Go touch some grass (but don’t tweet about it)

0:04Today on Great Chat, we say goodbye to an absolutely bananas P1 and contemplate how to stay sane in this crazy world. It's time to touch some grass. I'm Ashley and I'm joined by Mac, Angela, and Helen. Great chat is brought to you by Mercury, radically different banking loved by over 300 ,000 entrepreneurs. We use Mercury to run this podcast and love recommending it to other founders and fund managers. It's free to get started. Try it for yourself and visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Hey guys. Mac, welcome back. Thanks guys. Yes. The turn of the Mac. Hello. We talked about factory briefly last week, but we didn't have a ton of details.

0:47You want to give us a full read? Oh my God, you guys. Okay. Well, I got to spend a magical week in Alabama. 11 out of 10 could not have had a better time. I am unfortunately, as everyone who works with me now knows, an absolute like Alabama hype man, specifically the Bustle Shoals region is just so cool. It has so much insane history. Like they have these like two computing feuding. Now the families are all friends. Everybody is like very good. But like there was this like long period where they had these feuding music studios that were just churning out some of like the best American music like you've ever.

1:23Like the Rolling Stones did a bunch of stuff there. Like Aretha Franklin did a bunch of stuff there. Like the rumor is Lana Del Rey recorded something there. So it was just everyone was so lovely. It was such an amazing experience. It was so, so cool to see the community come out in force. Plus, I mean, you know, really living the dream for reindustrialization. And now I'm trying to figure out, like, okay, how do we go do this more and more and more and get more and more people as hyped as we all were for that. Totally. What does it take to open a factory? Like, I have no idea. Well, the annoying answer is it totally depends.

2:04Like, it depends on what you're manufacturing. it depends on what the local population is like like who lives there what are you making how complicated is it how many specialized skills do you need what is the permitting process like how how much space do you want how many machines do you need if you need machines if you're doing some other type like if you're trying to set up a founder or something yeah there's like unfortunately not really necessarily like a blue a blueprint and it also like we've gone into a lot of buildings that like where the building already existed that's a different process than if you're building the building from scratch.

2:34But even when you have your own building, like when for F3 in Arizona, we're going to need to come up with a new naming or maybe we don't. I don't know. We had to like completely redo the floors to be load bearing for the size of machines that we were working with, or at least that's my understanding. But so, yeah, so it totally depends. Sorry. All right. Long winded way of saying depends what you're trying to do. it sounds harder than software that's all i'm saying oh god it's so cool and so rewarding and so fun it's so fun i don't know there's something about being able to like walk into a space and be like this is our space there's something about being able to like hold a thing and be like we make this what does the factory make what what is it what is it meant for that one is going to make a submarine subcomponents so oh shit that's pretty cool very cool very cool yeah we'll hold Hold that thought on physical spaces because it's going to be our main topic for today.

3:34Oh, my gosh. Angela, this is your BBC dad moment. BBC reporter moment. This is incredible. Oh, my God. Amazing. Where is your husband sliding across the back to pull him away? And Zoe coming in on the walker like this. Yeah. Incredible stuff. did you guys read the the the Derek Thompson uh tweet or and the and the art Atlantic article about um maybe we are too online or maybe open eye was too online I only read the tweet I think I was the one who shared the tweet but I did not read the article but the tweet was basically like like if Goldilocks were a story about being too online or to not online and there's uh and there's like a happy middle ground that we should all be aiming for.

4:21Who do you think like has nailed that? Because it's impossible. And I feel like some weeks, you know, it feels like you take a break. Other weeks, you're way too online. And then something like you reach your breaking point, you shut your laptop and you're like, OK, I'm I'm good for my quota. And it's just it's hard. Yeah, it's exactly hard to find that middle ground. But I think his point was sort of like maybe open AI, you know, they optimized too much for the very, very online audience that is, I think, mostly on X. And to what extent does that sort of like leave a gap between, you know, sort of like mass market?

4:59I don't know that you'd be able to tell someone had like struck the record based on how they appear online. I think it's just more that people are saying and are making good business decisions because their brains aren't totally warped by feedback loops that are untrustworthy. But they have enough cultural context that they can understand how something might be received. So that's my hunch that we wouldn't know who's nailing the Goldilocks of being online unless you like were chatting with them in person. And you were like, oh, this is a healthy, healthy human who like understand what's up, but isn't overly okay.

5:37For anyone who is just listening, we have a child entertaining us. Angela, do you want to introduce our guest host this week? This is Asher. Asher, you want to say hi? Hi. He has lots of thoughts on who is too online. And I didn't read the article either. But my takeaway is there's a K-shaped recovery in the economy. And there's now like a K-shaped recovery in media where there's one axis that's super online. and everybody else. So in some ways, maybe it makes sense for companies or, I don't know, reporters, outlets to be catering to the super online in the same way that the whole economy has switched to catering to this part of the K-curve recovery.

6:24I mean, it's hard to think about something that's not turning into a K, right, or a barbell right now. It's like everything is bifurcating. And I feel like the algorithms and our little bubbles that we live in just incentivize us to sort of keep running in the direction that we're running. Although, Ashley, you shared that like, what was the narrative violation that AI chat brings people more into the middle? Like if traditional social media was, you know, a driving force behind like polarization of, you know, political views or what have you, that like people who are, you know, heavy users of AI chatbots and things, it's actually kind of drawing them back to the middle.

7:10I feel like that makes sense because there has to be clear citations and the way that those chatbots rank sources. But I don't know. Did you have a different take? No. I mean, I thought I loved it as a narrative violation. And then shout out to the Financial Times for having some of the best charts of this era because they also had that insane one that was like, here's what the future looks like. And it was like, either like, you know, we have just insane abundance with AI, we have civilizational collapse, or we like the economy grow continues to grow incrementally. It was like, like just like the wildest chart I've ever seen.

7:50And so they're really crushing it on the data visualization side. But yeah, I think I think this chart was interesting because I think a lot of the default assumptions have been that AI is just going to keep us in our own little bubbles and like reinforce our worldviews and maybe even take us further down some of those rabbit holes. And this seemed to suggest otherwise. So I think that's a good thing if it's true. And, but it also just shows how powerful these like models are and how important it is that like people are you know that they're architected responsibly because it's this is all invisible to us right as as users and so um so I'm happy I'm happy that this is where we are um but but I'm not counting on it for the future I've been reading so many dystopian like novels and you know like I'm listening to conform if any of you guys are have heard of it but it's like another Hunger Games or like some iteration.

8:53And I feel like in all of these worlds, in all of these worlds, the like elite or the chosen are like, they are distinguished by their looks and like intellect is how you go from like the bottom class and you break in. So just interesting that in every like post-capitalist, post-apocalyptic, it's sort of like looks maxing is the natural end for like the elite. Like the capital and Hunger Games where they have like the crazy outfits. look I'm gonna start the looks minning movement because I just think all of that I really I am living this every day I just like don't have time and so I think it's great like I think people who genuinely get passionate about like tailoring and like like aesthetics but I I hate that as like societal pressure speaking of fashion all birds RIP oh my gosh speaking of non-fashion speaking of san francisco fashion san francisco fashion yes it's the patagonia vest paired with the allbirds and um yeah so they were they were acquired by 30 39 million right uh which somebody pointed out was their series a valuation after ascending to a four billion dollar valuation and going public.

10:14Like this is a tragedy of the D to C, of the D to C wave. Okay, but I thought this, but then like, you know, on running or like on those shoes, that's a$10 billion company right now in 2026. So like, it's not like, oh, ha ha, this was a thing in the past. It's like, no, we're doing it again. And like, I can't really see a huge difference between, I guess, like those products. and sorry if you're an investor and on but like yeah i'm like embarrassed to say my husband is like such a value hunter like in our closet there's like three boxes of like all birds in like hideous colors because they were like deeply discounted so i feel like he's single-handedly been like hoarding inventory from all birds and i don't know what he's gonna do now that they're officially collector's items and you can sell them on ebay and yeah but he will have to abandon in his warehousing career and i'm so sorry for that we're gonna launch great chat sneakers that's the next product launch can we workshop that yeah i know like don't get me wrong i'm actually totally here for a consumer hardware play there's so many margin on that yeah yeah yeah let's let's workshop it we're gonna have a great chat submarines um that mac is gonna make for us.

11:36That's a lot. But it would be fun. I think that could be a great time. I personally would like to I don't think that I would enjoy being in a submarine. I think that that would really stress me out. The idea of six months, no sun gives me nine months, no sun, six to nine months. No. Well, you have to stay under for six to nine months. Yeah. People in the nuclear submarines go under for like I don't think it's nine months, but they do go under for like six months at a time And they do. And they have these like six hour they have these like six hour shifts. It's their life is insane. It's so interesting.

12:09And also very hardcore. If you ever meet someone who's like who's a submariner or submariner. Respect. That's so bad. It's hard. Like you basically like lose track. Like people come back and they talk about it and they're like you lose track of time. You're like it's not a big space. So you're like packed in like. Yeah. It's crazy. People are always making comparisons between like the oceans and space. Like oftentimes, like, you know, we know less about our oceans than we do about space. And I had never thought of the potential parallels between like going to space. Like if you're like, you know, at the space station for a year or two and like being in a submarine for six months, that sounds insane.

12:51And I like. No sunlight. It's got to do crazy stuff to your body. Like it's the whole thing is so insane. And it is to your point, like it is very much like being someone like the people who like first colonize Mars or the moon or whoever and wherever that we end up going first are going to have like a lot of very similar experiences because you can only make so much space habitable at a time. And so you'll end up just like looking out. Do you like do you emerge shorter because you've just been compressed by gravity? No, that's not how physics works. But I like the way that you. Like, I'm just imagining these, like, really short people and you're like, oh, that's...

13:28You know, if something does go wrong, if you are, like, deep underwater and something does go wrong and, like, the ship kind of, like... The instruction is basically take a really deep breath and then just zoom as much as you can. Because if you breathe out at all, like, if you, like, you just kind of got to go for it. From the bottom of the ocean. I think you're screwed. I don't think there's any surviving that. If you're at Titanic depths, no. But there are depths where you could definitely survive. Like the subs go to all different depths. I don't know too much about it. Mac, you know what the issue is.

14:00I was just thinking like we know all these astronauts and like, you know, but we don't know some. But you know what the solution is? We need Katy Perry. We need Katy Perry in the submarine bringing attention to this field. And Lauren Sanchez. You guys joke, but I think that would be super badass. I would watch that reality show. Let's find some celebrities in a subway into the depths. I think it'd be way more drama on a submarine than in a space. Like I would be there. Like imagine like it would be amazing entertainment. Yeah. I think that I think the whole thing would be crazy. Maybe in the vein of like the opposite of signing up to go in a submarine for six months.

14:44We have been talking about how like absolutely crazy. I mean, today we are recording at the very, very end of Q1. We thought maybe it made sense to do an episode about touching grass and how we all stay sane and how we're all still standing. But maybe just to kick things off, like roll call, how is everyone doing? We are a quarter of the way through 2026. We're only a quarter of the way through 2026? Because like genuinely hearing that statement makes me feel like I'm going to throw up. Like, what do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean we're only a quarter of the way through 2020? A lot's happened.

15:21It both feels like it's 2024 and it's 2035. Like what hasn't happened this year? It's insane. Anyway, so that was a really articulate take from me. Thank you. You're welcome. The ROI of today's episode is Mac learns that we're a quarter of the way through the year. Oh, my God. And the thing is, I know that. I know that because I always was telling myself, I was like, you can have a break at the end of the quarter. And now I have my break and I'm moving into my apartment. Yeah, you had a break. When we think back to like the projections, like what people were saying at the end of Q4, like what 2026 would bring, right?

15:57This is like literally the third year where they said, oh, you know, the IPO window is going to fly open and all those, whatever, 700 companies that have been waiting in the wings to go public. Like this will be, you know, they'll finally be liquidity. And it's like, OK, we're a quarter of the way through now. And the IPO window has absolutely not flown open. Although SpaceX is like actively talking about it in something that is going to be historic. That's really exciting. Oh, I think I think SpaceX will go public. I think it's just funny to your point that like we were we were told like a bunch of people would do IPOs.

16:34I don't think a bunch of people are going to do IPOs. what I think is a few people will do massive IPOs, making it even harder for regular users. Totally. Like you, you kind of get screwed when there are all these big IPOs waiting in the wings because you're worried that the investors are just going to hold like, I mean, when this is like seems so small by comparison, but Box got stuck waiting because Alibaba's IPO was going to come and it was going to suck up all the oxygen in the market. And so, and, but there are always some companies that squeak through and I actually saw that baby list listed the other day and they have like like a billion in sales or something like that it's like a real business and I was like oh that'd be so funny if it's like baby list that that like squeaks past all of these like frontier companies and like opens the IPO window like last year or the year before it was kava like that chain of like fondue chain or something I don't really know what they are Sure.

17:34There you go. Sorry. I'm thinking melting pot is OK. I get them confused. Wow, Ellen. Neither. But clearly wildly successful. And there were there were so many anticipated IPOs and we just got Kava. And like that was all we were going to get for like a very long time. And maybe that's what baby list is. I think the SpaceX IPO is real because like Elon really wants SpaceX to. I mean, my question about like, I've been asking this in the group chat for a while, but it's just like, is there even enough cash in the retail market to like even sustain these massive, massive IPOs? And with SpaceX in particular, I think that's just like a he won't do it until it can go straight into the index funds.

18:21And so like, maybe it doesn't really even matter if retail doesn't have the cash to, you know, buy into these things. I love how the prompt was like, how's everyone doing? And we're now analyzing IPOs. Like, I think this is exactly evidence of how, like, warped we are by this crazy year. Like, this is our reality. I don't know. Like, Mac, were you actually able to take a vacation post-factory launch? I underestimated the amount of traveling that I was going to have to do. So I booked four days and spent two days actually there because the rest was all the travel. Brutal. Whatever. You don't have to feel sorry for me.

18:59I was in the Dominican Republic. My life is great. but like i will say i didn't like fully like i did one day of like complete like touch grass like i didn't look at my phone that much and the second day i was like what is twitter why do people i saw you tweeting i saw you tweeting and retweeting and i was just like tweeting ram page and i have not gotten fully back off again i have such a like on again off again relationship with twitter but i have been i have been i have been non-stop tweeting and it's kind of a problem it's hard to take an actual vacation because the other half of it is like okay here was my travel experience this week my travel experience was waiting in the tsa line for 18 i went like to get to new york i was at lavardia the night of the plane crash then i woke up at the ass crack of dawn to go to uh to go to jfk i get there it's raining and there's like a line outside the door and i find out it's pre-check i just like walk straight back into the cabin i'm like hell no um so then i went to the train but I'm just saying like that is traveling now.

20:00Like, yeah, have like a beautiful, seamless SFO experience or you're going to have like the hellscape that is New York City airports. You just don't know. 100%. I mean, one thing I was thinking about to just go back to like the concept of touching grass, I feel like you hear this all the time. Like there's nostalgia for the 90s. There's nostalgia for a period where we weren't completely glued to our phones. People talk about how we're still really kind of coming out of COVID. So it's like return to office and a lot of IRL events, right? But all of those things are documented digitally and then shared on social media that to me, it's like, is it really touch grass if no one documented?

20:38And the answer is yes, of course it is. But like, how much of a real vacation or a break is it if you're like also posting and responding to comments and checking how many like something got? Is the nostalgia for the offline of it all or is the nostalgia for a time when things worked like I think you see the nostalgia in different places and I mean like I'm seeing like a big trend and like just like going like at least like I'm reading about I have no idea if this is like actually true although anecdotally true I'd like people going off apps and like going and like just asking people out in real life I think there's this piece of like yeah people are like I am so exhausted by the constant overwhelm and like dopamine seeking behavior of being attached to my phone.

21:21But then there's also this piece of like, God, my parents got married at 25. And how nice would it just be to have shit work where you meet somebody and you stay with them? Like, I think like and then extrapolate that to other places, like how nice would it be to go to a clothing store and just have clothes that like aren't made entirely out of plastic and will just get destroyed in three wears? Because like even nice brands these days are sort of like that. I think like the point I was making about travel was less about my personal like nightmare experiences and more the fact that like even when you go try to touch grass right now, you cannot escape it.

21:56What if you were like fucking on Dubai a few weeks ago? Like totally. Or Puerto Vallarta a month ago or whatever. There's no version of being able. The Internet is so pervasive. Our culture is so pervasive. The craziness is so pervasive. You would have to go so far under a rock to be truly untouched by it. Touching grass is hella important. And I think that like we as a we as a society, especially those of us who do go on Twitter, should realize that we're happier than we think we are when we're on the Internet. And also you can't escape it at this point. It is too big to touch grass. Yeah. I mean, it's not just Twitter.

22:32Right. It's I was talking about like Instagram or it's like if you didn't post a picture from vacation, did it even really happen? Right. It's like LinkedIn. Same thing. It's like people talk about how, you know, everything is online or IRL experiences and how, you know, people want to meet up and community and all this. And it's like all of those photos are documented and shared on LinkedIn. And it's super performative. And it's sort of like, sorry to be like romantic about it. It's like it sort of takes the magic out of like how nice that dinner was when you see that the next day somebody was secretly taking photos of you the whole time and then tagged you.

23:08And you're like, whoa, I didn't know that, right? And so, and then, or it's like, oh, did somebody have their phone open the whole time? And were they granolaing the entire conversation? And they're already going to turn that into a thought leadership post. Like, is that a thing? That is absolutely a thing. Yes. And so I think that it's that part where even if we're doing the touch grass, right? It's like at Dolores Park, if I'm literally touching grass is like, I have to talk about it. It's like, this is what touching grass taught me about B2B SaaS, you know, on LinkedIn. It's just everything has to have this like extension.

23:41But you don't, right? Like you don't actually. And so I think that's the really like you can opt out. And it feels like you can't. I like when I go on LinkedIn, I feel like everyone feels they have to post to exist and have to post to stay relevant. Like I feel that energy of people like mining their lives for content. And listen, sometimes I'm doing it too. Not so much my personal life, but like, you know, I like published an essay last week. I'm part of the problem. But anyways, I think like that that's the that's the thing that's so interesting is like we actually don't have to do this. You can just not do it.

24:20There's probably some level of participation that is necessary for certain jobs. but I think 95 % of what I see could not exist in the world would, the world would go on. So, um, I know that's not like good news for the social media platforms. And, um, unfortunately for them, I don't think anyone is going to listen to me on this myself, least of all. Um, I've posted on Twitter like five times a day, but I really think it just, it's a, it's more of a, of a feeling than a reality that like you have to, you have to show up there and we could all just like take a couple, weeks off and the world would be fine.

24:59Just like you're saying, it's going to be one of those like, okay, well you go first. I think it was Ezra Klein proposed this idea of like, like a digital Sabbath, like not using any devices from what is it like, sun down on Friday through Saturday or something. And I'm not Jewish, but I'm like, oh, I think like, that sounds kind of nice. Like, what if we all just agreed to do that? And I wonder if it has to be something like how parents feel like in order to not give their kids phones. Other parents need to agree to not give their kids phones and then that can happen. Like maybe we just all need to make some pacts with each other around like when we're taking breaks so that you don't feel the FOMO because other people are taking a break too.

25:44Helen, I don't know if your school is on this yet, but like there is a consumer hardware product called the Tin Can. And it's literally like the concept of like before when kids talk to each other via two tin cans. It's venture backed. And there's like a multi-month wait list of like to get this product. Like it's like literally sold out everywhere. You can't even get your hands on it. Well, it's because all those VC back moms group moms were like buying them for their entire classrooms, right? They're doing these like massive wholesale orders of tin can. I re-workshopped it. We're going from great chat sneakers to great chat tin can.

26:21I was just going to say, you guys, there are so many consumer electronics plays in kids and the kids' verticals that feel way more brand aligned. But we have to table on that. I don't want to give away any free ideas. I think I'll set up my clod bot to go touch grass for me on the weekends. There you go. Problem solved. I'm sure you're going to feel a lot better. I can mainline Twitter and also... Remember, there's a marketplace of humans that agents can hire to do things. And so your agents can go hire humans to touch grass for you. I have a technical question. Are you supposed to tell your agent that they can join Clodbot?

26:59Because my husband's in the process of, you know, setting up his Mac Mini. And he was like, should we tell it that it can? You mean Maltbook? Maltbook, Maltbook. Sorry, that's what I meant. Maltbook. Should we tell it that it can join or does it automatically know to join? Like these are the questions that I need answers to. Great chat tech support. You have a third child now, Angela. It's waiting for instruction. I'm curious. One of the things I keep reading about is like AI burnout. And since Angela brought up, brought up CloudBot, where part of it is, I think, I think one level of it is like, as you automate more work, like menial work, you just stay at a higher level of the stack and you're thinking more and you're strategizing more and you're not taking time to sort of like type out the email or like fill out the you know excel spreadsheet and so you're just like my husband who is an engineer will say like it's it's more exhausting to code now because he's not actually like doing the coding he's like solving the problems and scoping the thing and like you know so it's just like more brain intensive um and I think there are corollaries of that for for um like non-technical work too so that's like one type of like AI burnout.

28:12And then the other, I think, is when you do have like an army of quad bots, like working constantly and like you feel like you have to stay on top of your configuration and you see, you know, people like Gary Tan tweeting constantly about everything he's building. And so I'm curious, is anyone here feeling that like AI induced burnout yet? Or are we just not like in deep enough to feel that individually? I'm personally not feeling it because I'm not opting into doing every single thing. Like yesterday, I had to put together like a proposal for something and I got it done in like record time because I specifically knew what I wanted to, what my inputs were.

28:56And I would have normally procrastinated about that and like taken a very, very long time to like actually put the words down on paper. And, you know, I was thinking like, oh, I think I could keep doing this. But this assumes that you have original thought. This assumes that you have all of these like very sharp points of view, if that makes sense. And like, I actually think that there's a limit to that, right? People are like, oh, you know, now everyone's churning out a blog post today. I'm like, there's just no way that that's good. There's just no way. And so I think, yes, AI is making us more productive.