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.
00:05:05
And there's this breakup. But at the same time, every
00:05:07
business basically wants to work with China as much as they can.
00:05:11
People don't really seem to understand the intellectual
00:05:15
nature. I mean, I, I think there was a
00:05:17
sentiment on stage that China is a self-sustaining economy.
00:05:20
Even if we cut them off from our own economy, they are going to
00:05:23
continue to develop and make progress.
00:05:25
So do we really cut them off at the knees if if we block them?
00:05:30
So I, I don't think people really sort of understood how
00:05:33
we're supposed to block China in that way.
00:05:36
And yeah, I mean, American labs depend on Chinese talent, so
00:05:40
that that's going to hurt our research capacity.
00:05:42
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,
00:06:23
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.
00:06:32
I think in tech world, we don't see it.
00:06:34
But like, if tech feels like there's been a downturn, biotech
00:06:37
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.
00:07:20
You know, these companies take forever.
00:07:22
Drug discovery companies take forever to build.
00:07:24
And so people will get very excited about companies that
00:07:27
still don't have, you know, a drug that they're actually
00:07:30
selling to consumers. The final bullet is obviously
00:07:34
Ozempic looms large. You know, Ozempic, is that a
00:07:37
metaphor for longevity drugs overall?
00:07:40
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?
00:07:45
Should we have a more, you know, whereas Ozempic, you're getting
00:07:47
different doses, sized doses over time.
00:07:50
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,
00:07:57
which and feeds into the overall longevity conversation.
00:08:01
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
00:11:18
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
00:11:43
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.
