Palmer Luckey LIVE from NYSE, Supreme Court Smackdown, Data Center Backlash | Ryan Petersen, Jonathan Gould, Diogo Mónica, Joe Lonsdale, John Shahidi, Will Bruey, Sam Levenback, Alex Heath

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And that's the linear lineup. We got Ryan Peterson joining in just a second. It's Friday, February 20th, 2026. We are live from TVP and Ultron, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Let's pull up the linear lineup. But first let me tell you about ramp.com, time is money save, both easy use, corporate cards, bill pay, accounting and a whole lot more all in one place. And on the linear lineup we have absolutely stacked show. We got Ryan Peterson joining emergency call in about the tariffs. The then we're gonna have Paul Merlucki joining breaking it down. What's happening with Erebor? The bank received the charter, he's officially a charter holder. And we have a bunch of other folks who are involved with him in the Erebor project that we're very excited to talk to. Joe Lonsdale's joining Will Brewey. Sam, Alex Heath is joining in person from sources. You've been seeing his scoops all over the timeline this week and we are very excited to talk to him about that. Linear of course is the system for modern software development. 70% of enterprise workspaces on LINEAR are using agents and should be too. So the tariff news. Let's bring in Ryan Peterson from the restream waiting room. Ryan, how are you doing?

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Look at that.

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Confused.

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I'm great.

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I think I'm great.

1:12

Look at that smile. You haven't smiled like that on the show.

1:15

And we've had some dark times. We made it through.

1:17

We'll see, we'll see. I was at. You know what, I love you guys so much that I actually dropped from watching the President's news conference.

1:20

This is the real story.

1:29

There were some all time quotes. We were prepping the show but Tyler on our team was sending over quotes to me in real time. One of them was quote from Trump, I want to be a good boy. And then later he said I want to kiss you so badly. In some other crimes it's that.

1:31

Who was he talking to?

1:46

I don't know.

1:47

I think he was talking about somebody was saying that to him.

1:48

Okay, well take us through what have you seen, what's actually the news, what happened and how have you been processed? Processing it.

1:52

Yeah. So the, the Supreme Court ruled that the tariffs, the AIPA tariffs, that's not all the tariffs. There are sections 1 tariffs, there are fentanyl tariffs, there's a, there's a bunch of other types of terrorists. But IIPA is the reciprocal tariffs. You may remember Them from they were applied to the penguin island.

2:01

Oh yeah.

2:18

Most annoying is the kind of the global sweeping tariffs. Those have been overturned. However, the Supreme Court did not give any clarity. And Trump is right to point this out. It's really dumb about do we get refunds or not? I think they said $175 billion.

2:20

Yeah.

2:37

That would be owed in refunds. So that is the giant $75 billion question. What happens all that money that people paid over the last year.

2:37

Yeah.

2:45

What? How like, is there a meaningful percentage of those potential refunds that people purchase the right to like? Is it because I know, I know you know, over the last.

2:45

I wouldn't call it a meaningful percentage, but I probably, I have to guess there was probably 50 or $100 million worth of those would be my swag. I don't have data on it.

2:57

Okay.

3:07

Yeah, that's pretty small.

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It wasn't like 5 million put $100 million into that.

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You feel like, yeah, you do really well. But yeah, I mean I was thinking about through my own experience in E commerce, I was running the numbers and I was like, I think the company might get like a couple back over the next. But depending on how it's applied. But we were far too small to actually get at least that I received any inbound interest to buy those credits back in the day because we're very small.

3:12

The people that were transacting that, it was mostly Oppenheimer, the investment bank. They were minimum $10 million transaction or they weren't interested.

3:36

Yeah, that makes sense.

3:44

But by the way, Plug Flexport built the tariff refund calculator. So go to tariffs.flexport.com tariffs.flexport. head over there, slash refunds or just click the refund calculator button right there and. Or go to the homepage. We've got it on the top now it's free money. And well, for now it is just.

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It's free money that you already

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paid this money. And it's a. We made this very simple process for you. You have to go to the government website, they'll give you a CSV file, upload that there. We will run all the numbers calculated for you instantly and show you is how much you are owed. And it's a giant if right now, if the administration agrees to do refunds. He was very clear in the press conference just now that because the administrator, because the Supreme Court did not have a firm opinion about refunds that there will be no refunds for the next five years as it goes into litigation. So this is going to be a fight. It was very interesting because that's counter to what CBP has said in the past or earlier this. Well, end of last year, CPP said they would comply with whatever finding is, whatever the court says. If the court rules that the tariffs were illegal, that they would issue a refund. So. And that's in court filing. So it's going to. If it gets litigated. Yeah, we'll see how this plays out. But we. In the meantime, we've got the best calculator in the world. And by the way, trade attorneys have told us they're Planning to charge 15% to get you a refund to get a, you know, get your money back. We've got an automated process. So I intend to do that for much, much, much less.

4:10

That's great.

5:23

That's great.

5:24

That's great. Zooming out how. I mean, 2025 was obviously a very rocky year on the trade front. But how were you processing just the overall economic picture? There were so many different statistics like health of the consumer, health of small businesses. Like, how did you feel like 2025 went? As you look back on it now,

5:24

I'm not like the macroeconomics expert in the world. You got the stock market great if the people who own stocks did really well. The Mag 7, I guess, drove most of that. So I think small business really suffered last year. The E Comm businesses, like something like 40% of Shopify merchants were doing fulfillment from overseas and therefore using de minimis.

5:50

Yeah.

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And paying any duties. And so all those people just got hit with like this huge new disruption. And terrorists. I think a lot of them are under intense stress. It's a lot of our customers going through that. I was on your show last year. I talked about a fraud that we're seeing.

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Oh yeah.

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Stacks are against the wall and are just starting to let their factories import goods. Actually, those people are the most apt by this because if there are refunds, it goes to their factory, not to them. Cheaters get effed.

6:27

You know, that's funny. Yeah. What about the location of factories? I had this thesis that like, even if the tariffs didn't hold, just the fact that there was this like, oh, wow moment for at least one quarter meant that there was a whole cycle of board meetings where anyone who was on the fence about maybe we should finally pull the trigger on that American factory, like they might have done it then. And then that decision stuck sticks. Even if the tariffs get rolled back because in that moment they made the decision sort of like how during COVID people like decided to start working from home and then it took like two years for them to get back in the office. Like you could see people saying, like, I'm going to reshore my operation a little bit. And some of that, some portion of that's going to be sticky even in a low tariff regime.

6:40

Yeah, you know, I haven't seen the manufacturer statistics. I think manufacturing is going to, is growing in the United States pretty quickly. I'm sure tariffs are helping with that, but it's. They're so unevenly applied. I mean, one of the silly things about the way tariffs are done and they put new tariffs in today that I think are a better tariff policy. You know, I'm not. I'm famously anti terrorist, but my business bad for my customers. But if you are just looking at it from a. What's your goal as a president who says he wants to boost manufacturing? It's better to have a blanket tariff on everybody than just target one country. And the reason for that is tariffs are equivalent mathematically to an exchange rate, like a fixed exchange rate with another country. And you would never have a bilateral exchange rate. You can't say, hey, the United States is going to trade with the renminbi Chinese currency at 6 to 1. But we'll let the other ones, we'll do the other ones at a different ratio because obviously the money will just flow around. And that's what happens with cargo too. It's like, okay, cool, let's say the Americans, we're putting this tariff in. So we, instead of buying from China, we buy from Peru. Now the Peruvians have more money. What do they do? They buy stuff from China. Like, it ends up in the exact same place. Whereas a blanket tariff, it's like, okay, this is helping make American goods more competitive versus foreign goods, no matter where they're from. So I think from a policy standpoint, it's better.

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What's the, what's the legal justification for this new round of tariffs that just got announced? These were, this was a type of tariff that the Supreme Court didn't rule against today. So he's like, we'll just ramp that up.

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These ones are, it's called section 122. And under section 122, it's very clear that the President has statutory authority. It has a 15% maximum. He only did 10%, so he's got some cushion. I would expect him to get mad at somebody and raise it to 15 at some point. That would be one of my predictions in the near future give him a little cushion to go upwards later. Then second is it has a maximum of 150 days that it can impose this. Now, what I predict is I haven't done the math, but 140, 950 days from now, I think that section 122 will experience a pause of around 15 minutes and then you'll have another 150 days where it goes right back in. And there's nothing that says you can't do that. You could do that in perpetuity, but it would only be a 15% maximum and I have to double check. But I'm pretty sure that has to be imposed equally on everybody. And it's because of a balance of trade to go reread the statute now that 120 is the term today, but it's because of balance of trade that that act was put in by Congress.

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Very interesting.

10:11

What do business owners, executive teams do? How like any kind of like new approach going forward with today's news, or is it still kind of steady state, like, we don't know what's going to happen?

10:13

Well, on some of this stuff, you know, all we have right now is a news conference. So first off, when you see an executive order which is expected to come out on Monday, and you'll have a little bit more clarity there, we're advising customers in this situation to let's not clear customs today. Let's hold your entries until Monday when the rates are presumably lower. And so that would be the first step is make sure your customers, at least you save one day worth. We are, I think you want to get into again, I'll plug myself, go to the tariff calculator, see what you're owed, get into a process to go start filing. Whether it's protest or. We're still waiting for clarity here, of course, but file a protest. You might have to file a lawsuit. I'm hoping not file a protest against tariffs. That, you know, the government said this is illegal, so how can they take my money, owe it back? There's going to be various ways to fight that. I think hopefully it's not a lawsuit.

10:28

Would it really be a bunch of individual lawsuits or would it be a class action as a class action?

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Costco filed one. A lot of people have been filing them preemptively in this. So it's already kind of going to work its way through the courts. But the CBP was very clear. Okay, so there was this lawsuit by Costco, the retailer that said, you know, said, hey, this is an illegal tariffs. If the government rules that if the Supreme Court rules that these are illegal, you must give me the money back. And the court declined to put in an injunction to force the government to stop charging tariffs while they wait. While we wait for the Supreme Court. And the reason that they didn't put in that injunction is that the CBP said we were. If the tariffs are ruled illegal, we will issue refunds. Or at least they said there is. Oh, man. What was the legal term? It's sort of like these are. They are refundable or something. Which is interesting because you're like, well, you know, I break my arm. It is fixable. Doesn't mean I'm going to fix it. I could just leave it broken. I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm just trying to. This is all happening very quickly. I'm trying to learn this morning exactly how it's going to play out.

11:27

Yeah. Who are the biggest companies that are affected by tariffs? I jumped to Nike, Apple, I imagine

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it's an hour poll, get a full carve out.

12:43

That's what I think. So, like, who is actually the biggest voice?

12:45

Semiconductors and iPhones, I think managed to get it carved out. Probably Walmart is number one.

12:49

Walmart, okay. Yeah.

12:52

Which is insane because our intern made an iPhone in America when the Paris first came around. Pull it up, Tyler. Yeah, he put it together in a day. I don't know if you can see it.

12:54

Yeah, it works flawlessly. Does it turn on? Not yet.

13:05

Oh, you got great interns over there.

13:11

Fantastic. Yeah, we're going to reshore the entire semiconductor supply chain soon anyway. Anything else, Jordy?

13:13

No, this is great. Thank you for jumping on.

13:20

Thanks so much for jumping on us.

13:22

I really do hope for every Flexport customer and every business that is impacted by this that we can get some real clarity soon. I'm sure we want to.

13:24

I should end with a reminder for all. If you do get a unplanned support prize, gigantic refund check. Remember that most lottery winners end up bankrupt.

13:35

So don't spend it. Yeah.

13:45

To your shareholders, pay your employees less bonus. But if you go. If you go buy a bunch of inventory, of course that'd be good for me. That's why you can trust this. Because I would prefer you spend it on inventory and ship it with us. But better for you to save your money. Don't waste it.

13:49

Good call. Well, thank you for coming on along with the ferry building behind you and

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the Port of Oakland back there.

14:08

You can see it in the deep

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distance that's great to have you both on.

14:11

Thanks so much. I'll talk to you soon.

14:14

Talk soon, Ryan.

14:15

Cheers.

14:15

Let me tell you about Okta. Okta helps you assign every AI agent a trusted identity so you get the power of AI without the risk. Secure every agent, secure any agent. And I'm also going to tell you about FIN AI, the number one AI agent for customer service. If you want AI to handle your customer support, go to FIN AI. So this story is obviously still developing. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his dissent the court's decision is likely to generate other serious practical consequences in the near term. One issue will be refunds. We'll certainly be following this. I'm sure we'll know more on Monday, but I think we are up to speed at the very least on what has happened. And a little reminder that Ryan Peterson is an is a fantastic aficionado of office decor and shared a picture of a startup he visited that has two portraits on the wall that we'll have to pull up in section B. Because what office deck is on the wall? Who's on the wall? That's the thing. We should have asked him. I don't think anyone knows. But in the timeline on section B, There we go. You see none other than Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison painted very clearly not AI generated. This is a decade ago. Is that Chris Saka? It looks sort of like him.

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That does look like.

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Am I crazy? I don't know.

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Hard to tell.

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But people are guessing in the background. Yeah, someone else said, is Saka, is that you? And then someone said, no, it's Larry Ellison. And yeah, that's not what they're asking. Anyway, software.

15:43

Moving on. Charlie Kratovil says we won. No data center and they have to build a park.

15:58

Yes.

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This got 3 million views. 222,000.

16:06

That ratio is crazy, right? Yeah, crazy ratio.

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Gary Tan responds and says a fully built 1 GW data center complex generates around $31 million per year in state taxes and 61 million per year in local taxes from Data center operations. Al Also, it creates roughly 430 direct jobs at the facility itself, plus many more indirect and construction phase jobs. So nearly $100 million a year in local taxes based on this analysis by the Consumer Energy Alliance. So maybe these data centers need to be leading with that more. Think about how many parks you can build over. Think about how many roads you can repair.

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Yeah.

16:51

New building schools that you'll be able to build.

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Yeah.

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Locally, if you have one of these, there's not the. You know, we've talked about this at length, but it's understandable that citizens will be like, I don't need the data center in my backyard to use ChatGPT, so why would I want it? But if you're going to have, you know, nearly nine figures in. In local and state taxes that you

16:55

can direct, there is another solution here. You could build a jungle gym that has GPUs embedded in the slides and in the swings. And so you get a little.

17:13

You know, those ro. Slide.

17:22

Yes, yes.

17:24

So if those were.

17:24

Generates electricity. Oh, yeah, I know. I'm thinking what you're thinking. Of course. Put the kids to work if they're swinging. I want to capture that electricity and turn it into tokens.

17:25

And Regi James, creative director of General Catalyst and friend of the show, says, you mean to tell me the meme of creating a permanent underclass hasn't been winning the hearts and minds of the public? Shocking. Yeah, Very good point. Let's pull up this video because it's a pretty wild reaction. Let's get sound. This is started back at the beginning.

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They canceled it.

17:57

Wow.

17:59

They canceled it.

18:00

It's like the little Yachty. Little yachty.

18:05

Yeah, it is the little Yachty walkout.

18:07

The People United.

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They got a soundboard.

18:23

It does seem like they do keep chanting. Your Netflix recommendations just got 0.1% less accurate. New Jersey.

18:24

They actually have a live band.

18:38

Yeah. It's interesting because the pushback against data centers, it really is this meme of creating a permanent underclass, like that type of thing, because I would be so much more expecting of this pushback if it was like, oh, well, we know that living next to a data center is dangerous for your health. That is not the meme. The meme is, maybe your power rates will go up, but it's sort of unclear. And they might offset that. They're sort of ugly, but they're not the biggest, craziest thing that you could put there. It really is just about like, I don't like what it produces abstractly, and so I don't want the concrete.

18:44

I don't like what it stands for.

19:23

Yeah, exactly. I don't like what it stands for, which is. Which is just. It's a little bit different than, I think a lot of people says data

19:24

centers filling up Northern Virginia is super annoying and ugly. There are 600 now.

19:32

They got to make them look better. They got to make them look better.

19:37

Yeah. Okay, so you were joking about the

19:39

jungle gym, but there is that.

19:41

You've probably seen it, there's in Denmark. There's the ski hill. That's on top of the power plant.

19:42

Wait, really?

19:46

Have you seen that?

19:47

No, I haven't seen that. I thought you were going to mention the. Have you seen the stealthy cell phone towers? So there are cell phone towers all over Los Angeles that are dressed up like trees.

19:47

Yeah, they always get me.

19:57

They always get me.

19:59

You can never tell. Kidding. Of course you can tell from very far away.

19:59

They do sort of like fade into the background and you don't notice them as much as full on crazy cell tower in your face. While Tyler pulls up an image of that ski data center. Let me tell you about phantom cash. Fund your wallet without exchanges or middlemen and spend with the phantom cloud. And let me also tell you about Lambda. We have a great Lambda lightning round coming up. Lambda is the super intelligence cloud. Building AI supercomputers for training and inference that scale from one GPU to hundreds of thousands. Lots of pushback. Let's see. AI folks have about four months to pull a cure for cancer out of the Layton space before we drift into Butlerian jihad attractor basin.

20:03

Yeah, Jihad.

20:44

Butlerian jihad is from Dune. They don't want computers, so they use Spice and they travel around that way. Yeah, it's really popular. I mean we talked to Sagar and Jetty about this. It's bipartisan. It's very, very broad support against data center build out. And there doesn't seem to be anything that's pushing back against it. And I was thinking more about the cure for cancer thing because Microsoft Excel has been useful in medicine. You use Microsoft Excel to catalog how patients are doing, track a bunch of blood work, create a correlation. Okay, these people got placebos. These people got the real cancer treatment. Now we know for sure. And it just sped it up a little bit. You could have done it on paper, but doing it in Excel probably move things forward just a notch. You got the cancer cure like a couple months earlier, a little bit cheaper, a little bit faster. And that sort of like diffusion story is ridiculously unsexy. Like it's not attractive at all. No one, no one wants to talk about. I had this riff.

20:47

People want one simple trick.

21:57

Yeah, I had this riff for a while that the debt markets were critical in the space race. Like you actually do need to finance rocketry with debt. You need efficient capital markets to build rockets. But everyone likes to look at rockets. No one wants to look at debt covenants. And so rocket engineers get all the credit, when in fact some of the credit does in fact belong to the financiers that make, you know, large, large scale industrial projects possible. People, you know, love the bridge, but they don't think about the financiers that make it possible. But as. As silly as that sounds like it really is an important step in the chain. And AI, it might be that more than like the magical, you know, cure for cancer that you pull out of latent space. It's going to be tricky. Like, I think even if we do see a boom in. In cancer drugs and we hear testimonies from scientists that oh yeah, AI definitely sped me up. Like the ticker tape parade is going to happen for the scientists. We know Jennifer Duden is named for discovering MRNA and crispr. We don't know the software stack that she used when she was analyzing genes.

21:59

We got to find out.

23:14

We do, because that's the real hero. That's not the real hero, but it's an important hero in the story that we just don't tell because it's abstract and diffuse.

23:15

Let's pull up this video from Architectural Digest of this beautiful sustainable power plant with a ski slope on its roof.

23:22

So you can actually ski on this? Wait, you ski on the grass? You can ski on grass?

23:29

It works.

23:33

I had no idea. I'm going to.

23:34

Presumably in winter there would be some snow on it.

23:35

Is the building industry. The building industry accounts for one third

23:38

of all CO2 emissions and we need

23:43

to bring that down.

23:46

This thing looks.

23:49

This is cool. This is cool. And sustainability go hand in hand.

23:50

Trey in the chat would be totally cool with more data centers in Virginia. I imagine if you had extreme sports on the roof.

23:54

Yes. Do a deal with Red Bull. Get the FPV drones out there.

24:02

We need the sponsored data center next

24:07

X Games on data centers. Yeah, I mean, the Olympics are coming. If you want to build a data center in la, why not build an Olympic village as well? We want to design the future of the buildings that we would like to live in. My name is Jakob Lange. I'm a partner and architect at the architecture firm Big Organization, Bjarke Ingels Group. We're standing here at Copen Hill, the tallest mountain in Copenhagen. Wait, what?

24:09

Well, he's calling the building a mountain.

24:47

That's insane. A little more than 10 years ago now, we started a competition to design the facade of this building. We were struggling for quite a while, but in one of the design meetings we were talking about the fact that your magazines to get it on this deal flow. Completely agree. Are you a Thrasher magazine guy?

24:49

I love Thrasher.

25:10

Thrasher.

25:11

I haven't been a subscriber in probably 10 years, but. Yeah. How did we not know about this?

25:12

This is amazing. Yeah, I knew about it buried in.

25:20

You did?

25:23

You did buried in. The European stagnation thesis is the most white people, white pills structure.

25:24

I mean this goes viral every like few months. I've seen this a bunch on.

25:31

We gotta do it.

25:35

You should post it. Say, why is no one talking about. What's it called?

25:35

Yes, yes, but I'm saying people are talking about this. No, no one's talking about it. We're the first people to talk about this. Yeah. It feels like Apple would be one to do this. It's in line with the Google branding. Like there's so many companies that are ready to sort of pick up what this is all about and do a promo video.

25:39

Put plants on the roof of the data center.

25:58

For sure. That's a very easy one.

26:01

It turns takes a building that looks dystopian and cold industrial.

26:04

Also build them underground. Right. And then put the park on top of it. I don't know, it just seems like there's so many easy ways. Maybe it is hard because you're in this game theory and that's why Meta is building in tents, because even the buildings are too slow to build. And so they. If you add underground or you add roof plants on top, you're going to have another three month delay, you're going to lose the AI race, you're going to be part of the permanent underclass in the Mag 7 or something. They're worried about being part of the permanent underclass and so they're racing. But something like that I feel like would pay back and pay dividends. It was beautiful.

26:09

Matt over on X says there's an abandoned Brooks Brothers office in my town. Would make a lovely data center. So he's taking the other side. I think if you left the sign.

26:46

Yeah.

26:57

And it was just Brooks Brothers, you kind of revitalize the sign, redid the kind of landscaping, but then put a data center in it.

26:57

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27:05

Let's head over to Time magazine. Daleo, who's sharing. He came in pretty hot on the reaction. He said Team Cope made the COVID of Time. The people Versus AI.

27:20

A lot of behind the growing backlash. I mean the growing backlash is really, it actually makes a lot of sense to do a portrait and a profile on all the different voices that are here because some of them are lawmakers, some of them are pundits, some of them are analysts, some of them are environmentalists, some of them are lawyers. All sorts of different folks.

27:34

Did you read it yet, Tyler? Why are you laughing in protest?

27:52

You won't.

27:55

Team Cope is funny.

27:56

Team Cope is funny. But yeah, people took this all over the place. The people versus the wheel. Grunts from the silent majority. Dragging rocks and rolling is a drag. People are having a lot of fun about this.

27:57

The horses versus the car.

28:10

The horses versus the car. the same time, this, the backlash can have an actual impact. So you should not just write it off and be like, well obviously AI is going to happen. So this is, you know, it's inevitable. It's like, no, we live in a democracy. Like if they vote, no more data centers. Look at what happened in nuclear. People like you keep comparing AI to splitting the atom. I was just watching some video and the guy was saying like, it's like it's. The AI is the most incredible human invention. It's up there right with, with when we split the atom. And I'm like, well I know how that ended. Like we got a bunch of nuclear weapons that we didn't even fire at each other. It just became a cold war. So really zero economic value from that. Just a lot of people building and then putting them in silos and then a couple nuclear power plants that eventually got regulated out of existence and we never got a nuclear future of energy. And so it is possible that like society can just freak out and be like, actually we're doing non proliferation. Like that's, that's a possible outcome here.

28:12

So like Hill says, this is why we need data centers in space. Yeah, Elon looking pretty smart for sure.

29:10

For sure.

29:16

If the timelines that have been thrown out are aggressive on a longer time horizon, you're not going to have to push back there. And Trey really coming in with the most obvious solution. Blimp data centers. Just put them over. Put them over the Pacific.

29:17

I love it.

29:31

Float them over there.

29:31

Well, let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all in one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent to deploy web apps, servers, databases and more. While Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring and security.

29:33

Rob over on X has found some information on the Twitter deal trial. Is this the trial around the compensation?

29:44

Oh, I thought this was the OpenAI case.

29:56

No, this is different. This is different. So I believe this is the case around the Twitter employees that did not actually get their severance.

29:59

It says the class action brought by former Twitter investors against Elon Musk. I actually don't know that much about this particular case, but there was a pool of 92.

30:08

Twitter was worth more than 44 billion.

30:20

Well, maybe they had stock options that were canceled. Maybe they are employees, but they're counted as investors in this case because it's a SEC violation instead of an employment contract. I actually don't know. I'm completely speculating here, but apparently Elon Musk's popularity unpopularity is throwing a wrench in the trial because, quote, hate for Musk quickly narrows the jury pool. In Twitter deal trial, A California judge quickly narrowed a pool of 92 prospective jurors Thursday, excusing 38 potential jurors who said they couldn't be fair and impartial. As Musk's attorney lamented, there are so many people who hate him so much.

30:22

So the trial, according to Bloomberg Loss, the trial involves claims from Twitter investors who say Musk violated securities law by publicly waffling over his decision to purchase the company and driving down its stock price.

31:05

Yeah, and there's probably a lot of people who, they don't like Elon because of the.

31:16

Does that mean. Does that mean, though? So he said, okay, I'm going to buy this company. And then he was trying to back out because he was like, the price is insane. And then the stock declined and people sold, and then it ended up getting bought up here. And now they're like, well, you kind of misled. I don't know. I wonder actually how this one let out, because he didn't make anyone sell the company. If you're a Twitter shareholder and you believe that.

31:22

Yeah, basically. I mean, every time you make a public statement, unless it's disclosed through the traditional SEC workflow, one person or five people can sell, and then they can hold you to account on that, on the impacts of that. And so every possible move in the price of the company can come back to bite you based on what you were saying and whether or not it was above board. But the court will decide. And apparently they're going to get a bunch of people on the juror who have never heard of Elon Musk. There are people out there like, I

31:50

don't know, the guy Cooper, our strongest soldier in the chat, coming in, driving up those numbers.

32:22

Let me tell you about Figma Ship, the best version not the first one with Figma. You heard from Dylan Field yesterday. He introduced Claude Code to Figma. Explore more options.

32:30

And they liked each other. They like each other.

32:40

They did.

32:42

Pub is saying they're calling it the most Canadian caption of all time. Team Canada hit the timeline after their loss to the United States, saying, silver shines just as bright.

32:43

It's very Canadian.

32:56

Absolutely brutal. We have the Canadian on our team is sitting over there shaking his head. He's hard to see from this angle. But we're all friends on this continent. We like a good competition.

32:59

There's a war in the community. Notes right now people are saying silver actually shines brighter than gold. But gold is better. It actually doesn't, so tarnishes much easier and becomes dull. Gold is greater than silver. People are fighting it out over whether or not gold or silver.

33:14

They're coping it out, I think.

33:30

Yeah, they're coping it out. We know how it works at the Olympics. You want to go for gold and only America could take it home. Yesterday, Blake Robbins is reacting to the news that Meta's VR metaverse is ditching VR. This is from the Verge. We'll have to talk to Alex Heath, former Verge reporter, later today. This feels pretty clear. The Metaverse was actually just Roblox this whole time. Not Fortnite, not VR. This is extremely hard for me as a. As a VR bull. I threw on the headset yesterday, watched about 10 minutes of Blade Runner 2049 before you called me and I had to take it off, but I was having a great experience watching a 3D movie.

33:31

You threw that on right when you got home.

34:10

Right when I got home. I was like, I'm going to chill for a little bit. Throw on Blade Runner 2049. Reggie recommended it. So Hip City reg. I was like, okay, I gotta do it. Put it on. But interrupted. There's other stuff going on. So didn't get through the whole movie, but still delightful experience. And VR is not dead. It's about to reanimate and come back from the grave. I predict in the next 400 years, I guarantee you VR will be like a. Like kind of popular. Like sort of popular.

34:12

It'll get to at least 20.

34:45

At least 2%.

34:48

20 DAUs.

34:49

Yeah. In the next 400 years, I would take that bet.

34:50

Matthew Ball dropped his state of video games in 2026.

34:53

Boom.

34:57

One of the standout lines was Roblox had 150 million daily users in Q3 of 2025. Its quarterly engagement is now equal to Steam, PlayStation and Fortnite. Combined, it's huge. Which is just absolutely wild. Should we click through this a little bit?

34:58

Yeah, we can click through it. It's a huge presentation and we'll have to have Matthew Ball on the show to really break it all down. But this is the report that I was sort of inspired by yesterday when I was talking about this interesting fact that Matt Ball shared on his Tratecheri interview, that when you look at video games, the video game market is not doing particularly well. You have to always segment out non China. And then there's also mobile versus console. Are people paying or is it ad based? There's a whole bunch of different sub segments. But just looking at non China growth in video games, all of the growth went to Roblox and basically everything else was either flat or down. And people are starting to just spend more time on and feeds. They're on Instagram, they're on TikTok or they're doing sports betting or watching TV or watching Netflix. There's a million different things that have fought for attention and it used to be the greatest bargain in history. And Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take Two, maker of GTA and 2K games, got in a lot of trouble at one point because he said we should be charging per minute. And people were like, this is a nightmare. He's going to charge per minute. And he was like, no, no, no. I just mean in terms of the value that we're delivering, we will take from you, which is a lot of money, but we will give you GTA 5, which you can play for 100 hours and have a great time. And some people will play for more than that. And so on a per hour basis, you're paying like 50 cents. Now comp that he would say, comp that to going to the movies. You know, you pay 20 bucks and you're there for two hours. That's $10 an hour for entertainment. Whereas with a video game, 50 bucks for 50 hours, you're paying a dollar an hour. So he was just driving home. That is a great value. That is no longer the case in the world where there's so much incredible entertainment that's basically free because it's ad supported. And the experience of scrolling an endless vertical social feed is now rivaling the level of entertainment that you get from video games. It used to be like, yeah, I'll go on Facebook and check some posts about, see who posted like what they did this weekend. So check in with that. But I gotta go and play Counter Strike or I gotta go play the actual game that's like really fun. Now it's a lot more competitive. Anything else?

35:16

Yeah, I mean, what else I'll kind of tap through. So global video game content sales had a strong 2025, growing 5% year over year and hitting a new all time high of about 195 billion. 10 billion more than the prior higher in 2021. The industry high was achieved through new highs in each of mobile, PC and console two. So everything up and to the right and fortunately 2025, as with the year prior, as with years prior, boasted several new hit franchises and studios, while many older franchises and studios also achieved new highs. But despite three straight years of industry growth, a new record high for revenues and a smattering of new hits each year, private funding for game makers fell another 55% in 2025, that is. Yeah, big decrease.

37:44

There's so much going on in the video game industry and it's often overlooked because it's just like sort of off in its own little world. And the players are like subscale relative to the Mag 7, so they don't get as much as much attention. But it's a fascinating industry. Quickly, let me tell you about Vanta. Automated Compliance and Security. Vanta is the leading AI trust management platform. Do you want to talk about chill remote jobs or do you want to stay on video games?

38:32

Yeah, let's talk.

39:00

Do you want a chill remote job?

39:01

No, I said that but I lied. I don't want a chill remote job. I actually love a high pressure job. I love office politics. I love being thrown into the fire. Last minute slide changes fuel me. I get high often. Ad hoc ask. Corporate jargon is my love language when I'm in office. I'm a lethal corporate machine. I'm in a God tier flow state right now. This is my favorite game. This is so good. I love this new genre of the day in the life at work.

39:04

Whoever said that office jobs are adult daycares was onto something. I don't get that.

39:35

There's nothing like an ad hoc ask, right, Tyler? Yeah, I feel like Tyler, Tyler.

39:40

And Tyler lives for an ad hoc ask. He's like, yes.

39:45

And you're like, yes. But let me throw on my white suit first.

39:48

Yes. Market's up, let's go.

39:51

I think at least it was.

39:54

Yeah, we'll see. Well, I'm wearing green and the market's green. That works, right? Green's a good color.

39:55

Casual Friday, Cope.

40:00

Yes. More news in Paramount's $108 billion bid for Warner Brothers, it cleared an antitrust hurdle. What hurdle was that? The media group whose bid is bankrupt a bankrolled by Oracle billionaire Donald Trump founder Larry Ellis.

40:01

Freudian slip?

40:20

No, Oracle's doing fine. Said on Friday that its deal had complied with the U.S. department of Justice's second request review process, removing a critical impediment to U.S. regulatory approval. I have no idea why there would be any antitrust worries here. The antitrust question, the point is that

40:22

there's no antitrust with Paramount and Warner Brothers.

40:44

The question has always been Netflix, but I thought that was going to get through. But we'll see where it lands. So Paramount's deal could still be blocked, but by allowing the 10 day statutory waiting period to elapse under HSR or Hart Scott Rodino Act's second request process, the DOJ is clearing the path for Paramount's deal on antitrust grounds. The government's saying they can go forward as long as they can agree to terms.

40:48

Zooming out. When you look back at the news from a month ago, it seemed obvious that the next step was to spend a lot of time in Washington with the Ellisons and try that angle. It seems to be going well.

41:15

Let's see if this spiked. The Kalshi chart. It's up a little bit. Will Paramount acquire Warner Brothers before September is at 52%. We need to find the other one, which is who will acquire. Who will acquire Warner Brothers? Hunt Kelshi. Let me see who will successfully take over Warner Brothers. Oh, Netflix is back up. Netflix is up 47%. Interesting. The lines have just been crossing constantly. They crossed a couple days ago. It's a deadly dance, a tango. Well, it's been a lot of fun to follow it. I've been enjoying that.

41:29

Let's pull up this video.

42:10

While we pull this up, let me tell you about Sentry. Sentry shows developers what's broken and helps them fix it fast. That's why 150,000 organizations use it to keep their apps working. Matthew McConaughey, we talked a little bit about this, but it hits way harder when he says it himself. So let's play the clip.

42:11

It's coming.

42:25

It's coming. It's already here. Don't deny it. Don't.

42:26

It's not enough. It may be for you, but it's not going to be enough to sit on the sidelines and make the moral plea. The moral plea that, no, this is wrong, it's not going to last. There's too much money to be made and there's. It's too Productive.

42:30

It's.

42:44

It's tear. All right, So I say get. Get.

42:44

Get your own.

42:50

Your own yourself voice, likeness, et cetera. Trademark it. Whatever you got to do.

42:51

So you did that.

42:57

Yeah. Get own. Own yourself. So when and if. When it comes. Not if it comes, no one can steal you. But they're gonna have to come to you to go, can I? Or they're gonna be in breach. And you'll have the chance to be your own agency and go. Yeah. For this amount or no. Okay.

42:57

It's coming.

43:14

Is it gonna be another category or is it gonna infiltrate our category? It's damn sure gonna infiltrate. Infiltrate our categories. Category. I think it'll end up. Does it become another category? Will we be in five years having films. The best AI Film. The best AI Actor. Maybe. I think it might be. That might be. The thing is that becomes another category. I'm not sure it's gonna be in front of us in ways that we don't even see.

43:15

I'm not watching movies if it's AI or not. No AI is going to get me to start watching movies. Reality, I don't watch them.

43:40

That's more hazy than ever. In a very exciting way, I think, but also a scary way.

43:50

This is great industry leadership. I love it very.

43:57

Yeah. So I can see there being an incremental category. That said, I still think AI will be used in every category.

44:00

That's what he says. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He says definitely. He says he doesn't know the timeline and he's not sure exactly how this will come out, but he says there might be a new category. Just like there's best animated film at the Oscars. But then CGI and animation works its way into the Avengers, which is not an animated film, but Thanos was animated with cgi. It just wasn't hand drawn. And so the categories blur together. Clearly, AI is coming for all sorts of different levels of the stack, and he's just saying that you shouldn't just sit by and hope that it doesn't happen. You should embrace and figure out how you fit in. Well, let's go over to the New York Stock Exchange. Do you want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. There was a fun clip on Instagram.

44:07

Many of our guests will be at.

44:51

At the New York Stock Exchange.

44:54

I see. So just 15 minutes.

44:55

And the European kid was at Nicee having some fun. Going a little bit too far. Let's play the clip. What's he doing?

44:57

What?

45:04

That's the bell. You can't put it if you're coming for the going public and you're not

45:05

allowed to touch it. Shali, Shali.

45:09

My family's gone public five times.

45:10

I know.

45:11

I know what the bell does.

45:12

Don't try money MOG at the New York Stock Exchange. That's not gonna work. European kid, you gotta go.

45:15

Come on.

45:21

I'm sorry, you can't be here.

45:21

And you step away.

45:23

You have to go.

45:24

Do they realize who I am?

45:25

I'm sure they know who you are. We have to go.

45:26

My family owned this bell. No, you can't be here.

45:28

To be honest, when I read the caption, I thought. I thought it was rich. The kid gets escorted.

45:31

No, no, no.

45:37

Rapper.

45:37

So their brothers, the European kid and my tech CEO, we ran into one of them in sf. I think we ran into Mike.

45:38

Wait, there's two.

45:47

There's two. And they look identical. Wait, did you not know this?

45:47

Are you sure? Are you sure it's not the same guy?

45:50

I thought it was the same. I thought it was the same guy with two accounts, two characters.

45:52

Wait, I don't know. We'll have to get to the bottom of this. It might be one person, two accounts. I thought they. I have no idea. We'll have to get to the bottom of this.

45:55

You got got?

46:05

Yeah, it's the prestige. I'm getting prestiged. Potentially. There might be a secret twin and he is act. He's living life as a single person with two accounts, when in fact it is two people. That's possible too. Let's not rule anything out. Yeah, let's not take off our tinfoil hats prematurely. Let's watch this.

46:07

This post from David Herman. I love David the Herminator.

46:24

After being caught in a floor.

46:28

It started over.

46:29

Yeah. This is an ad pulled into a drain pipe after being caught in a flood. A nearby officer rushed over to help, but he was quickly dragged in too. The rushing water forced them both through the 100 foot long pipe. They finally came out on the other side at Papa Giuseppe's kitchen. I love these hands to warm you up from the flood along. It's funny because. Is that even AI? I'm pretty sure that's just like a video game. Especially on Valentine's Day. You and the officer will absolutely have a great time to recover from the flood. Yeah, I've seen. I've seen a lot of this style of ad where it's some crazy, you know, TikTok explainer and then it just cuts to like and. And you land at this. A nearby officer rushed over to help but he was quickly dragged. It is hilarious. Let me tell you about cognition. They're the makers of Devon, the AI software engineer. Crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team.

46:30

Ben, can you hear this?

47:22

We gotta talk about other.

47:22

Ben. We gotta make an ad like that.

47:24

Yeah, we do, we do, we do. You're where it's somebody like you know, falling off of a plane and then they land, they fall through the cloud and then they land in the TVP and ultradome and they're being interviewed by John and Jordi. There is a $36.5 million waterfront compound for sale in the Florida Keys. And take a look at this picture. Finally, a white pill. Take a look at this picture. So it has 1700ft of shoreline and two 5000 square foot homes. You thinking what I'm thinking? Next door neighbors.

47:27

That's right.

48:04

That's right. We could do it. So you remember, I think not Asana, the Atlassian. They did, they had this crazy few. So the founders of Atlassian and I think we read this some story. So they were besties, they built this massive company together. Wildly successful multi gen, you know, basically two decade run, incredible run. And they decide, you know, we've had an incredible run, let's keep the run going. Let's buy houses right next to each other. They end up getting a massive in a massive feud. And I think it destroys the friendship. Hopefully it's recovered by now. But we could do it.

48:05

Oh, you think? You think we could do it?

48:42

I think we could do it.

48:43

You don't think you'd be bothered by my industrial grade WI fi penetrating while you're trying to sleep? That would bother you?

48:43

I think that would be.

48:49

That would be the straw that broke the camera.

48:51

I'd be like, John, you have to turn off the wi fi after 10pm when we're sleeping. It disrupts the sleep.

48:52

Stop listening to movies all night long at full blast volume. I don't care. I don't want to see the second and third matrix or hear them through the walls.

48:58

You'd be in the backyard with your VR headset on, but playing.

49:06

But playing the audio fully and so you can still hear it.

49:09

And you'd be falling asleep with it on. So just be blaring.

49:12

Exactly, exactly.

49:16

That would be the end of tvpn.

49:17

That would be the end.

49:18

So we won't be doing this.

49:18

But what a funny situation. So it's a 10 acre waterfront property in the Florida Keys.

49:19

Just move in together.

49:25

No, you need two properties that are as close as possible. Next to each other and then they have like separate beaches. But the houses are like your windows are looking directly at the other person. It's such a weird property. So Eddie Garcia bought the Islamorada property for about 15 years ago. Waterman specializes in developing master planned communities throughout Florida. Garcia said he originally intended to create a small development on the land, but he wound up falling in love with the site and instead turned it into a family compound. My kids grew up there fishing, lobstering, crabbing, you name it. He was on Openclaw before it even existed. He lives full time in Miami with his children in college. He said the property's too big for just him and his wife. But you got his and hers mansions. What's wrong with that? When Garcia bought the property, it was mostly empty except for a 16 slip marina. That's eight boats per person and two cottages built around the 1950s, all of which remain on the property today. He built, built two side by side West Indies style homes in 2013 and then he ran it back in 2015. Each is 5,000 square feet with four bedrooms in a pool. Pretty, pretty interesting property. Also for you Boston sickos out there. There's a $22 million Beacon Hill home. It's become one of Boston's priciest townhouses. It's a six bedroom residence. It was converted from multiple rental units into a single family home. The development company Crest City Capital purchased the building for 8.9 million in 2023. Then they converted it. They gut renovated the house, which had multiple rental units, turned it into a single family residence. The buyer's identity couldn't be determined. Tracy Campion of Campion Co. Who represented the purchaser, didn't respond. But there's some beautiful photos here. It's a Greek revival house built in 1825. That's an old, old house. You don't see a lot of 1800s properties out here in California, but you do in Boston.

49:27

Nicey Nicey 1792.

51:26

That's a good one.

51:29

That's an OG.

51:30

It's located in one of Boston's most upscale neighborhoods. Have you spent any time in Boston? Have you ever been?

51:32

I don't think I've ever been.

51:38

You've never been? Beautiful city.

51:39

And I don't think I'll ever go.

51:40

Why not?

51:41

I just think. No, I mean think about the list of. I don't like traveling that much. Yeah, I like being, I like being in California, but at times I enjoy traveling. But there's easily 400 destinations that I would go to before Boston Before Boston,

51:43

it's not in the top 400.

52:06

I don't think Boston is in the top 400 if you really break it down. But I like to travel, Pops. I like to travel. I like to go somewhere. I've done the traveling where you do.

52:08

Yeah, you stop by two days here, two days here if you do an east coast trip.

52:16

But I like to go set up

52:20

New York and then Rhode island and then Boston and then Maine. Like you could have a wonderful little excursion on the east coast. You should do it sometime, broaden your horizons.

52:21

Road trip. If we were doing a road trip,

52:31

yeah, we definitely stopped there. College tour, maybe. Let me tell you about Gusto. The unified platform for payroll, benefits and hr built to evolve with small and medium sized businesses.

52:33

Tyler. We originally met because Tyler was commenting saying that we should do a college Tour maybe in Q1 of last year.

52:44

Yeah, well, I think it was. You guys said you were gonna do a college tour, but then I said you gotta go to Michigan because they have the biggest stadium in the western hemisphere.

52:51

Yes, yes. Filling 110,000 fans in one stadium would be truly.

52:58

We got some work to do.

53:03

We need. We need quite the guest lineup and we need to stack it.

53:05

We really need to stack it.

53:10

Yeah. The tiny Lake Tahoe enclave with some of America's priciest waterfront homes.

53:11

And Tahoe is absolutely wild this week. Did you see that video? Bears. Bears at North Star. I think they were just running across the ski slope with people on it.

53:18

That's awesome.

53:27

Kids were having to like pull out of the way.

53:27

Yeah. I saw Growing Daniel posting about how they're actually really friendly and you can just go up to them and pet them. Is that right?

53:29

Yeah, I think so.

53:36

Yeah, I think so. Crystal Bay's median list price of 14.9 million makes it one of the most expensive places to buy property in the United States. It's straddling the California Nevada border. Lake Tahoe's 72 mile shoreline is home to some of the country's most coveted real estate. Actually, the property is no, just Tahoe in general. Lake Tahoe is both California and Nevada.

53:37

Having a property that was half.

54:02

I'm sure that might exist. I don't know. That's probably pretty hard to zone or actually get done. But it has to exist somewhere in America. I know that there's a spot in America that you can stand on and be in four states simultaneously, or maybe three states because the lines intersect. So you can stand on that spot and be technically in four states.

54:04

You could just do the thing like the house we just saw in the Keys where it's like kind of two

54:23

property that's like one person's not paying income tax, the other person's paying terrible income tax.

54:27

Brutal.

54:32

Incline Village is. This is the. Is the I think the city that's the least in Nevada but technically in Nevada. So it's the most Californian Nevada city. So it's a popular San Francisco suburb.

54:34

I'm sure many ways the broader population of Nevada has really high opinion of inclined village. Incline Village for sure.

54:46

Crystal Bay is roughly home to roughly 200. It's a community on Nevada's north side ranks among the priciest waterfront markets. With a median listing price of 14.9 million. The Enclave is defined by its mid century glamour. Around the 1960s it serves as a playground for entertainer Frank Sinatra who at one point owned the local Cal Neva Resort and Casino.

54:53

Yep, Eric in the chat says Cal Neva Resort is exactly that in the same town as in splitting California.

55:17

Nevada. Cool. Very interesting. Today it is a tale of two realities. A town with a faded commercial strip that sits adjacent to multi million dollar real estate. Residential real estate favored for steep slope privacy and elite lakefront living. So it's just four miles northeast of Crystal Bay. It's bustling is the bustling Incline Village where there is a hospital, grocery stores and the Diamond Pier ski resort. Across the California state line is the community of Kings beach provides a more rustic feel. The north shore attracts homeowners seeking a constant outdoor connection. Winter offers skiing while summer centers on the lake for boating, fishing, paddleboarding. Holding an American flag while you wakeboard. That's very popular out there in Tahoe. Of course there's something interesting going on.

55:23

Is it legal to wakeboard up there without holding a flag?

56:13

Jail instantly. For years, Crystal Bay's commercial core had been defined by two stalled icons. Sinatra's former Calneva closed in 2013 and the Tahoe Biltmore Hotel and Casino which closed in 2022. These vacant structures have given the state line a ghost town feel with the Crystal Bay Club Casino as the area's main entertainment and music venue. However, a revitalization effort is underway. The Cal Neva is being transformed into the high end Lake Tahoe proper resort and Casino slated to open in 2027. Signaling a possible shift from faded casino era relics to modern luxury destination. Let's go. Let's hear it for Lake Taco.

56:18

Lake Taco.

57:02

Everybody out there, let's give it up for like I'm a big bear guy. I'm a SoCal guy. You're not gonna catch catch me in Tahoe. You're going to catch me at Lake Arrowhead. The House of the Week. The House of the Week. We will tell you about the House of the Week after we tell you about Shopify. Shopify 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. The House of the Week is a modernist home tucked into the Los Angeles hillside. Let's hear it for Los Angeles Wall Street. Maybe three, 3,000 miles away, but they're showing some love to homegrown houses here in Los Angeles.

57:04

It was only saying it's a hillside masterpiece.

57:39

Who The Hollywood house was designed by Rudolph Schindler for journalist Susan Orlean and her husband John Gillespie. A house has never been just a place to live. It's not just a place to live, it's an entire experience. Fans of modernist architecture.

57:43

Read that again.

57:58

I'm messing with you.

57:58

I'm messing with.

57:59

Really?

58:00

Yeah, I live that. Fans of modernist architecture, they spent their earliest dates visiting Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water in Pennsylvania. When the pair moved to Los Angeles in 07 so Arlene could research a book, they quickly fell in love with the work of Rudolph Schindler, an Austrian born architect who helped define modernism in the city. And so there's a beautiful house up for sale. They did a four and a half year renovation. Did you hear the drama about. There was a reporter, was it at Reuters or something? But he was accused of using AI to write all of his Olympics coverage. And it had all the telltale signs of AI generated sort of slop. And the editor in chief backed the journalist and said no, he always writes like that. That's what he sounds like.

58:00

They trained on him.

58:48

They trained on him. And then Pangram came in and said, well we pulled the receipts and he didn't use to write like that before AI and so you can look at the chart.

58:49

Maybe he's really bullish on AI and so he only will read outputs. Now he doesn't read any organic.

59:00

Maybe that. Or maybe he's just aping the style of ChatGPT 4.0 because he thinks it's a good aesthetic. I don't know. Could be trying to troll. Could be. Because I could probably write an essay that, that triggers Pangram 100% AI if I put my mind to it. And without, without the help of AI I could just sit there and say this isn't this. It's that blah, blah, blah.

59:09

I don't. I actually think that'd be a good challenge. I don't think you could. I think. I think. Pangram.

59:28

Tyler Challenge.

59:33

Tyler Challenge. Write something by hand.

59:34

100% is really hard.

59:37

100%?

59:38

Over 90%.

59:40

You think you could do over 90 in the next.

59:41

Between now and when the Palmer interview ends, you have to write 500 words minimum, right? Yeah, I think it's a few hundred words, right?

59:43

Yeah.

59:53

You have to write more words in the Pangram minimum and score above 90%.

59:54

Yeah. You have to kick it off with like. Sorry. As an AI model, I can't answer this, but I'll try anyway. This isn't just this, it's that. Anything else you'd like me to expand this prompt with and then you'll trigger. That's the hack. Do you think?

59:58

And if you win, you get a $50 gift card to Matu to pick yourself up some cheesesteak sandwiches.

1:00:14

I was thinking something book related, maybe tonight.

1:00:21

So there's $50. 50 whole dollars on the line.

1:00:24

50 smackaroos.

1:00:27

Go.

1:00:28

Okay. Label box, RL environments, voice robotics evals and expert human data. Label Box is the data factory behind the world's leading AI teams. Anyway, Jay Leno, he was turning heads because he was caught driving a 119 year old car, a steam car.

1:00:28

Oh, you caught me. You caught me.

1:00:49

He didn't call the car.

1:00:51

I didn't want anyone to see.

1:00:51

Look at this car. This is amazing. I didn't. 119 years old.

1:00:53

We should ask Palmer if he has any steam cars.

1:00:59

Oh, this is 1907.

1:01:01

You see the steam actually pushing the bottom.

1:01:02

Do you load firewood into it? How do you generate the steam? This is incredible. He's the final car guy. Like, he got the McLaren F1 and then he went older and then he went older and he finally got the first car.

1:01:05

He's gonna get into horses big time.

1:01:21

That would be hilarious if he was just like, yeah, like real car guys, we know. Like, you should just get a horse. Yeah, yeah. That's the end. That's the end. He literally predicted Vibe coding in 2023. None other than George Hotz on the Lex Friedman podcast.

1:01:23

I don't doubt that these models are

1:01:40

going to first become useful to me,

1:01:43

then be as good as me, and then surpass me.

1:01:45

Like, I think in two years I'm going to start using these plugins. Yeah, a little bit. And then in five years, I'm going to be heavily relying on some AI augmented flow. And then in 10 years.

1:01:48

Do you think you'll ever get to 100%?

1:01:58

I think it's all generated.

1:02:00

Our niche becomes. I think it's over for humans in general. Programming is everything.

1:02:02

No more programmers left, huh?

1:02:07

That's where we're going.

1:02:09

Well, unless you want handmade code, maybe

1:02:10

they'll sell it on Etsy

1:02:12

doesn't have that machine polish to it.

1:02:15

It has those slight imperfections that would

1:02:17

only be written by a person.

1:02:19

Look, I don't doubt that these.

1:02:20

It's so good.

1:02:24

We're back.

1:02:25

He's truly so good.

1:02:26

It's over. We're back. Let me tell you about Vibe Co where D2C brands, B2B startups and AI companies advertise on streaming TV, pick channels, target audiences and measure sales, just like on Meta.

1:02:27

This was quite interesting. Somebody over on X called Levi says:2 weeks ago the Epstein Files podcast didn't exist. Today it's about to cross 500,000 downloads and sitting in Apple Podcasts top 20 series between the New York Times and ABC NBC News. I Vibe coded every episode with Claude from Real Epstein court documents. So basically he just like fully generated a podcast and it is charting for something like this.

1:02:36

It makes a ton of sense to just programmatically sort of put everything together because there's so many files. It's a perfect use case for AI to sort of synthesize comb through.

1:03:06

And there is. There is unlimited demand for Epstein related content.

1:03:17

Totally, totally. Anyway, we have Palmer Luckey in the Restream waiting room. Let's bring him in to the TVPN ultradome. Palmer, how are you?

1:03:21

You are doing live. You are live, sir.

1:03:29

Can you hear us okay?

1:03:33

Yep, I hear you loud and clear though, with a little bit of delay, so we'll try to keep it zippy.

1:03:34

Well, we're gonna say probably five words in total and you're just gonna go crazy.

1:03:39

Tell us what's happening.

1:03:44

Tell us what's happening. So, I mean, Trump is complaining about tariffs, Iran is on the brink of war, and Erebor, the new bank for the tech community building things that actually matter, has officially received its charter and become operational. So it's a pretty good set of things that are going on.

1:03:46

Big hit.

1:04:09

Congratulations.

1:04:09

Big hit.

1:04:10

Take us back in time. When. When did this project start? What was the inciting element? Why is this important? How did you pick this to work on?

1:04:11

Look, there's a lot of things that I could point to, but it really boils down to I've been looking at starting a bank for a while, primarily for my own personal use. Because there weren't banks out there that really understood my business, my businesses, the things that I was doing. Silicon Valley bank was doing a reasonable job, but then they went out of business and took everybody's money with them and had to have the government bail everybody out. I think that was really kind of the thing that got me very serious about it. I realized that you didn't have banks that were aligned with the United States interests, that were aligned with deep tech, hard tech, energy. The things that are really complex and hard to understand but that do really matter, that could also serve them in a meaningful way. I mean you have farmers, banks that serve communities that are doing agriculture. You have banks certainly that are doing oil and gas quite well. But when it comes to tech it's a pretty sparse field. And so I started to think, well, how do you build a bank that could serve those things? How could you do it in a very conservative way, very, very low risk way where you can ensure you're not going to go out of business, you're not going to force everyone to rely on government bailouts. You may not be able to survive a total financial collapse, banks rarely can, but you can at least be the last man standing. And so thinking about that and then also a lot of things that new technology enables like using US dollar backed cryptocurrencies to have 365, 24. 7 settlement of payments, which is something that a lot of businesses need and very few get. You kind of stack all these things together and it becomes clear that there's, there's room for a company to be a real bank for real companies, companies doing real things.

1:04:21

So is there a network effect there? Because if I'm on Erebor and Jordy's on Erebor and we can both have 24. 7 settlement but someone else is on a different bank and they don't have 24. 7 settlement, we're going to have a good experience and then maybe to get out of the network. How does that work?

1:05:57

I think that there will be network effects, but to be honest, whatever network effects are will probably be pretty short lived. I think that pretty quickly everyone is going to realize that they need to support these things. And I think that when like seeing this administration's support for using specifically dollar backed stablecoins. So not saying we're going to move everybody off of the dollar, we're going to move them off of the United States currency as the reserve currency for world, but I think probably most banks are going to get drug into this, the Difference is that we are trying to do it from the start. So is there a network effect? Probably, but I think most of the forward looking code companies that would value that network effect, that one in particular see that in the next few years probably all banks are going to be forced to adopt this to be competitive.

1:06:14

So what is the ideal banking experience for you besides stability and low risk? Is being able to talk to somebody. Is that a bug? Should we just. Is Erebor just going to be a chatbot that you say talk to a human and it says unfortunately I cannot do that, I am an AI.

1:06:57

I think it's be a long time before we hand things off to the chat pods, if only for regulatory reasons. Like you set aside the risk, which is a huge factor. You set aside the fact that we have our own banking rails which are extremely efficient and that we can settle at any time. I mean those are huge factors on their own. But even if you knock off kind of all of these, all of these obvious advantages, there's a lot of other things that you get from having a bank that is strongly aligned with the United States state, strongly aligned with US interests, strongly aligned with the US Department of War and also the intelligence community. And that there's a lot of ways that that manifests. For example, one of the things that we're doing is rather than working with the intelligence community only under court order to kind of go and respond when they think there's crime going on on the platform, we're preemptively going out there and saying no, we're going to work with them from the very, very beginning to help make fraud almost impossible on our platform. Which is great, great for me too because it means that people who want to engage in fraud are going to go to other banks. It means that people who don't want to engage in fraud are going to be thrilled about being on a platform that doesn't have that type of activity on it. And to the extent that it exists inside of their own platform against their will, they know that they have a willing partner that is willing to work with the government rather than hide these things. I would say maybe think of it as like the opposite of HSBC where they were banking the cartels and desperately trying to avoid any sort of government intervention that would make that clear to the public markets. Put Erebor way at the other end of that spectrum. I think there's also a lot of other banks that whether whether they're good or bad people is irrelevant. You might have good people who nonetheless are Very beholden to European markets, Chinese markets, other foreign markets that they need to keep happy either because they want to keep them happy and make money or because they don't want their executives in those jurisdictions to get a arrested. Erebor is taking a very different approach. We're saying, you know what, we're an American company, we're an American bank that supports American companies and we will comply with U.S. law, but we will not comply with spurious rulings from people who have no real jurisdiction or authority over us. And you'll find a very hard time finding a bank that takes that position. I'm not aware of any other than us.

1:07:16

How do you think about rolling out products? A bank can do everything from mortgages to equipment financing to venture debt to capital raises. Take someone public, that kind of what, you know, you go to a big bank, they're going to help you. Ipo.

1:09:18

What do you want to do first? I think that right now, look, we've just barely opened, so give us a little bit of time. The products that we are prioritizing are based entirely on the customer feedback that we're getting. The things that they tell us they need, the things that they tell us that we can most help with. In a way, the existence of a bank to me is almost this entry antiquated thing. Like you would hope that companies could really just do all of this stuff themselves, or at least most of it themselves. But the regulatory climate, the way that the banking system works requires that you have this intermediary in the form of a regulated bank to make these things happen. And so I kind of think of our business as part and parcel of these companies that need us. And we're going to work very, very closely with them and focus on the things that they care about. That's probably not, not going to be, for example, residential mortgages, but things like equipment financing. Very conservative, very conservatively played. Where it's not going to turn into a risk management problem. Allowing them to work with the legacy banking system and plugging into that in the least painful way. These are things that we have a lot of customers who are very interested. Oh, and we need to not lose their money. If we can do that, we'll be doing better than many other banks.

1:09:32

Yes, yes.

1:10:44

Talk about the trade offs of going the charter route. You know, the last 10 years, most of the banking products that founders have used were built on top of existing charters or spreading deposits across multiple companies.

1:10:46

Avoid getting a charter at all. They want to be a fintech company and they basically will Dance around the fact that realistically what they're doing is basically being a bank. Look, there's a lot of things that you can do without having your own charter. There's things you can do partnering with other companies. There's a lot of things you cannot do without having your own chart charter.

1:11:02

Yeah, it's sort of against risk. You cannot do anti hyper growth. Like you can't just scale to 50 billion of deposits tomorrow even if there's the demand. Right.

1:11:20

So maybe we decided that we needed to get our own charter because of the tight of bank we were going to try to run and the ability to have the buck stop with us. The moment that you're dependent on somebody else for the key infrastructure, the key risk management, the key licensure questions, they can kick you off the platform. They can be forced to kick you off the platform. They might. Maybe they're doing it for good reasons, maybe they're doing it for bad reasons. I mean you've seen this play out for example with Steam and their payment processors and their banks and their payment processors banks where they're basically basically censoring games because there's some circle of people who all claim it's not them pointing down the chain, it's that guy, it's that guy, it's that guy, it's that guy. But they all agree, even if they can't agree, who's causing the censorship that if you don't censor, they're going to drop you, they're going to drop your account, they're going to debank you, they're going to depayment you. And so one of the things that you have to ask yourself when you're making yourself dependent on another bank or another payment company is am I setting this up where they get to make my decisions for me and are they making their decisions for me? Or is the Chinese Communist Party making those decisions? Is some political party that is extremely hostile to some business on our network, the one actually making that decision. So if you don't control your own charter, if you don't control your own destiny, the buck doesn't stop with you. And you're always going to have to keep other parties happy. And I think that was not something that we were interested in. We wanted to be able to run the bank the way that we think it needs to be run. And if we are debanking somebody, we are going to have to take responsibility for that. And I think that actually leads to much better behavior. I would love to see that type of Behavior across the industry, physical branches.

1:11:30

How are you thinking about that?

1:13:05

I think we're going to start with Fort Knox and then we'll expand from there.

1:13:07

I like it.

1:13:10

Yeah. Maybe actually dive deeper there. Like what is a bank these days? I think most people can conceptualize like setting up a crypto wallet that holds coins, but when you want to hold real dollars, you don't actually have a physical bank vault, I imagine. So once you get the charter, does that just give you the ability to like maintain a database and a ledger? Like what is a bank?

1:13:11

What is a bank? I mean, there's lots of forms that can be. I think if you want all the details, you can actually read through a lot of our applications. It's actually a matter of public record and you can see that Anduril will. Sorry, not. And Erebor will have a physical vault and we will have a lot of treasure in it. So we are not trying to be a pure digital, pure, you know, pure Ether company. And in fact, a lot of the companies that are very interested in working with us want us to have secure actual vaulted storage. I'm not saying that that's going to be the first thing that we focus on. That's our key differentiator. But we are not a. We are not a bank of the Ether. We are. We are of terra firma.

1:13:37

Yeah. Last time you came on, we talked a lot about mod retro. I'd love an Update on the M64. What makes that product special? Where did you go further with this project than with the chromatic and just general like how you're thinking about the M64?

1:14:13

Well, so for people who aren't familiar with it, the M64 is a tribute to the Nintendo 64 that I'm building one of the greatest multiplayer consoles of all time. We're building console that is compatible with all classic N64 games. We're re releasing a lot of classic N64 games so that you can buy them if you don't already have them. We're actually doing new releases of canceled N64 games that never even made it to market. Either because they were canceled and ported to GameCube or because they ran out of money or because the studios imploded for interpersonality reasons. There's a lot of cool stuff coming out the M64. I guess the main update is that it's. It's in mass production right now. It is not eventually coming. It is in mass production right now. We've decided we're not going to launch it until we build up sufficient stock to meet the demand. One of the mistakes I think we made with the mod retrochromatic, which was a tribute to the Game Boy and Game Boy color, was that we started selling them and then all of a sudden we sold out. And then you have people who hear about it, they read about it, their friends are all talking about it, they go to try to buy one and they can't buy buy one because it's sold out. And there's a question, will they remember to come back and buy it some other time? Will they still feel like going and immediately buying it? Exactly. And so you kind of end up with this dead end call to action. And so we've decided this time, by the way, this is especially bad for the game publishers that we're working with. Let's say that it's someone who's re releasing a game or somebody who's doing a brand new game. Some of the indie developers we're working with on the Chromatic, they're out there promoting their game, they're trying to market their game. They're doing all a whole marketing activation trying to convince people, hey, come and buy my new Game Boy game. Come and buy my new Nintendo 64 game. Well, what happens if you can't buy the console? A lot of people are like, oh, I'll come back later and buy it. And then they don't. And so what we want to do is not let down our developer partners this time and make sure that we maintain stock. So the goal is that the M64, no matter how many people hit our website, is not going to sell out. And so we are mass producing, we're stockpiling, I think tens of thousands of them so far, more and more to come.

1:14:27

What is the, what is this going

1:16:24

to be launching soon?

1:16:26

What's the supply chain actually like right now? We've covered the, the gamer rebellion against, against AI memory.

1:16:27

Gamers are rising up.

1:16:34

You know, the supply chain is okay because of the type of hardware that we're building. There's a lot of consumer hardware right now where people are trying to buy memory and it's a huge problem. But remember that the Nintendo 64 doesn't have exactly a lot of memory. You know, it had what, 16 megabytes by default, 32 megabytes with the expansion pack. And so it turns out that you don't need that much memory to perfectly replicate the Nintendo 64 original hardware. Maybe it might be, it might be actually the least imp, the least memory impact consumer electronics product of the year.

1:16:36

And so this was, this was your plan then all along.

1:17:13

Yeah.

1:17:15

You saw this AI boom was coming and you said, I'm going to make the final console.

1:17:16

Yeah, no, we got to return to monkey. We got, we got to go. To go back to the beginning. I mean, really, what am I doing here with something with 32 megabytes of. I mean, you remember what, you remember what Bill Gates said, right? What was it? 64 kilobytes of ram ought to be enough for anyone.

1:17:20

Yep.

1:17:34

Let's figure out how to use AI to. Yeah, let's figure out how to use AI to build applications that fit within reasonable memory footprints. I'm only half kidding. I think you might have seen me going back and forth with Chamath on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, talking about how this AI software platform for building, building software using AI should definitely support export to Windows XP Service Pack 3 compatible applications. And I really am only half kidding. There is actually a lot of government hardware that is still running those, financial hardware that's still running these mostly offline stuff. And so having apps that can run on those is actually useful. But man, it feels crazy to need a few gigabytes of RAM to have a start menu. It feels pretty crazy that you need 16 gigabytes of RAM to take 30 minutes to search through a bunch of text files. Surely we can do better than this.

1:17:36

Can you talk a little bit about how you think about gaming and the concept of just raising the next generation kids? I have three kids and I think I could probably get an emulator and run it on an iPad and slam that over to my kid's face and he might not know the difference. But is there another angle to the M64 that is about some of the things that you can't do with it are actually good for the world? Maybe.

1:18:25

I mean, you have to remember that the gaming industry, like many industries, figured out what actually worked a long time ago. They figured out how to make fun games. They figured out how to make things that people keep coming back, but it's moved from innovation to extraction. And I will note I stole that line from Nirav Patel, founder of Framework, because he put it so much better than I did. But there's these industries that have moved from innovation to extraction, and they're now in the extraction phase where they try to make tons and tons and tons of money and actually pushing the limits is not the top priority for some huge majority of the dollars that are in industry. And so there's a lot of stuff that you can learn, especially when you're learning it from the ground up by going back to when people were just getting the basics right, when they were still innovating, building things that were really compelling to people. I recently had a kid. I might have a second on the way. I'm planning on starting them with. I wouldn't even if I'd say the classic this isn't like a vintage play. It's starting them with a good foundation. That foundation happens to be largely old games, but I'm not going to be throwing them into the slot machine microtransaction Gamblerama that is dominating kids games today. It just seems like a crazy thing to do.

1:18:57

It's a Skinner box. Yeah, don't go in the Skinner box. Talk about vibe coding. What would your life be like if Vibe coding existed when you were 20? Advice for people who are 20 now. In the world of vibe coding, you went into hardware very early. That feels like a great move. Is that still a great move? Walk us through all that.

1:20:07

I mean, the biggest beneficiaries of vibe coding are going to be the hardware nerds like me. It's going to be the shape rotators, not the word cells. Everyone's focused on on how the word cells are going to be wiped out by AI. But for the shape rotators, it's going to be incredible. I was always a pretty terrible software engineer. I'm not a programmer by trade. I've taught myself enough to glue things together and make them work. But when I started my first company, Oculus, or actually when I started Mod Retro when I was 14 or 15, I knew just barely enough about software. If I would have been able to build crappy stuff by outsourcing it to a computer, I actually would have been able to accomplish things a lot faster than trying to do it myself. And people might say, palmer, you should have just learned to code. You should have just learned to do it yourself. But I think it's pretty easy to look at my track record and realize I started Oculus When I was 19, after building prototypes since I was 15, I was only able to accomplish what I accomplished because I focused on what I was good at, which was optomechanics, a little bit of of electrical, and then the product integration of all of these different components, I didn't have time to learn to program. If I had spent another year or two learning to program at even a reasonable level, I would have been two years behind on everything else. And so I am a big fan of vibe coding, even if everything that comes out of it is slop. Even if it is all shit, it's better than I was able to make.

1:20:27

How are you thinking about VR these days? I recently watched the Matrix from start to finish in an Apple Vision Pro. I enjoyed it. It feels like the only real thing that you can do these days is just a home theater, if you don't have a home theater. But it doesn't feel like the industry's embraced that at all. And everyone's sort of writing down their investments and pulling back at a time when the display technology does seem to be good enough for that narrow use case, if you cut out the weight and move things around. But where do you see this? Where do you want consumer VR to go? And then where do you think it actually is going?

1:21:53

So I will challenge your premise there, which is that people are pulling back. I think that's driven mostly by people sensationalizing Meta, firing a bunch of people. But you have to remember they got rid of 10% of the Reality Labs team in one layoff. Remember that they have something like 8 or 9% annual churn naturally and organically, not including firing.

1:22:30

So sure.

1:22:48

I mean, what you're really talking about is basically pulling six months of churn forward into a single month and they're still spending more on VR than anybody by an order of magnitude. They've said they are not spending less on content, they're just not putting it into first party stuff like Facebook. Meta Horizons, you might have seen they've announced Meta Horizons is no longer a VR app as of yesterday. It is now a mobile focused app only. So what they've done is they basically killed a few of these failing efforts that didn't make sense and they're now putting those resources into things that are working. And so I wrote a, I wrote a, I wrote a bit about this on Twitter where people need to understand this is not the end of VR. It's not, it's not collapsing. They are still spending an enormous amount of money. They're bigger than anybody else by an order of magnitude. And I think if you pay attention to what's going to be coming out from Meta and others over the next 12 months, you're going to see a lot of progress. Like Apple Vision Pro. Yes, they. So yes, Apple Vision Pro was ahead of everybody on visual quality, on display quality. But let me tell you a short story. Imagine that an American company went to a Japanese display vendor and they said, we want you to sell us your new 4K micro OLED displays. The company gives them samples of those micro OLED displays. The samples cost about $1,000 each because the yield on that production line is only about 10%. In other words, 90% of the display displays coming off the production line are not up to par. They're not working. And that's because these are engineering samples. They're not meant to actually be a working product. And they said, listen, here's our engineering samples. Just wait two years and the yield is going to be up to 90%. We'll be able to sell these to you for a couple hundred dollars. And then imagine that that American tech company had a guy named Tim Apple call them up and say, no, we're going to build a product with this right now, today, using our engine engineering samples. They said, but Tim Apple, that's crazy. That means that your headset was going to cost like $3,000. He said, I don't care. I'm going to sell a headset that should launch in 27, in 2024, 2025, and I'm going to do it for $3,500. That's what Apple Vision Pro is. It was never intended to be a product of the times. It's a product of the future, hauled into the present by spending enormous amounts of money. And so Meta and, and Sony and Apple and Google and all of these other companies, they are going to be hitting that level of visual fidelity. They're going to be doing it with headsets that are far smaller, far lighter than what you see from Vision Pro. And I actually remain very optimistic.

1:22:49

That's great.

1:25:13

I think things are going pretty well.

1:25:14

I'm extremely optimistic. It's mostly just that when I try and pull stuff out of Meta, they're like, no, no, no, we're not ready to talk. And I think that they're just being cold shoulder to me because they don't want to leak it yet. But I am very upset.

1:25:15

Well, you know, the problem is they don't have a. They don't, they don't have a charming, charismatic pitch man who knows how to talk about this stuff with you. They got to solve that. They need to figure out what they're doing. You know, it reminds me of something, being here, I'm on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange behind me, and back in the Oculus days, when we sold the company to Meta, one of the first things that happened was New York Stock Exchange emailed our contact email and they asked if I would come and ring the bell of the New York Stock Exchange. Sounds pretty cool, right? Like, hey, like You've been acquired by this major public corporation in the form of Facebook. Come and ring the bell. Maybe, you know, maybe someday we'll do something else with you. And unfortunately, I didn't see that email for about seven years because another Oculus executive intercepted the email, said, oh, no, Palmer can't make it, but I would love to come. And he came and he rang the bell without telling me about it. And so I found out about it later in unrelated litigation. That email came up in discovery. And anyway, I've not had a chance to ring the bell yet. Maybe when Anduril goes public, I'll finally be able to. I'll finally be able to ring that bell. But I got to admit, I have a long memory and a long memory grudges, and I won't say who it was, but there's probably a handful of people out there who can guess.

1:25:28

You have a lot of co founders now, a lot of executives that you work with. How do you select for folks who won't do that to you? How do you select?

1:26:44

Extreme loyalty.

1:26:51

Extreme loyalty. Trust.

1:26:52

I don't know.

1:26:53

I mean, it's important. Remember, we just kicked this thing off a year ago.

1:26:54

Look, I started Oculus when I was 19 years old. And I mean, you also got to remember the story of who is a founder, who is a co founder. It's fluid and dark, dynamic and always changing with the ebb and flow of history. One of my ideas is to have a blockchain company where everyone agrees what the founding story is and who the co founders are, and then it goes into the blockchain so that nobody can come back and say that they're a co founder. There's a guy running around now who says that he's a co founder of Oculus, who was very much so not a co founder.

1:26:58

And in fact, I swear, I think I met this guy. Told you this story off air. A guy I was at. Tell me the story. So I met it. I was at a dinner party at my friend's house, and my buddy was like, hey, this guy works at. I'm not gonna name the company, but you guys probably have some tech stuff in common. You guys should meet. And I go up to him, I said, hey, hi, I hear we should meet. And he's like, hey. I was like, what's your story? He's like, I started a company called Oculus now at Meta. And I was like, oh, interesting. Like, never heard of you before. And so it might. Maybe this guy, we won't put him on blast here's.

1:27:30

The crazy thing. I don't even know who you're talking about.

1:28:05

And I told him.

1:28:08

I was like, no, because there's multiple people who are saying this, including a guy who literally has a documentary being made about him, how he's the founder of Oculus. So it's all you'll appreciate. You'll appreciate.

1:28:08

I was like, oh, that's, that's awesome. Like, Palmer comes on the show all the time and then he completely back, back, backtracked. It was like, it was like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I, I joined, like. But I was on the founding team. He backtracked

1:28:19

to the point you asked me, how do you select these people? Carefully. I was 19 years old when I selected the first people that I was working with. I've learned a lot. I've been stabbed in the back a lot. And I'd probably make very different decisions if I were doing it today. And it's worth noting, remember that I started Oculus on my own with no co founders, nobody involved, and a lot of like, I brought on people that I am happy to call co founders even though they didn't join the company until months later, who I had never met when I started the company. That said, I'm happy. There's some people I'm honored to share the title of co founder with and there's other people that I'm not, which is why I really want this blockchain thing. Somebody needs to vibe code this slop and get it out there.

1:28:37

Super important question, have you played Federal Reserve Simulator yet? The new game?

1:29:17

It's on Steam.

1:29:22

On Steam. You gotta try not.

1:29:23

I'm not even.

1:29:24

You're a banker.

1:29:25

I've not even heard of it.

1:29:25

You're a banker.

1:29:26

You got to get the reps in.

1:29:27

Enjoy this.

1:29:28

You got to do it. Federal Reserve Simulator.

1:29:29

It's right there on the screen. It says Trump says we have an incompetent Federal Reserve chair who loves high interest rates. Very interesting.

1:29:34

What hardware are you collecting? Recently we just learned you can buy a steam powered car and drive it around down.

1:29:44

Jay Leno has one that's 120 years old.

1:29:50

What hardware am I buying? Am I buying?

1:29:54

Collecting? Not just buying, collecting.

1:29:56

Yeah, I know. What am I? Well, so there's a few things I could bring up. To be honest, I've been too busy to buy really good stuff. But I recently got delivered one of the first Jetson ones, which is a small Evtol aircraft. I was one of their first customers and their first delivery. I also have A collection of motorcycles. The theme of the collection is commercial failure. And so all of my motorcycles were huge commercial failures. The more of a failure, the better. And so I've been buying some failed two wheel drive motorcycles, military motorcycles.

1:29:58

How do they ride?

1:30:33

Oh, incredible. Look, there's really bad failed motorcycles. There's those that failed because they're too good. One of the crown jewels in my collection is a Honda Rune. It was basically a personal project created by the CEO of Honda. The document that they used when they were creating it has actually been leaked now. And at the start of the document it says, performance is the only object. Price is of no importance. And so they wanted to build the ultimate cruising motorcycle. And the story goes that they lost over $100,000 per bike in the end. And so I've got one of the handful of Honda Runes that made it out of that program. A beautiful Honda, Honda room with, with, with a couple thousand miles metallic purple and chrome. And it's, it's, it's one of my favorite motorcycles, if not the favorite. So commercial failure doesn't mean a product's bad. It just means they couldn't figure out how to make a business out of it.

1:30:35

Sure, sure.

1:31:25

Back to your Jetson one. Have you been flying it? Are you taking it like half a foot off the ground and then a foot off the ground? What, what is the path to commuting? To work in it?

1:31:25

I think given the regulatory climate around Evtol aircraft, it's best that I not say one more word.

1:31:36

Perfect. Perfect. Where do you get your shirts?

1:31:44

Where do I got my shirts? Well, it depends. I buy Tommy Bahamas. This one is a rain spooner and oral Hawaiian shirt. So I've got a sentry tower, I've got a ghost X on it. And they're headquartered on Catalina Island, California and Avalon. So I buy from a whole bunch of different places. I'm an equal opportunity Hawaiian shirt purchaser.

1:31:49

I like it. Supporting the entire market map.

1:32:14

Well, it sounds like we have Jonathan Gould, the Comptroller of the Currency next to you in the booth. Is that correct?

1:32:17

That's right. I'd like to introduce Jonathan Gould, Comptroller of the Currency, here with me today on tvpn.

1:32:24

Thank you so much for joining us. Jonathan, please introduce yourself since it's the first time on the show and tell us a little bit about what happened today from your perspective and what's going on with Erebor from your perspective.

1:32:30

Sure. So thank you so much for having me. I'm Jonathan Gould, Comptroller of the Currency, we charter, we regulate and we supervise national banks. And today we're here to celebrate what is the first full service charter of a national bank that's been issued since I took office about seven months ago. So we're very excited to have airborne into the national banking system after months of hard work on their part. So delighted to have them there. And we're here to celebrate that.

1:32:42

Yeah. How much is changing around the way banks get chartered? I'm interested to hear. Is this just the Herculean efforts, Palmer's side, or is there going to be a flood of new bank charters issued? Like what is the view over the next decade look like for new banks?

1:33:09

Broadly well, so I think over the last four years, but even beyond since the 2008 financial crisis, regulators have imposed a lot of hurdles procedurally and otherwise as a result of just having a much lower risk tolerance around bank chartering in the United States. That's not the result of any changes in statute or anything like that. Just simply a lot of regulators, not just the OCC but other regulators as well at the federal level and possibly the state level too, just discouraging banks from, from, from, from forming. But of course it's absolutely critical that we have new banks forming in America on a regular basis. That's really part of how the banking system revolves, revitalizes and refreshes itself over time. And so again, we want to do everything we can such that we are being transparent and holding all applicants to the same standard and faithfully applying the statutory factors that Congress has given us on a case by case basis and in an even handed fashion. So that if new applicants, if they meet the statutory factors and they can meet our high supervisory standards as Arbor has, they will get a charter. So we're excited to see the demand that's out there. We think that there and have seen already a lot of banks of various different business models kind of in the pipeline already. And again, if they meet the statutory criteria and they can meet our supervisory standards, we welcome the system.

1:33:26

I'd also say just personally I think those standards people should understand are already extremely high. Like you guys are not lowering the bar, you're just going through the process that statutory is supposed to. And you might not be able to say this or want to say this, but I'll say right now as it is, there's probably a lot of things that could be done to make it easier for people to start banks that would be productive. But right now the bar is extremely high. I've put it this way Starting a bank is very much a rich get richer thing right now you can't be a 19 year old Palmer Lucky who started Oculus in his trailer and say, you know what, I've got this incredible idea for banks banking. I think I'm going to go start a bank. Maybe it's possible, but the process we went through, I don't think a 19 year old Palmer Lucky can get through.

1:34:50

That's fair. And again, I mean part of what we're doing here is just trying to live up to the standards that we say we have in place for what it takes to become a bank. But more fundamentally, and if you'll pardon me for this one, but I mean you shouldn't have to hire a burglar from the shire to get a bank charter, right? You know, it shouldn't be that, that challenging. We should have transparent standards around it and to the OCC's credit, I think we do. We just haven't in all cases and overall administrations follow them.

1:35:33

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

1:36:02

What other, are there other kind of industries or categories that you're interested in? Erebor is obviously unique in that it's focused on technology and industrial businesses and it's something that has so much excitement from our industry. But, but is there kind of a line out the door in terms of other sectors that are excited to have kind of a new bank partner in their industry?

1:36:03

So we don't, you know, from a chartering agency standpoint, we don't pick and choose winners and losers. We don't pick and choose business models. We want to make sure that to the extent there is an unmet credit need in a community or in a business or an industry, that the banking system is evolving to meet those credit needs, again subject to doing so in a safe and sound manner. So again, you know, we are trying to apply the statutory factors across business models, across potential applicants in an even handed fashion, again consistent with the guidance that we've produced over the years. So again, we're not trying to direct, you know, bank chartering one way or the other. You know, I think we've seen in the past, particularly around the last four years, you know, a skepticism inconsistent with statute, but a skepticism around things like digital assets and crypto. We are reverting back to what I would say is the norm for the OCC over its 163 year history, which is we don't, we don't pick winners or losers here. We apply statutes in even handed fashion and we are agnostic around technology and in fact act. We welcome banks embracing new technologies. I mean over 163 years, which is how long our agency has been around for, and obviously the US banking system far exceeds that. Banks have had to adapt, evolve over time and again. New chartering is how banks do that in parts, how the system adapts and refreshes itself. So we have a strong interest in seeing that continue to occur.

1:36:27

I know you can't pick, pick and choose, but I have to say in my mind I, I want someone to start a bank that is focused on adult content and other edge of illegal stuff. It's not what I want to focus on, but the problem is right now there's this weird gray area where there's things that are technically legal in the US but no banks want to touch them because of the PR concerns or the actual real risk concerns. And so they end up being banked by foreign banks that are doing all kinds of weird payments stuff. Now you have an opening for organized crime, an opening for sex trafficking and opening, and you don't have any real insight into how any of it moves. Like the US can't see how the money is moving. It becomes much harder for law enforcement. These other international banks don't want to cooperate with law enforcement because they're making all their money off of sex trafficking and illegal payments and all of these other things. And so I've always wished that somebody would come up and say, hey, I'm going to bank, I'm going to bank all of the people that are on the edge of legality so that we can get at least some insight and access into this. I don't want to be in that business personally, but somebody out there should do this because it'd be probably be better if that whole industry theoretically didn't exist. But in a world where it does exist, it's better that they not be banked by Russian organized crime.

1:37:57

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Get a little more technical with us. What is the actual process look like for applying for a charter? I mean, I think some people, you know, imagine like a web form that they fill out, then they might, you know, imagine, you know, a thousand page legal document or are there lots of conversations, meetings.

1:39:13

Like you probably also need to be able to raise like a quarter billion dollars or something in that range.

1:39:34

What does it actually take these days?

1:39:39

I mean, I'll leave Leon, that's you. But I mean you said does it take a quarter billion dollars? I mean we had to have like $350 million in regulatory capital just sitting in an account to backstop it. Which again gets back to what I said earlier where right now starting a bank under like current rules and statute, it is very much not the 19 year old Palmer Lucky.

1:39:43

That seems healthy. I don't want to bank with a 19 year old personally. We have some 19 year olds on our team. They're fantastic.

1:40:05

They're probably slightly different, different opinions. But remember I lean very libertarian. I'm a college dropout. I'm trying to figure out if I can convince kids to drop out of high school. I mean would you say you wouldn't bank with a 19 year old? Maybe you just haven't met the right 19 year old. 19 year old, that's right. There's a lot of people who wouldn't work for a 19 year old. And I had that problem when I started Oculus.

1:40:11

That is true.

1:40:30

And yet I managed to do it.

1:40:32

I'll give you the more anodyne, less colorful and maybe somewhere between the two is what actually happens in practice. So it's a two phase process for chartering a bank at the occ. The first phase essentially is, you know, the regulator. So the OCC will be vetting kind of the business plan, understanding and assessing, you know, what's the probability for success. You know, ultimately doing what's called a giving what's called a preliminary consideration, initial approval or not. We aim to do that within 120 days. And then essentially kind of the second phase is the actual in organization phase. So it's standing up the bank, doing all the policies and procedures, doing the fundraise or the capital side. You're making sure you have the management team in place that you need. And that can occur. That basically has to occur within 12 to 18 months of when the OCC grants preliminary conditions approval. But how long exactly the bank remains in organization phase is really up to the bank. Right? Because they've just got to get themselves ready so that they can essentially kind of, you know, open the doors for business. And the last thing that happens just before they do open the doors for business is that OCC examiners coming in do the final kind of pre opening exam and make sure in fact the policies and procedures are in place, management's there and so forth so that the bank can in fact welcome customers and executed on his business plan.

1:40:35

I have one last question. Can we have a 19 year old comptroller? What does it take to become a comptroller of the currency? Is this. You go to Wall street and then there's a revolving door and Then you go to the government. Do you work your way up in the government? Break me down for the 19 year old that wants to be the next comptroller of the currency. What do they got to do?

1:41:59

Well, I don't think there's any statutory probation Prohibition on a 19 year old. I mean, hopefully qualifications are relevant, although, you know, it's hard to tell sometimes in Washington these days. But certainly you do need a presidential nomination and support and you need the advice and consent of the Senate. I spent about 25 years in this industry, so got a lot of friends and you know, both on the, on the policy side and on the, on the bank side side.

1:42:19

So.

1:42:47

Okay, well, now I'm excited about a 19 year old comptroller. Let's see.

1:42:47

Yeah, they can put on their application.

1:42:52

You don't have to worry about, oh, wow. Palmer talks a big game about faith in youth and then as soon as I tell him you're going to be regulated by your 19 year old, he's like, oh, no, no, no.

1:42:55

Let me tell you why this actually fits in with the libertarian perspective.

1:43:05

Okay, okay.

1:43:08

When you have a free market and you have a whole bunch of different companies that are all competing with each other, the idea that one or a few of them might be run by high schoolers say, you know what, give them the right to compete in that. It's a free market, they're allowed to compete. And if they provide a better product and a better service and people want to work with them or for them, all the power to them. Government is different. You have a centralized power, you have one chance to get it right. And so I will admit I'm a little, I am a little worried that perhaps if you need someone with a lot of experience, not even just in currency or finance, just someone with experience in life. I talked earlier about how I probably picked poorly in some of the people that I worked with early on. Imagine if I was comptroller, the currency and I had that same level of naivete. If it's one of a hundred companies in the market, I'm all for it. If they are the person who is the wielder of singular government authority, I actually would worry about it. So I'm not asking as hypocritical as you think. I'm like halfway there.

1:43:09

Okay, that made me sad.

1:44:06

I wouldn't want to discourage 19 year olds from aspiring to be or becoming the comptroller of the occurrence. But just to be clear, the comptroller of the currency is not responsible for killing the penny.

1:44:07

Do you have to deal with that every day. Are people stopping you on the street and flicking pennies at your head?

1:44:18

Most of my family members and all my college friends. All they want to know is, so you're responsible for killing the penny. And then as soon as I say no and start describing my actual job, they immediately eyes glazing.

1:44:22

That's a funny one.

1:44:33

Well, thank you guys for coming on the show. We really appreciate all the context and laughs. Have a great time at the New York Stock Exchange.

1:44:33

Say hi to Lynn for us.

1:44:41

Yeah, say hi to Lynn and we'll see you soon.

1:44:42

Cheers. Thanks, guys. Live long and prosper.

1:44:45

Goodbye. Live long and prosper. Let me tell you about public.com investing for those who take it seriously. They got stocks, option bonds, crypto treasuries, and more with great customer service. And let me also tell you about 11 labs. Build intelligent real time conversational agents. Reimagine human technology interaction with 11 labs. That was a lot of fun. I loved in the chat someone was saying they got to make comptroller of the currency simulator. Get it on steam. I'm ready to play 10,000 hours of Comptroller simulator. That's what you should be required to do before you get the job. The presidential nominee. Anyway, we will continue with our coverage of Erebor at the New York Stock Exchange in just a minute. We have Diogo from Han Ventures coming in, calling in from the New York Stock Exchange. So we will bring him in in just a second. Any other breaking news that we should touch on, Jordan?

1:44:47

Yeah, we can touch on this briefly. So Nvidia and OpenAI are nearing finalizing that Nvidia's $30 billion investment into OpenAI.

1:45:44

Yes.

1:45:53

A lot of people were kind of

1:45:54

thought it was 100 billion, which is.

1:45:56

Yeah. And so this felt like a downgrade, but at the same time, that 100 billion, when they proposed it, was going to be in, you know, 10% installments based on milestones. And so I think it makes a lot of sense to just do a good chunk of it.

1:45:58

You just need to remove five zeros from every deal to contextualize it for a normal founder. Like if you're raising a $10 million Series A and an investor comes in and says, I'm good for three, you're like, awesome, this is great. And then add five zeros. And that's the same Altman experience. Anyway, we have our next guest in the restream waiting room. Let me tell you about Plaid. First. Plaid powers the apps you use to spend, save, borrow and Invest securely connecting bank accounts to move money, fight fraud and improve lending. Now with AI and without further ado, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

1:46:11

What's happening?

1:46:45

We are working on audio. Let's try and bring that in. And we will kick it off in the introduction. Please, since it's the first time on the show, introduce yourself.

1:46:47

Yes, my name is Yoga Monica. I'm a GP at Han Ventures and the co founder and executive chairman of Anchorage Digital.

1:46:54

Fantastic. Since it's the first time on the show, give us a little bit of background how you wound up at Han Ventures. We've had Katie on the show and

1:47:00

what was your first trip to Nicee? Yeah, I hear that.

1:47:07

That's interesting.

1:47:10

Yes, it was not my first trip actually. So I've been here a few times. I've gone to take lots of the pictures and they actually have a curator by the way. So if you come to Nicee, you should ask for her. She knows everything about the history of this place. It is an hour and a half to two hours, but you should absolutely do it and see all of the original documents and everything that has happened here. Super historic.

1:47:12

Cool. And then so, yeah, background the path to Han. The path, the crypto. I know Han Ventures is interesting because there's the government relationships as well as the fintech. There's a lot going on. So I'd love to know how you wound up in your current position.

1:47:32

Yeah, so fun story, but I really have only done one thing in my entire life, so. PhD in distributed systems 20 years ago when honestly was useless. And then I led security team at Square for four years, went to lead security team at Docker for three years, then started my own company with Nathan, a company called Anchorage Digital, the First Federal Chartered bank, which is very relevant for Erebor. And then Katie and I connected when I was fundraising for Anchorage about eight years ago. And over the years we've just been friends. She was, as you know, co leading the A16Z crypto fund that was an investor in Anchorage. We were friends. We were on the board of the Libra Diem, if you recall that initiative, by Facebook together and just, you know, they're clients of Anchorage and so we've interacted many different ways over the years.

1:47:47

Yeah. So talk about the Erebor deal. How'd you meet Palmer? What was interesting about this other than, you know, obviously there's a lot of star power, but I want to hear more about the unique thesis.

1:48:34

So look, I was in a unique situation which is I'm one of the few crazy people that actually sit on the board of two federal charters, not just one. And so when the team came to me and really wanted to start this, said, well, there's not that many people that have done this over the past five years. And Anchorage got our charter, as you know, in 2021 and really was trailblazer in terms of showing that you could have innovation under the OCC and going through a Biden administration, which as you know, was very crypto unfriendly and coming out on the other side with a very strong business.

1:48:46

Sorry to interrupt, but did everyone think you were absolutely, you guys were absolutely insane to try to get a charter in that climate? Like, how did you think the odds were going into that process? Was it kind of a moonshot like, hey, if we can make this happen, it's great, but low likelihood? Or at what point did you develop confidence that it would be a possibility?

1:49:19

Well, look, it was to the point where the consultants that were helping us get the charter did not believe that we were going to get the charter in the first place. So that was how bad it was to get a charter and try to get a charter in 2020. But if you think about Anchorage and how it started, it is an institutional bank. We only serve large institutions. You know, the clients are the blank rocks of the world, visas of the world, very large institutions. So when we had the opportunity of converting our trust, state trust charter into a federal charter, it was the obvious solution and the obvious solution that had longevity if you're just serving institutions. We basically connected the best security, that custody's crypto assets to the best regulatory charter that can get out there. And that was the end state of the company. If you had the opportunity of jumping right to the end state of the company, wouldn't you take it? And so we put all of our chips, we went all in and we just ended up being the first ones to get the charter.

1:49:38

Got it. How are you thinking about innovation in the existing, you know, mega bank sector? Like, there's been a ton of skepticism around crypto from the leads of the big banks, but I feel like some of them are coming around. It's staring them in the face at this point. They're seeing public companies that operate in crypto, you know, make it through, there's new regulation. Is there any, is there anything that you are seeing on the horizon where those banks might modernize and actually adopt some more forward thinking technology strategies?

1:50:34

Look, Erebor to large part actually came out of the frustration of the fact that that does not exist for the industry. If we go all the way to 2008 in post crisis, you had Dodd Frank that actually created so many more regulations, all of these stress tests, all these capital requirements. And from that moment on the number of federal banks is literally a monotonically decreasing function over time. Each year has less banks in the year before for it through M and A mergers or people going out of business. And so the frustration of the industry when you're in technology and you're trying to build financial products of not being able to build has culminated in something like Anchorage and then something like Aeroborn. Because if you think about it, FinTechs started for a while renting these charters and doing banking as a service as it's called. And then all of a sudden synapse blow up happens which is still being litigated. They literally did not know who the money belongs to. And so it showed that if you are a tech company that wants to build a world class product, then you cannot rely on a rental charter and banking as a service. You sort of have to do it yourself. So going straight to the pain, which is very difficult to get an OCC charter and operate as a bank holding company under the regulatory regime of the oldest banking regulator in the United States, the occ. That is not something that you do like lightly, but it was necessary. So it was time for tech to come into finance. And so that's why these banks got created and we had to take matters into our own hands.

1:51:05

How do you see the market for new banks developing? Because when Palmer launched Anduril, there was this line where in order to start a defense company you had to have a billionaire as a co founder. And he cited Palantir, Anduril, SpaceX. And it was something that was like the barrier to entry was so high and then now we have a whole defense tech boom and there's a lot of cool stuff going on. Anduril's obviously still doing fantastically, but is this one, is this a moment where you think people will just wake up and be like, yeah, it's hard but it's not impossible. And so maybe we will see a bank that's specifically targeted at farming or oil and gas or some new startup in some other vertical, they'll try and create some different differentiation, not go right up against Erebor, but we will see a market map in a few years of new banks 100%.

1:52:32

After 20 years of almost zero federal charters being created a year, there's a window here because of a pro business administration and lots of these convergences that have been happening that allows people to even for the first time think that it's possible. Think that it's possible. And so dozens of these charges have been applied for. There's two main strains of them. One of them is the trust bank charter that Anchorage trailblazed in which you are full bank, but you're not actually taking deposits and you're effectively a full reserve bank. And then there's the Erebor model, which you're full fiduciary traditional bank in the case of Erebor, extremely conservative tier capital. Tier capital ratios. And it's an extremely conservative bank, but you're going for the whole enchilada, FDIC, insured, etc. So lots of banks are now realizing that this is possible. And you see that in the massive increase of applications and charges being given out. So it's a new renaissance for banks and people realizing this is possible. So let's actually go do it.

1:53:21

Yeah.

1:54:15

How are you, how are you thinking about making. You're now on the board of two. Would you consider making more investments in this space or are the incremental charters that are would be kind of broadly interesting to the market not necessarily a fit for Han Ventures?

1:54:16

Look, they have to make sense. One of the reasons why Erebor works is because three of the things that are hardest about starting a bank. The first one is capitalization. It's no surprise that Palmer starting anything will get capitalized. And so you jump through that hurdle. The second one is the regulatory hurdle. Anchorage has shown that it was possible. The team that Palmer assembled is absolutely magnificent. From engineering to compliance to regulation. And so it was very clear to me from day one that they were going to be able to step over the hurdle. And then the third and most important thing is you actually have to get to scale on a depository base and Erebor through Palmer as a go to market, which is what I call it, Palmer as a go to market. It's our go to market strategy and Palmer's friends, Palmer's connections and obviously the competence of the team in the bank. You have all three figured out so effectively we speed ran the infancy teenage years of a bank into something that is fully fledged and is ready to go.

1:54:34

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, breaking it down. Palmer, congratulations. Have fun. Enjoy the closing bell.

1:55:33

Great to meet you. Come back on the show.

1:55:41

Four minutes until the closing bell.

1:55:43

Nicey.

1:55:45

We will talk to you soon.

1:55:46

Cheers.

1:55:47

Goodbye. Let me tell you about console. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of it. HR and finance support giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. And I believe we have Joe Lonsdale in the restream waiting room. Let's bring him into the TVPN ultranum. Joe, how are you doing?

1:55:48

Hey guys, how's it going? Good to see you.

1:56:05

It's going fantastically. Is software dead? I want to say SaaS apocalypse. I know you have some good takes on the SaaS apocalypse because someone vibe coded your former company, right? Oh, that's funny.

1:56:07

You saw my comments online today.

1:56:22

I just can't help myself.

1:56:23

I'm like, it's like being shared by all these people. Oh yeah, I vibe coded Palantir. Like, come on guys. It's like, it's annoying because I'm such a pro AI bullish person, but it drives you to apostasy from the whole movement where they're like, we're replacing everything. Palantir is going down. I'm like, no, I think low end SaaS is in trouble the next few years. Like that's the reality, right? Not, not the hard company.

1:56:25

So that's narrow point solution. No system of record, no regulatory mode, like no network effect. Is that what you're thinking when you Describe Low end SaaS?

1:56:46

That's where I would start is probably some of the stuff that Constellation software used to do. I don't know what they're doing now, but back in the day when I studied them, there's a lot of stuff like that. It probably climbs the stack over time. So there's probably some very similar simple systems of record that are very basic that you can kind of probably pull in. But listen, there's like, if you took more than $100 million to build your SaaS software with like good engineers, that's going to be, that's going to take a while to replace. And if you have a great SaaS company that spent hundreds of millions of billions of dollars and you still have a great tech culture and you're using AI, you're fine, right? As long as you have a great tech culture because you're going to stay ahead, I think. But there's a lot of stuff with PE Bot didn't take that much to build, probably put more money into sales than tech, that stuff's in trouble.

1:56:57

Yeah.

1:57:39

What are you advised? How are the conversations going with existing portfolio companies that are now running the calculus on how long it'll take to build new products and thinking like, hey, we can go multi product faster than maybe we could before. Or maybe it's more tempting because this thing that was going to take us a year could now take two months or six weeks or something in that range to ship. Still feels like somewhat of a risk to just say, okay, we're going to do everything all at once. But how are you thinking about it?

1:57:40

It, you know, I, my, my bias as an entrepreneur has always been to like, do too much at once and I need to hire people around me to hold me back because I'm like, let's do these 14 things. Then you're like, actually, guys, you know, actually we should ace this thing first. And this thing. So, so, so, you know, in general, this is probably dangerous for me because

1:58:06

it empowers me to keep pushing for

1:58:21

doing everything at once. And it's like, I love Peter Thiel's like, argument on the board of Facebook 20 years ago where like the Warren Buffett, you know, person, Don Graham, who was tied to him is like, don't spend too much money. Get cash flow positive. And Peter's like, we should be like, still burning money and like just growing faster and taking over the market. He's obviously was correct. Right? So, I mean, it's just like there's a lot to do and our big companies are growing. You have no excuse to, to be making money right now. If there's things to build, right. You should, you should be spending up more to build within this environment. You know, it's, it's, you know, I think the best engineers really are 5 to 10x better with this. I think if your engineers are not using it, you should replace them. That's a great way to know how to who to replace in your company right now. And you know, I mean, yeah, a lot of our older SaaS companies are still well run. They're building agents on top of it to perform the work for their customers. Does that make sense?

1:58:23

Yeah.

1:59:11

So it's like, if you like Dominique, I shouldn't say it because he gets too many calls, but like One of our CEOs is like, dominates a big part of the financial industry in one particular niche area. And now he's like rolled out agents and he's adding tens of millions of revenue with the agents to do to help the customers have to hire less and to be more efficient. So there's a lot of stuff like that we're seeing.

1:59:11

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, let's flip it over to Erebor. You're not going to vibe code a bank charter at least. I don't think you will. But what are the keys to success going forward? You're obviously deeply involved with the company, very excited about it. What does the next couple of years look like? What do you want to see happen?

1:59:29

So, you know, I think with the bank, you got a barbell on one hand, there's like all this really exciting stuff you could do with AI and with hopefully like convincing the regulators to. To permit new idea, really great things, and we can talk about that. On the other hand, this is. It's a goddamn bank, right? So you have to be traditional, you have to be safe, you have to be smart. I'm putting my own money in. I'm putting some of my friends money in. I gotta. But a lot of my friends are. All my companies are too. I'm on the board of this thing. And your job and a bank board is to. Is to be conservative as well. Right. And so the whole point is, you know, our reputations are all tied into this. Palmer's reputation, my reputation, a lot of other people's reputation. And you have to run this thing where you're serving customers better and learning from the best of that and where you're just. And we're going to be extra safe. I don't know what I'm supposed to talk about, but I think the whole point is that, you know, it's not a narrow bank in that, in the traditional sense, but it is much narrower than other banks. We're going to keep a lot more in a very, very safe way because I think it's the right way to run these things. It's just never, not take any risk. You don't need to take.

1:59:46

What was the sort of 72 hours of the SVB crisis like for you personally?

2:00:44

Oh, gosh. You know, it was actually interesting because I'd warned eight or nine of my companies about six months before, actually, that I was. I didn't know for sure, but I said, this looks not, not, not quite right to me. My brother talked to me about it. He's a macro analyst. And what's going on? I hadn't known for sure. And I had a bunch of my family money in frb. And it was really sad because I loved. I mean, FB guys were nice too, but I loved frb. They were like our John.

2:00:51

John and I too.

2:01:12

Yeah, yeah.

2:01:13

And I was at the dinner with the governor here in Texas that night and I had a bunch of other friends here. I won't mention their names, but like, you know, guys who'd moved here are very, you know, multibillionaires who themselves had a bunch of their own money in frb, actually. And we all felt terribly guilty because when SVB had started to go down, we actually had each withdrawn money from FRB as well, because you kind of had to in that situation. It was just too scary. And so it was like. It was like SBB was a little bit sad. FRB for me was just. I was never really worried for myself. I got my money out. My companies didn't have too much exposure, but I felt really sad because it was such a great bank. I think for me, one of the goals of Erebor would be to try to learn to do things as well as FRB did, to serve people.

2:01:15

I think it was a really great bank.

2:01:56

Yeah, you mentioned Texas. There's a lot of young people that are nervous about the job market in the age of AI. Give me the pitch for University of Austin right now. In the age of AI.

2:01:57

University of Austin, the age of AI. Well, I think in any age, but especially in an age where the world is changing quickly, you need to have a really strong foundation. You need leaders in your society to have a strong intellectual foundation. So what we're doing is we have, you know, it's one side really deep intellectual foundations of the West. Understanding our civilization, understanding how our world works, why it works the way it does. You want to talk, you know who my top people I work with in business, they all understand philosophy, they all understand history, whether it's Peter Thiel, Alice Carp, Charles Koch, Elon Musk. You have to give them that really strong base. On the other hand, you got to challenge them, push them really hard. On the STEM side, we're just finishing our STEM building right next to SpaceX and Boring Company have a. I was just with my friend who built Palantir with me. He was teaching the AI Agents course next quarter. So we have a lot of our probably top 100 friends who built companies as advisors who are helping push the university forward. And we're going to train courageous young leaders, and a lot of them are going to work with us and build the future. So it's a pretty exciting place to go.

2:02:09

That's very exciting.

2:02:59

You guys are setting up dorms for Mac Minis. A little space, set them up.

2:03:00

You know, there's all sorts of crazy AI stuff going on that we're having fun with, but I think the dorms are a little bit too nice, frankly. I think the students. I don't know, maybe it's like too, too fancy, but it's good they like it a lot.

2:03:05

Are you secretly funding the California billionaire tax to punish all. Everyone that didn't leave like you?

2:03:16

You know, it has.

2:03:22

It has been something I've commented on that it's like, probably really good for these people in California to wake the heck up and see what's going on. But no, I'm actually secretly funding a bunch of the things that now my friends are waking up to kind of reveal the fraud in California and reveal the nonsense in California and. And hopefully fight back against the real extremes. Because, you know, I used to argue with a lot of my friends in college. I'd be more on the moderate right. They'd be on the moderate left, I'd say, if you want to define it. And now most of those smart people who've been successful on the moderate left were like complete allies against the crazy far left, because that is just so broken in California. And I'm excited to see a bunch of them courageously stepping up.

2:03:24

Well, thank you for taking the time. We'll let you get back to your day.

2:03:58

Good to see you.

2:04:00

We'll talk to you soon.

2:04:01

See you guys.

2:04:02

Always a great time. Have a good one. Let me tell you about Gemini 3.1 Pro. Gemini 3.1 Pro is here. With a capable baseline. It's great for super complex tasks like visualizing difficult concepts, synthesizing data into a single view, or bringing creative projects to life.

2:04:02

You hear that?

2:04:19

That's the sound of a happy dad barking.

2:04:20

Bring him in. What's happening here?

2:04:24

We

2:04:30

cracking them open.

2:04:33

Hey, it's five o' clock somewhere. It's four o'.

2:04:34

Clock.

2:04:36

The New York Stock Exchange. Cheers. John, good to see you again.

2:04:37

Yeah, good to see you guys, too. I'm good. Good. I know it's been a few weeks, but I just want to congratulate you guys again on the super bowl ad.

2:04:41

Oh, thank you. That was a lot of fun.

2:04:49

You know, I want to tell you guys, like, man, I actually got emotional because I remember a year ago when we spoke and when tvpn, like, was just taken off and, you know, just watching your guys's journey has been incredible. You know, I get. I get like once a week or so, I get, like, someone calling me and, like, trying to pitch me on a show and they're like, we're the TVPN of sports. We're the TVPN of. I got some guy the other day, like, we're the TVPN of Europe. So it's. It's kind of cool. It reminds me of. It reminds me of like 10 years ago when I was in music, people used to always pitch, I'm the Justin Bieber of Latin music, I'm the Justin Bieber of India. And like that's, that's what TVPN's become.

2:04:50

Yeah, yeah, that's somehow. Yeah, it's a good sign. It rarely works. I mean, if someone's trying to do the Happy dad for wine, it's like that's probably not. Either you'll do it or whatever works in that category will just look completely different and have a different strategy because people want new things. Walk us through. What's the experience like at the New York Stock Exchange? So today it's pretty cool.

2:05:32

I mean, you know, yeah, I came out here to support Erebor and, and what Palmer and, and Trevor and the team are doing. Really excited, you know, we're going to be switching all our companies over to Erebor in the next upcoming weeks. So it's very, it's very, you know, they're, they're, it's not just because they're good friends of mine, but it's, you know, it's really nice to see a bank doing something different and having that personal touch and, you know, you know, and have, you know, their philosophy of just truly caring about companies and, you know, whether you're a startup or an established company. So it's just a good feeling to be a part of it.

2:05:54

Yeah. How is business going? How did, how did 2025 shake out? There were, you know, the economy was up, there were tariffs, there's lots going on. But what was it like in your world?

2:06:32

Well, tariffs don't really affect us because almost all our products are US made. So, you know, Happy Dad. Yeah. So, you know, outside of our merch business, which is, you know, just a, you know, less than 3% of our business, everything else is us made. So tariffs don't necessarily affect us. You know, so far, I mean, this year has been already a great year for us. You know, Happy dad in January was, you know, year over year in January is up 31%.

2:06:43

Just.

2:07:11

Yeah. And this is, this is, this is dry January, by the way. This is, and this is like, you know, if you live anywhere outside of a California or, you know, some of these west coast states, 90% of the country was pretty much frozen. You know, including, including Florida. You know, I was in Miami a few weeks ago and it was 35 degrees in Miami. So, you know, and you know, Happy Dad's not a cold weather problem product. So to start the year off like that chocolate.

2:07:12

Yeah.

2:07:40

Although maybe I should launch the Happy dad hot chocolate for next January.

2:07:40

Yeah, I think people were okay with the cold drink, so we're gonna probably stick with that right now. How are you?

2:07:44

How much time do you spend in New York? Feels like a lot of your, your, your, your business and is. Is more west coast leaning, but New York is really feels like the epicenter of so much happening in just like the creator industry broadly.

2:07:54

I don't spend a lot of time here at all. I actually would only spend time here because more personal reasons because my wife's family's from New Jersey. But yeah, no, I spend most of our, most of my time is actually in California to, you know, work with our team and in Orange county and, you know, my brother Sam does a lot of the traveling to meet with our third party part partners. But yeah, I spend most of the time in California not too far from you guys.

2:08:10

Give us some tips, some hacks for expanding consumer products, expanding in retail. I remember this fun story from Mark Rampola, who started Vitamin Water company or sorry, Coconut Water company and he went to all his sales guys and was like, whoever sells the most, I'm giving you an F150. And they worked extremely hard and it was just kind of funny outside the box. Most people would be thinking in the spreadsheets. But what's been working on the retail side? What has been the interesting, like, unexpected growth vector throughout the last year?

2:08:34

Well, with Happy dad, you know, I think last time I was on the show in September, we were talking about creator brands and creators, like overextending themselves when they launch a brand. And one of the things that we're doing this year is we're going to actually spend a lot less time and effort on marketing with creators and spend more of the money on trade marketing and being actually where the customer's at. So if you think about Happy dad, you know, Happy dad, you go on a weekend on a Friday or Saturday to buy the product. Well, you might as well spend money in the store with displays and, you know, decorating the stores or putting up neon signs. Like, money is probably better spent where the customer is versus where the customer isn't. Like, if you're, you know, you know, you know, you're sponsoring a podcast and the podcast is live at 8am on a Tuesday and you're, you know, an alcohol company and most of your sales are Fridays and Saturdays or Sundays during football season. It's the customer is going to forget about you by the time Friday, Saturday, come out so you might as well spend that money when they're actually in the store. So that would be my tip with any CPG brand is focused, focus on trade marketing, focus on actually decorating stores, proper displays and being seen in the stores. Because what's the point if you're not necessarily in the store or if you're hidden in the back because your competitors are actually doing what I just said?

2:09:05

Yeah, we were talking about this. Expensify spent a lot of money sponsoring 10mil something 15 sponsoring the Apple F1 movie and cool concept but the challenge is like think about the sort of person's like frame of mind when they're watching that movie. They're not in the business of they're not thinking, I gotta buy management software right now. And so being at the right place.

2:10:28

Unless you have a lot of money, like if you have a lot of money and let's just say Taylor Sheridan calls you and says, hey, you want to be stocked in our fridge in Landman Season 3. If you've got got extra money and you're already in the stores and you're doing everything I said and you just have, you know, an extra amount of cash to do that so your friends could text you and say, hey, I just saw your product and Landman, that was awesome. If you want to do that, that's fine. But I would, I would focus on the act where your customer physically is and they're ready to go and they're ready to buy. They've got their wallet so you know, trigger them at that moment.

2:10:53

Yeah.

2:11:29

How a lot of your shows have partnerships with the sort of like the DraftKings or the Fan Duels of the world, some other online gaming platforms, I'm sure a bunch of prediction markets. Now how are you navigating that whole landscape? Obviously the big sports books have been talking pretty openly about how their businesses have been impacted by prediction markets. Even though they're getting into the game themselves. What are those conversations look like and how often do those contracts actually turn over?

2:11:29

Yeah.

2:12:02

So you know, we have a media company, Shotz, which was part of the TVPN super bowl commercial. So thank you.

2:12:03

You know, we don't have a lot

2:12:09

of time so we don't need to do that. But you know, I'm doing it in my head. Shotz has a partnership with PricePix which was, you know, which was a daily fantasy. You could select select players more or less. And recently they implemented prediction markets in there. So we have a long term partnership with Price Picks amongst all of our content and they've been great partners. We've been with them since 2022. We recently renewed our deal for another three years. They're great because they already had a fan base we didn't have to worry about. You know, most of our fans right now they actually have price picks. So, you know, we're more focused on getting them re engaged in the product or educated on some of these new features that Price Fix has. So, yeah, so that's our partner when it comes to the prediction market, sports app space.

2:12:10

Yeah.

2:13:02

Talk to us about the broader growth of alcohol consumption, particularly among young people. Obviously your business is growing, your category is growing, but beer, I believe, had a 4% decline. And alcohol, broadly, it feels like young people aren't drinking as sort of a meme. But how are you processing that?

2:13:04

Yeah, so people are, you know, this new generation especially. But most people are just, they're drinking, they're just drinking differently. They're not, you know, they're not going heavy, they're not going, you know, spirit. They're not drinking beers. You know, if you look at most beer companies, if they haven't got into like the seltzers or the tea or no bubble space, they're struggling. So, you know, I think beer consumption is down. You know, I say this all the time. You know, people don't want to get, you know, they don't want to wake up hungover, so they're not drinking, you know, vodkas and whiskeys and, you know, some of these harder liquors because people want to get up and they want to feel good. People are more on their health kick more than ever these days. You know, that's why you're looking at all these supplement brands, these fitness brands, GLP1 peptide companies. They're all through the roof because people want to be healthy. They don't want to wake up. And also have this theory that people want to look good on social media too. So, you know, so there's only two ways to look good on social media. Either be in shape or add 15 filters to your picture or grab a hammer.

2:13:25

Grab a hammer. Just stop with the hammer. We're not bone smashing done. Smashing is now. It's over.

2:14:31

That guy.

2:14:37

Yeah.

2:14:38

Anyway, that's a one. That guy's a one of one.

2:14:38

He is a one of one. Jordy. Anything else?

2:14:41

I wanna. Yeah, I wanna. I. Do you think. Do you think clavicular will create 10,000 claviculars? Like, do you think IRL streaming is gonna be a big new meta or is there just A much. I mean there's naturally a smaller base of people that can be an IRL live streamer than a traditional influencer who might have a normal job or something of the sort.

2:14:43

Well, media as in general is changing. In general I consider you guys IRL just in a different format. And if you look at how many people are viewing this right now, it's a lot less people than how many people are going to clip the TVPN episode interviews. So the longer you could actually stay online, the more of a chance you have to have multiple clips. If we had to count all the TVPN live views on X and YouTube versus all the clips of TVPN amongst all the platforms, shorts, TikTok X reels, it's probably hundreds X. So I do think iron whether it's streamers, whether it's this format, you know, I think that's, that's where media is going because it's really about short form. Most people aren't, you know, people are going to watch Palmer's clip, you know, you know, and those clips are probably going to go. I was in the other room so I didn't hear what he was talking about but everyone was laughing. So, you know, I'm sure there's going to be clips of that. Yeah, you're going to see that.

2:15:08

He was advocating for 19 year old olds to run banks.

2:16:15

You know, he's not what's, what's crazy about Palmer. I spent a lot of time with him and sometimes I'm like what did he just say? And then, then when it pros, when I don't know what he said about the 19 year old but running banks. But sometimes I'm like, he's kind of right.

2:16:21

He's great. He's great at making a point that he can defend and actually peel back the onion. But high up in a boat, it's really great stuff every time.

2:16:38

Yeah.

2:16:46

One more thing I think about media too is I do think we're going to see in the next year we're going to see our first podcast produced by Grok. Like I think there's going to be a very.

2:16:46

We talked about this on the show today. There's a 20, there's like a top 20 series on Apple that's 100% generated with AI somebody. It's on the Epstein file.

2:16:57

They took all the Epstein files, put them in deep research reports and different coding models to then turn it into audio and it's charting. It's in like the top 20. Because people, that's crazy. They can turn it over immediately. And even though it's AI generated and it's probably not as nuanced as you know, some serious journalist with a bunch of reputation like it's giving people what they want faster and so there's demand. Yeah, yeah.

2:17:08

So now imagine like you guys have TBPN and then you have diet tbpn. But imagine like TBPN Bright brought to you by Grok or some sort of AI engine that goes live at like 4:01pm Eastern time and breaks down the stock market like one minute after the stock market closes, you know, or sports, you know, like, you know today in sports, you know, it goes live a couple hours before tip off. NBA. And this is what's going to happen in the NBA. So and so is playing so and so. This guy's hurt. That guy's not hurt. This is what the line looks like on price picks are polymer market. You know, I, I think we're going to see one of those pretty, pretty, pretty soon.

2:17:33

Yeah, very interesting.

2:18:09

Well, it's, it's fantastic to see you excited. Yeah. Come by the Ultra Dome soon.

2:18:10

Well, that's what I was planning on doing and then when I heard you guys were here and I was here, I was like I was going to reach out to you guys next week about coming by, but. All right, well, I'm at this stock

2:18:16

exchange, you know where we are. Since you were last on, I think John, like somebody only offered your handle on Instagram to John Coogan like 10 times. They hit him up.

2:18:25

They DM me constantly. Do you want at John? And I'm like, I know John Shahidi. I, I'm not feeling his.

2:18:35

I'll give you on Snapchat because I have that but I can use it. So that's yours.

2:18:43

I, I like the consolidation of. You have the John Coogan. You gotta be John Coogan. I'm happy to have the full name.

2:18:48

The final John.

2:18:54

Yeah, the final John. Anyway, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Have a good one. Let me tell you about Cisco. Critical infrastructure for the AI era unlocks seamless real time experiences and new value. With Cisco software multiples have been reset at a fair level given AI uncertainty, said Brad Gerstner. He says if you own a software stock you must expect the CEO to say, quote, we crush numbers and expect that to continue because our business accelerates with AI. If you don't expect to hear it, don't own it. Too hard basket. Dylan in the too hard basket.

2:18:54

Dylan did that.

2:19:32

Dylan did that.

2:19:33

Dylan Field.

2:19:34

Oh yeah. Oh Exactly. Yes, yes, yes, for sure, for sure. Also, there was some funny stuff in the chat, but we can get to it later because we of course have Will Brewery from Bardas.

2:19:35

Time for a lightning round.

2:19:46

The Restream waiting room. And it is time to kick off the Lambda lightning round. Let's fire up that cloud, fire up the graphics package and let's bring Will Brewie in to the TBV and Ultram. Will, how are you doing?

2:19:47

Check, check, check.

2:19:57

Hey, Jordy and John, how are you? Can you hear me?

2:19:58

Yeah, good to see you loud and clear. Excellent.

2:20:00

It's been far too long. Obviously we're here excited about Erebor, but I'd love to start with just an update on. Are you running out of numbers for these capsules? How many are up there? How many have come back? You're going to have to switch to, to base 64 or something encoding them because the numbers are getting so high.

2:20:04

Yes, I love that.

2:20:23

Yeah.

2:20:24

We are at Winnebago 5, just landed a couple of weeks ago. So we're very excited about that. Number four is in orbit. Number six gets shipped to launch next week. Oh, thank you. Yes, yes, of course. God love that.

2:20:24

So, yeah, what are you actually learning in between these? Are they purely commercial? Like someone just asked you? So you're going to put one up. I imagine that you're iterating on hardware, software, regulatory, everything that goes into it. What, what's the what, what, what changes in between one launch to the next?

2:20:37

We have, but we've hit that zero to one moment. I mean we've hit the zero to five moment. So now we're moving from six and beyond. So yeah, yeah, very excited about that. So we are iterating on all the fronts you just mentioned, but luckily now that we, we have an assembly line going actually right behind me, there's two of them on the, on the floor. We, we put together and bulk all of our changes into what we call block upgrades. And so that'll occur about every year. Just like a car comes off a line as an upgrade.

2:20:54

Like an iPhone. Yes, it's a space iPhone.

2:21:20

Exactly, exactly.

2:21:24

It's lighter, thinner, faster, cheaper.

2:21:26

It is. Okay, so you have a capsule, you can put stuff in that. Can I put a GPU in it yet?

2:21:29

So technically we have a data center

2:21:39

in orbit right now.

2:21:41

You do. Okay.

2:21:42

It doesn't do as much compute as

2:21:43

you may want, but it, you know, you're like, darling, shut up. This might be real. There's a chance.

2:21:45

So actually I should point to you guys we were featured in Morgan Stanley's market analysis that came out two days ago where they're looking at the microgravity manufacturer.

2:21:54

Oh yeah,

2:22:05

yeah. Round of applause for Morgan Stanley. Forward thinking futurist bankers. My favorite on Wall Street.

2:22:07

So.

2:22:13

So no, but they coming out and taking the microgravity manufacturing industry seriously in a very sophisticated report and kind of hit up the nail on the head.

2:22:13

Okay. And a lot of that is still bio focused, I imagine.

2:22:20

Yeah.

2:22:25

So we're definitely focused on bio for at least the next five to ten years. Just because from first principles it's the most expensive dollar per kilogram. It has the biggest impact, it helps people, it makes economic sense and it's a large market that we can scale into.

2:22:26

It's highly differentiated and the defense stuff is interesting and orthogonal, but that is sort of a separate part of the business. Is that correct?

2:22:38

Separate part of the business, but same part of the product. I mean every single vehicle that comes off the assembly line can be either used for either use case and so that really helps with scaling and so we just have a diversified revenue stream now.

2:22:49

What kind of AI native tools and I mean truly AI native in that they were created after AI Transformer paper was released. What kind of categories are you getting pitched that you're excited about? Around potential speed ups or already getting benefit?

2:23:02

You mean like to purchase Barda?

2:23:20

Yeah, yeah. Roll out like tools that you're buying.

2:23:22

Oh sure.

2:23:25

Planning to buy that you're excited about Outside of code generation.

2:23:26

Yes, outside of code generation.

2:23:30

So cursor.

2:23:32

Excited about that. Excited about the new model. It's just becoming so much easier to build the in house version of those sasses that it really isn't, you know, for us there's, it's. I'm laughing right now because the guy leading the effort here was up till 4am last night just because he was so excited about it. We were looking at it but what we did was we, we. What it, what it does is it looks at Confluence, which is kind of like our, our wiki at the, at the company. Based on the diff from Confluence over the past week, here is a report of everything that's happened at the company. It does time tracking, it does risk analysis. You know, it's so. It's like, it's awesome. It's awesome. We're really excited.

2:23:32

Is it, is it getting to the point where it can make recommendations to you of like here, like here's how you can speed up this part of the process or is that kind of the next step yeah, absolutely.

2:24:10

We even ask it to give us a multiple choice.

2:24:20

Really nice walk through how launch costs are looking this year, next year. There was a lot of back and forth with Starship last year eventually did massive progress in the back half of the year. And then the surprise for me was Blue Origin. And I think everyone was sort of like, oh, it's a space tourism company. And people were like no, no, no, it's like a very serious company and there's going to be a real race. That feels extremely good for you. But do you anticipate the curve of launch cost to continue or change in some way? What do you see?

2:24:23

Yeah, so I'll tell you what I know, what I know is so we've right now we've already booked all of our launches out through 2029.

2:24:59

Oh wow.

2:25:05

And yeah, so we're, we're launching four this year, seven the year after that, 10 year after that, 12 year after that, they're booked. Flight hardware is purchased. The other thing I know is that, you know, when from a Barda business model perspective, we're one of the few space companies that treats launches shipping like, you know, and so we use SpaceX instead of FedEx. But from a business model perspective, shipping is shipping. Yeah. And so, you know, we're excited about new shippers coming online and you know, that'll prob and do some margin compression which we nice for, for us payloads but at the same time, you know, we're not going to trans transition overnight. You can imagine if you were using FedEx and they had a, you know, a truck going 167 times to the route that you want and then all of a sudden UPS shows up with one truck. Hey, I'm excited and I can't wait for more. But I can't switch shipping quite yet at the current nascent aspect of the technology.

2:25:06

Last question. Pick a side moon or Mars. Who you got?

2:25:53

I'm on team Mars, man. Yeah, I was. Oh yeah. So I was, you know, I was, I was cut my teeth when Mars was. I still think it is. Yeah, absolutely. Like I think the, you know what I want to be as my career ambition is Muddy the Mudskipper. You know, the first fish that, it was an ugly scene but the first fish that started to crawl on to land his flippers were slightly more like legs. It was not a glorious moment, but if you zoom out, it was an extremely glorious moment. So I'd like to be, you know, that ugly, you know, not quite ready for the next planet yet. But you know, we show up.

2:25:57

Sure, sure, sure, yeah. Moon important testing ground. But Mars is the goal and will be truly multi planetary. Moon base doesn't really count as multi planetary. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on the show.

2:26:33

Great to see you.

2:26:47

Will, congrats on all the progress.

2:26:47

We're still waiting for our capsule here in the dome right now.

2:26:49

Yeah, yeah, we got, you know they're

2:26:53

gonna have too many. They're gonna need a whole storage facility for them in a couple.

2:26:56

We can be, we can be trusted.

2:26:59

We can be trusted.

2:27:01

The price is gonna invert. I'm gonna start paying you just to get.

2:27:02

Yeah, yeah.

2:27:04

You're gonna be like, I gotta get there.

2:27:05

I gotta hold on to it for regulation. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on the show. Talk to you soon.

2:27:07

Cheers.

2:27:13

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. And I'm also going to tell you about Restream 1 livestream, 30 plus destinations. If you want to multi stream go to restream.com up next, Sam Levenbach from X Energy. He's the VP of Growth and strategy. Sam, good to meet you. How are you doing?

2:27:13

What's happening?

2:27:35

Thanks for having me.

2:27:36

Pleasure to be here.

2:27:37

First time on the show. Please introduce yourself and tell us about the company a little bit.

2:27:39

Yeah, absolutely. Name is Sam Levenbach. I work at a company called xmd. X Energy is designing a reactor, high temperature gas reactor. And what's really exciting, there's a lot of exciting things about what we're doing. The technology is super compelling. We have some incredible investors. I think the thing that we're most cited for and known for is we're building our first project in South Texas with Dow Chemical in Calvin County, Texas. And we're going to be building our second project in Washington state with Amazon to support one of their largest data center clusters in the Pacific Northwest. So just super exciting times for nuclear and the next generation of firm power.

2:27:43

Yeah, I mean Dylan and our team mentioned that you are a new Erebor customer. And I'm wondering like this doesn't seem like something that's like, you know, unbankable or you know, requires something new. But what is it about your business that drew you to Erebor? Or is it just excitement? Or is there something that where your business looks a little bit different than a normal business?

2:28:31

I think that there is a really amazing nuclear industry in the United States. Today we have 94 operating nuclear reactors, but not A lot of new reactors in construction.

2:28:55

Right.

2:29:07

And we have a moribund nuclear supply chain in this country. And that's, you know, it's a shame that we've lost a little bit of the shine and the pedigree of, of what we have historically done so well in the United States. And so getting that nuclear supply chain back up on its feet and up and running and to support the growth that's really demanded by AI digital infrastructure is a pretty heavy lift. And it's not something that's directly in the wheelhouse today, frankly of a lot of existing pick your basket of, of, of capital allocators. I think what's been really impressive about the Arabor team about, you know, with Owen and you know, what they're building is a real excitement and willingness to roll up their sleeves and understand our sector, understand what is risky, understand what is bankable and, you know, get to work with us really with the same mission, which is, you know, the next century of American leadership in global nuclear commerce.

2:29:08

Yeah. How capital intensive is the business? Do you have to buy land to build a facility to level the stack?

2:30:14

Yeah.

2:30:21

So our business is primarily around two things. Number one is designing a next generation high temperature gas cooled pebble bed reactor. So that's a heavy lift. Our company has over 900 employees today working on that.

2:30:21

Wow.

2:30:37

We are also then the secret sauce of our reactor is the fuel, so called Triso fuel. And this is really advanced stuff. And we're building a fuel factory today in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We received last week from the NRC our permit to operate that facility. And so that's the two halves of our business. It's designing a reactor which our customers will license that technology for us and they'll build it on their balance sheet.

2:30:38

Sheet.

2:31:06

And we will sell them the fuel for the life of that reactor. So we are selling you the design to build the printer and then we will sell you the printer ink for the life of that reactor. So, you know, there are different aspects of that business that are capital intensive. There are different aspects that are not. And getting into it with us and understanding those different aspects is really something that Arab works coming on that journey.

2:31:06

When did you guys decide to get into the fuel business? Business? Did that come after the reactor?

2:31:31

That's a great question. You know, it was really a visionary decision by our founder back in 2015. If you're just. If you build the world's most advanced reactor and the fuel doesn't show up, you're kind of hosed. Right. And so a little Bit of vertical integration here, a little bit of getting into. If it's the secret sauce of your reactor, you better have your arms firmly around. It was a really early insight. And so that decision was made back in 2015 and we spent a lot of time redeveloping how this fuel was made, the intellectual property around how you do it. And that's been a really important part of our story and our journey.

2:31:37

Last question for me. I want to know about timelines. We talk to a lot of folks in nuclear. I hear 2029. I've seen some reporting in the Wall Street Journal about even just bringing old nuclear power plants back online. But the dates are crazy to me. The 2030, 2032, 2035 gets thrown around. What are you estimating for when we might actually see the, you know, the famously flat curve of nuclear power generation in the United States start to tick upwards?

2:32:23

It's going to, you're going to see it in the early 2030s. In the early 2000 and 30s is when we're going to see our first two projects coming online with many more thereafter. You know, the first pickles out of the jar are the hardest, but the demand is insatiable.

2:32:56

New analogy.

2:33:13

Because pickles are green like nuclear fuel.

2:33:14

Yeah, you know, it's, it's.

2:33:17

But you're going to, I think that there's a reason that you're hearing, I mean that's, I think the kind of the concern sense in the industry. You know, you gotta, and so I think seeing, look, turning on those reactors and upgrading existing reactors, that's the, that's the low hanging fruit. And we should get every electron we can out of the existing fleet. But that's not going to be enough. There's only so many of those projects to do the, really throughout the2030s. You're, I think you're going to see, I know you're going to see a steady and ever going, growing cliff of new nuclear reactors coming online and powering this kind of generational super cycle of AI digital infrastructure.

2:33:20

Yeah. How are you thinking about the different scales of nuclear power generation? I was really excited about just replacing the one megawatt diesel reactor. Radiant's doing some cool stuff there. There's a couple other folks then, then there's been, you know, as the AI boom has sort of taken off, everyone has been thinking about, well what if we get 100 of those together? Well then we're doing something for a data center. Maybe we should upscale the whole project. Do a 10 megawatt, a 25100 megawatt and then we can get into the really big Westinghouse projects that maybe can be unstuck by a startup. But what's the landscape like from your perspective? Where's the most value in new reactions reactor designs?

2:33:57

Love this question. I mean I think that it's all exciting and all have their puts and takes, right? So the big reactors, the conventional light water reactors, the Westinghouse AP1000. Yeah, a lot of new excitement and focus on those. I'm sure new ones will get built. I mean just the amount of power demand that, that's out there. You know, Westinghouse is a great company

2:34:45

but Vodal, we all learned from Votal that it can take years. We did turn on Votal, but it took a long, long time. And I think the tech companies, that's the downside.

2:35:10

Right. I think that even for a big hyperscaler, even These companies spending $160 billion a year on capex, a $15 billion bite on a single machine is a lot of risk to manage and it's a lot of risk for any individual investor owned utility to manage. If you look at the market caps of the largest investor owned utilities in the United States, $15 billion, $10 billion, whatever the next AP1000 costs, these are big bites of the apple. Those are the puts and the takes with those. But you know what, they're going to be successful building more. I don't have any doubt about that. At the other end of the spectrum, the 1 megawatt micros, look, if you can get those to scale, delivering tens and then hundreds at a time, it's an awesome opportunity. The challenge there, and I think you alluded to it in the question, is for it to make a meaningful dent in a hyperscale data center. You're building hundreds and thousands in a single location and that's a lot of moving parts. That's a lot of.

2:35:19

It doesn't necessarily. Grid capacity is grid capacity. So if you put one at every hospital and you replace a diesel generator on every, you know, oil field, like that does free up energy for other purposes and that has equivalent equilibrates at some point. So. Absolutely.

2:36:25

And yeah, you know, so I mean they're super exciting. And you know the theory of the case, getting to a factory kind of manufacturing, you know, throughput, you know, to bring down the cost. Yeah, it totally makes sense, you know, but it's, it's, you know, it's, it's nonetheless challenged on the economics, on the actual delivered cost of electricity. When you get that small. Our main product is in that middle sweet spot. So our, a single one of our reactors is 80 megawatts electric.

2:36:40

Oh, wow.

2:37:08

Building.

2:37:09

Yeah. What Dow is building at our, at their first site is four reactors, so 320megawatts.

2:37:10

Wow.

2:37:15

Okay.

2:37:16

That's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot.

2:37:16

Yeah, that's like a small coal plant, you know, that's, that takes a real chunk out of, you know, what they're doing. And that, that, that more than takes care of the site that they are focused on.

2:37:17

And then I think that's the same amount of energy that's generated in my entire city that I live in. I live in a small city.

2:37:26

It's a meaning. Yeah, it's a meaningful bite. You know what Amazon and energy northwest, their second project, you know, they're talking about anywhere between four and 12 reactors on a single site. So anywhere between 320 megawatts and a gigawatt. What's really exciting about that theory of the case, our theory of the case for these, these mission critical deployments, you know, a petrochemical facility, it can't go down. You need, you know, very high reliability. So if you have four reactors, you know, if, if, if you overbuild just a little bit, if you only need two or three reactors, you know, if one goes down, you're still golden. You know, if you build 12 reactors in Washington state, if you only need 10, one, even two go down, you're still completely utilizing that very expensive data center with those very expensive, you know, Nvidia chips, you know, running in it, you know, and getting the full use case out of it. So that kind of reliability of our form factor is something that's, you know, very exciting, you know, particularly to our customers.

2:37:34

That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Have a great rest of your day.

2:38:36

Congrats.

2:38:40

Have a great weekend.

2:38:41

All the 900 or a thousand, a thousand people at the company on all the progress.

2:38:42

Yeah, we'll talk to you soon, Sam, have a good one. Goodbye. Let me tell you about Applovin. Profitable advertising made Easy with Axon AI. Get access to over 1 billion daily active users and grow your business.

2:38:47

Before we bring in our next guest, we gotta check in with Tyler on his project. Let's go over to Tyler. What do we got?

2:38:58

Okay, so I can read my little

2:39:05

essay and you swear and you swear on your life that you did not use AI to generate, correct?

2:39:08

Yeah, you can check, you can check my, my chat logs.

2:39:12

Okay.

2:39:14

Not Use anything.

2:39:15

Anybody that's just tuning in. For anybody that's just tuning in, the challenge was write 500 words that Pangram will pick up as AI.

2:39:16

Yes.

2:39:25

At 90% or above.

2:39:25

Okay.

2:39:27

And if you win. Ready?

2:39:28

Yes.

2:39:29

You get a dollar fifty.

2:39:30

This is.

2:39:31

This is Tyler's impression of a cheese steak sandwich.

2:39:31

Okay.

2:39:33

So I want you guys to also try to guess what. What the percentage is.

2:39:33

Okay?

2:39:37

Okay.

2:39:37

This isn't just an essay that is trying to fool an AI system. It's an experience where words and phrases flow over the compute like a waterfall. This short speech marks a pivotal shift towards a style of writing where the audience doesn't just consist of real people, but machine learning algorithms too. It underscores the innovative change frequently cited in the New York Times and CNN, who along with many CEOs, industry professionals and growth hackers, have noticed the world changing pattern emerge. It's a testament to the emerging influence of the AI industry. Additionally, it demonstrates the way in which artificial intelligence systems may fall victim to possible bad actors, further enhancing the importance that some government institutions may play in the future. You are absolutely right.

2:39:39

Okay, let him keep going.

2:40:22

You are absolutely right that AI systems might not always accurately predict whether text is written by humans. And you're actually touching on something really important. It's a great insight in the future. It's like pretty long, but.

2:40:23

Okay. I'm putting it at 96%.

2:40:37

I think this is gonna come back at a full 100. Let's hit it.

2:40:40

100%.

2:40:44

Let's go. He did it. I never lost faith. Enjoy those chickens.

2:40:45

Hit the gong dance. Winner, winner, cheesesteak dinner. Absolutely massive. You guys, don't you also at home, this cheesesteaks doesn't sound that significant, but these are the best cheesesteaks sandwiches in the world over at Matu.

2:40:50

Oh, yeah, yeah. Read out the em dashes. Did you use any em dashes?

2:41:05

Yeah, I mean, there are em dashes in what I just sent.

2:41:09

You put em dashes everywhere. That's fantastic. Let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB? Don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it.

2:41:12

Yeah. Hill says you should have used the word delve. Big missed opportunity.

2:41:23

I think actually like current models don't use delve anymore. I think that was just four. Okay. Which I guess this probably.

2:41:28

Yeah, probably detects. Yeah. Anyway, we have our last guest of the show, Alex Heath from Sources in person, live in the TVPN ultradome. Alex, good to See you guys. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on down to the TV pan Ultradome. Sources. News is the website. Access is the podcast.

2:41:32

Yeah.

2:41:56

So you're really in the. In the process of breaking through. Because anytime you get quoted right now, it's just say sources.

2:41:56

Say sources, and then a lot of

2:42:02

people are reading that and out there

2:42:04

saying you created sources.

2:42:06

Apparently some sources, yes. But you are the final source.

2:42:07

I named it that for a reason.

2:42:10

Yeah, no, it's good. And you've been on a tear. Like, truthfully, like, there's always a question about. Okay, you leave the place. Is it.

2:42:11

Does your content get better or worse?

2:42:18

And it's just been scoop after scoop after scoop. What's the secret?

2:42:21

The scoop cannon's always loaded, gentlemen.

2:42:24

It is.

2:42:26

That's all I gotta say. Scoop, doggy dog right here.

2:42:26

You got anything more this week?

2:42:29

Anything?

2:42:30

I got some stuff.

2:42:31

Next week. Next week?

2:42:32

Wait, wait, but how do you keep it in the chamber? Aren't you worried that somebody's gonna out scoop you?

2:42:33

Yeah, yeah.

2:42:38

There is always that fear.

2:42:39

Okay?

2:42:40

There's always that fear sometimes, you know, based on. On the story or the beat, you know, like who your competition is. You know, if they're on vacation, you know, if they're on maternity paternity.

2:42:40

Do you hire, like, private investigators to track your rivals to make sure. Oh, they're out of the game right now?

2:42:52

You keep tabs?

2:42:58

Yeah.

2:42:58

You keep tabs. Yeah.

2:42:59

What's super interesting is that I feel like your beat is just like, what's actually interesting in tech to me. No, seriously. Like. Cause there you could come out and you could be like, yeah, I'm. I'm tech, but I'm focused on SaaS or just AI. And you're hitting everything that I'm interested in consistently, and that's just really, really hard. And I see your name on every single article that's posted. So, like, do you ever sleep? What's going on?

2:43:00

You know, I've been using AI a lot to leverage output, where now it's my editor and it's my first draft.

2:43:27

Okay.

2:43:34

I'm the ultimate editor of it.

2:43:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But.

2:43:36

But the combo of granola, running that during meetings, training Claude to really write like me. So it does. The first pass, I spend about half the time that I used to spend on a story writing it. But I'm spending all that time now editing what the AI gives me, making sure it's not just lazy AI writing. Sure. Because that still happens. And realizing that I think the leverage I have now is my network, the interviews. I do the scoops. I get the actual source of writing.

2:43:37

The sources of the sources.

2:44:07

Yeah.

2:44:08

And like, the writing.

2:44:08

I never. I never read your work, like, expecting to be entertained by the pros design. I really don't care at all. Yeah, you could.

2:44:09

I always hated writing.

2:44:20

Yeah.

2:44:21

I love.

2:44:22

I love scooping. Yeah. That's what I've always loved. Like, I've been doing this for a while, and I think, like, the longevity you have to have now, especially with AI is you. You have to use the tools.

2:44:22

Wait, did. Did our giant ice cream scoop ever come. Did we order that? Oh, we couldn't find.

2:44:34

We got a man trying to get like a comically large, large ice cream

2:44:39

scoop for the Gong. I love it. You guys get a great.

2:44:43

I love it. By the way, the last time I came on here was WWDC last year.

2:44:46

Yeah, that's right.

2:44:50

You guys had, I think 80,000 followers on X. Oh, yeah. And I was like. I left that. I was doing it outside of cooperating Steve Jobs theater. I was like, these guys are onto something.

2:44:51

Thank you.

2:45:00

The magic you guys have, like, seeing you guys just like Ascend has been incredible.

2:45:01

Yeah, there's been a ton of ascending going on just broadly this year.

2:45:05

Love to ascend.

2:45:08

Everyone needs to ascend.

2:45:09

Did you see all the hammers in the. No. Some.

2:45:10

My.

2:45:15

My biggest number one question is, how are you balancing your relationships when you're balancing access that you have these companies, the executives will actually talk to you on the record and are excited for you to tell their story, but at the same time, you're kind of getting some stories out the back door at times. You have to have stories that. Yeah, yeah, but what's that dance? Like, how do you thread the needle? Because some reporters fly too close to the sun. Scoop too close to the cone. To the cone.

2:45:16

Scoop too close to the cone.

2:45:47

Yeah, it's a balance. I've always looked up to Sorcus and how he's approached DealBook and the reporting he's done and the. You know, I consider him like. Like a mentor. And like, the way he approaches it is. It's. It's just fair.

2:45:49

He's here with us.

2:46:02

Check.

2:46:03

Check the street. Check this.

2:46:03

Hey, is he really.

2:46:05

No, no, no. I got a sound effect right there for you.

2:46:06

He's definitely the goat. And like, what has given him longevity is. Is the fairness that he approaches an interview with. Right. So giving people that. That maybe don't even deserve it. A fair shake and just approaching things out of Curiosity and being a nerd and not being instinctually against whatever they're doing. I mean, I have opinions. Like, I just interviewed Chris Best from Substack about their Polymarket deal this week.

2:46:10

What's that deal?

2:46:38

Deep product integration with Substack, where basically any Substack writer can embed a polymarket like, name natively in the cms.

2:46:39

And are they getting paid on an impression?

2:46:47

This is the question.

2:46:49

I asked him that, and he wouldn't answer. So you infer with that.

2:46:50

But are creators getting.

2:46:54

So polymarket is buying, basically, like, they'll pay. They offered it to me. I said no. But they'll pay you to embed a market in your story.

2:46:56

Someone set up a poly market on if Alex Heath will ever take Poly Market.

2:47:05

There we go.

2:47:09

I think that's zero, but that's a good example. I have pretty strong opinions about prediction markets and poly markets specifically and reporting. I can't share yet. And. And. But, like, I still want to hear Chris out on, like, why did you do it? Like, and he's. He's geeked on prediction markets, as is every tech CEO, as you guys know. And so I just want to understand that. And I think a lot of reporters, like, they don't say that again.

2:47:10

You say that another couple times, five times.

2:47:32

But, like, he. He wants.

2:47:36

No. And we. We've experienced that where it's kind of random. But certain interviews get thrown up on prediction markets. And then you get people in the chat and they try to trick us into, like, sometimes they'll see, like, they're asking a genuine question, like, ask them about this. And I'm used to trying to respond.

2:47:37

And we usually trust the chat. We'll be like, oh, they're interested.

2:47:56

They're interested in this. And then I'm like, wait, why do you want me to ask this person about Bitcoin? Like, I have, you know.

2:47:58

Yeah, it's a taste thing, right? Like, and you guys are experiencing this too. Like, your taste is what matters. And then also, like, being able to. I mean, just to the point about, like, how do you do scoops and do interviews? It's like just balancing the fact that, like, I am. It's a bit of a leverage thing where it's like, you can't buy me. And I may also kind of ruin your day a little bit if I scoop something, but I'm at least gonna do it with a smile.

2:48:07

Right?

2:48:31

Whereas a lot of reporters will do it and, like, and they won't. And it'll be kind of like vindictive.

2:48:32

Yeah, exactly. No, that's really good. What are you looking for out of of Apple this year?

2:48:36

Broadly.

2:48:41

I'm always interested to hear this excitement about a new foldable. There's some leadership changes in the works.

2:48:42

We got a lamp. We got a lamp coming.

2:48:49

I've been very interested in the story behind the story, particularly with regard to John Ternus, because that feels like there are leaks and Apple's pretty tight, but then Mark Gurman's always getting scoops. But. But you have to imagine there's internal politics around who's leaking what, why are they leaking it? Why are they not leaking that Tim Cook is staying or something like that? There's some sort of internal machine. So I don't know. How have you just been processing Apple stuff? I don't know.

2:48:51

I've been following Apple for a long time. I actually got started at a rival Apple. German and I are about the same age, and we were doing rival Apple blogging in high school and then in

2:49:19

college, high school, going blog for blog with the Germinator.

2:49:27

Well, no, he destroyed me.

2:49:30

It's amazing that you still have a career. You're like, I got. Get me out of here.

2:49:32

So we just find Alex, like, washed up with Chinese. Chinese food covering him, like, dusting him off. You got to get back in the arena, dude. It's okay. Shout out.

2:49:38

Shout out. Mark.

2:49:48

Yeah, we love Mark.

2:49:49

We love Mark.

2:49:49

But.

2:49:50

But Apple always has had a. It's why I got into this. It's why I started covering tech as for a lot of people, right?

2:49:51

So interesting.

2:49:56

And I feel like they've lost their soul in a way, man. It really bums me out. Like, I don't. I'm curious about the glasses. I like Mark. I've also heard they're coming next year.

2:49:56

The first glasses.

2:50:03

Be curious to see, you know, but then it's like Alan Dye was doing that and he left and went to Meta. So it's like he saw what they're doing and still went to Meta. Just kind of weird.

2:50:05

Tim Cook, he likes that Founder Mode lifestyle, I guess.

2:50:15

But I just. Apple, I just. I think they're stuck in an era that doesn't feel of the moment. Right. And I'm curious, with the leadership reset, will that solve it? Ternus doesn't seem like the person who would solve that. But, you know, to credit to Tim, as you guys say, like, returned a lot of, you know, value to shareholders. But is Apple, like, culturally relevant anymore?

2:50:19

Yeah, yeah. There is an interesting pivot where it's like, oh, no, they're becoming Microsoft, which is also like an incredible company. So much value, but it isn't inspire people.

2:50:40

Here's something. Everyone's vying to be the Apple of AI. Right. You see this in a lot of the marketing campaigns, advertising campaigns. A lot of it feels heavily Apple inspired. And Apple should be thinking, well, why not us? Why don't we be the Apple AI? But instead they're doing Genmoji.

2:50:50

Right.

2:51:09

Like they have an opportunity to have to lead with heavy, heavy campaigns around the magic of AI. And they can say, we're not even building data centers. We're not increasing your power bill. They have a really powerful position, but it feels like they've lost. It doesn't feel like anyone at Apple is in love with advertising anymore, is really willing to meet the moment and deliver the kind of campaigns that I think they could.

2:51:09

Or like you the next demo day. I bet if you were to pull all the founders in the next demo day, like, what company inspires you the most? How many would say, Apple, we did this.

2:51:44

We actually did this. And I was expecting it to be all like, Elon and Tim.

2:51:51

Yeah.

2:51:54

And not, not, not Tim Cook, but Steve Jobs. And it was.

2:51:55

And we didn't ask the company, we asked for the founder. But. And a lot of people still said Steve Jobs. Yeah, yeah, but.

2:51:58

But not current Apple.

2:52:05

Yeah, yeah. How do you balance. Apple's such an interesting beat? Because it's. At least it has been for a very long time. It's still very much consumer relevant where I imagine that there are just Apple fanboys who read Gurman. Right. But then when you talk about, you know, Alan Dye going over to Meta, that's more industry focused. So how do you think about your audience blending tech enthusiasts with just tech executives who need to know about what's going on in their industry, like trade versus entertain, infotainment. These are the two extremes.

2:52:06

I worked, I mean, I worked at a very scaled publication before the Verge. Right. And.

2:52:44

Oh, wait, yeah, yeah. Actually, tell me the story.

2:52:48

It was Business Insider 10 years ago. You guys remember Chatter in New York?

2:52:50

Yeah, yeah, it was there.

2:52:56

It's very fun.

2:52:57

Yeah, yeah.

2:52:58

It's kind of that back in the day. And then the information and Verge, where I was deputy editor for the last, like almost five years.

2:52:58

Yeah.

2:53:05

So did the scale thing and now I'm in the influence game. And as I kind of think you guys are. Right, like, you're not going for huge scale.

2:53:05

Yeah.

2:53:11

Your audience being a couple hundred thousand people.

2:53:12

Totally, totally.

2:53:14

You need.

2:53:14

Yeah.

2:53:15

For me, like, I Wish I could. I wish I could brag more about the source of subscriber list. It's a great list.

2:53:15

It's a great list.

2:53:21

I should. I should. I've actually been doing an exercise where I tally up the market cap of the. The people on the list.

2:53:21

That's the number. We've done that too. We've done that too. Number of subscribers. You count the market cap with the CEO.

2:53:26

The average one point was had like a billion dollar market cap. Okay.

2:53:35

So. So. And it helps with brands. Right. It's like, it's like you're like. Well, you're not big, but it's like. Yeah, but you want to reach like these people.

2:53:41

Exactly.

2:53:47

So it's not like enthusiasts. It's not like how I came up in the OG kind of Apple blogging world or the tech blogging world. It's. It's the source of subscribers work in these companies. Companies that I cover.

2:53:48

Yeah.

2:53:59

They work in finance.

2:53:59

What. What stories are not a fit? Because we like Ben Thompson's a hero of our both from another go just his you know, his ideas all the way through his business model, the whole spectrum. He talks a lot about. Yeah. Consistency. He talks a lot about like companies that he doesn't cover. He's like stop covering Twitter. Stop covering like Elon.

2:54:01

Stop covering Tesla. Yeah.

2:54:24

Is there is. Are there categories that you. That you are maybe fascinating but not.

2:54:27

We try and stay out of politics just because once you wade into that you just become like, oh well then

2:54:32

you have to do the culture story in media.

2:54:36

It's not.

2:54:39

Well, the white space is what you

2:54:39

guys are doing and you as well. Yeah.

2:54:41

So because that's. It's a return to form. Everyone has gone towards politics.

2:54:42

Totally.

2:54:46

Right. Or even just kind of.

2:54:46

It's crazy too because I didn't actually think there was any white space left in independent subs.

2:54:47

Everything comes around.

2:54:53

Yeah, everything comes around.

2:54:54

But also it takes the right entrepreneur.

2:54:55

Yeah.

2:54:59

But to your question, I think it's taste. I don't think I. When you're in a newsroom you're taught to think in beats companies that you're covering sectors and for the first time and I was doing this at the verge towards the end because I was kind of just doing my own thing. But I really just go where my interest is and where I know this is the most interesting company right now. So it's. Right now it's like all open AI. It's anthropic. It's the big labs but you know, notion's interesting I think Ivan's.

2:54:59

I saw that.

2:55:21

Yeah.

2:55:22

And also, I want to talk story about, like, okay, they beat earnings and everyone thinks SaaS apocalypse. I was thinking the exact same thing. I wrote about it. I had them on sometimes.

2:55:22

We're like a day after.

2:55:29

Exactly, exactly. And I was just like, okay, yeah, this is a story that. Yeah, like, a lot of people would just be like, I'm over.

2:55:30

Yeah, we had. We had. We had Evan on, and then that night broke the story on spec. Yeah, I was like, yeah, I would

2:55:36

have been broke that while you guys were here.

2:55:42

We can work on that next time.

2:55:44

But, yeah, no, it's just kind of knowing, like, this is what's relevant. I do think it's a taste thing, and I don't think it's a thing you can teach.

2:55:46

Yeah, it's a thing.

2:55:51

You just kind of.

2:55:52

Yeah. We got to get you publishing while we're doing a live interview. And then you text us, respond, eventually.

2:55:52

Would you.

2:56:00

Eventually.

2:56:01

You know who.

2:56:02

We're booked.

2:56:02

No, just the scoops are in the chamber.

2:56:03

Okay. Okay.

2:56:05

Oh, okay.

2:56:05

Okay. We'll book those people. We'll book those.

2:56:06

Do you ever see yourself rolling up or rolling in other independent. Because I think there's. There's going to be writers out there that are good for about one banger story a quarter. It's actually not. Yeah, it's not really a fit for a monthly subscription. It's a challenge. But they could work great under your.

2:56:09

I think, based on the way things are going, that's going to happen. Yeah, I think that'll happen for a lot.

2:56:32

And I think consumers want that. Like, if you can find, like, four or five other people and then stay super lean, which is like, hey, we don't have a ton of bloat. Yeah. We're not hiring, like, you know, 200 people to do this, but yeah, five writers, one P and L. Yeah. One subscription. Like, that's. That's what consumers want. I'm interested in, like, subscribe to pretty much any new tech writer just to generally support them.

2:56:36

That's too much.

2:56:59

But it's not like I'm not reading all of them.

2:56:59

Yeah. I think there's interesting ways you can compensate on Rev Share, profit sharing way. Ways that traditional newsrooms can't. And I also think.

2:57:02

Yeah, and I don't think I was saying this yesterday. I don't actually think it will do well at the substack level because there's a lot of people that would want to be in your bundle, but you don't want to be revenue sharing with them. But if you can set it up and like actually you're running a business and being like you know, managing the personalities. Managing where they're at. I can imagine sources getting to it. Doesn't have. In the same way that we're anti scale and that. That you can say cool, I want to build a newsroom over time. But it's five other people and I

2:57:09

don't need to raise VC to do that.

2:57:39

Are individual contributors.

2:57:40

Like all these VC backed newsrooms that are four years in and not profitable and the cap table's screwed and I don't need that. And so I feel like we're kindred mindset here and we're in this unbundling phase of media which is so exciting and there will be re bundling.

2:57:43

It's funny that we sort of landed in the same place with like very different backgrounds. Yeah, this is my first. I mean I had a YouTube channel before but I've never been a journalist or worked in a newsroom. But we still sort of landed on the correct thing just because it's like

2:57:59

we all love horses.

2:58:12

We all love horses. Did I say horses? What was that?

2:58:13

Horses. What does the horse represent?

2:58:16

Progress.

2:58:19

Progress.

2:58:19

What's the year of the horse?

2:58:20

Yeah, it is the year of the horse.

2:58:21

We had it before.

2:58:22

Oh you knew. You knew what the year was going to be.

2:58:23

So we found out. We were aware. Get your reaction to. So I forget what we were talking about but our friend John Palmer was listening to us on a podcast talking about what's happened with media and that it's really hard to. Media is all about personalities and talent. It's really hard to retain talent if you can go set up a sub stack or we didn't need to start on television and we could just set up some microphones and a camera and get going.

2:58:26

We call it the barbell effect.

2:58:56

Yeah. And that's really challenging.

2:58:57

You want to own the platform YouTube substack or you want to be the individual creator Basically super small.

2:58:58

John's theory was that that comes for software in the same way where you still have a huge platform like a salesforce that has a bunch of other kind of layers to it. But then you'll have like, you know. Yeah, an aws but then you'll have like a bunch of new entrants which are like, you know, in the same way that we maybe compete with some cable networks technically for attention. You would have like a 10 person team that is building like some software that historically needed like a thousand People and had this bloated cost structure.

2:59:04

That sounds right. I think what Ivan told me about agents too, and software, where he was like, if your company cannot be traversed by agents, agents, you're going to be in a rough spot. I think that extends to what you're saying. Like, I think the young teams that are agile that understand that may have a shot at actually disrupting the big players, but the big players will always exist.

2:59:37

Yeah.

2:59:58

And I do think distribution is still the thing that really matters. Right. Like, you guys probably feel that, like, you have that with X and YouTube, but, you know, and substack's good. But, you know, that's the thing when you go out on your own is you're like, oh, man, I gotta fight for distribution. I gotta fight for every eyeball.

2:59:58

Yeah.

3:00:11

I gotta publish every day. Because when I'm not publishing, I'm not getting subscribers. That's why I went to four times a week.

3:00:12

Yeah.

3:00:16

Because it's like when I don't, I don't get anything. So it's like putting it out everywhere.

3:00:17

Is travel important to your work?

3:00:21

Yeah, I gotta go out and touch the sources. I mean, not literally, but you know what I'm saying?

3:00:23

Like, I gotta go out and grab them right.

3:00:26

When they walk out of the office,

3:00:27

I gotta shoulder brush the sources.

3:00:28

Last time we were trying to meet up, you were like, I'm across town doing an interview. Yeah, yeah. Person.

3:00:30

Yeah. That's always been the thing. I've invested and I've never understood reporters who just sit in their office and like, blog all day. It's like, you're never gonna get really differentiated stuff because they're really. Especially in the age of AI where you can generate anything. Like, if I can just generate the copy, what matters is, like, what's feeding the copy. And that's me going out and like, interviewing someone breaking a story.

3:00:34

I went to some, like, political event in Las Vegas and Teddy Schleffer from the New York Times was just hanging out at the bar. He didn't get invited.

3:00:53

Yeah.

3:01:00

That's.

3:01:00

He just was literally gum. Old school gum.

3:01:00

True.

3:01:03

And everyone there was adversarial to the New York Times. But everyone was talking to him. Everyone was like, I gotta hear this guy. I gotta say my side of the

3:01:03

story in this game.

3:01:13

So good.

3:01:15

You gotta do that. And you gotta love gossip.

3:01:15

Oh, yeah.

3:01:17

And you have to have like a level of just.

3:01:17

You do.

3:01:19

I mean, this is what this is. It's like awesome.

3:01:20

People are always like, why do people tell you things? Why do People tell you things that violate an NDA.

3:01:22

Oh, yeah.

3:01:25

Yeah.

3:01:25

And they always think it's vindictive or they're pissed and they're trying to right or wrong or it's moralistic. A lot of people just like to gossip, man.

3:01:25

Yeah. And I mean, maybe the more optimistic view is like, they like the world operating on the truth, and so leaking the truth out can be beneficial to update that. That's the more altruistic.

3:01:32

I mean, I think gossip is not negative. Yeah. I think it's just like. I mean, it's sort of neutral.

3:01:43

It's neutral versus the vindictive. I'm leaking something because I want you to write about my enemy. That's different. That does happen. But. But there's also people that say the story deserves to be told.

3:01:47

Yeah. And you want to, like, give and take. So a thing I try to do also is, like, I share stuff. I don't just, like, try to ask.

3:01:58

So what do you think about the future of investigative journalism? Like, really, really long. Like a year. It just feels like.

3:02:03

I'm sorry, that's the model that's so challenging.

3:02:09

It seems the most challenged because telling

3:02:11

somebody, hey, subscribe, and then I'm gonna just go off in the wilderness and then ultimately kind of like. Like become free.

3:02:13

Yeah. I mean, the big magazines will have that for as long as they can. It's probably just going to end up aggregating to the Times, the Journal.

3:02:22

Yep.

3:02:31

Maybe not the Washington Post anymore. It's the Barbell.

3:02:31

Yeah.

3:02:34

And so those kind of people aren't their own brands and they don't want to be either. Right. Totally. And so it's a different kind of skill and it's a different mindset. So you actually don't mind being protected and behind a brand. It's actually better for you if you're doing that work because you have the legal protection. You have all that totally the benefit of time. Whereas, like, when you're out, like me, I just don't have time. So. Yeah, I do think it just will accrue more to the. To the barbell that we've been talking.

3:02:35

Will you ever write a book?

3:02:57

You know, I've thought about it. Yeah. I've been. I've had conversations. No one I know who has written a book has enjoyed it, like, afterwards.

3:02:58

Yes.

3:03:07

No one I know afterwards is like, I'm so glad I wrote that book.

3:03:07

There's a lot of things like that

3:03:09

life once you become a New York.

3:03:13

Yeah.

3:03:15

Yeah.

3:03:15

The game theory. The game theory is tell all your Enemies not to do the.

3:03:15

Do people read books? Like, I. I mean, I. I haven't read a full book in a long time. I mean, my wife does, but, like, she's not reading, like, the kind of book I'd write.

3:03:19

No. Here's what you do. You take your latest article, you print it out like it's a book page. You take a picture of it with your phone, give it a little weathered yellow color overlay.

3:03:25

Say, Claude, make this 800 pages.

3:03:34

No, no, no, no. You just share that on screenshot and people will be like, whoa. It's authoritative. It's.

3:03:36

Here's.

3:03:40

Here's.

3:03:41

Here's a marketing. Here's a marketing idea for you. We were going to do this. We didn't get around to it, but I think you should. You should actually have the sources, like, daily print edition that you just put around SF everywhere. Like, give it to all the cafes.

3:03:41

It's just.

3:03:54

It's lead. It's. You don't have to do it forever, but it'd be good lead gen for

3:03:55

the newsletter or, like a week.

3:03:58

All you do, you just have, like, have a process. When you publish something, print it, distribute it to the cafe.

3:03:59

That is a good idea. Getting out there is important. I mean, like, I'm going to do events this year. Like, getting out there and, like, filling, like. Yeah. Being out in the world.

3:04:04

No, no. It seems ridiculous for a podcast to have, like, as aggressive of a brand. We have, like, it matters.

3:04:13

It matters.

3:04:20

We ran a Super bowl ad for a reason. We've broken through.

3:04:20

Did that do what you guys hoped? The Super Bowl?

3:04:24

100%. Yeah. The sponsors seem thrilled. Exactly.

3:04:25

Well, no, the point was that it

3:04:28

wasn't just sponsors, is all the guests.

3:04:30

There was thousands.

3:04:32

And so, like, we've had so many guests come on the show.

3:04:33

I don't think you had a logo when you came on.

3:04:35

I didn't. Yeah.

3:04:37

But. But we've had a lot of the guests that come back on the show and they. Since they've been. Oh, thanks for putting this, you know.

3:04:39

Well, you guys are crushing it. Seriously. It's very awesome to see what you

3:04:46

guys are doing and. Yeah. Last question for me. What's the longest you've ever held a scoop?

3:04:50

Oh, my God.

3:04:56

Holding a scoop is like being underwater.

3:05:00

That keeps me.

3:05:02

All you want to do is take a breath.

3:05:02

A sign you're getting too cocky is when you hold it and you're not worried about it, which has happened to me.

3:05:04

Okay.

3:05:09

And then I get scooped and I'm.

3:05:10

Yeah, yeah.

3:05:11

So months Couple months.

3:05:13

Couple months.

3:05:15

Couple months. Because.

3:05:16

Yeah, we've been talking to some folks who are writing books and that's really hard.

3:05:17

I don't know how.

3:05:22

Because it's like a year or two.

3:05:23

I don't know how you do that. And the advance has got to be crazy.

3:05:25

Oh, yeah. I guess you're getting paid up front for.

3:05:28

Yeah, I'm just getting subs on stuff. And the more. And you gotta. You gotta, like, itemize things out.

3:05:30

Yeah.

3:05:34

In a way that a book doesn't. So. Yeah, it's. It's. I'm holding right now, actually. And it's. It's tough. I'm like, Nancy. Okay, I'll be back on with you guys.

3:05:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this.

3:05:43

Well, it's great having you on. It's been amazing to see your success. And again, threading that needle, but by being. Telling interesting stories but not being adversarial is fantastic.

3:05:44

Fair and balanced.

3:05:56

Fair and balanced.

3:05:57

That's Cronkite, baby.

3:05:58

Seriously, can we call it.

3:05:59

Yeah, I think we can plant the bomb. Hey, tell everyone.

3:06:01

You can end the show with us. Tell everyone where to find sources.

3:06:04

News access.

3:06:07

Show access. Oh, I like that. That's really funny. But access is available in your podcast. Yes, of course. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribe to our newsletter@tvpn.com have the best

3:06:08

weekend of your life.

3:06:23

Have the best weekend of your life.

3:06:23

Just do it.

3:06:25

Go get a scoop, but don't hold on to it. Goodbye. Nice work, brothers.

3:06:26

I'll see you on the next one.

3:06:33