The 2,000th Episode Spectacular

Summary

Techmeme Ride Home - Episode 2,000 Spectacular Release Date: February 21, 2025
Host: Brian McCullough
Co-Host: Chris Messina
Special Guest: Wesley Faulkner, Stuart
Duration: Approximately 9 minutes into the transcript indicates the ads and non-content segments, but the main content spans from [00:00] to [112:49].

---

Introduction and Milestone Celebration

Brian McCullough kicks off the episode by welcoming listeners to a special 2,000th episode of the Techmeme Ride Home podcast. Chris Messina, the usual co-host, joins after a brief hiatus, bringing an air of excitement and camaraderie to the celebration.

• Brian: "This is a special one. This is the 2,000th episode of this show. Yes." [00:05]

Discussion on Autopilot in Podcasting

Wesley Faulkner poses an insightful question about the concept of "autopilot" in podcast production. He inquires about the routines and automatic processes that Brian employs, questioning what elements he can execute without conscious thought.

• Wesley: "What is autopilot for you? What are the things that you can go through the whole show and not realize that you're doing because you just kind of get into this mode?" [01:47]

Brian responds by highlighting the seamless integration of editing and story selection, a result of seven years of experience. He admits to occasionally making unnoticed mistakes due to the automatic nature of his workflow.

• Brian: "I have no idea what I said on the show today. Like, what stories we did or whatever. Like, as soon as I hit publish, within five minutes, if my wife or somebody says, uh, what did you talk about today? I can't remember." [03:14]

Impact of AI on Software Development

The conversation shifts to the influence of Artificial Intelligence on software development roles. Brian discusses the concern that AI might reduce the need for human programmers by automating code generation.

• Brian: "I'm curious, is it affecting budgeting for projects where it's like. Because maybe it's not. We don't need as many programmers." [03:18]

Wesley, with his background in developer relations at AWS, provides a nuanced perspective. He explains that while AI enhances coding efficiency, it doesn't eliminate the need for skilled developers, especially in areas like code review and ensuring quality and security.

• Wesley: "AI makes good coders better, it makes great coders more efficient. But there's still quality issues, security issues, and a lot of things that even if you are generating the code, you still have to double check that." [06:15]

Stuart introduces the concept of "Vibe Coding," illustrating how AI enables non-developers to create extensive codebases, albeit with limitations regarding production readiness and scalability.

• Stuart: "I'm building 3000, 4000, 5000 line applications that surprising nobody more than me actually run." [07:07]

Wesley emphasizes the ongoing necessity for human oversight, particularly in scaling applications and navigating regulatory landscapes.

• Wesley: "It's great for proof of concept. But I bet you if someone put a truckload of money into your backyard you would hire some other coders, would you not?" [08:45]

AI Model Competition and Effectiveness

The trio delves into the competitive landscape of AI models, debating why certain models like OpenAI's GPT-3.5 remain prevalent despite newer models emerging.

• Stuart: "I don't know why... nobody's using anything but GPT-3.5." [09:19]

Wesley advises experimenting with various AI models to leverage their unique strengths, especially in areas like code review and security enhancements.

• Wesley: "Use all of them because they're opinionated in the way that they develop." [10:09]

AI as a Medium and the Future of Software Development

Chris and Stuart discuss the paradigm shift in software development, where AI-generated applications become transient, serving immediate needs without long-term maintenance.

• Chris: "We may start to think of generative AI as more of a medium... as applications that have a short lifespan." [15:28]

Stuart complements this by highlighting the trend of rapid prototyping and deployment of AI-driven applications, which may lead to a spike in innovation but also challenges in sustainability.

• Stuart: "People turning new ideas into reality quickly and letting it catch fire." [15:40]

AI Race and Market Dynamics

The hosts analyze the current AI race, questioning how to evaluate the advancements and competitiveness of different AI models amidst rapid developments and market maneuvers.

• Brian: "How do you handicap the race these days?" [11:22]

Brian expresses uncertainty due to the continuous emergence of new AI models and the varying strengths they bring to different use cases.

• Brian: "Unless somebody comes with that next step change, I don't know." [12:03]

Chris introduces the concept of "AI varietals," suggesting that AI models may become commoditized with differentiation based on user experience and specific applications rather than raw power.

• Chris: "The models themselves commoditize inference and speed becomes a differentiator." [11:22]

Government and Silicon Valley Integration

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the evolving relationship between Silicon Valley and government institutions. Brian raises concerns about the potential for another VC freeze if market conditions don't improve, highlighting the dependency on IPOs and M&As for a healthy investment ecosystem.

• Brian: "If we reach summer and there's not a thawing, if we don't see M&As ramp up, you're going to see another sort of mini recession." [26:43]

Chris parallels this with historical analogies, comparing the consolidation of tech power to the Florence Republic's dynamic with the woolen cloth industry overpowering governmental structures.

• Chris: "Florence was a republic... it was an industry so big it outgrew the government's ability to manage it." [96:43]

They debate whether Silicon Valley's growing influence necessitates a transformation in government to keep pace with technological advancements or risk being overwhelmed by concentrated industry power.

Future Outlook and Personal Reflections

As the episode nears its conclusion, Brian reflects on the podcast's journey, sharing the origin story inspired by a friendship with Gabe Rivera of Techmeme. He emphasizes the podcast's role in providing daily tech news without bias, aiming to inform listeners about the evolving tech landscape.

• Brian: "The thing that I always think about is I am... telling you day by day how it's evolving, good and bad." [104:35]

Chris appreciates the consistency and trustworthiness of the podcast, recognizing its value in filtering and delivering relevant tech information without injecting personal biases.

• Chris: "The benefit of the show is just the consistency, you know, and it's the trustworthiness and it's not changing things up." [108:53]

Brian conveys gratitude towards his listeners, recognizing the podcast's impact on their understanding of technology and business.

• Brian: "I am deeply, deeply honored that all of you listen... It's my favorite job that I've ever had." [112:38]

Conclusion

The 2,000th episode of Techmeme Ride Home is a reflective milestone that not only celebrates the podcast's longevity but also delves deep into the transformative role of AI in technology and society. Through engaging discussions with co-host Chris Messina, guests Wesley Faulkner, and Stuart, the episode explores the automation of software development, the competitive AI landscape, and the intricate dance between Silicon Valley and governmental bodies. Brian McCullough underscores the podcast's mission to inform and educate, while Chris Messina appreciates the show's steadfast format and reliability. Together, they provide listeners with a comprehensive overview of where technology stands at this significant juncture and what the future may hold.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Brian: "I have no idea what I said on the show today. Like, what stories we did or whatever." [03:14]
• Wesley: "AI makes good coders better... But there's still quality issues, security issues, and a lot of things that even if you are generating the code, you still have to double check that." [06:15]
• Stuart: "I'm building 3000, 4000, 5000 line applications that surprising nobody more than me actually run." [07:07]
• Chris: "The models themselves commoditize inference and speed becomes a differentiator." [11:22]
• Brian: "If we don't see M&As ramp up, you're going to see another sort of mini recession." [26:43]
• Chris: "Florence was a republic... it was an industry so big it outgrew the government's ability to manage it." [96:43]
• Brian: "I am deeply, deeply honored that all of you listen... It's my favorite job that I've ever had." [112:38]
• Chris: "The benefit of the show is just the consistency, you know, and it's the trustworthiness and it's not changing things up." [108:53]

---

This episode serves as both a celebration and a critical examination of the current tech landscape, providing listeners with valuable insights into the ongoing evolution of AI, the dynamics of Silicon Valley, and the interplay between technology and government.

Transcript

[Wesley Faulkner]

Foreign.

[Brian McCullough]

Welcome to another bonus episode of the Techmeme Ride Home podcast. I'm your host, as always, Brian McCullough. This is a special one. This is the 2,000th episode of this show. Yes.

[Chris Messina]

Air horn.

[Brian McCullough]

Sorry, no. Here's our usual co host, Chris Messina, who has not been on the show for at least six months or so. Right. So. Hey, Chris.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah, hello. Hello.

[Brian McCullough]

Thanks for helping me do this. I, you know, this is not the most elaborate thing in terms of celebrations, but for those of you in the audience, and I'll say this, the one time you should have an option, if you're on a desktop to request a question like, Wesley is going to be the first one we'll bring up. You request. It'll sit on my screen and I'll bring you up. But Chris, 2,000 episodes. Like I was thinking this morning, like, if I sat here and counted to 2,000, that would take forever.

[Chris Messina]

If you could even remember, you know.

[Brian McCullough]

Like 25, like if we, if we assume that it takes me, let's call it six hours every time times 2000, that's 12,000 hours divided by 24 hours, that's 500 days. That can't be right. I did the math wrong. Okay, so by the way, also, the seven year anniversary is May 5th, so everything's coinciding. Okay? So the idea here is we are going to hopefully have questions about tech. And in fact, the first one is coming right now from our good friend Wesley. Wesley. We're making a habit of this.

[Wesley Faulkner]

So we meet again.

[Brian McCullough]

Yes, we were on Twit together this weekend. The great Wesley Faulkner. Wes, thanks for coming on.

[Wesley Faulkner]

Thanks for having me. My question is, doing the show day after day, week after week, what is autopilot for you? What are the things that you can go through the whole show and not realize that you're doing because you just kind of get into this mode when you can finish it. And he's like, did I do X, Y and Z? But you know, you did because it's just automatic to you.

[Brian McCullough]

I mean, all of the things like, you know, the editing. I feel like sometimes I make mistakes because it's so on autopilot with the editing. And I notice it usually when I've uploaded it. But yeah, it's just, you know, seven years of always watching, paying attention to the news. Like, I know instantly when it's like, well, that's a story I'll do tomorrow. So like I used to, early on, I used to really, you know, have to figure out like, okay, is this a story that's good to do. Like, now I know that instantaneously, the editing's instantaneous. But, Wesley, I think the thing that I've said before is I have no idea what I said on the show today. Like, what stories we did or whatever. Like, as soon as I hit publish, within five minutes, if my wife or somebody says, uh, what did you talk about today? I can't remember.

[Wesley Faulkner]

So it's just one of those severance but podcast form.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

Um, so I guess it's all on autopilot now. It's actually relatively easy to do now, I suppose. And one. One thing that I said that I learned early on, and this is the key, if anybody's doing audio, where you have to read something, I learned within the first three days that I have to perform it. Like, if I just read, it's no good. Like, I actually have to, like, put some sort of. It's not acting, but I have to put like, some sort of, like, juice into it where it's. And so that's also why, like, I write the scripts in my voice. So, like, I'm saying things that, you know, feel like it's just me talking. So listen, everyone in the chat, feel free to ask a question to come on stage. One of the questions that I want to throw out to the audience, if anybody's out there. And Wesley, maybe you could talk to this too. I've been thinking of trying to find a story or find an interview person to talk about the idea of whether or not people. Software developers in the trenches. Are you starting to feel AI breathing down your neck? In the sense that I've seen stories recently from a lot of tech platforms and a lot of just employers saying that they are now actively planning on hiring less or where there's new projects, and they're like, we can lower our budget by 20% because we won't need as many hands. Like, I'd be curious to know if anybody's seeing that where they work or. Chris and Wesley, you know, have you been hearing that from people at all?

[Wesley Faulkner]

Most of what I've seen on my side is less hiring on the developer side, not directly because of AI, but because for the larger companies. Because AI costs a lot of money to develop and it's not bringing in the revenue. And so in order to save from one bucket, they steal from Peter to pay Paul. And the only way they do that is to reduce their staff. I know that Microsoft has, and I think Google specifically said that they've produced more code via AI than they have forever, but you still need skill reviewers. So there's the bottleneck of reviewing the code, not creating the code. And that's the part that will take time and you need to make sure that it works. And then there's tests on top of that. So it makes good coders better, it makes great coders more efficient. But most of the buckets. If you look at how much time someone who writes code does code, it's usually what, maybe max 30% of their time because it takes a lot of research, it takes a lot of thought, and there's also meetings. On top of that, there's other deliverables and reports. So it is helping. But there's still quality issues, security issues, and a lot of things that even if you are generating the code, you still have to double check that. That still takes the time and that's still the bottleneck right now.

[Chris Messina]

Wes, can you just provide a little bit of background on where your perspective is coming from?

[Wesley Faulkner]

I work in developer relations and so my role is to work with developers directly from multiple organizations. My last role that was the most prominent one is I was working for developer relations for aws.

[Chris Messina]

Cool.

[Brian McCullough]

To be clear, I'm not saying AI is coming and everybody's going to get laid off. I'm more curious, is it affecting budgeting for projects where it's like. Because maybe it's not. We don't need as many programmers. It's that because you can use AI to produce code 50% faster or using 50% of your code is AI. Is it okay, this, this new project that we thought needed a team of 30 only needs a team of 15 and we can do it in three weeks. Less if. If people are starting to see that.

[Wesley Faulkner]

I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it yet.

[Brian McCullough]

I've got Stuart. This might be related. So, Stuart, come on up.

[Stuart]

Hi, guys. Yeah, I heard the term last night. Vibe coding.

[Chris Messina]

Yes. This is the new term I've been doing.

[Brian McCullough]

Right.

[Stuart]

I'm coder. Or let me put it more specifically. The last time I coded, I don' Any of you were alive. But due to AI, I'm now coding and I'm building 3000, 4000, 5000 line applications that surprising nobody more than me actually run. What does that mean? In the days of what's it take to build a new startup? I was able to go from a concept to let me see if I could conceive of it, to wait, here's an actual application to well, why couldn't we roll that out and make a production now? Wesley, I know it's not ready for production. I know it's on any of those things. But doesn't that change the dynamic where you no longer need the $30,000, the friend who's a developer, anything like that to bring something to market to get the test to go? Is this interesting? Is this worth me investing time, energy, effort into doesn't that dynamic change? I know that's not the same as the 100 developer mega project for an AWS tweet or something like that, but at that other end of the margin it feels like it starts to take technology oriented people and turn them into somebody that can be a CEO and a CEO even though they never studied programming.

[Wesley Faulkner]

Yes, but do you know how to scale regionally and geographically? Do you know all the different laws and regulations in the places where you want to roll out your applications? Even though if you are able to be as a coder with moderate skills, know all the information to make a product, you don't know everything there is to make a business. So it's great for proof of concept. But I bet you if someone back to truckload of money into your backyard you were you would hire some other coders, would you not?

[Stuart]

I would 100% hire some other coders. So no question. I guess the the related question is I I look and the only thing I see out there is cloud 3.5 sonnet that everybody is anointed as that's the best one for coding and yet deep seq r1 comes out right. V3 is supposedly good. Elon drops Gro3 that's supposedly the answer. Sam drops O3 and that's supposedly the answer. And yet everybody I know who code says the only thing that code worth a damn is 35 sonnet what I don't know is why. And do you folks feel that or do you, do you disagree? I. I ended up buying a large Mac because I figured this would be the year I'd be able to get Olama running with something local and doing it and nothing I've tried comes close.

[Brian McCullough]

For a mere mortal.

[Stuart]

It may be fine for programmers who just need it to check stuff, but for somebody who needs to develop via prompting, nothing else works.

[Wesley Faulkner]

I'll just say really quick I don't want to take over the show but use all of them because they're opinionated in the way that they develop and especially if you're talking about parts of the code as opposed to other parts of the code, just say review this code. What improvements would you make and just do that to Every single one of them and they'll make iterations that some will find and some won't find. So they all approach it differently. So even if you. There's no de facto answer on this front and you have to keep trying to figure out what problems it's good at solving and even if it fixes old problems, another model might find some security patches or ways to make it more secure, hardened or even visual changes and layout changes like the linting is different from some of them even. So just keep trying.

[Stuart]

All right, so when you guys take a look at the AI wars out there, which you guys live. Brian, I know you report on it frequently and everybody's trying to top everybody else and it's all benchmark soup and who knows what's great. How do you handicap the race these days?

[Brian McCullough]

That's a good question because that changes. I mean it was less than a month ago that deep seat happened. Right. And that came out of the blue. Yeah. And you know I, I do use Claude exclusively. I don't do any programming but yeah it's so sonnet and sonnet 3.5 is what I use when I'm using AI. So I don't know because. And we're going to get to the varietals thing in a second here because this is in the chat too. I. I don't know that it. Unless somebody. That's why people keep waiting for GPT5. Unless somebody comes with that next step change.

[Chris Messina]

Right.

[Brian McCullough]

Like it was from three to four. I don't know that it matters because like we're like we're seeing like different things are good for different use cases and stuff like that. In the chat here Johnny said I am not a developer but I am a macro creator and 100% of my macro building has started with an AI query in the past six months. Even as a non developer that is telling to me and then things like didn't I do the story? See this is me not remembering did I do the story about the TikTok but for Wikipedia I did.

[Stuart]

Yes.

[Brian McCullough]

And think of it. That's an example of something that was production ready in two hours.

[Chris Messina]

Right.

[Brian McCullough]

And all done on AI. You know.

[Stuart]

I don't people turning new ideas into reality quickly and letting it catch fire. I'm sure as Wesley said I'm sure that one crashed and burned pretty quickly because nobody built it to scale this that anything else but it proved there was interest, it was intriguing, it was relevant and now it's probably worth building it correctly.

[Chris Messina]

So like I would just Jump in on that one because it seems like what I've been observing and this like vibes coding thing is one way to describe this phenomenon where non developers such as myself suddenly have access to coding fingers or fingertips that previously like I used to have to cajole people to like look at my stupid code that would never compile or run or whatever. And now I have a wing person, or as Microsoft calls it, a copilot to kind of walk me through and get me through the dumb shit that's just based on some vernacular or jargon, that's code speak and you miss a semicolon or whatever here or there and it screws you all up. So what I've been thinking about, because it starts out with developers and technical people, I think being able to imagine what's possible and therefore having less fear and being willing to try things and then seeing where there is either friction or pushback, or where the software just can't build a thing and then they'll find their way around it so they don't get stopped as often. However, to your point about you building 5,000 lines of code that does stuff, this to me suggests that over this year into the next year, we'll probably start to think of generative AI as more of a medium. And the reason why I'm starting to think this way is just like what happened 20 years ago as social networks became social media. The network was the tool. The tool was a way to network and connect everyone together. And what's happening now is that there's a generational willingness to sort of just throw stuff out, build a little app, throw it up on Vercel or some other hosting context, let it live for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 2 days, 2 weeks. You know, maybe they make some money, maybe they do a meme coin sort of thing, and then they scrap it and move on. And it doesn't need to become production scale, it doesn't need to become something that they stand up an entire apparatus around to support. So I think it raises this question as to what is the half life of software going forward and how long do we need to persist? Software, if you develop an awareness of what is possible to be created on the fly, conversationally to solve your immediate need, which might be a week long, might be two weeks long, and it's simpler to just recreate it every time you need it, as opposed to build the software that has to be maintained. You have to fix the bugs, you have to do security things. It's just a completely different mindset in Terms of what problem you're solving as.

[Stuart]

Far as use once.

[Chris Messina]

That's right. Then treating it as a medium like paper where you know, you generate something, it's good, solves your problem and then you ditch it. And I find that that's kind of what's like been happening in my world.

[Stuart]

Okay, and Chris and Wes, just to finish up what I'd have Brian, how do you guys look at the AI race right now? When you look at everybody going after everybody and what does the world look like?

[Chris Messina]

I have a lot of. I guess I would push back on Brian's thought that GPT5 is some mythical unicorn that's going to kind of like end the race in all races to come.

[Brian McCullough]

I feel like people were waiting and worrying that that was something that was going to happen. And now since it's not happening, I do think it's this world, it's all kind of even. It's like an even playing field.

[Chris Messina]

Well, I guess so maybe I would look at it differently which is that we're leapfrogging or a lot of what's happened in other industries that are atom based is happening in the digital world. So I think cars are kind of like the best representation of this where it took 100 years for us to get to the electric vehicle and now with the combustion engine, essentially you have a lot of fashion and style that determines which car you might buy. But under the hood a lot of the components, the chassis, like all that stuff is more or less commoditized in a similar way. You know, if these models run out of new data to train on, I mean obviously there's always kind of like new information that's happening. There's the reality. So I'll give you an example. I've been using Windsurf to code a Raycast extension and I keep getting stuck in OAuth, which you know, just boils my blood because as a co author of OAuth, it's sort of like I screwed myself and I should go back in the past and like kill myself and we should just stick with passwords everywhere. Anyways, so I'm dealing with this problem because Claude seems to not be trained on the latest Raycast AI documentation. And so while I can use RAG or bring in the current docs to get me further along, I'm dealing with three to four different components and different libraries and different systems. And I'm not quite sure which version of the docs the LLM is using to get to that, you know, final outcome. So. Point being, when it comes to thinking about the experience that these products are providing. It is a little bit like, you know, the car and like the console and like, you know, whenever I get into a rented car now and I try to use the console and it's like it doesn't have Apple CarPlay or something. Like I just, I'm like, what is this terrible thing? And that feels like using LM Studio or Olama or some local LLM that doesn't have the niceties that a product person has layered onto Claude or onto ChatGPT. So that's where if you're asking for the horse race, that was a big, as usual, long winded way to say that the models themselves commoditize inference and speed becomes a differentiator. And so that requires compute. And then there's the experience on top in terms of anticipating what people are trying to do and to make that transparent and obvious and easy. And the deep seat grant was valuable because it showed sort of like the view source moment for LLMs. It showed the thinking and the reasoning. And so that becomes a real competitive advantage in terms of how well it's able to show you what it's thinking so you can model its thoughts and then speak to it more effectively.

[Brian McCullough]

Chris, is. Is that your idea for varietals? Yeah. Okay. In the chat, David said, or somebody said, do you wish you had trademarked it?

[Chris Messina]

You know, that's the question that I had about the hashtag and about BarCamp and all the. And typically like, I win when these ideas become commoditized and they become part of the mainstream conversation. And I would say that vertically has won out over AI varietals, but I feel like directionally we were in the right direction.

[Brian McCullough]

Right. So you and I have talked about this offline, we called it AI varietals. But in the last literally six weeks, it seems like everyone has come out of the woodwork and are like, you.

[Chris Messina]

Know, all the value is going to be at the application layer.

[Brian McCullough]

And we're like, exactly. And that was our thesis from day one, because, yeah, let's speak to that though, just for a little bit. If that's the case, then when you're thinking of horse races, really it depends on what you're thinking about because then you're really only talking about the large models and okay, then OpenAI is the only one winning. What did they just announce this week? That they're like 300 million monthly active users or something like that. So from a perspective of who's using somebody's product the most they're winning, and then you've got the other perplexities and all those folks. But the question would be, have we seen an application layer winner yet? And, Chris, you and I have seen there's 15 different players in, say, AI for legal, and we've invested in specific AI players for medical environments and things like that. But have. Have we. Does any. Has anybody. Can anybody think of, like, a real winner at the application layer where it's like, I know there are unicorns, but it's like, oh, yeah, this is transforming an industry or, you know, blowing up?

[Stuart]

Not yet, but it's coming. And, Brian, I just want to tell you, it's not a week without at least five of your podcasts.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, thank you.

[Chris Messina]

As a daily show, that's pretty good.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Have I ever told the story of how the show got started? No. So the book was coming out in 2008, and then the. I was talking. Which book?

[Chris Messina]

For the listeners who have joined recently.

[Stuart]

The Internet.

[Brian McCullough]

How the Internet happened. Yeah.

[Chris Messina]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Brian McCullough]

Which, by the way, I've done this before, too, but there's the box right here where I stick my head in.

[Chris Messina]

Oh, right.

[Brian McCullough]

There's a microphone. Yeah, there's a microphone in there.

[Chris Messina]

So it's like a microwave for his head. Basically. It's just this, like.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, it's just this. It's got sound foam inside it. And so instead of having to make.

[Chris Messina]

He kind of puts his head through, like, a doggy door. That's like all foam encrusted.

[Brian McCullough]

That's. That's exactly what it is. So. Right. But I. I didn't want to have.

[Chris Messina]

To foam for anybody who wants to compete with Brian. Now you know the secret.

[Brian McCullough]

So, right, I. I sit here, I type up the. The. The script every day. I put it on my phone, put my head in the box, and that's how I. So everything that I do is right here. Although I do have a separate studio in my office in Dumbo, but it's still the same sort of setup. Anyway, I'll do this real quick because we got another question. Thank you, Matt. So hold on. We'll get to you. And by the way, if anybody wants to dip off, especially you, Wesley, you're being very kind. Yes, I appreciate it. Hey, freelancers.

[Matt]

We know what your days look like. You juggle clients, deadlines, and that endless to do list. But when it comes to tax time, let's face it, the stress is real.

[Brian McCullough]

That's why I'm here to talk about FreshBooks.

[Matt]

The Cloud Accounting software designed to make the hard part easy. With FreshBooks, you'll save time and get peace of mind. Imagine having all your expenses neatly organized, your profit and loss report ready to go, and a clear picture of your business health all in just a few clicks. No more late nights drowning in paperwork or searching for lost receipts. And it's not just about taxes. FreshBooks automates your workflow year round. Snap photos of your expenses on the go, send professional invoices in seconds, and track payments seamlessly. Then, when tax time does come, everything's prepped and ready for your accountant. So why not give it a shot? Switching to FreshBooks is painless, even if you're coming from another accounting tool. FreshBooks makes migrating your data simple, and their support team is ready. If you need help, visit freshbooks.com pricing offer to get FreshBooks 60% off for the first six months. Now that's freshbooks.com pricingoffer and the link.

[Brian McCullough]

Is in the show Notes Notes if.

[Matt]

You'Re a security or IT professional, you've got a mountain of assets to protect. You've got devices, applications, employee identities, plus the scary stuff outside your security stack like unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps and non employee identities. It's a lot. Fortunately, you can conquer those risks with 1Password extended access management. You know I use 1Password personally, but get how you can deploy this it folks. 1Password's device trust solution blocks unsecured and unknown devices before they access your company's apps. And don't worry, 1Password still protects against the biggest attack source compromised credentials. Its industry leading password manager helps employees create strong unique logins for every app. Secure devices check. Secure credentials check. What About Employee Productivity? 1Password Extended Access Management empowers hybrid employees to join the security team with end user remediation that teaches them how and why to fix security issues without needing help from it. Go to 1Password.com Ride to secure every app, device and identity, even the unmanaged ones. Right now my listeners get a free two week trial at 1Password.com ride. That's 1Password comm/ride.

[Brian McCullough]

So the story of the show is I was talking to a bunch of media entities about doing a tech podcast because the book was coming out and was getting attention. And I mentioned to Gabe Rivera, who's the owner of techmeme, that I said, you know, if I do it was going to be like a talking heads thing like this where every week you get a circle of people. And I was like everybody's doing that. Which that was seven Years ago. So everybody was doing that seven years ago. Like we couldn't even imagine. But I said to Gabe, you know, all I'll be doing is just reading techmeme every day and then just regurgitating it on the show. Have you ever thought of doing a podcast? And he's like, yeah, I have, but I wouldn't know how to do that. Gabe and I have been friends for years, etc. So I was just like, hey, let's let me just do what tech meme does, which is, you know, I always call it TLDR as a service. Let me just do a 15 minute show where I pick the best stories, read the tweets, read the stories, etc. Bing, bang, boom, and that's it. And he's like, sure, great. And we cut a deal where I technically own the show. I have editorial control, but I kick back some of the revenue to him, and then I have access to the techmeme back end, like, so I can see the editors. That's the biggest advantage that working with Techmeme gives me is I can see about 20 to 15 minutes before a story pops what they're about to post, because they have a whole automated system for seeing when things pop and then seeing the chatter around it so I can know quickly what the big stories are going to be. And then also because techmeme is well known, we get embargoed stories and things like that. So I'll know. Like, I knew that Microsoft stuff was coming at the same time as the iPhone stuff the other day, but I was like, screw it, I got to do the iPhone now. I'll save it for tomorrow. But I knew two hours ahead of time that that was coming. So anyway, the bottom line was I said, gabe, let's give this a try. And he said, sure. And then the rest is history. And we, we kind of just made it up in a 20 minute phone conversation. And here we go.

[Stuart]

How many listeners now?

[Brian McCullough]

At our height, I believe we had 75,000. I would call it 40 ish thousand now. And yeah, there's natural audience attrition, but then this is too Inside Baseball. But the changes that Apple made to how they count downloads killed daily shows. Because long story short, if you listen to a weekly show, you only have to. You can miss five episodes before they stop downloading. But a Daily show, if you miss five episodes, that means you just missed one week, right? And so listen, I have heard things like the Daily by the New York times lost like 50% downloads. And I believe it because I saw what happened to my downloads too. But anyway, so still a great audience. I love you all. And, and even though it's down from what, what maybe its height was, I mean, we still turn in new people all the time. So I want to bring Matt up and I will let him ask his question. Hi, Matt.

[Chris Messina]

Hello, all.

[Mike]

Nice to be on with you. Congratulations. 2000 shows. Brian.

[Brian McCullough]

Thank you so much.

[Mike]

Absolutely awesome. But I did put in the comment. I was also going to shower you with praise. And you have been warned.

[Brian McCullough]

Oh, I missed that. I might not have brought you up. Okay, go ahead.

[Mike]

I started listening, I think episode one, because I have been listening to Mac os Ken for 17 years, every day. I still do. And you put something on his show. He mentioned it before you went live. And I have. You have been my ride home. I'm on the west coast, so you've been my ride home for all those years. And I will say it is a masterclass in understanding technology in business. I'm not in technology. I'm an operations leader. I've been running contact centers for 30 years. But I've always been a step ahead of understanding technology because I listen to it every day and I always tell people, you can't just listen to a couple days and get it. But you listen every day, every week, every month, and you start to connect the dots of what this organization's doing and how people are raising funds for new companies. So thank you. Absolutely. I understand way more about technology than I ever did in my life. My question now that I have showered you praise.

[Brian McCullough]

Yes, thank you.

[Mike]

Is I have been in the contact center space my entire career. And with every new technology, we think, how do we make things automated so where we don't have to hire people? And contact center leaders are not salivating at the idea of AI, but CEOs are salivating at how do we deploy this contact centers. And you said this on your show tons of times. That's going to be, should be one of the first proving grounds. But as, as AI started to get more popular or smaller organizations realized they can't, they can't afford to get a bespoke model for their organization to make it cost cost effective. So my question is, from your perspective, when does that start to scale down to where smaller organizations. Because that's in my, and I'm, I have my, my blinders on because I've been a contact center geek for 30 years. But that's going to be where we stop hiring people. People are going to, we're going to maybe not have mass layoffs, but we'll organizations will figure out pretty quickly how to not have to hire people with AI, but the cost of that has to come down and so curious your.

[Brian McCullough]

Thoughts on that is your question as opposed to say there's 10 different startups that are, hey, this is AI. But for law firms saying the ability for a law firm or a smaller organization to in the same way that they would maybe run their own server locally or have their own database running locally, you're saying create an AI specifically bespoke for whatever it is we're doing, our team of 30 people. Is that essentially what you're asking?

[Mike]

Yeah, absolutely. Like when is the bespoke size get small enough and affordable enough for companies to take it?

[Brian McCullough]

It's getting there. Especially because, you know, you can run these open source models on laptops. Right now, Chris and I have been talking to a really interesting startup that's literally doing that. So I guess that's coming now because obviously you can run things on small machines, right? The question is the technical ability to spin something like that up. Is that dispersed enough that people would know how to do it? But then again, I guess you could have AI do it for you. I don't know. Chris, what are your thoughts on if we're there at that bespoke level yet?

[Chris Messina]

Yeah, I guess I've been thinking about this from a slightly different vantage point maybe for a couple years. And it could be that eventually more companies need to behave in some ways like software companies in order for that revolution to ultimately occur. It also depends on what type of organizations and businesses and the types of businesses and the types of problems that customers have. When talking about customer service and customer support to sort of put a wrap around this, I sort of think of customer service as being part and parcel to the product experience currently. And the example that I like to use lately is with sunbasket, which is the sort of Blue Apron competitor meal service that I subscribe to. And you know, they essentially trade in commodities like, you know, produce organic vegetables and things like that. And every now and then, you know, some avocado shows up that's, you know, bruised or I've got some crushed, you know, onion or something, whatever it is. And I go to their website and I go through their customer service agent, which is available both as SMS and as a chatbot on their website. And I go through sort of like the issue tree. And by the end of that tree I've reported my issue. They issue me a credit, which is oftentimes a multiple of whatever the thing would cost in the grocery store. And I go on my merry way. And so that self service action is paid for by my membership in the cost of the good itself. And so one, the business is set up around this sort of almost expose its inner workings as an API such that they can build customer service experiences on the front end of that. And then secondly they've built it into their business model so that they can absorb the costs that come from those service moments. And so for me that's the totality of the product experience. Whereas when I've tried to get in touch with other delivery services in the past, it's like a wall of just kind of like oh, you've got to talk to this person or this person or there's like this specialized agent that handles that one and it's a horrible experience. So it seems like AI does a couple things. One, it sort of allows for block and tackling of those initial, let's say annoyances that are going to come up a lot. That's just part of doing business and they can be dealt with and it's just part of your business model. Then for those more complex issues, for example, I was one of the earliest users of fellow products, makes a bunch of coffee products and one of them that they came out with recently is called the Aden. And so I was one of their first people to buy the thing. And of course I got one of the early units which was not fully functional. And so I ended up kind of like going back and forth and got escalated through their support queue and like all these things and obviously building hardware is different but nonetheless I was able to get a level of support because they'd automated a lot of the front end defense that would take up a lot of their time. So it seems like that's maybe the pathway forward where you get an off the shelf model to handle a lot of basic stuff. You hook it up to your internal docs, you actually expose more of your internal working so that customers become more aware of what you can actually do and what remediations are possible. And then for those higher order things, maybe for more loyal customers, which of course also requires you to know your customer, then you can provide them with a level of like white club service or VIP service that really differentiates you and builds longer term loyalty over time.

[Mike]

So how far away are we from organizations? So it's both scale starting to do this.

[Chris Messina]

So I think some are doing it like so. So I'll give you another place to look. Shopify has an App called Shop. It's a purple little app in the App Store and you can download it. And what's amazing is that Shopify is taking all of the sellers that use Shopify as their backend and they're basically building sort of an Amazon competitor. So you have all these shops that are out there pushing and selling through their own social media marketing and other, you know, direct to consumer types of things. But then in the Shop app itself you can search across all these different entities and a lot of those entities I would say are doing what I'm describing and are building their organizations from the ground up to be almost like an API first organization. Whereas a lot of older organizations like Sears or I don't even know Sears is still around like Best Buy. Like, you know, you can barely like kind of talk to anybody who maybe Best Buy is a little different. But like for the most part a lot of those organizations are mired in a type of bureaucracy that's very top down and less responsive, I think to using these tools and deploying them and to giving a lot more agency to people at the edges. And so I think organizations that are set up that way are probably more likely to be able to, you know, meet the moment, be more responsive to social media and they understand that being as close to the customer as possible in all interactions is the thing that's going to drive their business.

[Brian McCullough]

In the, in the chat, David says that he was at an event lately and HP were pushing their solution to his group literally for, for what we're talking about.

[Chris Messina]

I mean if you've been selling like printer cartridges for all this time, you better damn well have like, you know.

[Brian McCullough]

Listen, they don't have to anymore. They have an AI hardware product, an AI wearable that they can now.

[Chris Messina]

Humane.

[Brian McCullough]

Yes.

[Chris Messina]

So yeah, they'll rebrand it as inhumane.

[Brian McCullough]

Yes, thank you.

[Mike]

Thanks for your comments.

[Brian McCullough]

Thanks, Matt. I'm going to bring Mike up because this is an interesting one that also Chris, I think you can do too.

[Stuart]

Out if need be.

[Brian McCullough]

Oh, if you want to go, you can just leave.

[Stuart]

Okay, I just.

[Brian McCullough]

Or just mute like I can, I can turn off your. I can turn you off. No one can see you now, but I don't know if that means you're gone. Gone. Actually I can't get him back. So just kick them off anyway. Maybe if you can, if you want to come back. Okay. Oh wait, I tried to bring somebody in. Oh crap. Oh, Mike, there you are.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah, Mike's.

[Brian McCullough]

Yes. Hi, Mike, how are you?

[Dan]

How's it going? Yeah, Brian, I know you're like a big history fan and so I was just curious about like, how you think about AI. I mean, I feel like agents are really going to change our lives once they actually work. And I don't know, like, I keep coming back to like the Aztecs. Like, is this the Spanish? Finding the Aztecs and being like, yeah, you guys thought you needed to like, you know, sacrifice people every day to make the sun go up. And it's like the equivalent would be, yeah, you guys, like have to work 40 hours a day and have billionaires own like a ton of the wealth. Like, is life going to change that fast for us where we're going to look back and wonder, like, how we live this way.

[Brian McCullough]

So do you guys remember at the end of one show I had insomnia one night and I had that, that analogy of the ships, which, by the way, this book, the Sea and Civilization, I was not reading it for AI analogies, by the way. Literally, I was reading about the history of, of humankind on the oceans. But this is an example of how doing this job for seven years, I can be doing anything and I can find analogies for stuff that's going on in tech. How do I think about it? I keep going back and forth on that and I'm coming back to the idea that this is just a different type of computer. Like, again. And I keep using this as like the maximalist thing where, okay, if we do get AGI, fine, God only knows what's going to happen, including possibly, you know, blowing up the planet and. Or none of us have to work again because everything is solved and all the answers are given to us. But I. It's in the long interregnum between getting there and I do think it's a long interact. I don't actually believe AGI will come in the next 20 years. And I don't know. Chris said, be curious to see what you think about that. But in the meantime, this is just a new type of compute, like the introduction of databases, like anything. It's a new way to tackle problems using software. And so while I do think that there will be this Cambrian explosion of new solutions and new companies to provide those solutions, I'm coming back to thinking that this is just the next stage. It's not a phase change as much as it's the next evolution of what compute is. Now, like I said, I wax and wane on that. And sometimes I think we're going to cure cancer. And again, I'm not saying that in a pessimistic way because I'm still investing, because I still see great ideas and great companies coming up. So for me, I'm maximalist on there's a lot of stuff coming here. But your question specifically being, are we going to look back five years from now and be like, I can't believe we lived without this. I'm not feeling that way. But, Chris, where are you these days?

[Chris Messina]

The hardest part, I feel like in this whole era, I mean, at least for like the last two to three years, is it comes down to definitions and what is like what. And the pace of evolution, of creating new techniques for taking advantage of these technologies requires that we are also able to name them and then from those names be able to then talk about them and reason about them. So an agent simply is software that kind of runs itself and can somewhat introspect. And when it runs up against a roadblock, you know, like whether it needs a user to complete a task or whether it needs authorization or whether it's stuck because it gets confused, you know, it's able to deal with that error in a way where as opposed to just dumping out to, like, the log, it can sort of like, be like, okay, here's what we might do next, because now we have enough training data that we've captured where there's enough patterns and pattern matching to say, here's how this has been solved in the past. And what may come to be the, you know, real realization from this era is that, like, 95% of problems are repetitive. And therefore, if they're solved once, then we just need to socialize the understanding and awareness of how to solve those things. And the real interesting things will happen in that 5%. Now, that isn't to say that there won't be trillions and trillions of things to do in that 5%. It's simply to say that the way in which we've captured information, knowledge and then distilled it into wisdom has been predicated on a type of education system that takes 20 years to produce a human that can operate in the modern world. And what may be the case is that we're able to get to a human that can operate within six to seven years. That requires a much deeper moralistic framework to help them make sense of what they should and shouldn't do that is harmful to them or harmful to people around them. Now, that's maybe not a very interesting direction to go in for technologists and people who like to deal with ones and zeros, but realistically, I guess I look at this from a behavioral perspective, from a cultural perspective, and the divide between, for example, the generation that's in the White House now and is making decisions about how government should be structured or destructured versus the generation that's coming up now and lives as gen AI natives is going to be so vastly different in terms of what they expect of their environment that I think that that's like, if anything, they're the Mayans and, you know, we're. We're the Spanish and, you know, like, they've already had their alien intelligence conversation.

[Brian McCullough]

This brings me back. This brings me back real quick. I almost did a story this week about, I didn't do it because you always hear things like this, but people complaining that, oh, the kids, the programmers coming up today that are AI natives can't really functionally code, you know, like.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah, but, like, I feel like that's, again, it's such a boomer comment.

[Brian McCullough]

That's why I didn't do it. That's why I didn't do it.

[Chris Messina]

But I'm like, go ahead, Mike.

[Dan]

I just want to make one point. Like, yeah, so transactions costs, if you think about those, like, so much of what we do, our activity is limited by transaction costs. Like, it's. It has to, like, go through our head to decide what to do. And like, I just feel like with agents, like, if we're able to get a model where they can, you have something online, like, representing you. Like, everybody's represented and it can make decisions with other things in a way that's controlled and that we understand. Like, that's a whole different level. And, like, I, I don't want to, like, go crazy with it, but I started thinking about that recently and I don't know, I'm more optimistic now.

[Chris Messina]

So are you building.

[Dan]

Building space or you're just observing economics and. Yeah. Curious about where things will go. So it's all pure armchair speculation. And I'm in an armchair, so it works.

[Chris Messina]

I mean, I think what you're raising. I mean, it's funny because, like, Satya was actually talking about this in his Dwarakash, like, podcast, like, conversation. Right. So I've, I mean, and this stuff we've been working on for a very long time, there was a thought that your email inbox is kind of like a personal API. And essentially there are a set of tasks or work or whatever it is that are dumped into this box. And then you could have agents that are all collaborating to kind of make sense of whatever's in your inbox. Now, of course, this is very subjective based on your personal inbox and what goes into your inbox. But you could just imagine that there might be bids for you to do things which are oftentimes offers here, buy this thing, buy that thing. And especially if these are time limited things, let's say you want to buy tickets to like the weekend and they're going to sell out. Well then if you have an agent that's monitoring your inbox, it can go buy those tickets like right away and ideally at the lowest cost. And so your agent and your interests are aligned and you may have deputized your agent to take that action without prior authorization. In other cases where there's no, you know, command Z, undo the risk to having your agent just do stuff like book stuff on your calendar with like your arch nemesis. Like you don't want that to happen. So there is this question of kind of path escalations and creating systems that are somewhat sensitive to the cultural context of the decisions that we make every day, you know, that are kind of like background operations and they're so fast for us. But that's because we are social creatures. Whereas like agents and LLMs are not social creatures. They're programmed to act like them, but they have no sense, they have no, no reason. They, they are not aware of how this might affect your marriage or your partnership or your child's life or whatever in a way that's like meaningful. And so I think that's an important thing to take into consideration.

[Brian McCullough]

I like the idea of ebay snipe bots for everyone. I'm bringing up Dan because Dan is going to take us off AI, which is probably a good thing to give us another topic which actually this is a good question Dan. So thanks for coming on.

[Unnamed Caller]

Yeah, for sure. Thank you for taking the question. I'm a long time fan of the show. I think of started listening back in, I want to say like maybe like 27, 2017, 2018, something like that. And yeah, happy to have you as my, my ride home after some, some good days in the office, after like fixing whatever problems I had to. And yeah, I just thought of this because I feel like with, with one of the shows I listen to they have a segment, so they sometimes have a segment where they talk about well, well mainly, mainly about the Apple Vision Pro, but about other things related to AR VR and everything. And I feel like, I, I feel like the, I think the thing that we're dealing with right now is I feel like there, it has so much potential with what's out there right now. Like, like whether it comes what, like whether it comes to like, spatial computing or gaming or anything like that. And part of me's always just been wondering, like, what's as much potential as it has right now. What could be that next killer feature or what have you that could really put it into the limelight and make.

[Brian McCullough]

It more accessible to others out there for AR&VR. Arkansas VR, the Vision Pro. Yeah, I think I've telegraphed this on the show, but I think that we're going to see, you know, spectacles are going to be the big thing for the next three years, but what you need to think about is it's not going to be the full jump to AR like they tried to do with Google Glass all those years ago. It's going to be coming feature by feature. They're going to be adding cameras to your earpods. There will be some glasses that will just like, maybe it won't overlay maps and stuff, but it'll just overlay the text messages that you're. You're getting tapped on your watch. I think it, it's going to be coming incrementally so that five, ten years from now you will have, you will be walking down the street with full AR experience and not just overlay on vision. It'll also be sensing around you with your watch, with your wearables and things like Humane. We're trying to get to this, but again, I feel like it'll come incrementally feature by feature, and it won't. So it won't just be these glasses do everything. These glasses do one thing and then a second thing and a third thing and a fourth thing, and then it interacts with your earbuds and then you maybe do have a pin somewhere on your body that then does additional other features. I think that the mistake that some people made right now, we're trying to do too much in this first phase.

[Unnamed Caller]

Yeah, exactly. And I feel like, yeah, way back when, I feel like, yeah, France at Google, they were, they were a little too soon when it came to Google Glass and perhaps it in more recent years, Humane. Too soon with their, with their, with their pin and everything. And yeah, I think maybe perhaps like some in the future they could look, look back on what was tried back then and like, like basically use, use that as inspiration to make things better.

[Chris Messina]

It's really hard when it comes to designing products that people will adopt and integrate into their lives. The step change in terms of functionality and an ecosystem, both in terms of integrations with Things that you might already have. But also, let's say the Apple Watch has all these bands and all these other fashion accessories and items is necessary for people to move or migrate to a different watch factor, because you have to be as good as whatever is there, which, as a fashion piece, I mean, like the. The idea of, like telling time is quite a commodity. And so for the Apple Watch to come out and to succeed as it did meant that it had to be both better than the existing technology enablement and also had to fit into a fashion context. And so from a similar perspective, I think one of the headwinds for a lot of these products, and I think the Meta Ray Bans are the ones that are kind of right on the edge where they're providing utility in a way that's very subtle and it doesn't feel like technology. Whereas a lot of people who work in the tech world want to bring more technology into the lived experience. Whether it's like the Vision Pro and it's like an amazing piece of technology, but you have to go there. It's a destination. And so if you don't already have that destination, that destination currently is like flying on an airplane, international long distance, or watching a movie at home. It's hard to imagine replacing your current set of behaviors with the current sort of offering. Now, maybe generationally, a younger generation comes up and they're in schools and instead of a Macintosh, they're getting a Vision Pro. And that trains them to be in these isolated spaces and then socially, it's normal for them. But I feel like trying to gain adoption of these technologies within the same generation that's grown up on desktop computers and on tablet, you know, screens is a hard sell just because of the convenience, the ability to leave it behind. Like, there's all this charging apparatus. There's just so many things that make it easy that's taken 10 to 15 years to build up in the environment that replacing it is going to require.

[Brian McCullough]

Like, a leap above Chris, since we haven't had you on for a while, and so I haven't been able to pick your brain on stuff like this. Two quick questions. Number one, have you used the Meta Ray Bans? Have you played with them at all?

[Chris Messina]

A friend of mine had them the other night and I was kind of surprised. Although his summary and experience matches a lot of what I've heard about it, where basically they'll use it for, like, Spotify, they'll use it for basic video and camera recording. They'll have it out in the world and they kind of forget that again. They're like, you know, technology glasses, they're first and foremost a fashion object and then they happen to have these additional features that make it valuable. And so that reinforces my intuition. Whereas like the pin, you know, the, the humane pin, if you just look at trying to use it on your hand, like that doesn't seem better than just swiping on a phone where you know exactly what's happening. You know, even though there is this like, I mean like humane. Ironically enough, like you know, the Humane center for Technology or whatever, like Tristan Harris's thing had this like momentary blip where it was like, oh my God, technology is bad. It's like rotting our children's brains. Like we need to like fight back and like take back our notifications and like the attention economy is like borked and all this stuff. You're like, yeah, but actually the replacements are terrible and no one wants them.

[Brian McCullough]

They took that TED Talk and ran with it and it's sort of crashed.

[Chris Messina]

They really, I mean it's kind of amazing what they were able to get out of that TED Talk, but it kind of amounted to nothing, you know.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah. The second question is, are you surprised at how wrong Apple got the Vision Pro?

[Chris Messina]

Ooh, excellent question. No, I don't know that I am. I think there's a number of factors that I would look at in terms of thinking through why they missed the mark and I should also give them some. I don't know if it's credit or just kind of contextual awareness that the Apple Playbook is to start out with like a high end device, just like Tesla. So same sort of thing, start at the high end, make it like super exclusive, you know, work out the, the edge cases and problems with users that are highly interested and willing to pay. And so that that kind of made sense and it was superior technology relative to what Meta was building. But in terms of who Meta was targeting, I feel like that's where Apple kind of has lost the script when it comes to social products. Apple has never been good at social products. They're starting to build in a social network into their operating systems now. But because of all the context in which Apple operates, you know, from governments to countries to other places where privacy is super important, they can't do a lot of things that Meta can do. And so Meta has been focused on this like multi presence, you know, Metaverse sort of context trying to go after the Roblox generation because they're aware just as Snapchat with stories was going to disrupt their business. They need to disrupt the next generation of Minecraft and Roblox Kids. And so that's what I think the Metaverse stuff was all predicated on. Apple, meanwhile, was like, we have this cool technology and we guess we can do some 3D stuff and maybe some augmented reality things because we've invested in this differentiation from Meta. But it doesn't feel like they have conviction that it's a better place or a better direction or a better world. I mean, I feel like it's hard to imagine Steve Jobs coming out with the Vision Pro and being like, this is what people are going to wear on their faces.

[Brian McCullough]

And I've said before that you can convince a lot of people to buy a $3,000 device if it's a fully fledged computer. Like, that's where I think they missed the mark. If I could. Again, I'm looking at A2 screens here. I don't know how many inches I've got here between these two screens. Like if it was a lighter weight device that I could wear all the time.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah, but I don't even. It's not like it's not a one for one substitution. I think except for the fact that.

[Brian McCullough]

If I could do all of my computer computing on it, like that would be enough to sell people. Now that's not what they want. They want the next thing beyond the iPhone. So I get why they did what they did, but I don't know. They're going to have to come down in price, obviously, really rapidly.

[Matt]

Welcome to the future of data privacy with Incogni. In today's tech driven world, protecting your personal information from data brokers is more crucial than ever. However, Incogni is here to ensure your data remains private and secure. This service is designed to help protect your personal data from data brokers who collect, aggregate and sell it. Incogni takes the hassle out of protecting your data by automatically contacting data brokers on your behalf to request the removal.

[Brian McCullough]

Of your personal information.

[Matt]

This seamless process saves you time and stress, ensuring your data stays off the market. And Incogni doesn't just remove your data once and forget about it. The service continuously monitors data brokers and ensures your information stays removed with repeated removal requests. This ongoing vigilance guarantees long term protection. Visit incogni.com ridehome and join the huge community of people who have control over their personal data. Explore all of their disruptive features and plans with their 30 day money back guarantee. Take control of your data privacy today. Visit incogni.com ridehome Sign up and enjoy a 30 day money back guarantee to ensure you're completely satisfied satisfied with their service. Take your personal data back with Incogni, use Code Ride home and get 60% off an annual plan. Incogni.com Ride Home and Code Ride Home Ever feel overwhelmed trying to manage your web hosting while juggling a million other tasks? Even if tech isn't your thing, Kinsta's Managed WordPress hosting is a relief. Their expert team handles it all. They bundled up all the essentials to make sites stress free with speeds that'll wow your visitors, security that never sleeps, and a dashboard so intuitive you'll wonder why everything isn't this easy. Trust me, I know how confusing outdated hosting dashboards are. Kinsta's custom control panel is intuitive and doesn't feel like it's from the last decade. Kinsta doesn't just host WordPress websites. They deliver blazing speed, ironclad security and reliability. Worried about moving? They'll migrate your entire website for free and you've got a 30 day money back guarantee. Imagine your site running at warp speed. Just by switching to Kinsta, your website could run up to 200% faster. TripAdvisor, NASA and Indeed are among the 120,000 businesses that trust Kinsta with their WordPress websites. Tired of being your own website support team? Switch your hosting to Kinsta and get your first month free. And don't worry about the movement, they'll handle the whole transition for you. No tech expertise required. Just visit kinsta.com/brian to get started. That's K I n s t a.com/b r I A N.

[Brian McCullough]

I don't know, maybe.

[Chris Messina]

I mean who are they going to sell it to? Who, like maybe like schools, like but.

[Brian McCullough]

But if they don't, all they're going to do is just sit there and watch as essentially meta and lower cost people. Like I think.

[Chris Messina]

So what's interesting about Dan's question, I think is, you know, where are there a number of like maybe big next hits that can occur? You know, it's like Eminem, like how are you going to top what my name is? You know, you got the iPhone, like how are you going to top that? And like they can kind of go down in price. They can go up in agents, they can go up in services. If we're talking about Apple still, I don't know that there's going to be like another massive like compute like paradigm in the hardware sense that's going to replace the phone because of how Dexterous it is how many assumptions it takes care of. What I mean by that is like I'm using, you know, same a bunch of screens right now, just as you are, Brian. But like, you know, your wife can come in and have a conversation with you.

[Brian McCullough]

Right.

[Chris Messina]

It doesn't take you five minutes to like dislodge yourself from the metaverse.

[Brian McCullough]

That is the single notification on my hand versus swiping. Like it doesn't really. Yeah.

[Chris Messina]

And so I like that in and of itself I feel like is an order of magnitude of friction that generationally is going to be hard to overcome and it may be overcome by again a younger generation that's nor like where it's normal to be disembodied and to live in the Internet as a normal thing and to not be annoyed when their friends are off in La La Land and they are playing Ready Player one all day. But I don't know that this generation with our social cues is quite ready for that, that transition.

[Brian McCullough]

By the way, I was just checking. Not only can I not type in the chat, but we were supposed to be streaming live to YouTube and Twitter and neither of those are happening, so definitely. And it did happen on our test run. Like if you see on the YouTube there was a. It was streaming live. So I don't know what happened with this recording. But you know, that would have been more fun if. If people would have seen it as they were scrolling around Twitter. Anyway, Chris, do you want to ask the question from Mo and then we can wrap up soon. But I'll ask you a couple things if you want to bring up stuff that you wanted to talk about.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah. So the question is, and I guess I'm kind of like interested in this as well, but I think I might have been around when this was happening.

[Brian McCullough]

You sure were.

[Chris Messina]

Was. And this is specifically there was an escalation from you starting out with the rolling fund and then moving into the fund that we did together. And so the question was, how did you go from being someone who was like covering the news to then wanting to invest in it? You know, had you been doing any sort of background investing up until that point? And then the rolling fund sort of became an obvious thing to engage your, you know, podcast listener ship or just like what was sort of like the origin story for that?

[Brian McCullough]

The origin story literally was Packy McCormick said, if I can do it, you should do it.

[Chris Messina]

So he literally said this to you.

[Brian McCullough]

We had the same audience, same size audience, you know. And so the story of the rolling fund is I saw People like Paki, like, who's that guy from Ann Arbor? Just a bunch of people that we kind of know parasocially and socially that were raising rolling funds. And so I announced it at the end of a show one day. And I remember actually I didn't check to see for a couple days if anybody actually went for it. So then when I went and opened my angelist a couple days later, I was like, oh crap, there's 130 people that say they would go in. So the answer literally is I just realized that it was possible I had been angel investing like you have been for years, but not in a serious way. I feel like you've done it more than I have. But then doing the rolling fund, the reason that I did it was because it was like a three legged stool where I could get content for the show and I could source investments from the show and then obviously provide a platform. So this is a reason why the companies would take a check from me. And then the escalation is, and this is where this is maybe the wrong thing to say, but I don't think that there is a ton of sophistication for doing the investing at the stage that you and I do it. Like if we were investing at Series A or Series B stuff, it's like there is a lot of like, you know, running deep financial analysis, you know, thinking of markets, you know, all sorts of stuff where like, you know, people that have gone to, you know, business school and finance school and stuff like that would, would do it. And neither of us are, are qualified to do that. But you and I invest at Pre Seed Seed and occasionally A's. And so what those are, are, is this a good idea? It's Vibe investing. Is it a good idea? Are these good people? Do I think that these people can actually execute on this good idea? Because when you're so, when you're that early, that's all it is. And, but the difference is, is that you can invest that way with a shotgun approach which is just like, oh, I'll just throw checks at everything because that won't work. But so the thing that's probably not the right thing to say is I didn't think that I was under qualified to do it because you know, if you've been in the industry for 20, 25 years, if you've known enough people, if you've like, you have worked at enough companies, you know, I founded four different companies. Like you kind of have the skill set and so then it's just a matter of the network and the platform.

[Chris Messina]

Has your investment activities changed the way that you cover the news?

[Brian McCullough]

Yes, because it. I have a deeper understanding of that side of the table. You know, I had only been on the side of pitching VCs, I had not been on the side of being pitched. And when you and I made angel investments, it would to speak for you, which I probably can't. But it's just like somebody that, you know, that you're like, yeah, I worked with them, they're good people. And yeah, sure, I've got this, this spare change, let's throw it at them and see what happens. So I have a. I feel like it's definitely helped to show that I can cover what's happening from the investment side of Silicon Valley much better because I understand all of the motivations. Whereas with the first 10, 15 years of my career being on the side of the table where you're just asking for money, it seems like the wizard behind the curtain. You don't really know why they make the decisions they make. You don't really understand where they get this money from and why they make the decisions they do. I feel like I deeply understand that now.

[Chris Messina]

How does it change your perspective given that you're coming from the East Coast? I mean, the fact that you're in New York, obviously, on the one hand you're saying that you understand the Silicon Valley VC thing and yet, you know, that's not where you are.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, I've never, I've never pitched on Sandhill Road. That's, that's true. That you don't do that anymore. That was literally.

[Chris Messina]

You don't really need to anymore. But I guess what I'm saying though is like, like I feel like the New York scene, you know, tends to be more media centric or more just the types of businesses that exist. There are.

[Brian McCullough]

That's not true anymore. You know, there's so much AI stuff here. You know, like hugging face is here and so much crypto was in Brooklyn. And like we're doing the AI. I'm going to swix's AI Summit tomorrow. I'm curious to see what the makeup is of the people attending that. Yeah, I don't.

[Chris Messina]

The culture is different.

[Brian McCullough]

I mean, the culture is different. Yeah, I feel like the VCs here are friendlier. I mean, I'm talking even about the, you know, the Fred Wilson's and folks like that. And even like, you know, Josh Wolf at Lux. I. The. I'll tell you what, you're asking me how it's different. In New York. And I'm going to tell you that I feel like it's friendlier and I wouldn't want to do it on the, on the West Coast. There's more sharks and sharper elbows out there.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah, I think that that's one thing that maybe doesn't come through enough, especially in the reporting. I think it's interesting to think now that you and I are kind of on this side of things. The coverage that you get or the things that show up in TechCrunch or the Things that do go live on productant or not can very much be determined by an investor's priorities. Not necessarily just the best company gets to get their news out there. And so there is like, it's not exactly like shadow banning, but there is a hierarchy and there are political movements behind the scenes that work in interesting ways that I think were both surprising and somewhat disappointing to me. And yet, you know, as you mature and get older, you kind of realize that there are ways of the world and that this is what people get upset about. And so I think it's interesting to hear that perspective that the sharp elbows that you're describing are some of the things that cut people as they're trying to get their embargoed information out there. But depending on how savvy your investor is, that might actually come to support you and your success.

[Brian McCullough]

Well. And it's also to the degree that this generation of VC, the A16Zs of the world, made it into this multi channel, you know, it's, they said they built it on the model of a Hollywood talent agency where we will be a full service everything to you. So that is to a degree the, the professionalization of something that was very much a boys club, literally, but also like just people that knew each other and handshakes and you know, you do deals because you know, people and stuff like that. I acknowledge that it's more professional now, but, but Chris, I would argue that it's still person based because you know, again, we're talking about a 16Z, one of the biggest firms out there, obviously with the biggest firepower. They're willing to throw elbows. But you and I are friendly with them because they're people there that we like and like us and we like to work with. And so that's, that's what I'm arguing is that to the degree that VC is this huge monolithic thing now at the level we're operating at, it's still person to person.

[Chris Messina]

I think that's true in general about A lot of vc, for sure. And I think that there's still a requirement of warm intros and strong context, because the whole value chain of introducing one person to a VC or to an investor requires, as you say, taking a flyer on someone. And that requires that you are willing to dedicate some of your social capital in order to give someone a shot. Because ultimately, if you're investing other people's money, then you're responsible for that relationship that you have. And so you can't just sort of throw the money around irresponsibly. So I think that's another part of it where, like, that's why these social relationships are so important. It'll be interesting to see how the things change. I mean, like, if you, I guess, like, if VC were to be disrupted, you kind of look at, like, what's going on in, like, the meme coin market, and I know, like, diverge too much there, but it's crazy to see what's happening.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Chris Messina]

And, you know, like, I know Chris Dixon has been talking a long time about, you know, one, like, who owns the Internet. And then two, if you fractionalize or tokenize things, then there is more of a direct participation in what can succeed and what doesn't have to succeed, as opposed to going to aggregators like VCs or like us to deploy capital to give people a shot. And so that may be, over time, more of the way in which a lot of these, these resources get deployed. But I don't know how you deal with, like, the, the, the grift and the, the exploitation. I mean, like, you know, if, like, what's his name, Javier, down in Argentina. That was the story you did.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Chris Messina]

Right.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Chris Messina]

I mean, like, if he can do a pump and dump, you know, as the president of a country and like, sink, you know, his, his own citizens, you're kind of like, okay, like, clearly this is still not at a place where the way in which these token Ponzi schemes are developed are safe enough for normal, like utility. When it comes to sponsoring or funding projects.

[Brian McCullough]

I'm going to bring up something that's related so that you can think of a couple of questions you want to bring up. One of the things that I've been looking for, I haven't seen a story to talk about this yet, and since I don't generally do editorial, I haven't brought it up yet. I'm starting to get a little nervous. I know that we're not even two months into this new administration, but one of the things that Silicon Valley has been sort of assuming and depending on is that the markets would unfreeze, that we'd be able to get IPOs. But more importantly than IPOs, the M& A would and people would be able to start acquiring. Because again, to explain people that don't know what VCs are like, if you have to wait for an IPO, like such a small fraction of them get there and you got to wait 10 years, really what you want in a healthy market is you want people getting taken out three years into their lives, acquired by Microsoft for $600 million or whatever, and all that froze so much. So the thing that I'm starting to worry about because I didn't do this story, but supposedly the new administration is keeping the same M and A guidelines as Lena Conhead. If we reach summer and there's not a thawing, if we don't see M and A start to ramp up, you're going to see VC freeze all over again. And as I said on the show, VC is already kind of up a creek, especially with the layout of the Hangover from 2021 and whatever. So just something to put on people's radar. If, if that doesn't happen, then we could see another sort of mini recession.

[Chris Messina]

To like, sort of complementary thoughts about that one is like, I guess the question is what would cause it to freeze or unfreeze, rather like what structural differences do we want to see? And the problem is that if you have the Mag 7, then they're the only ones who will be acquiring. And One of like J.D. vance's things is like these things either need to be broken up or they need to be made smaller because we need to have smaller organizations that are competing, you know, for the same dollars or whatever. There needs to be more diversity in the system. The second way, which is adjacent, is to think about the aggregation of power. And that more than ever in I think the tech world, I mean, certainly going back to the Cold War and what gave us the Internet, et cetera, is that we are in a moment where AI and the information wars that relate to the training of these large language models determines global power. And so this administration seems very different with regards to both expressing power, aggregating power, shrinking the size of the government to be more AI centric. So I guess where that leads to me is to say that the VC game of the last 15 to 20 years, and I don't want to speak out of turn, but it's just my intuition feels like it may never quite be the same as it Was because the market structure is evolving in a way that is unknown and maybe we haven't seen since.

[Brian McCullough]

But what can come back is the mania, you know, the manias that I've seen just in my life were, you know, the late 90s.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah. But it's not the same because you can't invest in the same small like people to take over to do like a land grab. Right. Like the land grabs have kind of been done.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay, I'll tell you, I'll tell you how that can happen. Okay. And what I've almost thought of doing is some sort of editorial like who's going to be the first one to prove who's going to take the leap? That'll, that'll signal to people that maybe the good times are back. And here's two ways that it could happen. You said the Mag 7 buying. If the Mag 7 are able to acquire some of these AI startups that legitimately in the old school way, then that'll be a signal. But really what you should look for is some of these super capitalized AI startups starting to acquire smaller ones. Like if Perplexity starts to.

[Chris Messina]

They have been, they have been.

[Brian McCullough]

If you see that starting to happen. A.

[Chris Messina]

Like for example, if like Claude were to acquire exact browser company in New York. Right.

[Brian McCullough]

Exactly, exactly. So if you start to see.

[Chris Messina]

Because that would be Anthropic, not Claude, but nonetheless.

[Brian McCullough]

Right. Agglomerations like that where the, the new players coming up start to build their snowballs.

[Chris Messina]

The problem with that though is that still the Mag 7 own those guys. Right. So who is Anthropic? Anthropic is Amazon.

[Brian McCullough]

Right. The idea would be that if, if, if Anthropic were to start to put together their own utility belt, then that would be the way that they would signal that they can be independent, they can build their own sort of.

[Chris Messina]

I mean, but it's. What happened with. Oh my God, what did Microsoft did like the acquisition or the aqua hire of the company that made PI. Was it, was it a C word? Anyways, they basically like whoever that person is now runs a bunch of like Microsoft's AI initiatives. And there wasn't an acquisition. There was like the investors got paid out, but it was sort of just like they, they acquired the staff.

[Brian McCullough]

All right, let me give you this.

[Chris Messina]

Like, is that the pattern that we're going to see going forward?

[Brian McCullough]

Because what I'm saying would be healthy is you imagine anthropic acquiring 11 labs.

[Matt]

Sure.

[Brian McCullough]

Something similar. Or. And then a video player and, and so putting together. Okay. We are now. We want to be the Mag 7 of this AI stuff. We have all of the different pieces and. Or you just have straight up sort of, you know, an industry consolidates at certain times. If you start to see consolidation where it's like you get a. Next week we get a bombshell that Anthropic and Mistral decide that they're going to combine forces, you know, stuff like that. So we're speaking only of AI. The other thing that I think we need to see is we need to see some of the acquisition of some of Those unicorns, the 1200 unicorns I talked about recently that are basically just zombie corns. Right? We need to see those people be acquired. They're not going to be. I'm not saying they would be acquired at the $10 billion valuation, but they get acquired at a $4 billion valuation that still a home run for the original investors that would really, like, you know, say the logjam is breaking.

[Chris Messina]

I mean, maybe. It also just seems like both these companies are staying private longer and there's now a secondaries market, thanks to Hive and some other ones. They're essentially giving or offering liquidity to early employees that were. Yeah, inflection. Thank you. Nada. That takes the place of the public market. And so that's what I'm saying is that there is this token tokenization that happening that maybe the IPO because of what it symbolizes to a population. And this is the thing that I was going to then bring up maybe as our closing chat is around how Silicon Valley has become kind of like the Death Star relative to the culture. And so not only do you have resistance to these big tech companies getting bigger and acquiring everything, but anything that looks like consolidation or removing competition from the marketplace also causes the market to, you know, to barf at that.

[Brian McCullough]

We need. We need a test case. We need somebody to be the. The acquisition that.

[Chris Messina]

Who's. Who's like, good enough, you know, in a way good. Like, who do people like enough to be like, yes. Oh, thank God. Like, they've now consolidated into like one Uber. Org and now everything's gonna be better. And now I can feel my costs are going down. My eggs are cheaper. You know, like, I get free cars. Like if, like, because, like, you can't do Waymo. Like, Waymo is already inside of like Alphabet, you know, I mean, like, maybe Uber Uber and. But like Uber and Tesla is not going to come together. So, like, who. Who acquires who in that configuration?

[Brian McCullough]

Well, this is why I haven't done that segment. Because when I, when I sat down to try to come up with a list of who's going to be the, the, the test case, the canary in the coal mine, I, I couldn't think of logical cases for, I mean, aside from dumb things like maybe Apple's going to buy Sonos or something like that.

[Chris Messina]

You know, but yeah, I thought about that. But like, that also feels like, like an unnecessary thing. I think Apple would just, you know, assume Amazon should buy Sonos.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah. So Silicon Valley is the Death Star. And you mean that in like literally people, you know, throwing eggs at. Well, throwing eggs at Tesla cars might be for a slightly different. But just being in general, like.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah, it's true, actually. Instead of like throwing them at the Google bus or the Google shuttle, you know, like the 2017, 2018, throwing eggs at the Tesla vehicles.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, what I'm asking is, do you mean it on that level or do you mean it on the level of, oh, it's 30% of the value of the stock market now or. Yeah, all of the economy.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah, like, essentially like the issue seems to be that tech has taken up like they've lodged themselves or many, many of the tech companies. And obviously Elon is the most visible into the White House, which is a change in terms of the world order and the perception of the tech world, which used to be kind of against the institutionalization. Well, not only that, these companies.

[Brian McCullough]

Chris Dixon's famous phrase, like the next big thing, always thought of as a toy at the beginning. Sure, Chris. Even six months ago, I think that the powers that be in Washington still on a certain level thought of Silicon Valley as this kind of cute little industry over here. Oh no, they're very rich and they're a huge part of the stock market and make a lot of jobs. But still an ancillary thing as opposed to what you're saying is like the gorilla in every aspect now. It's power.

[Chris Messina]

It is. That's what I'm saying.

[Brian McCullough]

Silicon Valley has power in a different way. What other industry has power? And okay, I'm not even talking about the level of. Okay, Elon is inside the White House. He's got a desk there.

[Chris Messina]

Sure.

[Brian McCullough]

I'm saying on the level of Europe thinking about over reliance on US based social media, or the US being afraid of China's social media or the chips that like the fact that tech is, it involves politics and the decisions of nations.

[Chris Messina]

This is what I'm saying, this is the growing up thing that I'm not sure enough of us have come to grips with, you know, which is that it used to be that we were the underdogs fighting against those in power and these, you know, ossified institutions that set these rules. But, you know, we, we could do our own thing as like, you know, the, the pirate founders and the frontiers people, you know, out on the West Coast.

[Brian McCullough]

But I. Chris, that's how you and I thought of it, and that's how.

[Chris Messina]

Is that how technologists think about things?

[Brian McCullough]

No. I would argue that there's a certain level of C suite at the big tech companies that in the last decade realized and realized that they had the power that we now realize they actually have. And for a time, certain people at that level tried to couch it. There was the backlash where they bring Zuckerberg and all the other CEOs into Congress sort of like as a lineup. Here, the six of you sit here and take our questions and take our iron. But I think at the time, even back then, there was a realization that at that level, that they knew that they had the power.

[Chris Messina]

Sorry, that who knew who had the power? That the tech people.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, the CEOs of, of meta and, and Google and, and Apple and Amazon, they all knew. And I also think that that's a certain, to a certain degree, that's.

[Chris Messina]

But I think that the difference, and this is more like maybe what I've just, you know, heard and observed or like the reporting has said, suggested that going through the Senate questioning, you know, that Zuckerberg endured and all the other tech execs endured, you know, was. Was humiliating. And it was, like, frustrating because it felt like maybe there'd been some tacit level of, you know, alignment or collaboration between Silicon Valley and, like, D.C. and the White House, and suddenly now they're being brought out and, you know, yelled at for losing elections and basically scapegoated. And so.

[Brian McCullough]

And you're hurting our children and all of it. That's what I mean. Right.

[Chris Messina]

So you guys have done all the wrong things. And meanwhile, you know, like a 16Z and others were asking for regulations around crypto. You know, Coinbase was out there, like, tell us, like, regulate us, please. Like, give us something so that we can, like, run our businesses. Because your inability to come up with these guidelines means that we're making it up, which means that, you know, that's not really our job. So anyway, so what I'm saying is that after going through that humiliation, there's now this cycling of saying, well, fine, then you guys are going to be stuck in your kind of, you know, you're going to play your reindeer games and be into politics. We're going to come in and move things forward, because as you said, we were just holding back and allowing you to be the legislature and you should be figuring these things out, but you're not figuring them out. And now we're the ones who are bearing the brunt of civilization's ire and therefore, screw you.

[Brian McCullough]

I think I said at the time of the congressional hearings that on some level, that was people in government saying to the tech industry, hey, by the way, we're the government. Yeah, they were. I think it was on a conscious level, even it was tacit. It wasn't said out loud, but it was, hey, by the way, to quote the great Erling Holland, stay humble. Because remember, we. We're the ones that actually have the power. Sure. And so that's what I'm arguing is that they were realizing the. The C level and the VC level at the time were realizing, no, actually you don't, because.

[Chris Messina]

Well, but it's both, because it's. It's, you know, the government saying, yes, we have the power and we can regulate you and we can basically make your lives very hard. And like, we, you know, if you don't like what we did to TikTok, you know, you better wait. And at the same time, they're also arguing in bad faith about stolen elections and about election interference and these other things that, you know, may or may not have happened at the level that they did, but it was more like politicians were able to use technology and the people who built the technology to scapegoat all their problems in a way that wasn't. I mean, whether it was fair or not, I mean, they're big boys. Like, it's fine, they made plenty of money, but it's sort of like, in terms of where this goes next, I guess what I find is, and I feel like I'm once again walking into challenging territory here, but when it comes to thinking about this moment and looking at what's happening to the government and the gutting of it and the way that Elon is basically twittering like the US Government, that method and approach may be a kind of like, forest fire for the institutions that exist that wipe out everything to studs, and then they build it back in their own image because playing nice was no longer working. And they've also grown up where they've spent 15, 20 years being the underdog, being the, ah, shucks, I'm the kid from college, you know, getting sweaty in my hoodie kind of thing on stage with Kara Swisher to now where you know, these are adults, like these are full grown humans. And so they're taking up space because the people in D.C. didn't do their job to come up with the rules of the road to create the right way for the technology. You know, people building those, those powerful systems to do it in a way that was commensurate with society's interests.

[Matt]

Ready to optimize your nutrition? This year, Factor has chef made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. They're dietitian approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes so you can fuel right and feel great no matter what life throws at you. I told you this is my wife's daily lunch solution. She's got these factors in the office and boom, no leaving work to find a bite to eat. Factor arrives fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active, busy lifestyle. Lose up to eight pounds in eight weeks with Factor Keto Meals Based on a randomized controlled clinical trial with Factor Keto. Results will vary depending on diet and exercise. With 40 options across eight dietary preferences on the menu each week, it's easy to pick meals tailored to your goals. Choose from preferences like Calorie Smart, Protein plus, or Keto. And these are tasty. Believe me, I have them too. Just don't tell my wife. Factor can help you feel your best all day long with wholesome smoothies, breakfasts, grab and go snacks and more add ons. Reach your goals this year with ingredients you can trust and convenience that can't be beat. Eat smart with Factor get started@factor meals.com Ride50OFF and use code RIDE50OFF to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code [e-mail] Ride50OFF to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. I like having a secret weapon when.

[Brian McCullough]

I go into some sort of a.

[Matt]

Business negotiation situation and ace in the hole if you will, an advantage in my back pocket. That's how Mack Weldon thinks about clothing as a secret weapon. Timeless classic style that's infused with performance fabrics and hidden details to give you secret confidence in how you look. Mack Weldon has become my go to business attire. Some guys just want to look good without calling attention to themselves. Mack Weldon Apparel gives you understated good looks for understated confidence. They're not flashy, just classic.

[Brian McCullough]

Always in style and made from the.

[Matt]

World'S most comfortable performance material. Mack Weldon clothes are designed to fit your style and the Demands of modern life. They look like regular clothes but feel like the latest in modern comfort. They're the go to choice for guys who want to look great without even trying. Get timeless looks with modern comfort from Mack weldon. Go to mackweldon.com and get 25% off your first order of $125 or more with promo code Brian. That's M A C K W E l d o n.com promo code B R I A N.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, I mean look, I'm not going to name a country because that would get me into trouble. But like if you're the president of any country, small to medium sized country, even large country, and Mark Zuckerberg shows up in your capitol and says I would like to meet with the Prime Minister or the President, you take that meeting. If you are the senator from I'm not going to name a state and you show up, you might not take that senators meeting. Right? Do you see what I'm saying? If Mark Zuckerberg goes to China tomorrow, he'll meet with Xi Jinping and the entire Politburo of the.

[Chris Messina]

I mean Tim Cook and Elon Musk both have relationships with the world leaders based on where they sell their products.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, let me do my dumb history thing to give context to why Silicon Valley was kept at arm's length or treated as the stepchild for so long. Go all the way back to the Bush gore election in 92. You're in a recession. They their big move, Gore being the technology guy was like, this is how we're going to modernize this country. We're going to come out of this recession. And so you had hands off, no regulation of commerce on the Internet, no sales tax on the Internet. That happened all the way through section two. So for that whole first decade, hands off. Let them do what they want. Because we don't know what this is. We don't want to strangle the baby in the crib. Right?

[Chris Messina]

That's right.

[Brian McCullough]

And then go to the next decade and when you have the great financial crisis where the entire economy blows up, the only thing that didn't actually blow up, I know there was some rough six months there where maybe there were layoffs and people couldn't raise, but you immediately had Silicon Valley roaring back in the tech industry roaring back in. So when the entire economy was broken, the only thing that was still working was tech. So again, hands off. Leave them alone. They're the only thing that isn't working. So you have 20 years, an entire generation of founders of CEOs of investors that were given this hands off treatment. And then when you moved into things like crypto, which was money, which touches the government and government's power big time, when you have things like, hey, wait a minute, social networks and social media are more powerful than newspapers or TV networks, which nominally the government has some sort of control over because of bandwidth of licensing and things like that. And so in that third decade in the 2010s, all of a sudden they were encroaching on things that were the natural power levers and centers of governments. And a governments didn't respond well to that, didn't evolve with it. And like.

[Chris Messina]

So the question that I come to is, like, what would have caused the government to modernize in a way that's meaningful, that would have aligned with the pace of change that's come out of Silicon Valley? And I keep coming up with blanks relative to the approach that Elon is taking, because if like, I have in so many ways, like, deep sympathy for the people that are experiencing these layoffs and going through this like, you know, horrific sort of like crisis at a moment where they've pledged their career to the government. And now a person coming in, you know, with this new administration basically says, well, thank you very much, you know, you can see yourself out. But if you were to do it gently, then every person gets to justify their existence and their persistence in that system. And the idea is to basically like wipe it clean, you know, not defrag the hard drive, like install the new operating system and go from that point forward. And so I don't. It's just like I, I'm left with such a challenge between like the techno optimist side of myself thinking about 20 years in the future and like the humanist side being like, so worried about the cultural scarring that's going on and not being able to reason between both of these in terms of which is the one that would be that that is necessary, right? Because basically like Congress hasn't done shit for like 20 years. And so we have a system that was meant to be somewhat representative of the people. And the people said they wanted a more efficient, less costly government. And yet we made it seems like, and again, maybe it's my ignorance, I don't know, very little progress towards that outcome. And in the last two months there's been more change to cut government. It seems, it seems I'm fully aware of my ignorance that there's a wrecking ball that is coming through and at least people seem very scared in a way that they have not been before. And is that better or worse?

[Brian McCullough]

We don't know the answer yet. Like, when you, when you say, when you say people are, like, afraid of Silicon Valley. It's, it's when literally what's happening is move fast and break things is being brought to government and there is a certain percentage of people for, they're like, oh, hell no. I don't want move fast and break things in my government. I don't want a certain percentage of people that put out fires laid off. I don't want to, you know, when you lay off people in the Veterans Administration, those are mostly veterans, you know, like, so. But at the same time, I see, I see the argument that you're making is that, right, because there were so much, so many institutional sort of inertia and stuff. Like, you're right, nothing got done in the last 20 years. I don't know.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah, again, like, I want to be clear. Like, I'm not like, yeah, you know, say anything negative about the individuals that you're describing. I'm talking about the systemic change.

[Brian McCullough]

But what I'm saying is, is I don't know that we know that move fast and break things actually will work for the government.

[Chris Messina]

So we don't. But the thing that I will add is that at least we have, you know, 20, like 15 to 20 years of experience now building infrastructure that we know scales to planetary, you know, effectiveness. And although, you know, I'm not going to say that, like, Elon has got that all in the bag, there are at least technologists that have built systems that do scale that. While the federal government, yes, has some of those systems in place, the fact that we're still running most of our systems on COBOL means that there is a generational loss of memory that is going to occur that in 20 years it's going to be very hard for us to maintain that system. The question is, do we just have to wait until the whole thing falls over and then we rebuild it, or is it better to be rebuilding it now while there's still some, you know, kind of like awareness, the COBOL cowboys that are around.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, and also the, and this is as far as I'll go into this because, you know, I don't like to go into politics, but I know I'm not convinced. Listen, if this really is bringing Silicon Valley thinking to government, that's one thing. If this is actually a political thing where it's like we're bringing a certain, I mean, it's both way of thinking.

[Chris Messina]

Because ultimately, what is Politics. Politics is just conflict between people. And so it feels like with the USDS, GSDs, the digital service, you know, there was some of Silicon Valley kind of in a. In a mop closet, you know, somewhere in the White House. And it just, like it did some things and it modernized some institutional stuff, it fixed some websites. But to have that way of thinking now in charge will require a different way of working with the resources that are available. And I understand that that's very uncomfortable, and maybe that's not the way people want their government to work. And at the same time, it seems like people are not satisfied with their government. So I just don't know what the pathway would be to get from point A to point B, where point B is a satisfying government that works effectively for as many people as possible and is cost efficient, and we've done it in four years and not 400. And maybe that's not the point. You know, maybe government needs to be slow and unsatisfying.

[Brian McCullough]

I'm going to bring it back to the larger.

[Chris Messina]

Which is the question.

[Brian McCullough]

Yes, Silicon Valley and the tech industry in society. And I'm going to pull out an history analogy here, but look, you know, Florence was a republic for a long time. It was run by one industry.

[Chris Messina]

Sorry, the Medicis.

[Brian McCullough]

No, well, Florence was a republic for a long time before the Medicis essentially created an oligarchy. But it was. It was a polity that had one major industry, which was the woolen cloth industry. Basically, they made clothes. Okay, yeah, but.

[Chris Messina]

Because that's why fashion was there, why it's still there.

[Brian McCullough]

But. No, but the point actually is, is that everything else in the economy was basically supposed subsistence growing of food. Right?

[Chris Messina]

Yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

Clothing was the only thing that was a good. That was transportable. That was also. It wore out. You needed more of it. And because of that, it accumulated capital because of the. All right, you have to be able to get paid later on or whatever. Okay, the point I'm making is that society, the industry and the banking that grew up around that, grew to be so much bigger than the government, so much bigger than the state that it existed in, that it was basically an impossibility for the state to exist the way it did when the real power was in this industry and among these people. Now, I have not qualified to make an argument of a republic in Florence is better than the Medicis running things in Florence or whatever. I'm just pointing out that it is a thing historically, where if an industry or what your country does or how it operates is bigger than What? The governmental system that was set up, like it outgrows it, then if the government doesn't evolve, then it gets swallowed by that. I'm not arguing that it would be a good thing for our republic to go away.

[Chris Messina]

No, I think neither of us is arguing one way or the other. I think I'm just saying that we're trying to. And the reason why I'm asking you this is because, again, this is your 2000th episode. So you've been documenting.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Chris Messina]

In audio form.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Chris Messina]

This path for the last seven and a half years or so.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, yeah, it is.

[Chris Messina]

This rise into power and this march into the White House.

[Brian McCullough]

I remember very clearly. Someone could look up my Internet history podcast episode with MG Siegler. I think it was in 2016, but someone couldn't look up the date. I remember that was the first time I asked somebody, hey, you do realize that people are kind of starting to.

[Chris Messina]

Hate you in 2016. Yeah, that was. That was the era of, like, the throwing rocks at the Google shuttles.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah. And that was the first time that I remember starting to parse that. And then. Right. You're like. It was. Since the show's been on, I had to cover, like, you know, the. The Congressional hearings and Cambridge Analytica and all that stuff. Yeah. I don't know, man. Remember when we were just kids that were tinkering around with blogs and. And I do.

[Chris Messina]

You know, so actually, it's funny. This is your 2000 episode. This year is also the 20th anniversary of Bar Camp, which was 2005. And that was explained for people.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah. Explain what Bar Camp is or was. And, yeah.

[Chris Messina]

I mean, so Bar Camp was an event that was kind of a fork of Tim O'Reilly's Foo Camp. Foo Camp stood for Friends of O'Reilly. And it was an event that drew together, you know, 300 of the luminaries who built a lot of these tech companies. You know, Larry and Sergey were there, and I'm sure Elon came through up in Sebastopol in California. And, you know, I was relatively new to San Francisco in the Bay Area, and thought, well, if Tim O'Reilly is going to have this event, why don't we have our own? He's a big fan of open source. I'm just going to fork his event and run my own.

[Brian McCullough]

Right.

[Chris Messina]

You know, I'll have, like, 20 of my friends show up. And lo and behold, we had 300 people show up down in Palo Alto, and we got covered in wired, and actually TechCrunch launched there. And Pandora launched and we had a bunch of just kind of seminal things coming together where up until that point so many of us had been on the Internet but hadn't met in person. And so it was the galvanizing moment, I think, that kind of brought together a lot of the people that then became kind of like the forebears of Web 2.0. And so we're 20 years on now.

[Brian McCullough]

That's making me think, and this is, I hope this doesn't come off as like arrogant or something like that, but you and I have experienced what we're talking about, about Silicon Valley becoming bigger than it was personally. Because that guy with the nose ring at your bar camp, Jack Dorsey, that was in the corner that was sort of, you know, completely awkward and didn't know how to talk to people, that.

[Chris Messina]

Mullenweg was the co organizer of the.

[Brian McCullough]

Event, you know, ends up being Jack Dorsey. So you and I have experienced personally, people that we know that were just the dork in the corner end up becoming Jack Dorsey, end up becoming billionaires, end up becoming like. So on some level, in any industry or anything that you do, any scene, any whatever, the people that are nobodies, if you stick around long enough, certain people become somebody.

[Chris Messina]

The other reason, like why I'm having a hard time on this moment is because of that, that point in that perspective. Having seen a lot of these people early on when they were just, you know, dorky nerds and you know, no one would talk to them or whatever, to the point where they have power now and to see like their internecine period where they were trying to kind of like do the right thing and do what like society asked of them and to you know, you know, be good kids that would wear the right clothes and you know, fit in. It's. None of it seemed to like pay off. I mean like Jack Dorsey is, you know, exiled, you know, he's doing whatever.

[Brian McCullough]

Larry and Sergey, they're off.

[Chris Messina]

You know, I mean, and that's an.

[Brian McCullough]

Interesting like again, that's an interesting arc where there was a time when Larry and Sergey were like, you know what? Hey, we're kids in a candy store. We can do self driving cars, we can do this, that and the other thing. None of it really paid off in the way that they want. They sort of drifted sometimes they came back and they got their juice back. But then, you know, certain people have left. I mean, Bezos leaving when he left, that was just kind of feels early to me.

[Chris Messina]

You know, I mean, he's also like, like A grandpa, like in. In terms of, like, the younger generation that came up. Right. Because he was there in the 90s.

[Brian McCullough]

So, yeah, he's a decade older than.

[Chris Messina]

Us, so it feels like we're in this moment of transition. And again, you've got two. So if we were to wrap this up, you know, you've got 2,000 episodes on your belt. You know, not that I think you like to give a lot of advice, but, you know, if you were to give yourself, to go back to that first episode, any advice on how to approach or think about and talk about these issues in these matters, is there anything that you would change or do differently?

[Brian McCullough]

Not change anything. Because like I've said before, the thing that I always think about is I am. I'd like to think that what I'm doing is you work in this industry and I'm telling you day by day how it's evolving, good and bad, whatever. Whether you like the way it's evolving or not. My job is to tell you why I think it's going this way. And so I'm kind of proud of the fact that that was the mission statement that Gabe and I came up with. And that's kind of still what I think I'm doing and what I think people get value out of it. I don't know that I do anything differently, but I do think if I had launched five years earlier, think of how different the show would have been where it was. It was more like, what if I had been able to cover the early iPhone stuff? And, like, I do wish I was covering the era when everything seemed to be, oh, my God, this is gee whiz, great. I kind of regret that I'm here for this part.

[Chris Messina]

Like, almost like that blows my mind, because at the same time, like, all the stuff that's happening in AI is almost as important, and it would not be possible if those prior technologies hadn't been adopted and used as broadly to create the training data for what's happening now. And so, in a way, and you know, obviously I'm not going to steal your thunder, but, like, you had to start when you did in order to be able to cover this moment the way that you're able to.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, yeah. But then that's just us getting old. Like, you know, the music was better back in the day or whatever. Like, so it wasn't that everything was great. But I just do remember the era when the reason I started to write that book is I was like, I want to explain to my parents who are the people and what were the ideas that transformed your life? And then by the time the book came out, I was being asked by interviewers like, is this explaining how the Internet ruined our lives? And I was like, well, no, I actually started out. And still that book is an optimistic book. And you know, I love the tech industry. I still do. It's hard for me to cover fighting and, and I like the fighting between Elon and Sam, but I don't like the fighting between society and idea.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah, I'm with you.

[Brian McCullough]

Whatever. I still like, I still like this job a lot and I intend to keep doing it.

[Chris Messina]

And you know, I'm going to ask this question and I kind of feel like I already have the answer. And so you don't like invent anything. But you know, if you were to imagine, let's just make it the next 1000 episodes. Is there anything that you're looking forward to or anything that you want to try that you haven't yet done?

[Brian McCullough]

Oh, format wise, whatever. Yeah. I don't know.

[Matt]

If someone would have told me that there are science backed ingredients that could help me feel 15 years younger in a matter of months, I wouldn't have believed it. Then I tried Qualia Senolytic. Cause as we age, everyone accumulates senescent cells in their body. Senescent cells cause symptoms of aging such as aches and discomfort, slow workout recoveries, sluggish mental and physical energy associated with that middle aged feeling. Also known as zombie cells. They are old and worn out and not serving a useful function for our health anymore. But they are taking up space and nutrients from our healthy cells. Much like pruning the yellowing and dead leaves off a plant. Qualia Senolytic removes those worn out senescent cells to allow for the rest of them to thrive in the body. You only need to take it two days a month. Qualia has really increased my energy levels and made me more productive. So join me. Resist aging at the cellular level. Try Qualia senolytic. Go to qualialife.com ride for up to 50% off and use code RIDE at checkout for an additional 15% off for your convenience. Quality Qualia's analytic is also available at select GNC locations near you. That's Q U-A-L-I-A life.com ride for an extra 15% off your purchase. Thanks to Qualia for sponsoring today's episode. I've been running resumewriters.com on Shopify for years now. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. Home of the number one checkout on the planet and the not so secret secret Shop pay which boosts conversions up to 50% meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed and everywhere in between. When you think about an innovative product, a progressive brand and button down marketing, an often overlooked secret is actually the business behind the business making, selling and for shoppers buying simple for millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout we use with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comride all lowercase go to shopify.comride to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comride.

[Chris Messina]

I will say, I mean part of the benefit of the show is just the consistency, you know, and it's the trustworthiness and it's not changing things up. And I'm not again, I'm not even as a technologist, it's sort of like once you arrive at the right thing, I mean like the fact that I'm still fighting for and defending the hashtag, it's sort of like that is the thing and it's going to stay the way it is and you can like try to like mess with it, but it's like, you know, just like your show, you've got the format like this is what people want to listen to and so there's a great deal of value and you providing that filtering and then you know, offering the audio commentary of the, the play by play.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, I just, it's just I feel like if you listen to me for three months you could essentially you could be, you could go work at a VC firm, you could become a journalist and cover tech yourself like that. I, that's what I want it to be. What I could do more of is more interview stuff. But then everybody's doing interview stuff. Yeah, you know, when I started the Internet history podcast, people were not doing business history and business analysis and now that's a whole friggin industry. I was on like the fifth episode of the acquired podcast because like the fact that that is the. So I would like to do more interview stuff. I just don't know where my lane is because I also don't want to be the guy that has opinions necessarily. I have opinions, but I don't like, I feel like the way to do that, to be successful doing that is to have hard opinions.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah. But I also feel like, again, like, the value that you provide is more or less providing the unfiltered view or lens that, you know, you are the physical embodiment of the technique, you know, aggregation, service. And so it's like, here's all the stuff that's going on. Here's what everyone's writing about. I'm going to deliver it to you in this format, you know, through a trusted, you know, voice. I am your intermediary. I'm choosing the clusters that I think are going to be relevant to you, and I'm not going to provide a lens. I'm not going to, like, tell you what to think. And so I think because it's a daily show, you're providing that information as it's happening, and people are making sense of it in real time just as you are. And for you to come in with these hot takes, I mean, I feel like I'm way out of my league, like, talking about the government and stuff. And yet I've been listening to, like, hours and hours of, like, podcasts to, like, try to, like, understand what's going on.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Chris Messina]

You know what I mean? And I would not want you to be doing what I just did.

[Brian McCullough]

Exactly.

[Chris Messina]

On your show.

[Brian McCullough]

And you and I know people that have found lanes recently about, say, going anti AI or hart pro elon. Like, you can take lanes. Right. And get great success with that and like, that. I. I just. I don't know. I. I don't want to do that. And. But so that's what I'm saying. I would love to do more interviews, but I don't know what my lane is other than just. So tell me about your latest thing. You know, that's what I'm searching for. Yeah.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to go, actually.

[Brian McCullough]

Hey, listen, everybody. I've said this a million times. I am deeply, deeply honored that all of you listen. That blows my mind. And I forget about it on a daily basis because I just do this. I sit in this room and put my head in a box. But I'm going to meet people at swix's event tomorrow. I'm deeply touched and honored that all of you listen. This is my favorite job that I've ever had, and I Hope to do 2000 more episodes unless AI has no need for me, which is probably the case. Thank you, Chris. And thanks everybody that called in. And how do we. Anything you want to tell people before we go, Chris?

[Chris Messina]

No, but you've got to do your son offline.

[Brian McCullough]

Right? I love everybody.

[Chris Messina]

There you go. Great.

[Brian McCullough]

Talk soon, everyone. Bye. Thanks, Chris.

[Chris Messina]

Yeah.