America's Tech Wishlist, Comcast Splits in Two, Tristan Thompson in the Ultradome | Zach Laberge, Gavin Uberti, Eren Bali, Larsen Jensen, Ricky Rosa, Andrew Rea, Michael Anderson, Tristan Thompson, Grant Gregory & Ian Rountree

You watching? TVPN today is Tuesday, June 30th, end of the quarter 2026. We're live from the TVPN Ultra and the temple of technology. The forces of finance, the capital of capital. Let me tell you about ramp.com, time is money save. Both easy to use, corporate cards, bill pay, accounting and a whole lot more all in one place. Where'd you raise this amazing news out of ramp Today, our Kharazian, one of the greatest economists to ever do it, has canceled the AI job apocalypse. We'll get into it, but it's a very interesting analysis showing that firms that adopt AI are hiring. They're going on the offensive. I've always said that this is the correct stance for a CEO to take is say, yeah, we're getting so much productivity, we're going to crush our competitors. We're staffing up. This is not doom. We're not some like there were all these CEOs that went into this very defensive. They were acting like they got bought for pennies on the dollar by a private equity firm. And they're like, yeah, it's looking, it's looking pretty bad for us. We're going to have to fire everyone and cut costs because this AI opportunity never made any sense.

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My point, my, my, my go on the always war. You have someone who's like, yeah, we're using AI, we're way more efficient now. We're getting more value per person on our team.

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Yeah.

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And so you're like, okay, great, so you're hiring more people, right, because you're getting more out of each incremental person.

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Yeah.

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And they're like, well, no, actually, like,

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actually, yeah, we got to do layoffs. A lot of these, we know, we've known this for a long time. A lot of these CEOs just over hired. They wanted to lay people off.

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They wanted to do, they needed an excuse.

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They wanted to get rid of underperformers, people that weren't the right fit for this particular company. All of those folks will reshuffle, find their place. Not everyone's suited to work at a giant hundred thousand person company. Some people might be better off at a 5000 person company or 500 person company or a 2 person company or even a 1 person company. There's also interesting studies showing that entrepreneurship is on the rise and it's never been better to go it alone. Thank you, Jordy. What else is in the news? Let's give you a quick overview. People were clamoring for a rocket lab story. That never came. Yesterday, Rocket Lab Enters the Arena with SpaceX. Brandon Grell fired up the TVPN newsletter which you can subscribe to@TBPN.com today because we were on the horn with Prof. G. We did his podcast. Very excited for that to come out. We're warmed up cause we already got an hour of podcasting under our belts for today.

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That's a four hour day for we

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got a three hour show for you as just coming of stealth. We got Aaron Bolly from Monogram coming on. We got Tristan Thompson live in the TVPN UltraDome and then Grant Gregory Ian Roundtree from Kantos coming in person as well. New fun folks, we're going back and forth Fundraising Announcement Venture Capital Fundraising Announcement Startup funding Raising Announcement Venture Capital Fundraising Announcement the money's flowing, things are good. Anyway, Rocket Lab, they are duking it out with SpaceX. Let's go through it. Yesterday, the launch services and space systems provider Rocket Lab agreed to purchase satellite manufacturer operator Iridium in a cash and stock deal that values the company at 8 billion or 20% more than the share price at Friday's close. Iridium pioneered LEO satellites, launching its first one some 30 years ago. The Iridium network was the original sat phone, this huge block of a phone. You would take out the antenna out of the back and the antenna was big enough to kill you instantly if you let it get near your brain. No, just kidding. It was very safe, but it would be terrifying to anyone worried about microwave technology or any sort of radiation. But it was wildly successful. The company grew and grew and now it's part of Rocket Lab. Today they operate a fleet of 66 satellites. That seems low. That's because these are bigger, older satellites. But this partnership is probably going up against Starlink so that it connects handsets and other devices used by ships, mining sites, US government agencies, enterprise connectivity play. The move represents yet more vertical integration at Rocket Lab. Over the years the company has grown from small niche satellite launch provider to an integrated space powerhouse. It now designs satellites and aerospace components, serves the defense primes, has the second most launched US rocket annually, the electron rocket, and is currently developing a reusable medium lift launch vehicle. But Jeff Bezos is probably coming for that silver medal any day now. With the Iridium acquisition, Rocket Lab is positioning itself to compete directly with SpaceX, which already connects, which already operates a 10,000 satellite fleet. Rocket Lab has its work cut out for it, says Brandon Gorell. Delian had a good post about this, talking about the journey of Rocket Lab. We can pull up because it was a SPAC, and SPACs have a bad rep. They all went down 99.999%. But not Rocket Lab. On August 25, 2021, Rocket Lab spacked at 4.1 billion. The usual SPAC price, probably $10 a share.4 billion valuation. It stayed at or below that price in the public markets for three whole years until September 2024, when it started to grow both revenue and get re rated. Now it's acquiring Iridium for 8 billion, twice its original IPO price. Dalian says, yeah, you could buy for

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around $4.80 a share on July 1st. It is now sitting at $101.

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Yeah. What a run. And, yeah, the whole space economy has been booming. Very, very good. It's a $60 billion company, so they're picking up an $8 billion connectivity provider. And we can play a little bit of this from the founder of Rocket Lab, the CEO Rocket Lab is Rocketman himself. Rocket Lab is acquiring Iridium Communications.

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At the time, I was wearing this blue jacket.

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Look at this.

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I was announcing Neutron.

5:51

Yeah.

5:53

So I guess that means there's something important to announce.

5:53

Do you ever. Wait, pause for a second. Do you ever put on a jacket like that?

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Because.

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Let's rewind, Actually.

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Is this really the important.

6:03

This seems to be one of the more.

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Neutron, look at this.

6:06

No, wait. Whoa, whoa.

6:08

I don't know.

6:12

I mean, I don't think I have, but now I want to try.

6:13

How do I put on a jacket? I go like this. Take the jacket off, and then when I put on the jacket, you usually just go, how do I put on the jacket?

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Now, then punch up. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That was way too much to side you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, but try it the. Try it his way. One arm out, and then you want to punch up through.

6:27

Okay, so you go one arm. Yeah. You're punching up to the stratosphere because he launches rockets. No, it's a metaphor. It's a metaphor for the rockets that go to orbit.

6:38

Okay, okay.

6:54

Anyway.

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Symbolic. All right, let's go back to the video.

6:56

Let's keep playing the video.

6:58

Man, this thing's shrunk.

6:59

This thing's shrunk, too.

7:01

Okay, we're going to go back to school for a little bit. I want to introduce you to the space application equation. So you've heard me talk a lot in the past about applications. It's where all the value in space truly lies. But in order to exploit that value to the fullest, you need a Few other things. First thing is unfettered access to space. So you need your own launch. And then of course, you need your own ability to build spacecraft at scale. We've got that too. But there's some other really big barriers to building large, successful constellations in orbit.

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The first one, Romantic Companions.

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Spectrum. Spectrum is a finite, almost impossible to get. And of course, not all spectrum is created the same. The next thing is, it takes a long time to build and launch your infrastructure. A long time to design and build your satellites, launch them. And even longer time to get your first $1 of revenue. And then finally, it's a long time to a sustained cash flow model. A long time to build your business model. A long time to build your customer base. And it takes just that long extended time until you've got proper reoccurring cash flow. So those of you who know me will know that I'm way too impatient for that. So we found a bit of a shortcut. Rocket Lab is acquiring Iridium Communications.

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Good music. Very clear.

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This will be one of the most transformative deals in the space industry. It's the ultimate combination for growth. And if you think back to our little whiteboard session a moment ago, this is a deal where one plus one equals three, not just two. One being Rocket Lab. We have unfettered access to space and

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unfettered, unfettered space again.

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And then we think of Iridium. They have an already operational Constellation Spectrum. Not just any spectrum, extremely valuable Spectrum.

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Oh yeah, the Spectrum.

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Millions of customers and they're a profitable business.

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SpaceX just bought some spectrum.

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Where the 3 comes in is the result of these two things, is a fully integrated self launching space superpower. One that will unlock more growth from Eridion's existing network and build new constellations to unlock new services and market opportunities. This is officially our entrance into the space applications market. A thing we've been talking about for a long time now. But to be clear, this is not the finish line. Now we won't just continue Iridium's network as is. We're going to build upon it to unlock new markets and pioneer new space based services. Rocket Lab's future in space applications has just been unlocked and accelerated.

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I like this guy.

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I'm off to buy a new jacket.

9:53

This thing's too small.

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See, it goes full circle. The reason he had to put the jacket on sort of awkwardly was it's too small.

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It was a part of the story.

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Yeah, it was good. That's a really good video. I like that. Anyway, will be interesting doesn't seem that hard to put up more satellites, just lower.

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It's just rocket science.

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I think they got to figure it out. They've been doing rocket science for a while. But congrats to everyone at Rocket Lab and Iridium. Deal makes a ton of sense and will be interesting to see where it goes from here. A lot of the space bulls will be picking up shares, I'm sure Comcast split in 2011, Comcast, which was primarily a cable TV, Internet and phone provider to something like 30 million Americans, bought a 51% stake in NBCUniversal from General Electric. I love it. I love an industrial company that owns a media company. It's happened before folks. It's not that crazy. Just might work. In 2013, it purchased the remaining 49% stake. Since then, Comcast has acquired the European media company sky, the movie studio DreamWorks Animation, and through NBCUniversal spun up Peacock among other activity in the entertainment space. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Comcast's decade long plus foray into decade plus long foray into trying to be a content plus distribution company is coming to an end. It's planning to split the business into two the Comcast entity will once again become a connectivity only business and NBCUniversal will focus entirely on content. And there's been a number of spin outs that have been happening for a while and this is the final like big one I guess. There's a recent history of telecom connectivity companies rolling up entertainment businesses and then spitting them out or get rid of or getting rid of them. Over the past decade, Verizon bought AOL and Yahoo, reorganized the two into a entity called Verizon Media and ultimately sold Verizon Media to Apollo in 2021, over roughly the same period, AT&T bought DirecTV and Time Warner but ended up fully exiting its position in DirecTV and spun off Time Warner as WarnerMedia into its own entity in 2022. So interesting deal to follow along. The other good news in the space world is that after that explosion at Blue Origin launch, that new Glenn launch that was so disheartening, there were rumors that it might be two years until they got that launchpad back online. But there is some updates here. There are some updates to return to flight this year. We're not rebuilding the same pad. We're going straight to a horizontal vertical hybrid. ConOps we had already been developing for our 9x4 new Glenn launch vehicle using existing infrastructure, skipping a new transporter erector and creating a common conops across two paths so Dave shares.

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They just used the explosion as sort of like a demo. They demoed the old setup.

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Demolition.

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Yeah.

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But good news from Dave Limp, the CEO of Blue Origin, that they're going to get new Glenn flying again sooner than people thought. So good news there. What else is in the news today? I have a pitch for you. I have a business idea. I want to get your feedback. So what's the biggest problem with being a doctor? You make a lot of money as a doctor, right? What's the biggest problem?

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The odd hours.

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No taxes. You make so much money, you get taxed on normal income, ordinary income. Even if you're a doctor, you're saving people's lives. You're doing the most important job in our economy.

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You have a doctor buddy that also runs a hedge fund, though.

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And when he runs the hedge fund, he's making capital gains. But when he does an operation, he

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makes ordinary gains, which to me is personally very concerning. I don't know if I'd want to go to see a doctor that does surgery.

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That also, to be fair, he's building a new clinic and he has time off. Well, he's not up and running it.

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But when I heard that a surgeon was also running a hedge fund, I got a little bit worried. Just if I was under the knife and there were some and the market was open, I'd be a little nervous.

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Only on off hours, for sure. But the doctor makes a ton of money, saves people's lives, does all sorts of good things, gets taxed at ordinary income, not capital gains. So you're taxing doctors who are saving lives at a higher rate. So my business idea is with the power of agentic AI, we create thousands and thousands of Delaware C Corps for every doctor. So every time that there's a doctor's appointment and you have to pay the doctor, you acquire one of their Delaware C Corps. And within that C Corp there is on the balance sheet of that company, basically an IOU for the services the doctor must render you sitting on the balance sheet. Sitting on the balance.

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She's an asset.

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It's an asset. And so you can then depreciate that asset since you've acquired it. The doctor reaps capital gains and then you cash in your.

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Yeah. And they can have a sort of a farm of C Corps. So there's, you know, they've had them, the shares for over a year.

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Exactly, exactly. Long term capital gains. And then the patient, on their way out, they sign one form. Agentic AI does its thing, winds down the C Corp and cashes in the asset and then the doctor can reap capital gains. What do you think? You think we got a business there?

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I think you just created vertical AI agents for tax fraud.

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I asked ChatGPT and it said this is almost certainly dead on arrival. Not clever tax optimization, more like abusive tax shelter. With health care law side quests. The core problem is the economic substance is obvious. The patient is paying for medical care. The doctor is being paid for performing medical services. IRC 61 includes compensation for services and fees and gross income. And the IRS says you generally include everything received in payment for personal services. Wrapping the bill in a newly minted C Corp does not change the income character. Well, I think we'll have to take that one to the Supreme Court.

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All the way.

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Take it all the way.

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If we take it to the Supreme Court, there's a chance, I think you

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can wrap it in a prediction market.

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Right.

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So every single time you go to the doctor, you say, okay, there's like zero percent chance that the doctor is

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going to do well.

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And then he bets.

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Yes, he bets. Yeah.

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And then we'll see what happens. But yes, you know, if it's a good doctor, then he'll be paid out in full.

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It also pretty sure adds insurance to it as well because you don't pay if the doctor doesn't do a good job.

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Yeah, it's like insurance is built in.

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Built in.

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So this is actually.

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But are winnings on. On prediction markets capital gains?

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I think it's still mostly unclear. So for the next few years, I think this would definitely be a good strategy.

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Okay, I like it. I like it. You have to imagine because they say they don't use the word bet, they use the word trade.

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Trade, predict.

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So capital gains trading, capital gains treatment, maybe.

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I think the post last year where someone was saying like prediction markets will replace everything. If I want blueberries delivered to my house, I go to the market for blueberries being delivered to my house and I bet $15. And I bet no, someone else, they bet yes, they deliver me blueberries. They get the $15.

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Works every time. Works every, every single time. We keep debating this meta question of will they launch a financially incentivized prediction market or will it purely be for social clout? You're still in the camp of there's going to be real dollars. It just feels like the first time meta will.

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The reason I believe that is because I believe they meta was reaching out to the various prediction market providers to try to be potential partners and or vendors.

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But I mean, partnership can mean so many different things, right? Partnership with prediction market can mean we'll give you ad reads or discounted ads or we'll vend your data so that if someone is on Instagram and hits the search box acting for something and Llama5 or Musespark wants to answer it and surface data from a prediction market, we have the rights to do that without infringing on your copyright or something like that. It could be a data licensing partnership, it could be an acquisition funnel, it could be something where meta's funneling people to the prediction markets or back that whole. I read the same article that you read and it doesn't make any sense to say, oh yeah, I want to create a competitor, so I'm going to reach out to my direct competitors and see if they want to give me their customers. Like, why would they ever do that? That makes no sense. You see what I'm saying?

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The only thing is like the prediction markets have a history of partnering with other applications and basically being the infrastructure providers to actually place real.

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But you go to any, any partner, whether it's, you know, there was that

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whole suite of like, no, I agree with you. Like I generally agree that there is a possibility that there's no dollars and

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it's cnn, cnbc, but I just don't. I New York Stock Exchange, they all have partnerships with prediction markets. None of them have like, oh, go in the CNBC app and and upload your credit card information. Like Meta has been on this path of like, maybe we'd like a financial relationship with our customers for decades. And like it's never really matured. There was always this idea that you would be able to like save your payment information and then when you see a T shirt you could just click and one click checkout in the Instagram app or in the Facebook app. And that never really took off for a variety of reasons.

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So John, in this case it'd be like you see an ad and then it's like I place a bet that there won't be a T shirt delivered to my house.

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Yes, yes.

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And then it'll get fulfilled, filled.

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This is the final boss.

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Hopefully, hopefully place a big enough bet.

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The answer to your question on can doctors reap capital gains by using prediction markets instead? Prediction market profits are taxable, but the characters unsettled at the moment. CFTC regulated event contracts like Kalshi style contracts. There is a decent argument that they are financial derivatives rather than gambling. The CFTC describes event contracts as derivative contracts whose payoff depends on the specified event. It also granted Kalshi status as a designated contract market. So best case, some contracts might be treated as 1256 contracts. That means marked to market annually and gains and losses split across 60% long term capital, 40% short term capital, regardless of holding period. So there's a chance that that's the solution. I think we might have solved it, but we'll have to use every tool in the modern financialization and technology box. The Wall Street Journal asked their readers what innovations they want to see in the next 20 years. And the answers are sort of all over the place.

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And so number five will shock you.

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Number five might shock you. What innovation do you want to see in the next 20 years? Tyler, think of something. Jordi, think of something. I'll read some of what the Wall Street Journal readers wrote in Mary Gillespie from Irving, Texas, said solar on wheels. She says, why can't cars be manufactured with solar panels integrated into the top of the vehicle? Then it could recharge the car's battery as you travel and when you park. So this is not actually a new idea. There are cars that have solar panels on the roof, but solar panels are extremely weak, and so you'd have to leave the car outside for like five months to charge a full electric car. Now, there have been DARPA grand challenge cars and specific almost science experiments vehicles where they have a huge surface area and it's this massive wing of solar panels. And I think there's a plane that's also potentially able to ply indefinitely by having solar panels that recharge a motor and it spins. But for a normal car, a single solar panel on the roof doesn't get you much in the way of charging. But she's basically asking for stronger solar density, stronger energy density. And I'm in. I'm in. In 20 years, totally feasible. Mary from Irving, Texas, I think it's going to happen. I think it's possible in 20 years. Anyway. Traffic jam plan. I would love to see an autopilot feature. I would love to see autopilot features on cars. Talk to each other.

21:27

You're saying Chat wants nuclear cars? Just get a nuclear car.

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That's very, very fallout. I like the. What is that? Nuclear punk or something. What was that? Was that there's like an alternate history of like the 1960s if it was powered by nuclear, not solar punk Atom.

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Punk.

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Atom.

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Punk is the term. And it has all these really cool things that could be powered by nuclear. Maybe we'll get there. Fusion is sort of promising that we've talked to a couple companies that do smaller fusion reactors, and they tend. Avalanche is one up in Seattle or maybe Washington, where it's basically the nuclear reactor, but it's. It's fusion, not fission. And it's about the size of, you know, a large battery. And so you could potentially put it in a car, put it in a drone, put it in a space vehicle, keep it up there for a long time. Accordion traffic jams would be a thing of the past. What is an accordion traffic jam?

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I think that's when the traffic's like, oh, going in and out, in and out. People are stopping and going. And there's that slight delay when theoretically, if everyone was moving at the Perfect.

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So Morgan Clayton from Birmingham, Alabama, wants autopilot features on all the cars to talk to each other. So they never do that. So they know, okay, I got to speed up, I got to slow down. And then they're all perfectly in sync. Probably doable. You need some standard or something. What are you thinking? Musical vision. This is a good one. These people are thinking outside the box. This is not like, oh, I want inference at one tenth of the cost. Silicon Valley is unimaginative by comparison. Comparison. But Mary Stickner Gifford from Alpine, Utah, says she wants musical vision. I'd like to see the invention of a device to help musicians with eyesight limitations read music. There are many ways to help the sight impaired read the printed word, but pianists and others need to read music at the piano. My father's sight was so bad that he had to look at the music about two inches away, memorize one, one or two phrases, then practice what he memorized. He gave his last recital from memory at age 94.

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What a legend.

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Let's give it up for Mary Schickner, Gifford's father, grandfather. Powerful, crazy idea. Can't you just print it bigger

25:07

if

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you're having trouble seeing it?

25:20

You just invented the semi truck size printer.

25:23

Yeah.

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I mean, you could just print like poster board and then you could see it at the piano also. Glasses potentially solution here.

25:27

Yeah, I wonder. I mean, it might be a small. Might be a small market of people whose vision is so impaired that even with glasses, it needs to be up close. Up close.

25:38

I'm just confused by why this. The invention of a device to help musicians with eyesight limitations read music. Why are we focused on reading music? Wouldn't this be. Wouldn't any technology that allows you to read music if you're hard of sight allow you to read anything? Are we talking about general technology?

25:47

I Mean, couldn't you have. Couldn't you learn individual notes and then learn the order of them? Have it spoken to you?

26:09

Yeah. And I do think maybe iPad app. IPads often sit at the. At the piano. And you could have an iPad app that shows sort of like one note or two notes.

26:17

What about a humanoid robot that grabs your hand and bends. Puppeteers you like a marionette and, you know, slams your hands?

26:27

Yeah, totally possible. Battery swaps. We've seen these in China where they eject them with great force. Joseph Magnotti from Sarasota, Florida, has a different idea. He says in probably less than 20 years, the technology of all solid state batteries will reach the point where the owner of an electric vehicle. I like this because he's phrasing it more as, like, pull up this video.

26:35

We have. We have Joseph.

26:56

We got the technology. We just need to make it less violent. We'll reach the point where the owner of an electric vehicle will be able to drive into a service station, buy a pack of batteries, each the size of an old phone book. Okay. This is a very different technology. Yep. That one's very dangerous. Let's not do that.

27:00

Okay.

27:16

Every time I call Nick on our team.

27:16

Yeah.

27:19

He's at. He's like, on some crazy quest to charge his car. Every time.

27:20

Yeah.

27:25

So this.

27:25

He doesn't have a.

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Every hour of the day I call him, he's like, oh, I'm. I'm trying to find a charger. Like, you know, the map was wrong.

27:27

Launching my battery like a broadside canyon at the moron next to me that cut me off. Just committing seppuku with your car. Just abandon the battery. But you take out your rival. It's a crazy thing because, like, if you eject that battery, like, you're not getting it back. It's going to be, at very least damaged. There's no way that's going back in the car. But this, of course, is a fire mitigation strategy. Electric vehicle batteries can burn for days on end. If you can eject them, you save the car, you save the surroundings, potentially and create a much more safe environment. Totally reasonable. Looks hilarious in the video.

27:35

Anyway, Nick just texted me, bro, the chargers in Malibu are all fake.

28:14

They are. I don't know what that means.

28:19

I don't even know what that means.

28:21

No worries about charging taking too long. The imminent technology will also herald a rebel.

28:22

That's probably the new, like, I'm going to the dentist. You know when, you know, someone's, like, interviewing at other places and they're like, oh, I got a dentist. Disappointment. You're like, again. But Nick is just like, oh, I'm just charging my car. Just charging my car. It's a good excuse. I don't buy it, Nick. I don't buy that the chargers are fake.

28:28

Here's one. Ethan Glasby from South Kingston, Kingstowne, Rhode island, wants a trash economy. He says, push, put trash to work. I would love to see it at home. Generator powered by bacteria that eat trash. We already have bacteria that produce ethanol as well as bacteria that break down plastic. So both in one doesn't seem like that much of a stretch. Much like solar energy. The ethanol could be used to offset heating costs and keep the fridge running when the power goes out. He's basically asking to burn the trash, but I guess in a more clean fashion, all while being fueled by household waste. Just maybe don't tell your dad dinner guests that you are growing bacteria in the next room over. Good little piece of advice from Ethan. Beam me up. This is a great one. Harold Lewis is truly living in the year 2060. Or 2600, something like that.

28:48

Or 30 60.

29:44

Because Harold Lewis from Tarrytown, New York, says, Beam me up. I want human teleportation in the next 20 years. It should work a lot like email, in which data composed of bits and

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email for humans as a whole in

29:56

one place are disassembled, then electronically transmitted to another place where they are reassembled. What is DNA if not bits and bytes of human beings? Do you believe that if you were teleported in this fashion, you would remain. Would you be teleported, or is it a prestige situation? Not to.

29:59

I would almost. I would almost certainly have Tyler go first and just, like, give it a spin and. Well, no, the whole point is that you wouldn't be able to tell, but, like, I would actually die and there's a clone of me.

30:18

Yeah, that you would die.

30:29

Like, you would have no way of knowing if it was me or not. Because in every way, it's like, all the same data.

30:30

Yeah, yeah.

30:35

You might be in the pocket of big teleportation. No, it's. I'm still. No, I'm arguing.

30:37

New Tyler would be like, it worked great. And then the corpse of old Tyler who got disassembled molecule by molecule, would be no longer with us and disappeared. And that is the question in the prestige. You gotta go.

30:42

Paul Blanco wants something else. He wants a smart spatula.

30:55

This is so much more attainable.

30:58

I'd love a cooking spatula. Human teleportation that could tell without penetration what temperature or how thoroughly cooked a hamburger or steak is, which is rare. Do we not have like a. No, we literally have things you just.

31:00

No, no, no. You want. Without penetration. It has to. You just rest the spatula on top of the steak and it tells you inside the steak what temperature it is, which is very difficult because if you're searing or doing a reverse sear or something, the outside could be a wildly different temperature than what's going on inside. So how do you detect the temperature without penetrating the steak?

31:14

With a thermometer, a powerful X ray.

31:35

Imagine it's as big as that brain scanner thing. Yeah. Here's your smart spatula. Load it up. It's like MRI ing the entire steak. That'd be a good time. Robot chef. So this is related. I want a robot that can work as an executive chef in my own kitchen, says Ray Lohr from Lacey, Washington. It could call a grocer. Order ingredients, insisting on it all being upscale, and have those ingredients delivered unpacked, load the fridge and then use my appliance to make dinner.

31:37

20 years.

32:09

I think it's possible. I like that. That's right on the right level of sci fi. Seems doable for what it's worth, but also not something we could whip up in a weekend with an Arduino like the smartphone.

32:09

Some of these ideas are silly, but I'm viewing it as a very literal request for startups.

32:20

Yeah, no, I like it quiet inside. Cheryl Franklin from West Grove, Pennsylvania says given the negative effects of new of excessive noise such as elevated blood pressure, cardiac stress and lower real estate values, I'd love to see improvements in building materials. For example, drywall with built in soundproofing capabilities.

32:26

Love that.

32:46

Perhaps a lightweight sound called lead paint.

32:47

Cheryl, bring it back.

32:49

That doesn't do anything to sound. Perhaps a lightweight sound blocking film could also be developed for use in existing buildings and home. I had a startup idea a while back. So you know when you have a young baby, a child and they every time you go to change the diaper, very noisy. One of my friends put up sound panels like a podcast studio. Full slat wall, slat wall in the nursery.

32:51

Dual use technology.

33:15

Dual use technology for sure. And it dampens the cry so you can. So you're not so echoey. Cause sometimes if a kid's crying in a very echoey room, it really reverberates and it be kind of crazy.

33:16

And lead paint is dense, so in theory any added mass can reduce sound transmission. So maybe add a little Bit of lead paint to your nursery.

33:28

Lead plates, whole lead plates, maybe whole Faraday cage. But here was the idea. No one wants a slat wall in their nursery, in their baby's room. I don't know, maybe if you're trying to breed the super podcaster, but most people don't want that. They want animals. They want a pastoral nature vibe, some warm pastels, some nice warm tones, something welcoming for the new child who's just been brought into this world. And so the idea was a typical sound panel, square, flat. You know, you might see the egg crate, the black material, but you paint on it an animal you painted on it. Childlike, you know, paintings that you would hang on the wall. It looks appropriate, it fits the decoration of the room. But it also has the added effect of sound treating the room so that it's less noisy when everyone's yelling. Good business.

33:37

Banger.

34:30

Banger.

34:31

There we go.

34:31

Banger.

34:32

Got a banger. Better than C Corp's on demand for doctors.

34:32

For doctors to do tax process maybe.

34:38

Certainly simpler.

34:41

Jennifer Smith. We have made so many advancements in so many areas, but what I want most is a way to control, control outside noise. This is the superpower she wants. It would be so nice to be able to sit on my screened in porch and enjoy listening to the birds without having to hear nearby traffic. Which sounds like drag racing these days. Well, that's because it is drag racing, Jennifer. We're drag racing in your neighborhood. If sounds are waves, can't we block some? How have we not invented an open air type of noise canceling headphones to shield noise waves and give us some squeeze quiet spaces outdoors.

34:42

Interesting. I mean the simple solution here is just more electric vehicles. They're quieter. You don't sound like drag racing. Obviously there's a whole bunch of emission standards that also reduce noise from internal combustion engines. At least until you chop the exhaust and straight pipe that thing. But if you're not doing that or

35:17

you engine swap your model 3v12.

35:39

But yeah, I don't know. Is this possible? Could you just put out a big speaker that selectively noise cancels car noise but not bird noise. That seems possible.

35:43

Personally, I would take my home, I'd get really thick windows, ideally lead paint in the whole home.

35:58

Even the lead paint. Just love to lead paint.

36:07

And I'd bring the birds inside.

36:10

I got an alternative theory. If you got drag racers racing down your quiet bird infested street, you gotta go Wile E. Coyote mode. You gotta put out a fake tunnel out of bricks, paint it with some lead paint, maybe the fake tunnel. The drag racer smashes into the bricks. They'll never be racing down your street again.

36:12

Drop an anvil on their.

36:36

Yeah, dropping an anvil on the car. That works too well.

36:37

You're gonna like this one.

36:40

Okay, tell me. Tell me what we got.

36:41

Daniel Hansen says, first I'd like to see a dishwasher with racks that can be raised, making it easier for tall people to load and unload them.

36:43

Literally a thing that exists. My dishwasher has that functionality.

36:51

Can you get it. Can you get it to six, eight, though?

36:56

No, it doesn't get. Go up that high, but you can adjust it up.

36:59

But wouldn't that be nicer if it was at eye level for you? And you could just, I guess, for

37:01

the bottom rack if it elevated. Yeah. This is a contraption. This is an invention. I agree. I like this. And then glare. Smart glass for windshields that will tint itself in the spot where the sun or a reflection hits it at high intensity. That's very cool. Very niche. I like this. Seems very difficult to do. There are some electrochromatic windows. Have you seen. Is it Porsche or maybe a Lamborghini that has it, where you can twist a knob and it will progressively shade and tint certain sections of the glass. The Rivian, which the Rivian team sent me to demo this week, which has been a lot of fun, has an electrochromatic sun or moon roof, I guess, because it doesn't open. So it's moonroof. And you can change the tint, but only for the whole thing, not selectively. There are now cars that allow you to do basically stripes, like every other one if you want. Half chrome, half tint. I suppose I have a funny dynamic

37:05

with my daily, where the material to my right, like down and to the right from the steering wheel is like very like, glossy plastic. And so anywhere between like 2 and 4pm the light just hits it and just goes into your eyes.

38:07

Yeah.

38:30

And I just. Every time I think I'll put. I'll have to, like, take like a shirt and just cover it.

38:30

Sure.

38:35

I'm thinking, like.

38:36

Yeah, if you had, like, millions of nano machines reconfigure the structure of the. Of the armrest at a particular time to bounce the light slightly differently, that would be the easy solution.

38:36

Yes, exactly.

38:49

That would be the simple solution. Nanobots.

38:50

I love.

38:52

I love.

38:52

Wait, we have to talk about the Rivian team because they sent you this demo unit to try and they said it's a demo unit, so drive it as Fast as you want. You can roll it. You can roll it if you want. It's no big deal. Just like really enjoy the car to the fullest. I was pretty surprised. Yeah, they said that.

38:52

That was great. It's actually an amazing car. I like it. The self driving feature, deeply underrated. My latest hot take is that self driving technology is commoditizing as fast as LLM technology and that companies that take it seriously and actually prioritize it. It is not some insane, insane tech breakthrough that cannot be implemented in other vehicles. It influences fact can be implemented in other vehicles. Just like we've seen Chipotle get a chatbot. We will see every car be autonomous. It will not be the domain of a single company. Funniest thing about this, you got someone who's asking for just a dishwasher that's a little bit taller. You got somebody who's asking for a smart spatula. And then you have Nolan Williams who says, I would like to see significant developments in cancer and longevity drugs. You're sitting there, you're going around with the Wall Street Journal and you're like, oh, what did you ask for?

39:09

Smart spatula, smart spatula.

40:08

What do you ask for?

40:09

Longer life extension.

40:12

Curing cancer. You're like, what? I didn't know it was that type of question. He says longer lives mean longer Runway for brilliant people to bring forth their own innovations and pass on their knowledge. Wow, Nolan Williams, really, really great answer. Early detection. In the next 20 years, I would like to see how new tech and AI driven diagnostics will improve cancer detection. This is definitely happening. Clement Lee from Atlanta. We are on the right track. A focus on seniors. I would like to see something address the risk of falls. I've seen a couple of things like this, different devices that you can put in your home that detect falls. Either while you're wearing the device, it detects the motion. I think the Apple Watch has a device as a feature for this, but I saw another. I think it was a YC company that had essentially a smart speaker that could detect a fall in a house. Very, very cool. Robotic home aids robots that are capable of performing home health care. Very similar to the chef, but obviously for someone who has multiple disabilities. Matthew Weed here from Colorado Springs.

40:13

Yeah, it's gotta be. If for anyone that's older and has been seeing the humanoid form factor for decades now, and then now there's actually a bunch of startups that are investing billions of dollars into doing it. They're still probably like, yeah, it's just never going to happen.

41:14

I like these. Michelle from Canton, Ohio says, what do I wish for a house that never needs dusting? I know ain't going to happen. And then there's someone else who says, Donna Helper Trudumer here says, what tech innovations would I like to see?

41:32

None.

41:51

We have too much tech. Keep it real. Very good. Anyway, there's a whole bunch more, but you can go and read them. Let's move on to other stories in the news. We have our next guest joining in just a minute. But there's a narrative violation on the timeline. We got a narrative violation, folks. David Sacks is breaking it down. This is from Ara Kharazian over at Ramp. Chief economist says a new study of 21,559 firms in the United States finds that companies that adopt AI tend to grow faster following adoption. Firms making the largest AI investments grow employment by roughly 10% following adoption, while low intensity adopters see no statistically significant change. Entry level headcount range rises 12% for high intensity adopters. Wow, that is a lot considering that the whole narrative was this will be the end of entry level jobs. And that doesn't seem to be the case, at least with this study. The results counter predictions that AI adoption will lead to broad job loss. The study is based on observed AI spending from Ramp card and bill pay data linked to Revelio Labs workforce records. And what's interesting here is that it's clear, especially from that Wall Street Journal article, people want more things, they want more stuff. People want more output from companies. They want cheaper things, they want more of those things. Whether it's movies or entertainment or cars or smart spatulas, people want more. They want more specific things. They want more niche things. They want more mass market things. They want more affordable things. And all of that requires a lot of AI and a lot of people. And so you put them all together and you start growing your business. And that's what's happening, at least in this data. Well, congrats to the folks over at Ramp on a banger article that made it into the Financial Times you'd love to see whenever something breaks loose of the Ramp Economics blog. But you can go sign up for our substack and subscribe to the Ramp blog. But without further ado, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify AI is the commerce platform that grows with your business and lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces. And now with AI agents. And our next guest is in the waiting room. We have Zach LaBerge from Omen AI. He's the founder and CEO. Zach, how you doing?

41:52

What's going on? How are you guys doing?

44:07

Did I get your last name even remotely correct?

44:10

No, that was perfect.

44:12

Perfect.

44:13

Wow.

44:14

Let's go. Yes.

44:15

Thank you. Anyway.

44:17

Please introduce yourself.

44:19

Yeah, I'm Zach, founder of Omenai. We do blood monitoring for mission critical machines.

44:22

Okay, mission critical machines. I'm thinking data centers. What do you think?

44:28

Yes, sir, you'd be right.

44:32

We got our start in big mining machines, you know, like the big machines you see on site. That's where I spent a long time working there.

44:34

Where does the name come from?

44:42

It's a forecast of something to happen, whether good or bad. We obviously don't want our customers machines to break and so we'd like to go.

44:45

So the lifeblood of the modern data center. There's water, there's liquid that's cooling the data center. Sometimes in a closed loop, flowing around, getting cooled outside the data center, being brought in, removing the heat from the chips. What's actually in that liquid? Is it just water? Is it water and something else. And then what happens? Like how does it get dirty if it's in a closed loop, why doesn't it just stay clean and fresh forever? Why do you have a job? Why do you have a business?

44:54

Yeah, it's a great question. So it, you know, it depends the type of fluid. Normally it's a water based fluid with some sort of mixture of either ethylene glycol or propylene glycol. You know, you're seeing a big shift recently towards more like, you know, safer fluid. So, you know, propylene glycol is more preferred since it's less, you know, toxic.

45:22

Can you drink it? Could you have a cigarette?

45:42

You can definitely vape it. Both of those are heavily used in the cigarette industry. Yeah, no joke. The whole VGPG ratio is a big thing in the E cigarette world. But good that we found a good use for you.

45:44

You're basically smoking data center when you hit.

45:57

That's one way to put it. The other way is that this is the solution to the vape crisis is that drive up the price of propylene glycol. So, so that everyone's like, ah, I gotta quit vaping, I gotta save it for the data centers.

46:01

I'm gonna use that now. Every time I see someone hit an E cigarette it's like, oh, really? You're smoking a data center?

46:14

Yeah. Anyway, so what happens? How does a liquid cooling system actually degrade over Time, how long does it take and what's actually going on?

46:20

Yeah, so a bunch of different things can happen in the system. You know, you see a lot of, you know, basically infrastructure where so you know, when your pumps wear your seals where all of that stuff starts to contaminate the liquid itself.

46:30

Okay.

46:40

And so whether it's like copper or chromium from the pipes or we're starting to see on get in, what also happens is like the more heat that happens, you know, and the more wear that happens to your fluid, the more it starts to break down. So you go from this very nice, like high concentration of, you know, glycol to water to then that starts to degrade and then you start to get biogrowth and other crap that gets in there and you know, start to eat your chips and sit on your pipes.

46:40

Has anyone tried using beef tallow to cool a data center? I think that might be the solution. That's a real meet in the middle compromise policy position maybe. Now what is the go to market

47:05

like most niche, niche joke of all time?

47:17

What is the go to market? Like $31 million raised. There's some hyperscaler mega data center centers. Do they pick up the phone for you? Can you sell into them? Or are you working your way up with smaller data center providers? Sort of a walk crawl one approach. Like what's working?

47:21

Yeah, I mean we've just, we've been working with almost every kind of NEO cloud that's out there in some form of violent deployment. It's been pretty crazy. I mean you think about like nine months ago, folks were just starting to get these, you know, systems online and these clusters online for like cooling. And now you start to see folks who are running dozens, maybe hundreds of megawatts worth of liquid cooled compute and they're starting to see failures. And so we kind of went from hey, we're selling and folks don't really know what the problems are to. Now everybody's like shit, we've had failures or we're starting to see failures, our competitors are seeing failures. We need to adopt something.

47:38

Yeah, and it's probably pretty easy to underwrite because every hour that the data center is not functioning, the is leaving hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars on the table. What is the actual installation process? Can you just cut the pipe and then insert your device into the flow? How long does it take to install? How big is your solution?

48:13

Yes, our solution just fits across the rack manifold. So we're kind of plugging in those OCP quick disconnects. Mounting if you were a gpu. So it only takes a couple minutes to install. What's great about a cabinet is that we get power, we get network and the fluids right there. Again, coming from industrials, that was not fun where you have every machine that has completely different integration. So we get to eat a lot less pain over on this side of things.

48:35

Sure, sure. Who did the round? What are you actually going to be spending it on? Is it just staff up? What is the cash conversion cycle like for the business such that. Because I imagine there's a lot of cash flowing around and they might be able to just pay you up front. How much did you raise first? Tell us. We want to hit the gong. Jordy's warmed up.

48:59

Raised 31 million in Series A.

49:19

We got a bigger mallet.

49:27

One of the first, one of the first rounds with this mallet, $31 million.

49:31

Is that, is that hiring scientists to iterate on the product? Is it just scale up manufacturing? What are you actually putting the money to work for?

49:34

Yeah, I mean it's really just growing up the team and growing on manufacturing. You know, when we raised our seed like eight months ago, it was basically just me, you know, working on this problem, you know, putting sensors on excavators. And so we've kind of gone through this interesting process of going from 1 to 20 and now, you know, we're going to go from 20 to 40 folks by the end of the year. And the round was mostly like just really smart data center experts. And so it was led by a fund called Nava Ventures. Really a lot of strategic value from the data center space, a big lp. And their fund is Cheryl Sandberg, who is also now an investor in us. And so we're really happy to have her on board. And then we also have like CRV and a few other awesome like kind of C suite folks from Core, weaverwave

49:45

and some other smart place is. Sorry Jordy, you have something. I got another question. So detection is only one piece of the puzzle is if you detect something earlier, you detect microbial buildup or copper leaking into the, into the liquid cooling cycle. What does that actually what happens downstream of that? Is it that you swap all the water out or you go fix the root issue? Like what is the technician side doing with, with the information that you give them?

50:27

Yeah, I mean that's kind of the problem right now is like you have these monster labs that like they pull a sample from every major data center you can think of, they ship it off to their lab and now it's like let me wait a couple weeks to get a result back. And normally it's pretty binary. It's like we either flush it, which is millions of dollars in downtime. I mean, you think about a loop, that's like call it a thousand GPUs. It takes four to five hours to flush a rack. And so now that's 5,000 GPU hours that just went down just to one rack. And so monitoring it every day, you can say, okay, what are smaller chemistry changes we can make? Whether it's bioshocking, whether it's adjusting the propylene glycol to water ratio, those are all things that the CDU can do. We just can't do it right now because we had these silly lab tests.

51:01

That's very cool.

51:41

Very cool.

51:42

Is the business 100% U.S. right now? What is the state of the data center build out Internationally?

51:43

We work with only US Neo clouds to date, some of these folks have projects all around the world. So we're looking at some projects in Europe that are run by a few of our partners. But it's been primarily US based. We're based in San Francisco and we have an office in Orange county right now.

51:52

Amazing. Thank you. Great to meet you for coming on the show.

52:08

Great progress.

52:11

Congratulations and we'll talk to you soon.

52:12

Come back on soon.

52:14

Thanks Zach.

52:15

Have a good one.

52:15

Cheers.

52:16

Zach, let me tell you about Cisco. Critical infrastructure for the AI era unlocks seamless real time experiences and new value. With Cisco, Derek Thompson has a new newsletter out. He's breaking it down. He says there's never been a better time to get rich working alone.

52:16

Is he saying the goose is not valued?

52:35

I think he's saying the goose is not valued.

52:37

He's saying the goose is not valued.

52:40

He says the debate about AI and jobs often breaks down into two extreme groups, both of which have an evidence problem. On the one hand are the doomers who say AI will take everyone's job even though unemployment remains low and the unemployment rate for prime age Americans is still very high. On the other hand are the deniers whose exist who's insistent that whose insistence that AI is a worthless scam prevents them from seeing the many ways it's changing work and the economy broadly. If you want strong and if you want a strong and evidence based take about AI and jobs, I have one for you. Quote from Derek Thompson. There's never been a better time for workers to get rich by going independent. This is the golden age for tiny startups with big revenue. The evidence charts one and two, the number of solo entrepreneurs and tiny startups is taking off. Great news. Chart 3. There is rising evidence that these small firms are more likely to use AI and sell AI related products, whether it's software consulting or design. Chart 4.

52:42

Saying the matter is not the eggs, it's the goose itself is the true value is the power to keep laying eggs.

53:44

Yes, yes.

53:50

Okay, continue. I just want to make sure I

53:51

understood Today's micro startups are becoming multimillion dollar firms faster and more frequently than any generation of firms that stripe has measured. Today's article is about the rise of the solo act in the US labor force and its implications for the future of business social life. More solo entrepreneurs, even more aloneness. And the fiscal and America's fiscal crisis. More pass through firms, even less tax revenue for a revenue starved government. Interesting. So if you have a bunch of talented people that would be earning money as doctors, but then they go and they wind up starting a business, then yeah, maybe that's lower tax. That feels like that's further off. When I looked at cap gains rates, like even if you brought cap gains in line with ordinary income, it doesn't close the deficit gap whatsoever. It's such a small portion of the tax revenue base. But interesting that he's calling that out. Would love to know more about where that trend line actually converges. The interesting thing is this a bull case for.

53:53

I don't, I don't really get the pass through firms point. Like you still end up paying.

54:50

It wouldn't be. I don't know if it's pass through. It might be. So I guess in a mature C corp the company is paying taxes and then also the employees are paying taxes. And so this is why most people don't set up a C corp if they're just a solo entrepreneur because they don't want to pay corporate taxes and then also personal taxes on their income.

54:55

Yeah, but like one way or another you're going to have to.

55:22

No, no, it's actually like double taxation. That's why you use an llc because you pass it through and the, and the income that you distribute is not taxable at the corporate level.

55:24

I know, but I'm saying like overall. Yeah, overall, no, the money is being taxed one way or another.

55:34

They're flowing to individual currently like a just a meta employee. Meta pays their taxes and then the meta employee pays income taxes. If that META employee spins out, starts an LLC and then is making the same amount of money that they were making at meta, the overall number of dollars that's going to. The government is lower. That's what he's identifying now. Do I think this is a crisis just yet? It would need to go a lot further, I think to get there. But I understand like the math that he's laying out. It is a, it is a risk factor. But, but is this a bull case for co working spaces? The rise of solo entrepreneurship.

55:41

Nothing is bullish for coworking spaces.

56:22

To me it's rough. Why is it bad? Why has no one been able to make a good co working space?

56:25

Because I think it's just nice to have your own space. It's the same. I mean the same logic would be like, why don't they make an. You know, why don't they make an apartment building where you get a tiny little. I mean they do do this.

56:33

You're like, why don't they have a pod?

56:46

Yeah, yeah. I'm basically. I mean it's basically like imagine if you rented your apartment and it was actually like as big as like one.

56:49

Why don't they make like a smaller version of a house that you can rent that's like in a building with other, other like of these mini houses.

56:55

I'm just saying like a 20, a 10 foot by 10 foot room that you rent and then all the amenities

57:03

you would have happily live in the Union Palmer shed. You were saying that it's the pinnacle of lifestyle.

57:09

I did think the picture of it

57:16

in stores looked cool, but it needed a slight solid.

57:19

The difference there is like that shed on the right property would be very cool.

57:24

That's true, that's true.

57:28

But the property is sort of an amenity.

57:29

Yes, but people don't feel that way about going into the office. They don't feel like, oh, this is a co working. Like people feel worse about a co working space than they do. Your sentiment is correct. Many people feel this way about co working spaces, that they are unproductive or annoying. But people don't feel that way about going to a campus with a bunch of buildings and a bunch of even like cubicles or like desks that are pretty close.

57:33

Shared effort.

57:57

But it's everyone on the same team.

58:00

Shared culture.

58:01

Yeah. So you need to create a KSU of every company in the. In the co working space. Potentially. I don't know. We'll figure it out. But fortunately we have our next guest from etched in the waiting room. We're very excited for the launch of this company. I did an interview with Gavin. What was that two years ago? Something like that. You were laying out the idea idea for this company, very early on, you've made a ton of progress. Take us through the story. Begin at the beginning. Introduce yourself first.

58:02

Well, I'm Gavin. I'm the CEO and one of the co founders at Etch and we are building rack scale inference hardware. And what that means is that we're building the full system that is chips, boards, platforms, racks and clusters, as well as of course, software and importantly the production lines to build those things at scale.

58:35

The original viral sound bite that got so much attention around your company was the idea that you were going to bake the. You were all in on the transformer. You said AI will advance, but the transformer is here to stay. That architecture will be here to stay. And so we are going to fully commit to the transformer and we're going to sort of etch that into the chip. How real is that? Today has that. That thesis feels like it's been borne out very well, but it feels like you've added a lot of new strategies to the portfolio. How are you thinking about the bet that you made two years ago?

58:59

We looked at a lot of early research directions and we realized the key things that models need are way more computer and way faster memory. If you think about interference, there's two key parts, pre fill and decode or pre fill. It's a compute bound problem. You need to have more flops, more operations per second on each of your chips. And on our gpu, the bottleneck is actually thermals. You can't really run a GPU more than around 50% of what it could theoretically do or it'll melt. So we're introducing a new technology today called low voltage inference to try to solve this problem. And what that is is we bring the voltage of the chip down dramatically, which allows us to have way, way better efficiency in terms of how much power is drawn per unit of math and thus fit way, way more flops onto the chip.

59:38

Why can't we pausing there. Why can't you super cool the chips liquid nitrogen or dry ice or something to make it colder so that you can run it at 100% power?

1:00:32

It's a great question. If you look on the Internet, there's some videos of folks trying to super overclock CPUs using these things on them. The problem is you actually can't go a whole lot above where they're meant to operate. For example, virtual CPUs can go ahead and do 4, 4 and a half gigahertz. I think the world records on the order of 8, 9 gigahertz with the liquid of cryogenic helium. And the problem is you have to get the heat actually out of the chip that you can't physically go touch the resistors with your liquid nitrogen. You have to go ahead and go through the silicon itself. And that by itself has a good deal of thermal resistance. Unfortunately, there's no way around it. You have to solve the power problem.

1:00:44

You want to run inference, so low voltage and then the other side of the equation, take us through that.

1:01:24

Well, for decode it's all about bandwidth. It's not just bandwidth on a chip, but bandwidth across your cluster. That's why we have this technology we call cluster scale memory. It reduces the amount of time it takes to communicate from one chip to another dramatically. As a result, we can go use all of our HBM and HBM bandwidth and SRAM and SRAM bandwidth and our scale up domain as a single coherent pool. And that means if you're a user, you can go get much faster tokens per second speed while still keeping your costs low.

1:01:30

How are you and the team dealing with various bottlenecks across the supply chain?

1:02:07

How did you get TSMC to work with you?

1:02:13

As a startup, TSMC has been a fantastic partner to us that we are so, so grateful. And one of the great things about them is they're very technical. You can just sit down and say, hey, we believe this will be a big market for these reasons and we need your help to figure out how to go co design transistors that can run at a much lower voltage. And that was a particularly challenging piece. As you bring the voltage down, manufacturing gets way, way tougher. We would not have been able to do it without a great fat partner.

1:02:16

Where else are there bottlenecks right now that you're experiencing?

1:02:48

I think all across the chip supply chain. There has to be much more build out. People don't realize how big of a market interference is going to be. Right now only a couple million people have access to the frontier models and those are going to have to get deployed to 8 billion people across the globe. And that's not even counting AI agents that exist already and will exist in the future. There need to be way, way more tokens produced and that requires both much bigger assembly lines, many more factories and some new technology.

1:02:53

Two years ago you predicted that AI would not kill everyone within two years. You were correct about your prediction. How are you feeling about the general prospect of doom?

1:03:26

I mean, I don't understand it. I think right now is an incredibly exciting time to see all the breakthroughs that are getting made. Things like the unit distance conjecture, stuff I learned about in college, and to see that now get cracked by an AI model. Man, what a time to be alive. And we are still so early. Models will keep getting smarter and like man, I could not be more excited for the moment right now.

1:03:43

Yeah.

1:04:10

So what is the why was now the time to come out of stealth? You clearly have had no issues getting customers. Sounds like there's a billion dollar pipeline that you're working through. But what made you decide to talk about the business today? And what are you hoping to get out of this little media tour?

1:04:11

All about talent I really strongly believe that our company's best asset is the people we've been able to hire. And I give a couple of examples. Look at our platform team. Around half of them are from Nvidia. Or if you look at the VP responsible for designing that thing behind me that used to go run Nvidia's HDX and DGX programs that made up most of their revenue for a Hopper and Blackwell. And people like that move the needle. So much for business, especially in a hard space like semiconductors. Not to mention we're now working on our roadmap. Finally, I have Gen1. If you want to go do multiple generations in parallel and take really big ambitious tech bets, you need the best of the best.

1:04:39

Are you a car?

1:05:26

A car?

1:05:32

Are you a car? There's a debate around whether modern large chip companies are interchangeable with one another, whether the moats around the software.

1:05:33

If you have a logistics business, you can buy trucks from multiple vendors.

1:05:45

I can get a new car tomorrow. In fact, I am demoing a new car right now. I got in it, I connected my phone over the Bluetooth and it works just like any other commodity product. That has not been the pitch in semiconductors for years. For years we've been told about moats, about how complex the software is, how hard it is to write efficient software that runs on a particular chipset, that you had to be all in on one ecosystem. And with the advent of agentic coding and insanely high rewards for figuring out how to run on other Asics or other chip sets, it feels like chip companies are becoming more car like. How do you think about your moat as you go into the future?

1:05:51

Well, I would say a Toyota and a Ferrari are not the same thing. You look at the speed gap there, you see what a 2x and I think chips similarly is very, very meritocratic. If you're able to go out and be faster, you can go command a huge premium just like the fastest cars can. The difference here, the way cars work under the hood is very similar. There are no more tenectis if you add in cars. I was thinking chips. Over the next couple of years there's going to be a lot more technical innovation and I'm very excited to go ahead and show the world, not just the current gen, what the roadmap for these things looks like. We believe we can go push low voltage inference and cluster scale memory much further and get even bigger unlocks here.

1:06:38

So next time you get that question, say I'm not a car, I'm a Ferrari.

1:07:26

Doesn't make any sense. So is the source.

1:07:30

It makes perfect sense.

1:07:34

Is the source of strength, is the reason that you will have positive margins in the future? Intellectual property, trade secrets, patents. What is the shape of owning that technology and not just being copied and commoditized by other chip companies?

1:07:39

I think it just comes down to those things matter. We of course do trade secrets and patents, but you need to build a lot of products and you have to go out and have really great economics as well. Being faster isn't enough. You have to go be able to do that at a price people can afford. You see folks stretched thin today. And that's why when we think about doing the thing we want to go do, the whole hard thing. That means building not just the chip, but the board, the platform, the rack, the cluster and especially the production.

1:07:56

What is the last AI innovation or product development that has updated you on your strategy? If anything, I'm thinking about the transformer based LLM. Obviously a huge moment. But then we got diffusion models and image models, we got agentic software that requires CPUs and other memory constraints. You got reasoning models. Has there been any development where you, you've either said I'm glad we're on the path we're on and we need to double down on that, or we need to slightly adjust our strategy to deliver the best performance for the latest and greatest use case.

1:08:29

Well, the thing that's been the most exciting for me has been seeing the models get so big. Get so big and demand be so large. When you think about economies of scale, it all just comes down to how much is there to go serve and the market's relatively small and justified. Small factory, but not some gigantic mega cluster. And with what we're seeing right now, with these many, many trillion parameter models, with these quadrillion token demands that we are seeing that are increasing every month, there has Never been a better time to go ahead and invest in those economies of scale.

1:09:10

That's great news. Last question, the customer. Are you focused on serving hyperscalers, the frontier models, Neo clouds, open source models? All of the above. How do you think about that?

1:09:50

All of the above we want to go out and do is build tech that you can go ahead and see that will make your tokens faster and your tokens cheaper. And that means working with the full stack.

1:10:04

Well, congratulations.

1:10:16

Talk about the round. Who participated? We have a gong and it would be an honor to hit it on your behalf.

1:10:16

Well, I am blown away at the quality of investor we've been able to get on the cap table. Folks like Jane Street. Folks like.

1:10:22

Those.

1:10:35

Yeah, it is. It is a very interesting group. I mean, obviously a lot of. A lot of traditional venture capital firms that focus on technology.

1:10:41

I was ready to do one hit for Jane street, one for hrt, one Shiver, two Sigma, one for Jump, one for Scott, one for Peter Thiel, one for Hinton. Scott Wu.

1:10:49

Scott Wu.

1:11:01

Patrick o'. Shaughnessy.

1:11:02

What a great.

1:11:03

Zach Dell.

1:11:04

Absolutely.

1:11:05

I think the people.

1:11:06

Yeah.

1:11:09

Maki Kareem. Wow, this is the best party round of the year. You really put together a good list.

1:11:09

It's a Coachella poster. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us.

1:11:15

Yeah. So great to meet you and congratulations to the whole team on the launch. Looking forward to the next conversation.

1:11:19

We'll talk to you soon.

1:11:25

My pleasure, guys.

1:11:25

Thanks for having me, Gavin. Goodbye.

1:11:27

Great. Cheers.

1:11:28

Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange.

1:11:29

Exchange.

1:11:34

You know who won't be raising capital at the New York Stock Exchange anytime soon? These fly by night peptide companies. Because the peptide battle has commenced, says Jessica Adams, FDA recommends against adding all seven peptides under review to the 503A bulks list. Is that for bulking up? Is that a list of things that get you bulky? No, I think it's things that cannot be bulk produced in bulk. But the FDA has effectively delivered a blow to BBC157 for ulcerative colitis, KPV for wound healing, TB500 for wound healing, MOTs C for obesity and osteoporosis emiditide and DSIP for opioid withdrawal, C Max and epithalion. You can tell I do not know my peptides by the way I'm pronouncing these. Anyway, a lot of people are fans of this stuff. Sorry if this is a dark day for you. A lot of people are in the camp that the FDA serves a functional purpose here to review these things and make sure that they are effective and safe for public health. And it's a blow for that.

1:11:35

Ben texted, we're just about to take all of these now. Yeah, a lot of people are going to be upset here. I think a lot of people would also say that this is like, maybe good if, you know, there could be some very real downsides with, with any of these. I was texting with a friend in health care this morning. I said, what does this mean for peptides? He said, done so. And I said, can't sell anymore. He says, unless RFK overrides the fda. Not legally. Then. I said, but they were already in a gray area. Now they are explicitly banned. Question mark. He said, they've been banned other than research use and haven't been enforced for human use. So they've been banned, but there hasn't been enforcement. Justification for taking them off the ban list was to kill the gray market. A lot of people have been taking peptides from, from random websites online. They either don't even have active ingredients or they're contaminated or, yeah, they're effectively just nothing. And he says, I think the real companies that are. We're moving into the space net new in anticipation of this changing are in a real pickle. So. Yeah, so we'll see. They now face a newly constituted pharmacy compounding advisory committee, making the July meeting one to watch. That will be July 23 to 24. So we will keep following.

1:12:52

Well, in other good FDA news, nicotine pouches finally got mrtp, which is modified Risk tobacco product. Zyn is the first one to go. And Zyn can now market and put on the label and advertise that it is better for you than cigarettes, which is such a mild claim, but it's huge for the industry if you know what this means. It's an extremely high bar. They have to run a bunch of tests and whatnot. Every product in the category currently says this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. But the products for ever have not been able to say this is better for you than smoking. Which is the obvious benefit that every company wants to make. They want to make that claim. There's a ton of literature out there. A lot of it's from Sweden, a lot of it's international. The FDA has to review it on a per product basis to make sure that your particular product maps to the data. Because the Sweden data that everyone points to is about SNUS which is a tobacco product. It's not exactly the same as, as white nicotine pouches that actually don't have tobacco in them. But anyway, the FDA has to review each one. They reviewed Zinn and they gave them the MRTP approval. It's huge news for the industry. It's very good news. It's good news for everyone, I think. Anyway. The other news is that Nvidia and Eli Lilly are building an AI lab, $1 billion lab for drug discovery in San Francisco. Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks talks about their D data advantage. Some scale biotech bio players are just training on public data, but there's only 4,000 ever approved drugs. Lilly alone has 3 million failed drugs. We're learning from failure, which is interesting. So a lot of big, a lot of big talk about the next biotech boom. There's acquisitions going on. Anthropic bought a company. There's all sorts of predictions about the impact that I will have on bio, whether that will accrue to the labs or the biotech companies. Who knows? We'll figure it out. Maybe both. Maybe everyone. Hopefully lots of consumer surplus. But we have Aaron Bali from Monogram in the wheeling room. Let's bring him in to the TV in Ultra dome.

1:14:27

Aaron, how are you doing?

1:16:39

What's happening?

1:16:40

Thanks guys. It's great to be here with you guys.

1:16:43

Fantastic.

1:16:45

Finally.

1:16:45

Great to have you. Finally. Long overdue. Talk about, about the launch today. Talk about the fundraise. Introduce yourself a little bit. Tell us about Monogram.

1:16:45

Okay, so I'll try to do it in a different order.

1:16:54

Whatever you want.

1:16:57

I'm Aaron. I'm the. I guess most people know me from the two other companies. I started Udemy, the online education platform went public. Hopefully most people know it by name. I started Common Health, being taken over to healthcare company and now the new company Monogram. We have been very stealthy about it intentionally. Yeah, yeah. Essentially what we like Monogram, which we launched today. Just like I asked me five minutes ago.

1:16:58

Congratulations.

1:17:26

Thank you. It's a general purpose,

1:17:28

So congratulations.

1:17:35

Sorry. Now we can continue.

1:17:38

Okay, so sure. He's on one today. Yes, Continue.

1:17:40

Yeah. It's a general purpose AI application for everyday use.

1:17:45

Yes.

1:17:48

But what makes it different is with other AI applications you usually have a chat based interface.

1:17:49

Yes.

1:17:55

You ask a question, you write some text, you get some text back.

1:17:56

Yes.

1:18:00

With Monogram you ask something and then you get a complete visual interface back.

1:18:01

Yes.

1:18:06

It's essentially. It's like when you think about computers had command line interfaces back in 80s and then we switch to graphical user interfaces where everything became visual interactive. We are Frank, we are, we will be the first company to do this in AI.

1:18:07

I love it. I've been seeing glimpses of this with ChatGPT images. So I wanted to know the rate of air conditioning in every European country because there's whole debate over France, they don't have air conditioning there. I wanted to know how France stacks up. And instead of asking for a text output, I just said, go get the data and then generate me an image, a graphic of that. Of course it's not interactive, it's not HTML based, it could be so much richer. And people are seeing glimpses of this with vibe coding, but it hasn't come to the consumer. So I'm interested to know, have you found a beachhead? Have you found a killer use case? Like I feel like, Yeah, I guess

1:18:24

assuming, like assuming every single person listening uses AI 20 times a day, you know, even if it's just casual asking questions, etc.

1:19:03

Yeah.

1:19:12

What are the, what are the kind of prompts that you would traditionally take to a normal language model that, that people should try with monogram.

1:19:12

Yeah, yeah.

1:19:21

So first of all, like if I explain this is one of the things that when you see it, it becomes very obvious, but it's hard to sometimes describe. But the big difference is we generate a visual interface response in roughly 1 1/2 seconds. You ask a question and you immediately start seeing something. It is not a do this work, make some research and get me back with a dashboard or report. It is, I ask the question, I lift my finger from the audio button and then in a second you start seeing the image.

1:19:23

That's really cool.

1:19:57

To be honest, we didn't know what use cases would really work with this technology best. But what we realized as testing the application ourselves is it works best for the very simple day to day use cases. I, for example, say, okay, the Oscars are live, so which movies were nominated for Oscars this year? Yeah, can I find something to watch? And maybe somebody from a South American director. Yeah, just really open ended questions like where do I eat? Is there in and out on my way to the airport from here? Yeah, so all like there's like day to day questions and then like what you realize is like, yes, like if you ask the same question to ChatGPT, it will also ask right behind the scenes. We are using OpenAI's model, but we do quite a bit on top of it to make this response query interactive. You get information architecture, right? You get a Lot of interesting visuals and when you tap on something you get even more information. So it's really just a day to day search discovery, basic questions. That's where we actually start seeing the most.

1:20:00

Is it? So it's voice first.

1:21:12

Yes.

1:21:14

And talk about that. I mean John was like such a, is such a power user of voice. Took. I was a laggard. But now I don't even like to prompt without voice because I can get a much better result if I just talk for 20 seconds and then give it a bunch of context and then it'll give me back closer to whatever.

1:21:15

I'll answer this from first principles, right. So I'm a first principles person. So talking is a lot faster than typing. Roughly four or five times more information can be converted to audio per second. So but the problem with voices, when you do voice mode, you have to listen. Listening is very slow. Listening is maybe four times slower than reading.

1:21:36

That's interesting.

1:22:00

But if you think, think about them, there's something even faster than reading. That's such a scene. So if you can. The fastest, most. The most, like I would say frictionless experience for me with AI is voice in and then visual output back.

1:22:01

Yeah.

1:22:16

Except when you have visual output, sometimes you can tap on things.

1:22:18

Right.

1:22:20

Tapping on a card is a lot faster than saying can you get me more details about this thing? So we support every form factor, but we design everything around audio as the primary input, camera will be the secondary and keyboard will be third input. They all work. What really like in the outputs, like we do have some audio output. Like we have a short answer but maybe 90% of the information is conveyed through the visual interface and you're getting a short answer. Like kind of like a text to speech back. Yeah.

1:22:21

So cool.

1:22:53

I wish I could bet on how quickly Apple tries to buy you because I'd be like term sheet by end of week.

1:22:54

So yeah, I mean this is your third huge company. Like do you have. I mean, I guess it's like where do you want to go with this? What are your aspirations? Because you've checked a lot of the boxes on the entrepreneurship journey. But then I'm also interested in like it's not. You're not building the same business three times in a row. There are certain founders that do that very successfully and it's impressive. But between Udemy Carbon and now this, very different companies. So what lessons, what strategies are you actually taking through the three companies that you feel like, oh yeah, I'm running. You might not think it, but I'm running The Carbon playbook in this particular area or I'm running the Udemy playbook here a little bit.

1:23:03

So the common thing between those three companies was that what my brain get obsessed on is how do I make something that is complicated and has high end free barrier and make that accessible to more people. Udemy, when everybody was focused on higher education online degrees, we focused on how do I learn from Photoshop like in a week. So it was the most like mainstream of the education companies and that's how we got the ton of success. And the difficult part was like not being overly caught up with what was hot in Silicon Valley at that time. Right. It's Carbon Health. When everybody was going after premium concierge healthcare, we were more focused on how do we make a health care that everybody can access better. And I think here right now, all the focus on AI has been the coding agents and how to make really complex enterprise workflows work. But what I'm really obsessed on is if I make AI a little bit easier to use, it will just benefit more people. So it's just like again, there's not a ton overlapping as you said. Like I also do like a new challenge for myself so I do like rotating things over and I would say healthcare was difficult. So it is nice to do software only.

1:23:49

Pure play consumer app. This is expert mode.

1:25:05

It is.

1:25:11

How are you thinking about image models? Diffusion models? I saw a really cool demo for something that looked like a website, but in fact was real time diffusion. You probably know the one I'm talking about. It looked like sort of a beige cityscape and you could sort of zoom in and it was was all being rendered in real time. Is that something you see yourself implementing in the future or is it a distinct different arc of the technology tree?

1:25:12

So the answer is yes and no. So I don't believe AI outputting pixels as the primary form factor. That sounds cool. Like maybe 10, 20 years later it might be the reality. But in the near term you will want something that's more of a representation of the user interface as a layer. So I think pixels is probably not the form right output, like medium. But diffusion models I'm obsessed with. So every time a new diffusion model comes in, we say, oh, is this the day we switch from LLMs to diffusion based models? Because that sounds like the right architecture for what we are doing, but they haven't been realistic enough. Like we have been trying everything. Right. So essentially the way Monogram works is there's one major model because when you ask a Question. There is language in the interface. So you just need a language model or something model that can do language. But then there's a lot of like maybe 20, 30 parallel things are happening at the same time. So it's a very different agent architecture. So we do have a. We have some of our own models, some fine tuned models, but one big one. So I think eventually that main model will be diffusion based, not LLM transformer based. But not today. I think their tech is still not good enough to be able to handle this.

1:25:40

Yeah, maybe in the future. Super cool in the app store now. IOS exclusive. Android as well. What do you have?

1:27:04

Thinking it's Iris exclusive. We'll be working on web application desktop Android. But part of the idea here is because the entire interface is built by AI, we are just building clients. This will become the most cross platform.

1:27:13

I imagine it has to be so fast, especially in the age of vibe coding. Porting has to be so simple. Now Instagram took like five years to get to Android. I imagine you have a shorter timeline. So good luck for the.

1:27:28

Tell us about the round.

1:27:42

Yeah, tell us about the round.

1:27:43

So the round was led by DST and Lux. It was a 40 minute RC round.

1:27:44

You hit the gong for the launch and you hit the gong for the round as well. It's a double day. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Fantastic.

1:27:56

Very cool. I'm super excited to play around with it.

1:28:04

I'd love to have you back on the show and chat more soon. Have a good one.

1:28:06

Yeah.

1:28:08

Great to see you.

1:28:09

Thank you.

1:28:09

Cheers.

1:28:10

Let me tell you about Figma. If you're designing the next banger app. Get in. Figma agents, meet the canvas. Your AI agents can now create and modify your Figma files with design system context. And our next guest is in the waiting room. We have Larson Jensen from Harpoon Ventures. He's the founder and general partner. How you doing?

1:28:11

What's up boys? Good to see you. Thanks for having me.

1:28:32

What's happening?

1:28:33

Good to see you.

1:28:34

I'm obsessed with the portfolio. We can go into that. But introduce yourself first and get us up to speed on what the fund is doing and what the news is today.

1:28:36

Sure. Jordy. John, great to be here. Thanks for having me. My name is Larson Jensen. I'm the founder and GP at Harpoon Ventures, early stage venture capital firm focused on investing in technology and the national interest of the United States and our allies when appropriate. Today we're announcing that we raised 155 million dollar fund for it. So fired up for the gong. I wish I was there to see it.

1:28:45

We wish you were here. This, this new mallet setup, we have it really like, you just feel the full force of the gong coming right back at you.

1:29:08

That's sick. I felt it on my end. Thanks, guys.

1:29:15

Good, good. Harpoon Ventures. Great name, great name.

1:29:18

Thank you.

1:29:23

Would you take us back if it was necessary? Would you invest in a company that you was using whale blubber to power data centers?

1:29:24

Is this even a question? Of course I do that. If it's necessary. It might be necessary. We need all the energy we can get, so let's go.

1:29:34

We do. It's a great name.

1:29:40

This is the show I'm on.

1:29:42

Take us back in time. Give me a little bit of the journey to venture capital. Because you have a. You have a fascinating. You actually have the non traditional background that so many VCs wish they had. When they say I went to Stanford and then I worked at Google before

1:29:45

becoming a venture capitalist, you actually say they're an operator. You know, in the background of what operator meant. A special operator in the career that I sane.

1:29:58

Stolen valor.

1:30:06

It's interesting.

1:30:07

It's interesting to hear. When I showed up to Silicon Valley, it's like, oh, I'm an operator. I'm an operator. I'm like, I don't know. It was the same kind of operator that I was used to, but I guess different, you know, different ecosystems have different terms, which is fine. Definitely.

1:30:08

Sure, sure.

1:30:21

The real operator should start saying, like, yeah, I was an employee. I was an employee.

1:30:22

Yeah, basically.

1:30:28

That's cool too, you know.

1:30:29

That's cool too.

1:30:30

Just trade.

1:30:30

Just trade.

1:30:31

Exactly. So, yeah. Grew up in the Central Valley of California. My parents are almond farmers. Went down to usc. Fortunately, was pretty good at swimming and worked pretty hard at that. Brought me to two Olympic Games. 04 and 08. I got a silver and 04 bronze and 08. 08 is where Phelps got his eight gold. So, you know, if there's anything that's common about my. My trajectory is I'm sort of like a nothing compared to the people that work in the industry or in the careers that I'm in. Had to compete against guys like Phelps and Lochte and that whole generation when I was swimming and then similarly, you know, moved into the SEAL teams thereafter. Wanted to serve my country in a different way than just serving on the playing field, but do so on the battlefield. Felt like I had the, you know, hopefully the courage. I guess we would see some of the determination and the hard work to make it Through SEAL training, which fortunately did, and then deployed in combat to Afghanistan. Had the opportunity to be an early adopter to Palantir. They told us we were an early customer, but you never really know what the government, what the truth is across history. But they said we're early adopter to Palantir. And I was just mind blown by the capability and that gave me the tech bug. So decided to apply to Stanford and if I got in, I'd move up to the, to the Valley and if I didn't, I'd do another rotation in the SEAL teams. Fortunately got in.

1:30:32

You did go to Stanford.

1:31:47

Traditional background.

1:31:48

Traditional, Very traditional, traditional background. Wait, I got.

1:31:50

How was.

1:31:55

I was a DEI hire up at Stanford at the time.

1:31:55

How was, how was buds as like an Olympic medalist swimmer? Like was he?

1:31:59

Dude, it was hard. It was really hard.

1:32:06

Okay, but was there, was there, was there, was there any points where you're like, ah, this is kind of easy. I feel like I'm just kind of.

1:32:08

Yeah, the swimming was, was a piece of cake. Like, you know, as you can imagine, I was literally the fastest, I'm still the fastest American of all time in the 400 meter freestyle. So if it wasn't easy for me, we'd have a real problem. So it was, it was, it was easy. I don't say that to be brag. I'm just saying you asked the question like, you know, was, was it, was it easier or hard? But I got my ass kicked like everything else.

1:32:13

So what was the hardest part then? Outside?

1:32:33

For me it was boats. Boats on heads, which if you've seen the videos, you're like carrying these like inflatable boat rafts and running around and stuff like that. It looks like they'd be in a background like a backyard pool. Trust me, they're not. These things are a couple hundred pounds and you're carrying those on your head for, for weeks on end. In the case of hell week, you pretty much always have them on your head. And so that was brutal. So anything that was impact oriented, I'm still feeling today. I think a lot of guys are. I mean when you're, when you're loaded up and rocking around the mountains, I mean you're doing so in full kit wearing, you know, £200 almost of gear on top of what you're already, whatever your existing body weight is. So it's brutal. And you know, I was definitely not the best at it. Wasn't the best swimmer, wasn't the best seal, but was fortunate to be part

1:32:35

of the community Mm, that's awesome.

1:33:18

So take us from Stanford to venture. What were some of the first investments? What was the strategy back then? Where'd the money come from?

1:33:20

Yeah, yeah, I mean my venture career sort of started pre Stanford. I got lucky and got an internship at Andreessen Horowitz, which was awesome. Great learning opportunity to go there. Pre gsb similarly did between years over at Lightspeed of the gsb and then after Lightspeed had the opportunity, or after the GSB had the opportunity to go to Lightspeed for about a year, I just really had this like any crazy founder might have, like this harebrained idea or a gap in the market. Something you're so passionate about you can't sleep without. And that was me in terms of investing in technology for the national interest. And at the time there really wasn't a fever for this. Now there certainly is, thank God. But at the time there really wasn't. And I sort of had this idea that's maybe not that novel, but I effectively said, hey, what if we could create a private sector in Q Tel? Wouldn't that be pretty cool? And that's what I set out to do. So fortunately pitched the GPS and the team over at my former two employers at Andreessen and Lightspeed and they're our first LPs ever in Harpoon to sort of go out there and start taking it, taking that mission to the market. So that's what we've been doing. Back in 2018 when we started, the market was obviously very, very different. Most of what we did was very much known as dual use. At the time that meant very much enterprise technology and we would try to work with them to help them break into a government market that these founders didn't really know existed. But you know, we and our team knew existed from our, you know, lived experience, I guess you could say for cybersecurity tools or next generation data infrastructure, what have you, for autonomous autonomy platforms. All the things that people sort of like know today are applicable to the government market. But back then it was super faux pas, man. It was crazy. I was, I felt like I was going to get laughed out of town. It almost was. And so now we're doing much more defense focused things because I think the founder ecosystem provides for it. I think that we've evolved along with the ecosystem. At the time there really wasn't very much national security or government focused companies or engineers or talent. Now there's a ton. I jokingly say that I go ahead,

1:33:26

go for it, go for it.

1:35:29

No, I was going to say, I used to go to these conferences that the government would put on in and around the Pentagon and Crystal City and all these places as a venture guy, and there'd be like nobody there. There'd be like no, like high horsepower entrepreneurs. There'd be no other venture firms. Man, what am I doing going to these places? There's nothing for me to invest in. Ultimately now that's all changed and I'm so happy about that. We're going, we're celebrating our nation's 250th birthday this coming weekend. Hopefully all of you are celebrating the fourth in traditional good fashion. And I think that now to see the ecosystem what it is is just, just tremendous. I'm super fired up about it.

1:35:30

Where. How are you thinking about early stage defense? Like, are you still. Are there still pockets of, of white space and feels like the boom of. Or do you really need to be doing like hardcore R and D? Like, like, like it seems like the last five years there was an opportunity to do hardcore R and D, like actually new technology or just like deliver a capability that's necessary and kind of leverage existing technologies and just deliver a great product for a need. Whereas it feels like there's less and less like, you know, we have a bunch of great maritime focused companies now during kind of every major category. So there's a new company needs to do like, you know, real R and D and come up with something totally novel or compete with existing. Or is there still pockets where you're like, there needs to be.

1:36:06

I think both are true. One, I want the discombobulator. I want to invest in that. I don't know exactly what it is, but Trump came out with the discombobulator and said that that's what helped in Venezuela and I want to find the next version of that and I want to back that technology. Similarly, I have a buddy of mine that we might need some R and D on that. Also have a buddy of mine who I went to OCS with. I'll keep his name off the tape here, just, you know, but he testified to Congress on the UAP phenomenon, which I know you guys are deep in as well. And I texted him not too long ago and I'm like, hey man, we got some alien tech. I'm ready to go. All the rest of this stuff is like, I don't know, not really doing it for me. And so we had a quick call but, you know, didn't end up going anywhere. So if you got any founders out there that are you Know, reverse engineer. Listen, I got assigned a poster of Bob Lazar in my office. I. I'm super fired up. I go deep on this.

1:37:03

You Jesse Michaels guy.

1:37:50

Listen, I dive into anything you'll give me. So send me some books, send me whatever you got. I'm ready. But like, ultimately, I think that there's plenty of meat on the bone for other novel capabilities to come up and get funded. I think for us as a venture firm, I used to superimpose my view of what should be created on the ecosystem. And we've effectively stopped doing that and just tried to be, you know, good judges of founders that are high octane and have a huge vision. And when we're surprised and we believe them, we want to back them as early as possible, which is another evolution of the firm. When we started, I don't think we had the brand, the reputation, the credibly or the credibility to credibly lead some of these, these rounds. Now I think we do, and we launched our Black Flag accelerator, which is helping us go earlier, creep into doing more pre seeds and seed stage investments where we've let alone lot through that. And so I think the future is bright for entrepreneurs, you know, chipping away at a variety of different problems.

1:37:52

You're wearing a flag on your hat. It's the stars and stripes, beautiful American patriotic flag. Black flag. I associate with pirates. They're not on my team. Why? Why black flag?

1:38:46

Well, I, I should have wore my other hat. So I got the Jolly Roger over the red, white and blue. I should have wore that one for you guys, you know, figuring that you'd bring that up.

1:38:56

But are they on our team? Have we recruited the pirates?

1:39:05

How does it work?

1:39:08

Yeah, we've recruited them. They're on our team now.

1:39:09

This is an American pirate Patriot.

1:39:12

I like it.

1:39:15

Pirate hybrid.

1:39:16

I mean, if you look, I mean, we thought about this for a while and if you look at all the squadron patches that are out there for aircraft, squadrons, you know, various SEAL teams, special operations, etc, like, they all have some pirate themed. I like that, you know, insignia. Not all that. Believe it or not, we're pretty thoughtful about the name Harpoon and the name Black Flag. We actually thought about the pros and cons and some people might not like it, but you can't, you can't win over everybody.

1:39:17

I like, tell us, how did you, what is your overall take as an Olympian on the enhanced games? How did you process it? If, you know, if this was like before your venture career and you were done with the, you know, Olympics. Would you have considered going in there? I want, I want your whole take.

1:39:40

You know, I, I should have tracked it more closely. You guys are probably much more better read on this than I am. But on the swimming, I, you know, I believe somebody entered that wasn't enhanced at all and still won and did a best time. I believe in the backstroke, which is interesting. And I saw some jokes on Twitter about people saying like, oh, these guys are already enhanced. You know, they don't need to be even more enhanced. And I think that's just a lot of bs like, you know, we get drug tested so much it's insane. We could go a whole offline segment on, you know, what it's like to have the drug tester show up and, you know, watch you go to the restroom, take your blood and all of this stuff unannounced. You have to fill out where you're going to be for literally a quarter in advance down to the day. And if you miss three tests in a row, it's the same as being, you know, being a positive test. So, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think that you might not be attracting to the Enhanced Games the right athletes right now. I don't know else to put it. I don't know if they're the gold medalists, silver medalists, bronze medalists that are showing up.

1:40:00

Yeah, maybe they're a gold medalist is still gonna outperform the like number eight guy who's taking totally.

1:40:58

I would have whipped those guys asses for sure. Like, I mean, it's like anybody who's like, who medals, Anybody who medals, like, there's a big drop off between like meddling and sort of finaling and then not finally. And so I would have sort of welcomed it. I think an interesting aspect of the Enhanced Games would be like, let's load these guys up and put them head to head with, you know, whoever the modern day, like Katie Ledecky. Let's see if they can beat Katie Ledecky.

1:41:05

I mean, that was part of the interesting production of the Enhanced Games was that it did tell you something about the real Games and that there is a gap there. And that was in. And if you look at it as like a science experiment, it was a cool experiment that we got to run. And I think we all learned a little bit from it, even if it wasn't this. Oh, yeah, obviously with the drug regimens, they just blow everyone out of the water, which is sort of what some people expected. But that wasn't really the message of that campaign.

1:41:30

I know, it was a really cool experiment and great to see.

1:41:57

Yeah. Anyway, thank you so much.

1:41:59

You're the man.

1:42:01

Where are you based?

1:42:01

San Diego, California. But I'm on the road. I'm actually in New York right now, but I'm back in San Diego quite frequently.

1:42:03

All right, Fund five. Come on, come on live.

1:42:09

Hang out.

1:42:12

We'll come back. Boys, thank you so much for having me.

1:42:12

We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one. Let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. Our next guest is Ricky Rosa from Oasis Devices. Ricky, how you doing? Welcome to the show. How you doing? Can you hear us? Introduce yourself.

1:42:15

I can.

1:42:39

Can you hear me?

1:42:40

Yeah, all good.

1:42:40

Can you hear us over the drumming and the air horn?

1:42:41

It's a very chaotic entrance. You get hot dropped in here. You're trying to drink your coffee in peace, and all of a sudden it's, welcome to the ultra Dome. But. Welcome to the Ultra Dome. Introduce yourself.

1:42:45

Awesome. Thank you, guys. So I'm Ricky Rosa. I'm the founder and CEO of Oasis Devices. We make smart ring to try to replace the keyboard. What we're interested in is the next platform of computing. Are smartphones the final form? I don't know. I mean, I don't think anybody knows. But once you take that as your

1:42:55

baseline, I'm praying every day I want to throw it in the ocean.

1:43:13

Yeah, yeah.

1:43:20

You and me, brother. So once you take that as your baseline, you can start to explore. What we noticed is that you can only ask people to take one step from current, and it's very easy to get tangled in crazy new platforms and devices and that sort of thing.

1:43:21

But

1:43:40

you can only ask people to change things so much. You cannot ask them to change the entire workflow overnight. We've spent years in the idea maze trying to figure out what would be good use cases for smart rings and different things. And what we landed is private dictation, because what rings are really useful for is bringing them very close to your mouth and whispering. And it just so happens that we also have a trackpad in our ring that allows you to edit. We spent a lot of time making sure that it had the resolution for navigation for smart glasses, but smart glasses are a little bit slower to take off. So we channeled all of that development into editing what you see on screen. And so we made it work with Whisper Flow. The founder tonight is an angel investor in our company, and so that's what we're launching today.

1:43:43

Amazing.

1:44:41

Very cool.

1:44:42

What does good look like in terms of churn and retention for a new device? Because I imagine that the product looks great. I imagine it will work and I imagine people will keep it on for a long time and use it. But the baseline is so low. I mean, we had an Apple Vision Pro in the studio this morning and the team was trying it out and like laughing and enjoying the demo. But that product has to have like 99% churn and same thing with most VR headsets. A lot of hardware companies, like, if you can just find that smiling curve of, you know, the conversion rate of a few people that come on. Do you. How are you thinking about actually getting people over that, that goal, that honeymoon period where they try something?

1:44:44

Well, and I'll tell you why, like I like this approach is you one utilizing a device that is already a daily product in the workspace, utilizing like Audio Transcription, which, like Whisper Flow. I was at dinner with a buddy last night and he's showing us like his whole Whisper Flow set up. He's obsessed, obsessed with it. And then you're utilizing the ring, which is also a form factor that people are used to by now. The Aura Ring is proven.

1:45:30

Yeah.

1:45:57

And so you'd like take that combination of like people want to be transcribing more.

1:45:57

Yeah.

1:46:01

They're using their computers all day long. You deliver it in a form factor that is like, you know, nor, you know, understood already that people are comfortable with. And I think that's a recipe for potentially a hit. But again, yes, the sort of median new consumer electronic device has like 0% retention. So it's still very hard.

1:46:01

I will say I use the Vision Pro every night. I don't know if that helps or hurts my credibility.

1:46:21

Yeah, no, I love, I love new hardware. But, but I, you know, I admit that there's that it's always hard to get people on, but yes. Is it important that this is both effectively a peripheral for a daily driven device and then also a fashion accessory? Is that important that it's both?

1:46:25

Yes. So the way that we think about retention is, and this is why we struggle so much in years past, is we really needed to find a use case that was a must have, not a nice have. With Whisper Flow, you can speak loudly to your computer, but it just so happens that in crowded offices, coffee shops, those sort of public environments, you can't speak out loud. And so it really helps to have a peripheral that you can speak quietly too. Once we move to other platforms like iOS and glasses. Eventually then the fashion accessory or the fashion point starts to become more important.

1:46:46

Yeah. It feels like, I don't know, because you can wear AirPods and you can talk to them. Can you not whisper to AirPods? Because even if you can, even if it's the same functional device, it's way different aesthetics. Talking into a ring and having earbuds in that feel like, okay, this person's like out in their own world. But I imagine with the microphone a lot closer, the ring allows you to speak at even a lower level and produce a higher fidelity transcript. Is that correct?

1:47:34

Correct. Yes. Yes.

1:48:08

Okay, that's cool.

1:48:10

The ring outperforms AirPods, but also it has the modality of touch.

1:48:13

Yeah.

1:48:16

Which is, allows you to do to edit the things that you see on screen, it allows you to navigate, it allows you to completely interact with AI and your computer and your workflows without ever touching the keyboard. And this point is important because what we think is that if we can. It's a big if, but if we can get people to interact with laptops without touching them, then the output piece of it becomes a little bit more fluid. Now it's a smaller ask to ask people to put the display in glasses or display in another device.

1:48:17

Right.

1:48:53

But you really need to solve the input part first. And that's kind of what we're going after at the moment.

1:48:54

The demo is someone using basically a Word document. Is that intentional? Why not a code editor? Why not an LLM interaction back and forth? Why text specifically?

1:49:00

Well, we do have a demo of the person using ChatGPT and that sort of thing in the launch video, but for the B roll, it's just more aesthetic to have the text.

1:49:12

Okay, okay, okay. I was just wondering if there was a hint at where you see the first killer feature with, with writers or with someone who's doing more like Word document based knowledge work as opposed to something who. More of a programmer. But I don't know, maybe I'm reading into it too.

1:49:26

Remember, remember, Whisper Flow is like a platform agnostic tool. They see retention across emails, word documents, you know, coding tools and the rest. And so we are an extension of that. So we kind of sit in the same plane.

1:49:44

You know what I mean?

1:49:58

What's the status of the company? How big is the company? Have you raised money? Where do you see all this going?

1:50:01

So we're pretty small. We're like a five person team. We're scattered across the globe. We have people in Australia, Abu Dhabi, China. We're an eclectic bunch. We've raised a few angel rounds and we shipped our beta this January.

1:50:07

That's great. When do you want to go into public release? Where can people sign up to learn more? Where can people preorder?

1:50:26

We launched our pre order campaign for the microphone and trackpad version today, and that's going to be shipping in small batches from two weeks from now till Christmas.

1:50:33

So we're going to roll it out.

1:50:43

Yeah.

1:50:46

That's great. A testament to the modern supply chain. I love it.

1:50:46

Well, order one, Tyler, if you can order one and then try to put us, you know, should I ask to be put at the front of the list or near the front of the list? It'd be nice to get in the next. In the next month would be awesome.

1:50:50

Be great.

1:51:04

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Congratulations on the progress. Very cool device.

1:51:04

Yeah, thank you.

1:51:09

I appreciate it, guys.

1:51:09

Thank you for having me on. Have a good one. We'll talk to you soon. Let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all in one of instead intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agents to deploy web apps, servers, databases and more. While Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring and security. And our next guest is in the waiting room. We have Andrew Raya from Tax Wire. Andrew, how are you doing?

1:51:10

Hey, guys. Thank you for having me.

1:51:33

Thank you for having me.

1:51:35

Welcome, Jordy.

1:51:37

Great to see you.

1:51:39

I know you guys know each other, but for the audience members that don't, maybe introduce yourself, tell us what you're building.

1:51:40

Yes.

1:51:47

Jordi, good to see you. I did not, did not have it on my bingo card three, four years ago, whenever it was that I worked for you, with you at Party Around Capital that we would be talking about taxes on your podcast. We're back. We're so back. Congrats to both of you on all the success, but I'm Andrew Rae. I'm one of the co founders of taxfire. We are a full managed solution for global sales tax compliance. And we just raised $25 million because death and taxes are forever. And I think, I think probably our bet is that Brian Johnson will solve taxes. Solve death first. So we're, we're here to solve taxes. I got the hat for us.

1:51:48

Okay, I see that you're actually hoping that he solves that. Just have more. More.

1:52:31

Exactly. Because the TAM just keeps, keeps growing. We just have more consumption in the economy. GDP goes up, there's more taxes. Hopefully we can improve the subway system in New York with some of those tax dollars. And we just. The good times keep rolling.

1:52:39

Why Business to business taxes. Why not go after TurboTax?

1:52:53

Yes, that's a great question. My immediate initial reaction is because Intuit has a hell of a lot of distribution. And so that's probably, that's probably one. But no, no more for, for me specifically, I had this problem in a really big way at a company I was up before this very much felt the pain of managing indirect tax compliance. And I think it's, it's a market that's dominated by a bunch of companies that are very old, I think about $5 trillion in taxes remitted in sales tax and VAT by enterprises around the world. It's a very big problem. There's a bunch of very not so customer obsessed software companies and services firms like the Big Four, Avalara, et cetera that dominate this market. And it's a pain point that I had before this. And we, so it's mix of market opportunity and our customers are finance people, they're super smart, but they do not have the expertise or time to be managing their taxes. So we deliver that outcome for them.

1:52:59

And reality check me on this, I would assume that sales tax enforcement is increasing significantly. In the early days of the Internet there were all these crazy loopholes where if Amazon's based in Seattle and you buy something in Florida, they don't pay tax. And I think a lot of those loopholes have been closed. So more and more e commerce companies, companies have flourished on the back of Shopify and other platforms stripe. So there's more people selling products all nationally and so they have a much higher sales tax burden. Is that roughly correct for the secular trend?

1:53:57

Roughly correct. The secular trend is kind of like a few things. One is regulation. So there's that regulation's been rolling out and what we're seeing now is that a lot of states are now actually starting to roll out taxes of not only like more enforcement, they're using AI to do audits. A lot of states are incre increasing sales tax as well and trying to increase audits of companies that have been complying. Now because they're getting squeezed on income tax. Yeah, they're getting squeezed on property tax. Gavin Newsom in California is trying to start taxing the software industry. And then very similarly in VAT around the world there's a lot of enforcement of real time reporting and invoicing that's coming down the pipeline. So nobody gets voted out of office for raising sales tax or raising vat, whereas income tax or property tax can hit you. So you're seeing big inflation that's like just a, I'd say a secular tailwind. And then the incumbents in the industry are not incredibly AI native or customer friendly. And so you've also kind of got this general customer frustration that gives a new player like us a lot of tailwinds as well.

1:54:38

So you raised this money during the SaaS apocalypse. You overpowered the SaaS apocalypse. But I'm sure you were getting asked like, how, like, how did you answer. How did you answer the SASS apocalypse question? Because now. Right. I'm sure when you kind of close around or at least you had a term sheet signed, the SASS apocalypse was over. Everyone was like, you know, we're back.

1:55:39

But yeah, but we were super back. Super back. The SAS apocalypse is over. But no, I think it's super being super honest. It's like we, the benefit, we're benefiting a little bit from the fact that we, A lot of the people we compete with are services as much as they are software companies. And so there's like more spend to eat, which lets you kind of lean into. We are categorized as like AI native SaaS or AI native services software. And some of that is that we genuinely are actually delivering an outcome. And so our customers don't think of us as software or services. Like, we have tax experts in house. We do literally everything that goes into indirect tax compliance. We ripped and replaced a big four consultants firm literally this, this week for one of our customers. And so it's, it's. So some of it is that we are, we are benefiting from AI versus being someone who's being displaced maybe by AI. And so it's mostly a tail end.

1:56:03

I think you're doing the displacement. You're coming after, you're coming after the hundreds of thousands.

1:56:55

I am the apocalypse.

1:57:01

Exactly. We are, we are the. We are the apocalypse. And we probably, we probably our category probably benefits from it, which is something that maybe I can't take much, much credit for. I think, I think it's probably still painful out there for some folks in a way that maybe it's not been for us.

1:57:03

Well, good luck. Thank you so much for taking amazing progress.

1:57:17

It's been awesome to see the journey and yeah, congrats to the whole team on the milestone. I'm sure you'll be back soon. Congratulations.

1:57:20

We'll talk to you soon, of course.

1:57:25

Thank you guys so much. Appreciate it.

1:57:27

Bye.

1:57:28

Let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? It's quite question. Everyone's been Asking. It's your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI. Own the data platform.

1:57:29

Just do it.

1:57:41

Why not?

1:57:42

Do it.

1:57:43

Why not? Our next guest is Michael Anderson from Framework Ventures, raising a huge foreign fund. He's in the waiting room and now he's in the TV in ultradome. Michael, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

1:57:43

Doing well. How are you guys?

1:57:55

We're doing fantastically, honestly. The View here is not the View.

1:57:56

Where are you?

1:58:01

You're viewmogging us. We don't even have any, we don't have any windows in this, in this studio. And you're sitting here. This is like thousands of feet in the air.

1:58:02

Looking good.

1:58:16

Anyway, where are you calling in from?

1:58:17

San Francisco. The Transamerica building.

1:58:19

Oh, that's a good one. The pyramid. I like that one.

1:58:23

Awesome.

1:58:26

Enough about the View, let's talk about you. Please introduce yourself a little bit. Tell us about the fund. Give us the news.

1:58:27

Yeah.

1:58:35

So, Michael, one of the two co founders of Framework the Quick History is my co founder. Vance and I started it seven years ago. We're both working for tech companies. I was at Snapchat, he was at Netflix. Quit our jobs, we were obsessed with crypto, moved into my parents house and started the fund. Now we've raised our fourth fund and manage a couple billion dollars.

1:58:36

Did you have any outside capital in the first fund? Like what was the. Because I imagine with crypto you can just invest in tokens and if you're good at trading and you're early, you don't necessarily need institutional capital to get started. But what were the early days like?

1:58:58

Yeah, we had an institution as our first backer and it was a small $15 million fund and we started a framework really with the Thesis. You know, a lot of people started with trading or a hedge fund thesis. Ours was actually the opposite in that we felt that nobody was going after the early seed stage of venture investing in the crypto web3 space in 2019. And so that's what we started with. So it's always been, you know, a venture thesis and I think our first, you know, our sector. Our second fund, 100 million, was kind of like the first institutional fund with multiple institutions and. And now we've got Ivy League endowments and sovereign wealth funds and off to the races.

1:59:15

That's great. What was it like in the early days? Was the crypto community really geographically distributed or were you focused on investing in America or California or San Francisco specifically? If you're going after those early stage crypto founders. Yeah, good Question.

1:59:52

I mean, we moved back to San Francisco. We were actually in, Vance and I were in Los Angeles. We moved back to San Francisco, Cisco, thinking, okay, well, well, that's the hub of tech. And we found ourselves basically traveling to all the entrepreneurs at the early days because crypto was a global phenomenon. You had pockets in Asia, you know, Australia, uk I'd say largely now it's still, it's still pretty geographically distributed, but there's still most of the tech is happening in kind of the hubs that you would expect. So San Francisco is definitely one of the top places these days. Yeah, it was a lot of, a lot of travel those early couple years.

2:00:09

Yeah.

2:00:41

So what's the, what's the conference strategy now? I feel like there's debate on like, you know, how many, how many conference. What's the perfect amount of conferences to go to in a year? As a crypto investor, that is the topic of conversation. It's like a billion dollar question.

2:00:42

You gotta do an Asia trip, you gotta do a Europe trip, you know, make some travel out of it. They're always in fun destinations. I think a couple of years ago we went to the blockchain week in Singapore and then stayed for the F1 race. It's always a good time.

2:01:03

What are you kind of forecasting in crypto right now? What you guys have done well by predicting? It's a balance of having some idea of the future and just backing great entrepreneurs. But like, what are you, what are you excited about with this new fund to invest in?

2:01:21

Yeah, so I think when we started in 2019, we saw crypto as sort of the next frontier where the smartest entrepreneurs that we were meeting with, you know, the whiz kids popping out of the Stanford, Harvard's are, you know, working on crypto, working on cryptography technologies. And I think that that's still the case, but I think what a lot of what we're seeing now is people who have domain expertise in different areas, different industries who are saying, help me do the crypto. I think this should be decentralized. Whether it's energy, nuclear, AI or you know, hard, hard infrastructure. They're coming to us and saying, hey, like, I know how to do energy trading. I've been doing it for the last decade. Help me build a disruptive, distributed, decentralized utility so that we can go disintermediate, you know, the utility, the, the utilities. And I think that that is kind of the new thing. It's not crypto just for crypto sake, it's crypto Getting imbued within really hard tech industries. So it's not really like its own thing anymore. I think now it's just going to become pervasive in everything.

2:01:44

So the fund's grown, the apertures probably widened in terms of the industries that you look at. What stayed the same throughout all four funds.

2:02:46

I'll take a crack. Just remaining bullish on crypto when everyone's calling you an idiot loser is like a really good way to make money, I think. And I feel like you guys have done that. Just like, you know, it seems like it's about having a tolerance for looking silly.

2:03:00

Sure.

2:03:15

And that can look like remaining bullish during like moments where everyone's like, honey, you're still doing that crypto thing at Thanksgiving.

2:03:16

Oh, so many years of that. It's just going to be another one of those. When it's a good time to buy, it's a bad time to sell. When it's a bad time to sell, it's a good time to buy. So I think riding the waves for sure. And we hold digital assets in the fund, each one of them. But I think the thing that has been consistent is really just the venture thesis. And then following the founders and the founders who we are seeing, we have an investment in company called Mecca. We got to know them because they were previous entrepreneurs that sold their company to Coinbase. They are not doing anything in crypto currently. They could eventually, but how we got to know them was through crypto and they are building a data platform for robotics AI. So those types of investments I think are just a consistent thread for us. And, and when we find world class founders, we're going to back them multiple times.

2:03:26

Interesting.

2:04:16

Awesome.

2:04:16

Cool.

2:04:17

I haven't been following the Mike strategy. Michael Saylor, we have not been following the story closely. Can you get me up to speed in just like 20 seconds what's going on over there? I mostly just see the deranged AI images that he puts out where he's on a lifeboat. Just like, why are you putting that image in my head, Ben?

2:04:18

So literally leaving, leaving.

2:04:40

You're like escaping the Titanic.

2:04:42

Wait, am I on the lifeboat?

2:04:45

Yeah. Is this inspiration? Am I supposed to.

2:04:46

I, I think, you know, the quick story is that whenever you mix financial engineering and crypto, something bad usually has happened.

2:04:51

Yeah.

2:04:58

And I think that that overfitting of the narrative is kind of what's going on with him right now. But he's building this, this entity that has multiple layers to it, whether it's convertibles, whether it's preferred Whether it' and he's financing it in different ways. And the question is, can he continue to do with all of the legs of the stool or is one of the legs going to fall out? I think the narratives of him blowing up are overblown. I think he's got smart people around. I think it's tough when crypto is down this much. But this is exactly what happens in all of these cycles. If we go back to the calluses on our hands over the last nearly decade of doing this, this is exactly what plays out all four years. So I think we're just in the middle of that right now. And I think he will be proven right eventually. It may just take him years. And talk about somebody who's been willing to just stand in the face of all of the negative publicity. He's the best at it.

2:04:59

That's a good point. Awesome, dude. Well, great to meet you. Congrats on the new fund and yeah, looking forward to meeting more of your founders.

2:05:55

Appreciate it. Great to meet you guys.

2:06:03

We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish.

2:06:04

The goose itself.

2:06:21

It is the goose itself. Have you ever heard of a hectocorn, Jordy? No, I'd never heard of this either, but apparently referring to refers to a company worth more than $100 billion. You got a unicorn worth 1 billion, a decacorn worth 10 billion, and a hectocorn, which I'd never heard before, but, you know, somebody wrote it in.

2:06:23

Learn something new every day.

2:06:45

Learn something new any day. Every single day. Especially on this show. Well, our next guest is investor and NBA champion, Tristan Thompson. We're very lucky to be joined by him here in the TVPN Ultra Dome.

2:06:46

There we go.

2:07:02

John, stand up next to me.

2:07:03

It's like Wally Zerbi out in here.

2:07:10

You guys are pretty. Hey.

2:07:13

Yes, you are.

2:07:17

Let's go.

2:07:18

You are all of it. You are a tall drink of milk. Holy schnikes.

2:07:18

What's happening, dude?

2:07:25

What's going on, brother? How are you?

2:07:26

We're doing great.

2:07:28

Yeah, yeah.

2:07:30

Why don't you stand up?

2:07:30

Not even close.

2:07:31

No.

2:07:32

I'm happy to let you guys do your thing. I just wanted the audience to understand that John is the NBA sized man.

2:07:32

It's true.

2:07:39

And.

2:07:39

And on the camera, everyone thinks I'm five, ten.

2:07:40

And then John and you guys, like, made my seat the shortest one right now. Like, seriously, you're like, this guy's a big. He was a Center for 14 years at this height. How do you do it? What's going on?

2:07:42

Anyway, it's great to have you. It's great to have you.

2:07:53

Glad to be here. By the way, congrats to you guys.

2:07:56

Thank you.

2:07:57

Congrats for landing you.

2:07:58

No, no, no. For all you guys. Success in that position and all, you know. Come on now, let's.

2:08:00

Big thank you. Thank you.

2:08:03

Fantastic. Yeah, I mean, I want to start with. I mean, tech and investing. I mean, we can go through your career, but I'm interested in sort of how you first caught the bug, how you. You first got interested in technology investing, just your journey to financial management, understanding more of your strategy, and sort of like, oftentimes there's, like, mentors or books and resources along the way. Like, what was your journey?

2:08:04

I mean, I think for me, and I won't give, like, the cliche, like, you know, I think other guests are like, you know, I think I didn't start really investing into things outside of the traditional, you know, state treasury bonds and the s and P500. The stuff that Fidelity and Wells Fargo tell you to. Yeah. Money market. Yeah. I waited till my second deal. Let's be real, like, you know, because. And, you know, I tell the young guys is, you know, your first.

2:08:29

You got to just be focused on being really good at basketball. Yeah. You get the second deal?

2:08:52

Yeah. When you get the second deal? When I got my. My second deal, 82 million. You know, I switched financial advisors because of the one I was with. Bang, bang, bang.

2:08:56

There you go.

2:09:06

Wow.

2:09:09

Wow.

2:09:11

This is high energy here. I love this. Wow.

2:09:12

But no, you got two deals.

2:09:15

No, I started getting into alternative assets and getting into tech and investing in companies, whether it's consumer or tech.

2:09:19

Or.

2:09:24

Were you getting pitched VC funds? Like, investing the VC funds?

2:09:25

Yeah, you know, like Carlyle Group and all those guys. You know, back then, I was with Morgan Stanley, so they would give us those opportunities because they had them as a client. Yeah, so that was like my early kind of like, get my feet wet. But obviously, as I got older and wanted to dive into more, but obviously having the capital to have that exposure, I started to look into more and start to talk to founders and get ahead of the curve.

2:09:28

Yeah.

2:09:51

Probably good to start. It's probably good to start taking deals from Morgan Stanley because obviously. Or a partner like that, because not every deal is gonna really hit or be that Great. But better than just looking at whatever's coming through. Because I think when people start investing, especially in private markets, everything looks great in a pitch deck.

2:09:52

Right.

2:10:15

It's like, oh, I'm looking at the forecast. It's like they're going to 100 million in, like, three years. And then you realize, like, okay, well, that most. That's in most decks. And it's about being able to pick out, okay, what's actually going to do well versus what's going to flop.

2:10:15

Yeah. I feel like one of the hardest things is you see one deck and you're like, this is a great idea, great team. And you don't realize that there's three other teams that are doing the exact same thing. They started two years earlier, and they're better. Do you think about trying to. When you identify a trend that you're interested in, you want exposure to. Are you trying to pick the one winner, get a huge stake in one winner, or do you want to have some sort of diversification across the market?

2:10:27

I think for me, it's. First of all, I always been on the founder. Yeah, Right. It's betting on the horse. Right. I think that's the most important thing. And, you know, these pitch decks, before they're 100 million, now, they always tell you they're a billion dollars, and now they always look so good. But I think for myself, I try to lean on what my peers are doing as well. And I've been so fortunate to have some guys that have, you know, have early ICOs in Ethereum or guys that have done great exits, and whether it is a family office or it is the guys that are in funds, you know, that have had that experience. Because for me, the reality is I am still one of the younger guys that are in the space. Right. So I try to lean on other people. And honestly, people have been so good to me and kind of like, kind of helped steer me the right way because they're like, tristan, we want to see you win. We don't want to see you come in and just give money to everybody

2:10:52

and not get much back.

2:11:37

And not get much back. You know, I remember Olaf, a buddy of mine who's one of the early coinbase.

2:11:37

Yeah.

2:11:42

You know, he said, tristan, you also got to be prepared that you're going to invest in 10 things and eight are gonna fail.

2:11:43

Yep.

2:11:48

But the two that do well, he said, don't worry, it's gonna cover all your capital that you put in. So I also had that mindset as well. But I always like to bet on the founder, bet on the horse. It's like a horse race.

2:11:49

Yeah.

2:11:56

That's what I'm the most bullish.

2:11:57

Was there, was there any athlete, entrepreneur investors that you look up to maybe from the previous generation or people that were. Or maybe underrated investors that people don't know about? Because I feel like people know about the shacks of the world, the guys that are super commercial, but anybody that. That's maybe more underrated.

2:11:57

I mean, I look at Shaq and Magic because I think they were able to use their nil to pivot to chapter two and leverage that to great opportunities. Right. Like at the end of the day, like the fact that Magic Johnson can open up movie theaters at affordable and get acquired by amc, that's big time. Right? That's like, that's creating a movement. But I think, you know, guys have done a good job as you know, of course, like the step career, Andre Iguodala, he's done a good job. But you know, the reality, us athletes, if we make good investments, we're going to tell all you guys, all the

2:12:15

guys that are doing very well, you

2:12:47

know, talk about it.

2:12:49

Yeah, there's no one under the radar.

2:12:50

Yeah.

2:12:51

If I'm doing a 25x, I'm not going to hide in Indiana and not tell you about it.

2:12:51

Press tour about it.

2:12:55

So.

2:12:56

Yeah. Do you think that there's a. There's a fork in the road between nil sponsorship, just get the cash but put your name every. Everywhere there. It makes sense. Tons of brand deals, but not a lot of equity ownership versus more behind the scenes equity ownership, just investing. Is that a fork in the road or can you do both reliably? How do you think about that trade off if there is one?

2:12:57

I think for us as athletes and anytime I go into the meetings and I'm on calls all the time, or if I'm going to, whether it's Milken or I'm at Medici or I'm at Token, we only get one chance of this. Right. And I think for us, because when we come in, everyone always, we're always playing down by five points, down by 10 because they're like, all right, another athlete in here that's going to write a check and you know, he's going to like, I don't know if we could curse it here, but we're always going to like hoe ourself out. Right?

2:13:18

Okay.

2:13:45

And that's what we. I want to be very selective because at the end of the day, I don't Want to be the guy that's for everybody. I want to make sure if I'm going down one lane, if I'm going to invest in a robotics company, I'm investing in tech drones. I want to try to find one or two, not just be with 10 guys, because you don't want to be that guy. But I. But in terms of the nil, I think it's very important as well, because if you look at it right now, who's the biggest influencer on planet Earth? Elon Musk. You advise the Kim Kardashian, but you might say Elon Musk, but, like, he's realized that, you know, Bill Gates and Steve Job, you know, these guys back in the day, in the 90s and early 2000s. Right. They would never put themselves out there and sit on squat box and go on CNBC and talk about their product. But now you realize that the great founders. You are going to do a press run. You're like Drake and you're going to do an album rollout because you want to create the FOMO for retail for when you ipo.

2:13:46

Yeah.

2:14:39

That people are going to buy. Yeah. You see this Palmer Lucky, too.

2:14:39

Very.

2:14:42

You know, you got to look.

2:14:43

Michael Saylor's got like, the look. Can't look. Then Elon's got. Got the like, doesn't look human. And then you got Larry Ellison looks like he's like. He's like, look maxing and everything.

2:14:44

Right.

2:14:53

Larry Ellison does look really young.

2:14:53

You do the look back. So, like, I get that. And I think that's why I think

2:14:55

Allison really is the OG looks. Max.

2:14:59

He is. He is.

2:15:00

He's got the chiseled and everything.

2:15:01

No, it's remarkable.

2:15:02

Yeah.

2:15:03

He's 80 or something.

2:15:05

And then there's no son in SF like that. So.

2:15:06

That's a good point.

2:15:08

Right.

2:15:10

But.

2:15:10

But he sails. He sails all the time. Yeah, he's a big boat guy.

2:15:10

Okay.

2:15:13

So maybe he's getting the sun there.

2:15:14

Yeah.

2:15:15

Who needs to be around the table when you're negotiating with a company? Because Olaf, fantastic investor. I imagine that if he's writing a check, not many people are being like, hey, we'd also like to put you in our super bowl ad. But with you, I imagine every founder comes to you and they say, well, we'd like an Instagram post and we'd also like you to be in an ad. And all of that is a separate negotiation. Are there agencies that you work with? Is this something that you can puzzle out? Is it all just one big bucket or do you just say, hey, let's table that and let's just do the equity deal here and then let's talk about partnership later?

2:15:16

So the way I approach it is like this. Right. So obviously you have the initial call and the conversation and you figure out what this marriage is going to look like and what. And if I'm just capital. If I'm just capital, then you're not going to. I'm going to be more behind the scenes. But if I really believe in. And I feel like I can help you, your GTM and create the narrative and story to be. To show what you guys are building and if I believe in it as well, we are going to strategize. And I've been very fortunate to have people that come from the venture, people that have, you know, from multicoin and around those guys, you know, they've been very helpful with, like, Tristan. Like, if you look at customize, like Tristan, you got to be very delicate at how you do things. And for me, it all depends. There's definitely been a lot of investments that I. No one knows that I'm invested in. Yeah, right. You know.

2:15:50

Yeah. Some of the best opportunities, like, they.

2:16:34

Well, you're waiting until it's a 25x and then you'll go on the tour.

2:16:36

Yeah.

2:16:38

Because it might be a zero. And you're not going to talk about that.

2:16:40

Oh, no.

2:16:43

But you know what?

2:16:43

Sometimes you guys, you got to get your hate lift. I was down 3:1 before, so it all really depends. But I love being part of. If I really feel bullish about something, I love being part of the journey. Yeah. Yeah. Because for me now, I still have the hunger and drive of winning again. I love winning championships, and this is the next form of doing it. But instead of wearing a jersey, I'm wearing a Tom Ford suit and tie. Or I got this nice. I don't know what color you guys call this, but I think it's very like tvpn.

2:16:44

Yeah.

2:17:11

Yeah.

2:17:11

It's on Brand green. Head to toe. Head to toe.

2:17:11

Taking the NBA to the next level. Is there anything that could make the NBA bigger? It's at the top of the mountain, but is there an even higher mountain? Is there a drive to survive? Play what would make the NBA even bigger? If you could do anything.

2:17:16

I don't know if this is legal, but imagine if you. I don't know if this is a bunch of.

2:17:33

I like where you started.

2:17:37

I don't know if the NBA could do this, but imagine if, like, so we have Something called the Player Post Career Income Plan. Right. And I'm going to give some tea and I don't be real. Right. So the Player Post Career Income plan is where basically we take a portion of our capital and we put it into, let's say it's like the Voya or the principal, right. We give them our money, we give them a percentage of our biweekly check and they hold onto it. It's good if you have, you know, bad spending problems and whatnot. And that is what it is. But you get nothing out of it. You don't make no yield, no interest. Right. But imagine if we were able to kind of create like a MBPA fund. But it's. And, but we're not going to be doing the money market four and a half.

2:17:38

Like sure, you want to be YOLOing,

2:18:20

but like a college endowment.

2:18:24

Yeah, college endowment.

2:18:26

Where they allocate tax.

2:18:27

Wait, wait, wait, tell me this. So I.

2:18:28

There's a blend.

2:18:31

We follow the sport of business as you know. So I don't know really anything about this kind of program that you're talking about. You give them money, you don't get any yield on it and then they just give it back to you at a certain point.

2:18:31

Yeah. So the reason why they created this is. You guys remember the ESPN 30 for 30 broke, right? There was a lot of high profile athletes that unfortunately. And it happens, right? Listen, at the end of the day, we come from, especially myself, I've come from nothing. You give us millions of dollars and we can't rely on people back home to help us. It's like the blind leading blind and

2:18:45

you just get a ton up front. You think, oh, this is never gonna stop.

2:19:03

Yes. So this was something that the NBA and I appreciate Adam Silver and David Stern taking the niche to say, hey, we don't want our players to pull out of their 401k at 35, 45 because you know, you get heavily penalized, the tax, everything. So we're going to create a Player Post Career Income plan. The day you're done playing, we are going to give you a check monthly to get you to 55, 60 years old. Right. Which I love and I think that's so smart. But imagine if now we're able to take some of that capital and get some exposure to some of these great investments. Like imagine if, think about this back when SpaceX back in 2022, right? If I came here and said the NBA PA association is going to give endowment of 500 million, $100 million to get into some allocation space. That's a pretty good one to get into, right. I'm not saying go ahead and buy a bunch of Sally beauty supplies. We're saying something a little bit more protective.

2:19:05

Right?

2:19:59

A little bit more that.

2:20:00

Yeah. I just don't understand why. So, so if there's capital that's been put aside coming out of your paycheck and it's sitting there, somebody's getting yield on it.

2:20:01

Oh yeah, who's getting.

2:20:10

Not me.

2:20:11

That's crazy. That's crazy.

2:20:12

But I will say this though. I will say though, because then everyone's been like.

2:20:14

So they're like, yeah, we're taking care of the players. Meanwhile they just have this huge pool of capital that they're. What I will say, but that seems a little bit. You might be honest.

2:20:17

But I will say the NBA's done a great job with the 401K. What they've done that no one else does is that they will match whatever you put in the 401k. 120%.

2:20:26

Wow.

2:20:35

Which is great.

2:20:36

That's fantastic.

2:20:37

So the NBA does a really good job protecting the players and trying to put the players in the best position to be successful, which I appreciate. So that's, you know, you gotta give a little bit. It's a start. It's a start. And it's like, you know, no one's ever finished product. Every business can get better. That's why AI Robotics, that's a big thing. Right. Especially in the workforce.

2:20:38

What guidance do you give to young players that are real prospects, maybe they're about to become a teenager, that are on the path to college, hopefully the NBA. What advice do you give them around navigating the Internet? I imagine some same way for any endeavor. People that have some type of following or notoriety or aura, they can get better deals done. But what advice are you giving? Because I imagine that wasn't even something that you had to deal with at the time. But then you obviously leverage social media now.

2:20:57

Yeah, I mean, I wish there was nil when I was playing back then. When I was playing, I was getting the money through the back door. Now you get it through the front door. So I wish I was getting that $11 million direct deposit or that wire to my account back in the day. But what I tell these young guys is that, you know, just, just be careful, like protect what you've built. Right? Because everyone's going to want a piece of you. And the reality is that we are not going to be the smartest in the room. We are going to be basically the squirming fish in the cesspool. And people are going to want to, you know, eat us up.

2:21:35

Right.

2:22:04

So you got to really lean. And I tell guys, lean. I know. I'm sorry, guys. I'm very honest. Yeah. This is part of being a big man, a center in the NBA. We're not pretty. We're very ugly with it. And we get down and dirty.

2:22:04

That's amazing.

2:22:17

But. No, but I think it's like, lean on your peers and older guys. I've always been the one, whether it's LeBron, whether it's Kevin Love, whether it's Antoine, Jameson, Anderson, Verjow. I've always went to my older and my vets to ask questions. And don't be afraid to be vulnerable. I think that's the one thing for us as athletes. We're fighting. We fear to say, like, man, my shit might be screwed up. I might have. Might be in some bad deals or I might have a bad financial advisor. That's the one area where athletes become small. And that's not something we should do.

2:22:17

Yeah.

2:22:48

What about AI and sports? I'm sure you get pitches all the time. I imagine you seem to like to invest in really big categories. You're going for the 100x, the thousandx. But what's exciting to you at the. At the intersection of AI and basketball?

2:22:50

Well, I think nothing would make me more happy if we had a fourth referee. And my friends think I'm crazy. If that referee was. We used AI.

2:23:08

It's worked in test.

2:23:19

Yes, it's worked in test. And it's even in soccer.

2:23:20

Yeah.

2:23:23

Yeah.

2:23:23

In World cup right now they have this band or something like that.

2:23:24

They're canceling goals on Paraguay. Canceling goals. Academy. I'm Canadian, so we scored. They're like, nope, bring it back. VR. But I remember, like, being a kid watching the World Cup, I said that never used to happen. Yeah. But now they're realizing AI technology to try to make the game more efficient. But especially in the NBA and the NBA and the playoffs, when it's a one possession game and you know when they're saying it's a charge or block or. I mean, we were. We were a victim of it. Game 1 against Golden State, when LeBron took. Took the charge on Kevin Durant and then they called it a blocking foul and they switched and I think. And we lost that game and I think we got swept there. But that was a turning point in the series, among other things. But, yeah, I think like, yeah, that was like. I feel like that's the next step for sports and AI and I think, you know, AI has taken over so many different sectors in the world. I think sports is like the one area that it's been like the most like, it's like the slowest one. It's like the last one to the party.

2:23:27

Yeah.

2:24:16

And it's like people on the court.

2:24:16

Yeah.

2:24:17

But in reality it's like guys.

2:24:18

Yeah, I just mean outside of that, like performance things like recovery.

2:24:19

Recovery.

2:24:22

Well, think about this thing about last

2:24:22

year in the playoffs. You had Jason Tatum, Tyler Salbert and Damian Lawler all tear their Achilles. And Adam Silver said we got to start using AI technology to protect our players. Right. Because don't get me wrong, sports science is great, but there's another level to this. Of course you can have your best players, the faces of your league, go down to the most important time where it's the money maker time, which is the playoffs. So hopefully that answers your question. I think that's the next step for. It's more. More for sports medicine and science. And I wouldn't mind a little fourth referee just to clean up some stuff.

2:24:24

Yeah, that makes sense.

2:24:55

How are you? What's your personal biohacking stack? Are you doing anything? How long do you want to live? You thinking like 90? I'm good.

2:24:56

Height extension surgery?

2:25:04

Yeah, right.

2:25:06

I literally put it in my legs there.

2:25:06

No, but for me, I'm very big on peptides. I want to look good for a long time, guys. Okay, all right. I want to look good for a long time. I'm 35. I want to look 25. I want to keep this skin good. I want to keep this jaw chiseled. I want to stay in shape. So I will do. Listen, I'm very. When I look in the mirror, I look in the mirror myself a lot. I want to look good every day. So whatever I need to do, I'm about it. So, yes, I do a little, you know, little for the hair. So, you know, I got to make sure I'm right.

2:25:08

I love it. I'm sure you've traveled all over the world. If there's one city where you could put a new NBA team, where would you put it? Anywhere in the world.

2:25:35

Oh, in the world.

2:25:44

Anywhere in the world.

2:25:44

NBA team.

2:25:45

NBA team.

2:25:46

Is that not a kind of a dumb question?

2:25:48

No, no. This is really dumb question. What do you think? That's the point. Just like it would be exotic, it would be interesting to go play there.

2:25:50

I don't know that's what that I would say. I would say America, Marrakesh. Or I would say, I mean, Dubai has a team right now, but Dubai is so beautiful. Yeah, that's a magical place.

2:25:58

See, dumb question. Interesting answer.

2:26:08

Yeah.

2:26:10

How about how much time you spend in Morocco?

2:26:10

You know, I'll be honest, never been there yet.

2:26:12

You just fix Morocco. This has never been there.

2:26:17

You gotta go, you gotta go.

2:26:19

Caleb Brown goes there every year. He calls me. He's like, titi, you have to come.

2:26:20

He's been invited the last three years.

2:26:23

He's like, titi, you have to come. And then one of the agents that work for our sports agency at Clutch Sports, he's Moroccan. He's like, titi, you have to go. You have to go. It's beautiful, it's magical. So that's why I say Marrakesh. But Dubai spends a lot of time there. That place is magical. They're forward thinking, they love entrepreneurs. They're about what we're about. They're all about. That's what I love.

2:26:24

Morocco is great. Morocco's great. Surf trip.

2:26:42

Oh, wow.

2:26:45

Probably nine years ago now I see

2:26:45

it in the hair.

2:26:48

Yeah, yeah.

2:26:48

There you go. You spent a lot of time in Laguna Malibu. Oh, closer.

2:26:49

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

2:26:54

That's amazing.

2:26:55

What, like, do you think you'll ever get bored with investing?

2:26:56

No, you know, I'm, I'm actually so excited.

2:27:01

That actually does happen. Like there's like generational investors, specifically angel investors, that are doing it for the love of the game and then they just get a little bit tired chasing the next deal. The issue is if you're good, you just get, you get too rich and then you're like, what's the point?

2:27:04

It's the boat. If you get the boat, you'll just be on the boat.

2:27:19

Yeah. You know, it's not about the best. You know, I love talking to people and like these meetings and the calls that I have, you learn so much. Like for instance, like I have a call with a gentleman that's creating a nuclear energy company. I just want to learn, learn about what he's thinking, his thesis, why, what he thinks, where he thinks the world's going. Because I just love the education. Right. It's almost like classes in session. So, of course, yes. Do I like investing? Do I like winning? Of course. Like when I did a hype short, everyone thought I was crazy. Crazy. But now I'm laughing to the bank when I, when I close out my hyper liquid trade. So that's what I was happy about. So I like Being right. But I like, I like the storytelling because I think I, I, I, I bring everything back to team.

2:27:21

Yeah.

2:28:01

And, and everything's a team. You guys are a team. The guy, the gentleman, you guys back here, they got, they love you guys at that. You got a squad here, right? Everything is team oriented. Team sports, team sports. So I love to always hear how, how this team is trying to operate and what they're trying do to accomplish. And if I could come and whether it's capital or whether it's leveraging my resources or intros, I want to do that. Especially if I believe in who you are.

2:28:02

Would you ever, would you ever raise outside capital from other players? Say, hey, I don't want you to. Don't invest 100% of your money, but give me, give me 2% of your next deal. I'll deploy it. And so they can kind of like, you know, get the benefit of everything you've learned.

2:28:23

Well, you know, I've been running a lot of SPVs the last two years and I've had some, some great success. I mean, I just, you know, one thing I'm very bullish on is Prometheus and I just invested in, you know, their last round.

2:28:41

You got the Prometheus allocation?

2:28:53

Yeah, I got the Prometheus allocation. The friends and family, shout out to family, you know, shout out mom. For the, you know, the 17th birthday at Jeff's house, shout out, mom, I love you. So, you know, I definitely allocated Jeff. Yeah, it's beautiful. And God is good to me and I want to give, you know, what I really want to do. I want to give guys the same opportunity. That's also why.

2:28:54

That's what I'm saying.

2:29:11

That's what I'm saying. You work to get to the point where you get that slug.

2:29:11

But yeah, so I think it's like now, instead of keep spv, maybe at some point I might want to, you know, around Q4, maybe start a fund for me and my people and, you know, give guys the opportunity that I have. And it's globally, it's not just in America. You know, it's, you know, yesterday I was sitting with some gentlemen that work with the Qiaoman and they've been really good and they've been very open doors to me and showed me nothing but love and respect. And I love the people of Doha and Qatar. So I want to give the people the opportunity that I have because I think it's about paying it forward and that's about being a real team player and me being A center. I didn't score 20 points a game. I did if you needed me, if Kevin Love was out the game. But you know, for me, I'm getting the low double double. I'm getting the rebounds. Be a star in your role.

2:29:15

Yeah.

2:29:50

And now my role now is pivoting to be, you know, helping my guys that are still got the jerseys on or the young guys or the guys that still were retiring. Give them the access, opportunity to make their money. Make money?

2:29:51

Yeah, yeah.

2:30:01

Give them a head start.

2:30:01

Yeah.

2:30:02

Robotics. You're excited about robotics? What specifically? Humanoids, non humanoids, wheeled stuff?

2:30:03

No, I think you know how, what's your timeline to a humanoid being able to beat you one on one?

2:30:09

So this is the real.

2:30:15

Because like it might be. It might legit be.

2:30:16

Yeah, like touring test, we got the trist.

2:30:19

Well, the day that I go one on one versus a robot, and if I lose, I better make sure I have so much peptides in my shoulders and bices where I can rip it

2:30:22

apart, I better have so much allocation in the robot, that beats me. I better be out in 20%.

2:30:31

If you're making money on the robot that's whooping you, then it's over.

2:30:37

Yeah, but no, my thesis on robotics right now and Jensen Wong said this two years ago, it's about physical AI. And I think robotics is physical AI. Humanoids, I'm not, we're not there yet. I'm not going to sit here and say I would want a robot taking care of my 9, 8 and 3 year old. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying for the physical AI, it's more so whether it's in healthcare, whether it's in one area, like healthcare, agricultural, construction, landscaping, all those areas robots and robotics can help. It's making the owners be more efficient on the business especially. One area I like to touch on is agriculture. Like the farmers, right? Because you know, back in the day, you know, a lot of the, you know, a lot of detractors right now are autonomous. They're doing it on their own. But back in the day you had people, labor, workers doing it. And you know, a lot of these farmers were spending so much time on the labor and missing out on the business growth and opportunity which was killing their margin. So now us using more autonomous, you know, machines and robotics, even like what Jeff's doing with now the packaging, what he's gonna have in Amazon with Prometheus, right? It's not just, you know, the drive the car, the Amazon. No, it's more like the packaging, the arm. So it's more efficient. Which that's what I'm super bullish on. Because I want people to find ways to improve their business and less relying on the manpower. Let us focus on building the business side. And I think one area that I'm very excited about is like the agricultural space, how we can improve that.

2:30:41

Yeah.

2:32:07

Because those farms, they're important to us. People always forget like we're talking about like AI and energy and crops are important.

2:32:07

Yeah.

2:32:14

And there's a labor shortage.

2:32:15

Have you ever started company whatever started

2:32:16

go through yc, run it up.

2:32:18

Oh, like Y Com. I mean, listen, those guys have. Man. You know, one thing I will say on this, guys, I am a capital allocator. So I do believe in a lot of people and I don't mind writing checks. So if there's the right opportunity, maybe one day that create my own accelerator.

2:32:20

Yeah.

2:32:35

I've thought about it as well, you know, especially. Yeah.

2:32:35

Go head to head with Gary Tan.

2:32:38

Yeah.

2:32:40

But, but, but founding the fund is the entrepreneur.

2:32:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:32:43

Or you know, doing, doing a multi. You know how they do multi family offices.

2:32:44

Yeah.

2:32:48

Like do like a multifamily accelerator.

2:32:49

Yeah.

2:32:50

Whereas like you could both put it like 100 in because I know like why come they used to put 250 and then they want like 10% back.

2:32:51

Gary, we.

2:32:56

We busted in half. Okay, 10 and 10.

2:32:57

10 and 10.

2:32:59

Yeah, 10 and 10. And I'll put the 100. You put the 150.

2:33:00

Well, thank you. This is so much fun.

2:33:05

No, no, guys. Thank you guys.

2:33:07

Yes.

2:33:08

No, I love it, man. We're all in the same place. Thank you guys so much.

2:33:09

Super.

2:33:11

Listen, I'm a big fan. Huge fan. Watch you guys daily. I'm so glad we're able to make this work.

2:33:12

This is awesome.

2:33:16

Welcome.

2:33:17

I would love to come back again.

2:33:17

This is electric.

2:33:18

I appreciate it. Thank you guys so much.

2:33:19

We'll talk to you soon.

2:33:20

Yes, sir.

2:33:21

Gentlemen. Thank you guys.

2:33:22

See you.

2:33:23

Much love everybody.

2:33:23

Thank you.

2:33:24

Yes.

2:33:25

Let me tell you about public.com investing for those who take it seriously. Stocks, options, bonds, crypto treasuries and more with great customer service. And we are back to back with two guests in the TVP and Ultra Dome. Finally, the men. The men. 11 we. We got shirts follow the new logo

2:33:26

as of this morning.

2:33:50

I like it. Very nice. Well, walk me through the logo design. Well, first introduce yourself.

2:33:50

Electrician just gave our pitch, by the way.

2:33:55

Yeah, yeah. You guys, you guys must be co investors. Yeah.

2:33:56

Welcome to the show.

2:34:01

I'm sure we got a Castilian shirt.

2:34:02

We got a Castilian shirt company.

2:34:04

Tear Neros as well.

2:34:07

I like the Neros orange.

2:34:09

I didn't realize that they were, they were verticalizing orange. It's a good color. Anyway, sorry. Introduction, names, titles, everything, quickly and then we'll go into it.

2:34:11

Ian Rountree, founder and general partner at Kantos.

2:34:20

Yeah, Glad to be joined by Grant, a partner at Kantos.

2:34:23

Fantastic. When did you guys get started investing?

2:34:27

10 years ago. 10 years ago. Almost exactly.

2:34:29

Overnight success. And the latest, the newest fund, take us through it.

2:34:32

New fund we just announced is 70 million. Last one was 50. We kept it.

2:34:37

It's even louder.

2:34:47

It feels even better than I expected it to.

2:34:48

You feel it in your bones. Feel it in your bones. First of all, did you ever, did you ever consider Roundtree Capital? Because you got Sequoia, you got the Green Oaks. Like there's already a long lineage of iconic firms that are sort of tree related or themed.

2:34:51

Not for a second, no.

2:35:07

Where's the name come from? Where's the logo come from?

2:35:10

I want to know about the new logo. So I named the term Kantos because the chapters of an epic poem are Kantos. I always thought we're drawn to startups, these missions that are greater than ourselves because we want to be part of some grander story. And I think of founders as, as the modern day hero and the startup as the epic. And I had these delusions of associated grandeur that I might partner with people who like, change the world in a way that's remembered in story and song.

2:35:12

What was the strategy early on? Were you trying to lead rounds? Were you going very early stages? Whatever would work.

2:35:46

The strategy was write checks into startups.

2:35:54

Okay.

2:35:57

Just get allocation good companies. Got it.

2:35:57

Okay.

2:35:59

Yeah.

2:36:00

I wish I called Fund one, Fund zero because it really was just like lessons cobbled together.

2:36:00

Four million.

2:36:04

Writing tiny checks, just trying to learn.

2:36:05

Four million.

2:36:07

Wow.

2:36:08

What a start. That's amazing. Yeah, I feel like, yeah, the lessons there probably. There's. Some people would probably be better off if they'd started with 4 million because it really is a constraint. But that breeds ingenuity, I'm sure.

2:36:08

Well, I also was like, I was early at Sofi. Crazy to go to the U.S. men's opener at Sofi Stadium, by the way. That was surreal because I joined them and they were like 20 people.

2:36:22

Yeah.

2:36:32

And just started getting that deal. I think it's like 20 million a year for 20 years or 400 million to just get the name. I think they bought it.

2:36:32

What percentage of market cap is that?

2:36:40

I think aren't they on? Aren't they on a rip? You probably sold a long time ago.

2:36:42

I did. Unfortunately,

2:36:45

It's only a $23 billion stock.

2:36:52

Yeah, but I mean, that's a perk of being in the private market.

2:36:55

I sold secondary to Silver Lake, I think in the Series D maybe, but that helped me get Kytos off the ground.

2:36:59

So fund zero, fund one. Whatever the right tool for the job is, whatever the right deal is, you'll get in as long as it's a good company. How rigid are you today? Do you want to be specific? First money in seed Series A. Do you want to take a certain ownership percentage? What guardrails do you have, if any?

2:37:07

We feel like the constraints breed creativity in a way. You want to be focused enough that you signal to the market what you do. And we kept the fund relatively small because we want to be able to look a founder in the eye when we write a 1.5 million dollar check. And me and Grant and me, our principal can look a founder in the eye and say, your company at this stage is a meaningful percentage of my

2:37:34

network is important to you.

2:37:55

And if you get too big, you can't really say that.

2:37:56

Yeah. When I think about the names like Nero's, Castilian, there's a bunch of others like the 70 million feels like very intentional about. We want to actually just keep doing

2:37:58

what what we're doing. Totally. That said, a lot of the best investments look like exceptions. You need to know when to bend. And Grant led Kastnellian seed round when he was at entrees in. The first thing he said when he joined Kantos was, hey, I know they're

2:38:10

about to raise a big Series A. Let's do it.

2:38:25

That makes sense. The logo, the new logo. What's the etymology?

2:38:30

So this is a quill.

2:38:35

Yeah.

2:38:37

We also like that it implies a vector.

2:38:39

Sure.

2:38:41

We talk a lot about tempo, speed, velocity. Really matter for a startup because time compounds just like money.

2:38:42

Sure.

2:38:49

And I like that it looks like a diving peregrine falcon or something.

2:38:50

Yeah, dude, I was just watching videos about a peregrine falcon.

2:38:54

This is what you do in your

2:38:59

free time with my 4 year old.

2:39:00

Fastest creature.

2:39:02

Fastest creature on earth. And they are. And they may, when they die, incredibly violent. Like they just go after other birds. Like literally. They're like a missile.

2:39:03

Sounds like some of the founders.

2:39:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Peregrine falcons.

2:39:15

State of defense tech. We were talking about this. Are we. Are we past peak Defense tech in terms of, not in terms of the size of the companies, but in terms of the rate of formation. It feels like post Anduril awareness, there was a boom. There were a lot of founders that came into the category from other areas, experience from SpaceX, et cetera. But is it picking up still or

2:39:18

you guys have the blessing of like, you're in Neros, you're in Castilian, you're not like, oh, we need our drone,

2:39:45

we need to find more.

2:39:50

Yeah.

2:39:51

And a lot of founders, a lot of would be founders if they're at like Boeing and they're bored and they want to do something more exciting, like they could go work at near us, you know, like there are so many options now if you want to go have an impact at the early stage, broadly, that you might not need to start a company. But what are you seeing on the ground?

2:39:52

One of the ways we look at these, like the cinematic universe here, broadly, is go down like the top 100 companies by market cap. And as soon as you start to not recognize the names, it turns out that those industries are super big and massive. Defense was one of the ones that now there's enough people like Anduril volunteer that paved the way and people are realizing that the venture scale outcomes. But one of the amazing things about Kantos, when I was at Andreessen was just observing how Ian and the team were able to find these categories that people still didn't feel comfortable about. I mean, Tristan's talking about ag, right? Like 10 years ago, people were like, oh, let's do ag tech. And everyone's like, it's a horrible place, you're never going to make money. And then, you know, we turn around a few years later and Kantos is leading the seed round for Shinke.

2:40:09

Yeah.

2:40:56

And it's like fish killing robots. That's really weird. Yeah.

2:40:57

I think it was the pre seed. Weren't you guys in the pre seed or what are you.

2:41:02

It was a small seed by standards.

2:41:05

Yeah. There's some crazy ag tech things we had the founder of the laser weeder on.

2:41:09

Oh yeah, no, I. Yeah, there. There's a bunch of cool things.

2:41:12

Have you heard about this? No, it's a. It's a tractor. But everyone's worried about pesticides. Very obvious solution is just fire a laser at the exact weed. So you just burn it. No one has a problem with like having a burnt weed next to your tomato. So it's fully no pesticide free. And it's just something that's you obviously, like you can back of the envelope. How that's built very quickly. But it's. But it's enabled by computer vision and small actuators that can adjust where the laser's going. And there's a whole bunch of somewhat commodity technologies that are just put together in this very interesting way. Creates a great product.

2:41:16

Yeah, it's how you package it.

2:41:51

Exactly.

2:41:52

That's one of the lessons when I got into deep tech is like technology is not inherently valuable in and of itself. It's valuable insofar as it solves a problem and creates value in the world. And if you're better at packaging things that are off the shelf in a novel way and contextualize that in a business that makes money, that's a lot more interesting than like, oh, I did my PhD in this crazy thing and it sounds really cool. How do I sell this?

2:41:52

By the way, where do you see yourself punching the hardest in terms of value add? Like you're making investments in a way that you are. Are an important voice around the table to the founders. That's clear. But are they coming to you with go to market consultation or hiring or strategy or marketing? Like, where do you feel like you're. If a founder calls you about a particular problem, you're excited to talk about it, as opposed to saying like, oh, this is kind of new. I can help as much as I can.

2:42:19

But yeah, I mean, there's all the, like when I'm fundraising next, oh, sure, sure, sure. In house bank or whatever. Relationships. And we have very high hit rate there, like, you know, over 90% success rate and getting your next round.

2:42:51

And that's. And that's actually. And that's an advantage of being a $70 million fund is that there's no signal to like, yeah, I'm actually not doing the $100 million around. It's like, yeah, the other, I think

2:43:04

the other thing that's different about Kantos and maybe we talk about like, you know, joining from injuries and going here. Like, I think one of the things is really clear about Ian and the team was they're so concentrated.

2:43:14

Yeah.

2:43:25

And so, yes, we don't have the follow on signaling dynamic here, but we also, when we go to another firm and say we think this company is amazing, they're going to take it that much more seriously. And also because we're concentrated, we can just devote more time to our relationships here. So we have a lot more context on any company in our portfolio, probably than the rest of the entire cap table. And you know, there are times when Founders don't want us to be involved because they're busy and they're crushing. But most often early on you need a lot of help. And that's where I think like we've just, they've been doing this for 10 years. I've been doing a good amount of time too. Like we have enough pattern matching. And I think the other thing too is for these categories, like I'm fired up that everyone's coming in to the cinematic universe here. But also not a lot of people I think have like as strong opinions for how to build a company or what types of founders you need to have. And I think with the lessons here, we can package a lot of that and have this cross pollination between the portfolio companies. That's pretty distinguished and helps out a lot.

2:43:26

But a lot of times the founder, they have the intuition, they know what they need to do deep down, they kind of just need to hear from someone they trust that like.

2:44:26

Yep.

2:44:35

Like when we invested in Chike, right. They were still licensing robots to fish farms.

2:44:36

That's right.

2:44:41

And they kind of dabbled in selling fish, having their own brand, but they weren't capitalized well enough to go do that. And so we stepped in, we were like, hey, why aren't you doing that thing anymore? And safe was like, honestly?

2:44:42

Because everyone's saying no.

2:44:52

Yeah.

2:44:54

We were like, that's absolutely what we should do. And it was like we had given water to a man in the desert. He wanted to do it, he knew he needed to do it. The other investors were being more coy about it and we were like, no, let's go direct man. Like, use your own robots, don't sell

2:44:55

them, just sell better fish with those super vertically integrated. It's great. Where's the office? Do you have an office here?

2:45:09

I'm in San Francisco.

2:45:17

I'm in la.

2:45:18

If you could open an office anywhere in the world, where would it be? No Post la and then maybe there's a boom in Austin. Where's the next, next boom for entrepreneurial talent, hard tech, defense tech.

2:45:19

Where's interest has been good to us? Texas investors in Solen and Venus Aerospace in Houston, Resurgent Industries in Austin. More recently there's. There's a couple of CEOs that live there as well in the portfolio.

2:45:34

We're going to see a bunch of these states though start to be really compelling. Like Louisiana is so strong in many ways because Tesla and SpaceX. Yeah, Austin, starting to get that with a bunch of, of other companies there. What we're also seeing Those so many companies were started in the Gundo, they kind of graduate to Torrance or Hawthorne, but then eventually Castellan, for example, they're not going to be able to test their missiles in L. A obviously. That'd be terrifying. And so a lot of these companies graduate radiant. Same thing for nuclear.

2:45:46

Many times you meet a Gundo founder and you're like, don't test your product.

2:46:13

Don't do it here.

2:46:17

You can do it somewhere nearby. We're, we're not too, not far enough away for me to feel comfortable.

2:46:18

You start the Gundo or maybe you start somewhere else. You move to the Gundo Series A, you move to Torrance and then you start building a factory in Texas.

2:46:23

In Texas. Tennessee.

2:46:30

Tennessee.

2:46:31

Tennessee.

2:46:32

I think you'll probably see we've seen a number of companies out of Seattle because a lot of the Starlink team is there.

2:46:34

Oh, interesting.

2:46:40

And like within SpaceX, that's a crack team.

2:46:40

Yeah, that's right.

2:46:43

So you'll see people that probably want

2:46:44

to stay Avalanche, the fusion companies up there and there's been a few others that we've talked about.

2:46:46

The lumber manufacturer.

2:46:50

What is, what is great look from an R and D cycle or an execution standpoint. Because like it really just feels like there's such a. Like on TVPN we're 90% of the time we're having founders, 95% of the time we're having founders on that are like actually like shipping and making like really meaningful progress. And then there's like the 5% of hard tech founders. Some of them raise a lot of money and we're sort of curious but are not really shipping. And that's kind of like, that's people. People. A lot of people have been burned by companies like that over the years where it's like cool idea, deep tech. And then they just don't, they keep raising money but don't ever make anything. Don't ever get like real contact with the market. Maybe like quantum related companies.

2:46:51

There's different types, there's different classes. Companies like we have some that like we put out a deck last year on what we're calling like the state of adventure capital. Yeah, delayed.

2:47:40

Delayed.

2:47:50

But it's, it's like 286 slides and there's a chunk in there that talks about like how deep is the deep tech company.

2:47:51

Sure.

2:47:58

And you know, if you're doing Quantum or like fusion, that's going to take a long time. The time to revenue is long. Capex, whatever. I think the companies that we like are higher up in that score where the time to iteration is really fast, you want to build, break and iterate. And I think what a lot of people got wrong in prior hardware eras is they just assumed, yes, you only get a few shots on goal. You have to be really deliberate. Sniper shot it out. You can't spray and prey your way to greatness here, but that doesn't mean that you can still not test quickly. If you look at Neros, if you look at Shinke, Castellan, all of them are like constantly in the field, fielding their systems, seeing what's working, what isn't. And they know early on that those are not going to be the best ways. But the most expensive part in building in hardware by far are the people. It's not the hardware. And you hear Elon talk about this all the time. The cost of starshield and Starship and all these systems there, in the grand scheme isn't a lot. It's the hours of labor that go into it. And so the sooner that you test out and see what breaks and refine it, I think the better off. I think we're seeing a bunch more founders that have appreciated this, that have learned it at Space X or in other places now, and they're coming out and doing a lot more. But, you know, I think there's like the other challenge here is a lot of people that are coming in and are excited to make a bet in defense or energy or what have you. They, I think, are missing that way of evaluating companies and their ability to test quickly.

2:47:59

You have to get on the learning

2:49:26

curve as soon as possible.

2:49:27

You can't sit in a lab. You need to field technology. And we find that getting back to tempo vector speed, we find that if we're diligencing a company in a week, I used to think, oh, that's not

2:49:29

a lot of time.

2:49:42

Of course they won't have made progress, but we've backed so many people now that a week to them is like a month, month to everybody else. And they'll just blow your mind with how quickly they move. And if you don't, again, that compounds. If you don't get that feeling in a week, you're not going to get it in a month. A quarter, a year, all of a sudden a decade, you know, is a lot shorter than it used to be.

2:49:42

Are you feeling the pull of the AI vortex? It feels like we're seeing like, Like.

2:50:04

No, not at all. No, I didn't notice it.

2:50:10

No, it feels like. It feels like we've seen a number of hard tech companies sort of of pivot or expand into AI related projects.

2:50:11

Boom.

2:50:20

Supersonic like Castilian. I can imagine that somebody's going to try and figure out how to bolt that thing to the ground. Yeah, I'm sure wind up being like security for AI data centers or something. Obviously they have fantastic businesses but like are there examples or like how do you negotiate or what do you, what do you say to a founder who's saying like yeah, we have a, we have a 6 out of 10 market right now. It's going to be a couple years. But I got an interesting call from a Neo cloud and they think that they could put our thing to work.

2:50:20

We were having this conversation recently we made, we've made a general robotics investment that's still in stealth. We're really excited about it and it will be general but again we want to get on the learning curve. Ideally we want to commercialize as quickly as possible and we're thinking about where do you start? And we're just throwing spaghetti at the wall. And one of the ideas was like should we start a car wash? You know, have these like robot arms wash your car for you?

2:50:52

I love it.

2:51:14

And then we're like but you're sneaky good businesses.

2:51:14

No, no.

2:51:17

Business also extremely fragmented. I don't think they've been rolled up. And with self driving cars the waymos they'll need to go somewhere. Why match it?

2:51:18

But you know who has a lot more money? Maybe data centers could use some of the two. It seems like a pretty obvious answer. I think there will be a lot of technologies that can ride that wave. When I first invested in Radiant we were talking about military applications.

2:51:25

Totally.

2:51:40

And the behind the meter application for data centers is not even really on the radar.

2:51:40

Yeah. I interviewed Doug a couple of years ago and I was like so like you're going to get calls. And he's like we really like the idea of going to Mars and stuff. And I'm like you'll get there. Yeah, but you're going to power some mail stuff.

2:51:44

First we got hand, all the energy companies got handed a huge gift.

2:51:58

It's great.

2:52:01

We had no growth in the grid.

2:52:02

Yeah, nothing.

2:52:04

30 years. Now all of a sudden there's these

2:52:05

like niche applications like oil and gas exploration, stranded energy and stuff. And now it's just like, yeah, there's obvious, obvious demand and it's gonna be so much easier for these folks. And then all the technology will get commoditized and it'll go everywhere and it'll be Great.

2:52:07

And you'll still get what's, what's the state of IP coming out of like universities today? Is that a pipeline of gradually.

2:52:18

We have a no PhD policy at Kantos. I learned this the hard way really. I mean There are some PhDs that are like the salt agent guys like John Gedmark at Astranis who are very business minded but if you find someone who's trying to commercialize their doctoral thesis, you've got this hammer. You're looking for nails that like hardly ever works. You're also trained exactly the wrong way when you're defending your thesis. It's all caveats and what could go wrong and you get dinged if you over promise.

2:52:29

It's like the old school way of thinking about hardware. It's like east coast mindset of we're going to sit in an ivory tower. Think about all the ways that this could make a lot of impact as opposed to just hey, we're just going to like Shinke is just going to put the, the robot on fishing boat and see what breaks and turns out

2:53:01

I'll have to put the robot on.

2:53:16

Yeah, let's do it.

2:53:18

Yeah, you'll find like you know the

2:53:19

SpaceX put the gun on the truck.

2:53:21

Where are you doing this by the way?

2:53:24

No, this is John's like bit on a Allen control system. He's like oh, the gun on the truck company.

2:53:26

But they failed to consider that there's a YC company that's just gone on the ground.

2:53:32

Oh yeah, nine mothers.

2:53:36

Yeah, nine mothers.

2:53:37

Multiple use cases.

2:53:40

Gone on everything I suppose. Anyway, congratulations on the fund. Congratulations on.

2:53:42

Yeah, yeah. A decade in decades to go. That's the idea.

2:53:46

You know if you look at our website, Cantos vc, we have these plaques and sort of our version of Trajan's column because we aspire to back people whose companies will be engraved in stone and metal in a thousand years. And if that's not you, you don't email us. I love it.

2:53:52

I love it.

2:54:09

Know who your know who your your customers are. Hit the gong for us. I want you to take it for a spin.

2:54:10

Yeah, take this. This guy's big. Whack that thing back.

2:54:16

Interesting.

2:54:20

Thank you for watching TVPN. We'll be back tomorrow at 11am Pacific.

2:54:24

Oh, hang out with us. We'll close it out.

2:54:27

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2:54:29