How to Spend a Trillion Dollars, Some Personnel News, Absolute Dawgs, Build that Ego
Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. Today, we are covering Max Meyer's latest edition of Arena Magazine. You've heard us talk about it before. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of, literature that you can buy, quarterly magazine from Max. If you don't know Max, great guy, great follow on x, some great posts, talks about a lot of different things, works with Joe Lonsdale at 8 BC and has started publishing this beautiful magazine all about techno optimism, technology companies, business
JORDI:the moon estate.
JOHN:Everything. He covers tons of stuff, and the and it's just beautifully, beautifully made. You really have to go and and pick one of these up. He has a deal. It's not that expensive.
JOHN:I think it's a $100 a year, $25 a pop. And it's something that you could just have on your coffee table and people could leaf through. And and and it's it's just it's so well. And you know what the best thing about this is? Monetize from day 1.
JOHN:Beautiful ads in the very first edition.
JORDI:That ramp ad in there?
JOHN:Yeah. Fantastic. This ramp ad's great. There's a great levels ad. There's tons of tons of beautiful ads in here, which we love to see.
JOHN:And Yeah.
JORDI:This is just a good example of even if you're monetizing through your users, you should still, you know, directly via subscription still run ads. Right? I wanna see more substacks, paid substacks running ads. Yeah. Right?
JOHN:Exactly. And he said he said something interesting where he's, like, kind of building this community of advertisers. I think 1 third of the tech stack that he uses to build the magazine and run, is is an active advertiser. Yeah. So it's kind of like a one hand washes the other, situation.
JOHN:But there's just a beautiful layout. You can just see that you just don't get this in any other magazine. It's just it's just very, very rare. And it's just so, so fun. So many interesting pieces.
JORDI:It's the same level of I I don't know. When you're when I was a kid, I I subscribed to Popular Science
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:Which, these days is probably, like, popular propaganda. But the same level of excitement that I used to get as a kid getting popular science in the mail, which was just, like, euphoria. Yeah. I get this with Arena now.
JOHN:There there is one I have to take one issue with this. It's printed in in Canada?
JORDI:Some Canada? Where?
JOHN:Yeah. It's some far off place. And so, hopefully, they can clean that up because I don't know what's
JORDI:That actually feels a little off off, but You wouldn't want it to rub off.
JOHN:No. No. No. Definitely not.
JORDI:Put on some gloves.
JOHN:But, but a ton of a ton of interesting articles in this edition. They have a whole deep dive on, Rahul, who you might know as Legma. Ligma. Yes. The ballad of Rahul Ligma, Rahul Solonwan Solonwankar, and how he built his company.
JOHN:And it goes through his prank at x, formerly Twitter, outside with the box, one of the greatest moments in tech history.
JORDI:The reaction time on that is is incredible, and only a a real poster could have done that. Because oftentimes when a news breaks Yep. You have 20, 30 minutes to get a banger out.
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:And he didn't even just get a banger. He get physically got there with the box.
JOHN:I had Jimmy in the night before this happened. Yeah. And he was not playing he wasn't talking.
JORDI:No. It was up in the moment.
JOHN:Woke up and just did.
JORDI:Just like most most posts are are created in the moment. Right.
JOHN:And the acting, like, you can see it on his face that he's just, like, so sad that he got fired. It's so funny. And there there was a time when that when, like, these types there's a whole movie about this, the it's called, like, the the other guys or something where this this this comedy troop basically figured out how they could go on the BBC and they would and they would act like they were oil executives and be like, yes. We're really sorry for what we did. We're giving away $10,000,000,000 and the stock would drop and and they would get sued.
JOHN:They didn't have any money because they're just trolls. And it was, like, amazing. And this was like that. This was, like, that level. Well,
JORDI:the the funny thing is I remember that happening, and I and I knew Daniel. Like, I'd I'd met up with him. I'd actually, funny enough, met up with him at Erewhon once. And so watching that unfold live, I was like, wait. This is this is, like, obviously not real.
JORDI:But even a large part of x, like, didn't know that it was a prank. Yeah. Everybody was pranked at once, and it took, like, a while for people to be like, wait. Wait. Wait.
JORDI:Wait. Wait. These are posters.
JOHN:These are not He was texting me as, like, as the day went on, kind of talking about, like, hey. All these, journalists are, like, hitting me up now to, like, tell my story. We were like, do not say anything. Just, like, let the meme live. You crushed it.
JOHN:And it just led to all these incredible meetings. I mean, here's a picture of him with Jensen Huang. Here's a picture of him with Elon Musk.
JORDI:It's amazing because they both parlayed that into building, like, very unique, very interesting businesses. Yeah. Exactly. Totally. I mean, they didn't get hooked
JOHN:on the stunts. They didn't find content creators, but, but it's just fantastic. And, I mean, there's a bunch of other cool articles in here. There's one I mean, look at this. There and back again celebrating the
JORDI:The catch.
JOHN:SpaceX catch. The great option.
JORDI:Catch of all time.
JOHN:Fantastic. Just so so nice to see this in print. Then a beautiful ad for intercom. Nice. And some questions about
JORDI:Yeah. I I guess the question is, like, if you're running a scale up or even an early stage company, why are you not advertising in this Seriously. Right now? Because it's such a way to signal, to the tech elite that you get it and that you're cool Yeah. Even if your brand isn't even that cool by itself.
JOHN:Yeah. And it's a really it's a really lovely tour of, like, the new generation of tech founders. Like, Nora Siddiqui is in here for Orchid Health, and and and you'll see her and other people mentioned in this in this article also in, like, the Jason Carmen s 3 video series. But then now this lives in, like, the print world as well. And there's a few different, kind of like it's almost like the media junket when you're doing, like, a a promotion for a movie.
JOHN:You'll go and you'll do, like, Jimmy Kimmel and then Fallon and then Colbert or whatever. And the the the tech version of that is, like, you do Jason Carman s 3. You do you you go on to a cash or you go on to, you know, some other podcast and then you, you know, write an article for Max in Arena.
JORDI:Yeah. If I if I was a series a stage founder right now, I'd be trying to get a feature in this magazine at all at all costs. Because how do you get in front of a more curated, group of of people in tech?
JOHN:Yeah. San Francisco strikes back. And just, like, wonderful layout, wonderful wonderful to to look at. Open Source Defense Capital, mission to Europa. Just beautiful.
JOHN:I love this. I'm I'm excited to read through this more. I just received it in the mail 2 days ago. But we wanted to do a deep dive today on kind of the lead hero piece of this edition. And did you read the did you read the actual, letter from the editor for where Max writes AmericaPunk?
JOHN:The whole thesis of this particular,
JORDI:the first page here.
JOHN:Edition. The second page.
JORDI:Got it.
JOHN:So the first page is is Max introducing the the corporation name, a message from the president of the Intergalactic Media Corp Corporation of America. Very bullish on making humanity multi planetary. But what I found interesting was his article on America punk. Just this idea that that you can wind up and I this really struck a chord with me because his basic thesis is like is like good things are good, but it's sometimes boring to say that. And so he kind of walks through, like, capitalism is good for a bunch of reasons.
JOHN:It's lifted 2,000,000,000 people out of subsistence poverty, and it's the greatest engine for human flourishing since we've captured fire. And people will say, oh, no. That's bad. Going to space will be very expensive. The idea of learning is racist.
JOHN:Western medicine is racist. And so there's these wars between, like, you know, bad things are good, good things are good. But at a certain point, it becomes boring to just say good things are good. It's boring, like, really boring. It's a tautology.
JOHN:It's what your dad believes. And once you admit that good things are good, then you have to spend your time making and defending good things, which is hard because good things are often hard.
JORDI:Well, it's funny because it actually became countercultural to be, like, no. Capitalism is amazing. It did. Right? Like, I feel like, as a 28 year old, I grew up in a school system in which the teachers, which ironically the American public school system, the teachers were saying, like, here's all the issues with capitalism and, like, really fixating on the issues, not talking about the advancements in medicine, education, housing, all these different things that, have allowed for human flourishing.
JOHN:Yeah. And so, Max argues that if, but even if defending good things isn't very interesting, it's still important. And so good things need to be made cool again. America needs to be made punk. America needs America punk.
JOHN:Yep. And so as one of the world's best things, America has a problem. It's currently very boring to defend America. As of now, supporting America means your dad waving a flag on the 4th July, your mom scolding you to be more grateful at dinner. Defending America means a solemn forced flag day singing in elementary school.
JOHN:But if you wanted to defend America in a cool way, how would you go about doing it? And his answer is that you'd celebrate rebelliousness, the spirit that made the country. There's nothing cooler than a rebellion, and that's America punk. And so he wants to separate it from these visions of the future that are, like, steampunk, cyberpunk, atom punk that are too narrow around a particular technology and refocus on the spirit of the American people, which I think is very, very interesting. So grab a flag in a magazine, tell your friends to join the party because if good things are good, then defending good things is better together.
JOHN:And then he says, thanks.
JORDI:Well said.
JOHN:And it's it's just a very yeah. It it it is an interesting thing that that that that, like, techno optimism has become consensus. There's this idea that, you know, everyone is posting like, oh, the next 4 years are gonna be amazing. Unbridled techno capitalism.
JORDI:I mean, that is very much a we are in somewhat of a bubble even though it's it's overlaps with the real world. Yeah. We still need to continue doing it even though it's mainstream with Yeah. Technology now.
JOHN:Yeah. But there's something about, like, when you're when you're on top of the world and you're, you know, just winning and it's very consensus, like, there's nowhere to go but down.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:That's very risky. So I think he's he's right to identify that, we need to think deeper about what, like, rah rah technology actually means.
JORDI:Yeah. Which I think is good that he's
JOHN:thinking now instead of
JORDI:Well
JOHN:a year when people are like, oh, yeah. It's boring. Like, I'm not into this. I'm not motivated by this.
JORDI:Yeah. And that ties into Joe's piece, which is it's not enough to just be excited about technology. You actually need to and I think a lot of our, a lot of the technology being errors out there are starting to realize that, there is you sort of can reach a level of impact in the private markets. And then to have the next order, you know, of magnitude of impact, you need to get involved with government. Yep.
JORDI:Because it's a huge, huge critical aspect of our society. And and the people that run the government and the decisions that they make have a massive impact on our on our quality of life, and so many different systems from mental health institutions to prisons.
JOHN:This is a massive shift from a decade ago where Balaji gave that talk at Y Combinator called Silicon Valley's ultimate exit. Are you familiar with this? So there's this I I forget what his name is. There's some philosopher, and he basically said, like, when you're when you're living within a society that has a particular government, you have a few options, voice, exit, and something else. I'm blanking at all of this.
JOHN:But, but, basically, it's like you can stay and fight and try and reform the government or you can leave.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And Balaji was part of the, you know, libertarian crew that was like, let's go to maybe New Zealand. Let's do sea steading. Let's do ice steading. Let's let's do, you know, interplanetary colonization. Let's leave because things are so broken we can't fix it.
JOHN:And that was the dominant thesis of most Silicon Valley elites for a long time.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And only recently, I feel like people have shifted.
JORDI:No. I I my personal, sort of personal anecdote here during COVID living in LA, things were getting so dark. Yeah. I mean, it sounds silly saying this, but, like, they couldn't they didn't let you go to the beach. Yep.
JORDI:Really basically couldn't be outside.
JOHN:That's crazy.
JORDI:I was like, why am I living in California if I can't go outdoors and be, away from people just like
JOHN:California during
JORDI:that time. So and I and I got very caught up in that. Like, my my experience in, like, April of 2020 was, like, on Zillow Yeah. Looking experience in, like, April of 2020 was, like, on Zillow Yep. Looking at property in Austin and Miami and and getting very caught up in up in that.
JORDI:And, fortunately, I decided to stay in California and sort of, like, try to have a small impact. So I and that ended up having being, like you know, I ended up backing, like, a city councilwoman who had came in and made a tremendous impact on the west side. Right? Ended up, more recently, supported, our new DA, Hockman, who is, you know, gonna do it have an incredible impact sort of cleaning up the city, making crime illegal again, and things like that. And so I decided to say, like, no.
JORDI:I was born and raised in California. I'm staying here.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:I'm gonna make it better even in small ways. Yep. And if if if people with agency just decide to leave Yep. Things will just get worse and worse and worse. Yeah.
JORDI:Yeah. So we need
JOHN:It's Albert Hirschman, exit voice and loyalty. So you can leave the government that you're under. You can have a voice and try and change the government, or you can just be loyal to the government. And I think no one in tech wants to do the last one. Yeah.
JORDI:That's why
JOHN:I couldn't even think of it. It was the one
JORDI:after paying
JOHN:for that. But it but it is interesting that Joe went through a period of exit with regard to California, but has chosen to opt for voice with Well,
JORDI:it's also he didn't exit the United States. Yeah.
JOHN:He didn't exit the United States.
JORDI:Started whatever University of Texas or what's the name of it?
JOHN:University of
JORDI:Austin. University of Austin, which is like, hey. We actually need to Yeah. You know, create these sort of, like, hideouts where we can build the movement without, you know So
JOHN:you can think of them as kind of like long America, short California, which is like a totally reasonable trade. Yep. And so this is fascinating because, you know, you think of him as like, you know, Palantir, like almost PayPal mafia esque guy, very libertarian. And yet he's writing this article that's literally called how to spend a $1,000,000,000,000. And so, you you know, the the drumbeat of the technologist and the libertarian for so long was just spend less, spend less, spend less.
JOHN:And he's completely reframing this thought experiment to say, what happens if you get a dozen top entrepreneurs in the United States together? And just tell just ask them how would you spend a $1,000,000,000,000? Not he's not talking about buying artwork or planes, the type of things lottery winners might spend a new fortune on. Rather, how would they spend public money to strengthen the future of American society? And suppose further that you could skip the red tape, how would it be different than the way we currently spend trillions?
JOHN:And so he breaks this down into 9 parts. And I love all of these. They're very, pragmatic, but they're also very techno optimistic. And, it's just a fascinating tour of all the different problems in America right now and how you could go about solving them if you were very aggressive with the spending, but also very, like, laser focused. So, the first proposal he has is for $200,000,000,000
JORDI:The small price of $200,000,000.
JOHN:And the cost of living in our 50 largest metropolitan areas. And so his his argument here is that, the average traffic the annual cost of traffic congestion in Texas has reached over $1,000 per commuter in wasted fuel and time, with the average commuter losing 54 hours in traffic each year. And L. A. Residents, as you well know, lose over 80 hours in traffic per year
JORDI:for you. I probably say at least.
JOHN:It was a month.
JORDI:80 hours a month. Now for me, I wouldn't say I lost it because I'm either doing deals or listening to founders podcast. Right. There's no It's
JOHN:all about frame of mind.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:Frame of mind. But, or or are charging $10,000 an hour on intro.
JORDI:Yep.
JOHN:So if you're making money while you're on the call, then you're good. Yeah. But basically, you know, he's saying Los Angeles can't build a subway tunnel for less than a $1,000,000,000 per mile. How could 200,000,000,000 meaningfully improve 50 cities? The answer is competence.
JOHN:You know, I went I once wrote the mayor of Austin about new technology with proven economics tunneling. And so he's advocating for building more tunnels most likely for the boring company.
JORDI:So the boring company is, like, that sleeper company in the Musk portfolio
JOHN:that Everyone could be. Dude, if you go on YouTube and you search, like, boring company update, it's just all of these communists posting videos of Elon Musk with clown nose on. And they're like, it's not working. It's not working. And it's like, you don't realize that you're giving him the attention.
JOHN:Like, you could have made those same videos about Tesla for 10 years. And they, like, were barely shipping any cars. Yeah. It's like you don't understand how this works. Like, he spends 20 years on something, and then all of a sudden it's like, fuck, there are tunnels everywhere.
JOHN:Like, there are too many tunnels.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. It's like most people would see, like, there are
JOHN:too many Teslas out there now.
JORDI:Yeah. So my my, my roommate, work for The Boring Company. Yeah. My roommate, the first year I lived in in LA out of school. And, yeah, he ended up moving to Vegas because that was, like, where they could get a deal done.
JORDI:And Yep. And they they're building out a bunch of, tunnels there. So I'm excited. I mean, that'll
JOHN:be love to harp on, oh, the tunnel. You got some water in it. It's flooding. It's failed. And it's like, maybe.
JOHN:May maybe not. Maybe he'll just keep working on it, and he'll just fund it forever until it works. And but the the the very, like, fundamental, like, economic physics, like, the laws of physics around the project to me are just so obvious because it's like you have a a resource which is essentially land underneath cities that's extremely valuable that no one has access to.
JORDI:Yeah. So if
JOHN:you can get access to
JORDI:it theoretically,
JOHN:incredibly valuable.
JORDI:Yeah. Theoretically, there's way less laws if you go 100 feet underground than above ground where it takes $1,000,000,000 to make a mile of track because there's so much regulatory burden and and approvals needed. And and, oh, we need to buy we need to, like, buy this person's property for some egregious price because, like, you know, 10 square feet of it, like, touch where the track would be. Yeah. All that kind of stuff.
JORDI:So just the the ant the solution is just, like, go underground.
JOHN:And I think there was this there was an there was a change in the law where you used to if you bought property, you used to own, like, technically, essentially everything from the core to the earth all the way to the sky.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And then eventually, they said, no. There is a cap so planes can fly over you and stuff.
JORDI:And And they did that underground. It used to be that if if you owned a piece of land, you could pull as much water from the aquifer below you as you wanted. Yep. And now everybody's like, no. This is actually a shared resource.
JORDI:Like, you you can't just pull as much as you want.
JOHN:Well, have you ever been on the red line out to Harvard in Boston or Cambridge? No. It's the craziest thing. So you're on this train that's just going straight like subway. It just works really well.
JOHN:And then all of a sudden it slows down and starts screeching as you're pulling into Harvard. And the reason is because in 1776 or something Nice.
JORDI:George
JOHN:Washington wrote a letter to Harvard and said, I am granting you this land permanently no matter what cannot be revoked under any circumstances. And so they own the land, like, forever and all the way to the core still. They have some, like, tech they have some, like, different definition of what real estate means for them. Yeah. And so when the subway came, they were just like, no, which is really stupid because it would have been so much better for everyone if they'd just been
JORDI:like, yes. Cell phone.
JOHN:But but but yeah, it like it like screeches around the corner to get there because
JORDI:crazy
JOHN:because they're like, no, like, you can't you can't dig under us.
JORDI:Like, yeah, that's our dirt.
JOHN:We own everything. Yeah. And and our proof is a letter from George Washington. Yeah. Like, because they were there before before the country.
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah. It's older than the country. I'm pretty sure. I think it's, like, 1600.
JOHN:It's crazy. So, Joe maps out a couple more stats. He says, he says, while saving over 90% versus above ground infrastructure with cost of a single tunnel about 10,000,000 per mile, add adding a second direction in some places as well as stations and egress about every mile brings the total cost to 25,000,000 per mile. In 2020, we mapped out a sample Austin system for 1,000,000,000 connecting the airport, several downtown locations, and the q 2 soccer stadium. The project has more connections than the proposed 5,000,000,000 above ground rail line at a 5th of the cost for 5,000,000,000.
JOHN:It connects a much larger area.
JORDI:The interesting thing with tunnels is it's actually like a very good fit for, like, robo taxis because it's such a more controlled environment. You're not going to have, like, a dog run through the tunnel or, like, some kid come out of school or run
JOHN:out or, like, cars doing crazy stuff. Tesla, like Could
JORDI:do it.
JOHN:Self driving system could easily do that. No problem. And and is, like, that's kind of what's what's happening in the Vegas.
JORDI:And and every time you think that, like, I I would love to see, like, the Walt Walt Disney had his, like, you know, master plan multi year of, like, how how all of his companies interact. Like, I'm sure Elon has his version of that. He's like, we're building the robo taxis, which will be ready when, like, all of my tunnel networks, like, come online. And then, like, all every, you know, 50% of people that move in the United States will be in, like, a in one of our tunnels or, like, one of our cars or both at the same time.
JOHN:It really is just like Musk Inc. 100%. So let's go to number 2. Joe Lonsdale says, for 100,000,000,000 take back our prison system from incompetent bureaucrats. Says America has two forms of Stockholm syndrome in its approach to criminal justice.
JOHN:Coming from the extremist left, there is a desire to cuddle violent criminals and allow repeat victimization in the name of social justice. But across the political spectrum, there's another problem. The total capture of the prison system by bureaucrats, unions, and corporations whose incompetence we tolerate. Speaking of Stockholm, when the American criminologist Francis Cohen won this won the Swedish government Stockholm prize, he proposed to spend $10,000,000,000 in new prisons. His framework was as follows.
JOHN:10 prisons will be developed, each funding each funded at 1,000,000,000 each. The competition of proposals would be undertaken in which states would partner with criminologists and prison experts from around the world as well as from private enterprises to set forth a model for prisons. Each prison proposal must be shown to a rational scientific and to nourish the development of prisoners. In each proposed prison, each prisoner must be engaged every day in activity, education, work, or treatment, and there would be ongoing process and outcome evaluation by a team of researchers. The Cohen framework is a fine start, but if a bit idealistic, not all prisoners need to be nourished.
JOHN:Some are hardened killers to be locked away. But approximately 600,000 people leave prison each year, and an estimated 95% of prisoners will eventually return to our society.
JORDI:And so, yeah, this this segment on, like, paying for there's been a few ex well, yeah, paying for performance, like, almost like recruiter style where if you work with a recruiter in tech and they don't find you anyone good and you don't hire anyone, you don't really, you know, maybe you pay a little bit like a small retainer, but you don't pay much. And the same concept is is being, has been applied. It was applied in, he talks about how it was applied in Arizona Yep. Where the state allowed county governments to collect up to 40% of the cost savings to the state when fewer people under their parole and probation supervision went back to prison. Yep.
JORDI:And so that incentive just allowed, made the institutions actually care about care about the long term outcomes of their prisoners, which I think is fantastic.
JOHN:Palmer Lucky actually said that he was thinking about doing, private prisons before starting andro. And andro was just, like, a much bigger, much more important job. But Yeah. But we get the polymer. Interesting.
JOHN:Yeah. And it is crazy that he he mean, he mentioned that, like, maybe 5 years ago. I'm surprised that no one's run with it, and we haven't seen, like, a venture backed prison startup.
JORDI:But That's that sounds like a a task for Will Menitis. Probably. Will and Theo can do that Yeah. Maybe. For their next their next big one.
JOHN:Yeah. I mean, like, if if Palmer's throwing out ideas like that, you would think but it's not enough to just say, like, oh, Palmer, like, validate the idea, so I'm running with it. Like, it's
JORDI:clearly It takes a very special person to be able to do that and thread the needle. Yeah. Yeah. The the And also, it's just that you know how
JOHN:sure it's a very rough, like, industry to work in. Like, my mom was a nurse in prisons, and it it like, it's just brutal at every level, like, from, like, the sheriff department. Like, while she was there, I think the sheriff, like, went to prison because, like, he was, like, super corrupt. Like
JORDI:What about all those there were there were a handful of of tech elite that went to prison because they were paying to get their kids into schools. Yeah. We need to go after those people who are like experienced prison system and be like, hey, look, like, let's make a change here. Martha Stewart, you understand you understand the product. Yeah.
JORDI:Like, let's like makes this better. But, you know, when people will will post picture of, like, a Nordic prison, they'll be like, it'll they'll try to, like, critique it and be like, look how nice this prison is. Like, like, I'm sure that people just want to go to prison. It's like nobody wants their freedom taken away. We our prisons should be places that allow in general, like, there's people that are too far gone.
JORDI:I I strongly believe that that just need to be locked up forever. Like, they just, you know, didn't fail the test. Like, you you know, you should be gone. But then there's this whole contingent of people that obviously should be in an environment that is conducive to personal growth, to learning, to even just being in a mental state that allows them to think more positively about life. Right.
JORDI:And, like, build their self esteem back up because, you know, going and being thrown effectively a dungeon is not going to be conducive to, the mindset that you want those people when they are those 600,000 people that are released every year. You want them to be in a mindset where they don't hate the system. Right? Because then they're just gonna continue to rebel.
JOHN:I wonder what Martin Scruggling thinks about prison reform. I bet he would have some very interesting takes.
JORDI:He talked to I mean, he talked about, he talked about at Heretic Con, he talked a bit about his, his experience in in prison and and why you have Diddy and SBF in the same in the same, prison in Brooklyn. But longer longer conversation there. Yeah.
JOHN:Let's move on to part 3. Joe says for $100,000,000,000 build 21st century mental health institutions. So very related to the previous point. We'll we'll read the lead in here. At the peak of of institutionalization in 1955, nearly half a 1000000 people in the United States were in mental hospitals.
JOHN:The 1962 book, 1 Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the movie 2, dramatically changed how Americans viewed that system. And not only without reason, the system had obvious defects and needed reforms. But generations later, after we ended nearly all institutionalization, we have a serious crisis in our society. Many people with serious but treatable mental illnesses that would have benefited from institutionalization have been left to prison and the street.
JORDI:So this this was the thing that stood out here. Yep. This guy, Christopher Ruffo Yep. Found that in his home state of Washington, the per capita number of men state mental health hospital beds had declined by over 90% since the sixties. And anybody who's been out in the real world, like, would would probably guess that, like, our mental health issues have not sort of reduced by 90%.
JORDI:Yep. Yep. And you can see that on. On the street. The streets.
JORDI:And, you know, I know, I was talking to, to a CEO that, like a very successful, like, founder CEO talking about his, you know, family's, like, battles with, you know, bipolar and how alone you feel when you're dealing with that because there's no it's literally like it is a 100% on the family to provide that level of care, and there's almost, like, no quality resources that can help kind of, like, address that. It's incredibly, challenging to deal with. Yeah.
JOHN:It's interesting because at least in California, there's this story that might be somewhat apocryphal that, like, all of the mental health institution closures are due to Ronald Reagan. Yeah. And I'm not sure how true that is. I'm sure it was like a process, but, it's fascinating because it it's it's actually a very libertarian and and and somewhat right wing philosophy. But if you look on a political compass, there's, like, left wing libertarianism, right wing libertarianism.
JOHN:They're kinda 2 different things culturally. But, there is a libertarian argument to say, you know what? Keep the government out of everything. Keep the government out of my mind. Keep the government out of what I do.
JOHN:If I wanna sleep on the street, that's that should be my freedom. But the argument that I've heard that's much better and much more convincing to me is that, no. Like, as a society, we have a duty to step in and help people who are suffering, and and it is unacceptable to let someone do drugs to death on the street. And Yeah. We have a moral duty to step in even if that does have a little bit more of an authoritarian bent relative to the libertarian.
JOHN:Like, you can just do whatever you want. But it's odd. This is why the libertarian position has kind of been adopted by the left to some degree because you would normally think that of someone who's like, well, no, I don't want my tax dollars going to a mental institution. And, no, if I go crazy, I wanna be able to do whatever I want, like, stay out it. Right?
JOHN:That's kind of a that's kind of a libertarian position, and yet it's become, like, the standard on the left, very oddly.
JORDI:Yeah. Which is why, I mean, I think this entire piece is is a very interesting perspective from Joe, who's very libertarian Exactly. General to just, like, take an opinion of, like, okay. Like, I'll I'll, you know, run this exercise of how you might because the money is gonna get spent Yeah. One way or another.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:It's like a venture backed startup. Like, if you raise Yeah. Like, the United States raises, like, 5, $6,000,000,000,000 a year, like, they're gonna spend the money.
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah. Let's go to number 4. Number proposal number 4 is for $50,000,000,000, you can make ours our inner cities a place where children thrive. Lonsdale endorses, Brad Gersner's idea to give every American child oh, whoops.
JOHN:That's the wrong one. Lonsdale proposes spending $50,000,000,000 to replicate successful community programs like the Harlem Children's Zone. I hadn't heard about HCZ. Have you heard about this? No.
JOHN:Because it's funded by, Geoffrey Canada and Ken Langone and Stanley Druckenmiller. And it it it covers an area of a 100 blocks in Harlem. And apparently, it's been it's been remarkably successful and very, very high ROI. And so his argument is just like, we need to scale this the the one program that's actually working. Basically, just like put more wood behind fewer arrows.
JOHN:Yep. Confronting issues directly such as a need for male role models and addressing maternal drug use. The program has significantly improved test scores and future income prospects for participating children. And there was some stat in here about, yeah. I love this one.
JOHN:The benefits to the public are enormous. Converting a high school dropout to a high school graduate is worth more than $250,000 in public costs over a lifetime.
JORDI:Incredible.
JOHN:Like, huge hugely hugely this is exactly, like, where the government should be investing.
JORDI:Yep.
JOHN:So I love that. Scaling such models would involve rewarding programs that achieve measurable positive outcomes, aiming to reduce intergenerational poverty, and creating environments where children can succeed. Love it. Those are some great pictures from the Harlem Children's Zone. Yep.
JOHN:Step pictures from the Harlem Children's Zone. Yep. Step 5 is for $100,000,000,000 give every American child a stake in our economic future. Yeah. So this has been something that Brad over at Altimeter has been
JORDI:talking about for years and is actually making some substantial moves on because it's it's really not that great of an investment to give every new child in America $1,000 in an index fund the day that they're born. And over time, you know, through compounding, it'll become like a very meaningful amount of money that would help them buy their first home, pay for college and teach them about the power of compounding growth, which we understand here on this podcast because we went from 0 to a 1000 followers on followers on x in, you know, a few weeks. And we're going to get to that second, you know, 1,000 follower mark 2,000. Yeah. In about 7 days.
JORDI:So, people like, the more that we can educate the youth in this country on compounding growth and and be able to not just, like, learn about it, but experience it directly, I think that'll be very, powerful.
JOHN:Yeah. It is really hard to get hooked on long term compounding growth. Yeah. Like, it's so easy to experience the euphoria of buying a lottery ticket. Like, I still remember the day I bought my 1st lottery ticket, and I was like, I'm going to win.
JOHN:Like, this is your fault.
JORDI:For me. It was
JOHN:the only lottery ticket I ever bought.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:But for that, like, week while I was waiting for the numbers to come up, I was like, completely delusional.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:But I was like, of course, I'm not gonna win. Like, this is so stupid. I should never do this. Yeah. But but it's very hard for something that grows slowly.
JOHN:So imagine if, like, over the 1st 10 years of your life, you're just watching this account go up and not been up, and you're just
JORDI:And not being able to touch it.
JOHN:Exactly. Exactly.
JORDI:Because, like, the other
JOHN:the other thing psychologically at a very young age.
JORDI:We're we're, you know, we obviously love bubbles and speculation and, you know, being risk on, but Yep. Kids are getting exposed to meme coins in, like, middle school now, which is like an unregulated lottery. Yep. Like, they I you have to be 18 to buy a lottery ticket. Right?
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:So these kids are able to go in middle school, buy Solana meme coins. Yep. And, you know, they think they're gonna turn $17 into $3,000,000 like that guy did with with Peanut. But, it's teaching this sort of, like, experience of instant gratification and low effort for potentially extreme ROI, but it's basically just encouraging, you know, gambling or lottery ticket buying. So Yep.
JORDI:It's a big issue.
JOHN:Step 6 in Joe's plan is for $50,000,000,000 restore the American industrial skill base.
JORDI:Yeah. So this this this, this remind me a few episodes ago, I was talking about a guy that I use for, like, handyman stuff. Oh, yeah. I mean, like, oh, I'm learning how to, like, build websites. And I told him I was like, that's great.
JORDI:But, like, you realize there's there's infinite other things that you could do that you're probably already like more competent in that if you just really specialize, you could make a very meaningful like 6 figure income and have like very little competition in doing that. We don't need people that we don't need more people that know how to build Web sites. Right? We need more people that know how to do, like, you know, I think somewhere in this article
JOHN:example is tooling engineers. So he opens with Apple CEO Tim Cook once remarked, in the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. And this is why they're kicking kicking our ass on on, you know, iPhone and electronics manufacturing.
JORDI:Manufacturing. Probably
JOHN:because there's so many integrated parts and there's so many, you know, little CNC engineers, little, you know, all all sorts of little tools that need to be made and the tools to make the tools. Like, there's, like, 20 20 layers deep
JORDI:in the
JOHN:supply chain, and we've just lost so much of that.
JORDI:Yeah. And I think we're in this amazing moment in time where we have, like, a bunch of friends of the podcast that are building, you know, people like Aaron, the direct kid.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:I forget his name. Phil. Phil. Right. So people like Aaron and Phil that are, building manufacturing company here in the U.
JORDI:S. Hadrian, Deterrence, so many important companies. But what they're going to run into, like a big challenge is not even just making these new manufacturing systems, but is a talent thing, right? Like, how do you actually find people that are qualified? And a lot of these companies will end up in a place where they're like, we have 6 open roles that are all 6 figure jobs and we don't know where to find these people.
JORDI:Right? And it's actually good for the people that do know how to do it. But a lot of those people are retiring. Right? They're not.
JORDI:We need a new influx of manufacturing talent. And, these are very like they are jobs that require you to, like, use your hands and use your body, but they're jobs that will give people real dignity over going and working at Chipotle, you know, or going and working in the McDonald's drive thru because you're being very productive. You're, like, producing things that matter, not just producing junk food. Yeah. And,
JOHN:there are some risks. Have you heard of the Sonoran Desert Institute, SDI? Have you ever
JORDI:heard of this?
JOHN:No. Okay. So, it's a very popular sponsor on gun YouTube.
JORDI:So
JOHN:gun reviewing YouTube, you they they often say, if you're interested in in getting into, like, the manufacturing gunsmithing, you should go to the Sonoran Desert Institute, which is an online college, blew up during COVID, and they teach you, like, the basics of how to use machinery and use tooling to become a gunsmith and go work in the arms industry. Very cool idea. And the economic model works very well for them because, they're GI Bill, compliant. And so if you come back from the military and you have GI Bill dollars that you could put towards college, you can put that towards SDI. Now there was a bunch of criticism recently about SDI not actually driving better outcomes and kind of just giving you, like,
JORDI:very well. It's tough because, like, gunsmithing is such a tactical tool. Like, a lot of these things, like, are better suited for an apprentice model. So I want to see trade schools Yep. That have government incentives Yep.
JORDI:That then feed you into apprentice programs. Yep. And people like, I always tell you know, I told, you know, my my handyman, buddy, I'm like, go find somebody who's very talented at one specific thing
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:And offer to work for them for $30,000 a year Yep. And do 12 hour days and do that for 2 years, and you'll come out of that being close to an expert. Right? Like, you'll learn enough during that period. Yeah.
JOHN:So Joe's solution here, he points to Texas in 2014. They aligned incentives and funding for for its technical colleges and started paying the schools based on how much the student earned. They can fake graduation rates. They can fake teaching skills, but they cannot fake the results income. This approach resulted in a doubling of the total amount of money being made by students in just 6 years.
JOHN:Money that goes back into Texas through local taxes. When bureaucrats have a strong financial incentive to deliver better results, they will. And I love that.
JORDI:Yeah. I think there's a lot of you know, just like there was an explosion of like effectively trade schools for software engineering, the same exact thing. You could do that for machining, plumbing, electrical work, all all those sort of, like, you know, specialized categories.
JOHN:So let's go to number 7. For $200,000,000,000, one of the bigger ideas, create better funders of science in America. Lonsdale proposes allocating $200,000,000,000 over 10 years to establish new competitive funding bodies for scientific research, challenging the dominance of institutions like the National Institute of Health. He argues that the NIH has become risk averse and bureaucratic, often stifling innovation by creating alternative organizations that reward high risk, high high reward research and empower young scientists. The US can invigorate scientific progress.
JOHN:This is something we were just talking
JORDI:about in that group chat. Yeah. I think venture capital has, like, stepped into here to some degree because they'll be, like, you know, the, the long journey team will, like, give some, like, researcher basically, like, 200 k to 2 cap to be, like, just work on this, like, weird idea for a couple of years. And that's, like, cool. And we need that.
JORDI:Like, that's risk capital. But our government should also be giving, like, basically risk capital
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:To, like, important sort of scientific scientific pursuits.
JOHN:It goes to that discussion we were having in that group chat about, like, invention versus discovery.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:Just this idea that, you know, some of the biggest breakthroughs in in science have been more discoveries than inventions, not very diligent. It wasn't really as Lizard venom. Yeah. Lizard venom is a good example. That was epic.
JOHN:But even penicillin, I think, it was it it's this, our friends are referring to it as the gentleman scientist, the the person who's just experimenting and testing things and then just locks upon something really,
JORDI:really cool. Many important discoveries.
JOHN:And it's and it's very hard to facilitate that these days in the traditional academic institutions or the typical tracks where it's like, in a certain amount of time, you have to publish a paper, you have to get this many reviews and this many, citations, and it's become, too rigid. And so he definitely wants to
JORDI:go on back from that. So one thing that, you know, he suggests is saying that, like a public scientific funder would be filling in and funding research gaps where innovation isn't profitable. Yep. And so there's so many, there's so many drugs that potentially have impact in like areas that they weren't initially like approved for that are non profitable to fund research in because you might have to spend 20, $50,000,000 like proving out that something works and then it's not it's a generic drug. So there's no like margin to be made or like edge or like IP that you can create.
JORDI:And so, there's so many different areas where that applies. And honestly, it's like the oftentimes like bro scientists that are, like, doing this, like, research, like, on themselves. Right? In many ways, like, Brian Johnson is doing a lot of this on himself where he's just like, I'm gonna spend 1,000,000 of dollars, like, figuring out how to sleep, like, 5% better because that's gonna deliver, like, the best.
JOHN:Some of the the greatest I mean, we're seeing this all over the place where I think Gwen is probably one of the most respected, like, researchers on stimulants. Josie Zayner developed, like, her own vaccines during COVID and was, like, testing stuff on herself. It's crazy. And then, Ayla has, like, one of the most she has one of the largest datasets on, like, sex related social science and can can put out research that's, like, way, way more robust than anything you'd see today. So there's this weird, there's this weird model shifting to just like these independent researchers.
JOHN:And, but yeah. I mean, I I I think Joe's hopefully, it's it's it seems like he's optimistic about retooling some of the funding that does come from the government to drive innovation within these organizations. But let's go to number 8. He says, for $100,000,000,000 upend the energy future and put degrowthers out of business. And his argument is that if you invest to it a $100,000,000,000 to, revolutionize the energy sector by promoting abundant clean energy production, particularly through nuclear power and carbon capture technologies.
JOHN:He criticizes the nuclear regulatory commissions, obstructive processes, and advocates for its reform. And I've heard this so much from the all the nuclear folks that there are like, when you're getting a new reactor design approved, you have to have an actual hearing for things that are completely uncontested.
JORDI:Yep. Yeah. There's, they had a funny quote in here where the, NR NRC was was bragging, and they said the 12,000 page application took less than 42 months to review. Can you imagine being the guy like building something and put together this like 12,000 page application that probably like could have been it probably could have been an email, you know? Yeah.
JORDI:And then you wait 42 months, you know, just to figure out if if if, like, you're good to go. Yeah. That is just, like, criminal, my opinion. Terrible. And,
JOHN:and he includes this incredible graph here of the the cumulative nuclear construction permits and operational plants over time. And you can just see that after the seventies, the number of new operational plants just completely flatlines. And there's just no new development. And I think it has started to tick up again but it's it's nowhere near like the the asymptotic curve that we thought we'd be on with energy too cheap to meter. So very, very, very depressing.
JOHN:But hopefully, there can be, you know, really significant overhaul of the NRC. Joe advocates for starting by abolishing the NRC's awful incentive structure, conceived as a cost saving measure, but which has backfired awfully. Congress forces the NRC to fund its budget through fees paid hourly by the very companies it regulates, not unlike a law firm or consultancy. If you were funded to regulate by the hour, how long would you take? It's like Yeah.
JOHN:The worst possible incentive.
JORDI:Same thing with, like, the cost plus model within defense. You know?
JOHN:Very, very bad.
JORDI:If you're getting paid based on how much something costs, like, you run up the costs. Yep.
JOHN:And let's go to number 9.
JORDI:Personal favorite.
JOHN:$1,000,000,000 give back the rest of the money. In
JORDI:his final
JOHN:proposal, Lonsdale recommends returning the remaining 100,000,000,000 to the American people, emphasizing the value of individual liberty and economic freedom. He believes that citizens are better equipped than central planners to allocate resources efficiently by giving the money back perhaps through tax rebates or direct payments. Individuals can make their own choices stimulating economic growth and just demonstrating trust in the populace.
JORDI:Yeah. So he positions this very well, which more people should understand is that when the federal government does things like a quote, unquote stimulus check
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:They position it as a as a payment or a tax rebate. And and that effectively implies that the money was never yours in the first place. Yep. But it was it was your money that the government effectively took from the citizens and the businesses, institutions in our country. And, you know, I think that the government should position that more of like, hey, we're giving you back.
JORDI:We sort of overtaxed. It's your
JOHN:I always like to joke spend
JORDI:it how how you wish.
JOHN:Did you know that every single year, the United States government collects enough money in tax revenue to give every single citizen a 100% tax rebate?
JORDI:Is that
JOHN:They could give every single person 100% off their taxes, but they keep all the money for all these projects. It's just it's just a it's just a methodology because Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, whatever they take from you, they could give back. Right.
JORDI:Right. Right.
JOHN:But it sounds shock Yeah. Yeah. It it it
JORDI:It sounds very shocking.
JOHN:It sounds like one of those
JORDI:one of those stats that's like, oh, you
JOHN:know, if they they could give everyone $1,000,000. But no, it's really it's really like whatever they're taking, they could just give back. But so they have to justify what they're giving and it has to make sense. And I think he has some great proposals there.
JORDI:Yeah. People are going to realize that, like, income tax was illegal for a while in US history. Right? It was like it was something that the founding fathers were very against in the foundation of the country in many ways because it was like us telling the Brits, hey, look, like, we don't we don't like these taxes. Like, let's let's end this.
JOHN:Yeah. We've kind of, like, wound up with such a hodgepodge of, like, corporate taxes, income taxes. There's taxes on all over the place and people wind up moving around the country to find, like, their optimal blend. But
JORDI:A blend.
JOHN:I think I think it's the the most interesting thing with with this is is definitely to to close on is that there's a shift from just burn it all down, stop everything to Yep. Let's be more efficient with the
JORDI:Yeah. And I I honestly like that, I I I think Balaji It's more incremental. Balaji is, like, consistently had extremely interesting ideas and been right on a lot of stuff. Yep. And the area that I just strongly disagree with him on is he's like very like pro like exit, like let's just leave and like rebuild from the ground up.
JORDI:And I think that experiments like that should be run at the same time. We want the best and brightest in America to be focused on how do we make this place a better place
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:For everyone. Exactly. So it's a great movement.
JOHN:I love it. Well, thanks to Max for publishing that in Arena Magazine. You can go pick it up and give him a follow because it's a fantastic publication.
JORDI:Subscribe to the magazine.
JOHN:Subscribe to the magazine.
JORDI:Before we dive in, should we indulge in in a beverage? Yeah. Sure. Gotta always have a budget.
JOHN:And, thank you to enchiladas surfboards. We received some beautiful koozies that we're enjoying very much.
JORDI:And they say
JOHN:They're certified for milk only, but we're drinking Celsius in them. So Yeah. Make it work. Hopefully, it works.
JORDI:How do I do this? Today, we have,
JOHN:organic,
JORDI:coconuts. We always let's see. It's a product of Thailand, so it came off the boat. I like that they send it in the nature's packaging.
JOHN:So it
JORDI:pulled this out. Now you pull that off, and then you go like that. So you break it, and then you can pull this little thing off.
JOHN:Okay.
JORDI:Pull off the top. And then you got a little straw here. A little microplastics. Take this off, and we record for many hours here in the studio, so it's good to have a little, we're like, endurance athletes that need a little, like, sugar boost along the way. So these are delicious.
JORDI:I think I look got a little coconut meat in mind, so it's,
JOHN:me too. I'm pretty jammed up.
JORDI:Jammed up, but we'll, we'll make it work. And, thank you to Melissa's organic Okay.
JOHN:Now it's going. Coconuts.
JORDI:That's good. Delicious. Delicious. I love that. Do we I think we have some Let's
JOHN:go to some DM's.
JORDI:Do we have some personnel news?
JOHN:Oh, yeah. So we have a new segment on the show, some personnel news where we are tracking the biggest moves, the biggest pickups, who's entering free agency, who's getting long contracts in tech. And our first deal or move of this show is?
JORDI:Yeah. I mean, this is this is breaking Massive. In the tech world, folks. We have a major move happening, and it's shaking things up as we speak. Brandon Jacoby.
JORDI:Yes. That Brandon Jacoby, former product designer at Square and Cash App. The guy who's had his fingerprints on products used by millions of people is officially making the leap. And after an absolutely electric stint as a first hire at Party Round where he built a product that was the talk of the town, Brandon Jacoby is now joining. You heard it here.
JORDI:2nd, x. You heard it first on x. That's right. X just landed an absolute stud, and, I think it's worth telling you a little bit about Brandon Jacoby. This guy is a grinder.
JORDI:We're talking 20 hour days in Figma every single day. If it's 1 AM, if it's 4 AM, Brandon is there locked in, pixel perfect, making magic happen. Nobody, and I mean nobody, knows their way around Figma better than this guy. His taste impeccable, Attention to detail, unmatched. Low ego, high output.
JORDI:We're talking about a technician, a craftsman, a relentless perfectionist.
JOHN:An absolute dog.
JORDI:An absolute dog. So what does this mean for x? Well, they're bringing in a player who doesn't just make products. He makes phenomenal products. He's been in the big leagues building for millions of users, and now he's suiting up to take x's game to the next level.
JORDI:This isn't just a hire. This is a franchise altering move, an absolute dog by every definition. Watch out, Tech World. Brandon Jacoby's coming, and he's ready to dominate. Do you have any details on the contract?
JOHN:Well, yeah. I mean, he's an absolute dog. I think, you know, the deals weren't released. So the details weren't released to this deal, but you probably think it's, you know, 4 year deal, maybe 1 year cliff.
JORDI:7, 8 figures.
JOHN:Big, big deal for him. I mean, just look at the stats he's put picked up. Former rookie of the year contender, potential future hall of famer, pushed millions of pixels every year in day in day out. Extremely technical, extremely detail oriented. And I'm really excited to see what he does this season.
JORDI:He's coming to a platform that, we all use and love.
JOHN:Love it.
JORDI:It's the foundation of this podcast and our, you know, livelihoods. And we're excited to get this level of talent working on the product that we spend hours in that feed every single day. So thank you to Brandon
JOHN:for this move. Acts on the on the pickup.
JORDI:Big pickup. Big pickup.
JOHN:That's great. Let's go to some q and a. We got a DM. We got a question from Mickey with the Blicky. He says, hey, guys.
JOHN:BC Mickey here. I got some great advice last week about angel investing and starting small. I decided to take your advice and basically put my entire net worth into XRP. It's now up almost 80% over the last week. Can you guys offer any tips for risk management?
JORDI:Man, my only advice here would be rotate out of that.
JOHN:Is this real? Did XRP really moon? I I think I was joking. I don't know. I love it.
JORDI:I love I love the
JOHN:it's up like 100%. Here we go.
JORDI:I love that risk on attitude. Here's what I would say. If I were Mickey, I'd be rotating into other risk assets like early stage startups. But, and the reason for that is I think that, illiquidity is a feature. When you got something like XRP that's moving 100% a week, get into something that's illiquid, get into something that's marked on maybe like an annual basis, something like a seed stage startup, just so you can go focus on other things.
JORDI:Right? A lot of people get caught up in the day to day price action with crypto, and that can be a huge distraction from actually creating enterprise value in your job, in your in your company. And, so anyways, get into something illiquid, lock it up, lock in the gains I
JOHN:like that.
JORDI:And, go long.
JOHN:Yeah. Good luck out there. Our next DM comes from, an anonymous, poster who writes in, hey. Do you have some time to enlighten me on your experience with creating a consumer packaged goods company? How did you validate the market?
JOHN:I have a group of talented individuals that hit me up about an idea I shared publicly, and I'm evaluating taking next steps. What do you think? How do you validate the market for a consumer packaged goods company? I've been through this a few different times, and I and I kinda broke it down as there's 2 different ways. 1 is kind of the Brian Johnson way.
JOHN:You start talking about the idea and the problem that you wanna solve extremely publicly, become the face of that problem. So for him, it's longevity. For Jocko, you know, it's performance in the gym. It the this, like, athletic militaristic style, and then that fan base will will buy kinda anything from you.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:The other is more product led, more product driven where you're doing real r and d, locking up a supply chain, kind of like what the Ridge Wallet did. A lot of our early stuff at Lucy was around, like, FDA applications, patents, stuff like that. It took a long time to get it going. We weren't the face of nicotine.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And to some degree, we still aren't, but we have, like, a very narrow set that's
JORDI:like kind of the face of
JOHN:nicotine. Yeah. But,
JORDI:but It came later.
JOHN:Yeah. But it did come later. It wasn't like we we we we we we went, like, you know, influencer or brand first and then kind of were able to sell a a a commoditized product. We had to do something unique. So I think a lot of it's like, well, what's your edge in this product?
JOHN:Can you be an, like, an operational beast and then grow slowly? But what what do you think?
JORDI:Another another example. So launching, Aurora water filters actually tomorrow.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:That's an example of validating that opportunity was looking at the market. You know, consumers are already spending 1,000,000,000 of dollars on water filters. So it wasn't a question of do people buy water filters? Are they gonna want 1? And so what we did with that is we took a popular water filter called, called the Berkey, and we looked at it and we said, how can we make this better on 10 different dimensions?
JORDI:Right? So we made it way, way, way more effective. We went and did the hard work of getting it. It proved out that it actually works, and then we made the design better, the usability better, all these different things that we knew consumers cared about. And so we've spent somewhere in the 7 figure mark on testing and r and d to get the product where it is today.
JORDI:But we know that the product is gonna be a hit because we took something that was already out there that consumers liked generally, and we made it dramatically better. Yep. And so I think if you're, most consumer products, you know, a friend of the podcast, John Theo, has made products over the years that were like first of a kind, something like he made like the gravity blanket, something like that's much more binary of like people weren't really buying weighted blankets, like they weren't really a thing until he created it. But a lot of consumer products are like, you know, even, you know, looking at this on the table, it's not like people were already buying coconut water. It was like, hey, can we sell them the same product just like in the in the original packaging basically?
JOHN:One of my favorite stories from Theo is, when he when he launched the Moon Pod, which is a, it's basically like a big bean bag Yep. But it's even bigger and softer. He realized that he he shot some video of I think it was, like, a woman falling backwards and getting caught by the bag and just, like, falling into this really comfy bag in slow motion. And that one asset probably drove, like, $100,000,000 in sales on Facebook.
JORDI:That's something crazy. And
JOHN:he just knew that, like, that it was just a few frames. It was, like, it was, like, almost like an animated GIF.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:But it was, you know, a few seconds and it just stopped you in the feed. And so having that, like, what is the hook? What is this one thing? So there's a bunch of different ways, but to to validate the market, it can be, like, it's so big and so obvious and you have some innovation or you're so charismatic and you're this, you know, heroic influencer who's gonna have millions of fans buying whatever you sell or you have some hook that you just know will go viral. There's a lot of companies that have done, like, stress tests or some other stunt, liquid death.
JOHN:Good example of, like, the brand just stood out so much that I'm sure Yeah. If you ask them, how did you validate the market? Those guys would behind liquid death would just tell you, well, like, we looked at our brand deck that we built. Yeah. We were laughing, and we knew that it was gonna be good because it was Sometimes it was unique.
JOHN:It it was and it was just gonna pop. Like, they just knew.
JORDI:Yeah. Every, my wife invested in a company called Graza. Have you seen them? Yeah. Which is like a squeeze bottle of
JOHN:olive oil.
JORDI:And she invested in that company prelaunch, and she looked at that being like, I know people like olive oil. Yep. They have this, like, new form factor that was popularized by chefs. They're gonna put it into this new form factor.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:And it's gonna work really well on social because it's such a, like, dynamic way to use olive oil. And so that was and and they got to I I don't know what their metrics are. They'll probably do, like, a 100,000,000
JOHN:next year.
JORDI:It's a crazy number. And so, you know, sometimes with with consumer products, like, I've found it's very binary. Like, sometimes I look at something and I'm like, this will not work. They launch it and it flops. Yep.
JORDI:And then sometimes I look at something, I'm like, this will not work, and it launches and it just rips.
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:And, timing has a big part to play in it. But then you need to look at, like, what is your edge with the product? Like, with Lucy, it was, like, early focus on, like, the regulatory aspect. With Aurora, it was, like, let's just spend longer and be more obsessed with design and efficacy than any other company and testing than any other company in the market. Yep.
JORDI:And then something like Grazo was, like, even more simple. Like, let's just change the packaging, sell the exact same thing, and it'll work well on social. Yeah.
JOHN:It's kind of like I mean, you should be able to boil it down to some sort of elevator pitch that just makes sense, and you have a lot of confidence around. Like, what what are you doing that's actually different?
JORDI:Yep.
JOHN:And if it's just like, oh, we wanna launch this because we think it's cool. Like, you know, yeah. Get out of there. You need to be able to articulate it.
JORDI:Also, like, People that are considering building consumer products, like, you need to go into it. Like, yes, sir. If you have a hit consumer product, you can scale it very, very quickly now. Like Yep. Fios, like, a good example of that.
JORDI:Once it works, like, he scales it very quickly. But more consumer products like company like Ridge Ridge.com, they'll do, like, 200,000,000 just population here, but just operational excellence over almost like a decade. Yep. And the first, you know, in, like, the 3rd or 4th year, it was, like, a $5,000,000 business.
JOHN:But it's, like, what what game are you playing?
JORDI:Yeah. You have to understand, like, are you still gonna wanna do this product if in the 1st year you do 500 k, the 2nd year you do a 1,000,000, the next year you do 3,000,000, and then the next year you do 10, and the next year like, are you still gonna be wanting to play that game if it's not a rocket
JOHN:ship? Means less venture capital, and it probably means higher ownership for the founders over the long term. You look at the stories of, like, Red Bull Monster, like these guys, they grind for years years years, and then they pop because they're in a big market. And they do have the the branding and formulation correct, but they're but they own enough to make it worth it. And as long as you get I I think the real key for those consumer goods companies is, like, you have to work super extra hard to get the first to get over that first hump where you can actually be taking a salary that makes your life, like, worth living, basically.
JOHN:And then once you're flying business class and, like, covering your expenses, your your kids are in good schools and stuff, then it's like, okay. Well, I can grind and and compound for a very long time.
JORDI:Yep.
JOHN:But those 1st years where you're just making no cash flow and it's just brutal, it's just tough. Yeah.
JORDI:And I think that it's
JOHN:very valid.
JORDI:I think that the the category that is is the biggest trap is beverage because people look at a beverage like Celsius, and they're like, oh, Celsius is 1,000,000,000 1,000,000,000 of dollars a year. They're like, oh, it's so simple. I can create an energy drink. And if you know that the founder
JOHN:went to every single CrossFit gym for, like Yeah.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:4 years straight.
JORDI:Yeah. And did tastings for 12 hours a day. Yeah.
JOHN:It was laughed at and, like, had product defects and problems and all this stuff.
JORDI:Anything that looks easy, I can guarantee you it's, like, deeply competitive. Yeah. And beverage is an example of that. It's, like, the most
JOHN:cutthroat industry. Exactly. So we have a new segment on the show, reply guy of the month. Let's go. Let's go.
JOHN:Every month, we're gonna try and, give an award to the biggest reply guy for the show. So get out there, reply to every post that we make, quote tweet us, retweet us, like us, all on x, send it around, give us your best replies because, you're gonna wanna win.
JORDI:You're gonna wanna win. Of the month. There's gonna be a special honor. You're gonna be on you're gonna be on the wall here in the studio.
JOHN:So, this month's reply guy of the month is, an intern at Red Letter AI. He's 18 years old. I see great things in his future. He says he's ex future founders. He's at the University of Houston studying econ and finance.
JOHN:Love that. He says he's right, EAC. Views are my own. And I didn't even know EAC would have there was, like, left EAC and right EAC. Wow.
JOHN:But cool for clarifying. Hard to go. He's out in Houston, Texas, and he has a wonderful wonderful header image of Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, and Tim Cook hanging out today.
JORDI:I could see him in that same group at some point, you know, if he keeps accelerating like this.
JOHN:For sure. And so this month's reply guy of the month is Amit, Blesha. Yep. Congrats, Amit. You are the reply guy of the month, and he's been the I love this about his profile.
JOHN:I mean, good good numbers for such a young kid. He joined in April of 2024. He's only been on x for a couple months. He's already got over 1 k.
JORDI:There is. The
JOHN:reply guy territory.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:You you gotta be the reply guy to get to 1 k, then you can start doing the inside jokes, grind your way up to 10 k. And once it's 10 k to get to a 100 k, it's gotta be the cringe threads. Yeah. And then once you're past a 100 k, it's just fake news all the time. He's on the path.
JORDI:He's in
JOHN:he's in some community that's highlighted on his profile that just says the t lists, and it's only 2 members. He has, like, a community. It's just like him and one other dude.
JORDI:Him and his
JOHN:dog. His absolute dog. His absolute dog. Like, could just be a DM, bro, but I like that you're publicizing this.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And he's followed by another friend of the show, Red Bull futurist.
JORDI:Yep. So, you know Also, great
JOHN:feature. So congrats to Amit. You are the reply guy.
JORDI:There's never gonna be another first honorary reply guy of the of the month for, yeah. And to be clear, reply guys is a spiritual thing. Like, you can be a woman. Yes. Whatever gender can be a reply guy.
JOHN:Your your thing could be quote tweets. You don't actually have to reply. It could also just be spamming our DMs constantly.
JORDI:Yep. There's bunch of ways to get here, and there will be many more.
JOHN:Many more. Many more. Let's go to the timeline, and then we're gonna start working in some promoted posts. We because we ran a a poll and you guys wanted at least 60 ads in every episode. So we're gonna do our best.
JORDI:Try to get there.
JOHN:It's gonna take us some time to get there, but we're gonna do our best. Let's go to Nicole Whiskoff. She says, the gift that starting from rock bottom affords you is having an insane appetite for risk. You've been there before. You can crawl your way out again if you need to.
JOHN:I like that. I don't know. Yeah. She she she talks about coming from nothing. What a badass story.
JOHN:Now she's running, what, 50,000,000 AUM?
JORDI:No. I mean, that's the last one. That's the
JOHN:last one. That was quite
JORDI:a bit more. Yeah. Let's go. Yeah. I mean, this just goes back to the the Josh Wolf, quote, chips.
JOHN:Chips on shoulders. Put chips in pockets. Let's go.
JORDI:We need a big Josh Wolf.
JOHN:Yes. Quote. Yes. He's going on the Mount Rushmore of of pithy, thought leaders.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I love it. Yeah. I think, the the I I I honestly resonate with this so much that at a certain point, you need to know when to not go risk off, but, like, not continue to risk at all.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. Because because when you're
JOHN:Post YC, our burn rate was 3 k a month for 3 people. That's insane.
JORDI:That's amazing.
JOHN:Because we paid our rent a year in advance.
JORDI:Yeah. Because we
JOHN:were just like, just take that out the bank balance so we don't even have to think about it.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And I think we were like a credit risk. So we were just like, yeah. They were like, you need to And I think our our think our rent in in the tenderloin in this, like, complete disgusting hovel of a apartment. Yeah. It's technically a 1 bedroom.
JOHN:It had a closet that one guy was living in. I was sleeping in the living room, and and it was $1500 a month. And every time I sell someone in San Francisco, they're like, oh, $1500 a month per bedroom. Like, that's not bad. I was like, no.
JOHN:$1500 a month for the whole thing
JORDI:For the whole
JOHN:thing. In San Francisco.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:But it's like, if you're willing to go down to living on 3 k a month for 3 people that can write software and build stuff and just get stuff done and call people just willing to do all of the different problems, It's like, yeah, there's just no way you can be stopped. Like Yeah.
JORDI:Because
JOHN:you can get 3 k a month from so many different places.
JORDI:I think I think more like, it becomes really challenging when you have a family because of, like, kids are in school. Like, there's, like, real fixed costs. And I think people don't really recognize that. I I tell founders this all the time. Like, if you're, like, if you're 28 and you wanna, like, start a company and you're deciding, well, should I work for, like, this company?
JORDI:It's like, no. Like, go, like, so risk on right now because 4 years from now, you're gonna have a kid or something like that. You're gonna be getting married and, like, your fiance's dad is gonna be, like, sitting you down and be like, alright. Like, the startup thing was, like, cute, but, like, you're about to, like, marry my daughter. Yeah.
JORDI:Yeah. You gotta, like, you know, really get together. But more more founders should, like, raise a $50,000 angel round and, like, go live in, like, the middle of nowhere. Seriously. Just, like, grind and grind and grind and grind.
JOHN:I mean, my first my first fundraise was $17,000 and me and my cofounder made it last 6 months.
JORDI:We almost wanna maybe wanna hit size gongs per second.
JOHN:With the tiny Through that a little There you go. The tiniest little size gong.
JORDI:But,
JOHN:yeah, I mean, we made it work. Like, we spent a lot of it very quickly and then stretched it out
JORDI:ever so slightly. No. I remember running the calculus, you know, coming to to LA being like, if I don't make this happen, like, I have $1200 a month to spend. Yep. I have exactly until this date to, like, be profitable and, like, be, like, able to pay myself more.
JORDI:And if I don't, like, I'm dead.
JOHN:Yep. Let's go to Gabby Goldberg. A second time on the show, she will See, I think I
JORDI:think I think 3rd.
JOHN:I think maybe 3rd,
JORDI:but She's a regular at this point.
JOHN:Yeah. She's a regular, but, we we love Gabby here. She says, Partifull deserves more credit for making random gatherings great again. And it's like photo of the Jeremy Allen White look alike crowned in Chicago. There was a Jeremy Allen White look alike contest, including a toddler dressing up like chefs from the TV series, The Bear.
JOHN:Have you watched The Bear?
JORDI:I have not. What's the first season? It's pretty good. Not a huge, TV guy. Mostly founders podcast.
JORDI:Yeah. Unfortunately, no video. Yeah. So I can't stream it. But, no.
JORDI:Particle has gone, like, extremely mainstream.
JOHN:Yeah. Like, you have this, like, it just should be
JORDI:a tech thing. And, like, it it kind of proves that, like, tech is mainstream. You can start something and, like, build it, like, to the tech audience and then expand out from there. I think even, like, a lot of things like Whoop and Oura Ring were, like, very, like, ins insular, like, tech community products. But, in many ways, this is I think we should go dig up, like, the VC thought part, leadership of, like, blog posts.
JORDI:Like, it's time to unbundle Facebook. Right. Because I think about, like, Facebook events Yeah. Where that was the thing. That was the alternative to Partifull.
JORDI:And Partifull
JOHN:should pick them up and roll that in.
JORDI:X should pick up x should absolutely pick up Partifull. Part partly because, I think it would be a, I don't think they're monetizing yet. Last I checked, and the and the CEO is, like, jokes about this quite a lot online. She's like, you know, we're just, like, giving this thing away. We're we're glad people like it.
JOHN:Like, paperless post, which is, like, kind of, like, the the billionaires' part of full, is extremely expensive. Like, you have to buy tokens to invite everyone. They have some sort of, like, digital currency that intermediates.
JORDI:Paperless post is like
JOHN:booming passive.
JORDI:It when I see that, like, if I if I'm getting invited to, like, a VC dinner and it's paperless post versus Partifull, I'm like, oh, okay. Like this.
JOHN:Like I think it's gonna be some ballers. It depends. It could be some boomers or some ballers.
JORDI:Boomers and ballers. Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:It's one of
JORDI:the other.
JOHN:Let's go to East Village guy. He says, why are you a grown man telling me which AP classes you took? So he's talking about, like, accounts payable classes, like, to learn how to do ramp stuff?
JORDI:To learn
JOHN:how to close your books.
JORDI:Better, to close your books.
JOHN:Okay. That seems totally reasonable. I would love to know what AP classes people take, especially if they're gonna be working in a finance or high performance or finance or. Ramp should
JORDI:should actually do more to get into the college curriculum.
JOHN:Right? Because that's the number one.
JORDI:That's the number one. If you're in AP AP AP.
JOHN:Advanced Placement Accounts Payable. Yeah. This is what we need to be taking. Exactly.
JORDI:Yeah. I can honestly say I've never I've never had anybody tell me what AP classes they took. It's kind of an interesting thing to know, though. I wouldn't be mad if somebody told me.
JOHN:Especially if something interesting.
JORDI:We're we're we we appreciate continuous learning. So if you learn if you took some, you know, AP, dinosaurs class and, like, you're still obsessed with dinosaurs and now you're getting into dino excavation Yes. Expedition.
JOHN:Investing in dinos.
JORDI:Then that's cool. That's cool.
JOHN:I like it. I I don't see a problem with it. East Village guy. Take it easy. Aaron Slodov, repeat guest on the show says, I'm convinced that basic business economics, money, education should be mandatory in middle school.
JOHN:Here we go. He needs to be taking advanced placement accounts payable. And it's a quote tweet from Union Made who says, I worked 8 an 8 hour shift today on register and made a 100 and $168 before taxes. I rang up $35100 in sales in those 8 hours in my little cafe with no seating in South Brooklyn. And so they're kind of complaining.
JORDI:I hope he was wearing, gloves for all those receipts that he was touching.
JOHN:For sure.
JORDI:Unless his tea is really high. And then in that case, you should use the receipts to kind of bring that testosterone down from the Yeah.
JOHN:People always say this that, like, oh, they should teach, you know, how to do your taxes in school. And I couldn't disagree more. I think that you should definitely just be studying, like, the great books and Shakespeare and Yeah. The Aeneid and the Iliad and the Odyssey.
JORDI:Because there's nothing in life.
JOHN:Ton less.
JORDI:Education is like a needs to be a forcing function for learning things that you're not gonna have to learn in life. Most people will graduate school and never think about Shakespeare again
JOHN:Exactly.
JORDI:When it couldn't be more important
JOHN:to just to share that. And there's a million ways to pick up this on the job very quickly. There's so many other resources. There's there's a 1,000,000 different ways to consume basic business education through nonfiction. You could And
JORDI:there's so many great startups that will do your taxes for you.
JOHN:Exactly. I I I actually very much disagree with this take. And and I and I think that, schools should focus much more on, I I think this is a little bit of what's happening at the University of Austin, kind of a return to the classics.
JORDI:Yeah. I
JOHN:mean, I have the great book series right there.
JORDI:Yeah. And just facilitating like mine.
JOHN:It's very hard to find time to read Tolstoy. Yeah. Like, that's not something that I'm forced to do every April. Yeah. But I will be forced to learn a little bit about the tax code.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And I can figure that out. Yeah. So I yeah. I'm I'm I'm fine with going back to
JORDI:And school is like a forcing like like, let's force people to do things that are that are, like, interesting. Right? My my dad was a high school teacher, and he taught a class called Project Make, which was some combination of, like, robotics and programming and wood wood shop and things like that. And so they would, like, build and launch rockets on the football field. Field.
JORDI:Yeah. Like, do things that, like, maybe that the nerds will do on the weekends. Yeah. But, like, the average student should be exposed to that kind of thing. Yep.
JORDI:That's great. And schools, you know, have a have a role to play there.
JOHN:Yeah. So, the sales bull says we fire h r and pay the sales team double. And it's the picture of Don Draper.
JORDI:This should be this this this is funny coming from from the sales guy. He's like he's like he's like, give me it. Give me a raise. Give me a raise. Yeah.
JORDI:Give me a raise.
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:But, anyways, usually paying your best sales people double is, like, pretty good, good way to spend money. Yeah.
JOHN:It really resonated. Twelve k likes. People are really
JORDI:I'm unsurprised that his following is confusing.
JOHN:But but I think this is less how much people love sales guys and more how much people hate HR. Yeah. Because HR is always seen as like a drag on the company. But, I mean, it's getting easier and easier with more, like, automated HR tools. Like, you can you can build a pretty sizable company without a dedicated HR person, for a long time.
JORDI:Yeah. You're on rippling and then Yeah. You know, it has so many bugs if you wanna, you know
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah. I think I think you could yeah. I mean, it's interesting that there's not more like, there's the the outsource CFO, like, really partial CFOs. It's weird that there haven't been more of those for HR.
JORDI:No. There
JOHN:are. There's probably Because because that seems like much more, like, in line with, like, the start of ethos than There's
JORDI:a lot of, like, $300 a month. You get the software and will help you.
JOHN:And there's personal consulting issues.
JORDI:But it's funny because, like, Chamath got, like, so much shade for being, like, HR should be, like, your legal team. Sure. Like, the but, like, the biggest HR issues that people have, like, tend to be better suited for outside counsel to, like, deal with Yep. Yep. Because it's, like, end up being, like, extremely charged Yeah.
JORDI:You know, issues with with employees.
JOHN:I wonder if there'll be a little bit more of like a a re restructuring of where HR sits in the organization as we go into, like, the next generation of companies. Like, how a lot of marketing teams have technical people on their staff now. Like recruiting is obviously super critical in the HR function. And then the general counsel, the legal stuff is super critical. So maybe you should kind of disaggregate it into a finance person that does the compliance stuff.
JOHN:Team building. Legal person. Yeah. And then the t and the team person, the team building honestly should just be an extension of the CEO and the culture. So I would want I would want a CEO's chief of staff to decide we're doing a happy hour because the CEO likes this place and and this would be great for the CEO to come and meet with all the employees.
JOHN:And then the recruiter should honestly be living within the functional units of the Yeah. Engineering team and be live right there. And there's Technical. Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:So I don't know. I I could see, like, the HR function kind of just diffusing without through throughout the organization instead of building up, like, this massive longhouse in your organization.
JORDI:That's good. Massive longhouse.
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah. Massive longhouse.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. Go over our our our HR team is over at the Longhouse building. Yeah. You can use the map.
JORDI:It's like
JOHN:That'd be a good name for the for the outsource part time consultancy for HR.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:Just like, Longhouse Consulting.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:Like like, let let us be your Longhouse.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. Longhouse as a service.
JOHN:Tio says new life goal having a tweet printed by the Tech Bros pod. Well, congratulations, Tio. It's happened. Today is the day you got your post printed. I don't know how to pronounce x eat.
JOHN:I think we live online. Is it zeat?
JORDI:Zeeded?
JOHN:I we live so online that, like, I couldn't pronounce cryptox
JORDI:either. Somebody pointed out. I don't
JOHN:even know t o t o. Who knows?
JORDI:Former, like, Dylan who'd been on the show pointed out. You know how you could say, like, oh, I'm on Tech Twitter. I'm on Yep. You know, Like
JOHN:like like Crypto Twitter,
JORDI:FinTwit. Yeah. There is not that same language for x. Sure. Like, I'm on Tech x.
JOHN:Tech x.
JORDI:I'm on
JOHN:Fin x.
JORDI:I'm on Fin x. It it doesn't exist, and it's actually a a key barrier to growth right now because we all of us on Tech Twitter
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:Tech x, maybe we just make it tech x.
JOHN:Tech x sounds like TEDx, you know, that really, really dumb version
JORDI:of TED.
JOHN:I mean, the base version's already really bright.
JORDI:We need to add we actually need to add TEDx to our enemies list because a bunch of there's smart people that have gone up there, but,
JOHN:by and large.
JORDI:By and large, some of the worst takes of all time.
JOHN:Most blue pill
JORDI:shit I've ever seen. The worst the worst
JOHN:takes of
JORDI:all time.
JOHN:Oh, did you know cancer was cured? Like, every single time, every year they have someone stand up and say cancer is cured. It's like, come on. It's not cured. We're not there yet.
JOHN:Let's go to Jen over at Anduril. She says it's live. Anduril exclusives.com. So they did a drop. Anduril has selected eBay for charity to host this auction.
JOHN:100% of the proceeds will benefit Blue Star Families. And so did you see this? They're they're auctioning off pieces of of wreckages from tests that they've run.
JORDI:So amazing.
JOHN:It's basically loot crate drops. There's different tiers. There's, you know, rare epic legendary tiers.
JORDI:And they're not using it as profit center. They're using it to give back, which I think is really cool.
JOHN:I don't know. Maybe they should be using it as profit center. I think I'm I'm actually pro profit.
JORDI:I just think I just am in favor of companies that generate so much so much profit from their core products Yeah. That they're able to give use that same skill set to give back. And,
JOHN:obviously, Blue Star Families are fantastic, and it's a fantastic
JORDI:We love Blue Star
JOHN:Families. But I I just love that it's a very unique, a very unique drop. We we've been talking about this how, like, every company has a t shirt. Yeah. But only XL nicotine pouches has a briefcase Yeah.
JOHN:And a watch
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And a Rolex. Yeah. And, and more more brands and more companies should lean into understanding, like, what is the expression of your brand in terms of merch? I was I was talking to another founder of a of a unicorn who, I was I was saying, like like, you're, yeah, you're a tech company, but, like, what if your tech company was a car, like, what car would it be? Yeah.
JOHN:And don't tell me it's a Tesla because that's what every single person says. I'm a tech company, so the the the avatar of my brand is a Cybertruck. And it's like, that's fine, but that's also just the avatar of the Tesla brand. Yep. You need to express yourself differently.
JOHN:And are you an f 150 or are you a Corvette? Like, those are 2 wildly different cars. And you should be able to immediately say based on your brand, oh, we're more of a Corvette than a f 150.
JORDI:Yep. Or or The Aurora systems a Porsche 911 of
JOHN:There you go.
JORDI:Of, water filters.
JOHN:There you go. And so and so this this is a this is a merch drop that feels uniquely Anduril
JORDI:Yep.
JOHN:As opposed to just a t shirt, which I'm sure they'll be selling and they'll sell other other merch. But when I think of, like, the merch that I want from Anduril, I think of, like, hiking gear, like, almost tactical gear, not, like, fully military
JORDI:Stuff you can wear on the range.
JOHN:But something that's like that. And I and I and I honestly don't even care if it's just them going and finding a great brand and just, like, honestly, just throwing, like, an annual pin on it. That's what Founders Fund does a lot. They'll they give out these bags, and there's just a pin on it. Yeah.
JOHN:But they're really nice bags, and I really like them. And You're
JORDI:much more likely to use them.
JOHN:Exactly. And you can always take off the pin if you want. It's not they didn't have to go and get, like, some white labeler to, like, make them a fake version of the bag. They just give you the actual bag with the pin on it. But it's like the it's still like an avatar of the brand and it's still, an expression, which I think I know is is really, really cool.
JORDI:Yeah. And brands need to know what they're actually doing with, like, non core products like merch. It's like you wanna be building connection to the broader community and, like, likability. Yep. And usually a shirt is not the best way to do that.
JORDI:Yep. You can get a lot more coverage by doing something like this where somebody's like, oh, I actually own a piece of Anduril's, like, drone system that
JOHN:Yeah. Exactly. Blew
JORDI:up. Yeah. Right?
JOHN:It's really cool. And I always love artifacts. We have a lot of artifacts in the studio here. And a lot of the investors at Founders Fund have have, like, a whole set of of of artifacts from, like, oh, this commemorates, like, the SpaceX deal or the Anduril deal. And I think that's really, really cool.
JORDI:Yeah. And I like this too because if you're very online on x and, like, accelerationist, you know, defense tech oriented, getting a piece, like, from here would be amazing. But they can also go give this to a politician and be like, you know, throw it on their desk and be like It's
JOHN:a paperweight.
JORDI:Don't forget about us.
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah.
JORDI:So,
JOHN:this was blown It's
JORDI:a great paperweight. Yeah.
JOHN:Well, let's stay on defense tech and go to Ben Coleman. He says, quote, we have a 5 star general on our board of advisors. True story. And it's the, Inglorious Basterds meme of the guy holding up 3 the wrong way because Germans do the 3 this way. You know
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:And so it's, you know, detecting that you're not one of us. Yeah. And and and we know that it's not real because, of course, you can't have a 5 star general right now because it's not a time of war.
JORDI:Right. Right.
JOHN:Right. So very embarrassing for whoever did that. And you
JORDI:really Yeah. What I've seen in defense tech is like a lot of, there's people that will be publicly out there like, oh, I'm a general. And then they'll use that to, like, get sort of advisory opportunities. And then once they're actually in the deck, then they're like, woah. Woah.
JORDI:Woah. No. Actually, like, put this, like, very specific title, like
JOHN:Oh, yeah.
JORDI:8 Brigadier Oh, sure. Sure. Sure. Blah, blah, blah. And it's, like, ends up being much more specified, and it doesn't sound nearly as cool.
JORDI:And so bless their hearts are sort of, like, using that, like, high level title to, like, land private market opportunities.
JOHN:Yeah. I wonder how valuable having a 4 star general is on your board because we we we hear stories about some really helpful people like Chris Burrows at Anduril, like, was McCain's chief of staff came in, like, really runs that organization, like, full time employee, like, very, very beneficial. But then you also hear, stories about, like, the didn't some general join the board of I think Mattis joined the board of Theranos and, like, it was, like, what does he know about that? It was it was very controversial at the time. And, like, if you're a board member, like, you should know.
JOHN:I I think that was that was a story of Mattis or something. But Yeah.
JORDI:Yeah. Before we dive into the next one on the subject of defense tech, we have a promoted post from Allen Control Systems. They say looking for a fast moving high growth opportunity in defense tech. We are hiring for several roles across engineering and operations. A few of our featured openings are senior mechanical design engineer, electrical embedded engineer and an unreal systems developer.
JORDI:You can view all of Allen Control Systems openings and apply at Allen Control Systems dotcom/company, numeral sign, careers. Improve your links, ACS. You guys can do better than that. But, anyways, fantastic company. ACS is building AI, gun turrets and gun systems for counter drone use.
JORDI:So they basically have built a product that can take out, you know, without any human intervention, drones that are, you know, fast moving
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:Across the battlefield. And so, amazing opportunity. They have their their first product is very defensive, but gonna save many lives, on battlefields across the world. So, thank you to ACS for innovating in this space.
JOHN:Thanks to ACS. Let's go to Jason Liu. He says, if you stayed in Canada, were you truly that ambitious?
JORDI:Got him.
JOHN:I love I love some hate on an un American country like Canada.
JORDI:Very un American. Yeah. It's it's objectively one of the the most un American because
JOHN:So close. They could
JORDI:just say, hey. We wanna
JOHN:be part of this awesome team. We wanna join up. 51st. Let's come over here.
JORDI:I I would be surprised if Canada doesn't try to front run the moon to become the 51st state. Right. Yeah. Is that be kind of like, you know, the moon's going to get a lot of attention once it becomes a state. Yep.
JORDI:And, you know, be the first new state in quite a long time. The 50 is like a nice round number being that 51st state. Big opportunity. I can see a lot of competition for it. Yeah.
JORDI:That slot. And Canada, we would welcome you with open arms. I know, you know, a lot of friends in the podcast, Jeremy Gafon, Sam Poirier.
JOHN:Jeremy's from Canada?
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because he was at tiny he was at I have
JOHN:no idea.
JORDI:He's he's he was at tiny. Remember? It's in Vancouver. Okay.
JOHN:But but he, like, grew up there? He's born there? It's brutal.
JORDI:Brutal. Based in New York now. Okay. So, thank God. We got it.
JORDI:We got a good one.
JOHN:So so he he is ambitious. Yeah.
JORDI:He
JOHN:didn't stay in Canada.
JORDI:No. But there's something to be said for, like, at the same time, we we would welcome Canada. But, I respect all the Canadians that are staying there and trying to make it better and fix the place.
JOHN:Yeah. No. I I agree. We we love our Canadians.
JORDI:All my all my favorite Canadians are are US residents, but that's also because I spend more time with them. So
JOHN:Exactly. And Shopify, fantastic company from Canada.
JORDI:Fantastic company.
JOHN:And, University of Waterloo, fantastic engineering.
JORDI:Also good.
JOHN:Lots of respect. And a lot of companies have, like, engineering hubs there. Yeah. And it is a beautiful country. So we love Canada.
JOHN:Let's go to unusual whales. They say, Ken Griffin of Citadel says he's invested in nuclear and it's the future.
JORDI:I love these accounts to show they just, like, say something that's just, like, could potentially be, like, very out of context. Yeah. And because it's a big account, like, it's just, like, fact. Yeah. Fact.
JORDI:Ken Griffin is a long nuclear. I want nuclear powered high frequency trading. Right? Like, I want, like, I wanna be giving these high frequency trading companies these mark we need to be giving nuclear power to market makers, right, to to increase financial innovation and the speed at which money moves.
JOHN:I actually wonder if energy is a big big issue for the high frequency traders. Like, I know that Jane Street is advertising on Dorkesh Patel's podcast trying to recruit, I believe, CUDA engineers and machinery engineers. So they've done a lot of AI stuff, but I'm not sure how scale bound they are right now. Like, a a lot of their early stuff was very deterministic. It was written in this programming language called OCaml.
JORDI:Well, and a lot of their strategies were location based. They were like, how do we how do we get to within 10 feet
JOHN:of Yep.
JORDI:Yep. Of where the trade is being executed. You know
JOHN:that on the on the Nasdaq, they have a rule where even if your server is closer, there's a 1,000 feet of cable between you and the and the main server no matter what. So that everyone has a level plan.
JORDI:Laws don't work. So we're gonna, like, physically force this. Yeah.
JOHN:Yeah. And, I mean, it's flash probably as a great. Yeah. I don't about like digging this huge tunnel across.
JORDI:Probably a good business to be selling. A lot
JOHN:of these exchange to stock exchange.
JORDI:Probably a good business to be selling those like 1,000 foot cables because they probably need to be replaced all the time because there's, like Yeah.
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah. Hey. It's too
JORDI:slow. I can great or whatever. Exactly. It's gotta be fresh.
JOHN:But, yeah, I mean, if if the if the trading algorithms wind up moving to something that looks like an LLM where it's very scale bound, like, you're gonna see huge data center build outs to it's gonna be a new waste just like the LLM stuff. But I haven't heard anything about that. We should dig into that more to see. I I mean, I think at this point, he's probably just making the bet on the fact that the LLM companies and the consumer AI companies will need energy for their data centers. So he's investing in nuclear.
JOHN:But this is interesting because, you know, a year ago, people started talking about, okay, what's after Nvidia? Nvidia's pumping. Yeah. Energy is clearly key. Maybe nuclear is the next thing, but it was very much like a cocktail position.
JOHN:People talked about it, but they weren't actually moving the market. Now the market's starting to move and some of the nuclear stocks are starting to go up.
JORDI:Well, we talked about this before.
JOHN:Crazy as Nvidia.
JORDI:It's worth bringing up again 4 years ago at Heretic Con, nuclear was a heretic you know, being pro nuclear was still heretical. Now it was the the most normie Yep. Take that you could have. So, Yeah. Ken Griffin is just kind of putting a stamp on that.
JOHN:Yep. Let's go to Sarah Hess. 2nd time on the show. Can't beat these margins. It's a screenshot of the rare anderel rel relic, recovered crash component from anderel r and d tests.
JOHN:And the the bid I mean, it hasn't even ended. There's still 3 days in this. It's already over $1,000. It's pretty awesome.
JORDI:Amazing.
JOHN:And, yeah, margins are fantastic
JORDI:because to those families. Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:Yeah. Because it's, you know, essentially free since it was just wreckage anyway. But Yeah.
JORDI:I wonder if anybody figures out that, like, the actual metals and, like, if you got the right piece, like, the metals itself would be, like, worth the, like, more yeah. Take it down. Break it down.
JOHN:Melt it down.
JORDI:Some enterprising, you know, very We
JOHN:know they do that with, like, hypercars When there whenever there's a crash, there's a community that will find, okay. Yes. Like, a lot of Ferrari crashed in this place. Let's go and dig through the rubble and, like, figure out if, like, maybe some random piece got thrown clear. Yeah.
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah. That and sell it.
JORDI:And it's like a $1,000 piece.
JOHN:It's like, it's like diving for treasure.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:Supercar crashes. Whole community because, like, if you get one, you know, like, a clutch or
JORDI:something, you're really valuable,
JOHN:because they don't make them that much.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:It's great. Do we have a promoted post?
JORDI:Promoted post from Nico runs a company called Default. Oh, yeah. 76% of qualified leads book an inbound meeting with default. We try to help customers think of demo requests as ones who fall into 2 buckets. Demo qualified and to not demo qualified.
JORDI:Most of our customers only show a scheduler to leads who qualify for a demo. So Nico's building an amazing platform, an enterprise product called default that helps other enterprise companies, you know, sort of like sort and qualify and book, demos. So he's been at this for quite a while, backed by craft and, now is starting to see some pretty fantastic results. Became buddies with Nico, you know, a few years ago at this point, and their execution has been fantastic. So, if you're dealing with processing inbound leads, go over to default, hit up Nico, DM him, Nico, d m him, on x, and, he will get you.
JORDI:He's the kind of guy that if you d m him right now, he'll jump on to do a demo of the product with you, like, in, like, 5 minutes.
JOHN:Only if you're demo qualified.
JORDI:If you're qualified. So, he'll qualify you. That's part of his his, his job and what default does. So thank you to default.
JOHN:Let's go to Val. He says something that would let us buy and trade seconds from future ad slots would be lit. And so he's, he's pushing us to, let the average viewer and fan invest and profit from our
JORDI:future ad spots. So that's actually kind of interesting. Like, if you wanna if you wanna go long Technology Brothers, you should be buying up our 2020 6 q4 in inventory. Them and then reselling it when the time comes.
JOHN:That's great.
JORDI:So, yeah, maybe, somebody wants to create a platform market for this. Yep. Well, well, well,
JOHN:well, I like the idea of, like, a dynamic auction.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:Where it's like we could be doing the show live on spaces and
JORDI:we're like, oh, we actually got a higher bidder. Hit the printer.
JOHN:Print it out.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. You can buy if you buy the ad slot within, you know, it's kind of like a car auction where, like, after the 2 minute thing gets down, if nobody does it, you can buy the slot. But then you buy the slot once it's physically printed, like, it is It's locked in. Locked in.
JORDI:Yeah. Price is locked.
JOHN:He was saying he wanted to, invest, and they said, would he prefer a SPAC or a shit coin or both? I think
JORDI:both at the same time hasn't been tried yet. Not really. But, could we
JOHN:do kind of experimenting with it.
JORDI:Liberty coin.
JOHN:Liberty coin. Social. Social. He's kinda got both.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:And then also lots of merch drops.
JORDI:We might wanna He doesn't
JOHN:do ad reads, though.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:He should he should have an ad product. I'm
JORDI:actually in the middle of the
JOHN:state of union.
JORDI:So can you actually brought
JOHN:to you by MyPillow.
JORDI:Is there something is there a reason that Trump has not done his own podcast? Because the guy clearly likes This is the future.
JOHN:I'm telling you the future is the president will have a podcast.
JORDI:The president will have a podcast. A 100%. We should create a poly market for that. We're, like, will Trump have his own podcast by 2020
JOHN:7? JD will.
JORDI:But And
JOHN:I think JD will bring on his his, like, associates and whoever he's thinking. Like, think about all the buzz that's been happening around, like, who's gonna get department of transportation? Who's gonna get commerce? Who's gonna get defense? And it's and and the way these people are introduced, it's usually, like, a screenshot of a press release that goes viral.
JORDI:People are
JOHN:like, who's this? There's, like, a couple mainstream media write ups, and then a video clip will go will go viral from whatever that person said on some other podcast.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:So, like, they'll be like, this is the new secretary of defense, like, so based or so terrible depending on who is posting. And it's just a clip from them on a podcast. But how much cooler would it be if you could just watch, you know, Trump or whoever the president is sit down with Yeah. The person and say, hey, American people. I'm thinking about this person for secretary of transportation.
JOHN:We're gonna talk for an hour.
JORDI:And then you're gonna roast them.
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah.
JORDI:Roast them in the comments.
JOHN:Yeah. Roast them in the comments. Yeah. Well,
JORDI:but Trump if Trump had his own podcast, he could get that podcast to a $100,000,000 run rate just on ads.
JOHN:Oh, totally.
JORDI:Which would be which would be a 100 times the run rate of truth social.
JOHN:Oh my god.
JORDI:And maybe he could take it could be the 1st podcast to go public. Right?
JOHN:He could.
JORDI:And then you could just have like you could just be a you could have all of America own a piece of. Yeah. So anyways, I
JOHN:mean, this is the thing. Like, didn't, Churchill? No. It wasn't Churchill. FDR did, like, the fireside chats.
JOHN:That's really popular.
JORDI:Well, you know how there's like.
JOHN:Weekly things. I think even Obama did stuff that was, like, weekly dispatches
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:About, like, here's what's going on.
JORDI:Well, they're I feel like these are less of a thing now, but isn't there, like, presidential accounts for there's, like, there's an x account that's for the first lady.
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah. When did the first lady at POTUS and there's Donald j Trump.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And at POTUS changes hands.
JORDI:Exactly. Exactly. So Trump's like, I'm not gonna blow this. Like, if Trump if Trump was actually on the at POTUS account just ripping bangers, that account, he's like, I'm not gonna 10 x's for my future. Like, for somebody who's gonna use that audience against me, like, in 4 years.
JOHN:Yeah. I would I would love to listen to a podcast. I could see j
JORDI:I could see j d, like, booting up at POTUS again, though. And and I mean,
JOHN:I think, Vivek Ramaswami is gonna do it because he's already doing vlogs, and he's clearly understands, like, the modern media stuff. He's buying BuzzFeed. He can use all the BuzzFeed, you know, resources to kinda craft his own media strategy and really level up from there. Go to John Feo. He's been on the show before, the Fiorentino family.
JORDI:He made their money in Hospitality. Oh, hospitality. Yeah.
JOHN:He's quoting Tony Segura who says President Trump at Real Donald Trump is requiring vote Vladimir Zelensky to wear a coat and tie when he meets the president going forward. And John says, in the same way, you weren't trusted if you didn't show up in a slouchy hoodie to a meeting in the last 20 years, we're about to snap back to suits as a filter. Speaking my language.
JORDI:Speaking our language.
JOHN:You'll wanna make sure you're wearing a a Fiorentino label soon because he has a suit company.
JORDI:So John, came in very clutch at Hereticon. I, didn't have time to get my own suit, sort of ironed and dry cleaned at, at, at the hotel. So I was able to wear a Fiorentino label suit. It was fantastic. Got a lot of compliments, turned a lot of heads.
JORDI:It's great. And, it was all thanks to, the fine fabrics and fit, of his label. But, yeah, I think, it's it's kind of funny that you you remember these, like, memes where, like, if your VC is wearing shoes like this, like, they're gonna, like, try to buy 50% of your company or, like, if your VC, like, is even wearing a suit at all, like, you're fucked, you know. And I think that, like, trends obviously oscillate
JOHN:from
JORDI:one side to another, like, very dramatically.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:And it became, like, the thing to wear, like, Allbirds and joggers and, like, hoodies, and and that so clearly is just, like, wrong.
JOHN:Yeah. Right?
JORDI:It's the same thing when you're you
JOHN:have over 50,000,000 in AUM, you need to wear a tie.
JORDI:You were you called me, like, very upset the other day because you sat down in business class on a flight next to somebody, and they were just dressed, dressed, like, very sloppily.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:And you were, like, physically ill for just being, like, in their presence saying, like, this is so wrong. You should know that if you're flying business class, you should be wearing at least a collared shirt.
JOHN:Exactly.
JORDI:And, you know, we hope that we're on the forefront, you know, with people like Theo, and, you know, our our own podcast. We hope that we're on the forefront of a new movement in tech to just, like, dress, dress for the for the Yeah. For the job. So if
JOHN:you see a tech, a capital allocator out there in casual clothes, maybe on a podcast, just send them a nice note in the replies. Just tell them, like, you know, love what you're saying, love your business model, but would it kill you to put on a suit?
JORDI:Exactly. Exactly.
JOHN:Let's go to Josh Miller.
JORDI:Capital allocator, not a HVAC technician.
JOHN:Exactly. Let's go to Josh Miller. He says, I've said before and I'll say it again, from antitrust to AI agents, 2025 will be the year of the web browser. More and more signs by the day. Interesting.
JORDI:So I think this was in response to, news. I think that there were actually, yeah, Chrome potentially being forced to spin out, which is which is very, potentially very wild just because Google is so and all of Google's products are so deeply integrated into Chrome at this point. It's hard to imagine a Chrome that's not that's sort of like account agnostic. It's probably not that hard to build, but you know that Alphabet has spent Alphabet's strategy was like, hey. Like, search is our golden goose.
JORDI:Let's build up these sort of, like, walls all around it via Android, via Chrome. So that, like, we have we're building up this sort of, like, fortress. And, if it gets spun out, that'd be cool. Like, Chrome has probably 1,000,000,000 of users. Yep.
JORDI:And
JOHN:The perplexity CEO was joking about buying it.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which would be funny.
JOHN:Very funny.
JORDI:Which would be, which would be a great, scene of the simulation. But, but, yeah, like, you know, Josh and the browser company, like, it's called the browser company for a reason. They were set up to, like, innovate in this area and, like
JOHN:Oh, he's the CEO of the browser company? Yeah. Oh, that makes sense now. Okay. Gotcha.
JORDI:Yeah. So he you know, they built a fantastic browser. They're now focused on they're now focused on building sort of a Gentic browser products. Like Got it. I I'm at you know, they haven't shared a ton yet, but it's, you know, products that will browse for you Yep.
JORDI:On your behalf. Well, then this is kind of
JOHN:interesting because just recently they they said that they were kind of pivoting away from Arc as a core browser product. But he's still very bullish about about the web browser broadly. He just wants to find a different way to
JORDI:So here's what the browser company needs to do. Find a SPAC. There's, like, 100 out there. Yep. SPAC, buy Chrome.
JORDI:And, suddenly, Josh doesn't have to compete with the big bad Chrome. He can just be the Chrome.
JOHN:I wonder how much Chrome is worth.
JORDI:It's probably not not not cheap. Because if you buy As a standalone business
JOHN:I mean, I'm pretty sure the isn't isn't the deal for doesn't Google pay Apple, like
JORDI:That's what I'm saying. So you buy Chrome and then you license
JOHN:Just to be the default search engine on iOS? Yeah.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. That was 20. I thought it was 20,000,000,000.
JOHN:Yeah. So think about Chrome's gotta be like, almost in a similar install base size and even maybe even more valuable or somewhat valuable. So, like, you have $20,000,000,000 of essentially
JORDI:Potential net income.
JOHN:Just net income. Like, you run a multiple on that. Like, it's a $200,000,000,000 asset. Like, I mean, or some something in that range. Like, it's a lot.
JOHN:Yeah. It's not it's not Hard to build.
JORDI:Big SPAC.
JOHN:Yeah. It's gonna be tough. I mean, I guess they could just do, like, a demerge and just have 2 tickers and they're just
JORDI:I think that that will what it would it would be have to be. But then what isn't then the new company is like if they're beholden to their shareholders isn't the most profitable thing that you could do, Just go relicense a product back to Google like you're talking about.
JOHN:Yeah, that's exactly what I would do.
JORDI:If and if you can't do that, then it's worth way less. Right? You have to look at like Mozilla and say, is there a big
JOHN:or something
JORDI:big browsers? Yeah. Be like, well, what is this actually worth?
JOHN:Yeah. Very interesting. Let's go to Jason Carman, fantastic filmmaker, good friend of mine and of the show. Jason says, most people don't realize how big of a deal Starship is. Ahead of today's flight 6, here's a first look inside a new series I'm working on called Frontier Films.
JOHN:The first one is all about new space. And this actually got reposted by Elon. And it's I mean, it's amazing. Jason has crushed it, and he's making, like, the documentaries are better than Netflix stuff now. Yeah.
JOHN:Like, it's funny.
JORDI:No. If Netflix is smart, they'll go and say, hey. The next series you do They should.
JOHN:They should. Just give it to us. HBO, honestly. Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:Because,
JORDI:now he's on that path, and and it's honestly the path that all media is going on Yep. To get to actually break into traditional media and, like, get the Netflix or the HBO or be on TV.
JOHN:You gotta do it.
JORDI:You gotta be big online first. Otherwise, like, you just don't understand attention and, like, it's just too risky.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:So Jason is and, yeah. I think, like, he's carved out his own niche of, like, I am a filmmaker
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:In technology, which, like, the fact that when you think filmmaker and technology, I think of you and Jason. Yep. And in many ways, like, you were, like, a YouTuber.
JOHN:Yep. Right?
JORDI:More of a YouTuber. He's, like, filmmaker, multi platform. Oh, yeah.
JOHN:Yeah. I mean, his whole background is filmmaking. He he's I I kinda, like, chose YouTube because it was some white space. Like, a lot of people had sub stacks, and I was like, I wanna do something different. I like I'm kind of a camera nerd.
JOHN:This guy's been, like, making films for his entire life, like, dreaming of making films. And so, super excited for where he's going with it. And it's funny because there is already a Netflix documentary about SpaceX, but it wasn't made from the perspective of someone like Jason who's actually worked inside of a space company at a Stratos and really gets it and really talks to the founders and the investors and and understands the whole 3. So it's just gonna be so much better, and you just know that it's gonna it's gonna rip. And he has a whole he has a whole bunch of different products now.
JOHN:Like, he started with the s three series doing these, like, some kind of micro company deep dives on, like, pretty early stage companies. But they were really, really polished, really great interviews. Then he did his interview series. Then he also did some flashback stuff where he did Bell Labs, and now he has these Frontier films. And so he's he's, like, fully building a a new movie studio, essentially.
JOHN:Like, truly going into And
JORDI:showing, like, how efficient it can be. Like, he doesn't have some massive production company.
JOHN:Well, it's because he's actually an individual contributor. Like, he knows how to use a camera. He knows how to use a microphone. Like, he doesn't need to spend, you know, a $100,000 on every single thing because he knows how to do it himself. He can do it solo, but then that allows him to hire the best.
JOHN:And so
JORDI:And last thing
JOHN:it's gonna be massive.
JORDI:He embodies the technology brothers' mentality, which is doing it for the money. Right? He's doing it for the love. But, like, this guy is gonna make 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars making important films, pushing humanity forward through you know, he's, like, basically a marketing channel for a lot of really important companies. So thank you to Jason for doing what you do and doing it for the money.
JOHN:Thank you, Jason. Let's go to Gary Tan. He says this company went from 0 to 500 k ARR in the last 8 weeks. Lots of people do AI due diligence for private equity, but this is the first one that outputs all the analysis natively in Excel files that analysts slash principles can understand and modify from formulas up. And it's a repost of YC congratulating one of their portfolio companies.
JORDI:Yeah. So this makes a lot of sense. Like, any any time you can go after, like, this company is replacing people that today make between, like, 80 and, like, $250,000 a year doing, like, just, like, keyboard work Yep. Like modeling. And it's one of those things, like, it will probably maybe already is or very soon will be Yep.
JORDI:Better outputs than, like, the humans that would do it. And for, like, a 10th or, like, you know, even 5% of the cost, something.
JOHN:But importantly, it still allows you to have a tunable model at the end of the day. It's kind of like what what was that company that Teegas bought, that, was it was, Catalyst, I think it was the thing.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:And Catalyst would allow you to download a DCF that was kind of prepopulated with the metrics. There's always been Excel templates for various, for various public companies. You can get like a Cap IQ or Bloomberg integration to pull all those formulas in. But allowing allowing a company to do this in the private markets with just like the proprietary data. And so much of the work is just scraping stuff out of Yeah.
JOHN:Differently formatted PDFs, differently formatted Excel sheets, just doing the translation. And that's where AI is, like, so valuable right now. Just taking a bunch of messy stuff and copying it over and cleaning it up. Like, that's where AI really,
JORDI:really flows. If you're an analyst or an associate and you're worried about AI taking your job, you should be looking at this being like, no, it's not gonna take my job. I'm just gonna do more deals. Right? So before it might have taken you a week to build this model Yep.
JORDI:Or 24 hours. Now you're gonna be able to build it and get on to the next one.
JOHN:Yep. Yeah.
JORDI:So, just an increase of a lot.
JOHN:It's everything we're seeing in in art and filmmaking where you can accelerate with some AI generated music or some AI generated content aware fill in the background. Like, there's still artistry. There's still gonna be
JORDI:Yeah. You're making it to actually be the right image for a certain slide and
JOHN:you can generate it. Exactly. And it's gonna be the same thing with with building these models. It's gonna be something where you're you're you're you're just using this to fill in all the, you know, annoying, problems that you would normally have to grind at for
JORDI:Yep.
JOHN:Nights and weekends. And you can grind on nights and weekends on more deals.
JORDI:More deals.
JOHN:We love that. Let's go to Pavel, Dalian's brother. He says, very misunderstood by tech outsiders. A low intention meeting with a successful person is net worse for you than not meeting with them at all. Networking is default for harmful, makes you look like an MPC unless you have a clear agenda.
JOHN:It's a good point. Never heard
JORDI:this before. So anybody that meets Delhi and go, oh, you're Pavel's brother. So do that. Yeah. Pavel's his own man.
JORDI:But but anyways, yeah, I I think people don't. There's this obsession in tech of, like, trying to, like, climb the ladder and, oh, if I just meet this person and get in the room with them, I can, like, do something. And it's, like, people even use cold email to a fault. Like, use cold email when you have a specific thing that you're trying to do Yeah. With somebody or if you have a specific way to, like, add value to what they're doing or something you can offer them or something you can ask.
JORDI:Just it's a total waste of time to, like, meet people when there's no thing to do together.
JOHN:Exactly. So,
JORDI:like, don't nobody wants, like, people in tech are generally, like, friendly, open to, you know, outsiders, whatever. It's awesome. But don't, like, waste somebody's time by just being, like, hey, I'd love to talk. Yeah. It's like nobody wants to just talk.
JORDI:We wanna
JOHN:do things. Naval talks about this. Like, what like, you have an extremely high opportunity cost. There's that idea that, like, you know, your coffee meeting should be worth, like, $10,000. Yeah.
JOHN:And and it's okay to come in with, like, hey, look. I have a I have an opportunity that together we could make a $1,000,000 is a 1% chance that it goes through. So, yeah, this is this is a $10,000 meeting as opposed to just like I want to just pick your brain and figure it out.
JORDI:Yeah. It's also important to understand, like, if you're if you're at a conference and there's like somebody like a bean air there, right? And you're like, oh, I really want to meet this person. Yeah. There's going to be like 20 other people, like, crowded around that person.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:And you have to understand that all those 20 people are, like, kind of making that that person's life worse.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:Because they're just coming at them with just, like, a bunch of bullshit.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:And it's better to just be, like, you know, not approach them then and cold email them or get a warm intro months later and be, like, hey, you know, we overlapped at this conference, didn't get a chance to talk, social proof right there that you're in the right room. And then you can launch into your, like, I'm building this thing. I'd love to, like, run it by you. And that's gonna be a lot more effective of, like, actually building a relationship than just, like, you know, coming on to them and be like, oh, I wanna be friends.
JOHN:Yeah. And there's something like a fine line about, like, being too transactional, like, only talking to someone when there's something to be. Yeah.
JORDI:But I always I always talk you know, I was talking with, Sebastian, yesterday, and I told him something that I believe pretty strongly is, like, if you're a busy person and the person that you're meeting is a busy person, you're only gonna spend a lot of time with them if you're actually working on something. Right? Like, the best friendships are usually founded on, like, something for doing something productive together.
JOHN:Yep. Yep.
JORDI:And so I don't think it's wrong. It's not even necessarily transactional, but I don't think it's a bad thing that there's a lot of people in my life that I'm like if I work on a specific deal or company or even in this situation we spend like 20 hours a week hanging out. And we wouldn't be doing that if we weren't making this podcast. And, like, there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah.
JORDI:Like, we were friends before and we're friends now. But, it's great to find reasons to be friends. Yeah.
JOHN:Let's go to Liz Wessel, noted angel investor in Ramp.
JORDI:Wow. Big
JOHN:one. Secondary to that, I think she's a general partner at a big venture capital firm.
JORDI:But That's cool too.
JOHN:Less important than just ripping an angel check-in the Ramp. Big. She says, why do so many people become investors slash partners and suddenly grow enormous egos? It's so obnoxious. You're not the only one who's special.
JOHN:Your founders are. I mean, I gotta disagree with you there.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:I mean, your I
JORDI:think capital allocators are very special. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine if all the capital allocators in the world just cease to exist, our entire global economy would come crashing down.
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah. We always say that, yeah, the the working class gets far too much credit and so do that. So does the founder class.
JORDI:Yep.
JOHN:We need to to
JORDI:There's so many are with businesses that are r and d intensive. Yep. They cannot exist without. So I don't care if a founder has a pretty deck or a good idea or great pedigree. Yep.
JORDI:If they don't have a $5,000,000 seed round, they're never gonna achieve their dreams, which makes the venture capitalist absolutely critical to the process. And they should have a colossal ego. I don't think you should have a big ego if you have, like, a micro fund, like, $400,000,000 or something like that. But if you're getting up into the the $1,000,000,000 AUM range, like, build that ego up. Yep.
JORDI:You're just as important, as
JOHN:Like, jokes aside, there is something very valuable about being a young founder and interacting with an extremely high ego investor because at least there is some alignment there most of the time. So you can kind of get some reps in, deal with some sharp elbows, and deal with, like it's almost lower stakes than than dealing with a high ego public company CEO who's gonna buy your company or something like that. Like, you've gotten the reps in and just realized, like, what what a big ego is and how to deal with it. And, but, yes, obviously, it's a little silly, especially if you haven't actually earned it and you've just become a partner because of your career.
JORDI:I tell I tell there's a specific investor friend of mine who has a few 1,000,000,000 AUM, and he, like, high, like, hides a lot of his, like, material success from his founders. And I'm like, dude, you realize that, like, people want to work with other winners, right? So, like, if you're a winner and you're crushing it, like, other people that are already winners or want to be will want to work with you.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:So I don't I think it's important to just kinda, like, shatter that wall. Yeah. And, yeah, obviously, having a huge ego is, like, not like there's no there's no need for that. Yeah. But I do think that ego is an edge.
JORDI:And we went through a period of business history where ego, like, go ask, like, Michael Ovitz. Yeah. Like, hey. Like, what do you think? You know, did you have a big ego when you were building CAA?
JORDI:And he'd be like, yeah. Yeah. You know, like, that's what drove me every single day.
JOHN:Yeah. I
JORDI:mean, that's the story. To have a big ego and be kind.
JOHN:Yeah. Of course. Of course. There's also a big difference between, like, materialism and, like, having nice things and having a big ego. Like, those can be very different.
JOHN:You can have you can have a $100,000 watch and still have an appreciation for really interesting Casio that costs a $100. Right? Totally. And being and being a someone who who, understands, like, taste and
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And, an opinionated decision making even and not just saying, oh, like, this person has, like, a really expensive hue blow. Yeah. That's not going to cut it. Right?
JORDI:No.
JOHN:So
JORDI:yeah. The other thing is there's a difference between you can have a huge ego and still be very respectful. So a GP that's managing 1,000,000,000 of dollars, they can have a huge ego because they're managing 1,000,000,000 of dollars. They can still be respectful of founders, respectful of their time, kind. And when they pass Yeah.
JORDI:You know, or kind of, you know, and respectful if there's a tough situation. So the key is to build build the ego Yeah. And, you know, become a better kinder person.
JOHN:I really wonder who this subtweet is about. It's clearly about some investor partner, someone who just made partner on, like, you know, for no reason and is now just, like, running around being like, you you fucking work for me.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:Hopefully, it's not happening at her fund. Buco, capital bloke, he's been on the show before. He says, I heard someone say here for the income, not the outcome today at work, and that pretty much nicely sums up what happens in tech when stocks really start ripping. 2021 vibes everywhere with 1 k lights.
JORDI:Yeah. A lot of people have been talking about, I mean, just the general. We're just we we who knew when when 2021 and 2022, early 22, 22 were happening
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:It didn't feel like we'd reach that level of frothiness again for at least a decade. Yep. And we prayed for a bubble. Yep. Like, how many how many hours, right, were we praying to have another bubble and to get AI this quickly and, in many ways, get, you know, there there's even a a couple of tech podcasting.
JORDI:Right? Yeah. No. But I I do think it's this thing where these companies get to a certain size and suddenly it's become so hard to sort. Like, I I was talking to a a founder today who's starting about thinking about starting his own company, you know, interviewing and would likely get an offer with OpenAI.
JORDI:And he was looking at it as, like, well, I could go to OpenAI for a year, invest, like, a couple $1,000,000 of stock Yeah. And then be an OpenAI shareholder and then just build my company. Yeah. So that's, like, the reality of, like, here for the income Yep. Not the outcome.
JORDI:He doesn't necessarily like, he's just getting it as, like, a call option,
JOHN:basically. Mercenary.
JORDI:Mercenary. But he's gonna start a company. So good. Good.
JOHN:That's great. That's great. Let's go to Megan Neivold. First time on the show. She says, so once Azempic gets to be cheap, will rich people start being fat again?
JORDI:So you know how it used to be a status symbol to be overweight, like, in the early, you know,
JOHN:I have a joke with some of my friends when when they get fat, we say looking prosperous.
JORDI:Looking prosperous.
JOHN:Looking prosperous.
JORDI:Yeah. So the real contrarian move here
JOHN:Peter Paul Reubens.
JORDI:If you wanna
JOHN:Fat people. And it was a luxury. It showed that you had enough income to afford nice foods.
JORDI:Yeah. And so the real the real edge of your capital allocator out there, add pronouns to your bio
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:And get overweight, and you'll really stand out and Yeah. Kinda make a statement of, like, I am contrarian.
JOHN:Yeah. For sure. I wonder if there will be a future where just like we discovered this miracle pill in Ozempic, there will be a miracle pill that will allow you to be extremely obese, but suffer none of the health consequences.
JORDI:That that's alpha.
JOHN:That's alpha. So you can just be physically intimidating.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:Walk around at £400. But
JORDI:You're having to go to Patek and get, like, customized, like, what, like, bands because, like, it doesn't fit around your wrist.
JOHN:Yeah. I do. I do wonder. Have you
JORDI:been through, like, a heavy, like, mass gaining period?
JOHN:Many times.
JORDI:I there was a period
JOHN:when I
JORDI:first started going to the gym Yeah. When I was 18, I would eat at this at the college cafeteria 3 times a day.
JOHN:Yep. I
JORDI:would wake up, have a protein shake, go to the gym, go go to the cafeteria, then I would get 2 peanut butter sandwiches There
JOHN:you go.
JORDI:That were bread with a puck of peanut butter. It was like a burger size and I would eat 2 of those before lunch. Wow. At lunch, I go back to the cafeteria, eat a whole meal, and then I get 2 more sandwiches, and then I would go to dinner, and then I have one more sandwich and one more protein shake. Yeah.
JORDI:I was, like, literally having, like, 5,000 calories a day. Yep. It was just absurd.
JOHN:It's fantastic.
JORDI:And, everybody should go through that. It's character building to go through because you're every single bite you're like, I'm gonna throw up.
JOHN:Yeah. I feel sick. Yeah.
JORDI:You wanna you gotta go through it. Prosperous. Look prosperous, everybody.
JOHN:Prosperous. And then go through a cut, convert it all the muscle and become a mass monster.
JORDI:Mass monster size lord.
JOHN:And then and then take Ozempic and get peeled and walk around at 5%.
JORDI:Body fat.
JOHN:Body fat. Yeah. We have a huge move in the talent world. This is actually massive. Fred Ehrsam, the founder of Coinbase, is welcoming Jeremy Berinholtz, who doesn't have an x account, sadly, as a cofounder of Nudge.
JOHN:Linked to his post before, below. And so Jeremy Berinholtz is a former, Elon Musk associate at Neuralink, and I had the pleasure of meeting him. And he was truly one of the most impressive people I've ever met.
JORDI:An absolute dog.
JOHN:An absolute dog. Really, really incredible.
JORDI:And now just building an alternative, to Neuralink focus on, you know, improving.
JOHN:Yeah. It's a non implanted device. Yeah. So I think it's a headband that improves memory or or something with the brain, interacts with the brain in some way, electrical stimulation. But, fascinating fascinating guy.
JOHN:Went to Stanford, was in the military, and I met him. And he looks just like the typical, like, San Francisco, like, thin programmer guy. And he was telling us that he's, like, extremely goal driven. Yeah. He sleeps for, like, 2 hours a night.
JOHN:Insane. And I was, like, this is fake. Like, there's there's so many red flags. Like, I just don't buy this guy what he's saying. And he was, like, no.
JOHN:I'm extremely goal oriented. Like, when I wanna work on something, I just work on it constantly. And I and if I sleep, I'll just wake up and be, like, I need keep working on this. It's insane. And he was like, yeah.
JOHN:One time, I got really into working out, and I got in this incredible shape. And I looked like a professional bodybuilder. And we were like, yeah. Right, dude. Like, you're so skinny.
JOHN:Like, this is impossible. And he showed us a picture, and he was, like, the most jacked dude I've ever seen. It was insane. Amazing. Insane.
JOHN:And so he just Oh, I hope they make the notes. The FDA stuff. He's electrical engineering, working on neuroscience, working on programming. You can go look up his GitHub. He's written a bunch of programming code.
JOHN:Like, he is totally the real deal. Like, really, really fascinating person. And so huge pickup for Fred.
JORDI:I hope he leaves his mark on the nudge. Like, I'd love to just put on the nudge headband and just, like, get some, you know, even, like, 60% of that, like Yeah. You know, mindset. It it it
JOHN:it really he really is like a special special person. Like, I I I left being it was a it was a big like, it was the Founders Fund CEO Summit. And, there are a lot of very impressive people there. But he was someone that really, really stood out as a very, very interesting, like, long tail person.
JORDI:Yep.
JOHN:And I was I was very bullish on him. So Big
JORDI:pick up. Very excited to see more about
JOHN:he does. And I hope I hope we learn more about him. He he's very quiet and he's, he was featured in one Ashley Vance article about, about Neuralink. And hopefully, there's more because I think the way he thinks about artificial intelligence and math and everything, it's, like, extremely valuable. And they're just there's not enough of this, like, intellectualism that actually boils up.
JOHN:He's a very, very interesting thinker. So rooting for him. Big pickup. Let's go to Andre. He says, a preview of my new book preorder for 3999.
JOHN:And it's 2 screenshots. It's how to build generational wealth on x.com. And the first page is you can post the plane with red dots. You can quote tweet anything with this picture of the plane with red dots. It always does numbers.
JOHN:Even if people have no idea what it means, they will like and retweet to fame that they understand what's going on. And I I I think I replied to this, but, like, I would I would actually read this book. I think it's amazing.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:There are so many of these formats. Charge more. He should charge more. Yeah. He should actually do it, or he should do it at least at least a huge thread of all the most viral swap.
JORDI:I do think, yeah, viral swap.
JOHN:It's the it's the iPhone. This is the best this is the best feature Apple ever made, and it's filling in the text message to factor.
JORDI:And then it could come with, like, a down like a link to, like, a, a drop box. Yeah. You could download all.
JOHN:But they're not, like, high res. They're all, like, reposted, like, like, burnt in JPEGs. They were super compressed and grainy.
JORDI:No. I do think this is the the there's a lot of people that go on x and just start, like, posting and just, like, otherwise, like, very intelligent people that just do not understand how the platform works. Sure. And, like, couldn't for the life of them, like, create a banger even though they have good ideas. Yeah.
JORDI:Yeah. And so yeah. This this could be, like, you know, a book, a cohort based course, like, in person events, summits.
JOHN:Get on WAP.
JORDI:Yeah. 3 get on WAP.
JOHN:Just a WiFi money going.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a 360 degree business to be built here.
JOHN:I think so.
JORDI:And you'd help a lot of people get, post economic just from posting.
JOHN:I think so. I mean, we've seen some of those creator paths. They get pretty big.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:Pretty big. You'd fund your whole startup on it. Let's go to Keshev. He says, Paul Graham's whole life. I need money to paint.
JOHN:Learns programming, falls in love with lisp, works briefly at interleaf, starts via web to fund his painting lifestyle, sells to yahoo for life changing money, moves to California, then New York, tries painting, can't focus properly, feels lost, discovers writing essays online, creates YC. This is temporary. Then I'll paint. Builds Hacker News, gets stressed, running online community, leaves YC to paint, tries painting in 2014, gives up mid painting, codes Bell for 4 years, returns to essays and lisp, moves to UK, quote, unquote, for a year, never leaves. It's so funny.
JOHN:There's so many people like this where it's like they they have this the the this idealized passion of themselves, like, what they could be, but they're like, born to allocate capital or born to post or born to write or code. And he just clearly has so many so many fantastic skill sets. PG.
JORDI:Yeah. Painting was always a fever dream, but thank thank God it stayed a fever dream combinator. Yep. And, we'd live in a world where if you made a good app, you'd never have a 50 competitors launching
JOHN:next year.
JORDI:You know,
JOHN:you wouldn't have 50 VCs lining up to write your seed checks.
JORDI:You never would have gotten the safe. Yep. You never would have gotten the 2 on 20
JOHN:Think of that.
JORDI:Seed drive.
JOHN:Impact he's had. I mean, I always think about YC as more less of an less of an investment vehicle. Like, they've had the impact on the investing space, obviously, but YC has become essentially a union for startups. Yeah. Because if you Collective.
JORDI:Are a
JOHN:VC and you fuck over 1 YC company, you go in their database, every YC company hears about you, and instantly, you're ostracized from the entire community. And such a large community.
JORDI:And the collective bargaining approach of going, everybody goes out for 2 on 20. Yep. It's like, that's just price, my friend.
JOHN:It's funny you say 2 on 20 because, like, when I went through, it was like 1 on 10 and then it was like 1 and a half on 15. And now it's 2 on 20.
JORDI:Even back in the day with 1 on 10, that was probably felt like people were like, well, this is like egregious.
JOHN:A 100%. Like, it's always been it's always felt egregious.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:It's always felt egregious. But Yeah.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. We'll know the money supply is expanded when when y c companies are going out, and they're like, yeah, we're going for out for 10 on a 100.
JOHN:There was one company in my batch who raised at 80, everyone was like, wow, this is wild. And there there's always like one company How did
JORDI:they do though? I
JOHN:don't think they actually did that well, but their numbers were crazy. It was like this company Virule. They did like viral videos and I think they had a ton of revenue. Because the guy the guy who did it had been building, like, online advertising tech since he was a kid and had, like, a bunch of, like, just made a lot of money through, like, online advertising. So he was able to get the business to, like, a pretty big size.
JOHN:Do we have a promoted post?
JORDI:Promoted post from our friends over at Ramp. Why settle for individual ingredients when Ramp gives you the full financial operations sandwich? They have corporate cards, expense management, accounts payable, procurement, travel. Look at this sandwich. Looks fantastic.
JORDI:We haven't eaten yet today.
JOHN:Oh, looks fantastic.
JORDI:It's making my mouth water. And you're you're
JOHN:It is a great way to articulate, like, the value of Ramp that, like, it's the CFO suite. It's a bundle of tools. It's a, you know, it's a compound startup. It's multiple products all wrapped up in 1. But my problem is is that I don't think ramps a sandwich.
JOHN:I think it's a 9 course prefix with a wine pairing at the French laundry. I think it's I think it's premium. And and when I think of ramp, I don't think just some sandwich that your your mom made for you and threw in a plastic bag on your way to school. I think, you know, begging for a reservation, greasing the maitre d, valet parking your turbo s, walking into the French laundry, shaking hands with the chef, sitting down and enjoying, an omakase.
JORDI:Totally. So where
JOHN:the Good post, but step it up with the the the the classiness because I want Ramp to be a premium brand.
JORDI:Yeah. Their social media manager is fantastic. Always good for a laugh. But, yeah, 99 course meal, wine pairing and, the chef will even, you know, the chef will even come out and say, hello. Kareem will send you a note and say, thanks for being a ramp customer.
JOHN:This is true.
JORDI:Eric will send you a note.
JOHN:Eric really will. Hey. Eric really is the CEO to Eric
JORDI:will come and sit down at your table and, you know, have a conversation and make sure that your your your NPS score is a
JOHN:100. I've always said that about the way Elon runs acts now, where if you have a banger, he will come around and, like, just drop, like, a crying face emoji in the replies. Just be like And
JORDI:then it'll break your phone.
JOHN:And it and it'll break your phone. But but it it feels like the chef coming out and being like, is everyone enjoying the meal? Is everyone enjoying the bangers today? Like, here here's what's going on. And I just love that about the way he uses the product because no previous CEO, not even Jack Dorsey, who was, like, totally in founder mode during his whole career.
JOHN:Like, he didn't use the product that way. And Elon really used the product where he clearly consumes the the stuff and comes out and he's like, oh, is the soup good tonight? I'm tasting it. Oh, like, let let me have some of this, the whiskey too. Like, we'll share some of this.
JOHN:Like, is the wine working? Oh, it's a little cork. Like, let let's adjust the algorithm. Yeah. It's good.
JORDI:And Jesse Hawk.
JOHN:And I and I think I think the ramp guys are doing the same thing. Let's go to Logan Bartlett. He says MicroStrategy has now passed its dotcom bubble stock price and is an $82,000,000,000 business. Get him on the podcast, Logan. This is $82,000,000,000 software company.
JOHN:You you you interview the largest public company tech CEOs. You gotta get Saylor on the pod.
JORDI:Get him on the pod.
JOHN:Get him on the pod.
JORDI:No. MicroStrategy has a fantastic business model for every dollar of Bitcoin they buy. They get $3 of enterprise value. And so if if they're smart and they're serving the shareholders, they'll just do that over and over and over forever.
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:And then if Sailor's, like, really bullish, he'll do a take private
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:At a nice premium Yep. Because he's just like, I'm so long. I'm happy to pay, you know, 3x Yeah.
JOHN:For the Bitcoin.
JORDI:Because I could use more leverage on the take private.
JOHN:Oh my god. Yeah. It's wild. There I mean, the the funny thing is that there are a number of companies that have done this exact chart. Akamai.
JOHN:Do you know Akamai? The networking company. They they invented, like, like, IP routing and stuff. It's like this MIT company. Fascinating.
JOHN:And they were worth, like, 20,000,000,000 during the dotcom boom. Couple of the guys sold. They only worked there for, like, 6 months during the run off.
JORDI:Crazy.
JOHN:Just became generational generationally wealthy. And then it took the company, like, 20 years to build back up, but it was a solid business with solid technology. And so they finally got to their peak, like, more recently. It's good to have a different story with macro strategy, but respect. Respect.
JORDI:At least, like, you know, having that up and down, like, you get, like, nice you know, the number that you have to hit again to get any level of respect. Right?
JOHN:Yeah. Yeah. We go to TCP Tech CEO, Pepe. He says daily affirmation. I will fire an inter an intercontinental ballistic missile.
JOHN:I love this. I believe you'll be able to do it. Although, the ICBM might not be holding a nuclear weapon inside of it. It might be a, it might be SpaceX point to point. You might be riding on that.
JOHN:You might be going from New York to Tokyo in 30 minutes. Yep. But ICBM's, I saw another post. SpaceX is just a wrapper around ICBM's. I like that.
JOHN:Make the ICBM useful again. We need to be firing these things off. They can't just be sitting on nuclear submarines doing nothing.
JORDI:I know. Total waste. Total waste. Yeah. You can just, you know, in the same way that you can just do things.
JORDI:Yeah. You can just manifest things and you can just affirm things.
JOHN:Yep. I
JORDI:think it's a very, you know, it's been well studied to this point. Like, you should be leveraging this in different ways, but don't do it in the ways that that, you know, that that people in l LA do it where they're like, I am healthy. I am happy. I am, like, I am
JOHN:You step it up.
JORDI:You step it up. You know, I will, find the $100,000,000 hidden in my computer. Yeah. I will find the $100,000,000 hidden in my computer.
JOHN:Oh, speaking of that, let's go to Atlas creatine cycle. It's a screenshot. It says there is a $100,000,000 stuck in your MacBook. Your job is to figure out how to get it. And he says there is a $100,000,000 stuck in SF.
JOHN:Your job is to break up with your g f, move there with your best friend, and start a GPT rapper.
JORDI:Yes.
JOHN:Let's go.
JORDI:More rappers. More rappers. Enough rappers.
JOHN:There are Genuinely. Genuinely. Just
JORDI:go. If you don't have a good idea, just go make it go make an app in the App Store called chat gpt.
JOHN:Chat.comgpt. Or something
JORDI:like that. And it's just chat gpt reskin, put in the app.
JOHN:No. It's not even chat g p g is llama, probably.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:It's llama on a
JORDI:And just charge just charge charge the most. Yeah. Have some, you know, put put some good branding on there. Spend a ton of money on paid ads. Yep.
JORDI:If you spend a dollar on paid ads and you generate a dollar and $1 of revenue, just keep doing that.
JOHN:Keep doing that. That scale it.
JORDI:To, you know, till you're a bean air or Senti. Yep. There's nothing stopping you. You don't need to be that creative. You just need to work harder.
JOHN:Yep. I love it. Thanks, creatine cycle. Always good to have you on the show. Let's go to Isaac.
JOHN:Isaac says, this time 2 years ago, my timeline was filled with business banter, hot takes, bad takes, random shit posts. Now it's crickets. I came to Twitter for business shenanigans, and more and more, it feels like it disappoints. I won't be leaving, but I hope it changes. Well, I mean, you're disrespecting x with by calling it Twitter.
JOHN:That's your first mistake, Isaac. Yeah. Also, be the change you want to see in the world.
JORDI:Maybe. Why don't you start
JOHN:posting business banter instead of complaining?
JORDI:So Isaac is a friend and fantastic entrepreneur. He actually made his first million selling swords. Really? Yeah. Okay.
JORDI:He he has a company called, mini katana that he bootstrapped using these, like, crazy viral hacks. Fantastic. Making original content. He's now building a candy company. I think that Isaac, I've said this before, but he's really, like, the willy like, he's the next Willy Wonka.
JOHN:Awesome.
JORDI:So if you have all the VCs out there that have, like, a Willy Wonka thesis, go find Isaac. His company is awesome. His facility where he manufactures everything is, like, only a few miles from here. But, yeah, I I I haven't necessarily experienced this. Like, the the 4 year page, like, definitely It's
JOHN:a little messy. Especially during the election. It's messy. It's not sloppy. But that's why we're doing the show.
JOHN:Like, follow We
JORDI:use that.
JOHN:Tech Bros Pod. Like, we are posting business hot takes. We never post bad takes. A lot of random shit posts, but
JORDI:No.
JOHN:There's a lot of content.
JORDI:No social commentary, no political commentary
JOHN:We never talk about politics.
JORDI:Business and technology. Exactly. And so the comment section, even on this post, I'm at, you know, when we quote tweet this, there's gonna be a lot of, like, you know, hot takes. Yep. Anyways, you know, good to call this out, but use the not interested button when they try to put some slop in your for you page.
JORDI:Say not interested. Lot. Not interested. Not interested.
JOHN:It does require curation. You're building a Zen garden. You want to avoid some things. I mean, I have a series of lists now. I have I I I often look through the for you page a little bit.
JOHN:I find that, like, the first ten posts are usually pretty good. And as you go farther down, it just gets sloppier and sloppier because it's just randomly sorting. But then switch over to the following tab. Got some good people in there. I also have a list just for the people that I know post great stuff.
JOHN:I wanna see everything that they post. So I put I put that in there. Also, just spend more time online. That's probably a problem. Yeah.
JORDI:Do we
JOHN:have a promoted post? Let's do it.
JORDI:Post from, our friend, Jackson Dahl. Jackson says, I'm excited to announce
JOHN:that this big
JORDI:dialectic pod podcast, an interview podcast with the sharpest, most creative and original people I know. He says, I like to spar with people on their ideas and push them deeper ultimately to understand what makes them themselves. He's already got episode 1 out. He's got a cool, graphic here. And Jackson is somebody that has, one of those people where you talk to, like, very high, like, in in insights per minute.
JORDI:Right? So if you're having, like, a 10:10 minute conversation with him, you're gonna have, like, a bunch of interest he's gonna give a bunch of interesting point of point of views and take. So, podcast is awesome. Listen to a little bit of the first episode. And, anyways, very, I I think this is just like he he's one of those things.
JORDI:It's very strong, like, founder market fit in the context of, like, a podcast. Like, looking at this as, like, a media business, like, he's gonna have,
JOHN:no
JORDI:problem just, like, making the show fantastic.
JOHN:Is he monetizing already?
JORDI:That'd be my I know. I have one risk
JOHN:factor for him.
JORDI:Maybe we should be the 1st advertiser. Maybe. As much as we like to, juice our show with ads, like, we should be advertising quite a bit. So, Jackson, if you don't have any advertisers yet, we'd love to,
JOHN:make them all. Let's go to Adam Graham. First time on the show, he says, the amount of high quality content that Tech Bros Pod is putting out is insane. Banger after banger. This is why they're they're the most profitable podcast.
JOHN:Hell, yes, Adam.
JORDI:Let's go.
JOHN:This is exactly why we do everything that we do. We
JORDI:do it for the money. Really. For the money.
JOHN:We do it for the money.
JORDI:There's bangers as a byproduct, then that's that's fantastic.
JOHN:Yeah. And high quality content, if that's what makes the money, we'll do it. But Yeah. Just to be clear, if low quality content's more profitable, expect some low quality content.
JORDI:Here and there. Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:But, good to have you as a fan. Good to have you as a follower. Good to have you on the show. Welcome to the Tech Bros community.
JORDI:Thank you.
JOHN:Thanks, Adam.
JORDI:Thank you, Adam.
JOHN:Let's go to Nick Carter. He says locked in and pulled another all dayer today. Let's go. Let's go, Nick.
JORDI:Go. The only time I've ever taken naps during the workday, like, I was, like, probably, like, devastated. Like, I've had to be in, like, a really bad spot, like, to be so strung out.
JOHN:I take, like, one nap a quarter on, like, a Sunday, and it's wonderful, but I'm not a daily napper. Yeah. It's kinda crazy.
JORDI:Yeah. Naps are, I get it if you're like Paul Graham and you're working on your painting career and you're trying to get, like, a, you know, a burst of energy for the afternoon. But, I don't know any
JOHN:Also, it's kind of impossible to take naps when you're on enough stimulants to kill a horse.
JORDI:That's a big that's a big heart hit. I think anybody's that this is like, oh, I should take a nap. It's like, try
JOHN:Try 600 milligrams of caffeine and It's
JORDI:a nicotine.
JOHN:4 milligram nicotine pouches all day long.
JORDI:There you go. You won't be
JOHN:You won't be inclined to now. Take it you'll be pulling all dares every single day.
JORDI:All dares daily.
JOHN:But I love Nick. Quintessential you can just do things guy. Did the boxing match, did the investigative journalism, huge, huge capital allocator. Love Nick.
JORDI:Amazing.
JOHN:Does a bunch of cool stuff.
JORDI:Fantastic. Student capitalism. Let's go
JOHN:to my colleague, Bridget Harris, over at Founders Fund. She's she's quoting Peter Thiel. Says the Wall Street banks are long the trade deficit because the bigger the deficit, the more money they make. And she says, obviously, bigger trade deficit equals larger volume of cross border payments. Stablecoins could be hugely helpful here in helping smaller banks compete with cross border flows.
JOHN:Large banks have no incentives besides defensive to switch because of this dynamic. Lower fees equals less profit among others. Has to be a smaller player slash new entrant with nothing to lose plus favorable legislation because the incumbents won't cannibalize themselves under unless pressure comes from the outside. And love you, Bridget, but you made a terrible mistake. You included a link to Spotify, which is banned on x, and that's why you only got 99 views.
JOHN:So turn this into a clickbait thread, repost it, I'll retweet it, and we'll cover it again. Moon, we'll cover it again. I think you got a 1,000 likes easy on this. If you just make it a little bit more incendiary, you need to call someone out. They're the reason America's stagnating.
JOHN:This is the problem. You've got to be much more aggressive. But honestly, a very thoughtful post and something that really digs into all of the features of Stablecoins and all of the different, factors going on there. I was not aware of all this, but it makes a lot
JORDI:of sense. Yeah. There there's it's it's gonna be interesting with Stablecoins. So far, it seems like the fees, you know, stripes obviously made their move into stable coins. We'll see, like, what the you know, I've seen, like, some stable coin products that just still have, like, similar fees to, like, traditional payment processing.
JORDI:But it'll be a pretty cool experiment to run to be like, alright, if you can move money basically for free in a sort of trustless way.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:How much does that accelerate the velocity of money? And I would imagine it'll be pretty significant.
JOHN:Yep. I mean, it still seems like we're pretty early in all of the crypto stuff, like even Bitcoin. It's unclear, like, is it putting pressure on certain parts of the US government? Like, it's become a political issue and there's pro Bitcoin or anti Bitcoin communities, but we're not We haven't really worked through because we're not on the gold standard. Like, if Bitcoin displaces gold, how does that really trickle through the rest of the American economy?
JORDI:Like, not sure. Rumors of the strategic
JOHN:Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. That
JORDI:would be big. Interesting.
JOHN:Yeah. Very interesting. But, Bridget has a fantastic post on PirateWires, deep diving the, the Stripe acquisition of, it was a bridge. Yep. It's confusing because it's Bridget and Bridge.
JOHN:But, the the stable coin platform that got acquired. And so you should definitely go read that if you want to learn more about stablecoins. Let's go to the founder of Perplexity. He was demoing a new perplexity product for shopping, which I love. You can just take a picture of something, and then perplexity will go and find, the product that you're searching for.
JOHN:And in this case, he asked what watches does Jeff Bezos wear? And he perplexity helped him realize that, Bezos is often wearing the Omega Speedmaster Professional Moonwatch and, and another watch. And he says, should I buy this? And I think the answer is absolutely. You should buy it.
JOHN:We need more technologists and founders who are watch guys. We've seen this happen with Zuck. He's rocking a fantastic F. P. Jorn.
JOHN:We know some capital allocators who were rocking Pateks and Nautilus and, Aquanauts at this point. But it's still under discussed, and there's still major alpha
JORDI:in getting into the watch game. It needs to be more a part of the conversation.
JOHN:Exactly. Exactly. So I highly recommend this. You need to differentiate. You're in brutal competition with every other big tech company, bro.
JOHN:You need to stand out. Get a nice piece.
JORDI:Statement. Get a hitter.
JOHN:Get a hitter. And then every time you go and shake someone's hand, when you go shake Jensen's hand for those for those GPUs that you need, he's gonna be like, oh.
JORDI:Because even people that aren't watch guys, they're still gonna notice and respect it.
JOHN:Exactly. And,
JORDI:it's a way to make, an impression.
JOHN:Yeah. So I say pull the trigger. Let's go to Yarden Shafir. He says, I'm outside the club. A drunk girl is yelling her opinions on Rust.
JOHN:I have hit peak San Francisco. Wow. 7 k likes. Let's go.
JORDI:There we go. Tech is mainstream.
JOHN:People like Rust. I've never I've never written a line of Rust. I know it's a very popular language. Really popular crypto, I think. I'd really appreciate it if people can stop being transphobic in my comments.
JOHN:Go do that someplace else if you must. Yeah. Of course, this turned into a culture war issue. It's more it's more
JORDI:of an issue than anything past anything past a 1000 likes, it it turns into a You're
JOHN:in the dark territory.
JORDI:Culture war zone. Dark x. Try to keep your likes under 1,000. Yeah. You don't want politics and social issues.
JOHN:You want you want low tam bangers. Just the people just now consistent or else it's gonna get too crazy. But, Yeah. I mean, this is
JORDI:This is interesting.
JOHN:Because sometimes, like, the the the drunk girl, outside of a club, I remember in Miami seeing a drunk girl talk to a bouncer about Bitcoin, and it was right at the peak when Bitcoin was at 20 k, and then it immediately sold off afterwards.
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:So there is a little bit of, like, when your barber is giving you stock or your taxi driver is giving you stock tips, like, maybe that's a signal.
JORDI:But this is a signal that SF is is is back.
JOHN:I think so.
JORDI:The fact that somebody went out in San Francisco presumably past 10 PM Yeah. Is a really bullish sign. Yeah.
JOHN:So I wonder if that's real or if that it was just like a like an imagined scenario.
JORDI:You can just make up things.
JOHN:You can just make up things. Let's go to Beth Jesus. He says, bio act is the next Overton frontier. Few.
JORDI:Yeah. So, you know, we've been, you know, you've been a strong proponent for Yeah. Literally years for genetically engineering bears to domesticate them and also make them, you know, allies for us and
JOHN:And also biohacking and stimulants and all sorts of stuff in in in that world. But, yeah, it's interesting to see where this goes. What's interesting is, like, the Overton frontier. Is he just saying, like, that is where the political issues are being fought right now? Like, over IVF, over what nor Sadiki is doing at Orchid over, like, genetically engineering babies, like, that type of stuff.
JOHN:Because Overton I usually think of the Overton window as, like, the what is acceptable to say politically. So it seems like what he is saying here is maybe that that there are things that are going on in the bio accelerationist community that you can't talk about or you would be canceled if you talked about. And this is like the rumor that there are genetically engineered children in China right now, but not in America. Have you heard this?
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And so, so it's interesting that it's like, maybe we're going to have to have a national conversation about the morality of bio in the same way that we have had it around AI. No idea.
JORDI:There there yeah. There needs to be a conversation. There's there's certainly, you could get on the the hat for
JOHN:this Put on the tinfoil hat.
JORDI:But, there's many people, like, you know, one of the one of the, you know, sort of pushback against this. There's many people that believe that, Lyme disease was created in a lab Really? Because it basically spread out of this small area around Interesting. Like Long Island. Sure.
JORDI:There was a there was a island off of, like Montauk area.
JOHN:Interesting.
JORDI:And dogs would wash up on, like, in Montauk, they were like a dog combined with a pig. What? Like, very weird.
JOHN:This is the most crazy thing I've ever heard,
JORDI:stuff. But, Lyme disease also spread out from, sort of, like, that was the geographic center. And the ticks that initially had it sort of spread out from from there.
JOHN:I'm terrified of ticks and Lyme disease. Whenever I'm on the East Coast, I always avoid going for hikes and stuff. I'm like, huge
JORDI:West Coast alpha. Just like having less ticks.
JOHN:There's something scary about having, like, something so small have such a huge impact on you.
JORDI:No. It just almost spiders. Yeah.
JOHN:And snakes, I'm not a fan.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:Anyway, hopefully, we'll hear some more stuff about bio biological accelerationism. I think there we we need a good blog post from somebody. I mean, a little bit of that's happening with Neuralink and probably Nudge and a few other programs.
JORDI:And Yep.
JOHN:So putting all that together into kind of, like, we need, like, a packy deep dive or something.
JORDI:Be cool. Some things just need a packy deep dive.
JOHN:They do. Jeff Lewis says, I believe that in the future, we'll be governed predominantly by algorithms. Phase 1, algorithms accum accumulate power, 2000 to 2020. Phase 2, governments attempt to rest power from or align themselves with algorithms, 2020 to present. Phase 3, algorithms become the government.
JORDI:So just has a special talent for looking at, you know, there's set phrase, like, how do you how to predict the future is to, like, sort of, like, look at the the present. Mhmm. Right? And in many ways, like, he positioned this tweet in a sort of, like, incendiary way of being Sure. 2,000 to 2,020.
JORDI:Yeah. Algorithms gaining power.
JOHN:Yep.
JORDI:But, but, yeah, I, you know, I I I buy this. I feel like we're we're, already seeing the governments align themselves with different algorithms. Right? You saw that this election cycle, but I would just say, I wanna I wanna live in a world where the temp check algorithm runs I agree. Runs the country.
JORDI:Right? Vibes based governance. Yeah. And, Jeff, we've told you this already, but, bring back temp check
JOHN:We need it.
JORDI:Some of the best VC content market. I know you're not a VC.
JOHN:Fantastic.
JORDI:Best VC content marketing in the game.
JOHN:It was fantastic.
JORDI:Classics, and some low temp bangers in there.
JOHN:So Yeah. This is kind of the Brian Johnson question right now. He's been he's been asking a lot
JORDI:of people. He says that don't die is an algorithm and that's what he's really creating.
JOHN:And also he's been asking a lot of people, like, if if if you could guarantee that an AI would give you, like, a better life outcome, would you submit to the AI to the AI dictator?
JORDI:And
JOHN:it's a very interesting philosophical question that I think we'll be digging into more over the next few years. So definitely the right question to be asking. Yep. Go to Matt Turk. He says, okay.
JOHN:But what but we dramatically improved our podcast game, and it's a response to TechCrunch. In 2023, VCs returned the lowest level of capital to their investors since 2011. And so, the 2023 was not a good year for venture capitalists, but there were a lot of great podcasts that came out of this era.
JORDI:Actually, I would say that in in many ways, maybe that the carry checks were lower, but, big funds were still being raised.
JOHN:Yep. The fees were higher.
JORDI:The fees, you know, stayed stable.
JOHN:And so why not put those fees into a Shure SM7B or some cinema cameras or a lovely set?
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:Why not? But, yeah, we do need more venture capitalist podcasts. I've noticed this when I've looked at, like, if you're a VC or a company and you wanna go do do a press junket, it's actually pretty hard to go do 10 solid interviews that have, you know, a reasonable following. Like, if you're a celebrity and you're promoting a movie, you can go do Kimmel, Fallon, Colbert. Like, you can do, you know, NBC and CBS and, you know, The View and all of these different things to promote your show.
JOHN:And they all have large followings. And on in terms of, like, VC world, there's really not that much. There's, like, a few shows that are pretty big. A lot of them don't have guests. It's not like you can just call up all in
JORDI:and go in and go on. This point of view, see does this. There's the TechCrunch one, but it's not like you're going to go and get these sort of, like, super influential hosts. Yeah. And
JOHN:it is really important for for founders to be able to, like, work their way up and start with a smaller show and then parlay that into the bigger show and then wind up on the big show. But it's really Yeah.
JORDI:The same way that tech founder Donald j Trump finally was able to claw his way up onto Rogan. Yeah.
JOHN:Yeah. Exactly. And there needs to be a similar path, but it's hard because DoorDash is so focused on AI. And Lex, occasionally, I mean, he had the Cursor Founders on, but he hasn't I don't think he's even had Palmer Luckey on. There's like like, there there's not really that many just general tech shows.
JOHN:Like Logan Bartlett, a great show, but it's, like, now narrowed down to
JORDI:just, like,
JOHN:public company SaaS CEOs,
JORDI:which is cool. And that's why we started this podcast. We felt like the technology industry needed a podcast.
JOHN:It did. It did. So Yeah. Let's go to the real estate god. The real estate god says, craziest thing in America is that the average person could 2 to 5 x their salary simply by taking a sales role, but they're too scared of people telling them no 20 times a day.
JOHN:Interesting. Yeah. It's true.
JORDI:It's, it's funny. Sales is one of those things, like, you know, in a lot of things, if you're getting told no 20 times a day, like, you should just, like, stop doing what you're doing because the market is telling you, like You're
JOHN:doing something wrong.
JORDI:You're doing something bad. Like it sucks. But sales is like one of those things like the the no tolerance needs to be, extreme mostly because like sometimes like even customers that want your products like don't wanna deal with you right now or they just have 10 other things that are more important so you're never gonna break through. Someone else shared something recently that was, like, oh, in in the future, I I forget who posted this, but in the future, you're gonna be getting 2,000 email like, perfect cold emails a day from all the outbound sales agents. And Salesforce is gonna be, like, taking you out to, like, a steak dinner, and they're like, so we're gonna renew your contract.
JORDI:We're gonna increase it, like, by, like, 50 percent. Like, here's, you know, just sign right here and you're like, alright. Like, I guess I guess this is what we're doing.
JOHN:It's fantastic. Let's go to Jen. She says overheard 3 tech bros discussing how much money it would take for them to replace their girlfriend. Thing is none of them even currently have a girlfriend. Boom.
JOHN:Roasted. Roasted. Technology brothers, tech bros, get girlfriends, dude. Figure it out. Girlfriends.
JOHN:And, yeah. Don't let people overhear you talking about embarrassing things. Although it could be imagined, could be a fake overheard.
JORDI:Yeah. This thing happens. You never know.
JOHN:That's it. It's a proven that goes in the how to post bangers, how to create
JORDI:generational wealth and x. You know, Red Bull Futurist exemplifies what a technology brother is. Yes. He's over here talking about wanting to have 10 children. Right?
JORDI:So he he can't there's nothing like no AI girlfriend, you know, friend.com Yep. Is not gonna replace, you know, having a a loving wife and partner Yeah. And mother of your children.
JOHN:So there's some crazy bio accelerationism and Yeah. Some Yeah.
JORDI:We're diminishing bears. Yeah. It's artificial wounds.
JOHN:Good. Jenny Fielding, she says, a pre seed company that raises a modest round should not be burning more than 50 k per month. This is a hill that I'm willing to die on.
JORDI:Well, you're gonna die, Jenny. There's money to be made. Yeah. But this goes back to your $17,000 pre seed.
JOHN:Oh, yeah. If we were burning 50 k, that would be 1 week. It would be out of money in 1 week.
JORDI:1 week. Yeah. But I think, that this is the challenge with venture. Right? Money that is a raise gets spent.
JORDI:Yep. And it's ridiculously hard. I you know, one of my portfolio companies just raised around basically off of a lot of momentum. Yep. And there's already this, like, oh, we could hire this person.
JORDI:Yeah. We could be like, this person's amazing and look what they're gonna do. And then suddenly, this company will have added, like, $1,000,000 a year burn that they didn't really need or maybe they could have pushed it back, you know, down the road. So, yeah, this is where, like, y c is, like, dogma is just absolutely correct,
JOHN:which is
JORDI:just, like, keep burn incredibly low, and it's so hard, you know, as somebody who started a company in 2021 and Oh, I
JOHN:never even realized that y c. PG wrote this post, and I believe it was called don't die.
JORDI:Yeah.
JOHN:And now Brian Johnson's using that in the in, like, the literal sense. But the original PG thing was just don't die, don't run out of money. And as long as you do that and you stay an entrepreneur, eventually, you'll figure it out.
JORDI:I have I have a there's a company that that I backed in in 2021. And, the, only 3 people invested in the company. YC, or I invested in 1 other guy invested in YC did their their round, and they've pivoted, like, 10 times.
JOHN:Yeah. But all
JORDI:of their updates are, like, we pivoted again. And it's, like, monthly burn, like, runway. And it's just been going it's been, like, 8 k a month burn plus, like, server costs. And their runway has just been, like, dwindling down Yeah. Like, very slowly.
JORDI:But they've taken so many shots. Like, I'm I'm eventually expecting to get an update from them. It's like, we have 10,000,000 of ARR. Yeah. Like, we pulled it off.
JORDI:I love
JOHN:that. But but they
JORDI:would have had way less shots on Google.
JOHN:But I mean, seriously, like, it it is difficult to create an axiom around burn rate because if you're doing something that's r and d intensive or you're gonna spend a lot of money on lawyers or you're acquiring a domain or if there's something weird going on, like, it's gonna be very bespoke. Some companies are completely justified in burning a 100 k a month out of the gate, and some companies shouldn't be burning more than 10 k out of the gate. It just really depends on what you're doing and who your team is and where you are. But in general, I agree you should be conscious of your burn. So great.
JORDI:We certainly are at this podcast.
JOHN:Participating. And let's end with one more promoted post, and then we'll go to Lulu.
JORDI:This promoted post is from Okay. As a 20, 24 911 GT 3 RS. This is not the first time we've had, DuPont as a promoted post and not the first time we've had a GT 3 RS on here. This one is a paint to sample pastel orange that comes fitted with custom 1016 industries carbon fiber kit. This car looks fantastic.
JORDI:We eventually will be doing it a transcontinental, race Yeah. As technology brothers probably with a ramp branded, car.
JOHN:G two three r s. And, the gumball 3,000
JORDI:Gumball 3,000.
JOHN:The car the car as well.
JORDI:Yeah. So there's a few big races coming up in in our pipeline. Yep. And, we're certainly gonna be, I'll be driving a Porsche. You might be driving something American, but that will be, will each die on that hill.
JORDI:Yes. But anyways, fantastic example. Thank you to DuPont. For.
JOHN:How much is it?
JORDI:Coming. It's listed at at 490,000. Wow.
JOHN:An absolute steal. An absolute steal. You can't afford not to buy.
JORDI:Yeah. They're they're basically giving this away.
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:I would I would make sure to, you know, get your PPI Yeah. Because I don't know, pastel orange PTS. Yeah. This could easily get into the 500. Yeah.
JORDI:But thank you to DuPont. Yeah. And, I
JOHN:mean, if you have so if you're, I mean, an entrepreneur or then you can pick it up. But if you're, you know, a capital allocator with some small $400,000,000 fund, like, that's a no brainer.
JORDI:No brainer.
JOHN:No brainer.
JORDI:No brainer.
JOHN:Let's go to Lulu. She says, taste aside from a purely strategic perspective, this brand marketing is disastrous for Jaguar. For context, Jaguar sales have been plummeting down 70% in the US in 5 years. Did you hear that they took a year off of making cars?
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN:They they they just are not making cars for a full year because that's completely resetting. Up to 2018, Jaguars are actually growing quickly, doubling sales in a few years. And she breaks down all the disaster that came from this post that was called copy nothing. And it was a very abstract ad. It looked like a like a I don't know, like a music video almost, with a lot of interesting characters.
JOHN:It got a ton of attention, and I think Lulu's post got more than her than the jaguar post. There's likes. Lulu got 16 k on this, and she kinda breaks down the problem that Jaguar used to be the iconic image of an old school British gentleman. Think of Sir Roger Moore. It was James Bond level car.
JOHN:And then they kind of, messed around and wound up with, kind of shifting from being in the luxury and classics classic sophistication market with competing with Bentley and Aston Martin. And then they shifted down to premium competing with BMW and Mercedes in a more crowded market. But Jaguar SUV sales are cannibalized by their own sister company, Range Rover. And now they're not upscale enough to compete in the luxury market and not cutting edge enough to compete in the premium market.
JORDI:Yeah. So they have to sort of
JOHN:that they need to focus on the cars.
JORDI:Yeah. They have this vicious cycle where you have lower sales, which means you can invest less in r and d and you're not even producing parts at the same scale, which means that the parts end up being more expensive for you. And I like it's this crazy vicious cycle. And then it almost feels like this campaign is, not like a nail in the coffin, but how do you how do you completely turn off an entire new generation of automotive enthusiasts where I've never once considered buying a Jaguar except every now and then you'll see, like, a Jaguar is, like, leasing, and they're, like, we will pay you a $1,000 a month to lease this car. Like, they're, like, so, like, bought like, the like, they can't they can't give these cars away.
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:They stopped making cars for a year because their sales were, like, basically 0.
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:Like, car people don't realize, like, sales volumes on cars are, like, are not even that high. Like, the the like Aren't
JOHN:the Waymows Jaguars?
JORDI:Yeah. The Waymows are Jaguars. Maybe what Waymows should just
JOHN:buy them.
JORDI:Buy
JOHN:Yeah. Because at least they can make cars and
JORDI:then they'll sell something.
JOHN:Seems like the end of the road here.
JORDI:Yeah. That that seems like the end state. That's that's the only time you really see a Jaguar. But But if they want something that they
JOHN:like to revamp the brand, they shouldn't have done this crazy video. They should have hired someone like who Hyundai hired, who was the former developer of the m label at BMW, and he created the n group at, the performance group of Hyundai. And they're creating, like, insane cars like the, the Ioniq 5 n. Have you seen this
JORDI:with, like,
JOHN:the fake noise and, like, all the car guys love it even though it's electronic.
JORDI:Yeah. Even though
JOHN:it's electric vehicle, it sounds like a v six and it, like, shifts like a v six. It has this fake DCT in there. And then and then they're also doing this crazy Envision car that looks like a
JORDI:Yeah. Yeah. Super nostalgic one.
JOHN:Super nostalgic. And so there there are a bunch of ways that they could have gone into the vault and brought something back that stood out and made a made a statement Yeah. As a car. Yeah. But they just chose not to.
JOHN:Maybe this would
JORDI:be
JOHN:the start of something new, but it was a very weird brand direction.
JORDI:And it doesn't No. It did. Somebody somebody was commenting, and I think this was accurate. Like, it's almost like they were expecting, like, a comma win and they had invested, like, tens of 1,000,000 into this campaign. And they were just, like, alright.
JORDI:We already made it. Like, we bet the house on this. And then everybody's, like, now, like, you realize that, like, Trump won.
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:Yeah. But we don't talk about politics on this podcast. So we will leave it at that. But jaguar could be a good acquisition target for us at some point.
JOHN:Yeah.
JORDI:The, you know, history of the brand aligns with a lot of our ethos. Yeah. So somebody will bring it back. Sometimes it just takes an extra decade.
JOHN:Yep. Thanks for watching. Subscribe or else you'll be relegated to a life of flying on net jets.
JORDI:Ouch.
JOHN:Have a good one. Bye.