Benchmark’s Ship of Theseus, OpenAI Kills Sora, SpaceX $2T IPO Buzz | Diet TBPN

Summary

TBPN Diet: Benchmark’s Ship of Theseus, OpenAI Kills Sora, SpaceX $2T IPO Buzz (March 25, 2026)

Overview

In this Diet TBPN episode, hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays—joined by Harry Stebbings and Jason Calacanis—dive into several hot topics in Silicon Valley: Benchmark Capital’s ongoing reputation crisis post-Uber, OpenAI’s surprise shutdown of its Sora app, and surging IPO rumors for SpaceX. The discussion is lively and opinionated, with the hosts weighing the lasting impacts of VC drama, the latest pivots in AI product strategies, shifting business models in the gig economy, and the next generation of AI and aerospace companies.

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1. Benchmark & The "Ship of Theseus" Paradox (00:00–10:31)

Key Discussion Points

• The Legacy of Benchmark and the Uber Scandal

  • Emile Michael likens forgiving Benchmark (after its role in forcing out Travis Kalanick) to forgiving the Wuhan Institute of Virology if new leadership is friendlier ([00:00]).
  • Question posed: "How close are we to actually being able to forgive Benchmark? When is the right time? It's been a decade." (Harry Stebbings, [00:00]).
  • Under Travis, Uber might have been a trillion-dollar company (Jason Calacanis, [01:11]); Uber is worth ~$150B today, while Lyft is much smaller ([01:28]).

• The Ship of Theseus Analogy

  • Harry explains the Ship of Theseus: at what point, after enough team change, does a venture firm become "new"? ([03:45]).
  • "It's not a full ship of Theseus, but only one third of the original 2017 partnership remains." (Harry, [05:23])
  • Jason asks: "Did Chitan, Everett, and Jack, as part of their interview process, say, 'Can never do anything like that again'?" ([06:16])
  • The consensus: Although the firm is changing, the Uber ousting still haunts Benchmark; skeptics need more time before "forgiving" ([10:06]).

Notable Quotes

• “If Travis had stayed in the role, it's hard to imagine Uber being worth less than a trillion dollars today.” – Jason Calacanis ([01:11])
• “So Shervin said, in my opinion, Gurley single-handedly destroyed hundreds of billions in value.” – Harry Stebbings ([03:45])
• “Only one third of the original 2017 partnership remains... What happens if Peter and Eric retire or leave?” – Harry ([05:23])
• “Would Delian accept that argument? Probably not. Would Emile? Probably not.” – Harry ([09:35])
• “Benchmarks has put up incredible returns…but I’m sure they’ve missed a lot of deals that would have made their returns even better because of that kind of narrative.” – Jason ([07:05])

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2. OpenAI Kills Sora: AI Video App Sunset (11:05–20:59)

Key Discussion Points

• Shutdown of Sora

  • Sora app being phased out; content moves into core ChatGPT, reflecting OpenAI's "refocusing" ([11:05]).
  • “Bullish—killing products quickly is hard…It's a good sign for OpenAI.” (referencing Tyler Hodge, [11:13])
  • Host reactions: Sora’s launch was “one shot humanity,” claiming it could be too successful, but real-world creator adoption lagged behind the hype ([13:32]).

• Platform & Network Effects

  • Difficulty building new creative networks: "Come for the tool, stay for the network" mantra doesn’t always translate when existing networks (Instagram, TikTok) already dominate ([14:30]).
  • AI-generated videos are easy to share on existing platforms; Sora couldn’t lock users in.
  • Real-world example: Viral AI-generated “Love Island” spinoff thriving on TikTok despite Sora’s sunset ([16:24]).

• Monetization & Compute Constraints

  • Both Google’s and OpenAI’s premium video tools have severe rate limitations due to compute costs, harming user retention ([17:51]).
  • "YouTube, let me tell you, rate limits kill retention like nothing…Imagine if TikTok was like, after five minutes, you have to close the app." (Harry, [18:37])
  • AI-generated video is progressing, but the real value is still in code generation and enterprise, not viral content ([19:36]).

Notable Quotes

• “Almost no one can do it. It's a good sign for OpenAI. They're consolidating in many ways.” – Harry ([11:13])
• "Google has been like charging ahead...but the vibes around both Meta Vibes and Sora were like, this is going to one-shot humanity.” – Harry ([13:32])
• “YouTube, let me tell you, rate limits kill retention like nothing. Nothing is worse.” – Harry Stebbings ([18:37])
• “It's just way more valuable...the tokens of the most value will always be the ones that the compute flows to...endless random generations that aren't quite dialed yet.” – Harry ([19:36])

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3. Fiverr’s AI Pivot & The Gig Economy Paradox (21:25–26:05)

Key Discussion Points

• Fiverr’s AI Directors Billboard & Marketplace Challenges
  • KTLA 5 covers Fiverr’s campaign: “Find the best AI directors”—boldly signaling AI as a creative force ([21:25]).
  • Fiverr struggles: AI replaces many “$5 creative work” gigs; disintermediation remains a huge obstacle—buyers just go direct to top creators ([23:12], [26:05]).
  • Harry: “Nature of Fiverr is like, you have to define your task in a prompt. Not, oh, have a long conversation.” ([23:30])
  • “This campaign is effectively an ad for Billy Bowman who you could just go hire today.” – Jason ([26:05])

Notable Quotes

• "Fiverr is not one of those companies. KTLA 5 is not prepared for it not to be a bubble." – Harry/Jason ([23:03])
• "Generate AI is very, very, very good at $5 creative work. Exactly $25." – Jason ([23:12])
• "The market is not excited about Fiverr right now... they're being valued basically at four times EBITDA." – Jason ([24:18])
• “Disintermediation has always been a problem on these platforms.” – Harry ([26:05])

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4. United Airlines ‘Relax Row’ & Competition with Private Jets (26:05–28:49)

Key Discussion Points

• New Airline Product Innovation
  • United's “Relax Row”: three economy seats combined into a lie-flat bed, targeting private jet clientele ([26:05]).
  • Is this "threat" behind Bombardier stock dip? skepticism, jokes about hacking your own relax row, and negotiation with seat neighbors ([27:19]).
  • Air New Zealand pioneered it in 2010 ([28:29]).

Notable Quotes

• “If Tyler's resourceful enough, he could just… detach the armrest blocking this and just kind of build your own.” – Jason ([27:23])
• “Now we just need to put stairs on the food drink cart so you can climb over the top of them to get to the bathroom…” – Jason ([27:57])
• “United built the product that everyone who has ever been on a plane wanted.” – John Collison quoted ([28:13])

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5. SpaceX $2T IPO Buzz & XAI (28:49–30:46)

Key Discussion Points

• SpaceX IPO Rumors
  • Rumors suggest SpaceX will file for an IPO, possibly as soon as this week ([28:49]).
  • Interest in S1 focus on XAI, financials, and how AI is monetized through Grok and other models ([29:08]).
  • Pricing differences in AI services: $15 per million tokens vs. $2 per million tokens for foundation models ([29:16]).
  • Elon Musk’s penchant for symbolism: speculation that he may aim for a 4/20 IPO date, ticker ‘SX’ ([30:03]).

Notable Quotes

• “This is the first time we actually see the economics of inference, the economics of foundation lab…” – Harry ([29:08])
• “I think Elon will try to aim for the company to actually go out on April 20th—4/20.” – Jason ([30:14])
• “Knowing Elon's very millennial sense of humor, I think the ticker SX is…” – Jason ([30:28])

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6. Memorable Moments & Running Jokes

• Ship of Theseus as VC Parable: The playful, philosophical framing of whether Benchmark is “forgivable” if enough partners turn over ([03:45]–[06:16]).
• “Do not visit the sins of the father on the son”: Defending new Benchmark partners who weren’t involved in Uber drama ([10:51]).
• Viral side notes: Traffic accident caused by AI directors billboard, tongue-in-cheek on hacking airline seats ([21:43], [27:23]).
• Disintermediation insight: Fiverr’s billboard as unintentional free ad for its own "AI directors" ([26:05]).

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Timestamps Index

• 00:00–10:31 Benchmark, Uber, VC reputation, Ship of Theseus
• 10:31–20:59 OpenAI Kills Sora, AI video, compute limits, product strategy
• 21:25–26:05 Fiverr AI billboard, gig economy & disintermediation
• 26:05–28:49 United Airlines ‘Relax Row’ vs. private jet market
• 28:49–30:46 SpaceX IPO rumors, XAI, S1 anticipation

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Tone & Takeaway

The show is brisk and irreverent, yet detailed—marrying Silicon Valley inside baseball with broader tech culture trends, peppered with in-jokes and direct, sometimes biting, attribution. For those who missed the episode, this summary captures the substance, tone, and zingers that define TBPN’s growing influence in tech talk.

Transcript

[Harry Stebbings]

There's been a debate truth bomb dropped by Emile Michael. He says forgiving Benchmark and others would be like letting the Wuhan Institute of Virology slide back into a good reputation because the new senior manager of pandemic causation has made more friends than his predecessor. And so this got me thinking and I'm probably going to have to put on the steel helmet for this one because this is wading into dangerous territory defending Benchmark. But my question is how close are we to actually being able to forgive Benchmark? When is the right time? It's been a decade. Obviously the drama between Benchmark and Travis Kalanick was awful. I think everyone's against what happened. But the question is like what is a venture firm? It is its partnership. If the partnership turns over at some point, is it a new team? Do you get a second shot? Can you actually change changed the reputation. And so believe me, like I, I get the Benchmark criticism like Travis is truly a generational entrepreneur and was on such an amazing run. Right. So he was attacked.

[Jason Calacanis]

Jason, Jason from Saster was reacting to our interview with Travis and his take, which I totally agree with, is it's hard to if Travis had stayed in the role, it's hard to imagine Uber being worth less than, than something like a trillion dollars today.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yes. So our friend of the show, Owen McCabe over at Bin AI said Waymo is superior to Uber in literally every way. This was a year ago in March 25th actually to the day a year ago he said this Waymo superior to Uber in literally every way that matters to consumers. Smoother, safer, more reliable, no chatty, weird, rude drivers. Private, quiet, self driving car services are gonna dominate their human driver incumbents and own says tbt when I think that's throwback to. Right, throwback to when Benchmark pushed Travis out of Uber and can the self driving division that he started literally 10 years ago. And so this is what's so, so tricky about this is that uber survived. It's 150 billion market cap. It's bigger than when Travis was ousted. But getting a 2x over a decade is not what I think people were expecting from Uber. Under Travis's leadership it's and Lyft has fallen to just 5 billion. Like he won the capital war. And Dar has done a great job managing the business. But I feel like a lot of the success of Uber has been built on the foundation that Travis set up. It wasn't a complete reinvention. If anything they just honed down the core business.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, the Thing that is holding the business back right now, at least from a valuation standpoint is this big question right around self driving. Dara has answered this question thousands of times. Right now the strategy is to invest in self driving companies, partner with self driving companies, but not the same as having developed their own internal IP and product starting a decade ago. And seeing where that would have been by now is hard to think about.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah, and so Uber is valued at 150 today. Something like that. Waymo was valued in February of this year at 126 billion. And so yes, Waymo's been working on self driving longer, but you have to imagine that there's another 50 billion of market cap if you have a serious play.

[Jason Calacanis]

What would Waymo be valued if Travis was the CEO that you would get some type of Travis premium on it? Just, just the market would be. Would, would.

[Harry Stebbings]

Totally, totally, totally, totally.

[Jason Calacanis]

You have this sort of one of one entrepreneur.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah. See 100%. So Shervin said, in my opinion, Gurley single handedly destroyed hundreds of billions in value. Travis and Emil staying in charge of Uber would have led to a Tesla sized win 500 billion plus for everyone including benchmarks LPs. He nuked decades of Benchmark's reputation with founders. The market has spoken and no future Travis quality founder would ever touch him or his former firm again. Especially since three of the partners that approved of the ousting of of Travis are still at the firm. And so my question is how many partners need to be at the firm until we can call this a ship of Theseus? So for those who are not up to speed on their Greek mythology. In Greek mythology, Theseus is the mythical king of the city of Athens. He rescues the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the Minotaur, which is his mythical beast. And then he escapes onto a ship going to Delos each year. The Athenians would commemorate this success by by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo over time. Because they're sailing the ship every year, various of its timbers rotted and were replaced. A question was raised by ancient philosophers. If no pieces of the original ship remained in the current ship, is it still the ship of Theseus? If it was no longer the same, when had it ceased existing as the original ship? So some people might say 50, 50. Some people might say yes, it is the same sh. Because replacing one board at a time, the ship is the concept and you can swap everything out 25 times, it's still the same ship. There isn't Like a. It's a. It's a paradox. There is no, like, right answer. It's a philosophical question. But it applies, I think, to Benchmark. Because back when Kalanick resigned as Uber CEO on June 20th of 2020, 2017, after investor pressure that included Benchmark on that exact date, Benchmark's equal GP roster was Bill Gurley, Eric Vistra, Matt Kohler, Mitch Lasky, Peter Fenton, Sarah Tavel. Today, the partnership has changed dramatically. The only two that remain are Peter and Eric. And you have Chetan, Ev Randall and Jack Altman, who are new to the partnership post the Uber scandal. And so it's not a full ship of Theseus, but only one third of the original 2017 partnership remains. And my question for those who remain reluctant to forgive Benchmark is like, what happens if Peter and Eric retire or leave at some point and the full ship of Theseus is complete? Maybe you'll ship.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. Right now, right now, 40% of the 40% of the partnership was there, 33%. The question is, did Chitan, Everett and Jack come in and as part of the interview process, say, like, you're absolutely right.

[Harry Stebbings]

You're absolutely right. I mean, to defend Evan knowing two out of the three Ev had just graduated from college, like, he was truly, like, not involved in the Uber scandal, and yet, you know, people will visit

[Jason Calacanis]

upon him knowing Everett and Jack. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure during the interview process, they were like the storied firm.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

I'm excited to join, but we can never do.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

Can never do anything like that again. And so. And so one. One question that's worth asking is, it's like, is the firm that did this and ultimately, you know, stained this. This storied brand.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

And has certainly suffered the consequences. Right. They've put up in, you know, incredible returns since then, but I'm sure they've missed a lot of deals that would have made their returns even better because of that kind of narrative around the firm. And so Emil, Michael and others are upset that they're doing great deals at all, but I think it is if they're in a situation again. Right. In the same situation kind of situation, are they more. What. What decision are they more or less likely to make? Right. I would. I would argue, like, they are probably less likely to. I would think so go against the founder. Given. Given how this entire situation has played out.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah. Yeah. The only. The only steel man. And this is this needs the full steel helmet because it's so hard to steel man. The benchmark thing the full steel man of the benchmark thing. It's really bad. It's really bad to bench. I'm sorry for everyone. I'm sorry. But it's basically that every partner at Benchmark, it's an equal partnership. So every partner was going to make a clean $1 billion. They were all going to be billionaires from this one deal. And it was such a power law that there was no path to becoming a billionaire from the other investments, most likely. And so you see the endless 247 hit piece pile stack up and you got Mike Isaac bloodhounded at the New York Times writing books they're turning into movies. It's getting rough. It's getting rough.

[Jason Calacanis]

Mike Isaac's at your door.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah, Mike Isaac's at is at the door. The barbarians are at the gate and you're like, I'm either a billionaire or I'm going back to a paltry 10 million. And I can't do that. I can't do that. And so they freak out and they're like, we gotta salvage this thing. We gotta just push it out in the public markets. We gotta get out of this name. And so they basically just, it's just too nerve wracking. And yeah, it's not a strong steel man. But I think, I think that's a little bit more of what happened than, than like taking a stand on like, oh, like this particular thing that happened was so egregious. It was more just like, okay, like wow, all my money, like 99% of my net worth is in this asset. And it's looking like it could be a zero because Lyft is coming from behind. There's a whole bunch of VCs they're piling into that. The narrative is totally flipping. There's a boycott U pain like, and everyone's like, what's going on? I got to get out of this. I got to salvage this. And I think that was maybe more of the underpinning than like, like I'm taking some sort of like moral stand on a particular hit piece or something like that. Anyway, it's rough, but fortunately, you know, ship Theseus process, maybe it happens. I don't know. Would Delian accept that argument? Probably not. Would Emile? Probably not. But they're not making it any easier with the Manus investment either because like there was a world where it was like, okay, yeah, the Uber thing happened a decade ago. The partnership is basically entirely new and they're focused on.

[Jason Calacanis]

But it's not, it's not there yet. Yes, it's just not there yet.

[Harry Stebbings]

It's not there yet.

[Jason Calacanis]

But I think. I think you can rewrite this in five years.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah, yeah. You made this point that it's too early to call this.

[Jason Calacanis]

But, but I think it's directionally given that the firm is still. Is still putting up great returns. They've gotten to a bunch of great companies over the last five years. I think we are on a path to the benchmark.

[Harry Stebbings]

Well, yeah. Venture Lazard, the venture ship of Theseus and vc. Bragg said Airbnb has no homes, Uber has no cars and Benchmark has no partners. Of course, that was an exaggeration. Sora, rest in peace. Sora, the app is leaving.

[Jason Calacanis]

Eva's in the chat. There he is. Class of 17 represent.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yes, yes.

[Jason Calacanis]

Ev was.

[Harry Stebbings]

I was chugging beers while Uber is getting ousted. Do not visit the sins of the father on the son. That's what I would say. I've not guilty.

[Jason Calacanis]

I was. I was a boulder.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah, he was hanging out. He was.

[Jason Calacanis]

What happened? See, senior year. What happened?

[Harry Stebbings]

Anyway, Sora is now. Is it still in the App Store? I think it's like the announcement was that it will be leaving the App Store.

[Jason Calacanis]

Millions of people have made content on the app. You have to leave it running for some amount of times.

[Harry Stebbings]

There's a phase out. But the announcement happened and now it is going out and there's. I have a bunch of takes on this. Obviously this is not the end of video creation for OpenAI. This will be rolled into ChatGPT. I imagine Tyler Hodge put it well, bullish. Killing products quickly is hard. Almost no one can do it. It's a good sign for OpenAI. They're consolidating in many ways. It's like last week you heard about like the red. The code red was like a month or two ago. And then it was like, we're refocusing. And then it's like, here's step one of refocusing, like a single app that we're going to push everything together. And also I've. I've enjoyed making some videos in Sora. I've never enjoyed having to go to a separate app. I want all of that to live in one place. So that makes a lot of sense. Let's see what Dax said. It's lame to see all the people saying, ha. I called it. I knew Sora wouldn't work. Yeah, duh. Because everyone thought. Everyone thought that, including me who were working on it. They probably learned a lot trying to make it work. Anyway, for every successful thing that exists 100 efforts like this had to fail. And those learnings are fed into making something that ultimately does work and provides you with a steady paycheck. Yes, it's interesting because this quote of like people saying, ha, I called it. I knew SORA would work. That is not how I interpreted the vibes around the Sora launch. Like, I went back and revisited the essay that I wrote. On October 1st, we had the slop versus farming debate. I was really on a tear back then. Slop is bad. We the timeline, don't want to be pigs at the trough. We don't like it when tech leaders treat us like farm animals. But we love farming. Farming is lindy. We the timeline, want to return to a world where we are filling up troughs with slop on a daily basis. I guess. So between Google, DeepMind, Meta Superintelligence and OpenAI, we now have three different variations on AI video products, each met with slightly different responses. So the interesting thing here is that like Google has been like charging ahead, launching it. It's in real, it's in shorts. And that's just been like not a story at all. What was interesting was that the vibes around both Meta Vibes and Sora were like, this is going to one shot humanity. They're like, this is going to be too successful. That was, it was like interesting.

[Jason Calacanis]

It was like a entertainment doom loop.

[Harry Stebbings]

Exactly.

[Jason Calacanis]

You could imagine.

[Harry Stebbings]

Exactly it.

[Jason Calacanis]

Just getting so good at generating the next thing that you would want to see better than even a billion humans on Instagram could do. And that's not what we've seen so far.

[Harry Stebbings]

And so my big question was, will this actually be sticky? Will people like this? And at what rate? I mean, I read LLM generated text daily, but I also read a ton of not LLM generated text and my ratio has grown exponentially. But it hasn't gone to 100%, nowhere near it. Like probably 5% of the text that I read is LLM.

[Jason Calacanis]

I mean we should actually revisit how we were processing it during launch when it was rocketing.

[Harry Stebbings]

We should just throw on that three hour stream and just watch that and

[Jason Calacanis]

react to how our day, even at the time, I remember saying, very obvious that they built like a very cool creative tool.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

And they have the potential to seed a network with this. There's a, all this novel content they had, they had allowing creators and you know, people like Sam to allow people to use their, their ip. Yeah, it was very, very well executed launch. But even from the beginning it was like, okay, obviously cool Creative tool. It's a totally different ball. You know, this like, come for the tool, stay for the network has been like an enduring Chris Dixon strategy. Right. Chris Dixon probably wrote that in like 24, 2014 maybe, or a long time ago, over 10 years ago. But just because you build a tool that is attached to a network, that jump is just really, really, really, really tough.

[Harry Stebbings]

Especially when there are three or four, five serious networks that are at scale that can on day one, support the format of the file that is produced from the model. So in a world where generative AI video came out not in a MP4 file or an MOV file, it came out in some sort of format that could never be uploaded to Instagram reels, then you have a chance to build a network and run away with it. And this was the story of Instagram, like, like Instagram just had better support for images than Facebook did. And then vine had support for video literally before Instagram. So Instagram, it was like, I have a video on my phone. It's cool, I want to share it.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah.

[Harry Stebbings]

Sharing it to Instagram was not possible. Yeah. Now on day one, you generate an AI video. You want to share it, you can share it on Tik Tok.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. It's just incentive. If you create. If you created an amazing video on. On Sora.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

What is the most logical thing to do if you're a creator and you want reach post it to Instagram. There's just naturally, there's billions of people there. There, there were millions of people on Sora and a lot of energy, momentum.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah. And it's not lost on me that the same day that Sora was killed, you have a Viral Breakout reality TV style series show putting up incredible numbers on TikTok for fruit. Love Island, I believe it's called. It's an AI generated twist on Love Island. There's romantic intrigue and plot lines and stories and consistent characters and a lot of things that have come from a variety of AI models. And we should talk to the person that's the entrepreneur behind that project because I would be interested to know what the stack is, because I imagine it's not just going to a single gen AI app. I imagine that they have a whole pipeline workflow in place to actually generate that. And so we're at this weird moment where Sora, the app, is going away, but we're also seeing more and more AI generated content, slowly see success. Whether that's the podcast that's at the top of the charts, that's fully AI generated. There's this Love island show. There's a number of niches where they found the right product market fit for AI generated content. But it's not overnight. We're living in infinite jest and we just can't look away. It's like, for specific things, it makes a lot of sense. And so it's working there.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. It's interesting to think about Google's strategy with, with video. Even. Even Google was like, we cannot operate this for free at scale.

[Harry Stebbings]

200 bucks a month.

[Jason Calacanis]

No, that was the, that was the discounted rate.

[Harry Stebbings]

Oh, I think I'm at 500amonth or something.

[Jason Calacanis]

It was like an entry to start. It was like $250 a month.

[Harry Stebbings]

And it was brutally weight limited. Like.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, even with. We were laughing at this because three a day. I remember we'd be like at the gym in the morning, you would fire off a couple prompts.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

And. And then you were like, rate.

[Harry Stebbings]

I hope I got it right.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, I hope. Wouldn't get it right. Then you're rate limited. And you're like, wait, I'm rate limited on a, on a $250 plan that's going to jump to 500. You're probably paying. Got to check the ramp. Yeah, check our ramp. It's probably paying 500amonth still.

[Harry Stebbings]

No, seriously. And. And that.

[Jason Calacanis]

And that's Google with all this.

[Harry Stebbings]

Literally a hyperscaler.

[Jason Calacanis]

Insane data advantage.

[Harry Stebbings]

YouTube, let me tell you, rate limits kill retention. Like, nothing. Nothing is worse. If you're in Instagram, the endless scroll exists. TikTok, you can, you can scroll endlessly. You can use the. Imagine if TikTok was like, after five minutes, you have to close the app and come back in 20 minutes. Like, how successful do we think that would be? It would be a disaster. And that was the experience for Both Sora and VO3, where you would fire off a prompt and it would be like, okay, come back in a couple minutes. Take me a while to cook. And then you fire off five. And it's like, okay, we're doing no more for today. Clearly, the compute constraints are immense and there's just so much more value that can come from enterprise and can come from deep research and so many of the other models that are immediately economically valued, like code gen, like enterprise workflows. And it's maybe more boring and less viral and less controversial, but it's, it's where the compute needs to go. And so I think you're going to see the chips be moved around inside of all the labs to like, compute will find the most optimal output. Like the tokens of the most value will always be the ones that it flow that the compute flows to and endless random generations that aren't quite dialed yet. Even the best video models, like, they're just not there. They require a lot of work. Is not the same as, as where we are in terms of knowledge retrieval, where we are in terms of code gen. It's just way more valuable. What did I say?

[Jason Calacanis]

September? People overestimate how much brain route happens in a year and underestimate how much brain rot happens in a decade. So yes, yes, we're still.

[Harry Stebbings]

So I mean, I'm using brain route pejoratively there, but. But I do think that like this, this move does not really bend the curve of, of just AI generated content. But I still think it's like a slow rollout. Like it's, it's fast in the sense that like we went from no slop on the timeline to lots and we went from like, like actually zero. It was like one. One cool AI video. Harry Potter, Balenciaga was like entertaining to general people. And now we get like five and then we get like next year we'll get like 20 and then eventually it'll be like hundreds and it'll be like, oh, yeah, I'm actually into that. Like, people are into cartoons and people are into CGI movies and superhero movies. Some people will be into it, some people will never like it. Some people will always say, I want a black and white film from the 40s. That's what I want to watch. And these rollouts, the diffusion of this stuff will happen.

[Jason Calacanis]

Tweet Davidson says.

[Harry Stebbings]

What is this?

[Jason Calacanis]

Y' all are worried about the wrong open claw.

[Harry Stebbings]

This is a good post. White Claw did have a fast takeoff for sure. It went from zero to 60 and it was just everywhere all of a sudden. But anyway, it is a remarkable story because Fiverr is running a. One of the coolest out of home campaigns. Like just from an out of home inventory. I didn't know you could do this, but we can pull up either my picture or we can pull up.

[Jason Calacanis]

Let's pull up this video from KTLA 5.

[Harry Stebbings]

KTLA 5 had a video breaking down. What's going on? Let's watch this and then we'll react to this. Let's pull up the KTLA 5 report about AI coming for Hollywood. The mysterious sign along the 101 underneath,

[KTLA 5 Reporter]

a logo for Fiverr and a search box says, find the best AI directors. It's a brash, bold statement.

[Harry Stebbings]

Brash, bold.

[KTLA 5 Reporter]

Coming for Hollywood, Coming for Fiverr has made a name for itself connecting projects with freelancers. Now they're launching an AI video hub which they say can make content at a fraction compared to traditional production. This Billy Bowman guy is one of the directors that you can hire. He's based in Sweden. He's made AI videos for Google, Universal Music Group and others. As you know, AI really hasn't taken over Hollywood yet.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yet.

[KTLA 5 Reporter]

But it has certainly crept into commercials. Brands like Google and Jeep rolling out AI on national campaigns. Many are slowly are slowing rather to see the 30 foot sign which went up over the weekend. I first noticed it traffic yesterday morning after someone was so entranced they rear ended somebody.

[Harry Stebbings]

It's causing accidents. Yeah.

[KTLA 5 Reporter]

So interesting AI director.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[KTLA 5 Reporter]

So it's basically someone who puts the prompt into the machine and chooses silly. Is Fiverr gonna pay?

[Jason Calacanis]

Just put the prompt in the box, buddy.

[KTLA 5 Reporter]

That's a great question.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Harry Stebbings]

Can they be held liable for such a distracting sign?

[KTLA 5 Reporter]

I didn't, you know, blush with money. Whether or not it is a bubble, like you can debate.

[Harry Stebbings]

That's interesting because Fiverr is not one of those companies.

[Jason Calacanis]

KTLA 5 is not prepared for it. Not to be a bubble.

[Harry Stebbings]

But of course the AI wave has not been kind to Fiverr because a lot of the tasks like, you know,

[Jason Calacanis]

generate AI is very, very, very good at $5. Creative work. Exactly $25. Obviously the prices go well beyond $5 since, since, since the early days. But in terms of the kind of projects that I always use Fiverr for AI, just one shots, all of that.

[Harry Stebbings]

And the nature of Fiverr is like you have to define your task in a prompt. Yeah. It's not, it's not. Oh, have like a long conversation. Get Dr. That was often.

[Jason Calacanis]

That was often the better bottle. That was the bottle.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah, totally.

[Jason Calacanis]

It was like, okay, I need to do this task. Yeah, I need like 10 minutes to like properly all these things. It's honestly way more time than you spend prompting normally. Because with prompting you're just like, I'll just try it. Yeah, A few times, kind of iterate

[Harry Stebbings]

my rate limits and then fire back up. Yeah. I mean, it was always a bottleneck. I remember as an entrepreneur, I found out about Fiverr and I was like, this is amazing. Get random stuff done for five bucks. But the time commitment, actually finding the right person, making sure the reviews are good, it wound up being like hours of work. And if you have a consistent flow, you're better off just hiring a person. So the, the. So they got kind of squeezed in the middle.

[Jason Calacanis]

Yeah. The market is, is not excited about Fiverr right now. They're being valued basically at four times ebitda.

[Harry Stebbings]

But this is an interesting pivot for them. They're basically saying that you can come to us to hire someone who has all the tooling set up to actually sit there and sort of nanny all the AI models because it is a hassle, as you described with me and VO3. I was sitting there like, okay, I fire off four prompts, then I go back. It's way better if you're on the API and you have Higgs Field wired up and you have Runway ML and you have access to the Chinese model C. Dance the right tool for the job and then you do fine tune on someone's face. There's a whole bunch of things that you can do to get better results, but it takes time and it's a hassle and it's more of a professional job. It's not actually at a.

[Jason Calacanis]

Here's the main problem with the campaign.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yes.

[Jason Calacanis]

Is that Billy Bowman.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

Is a real person with his own website, with his own Instagram. You can just go and reach out to him. Which is interesting because like the primary issue with these labor marketplaces like Fiverr is disintermediation. If you, if a business hires somebody on Fiverr and has an amazing experience, eventually they're just going to go direct because they build up a lot of trust. And it's very different than, than a platform like Uber where you don't necessarily want the same driver every time because they're not around you and all these things. And so the reason that the Fivers and the upworks of the world and there's been a bunch of other like engineering focused marketplaces just have never reached like insane scale like Uber is because of the disintermediation. And this campaign is effectively an ad for Billy Bowman who you could just go hire today.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah. Disintermediation has always been a problem on these platforms. Bombardier, the manufacturer of private business jets, is down 10% over the past month. A lot of people were wondering why this was happening. I think we now know why. And it's probably because the shot across the bow from United Airlines. So what competes with a private jet? United Airlines new product, which is an entire row of economy seats. United Airlines says the entire row is all yours. Welcome to the United Relax row. Three adjacent United economy seats with adjustable leg rests that can be raised or lowered to create a cozy lie flat sea space for stretching out. You'll also get a mattress, pad, blanket, and two pillows. If you're traveling with kids, a plushie, too. United Relax Row will be available starting next year on more than 200 of the 787s and 777s. So what do you think, Jordy? I was telling Tyler Cosgrove, who is out of the studio today, he's in Washington, D.C. he's got to demo this. He's got to get on one of these. I don't know. Every time the airline announces something, it's always like five years until it actually is available. I've been waiting for Starlink for a long time. Took a long time for that to get rolled out from the.

[Jason Calacanis]

United has pretty good pace.

[Harry Stebbings]

Okay.

[Jason Calacanis]

They've been quick to.

[Harry Stebbings]

Do you think Tyler could get on this tomorrow?

[Jason Calacanis]

I think if Tyler's resourceful enough, he could just. If he ended up in a row.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

Two empty seats next to him. He could just figure out a way to detach the armrest blocking this.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

And just kind of. Kind of build your own.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

They might have to land the plane and arrest him.

[Harry Stebbings]

Yeah.

[Jason Calacanis]

Potentially worth the risk.

[Harry Stebbings]

He could also. He could also potentially negotiate with whoever's sitting next to him. So say, hey, you go and spend the entire flight in the lavatory. And in exchange, I will vibe code you a sloppy app of which I don't understand what programming languages use.

[Jason Calacanis]

I'll trade you an app for your seat.

[Harry Stebbings]

I'll trade you an app for your seat. And somebody might be like, that's amazing. I don't have anyone that can vibe code for me. This is too good. No, I'm sorry.

[Jason Calacanis]

Ryan Peterson says now we just need to put stairs on the food drink cart so you can climb over the top of them to get to the bathroom instead of holding. Yeah. This just feels like. This just feels very, very chaotic.

[Harry Stebbings]

I don't know. Starlink, a relaxed row, a dream. I think that this could be a good option. United built the product that everyone who has been. Who has ever been on a plane wanted says John Collison.

[Jason Calacanis]

John, you need to work on fixing Bombardier's stock price.

[Harry Stebbings]

I don't think it's related. Oh, apparently Air New Zealand launched this in 2010.

[Jason Calacanis]

No, it is related because he should. You should help them build out their pipeline.

[Harry Stebbings]

Well, he's. He's just pumping his bags because he owns a. A property in Ireland. How do you get there? You got to fly on United, so, you know, one hand washes the other on this. He's. He's. He's talking his own book.

[Jason Calacanis]

Space X aims to file IPO as soon as this week. Yes, I know everyone is excited for the S1 particularly. I think people will be focused on XAI. Yeah what they have going on. I think that Are they going to

[Harry Stebbings]

have to break it out in the S1?

[Jason Calacanis]

I would assume so.

[Harry Stebbings]

This is the first time we actually see the economics of inference, the economics of foundation lab. Even though yes they are at a smaller scale.

[Jason Calacanis]

Hard to read too much into it because they've been investing so far ahead.

[Harry Stebbings]

And yeah, I just think that like there is a world where we get broken out financials that you can dig through and you can understand based on Grok pricing which we see and top line revenue and cost we can actually see are they serving that model profitably and there will be, you know, a lot to dig into there. Obviously the other labs have different strategies, different vertical integration points, different economic, different pricing regimes. I mean the true frontier, the models that are dominating ARC AGI, those command a premium, a price premium. There's a wild difference between charging 15 bucks per million tokens versus $2 per million tokens.

[Jason Calacanis]

So people were posting this as though it was fact. I think it's a very real possibility. So I think Elon will try to aim for the company to actually go out on on April 20th for 20.

[Harry Stebbings]

Really?

[Jason Calacanis]

And I think it is possible. If he fast we'll see what the ticker ends up being. But I think some people would like knowing Elon's very millennial sense of humor. I think the ticker S X is.

[Harry Stebbings]

You think so?

[Jason Calacanis]

Plus the April 20th IPO. I would assume that is a real prediction.

[Harry Stebbings]

You're not trolling?

[Jason Calacanis]

I'm not saying I would bet on it. I would put the April 20th at maybe like you know, 30% and then the ticker maybe down at 15%.

[Harry Stebbings]

Leave us 5 stars in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. We'll be live tomorrow at 11am Pacific Sharp. Sign up for our [e-mail] and we'll see you tomorrow. Goodbye.