The Legacy of Warren Buffett, Bucky Moore, Katherine Boyle, Aditya Agarwal, Molly O'Shea, Augustus Doricko

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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?

  You're watching TVPN. Today is Monday, May 5th, 2025. We are live

• 0:04Jordi Hays?

  From the Temple of Technology, The Fortress of Finance, The Capital of Capital.

• 0:09John Coogan?

  We're back in Los Angeles. Yeah, we are so back. It was never over, but we are back. We enjoyed the weekend in Ojai, and it gave us some ideas. You know, Ojai is a very idyllic place, very slow-paced, not nearly

• 0:22Jordi Hays?

  Country living.

• 0:23John Coogan?

  fast-paced enough for us. Just the entire place is kind of devoid of finance.

• 0:29Jordi Hays?

  Finance.

• 0:30John Coogan?

  Really. And so we're launching a new campaign.

• 0:33Jordi Hays?

  Those calm, tranquil streets

• 0:35John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 0:36Jordi Hays?

  filled with

• 0:36John Coogan?

  A lot of farmers markets. A lot of derivatives trading.

• 0:40Jordi Hays?

  Wine tasting, things like that.

• 0:42John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 0:43Jordi Hays?

  There was this constant thought of what if we brought finance to Ojai?

• 0:48John Coogan?

  Yeah, so we're launching a campaign. We're calling it Save Ojai from stagnation. We're going to petition Goldman Sachs to open an office there.

• 0:59Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 1:00John Coogan?

  That's really the goal. Get Goldman in there.

• 1:02Jordi Hays?

  It would massively stimulate the local economy.

• 1:05John Coogan?

  Exactly. Transform it even.

• 1:07Jordi Hays?

  Transform.

• 1:07John Coogan?

  And save it. Ultimately, save it from being idyllic and stagnant.

• 1:12Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 1:12John Coogan?

  And so

• 1:13Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 1:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, if you know someone at Goldman, please kick them the idea, let's transform Ojai into sort of like a midtown Manhattan vibe.

• 1:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Really, the next midtown is what we want to be calling it.

• 1:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27Jordi Hays?

  There's so much, you know, midtown is, you know, Manhattan in general is so constrained geographically.

• 1:32John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:33Jordi Hays?

  The vision for Ojai is what if there were no bodies of water stopping, you know, tremendous growth and expansion.

• 1:40John Coogan?

  Just parking lots and condominiums and billionaire, we could build a new Billionaires Row in Ojai.

• 1:47Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 1:47John Coogan?

  You could save Ojai.

• 1:48Jordi Hays?

  That's right. We can save Ojai.

• 1:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50Jordi Hays?

  We did have a fantastic weekend, though.

• 1:52John Coogan?

  It was great.

• 1:53Jordi Hays?

  And, but we are certainly happy to be back today.

• 1:57John Coogan?

  Locked in. We got a great

• 1:58Jordi Hays?

  Live, locked in.

• 1:59John Coogan?

  Yeah, we have a great lineup for you. We'll pull that up.

• 2:02Jordi Hays?

  TVPN lineup.

• 2:03John Coogan?

  TVPN lineup. We got five guests. We got Molly O'Shea from Sorcery, Augustus Doricko from Rainmaker, Bucky Moore from Lightspeed, Katherine Boyle from Andreessen Horowitz, and Aditya Agarwal from South Park Commons. Very excited to talk to all of them, starting in about 40 minutes. But we will go through some breaking news. Also, if you're traveling to Ojai, get on Wander, go to wander.com, find your- Your happy place. Find your happy place. Book of Wander. There's a new Wander opening up in Ojai very soon, so you can get on the waitlist. Yeah, go check it out. Anyway, the news from the weekend was entirely dominated by Warren Buffett. The Wall Street Journal today is, it's just the Warren Buffett edition, basically. That's right. Two different articles in the main section, two different articles in the business and finance section.

• 2:48John Coogan?

  It should have just been wall to wall, to be honest. Yeah, they should call it- It's kind of offensive that- The Buffett Street Journal today. Yeah. But obviously, a fantastic legacy. 60 years as chairman. This was his 60th annual meeting, and he kind of teased that maybe he'd step down. He had already announced that he would be transitioning out, so it wasn't a complete surprise. Yeah. But it seemed like no one really knew that today would be the day. And so it was very exciting. And obviously, it triggers a lot of reflections. And so this piece in the Wall Street Journal was particularly interesting. Why there will never be another Warren Buffett. He's been the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, of course, the conglomerate

• 3:31John Coogan?

  he has built into one of the most successful investments in history. There are three reasons why he has no equal and never will. The person, the period, and the package. Let's start with the person. He's not only brilliant, but he has spent nearly his entire long lifetime obsessed with the stock market, especially in his early years as an investor. His unparalleled success depended on unbearable sacrifice, foregoing a normal, social, and family life. A later writer called the great 17th century philosopher Spinoza, the God-intoxicated man. Buffett is the stock-intoxicated man. That's right. He bought his first stock at age 11, devoured information around about companies, reading corporate reports, the way most people listen to music. He read a ton of financial

• 4:13John Coogan?

  statements while other kids played at amusement parks. Buffett was there physically, but mentally and emotionally. He was off in a world of his own, fixated on tax-loss carryforwards and amortization schedules. We love to see it. Imagine being that obsessed. Imagine enjoying it. That's how we feel about podcasting. Kind of the Warren Buffett of podcasting, the the the Munger and Buffett of podcasting ideally. That's where we want to end. You really should strive to be so driven in your career that when you retire, you retire, you announce your retirement in a stadium to just all the adoring fans.

• 4:45Jordi Hays?

  To applause.

• 4:46John Coogan?

  Yes, applause.

• 4:46Jordi Hays?

  Round of a standing ovation.

• 4:48John Coogan?

  Yeah. He started when Harry Truman was in the White House. Expertise is rooted in pattern recognition and Buffett has seen every conceivable pattern. Given what I know about his work habits, I estimate conservatively, he has read more than 100,000 financial statements in his more than seven decade career. Years ago, winding up a phone interview, he was talking to the the man who wrote this Wall Street Journal op ed or piece and and said, hey, I'm I'm I'm reading this book. And Buffett says, oh, I also read it. It was about 50 years ago. And then he starts describing a passage and Buffett's like, wow. Yeah, Buffett knows the knows the exact quote from that book. And knew almost every sentence verbatim. Fantastic.

• 5:32Jordi Hays?

  His parallel exposure to financial information combined with his prodigious memory made Buffett into a human form of artificial intelligence. He could answer almost any query out of his own internal database. That has given him an unparalleled ability to identify the kernel of significance in any new bit of information and a durable advantage over other investors. Now that AI is universally available, a person with Buffett's massive command center won't even have an advantage in the future.

• 5:58John Coogan?

  Do you think this is true?

• 6:00John Coogan?

  Do you agree with this? I thought this was an interesting take and I don't know. I agree with it.

• 6:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I don't. I don't want to believe that it's true. Right? Because that that just that that sort of would imply that that Buffett's only advantage is

• 6:15John Coogan?

  Just knowledge.

• 6:16Jordi Hays?

  Access to information.

• 6:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Jordi Hays?

  And in a world where information has already been widely accessible and freely available for. Decades, you know, effectively for free.

• 6:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:27Jordi Hays?

  It feels like we would have already, you know, it feels like he would have lost his edge, you know, maybe in the 90s.

• 6:32John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 6:32Jordi Hays?

  If that was the case.

• 6:33John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 6:33Jordi Hays?

  So.

• 6:34John Coogan?

  Yeah, there is, there is a remaining question. I wonder how David Senra and like the, you know, modern business historians will see his legacy. Is it purely driven by knowledge? Is it intelligence? Is it contrarian individual, independent thinking? Is it, is it access to capital and storytelling? Or is it management?

• 6:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 6:53John Coogan?

  He's also great at, in, you know, putting the right person in the job and giving them the tools to succeed. So there's a lot of other things that, that go into making Buffett successful.

• 7:04Jordi Hays?

  Seems like market timing seems to be, you know.

• 7:07John Coogan?

  He's really good at that.

• 7:08Jordi Hays?

  You know, access to historical information can certainly give you an advantage, maybe in timing markets, but it certainly doesn't seem like it'd be the only thing that gives you an advantage. Otherwise, more people would be better at it.

• 7:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it does seem to, I don't know, it's odd with the market timing thing because it does seem like that would be easy to encode into an algorithm. And yet we haven't seen quantitative hedge funds necessarily apply the Buffett philosophy. When they do quantitative investing, they, they, they usually do it on a much shorter time horizon. So it's kind of interesting. I did like this, that he, Buffett has said many times that he won the ovarian lottery by being born when he, when and where he was. If he'd been born in Omaha just 50 years earlier in 1880, he would have had to invest in livestock instead of stocks. Had he been born in 1930, Omsk instead of Omaha, a little play on words there, he wouldn't have owned, he wouldn't have owned railways. He probably would have worked on the Trans-Siberian

• 8:04John Coogan?

  Railway. And so he lucked out being in Omaha in 1930, when there was a big boom. And then also Benjamin Graham, pioneer of security analysis and one of the greatest investors of the past century, was, was developing his career right then. So Buffett was able to study under him. And Buffett also began his career before trillions of dollars had poured into the stock market from index funds and other giant institutional investors. He built his phenomenally early track record by his phenomenal early track record by fishing, where no one else was even looking to catch anything. He fed on the tiniest plankton on the stock market. He bet big on these small fry. This guy is such a good writer.

• 8:46John Coogan?

  At various points, his investment partnerships had 21% of their total assets in Dempster Mill Manufacturing, a maker of agriculture equipment based in Beatrice, Nebraska, and 35% in Sanborn Map, a New York-based cartography company whose investment portfolio alone was worth more than its stock price. Sometimes it took him years.

• 9:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I mean, it's such a testament to you can be an extreme generalist and do very well if you have a deep passion for the craft of investing, which to date, have we seen anybody that seemingly loves investing more than Warren Buffett?

• 9:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:19Jordi Hays?

  Outside of Charlie, maybe?

• 9:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Jordi Hays?

  This was a funny comp. Somebody else shared this online, but they said, as Warren Buffett retires, think about this, in 2024, Warren Buffett's stock portfolio performance was 25%. And in 2024, Nancy Pelosi's stock market performance was 71%. So anyways, a strong, strong case for the Pelosi act there.

• 9:44John Coogan?

  I do think this is, the final takeaway in this piece is interesting because Buffett placed his investments in a package like no other, talking about the holding company. Berkshire Hathaway operates as a publicly traded holding company, a receptacle for whatever he thought was worth owning. Other publicly traded stocks, treasury bonds, private companies. At one point, it was even one of the world's largest holders of silver. Now it holds $330 billion in cash. Berkshire isn't a hedge fund, mutual fund, exchange traded fund, or any other conventional investment vehicle. By design, it charges no management fees that would subtract from its returns and no performance incentive fees that would encourage excessive risk-taking in pursuit of a big payday. Most investment funds operate under a curse that

• 10:30John Coogan?

  Economists call pro-cyclicality. After a fund racks up, racks up a streak of good returns, investors throw money at the fund, forcing its managers to put the new cash to work in a market that is likely becoming overpriced. That hinders future performance. We saw this with venture, obviously. Like, a bunch of people made a bunch of money on mobile, and then they raised huge funds specifically for mobile. We're seeing this in defense tech now. You know, if you got early in Anduril, now you're raising like a dedicated defense tech fund. Is there, are the assets overpriced now? Maybe. It is risky. And so with Buffett, when returns falter in a falling market, normally, when returns falter in a falling market, investors yank their money out, forcing the fund managers

• 11:13John Coogan?

  to sell as bargains are becoming abundant. This is the problem of pro-cyclicality in normal investment fund structuring. The fund's own investors make its performance worse, intensifying the market's ups and downs. Berkshire's only cash flows, however, are internal. Money comes in from, or goes out to, the assets it owns. Cash can't come pouring in from new investors, or get yanked out by fleeing investors at the worst possible times, because you can only invest in Berkshire by buying shares from someone else in the secondary market. They don't do new, new stock issuances. And this package has given Buffett a structural advantage that has enabled him to pursue opportunities wherever

• 11:55John Coogan?

  and whenever he has perceived them. That's a luxury almost no other professional investor has or even wants. So long as most fund managers can earn a lavish living from underperforming the market, the real risk for them will be trying anything different. Pigs will sprout feathers before anyone has the daring to truly emulate Warren Buffett. I love it. That's great. Anyway, if you think you're the next Warren Buffett, get on public.com. Multi-asset investing, industry-leading yields, trusted by millions.

• 12:24Jordi Hays?

  Trusted by millions. They had their first race yesterday sponsoring Aston Martin.

• 12:31John Coogan?

  Aston Martin, F1 in Miami.

• 12:32Jordi Hays?

  F1. And thank you to public for betting on us before you bet on Aston Martin. Really shows, shows your faith. And yes, in good company.

• 12:44Jordi Hays?

  It is interesting how many people, is there a curse to call yourself a baby Berkshire Hathaway?

• 12:53John Coogan?

  Maybe.

• 12:54Jordi Hays?

  A few people have dared to call them.

• 12:56John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. It is rough.

• 12:58Jordi Hays?

  Building, you know, this, this holding company.

• 13:00John Coogan?

  Notably, Josh Kushner at Thrive has not drawn that comparison.

• 13:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 13:03John Coogan?

  Thinking very differently, maybe building something different. But it is interesting because they're like that pro cyclical thing does feel like a problem in venture. And, and if you have the, if you have the permanent capital vehicle, maybe there's something there that you can grow into over time. But yeah, I mean, it's very, it's very different there. Like, you know, if you're a traditional VC, you don't have deal flow stuffed with cash flowing assets constantly.

• 13:28Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 13:28John Coogan?

  Somebody shows up with a lot of cash flow, you're kind of confused.

• 13:31Jordi Hays?

  Not sure what to do here, bud.

• 13:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, I should. Yeah. Anyway, we, we should talk a little bit about the CEO in waiting, Greg Abel. He is taking over and at the young age of 60, 60 something.

• 13:48John Coogan?

  Imagine being.

• 13:48Jordi Hays?

  Still ready for a generation, second generational run.

• 13:52John Coogan?

  Yeah. But at the same time, you know, his boss, Warren Buffett is 94 years old. And so he's like, yeah.

• 13:57Jordi Hays?

  That's what I'm saying. He's got a good 34 years.

• 13:59John Coogan?

  Yeah, probably. That's the nature of these, these.

• 14:00Jordi Hays?

  Potentially a lot more.

• 14:02John Coogan?

  Yeah. And so Abel will inherit the challenge of overseeing that wide ranging empire while living up to Buffett's seemingly impossible to replicate record in stock picking, something even Buffett has struggled to do in recent years. He would make a huge mistake trying to be Warren Buffett, and he knows that, says Will Danoff, the fidelity manager who counts Berkshire as a top holding. Shareholders want Greg to be the best Greg Abel can, he can be. Buffett isn't just an investor. His unique stature allows him to conk, confer legitimacy on damaged businesses in times of crisis, as he famously did when Wall Street veered toward potential collapse and to extract a good deal for his shareholders in the process. That's of course, the story of Bank of America during the financial crisis.

• 14:45John Coogan?

  It was the, the definitely the next domino to fall after Lehman and Bear Stearns, but.

• 14:53John Coogan?

  Buffett saw something beautiful in the business. He saw something savable and he came in, kind of bailed them out in the private markets, injected a bunch of cash, and then, of course, wrote a op-ed on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.

• 15:02Jordi Hays?

  Never let the Bank of America fail.

• 15:04John Coogan?

  Never let the Bank of America fail. His reputation as a brilliant investor means that many shareholders are content letting Berkshire amass a huge pile of cash because they expect that Buffett will eventually be able to deploy it well. No one can completely fill those shoes. Warren's so unique, Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, said of his close friend, "I hope we have leaders like Warren in the future." Buffett's planned departure, combined with the death in 2023 of his close friend and investing partner, Charlie Munger, sets Berkshire on a new path. The company's fundamentals remain strong, but Berkshire's investment decisions might no longer carry the same weight. Abel, who is 62, will join other successors with tough acts to follow. Tim Cook filled Apple's top spot after Steve Jobs died and has made a lasting imprint. He drew on his supply

• 15:48John Coogan?

  chain expertise to expand manufacturing in China and built up a services business. At Disney, Bob Chapek took over as CEO for Bob Iger, only to have his uneven tenure cut short by a boardroom coup that resulted in Iger's return.

• 16:01Jordi Hays?

  Battle of the Bobs.

• 16:02John Coogan?

  Battle of the Bobs. There's a lot of Bobs over at Disney. It's very fun. Greg will have to be Greg, said Mark Omen, a retired Wells Fargo executive and a close friend of Abel's in his adopted Iowa hometown. Berkshire's succession plans, one of Wall Street's favorite guessing games, were finally revealed in 2021, so we've known this for four years now, when Buffett said Abel would eventually become the next CEO. Buffett had previously said that his son, Howard Buffett, would someday replace him as chairman, though without an executive role. Until this weekend, many shareholders assumed those handoffs wouldn't take place before Buffett's death, but he decided to do it early.

• 16:37Jordi Hays?

  I think it's smart to try to make this a phased approach versus Buffett, were he to pass away without warning, would be probably much worse for shareholders in general and just much more chaotic than saying, "Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a step back at the end of this year, and here's exactly how we're phasing out my leadership." So, and knowing Buffett, he will be, he will be involved. There's no way this guy is gonna stop caring about stocks.

• 17:10Jordi Hays?

  There's just no way.

• 17:11John Coogan?

  I do hope he's healthy. It would be very unfortunate if this was all like, you know, like how the Pope went out the day, like the weekend before he passed away and, you know, spoke with the people. I hope that his health is in good, I hope he's in good health and can serve as the chairman and non-executive director for a number of years.

• 17:32Jordi Hays?

  Maybe it's that he wants to really get seriously into weight training. You know, he never made a lot of time for the gym and he just wants to be able to, you know, take some of that time. He would spend reading or studying companies and just put it towards iron. It's a very good possibility.

• 17:47John Coogan?

  But if you are buying cash flowing assets, trying to squeeze every penny out of the businesses, you gotta put those holdings on ramp.com. Time is money. Save both. Easy use corporate cards, bill payments, accounting and a whole lot more all in one place.

• 18:01Jordi Hays?

  Ramp.

• 18:01John Coogan?

  A ramp powered roll up. It's easy money. You just buy a company, put them on ramp, triple the cash flows.

• 18:08Jordi Hays?

  That's right.

• 18:08John Coogan?

  Reinvest it in silver and gold.

• 18:10Jordi Hays?

  It could be that easy.

• 18:11John Coogan?

  It could be that easy. Not financial advice, of course. Then there's another interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, five wins and losses from Coca-Cola to Berkshire. What worked and what didn't for the head of Berkshire Hathaway, looking back on his hits and misses. Coca-Cola was a hit. He invested in the software and company in 1988. He told Berkshire shareholders he wasn't. He expected to own the stock for a long time. When we own outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding pill, period, is forever.

• 18:41Jordi Hays?

  Great life.

• 18:42John Coogan?

  True to Buffett's word, Coca-Cola remains a holding 40 years later. By the end of 2024, the stake was valued at roughly 25 billion. Coke's dividends, which have increased annually for decades, paid Berkshire some 770 million in 2024 alone.

• 18:57Jordi Hays?

  So along the way, the stock came to represent something more to Berkshire and its shareholders than just a steady source of income. Buffett was Coke's largest shareholder, a one-time board member and an unflinching pitchman.

• 19:08John Coogan?

  So good.

• 19:08Jordi Hays?

  He often said he drank five cherry cokes a day and his devotion to his favorite soda became part of his lore, of the lore that drew thousands of fans to Omaha for Berkshire's annual shareholder meetings.

• 19:20John Coogan?

  He's a junkyard dog.

• 19:21Jordi Hays?

  He's a junkyard dog. Yeah, I mean, he really, you know, this has been one area where people have said, oh, you know, tried to poke holes in in Warren Buffett and say, you know, you're promoting, you're making your money on on big soda, basically, right? Something that can can have negative health effects, but he sort of has been able to beat those allegations by just.

• 19:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, he drinks five a day. He's like, how bad could it be?

• 19:48Jordi Hays?

  I'm drinking five a day. I'm good.

• 19:49John Coogan?

  I'm a peak performance.

• 19:50Jordi Hays?

  If you're worried, drink two a day.

• 19:52John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Jordi Hays?

  Just dial it back. So a miss that he had with Solomon Brothers.

• 19:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, this is interesting.

• 19:57Jordi Hays?

  Berkshire bought preferred shares in Solomon Brothers in 1987, when it was still one of the biggest firms on Wall Street. In 1991, through scandal, though, scandal enveloped the investment bank when its traders were accused of rigging a treasury note auction. Buffett was forced to step in as chairman to clean up the mess, which ended when the firm settled a series of government investigations.

• 20:18John Coogan?

  This was very interesting because, like, people don't, I mean, in Silicon Valley, we don't think about that many opportunities where a company is embroiled in some sort of chaos or scandal and then like a legend steps in.

• 20:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 20:33John Coogan?

  Like, it kind of happened with Zenefits and the David Sacks thing, but it didn't go well.

• 20:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 20:38John Coogan?

  Can it ever go properly? Like, it's just an interesting strategy to try and pick something up. But I think the I think the lesson, you know, is this, buy buy wonderful companies at reasonable prices. As opposed to trying to get a discount. This feels like the example of like, oh, they're so beaten up, there's still some business there, let's hop in, but ultimately got, you know, your hand burnt because there was just too much, too much.

• 21:04Jordi Hays?

  Well, in this case, they invested in 1987 in the in the this ordeal.

• 21:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:09Jordi Hays?

  With the treasury note auction didn't happen till four years later.

• 21:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, rough.

• 21:13Jordi Hays?

  It wasn't necessarily trying to be a turnaround. But yeah, you could imagine, I mean, there would have been a scenario where.

• 21:19John Coogan?

  Yes, but but in in 91, Buffett had to step into the chairman role.

• 21:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 21:24John Coogan?

  Instead of just saying like, hey, it's I'm wiping my hands of this because, you know, we, yes, we have our preferred shares, but we like the the investment's not going well, so we're gonna.

• 21:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 21:34John Coogan?

  Bet we're gonna dip out and sell at a loss as opposed to, I'm gonna step into the chairman role, I'm gonna run the company. That's kind of crazy.

• 21:40Jordi Hays?

  Founder mode.

• 21:41John Coogan?

  Buffett said, I can handle bad news, but I don't like to deal with it after it has festered for a while. A reluctance to face up immediately to bad news is what turned a problem at Solomon from one that could have easily been disposed of into one that almost caused the demise of a firm with 8,000 employees. Then the next one, the hit, this is kind of interesting, BYD, Little No Battery Maker.

• 22:07John Coogan?

  Munger went over to China, found BYD, the battery maker, and encouraged Berkshire to buy a 10% stake in the company in 2008. Within two years, the $230 million investment was valued at nearly $2 billion. And so, this is like a series C. 230 million for 10% of $2.3 billion post. That's like venture style investment that they just did kind of randomly. Obviously, a little controversial now that BYD is so closely competitive with American industries. But, you know, he secured the bag and made a 10x, pretty, pretty. But they have since, since begun to trim their stake. They also missed on US Air, the airline.

• 22:49John Coogan?

  And this is, this is the famous and hilarious quote from Richard Branson, the wealthy owner of.

• 22:55Jordi Hays?

  Just for context.

• 22:56John Coogan?

  Where's BYD right now?

• 22:57Jordi Hays?

  BYD is still over $100 billion.

• 23:00John Coogan?

  $100 billion?

• 23:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 23:02John Coogan?

  Wow, okay, so they have 10%. That's 10 billion on 200 mil.

• 23:07John Coogan?

  It's a 50x, they got it at 2 billion.

• 23:10Jordi Hays?

  No, no, no. They, they invested way.

• 23:15John Coogan?

  Berkshire invested a $2 billion post money, essentially.

• 23:17Jordi Hays?

  No, it said Berkshire to buy a 10% stake in 2008, within two years, the $230 million investment was valued. So they got a 10x to 2 billion.

• 23:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, and now it's another 10x, basically, yeah.

• 23:29Jordi Hays?

  Or sorry, another 50x.

• 23:31John Coogan?

  50x?

• 23:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:32John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 23:33Jordi Hays?

  So they invested.

• 23:34John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:34Jordi Hays?

  Got like, within two years, it was a 10x.

• 23:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:38Jordi Hays?

  And then.

• 23:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, got to a 50x, not bad. But they struggled with US Air. Richard Branson said, Richard Branson was asked how to become a millionaire? And he had a quick answer, there's really nothing to it. Start as a billionaire and then buy an airline. Buffett wrote in his 1996 letter to shareholders unwilling to accept Branson's proposition on faith, "Your chairman decided in 1989 to test it by investing 358 million in a 9.25% preferred stock of US Air." Buffett conceded he underestimated just how much havoc the deregulation of the US airline industry would play on US Air's business. From 1990 to 1994, US Air reported total losses of 2.4 billion.

• 24:20John Coogan?

  US Air eventually became US Airways, which later merged with American Airlines. Not a good outcome, but contrarian, interesting outcome. Mid-American Energy. You think of mid? It's not mid. It's not mid. It was great. It was goaded. It was goaded. Buffett bought a 75% stake in the Des- in the Des Moines Utility in 1999 at the urging of Walter Scott, a lifelong friend who had joined the Berkshire board in late 1980s. Mid-American, later renamed Berkshire Hathaway Energy, thrived under Berkshire by eschewing dividends and plowing the company's profit back into the business through acquisitions of capital events- capital investments. BHE would become one of Berkshire's four pillars, along with its insurance and railroad businesses, and its stake in Apple.

• 25:03John Coogan?

  Annual operating earnings grew to nearly 4 billion from 122 million in 2000. Wow. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty, pretty great growth. The deal also added Greg Abel to Berkshire Hathaway's payroll. That's where Greg Abel came from. He was working at Mid-American Energy, and that's how he was able to climb the ranks. Pretty, pretty great. And then actually, the last one that's kind of interesting is that Berkshire Hathaway itself apparently was amiss. In May of 1964, the top executive of a struggling textile manufacturer called Berkshire Hathaway wrote to its investors, offering to buy their shares for $11.37 apiece.

• 25:44John Coogan?

  Buffett, a major shareholder, had expected $11.50, but when Berkshire's Seabury Stanton responded with the lower offer, "I bristled at Stanton's behavior and didn't tender." He's like, "It's offensive that you didn't want my $11.50. You only want $11.37. What is this? What are you trying to sell me?" And so that was, Buffett wrote, "A monumentally stupid decision." Berkshire continued to wilt, along with the rest of the New England textile industry shutting mills and racking up losses, but Buffett, piqued by Stanton's actions, ignored the company's grim outlook, and instead kept buying more stock. By May 1965, he took over Berkshire for good. It is a move he still regrets,

• 26:29John Coogan?

  though it did earn him his first mention in the Wall Street Journal.

• 26:32Jordi Hays?

  There we go.

• 26:33John Coogan?

  Although Seabury's and my childish behavior, through Seabury's and my childish behavior, after all, what was an eighth of a point to either of us? He lost his job and I found myself with more than 25% of Buffett's partnership capital, his original investment vehicles, capital invested in a terrible business about which I knew very little. I became the dog who caught the car. Buffett kept the textile business going for years, but stubbornness, stupidity has its limits. He wrote, "In 1985, I finally threw in the towel and closed the operation." So, very, very ironic.

• 27:07Jordi Hays?

  It's insane that the company, that it was, yeah, the namesake ended up being an L. Just goes to show as if you want to be one of the greatest or the greatest investor of all time, you can, okay to have some L's along the way.

• 27:20John Coogan?

  It happens.

• 27:21Jordi Hays?

  It happens.

• 27:21John Coogan?

  The best of them.

• 27:22Jordi Hays?

  Even to the best of them.

• 27:23John Coogan?

  So, the market so far does not like the retirement news for Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway stock is down 6.39% in this post by Ryan Peterson, friend of the show. But he asks, "How was this not priced in?" He's 94. I mean, I guess, you know, there's the question of like, what's, yes, yes, we know he's going out, but it could be another two years, could be another three years. And what does that mean? Well, is the delta between another year of Buffett and extra 3% in the, in the performance of the company? Maybe, I don't know.

• 27:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, in many ways, I mean, I think the, the interesting dynamic is they're, they're sitting on all this cash that they will have to redeploy at some point. And so, it would be fascinating if Buffett's, you know, main sort of final act was just accumulating this fortress balance sheet, but then you have to trust Greg Abel and the rest of the team to actually deploy it effectively and be able to live up to, you know, you know, basically fill some of the biggest shoes ever.

• 28:26John Coogan?

  Those are interesting quote by Warren Buffett. "I read everything, annual reports, 10 K's, 10 Q's, biographies, histories, five newspapers a day. On airplanes, I read the instructions on the back of the seats. Reading is key. Reading has made me rich over time." Warren Buffett. That's David Sandler, to a T. That's great. And Jerry Capital had a funny post here. Proof that nobody can actually compound 20% over his entire career from 1995 or 1965 to 2024. The gain 19.9%. Just 0.1 off of 20K, 20%. No one can do it. It's too hard.

• 29:04Jordi Hays?

  Simply impossible.

• 29:06John Coogan?

  He has not had that many bad years, although 2008, the financial crisis, that was rough. 31% down, but the S and P went down 37%. And so it seems like he also didn't get back in fast enough because the next year.

• 29:18Jordi Hays?

  If you look at his exposure, he actually was down in 1999, but then as tech, you know, the original dot com bubble collapsed, he had a one down year.

• 29:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, but mostly he outperformed a ton.

• 29:31Jordi Hays?

  He was outperforming massively.

• 29:32John Coogan?

  Fascinating. Yeah. So 5 million percent overall gain versus 40K percent overall gain in the S and P 500. Anyway, there's some more information here. I like these just like key ideas and takeaways from Buffett. I pulled a bunch of these together. We'll have to get David on the show this week and talk to him about lessons because he's done like seven different episodes about Buffett and the Buffett Cinematic Universe. But avoiding mistakes is the ultimate goal. Buffett and Munger teach that the best way to prevent trouble is to avoid it altogether by learning what works and what does not. Focus on not doing dumb things. I like that. Learn from folly and remove ignorance. Fewer dumb mistakes

• 30:15John Coogan?

  than other people and fix mistakes quickly. Buffett and Munger stress ignorance removal, systematically eliminating what you don't know or understand. Simplicity and common sense, a core theme. Simplest timeless principles win over complexity. Efficiency, simplicity, common sense, hallmark of Buffett and Munger and tons and tons of lessons in everything from venture capital to startups to building businesses to just living your life.

• 30:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and they, they, I mean, the, the, these are illustrated by looking at investments like Coca-Cola and Sees Candy, which are

• 30:49John Coogan?

  So simple.

• 30:50Jordi Hays?

  beloved brands.

• 30:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Jordi Hays?

  And it's sense of, are people going to love candy in 20 years?

• 30:57John Coogan?

  Probably.

• 30:58Jordi Hays?

  Just as much as they do today? Yes.

• 30:59John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 30:59Jordi Hays?

  Okay, if, if, can we scale, you know, distribution between now and then?

• 31:03John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 31:03Jordi Hays?

  Great.

• 31:04John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 31:04Jordi Hays?

  Probably a good investment, so.

• 31:06John Coogan?

  I mean, apparently when he made the iPhone, or the Apple investment, the iPhone was seven years in? I think the iPhone

• 31:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 31:12John Coogan?

  started in 2007, and he made the investment like 2014, and he didn't use an iPhone. He had a flip phone. But he was like, my grandson uses one, or my granddaughter like loves them. And so he was like, and the, and the retention rate is 95%. And so I think it's a good business.

• 31:31Jordi Hays?

  That's, that's amazing.

• 31:32John Coogan?

  And, and it became a fantastic investment for him.

• 31:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 31:35John Coogan?

  And a lot of people were pointing out that if you, if you pull out Apple from the Berkshire Hathaway investment returns, it then underperforms the S and P 500. But that's kind of odd because Apple's in the S and P 500, so maybe you should pull it out of that too. But it's kind of like, you know. But at a certain point, it does raise the interesting question is like, people originally went

• 31:57Jordi Hays?

  If you pull out the power law outcome out of any investor's portfolio.

• 32:02John Coogan?

  It's kind of the nature of these things.

• 32:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 32:03John Coogan?

  But, I mean, to, to kind of steel man that criticism, the, the flip side is, um, what, what service were you paying Warren Buffett for in the seventies or the eighties? It was like, go find some company that's, maybe the stock isn't even publicly traded and operate that company extremely efficiently, reinvest all the cash flows, all these different things. And, and Apple feels like, well, anyone could just buy Apple.

• 32:30Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 32:30John Coogan?

  And so, um, certainly, you know, I, I think, I think Apple outperformed Berkshire Hathaway.

• 32:36Jordi Hays?

  But at the same time, I'm happy to pay somebody two and 20 if they just only invest in

• 32:42John Coogan?

  And in this case, you're not, you're not paying two and 20. There's no, there's no fees.

• 32:46Jordi Hays?

  No, but in general, it's like, that, that is what somebody is paying a manager.

• 32:49John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 32:50Jordi Hays?

  Say like, I will pay you.

• 32:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:51Jordi Hays?

  Uh, two and 20 to buy public equities.

• 32:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:54Jordi Hays?

  Because I think you're gonna just buy the best ones.

• 32:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:57Jordi Hays?

  And not buy the bad ones.

• 32:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:58Jordi Hays?

  And that's the.

• 33:00John Coogan?

  And I mean, the real, the real benefit is like, he's been trimming that Apple position going into the crazy year that we've had so far.

• 33:07Jordi Hays?

  It is, it is so.

• 33:08John Coogan?

  He's not just buying and holding.

• 33:09Jordi Hays?

  You know, you remember, I mean, this was, was last year the first time that they announced they were selling?

• 33:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, last year there was, there started to be some articles about the growing cash pile at Berkshire Hathaway, uh, which sits closer to $350 billion now in cash.

• 33:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 33:23John Coogan?

  Which is insane.

• 33:24Jordi Hays?

  So Berkshire started selling in Q1, Q2 and Q3 of last year with the most significant sell-off happening.

• 33:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 33:32Jordi Hays?

  In Q2, which reduced their stake by nearly half. So, I mean, I, I remember at the time, people were somewhat coping and just being like, oh, like the business is just getting complicated.

• 33:43John Coogan?

  They're getting it wrong.

• 33:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:45John Coogan?

  Of course, the market goes into turmoil.

• 33:47Jordi Hays?

  They've just held it a long time.

• 33:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 33:48Jordi Hays?

  They're probably not actually bearish.

• 33:50John Coogan?

  Yeah, they're not actually calling the tom.

• 33:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 33:52John Coogan?

  Successfully for the seventh time in a row.

• 33:56Jordi Hays?

  It's great.

• 33:57John Coogan?

  Yeah. Anyway, uh, I like this, I like this investment principle, the circle of competence. Oh, invest only in businesses you truly understand. Buffett and Munger stay within industries where they have knowledge and insight, and they put anything outside the circle in a too tough pile to avoid. Venturing beyond your competence or into overly complex ventures is a recipe for, for mistakes. Knowing your limits and saying no often is just as important as spotting opportunities. This idea that like, it is okay to grow the circle of competence, become competent in other, in other areas, but don't step out of the circle of confidence.

• 34:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 34:32John Coogan?

  Of competence, because you will be smacked.

• 34:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, just going back to their, uh, when they were selling, so the stock actually, they started selling in Q1.

• 34:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Jordi Hays?

  The stock rose from $165 a share, uh, in the beginning of Q2, the entire period that where they were really selling, and actually ripped that quarter up to 230, uh, and going all the way to 250, uh, by December. And then ultimately has just been down since. So it just shows the, um. Conviction in that, you know, it's not like they FOMO'd back in once, you know, once they were like, oh, the stock's actually ripping. Maybe we sold too early. It's like, no.

• 35:10John Coogan?

  No, he waited.

• 35:11Jordi Hays?

  We were, we're gonna be, you know, right in the fullness of time.

• 35:14John Coogan?

  I like this. Uh, there's a bunch of interesting memorable quotes we should go through. All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there.

• 35:23Jordi Hays?

  Iconic line.

• 35:24John Coogan?

  Uh, consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others. This whole idea of like, they meet people where they are. A bull market is like sex. It feels best just before it ends. Euphoria.

• 35:39Jordi Hays?

  Crazy line from, from Buffett.

• 35:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 35:42Jordi Hays?

  He had a, like, a few too many Coca Colas.

• 35:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Jordi Hays?

  It's really getting the caffeine high.

• 35:47John Coogan?

  To being successful in any field is getting very interested in it. I couldn't excel in anything in which I didn't have an intense interest, passion. You excel when you truly love the subject or work. That's 100% accurate.

• 35:57Jordi Hays?

  Here's another good one. We don't try to change people. It doesn't work well. We accept people the way they are.

• 36:01John Coogan?

  Yeah, smart.

• 36:02Jordi Hays?

  Uh, and it, this, this is a lesson you only have to, you know, uh, learn a couple of times. I think founders, you know, hiring people or even investors hiring people.

• 36:12John Coogan?

  Yeah, you mentioned this with some investments where you were like, okay, the founder's bad at this one thing, but I'm good at that. So I can change them into being good at the thing that I'm good at. And it's like, often that's not the case.

• 36:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, or more so you, you hire somebody to do a specific thing and there's only, you can help somebody go from, my experience, you can help, help somebody go from like, great to excellent.

• 36:34John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 36:35Jordi Hays?

  It's hard to take somebody from okay to great.

• 36:38John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 36:38Jordi Hays?

  Right? And so, accepting people the way that they are and then sort of, you know, trying to really be honest about whether they can get where they need to be is important.

• 36:47John Coogan?

  Yeah, I like this. Uh, Wall Street never changes. The pockets change, the suckers change, the stocks change, but Wall Street never changes because human nature never changes. It's great. Uh, there's a kind of interesting, um, uh, overview of his, of his career in 25, uh, key moments. So he reads The Intelligent Investor in 1949. That's so long ago. Discovers Benjamin Graham's philosophy of of value investing. And this and this forms the foundation of his approach in 1951, he visits.

• 37:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, real quick, you know, the the article in the journal earlier, he's talking about.

• 37:30Jordi Hays?

  The the author is talking about how Buffett's edge is the information that he has. And I would almost argue that Buffett's edge is the experience that he has. Because there's one thing to like, read about financial turmoil. 30 years ago, and you can understand like, why it happened pretty well. But it's a very different thing to viscerally feel it. And then have that inform your future decision making. And Buffett, at this point, done 60 plus, you know, shareholder annual AGMs, right? And, you know, being able to actually have 60 years of experience to draw on where he was viscerally feeling what was happening in the industries that they're in, just gives you an intrinsic advantage, right?

• 38:14Jordi Hays?

  Sometimes you actually have to experience something to to really learn the lesson. And he certainly has experienced the full spectrum of investment, you know, experiences.

• 38:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, 100%. So in 1951, he visits GEICO headquarters, learns firsthand about insurance float and low cost moats, gets gets excited about insurance. 1956, he launches the Buffett Partnership Limited, starts starts managing outside capital using Graham's principles, rapidly outperform the market. He begins buying Berkshire Hathaway shares in 1962. He spots this deep value opportunity in a dying textile mill and builds the stake.

• 38:52Jordi Hays?

  Ended up being his biggest regret.

• 38:54John Coogan?

  Yep, takes control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, buys enough shares to oust management, turning it into his investment vehicle. Buys National Indemnity entering entering the insurance market in 1967. It's crazy, like, each one of these is like a three year journey. But but because it's an 80 year career or something, or 60 year career, we're like, condensing it down so quickly. But so he enters insurance, unlocking the float model that would fund decades of investments. He closes his partnership to focus on. Berkshire in 1969, returns the capital to investors to avoid speculating in overheated market. 1972, he acquires Seize Candies, learns to pay up for great businesses with pricing power, shifting his investment philosophy instead of just finding, you know, these really, really beaten down stocks.

• 39:38John Coogan?

  He, he, he's okay paying a reasonable price for a truly great business. Invests in the Washington Post in 1973.

• 39:45Jordi Hays?

  The Washington Posters.

• 39:46John Coogan?

  The Washington Posters, bought a world-class media business at a bargain and became close with Catherine Graham.

• 39:52Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I forget when we were talking about this, wasn't he notorious for really marketing? Like, he would take a position and then he would actually take, effectively go on road shows, like doing media around, around the stock. So, yeah, he's like, I'm gonna own my distribution, right?

• 40:06John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 40:06Jordi Hays?

  He's like, retail.

• 40:08John Coogan?

  Let's talk about Seize Candy.

• 40:09Jordi Hays?

  Let's talk about Seize Candy, right? Let's get retail, armies of retail investors on board.

• 40:15John Coogan?

  Certainly early to that. He rescues GEICO from collapse in 1976, buys shares and joins the board to help steer his favorite insurance firm back to health. He names Charlie Munger vice chairman in 1978, and this was a formalization of his most important partnership and philosophical sounding board. He shuts down the textile business in 1985, acknowledging its failure, but it frees up capital, which completes Berkshire's transformation into this holding company. Buys the Coca-Cola stake in 1988, makes a $1 billion bet on a timeless consumer brand that became one of his biggest long-term wins. Stepped in to lead Solomon Brothers in 1991, takes in emergency control of the scandal-ridden firm, saving its reputation and stability, but ultimately not a great financial outcome.

• 41:00John Coogan?

  Issues Berkshire Class B shares in 1996, created low-cost access for smaller investors and blocked Wall Street's from misusing his name, because I think there was probably some sort of like, you know, aggregation SPV essentially on it, because the shares were getting so expensive. Acquires General Re in 1998, expands Berkshire's global insurance reach through the later admitted early integration challenges. He avoids the dot-com bubble in 1999, 19 to 2000, refused to chase fads, preserving capital and credibility as others crack. Pledged $31 billion to philanthropy in 2006, history's largest charitable donation, primarily to the Gates Foundation, his buddy, backs Goldman Sachs and GE during the crisis in 2008,

• 41:45John Coogan?

  stabilized markets by investing when fear was highest, bought Burlington Northern Railroad in 2009. This is the biggest acquisition of all time for Berkshire, betting on America's long-term economic growth. Railroads aren't going anywhere. They're not making any more of them.

• 41:59Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 42:00John Coogan?

  Funded Bank of America during the slump in 2011.

• 42:02Jordi Hays?

  Yesterday that was fascinating.

• 42:03John Coogan?

  This is crazy.

• 42:04Jordi Hays?

  Your, your local city Pasadena was, was estimating that it would take 400 years.

• 42:10John Coogan?

  500 years to put all of the electrical power lines underground. So they, they, they said the phase one is 100 years and phase two is 400 years to put them underground. Isn't that crazy? That's longer than America's been around. America is what 250, they're 300 years old now going on 1776, right?

• 42:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 42:30John Coogan?

  It's like a crazy, crazy amount of time.

• 42:34Jordi Hays?

  Imagine writing that with a straight. I hope they put on clown makeup.

• 42:37John Coogan?

  Oh, you think in decades? We think in centuries.

• 42:39Jordi Hays?

  Our plans are measured in centuries.

• 42:42John Coogan?

  Uh, so he funds Bank of America during 2011 slump, injects $5 billion, gains a massive stake. Then he invests in Apple in 2016. This is the iconic investment, $36 billion of Apple. Now it's Berkshire's most valuable holding. He promotes Abel and Jane as vice chairs in 2018 and starts quietly initiating the leadership succession process, uh, names. And then of course in 2021, he names Greg Abel as the future CEO. And then in 2025, he announced retirement as CEO. And so that is the legacy of Warren Buffett and we will continue talking about him this week. Hopefully we'll get David Sennar, some other folks on the show, but we are joined by our first guest of the show, Molly O'Shea, host of the Sorcery Podcast. Welcome to the stream, Molly. How are you doing?

• 43:28Jordi Hays?

  Molly, it's great to have you.

• 43:31Jordi Hays?

  You are live.

• 43:32John Coogan?

  You're alive. Okay, one second. We are working together, Molly. I want to have her on, but we'll talk to you about Linear in the meantime. Linear is a purpose-built tool for planning and building products. Meet the system for modern software development, streamline issues, projects, and product roadmaps on Linear.

• 43:48Jordi Hays?

  Just do it. We use Linear at TBPN. As you know, we treat our media products like regular software products in terms of the way that we build them, in terms of trying to make them better every single day. The best evidence of that is our livestream overlay, which we are always rolling out changes to. And if you have any feedback for it, let us know and we'll get those issues slotted into Linear.

• 44:16John Coogan?

  For sure.

• 44:17Jordi Hays?

  So, thank you to Linear for supporting the show and...

• 44:22John Coogan?

  Did you watch Miami F1?

• 44:24Jordi Hays?

  I did not. I had food poisoning.

• 44:27John Coogan?

  It was brutal.

• 44:27Jordi Hays?

  It was absolutely brutal.

• 44:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yesterday was a complete...

• 44:32John Coogan?

  I didn't get a chest watch either. I did throw on a little bit of the, a little bit of an older season of Drive to Survive. And I'm starting to get back into it, but it's hard.

• 44:40Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 44:41John Coogan?

  F1's tricky to follow. Bodybuilding's much easier to follow.

• 44:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 44:45John Coogan?

  I think it's really the only sport I follow actively.

• 44:46Jordi Hays?

  There's very little space in your brain for anything other than bodybuilding content, right? So, it's like anything that you would watch is competing with, you know, reruns of the Arnold and...

• 44:57John Coogan?

  Yes, exactly.

• 44:58Jordi Hays?

  Historically.

• 44:59John Coogan?

  They really do need to do, I mean, full, full Drive to Survive level production on the next Arnold.

• 45:05Jordi Hays?

  Maybe that could be us.

• 45:06John Coogan?

  I mean, that is like Sam Sula's like channel, basically. It's like that. It's just Drive to Survive for bodybuilding, basically. But we wanted to have Molly on the show because she is a good friend and has done a bunch of interesting things. But she posted over the weekend, venture funds as F1 teams. Red Bull is Founder's Fund. McLaren is Thrive. Mercedes is Sequoia and Ferrari is Cosla. And we're going to debate this with her, see how she breaks it down and if we have any different takes. She says Red Bull Racing is Founder's Fund. Why? High conviction, unapologetically bold, and driven by generational talent. Verstappen is Peter Thiel. Traits relentless, unconventional,

• 45:46John Coogan?

  and power focused. I feel like for Red Bull, you gotta go with a venture fund that's not in venture, because Red Bull's like not a car company.

• 45:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 45:57John Coogan?

  So I almost feel like you should go with like Incutel or

• 46:00Jordi Hays?

  Co2.

• 46:01John Coogan?

  Co2 crossover for sure. Tiger maybe. Or maybe, is there an actually decent corporate VC arm? I mean, I guess OpenAI.

• 46:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they probably have one of the better performing corporate funds.

• 46:17John Coogan?

  They have a really good corporate fund.

• 46:18Jordi Hays?

  As of late.

• 46:19John Coogan?

  But I haven't seen much from like, I mean, I guess Google Ventures has done pretty well, GV, although they've kind of spun out now.

• 46:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. I think Stripe has probably made some good balance sheet investments over the years. I know they're in Ramp. I've heard Okta randomly does a decent amount of corporate investing. They have some fund vehicle, or they're doing it off the balance sheet as well.

• 46:47John Coogan?

  Well, if you're looking for a new bed, get an A sleep. Go to asleep.com.

• 46:52Jordi Hays?

  Slash CBPN.

• 46:54John Coogan?

  Five-year warranty, 30-night risk-free trial.

• 46:56Jordi Hays?

  I actually had such a brutal night. So it really picks up on when you're sick.

• 46:58John Coogan?

  Free shipping. It does?

• 46:59Jordi Hays?

  And for me, I got eight hours and 57 minutes of sleep, but I had a 77, which is well below my typical.

• 47:07John Coogan?

  98. Let's go.

• 47:09Jordi Hays?

  There we go, John.

• 47:10John Coogan?

  Back in the game. Been away from it for a week. Came back. The consistency was terrible, but I slept a ton. Eight hours, 40 minutes. Let's go. I was in bed by nine last night.

• 47:19Jordi Hays?

  Wow. Fantastic. Fantastic.

• 47:22John Coogan?

  Gotta put up some big numbers this week. Anyway, hopefully we can get Molly back in the studio. We will see. How we doing? Just figuring out audio. Okay, she can't hear us.

• 47:34John Coogan?

  Let's see, we will try and write that in. Let's do some timeline in the meantime.

• 47:39Jordi Hays?

  Little timeline.

• 47:39John Coogan?

  Did you see Mark Zuckerberg went on Theo Von? And they kick it out. I didn't realize this was the opener to the whole episode. But Theo Von says, you drink coffee, man, or no? Zuck goes, no. Theo Von says, really? I mean, you've had it, right? And Zuck says, I have. I just like hate anything that messes with like, I don't like any kind of chemicals or anything. My sister gives me such a hard time about that. She's like, you're just sitting there, raw dogging reality. Theo Von says, wow.

• 48:09Jordi Hays?

  That's a great line.

• 48:10John Coogan?

  And then, but it got spicy on the timeline because Memnon of Rose says, let's be real. Mark Zuckerberg's sister did not tell him he was raw dogging reality. And Mark Zuckerberg's sister Ariel Zuckerberg says, I 100% said this to him. You know, never deleting this app moment by Shreeta. Anyway, I think we got Molly. Let's bring her back into the studio. We'll ask her if she's had coffee or if she is raw dogging reality today. Let's see. Molly, are you there?

• 48:37Speaker 02

  I'm here.

• 48:38John Coogan?

  Are you raw dogging reality or are you caffeinated today?

• 48:42Speaker 02

  I've had about five matchas and two espressos.

• 48:46John Coogan?

  There we go.

• 48:47Jordi Hays?

  Wow, getting up potentially into that 500 milligram range, which is.

• 48:51John Coogan?

  That's junkyard dogging reality. That's just consuming everything, maxing.

• 48:57Jordi Hays?

  Did you have a rough time like with, you know, going to the East Coast last week? I think for me personally, given my caffeine intake, when I go. When I, when I go through a time change like that, just everything gets messed up. How, how did you do?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Horrible. I've been up since 4 a.m. every morning.

• 49:16Jordi Hays?

  That's a good thing. That's a good thing now.

• 49:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's good.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Just cranking content.

• 49:20John Coogan?

  Yeah, just Ashton Hall mode, Ashton Hall maxing.

• 49:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. No, I think it's time you have to do one of that. I think you need to do the Ashton Hall for tech video. I think you should basically start tomorrow morning when you wake up at four and just do it.

• 49:33John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  I'll try my best.

• 49:36Jordi Hays?

  It's great to have you on the show, finally. Long overdue. There's a bunch of stuff to run through. We have limited time, unfortunately, but maybe we'll make Augustus wait a couple of minutes extra and just hang out. We're already covering your F1 firms as...

• 49:51John Coogan?

  What inspired it? What was the reaction? What do you think you got right? What do you think you got wrong? And then we'll go into the other, less iconic F1 teams. Take some shots.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Well, so all this started because I got a nice tip from someone who might be on the inside. I can't share much more than that. But I was given a tip because I've done these before where I've compared the VC funds to something like the Coachella stage. I did this for Sorcery like years ago and it went so well. But this was at like Zerp Funding and like Zerp environment. So it was like SoftBank was in it and Tiger and like it was just so much more clear who the stages would be. And now, now we're dealing with F1 because there's only a couple contenders. And we just have to, we've got to see who's going to win.

• 50:45Jordi Hays?

  Going back to the Coachella, which fund was the DoLab? I gotta ask.

• 50:49John Coogan?

  What's the DoLab?

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Oh my God, that's a good one. I forget.

• 50:53John Coogan?

  I've never been to Coachella.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  You've never been to the DoLab?

• 50:56Jordi Hays?

  Honestly, that's extremely bullish. That's extremely bullish that you've never been, to be honest.

• 50:59John Coogan?

  I've never been to Coachella.

• 51:01Jordi Hays?

  You sweet child. You sweet child. Doesn't know what the DoLab is.

• 51:06Jordi Hays?

  But who do you have as a DoLab? I gotta know. And then Sahara, and then we'll move on to F1.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  I mean, let me pull this up.

• 51:14John Coogan?

  While you're pulling that up, there are some midfield teams that someone broke down. Williams is Greylock, the fifth most winning team in history, didn't keep the top talent or scale, so fell behind. Alpine is BCV, Bing Capital Ventures, storied brand across racing categories. PE Consulting, strong veteran lineup. Couple wins and podiums in recent years. Dakagon, Crea, younger guys largely untested and no clear succession. I love AlphaTauri as YC. Battleground for young talent, produces some of the best drivers, but sees limited return. Verstappen, Sainz, Gasly, plays an important role in the startup driver ecosystem. And Aston Martin is SoftBank. One man behind it all, Lawrence Stroll, Masayoshi Son. Tons of money and big deals.

• 51:58John Coogan?

  No significant results to speak of. Brutal. Great. Anyway, yeah, break us down the, uh, the, uh, the, the Coachella, uh, landscape. And then, uh, I thought I'd put it in terms that, uh, folks that are more familiar with bodybuilding could, uh, could key off of.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Okay. So for DoLab, okay. Yeah. This, this one was just scrappy bootstrapped companies for people in stealth. For the, the main stage we had is Tiger Edition, Co2, A16Z and Sequoia.

• 52:29John Coogan?

  All crossovers.

• 52:30Jordi Hays?

  Oh, so it's basically the lineup crossing over. Okay.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  It's, uh, the big show headliners, hard to compete, expensive rounds.

• 52:38John Coogan?

  Got it.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  And then for, for outdoor theater, which is just as experienced, arguably more fun, artist friendly, we had first round benchmark, pair and index this night. Okay.

• 52:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that tracks honestly.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Sahara, Sahara, which is also like amazing, very large, loud and a little bit more out there, founders fund, SoftBank, General Catalyst, Lux, Lux, Craft. Um, let's see, Gobi.

• 53:07Jordi Hays?

  I can see Delian playing, uh, the Sahara stage right around like six o'clock, just really, you know, peaking basically.

• 53:19John Coogan?

  Well, yeah, I mean, I'd never been to Coachella. I barely get to watch F1. I'm, I really only follow, the only sport I follow is bodybuilding. So I did my own kind of version of this, mapping the top venture capital firms to professional bodybuilders. So I'll, I'll give you a rundown and I'm sure you're familiar with bodybuilding. So you'll be able to give some feedback and tell me how I did. So for Sequoia Capital, I have Arnold Schwarzenegger. They, I mean, this one, obviously it should be.

• 53:42Jordi Hays?

  Obviously.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Great documentary.

• 53:44John Coogan?

  Sports, uh, the industry's gold standard early. Sequoia, Apple to Airbnb hit list and Arnold's seven time Mr. Olympias. It became the blueprint that everyone studies, right?

• 53:54Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 53:54John Coogan?

  Andrews and Horowitz, this one should be obvious. Dorian Yates, of course.

• 53:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 53:58John Coogan?

  Each burst in with radical mass, you know, software eats the world, media blitz, six straight Olympias. They kind of reset what scale and intensity could look like, uh, for founders fund. I mean, this is a no. Brainerd Phil Heath, uh, precision obsessed moon shooters, Teal's contrarian bets Heath's near flawless symmetry. Both racked up seven crowns while dividing the crowd, but a little controversial Heath. Kleiner Perkins, Ronnie Coleman, obviously, I mean, everyone's gonna guess that one.

• 54:28Jordi Hays?

  Of course, of course.

• 54:29John Coogan?

  You know, they're 1990s titans that went maximalist.

• 54:32Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 54:32John Coogan?

  KP's dot com era supremacy, Mears Coleman's eight title, yeah buddy.

• 54:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah buddy.

• 54:39John Coogan?

  That per- that pushed to your size and later paid for it in surgery and turnover. Uh, Excel, you got Lou Ferrigno, Lux Capital, you got Jay Cutler.

• 54:48Jordi Hays?

  Of course.

• 54:48John Coogan?

  Probably makes sense, you know.

• 54:49Jordi Hays?

  Of course.

• 54:50John Coogan?

  He's a, he's a methodical grinder, just like Lux, they've been at it for a long time. Lux's deep tech persistence and Cutler's dogged prep, finally dethrone the champ, uh, showing steady focus, beats flash. Lastly, we got Nat Friedman, he's the up and comer, he's the Sam Sulek of venture. People have been saying that for a long time.

• 55:07Jordi Hays?

  Many people have been saying that.

• 55:08John Coogan?

  Yep. So I, I think that will put, you know, the venture funds in terms that really anyone could understand. Cause a lot of the F1 analogies that just don't really land with like our audience at least.

• 55:18Jordi Hays?

  Bodybuilding's very American, whereas F1 is very European, right?

• 55:22John Coogan?

  It is.

• 55:23Jordi Hays?

  What, what else is on your mind, Molly? How, how was, uh, what was your reaction to last week? We obviously, uh, were, uh, in DC as well. Did you have any major takeaways, any, anything, you know, that you're following, uh, after the event?

• 55:36John Coogan?

  You got some Palantir merch.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  I got some Palantir merch, um, became friends with Iliano there, got introduced to Shom. Got a private tour of the office on Friday or the next day. Some amazing merch they got there, but I think like the biggest takeaways, and I'm still seeing this, but the, the biggest theme from the event was the US first China. And we're seeing that because Delian's still posting about it.

• 56:04Jordi Hays?

  He's posting through it for sure.

• 56:05John Coogan?

  He is, he is.

• 56:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, an interesting one, I, we had heard some light chatter about the TikTok deal potentially getting closer to a resolution, but there being a general unhappiness with how it was getting sort of resolved. So, not sure how much we can share, but that was one takeaway for me. It's like in the midst of this like massive trade war.

• 56:27John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 56:28Jordi Hays?

  And, and all this talk about US-China, one of the sort of key issues that should be completely bipartisan and, and we should be acting extremely intensely around. It seems like we're gonna miss the mark on, so.

• 56:41John Coogan?

  I think consensus is that there will be a group of financial investors that come into the company and own a stake and then Oracle will do the data management and kind of the, the cloud infrastructure, but it won't fully leave control of the CCP, which is maybe not the best outcome. I've been advocating for just giving all of TikTok to Truth Social. I think that would be something that everyone could really rally around.

• 57:06Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 57:07John Coogan?

  Might destroy it, might, but it's definitely gonna get approval from the, from the top dog in Washington. He'll be happy to have an asset.

• 57:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 57:16John Coogan?

  What, what else, what, what can you tell us about working at a family office? How it differs from working at a VC firm? You've obviously worked at, in, in both places. What's different? And, and how, how are family offices like positioning themselves these days in ventures? Is it just like tag along rounds or are they trying to lead rounds? Like what are you seeing in the family office landscape?

• 57:37Speaker 02

  Good questions, many questions. I think the biggest difference is the time horizon on deals and the thinking. So, instead of-

• 57:45John Coogan?

  Permanent capital?

• 57:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's permanent capital. You're thinking evergreen. It's not, you're not confined to four years for investing. It's not like you have to stop investing after two and a half years and start raising and going out to fundraise. Instead, you're thinking long-term. You can actually like be like a little bit more thoughtful instead of playing the rat race of competitive rounds. You can pick companies and go deeper with them, have longer-term relationships. It's, it's just like, it's a much different game because it seems much more rational. You, I think my biggest-

• 58:22Speaker 02

  My biggest thought and reflection after leaving institutional VC was just like how much it's thwarted by fast decision-making. If you have to consistently confine to, oh, I've got to do this many deals a year, you have to do this many per fund and allocate X amount of capital, then it really constrains like your judgment and how you think about what you want to do. So, yeah, I mean, it's great because you can operate with clarity. You don't have to waste your time with tons and tons of meetings. You can actually just focus on the power law winners.

• 58:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and that means, you know, effectively, you know, identifying a company early, not necessarily being able to invest in that moment for some particular reason, but just saying like, hey, it doesn't really matter. We want to get in at some point. Let's, you know, continue to build a relationship. Whereas I think oftentimes VCs, you know, have a specific window. Unless you're a big platform fund, you have a window where you can make an investment work, but then you can't even do an SPV into the company necessarily if you weren't in the, you know, in one of the earlier rounds. And so having that timeline flexibility to be like, okay, you know, we can have 10-plus billion-dollar outcomes now. It really doesn't matter if we get in at $100 million or we get in at $500 million, you know, post. So.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  It's also just, it's much more flexible capital. It's not like you're confined to X amount of percentage that you need in equity or check size. Like you can get in whenever and whatever makes sense. Then you could also put in your own capital and then raise the rest through SPVs and make a larger round. So there's many different dynamics. It's much more friendly.

• 59:59John Coogan?

  You dropped an interview with Bucky Moore. He's going over to Lightspeed. We're having him on the show later. What was the question that, you know, you were too afraid to ask because it doesn't meet sorcery's brand standard, but, you know, it's anything goes here when we're live, so we can put him on the spot. What did he ask you to like edit out and then we'll ask him that live?

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  I will say, I passed all compliance. My biggest question that I wanted to ask him was, what was the deal? Like, did you get your carry bought out? I asked this. You gotta listen to the interview so you get the answer.

• 1:00:32John Coogan?

  I'm prepping my show.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  But I asked him, like, how does it work transitioning, um, large partner from another fund going to another, right? Like, there's a lot of tied up carry, there's board positions.

• 1:00:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  It's very complex. Like, what was that process like? And we walked through it. I mean, he was very open. I was quite surprised. It was an awesome interview.

• 1:00:52John Coogan?

  That's very cool. Um, what, what else did you talk to him about, um, uh, that we could maybe dig in deeper when he hops on the stream in an hour?

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Um, ask him about his view on ASI. Ask him about pricing dynamics for tier ones and tier twos. He doesn't like that branding, but, um,

• 1:01:11John Coogan?

  You think he's more like tier three?

• 1:01:15Jordi Hays?

  He wants, he wants to be labeled as a tier three so you can have that dog.

• 1:01:18John Coogan?

  Yeah, the dog in him. Inspiration to grind harder.

• 1:01:21Jordi Hays?

  As soon as you're labeled a tier one, you just,

• 1:01:23John Coogan?

  It's over.

• 1:01:24Jordi Hays?

  I've peaked.

• 1:01:28John Coogan?

  Anyway.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  And then I would, I would also, I would ask about global pools of funding. He was open about that. Um, and,

• 1:01:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, he's, he's big, he's big into raising money from Pyongyang, right? North Korean money is usually in his funds. He does a lot of SPVs with, uh,

• 1:01:46Jordi Hays?

  Somebody out there is not gonna, not gonna understand.

• 1:01:48John Coogan?

  With the North Korean Sovereign Wealth Fund. Uh, yeah, we'll have some fun with him. All right. Last question before you go. What should they do with Alcatraz? Everyone's been debating it in tech. I want to get everyone's take on it today. Should they become Y Combinator? Put a monument on it? Put it, bring back the jail? Keep it as a tourist destination? What's your pick?

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  I want to keep it. I know, I want to bring it back as a jail, but I want to keep it open for tours.

• 1:02:14John Coogan?

  Okay, so you can tour the prisoners.

• 1:02:16Jordi Hays?

  Oh, crazy, crazy. That'd be very chaotic.

• 1:02:19John Coogan?

  That'd be extremely chaotic.

• 1:02:21Jordi Hays?

  Somebody was running, I forgot who it was. I think it was Sheil was saying that like the reason that it was shut down initially was that, uh, There you could only have like 300 prisoners and like due to being on an island.

• 1:02:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Jordi Hays?

  It was like extremely expensive. 3X the cost to actually house them.

• 1:02:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:37Jordi Hays?

  So it was just like, doesn't really actually make sense.

• 1:02:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:41Jordi Hays?

  But I liked somebody's idea of turning it into Y Combinator.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  If I was in jail, I'd probably choose the island jail, right? I mean, that that doesn't seem like a bad place to be.

• 1:02:48Jordi Hays?

  I don't know. Have you been?

• 1:02:49John Coogan?

  It's pretty miserable, actually.

• 1:02:51Jordi Hays?

  Have you done a tour?

• 1:02:51John Coogan?

  It's pretty miserable.

• 1:02:52Jordi Hays?

  It's so bleak. It's always super foggy out on the water.

• 1:02:55John Coogan?

  I mean, I guess if you get a window, you can kind of see everything, but I don't know. Yeah, pretty terrifying. Anyway, we'll see what happens with it. We'll be tracking it.

• 1:03:01Jordi Hays?

  I'm in favor of putting, you know, letting Y Combinator set up shop.

• 1:03:04John Coogan?

  I like the Y C strategy.

• 1:03:06Jordi Hays?

  You know, trapping.

• 1:03:07John Coogan?

  It's BMF or die 2.0.

• 1:03:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Y Combinator is the Y Combinator of Y Combinator.

• 1:03:11John Coogan?

  It's true.

• 1:03:11Jordi Hays?

  As many people have said, but put it on an island.

• 1:03:15John Coogan?

  Anyway, thanks so much for stopping by, Molly.

• 1:03:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this was great, Molly. Have you back on soon. Congrats on all the progress.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  Bye, guys. Thanks.

• 1:03:22Jordi Hays?

  Bye, see ya.

• 1:03:23John Coogan?

  Let's bring in Augustus Doricko from Rainmaker.

• 1:03:27Jordi Hays?

  I got the gong ready.

• 1:03:28John Coogan?

  You got the gong ready? I think we got some breaking news from Augustus.

• 1:03:35John Coogan?

  Yeah, we had a chance to sit down with Augustus in DC, get the update from him. I loved that, you know, his business is cloud seeding, making it rain. And he somehow tied it into the AI race to develop more data centers.

• 1:03:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50John Coogan?

  And it wasn't complete nonsense. Like, it actually made sense.

• 1:03:53Jordi Hays?

  Where's the water gonna come from?

• 1:03:55John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a big question. Anyway.

• 1:03:59John Coogan?

  We're always excited to have him on the show. In the meantime.

• 1:04:04Jordi Hays?

  Texting him. Here he is.

• 1:04:05John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, let's bring him in.

• 1:04:06Jordi Hays?

  Let's do it.

• 1:04:08John Coogan?

  How you doing, man? What's up?

• 1:04:09Jordi Hays?

  Boom. Look at that contact.

• 1:04:11Augustus Doricko?

  I'm blessed. It's a size gong occasion. Rainmaker just raised or just announced its raise of $25 million for our Series A.

• 1:04:22John Coogan?

  Fantastic. Congratulations, Augustus. 25 million. Give us the breakdown on the deal. Who's in?

• 1:04:30Augustus Doricko?

  Okay, yeah, so it was led by Lower Carbon. So that was Ryan Orbook and Clay Dumas. Chris Saka founded the fund. They're really interested in adaptation tech now, right? Like, in the face of severe weather and change of climate, how do we build technologies that can? Uh, make us more resilient, right? Um, so more resilient to drought, um, more resilient agriculture, more from cloud seeding is one way to facilitate that. Um, and so they were stoked, uh, Naval Ravikant, um, sage philosopher, king of tech bros everywhere. Uh, he was in, I think, just because we went for like a really long romantic walk in Manhattan Beach one time.

• 1:05:10Augustus Doricko?

  Um, and then, uh, Greg Bernstein from Ace Cap Sovereign's cap, some, uh, really great, uh, Christian mentors and leaders for me. And then, um, Grover Ventures as well, Grover Ventures, William Clark, great dudes. Um, so that was the deal there.

• 1:05:24Jordi Hays?

  Talk about, uh, talk about what the process was for the raise, because it, from, from what I know, this, this is being announced now, but, but got done. A while back, it was, uh, from everything I heard, an extremely, uh, competitive process. What, what were you really looking for in that lead check?

• 1:05:44Augustus Doricko?

  Um, yeah, I'll tell you that and then I'll show you all of the crazy shit that we've been working on with the money since we actually did raise it. So that's the more exciting part. Um, what we were interested in then was, uh, technical sophistication. Um, cloud seeding, unlike even a lot of deep tech is an inordinately complicated business. You need to be really good at weather modeling, at aerosol chemistry, at radar, um, at a bunch of other electronics. Um, meteorological radar is crazy unto itself, the avionics of the drone boutique, anti-icing systems, new chemistries, uh, for new cloud seeding agents. And so, um, here is some of the stuff that, uh, we had to diligence our investors on, whether they'd be able to understand what went into building novel meteorological radar.

• 1:06:28Jordi Hays?

  Right. And to be clear, this is all behind you is all renders, right? Like this.

• 1:06:32Augustus Doricko?

  Yeah, this.

• 1:06:33Jordi Hays?

  He's on a green screen.

• 1:06:34Augustus Doricko?

  A great, great cat model. Um, so anyway, in 6,000 square feet, which is nuts. Um, we started high rate production of our drones, um, which are anti-icing capable drones. They're the only class one UAS in NATO, uh, that can fly in severe icing. And so this is one, uh, of our Elijas right here. Um, so it has thermal anti-icing systems, uh, ridiculously difficult to engineer aerosol dispersion system, um, that tunes the particle size that you're emitting into the cloud exactly as you wish. Um, and then over, over here.

• 1:07:13Augustus Doricko?

  I can't even begin to show you this. Actually, it's probably proprietary. I won't show you our boards, but here's some more material going into some more drones. Here's the next unit of our radar that's going to Argentina. Uh, our second international deployment. Um, so I'm pretty stoked about that. Here is all the proprietary radar stuff because we had to design our own boards. Um, and then on the other side of the house is like our novel chemistry work. Um, that, uh, by the way, I'm taking this out of Aaron Slodoff's playbook, just like walking around the factory.

• 1:07:41John Coogan?

  Love it.

• 1:07:42Augustus Doricko?

  But, uh, that's the fun stuff that's going on.

• 1:07:45John Coogan?

  Yeah. So, uh, you, I mean, talk about the use of funds. It seems like you're buying a lot of stuff, hiring some people. What's the breakdown? Probably doing mostly like founder-led growth and sales, but, um, where is the money going, um, generally?

• 1:08:03Augustus Doricko?

  Yeah. So I would say it was probably something to the effect of, um, like 30, 30, 20, 20. Um, so 30% of all the money that we raised, uh, is dedicated to designing our own meteorological radar and atmospheric sensing platform. Um, so that platform is called Eden. Um, that is radar, LiDAR, uh, long wave infrared, aerosol probes, pressure, temperature, humidity probes and anemometers. Um, it's one of the more, if not the most sophisticated and low price point atmospheric sensing systems on the market in the world right now. And the lead time is only five weeks instead of nine months.

• 1:08:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And out of curiosity, did you try to buy that off the shelf initially? And then realize that you had to build it yourself? What did that look like? Cause that feels like its own, that feels like, like its own, uh, product line. And although it doesn't sound like you're selling it to, uh, individually yet.

• 1:09:00Augustus Doricko?

  Yeah. So basically everything at Rainmaker, you know, I am grateful and happy to be making money and eventually returning capital for our pre-seed investors. But like our thesis initially was like, well, we're going to use off-the-shelf radar, off-the-shelf drones, off-the-shelf chemicals, off-the-shelf weather models, and just be like a really good systems integrator. And then we got punched in the face like a hundred times and decided we had to vertically integrate everything. So tried to buy that radar cots, but there's one guy in Germany that makes them for 51 grand and they take nine months, if not 12 months to get there. Uh, our system is about five times more cost, uh, cost effective, more affordable and um, and the lead time is five weeks.

• 1:09:40Augustus Doricko?

  So we did that about 30% of the funds went to designing Elijah or class one UAS um, that's capable of anti icing. Um, that was a big thing that about 10%, uh, 20% was for novel research to fancy probes. So that we could detect the right conditions in cloud, validate our effect. Uh, and then the remainder went to um, GA, you know, fighting Florida, fighting for bigger budgets, that sort of thing.

• 1:10:05John Coogan?

  Uh, talk about acquisitions going forward. I mean, we've seen, I mean, Ander will just announce another acquisition. It seems like in, in defense tech and hard tech, um, there are assets that can be, you know, you can create more value if you roll them into a larger, more agile, more founder-led organization. Are you looking at that? Have you done it? Are you thinking about it in the future? Uh, how do you, how do you think about um, building versus buying everything?

• 1:10:34Augustus Doricko?

  Yeah. So, so one of the really strategically important things that Rainmaker planned to do from the outset was roll up the existing cloud seeding market. Um, if you look at the market as it stands, uh, it is, it ostensibly doesn't exist. There's like a few legacy operators that are kind of cowboys that blast clouds randomly and states or municipalities, or even like Saudi will pay for it because they're so desperate for water, they're willing to try anything, even it's, even if it's technically unsophisticated. Um, we uh, bought North American Weather Consultants, which was a old school cloud seeding company out of Utah, out of Salt Lake City. Um, did so with project finance, uh, which was great. Shout out to my finance director, John Madigan, Killer. Um, and then uh, we injected our tech into it. The organization was extraordinarily well-run there.

• 1:11:19Augustus Doricko?

  We've retained everybody because they're great operators. Um, but we injected our tech, upsold that have been. Getting better yields because of it, more transparent reporting to our customers. I think that we'll continue to roll up the existing market. I also think that there's a lot of novel probe and material science companies that Rainmaker is targeting as well. So anywhere where we can inject our tech or just accelerate growth by deploying stuff faster and at a better margin is part of the plan.

• 1:11:47Jordi Hays?

  How much pushback did you get initially around people that were like, I love, I love the idea of what you're doing, but I don't see, but like, I'm trying to find comps in the market and I can't find any, is this a market? And I'm assuming your answer was like, well, the tech didn't exist and we're actually creating the market. But, but what was your, you know, was that, was that your, you know, kind of primary answer there? It seems kind of obvious in hindsight that there could be a technological sort of barrier between the demand for something like cloud seeding and the ability to actually deliver on it.

• 1:12:27Augustus Doricko?

  Yeah, absolutely. Got pushback on that. Like, a lot of what we had to say was like, well, this is actually deep tech and frontier tech. Sorry, there's no comp. Like, do you want to participate in something net new or not? And so our investors were really saw it about that. But the thing that I did say, which has pros and cons, looking back is, you know, SpaceX is like a launch services provider for now. We're a cloud seeding services provider. We, rather than get stuff to orbit as a, as a function of our service, we build all of the hardware, we operate all of the hardware and then get precipitation down on the ground. I think over time, we'll probably trend more towards an exorbitantly high margin

• 1:13:11Augustus Doricko?

  utility, just because cloud seeding water is the cheapest water that you can produce. But also we'll start buying up land too, and then look very strange, maybe more like Monsanto or a hedge fund.

• 1:13:21John Coogan?

  Alcatraz is in the news. What's the coolest thing we could possibly do with Alcatraz? What's your pick for the next move with Alcatraz?

• 1:13:31Augustus Doricko?

  I think to catalyze more conspiracy theories, putting heat on us, we should put a huge EMF array like HARP there to flood the San Francisco Bay.

• 1:13:42John Coogan?

  What would that do?

• 1:13:45Jordi Hays?

  We don't know. We don't know yet. We're gonna find out. I, uh, maybe last question, uh, but like, what's the revenue mix look like right now? Cause I, I only, uh, know, uh, last investor update I saw from, from Rainmaker. I was pretty blown away by the traction, but what, you know, talking generally, you know, where, where's the revenue come from? Is it, is it, you know, individual, like local governments, states, countries, private, you know, industry, et cetera?

• 1:14:16Augustus Doricko?

  Yeah. So first of all, Jordy, you'll find out soon, but, uh, we've doubled our realized revenue since our last investor update.

• 1:14:22Jordi Hays?

  Wow. There we go.

• 1:14:24Augustus Doricko?

  Yeah. And, um, so I would say about, what's the math? Eighty-five percent, eighty-six percent is domestic. The rest is international.

• 1:14:35Augustus Doricko?

  And then another about seventy-five percent of all the domestic revenue comes from state governments. So, um, departments of natural resources, departments of agriculture, uh, the remaining 25 is small municipal or ski resorts that need more snow.

• 1:14:49Jordi Hays?

  Very cool. Very cool. Very cool. And when you, when you, uh, last, last question, when you talk to these end customers, I, I'm at, do you, are you feeling, yeah? Like I'm assuming you're feeling the product market fit where they're like, please do this, like we need this. And, and, and I'm, I'm assuming at no point were they like, oh, I don't, you know, why, why would we, why would we want more precipitation? But maybe talk about how those conversations go.

• 1:15:14Augustus Doricko?

  Someone made a really salient quote tweet of, um, Gary Tan's, uh, post of like the gif of the whatever bouncy ball game where like, when you hit PMF, everything like runs away. Yeah. Um, like a deep tech is not like that at all. Deep tech, the demand is like so obvious from the jump. People have been desperate from the very beginning when we like, didn't even have a drone to fly saying like, hey, if you can figure this out, we would love to buy more rain and buy more snow. It was just a matter of getting to the point where we actually had an operable system and everything changed for us in October 2024, because we picked up the entire company, moved it to a rural hamlet in Oregon, um, to do more intensive testing. And then everything really accelerated and we got the, the system ready and to a point where we could sell it.

• 1:15:57Augustus Doricko?

  And, um, people, people are desperate for more water. So that's been straightforward.

• 1:16:01Jordi Hays?

  Amazing. Cool. Great having you on. Congrats to you and the whole team on the milestone. And I can't wait for the next investor update. We'll see you soon.

• 1:16:08Augustus Doricko?

  Godspeed, guys. Thanks.

• 1:16:09Jordi Hays?

  Godspeed.

• 1:16:11John Coogan?

  Up next, we have Bucky Moore, moving over to Lightspeed, shaking up the industry.

• 1:16:18Jordi Hays?

  Huge pickup. Many people have been saying this was a maxed out.

• 1:16:20John Coogan?

  Maxed out.

• 1:16:21Jordi Hays?

  Contract.

• 1:16:22John Coogan?

  For sure. I texted him as soon as he told me.

• 1:16:26Jordi Hays?

  Absolutely maxed out. I'm super excited to chat with him. He has been on a podcasting roadshow.

• 1:16:32John Coogan?

  Yep. Roadshow, for sure. He's been making the rounds.

• 1:16:35Jordi Hays?

  Making the rounds.

• 1:16:37John Coogan?

  That's great. What else do we say? Anyway, let's bring him in to the studio and talk to Bucky Moore. How you doing, Bucky?

• 1:16:47Jordi Hays?

  There he is.

• 1:16:48Speaker 04

  Oh man, great to be here with you both.

• 1:16:50John Coogan?

  Fantastic to have you on the show.

• 1:16:51Jordi Hays?

  Welcome to the Temple of Technology.

• 1:16:53John Coogan?

  Yeah, give us a little breakdown.

• 1:16:54Speaker 04

  My encore stopped today, and then I promise I'm done going on podcasts.

• 1:16:57John Coogan?

  Oh yeah, you've been on quite the tour.

• 1:16:59Jordi Hays?

  Honestly, roadshow, like four podcasts a day for the next 40 days.

• 1:17:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, you should just keep doing them all. Just wind up on like Hocktua.

• 1:17:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08John Coogan?

  Why is Bucky on Bill Maher today? That doesn't make any sense.

• 1:17:12Jordi Hays?

  You shouldn't be able to listen to a podcast in the month of May without having Bucky join, at least for five minutes.

• 1:17:17John Coogan?

  I want to get confusing with the politics. Do Tucker, but then do Pod Save America. And no one knows where your politics align. Just talk about early-stage venture, right?

• 1:17:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I'm particularly excited to be here today because I think you guys have been hitting on some really big ideas in this podcast, just in the past couple of weeks alone. I'd love to just kind of riff on those a little bit with you because I think they're so important and I want to encourage you guys. And so, I think the first one that comes to mind for me is this sort of make hotel gyms great again moment you guys are having. This is, this is a really important discussion. It's not being had anywhere but here. There's clearly a hole in the market where someone needs to build an insurance product that allows for those folks hitting leg day on Friday to max out at above 500 pounds.

• 1:17:59John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:17:59Speaker 04

  It's just not happening out there. So this is a big problem. I'm glad you're talking about it.

• 1:18:03John Coogan?

  It's a big market failure.

• 1:18:04Jordi Hays?

  It's the kind of thing that maybe it's not a venture, it's not a place that venture dollars should go, but maybe a group of investors like should say like, hey, For the good of America, we need to, there needs to be a company here.

• 1:18:15John Coogan?

  I think everything's venture now. There will never be enough venture dollars.

• 1:18:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:19John Coogan?

  I think we need to put this firmly in the venture bucket and then do 20 more.

• 1:18:22Speaker 04

  I think it could be a fit in one of these, you know, sort of AI turnaround funds that are being spun up by a lot of the big platforms. Like it's, it's just gotta happen, right? It's, it's gone on for way too long and all of us travel a lot and, and we need to, uh, we need to be dialed in, especially as professional yappers like VCs and podcasters.

• 1:18:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I mean, maybe, maybe we just boycott all travel until the dumbbells get up to 100.

• 1:18:41John Coogan?

  The economy will collapse.

• 1:18:43Jordi Hays?

  We'll start to have a conversation at 100.

• 1:18:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Jordi Hays?

  And then go from there. We'll start the, we'll start the negotiation at 100.

• 1:18:49John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, like a trade war, a real standoff between the capital allocators and the luxury hotels. This is key.

• 1:18:57Speaker 04

  So I think it's our cross to bear and I just wanted to say I'm glad you guys are talking about it.

• 1:19:01John Coogan?

  Yeah, I feel like there's an early stage bet here. You get some AI powered, you put cameras in the gyms and then, and then the underwriting is based on the form of the, of the average gym goer. And so if you just have like mass monsters in there all day, they're just throwing around the 100. No one's getting injured. Take those insurance rates down.

• 1:19:18Jordi Hays?

  There was an infamous list.

• 1:19:18Speaker 04

  Remotely hardware, off the shelf AI models, it's doable.

• 1:19:21John Coogan?

  It's doable.

• 1:19:22Jordi Hays?

  There's an infamous list, VCs for Kamala.

• 1:19:24John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:19:25Jordi Hays?

  What if we had VCs for dumbbells? We could throw that up today. Potentially, I think we could get 100 signatures in, in 24 hours and.

• 1:19:32Speaker 04

  Unclear how much overlap there is between those two lists, but it's a good idea.

• 1:19:35John Coogan?

  It's a big tent. It's a big tent. The mass monsters.

• 1:19:38Jordi Hays?

  It's a big tent. It's a big tent.

• 1:19:40John Coogan?

  Yeah, get them all in there. Why not?

• 1:19:42Speaker 04

  And look, I think before, before we talk shop, I also just have to make sure I, I really reinforce the, what you guys are doing here, really trying to turn LA and more broadly Southern California into the Silicon Valley of media. Like this is a, this is a gargantuan effort, but a very important one. And I think you have this foundation emerging over in Malibu where you have these esteemed podcasters, like the Rick Rubens, the Andrew Hubermans, the Jordy Hayes is kind of settling in. So it feels like you're well on your way. And the last thing I'd say on this.

• 1:20:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:10Jordi Hays?

  No, go.

• 1:20:11John Coogan?

  Go ahead.

• 1:20:12Speaker 04

  I I just think it's important that we dream a little bigger than that, right? And in the sense that the Southern California is the the closest thing to the Amalfi Coast that we have in America.

• 1:20:20Jordi Hays?

  Yep.

• 1:20:20Speaker 04

  You look across to Catalina, it's our Capri.

• 1:20:24Jordi Hays?

  It is.

• 1:20:24Speaker 04

  Superyacht. There's no Superyacht. There's no luxury experience. Like, we gotta fix this. And so I just.

• 1:20:29Jordi Hays?

  You're so right.

• 1:20:30Speaker 04

  I just want to encourage you guys to keep going on that and and keep pushing. And I think it'll lead it'll lead to some really great things for what I think is all three of our our home hometown of Southern California.

• 1:20:39Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I mean, the natural evolution is, you know, potentially, we had a hundred percent tariffs on foreign films.

• 1:20:44John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:20:44Jordi Hays?

  Potentially announced yesterday. I don't know how real it is, but I mean, a natural next step would be, you know, two hundred, three hundred percent tariffs on foreign podcasts.

• 1:20:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Jordi Hays?

  Um, and to really kind of like, you know, generally, I'm a free trade guy, but when it comes to podcasting, you know, I want to support.

• 1:20:58John Coogan?

  We, uh, so we were in, uh, we were in Ojai this weekend, and we noticed that it was just devoid of high finance, and there wasn't a single Goldman Sachs office or, uh, high-frequency trading operation there. Uh, and so we announced our campaign to save Ojai and bring finance to Ojai and really, uh, get the cubicles there, get the stimulants flowing, get these folks to work hard and really save Ojai. But we need to, we should do that for Catalina. We should save Catalina from the problem of boats under fifty feet.

• 1:21:26Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:27John Coogan?

  Because it's a big problem out there. Most of the boats are small.

• 1:21:28Jordi Hays?

  Fishing, fishing, notoriously unreliable. You might have a good year, have a, you know, a lot of, a lot of yield.

• 1:21:35John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:21:35Jordi Hays?

  And then you might have a down year, whereas hedge funds, you know, figure out a way to to to generate, you know, alpha in any market condition.

• 1:21:41John Coogan?

  Stock, stock the ocean with new fish to to hunt.

• 1:21:45Speaker 04

  Related to this, Augustus was talking a little bit about what to do with Alcatraz, right?

• 1:21:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Speaker 04

  I mean, who isn't a mega yacht owner in San Francisco that wouldn't want to bring their boat into the San Francisco Bay?

• 1:21:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:55Speaker 04

  And enjoy what Alcatraz has to offer. So I think there's another dimension. We can kind of take the Alcatraz conversation that, uh, sort of aligns with what Catalina has in terms of its potential. So there's a lot of good work to do here, and I just want to say I appreciate you spearheading this effort.

• 1:22:07John Coogan?

  Yeah, there was kind of a controversial post from, what was it Christina over at Bain Capital, right? She was saying that Alcatraz should be a Four Seasons resort where you pull up in a fancy water taxi, White Lotus style, not a federal prison. But I mean, a lot of people were firing back being like, this would obviously be better as like an Aman, and instead of a water taxi, you should be pulling up in a super yacht.

• 1:22:29Jordi Hays?

  I haven't heard of a VC going to a Four Seasons in about 15 years.

• 1:22:33John Coogan?

  In a decade, yeah.

• 1:22:35Speaker 04

  I hope these places have a lot of potential.

• 1:22:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, what is your top pick for Alcatraz revitalization?

• 1:22:46Speaker 04

  I'm not sold on the idea of reopening the prison. Anyone who's taken a tour of Alcatraz realizes it doesn't look like The Rock, the movie that is, which is, which is very disappointing if you're a fan of The Rock in that shower scene where it all starts. But I think this, I think this five star destination in the making idea that Christina floated, again, upleveling the Four Seasons to the Aman, upleveling water taxis to super yachts. Like, I think this might be the best idea, at least floating out there right now.

• 1:23:09Jordi Hays?

  I like the idea of turning it into, what are the, what are the regions in the Mediterranean that like don't, or not, not Mediterranean Caribbean that don't really have any financial sort of rules, like?

• 1:23:20John Coogan?

  Like tax haven.

• 1:23:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if we turn it into a place that VCs could generally solicit,

• 1:23:25John Coogan?

  It should be the Puerto Rico of the Bay.

• 1:23:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:28John Coogan?

  And if you go there, but you have to spend six months and a day on the island.

• 1:23:33Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:34Speaker 04

  We're trying to ensure the crypto industry. So, you know, all those folks living their life in Puerto Rico right now, this might be the answer. So, I think, keep pushing these big ideas. Somebody's got to do it. And I think you guys are doing a really good job.

• 1:23:45John Coogan?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 1:23:47Jordi Hays?

  Amazing. How's your, how's your first real day on the job today, right?

• 1:23:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. Change doesn't happen often in this industry. So it's been really exciting. It kind of feels like the first day of school or something where I'm just meeting a bunch of people I've never met before, getting up to speed on how we do things here. And there's been a lot of similarities in how the firm operates relative to where I was at Kleiner Perkins. But given the, the global footprint and just the, the scale of the firm, there's, there's a bit more process that we, that we use to run, run our operations here that I'm kind of getting used to. But super excited about this opportunity. I mean, I think it's just such an incredible time to be investing right now. And given we're kind of in the midst of this super cycle, I'm just really, really excited to kind of hit the ground running here at Lightspeed and, and make the most of the opportunity in front of us.

• 1:24:32John Coogan?

  And it's a pretty big change in terms of like your actual focus because I always thought of you as like the growth guy at KP. Now you're early stage. Is that right? Is that a correct characterization?

• 1:24:41Speaker 04

  So Everett would be the growth guy at KP, but I think what's unique about KP is we all, we preside over the growth and venture funds together. So every, every investor makes growth investments. Every investor makes venture investments. And for me, my roots have always been early stage. I love, you know, pounding the pavement, going to Stanford, figuring out who that next postdoc is. It's going to start a company, figuring out who those amazing people inside of these juggernaut companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are kind of those next great founders. And I think the tension for me has always been like, how do you put your best foot forward on early stage while also running, running growth stuff down? And so here, what I'm really excited about is we've got a dedicated growth team and I can really go back to focusing on those early stage roots of where I started. And that was a big, big driver for me about why I was so excited about this opportunity.

• 1:25:23John Coogan?

  Is there some sort of like, how would you, how would you define the delineation between growth and early stage at Lightspeed specifically? Is it like certain round size, certain valuation, certain just like you're getting out an Excel model for the first time. So the growth guys have Excel installed and the, the, the early stage team hasn't touched it in years.

• 1:25:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I think that's a fair depiction of it in the sense that if there's real venture risk to a company's standing in terms of like a total loss of capital is a possibility. There isn't a ton of repeatability in revenue generation or how they put product in customers' hands. I think that feels a lot more like, like a venture type of investment. Whereas if there is that sort of repeatability, which for certain companies, especially in AI can come very early in their life, given just the market pull that we're seeing. Setting aside quality of revenue and that whole debate, uh, you're, you're, you're starting to see more and more that, uh, these companies become growth stage companies very quickly. So I think what I'm really excited to focus on here at Lightspeed is like, how do we get into those companies as early as possible? Because, you know, they can be six, seven months old and suddenly it's a growth stage opportunity. You've kind of missed the opportunity to get that venture exposure that really does at the end of the day, drive a lot of the returns for this industry, at least historically.

• 1:26:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, what is the shape of like these AI companies and where they fit between growth and venture? Because I saw some, some firms were putting OpenAI at 27 billion in venture, which wound up being like a venture style bet. Like it, you know, it could have kind of zeroed with, you know, all the, all the complexities around. You're investing in a nonprofit at that point. Like it does have binary risk, but again, it's like almost 10x'd or something. It's been like a venture style return very quickly. On the same time, you have a lot of these very hyped AI companies that are maybe rappers would be the, the negative critique. They're generating a lot of revenue, but everyone's worried about churn and durability of that revenue. It reads like a growth stage company, but maybe it's more of a venture bet. How are you seeing the AI landscape kind of break down?

• 1:27:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, so to the question about OpenAI and that being a venture bet, I think it's even more clear today that the investors that participated in that round, again, there's a lot of dilution that comes along the way. But if you look at it just on like a multiple evaluation basis, there is absolutely a venture like return to be made at that round. And, and you know, that's going to make a lot of funds that went in big there.

• 1:27:28John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:27:28Speaker 04

  I think with respect to your, to your second question about just like how these, these rapper companies sort of fit into this box. The first thing I'd say is I think it's becoming clear that when you look at the mature companies that were once referred to as rappers, like the Harveys, the Cursers of the world. They're getting a lot fatter in terms of like how much of the tech stack they own themselves and how much differentiation you can argue that they build in. So an example in Cursers case is like they've been very publicly, public about like the people they want to hire are people that can help them train models. Why is that? Well, the, the cost that they have to pay to the model providers, as we all know, is non-trivial. Hence this rapper distinction being a bit pejorative in nature.

• 1:28:02John Coogan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:28:02Speaker 04

  And so what I think you're going to start to see happen is that these breakaway companies that were once AI rappers, once riding on top of the existing frontier model companies, are going to get a lot fatter in that sense and start routing as much of the queries that their users have to models that they can, that they can control and own and customize for that use case. So that's like one trend that I'm seeing, but I think to your point about the quality of revenue. There the the capabilities that these products bring, especially those that kind of have a prosumer adoption motion, are just so alluring and magical that everybody's gonna try it, right? And I and not everybody's gonna stick around, not everybody's gonna stay with that product and they might go to another. But from my perspective, I don't think as much about that because I just think the pull for these is so extraordinary that over time, you can think of that as a bit of a marketing cost and and and the quality of the revenue at steady state, especially as these products get brought into to larger companies.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  Uh, go from kind of credit card swipes to invoicing customers. You're gonna see that these companies look a lot like traditional enterprise software businesses, but in theory, they're gonna grow and compound at much, much larger scales.

• 1:28:57Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. How do you uh, how do you think about the the competitive dynamics and differences between B to B sort of enterprise focused agents and consumer agents from from my point of view and evaluating a lot of consumer agent businesses lately? A lot of my thinking comes down to, okay, this is not necessarily explicitly on Anthropic's or OpenAI's roadmap, but I can imagine, you know, six months from now, they just sort of like immediately enable something like this. Where on the enterprise side, when you look at businesses like, for example, like Harvey, something like that, it's like, okay, there's a a ton of functionality and features that

• 1:29:34Jordi Hays?

  that to me feel like there's much more of a of a long term kind of like value proposition and moat here, but I'm curious to to to hear how you think about the differences.

• 1:29:44Speaker 04

  So I I agree directionally with everything that you said, and with the caveat that I'm not a consumer investor. It just it intuitively looks to me as though a consumer agent is only useful when it can do everything from planning my kid's birthday party to booking the flight, everyone's favorite example, to really just like automating away all these tedious tasks that I would otherwise be clicking through websites to accomplish. And I just haven't seen a consumer agent that can really do that in a holistic sense yet, and I think someone will figure it out, and I think that someone will most likely be one of the frontier model providers because this is just such a an important use case for them to get right to kind of maintain that core consumer mind share that they have today. So on the consumer side, I my bet is on the model providers, but I just haven't seen anything that that really lives up to the product that I would be compelled to use.

• 1:30:27Speaker 04

  And I think like one distillation of that is like the moment you ask it to do something and it can't do it, you just get a little frustrated and and it breeds distrust and you kind of move on and go back to doing it your way. So that's sort of where I see consumer today and where I see it going. The enterprise side, on the other hand, is much, much more interesting to me because I think you can create a tremendous amount of customer value by going narrow. So you mentioned Harvey, there are companies obviously doing this in in code gen and trying to abstract away parts of the software engineering process. There are some really interesting companies that are kind of going after like the people that use data dog, for example, and helping automate the human intuition that goes into munging through all that data when your software breaks. There's obviously a ton of stuff happening kind of more on like the process automation side of the back office that like a financial institution or large enterprise would have.

• 1:31:09Speaker 04

  So I think we're already seeing those products like hit runaway trajectories and the reason for that is because like the products work and they do a simple job really, really well. And I just think that's a lot harder to to deliver on the consumer side in a way that's compelling. So. My sense is the inflows that we see in the like agent investing will be very heavily concentrated on the enterprise side. And I think that those companies are going to get very, very big for the obvious reason that they're starting to chip away at human labor budgets rather than tool budgets. And I'm seeing that with my own eyes today. Like I feel like I'm seeing the future every day when I meet these new companies that. Can can just they just have superhuman capabilities in terms of some of these enterprise tasks they're automating.

• 1:31:43Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:31:45John Coogan?

  What is your take on like the rapper meme? It felt very, it felt like a VC psyop basically to me in the sense that like. A lot of VCs were like, hey, maybe there's some rappers out there that. They might get steamrolled, but they're going to be fantastic lifestyle businesses for a few years and then. And then we had the windsurf rumor about, you know, kind of a pretty fund returning. Result if that deal goes through. And so it feels like is the windsurf acquisition potentially like a. Like an Instagram moment where it kind of unlocks like a new mindset around the ability to go and build businesses in AI and it won't be totally winner take all or like the.

• 1:32:26John Coogan?

  The the category as a whole will be, there will be monopolies, but not just one, there will be pockets of value all over the place.

• 1:32:33Jordi Hays?

  A little credit to Bucky too, windsurf angel investor.

• 1:32:35John Coogan?

  Really? Very nice.

• 1:32:38Speaker 04

  Proud angel investor before it was Windsurf and I have to give credit to my former partner Lee Marie for for leading that investment at Kleiner Perkins. She's amazing and you know, it's a really special company. So what I'd say about the Windsurf rumors, if true, to me, what it foreshadows is this notion that there will be probably more chips to fall, not just in Coogan, but also just more broadly in these like core categories of agentic work that the model providers are going to want to get into. OpenAI famously said, anyone who's an investor in a company called Glean is not allowed to invest in OpenAI anymore. Glean is an enterprise search product that kind of does retrieval over all of your business data and incorporates it into the model. So you can gain intelligence from that. To me, that's indicative of, you know, them looking at that piece of turf as something that they want to occupy.

• 1:33:18Speaker 04

  So to the rapper Psyop question, like I would completely agree and you you need to look no further than all the top funds voraciously trying to invest in as many of these companies as possible to know that that's a Psyop. That said, I think the the scaffolding of why these companies are very, very interesting to me is that ultimately the way you do retrieval of all this enterprise kind of first party data is what makes these products like good versus great, right? And so in a sense, if you look at Windsurf versus Cursor, Windsurf has figured out some tricks as to how to essentially pass the model better context and in doing so, generate better outputs for their users. And what that to me says is that like really the IP of these companies is going to largely be around how they do that retrieval and how they bring that data into the model at the right time and in the most efficient way. So I think and given Coogan is the most mature category, you're kind of getting to see how that plays out.

• 1:34:04Speaker 04

  So I think what you're going to start to see is like, A, the winning companies, like be it illegal or Coogan or, you know, any of these other categories that we've been talking about are going to be the ones that that figure out the best set of retrieval steps to give the models optimal context. And then coming back to what I said earlier, I think these companies are going to look a lot fatter than the rapper uh, name might indicate over time. And again, you're seeing this with Cursor, Windsurf, these companies are, you know, really out there trying to take more and more of a stack on versus just being like, you know, dependent entirely on a frontier model provider. I think it's safe to say the same about Harvey. They recently published a a really interesting blog post that kind of showed the architecture of their of their app in terms of how it interacts with the AI models. And what you see very quickly is it's a lot more than just a wrapper.

• 1:34:43Speaker 04

  And so I think the trend's only going to continue and it's why I think, uh, you know, we at Lightspeed are very bullish on this this form factor of company. And I think you're going to see a lot of uh, activity from us there over time.

• 1:34:54Jordi Hays?

  From how have you personally evaluated, you know, businesses that are looking to eat into effectively labor spend through rolling up businesses versus companies that are looking to get into that on a ground up basis? And I don't have a ton of context on Harvey's business, but from what I would guess right now, it maybe looks more like a SaaS business today. But over time, it could look like more like it, you know, it's sort of eating more of the of the value chain.

• 1:35:23John Coogan?

  Look what Salesforce did where they where they get comped on per ticket closure as opposed to just pure.

• 1:35:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, results, results, basically, or output. But I'm curious. Yeah, just just this nature of, you know, ground up, you know, new software businesses that are leveraging AI versus this sort of buy and and build on top of strategy.

• 1:35:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I think this question is sort of being answered collectively by the industry like as we speak, as in like, there's a lot of chips on the table around this notion of like, hey, what if we go and buy the BPO in India and inject AI into it? Or what if we go and, you know, buy the homeowners association administrative businesses all over the world and inject AI into those? Yeah, just just an idea off the cuff I have.

• 1:36:07Speaker 04

  And and then on the other end, you're seeing companies like Harvey that are saying, no, the right way to do this is kind of to deliver like AI native value in the form of a co-pilot like product. And then over time, you start to chip away at the labor spend and bring more automation to that.

• 1:36:21Speaker 04

  The first thing I'd say is that I think one of the mistakes that a lot of investors have made, looking at these companies early is seeing the product as it was like then and not imagining how fast it was going to get better. Part of that is obviously just the models getting better. And I think just like when you have like logarithmic rates of improvement, it's just really hard for the human mind to like intuit that and look forward and actually feel like confident in, okay, this is what it's going to look like a year from now. So for example, I think it's fair to say that if you met Harvey at, you know, C or Series A and you saw the product, you'd say. I don't know if there's like a lot here. It's hard for me to see how this is going to be like a daily active use for the average lawyer. But what's happened is that product has gotten so much thicker and and more capable. To some degree because of better models, to another degree because of the in-house engineering work they're doing around how the information is retrieved and delivered to the end user.

• 1:37:05Speaker 04

  And so that product is just a totally different beast than it was, you know, a year or two ago. And I think you're starting to see that reflected in the growth rate and more importantly, the the product engagement of these of these products. So that's kind of one point on on that end. And then I think with these turnarounds, like I I haven't spent a ton of time digging into these. I think my. My high level concern would be, uh, one to the people that know how to bring the AI into these products, know how to run the, uh, you know, the BPO or the call center operation or the community association administrator. I just think these are, these are, uh, kind of oil and water like DNAs. And it it feels a little bit like, you know, Doge coming into the US government and telling all these people what to do. I think there's going to be some friction like that. Of course. Uh, but on the other hand, uh, you know, having that existing distribution and scale is really, really powerful. So I can see how there'll be a lot of enterprise value created by these.

• 1:37:49Speaker 04

  If they can kind of manage that DNA mismatch that I foresee being being an issue. Yeah. Uh, so if you're asking me, I'd much rather invest in the AI native company, uh, one. And the other thing I'd say is that. Uh, if you're the AI native company, uh, say, competing with the company that's transforming itself around AI. What I see out there right now is that there's sort of a a board and CIO level mandate to just adopt as much AI as possible. And and they look at it almost as existential as if like their business is going to perish if they don't do this right. And more immediately, they're going to get fired if they don't do this right. And I think if you can, and what I see with the best companies, like you could, you could say this about Windsurf, you could say this about Glean and some of the other companies that I've that I've been somewhat close to. Uh, is that if you can get mindshare with the CIOs, there's this mimesis that plays out where then the next one has to buy it and the next one has to buy it.

• 1:38:31Speaker 04

  So I think really being first and being looked at more of as like a true pioneer of the space rather than like a company that's being competent about how they bring AI into their existing products. It's just a much, uh, let's just say sexier position to be in when you're going and talking to CIOs and CEOs of these really large corporations. And so, uh, that's the side of the fence that I'm I'm more inclined to to bet on as an investor.

• 1:38:52Jordi Hays?

  Makes a ton of sense. Let's talk about outcomes. I think in 2021, 2022, you know, especially early 2022, everyone was writing of like, writing to lots of $10 billion outcomes. That was like, maybe the general sentiment. You shared recently that you're thinking about, you know, trillion dollar outcomes now. Is that, is the right framing as sort of a scaled platform fund to be thinking about making sure that you're in the handful of companies that, that over time can be trillion dollar businesses versus just expecting tons and tons of, you know, these, these, uh, you know, $10 billion plus companies?

• 1:39:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. So just to reiterate my position there that you mentioned, like what I see happening right now is that there are companies that seem to be scaling into market opportunities at a rate and scale that we just really haven't seen before. They can, they can actually convince me that there will be companies that cross trillion dollar valuations in the private markets. Like, of course, many companies have done this. Well, I shouldn't say many, but some of the great household name companies have done this as public companies and a lot of the value has been created there. Obviously now these companies are staying private longer, they're growing faster and therefore I think it's not unfathomable to think of an OpenAI or a SpaceX, um, you know, getting to this place where we're talking about trillion dollar companies in the private markets. So what does that mean for the venture business? What it means is there's even more headroom in this later

• 1:40:14Speaker 04

  stage investing part of the business that the mega platforms operate in that, uh, to generate alpha there that I think just wasn't there before. So that's hard for me to ignore personally. And I think why these mega platforms like Lightspeed are in a really unique position to, to capitalize on that. I think there's an obvious question as to, you know, are these the, are these companies a point in time thing? Or are they more foreshadowing of more of these to come? I think that's something that we're kind of figuring out as an industry and watching, but my instinct will be that just the, the problems and the ambition of the problems that founders are going after these days are just so like fundamentally massive that I think we will just see much, much bigger outcomes, uh, aligned with those companies succeed at going after these like really fundamental problems like space travel, uh, like intelligence, for example.

• 1:40:56Speaker 04

  And then I think with respect to the $10 billion outcomes, I mean, look, you're you're still going to see a tremendous number of those, right? I think that these these AI app companies are like the the large platforms are going to be very acquisitive of these companies. I think you're going to see things like Move Works, which, you know, ServiceNow announced, or or, you know, the Windsurf rumors that OpenAI and Windsurf are having conversations around. Like, I think there's a lot more of this to come. And so I think the the venture business will still be driven by those outcomes. But I think when we have these trillion dollar outcomes, even if they're few and far between, it just completely distorts and and changes the shape of the industry. And I think that the mega platforms are well aware of that and and and architecting their setups with that in mind.

• 1:41:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, in many ways, you know, these these bigger companies would prefer to avoid, you know, four or five rounds in a row that are predominantly random SPVs with hundreds of underlying shareholders, you know, that are then all trading those positions over time. And it's very chaotic if you could just have, you know, if you could get the majority of your cap table around a single dinner table for a few more rounds, you might be more inclined to to stay to stay.

• 1:42:03John Coogan?

  Sure. Last question, any lessons from Warren Buffett? He's transitioning out of Berkshire Hathaway. Obviously, a very different style investing from early-stage venture. But at the same time, if Lightspeed keeps scaling AUM, who knows? Anything's possible.

• 1:42:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I guess the the thing, whenever I think about Warren Buffett, and I think technically Charlie Munger said this, but I sort of think of them as one and the same for all the lessons that they share. The one that I always come back to is this notion of the too-hard pile, right? And so what the too-hard pile refers to is when they see a business that someone is trying to pitch them on being a really compelling investment. If it doesn't necessarily fit in the box of like their circle of competence and their ability to underwrite that business like with an unfair advantage, it goes in the too-hard pile, even if it ends up being a great investment. And look, I think venture is all about exceptions, but at the same time, I think. Knowing your strengths in terms of how like the type of people that you can read and work with, the types of markets that you can understand, the type of companies that you can start to really like dream with and and and kind of look out forward and have a sense and intuition of what

• 1:43:05Speaker 04

  they can be. There's this notion of a too hard pile and venture there where I think sometimes the mistake that venture investors will make is they'll run after things that they don't actually understand, either at the personal level or the market level. And what I think I've really learned in the 11 or so years I've been doing this is like there is a notion of a too hard pile and venture and just like sticking to your strengths and really being open minded, but at the same time, like understanding your core strengths that you can anchor on as a picker. And so that that would be my answer.

• 1:43:30John Coogan?

  That's great. Well, thanks so much for stopping by. Congratulations on the new job.

• 1:43:34Jordi Hays?

  Come back on again soon.

• 1:43:35John Coogan?

  We love personality here. We really appreciate you hopping on. We'll talk to you soon.

• 1:43:38Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:43:39John Coogan?

  Bye. And next up, we have Katherine Boyle from Andreessen Horowitz, the pioneer of American dynamism.

• 1:43:48Jordi Hays?

  One of the top coinages of the last few years.

• 1:43:51John Coogan?

  Yeah, for sure. And and more relevant than ever. In some ways, mission, mission accomplished. I mean, last week in DC, it was American dynamism on display, right? Everyone, everyone is a believer. And the question is, where do we go from here? And that's what I'm excited to dig in with her today. Catherine, welcome to the stream. How are you doing?

• 1:44:13Katherine Boyle?

  Thanks for having me. It's about time. I'm so happy to be here.

• 1:44:16Jordi Hays?

  Good to have you.

• 1:44:17Katherine Boyle?

  Longtime listener, first time caller.

• 1:44:20Jordi Hays?

  Great to have you with the flag in the background.

• 1:44:23John Coogan?

  Yes, fantastic background. Where should we start? I I'm curious about just state of affairs with the American dynamism movement. The project feels like it's maybe time to rest on our laurels. What do you think?

• 1:44:39Katherine Boyle?

  We've achieved American dynamism.

• 1:44:41John Coogan?

  It feels like it. Yeah. No, it's it's it's a yeah. Like it's broken through, it's mainstream.

• 1:44:47Jordi Hays?

  Cultural victory may be coming before actual victory.

• 1:44:50John Coogan?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 1:44:51Jordi Hays?

  In that in that American dynamism is is almost mainstream now, at least in the venture world.

• 1:44:57John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:44:57Jordi Hays?

  But job's not finished.

• 1:44:59John Coogan?

  Job's not finished. So what are the key asks in DC from from Silicon Valley right now? What are the top projects? Where should tech be focused in terms of the American dynamism project broadly right now?

• 1:45:13Katherine Boyle?

  Totally. So it's nowhere near finished. I mean, this is like three or four years into a 30-year project, which is always good when you have those sorts of aims. And I'd say it's even longer than that. When you think of Defense 1.0, it started around 2015, 2016. You know, it's sort of has become this very large movement. But I'll tell you, like, last week was a huge, huge week for American dynamism inside of the DOD. And the news sort of got buried in tech land, but it was just, it's probably one of the biggest things to happen in the first 100 days of the Trump administration. The Army announced what they're calling their Army Transformation Initiative. It was with Secretary Driscoll, General George. They actually went on Fox and Friends, which was like a huge deal that they actually went public with it. And they said, it's been way too long.

• 1:45:58Katherine Boyle?

  Like, we have so many platforms we want to modernize. We want to divest from technologies that are no longer useful. We want to modernize the force. We want to make sure that we get rid of civilian jobs that are not important anymore. We want to make sure we are not having wasteful spending. I mean, it was sort of like, you know, I had read in NBC, after it came out, they said, like, the Army is dozing itself.

• 1:46:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:21Katherine Boyle?

  I think that the real story of what the Army is doing, and kudos to them, because they truly are the first mover, is there are people inside of the DOD who have been saying these things for years, pounding their head against the wall, saying they want acquisition reform, saying they want to work with startups, saying they have to have new platforms that come in and actually support the needs of the warfighter. And they've been pounding their head against the wall with little results. And so when you have a Doge effort going on in Washington, and an administration that really wants to see, you know, the waste disappear, it allows for those people who are really forward-thinking, like General George and like Secretary Driscoll, to come forward and say, hey, we're going to do this ourselves. We're going to pick out the new technologies that we need. We're going to get rid of things like Humvees that we haven't needed in 20 years. We're going to figure

• 1:47:05Katherine Boyle?

  out what is actually useful for the Army, and we're going to do it ourselves. So it was a huge week. I think it was probably one of the most, it was reported, but it didn't get sort of the praise from technology that it should have. Like, this is an extraordinary movement that I think has really been a long time coming. And it's something that a lot of the early American dynamism companies have been pushing for for a long, long time. So congratulations to the Army.

• 1:47:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, so can you give me a little bit of a

• 1:47:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's better to doze yourself than get dozed.

• 1:47:32John Coogan?

  Always doze yourself.

• 1:47:33Jordi Hays?

  Doze yourself.

• 1:47:34John Coogan?

  Yeah, can you give me a little bit of a tour of the market map of the beneficiaries of this transformation? Obviously, everyone knows the Palantirs and the Andurils, but I imagine that there are tons of pockets of value and projects that need to be overhauled. Is it mostly drones, weapon systems, vehicles first? Or are there other areas that companies that you talk to are focused on in this transformation process?

• 1:47:59Katherine Boyle?

  Totally. So I mean, in the in the early days, that's what's been called out. So it's, you know, it's it's early UAVs that were developed 20 years ago. They're not relevant post-Ukraine war. I mean, it's it's it's actually sort of, I don't want to say comical, because it's not funny. But when you think about the fact that the Humvee was developed in 1980, it went into production in 1985, and that the army said in 2004, this actually isn't useful for us anymore, because there's this new type of warfare called IEDs, and we're not going to use it. And these and these are still in production in 2025. And so that's a perfect example. And I think they're sort of, you know, they're they're showing certain programs that are so long overdue that they're not going to be changed. But I think it's also smaller things, like, you know, the the program of record was developed

• 1:48:42Katherine Boyle?

  when you had to build out these very, very large platforms, and you and you had to plan years and decades in advance. And when someone won a program, it was understood that they were going to to run that program for for decades. And and now the army has ways to acquire things where technology is changing at a pace and at a speed that that really needs to have a genuine competition every year, every couple of years. And so that really benefits all startups. That that benefits all, you know, incoming emerging technologies that are going to serve sort of the fight of the future. So in some ways, I think it's, you know, they have specific callouts that they're that they're pointing to now. But there's definitely, this is sort of a, this is great news for startups, because what it's showing is that there is actual, actually the will inside the DoD to change

• 1:49:26Katherine Boyle?

  things bigger than just, okay, we're going to give you a

• 1:49:31John Coogan?

  Is there any movement on procurement reform? I remember I watched this hilarious movie Pentagon Wars, all about the development of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. And it's a very funny movie, but it kind of, you know, everyone has a different requirement. They all get put together and becomes this kind of platypus of a vehicle that is part tank, part troop transport, all these different problems. Part of the benefit of modern technology is that we do develop platforms and things like Andurals Ghost can do ISR and also do munitions and a whole bunch of things. There are projects that do need flexibility, but is there a cultural shift around moving away from exquisite systems?

• 1:50:15John Coogan?

  Or just when, when folks in defense tech say, "We need procurement reform," what are they really talking about in 2025?

• 1:50:23Katherine Boyle?

  Yeah, well, I think they're talking about different things because I think what this initiative is going to do is it's going to allow the Army, and I think there'll be a lot of, you know, replicas of this as well. I think other branches will look at this and say, "This is a great idea." Instead of being locked into a program for decades, they're going to be able to say, "Actually, we would love to use that capital for something new. We would love to recompete that, that program. We would like to be able to be better capital allocators." Because now their, their hands are tied. And, and I think when you, when you talk to people who are just in normal business, not in defense world, and you say, "Hey, if you had to make a decision about a purchase that's going to last for 10 years and get no updates, and you would not be allowed to change it, what would you do?" We would say, "That's insane."

• 1:51:04Katherine Boyle?

  Like, how is a CEO going to say they're going to acquire technology for their company that they're going to use for 10 years and there's going to be no software and updates, no nothing? And if it's not working, you can't get rid of it. You're told you can't get rid of it. I mean, that, that is, that is literally what the, the DOD has to deal with. And so I think what, what's great about this initiative, again, it's, it's, one, the fact that the Army is going public says that they mean business and that they have air cover to do this. But I think that the meta-story that we're going to tell ourselves is, you know, Doge has been very public in the last week of what they're doing. There's been some pushback on, you know, "Why are you working on IT systems?" You know, everyone has sort of their, their favorite Doge meme of why it's not working. But the story of Doge, I think, when we look back even in a year.

• 1:51:48Katherine Boyle?

  Is going to be that it gave extraordinary air cover to reform in every department. And the first example inside the DOD, this is the biggest example in the last hundred days. To see General George out there saying like, this is what we need to do and we are committed. And we're going public because we are so committed, which doesn't usually happen. I just think it speaks volumes and tech should be celebrating. This is a big, big day for everyone in the American dynamism ecosystem, for every defense company that's been fighting for this for a long time.

• 1:52:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah. And for, for all of this to be, to actually achieve those sort of 30 year goals or execute against that 30 year plan. Things need to be bipartisan. People need to realize we want efficiency and innovation across every branch. I'm curious on the, on the investing side, I'm sure you have this painful experience all the time where you meet companies that probably are going to be great businesses, are good for America, but maybe aren't a fit for venture. What, what's your sort of updated thinking on understanding if something can be a great, important business versus something that can truly be, you know, a generational outcome?

• 1:52:53Katherine Boyle?

  Yeah. Well, one of the, one of the biggest mistakes I see investors make is trying to predict TAM. So, so, you know, early, early days of Anduril. A lot of people, you know, didn't want to look at Anduril because of ethical reasons or because they were worried about being involved in defense. But there was another meme that was going around, which is almost comical now, which is, well, it's kind of a small TAM, right? Like a border security company, like, oh, they're selling to DHS, Department of Homeland Security doesn't really have that big of a, but like, like, these were real things that people said that are hilarious now. You guys can imagine. So it's like, I, I think it is very difficult to predict a growing markets. Eventually what some of these incredibly important technologies are going to be worth.

• 1:53:36Katherine Boyle?

  But I, but I agree with you. There are some examples of companies that might not be, you know, standalone businesses, but will ultimately, you know, Anduril's done a very good job of acquiring businesses that aren't going to be these venture outcomes, but work, you know, very well within their platform. But I think in some ways, there's always surprises with companies that were initially passed on, or people were very skeptical of their TAM in the early days. And then you look back and you see just how much they've grown, or how much the product has shifted, or how important the platform actually is.

• 1:54:06Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. How have you been reacting to ignoring the politics of it all, but reacting to the trade war? In many ways, when you have these big geopolitical events playing out, that doesn't necessarily mean start to make a lot of venture investments, because venture investments take a long time to play out, and it's very hard to predict the future. Are you seeing new opportunities related to the events of the last month? Are you still just continuing? I imagine when you guys invested in Hadrian, you weren't betting on a trade war in two years, or something like that, right? But how do you think about

• 1:54:49Jordi Hays?

  timelines? And is the benefit of thinking in that 30-year timeline that you're able to broadly ignore or not place too much focus on the headlines of today, and just think about what America needs in the long run?

• 1:55:07Katherine Boyle?

  Yeah, no, I would say my bias as a very early-stage investor is to not think about the immediate timeframes. These are very long cycles. You can see trend lines, but it's hard to know what actual events are going to happen, obviously. So I think even when we made the investment in Hadrian, as you called out, there was a movement towards reindustrialization and towards investing in manufacturing that was early and nascent. But if you were hearing the signs, or spending a lot of time in DC, or even, both sides were very focused in Washington on how do we think about investing in America, reindustrialization, how do we bring back manufacturing? So it didn't feel like it was, it felt like it was a message that was being heard then. It's just, of course, been accelerated. And

• 1:55:50Katherine Boyle?

  I think truly, if you think about the next 10, 20 years, reindustrialization is going to be a very important theme. So it can feel like everything is hot right now, or feel like we're in the middle of something. But ultimately, I think we're, again, in this very, very early, three or four years into a 30-year journey of this sort of, you know, it took... Decades for globalization to really hit its peak and now we're sort of seeing the pendulum swing again. And so you're going to see a lot of companies that are built in the next few years that become generational companies.

• 1:56:22John Coogan?

  Yeah. How do you think about the kind of broader market map of American dynamism? Obviously Anduril is like a just a great case study in the American dynamism thesis. But at the same time, as you go through the American dynamism website, you can go back to like the moon landing and the development of the iPhone as like examples. At the same time, there's this question about like the Anduril of X is Anduril potentially, but then that doesn't always come true if you're talking about something that's truly outside of their purview in consumer or in, you know, flock safety or Hadrian. These companies are not competitive, but maybe fit in the thesis. What, how are you seeing the, the investing

• 1:57:05John Coogan?

  landscape of American dynamism kind of evolve as more people come into the, to the category, but then think outside the box and address different issues? I mean, I've seen even like some education stuff kind of fit the, the broader thesis. So how has that evolved over the last couple of years?

• 1:57:23Katherine Boyle?

  Yeah, we define it as companies that are actively supporting the national interest.

• 1:57:26John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 1:57:26Katherine Boyle?

  So it is a very simple definition and founders have, you know, different interpretations of what it means, but there's, there's common themes. And actually this goes into why we decided to have a separate fund, why we decided to build out the platform. It's because these companies need something entirely different than a true enterprise or a true consumer company.

• 1:57:44John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:57:44Katherine Boyle?

  And when we looked back at our, our early portfolio of Shield AI, Anduril, you know, these Astronis, these companies that, that were sort of what I would call space and defense 1.0.

• 1:57:53John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:57:54Katherine Boyle?

  We'd sort of like put them in the enterprise category as though they're like no different than a company that's selling business software to, to the Fortune 500, right? It doesn't make any sense. They have totally different needs. You know, Anduril's famously said that they had a lobbyist on staff on, on week one.

• 1:58:07John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 1:58:08Katherine Boyle?

  There's things that companies need. That our view is that we could build a platform to help support these companies, namely in Washington, understanding who their buyers are on the BD side, which is a very difficult kind of role to hire for inside of early-stage startups. But then also understanding kind of the Washington game, which is very important for companies to understand if they're going to be selling directly to the federal government. Now, you mentioned education, and there's a lot of companies in our portfolio, too, that are selling to state and local. And that is a totally different sales motion. You know, that is something where, you know, a company like Flock Safety has sort of rewritten the rules of how you sell directly to a police force or how you even follow what I would call kind of like a second-city strategy of not going to the biggest cities, but going to the smaller municipalities

• 1:58:52Katherine Boyle?

  and getting a lot of, you know, almost circling a big city with the suburbs around it and kind of getting a lot of momentum from the citizens. But all these companies have very similar needs and sort of things that they have to think about early rather than later. And we've now seen enough of sort of the early success stories in public safety and, you know, aerospace, defense, like sort of these generational companies that came up in the last several years, that the boom that's happening in these categories, many of them want to replicate those playbooks and have, I think, with a lot of success.

• 1:59:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, can you talk a little bit about almost like lobbying as value-add for venture capital? I remember I was running an Andreessen-backed company a decade ago, and there were, I met the CEO of McDonald's through Andreessen at some happy hour, and there were trainings on B2B sales and PR and all this stuff, but there was no concept of regulatory or lobbying. But I imagine that's a piece of it, but it's, at the same time, you need to eventually staff your own government affairs team. How are you working with early-stage founders to get them up and running in Washington?

• 1:59:58Katherine Boyle?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I would say a lot of the founders that we backed are very, I would say, sophisticated in their knowledge of who they need to be meeting with or the types of people they should be meeting with in the DOD. But the thing that I think we're actually, I would say, even more successful in doing that's really important is making all that knowledge public. You know, we make our playbooks public. You know, my partner, Leila, who runs our go-to-market in DC, she wrote this incredible glossary of things you need to know if you're even going to approach a venture capital firm about, you know, about a defense tech company. Like, these are the acronyms. These are all the acronyms you could possibly hear in a conversation with the DOD. And it's things like that where we do want to make that public and we want to help educate

• 2:00:41Katherine Boyle?

  the ecosystem. And I can tell you, like, you know, five or six years ago, the number of venture capitalists who understood the difference between contracting, you know, the different types of contracting vehicles, that understood the names of, you know, of different, you know, people on the appropriations committee, these things that are now sort of, I'd say, taken for granted, were not well known. And so I think that's a huge part of it, too, is really helping the ecosystem get up to speed, helping companies sort of speed run that early stage process of like, you can ask any dumb question, we're going to help you with it. But then there is also something to be said of, it is much easier to get a meeting with certain people if you are at a dinner that's sponsored by a group of people who are always in Washington. I mean, we have a Washington office now. We are fully

• 2:01:23Katherine Boyle?

  staffed in terms of both Republicans and Democrats and people who work on both sides of the aisle, people who specialize in DODs, people who specialize in certain types of the DOD. And I think that is like a very important thing to be able to say, okay, you need to meet with X, Y, and Z people, or you need to understand the glossary before you can even begin to have those conversations.

• 2:01:42John Coogan?

  Do you think defense tech is now mature, it's oversaturated? I was joking with Jordy that I think world peace is like, maybe six months away, and then I'm going to start poaching top defense tech talent to build the next generation of advertising optimization. Because I think that we just got to get them back in the ad optimization game.

• 2:02:03Katherine Boyle?

  Next company, you know it.

• 2:02:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, seriously, like, it does seem like-

• 2:02:08Jordi Hays?

  That would be the most, you know, the OpenAI, you know, AGI is always six months away.

• 2:02:13John Coogan?

  World peace is always six months-

• 2:02:14Jordi Hays?

  Defense tech founders need to just go like, yeah, just two more, two billion more and like, world peace.

• 2:02:19John Coogan?

  World peace, yeah. But I mean, there is a serious question here, like, there, I know some people who are like, just so excited that they're jumping into things, but, but, you know, being even, I'm not even in the industry, but I'm a little bit more tapped in, and I'm like, there are already seven companies working on that exact thing. I don't know if this is the best time. Is it, is it worthwhile to steer, you know, these incredible hackers, these great entrepreneurs, like, maybe towards the more like- The more tangential hard tech problems, like what I see with like, what Base Power is doing is like, it's hard tech, it has defense roots, but it's not directly something that's on Anduril's roadmap. What advice are you giving to kind of the entrepreneurs that are like in between things,

• 2:03:01John Coogan?

  thinking about serving the national interest, but not necessarily putting themselves on a collision course with a, you know, multi-billion dollar founder mode company?

• 2:03:10Katherine Boyle?

  So I'll say deterrence is the constant project, right? So like your whole, like the meme of we're maybe six months away from World Peace.

• 2:03:16John Coogan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:03:18Katherine Boyle?

  Like I actually think that was part of the problem in the 90s, right? Like, like seriously, that was the big problem.

• 2:03:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, democracy will end of history.

• 2:03:25Katherine Boyle?

  Yeah, end of history. We flourished and we don't need to be working on these things. So the, the, the kind of, it is very important that we've gone back almost to the roots of the DOD, saying like, hey, actually, we remember what it's like to be a country at war. And we need to be constantly focused on the next technologies. We need to be focused on deterrence, thinking about as deterrence because we want to prevent war, but we have to be continuously building. So from, from that perspective, I think we're, again, we're only a few years into this, this real movement of Silicon Valley caring about working with the DOD. And I hope that it's a 30 year project. I think that's what we all really should be, should be focused on is making sure it's a 30 year project and even longer than that. But to your point, what, what I think is so interesting about companies that, you know, are founded out of Anduril or out of SpaceX, you know, we've done an analysis where we looked

• 2:04:10Katherine Boyle?

  at all of the founders who've left SpaceX, you know, in the last, say, 10 years. And there's hundreds of companies that have been formed in just wildly different sectors, whether it's, you know, Radiant Nuclear, working on nuclear energy, you know, Castellian, which is in our portfolio, and they're building hypersonic weapons. I mean, some of the best founders are trained, I always say they go to the school of Elon Musk, they learn manufacturing, they learn production. And then they want to take that to something that, you know, is pretty low hanging fruit. Like they, they, they want to make sure that they're competing against the incumbents of, of, of yesterday, who, who have not modernized their production, who've not modernized a lot of the technology that they're working on. And so, you know, I think you see that with a lot of the, you know, yes, there are some extremely crowded fields,

• 2:04:51Katherine Boyle?

  but then there are also areas of defense that are really just boring and completely untouched. And you're seeing founders realize that too, that it's, it's not something that that's, you know, interesting to, to any of the existing companies and it's a low hanging, you know, it's low hanging fruit. It'd be interesting to work on that. Um, or they're interested in being a tier one supplier. We have a number of companies that are really focused on the supply chain aspect of defense and, and they're partners to Anduril and they're partners to SpaceX and, and other companies in the ecosystem. So, so you really are seeing founders like, understand that question in a very sophisticated way and saying, okay, we're going to go after the parts of the supply chain or, or the things the DOD needs that no one is focusing on. Um, and that's been exciting to see too.

• 2:05:30Jordi Hays?

  Can you, can you talk about M and A in defense tech broadly? Anduril's done this very well. Sironic announced a deal last week, uh, acquiring Gulfcraft. Um, that feels super significant. I'm, I'm curious, you know, how you advise founders kind of broadly when, when thinking about that. We actually had Augustus on from Rainmaker earlier, who had acquired, uh, a company in his space. But when's, when's the right time to be, you know, thinking about that as, as somebody in defense tech? And, um, yeah, what, what kind of opportunities do you think make the most sense?

• 2:06:05Katherine Boyle?

  Totally. Well, I, I think, I mean, both Anduril and Sironic, I mean, they, they have incredibly unique stories in terms of where they're operating and, and sort of what they need to do in order to grow and scale. And they've done it, um, at, at a speed that is just incredible, right? Like they, they, they, they have very sophisticated teams that know a lot about acquisition. Um, I'd say for earlier stage companies, like it's, you know, we're seeing more companies that are, that are potentially interested in doing that and can speed up, um, it can speed up innovation. Um, it can speed up being able to, to work with certain customers. That's for sure. If you're acquiring a certain, um, capability so that you can sell to a, to a, a major prime, that's something we've seen more of too, which is, which is interesting and exciting. Like, I don't think we were seeing that several years ago and now we're certainly seeing companies experiment with that.

• 2:06:47Katherine Boyle?

  But when you, when you said actually M and A, um, I actually thought you were going towards something that I, that I think is actually more likely to happen in the future that hasn't happened in a long time. When you look at these existing prime, prime companies, the big five, say, they've really only acquired, um, companies that have not raised any venture dollars, right? Like they, they don't acquire companies that are kind of seen as these bleeding edge companies to, to shore up their capabilities. And my instinct, you know, we're talking about army transformation initiative. We're talking about a government that's becoming. Far more sophisticated and a DOG that's becoming far more competitive, right? It hasn't been competitive for decades and now you're seeing all of these startups come in. My like prediction, if we're looking five, 10 years out, is that the companies that have not been acquisitive for the best engineers and the best technologists and these capabilities that

• 2:07:32Katherine Boyle?

  they need are going to find that as their only solution. And I think we could potentially even see another Last Supper situation, which of course in the 90s was the famous case where the government came to all these primes and said, you have to merge, you have to have kind of forced mergers and acquisitions because the budget's going to decrease. And of course, that was, that was probably the wrong strategy, given sort of the results that came out of that. But I do think it is something that I would not be surprised if in five or 10 years, you're seeing the existing primes that have been around in many cases for 100 years, saying, we have to, to work with these startups in a, in a much more tangible way. And you could see a highly acquisitive ecosystem that, that people don't necessarily kind of write into their, their, their kind of thesis today.

• 2:08:14Jordi Hays?

  How would you, uh, uh, how, how do you think about leadership at the individual primes and you know, people over the last few years, I mean, Boeing has been dragged through the dirt by pretty much everyone, but I think of it as a great, uh, in, in the fullness of time, it's a great company.

• 2:08:31John Coogan?

  It ain't Boeing, I ain't going.

• 2:08:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, John is, John's so loyal.

• 2:08:33John Coogan?

  I'm pro Boeing.

• 2:08:34Jordi Hays?

  He'll never fly on an airplane. He'll never fly on an airplane.

• 2:08:36John Coogan?

  As a white collar worker, you know, there's, you don't risk your life very often. When I go on a business trip and I step on a 737 Max, I'm locked in.

• 2:08:44Jordi Hays?

  No, and I mean, I, I just look at it as, as, as China would love to have a company that was actually competitive with Boeing.

• 2:08:52John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 2:08:53Jordi Hays?

  Right? It's a hugely strategic asset.

• 2:08:55John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:55Jordi Hays?

  But I'm curious, uh, do you think that, you know, any of the primes, you know, and every now and then you'll see a prime release a video that's like clearly like they hired a marketing agency and said like, make us like an Andorol movie, you know? And then they, they, they put it out. Uh, but, but how do you think about, um, do you, do you see that the, the leadership at, at the primes?

• 2:09:15John Coogan?

  Well, Lockheed Martin invented artificial intelligence, remember?

• 2:09:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they came out last week and claimed that they invented AI.

• 2:09:21John Coogan?

  They basically just said, you're welcome.

• 2:09:22Jordi Hays?

  You're welcome. Yeah. By the way, you're welcome. Welcome, but I'm curious.

• 2:09:26John Coogan?

  Any hope for transformation?

• 2:09:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, do you have conversations with them? Or is it?

• 2:09:31John Coogan?

  Because I mean, even though it's not an opportunity for, you know, venture capitalists necessarily like, it would be great if they were highly functioning in the American interest, like as Americans.

• 2:09:39Jordi Hays?

  And then you have the, you have the program that was spun out of, you know, was it Microsoft? Microsoft to Android.

• 2:09:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, the HoloLens. Yeah, sorry.

• 2:09:48Jordi Hays?

  So I think there's probably more kind of even spin out opportunities where new companies can create, you know, value on top of existing programs.

• 2:09:55Katherine Boyle?

  Yeah, I think, you know, Palmer and actually Brian Schimpf has done an incredible podcast on this where he talks about sort of what happened at these primes and why things sort of went by the wayside. And it's partially because they really stopped focusing on research and development. They sort of, they didn't really need to. There was no real competition and they kind of recognized that, that, you know, they, they would always get paid by the government to do new things. You know, again, like it's, it's sort of this confluence of factors that led us to be, I don't know, really complacent. And I went back actually last night and was reading the first few pages of The Kill Chain by Christian Bros. Which again, it's like, it's reading it, it was written, I believe in 2019. Things changed so dramatically in terms of the conversation, but it's like going back in a time warp and saying, wow, like in 2019, people really didn't care that Boeing was collapsing

• 2:10:38Katherine Boyle?

  or that there were these private or these public companies that were doing no research and development because it didn't matter, right? That was pre-war in Ukraine. It was sort of, you know, in some ways it was a security theater, right? Like, we don't actually have to remain secure. We just have to pretend we're secure. And so I think there is this new sort of wake up call where a lot of these companies are going to say, one, if we, if we can't recruit the engineers and do the research and development in-house, we're going to have to acquire it. So again, that's why I think you're going to see a lot more acquisitions over the next several years because I think a lot of these companies are really going to have to change. But two, like these initiatives inside the DOD that are now getting real steam, that is going to force incredible competition that has not existed. Even in the last 10 years when we've all been investing in American dynamism.

• 2:11:20Katherine Boyle?

  So I'm, I'm actually much more like hopeful and excited about where I think the world is, world is going because I genuinely believe that a lot of these players have sort of woken up but are looking for solutions because now they know they have to.

• 2:11:31John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. I was, a while ago, I was talking to Trey about just the lack of the deeper supply chain, specifically in drone motors. Like, there are no small drone motor manufacturers in the United States. They're almost all made in China. And that feels like, oh, there's almost a startup idea there. But I don't know if it's a venture idea. There's actually a drone motor company in Washington. They outsourced some of their supply chain recently. That feels like, almost like, we need an American dynamism private equity fund to just turn those companies around. They're not going to be these power law, $100 billion companies, but they might produce 20% returns more reliably, and there's maybe no venture-style, zero,

• 2:12:13John Coogan?

  you know, loss of capital risk. Do you think we need a American dynamism for private equity? Is that something Andreessen would do at some point? I mean, you're kind of in every asset class now, so anything's possible. But is there, is there a flip side to the venture model within investing in the national interest?

• 2:12:31Katherine Boyle?

  Well, I certainly think we've, we've invested in some companies that are focused on component parts.

• 2:12:35John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:12:36Katherine Boyle?

  We're, you know, we're invested in AMCA. I know that Jay was on recently. So like, there are more and more companies that are figuring out to do this. And again, those are the examples of companies that are, that are, you know, much more focused on how do we, you know, how do we acquire companies? How do we, how do we, how do we make it, you know, make them, I would say, tech-forward, but also think about like, how quickly we can get into the supply chain in some of these larger primes. But I think you're, you know, you're seeing a lot of innovation around the edges on this, and you're probably going to see more and more founders who recognize that if that's where the real problem is, they're, they're going to build there, and they're going to build in the best way that that suits them. So.

• 2:13:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, it does seem like there's almost like a way to turn something, like, MP Materials, we were talking about, like, you, you wouldn't think like, oh, yeah, venture is suitable for like, mining, at all. But like, now there's a couple mining companies that are figuring out how to inject enough technology to make it potentially a venture-scale opportunity, which is interesting. Do you have anything else? I have a couple more.

• 2:13:29Jordi Hays?

  I gotta, I gotta totally switch in gears, but you had a post recently that I, that I liked. It was, "I'm committed to doing whatever the opposite of gentle parenting is." And I wanted to ask you if you've found any Lindy books on parenting? Anything that's sort of resonated that you're implementing? John and I both have similar aged children. And I always have this, you know, sort of concern around, you know, you want to experiment, you know, with parenting and try new things and maybe not just take exactly what the mainstream media says is the right way to do parenting. But then, you know, your, your children have one life, you know, you want to not run, you're not trying to run A B tests, you know, on their...

• 2:14:14John Coogan?

  I have three boys, so I employ what I call the snake pit strategy, which is you lock them all in a room and then it's just a snake pit. And they just like wrestle and, you know, if there's damage, they'll heal and that's fine.

• 2:14:26Katherine Boyle?

  Right way to do it. Well, I followed up that tweet with the tried and true Irish, Irish strategy, which is the "hey" method. You just shout, "hey!" Yeah, "hey, hey, hey!" You know, it works. Like there's something about this there today where your sons actually turn around and listen to you. But sadly, you know, there, there aren't like any books, like old timey books that I've found that, that actually teach, I would say, the best way to, to, you know, to, to train children or to, to child rear. But, you know, it's, it's interesting. I always think that grandmothers kind of know best. So if there's a grandmother in your life, anywhere, they remember how it used to be done and how effective it was. And it was, you know, probably harder in the olden days too. So it's like basically just ask grandma, like grandma...

• 2:15:10John Coogan?

  I would plug, I would plug Free Range Kids, all about this, the, like, our society has moved towards like, don't let the kids just run around in the neighborhood. They could get kidnapped. There's so many bad things that could happen. There's been a lot of fear mongering from the media. And so that's kind of led to kids turning in, in, inside, becoming inside kids, staying on the iPads or whatever. But there's this movement in the free range kids to just be like, yeah, actually like you're six, you can ride a bike, like ride your bike to the park, like, and, and that will enforce the society to maintain safety.

• 2:15:40Jordi Hays?

  I need to find the rate, the repeat of parenting.

• 2:15:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:43Jordi Hays?

  That's, that's the next alpha. But yeah, my, my problem with the grandma method is that my, uh, my mother and mother-in-law just want to let the kids do exactly what they want to do. You wanted two cookies?

• 2:15:55John Coogan?

  Maybe that's good.

• 2:15:55Jordi Hays?

  Good. You want three cookies? So maybe they're, maybe they're right.

• 2:15:57John Coogan?

  Maybe that is Lindy. Who knows?

• 2:15:58Jordi Hays?

  Maybe it is Lindy.

• 2:16:00Katherine Boyle?

  I'm the great grandmother, right? Like the, the one who remembers how tough it was.

• 2:16:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 2:16:05John Coogan?

  Uh, I, I want to get your reaction to Warren Buffett. Uh, obviously he stepped down over the, or, or announced his transition at Berkshire Hathaway this, uh, weekend. What do you take away from Buffett's legacy as an investor? It's obviously a very different type of investing, but there's so many interesting lessons there from company building to investing to everything else. Uh, what, what was your reaction?

• 2:16:28Katherine Boyle?

  Yeah, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll take a little bit of a different take because I was watching the, the, you know, the annual meeting last year and there was this moment that happened and I actually wrote about it, uh, and a piece on friendship and founder friendship where he was doing his usual, you know, going through company analysis and then he just kind of forgets where he is and says Charlie. And everyone stopped. It was like, you know, I think, I think I cheer up seeing it because it was like he had, he was so in his zone. After so many years of working together, he had forgotten that, that Charlie had passed.

• 2:16:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:57Katherine Boyle?

  And he's almost embarrassed about it, but I thought it was the most beautiful moment because one of the things I don't think we talk enough about in venture world is founder friendship. And I mean, like deep, deep friendship, not like, oh, we went to college together and we were friends or whatever. We're going to start a startup together. I mean, those people who like worked together decades and decades out. I actually think this is why family businesses often work better where even if you look like the Collison brothers, it's like they've. Sharing resources, you know, for, since, since childhood, since they can remember. And like, there's something about just the going through life with someone, suffering with someone, understanding how to like, you know, end someone's sentences, that leads to these just incredibly rich and beautiful companies. And I think if, you know, if we did an analysis in Andreessen Horowitz and just looked at

• 2:17:40Katherine Boyle?

  the companies that were true outliers, I think there would be stories of these people are like brothers, brothers and sisters. And Andorl certainly this, right? Like it's, you know, the, the founders there were DARPA challenged together, like their first day of college, right? So it's, in some ways, there's something about just having these deep relationships that, that span the test of time where you're, you're on a journey with someone and it's real, like Aristotelian friendship, not like faux friendship, but true love. And, and clearly you saw that with them. It's, it's just a remarkable thing how they were able to, to kind of be true brothers and, and kind of, you know, each other's better half throughout their business career for as long as they were.

• 2:18:17John Coogan?

  It's amazing. Last question, what should we do with Alcatraz?

• 2:18:20Katherine Boyle?

  Oh, you know, I, I love all, I love all the ideas of turning it into a casino.

• 2:18:25John Coogan?

  Yeah, I haven't seen that one. I like.

• 2:18:28Jordi Hays?

  I was saying, I was saying tax haven and, and no, no general solicitation rules. So you can like, go out there and sell your angel investments.

• 2:18:35John Coogan?

  No quiet periods, no lockup periods, just unfettered libertarian capitalism out there.

• 2:18:39Katherine Boyle?

  That sounds good. But I, but there is something about bringing it back in its original form, you know, it's like, there is something about these buildings that, that the, the president likes to restore into their former glory. And so if Alcatraz is the case, like to keep the historical details accurate, you can kind of see where it's coming from. He's, he's definitely a historicist in that, in that regard.

• 2:18:58John Coogan?

  Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was fantastic.

• 2:19:01Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this was great. Come back on again soon.

• 2:19:03Katherine Boyle?

  Thanks for having me. Have a good one.

• 2:19:05Jordi Hays?

  Talk to you soon. Cheers.

• 2:19:07John Coogan?

  That was fantastic. I hadn't heard the casino idea. She's clearly on a different part of X than I am.

• 2:19:14Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, no, I saw, I think I saw a little bit of that.

• 2:19:16John Coogan?

  Turn into casino?

• 2:19:17Jordi Hays?

  I was thinking if you made it a tax haven, then you could just put casinos on it.

• 2:19:21John Coogan?

  True, true, yeah.

• 2:19:22Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:23John Coogan?

  It should be completely lawless.

• 2:19:25Jordi Hays?

  Gambling.

• 2:19:25John Coogan?

  It needs to be either more lawful and become a prison, or more lawless and become a gambling haven. It does have like that riverboat vibe of like, you know, being in the bayou, hanging out on the riverboat gambling. It's kind of like international waters, anything goes. Anyway, our next guest is here. Welcome to the stream. How are you doing? Do we have you? Hey.

• 2:19:45Jordi Hays?

  There he is.

• 2:19:46Speaker 06

  How are you guys?

• 2:19:47Jordi Hays?

  What's going on?

• 2:19:47John Coogan?

  We're doing great.

• 2:19:48Jordi Hays?

  Welcome to the show.

• 2:19:49John Coogan?

  Would you mind kicking it off with a little introduction for yourself? Yourself?

• 2:19:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure. Hey, hey, everyone. Aditya Agarwal here. I'm the managing partner here at South Park Commons. I've been in the tech industry for about 20 years now. Kind of started off by meeting a very young 19 year old Mark Zuckerberg in like early 2005, when I just moved out here. Facebook was still working out of the famous house. And you know, so kind of meeting a 19 year old Zuck at that point was pretty obvious the dude was special.

• 2:20:19Jordi Hays?

  How old were you? How old were you at that time?

• 2:20:22Speaker 06

  I was 22.

• 2:20:24John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 2:20:25Jordi Hays?

  Okay, so you were like, uh, three years younger than me, but generational founder, I should probably join the company.

• 2:20:31John Coogan?

  That's great.

• 2:20:33Speaker 06

  You know, it's funny, it's like, I kind of joke that I love working for founders younger than myself. Cause I went for working for Zuck to, I then did my own company after Facebook, which then got acquired by Dropbox. Dropbox's first acquisition. And then I was the CTO there, working for a young Drew Houston and a young Rajiv Doshi.

• 2:20:50John Coogan?

  Wait, so did you recruit Guido Van Rossum?

• 2:20:53Speaker 06

  I did.

• 2:20:54John Coogan?

  That's incredible.

• 2:20:55Speaker 06

  Personally recruited GBR to come join Dropbox.

• 2:20:59John Coogan?

  Python.

• 2:20:59Jordi Hays?

  Wow.

• 2:21:00John Coogan?

  Absolute legend.

• 2:21:01Speaker 06

  And it's interesting, right?

• 2:21:02John Coogan?

  BDFL, the benevolent dictator for life of Python. Probably the most important programming language in modern history.

• 2:21:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's interesting you say that because you know Python at that point Dropbox is probably the most used, I would say, consumer app, maybe actually the most used kind of app in general written mostly in Python, because most of our, a bunch of our backend and frontend were actually kind of like code gen using Python.

• 2:21:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:26Speaker 06

  And Guido's a legend. I mean, like I think that the way he has crafted Python of, you know, both by himself and at Google and under kind of the Dropbox auspices was just legendary. And it's kind of amazing. It's kind of becoming the, uh, the programming language of choice for AI as well, right? Kind of like most of the AI programming is actually done all in Python, which is pretty, which is pretty crazy.

• 2:21:47Jordi Hays?

  Wild.

• 2:21:47John Coogan?

  Yeah. Best to ever do it.

• 2:21:50Jordi Hays?

  Let's talk about, let's talk about the news, uh, cause it was hitting the timeline. I think it was Friday.

• 2:21:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:21:55Jordi Hays?

  New Fund Three. Maybe talk about the genesis of the fund, uh, and you know, the, the series of funds to get where you guys are today.

• 2:22:04Speaker 06

  For sure. Um, you know, happy to tell you about SPC Fund Three, that South Park Commons Fund Three. But maybe I, you know, instead of kind of, uh, telling you about the fun sequences, talk about why SPC exists, right? Um, SPC was started in 2016 with the simple premise that, um, if you are a talented technologist, do not waste your life kind of tackling small ideas, right? Um, I'd say that there are two big mythologies that we've been trying to bust, if you will. So the first big mythology is that, you know, we all have this mental model of kind of like founders, essentially getting a stroke of inspiration, going up to the top of a mountain and then coming back to us with kind of the promised product, right? It's a very, it's framed as this like solitary hero kind of

• 2:22:46Speaker 06

  or heroine kind of act. But our strong premise is that great companies basically come out of insanely high talent density, right? They come out of places like PayPal, which kind of like kind of show like, you know, what greatness looks like. And then people go out and build things. They come out of like places like, um, you know, obviously Facebook, then we have had a bunch of companies out of Google, uh, there are Spark, obviously. Um, you know, and we also see this greatness kind of occurring in clusters all across us. Like we see it in like elite sports teams. We see it in elite kind of like musicians. We kind of see it in like essentially. Essentially academia. So our take was that if you want to start a company, why would you want to go and kind of like ideate by yourself, right? Instead, be surrounded by super high talent density.

• 2:23:31Speaker 06

  People who challenge you, like, you know, very interesting collisions of ideas can happen. Um, and it's kind of a semi-competitive collaborative setting, right? You want to be surrounded by the best people who are kind of challenging and pushing on your ideas. But then you also have a little bit of like, you know, you're looking over your shoulder being like, I want to aspire to the greatness that I see around me, right? Um, so that's our first mythology, which is that in order to start a company, you should be surrounded by great people. And the second one, which is maybe, it's almost, you know, it's more than a pet peeve for me, which is that they're the generation of founders that argue over the last decade in Silicon Valley, who basically because of the availability, frankly, of early-stage seed capital, kind of latch on to the first idea that they think of, right?

• 2:24:14Speaker 06

  Because they have some idea, somebody gives them like a seed check, and then they think that the idea is good, right? And our take is that actually, like, you know, instead of just focusing on the first idea that you have, take some time to wander. Let your mind kind of like go lateral, figure out like, it's unlikely that the first idea that you have is the best one, right? If you kind of just think about it from a probabilistic perspective. So our take at SPC is that come spend six, nine, 12 months with us, wandering, ideating, exploring, tinkering, letting interesting ideas come about. Um, and in some ways, everybody is so focused on scaling the mountain. We talk about hyper scaling, we talk about scaling the mountain, that nobody stops to ask, like, is this the right fucking mountain? Like, is this the best mountain that you want to go climb?

• 2:24:59Speaker 06

  Everest has like, you know, 16 peaks over eight, sorry, the uh, the Everest range has like 16 peaks over 8,000 meters, like, which one are you gonna pick? Right? Like, that's a pretty good one, right? Um, so.

• 2:25:10John Coogan?

  K2, because it's the hardest.

• 2:25:12Speaker 06

  K2 is the hardest.

• 2:25:13John Coogan?

  In the winter.

• 2:25:14Speaker 06

  Highest fatality rate by show, for sure.

• 2:25:17John Coogan?

  Some founders just want the pain, and so they go K2. North Face during the winter.

• 2:25:22Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:25:23John Coogan?

  What, uh, really quickly, what, uh, the, the name? Uh, not South Park Capital, not South Park Ventures, South Park Commons? What's, uh, what, what does that mean?

• 2:25:34Speaker 06

  It was a name that was actually chosen by our early members, right? So our early members in circa twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. The idea is that it is a meeting place of ideas, right? Like it's kind of formed by the comments, obviously very famously out of London. But a place where the intellectual public can gather to kind of like, you know, uh, introduce ideas, kind of essentially, um, debate ideas. Some of, you know, some of the folks that we were inspired by back in the day were Benjamin Franklin's Hunto Club, right? We actually remain deeply inspired by that, which is it exists in a society to better each other, to kind of like to towards greatness. Um, so the idea was that SPC, I mean, sure, we have twenty people on staff here. We have a bunch of investors. I think we're awesome.

• 2:26:17Speaker 06

  But ultimately, a lot of like the value of SPC is being surrounded by great talent that can all kind of like push each other. So when you come back to the genesis of the fund, right, guys? Like in the early days, there was no fun. We framed ourselves as a learning community. We framed ourselves essentially as like an exploration society, kind of the Royal Exploration Society in the eighteen hundreds in the UK with the idea of being that like being a founder is kind of being like an explorer in the early days, right? You're trying to navigate the idea maze. Uh, you should be able to like, you know, throw away like the bad ideas in pursuit of the great ones. Um, and then over time, what we realized is that this is actually an interesting model for early stage, kind of like company exploration, right? So we would basically provide a place where people would come in

• 2:27:03Speaker 06

  and essentially it was very hard to get in, right? It's, you know, we do maintain super rigorous standards for essentially getting in. We put people through multiple interviews, reference checks. So for instance, this people, this year, twenty thousand people plus will apply uh, to be part of SPC uh, across two hundred and fifty spots across SF, New York and Bangalore. Um, so it is very rigorous to get in. But once people essentially got in, we would kind of like have like a very vibrant intellectual environment where we would invite like really interesting people at the frontier of their fields. Uh, you know, so for instance, I remember back in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen, a young Vitalik would be like walking through kind of like SDC, just talking to people about some of his ideas around distributed systems. We would have GDB and Ilya walking around, telling people about kind of what was happening in deep learning.

• 2:27:47Speaker 06

  And I know that today these guys are like world famous, but back in twenty sixteen, they were still trying to pioneer something that felt a little bit heretical, right? Which is this idea that we were about to enter kind of a, kind of like a Cambrian explosion of machine learning away from the deep learning winter. So you know, we have always welcomed the people who are kind of in some ways pushing the boundary. Um, and so it was framed as a learning society. But as people kind of came and spent time in SPC, we realized that they were actually converging on more interesting ideas for, you know, by way of their exploration. So as they started essentially starting companies, uh, Ruchi and I, Ruchi is one of the founders of like SPC, would basically write, you know, you know, angel checks and introduce them to our, uh, investor network.

• 2:28:32Speaker 06

  But over time, we decided that like, hey, why don't we start a fund to invest in SPC companies, uh, and the fund would also, the, for instance, the fees coming in from the fund would be used to essentially like provide for staff and also provide for the building that we have in South Park, right? Um, and that fund one was a fifty five million dollar fund in twenty eighteen. That fund, uh, has done phenomenally well. It's kind of going to be in the top five percent of its vintage of that year. Um, on the back of, on the backs of that, boom, boom, boom, boom. Um, is that the money bell? Okay, there we go. Yeah.

• 2:29:06Speaker 06

  Um, and then on the backs of that, you know, we raised another fund in, uh, two thousand and late twenty twenty one, which was a hundred and thirty five million fund. That fund is actually outpacing fund, uh, fund two is outpacing fund one. Um, and on the backs of that, we have just raised fund three, which is the two hundred and seventy five million dollar fund to invest across, uh, across the globe, but also specifically the USA and India, uh, and the model scaling well, you know, like we.

• 2:29:30Jordi Hays?

  I'm curious. So, so I want to get into, uh, potentially some of the learnings, uh, the broader learnings for companies. Uh, you talked a little bit about this sort of, uh, the unicorn factory, you know, the companies come, they get, you know, two to five million dollars, they announce their fundraise, maybe they launch, and that's sort of like this, like, you know, they get, then they're on the sort of treadmill, right? And it just speeds up and speeds up and, and, you know, hopefully you don't get thrown off of it. At some point, you can keep the pace up. But, um, uh, one of the things I've been talking about recently on the show is kind of the, how that, that timeline can actually end up hurting your business.

• 2:30:12Jordi Hays?

  If you pick an idea, you have a super high profile launch and then everybody. Knows you as this company that does this one thing. But maybe in that process, you discover a totally different idea or it makes sense to pivot. And I'm curious, you know, seeing so many of these companies go from zero to one. And then I'm sure ultimately oftentimes pivot into other areas. What is the, what is the, what is, what is the core advice that you're giving to founders that are joining at the earliest stages? SPC, maybe pre idea, or maybe they only have ideas of an idea to help them avoid that. You know, we saw, um, we had the founder of Cluley on a couple of weeks ago and he's had, you know, two, maybe three, four or five

• 2:30:57Jordi Hays?

  super viral moments around what he's doing. And my, my advice to him was, you know, don't be afraid to basically reinvent yourself just because, you know, in three months, if it's not working as well as it should, right? And I've gone through this in, in the past myself, which is, you know, going viral before you have product market fit is not always. Gift and a curse. It's a gift and a curse. Double edged sword.

• 2:31:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, honestly, I mean, it's, it's, I think it's a well phrased question. And I think insofar as the question also contains some of the answer, right? My take is that honestly, uh, the cheapest time, the easiest time, uh, to kind of do pathfinding and to do pivots is in the earliest days. And in some ways, like obviously my point of view is that you shouldn't raise a ton of money, right? Like the first two, three, five million dollars should be easy to raise, right? Like that should be your easiest raise, right? In the sense of like you have, you have, you're kind of converging on an idea that is making people excited. What you really want in the earliest days is to have a lightness of being in terms of like making sure that you can actually objectively examine the idea from all sides, right?

• 2:32:05Speaker 06

  Like if it's not working, put another way, here's something I often tell founders. Your first $2 million of sales should be damn easy, right? Like I think that people often conflate that like, I'm going to go and do hand to hand combat to kind of go and get my first $2 million of sales. It's like, what are you talking about? Like, if you have a great idea, that first two, five should be easy, right? People should be taking a product that is half baked because it's so resonant. So my take is that like wait around and kind of like keep on kind of like doing big pivots or small pivots until that idea comes into focus. Right?

• 2:32:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:37Speaker 06

  Entrepreneurship, like any founder that you talk to that has gone on kind of a unicorn or a deck of gone journey. It is long, it is super painful, right? Like, if you are going to sign up for a super long kind of like game, take the time in the beginning to make sure that it's actually like the right mountain, the right game to play. Um, and I think that, I mean, if you're gonna think about it, guys, it makes sense that a lot of trends, I think, at least in our industry, makes sense to me when viewed from the lens of like, we are trying to push founders to start things as soon as possible, right? Like, you know, software kind of enables that, like, you know, super low cloud computing costs kind of like can enable that. But I think the flip side is something what we have seen is that I actually would argue that over the last ten years,

• 2:33:21Speaker 06

  founders have shied away from a problem that doesn't immediately come into focus, right? If you can't code like V one in like a month, or if it requires like physical atoms, if it requires kind of like talking to anybody that is not over the internet, people tend to shy away from it, right? And my take is that there are actually tons of super interesting kind of problems to tackle if you widen your aperture in the early days. And again, you know, whether you raise like a million dollars or five million dollars, I I would urge raising less, but ultimately it's kind of about having that mindset of being light in the beginning. Because none of your early investors actually care that much if you pivot like five times. Because the alignment around like biggest, sorry, the biggest outcome is always, is is just there.

• 2:34:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. How did you think about fund construction with the new fund? Uh, just the nature of venture means that, you know, a handful of companies in the fund will end up, you know, being, you know, maybe an order of magnitude larger than than the rest. Uh, and I imagine you've learned a lot of lessons from the first couple of funds around, you know, making sure that you're you're able to participate in in in multiple rounds. Uh, and and that kind of thing.

• 2:34:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'd say that the the first thing that we often talk about is that fund size is an in, uh, is an output, not an input variable, right? I think there's a lot of managers in our industry that basically raise a a big fund and then come up with a strategy to deploy the fund. For us, kind of the the methodology always has been like fund size is an output of the number of founders that we can Serve the number of people we can have in our community. We strongly believe in that our community is best facilitated when things feel intimate, right? So this is why, like, you know, none of our spaces in SF New York and Bangalore are more than like a hundred and fifty people. Um. And then we kind of have a sense of like how many of these members can each of our kind of like investors support.

• 2:35:12Speaker 06

  Such that we can actually provide them with an amazing, frankly, white glove experience. Like, I personally work closely with like thirty, forty, fifty founders per year. Um. And that's a fun part of the job, right? So a lot of it is just like, what is the maximum number of people we can support both in the community, but also on a per investor basis? And then we kind of back our way into a fun size from that. Um. Frankly, you know, I think that right now, um, we are not constrained. Uh. The big, the big thing that we're constrained by is simply our ability to support these founders, not from demand for the product, if you will, right? Like, I think that just looking at the numbers in terms of how many people want to be part of S P C, I think we are humbled, I think, by the interest.

• 2:35:52Speaker 06

  It also kind of makes sense, guys, in the sense that I think a lot of, one of the really interesting trends for us is that how many second time founders join us, right? Or how many, like, essentially people who have been early employees at, like, a Stripe or a Scale join us? And I think it's because they see the, I, I think we're kind of spreading a philosophy, which is that if you want to play this repeated game of startups, right? And you want to start companies, like, it's better to be surrounded in the early days by a super high talent density. I think one of our goals at S P C has always been that startups are hard, but startups create a lot of value. Let us figure out a way to kind of like actually make them more net productive for everyone.

• 2:36:33Speaker 06

  So I think that the minus one philosophy is resonate, is resonating. We obviously want to serve as many founders as we can ourselves. But I also hope that, like, other people start up minus one things, you know? Uh. And we're starting to see a bunch of, uh, I would say, um. Folks who have similar philosophies, like minus one, I think, has entered the vernacular now, which makes me really proud. Um. So, yeah, fun size is an output. I actually think we can serve a lot more people as we figure out ourselves how to scale. But more than that, you know, like minus one is kind of a big thing. It's kind of a big philosophy that makes me proud to be able to share with the world.

• 2:37:07Jordi Hays?

  Totally. You co-founded Bezel. Sorry, not Bezel, Bevel. Bevel.

• 2:37:14Speaker 06

  You know, actually, Bezzles were part of the motivation for kind of talking about Bevel. But yes, I did co-found Bevel last year.

• 2:37:21Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I would love for you to talk about that and how it's been. It makes a lot of sense. I think one of the biggest complaints people have about different fitness trackers is

• 2:37:33Jordi Hays?

  the data is not always consistent, right? You know, your Whoop might tell you a different, tell you you're walking more than your Oura Ring or whatnot. And, you know, having a platform that can pull all that data into a single place and help you understand different trends makes a lot of sense.

• 2:37:52Jordi Hays?

  And, you know, just, just the nature of, you know, bundling and unbundling. But talk about maybe the genesis there and how it's been going.

• 2:38:02Speaker 06

  For sure. You know, I think probably like a bunch of us six years ago, kind of when COVID first, kind of like the lockdowns and stuff started, decided to channel a lot of my pent up energy into kind of just like going full beast mode on my health. You know, like basically analyzing everything like sleep, fitness, nutrition, body metrics, everything. And I started to maintain these super detailed spreadsheets and these spreadsheets were basically like I have all of this data collected on a daily basis going back six years. It's kind of stored in a combination of Excel, sorry, like Google Sheets and Airtable. Yeah. And I think everything that you said, like, you know, I would collect data from three different sources, right? I would collect data from my Oura Ring. I also had an early Fitbit.

• 2:38:45Speaker 06

  And obviously when Apple Watch came out and some of the data would be like a little bit different and I would basically normalize it. I would also collect a bunch of qualitative data about my own kind of like, I would say, experience.

• 2:38:55Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:56Speaker 06

  So when I was talking to Ben and Gray, who are at SBC, you know, they were also essentially going through similar journeys. They've kind of been through a little bit of the wringer in terms of their first startup. And if you were talking about what we wanted. Out of essentially like a health app, a lot of what we were saying is that essentially, number one, all of these health devices at this point were kind of like offering you like a dashboard of your data, but nothing was really tying it together. I mean, Apple Health is fine, right? Like it's not a bad product, but it's a little busy and it's kind of like very specific to that ecosystem. So our take was that how do we kind of create as step one, the best place to ingest all of your kind of health data? Because at this stage, it's not just your rings, your watches, it's also your eight sleep mattress. It's

• 2:39:41Speaker 06

  also like, you know, everything basically is kind of like creating this health data, which is awesome, right? It's beautiful because I think it's indicating that consumers care about this. So our take was step one, how do we get all of this into the into a one place that essentially, uh, instead of eight, there we go. Amazing. Yeah, that's a great product, right? Like eight sleep, but eight sleep gives you a nightly sleep score as does your aura ring. Maybe if you wear your watch. So like, how do we make sense of all of this data into a clean, consistent place, right? And it's, I mean, it was a simple proposition. It was one of those classic things. Let's just build what we want. And Ben and Gray are just world-class kind of builders and designers. So they just built something that

• 2:40:23Speaker 06

  was beautiful. It was easy to use and we put it out there and it's just been all kind of like crazy organic demand. You know, we're not divulging too many numbers, but you know, we are definitely kind of the, uh, the number of users and kind of paid subs. It's just kind of blown us away. We've kind of been on a tear for the last four, you know, last like six months.

• 2:40:43Jordi Hays?

  Well, there's, there's this, I, there's this idea that, uh, once you get to a certain obsession level in health, the amount of money that you'll spend on an incremental one percent, you know, gain in your health is like, you know, you get to a point where you're, you know, I did this like NAD treatment last year.

• 2:41:01Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:41:02Jordi Hays?

  That in hindsight was like, I think a terrible use of funds, but it was like, it was like a series of, I think it was like six grand over like multiple treatments. And I was like, I didn't feel anything at the end, but at the time I was like, yeah, if this is gonna make me like, yeah, if I'm gonna feel like, you know. Five percent more energized during the day. Totally worth it. It's totally worth it, but um. Yeah, it's a great market. That's cool. I'm curious, last thing, because I know we have a cutoff here and there's probably a founder you need to chat to, chat with.

• 2:41:30Jordi Hays?

  What are you seeing today at a high level? You guys have a unique insight into the sort of trends and categories that will be probably hot in a year and you're probably making those investments now. You know, I'm sure a lot of the obvious stuff, you know, agents, MPC, that kind of thing, but what's

• 2:41:55Jordi Hays?

  what's getting a lot of your attention?

• 2:41:56Speaker 06

  Probably two, probably two areas that I would highlight and maybe this is I think both of these are somewhat well understood now. The first one is the amount of, I would say, enthusiasm and excitement for stuff around robotics is very real. This is both kind of like building actual robotics, like hardware to kind of building robotics, kind of, I would say, middleware, kind of like think like, you know, end-to-end stacks for coding on robots, then obviously robotics foundation models. It's, it's, it's hard to say whether it will all translate into usable products over the next three or four years, but over a 10-year horizon, I think that the energy is just substantial, much more so than I've ever seen in my career.

• 2:42:35Speaker 06

  And the second one I'd point out is that, you know, a lot of the times, the conversation around foundation models has really centered around, essentially like, take what we have and kind of like throw more compute at it, throw more data at it. But it's surprising to me that a lot of people don't actually take a step back and realize that lots of smart researchers out there who are building the next generation of algorithmic changes to these models. So there are lots of really interesting, both, I would say, variants, but also novel takes on, for instance, what would a pure RL-based kind of like model look like, right? If you had to ingest reinforcement learning from day one. So I'm seeing a lot of energy around building the next generation of foundation models. It's a little bit, I would say, still hazy,

• 2:43:18Speaker 06

  but it's very exciting because I think that, I still think we're at the tip of essentially the innovation we're going to see on top of these core LLM capabilities.

• 2:43:28Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it makes total sense. I mean,

• 2:43:29John Coogan?

  I'm trying to assume we're at the end of history and all the future algorithmic progress.

• 2:43:33Speaker 06

  It's so crazy, right? Like, everybody assumes that, like, it's just gonna pause and then we're gonna scale it up. And I'm just like, no, no, no, there's a ton of, like, energy around core innovation around the algorithms.

• 2:43:43John Coogan?

  That's very interesting.

• 2:43:44Jordi Hays?

  Makes a lot of sense. All right, well, I know we've already had some of your founders on, but let's make sure to get more on. And thank you for coming on and telling the story and congrats on the new fund.

• 2:43:54John Coogan?

  Amazing. Thank you so much.

• 2:43:55Speaker 06

  Appreciate it.

• 2:43:55Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 2:43:56John Coogan?

  Congrats.

• 2:43:56Jordi Hays?

  Have a good one.

• 2:43:57John Coogan?

  Should we rip through some timeline, get out of here?

• 2:43:59Jordi Hays?

  Let's do it.

• 2:44:00John Coogan?

  We started a little bit late.

• 2:44:02Jordi Hays?

  It's timeline time.

• 2:44:03John Coogan?

  Hours. It's timeline placement, sound effects. I have been missing that sound effect.

• 2:44:08Jordi Hays?

  It's so great.

• 2:44:09John Coogan?

  Great one.

• 2:44:09Jordi Hays?

  I mean, last week was just absolutely-

• 2:44:10John Coogan?

  That's not even the main one. That's the different one. I want the Ashton Hall. No, not that one. The Ashton Hall.

• 2:44:16Jordi Hays?

  The Ashton Hall.

• 2:44:17John Coogan?

  You know the one I'm talking about. This is the one. This gets me so fired up. I love this one. Anyway. Morgan Housel, friend of the show, put a random thread boy in the truth zone. Aaron Richards writes, "In 2020, Morgan Housel published his bestselling book, The Psychology of Money. It sold 4 million copies and changed the way we think about money. Now, he's predicting the collapse of America. Here's everything you need to know." Beautiful photos from diary of a CEO. And Morgan Housel comes in and says, "Lol, I am 1,000% not predicting the collapse of America." Double kill. Community note. And the actual author of the book telling you that you're wrong.

• 2:45:00Jordi Hays?

  Absolutely wild for-

• 2:45:03John Coogan?

  Step it up on X, Aaron Richards.

• 2:45:05Jordi Hays?

  That to be the takeaway.

• 2:45:06John Coogan?

  You're on notice. The next slop thread you post better be factual.

• 2:45:10Jordi Hays?

  What's Morgan Housel's latest? The Art of Spending Money is his next book.

• 2:45:16John Coogan?

  Oh, I like that.

• 2:45:17Jordi Hays?

  I am so excited about it because-

• 2:45:19John Coogan?

  It's very interesting. Yeah, we gotta have him on more regularly. That was such a fun conversation when we had him on.

• 2:45:23Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, absolutely brilliant.

• 2:45:25John Coogan?

  That'll be great.

• 2:45:26Jordi Hays?

  Thinker.

• 2:45:27John Coogan?

  Anyway, we want to take a second to tell you about Vanta. Automate compliance, manage risk, and prove trust continuously. Vanta's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation, whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program.

• 2:45:46Jordi Hays?

  Go sign up for Vanta. I've used them across multiple companies and I am excited to be working with them now at TVPN.

• 2:45:54John Coogan?

  We gotta get Waymo on Vanta. I'm sure that there's a lot of compliance with a business like that.

• 2:46:00Jordi Hays?

  I'm sure they're already on Vanta.

• 2:46:01John Coogan?

  That'd be fantastic.

• 2:46:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, we'll have to fact check that one.

• 2:46:05John Coogan?

  Next post is from Jane Wong. She says, "This Waymo almost T-boned a cyclist blowing through a red light at an intersection in San Francisco. Who's in the wrong here? Why isn't the robotaxing yielding to some, yielding to someone who always has the right of way anywhere and everywhere at all times?" But what's interesting is that a lot of people were looking at this and being like, "This is incredible performance by the Waymo." Like, it stopped and the biker kinda came out of nowhere. But Christian Kyle is putting his, you know, the bet, his dollars on the gambling table. I don't know what analogy I'm using here, but he, he says, "Prediction in 2040, it will be illegal for humans to drive cars." What do you think?

• 2:46:47Jordi Hays?

  I think that day is gonna come.

• 2:46:49John Coogan?

  Illegal, though? That's gonna be hard.

• 2:46:52Jordi Hays?

  I think it will be frowned upon.

• 2:46:55John Coogan?

  Frowned upon. Yeah, I mean-

• 2:46:58Jordi Hays?

  I do, it is funny as a car guy-

• 2:47:00John Coogan?

  It's illegal to ride horses.

• 2:47:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, true, but it's frowned upon to, it's one of those things, right? So, so it's technically, I think, legal on most roadways to just ride a bike, right? Maybe, maybe not on a freeway, but it's frowned upon if you're in like, you know, a 45, like if you're like, expressing your right to cycle in like a-

• 2:47:19John Coogan?

  In the middle of a freeway.

• 2:47:20Jordi Hays?

  In a highway, right? Like a one-lane highway and you're like riding-

• 2:47:23John Coogan?

  Yeah, in the middle, yeah, it's kinda bad.

• 2:47:24Jordi Hays?

  Frowned upon, I could see it being like that. I mean, I do think it will become at some point just so objectively clear that it is dangerous for humans to drive, that there could be plenty of pressure, at least in some, in some areas.

• 2:47:39John Coogan?

  I think, I think Waymo's very underrated. Horses, also underrated. First off, let's go through the stats. One horsepower. Not bad.

• 2:47:51John Coogan?

  It's pretty good.

• 2:47:52Jordi Hays?

  And I was thinking about it.

• 2:47:54John Coogan?

  The most jacked horse, probably two horsepower.

• 2:47:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, I was gonna say, how do you rank, there was Journalism was racing on Saturday.

• 2:48:02John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:48:02Jordi Hays?

  Against.

• 2:48:03John Coogan?

  It's a big horse weekend.

• 2:48:04Jordi Hays?

  Who, who were they racing against?

• 2:48:05John Coogan?

  Sovereignty.

• 2:48:05Jordi Hays?

  Sovereignty.

• 2:48:06John Coogan?

  Sovereignty won.

• 2:48:07Jordi Hays?

  Sovereignty mogged Journalism again.

• 2:48:09John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:48:10Jordi Hays?

  Um, but, uh, but yeah, I was thinking about this, is Journalism really one horsepower? Is that the right way to think about it?

• 2:48:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:17Jordi Hays?

  Or, or is Journalism also getting up into the three or, three or four range?

• 2:48:21John Coogan?

  Totally possible. Also, Henry Ford famously said, if I asked people, they would have said a faster horse. What's wrong with a faster horse? If we've been spending the last, if instead of the Ford Motor Company was the Ford Horse Performance Enhancing Drug Company, we could have horses up in the 20 horsepower, 200 horsepower.

• 2:48:38Jordi Hays?

  Easily, easily.

• 2:48:39John Coogan?

  Who knows?

• 2:48:39Jordi Hays?

  No, so here's, here's.

• 2:48:40John Coogan?

  Get them on the right cocktail gear.

• 2:48:41Jordi Hays?

  Here's my, here's, this should be our investment strategy for the day that it get, uh, humans get banned from driving cars on roads. Go and buy all these legacy race tracks that haven't really been as, you know, you can go and do a track day all over America. It's, it's some, it's popular in some circles, but I think if car, if humans were banned from driving on roads.

• 2:49:02John Coogan?

  For sure, they're gonna hit the track a lot more.

• 2:49:04Jordi Hays?

  They're gonna hit the track way more.

• 2:49:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:06Jordi Hays?

  It's gonna become the new round of golf.

• 2:49:08John Coogan?

  There's actually a, uh, some track in California that just got bought out by a new investment firm and they're gonna modernize it, build like a hotel on it and, uh, build like a paddock so you can store your cars there, do all these different things.

• 2:49:20Jordi Hays?

  Was it, was it Buttonwillow or?

• 2:49:23John Coogan?

  I think it might be, that might be right. Um, it was up for sale and it wasn't that expensive.

• 2:49:27Jordi Hays?

  You know about Thermal Club in, uh.

• 2:49:30John Coogan?

  Loosely, but tell the audience.

• 2:49:32Jordi Hays?

  I mean, I don't think it's been an amazing business, uh.

• 2:49:36John Coogan?

  Not yet.

• 2:49:37Jordi Hays?

  So far.

• 2:49:38John Coogan?

  But maybe it would work for us.

• 2:49:39Jordi Hays?

  But, uh, but yeah, no, it's basically they, they built a track and then they built a lot of houses that are specifically.

• 2:49:46John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:46Jordi Hays?

  Designed for car enthusiasts, so they have transparent.

• 2:49:49John Coogan?

  You drive in and out.

• 2:49:49Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, they have transparent, uh, flooring, so you can look down and see.

• 2:49:53John Coogan?

  That's great.

• 2:49:55Jordi Hays?

  Uh.

• 2:49:56John Coogan?

  Yeah, I love it. Also, Hackathon project, self-driving horse.

• 2:50:01John Coogan?

  Totally doable. Think about it. Horse, you just need to put in compass, GPS, you literally strap a phone to the horse and then in one tiny servo motor moves the reins to the left or the right, you can steer the horse and little, little motors goes kick and the horse goes.

• 2:50:15Jordi Hays?

  Well, and you could have, what are the jockeys?

• 2:50:17John Coogan?

  Parts about like the horse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The crop, the riding crop. You could easily automate that. But the hardest part about, you know, Waymo is like the fine motor, like, oh, slight object detection. You want to scrape, you want to look out. A horse isn't just going to run into a bicyclist. Horse is going to see that and, you know, stop immediately.

• 2:50:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and there's an opportunity to do a horse in the loop, you know, the sort of interim stage where it's not fully autonomous, but the horse, the horse can take over.

• 2:50:44John Coogan?

  You basically have an end-to-end neural network running in the horse's brain already. It's probably like GPT-3 level.

• 2:50:50Jordi Hays?

  So you're giving some credit. Could he, could, could?

• 2:50:53John Coogan?

  Could be frontier.

• 2:50:54Jordi Hays?

  Could be frontier.

• 2:50:55John Coogan?

  Horses were often on the frontier. Horses have been on the frontier. They remain on the frontier.

• 2:51:00Jordi Hays?

  They're frontier models.

• 2:51:01John Coogan?

  They're frontier models in the, in the horse's head.

• 2:51:03Jordi Hays?

  I think we're getting, yeah, getting somewhere.

• 2:51:04John Coogan?

  I really do think you could train your horse to just learn your commute and just say, hey, take me to work. I'm going to take phone calls.

• 2:51:12Jordi Hays?

  I mean, people were doing that for thousands of years.

• 2:51:15John Coogan?

  It's so Lindy. Let's bring it back.

• 2:51:17Jordi Hays?

  Let's bring it back.

• 2:51:17John Coogan?

  I'm going to daily a horse.

• 2:51:19Jordi Hays?

  I'm going to daily a horse.

• 2:51:20John Coogan?

  One horsepower maybe.

• 2:51:22Jordi Hays?

  One horse.

• 2:51:23John Coogan?

  One horsepower.

• 2:51:24Jordi Hays?

  Oh, it's so good.

• 2:51:25John Coogan?

  Anyway, uh, what should we do, Sam? Lesson data is oil. We should just have him on the show at some point, talk about it.

• 2:51:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, let's, let's have him on the show to discuss it live.

• 2:51:33John Coogan?

  He's, he's yapping too much on here. I want him to just read it to me. I don't even want.

• 2:51:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, just come on and read it to me.

• 2:51:37John Coogan?

  I want to read your post. I want you to read it to me.

• 2:51:40Jordi Hays?

  Well, you know what, uh, Sam lesson loves?

• 2:51:42John Coogan?

  Ads.

• 2:51:42Jordi Hays?

  Ads. He likes billboards.

• 2:51:44John Coogan?

  He loves that billboard.

• 2:51:45Jordi Hays?

  And, and to be honest, lesson is going to love when people pivot from American dynamism back to ad optimization.

• 2:51:51John Coogan?

  He's going to be excited about that.

• 2:51:52Jordi Hays?

  It's going to happen and he's going to be ready to fund, fund them all.

• 2:51:55John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:51:56Jordi Hays?

  But head over to AdQuick, out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising. Only AdQuick combines technology, out of home expertise and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe.

• 2:52:13John Coogan?

  Get on adquick.com.

• 2:52:15Jordi Hays?

  Just do it.

• 2:52:16John Coogan?

  Gary Tan had a funny early Palantir story. He said they were doing some of their first sales meetings for Palantir and team was all under 25 years old at the time. They were staying at the Mandarin Oriental. We said, hey, this is a startup. Why are we wasting money on this? Alex Karp said, the people you're selling to will ask where you are staying. And we aren't selling Motel 6 software. We are selling Mandarin Oriental software.

• 2:52:37Jordi Hays?

  That's a great line.

• 2:52:38John Coogan?

  It's great. Apparently Joe Lonsdale said he was responsible for this.

• 2:52:41Jordi Hays?

  A lot of people are gonna take this the wrong way and go and stay at the Aman. But there's also, you know, probably other ways to accomplish this.

• 2:52:51John Coogan?

  We're selling Aman Ghiri sports betting.

• 2:52:55Jordi Hays?

  Podcast.

• 2:52:57John Coogan?

  Microtransaction riddled mobile app games.

• 2:53:00Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 2:53:00John Coogan?

  Something like that. Mobile games.

• 2:53:03Jordi Hays?

  I love this post from Solana. If we can't do trains, we should at least do a big autonomous pod network on a special guardrails, 150 mile an hour lane with cars the size of gorgeous sleeper carriages.

• 2:53:13John Coogan?

  Love it.

• 2:53:14Jordi Hays?

  Which link up in Giant Change with elegant bars and restaurants on long haul drives across the country.

• 2:53:19John Coogan?

  This is so doable and so beautiful. I love it. I've been big on the tear down the speed limits. I firmly believe this is much easier than building new high speed rail is just take down the speed limit signs and just have an American Autobahn.

• 2:53:35Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:35John Coogan?

  And then put it, it's incumbent on the individual to drive safely. Cars are getting way safer. They have autopilot now and lane keep assist. So if you're on a long drive and you can, you can get a car that goes 150 miles an hour for like 50, 50K, right?

• 2:53:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:50John Coogan?

  Like plenty of cars have like.

• 2:53:52Jordi Hays?

  They democratize.

• 2:53:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:54Jordi Hays?

  Going super fast.

• 2:53:56John Coogan?

  Get like an O5 AMG and you're good. And you're just cruising and it will actually cut the time, the travel time in half. You can drive twice as fast.

• 2:54:04Jordi Hays?

  Tessels have to get better brakes though.

• 2:54:06John Coogan?

  Yeah, they do. But I think

• 2:54:08Jordi Hays?

  Cause anytime

• 2:54:08John Coogan?

  I think beater AMGs are where it's at.

• 2:54:10Jordi Hays?

  These days, anytime you see a car driving double the speed limit in traffic, it's always a Model 3. Like, bro, I know the brakes aren't that good.

• 2:54:19John Coogan?

  But go into Mammoth from LA and E63, like S63, just bombing.

• 2:54:25Jordi Hays?

  Can't beat it.

• 2:54:26John Coogan?

  160. You get there twice as fast.

• 2:54:28Jordi Hays?

  That's a drive that

• 2:54:29John Coogan?

  And it doesn't require any retrofit.

• 2:54:30Jordi Hays?

  That's a drive that people have been known to get there in, you know, 60% of the time that Apple Maps, you know, says.

• 2:54:38John Coogan?

  I mean, it takes, it takes, it takes a lot to build something new in America. A lot of permits, a lot of eminent domain, a lot of regulations, a lot of different consultants and legal battles. But just having a bounty for, hey, take down all the speed limit signs. It's now an autobahn. Pretty easy.

• 2:54:56Jordi Hays?

  So good.

• 2:54:57John Coogan?

  Pretty easy.

• 2:54:57Jordi Hays?

  Here was the, the post you were referencing earlier.

• 2:55:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:00Jordi Hays?

  Wasteland Capital says, "It's still amazing that Buffett's crowning achievement was simply buying Apple in 2016, when Apple was already the largest company in the world by market cap."

• 2:55:10John Coogan?

  Wow.

• 2:55:10Jordi Hays?

  And just adding and holding on to it.

• 2:55:12John Coogan?

  So good.

• 2:55:13Jordi Hays?

  Amazing.

• 2:55:14John Coogan?

  So Berkshire with Apple, 174%, the S and P did 168%, but without Apple, they would have been at 142 versus the S and P's 168. But again, people were saying like, is it really fair to consider that because, you know, Apple's in the S and P? So the S and P would be lower as well. But anyway, still just like a good pick, you know? He didn't, he didn't, he wasn't too dogmatic about like, oh, I'm just a silver investor. Like, I'm just a, you know, railroad investor.

• 2:55:40Jordi Hays?

  For a long time, he, he was not anti-tech, but he just didn't fully understand it. And then

• 2:55:46John Coogan?

  But at a certain point, figured it out.

• 2:55:47Jordi Hays?

  You're selling candy in hardware form. I like this.

• 2:55:50John Coogan?

  I like Candy Crush.

• 2:55:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, Candy Crush.

• 2:55:53John Coogan?

  The seize candy of mobile devices.

• 2:55:56Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:56John Coogan?

  It's great.

• 2:55:57Jordi Hays?

  This is funny, this is a funny post for a few reasons. It is by Unemployed Capital Allocator. And it's a screenshot. Unemployed Capital Allocator says, "From a friend, a capable analyst, the Chasm has been crossed. O3 is significantly better than I at my job in almost every aspect."

• 2:56:19Jordi Hays?

  Brutal, but not surprised. So your job is to just analyze a thousand times more companies.

• 2:56:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:26Jordi Hays?

  And then you'll be fine.

• 2:56:27John Coogan?

  Scale it up.

• 2:56:28Jordi Hays?

  Scale it up.

• 2:56:28John Coogan?

  Just do more queries than everyone else.

• 2:56:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:31John Coogan?

  I guess. I don't know.

• 2:56:33Jordi Hays?

  This was interesting. I had this up earlier and it didn't get into the stack, but I'll pull it up now.

• 2:56:39John Coogan?

  Is it really that much different than just being like, yeah, Google is, is like, I mean, there were people that were cells in individual spreadsheets calculating all day long. Excel is, you know, significantly better than, you know, somebody whose job was just to crunch numbers all day long. And we move forward. We did more work, found more capital to allocate, more things to analyze.

• 2:57:00Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's funny being like, Excel is so much better at multiplication.

• 2:57:04John Coogan?

  I kept trying to put this to the, to the AI people that would say like, yeah, there's going to be serious unemployment because of AI. Like, okay, let's actually quantize this. Let's say over, under American unemployment by 2020, 30 is, you think it'll be over or under 10%? Like, we've been at above 10% before. It's not that crazy to be that high.

• 2:57:20Jordi Hays?

  Like 20%?

• 2:57:21John Coogan?

  Yeah, but America's always been like routinely at like three and four. And so the question of, you know, will we actually see unemployment? Still an open question in my opinion. Lots of people talking about, oh, I'm going to stop hiring, but we're not really seeing it in the data.

• 2:57:38Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. China still has urban youth unemployment at 16 and a half percent.

• 2:57:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:43Jordi Hays?

  Who knows how accurate that is. Pull this post up, Michael. I thought it was relevant to the last one. This is from the CEO of Fiverr.

• 2:57:50John Coogan?

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:57:51Jordi Hays?

  You know, you have to imagine he knew this was going to leak. I think anytime a CEO sends a company-wide email that's dramatic, they're probably expecting it to leak. He says, hey, team, I've always believed in radical candor and despise those who sugarcoat reality to avoid stating the unpleasant truth. The very basis for radical candor is care. You care enough about your friends and colleagues to tell them the truth because you want them to be able to understand it, grow and succeed. So here's the unpleasant truth. AI is coming for your job. Heck, it's coming for my job too. This is a wake-up call. It does not matter if you are a programmer, designer, product manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson, or a finance person. AI is coming for you. Didn't, didn't mention podcast.

• 2:58:35John Coogan?

  Is he talking about people that work at Fiverr in corporate?

• 2:58:39Jordi Hays?

  No, he's talking to his employees. No, he's talking to corporate Fiverr. You must understand that what was once considered easy tasks will, this is the part that's interesting. What was once considered easy tasks will no longer exist. What was considered hard tasks will be the new easy. And what was considered impossible tasks will be the new hard. If you do not become an exceptional talent at what you do, a master, you will face the need for career change in a matter of months. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm not, I'm not talking about your job at Fiverr. I'm talking about your ability to stay in your profession in the industry. And.

• 2:59:10John Coogan?

  Everyone's been saying this. Yeah, I mean. We've seen like three CEOs at this point.

• 2:59:14Jordi Hays?

  The part that's interesting is.

• 2:59:16John Coogan?

  AI first organization.

• 2:59:17Jordi Hays?

  The part that's interesting here is digging into easy tasks will no longer exist. So if you're a marketing manager and the CMO is like, hey, we should put up a blog post about this regulation.

• 2:59:30John Coogan?

  It's like you should do that.

• 2:59:31Jordi Hays?

  That'll be done instantly.

• 2:59:32John Coogan?

  Five minutes.

• 2:59:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, instantly it's not sort of a painful research and writing process. It's just sort of done for you. Hard tasks will be the new easy in that, hey, why don't you generate 20 new ads?

• 2:59:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, what should our strategy be?

• 2:59:47Jordi Hays?

  And then impossible tasks, I think, are these more agentic, sort of mile, you know, complex, sort of milestone based tasks. But overall, it's interesting. I'm going to pull up the Fiverr. Fiverr, Fiverr is one of those companies that people identify as, as a company in trouble, just given that a lot of their work is lower skilled.

• 3:00:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:12Jordi Hays?

  Sort of services.

• 3:00:13John Coogan?

  A little illustration, little cartoon or little blog post and that type of stuff.

• 3:00:18Jordi Hays?

  Record a soundbite, you know, record a size gong soundbite.

• 3:00:24John Coogan?

  Hilariously human in the loop for that one. I think that's Ben's voice, right?

• 3:00:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yeah. Ben is our Fiverr. That's, that's Ben. He's like.

• 3:00:31John Coogan?

  No, no, no, it's not even a Fiverr job. It's not an AI job. It's not a Fiverr job. It's a full time employee job.

• 3:00:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I know. But Ben's like, Ben's like, AI, you're not taking my job. I'm making every soundbite.

• 3:00:42John Coogan?

  We, we tried to use AI for it and his voice was way better. Still.

• 3:00:45Jordi Hays?

  Ben's built different.

• 3:00:46John Coogan?

  He's built different, yeah.

• 3:00:47Jordi Hays?

  Advice I always give to founders, be present. Building a startup is very hard. Sometimes you just want to hide, but it's also an incredible ride. Working with and meeting great people, constant growth, endless creativity and working with this new technology that is changing the universe. Life goes by so quickly. Don't run away from it. We only get to do this once.

• 3:01:05John Coogan?

  Take pictures.

• 3:01:06Jordi Hays?

  Take pictures. Look around.

• 3:01:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:11John Coogan?

  Once if we're lucky, twice if we're good.

• 3:01:15John Coogan?

  Interesting. Be present. I don't know what the, what is the opposite of that? Like, how are you? I guess sometimes you want, you just want to hide.

• 3:01:27John Coogan?

  What does that mean? Hiding from the organization, hiding from the world while you're building something? I don't know.

• 3:01:34Jordi Hays?

  I think, I think it's one of those things. So this is what?

• 3:01:37John Coogan?

  I'm not very into like meditation or anything like that.

• 3:01:39Jordi Hays?

  That's just because you.

• 3:01:42John Coogan?

  Always on.

• 3:01:43Jordi Hays?

  You're always on. Somehow you don't follow any eastern, you know, sort of practices and yet you're one of the most present, you know, people I know. So you're just built different. But, but I think this is one of those things founders, you know, go through these periods of excitement and euphoria and then pain. And that pain is usually like the, the classic is, you know, you have an idea, you raise some money, you launch, it's euphoric and then, and then you realize, oh yeah, you know, the reward for hard work is more hard work.

• 3:02:18John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 3:02:19Jordi Hays?

  And even if you're, you know, even if you're, you know, Jensen Wong.

• 3:02:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:26Jordi Hays?

  The, the job is only getting harder every single day.

• 3:02:29John Coogan?

  Speaking of which, she met Jensen, asked what brand his jacket is, told me, Ferragamo.

• 3:02:36Jordi Hays?

  There we go. I'm not surprised.

• 3:02:37John Coogan?

  Uh, but you know what's equally exciting and what was the word euphoric?

• 3:02:42Jordi Hays?

  Euphoric.

• 3:02:43John Coogan?

  Buying a watch on Bezel.

• 3:02:44Jordi Hays?

  Oh, I was.

• 3:02:46John Coogan?

  We missed Bezel. Go to getbezel.com, buy a watch. Anyway.

• 3:02:51Jordi Hays?

  Do it.

• 3:02:51John Coogan?

  Uh, we, we, we can move on because we can also talk about numeral, which is also euphoric. Sales tax on autopilot.

• 3:02:56Jordi Hays?

  Sales tax on autopilot. Many people.

• 3:02:58John Coogan?

  I mean, it really will allow you to have more time to be present as a founder.

• 3:03:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:02John Coogan?

  If you're, if you're getting sucked into sales tax compliance.

• 3:03:05Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:05John Coogan?

  You're not going to be present growing.

• 3:03:07Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:08John Coogan?

  Experiencing euphoria.

• 3:03:09Jordi Hays?

  If you're spending less than five minutes per month on sales tax compliance, I mean, that's.

• 3:03:14John Coogan?

  That's plenty of time to be present.

• 3:03:16Jordi Hays?

  Hours back that you can be present and just in the moment.

• 3:03:19John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 3:03:20Jordi Hays?

  Full Rick Rubin mode, just vibing. Vibing.

• 3:03:24John Coogan?

  Vibe entrepreneurship. What, what else? Is there some, some deep analysis of Grok 3? Do you see this? It's like they're doing deeper, deeper search in Grok 3. And one of the, one of the steps that it takes is searching posts by Elon Musk, the information I am looking for. Just seeing like, hey, has Elon said anything about this? Let's throw that in the results. I mean, he does post a lot. I mean, whatever he's posting is probably relevant.

• 3:03:50Jordi Hays?

  It's a good way to find, you know, fine tune the model.

• 3:03:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:54Jordi Hays?

  On your, on your CEOs.

• 3:03:56John Coogan?

  Not even hiding it. Very silly. Anyway, what, what else should we talk about?

• 3:04:01Jordi Hays?

  I thought this, this post from Kari was quoting Didi.

• 3:04:08John Coogan?

  Founder of Linear.

• 3:04:09Jordi Hays?

  Didi says every single one of these companies was started by people from one part of the world. And it's Klarna, Cursor, Databricks, Zendesk.

• 3:04:19John Coogan?

  Spotify.

• 3:04:20Jordi Hays?

  Linear. Uh, public.com also.

• 3:04:24John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah. That's right. Scandinavia.

• 3:04:26Jordi Hays?

  Unity.

• 3:04:27John Coogan?

  The Nordics.

• 3:04:29Jordi Hays?

  Built different.

• 3:04:30John Coogan?

  Very interesting.

• 3:04:30Jordi Hays?

  And of course, linear.

• 3:04:32John Coogan?

  You think it's the weather? Cause it's kind of similar government as the southern states, you know, Italy and, and Spain and Greece. But once you're on the French Riviera, no time to grind. You're chilling.

• 3:04:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's tough.

• 3:04:46John Coogan?

  You're chilling. If you're in the Greek islands, you're not, you're not putting in 20 hour days coding.

• 3:04:52Jordi Hays?

  That's the, that's why SF just stays on top. It's not because OpenAI, you know, created the next trillion dollar company. It's, it's so.

• 3:05:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:00Jordi Hays?

  It's at times like the fog makes it so hard to want to be outdoors.

• 3:05:05John Coogan?

  Just want to stay inside.

• 3:05:05Jordi Hays?

  You just want to create shareholder value.

• 3:05:07John Coogan?

  Yeah. People were predicting that because of global warming. It would lead to the downfall of San Francisco because it would get warmer, balmer. More people would just be hanging out in Dolores Park all day.

• 3:05:16Jordi Hays?

  And Portland would become the Imagine if AI was being built in Portland primarily. The AI safety people just.

• 3:05:27John Coogan?

  Oh, are you talking about the artificial intelligence company of Portland?

• 3:05:31Jordi Hays?

  Huge alpha there.

• 3:05:34John Coogan?

  Huge.

• 3:05:34Jordi Hays?

  The safest AGI on earth. This post praying for exits. Friend of the show.

• 3:05:43John Coogan?

  We should meet him.

• 3:05:44Jordi Hays?

  We should meet him. We should have him on the show sometime.

• 3:05:48Jordi Hays?

  Actually, honestly, I feel like we can, we can go out on enough of a limb and say it's possible praying for exits has been on the show.

• 3:05:56John Coogan?

  It's entirely possible.

• 3:05:57Jordi Hays?

  We've had so many guests, it'd still be very hard to nail down.

• 3:06:00John Coogan?

  Entirely possible.

• 3:06:02Jordi Hays?

  This email from Steve Jobs to Bruce, who was Chisen, who was the CEO of Adobe at the time. Bruce, Adobe is recruiting from Apple. They have hired one person already and are calling lots more. I have a standing policy with our recruiters that we don't recruit from Adobe. It seems you have a different policy. One of us must change our policy. Let me know who, Steve.

• 3:06:22John Coogan?

  That's so good.

• 3:06:24Jordi Hays?

  So hard.

• 3:06:25John Coogan?

  64,000 likes, praying for exits, let's get it.

• 3:06:28Jordi Hays?

  Giga banger.

• 3:06:29John Coogan?

  Giga banger.

• 3:06:33Jordi Hays?

  Now, so apparently there was a whole lawsuit surrounding this around how.

• 3:06:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's illegal.

• 3:06:38Jordi Hays?

  Psych anti-competitive practices.

• 3:06:42John Coogan?

  Yeah, you're not supposed to do that.

• 3:06:44Jordi Hays?

  And yeah, it's, it's good for employees, I guess, if.

• 3:06:49John Coogan?

  Yeah, if you can get recruited.

• 3:06:50Jordi Hays?

  If it's a free market. And say, hey, you're making, you know, a million dollars at Apple. How would you like to make $2 million?

• 3:06:57John Coogan?

  At Adobe and then it's a bidding process. Yeah.

• 3:06:59Jordi Hays?

  But.

• 3:07:00John Coogan?

  Oh, well.

• 3:07:00Jordi Hays?

  We have this, we have this policy with other, with other podcasts, so.

• 3:07:04John Coogan?

  We do. Yeah, so sue us, or don't. Alex Dapp has a story about universal antivenom.

• 3:07:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this is what I was telling you Friday.

• 3:07:12John Coogan?

  I didn't understand this, to break it down.

• 3:07:14Jordi Hays?

  So, universal antivenom may grow out of man who let snakes bite him 200 times.

• 3:07:21John Coogan?

  I hate snakes. I'm Indian.

• 3:07:22Jordi Hays?

  You had a, you had a, you had a.

• 3:07:23John Coogan?

  I truly hate snakes.

• 3:07:24Jordi Hays?

  You had a snake interaction recently that we won't go into.

• 3:07:29John Coogan?

  Months ago. It was gross.

• 3:07:30Jordi Hays?

  Scientists identified antibodies that neutralize the poison in whole or in part from the bites of cobras, mambas, and other deadly species.

• 3:07:38John Coogan?

  He's 57. Over 18 years, he injected himself with more than 650 carefully calibrated escalating doses of venom. Okay, so he didn't actually let them, wait, no. He also allowed the snakes, mostly one at a time, but sometimes two, as in video, to sink their sharp fangs into him 200 times. Wow. It's, yeah, he built the tolerance. This is poison resist.

• 3:07:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:00John Coogan?

  This is what, this is what did you in this weekend.

• 3:08:02Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:03John Coogan?

  Everyone, yeah, you just, you're too much of a thoroughbred. You're on the thoroughbred diet. If you're on the junkyard dog diet, nothing could, I have poison resist for everything. Microplastics unaffected.

• 3:08:15Jordi Hays?

  I really, I really, it really, you're, John's had this running joke on the show, for those that haven't heard, that like a single inorganic blueberry would, would.

• 3:08:25John Coogan?

  Would cause you to have.

• 3:08:26Jordi Hays?

  Be sick and, you know, throw up and all this stuff. And then over this weekend, I got food poisoning.

• 3:08:32John Coogan?

  And no one else did.

• 3:08:32Jordi Hays?

  And no one else did. Yeah, except Sarah, who's also.

• 3:08:36John Coogan?

  On the thoroughbred diet.

• 3:08:36Jordi Hays?

  On the thoroughbred diet. So honestly, there's something, there's something there.

• 3:08:40John Coogan?

  You need to, you need to build your poison resistance, man.

• 3:08:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, yesterday was so brutal.

• 3:08:45John Coogan?

  And like, we were eating like lovely food, but there's probably something there that you weren't used to.

• 3:08:50Jordi Hays?

  Got me.

• 3:08:51John Coogan?

  Ridiculous.

• 3:08:51Jordi Hays?

  Gnarly.

• 3:08:52John Coogan?

  This bit of daredevilry, one name for it, may now help solve a global dire health problem. More than 600 species of venomous snakes roam the earth, biting as many 2.7 million people, killing about 120,000 people and many 400,000 others. The number's thought to be vast under estimates. Brutal.

• 3:09:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, so anyways, this guy's blood, scientists have discovered antibodies that are capable of neutralizing the venom of multiple snake species. So anyways, major sacrifice, still kicking. And he says, I'm really proud that I can do something in life for humanity to make a difference for people that are 8,000 miles away, that I'm never gonna meet, never gonna talk to, never gonna see, probably. And I hope he's monetizing this. That's all. He went, he really went through the wringer. But it sounds like he enjoyed it. Bit of a masochist.

• 3:09:38John Coogan?

  Well, let's go on to Harvard. Their tax exempt status is to be revoked, says Trump. And Sheil, a good friend of the show, says, wild impact on our world, hearing from multiple funds currently raising that universities have paused allocations. I had some ideas for how Harvard could get back in the good graces of the Trump administration. Do you have any takes? I think step one is Harvard needs to prove that they're on the side of Trump. They need to add Division One bodybuilding. Absolutely. You know, they're known for, they have a football team. They have a crew. Everyone knows, oh, the, the, the, the, you know, Harvard crew team, the, what's it called? The something on the Charles, head of the Charles. It's really fancy.

• 3:10:22John Coogan?

  Crew race. But if they get into bodybuilding, I think that would be a big step forward. They should also get into pro wrestling at the collegiate level. Yeah, this was a big one. NCAA pro wrestling. But, you know, Trump has been in many WrestleManias. And if you could go full scholarship to Harvard as a wrestler.

• 3:10:43Jordi Hays?

  Junior wrestling.

• 3:10:44John Coogan?

  Not, not the typical wrestling, but the pro wrestling specifically. I think that'd be, I think that'd be a big step up.

• 3:10:51Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:51John Coogan?

  Anything else that they could do? I think if they go for profit, it might actually wind up, maybe they don't allocate, maybe they become, build a high frequency trading option. Like start prop trading their own endowment. Why are they outsourcing?

• 3:11:04Jordi Hays?

  They're pretty close to that already.

• 3:11:07John Coogan?

  They should just start leading Series As.

• 3:11:09Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:11:10John Coogan?

  Just directly. Just go direct, right?

• 3:11:11Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is interesting. One, Bucky, shared something recently about how one of the dynamics here is in many ways, this will negatively impact net new funds or funds that are getting off the ground. Because Harvard would have already committed for the, the major platforms, the funds they're in it with for the long haul. They're, they're making commitments, multiple funds out. And so this is primarily, I doubt their.

• 3:11:41Jordi Hays?

  Reneging on existing commitments.

• 3:11:43John Coogan?

  They're still making capital calls and stuff.

• 3:11:45Jordi Hays?

  And so, don't worry, Lightspeed, A16Z, general catalyst will be okay. You don't have to worry. We're going to make it through this.

• 3:11:53John Coogan?

  Mark Gurman had some news. Apple is teaming up with Anthropic on a new AI-powered vibe coding platform and is rolling it out internally to employees. It could come to third-party developers in the future. Details and what this means. Interesting, makes a ton of sense. I don't know how familiar you are with iOS development, but most of it happens within Xcode, which is not as, it's not open source, so it's not forkable like VS code. And so, like, you can't really, I think most iOS developers, if they're really serious, they have to use Xcode or they get good at Xcode. And so, to just not have a cursor competitor or a vibe coding option in that software is like, really antiquated. It's always been a harder, harder IDE to use, but it makes a ton of sense that they would team up with someone for this.

• 3:12:37John Coogan?

  Anthropic, probably a good pick. So, we'll see.

• 3:12:40Jordi Hays?

  No, it makes a lot of sense.

• 3:12:41John Coogan?

  And there was other news. Claude is known as one of the best when it comes to programming. Daria One says, Nick, Apple is partnering with Anthropic. Very interesting. I wonder what the structure of that deal will be because most of, like, you don't think of Xcode as having like a consumption-based pricing. It's something that just comes pre-installed with a Mac.

• 3:13:00Jordi Hays?

  Look, Apple's golden goose, the App Store is getting cooked right now. And I would not, you know, I can imagine that Apple will find to make, and Anthropic will find a way to make plenty of money off this.

• 3:13:15John Coogan?

  I mean, in the similar vibe coding world, the CEO of Windsurf went on the Y Combinator podcast.

• 3:13:20Jordi Hays?

  If you think about it, though, like, I'm sure that, I don't believe that Apple, Anthropic, vibe coding, you know, Xcode platform can make up for that, what may end up being a massive drop in App Store revenue, but it is pretty funny to think about, you know, it's like, okay, like, hey, developers, you're not going to give us our, you know, 30% cut.

• 3:13:39John Coogan?

  Oh, we're going to handicap you.

• 3:13:40Jordi Hays?

  We're going to charge you, you know, you can use regular Xcode, but if you want to use AI to code, it's going to cost you a hundred grand a month.

• 3:13:49John Coogan?

  Well, Windsurf CEO went on the Y Combinator. Spotted in two polos. Sam enjoyed the fashion. I thought that was a fun little Easter egg in his podcast appearance.

• 3:14:01Jordi Hays?

  I mean, I don't know, I don't know any, any details, but I... Have to imagine that's the kind of move you make when you're very close to closing or

• 3:14:11John Coogan?

  I think so.

• 3:14:12Jordi Hays?

  A done deal. That doesn't, that doesn't seem like a YOLO move.

• 3:14:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:16Jordi Hays?

  If, if the deal were to not go through, I don't think the double polo is going to save it.

• 3:14:21John Coogan?

  No.

• 3:14:22Jordi Hays?

  We're talking about billions.

• 3:14:23John Coogan?

  Although he was very muted. I don't know if we should read into the shades and hues of the double polo choice, but it was nowhere near as, as vibrant as Sam Altman's original double polo.

• 3:14:33Jordi Hays?

  Maybe it's more like a job's not finished double polo.

• 3:14:36John Coogan?

  Yeah. He's like, I'm, I'm open to the really bright colorways, but we're going to have to.

• 3:14:42Jordi Hays?

  Let's get to a billion ARR first.

• 3:14:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:44Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:46John Coogan?

  We have some personnel news. Will Brown, he came on the show, what, last week, the week before? Told us that everything was great at Morgan Stanley, then he completely rug pulled them and dipped immediately.

• 3:14:57Jordi Hays?

  No, Will had, Will had actually known he was going to take off for a while. And we got to have him back on when he joins the new company.

• 3:15:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:06Jordi Hays?

  Which should be, he's been just teasing it out. I don't think he's announced it yet.

• 3:15:10John Coogan?

  No. Since it's time for a new adventure, the ML research team there has been a wonderful home for the past two years. I've learned more than I ever could have imagined about LLM's markets responsibility and how things work in the real world. I mean, he's a very, very interesting poster and, and always brought a very interesting, unique perspective because he wasn't fully aligned with one of the labs. And, and kind of had more 30,000 foot view at Morgan Stanley and I really enjoyed his takes and excited to continue following him in his career.

• 3:15:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Total narrative violation that the finance guy wasn't extremely conflicted, but

• 3:15:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:41Jordi Hays?

  It was fun while it lasted, basically.

• 3:15:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:46John Coogan?

  Anyway, I think that's a good place to, and thank you for watching. This is a great show. We really enjoyed it.

• 3:15:51Jordi Hays?

  Wait, I got one last post because it is, I'm going to throw it in here, Michael, if you can pull it up. I think it's pretty funny.

• 3:16:00John Coogan?

  What is this post?

• 3:16:02Jordi Hays?

  Uh, BC's trying to figure out who Arfer Rock is.

• 3:16:07John Coogan?

  They are trying to figure out who he is. I invited him on the show anonymously. Thought he might, uh, do it. We're not sure exactly when he will be able to, but I'd love to get him on the show anonymously. I would not dox him. I respect his anonymity.

• 3:16:21Jordi Hays?

  From my friend Anish. Um, yeah, the, the funny thing here is he kind of missed, uh, so Arfer Rock.

• 3:16:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:28Jordi Hays?

  Sort of like misreported.

• 3:16:30John Coogan?

  Oh, he did.

• 3:16:31Jordi Hays?

  Replets revenue.

• 3:16:32John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 3:16:33Jordi Hays?

  He, he's called him at 40 million of ARR, raising it two and a half to three billion.

• 3:16:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:38Jordi Hays?

  Which felt expensive.

• 3:16:39John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 3:16:40Jordi Hays?

  But then he had to show a follow-up, uh, graph showing that they added roughly 30 million ARR in a month.

• 3:16:48John Coogan?

  Oh, okay, okay. That's pretty good.

• 3:16:50Jordi Hays?

  So he had, he, he basically.

• 3:16:52John Coogan?

  Yeah. I mean, that's the problem with those leaks is that a lot of times they're, they're super out of date.

• 3:16:55Jordi Hays?

  Uh, yeah.

• 3:16:56John Coogan?

  You're getting, you're, you're getting docs that like, oh yeah, I, they did send me a deck last year. I passed it to somebody, then that day passes to somebody. And then pretty soon it's like eight, 10 months later when, when that leak is happening. And founders always get frustrated with that because they don't want to share any financials, let alone old financials. And so. Usually some horse trading, but.

• 3:17:16Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:16John Coogan?

  So what, what, what is this image? Citizens? I, I don't get the reference. Do you?

• 3:17:20Jordi Hays?

  I don't get the reference either, but you should because you're, you're a big movie guy.

• 3:17:24John Coogan?

  Yeah, but not this time. I don't know.

• 3:17:25Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but it is interesting. Uh, I've DM'd with, uh, Mr. Arfer.

• 3:17:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:30Jordi Hays?

  And, uh, I, we, we also talked to him about him coming on the show. It's just so hard because there's so much incentive for people to try to triangulate.

• 3:17:39John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 3:17:39Jordi Hays?

  Who he actually is.

• 3:17:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:41Jordi Hays?

  And eventually some schizo is going to do it, but for now it's, it's very fun.

• 3:17:46John Coogan?

  Maybe there should be a poly market for it. Who is Arfer Rock?

• 3:17:49Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 3:17:49John Coogan?

  You can list out a couple of top candidates.

• 3:17:51Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 3:17:52John Coogan?

  That'd be fun.

• 3:17:53Jordi Hays?

  Yes.

• 3:17:54John Coogan?

  Um, I had a fun poly market.

• 3:17:55Jordi Hays?

  It's interesting.

• 3:17:56John Coogan?

  I'm tracking the trade war. And, uh, it's at a 19% chance that there's a US-China trade deal before June. And I said, I honestly believe I could hammer out a trade deal in a weekend if I was in charge. What do you think, Jordy?

• 3:18:09Jordi Hays?

  I believe you're, you're good at, at, you know, finding win-wins, you know?

• 3:18:13John Coogan?

  Exactly.

• 3:18:13Jordi Hays?

  And, uh, that's kind of really what it takes.

• 3:18:16John Coogan?

  Step one, Xi Jinping, let's get a lift in.

• 3:18:19Jordi Hays?

  Let's get.

• 3:18:20John Coogan?

  See you at six.

• 3:18:22Jordi Hays?

  See you at six.

• 3:18:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:23Jordi Hays?

  Let's do it.

• 3:18:24John Coogan?

  Bring some gloves.

• 3:18:24Jordi Hays?

  That's really the chance.

• 3:18:25John Coogan?

  Do some deadlifts.

• 3:18:26Jordi Hays?

  The, the, the, the right strategy.

• 3:18:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:28Jordi Hays?

  The other one that's interesting, um.

• 3:18:29John Coogan?

  What else you tracking?

• 3:18:30Jordi Hays?

  I don't know when, when did this, uh?

• 3:18:34John Coogan?

  Screenshots.

• 3:18:34Jordi Hays?

  Ever, ever since, uh, the double polo, the chance of will OpenAI acquire Windsurf before August has just been steadily going up. So the market.

• 3:18:44John Coogan?

  Oh, okay. The market reacting very positively to the double polo.

• 3:18:47Jordi Hays?

  Into it.

• 3:18:48John Coogan?

  It does feel like if the deal was falling apart, you would be like, I'm not in a real like joking mood. Right? So I feel like the read on the double polo is probably positive 68%. But again, August, I like the question that like the date is so important there because that could slip. Because a lot of people, you know, a, a lot of the OpenAI employees are very, are very wealthy now. And so they're probably getting ready to go on summer vacation. Probably usually starts like mid-May and they don't come back until what? August, September, October, sometimes? A lot of venture capitalists will be out for four or five months. It's actually going to be a big challenge for us at TBPN, uh, because most of our best yappers are going to be at the Amalfi Coast for.

• 3:19:28Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 3:19:29John Coogan?

  Five, six months on summer vacation.

• 3:19:30Jordi Hays?

  We might have to set up, uh, you know, a remote studio in the south of France.

• 3:19:35John Coogan?

  Yeah, just to make sure that we have some coverage there with capital allocators.

• 3:19:39Jordi Hays?

  Helicopter to sort of take people between the boats to.

• 3:19:41John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 3:19:42Jordi Hays?

  Or, or potentially a water-based studio.

• 3:19:44John Coogan?

  Water-based studio would be good.

• 3:19:45Jordi Hays?

  A boat would be, uh, would be very helpful. Well.

• 3:19:48John Coogan?

  Anyway.

• 3:19:49Jordi Hays?

  Uh, it is fantastic to be back in the studio.

• 3:19:52John Coogan?

  It's great.

• 3:19:53Jordi Hays?

  John, and.

• 3:19:54John Coogan?

  We gotta get out of here.

• 3:19:55Jordi Hays?

  It's gonna be a big week for technology.

• 3:19:57John Coogan?

  It will be. Anyway, thanks for watching.

• 3:19:59Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 3:19:59John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon. Bye.