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- [00:00]
A
Hackers have been stealing people's Instagram handles by going to Meta AI's customer support chatbot. Should we be putting all of our most sensitive information into any of these things Right now? Agents are going to be invisible, just like the algorithm on TikTok's invisible and so people won't even know they're using agents.
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B
This year we're moving more capital than anyone in the history of the world.
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A
So we've got SpaceX pricing at 1.75 trillion going out June 11th. We also saw anthropic signaling they are officially filing for a trillion dollar IPO. And then we actually had cerebras open with a $95 billion valuation.
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C
They should have been public like years ago. I think it's like kind of almost a financial crime that the American public didn't get to participate in the growth
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A
Wordsmith, which is like a Harvey 2.0 dude that does in house legal work. Raised 70 million, town raised 55.
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C
Brit, no one cares. Just because they raise money means nothing.
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B
More or less easy.
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A
No. Or is it? Yes. We'll debate the text. That's best when we get More or less Dave and grip your salmon. Jess, put it all right to the test.
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B
More or less.
- [01:22]
A
Why? Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of More or Less. It's Britt subbing in for Jess this week as moderator of these two rascals, Sam Lawson and Dave Morin. Can I call you rascals?
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B
I heard that last week my wife was being kind of spicy because I wasn't around. Is that true?
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C
She was super spicy.
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A
She's generally pretty spicy when you're not around.
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C
No, but yesterday, last week was extra spicy. She was. She was on fire.
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B
She was like. I was like, oh, that's great. I should leave more often. You can be more spicy.
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A
Well, the thing she really got into it with us on was like, whether anyone actually is going to use AI in the normie audience. Agents. Sorry, agents.
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B
See, I'm belying the fact that I obviously don't listen to the More or Less podcast. Yeah, I'm glad. Good for her taking the under. Good for her taking the under. I like that. I actually kind of. I mean, I obviously agree with that.
- [02:14]
A
People won't use agents like normal humans.
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B
No, I mean, I'll use them.
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A
You don't think normal humans will use agents? My point was that agents are going to be invisible. And just like the algorithm on TikTok's invisible and so people won't even know they're using agents.
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B
Well, I guess it depends how you define these things. Sure. But is an agent that you don't. It's not an agent. An agent. I mean, like, sure, we'll all be multiplying big numbers to shortcut our way through booking things.
- [02:41]
A
Alas, here we are. And listeners, if you missed that debate, it's worth a re listen. Even though Sam won't listen from last week's episode.
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B
I'm going to have my agent listen. I'm just going to my agent.
- [02:51]
A
Yeah, have your agent summarize it for you. There you go. First week of June, it's been a hot week. I think everyone's trying to get out.
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B
Really?
- [02:58]
C
Like hot temperature, hot.
- [03:00]
A
No, like a hot tech week. There's many IPOs happening. There are like lots of people announcing fundraises. A lot of events going, going on still. We've got also events coming up next week, including WWDC and all kinds of other things. So we've got a lot of news to get into without Jessica here to ground us in real facts. So I will do my best to lead us through it. But the first, of course, is the IPO stuff. So we've got SpaceX pricing at what we thought it would be 1.75 trillion going out June 11th. We also saw anthropic signaling they are officially filing for a trillion dollar IPO. And then we had actually had cerebras open with a 95 billion valuation and shares jumping 68% on the first day.
- [03:51]
B
That's hilarious. Was Cerebras this week? Because to me that was like 10
- [03:54]
C
years ago, I think it was two weeks ago.
- [03:56]
A
And OpenAI was one of the people on the cap table or the companies on the cap table. So I thought that was an interesting little Russian doll racket there. But this has a lot of implications for good and for bad. But I want kick it over to Dave first. What do we think about any of this? Does any of it surprise you? Or is this really more for us at least about like, what does this mean for venture capital and housing and prices and craziness in the general markets here in Silicon Valley.
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B
You guys should sell your house to one of these anthropic people. You could make a fortune.
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A
And then where would we live?
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B
A lower tax state, Wyoming.
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C
I mean, the thing I found interesting, I don't know the exact details of it, but, um, I heard that SpaceX is actually requiring. There's some kind of interesting term in the IPO setup where they're not going to allow. There's like a big lockup Sam, I don't know. Do you know what this is? There's some. There's some big lockup and then there's some requirement that ETFs and the sort of more algorithmic traders are the initial buyers, so they're not actually selling the float to retail immediately or something like that. And so it sounds like an interesting setup to ensure that the liquidity profile stays less crazy crazy over the first year.
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B
How do you ban an algorithmic firm from buying? That doesn't make any sense.
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C
No, it's. They're not banning them. They actually want them to. I should have actually done my research before bringing this up.
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B
Have some bot do it and we'll bring it up by the end of the episode.
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C
Okay?
- [05:24]
A
Yeah, you can always return back to,
- [05:26]
B
like, bring a bot into the conversation. Look, I think the SpaceX IPO is gonna be fascinating. It's just like going to be a cultural moment, right? Of like, where are we and what do we value? And how does this all work? I mean, the whole wildness around, like, how it relates to the market with the s and P500 is like, actually kind of a huge deal, right? In terms of how that plays out. How do we value stories versus reality? I mean, it's just like I, you know, as a shareholder, I want number go up and number high, but, like, I'm actually just as fascinated by how this will be digested by the whole world. It is a really important cultural story in my mind. Even more than a financial story, it's a cultural. Which.
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C
What do you mean by that?
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B
The SpaceX IPO?
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C
Yeah. What do you mean by cultural?
- [06:09]
B
Well, we have. It's an. It's an incredibly compelling story. Right. Like, from a science fiction perspective, it is financially, if you look at it like, with a Wall street hat on, nonsense. Right. At a $1.75 trillion valuation. But it's an incredible story. And if it delivers the story and people want to buy into the story and hold the story and believe the story, and we're okay with narrative capitalism, then the thing goes to the moon. But if Wall street rationality dominates, it doesn't add up. Right. And so it's going to be really. I mean, it's like such a stark contrast of those two realities and how we play those. I mean, again, I just look at this as an observer as, like, from, like, what do we store value in? Do we store value in story? Do we store value in, like, financial reality? Like, how do we think about this stuff? And this wasn't the case of SpaceX at like a 500, $800 billion valuation as like a launch plus Starlink connectivity company. But when you layer all the pieces in, right, in terms of how this has played out, it really is like just an incredibly interesting moment. And then you have this whole thing with, you know, the S and P side, right, where if you're really sharp nosed and you're coming into this thing as an investor and you're coming in new and you're like, what's going to happen here? It's like, well, all the institutions that would normally buy this already own this, right? Because it has like a huge cap table. Some people buy more, whatever. Then like you say, okay, I want to buy this. The question is, who's buying it after you, right? Like, and the interesting thing is it's really unclear who's buying it after you unless the rules of the s and P500 change. And the answer is, structurally, retail has to buy it after you, right? Yeah. And like if that happens, which by the way is great exit liquidity for anyone buying into the ipo. I mean, it's like the best. It's also weird because it means higher the number is, the more they buy, right? Which is like this wild new reality, right, where number go up means number go up. I don't know, it's just like, I honestly, like, I just stepped back from this as an observer and I'm like, look, I actually think SpaceX is a super cool company, you know, I think it's a really interesting thing. I love the vision of the whole thing in a lot of ways. I also just recognize that it's a vision, right? It's a vision wrapped in an S1. And I think that's like a really, it's like, it's an S1 as a piece of incredible science fiction, right? And you're like, how do I value that? I don't know. Like, the answer is not. The easy answer is to shit all over it financially. But on the flip side, we're going to have three IPOs which are like inspirational science fiction narratives coming out right this year with moving more capital than anyone in the history of the world. And the reality is maybe we just store money in stories now.
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C
Yeah. And what was gold? Just a story.
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B
Gold is just a story.
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C
Yeah, it's an interesting. For sure.
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B
100%. They're just story. They're just stories which were going to be bigger stories tomorrow than they were today, right? 100%. That's just like not, you know, I think everyone at HBS is like losing their minds right now. Right. Because the story that we all bought into before was like free cash flow and dcfs. Right.
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C
There's no DCF here. You can't value any three of these companies on dcfs. Like they're, they literally.
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B
Maybe, maybe you can sort of squint it on top of me. So I don't know, it's like, it's just a. Why Again, I just think this is a year, this is a summer where we're going to learn a lot about ourselves.
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C
To throw onto that, I found the. My claw found the information for us. So they're doing 7% tranches at 7 90, 105, 120 and 135 days post IPO. Full release at 180 days for most holders.
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B
What does that even. Sorry, what does that mean? Oh, this is the lockups.
- [09:41]
C
Yeah. So they're doing this like tranche lockup, which almost sounds like a crypto release. And then there's a full release at 180 days for most holders. Elon and key investors are 366 day. So full year lockups. And then one of the more interesting things is that SpaceX reserved up to 5% of the IPO shares for a directed share program, which is people selected by the executive officers. And so they're offered at the IPO price and they have no post IPO lockup restriction. So that's kind of them saying like we're giving you trusted people, you know, IPO price and kind of trusting you not to sell immediately.
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A
Who are these people that they're giving this?
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C
Who are they select.
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A
That's interesting. So capital is going to flood the market in December for the most part.
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C
No, they've got this 7% tranches over the next 135 years.
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B
Fine.
- [10:32]
A
But I'm talking about also like with anthropology and then OpenAI coming next and six month lockups, like all of this capital will be hitting in December.
- [10:41]
C
It's unclear, Brett. Like Sam could be right. Like it could be that, you know. No, like the. Yes. Like some liquidity comes in, people will take some off the table. But like, you know, people might buy this story and hold it, right? Who knows? Like Sam's right. Like it's totally unclear which way this is going to go and we have no idea until it all happens.
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A
So the downstream effects though, assuming some liquidity comes off the table in the next six months are what?
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C
Like the main one is that this is just fantastic for the Silicon Valley ecosystem.
- [11:13]
A
Like because finally, there's liquidity again.
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C
No, no, no. It's less about even liquidity. It's just about focus. Like, people can stop talking about these companies and move on. Seriously. Like, it's like, I'm bored. Like, I never want to talk about these companies on the podcast again. Like, get out into the public market.
- [11:31]
A
Well, we're going to have to talk about them because if they, like, start failing. Yeah. And like, the game's not over.
- [11:37]
C
It's not about it being over. It's. But it is in our world. On this podcast, we. We think about startups and the private markets and we can talk about the public markets all day long. But, like, I'm done. I'm like, I just don't care about talking about these companies in the private markets anymore. They should have been public, like, years ago. I think it's like kind of almost a financial crime that the American public didn't get to participate in the growth.
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B
I'd like to introduce you to someone named Bernie Sanders. I, obviously, I'm not a Bernie bro,
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C
but, like, you know, I do think that it's great. Like, it's actually just great. Get out into the public market, people can have the CNBC conversation about these things till the cows come home. It's great. Now we can return to, like, more of your regular startup programming, which is like, let's figure out the next phase, which is agents and everything else going on and how that's going to play out the next 10 years.
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B
Unless there is no next phase, Dave.
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C
Because it's the singularity, it's the AGI,
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B
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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C
Well, I can, I can report from the singularity as someone who's building agents every day, that these things are way far away.
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B
But my favorite. This is like, I actually do. I think we should talk for a second about the walk back on. AI is going to take all your jobs.
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C
The narrative gap.
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B
Yeah, it's the narrative walk back.
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A
Well, okay, I saw Sam Altman walking that back. But isn't that just because AI's brand sucks and he needs it to not suck?
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C
No, it's also just true, but.
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A
But he's also doing a PR campaign about, like, why AI is good benefit of being true.
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B
But that's a secondary point.
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C
Exactly.
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B
Like, it's like, like, look, it's just really funny because it's like, again, it is incredibly masterful PR strategy. I think you'll get everything through a narrative lens these days.
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C
And it's like, what.
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B
What happened? It's like phase One of AI was we need a shit ton of capital. And the fastest way to do that is to convince everyone that like, the end of the world is coming, right? And like, it's like the most powerful jiu jitsu move. You go to Washington, you're like, please regulate us. We're scared of how powerful things are now into version two, which is once you start winning, you become like everyone else, right? Like, this is what always happens is you start out as the insurgent and then you just, you become the thing you sought to fight, right? And like, this is the era we're now in where all these companies like, well, one bad news by telling everyone that I was taking was so powerful and dangerous and being like, well, we're the only trusted people, you were able to achieve something unheard of, which is, I believe that in a recent survey, AI has a lower approval rating than Jeffrey EPSTEIN. It's like 6%. It's like. And like, apparently 6% of Americans approve of Jeffrey Epstein. But like, it's like wild. It is like literally the most hated thing in the history of the world. Some of it is clearly like foreign influence, like, trying to slow down data center build out. Like, that's for sure true. And there's like all sorts of narrative warfare going on. But it is also true that, like, it's a terrible brand. And so now you're like, okay, well, now that we have all the capital and we can convinced everyone to give us these huge numbers and convert it into a ton of infrastructure, we need to kind of walk back all the scary stuff, right? And so it's just like, it's really funny to watch this stuff play out.
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A
So that's what's happening. IPO land. We'll see what the downstream effects are if people hold, if they sell. It's going to be an interesting rest of the year for 2026. Who cares?
- [14:43]
C
We can get back to talking about building things and like, what's going on.
- [14:47]
A
Okay, well, speaking of building things, Dave, you were at the Microsoft Build conference this week. What happened there? Anything of note?
- [14:55]
C
It's a continuation of the same message that we're hearing from all of these big developer conferences. Although I guess it differs slightly from the Google one in that Microsoft is very focused on agents and the enterprise. And we did a big integration effort with Microsoft over the last month or two. We announced that OpenClaw is fully integrated with Windows now and did a bunch of really great security work around giving it controls. And, you know, if you want to deploy open cloud into the enterprise now you can using all of the Windows and Azure tools and you can have full control over it and you know, set up all of your observability policies, admin policies, all that kind of stuff. It's the stuff people are asking for. They also really kind of cool integrated it like directly into Windows and they have a new long running agent called Scout that's based on, built on opencloth. And so that's been pretty neat to see. But you know, that's the same story that a lot of folks are chasing right now and kind of in the story of this half of the year. So it's cool, it's cool to be on stage with Microsoft.
- [16:02]
A
There's you know, a Google IO Microsoft build, we've got Apple next week, we've got the Dell World event happening. Like, like, does a lot of this feel like feature parity? Like everyone's trying to get to the same infrastructure when it comes to AI and agents in the big tech land?
- [16:19]
C
No, I, I mean I think that this is the era of figuring out what agents are going to be. I keep saying this, but I think it's kind of 1997. I always say it's like either 1983 or 1997, depending on which part of the technology canon you want to look at. But we're kind of in that era where websites were just invented. Some of the early languages for programming them are around, some of the early servers for building them are around. But the, you know, real really cool stuff that you're going to be able to build with this has not yet emerged and it's pretty messy. And agents like the narrative between what agents can do and what people think they can do could not be wider. That's like one of my other narrative fascinations right now, Sam, which is that it's like anybody building this stuff knows that like they cannot do what a lot of people are claiming that they can do, that is they cannot be an employee of your business. Like they do not learn every day. They have really poor memory. There's a lot of stuff to figure
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B
out, is pretty good but. Yeah, I hear you.
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C
But like would you trade employee for an agent right now? Like I think is a really interesting.
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B
Oh, that's an interesting question. If I could only have one. Yeah, well this is a very interesting question.
- [17:34]
C
I think this is the premier question right now.
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B
Honestly, if you said I could either lose my associate Jack Rain or Claude. Wow, that's an interesting, That's a hard call. I like Jack.
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A
Sorry, Jack.
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B
I think I would stick with Claude.
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A
Oh, no, Jack.
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B
Oh, no. The good news is I don't have to choose. I can have both. It's not a choice. It's not an either or, but I don't know.
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C
But this is the question people are asking, Sam. Like, and this is the more direct question that people are debating right now, right?
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B
Yeah.
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C
And I'm fascinated by that. Agents really, like, when you hire a new employee at the end of 30 days, people learn. They get smarter. They continually learn. They collaborate. Agents can't do this right now. They write down memories in a book and put it on the shelf, and they try to consult all of their books to answer the question for you each time you're talking to them. But they're not really learning. They're not really getting super, super better, though. Everybody says that that's what's happening.
- [18:40]
B
I don't know, man. I feel like mine's really good, but I don't use. I don't use markdown files.
- [18:44]
A
Are you still using just one? I have, like, so many agents because I'm trying all the different agent harnesses and platforms and, like, because I want to compare them as we're moving along in this race. Right, but are you just using one, Sam? And is that where you think most people are going to net out here?
- [19:01]
B
I. It's interesting question. I mean, I. Basically, I do. I guess it depends. You define what an agent is. Like, I use Gemini for things that I actually care about, security and. Right. So, like, for health and finance stuff, I just use Gemini because, honestly, I trust them. Like, and I think there's, like, value to that. It's like, I'm not even sure. They're not. Like, I have no opinion about them being fundamentally better. I just, like, I generally trust. It's kind of like my dad used to say, you can go on Disney World rides because they're a public company. Right. They're not going to screw you because it's expensive. And so I'm like, okay. Like, it's like, that is my Gemini thing. And, like, I use, like, Grok for image stuff because candidly, it's just way better. It's like, not even close. Like, Grok is the only one that's cared about image stuff. So, like, their image stuff is just way better. And then, I mean, I use tons of services and agents, but they're all for me wrapped through, like, a central, like, setup I have built around Claude, right? So, like, I have, like, Claude controls everything else, and it controls a huge number of services. But like it's kind of the. And I have multiple instances of it running and I email. I mean, like, it's like. But it's really hard to even define what an agent is. It's like I have an infrastructure that has a huge amount of access to other infrastructure and it's like a stack. Yeah. Like if cloud went away tomorrow, it would take me a day to recover, if that makes sense. And I just use OpenAI or I use, you know, whatever. Like it doesn't matter. Right. Which is part of my, like, long term, like, I don't even know what any of this stuff is because, like, it's all just like plumbing, you know,
- [20:23]
C
I mean, this plays into. For what it's worth, I think the big question about these IPOs that we just talked about, which is that are these guys really, you know, and it's increasingly looking more and more like it. Are these guys just infrastructure providers?
- [20:35]
B
They are just infrastructure providers.
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C
I know, but everybody's debating this, Sam. And like, I think you're right that I have this experience with openclaw. You know, I'm switching back and forth between all kinds of different models all of the time. It doesn't really matter which one. One of the big stories this morning was there's like a new company that's providing, you know, routing to these whatever the most efficient model is. Every CFO on the planet wants control over their token spend. And you know, to deliver this stuff, no matter how your agents are set up, you want to do it in a way that you're getting good value out of and you can make that decision as to whether or not a token person is more valuable.
- [21:14]
B
I think this is a really interesting place we're in right now because, like, look, I mean, even this morning on cnbc, we're talking about this because, you know, and I was like, look, here's the deal. Right now, anthropic tokens cost like 100 times as much as like the open source tokens. Right? Like just in terms of what they. In like the open source stuff is catching up in open router and whatever. Like, obviously you don't need a PhD to do your IQ100 work, right? So obviously the future is not going to be like you just send all of your stuff to the most expensive model. Right. This stuff should rationalize really quickly. And the fact that it's so frictionless means that it should rationalize financially way faster than like a normal market with more friction in it. Right? So like, naturally speaking, like, we're just multiplying big numbers and like it's fine. The only caveat on that for a more or less conversation is ironically the fact that there's no demonstrable measurable ROI is in some ways this weird moat for a while because you're like, well I can pay a hundredth as much, but I can't actually measure the value of this token versus that token in from an ROI perspective. So the fact that it's so opaque in some ways like makes it kind of defensible for a while. Right? Like, because I can't actually tell the, you know, like what the gap is for an average person. So this is a weird market where like the opacity of quality it creates defensibility. Sort of. Does that make sense? Like if you actually had an advertising ROI function, like think about the ads market, which is totally the opposite at this point. It's incredibly transparent. You can literally just look at the ROI and it's perfectly efficient at this point. And so you're going to buy meta ads when they're more efficient and the second they're not worth their extra cost because they're target. Like from an ROI perspective you can run shitty other ads like it doesn't matter. It's like a efficiency thing. Whereas with the tokens you're like, you ask for an intelligence task and it's like hard enough to benchmark what you're getting. Right. Without redoing the work twice in a lot of ways all the time that you're like, well, is there some defensibility in the lack of measurability?
- [23:10]
C
Yeah, I agree. I think there's an and here, which is I'm. I was watching this group chat that I'm in with a bunch of interesting CEOs this morning and it people were talking about that one of the general observations is that people are also highly addicted to the personality of Claude and so they're unwilling to disrupt the addiction of their workforce to this personality.
- [23:34]
B
Really. I just don't give a shit about the personalities. It's so funny. Like, I think this is maybe like where I'm like a psychopath because I truly don't it get care.
- [23:41]
C
I think it's all depends on how you look at it, Sam. Like I see this in people where people are truly addicted. Like I think if you look at the tool objectively and in a non anthromo. How do you say anthropomorphized.
- [23:54]
B
Anthropomorphized. Anthropomorphized.
- [23:57]
C
Anthropomorphized way, Then, yeah, it doesn't matter. Like, I've. I've really tried to train myself to do this where I just don't care whether I'm using GPT or Claude or any of it. Like, I view it as a tool. And, you know, just because it can speak to me in first person doesn't mean it. It's anything other than just a tool that outputs tokens. But a lot of people don't see it that way. They actually care about the personality. And if you're a leader trying to make a decision on this, like, do you want to remove the personality?
- [24:26]
B
That is, you're gonna like, you're like worried about firing Jane because people like talking to her over the lunchroom break. Come on. I mean, like, I don't buy.
- [24:34]
C
Dude, I've got like, I've got like serious people saying this this morning, you know, and so I just don't.
- [24:40]
B
Those people aren't smart.
- [24:42]
A
Can't you just like, retrain the personality?
- [24:44]
B
Those people are not smart. Like, what are they doing?
- [24:49]
A
Sam, you're saying that you trust Gemini with finance and health data to be good?
- [24:54]
B
I trust Google. No, I trust Google not to accidentally publish my shit. And I know if they do, I will sue the shit out of them and everyone.
- [25:02]
A
But the beauty of this is that literally today, like, it was broken news that hackers have been stealing people's Instagram handles by going to Meta AI's customer support chatbot, asking them to change the email account of like, big Instagram handles. And they're doing it. And now this has been happening for four months and no one has caught it until today.
- [25:29]
B
I have to share a screen for a second. Hold on. This is very, very pertinent and I don't think I've ever shared a scre on more or less, but I have to share my screen because this is so good. Guys, look at Slows. Slows Instagram. Some dude, Hamdan Albushi, no way stole slow, which is a good four letter domain.
- [25:50]
C
Adam Mosseri gave that to us fair and square.
- [25:54]
B
It's just, I'm not particularly.
- [25:55]
A
What are you going to do now?
- [25:57]
B
Well, I'm laughing about it. I'm like, this guy's our new marketing associate. I want to message up your game
- [26:02]
A
listening and not looking at this video. Slow is at Slow on Instagram.
- [26:08]
B
Good domain, good name.
- [26:09]
A
His first slow venture. Sure. Great. Now it's been hacked by Hamdan Albushi. Albushi.
- [26:18]
B
He's my new associate.
- [26:19]
A
Middle Eastern apparel in his headshot, which. Why would you Put your headshot on here. Like you're totally giving yourself away.
- [26:26]
B
I just think it's so funny. I mean, I can understand why like I'm not stressed about this because one, I'm sure I can get it back and two, like I just think it's extremely funny, but like it is kind of hilarious. You're right, Brit, that this happened and like I'm kind of enjoying that. Hamdan Albushki, who turned our profile private, is now in charge of the instagram.com slow.
- [26:49]
C
I hope he makes good content.
- [26:51]
B
I hope so. I keep messaging. I'm like, you haven't even posted yet. If you're our new person, you got a post. You know, like, this is like what
- [27:00]
A
if meta did this? Like, like if these big tech companies can have these little flaws and errors, like should we be putting all of our most sensitive information into any of these things right now?
- [27:10]
C
Yes, you need to set them up right. Like this is the whole point of like what we announced on stage with Microsoft, Brit, but like this is not a normie thing. This is a thing where this is a big, this is a multi trillion dollar company that has serious infrastructure.
- [27:25]
A
My point is that, you know what, what other information might get caught up in an oopsie that one of these even huge multitrillion dollar companies.
- [27:35]
B
I agree. And for what it's worth, the counterargument, the counterargument to what I've said is that don't put your data where everyone else's data is because it's a bigger, fatter hacking target, you know, but it's like, I don't know, I trust Google, I'm fine with them.
- [27:46]
A
But how many, like how many things have you MCP'd your email or your calendar into at point?
- [27:50]
B
This, this, I don't. My core email, I won't let any boss touch. I have a secondary email I let the bots use and I've mtped a huge number of things. But I. There is a level of like inner circle, inner ring fence that there's no way I would let like people like I think people like off1Password with like open cloud. That's insane, right? Like people who do that, that's insane, right? Like, don't do that. Don't, you know, give it access to your core email, you know, understand the fact that anything you put in there, there's a non zero chance it gets and then just be okay with that, you know?
- [28:22]
C
Brit, this is the answer to your question, which is that you have to put agents in A sandbox that has real guardrails. Some people, like Sam just said, do that by quite literally buying different Mac Minis. Like, you have a Mac Mini that has your email on it and it has its one password and there's. There's no agent and then you have another one that doesn't. Right. Or you have the cloud. And like, that's what we were talking about with Microsoft.
- [28:45]
B
I just run this stuff. Not anyone. All cloud. Like. Yeah, it's all just cloud.
- [28:49]
C
Yeah, I know, but I'm just using the metaphor, Sam, for those that don't know how to think about clouds. Like, it's like you have to put them in a sandbox where you know what they can and cannot do and what software they can and cannot touch. And then, you know, have another area where you have tools that they can use and they can only come in and out of it to do certain things. Right? And that's a lot. What the big thing has been the last many months of getting, you know, agents to go to more and more places. Like, you have to let them interact with sort of traditional software in ways that you understand. Then you have to let them do their thing in a sandbox that they can't mess anything up. And what happened here with Meta is they like, let them run around in areas that they shouldn't run around in, right? And now this guy's running the slow
- [29:34]
B
account, which, again, like, it's good for me. Like, I think it's funny, but I can understand that. It's not funny for a lot of other people, including probably our friends at Meta, but for me it's funny. Like, how great would it be if you just started posting great content?
- [29:44]
A
But there's also, like, Dave, there's all these wrappers now or harnesses or whatever you want to call them. Like this one called town raised 55 million.
- [29:52]
C
Town's not a harness.
- [29:53]
A
Okay. I'm just saying there's like, agentic applications that have raised a lot of money. $55 million raised this week by fancy VCs. And now people are like, connecting everything into them. Like, no one is going to think to sandbox their stuff.
- [30:10]
B
Let me try to provoke. Let me try to provoke, Dave. Harnesses are stupid. Like, no one's going to make money on a harness business. Business, right? Like, it doesn't make. It's like it's. I'm markdown files like, that are copyable.
- [30:21]
C
Like, what.
- [30:21]
B
What are we doing here? Like, this is not the idea that, like, you're gonna. You're selling Me a PDF. Like, that's what these things are. Like, how is anyone. I understand why you can raise VC for them, but how on earth is anyone justifying the idea that the selling of PDFs called and calling them harnesses is going to be a business?
- [30:41]
C
I don't know what you mean by PDF.
- [30:43]
B
They're just like, they're just markdown files. Like, people are just like, oh, here's our framework.
- [30:48]
A
It's like orchestrating all your things.
- [30:50]
C
It's just an app, guys. These are all just apps. Like, they're just apps built on top of models. That's it. Like that. There's no difference between an app that's built on Linux or an app that's built on iOS. Like, these are just apps.
- [31:05]
B
But this is so funny, right? Like, what are these? They're just selling. It's. Whether it's a markdown file, which was the original Basie harnesses, or now we have fancier ways of talking about them. Like, it's really funny to be in this world where like, everyone's like, software is dead, except for these things that are software.
- [31:21]
A
Well, that's what I'm saying.
- [31:22]
C
I mean, but I mean, Sam, isn't that why, isn't that why the entire SaaS sector is back up like ridiculously right now?
- [31:29]
A
No, that's what I'm saying. So like the application layer is. Must be like hitting. Because there's another one called Lassie. They do like automation for dental offices and they want to move to other types of, of clinics. They raised 47 million wordsmith, which is like a Harvey 2.0 do that does in house legal work. Raised 70 million, town raised 55.
- [31:49]
C
Brett, no one cares. No, it doesn't, Brit. It doesn't matter. You're a venture capitalist. You know this as much as anyone. Like, just because they raise money means nothing. Like we've, we've shifted like this how you know the cycle is coming, like at least somewhere in the tail end because people aren't actually talking about customers, they're only talking about the money that they raise. And it's like a. There's like high art now in like announcing your fundraise using a like, but
- [32:13]
B
like a trailer look, by the way, I actually like the movie trailer thing. We should come back to that. But set aside that for a moment. You guys Remember when like TechCrunch, if you raised like half a million dollars, used to like immediately write an article about how some kids raised half a million dollars. And like now no one truly gives
- [32:28]
C
a Fuck, now you have to release a movie trailer.
- [32:31]
B
50 million is like TechCrunch 500k of like the odds, you know? And like this is where we're at. Here's the thing. I actually love this. I think it's one of the best things I've seen. I've now to Dave's point, seen several startups, some of them which I really like, who literally, I mean I've been in this 100k documentary thing. Like, why don't we produce more like video high quality. They're starting to make really good storytelling videos about what it is their startups do. I love it. I think it's great for investors, I think it's great for narrative development. I think it's consumable. I think it's hard for bots to make its own. Well, like you can't make a deck. Like I don't care. Someone sends me like an awesome fucking movie trailer for their business. Like I'm going to watch it, right? And so like I'm actually very long this trends and like I'm annoyed that I haven't been further out ahead of it. The people investing in like mini docs and high quality video production to tell stories of their startups, like I think it's great. I've seen or just for the, for anyone. Like, I just think it's like I
- [33:29]
C
know not to raise money. They do it after they raised money. They're doing it to raise awareness in order to hire people. You don't put content out for any other reason than customers, investors or hiring people.
- [33:41]
B
Well, you don't tell stories for anything other than customers. But like that's what a company is, is money and people and customers. But like, yeah, I just, I'm just saying that like I think, I don't know if I can mention it publicly, so I won't. But like there's a company that I've known for a while, we put a small seat check into 18 months ago. I love, it's like the coolest store, right? And but the storytelling was never like quite there beyond the one liner. And they sent me the recent video where like we've got a video person now. They're doing video like every month and helping us with the storytelling. And I'm like, this is so much better. Like this is now so compelling and you're telling it so well because you're fitting it into a narrative format in an era of narrative capitalism. So like of all the things that I'm super skeptical of and hate, I actually Think this, like, let's give like storytelling, like the future of Hollywood is going to be like storytelling for companies and like we should do this. We should do the documentaries of startups and like continuously be doing a high quality video. It's like the anti tick tock. I'm like super into it and I'm only annoyed. I'm only annoyed that I've like been on this 100k documentary thing for a while and like really wanted to do this and I have not done it and I haven't executed it right like and so. But it's totally a thing. And I think it is such a thing that like one Sam structural mistake is I always like see someone else
- [34:56]
C
that like, I know, I know something that you're involved with which we can't talk about yet. That had some really good stuff recently that I've seen.
- [35:04]
B
That's true. And by the way, there's a good video with it, right? There's a good video. And so.
- [35:08]
C
And now I have the. And Sam, Sam, now I have the bracelet. I'm very excited.
- [35:13]
B
Hold on, hold on. Let's just confuse people. I've got two.
- [35:19]
C
Ooh, yeah, it's something.
- [35:20]
B
Yeah. These are Easter eggs. So that later we can lick the cookie later, dear listeners.
- [35:24]
C
It's funny. I guess I get annoyed by the we raised all this money vers version of these.
- [35:29]
B
No, no, the video. I don't give a sh. The money raising thing is stupid. Like that's not a good story. That's a boring story. But there are great stories. It's like if you can't make. If you. How about this? If you can't make your startup into a sick movie trailer, don't do it. Right. It's like you should be able to tell have a sick movie trailer for your startup. And if you're just like, I'm making something and you can't articulate the visions like Elon companies have sick trailers.
- [35:57]
C
Totally.
- [35:57]
B
Right? The sickest trailers. You're digging holes. You're going to space like you're going to Mars. Like these are amazing.
- [36:05]
C
No, there's plenty of them that can.
- [36:08]
B
But like if you can't make a movie trailer, don't pitch me and don't do it.
- [36:11]
C
They don't.
- [36:12]
B
And they shouldn't exist.
- [36:13]
C
No, they can go do like, they can go do like a version of suits. Like go like.
- [36:18]
B
Yeah, like petty lawsuit bot. That's a great fucking movie trailer.
- [36:22]
C
Oh, it's so good.
- [36:23]
B
It's a great movie trailer.
- [36:24]
C
All I want is trailers. You Know, Sam, we should vibe code an Apple TV trailer app that people can submit their pitches to.
- [36:32]
B
Yeah, well, it's like. It's like, I actually, you know, I already do this a little bit where I have these, like, apps set up where, like, if you want to talk to me, I'm just like, just pitch me lot. Like send a video or submit a video of the thing, and then my thing transcribes it and gives me a summary and whatever. But I'm like, I only want video pitches. But now I'm like, actually, I want you to produce me a trailer. Like, just make me a trailer. And if the trailer is sick, then, like, that means you have good taste. That means you have a story people are going to care about. Like, it means all the good things. And if your story is boring or there's no good trailer, then your company's gonna suck. This is a new thesis.
- [37:04]
A
I feel like AI is gonna make their trailer, though, for them in the next year or 2.
- [37:08]
B
It's fine. AI can make. If the AI can make the trailer. Here's the thing, they should use AI to make it. If AI will always make the same fucking trailer over and over again. Which means I will instantly get bored of your trailer, right? It's like Transformers number 87. Boring, right? I don't care about your trailer. But if you use AI to make an amazing to help you improve your storytelling, God bless. But basically, I want to wake up every day as a VC and instead of looking at my inbox, I want to watch an hour of movie trailers before I get to the meeting I have to go to. And I will pick which movies I want to see, which startups I want to invest in based on the movie trailer. This is the future.
- [37:45]
C
This is one of the reasons why I love Silicon Mania, this little media company that Adeel started. It's like, you know, they make these amazing cartoons every week of everything going on in Silicon Valley.
- [37:56]
B
This also is clearly part of the future because it's straight out of the movie idiocracy, right? Where, like, venture capitalists are like, fat assholes sitting on a movie theater and, like, eating popcorn and they're like, picking the companies to invest.
- [38:08]
C
Is that a mike? Is that also mike judge? Have you guys seen these bars that people are making now that have, like, polymarket and this is like the pop culture corner this week? There's like, these bars where people are putting polymarket sports. Like, it's like every TV and every possible variant of story and narrative in the bar.
- [38:27]
B
Polymarket Launched a bar, I think, to do, like, it's literally a polymarket bar.
- [38:31]
C
Oh, it was.
- [38:32]
B
Yeah. Like, they literally made a bar.
- [38:34]
A
While we're in pop culture corner to, you know, round up the pod here. Can we debrief on Taylor Swift and Disney this week? I don't know if you caught this in because you're not a Swifty. You can, Dave. Okay, well, Taylor might be selling out, though, and I'm a Swiftie, so me saying that is a really big deal. But, guys, for like, a week. For like a week, there are all these Easter eggs. TS billboards were going up, which was in this Toy Story font. So you thought it was Toy Story, but then, of course, all the Swifties thought about whether it's Taylor Swift and, like, all the T's and S's and Taylor Swift lyrics on Apple music were capitalized and all these drugs were happening. Okay, fine. Everyone's getting really excited. It's gonna be like a new album or something crazy. Turns out Taylor Swift has a new song on the new Toy Story movie called I knew it. I knew you. It's coming out June 19th.
- [39:24]
B
You're talking about it. You're talking about it. It's working.
- [39:26]
A
There's some, like, interlude between that and maybe she's gonna have a country album or there's another announcement. But the amount of marketing that went into this is on Disney and Taylor Swift levels for, like, a one song release, which is like. It just felt very commercial. Like, it's like Taylor jumping the shark.
- [39:43]
C
But that's always. It's always been commercial.
- [39:45]
A
No, but it was always for her before. Like, is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. I think the Swifties were pretty upset about this. It was like, why are we putting so much emphasis on a song in a Disney movie when we just want an album? We want real Taylor doing stuff for us.
- [40:01]
C
Yeah, it's fine. She's. She's Disney.
- [40:04]
A
I don't know. I'm just saying watch the space. I think the Swifties are starting to sort of question what's going on in the Taylor ecosystem.
- [40:11]
B
You know what Taylor needs is a movie trailer for me to care.
- [40:16]
A
Well, there was a Toy Story movie trailer that she's not part of, but she could be. She's also getting married, literally in a month.
- [40:25]
C
I was actually noticing that, like, mtv. I didn't realize MTV died, like, fully was shut down. Maybe what we're all just asking for is we want the return of mtv.
- [40:35]
B
I want MTV back. Yeah, well, it's like.
- [40:38]
C
But it's like tech TV this time.
- [40:39]
B
But, like, it's going to be awesome. Like, you're going to have, like, when I get, like, Cardi B shaking her ass in pitch videos. We will have reached Idiocracy in the future.
- [40:47]
A
I don't think I want Cardi B shaking her ass in my pitch video.
- [40:51]
B
I mean, you'd watch it okay, but
- [40:53]
A
it has to be catchy. I don't know. Suno and eleven Labs also raised a lot of money, so I think we could have music videos pretty easily built for startup pitches with AI.
- [41:02]
B
I don't know. I will say I use a lot of 11 labs because I just only listen to podcasts I make for myself. Dave, most humans are like, I don't like listening to my voice. I apparently am fine with it because, like, in our car, I'm just constantly making new podcasts for the boys using my voice, which is great. I've learned so much.
- [41:18]
A
Constantly weird.
- [41:19]
B
No, it's great. I've learned so much.
- [41:21]
A
Tricking your kids into thinking you're the smartest person in the world. That's a little weird. Sam. I'm not gonna lie.
- [41:28]
B
I don't.
- [41:28]
A
I know you're fine with it, but,
- [41:30]
B
like, you can call me a psychopath. It doesn't really bothered me.
- [41:33]
A
Is there an inner. Inner something, though, that you want your kids to think? You know the history of how Tetris was invented.
- [41:40]
C
No. It is a good idea. Like who.
- [41:42]
B
Who.
- [41:42]
C
Who else's voice would you use?
- [41:44]
B
I could use Jess's voice.
- [41:46]
C
No, no.
- [41:47]
B
But I don't own those voices. The problem is, like, you own the stock voices sound weird. You own your own voice. You can use it. You might as well just use a better voice than the stock voice.
- [41:56]
C
I'm kind of with Sam on this.
- [41:57]
A
You could license Matthew McConaughey.
- [41:59]
B
Why? I have no interest. It's like, why would I do that?
- [42:02]
A
It's because it's an option on 11 labs. Okay. Yes, he's officially licensed.
- [42:08]
B
Okay. I personally rather listen to myself than Matthew McConaughey, but maybe that's more about me.
- [42:12]
A
That's not what the women would choose. If Jess were here, she'd back me up right now.
- [42:15]
B
Some women might choose it, Brit.
- [42:19]
A
All right, folks, well, with that, I hope we left you with something today. Entertainment ideas, maybe some intelligence. We don't know.
- [42:27]
B
You know who did the trailer thing? Well, tvpn. TVPN launched a sick trailer.
- [42:33]
A
Can I get a TVPN update? Have they sold out since the OpenAI? Thing or no, like, what do we think? Is it fine?
- [42:39]
C
Are they still broadcasting?
- [42:41]
B
There's your answer, Brett. I mean, I think I just. The real question I've always asked and wondered is, like, it's like Elon just, like, deplatformed and demonetized. Like, they posting to themselves. Like, I don't actually know what happened.
- [42:52]
A
I don't see them in my feed. I don't know what's happening.
- [42:54]
B
Well, that's not shocking. He sold to the. They sold open AI.
- [42:58]
A
I know.
- [42:58]
C
I only ever see. The only thing I ever see live every day now is that Andreessen Horowitz thing. MTS that Eric Tornberg's doing.
- [43:06]
B
Irony is no one watches any of this stuff live. Like, the. The. The TPP has a tiny. Had. I don't even know now had a tiny actual audience for the thing. It's just the clips moved. Right. Like, so there's no one was ever watching it anyway. Right.
- [43:20]
A
Like, has TV been hitting by any of this? Does Elon get pissed if they write a bad story and then they get demoted?
- [43:26]
B
No, you gotta ask Jess that. I. I don't think so.
- [43:29]
A
It could be an algorithm change at large for, like, new shows.
- [43:33]
B
Also, Jess's audience is a little different, but, yes, fair taken.
- [43:36]
A
More. More to uncover in our next episode. All right, thank you, dear listeners and viewers, for keeping up with us. Hopefully, this long in the pod, make some pitches in a. In an. In a video trailer style.
- [43:51]
B
But, like, you have to get me in the first five seconds. Yeah.
- [43:54]
A
Like, if you want capital from offline or slow, show us what you've got. Yeah, think about the first five seconds. We need a. We need a good opener.
- [44:02]
B
And, like, it's good. I get the trailer and I finance the movie.
- [44:06]
A
The movie of the company. Yes.
- [44:07]
B
Because it's all about the attention and narrative economy. Anyway, we're financing. We actually are doing film finance at this point. Like, Silicon Valley has just taken the job of Southern California. And we're way better at storytelling. At least some people are.
- [44:20]
A
We should also write into the term sheet, we get rights for the actual movies if Hollywood ever wants to buy it from us down the line for these companies.
- [44:27]
B
I do like the idea of putting rights into term sheets that are completely nonsensical like that and just seeing what they accept. If you're like, look, we have a side letter on the YC safe. And it's for movie rights.
- [44:38]
A
Yeah. And books. It's like publishing and.
- [44:43]
B
And film. It's like, look, we don't do standard YC letters anymore. Like, we don't care about rights, but we need. We need movie rights. Exactly.
- [44:52]
A
This is where the world's going, folks.
- [44:54]
C
I love it.
- [44:54]
A
All right, well, thanks, everyone, for following along with us. Like, rate, subscribe, share with us.
- [45:01]
C
It took me a minute to realize that this is actually a real term that we need to do.
- [45:05]
A
I'm closing the episode. You gotta stop jumping in.
- [45:07]
C
Okay.
- [45:09]
A
And with that, we'll be back next week for another episode of More or Less. Bye, guys.
- [45:14]
C
See you later.
- [45:15]
B
Bye.
- [45:15]
A
If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for or less Avemorin, lessonlesson. And as for me, I'm Brit. See you guys next time.