Tony Fadell Unfiltered on Apple, OpenAI & the Next Big Device

0:00Apple has never done marketing bullshit before. and I saw that was complete bullshit. I mean, do you think OpenAI goes bankrupt? Look, if they're asking for$50 billion now, like how fast are you going to burn through that? Is that what you would focus on if you were an Apple CEO? I have many things that I would do if I was an Apple CEO. All right, give us some of them. Is the next big tech device a pin, a pen, your headphones, or the device that you've already got in your pocket? Today's guest is Tony Fidel, godfather of hardware design, who brought some of the most important consumer electronics to life at Apple and then at Google with Nest.

0:36I sat with him and got his thoughts on how Apple and the rest of the big technology companies are looking, even as he's rumored to be a contender for Apple's next CEO. We talked about what he would do if he ever got that top job. We talked about why he thinks open AI is building a strategy of being too big to fail and all those unfiltered thoughts without the constraints of a corporate PR department. This is the Newcomer Podcast.

1:07Tony Fidel, great to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining me. It's great to be here. Great to be here. We're in an insane moment for the future of devices. So I'm super excited to talk to you. It's pins, pens, like what do we want? So I really want to get direct into it. I mean, there are rumors, I think this week, that Apple is thinking about a pin in the wake of Humane working on a pin. I have friends, and I think there's been some reporting now that maybe Johnny Ive and OpenAI are thinking about a pin. I'll try and press you on what you think about the particulars. But from first principles, what do you think is most likely to be the AI native device format?

1:51AI can be applied to many things. Yeah. And AI is great for certain applications with certain hardware components around it. Okay. So there's AI with a screen and there's AI without a screen. In all cases, it needs to have audio, right? But what AI needs mostly is it needs context. Okay. Okay. So you have to look at the input side and you have to look at the output side. so first let's talk about the input side the more context you give any kind of llm and i'm not saying they're the panacea there's going to be lots of models beyond uh llm so i want to make sure i'm very clear and i'm not the llm yeah yeah yeah it's we're going to get agi with it it's all bullshit okay i'm concerned so um you first start with the input and if we know everything and you've been hearing about over the year, two years, so fast here now, it's like we've been hearing about context windows.

2:55And context windows getting longer and longer and longer. And then now we're ragging all your data. And Gemini just announced yesterday that you can bring in all of your Gmail and all your Google Photos and G Drive. I know, I feel like I'm being reckless. I've connected everything to Anthropic already. It's like, yeah, search through my email, go for it. Right, exactly. And So the more context, the better. So there's one which is context about what you've done. Right. Okay. And that's, you know, and that makes it better. But then there's the context of what you're doing. Right. And knowing that really, really clearly.

3:30And so what you want and, you know, what your smartphone has is you want to know your, and just like advertising and all the other, you know, websites and social wanted before, it's no different. They wanted your location. They would love your audio all the time. They want your camera all the time. They want what you're typing, who you're nearby, what Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth things are there, and what other devices are around you, and even what time of day, what's the lighting, what's the weather, are you indoors, outdoors. Why is that? the more context you have in the moment, combined with what it knows about you and what's around you in the moment, you don't have to ask it when you make a query, whether that's a voice query or a text query or whatever the query might be.

4:23It knows it's like, oh, you're at this place at this time around these people with these resources, with this kind of weather. And when you ask a short question it's like bing as opposed to back in the siri days and the alexa days you had to tell it everything because it had no context so in this case the better the interface becomes the more historical context as well as real-time context it has to be able to so it's like we know what we're doing right now i can i can briefly say two words to you and you probably understand like oh look at that plant over there you know what i mean something like that that's what it needs to know to be able to give you much quicker answers like it's in the room but do you buy like do you think most humans will ultimately want some ai to have access to their current audio like do you think that is something that needs to be i think i think there's obviously use cases for that and also for video i don't see and all the other all the other sensor suites for sensor fusion out there to make it work so in certain context in certain applications you'll want to do that certain people be no way right you know people put the tape over their laptop cameras and everything else so it's just it's going to be an individual preference on what it is you know i remember the glass hole days of you know google glass we're like you're not recording me and now we're running with meta glasses right so it's all a social context awareness thing where you know it it's not just about when the technology is ready it's about when a particular segment of society is ready to adopt it i remember this from my general magic days when we were making the iphone 15 years too early you know nobody knew the problems we were solving because they didn't have those problems right but the idea of like a pin type device is that mostly would you buy is there a pin type device sure there's a pin type device there's also a pin type device now it's called plod but is that trying to solve the social problem of saying i'm recording like why can't the phone just do the recording we already have it with us okay so so first we were talking about the input i want to talk about the output right and then there's the form okay okay so let's talk about input now we'll talk about output then we'll talk about forms okay i know you want to talk about pins but let's talk about output yeah so there's really great times when you have and this is what you know i really experienced when i was working with google glass and these kinds of things output is really important in very contextual ways so if you're on the move you're going i see people out here walking into you know in new york walking into polls and stuff because they're sitting here looking at their thing or they're on their bike you know doing it or driving worst case so and they're all distracted from that and and a lot of times you just want audio and you want to have a much better audio interface right versus a display but the best way to represent visual information is visually right you know we've heard people trying to communicate okay, you know, I'm changing this schematic or whatever.

7:21And they say, I'm going to change this and this. And they're like, oh, and you just send them a drawing. They're like, oh, now I get it. Yeah. Right. So you have to understand the context you're in and what's the best way to represent that output. Okay. Is it visually? Is it audited? It could be like vibrations. It could be many different ways. And so when you start to break down the applications, you start to, and the environment you're in, Like, are you in your office? Are you in your home? Are you walking? Are you in a bus? Are you in a train? Are you in a plane? Whatever. And then you start to understand the applications and the ways of representing that output that makes sense in that given situation.

8:02For output, I understand like AirPods or earphones as an output device for AI. I guess part of why I was limited in the thing is like the pin and the pen format, I don't see what the output is. Like to me, they mostly exist as input devices. You hit the nail on that. You absolutely. And that was my next point, which is the form. Okay. And so what's going on with a pen, with a pin, with whatever. in the case of let's say it's a pen at open ai because that's i've heard the same thing and i know some people working on things like that there and they used to work for me it's a pen so and i also worked with johnny a long time for a decade right so i think i understand it and i probably think it's something like a pen but it can also be glasses and other things yeah but given johnny's predisposition for how he has to do something very different right so he's got to do that because he'll have some story around it's got to be a pen and maybe it'll be like the noto pen do you remember the noto pen the noto pen actually had a pad of paper and you could just it was like a digital pen you just write on paper and the noto would keep all of the right the things and it would then create a pdf of that thing that you could then you know do uh text to speech and stuff like that how ai is bringing us back to our humanity of course there's going to be this whole big flowery oh my god we're getting away from the phone and blah blah blah and all that diarrhea you so what really happens though is that the reason why it has it's it's a pen for a story okay but it doesn't have output right because at the end of the day the best form of output is the thing you already have with you which is your smartphone right okay it does the best visual output you're not going to carry yet another screen you might have a couple of leds or a very very tiny thing on whatever this other thing is for status or whatever right but it's not going to replace the phone it can't replace that's the the bullshit thing of humane we're going to kill the phone it was like that was the stupidest marketing message i've ever heard because you're not going to kill it so you have to be a companion to it just like airpods just like uh apple watches it's a companion to a phone right so the reason why it's in this form factor is because they need all the sensor suites why do they need the sensor suites because apple's not going to give them access to them on the phone so they just don't want to be disintermediated by apple they have to buy a whole new device no no they're saying you have to get the device because they need to get all the context right to get all the real-time input so they can feed it back to the servers to give you the because all the security of bluetooth security video security the dots all the gps coordinates when they when you have to ask apple for permission right and and the user permission for all those things you go oh my god they're hyper tracking us right as opposed to it's one network link whether it's a bluetooth or wi-fi thing you know it's most likely bluetooth to your device that then does goes back to the network it's one thing yeah i'm just connecting like my headphones right but it's got gps everything else in it right so it's just sucking up all your context and throwing away and getting rid of all those privacy concerns you see right so it makes it real simple and people go oh yeah it just does it and you don't understand right it's sucking everything it possibly can suck right to get back to open ai to get around all the restrictions if you're an ai true believer you want all the con you too sort of want it to have all the context you have if you're you if we start to have a relationship with our own chatbot where it's like, I really depend on you.

11:41I want you to know what I'm doing. You don't feel this impulse that it's sort of, the deficit is its lack of context on what I'm doing and that it would be, you don't feel that way. You're an early adopter. Right. But do you feel that way? Most of the world isn't. Right, right. Most of the world is like, what the fuck are you doing with my data? Right. Right. So am I, I'm, I am, I'm a late early adopter. Okay. I have learned how these products are made. I've watched this stuff. Right. I didn't adopt iQMane. I knew how bad it was because when I had the first meeting, when there were four people, I was like, this thing's going nowhere.

12:17The same thing happened with various other devices. I'm like, I don't have time for this crap. Same thing happened with Rabbit. I was like, what is this thing? Right. I met with Jesse. I'm like, nah. So the issue is you want to be a late enough early adopter, not so crazy that you're just wasting your time. So I'm on that side. And then I also look at all the data stuff because I'm also pretty wise and I know how this data stuff is used. And I'm in between. You know, you just said you have your first child, a daughter, right? It's your first child. Yes. Three and a half months. Congratulations.

12:55Thank you. I remember a marked way difference in the way I thought about the world before I had kids and after I had kids. And most of these founders, that was including Larry and Sergey and Mark Zuckerberg, all those guys, think about the world before they had kids, before they were married in a very different way. I want everything all the time. I'll give away all my privacy. I don't care what happens with all this data. As soon as you have kids and you start hearing about defects and you start hearing about social engineering and you start hearing about all this other stuff, you start changing your view on how much data you want sucked up.

13:31Right. Okay. and how you're being protected. And there's a very, and I know for a fact, because I worked with these guys, some of these founders, that they think about the world differently and they wish they would have made some different moves and different decisions early on and would like to go back, but they can't. So I'm just saying, going back on your data thing, it's very different. It depends on who you are. I'm still on that journey. For my daughter, we have Tiny Beans, which is like a private app just for our family. So I can see you start using products. in terms okay so if the pen is really an end run around the control of the iphone why would apple need a pin like they they have the iphone how does that story oh because you might be on the device using it it might be also a lot of times you don't want to have the device there in the middle because you're saying like it's it can also be ambient all the time because your thing's going to be in your pocket so there is there are some like the form of having this other thing that if you choose to wanted to watch it because we've watched these life recorders before you know 10 years ago there's these life recorders this is just another form of that's how it gets positioned it's like don't forget any moment yeah you know plod's doing that now with their their voice one and this one i actually don't know that one plod's out of the uk and it's it's you know granola yeah yeah of course it's basically granola but as a wearable are you an investor or in no i'm not No, okay.

14:57You just brought it up. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not an investor. Do you buy that Apple's working on a pin? I'm sure. I hope to God they're working on something. Right. You know. Right. They need to be working on a little bit. But knowing their chip, their chip expertise, Johnny Saruji and the team, they're incredibly awesome. Right. Knowing the mechanicals, knowing that they've made the watch. Right. Right. And they're making, you know, the tracker, all the other stuff. What's the tracker, sorry? You know, the Apple AirTag. Oh, yeah, yeah. They have AirTag. They have all this really, really miniature custom silicon and all the AirPod custom silicon.

15:37They can make one of these things really easy compared to anybody else because they have all the expertise to make. An incredible piece of hardware. They have to get the software right, but the hardware, the connectivity, they have their own network stack. They could make an awesome one because they have all the camera technology, too. So either it's going to be something you sit on the desk or you wear and you sit on the desk or whatever. It's like, duh. It's like, or you build it into your AirPods Pro. Like imagine cameras coming out of your AirPods. You're using could. Or it's like, how much do you expect Apple to deliver, I guess?

16:11You know, you're talking to somebody, I'm deep in the Apple ecosystem, my laptop, AirPods, watch, phone. But then I think I bought the phone that was sold on AI. And it's one of the most egregious misleads, perhaps, in ever marketing a product ever. When I saw AI first laptop, AI first phone, I was ready to tweet something that was like really, really nasty. And I pulled back because I'm like, you know, Apple has never done marketing bullshit before. And I saw that was complete bullshit. Right. You know, and I was like, I was holding back. So, you know, hopefully they're finding new religion and going back to the old real smart days, which is under-promised and over-deliver.

16:52What do you think they can do well right now and what do you think is holding them back? What can they do well right now? Oh, chips, low-level software, devices. It's really, really, you know, Apple Vision Pro is an abject failure. But it's an incredible technical marvel from a technology point of view. So they can make great stuff. It's do they have the product chops like they used to to be able to create the full stack, create the incredible user experience and deliver all those pieces, the puzzle in the middle necessary to pull it all together. And that's the thing that, you know, has been really important for the reason why Apple is where it is today.

17:36To what extent do you think just the underlying capability of AI is holding Apple back, right? For a great user experience, you want sort of the 100 % case. A lot of people talk about some of the ChatGPT capabilities. It's almost like the self-driving 90%. It can do most of what you want, but then the more you drill into a problem, the more you start hitting problems. And so if you're trying to set up these consumer loops where it's like every time I step into my house, you do this, and the AI gets it right 90 % of the time, can Apple be expected to deliver that consumer experience that people want?

18:11Well, the very first thing to understand is LLMs have fundamental problems. Right. They have fundamental problems in the way they're created, and that's why they hallucinate. And unless they're de-scoped and they're really trained on very, very contextually specific information like medical or legal or general consumer stuff, instead of these incredibly huge models that can hallucinate because they don't know whether you're talking medical, legal, whatever, it tries to be a know-it-all. You would never hire a know-it-all in the real world. We can't stand know-it-alls. Right. I admit what I don't know.

18:46Right. And Chachapiti never seems to. It always gives you an answer. And it doesn't know whether it's right or wrong. And so, you know, we're invested in various companies in the medical domain like Nabla and other things that have very, very specific context and very, very specific guardrails for what they will do and what they will answer. And they will not answer stuff. It's when you're trying to make these general purpose ones, that's when it's a problem. So getting back to the LLM specifically, if Apple has very, very specific models for consumers in certain contexts, it can work really well.

19:23It's when you apply these very, very broad models and you don't know what's going to come out, then that is where the problem is. There's still models and other things beyond LLMs, even highly contextually constrained LLMs, trained LLMs that are coming, that are going to get around a lot of those things. But right now, everybody's blah, blah, blah. LLMs, AGI, bigger and bigger models, which I think is bullshit. What's coming? Well, there's world models coming. Right. So world models combined with LLMs. So that's understanding physics, understanding chemistry, all this stuff that we know because there are real rules, mathematics.

19:59around those things you know today chet gpt can't even draw a face of a clock right or understand what a clock says because it doesn't graphically think it's easy for us for a graphical clock not a digital one and so it's like though that a world model would go oh that's a graphic i'm going to use this model you know this is how it works you would build that stuff we'll give these models tools where it says for this question you you go off to this software or this technique to solve so much. Yeah, absolutely. And then the language model is good for what the language model is good for, as opposed to trying to think it reasons about chemistry, because it doesn't have a real basic chemistry model.

20:38When we started this conversation, I think you were saying, you know, audio and voice is sort of at the core of what AI wants to consume. Where, or maybe, is that fair? Or, I mean, clearly listening to everything we're doing is part of what these devices we've talked about. Where do you think about sort of the AirPods and earbuds in terms of the AI device story? Well, you know, there's edge devices, which are AirPods and, you know, and phones and these kinds of things. I think of the edge of the edge first. Okay. So the edge of the edge is the very, very fringe of like are you speaking a word how do i do noise cancellation how do i do speaker focusing those kinds of things okay there is ai that can do that stuff really well your ear does that you do that you turn your head you focus in so we can apply ai into each of these at the edge of the edge devices to do much better intelligence to help us be able to filter out noise from right Right.

21:42To do the device's core task. The very basic task of separating signal from noise, whether that's visually or auditorily or other things of that nature. So we need to get there. So that's the first level of AI applied. Then there's the AI above that, which is labeling, interpretation, those kinds of things. And that can be done on device in some cases or be done with the companion, which would most likely be your smartphone. own so that's another set of ai then there's another one on top of that which is like okay what's the reasoning let's make let's get the context and then figure out what's going on so there's all these levels yeah and we need to break down the ai and levels just like your brain has many different different uh you know uh centers in your brain to do this this this this this you're going to start seeing ai becoming much more diverse and not just one big thing and we're seeing that with self-driving cars already right i know we're all over the map no i know i love it the ai wave creates uh this broken thinking because you have companies that have they want to justify valuation so they need to sell something right and they have the story which is ai and so in some ways i'm complicit in what they're doing which is like think from the need for an ai device out rather than like some human problem and then sort of build the device correct up and that's why this conversation ends up being chaotic because we're shifting between from the technology to the use right technology it's like we're in search of a but but don't you think there is this moment to sell the consumer on a new device they've heard about this technology they're they're sort of open to adopt a new sort of way of behaving and so people are searching for what what what device can we get deliver them in this moment to me these devices a pin a pen or whatever are enablers right they're not a solution right and where we were going was i was saying that we need more context specific llm drug so that consumers can get a reliable experience without hallucinations what that means is you have to come up with the applications and constrain the application to better understand what it is you want it's not just a know-it-all that's going to go and try everything so when we when you switch into certain applications you want that because why at the end of the day we're not where we want to be it's not we're not at her yet everybody wants her you know right the the thing but we don't have the technology yet so we have to creep into it right which means application more application specific context specific llms for given workflows right and not just it's a general anything right device okay And so we're going to see much.

24:30It's like kind of Web 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0. We've had to make these leaps because we have to have the technology to move along with it. We had Siri many years ago. We've had Alexa. Do you think we're still far away from the sort of voice communicated personal assistant that people talk to to engage with a computer? Yes, because why? What I see is you're going to have your federation of your devices. That's going to be everything for your laptop, your TV, your game machine, all the things you carry on you, watches, whatever it is. You're going to have that. Then you're going to have a smart agent in the background really understanding which device you're on, which users you're on, and all the data and all the context, and then be able to switch how it's working based on those things.

25:16Today, what we're saying is put everything on a device and it's going to work or put all the sensors here and put all of the smarts in the cloud and everything else is just dumb in between. We're going to build into this much more multiple AI world where edge of the edge, the edge devices, the federation of edge devices and the cloud all work together to produce the her application we're here. that we would love to have, but we're just not going to get there today from what everyone's telling you. Just because of the capability of LLMs? Yeah, because we're just not, we don't have the world models.

25:53We don't have the sensors. When you look at these humanoid robots, everyone's like, oh, they do flips and tricks and everything. Great, we can do that, but we don't have the necessary sensing and actuation necessary to be able to get the data to be able to, right? And they need world models to do anything Anything like a humanoid stuff that people are hoping it'll do. Remember, self-driving cars came out in the late 2008. Right. We're just there now. Right. No, it's great. Right? And we've spent billions and billions and we're now getting, and it's just getting rolled out. And there's still$300 ,000 cars with massive sensors and compute.

26:33And those are massive edge devices plus a whole set of coordination in the cloud. Right. So that's what we need to do. And we need to do it at a very cheap level and battery efficient level. Right. And it's going to take time to get there. Right. What is the state of the smart home today? Or what? Okay. I know you were talking the big device questions here. Like, it fits into this AI conversation. But like, what is your read on just the success or failure of building, you know, smart home devices? Okay. I'm going to build a remodel of a big new smart home thing for myself. So I'm tracking the very latest.

27:15And now I'm not in it like I used to be. Does that include custom devices or you're just sourcing the best stuff that exists? Well, I'd say that there's the best of what exists from the device side. But then there's custom ways of putting it all together. It's like what we just talked about, the self-driving car thing. You have to, and when I'm designing this thing, I have to think about the devices, the low level network, the application level network, what's in the server, what's in the cloud. Like, and it's still very, very difficult if you want to pull off what, again, the smart home, the Jetson smart home that we all think about.

27:49Is that what you're trying to get? Yeah, and I just know better. Like, I'm like, okay, I'm going to wire everything and make sure I have thread border routers in the necessary places and everything else. What are the main things you want the house to be able to do? Oh, right now, it's just the simplest things. like i have a you know i'm the the in in in this case i have a um a self-playing piano okay right so i'm i'm i'm pumping midi into it okay so i pump midi and i put songs from the net or from locally it midi into it to then it self-plays and then it has it's mic'd and the mics are then a to deed into a dante audio network which then distributes all the way through the entire house or whatever zones I want through Dante into all of these Dante-amplified speakers around the house and the Sonos can pump in.

28:40And so I can have a player piano. Right. And the keys are pressing. The keys are pressing. So it's an analog piano getting digitally recorded and streamed all through the house. And sorry, what's pressing the key? Is it like an old, it's not an old school player piano or it is? No, no, no. It's a modern, it's a modern regular grand piano. Right. But it has actuators on it. Oh, okay. And it plays the songs just as, because they record it from a professional. Yeah. So it's like you have a concert pianist with you. Wow, interesting. And then you're micing it, and then you're amplifying it and playing it throughout the house.

29:17So it feels like you have a concert pianist in the house at all times. Have you executed on that yet, or is this still a dream? Oh, no. It's in the mix, and it can work. Yeah. It absolutely can work. Okay. But then there's all the switching to make the Sonos move from one thing to another. And how do you, in which zones did the player piano go to? Right. And are you like a speaker head? Like, do you have this sort of fancy old school speakers or you're using like Sonos? Well, no, I'm using Sonos ports to get the two amplified speakers for certain either in ceiling speakers without, you don't see the grills.

29:52you see in some cases i don't like them but there's some cases in certain wet locations you need the grills and other things where it's el acoustics like dolby atmos right okay yeah you know whole thing right and you have to worry about all those levels of networks to make all that stuff work right you know got avc you got ac there's so many different things like i have um plus i also have full lighting so there's a dmx lighting control like you do on stages um there's also uh the midi over ethernet and everything runs over ethernet so it's midi over ethernet uh uh lighting control over ethernet dante over ethernet uh lighting control over ethernet right right so it's it's a full-on you know next generation system anything else your smart home well it's gonna have thread of course because we did we what is threads so thread we had basically invented it at next and now thread is the bluetooth equipment uh equivalent for mesh networking for entire house so it mesh networks an entire house for low speed data and control very very low latency so you can do light switches light bulbs you know sensors everything else that can be battery operated for 10 years that kind of thing and it's very resilient so do you do anything like mechanical like i don't know are there meals being made in automated There's mechanical lighting and TVs that pop out.

31:19Things, lights drop down. Robo lights that move. Yeah, that's the most of the mechanical. Except mechanical locks and, you know, and, you know, and NFC based door locks, that kind of stuff. And what do you use for the actual like voice communication with your house? That is to be determined. it's a bake-off or what do you mean well nothing's ready yet right right so you have to next generation alexa is not there yet right so it's it's set up that's the next layer on top of all of this infrastructure the next layer is on top of that and that's tbd but are you typing it what's what's going to happen you have to make a decision right no i don't why because well you're gonna have to talk to it what are you going to use when is this house supposed to be ready to go what are you going to use you use buttons just like cars are coming from screens you're not using voice right now you're not ready to use voice no it's because it's fucking bullshit so you just have like modules like i don't feel like having everyone scream at me and you know turn on the lights you don't have any of that you know look this is the other thing i learned from smart home right okay is that most people who design the smart home design it for themselves It's like for single guys.

32:37I want one button that does this and one button that does this. And then when you have kids or you have friends over or you have a wife or partner with you. And they're like, I don't want that button. I want this button. Everyone has their own one button interface. So you have to design and understand just like anything. It's not just you. You have to design this whole world when it's a shared space. versus your own AI, you know, her space. It's a very different thing. I mean, one of the things that's amazing about the devices you guys produced at Apple, obviously they were expensive, but they're fundamentally mass market.

33:17You know, it feels like the billionaire phone is the phone that sort of the middle class American is able to afford. I mean, the portrait you're painting is not that, you know, where it's like with the home. And that's sort of like old school electronics. Oh, my stuff's really crazy, but you can make a much easier version. Think about like sort of getting the home to that. Because on some level, it's what you want too, which is a device that's made that sort of works, that solves some of these problems without the sort of having to cobble. I want less screens in my home. I don't want more screens.

33:48I hate screens. Right. Frankly, I hate screens. I don't want them in the home. Why hasn't the home had that sort of like mass market, amazing electronic work yet? Oh, because we're still in the days of like, you know, remember, Wi-Fi didn't even exist until 2001, too, right? We thread just finally got, even though it started in 2011, it's just now there. We're still building all the base layers and linking everything. And then, and we're now going to get the LLMs and voice recognition, all that stuff, to then put it all together. But it's still on the verge, just like the self-driving car was when?

34:28that smart home like that is you got to give it another i think five to six years for what we think of when you think smart home you want it to be i think it's going to be there just set up your home to make sure it what what company do you think is best positioned i have no idea it's five six years no because the thing that i learned at nest was all these sensors and smart plugs and all that other stuff there's no money in it there's absolutely no money in that stuff that's why you go online and you know and that's why there's you know um because people are only willing to buy like 20 more expensive yeah because they're like i have a switch in my wall why do i need anything else and any crazy guy like me doing this other thing it's just not a big enough market it's not a big enough market so nobody wants to play in that space and so ikea is finally you know to tell you the truth because they're using thread and they're using matter and that kind of stuff So IKEA is starting, but it's just starting.

35:23It's all nascent. So I think that the ones that are going to be successful are the ones who are going to finally deliver the Nest vision that we really had. But it's still, you know, if I was, I would be rebuilding Nest right now, you know, and because in three to four years, you can be there to get what we've been talking about that we had the vision for in 2010, 11. and you're obviously investing right now with it do you still have the entrepreneur bug like do you think you have another great company in you oh i have over a hundred great companies in me right now i i we you know i've invest directly in many many things and i invest indirectly in many things so i have over 100 companies now 100 and something companies where i'm working with them every day like today i was working with a company and helping them with apple i'm a shadow ceo at a couple of companies.

36:14I'm doing product design at companies. So I get to do this in many different domains. What's it mean to be a shadow CEO? So there's the CEO and then he's like, please help me. So I get to be behind. I'm like, would you think about it this way? Operations, head count, how should we do funding, product design. And so I have various roles like that where they please help. And so I do, and I go in and I get to. A couple of companies are spending the most time on right now uh i'm spending a lot of time with orionis biosciences um they are doing ai drug discovery and we have drugs in uh fda phase two clinical where they're actually working um and helping with the with that so i'm spending a lot of time i'm not a shadow ceo there but i'm i'm on the board and happening out i'm um i'm at menlo micro okay menlo micro um is a um a mem switch so we have transistors and we have relays mem switch sits in the middle and it's an incredible new technology that we've been working on for 10 years they've been working on for almost 40 years to power a identity data centers and robots and all these other things um it's a absolutely phenomenal thing and helping with the business development the product plans the the strategy the financing that kind of stuff yeah um let's see what else am i working with uh i'm doing i was just doing some vr work this morning oh really yeah are you a believer in vr i believe in i believe i fucked the metaverse i believe in vr for episodic b2b and some gaming um um But episodic, so you're not living in it like, you know, some people are saying you're going to live in it.