Amazon x OpenAI, Ford's EV Reality Check, Kushner Drops WB Bid | Sarah Guo, David Senra, Doug O'Laughlin, Doug Bernauer, Jacob Effron, Logan Kilpatrick

Summary

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TBPN Podcast Summary – December 17, 2025

Episode Theme
A deep dive into the intersecting worlds of technology, finance, and entrepreneurship, with a focus on:

• The reported Amazon x OpenAI mega-deal and broader cloud/AI chip competition
• Ford’s decision to axe the F-150 Lightning and the current state of the EV market
• The collapse of Kushner’s Warner Bros. bid and the shifting sands of entertainment M&A
• Shifting AI, media, and hardware trends, with expert discussions on everything from LLM monetization to nuclear innovation
• Bonus: Notable discussions on company storytelling, brand-building, and podcasting craft

Featured Guests:
Sarah Guo, Doug O’Laughlin, Doug Bernauer, Jacob Efron, Logan Kilpatrick, David Senra

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Key Segments & Insights

1. Ford’s F-150 Lightning, the EV Reality Check, and Consumer Mindset

[02:10 – 13:12]

• Ford has ceased production of the F-150 Lightning after disappointing sales—a 72% YOY fall, blamed on post-incentive demand collapse and the deeply ingrained ‘gas-powered truck’ image.

  • John: “Did truck buyers ever really want to go electric?... Who’s the last person that’s gonna buy an electric car? The truck buyer. Right?” [02:57]
  • Brian: “All that advertising worked on me...as soon as I was an adult and could afford it, I bought a Ford Raptor...I just wanted the truck that was advertised to me as a kid.” [03:59]

• Rivian & Tesla Cybertruck: Success foresees a new buyer; the Lightning mainly attracted non-truck and non-Ford owners. Rivian’s R1T SUV outshone Ford on features and ‘badge value.’

  • Brian: “The F150 Lightning had crazy stuff...but ultimately it wasn’t really enough.” [05:51]
  • John: “The Lightning only got a 65 [DougScore]. So on day one...couldn’t actually be a step forward.” [09:29]

• New Ford strategy: pivot to extra-long-range hybrids, leveraging both gas and electric, aiming for “no range anxiety and all the towing power.” [11:54]

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2. Amazon x OpenAI Mega-Deal: Chips, Compute, & Commerce

[21:12 – 33:32]

• Amazon reportedly eying a $10B+ investment in OpenAI, largely to secure AI compute (including for its Trainium chips), lock in cloud spend, and perhaps integrate deeper on commerce.

  • Brian: “It’s kind of like a rebate. They said, ‘Hey, we’re going to buy 40 [billion],’ and they said, ‘Here, take 10 back’.” [21:53]
  • John: “OpenAI wants to turn ChatGPT into a shopping hub...They have not done Amazon notably...there’s just been some general hesitance to let, again, let the fox into the henhouse.” [22:13]

• Commerce convergence: “OpenAI wants them to pay them for that customer...that didn’t just go look at a bunch of ads.” [23:24]

  • Amazon is protecting its core ad/search business (>$60B revenue), wary about offloading discovery and margin to an LLM interface.
  • John: “Amazon is projected at $60 billion in advertising revenue...They want to protect that.” [25:00]

• Trainium’s role:

  • Will OpenAI become hardware-agnostic? “I think the abstraction is pretty hard...you always hear about TPUs and how the model architecture is interlinked with GPU architecture.” – John [28:13]
  • Anthropic as a precedent: running on multiple hardware types (TPUs, GPUs, Trainium).

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3. Cloud/AI Compute: Amazon’s Power Play & Trainium’s Trajectory

Guest: Doug O’Laughlin, SemiAnalysis [92:33 – 105:54]

• AWS’s edge: “Amazon has—like—their execution is flawless when it comes to datacenter and power...OpenAI is always trying to secure more compute.” – Doug [95:00]

  • Amazon’s huge head start, seamless infra execution, and focus on power availability made it the go-to for “instant scale.” Microsoft’s Azure lagged in infra sophistication.

• Multi-cloud/multi-chip reality:

  • “Anthropic uses TPUs, GPUs, Trainium...you can abstract at a certain level, and that’s good for negotiating power, but it’s a pain in the ass to get this to work.” – Doug [97:32]
  • In practice, labs will run different models on whatever chips provide optimal cost/performance for each workload.

• Space Data Centers?

  • “I’m a space data center hater...it’s hard enough to train a model on Earth today...we have power delays on Earth!” [105:43]
  • Narrative is mostly fund-raising hype tied to SpaceX ambitions, not near-term reality.

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4. Models, Agents, & App Layer: Google Gemini 3 Flash & LLM Productization

Guest: Logan Kilpatrick, Google [151:21 – 163:54]

• Gemini 3 Flash Launch: optimized for speed and price, sometimes outperforming Gemini 3 Pro on specific benchmarks.
  • “We’re able to do a little bit more iteration and it has a slightly updated post-training recipe...With enough time, we can keep making better and better models.” – Logan [154:44]
  • Flash offers “immediate cost saving” and measurable user experience improvements simply by switching over, even before custom tuning. [158:27]
• LLM Productization: Google prioritizes offering a Pareto frontier of speed/price/performance for devs.
  • “The fact that two years ago, being a model wrapper was a bad idea...now you just get to show up one morning, somebody made your product 40% better and saved you 50%.” – Logan [158:28]
• AI agent builders & integrations: new experiments in Workspace; Google aims for “AI native” apps at mass scale.

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5. The Rise (and Value) of Storytelling in Tech

Guests: Sarah Guo, Serguo, David Senra [58:09 – 66:20, 165:08 – 184:00]

• The “Storyteller” Trend: Viral WSJ article drove debate—should startups hire ‘storytellers’? Or should founders own the narrative?
  • Sarah Guo: “I’d say that’s your job. [If a founder hires a storyteller as second hire.]...Most skills are accessible to you...but you can’t outsource it.” [58:21, 59:04]
  • Learning effective narrative-building is high impact: “Storytelling is thinking. How do I actually communicate the strategy of the business...?” [64:02]
  • Good founder storytelling is tied to clarity of strategy, momentum, and taste, not just PR.
• Senra on Storytelling:
  • “Who do you think is the best storyteller or salesman alive today? Probably Elon...before him, Steve Jobs.” [165:23]
  • “Money flows as a function of stories” – Don Valentine, quoted by Senra [165:35]
  • Effective ads/podcasts are simply “stories about the product” (e.g., Senra’s Ramp ads convert users with narrative, not slogans). [167:08]

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6. Founder Market Fit, Focus, and the Art of Longevity

Guests: Senra, John, Brian [179:43 – 184:16]

• TBPN hosts reflect on intensity of focus and compounding as the hidden differentiation: “The most contrarian thing we can do next year is just double down on the core show itself. No fun, no products, no world tour. Just talking tech and business every weekday.” [178:39]
• Senra: “The best things in life, all of them, come from compounding—relationships, money, knowledge.” [183:51]
• Repeating conversations with trusted collaborators and the importance of authenticity: “The audience has to see who you truly are...I think people came to Founders because it was the books and the biographies; over time, they're just like, whatever this guy thinks is interesting to read, I just want to hear it.” [190:19]
• “You should spend 90% of your time teaching [your team]. If you’re not repeating yourself, you’re not doing your job.” – Citing Jim Sinegal [176:36]

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7. “Neo Labs,” Billion-Dollar Talent Bids, and AI Model Strategy

Guests: Sarah Guo, John, Brian [69:55 – 79:10]

• Neo Labs (post-OpenAI/Anthropic startups building large foundational models) are attracting massive venture and hyperscaler capital.
  • Key debate: Is “scale all that matters?” Or do differentiated research, talent, and model architectures justify hundreds of millions in early funding? [73:08]
  • The “billion-dollar acqui-hire” thesis: “As long as you have people spending $100B a year, and they believe by spending $1B to acquire a team they can make that money go further, they will.” [77:11]
  • Even if only one “Neo Lab” achieves platform status ("shoot for the moon, land in Satya’s arms"), the potential for talent acquisitions keeps these bets alive. [76:31]

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8. Hardware, Nuclear & The AI Infra "Gold Rush"

Guests: Doug Bernauer (Radiant), Jacob Efron (Redpoint) [115:54 – 149:59]

• Radiant: building the first new nuclear reactor design to go critical at INL since 1977, with customers like Equinix and the US military lining up as data-center energy needs spike. [116:12]
  • $300M+ funding round from Boost and Draper; focus shifting from R&D to deployment and mass manufacturing in Tennessee. [118:27]
• VC Landscape (Jacob Efron):
  • The great AI “infrastructure wave”: billions flowing, with Series A companies jumping straight to ‘growth’ valuations; mix of classic funds, SPVs, and hyperscaler direct investment.
  • “All big markets, the big companies will want to go after”—applies to consumer/AI hardware too (e.g., glasses, voice devices). [145:43]
  • Robotics: New models using human video data are a critical milestone for “real world” robotics. [143:39]
  • Gross margins: “With enough model competition, AI infra will get much cheaper for software cos, not margin-destructive.” [149:13]

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9. Monetizing LLMs: Ads, Commerce, and the Next Wave

Sarah Guo [88:40 – 90:59]

• When will LLM-powered ads really scale?
  • “Once you’re driving high intent clicks, it’ll scale quickly. But it will take time...probably a 2H 2026 story.” [88:41]
  • Case study: Open Evidence (LLM for doctors) is already ad-supported and “went from 2 to 150 million ad run rate.” [89:47]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ford EVs:

  • “All that advertising worked on me...I bought a Ford Raptor...I just wanted the truck that was advertised to me as a kid.” – John [03:59]
  • “The Lightning only got a 65. Couldn’t actually be a step forward.” – John [09:29]

• On LLM integration and chip competition:

  • “Execution is flawless when it comes to data center and power...Amazon has the most power available...that’s the art of the deal.” – Doug O’Laughlin [95:00]
  • “I’m a space data center hater...it’s hard enough to train a model on Earth today.” – Doug O’Laughlin [105:43]

• On Company Storytelling:

  • “Money flows as a function of the stories.” – Don Valentine, via David Senra [165:36]
  • “If you’re not spending 90% of your time teaching, you’re not doing your job.” – Jim Sinegal, via Senra [176:36]
  • “The best storytellers are not for hire. They’re running companies.” – John [165:16]

• On Model Progress:

  • “With enough time, we can keep making even better and better models.” – Logan Kilpatrick [154:44]
  • “You just get to show up one morning; somebody made your product 40% better and 50% cheaper.” – Logan Kilpatrick [158:28]

• Senra on focus and compounding:

  • “The best things in life come from compounding—relationships, money, knowledge, everything.” [183:51]

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Structure & Timestamps

• 00:00 – 13:00: Ford F-150 Lightning, Rivian/SUVs, consumer psychology in EVs
• 21:12 – 33:32: Amazon x OpenAI investment: chips, commerce, ad model tension
• 92:33 – 105:54: Doug O’Laughlin: Amazon’s infra superiority, Trainium/TPUs, debunking space data centers
• 151:21 – 163:54: Logan Kilpatrick: Gemini 3 Flash, model iteration, use cases, AI agent builders
• 58:09 – 66:20 | 165:08 – 184:00: The meta of storytelling: viral “storyteller” jobs, founders owning narrative, Senra on selling by story
• 79:10 – 100:00: Neo Labs, early model innovation, talent M&A, scale vs creativity
• 115:54 – 149:59: Hard tech and venture: Radiant nuclear update, AI hardware, Robotics, Gross margins
• 88:40 – 90:59: LLM ads, ChatGPT/commerce, Open Evidence as early case study

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Additional Highlights

• Media/M&A:

  • Netflix emerging as strong partner amid Paramount/Warner drama; CBS buzz attributed to new media leadership
  • “Oscars” exclusive licensing to YouTube signals legacy media’s streaming handover [54:16]
  • Barstool exclusive video podcasting deal with Netflix; Portnoy’s viral Netflix, Netflix, Netflix video [51:54]

• Product Trends & Brand-building:

  • DTC playbooks: launching new CPG/men’s skincare; path from influencer to big-box retail (Target) [45:16 – 48:43]
  • Mass billboard campaigns (“Friend.com”) as new virality lever [39:31 – 41:07]

• Predictions for 2026:

  • "AI trading": “Somebody out there is going to make hundreds of millions of dollars on AI trading...it’s not happening at that scale yet, but people are gonna try.” – Serguo [85:00]
  • Next year: “Year of new AI applications...models are now so powerful, there’s a ton of proof across domains.” – Serguo [84:22]

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Summary Takeaways

AI infrastructure and cloud are increasingly capital arms races, but talent, unique architectures, and new consumer behaviors may yet create disruptive opportunities. LLMs are commoditizing basic tasks; product success is driven by speed, price, and thoughtful integration. In an era of tech abundance, storytelling craft—rooted in substance and repeated narrative—is the underrated superpower. As markets shift, the TBPN roundtable keeps a sharp eye on what’s hype, what’s real, and how to separate signal from noise in innovation.

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For anyone in tech, investing, AI, or fast-evolving media, this episode offered a firehose of insider insights, punchy debates, and actionable frameworks—delivered in the hosts' signature blend of wit, irreverence, and unbeatable guest access.

Transcript

[John]

You're watching TVPN.

[Brian]

Today is Wednesday, December 17, 2025. I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Eight days till Christmas, baby. We're live from the TVPN Ultradome. The temple of technology. The fortress of finance, the capital of capital.

[John]

It's Christmas day.

[Brian]

The North Pole of net income, the.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

I don't know.

[Brian]

I don't have any more. Ramp time is money save. Both easy to use. Corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. We're mixing it up today.

[John]

Foot ramp under the Christmas tree.

[Brian]

He's the elf today. Jordy's the elf today. We're tracking it, Hitting it. That doesn't really work. Whoa. Okay. Stockings are hung on the gong with care.

[John]

We're back.

[Brian]

Good to see everyone. Welcome back to the show. We have a great show for everyone today. We have Sarah Guo joining us in the TVPN ultradome. We also have Doug o' Laughlin from Semianalysis hopping on to hopefully break down the Amazon OpenAI deal. That is big news. I was talking about this with some friends about, you know, SpaceX is potentially going out, gonna hoover up 30 billion of capital. They're going, they're going out at 1.5 trillion. They're talking to bankers now. They're gonna hoover up all the capital they're.

[John]

They're hoovering.

[Brian]

The public market's gonna be tapped out. Right. Well, Sam Altman would like a word with Andy Jassy and he says I need 10 billion. And Andy says, sure, as long as you buy a bunch of Trainium chips. That's basically the story. We will get into that.

[John]

We'll dig into that. Yeah. Isn't it like mostly or all credits?

[Brian]

We will see. We will see. But first I wanted to dig into a little bit more. We touched on.

[John]

Wait, don't forget. We also have Logan and Google coming on to talk about Gemini Flash, the new model they released today. We also have David Senra joining at the end of the show just to hang out.

[Brian]

What are the odds that David Senra will be in a more elaborate Santa Claus costume than me?

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Zero.

[John]

I hate to say it. We'll give him this hat. He can have this hat.

[Brian]

Anyway, so closing out the story with the Ford F150. Of course, this broke earlier this week. The CEO of Ford, Ford did a round of press interviews talking about the news, which is that Ford, the historic automaker, is killing the F150 Lightning. Their electric truck sales fell 72% year over year. Of course, that is a 72% decrease. Specifically in last month, which is post EV tax credit going away. And the whole project was a money pit. So they took a $19.5 billion charge, and now they're shifting strategies. So, I mean, the first question that I was sort of toying with, that we've been debating, is, did truck buyers ever really want to go electric? Was that even. Was that ever a good idea? Because it always seemed like, who's the last person that's gonna buy an electric car? The truck buyer. Right.

[John]

So one thing that I was thinking about is I feel like the cybertruck probably got truck buyers to, like, traditional truck buyers to go electric. But it wasn't because it was electric. It was because it looked electric.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[John]

Like, it looks crazy. It looked wild.

[Brian]

Completely agree with this. And so, yeah, there's this weird thing where, like, the F150 silhouette is iconic, but.

[John]

Forgot I had my. My elf ears on.

[Brian]

But, yeah, I mean, there's just like. I mean, ballpark. How many ads. How many billions of dollars have been spent on ads that associate trucks with.

[John]

Like, being a cool dude.

[Brian]

Guy. Dude.

[John]

Guys being dude driving through the mud.

[Brian]

And a big part of that is the engine note, and a big part of that is the actual exhaust coming out of the back, like, rolling.

[John]

All that advertising worked on me. Like, I grew up in a Toyota family. We only had Toyotas growing up. It's truck. We at one point had two Priuses. Right? Yeah. And. But as soon as I was an adult and I could afford it, I bought a Ford Raptor. It was black on black on black on black. It was lifted. I just wanted the truck that I was. That was advertised to me as a kid. Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[John]

And then, of course, I realized quickly, like, it's very difficult to park. It was so loud in the cabin that it did make sense for a lot of reasons. But I wanted that truck since I was a kid.

[Brian]

Yeah. Yeah. And a $750 tax credit probably wouldn't be enough to pull you off the Raptor, if that's what you've been programmed from a young age.

[John]

7,500.

[Brian]

$7,500 EV tax credit. That's probably not enough to pull you away from. Okay. I've been watching the super bowl, and every year at the Super Bowl, I see truck ads with big, loud engines. And they've been marketing this to me for decades. And yes, EVs, it's very logical. There's a lot of cool benefits. I mean, the Ford F150 Lightning had crazy stuff. You'd Open up the front. It just had four household power outlets. So you just have like a full. You could have a full like tailgate. There was a 220 volt. You could power a washing machine on it. You could just like pull up with a washing machine and just do your laundry, I guess. Also, big part of big problem with trucks.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Sure.

[Brian]

You experience this is that you don't have anywhere to store anything because if you put it in the back, it could just get taken. You have to lock it down if you put something in the back. So if you have like.

[John]

I think most people that are buying trucks for a daily are getting a cover over the bed.

[Brian]

But yeah, locking cover potentially. But then you're in this like weird half and half instead. The F150 Lightning, there was a front trunk that was actually very large and you could. And it had outlets in there too. And there were a bunch of features and they really went crazy with the features. But like, ultimately it wasn't really enough. And there was some interesting. There was some interesting data that Ford was sharing that they were framing as positive when the F150 Lightning launched. But I think in retrospect might have actually been sort of a canary in the coal mine.

[John]

Totally.

[Brian]

So the first stat was that of the people that reserved the F150 Lightning, 50% had never owned a truck before. So they're new to trucks. And then 75% of the reservation holders had never owned a Ford before. And so Ford was celebrating this. It's like, we did it.

[John]

We did. New hero product.

[Brian]

New Hero product is going to bring new people into the Ford ecosystem. It's going to bring new people into the truck ecosystem. We are expanding the market. And in hindsight, what it feels like is the truck buyers didn't want it, the board buyers didn't want it. And they're the two biggest markets. And so yes, there were a class of people that were like, oh, I would always. I've always. An electric truck. That sounds really interesting. I love the idea of a 220 volt. I'm a unique purchaser. And they're like, this is a niche product. And they go hard for the niche product. They show up immediately and they'll do it no matter what.

[John]

And you wrote in the newsletter the first electric truck was the Rivian.

[Brian]

Yeah, well.

[John]

And that had only launched a few.

[Brian]

Months, six months earlier.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brian]

So the Rivian came out in September of 2021. That's the R1T Ford Shipp in April of 2022. That's actually very impressive to me. I was very impressed with how fast Ford was able to respond to the idea of electric trucks happening. Because electric cars have been around for a really long time.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brian]

But there was always this like, is it ever going to happen with trucks? And then all of a sudden it was like, it's happening this year and you need big company, you need to respond within six months. Like, big companies are typically not that good at responding. Usually it's like, oh, we'll let the startup, we'll let this Rivian company show up, we'll let them ship, see how they do and then we'll move. Like a lot of big companies, like being second movers, this feels like they were like, no, we're moving. In the first wave, they did successfully. A lot of that's because they built off of the F150 platform. They were able to reuse a lot of equipment there in the supply chain, but ultimately they didn't ship a product that delivered at the level of the R1T. So Doug DeMuro, friend of the show, former guest, gave the R1T a 73, which is a very, very good score. It actually earned Doug's Car of the year or vehicle of the Year. The next year, Rivian runs it back again, wins Car of the Year again with the R1s, with the SUV. And so Rivian has two back to back car of the year with Doug Demuro. But the R1t gets a 73. So that's the benchmark for where you should be if you're competing with them.

[John]

And Rivian doesn't break out sales, which is super annoying. I really want to understand this, but my guess is over 90% of their sales are the SUV.

[Brian]

I agree. Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

[John]

And that is generally just because of the popularity of SUVs among the cohort of people that are going to buy an ev.

[Brian]

Exactly.

[John]

And the car just looks fantastic. I think that's underrated. Like, people critiqued the headlights early on. You didn't really like the headlights, but the car, the silhouette is just amazing. It feels like a 21st century, very, very modern, very kind of modern take on a Range Rover.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Right.

[John]

And it has the same capacity.

[Brian]

Yep, yep. And so the R1T got a 73 dug score. The Lightning only got a 65. So on day one, even with all the features, even with all the heritage, even with good pricing and time to market and all this stuff still couldn't actually be a step forward. And it, I think it tied the Raptor, but lost on some of the some of the weekend categories, obviously, because Doug likes to drive these cars for fun on the weekend. But people wound up obviously buying some of them. I've seen some of them around. But my question was how much does the iconic silhouette help or hurt the lightning? Because you would imagine that there's so much value in the F150 silhouette. That would be a huge advantage that you're driving something that looks like the classic canonical truck. But at the same time, if you see those Rivian headlights, you know that that person's driving an electric truck. And that's maybe more of a signal, more of a more badge value there. It is just crazy. Reflecting on how the way you're talking about the Rivian silhouette. Looking good. I was thinking the Rivian name. Do you like the Rivian name? I think it's.

[John]

I think it's fine.

[Brian]

It's weird. It sticks out to me. It was also weird when I'm neutral on it. It was weird when it first stuck out. It sounded like something that came from like a, like a brainstorming session at a pharmaceutical company, you know, because it's like this weird. Like what does the name actually mean? I guess it means river and Indian kind of portmanteau.

[John]

But so the reason. So, but it's really grown upon itself is a blend of syllables from the river symbolizing adventure and connection to nature. Like, I always looked at Rivian as something like the whole foods of cars. Right? Like the REI of cars. Right. It's like people go to rei. The average person going into REI is not necessarily like buying gear for the most rugged adventure. Like they might be buying gear for their backyard or like going on a hike that weekend. And again, like, I feel like the Rivian cars, again, I mean we had the CEO on, but like have that range where it's like, it really is just like a good daily. But they've built it, it's super powerful. It's very capable.

[Brian]

Well, if you were to daily a Rivian R1s, let's say. Oh, by the way, just to close out the Ford F150 thing, Ford's plan is to pivot. I will tell you what they're going to pivot to after I tell you about Linear, the system for modern software development. Linear streamlines work across the entire development cycle from roadmap to release. So they are going to be pivoting to hybrid trucks and hybrid designs. But what's interesting is that it's one of those. It's this extra long range hybrid where you have an electric powertrain that is charged by a gas motor and so you can get like 700 miles of range. I saw someone demo one of these in China and it felt like one of those, like crazy, like, okay, is it just a gimmick like the jumping car or is this a really interesting like value prop because you could fill up once you have all the towing power. Like you have the energy when you need it, but then also you, you don't have any of the ranging range anxiety of the electric car ownership, which is still a little bit real.

[John]

Magnus is a little triggered. Rivian is terrible. Stop talking about it.

[Brian]

He doesn't like it.

[John]

Ever bought.

[Brian]

What was bad about it? Tell us the details. Give us the details. I've only heard good stuff. I don't know. Interesting. We'll have to dig into it. Anyway, let me tell you about Gemini 3 Pro, Google's most intelligent model yet. There's an update today. State of the art reasoning, next level vibe coding and deep multimodal understanding. So here's a question. Here's something that people don't like about Rivians. They don't have CarPlay. Is that a deal breaker for you? Do you like Apple CarPlay?

[John]

I think it's solid. The thing that I find annoying is car, like the fact that there's no. The cars that I've owned are all defaulting back to the. The actual operating system.

[Brian]

Oh really? What do you mean they're defaulting?

[John]

So in I have two Mercedes. They have like the regular Mercedes operating system and then like Apple CarPlay. CarPlay is layered on top of. But I still find myself turning on the car sometimes and it's the stock system. So I just wish there was a single operating system.

[Brian]

So Apple's trying to do this because.

[John]

I've noticed but the manufacturers are like, well, we sell to Android and we don't want you to control us forever through some type of new blue bubble scenario.

[Brian]

Totally. So I've noticed this weird thing where there are a set of buttons that I can use to interact with CarPlay. So like changing the song is a button that's mapped to my steering wheel in this Cadillac and if I push the button it will go to CarPlay and say play the next track on Spotify.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Great experience.

[Brian]

But if I'm turning the volume dial, the volume exists at the car operating system level and that overrides CarPlay. And so then all of the buttons in the car are in like, okay, we're now elevating to the volume knob ui and so if you push a button, you're not clicking on the actual screen anymore, you're clicking on the volume overlay. And it's very weird.

[John]

Think about how it would be insane if you're on a Mac and it was like running two operating systems at the same time. The difference of being in a car is like you're in a moving vehicle that's thousands of pounds. And so it's really. I do think we'll look back at this kind of era being like, okay, well, what were we doing? Yes.

[Brian]

So let me tell you about Cognition, the team behind the AI software engineer Devin Crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team. But so Apple's trying to solve this their way. Apple's saying, hey, let us take over everything, including you can let the fox.

[John]

Let the fox into the henhouse. We can be trusted. Yes, we're a good fox.

[Brian]

Yes. And so they will do. We'll handle the volume, we'll handle the speedometer, and we will do all of that in Apple CarPlay plus or something. And it'll take the whole screen. And that seems great. That seems like a solution to a lot of the problems that we've identified. Rivian's gone the other way. Said no Apple carplay. He was on Ben Thompson's show on Sir Techery and Ben asked him about this. So Ben said, why is there no carplay in Rivian's? RJ says the CEO of Rivian says it's a good question. We get asked a lot. We're very convicted at this point. We believe that the aggregation of applications and the experience, and importantly now with AI acting as a web that's integrating all these different applications into a singular experience where you can talk to the car and ask for things and where it has knowledge of the state of the health of the vehicle, the state of the charge, distance, outside temperature, everything becomes much more seamless in time if the vehicle is its own singular ecosystem versus having a window within the vehicle that's into another ecosystem. Ben says that's the issue. Just the implementation effort on your side. Or is that the issue? Or is it implementation on your side or is it that customers are actually short circuiting themselves? RJ says, we could turn on CarPlay really quickly, but then you end up.

[John]

With, I think I know why he's doing this. Either wants the consumer to be able to say, rivian, get me the fastest production car lap record at Laguna Seca.

[Brian]

And it just does it.

[John]

And it just does it.

[Brian]

It just does it self driving. Right. So he basically Doubles down. He says, you know, in the age of AI, you'll be able to say Rivian, tell me what's on my schedule for later today and it will go talk to Google Calendar. Pull that information and maybe you get stuck in an Apple ecosystem a little bit more. It still feels like a lot of duplicate work where over the long term Android Auto and CarPlay will be compounding and adding more features and they should outrun the individual car companies. Ben actually asks, is this a bit where Tesla covered for you? Because they don't have CarPlay either, but now there's a rumor that they might add it and it might make it a little difficult. Is it confirmed that Tesla is going to add CarPlay? I didn't know that that was confirmed.

[John]

But as of November 13, Tesla from Bloomberg. Tesla plans to feature CarPlay within a window inside its broader interface.

[Brian]

Yeah, which is normal. So CarPlay is coming to Tesla. Will CarPlay come to Rivian? TBD.

[John]

The question is, will the fart sound effect come to CarPlay?

[Brian]

Yes, yes, for sure. That 100% going to happen anyway. If you want to make a more serious soundboard, go to fall the generative media platform for developers develop and fine tune models with serverless GPUs and on demand clusters. Anyway, I think Rivian will eventually get on CarPlay. I think it's got to happen because I just think of the car as like, the car is not fully a device, the car is a speaker.

[John]

It's not your life.

[Brian]

It's not my life. Exactly. It's not my life. And so if I'm going on a.

[John]

Run.

[Brian]

And I'm listening to music on headphones and then I get back from the run and I go in the car, I'd like a seamless handoff. And then I go in my house, I'd like another seamless handoff. I don't want my house to be like, oh no, we're building house OS and we don't interface with Apple, we don't play nicely with Google. I actually, as a consumer I do sort of benefit from a monopoly and at least picking an ecosystem and staying into it. I mean, I'm seriously considering going just I know that the. I think the audio quality isn't that good on the Apple air, whatever the air speakers are. I don't even know they're homepods, the homepods, but I'm thinking about just dropping those everywhere because at least it will be integrated. Whereas Sonos has just been falling behind, falling behind, falling behind. And imagine if you're In a situation where like the Sonos situation plays out to Rivian, like, it would be really, really unfortunate where you could be like, well, at least it still has carplay. Like people will go buy retro cars or old cars and then go retrofit them with CarPlay. And then it's like, okay, yeah, like it has analog knobs and stuff. It's an old car, but at least it runs CarPlay. So I know that if I switch From Spotify to YouTube to Apple Podcasts to anywhere else where you can leave us five stars. You should. It will still continue to play. It will still continue and it'll play seamlessly because that technology will just continue to get better regardless of what happens. Anyway, let's move on to other news, but first let me tell you about adeo, the AI native CRM. ADEO builds scales and grows your company to the next level. So the big scoop from Katie Roof. She says Amazon is in talks to invest over $10 billion in open AI. And so let's read through some of this, get the scoops.

[John]

The valuation, three people familiar with the discussion. Yeah, the valuation be higher than 500 billion. The Amazon investment would help OpenAI afford some of the commitments it has made, some to rent servers from cloud providers, including from aws.

[Brian]

Yeah, this is like, it's like there's somewhat, there's some circularity, but it's not.

[John]

Entirely fully beating the circular allegations. OpenAI last month announced it would spend 38 billion renting servers from us over the next seven years, making AWB one of at least five cloud providers OpenAI uses to develop AI. The deal also could help Amazon find a new customer for its Trainium AI chips which compete with the Nvidia chips.

[Brian]

This is kind of like a rebate. You know, it's like they said, hey, we're going to buy 40. And they said, here, take 10 back.

[John]

And we'll take a piece.

[Brian]

Take 10 back. I mean this is the, this is the semi analysis.

[John]

Like the bigger. Yeah, so the bigger. Honestly, the more notable news here is that Amazon and OpenAI have discussed commerce partnership opportunities.

[Brian]

That's very interesting.

[John]

OpenAI wants to turn Chat CBT into a shopping hub and has discussed earning fees for referring customers to retailers. It isn't clear whether Amazon OpenAI deal would involve any arrangement related to such features in ChatGPT or AI powered shopping features that Amazon is developing. So I just look at this in the same way as like the Disney deal, which is like, hey, we're going to invest, but we're going to give you access to this thing and I would expect that, I mean, you can imagine opening eyes, been working on getting referrals, basically getting a revenue stream from referring products out to Amazon for a really long time, right? They've done the Etsy deal, they're doing deals with Shopify. They have not done ebay notably and they have not done Amazon notably. And I think there's been some, there's just been some general hesitance to let again, let the fox into the henhouse, right? Because you can think about it like the Google search experience is like. Or sorry, searching for products on Amazon is extremely profitable for Amazon, right? If, if consumers start just going to chat cbt to find products on Amazon that like Amazon needs to be really careful around that because yes, they can get a referral fee or they're getting a customer, but then they Amazon or sorry, OpenAI wants them to pay them for that customer. And that's a customer that didn't just go look at a bunch of ads, right? And I do not like searching for products on Amazon because the experience is I'm just trying to find. I always use the example like paper towels, right? It's been so maxed out. It's so frustrating to search on there because I just want to buy like I'll spend 20 to $30 on this thing and then it's like three pages of like $6 versions of the product that I know are going to be terrible and a bunch of ads for those things, right? And so being able to go into ChatGPT and just say like, hey, I want to buy this item from a manufacturer or a brand that has been in business for more than 30 years, like pre E Commerce. Yeah, I want a brand that has just been making this thing well for a really long time. And so I would be defaulting to the LLM and skipping Amazon entirely.

[Brian]

You want to fight. You want to fight to be the aggregator you want to like. I guarantee that although Amazon shows up on Google search results like they want people to open the app and search in the app and be the main starting point for their commerce, their entire commerce journey. And we've seen this with Shopify as well. Shopify obviously would love for the, for the commerce journey to not start on Facebook or Meta properties, instead start in the Shop app. They're working towards that. The same thing is true of Amazon. And every aggregator is acutely aware of aggregation theory and acutely aware that they should not let someone.

[John]

So Amazon is aggregate on top of that, apparently projecting 60 billion of advertising revenue, yeah, just growing way faster than the core retail business. They've sort of like the core retail business is probably growing at the rate of overall E commerce penetration, whereas this is just like extremely high margin, fast growing and they want to protect that.

[Brian]

And probably bigger than what they could make off of a referral fee on top, deeper in the stack. If they're deeper down like they, if they control more of that purchase, they can probably take a higher take rate essentially because I imagine their margins on top of all this is very high. Well, the other side of the Amazon OpenAI deal is that the deal could also help Amazon find a new customer for its Trainium AI server chips, which compete with Nvidia AI chips that OpenAI primarily uses. Today, as part of the deal being discussed, OpenAI plans to use Trainium chips. Two of the people said the cloud deal Amazon announced with OpenAI last month only made mention of service powered by Nvidia. So if the interesting thing here is what will they be doing with those Trainium chips? Will they have a specific model that runs on Trainium? Will they set up some sort of abstraction layer that they can run any of their models on any hardware or any asic? Basically, will you see, or will it be like, okay, we still have GPT 4.0 workloads, let's recompile 4.0 for, for Trainium and let it just chill there. And Trainium is our pool for 4.0. Or you know what, Trainium is going to be our workhorse for imagegen or videogen and let's do our imagegen optimized for that particular stack. When we talked about Trainium initially during the latest launch, the Wall Street Journal highlighted real time video as an interesting place where Trainium could potentially outperform. They weren't making the case, at least to the Journal, that Trainium is what you want if you're going to do the biggest, most massive training run. That was sort of the narrative that the TPU was pitching with the latest anthropic runs, but they did highlight, you know, real time video generation. And so what I'm interested in is that does Trainium get abstracted to a point where it's sort of like model agnostic? Or is OpenAI like the ChatGPT? The app has a whole host of models because these models are now mixtures of models and there's model routers and there's different products, video, audio, image, deep research. Is one of those going to be on Trainium or will Trainium be like a liquid pool of Compute that cuts across the entire stack. Do you have any instinct on this?

[John]

Yeah, I mean I think the abstraction thing is pretty hard. Right. Because you always hear about TPUs and how the TPU team and the Gemini team are so closely integrated.

[Jacob Efron]

Right.

[John]

All the model architecture is interlinked with the GPU architecture. Gpu. So I think it's hard to actually abstract all the way up. But it's interesting. I mean anthropic has been like multi platform for a while now. So I'm curious how they think about this stuff.

[Brian]

Yeah, I don't know.

[John]

Good question for Doug.

[Brian]

Yeah, maybe Doug will be able to get us up to speed.

[John]

Something that's interesting. If I search on Gemini for a product on Amazon, find me the best blank on Amazon. It takes me, it says top recommendations on Amazon and then I click the link and it takes me to a Google search for that product that is a sponsored result on Amazon. So then I click pay who? So Amazon is paying, Amazon is paying Google to appear in search results AdWords in AdWords and then Gemini is routing basically to AdWords to get the click through there. So there's no direct integration at all, huh?

[Brian]

Yeah, well, I mean that is like the odd Google has so many odd advantages. It's crazy. The fact that the Google bot just sees so much more of the Internet feels extremely important and yet I just don't know if it will be enough, if it will be enough to win in consumer in some meaningful way. What does it mean? Does it mean 50% of the value of consumer. Does it mean that they can win, come from behind defeat OpenAI Chat like it feels so important and yet it also feels extremely hard to actually pass that message through. Maybe they need like a whole ad campaign around it or something. But. And also I haven't even. Did Matthew Prince over at Cloudflare ever publish those results? He was saying he was asking people, like, how much of the Internet do you think Google sees relative to OpenAI's web scraper, like their bot? Because no one's blocking the Google bot. Like you have to be insane to be like, I don't want my company showing up on Google. You would just never do that. But if you do, then you also show up in Gemini like that, like what you just showed. Now there are plenty of blogs and plenty of people out there who are saying, I don't want to show up in ChatGPT because my content is valuable. I'm monetizing it in a particular way. We're not talking about products, products on the Other side. They're on profound. Get your brand mentioned in ChatGPT. Reach millions of consumers who use AI to discover new products and brands. No, but seriously, if you're a brand and you want to be mentioned everywhere, but if you're a newsletter writer or you write reviews about best Amazon products, you might not want those reviews just to get sucked into ChatGPT and anonymized. So you might turn that off, but no one's turning off Google. So Google should have an advantage there. The product should be better, but it all matters on, like, how much does the consumer feel the better ness of it? Because even you can see it, even with the image releases. It's like we're into one's 99% of the way there. The other one's 99.1% of the way there. There's a benchmark that says this one's better, but people aren't really shitting.

[John]

This one is really good at doing ornaments. Which one like that was that?

[Brian]

Seems that that's the first value prop I've heard where I would switch immediately.

[John]

Well, that was like something they were pushing, yet that was something OpenAI was pushing. Yesterday was basically like, you can turn yourself into an ornament.

[Brian]

Oh, yeah, Christmas.

[John]

Trying to kick off a new that was good meme super cycle. Near. Near is not loving this line. The Amazon investment would help OpenAI afford commitments, including from AWS.

[Brian]

That's very funny.

[John]

Well, liquidity is showing the gang standing around. All right, Jeff, you're up next to invest in OpenAI.

[Brian]

OMFAO. Yeah, literally almost all of them.

[John]

Well, to be clear, I don't think Elon is. I don't think Sundar is. I don't think Zuck is okay. And I don't know.

[Brian]

Do you know Tim Cook's partnering with Gemini, So this meme is actually slop. I'm sorry, Liquidity, I love you, but it was funny. But then as I dug in deeper, I mean, 10k likes, but it is not. Is not accurate. It's not accurate. Let me tell you about Vanta Automate compliance and security AI that powers everything from evidence collection to continuous monitoring to security reviews and vendor risk. Amazon, $10 billion investment in OpenAI in the form of AWS credits. You got Satya, Nadella.

[John]

I couldn't find where 2% for Amazon.

[Brian]

Maybe less if it's at above a $500 billion valuation. So Andy Jassy's getting 1 1/2% of OpenAI. Satya sitting there with over 20, he's pretty happy Pretty happy. Looking at the screen. This is a. Oh, and this is a Gemini meme. Very funny. Well, Jared Kushner is pulling out of the Paramount bid hours after his father in law took aim at the Ellison clan, apparently.

[John]

Yeah. To be clear, I don't know where Nick pulled the credits line. I haven't seen that.

[Brian]

Which credits line?

[John]

Sorry, Nick. This post before Amazon. $10 billion investment in OpenAI in the form of AWS credits.

[Brian]

Oh yeah.

[John]

Seen that confirmed anywhere.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah. It's actually not in the form of AWS credits. It's just cash and then. But it's just, it feels like credits because they do have obligations with aws.

[John]

They're basically going to spend all of it.

[Brian]

Well, no, it's like it all goes into a bank account, but it fits a narrative to be like it's in the form of AWS credits. That is a good correction. Thank you, Jordy. Anyway, the latest news in the Paramount bid for Warner Brothers. This story that just keeps on giving is from Semaphore here. Let's see what this says in the news. In back to back salvos Tuesday, the President and his former or his family distance themselves from Paramount's hostile bid for Warner Brothers discovery. I think we know what's going on there. It's about Foghorn Leghorn. It's about Tweety Bird. Is that it? Porky Pig. It's Porky Pig. It's a rebuke to owner David Ellison's attempt to leverage relationships with the White House to close the $108 billion takeover effort. President Trump Tuesday afternoon said he had been treated far worse by the Ellison owned CBS since the family closed a deal for CBS parent Paramount.

[John]

Which is so interesting because I've seen a bunch of. There's been. People have been riled up about Bari Weiss running cbs. The reason that you maybe would say that she's doing an effective job as a manager of that asset is because people are talking about CBS content in a way that I have not seen in ever.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Right.

[John]

Do you ever remember, like maybe a couple times here you'd see something and she's, she's clipping CBS content. It's like she's doing stories working. Yeah. If they're, if they're.

[Brian]

We were joking about this. I mean, no, no shade to the people that were running CBS before. But like what, what content was on that?

[John]

Yeah, we just don't know what they were doing before.

[Brian]

It's like it didn't exist and now it exists. And you can like it or you hate it depending on your political persuasion, but you can't deny.

[John]

And I always listed this as, like, it's a thing. The Ellisons were like, hey, we can get a truth engine and we can help. Sure, we can help. Like, we can. Yeah, basically, yeah.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

I mean.

[Brian]

I mean, there's definitely. Like, the brand is still great. Like, CBS feels like a solid news source. So I agree with that. But the reason the distribution was so far behind that people weren't talking about what was going on there.

[John]

And I would say that the reason. One way to think about the value of CBS is what would it cost and how long would it take to recreate a brand like CBS probably cost. It would take you decades.

[Brian]

I don't think you can buy it. Like, I actually don't think. I think you could. I think you could be Sam Altman and Marshall. A $50 billion fundraising round.

[John]

You can't just snap your fingers and get it.

[Brian]

And it would still take 50 years to get there. And that's the thing, is that it's not. It's not like, if you get 50 billion, what do you have to do? You have to go buy the legacy ip, because there's only. You can't just. You can't just. You can't snap your fingers and create a brand overnight. Like, it just takes time.

[John]

So Warner Brothers sent a letter to shareholders this morning, basically saying that they're riding. They want to. The board of directors still wants to go with Netflix. They believe it's superior in a number of different ways. One thing that stood out to me is that Paramount has consistently. They said Paramount has consistently led WBD shareholders that its proposed transaction has a full backstop from the Ellison family. It does not and never has. Paramount's most recent proposal includes a $40 billion equity commitment for which there is no Ellison family commitment of any kind. Instead, they propose that you rely on an unknown and opaque revocable trust for the certainty of the crucial deal funding. Despite having been told repeatedly by WBD how important a full and unconditional financing commitment from the Ellison family was, and despite their own ample resources, as well as multiple assurances from Paramount Skydance during our strategic review process that such a commitment was forthcoming, the Ellison family has chosen not to backstop the Paramount Skydance offer. And a revocable trust is no replacement for a secured commitment by a controlling stockholder. The assets and liabilities of the trust are not publicly disclosed and are subject to change. So they basically, like, have this entity being like, yeah, we're guaranteeing it, but it's not actually them saying like they could move assets out of that trust and, you know.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah. Got it. Anyways, so strength not as strong potentially as Netflix. You know, Netflix is good for it. It's a huge company. They've already signed a deal with a massive termination clause and they've, I believe they've raised debt for this. Like they're, they're ready to rock. So bird in the hand is worth not too in the bush.

[John]

Yeah. The other thing is Paramount has not offered to reimburse the breakup. The termination fee. It's a $2.8 billion fee.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[John]

There's also financing costs that they're going to have to take that Warner Brothers would have to take on if they don't, you know, complete the debt exchange. So. Yeah. At the end of the day, what are the, what do the Ellisons do at this point? Right. They've been doing deals. Right. They've got CBS now they've got the ufc. They're trying to build this streaming platform. And again, going back to some of the conversations that we've had, like this entire, the entire strategy to date has been predicated on getting this Warner Brothers asset.

[Brian]

Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like it might not happen, but game's not over.

[John]

I anticipate announced the $1 trillion backlog.

[Brian]

Think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. Also, Avi Shifman got back to us. He answered the question. Is he leveraged up? Is he levering up to buy billboards? He says every out of home agent I've ever talked to has offered 50% reductions in price when doing a large scale campaign. Most of the inventory is actually pretty cheap if you don't focus on the most premium assets. So where haven't you seen a Friend.com billboard? The 101. You haven't seen it in the iconic places. He hasn't done the Times Square buyout. He's in the subway.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Right.

[Brian]

Like when, when we saw them. You always make fun of this one is there's one that's like up against the wall. I saw one just at a random bus in my hometown. It's like there's just, there's like random places, but there's so many of them.

[John]

Some of the alpha and out of home in LA is there's so much traffic.

[Brian]

Yes.

[John]

That you're kind of moving slowly by some areas and you'll just see random stuff.

[Brian]

And so yeah, I was kind of fighting on you, fighting you on this. Like, was this truly one of the greatest campaigns of the year. And hearing his extra context, it's incredible. He might have unlocked some entirely new strategy of just like the go big massive billboard campaign. And I wouldn't be surprised if we don't. If we. I wouldn't be surprised if next year is the year of the copy paste the strategy for, you know, a company that has a million dollars to spend on a big campaign. Let's do an interesting billboard campaign.

[John]

Maybe they have a million dollars in revenue too. Maybe.

[Brian]

Ideally, yeah. Ideally. Ideally, yes. I mean he clearly like it was, you know, he's like risk on exploring, testing new things like learning but just the core arb of like a big billboard campaign paying off. I think you gotta credit him. You gotta check in with Avi Schiffman.

[John]

Did you see his other post? He said SF is over. Still a beautiful place to live. Hype around LLMs has subsided. It's not an interesting place to be anymore. Why go to a hackathon? It's not like GPT4 just came out. There's nothing too interesting to discuss at a party anymore. All the big companies are too mature now. Most of what is new is just YC slop startups. If you're still in precede exploring stage, it's mostly too late. The directions have been positioned in. It's just a performative scene left. There are always a cycle to these things and this is fine. I've enjoyed 2022 to 2025. I hereby declare New York the new bastion of what matters in the near future. Could not disagree more with every single, pretty much every single word in here. It is, I think this is, this is. I think Avi has shown, you know, brilliance in some ways even though many don't. But this was. I put this up as one of the worst takes of the year. It's just like it's literally like saying like back in 2000, like it's like saying in the early days of the Internet or in the early days of the iPhone, like, hey, like yeah, it's over. Just don't build anything.

[Brian]

Yeah. Avi underrated reason to stay in San Francisco. First Fin AI. The company's headquartered up there, the number one AI agent for customer service. And I know you love AI agents. Avi automate the most complex customer service queries on every channel. Also, you should get in if you're bored with the hackathon. You're bored with the YC demo day. Get into shark diving, go dive in the bay, put on the 7 mil wetsuit, swim out to Alcatraz take on a shark head to head and emerge victorious. I think that will really give you the sort of the glory. You'll be excited again. You will have survived a shark attack that will energize you in a way that GPT 5.2 might not be energizing you totally fighting head on with a great white shark in the San Francisco Bay. That's something you can only do in the bay area.

[John]

Or who's. Who's making friend.com for sharks. Right. Like a wearable pendant that a shark could use to, you know, better navigate. Maybe they're lonely out in the high seas. Right. It's cold, it's dark.

[Brian]

Yes.

[John]

Maybe, you know, in between hunts, Right. They're just kind of hanging out, right? Maybe, yeah. Just having it. Having a digital companion. Why reserve digital companions for. Why reserve those just for humans? Right. Like all life, all life matter. Think bigger. The other thing I was thinking why I was saying this yesterday. Why has no one made like a telemedicine for anabolic steroids for your pets? Right.

[Brian]

Somebody has, Right. Isn't that a real thing? I think Tyler was saying loyal.

[John]

I was saying loyal. But it doesn't really count though.

[Brian]

That's.

[John]

Yeah. I want to see a golden retriever as a mass monster.

[Brian]

I think that's just a rottweiler. Like I think you just get.

[John]

No, but nobody. Nobody. Well, so I mean you can make your like cattle really jacked, right?

[Brian]

Yeah. That's like what sarms are.

[John]

So you could just. You couldn't you just give it to your dog?

[Brian]

You know way too much about performance enhancing drugs anyway.

[Doug Bernauer]

Yeah.

[John]

Just saying the word sarms is like. Just say that you've been deep in bodybuilding forms, Tyler.

[Brian]

Just say you're a day one. Put on the more plates, more dates. Well, speaking of restream.com one livestream, 30 plus destinations. If you want to multi stream, go to restream.com. before our first live in person guest gets to the TVP and ultradump, we gotta open a Christmas present. But if you have breaking news, break it down.

[John]

I wanted to talk about this Christmas present.

[Brian]

Okay. Okay. We got a Christmas present from friend of the show, Sahil Bloom. Let's open it up. It's under the Christmas tree. I got a belt on today. I'm looking much more.

[John]

Santa felt it up.

[Brian]

Okay, so this is from Sahil Bloom himself. Look at this, look at this.

[John]

New brand alert.

[Brian]

I love this. So he said, I got sick of putting things on my skin that I'd never put on my body. So I spent 18 months creating the perfect skin solution. The perfect solution. Wild Roman. I can smell it. Everyone says the TBP Ultram smells bad now. Smells great. This, this actually smells fantastic. So Wild Roman is 100 natural skincare for men made with grass fed tallow, cold pressed oils and wild botanicals. You can order [e-mail]. just want to give him a shout out and then. Yeah. So this is good stuff you've been using.

[John]

I've been using this for about like two weeks.

[Serguo]

Wow.

[John]

I think it's working so far.

[Brian]

Two weeks on Wild Roman and you look like that.

[John]

Yeah, I mean I think it's been, you know, it's helped with like beard growth and just general skin clarity.

[Brian]

You look fantastic.

[John]

Yeah, you're glowing. You're really glowing from the inside out.

[Brian]

It must be the grass fed tallow and the cold pressed oils or maybe it's the wild botanicals. But it's clearly.

[John]

I just want to say never stop. Really truly never stop using this product.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[John]

Because I do not want you to go back. Never churn. I don't want you to go back. Never churn. I think you're a customer for life.

[Brian]

Never. Never churn. Never churn from this. Anyway, back to the show. What do you think it takes to win in this category? Sahil's obviously an influencer, an author. He has a massive newsletter. He has 1.1 million followers on X and has an audience. But something we keep coming back to is an audience might not be enough to truly win in Academy. What are.

[John]

I think he's got to go hard on target. This feels like a good brand to introduce like Talo.

[Brian]

Yes.

[John]

To the target audience. Right. This feels again like going, going for the set, bunch of products out the gates. This, this screams end cap to me. I, I was talking to a friend and they have a brand new that does over 100 million a year. Only in Target they don't sell anywhere else. And so it's just such a massive channel. And so I think Sahil can probably leverage his brand to just go really hard into Target early. But I'm sure he can at least get some initial traction. Dtc.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The DTC thing is great just because it gets the business up and running. Kind of like, you know, iron out any of the kinks, get the supply chain going, you know, learn the obvious customer service questions.

[John]

Yeah, the main, the main thing that people miss with like personality led kind of like influencer brands like this is that no matter how big Your audience is you can be Kim Kardashian. And in order to build a truly big business, you get this initial boost from your audience. Yeah, but, but, but the nature of like any audience is that the longer that you just advertise against it, you can saturate it. Kim K can post like five times in the first week, but then eventually you have to go find new people that aren't necessarily getting exposure.

[Brian]

Well, it's a fascinating. It's a fascinating question. Anyway, Liquidity is having some fun with databricks. He says you're laughing. Startups are raising Series Ls instead of going public and you're laughing. Yeah, it is crazy. I was thinking about the product that databricks is offering, like a financial product that databricks is offering.

[John]

So funny. The deal director who's often in the chat here, replied to this and said, don't be salty. VCs need to get paid too.

[Brian]

That's it.

[John]

Couldn't agree more.

[Brian]

There is something to the fact of if you have a growth fund with billions and billions of dollars under management and you need to park a couple hundred mil in a safe place, that's going to grow. It's not some like databricks is not like a, oh, started a year ago. AI company that might be gone or there's going to be some different competitive pressure. It's a real company is really going. The databricks Series L looks pretty good anyway.

[John]

Trey in the chat says, wait. According to Reuters, trying to reverse engineered ASML's EUV machine with the help of former ASML engineers and it's undergoing testing.

[Brian]

That's crazy.

[John]

Well, they've never done this before.

[Brian]

That's another good question for Doug. We can get into that. I don't know. It does feel like there's a bit of a boom in lithography machines right now. We had one founder on the show talking about it and it feels like that was for a long time thought of as unassailable. You could not build a business that was that deep in the chip supply chain. It was just too difficult. And now people are at least trying. I don't know, maybe they're seeing this.

[John]

Is what, this is what I've always said on the, like China Nvidia or just the China AI debate. It's like no matter how many chips you give China, they will never say, oh yeah, we actually want to be dependent on foreign suppliers for this technology that's so critical to the future. We'd love to just remain dependent. It's like, no, they'll take the chips and they'll continue to innovate and copy and invest to get to the to parody.

[Brian]

I can't believe we got a crossover between good skin care and databricks, but he is here on the timeline. Fahd says the real reason Brian is trying to live forever is because he was an early investor in databricks and is waiting for the liquidity event. Of course, there's probably plenty of times to tender your shares if you want.

[John]

To, but I got to say, Brian is looking fantastic in this new image.

[Brian]

He looks 2025 is the best he's looked.

[John]

This is a great version. This is a great the 2023. This is the trough of disillusionment. Yeah, trophy disillusion. Everyone's like, he looks like he's dying. This can't be good. Look at him now.

[Brian]

I think the lighting is also doing a little bit of work there.

[John]

Yeah, but just the general skin tone.

[Brian]

He just feels more balanced.

[John]

Yeah, that's good.

[Brian]

Well, we mentioned Netflix before. Obviously they're trying to go for Warner Brothers, but they're going for Barstool Sports as well. Before we take you into this story, let me tell you about Julius AI, the AI data analyst that works for you. Join millions who use Julius to to connect their data, ask questions and get insights in seconds.

[John]

Let's actually pull up the Portnoy video. I want to pull up the Portnoy video.

[Brian]

So Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool says breaking I am proud to announce in our continuing 20 plus year evolution, we are now partnering with Netflix for exclusive video podcasts. And the way he frames this in the video is remarkable. So let's play it.

[John]

Emergency press conference time.

[Brian]

If you haven't heard the news, I'm.

[David Senra]

Proud to announce that Barstool is partnered.

[John]

With Netflix for three of our topics.

[Jacob Efron]

Exclusive video only on Netflix starting next year.

[Brian]

I'm talking you want to watch a video part of my take netflix 3 one watch video of spit and Chiclets. Netflix actually spit there. That's just my brain. You want to watch a video of Ryan Rossello show where Netflix 5, 6, 7 video audio stay the same video where Netflix. Netflix Netflix 10. We're proud to partner one of the.

[Jacob Efron]

Best in breed companies. That's what we do at Barstool. Evolve, rotate evolve video next year PMT.

[John]

Chicklets Ryan Russello Netflix.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Netflix.

[John]

Netflix.

[Brian]

Yeah 13. Netflix 13. Pause In a 47 second video, 13 mentions founders.

[John]

Anyway, that's what's there out there. Founders, technology founders. Next Time you think, oh, I need to film this cinema. Oh, I was gonna.

[Brian]

Yeah, that's amazing.

[John]

I need to film this crazy cinema. I need a studio shot of me sitting down on a couch looking all put together. Dave is sitting there with a bunch of windows behind it that are reflecting he one shot at this video. And it's way more engaging than him just being, you know, trying to be all performed professional.

[Brian]

But I mean, to be fair, like, in order to do that, 20 years. 20 years of experience, like most people cannot just one shot that on day one of their career on camera. It is hard. Anyway. Turbo Puffer. Turbo Puffer. Turbo Puffer. If you want serverless vector and full text search. Turbo Puffer. If you want something built from first principles and object storage. Turbo Puffer.

[John]

Turbo Puffer.

[Brian]

If you want something fast Turbo Puffer linear turbo puffer. 10x cheaper turbo puffer Cursor. Turbo Puffer Scalable Turbo Puffer. It really does work. It just worms its way into your brain. Anyway, the other big get for I guess the modern tech companies is the Oscars are moving to YouTube, which is a box of.

[John]

Okay, so explain the Oscars.

[Brian]

Okay, so it's like, you know how we did the award shows for, you know, random obscure achievements?

[John]

Journalist of the year.

[Brian]

Yes. Absolute hitter of the year. It's like that, but for movies, of course. The Oscars, very cool. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and they said they reached a deal with YouTube for exclusive rights to the show starting in 2029. So, I mean, really feels like forever, but I'm sure it'll be upon us in no time, but probably the right time. But does feel particularly. It hits particularly hard because it's. It's like the whole show is about the theater. It's about the movie industry.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brian]

And the movie industry is saying like, yep, like, YouTube beat us.

[John]

It's over.

[Brian]

It's over.

[John]

We're so back. But also, it's over.

[Brian]

Anyway, let me tell you about numeral compliance. Handled numeral worries about sales tax and VAT compliance so you can focus on growth.

[John]

Okay, let's pull up this video of Vlad and then we'll bring in our first.

[Brian]

What is he holding? Is he holding an auction paddle or.

[John]

Earlier I showed one of the many weather contracts we offer on the platform. Here's another one. Some people have already started to realize that using prediction markets can be cheaper than conventional fire, flood and hurricane insurance. You can just place a trade on your. On your phone without having to deal with a traditional broker. Earlier I showed. Okay, Give your take.

[Brian]

I have a take. Let's break it down.

[John]

So on one hand, give the funny take first.

[Brian]

The funny thing is instead of buying insurance, you just.

[John]

Well, yes. Yeah. So the funny thing here is, like, instead of, you know, insurance is like a pretty cool product. It gives you a lot of peace of mind. Pay for it once, you know, a year, just pulls it out kind of automatic. You got a policy, whatever. You don't have to think about it. In this scenario, it would be like, okay, you're heading into the next month and you're like, all right. Like, I'm pulling up the weather charts. Like, I'm trading, I'm trading. I'm trading effectively.

[Brian]

Will my house burn down?

[John]

Will my house burn down from a fire? The other problem here is if you're betting on a fire happening in a certain area and depending on the odds and if there's a lot of volume on it, it could very well incentivize somebody to start a fire in your neighborhood. So I think, obviously, I think prediction markets are very cool in a lot of ways, but the CEOs that have been integrating prediction markets have been coming out and giving some pretty wild examples of their value. When I think that the value is that consumers want. They want these products. Experiences.

[Brian]

Yeah. I think that there is a world where you do wind up building an actual financial product on top of all of this. That feels a lot more normal instead of the DIY version. But obviously it's very funny. Anyway, we have our next guest, Serguo. Welcome to the show and thank you for joining us. You're welcome. You look fantastic. Feeling. Feeling the Christmas spirit.

[John]

I'm gonna move this out of the way.

[Brian]

The big smack.

[Serguo]

What's up, guys?

[Brian]

How you doing?

[Serguo]

I'm feeling good. I'm feeling the spirit.

[John]

I have to take my ear off so I can get the.

[Brian]

Yeah, it's a mess.

[Serguo]

Those look very natural on you.

[John]

Yes, I know. They really do. I said earlier before the show starts, John's more Santa coated. I'm more elf coated. I don't know, it's just. Anyways, you're looking like a lot more. A lot more polished.

[Brian]

I like the nails. Like frosted nails.

[John]

There you go.

[Serguo]

We don't have skin care, but we've got nail art.

[Brian]

Okay, cool.

[John]

Amazing.

[Brian]

How did you process the storytelling, the storytelling cycle, News cycle? Yesterday we asked pretty much everyone about storytelling. Do you. Did you? Did you. I mean, I'm sure you saw the viral.

[Serguo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian]

Announcement that there's a lot of companies that are hiring People, storytellers, Is this just a rebranding? Is this a valuable thing? If a founder came to you and said, my second hire is going to be a storyteller, what would you say?

[Serguo]

I'd say that's your job.

[John]

Okay, so then the question becomes, can like, is it a skill set that you're kind of born with? You maybe start at an 80% and you can get to 100%, but if you start at like a 10% capability wise, like, you should probably just focus on other things. Right. You're maybe never going to be great at that. I was classifying it as like, it feels like there's like Joe Rogan CEOs which are CEOs that could go on a three hour podcast and deliver an amazing performance, some of which would be about the business, a lot of which would just be about, you know, random stuff. But it feels like, have you seen founders in your portfolio go from just okay to like truly excellent?

[Serguo]

I think so. I'm an extreme growth mentality person. I'm like, if you are smart and you are a high work ethic, most skills are accessible to you. Not everybody can be tbpn, right? But you can go from a D to a B plus and that does a lot for your company. But I don't think you can outsource it. And so if you take this storytelling idea and you just kind of disaggregate it a little bit, you have channels that have changed, right? This matters. And traditional media, you know, it's having a time of it, it's struggling. Right. And so if you think about the job, like, does anybody want to like start off as a junior PR consultant today? It's a hard job, right? I'm not saying there's not room for that, but the traditional like low grade version of that that was. I'm going to call a bunch of journalists, I'm going to repeat the pitch from the company. I have no point of view, I don't really have storytelling or taste and I'm a C. Like, I think there's not of lot a, a lot of room for that.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Right?

[Serguo]

Because if you think about it from the reporter's perspective, even if you think about where the attention actually is, you could be like a mid size AI influencer and have as much like followership as a large media publication that's relevant today. Right.

[John]

And so I think, and weirdly like the hardest job on our team is Nick, who's somewhere around here. And that is actually just like getting inundated with pitches from various PR teams, companies, agencies, et cetera. And he has, like, functionally, he has to say no to 95% of them just because we don't have. There's no time in the show to do as many as are coming in.

[Serguo]

Yeah. I think there are a lot of people now where. Why do they call it storyteller instead of content person or PR or whatever?

[John]

Or just advertising specialists.

[Serguo]

Or advertising specialists. The meta has changed. Right. It's saying we need people with taste, we're chasing the moment, There's a lot of noise, and we have to create some signal even if we want the traditional channels. Yeah. And so some of it is skill set, some of it is the story about, like, what the job is. But I do think a lot of it is hard to outsource and you can get better. We run a grant program which is like an uncapped note for 10 companies twice a year called Embed. And the highest rated session for the program is a storytelling session. Interesting, right? So you come and you pitch your company, and it goes from like a D minus to an A plus in terms of where people start. But, like, people get a lot better in the span of a week before they do demo day. And so it is.

[John]

It is relative. It is relatively, like, structured. Right. It's not like if you're making a film, it's not like, hey, I need to reinvent the hero's journey. Like, the structure works. And I think there's the same type of approach you can apply to storytelling about your company. I would have this. I would get sent a deck, and I'm like, your idea is cool and you're great. Your deck is terrible. And I would just send a figma file that is like, here's the deck template. Here's like, an example for each. Like, six examples for each slide. Just like, completely redo it, and then it. And then it's automatically, like, a few times better.

[Serguo]

But you have amazing intuition for this. Now, did you start great at it?

[John]

No, I made. No, no, no, no. Yeah, it's definitely.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[John]

I don't know. I think I started. I've been sort of naturally. I've studied advertising since I was a kid. Not directly, but just, like, understanding, like, why do I want this product so much more than this product? Right. And that started with, like, skateboarding and snowboarding stuff. Right. And so I, like, fully understood, okay, this. This brand, it's like their event athlete strategy, the design, this collaboration that they did. How. You know, But. But again, like, it was very, very refined. To get to that ultimate structure that I have in Figma, that I can just be like, this is the structure that. That has worked for me and it's worked for a bunch of other companies. It's like, tried and true. This structure, even just my personal one, which I haven't shared broadly, has, like, directly contributed to raising like, hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. Just across the years. So I don't know. I think you can systematize it.

[Serguo]

Yeah, there's art and there's alpha in it, but it's certainly something you can practice.

[John]

Totally.

[Serguo]

And I think people have discovered that, like, you need to be good at this. Now, this.

[Brian]

Do you think people.

[John]

Well, the other. The other thing I've noticed with, like, company storytelling is like, if it is truly.

[Serguo]

And people take you more seriously if you do it in an elf costume.

[John]

Yeah, of course, of course. No, but the thing that I've always found is, like, if it's really difficult to get the story out in a cohesive way, then your whole strategy is just effed. Like, it's just bad. Right. And if it comes out very naturally, it means that, like, there's alignment, the strategy makes sense. But if you're like, if making the deck takes 50 hours, it's like, you probably just don't have that great of a story in the first place. The actual facts of the situation are not that great.

[Serguo]

Yeah, this is so true for me. So the version of it is, at some point I actually thought I wanted to be a writer. Like, thank God I'm not. I find writing incredibly painful. But I still have to write every week for my work as an investor.

[John]

Like memos, LP updates.

[Serguo]

Yeah, yeah, mostly memos. And like, the problem is writing is thinking. Right. Storytelling is thinking. How do I actually communicate the strategy of the business and do I believe in it? And the difference between, like, I'm procrastinating, I'm avoiding writing this memo for six days in a row because I got to talk to my partners about it, is I actually understand the strategy of the company or I don't. And sometimes it's because, like, I just don't know enough. Right. We make our first defense investment and I'm like, well, I need to call like 45 people to understand what I don't understand about this yet in terms of the procurement process or whatever else. How important is electronic warfare? Like, how quickly is this cycle going to go? But. But some part isn't knowledge. It's just like, does it make sense at all?

[John]

Yeah.

[Serguo]

And I have learned to Trust that signal of like, well, if I'm not missing information and it's still like not super cohesive, it's not because I'm an idiot, because I have to go tell this story to recruits and to the media and to the next investor. And if it's hard, they're not going to get it either.

[Jacob Efron]

Right.

[Serguo]

And so I think there's substance in that.

[Brian]

Yeah, I think part of the at least backlash or virality around still so.

[John]

Funny dude, to be in Santa. We almost did Santa. We almost did Santa for Evan from Snap on Monday. And yeah, yeah, I'm not. There you go.

[Brian]

It's the first time you're meeting someone like, can you really go full sand? But yeah, I mean part of the reason there was like some backlash is I think people are worried about startups leaning into like over rotating to all style, no substance, all storytelling, no plot. You have to forget that like without some plot points, you can't tell a story around it. If you haven't built anything you haven't raised, you know, you didn't raise a funding round. Like a lot of the stories get, get told around. We built this thing, we satisfied this customer, we hired these people.

[John]

You also need, you also need tension, you need, you need some like adversity. Right? So we'll have founders come on and we're like, is this not like the most hyper competitive category? And they'll be like, no, it's not. And then like not give like the follow up as to why. And it's like it's okay if it's competitive, if you're gonna win and you might be the one to win, but it's better to just admit like it's competitive and like here's what, here's what the market is like missing. Sometimes people don't want to share whatever their alpha is.

[Serguo]

But yeah, so I've learned a little bit more about. I'm just gonna go ahead and say marketing, advertising, storytelling. But like that category of things that has existed for a little while over time. But I'm still like, I taught marketing at Warren, but I'm, I'm like at my core.

[John]

Wow. She didn't just study, she wrote the book.

[Serguo]

I studied a little bit.

[John]

But.

[Serguo]

But like I'm a product absolutist to your point of. I actually had just this like pretty full contact debate with a founder in our portfolio very recently about how much of the success of a company is its ability to raise money, get to momentum, look like it's winning to customers. Look like it's winning to hires and go faster than others. And I'm like, well, there's some. It depends on the space. Right. And if you're in, take an example, like late 2010s SaaS, the degree of freedom you have for what you're going to go build in any given category, not to denigrate the product work, it's just like, you can only do so much without fundamental technology change. If you have certain integration points and certain workflows.

[John]

Totally.

[Serguo]

And you can have amazing execution there. But I'm like, you know what you probably want to do? Invest in people who understand the workflow, have amazing execution, and are total animals about storytelling and momentum and all of that.

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, right.

[Serguo]

And that doesn't mean there's no substance. It's just like, well, there's like, there's not as much creativity.

[Brian]

Sound like 2010 advice, though. That sounds like advice today.

[Serguo]

No, no, no. Okay. So today I would argue actually, like, is it different? Yes. Okay.

[John]

There's more white. I mean, 20, late 2010 Sass, there was no, There was struggling to find white space. I think, like, if you, if you.

[Serguo]

Look at the things, you're not that different.

[John]

Well, yeah, the 2021 era, you saw this like it was crypto and fintech. Sure, there was a lot of SaaS, but like, even with fintech, there was some new infrastructure with fintech that made it easier, but yet that you were still competing with companies that started five, six years ago. And so that was just really rough. And so I think the difference today is like, we have super powerful LLMs, we have machines that can think. And so maybe there's a little bit more kind of random white space and categories that you can find and go digging in.

[Serguo]

I was talking to an investor friend yesterday about this and we were discussing whether or not you just want to invest in the smartest people you could within some constraints of they can convince other people to come to their cause and such. And I'm like, I actually think this is a much better strategy now than it was in the late 2010s, 2020 period. Because you're like, well, the variance on what you can build is really wide. And that's both information and ability. Creativity. People are trying to, you know, they're trying to build very different products, even in software. And it depends on like, what you think you can do with models or robots or hardware, whatever it is.

[John]

Right.

[Serguo]

And I think it's just like broader. And if you can do more different things with product, it matters more. So substance Matters more than ever. Yeah, yeah, but storytelling too.

[Brian]

If you believe in the midwit meme, then you should invest in the smartest founders, but also the dumbest founders because who knows, they might lock into the same thing. No, I don't think.

[John]

I think, I think that, I think, I think that works. I think that works in cpg, actually. I think it works in cpg. I've seen some people on both sides do very, very well. And in the middle it's like innovating on four to four to five different dimensions. It's like way too complicated and tends to.

[Brian]

Anyway, tell me, what is a Neo Lab?

[Serguo]

Okay, so there's this category of company that has been, you know, a handful of these things have been funded this year that are quite controversial in the investing community, which is essentially like, we're going to raise a solid amount of money, let's say, you know, 50, $100 million plus, and we are going to invest in large scale AI research and training up front.

[Brian]

Yeah. So not a rapper company.

[Serguo]

Not a rapper company, though. We can come back to that. And I think this is like one of the reasons it's so interesting is because you had this dominant narrative for a lot of the last couple years of just like, how could you compete with Google and OpenAI?

[John]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian]

And maybe people throw anthropic in there. Yeah. And then, but that was the first.

[John]

And it's notable because you have, you have, if you're, if you're trying to build like a new LLM or maybe have some new ideas around that type of product. And people are already saying like, oh, OpenAI can't compete with Google because Google has all this cash flow and even though they have like almost a billion weekly actives, like they're burning so much money. And then you get a new company, a NeoLab, that's like, oh yeah, we're also going to compete and we don't have any users and we have a fraction of the money. And so that's why I think it's been like almost a narrative violation. If you're going to, or at least contrarian to say, like, no, we actually are going to bet even more into this category.

[Brian]

Point of clarification, Thinking machines, ssi, Anthropic. Are those Neo Labs or are the Neo Labs post those labs?

[Serguo]

I think the definition would be post those grabs.

[Brian]

That's helpful.

[Serguo]

But that was the first generation of this because they also fought that narrative. That makes sense. And OpenAI did before them.

[Brian]

Totally.

[Serguo]

And so I think this is like this Big open question in venture investing. It opens a can of worms of like well how much money do you need to go do venture investing at conviction? I got to say like 14 times like we would argue not that much necessarily if you're very early.

[Brian]

But no, it changes the economics completely to like growth fund you need to be able to build a position because it used to be you could take a flyer for two, you know, get, get 10 company for a couple million bucks.

[Serguo]

Yeah.

[Brian]

And if that's just not going to happen on day one, it's just the economics just don't work. Right.

[Serguo]

Yeah.

[Brian]

So is that changing your fund or have you figured out a way how.

[Serguo]

Are you thinking about it? It's not for us and you know we have supported some new research lab efforts but I think that's also a tactic of how early you are. But I think the broader thing that is really interesting is this narrative violation or question of is scale the only thing that matters. And if you're going to spend the GDP of a medium sized country on training, can anybody keep up with you?

[John]

Or even if. So Greg had a video that came out yesterday or this morning were at OpenAI and he was just saying we've tried everything but scale and scale is the thing that works. Right. And so again it's, it's very contrarian to be like well no, we actually can come up with you're basically if you're raising $100 million to compete.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[John]

With these other labs you're saying like we don't need scale just because you're never going to be able to compete on scale when these anthropic and OpenAI are running away in the capital market.

[Serguo]

You know, I think one of the more nuanced arguments about these things has been let's say a bunch of people can go raise hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to $100 billion plus, which is a wild claim to begin with. Even so where you spend that money matters not just size.

[Jacob Efron]

Right.

[Serguo]

And so one of the things that's happened with open source is there are large pre trained models, some Chinese, some European, now hopefully more and more American ones that people work with and are really powerful. Like the big joke that Silicon Valley.

[John]

Runs on coin and they're like distilling them.

[Serguo]

They're distilling them and they're also, I think if you're a research lab you tend to be post training or just trying entirely different architectures. And so people are. The argument I think goes something along the lines of more is better. Eventually Right. Like I do need the GDP of Japan in compute, but on day one Ilya Sutskever basically said this, like in the age of research, we need some amount of money to just validate our ideas. Yeah, but it's not a trillion dollars.

[John]

Yeah, I mean his interview I took away, he's like, kind of like we're going to do a couple million here, a couple million here, a couple million here.

[Serguo]

I think it's a little bigger than.

[John]

That, but yeah, okay, okay, but, but the idea is like he's not just like we're one shotting, we're going to try to one shot this with 60% of the dollars that we've raised. It's much more again experimental research driven.

[Serguo]

Yeah. And then I think the second part of the argument of like, you know, we're doing actually new things versus fighting symmetric warfare with ant or OpenAI, which is like seemingly a bad idea in Google, you know, money machine, is that if you have these pre trained models, like we can just focus. If you have the GDP of Japan and you have the GDP of Germany and I have some other equivalent country. California, Right?

[John]

Yeah. Let's give it up for California.

[Serguo]

Let's go. California, we love you. Total failure of governance, an accident of history, but it's the best place in the world.

[John]

We're still cooking.

[Serguo]

Still cooking, still cooking. Thank you semiconductors. But if everybody has some huge amount of money and I put it all toward post training or self improvement or diffusion or SSMS or some other bet and you're like serving inference and also doing pre training and whatever else, then like my effort on the thing that matters might be bigger than your effort even if you have more money overall. That's the story.

[Brian]

Let me pitch you on a fund thesis and I want you to push back on it potentially or agree with it. So I have a question.

[Serguo]

Tell me now and then let me do it.

[Brian]

Okay. Yeah.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

I don't know.

[Brian]

Let's say I have a billion dollar fund. I'm gonna put $100 million in 10 of these Neo Labs, $100 million each. They're all gonna go and try different ideas. And my thinking is 10% chance one of them goes really, really big. But I'm also underwriting these on talent acquisitions. And I say that hey, I'm not gonna lose money on basically any of these. Even though I'm paying crazy prices at seed for just a couple people with barely an idea, I'm going to get a lot of money out because the big hyperscalers are going to continue to acquire. Are you telling me I think that party's over, or do you think, no, there's going to be an endless stream of billion dollar acquisitions coming out of the hyperscalers.

[John]

Yeah, it's like shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land in Satya's arms.

[Brian]

Yes. Is that true?

[Serguo]

I do think that is part of the calculus that's happening here, where the distribution of outcomes is like, without naming names. But how many people want to hire Ilya or Mira Moradi or Barrett or any of these folks that have started new labs? A lot of people that think that winning an AI race is very valuable to them.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brian]

So you think that the hyperscalers definitely aren't exhausted of these lab tuck ins? Lab tuck ins.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Okay.

[Serguo]

The actual.

[John]

And I think my point of view is like, as long as you have a bunch of people spending something in the range of $100 billion a year, and they believe that by spending a billion dollars to acquire a team, that they can make that money go further, there's a good chance that they will. It's always been if there's, if there's. Again, if there's like a pullback and new information, then you start to run the calculus of like, well, we're actually cutting spend and we've figured out what we need to figure out. And just adding five new smart people to the team is not going to give us that much of an edge in this market.

[Serguo]

Yeah, I think this is exactly right. Where one of the craziest reframings of this to me, made by somebody at a large lab with a lot of money to spend is like, just imagine Jordi is a researcher and his GPU budget for experimentation is $100 million personally. Right. And I have to give that to him all the time. Right. So he works.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Otherwise you start looking around, you say somewhere else.

[Serguo]

Well, and the question is like, well, then how much am I willing to pay for Jordy or the talent that is 1% better, 10% more likely to make the thing work? Actually a lot of money.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Right.

[Serguo]

Because it's like the way. I'm not saying that you should start your growth fund with this risk calculus. It takes a certain strength of gut. Right. But it's not irrational to be like, these players have already committed to spend X billion dollars of compute over the next years, and they will look at the people as leverage on that compute.

[John]

Totally.

[Serguo]

And so, like, I don't. I mean, lots of things can happen in the macro and people can change their minds. And some of these contracts are on performance. Right. They're not like fully solid. But the way it looks now, I'd be like, I think people are going to keep spending money here, so you're probably safe with your fund.

[Brian]

Amazing.

[Serguo]

No financial advice.

[Brian]

If the fund pans out. I'm going big on Christmas. What should I give to all of the founders in my portfolio who have made me so much money? How do you think about gifting? Is there a top gift recommendation for this Christmas season? Is there anything that you can share about top gifts?

[John]

Yes.

[Brian]

Is there anything you can think about?

[John]

Yeah. Look at the Christmas theme on this too. We got Santa Claus.

[Serguo]

You know, this is a gift to advertising. I learned recently that Coke made the modern.

[Brian]

We fact checked this.

[John]

It's not true. They solidified it. No, they solidified it.

[Brian]

They solidified it.

[John]

They like. They basically like the whole. They didn't create the meta, but they. They owned it.

[Brian]

They owned it. They story told around it. Yeah, they stories told around it over substance. So. So gift guide or maybe like a book recommendation that you could put under the tree if you. I always like giving books. What do you have?

[Serguo]

No, I'm a. I'm a big books person. I want people to give me time and books and nobody seems to be able to give me time. So that's deep.

[John]

Whoa.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

It's crazy.

[Serguo]

Yeah. My husband hates this. He's like, what do you want for Christmas? Do you want, like, stuff? Do you want jewelry? I'm like, no, I want time. And he's like, terrible answer.

[Brian]

Maybe he should get you a luxury watch on getbezel.com, our sponsor.

[Jacob Efron]

What's better?

[Brian]

The only way you can get time is if you get a watch on getbezel.com.

[John]

What are you. How are you processing? How are you processing the current moment? And like, what are you. What are you looking out for in the next 12 months? It feels like it's hard to think that we could go. Things could get crazier.

[Brian]

I disagree.

[Serguo]

Can I give one book recommendation and then we'll talk about 26? Okay. Only one? No, I'm going to give you three. So I think Dan Wang's book Breakneck on China and the US Was really good. It's worth reading. It's like a little stylized, but I think like really substantive, actually. Just good storytelling, I suppose. There's a book on imbruvica. Like, I think a lot of people are suddenly interested in biotech.

[Brian]

Okay. Yeah.

[Serguo]

I'm not saying that's bad. I think biotech is Amazing. And it will get a lot more impactful and like more efficient. But the book is called. I think it's called For Blood and Money. But it's about.

[John]

Great title. Yeah, I'm interested.

[Serguo]

Yeah, no, it's sexy. I think it's.

[John]

Doesn't sound like a textbook.

[Serguo]

As hot and interesting as a book can be about a non technical founder of a breakout leukemia drug. Like this is worth reading.

[Brian]

Okay.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Very cool.

[John]

Very cool.

[Serguo]

And then if anybody. Okay. I mean this is a lot of tech nerds in this audience. So if anybody hasn't read Masters of Doom.

[Brian]

Okay.

[Serguo]

This is a story of like the like the Carmack best era of the video game industry. Carmack worth reading.

[John]

All right. These are great.

[Brian]

Masters of Doom is great.

[John]

Okay.

[Serguo]

Actually I have one more niche.

[Brian]

One Prince of Persia book by Stripe Press. That's a good one in that Masters of Doom.

[Serguo]

No, I haven't read it. Now I'm excited.

[Brian]

That's sort of like similar theme.

[Serguo]

Okay, I'm gonna screw up this title.

[Brian]

Cause it's speaking of storytelling. I mean the story of a individual video game is particularly great cause it's a tech company. But it's always hard to tell the story of a full tech company that just keeps going and going and going. And the video game companies, they do. But you can also tell just the story of that one game.

[Serguo]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Like this.

[Serguo]

It's this multi year project.

[Brian]

Exactly. Whereas no one's like oh yeah, we needed to talk about like you know, the story of Figma in 2018 specifically. Like it's like this whole. It's such a broader arc.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Anyway, other book recommendations. Are we going 26 predictions.

[Serguo]

Okay. Maybe last niche one that we could do the rest episode this way. The. There's a book I'm really interested in like what environments make for good ideas. Right. And like consistently good ideas. Because part of like extreme growth mentality is you think environment matters. Like how do we like help people create the environment where they're doing their best work? There is a book called called Apprentice to Genius and it's about a series of researchers at NIH and Johns Hopkins that had like just huge contributions to biology, chemistry, science for a while. Like way more than you should have in just a small lab over like decades.

[John]

Yeah. And was it the feng shui of the building or something? What about the environment? Obviously like the academic environment.

[Serguo]

Yeah, I think it's a. I think.

[John]

Even a couple key people that were kind of like around during that period.

[Serguo]

It is definitely about a couple key people. But the Question is, how come their students also are like Nobel Prize winners?

[Jacob Efron]

Right.

[Serguo]

Because it's hard to imbue the next person with magical creativity.

[John]

Go win a Nobel Prize. Here's the playbook.

[Serguo]

Yeah, but like three times in a row, man. And so I think just look at this deck.

[John]

Study this deck. Study this figma file for an hour and you'll be.

[Brian]

It's actually an online course now.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Nobel Prize.

[John]

It's available for a thousand dollars for a grant with Klarna payments attached.

[Brian]

How did I get this? Lambo. I won a Nobel Prize. And then they sold the course on how to win a Nobel Prize.

[Serguo]

The course is $9.99.

[John]

Yeah.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

How are you?

[John]

What are you looking forward to this next year? What are you kind of wary of?

[Serguo]

I think all the other investors should go away and leave AI alone. Oh, okay.

[John]

It's over, everyone. It's over. It's over.

[Serguo]

Sorry. The demand is not real.

[John]

Look at the order. Oracle stock price. That's. That's what's happening here.

[Serguo]

If I can't move the markets that way. No, I. Okay, here. I have really high conviction that like, you know, 26 is going to be a year of a bunch of new applications of AI. And that doesn't mean that there won't be like market panic or some bumps. Of course, people like claim it's winter, but I think there is now so much proof that the models are powerful in a bunch of different domains.

[John]

Yeah.

[Serguo]

And it starts with ones that maybe are not, like, so obviously commercial, you know, Rentech aside, people are like, what can you do with math? Right. I feel like here's my prediction for 26 that you can like come back to me on is, I think somebody out there is going to make a lot of money, like hundreds of millions of dollars on AI trading. Like, it's not happening at that scale yet, but people are certainly gonna try. And I see no reason that would.

[Brian]

But do you think that would happen on Wall Street? Will there just be like a pod that is like training models or is that like a startup in Silicon Valley? Because they're very different cultures.

[Serguo]

I would love to see a big startup.

[Brian]

It would be fun if it was our team, but I think it's gonna be, who knows?

[Serguo]

I think people are already trying it in lots of different environments.

[Brian]

I have talked to some and the markets are big. I've talked to some high frequency traders who are just like, yeah, I worked at. I worked at Meta and like, Meta is better at machine learning than we are. I don't Know if that's like holds across the entire industry. But I do think that like the, the, the ad tech industry might be better even though the high frequency trading industry is like a little sexier and a little bit like more discreet.

[John]

Yeah. One reason you might see a startup do it is just because the labs have been and just like the west coast has been recruiting from some of these trading firms on the east coast and so they already have the experience and then they like hey, we made something that's pretty smart. Maybe, maybe we're seeing like I think Nasdaq announced like 24 hour trading and there is a lot of volatility just in general. So.

[Brian]

Yeah, last question for me. Do you. We've been wrestling with this debate over whether some of these AI tools become like video games. We talked to the founder of Suno and it's like and Midjourney similar where there's a lot of people that are using midjourney as a prosumer tool. There's other people that are using Midjourney just as like a game. Like they have an idea for a funny image, they make it and then they're satisfied when they get that image that they created. I think there's a lot of people that are creating songs on SUNO and then just enjoying them themselves and they're not actually sharing them anywhere. Do you think that like how are you thinking about the nature of like gen AI interfacing with like prosumer, maybe new consumer flows, this like gamification? Is any of that resonating from you or any of the portfolio companies?

[Serguo]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Okay.

[Serguo]

So one thing I have I think is inspiring as an idea is that most people are much more creative than they get to express in daily life.

[Jacob Efron]

Right.

[Serguo]

If you are a creative of any type, like people have more ideas and points of view than they have tools and skills to go execute. And so if AI allows people in images and music and video, I know if it's a good thing in writing with slop but or code even.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Right.

[Serguo]

Like if you can make things at a much higher level.

[John]

Yeah.

[Serguo]

Then you're like you're going to enjoy making things and making more things. Right. Like you know what's like the saying inside every adult is an artist because who doesn't draw.

[John]

I feel like some people just don't know what the process. Like people that get viewed as like creative people are often people that just take two very different ideas and, and put them into one idea, take something that's working and make it different. And I think once People. I've seen people in their head kind of like unlock that concept and then they realize like, oh, I can be creative because like, here's a product that I like. What if I made it healthy here?

[Serguo]

You know, did they make Santa or did they.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What if we made a soda and then marketed it with by creating Santa Claus and we're back to storytelling, I guess. One question, maybe fun prediction. How much do you, how many dollars do you think will be spent on ads within LMS next year, do you think?

[Serguo]

I think it's a little early.

[Brian]

Little early.

[John]

So that's my feeling. Like I can see it ramping in the back half of the year and like, actually because I think the ads are going to be extremely effective. People are saying like, oh, a lot of these queries are not that high intent. It's just research. But I think that a lot more of them, I think a meaningful amount are product research. And once you're driving these sort of like high intent clicks, I think it will scale pretty quickly. But I think it will take. I think it will. I think this will be like a second half of the year 2026 story as it starts to scale. But we've had founders on the show that have said like when somebody lands on my site from chat CBT, they can convert at 7% and my average conversion rate is like 3%.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Serguo]

So I think people don't quite. I think when it happens gonna happen really fast. And the question is just like how quickly can the companies with a bunch of traffic build any kind of product because the inventory is gonna be so good. And I think it's useful to look at open evidence as a precursor here. So it has been reported that the company went from like 2 to 150 million of ad run rate already.

[John]

Oh yeah, it's fully ad supported. This is LLM for doctors.

[Serguo]

This is the biggest ad business in AI today.

[John]

Right, I forgot about that.

[Serguo]

And like, what happened? They made a product that was free that was so useful to doctors because you're literally answering the question of like, well, I don't know what's happening in this area of like personalized medicine for this domain of oncology for this type of patient. Right. I'm from Wisconsin, so we'll use Wisconsin as an example. Like I am a doctor in rural Wisconsin that's never seen this type of leukemia. Right. So I'm going to ask open evidence for help. Guess what? Like, that's a really high intent query to go serve ads against.

[John]

Here's a Treatment. Yeah.

[Serguo]

And so I think when you compare that to the ad inventory that exists in the world, which is just like look at a bunch of random stuff. My advert query is two words or whatever. Like I think that and there's something.

[John]

There'S some amount of, there's a level of trust that I think someone will have with open evidence that they maybe don't have with Google search.

[Serguo]

Totally.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Yeah.

[Serguo]

They understand what the sources are. It's, you know, research trials, et cetera. It's generated data from other doctors. So I think, I think that if you can make the right products here, it's going to be very big. My only question is like how quickly.

[John]

They make those ad products last. Last question. Are you long or short? Forward deployed engineer like the model.

[Serguo]

I think it is a symptom of how quickly AI is happening. And so if the long is people are gonna pay for a lot of FTE next year. Huge bull.

[John]

Right. So maybe more like 2027, 2028.

[Serguo]

2028. I think in the long run you should deliver that as a product and people are going to. I think FTE happens when people don't have a transition happens too quickly or they don't have the talent or the ability organizationally to do like change management, the corporate term. But it's real, right? It's really hard to like completely transform an asset manager or a big public company. And so like that's what you're paying for in 26 and 27 and maybe 28. But I think eventually it's going to be product.

[John]

Yep.

[Brian]

Well, thank you so much for coming.

[John]

I wish we had more time.

[Brian]

Merry Christmas.

[John]

Merry Christmas. Hit the gun, hit the gong for.

[Brian]

Conviction for conviction all the progress you've made and we will bring in Doug o'. Laughlin. The president of Semi analysis is coming on TVPN while we bring him in from the Restream waiting room. Let me tell you about graphite.dev code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. And we've been keeping Doug waiting, but let's bring him in to the TVPN ultradome. Doug, how are you doing?

[John]

Whoa, look at that. Outer galactic dud.

[Brian]

I'm so glad was delivered. It looks fantastic on you, dude.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

It's great. I've been telling we're gonna make some analysis. Like we're gonna try to do it this March. It's so good. I got it yesterday. I actually didn't realize I was on today. I just wore it today.

[Doug Bernauer]

For work.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

I'm like, I'm not. I'm not joking. And then I was like, oh, my God, my schedule, my calendar, I'm doing this. I was like, dude, this is perfect.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brian]

I mean, we were talking and Tyler was like, oh, did you book Doug specifically because you knew that Amazon was gonna do this deal with OpenAI? He's the perfect person to talk to.

[John]

No, we booked Doug because we love Doug.

[Brian]

I said, no, they did the deal because they knew Doug was going on TBPN on Wednesday, December 17th. They were like, we gotta give them something to talk about. Let's do a deal. And so Sam and Andy, they got together and they were like, this is good content for TVPN and semi analysis. Anyway, take us through your reaction to the deal and if you could actually just start with like, setting the table on where are we on the Trainium narrative? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it like, what do we know? How is it changing? What's the updated thinking around? Just Amazon's chip efforts?

[Doug O'Laughlin]

So I think it's pretty good. We wrote an article about training three. We think it's going to be a lot better than Trainium 2, mostly because there's a lot of interaction and help from the labs themselves. And let's not forget. Oh, my God, it's beautiful. Let's not forget. One of my favorite parts of this whole story is everyone's like, okay, we wrote about the TPU article and people hated it because we said, oh, it's a Ruben clickbait. Where did all the TPU engineers go? A lot of them went to Trainium.

[Brian]

So this brain rot's too Nvidia focused. I botched it, but I like.

[John]

We wanted to give you some Brainrot.

[Brian]

We wanted to put the Brainrot directly in the show because we've been enjoying the Brainrot edits and we thought, what if we did it live? But my prompting was maybe below standard. But I like the Is it a cake or not?

[Doug O'Laughlin]

That's pretty good. I honestly forgot about the is a cake.

[Brian]

Anyway, sorry, just resetting on Trainium. You wrote the article. Obviously there was like a bunch of back and forth, but how are you thinking about it currently?

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Look, I think we actually, in the Semi Analysis premium product that I manage, we kind of made a call that we thought there would be some kind of announcement. OpenAI@RE invent mostly because. And first principles. Here's what it is. Datacenter execution is starting to become a real issue. Oracle's delayed. Fairwater's delayed coreweave is delayed. And you know who is not delayed? Amazon. Amazon has like their execution is flawless when it comes to data center and power. And I think they're going to put like 5, 6 gigawatts online next year. It's a big number. Like a huge number.

[Brian]

Wow.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

And so OpenAI is always trying to secure more compute at every single point in time and who has the most power available to them and has a project that they obviously are very interested in getting more customers for. I think OpenAI's power constraint is going to. That's one of the reasons why the deal. And then also OpenAI is always down for fresh money at this point in time. They're hitting up Disney, they're hitting up Softbank. Everyone who has money they're trying to get investment from. So that's kind of like a win win for them.

[Brian]

Okay, so the question that I was kicking around was there's this $10 billion investment into OpenAI from Amazon and simultaneously OpenAI has around 38, 37 billion dollars of commitments with AWS over a series of years. And my question is, like, how do we see. How do you think about the way OpenAI will be working with AWS and Trainium chips broadly? Is it something where they can basically make all of their models multi platform and run them and kind of create one fluid compute resource, a pool of compute that can fluidly shift across Trainium and GPU from Nvidia? Or are they going to sort of take the Trainium chips and have a specific model? Like maybe they'll do their video generation over there or their image generation or they have old 4.0 workloads that are sticking around longer than they expected. Let's replatform that model to Trainium and have it run really cheaply on Trainium or something like that. Like is it a per per use partnership or is it something that cuts across the entire org? Do you have any visibility into that? Did we lose audio?

[John]

I'm not hearing, I'm not hearing. Doug lost him.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Oh, how about nerd now?

[Brian]

How about now?

[Jacob Efron]

We're good.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

I don't.

[Brian]

Sorry about that.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Okay, we're back. We're so back. I don't think we have perfect visibility first and foremost, but you can look at someone who's already doing that, which is anthropic. What are they doing? TPU's, they use GPUs and they use Trainium. And so there's a certain level that you can abstract it at. And I think TPU's for example, are trying to do it on torch TPU. Right. So at Pytorch and I think having the multiple compute, like elastic pools of compute is good for negotiating power and that's probably in OpenAI's interest, but it's like a pain in the ass to get this to work. So there's like a two. Two brains. One, if you're really focused, you just buy more of one and be the best at it. Two, at the same time you get to pay less gross margins. If you can kind of diversify your suppliers instead of just one, it's possible. Anthropic has shown you that they people can do it. They already have and that's probably what we. Yeah, so that's kind of my brain. I think it really comes down to the power constraint, dude. That's what Amazon has that no one else has and that's like, that's the art of the deal, if that makes sense.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Also.

[Brian]

Is that a refere. Is that like, does that tell me that Amazon was more excited about the AI build out a year or two ago? They didn't pause when Satya Nadella went through that pause? Or is it just Amazon's been building sort of linearly, growing, growing, growing for a decade, two decades. And so this is just more of the same what we should have predicted from Amazon. Do you have, do you have an idea of like is this them catching up? Is this them just maintaining their level of excitement?

[John]

Well if, I mean, how they wind up. If you look at Oracle's like backlog announcement, they were basically saying we're going to build AWS in like a couple years. Meanwhile, AWS has multi decade head start and it's like, yeah, we're also that like imagine they're thinking like we're going to, we're going to build that capacity too and you're welcome to have your deal with Oracle, but it makes sense that Amazon can kind of beat them to the punch.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Yeah, I think what Jordi said is probably more realistic. What's happened? So like last year we had the pause from Microsoft. Obviously it's a big deal, but even before the pause, Microsoft at the infrastructure level was never as sophisticated. From Azure versus aws. AWS is the OG all in house, did everything themselves and has like a very reactive and like battle tested infrastructure. And like, hey, they're the largest logistics company in the United States. They're one of the largest logistics companies in the entire world. Before all this AI stuff, they had the biggest amount of compute and the biggest, you know, the biggest infrastructure shell and all like the whole pipeline and platform and all of this. And I think that that's the like pretty much they finally got everything turned in the right direction with a focus on more AI. And then you're seeing the results of that about a year and a half later, like Right. But while Microsoft pulled back, they pushed ahead and then now all of their long term investments are going to start to bear fruit meaningfully in 26 and 27. So that's the, I think that that's the simplistic way to think about it. When I work, when I talk to and I work with people who have worked with, let's say and this is like from the before times, you know, before GPUs. The difference between AWS and Azure is like, you know, junior varsity varsity. Like they're a totally different league. And I think that that's. And you don't bet against AWS's infrastructure like execution there. We've seen almost Oracle is a perfect example. Dude, it's been delay after delay after delay. These timelines are starting to be pushed out and we think that that's going to become more than just trying to find power. It's just like converting that power into a powered shell seems to have a real execution risk. And I think Amazon is more money good from that perspective.

[Brian]

How did you process the AWS direct pipe to GCP News? It seems like they're maybe trying to get into more like cross data center training. I know Google has some experience there. Is aws. Is that something that the big labs are demanding at this point because they're also multi cloud. Are there any special offerings other than or is it really just like, hey, we just have capacity and no one else does and that's enough?

[Doug O'Laughlin]

I mean I think the labs probably demand it. And historically the biggest rake that everyone got paid or like had to pay in the multi cloud world was egress and ingress. Yeah, I don't like this is like, I don't know, you remember maybe 2019, everyone was like all these fricking egress fees are like too high. And that's kind of, I think that's like kind of how what they did is they forced all the data to stay inside their data centers and they charged you like crazy to open the door. I think that's just kind of breaking because they're seeing that the customer's absolute size is so large and they need so much demand that you have to pay. How do you win these customers? Well, you need to build a pipeline, a door to your data center, especially if your data center isn't where they started at and their data lives in Azure and not in aws. You want to have a door to AWS because up until now it was everything lived in aws. So I think that's kind of the story there. Yeah, I definitely think the multi data center, multi data center training and inference probably to a certain extent is like maybe not inference, but that's part of the story too. I also think maybe even rolling back to the previous question in terms of there was a paper or article where maybe it was like a conversation that Anthropic had where there are different models that have different TCOs and different values that on different hardware. So like certain types of hardware I think is much more profitable on certain types of memory bound and. Or like flops bound. And so I do think having all those different options is going to have a better cost per use, per model, per hardware. And so that's, I think that that's going to be a like strategically valuable thing going forward in terms of like lowering the cost. AI.

[John]

Do you expect to see any announcements on the commerce side between OpenAI and Amazon? We were talking earlier, it feels like this could be a scenario where like Disney invested in OpenAI and in exchange as part of that Disney is giving them a one year exclusive on all that ip, which is like an insane, I think underrated advantage with Amazon. You can imagine ChatGPT OpenAI has been working since inception to like be able to monetize some of the product, like some of the purchasing that they are driving across the Internet and could be. But at the same time Amazon is a $60 billion ad business and they want to protect that. And that's based on people landing on Amazon and searching for products there.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

My impulse is nah, no way man. That's like the unassailable. That's the unassailable.

[John]

The golden goose.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Yeah, it's the golden goose. Why would you let the Fox into the handheld? Like just no way.

[John]

No way. Yeah. So the weaker companies have. The Etsy's of the world have said like, yeah, we'll do it because we.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Did more to win.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Your background makes it look like you're in space. Are you developing a thesis around data centers in space or is that coming? I know you probably don't want to leak too much alpha on this particular show, but yeah. How are you thinking about it? What's the timeline? Is there going to be a space data center model for sale anytime soon? Soon.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

So you're Talking. I'm from the Space Data center team, research team, SME analysis right now on the issracker online. And I'm going to be honest with you, I'm a space data center hater. I'm a huge space status. I'm a giant hater. I'm sorry, I know Gavin talked about it. Gavin's really intelligent and a very warm, well spoken, smart individual in the space. But like guys, it is hard to train a model on Earth today. It's hard enough to train a model.

[John]

It's hard to, it's hard to build a box and put some chips in it and plug it in on Earth.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Yeah, it's, it's. Dude, we're telling me that we have power delays on Earth.

[Brian]

Yes. What is going to happen? Like we, you know, we square those things and so, and so, and so.

[John]

Hater.

[Brian]

Hater.

[John]

I mean the pushback there would obviously be like there's a lot of energy in space, solar energy. But again, I just felt like there was like a very organized, effectively narrative pump tied to this.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

I mean, do you want to know why? Come on. I can tell you the answer. I can tell you the answer. It's because SpaceX is racing.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

You got to remember what bag is being pumped at any given time. And the fact that you heard the SpaceX round come out maybe a few weeks later is not, it's, that wasn't.

[John]

It was within the same week, it was the same week that the $800 billion round like details came out. I could see them raising more now because they've announced the like target one and a half trillion. So like that, that just creates space for like the pre IPO round which could land at easily a trillion or north of a trillion. Now that all these people realize like, hey, it's going to go out, I'm going to have like a shorter liquidity timeline. And so yeah, I would expect, you know, more.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

I think that's part of it. But also, you know, if we're talking about data centers in space, there's only one service provider, right? The whole. So like, you know, one of the reasons why I'm like a hater of data centers in space is like, hey, like you know, a 3200 pound or whatever, a 1 ton GB200 on earth costs a lot of money, 10x the cost to get it into space. Right? But if a space data center was to ever happen, right. There's only one company that has really lowered the cost of moving something from on Earth into space. And so if that was to even be part of the TAM. All of that TAM would belong to SpaceX. So that's my, that's, that's, that's my belief at least, is that like when, when these like large narratives come around, a very large funding round, there's no, it isn't a coincidence. Maybe that's what they were talking about in the SpaceX round and that's where you're starting to hear all this stuff. Hey, this is something in their long term planning and then, you know, investors who are very excited about it talk about it. That's very plausible. And if there are data centers in space, I promise you SpaceX will be doing it. Let's put it that way.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

However you feel about it, I promise you SpaceX will be doing it.

[Brian]

Yeah. So it's sort of the same thing as like the Mars narrative, which is still years and years away and you know, maybe decades away, but you still have this like call option on it because if we get to Mars, it's probably going to be a space something.

[John]

Something I've been thinking about is, I mean, it seems like, I mean so far Paramount's Skydance effort to acquire Warner Brothers seems to be falling apart a little bit. Warner, Warner Brothers board doesn't want to do it. They're happy with Netflix. It seems like Netflix very clearly is good for the deal and there's less certainty on the Paramount side, or at least that's how Warner Brothers board is positioning it. And I have to imagine that there's a handful of people that are looking at that money that was soft circled by the Gulf and they're like, I want those tens of billions of dollars. So if you're SpaceX or you're OpenAI and you're seeing an opportunity of like, hey, this, this kind of money was soft circled for a deal that might not be going through. Everybody should be going after that.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Yeah, you should be raising. Always be closing, bro. Always be always.

[John]

I wanted to ask you about storytelling, but in a very specific context. Obviously everybody on the timeline was talking about storytelling this week, if you should hire a storyteller. But I wanted to ask you about meta, specifically their storytelling because they came out this year with this story around personal superintelligence. And then there was some reporting recently, I forget by who that was saying, like some of the execs apparently were just like, hey, we should just work on ads, basically. Like, let's just make the core business better. And I feel like I personally as a user in the meta ecosystem, I have no idea what personal superintelligence really means. Right? Is it a better, like, are you trying to deliver a better version of ChatGPT and get into the search business as a, as a Meta shareholder? I'm like, I don't know. I also don't, I also don't totally know what it means. And so my question is like, do you, do you think that Meta needs to kind of dial that in or do we just let them cook and we can form an opinion once they ship?

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Look, so okay, I think forming an opinion when they ship is like the most reasonable way to live your life instead of speculating. But I'm going to put my zuck hat on. Okay, Zuck hat on. Let's think about how I would do this. Three billion people use our products every single day and it's important part of your day to day thing. I would argue the ChatGPT universe is actually like, don't even include us, include the United States actually. We are high ARPU users who pay for max or pro or whatever and can amortize know how to use these things. The adoption in the United States is pretty high. The long tail of Meta users is like pretty astounding. You know, in some places in Southeast Asia, like, hey, meta or like WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, is like the primary mean for people to do business on, right? For people to talk to other businesses. Hey, all of a sudden, like I'm sure. Have you ever done like a random like tour in like Southeast Asia or like Japan or like wherever the hell you go on and you like, you know, you sign up for it and they, they send all these things. There's clearly like a whole business flow behind it. WhatsApp actually does have a ginormous, you know, billion user moat that I think can like kind of, you know, kind of become the super app that's like.

[John]

If I. Yeah, that, that. But the other thing, they have to be feeling pretty confident with the experience with Threads, where they have effectively ported their user base to an entirely new app. Like it's. I believe they could at some point, once they're confident in the product experience, get the Meta AI app to half a billion users in the way that they. I don't think Threads is at that yet, but it's at hundreds of millions of, of active users. And that, that distribution advantage does give them a potential to like come from behind, especially in some of these sort of more international markets.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

I mean, have you guys ever seen the like, the really sloppy. I think they're Applovin app advertisements actually for the games. It's like the guy and he's shooting a gun and you press one. It's like the pure brain rot video game ad that gets you to click through.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Yeah.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Meta has the ability, in my opinion, to serve that kind of crap in your feed that is so gamified it makes you press a button when I am. When I am doom scrolling on reels or something like that. Occasionally there would be a thread where they have such a jebaited ridiculous title where I'm like, I just have to see that. And of course it ends the word before the hook that you want to know the answer and so you click it and then you go through and then that's how you can juice Arpu. So yeah, I think you're right. No one else has quite the on ramp, I think in terms of engaging active users ASAP if they wanted to. But I think you have to have like, you know, you have to have the Galaxy Brain addictive perfect use case done first because I think they have the on ramp and they can spend enough GPUs to tell you, here's how you convert a random user to try our experience for 30 seconds and we could probably mechanically show it to enough people to get, you know, to easily boot up 10, 20, 30 million people to try the app very quickly. But the real execution that I think it's going to be on them is to get those 10, 20, 30 million people to become addicted users who share with other people and make that personalized superintelligence part of your day to day.

[John]

Remember to the WhatsApp point. They did boot chatgpt out of the WhatsApp ecosystem not too long ago, remember, which had a ton of users, I think it was at least.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

When did they boot this out?

[John]

This was, I think a couple months ago.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

That's actually a really interesting. I might have to follow up on that idea actually. That's pretty. It's pretty interesting. It might kind of.

[John]

That tells you. That tells you. Yeah, I mean it tells you like how they'll integrate their own models.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Yeah.

[John]

Over time. Anyways, we're way over. I wish we had more time, but thank you for being a part of this this year. Some of our most enjoyable conversations much.

[Brian]

For everything you've done to help, dude.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Thank you guys. I love, I love tpp. Like seriously, I love tppn. Like straight up, we're on the moon, I guess, or we're in outer space. You guys are in la. I would love to do. I Got to do in person.

[Brian]

Please come down.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

I'm like never out, but. No, I would love to, anytime. It'd be great.

[Brian]

Merry Christmas. Anyways, have a great holiday season and we'll see you in 2026.

[John]

You're the man.

[Brian]

Goodbye.

[John]

Cheers.

[Brian]

Public.com investing for those who take it seriously. They got Multi Asset Investing and they're trusted by millions. Our next guest is Doug Bernauer from Radiant. He's right across town over in El Segundo. He's one of the original El Segundo hard tech companies I have been a huge fan of.

[John]

Look at that. Beau Truss.

[Brian]

Look at this building.

[John]

Beautiful. We're looking for a building that looks like that. I didn't know that terminology until this year and now I only want to spend time if I'm not at home. I want to be in Beau Truss buildings. They're just, they're iconic.

[Doug Bernauer]

You can come on by. I think it's a Double Bow Trust because we got the two.

[Brian]

They got Double Bow Trust.

[Doug Bernauer]

I don't know if there's a name for that. That might be a name for that.

[Brian]

Anyway, we're not here to talk about architecture. We're here to talk about nuclear reactors. So please kick us off with a. Get us up to speed on what's happened in the last year. How are you describing the shape of the business? Where's the progress? What are you building and how do you frame it for everybody?

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Everyone.

[Doug Bernauer]

Thanks, John. Great to be here. We are actively building our first nuclear reactor, which would be the first new design going critical at Idaho national laboratory since 1977. So before any of us were born.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Doug Bernauer]

So it's extremely exciting. I think last time we had talked a year ago, we were still working on the design. Now, all components are ordered. There are parts here, there are people or technicians assembling it. We're on qualified supplier list. And you know, just this morning you.

[John]

Said that, you said the first.

[Doug Bernauer]

That's right.

[John]

There's some competition to really be the first. A lot of people want to say they're the first.

[Doug Bernauer]

Absolutely. There's always competition and I welcome all the competition. Let's all build a huge amount of reactors and all right make American nuclear energy reach as many people as it can.

[Brian]

So the design still the same, one megawatt, roughly the size of a shipping container. Have you thought about who the buyer is? I know we've talked in the past about you throw it on a military base or you throw it on an oil and gas exploration zone stranded area where diesel might be really expensive. Are you still thinking about those types of customers or have the AI folks come calling?

[Doug Bernauer]

We're absolutely thinking about those types of customers. But really, nuclear energy is for prosperity, driving prosperity. That means letting humans put power wherever they want to put. It just so happens if you make a compact reactor, you can put years of megawatt scale power wherever you want. We have made progress with, you know, we have a data center customer, Equinix, who has put down an order for 20 units. So AI is definitely driving that.

[Brian]

Congratulations. That's huge. That's a lot.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

I mean.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Doug Bernauer]

And then more, more progress with the military customer as well. You know, we have a contract now with the Air Force through Defense Innovation Unit for several units there as well. So it's really. We're working on the same stuff. You know, the design does not need to change. We submitted a regulatory document, over 500 pages to the Department of Energy.

[John]

One shot it with chat. Really?

[Doug Bernauer]

Well, it's not a good, not a good thing to do. You definitely can use AI to learn fast, but not to do fast.

[Brian]

Yeah, that makes sense. So take us through the news today. Massive new funding round. What exactly happened? And then I want to talk about some of the uses of that funding.

[Doug Bernauer]

Yep. Yeah. So we have raised over $300 million in new funding through Boost and Draper Associates.

[John]

Massive.

[Doug Bernauer]

Awesome.

[Brian]

Yeah, I mean, that's a huge number. Is that because you're expecting to order lots of parts at this point? Because you're actually fulfilling orders? Is this hiring more R and D scientists? How much of this goes into R and D? How much of this goes into opex? Capex? Like, how are you thinking about the uses of the funds?

[Doug Bernauer]

Yep, all D, no R. Okay, we're building. We're building right now. That's right. But it does accelerate our ability to go and build and get some more trained operators to run. At Idaho National Lab, we'll be running 247 with the reactor up, up and functioning. But a lot of those funding will go towards actually our facility that we announced in Tennessee. You know, an over 80 acre site where we're putting down new construction on Department of Energy land. And that's fueling facility what will become the mass production of reactors coming out of that facility.

[Brian]

Yeah. What. So the next INL milestone, do you have a specific date locked in? Are you working against a particular timeline and has any of this shifted since? There's been sort of a flurry of efforts to speed up the development of nuclear specifically. Has anything been able to be pulled forward? I know that there's a lot of. There's a lot of excitement around nuclear. Just over the past year, has anything changed from your initial plan?

[Doug Bernauer]

I think things are accelerated across the board. So we got access to fuel in May. We know that's been transported now. That's at the fabricator. Fuels being made for the reactor. That's very new. Probably the most important thing to know, that we'll hit schedule, but nothing's really changed in long run. You know, we had a goal of going critical, the reactor full scale, one that's designed, built by and operated by Radiant along with the national lab. And that'll happen before summer, which is pretty exciting. So it's very, very soon. That's coming up. Your greater question, there's a whole bunch of executive orders and there's a lot of impetus from the current administration to make things move, make them go quickly. And the national labs and the NRC are both looking at their processes and going, well, we've got new reactors coming and so let's plan for it.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Doug Bernauer]

And so there are new processes that have already been released as part of the effort. So it is not an open call to action, but we're seeing a lot of real action.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

That's great.

[John]

Switching topics, I wanted to. We had the tragic news yesterday that the MIT professor passed. I know he was studying and focusing on fusion. Can you talk about maybe the significance of his work and kind of the more industry reaction? Because a lot of people on the timeline were just kind of reacting to that and obviously it's incredibly tragic and just concerned around the work that he was doing.

[Doug Bernauer]

Yeah. I am actually not a fusion expert, so I think that probably that story is best told by someone else. Of course, energy is critical and we're all building off of those marvels of the past and the technology it's developed, even just the ideas and those people who are willing to make their life and their life's work about something so important as, you know, clean, safe energy and access that energy for all of humanity.

[Brian]

What.

[Doug Bernauer]

So I applaud that.

[Brian]

One of your unique sort of experience has been at SpaceX, watching development of early rockets and then the transition from making one that works to making dozens and eventually hundreds that work of these massive machines. How are you thinking about setting the company up for success in the transition to the point where you're churning out dozens of reactors? Can you already feel that Radiant is a different company because you're thinking about scale down the road?

[Doug Bernauer]

Yeah, that's absolutely the case. So pretty much everything with Nuclear does not have a thing you can go and just carbon copy and say, we're going to make, somehow make reactors a thousand times smaller, but yet follow all the rules and use all the same suppliers who are used to making those types of parts and things. And I think at my core is that SpaceX kind of derived first principles approach. And, you know, it's absolutely the case if. And we usually point folks to talk to the national labs or other entities who are not us to talk about us and go, you know, what's different about those guys? And we really, we feel strongly that you must really own every aspect of the design down to and including the printed circuit boards and the software that goes on them. And that is not at all dissimilar to. Right, that's the thing SpaceX also did. So it wasn't just, hey, make rocket engines only, make that. There's also. It's really required that you think through integration and go put everything you can get from the modern world into something so they end up with something that's not outdated or slowed down by lack of integrating that new technology.

[Brian]

How big is the team at this point? And are you going to need to set up a second facility at some point? Because it feels like SpaceX started and Nelson Gando eventually sort of outgrew that and now has an entire city. Is there going to be a radiant base city somewhere in Texas or something at some point?

[Doug Bernauer]

Yeah. So Tennessee is our factory site. Tennessee construction will start really soon on that. I think we will have a functioning building able to. Able to handle fueling reactors before the end of next year, which is a wild timeline only supported by the NRC being able to move fast today, which is very exciting. But we already actually have two buildings in El Segundo. We just got our second building last month.

[Brian]

Congrats. That's amazing.

[Doug Bernauer]

So we have ES1, ES2.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[John]

Very cool chat. Gabe in the chat said the Koreans are making major moves in nuclear. He thinks, are there any countries that are kind of like rebooting their nuclear energy.

[Brian]

Of America right now? That's interesting. Or.

[John]

Yeah. Inspiration. Or people that have been inspired by your efforts and other companies in the space.

[Doug Bernauer]

Yeah. So nuclear spans this wide range of power levels, so. Very true. Korea's, they're building a whole fleet of reactors that are, I think 1400, even up to 1600 megawatts. So some of the biggest that there are.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Doug Bernauer]

And they're able to do it on really short timelines, you know, five to six years to construct a giant facility like that, which is grid power, but it's. It's so different from what we're doing. And I. I don't know if it seems like America might be ahead and might be first in the area we're in, which is these 1 megawatt. Right. Systems, the real tiny and portable stuff. But there are. Because the US Is so innovative, there are startups that are working on this as well, and some established US Nuclear companies, but there's handfuls of them, though. You know, there are even more federal dollars being pointed at this problem. So the army actually have a really big program called Janus that's been announced that we're really excited about. So that could provide even faster motion to the tip of the spear.

[Jacob Efron]

Right. And go.

[Doug Bernauer]

Make it so that nuclear can go in a box and can go anywhere you want, which isn't. Isn't the case for those big reactors in other countries.

[Brian]

How much of what's happening in the admin is just a different level of energy, a different perception versus, like, there's, oh, that one law changed, that one rule changed. And because it felt like we've talked about this in the past, there wasn't necessarily just like one line in the legal code that was holding you back. It was more like this sclerotic system of a large organization, a lot of people trying to do their best, but just not really pushing things forward. So is it more of like a cultural shift or has there been particular regulatory changes that have been helpful?

[Doug Bernauer]

Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's always a. It's kind of a combination of things. But I would say that, you know, we have Department of Energy, we have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. These organizations have been around a very long time. There are people who've been there.

[Brian]

Oh, did we lose audio and video?

[John]

We lost both.

[Brian]

We lost both.

[John]

You're back.

[Brian]

You're back.

[Doug Bernauer]

Oh, sorry about that.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Doug Bernauer]

Re answering. So the nrc, the Department of Energy, there are people there who've been there for decades. And it's not like there's a real cultural shift, but there's a culture within them that just needed to be unleashed. So a lot of folks, it's the same people, but they're just answering a different call and they're excited by and they're deploying fuel. There's a reinvestment in enrichment assets in this country as well, which since 2013, there had been nothing. So I think we're just really out of a dry spell. Yep.

[Brian]

That's fantastic. Well, a lot of belief thank you so much for coming on the show on such a busy day. And congratulations on the massive series D. It's 1.8 billion valuation. You're officially a unicorn. Congratulations.

[John]

Unicorn mode. Congrats to the whole team. I'm sure you guys are not going to have very relaxed end of the year.

[Brian]

I can't imagine you resting on your laurels. That's what we do over.

[John]

Timelines.

[Brian]

We'll handle the laurel resting.

[Doug Bernauer]

That's right. The build plan includes weekends and holidays.

[Brian]

Okay, that's great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Have a great. Have a great holiday season. Cheers.

[John]

Cheers.

[Brian]

Privy. Privy makes it easy to build on crypto rails securely spin up white label wallets, sign transactions and integrate on chain infrastructure all through one simple ap. And our next guest is already in the restream waiting room. We have Jacob Efron from Redpoint.

[John]

There he is.

[Brian]

There he is.

[Jacob Efron]

Hey, how you doing guys? Great to be on.

[John]

Great to finally have you on. Got it in before the end of the year. Welcome to the show.

[Jacob Efron]

It's an honor to be here and a very, very happy holidays to you guys.

[John]

Thank you. Thank you. What's going on in your world? Maybe first time on the show. Quick, quick introduction for the folks watching.

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah. I'm Jacob. I'm a managing director over at redpoint. We're a $6 billion fund and I co run our early growth fund which sounds like an oxymoron but basically means series B and C. So that's where I spend all my time and do a lot of our investing across a bunch of companies.

[John]

What's, what's your favorite.

[Jacob Efron]

You know, you can't answer that question.

[John]

I think you can answer it. I think, I think it's. I have a friend who does A's and B's and like he has like a very, very clear, a very clear, clear preference around like one of. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, you know, share his alpha but like he has a lot of reasons about liking one versus the other and I think, I think they track. But I'm curious how you think of that B to B2C range if there's like. Yeah, well, what.

[Jacob Efron]

I will say that the first, the first investment I ever worked on at Redpoint was show sponsor Ramp, which is sitting nicely up there in the top. Right. And so I feel like that set the bar pretty high for team Velocity.

[John]

Was that the B or the C that you guys.

[Jacob Efron]

That was the B. Yeah, that was.

[John]

The B. Yeah, yeah, I remember those days. You guys had a lot of conviction and it certainly panned out. What?

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Yeah.

[John]

How are you kind of reflecting on this year?

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, it's been quite the year. Right. I think we've. On the application side, I feel like there's been a tremendous amount of stuff that's really started to work. I feel like obviously coding being the killer use case, but there's been a ton in customer support, healthcare, legal, and I think the big question going into next year is what's the next set of dominoes to fall on the application side? Are we in a time period where models are relatively plateauing and it's going to be this set of applications for a bit, or are we going to see some improvements and then get a whole next wave of application areas unlocked? At the same time, there's been a ton of interesting stuff on the model side. Outside of core LLMs, obviously. You guys have talked at length about some of the cool stuff happening in the image and video world, but even in robotics, biology, material sciences, it's been fascinating to see. And then next year I'm really fired up about infrastructure, actually. I think with the models slowing down a bit, I actually think it's a great opportunity. There's finally a stable set of things to build infrastructure for, and so I think it'll be really, really interesting. 26.

[Brian]

Do you think that there's any chance that we'll get a new consumer AI company out of a company that didn't start as a consumer AI company? I'm just fascinated by this.

[Jacob Efron]

Like OpenAI Part 2.

[Brian]

Oh, I mean, I mean, that is one of my hottest takes, is that maybe the OpenAI nonprofit spawns another for profit. Because perhaps there's something just innately, you know, there's no better place to just do unstructured research and start a company than a massively funded nonprofit. It happened once in history, maybe it happens again. But I mean, to be clear, I was talking more about like, there's these SUNO midjourney. There's this interesting wave of companies where they have a model and they turn it loose and it seems like people are kind of playing with it themselves. And everyone reads immediately as job displacement. That's a prosumer tool, that's an enterprise product. And maybe that's right. Maybe there is a big enterprise opportunity or big prosumer opportunity or B2B opportunity. But I'm more interested in. In these new patterns of consumer behavior right now and trying to find areas where consumers just might land. But I don't know if you've even looked at any of that.

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, no, we've looked at all these and I think there's obviously a ton of interesting new consumer behavior around remixing. These models, playing around with them. I think Suno especially, I mean we play around with that tool all the time. And so I do think that they're, you know, I think that the key will be, and you're starting to see this with OpenAI and Disney and even Suno, which had an arrangement with Universal recently. It's like bringing IP onto these platforms I think will just be fascinating. Right, because what's the. It's fun to remix something that is, you know, maybe a friend or somewhat abstract. It's a lot more fun to remix something that involves, you know, Taylor Swift or, you know, Darth Vader or some form of ip.

[John]

How do you look at that category evolving? Because I was debating somebody Monday night who has managed some of the biggest global superstars and we were talking about music creation as a category and consumer AI and this kind of prosumer category. And I was taking the side that you have to assume that every lab or not every lab, but a lot of the big players get into. You can imagine Gemini letting you make music OpenAI. I think a lot of people will get into this because it's just like a great hook and it's something consumers clearly want. I was much more on the side of like, I think music is like nuanced enough and like there's a lot of depth to it and I think it deserves a standalone app. And I think that there's a lot of people that will just pay for the SUNO experience for a long time, even if they have some of these other subscriptions. Meanwhile, like clearly like you don't need like the average person is not going to necessarily have like an image gen app and then also like their normal LLM. So. So I'm curious, you guys are obviously quite biased here given your position in suno, but like how you see that structure evolving.

[Jacob Efron]

We're not investors in suno, just a fan.

[John]

Oh, really? Sorry.

[Jacob Efron]

I'm from Boston and so anytime there's like an epic Boston based company, I get very excited. And so Suno being from there is awesome. But I think that to your question, I agree with you. It probably doesn't live within a larger consumer app. I think if anything, what you're going to see is there's a whole set of experiences to be built around how artists interact with their fans through these platforms. And I Think that when someone captures a lot of the volume of folks that are interested in this, that's where the artist will go. It's not like an artist is going to go to 10 different to Gemini, to Claude, to ChatGPT, where music's embedded and have back and forth with fans that are remixing their songs and interacting with it. I think that the IP holders here will go to the consumer landing page that aggregates as many people as possible. And so I actually think it makes a ton of sense as a, as a space for a standalone category because it's not really just about the quality of the model, Right?

[John]

Yeah, totally. I wanted to chat, was asking about pricing and I was curious too, how you guys are. How you guys handle some of these companies that are being formed, have. Are getting off the ground basically with like Series A pricing out the gates. How do you guys handle that at redpoint, when you have an early stage team and then you're doing early growth and you're like, where do these even fall in?

[Brian]

You incorporate the company and you say, I don't want to talk to the Red Point seed investors. I want to do a growth round on day one. I want to talk to Jacob.

[John]

Exactly. Because that would happen from day one.

[Brian]

They call you.

[John]

They want to go straight to the.

[Brian]

I have an idea, but I need a growth round right now. Put 100 million in my account.

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, I mean, this is where I think it's just one of the really fun parts of working at a small firm. Right. There's, you know, there's eight of us that are, that just work super closely together on all this stuff. And, you know, a company can be a seed one day and five days later be a Series B. And so we, you know, I think it involves us just working super closely together. But it's, you know, it's an interesting time. Right. It's both a crazy valuation environment and also these markets that folks are going after is just absolutely massive. And so I think you have to hold both of those truths simultaneously.

[Brian]

Okay. On the valuations, broadly, just in the last half of this year, we've seen Oracle sell off post, big excitement around the backlog and the rpo. We've seen core weave sell off. We've seen Rich Sutton and Andrej Karpathy and Ilya Sutskever on the Dwarkesh Patel podcast talking about how maybe the models are slowing down is any of that.

[Jacob Efron]

Though I love that Andre's taking was taken as bearish. He was like, I think this stuff will automate all Enterprise work, but it'll take a decade and everyone's like, oh, it's over.

[Brian]

Like if it takes a decade. Well, there's the question, I need it now. Is that how is the venture community? How are all of those different data points, some of them bullish, some of them bearish, potentially many of them up for interpretation. How are they being interpreted in series A, B, C prices?

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, I mean, I think what's very clear is there's both going to be massive new companies created in this wave. And I think even with just the capabilities of models, even if you believe that models aren't going to get that much better without some algorithmic breakthrough and you believe that we're overbuilding on the data center side, it doesn't change the fact that this current generation of models works really well in a bunch of different application areas. And so I do think like on the app side there's going to be massive businesses built, they'll require a bunch of infrastructure behind them. I think you were talking earlier with Sarah about some of the NEO labs. I think that's the most interesting question of what is the form of model progress going to be in the next five, 10 years? And is that something that occurs within the labs or outside of them? But I don't think that anyone's questioning whether really large companies will curated today.

[Brian]

Yeah. What about the overall venture, the amount of dollars flowing into venture funds? Right now I'm sure you have a view and you have a couple data points. There's this chart that looks incredibly bearish. It looks like it's completely over for venture capital and yet that doesn't match with anything I was feeling because there's huge rounds happening. I mean, I guess it doesn't count as venture capital, but OpenAI is raising 10 billion from Amazon. Like there's big deals getting done, but for some reason there's a chart that shows venture dollars going down. How did you process? Did you see that chart? Did you process? Of course, the same way I did. Walk me through your interpretation of that. What's going on?

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, I think you're spot on on the vibes. It didn't totally match what it feels like the game on the field is. I do think there's probably, you know, it's definitely harder for emerging managers or first time funds. And so it doesn't surprise me that the overall count of funds was, was down a bit. But like, you know, a lot of that data can be skewed by some pretty outlier large funds that were raised in kind of 2021, as well as the fact that those funds in 21 were deployed in like, you know, 612 months or something. Right. And so I think actually maybe we're back to slightly more normal fund deployment basis.

[Brian]

Yeah. And then do you think there's also a shift over the last few years to more SPV usage amongst fund managers so that maybe the dollar value that's flowing through is high or is growing right now this year? Certainly isn't.

[John]

Look, at rate we just had Doug on from Radiant, the two funds that led are not to my knowledge, multibillion dollar funds. And yet he raised $300 million that had to come from. Assuming that came almost entirely from SPVs.

[Brian]

Sure. So yeah. Are you seeing an uptick broadly? Does your firm have a view on SPVs?

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, I mean, I think there definitely, you know, seems to be both SBV activity as well as, you know, Nvidia, like, you know, large, the hyperscalers, a lot more investment coming in from, from all sorts of other places. I think for us, you know, we, we keep our fund size focus where, you know, we want to be, you know, direct investors and long term partners for the companies we work with. But I do think, you know, I do think that's probably part of the story here too.

[Brian]

Yeah. Do you think there's any. Are funds losing like, losing rounds to hyperscalers, like. Oh yeah, I put it in a term sheet and they went with Nvidia instead of me.

[Jacob Efron]

I think usually these rounds are kind of a combination of, you know, traditional venture firms and some of the other folks. But obviously people have different incentives in those arrangements and so, you know, it can change, change the pricing sometimes.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[John]

What are you, what are you expecting out of robotics broadly next year or maybe the next two years?

[Jacob Efron]

Did you guys see the news from, from Physical Intelligence today? It's actually pretty nuts. What?

[John]

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't see it.

[Brian]

But yeah, sorry, break it down for the audience.

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, so for those that didn't see, and I am not a robotics AI researcher to be clear, but I'll do my best to play.

[John]

But you guys are investors, we're intelligence. There we go.

[Brian]

Let's ring the gauntlet.

[Jacob Efron]

Exactly, exactly. I love that. So what they basically, what they basically showed is there's been this question for a long time of can you use, you know, egocentric human video data to improve robotics models? Because, God, we have a lot of human video. What we don't have a lot of is teleoperated data and other data that's more difficult to gather for robotics. And so what they were able to show is that basically they built these models already on. They had this model PI 0.5 that they built using a bunch of teleoperated data. And once the model got to a certain ability, they then threw a bunch of egocentric human video data at it. And it actually made the model way better. And this was what's called an emergent capability. This capability didn't happen when the model was way worse. And what's exciting about it is it kind of parallels actually a lot of what's happening in reinforcement learning right now. After AlphaGo, there was this huge push to do reinforcement learning for everything. And it didn't really work because the base models weren't powerful enough. But then fast forward, we did this massive pre training. We got these much more powerful base models. And then reinforcement learning started working really well. And so it seems like as we're starting to scale some of these robotics models, we're starting to see some pretty cool effects of the ability to apply video data, which we have a lot more of.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes no sense. It's awesome.

[Jacob Efron]

Those guys every.

[John]

Predictions around, just like, I feel like for people, you see stuff coming out of labs, it's really exciting. But for people to really start to actually believe that robotics are going to transform our entire world, right, you have to get zipline delivered to your house and have that moment right. You have to be in a waymo.

[Brian]

Yeah. Everyone seems to be waiting for like, the Turing test of robotics is like, do my dishes. And it's unclear that that's going to be the first really big business in robotics. Like, it could be something else that comes out. But we already have the robot in the house. It's a vacuum cleaner. A variety of companies have duked it out there, but we have some robotics that deliver some value. But we want something that's like the full humanoid will probably accept the dishwasher robot in the interim with like one arm.

[Jacob Efron]

I'll definitely accept the dishwasher robot. Like, I'm here for that. The laundry robot. Like dishwasher sounds, sounds dishwasher robot.

[John]

I'll sell you a dishwasher. It's an AI dishwasher. 20 grand. You want it?

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jacob Efron]

Under my Christmas tree, I'll take it. But no, I do think that, you know, basically as these models get better, we'll start to see some pretty interesting. Probably to start in like, you know, some of the enterprise use cases where you Control the environments a bit more and it's less on the home side. But I think there's going to be a ton of really interesting stuff people build on top of the models. To be clear, there still needs to be improvement in the underlying models until we get there. But I think it's so clear. Everyone from the government to the largest companies in our economy are quite focused on robotics right now, and rightly so.

[Brian]

Have you looked up, have you looked at other AI hardware stuff? There's this weird phenomenon happening where there's a lot of AI hardware companies that go viral, get tons of press and then it doesn't seem like there's massive sales in the short term at least. And then we wound up finding some company that was just doing basically AI device for note taking. It just records and gives you the notes. It's a very simple like, you know, you very. I can explain you. You already know exactly what I'm talking about in terms of the product value proposal. And they're making like $100 million in sales, maybe 250 or something already. Have you looked at that? Have you thought about how the future like AI hardware plays out? Or is it scary because the big device companies like Apple might want to just go after that and just eat that at some point?

[Jacob Efron]

Well, I think all big markets the big companies will want to go after.

[John]

Right.

[Jacob Efron]

And so nothing. I think that's the price of it being really interesting. We're investors in a company called Sesame that is going after, you know, both kind of better voice models, but also like, you know, the glasses world. And I think that it's interesting to see so many people coalesce on that as like the form factor for, for a bunch of, you know, of these products going forward. And so I think that like that is hugely exciting and I would be really surprised in the next few years if there wasn't much more prolific usage of hardware that has a bunch of these AI capabilities built into it.

[Brian]

Yeah, no, no, it's exciting stuff, Jordan. Anything else?

[John]

The amount of glasses that are going to be available in a few years is wild. Probably going to where it's Sesame, Snap.

[Brian]

I mean Apple, that's less than you walk into a sunglass hut. There's 25 brands. Why not 25 brands of electronic products?

[John]

Yeah, no, no, I just think it's exciting. It's going to be very cool.

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, it's going to be pretty sweet.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John]

We got the demo Monday of the new the Snap spectacles specs that are coming out next Year that are dev only right now. And we were running around everywhere here having, having a lot of fun.

[Brian]

I mean, the ar.

[Jacob Efron]

Are you guys going to rock them on the show next year?

[Brian]

The augmented reality is. They're very chunky. They're big. Like, and, and I've actually thought about this.

[John]

Like, like, well, no, the developer version is not what they're releasing this next year.

[Brian]

It'll be smart. But I like wearing augmented reality glasses. I mean, I guess I could have a screen. I could kind of use it as a teleprompter. Sometimes I will text with the team on my laptop here. Oh, is the next guest on time or do I need to hang out in this interview longer? Not to break the fourth wall here? And I could imagine glasses.

[Jacob Efron]

I hope you're not texting that directly right now.

[Brian]

I'm not, but Logan from Google is actually a few minutes late. So we can hang out here and.

[John]

Chat.

[Brian]

And then maybe it would be fun to have a camera on there that you could feed into the show so you could be like, like, let's go to the John cam. Because sometimes we go to the gong cam. And imagine if you could watch me hit the gong in first person as Santa Claus. Like, that sounds like entertainment. Of course, I'm sort of a niche use case, sort of a niche user, but I don't know, I just came up with two pretty cool use cases. I think it's going to be a fun future.

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, I think the fun part about this stuff, I mean, it reminds me of the models. It's like you put it out in the world and you can't begin to imagine the way that people are going to use it.

[John]

Right.

[Jacob Efron]

And I think that once you have a product that meets the aesthetic bar of something you'd actually wear, people are going to use it in all sorts of ways that I'm sure anyone making these things couldn't possibly predict. In the same way that I love, whenever the model companies release a model, it's like they have some idea, but they're always day one shocked at like all these, you know, things that work about it are ways people use it. They had no idea.

[Brian]

Yeah. Last question. With. With all the competition in the foundation model space, it does seem like there's a lot of startups that you've probably invested in that are spending a lot of money with the foundation labs. Have you seen that manifest in gross profits? There was a data point from Notion in the Wall Street Journal that their gross profits went from 95 to 85% or something it was a very slight gross margin compression. Certainly not cause for concern. But do you feel like you have a view on what the impact of of high usage LLM inference might be for growth stage software companies on gross margins?

[Jacob Efron]

Yeah, I mean I think for the thing that makes it challenging to know where it all shakes out is just the price of these models changes so much every two, three months. It just keeps going down. And so if we stay on this treadmill of capability improvement then maybe you're always paying for the most cutting edge thing. But I do think that that for anything that one of our companies was doing six months ago, it's gotten 10 times cheaper. Now they may be doing a whole new set of things as well. But take any set of capabilities. I think the gross margin for that set of capabilities will end up being, you know, being pretty good just given the competition that exists in the foundation model space and just the insane rate at which this stuff keeps getting cheaper. And we're going to see the same stuff happen in video in other spaces and I think that'll be incredibly exciting too for, for folks building on top.

[Brian]

That's good to hear. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

[John]

Super fun.

[Jacob Efron]

Thanks for having me.

[John]

Super cool.

[Jacob Efron]

Have fun with Logan. He's the best.

[Brian]

Yeah, we're gonna have a great time. Well have a great rest of your day and we will talk to you soon.

[John]

Yeah, great. Great hanging Jack.

[Jacob Efron]

Sounds good.

[John]

Talk soon.

[Brian]

See you soon.

[John]

Cheers.

[Brian]

Bye. Let me tell you about eightsleep.com exceptional sleep without exception. Fall asleep faster, sleep deeper, wake up energized.

[John]

Kind of a brutal night.

[Brian]

Do you have a rough night? That's too bad. I'm sorry. Well, maybe you'll need 63, four hours. Need to book a wander. In the meantime book a wandering view hotel grooming, hotel grade amenities, dream beds, top tier cleaning and 247 concierge service.

[John]

I forgot to ask Jacob what he felt is an appropriate tip. Founders end of year holiday tip.

[Brian]

We didn't ask Sarah either. I got an 89. So let's go.

[John]

Wow. I have some breaking news.

[Brian]

You're breaking news.

[John]

Jared Isaacman confirmed.

[Brian]

Let's go.

[John]

Friendly reindeer.

[Brian]

I'm very excited. You know, whether the data centers go to space or not, there's obviously a lot of interesting and important things to be done in space and very, very excited to have.

[John]

He's that guy.

[Brian]

Leadership in the position in the seat.

[John]

He's that guy.

[Brian]

Hopefully doing some cool stuff.

[John]

You know who else is that guy?

[Brian]

Logan Kilpatrick. From Google, of course. He's in the restroom waiting room. And now he's in the TVP and ultradub. Welcome to the show. Logan, how are you doing?

[John]

He's that guy, pal. Hey guys.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Happy holidays.

[Brian]

Happy holidays. I love the background.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

The UAV online is incredible.

[Brian]

Well, we have, we have Christmas themed ones now. So there's Play the Drummer Boy one.

[David Senra]

Hostile drummer boy on your six.

[Brian]

Hostile drummer boy on your six. That's a good one. The team had fun with that. Anyway, thank you so much for joining. Please. Everyone knows who you are around here but take us through the news today. Gemini 3 flash. What are the highlights? How are you positioning the communication around that particular launch?

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Yeah, no, it's a great question and thank you again for having me on Gemini 3 Flash is the most capable model, I think along a bunch of dimensions that we've shipped before. And it's also just this model that is going to bring intelligence to everyone which is the exciting thing. So I feel like.

[Serguo]

I feel like.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

That is we need to do this for Gemini launches is we should get, I'm going to get a gong for.

[John]

For the office and we'll, we'll help you out. We've, we know all the suppliers and we, we get bulk pricing. Yes, we're going to help you guys out.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Etched gong for the office when we launch would be perfect. No, but I think the model is incredible and I think it builds on the momentum from 3 Pro which is really exciting. But and it's actually the crazy thing is it's actually better than 3 Pro at some dimensions.

[Brian]

I was looking at this, I'm looking at the model card. It outperforms on Ark AGI 2 which is like my personal favorite benchmark. We love the team over at ARC AGI and somehow the Flash model outperforms the Pro model. I'd be very interested. What the thesis on that? Is it like Gemini 3 Pro was overthinking it? Is that what's going on?

[John]

We also did our own bench. Shrimp bench.

[Brian]

Oh yeah. Shrimp bench went very well.

[John]

It came up with.

[Brian]

You're supposed to think of jokes that have the same format as you're telling me a shrimp fried this rice.

[John]

So, so for Ginger snap it said you're telling me a ginger snap this cookie.

[Brian]

It's pretty good. Pretty good. It's funny. We're loving it.

[John]

Not all the, some of the models that are, that are, that are quite smart. So it's, it's a good, it's a good benchmark, sir.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Yeah. Really quick though, like the reason Flash is so much better, like there's a very pointed answer on this and actually not that it's so much better.

[Brian]

It's better in certain places.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Some places it's a little bit better. And this is because the model is a little bit smaller. So the like iterate like we're able to do a little bit more iteration and it has like a slightly updated like post training recipe versus the Pro model. And this is just because of the timing. So like we finished pro and finished some of the training like probably a little bit more than a month ago. So like just within the last month have made a bunch of innovation on the research side. It makes it into the smaller model just because of the timing and the release process. But so you'll see some of that. So there's no special silver bullet behind the scenes of making this possible. It's just literally time. And with enough time we can keep making even better and better models, which is exciting.

[Brian]

Yeah. How are you thinking about the. I feel like the Gemini team is very, very good about offering different models along the Pareto frontier. Not over fixating on a particular benchmark, but delivering a high quality product at each incremental price or the best product for a given price. Do you envision the left and right bound expanding further? Is there a Nano coming? Something even cheaper, even smaller, even more compressed. How do you think about offering a product from the same sort of API structure but at an even cheaper price? Is that something that's coming?

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Yeah. So we're working hard on this. So the Flash or the sort of three model family historically or 2.5 model family historically has been Pro Flash Flashlight which is the smallest model. And then I think, I don't know if we still call it Nano or not, but Nano is our on device model, just like the, the smallest model. So we will hopefully have a flashlight model early next year. It takes time to sort of trickle the innovation through and the holidays are busy.

[Brian]

I was joking with Jordi because Nano Banana, the code name, sort of leaked into like the public consciousness just because it was exciting, it was great model and so people figured it out. Nano Banana. But it implies the existence of just a normal Banana or Banana Pro or a Mega Banana or Giga Banana. And so we want the Giga Banana. We want the full image. The even bigger model, the biggest, the biggest possible model.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

But of course Gigabana Pro is your Giga Banana. We actually thought about calling it Giga Banana.

[Brian]

Giga Banana.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

It wasn't as catchy as nanobanana nanobanana.

[Brian]

Already has its own brand, so you kind of gotta just run with that. Like you got the bird in the hand, just run with it.

[John]

Maybe getting a little bit more specific. How have conversations been going with startups that are leveraging kind of the suite of models? Where are people most excited in terms of actually implementing them?

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Yeah, I think the cool thing, and this hasn't been unique to this launch, but I think the cool thing is that for 2.5 pro customers who are paying, I think it's like between $1.25 and $2.50 per million input tokens and then like 10 to $12 per million output to this model is actually almost across the board completely. 3 flash is better than 2.5 pro. So like if you're a startup and you're like 2.5 pro was the model that. Which for meant like literally tens to hundreds of thousands of customers in production right now this is the case for them. They're able to sort of migrate over to this new model and like out of the box cost saving, their product just gets faster. And I was talking to someone earlier today and like the fact that two years ago this narrative of being a model wrapper was a sort of bad idea. And then now I think about this for our team, actually we have APIs for developers to build with, but we're also building a Vibe coding product in AI Studio. And the Vibe coding product, we ran the silent test behind the scenes and it was like just with three Flash actually, because of how much faster it was and it was reasonably the same quality as 3 Pro. Retention went up, the number of things people were building went up, engagement went up and it was like free. We didn't have to do anything. We literally just changed the model and the drop down. It's actually cheaper for us to run that. And like, as a product builder, I don't think there's been a time in like human history of building startups where like you just get to show up one morning, somebody made your product 40% better and saved you 50%.

[Brian]

Like the end.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Yeah, the analogy is like usually if.

[John]

You make something 40% better, you're like, get ready to pay 50% more.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Exactly. So it's crazy. I think it's like that continues to get me just like in the fiber of my being so excited about what startups are able to go after. And yeah, it's a great moment. So hopefully folks get a chance to adopt and then I think the next thing that I'm excited about is like taking These two models, Flash and Pro now become like the default models to build on top of for our other custom variants. And the image generation is one example of this. But also we have text to speech models and live audio models and a bunch of other stuff in the works, computer use models and they all sort of rebase onto this new thing and then again by default just like get better out of the box, which is really, really cool. So I think you'll see the not just coding and all these other agentic capabilities multimodal that we've showed with this specific 3 flash base model. But you'll see this across pretty much every other dimension as all those more bespoke checkpoints rebase to these new three Flash and three Pro variants.

[John]

What's going on with the agent builder that you guys. Did you roll it out last week? I'm losing track of time in Google workplace. Yeah, yeah, I know it's outside of your kind of like key territory, but I would love to kind of hear why, what's exciting about it to you. Yeah, I think.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

And so what I mean truthfully, and I'll give you my very candid take, which is I was trying the version of that product for probably and I tweeted this out probably like three months before it came out. And the part that was most the reason I loved it so much is because inside of Google like you know, we can't just use random startup products. Like there's like a very rigorous process in order of like what software are we actually using as Google employees. And so this like homegrown solution for me to be able to like have an agent builder and like connect all my stuff up and build workflows and all these things like really is the AI product that I get to use on a daily basis. So like I. It is exceptionally important that it's world class and that it like pushes the frontier and that it's actually good because I don't get the sort of free market of options. I can't just go and choose between any one of a hundred AI startups who are providing something similar to this. And for what it's worth, I get those in my personal life, which is awesome, but I don't get those in my work life. I feel like it's sort of hit the mark of where I wanted it to be. I really do get genuine product utility and as somebody who my email is out on the Internet, you can email me El Kilpatrick google.com I get many, many emails. It is helpful to like have a system. I still respond to all them manually, humanly. But it is nice to have some sort of like filtering mechanisms and then sort of separate my external stuff from my internal stuff and it's. And also hook up to the rest of my Google information. It's awesome. So I'm a huge fan and it's also just chapter one of this like AI native Workspace story. And I think you'll see this across other Google product services. I don't know if y' all have had Robby Stein on who leads AI product for search.

[John]

Oh yeah, yeah, I think we did.

[Brian]

Yeah, we did.

[John]

I think we did.

[Brian]

That's right.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Robbie's the man. I love. Robby, we talked probably six months ago about. He was telling me this story and it was a story at the time of like how search was becoming this frontier AI product. And I sort of had to extend disbelief a little bit and I think now you sort of see this with AI mode. Like AI mode is crushing it. Like it really is like a just as competitive frontier AI product as a lot of the other ones that are out in the market and it's like at search scale, which is crazy. So they're doing a great job and I think Workspace is going to go through that same arc where it's like they're going to become a frontier AI product which is great for the, you know, billion plus users who are using Workspace.

[John]

Anything, any shipping again this year. Are you going to give everyone a break? Let people let the other labs rest.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Offline starting next Monday. So we've got a couple more things in the pipeline the rest of this week which I'm excited about. And then people really will be offline. It is the blissful last part of the year where people actually take time off and relax and then the roadmap for January is going to be ridiculous.

[Brian]

You should try and get a massive company wide secret Santa going.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

One more quick pitch for both of you. I've been pushing for the blimp, so don't worry, I'm having a conversation.

[Brian]

We've been pushing for the blimp.

[John]

It's time to blimp. It's time to blimp.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Yeah, maybe gonna be a blimp coming.

[Brian]

It's interesting. Google's DNA, I feel.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Not gonna say who's involved, but we've got, we've got some people involved.

[Brian]

I love it.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

See what happens.

[John]

We would be, we'd be 2026 TVPN live from the air.

[Brian]

Christmas gift for us.

[John]

Yeah, that'd be incredible. What. What a year. You and the team should be incredibly proud and we've loved every conversation. So thank you for being a part of this. And yeah, I'm glad we'll be off when you guys are off so we can all. Yeah. I expect what some someone out there to be like we're launching something on Christmas Eve because everybody's. But imagine anyways.

[Brian]

But we'll cover it when we're back in January.

[John]

Awesome.

[Brian]

But thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Have a great rest.

[John]

Cheers, Logan.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Happy holidays.

[John]

Happy holidays.

[Brian]

Goodbye. One last if you don't have access to a blimp and you want to run a billboard ad, you go to adquick.com out of home measure out of home advertising made easy and measurable plan Buy.

[John]

We need some David Senra by David Senra Billboards.

[Brian]

Yeah, when's the billboard.

[John]

We need the $1 million ad buy.

[Brian]

We have David Senra in the studio in the TVPN Ultra dome. We're going to bring him down. We'll talk to him about podcasting. Maybe we'll touch on podcasting, maybe we'll touch on media. No. You know what I want to talk to you about first. We've beat the story to death, but a few days ago, this Wall Street Journal article went viral on how all tech companies are trying to hire storytellers. And I want your unfiltered thoughts on storytellers and entrepreneurship and whether storytellers can be bought or they merely exist. I think the read just to set the table was that, so basically there are a number of jobs that have popped up in Silicon Valley. 250,000 for someone whose job title is just storyteller. And that feels very broad because is that a copywriter? Is that someone who buys ads? What are they doing?

[John]

Do you think it's important for a founder to be good at telling stories?

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Yeah, of course.

[John]

I'm just kidding.

[Brian]

Well, take us through.

[John]

Well, and so my take was like, the best storytellers are just not for hire because they're running companies.

[David Senra]

I mean, who do you think is the bestseller storyteller or salesman alive today?

[Brian]

Probably Elon.

[John]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And before him, Steve Jobs. There you go. Yeah, it's very important.

[Brian]

Steve Jobs.

[David Senra]

There's a great quote from Don Valentine, the founder of Sequoia, who talked about this and actually put in my ads for one of my partners, and he's like, the art of storytelling is critically important. Most of the entrepreneurs that come to us can't tell a story. And that learning to tell a story is really important because money flows as a function of the stories.

[Doug Bernauer]

So.

[David Senra]

Yeah, I don't know. I didn't read the article. I don't read any of that shit. But I do. But I do listen to you guys and I heard you go over it and I think like, Vanta was one of them trying to hire. Yeah, yeah. So, like, I think they were one of my big partners. Like, they pay a lot more than $250,000 and I think I'm just like the person that needs to tell that story. And I think, like, that's the. Yeah, I think, like, obviously Christina's right. Really good from a founder level. But even if you don't have like the very few people have the Elon or the Steve Jobs skill set. And so I think, like, we've talked about this over and over again and like, you just partner with the people that are able to tell that story.

[Brian]

Yes.

[David Senra]

Like, let me give an example. Mr. Beast text me like two days ago, he's like, look at my Spotify wrapped. And number one was Founders podcast. I want to talk about the new show. Not founders, but. So we'll get to that in a minute. But he, we're in a group chat. It's me, him and all the founders of Ramp. And his whole thing was like, he didn't know what Ramp was. He text us to Kareem and Eric and he's like, now we've switched over my company to Ramp because, like, I feel like I know every single thing that's going on inside Ramp because I get a minute or two minute update every week from David.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

And if you listen to my Ramp ads, it's not like this is, you know, it's just corporate cards.

[Brian]

It's like same every time. It's how you're digging into different pieces.

[David Senra]

It's not that it's not the same every time because I think actually repetition is persuasive. So I have three or four versions and I repeat them over and over again. But Ramp and I, as you guys know, have a multi year partnership.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Senra]

So, but his point was just like.

[John]

Well, it's more than a partnership.

[David Senra]

So you should see the shirt I have underneath this hoodie. It's Ramp. So the point that he was telling them, it's like he now knows how Eric the CEO thinks he knows how Kari the co founder and CTO thinks he knows their hiring practices. Like, my ads are just stories about Ramp and if you pay attention to them, then you're like oh, I want to work with a company that takes this, that seriously, that does 300 different updates to their product on a yearly basis. That's nearly impossible to get hired as an engineer that is trying to lead from the very front in AI and these are very effective storytellers to the point those ads converted the biggest creator in the world to use your product. So I think that's what companies should be doing. Paying somebody 250 grand maybe.

[Brian]

I don't know how structural do you think storytelling should be? Because I really like systems thinking. I like systems and processes. So when I think about telling a story I actually do think about a three act structure. I think about who's the protagonist, what's the antagonist like. I can map it out on a piece of paper.

[David Senra]

I know this is what do you think?

[Brian]

Yes, exactly. No, I literally think this is how we met. I studied the books on it and I studied and I created like structure on it. There are other people that are much less structural. But when you, when you are trying to like when I tell the story of a founder on a YouTube video essay, I would literally map their journey to a beginning, middle and end Act 1 and Act 2 and Act 3. What happens at the end of Act 1? You're crossing into the unknown. What happens to.

[David Senra]

You're describing the oldest story there is.

[Brian]

Of course the hero's journey. Yes, the hero's journey to the hero's journey. Do you think about that when you are constructing an interview for David Senra, your new show? Are you trying to start with let's do the early life and then at 1/3 or, or you know, 20 minutes into the interview I'm going to try and get you into. Tell me about the crossing into the unknown. Okay then how are you structuring the episodes if not following a hero?

[David Senra]

I am just like the way I think about my work is very simple and I think it's really important because there's this great line from Munger where he's like, you know, the rarest of all things is to keep things simple and remember what you set out to do. Right. The value in what I do is that I'm going to be doing very similar things now. I was doing it 10 years ago, I'm going to be doing it 10 years from now. Yes, that is the value. It's in the compounding nature of it. So the way I try to keep, remember to keep things simple is Founders is the books that I'm intensely interested in reading and the new show is who am I intensely interested in speaking.

[Brian]

To and talking to?

[David Senra]

Yeah, there have been multi billionaire public company CEOs that asked to be on the show, and I started doing research about them. I was like, I don't want to spend any time with this guy. Like, I'm just not interested in talking to him at all. And me and Rob, my partner. So I'm partners Angie Heerman and Rob Moore on the new show. And, you know, Rob kind of pushes back sometimes, and it's just like, I just don't want to talk to him. What do you want me to tell you? And, you know, he's like, this is actually good that you would say no to somebody like that. Yeah, I don't think of things in, like, obviously, the hero's journey. If you listen to founders, like, that is essentially, that is what I'm doing over and over again. I think that comes naturally to me, but I don't think of things in structure. I'm just very. Almost everything for me is like, I'm intensely interested in what I'm working on. I try to consume more information about that subject matter than anybody else in the world. And then I just go straight off intuition.

[John]

I just wonder if I think one.

[Brian]

Thing that's interesting about that will develop a structure. I don't know. I think that makes sense.

[John]

I don't know.

[David Senra]

You listen to the podcast. I mean, do you see a structure there?

[Brian]

Well, you're. How many episodes in?

[David Senra]

6.

[Brian]

6. I would assume that in a decade I will be able to somewhat predict a structure. And you won't need to ever sit down and map out. I'm going to ask this question before this question. It'll just come to you naturally, but that intuition will happen and it will make sense, but you will know the rules and also know when to break them. So it won't. Like, there are stories that are told in four acts. There are stories that are told in five acts. There are stories that don't map perfectly onto the. The hero's journey because it's actually a love story or it's actually some other structure of story.

[David Senra]

I think storytelling is downstream from interest. So I heard Jordy say something that I think is dead.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Right.

[David Senra]

It's like you guys are using the term storyteller when it's really like you're talking about copywriter. And what I would do is I'd go back and study this guy named Claude Hopkins. Can one of the guys check? I think it's episode 170 of Founders, and he wrote this book called Scientific Advertising. And I found him because I read.

[John]

Not only, you know, it is 170 a life in advertising.

[David Senra]

When did I do that? How long ago was that?

[John]

March 8, 2021.

[Brian]

Okay, so 2021.

[David Senra]

So this is my point. It's just like intensely interested in what you're doing, and then just try to collect as much information as possible. So essentially, I found this guy named David Ogilvy. Then he would write about. Every single person that you're interested in will tell you who influenced them. And this guy wrote Claude Hopkins, probably the greatest copywriter to live. And he wrote this book called Scientific Advertising that I'm pretty sure if you buy his autobiography on Kindle, you get My Life in Advertising. And then at the end, you get scientific advertising for free. But I think every single person on the planet should read Scientific Advertising because Claude Hopkins worked for this guy named Albert Lasker. Albert Lasker built. He made more money as an advertising agency founder than anybody else in history. And all he did essentially cut away all the fat. He didn't have an art department, didn't have a research department. He had two of the best copywriters, and their words made the cash register ring. And in scientific.

[John]

That's what I'm saying. It's like, it's such an elite skill set. Using only your words, you can bend the world, but you have.

[David Senra]

This is. It's the amount of. You have to, one, be intensely interested in the subject, and two, you have to be willing to do an insane amount of work. And.

[John]

Yeah, well, that was why. That was why I started interrupting it. But when. When the point. The point you brought up earlier, like, if I'm trying to hire a storyteller, I want to hire the best writer. I don't want somebody that wants to be the chief storyteller of a business. I want them to be obsessed with writing and actually understand how important it is. I don't want them to, like, best communicator, not writer.

[David Senra]

It just so happens at that time, writing was the form of communication. So let me just finish the story real quick. He wrote Scientific Advertising. Albert Lasker reads it. He's like, this is our trade secrets. This is why I'm so rich. Like, it's going in the safe. He literally locked the manuscript in a safe for 20 years. Then when he retired, he let Claude Hopkins publish it and wind up selling 8 or 10 or 12 million copies.

[John]

Wow.

[David Senra]

And so. But when you go into there, like, Claude Hopkins. Let me give you an example. And this is something I think I Do really good on the podcast ads is like talking about the story behind how the product is made. And so there was this beer at the time. It was like Schlitz beer or something like that. It was like fifth market share. And so they hire Claude Hopkins. He goes and visits him. He visits their distillery. He interviews all the top founders, the founders of the company, the executives. He spends an insane amount of time with it. And then he goes, hey, you have this remarkable brewing process that is fascinating with all these machines and this technology, and I drink your beer, but I didn't know what was going on. Why don't you tell that story? And their whole point was, but our process isn't different from any other beer company. He's like, yeah, but no other beer company is telling the story. All he did was tell in text of like 1000, 2000, 3000 words the story behind how the product is made. This. When you. When you hear a founders episode or the new show, like the James Dyson episode just came out, it was one of the best days of my entire life. To be able to spend several hours at a time. The amount of fucking people. Am I gonna get you in trouble on the stream cursing?

[John]

No, no, it's fine. It's fine. There's one. There's one listener that takes issue with it. Tell me doesn't like. Tell me doesn't like the swearing.

[David Senra]

Okay, I apologize.

[John]

David has a potty mouth. But it's. It's you, it's you. I appreciate it.

[Brian]

So the.

[David Senra]

That's funny.

[Doug Bernauer]

The.

[David Senra]

Oh, the amount of people that sent me messages after that podcast or other podcasts have been made on him that now because I understand who the person is and what went into building the product. Like, I went and bought his hair dryer or his vacuum cleaner. Works for everything.

[John]

Yes, it's interesting. We every. That. That the style of advertisement, which was like you had a page of a magazine and you had basically an opportunity to put a picture and then a block of text, it kind of like comes back. In fact, it's constantly like coming back in fashion. And I think the reason for it, even though it's not like the most native format for the Internet, it's because when companies sit down and they're like, how do we sell our product? In a short paragraph? Oftentimes companies never do that. Right. The modern way that you communicate is like, you have a big website. Somebody has to scroll all over the website to really be sold on something. Or you have an ad that's like targeting different things or different value props. But when you just sit down and write one paragraph of exactly why somebody should care about your product and why they should purchase it, it's just extremely effective.

[David Senra]

Ramp's doing this with Harry Dry. Have you ever paid attention to Harry Dry's Twitter feed? Do you know who that is?

[John]

No.

[David Senra]

Fantastic copywriter out of Europe. I think he might be in England. And he's worked with Eric hand in hand and they've done a couple, you know, and it's posted, if I'm not mistaken, on like Eric's Twitter feed. It's like, that is still a very effective ad unit.

[John]

Yeah.

[David Senra]

So to answer your question, I don't know, like, yes, telling your story is a good idea. Like the founder should do as much as possible. Then the founder should be really teaching how they think about their business. I always, like Jim Sinegal, the founder of Costco, has this great quote where he's like, if you're not spending 90% of your time teaching, you're not doing your job. And his whole point is like, the direction's coming from you. You talk about, this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing. This is how we do it. And you repeat, repeat, repeat over and over again. And people are like, oh, yeah, but Jim Sinegal, he's running Costco. It's not a tech company. Well, go watch the episode I did how Elon works. And in that I just break down, I super weigh everything that. That has nothing to do with how other than how Elon works and this four step algorithm. He got to the point where he's like he says in the book, I repeated it so much that the executives are sitting in the meeting, would mouth the next word that's coming out of my mouth. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

[John]

Dave Portnoy did this today. He had this announcement video and it looked like very unprofessional in the way that it's shot. Clearly shot in an iPhone. He's standing in front of glass and he's just kind of like rambling, but he's just going, Netflix. He said it like 15 times because they were announcing a deal. A bunch of barstool podcasts are going on Netflix. And he's just like, netflix, Netflix, Netflix. And like you just immediately like, it doesn't look.

[Brian]

You want to watch part of my take, Netflix. You want to watch Spitting Chiclets, Netflix. Just keep saying Netflix.

[John]

It was very active on, on repetition. Something that I've appreciated about our relationship is I feel like when we all get together it's almost the same conversation every single time. And you would think you would get bored of it, but because we're extremely obsessed and focused, it's like, it's actually helpful in that, like, we're remembering, like, why we do this, why, why, why we make the decisions that we make and almost just kind of like constantly reminding ourselves. And I think that's very helpful of like, not. We talked about how we're thinking about. Somebody asked us what our.

[David Senra]

Is this the Emily Sundberg?

[John]

Yeah, she asked.

[David Senra]

Can you read that exact quote? I thought it was really.

[Brian]

Oh, we were supposed to. It's in the show notes, I think today or yesterday, but I'll pull it up.

[John]

Our 2026 resolution is to lock in. We had a great 2025 and it opened up a lot of amazing and fun opportunities. But the most contrarian thing we think we can do the next year, simply double down on the core show itself. That means having to say no to anything that doesn't improve the show directly. No fun, no products, no world tour. Just three hours of talking about tech and business at 11am every weekday.

[Brian]

The world tour was. Was my little sneaky joke is, you know what, what is a world tour? Like, isn't there that whole meme of like, it's going to ruin the world tour?

[John]

Well, we, we did we. I mean, we are. We had an opportunity to go to Switzerland. Oh, and we turned that down.

[Brian]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess we've had a couple, like, world tour, not full tour, but like trip, international trip.

[John]

But if we were to go to Europe, it'd turn into a tour.

[Brian]

Maybe.

[John]

Yeah, we went to the Middle East. It'd turn into a tour. You know, you're going all the way over there.

[Brian]

Maybe that happens, but not next year. We're locking in next year. The interesting thing is that friend of the show, Bryce, said that the. He was. He was sort of like framing it as like, these guys have realized that, like, media can be a better place.

[David Senra]

Bryce Roberts.

[Brian]

Yeah, yeah, he.

[David Senra]

He texted me yesterday and asked for advice on this format of a new podcast. And I was like, I'm not watching that. I won't say what it is, though.

[John]

I don't even think. It's not that it's a better business, it's just a better business for us.

[Brian]

Exactly, exactly, exactly. So obviously no shade here, but it is just like the founder market fit. It is ridiculous to say that media is about better business than asset management. Like, that's just not true. Look at the. For 400, it's all industrialists or asset managers. There are very, very few media figures that actually are in the hundred billion plus club. It just doesn't happen. But can you be hugely successful? Absolutely. Can you be very happy? Absolutely. Is it a better fit for us? Absolutely. And so I would.

[John]

Yeah, I could have a.

[Brian]

That makes people leave and pivot.

[John]

I considered. I. I enjoy investing in startups. I always have. I've invested in probably every. Every few months I got to add another 10.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Sure.

[John]

But yeah, some. Something over. Over 60 companies. And so I Last year, wandering in the wilderness, you know, trying to figure out how I wanted to spend my life. I considered that, but there's zero. Yeah. That.

[David Senra]

Or.

[John]

Or join a fund. I think being a solo GP is maybe overrated in a bunch of ways, but I would be 10% as happy or fulfilled doing that, even though there's a career to be built. Cheers. I wanted to talk. Ask you about question one second.

[David Senra]

I want to go back to what you just said about the conversations being very similar and repeatable. I just did this episode on Bruce Spreenstein, which I was like, very unsure if I was gonna put it out. I recorded for like three hours, edited down to like one hour and like 15 minutes. It's the most unusual episode of Founders that I've probably ever done. The amount of people that have now text or send me messages that like they're crying during it has been like, shocking. It wasn't. It turned out I thought I was making a podcast on, you know, somebody had one of the most extreme work ethics that I've ever heard of. That's. That was my introduction to him. I didn't know I wasn't like a Bruce Springsteen fan. I'm a huge Jimmy Iovine fan who's really like, almost like best friends with Bruce. And you know, he says one of the hardest working, like, most extreme people ever. And it wind up, you know, taking a very. The second half of the book is pretty crazy where you have this guy that essentially gets everything that he thought he wanted and try almost kills himself and like, what happened there? Why is he doing that? And then how did.

[John]

Did he.

[David Senra]

He was 34 when that's happening. He's almost 80 now. He looks phenomenal, by the way. It's like, what happened there? And how did he actually get what he mistake. He was mistaken on what he thought he wanted. Once he got what he wanted, it's not what he wanted. He realized what he actually wanted was a sports car. But he was. No, but he was in. But he was incapable of getting that. And then he figured out a way. I think the episode title is like.

[John]

Bruce wanted a GDP through rs, but he really wanted a Rensport.

[David Senra]

Is that the one that you said I should drive?

[John]

I always tell you to get the most insane cars, but this is.

[David Senra]

But this is the point.

[John]

There's so, so funny. David. I. You. You were. You. You were like, oh, if I wanted to. If I, like, wanted to buy a Ferrari, it would be this one. It was an 812 comp for, like, a cat. Just a car to keep in California. And I was like, that's so you. To. To just pick, like, the most elite car.

[Brian]

History's greatest cars. The spinoff. We're getting car reviews out of it.

[David Senra]

Well, hold on. There's a line in Bruce's autobiography that I don't even think I put in the episode that I thought was interesting. He's like, people don't come to my shows to learn something new. They come to be reminded about what they already know is true.

[Brian]

Ooh, that is great. I love that.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Wow.

[David Senra]

And I think if you look at. Again, I think of founders as like, church for entrepreneur. I think a lot of that's like, dude, I grew up in the church.

[Brian]

Don't think about it.

[Doug Bernauer]

Yeah.

[Brian]

Like what? They do that. Like, the rhythm and the repetition as, like that. That's very interesting.

[David Senra]

Yeah. So I do think a lot. I think, again, my natural instincts is fewer, deeper. So it's like I talk to the same people over and over again. I don't.

[Doug O'Laughlin]

Like.

[David Senra]

There's another line in the autobiography. He's like, I'm fairly insular by nature. I don't let new people into my life casually. I feel the exact same way. And so I do feel the best things in life, all of them come from compounding, whether it's relationships, money, knowledge, everything comes from compounding. So my instinct is to just go and have the same conversations with the fewer, deeper people that I actually trust. And then you meet remarkable people and you add very slowly.

[John]

Yeah, I think about that. The opportunity cost of having a dinner with somebody that we've never met versus just hanging out and having my favorite conversation, which is the same one we always have. The other thing about, I would say the difference, like the quote you just gave around going to a show to remember what you already know. Think about. When I discovered founders, one of the most powerful things was learning that certain elements of myself were okay. Like, I'm not the most organized person. Right. And so to hear that other people that have gone on to do great things. Like, some of them are hyper, organization, organized, like, you know, like, incredibly dialed. And others are just, like, chaotic. And it's actually learning. Like, what's actually okay is I feel, like, extremely powerful.

[David Senra]

We may be, like, a small percentage of the overall human population, but we are not unique. There have been people that our same experiences, think the same way that we are, have our same natural intelligence, talent, everything else. And just like, it's foolish not to utilize their experience and knowledge for your own benefit on how to build a life, not a fucking business, a life. That was one of the craziest things realizations that Bruce Springsteen has in this episode where he's like, I thought I was building work. I wanted to be a rock star. I want to do all this other stuff. He's just like, I got that, and I have a shitty life. How do I fix my life? And for him to go through that was a pretty intense experience. And I think that's why. And then his dad. I don't want to talk too much about this, but, like, you know, he had one of the worst dads that you could possibly have. His dad was a misanthrope, had no friends, alcoholic, beat the shit out of Bruce. I think he said in his entire childhood, his dad said less than a thousand words to him. Well, and then later on, he gets diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. And the amount of messages there are just like, the part about his dad is like, that hits way too close to him home. It's exactly like, why? Because there's people out there that have had that same experience too.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brian]

What is your favorite book? That is not a biography. Really hard, right?

[David Senra]

Favorite book. That's not a biography.

[Brian]

So examples would be like, you know, 1929 doesn't really have a Breakneck by Dan Wang.

[David Senra]

I'm not reading anything new.

[Brian]

No, I'm just giving examples. Like, I'm just looking through, like, what I've. What I've read recently, and there's a lot of books that are.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

That.

[Brian]

I would imagine that it would be very hard to make a Founders episode about a. You know, I mean, certainly a work of fiction.

[David Senra]

I think I can make a great Founders episode about any book that I really enjoyed. Like, I did last year. I did Haruki Murakami's what I Think About When I Think about Running. And I remember I was in Malibu. This is why I spent so much time out here, because I really do believe I do my best work out here. There is something Very, very special about this place.

[John]

About Hollywood or Malibu?

[David Senra]

No, not Malibu.

[Jacob Efron]

Hollywood.

[David Senra]

I come because I love you guys. I was whipping through the mountains just now, by the way.

[Brian]

That's great.

[David Senra]

I was like, I gotta slow down.

[Brian]

This is not a good idea.

[David Senra]

So I start reading that. I got this idea from Elon, and he's like, he wants to read more books, and he realizes carrying books with him is difficult. So sometimes he would just read entire books on the Kindle app on its iPhone. And I started reading. I forgot even how I discovered this, because I didn't know who Ricky Murakami was before this started reading it. And I think I read the whole entire book on my phone in, like, a day and a half. And then I was like, this isn't really a Founders episode. This is kind of weird. I'm like, no, the fact that you couldn't put this down means that it is a Founder's episode. You are going to make an episode about it, and then the response. Because you're so intentionally interested and you can transfer your interest to podcasting a straight energy transmission for some of us, you were able to transfer that enthusiasm, that passion for this guy's ideas and life to the audience. So I think I can make it on any book that I'm intensely interested in. Like, I've been rereading Freedom's Forge, right? I mean, I could make the episode on just Bill Knudsen.

[Brian]

Yeah, Bill Knudsen.

[David Senra]

But I think telling the whole story of, you know, the fact that in the 1940s, the United States, they took what was this hugely sophisticated manufacturing base that was just applied to consumer products, and on a dime, turned it and started building, producing the most war material than any other country in the world. Like, how they did that is a very fascinating story. But to answer your question, favorite book. That is not a bio.

[Brian]

Interesting, because I would never put Freedom's Forge in the pipeline of Founders episodes, and yet I would 100% listen to a Founders episode on Freedom Forge, which is like. Like, unmet demand or unknown demand.

[David Senra]

I don't want to talk too much about podcasting because, you know, like, I will not shut up about this. But, like, I think one of the most important parts of, like, if you're going to do this for a long term, long term. And, like, this is another thing that Bruce Green saying, I think was very smart. He noticed. He just, like, observed his industry. He's like, this industry is very transient. There's a person that has a hit song, maybe a hit album, maybe two hit Albums, but, like, then they. They either get on drugs, they die. I think, what is it? Like the 27 Club, all these young musicians die. And he's like, I was built for durability and longevity. And so he worked backwards from like, what are these people doing? And how do I just avoid. It's very Mungeresque. Charlie Mungeresque. Invert. Always invert. And so with podcasting, I think about that a lot. I can't say who this was. And Rob. I shouldn't even say this. Rob put me across from, like, a. I would consider him like a legacy podcaster. And he did this at dinner. I think he did this on purpose because he knows, like, what's gonna happen. And I just start asking him questions about, like, his show. And, like, he came up in podcasting when, like, it could be your second, third, fourth, fifth thing that you were doing, which is like, those days are done. And I remember I didn't even eat that night. I don't think I was like, pounding like, chopsticks on the table because his answers were like, you're not gonna make it, man. Like, like, you're already dead. This isn't going to work. So the point of being here is if you're going to do this long term, I think you have to.

[Jacob Efron]

Show.

[David Senra]

The audience who you truly are, and therefore they will over time. I think people came to Founders because it was the books and the biographies, and over time, they're just like, whatever this guy thinks is interesting to read. I just want to hear his insight or his takeaways from that.

[John]

You.

[David Senra]

You guys are doing a good job with all the personality you have. You're fucking dressed as an elf right now. Like, you have this giant horse behind the million little things that you guys do. Even now. I was here probably a month ago, and even the stuff you have hanging up on your walls, I'm like, oh, they're just becoming more and more natural and authentic to who they are. So I want to answer your question. Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant. It's not technically a biography. I would say it's a hundred page biography of the human species. And because I think if you have one skill set that's going to help you throughout your life, it's like really understanding that history doesn't repeat. Human nature does. And you really should study how humans. Humans react in very predictable ways when they're exposed to specific stimuli. And I think understanding that is one of the most useful tools you can have as you go through life.

[John]

What patterns do you see in the founders that have appeared on Founders and the new show in terms of how they landed on the thing that defined their life and their work? Someone v in the chat says, how does one find their purpose? Obsession. But I feel like it's very, very different across. But I'm curious if you see any patterns.

[David Senra]

Somebody came up to me at that party, that Peter Thiel's party we were all together at a few days ago, and they asked me that question. They're like, I forgot the exact way this guy said it. But it was just like, you know, it's obvious that you found your thing. And like, how do I find my thing? And the story I told him was just like, obviously it's internal. Like, no one can answer that question. I gave that story from Mozart where, you know, this 21 year old kid comes up to Mozart's like, how do I write a symphony? And Mozart's like, you're too young. And Mozart's like. And the guy goes, you were writing symphonies younger than I am now. And he's like, yeah, but I wasn't going around asking people how to do it. And I just think, like, all you have to do is like, just look how you spend your time. Actions express priority. Like, actions express priority. You, I don't give a shit what you say. Just like, I see how you spend your time and you, I will know what is actually important to you. And so if you're looking for that thing, you know, just like, where are you naturally drawn to? Like, this morning I spent like six.

[John]

Hours, but at the same time, when you were, when you were. I feel like there needs to be an openness to, like, an openness to not like you can't just. If you're trying to find your life's work, it's not something you can just decide, I'm gonna find my life's work this week, I'm gonna. No, no, no.

[Brian]

So you can't.

[John]

When you were 20, it's not like you were like, I'm gonna be a.

[Brian]

Not everyone can be a pro basketball player their entire life.

[John]

And people are just more specifically, like, when you were 20, it's not like you were thinking, well, when I'm in my 40s, I want to have a business podcast.

[David Senra]

So what I would say, if that kid is 20, find out how old this guy is in the chat. I would say, read Paul Graham's how to Do Great Work. That essay, I think it's episode 314 of founders. Can you check for me real quick? And like, it might not.

[John]

Like, I think one shotted. Paul Graham, how did your great work? Episode 314.

[David Senra]

So hold on real quick. And I think it came down to your. He's just like, how to do great. You're just following what you're intensely curious about. And so like, like this morning I woke up and essentially I just like, read for, I don't know, four or five straight hours. And then I was like, oh, shit, I forgot I have to go to TPPN today. And that's why I was driving so fast. And like, no one told me. Like, no one's like, david, you should read for self development. Just like I like reading. I feel good when I read. It's way better than looking, looking at my goddamn phone. It's outside of like spending time with people I love, like, there. There's not another activity I like to do. I would put like our relationships, spending time with people I truly care about above that. But in terms of like, if I'm by myself, like, there's not another thing that I'd rather want to do. And that's just me listening to my curiosity. Yeah, I'm going to go. Okay.

[Brian]

No, no, no. I was just. Yeah, yeah, you can continue.

[John]

If you could interview anyone that is dead, who would it be? Was there any, like, is there anyone you've studied that you feel like there's this open question where no. No text captured it or no interview that they did?

[Brian]

Yeah, it's like particularly lost.

[David Senra]

I mean, that has got to be the case. I had a weird experience last week in a great way.

[John]

A ghost.

[David Senra]

No, no, ghost of Rockefeller. So, yeah, the answer probably, I mean, the simplest thing would be like, Rockefeller, maybe Steve Jobs, maybe Sam Samurai, because Sam's a Murray is just like, you know, such a savage. And I think I have definitely, like a wild side to me that, you know, Lulu, like, she's. She's constantly like, you cannot travel anywhere without a crisis comms person next to you. Like, you're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble. And so I think there's like a wildness to Sam's Murray that. That's very attractive to me, if I'm being honest about this. But in terms of like, it does not come across in the text. So what I'm trying to do is like, obviously with the new show, I want to be differentiated, right. I wouldn't be doing it just to be the same as anybody else. I find being the same as anybody else disgusting. It makes me want to vomit. So I'm Working on some people that have literally never done podcasts before. And I skewed to like older killers. Like I'm not interested in the, in the, in general, I do try to spend time like I do feel I'm in like the middle child where like you get access to all these crazy people have done things for decades and aren't really successful and they're willing to like spend a lot of time with you. Most of them listen to the podcast. And then I get a lot of information out of these relationships and conversations, these dinners. And then you know, every once in a while identify like a younger founder, maybe to spend time with that. If you think you can help them, you should. But in general I skew way older way. Like you know, somebody that can actually point to a body of work to prove that they are actually like somebody you want to spend time with. And I had, I spent time with a 71 year old guy last week in New York and he sold his company for $60 billion recently and he's never done a podcast. And I did an episode on his episode of Founders on him and his family. And the reason he wanted to meet me and the reason that he's now going to do the new show and he trusts me is because there's only one book written about this. And he listened to the podcast, he couldn't believe the insights that were in it. He asked his son, asked David, who he interviewed in the family, to get this information and the answer was nobody.

[Brian]

I read the book and then I.

[David Senra]

Tied it together because like, like you're the same person that there's been 100 of you, 200, 1000 of you for the past few hundred years. Like we're not. I know we like to feel we're special. Like we are. There's just we're not as unique as we think we are. And so I don't think, you know, obviously if you can have conversations with these people, you should do that. One of the reasons that is because like in an hour we talked for an hour, the amount of information that guy transferred to me in an hour would be literally impossible. You could give a 25 year old founder, 30 year old founder weeks and he just could not convey that much knowledge and information that this guy was able to do in an hour. So yeah, if you can have conversations with him, you should. But I don't feel like I'm ever like missing out. Like the text wasn't enough.

[Brian]

Well, it's been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much.

[John]

Chat says more swearing please.

[Brian]

Chat's fans of it. Well, that concludes this episode.

[David Senra]

Thanks for having me again, guys.

[John]

We will be retired.

[Brian]

John, back at 11. No, I do have.

[John]

Oh, you actually have to go.

[Brian]

Yeah, sorry. But, I mean, you two could hang out here if you want.

[John]

It's been a great show. We're in the fourth hour. We're almost halfway through the fourth hour, and we'll be back tomorrow. Yeah, we got two more.

[Logan Kilpatrick]

Every.

[John]

Every day this week has felt like Friday.

[Brian]

Thank you.

[John]

But thank you for hanging out with us. Thank you for being here.

[Doug Bernauer]

Of course.

[John]

We love you, David. And we love you.

[Brian]

Add David Senra by David Senra to your podcast player.

[David Senra]

Thank you.

[John]

Thank you. Cheers, folks.

[Brian]

See you tomorrow. Goodbye.