Before the rise of crypto investing, venture capital careers seemed to be divided into two buckets: consumer and business-to-business. If the goal of venture capital investing is to pick winners, American consumer investors generally picked wrong. There just hasn’t been another Facebook. The biggest consumer startup of the moment is ByteDance, a Chinese company.
While I’ve generally dedicated more time to writing about software investing since that’s where the money and exits have been, I’ve tried to chronicle consumer investing to the extent that it exists. I was the first to report BeReal’s seed and Series A funding round. I’ve scooped some of Discord’s valuation ascent. In December 2020, I wrote about investors’ effort to will a consumer renaissance into being. Sure, there weren’t any obvious new platforms but consumer investors weren’t going to let that get in their way.
I invited my good friends Max Child and James Wilsterman onto the Dead Cat podcast. They’re the co-founders of voice games company Volley. The NFX, Y Combinator, and Lightspeed-backed startup — which they tell me is the largest voice game company — started off as a chatbot games company. So Child and Wilsterman know consumer trends. Chatbots once burned red hot before evaporating only to be revived with the rise of generative artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, few VCs have been bullish on voice as a platform.
Child, Wilsterman, and I dig into the struggles of the QVC for startups trend. Popshop looks to be on the rocks and Whatnot may be peaking. We interrogate whether marketplaces were ever really a thing. And we wonder if AirPods as the next platform was really just a statement about Clubhouse.
Then we look to 2023 and consider the pockets of hope for consumer investing: the rise of generative AI startups and the possibility that Apple announces an augmented reality device. And we ponder whether this crypto winter will ever thaw.
Give it a listen
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00:00:05
Welcome, hello. I'm Eric newcomer, welcome to, I
00:00:16
guess, we're still calling it a dead cat for the time.
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Being I have with me, Max child and James, will stir men who are
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the co-founders of volley, but who I first got to know, is sort
00:00:27
of the older guard on the The Crimson, the newspaper.
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Max's, the President James was edshare, right?
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Yeah. Which is our sort of it opinion
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page, we'd, I guess. And so I don't know to the
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extent that newcomer has a secret board of directors.
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You know, they're on it out any upset.
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I don't know. Yeah, you wouldn't.
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You wouldn't let us invest. Yeah, not for me.
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Investment opportunity. If I ever raise give you
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allocation break, Free advice. Yeah.
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James wrote the slogan, you're seated, the cap table.
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Yeah. And you are a little skeptical
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of that at first, but I think it's had some saying Powers.
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I'm skeptical of everything in first, but yeah, and yeah.
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So they've been super involved. Great to have you guys on unlike
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my previous co-host, Max and James are startup Founders.
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And so, In The Biz and run a voice games company, Called
00:01:30
Vale. So I'm gonna have them just
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like, give a little context on their company to start off with.
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I've been watching it sort of in when it was in the wilderness.
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Like, you know, as a friend they were insisting on living in Palo
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Alto just for the sort of I don't know, drudgery of it all
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to prove to prove Menlo Park, ofac check to prove their
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credentials but for this episode we want to talk about sort of
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looking for 2023 consumer apps and so I think useful to have a
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little context. Their company.
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So Vale is as used to lie described a voice game company.
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We got started on Amazon Alexa and Google home platforms about
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five years ago, we make games you can control with your voice.
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So a number of our most popular games are Name That Tune kind of
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music trivia game called song quiz for replay little clips of
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pop music and you shout out the Ted or the artist we also have a
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number of like game show properties, including Jeopardy
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Wheel of Fortune. The Price is Right Wants To Be A
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Millionaire bunch of good stuff like that and also some
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storytelling. So kind of Choose Your Own
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Adventure style, interactive fiction, kind of like audiobook,
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you control with your voice. And I know Eric likes one of
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those games that we made called guest sire.
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A medieval Knight, controlling your house.
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I've played song ways and I see the ads for it all the time, on
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Tick, Tock. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
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So, not saying much necessarily, I think we are the preeminent
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voice that game company. I think we have more users and
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more Revenue than any other. And in general, we kind of
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believe you're going to be talking to your computer's a lot
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more in the next five to ten years revenue from users or
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revenue from Amazon revenue from users, Amazon Google basically
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but front-end App, Store model. And so we have basically a
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subscription in our game. So like Jeopardy, you pay a
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subscription to play, you know, extra questions, Double
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Jeopardy, Final Jeopardy. And this is corruption is
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facilitated by By Amazon and they take their cut and we get
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the money from the users. And while you guys you did YC n
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FX, right? Yeah, we did what I see back in
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early 2018, and yeah nfx. Also, some of our earliest
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investors. So got somebody just say that,
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very assertive State deep in the Silicon Valley.
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Both big S Valley sort of circles and your, your lights be
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company. I can say that right this way.
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Yeah I really like is the one startup in the world that I'm
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required to. Keep secrets about.
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So I'm like, yeah, like what can we say here?
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What do you want to? Yeah, that's what do you want to
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ask here? How many rounds have you raised?
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I don't know, or I guess kind of beheading on how you count them.
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Something like that, but most recently raised a series B.
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Yeah, we're at Lightspeed portfolio company.
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Jeremy Lou who's obviously very famous for Snapchat.
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Among other things is a big investor in us and a good friend
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as well and yeah, I mean we're he's a reason Leaf World
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somewhere right now. He is off traveling, the world,
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he's living the dream right now. He's taking his kids off, 15
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months World Tour, which is pretty awesome.
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But, yeah, I mean in general, we've kind of seen Silicon
00:04:40
Valley, like you said from the shitbox apartment and Menlo Park
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district. Seven years ago, all the way to
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being a series because put it outside of the company.
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I mean, I remember James was trying to convince me that Dows
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were like a huge thing. Definitely, at a time when I
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could have made a lot of money in that Space.
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If I ordered active investors you could have definitely lost a
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lot of money. Yeah that's how you know, if you
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had taken my advice as well but yeah, Max and I were both pretty
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early and sort of seeing the emergence of crypto.
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I think we personally didn't really, you know, become rich
00:05:18
off of that bad rap. Yeah, benefit for me, either.
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I ran a test if Theory mm node from my computer, meaning a
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theory, but not launched yet, and he had did not By any
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Theory, I'm at that time which I would have paid off pretty well.
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But we did think sort of the mainstream Tech journalists like
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yourself at the time at Bloomberg were kind of ignoring
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the whole crypto Story. I mean this is like 2013 or 2014
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right so yeah or was it you feel about then burned by his there's
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a 2014 crash right? All the crashes start to run
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together wasn't this post sort of that?
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Runoff what or yeah yeah but I mean I think it was after that,
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what mizdow is were, after is sort of the big and now have
00:06:04
nothing. Now hack was in 2016 are, right?
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So so so I think people felt reporters and I'm trying to move
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away from media but I think, you know, me reporters and myself.
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Felt like, yo, man, I don't know.
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We did this whole crypto thing. Yeah, yeah, we Max and I had the
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time that the Dow hack happened. We were just so astonished by
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how, you know, someone could steal 60 million dollars from
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Like a digital scale joke but just now a joke.
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Yeah, the there's been much worse scams and frauds.
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Yeah. We were fairly convinced.
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It was like the largest heist in world history at the time, I was
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like Ocean's 11 style but no one seemed to care.
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And now we just gotta to do so you can send good, see your four
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billion dollars, you know? So crypto interested voice game,
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lots of. I feel like you're and with a
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board or an investor who's known for Consumer investing.
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So those are some of the sort of consumer credentials.
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I mean, the goal here is to sort of look forward and think of
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2023, but I sort of want to jump straight to sort of a tough
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question that I think helps frame it, which is just like, I
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don't know, theme attic investing at all.
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Like, you guys are built in my mind, at least on sort of
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Amazon, like, pumping out Alexa's all over the world and
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being like, Oh man, if they succeed in that, you know, No,
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we're gonna do great obviously. You see it as much bigger than
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that but I don't know. It's sort of where investors
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ever interested in the audio. There was a moment where people
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were like are pods are the next platform or how do you as a
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company. Think about sort of these VC
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driven like platform thematic. Sort of manias, I think maybe we
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should talk first about kind of what we were doing right before
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we started Bali which was working in the chat bot World
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which was yeah 0 remember an insane I'd say All of it, all of
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its own and we were building games for Facebook Messenger at
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the time that we got our first investment from nfx.
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So I think we've experienced a lot of these hype Cycles.
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We found that, you know, voice was kind of a natural extension,
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boys. Games was a natural extension
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off of our chat box game ideas. So we've seen that whole cycle
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and it's amazing to me right now that you're starting to see the
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chat bot whole hype cycle re-emerge with AI.
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A lot of the same ideas kind of becoming try it again.
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There were, there were lots of, you know, medical assistant,
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Chad bods and games and you know, anything tutors, right?
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Anything you can imagine Financial Services advisors
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there was all happening in 2016, and now, we're just seeing it
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again with the emergence of, you know, Ela Lems.
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So, I think it's just fascinating to think about how
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these go in waves and I think Max and I specifically, you
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know, maybe got started in a hype cycle.
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But pivoted into voice which I don't think was as hot ever as
00:09:04
anything that, you know, probably you've seen.
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Yeah, I mean anyone who asked me like, oh, you know, how do you
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feel about voice? I feel like it was super hyped
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back in like, 2017, 2018, and now it's really cold and I'm
00:09:16
like, I don't know. Can you name a vc-backed startup
00:09:20
besides us in the void space like certainly not a consumer
00:09:24
one, like I struggle. Yeah.
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I mean, I don't think there ever was a real.
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Wasn't least there was that like yeah.
00:09:30
The group on guy didn't need to do some like, podcasting
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tortillas he's doing like a podcast editing thing.
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Yeah, was it any liked it? Pivoted to descriptive,
00:09:39
interesting and amazing. Yeah, but, yeah, I mean, in
00:09:42
general, I think like, sometimes the ratio of new stories to
00:09:45
actual VC Investments about something is like, 20 21.
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You know, sometimes species actually are pretty caught up in
00:09:51
the hype cycle, you know, I think, obviously web three in
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the last year to was a real hype cycle, right?
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I think and sometimes these Trends are really about one.
00:10:00
Like people want to make it in time, but it's like Clubhouse
00:10:03
and I uh, I mean, yeah, audio audio /.
00:10:06
Yeah, social audio are pods was just Club at.
00:10:09
I mean, that was no other company in that space.
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Like everybody's got their blog post out, but there was no other
00:10:15
actual investment. Something I find interesting is
00:10:20
kind of like what kicks off the hype cycle.
00:10:22
Is it usually companies like raising a series a day or is it
00:10:26
a consumer company that sort of reaches a Breakout Out, you
00:10:30
know, user kind of download numbers or metrics on the App
00:10:34
Store, is it? Something else, like, BC is
00:10:37
themselves driving the hype cycle?
00:10:39
I think, you know, there's a lot of kind of delay to the whole
00:10:44
thing, right? Like the people who are now
00:10:46
investing in AI, are investing in companies and Founders that
00:10:50
have been thinking about AI for two to three years or more
00:10:54
right, right. And raising money at the seed
00:10:56
and proceed stage for the most part out there sort of the
00:11:00
Either hype cycle and then sort of the more public hype cycle
00:11:03
delayed and you know, part of what I'm trying to do is and the
00:11:06
information I'd say we're trying to figure out what the height,
00:11:10
you know that sort of inside Benchmark injury since Sequoia
00:11:13
like who are they going after? But like I guess before we make
00:11:16
predictions we can talk about like failed hype Cycles a little
00:11:19
bit and like I mean Pop Shop seems in deep trouble like
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talking to people around that, you know, I haven't gotten story
00:11:26
together but that this sort of yeah, that seems Really, really
00:11:30
troubled and then whatnot. I got some sensor Tower data.
00:11:34
That seem to show that they'd there were down from, from a
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peak. So that was the category that
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was hot. This sort of yeah, QVC near
00:11:41
shopping. Yeah, right.
00:11:43
Well, I think that was a trend, you know, a sort of metas trend
00:11:47
of EC is investing in things that worked in China and
00:11:49
consumer social and thinking, that that will translate the
00:11:53
United States and a general. I'm not saying that's even
00:11:55
wrong. I think that is actually a
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pretty interesting way to invest, right?
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Can you take the successes? Giant consumer internet
00:12:01
companies in China and bring it over.
00:12:03
And so, a bunch of really successful QVC's in China.
00:12:07
I think the whatnot. I mean, I think you, and I
00:12:09
talked about what not to let you know, 18 months ago and we're
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like my take was, what not is absolutely killing everyone
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else. Like there's a bunch of hype
00:12:17
around the pop shops and newness and a couple other ones and
00:12:21
whatnot is like a thousand times bigger than any of these
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companies. And I think there's still like a
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plausible case for whatnot, but I think they raised their last
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round at like two and a half. Billion-dollar valuation.
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And you know, if you look at what they're selling, it's
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basically like sneakers and Pokemon cards and collectible
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plush toys and stuff. And the price think I did the
00:12:40
man, plumbing. But prices are always, things
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are plummeting a super correlated with the, you know,
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born obscenities in seventh and secondarily.
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I think, at a two and a half billion dollar valuation.
00:12:49
I think with current and multiples, you basically have to
00:12:53
have 100 percent market share in like, all of those markets to
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even sort of justify that valuation.
00:12:59
So, You have basically have to have every baseball card in
00:13:02
America soldier, what not, every Pokemon, pirate, every, and then
00:13:05
so you gotta see on upside in other markets for it to make
00:13:07
sense. Yeah.
00:13:08
If they have to succeed in non collectible markets doesn't seem
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like that's working yet. There's also some question
00:13:15
worried about ya, their Marketplace strategy in general,
00:13:18
and are they basically having to do individual deals with these
00:13:23
hobbyists collectible shops, or are people able to actually go
00:13:27
on and sell their own Collectibles?
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And How does that kind of contribute to their own cost
00:13:32
structure with like maintaining inventory of Collectibles that
00:13:35
are super volatile and all these things right there is some
00:13:38
question. Whether they actually own stuff
00:13:40
themselves raised that we right? That's what I'm saying.
00:13:43
Yeah yeah. Are they holding inventory and
00:13:46
or just in the world and sweet. We interested we would like to
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know what. I think the second point is like
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are the people who are selling on what not are they essentially
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non-employees per se but effectively vertically
00:13:58
integrated into what not right. I mean, are they?
00:14:00
You know, are that part of what size are they to be selling on
00:14:04
on what not? This is not unique to what?
00:14:06
Not just Marketplace question. I think that's important to ask
00:14:10
is. Yeah.
00:14:11
How, how much is the supply side driven by the company striking,
00:14:16
lots of deals with the suppliers versus a lot of like, pull from
00:14:20
the, you know, the suppliers wanting to be on that platform.
00:14:23
I mean, you covered obviously Uber extensively, so it's a
00:14:27
similar type question, right? Like, are these Supply Liars of
00:14:30
rides. You know, heavily incentivized.
00:14:32
Are they employers? You know, total are they?
00:14:35
Yeah, right. Well in Ubers case, you know,
00:14:37
they all floated, the capital risk under the yeah.
00:14:40
Anyway, I get talked about that. Unless, I mean, yeah, there's
00:14:42
always that sort of opens the big question that James, our
00:14:45
disgusting, like, a week ago, which is like, is marketplaces a
00:14:48
fake Trend, like, you know, have there ever been any?
00:14:51
Have there ever been any successful Market places besides
00:14:54
eBay Amazon and like debatably uberX, like ever, you know, like
00:14:59
that. He is not a Marketplace every
00:15:01
day, I'm sorry. Yeah.
00:15:02
That was are being damaged in our.
00:15:04
Yeah. But if you think of Larry be
00:15:06
reserved, is this a hot-melt logic where I like this?
00:15:09
Yeah, yeah. Go go.
00:15:10
Let's go forth. What is worth looking pathetic
00:15:13
trick? Yes, we were looking at the, you
00:15:16
know, the a 16 Marketplace list instacart is considered one of
00:15:20
their top marketplaces. Tell me that somebody's keeps
00:15:23
making noises valuation. You know the question is, are
00:15:26
random people throwing up things to sell and it's very obviously
00:15:29
not So what are those deals look like between instacart and the
00:15:33
grocery stores chains. You know, I have no idea but
00:15:37
it's certainly not like eBay or even Amazon where there's sort
00:15:40
of this permissionless marketplace where anyone can
00:15:43
just put things on it. And I think that's a kind of an
00:15:46
important distinction. You guys had this sort of
00:15:48
injury, you'll sometimes get frustrated with my stories where
00:15:51
all right? Consumer investors are just like
00:15:54
desperate for anything. They'd like, you know, anything
00:15:57
to invest in like there's a, you know, basically, it's a Are you
00:16:00
know, your consumer investor, some of the Smart Ones, you
00:16:03
know, I am in Saratov old bench, mark.
00:16:05
Kate analysis is one of her biggest companies.
00:16:07
Not, not a consumer, but my point is, there are VCS who feel
00:16:10
like they need to invest in consumer deals.
00:16:13
But yet, it can still feel hard to raise sort of off theme, or
00:16:16
how sort of talk talk through your experience with that
00:16:20
Dynamic working. Feel like there's this money,
00:16:22
chasing all these bad ideas and yet it's hard to get feces to
00:16:26
pay attention to what you think is a real business.
00:16:28
I don't think there's There's that much consumer investing at
00:16:32
the A and B scale for the last five to seven years.
00:16:35
I mean, I think we're joking around about the hot deals,
00:16:37
right? You know, Clubhouse.
00:16:38
And you know what? Not again, which I think is more
00:16:41
of a real business than most, you know, a couple other in a
00:16:43
market places that, you know, camping one that Saratov all did
00:16:47
and some tips Camp, some hip Camp even be real, which I think
00:16:51
is like a historically successful consumer, social app
00:16:54
might not end up being an amazing.
00:16:55
And I know I literally just pulled out like in France.
00:16:58
It's already sort of leveling. If there are questions of
00:17:01
whether it's leveling off the u.s. to.
00:17:03
Yeah. So the question is, like, if you
00:17:05
have maybe two, maybe three big consumer deals per year for the
00:17:08
entire Sandhill industry. Like, you know, and you're
00:17:11
talking the top 10, the top 20 of these days or whatever.
00:17:13
Like it is consumer investing like a real category, almost
00:17:18
like, it's sort of, I think we have found our way or whatever.
00:17:22
But I think in general it's just not that hot of a space since
00:17:26
maybe 2013 2014. And so I think, You know, we can
00:17:30
joke around about the big deals making sense or not, but a
00:17:32
general, I think the sort of quote unquote stupidbunny
00:17:35
choosing bad deals. You know, which I don't
00:17:37
necessarily ascribe to. But if you do ascribe to that
00:17:39
its large, letting it be to be SAS crypto, you know, and a
00:17:43
couple other things or interesting or Woods.
00:17:46
I mean, they, you know, Clubhouse sub stack.
00:17:48
I mean, I'm not gonna make you guys get on them, but you have
00:17:52
oceans of money. Ocean money cheese.
00:17:54
Pretty small user base is pretty small.
00:17:56
Revenue basis is almost exclusively in B2B, SAS and
00:17:59
crypto. And a couple crazy outlier deals
00:18:01
in the last 5-10 years and gaming is a whole category of
00:18:05
its own that we're somewhat, you know, in although we are
00:18:09
building games on a new platform, which makes us more of
00:18:12
a kind of consumer type investable play.
00:18:14
Right. The thing about gaming, I think
00:18:16
that's really important is the fact that you get Revenue
00:18:20
earlier on in your trajectory. I think that's classic consumer
00:18:24
Investments. Like, social networks haven't
00:18:28
seem to work since, you know, 14 2015 where you are just
00:18:32
creating, you know, a massive audience that can somehow
00:18:36
monetize down the line and be real would be a perfect example
00:18:39
of something like that. We haven't seen it, make any
00:18:41
Revenue yet. I mean to talk about VC in sort
00:18:44
of the most basic terms. People want to believe either
00:18:48
there's a new platform and invest in the platform.
00:18:51
And if you can't invest in somebody who uses it or invest
00:18:55
in sort of a new style business new thesis empowered by
00:18:58
technology, I mean that's sort of Marketplaces and platform
00:19:02
plays and now it's sort of your sight, okay?
00:19:04
But marketplaces were they even really, really that great and
00:19:10
and they're having a new platforms, I mean, the iPhone is
00:19:14
really the platform's iron, amazing investable strategy.
00:19:17
I mean, that's our that would be our pitch for volley is if you
00:19:21
can find a winner on the brand new platform and it actually
00:19:24
turns into a very meaningful platform, that is a great
00:19:27
investment. However, things very is.
00:19:29
Voice of platform right now. Are your it'd still be a bet on?
00:19:33
I think we talked about it as an interface out platform, right?
00:19:35
I don't think like, I think we can all jacked up to say, like
00:19:38
Alexa is going to be in 200 million houses, but is not going
00:19:42
to be the iPhone, right? But like, do we think people are
00:19:45
going to talk to their phones, their TVs, they're smart, you
00:19:49
know, speaker devices eventually, you know, their
00:19:52
computers, their ARB, our guys. Just like to me, it seems
00:19:54
clearly. Yes, that, you know, people are
00:19:57
going to be talking to computers a lot more five years.
00:20:00
Today than they are today, right?
00:20:01
And whether or not those computers are little hockey puck
00:20:03
sold by Amazon. I think you can make the case
00:20:06
either way. But fundamentally, like, you
00:20:08
know, how could you have an arv, our glasses experience without
00:20:11
robust voice control, right? How can you have an amazing
00:20:14
Smart TV experience without good voice control?
00:20:16
Right. It just seems like we're sort of
00:20:18
long people talking to computers and and we're also long Alexa,
00:20:22
don't get us wrong. But like the macro take is that
00:20:25
people are going to talk computers a lot more 25 years
00:20:27
for that the gaming piece. You touched on.
00:20:30
I mean, I honestly don't know. Like do you have a sense of how
00:20:35
that space is being affected by the downturn or I mean they're
00:20:38
not investing it like gaming Investments today.
00:20:42
I mean I yeah and this is so old.
00:20:44
Now I think of like people invest in Zynga and rode that
00:20:48
there were sort of the supercell investors who made a I mean, A
00:20:52
lot of the gaming style Investments, I think of people
00:20:54
being excited about in 2021 had a crypto element, right?
00:20:58
Or what do you think of sort of gaming investors doing right
00:21:02
now? I do you think like a lot of the
00:21:05
gaming companies? There was a lot of m&a activity.
00:21:08
Right? The biggest em, a deal of of the
00:21:10
last year was Microsoft making an offer for Activision Blizzard
00:21:15
great. So I think that, you know, these
00:21:19
giant gaming companies that are on Platform imaginable, what
00:21:23
including console and PC, and mobile are still great
00:21:27
businesses, but maybe they're less kind of grow stock or you
00:21:32
did there more kind of established businesses.
00:21:35
The more exciting non crypto gaming stuff I think you have
00:21:39
to, like, start to talk about a rvr or kind of metaverse, like,
00:21:43
Roblox or kind of what epic is doing and where that goes.
00:21:47
But I do think like, a lot of gaming, businesses are just huge
00:21:51
Age Revenue businesses, maybe not growing super fast, right?
00:21:55
Yeah. We sort of talked through some
00:21:56
of the challenges of consumer but you guys, you know, aren't
00:22:01
you here to prove the journalist don't have to be so negative.
00:22:04
All right, let's talk about. All right.
00:22:11
Yeah, 23, I mean clearly I think.
00:22:15
Well, I won't give away my answer.
00:22:17
I think we would all agree. What is the hottest Trend in
00:22:20
your mind? Like going in?
00:22:21
20:23 in terms of investing category.
00:22:24
Hey, yeah. I mean, yeah.
00:22:26
AI generation for sure. I think.
00:22:28
Yeah. And you know what?
00:22:30
You read on that space? Or are you optimistic?
00:22:33
Yeah, I mean of course you want to go first a yeah?
00:22:38
Yeah, yeah. James.
00:22:40
No. I think I think I mean I'm
00:22:41
generally pretty optimistic about any of these Trends.
00:22:46
I guess I want to differentiate kind of the invest ability of
00:22:50
transverses like Whether I believe in the technology like
00:22:53
I'm long crypto. I'm excited about what that
00:22:55
could lead to. I'm long AI.
00:22:58
I'm on, you know, I was launched at Bots and I think the timing
00:23:01
wasn't right in 2016. So I think that you can feel
00:23:05
leave that these things will happen and not necessarily want
00:23:08
to make a seed or series a investment at that moment in
00:23:12
time. I think for a I specifically I'm
00:23:15
pretty excited about this upcoming year.
00:23:18
I think a lot will kind of depend on Wide open a.i.
00:23:23
releases next. I can't you beautiful.
00:23:25
Yeah, chat gbd4 I don't think anyone actually any of us know
00:23:29
what that will be like there's a lot of like huge hype around
00:23:32
that. So yeah.
00:23:34
I could see that being a really important product and 2023 but I
00:23:39
could also see it underwhelming. I do think that the next phase
00:23:43
of the kind of AI thesis will be more more around.
00:23:48
Chat GB, T 4X essentially, I think it'll be You know, chat
00:23:52
GPT for law, chat GPT for medicine, chat, GPT for math,
00:23:58
tutors chat, GPT for business, you know, Finance financial
00:24:03
advisor. If I, you know, your track EP T
00:24:05
in your spreadsheets, right. Everything just adding catchy
00:24:08
PT. So it's a very similar to a lot
00:24:11
of trends that we've seen come before where, you know, it over
00:24:14
4X or or whatever, you try to kind of take the existing
00:24:19
technology to apply it to anything.
00:24:21
Possibly imagine a lot of times that just doesn't work and it's
00:24:25
a great story, if you're a Founder because you don't have
00:24:28
to be an expert in AI. You can be like well figma is
00:24:32
now disrupt the bull because we can be figma plus plug in some
00:24:36
generative AI tools or you hear a lot of this story of like, oh,
00:24:41
you know, the new companies are going to be product-driven and
00:24:43
it's going to be tailoring it for end, you know?
00:24:47
I mean there are a lots of Enterprise companies that give,
00:24:50
you know, smaller. Our company's tools for things
00:24:53
that they could Cobble together with existing products, but are
00:24:56
made by for startups case for startups.
00:24:59
I think the question will be do the existing incumbents kind of
00:25:04
succeed, you know, better or first by just adding a i
00:25:09
features to write what we saw that with Jasper fight, right?
00:25:13
We're right. Exact Jasper was building off
00:25:16
opening, I and then suddenly chat GPT was a big threat to
00:25:20
them. Yeah.
00:25:21
I think James is point. I think like, you know, startup
00:25:25
Founders and the media. I think tend to be very like
00:25:27
text-oriented individuals like they like to read the like to
00:25:30
write and so chatty PT is super magical because you know, it's
00:25:35
a, the world's greatest text generator, right?
00:25:37
And I think, but most of this sort of kind of real world,
00:25:40
applications of text are probably more like be to be
00:25:44
oriented like the law. Like, you know, Finance like
00:25:47
medicine, like sales communication like marketing
00:25:50
copy, that kind of thing. You and I, yeah, I mean to this
00:25:53
point, I would sort of be shocked if like Facebook doesn't
00:25:55
launch a i generated ad copy, like in the next year or
00:25:58
something, right? Or like, Google should launch a,
00:26:02
i generated ad copy for search ads like yesterday, right?
00:26:05
Like forget like, you know, marketing copywriters should be
00:26:09
like obliterated in the next year, essentially, right?
00:26:11
I mean, it's not gonna happen that quickly, but like he should
00:26:13
be because you should just be able to ABCDE, test your
00:26:16
marketing copy, you know, ad infinitum, and never really
00:26:19
write anything anymore, right? Whereas, I think, On the
00:26:22
consumer side of things, I'm a little more long, the sort of
00:26:25
visual generation tools, that kind of make beautiful pictures
00:26:29
and drawings and art and eventually I think 3D models and
00:26:32
video and maybe games via the sort of AI generation.
00:26:35
Like we made a little hack project where you can turn a
00:26:39
stick figure drawing into like a Monet or a van Gogh or Pixar,
00:26:44
you know, still right. And I think we're sort of you
00:26:47
have these full-time dedicated Not not a present.
00:26:53
No no. But in general like I just think
00:26:55
that pictures resonate more with consumers than text to like
00:27:00
distill it more fundamentally like Instagrams were popular.
00:27:03
The Twitter Tick-Tock will probably be more eventually more
00:27:05
popular than still pictures, right?
00:27:07
Or videos already more popular than images, right?
00:27:09
Like you know immersive imagery is always I think going to win
00:27:13
with consumers whereas I think with B2B applications I think
00:27:17
text input and output is is incredibly useful and I think
00:27:21
Sort of at the Finish Line. Almost on that front.
00:27:24
I do. You think another thing to watch
00:27:25
on the consumer side that we're very invested in is how this a
00:27:31
ilm large language model? Yes large language model
00:27:35
effects, smart speakers, and boys interfaces.
00:27:39
I think you know Alexa was invented in 2015.
00:27:43
It's a very like mechanical interface in some ways it's you
00:27:47
know, amazing for for the time it was amazing at how good it
00:27:51
was. That voice recognition, but it's
00:27:53
never been very conversational. You can't just kind of
00:27:57
interrupted. You can't ask a lot of follow-up
00:28:00
questions which were already seeing, like, Chad GPT blows
00:28:04
that out of the water. So I would be surprised if kind
00:28:08
of the voice companies, don't start adopting.
00:28:11
Not ovule really dystopian if chats uet.
00:28:14
I literally had somebody in my Twitter replies.
00:28:18
I mean I could tell, you know, is some reply I from an AI
00:28:22
startup company which also flagged it and I replied like
00:28:25
GPT and he sent me a smile on your face but they're already
00:28:29
people trying to deploy this shit like out in the wild as if
00:28:33
it's a real person. I was like what a growth hack.
00:28:35
But yeah once it's on speakers I mean isn't spam and generally
00:28:40
going to be just like a huge problem.
00:28:41
Like right, like exponentially more and more of a problem in
00:28:45
the, make some weird work in the world to sort through, like
00:28:48
idiots on social media as it is right.
00:28:50
You got Buddy, who tweets at you and you're like, is this person
00:28:53
worth listening to now you have to sort through?
00:28:56
Is this an actual like robot non thinker, you know, it's it's a
00:29:00
real burden for the information consumer.
00:29:03
This is why the future will be more and more similar to tick
00:29:06
tock and all that will matter is whether you like the thing and
00:29:11
it can figure out what the present you next.
00:29:13
It doesn't really you don't want in the future.
00:29:15
I just don't think it makes sense.
00:29:16
That he's sorting through anything like the a, I will just
00:29:19
give us the thing that we will. The best dad was made.
00:29:22
Yeah. You better night doesn't mean
00:29:24
he's circling around Tick-Tock and I wanted to flag that with
00:29:29
our mood around consumer. Be much more upbeat if Tick-Tock
00:29:33
word American company because it's like, oh man, we have this
00:29:36
huge. It was valued at like, I don't
00:29:37
know, for in Sixty billion dollars at one point, just very
00:29:41
valuable company. Yeah, we're like, oh, there have
00:29:44
been no, great consumer companies, it's like, well,
00:29:46
there has except for Tick-Tock. Yeah, that's a great one.
00:29:49
I think Tick-Tock is really Resting because like for those
00:29:53
who don't know the backstory, you know, they bought musically,
00:29:55
which was this American app for lip-syncing, you know, for
00:29:58
teenagers, right? That hadn't really gone anywhere
00:30:01
at sort of topped out at a few tens of millions of users but
00:30:04
never really rescale. They bought it the Chinese
00:30:06
company by dance and they mashed it up with this news AI
00:30:10
algorithm that they had developed for a noose AI app
00:30:13
called tortilla right and they had developed as algorithm that
00:30:16
showed you the newsfeed stuff you wanted to see text come back
00:30:19
to text and mash it up with liquid.
00:30:21
Making videos. And that was a huge hit in
00:30:23
China, but then to bring it back to the United States.
00:30:26
They had to spend, like five billion dollars on Facebook ads.
00:30:30
Like, literally, they spend more money on Facebook ads.
00:30:32
And I think Snapchat ads, they were the number one customer
00:30:35
there as well. They bought out 25% of all
00:30:38
Facebook ads. All Facebook ads in the United
00:30:40
States for, like, a meaningful period of time.
00:30:43
And I think that growth strategy would just never be adopted by a
00:30:47
us company, or a VC vac company. Right?
00:30:49
I mean, the idea that you're like, Okay, once we reach scale
00:30:53
would be a huge multi-hundred billion our company, but it's
00:30:56
going to cost five billion dollars in face.
00:30:58
But the cats like, you know, more than the market cap of most
00:31:01
companies to pull this off. So you know, hey you know,
00:31:04
Sequoia drusen, right? You want to write us this five
00:31:06
billion dollar check so we can reach the scale like no effing
00:31:09
way, right? And so it's kind of a
00:31:11
fascinating strippy, you know, it's almost like the Urgent 5
00:31:15
billion or you is that just oh, yeah, no, they spent five
00:31:18
billion on ads just in the United States like you could
00:31:20
just look at the Documents from Facebook and Snapchat of stuff
00:31:23
that just literally had to like, admit in their SEC documents
00:31:26
that their biggest spender was a bite dance for like two years on
00:31:30
the whole, she was basically gone.
00:31:32
Yeah. Exactly.
00:31:33
Right. Right.
00:31:34
And so like, what's interesting and to come back to gaming?
00:31:37
Actually, one thing that's interesting is gaming companies
00:31:39
have never been shy about having to pay for their users about
00:31:42
having to do paid marketing, right?
00:31:44
Whereas in America, we've always had this sort of like, almost
00:31:47
naivete that to build a social network, you have to get all
00:31:50
your users for free. A or otherwise it's not real
00:31:52
like you know oh no it's only real.
00:31:54
If you get true morality and you get all your house this is like
00:31:57
we Andrew Cheng. Yeah, style stuff, right, where
00:31:59
people are learning is that right?
00:32:01
You guys are more stops. It's like, sort of to be, I'm
00:32:04
just, I'm saying, just not being afraid to pay for your users to
00:32:09
build a social network or to build a true consumer.
00:32:12
Like a pure consumer product is I think kind of an interesting
00:32:15
strategy that has it really been adopted by any American
00:32:18
companies like other than gaming companies where you're like,
00:32:21
yeah, I have to do marketing to succeed, like that's just part
00:32:24
of the way the world Works. Whereas every previous American
00:32:27
Social Network, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever,
00:32:30
you know, even YouTube acquired older users for free essentially
00:32:33
in the early days, arguably by stealing content.
00:32:36
But whatever. But in general, I like the idea
00:32:40
of the Chinese idea that you could build a true Social
00:32:42
Network that has massive scale on success and network Effects
00:32:45
by paying for almost all of your users.
00:32:48
And not really having true virality.
00:32:50
Has not really been Opted in the United States and I think is
00:32:52
sort of an interesting Twist on growing consumer apps that maybe
00:32:57
we'll get adopted, the United States at some point.
00:32:59
And so, we'll see. I guess it's hard for me.
00:33:01
Not to hear this is, and this is why we are going to spend a lot
00:33:05
ads. Well, well, now we are gaming
00:33:08
companies, so we're not afraid in our investors right out of
00:33:10
breath, but like it, he'll buddy.
00:33:12
It's interesting. The payback is, whereas, if
00:33:14
you're a soda company that says listen trust us that we will
00:33:17
make the pivot to monetization and trust that we will keep
00:33:20
these users. You know, right.
00:33:22
That's all really hard. I agree, totally.
00:33:25
But, is there anything to be learned for Tick-Tock in terms
00:33:28
of new startups coming up, or I mean, Tick-Tock was sort of an
00:33:32
early force in just like if we wield, the super smart AI, we
00:33:38
can produce sort of great things.
00:33:39
So maybe it's a model, they're related to some of this
00:33:42
generative AI or I don't know, what do you see in terms of what
00:33:46
people can take from Tick-Tock success?
00:33:49
All right, I guess. You said one is By the audience
00:33:52
if you think you have a good good?
00:33:53
Yeah, I think, the one other lesson in James alluded to, this
00:33:56
may have more perspective on this as well.
00:33:58
Like, I think the other Insight is that personalization of
00:34:02
content like defeats every, other sort of form of content
00:34:06
and some like, historically growing up.
00:34:08
We had this idea that there were like, good movies and bad
00:34:11
movies, right? And like, or you know, on on
00:34:13
Instagram that there were like good photos of bad photos and
00:34:16
and Facebook sort of started to change the perspective too.
00:34:20
Well, Bad photos from your friends are still, like, almost
00:34:24
as good as you know, quote unquote, good content because
00:34:28
like they're your friends and so therefore like a stupid photo
00:34:31
from your friend is so funny because you know them any of
00:34:33
this American context relationship and everything.
00:34:34
Right? Tick-Tock has sort of gone all
00:34:36
the way which is like not a no, no legs are 10 times.
00:34:41
Yeah, yeah, well, they're like forget about your friends.
00:34:44
They're like, as long as we have this, a, I sort through all the
00:34:47
content in the universe and personalize it to what you like,
00:34:50
you will like that. More than your friends or then
00:34:53
the good cods had that, you know, Hollywood or HBO or
00:34:57
whatever thanks for going to like and not the quote-unquote,
00:34:59
like good content won't exist still, but then the idea of
00:35:02
like, finding the needle in the haystack and sort of dispensing,
00:35:05
with this whole idea of friend relationships, being important
00:35:08
is very interesting that personalization of the whole
00:35:12
universe of content is more important than anything else.
00:35:14
I think, could probably be adopted and probably paired with
00:35:17
some of this generative, a, I think we were talking, no more
00:35:20
friends, no more. Eggs, the computers to figure
00:35:22
out what you like and deliver it to you.
00:35:25
Yeah. And then to add to that the next
00:35:27
step could be that we start seeing a lot more just a i
00:35:30
generated content that had no human involvement.
00:35:33
I don't know how close we are to that.
00:35:34
That really depends on these LMS and you know how the kind of
00:35:39
visuals to Max's Point earlier and you know, sound and voice
00:35:44
cloning and things like that change.
00:35:46
But you could imagine a world where you don't, you're just
00:35:48
watching videos that never existed until the The algorithm
00:35:51
decided they were needed for you.
00:35:53
Or how far away are we from? I don't know.
00:35:55
You guys aren't AI Scholars, but just like, if Tick-Tock can find
00:36:00
the video you want, and it's just like a bunch of, you know,
00:36:03
it's a 15 second series of pixels and sound.
00:36:07
When exactly, when can they just like produce, you know?
00:36:10
Oh yeah. This Creator.
00:36:11
We're gonna build a whole universe of AI versions of this
00:36:16
greater. Yeah, I don't have an answer for
00:36:18
you on the timing of that, but I think that's kind of weird.
00:36:21
It eventually I bet under five years probably over one year.
00:36:25
Right, I mean I think of the ball feels very close to we just
00:36:29
sit there and watch the a I dance for us.
00:36:31
Like, that's a lot. Pretty much.
00:36:34
Yeah, I have one more insight on Tick-Tock I think is interesting
00:36:39
decide about Insight. Okay James uses the word.
00:36:47
Well I'll trust that the when the a I can deliver Career
00:36:51
better insights than me, then then, you know, you can have
00:36:53
them on the podcast. But basically, the idea that
00:36:59
Tick-Tock made it sort of lot less scary in some ways or, you
00:37:02
know, dangerous to create content.
00:37:04
Like, when I create a tweet or an Instagram post or anything,
00:37:09
you know, all of my followers are seeing that essentially.
00:37:12
I don't have a lot of control of that and what I like about
00:37:15
Tick-Tock is that you can just create it and your your whole
00:37:18
Social Circle, your network, you know, the broader world.
00:37:21
Old won't see that content unless it's good according to
00:37:24
some people, right? Which is a really fascinating
00:37:27
kind of flip on the hall. If Twitter is distributed to
00:37:30
people, people who are interested in Eric's Petty,
00:37:32
Twitter, rights, doing save me a lot of drama.
00:37:37
Like, why are you reading this? But it's like the Twitter
00:37:39
algorithm is shoving it down their throat.
00:37:41
He's on our last episode. We talked about this right now.
00:37:44
People kind of didn't have the context and suddenly were very
00:37:47
confused by your tweets, right? Yeah.
00:37:51
Oh ization. You need, you need the
00:37:52
personalized content. Even from the Creator's you
00:37:54
follow, right? Right.
00:37:56
I think one final code object. I think we had we'd be remiss
00:37:58
in. Not saying, I would vastly
00:38:00
prefer if this were an American company and I would hope real
00:38:05
succeeds. I hope if he'll on decides to
00:38:07
reboot Vine, I hope that succeeds.
00:38:08
I hope statue has soft place to see if they help you to short
00:38:10
succeeds. I think it is sort of bad that
00:38:13
you that Tick Tock is this good compared to everything else and
00:38:15
so fingers crossed it. Well, I think Zuckerberg is
00:38:18
probably the horse to it back and Bridge.
00:38:20
The In. Do you think Zach should have
00:38:24
spent the money that he spent on the metaverse building reels and
00:38:28
that would have been better for the world?
00:38:30
And I mean, that, I don't know, probably, but I guess the real
00:38:34
question I want to ask is just, you know, we made the point that
00:38:38
there are a lot of app companies sort of software consumer
00:38:43
companies, that sort of in some ways are sitting around and
00:38:46
waiting for great Hardware to build, like the next great
00:38:49
company off of. So, what, Do you see Hardware
00:38:53
meaningful significant Hardware coming out in 2023?
00:38:57
The changes the consumer investing landscape?
00:39:00
Yeah, I mean I think we think Apple glasses are going to come
00:39:02
out right and I feel like day one will be the narrative.
00:39:06
That's always the case which is that this sucks.
00:39:09
This flap this does weigh less than the meta Quest thing,
00:39:11
whatever. Really it's too, it's too
00:39:14
expensive. I mean, that's my perspective.
00:39:16
I've never seen an apple launched in the last 20 years
00:39:19
where that wasn't the insta. React from the Yeah, maybe the
00:39:21
media has changed maybe that maybe has chaired for Apple now.
00:39:24
I don't know. But like I just carried to your
00:39:26
gonna get a raft of stories about how this is underpowered
00:39:29
too expensive and like doesn't do all the things that the medic
00:39:32
West does. Like I just I'll put out, put
00:39:35
y'all all lay ten-to-one odds on that.
00:39:37
I mean, that's there's a long tradition of Apple in society
00:39:40
where there's sort of the Microsoft type people who say,
00:39:44
oh, this is why it lacks XYZ. But I don't know in terms of
00:39:47
media during Fireball and those people have sort of one to me.
00:39:50
I mean, He's sort of one. Yeah, but I'm talking about like
00:39:53
the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, like the
00:39:55
information, like, you know, you know, whatever the big Tech.
00:39:59
The Big Three, the big street newcomer newcomer coming on into
00:40:03
solid number four. Yeah, exactly.
00:40:06
Right. But, and that's just gonna be
00:40:07
the narrative. But I, you know, if they get it
00:40:10
right, I think historically, if you look at the iPhone, you
00:40:13
know, about two years after the iPhone, launch was when all the
00:40:16
mega-hit consumer startups, came out, right?
00:40:18
It was like, uber came out in 09.
00:40:20
Instagram came. 09 like Snapchat came out in 10 or something
00:40:24
like, you know, you need a couple, maybe 18 months to sort
00:40:28
of percolate, what the feel of the experiences before people
00:40:31
could start building, you know, the hundred billion dollar
00:40:33
companies off it. So my expectation would be is if
00:40:36
they actually launched this year that you won't really see the
00:40:38
Apple glasses Mega companies start to nail the product until
00:40:42
like 20 25. I think an interesting question
00:40:44
is, how they will sell it, whether they will mostly sell it
00:40:47
as a consumer product, or there will be like an Prize aspect to
00:40:52
it like more like a Mac Pro or something like you know where
00:40:56
you use it to build video games or you use it to, you know,
00:41:01
sculpt 3D objects for Designing motorcycles or something.
00:41:06
I don't know, 100%, that it will be like a pure consumer product.
00:41:11
You think that would be in lieu of the consumer product?
00:41:15
Or I'd, I think a lot depends on just what they're trying to
00:41:19
Target as a price point. I just have no idea.
00:41:21
I mean Max right now better but I think yeah.
00:41:24
Like the quest Pro which is has Pro in the name, right.
00:41:28
I think they've tried to thread that needle a little bit, but
00:41:31
it's very expensive and I think you know, isn't and this is
00:41:36
going to go in real apple or but and you guys you guys are sort
00:41:40
of Apple obsessives, but wasn't Tim Cook in favor of the carrier
00:41:48
subsidies for the iPhone, understanding that you really
00:41:50
needed. To drive price down and Steve
00:41:52
Jobs wasn't, and that was one of his great victories.
00:41:55
I mean, obviously just a key to the iPhone succeeding was that,
00:42:00
you know, it was affordable instantly.
00:42:02
Well, the crater wall to people or that was a huge insight.
00:42:06
And I think like, the other craziest one is that Steve Jobs
00:42:10
was fully against the app store for the first 18 months of the
00:42:13
iPhone. Like what you again, we're
00:42:15
talking about being the greatest platform of our lifetime like,
00:42:18
Steve Jobs, not just had to be argued into the The App Store,
00:42:22
it was like a Relentless battle within Apple for 18 months,
00:42:26
whether or not other people should be able to write apps for
00:42:28
it. And, you know, I think Scott
00:42:30
Forstall who departed was a huge proponent of it, I don't know
00:42:34
about Tim Cook, but I assumed he was in favor.
00:42:36
And like finally, apparently Steve Jobs was basically like,
00:42:39
all right, like, fuck off, like make the App Store.
00:42:42
Like, I don't give a shit what you guys want, right?
00:42:45
What it was company was the first, it was the 3G, which was
00:42:49
the second phone so it was one year.
00:42:51
And so, but initially they were going to, they were going to let
00:42:54
people just write web apps for it.
00:42:56
They're going to say, well, you run a little website and that's
00:42:58
close enough to a nap. And people were, like nasty, we
00:43:01
have to let people write relapse for this thing and it was just a
00:43:04
massive battle that he finally just caved on.
00:43:06
So, that's kind of an amazing history because that arguably,
00:43:10
you know, was the most important thing about the iPhone.
00:43:12
If you look at it in retrospect. But unless Apple has some magic
00:43:16
trick up its sleeve, there's nothing like the carrier to
00:43:19
subsidize. No, no, right?
00:43:22
They are. And then if they could get away
00:43:24
with this like corporate Story, I mean, I you could just imagine
00:43:28
this sort of dark world where it's like, apple can figure out
00:43:31
how to make the pricing work. You know, it's been talked about
00:43:34
behind the scenes forever and so then they come out with his
00:43:38
super expensive version and maybe they're a couple companies
00:43:41
to try to build pro services. But what people really want is
00:43:45
Apple to offer something aimed at the mass Market that gets a
00:43:49
bunch of consumer adoption. Right.
00:43:51
Exactly. I mean apples famous for having
00:43:54
like five year plans so I'd be shocked if they're not going to
00:43:56
launch it like 2999 and then have a five-year plan to get to
00:44:00
999 basically or something, right?
00:44:02
I mean, I think like, you have to imagine, they're seeing like,
00:44:05
okay, 20:27. We can get this to 999, or so,
00:44:07
right. I mean, you know, many, many
00:44:11
episodes ago, I had Phil libin on who was shitting on virtual
00:44:16
reality devices and just sort of he has a mall, you know?
00:44:19
And they're all piled up in his closet and there.
00:44:21
One for, you know, like 30 minutes and then I don't know
00:44:25
what sort of the view here on VR vs.
00:44:29
AR. I think that they are the VR is
00:44:33
still kind of a niche popular device for people who just want
00:44:37
kind of the gaming experience. And and I think there are some
00:44:40
Fitness, you know, games sort of that are kind of more active.
00:44:45
I think that it's a popular kind of Christmas gift.
00:44:48
I think you know Quest, sales are still going up and I I think
00:44:51
that it just hasn't penetrated into anywhere near kind of the
00:44:56
install base. That would really allow large
00:45:00
consumer startups to sort of emerge and focus solely on BR,
00:45:05
you know, I think, you know, Max talked about the scale of
00:45:08
Alexa's and potentially 200 million households.
00:45:12
Like we're not anywhere close to that with VR, so, it just makes
00:45:15
it a lot harder to build a brand new consumer startup, focus on a
00:45:19
much smaller install base. Yeah, and nothing sort of
00:45:22
technologically. The you think is on the horizon
00:45:26
that's going to change that? Or is there anything that you
00:45:29
would say would create an inflection point there on for VR
00:45:33
specifically? I don't know, it's a good
00:45:35
question. I might kind of a hotter take on
00:45:38
this, is that everyone's trying to do games that require you to
00:45:43
like, run around your house and kind of yeah, like be more
00:45:48
Fitness oriented and I think people just want games.
00:45:51
Is that you can sit and play and nobody's building games that you
00:45:54
can sit and play the VR device can't tell when you actually
00:45:57
job. So you're kind of having to
00:45:58
like, you know, Crouch and stand up in order to like simulate
00:46:01
jumping. I just think people need to
00:46:03
focus on games where you can sit and chill.
00:46:07
Like every other form of entertainment designers are not
00:46:10
necessarily in touch with average American.
00:46:12
Yeah, yeah. It's kind of, It kind of like
00:46:14
that, I think. Yeah, give me a race car game or
00:46:16
something that I that I don't have to stand and run around
00:46:18
for, I mean, it's good for some people but I think I think that
00:46:21
that's kind of the design space that hasn't been explored
00:46:23
enough. So I mean, the crypto winner is
00:46:26
this sort of a dead year coming up.
00:46:28
Do you think for crypto? I mean, obviously, people have
00:46:30
money, they've raised and they're going to keep working
00:46:33
but I mean yeah. First of all, I guess, is there
00:46:36
anything good about a downturn for crypto in terms of
00:46:40
development? Is there anything good about it?
00:46:43
I mean a lot of the original people involved in this space
00:46:46
will always tell you that, you know, it's good when the winters
00:46:50
happen because Is it kicks out all the tourists in the industry
00:46:55
kind of like tamps down on the speculation aspects of crypto
00:47:00
and allows real Builders to kind of continue working?
00:47:04
If that's true to some degree. I definitely think this winter,
00:47:08
this crypto winter was pretty, pretty, pretty dark and cold or
00:47:13
something. I don't know.
00:47:14
It was our the beauty of other crypto Winters is if there were
00:47:17
still new suckers to bring in the next time, like if you Like
00:47:21
they've gone through every fucking sucker in the world.
00:47:23
Like, I like, is there another sucker for the next round of it?
00:47:27
I mean, I'm still I guess let's all just say what we actually
00:47:31
believe about crypto to moment. I still think there will be some
00:47:35
great company built on blockchain and maybe even the
00:47:38
financialization aspect, I don't think they will lean in super
00:47:42
heavily to the crypto brand. And I think it could it doesn't
00:47:45
mean that the space in general is successful.
00:47:49
And I'm certainly not bullish on.
00:47:51
On the actual currency values, or what about it these in
00:47:56
gaming, because I think you are, the one who originally sort of
00:48:01
got me interested in the idea that, you know, ft's could have
00:48:05
a place in gaming. Yeah.
00:48:07
I mean, I still think it's crazy that I like bought all these
00:48:09
OverWatch skins and now they have nothing to do with my life.
00:48:14
I think what would have been cool is just to see, sort of
00:48:18
different big companies, recognizing The same system, but
00:48:23
it was almost like a big company thing to me more than you know,
00:48:26
it people with IP needed to lean into them in a way that we
00:48:30
didn't see. So I don't know.
00:48:32
I still think portability of Internet items would be cool but
00:48:38
but I don't even know if you don't need the blockchain.
00:48:40
I mean we could you know, two companies could just come to an
00:48:42
agreement that they honored each other stuff, right?
00:48:45
I mean it's cooler with the blockchain because there's a
00:48:47
truth to it and other people could voluntarily.
00:48:51
Participate. I mean I still think it's an
00:48:52
exciting idea but we had this moment in time where there was
00:48:56
so much every company had a reason to implement it because
00:49:00
their stock could go up because they were doing the crypto thing
00:49:03
and that it didn't work. Then I don't know that.
00:49:06
I mean part of the bull case you would hear about crypto at the
00:49:08
time was that all this sort of getting the money upfront.
00:49:13
Meant that a lot of people were motivated to actually do
00:49:15
something and that was going to get the flywheel going.
00:49:18
Right? It's almost like Max's point.
00:49:20
You guys spend The ads ahead of, you know, everything needs
00:49:23
something. Whether it was YouTube getting
00:49:25
content, that was probably illegal early, you need some
00:49:27
reason why people are going to use this shitty thing early and
00:49:31
that will get you into the world where it's actually more
00:49:33
valuable. And so for crypto, it was
00:49:35
supposed to be everybody getting rich early and that hasn't
00:49:39
worked. Did you read the mat Iglesias
00:49:41
story where he compared it to the Segway as like an amazing
00:49:46
technology that basically has no use cases?
00:49:50
Yeah. Yeah, I did read it kind of a
00:49:52
narrow metaphor, but yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know.
00:49:55
Yeah, I think his point in the article was that when he was
00:50:00
using the early internet comparison to crypto the things
00:50:03
that do it was doing on it were sort of fun distractions
00:50:07
comparable to, you know, otherwise watching HBO or
00:50:12
reading a magazine or reading a book and it felt very much like
00:50:17
a valuable use of his time even if it wasn't like World-changing
00:50:21
in the early internet. And then in the future he kind
00:50:25
of projects to you today and says like the same things that
00:50:29
he was doing our, he's just doing a lot more and a lot more
00:50:32
people are doing them on the internet in terms of like
00:50:34
reading and writing and you know using it as a distraction and
00:50:38
research tool and things. And so he thinks that you can't
00:50:41
really project forward anything in crypto that would be
00:50:44
valuable. I agree when I interviewed vinod
00:50:46
khosla, he was still bringing up helium.
00:50:48
You know, it's there are there. Nobody has a Good crypto.
00:50:51
Use case 2.2. I don't yeah, I think that I
00:50:55
think you can project forward pretty easily and say that and
00:50:59
I'm kind of borrowing part of Max's thesis on this a bit.
00:51:02
Which is that a lot of what crypto is right now is sort of
00:51:06
regulatory Arbitrage, meaning you couldn't do this type of
00:51:10
defy or whatever, because it was illegal or speculation like
00:51:14
where, you know, it's a new way to gamble, it's a new way to,
00:51:17
you know, bet on things, that's kind of fun.
00:51:20
I think that's Actually accurate.
00:51:22
I just think that that will just continue to expand and we are
00:51:25
going to get really interesting companies in the future that do
00:51:28
regulatory Arbitrage and do speculation on random internet
00:51:32
assets. Whether that's, you know, video
00:51:34
game items or, you know, cryptocurrencies Bitcoin,
00:51:39
anything, you know that it you can imagine.
00:51:42
I think we are just scratching the surface of like, what types
00:51:45
of new speculation and gamble you, we can invent, you know, I
00:51:48
guess like that's kind of a, you know?
00:51:51
No, but if interest, that's what, yeah, I mean the
00:51:53
regulatory status quo remains, but I mean they could have
00:51:56
squander this opportunity if the everybody losing their shirts,
00:52:01
means that the SEC and everybody else decides it's time.
00:52:04
Totally. I think the cats out of the bag
00:52:06
a little bit where you are gonna, you know, just like uber
00:52:10
lived like, you're kind of like stuck with this world.
00:52:13
Now that we invented this and people found it interesting.
00:52:17
So yeah, I'm definitely not saying there won't be more
00:52:20
regulation. I just think it'll be like,
00:52:23
we're still going to see things in the future that, you know,
00:52:27
are kind of similar to what we have in crypto right now.
00:52:29
But even more kind of pushing the envelope in terms of
00:52:32
regulatory, Arbitrage, Uber, and Lyft one over consumers hearts
00:52:35
and not sure crypto has but generally I think like the you
00:52:38
say it is. I just think that a financial
00:52:41
use cases can still be used cases, right?
00:52:43
I mean, if you think of like cross-border transactions that
00:52:46
are really hard to do or keeping your money in something, you
00:52:49
know, if you live in Argentina door, Hyperinflation where, you
00:52:52
know, keep your money in something, it easy.
00:52:53
The Argentinean peso is a real use case, right?
00:52:56
So there's sort of those core Financial use cases and then,
00:52:59
yeah, fundamentally I think the other product Market fits that
00:53:02
exist today are essentially, I mean, James called a regulatory
00:53:05
Arbitrage, you might just call it like, you know, evasion of
00:53:08
the law and some sort of a fundamental principle Ray.
00:53:11
And I think that like, you know, gambling is still somewhat
00:53:14
illegal in the United States. I think prediction markets which
00:53:17
where you predict things other than just Sports outcomes is
00:53:20
something that James Always been really excited.
00:53:21
About prediction markets are three core of our friend group,
00:53:25
anywhere resigns and bullishness just in the, you know, I don't
00:53:29
know, we've bet on who's going to win very selections and I
00:53:33
think there's call she is yeah, call she's starting to do legal
00:53:37
regular, you know, legal prediction markets, I think
00:53:40
fundamentally yeah, loaning out your money and bizarre
00:53:43
derivative Securities that you probably aren't allowed to
00:53:47
invest in the United States whether or not.
00:53:49
That's a good thing or not. That is a I'll use case, some
00:53:51
people want to get 20% on their money, even if they have a 40%
00:53:55
chance of losing all of their money, right.
00:53:57
I think that, you know, the use cases of crypto are essentially
00:54:00
Financial regulatory evasion, right?
00:54:03
And in some cases, that's really valuable, if you're in a
00:54:05
country, that's inflating your currency to nothing or if you're
00:54:08
in Russia and it's essentially diamonds, you know that you're
00:54:12
trying to smuggle out of Russia, right?
00:54:14
You know Bitcoin is the new is the new jewelry that you hide in
00:54:17
your suitcase, right? And so I think those are real
00:54:20
use cases I think the end up season games saying and sort of
00:54:22
more straightforward consumer use cases.
00:54:25
I haven't really seen too much that works outside of like
00:54:28
speculation in certain games. That kind of ended up being
00:54:32
Ponzi schemes like actually Infinity for example, right?
00:54:35
But maybe there will be something there where there's
00:54:37
type of games that are, you know, it's amazing how much some
00:54:40
of the stuff we just moved on from to make anything.
00:54:43
Not a Ponzi is very, very difficult.
00:54:45
And, you know, a lot of like traditional game industry,
00:54:49
people kind of Scott. That crypto because they are
00:54:52
like phds in economics, crafting the economy's for these games
00:54:56
like Roebuck Roblox and wrote bucks in Roblox.
00:55:00
Yeah. And yeah, and I think that a lot
00:55:05
of people have kind of tried to cut Corners there, whereas you
00:55:09
really need like extremely Advanced modeling to create a
00:55:14
token ecosystem, that's like, no, we need central banks and
00:55:19
sort of a technocrat In exchange for our currency to work Customs
00:55:24
Mei, I love it, but I'm surprised to hear from you.
00:55:28
Well, yeah, I think I definitely believe that there's something
00:55:32
interesting happening and that kind of gave me creative space
00:55:35
where people are kind of coming together.
00:55:37
There's like the excitement of speculating on whether the game
00:55:40
will exist and succeed and you can kind of buy Assets in
00:55:44
advance. And then there's kind of the
00:55:46
elements of Designing a ecosystem that kind of reward.
00:55:50
The early adopters and grows as the game grows.
00:55:54
You know, kind of Mercedes more centrally planned.
00:55:56
While uses very, very centrally planned to do that well and
00:56:00
nobody has figured out how to do this like in are truly
00:56:02
decentralized way for sure. Like even board a yacht club
00:56:06
which are, you know, working on their own version of a metaverse
00:56:09
scheme, you know, they tightly tightly control, the kind of
00:56:14
evolution of the game and the evolution of their currency they
00:56:18
you know purely for legal. Three reasons, they kind of
00:56:21
created that Dow out of the eight coin that they created.
00:56:25
Right? But the you know they are
00:56:27
they're definitely in control of where this all goes and the
00:56:29
value of the value of the assets.
00:56:32
I mean, yeah, I think Warren Buffett has this like famous
00:56:35
quote free crypto where he says, like if you took all the gold in
00:56:40
the world, it would be like a 70-foot, q body side, and it
00:56:43
would like fit in like a baseball in feel like you
00:56:46
wouldn't make it to first base, and I'd be all the gold in the
00:56:48
world right? 70-foot key.
00:56:50
It's on the baseball and field and he says, for the value, the
00:56:53
supposed value of that gold, you could have like eight times the
00:56:57
entire agricultural output at the United States.
00:57:00
He times all the forming and the United States you could buy it
00:57:04
eight times over, right? And he's like, I'm just the kind
00:57:07
of guy who wants the Farms, not the cube of gold, right?
00:57:10
And I really could do is cut of in the cube of gold phase, where
00:57:13
some people are like. I Don't Know, Jack you but gold
00:57:15
is pretty cool. Like, you know, can I get this
00:57:18
place? Not here but yeah.
00:57:21
On it. And, and it, yeah, it's actually
00:57:22
very is very similar in my mind to, you know, especially the NFC
00:57:27
world. But into art collection, you
00:57:29
know, baseball card collection, any type of like hobbyist
00:57:32
collection. We are talking about 190 action
00:57:34
figures plus Java is like what, why do people collect these
00:57:37
things? I mean, there's there's a mix of
00:57:40
kind of, you know, human emotional attachment to the item
00:57:44
and then there's like an idea of speculation that maybe this
00:57:48
thing will go up. In value, was he really hard to
00:57:50
untangle? But I feel like people really
00:57:52
want to get rich when people are getting rich and I don't know,
00:57:54
there is sort of a mood to clearly.
00:57:57
There's, there's a reason and FTS and Pokemon cards have both
00:58:00
Fallen, right? I mean, every trip and why not?
00:58:03
Let's not enjoy Korean stock market is down.
00:58:06
I think it's because there's just less of a sense that
00:58:10
everybody's getting rich and I should be doing it some way to.
00:58:13
So, I just think that's all going to cool off for someone
00:58:17
either. I guess I would just say that
00:58:19
speculating on things. That you kind of have a personal
00:58:22
attachment to is a lifelong human.
00:58:26
Yeah. Yeah but the Pokemon cards in
00:58:28
your basement and we'll be back, you know, Ten Years, everybody
00:58:32
will be playing this game again or whatever but yeah what
00:58:35
showing off their gold jewelry or whatever?
00:58:37
Right. I mean so Foley, what's the
00:58:39
theme we've missed? I mean, I don't know if this is
00:58:42
interesting, but we haven't really talked about the markets
00:58:44
for the next year, or at least like a start-up Fund, Raising
00:58:46
markets. Right?
00:58:47
Obviously is very top of mind for Champs in hiding.
00:58:50
Potential. Future startup Fund Raisers.
00:58:53
So that W is the theme that I think about the most
00:58:57
unfortunately or unfortunately, what's the vibe you're getting
00:58:59
from Founders and people? I mean, the vibe right now is
00:59:03
that it's colder than it has ever been talk about winters.
00:59:07
If the late stage fundraising Market is like in a freaking
00:59:10
100-year Ice Age right now. But you know the thing about you
00:59:14
talked about it being a mood base, you know, Mark it.
00:59:17
I feel like if the stock market goes up for two straight months
00:59:20
or Are, you know, Sequoia does three big deals, you know, or
00:59:24
something concert of those types of things.
00:59:26
I feel like it could completely unlock again.
00:59:28
I guess, my one hot take on this front is everyone seems
00:59:32
convinced that we are either in a recession or we're just about
00:59:35
to go into a recession or it's like so obvious.
00:59:37
The whole markets in a recession.
00:59:38
You know, I've not really seen any a macroeconomic indicators
00:59:43
that are pointing towards a real recession.
00:59:45
That's driven by normal consumers, especially now that
00:59:48
gas an asset press is coming down.
00:59:50
So I guess my hot take is like, I don't think we're really in a
00:59:53
recession and maybe Powell will fly the plane into the ground
00:59:56
and just keep raising rates. But if he doesn't do that, I
00:59:59
think it could be kind of a boom year by mid-year.
01:00:01
If everyone just wakes up at like, hey, the economy is still
01:00:04
pretty good. And we tamed inflation.
01:00:06
So kind of interested to see what how I'm against, but not
01:00:09
because I'm betting strongly on a recession.
01:00:13
But just because I think the valuation reset and the
01:00:18
uncertainty, just the multiple In is ongoing in that just
01:00:23
causes so much trouble. I mean, Tesla was such an anchor
01:00:29
to so many like self-driving car type come, you know, you can
01:00:32
just see sort of everything trickling out from there.
01:00:34
And so, if you have public companies, I mean, Snapchat is
01:00:38
down, like, 81, 80 something percent this year, right?
01:00:42
I mean, it's, I just feel like that has not.
01:00:46
I this isn't the word startup Founders want to hear, but I
01:00:49
just don't think that's Seep through startup valuations I.
01:00:53
So I think that did in this challenge.
01:00:55
Yeah. I think it did in the second
01:00:57
half of last year though. I mean you basically saw no
01:01:00
deals happen. If fundament everyone like
01:01:02
waited out series C Series Deep saying I don't want to help your
01:01:07
overvalued company, maybe I'll give a little more cash to mind,
01:01:11
but probably not, but then they still invested in highly valued
01:01:16
series seed deals in series a believing like well, if the
01:01:20
Comes back. I want to have ownership and
01:01:23
we'll see. But we haven't really had the
01:01:25
like, real sort of problem of, like, oh, I couldn't raise any
01:01:29
money and now I agree with you. I think that next year, you'll
01:01:33
see like a lot of bitch Elation from the founder side.
01:01:36
So I think that you will start to see a lot of Founders going
01:01:39
out there, raising down rounds or doing MMA, and selling their
01:01:44
company, or going out of business because they just can't
01:01:47
raise money, and they were running out of money.
01:01:49
So I think like we Haven't seen that really?
01:01:51
We've seen the layout phase but we haven't seen kind of the true
01:01:55
pitch. Elation somebody suggested to me
01:01:57
that I should try to make a list and any listeners, feel free to
01:02:01
send your ideas of companies that are generating more money
01:02:06
on interest from money that they've raised then from
01:02:09
customers, you know. Because you know, there are some
01:02:13
of these unicorns that raises, you know, a hundred million
01:02:15
dollars that are million dollars, that's like 44 million
01:02:18
dollars a year. So they have a fewer Smaller,
01:02:21
you know, revenues from customs and that, you know, I totally
01:02:25
think you're right. I think to just clarify my
01:02:27
point, like, I think multiple compression is going to be a
01:02:31
huge issue and I think to James's Point, your people are
01:02:33
going to capitulate because they're going to want to keep
01:02:34
the company's Alive At Any Price.
01:02:36
Basically. Right.
01:02:37
I do. Vo.
01:02:38
Think that, like, if the economy is doing reasonably well in, you
01:02:41
know, Q2 Q3 or whatever, you know, I think we'll start to see
01:02:45
deals actually get done at, you know, 10 x, 15, x, 20 x,
01:02:50
whatever. Instead of the ludicrous,
01:02:51
hundred x, 200 x, you know, 2020 2021 cycle, right.
01:02:55
And I think like the second half of last year, ice age has been,
01:02:59
nobody has done anything other than stuff.
01:03:02
They feel like they absolutely had to do to save the companies,
01:03:05
but I think more a lot more action will happen next year.
01:03:08
Especially if there's no recession it'll just be a
01:03:11
multiple that our life saying, right, and so soon, I don't
01:03:15
know, I just do not understand tinkle on this is just The
01:03:20
uncertain supply of capital, right?
01:03:23
I think it can't be underestimated.
01:03:25
How much IPOs? We're actually a big source of
01:03:30
sort of startup Capital, right? That is, you know, instacart
01:03:34
stripe Etc. Could have raised a ton of money
01:03:36
and IPO and that would have been a big source of funding and ibos
01:03:39
have basically stopped and then IPOs are a validator of startup
01:03:45
valuation. So as long as the IPO Market is
01:03:48
super jammed up. That's really bad for start-up
01:03:52
world and to I think there's just like has Tiger is Tiger
01:03:56
going to be able to raise this next fun.
01:03:57
How big is it going to be like these funds that have raised you
01:04:01
know billions how much do they have?
01:04:03
And like how much are there LPS telling them oh deploy that over
01:04:07
you know six years not for what. I just think there's a lot.
01:04:11
You know, it's their private markets and there's just a lot
01:04:14
of uncertainty about how much dry powder that really is.
01:04:18
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right, but I also think Like
01:04:20
2018 was sort of pre tiger or whatever or sort of pre Insanity
01:04:25
to some degree, at least like you weren't getting 100x revenue
01:04:29
for SAS companies, making two million dollars, right?
01:04:32
And so I guess I believe the market can exist in a world
01:04:35
where SAS capellini two million dollars gets a 50 million dollar
01:04:39
valuation or whatever, right? Everybody's still believes in
01:04:42
the you want to have ownership of basically, any price of the
01:04:46
best company and the fact that like I could miss a figma deal,
01:04:49
you know, got done. Activision and we're still
01:04:52
seeing those like huge prices sort of into the downturn.
01:04:58
Yeah, I think is a case that there's still a belief in the,
01:05:02
you know, in the overall principles.
01:05:05
But if if stocks turn around a little bit because they're, you
01:05:09
know, isn't a huge recession or whatever, doesn't that to your
01:05:11
point kind of flow through a little bit at some point, I
01:05:14
mean, like, if we have an amazing, first three months and
01:05:17
stocks are up, 15 20 %, what will that start cast?
01:05:20
Skating down early, I don't know, I mean stocks are up the
01:05:23
market that percent. I just my position that I've
01:05:27
said over and over again, is there are companies that went
01:05:30
public via spec, like bird is not bankrupt.
01:05:33
Like there, there are crazy companies that have no path
01:05:37
forward that are still alive, and until those companies are
01:05:42
dead and people have had to be like, oh shit, that's scary.
01:05:46
We're not close to the bottom because like that has to happen.
01:05:49
We haven't had the Emotional reaction from that.
01:05:51
And so I keep waiting for that to happen.
01:05:53
And, you know, this isn't.com people believe in Tech, but
01:05:57
like.com good companies were trading at like 1X Revenue.
01:06:01
So there's certainly plenty of room for multiples to fall way
01:06:05
further if there's more pessimism.
01:06:08
Yeah. And tear point, I don't think
01:06:10
we've seen a lot of companies God, a business, because they
01:06:13
had so much runway and dried powder themselves.
01:06:16
The companies that raised a lot of money, so I think that
01:06:19
there's still time for that to happen.
01:06:20
Tap, the founder VC, Dynamic. I mean, it feels like a VC is
01:06:27
have more of the leverage again, or like, I don't know, how do
01:06:29
you, what do you think? Sort of what's what's I
01:06:32
thinking? Founders like what do you mean?
01:06:35
I think Macy's themselves are you know, worried about how
01:06:40
they're looking for their help. He's right.
01:06:41
So everyone who has happened, all I guess, has leverage
01:06:45
because capital is not free, right, ready?
01:06:47
I think Founders have 11 more leverage or just General
01:06:51
business owners have more leverage than employees did then
01:06:56
than they did in the prior cycle, where you know, employees
01:06:59
could demand really high salaries.
01:07:01
I think, you know, employees. All, you know, we now had this
01:07:05
whole work from home culture, I'm very interested to see how
01:07:09
that changes next year. If like were describing, like
01:07:14
there continues to be some Downstream effects on startups.
01:07:19
Like and Larger companies, laying off more people, if there
01:07:22
continues to be more Fallout from, you know, layoffs and
01:07:27
companies going out of business and are you guys real,
01:07:30
everybody? You people have to come in,
01:07:32
like, what three days a week or what sort of your we do Tina.
01:07:36
We do we cannot right now and everybody has to come in or
01:07:40
everyone in person. So we have about 60 percent of
01:07:44
our company working in the Bay Area and about 40%, they'll be
01:07:49
fired remotely. So kind of a hybrid system for
01:07:53
sure. Oh yeah, you guys both are, are
01:07:55
you along San Francisco? I don't know.
01:07:58
San Francisco is so frustrating sometimes, but I do think I do
01:08:03
think. If you believe in network
01:08:04
effects, it's like the greatest Tech that work affects city in
01:08:06
the world by far. And I think that that's going to
01:08:08
be really hard to break despite what other people think.
01:08:11
And and anytime I meet folks from other cities, if you get
01:08:14
them like three beers deep at the bar, they're like yeah it's
01:08:17
actually unbelievably difficult to recruit people here.
01:08:20
You've got a standard go to Miami.
01:08:22
Even you go to New York. People are like yeah to be real
01:08:27
with you. It's pretty hard to recruit
01:08:30
relative like they think it's easier in San Francisco.
01:08:33
Since there's the talent that you need to run a successful
01:08:37
startup, I think there are people here who you know, the
01:08:41
average engineer has a lot more experience or, you know, you can
01:08:44
find the head of people or, you know, the recruiters who know
01:08:49
what they're doing. I just I think there's so many
01:08:51
people with a lot of experience, everyone kind of.
01:08:54
I'm actually, I'm not sure what you guys will say to this.
01:08:57
Do you believe in 10 xers lat? How do you define a bit more
01:09:03
period where Mark Zuckerberg? And people would very clearly
01:09:06
say, oh, you know, they, you know, a small segment of our
01:09:10
Engineers are doing just far more are far more productive
01:09:14
than the rest. And then, I think there's been
01:09:17
like, as part of, I don't know, the sort of Woke politics, turn
01:09:21
or whatever. I feel like there's been a push
01:09:23
back against that idea and now people are being more honest
01:09:27
again but I don't know. You don't have to win but I was
01:09:30
just genuinely it was just a genuine curiosity.
01:09:33
I would kind of turn this on its head which is I would say at a
01:09:36
start-up where sort of fundamentally you know, we as a
01:09:40
company are trying to be someday a thousand times bigger than we
01:09:43
are today right to be successful.
01:09:45
Right? I think it's really about.
01:09:48
Can you prioritize The like one or maybe two things that are
01:09:53
likely to have a massive upside impact for the company.
01:09:57
And I think that kind of applies across all roles.
01:09:59
And so it's not like, you know, you're a better, you know,
01:10:03
engineer data science, or Finance person or co-founders
01:10:06
like us or Business Development or whatever.
01:10:09
Anything. It's like as you get further in
01:10:13
your career, are you 10 to 100 times better at like picking the
01:10:18
most important thing to work on? At that exact moment do they
01:10:21
didn't ask that are actually useful or do they just but yeah,
01:10:25
well it's not just useful but like do you collect the sort of
01:10:27
basket of upside options that we're one of the ten will pay
01:10:31
off 100 X or something. Right.
01:10:33
And I think that that is sort of like a real skill in a lot of
01:10:37
different roles and so it's not like you're in front of the, you
01:10:40
know, the computer typing away like Mark Zuckerberg of the
01:10:43
social network while drinking shots, right?
01:10:45
It's more like you look at your list of eight things you could
01:10:48
be working on and you like work on the To that might have like a
01:10:52
huge payoff and the sort of training, your own neural
01:10:55
network, as to what those two are I think is what all of us
01:10:59
are trying to get better at right?
01:11:00
And so I guess I believe in and that sends like, I'd like to
01:11:03
think James and I are 10x better than our jobs 5, then we were
01:11:06
five years ago, God willing, if we're not willing trouble like
01:11:09
and so it's that I think ruthless prioritization and
01:11:14
understanding of upside that I think exists across all roles.
01:11:17
So and that's, I guess I would say, yeah.
01:11:20
Side and kind of the risk profile.
01:11:22
There are a lot of things that we can work on that have a, you
01:11:25
know, only a 20 percent or 10 percent chance of succeeding, I
01:11:28
Vale but we do them anyway because they you know, have this
01:11:33
outsize upside. So we're willing to work on
01:11:35
things that might not work out if they are you know, could be a
01:11:39
gigantic success for the business.
01:11:40
And we want all of our employees to be kind of thinking a little
01:11:43
bit mathematically about these, you know, their work in some
01:11:46
ways like what is worth working on, it's not just what's In
01:11:50
front of you that will work. Its kind of what has that
01:11:54
payoff? That makes sense for the risk.
01:11:56
You're taking. Yeah.
01:11:58
At newcomer you can write post that drive 10x more subscribers
01:12:01
than others. Right?
01:12:02
And hopefully over two years and me only you better Decks that
01:12:06
you get your hands on please for my fiber for my family.
01:12:12
Yeah. Yeah sorry I interrupted you.
01:12:16
No no. I was just saying you are
01:12:18
hopefully getting better at picking the 10.
01:12:20
Ex posts, right? 100x posts, right?
01:12:22
And like you have to believe, I think that you're better at that
01:12:25
than you were two years ago and the two years from now.
01:12:29
It's not like you're working 10 times harder there, right?
01:12:31
Like to write that post that goes viral, part of it is like,
01:12:34
what's the return on investment for any amount of work?
01:12:37
You know, like if you will give me lots of great story ideas and
01:12:41
sometimes I can seem lazy being like that's really hard.
01:12:43
But what I'm really saying is like that's a lot of work to
01:12:46
like get a list of, you know, a bazillion things that at-bat.
01:12:50
It would be like a pretty good post, you know what I mean?
01:12:53
Like if you're going to do a lot of work, it needs to, you know,
01:12:55
have the upside sort of matching that and so, yeah.
01:12:59
Especially when you're sort of, you know, creating your own
01:13:02
product or whatever you really have to be smart about time,
01:13:05
allocation. Well, I don't know if you
01:13:07
remember, but when you came to visit our office over the summer
01:13:11
and you kind of had a comment that was kind of a throwaway
01:13:14
thing. Like oh you got a lot of like
01:13:16
stuff in here. Like there's tables and laptops
01:13:19
and plan. It's and it kind of like you
01:13:21
guys have to like you think of it, I think journalists and BC
01:13:25
is to a large extent, think of the business as the product.
01:13:28
The idea, the founders, the amount of capital and like it's
01:13:31
kind of a formulaic thing but like we, we have to deal with
01:13:35
like, you know, where to put the lunch tables and kind of where I
01:13:39
like, how to deal with, you know, people's emotions and
01:13:43
things that I think it's very hard to think about as just a
01:13:46
skill on its own. It's just like, yeah, it's just,
01:13:49
can you make good decisions? Moment.
01:13:51
And I think that would be a valuable kind of thing for more
01:13:56
non operators. Kind of just think about, you
01:13:58
know, most businesses and not being so formulaic.
01:14:02
Like are they in a good Market? Are they are the founders good,
01:14:04
you know. Did they hire the right people?
01:14:06
It's like, are they making you know, the right decisions?
01:14:10
You know over and over again, right?
01:14:12
Cool. Well I'm glad we were able to
01:14:15
make this happen blast. Have you guys on?
01:14:18
Yeah, thanks for all the support for Or newcomer along the way.
01:14:22
Thanks for having us and congrats crabs.
01:14:24
A newcomer everyone. Yeah.
01:14:38
Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:14:39
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye.
01:14:38
Goodbye. Goodbye.
01:14:39
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye.