The stories we told ourselves in 2025

0:05This year on Great Chat, we watched AI grow up, venture enter its kingmaking era, reputations get stress tested and careers unbundled, while the internet got louder and real power got quieter. I'm Ashley, and this week I'm joined by Helen, Mac, and Angela for the season three finale and the final episode of 2025. Great Chat is brought to you by Mercury, the fintech used by entrepreneurs through every stage of company building. We use Mercury to run this podcast and love recommending it to other founders and fund managers. Try it for yourself. Visit mercury.com to join over 200 ,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to make managing their money unbelievably simple.

0:47Hey. Hi everyone. Hi. Oh my God. It's the end of the year. December baby. Let's go. How are we here already? Insane. Angela just got back from two weeks on the road and what time is it in Zurich? it's late Zurich but I I will say this has never ever happened to me before in like all the trips I've taken but the person I was seated next to on this 12-hour flight was this very like tall attractive blonde Swiss man and I was just like this happens in real life like you are seated next to attractive people in real life except that I was like disgusting and just like trying to be a troll and watch emily in paris so not not my finest moment was he wearing like a suit are these like those people you only hear about that like get dressed up for flights and you're like what he was very dressed up for the flight and then after takeoff he changed into like a outfit but he was like he brought printed magazines like not even just a kindle like printed magazines that he was like flipping through on this flight um and we engaged in like polite conversation and it was like very lovely you know but it kind of like felt like one of those like office crush situations where I'm like oh like I hope I'm like sleeping in a cute way you know like it'd be terrible if I was like drooling you know because Angela, does your husband listen to this podcast?

2:21He does. He does. He's like a number one fan. I just want to make a good impression. But like the Swiss Air product is like so terrible that there's actually no divider in between the seats. Like, you know, in United, you can pull it up. This is like you just. Yeah, there's no there's no dividing line. It's just it's just being like a generous companion. You know, you don't want to like be snoring or. I mean, it's like important for international relations. Well, that's what they say when AI makes all of us redundant, like, you know, your appearance and sort of like that whole thing is the differentiators we have left.

2:56So congrats to this guy for crushing it and like being AI proof. So we've decided the strategy to being AI proof is just be hot. Yeah, I feel like that's generally accepted. I do feel like people do value being hot. So like, I don't, I don't hate it as a strategy overall. I sounds like a lot of work. but I feel like people did not. I feel like people did not for a hot minute. Like there was this time during like the NFT craze when people were putting like the fake profile pictures or like whatever. I was just like, I think that this is, no, not ugly people. Just kidding. No, my whatever fake AI generated profile picture is much more attractive than me.

3:37So like, I think just people were just like doing that. And I was like, Oh, is this the future that people never meet up in real life? And we just have these virtual, I think for some people that is the future or that that future is now. But anyways, not for Angela and her Swiss airline companion. I missed the era when hotness was not valued. I think that's the only thing we can count on. I think that that might just be in Helen's head. I don't think that that ever happened. I say that with love, friend. You know what I will say? One last thing on this topic. One of my very best friends in the whole world met her now husband on the airplane.

4:12They sat next to each other. it was a flight back to sfo from la guardia and she sat next to this like hot irishman and they like didn't talk much on the plane but like he caught her after as they were leaving and he was like hey like i'd really love to see you again and now they're married and live in austin and they're the cutest most wonderful people so i love that it can't happen that's like a straight up rom-com plot and it's it is one of my all-time favorites they're they're such wonderful humans and i love love it's perfect oh my god i can picture their wedding website how we met They got COVID married and it was, they had to reschedule it twice.

4:48It was, they ended up being friends and family, but it was at this gorgeous castle in Ireland. It was fabulous. Well, for the avoidance of doubt to my husband who listens to this podcast, I was very clear in saying early on in our conversation that I was married with two kids. There was no, there was no, there was no risk of romantic entanglement there. Oh my gosh. It's good we got that in. Yeah, totally. What was the big headline this week? Like, Ashley, I saw you tweet a bunch of things about Wall Street Journal storytellers. So give it to us. And for Angela, who did not see that story. What is this?

5:22And the Wall Street Journal going viral. That's amazing. I think the story actually was published a number of days before it went viral. I saw some like comms people sharing it. But basically, it's a story about how a bunch of like tech companies, and I think the examples used are um notion and chime and vanta are have either hired or are hiring storytellers like it's like this new role this new function and i think notion in particular like combined it's like social media and content and comms like under this like storytelling umbrella and so um and so yes it was just this i don't know it's like an article i read like it was getting shared in some comms areas and then like it went viral on Twitter earlier this week.

6:11And the hot takes were abundant. What were your favorites? Well, my hot take, no, just kidding. Yeah, obviously. I thought you had a great one. I actually, well, yeah. So my main hot take is like, you already have a chief storyteller. It's your CEO. And unless like they are embracing that role, there's no new function creation or like role title that will solve that. Of course, there should be people supporting the founder and CEO and like, you know, taking this vision and articulating it in different ways and different channels. But like, yes, like the CEO has already always been the storyteller.

6:47Startups are stories about the future. Like if you can't tell that story, you're not going to get investors. You're not going to get your first hires. You're not going to get your first customers. That was my hot take. I think like it's just so funny when an article like sort of hits a nerve and then like everyone manages to find a way to frame it so that it supports their worldview or more importantly like their self-worth. and so it was like simultaneously people in like comms and marketing like you know using it to like bolster their value and like we're so important and also people outside of those functions to be like marketing and like pr sucks we need something new and like everyone had you know everyone had saw it was like um it was like a mirror like whatever you already believed was reflected back to you in that article and i and i'm sure like 99 of people didn't read it um so uh the headline the like little screenshot alone was enough yeah i thought you're right i thought it was most of the responses were like kind of in the category of like defensive right regardless of what your role was and my interpretation i did not weigh in because i was like oh this is interesting when there were so many takes um is that it reminded me a little bit and you said this too about like how we rebranded marketing to growth it's like all marketing's not working so let's have a chief growth officer like no more cmos um and i felt at the time when we did that this is similar that like it's more of a um reflection that there is a breakdown between the founders and the role of marketing or comms or growth or whatever because they're like well this person that we have in this role it's not working they're not doing the job of a storyteller so let's create this new function let's start over and when you couple that with like there's like a average of an 11 month tenure for like cmos um that you know it just sort of it goes hand in hand where it's like well something's not working you know and rather than repair it it's like ah we're looking for the wrong people we need what we really need is storyteller and so I don't know if we're gonna look that in word on this one but yeah great cool storytellers like I'm all about it so funny I would have gotten like shoved in a locker if I had told myself a storyteller in my comms days like it would have sounded so precious and like elite but now now it the word of the people.

9:05I mean, I do think there is something that has, like, so I think good comms people have always been good storytellers. But in the era when, like, you were mostly working with media to tell your story, you didn't have to be a great storyteller to have, like, to have that pull through, right? Like, I feel like a lot of it, like, in this Go Direct era, a lot of the stories feel so two-dimensional to me. like they it's all just growth and valuation and hustle culture and vibes and I feel like I have like just far less of a sense of like who these people are and what they believe in than I did in prior eras of tech and I think a lot of that is because the storytelling is very flat and two-dimensional like we are in this like very lazy era and media used to fill in a lot of those gaps for us and like round out these characters and like make them larger and let than life and like push them with interesting questions and now when when founders are just able to like take you know take to twitter on their own right do a podcast video you can see more of them than ever before which is ironic right that they're more visible than ever yet they're less of a story than ever i wonder if it's really that i wonder if it's lazy storytelling i do think that like media necessarily tends to be incredibly great good storytellers but i also think that founders today and always have to be very good storytellers to hire the type of people that you have to hire to close the type of money you have to hire that you have to close.

10:31I think you have to be an incredible storyteller. I think that this might be different because I think that the public is used to these stories. I think that it's not the problem of storytelling as a skill, but rather of the model being fairly derivative. We keep hearing the same archetypes and we're sick. I think like generally as a culture, like we've heard the boy genius, we've heard the disruption, we've heard the, I started in this industry and I saw that it was a problem. So I discovered the SaaS solution. Like we've all heard that before. And then also the like huge dollar valuations are exhausting because they don't tell you anything material, but they are impressive.

11:07And that's what people will default to because to your point about laziness, I do think that that's lazy, but it's a proven playbook. That's why people go for it. So I think, I mean, I think that part of it is like, part of it is because we're not doing as much of this like in-depth one-on-one media and getting pushed by like exceptionally good storytellers. But I also think that part of it is just that like we're in, if we want to talk hype cycles, I think tech as a commodity or tech as a brand is in a low point in its hype cycle. And I think a lot of that is due to the lack of innovation in the way we tell stories.

11:38Because it's so dominant. Like, what do you mean by low point? It's been dominant. It's been dominant for 20 years. And I think like it's partially because we keep telling the same stories. And I think it's also partially because those stories have proven to be very like wildly different from what the lived reality of everybody else's experiences but isn't that what like ai isn't ai supposed to be like aren't there all these explosions of new things that are different than the past cycle i thought that was like the whole point of this new cycle which was we were super late product i think it's the same shit on steroids it's like higher dollar valuations but the story is still the valuations like nobody's talking about like look at all the amazing things that have happened to random people because of AI.

12:15People are talking about, look at how much money OpenAI raised this week. People are talking about, look at how much, like how many billionaires got created. Did you not see that a Japanese woman got married to her AI boyfriend? So don't say that great things are happening to people. It was like a whole ceremony in her dress. I unfortunately did see that. Listen, when I say the stories are lazy, I think they're lazy because they can afford to be. So Mac, I kind of agree with you. The valuations are making investors in ARR, making investors feel FOMO. It's making talent feel like opportunistic.

12:49I think we're in this era where tech is mostly talking to tech. And as like people who are students of company building and who like love like breaking records and also like the AI platform shift is just doing so much work. Like people don't have to do as much storytelling. It's like, yeah, like we grew 10X and we have all these amazing investors who came in two months after our last investors. And so you don't actually have to like, like really get into like, like, what do we stand for? Who are we for? How do we want to change the world? That's a good point. Right. Where we didn't disclose valuations, right?

13:23We kept the cards a little close. And it was mission. Like everyone. Yes, yes, yes. Everything was like democratizing. Right. And you can be really cynical about that now because like Facebook a democratizing force. But it was everything lived at the intersection of like, like mission and then like the cloud and mobile platform shifts. And every story was about like access and changing the world and connecting people. And this is just numbers go up era. Unless you're in defense tech, I will say like, it does feel pretty lit out here. I feel very vision. I like, I can't shut up about it. I'm having the time of my life.

13:59It feels like 2014 where I am. It's been very fun to see like, to your point, like we literally don't disclose valuation. We talk about the things that we're doing. I work every day with people who come from vastly different backgrounds. I see prosperity in action. I love it. It's been amazing. But I do agree with you that in the broader tech ecosystem, it's not. I think the defense tech industry, and I don't invest in defense tech. And so I'm looking at this from the outside. There is this broader, very dramatic geopolitical narrative that is the backdrop to everything. And so I think like the stakes are clear to people, regardless of how you feel about like, you know, billions and billions going into defense tech.

14:44And so that that helps make the story more tangible. And it's highly relevant for people who aren't on the cap tables of those companies in a way that sometimes the AI narratives feel like, oh, yeah, congrats to the investors. Which, you know, is not not the sentiment of like everyday like, you know, Americans. So I I don't know. I think 2026 things will shift, but they'll have to shift. And maybe this storytellers mania is like, you know, an early indication of that. Shifting gears slightly, did you guys look at the Vanity Fair photos of the White House staff? Only after you texted them to me.

15:21Something we talked about is like the injection sites that they left on poor Caroline Levitt. and honestly I mean not a fan but like I feel for her I would assume that Vanity Fair would have like the most bomb like retouchers in the world right so like people are like did they not think that they would do you know close-ups or that they would they would have photos like yeah no I think they did know all those things would happen but I think they thought there would be like a post production and there absolutely was not so yeah I don't know it was hard I felt sympathy for a second I saw like this great juxtaposition of like it was like the um caption was something like you can tell who vanity when vanity fair likes their subjects it was like yeah yeah these recent Pedro Pasquale whatever and then these photos right it is but I think it's um not to like always like bring it back to like a startup or founder audience but like I think a lot of times obviously vanity fair you you're thinking a lot about the photos but like I think a lot of times people think of photos as an afterthought.

16:27There's like the content, the article, the interviews, and like, oh, we're gonna do some photos. Oh, okay, great. I'll wear a cute outfit or whatever. And this is where so many stories over the years have just gone wrong. And like, these publications are incentivized to get you to do very like, like, you know, noticeable and visually interesting things and I remember for I remember Aaron had Aaron Levy at Box had a chance to be on the cover of a magazine if he would wear like a unicorn like uh thing over his head um uh and uh we said no and then someone else did it you have to think about your like the visual elements of your brand too and I think I think maybe there was like a was it was it clinkle someone like was photographed like lighting money on fire like they're gonna try to get you to do things that people are gonna talk about and so the lesson that I've taken away from this is like always read the contract and ensure that like retouching is in there that's the lesson for everyone from this that's the lesson or be like come prepared like swiss banker guy on the airplane yeah yeah don't get your little injections the day of the photo shoot you know it's very hard to negotiate like rights with photos like you have to be a real celebrity to do it and so like I've tried to negotiate for like photo review and things like that and usually with these profiles you have like very little power so I do actually feel some empathy with any legit media you don't get any creative control like your only control is in how you present yourself and that is brutal because I don't think that you expect that what you're going to get is a zoomed in shot this close of your face like of your pores yeah yeah like I think that's I think that's brutal like I up to up to everybody to decide what they think about it but it's it's definitely not not what you would not even like even if you thought that there was a chance it was going to be a hit piece I don't think that most people expect that but Vanity Fair did its job so okay my favorite headline of the week because it allows me to continue to beat this drum um so open evidence uh just like chat gpt for doctors um which if you don't use it's like do you maybe you or like one of your friends used to go down like web md rabbit holes like that's like the web 2.0 version of this i have now discovered open evidence and i am going down many rabbit holes a day but anyways you're using don't you need a doctor's like email address to no you just start using it land on the website and just start using it.

19:04So like any question you would have asked Google or like on WebMD, just ask Open Evidence. Wow, I ask like ChatGPT all of my health questions. Yeah, exactly. I should move over. I don't know how different they would be except for Open Evidence is like citing research, right? Citing like the journals instead of like maybe ChatGPT has a variety of sources. But anyways, they are raising$250 million on$12 billion of revenue or ARR. Wait, no, they don't have$12 billion of ARR. Sorry, sorry. A$12 billion valuation based on$150 million run rate. I think the things that were interesting about this is that they've got less than a million users and something like 90 % gross margins.

19:43And so this brings me back to the hill that I will die on that ads are the perfect business model. And I think there was some commentary about this is going to make a lot of AI companies wake up to the fact that, yeah, ads are pretty good. So my prediction based on this is, I think OpenAI will probably introduce ads next year softly. Wait, so their core business model is ads? It's also subscriptions by doctors, of course, right? But it's just like, if you think about there being less than a million users on the platform, because like, you know, if it's just, if the doctor's the only ones that are paying for it, it's like, how are they making money from everyone else?

20:18And it's people like me who are searching, right? So like ads on the free product, like doctors aren't being served ads while they're like treating a patient and looking for it. Right. Okay. But anyways, like, I think there are so many companies right now. Like, I saw this guy, super smart on Twitter that was like, I would, I wish somebody would play me like a high value piece of content that I could like learn something while I'm waiting for like the model to sort of like generate and spit out, you know, whatever I'm looking for. I'm like, you mean like pre-roll? You mean like a blockbuster movie trailer?

20:53You know, like these very premium Super Bowl quality style ads that I think people would not find, you know, spammy or distracting, but like kind of entertaining and enjoy while they're waiting for AI to process. And anyways, so maybe 2026 will be the year of ads. So we were looking at like big themes. Like this is our first year of the podcast. We did three seasons and, you know, what were themes that emerged? I think, you know, as, as expected, we talked a lot about like sort of marketing and messaging and how things were received by different audiences. But I think there were like definitely of the headlines that we, you know, discussed and analyzed, like a couple of things stood out.

21:33And like, what do those things mean for what's ahead? And so the first one, you know, I think like one of our first episodes was like, nobody cares about bad behavior anymore, but it's like this idea that like people don't have shame anymore. Right. So like deal was a really big story line of the year and, you know, um, the watching deals, VC sort of rushed to their defense was super interesting. Maybe that's now like the standard value ad that founders are looking for from their lead investors. So like, what do you think happens there? I thought the deal thing was really interesting because the investors were very quiet at first.

22:08Like when the big honeypot reveal dropped, like no one was talking. And then it was like everyone sort of gathered around for, I think, when they did their big revenue moment. Like was like sort of the big public pushback. And so it was kind of like kind of a strong message that like what really matters is growth. And this like hasn't hurt us and this company is growing. And so we're going to stand behind them and like the honeypot, the spy, like none of none of that matters. So, yeah, it's an interesting, interesting lesson for everyone to learn on the timeline. Yeah. So like, I mean, what do you think happens?

22:52you know is this the new normal and is this like something that you know founders should expect and they'll cite this this use case for like their expectations I mean agree that like VCs stayed very quiet but I feel like now because Deal continues to like crush it from a growth standpoint they're they're more you know vocal in their support I'm not speaking to the Deal example specifically um but like in general I think the biggest thing that I've changed my mind on is I used to think in a crisis the most important thing was like moving quickly and now I think the most important thing is not overreacting and part of that is because like cultural norms have shifted yeah yeah but also because like we're just all so bombarded with news and so much crazy shit is happening every day and so like the internet might be like all consumed with honeypot jokes for like you know 12 hours and then people move on and so again I'm not saying like hire a spy or do anything fraudulent but like if you are in a crisis like take a deep breath and don't like add fuel to the fire because I you call this hubermaning it right yeah yeah Yeah, exactly.

24:07He just played through. And that worked for him. So I think that's like the main lesson I take from this is like, you can really only cancel yourself. And so like, just breathe before you do that. Like I remember the apology notes era where everyone was using the notes app. Screenshotting, right. Yeah, new screenshots dropping every day. And we are out of that. We are somewhere new. And yeah, like things that feel really big, like wait 10 minutes, they might not feel big, you know, after a few more news cycles pass. That's so funny. I remember one of the partners at my fund was talking about how you present like a deal, not deal to the company, but like bring a deal to committee.

24:52And he was saying like, always just say all the bad things up front because people will like attack it and say, like say what they want to say. And then once they say it, like it's done, like they can't just keep repeating themselves. Right. So it's a little bit of like, just like let the, let the wave crash and then, and then you move on. So yeah, just a power through. That's actually how I run all my, all my updates. I always just lead with every, I always just lead with here are the things that aren't tracking because that's usually what people are holding their breath waiting for. That's usually what the tension is in the back.

25:25And so you're just like, let's start with that. Let me tell you what, let me tell you what's getting dropped. And then I'll tell you what I'm dropping it for. And then we can make sure that we're on the same page uh but to your point like i think i think that part of i i wonder if the lesson is that nobody cares about bad behavior anymore or nobody has an attention span that we that can withstand the amount of the volume of information we got like people can't even sit and wait for their models to run you know like we need to be entertained in the 30 seconds or you know totally probably longer but you know by the way i also like this strategy for dating just like here are all my flaws i don't know if it works in that context yes because when that It was that guy with the dating doc.

26:04And what happened to him? He was forthright. He was not forthright about the, you know. Wait, no, but we talked about whether or not there'd be a redemption arc there. Did that ever happen? Or did he just drop off of Twitter? I don't know. I feel like he no longer, yeah, he's not a character. He's not on my feet anymore, which I'm fine with. I think it would be a power move. Did you guys see that the woman at the Coldplay concert, she just did like a profile on the Wall Street Journal. I thought that was great. she emerged oh did you see the comments on that like people were not like she's saying she got death threats that's crazy yeah i think the comments were not death threats the comments were just like what like you were hypocritical you're doing this profile to talk about how you were thrust into the spotlight everyone has moved on and now you're thrusting yourself into the spotlight again and like we're all just supposed to feel bad for you but like how else would she get like the last word how else but no one cares no one actually i don't disagree that the reception is that people were like why is this woman but like the publication cared enough that they thought that this would be interesting enough to run i think it's really hard to empathize with what it's like to be the like butt of whatever the internet moment is unless you've actually experienced it like i mean i haven't thank god i hope i never do but it's see like i can only imagine just like being someone who reads some of the comments sections which like I don't suggest not healthy not fun deeply unenjoyable but being the subject of that and being the subject of that on that scale especially because people seem to be willing to give death threats for anything you need like a lot of buffer time like the two best examples I can think of are Monica Lewinsky and Justine Sacco obviously like very different oh my gosh Justine Sacco is that the IAC South Africa yeah yeah that's like has Justine landed yet or Saco landed yet yes yes and like I mean that was everyone just piled on and it was it was before that was happening all the time on the internet so I think it also just felt so dramatic and like she later years later came back and talked about it and so I think that worked really well I think this is just too close to the news cycle she should have held it for another year yeah but like most people aren't comms people like I do think it's a very human thing to respond like immediately and just be like you guys what the fuck like as soon as like you know some reputable news source comes to you and says hey I have a platform do you want it like I think a normal person would be like yeah I want to talk back like this sucks this has been so miserable for me totally I get why she did it I also if I were her like friend I would say don't do it don't do the like the somber photo looking out the window like you're gonna become a meme again at least they retouched those photos you know it could have it could have been worse everyone who doesn't know ashley treat ashley's advice as if it's as if she's your friend because that is good advice just try to become my friend guys i thought her including the dog was good speaking of photos it was just okay i literally saw comments like why would you drag the dog into this oh god no i mean people don't all read the comments i love being real i actually missed this entire news cycle i missed the first round and i missed this round so i have no idea who you did not miss the first round because you literally memed yourself into the coldplay kiss cam video yeah oh i did i did i did do that that was a fun time you did not miss that but i missed the second one i did miss her coming out saying it was just like two days ago it wasn't even you know it's it's maybe it's good that it didn't really like make a blip i can't believe i already forgot the cold play story that was a big story speaking of having no attention span my connection of like things we talked about women the year i feel like 2025 was kind of a big year for katie perry i mean she made it to space she held it down for women of stem she met with government leaders like incredible arc for her she also had like a horrible album release and like was sort of made fun of but now right I feel like she's kind of on top and yeah she wrote a whole hype cycle in one year that's badass yeah no I agree that's that's a great I feel like she's been through the ringer with this before too like Katy Perry is someone who has probably experienced as much public love and outrage in a short amount of time as humanly possible she must just be the most resilient person yeah I think I saw a video of her and Justin Trudeau at like a sushi restaurant and they look like genuinely happy and somebody put a side by side of like her at that same sushi restaurant with Orlando Bloom and she looked like dead and I felt like oh that is a powerful video right because that really changes like the story on like oh she's just so happy and I think you want to see people happy and healthy and love on this podcast yes we love love on this podcast so yes another theme that we had was sort of like around the careers that we've had.

30:57And like, what do you do after, you know, you decided to climb the ladder as fast as you can? And there are many paths, you can keep climbing the ladder. And what does that look like? Or like, I think we got a lot of questions around like, you know, I'm thinking about a career in venture, I'm thinking about leaving venture, I'm thinking about taking an operating role at a venture firm or starting a fund or, you know, how do I weigh this hot startup versus this other less hot startup, but seems more stable. And so I think something that was interesting was, you know, the backdrop of like, there being less and less jobs, right?

31:31Like I think unemployment is on the rise. But people are not holding on as much as we thought. It's just like people are actually looking around and thinking about, you know, what they want their careers to look like in the whole. And a lot of this requires like, being able to, you know, have your own predictions about what the future looks like. That's really interesting for me, because I feel Like we live in an information overload, like completely saturated. You can find all the, you know, skeletons in the closet and you find all this information about how the company is doing. Yet people don't have like as much certainty about the decisions they're making in their careers than they did before.

32:07And so that's interesting. And I wonder where that all goes next year. You know, I think a theme that we saw in the backdrop too was like this great bundling and unbundling, right? Right. And so like there was a lot of consolidation, whether it was mega firms, you know, open AI doing a bunch of acquisitions, Google doing acquisitions like next year. You know, is it just more of that? And what does that do with role elimination? And like, what does that do the job market? So I don't know. Any thoughts about what you think the job market will do next year? If I had to like just make one hot prediction, I feel like the story this year was like young people are screwed.

32:46Entry level people are screwed. And I mean, I'm sure that is actually unfortunately going to continue to be true in a lot of industries. I just think that young people are going to adapt and they're going to like use these new tools to their advantage. And maybe it's like the middle manager layer that's in trouble. um and so anyways I think we'll just see the narrative shift a little bit about who are the winners and the losers um especially when it comes to AI um I think it's like very self-serving when when like people are senior in their careers they're like there are no more entry-level jobs and I'm just I don't know I I refuse to believe I mean maybe it would be to my benefit personal benefit to believe but I just think we're like things things are not going to be quite as linear as we think they are.

33:31So maybe 2026, the young people will have their revenge. That's great. Because being a middle manager sucks. Nobody wants to be a middle manager. I hope AI automates all of that away. Okay, managing itself sucks, but there is something really nice about being a middle manager. I think. You have responsibility, but you also have no control. It's like the worst of everything. Oh, wow, wow, wow, wow. Okay, I have a different take. My hot take on middle management is it's actually kind of the dream because you have enough power and control and ability to affect outcomes that like you can see the regular output and process of your work.

34:09But you don't have the insane isolation that you get at the top. You don't have the like the weight of like hundreds of jobs on your head. You don't have like I think I think being like, I don't know, I wouldn't really want to be a founder personally. um I enjoy I enjoy being a middle manager middle management apologist over here you are like the last person I think of when I think like middle manager energy but like actually maybe the hottest take is like like more people are going to be ICs because like the especially in tech careers it was like unless you were an engineer or maybe a really great salesperson the only way to progress up was to like manage people and so you were sort of forced whether or not you loved managing or not that was like the only path available to like ascend within an organization and as we rethink how teams are built as we like rethink like you know like what role agents play alongside humans maybe we don't force people into manager roles if they don't want to be people managers and maybe we make the people who are really exceptional people managers like they can still do that but we're just like there are just way more ICs including senior ICs like across functions not just in the ones where that's historically been an option I just wonder how that happens and like maybe this is me like in a plus one for like humanity and like humans but being in like for example being in person in Zurich there is just such a different energy than being virtual than being over slack And so much of the body language or negotiation or reaction is about reading the person across the table from you and not the issue at hand.

35:50And I just wonder how AI agents get to a place where they have enough of a feedback loop to really be managing a team of ICs unless those ICs are all just automated. I don't think the agents are managing the ICs, although maybe that's possible. I think it's just like as a senior IC, maybe you just are able to cover so much more ground instead of having to hire to increase your scope. You know, you're more efficient because you have like AI at your disposal. Well, I'm thinking about like how return to office has been like another big theme this year. And for a lot of people, you know, especially young people who are kind of moving into that middle management role, like this is their first time having to manage like in person.

36:34And I'm at least the stories that I hear sort of anecdotally of people reaching out and sort of like, you know, talking about transition. That's a that's a tough one. And so I think it's one thing to like manage virtually. Right. And now a lot of those folks are fully in office and there's like this whole, you know, like in-person dynamic that I think is that is interesting for people to figure out. So we'll kind of revert back to the norm. All right. Last topic. Who controls the narrative and who it actually reaches? So we kind of compared people who are going direct versus people who are using the media.