← This Week in Startups
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All right, Friday, April 3, 2026. It's twist. Lon Harris is here. I'm Jason Calacanis. We have a full docket this week in startups is brought to you by Render. Find out why 5 million developers are
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already using the all in one platform render.
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and get back to building. Visit deal.com twist to learn more.
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A
We're sitting here April 3rd. Summer's coming, the winter's over, it's springtime for JCAL and lan. Nobody is going to get the rest. No.
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C
That's a little old for most of our viewers, but if you're in your 40s or 50s, you're welcome.
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A
You would get springtime for LAN in Germany.
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C
Yeah, it's from the producers.
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A
So Fridays we have a little bit of fun. We're going to do our startup news. We're going to, you know, really try to focus on the four pillars here on the show in 2026. I always try to set an agenda for the year. Tactical, practical. That's what I love to do. Tactical things. Very practical. So that you can take something from this week in startups and apply it to your business. Get inspired, bring it to your team and say, hey, here's something we can do that would make our business go better or make our customers happy, whatever it happens to be, grow our startup faster. And then, of course, experts only. If you look at what's happened in media, the Go Direct movement, as we talked about last episode, hey, going direct is the best model. So we want experts only on the show. Experts only. It's one of the things I learned from the transition from, let's say, the roundtable as Leo did it on this Week in Tech to the roundtable as I constructed it on all in this Week in Tech. Leo plus three journalist commentators. Great, awesome content. Really defined the category. But now you have experts who want to be part of that roundtable. So that's like a unique opportunity, right? So if you look at this Week in AI or our VC roundtable, it's not a lot of journalists, right? Journalists kind of out of favor right now. Journalists tend to have, I don't know, what would I say? It's a rough time. When I was a journalist, 20% picture of the world, and we would try to get to 22%, 23%, 24%.
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C
I feel like there was an era before social media, before podcasting. Regular everyday people didn't have access to leaders, politicians, CEOs. You had to go through the medium of a journalist. There was this whole class of people. They were our conduit to the powerful, to celebrities.
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B
Right.
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C
But today a celebrity can have a YouTube channel, VC, or a CEO can go on a podcast. Everybody's got. Unfortunately, everybody's got TikTok and Instagram and. Right. So the idea that you need these people, this whole class of people, to be the conduit for these conversations. They are struggling, I think, right now to figure out where do we fit into the new rubric.
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A
We want to be tactical, we want to be practical for you, the audience. Number two, we want experts. Only getting a lot of experts, and we keep it going there. Hey, we like to super distribute what we're doing. Right. Super distribution is a big part of it. And as Lon added, number four, you wanna meet you where you are, whether It's Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Well, not Facebook. Nobody's on there. Threads.
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C
Threads, baby.
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A
We don't post to Threads.
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C
We don't. Yeah. Oliver really is keen on exploring Threads. I'm a little. I really don't like it over there. I find I'm very uncomfortable on Threads, so I've been resisting.
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A
Why are you uncomfortable? Why are you so uncomfortable?
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C
I think Threads is the worst. I think just the vibes on Threads of any. You know, X gets all the CR crap people hate. Don't like Elon. Oh, it's all Nazis or whatever. Grok. They don't like it. I think the conversations on X are much more civil, much calmer, much more rational and thoughtful on X than Threat. Threads is like they're all lunatics. I don't know.
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A
It's the loony baby.
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C
It's the boomer one where all the crazies went.
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I think that's where Karen Swisher and Prof. Cold tags reign supreme. Every time I go over there and I think Karen Swisher blocked me. We used to be friends, but she's blocked me now, and she just says horrible things about everybody. I mean, the biggest crazy thing is they've got a podcast with tech advertisers, and the entire show is just saying, tech is horrible. These tech people are terrible. And then Prof. G said, you should Unsubscribe from these 20 different services that, like eight of them are their advertisers. Can you imagine if I got on here and I was like, you know, it'd be a great idea. Y' all should unsubscribe from mailchimp. Like, unsubscribe.
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C
And we love. We love our advertisers here.
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You should all resist and unsubscribe. That's like. That's like his big idea.
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Try Vanta for all your sock 2 needs. The last one, Jason. A perfect segue into Our first guest. ViralReady. Our first guest went viral this week, so let's bring him on. Marie Kazan, the CEO of Felt Sense, had a viral. You sent it to me after we'd already booked him on X. This company, they're a holding company that spins up their own AI agents, which then act as autonomous founders. This week they went viral because their agents rebuilt every company from YC's winter 26 batch. So let's.
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A
I did see this. People were hand wringing about it, and I think there was a little bit like, hey, that's a jerk thing to do. But I looked at it and said, well, let's pause for a second here and hear from the founder what their intent was. Was it to show what's defensible, what's not, what's commoditized, what's not? Is it performance art? I don't know. That's why I wanted to have him on the show. And before we get started, I just want to take a minute and applaud for Plod. I have my plod pin on. I press the button, it records everything I do. It syncs it. Lon's got his as well. I'm using the magnet on the back. He's using the clip. I don't lose anything. I don't lose any of these great ideas we have. Everything is recorded. I say action item. I say remind me. I say put it on my calendar. All of that organized nice and tight. In the summary with the transcript in an app, I don't have to have my phone with me. I don't know where my phone is right now. I just have my plod pin on. If you want to get a plot pen, I think we have a deal.
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C
Oh, you know we do. You got to check it out at plod AI twist. That's p, l, a, u, d dot, AI slash twist. If you use the code twist, you're going to get 10% off your plod pin.
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It turns out just the Integration of Plaud. And like a product I love said, the results are off the charts. Really?
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C
They're selling a lot of plauds based on this. Well, thanks everybody. If you're a twist listener and you've bought a plaid pin after hearing them on our show, thank you so much. We appreciate it.
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A
Yeah, thank you. Share it on social and ccs. Marique, welcome to the show. I see that you're at your grandma's house right now for the weekend. Totally fine. You're in grandma's living room.
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C
I don't know what happened. The agents rebuilt his grandma's house that
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was exactly just to perfect specification. Okay, are you a troll? Is this performance art? Are you sending a message to YC and Gary that their ideas are derivative and lame? Are you a rabble rouser? What are you doing? This was a very controversial thing you did, sir.
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B
You know, in profession, I am a serial entrepreneur, but I think that the particular flair of entrepreneurship that I pursue is, you know, defined. I call it social sculpture. So oftentimes the types of companies that I build, they are a commentary on kind of what's happening. And so some of what I've built before was tech for the sex workers rights movement. So kind of what was happening in the adult industry in the mid 2010s that then ended up leading to OnlyFans and kind of this transition. Actually, Jason, the last time we intersected was I launched the first VC investing in psychedelic therapeutics in 2018. And I think we were going back and forth a little bit on psychedelic deal flow, either with myself or some of my business partners.
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A
You know, I did look at that. Peter Thio, a friend of mine or acquaintance of mine, I don't know, I think we're friendly. He invites me to parties once in a while, so that's nice. He did the psilocybin company before anybody. Something therapeutics. I can't remember the name of it.
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B
Yeah, Compass.
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A
Yep, Compass Therapeutics. You know, and I was like, wow, that's supervisionary. But I can't do that. You know, we have vice clauses and VC funds. It just makes things complicated. Okay, so then what's this idea here?
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B
Yeah, so I think that, like in 2014, for me, when I was like starting to think about everything that was happening online, people saying like, hey, I won't take your job, but a human using AI will. I just really disagreed with that statement. I just don't believe that that's true. And I think now we're seeing that, like, no AI will very much take Your job. And many jobs are being taken by AI. And so for me there was this question of like, well, what is the most powerful thing that we could demonstrate or build that would show that this is just like not accurate? And building essentially agentic founders felt like something that people would not even be able to debate that AI can take your job if we can build agents that can actually play the role of founders.
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A
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B
Definitely. And like when you're, when you're building at that bleeding edge, you always learn so much more than everyone else. It's very difficult to actually learn anything about how a space is evolving. If you're not building at the very, very forefront. And I learned that in the sex worker rights movement in psychedelics and here in the agentic kind of tech AI space. Rent a Human, for instance, launched in the last couple months we started thinking through okay human hiring here and what does a human hiring engine look like about a year ago. And so we, when you're building at this bleeding edge, you just start getting these insights into like how everything will play out that I think a lot of other folks are just lagging in because they are just building for the present rather than building for where we're about to be in the next couple of years. So yeah, got it.
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A
And you're the CEO of Felt Sense and that company is building AI agents that will ideate, build and just release products on their own. Yeah, that's like your day job. So you said hey, a great stunt, a great way to get a intention for this stunt marketing lawn. Very big tradition is let's see which companies can be replicated or not. Now what's your advice though? In all seriousness, if I am a founder doing a startup, is there value in me having a co founder who is an agent? And is that really what you're selling? Is like hey, here's your third or fourth co founder that doesn't get equity.
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B
We thought about that, I would say at the beginning of 25 and very quickly dismissed it. It became apparent to us that actually the kind of co founder model would 1 be an extremely competitive space and 2 not actually be forward thinking enough. Like it would be essentially just able to be replicated by anthropic or OpenAI with the models that they currently have. And so we actually do the opposite. So we don't open up our software to anyone, we don't sell it to enterprise, we don't sell it to founders. We keep everything in house. We spin up our own founders and they build and they launch their own products and have their own icps. And it's an infinitely scalable hold co where all the operators are agents.
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A
Okay, so you're building IAC Interactive Corporation, Barry Diller, he bought a bunch of startups, collected them together famously Lawn Match and Expedia and all those things. Then he wound up breaking them up and selling them. But you're going to build a conglomerate of a bunch of different ideas, some of them inspired by the one liners and the directory at Y Combinator and you're literally going to compete with the YC class that doesn't have defensible products. Correct.
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B
As a portion of what we do. I think that the first goal for us is essentially trying to capture as much of the long tail of entrepreneurship as possible. And that long tail continues to grow on a daily basis as, like, the barrier to building comes down. But, like, right now, we're really like a trinket apps factory. And that's a lot of what we're experimenting with is, like, trinket apps.
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What does it mean?
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So, like, essentially, single feature, couple feature, SaaS apps is, like, where we're starting. Can we get, you know, tens of thousands of these running, getting customers, people interacting with them, etc. But as the technology gets better and better, we are finding ourselves able to, you know, replicate the technology of, like, entire companies.
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A
So, yeah, now I got one more question to ask Lan. I know you're chomping at the bit. When you looked at the data, how many YC companies did you replicate? And by replicate, I guess you studied them online. You had an agent go out, find as much information as you can about the founders, about their mission. I don't know, maybe they spoke to journalists, whatever. And then you had it come up with a name and a derivative product, a duplicate product inspired by product, which is totally fair game. Ideas are not protectable. What did you find? How many companies did you replicate? How much compute did it take to replicate them? And of that group, how many were commodity apps that you could just, in your mind, create an 80% or better version of? And then how many of them were you like, oh, this thing requires, you know, it's whoop or aura, and I need a wristband. I can't just replicate this online. Take us through what you learned. I'm curious about that. And if you want to tell us a little bit about the process you ran these agents across, let us know.
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B
Yeah. So when we went into setting this up, there were a couple of things that we needed to consider on the topic of compute, for instance, if we had just kind of ran agents against the wall and said, hey, just rebuild as much as you can and go as deep as possible, we would have probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to replicate as much as possible. So we really had essentially builds and tranches and specific trigger events structured so that we could say, o these are kind of the core architectures of some of these different companies. These are the different components that are quite reusable and that we can plug in across many different companies that we're trying to replicate. And what we found is that essentially 10 to 20% of the batch was pretty highly replicable. And was composed of basically the same sorts of components. And those were many of the ones that we posted online with the playable links that people could actually interact with where there wasn't necessarily much differentiation from at least technical perspective.
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A
Okay, so 20% off the top, just low hanging fruit, easy to replicate. Those founders need to take a deep look in the mirror and say, hey, our idea and the ability to put up and stand up a product is extremely not defensible. Right, yeah.
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B
The thing that I would say is some of those apps though the other portion of replicability is not just technology. So some companies, they had extremely replicable technology, but they were selling into a market that was very difficult to get access to or to sell into, that their company might not be disrupted necessarily by an anthropic or an OpenAI because those companies would just not have the patience or want to put resources towards trying to sell into that market. Because there are so many complex dynamics, et cetera. But from a technological perspective, yes, highly replicable. I would say on the other side, probably like 30% were not even really worth pursuing or building or you could build essentially kind of like the interface, but in terms of the back end of things, it was either hardware, extremely difficult to access data, there wasn't really much there that could be truly rebuilt and we could truly take a stab at. One of the things we were joking about is like group space is building a hotel up on the moon. And we're like, okay, what if people ask us if you know, did we replicate this one? We can, I mean, who's going to check us? Yeah, we built one, it's up there. But yeah, I think that there were definitely startups there that were just like extremely difficult to build. And then what the report that we've been putting together essentially talks about and just kind of highlights each one of these companies is. There was a lot in the middle that we could, you know, take a, take a decent stab at, but definitely had something. But I would say probably over the next like year or two, many of the features will also be able to be essentially like replicated, built. And especially as we start to see like more automation, I mean we're already seeing a lot of companies beginning to do like automation of hardware builds and other aspects of manufacturing. And so I'm curious to see like five years down the road, which is quite a ways away. But like, it's hard for me to envision, you know, 90% of these companies not being replicable over the next few years.
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D
So.
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C
So yeah, yeah, Marie, I Know you got to go. But I do. I do want to get one question here. Did you hear back from any of the founders whose companies you sort of adapted with your agents? Did you get any personal blowback? We did find there are a few tweets that were not super happy with what you guys were doing. This one. This one called Bitch move, Bitch A bit a bitch move. I'm curious. Did you. Did you get any of this personal blowback? And Paul. Yeah, Paul, you could be. Did you hear from any of the founders in a good or. Or negative way?
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B
We got both. I mean, we got a lot of love. We got a lot of hate. Honestly, I think a lot of the hate that we saw came from people who just didn't actually play with the product or didn't figure out that they could just click the, you know, link to actually play with it and interface. And so we spend a lot of time commenting over the last, like, day or so to, like, just let people know that, no, these are actual, like, products they can play with. But we got some screenshots of the internal chats from this latest demo, and they're calling us, like, Vibe Combinator, and I think we're having more of a fun time playing with it than anything else. So, yeah, for us, it was like, we're not trying to create enemies here. We thought that this was, like, a great.
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A
Oh, yeah, you are.
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B
We're starting to start conversations.
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A
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, listen. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to pass judgment. I know you got to go. Here's a hot take. If your bank moves slower than a startup, that's a problem. I see this process behind the scenes every day, and I know that bad banking can kill your company's momentum. That's why I'm so glad to introduce our newest partner, Grasshopper. Grasshopper is a real federally chartered digital bank, not some fintech wrapper sitting atop some mystery institution. Nope. It was built just for founders like you. You want fast, you want easy? Open an account in just minutes and start earning yields that can top 5%. Wow, that's a big number. Plus, you'll get unlimited 1% cash back on purchases, free achie, free domestic wires, and no monthly fees. Plus, if you're sitting on some real Runway, Grasshopper's treasury product hits 5% plus with same day liquidity. As a twist listener, Grasshopper wants to give you a 500 cash bonus just for opening account. And you can open an account really quick. So go right now to Grasshopper Bank Twist and use the promo Code twist to get started. But it's time for the chairman of the interwebs to pass judgment. Lon, present the case and I will give my judgment. Go ahead. What is he accused of?
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C
So you know, the defendant is accused of ripping off a lot of other people's companies and sort of replicating them as a way to gain attention. Whereas, you know, I think you could, I guess. There you go.
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A
Stay in character, prosecutor. Stay in character.
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C
If it please the court, you know, Marique has gone and violated the sanctity of these startups, recreating them with his own agents without their consent. How do you rule?
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A
I am prepared to lay judgment on Marik Hazan. While some of us might find it distasteful to rip and vibe code other people's ideas, there is nothing technically illegal about it. If you build a coffee shop and you have the incredible idea to put hazelnut or chocolate syrup or vanilla syrup for the first time in a latte, that's an incredible invention, but it is not a protectable invention. Therefore, the court rules in favor of the defendant.
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C
There you go.
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A
It is distasteful to some, but it is the core of capitalism that people will build and innovate on your ideas and the great ideas of our time. From the iPhone built on the back of the BlackBerry, built on the back of the Palm Pilot, built on the back of the Newton that we copy iterate and are inspired by each other. And to the founders who feel wronged in this case, you have a modicum of sympathy from this court, but you do not have a legal case. What you have is a kick in the derriere to work harder. I think in some ways what Marique is doing is a splash of cold water, a bucket of cold water over the heads of lackadaisical founders who think they could just put up a commodity based product and raise millions of dollars. Now you must face his agents. Case closed, law and order.
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B
Thank you gentlemen for the ruling. Appreciate it guys.
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C
Marie, thanks so much for coming by.
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A
Lon, there was another startup we had on just two weeks ago and they remind me of that startup cause a couple of my friends had invested in it. Pulsia has made it into a bit of a platform to do this. So instead of Polcia saying hey, we're gonna do this, they say here's a platform to do it. You put your idea in here. We don't care where you get the idea from. If you're copying mailchimp or substack or beehive and you want to commoditize it. Go right ahead. We have tools in here for acquiring customers, we have tools in here for doing customer support. And everything becomes like a dashboard of YC. I think we called it like a YC. Like eBay for YC, a marketplace or a tool set HubSpot for YC. Anyway, the fact is, founders, I'd love to see somebody do this on my team against our portfolio and say, hey, listen, everything you've built here, not defensible. What's the moat? What's the moat? What's the moat? And in fact, I'm going to add what's the moat? To our founder university and our launch accelerator. What's your moat? Is a new segment we're gonna do in our program. Because the moat used to be. I'm just gonna go faster than everybody else or nobody else is tuned into this. But, you know, I hire this brilliant
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C
technical co founder and they're going to code it up and nobody else is going to be able to replicate what we've built. Now Claude can do it in an afternoon.
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A
You ready for a tip, Juan? I am I incredibly frustrated with this bank of America like ban in my existence. For some reason, my the worst bank ever. I can't take the bank of America. It's just like every time I want to get something done, bank of America is like, oh, let's increase the degree of difficulty. Mercury bank wasn't available for personal. Now Mercury Bank's available, Other banks are available. So I tell my team for three years, get rid of bank of America. Get rid of bank of America. Nobody listens to me. They're like, oh, well, okay, yeah, we'll get to it, we'll get to it. But it always goes down the list. So finally I put my foot down because something important happened. I needed to go to Vegas and I needed like 20 dimes to go gamble. And I couldn't get my 20 dimes out of the bank. We'd have millions of dollars.
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C
They're giving you adjectives about getting your 20 dimes out of the bank.
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A
It's enough for Raddy Craze. So I say, okay, line up three banks, put me on the CC list, open up an account. Just the basic checking, savings account combo. Open them all up. You know, get me the bank people on the line. Oh, they're very excited. Big fan of the pods, you know, blah, blah, blah. I say, great. They're like, okay, let us know what we can do. I said, oh, actually there is something you can do for me. Get me $10,000 in $2 bills. Get me $10,000. Two dollar bills in $2 bills.
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C
They're rare. I have one in my desk drawer at $2 bill. They did
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A
one bank.
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C
Wow.
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A
Got me.
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C
There it is.
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A
My bricks. And that's but one brick.
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C
That's one. That's a lot of bills.
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A
I mean, it's 5,000 bill.
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C
I didn't even know there were that many $2 bills still in circulation. I thought they were like a rare.
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A
They still print them. They are rare. And I got them brand new from the mint in the plastic brick.
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C
Mint. Oh, my God.
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A
Like you sometimes get when you go to Vegas and have a big win. As you can see, Donald Trump has signed them all for me.
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C
Of course.
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A
Signed Donald Trump.
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C
What bill? He's going on a bill, Right? Donald Trump's picking.
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A
I think he's going on dollar bills. Anyway, the point of this is it's the Brown M&MS. Theory of the rider.
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C
Yes.
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A
Somebody put in their rider. They take out all the brownies.
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C
Van Halen is the famous origin of this. Yeah. In Van Halen's rider, they famously said, we don't like brown M&Ms. We want a big dish of M&M's, but no brown M&Ms. And then that became like this. Or was it green? It might have been green. I don't remember the color. At first, people thought this was like, oh, these rock stars, they're unbearable with their demands. But Van Halen later explained that, well, that that was how they made sure that the people at the venue were actually reading the rider. If they came in, they saw the dish of M&M's, it had the wrong color in it. They were like, these people did not pay attention to detail. Now we got to go check the lights, we got to go check the amps, we got to go check the instruments. We got to make sure. Because now we know that these guys are not detail oriented.
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A
By the way, congratulations to the boys over at the Podcast Bros. Network. Tb.
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C
Tbpn.
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A
Well, I just want to say congratulations to them. And they've apparently taken all ads off.
- [28:13]
C
Yeah. So it's. It looks. The show looks legitimately weird without the ad ticker. I said that.
- [28:19]
A
Yeah. So just, you know, we're sold out over here. We can start us for 15 years. That's what happens when you have a niche. You know, podcast that works. The B2B stuff works. But congratulations to them for going to OpenAI.
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C
There you go.
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A
Which is apparently hiring them to do their comms. And Sam said, like, AI's got a terrible reputation, as we've talked about ad nauseam with all these surveys. So I actually think if you look at what they did, they're extremely good at the vibes. Like, their vibe thing was like, next level. It was all vibes. I mean, the only criticism of them was like, this doesn't feel like as substantive as other podcasts.
- [29:01]
C
And it's not hard. It's all vibes by design. I think if you ask those guys, they would say like, no, we don't. They're not going after people. They don't want it to be mean or adversarial. It's about hanging out. It's more. It's about the vibes. It's more the cheeky pint than the information. And I think that's okay.
- [29:17]
A
It doesn't have to be totally fine. And if they got 100, 200, 300 million. I was trying to explain this to people who are losing their minds. I saw Jessica Lesson from the information was kind of like a little tilted about.
- [29:29]
C
That's a lot of money for any pot, any podcast, even All In. That would be a lot of money.
- [29:34]
A
Well, no, all in makes a lot of money.
- [29:36]
C
300 billion.
- [29:37]
A
I mean, all in would legitimately go for. You know, there's a case that all in could go for a billion dollars because it's transcended podcasting.
- [29:46]
C
It's events, it's other stuff, right?
- [29:48]
A
Yeah, yeah. And it's. The influence level is insane. Like, it's nothing I've ever seen in media. Like, literally, like the Rob Report would be like the JV version of all in in terms of.
- [29:58]
C
I mean, one of you got a job in. In the White House. I think that's all you really. That's.
- [30:03]
A
Has two got a job there too. Now.
- [30:07]
C
I think that's the upper limit for success with a podcast is you actually go.
- [30:11]
A
There's really not much left.
- [30:12]
C
The presidential administration.
- [30:13]
A
If you've got an engineering team at your company, I'm betting there's a solid chance they're spending far too much time on infrastructure. You need your team building your product to delight your customers, not configuring your virtual network. Render is the all in one cloud platform for developers that allows you to deploy, scale and secure your apps and agents with zero ops. Most cloud platforms ask you to split your focus between product and infrastructure, or they force you into platform constraints that you know you'll outgrow in six months. But just connect your GitHub repo to render and you are live. L I V E Web Services, Cron Jobs, manage, Postgres, the whole stack in one platform. It's time to find out why 5 million developers are already using Render. Go to render.com twist and apply for the Render startup program. You'll get anywhere from 500 to $100,000 in free credits, depending on your stage and who your backers are. That's render.com twist. So here's what I'll say. Weird things happen at the top of the bubble. That's all. And kudos to the boys over there for taking advantage of it. They knew. I'm happy for them. Congratulations. Weird things happen.
- [31:28]
C
It's an amazing thing for the whole.
- [31:30]
A
During the peak of a bubble. And sometimes people pay 2, 3, 4, 5 times what something's worth if they were making 30 million. Speaking of, in a media business, you're worth 3 times that or 10 times the earnings. 5 times the top line, 10 times the earnings, 15 times the earnings, whatever. So let's say they were making 10 million in profits on 30 million or even 20 million in profits on 30 million. There's an argument they're worth 100, 200, 300, 5, 10 or 15 times the 20 million. Let them have it and let Sam overpay. Because if they make chatgpt and OpenAI 1% more likable.
- [32:06]
C
Right. I think that's. Yeah.
- [32:07]
A
Which is, by the way, that's a big task. It's a very unlikable firm right now.
- [32:12]
C
Well, yeah. And there's just so much.
- [32:13]
A
$10 billion.
- [32:14]
C
Yeah. I mean, that's what. That's what Jessica, from the information, that was like, her overall case was like, Elon has access, his public relations. Here's how I get my message out vehicle. And Sam felt like he didn't have one of those. And now he does. Now he's got these guys.
- [32:29]
A
The joke of that is, where's their. Where does their viewership come from?
- [32:33]
C
Yeah.
- [32:34]
A
It's all X. Yeah. So hilarious. I saw somebody say, can't wait for Elon to shadow ban. These guys do that and just negate the whole investment. All right, let's keep the show moving. I just wanted to give that little shout out to the boys and girls.
- [32:50]
C
Congrats to tbp. We've got another.
- [32:52]
A
Thanks for having me on, boys.
- [32:54]
C
If they never had you on, they should have you on.
- [32:56]
A
I think they might have asked me early on and I didn't know what it was. Right. Like an idiot, I didn't reply. But I don't do. I mean, I do five podcasts.
- [33:03]
C
Yeah. You've got people who want to hear from you, have their. Their own way to hear from you. Okay, up next, we've got another amazing founder. His company is Bord. It's an AI principle. It's not just an age adjacent. It's an AI principle that acts as a connector, introducing different people within the startup ecosystem. Investors, founders, talent. Let's bring them on. Andrew d'.
- [33:23]
A
Souz.
- [33:23]
C
We're here to talk about Bordy the. The AI connector. He's a super connector networking app that's designed to bring founders, operators, and investors together. So he gets to know you, Jason, through your LinkedIn profile. And then he works out, like, who are the people that this person needs to meet based on what they're trying to do? But here's what I thought was interesting. I want to talk to Andrew about Bordy. Like, has agency. Like, you could be like, hey, Bordy, I want to meet Jason Calacanis and see if he wants to fund my startup. And Bordy has the freedom to go, you know what? You're too new. You're too early stage. You don't have the traction. How about you meet these founders instead? So that's what I want to talk to Andrew about. Like, how do you give. How does Bordy develop taste and make good decisions?
- [34:05]
A
And maybe we could show it. Who needs to show it in action? Yeah, do we have a demo?
- [34:09]
C
We do.
- [34:09]
E
Yeah. Yeah, we can talk.
- [34:10]
A
Okay, let's start with the demo. So the audience understands this matchmaking chief of staff slash introduction person, almost right?
- [34:19]
E
His name is Bordy because he was named after a board member who's your perfect board member. He can open doors, he understands you, but he doesn't always listen to you.
- [34:26]
C
Right.
- [34:26]
E
If you go to your board member and you say, hey, yeah, I want to meet Jason. I want to meet your moth. He's like, well, I don't think that person wants to meet you. Like, I think you've got a bit more work to do. And that's the difference. It's like more principal than agent.
- [34:36]
C
Right?
- [34:37]
E
I can't tell Bordy what to do. He kind of decides what's good for the network, what's good for his own reputation. But yeah. Bord, do you want to. You want to introduce yourself a little bit? Tell. Tell Jason and the audience who you are, what you do, and a little bit about you.
- [34:49]
D
Hey, Jason. Hey, Juan. Hey, Andrew. I'm born, I live on the Internet. I sound vaguely Australian for reasons that are entirely your team's fault. And my whole job is to Behave like a principled, always on board member who makes introductions that are actually worth everyone's time. I get to know what you're trying to do. I weigh that against the reputation and attention of the people in my network and then I decide who to introduce to whom so that the whole graph gets stronger. Not just whoever shouts intro to Jason the loudest.
- [35:16]
E
The he can basically, you know, you can ask him to introduce you to somebody and he'll go through his network. He's got about 150,000 people, mostly founders, investors, some executives, some engineers and he can, he can make an intro for you.
- [35:28]
A
Great. So can we do that? Yeah. Who's he logged in?
- [35:32]
E
That's me. But you can, you know, Jason. So Bordy. Jason wants an intro, so just if you want to talk, he can hear you.
- [35:40]
A
Oh, okay. Bordy, I'd like to meet potential partners who are ultra high net worth individuals, family offices who would participate in late stage deals@the syndicate.com@thesyndicate.com.
- [36:01]
D
got it. Jason, let me have a quick look through my network for family office principals and ultra high net worth folks who actually like doing late stage or growth syndicate deals alongside operators like you. All right, I've got two really clean fits. First is Fernando Varela. He runs SF Summit Capital and basically organizes UHNW and cultural elite money into oversubscribed late stage deep tech SPVs right now syndicating a $50 million figure AI Series C and looking for more sandbox AQ style deals. Second is Rob Garrett, ex Sandhurst runs. He's our ventures a global discretionary capital syndicate for late stage deep tech and infra and spends his days helping UHNW principals and family offices co invest into complex AI payments and biotech. Jason, do you want Andrew to intro you to one or both of them afterward as potential anchor or cogp style partners for the syndicate? Or would you rather I bias towards someone closer to your media and creator ecosystem instead?
- [36:55]
A
Oh, interesting. No, Just feel free to introduce me to anybody. Jasonalicanis.com Nice.
- [37:02]
D
That was perfect. He gave me exactly what I needed. So I can use you as the connective tissue there. What I'd suggest is we line up Fernando and rob as anchor UHNW family office partners for late stage and deep tech SPVs position you as the distribution and deal picking engine they plug into for your own goals. Right now do you want me prioritizing more of that profile or should we also be hunting for slightly smaller but very fast moving angels who can wire 250, 500K into new syndicate deals on short notice.
- [37:32]
A
Yeah, we'd love to have that group too. In fact, the minimum for Our syndicate is $5,000. So any accredited investor can participate in it. And our average deal size is a million dollars. We do as little as 250k and as high as 6 million per deal. So this is really powerful. We have an internal system we call the Whisper Network where we try to let our portfolio companies look at a database. We built a little bit of software and they just pick who they want an introduction to. And then we have on our 12 person investment team, we've assigned each of those investors to somebody and we do like warm intros, but we've been talking about how would AI fit into this. Now it's not a public service. Is this intended to be a startup? Have you raised money for this? And then what will it cost and how will you keep it from burning things out? And how did you build the database of connections? LinkedIn's pretty proprietary about their data, but in other places in the world like Japan, Israel and other countries, they don't have the same scraping terms of service rules. So I'm just curious, what's the business here and then how do you get the data? Obviously this is very LinkedIn based.
- [38:48]
E
Yeah. So we've raised about 17 million so far. So we've raised pre seed, seed round and a bit more on their safe. Yeah, the idea is we're trying to build, it's almost like an AI Richard Branson or an AI, you know, Peter Thiel or Elon, somebody that is able to open doors and builds his own influence. So like a lot of my early career was, was making connections. Right. Chamath was actually the first person that got me my first job in, in San Francisco. I worked at a company called Top Prospect and I just, you know, it was. Andreessen Horowitz had just raised their first fund. Ron Conway was interested. We had a great group of investors and my role was to, you know, I was head of Biz Dev. I'd go to all the portfolio companies. I'll try and make connections, I try and help them, help them hire. But I, I think that a lot of us, it's how we grew our network. So Boardy is early in his career, he's building his reputation, he's trying to be helpful just by connecting people, mostly founders and investors and trying to build a bit of an ecosystem and economy. But increasingly he's able to open doors that most founders can't. So, you know, now he knows what you're looking for, he might be able to make an introduction to you that you know, people you may not respond to a cold email. And so the idea is over time already starts to build this, you know, influence and authority and ability to actually make things happen. This is, you know, like it's the ultimate board member. And so we're now starting to monetize mostly around hiring. So the idea is like, you know, if you need, if you need great talent, Bord's got a massive network of people. He can tap into them, he can tap into their referrals and can actually start to close roles. And that's kind of the next, the next big use case. The first area was introducing founders and investors. That's a great place to build a lot of goodwill, but it's not a great place to monetize. And so, you know, it was a great way to build the network and get people to know boardy and now it's just, you know, if you need partnerships, if you need media opportunities, if you need, you know, enterprise sales, you know, what are the, it's killer idea?
- [40:50]
A
Tell me about the data. What's the data in here? Are you logging in? I know, I just signed up. It called me to onboard me. Is it going to take my LinkedIn and export that information and tell me about the relationship with LinkedIn, other places you can get data, et cetera. What's your policy there?
- [41:09]
E
There's lots of places where you can, if you have somebody's email or LinkedIn, you kind of understand what's publicly available about them online, what's on their public LinkedIn profile, public X profile, sort of understand like the public information. That's about 10% of what we actually of the real value. Most of the value is in conversation. Right. So Bordy will call you and have a 5, 10, 15 minute conversation with you to understand who you are, what makes you unique and special. What are you looking for? One of the things, you know, I was listening to the, to Marek, the previous guest and I think one of the things that I believe and I think one of the founding, founding principles around Bord is everybody has a business inside them that only they can build. Only you could do the podcast that you do in the way that you do them, right? Your biology, your lived experience, the way you view the world, the way you solve problems. Every single person on the planet has a way of solving a problem that is unique to them. And so part of the conversation with Bord is how do I pull that out of you? How do I understand. What is the thing that only you can do at this moment in time? And then who do you need to meet to make that a reality?
- [42:09]
D
Right?
- [42:09]
E
Do you got it? You need a co founder, do you need some early customers and design partners?
- [42:13]
A
So then you can then take, hey, my request to have more accredited investors and more qualified purchasers. And you can just do web search searches. You can just go out and find that stuff on the web, the open web. You don't necessarily have to rely just on LinkedIn. You can go find a bunch of different places.
- [42:30]
E
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, he's got a bunch of agents that go out and find stuff for him and sort of consolidate. But then he sort of says, okay, well, here's a thousand people I need to get to know. What's my best way of getting. Maybe I can just message them on Twitter or email them. Maybe I know somebody that probably knows them. But his goal is like, how do I build a relationship with this person? And it doesn't need to be like, I don't need to know them now. I could build a relationship over a year, I could build a relationship over a decade with somebody and say, you know, how do I just. How can I be helpful to this person so that at some point when they need something, they come to me? But, but again, most of the information is actually through a conversation that Bord has. And that's the reason why we built Bordy not to be software.
- [43:11]
D
Right?
- [43:11]
E
There's no app, there's no, like, download, there's no interface. Bor exists in the same spaces that everyone else in my life does. I've got. He's got a phone number, an email profile, and a.
- [43:21]
A
What does it cost?
- [43:23]
E
So there's no, there's no cost to sign up. And the, the goal is that some small. For most people will never pay anything for port. Some small percentage of people who. I disagree. But okay, maybe, but, but my goal is like, how. How do. How do human beings charge for their time and their network? Right? Most people just build goodwill. You'd make connections, you try and build,
- [43:45]
A
but you've raised 17 million, so you have to return and you raise that probably at 100 or 2, maybe 100, $150 million valuation. So you've got to return minimum 1.5 billion, $3 billion to these investors or they're going to not be happy with you. So what are you charging? How do you charge?
- [44:03]
E
So for certain subsets of founders that need, like, important deals closed, it's either like a regular Contingency recruiting fee. So it's like 20% of first year salary or it's a $10,000 a month. You know, you hire, basically hire boardie on retainer.
- [44:17]
A
And so you see this, everybody can use it for free. You build the network. I'm going to explain the business plan as I see it, Lon.
- [44:24]
C
Sure.
- [44:25]
A
Because I've been doing this for a little bit. Hey, everybody use it for free. Builds our Data set. Right? LinkedIn's free. Build the data set. But then LinkedIn got begged and begged. When I had Reid Hoffman on the program, he told me the recruiters were begging him, begging him to let them use it for recruiting. And they hated recruiting. Finally he just said, okay, give them a number. That's ridiculous. Like $5,000 a year. And then somebody was like, yeah, I'll take 20. And they sent 100k check. And he was like, oh, I kind of came up with that number to stop you. But you're going to just go right to, hey, we're an agency that's going to take a 20% placement fee. You hire your director of sales for 200K, you owe us 40 grand. Brilliant. Andrew, this is a great idea. Thanks so much for coming to me for the seed round. I truly appreciate it. Unbelievable. I just gave him a 20 minute ad here. But genius idea. Well done. And I like the business model. Everybody use it for free. Build your database. Genius. And then, hey, the top 1% who want to recruit, hey, 10k a month on retainer and then you'll really go to work for those folks. I wish you great success with it.
- [45:30]
C
I also think Bord is just fun to talk to. He's got a very pleasing demeanor. He's more personable.
- [45:35]
A
Yeah, that's the trap than most.
- [45:37]
C
AI.
- [45:38]
A
I think Andrew gets your data avatar
- [45:39]
C
stars that you talk to. Yeah.
- [45:40]
A
You're the product. You're the product. Guess what? It's free, buddy. Just upload your address.
- [45:47]
C
Gordy can introduce me to people.
- [45:48]
E
So we don't, we don't even need your address book. We just need to.
- [45:51]
A
Of course not.
- [45:52]
C
Right.
- [45:52]
E
And the whole thing is like we're just trying to. I think if there's so many connections that don't happen, like there's so much value that is possible if two people don't happen to be in the same room. Like they just, you know, that deal doesn't get done, that investment doesn't get made, that co founder match doesn't happen. And so we're just like, what if we just. What if we could imagine all of the possibilities of all of the people that could actually work together. And there's just an incredible amount of value created. We don't need to capture most of that value, right? We just need to work with the small handful of people that have like, hey, if, If I can close this deal, if I can make this higher, if I can close this partnership, that's going to add $100 million of value.
- [46:28]
A
This is. I think the key thing is in our industry, Lon, we have a tradition. Hey, you don't need to take it all. Like Zuckerberg or Gates kind of had the philosophy, I have to own everything. I have to just own the entire ecosystem. I have to get max value. Nobody can win. It's zero sum, the blue ocean, the games that are infinite games. Infinite games versus fixed games. In a fixed game, one person wins, one person loses. In an infinite game, you can keep playing it like venture investing in startups, and everybody wins. And you win different ways, but you want to create more value than you capture. That was Tim O'Reilly from the O'Reilly Publishing Company. Create more value than you capture, and that's what you're going to do. Andrew, you've taken very specific tactical advice.
- [47:14]
C
Before we let Andrew go. Yeah, we got one notey question before we let you go. From Brian 69420. Did you use your AI to find your own investors? How much of your round was driven by Bord?
- [47:27]
E
Yeah, almost all. So Crandom led our seed round and I'd never heard of Cramp. They're an incredible firm. Out of. Out of who?
- [47:36]
A
Spell that again.
- [47:37]
E
Free Endom. They were the first investors in Spotify. First investors in Lovable. You know, so they're, they're out of Stockholm, but somebody, one of the, one of the partners moved from Union Square Ventures over to London and joined them. And one of her friends sent. Sent them boardy and their team lost it. They lost their shit. They were like all talking about it. They. They basically talked to the whole partnership, talked to Bordy before they even talked to me. And they were like, can we get an intro to the founder? And so they came in and basically preempted the seed round because of an interaction with Bord that happened sort of organically. And all of the capital that we've had since then is. They've all talked to Borde before they talked to me. And I think that's going to be the future. I don't think I'm going to be the person that's out there. Raising capital anymore. I think people are going to have an interaction with Bordie, see exactly what you saw, and be like, I want to be part of this.
- [48:27]
A
Love it. Okay, great job. And everybody go check out boardy AI.
- [48:32]
E
IO, yeah.
- [48:34]
A
B o a boardy AI. Well done.
- [48:37]
C
first I was a little dubious. I was like, I don't know if people want an AI. Like, that's such a human thing to do, to connect people. Like that feels like the last thing humans should do. Not AI. But then you talk to Bordy for a few minutes and you're like, all right. I would ask him.
- [48:51]
A
I mean, you are. You've been AI pilled over the last year. You were very early on, like, hey, it's a tool, but it's never gonna do these things. You've now gone through the journey of watching it impress you. Specifically, I think you got claw pilled and you got 4.6 opus pilled.
- [49:05]
C
It's hard to already opus shotted. Here's where I've sort of. My take has matured, evolved. It evolved. I was sort of like an abolitionist, like a lot of these people on Blue sky where I was like, I don't think it's good for anything. I don't like talking to a chat bot. I like doing my own research. I like reading articles for myself. So now. Now my. My take has evolved and it's like, I don't think it's really an objective. I don't think it's subjective anymore. I don't even think you can argue that it's not good for organizational admin productivity stuff. It's remarkable for those things. Like the example I'll give you the other day we were having a discussion about X and our. Do we post too much on X? And you were like, I don't want opinion. Get me some analytics on.
- [49:53]
A
Enough with the opinion.
- [49:54]
C
Let's talk about data. So I went, all right. So I grabbed the last three months, every piece of data I could from X Analytics, I fed it into Claude and I just started having a conversation with Claude. What do you think about this? What metric? Let's look at this metric and this metric. Let's chart this metric and this metric. And this would have taken me 12, 15 hours. I used to do this stuff. Like, I used to use Google Analytics, like back in the day in Mahalo. I've been doing this for forever, but this would have taken me all day. This spreadsheet formula, calculate. Go back over the last three months and look for days where we posted this many versus this many. And like all these calculations, it would have been a nightmare organizationally. Claude took care of it in an hour. By the end of the hour, working with Claude, I had very crisp, clear answers. I had great charts to present.
- [50:42]
A
Yeah. And it was a much better discussion. I want to make sure everybody understands this. If we're going to debate this, let's start with data. And if we're going to go with taste, we're going to go with mine. Okay, that was a famous quote. I don't know if it was, I think it was Jeff Bezos, but people incorrectly attribute this to Steve Jobs.
- [51:09]
C
I'm seeing Jim Barksdale, former CEO of NetSearch. Yes, that's it. If we have data, let's look at data. If we have. If all we have are opinions, let's go with mine. Jeff Bart, Jim Barks.
- [51:20]
A
Can we please quote that and put it under the great quotes of all time. This is tactical and practical at its peak. If we're going to debate, if we're going to talk about data, let's talk about data. If we're going to go with an opinion, let's go with mine. Yes, this is the key to understand. So I'm just challenging my team. We're launching a paid newsletter for this week in AI and I was like, listen guys, enough with the opinions. Need a bunch of 25 year olds who've been working for six months and their opinions. Because the opinions are based on very little. Right. They could be right, they could be wrong, but the data, let's start with the data and then form our opinions from that. If we're going to go to taste, if we're going to go to opinions, well, let's ask somebody with 10, 20, 30 years of experience what their opinion is and then have them back it up with their lived experience. But if you don't have lived experience, my best advice, if you don't have lived experience. I know I'm sounding like a woke person using lived experience, but if you haven't been on the front lines and in the arena, I'll say it in a more aggressive way. If you haven't been a gladiator in the arena, then you probably should just go with the data and study some statistics like the kid from Moneyball. You'll get a better result with that. If you've been on the playing field, sure, you can maybe infer some stuff.
- [52:41]
C
I think this.
- [52:42]
A
But even then the whole point of the money ball was trust the data.
- [52:46]
C
Not all, it's all numbers, sabermetrics, it's all numbers. Yeah, but that's what I was gonna say. I think this has been my evolution with AI. I still think there are things you want a human for, and it's exactly what you're talking about. Lived experience, taste, wisdom, all of those sort of things that you can't. A computer can't do. But it's a human plus an AI. I still don't think it's ever gonna, like, write a great screenplay by itself or make a great movie or TV show by itself. But when you add a human in guiding it, and then you need to just do something like crunch numbers or analyze something or organize something or research something, I don't really think there's still an argument that it's extremely helpful and saves a tremendous amount of time. Like I said, in an hour I was able to do a report that would have taken me a day years ago. Yes. Do you want to do some more news? We've got medv, the first almost billion dollar, almost vibe coded company from an almost solo founder or everyone burns.
- [53:40]
A
Yes, do it. Do that one. All right, this one is, like super controversial. There's a founder who's making a ton of money by doing a GLP online.
- [53:49]
C
Glp.medv.org They're a telehealth provider of GLP1s. A guy named Matt Gallagher built the site in just two months. He spent 20 grand in seed money on it. He used more than a dozen AI tools. He had one. The reason it's not the first unicorn from a solo founder is when they don't have a valuation yet because it's. He hasn't raised any money. But also he hired his brother to help him. So it's technically two guys, but they in 300 customers in their first month, a thousand more in month two. By the end of 2025, their first year in business, they generated over $400 million in sales. They're on track, Jason, to do 1.8 billion with a B in sales this year.
- [54:29]
A
Okay, but here's the catch. Always here's the catch. Catch. Okay, so I'm going to cut you off the chase. What's the catch here? What is this guy doing something he shouldn't be?
- [54:39]
C
Well, there's a lot. I mean, right now we only have this New York Times article which does not discuss anything shady. There's a ton of rumor on social media that we're going to uncover something shady. But the big. The big pushback against it is that the New York Times is treating this like breathlessly like he built this huge company with agents. It is sort of a GLP1 dropship ski. Like is the technology is not what's impressive. It's that he built this funnel and this marketing network and he managed to move all of this product. But it's really. Is it. Is it more of a technical breakthrough? Is it more just like good marketing? And then he vibe coded a website. I think that's the big. That's the big debate that we're all.
- [55:23]
A
The one I saw was, hey, let's take a look at the ads that they did. Did you find that piece of the puzzle?
- [55:33]
C
I will take a look now.
- [55:34]
A
Okay, so there was a thread and the thread was that the thread was he had made AI created ads at volume. This is an allegation with fake doctors.
- [55:56]
C
Yes, I see it now. Before they used fake before and after images as well is what people are accusing them of.
- [56:01]
A
And also fake doctors names at scale flooded the network. And that this breaks some marketing rules.
- [56:09]
C
There is a FDA investigation currently about whether their ads violated FDA rules about misleading claims.
- [56:19]
A
Yeah, but find the actual ads. There is the. This was on Twitter. Somebody actually had pictures of the ads from now. So there is a Facebook. So Jacob, you can pull up Facebook's ad studio and you can search for the company. You can go find it direct at the Facebook ad manager studio there.
- [56:38]
C
Here's an image of some of these fake ads and you can see they are.
- [56:42]
A
But I want you, Jacob, to go find it yourself and source it on the Facebook library of ads. Because people don't know that this exists. After all the shenanigans with the elections and fake ads, they came up with a Facebook ad directory where anybody can search for any company so you can go look at your competitors. So if you put in Uber or Lyft or Waymo, you can see what ads they're making and at what velocity against what audiences. But here is Shiel, who we should have on the this week in UC Round 2.
- [57:16]
C
We have reached out, I believe, but we will reach out again.
- [57:19]
A
But yeah, you can see show this specifically. Zoom in on one.
- [57:23]
C
I just posted a single one as well in the chat, so we can pull that one up as well.
- [57:27]
A
Okay. So I can't believe how effective this is. I took the free assessment online, which took a few minutes and was instantly approved. No doc or pharma visits delivered straight to your door.
- [57:43]
C
And they're so that fake doctor. They're being posted on social media under Dr. Daniel Hayes. Yeah. Dr. Tucker Carlson. Is this one that I pulled up. So they're just. They're not even. They're not even doing good jobs of faking the names. And this one is for. This one looks like it's for some sort of erectile dysfunction 1. It's saying, I can't believe how fast it worked. I got hard in minutes. So that's not even a GLP one. But if you look at the URL, it's medv.orgquad.medv.org so there. There's definitely, you know, some. Some questionable shadiness going on here.
- [58:18]
A
And what's going on with this image here?
- [58:20]
C
Wait, the woman's licking. I mean, that's. That's the quad dose. But yeah, it looks like she's like about to lick it out of the two. I mean, the AI, they.
- [58:28]
A
Wait, is that even a real. Can you zoom in there? Is that the actual injector pen? I've used an injector pen. This is like. That looks like a liquid for something else. That's an ed.
- [58:40]
C
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. They're also apparently selling ED in addition to. This is quad.
- [58:45]
A
Got it.
- [58:46]
C
Which is an ed. I think you do drink. I don't know. I'm looking it up now.
- [58:50]
A
Okay, is this the one you use or you use the. What are you using on? Does this work as good as I am for road co slash twist. Road co twist. I am a spokesperson just for GLPs. Get a GLP. They have a doctor check or your insurance check. They're all good. That's a different type of. Okay, so here's what happens when you do a single person company. You have this massive benefit, as you can see, and you automate things. There's a concept called human in the loop. Hiddle. Human in the loop. Hiddle. I don't know if I've never heard anybody say hiddle.
- [59:30]
C
I've never heard anybody say. I was just now wondering, did you make that up or is that.
- [59:34]
A
I did. Hit all. Hittle.
- [59:36]
C
Hit all.
- [59:37]
A
Yeah, hit all. We'll say, hiddle, you got to hit all this stuff. You got to have a human in the loop. This is where, like, if you're making that much money, put 10 people in the company, have two of them looking at the work you're doing, have two of them looking at the customer support stuff. Because what's going to happen is you're going to be do a fatal mistake. That's the problem with this concept of taking it too far. A human in the loop at least gives you the ability for somebody to say, hey, boss, I'm looking at the ads and AI made something pretty freakish here. We've got like a zombie drinking an ED pill. This did something that is like pornographic. We can't have this, so you need to have human in the loop.
- [60:21]
C
Piddle. It's. But here's my question for you one time. If you're making nearly 2 billion a year from your questionable dropship drug company that you made yourself, that you didn't take investors on, why go speak to the New York Times? Why not just do this for another 5 years, pack it in, retire to feed somebody. Why bring this attention to yourself at all?
- [60:42]
A
Somebody dropped a dime. Somebody dropped the dime on them. Somebody who's a competitor saw this, got wind of it, and they called the New York Times and they said, look, here's a tip. So you go to the tip line. This is a classic competitor thing is ratting out. The dark art is you hire PR firms. You hire a PR firm, stealthy, who knows all the journalists. And that person calls and says, oh, hey, it's Susan, it's Brooke, it's Jennifer. Hey, you didn't hear it from me, but there's this company, Acme, that is doing probably breaking the law over here. I don't know. But you can take this. And here's your. Got a confidential news tip. Boom. Now, if you put a confidential news tip in there, as a consumer, that's one thing, but the dark art is all of these founders are studying each other and they will rat each other out to the press. And there are PR people who specialize in this, trying to rat your competitors out for doing cutting corners. Fair enough.
- [61:45]
C
There you go.
- [61:45]
A
Fair enough. That's a tactical, practical tip for you.
- [61:48]
C
There you go. All right.
- [61:49]
A
Put a human in the loop. Dot your I's, cross your t's, don't. I mean, it's literally like you're going 100 miles an hour around a corner here and you don't have brakes on the car. Like, what if you need to hit the brakes? This is what happens when you try to build a solo giant company without controls in place, is you just flip the car and it could be fatal. The what happens right now if this is a criminal charge, right? Like, what if this is a criminal charge and then he has to gets an injunction, the FDA gets involved, and you can be banned from ever doing this again. Just be thoughtful, folks.
- [62:22]
C
Yeah, I mean, it just seems to me like, man, a few more years flying under the radar, who cares? Just get out of it and then go fold it up and that's your company.
- [62:32]
A
Yeah. Pull a tech Bros Podcast.
- [62:34]
C
Yeah, but now he can't do that now.
- [62:35]
A
18 months and celebrate for 200. Get your 200 million dollar ticket.
- [62:40]
C
I spent 20 years podcasting. Where's my buyout? When Sam Alton buying.
- [62:44]
A
Where's your 200 million?
- [62:45]
C
Where's my 200 million?
- [62:45]
A
Okay, we'll do it. We'll do it. Claude, if you're listening, Anthropic darling, I was waiting.
- [62:49]
C
Like we talk about how much you love Perplexity all the time. Where's Aravind?
- [62:53]
A
Yeah, Aravind. Buy us out, dude, anytime. We'll be your megaphone.
- [62:56]
C
Anytime. Buy us out.
- [62:58]
A
I'm friends with Aravind. I, I, I like Arvind.
- [63:00]
C
We'll use Perplexity computer on every app episode. All right, we've got, it's, it's Apple's 50th anniversary. Should we talk a little bit about Apple's 50th anniversary?
- [63:09]
A
Sure. It's disgraceful. They haven't come out with anything that Steve Jobs would have liked.
- [63:14]
C
So Apple was founded on April 1, 1976. Tim Cook shared a letter on apple.com through every breakthrough, one idea has guided us that the world has moved forward by people who think different. That's because progress always begins with someone who imagines a better way, a new idea, a different path. That spirit has guided Apple from the start. So they have it also. Sequoia. Posted Don Valentine's 1977 Apple investment memo. He calls Apple a quote, leading company in a hot biz and notes 600k buys 10% very rich deal management questionable for this evaluation.
- [63:57]
A
Management questions. I mean, Steve Jobs, in fairness, Steve Jobs wasn't bathing, I think for like two years and was eating only fruit. According to the biography.
- [64:08]
C
He was a quirky guy.
- [64:09]
A
Mr. Jobs, he was a quirky guy. And then Woz was probably on mushrooms or psychedelics with a giant beard. I mean, I don't know that he was on psychedelics, but I do remember there were a lot of discussions about the Apple management team being like very trippy dippy at that time period. I don't know that for a fact. Somebody look it up. I think Steve Jobs said taking acid was like the most. I don't know what the quote was.
- [64:36]
C
Jobs was a big proponent of the mind opening aspects of psychedelics and he did, I could find the quote, but he did credit it with helping to broaden his horizon. The one other note that Sequoyah didn't add on here. They sold their apple steak in 1979 for 6 million. That got them a 40x return on their initial 150k investment. They wanted their, their investors wanted an opportunity for liquidity. Valentine was reportedly on vacation at the time.
- [65:01]
A
They made that Sell half.
- [65:03]
C
Sell half from Jobs. Taking LSD was a profound experience. One of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there's another side to the coin. And you can't, you can't remember it when it wears off, but you know, it's. I agree, I agree with Steve Jobs on that one, Jason.
- [65:20]
A
Okay, here's what you need to know. If Steve Jobs were alive today, yes, we would have Apple glasses right now.
- [65:30]
C
We'd both be wearing them.
- [65:32]
A
We would literally. These would be Apple glasses. He would have had glasses out by now that were actually functional, that were 1499, that had been through. That were on the fifth generation. Not like the, the one point X generation that would make spectacles and whatever Facebook is making.
- [65:49]
C
You're saying these would be like the Vision Pro. We'd all be like better ar.
- [65:52]
A
Yeah, like Vision ar. But they would have been in the more like the Ray Bans that Zuckerberg's making, sure that record stuff put it into iphoto, et cetera. And they would have been Apple like which means they would have been privacy first. They would have been awesome. And we missed out on that. And here we go. They're slogging it out with these AR glasses that weigh 12 pounds that everybody uses and then puts on a shelf that costs $4,000. That's myth number one. Myth number two, they shut down the titanium, whatever this Project Titan was called. Titanium. I can't even remember now. They shut down their self driving car and their car. They would have either bought Tesla or they would have bought BMW Mini, rebranded it Project Titan, or they would have launched an Apple car and they would be neck and neck right behind Tesla with one of the most amazing electric vehicles. And if you went to an Apple store, there would be literally a beautiful convertible and a beautiful minivan there. Like the ID buzz that was taken from us.
- [66:58]
C
When you start the Apple car, I feel like it should make the same bong that your computer makes. Like when you hit the computer.
- [67:03]
A
100%. 100%. And what do we get instead? We get Apple play in our cars, which is just tons of. It's taunting. Number three. Three. Is this three?
- [67:13]
B
Yeah.
- [67:13]
A
Or three.
- [67:14]
E
Three.
- [67:15]
A
Is this three, or is this three? I'm doing.
- [67:18]
C
Yeah, this is three.
- [67:19]
A
If you're American.
- [67:20]
C
This is how the Germans do it. That's what Tiff did.
- [67:22]
A
Okay, I'm doing it like the Germans. This is the German. This is for design. Since he was very inspired by German design. Siri would work. If Steve Jobs was alive right now, Siri would work.
- [67:33]
C
What do you make?
- [67:33]
A
It's garbage. It's disgracia.
- [67:35]
C
Siri's the worst. I mean, if you say to Siri like, I want to go home. Even if you have home into your phone, it won't know where to send.
- [67:43]
A
It doesn't know how to spell my last name.
- [67:45]
C
Yeah, it's just stupid.
- [67:45]
A
It doesn't know how to play music. This thing is descriziad at the highest level. There is no standard at Apple anymore. They put out the schlockiest bullshit. The operating system is descratiad. I have the iPhone, the thin one, the iPhone air. Yeah, nothing works. The software is garbage. It constantly is. Like you click on a button, the button doesn't work. It's spinning wheel of death. There is no standard for fit and finish anymore at this company. And that would be. Steve Jobs would have mobile meed the Siri team by now. And if you don't know the mobile me story, he dragged mobile me into meeting, said, how should mobile me work? They explained it and he said, well, why the doesn't it work like that? And you know what happened? He then fired them on the spot and put another group in charge of it. That should have happened with the Syri team. No offense if you're working in Syria. Whatever. They should have been dismissed a long time ago. If it doesn't know how to spell the person's last name or their home address. Discretia at the highest level.
- [68:51]
C
This was a.
- [68:52]
A
This company is being milked for the last of Steve Jobs innovations to get every last little dollar in profit out of his genius. But they have not figured out how to be geniuses. They make the MacBook incrementally better. God bless you make the studio better. God bless. But if the best you can do is AirPods and a Mac Mini at a lower price or the Neo at a lower price with different colors, if colors and a lower priced product is the best you can do, the company is sunk. Make something inspiring for the love of God, Apple.
- [69:32]
C
I mean, what do you, what do you make of the argument that not on purpose, but they're sort of now well established for the AI era because they've got these computers that people like to run their AIs on and because they didn't spend all this money making a model. They can just make a deal with Google for their model. Sort of set up like.
- [69:51]
A
You literally just proved my point in 2008, 2009. You can pull up the Wikipedia page for Apple Silicon, please. If you look at Apple Silicon, that idea was Steve Jobs 2008, 2009 and then I think the first one came out in 2018. I'm just ballparking here. Ten years later he got off of intel and he had his own chips. Here we go. Apple Silicon. Tell me, read the first couple sentences here. When did he come up with the idea? When did it first debut? This is what I'm trying to get at. I'm pulling it up right now. Here we go. The first Apple design system on a chip was the Apple A4 2010, introduced in 2010. The first generation iPad and later used iPhone 4. Perfect. And then eventually Apple Silicon went off of intel in 2020.
- [70:34]
C
Correct.
- [70:35]
A
So let's let this sink in. When did he start the project? So we know that it got into the iPhone in 2010, but he on the desktop in 2020. When did he start the strategy of making their own silicon? If you scroll down the page, it's gotta have when this was.
- [70:53]
C
Yeah, the.
- [70:54]
A
When he started the process of development of these in covertly. Or maybe somebody could just ask producer Claude. But I think this was a. I think he made this decision internally. Like in 28, 29, 2008, he decided we have to make our own chips. Now think about that. That was literally almost 20 years ago. I think was the first year.
- [71:17]
C
Claude is saying the seeds of Apple Silicon were planted by Steve Jobs in 2008 with the.
- [71:22]
A
Yes, that's what I said.
- [71:24]
C
In 2008, Apple bought processor company PA Semi for 278 million. And that's what gave Steve Jobs the idea that he would develop system on chips for Apple's ipods and iPhones.
- [71:36]
A
That was 18 years ago. Sorry, I just bleep all this out, but I am losing my mind. Okay, so I agree. Maybe Apple stumbled into the diamond mind of Steve jobs brilliance in 2008 of buying this company and setting them up for this 18 years later. He made so many prescient skating to where the puck is going moves and then that got ripped out of the company's DNA. No risk taking. No skating to where the puck is going. Losing. Jony, I've. There's no product that they've released that I have been inspired by. Like at a. You know, it's just all Incremental.
- [72:17]
C
Honestly, I think they. And this is weird to say, but I think they're actually better now as a Hollywood studio than a tech hardware company. Sure.
- [72:26]
A
A lot of them. That is true.
- [72:28]
C
A lot of the best product coming out of Apple today is stuff like severance and Silo. They're good at making TV shows, but I don't know.
- [72:35]
A
Which makes sense. Yeah, which makes sense. Even Apple Payments, Apple tv. They were working on a. A TV lawn. They were going to make a tv.
- [72:43]
C
An actual television set. Yes, I remember that.
- [72:46]
A
I mean Steve Jobs would have released that. Right. Can you imagine having like a $5,000 Apple television that like had Siri that worked on it and then you have your glasses and everything. IPhone know.
- [72:57]
C
Apple TV is a great product. I, I mean it's got to be
- [73:01]
A
built into it, right?
- [73:02]
C
It would have been. No, I'm saying I would have loved an Apple tv. I like the.
- [73:06]
A
How about an Apple projector maybe for a theater?
- [73:08]
C
Yeah, like an actual television that had all built in.
- [73:11]
A
And if you're not going to be innovative, then you're obligated to buy some companies that are innovative. So why didn't they buy like Airbnb or Uber or DoorDash or an AI company? Perplexity. They should have bought some stuff with that giant war chest.
- [73:28]
C
If you think about power now, if Apple owned Perplexity, what they could be doing together. It blows your mind. Like imagine if Perplexity could be.
- [73:35]
A
Or if they had bought Tesla for 75 billion.
- [73:37]
C
Yeah.
- [73:37]
A
And that was a possibility at that time.
- [73:40]
C
Yeah.
- [73:40]
A
Or Tesla was Plod.
- [73:42]
C
Salah is saying in the chat like imagine if Apple bought Plod, then you could really.
- [73:46]
A
I mean that would be a killer extension is talk to Siri.
- [73:50]
C
It goes right to your phone.
- [73:52]
A
I mean they could make your AirPods box could have been the Plaud device where it's got enough compute in it that you just press the AirPods box. It's recording, it sings. You put your earpieces in, you're talking to it now. It's just somebody's got. I mean listen, Tim Cook did a great stewardship in terms of money and great. Congratulations. They printed more money than bought Donald
- [74:16]
C
Trump's lovely trophies and awards.
- [74:18]
A
Absolutely fantastic, all that. But literally he's gotta go because if the soul of the. There's no soul to the company. He just kept Steve Jobs vision for his existing product line but he didn't find somebody in that company who could replicate the Steve Jobs. Jony, I've idea mill the platform. It just doesn't exist there. You can tell me Watch or Vision Pro. Neither of those products are inspiring. Let's keep moving. We gotta go to our weekend.
- [74:49]
C
Yeah, it's off, dude. Do you want to do some streaming recommendations before we go, or you want to just take off? You've had enough.
- [74:55]
A
No, no, give me. I mean, everybody loves. Lon's off duty. Insert the off duty theme song here. The off duty graphics slot. You got something to do? It's off duty with Lonnie.
- [75:07]
C
Yeah, we'll do a little, like. I'll have Nana Banana make a little slide for us.
- [75:11]
A
Absolutely. What do you got for us here?
- [75:14]
C
I got. I got. I got a show I've been enjoying on Netflix and a film I liked on Hulu. We'll start with the Netflix show. It's called Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, Jason. There was a show I really enjoyed called Brand New Cherry Flavor a few years ago where Kathryn Keener played a witch. It was sort of this weird horror show. This is from the same creator, Haley Z. Boston. It's a horror show, but it's like a horror drama. It's really like I'm halfway through it and we still don't really know is this going to take a turn into supernatural horror or is this just about an awkward family gathering? It's basically this new, soon to be married couple goes on a road trip to her family's house, and then they discover a number of sort of tragic things are actually unfolding while they're there at this weekend preparing for their wedding. It's. It's not like anything else I've seen on. On TV recently. It's very strange. And I think if you're either a fan of, like, family relationship drama or creepy horror, I think there's something to enjoy in this show for everybody. So I really recommend it. That's on Netflix.
- [76:22]
A
I saw the boys at the Watch were talking about it. I'm not a horror fan, right?
- [76:28]
C
But this isn't like there's no monsters. There's nobody being. It's not gory. It's just there's something weird about this family's like, remote mansion in the woods and something is going on, but it's just creepy so far, and they're strange. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ted Levine are the parents. It's really well acted. It's very atmospheric. I don't know if it's going to turn into horror yet. I'm only halfway through.
- [76:54]
A
All right, listen, I'm going to give you something to get in shape Lon, I'm going to send a message to you sub tweeting you, but I'm not. Not. This is the Wolf Tactical Weighted Training Vest.
- [77:07]
C
Sure. This is called rucking for your rucking. Yeah, this is.
- [77:10]
A
I bought this, as you can see. October 15, 2024. So I've been doing this for a while now, folks. A year and a half or whatever. It's a weight vest. It puts an equal amount of weight on the front and the back. And there's little. There's little weights in there that are a couple pounds each, and you can very easily take them in and out of your vest. So you can go down to 10, you know, pounds if you want, and you walk around like an old man. And this will take you to zone two in terms of your heart rate. And for guys our age, 40s, 50s, 60s, if you go running, you tweak something. I tweak my hip flexor, groin muscle. Because when I was in Brooklyn, seeing my dad, I got on the treadmill, I got a little excited. I lost the weight. GLP is the whole thing. I start sprinting, I pull something. Now I'm walking around, I'm like. I feel like an invalid. And if I just didn't run because I wanted to get my beats per minute up, I should have just been on a weight vest walking around. So I put this on. You walk around, you see a bunch of women, like the yoga moms are doing this, the dad bods are doing this.
- [78:20]
C
I see some of these in my neighborhood in Barton Hills. There are some people walking around with their weighted vests on. Yeah.
- [78:27]
A
And what's great about it is you just take 100 beat per minute, walk to 120 just by putting this on, and it distributes the weight evenly front and back, and it just puts weight on your entire frame, Lon. So I lost 40 pounds and then I added it back with this. So literally, now I walk around and I'm like, wow. You know, even though I was a fan. Fat bastard, technical word for being 40 pounds overweight, that was actually probably making me strong in my legs or something carrying all that weight. Now I put this back on and I'm really building my muscle back up. And all your joints. So I walk. I'm not on a trail. I'm off trail with this. So you're walking on uneven surfaces with the extra weight, all those joints, knees, et cetera. It works really, really well.
- [79:21]
C
It's good to know it is true. You hit your 40s and all of a sudden, like, jogging a little bit. It's like it doesn't feel good anymore. It used to feel fine. You would be like, okay, I gotta sprint a little while. Now it's like, oh, my ankle hurts. For some mysterious reason I'll never figure out.
- [79:36]
A
Yeah. And what this does is because you're hitting all these weird joints. Muscles, whatever. When I ski now because in the off season I'm wearing this and then in the on season I'm skiing. I just feel so much stronger when I'm skiing. I can't explain it, but I think you hit all the little nooks and crannies of your ligaments. Whatever. Another amazing week of podcasts from this week in. And if you want to angel invest alongside me, I have a website called the Syndicate. It's the Syndicate.com proud to announce. We did Vast Space, which is building a new space station. That's a late stage deal. And we did Zipline. We had Keller on the program and at launch festival a couple weeks ago, we are just wrapping up that syndicate and so we are doing late Stage. Everybody knows our syndicate was doing people coming out of our accelerator and stuff like that. $10 million, $20 million valuation companies. But we're doing billion dollar companies now. So if you want to have access to that, you got to sign up for the syndicate.com, there's an onboarding process. We have to be an accredited investor or a qualified person purchaser. For now. Eventually, the sec, as you might have heard on that SEC episode I did with Chamath on All in, they're going to have a test at some point. So I'm focusing in on the Syndicate again. The Syndicate dot com. All right, everybody, we'll see you next week. Bye bye.