The LA Fires Continue, Rebuilding Market Map, PMF or DIE, Unpacking the "R" word, The End of Censorship
John, who who was the doctor that you were going to for Kath and Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, we're alive? Welcome to Technology Brothers, the most profitable podcast in the world. We're still loosely on the topic of the fires, but today, we're flipping to a little bit more of an optimistic frame. We're gonna take you through the rebuilding process. Who's gonna make money off of this disaster?
Speaker 2:There's always a lot of money changing hands, whether it's through insurance, private companies rebuilding, all sorts of different things that are gonna happen. So we're gonna take you through a market map of what companies are gonna be built. But we Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're gonna try to get into there there's people that there's people that are that are taking advantage of the situation, but there's also a bunch of good people. Yeah. And there's also a lot of chaos. So, yeah, excited to dive in here. But we'll kick it off, with some coverage by
Speaker 2:our Mike Solana.
Speaker 1:Mike Solana.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Journalist of the year.
Speaker 1:Journalist of the year. 2024 journalists of the year.
Speaker 2:So Mike Solana writes in Pirate Wires, a piece called Wildfire. He's he does a very interesting thing in this piece. He kind of connects the wildfires to the Mark Zuckerberg announcement about the removal of fact checkers and the institution of community notes. It was pretty interesting, but it's a great overview of kind of where the chaos stands. Culturally, Mike always does a great job of blending, technology and politics together in a really cool way.
Speaker 2:So I'll just read through some of this. Last Wednesday, America woke up to footage of Los Angeles once, Los Angeles' once idyllic Pacific Palisades in black and smoldering ruins as the city began to grapple with the worst fire in its history. Almost immediately, the remaining vestiges of our de facto state press lifted their hands to the sky in despair and blamed global warming.
Speaker 1:Also not just the worst fire in LA history. It's the worst fire in American history from the lens of economic damage.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I wonder if it's gonna be the worst fire in human history.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you measure it that way. Yeah. It's it's it's up there. It's massive. We are recording in a different city because of this.
Speaker 2:We've both been loosely displaced.
Speaker 1:A fire could rip through 2 or 3 Western European countries and not cause the same amount of economic damage as one neighborhood of LA.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's true. And so the, the democratic politicians echoed the charge and demanded action decarbonizing our entire planet from Donald Trump, who would not be president for another 2 weeks. But on X, there was no hiding from the truth, and there will be no forgetting what we saw. LA was a portrait of madness as 100 of thousands of people evacuated the city while suspected arsonists shuffled through the haunted hills and empty streets, spreading fire, and roving gangs of looters picked apart abandoned homes.
Speaker 2:From the first deadly blaze, questions from the front lines quickly rocketed back to social media and spread. And and he lists out all of these great questions that people were asking, some, you know, conspiracy theories and some things that were proven true. And it's very, very interesting to because it happened so fast. I didn't remember all these. We talked about a few of these.
Speaker 2:But, why were the fire hydrants running dry? Something that's been really hot hotly debated. Why did the LA water chief, Janice Quinonez empty the Santiones reservoir, and why was she making $750,000 a
Speaker 1:year? Yeah. I I saw an interview with her where she repeatedly said that, equity was her primary motive in taking the job, like, over and over and over. That was, like, the most important thing to her
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which, you know, it's fine for her to have that belief, but you would imagine that you'd want the person running our water infrastructure to just make sure that it was a well run, you know, well run Yeah. You know, sort of system.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The priority should be, like, your job part.
Speaker 1:Your job. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The other stuff.
Speaker 1:Also also unbelievable comp for public servant.
Speaker 2:You know? I mean, we love big comp packages here. Should we ring the size gong for her? 750 k?
Speaker 1:I'm not gonna really give it too much, you know, just But
Speaker 2:not not bad. It's not bad for a day's work doing apparently nothing. The the the next question is why was LA mayor Karen Bass at a presidential inauguration in Ghana? And then, actually, why was the mayor of LA
Speaker 1:on a diplomatic basis in Africa at all? The Ghana thing is interesting. I I think so. A lot of this got kind of blown over a little bit, but Malibu had bad fires
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Less than a month ago. Yeah. And the town was really damaged. There was if you drive through Malibu today, you you would think that the fires had really gotten into the sort of central area of Malibu, but it was actually the last fire, which was in December. And same exact thing, high wind warning, fire started up almost immediately.
Speaker 1:In that situation, the firefighting teams were just able to be a lot more effective and save a lot of structures. So it wasn't it's like 15 structures were taken out or damaged. And so Malibu and and sort of Santa Monica Mountain residents are basically trained at this point where if there's a high wind warning, there will be fires. Right? And so that's why this week, everybody's still on super high alert because there's high winds today.
Speaker 1:They shut off power again and all this stuff. So so Bass was getting briefed on the high wind warning while she was on her trip, knowing that this was, like, the the most significant fire risk, and still decided I'm gonna stay on this trip that at this point, nobody even knows what the purpose of the trip is, but it seems like one of those kind of, like, relationship building sort of more like photo opportunity.
Speaker 2:It does. I I mean, I I was thinking about this because, like, at at the first read, it's, like, very bizarre. Like, Why is a Mayor going to a country so far away? You think about the Mayor, their business is in the city, they should always be in the city. The Governor should always be in the state.
Speaker 2:And then the Federal employees and, you know, the President should be travelling, doing, like, the geopolitics stuff. And there was an early story about, like, Bernie Sanders being one of the first congressmen or governors to do, like, foreign policy as a local politician. It was very odd. It was criticized.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But but I was trying to steal, man. Like, is there a reason why I would want my mayor to be in a foreign country? And, I mean, we could use, like, the Swiss watch industry as a joke, but there are reasons why. If if there's a country that's doing a lot of business in your city, it might actually make sense to go visit that and say, hey, you know, you are a constituent in some way. You are selling a lot of products in our city, or you are, you know so I'm going there to make sure that our business relationship with my city is great, and and I might want my mayor to go and do that.
Speaker 2:Again, it's a little odd because I don't think we have a really amazing business relationship with them.
Speaker 1:Has a history of of of, you know, foreign, you know, policy missions. She Yeah. In the seventies, her favorite trip was to Cuba where she would go and she would coordinate. I'm forgetting the exact name of the group, the extremist group that she was a part of, but she would coordinate with the Cuban government to sort of strategize on bringing communism back to Southern California. And it sounds like it sounds like a joke, but look it up.
Speaker 1:It's factually true. Yeah. And so, yeah, maybe she just likes to travel. Maybe that's just part of her thing. But regardless, she she had posts, like, few years ago saying calling out other politicians in disaster scenarios being like, why aren't you you know, it's embarrassing that you're not at home with your so the whole thing is, you know, she has been completely melting down, but let's get back to the
Speaker 2:more questions. Why in a city constantly on fire did the mayor cut the fire department's budget? It's a very good question. And if you look at the the the breakdown of the budgets, it's not like the budget of everything was cut and the fire department was just cut less than everything else. It's like the fire department was uniquely cut, one of the one of the hardest hit departments, and then a lot of other things increased in budget.
Speaker 2:So it's kind
Speaker 1:of odd why we were allocating the way forward. So the the fire chief who's been getting just, you know, memed and and and kind of unnecessary ways in many ways, it seems. But she had put together a report telling the mayor's office, we need we don't need our budgets cuts. We need 50 more fire stations in LA County. So she was
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Asking for the right thing.
Speaker 1:Banging the size gong, asking for more budget Yep. Getting
Speaker 2:Size gong. Everyone needs a size gong.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's like, look, I need my budget increased. I need to ring the size gong.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We couldn't bring much from the studio.
Speaker 2:Pick the size gong. We
Speaker 1:brought the flag and the size gong and
Speaker 2:And some money. Okay. And why, the last question is, and why had the state prohibited insurers from increasing rates as the risk of wildfire increased, which catalyzed a drop in coverage just before one of the worst fires in its history? California is a one party state, so failure in California is perceived as an indictment of democratic governance. This means wildfire discourse is pretty much toxic at the national level.
Speaker 2:Republicans are incentivized to highlight disaster in the state. Democrats are incentivized to obscure it. And nobody is incentivized to chart a course toward safety for the people of California. While inevitable, the discourse stalemate has nonetheless been frustrating. This was something that I covered in that solo episode.
Speaker 2:It was, like, I wasn't even trying to take, like, a political stance. I was more just trying to, like, lay down, like, what will the narrative be, and what where where is where are the battle lines being drawn right now? And it's the question of, like, you know, was this a man made fire? Was this, can you pin this on the a lot of times these fires get pinned on, like, the electrical companies for not doing maintenance on their transformers.
Speaker 1:That's why now every time there's any Yeah. Fire risk, they shut off the power completely.
Speaker 2:It's crazy.
Speaker 1:Which makes sense to them there because there were were Yeah. Landmark court cases where they were proven to be at fault in there's these $1,000,000,000 payouts or whatever. So they're like, well
Speaker 2:Startup idea. How about a transformer that just doesn't fucking explode?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I cannot believe
Speaker 2:how many transformers just explode when something goes wrong. Like, that just seems like an engineering flaw. Right?
Speaker 1:Transform into a more structurally sound. It's crazy. Yeah. But the real solution is to bury the real solution is to bury the the line.
Speaker 2:Of course. Of course. Under
Speaker 1:And I don't think the utility companies want to pay for that. Yep. So now they're hoping for a bailout.
Speaker 2:There is a there is an interesting question. I don't know if we've talked about this before, but there's this massive move in in LA. Everyone's saying, like, oh, look at the houses that survived. They, you know, they use, like, steel and brick or whatever. And you see the burned down homes, and the chimney is always still there because it's made out of brick.
Speaker 2:And so it's like, oh, maybe just rebuild with brick. But you forget that, like, earthquakes are huge here. And, like, if you just focus for fire prevention, well, well, then when an earthquake comes, you're gonna get screwed. And and and, like, it's easy in this in these kinds of, like, immediate disasters to just refocus on, like, the current issue and be, like, fire prevention's the number one thing. But it's, like, maybe the time is to also think about earthquake prevention and fire prevention and all the different things.
Speaker 1:I think the Blank slides. In in some ways, focusing on making, you know, built developing houses so inexpensive through stuff like cover. Yep. And, my buddy, Alex, a company has a company that Packy Back that's focused on building, you know, building homes in a in a much more inexpensive way. Part of it's, like, if you could build a home 10 times faster for 10 times less money, then there wouldn't even be the same issues around insurance because you could
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Lose your home and just rebuild it fairly quickly
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which is sort of dark, but, maybe that's, part of the solution here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, Solana takes a little bit of a victory lap for having called a lot of this. He says he first wrote about California's wildfires in the fall of 2020, and then again in 2021 in a piece called Global Warming Ate My Homework. Great catchphrase. He quote tweeted Bernie Sanders with that and got a lot of attention because it's it's a great way to, you know, focus on the key issue of, like, you can't just always blame, global warming when, like, if you had done the wildfire prevention
Speaker 1:I did. I never told you
Speaker 2:this to my
Speaker 1:dad my dad during his teaching career, his his website where you would go to get the homework
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Was dog ate my homework.com. Oh, really?
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Good domain. Runs
Speaker 1:the blood. He he let it expire. I was like, dad, like, come on. It's a great name. But, but, yeah, again, the whole, like, at a certain point, the excuses just stop working.
Speaker 1:And and when Bernie was tweeting blaming this all on climate change, I was I don't get triggered.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I was
Speaker 2:Upset.
Speaker 1:Generally, like, I was like, okay. Like, come on, dude. Like, this is, like, this is not the time. And also you're in Vermont. So why don't you focus on Vermont, which is a disaster in many ways too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Solana breaks down, like, a little bit of what's going on here. Wildfires, including mega fires, have burned through California for 1000 of years. But about a 100 years ago, gold rush times, the population of California exploded, which led to the prevention of natural wider scale burns as humans fought back against the regional phenomenon. Fuel has built up for decades because of this, and today, the state the state's at constant risk of burning.
Speaker 2:There's no easy solution to this problem. The problem, let's call it, of living in a place that tends to be on fire. Nobody threw us in these jokes. Although there are many strategies we should consider, from housing policy that encourages greater urban density, I talked about that, Away from the winds to better or from the wilds to better resource management, to reservoirs, to new equipment. We are also living in the future, I'm told.
Speaker 2:And I wonder what new tech what new strategies and technology might be possible from tracking to fighting fire. Probably someone literally paid to pursue such things should do a little digging. But decarbonizing our entire planet is not a serious suggestion. Not only because it's never gonna happen, but because if it does happen, California will still be at constant risk of massive deadly wildfire. We need a plan.
Speaker 2:I argued this for years. And so it goes a little bit into, you know, how the discourse is shifted on X, because there's much less fact checking. This is a really interesting anecdote. Now, there really is an art to good fact checking, one of the most popular and useful weapons in our sprawling information war. Generally, what you want to focus on is something categorically wrong, which by relation seems to disprove an entire class of thing you find uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:CNN produced a great example of the tactic early morning, early Monday morning. Meta fact checkers, they reported, debunked a post on looting. And from what I can tell, they were correct. The narrow example they fact checked was indeed wrong. But was looting a problem barely discussed in the early days of the fire?
Speaker 2:While widely while widely discussed online, a problem or not. And then he says, as as the as at the time of my writing, 29 looters have been arrested with 100 of looters reported. Generally speaking, it was and remains a huge obvious problem.
Speaker 1:And and they had to create a 24 hour curfew effectively where you were not in Malibu, specifically. You were not allowed to move around, walk around, etcetera. We were my neighborhood was looking at beefing up our security, and the only place the security was gonna be able to sit was at the guard tower or in in the community. Yep. So it was effectively not gonna be worthwhile because we already had security there.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And so they weren't even letting private security come into the area. So imagine the number of people that would have been arrested if and that were arrested.
Speaker 2:Just as a media strategy, I find this section so fascinating because it's like like, you know, you're running some, like, SaaS company, and people are complaining about your website being slow or something. But instead of addressing, like, the median complainer, you find, like, the most extreme person who has some, like, insane avatar. And you're like, I'm being targeted by the far left or the far right. And then it's like, oh, well, like, you know, he debunked that person. So, you know, he debunked the entire class of complaint.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I I I feel like this has been used all over the place to great effect. This idea of just, like, honing in on
Speaker 1:Well, that's what Newsom has been doing too in he's hyper fixated on maintaining his image right now.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:so anything that anyone says, he's he's a master manipulator and and media personality. And so, yeah, it's a good strategy to just focus in on the one thing. But in my, you know, going through this the last couple, you know, last week or so, it's been eye opening to me because so much of the information that I I was getting from people that that they were speaking factually.
Speaker 2:Like Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Nobu burned down.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It did not burn down. It was saved. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, 2 so Larry Ellison has 7 homes on PCH.
Speaker 1:2 out of the 7 burned down. And apparently, the firefighters just decided to make a final stand at Allison's houses. I wouldn't be surprised if he was, like, carrying, like, this is a Bitcoin, you know, hard hard hardware wallet. Like, don't let it go any farther. But, but, yeah, there there was just a lot of a lot of people were saying the Palisades village burned down.
Speaker 1:In fact, it was the only area of the Palisades, basically, that didn't burn down. So there was a lot of stuff that ended up wasn't intentionally misinformation.
Speaker 2:How bad do you think the the Palisades village is gonna be in for it post fire? Because Caruso had private firefighters there and water tanks and was very set up to defend it. He defended it successfully. You know, people are criticizing him. Oh, like, he prioritized his buildings over people's homes.
Speaker 2:But clearly, the guy was prepared and planned effectively and was effective in, like, protecting I
Speaker 1:think it'll ultimately be
Speaker 2:is just, like, who's gonna go to these businesses when it's all just construction just
Speaker 1:around them? Here's here's what I think happens. Just my opinion. I think it was actually very positive that one small area was untouched
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Because that is gonna be the community center for people to rebuild. I think a lot of these stores, you know, the stores there, Bottega Veneta, Saint Laurent.
Speaker 2:You You
Speaker 1:know, like, these stores, like
Speaker 2:Just replace them with Home Depot.
Speaker 1:They should be like construct you know, hardware stores
Speaker 2:Hardware stores.
Speaker 1:Gas stations Yeah. You know, restaurants Yeah. For food. Because, like, there's gonna need the homeowners will be spending, and and the residents will not be spending much time there. No.
Speaker 1:But there's gonna be for every home, let's say the average home has a crew of 10 people working on it. You know, that that's tens of thousands of people that need to eat and Yep. You know, buy supplies and get gas and stuff like that. So I think it will ultimately be a beacon of hope and some it's not gonna be normalcy. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But,
Speaker 1:but hopefully But it will can kinda I can't imagine that, like, it'll be interesting. Like, does is it make sense for Airwand to still be there when it should probably be a smart and final now? Yeah. Because, like, people should you know, they don't we don't need we don't need $20, you know, grain bowls when when the average person buying will be, like, you know, day labor. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe he, maybe just does short term leases and just swaps out the
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying. I think he'll be strategic I think he'll be strategic with it.
Speaker 2:Brings in the because he's stuff later.
Speaker 1:Being worth $6,000,000,000, he could have that, and he owns his properties. Like, he could basically zero it out. Yep. But if he goes in and say, we need a hardware tenant, we need, you know, this, this, this, and, maybe get a a slop kava bowls in there. Some barnyard barnyard bowls.
Speaker 2:So, in in typical Solana fashion, he bridges the 2 major stories of the year, of the week together into one kind of thesis. And he shifts from the wildfires and all the fact checking that's going on, on X, to Mark Zuckerberg's announcement that he will be removing fact checkers from meta properties and implementing an Axe like community notes system, which we talked on the show before, but, Solana has a bunch of good stuff in here. He says, On blue sky, Zuckerberg's changes were, of course, likened to white supremacy by the sort of mental patients once uncritically cited as experts by our tech press. And sure, we love to throw eggs at the crazy people who held us prisoner over the last few years. It's funny when they claim their lives are in danger because people are shitposting on a platform where they do not themselves post, and it's good to laugh at them.
Speaker 2:But Meta's changes really are significant, and they were announced in a manner meant to make that clear. Marc didn't only change course on speech. He denounced fact checkers both specifically in the case of their work at meta and conceptually. This was returned to the company's founding founding values, he argued.
Speaker 1:One more point on that. Yeah. I I do think I have been generally everybody can say these I posted yesterday
Speaker 2:Have you been testing the limits on Instagram going really, really extreme seeing seeing if Mark's, you know, really Well,
Speaker 1:I posted yesterday about this. Well, I just posted yesterday just because you can say there was this Oh, yeah. Egan robot says it's morning again in America, and there's a quote from a banker. I feel liberated. We can say the r word and the p word that we're getting him.
Speaker 2:About this.
Speaker 1:It's a new dawn. Yeah. And so my point was just because you can say the r word now doesn't mean you should.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I think that the the people are taking this as an opportunity to be mean and hateful. Totally. And it's low class and vulgar.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 1:Joke about this, but it's true. Don't use free speech to be mean. Yep. Just just just there's no there's no more or less, you don't see, you don't see successful people being mean online. Totally.
Speaker 1:Even Palmer, when he uses some of these words, is using them in response to Jason, who's a Internet bully.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So he's standing up to an Internet bully.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:But even with Palmer, as he said, the 3rd 4th iteration of the r word, it started to get old.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:But, again, Jason is, like, trying to bully him Yep. Which is hilarious to try to bully
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:A billionaire who's 10 times more successful than you. But that's what's happening. So but, yeah, I would just say to to our audience, just try you know, there's no there's no ROI. There's no long term ROI in being mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's sort of these short term
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 2:So I remember literally where I was when I first heard the term the r word. Obviously, I grew up with, like, you know, guys calling each other retarded all the time, in in the pejorative sense, which I don't think you should use. I think it's okay to use it in the descriptive sense, if you're quoting something or using it in, like, fire retardant, essentially, like to slow the process down. But I remember being at South by Southwest at this, like, Spotify activation, and my business partner was on the phone with someone, and he used the r word as in a pejorative sense. And his buddy was like, hey, we don't use the r word anymore.
Speaker 2:Anymore. It was kind of like, you know, like, police, like, free speech policing him. And he was like, Oh, I don't know how I feel about that, but, like, I kinda get it. Like, it is kind of vulgar. Like, maybe I shouldn't use it.
Speaker 2:And then over the following years, it became like, okay, no one ever uses
Speaker 1:that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which, like, people were already there was there was already
Speaker 1:a switch. I mean, it was, to be clear, it was still being used heavily online Totally. And in many male circles.
Speaker 2:Totally. But but but if you just had, like, a normie job at, like, a fortune 500 company, like, you wouldn't use any foul language in the office at all.
Speaker 1:Basically, your mom was right. Exactly. Speak how your your mother Exactly. Wanted you to speak when you were 10 years old.
Speaker 2:But then what happened was it became such an inflated word to the point where if someone caught you using it even descriptively, and the famous example is Ben Horowitz using it in that Clubhouse, chat, and Taylor Lorenz putting it out on Twitter, saying And she misattributed it to Marc Andreessen, but Ben Horowitz was quoting some Wall Street Bets, kind of, gambler degen guys who used the R word to describe themselves. So they were they were they weren't being pejorative because they were using it to describe themselves. They were still using the uncensored r word. He was quoting them. And so it was, like, 3 degrees of separation away from, like, actually calling someone the r word pejorative.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm just I'm looking.
Speaker 2:And so it became like this weapon of, like, if I caught you using it, if I have evidence of you using it, I can get you fired, I can get you punished, I can hurt you. And so that's why I do think it was important to cross the Rubicon for people like Palmer and Delian to use the word and say, hey. We're not afraid anymore. You can't control our speech.
Speaker 1:But it's funny now coming back, I would not I I would not be inclined to hire somebody that was freely using the r word Totally. In any in any, like, online, you know, consistent setting just because I don't I don't think it's generally kind. So I think I agree. I agree. Part of it is having the power Yep.
Speaker 1:And the the the freedom to do it and having the restraint to say there's better words, Nimrod, communist, mouth breather, venture capitalist. So next time
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Repeat this. Next time you wanna use the r word, call someone a VC. Yeah. John, you sound like a VC right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And so and so I think, like, Palmer, at one point, he actually broke down his logic and kind of explained why the why the words shouldn't be removed from language and censored. And and I agree with all of that. I think it's I think it's good to to to say this is something that should not be this weapon of cancellation.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But then there's a second aesthetic question.
Speaker 1:Aesthetic question. It's a
Speaker 2:static question. It's a static question. Exactly. Exactly. There's there's the there's, like, the utilitarian question of the word.
Speaker 2:Like, should you be fired for using this word? Maybe not. Should you be shamed, and should your free speech be impinged? No. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But is it an aesthetically beautiful word? No. Yeah. And so that's why it's just removed from
Speaker 1:your, like weird thing where I do think sound like you know, again, this is, like, almost getting into territory that's this is almost more of like a man like a business, like, management thing. But if I had an employee who is going around using the r word online Yep. I would tell them to stop. Yep. And then if they kept doing it, I do feel like that's grounds for termination because you're representing the company in a way, and you've been asked to not do something.
Speaker 1:And if you wanna go around using your real identity while being employed at a company, it's the same thing to me as somebody going around being racist online Yep. Especially, like I mean, it's very context dependent. Yeah. I mean, it's different. If somebody wants to have an ad on profile and go Wall Street Bets,
Speaker 2:that's It is a very different thing now, especially with the with the company badges on x. Like Yeah. Everyone with that badge is an extension of the brand. And and, I mean, we talked about That's why
Speaker 1:I worked
Speaker 2:on a brand ambassador. Yeah. We've got into a lot of trouble with this because they gave the badge to everyone. It made everyone a brand ambassador. When you look at the way ramp's done it, it's a lot of people who are on X and are posting about literally just their job, but it helps build the brand because they're posting about software development.
Speaker 2:Or Fax Herbert is posting about corporate finance. And he works in corporate finance at RAMP. And so, he is an extension of the brand. They don't want their brand to be represented by vulgar terminology. And so, it wouldn't make sense for a RAMP employee with the badge to use that word and represent the brand that way.
Speaker 2:And so, it it is this weird it is this weird dance because because, obviously, I'm extremely pro free speech. I'm extremely anti cancellation. But that's not a
Speaker 1:free speech is also different in the context when you're representing. If a if a pro it's totally fair. Yes. If a pro sports team, it's one thing. Okay.
Speaker 1:A guy, an athlete should be able to give an interview and thank their religion for, you know, what you know, whatever. Right? That should you know, nobody should be able to get in the way of that. Right? Yep.
Speaker 1:Like, that's their first part of their identity. Using specific words that negatively impact the brand that you're participating in
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Is to is to me a totally different thing. And you can go to another team and do that. You can go work for yourself and do that. You can be, you know, terminally online, unemployed, you know, and use it. You know?
Speaker 2:Also, it's like I mean, it's like good comedy. Like, there are, like, certain words can be used in very funny and novel ways. And the first few times the r word came out online, it was like, woah. Like, okay. In this context, this is extra funny.
Speaker 2:I mean, we were joking about it in that Taylor Lorenz piece. How how we said, like, her career had been r word. Yeah. Slowed. Because that's that's actually the non pejorative definition.
Speaker 2:So it's like this play on words and that's kind of, I think it's funny. But if you're just, like, throwing out the R word everywhere because you just don't know any other words and you can't express yourself anyway, it just gets boring. And so it's low class and vulgar. And what would your mother say?
Speaker 1:What would your mother say?
Speaker 2:So that that wraps up our our word rant for the day. Well, you'll probably be able to use it on meta. They list out a bunch of examples,
Speaker 1:and then they don't you should be able to use it on social media platforms.
Speaker 2:They're not the arbiter of this. Yeah. You're the arbiter of it because we decide what is aesthetically Yeah. Yeah. Correct in terms of taste.
Speaker 1:And there's gonna be teams that decide that that aesthetic aligns with their brand.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:And they're free to use that. But, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's very, like, monster energy work.
Speaker 1:I had, I I I had a young member of the party around team that, there was a period where me and, another person on the team would have post notifications on for said person. It would be like we would have, like, twice a week. We'd have to be like, delete this right now. It's like, and it became the same. Some people will be able to guess who that was.
Speaker 2:But Okay. So basically, Solana breaks down some of the reaction at Meta. Like, the there's been this big story in The Intercept, and formerly Gawker and 404 Media, talking about how, like, Zuck's announcement has caused chaos at the company. And there was a post on the internal Meta platform called Workplace that said this person's, like, upset about it, and they're taking time off. Solana then talked to a couple meta employees himself and said that there were a couple hundred comments on an internal post, but not a single person had quit because of it, and meta employs 25,000 people.
Speaker 2:So it does seem like a muted reaction internally. People are just kind of like, Yeah, cool. Fine. No fact checkers, community notes. Awesome.
Speaker 2:But there's a great anecdote in here from Tech History, which I was not familiar with. And he says that, one executive that Solana spoke with reminded him of what Facebook culture used to mean. In 2018, when Justice Kavanaugh was elected to the Supreme Court, a meta employee and one of Kavanaugh's good friends went to Washington to support him amid the controversy surrounding his confirmation. This, according to the executive I spoke with, led to a full week of what might more properly be termed chaos, as thousands of comments lit up META's internal message boards, which concluded an employee walkout. That executive's name was Joel Kaplan.
Speaker 2:Mark just gave him a promotion. He is now the company's president of Global Affairs, and nobody at the company seems to care, which is kind of confusing at this point, as it's starting to seem like Zuckerberg is actually trying to piss these people off. Which I love. And so, after a few a few days after his Instagram post, Meta ended its DEI program, and, Mark appeared on Rogan to basically apologize for all the censorship. While Meta,
Speaker 1:in some way, benefited from I think meta and Sam have benefited from the fires in some ways because they both had somewhat controversial moves
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That were just completely drowned out. Like, last week, people really didn't care too much about technology. Yeah. This was a story
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it had 10 times less interest because Totally. There just was these raging Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fires. Yeah. It was hard to post, like, anything non fire related, just because it's overwhelming the timeline. But this is a very interesting, debate point. I mean, you you you've kind of called the top on Mark's, you know, real
Speaker 1:I called the top. I I I should have posted about it, but I I called the top on Mark's personal, the local top Yep. Not bearish forever.
Speaker 2:As soon as he throws on a suit, it's a new Yeah. Yeah. It's a
Speaker 1:new market. Yeah. New market. No. But but about It's a bearish track.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. About 6 months ago, I felt like Mark had been very emboldened by a lot of the positive reactions. He went through the worst negative period everybody He's called a robot.
Speaker 2:Truly He was called a robot. Straight.
Speaker 1:He would go in front of congress and be gone. Yeah. And just he was he was in a bad spot. Then he started training MMA, working out, got jacked. Yep.
Speaker 1:Meta, like, started ripping. He started doing the the wakeboarding with the American flag, positive response, moving all the way to the minivan stuff, like, flaunting as well, like, kind of playing into the average meta user and things that they would find interesting. And I felt I felt like there's this dynamic where if you get too much positive the more positive attention you get, the more of a target you're putting on your back front by the Internet. Right? And, anyways, that seems to have been there now is, like, a much more there's a bunch of positive people who are like, yeah.
Speaker 1:Pro suck. And then now there's certain people being like, you don't get credit for this decision. Yep. You're doing it right at the new administration. Yep.
Speaker 1:You're very late. You're doing it at the most convenient time.
Speaker 2:And there's always been this theory of, like, the PR firm behind his rebrand is genius. And, like, I never really bought that because I do think he's just going back to you you can literally find
Speaker 1:He's also he's also always just had, like, anyone goes through periods with different interests. He got into smoking meats. Did that in a very robotic way. Yep. But then he's now into MMA and, like, Dana White and, like, you know.
Speaker 2:And and he's more confident about it and he's more he's posting about it.
Speaker 1:So I'm generally I'm generally I'm I'm in the camp where I'm I'm glad he's.
Speaker 2:But I've literally talked to, like, the head of PR at meta and like and like, she's always like, yeah, he had to explain to us what MMA was. Like, they didn't know. Like, I'm like, I'm very, very sure that, like, that, like, there's no slide deck out there with, like, getting FPjorn, Zuck. Like, that's what'll work.
Speaker 1:No. He's he's he's just He has agency.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and you can see it because if you go back and look at, like, the first interview he did with, like, the solo cup on the couch, it's like, that's kind of he's always kind of been a bro. And then he, like, the
Speaker 1:the the language he used in the college era is almost the same as what you would expect a guy that looks like he does now.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 1:I can't believe these people trust me with their data. LOL.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And he looks kinda And so clearly the robot era was the PR firm makeover. It was like, this guy's too much of a crazy bro. We gotta wrap him in something really tight and, like, quiet. So, like, don't say anything.
Speaker 2:And now he's kind of unleashed. But, but people are definitely saying, like, oh, this is the top, and now it's, like, oh, this is late, and I'm I'm sick of this shtick. I think he needs to switch it up. I've argued that he should throw on a suit. There's other things that he could do.
Speaker 2:He needs to get into long range visual shooting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I wish Tim Cook would follow Tim Cook can't really afford it. Yep. But if he had the level of wealth that Mark had, he might be able to spice up his personality a bit.
Speaker 1:Totally. Tim Cook, you think of Tim Cook, you're like, okay. He drives a Lexus.
Speaker 2:He drives a Lexus?
Speaker 1:No. I'm assuming. Okay. Where's an Apple watch? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where's Lululemon? Okay. Maybe spices is up. I think
Speaker 2:he wears Nike's. Supernello. Nike.
Speaker 1:It's a Brunello now and then. But Tim Cook, I think, could take Apple from a 3 to a $4,000,000,000,000 market cap just by being a little more personable and being like, yeah. The photos app is terrible. I'm sorry. The alarm app is terrible.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. Battery life is terrible. I'm sorry. We're gonna make it better.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He is he is, like, the most media trained person in the world. Have you seen his interview with
Speaker 1:MTSU? Live stuff. Right?
Speaker 2:No. No. Well, not anymore. But that's just because of, like, the COVID stuff and the the live stuff's coming back in and stuff. He's not, like, afraid of that.
Speaker 2:We'll see.
Speaker 1:We'll be hack hack
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You bricked my phone.
Speaker 2:No. He did he did an interview with MKBHD about the Magic Mouse, which is the mouse that you have to plug in this way. So you can't use the mouse while it's plugged in. Like, it would be so obvious just to have the charger in the front, so then you can use the mouse while you're plugging it in. But this, you have to flip it over, plug it into the bottom.
Speaker 2:It's like one of the worst designs ever. Apple, they have a lot of great designs, but this one was So
Speaker 1:you know, so my my phone
Speaker 2:And MKVHD asked him, like like, what do you think of the Magic Mouse? And he's just like, well, it's one of our best products. Just zero awareness that, like, people in the Apple community hate that.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 2:he should have easily just been like, yeah. I mean, obviously, like, we kind of messed up the port. I'm excited to revise that. We have all these timelines. We'll work through it.
Speaker 2:Like, you know, you know, you miss stuff sometimes.
Speaker 1:So, yes, my phone's about a year old. Yeah. I might go I don't think we're gonna have time today, but tomorrow, I'm definitely gonna go upgrade it. Sorry. I didn't sorry to Apple.
Speaker 1:I didn't get it in for q 4, but but I'll try to buy some other stuff this quarter and really get my, you know, LTV up. But, my phone went yes. So I I go on a I leave, the house. I go on a beach walk. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I was, like, listening to something, not even using my phone. In 15 minutes, my phone went from 20% battery life to 1% and then died. Yeah. I was, like, 20 to 1, like, a 15 minute walk. I was, like, this is basically, like, a landline now.
Speaker 1:Like, I
Speaker 2:actually should be charging you. I we need the tinfoil hat because I don't believe in this conspiracy, this conspiracy theory at all. I think it's a skill issue. I think Yeah.
Speaker 1:My battery is a skill issue.
Speaker 2:It is. You have some crazy apps running the background.
Speaker 1:No. It's it's x. Actually, I think x when you have, like, if you're posting Yep. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Because you're getting notifications. Destroys your battery. Exactly. Exactly. And you know whatever optimization engineer was like, let's worry about the battery.
Speaker 2:Elon's like, no. Don't care.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Fry the battery. Just get the just get the engagement out. Right. Keep the people on
Speaker 1:the test. Get the test. The the Elon would launch a phone at some point
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:With a week long battery life using all of Tesla's, like, battery technology. Like, that would actually, you know, people would be like, oh, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:The the Starlink is like the size of an iPad. You could just have that and then Yeah. IPad on the front and then it's just like always satellite internet connected.
Speaker 1:I saw a saddle I saw a Starlink battery, like, new product. It's like built like basically like a Oh, radio. Week long battery that you can put your Starlink in. Okay.
Speaker 2:I need that.
Speaker 1:But it costs like 5 times as much as the Starlink.
Speaker 2:As the Starlink? Batteries are expensive. Yeah. They still are. Apple needs to have some sort of, like, limited allocation like the like Ferrari does.
Speaker 2:So, you know, it's like, look, we're gonna need you to take a bath on this Apple Vision Pro. You're gonna need to get, because these things are amazing. You can buy an Apple Vision Pro for 4 k and go on eBay and sell it for 2 k the next day. Like, the depreciation is insane on this product. But you do that a couple times, Your your, you know, your AD starts, liking you, gets you the allocation of the new diamond iced out Apple Watch when it
Speaker 1:goes on. Yeah. Yeah. Ice it out. With with a, you know, 72 hour battery life.
Speaker 2:It would be it would be really funny if they're just like, yeah. We launched the new iPhone. It has the has the best, like, M4 chip in it. It's super cool. Interesting.
Speaker 2:And and you're you're gonna need to get on the list to get it.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:You can just buy it.
Speaker 1:It it is fascinating that Apple has seemingly shifted away from this multi iPhone strategy and basically wanting everybody to get, in theory, get the next iPhone.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:When I do believe there's a huge number of people that if they made a $10,000 iPhone that that had a just ultra ridiculous battery life, that they would get it.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:I would if I had a phone that I just never had to really worry about charging, throw it on every now and then, I the the the sort of my willingness to spend would be as
Speaker 2:powerful as possible. Because, like, there's that terrible camera bump on the top, which, like, you know, was never on the Steve Jobs iPhones. The wobble is wild. And it and it seems like if you just raise the rest of the phone to the thickness of the camera bump, you would get double the battery life with the extra space. But they must have run the numbers and been like, people don't care.
Speaker 2:I think that it's like a standard versus revealed preference thing. I think that for most people, it's like, yeah, just subscribe to your iPhone. You run every year. It dies at the end of the day. You're good.
Speaker 2:And then, sure, you're a power user on x, so you're gonna get screwed. But for most people, their phone lasts the full day, at least for a year, and then they move on to the next one.
Speaker 1:It would be if they had any vision, they would do a landline version of the iPhone that has one of those stretchy cords.
Speaker 2:You can just
Speaker 1:that would actually
Speaker 2:We gotta get
Speaker 1:that. Tim, when you listen to this Yeah. Reach out to us.
Speaker 2:Printer too. We want an Apple We
Speaker 1:got it on. We we we got this incredible market map. So John John is John
Speaker 2:Future associate
Speaker 1:John did this. And if anybody yeah. If anybody, any any venture capital firms out there that need a market map made, John made this in, like, 10 minutes. Yeah. I'm very, very impressed.
Speaker 1:But, yeah. So we
Speaker 2:key question, who's gonna make money? Obviously, it's a terrible tragedy. But Yeah. And who is it? Who are the players?
Speaker 2:Ramifications. Yeah. So we tried to divide up what are the categories of industries that will be affected, and then within those, what are the subcategories, and then give you a couple examples of each company.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the categories take
Speaker 2:us through some maybe list out all the categories and we'll go through one more time.
Speaker 1:Category. So we have building materials and supplies, thousands and thousands of homes and structures and stores and all these things burned to the ground. Tons of damage that wasn't even necessarily structural, so that's a big one. Community and government support. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's everything from fema to the Red Cross who are coming in. Some, you know, some activity on the nonprofit side government side. Neither of those groups are gonna be making money, but they're gonna be spending a lot of money. And so people are gonna be making money from those budgets. Yep.
Speaker 1:Construction and infrastructure. So there's big, home builders and, you know, and groups that will build a, you know, not a not a not a Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's kinda unclear if those big home builders like Lennar will come in because they they do more like track homes and specific developments. We can talk more about that when we go into the deep dive on that company. But Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the Palisades is not an area where people are gonna say, hey. Let's just take You could see that potentially happening where one block is, like, let's all work with this one builder. They can all just amount. But, anyway, so construction and infrastructure, environmental remediation restoration. So that's everything on the cleanup side.
Speaker 1:Yep. You know, so much, there's so much toxic waste, all over LA that needs to be cleaned up, and then landscaping and erosion control. So one thing that happens post fire is when all the fuel that fueled the fire burns off, then, then then the mudslides become a huge risk. Remember this in Santa Barbara? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Really, really sad. So I was in college when those were happening. And Montecito had had some fires, and then there was heavy rains. And there was so much mud coming through the hills of Montecito that entire houses were just taken off, like, huge boulders. So imagine a house a house traveling 200 feet.
Speaker 2:The death toll was, like, 20.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I know. I I had a family friend who not not super close or anything, but who decided that they felt they were safe in their home Yep. Even though there's a lot of rain and and sort of activity, and the the home was just taken out and just completely destroyed.
Speaker 1:So, very dark, but, that's gonna be super important now because all over LA and in the hills, people wanna rebuild, but there's gonna be, like, huge mud risk. So financial and insurance services. So there's gonna be a lot of, ton of lending, you know, activity for people that need construction loans to rebuild and,
Speaker 2:and huge fights. I was listening to something about this where, like, where, like, there's, like, the, what do they call it? Claims adjustment?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Big question about, like, oh, like, your house burned down and you're claiming that we need to, like, rebuild the foundation, but we think that the foundation was cracked before the fire happened, and so we're adjusting you down. And Yeah. And, like, if you don't have perfect data on exactly all the materials, everything that went in, like, you're just gonna get pennies on the dollar. Just huge fights and then lawyers get Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting. So there's going to be the banks are gonna make money on the new activity.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:But they're also gonna lose money on mortgages where, you know, maybe somebody didn't have insurance, and so there's bankruptcy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then there's just gonna be obviously a bunch of policy shifting around as people realize, oh, I need to get off the fair plan because Yep. It was interesting. I I think it was was it Monday's episode? I reached out to kin.com Yep. Just to just as, like, a market research thing, And they called me, like, 6 times in the last few days.
Speaker 1:They finally picked up while we were at the grocery
Speaker 2:store earlier.
Speaker 1:Talking about? And, they were like, yeah. We're issuing new policies in California. So so kin.com still issuing policies. QED, I think, is their biggest investor.
Speaker 1:So the next category, security and safety. You have alarm monitoring services, and then there's a bunch of new upstart companies, like Sauron that are in that space as well, and then physical security providers. So, in the Palisades and Malibu area, there's, like, a specific security company called IPS that everybody uses, and so they've been on overdrive.
Speaker 2:They're probably really important in the short term.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And think about think about so LA's had huge issues forever with, squatters. So if you I know people who have had a house in LA that was empty that would repeatedly get broken into, and the police just say we can't do anything about it. Like, there's weird laws around. Like, if they just chill out in there for enough time, then, like, suddenly, like, they're they have some rights, which is crazy.
Speaker 1:So, just Did you wanna
Speaker 2:hear a crazy story? 2 weeks ago, a friend of mine was flying back into LAX, gets off the plane, goes to baggage claim. Luggage has been stolen. There's an air tag in the luggage. Can see so she can see exactly where the luggage is going.
Speaker 2:It goes to this house. She takes a screenshot. It's stable. She knows exactly where it is. Calls 911 or calls the police police department, tells them, hey, my bag was stolen.
Speaker 2:It has an air tag. I know exactly where it is. Like, can you help me with this? And they were like, no. Just no.
Speaker 1:Just no? Just no. That's so dark.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:That's that's collapse right there.
Speaker 2:And I was just like I almost like I I wanted to, like, tweet about it, but it felt, like, very, like, cultural
Speaker 1:or something. Yeah. That's that's like it feel it feels like a sci fi movie where you're, okay. I'm hiring in my own private central ops team to basically go break it in.
Speaker 2:I'm saying that. I was like, do you need me to go?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm ready to tool up.
Speaker 1:It's Diamond. I'd call Diamond.
Speaker 2:It's Diamond. The door kicker.
Speaker 1:Our door kicker. He's got, like
Speaker 2:Oh, he's ready. He's ready to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But I had I mean, I I
Speaker 2:I had I was just shocked. I was, like, you have all the evidence here. It's, like, so clear. All you can do is just have Committed in LA County. Just just just send somebody to knock on the door and say, hey.
Speaker 2:Give us that back.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and instead, she just bought all this stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh, really?
Speaker 2:She wrote
Speaker 1:it off.
Speaker 2:Never got
Speaker 1:it. Just wrote it off. Next, technology and data services. So there's a ton of disaster assessment, planning, tech, you know, drones being used, aerial photography, satellite imagery, and then smart building and construct construction tech. So, you know, there's gonna be companies like Procore, which is actually here in Santa Barbara County.
Speaker 1:They make a platform for construction management. So, like, they'll probably see a huge uptick in Yep. Southern California sales as builders sort of descend. And, Yeah. One thing that you know, let let's let's get into it.
Speaker 1:Let's start breaking down each individual category. Sure. So why don't we start at the top? So manufacturers of core materials. So, there's, to make a house takes a few different parts.
Speaker 1:So we have CEMEX is the first one. They're multinational, that we're highlighting. Multinational producer of cement, concrete, and aggregates. They're a key supplier for roads, bridges, and foundations post disaster. They are publicly traded 8 to $10,000,000,000 market cap and operating in, 50 plus countries already.
Speaker 1:So massive, massive country or sorry, massive company, already. And, the other one that we have listed is Owens Corning. They do roofing insulation fiberglass composites. They're already been emphasizing, like, fire resistant and energy efficient products, also publicly traded similar range, 9 to 10,000,000,000 actually in annual revenue.
Speaker 2:I wonder with some of these, like, construction materials companies, if this will actually move the needle for the stock. We were talking about maybe looking up some of the some of the market caps on this. But because, like, although the LA fire is, like, hugely impactful in this area, like, it is, at the end of the day, just, like, 10,000 homes. And some of these homebuilders are coming out.
Speaker 1:But it
Speaker 2:A 100,000 homes in a year.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah. But but from a construction standpoint, if you think about the demand, so if there was a $150,000,000,000 worth of damage Yeah. And it's and everybody's projecting it to actually be higher than that, and you're the number one producer of cement and concrete
Speaker 2:Yeah. That could be
Speaker 1:And then that a 100 and 50,000,000,000 of damage is not gonna cost a $150,000,000,000 to replace. Right? The replacement cost is actually lower Sure. Because you build a house for $2,000,000 and then it's worth 4,000,000. Right?
Speaker 1:Because the land didn't get destroyed or whatever.
Speaker 2:But I think that's calculated in the losses. I think when they say $150,000,000,000 losses
Speaker 1:replacement cost?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're not talking about the land value for
Speaker 1:sure. No. No. I I I figured it's more, but the thing, a house that's built is worth more than the raw materials sitting around and the construction.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But but but, but, I I mean, I I think that, like I mean, we discussed this in that in that in that Bloomberg Odd Lots interview where it's like the there's the insurance claims and then there's the, there's like the other disaster database. And so they're not just saying, oh, a $4,000,000 house burned down. That's $4,000,000 loss. They're like they're saying the insurance will pay out 2,000,000.
Speaker 1:Got it. And so. So. Taking the lower.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Because because truthfully, like, the land was not destroyed.
Speaker 2:Like, you still own the land. And even if you didn't have insurance and you had a $4,000,000 home in the Palisades and it burned to the ground, your net worth, if you own that free and clear, is still 2,000,000 probably. Right?
Speaker 1:Something around that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's 1,000,000. Maybe it's 3. I don't know. But, but, yeah. I mean, the the the losses are truly, like, the the the burned losses.
Speaker 1:It's interesting if you owned
Speaker 2:At least they should be. If you
Speaker 1:owned lots around LA that were in these fire affected value actually ticked up Yep. In some ways because now it's easier to build. Yep. And you can build it faster, so you're not carrying that Yep. Construction.
Speaker 2:I I was actually thinking about this. Like, there's that there's that funny Newsom announcement where he was like, we're removing the red tape for all the fire victims. And Dude, did you
Speaker 1:see the video?
Speaker 2:Using that Friedman quote tweeted, and he was like, but we're leaving the red tape for everyone else. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Did you see the video of him? Everybody was saying he was on a punch of stimulants because he has these, like, weird tics where he was going
Speaker 2:Hand motions?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we he literally was going like this. Yeah. We're really afraid of these property developers that, we're really afraid of property developers that are gonna come in and make lowball offers on these properties. You know, I talked to the Maui guy, you know, the Maui governor and he is afraid of the same thing.
Speaker 1:So we're we're we're working on Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just such a smile. But I wonder I wonder, like, like, there's gonna be, like, payouts to people that are affected. I wonder $770 from
Speaker 1:from from Joe?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's, like, 7 $700 or something like that.
Speaker 1:$770. Oh,
Speaker 2:so, yeah. 7.70. I thought you just said $70. That would be really long.
Speaker 1:I mean, what's the difference if you just lost your job?
Speaker 2:But, but but there's also the question about, like, if the regulations change, like, will it be all of Malibu? Like, will it be easier for you to build? Will it be Like, Altadena burned. I'm in Pasadena. My water was affected because I'm on the same water line, which is why I'm here in Santa Barbara now.
Speaker 2:But my house didn't burn down. But there was ash that fell on my house. Like, we have ashes.
Speaker 1:The thing is, like, is, like,
Speaker 2:do I benefit from this or not? I'm I'm still unclear.
Speaker 1:Malibu, Coastal Commission
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Low you have local groups
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Other environmental groups. There's so many different levels of permits.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:I I think it's great that Gavin Newsom can go out and say we're gonna make it easier than ever to build. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it will What does
Speaker 2:that actually mean?
Speaker 1:But but, okay, you've removed red tape, but then you have a 1000 times more people trying to do the thing. Yeah. So what is the net effect? Are they gonna get, you know, a 100 times more, you know, employees that are processing sort of these, like, permitting stuff like that. Everything's gonna still be permitted.
Speaker 1:You talked about how
Speaker 2:Permanent needs to be done.
Speaker 1:About how you were just trying to rebuild a room in your house, and they were like, well, if you wanna do that, you have to put in a stove.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You have to add a kitchen.
Speaker 1:You have add a kitchen. You're like, I already have a kitchen.
Speaker 2:To the studio?
Speaker 1:I already have a kitchen. I you just really want me to cook. I get all my food from kava, I guess. I'm barnyard I'm barnyard.
Speaker 2:It really is. So it's it's like, yeah. Your house needs 2 kitchens.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Why? No. All of this is exposing that that every single level is broken. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right? And 100%. We talked about this on Monday's episode. The they had just introduced new regulations to solve the insurance crisis that was already unfolding.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And then it there was a week delay between when it went into effect and when the fire set. So no no changes.
Speaker 2:And it's so easy to just be like, the branding is we're removing red tape, and then the law is like, we're gonna make it sure that your house can never be built unless it's to the most environmental fire code possible. And it's like No.
Speaker 1:And and so now LA now LA has I I think we're gonna wanna cover this, but the the the the business of Super Bowl prep, the business of Olympic prep. So we're we have these huge international events coming to LA by 2028. And, that just adds a whole other level to it. But let's keep going. So we have separately, these tend to be the company.
Speaker 1:So CEMEX and or Chemex, I don't actually know how you say it, and Owens Corning, get way less attention because they're they're much more on the industry side b to b than Lowe's and Home Depot, which still have a huge b to b component to their business, but are the more high profile sort of consumer retail businesses. So Lowe's, I think everybody should know. 2nd largest hardware building supply retailer in the US provides community support and emergency supplies post disaster, which is great. They do 90 to a 100,000,000,000 in revenue. They're based in North Carolina where they just had, obviously, a big hurricane.
Speaker 1:And then you have Home Depot, which is the largest US home improvement retailer, critical supplier of rebuilding materials after disasters, 23100 stores. They have a 150,000,000,000 of annual revenue. And so, so, yeah, the the average you know, for every one person that walks into a Home Depot, one of them is a, you know, contractor.
Speaker 2:2 people that walk in, one is. It's 5050 at Home Depot contractors versus DIY prosumers.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:At Lowe's, it's about 70% DIYers. Really? Yeah. Yeah. It's more of Lowe's is where you go as a consumer.
Speaker 2:The contractors lean towards Home Depot. And there's some interesting design choices that they've actually made in the history of Home Depot where, one, they were building 1 of the first stores, I believe, and they and the the builder on the actual store had, like, polished the floors and made it look all nice. And they came in there and they were like, this is not this is not going to be friendly to a contractor. Like a contractor wants to see, like,
Speaker 1:great
Speaker 2:grit, and so, like Yeah. Throw some sawdust down.
Speaker 1:That is funny because whenever I'm in Home Depot, you'll you know, I feel like a lost goal golden retriever. Exactly. I'm I'm over here golden retriever
Speaker 2:math. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the idea is to, you know, put the contractor first. You show up, you go in, you just get your stuff and you go. Whereas Lowe's, there's gonna be more people walking around kind of, oh, oh, you wanna, you know, like, know, DIY your own deck or just get some furniture, get a new fridge. Like, we'll we'll walk you through that.
Speaker 1:You could in many ways, I would imagine that Home Depot is a bigger beneficiary here because
Speaker 2:Yep. There's been so much DIY because you're not
Speaker 1:still doing the foundation yourself.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That is almost a meme online of, like, you know, you can just build a house. Yeah. People that can, you know, you know, left wing people will complain about the cost of housing, and then you can sort of, like, homesteader right wing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They'll be, like, you can just build you can just go and buy the supplies and build your house. Yeah. So I I'm sure we'll see some of that.
Speaker 2:Home Depot went through some crazy shocks, during COVID. Everyone was worried that, like, you know, the the housing market would collapse because the stock market was down. The economy was really rough during the early days of COVID, unemployment was really high. But then once people realized that they were gonna be at home for a year, they were like, let's do some home improvement projects. And I think they pulled forward something like 5 years of growth in 1 year during COVID.
Speaker 2:And the stock, like, mooned and did really well because everyone was doing renovations and stuff because they were like, if I'm gonna be here, and the interest rates are really low, and I'm getting massive checks from the government, and, you know, I'm not moving, and the stock, and the price of my house is going way up, I should be renovating. I should be and they were just, like
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Stuff everywhere. So, yeah, Home Depot flipping. Doing a ton. Yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot of flipping during that time. So, again, Home Depot is a It's not what a company.
Speaker 1:We're gonna we're covering Brad Jacobs on Friday, but he has a new private equity firm or
Speaker 2:he's a roll up. Private equity roll up firm. You're gonna try and buy a couple companies that do, construction supplies.
Speaker 1:So that presumably would b
Speaker 2:to b.
Speaker 1:More like CEMEX or Chemex
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Like, or Owens, but the smaller smaller Exactly. Mid mid market
Speaker 2:companies. Okay. He wants to bring in technology and automation to all the stuff he's done at XPO and the other logistics companies that he's run, but focused on on, construction supply chain.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Alright. Let's jump into we're gonna cover more of that
Speaker 2:Kinda like Mcmaster car, if you're familiar with that. Who wants to be, you know, Mcmaster car for margarita. For for construction supplies.
Speaker 1:Who is posting about the McMaster margarita?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. The ITAR Gatorade.
Speaker 1:The ITAR Gatorade. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:So next category, community and government support, subcategory. We have emergency management and coordination. So first up, we have cal o e s. They oversee the emergency response specifically for the state of California. They coordinate the wildfire evacuations and statewide resource deployment.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because I don't know anybody that was using Cal OES for this. Everybody was using, watch duty, but I'm sure Cal OES data feeds into that. Sure.
Speaker 2:Sure. Yeah. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:But watch duty
Speaker 2:because watch duty is a nonprofit, but it's but it's like a company. So it's like a startup almost.
Speaker 1:And I'm it wasn't it wasn't perfect. Nonprofit
Speaker 2:now might be for profit conversion if they wanna start printing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We'll see.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Take private.
Speaker 2:Get those units. Stack those units if you're in watch duty.
Speaker 1:Giphon and company. Take private a watch studio.
Speaker 2:Watch duty.
Speaker 1:Just jacks it up to a
Speaker 2:$100. A $100. Yeah. Getting the key in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Watch Get some dark patterns.
Speaker 2:Get some dark patterns.
Speaker 1:Dark.
Speaker 2:And, start start printing. Dark. In app purchase.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so Cal OES coordinates with local, like, city LA and FEMA for disaster strategies. And, yeah, it it it was wild. I think Wednesday night, watch duty just stopped updating. The fire didn't spread all night.
Speaker 1:So I remember everybody's watching it being like, what's going on? Because that's, like, the only way to get
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Information close to information. FEMA is a more interesting one to me here. So FEMA's, everybody knows, kind of a controversial agency because they deal with a lot of the immigration stuff. But federal agency coordinating major disaster response across the US, they provide grants, temporary housing, public infrastructure repair funding. So they're funding you know, if if a freeway gets damaged, they're gonna help fund that.
Speaker 1:They oversee $20,000,000,000 annually in disaster relief. So what's interesting about this is people yeah. And I'm sure that that's more of like an average, and I'm sure it massively picks up.
Speaker 2:Katrina, I'm sure it was higher.
Speaker 1:But, what's interesting about this is there's a whole subcategory of contractors that, that are already looped in, you know, that that do work with FEMA because there's always stuff happening. Right? So it's think of it as, like, a FEMA SMB type, you know, operator where FEMA is now gonna be funding a lot of the cleanup from the fire where everything from okay. There's we have these 20 cars on the street that burned out. Bring a bulldozer.
Speaker 1:Bring a bulldozer. Yeah. So there's
Speaker 2:Probably DOD contracting, but
Speaker 1:just Yeah. So there's a subcategory of of contractors right now that are buying that are buying or renting every available bulldozer in the surrounding area or shipping them in just to operate them to basically take on these, like, individual, you know, FEMA contracts and could probably do a whole deep dive, there. But it's a lot of, like, people that have good intentions, a lot of people that are just trying to make a quick Yep. Buck, a lot of that money gets spent pretty poorly because there's, like, this crisis situation. And if you need to clean up, you know, hundreds of square, you know, miles or thousands and thousands of acres of just, like, chaos, then, like, you just need to spend money.
Speaker 1:It's like a startup, right, where if you need to do something super, super fast, sometimes the best way to do it is just to, like, overspend. The local agencies and nonprofits, American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, everybody knows the Red Cross. They
Speaker 2:Not many injuries or blood donations going on right now because the death toll is so low, but I'm sure they come out with, like, you know, just general relief.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So they the Red Cross works at local agencies. They're trying to, you know, provide support for displaced residents. They operate on $2 to $3,000,000,000 annually from donations and grants. So, you know, big organization, but maybe not even as big as some might think habitat for humanity.
Speaker 1:They build and repair affordable homes with volunteer labor and they offer zero interest mortgages for disaster affected families. So that's cool. They're active globally, but they're based in Atlanta.
Speaker 2:I built a house with Habitat for Humanity in high school, and it was like the slowest process in the world. It took like months for them to do like anything.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Because it's like now we're gonna do the It's
Speaker 2:not like a because it's like American.
Speaker 1:Like there's all the rotations and stuff. Rotating team.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It just takes forever. And then I did one where I went to Mexico and did it and built the house in a day. It was the most satisfying thing in the world.
Speaker 1:That's crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, you had a foundation before, but you get there. And and it's just, like, okay. Frame this out. Put this up.
Speaker 2:It's, like, very minimal, but you finish the house in a single day.
Speaker 1:That's cool. So sick. And that's how it
Speaker 2:should be.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, I mean, that's not gonna happen here, but, hopefully, even a 100 days. Right? Yeah. I have a friend Bring
Speaker 2:in the Amish. Yeah. Bring the Amish to your wife. Just throw up. Just throw up.
Speaker 2:Parts. Import the Amish.
Speaker 1:I have a buddy in Malibu who did an internal remodel. Structured and change it all. Took him over 3 years. And and it wasn't and it and it was the kind of thing that could have been done in 4 months.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But just massive delays. Delays.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. Alright. Next, construction and infrastructure, commercial, and infrastructure construction. So there's AECOM, a e c
Speaker 2:o m e AECOM. Yeah.
Speaker 1:AECOM. Global engineering construction firm for handling civil and commercial projects.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's more for, like, if the water plant or power plant, like, burned down, like, they're gonna come in and build, like, a bespoke, like, you know, massive power plant or some, like, piece of huge infrastructure, like, the water main, stuff like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You have to imagine a lot of that stuff didn't burn to the ground because it's, like, concrete buildings, but the machinery inside. And and right now, we're we have a water crisis in in LA just because, you know,
Speaker 2:they're not getting crowded. Who builds the reservoir? Like, that type of thing. Like, do we need an extra reservoir after this? Is that the resolution?
Speaker 2:Well, then you're gonna call
Speaker 1:in when you're maxed out. Before their comp should be structured based on making sure the reservoir actually has water. You know, like it should be like a, you know, we need some accountability.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You don't get paid unless
Speaker 1:full. And then there's Bechtel, one of the largest privately held engineering companies renowned for massive infrastructure projects worldwide, 17 to 20,000,000,000 in annual revenue. Yeah. International operations. So
Speaker 2:Very similar companies. Halliburton, famous for Dick Cheney. Halliburton, very old company, but does these huge infrastructure projects. The famous story is in Iraq, like you need to put in oil well. They would engineer that and build that.
Speaker 2:And then, and then are you familiar with Parsons in Pasadena?
Speaker 1:Oh, the design school. Right?
Speaker 2:There is a design school. I think the design school was endowed by the founder of the engineering firm.
Speaker 1:Oh, crazy.
Speaker 2:I think his name's Bill Parsons and he, he does yeah. He designed, like, all these weapons. He was, like, a DOD contractor during, like, maybe World War 2, maybe a little bit after, but built, like, a whole bunch of, like, tanks and stuff. And then eventually he did more and more engineering projects bigger. And now it's, like, this big, big engineering firm.
Speaker 1:Crazy. Okay. On the residential side, we have KB Home and Lennar. KB Home, customizable energy efficient homes in major US markets. Built to order model simplifies adaptation to local codes based in LA.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure they're gonna you know, I actually talked to a guy who does a bunch of
Speaker 2:Can I have the other 3 pages, by the way?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Did we get the printer working? Sorry.
Speaker 2:I haven't set it up.
Speaker 1:Copies of this. Anything. We can trade back at some point. I talked to a guy in Santa Barbara the other day. I was like, are you gonna go try to do any development work in in Santa Barbara and he or sorry, in LA?
Speaker 1:And he's like, I'm good. You know, I don't wanna go basically get involved in someone's backyard. So I think a lot of this stuff will go to local Yep. Builders. Yep.
Speaker 1:And that's who I'd want. You know, if I if my house burned down, I'd want somebody local that's not just, like, coming in for a few years to, like, make a quick buck and and get out. Yeah. And then Lennar, one of the largest US home builders, they focus on scalability, and they do have post disaster rebuilding sort of products, based in Miami, $35,000,000,000 market cap.
Speaker 2:Also an investor in cover.
Speaker 1:Really? Yeah. That's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So cover is a friend's company, who builds, modular homes most of the backyard homes right now.
Speaker 1:Covers revenue, well, 10 x.
Speaker 2:You would imagine if people are doing stuff, their core market has been ADUs and backyard homes very quickly.
Speaker 1:Here's here's here's one angle, and this is what people have done even historically is if you need to remodel or rebuild your primary home Yep. Throw an ADU in the backyard.
Speaker 2:Start with ADU, live there, and then you can build the full house. Yeah.
Speaker 1:People that don't you know, if your house didn't burn down, but it was badly damaged Yep. And then okay. So you're not you're gonna get paid to get it remodeled.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:But insurance payouts kinda work where they're like, well, we'll fund it for 2 years Yep. But then it takes 3, 4 years to rebuild. Yep. And then you have to then carry the cost of 2 properties just for your primary residence.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I mean, I certainly hope that they can step up and and help. They they they they have this whole modular, like, you know, they they they basically manufacture panels. There's a lot of manufactured homes where they build the whole home in a huge warehouse, and they put it on the back of a truck. You've probably seen these driving down
Speaker 1:like the 5. It's always
Speaker 2:there. It's crazy. And then they sometimes they split the home in half, and then they just piece it together, bolt it to the foundation.
Speaker 1:Those homes feel really bad when you're in them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And they're built using traditional manufacturing techniques. Like, it's a guy with hammer and nails, like, nailing, like, 2 by fours together to make the home and then putting up drywall. The cover model is like, make these modular panels that then can click together, and they're perfectly engineered so that even, like, the, you know, the power outlets are, like, built into the whole system.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But they, long term, they wanna have all those panels click together so you could make a 3 story house out of them. But they just aren't quite there yet. And there's always a question of when these, when these big events happen. Like, the Ukraine war.
Speaker 2:Like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of drone companies where it's like, yeah, they'd want to jump into that business, but they don't have a manufacturing plant. They have, like, a demo product, and they're just not really gonna move the needle. But it can be a catalyst for a next funding round or a next product or something like that. There's this interesting, deep dive on Doctor Horton from Business Breakdowns. They're very similar to Lennar in the sense that they're a massive home builder.
Speaker 2:I think they build 100,000, yeah, 90,000 homes annually now. The founder started with $3,000 in 1978 and a $30,000 loan from the bank. Built 1 home and then 5 homes and then 10 homes and then 100 homes. And then
Speaker 1:So crazy.
Speaker 2:In 1992, we built a 1200 homes and now he's building 90,000 annually.
Speaker 1:And Yeah. So one one But these
Speaker 2:are focused on attracting homes.
Speaker 1:This one thing to know Yeah. If if there if you're somebody who is obsessed with construction and home building, which there are many people and this and you want to go and build a major construction company, or home building company, there's nothing wrong with coming to LA and setting up shop and trying to rebuild a bunch of homes here. And that can be your the catalyst to building a big business. It's not you're not taking advantage of anyone. You're providing a service.
Speaker 1:Nobody's gonna give you money unless you're providing them value in exchange. So I would imagine that there will be some there will be many people that make an incredible you know, catalyze their career and go from a $2,000,000 revenue business to it. Totally. You know, 20 plus. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Or whatever. One of the interesting things about these, these large home builders that came out of this deep dive that I listened to was, a lot of them have transitioned to being asset light, meaning that they don't typically own the land, and they're less in the real estate business. And they've said the business has transformed from being a real estate business to being a manufacturing business. So they really just focus on making the homes. 75% of the land is optioned versus 25% a decade ago, and that has increased the return on equity for this business from 10% to 22%.
Speaker 2:They're much more asset light. And it's really just about getting those homes out as fast as possible. Now, I don't think any of those prefab manufactured homes are going into the Palisades. There's a question about Altadena. You know, the the average home price there was probably a third to a fifth as much as the Palisades.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1:a, 800 k to a million.
Speaker 2:Something like that. Yeah. But there's a but there's a big question about, like, what will that, what will that community want in terms of style and design?
Speaker 1:I think the what what, what there's a pending gentrification crisis almost in Altadena where so many of the people there had owned their homes for so long that if you own your home free and clear, you do not have to have insurance. No. I don't believe. You can just you can just
Speaker 2:It's raw dog.
Speaker 1:Raw raw dog it basically. But, but, the what's gonna happen is Altadena is in close proximity to LA. Yep. People will look at that very opportunistically and say we can create $3,000,000 homes here. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know? And $3,000,000 gated communities by going out.
Speaker 2:Or more or more mixed use you could mix in. So Pasadena has been going through a little bit of a transition where, in the downtown core, there's been more apartment buildings going up. Still not 10 stories. You're talking about, like, 4 story buildings. And you and Altadena historically really had none of those.
Speaker 2:So maybe you put in some of those. The there's these zero lot line homes that are very popular in LA right now, especially in kind of the EchoPark area. It's a full house. You own the house, but there's no lot. Like, like, your house bumps up against your neighbor's house.
Speaker 2:And it's basically just, like, this ultimate optimized, like, check the box for what
Speaker 1:a house is. Place to be golden retriever maxing. Yeah. It's rough. There's no place to sun your
Speaker 2:Well, the roof deck usually. So they're they're designed to be, like, hyper optimized. I know a guy who moved into 1, he has golf simulator. Sunning on the.
Speaker 1:You better hope you're the highest rooftop.
Speaker 2:So like it'll be like a 2 car garage, but they're like stacked. And then you go upstairs and there's like a kitchen open floor plan living room. Then you go upstairs, there's some bedrooms then there's a roof deck. And it kind of, like, checks the boxes for, like, you have one of everything. And they look nice, but they're just, like, really, really condensed to be able to fit them all in.
Speaker 2:So you can wind up building, like, a 3000 square foot, 4 bedroom home on, like, a 6000 square foot plot of land or something instead of, like, a quarter acre or whatever. I probably have those numbers wrong. But it's a small plot of land, because it's just stacked up. And so I could see some of those going in. I could see some of the I wonder how many people will say, Hey, we want El Tadena to look like it did before.
Speaker 2:So let's build in kind of there's this Spanish style. There was a lot of, like, tiled roofs
Speaker 1:and stuff.
Speaker 2:And there was just a lot. I mean, it was a very slow growth community. Like, it grew for a 100 years without real reason.
Speaker 1:Historically, there was a large, community of, like, African American.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Latinos. Yeah. And, and so there's a question about, like, yeah, what what will what will the style demands of that community be going forward? How much displacement that will there be from, wealthier people moving there?
Speaker 2:Will all the
Speaker 1:It's gonna be I mean It'll be chaos. It's a interesting experiment to see what the Palisades look like Yeah. Just because
Speaker 2:I could see the Palisades rebuilding, like, exactly like it looked.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Similar. I mean, they were still in the Palisades. They were still homes from sixties. Sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a lot of stuff like that. Yeah. But, let let's keep it rolling because there's a lot of here. So environmental remediation and restoration, cleanup and remediation is a big one.
Speaker 1:We we covered some of this in the emergency management section, but you have BELFOR global property restoration firm for fire water and storm damage. They offer complete services. They do cleanup and reconstruction. Also privately held clean harbors, specializes in hazardous waste management and industrial services. They remove toxic debris and manage environment toxic debris and manage environmental risk post disaster publicly traded for 4 to 5000000000 annual revenue.
Speaker 1:The one interesting thing here is like, okay, you have a gas station that just burned to the ground and was on fire. Okay, now is that what happened to the tanks? Like, is it is it leaking oil everywhere? A lot of the gas would have been siphoned out, just by nature of the the demand in the in the exit to the fire. But but, yeah, there's there's just so many levels to the crisis.
Speaker 1:That's not just the homes. Right? There's, it's like simple stuff like, oh, this hardware store had 200 batteries in this backroom that just burned. Right? So now that's all just leaking everywhere.
Speaker 1:All the
Speaker 2:refrigerators, all the stoves,
Speaker 1:like all the
Speaker 2:stuff just melted.
Speaker 1:Landscaping and and erosion control. So Bartlett tree experts is 1. They have a 150 offices. So that goes to show you can get, you can build a big company pretty much in any niche family owned still. They do like basically just any work around these sort of I mean, for as many homes as LA has, it has as many trees.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The trees, weirdly, a lot of them are left standing, which is just a proof point for I think going forward, a lot of these homes are gonna add these complex sprinkler systems. There's this guy who runs an SMB and, like, does a lot of stuff with the homes in Malibu called
Speaker 2:I
Speaker 1:think it's, like, brush fire battle systems. Like, kind of a cool name.
Speaker 2:Sick name.
Speaker 1:But he creates these, I actually meant to when I was originally looking into that idea around doing a drone Yeah. Fire response business, I I was meant to talk to him, but then we had a bunch of fires, and the meeting never happened. But but he built these sprinkler systems to just make homes damp when fires are breaking out. Yep. And the trees, that was interesting.
Speaker 1:A lot of conspiracy theorists were saying, like, how did all the homes burned down and not the trees and this car, but but trees are very moist.
Speaker 2:They have Really filled with water.
Speaker 1:Filled with water. They're like humans. They're like, whatever. Yeah. 70% water.
Speaker 1:Whereas the So it's much harder How's it really if you've ever tried?
Speaker 2:The highest wood possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If you've ever tried to burn down it, you know, burn, you know, start a fire with, like, wet wood
Speaker 2:It just doesn't work. That's why you have to, like, kill the tree and then you burn it out.
Speaker 1:And it's an interesting thing where where homes in California and, you know, buildings everywhere have fire sprinklers because it's a way to protect.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's like, why don't we have systems that just completely irrigate every home as these fires are starting? Because if not, the firefighters are gonna have to come put them out. So that to me seems like a startup opportunity that's maybe not a venture back business, but just create these sprinkler systems for homes Yeah. That are set up where when somebody evacuates, they turn it on, and it just, like, sprays water everywhere and makes the place damp. So Davy Tree, employee owned company, very cool.
Speaker 1:Better than, much better than being a a nonprofit. For tree care and environmental consulting stabilizes landscapes post fire by removing hazardous trees. 1 and a half to 2,000,000,000 of annual revenue. They're based in Ohio.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:So, like, there's a lot of trees that come by.
Speaker 2:Have presences in LA. But Yeah. It gives you a shape
Speaker 1:of No. But they should be being, like, okay. We have 200 employees. We're sending them to LA because even around my neighborhood just from the wind alone Yeah. Walking around my neighborhood, there's all these trees that have fallen down.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, so anyways, they they'll they'll be making some money out of this. Banks and mortgage lenders, you know, I don't think we have to explain Bank of America or Wells Fargo to our highly sophisticated audience of, wealthy technologists. But, so maybe we skip over that. Yeah. Property and casualty insurance, Allstate, State Farm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We already talked about insurance.
Speaker 1:We already talked about insurance. I'd say we, like, skip over this. I mean, Allstate
Speaker 2:I'm sure there are policies They're
Speaker 1:they're saying they're they that they're Allstate's focused on, like, rapid Yeah. Claims. And, but you can imagine so much of this stuff is just gonna be slogged. And, you know, it's like any any time you experience a business experiences a 100 x, like, calm around something, it's gonna be slow. Alarm and in in a lot of areas right now, people still can't get to their homes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like, they're just literally blocked by National Guard. And even if you own a home, you can't get through.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Security and safety alarm and monitoring services. It's kind of interesting because, like, some of these businesses just lost a bunch of customers because people are not gonna, like, pay to secure pay ADT in the long run to secure a lot. Yep. And they're not gonna pay for, whatever. What's the like, camera
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Ring or whatever. Like, nobody's paying for Ring if their cameras don't exist anymore. That'll be a quick unsubscribe. And then the physical security providers, I think, will be bigger because people have very little trust in the government right now. And even though there's a National Guard presence, the one thing that that is positive on the security side in LA is Nathan Hockman, who was the is a new DA for LA, who, just started.
Speaker 1:And he was Caruso's pick. I saw Caruso talk and endorse Hockman at a at a fundraiser in the Palisades, back in q 4. He's already, like, throwing the book at leaders and people, criminals that are, you know, have been taking advantage of the situation. Support services and ancillary industries, you have architecture and engineering, all these design firms, engineering firms that are just figuring out how do we rebuild this home. Yep.
Speaker 1:There was the home in succession, the $125,000,000 home in the Palisades that burned to the ground. Yep. That rebuilding a $125,000,000 home on a slope is like a very complex engineering undertaking. Yep. So that by itself is probably, like, just imagine the architecture and engineering bill for rebuilding a home like that has to be in the 1,000,000 of dollars.
Speaker 1:So, like, there's gonna be some big beneficiaries there. Professional services, Deloitte, McKinsey, these companies that are doing, like, consulting audits tax, all this advisory work. There's just anytime you have massive amounts of money Yeah. Changing hands, these companies benefit. McKinsey always finds a way to make money in a, in a crisis.
Speaker 1:Here. Yeah. We gotta get the we gotta get the McKinsey sponsorship and then get some, like, pre seed companies working with McKinsey. And they're like, look. Like, you've got a 100 k of annualized revenue.
Speaker 1:Like, you're paying you're paying yourself a 100 k a year. Like, the only person to cut is you. Like, cut because he's gonna be like, cut yourself.
Speaker 2:Don't fire yourself.
Speaker 1:They're like, but, sir, like, who who will run the company? And they're like, well, we have our AI agent practice for $1,000,000. We can create a program for you to
Speaker 2:But I only cost a 100 k.
Speaker 1:Run your business with AI agents. And they're like, well, spend the money on us. Don't spend it on yourself. Yeah. Everybody will win in the long run.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:Disaster assessment and planning techs. So we talked about this a little bit before, but the drone deploy, they they use, they deploy drones, and they have software for aerial mapping and inspection. Yeah. I I was recommending to somebody the other day. They were like, I couldn't get to their house, and I was like, go find buy satellite imagery.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You can you can you
Speaker 2:can actually pay Planet Labs to task a satellite. I'm sure a bunch of satellites were tasked over LA this last week. I think that's the other that's the other company it's mentioned.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So drone deploy has raised a 140,000,000. Mhmm. You can hit the size gong for that. They do quick damage assessments over, large fire areas.
Speaker 1:So, like, they'll they'll I'm sure make, you know, this is the kind of thing where insurance companies are now, like, probably, like, sitting around the table being like, oh, my God. You know, and and you know, publicly they're like, we're very, you know, devastated. But then internally you can imagine they're just like freaking out. And so I'm sure they're tasking drone deploy with with various projects and then, smart building and construction tech. This is just more like SAS, Autodesk, creators of AutoCAD and a bunch of other design engineering tools.
Speaker 2:What's interesting is, like, you know that when whenever something like like crazy national news story happens, like, there are start ups that are pivoting and looking for their next idea, and some of them might pivot into something related to fire prevention. I think the the fear, and I've seen this play out before, I knew a guy who, after the San Francisco fires, remember the ones that turned the sky orange? Yeah. He he decided to start a fire. Wildlife prevention
Speaker 1:He said he decided to start a fire.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's a he's a fire prevention company. Right? And he was using all this data and peeling all and pulling all this stuff together. But selling into the government was so hard that he pivoted.
Speaker 2:And I was telling him, like, like, okay, you have all these, like, vanity metrics and, like, contracts that you're working on, but, like, really, like, the catalyst for your company being huge will be like what happened with the Watchfire app. Like, when you save watch duty, when you save your first home, like, that should be your main KPI that you have on the wall of your company. It's just, like That
Speaker 1:guy, Brushfire Battle Systems, literally
Speaker 2:Saved a home?
Speaker 1:Saved a home.
Speaker 2:And so
Speaker 1:he's like, here's the proof. Exactly. Now he's gonna
Speaker 2:be So you just need to raise 0 on the wall. 0 home saved. You need to just work backwards from saving a home. And as soon as you save a home, there will be a national news story about your company. You're, like, really smart about what are those selection points.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But he pivoted out before the next fire. And so, like, there was never a moment when it was, like, the tech could demonstrate, like, what it was straight, like, what it was before.
Speaker 1:I think there's probably a flock safety style business that makes consumer apps for cities and state and local governments to manage disasters. Because right now like, when the disaster broke out, everybody's on WhatsApp, I message, you know, coordinating using watch duty, but watch duty wasn't working. And I don't really wanna be reliant on a nonprofit during, you know, a fight like, fire realistically because it's like, okay, they went down for 12 hours. Yeah. And was that because, like, they hit they their cloud bill?
Speaker 1:They they didn't have, like, the basic like, who knows? Right? Well, we we probably will never know. But, I think there's a consumer business to be like city states get every one of your citizens, like, on this app.
Speaker 2:So we're
Speaker 1:not relying on the press release.
Speaker 2:I think of flux safety as, like, the the hardware company, like, Anduril for
Speaker 1:Yeah. 1st More like citizen citizen app is, I guess, that's more like not
Speaker 2:around for local governments. Yeah. Something like that. It makes more sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. More around communications because the government being like I was getting my information from group chats, my HOA.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then the city was the HOA was getting going and, like, tuning into the live events broadcast that the city was doing.
Speaker 2:There's always this question about, like, oh, like, can the technology save us in this situation? And and I always worry that it's not it's not a matter of technology. It's a matter of, like, willpower or, like, do you desire? Like, is there even a desire to solve some of these problems? Like, it's very unclear.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And you kinda need to rely on people. Like, my neighbors Yeah. Were great. I got
Speaker 2:tricky. Well, should we move on to the timeline? Let
Speaker 1:me jump into the timeline.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Pete. I gotta Take a break. Take a break. Welcome back to Technology Brothers. Still the most profitable podcast in the world.
Speaker 2:Jordy, you have an exciting announcement to make. Let's hear about PMF or Die, the latest project from the Technology Brothers.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, yesterday, I sent out
Speaker 2:Inspiration struck.
Speaker 1:I wasn't exactly yesterday morning, but the inspiration for some of this, for some of the language that I use in the post definitely struck in the morning. So, a while back, John and I, were always thinking of new formats and concepts and stuff like that. Our goal is to entertain and elevate technology brother voices and movements. And so we were thinking about, well, what if we, found a founder, gave him 25 k, and just basically locked them in a studio apartment for 90 days, and then used
Speaker 2:Was that the word you used? Studio apartment?
Speaker 1:Studio apartment.
Speaker 2:When did you refer to it as a cage?
Speaker 1:A cage. Well, it's now called the cage.
Speaker 2:Okay. Break down the tweet. Read your post.
Speaker 1:No. I'm I'm just giving some of the history of it. So the idea was, like, well, if we have a founder, we'll talk about them on the show. We'll support them. We'll get them a bunch of attention.
Speaker 1:And if they can't hit a1000000 dollars of ARR in that 90 days with all of the attention of us telling people go buy this product today, then they're never gonna succeed. Yep. And they and and we do some type of deal where they literally have to quit startups if they can't make it work.
Speaker 2:Jobs.
Speaker 1:You gotta go work, in big tech if if you can't make it in, in the cage. But I I posted yesterday. So we're working on a new show called PMF or Die. We will lock a small founding team in a studio, AKA the cage with 25 k in funding and only enough food, caffeine and nicotine to last for 90 days. The team will only be released if when they achieve a 1,000,000 in a r r and the whole process will be documented and shared daily.
Speaker 1:While in the cage, you will get millions of eyeballs and be coached by some of the most accomplished founders in the world. So if you can't find p m f in the cage, you just won't find it anywhere. Please reach out if you're interested in being locked up. Yeah. And I
Speaker 2:will So good. And I
Speaker 1:will share the application. And and it's so so
Speaker 2:Got 2,000 likes. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. 25. 23100. 23100. 23100 likes still climbing.
Speaker 1:Lots of, yeah. And and I had to quickly follow it up and say, like, no. This is not a joke. Here's the application. So, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'll say it again now. Like, I want as many of our listeners to be a part of this as possible. You'll all be in the ride, as viewers. And, you
Speaker 2:described it as mister beast meets Paul Graham.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I said if mister beast and Paul Graham were to make sweet love and have a nice and give birth to a baby accelerator, it would look a lot like PMF or Die. And it's so funny because I've maybe watched 5 minutes of Mr. Beast content. I just never got into it.
Speaker 1:I didn't watch Squid Game. I've never I I just was never big into that whole world. I've never watched Survivor or anything, any of these other shows. But this is in that vein. I I think it's gonna be extremely entertaining.
Speaker 1:And and it's one of the issues. So, we've talked a lot about different concepts and shows. And one of the issues with Shark Tank is because they're putting this out on TV, which is not a tech startup audience generally. Yep. They need to only basically, they only can work with founders that are, that are creating sort of gimmicky CPG products.
Speaker 1:Like, I may I made this cooler that also has a grill built into it. So you can, like, cool your steaks and then Pavlok, one
Speaker 2:of the greatest shark
Speaker 1:tank. And so there's a bunch of
Speaker 2:it's a wristband that shocks you when you do something that you're trying to quit. So if you're trying to quit smoking, it will shock you when you smoke. And it's the Pavlovian response. It's, like, total
Speaker 1:meme attack. And so there's a bunch of meme tech, and I I think it's great.
Speaker 2:And and
Speaker 1:and if you're building a product that, you know, and founders go on that because they don't go on that to get the money because the terms aren't generally good. They go on to get the attention and these reruns and stuff like that. So it's really a customer acquisition.
Speaker 2:We we do you know the whole gimmick on Shark Tank?
Speaker 1:Let's go let's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it. Go for it.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is such a good story. So, they film you for like an hour. The actual segment on TV will be like 15 minutes max. And so what happens is they wind up, am I good? Okay.
Speaker 2:What happens is that is that there's during that, there's a bunch of really good quotes from you, and there's also a bunch of really bad quotes of things you
Speaker 1:stumble over.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They they they they
Speaker 1:want to stop. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And they ask you hard questions, and they ask you easy questions. And then depending on if you take the deal, they will edit it to make you look great. And if you don't take the deal, they will make you look bad. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, I I had a friend who went on and, and just tied them up in legal negotiation for so long that they had to run it. And they're and and they were like, we're doing the deal. Make us look good. We're doing the deal. Make us look good.
Speaker 2:And then as soon as it went live, it was like, I'm not doing that deal. No way.
Speaker 1:It's the worst deal I
Speaker 2:ever see. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Then it's it's locked.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You just
Speaker 1:have to run it.
Speaker 2:But I mean, that just gives you an idea of, like, the problem with Shark Tank.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's purely entertainment. So so it's cut out a lot of founders that don't care to get in front of that audience. Yep. Don't want that funding.
Speaker 1:And so one thing that's really interesting, we've seen this recently is so many companies can can get to that 1,000,000 of ARR mark faster than ever. Right? You're seeing it in y c. The best y c companies are getting out with, like, 1,000,000 of ARR. Yep.
Speaker 1:And you're seeing teenagers on x go from nothing to doing 100 of 1,000 a month. Yep. And part of that is, like, these new AI these new, like, these LMs that are enabling new experiences, but part of it's just faster to build.
Speaker 2:It's just faster to
Speaker 1:program. And so we wanna create the, you know, basically the cage, which is like the best place to build a software company. And so, like, specifically for this kind of corner of the Internet, one of my favorite responses was, Shkreli, responded and said, hits too close to home. And I shared that and got a good response.
Speaker 2:We got you.
Speaker 1:It's funny because he was
Speaker 2:one of the coaches.
Speaker 1:He would yeah. So I actually messaged him to become a coach already. That's true. And I think it's funny because if he was actually a player, he would get out in a day. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Guarantee 100%. Figure out a way to get out in a day. And so there's so many fun ways that you can gamify this. The point is not to create the next you know, I I hope that people create world changing startups out of it, but it's totally cool to come in the cage and just have
Speaker 2:Yeah. To sprint and have fun.
Speaker 1:Have fun. Right? I I was telling I think something that people could do is make the next, like, I am rich app. Call it jailbreak app and be like, I am stuck in in a in a prison right now. Yep.
Speaker 1:I can only get out if I get a million of ARR. Subscribe to my app. I will donate all the profits to fire relief.
Speaker 2:Right? There you go.
Speaker 1:And somebody would get out in a day, right, if they know how to work
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:TikTok. And so the the players will have access to the TV audience and the
Speaker 2:text
Speaker 1:audience. I posted a follow-up to just make sure that people understand that this is real. I'm very happy to see the incredible response to PMF or Die. We are clearly making something people want. The show is guaranteed to be life changing for the players.
Speaker 1:They will either leave the cage with a $1,000,000 air our business as a niche internet micro celebrity or they will die. Either way, it's a big change. We have received 10 x more applications than we anticipated and we will we will be processing them as fast as we can. The the demand has been insane. Like there's so many talented, builders reaching out.
Speaker 1:It's, kind of the perfect opportunity if you're just, like, in the middle of something or you wanna start something new. You wanna quit. Back in
Speaker 2:the heart put on the form? Just email, name?
Speaker 1:Just name, email, profile.
Speaker 2:You gotta put mailing address because, like, it's always good to be able to send people stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That'd be good. Send that. So, yeah, the the we're just trying to process the applications at this point.
Speaker 1:We already have, you know, people that we've accepted. That's great. We're gonna be sharing a lot more information, location, dates. And there's tons of opportunities for people to get involved. You can be a player.
Speaker 1:You can be a coach. You can be an antagonist. You could be a trainer. Right? We're gonna have weightlifting equipment there.
Speaker 2:Here you go. We're
Speaker 1:gonna have treadmills. You're not gonna be getting sloppy in the in the cage. In the cage. And, so if you wanna sponsor the show, there's gonna be a bunch of opportunities. We're gonna have to get a bunch of these in there.
Speaker 1:And it's just gonna be super fun.
Speaker 2:The response was really incredible. I saw that DM you got from someone who said, put me in the cage. I yearned for the cage.
Speaker 1:I yearned for the cage. So there's something primal about being in a cage and just wanting to break out.
Speaker 2:It's a cure
Speaker 1:for loneliness. It's great. We're gonna figure out how to structure the 25 k. It'll be an investment. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe it'll be like, you know, debt.
Speaker 2:Lots of debt covenants.
Speaker 1:Lots of debt.
Speaker 2:We're gonna find that money on a 100% of
Speaker 1:the business. The debt covenants are the are the real, like, you know, you got maybe it's more like venture debt.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1:But now we don't wanna scare anyone off. Like, the point is not to to really own a lot of these businesses. The point is to just, like, create some really great entertainment and create some some great companies out of it. So, so go apply. What's the website?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So just you can just go to x and go to PMF at PMF or die or PMF, that the application link is in the bio it's apply.pmfordie.com/sone. And, it's gonna be a lot of fun as I like to say if you can't find pmf in the cage you won't find it anywhere War is peace. Freedom is slavery. PMF is strength.
Speaker 2:There you go. Fantastic. I'm excited.
Speaker 1:We will talk a lot more about the show coming up. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You'll be hearing that.
Speaker 1:You'll be you'll be hearing about it relentlessly. And, some of the locations we're looking at are pretty insane. We're looking all over the country for the right spot.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And, you know, we're gonna be, you know, assuming season 1 goes well, we'll be going more and more exotic. We're gonna do Epstein Island. Season 2. Season 2. We take that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Greenland. We could have we'd have Reid Hoffman come, come back to the island. Where do you judge?
Speaker 1:Back to the island. Back to the island. But, but, yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be a lot of fun, and, everybody will be able to be involved. We're gonna have they'll I'm sure there'll be some, like, betting markets on poly market.
Speaker 2:For sure. That's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's that's a cool one. Yeah. And, I just it's gonna be a really great time. So, without further ado, let's talk protein.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Protein. Okay. So you have mentioned this founder many times in the show, founder of our XBAR. Does he go by Pete or Peter?
Speaker 2:Peter Peter Rahal.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Founded RXBAR. Did not raise a lot of venture capital. I don't know if he raised any. Sold the business for 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars. Became very wealthy.
Speaker 2:And then decided to run it all back and build another protein bar company. And I have been surviving off of these exclusively for the last 30 days, and it's been fantastic.
Speaker 1:You've been doing, like, roughly 10 a day?
Speaker 2:10 a day. So it has 28 grams of protein, 100 and 50 calories. So 10 a day, I get, I get 1 and a half grams of protein per pound of body weight, roughly, and only 1500 calories. 1500 calories. So I'm in a major caloric deficit.
Speaker 1:Lean lean but a mouthful.
Speaker 2:And just, yeah, going down to 5% body fat getting absolutely peeled while maintaining all the muscle mass.
Speaker 1:Question for the audience. Should John try to get his IFBB program? Yes. Because that's, like, all obvious. There's gonna hit a point this year where the the natural next step is to get your card
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And do a show. Yeah. Because some of the greatest ever do at Chesky
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, had his run Yeah. On the on the amateur bodybuilding circuit.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But, these are fantastic. I've I've been really enjoying these, just in really, really insane macros. The the rule of thumb And Ryan,
Speaker 1:our our dear friend Ryan Harmon at Day Job did all that.
Speaker 2:Oh, he did the branding. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It is great. The David Barr after, Michelangelo's David.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Correct? I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. That is how you need to be thinking about yourself
Speaker 2:Does it say that on here?
Speaker 1:On the side. Yeah. That's
Speaker 2:sick. Oh, it's amazing. These quotes, biblical quotes. Yeah. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2:The the the macros really feel too good be true. The the rule of thumb that a buddy of mine, gave me was, if you're trying to eat healthy and get a lot of protein, you should be looking for 1 gram of protein for every 10 calories. So you pull out a protein bar that's 200 calories, it should have 20 grams of protein. This has almost twice the ratio. It's
Speaker 1:uncannied. It ratios the other bars.
Speaker 2:It ratios the other bars. And I thought it was gonna taste absolutely terrible because of the I thought it was a, you know, Faustian bargain. But, I think they taste great, and I I could easily survive off these for years and just and just walk around IFBB pro status ready to step on stage at 6% body fat at any at any moment.
Speaker 1:Let's go.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It really is it really is fantastic. I I'm a huge fan of these.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's great.
Speaker 2:We might have different palates, but, but I'm into this. And so thank you for sending these.
Speaker 1:That just tastes like almost like a rice krispie cheese.
Speaker 2:It it really it doesn't taste like you think. You think it'd be really, really dry. Right? And, like, inedible, and it's just, like, you just get
Speaker 1:So much better than RXBAR.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which is evidence of why repeat founders oftentimes do really well. Yep. Because they're a better founder than they were with their last company. But then with, with this, he didn't just he's he's still in the bar game. So he's, like, making a 10 x better bar.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:I I would eat RXBARs quite a lot. I just like the fact that it was so simple. Yep. And it's funny because this is on the other end of the spectrum of simple, but but much more of of a science project in
Speaker 2:a way, right,
Speaker 1:where it's not a so, anyway, shout out to David. Shout out to Peter. Thank you for getting us stocked up.
Speaker 2:They're fantastic. They will definitely
Speaker 1:This will take us nicely into the, into the timeline.
Speaker 2:Definitely present in the cage. You'll be surviving off of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The cage, by the way, one thing I wanna clarify, it's not meant to be, the cage is not meant to be, a unenjoyable experience. I I predict that many people I've been talking to some of the applicants. I predict that many people will get to the end of the 90 days and and actually have, like, sort of a Mexican standoff. You know?
Speaker 1:Like, I don't wanna leave the cage. Like like, I'm like I'm like, you know, like, I'm staying
Speaker 2:They're calling us sponsors on our behalf. So let's run season 2 right now.
Speaker 1:Chef is too good. The steaks are too good. I'm too diced. I'm my company's ripping. If I have to move, it's gonna disrupt my company.
Speaker 1:Throw everything off. Like, let me stay.
Speaker 2:I hope they can just speed run everything. I wanna see, an acquisition of 1 company into another.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We're gonna see large scale m and a, mango seed rounds getting done in the cage.
Speaker 2:What is private equity guys doing in the cage today? Oh, they're doing a LBO in one of the
Speaker 1:I wanna yeah. I would like to see a roll I'd like to see a roll up.
Speaker 2:Roll up of some cage. I'd like to see somebody
Speaker 1:come in. The the the good strategy is come in with a search fund. Okay. Acquire business over that 90 days. Get to the 1,000,000 mark.
Speaker 2:Seller financing. You only have 25 The meme the meme
Speaker 1:coin the meme coin idea is good too. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. The meme coin's obvious. But, I mean, the the the the seller finance buyout of a business that's already doing a 1,000,000 ARR, that's very doable.
Speaker 1:That's the
Speaker 2:body of the fish. No.
Speaker 1:There's no rule. Get out
Speaker 2:in the day.
Speaker 1:The only rule the the rules are very simple. Creativity. 25 k, 90 days, 1,000,000 or you die. Somebody so Nate Nate Eliason, you know
Speaker 2:him? Yeah.
Speaker 1:He said that the the the death should be waterboarding with Dom Perignon. I was like, I don't know.
Speaker 2:That's I don't think that's the way to go, but that's rough.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you were gonna go There'll
Speaker 2:be lots of Dom Perignon's garbage. If you
Speaker 1:had to be tortured to death slowly, you'd choose Dom Perignon for water.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I've been doing dry January, so only drinking dry champagnes, basically every day. And it's been fantastic. I mean, your body just changes after a couple weeks of of not drinking sweet wines and focusing on the dry ones during dry January. So, highly recommend doing dry January.
Speaker 2:Sticking to Dom. I have a fantastic story about cages and Paul Graham. First time I heard him speak, Silicon Valley, 2012. First company went or second I'm crazy
Speaker 1:that I wasn't even born yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. You were in, what, 3rd grade? 1st company is going through YC, and PG comes to talk and gives this talk about, like, what red flags exist for founders of companies they seize. And so PG famously really loves technical teams.
Speaker 2:He likes, you know, Oh, these 3 guys were at MIT together. They all can program roughly, and they all come out. And then over time, you know, the CEO does a lot less programming. Eventually, the CTO becomes just a manager, but is very technical still. And this is a common pattern we see where it's like, if it's a tech company, like, the CEO is still pretty technical.
Speaker 1:Even if they're not fully with party around, that was a huge,
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. People That was a like
Speaker 1:I didn't we didn't we didn't get into YC because Yeah. Because You were
Speaker 2:not technical founder.
Speaker 1:And, well, not I can't say it was just because of that, but that was a primary reason they gave. We were already funded by Google Yeah. Like, Google's, early stage fund. But, I do feel like it was the biggest detriment to our success because in terms of imagine it's a Friday night, and you are CEO Yep. And you wanna have the most impact on your business.
Speaker 1:And maybe shipping that next feature is the most way to the best way to have an impact.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:If you're nontechnical, you're just sitting there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, also, it's a great way
Speaker 1:You just simply can't have the impact.
Speaker 2:And if you are technical, you can evaluate technical talent very well. You can rally the troops, inspire them. So And you just know, hey. Like, this bug that I that that somebody a customer came to me. I'm the CEO, told me to to to fix this bug.
Speaker 2:You can if you if you're at least a little bit technical, you can clock, okay, this is a week long project. I'm not gonna try and give this to for somebody on Friday night. I'm gonna actually set ourselves up for success next week and build this feature properly. Or this should take 1 this should take 15 minutes. If I give it to my team and they take a week, there's a problem.
Speaker 2:Like, something weird is going on. And so PG has been super bullish on on on technical teams, technical founders for a long time. But he comes in and he says, like, one pattern that he sees is the, like, the business guy, the MBA guy that comes in and is like, I got this business idea, and I have my technical, like, code monkey who's gonna build it for me. And he and he the term that he used for the programmers who because he's like usually, it's like some shy programmer who's been, like, lightly bullied into, like, joining this, like, startup for this business guy who has no idea how to build this technology is, is CAGR.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:CAGR. Because he's like he's like the way it feels in a YC pitch is that they pull out their code monkey in the cage, and they're like, then this is the guy who's gonna build it. Look at my quant. That type of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so we we would always joke about, like, oh, you're you're you're a cager.
Speaker 1:Like, you
Speaker 2:know, we need a cager, that type of stuff. And so the cage is well established in the YC canon.
Speaker 1:It's so real. I mean, every every one of those business guys that hasn't built a software company before, Software is pretty tangible because, like, everybody's used a bunch of software, and they've used I've used Salesforce. I can build a CRM. Yeah. I've used Airbnb.
Speaker 1:I can build a sharing economy app. And then you just realize that it's building great software. It's maybe getting easier to build great software, but it is not easy at all. It's different art. And the the toughest thing and and the reason that I think I was not accepted to yc and even raised,
Speaker 2:you
Speaker 1:know, didn't stop me from raising, you know, yc has their religion almost. Right? Like, it's very firmly, like, they have their criteria, and that's what they need to follow in order to accept 100 of companies a year.
Speaker 2:But,
Speaker 1:I feel like their general framework, I've used it for my own angel investing, and it's been the best like, it's it is the best framework for me for evaluating early stage technology companies because it's just so much data has gone into that, that, I now, you know, well, if I talk to a founder that doesn't even look too dissimilar to myself, that that I'm like, no, I won't invest in your company unless you have somebody who is is equal to you that is as good as you at what you do at engineering and they're as bought into the mission.
Speaker 2:And they're also like a brother to you or like you
Speaker 1:work to do that because that's the other thing. The real risk is having a CTO that you don't know that well is usually a disaster too. I mean, you can't trust them in the same way that you can somebody you've worked any amount of time with.
Speaker 2:So that's why questions. And then if it's a no, you ask them, well, what's your bench press? And then that's kind of the final hurdle.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's the final As long
Speaker 2:as they're wrapping 2 plates or
Speaker 1:£1,000 more than £1,000,000. It could be £800 a spot.
Speaker 2:The Brian Johnson Club. Just benching more than Brian Johnson.
Speaker 1:That'll be pretty far and less. Most most people. Yeah. Can do it.
Speaker 2:Anyway, get in the cage, folks. Sign up today. Let's go to Brian Graham. He says, Zucks says Meta is putting in cubicles. It's bringing back scotch at lunch and smoking in the office.
Speaker 2:Zucks says the company's AmEx cards work at the strip clubs again. He says it's back to suit and tie dress code. Zuck says they're reinstalling the asbestos. Zuck says there's no Irish allowed. And then Santiago tags us and says, this is a Tech Bros Pod worthy banger right here.
Speaker 2:38 k likes. Like, people really like this. But it is
Speaker 1:funny. This this is why this is why this is why we're doing PMF or DAI because 38 k likes just shows how mainstream
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This stuff has become.
Speaker 2:Into this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I, Yeah. I mean, it's kind of funny. Zuck kind of is at this point where he's basically kind of understands that he's he always wants to be at the edge of doing what people like and what is acceptable. Right?
Speaker 1:So he's just kind of, like, crawling to the edge, coming up to a new spot, being like, okay. I can go a little farther. I can go a little farther. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I can go a little farther.
Speaker 2:Take the tampons out of the mail restrooms to see what happens then.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2:I haven't gotten canceled.
Speaker 1:Apparently, Palmer Palmer said he posted. He said he had some, like, crazy story about that. It probably was, like, some crazy company that was charging, like, $20 a tampon. And I'm like, just, like, abusing it being, like, well, you need to buy
Speaker 2:this tampon as a service. I mean, that is hilarious that it's, like, if you're trying to sell more urinals, logically, you'd be, like, they need to be in both bathrooms. No. That was the issue.
Speaker 1:That was the issue. I remember the plate, the library that I would study at in college. I had my little zone. Yeah. And I remember when the DEI wave hit, and they ripped out all the urinals and and they made the our main bathroom for that section.
Speaker 1:Oh, really? So the the walk to go to the bath you know, when you're studying and you're just, like, grinding for, like, 10 hours and you're and you just sort of, like, at your desk walking, you know, my my peer group would walk outside, smoke a cigarette, walk, you know, back to the desk, go to the bathroom, and just, like, alternate there. And then it just became, like, a super long walk to get to a a urinal. So it was devastating, but I'm sure they're putting it back, now, which is also good for the urinal companies. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. For sure. I I love the the suit and tie dress code. Obviously, we we love a suit. We don't wear ties yet, but stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Sucks bringing back martinis I think they'll in the cafeteria.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He says scotch and, smoking in the office, which I support as well.
Speaker 1:If if you combine if you combine big tech profits with the with the power lunch Yeah. And bring back the power lunch Unstoppable. People. All you can drink
Speaker 2:on a cheap drink. I told you about my my buddy who his dad worked at Goldman Sachs on their prop desk, and, their whole team wore tuxedos every day.
Speaker 1:Every day?
Speaker 2:Every day. That was, like, the dress code in their office. And I was, like, dude, that's so sick. Like, the eighties were probably so tight. He was, like, oh, no.
Speaker 2:This was in 2007. Right before the The crash. And I was like, 2007, like, people were wearing tuxedos all the time. And, like, I have a feeling that, like, the MD on that team just thought it was funny. It was just, like, okay.
Speaker 2:This is, like, what our culture will be in this pod. Because, like, when you're in Goldman, like, it's a huge organization. You need to differentiate your team a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I was, like, that's an amazing thing.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:If you're if you're, you know, a manager at at META, make your team wear a suit and tie every day. Just lean into that one. Because that's that's not offensive. You know? The the smoking in the office, that's gonna set up the fire alarms.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of other things here that are a little bit more risky. Don't recommend the asbestos, but you can't go wrong with a nice suit and tie. Let's go, to the next one. Forward Thinking Founders says, Monday's pod is going to be lit. In this conversation, Matt Sherman interviews SymphorSatoshi of Truffle.
Speaker 2:Topics covered include the discussion of truffle, a device for local inference tied to humanoid robotics and personal intelligence, insights from a unique upbringing in the Middle East, future of AI agents, criticism of Sam Altman, critique of Y Combinator. Yeah. Simp for Satoshi's been spicy on the timeline for a while. And Forward Thinking Founders says, can you print this one out, please? This episode is gonna be epic.
Speaker 2:So I guess I guess is Forward Thinking Founders a yeah. He tagged us.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Is Forward Thinking Founders a podcast, I guess?
Speaker 1:It must it must be
Speaker 2:This must be an interview
Speaker 1:with We are running this is officially now a promoted post for
Speaker 2:Matt Sherman's podcast with SymphorSatoshi.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So anyway truffle.
Speaker 2:So go listen.
Speaker 1:SymphorSatoshi's got a lot going on right now. He I saw him posting that he's potentially launching a token for the truffle.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:there's there's a thesis around Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's not that crazy because there's a render token. Are you familiar with this?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Where where
Speaker 2:you can render 3 d,
Speaker 1:like, some And he's he's trying to figure out the right way to do it. Yeah. Super long, lock up, stuff like that. I think, well, let's see how, I I would I would imagine that that Sam Altman would would open just like a colossal short position. It's a dangerous game once you're in the public, public crypto markets.
Speaker 1:But, but we'll we'll see how it plays out.
Speaker 2:Let's go to Will Menitis, obscure hobbyist of the year last year. He says, everyone in tech 100x underestimates how important official capital formation is for building the future, inventing the safe and making it so you could sell equity with a one page agreement probably created greater than $100,000,000,000 in equity value. There's dozens of these unlocks left to discover. I agree with that. There's a very interesting story where, when LLMs first popped off, and all the AI companies were, like, the hottest thing, and it was like, this is the future technology, and everything else is just, like, 0 sum reshuffling, like, B2B SaaS, Cringe, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:It was like, go build the real stuff. Build the Tesla, the rockets, the AI. That was like the real tech. Then everything else was just, like, you know, busy work, basically. And what was interesting was, like, I was thinking about it.
Speaker 2:I was like, is this is this a legitimate critique? And if you look at how did the LLMs actually get built, efficient capital formation is a huge part of that story. And it's the same thing for rockets. Like, without the financing structures
Speaker 1:Without the SPV into the SPV into the SPV with this 10% management fee.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a joke, but, like, even just the credit lines on all the different materials in the supply chain that go into rocket, that is actually important and that financial innovation does speed up the rate at which we get to march. It's just crazy to think about. And it's absolutely true for AI where, you know, you have this, like, nonprofit that's able to do a whole bunch of, you know, fundamental research and then get super creative with the capital formation later stage with these, like, all these NVIDIA credits that are going into AI startups now. So, oh, you need to train or fine tune a model. We will figure out how to do that.
Speaker 2:And a lot of those deals are very, like, they face a lot of criticism because during the dotcom boom, a lot of telecom companies did these crazy deals with with dotcom's web startups, where they would basically invest in the company with, like, in kind credits for their, like, the fibre optic cables that they were laying out, and it led to a lot of dark fibre. But that type of, like, creative capital formation is actually extremely important. And, the SAFE is, like, obviously, the best possible example because it sped up how quickly start ups could move. And it shortened financing timelines from a month of due diligence to a few days.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's
Speaker 2:your take on this? What are you
Speaker 1:looking up? Well, I'll tell you in a second. But, yeah. I mean, people don't really realize because because my generation at least never built companies in a world without the safe. So the safe was just the default method to raise capital.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And people don't realize that if you wanted to take even a $25,000 investment however many years ago, it really was like a lot of Silicon Valley was high trust. So it would be like, I'm just gonna give you money and we'll figure it out. But then, and here's like literally a napkin kind of thing. Like, you know, here's the general terms. Well, it'll take a while to get done.
Speaker 1:But, we've been really blessed to only know that sort of frictionless capital raising. And I even with party around, I was taking it a step further with safe automation where you could come on the app, KYC, and then generate a round, generate, you know, send it, and it was, like, using Cash App. It was the same amount of time to sign up with Party Round to raise as it was to, like, sign up for Cash App.
Speaker 2:Do you remember the convertible note era at all? I never I never even So the convertible notes
Speaker 1:And maybe I invested in I've invested
Speaker 2:in 1 or 2 convertible notes. I mean, it's pretty it was pretty, like, a crazy dance because you do this round and there's a cap on the convertible note, but there's no floor. Yeah. Typically. There there's a famous example of a company that did one and it was a disaster for the for the investors.
Speaker 2:But, but, typically, it's like, you know, you raise $2,000,000 on a convertible note. Or if it's a big round, you do, like, $10,000,000 on a convertible note. And that all sounds great. But if you wind up raising money at $10,000,000, they own a 100% of your business or 50% of your business or something. And it's, kind of, like, this default recap.
Speaker 2:Now, in practice, it doesn't happen that much because if you're a start up and things are going bad, like, usually, you're acqui hiring a company or just shutting down. There aren't that many places where, like, your crown jewel gets, like, stolen by some convertible note investor. But it was a little bit more nerve wracking than the, than the safe. And, certainly, the safe is much, much faster. Should we do a bucket poll promo post?
Speaker 1:I gotta do a promoted post. So, we were meant to get on the phone with Wander, the team at Wander.
Speaker 2:Oh, right now.
Speaker 1:We're we're we're late. So we we had a 2:30 call schedule.
Speaker 2:Call into the podcast right now?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. No. I think we're I'm gonna try to talk with them. We'll try to set it up for, like, 30 minutes from now.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, so we, when when I posted about some issues I was having with Airbnb over the weekend, Kyle, Tibbets over at Wanda reached out and was like, hey. Let us get you set up. Like, so anyways, Wanda, if you don't know, Wander is, a technology provider, and they own they own some real estate. But it's their they've shifted to, I think, a more asset light model where they go and, get the best homes, like, in the world, period.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Homes that would have maybe been on Airbnb, but then they operate them almost like a hotel. So you know that sheets are gonna be good. You know, the Wi Fi is gonna be fast. You know, the soaps are gonna be nice. There's, like, snacks when you arrive.
Speaker 1:And so it's and and you know that you're not gonna, you know, book a place Yeah. And then 10 minutes before, they're like, oh, I can't host you and cancel.
Speaker 2:It's the Amman Gary of couch surfing.
Speaker 1:It's the Amman that's Amman Gary of the of vacation rentals. There you go. So, so, yeah, I I've known John for a while, and and his dad. They're both they're both fantastic. And, the company's great.
Speaker 1:They have hundreds of properties now. Cool. And, Yeah. Just really, really cool business. So we are definitely gonna be staying in Wanderers this year.
Speaker 1:Cool. I think it's a great solution if you're, a startup founder that is, wanting to book, like, a retreat for your team Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And post up somewhere nice for 4 days and just get a bunch of work done. Much better, I think, solution than just relying on some Airbnb and you show up. And I've I've had this happen before where you show up, you get your team on the Wi Fi, and everybody's like, it doesn't work. Like, it's devastating. Good for Starlink.
Speaker 1:Choice productivity.
Speaker 2:Good for startup retreats. If you somebody wanted to, like, do a DIY cage situation. Would that make sense?
Speaker 1:John John says a tech bros pod shout out will make my month. That's the CEO of Wander. Well, John, we did something better. We ran an ad. Go to, every technology brother, listener, go to wander.com.
Speaker 2:Tell them the technology brother says
Speaker 1:to you.
Speaker 2:Tell tell
Speaker 1:John and
Speaker 2:Kyle. So,
Speaker 1:yeah, we're we're now we're now talking with them, in 30 minutes. So we gotta get the pod.
Speaker 2:Okay. Let's,
Speaker 1:tight. Let's let's wrap up.
Speaker 2:But, yes, if if you wind up buying a product from somebody we advertise, just throw an a a little post on x, a little at at the CEO. Tell him the technology brother sent you. Don't even worry about coupon codes. Coupon codes, I'm sure we'll do them at some point. They're a little gauche.
Speaker 2:What you wanna be doing is sending a DM to the CEO or tagging them in a public ex post saying that the technology brother sent you. Yeah. This is the real way to get attribution. Alright.
Speaker 1:So we're gonna be talking to them tomorrow now. Let's get into the next, bucket poll.
Speaker 2:Let's do a bucket poll from Eric. He says, when a software engineer says, 'That's not necessarily true,' it means someone just said something incredibly stupid. Yeah. That's rough. The software engineers, they're polite but brutal.
Speaker 2:They can be cold. Oh, I mean, it's a very, it's a very
Speaker 1:strict discipline.
Speaker 2:Right? A very strict discipline. The facts are the facts. Everything compiles. And if your logic doesn't compile, you probably just said something very stupid.
Speaker 2:Not too much to say about that. But, I'm sure know, plenty of software engineers have told you that's not necessarily true. Since, you know, non technical and all.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you move on to, daily drivers?
Speaker 1:How how how, in the world of Devon AI
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Is everyone technical? If I sic an army of Devon AI agents on somebody and say Yeah. You know?
Speaker 2:I think,
Speaker 1:I mean, the gradient Technically technical. Technically technical.
Speaker 2:The the the gradient it used to be that if you if you understood Excel, learning Visual Basic, which does a little bit of it's programming language, and it and it can automate Excel, and, and it works in the background. It runs scripts, which is very, very helpful. If you ever open up, like, a really big investment banking model, there'll be a whole bunch of visual basic behind the scenes, the buttons you can actually click that do stuff. You can build I built a whole CRM in Excel at one point, using VBA. And and then from there, you know, you could teach yourself, like, Python in, like, a weekend.
Speaker 2:Or you could do, like, a coding boot camp. So, like, the definition of, like, what is technical is, like, a huge gradient from, like, okay, I I know, like technical.
Speaker 1:I was DDoS ing my father's website.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's like, that is pretty technical. It's not it's not super technical. It's just, like, it's enough to understand how software works a little bit. You learn a programming language, you write some scripts.
Speaker 2:But that gradient is just getting so much smoother. Like like, just last night, I needed to pull together some data. And I went in Chatchepetit, asked it to write a script, and then Chachi Poteet just threw up, like, Here's the script. Press this button to just run it. So he didn't even need to install Python on this laptop and set up an environment.
Speaker 2:And then you get cursor, and that's more advanced than you get devon, and that's even more advanced, and it's just running continuously in your repo. So the gradient so I think the big question is, like, if you're intimidated by the idea of software engineering or code in general, like, you should probably spend a weekend just having ChatGPT explain stuff to you and learn how to write, like, the most basic Python program. Because once you once you actually solve a problem, even if it's just like, I want to scrape some website and pull it into a spreadsheet. Yeah. Like, I did that with the, like, like, we wanted to see, like, every Economist article that's ever been written about technologists.
Speaker 2:Like, that's just a really easy scraping problem. It's a code that's kinda, like, pretty easy to write. You can just have an AI help you. But you get to a point where you're like, okay. I achieved the goal.
Speaker 2:I have used code to do my bidding. Therefore, I can understand that.
Speaker 1:This is the advice I always give. AI is not gonna take your job. A technical person using AI while in a cold plunge is gonna take your job.
Speaker 2:In a cage.
Speaker 1:In a cage. He's gonna take your job.
Speaker 2:Let's move on to daily drivers.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Good day, Sarah says, good daily driver for Defense Tech Founders, and it's, a beautiful Mercedes G Wagon 6 by 6.
Speaker 1:They need to make more of those. They do. Right? They should just kill the the regular 550 Yeah. G 63 and just switch over all production to these Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because the road presence is just on another level. I mean,
Speaker 2:they just launched the the the g g 580 with EQ technology. Have you seen that one? It's the electric g wagon that can do a tank turn. You don't like it?
Speaker 1:I think those I think those are gonna,
Speaker 2:Depreciate it.
Speaker 1:Depreciate it.
Speaker 2:Incredible rates.
Speaker 1:Incredibly fast, and, I think it will only make the the gas power more valuable. That said, is Sarah a partner at 0.72 yet? Because if not, she should be.
Speaker 2:She is.
Speaker 1:I don't know anyone else at 0.72, but
Speaker 2:You know who's he's calling?
Speaker 1:The is he, like, in base is he in the baseball world? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1:Baseball guy. Yeah. But, yeah, I think, if I was building a defense tech company right now, I'd be pitching, you know, Sarah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, this is a controversial post because a lot of defense tech founders are quote tweeting this and saying, wrong. It's the Toyota Hilux
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or the Ford Raptor.
Speaker 1:We gotta be we should get into the Hilux importation business. Yep. We should go into some of these areas and make cash offers.
Speaker 2:Bring them in on show and display. Yeah. Yeah. Can you imagine?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I like, yeah. I think I think,
Speaker 2:the Hilux Hilux 6 by 6. Toyota Toyota
Speaker 1:what what's the meme where Toyota's like, we don't know how all these Hiluxes ended up in the desert in the Middle East. Like, we don't even know where the money you know, the money came in. Yeah. In in, you know
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, there are some, there are a lot of g wagons that get lifted and people do a 4 by 4 squared conversion with portal axles, so they are higher up. And I think there's been a 6 by 6 conversion that someone did, which is insane. The amount of engineering that went into that is, like, crazy. But, yeah. The Toyota the Toyota Hilux 6 by 6 beats both of these, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Pull up
Speaker 2:in that. You're good. Any other any other recommendations for daily drivers for defense tech founders? What what would you go for?
Speaker 1:I would just go for I would go for a go get an old, NASCAR.
Speaker 2:That's a good one.
Speaker 1:It's quite a bit cheaper than the average Tesla right now.
Speaker 2:Yep. You
Speaker 1:can go pick one up for 30, 40 grand
Speaker 2:K.
Speaker 1:And, make it, you know, convert it, get it street legal, and, drive that. Slap all of your, venture investors logos on the car because they're your sponsors.
Speaker 2:You've given up too much alpha to just give me my car.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Slap the, slap your your your cap table on, because those are your sponsors and just hit the roads.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We're I mean, we're trying to move on from the fires, but there's still so many posts. We gotta cover one of them. This is real technology brother behavior. Tryndamere, Mark Merrill, the founder of Riot Games says, Been off the grid fighting to save my house and neighbourhood for days.
Speaker 2:It burned a house 2 doors down, 2 above us on a hill, and 2 on the other side of us. Went all around. We are staying vigilant because we are not out of the woods with embers, falling ash, and putting out spot fires around and at our neighbours. Got a Starlink up and solar powered rechargeable battery, which has been a game changer to coordinate and get info. My brother lost his house.
Speaker 2:Our kids lost their school. And 90% of the families at their school lost their houses. Wow. And the Palisades. Grateful to all the first responders and everyone working to help support each other and save lives and neighborhoods.
Speaker 2:Reminder to everyone: Be prepared for emergencies. Our water, food supplies, horses, and landscape fire hygiene has been critical for us. Sending love to everyone affected. And he posted this photo of him just, like, covered in soot. Like, just dealing with it.
Speaker 2:And, there's, like, a cyber trick in the background. Fascinating. I mean, yeah. Real real heroic
Speaker 1:behavior there. It it does seem that a, you know, a significant number of people that stayed behind and fought and basically ignored the evacuation warnings were successful in saving their homes. But, you know, obviously, you know, some some even I'm sure larger amount weren't successful. So it's a miracle glad his house made it, and, I'm sure it'll be like a end up being a community outpost almost for his neighbors that are as, you know, his neighborhood burned to the ground. And, I'm sure he'll open it up to to people as they rebuild.
Speaker 1:So bravo.
Speaker 2:Here's another good one from word grammar. Been on the show before. Word grammar says, In Mario Kart, the racers in place 8 through 12 get really good items. 1st place gets banana peels and blue shells thrown at them. This is how I expect LLM research to work.
Speaker 2:As time goes on, it will get easier and easier to train new frontier models. A third of this is that more research papers get published as time goes on. A third of this is that more open source models get released as time goes on. A third of this is that NVIDIA chips get faster, better, and easier to program as time goes on. Super interesting.
Speaker 1:I mean, great analogy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, we're seeing Everybody's everybody's smart cards.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Deep deep sync. I mean
Speaker 2:Deep seek.
Speaker 1:Deep seek. Deep sink it into the ocean. I'm gonna put this all, tie some weights to it, throw it in as a bay. Let it sink. Let the sharks feed on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I just don't I I think
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I think people
Speaker 1:are Everybody letting everybody giving them this, like, crazy victory laps.
Speaker 2:Model from 2 years ago. Yeah. Open source. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's not crazy. There's 2 years of research.
Speaker 1:Dude, don't give them don't give them, don't even give them any chats.
Speaker 2:Let's do, let's do a
Speaker 1:promoted post. I got a promoted post from Jacob Rent to Rent Amaki. Yeah. Jacob, Rent Amaki. He says, I'm looking for work.
Speaker 1:Please reach out. And then he's got this awesome post, that I'll cover a little bit. And, I would say this is this is very smart. Instead of throwing up the open to work thing on his LinkedIn, he's actually saying what he wants to work on. And what's what's interesting about his point of view, He says, according to my iPhone, I walked for approximately 12.6 miles yesterday mostly because I didn't want to pay for nonzerb ubers in the Bay area.
Speaker 1:However, all that walking made me do a lot of thinking. So I'm ready to announce that I am looking for work. This piece includes the first two things I would do if hired at each of the 3 organizations. I'm particularly but not exclusively interested in Doge, Renaissance, philanthropy and Future House. And so he just goes on to share quite a lot, about his experience experimenting with ai, what he would do at Doge and, some of these other organizations.
Speaker 1:So anyways, this is just, one that this is so smart because you don't have to be at these 3 organizations to be like, this guy clearly has agency Yep. Knows what he's interested in. Yep. I should reach out to him. And, you know, this, makes me wanna talk to him about rules at at
Speaker 2:I met him in some random group chat and always liked what he was saying. And I think I referred him to Patrick O'Shaughnessy for, like, one of those O'Shaughnessy Venture OSV
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Program. And I don't know if that panned out, but then, a couple days later, Will Menitis was asking for someone to help him with some project.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I tagged Jacob and was like, hey, you should guys should talk. And Will texted me like, where are you finding these boys? Like, how did you how did you find this man?
Speaker 1:It's like the brothers.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's just it's the brothers, Will. Like, get used to it. This is the
Speaker 1:most powerful online fraternity in the world.
Speaker 2:It really is. It's great. But, yeah, I mean, would would be a great pickup for the right organization. So Yeah.
Speaker 1:Put
Speaker 2:them to work. Get them in the cage.
Speaker 1:Look, doing the personnel news. Jacob, the only other thing I would say, join the cage. Join the cage. Build something. You'll find yourself in the cage, and you might find product market fit.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or you'll die.
Speaker 1:The stakes are high.
Speaker 2:Let's do a bucket pull. I love this one. James Hawkins says, oh, this is such a low tam banger. 36 likes. I love when we find a low tam banger.
Speaker 2:Jordy, you gotta pay attention to this, man.
Speaker 1:It's a good one. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
Speaker 2:You gotta lock in. The notifications. So James says, Your dream life isn't that expensive. San Francisco Apartment, $7,500 per month. Rivian R1S, $1,000 per month.
Speaker 2:I can think of a lot better cars. Ski home in Aspen, $49,000 a month. Yacht, that's 1 meter longer than Jeff Bezos' yacht, $30,000,000 a month. 30,000,000.
Speaker 1:30,000,000 a month? No way. No. No.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 1:It's 30. I think
Speaker 2:it's like a $1,000,000,000 yacht. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. But still you're not paying 360,000, 360,000,000 a year to rent that yacht. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Anyway, maybe you're going $10,000,000,000. Who knows? But he says $10,000,000,000. It's the spirit of the post that matters here with the bucket pole. He says $30,057,500 per month.
Speaker 2:That's your dream life. You just need to get
Speaker 1:Let's go. Let's go.
Speaker 2:You just need to get one client paying you $30,057,500 and you're there. You ring that gong, baby. Ring that gong. Oh, it's so good. Okay.
Speaker 1:See, that's the kind of thing. People need motivation. Client. Need One client. One client.
Speaker 1:It's not about, oh, you need you just need 10 clients paying you $8,333 a month, you know, to get 1,000,000 ARR. Just get one that pays you 30.
Speaker 2:30.
Speaker 1:Simple.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:It's not the number, like
Speaker 2:Stop making excuses. You don't
Speaker 1:even need a calculator.
Speaker 2:The genetic lottery. It exists. Win it. No excuses.
Speaker 1:Win it.
Speaker 2:Let's go to another deranged bro idea. Banger from weapon outfitters.com. I love this account. I don't know if this is actually true but hey, if you already own night vision goggles, Nods, might as well give it a try. I think my baby is more disturbed by the sensation of temperature shift than light, but I'm gonna experiment.
Speaker 2:And it's supposed to be a guy who says, I have a, like, I have a 13 month old kid, a baby, and and I don't wanna turn on the light when I go in and check on him. So I put on my night vision goggles. Because the dude clearly just has, like, you know, a scope for his gun, like, night vision goggles. With night I have when you're a 33 ms, size 13, stay at home 33 year old male, size 13. I don't know why you're saying that.
Speaker 2:Stayathomedadveteran with night vision and a child, you realize by using ICW, you can disturb the child less, thus allowing us to sleep more. So he'll go in and change the diaper, and he's just pitch black for the baby. I thought it was genius.
Speaker 1:That's insane. I thought
Speaker 2:it was genius. More tactical gear in in the in the bedroom Yeah. I in the baby's
Speaker 1:room. I'm inclined. I mean, there's so so many moments as a parent where it's dark. You wanna keep the lights off, and you gotta do stuff. Oh, diaper change.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I do think it'd be, you know, potentially traumatizing for the child to see you fully kitted up.
Speaker 2:She's But, You know the sound and when it turns on in call of duty?
Speaker 1:But maybe just let your kid watch 0 dark 30 Yeah. So they get more familiar with adults Yeah. And night vision.
Speaker 2:There are, like, tactical baby gear companies for, like, they're, like, kind of joke gag gifts. And it's, like, a bulletproof vest, but it, like, has room for, like, diapers and stuff. So they're very, very cute.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I I I also think, like, nurseries, sometimes, like, if there's flat walls and there's echo, the baby's cry can just be so much louder because it's reverberating. So selling sound panels that are that that are that have, like, images that are appealing to babies. So, like, a cute photo that's printed onto top panels. Panels. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Like, nice wallpapers.
Speaker 1:Nursery sound panels.
Speaker 2:Like, you know, a safari park or, like, giraffes and elephants, but it's sound panels that's dampening the crops.
Speaker 1:Maps that are 3 d?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, anything.
Speaker 2:You can throw a tapestry on the wall. Yeah.
Speaker 1:How about some fine art?
Speaker 2:Fine art?
Speaker 1:Fine art actually does the same thing.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Totally. Especially if it's, like, a nice canvas.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So throw Tapestries. Throw on a priceless work.
Speaker 2:Even it's just it's just a failure of, like, modern home design that, like, we no longer use tapestries and floor, like, the carpets. Like, you should have thick, lush carpets, tapestries on the wall, like, you know, exposed beams in the ceiling and and what what are those called? Like, you know, it should look like the Sistine Chapel when you look up. Yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 1:The modern wonder.
Speaker 2:You wanna do a promoted post?
Speaker 1:I'd like to do a promoted post because this 1954 bentley r type continental fastback sports saloon by hjmulliner is considered one of the most beautiful cars ever produced. Featuring a hand formed aluminum body on a high performance chassis and this thing is just fantastic. I mean look at this john. This screams s f daily. You could do an engine swap and and throw your, you know, if you have a a tesla model 3 right now, swap that engine into here.
Speaker 1:And, you know, it's gonna be a little bit annoying to charge it, but, there's more and more of these, you know, supercharger stations and this thing is just fantastic I mean I can imagine imagine hearing that you know you you know picture this you're driving down the 101, and you you you know, you're in bumper to bumper traffic in this car that presumably is, you know, multiple, you know, 1,000,000 of dollars, and you get this, notification push notification that says, you know, we're in for the deal. Like, send over the contract. We'll sign
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:5,000,000 air our deal. And you're like, that just paid for this car.
Speaker 2:There you
Speaker 1:go. So, like, picture that, visualize that, go buy this, and tell RM Sotheby's that the technology brother sent you.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Let's go to Grimes. Throwing some shade in the timeline from a 20 VC clip with the founder of Suno. Found, founder of Suno says it's not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice.
Speaker 2:You have to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don't enjoy the majority of time they spend making music. And Grimes comes with some heat. Says, this guy is a weak fuck boy and wants all of us to be weak too. This POV in the AI community is literal poison and cope.
Speaker 2:People who want to destroy your dopamine receptors and make you intolerant to challenges Hate humans, and they are legitimately dangerous. Wow. Nuclear bomb going off on the timeline. You you hate to see it. You love to see it.
Speaker 1:So I
Speaker 2:It happens every day. We gotta recover we gotta
Speaker 1:cover what happens.
Speaker 2:I see,
Speaker 1:I see both. I think both points of view are correct in their own ways. I think that it's awesome that a bunch of people are gonna make music now that never made music before. When I think about growing up, you know, I I had the benefit of parents that were insistent on piano lessons, guitar lessons. I had to, you know, singing lessons.
Speaker 1:I had to be Yeah. Making music weekly, daily. I was forced to practice. I went through periods where I didn't like it. I went through periods where I loved it and that was all I wanted to do.
Speaker 2:So,
Speaker 1:but, yeah, I I don't remember I I remember as a kid being, you know, thinking to myself, I don't wanna practice piano right now. But that was more so because I wasn't I I just was like 7 years old and I wanted to I don't know like throw rocks
Speaker 2:at the
Speaker 1:house or something like that. So I think that but but it's the same thing I saw other people making the comparison of of a marathon runner doesn't go oh I'm so annoyed that I have this blister that's so annoying I I wish that I just never had any like adverse situations they're not thinking in that way right so a musician who's like I've trained my whole I had to train for 2 decades to get this good at violin. That's so annoying. I wish I could have gotten here in in a day. Right?
Speaker 1:Nobody I I really don't think that's how people think.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But simultaneously, it's great that there's new tools that will make it simple for people to create beautiful art. Right? Even though it's definitely machine oriented. And so the same type of pushback against d g d j's and electronic music of you don't have a full orchestra. Why are you you know, this isn't real music.
Speaker 1:So I think there will be this separation and continuing separation of artisanal
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Handcrafted music and then music that sounds very similar that was created by machines.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's some DJs that, like, they're EDM, but they have like almost a live band when they perform. And they're using live drumming. There's there's kind of like, the good ending I think here looks like, there's an there's an app, I think it's called Synthesia, that you can run on your laptop above the piano. And it turns it's a real piano that you're playing, but as you're playing, it moves the notes down visually.
Speaker 2:So instead of reading sheet music, you can just see, like, it's the key to the left.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and that makes piano, like, way easier to see. Like Guitar Hero. It's like Guitar Hero. Yeah. But you're playing the actual instrument, which is cool.
Speaker 2:So it's, like, kind of cheating. And then a lot of music production in, hip hop and rap specifically is just, like, almost just assembling other stems. So there's, like, is just, like, almost just assembling other stems. So there's, like, you know, there's, like, these famous beats from, like, vinyl records that, like, Kanye will sample and then put that. And then it's, like, he's not really writing that particular melody.
Speaker 2:He's just kind of rearranging it. And I could see Suno being useful for, like, blocking out tracks. I know people are Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and and Mike Mike's argument would be that Suno is gonna be a gateway drug for people to fall in love with making music and get addicted to making music. And then as they get more into it
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:They will well, maybe I should learn this instrument or maybe I should do this live Yep. Or maybe I should sing this myself. Right? So, presumably, if you make it much easier to do something, it will introduce more people to it. But Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean I don't think I I I think I think Grimes is also right in that saying, we should only do things that are easy Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is is Yeah.
Speaker 2:Is totally accurate. It's just the most controversial framing possible on this. But
Speaker 1:But he's clearly trying to piss off
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Traditional music.
Speaker 2:We already went through all this with AI art stuff, where it's like, yeah, the the AI art that actually goes viral is stuff that's, like, inspired, like, the Harry Potter Balenciaga thing, where that was, yeah, it was all AI generated, but the prompt wasn't make something viral. The prompt was clearly from a human thinking about, okay, it's interesting to combine Harry Potter and Balenciaga, these two things on the opposite ends of the spectrum. And then I'm gonna do all the puppeteering of this, put it all together, and have this song in there. And like, Suno will be a tool in that toolkit in the same way that Content Aware Fill is a tool in the Photoshop toolkit or generative fill is. I mean, just yesterday I was mapping out that, like, that, like, spec ad that we're working on for the next video, and I was using a lot of movie b roll and then using some, some audio, and I was looking for different songs.
Speaker 2:And it was like, I was really having to shuffle through all the different songs that we could possibly fit in there. And it would have been, I probably could have prompted something for, like, I just need generically dramatic music right here, and I just want higher energy music during this section, and I just want to have it paced out a little bit. And some of the stock music sites allow you to filter for that stuff. You still have to listen to a lot of it. And, clearly, you know
Speaker 1:Yeah. The good thing is that that electronic music has not killed live music.
Speaker 2:It
Speaker 1:seems, in many ways Yeah. It's just as loved and enjoyed as ever.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Should we go to Sean Frank? He says, do you want more domestic manufacturing? Current consensus is to court multinationals with tax breaks, tariffs, and tens of 1,000,000,000 in funding. I suggest a different plan.
Speaker 2:What makes China so powerful isn't Foxconn. It's the literal tens of thousands of solo factories, making everything from buttons to springs to toys. We should build up. Build the small mom and pop factories because they train people, make the parts, that make the parts that make the things we buy. One giant automated mega factory is awesome.
Speaker 2:But if you want a 100 good factories, you need about 10,000 shitty ones, barely figuring it out. The CHIPS Act is great, but we need a shit act. Seriously hire, invent, and train. Invest and train. S h I t.
Speaker 2:10,000,000,000 in zero interest loans. I love the sound of that. To start new factories at 10,000,000 blocks only. Start paying back when you 10,000,000 revenue.
Speaker 1:So Sean Sean is is goated in so many ways, not just as an operator running the most profitable wallet company in history, but, he just is hilarious. And, you know, his ability to coin is is phenomenal. I think, he's really leaning into Kuvan's law on this one and and and claiming the shit act. But, I got a, you know, front row seat to ridges operations in the early days, and, they developed a really strong relationship with a specific factory that they built up over time and many visits. And I think, eventually, they just took over all their production capacity.
Speaker 1:And every consumer product and hardware company today will tell you that everybody goes out, and they look at the whole world. Where can we make this thing? And they always end up in China because China's half the cost and the products and the output's better, and it's more consistent. And, yeah, you have to deal with Chinese New Year and longer shipping times. Yep.
Speaker 1:But it's just so much better. And so, carried no interest also talking about this as well. Like, we need massive if we wanna take this seriously, we need massive, massive, massive subsidies. Yep. And so both these, legendary posters are right, and I do I support the shit act.
Speaker 2:Well, we were talking about this with the, American toy company. Just this idea of, like, there's a I mean, you buy toys for kids, and they're all just made in China, and there are all these cheap plastic, and they're clearly designed to be used for 3 months and thrown away. And they're they're not something that will be passed down. Whereas, if you look at, like, your grandparents, they have toys that were passed down to your parents, probably. Right?
Speaker 2:And so it's emotional. And that emotion can drive consumer behavior. And so if you start a company that their whole brand is, like, these toys are made in America. They still do all the cool things. They they entertain.
Speaker 2:They have LEDs and music and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:4 to 5 times the cost?
Speaker 2:Yeah. But they are more expensive. It's a luxury good. It's more expensive. But then when you build I I had this I was talking to Trey about this, like like, you know, maybe to to to you know, we get the missile factory after we get, like, the Happy Meal factory.
Speaker 2:Yep. And it's, like, yeah. Let's just let's just have, you know, like, Adrian's obviously doing incredibly important stuff right now with, like, very key defense companies that need products right now, and that's important. But maybe we also need a happy meal start up that's just, like, yeah, injection molded plastic and we do it pretty well. We do it as well as we possibly can in America.
Speaker 2:And maybe the tariffs will help with that. Maybe the consumer choices will help with that. But we're dedicated to this for the long term. Over the long term, we think we will be able to get it parity Yeah. With with robotics.
Speaker 1:That's a request that's a request for Charlotte's, by the way. For sure. American toy company. Please, somebody build it. I think you should sell items that currently go into a toy store and look at all the stuff that currently has made $20.
Speaker 1:Make those items for 50 to a $100 here in America. Make them really, really good. And And and I'll just tell you, this is more of like a request for dinos because I buy and I've seen, an obscene amount of dinosaur toys. And I like buying the ones that are these heavy rubber because I'm like, well, I'm gonna be able to re I'm gonna be able to donate this, and it'll still be in really good condition. I don't want this cheap stuff.
Speaker 2:And and, like,
Speaker 1:9 times Slap an l l m in it. Yeah. Put an l l m in it.
Speaker 2:I mean, 9 times out of 10, you're so much better off getting a small child, like, one really amazing toy than, like, 20 toys where they just cause a lot of clutter. Like, the clutter builds up no matter what. With the toys. And so, like, if you came to me and you're like, there's this amazing toy that's really popular and it's $3 or something,
Speaker 1:I'd be like,
Speaker 2:hell yeah. Like, that sounds amazing. Whereas, like, instead of it's like, oh, I mean, like, you go to the toy store, it's like everything's like $20, which is, like, great because everyone can have toys. But, like, there's definitely For
Speaker 1:the first time in my adult life, there was, as an adult, there gets to a point where all the stuff you want costs 5 grand and up. And, and so it's great walking into a toy store and being, you know, like, I'm gonna buy the whole store
Speaker 2:for myself.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, I'd much rather buy and and
Speaker 2:you want Something that's like an Italian suit. Something that you Yeah.
Speaker 1:Something that yeah. Just I want something that's wooden, cool material. Yeah. You know?
Speaker 2:Boston Dynamics. Like, that type of stuff. They they they they're making these, like, transformer toys that a couple of them went went viral.
Speaker 1:I actually do wanna I wanna get I wanna get I wanna somebody make a Boston Dynamics kids toy dog
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I'd like a dog, but I wanna be able to turn it off. Yeah. I don't want it to poop in the house. Yeah. And but I still want it to be fluffy and loving and conscientious.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that l m's can do that. So
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:Toy dogs Yeah. That toy dogs for kids, $500 to $1,000. You could probably charge more because, like, a dog is pretty expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Don't have to feed it. Just gotta plug it into the wall. It barks. It, you know, develops a relationship with your child, and you never have to take it to the woodshed.
Speaker 2:And it has an AR 15 inside in case it needs to do some home defense. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Alright. We're we're we're we should just keep going with that.
Speaker 2:Let's do a bucket pull. Luxury watch guy, first time on the show, but I've been a follower of his for a while. He says 2025 prediction, Zuck is gonna end the Apple Watch. This is not satire. I have had a few big boys from Silicon Valley DM me that they want to start building collections.
Speaker 2:And so I think this is, this is right. Obviously, we have been big on this, and we're pushing for the, for everyone in in Silicon Valley to start building watch collections. But I don't think it'll be the end of the Apple Watch because it's just they're, like, they're they don't make enough F. P. Jorns to to satisfy
Speaker 1:demand. It's just impossible. Yeah. I just recommend if you're obsessed with your Apple Watch, you got 2 wrists for a reason. God gave you 2 wrists.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Use. You got
Speaker 2:Throw the Apple Watch on your ankle.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's more of like an that's more of like a longhouse technology. So throw it on throw it on the ankle.
Speaker 2:Throw it on the ankle.
Speaker 1:That's you got exposed I got exposed ankles here slapping it. It's it's much more of a, you know,
Speaker 2:your your No. I mean, if Zuck wanted to really kill the Apple Watch, he would need to launch a competitive product, something
Speaker 1:I mean, I want Here's what I want. I want the Meta watch, and it's just the reels feed.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And
Speaker 1:you can just watch
Speaker 2:swipe constantly.
Speaker 1:Swipe all day.
Speaker 2:Just there's no other functionality. Just constantly content. I mean, the the the new, Orion headset does have a watch. It's not an actual watch. It's just a wristband, But it measures what your hands are doing, and then that translates into the augmented reality experience.
Speaker 2:And so you could imagine, if they really want people to wear the glasses all the time, and they want people to have the wristband all the time, well, throwing watch functionality out and making it look like a watch, making this look like sunglasses or eyeglasses, and making this look like an actual watch is gonna be much easier than saying, okay, you still have a watch, but then you also have this wristband.
Speaker 1:It's actually I really wonder why Meta hasn't done a smart smartwatch, at least for the international market that runs on WhatsApp. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, when somebody messages you in America on WhatsApp, you're like, really, dude? We're both here. Yeah. We're both here. Let's jump over to
Speaker 2:the, you know I messaged you. I messaged you.
Speaker 1:I messaged you. Like, we don't have to do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But you'd think that they would have done something in that lane given,
Speaker 2:we tried.
Speaker 1:But,
Speaker 2:they they tried to do a phone. Chamath was on the project apparently, and it didn't go well. You know, the Facebook phone, this was
Speaker 1:back in the Wow, 99% of the Tremont's
Speaker 2:just like sitting there like, what if we spun this out as a spec? No. But yeah, the the the getting into hardware is really hard, especially if it's an existing platform where there's this entrenched duopoly. Getting people to switch is really hard. Tricky.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It would be cool to see, like, if Zuck took, like, a sabbatical or, like, a, you know, a trip to his island in Hawaii and was like, let me just think of, like, a cool consumer device instead of, like, thinking about, like
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I like
Speaker 2:What needs to be the platform Milwaukee and all that stuff?
Speaker 1:The thing I've liked about these AI hardware start ups is the shots on goal. Totally. And people think about software as it's okay for software to take shots on goal and have misses. Right? Think about how willing people are to experiment with software.
Speaker 1:Yet with hardware, there there seems to be this sense of it's super embarrassing if a hardware device flops. Like, we should only do it if if, like, we're gonna really make it the core thing. Whereas Meta is, like, okay. Figure out a way to spend $20,000,000, which is a rounding error for Meta to make a new
Speaker 2:They spent 10,000,000,000 on
Speaker 1:the Yeah. Yeah. Like, they're spending 10,000,000,000 on everything. Why do why isn't doesn't duck?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Set up a Skunk Works team.
Speaker 1:Skunk Works where it's like, you know, Avi from friend is launching a consumer hardware device for $5,000,000. Yeah. So why don't you do a bunch of stuff like that? Half of that's on
Speaker 2:the domain. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Exactly. But you can, like, distribute just, like, think of it as as, you know, it's okay for it to be ephemeral, and it's okay to just put stuff out there. Yeah. And I want our big our lovely big American tech companies to just be innovating Yeah.
Speaker 1:And just, like, doing cool stuff.
Speaker 2:Launch a printer.
Speaker 1:Launch a printer. We badly need a better printer, that can do 10,000, pages a minute. We should, maybe do one more and then wrap it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's do
Speaker 1:We could at this rate, we could hit 5 hours. We could do our first 5 hour show, but our our children wanna
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's go to Dennis. He says, you just got lucky is equivalent to I failed more times than you tried. I like that. A little bit of just an inspirational quote.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No. It's great. I mean, there's so much most of the successful entrepreneurs I know have failed more times than the wantrepreneurs have I know have ever tried. Right? And it the the most the worst thing is when somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur tries really hard and fails Yeah.
Speaker 1:And just gives up completely. And that happens so much. So, you just gotta take a bunch of shots on goal, and that's one of the the, honestly, the downsides of venture capital is the stakes become so much higher. Sure. And now it's become easier for people to raise venture capital.
Speaker 1:And so I feel like the stakes get
Speaker 2:lower in a sense because No.
Speaker 1:The stakes are
Speaker 2:lower. No. $10,000,000 No. But 400 k salary on day 1.
Speaker 1:No. But it's more like it's more like, when you raise venture capital, you're you're you're taking people's hard earned money Yep. And then you have to, like, turn that into you're trying to turn that into multiple
Speaker 2:And you're certainly trying to build business faster.
Speaker 1:The emotional pain and turmoil if you don't do that Yep.
Speaker 2:Yep. Yep.
Speaker 1:Is is so real. Yeah. And then, okay, if your company sort of works and you're stuck on that idea, if it doesn't work, you know, maybe you operate for a few years and then whatever. And so it eats up way more time. Whereas when you don't raise venture capital, you can just ship ship ship fail fail.
Speaker 1:You're not hurt you're not wasting any resource except your own time and money. And so I think that, I think, there would be less capital incineration if more people were just
Speaker 2:I would I would like to add that luck is a skill issue. And, if you feel like you're not lucky, you need to get your feng shui in order. You need
Speaker 1:to make sure you're desk in the
Speaker 2:in the power position. Make sure something in your life is the Chinese number of wealth. 8.
Speaker 1:Many things in your life. Phone. Yep. Address.
Speaker 2:Everything should add up to 8. Business partners. Yes. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Group chats.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So get your feng shui correct. Make sure your desk is in the power position. It's easy to do. Just move the desk.
Speaker 1:Follow astrology.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Do not incorporate without consulting with the stars.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Make sure it's the right time to get on Stripe Atlas.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They need Stripe Atlas should have an astrology. So, okay, before you hit submit, you're gonna have a better chance if you just wait 12, you know, 12 hours and let it take over the
Speaker 2:next set.
Speaker 1:Jeff Jeff Weinstein over at Stripe Atlas, please add an astrological incorporation functionality.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I need to make sure it's the right it's the right time.
Speaker 1:It just can be devastating if you do it at the wrong in the wrong, day, month, year.