

  Like, just with the new?

• 1:45:52John Coogan?

  Yeah, the newest one with the hybrid powertrain is, is up at like 150 now.

• 1:45:59Jordi Hays?

  The 2025 T has a starting price of 135. So yeah, with options, you could probably get it to like 170.

• 1:46:05John Coogan?

  Yeah. But the ST was much more limited, much more expensive. And I think it's because the S, it has the Turbo S powertrain essentially, or the GTS.

• 1:46:13Jordi Hays?

  It's basically a Turing, like a GT3 Turing.

• 1:46:15John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. GT3 Turing, powertrain, but manual and much more engagement. So highly recommended. Anyway, big news from Anduril Industries. They are doing a hiring stunt. They posted, "Don't work at Anduril." And we have a post here from Chris Backy. He says, "The new social media intern at Anduril is about to single-handedly land them a $500 million defense contract." There's a couple posts here from Anduril. They say, "Got a tech job, they said. It'll be easy, they said. I've been soldering for eight hours straight. Oh, sure. I'd love to go help with the Dive XL project. Flying from LA to Sydney and back in a weekend. Sounds great." Matt Grimm just said, "I should do the Murph with

• 1:46:57John Coogan?

  him in two weeks, and he believes in me. I've never done a pull-up in my life. Whoever was working on IVAS before me was really into Sword Art Online." And the ultimate banger that got 8K, I think it's going up more, says, uh, Palmer-

• 1:47:12Jordi Hays?

  Who's the intern, John?

• 1:47:13John Coogan?

  Yeah. Whoever ghost wrote these? Generational ghostwriter, really. Like genius. You know, can't say enough about them. Really, really-

• 1:47:23Jordi Hays?

  Absolute dog.

• 1:47:23John Coogan?

  Absolute dog of ghostwriting on the timeline. Palmer-

• 1:47:27Jordi Hays?

  Might be in the-

• 1:47:28John Coogan?

  Maybe. Palmer just told me he wants a working prototype of the big robot from Pacific Rim by Friday. 8K likes on that. And lots of good responses. Somebody says, "Is Drill working for Palmer lucky now?" Jason Levin says, "Anduril is posting now. This round is about to be huge." And they even gave a shout out to our sponsor Ramp. They say, "Hey Ramp, why does my corporate card have unlimited spending on American muscle car rentals?" I like that one. And Ramp quote tweets it and says, "Looking into this for personal reasons." And of course, the Ramp army comes out. Juwan says, "I think we should change it to unlimited muscle car purchase."

• 1:48:15John Coogan?

  And Ramp says as long as it increases productivity.

• 1:48:18Jordi Hays?

  Heard a good story. So I have a family friend who operated a massive HVAC company in New York for decades and he's told me just some crazy stories from that because imagine you're working basically on the buildings and office and retail space of like all the most powerful firms in the world. And so anyways, wild stories, but he said that he would get his executives, they would all get a company car and he would advise people, they could get whatever they wanted, like within a certain budget range, but he would advise them, you know, generally like get a truck or you know, something that's and he said that the most issues he ever had was an exec that got like a nicer BMW.

• 1:48:59John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:48:59Jordi Hays?

  Because every customer started going back to him being like, why is your exec like, like I'm clear, like I'm not paying like whatever I'm paying you right now, I'm going to pay you like, you know, 20% less because clearly you have way too, enough margin in here that your executives are like driving sports cars.

• 1:49:17John Coogan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:49:18Jordi Hays?

  To meetings. So.

• 1:49:19John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think the Andorl guys, if you're, if you're working at Andorl and you're traveling, gotta get a Mustang. Show up in the GT350R, the GT500, the Dark Horse, maybe.

• 1:49:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:29John Coogan?

  Who knows? Uh, yeah. What else would be there? Maybe Camaro, maybe something with a Hellcat.

• 1:49:36Jordi Hays?

  The new Corvette.

• 1:49:37John Coogan?

  Yeah. ZR1.

• 1:49:39Jordi Hays?

  The new ZR1.

• 1:49:40John Coogan?

  If you put it in a ZR1, people are not going to be like, this is a muscle car. This guy, they're going to ask you to renegotiate the contract at that point. But, but maybe, uh, maybe something with a Hellcat in there. A Demon, Dodge Demon pulls up.

• 1:49:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:54John Coogan?

  Zero to 60 in 1.7 or something off the factory line.

• 1:49:58Jordi Hays?

  Totally.

• 1:49:58John Coogan?

  You love, you love a track ready, uh, American made factory muscle car. Uh, but very cool. Uh, love to see Andorl, uh, doing some fun posting. They posted a video, uh, which I think we can pull up, Ben. Is that right? Do you have that? Let's throw that on the stream and, and break it down. Jordy, what do you think about Andorl's recruiting video titled, "Don't Work at Andorl", highlighting all the drawbacks of going to work at a defense tech company?

• 1:50:26Jordi Hays?

  Is that from an icon? We'll watch.

• 1:50:28John Coogan?

  Yeah, let's watch.

• 1:50:29Speaker 02

  I've been at Andorl for what? Three months now?

• 1:50:35Speaker 02

  It's not the typical tech job I was expecting.

• 1:50:46Speaker 02

  My last 9 to 5 was more like an 11 to 3. And I was working remote. Here, you come into the office every day. And they have you doing actual work. Where are the nap pods? And everyone's going on about the mission. It's like, they're literally obsessed with America. But... Pretty sure this coffee's Italian. The founder guy, the one who's always in the Hawaiian shirts. He's like, always around.

• 1:51:23Jordi Hays?

  Subterranean tunnels are bunkers. It's about using the entire crust of the earth as a three-dimensional battle space. A new warfighting system. It's really hard to make it in the current e-bike industry because... Dive LD is the smallest accessory that we make. It dives to depths of about 6,000 meters, totally autonomously. Gets you to the bottom of any part of the earth.

• 1:51:42Speaker 02

  Easy shot, but very cool. A little touch. Not exactly business class. I thought I'd be on my laptop at the hotel pool. Now, I'm just surrounded by all these robots. Lots of product demos. They actually expect us to test our products in the field? I'm more of an indoor guy myself. Sometimes I wonder, how did I get here? I'd rather just be sitting at my desk. That's a good VFX shot, too. It's pretty cool.

• 1:52:19Jordi Hays?

  This is so well done.

• 1:52:21Speaker 02

  It's so well done. I mean, it's like...

• 1:52:23Jordi Hays?

  Is the whole "don't..." like, blank? Has that been done in a campaign?

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  I don't work in Android. Probably. It's just built different.

• 1:52:35Jordi Hays?

  It's funny that they mixed in the zoomer brain rot terms.

• 1:52:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:40Jordi Hays?

  Like both different.

• 1:52:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean clearly, you know, targeted at like, you know, the younger engineers who are, I mean, the classic Andorol pitch was like, why are the best software engineers writing ad optimization code? Like come build something important. And I think that hits it really well. Pretty fun.

• 1:52:57Jordi Hays?

  I love, I mean, fantastic campaign. I was engaged the whole way. It felt like they could have done the same campaign in 30 seconds, but they just extended it out.

• 1:53:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:06Jordi Hays?

  Probably cut it in a bunch of different ways.

• 1:53:09John Coogan?

  I was talking about that. Like, I think, like, it has like the patina of like, Superbowl ad almost, where it's like, something you could see almost before a, like a movie. It's like, it's like a one minute, like cinematic, like experience. But I think it works because Andorol has so much like credibility. I think that that style of ad probably is a little too much if you're, you know, a seed stage startup that's like, just.

• 1:53:35Jordi Hays?

  Also, that's a very, that's, that's. That is, I have no idea if they, I'm assuming they work with an external agency.

• 1:53:42John Coogan?

  They have an internal team.

• 1:53:43Jordi Hays?

  Okay. So yeah, the cool thing is like, an agency would be like, that's like a $300,000 campaign because it's days and days of shooting and you have like all the product shots in the field and then the stuff with Palmer. So doing it in-house is very cool. I think they can take that don't work at Andorol campaign and scale it out and do, we were talking with the Adquick team, right? Like do, do a billboard on the 101 that says, don't work at Andorol and it has some crazy submarine.

• 1:54:08John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:54:09Jordi Hays?

  And people are gonna go.

• 1:54:10John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:54:11Jordi Hays?

  You know.

• 1:54:12John Coogan?

  And it's just about like breaking that expectation of like, everyone's saying, work at my company. We're saying, don't work. And yeah, it's a joke. Obviously you get it. And in there are, and they are recruiting, but it's just something that sticks out a little bit in the feed. And even the first, just don't work at Andorol post got memed and went viral because it was like, wait, why are they saying that? Like that's weird.

• 1:54:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, the counter.

• 1:54:32John Coogan?

  And people like fell for it.

• 1:54:33Jordi Hays?

  Counter positioning is so key. It's funny.

• 1:54:37Jordi Hays?

  Speaking, so counter positioning, everybody says, join us on our mission. Anduril taking the opposite approach. Don't work at Anduril.

• 1:54:43John Coogan?

  If you don't, yeah.

• 1:54:44Jordi Hays?

  Like if this doesn't sound exciting to you.

• 1:54:45John Coogan?

  If you care about nap pods, like you're not gonna have fun here. Just self-select out.

• 1:54:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:49John Coogan?

  And then by definition, they're gonna self-select.

• 1:54:51Jordi Hays?

  Another good counter positioning example. So Allen Control Systems, which we've talked about on the show before. Everybody was going for these sort of Lord of the Rings names.

• 1:55:00John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:55:00Jordi Hays?

  And they were like, we're gonna go the exact opposite. We want to sound like we're decades old.

• 1:55:04John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:55:04Jordi Hays?

  Like Allen Control Systems.

• 1:55:05John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:06Jordi Hays?

  It's like just kind of random.

• 1:55:07John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:08Jordi Hays?

  Just sounds like an old legacy company.

• 1:55:10John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 1:55:10Jordi Hays?

  But then when Steve was on CNBC.

• 1:55:12John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:55:12Jordi Hays?

  Or some other mainstream media channel, I think like a week ago. It looked very legit because it's like Steve from Allen Control Systems.

• 1:55:20John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:55:21Jordi Hays?

  People are like, oh, what's this?

• 1:55:22John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:22Jordi Hays?

  It doesn't sound like a startup. So counter positioning matters a lot.

• 1:55:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:25Jordi Hays?

  Even, even with us, like, we love YC. We like, would love to, you know, figure out, you know, some stuff to do with them over time. But with PMF or DAI is like the exact counter positioning against.

• 1:55:36John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 1:55:37Jordi Hays?

  Against YC, just from the lens of like, instead of make something people want, like make something that makes money.

• 1:55:42John Coogan?

  Exactly. Yeah. And it's not, it's not like taking a shot at YC. It's more just like, like, hey, there's, there's a million, like, tech stars is trying to be like, exactly copycat YC. And there's a bunch of different companies that are, or organizations that have just been trying to like clone. It's like, actually, it's more fun. It's more valuable. It's more interesting if you try and differentiate. And that's what Anduril's doing next to the Googles of the world, which have been pushing for, hey, the nap pods are great.

• 1:56:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:07John Coogan?

  And hey, the, the work-life balance is fantastic. They're, they're saying the opposite. And it's, and that is like the, the spice of basically any great marketing campaign, in my, in my opinion, is just finding the white space and then kind of going and exploiting it.

• 1:56:20Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:21John Coogan?

  Let's, uh, let's move on to AdQuick since you mentioned them. Uh, this is a little shout out. Their head of analytics, Ty Tinker, great name.

• 1:56:29Jordi Hays?

  TT.

• 1:56:31John Coogan?

  Head of analytics and he just tinkers with analytics all day. Great nominee of determinism. I love it.

• 1:56:36Jordi Hays?

  Amazing.

• 1:56:36John Coogan?

  Why don't you try tinkering with your analytics once you run an AdQuick billboard? But he was on the SaaS Backwards podcast and you can listen to the full episode here. And I think that'd be a great opportunity. If you're trying to think about out of home, you go listen to this podcast and you see, I mean, the big question with out of home is always the analytics. Like, how do I track any of this? It makes no sense. It's like, is it just brand? Do I just have to do it on vibes? Well, Ty Tinker, the head of analytics over at Adquick, has all the answers. So go check that out.

• 1:57:04Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And so I was saying, I asked Chris to see you of Adquick earlier. How would you approach an Androl out of home campaign specifically around recruiting? Cause there's some of these key areas where they could just like really scale up their recruiting efforts. And he said, we can layer any first party or third party behavioral data onto the map in Adquick to find the best out of home ad placements to hit engineering job seekers.

• 1:57:27John Coogan?

  That's cool.

• 1:57:27Jordi Hays?

  So it's not just about, a lot of out of home is like, we just want to be out in the world and like be big and like, you know, get people's attention. But there's a science behind it and like Adquick integrates all that. So it's not like you're calling up the owner of a billboard just saying like, yeah, I'll take your billboard for 30 days. It's like, let's actually figure out the highest ROI, most relevant places to be and then spending in those places. So.

• 1:57:49John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:57:50Jordi Hays?

  They, anyways, very cool.

• 1:57:53John Coogan?

  Well, let's move on to VR, something Androl's working on. So if you want to work on VR, you could go work on the IVAS program, which I think is very interesting. I was, I was digging in a little bit more. $22 billion contract for IVAS transferred over. It only went live in 2021. So I think that there might be like $10 billion left on that contract, but then also it might get rebid and other people might bid for it. But at the same time, it's like,

• 1:58:21Jordi Hays?

  The dollar amount wasn't, the dollar amount wasn't released from what I saw in terms of what Androl was actually capturing.

• 1:58:29John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:58:29Jordi Hays?

  But Androl's pitch would have been, even if they were bidding for it cold,

• 1:58:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:33Jordi Hays?

  we're going to be able to do this for a quarter of the cost.

• 1:58:35John Coogan?

  Exactly. And so that means that, hey, if Microsoft was going to make $10 billion, but it was going to cost them $9 billion to deliver that and capture that ACV, then all of a sudden, they're like, hey, this, this, this contract only has a billion dollars of value to us. We will sell it to you. And I have no idea if they, if they paid anything or what they paid, but these contracts can change hands. So it'll be interesting to see how that, how that plays out. But I can't imagine a better place just from, I mean, obviously I'm like not objective at all here, but just try to be objective. Like, like you're doing VR for defense. Name a better person than Palmer. Like, I'm super conflicted here, but like, let's be honest. Like, what other company are you giving it to? Like, there's no one else.

• 1:59:18Jordi Hays?

  So anyway. This is our main advice for people is get conflicted.

• 1:59:22John Coogan?

  Get conflicted. Yeah, get conflicted. Get on the cap table. Get on the cap table and then start chilling, pumping your own bags. Let's go to Tim Urban, though, because he is a daily active user of the Apple Vision Pro. He says, I'm possibly the only person on Earth who uses Apple Vision Pro 20-plus hours a week. As a writer, it's just such a massive upgrade to go from a 32-inch monitor to sitting on a mountain top, totally immersed, looking at a 50-foot screen. There's just one problem. The idiotic way Apple designed their headset. All the weight sits on your face. This is uncomfortable and was on the way to making me look 80 years old. So he had a friend who 3D-printed a headset that leads the

• 2:00:05John Coogan?

  headset to sit millimeters off of his face. It doesn't even touch his face. And so, he says, "Apple, please talk to Jonathan and get your stuff together. VR, even with a big, heavy headset, does not have to be uncomfortable. It's all in the design." And I love this. I loved the Apple Vision Pro, but I agree. It was super, it was super heavy, and they needed to fix that. And it seems like Tim Urban's got a solution.

• 2:00:29Jordi Hays?

  The what they nailed, design-wise, was what people expected a VR headset to look like.

• 2:00:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:35Jordi Hays?

  But they, but there were just so many, like, again, that's not something that Steve would have let out the door. Users were like, "Oh, it's heavy on my head."

• 2:00:43John Coogan?

  It was a Pepsi Challenge product. Are you familiar with Pepsi Challenge?

• 2:00:46Jordi Hays?

  No.

• 2:00:47John Coogan?

  So Pepsi Challenge was this campaign run by Pepsi in, I think, the late 90s, early 2000s. And basically, what they did was they had blind taste tests with people, like, man-on-the-street stuff. So they'd film a bunch of people, come in and say, "Taste Pepsi, taste Coke." And they'd give you a little, like, thimbleful, like, two ounces of each. People would taste the Pepsi, and they wouldn't know which one. And overwhelmingly, they would select Pepsi. And what was going on was that Pepsi was sweeter. And so over a one ounce taste, you would be like, yeah, I want the Pepsi because that one tasted sweeter. But when you gave people the whole can, they were split much more 50 50. And sometimes even leaned Coke because they were like, I don't really want that much sweetness.

• 2:01:27John Coogan?

  And so I call, I call the, the Apple Vision Pro like a Pepsi challenge headset or Pepsi challenge product. Because it was an incredible experience for 10 minutes. And that was the experience that most people had. They went in, they put it on and they were like, okay, I'm good. Or you give it to your friend or you blow your grandma's mind with it, that type of thing. But beyond that, it didn't be, it didn't become a daily active product for many people. And Apple isn't the business of daily active use. You got to be using your AirPods every day, your phone every day, your laptop every day. Like they're, they can't be putting out these stunt products.

• 2:01:59Jordi Hays?

  Hard to build a valuable consumer electronic product if you're not getting daily use. Which is why Sona struggles because you can't set it up and then you just put it in a box and you know.

• 2:02:07John Coogan?

  Yeah. Well, speaking of products that I use every single day, we got to talk about Eight Sleep. And I want to show this ad that they ran with, no, then Charles Leclerc, Charles Leclerc, Charles Leclerc. The F1, the F1 driver, he partnered with Eight Sleep. He says, the secret is out. We are, Eight Sleep says, we are officially teaming up with Charles Leclerc, who trusts Eight Sleep to power his performance on and off the track. And this ad is incredible. We are going to recreate this 100%. I love how this was shot. It's super high energy. Ben, can we pull it up and play the full Eight Sleep, Charles Leclerc ad on our screen?

• 2:02:53Jordi Hays?

  Trey in the chat goes, Charles, S H A R L, Charles.

• 2:02:58John Coogan?

  Charles.

• 2:03:02Speaker 03

  People see the races, the speed, the moments on the podium. But what they don't see is what truly drives performance. For me, it's the work of the track, the preparation, the focus, the recovery. Sleep is the foundation. Whether it's long hours of travel or intense back to back races, staying sharp and recovered is what makes the difference.

• 2:03:25John Coogan?

  It's so stylish.

• 2:03:26Speaker 03

  Champions sleep on 8 sleep.

• 2:03:27John Coogan?

  So quick. You can tell the production was like a one day, maybe two.

• 2:03:32Jordi Hays?

  Beautiful transition out of the sort of tech online X bubble.

• 2:03:36John Coogan?

  Hundred percent.

• 2:03:37Jordi Hays?

  Into one of the biggest global superstars in the world.

• 2:03:41John Coogan?

  A hundred percent. And, and it also still has that like high paced, frenetic, social media vibe real, like pacing to it, which I love. It's not like, oh, they went to some agency and the agency said, oh, this is how you do an ad with F1. It's gotta be, you know, this really long winded thing. It's like, no, really fun to watch, bunch of really cinematic shots. You can imagine, I can see the, I can visualize the lens that they're using, how the camera is moving. That's just like handheld, really quick, you know, high, high, like fast paced editing. And I love it. And I can't wait to recreate that with us because he says champions sleep on 8 sleep. And we like to say that podcasters sleep on 8 sleep. And so you should be sleeping on 8 sleep. Everyone should be sleeping on 8 sleep. So go and get an 8 sleep.

• 2:04:26Jordi Hays?

  We have a code too.

• 2:04:28John Coogan?

  We do.

• 2:04:28Jordi Hays?

  TBPN.

• 2:04:29John Coogan?

  TBPN. Go check it out. Oh, we got some hiring news from none other than Josh F Frame. He says, today I'm joining Cooley LLP as special counsel in San Francisco to support and advise founders that are forging a new tech frontier. Building on the frontier is hard. Things sectors like crypto, AI, hard tech, biotech. This is in part because the legal landscape can be complex and dynamic, making it hard to navigate. He was a paradigm before, an absolute dog. He saw many founders struggle to find the right team of lawyers to help them navigate the challenges their businesses face. Working with crypto founders and investors on these challenges has made me uniquely equipped to help others navigate

• 2:05:11John Coogan?

  legal complexity. Yeah. I mean, crypto deals are next level in terms of legal complexity. It is not just the simple safe note and some Stripe Atlas stuff most of the time. And so Cooley is leading law firm supporting companies in crypto. AI, biotech and hard tech. This involves a full suite of experts in areas like securities and commodities, regulation, governance, finance, hard and soft intellectual property, money transmission and commercial transactions, just to name a few. It's a privilege to have the opportunity to join my good friend and former Paradigm colleague, Rodrigo Sierra. The team at Cooley works seamlessly together to support founders on the frontier of crypto and beyond, and I'm ready to get to work. I wouldn't have seen this opportunity or been equipped to address it without the support of the team at Paradigm.

• 2:05:55John Coogan?

  The team at Paradigm has set the standard of how to build on the frontier of crypto, and their leadership on the legal and policy front is the best in crypto. So, congrats to Josh. Good luck on your new career as special counsel at Cooley. And hey, if you're looking for a startup lawyer, this guy knows how to post.

• 2:06:12Jordi Hays?

  Not many, none of the startup lawyers I know are great posters, so.

• 2:06:17John Coogan?

  But this one's, this one's great. Full breakdown, he's on X, you can go reply to this post, you can go tweet at him and say, hey.

• 2:06:23Jordi Hays?

  DM him, he's not gonna be able to give you legal advice in the DMs, but you can sign an engagement letter, and I'm sure he'd be able to help you out then.

• 2:06:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, let's go to Vanta. Savraj Singh says, trust Vanta. Wow, thank you for this generous gift. This is a gift from your friends at Vanta, and it's a couple of Valentine's Day candies.

• 2:06:48John Coogan?

  It does look like drugs, but they are in the compliance business, so I imagine it's not drugs.

• 2:06:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:54John Coogan?

  And people are kind of like, lol, that's so generous of them.

• 2:06:57Jordi Hays?

  No, so I think it's, I think it's an idea that it's the world's smallest gift, but it's, it's kind of a cute idea to just be like, like, what was the actual, I'm trying to remember.

• 2:07:08John Coogan?

  It's Valentine's Day.

• 2:07:08Jordi Hays?

  Valentine's Day thing, you give these little like.

• 2:07:10John Coogan?

  What do you expect from your SOC 2 compliance, like, you know?

• 2:07:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you're paying for compliance, not, you know?

• 2:07:16John Coogan?

  Yeah, they're not gonna take you to F1 on, a box at F1 on, on.

• 2:07:22Jordi Hays?

  I mean, they probably will do that, too.

• 2:07:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, maybe if you're a big client. But yeah, I mean, it's nice of them. And I think this is underrated, that, hey, come up with something cute and fun, and send it to every single customer you have, especially if you have high LTV, you know, every Vanta customer is probably making them. Thousands of dollars. So you can afford to send a couple bucks to every single person, send a package, send a T-shirt to every single one of your customers if you're in a B2B organization. Sure, if you're a consumer and you know, your customer makes you 10 bucks, you can't send them very much free stuff, but better than just an email, better than a, you know, I don't know, just like a discount code. I think it's interesting. Kind of, you know, didn't go viral for the wrong reasons, didn't go, wasn't actually a fiasco for them.

• 2:08:05Jordi Hays?

  I think it's just kind of cute.

• 2:08:06John Coogan?

  It's cute. I like it.

• 2:08:06Jordi Hays?

  Little gift.

• 2:08:07John Coogan?

  Yeah. And it's funny that they have this cute little llama as a mascot. And yeah, I like Vanta. I'm down. I'm into it. Speaking of other good vibes, Rahul, zero interest rates, posted pictures of evenings at Julius and he posts this at 10pm and it's just guys being dudes hanging out in the office. Love it. And Rahul's really gone on to step back from posting and memeing and trolling and just, you know, wind up building a business.

• 2:08:36Jordi Hays?

  EV.

• 2:08:37John Coogan?

  EV. Just focused on, focused on grinding. So we love to see that.

• 2:08:41Jordi Hays?

  Well, every time you post Rahul, if it's PG, we'll cover it here.

• 2:08:45John Coogan?

  Absolutely. And you can always go back into the product manager archive and see some absolute bangers.

• 2:08:52Jordi Hays?

  Product manager.

• 2:08:52John Coogan?

  Old account.

• 2:08:53Jordi Hays?

  So here's the hack to find the top, the top bangers. You just go in a, go in a new tab in Chrome that's, that you're not logged in and just put x.com slash their username.

• 2:09:04John Coogan?

  Won't work for him because he's locked. His old account is locked.

• 2:09:07Jordi Hays?

  Oh, his old account is locked. Yeah. All right. Well, he's still got bangers on the new account.

• 2:09:10John Coogan?

  Truly archived. But some of the greatest posts of that era came from him.

• 2:09:14Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 2:09:15John Coogan?

  He was, he was a fantastic poster and still, still got it, but you know, much more focused on business these days. But we love you, Rahul, and good luck on the next feature you're pushing or the next hire you're making or whatever you're doing next.

• 2:09:28John Coogan?

  Sela, Sela underscore, who's been on the show before, says, how the F am I supposed to consistently down 200 grams of protein every single day without structuring my entire life around this?

• 2:09:38Jordi Hays?

  I put this in because I feel like you have really good advice for this. You're always having some little protein snack. We ate burritos right before this, as we typically do.

• 2:09:47John Coogan?

  Yep. I mean, the easiest way is to, uh...

• 2:09:50Jordi Hays?

  Look, Blake, I have the PMF or Die stream up here. Blake is just housing what looks like raw milk. So that's one way. Just, just, just don't drink water and just drink raw milk instead.

• 2:10:01John Coogan?

  I can't, I can't pull up the old data, but, uh, yeah, I mean, you need to eat buckets of chicken and, uh, I mean, one easy way to get this is, uh, a, a single, uh, David Protein Bar has 28 grams of protein and it's something like 110 calories. It's like uncannily crazy macros. Uh, so yeah, eat 10 of those a day. Boom, done. Uh, but yeah, you got, you gotta go, uh, you gotta figure out where to get the, the massive amounts of protein. Uh, you know, six eggs in the, in the morning.

• 2:10:37Jordi Hays?

  We, we talked about this. We're gonna start slonking eggs on the show. John's never slonked before. I'm a slonk enthusiast. Uh, we gotta get, it's, it's also, eggs have become such a status symbol, such a, you know, a safe harbor for wealth recently.

• 2:10:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:53Jordi Hays?

  Uh, and, uh, I think just having like a 36 pack carton here that we're just slonking.

• 2:10:58John Coogan?

  I mean, Gabe right here, he says, uh, pretty easy. You have 16, we have 16 waking hours. Uh, you need to eat 12 and a half grams per hour. That's only two eggs. Set a recurring reminder on your phone. At the beginning of the hour, eat your two eggs. You can cook the 32 eggs the night before. They'll fit in a regular size cooler, which you can carry with you. Wow, 8,000 likes on that. I didn't realize this was such a banger. 64,000 likes on this post. Wow, Sela, killing it, dude. Good job. Uh, very, very fun post. And yeah, you gotta get your protein up. You gotta get one gram of protein per pound of body weight at least. And so, yeah, a lot of steak, a lot of chicken, a lot of broccoli and a lot of eggs, I guess.

• 2:11:43Jordi Hays?

  Simple.

• 2:11:44John Coogan?

  Uh, let's stay with Sela, cause there's another good post here. Uh, some ideas for huge value add quote tweets in case anyone needs them. Uh, you wanna read some of these? They're pretty funny.

• 2:11:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so if you've ever had a post go really viral, you're basically going to get people that are quote tweeting it and adding their own little spin on it. So these are typically some ways that, you know, if you're quote tweeting something, throw these in. Fascinating, big if true, 100 emoji, interesting, wow, rocket ship, target, worrying, hmm, question mark, exclamation point. Be sure to use these a lot. People will really appreciate the value you add.

• 2:12:25John Coogan?

  Kind of an Elon sub tweet, but I genuinely think this-

• 2:12:30Jordi Hays?

  This is when Elon does it, it's value add. Your phone's gonna melt down.

• 2:12:33John Coogan?

  It's curatorial, because Elon knows there's a lot of followers. Obviously, he has a huge boost in the algorithm. And so what he's doing is saying, I want everyone on X to see this post. And I'm just going to quote tweet it so that it goes in because, by the way, retweets don't really work anymore. They just don't go out. So instead, you need to quote tweet with something like this. And so I think this is a great strategy for growing your account. Just become a curator. Everything you see, quote tweet it, throw it in the timeline. I think you're going to wind up seeing a lot of growth, honestly. And that's just the meta. And you gotta play the game on the field, unfortunately, or fortunately, you know? Don't complain it. Don't hate the player. Hate the game, or vice versa. What is it? No, don't hate the game. Hate the player. I don't know. Anyway.

• 2:13:17Jordi Hays?

  You don't know at this point.

• 2:13:18John Coogan?

  Speaking of Bezel sponsors, I don't know, there's no transition here, but we love Bezel. And Bezel has been killing it on X. I'm so excited about this. We've been talking to them. They're obviously a partner on TBPN, and we're very happy. I have a watch coming on Bezel. Jordy's watch he bought on Bezel, and we recommend everyone install the Bezel app and pick something up. And they do these amazing deep dives here on individual watches that are available for sale on Bezel. And this one today is about the discontinued Patek Philippe Nautilus. It could finance your house, or at least a very, very nice vacation. Here's what makes it special. It's complicated.

• 2:13:57Jordi Hays?

  And to be clear, this is like a, this is a $100,000 watch. So- Yeah, it's very, you know,

• 2:14:04John Coogan?

  It's a lot of money, but it's a lot of watch.

• 2:14:06Jordi Hays?

  Couple of weeks at Aman is, you know, basically equivalent. So that just get, get an idea of the value here.

• 2:14:12John Coogan?

  Beyond the standard timekeeping functions you'd expect from a six-figure watch, the reference number 57121A-001 boasts a date, moon phase, and power reserve complications. Will you use them every day? Probably not, but bragging rights don't come for the asking. Just like the most sought-after executions of the Gerald Genta-designed icon, this outgoing Nautilus features stainless steel construction. If a standard Nautilus challenges convention in steel, a complicated Nautilus turns the wow factor up to 11. At the heart of this showstopper, Patek Philippe's micro-rotor-equipped Caliber 240PS IRMC LU.

• 2:14:57John Coogan?

  Translation for the non-watchpilled, a comically drool-worthy self-winding mechanical movement of the highest quality, the stuff of Swiss dreams. Production of this reference has officially ended, meaning the ante just got upped on its collectability factor. If you're still waiting by the phone for your AD to call, you might be waiting for a while. I like it. So go follow Bezel and download the app and start curating a little, a little wish list. Because, you know, the, that secondary sale might hit any day now. And, or you might hit some sort of thousand-bagger and need to upgrade your daily driver.

• 2:15:38Jordi Hays?

  Real quick.

• 2:15:39John Coogan?

  Get on Bezel. There's a bunch of options at every price point, and we can't recommend them highly enough. It's been a wonderful experience. They have a little like Domino's Pizza tracker. When you buy something, it shows the person mailed it into them for authentication. Then they mail it to you. It's all very seamless. You can pay with wires.

• 2:15:54Jordi Hays?

  Which is so key, because normally if you're buying a watch, you know, from some random dealer, you send all this money and then you're just like, fingers crossed. Fingers crossed it's coming. So.

• 2:16:05John Coogan?

  Yeah. So it actually goes into escrow properly and you can even, so they have auctions as well.

• 2:16:12Jordi Hays?

  Right.

• 2:16:12John Coogan?

  And those are extremely tempting because you see these watches and you're like, that's like half off.

• 2:16:16Jordi Hays?

  Of course. So by the way, Justin Mayer's former brother, we just messaged me and said, or messaged us and said, talking to a hooded man at Bezel about buying a hundred thousand dollar watch. Thanks for the intro. So he's talking with Ryan right now. So the good thing is like, watches are considered purchased. You can go on Bezel, browse, buy stuff, but they actually will just let, they'll talk to you, which we recommend because it's like, you're basically buying, you know, potentially something that's car priced, you know, as like a car. So having somebody you can talk to is great.

• 2:16:51John Coogan?

  That's great.

• 2:16:52Jordi Hays?

  Anyway, so funny that it's happening live.

• 2:16:53John Coogan?

  I'm excited to hear what he winds up with. That's fantastic news. That's, that's great news. And then let's, let's do Joe Weisenthal, the stalwart over at Odd Lots Podcast on Bloomberg. He says, imagining Twitter right before the asteroid hits. Have you been following this asteroid news at all?

• 2:17:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I'm going to go out on a limb is, is NASA's like, we are getting dogged. It's coming.

• 2:17:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:21Jordi Hays?

  How do we protect ourselves against that? Every single day? Just say, there's a 1% greater chance. Eventually it's going to be like 99% chance. We need NASA to save us, like fund them. So I think this is a survival tactic. I think it's too conveniently timed. And why are you getting, why are you, you, why are you a hundred percent off week over week on the probability of something hitting?

• 2:17:45John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 2:17:45Jordi Hays?

  Hitting in 2030.

• 2:17:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:47Jordi Hays?

  Right? They also just pick 2030 out of the hat.

• 2:17:50John Coogan?

  Is it 2030? I thought it was like 2025 or something.

• 2:17:53Jordi Hays?

  No, I think it's.

• 2:17:53John Coogan?

  NASA's, oh, 2032. Yeah. NASA says there's now a 3.1% chance of an asteroid, that an asteroid will hit Earth in 2032, up from 2.6% yesterday. This is the highest risk assessment an asteroid has ever received, surpassing 2.4% in 2004. And Guru Viper says, can we bet on this polymarket? And polymarket says, yes, of course. And Joe Weisenthal says, imagining Twitter right before the asteroid hits, a furious debate about whether prediction markets did a better job than the formal modelers and the, and the degree to which the former could exist without the latter, of course, referencing the. The election. And so I thought that was just a very, very funny post because of course,

• 2:18:36John Coogan?

  people would be debating about that and betting on it right up until the end. But I think we're safe. NASA actually has, the bull case is that they've done asteroid deflection before. And so this, this model does not take into account that they might just send a rocket and like blow it up, basically.

• 2:18:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:53John Coogan?

  Which would be a good outcome. And fortunately, we have, what, seven years to figure it out? That seems

• 2:18:59Jordi Hays?

  We've got time.

• 2:18:59John Coogan?

  That seems very doable. We might, we might have, you know, thousands of starships up there by then. Who knows? You could, you could start a new company today for asteroid defense and

• 2:19:13Jordi Hays?

  Big opportunity.

• 2:19:14John Coogan?

  And

• 2:19:14Jordi Hays?

  If you want to be a hero, if you want to be a hero, main character every 15 years, start an asteroid defense company.

• 2:19:21John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:19:21Jordi Hays?

  We'll back it.

• 2:19:22John Coogan?

  Yeah, it'd be great. And so we got another post from Wander. Their designer has been on a tear. And this was interesting because I haven't listened, I've never actually listed a, a property on Wander. But if you have a, a, a, a vacation home that you want to rent on to Wander to other people, their booking website is just the tip of the iceberg. They have a whole management platform and the management platform is crazy. It's integrated with all sorts of ICal URLs and smart home things. So you can generate new access codes for the garage door so that when someone comes in, they have a bespoke code that only

• 2:20:05John Coogan?

  works for that amount of time. And so they've done a lot of work to help property managers

• 2:20:10Jordi Hays?

  I think one of the, yeah, one of the greatest trades, one of the greatest trades you could do right now is say, there's a ton of competition for nice homes on Airbnb because there's this huge range.

• 2:20:19John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:20:19Jordi Hays?

  And if I, if I go and partner with a Wander, I'm going to get a much better guest experience that I don't have to manage at all.

• 2:20:26John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:20:26Jordi Hays?

  And less competition because Wander at the moment, they don't have the same amount of density. They might have five homes in a specific market. So you're Sort of, and they're working with the Technology Brothers to drive the demand side too. So we're here to drive supply and demand.

• 2:20:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:42Jordi Hays?

  But.

• 2:20:42John Coogan?

  And I liked this picture if you're looking for inspiration for where to stay. If you want to be a guest at a wander, the next photo is just this, this crazy, modern box house with a beautiful pool and a really wide open door. Great for entertaining. I thought that'd be a fun place to stay. So, so go surf on Wander, tell them the Technology Brothers sent you. And that's pretty much our show for today. Our producer Ben is a little under the weather, so wish him well. Thanks for being a trooper, Ben. We really appreciate you helping run the show today. Hope you're healing up soon and leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Leave us a review with an ad and we'll read it on the show.

• 2:21:27John Coogan?

  Send us DMs, tag us in whatever else is going on. And you can kick on over to the PMFred Ice stream now.

• 2:21:33Jordi Hays?

  Go lock in.

• 2:21:34John Coogan?

  Go lock in.

• 2:21:34Jordi Hays?

  It's time. It's enough entertainment and news for the day.

• 2:21:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:37Jordi Hays?

  It's time to lock in.

• 2:21:38John Coogan?

  Thanks for watching, everyone.

• 2:21:39Jordi Hays?

  Thanks, folks.

• 2:21:39John Coogan?

  Have a great day.

• 2:21:40Jordi Hays?

  See you tomorrow.

• 2:21:40John Coogan?

  See you tomorrow.