A Very Stable “Coin” GENIUS
Newcomer PodMay 16, 202500:23:4421.74 MB

A Very Stable “Coin” GENIUS

Eric relays his dispatch from Dimension Capital’s biotech summit in Park City, where the crowd was much more academic than the conferences we usually attend. Biotech stocks aren’t doing great, meanwhile university funding cuts could spell trouble for drug research. Still, people were rosy about AI tools. 

We also took a temperature check on the state of fintech, which investors tell us is mixed. Everyone’s hopeful about IPOs and streamlined stablecoins, but the dollar getting destabilized by the tariffs has some investors skittish. Later in the episode, Madeline explains how Trump’s crackdown on immigration is spooking startup founders and employees. 


Timestamps: 00:42 Lineup of our upcoming fintech summit02:02 Eric's dispatch from Dimension Capital and Recursion's biotech summit09:22 Fintech IPOs and stablecoins en vogue18:50 Heightened immigration enforcement spooks startup employees



00:00:00
Hey everybody, it's your newcomer for the week.

00:00:02
It's Tom Doughton here, joined by Eric newcomer Madeline

00:00:06
Renberger. We got Eric pretending to be at

00:00:09
his home. He's got a fake background, but

00:00:12
I know the real truth, which is that he's in San Francisco.

00:00:15
I love how Tom has this like great deep voice but then his

00:00:18
intro voice is like two octaves up.

00:00:22
Yeah, that's called the energy. I I I bring that high pitched

00:00:26
energy that people like, none of that monotonous low tone stuff.

00:00:31
How? Brings the shrill energy we need

00:00:33
more of on this podcast. You can't describe men's voice

00:00:35
as shrill. It's deeply.

00:00:36
It's. It's just not allowed.

00:00:39
There's a whole TV show about it.

00:00:41
I think we got a lot to get through in this episode here.

00:00:44
But I, I have to start off for those of you not watching on

00:00:46
video, Eric is joining us, as I mentioned earlier, pretending to

00:00:50
be at his home, Although I know the truth, which is that he's in

00:00:52
Union Square at a hotel with cement floors, but he's got a

00:00:56
flat brim hat on. He's a flat brim guy and he

00:00:59
recently just came from an exclusive conference that gave

00:01:02
him this flatburn hat that marks the beginning of conference

00:01:06
season and actually good dimension conferences because we

00:01:08
have the newcomer Breaking the Bank conference coming up next

00:01:12
week. And before we even get into your

00:01:14
private excursion conference, Eric, can you just give us some

00:01:17
details on on breaking the bank? Why should we?

00:01:20
Why should we get people excited about it?

00:01:22
Breaking mega, we're going to have the CEO of Gusto Plaid,

00:01:26
we're going to have the founder of Bridge, which you know, is

00:01:30
bringing stable coins to Stripe. The topic of the day.

00:01:33
We're very fortunate that Chime filed to go public this week and

00:01:37
we had a tech IPO and E Toro. So I think people will have some

00:01:43
enthusiasm. So yeah, we're going to have

00:01:45
some most of the top private fintech companies in the same

00:01:48
room in San Francisco on Tuesday.

00:01:51
Yeah, I believe the slogan of the summit is Fintech is back

00:01:54
baby. So.

00:01:56
Right, which we will get to later in the episode as you just

00:01:58
recently Madeline wrote a whole article about the backness of

00:02:01
fintech. But Eric, I got to hear about

00:02:04
this hat. I got to hear about your

00:02:06
conference. So the the conference I was in

00:02:08
Park City, UT at like very bougie retreat.

00:02:12
The event was under Chatham House rules.

00:02:15
So I am somewhat restricted in what I can say fundamentally,

00:02:18
I'm allowed to talk about the ideas, but not exactly who was

00:02:23
there. The event was, it's the first

00:02:25
year blue sky put on by the venture capital firm Dimension

00:02:30
and the biotech company Recursion.

00:02:34
And you know, it was attended by sort of a who's who of biotech,

00:02:38
pharma and tech people. Honestly, it was sort of a new

00:02:41
crowd for me. I knew some of them, but you

00:02:45
know, I'm not deep in like the biotech world at all.

00:02:48
And then I I moderated 2 panels that were super interesting and

00:02:54
shot some clay pigeons and you know.

00:02:58
You shot clay pigeons? Yeah.

00:03:00
It was actually pretty good. My team in our our little bit 1.

00:03:03
So yeah, clay pigeons. Congrats.

00:03:06
Yeah, that's that's work. You know, I was hard to hard at

00:03:08
work networking while shooting clay pigeons.

00:03:11
You're allowed to describe that. Chatham Health Rules allows you

00:03:14
to describe your pigeon victories, but in terms of

00:03:17
specific attendees in your group.

00:03:19
No, no, no, OK, I can talk about it.

00:03:21
So the big idea is, I think honestly one thing that I

00:03:23
thought was super interesting to come out of it is that, you

00:03:27
know, people in biotech are genuinely concerned about Trump

00:03:31
cutting all this funding to universities because all that

00:03:34
research funding is, is the beginning of, you know, bio and

00:03:38
pharma companies. It's all sort of nice research

00:03:42
that then, you know, the corporate world uses to come up

00:03:46
with their ideas. So there was, there was genuine

00:03:48
concern. Well, yeah.

00:03:50
And, and so what's, what's their response to that, though?

00:03:52
Are they just hoping that, like, wealthy philanthropist donors

00:03:54
are going to fill in those gaps and like they can keep the money

00:03:57
trained for biotech startups rolling?

00:03:59
Or like what's? Well, I think there, you know,

00:04:01
there's one attitude, which is just like we play the, you know,

00:04:04
the game on the field and sort of they'll adjust.

00:04:06
I think there's some belief that schools like Harvard, despite

00:04:11
their stance, will ultimately sort of cut a deal and this

00:04:15
situation won't go on forever. But I think people were pretty

00:04:20
clear that the cuts are going to be damaging and have a long term

00:04:25
effect. So I don't think there's getting

00:04:27
around it. But yeah, there's going to have

00:04:29
to be more private research. And, you know, I guess it's a

00:04:33
win for the likes of what Microsoft Research and DeepMind

00:04:38
and sort of the corporate academia is, is going to be more

00:04:41
important than ever. Do people discuss much?

00:04:43
I mean, the the talent risk also with the policy crackdowns

00:04:46
around immigration, I mean, was that a topic that came out much?

00:04:50
China was a big theme. I, I continue, this wasn't set

00:04:54
on stage, but I continue to be confused by the China tensions

00:04:58
overall because everybody, everybody's clearly getting the

00:05:00
cues that like we, we have to be very hostile to China.

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And there's this breakup. But at the same time, every

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business basically wants to work with China as much as they can.

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People don't really seem to understand the intellectual

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nature. I mean, I, I think there was a

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sentiment on stage that China is a self-sustaining economy.

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Even if we cut them off from our own economy, they are going to

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continue to develop and make progress.

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So do we really cut them off at the knees if if we block them?

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So I, I don't think people really sort of understood how

00:05:33
we're supposed to block China in that way.

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And yeah, I mean, American labs depend on Chinese talent, so

00:05:40
that that's going to hurt our research capacity.

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China is also making it difficult for Chinese

00:05:45
researchers to stay here. You know, AI is a super

00:05:48
important area to them. And so I think they literally

00:05:50
call back some of their people. I wonder where like the American

00:05:53
dynamism thesis fits into that though.

00:05:56
Right. Like theoretically more

00:05:57
homegrown talent, more companies developing biotech or

00:06:01
pharmaceuticals in the US should be part of that.

00:06:03
But I haven't seen any of the end recent people stepping up

00:06:06
and saying the crackdown universities is like

00:06:09
antithetical to the American dynamism.

00:06:12
I know well they want to build new institutions.

00:06:15
Right. They want to build the next

00:06:17
American wave. Yeah.

00:06:19
The University of Austin is not so far like a beacon of success,

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from what I can tell on the outside.

00:06:25
That's the yeah, sort of Joe Lonsdale school.

00:06:28
Well, just some quick other bullets.

00:06:30
Biotech is obviously in a terrible downturn.

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I think in tech world, we don't see it.

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But like, if tech feels like there's been a downturn, biotech

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is like, oh man, got destroyed. So that's been brutal.

00:06:41
I think people are really excited like in tech world about

00:06:44
artificial intelligence. And there's certainly a lot of

00:06:47
companies running, you know, AI transcription, but also drug

00:06:52
discovery using generative models.

00:06:54
Yeah, how is how are people feeling about AI boosted drug

00:06:57
discovery right now? Because that was a pretty hot

00:06:59
space that even generalist investors were getting into.

00:07:02
You know, we wrote about that last summer.

00:07:03
Well, it felt like every drug discovery company was AI to some

00:07:08
degree. You know, it's like, oh, you're

00:07:09
old generation, but we're powering up, or you're the brand

00:07:12
new company and you're like, oh, we're gonna do it from the very

00:07:15
beginning. So I think everybody's saying

00:07:17
it. I don't think anybody can claim

00:07:18
that they've fully discovered a drug.

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You know, these companies take forever.

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Drug discovery companies take forever to build.

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And so people will get very excited about companies that

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still don't have, you know, a drug that they're actually

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selling to consumers. The final bullet is obviously

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Ozempic looms large. You know, Ozempic, is that a

00:07:37
metaphor for longevity drugs overall?

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You know, when you see a drug that's successful, people are

00:07:42
like, oh, should we be staging out our drugs like that?

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Should we have a more, you know, whereas Ozempic, you're getting

00:07:47
different doses, sized doses over time.

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And also this sense that it's a drug that sort of helps people

00:07:54
in lots of ways is not necessarily targeting disease,

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which and feeds into the overall longevity conversation.

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So, you know, people are certainly watching the success

00:08:05
of Ozempic and Wagova and everything and thinking how does

00:08:09
that affect our companies? I like the idea that something

00:08:12
like Ozempic or Wagovi like that.

00:08:14
The lesson to be taken from it is like, it's the way that they

00:08:17
measure out the doses and like it's the, it's, it's the

00:08:20
recurring, recurring product model of it, not that it's like

00:08:24
having actual tangible impact on people's health.

00:08:26
No, it's, it's the weight loss as a subscription service where

00:08:29
we're really. Making a difference, yeah, I

00:08:31
call it the fat shot drug, by the way.

00:08:33
That's my thing. But that's a classic tech

00:08:35
mindset. LinkedIn, LinkedIn brain is like

00:08:38
looking at something like that. What can you learn from Ozempic

00:08:40
success that isn't its actual functionality, but in fact it's,

00:08:45
you know, meeting out doses? In their defense, that's, you

00:08:48
know, the business, the strategy part is the part of the part

00:08:51
this podcast probably understands better, right?

00:08:53
I'm they were also talking about, you know, types of

00:08:57
treatments and stuff. And some of that honestly goes

00:09:00
over my head. So I'm going to come to their

00:09:02
defense a little and say there was plenty of talk of, you know,

00:09:05
pathways and approaches to treatment stuff that pour me

00:09:09
without an MD can't distill for you here.

00:09:11
More MD's than a typical VC conference sounds.

00:09:14
Oh. My God.

00:09:15
Oh, tons of people. Lots of professors you know.

00:09:17
Mini former but definitely well credentialed and educated Crown.

00:09:22
So, so, so if, if, if biotech is in this kind of inexorable

00:09:26
downturn, fintech has actually been looking really strong in

00:09:30
the last year, really strong a couple of years ago.

00:09:32
Really strong. Is a that's too.

00:09:34
Too much. Relatively strong.

00:09:36
We have, we have an event next week, but even us, we're not

00:09:39
going to say really strong, but I think it's coming up from a

00:09:43
lot it. Is fintech is back baby but.

00:09:46
It's an aspirational marketing copy.

00:09:49
What is the the journalist Madeline that digging into this

00:09:53
as the journalist How back baby is fintech?

00:09:57
It's mixed. I would say the backness of

00:09:59
fintech is decidedly mixed. On the one hand, you have E

00:10:04
Toro, the stock and crypto trading platform going public

00:10:07
this week, which you know, end of IPO drought.

00:10:10
In a sense, Chime filed its S 1, so two major fintech

00:10:14
powerhouses, Deca corns like testing the public market.

00:10:18
That's really exciting. One week out from our fintech

00:10:20
conference, we didn't plan that. We promised we didn't collude,

00:10:23
but we did. Talk about the influence.

00:10:25
I'd love people to believe that we could plan that.

00:10:28
Wait, yeah, record. Scratch.

00:10:29
Scratch that, it was all according to plan.

00:10:32
So things are looking up. Investors that I spoke to were

00:10:35
seeing those as bull signals. That being said, interest rates

00:10:38
are still pretty high. So any company that's in the

00:10:41
lending space is not doing too hot right now and is not really

00:10:45
predicted to come back. And we're not going to be really

00:10:47
hitting that sort of, you know, 2021 boom anytime soon.

00:10:52
I mean, things pretty much fell off as soon as interest rates

00:10:54
ticked up in 2022 for a lot of these companies.

00:10:57
And that's going to stay pretty low.

00:10:59
And the excitement has really come around both two key areas

00:11:03
like Chime style consumer plays and banking companies that are

00:11:07
more like neo banks that provide financial services maybe in

00:11:10
emerging markets or for mobile first customers or I would say

00:11:14
stable coins and facilitate payments and card payments that

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can be back to your stable coin wallet.

00:11:20
So that's right. Bridge deal, obviously last year

00:11:23
was a big exit for the space. So we've got neo banks, you've

00:11:28
got stable coins. I would add the stick AI on it.

00:11:32
I mean, but obviously much more sincerely, I'm excited to have

00:11:35
Rogo there who's reinventing the sort of banking analysts with

00:11:40
generative AI. So you have sort of we're going

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to have, you know, they're a bunch of companies that are

00:11:44
looking at old guard sectors and saying how do we rethink it now

00:11:49
that we have the power of foundation models.

00:11:51
Now a fourth sort of category represented by Gusto is just

00:11:55
sort of the non fintech fintech, right?

00:11:58
I mean it's a payroll company, but you have these sort of big

00:12:00
companies that sort of do a lot of business in money paying

00:12:04
people and and other things, but offer sort of a broader range of

00:12:08
services that I think people are still pretty excited about.

00:12:12
Investors have been telling me that this space of, you know,

00:12:14
accounts receivable, something that you never think would be

00:12:17
like a sexy space, is doing incredibly well.

00:12:20
And there's lots of early stage fintech companies that are using

00:12:24
AI agents to automate a good deal of this.

00:12:26
It's work help pump out things similar to kind of the legal

00:12:29
tech boom that we saw a few months ago too.

00:12:30
Like just any kind of service, business can be automated and

00:12:34
agentified, and people are hype about that.

00:12:36
A sub category of our AI story is the take a services business,

00:12:40
put AI on it and like make make an AI startup out of it.

00:12:44
Yeah. I'm always intrigued in the

00:12:46
fintech space of the targets that a lot of these startups

00:12:48
have. You know, so like for the, you

00:12:50
know, accounts receivable, it's basically a bunch of investors

00:12:53
and executives who are like, it's time we took down ADPA

00:12:58
company that you otherwise don't think about.

00:13:00
You know, these poor guys just like in Arizona that own like

00:13:03
whatever 80% of the accounts receivable market.

00:13:05
I guess it's like prime for the taking.

00:13:08
Like that's who like a gusto was going after, right?

00:13:10
Right. Oh my God.

00:13:11
Well, you know, all the startup reporters, myself included,

00:13:14
wanted to ripling versus Gusto, you know, or, you know, the

00:13:18
payroll versus payroll. But but yeah, ADP looms so

00:13:22
large. Most companies just use this

00:13:24
sort of super old fashioned tech that there's a lot of

00:13:28
opportunity. There's plenty of room for these

00:13:30
startups to kind of coexist right now because the incumbents

00:13:33
are so large and unchanged. Over the last 40 years, there's

00:13:37
been a lot of opportunity and also, you know, some companies

00:13:40
are targeting doing the the leap to mobile, but for payments.

00:13:44
So for mobile banking and also, you know, building stable coin

00:13:49
wallets and cards. I mean, we can get into stable

00:13:51
coins. Let's let's that's a whole other

00:13:53
sector people are excited about. But you know, kind of doing the

00:13:55
skipping to mobile connection story where people didn't have

00:13:58
landlines, but they went straight to cell phone, right in

00:14:00
the mobile era, like that's happening with banking too,

00:14:03
because all of these, you know, digital only rails are setting

00:14:06
up payment. Systems.

00:14:07
Yeah, yeah, you're, we can tell you're deep in fintech.

00:14:09
You're like, Oh, yeah, I'm excited about the mobile first

00:14:12
banking, the stable coin thing. You know, we we talked about,

00:14:17
you know, the IPOs, which I think are good for the timing of

00:14:20
this event. The other thing is there's

00:14:22
legislation working its way through Congress trying to

00:14:26
formalize how we treat stable coins in the United States,

00:14:29
right? Or Madeline, what's, what's the

00:14:31
latest on that? Yes, that would be the Genius

00:14:34
Act which is making its way through the Senate so.

00:14:38
What does genius stand for? They're always good at coming up

00:14:40
with those reverse engineered backronym names.

00:14:44
What do you do? You know it.

00:14:45
Guiding and establishing national innovation for US

00:14:48
stable coins. That's the one I'm talking

00:14:50
about. Guiding and establishing

00:14:52
national innovation for US stable coins.

00:14:54
So that's that's the backronym for it.

00:14:55
So basically the Genius Act is currently in the Senate and it's

00:14:59
basically exists to establish federal safeguards that protect

00:15:03
stable coin holders, kind of like the FDIC insurance of

00:15:05
stable coins. So that and the rails can get

00:15:09
more standardized within our existing financial system.

00:15:11
So it basically further legitimizes and integrates

00:15:14
stable coins into our system. They're already legal.

00:15:17
It's just, you know, making them a little bit more stable for

00:15:21
stable if you will, for trading and you know, being an asset

00:15:24
that people can hold and exist within the rails of our

00:15:27
financial system that's regulated.

00:15:29
And stable coins are the crypto for people who don't like

00:15:32
crypto, right? I mean, it's like you don't

00:15:34
need. To use their pitch.

00:15:35
Right. It's like it's not about the

00:15:37
speculation. We're not trying to get

00:15:38
consumers to buy random coins. It's like move money easily cut

00:15:43
out fees. For sure.

00:15:45
And and it's also key distinction for staple coins is

00:15:49
that they are tied to a Fiat currency.

00:15:53
Most of the ones that we're hearing about with this act are

00:15:56
tied to the US dollar, but they can be back to other currencies

00:15:58
too. So, so that's supposed to add

00:16:00
sort of a another level of stabilizing for them.

00:16:04
Of course, with the tariffs and how monetary markets are doing

00:16:06
right now, it's not looking as stable, but that's, you know,

00:16:12
not something that the boosters are really advertising front and

00:16:15
center right now. I'm.

00:16:16
Probably the crypto dullard on this, this podcast, I know the

00:16:19
least of three of us. Like my understanding, like you

00:16:22
mentioned of the stable coins is that they're pegged to a Fiat

00:16:25
currency and it provides like a level of or it's a, it's a hedge

00:16:30
against the volatility of crypto.

00:16:32
And we're at a time now, I mean, I guess things have stabilized a

00:16:36
bit, but like the dollar has never been more in flux.

00:16:39
Like the tariffs have been a disaster for the value of the US

00:16:42
dollar. I mean, I guess they're happy to

00:16:44
get this bill passed regardless, but like, it's not exactly like

00:16:47
the strongest case that like pegging something to the US

00:16:50
dollar suddenly makes crypto like a more reliable investment.

00:16:54
Yeah. Like talk about timing for this

00:16:56
bill. It's really, you know, coming in

00:16:59
at this moment of great financial uncertainty.

00:17:01
Despite the sort of fluctuation with the dollar, it does seem

00:17:05
like a lot of both startups and existing mainstream financial

00:17:10
institutions and banks are jumping into the staple coin

00:17:13
space when it comes to issuing cards that can link to staple

00:17:16
coin accounts for payments, especially overseas.

00:17:19
So MasterCard made an agreement this week with Moon Pay to

00:17:23
launch staple coin cards for customers.

00:17:26
Obviously there's Bridge and Stripe have this service with

00:17:29
Visa as their partner there, and then Ramp is also doing this as

00:17:33
well, which was announced in the last couple weeks.

00:17:35
So everyone's going full steam ahead on stable coins, dollar

00:17:38
insecurity be damned. That's what people voted for.

00:17:41
That's what that's what. This was the vote.

00:17:43
The stable coin coalition was strong and mighty.

00:17:47
I voted for a wild fluctuation in the dollar and also

00:17:51
stablecoin act. A lot of Silicon Valley's

00:17:53
support for Trump, I do think, was rooted somewhat in crypto

00:17:57
support. And so the Silicon Valley crowd

00:18:00
throwing their money at Trump in it, this is sort of what they

00:18:02
voted for. Oh yeah, I wasn't joking.

00:18:05
I was not joking. Listen, if you're excited to

00:18:07
understand what's going on in fintech right now, there's one

00:18:10
place you should be breaking the bank on Tuesday.

00:18:14
If you go to breakingthebanksummit.com, you

00:18:17
can apply for a ticket will be pretty last minute, but if

00:18:20
you're a founder, we will try to get you there.

00:18:23
Or you can e-mail This is the real.

00:18:25
If you're listening now, I'll say we're small enough podcasts.

00:18:28
I can say an e-mail address on air.

00:18:31
E-mail rileyriley@newcomer.co and he's the person to beg for a

00:18:38
ticket if you're going to try and sneak your way in on

00:18:41
Tuesday. Well, we will be burning a bank

00:18:44
in effigy at the end of breaking the Bank, Burning Man style to

00:18:47
get people reminiscing about. All right.

00:18:50
So one thing that we mentioned earlier in the podcast during

00:18:52
Eric's take on the Chatham House Rules biotech, you know, what

00:18:56
have you, was the fact that there's been a loss of a brain

00:18:59
drain, would you call it, or a concern about where the talent

00:19:03
within the biotech worlds is going to go in a more combative

00:19:07
immigration environment? And Madeleine, you had a great

00:19:10
piece the other week that talked all about the worries among

00:19:12
startups and the the status of their immigrant workforce.

00:19:17
What did you learn there? Yeah, I mean the crackdown that

00:19:21
sort of happened around the first Trump administration on

00:19:23
immigration did cause a slowdown in the startup and tech

00:19:27
ecosystem around H1B visas, which a lot of tech employees

00:19:31
for bigger tech companies, either the largest startups or

00:19:35
public tech companies are on, or O1 and EB1 visas, which are more

00:19:39
common for startup founders and early startup employees to get.

00:19:42
So people, you know, like in the founding team have equity.

00:19:45
That tier of early stage would probably go for an O one or an

00:19:48
EB qualifier. Green card isn't.

00:19:51
The core, the core problem that I took away from your story is

00:19:54
just Trump is scaring the shit out of every immigrant in the

00:19:58
United States. And so if you have any ambiguity

00:20:01
about your immigration status, you're not going to go home to

00:20:04
India for your cousin's wedding. You're going to stay here.

00:20:07
You're not going to go, you know, and and you're sort of

00:20:10
worried. And if you have a choice

00:20:11
between. Going to work for, I don't know,

00:20:15
Klarna in Europe or in the United States.

00:20:17
You're going to go in Europe because it's like they seem to

00:20:20
want you more. There are a lot of rules and

00:20:22
there will be changes, but a lot of it is even for the people who

00:20:25
are legitimately here, they don't know if you know the rules

00:20:28
are going to change. If we're seeing students, you

00:20:31
know, get hassled for their for op eds that they're writing and.

00:20:35
It's kind of like an ugly resurfacing of that fight that

00:20:39
played out at the end of last year when, you know, Sri

00:20:42
Ramakrishnan was being called out by, you know, some of the

00:20:45
more intense MAGA types claiming that someone who looks like him,

00:20:49
AKA, you know, not white, shouldn't be the face of, you

00:20:53
know, the MAGA right policy. And you have this huge fight

00:20:56
between tech and you know, you know, the MAGA hardcore, which

00:21:01
it seemed like it was resolved when Trump kind of came out in.

00:21:04
The white nationalist wing of the Magas.

00:21:07
Right. Well, I was going to say that

00:21:09
the more openly racist part of the coalition, and that's more

00:21:12
extreme, is not a fan of this and it's very at odds with the

00:21:16
tech community's support of the current administration.

00:21:20
I would say to your point, Eric, there's been a slowdown in

00:21:23
visas, but the real shift is cultural and how people feel

00:21:27
about practicing their business or, you know, taking the risks

00:21:31
of hiring a new employee that's also an immigrant.

00:21:33
They may not want to do it because of 1.

00:21:35
The paperwork getting complicated and the risk of

00:21:37
their employee, you know, getting stuck somewhere or

00:21:40
deported. We saw this happen with an open

00:21:43
AI researcher who was pretty senior within the company, just

00:21:46
had her visa denied. And the administration said, you

00:21:49
know, it was for paperwork irregularities, but she had to

00:21:52
leave the country and is working remotely out of Vancouver.

00:21:55
And obviously, they're accommodating her right now.

00:21:57
But if this happens in mass, it has a chilling effect for any

00:22:00
talent that wants to come here. I mean, when Vinod Khosla

00:22:04
actually shared the story on X, which was, you know, great,

00:22:08
great to get that reach out there.

00:22:10
But, you know, and it kind of fit into his message and what

00:22:12
he's been in support of making immigration easier for startup

00:22:15
founders and employees. But to his point, you know,

00:22:18
scaring qualified immigrants away is not what we need in our

00:22:22
technology race with China. If that's really important for

00:22:24
you, an American minimism, a lot of you know, to this point here,

00:22:27
biotech point earlier, a lot of qualified researchers come to do

00:22:31
this work from overseas. It's and they're choosing to be

00:22:34
here, but. I mean, so much of the MAGA, the

00:22:36
MAGA movement is help Americans at the expense of everyone else,

00:22:40
right? And, and I don't even think

00:22:42
that's a hostile way of putting it.

00:22:44
It's like we're not trying to do USAID, we're trying to help help

00:22:48
Americans. And so I think a lot of them

00:22:50
sincerely don't want, you know, the talented, the top engineer

00:22:56
in sort of Bangalore to come here.

00:22:58
Obviously, I don't know, I, I feel the opposite and, and most

00:23:02
of Silicon Valley does that. The whole engine of Silicon

00:23:05
Valley and why American exceptionalism works is that

00:23:09
America has a very expansionist identity and you can join it if

00:23:14
you're hungry and ambitious. And that's the way we stay on

00:23:17
top. So I think it's good for

00:23:19
business and I think it's a moral good and certainly a

00:23:23
theme. We'll, we'll keep watching and

00:23:25
hopefully the situation doesn't get any worse, but I suspect

00:23:28
that it will. Look, Eric, on that note of, of

00:23:30
optimism, you know, I, I really have nothing more to add.

00:23:33
I'll only bring the mood down. So I'm I'm glad we're able to,

00:23:36
to go through all that stuff and see everyone back here next

00:23:39
week.