Arsonist In LA, The Government Files, I'm Rich and Need Help, Why B-Naires Love Diet Coke
Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. We are still surviving the Los Angeles fires. Thankfully, both of our homes are still standing, but the story has evolved over the past, 24 hours, and it's looking like there's a lot more arson going on than people previously thought. There's rumors that the whole Palisades fire started via arson. Didn't Andrew Huberman catch someone clearly doing arson?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Caught some arsonists Yeah. Very clearly.
Speaker 1:And then, our our vice president, Ben, had to step out earlier this morning because, an arsonist literally burned down his next door neighbor's house or something like that or lit a fire.
Speaker 2:Here's what here. So people are really people are really taking advantage of the chaos Totally. In the same way that in the you remember summer 2020
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:When the riots were happening Yep. Yep. People were just saying, oh, there's protest riots. I'm just gonna start looting. Yep.
Speaker 2:So what people are doing now is they're going into neighborhoods, lighting fires, waiting for people to evacuate, and then, starting to rob the houses. Yep. And they're on networks with scooters and motorcycles
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And rented cars. And so it's just full chaos. There's I was seeing in a group chat that, multiple neighborhoods in Malibu have caught people just coming in actively trying to start fires. Yep. So now people are just, you know, trying to basically make citizens arrest Yep.
Speaker 2:Full chaos.
Speaker 1:So some recommendations for the listeners, security systems, ring cameras, ADP, whatever you can do. There's not a lot of great stuff there. Sauron is coming. Thanks to, Kevin Hartz, over at Astar VC. He's starting a home security firm.
Speaker 1:It's not fully live yet, but maybe go get on the wait list if that's, something that you're interested in. You're trying to defend a home. Most the top recommended weapon for defending a home are are AR 15. Don't overcomplicate it. We joke about a lot of crazy weapons here.
Speaker 1:You don't need the meteorite 19 elevens, and an AR will do the job. So maybe go pick one of those up. Also, support Andrew Huberman and citizen journalists who are doing reporting on acts and, buy some Mataina Yerba mate.
Speaker 2:Mataina. I'm
Speaker 1:I I I love this stuff, and it's, it's Huberman's brand. If you're not familiar, he acquired it alongside, another Andrew Wilkinson at Tiny. And so they've been growing that, and, we love so if you see something, record it and throw it on the timeline. We saw just a crazy car crash and police chase outside or Ben did outside of our studio and, got some footage of that, threw that on the timeline, and just kinda letting people know what's going on. And obviously stay on
Speaker 2:top of
Speaker 1:the water.
Speaker 2:Crazy energy in the city right now. You got ash Yep. Floating through the air. It feels like it's snowing.
Speaker 1:Very cold. Terrible. It's, it's miserable and chaotic.
Speaker 2:You were actually okay with there being a lot of sort of PFAS microplastics floating around because your tea has been so high lately. You're trying
Speaker 1:to Take the edge off.
Speaker 2:Out and take the edge off. Yeah. But, anyways, not good for kids. I, I went down to, South Bay with, or took my family down there yesterday because, the air quality was slightly better. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Not good for kids.
Speaker 1:It's rough. Yeah. So, yeah, everyone stay safe out there, and, yeah, do whatever you can to help other people that are in trouble. Check-in on everyone in LA, please. So, yeah, completely unrelated to the fire.
Speaker 1:We're moving on. We're trying to move to the tech stories that we love and think are interesting. Today, there was a, op ed posted by Peter Thiel in the Financial Times.
Speaker 2:For those that don't know, who who is Peter Thiel?
Speaker 1:Oh, I thought you're gonna say who's what what is the Financial Times?
Speaker 2:What is the Financial Times and who is Peter Thiel? No. I would I I'd be interested. I'm sure we have at least 1 brother in the audience.
Speaker 1:Well, it says it right here. It says the writer is a technology entrepreneur and investor.
Speaker 2:And he's a writer. Yeah.
Speaker 1:He's a writer. Yeah. He wrote a book, 0 to 1
Speaker 2:entrepreneur, investor, and
Speaker 1:Power Law of Business Books, the only book you really need to read again and again and again. Founder of PayPal, founder of Palantir, incubator of a ton of different stuff through, Founders Fund, runs Founders Fund, big venture capital firm, invests personally, and is tied to a ton of other venture capital firms.
Speaker 2:Founders Anytime a reporter, a tech journalist wants to make something sound
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Crazy and mysterious, they always go, oh, Peter Thiel backed this company. Yeah. Yeah. And most of the time, he invested in a fund as an LP or his family office invested in funds. So it's, like, very clear that he didn't Yeah.
Speaker 2:Necessarily invest in the company, but they always bring it back and say it's Peter Thiel backed.
Speaker 1:He's a he's been he's been a boogie man of the left for a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where yeah. I've gotten to the point where I I will sometimes throw it in, like, teal backed or teal sponsored because it's, like, it's just such a meme at this point. Yeah. And a lot of times, they'll try and, correct that. Like like, the name of the fund is founders fund, not Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.
Speaker 1:Like, he's one of 3 cofounders, and there's multiple GPs. And, of course, he's a huge force in the firm, but, it is its own entity. And Yeah. Everyone, including him, would like it to be represented as its own thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But that doesn't fit the narrative. So He
Speaker 2:also has teal capital.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so this is an interesting article. We wanted to cover it on the show. It's called a time for truth and reconciliation, and it's talking about what's going to happen in the new Trump 2 point o presidency. And so it it the lead is, in 2016, president Barack Obama told his staff that Donald Trump's election victory was, quote, not the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:By any definition, he was correct, but understood in the original sense of the Greek word apocalypsis, meaning unveiling, Obama could not give the same reassurance in 2025. Trump's return to the White House augurs the apocalypses of the onsen regime's secrets. The new administration's revelations need not justify vengeance. Reconstruction can go hand in hand with reconciliation, but for reconciliation to take place, there must first be truth. And this feels very tied to, actually, Eric Thornburg's prediction, which he shared with Molly O'Shea and that other analysis that we looked at.
Speaker 1:Mikael Basu Trivedi wrote those. And Thornburg was saying, he's predicting that there will be a Twitter files for the government.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That there is now that Elon's more involved and the Trump team is more aware of what they want to dig into, that there will be more documents that are declassified, more analysis of where the bloat is exactly, and it could be anodyne just like, oh, like, you know, you you you see these reports all the time where it's like, oh, for some reason, there's, like, some bus driver who's making 500 k. And you're like, how did that happen? It's kind of odd. Like, that seems like there's an aberration an aberration of, like, the government. Or, you know, or we talked about it in defense where it's like a toilet will cost $86,000 or, like, a screw will cost 20 k.
Speaker 1:And all of those should come to light, but, he also goes on to talk about some of the the the the bigger kind of conspiracies and secrets within the government that people are clamoring for. And how do we grapple with
Speaker 2:stuff? It's Right? He could have just posted this. Yeah. It's a long form post.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He
Speaker 2:could have put it on a blog somewhere.
Speaker 1:Or done an interview with a tech person. Like, he could have gone on Rogan to talk about it, but he
Speaker 2:also could
Speaker 1:have gone on
Speaker 2:a tech specific show. Yeah. So it seems yeah. It's an interesting choice to to to say, I'm not gonna go direct. I'm actually gonna work with Financial Times Yeah.
Speaker 2:And try to get this in front of a new audience that isn't necessarily rapidly consuming every word.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so the Financial Times read by capital allocators, investors, business people all over the world. Very international audience. International audience. Beautiful.
Speaker 1:We we should get a subscription here. It's pink. The pink sheets. You know? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's great. So this is the apocalypses is the most powerful means of resolving the old guards or most peaceful means of resolving the old guards' war on the Internet, a war the Internet won. And I and I love that because I haven't I haven't actually internalized that idea that there really was this massive war between go we hear it with going direct versus traditional PR. We hear this versus, you know, censorship versus free speech.
Speaker 1:What does the town square mean? How do how do companies operate on the Internet? Bitcoin. There's so many things that come back to this Internet, and we've heard, you know, even Lina Khan and breaking up Amazon. It's just been a massive war in a bunch of minute little microcosms.
Speaker 1:And the war on the Internet, this is a Coogan's law coinage, I think. The war on the Internet is how we should be thinking about what happened from the dotcom crash when the companies were seen as jokes and toys to now when they are ascendant, they are the most powerful platforms, and the people that founded them and invested in them are the most powerful people in the world. Full stop.
Speaker 2:Yep. Yeah. And it's the the phrasing is is pretty on point too because it it the Internet is made up of platforms and individuals and profiles, and it really was profiles. Like, individual profiles were attacked. The platforms were attacked.
Speaker 2:Yep. The platforms were made to bend the rules of their platforms and and go against, like you know, we saw this. Trump got booted off of Pinterest. Yeah. Like Wild.
Speaker 2:Wild. Wild. And spot and, Shopify.
Speaker 1:And Shopify. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's like, you can't sell anything. You can't even organize pretty pictures and get inspo for your next home. Yeah. Like, they didn't want him doing any it was, like, full out.
Speaker 1:So clear that every big tech CEO is in a group chat together, and they were like, look. We like, one of them was like, we probably gotta do this. And a bunch of them were pressuring each other.
Speaker 2:The Pinterest thing is so funny.
Speaker 1:It's almost just like So I I wanna be a big tech company too. Like, oh, you're you're you're you're banned from
Speaker 2:imagine though if Trump was like, okay. I'm banned on x. I'm banned everywhere. I'm not gonna do true social and become Yeah. And and create 1,000,000,000 of dollars of value.
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna post on Pinterest. Yeah. It's, like, pretty pictures with with him, like, smiling and Yeah. And then, like The wild.
Speaker 1:Handwritten. Yeah. So he goes on to say, my friend and colleague Eric Weinstein, Weinstein, calls the pre Internet custodians of the secrets the distributed idea suppression complex or the DISC. The media organizations, bureaucracies, universities, and government funded NGOs that traditionally delimited public conversation. In hindsight, the Internet had already begun our liberation from the DISC prison upon the death of financier and Czech child sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, in 2019.
Speaker 1:Almost half of Americans polled that year, mistrusted the official story that he died by suicide, suggesting that DISC had lost control of the narrative. That was fascinating. I remember
Speaker 2:It doesn't feel it feels like he died a few years ago. It doesn't feel like Totally. 2019.
Speaker 1:I was telling I was telling someone, like, yeah, it's crazy that, Epstein died at the tail end of the last Trump administration, so there wasn't really time for a reconciliation within that, and it immediately turned over. And it it was very hard to say, oh, was that before COVID? After COVID, it was 2019. But do do you remember when you first learned about Epstein? I remember
Speaker 2:Just as an individual?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, when did the story
Speaker 2:break had to be the articles where there were there were almost, like, puff pieces back in the day of who is this mysterious financier, but it was pre I feel like I started to get an idea of who he was prior to understanding that he was obviously a crew.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Oh, interesting. I I found out about him through just straight up, like, conspiracy theory charts of, like
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Of, like, those pyramids, and it would be, like, aliens, era 51, and, like, Jeffrey Epstein is conspiracy. Because, when the whole Pizzagate thing boiled up, there was a lot of, like, this is completely fake. But if you dig into the 4 chan threads on Pizzagate, it's like 99% Epstein focused.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And Pizzagate was, like, a like, an extension of that where where, like, the conspiracy theorists were clearly onto something with Epstein, but then they kind of ran with it a ton. And then that deranged guy, like, actually shot up that pizza parlor that didn't have a basement or whatever. And then and then and then everyone was like, clearly, the whole thing is fake. And that was partly wrong. But I remember explaining to people that Do you
Speaker 2:want the hat?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I needed the hat at the time. I remember going to a New Year's party in, like, 20 15, 2016 or something and and telling people like, oh, have you heard about this Epstein thing, the black book? All these people are flying these planes.
Speaker 1:Like, maybe Chris Tucker is involved. It's like the weirdest story ever. Bill Clinton's been out there a bunch. And and everyone was just like, oh, geez.
Speaker 2:20 or 30 years older
Speaker 1:than me. Apparently. And and everyone was just like, okay, dude. Like, that's a crazy conspiracy. And now it's like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:I watched the Netflix documentary on on Steve's. Like, of course, it's real.
Speaker 2:That's a hard thing is after you've watched documentaries, which shows specific stories, they paint this thing. It's like, well, what is my my memory of, like, real time reactions to what was being shared versus what did I just see after the fact?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Such a such an odd odd time. But, yeah, I mean, it really did become, like, just normie like, it was not a conspiracy theory anymore. It's just history that there was an island and there was
Speaker 2:bandits and stuff. It doesn't seem like it's a conspiracy theory either that there has been a widespread effort within the government to control the information around that case and prevent it from being widely known.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, that's actually where where T. O. Goes on to talk about. He says, it may be too early to answer the Internet's questions about the late mister Epstein, but one cannot say the same of the assassination of John f Kennedy.
Speaker 1:65% of Americans still doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Like an outlandishly postmodern detective story, we have waited 61 years for a denouement while the suspects, Fidel Castro, 19 sixties Mathiosi, and the CIA's Allen Dulles gradually die. The thousands of classified government files on Oswald may or may not be red herrings, but opening them up for public inspection will give America some closure. We cannot wait 6 decades, however, to end the lockdown on a free discussion about COVID 19. In subpoenaed emails from Anthony Fauci's senior adviser, David Morins, we learned that the National Institutes of Health apparatchiks hid their correspondence from freedom of information act scrutiny.
Speaker 1:Nothing, wrote Borachio in his medieval plague epic, The Decameron. It is so in it is so indecent that it cannot be said to another person if the proper words are used to convey it.
Speaker 2:So do you remember this? They were misspelling words intentionally Oh, really? The same way over and over so that when people would make a Freedom of Information Act request, the emails wouldn't surface.
Speaker 1:Because it yeah.
Speaker 2:It was just they would all they would, like, very consistently had a had a code.
Speaker 1:C o v d I. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I just flipped the letter, but I do it every single time.
Speaker 2:So when
Speaker 1:you search c o v I d, then nothing shows up. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:It's c o v d I is, like, the keyword. Interesting.
Speaker 2:So crazy.
Speaker 1:That is crazy. In that spirit, Morin's and former chief US medical adviser Fauci will have the chance to share some in some indecent facts about their own recent plague. Did they suspect COVID spawn from US taxpayer funded research or an adjacent Chinese military program? Why did we fund the work of EcoHealth Alliance, which sent researchers to into remote Chinese caves to extract novel coronaviruses? Is gain of function research a byword for a bioweapons program?
Speaker 1:And how did our government stop the spread of such questions on social media? Our first amendment frames the rules of engagement for domestic fights over free speech, but the global reach of the Internet tempts its adversaries into a global war. Can we believe that a Brazilian judge banned acts without American backing in a tragic in a, tragic comic perversion of the Monroe doctrine? We were complicit in Australia's recent legislation requiring age verification for social media users, the beginning of the end for Internet anonymity. Did we muster up even 2 minutes of criticism of the UK, which has arrested 100 of people a year for online speech triggering among other things, annoyance, inconvenience, and needless anxiety.
Speaker 1:We may, we may expect no better from Orwellian dictatorships in East Asia and Eurasia, but we must support a free Internet in Oceania. Interesting. Yeah. I remember when COVID first broke, and it was so funny because now it's become this, like, cause of the left. Like, you gotta Taylor Ryan's like, you gotta still wear a mask in 2025, etcetera.
Speaker 1:But it came from Balaji who's, like, firmly on the right and libertarian. And at the time before like, there there was, like, a multi week period where only tech was taking it seriously and some of the scientific community. And so my cofounders are PhDs in bio at Lucy, and and they didn't see it. They're they're not super political guys. They didn't see it through, like, a political culture war lens.
Speaker 1:And so immediately, I remember coming in and, you know, talking about it. And then we we kinda knew that, okay, this is gonna be crazy, like, the the the what's the r naught? The the the viral coefficient is very high, etcetera. But, we just drew out a 2 by 2 graph, and we were like, okay. Is it Chernobyl, or is it Fukushima or or, or Pearl Harbor?
Speaker 1:Like, is this is this a is this an attack or an accident? Is this intentional or an accident? And then on the on the y axis you put, is this bioengineered, or is this of zoonotic origin? Yeah. Because you could literally go and get a bat or a pangolin and then just be like, it's this pangolin is sneezing.
Speaker 1:Let's take it. Let's release it. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and that doesn't require any bio lab, crazy science, like, amazing zest, but it's still, like, very deliberate.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Then there's the other one where
Speaker 2:it's like look at the wet markets in China, they are fat extremely foul.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So immediately
Speaker 2:easily imagine that something would happen, that it wasn't that Yep. There is a there is a It would make a case that it
Speaker 1:was totally and is still somewhat, like, the default narrative that's being pushed is is came from an animal, totally accidental.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But if you look at the the story, at at the very least, it's like, well, the Chinese government knew that something was spreading, and they didn't raise their hand and say, hey, guys. We got a thing going on over here.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They they actually, like I think they killed the doctor or something. He was, like, bad. Or they they they definitely were silencing people who were talking about it on social media, which is bad for us. And it's like, even if even if they did have Chernobyl, they did the bad thing of being like, no. No.
Speaker 1:No. We don't have an accident going on over here, and that's annoying, and that's expensive.
Speaker 2:And they and they did we do know that the US funded the work of EcoHealth Alliance, which sent researchers into remote Chinese caves to extract novel coronavirus. Yeah. So we do know that that was happening.
Speaker 1:And so that takes it into, like, the it's from the biolab type of thing. Yeah. This is engineered. Maybe there's gain of function going on where they're trying to juice it up. And and and then there's the question of, okay.
Speaker 1:So maybe there's an argument for yeah. Go do the research, create the superbug, and then create the antidote for superbug. And then if the real superbug comes out randomly, you have the antidote ready to go. Cool. I I can be, like, okay with that under the right circumstances if it's clean.
Speaker 1:But it's like, did they have a Chernobyl esque accident where they were doing this research, and then it got out, which was like, you can't talk about that at all. And then and then the and then the worst of all scenarios is this was engineered and released deliberately
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For a bunch of different reasons. And you you talk to a bunch of people that think about that. But what's weird is this matrix of, like, 4 options. It was just, like, immediately, like, it's gotta be one of these 4. We should talk about all 4 of them.
Speaker 1:This isn't conspiratorial. Like, what's actually going on? There's so little evidence. It's so unclear. You can't just immediately be, like, 100% zoonotic accident.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And yet that was what the force
Speaker 2:was supposed to do. Like, really has takes quite a long time to dissipate. In some cases, never. Right? Even even with the JFK Yeah.
Speaker 2:Stuff, there was all these documentaries that were produced Yep. That each had their own take on the story. Yep. And so the result was that a bunch of information was put out there, but everybody was still deeply confused Yep. And had and you could make a case.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And even with the fires this week, I was hearing yesterday from, from a close family friend that that somebody was saying that their friend in the police force was saying that, there was arson for the Palisades fire. Yep. And and it's like, well, we know there's arson for the Kenneth Fire, but is you know, it's still unclear. Yeah. Other people are saying that fire started in somebody's backyard and just ripped.
Speaker 1:And and I I did this on the solo episode. I was like, how do fire start? There's a bunch of different ways. Lightning strikes. That's like the all natural version.
Speaker 1:There's power lines, so it could be on the electrical company. It could be arson. It could be someone having a fireworks or a backyard barbecue that went wrong. There was a video
Speaker 2:of a conspiracy of police throwing a bunch of gas on the fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, like like, that that can be human and criminal. It can be a human accident. Like, you could just be having a barbecue one day and something goes wrong or and Gas is not even heating
Speaker 2:a heater.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's not even negligent. It's just it's just it's just a complete accident, freak accident, but it's caused by a human. But, like, you should be able to immediately discuss all of these, and that was just not on the table for the first couple years of COVID. There was actually an interesting turn of events when, I noticed do you know Johnny Harris?
Speaker 1:He's, Yeah. He's he's worked for the New York Times.
Speaker 2:Misinformation.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, he's he's very, like, left wing.
Speaker 2:In the comments of his videos
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. It's all
Speaker 2:this is here's five reasons why you're completely wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Hey.
Speaker 1:I mean, for a long time, he was like, I I felt like he was kind of the cultural center of YouTube in the sense that, like, the average YouTube viewer was very good. Produced. They're very well produced, but also just in terms of politically. Like, he was basically center left. And for a long time, he couldn't talk about the, the lab leak theory.
Speaker 1:And then a couple years in, it was like Rogan had talked about it a bunch. They put the community notes on it. And then eventually, it got to a point where, like, the New York Times is reporting on the lab leak theory. Just the
Speaker 2:fact that the
Speaker 1:disc put his
Speaker 2:Just the fact that the disc was so adamant at making sure that nobody thought it was a lab leak almost makes you think that
Speaker 1:Yeah. It it's she does protest too much is the phrase.
Speaker 2:We should keep this for
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. We need this here for this for sure. We we pulled out the tinfoil hat, which we put on when we're talking about conspiracy theories. Let's move on.
Speaker 1:Darker questions still emerge in these dusky final weeks of our interregnum. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently suggested on Joe Rogan's podcast that the Biden administration de banked crypto entrepreneurs. How closely does our financial system resemble a social credit system? Where were an IRS contractors illegal leaks of Trump's tax records anomalous? Or should Americans assume their right to privace financial privacy hinges on their politics?
Speaker 1:And can one speak of a right to privacy at all when congress conserves section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act under which the FBI conducts tens of thousands of warrantless searches of Americans' communications? South Africa confronted its apartheid history with a formal commission, but answering the questions above with piecemeal declassifications would benefit both Trump's chaotic style and our Internet world, which processes and propagates short packets of information. The 1st Trump administration shied away from declassifications because it still believed in the right wing deep state of an Oliver Stone movie. This belief has faded. So I think what he's saying there is, like, Trump wasn't going to declassify stuff because the right wing deep state of an Oliver Stone movie, does that mean a deep state that is against the right wing?
Speaker 1:So if they declassify things, they won't be able to get stuff done because the deep state will be working against
Speaker 2:them? Think so.
Speaker 1:I think that's what he's saying. I'm not exactly sure about that one. I was a little confused when I read that. He goes on to say, our onsen regime, talking about the Biden administration and all the Democrats in charge, like the aristocracy of prerevolutionary France, thought the party would never end. 2016 shook their historic faith in the arc of the moral universe.
Speaker 1:But by 2020, they hope to write off Trump as an aberration. In retrospect, 2020 was the aberration, the rear guard action of a struggling regime, and it's oh, god. Mogged. Mogged.
Speaker 2:By English. Every now and then, we
Speaker 1:get mugged
Speaker 2:by the English language.
Speaker 1:And, That's a German word, I'm sure. Come on. There were there will be no reactionary restoration of the pre Internet past. And, and and that is really interesting when you think about, 2020 as an aberration of the previous regime in the sense that Biden was, like, super old, and then they didn't have a primary to try and install a comma. And it was like it was very, like, you know, just like like, thrown together.
Speaker 1:It felt like it was kinda chaotic and thrown together at all times. And so yeah. I mean, I think everyone agrees that, like, the left will have to, like, completely retool how does Bernie and AOC fit in, like Yeah. Completely rethink the strategy, if they wanna move forward and be successful because, the the foundation has really, really cracked.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's interesting too this week. I I can't imagine that the images coming out of LA will be good for Newsom's political career because they feel like sort of visual summary of his, you know, time running California. And he was a front runner Yeah. To go for for 2028.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:On polly market, he was, with the democrats, he was, like, 3%, 5%, like, hovering around there. Like, maybe they'll throw him in. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Even you're saying this last election. Yeah.
Speaker 1:This last election, it was like, oh, maybe Kamala won't do it, and Newsom will be the one or Michelle Obama.
Speaker 2:Thing that the one thing, the only thing that I, appreciate about Newsom is he oh, he knows how to put himself together in a in a crisis.
Speaker 1:Right? He always looks great.
Speaker 2:We still put on our suits.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And he has fantastic taste in food.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:He loves a 5 star restaurant.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There was a a a AI generated image of him at Nobu, like, looking at the disaster on his phone while Nobu was, like, burning
Speaker 1:This is great.
Speaker 2:Burning down.
Speaker 1:He's going to Michelin Star Restaurants in the middle of Yeah. The fire. The future demands fresh and strange ideas. New ideas might have saved the old regime, which barely acknowledged, let alone answered our deepest questions, the causes of the 50 year slowdown in scientific and technological progress in the United States, the racket of, crescendoing real estate prices, and the explosion of public debt. So this is going back to, the deepest question to teal is, what is the cause of technological stagnation?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Perhaps an exceptional country could have continued to ignore such questions. But as Trump understood in 20 16, America is not an exceptional country. It is no longer even a great one. Sash.
Speaker 2:That hurts. You can you can admit that and still love our country.
Speaker 1:Yeah. For sure. Identity politics endlessly relitigates ancient history. The study of recent history to which the Trump administration is now called is more treacherous and more important. The apocalypsis cannot resolve our our fights over 16 19, referencing the 16 19 project.
Speaker 1:But it can resolve our fights over COVID 19. It will not adjudicate the sins of our first rulers, but the sins of those who govern us today. The Internet will not allow us to forget those sins, but with the truth, it will prevent us it will not prevent us from forgiving. Very interesting. So I think a little bit of the takeaway here is is that, the obsession over the JFK assassination might be a little bit of a distraction from moving forward.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And there needs to be more of a focus on the recent history as he says. There was a fascinating did you see,
Speaker 2:Yeah. The future demands fresh and strange ideas. To me, that's Greenland. Right?
Speaker 1:The Arctic is That's a very good example.
Speaker 2:The Arctic is melting. Yeah. We want, you know, control over those trade routes.
Speaker 1:And so related to this, Mark Zuckerberg just went on Joe Rogan. The episode just dropped this morning, and there's a quote here from Autism Capital. I didn't have a chance to print it out, but, Zuck says, people in the Biden administration would call up our team and scream and curse at them. The emails are published. It's all out there.
Speaker 1:They wanted us to take down a meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, like the you know that one?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. At some point, Biden gave some statement where they said that Facebook was killing people, and then all these different agencies and branches of government started coming after our company. It was brutal. And so that's kind of the, the Zuck vibe shift that we talked about on Monday where he appointed Dana White to the board and also announced community notes and moved the, the trust and safety team from California to Texas and then
Speaker 2:also got eliminated give
Speaker 1:me the latest.
Speaker 2:Completely eliminated, DEI.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No more DEI organization or targets. Yeah. So so you can see that this is, like, echoing through, and it's fascinating because when when Zuck came out, there was a lot of criticism like, oh, he's, like, late to the party. Like like, Brian Armstrong was being brave about this in 2020.
Speaker 1:But if you talk to Brian, he's like, no. Like, it's great that he's here in, like, 4 years. It's not that long. Like, what we don't want is, like, the holdouts who have who real who, like, haven't realized that the world has changed and aren't willing to shift. And so, like, I think that this is the Palmer lucky thing with everyone's working on defense now.
Speaker 1:Like, it's fine. If you had a DEI program that was a mass in 2015, like, move on and figure out what's actually a good way forward. You just don't wanna be, fighting, tooth and nail to maintain the the the previous regime that was obviously very destructive. But, fascinating article, highly recommend. I mean, we reread it all.
Speaker 1:So, but it is free on the Financial Times. Fortunately, not paywalled
Speaker 2:for
Speaker 1:you bootstrap founders out there who are trying to keep burn low, you even though we recommend, getting the paper delivered in print every day, you'll be able to read this one for free, which is great. Should we move on? Beautiful. Let's talk about a super viral problem. Super viral post that went out, I believe on Monday, maybe Sunday.
Speaker 1:Vene Hiremath says, I am rich and I have no idea what to do with my life. Here's a blog where I talk about leaving Loom, giving up $60,000,000, LARPing as Elon, breaking up with my girlfriend, insecurities, a brief stint at Doge, and how I'm now in Hawaii self studying physics. And, for those who do for those of you who might not know, Loom is a Chrome plugin that allows you to record your screen, record your, your face cam, and match those together. It's actually very useful if you
Speaker 2:need
Speaker 1:if you need an employee or you're you need to send someone a little video of, hey. Here's how I want this process done. A lot of sales guys
Speaker 2:do it. I've used it a bunch for async, design feedback.
Speaker 1:So I
Speaker 2:get some design work done, and then I can't talk through it live. I'll just send a 3 minute video being, like, change this, change this. This could be better. I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's just way more
Speaker 2:more I
Speaker 1:don't like this font. Way more flowing than trying to write out an email. It's just way easier.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's it's interesting. I actually think when I when it most of the time when I get a voice note
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:From from somebody, it it annoys me because I'm like, well, you saved yourself time, and and now you're gonna waste my time because you could just summarize this over text. But when you get a Loom, typically, there's actually some, like, meat in there, and it could be convenient because it's saving you a phone call. Yep. When somebody sends you a voice note, there's they're saving themselves time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's often saving you
Speaker 2:Somebody Zoom call
Speaker 1:because it's Yeah. The whole screen share aspect of it is really
Speaker 2:Yeah. Is saving you from a Zoom call.
Speaker 1:Typically, it's hard for me if if you're giving that type of design feedback, you need to not only put all of your thoughts into words perfectly and then also share screenshots of, okay, this is the button I'm talking about. Draw on it. It it just it's it really does save a lot of time. It's a great product. And so they raised a lot of money.
Speaker 1:They grew the company really big. I think the the biggest venture round was, like, over a 1,000,000,000, like 1.5 billion. They sold for a 1,000,000,000.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:it was still a great outcome for the founders very clearly. The guy made a lot of money. And so let's look at his blog post. He says, life has been a haze last year. After selling my company, I find myself in the totally unrelatable position of never having to work again.
Speaker 1:Everything feels like a side quest, but not in an inspiring way. I don't have the same base desires driving me to make money or gain status. I have infinite freedom, yet I don't know what to do with it. And honestly, I'm not the most optimistic about life. I know this is a completely zeroth world position to be in.
Speaker 1:The point of this post isn't to brag or gain sympathy. To be honest, I don't know what the point of this post is. I tried to manufacture 1, and I have an idea what it's about. I know the thing that you can chase. Vinay, I got your solution right here.
Speaker 1:Stay tuned. Then I recognize the irony of creating purpose out of a blog post when I don't currently have much conviction or purpose in life. I'll so I'll just go ahead and explain my current situation for my own selfish purposes, to push myself to be completely and awkwardly vulnerable to a blob of nameless strangers on the Internet. Last March, I had no idea what to do with my life. I found it very hard to give up a $60,000,000 pay package.
Speaker 1:I had already made more money than I knew what to do with, but your mind does funny things when you start to consider numbers like this. So I decided to go to the redwoods and figure it out. Within 5 minutes of my first hike, the trees smiled at me and whispered their simple wisdom. What's the point of money if if it not for freedom? What is your most scarce source what is your most scarce resource if not time?
Speaker 1:I would leave to do something, anything to be alive again. I had no idea, but I was hell bent on making sure everyone knew I had it all figured out. So he spent 2 weeks, after his tenure he 2 weeks after leaving an intense 10 year journey, he did what any healthy person does and met with over 70 investors and founders in robotics. Wait.
Speaker 2:Wait. One one note. Yep. So at last in the company that bought Loom, they owned Jira. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that that's a little bit of context here. So he was, like, working at the company that makes Jira
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Very miserable software to use, was so painful that he couldn't stay for a couple years to make 60,000,000. The an MBA level contract. Yeah. But just shows, honestly, one thing he could have done is said, hey. Millions of people use Jira.
Speaker 2:I gotta make it my life's work to make this product say, hey. I don't wanna work on Loom anymore. Yeah. I'm done screen sharing. I want to fix Jira Yeah.
Speaker 2:The the cause of so much suffering in the world.
Speaker 1:I've always I've always said this that you should never sell your company. But if you do, you should be sure that you're on the track to be the CEO of the acquiring company. And it's a completely different The talent. If if you're if you're a big if if you're a big company. Like like, could you see Dylan Field being the CEO of Adobe if that deal went through?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Would that be good for Adobe shareholders? Probably.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Would that be edifying for Dylan Field? Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Would he be able to bring his team upward and
Speaker 2:Or Dylan looking at Adobe being like, I wanna work with Scott Belsky.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm sure the 2 of them were, like, devastated.
Speaker 1:But the big big problem is is, like, of course, if you're, like, you know, the company's struggling, like, get a get a, you know, acqui hire done or so or the you know, you're you're you're you're stuck and you just need an an exit, like, do that. But if it's a if it's a deal where, you know, you're getting, you know, 1 to 10% of the company, they're, like, you know, on a market cap basis Yeah. Set your sights higher and and and actually set yourself up to go in and dominate because Yeah. You wanna be a leader. You wanna be at the top.
Speaker 1:You've been at the top your entire career as a founder. Yeah. Be just because you they stuff you in an office with an earn out and a boss as, like, VP of innovation or whatever. Yeah. If you're a real killer, you can get back on the corporate track and Yeah.
Speaker 1:Talk to the board and get the CEO fired, take over.
Speaker 2:Hostile.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Get hostile. Technique. What's the best way to get your boss fired? If you wanna move up and you know that it's just a corporate ladder and you just wanna move up, best way to get your boss out of the picture, find a bunch of recruiters to recruit them away to a better job.
Speaker 2:That's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So find executive recruiters. Oh, yeah. My boss at
Speaker 2:Doesn't work if you're joining a founder mode. I think Atlassian is a founder mode.
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think they're responding to, hey. So and so I heard I saw you work in SaaS. Would you like to
Speaker 1:Yeah. But, certainly, if you're in the middle of the ladder, works every time. Every time. Yep. Great great strategy.
Speaker 1:And and Recruiters
Speaker 2:are always looking for edges and insights. Yeah. Yeah. It's nonviolent.
Speaker 1:It's not aggressive. It's it's just a little. And then, oh, I'm getting a lot of drama. Actually, I'm gonna have are you gonna be okay? I'm gonna leave.
Speaker 2:You know, I I I
Speaker 1:I don't wanna abandon you on this team. You're gonna have a lot more work. You're like,
Speaker 2:yes. Really? Yeah. Interesting news. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's like a Dwight from The Office style
Speaker 1:have to be neat.
Speaker 2:Style move. Or or maybe or maybe, Jim would would do that to Dwight.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's good. So he breaks up with his girlfriend, realizes
Speaker 2:that he's very interested in purpose of the post was was it was more of, like, using it as a dating app, kind of like a call to hell for e girls. My theory. Call to hell for e girls. Like, hey. Any e girls out there?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I'm very lonely and lost, and I have a 100 to $200,000,000. Yes. Like, reach out. I'm I'll be in Hawaii.
Speaker 1:So I think the I think the maybe not the purpose of the the the post, but, like, the missing thing here is essentially fame and recognition. You know? Like Yeah. Loom is a cool company. We know about it, but it's not something that people talk about like Tesla.
Speaker 1:You know? It's not a consumer product.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Even even smaller, even like a kettle and fire has more mental mind share than Loom even though it's probably a smaller company, because they they sponsor UFC. And so if you're just running into a random person in a bar and you're like, I'm the founder of kettle and fire, they're like, oh, I saw that at Erewhon. Like, that's amazing. That's cool. I I get that all the time with Lucy.
Speaker 1:People will be like, oh, I use those pouches. And and we have, like, you know, tons and tons of customers much harder with a with a
Speaker 2:fast phone.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Lucy. Exactly. Like, there's a person loves Loom.
Speaker 1:It doesn't happen as much.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so, and and and that's a weird ego thing, but it's real. And there's this thing where a lot of people want money, and then once they have money, they want political power. And once they have political power, they want fame, and they kinda dance between all of these.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, and so first off, I think I think, like, it's fine to want a public presence, to want to be known, to want to be widely loved and respected. And so, you know, you're a good writer. I wanna hear I wanna read more of these blog posts. So I I I would say, like, turn this into something. Give this a try.
Speaker 1:Yep. Maybe this will work. And and and, yeah, create some content because there's already so many content creators, but you have the you have the the bona fides to put some cool stuff out there. And then also just in general, I I have this philosophy that, it it it's very difficult when people focus on just one metric of success. And they say, my happiness is tied just to my net worth.
Speaker 1:Because if you get to the top of the mountain, you have nowhere to go but down. And the real best thing are you familiar with, like, the shepherd scale or barber pole? I I've talked about this theory. So, basically, if you watch a barber
Speaker 2:pole making stuff up, Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is the kuzov. But, barber the, like, the barber pole theory of happiness is if you look at a barber pole, it's it's like stripe like a candy cane. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if you watch it, it looks like it's going up endlessly. Yeah. But what's really happening is that it's getting the other side, and then it's kind of restarting the cycle. And the shepherd tone does the same thing. I can I can play it?
Speaker 1:It sounds like really, really crazy when you hear it, because the it's basically a whole bunch of scales, that are playing at the same time. And so it sounds kinda like like this. You hear how it's, like, sounding it sounds like it's going up? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You can listen to this for hours, and it
Speaker 2:just goes up and up and up and up and up.
Speaker 1:And it's because some of them
Speaker 2:Kinda sounds like it's summoning
Speaker 1:a 60 Mesoamerican demon. It really does sound weird, but I I like this as it's a it's like a fractal pattern. Like, you see the fractal pattern? Fractal pattern
Speaker 2:just continues struggling.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Continue endlessly. And so, I I believe that you need kind of that philosophy in your life because things are there's certain metrics. Like, if you have, you know, your family life, your fitness, your fame, your wealth, all of those, they're gonna reach the top of the mountain, and eventually some of them are gonna decline. But if if when you're when you're crusting in your business career, you're be having grandchildren, and you're Yeah.
Speaker 1:Getting more and more joy out of just the size of your family. Or when you're really young, it might be hard to make a lot of money. But if you're in peak physical condition, you're like, this is amazing. Eventually, you're gonna hit 50 and be like, yeah. I can't bench press, but I could when I was 25.
Speaker 1:But But you still enjoy. Yeah. Your business career is gonna be even better, and you're gonna be making more and more money. So you'll be able to focus on, like, the new thing that's good. And so, yeah, like, you need to be balancing all of those different sources of wealth, the types of wealth so that you're you're you're you're you're raising 1 while the others are in decline if they if they happen to be.
Speaker 1:So you can always refocus. It's literally just moving the goal posts on yourself, on what makes you happy.
Speaker 2:What are you
Speaker 1:about to say? You wrote some stuff down.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, we can kinda get into I would say, not I don't think he's asking for our advice, but, you know, we've never
Speaker 1:been in any way.
Speaker 2:We've never been hesitant to give unsolicited advice. I mean, a a few a few things. I mean, one, it's very normal for somebody who's hyper success and career oriented and mission oriented like entrepreneurs are
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:To, feel very lost when that journey ends Yep. And landing at Atlassian and then becoming a cog in the Jira machine. It feels like very much like, okay. I'm no longer make having this forward momentum. I went through that on a much smaller much, much smaller scale after, after we joined Roe
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where I just didn't feel like I was I was, like, I'm 20 whatever. I was 26, 20 okay. 27 at the time. Mhmm. I'm like, okay.
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm at the my my career is picking up felt like it was really ramping up, and then it felt like I slowed way down because I was like, okay. I have a boss for the first time
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. In my life. I'm working at a company where I'd I'd bear I only know, like, 5 out of, like, 250 people. Yeah. It just felt it felt very strange.
Speaker 2:I felt I felt lost, and I personally ended up doing the same thing where I left earlier than we had originally structured. So, I think it's totally normal to feel lost, and, it's cool because he's now crowdsourced a ton of ideas and brought all this in you know, interest and intrigue into what he's doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He showed me the whole post.
Speaker 2:I think
Speaker 1:went on to work at Doge and figured out that he didn't really like that. He went into robotics, but felt like he was LARPing as Elon. And then he wound up moving to Hawaii and is, teaching himself physics, which is
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so I think I think, the high level, like, thing that I think every entrepreneur it's different where for him, he doesn't he's post economic now.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Doesn't need to start another company. Doesn't need to get a job somewhere. Doesn't need to work in the government. Yep. So I think the strategy overall should just be to do cool stuff.
Speaker 2:So that could take a bunch of different forms. Right? That could be, Elad Gill, making monuments. Right? He's still doing his thing on the investing side and, incubation side.
Speaker 2:Could be doing a grant program like Justin Brother Mares where Justin gives away money to people to try to change their life.
Speaker 1:On the post economic thing, I I love that word. It's a it's very good phrase for, you know, not needing a job, but I feel like I kind of hate it in the sense that when I look at the people that I look up to and respect, they are obviously post economic in the sense that they're, like, billionaires, but they are not post economic in the sense that
Speaker 2:they're Players.
Speaker 1:Completely players in the game. Yeah. And and to the point where if they have a down year, it's emotional. If they have an up year, it's amazing. They're really thinking about how to allocate their capital across every asset class.
Speaker 1:And, like, they're they're thinking about it just as much as, you know They're
Speaker 2:still trying to stimulate the economy. Yeah. They're still active participants. They're still playing the game.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think a lot of it happens when it it it's always hard when you jump multiple orders of magnitude in a very, very short of time. Essentially, overnight, I've noticed this with, like, if you ever hire someone, and you're running, like, let's say, a 100 person startup, you can usually hire someone who's been at a 10 person startup or maybe even a 1,000 person company, and they can kinda jump in. But it's hard when you pull someone from a 10,000 person organization into a 100 person organization because everything about that job is different. Instead of, like, if you're at a 10,000 person organization and you're a leader, like, you don't have a person for everything.
Speaker 1:You have a team for everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And at a 100 person organization, just think about, like, is the Wi Fi down? You might have an IT person. If you go down to a 5 person startup, it's like you're doing it yourself.
Speaker 2:You're going
Speaker 1:to best buy against Starlink. Yeah. If you're at a 10,000 person company, it's like, well, we have an IT team.
Speaker 2:And Yeah. It's just saying something else. You jump up.
Speaker 1:There's 3 orders magnitude. It's like Yeah. As opposed to, you know, a little bit more of, like, what we've experienced in our career where it's, like, a more gradual accumulation of wealth. And so you're more acclimated to it. It's not the sudden wealth syndrome that's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The, the other thing that I've seen, especially in LA, the kids who got really big on social media
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, as teenagers Yep. And then got jaded Yep. And didn't convert it into a business or anything like that, those people really struggle
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Because they've had the pinnacle of attention
Speaker 1:And wealth.
Speaker 2:And and not necessarily wealth, like, true wealth Which is like like, cash flow. Like, cash flow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's just like So they got they got a 100 k check from goo from YouTube
Speaker 2:this month. So if you're a teenager making a 100 k a month and then you 10 years later, you stop doing YouTube because you didn't care about it, and then you have to money doesn't even feel real in the same way. So this happens in crypto. People that get
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Ultra wealthy from crypto. They didn't really have to work hard to do it. They they were smart, and they got had some luck. Those people end up just feeling incredibly lost because they're chasing that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They they're subconsciously sort of still chasing that high even if they're not playing a game that allows them to get that high.
Speaker 1:I mean, we've talked about this with the in the opposite case of, like, the PayPal mafia. Like, why is the PayPal mafia so special? Obviously, like, they're all really talented business leaders and technologists. But, specifically, it's like they were kind of forced to sell their company after IPO. They got liquidity, but then they all had, like, these revenge narratives of, like, I've been wrong.
Speaker 1:Like, I could have been running something that I think PayPal's peak market cap is, like, a 100,000,000,000 could easily be a 1,000,000,000 if they were still there. And and it was like they got that kinda taken away from them with all this chaos. And so they all went back in immediately because they had so much to prove. Because they were like, we were the dotcom wonderkids, and we didn't get our full bite of the apple.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so that's very different than the
Speaker 2:And they basically all went back to 0 and all ran it up to public companies again.
Speaker 1:Yep. Exactly. It's great.
Speaker 2:That, lots of luck counts for something.
Speaker 1:That's the goal. You get Yeah. Couple 100,000,000 you got.
Speaker 2:So I mean, there's so many things like Yeah. Imagine if if mister Beast had started his content creation career with a $100,000,000 already in the Oh, yeah. And so I'm at so so do something like that. I think that it's not wouldn't be the worst idea to do a Peter Rahal style
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Deal where let's say Vanae buys house
Speaker 1:background on Peter?
Speaker 2:So so well yeah. So Peter Rahal started RXBAR, sells it, like, raises very little money, sells it for, like, $600,000,000 Yeah. Proceeds to wait, like, basically, I think, like, 5 plus years after his earn out and all that stuff. Does, like, a bunch of growth equity investing, some venture investing, and then basically starts the same company again, more focused on protein called David. And now he's running it up again.
Speaker 2:Like, it'll clearly be somewhere probably $502,000,000,000 outcome again. It's a way better product. And it's amazing product.
Speaker 1:It's so good.
Speaker 2:Peter's sending us some I love it. Today, I think. So we're gonna be eating it here with our Matina.
Speaker 1:And we're just at the I looked at the macros. It's it has, like, 40 grams of protein and, like, 200 calories.
Speaker 2:On Matinas and Easily. Roar Water
Speaker 1:Easily.
Speaker 2:And, and Volta, Gu
Speaker 1:Volta And Kettlin Fire.
Speaker 2:And David protein bars.
Speaker 1:You can't spend a lot of money. Thrive
Speaker 2:on that. So I would say Vinay Vinay ultimate stat. Strategy was spend all your money Yes. And it creates such a crazy lifestyle, you know, bloat and burn that you need to get back in the game just
Speaker 1:to survive. I I'm happy to run through that, but let's finish up. Yeah. So So so so so the Peter Hall thing is like Peter Hall rebuild Loom.
Speaker 2:Rebuild Loom. Rebuild the same company. Yeah. You know, build a Loom that just that automatically generate AI generates the video so you
Speaker 1:don't even
Speaker 2:have to record it.
Speaker 1:Yep. And it's something that you know you can hire all the best people. You already know
Speaker 2:all the products. Back on the treadmill. Greenfield. Back on the mission. Great.
Speaker 2:Run it back again. Yep. So I'd like to see that.
Speaker 1:I mean, that and that's also Nicky. Beer. That's also a bunch of people that have done that stuff. It's not just
Speaker 2:Yeah. And the the the
Speaker 1:It's not just Peter.
Speaker 2:Thing with, site so so there's a mushroom on his blog, which is a is a bit of a red flag for me because psychedelics are very dangerous. You know, they've been widely promoted by other podcasters, and they're you know, people can experience tremendous benefits from them. But doing them while you're very lost and don't know what's going on can give you a bunch of false signals around what you should actually do, and you're hallucinating.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So there's it can tell you truths that feel real
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That aren't necessarily real. Yeah. And so even, it's like the opposite
Speaker 1:of grounding yourself. You're literally, like, having an out of body experience. You're, like, away from the ground. You feel like you're flying. The way to ground yourself is, like, go back and spend time with your family and your extended family.
Speaker 1:Because at a certain point, it's like you're even if you're running this life of, like, you know, you never have to work again, well, like, they're going to have real life problems and and vicissitudes and all different type of, things that that they need to work through. And, that can just make you a lot more human if you're actually, like, engaged with your your community and then your friends and and and, you know, whoever's in your in your network, really growing that stuff will actually help you keep keep stay grounded. But did you have anything else before I go into my plan?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just think, studying physics in Hawaii, very cool. Study your own physical form. Right? Get really into bodybuilding.
Speaker 2:Get your IFBB pro card.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:Compete with, you know, someone like Keith Raboye. Yep. Get to the absolute pinnacle of that. That's an entire mission that's not necessarily economically driven.
Speaker 1:But Do you know how many workouts Keith did last year?
Speaker 2:Like, 2 a day. So, like, 700.
Speaker 1:It was like I think it was over a1000. It was the most insane stat. I looked at it and I was like, this can't be real. I mean, I understand he works out every single day and he and he had a number of days worked out. It was like 364.
Speaker 1:I guess he missed one day. But it's like, how do you do 3 workouts a day, dude?
Speaker 2:Unreal.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Mass mass monster arc is gonna be fantastic. But yeah. Good job.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's just like yeah. There's a lot that the the get inspired by Nat Friedman, take 500 k, and create a public good out of it. Right? So there's just so much stuff you can do that's not directly economic that can have tremendous impact, can be very motivating. And when I look at this stuff, these are all things I'm very excited to do, that we're excited to do through the show.
Speaker 2:Yep. And, anyways, what do you got there? Because we you know, one thing
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That we love doing, is spending money, and, it the timing for Renee to come into this wealth also during as loud opulence becomes a dominant trend and quiet luxury is sort of fading into the background.
Speaker 1:It's great.
Speaker 2:The timing is pretty perfect to start spending some, some cash, especially, you know, on the equestrian side, which I'm sure you'll get into.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:You know, it's not easy or inexpensive to have a, a stable of of championship winning racehorses, but he has the resources to do that. Exactly. So
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I broke down kind of how I would spend the first 200,000,000, to really get you back on the hedonic treadmill because it seems like he's kinda fallen off. And once you move into, you know, a Manhattan penthouse, you're gonna be meeting people in the elevator saying, if I was just one floor higher
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:I should get back on the grind. Yep. Maybe I should call up Atlassian and see
Speaker 2:if that's the opposite side. And they've got some bags of them, and they're like, where are you going? They're, like, I'm going to my house in Aspen. Exactly. And and you say, oh, what neighborhood you're in?
Speaker 2:You look it up on Zillow, and it's $50,000,000 entry price. Yep. Exactly. It's like, well, that's quarter of my
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Assets. I I gotta actually get back in the game.
Speaker 1:I gotta get back in the game. So I broke it down into a couple different categories. You start with the real estate portfolio. Obviously, you're gonna need a lot of properties. I recommend a mansion in Malibu, probably 25 mil.
Speaker 1:Miami Oceanfrontfront estate, you might be able to get that for 10. Manhattan penthouse is 30. Aspen ski chalet is 15. Hampton Summer Estate, 20. Lake Tahoe Lakefront Home, 8 Mill.
Speaker 1:Joshua Tree, contemporary retreat for 5. And then you're gonna need something in Hawaii. That's gonna be 12. And that's just in America. You might want Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You might want the bug out village, some property in Montana or Alaska. You might wanna go to New Zealand. That's gonna be
Speaker 2:expensive, but beautiful. Careful gentrifying Alaska. They will.
Speaker 1:They will come for you.
Speaker 2:They will come.
Speaker 1:And so that's gonna that's gonna take a 125,000,000 out of your pocket. Obviously, you can use debt, but you don't have a lot of cash flow at this point. So Yeah. You're the you you're trying to burn down that,
Speaker 2:comp cash core real estate
Speaker 1:bridge, and then that's justification for
Speaker 2:And not to mention, at this number of homes, you need you basically are running a company again, which
Speaker 1:is Exactly.
Speaker 2:So you're gonna get that you're gonna get daily 1 on ones, stand ups. Yep.
Speaker 1:You're probably a full time real estate agent.
Speaker 2:Just Slack for your you know? Yeah. You might wanna put a put a agent on the payroll and say, give me a little less commission, but, you know, I'll give you some cash flow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, running an efficient family office is in in and of itself a status symbol because so many of them are mismanaged and have tons of hangars on them. They're just collecting checks and doing nothing. You're also gonna need some cars. I mean, you'll need these cars in every single house.
Speaker 1:But I
Speaker 2:would say 3 for every house.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But if you're just to build 1 3 car garage, you know, you're going Bugatti Chiron, Koenigsegg Jesko, Rolls Royce Cullinan black badge. That's 7,000,000 right there, and then you copy paste that a couple times with different Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you get some funky stuff. Get a old Ford Bronco drop top. Yep. You know?
Speaker 1:That's not gonna completely run up the bill on you, but No. He's gonna occupy your time.
Speaker 2:Oh, and the key here is, you know, buy it's all life is all about buying the right things. Right? People say, oh, spend your money on experiences. Well, you know, a one of 1 Bronco
Speaker 1:Is an experience.
Speaker 2:Re you know, refurbished Yep. And rebuilt is app is an experience every single time you get in it. It's an experience when you look at it in the garage. Right? Yep.
Speaker 2:And, anyway, so so keep going down the list.
Speaker 1:Yep. And so for watches, you could get a Patek Philippe Nautilus, 5990, Rolex Daytona Paul Newman, Richard Mille. You're in for a hun 1.3 mille right there just with the starter collection, 10, 20 different. We didn't even get into dailies, beaters, dress watches. There's so many different options there.
Speaker 1:In terms of far, firearms, I mean, you can't go wrong with the meteorite now. The 911s. We've talked about those from Cabot guns. A singer, 1911 could be a 100 Go down to Arley.
Speaker 2:Go down to Arley in Beverly Hills. Get a get a shotgun.
Speaker 1:A Browning 50 cal. That's gonna be 50 k. You're gonna need licenses. This is all gonna take up not just money, but time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so while you're thinking about your next act, you're also
Speaker 2:happy life is a busy life too.
Speaker 1:Exactly. You
Speaker 2:don't wanna be too
Speaker 1:You wanna be busy. You wanna be easily spend 5,000,000 there. Then on horses, you're gonna wanna start breeding racehorses ideally from the American Pharoah line. But then you're also gonna want a high performance quarter horse for cutting, an Andalusian dressage stallion, an Arabian choke champion.
Speaker 2:It could also be cool to go, to go out to Omaha, Nebraska
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And literally buy every home surrounding Warren Buffett. That would be pretty cool. Sort of like a castle wall type setup where you build basically yeah. For for Vinay, he would be able to look down on Warren Buffett Yep. And start picking up through osmosis some some you know, he's he's gotta manage his family office Yep.
Speaker 2:To pick up some investing techniques, but you'd also be able to mug one of the world's, you know, most successful and wealthiest, you know, men, which Vinay might like. He he hasn't done easy for him.
Speaker 1:Walking around the neighborhood, strolling around on top of your quarter horse, you know, he's gonna have to stop and say hi. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Or if
Speaker 1:he hears the
Speaker 2:pull up in your Camry.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If you pull up in a yeah. He he's in the Camry, you're in the Tesco.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Every time he starts his Camry and you hear it kinda start up, you start up the Tesco.
Speaker 1:The Tesco.
Speaker 2:And you're gonna
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly. And then the quarter horse gets a little skittish.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Because the Tesco is ripping.
Speaker 1:Then, you know, obviously, build a wine collection. You're gonna want an expansive cellar featuring top Bordeaux first growths, Lafite, Mouton, Petrus, iconic California cult wines like Screaming Eagle, Scarecrow. This blends revered old world European traditions with cutting edge American vintage bit of a bit of culture. You're gonna spend 5,000,000 on that easy.
Speaker 2:Sommelier. Get
Speaker 1:a sommelier full time.
Speaker 2:50 k a year
Speaker 1:Have him travel with you Yeah. Which we'll get into how you're traveling because for 200 mil, it's really hard to justify a g650. So you might have to go fractional private jet ownership.
Speaker 2:Talk to Preston.
Speaker 1:But, there are some good options there. You've heard us, you know, talk about netjets before.
Speaker 2:Sort of a touchy subject for our audience. But But
Speaker 1:if you've spent this much on cars and guns and houses, it might just be the right mix for you until you get that second
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That, you know, this is the base hit. We're looking for the home run that gets the the BBJ. Yeah. And, and then, of course, our collection. You're gonna wanna curated set of works.
Speaker 1:You could go Andy Warhol, Basquiat. You could go older, and it's just gonna get more expensive. But you'd easily put up $50,000,000 just decorating your homes. So
Speaker 2:Each home. Yeah. So he's gonna really have to stretch and and try to budget and
Speaker 1:I'm assuming a lot of debt comes in here. You really multiply it. Lot of leverage. Maybe you're you're actually in in control of maybe a $1,000,000,000 of assets, kind of a 2 a 5 to 1 debt to
Speaker 2:equity ratio. That's priceless too is having an enemy. You know? Yep. The if has had enemies, they've basically been forced to listen to the soundtrack of his success for the last few years.
Speaker 2:Yep. But picking new bigger enemies Yep. You know, he could pick somebody like, Caruso Rick Caruso. He could he could try to come in and and start competing and outbidding Rick Caruso.
Speaker 1:I mean, the other side of this is that he's working for Atlassian. You could go and say, you know what? DHH, you got the Aston Martin Valkyrie. I'm gonna beat you on the track. You run base camp.
Speaker 1:It's directly competitive.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna crush you on the track. I'm gonna get 3 Valkyries.
Speaker 2:Wow. Actually
Speaker 1:I'm gonna engine swap a couple of them, lower them, modify them.
Speaker 2:You know that shot of the DHH has of his, like, crazy view?
Speaker 1:Make it even better.
Speaker 2:That's right in the in the fire.
Speaker 1:Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no way. Hope he's okay.
Speaker 2:Hope he's okay.
Speaker 1:I like to joke around, but that is rough if that's true. But, yeah, I think, DHH, he puts a lot of time in on the track. He has some amazing, records, and I'm sure he's gonna break all of them with his new Valkyrie. You know, get your own Valkyrie. Break his records.
Speaker 1:Show him who's boss, and then go back to Atlassian and say, we're take we're coming for every single Basecamp customer. And I will be CEO of this company Yeah. Once I destroy Basecamp.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Basecamp has said they'd never sell, but if you take
Speaker 1:If you take 100% of their customers, they will go out of business.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And DHH will be forced to sell his Valkyrie to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But you'll already have 3.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, I think you're
Speaker 2:gonna have too many Valkyries, though.
Speaker 1:No. You wanna corner the market, really. Because Yeah. You take them, you raise them so fast. You're crashing a bunch of them.
Speaker 1:But every time you crash 1, lowers the amount, so raises the market price. So there is a there's an efficient point where crashing the Valkyrie
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Drunk driving or off roading it, taking it on the Dakar, taking on the Gumball 3,000. This can actually be
Speaker 2:TV 5
Speaker 1:positive for your net worth. Yeah. And that's great. The other option would be to pick a low status, nemesis. Just I'm sure this post went mega viral.
Speaker 1:I'm sure there's some haters, some quote tweeters. Pick one of them at random.
Speaker 2:Go 1 by 1.
Speaker 1:Revenge is a dust pit. Dick. Deadpool.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Ripping apart their careers Yeah. And their
Speaker 1:Oh, you're starting a little lifestyle business? Wouldn't it be a shame if I raised $500,000,000 and destroyed
Speaker 2:you? Category.
Speaker 1:Exactly. You got a blank check.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We didn't have it on here, but raising a mango seed round is usually a good way to cheer you up.
Speaker 1:So I agree.
Speaker 2:So and he could definitely get that done in in in a day, you know, in a few hours. Or We would back we
Speaker 1:would back a growth fund, start a hedge fund. I mean, the growth fund, it depends on who you wanna talk to. But, you know, the seed fund you're talking to, a lot of founders, some of them are gonna be, like, very low quality just by nature. Some of them are gonna be amazing, and you get in early, and that's cool. But, like, if you really just wanna hang out with really interesting entrepreneurs who are already derisked, like, Growth Fund.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Raise a big Growth Fund and just rip checks into blue chip companies, and you'll be on the phone with all the best people and hang out with them.
Speaker 2:And it's fine if you make one investment a year. So you can study physics Yeah. And then rip checks.
Speaker 1:Totally. Totally. It's great.
Speaker 2:Anyways, Vinay, proud of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Proud of
Speaker 2:you for talking about your feelings.
Speaker 1:Good luck on
Speaker 2:20 8 BC. Let us know if you wanna join the show. Call in. Call in.
Speaker 1:We'll come to
Speaker 2:we'll come hang in Hawaii.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And we'll go shopping with you.
Speaker 2:We'll take you shopping.
Speaker 1:Take you shopping. Bring your checkbook. Bring your wire instructions. Because, you the the check is just gonna be too too many zeros to fit in the box.
Speaker 2:To fit in the check.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Bring one of those big checks, actually. Yeah. Bring a huge check. Bring your
Speaker 2:little your UV key or whatever. You can just
Speaker 1:rip stable coins.
Speaker 2:We're going to Mercedes.
Speaker 1:We're getting you name g one. We're going to Aston Martin. We're getting you a Valkyrie. We're going to Bugatti. We're getting you a tourbillon.
Speaker 1:We're going to Mercedes. We're getting a SL 300. Gollin. We're going to Ferrari. We're getting the f eighty.
Speaker 1:We're going to McLaren. We're getting the
Speaker 2:w one. We're going to Geneva, and we're buying the Patek store. Yes. Making them an offer they
Speaker 1:cannot refuse. Yes. I mean, we talked about, who's the hedge fund guy that bought a watch company? I love that. He owns the watch.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's, the guy who's always getting angry. Perfect. Europe. Herbal Herbalife.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Why Why
Speaker 2:can we not remember his name?
Speaker 1:Pershing Square. Is this fun? I don't know. How? Bill Ackman.
Speaker 1:Bill Ackman.
Speaker 2:I was gonna be that.
Speaker 1:It's hard. It's hard. This is not an AI generated show, folks. So you gotta sometimes we blank. Sometimes we get mugged by the English language, and other times we just blank on someone that we see every single day on the timeline.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. So we got some q and a's. Let's go to questions from the fans, from the brothers, from the brotherhood. Ben Koehler, our vice president, posted some behind the scenes footage of you dancing and me playing Tetris. And Chris On
Speaker 2:the map retro.
Speaker 1:What kind of shoes are on Jordy's feet? And is this a real word? Is it is this a
Speaker 2:is this the word
Speaker 1:for what you were wearing?
Speaker 2:I don't know. Category of shoe? Chris has been deeply within the world of, high end equestrianism. And
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's very he's very he's very, he's grown up in loud op among
Speaker 1:And I mean, his profile photo, he's wearing a So love him.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, I'm wearing, those are some Bottega Veneta slides. Picked them up a couple years ago. Those are my favorite shoes. Yeah. Kinda wear dress them up, dress them down.
Speaker 2:You can wear them to the beach. You can wear them, to a nice dinner. But we, I actually love the shoes so much that, we are working with, my friend Devin to develop our own, TV branded version of those exact slides. Fantastic. Chris, keep an eye out if you don't wanna spend, $1500 on
Speaker 1:Potential beta tester. Some of that.
Speaker 2:You can get these. We're gonna make it a lot more, you know, accessible, you know, but still very fairly priced.
Speaker 1:That's great. So if you head to the Bottega Veneta store, tell them the Technology Brothers sent you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The Bottega store actually made it in the Palisades.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 2:Where I bought them. Yeah. It, yeah, everything around that development burned down except for the Bottega. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, emergency supplies.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:We got another DM. It says, I'm joining a startup about a 100, over $1,000,000,000 in market cap. Should I focus on a narrow set of skills or try and work across teams and functions? What do you think, Jordy?
Speaker 2:Wow. You're joining something that already has The scale. $1,000,000,000 market cap valuation. Yep. This this, you know, screams corporate athlete to me.
Speaker 2:Yep. Somebody that needs to get in there and make stuff happen, work cross functionally. Yep. You know, own own some key product areas, strategies
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Whatever you need to do. But, think go in there as an athlete, outwork everybody, train your mind Yep. Get into the office earlier
Speaker 1:Be flexible.
Speaker 2:Leave later. If it's a work from home, flexible work policy, never work from home. Yep. Just don't. Yep.
Speaker 2:Show up on Saturdays. Yep. You you know, Slack your your the CEO on Sunday morning at at 5 AM and say
Speaker 1:Wanna get a workout
Speaker 2:in. Door door to the office is locked. Could you come open it up for me? And if they say, you know, oh, we might be able to get somebody from maintenance over there to say, if you have a second, it'd be great if you could just get down here. So, like, establish that level of, you know, seriousness with your not only your CEO
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, you know, everyone else on your team Yeah. That you it's free to outwork everybody. It costs some a little bit of time, but it's free to outwork Yeah. Your peers. And, if you're in an organization like that, you're joining, there's hundreds of people already.
Speaker 2:You need to you need to, you know, really put yourself on the map. Yeah.
Speaker 1:When I first got introduced to the term corporate athlete, it was from a CFO I was working with who was describing some of the finance folks, like the strategic finance guys that would come in. And as corporate athletes in the sense that they were good at spreadsheets, but that skill set of analysis, management, strategy could be applied basically anywhere in the organization. You can drop that person in the marketing team, run run some analytics, see what's working, cut things, but also on the product side, really anywhere.
Speaker 2:And That's like a midfielder.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and we've seen this. I mean, we were just talking to Calvin over at ramp. I think he was on the engineering team. Now he's running marketing.
Speaker 1:That is a transition that I think people think is, like, so crazy, but it's actually a
Speaker 2:Have good taste. Yep. Good decision making. Yep. Deeply analytical.
Speaker 2:Yep. Very hard
Speaker 1:And ability to drive outcomes.
Speaker 2:And ability to study the experts. Like, if you wanna learn marketing, go Ogilvy. Listen to Others. Andrew Huberman. Go look at Rob Mower's feed.
Speaker 2:Yep. Right? There you go. So, yeah, I think the the obvious, yeah, obvious answer here is sleep on an 8 Sleep. You're a corporate athlete.
Speaker 2:Yep. Sleep on an 8 Sleep. Yep. Get those sleep scores up. Wear a WHOOP band.
Speaker 2:Yep. If, you know, track your stress throughout the day. If you're not getting stressed, you're not working hard enough, you're not taking on enough responsibility Yep. To make sure you're stressed.
Speaker 1:Chug your
Speaker 2:momentum constantly. It's free to outwork your peers. So go get in there and do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I got another question. I didn't get a chance to print it out, but, it's, essentially here. I have it here. I am a I'm working at a VC firm, and I'm considering joining the Trump administration.
Speaker 1:I'll be working for, one of the billionaires that's heading up one of the organizations. What can I do to stand out as I join the admin and really make a statement on my first day at work? What do you think, Jordy? When you're coming into a new organization, how can you, earn the respect of your boss, and how can you set the tone for what might be a short stint since these political jobs, usually it's for your stint at most.
Speaker 2:So going into the admin in
Speaker 1:this Going into the admin Yes.
Speaker 2:So what I would do for a big shot, in a
Speaker 1:different role,
Speaker 2:how do you how do you
Speaker 1:stand out So on day 1?
Speaker 2:When you are watching a sporting event
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Who do you notice in the crowd?
Speaker 1:Guys with the chest painted with the American flag?
Speaker 2:Chest and face painting. Yeah. Face painting is key.
Speaker 1:K.
Speaker 2:Chest requires you to go shirtless. Not every office environment is that conducive to being shirtless. Yep. But the thing that you can obviously do in this situation is paint the American flag over your face That's good. And add stars to it.
Speaker 2:So, like, don't just settle at 50 stars because that just shows you're not very ambitious And
Speaker 1:you're not tapped into the discourse.
Speaker 2:To take the picture that you posted. Yeah. Yeah. You're not tapped into the discourse if you're not putting 54 stars. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Moon, Greenland
Speaker 1:Panama Canal. Canada.
Speaker 2:Panama. Let's Yeah.
Speaker 1:I spent
Speaker 2:I actually spent a bunch of time in Panama surfing over the years, and, great place. We could add them.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So, yeah. Show that ambition. 54 stars plus at least. Full face paint. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Hair dyed. Yep. Mohawk. Yep. And, you're gonna actually want to shave the side of your face to get the flag to fully stretch around your face.
Speaker 2:Right? And then leave the hair, you know, dress that up, make make make yourself look like a stallion, and and then just do that every day. So it's gonna cost you. You're gonna have to find you know, bring in a Hollywood makeup artist, bring them out to DC, and, you know, pay them whatever it it takes. Right?
Speaker 2:You're and and Doge, they've got these sort of rotating, appointments too where you're only there for 3 months. So if the makeup artist costs $500 a day, only there for 3 months, Very worth it. You're gonna be a little bit in the red, but you can probably day trade your way into back into the greens.
Speaker 1:That's good. That's a good call. So My my my advice was, gift your boss a gun on day 1, AR 15 that's wrapped with the American flag because Listen. There's a lot
Speaker 2:of Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you
Speaker 2:wanna make a statement?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because there's a lot of you know, we're still in the post pandemic work from home era even if everyone's in the office. You know, a lot of what the government's doing is communicating with organizations that aren't in DC, corporations, and other arms of the government. And so you're gonna need a nice Zoom background. You put an AR 15 on the background.
Speaker 1:Just immediately lets everyone know you're 2 a.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and a good thing is, you know, even in the government, they do work from home quite a bit. Yep. So if you know you're gonna be on Zoom calls, go get a Starlink. Yep.
Speaker 2:Post up at at the local range.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And when you're not talking on the call, be drilling the target. Oh, there you go. 200 yards, 300 yards, mile out, And that will just show a level of, you know, you're gonna relate to your peers better that that that might enjoy guns. People don't enjoy guns, they're gonna say, well, this guy's could defend me
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In a in a hostile situation. So it's a good way to to build, you know, relationships and, establish dominance on Zoom Yeah. Specifically.
Speaker 1:And so And
Speaker 2:don't don't mute either.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You wanna you wanna hear the shots ring out. There's already so much AI that goes into the voice processing on Zoom. I'm sure it'll handle the loud noises.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, you wanna make a statement. You wanna come in, let people know what you're all about,
Speaker 2:get
Speaker 1:the cadence up. Well, speaking of America and international relations, TikTok says it plans to shut down the site unless the Supreme Court strikes down the law forcing it to sell. So TikTok will not sell, and aghamilton29 says, the fact that China slash the CCP via ByteDance would rather choose to close the platform than give up control of it in exchange for a substantial payday kind of tells you everything you need to know about what they see is the real value of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Simon said in poker, they call that a tell. Simon's been right a lot lately.
Speaker 1:He has. Gotta give him
Speaker 2:credit for that. He has. Yeah. I I used to be the owner of bandtalk.com. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Sold it for about what I put into it. I thought it wasn't getting banned.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now somebody's gonna make an absolute killing. I talked about this. You could make kind of a vampire app where you clone, you know, TikTok and and and sort of recreate the social graph Yep. For people and just say, hey. Come over here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Start posting. But I hope it gets banned. It's absolutely insane that, you know, we we wouldn't want China directly controlling, you know, one of the top three largest media companies. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that it's fit and TikTok is objectively one of the biggest media companies even though it's a social media platform. Yeah. So it's absolutely insane.
Speaker 1:The yeah. The comp is would you be okay with the USSR controlling NBC during the Cold War?
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. Yeah. Obviously not. Spent, unfortunately, I've spent time in China, and they do not allow our social media platforms over there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So So there's just a little
Speaker 1:bit of reciprocity there. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's just keep it even.
Speaker 1:It's also just extremely redundant at this point because every feature has been copied by YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. And so there's a lot of people that are like, but what about the small businesses that are built on TikTok?
Speaker 2:The attention will just shift.
Speaker 1:The attention will shift. They'll be okay.
Speaker 2:If you were if you were building your small business on the CCP's Yeah. Platform Yeah. And not thinking about Yeah. You know, going elsewhere.
Speaker 1:Those recent, like, deep dives on TikTok shop? How people are just, like, straight up selling drugs, like, via the TikTok shop. It's like, there's just no marketing.
Speaker 2:China has no interest in you know, there's probably, like, the number one Fentanyl dealer is probably TikTok. Yeah. Literally.
Speaker 1:It's wild. Anyway, let's move on to Anne Lee Skates. She says the consumer founders' secret AI master plan. Give us some context on Anne.
Speaker 2:Anne's great. She was at Andreessen. Cool. Helped lead our round and now has her own fund. Cool.
Speaker 2:Very, very sharp on all things consumer. Great. She was a part of the group that did whatnot. She just raised a new round of 5,000,000,000. So, an absolute dog of a company.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No need for TikTok shop. They're probably gonna be way up after the TikTok. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Wow. That's interesting, actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Gonna go scoop up some secondary right now. As we know, 2025 is the year of agents. Much has been said about relationships with AI agents as the new moat, but the big platforms of tomorrow will be what I call trusted recommenders. And Signal, she's quote tweeting Signal, says, the next generation of companies will be full stack, vertically integrated from content creation to software delivery.
Speaker 1:This is the ultimate play for customer loyalty, engagement, and retention. It aligns. Something something.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Anne is saying, I just pulled it up because it's actually a thread. Doesn't seem like we got it. AI changes the strategic modes, revenue, and profit generation of Internet companies. Intimate AI meets human relationships via trusted AI agents will emerge across many consumer verticals and apps.
Speaker 2:I just would say, like, this is the obviously, the most exciting time to be a consumer investor
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In a really long time because many of the biggest outcomes in venture are consumer, like, like Coinbase Yeah. Chime, things like that. And so, you know, perplexity valued at almost $10,000,000,000. Yeah. They're very agentic in many ways.
Speaker 2:Like, the browser company, a lot of their new stuff is more focused on that. Yeah. And so her her theory here is that, AI agents will become effectively like recommenders. So, So, like, recommending actions, recommending products and purchasing decisions, you know, helping you develop, habits. You could have styling apps.
Speaker 2:We saw this launch last week. There's gonna be everything from agent, agentic relationships for consumer fintech that's, like, recommending you the right mortgages. Right? So you're not going and just googling. You're, like, in an app being like, hey.
Speaker 2:I wanna get a mortgage.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Everybody was talking about building something that was, look at everything in your credit card statement and help you understand which credit cards you should be using for what. Should you switch to a different credit card? That type of stuff. All that makes ton of sense.
Speaker 2:All the clients are everywhere. Yeah. And and Gary Tan in in the comments tagged, happenstance, which is, I believe it's, yeah, it's a YC company that's basically helping you find connections within your network and get intros and stuff like that. So I would say this is probably the most exciting time to be a consumer investor. You shouldn't even call yourself a consumer AI investor just because every AI is gonna impact everything.
Speaker 2:Yep. So shout out to Anne. Thank you for the thread. They make these shows possible.
Speaker 1:That's great. Let's do a promoted post.
Speaker 2:Promoted post from Cy Sac. Cy says looking for someone who knows the ins and outs of CAD and PLM while all while also really enjoys teaching, training, and enabling other engineers. The job will help up level and accelerate the 1,000 plus hardware engineers here at Anduril Tech role in the thread. So Sy is over at Anduril, and this looks like a really cool opportunity for somebody who likes teaching other people and, upskilling their peers. So, go send a note to Sy, over at Anduril and check it out.
Speaker 1:That's great. Let's do a bucket poll. We got Antonio Garcia Martinez who says trust fund kid in SF LARPing as a VC is such a type. And Jonathan says, lp equals loving parent.
Speaker 2:Loving parent.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:There are I I do think it's I do, you know, we are pro nepotism. Yep. But we're generally pro helping people. Yep. So if you have children, family, friends that you wanna help, help them, and then also help a bunch of random strangers.
Speaker 2:And I think that's the great part about tech is there's, you know, you know, to use a random example, somebody like Vinay. Right? Yeah. He if he has a family member
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Who is, you know, wanting starting a new start up
Speaker 1:them up with a fund.
Speaker 2:Set them up with a you know, you know, invest in their company. Yeah. But he's also gonna help somebody who he doesn't know. Right? And that's the beauty of tech.
Speaker 2:So if you, wanna get into venture investing and you have some loving parents Yep. Make them your LPs.
Speaker 1:Also, I mean, a 1000000 times better than LARPing as a philanthropist nonprofit person.
Speaker 2:Just Also, way cooler. I mean, we we could do a whole episode of, like, how we wanna, you know, how we wanna approach finance with, like, our kids. Sure. But I do think it's cooler to, you know, invest in your child's fund. Like, if I if if my daughter wants to go on a venture, say, cool.
Speaker 2:Here's a $10,000,000 fund, and, you're gonna get management fees, but that's a lot cooler than just, say, giving them a trust fund that they have to
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Also, I mean, like, you you gotta build the track record at some point. The first investments are probably gonna be rough. They're gonna figure all the stuff out.
Speaker 2:And, better to figure out on your parents' dollar. Incinerate your family's capital.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, not that bad. I mean, with if you're in SF, a lot of ways to return the return the fund if you get lucky or or in the right group.
Speaker 2:All it takes is 1.
Speaker 1:All it takes is 1.
Speaker 2:Many many solo GPs quit right before a 100bagger.
Speaker 1:Yep. Exactly. Let's go to Nir Syanne, friend of the show. She says, I've never met a self made billionaire who hasn't drank Diet Coke. Love this.
Speaker 2:Great post. And We gotta do a whole deep dive on Diet Coke. We can maybe do, like, Diet Coke episodes where it's every new thousand listeners. Should be
Speaker 1:drinking Diet Coke.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Mix it in.
Speaker 1:We got it. So I realized why Diet Coke is so powerful and why it uniquely helps billionaires more than just the average person that just goes and gets the Diet Coke from, you know, McDonald's.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And here's why. So diet Coke has about, I believe, 30 to 50 milligrams of caffeine.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so it's a very low dose. It's not like a Celsius. It's not gonna take you to the moon for 2 hours, and then you're gonna crash. But if you're a billionaire, you will have someone bringing you Diet Coke constantly throughout the day. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you will have a fridge with Diet Coke all the time. And when you get in your chauffeured car, there will be a Diet Coke waiting for you. That's cold.
Speaker 2:D e r.
Speaker 1:There will be coke on board. Whereas, if you're just living a normal life, you might have a few cokes throughout the day. The billionaire's coke diet coke habit the billionaire's coke habit is is constant stimulation right at that 30 milligram level.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's so good because think about it. So 300 milligrams of caffeine right at once for a lot of people doesn't feel that great.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You're jittery. 300 spread throughout 10 hours feels fantastic.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Exactly. So it's basically the extended release version of caffeine. Yeah. And so there's been a little bit of a horse race in the energy drink category to get more and more higher doses of caffeine.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But maybe the secret to true outperformance. That's why I like the Yerba Mate because it's a 100.
Speaker 2:Ben.
Speaker 1:And so you can drink a couple of those.
Speaker 2:Could I could we get a couple of those?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Let's get a couple more caffeine beverages on the set. We're we're thirsty. I'm I'm genuinely thirsty.
Speaker 1:I need some more caffeine. I can feel myself dropping. I wish I had 5 diet Cokes in front of me. Yeah. But but but I do think that there is something specifically powerful
Speaker 2:about on a diet Coke.
Speaker 1:That's probably terrible with the with the carbonation. Carbonation. It's so bad. Brutal.
Speaker 2:Oh. Go out to is is Thank you. Thank you, Ben.
Speaker 1:And so, so good. And and so there is something very specific about the continuous nature of consuming diet Coke that you see Elon and other billionaires do. Yeah. And that's and that's actually harder to do. It's not just a cost thing because you can go to Costco and get a whole flat of diet Coke.
Speaker 1:It's like you have to rearrange your entire lifestyle to have cold diet Coke available to you all day long. But if you do that, you will have the perfect level of caffeinated blood in in the brain the whole day. So Okay. I I love that. One more thing
Speaker 2:on, on Nir.
Speaker 1:Oh, I got it.
Speaker 2:So Near says we are very excited to release our LLM rapper hopefully this month. I think it will be the most novel and interesting interaction normal people have had with l m LLMs so far by a favor of 10. Remember when the iPhone was new and there were all those app guys and they just made an app and somehow pulled in 1,000,000 of dollars with no effort? Well, guess what? The days are back, and all it takes is a good rapper.
Speaker 1:That's so sick.
Speaker 2:Claude and I call it the art of the rap.
Speaker 1:That's so sick.
Speaker 2:MiR has a new, app
Speaker 1:coming out. Go follow.
Speaker 2:If
Speaker 1:there's a if there's a wait list, get on it.
Speaker 2:We wanna see where we're You know you know, they also had, the NVIDIA fund that was just a 10 year duration fund that just buy NVIDIA.
Speaker 1:Okay. Oh, yeah. That's right. It's up. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Obviously.
Speaker 2:Percent crushing it.
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 2:But you can't sell for 10 years. Okay. You just have to hold it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's good. So very cool. But, looking forward to this. Here's a big Claude enthusiast, so I'm excited to see, what the app is.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is a controversial one. We don't normally talk politics, but Riva is a friend, so we gotta do it. Riva says
Speaker 2:you do not I don't think this is politics.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:This is facts.
Speaker 1:Facts. Okay. Here's some facts.
Speaker 2:Around policy.
Speaker 1:Here are some facts for you.
Speaker 2:Impacts business owners, capital allocators.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And a lot of techies in California.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You do not hate California's government enough. California has the highest poverty rate at 13.2% of any state despite being the 4th largest economy in the world. This poverty, despite the state having an annual budget of 297,000,000,000, the most significant state budget in the United States. That poverty, despite the highest spending on public welfare programs in the United States, under, just under a 100,000,000,000 annually. All of its failures despite a progressive income tax system of up to 13.3% and a state sales tax rate of 7.25%, both the highest rates in the nation.
Speaker 1:Despite all those taxes, California ranks 48th for road conditions with 44% of roads rated in poor condition. Despite all those taxes, California rates, despite all those taxes, California education ranks below average in national assessments for math and reading proficiency. Despite all those taxes, California's violent crime rate has risen by 16% since 2019, while most of the nation has seen rates declining. Despite all that money, upgrades to state grid infrastructure have been slow to scale and have not hit stated annual targets. California's failures are endless, far beyond the fires.
Speaker 1:Do your own research and stop voting for this lunacy. Very sad.
Speaker 2:So so growing up in the Bay Area and then living in LA as an adult Yep. I you don't even have to know those facts specifically to have experienced them. Yep. Like, if you think of the wealth creation and the prosperity in many ways for the last 2 decades and the current state of things on the ground when you just drive around LA. Like, I I joke that the g Wagon is so popular in LA because the roads are so bad Yeah.
Speaker 2:That you need You wanna Yes. You need. 4 wheel drive with, like, good clearance Yeah. Because you're driving around, and it's just constant. And it's just and it's just pure, you know, government rot and incompetence.
Speaker 2:Right? It's not a budgetary issue for any of these things. Yep. The, LA spends a $1,000,000,000 the the city of LA spends a 1,000,000,000 it's not even the county. The city of LA spends a $1,000,000,000 a year on the homelessness issue.
Speaker 2:And the irony of the budget last year was that $500,000,000 of it didn't even get spent. They were trying to spend because they just failed to actually put it to work. So we had the budget. The homelessness issue is still obviously terrible, and they just couldn't even put the money to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I always think about If
Speaker 2:you're a VC, your LPs would be like, sorry, dude. You you clearly can't get into any deals. Like, you're done.
Speaker 1:I always think about the, like, the government stuff. I mean, people always say, you know, like, do we need more budget or less budget? And it always sounds like, oh, yeah. If we just had more money to solve this problem, it'd be better. And I think about it like the metaphor is imagine, like, one of those giant trash cans, and you're trying to throw, you know, a crumpled up ball of paper into the trash can.
Speaker 1:And and it's like, yeah, if if my tax dollar goes in the big bucket, it's in the pool, but I really need to get it into a solo cup inside the trash can in order to actually have an impact with that.
Speaker 2:Good way to kinda put this in, you know, a way that the brothers will be able to understand
Speaker 1:And so
Speaker 2:crushed up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like, you, you know, you throw your you throw your dollar in the big trash can. There's a chance that it could go in the solo cup and actually solve the problem and actually repair a road.
Speaker 1:But 90% of the time, it's just gonna get stolen
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And just get burnt or spent on something ridiculous. And you see that with the with the California high speed rail and the fire stuff and just everything.
Speaker 2:It's just like sing.
Speaker 1:They're not actually outcome driven, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I saw a whole thread as well that was basically arguing that our inability to put out these fires in densely populated areas is just a symptom of societal collapse. Yep. People have this idea of collapse as being these sort of apocalyptic scenarios, but just the nature of having fires rip through highly residential areas and have the fire hydrants not work is a there is another video of a of a helicopter just, like, dropping a bunch of, fire retardant on water on just, like, on a person.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's like, you
Speaker 2:know, that's just, like, a a fair mistake. Yeah. But it's, but, yeah, this this goes back to the to the Peter article that we wrote. Like, let's stop rehashing, you know, the past and doing land acknowledgments for stuff that happened 200 years ago, and let's focus on, you know, the next 100 years.
Speaker 1:Right? And how
Speaker 2:do we make the whole world better for everyone?
Speaker 1:Yep. I do have a a bit of, like, a insensitive hot take about the fires, but it's more of like a thought experiment. So I've always thought that, one underrated reason to support the second amendment is not like, if you talk to the second amendment people, they'd be like, you need the guns to hunt. I should be able to hunt. Then they say home defense.
Speaker 1:And then the last thing they say is, like, it's a backstop against the tyrannical government. Yeah. So if the feds come, you can defend your territory if it's truly a tyrannical government. But I've always thought that maybe, like, there's a better argument around, like, if America is invaded, it would be a complete bloodbath because we'd have the best militias and the insurgency would be insane. Like Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just just taking you know, imagine imagine the battle of Dallas. Like, if if, like, Russia or China, like, lands in Texas and is like, we're gonna try and take over Texas. It's like, they're gonna have to deal with the military, of course. But then every single house that they go to is, like, filled to the gills with guns. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so my my thought experiment was, like, should like, obviously, everyone evacuated, and that was what the government recommended when the fire started. And that's what was rational, and that's what we did. So I'm not saying that people shouldn't have evacuated. But just in terms of actual firefighting strategy, is there a world where everyone stays or at least all the able-bodied men stay and just turn on all the hoses at their houses and just hose down every little ember that goes
Speaker 2:my neighborhood just we have
Speaker 1:our own, like Everyone, it's like firefight your own house as long as you possibly can. Then the firefighters show up, and they do what they can and fight the brush interface. Yeah. But everyone's responsible for, like, staying as long as possible and get the women and children out with the priceless valuables and the pictures and stuff. But the able-bodied men stay and hose everything down.
Speaker 1:And if they have a fire extinguisher, you just try and put it on the ember when it comes down. There's a tree. Just do your best. And if everyone's there, it makes it a firefighting. Would that actually work, or is that just a complete fool's errand?
Speaker 1:Am I an idiot? I don't know.
Speaker 2:No. I think it it's high risk and that there would be a higher loss of human life.
Speaker 1:Totally. Because someone's getting a tree fall
Speaker 2:in them or something. Yeah. It would generally work. I mean, so
Speaker 1:But that's a cultural thing. Like like like, we don't think about a society. Like, we think, like, evacuate. You know? Which is good because, like, the houses can be rebuilt, and the death toll was fortunately very low.
Speaker 1:It feels like a 9:11 event, but Yeah.
Speaker 2:There was
Speaker 1:so low.
Speaker 2:Somebody was telling us in a group chat earlier that a friend of theirs stayed at their house in Sunset Mesa, which is, like, between the Palisades and Malibu and just fought and fought and fought in every single house
Speaker 1:Burned. Around them and burned
Speaker 2:down, but they saved theirs. Wow. Which is almost like, what's even the point? Like, you wanna live in the rubble of your neighborhood for 3 years, it's, like, very toxic too.
Speaker 1:Oh, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, my neighborhood has a volunteer fire brigade, and they're they train, you know, like, kind of frequently. There's group of
Speaker 1:of I would like to get that going in my neighborhood. Just, like, little bit of a plan. A, what can we do?
Speaker 2:I walk through with my neighbor being like he he's like Yeah. This is where the hoses are if I'm not here. Yeah. You know?
Speaker 1:Everyone in the neighborhood, here's how you clear brush in your own backyard, then here's how you fireproof your house a little bit more.
Speaker 2:My my neighborhood uses goats to clear brush above in the land above our neighborhood.
Speaker 1:I was saying that
Speaker 2:bring in, like, literally, like, 500 goats Yep. Which is super cool for
Speaker 1:the
Speaker 2:kids because they get to see, like Yeah. 500 goats just milling about eating grass.
Speaker 1:There's gonna be a ton of regulations about, oh, we can't get rid of the brush because it's natural, and it's hurting the brush species or whatever. And I'm like, I just wanna throw goats loose
Speaker 2:everywhere. We need I understand. We need
Speaker 1:an we
Speaker 2:need to air drop
Speaker 1:Millions of goats.
Speaker 2:Air drop millions of goats into the Santa Monica Mountains. Yeah. And I want to be I would prefer that and the hearing stories of, oh, a goat chewed through the my f forty tire. You know? Yeah.
Speaker 1:I want the fattest mountain lions. Just just just obese mountain lions from eating all the goats, but they just can't they just get their fill, and they just keep eating because there's just so many goats eating the brush, and just turn them loose and just stop stop asking, for permission. Just do it. Release the goats. Let's go on to this next one.
Speaker 1:This is more positive. We can move on from the depressing California wildfires, and we go to Nicole Whiskoff who says, the at tech bros pod will be one of the top 3 podcasts in tech by the end of the year. Let's go. Thank you, Nicole. Boom.
Speaker 2:And I commented to Nicole because I said roughly 5% of our show is just covering Nicole's post. Yeah. So if if if she's correct post
Speaker 1:her, she's almost at a 100 k followers.
Speaker 2:If she's correct, it's it's becomes a huge part of her W Ventures platform.
Speaker 1:Totally. Right?
Speaker 2:Where where she can just count on few times a week. I'm getting mentioned. My my post in front of, you know, the the entire, you know, tech world. Community. Printed.
Speaker 2:Printed is a key thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's great.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, love, brother Nicole.
Speaker 1:What are your top 3? I I was thinking about a new segment called gun to your head where I ask you a tough question, and we pull out a gun.
Speaker 2:I need some squirt guns that look like a box. Squirt guns would be good.
Speaker 1:And, and it's like, right now, what's the last founders episode you listened to? Tell me. I'm yeah. I I haven't listened to a few in a couple weeks.
Speaker 2:This center
Speaker 1:is gonna be mad at me.
Speaker 2:Relisten to Dyson.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good.
Speaker 2:But yeah. So so we also
Speaker 1:Top 3. I would love to be up there with Invest Like the Best, Founders Podcast, Technology Brothers.
Speaker 2:Well, happily take a 3rd a
Speaker 1:3rd spot. Lineup. Yeah. But, I mean, there's some stiff competition out there. Dworkesh is on fire, obviously.
Speaker 1:That's about it.
Speaker 2:All in all in is in a crisis, but, they'll figure it out. Anyways, private equity company
Speaker 1:buys the show and turns
Speaker 2:Thank you for the support.
Speaker 1:We talked about that. Did you post this, Mark Andreessen saying, yes. I read it twice. His ID says his name is climate change.
Speaker 2:I just thought it was a good
Speaker 1:shit. Arsonist?
Speaker 2:This is the arsonist that got arrested at at the Kenneth fire, which sparked up yesterday around Calabasas and and in in basically 2 hours went from 0 to 1,000 of acres.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And everybody was like, how does this make sense? It was so far away from the Palisades fire and and upwind. It just didn't make any sense. Turns out arsonist. And, yeah, yeah, of course, Bernie Sanders is out there saying, like, this is all about climate change, which is at this point, it's I find it, you know, we don't talk about politics on this podcast, but I find it deeply offensive that Bernie in Vermont wants to to post and say that that this is all about climate change
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:When it clearly is there's a bunch of policy and political failures that that and just a lack of you know, new Newsom cares more about looking good in a crisis than preventing the crisis in the 1st place.
Speaker 1:Should go to Greenland. Climate is gonna be beachfront property. It's gonna be the new Miami. Like, your After climate change wreaks havoc.
Speaker 2:Miami. We're gonna have to go.
Speaker 1:In Greenland, mountain in Alaska, water world happens
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're chilling.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We won't Greenland will really have been taken once the the mega mega VCs are setting up offices there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We gotta go to Greenland. It seems cool. Let's, let let's stay on Greenland. Go to, Bojan.
Speaker 1:He says, Greenland is easy. Time to play on the hard mode and post say, a screenshot of the world, and it's just Egypt.
Speaker 2:Now he's highlighting the Middle East.
Speaker 1:It's the entire Middle East. From Iran to Saudi Arabia, we had a Qatar, Dubai. Turkey, I think is in here. Yeah. That would be controversial.
Speaker 1:I I'm I'm surprised this has not gotten some more blowback because Did
Speaker 2:we not already sensitively. Attempt that for 20 years?
Speaker 1:We did, in fact, attempt that for 20 years unsuccessfully.
Speaker 2:Didn't go super well.
Speaker 1:Although, wasn't Kushner talking about more of a realignment between Israel and Saudi Arabia and some of the other countries? I mean
Speaker 2:We don't talk about politics. There's no other things that are happening. Yeah. Effort of the prior the last admin. Anyways
Speaker 1:So it's happening. Well, let's go to crypto.
Speaker 2:Literally
Speaker 1:says, I predicted the Thorchain collapse in 2023 when they launched their lending feature, and it's happening now. The lesson people never seem to learn is any system in crypto that can fail will fail. When you borrowed on Thorchain, they would sell your BTC collateral for their own token, Rune. If you repaid your loan, they would need to sell Rune for BTC to give you back your collateral. But this leads to a death spiral opportunity as decrease in Rune price leads to more people wanting to get their BTC back from Thorchain, which leads to more Rune being sold, which leads to a decrease in Rune price, and so on.
Speaker 1:This is exactly what's happening. People thought Thorchain was a self custodial secure protocol, whereas it was the exact opposite. In fact, the founder today tried to shut down the app. There's only one secure option to borrow against your BTC, lava xyz. It's simple, and there's no Ponzinomics involved.
Speaker 1:All we've done is embed the logic for a standard over secured loan into a smart contract, so you can borrow without bridging or taking on external risks. Unfortunately, this will be a multibillion dollar failure comparable to what we saw in 2022. This was predictable too. It's basically what happened with Terra Luna happening again. Kudos to sunny a ninety seven for jamming with me about this in early 2024.
Speaker 1:Rough for anyone in Rune or Thorchain. I've heard about this chain. I've never bought it or really dug dug in, but you weren't into it. Yeah. Rune Thorchain.
Speaker 2:Is Rune involved with that?
Speaker 1:No. No. No. It's not r o o n. It's r u n e.
Speaker 1:Very funny, though. But, he's moonlighting crazy. There there was some there there was some non account that was, promoting this chain for a long time, and people really seem to like that guy. And so I think it got a decent amount of pump and excitement and investment, but, it seems like it's collapsed.
Speaker 2:Pump like our back workout this morning?
Speaker 1:Yeah. That was a good one.
Speaker 2:Spamming spamming delts.
Speaker 1:Spamming delts. Let's go to a promoted post.
Speaker 2:Let's see what we got here. I gotta jump in. We We haven't talked about DuPont Registry enough. This episode, this thing isn't is looks pretty fantastic. It's a one of 1 custom 1994 Porsche 911 Oh,
Speaker 1:we're in dangerous territory. TJ is gonna just throw my ass.
Speaker 2:TJ is gonna be pissed about this one, but it is just
Speaker 1:this thing. Mod?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a resto
Speaker 1:Oh, no.
Speaker 2:But the speedster is just so such a such a beautiful concept. And and I think resto mods are great for non car guys that wanna larp as car guys. Okay. They're like, look at my look at my restomod. Yep.
Speaker 2:I'm very much a purist. I'm not a Bravas guy.
Speaker 1:I'm not
Speaker 2:a you know? The the closest I'll get to to an aftermarket is AMG. Right? Yeah. Which used to be an aftermarket, you know, offshoot.
Speaker 1:I thought you were going to West Coast Customs.
Speaker 2:And, Yeah. But that's for the minivan.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and and those and the engine swap on your 40.
Speaker 2:That's for
Speaker 1:and The v twelve
Speaker 2:that's for my f 40 engine Yeah. My minivan.
Speaker 1:The v 12 f 40 is grail.
Speaker 2:But yeah. This thing I I I love the Speedster. I think it's a underrated car, and, this thing's priced at only 589 $1,000. Practically giving it away. Practically giving it away.
Speaker 2:I mean, you could buy a house in in, like, someplace like Dallas or you could buy this.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:You can't drive a house. You can't go on the TB 500 in a house. Yeah. You can do it in this Evo Max, 911 Spider. So, enjoy.
Speaker 2:Thank you to DuPont Registry, for, you know, even sharing this in the first place.
Speaker 1:Bucket pull time. We got one. Samuel says they should rebuild LA to look like Tokyo. Remove what remains of the brush, chop down these fire prone forests, and deck the place out in skyscrapers with an actual working public transit system. It's a joke post, but it's super true.
Speaker 1:Super, super true. A big part of what's driving these crazy fires is what's called living at the wilderness interface. So this is where I live. I literally live up against a mountain that if you catch a fire, I'm fucked. But, it's amazing because you can just go out your backyard and go hiking, and and there's wild animals, and you see deer and bears and possums and cougars and all sorts of cool stuff.
Speaker 1:And it's like wet wet living
Speaker 2:in the forest. Of, like, it's very relaxing.
Speaker 1:Like, I mean,
Speaker 2:I have this I can go out of my backyard, walk up the hill, and go straight onto
Speaker 1:a trail. A little bit of the problem, I think, is that we wind up building out not because people necessarily wanna live near the wilderness interface, more just that
Speaker 2:yeah. But but But that's a love of bears.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Which which we're working on domesticating. But it's more that, the housing is expensive.
Speaker 1:There's nowhere else to build, and so you just build up until the mountains. And then you're building, like, gridded out dense houses, all out of wood that just go up in one after another, and that's exactly what's happened. Whereas if you alleviate the housing pressure by building taller buildings in the core downtown and surrounding area, well, then you don't need to be as dense once you get up into the mountains, and that leads to less fire risk.
Speaker 2:I just don't know. I I I think that you could put up 40 new skyscrapers in LA, and there would still
Speaker 1:be 40. I'm talking 4000. 40,000. Like, I'm talking about, like, you you walk around New York, every building is 50 stories tall. That's, like, the average building.
Speaker 1:You just look up. And even in and even in a place like
Speaker 2:New York, they're still using every extra square inch of the entire place. So I just think that would still we'd still have the same issue. We just have new skyscrapers. I'm not opposed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. But I don't know.
Speaker 2:I would still wanna live where I live even if there was
Speaker 1:True. But, I would like I I really, really do hope that this leads to a relaxing of building regulations and Yeah. More aggressive permitting because, I mean, the permitting office is is a beast. We talked about it about my nightmare with, getting some stuff permitted, but there's just, it is crazy that that we can all agree that some permitting rules make sense. That Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You don't necessarily if you're in some residential area, you don't necessarily want a skyscraper going up next to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Warren Buffett would be pissed if he built a literal castle wall around his entire
Speaker 1:But I respect it. Who knows?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Depends on until he hears the the the that engine roar, the v 12. You know?
Speaker 2:The Jesco.
Speaker 1:Then he's like, okay. That's a w 16. I hear the Bugatti firing up. The Tourbillon's going or, you know, the Chiron's got a w 16. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The Tourbillon has a v16. 16. That's an insane engine. And so you he hears the Tourbillon. He's gonna be like, respect.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The castle wall. I will I will I will deal with the castle wall. But, it is crazy that that, you know, we can all agree that there should be rules around what you can build. The problem is is that there's this crazy paper based, you know, analog workflow to actually getting things approved where you have to send in, basically, a PDF of your plan.
Speaker 1:It has to get printed out, reviewed by a human. It takes a really long time. Like, there should be a plug in literally in CAD where as you're designing, it just tells you you're in violation of this code. And then and then you can just design it, design it, design it. And once the thing goes green and everything is approved and you're not violating any code, you have no code violations, you just hit print and just go do it.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And and it's just like, okay. It's automatically approved.
Speaker 2:Symptom of of of the bloat of this is why deregulation makes sense. Yeah. It's because you get so many laws and that build up and build up and build up that it becomes illegal to do anything.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And And so if the if the laws hold over the next few years, I mean, the palaces is gonna be empty for a decade. Like, it's just gonna take forever to rebuild anything. But, hopefully, this is the opportunity to get a new mayor in, new team, doge it, kick a bunch of people out Recall that. Completely change the rules.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That would be great. Anyway, should we do this power bottom dad post? Update from Oregon, 1,000 year empire, and he's, posting a screenshot. A massive new lithium discovery on the border between Oregon and Nevada could supercharge the country's white gold rush.
Speaker 1:It is estimated that the new newly discovered reserves under the ancient McDermott Caldera holds a whopping 40,000,000 ton metric tons of lithium. The scale of the deposit is extraordinary, dwarfing other reserves worldwide. Just last year, lithium producers were thrilled to find a reserve of 4,000,000 metric tons of lithium in the Smackover formation, a geologic formation that spans the width
Speaker 2:of go.
Speaker 1:The, the width of Arkansas, next to the McDermott caldera that that now seems a paltry sum. China alone refined 60% of the world's lithium not for long. So, yeah, he's saying 1,000 year empire with a lot of American flags. I guess we just found a ton of lithium. I I didn't hear this story.
Speaker 1:I I completely missed this.
Speaker 2:There's this graphic of, you know, oh, we're using this natural resource Yeah. Yeah. And we're running out of it. And then America just finds, like, you know, 10 lifetimes worth of Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just, like, continues. Yeah. Yeah. Happened with with oil. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, it's beautiful. We're blessed.
Speaker 1:It always was funny how people refuse to admit that there is a resource bottleneck around solar panels. Like Yeah. Like, eventually, you're gonna dig up all the raw materials for solar panels too, and you will run out. But I think it's just, like, like, way more than oil, so it makes sense.
Speaker 2:This is what this is like Peter Peter Zion Zion will often, start listening to him, and you're you're like, this guy's goated.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, it's very nice to listen to. He can talk about any subject. And then you start he starts talking about stuff that you know about, and then you're like, wait. Like, this guy is just, like, spewing
Speaker 1:That's the Gell Mann amnesia we're
Speaker 2:talking about. But, he what what his his, you know, talks and writing on the US, and how blessed we are from a natural resource standpoint is is is timeless. So, I gotta Okay. Do, like, one more. I gotta get on with my, chiropractor.
Speaker 2:He's ever from the East Coast Okay. Visiting.
Speaker 1:Stu Tanae. He says, simple but neat example of a valuable AI feature that runs on device, Tinder's AI photo finder. Leveraging our vast dataset spanning 100 of millions of Tinder profiles, and billions of user interactions, we train a proprietary new AI model to sift through your camera roll in seconds and identify the photos most likely to succeed on the app. Importantly, we designed this system to run entirely on your device, so no images leave your phone unless you choose. This allows us to upload the highest standards of privacy and transparency.
Speaker 1:That's cool. That's good. Hopefully, it helps people meet each other, solve the fertility crisis a little bit. But, Tinder's kinda lost the plot on, like, actually getting people together for the long term, haven't they? It seems like it's just like a casual dating app.
Speaker 1:But I don't know. I'm
Speaker 2:Not a great not a great brand. Not a great not a great brand at this point. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I'm sure something
Speaker 2:people have a lot of visibility into the apps right now because our we we have a group chat. Yeah. And no we had one single person in it, and then they just got in a relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, there
Speaker 2:So it's like, how are you gonna and they're anti apps.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There is an arc where, like, even if you're the first person to get married in your friend group, like, usually, it's like, oh, you got some single people. Like, let me swipe for you.
Speaker 1:Let me see who you're talking to. Like, I'll be the judge for you. People like, a lot of girls do this at, like, you know, their their girls' nights. But, but, you know, that is completely gone.
Speaker 2:Why don't why don't you man explain girls' nights? Yeah. Yeah. Delegated swiping is what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's it. Delegated swiping.
Speaker 2:I do think some somebody messaged me, and they were like, I think there's an opportunity to do a dedicated swiping app where you never you can't swipe for yourself.
Speaker 1:It's only friends can. Yeah. That's kinda cool. It'd be kind of a gamified version.
Speaker 2:Little gimmick. You might be able to get your first million users.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Who knows? I mean, the the the the gimmicks were powerful in the dating app realm because there was the the Bumble had a gimmick, which was the only the woman could, message first. Then Hinge had a gimmick, which was you had it had to be, like, a second degree connection on Facebook. So you had, like, a mutual friend.
Speaker 1:Then the latter, remember or was it the league? Was, like, you had to verify that you made over a 100 k. And then there was Raya, which was, like, you had to be a celebrity, basically.
Speaker 2:It's such a funny number, which is really funny.
Speaker 1:It is. Yeah. It is a funny number. It's like, not that.
Speaker 2:Because because the the girls that are really trying to find somebody that's, like, legitimately wealthy Yeah. Like, would be so disoriented to get on their wife. And they they meet the love of their life, and they're like, wait. You're on the league, but, like, you make, like, $8 a month.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Wait. Why is this a dentist in Ohio on here?
Speaker 2:A dentist?
Speaker 1:This is HVAC consultant.
Speaker 2:Step aide. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, like, there there's so much inflation. Like, a 100 k is like everyone now. Well, anyway, promoted post.
Speaker 2:We gotta, we're gonna we're gonna end the show after this. Okay. Sean Frank, dear friend, Sean's fire Sean's house was at risk of a fire. Still reaching out to me, checking in on me. Great dude.
Speaker 2:Yep. But he is doing a public service here, which he says he's giving away the blueprint for 2025 k. Which he says, my tips for better life in 2025. Buy a effing Ridge Wallet. I'm serious, man.
Speaker 2:You have seen our ads for a decade at this point. What? You don't think you deserve a nice premium treat? You don't like carbon fiber or sick titanium wallets that that can expand to fit 1 to 12 cards? I think you do.
Speaker 2:I love you and believe in you. Make this year your year by giving me 95 to a $195. You can even use code sean@ridge.com for a slight discount. So There we go. And the thing that we love about Ridge more than anything, even more than Sean and more than the design of their, you know, their products, is just their profitability.
Speaker 1:I mean Yeah.
Speaker 2:That this company prints cash, which is fitting Yeah. For a wallet company.
Speaker 1:And their dedication to performance ads. When you're carrying a rich wallet Honor
Speaker 2:is the top performance marketer Yeah. Of the last decade. Yeah. And these 2 guys are selling more wallets than pretty much anyone else on earth. So
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Anyways A lot of a lot of
Speaker 1:buying a specific consumer item is about aligning yourself with the brand and the team behind that brand.
Speaker 2:You don't wanna support a company that's underperforming for
Speaker 1:the future. If you if you see someone in a model 3 at a at, you know, in in LA, you know that they bought that car because they support Elon. They believe everything he believes, and they're politically aligned with Elon. And you can go up to them and say
Speaker 2:Not everyone. Some of the some of them have a bumper sticker that say, like, I don't like the big man.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But some of them are doing that, sarcastically, so you should still go up to them and say, I know why you bought this car. You're a big Elon fan. I get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They love that.
Speaker 2:I'll see you in the tunnel. Yeah. Tell them that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They love that. And but but it's the same thing with Ridge. You pull out a Ridge Wallet. Everyone knows you take performance ads seriously. So go buy a Ridge Wallet.
Speaker 1:Tell them the technology brothers sent you.
Speaker 2:Show by juggling and
Speaker 1:DM Sean. Use his code, but DM him and say we sent you.
Speaker 2:And I will say I will not stop juggling until everyone listening to this
Speaker 1:Subscribes.
Speaker 2:Subscribes and gives us 5 stars.
Speaker 1:Let's do it.
Speaker 2:And gets their entire group chats to give us 5 stars.
Speaker 1:It's great. Thanks for watching.
Speaker 2:Thank you.