Intel Lays Off 15% of Workers, Trump's $550B Japan Investment, Hulk Hogan's Legacy | Live TBPN Taste Test with Saif Khawaja

28:34Although Hiro Onodo, I don't know if this is he's using he's using they. So it seems like he's not in Japan currently. Says it's greater than 10 percent of their GDP. They exported$150 billion to the U.S. And assuming they just bore the extra cost of 15 % extra, even that's$20 billion a year. So that is a huge, huge commitment. But I mean, I guess if they have a big balance sheet, like it makes sense to put it to work somewhere. Howard Lutnick said, this is literally the Japanese government giving Trump$550 billion and says, go fix whatever you need to fix. I love it. One admin official gave a hypothetical example of how Japanese money could be deployed.

29:14the US could fund construction of a semiconductor facility for say Intel, then lease it to Intel and keep 90 % of the leasing revenue. Well, if you're looking to fix your code review process, get on graphite.dev. Code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. Anyway, let's continue with this. If the fund materializes as Trump envisions a significant question, it would give an American president unprecedented power to steer money into the projects of his choosing. potentially with some significant impacts on particular industries. This is interesting because I feel like this story just broke and the re-industrialized crew isn't necessarily talking about it yet, but this feels extremely aligned with the whole re-industrialized movement, the idea of more U.S.

30:01dollars. We saw this with the AI summit and the AI action plan. There's a lot of talks about positioning, but there wasn't that much actual new legislation or new funding that could specifically move a particular project forward, which I think would be more exciting to be like, okay, like, you know, we're building a bridge. We're building a dam. We're building a nuclear reactor. We're building something. Like the U.S. government hasn't really been in build mode for a long time, it feels like. Everything's kind of stalled. And some of that's good because it's handled by the private sector. We had the founder of Bright AI on yesterday who scaled to a$100 million run rate or bootstrapped to$100 million run rate and then recently raised from Coastal.

30:45He was saying a lot of U.S. infrastructure was built during the World War II era with a 20-year, expected 20-year lifespan and obviously is still what we're relying on today. Well, speaking of the re-industrialized crew, they sent us this wonderful clock from Shinola, a Detroit-based company. Clocks are incredibly underrated. Yeah, clocks are fantastic. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Aaron. Very frustrated that we couldn't make it to re-industrialize. Seemed like an awesome time with all the absolute boys out there having a good time. I think we will have our remote workflow worked out and studio stuff worked out so that we can travel more in the near future.

31:27But it was fun having so many of the folks call in from re-industrialize, give us the updates from the ground and excited to do more of that. So who is this? Christina Davis, Harvard University professor of Japanese politics who directs its program on U.S.-Japan relations, said where this one deviates is the step toward investing at the president's direction with the profits going to the U.S. It makes it sound coercive, socialist and unprecedented in any sense of past trade negotiations. Now, the U.S. has a mixed bag. In any ways it makes sense that the president would be the chief capital allocator, the chief GP.

32:07Yes, yes, yes. Commander in chief, GP in chief. Yeah. What's weird is that we've talked a lot about how when the U.S. government tries to pick a winner, it often doesn't go very well. The famous example, at least from Zero to One, Peter Thiel's book is Solyndra. Are you familiar with this? So Solyndra was a clean energy startup. Oh, yes. that was a cylinder, like instead of just a flat photovoltaic panel, I believe it was like a cylinder, and the idea was like clean energy, and they got this massive grant from the Obama administration, and the company went bankrupt, and it was a big mark on this idea of the government like picking winners and backing companies.

32:50And in Zero to One, Teal kind of outlines this idea that like from first principles you could tell that just mathematically a circle didn't fill as much space as a square. And so you should have gone with the square solar panel. And so the business model was kind of flawed from day one. And you could have figured that out if you'd just done the basic math of how energy dense is a circle versus a square. If you're packing them in, pack a bunch of circles in, there's going to be a bunch of extra space. I think that's basically what happened. Maybe I'm collapsing it a little bit. But I'm not a huge fan of the government picking winners.

33:29I like the Tesla model a little bit more where there was just this EV tax credit and anyone could have gone after it. And then Tesla just dominated it and won it. Well, even in China, China effectively encourages massive competition and then kind of waits for there to be a breakout winner. And that creates a talent vortex. And then the state is effectively starting to really back it in a meaningful way. Yeah, it's very controversial to say. pick the winner. Exactly. It's somehow more capitalist. And that's what this Harvard professor is kind of taking shots at, saying it's pretty socialist to be picking winners.

34:11And in a weird world, China's policies tend to be more capitalist in some ways. They are doing a lot of investing in technologies and putting government and, I guess, taxpayer funds into to strategic technologies and subsidizing whole industries. Like their chip manufacturing, their supply chain for semiconductors has been lagging. For like 50 years, they've been not competitive. But the Chinese government has just been like, well, there's still an incentive to make semiconductors here. There's still an incentive to make semiconductors here. Who's going to do it? Who's going to do it? And it's one company, and then it's SMIC, and then it's SME, and then Huawei's getting stuff.

34:49And it should be the same thing with electric cars in America. Tesla got a benefit. Rivian also got a benefit. Lucid got a benefit. And even when BMW went over into electric cars, they got a benefit. And now those benefits are pulling back. And we can go into what's happening with Tesla stock. Well, to put the$550 billion number in some context, American tourists spent just under$6 billion in tourism in Japan last year. So they'll learn it back in 100 years. 100 years of tourism and they get it back. But no, I mean, the thing is that this is not them giving us the money. Like they should earn a return.

35:29I would be surprised if these infrastructure investments don't pay off. It's going to be hard to beat the market if you're getting 10 % of the upside. I mean, if you collapse it down, you know, you're basically treating Trump as a solo GP. And you have to look at his historical IRR. And he's gone bankrupt a few times. But I think overall, he's not just zeroing everything, right? Some of the stuff's ripping. I bet on average, he's preserving capital, if not returning multiples of it. And so you think about a scale of, okay, there's going to be a new semiconductor plant in Arizona. And Japan's going to come in and underwrite$100 billion of development and some massive, probably debt deal or something.

36:19and they're going to earn some sort of return, the chance that they don't get anything back is pretty low, I think. I don't think this is money going into a pit and burning. I'm a little worried. I mean, the example was the money goes into, let's say, a semiconductor manufacturing facility, and then Intel would pay the U.S. government to lease it, and the U.S. government would keep 90 % of that. it's going to be hard to, you will be losing money if you factor in inflation. Maybe. I mean, the way I see a deal happening is I'm going to go, I need$100 billion to go build a bunch of nuclear power plants.

37:05I go to Trump or the US government and say, I need$100 billion. And they're like, great, take$20 billion in equity, take$80 billion in debt. and then there's an interest rate, a coupon rate attached to that debt and then the equity has some sort of value and hopefully the plan works out so that there's a multiple return on the equity and there's an interest rate and you blend the IRRs and you're getting to, I don't know, five, 10 % across everything and then yes, the US is taking 90 % of that but you are still preserving your capital. The idea that it's instantly a zero is probably, hopefully, avoidable, right?

37:46It could be if they did another Solyndra. They'd have to do a lot of deals, but if they have a portfolio, you would assume that the portfolio broadly does okay. It's possible that Eshiba, the president of the prime minister of Japan, is just so AGI-pilled, and is such a firm believer that America is going to win the AI race that he just says, yep, take it, Mr. Trump. You got it from here. Yeah. I mean, it could be seen as a, like, are you comping it against buying treasuries? Because that's just a way to like index to the dollar. If your currency is in decline, like at least at the end of that term, you've got 3%, 5 % continuously.

38:26That would be really funny if Trump just takes the$550 billion of 5T bills. To lower the rate, to bring down the yield curve. Just wants to bring down, he's just obsessed with the yield curve. Market buying T-bells and taking 90 % of the yield. Anyways, lots of fun. Asset management is the greatest business. AUM Maxing. He's AUM Maxing. Jeremy Giffon called it. Let's keep going with this. Okay, you want more? Yeah, there's a little more in here that I want to go through. So the plan has raised more questions than answers on Wall Street and beyond. Details remain unclear, including whether Japan will have any discretion over projects and the time period during which the investments will be made.

39:03Haggerty said the investment will be overseen by two Japanese backed administrators Japan Bank and Nippon Export. One administration official said the funds would likely arrive only as needed so you make capital calls when you need to. As you know these deals have been agreed in principle but they have not been fully papered yet. In selecting investments this is where it gets interesting Trump would have help from the Commerce Department's US Investment Accelerator headed by former Morgan Stanley investment banker Michael Grimes and Polytechnic alum. I went to the same school as this guy, absolute beast.

39:38He took Facebook public. He has a massive row. He's like the king maker. The deal toy final boss. Deal toy final boss. You walk into his office and it's just, there's no room to put down a coffee because there's just a deal toy on every single surface. It's insane. Absolute beast. The dream. One of the greatest to ever do it. His team will help identify investments and make sure the funds are used properly and expeditiously people with familiar with the matter said the size of the commitment dwarfs most investment funds it's more than twice the size of japan's gross foreign direct investment in the u.s last year and so we can't really evaluate the agreement because it's so vague at this stage there's a lot of vague deals happening right now the ai action plan is kind of in that territory now but you know we still are only six months into this administration maybe all of this crystallizes.

40:27And then they comp it to Stargate, which was unveiled at the White House in January, involved a commitment from OpenAI. This has apparently already been scaled back, unclear exactly what that means. And so there was also an EO from Trump in February directing his team to develop a plan for an establishment of a sovereign wealth fund within 90 days. This is the start of that. So anyway, get on numeralhq.com, sales tax on autopilots, spend less than five minutes per month on sales tax compliance. Let's go to Avalanche Energy. We got to ring the gong. Avalanche was awarded a$10 million grant from Washington, the state to develop Fusion Works Neutron Factory.

41:08This marks small scale fusions evolution from a laboratory curiosity into a neutron source that creates real world value. From Robin Langtree, the CEO of Avalanche. We've had a show, great guy. I've toured his facility with Ben up in Washington. We had a a lot of fun, extremely hard project, small scale fusion. Fusion is still not fully commercialized. Small scale fusion is in some ways easier because you're making something smaller, but also still untested, lots of work to be done, but great to see that they have more money to develop more technology. So congrats to the team over there. A lot to see Washington state putting.

41:47They've been really, yeah, it feels like Washington's been kind of under the radar as being like very hard tech friendly. Like he's had a pretty, like he set up a whole facility over there by the SeaTac airport and seems to be able to do stuff. Although he's not working with radiation because he's not doing fission. He's doing fusion. And so his, his like power sources are like, he needs like hydrogen or something or, you know, it's like, it's like pretty inert gases that aren't that big of a deal. He should, he should talk to Trevor from Nikola's brother. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The head of, head of hydrogen.

42:22in yeah i mean you want to be taking taking advantage of those 80 energy gains for sure yeah they're making it for 80 less yeah yeah anyone else in the known universe um anyway fin.ai the number one ai agent for customer service number one in performance benchmarks number one in competitive bake-offs number one ranking on g2 say it again don't get in a bake-off with an ai don't do it if you if you enjoy winning don't do it anyway uh great post here from antonio Garcia Martinez. He's coming on the show next week, by the way. The 80s were the apex of American civilization. And today is a sad day.

42:57His memory will be a blessing. Yes, we mentioned Hulk Hogan. Let's play this video. Yeah, pull up that video and I will read from the Wall Street Journal. Hulk Hogan is gone, but still everywhere. He may not have been a traditional athlete, but the late pro wrestlers influence in sports and the culture at large was pervasive. so um i'm not sure where to put this is from jason gay in the sports section of the wall street journal jason says i'm not sure where to put hulk hogan in the history of sports or whether to put him in there at all hogan who died thursday at age 71 could pull off exceptional athletic feats with his massive sculpted six foot eight body we were we got some misinformation yesterday where We were quoting him at six foot seven.

43:45Six seven. Seems like he's my height exactly. Still, a professional wrestler's trade is, spoiler alert, entertainment, not pure competition. And yet it's impossible not to recognize wrestling's evolution from regional circus to widespread cultural force. It is crazy that pro wrestling started as just like a traveling circus. Like just a bunch of dudes coming into town and being like, you want to see us fight? It's so funny. Today, this is an accepted, well-trodden observation. Sports, politics, and daily life are closer atmospherically to the wrestling ring than ever before. This is the idea of kayfabe in politics, the idea of people being in on the joke.

44:28They know that people are just saying things to rile up the other side. They're entertaining. We see this in journalism and media. We see it in tech. We see it all over the place. And Jason here in the Wall Street Journal is drawing more analogies from that. We become a nation of noisy confrontationalists. The skillful soft touch replaced by the swing of the folding chair. Reason is routinely drowned out by the loudest voices in the room. Wrestling strips life's complications down to primal conflicts. And few wrestlers embody this approach as famously and forebodingly as Hulk Hogan. I'm not a wrestling obsessive.

45:07I've been a couple times. That's it. I still need to look up the correct spelling for Bruno Sammartino. But I know enough to know Hogan, born Terry Bollea, was a transformative figure, one of the most larger-than-life characters in a larger-than-life universe. And I think we have the video ready to pull up. It's not a video. Oh, it's not. It's just an image. I think it's just a picture. It's just a picture from AGM. Well, we did play the Hulk Hogan calling out someone else, I forget, in one of those pre-show reels on the last show. So you can go check that out if you want. Anyway, he says, a true brand name, Hogan over time refashioned himself as a heel to hero to heel and everything in between.

45:53So we went back and forth. I think the actual wrestling term is a face. A face is someone that everyone loves. A heel is someone that everyone cheers to lose. But they both play the role. And there's a lot of interesting like fourth wall breaking, all sorts of stuff going on. He had too many comebacks, collapses, and professional detours to count. At one point he went and did movies and he came back and everyone was saying, he's Hollywood Hogan. He's gone to Hollywood. He's sold out. He doesn't represent us. And so that was like a whole character that he played up. Hollywood Hogan. and he's too good for the mainstream wrestling fan.

46:28And everyone loved that. There we go. We got some video of Hogan running around with an American flag. You love to see it. We found him waving a flag. Over time, his character seemed to merge with Terry. Terry Bollea, the human, and Hulk just became the same person. I was talking to Rob about this. This is an idea just generally in media about, like, you play this character when you're on camera, but you want to be authentic, but you don't want the attacks on your character to ruin your personal life. You don't want to lose yourself in the sauce. It's all very complicated and modern. It's very, very bizarre.

47:10um celebrate uh celebritized and repeatedly scandalized swapping places as poster boy and pariah fired for getting caught on tape using racist slurs a strange protagonist at a media crusade and even a convention speaker yeah he spoke at the most recent rnc convention where he ripped off his shirt in uh in support of donald trump uh he was controversial and omnipresent through the end he exploded on the scene in the early 1980s a lot of people's first exposure when they came when they when uh came when he appeared in the ring as thunder lips the ultimate male against rocky balboa in rocky 3 tossing rock like a rag doll as a horrified mickey and adrian recoiled going to hollywood cost belaya his job in the then wwf they didn't want him to do it but Hulkamania only grew and he returned.

48:05The fever reached the point he landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated in April of 1985. Biceps flexed, hands clawed, a fictional barbarian at the gate. Traditionalists... Pull up this post from Luke Metro. Oh yeah. Traditionalists howled, pro wrestling wasn't real sports. How could the Hulkster enter the same cathedral as Koufax, Ali, and Abdul-Jabbar? I admit to harboring the same feelings when I see pro wrestling events treated seriously by major sports outlets. Why are we doing this? Why? Yet wrestling's reach is indisputable, and Hogan's timing in its ascension was impeccable. He hitched his career to its leap from localized products to global force, a handsome blonde agent of Vince McMahon's aggressive growth strategy, and a media ecosystem that cultivated better than most.

48:56Hulk understood a very old-fashioned wrestling concept. To be seen, it's better to be outrageous. To be heard, you need to be loud. If it earns you love, great. But even if you are hated, you are still noticed. Great lesson there. So what did Luke Metro say? He says, you watch the earth, I'll watch the sky, brother. What a great post. Of course, referencing the Gawker takedown where these two, Yeah, linked in such an odd way, such different characters, and yet linked both in the support of Donald Trump at various points on the conservative politics world, and also with a mutual distaste for Gawker and their salacious reporting.

49:43It's absolutely insane. This kind of intentional performance, what wrestlers call a work, is routine in sports. What's common is the athlete who arrives on the scene and makes noise to get attention, make a name and make money. It's pervasive in every profession now. The media used to be a necessary partner, but now the digital tools exist to do it on one's own. Influencers, business antagonists, media flamethrowers, and the performative fray of social media, the exhausting, not very real reality programming on television. There's a bit of wrestling in all of it. I'm not sure the tools exist. How much do you think the combined entity that includes WWE and UFC is worth in the public markets today?

50:27I would say like$4 billion. Close. How much? $33 billion. Well, not close at all, dude. I was not playing over the magnitude. Wow. Yeah. That's a beast. Yeah. It also includes IMG, the sports talent management. Isn't that a modeling agency too? I think they have a modeling division, but it's primarily sports talent. They also own PBR, the premier bull riding. We got to get a TBPN bull riding athlete. I'm a huge JB Monty fan, one of the greatest to ever do it. He's one of the most legendary bull riders. I know all about him. Recently injured, very sad, but the bull that retired him by breaking his back, he now owns and affectionately takes care for, and they are now friends.

51:13Beautiful story. I'm not sure the tools exist to turn the clock back the appetite exists for relief but I don't know if there's room anymore for subtlety context or even expertise the algorithms reward volume and so does the culture the rest of us are caught in the noise Hulk Hogan has departed but he remains among us what a wonderful obituary tell me about UFC it is incredible that so many it says something about the character that Terry played in Hulk Hogan that he could have these glowing obituaries despite having so many sort of terrible moments when that he made some terrible comments on recording at one point and still to get this.

52:05Again, referencing what I said earlier, it's like who is the man? Is it Terry? Is it Hulk Hogan? Are they the same thing? I watched a hilarious interview with him in maybe GQ or something where they go in his house, they see his supplement stack, and he said that during this time when he was fighting, this is insane, he would, he was like, what was, they were like, what was your diet? What were you on? He was like, well, I'd wake up and I'd have a beer and two Tylenols. And then like after the fight, I'd have six beers and two more Tylenols, Something like that. And I remember you asked me one day, you were like, oh, I got like aches.

52:45I'm not feeling well. And I was like, you got to take Tylenol. And you were, and you were. Why didn't you recommend beer? I should have recommended beer. But I remember you, I remember you asked me like, okay, John, like, I know you're like really like nerdy about all this stuff. Like you probably have some like really solid rationale for like why Tylenol is like the correct painkiller to take. And my entire rationale was just like, it was good enough for Hulk Hogan. But in this, in this video, they're asking him all these questions and they're doing the rapid fire questions. And they ask him like, Hulk Hogan, if you could fight anyone alive or dead, who would you fight?

53:16And he just says, Bill Clinton. It's like, I have no idea what he's thinking. And they just move on to the next one. It's like, why is he? He holds some grudge, I assume for political reasons or something. But it was just a wild thing to say. Very entertaining. But on the note of entertainment, I want your reaction to this specific. That seems a little more tan than you'd want to go for. This is a little too tan. I think that's probably the camera adding some color correction or something. It seems like the exposure on the camera was a little low that day, but he is very tan. Because here, look at this picture in the Wall Street Journal.

53:50It's the same photo, and it's a much more normal tan. But he is very, I don't know if he's Italian, but he is very tan. So I want you to explain to me about how this relates to UFC. In this article, they say, Common is the athlete who arrives on the scene and makes noise to get attention, make a name and make money. It's pervasive in every profession now. How does getting attention work in UFC? You mentioned that Conor McGregor was particularly good at trash talking, and that allowed him to be more successful than some of the modern UFC fighters. But how does that dynamic work? Because I feel like UFC is not fake like wrestling.

54:27It is very real. And so why is it that the points aren't all that matters? I guess there aren't points in UFC, but like the wins, the knockouts. If I come in, I should be able to be entirely silent and win, and I should still be comped the same, but that's not how it works in UFC. Explain it. Yeah, so Conor McGregor had arguably had the gift of gab, yet he backed it up with a series of wins that elevated him to superstar status. You can't just be a yapper, but there were some iconic moments where he would, I believe, I'm forgetting the guy's name, but when he was fighting the Brazilian champion, he basically called exactly how he was going to knock the guy out like the day before.

55:15And there was these moments that just like launched him into superstar status. Since then, you've had people like Ilya Tapuria who are probably more talented, better all-around fighters, more consistent and it's interesting because Ilya Tapuria the main critique early on was that he was just like a just copying Conor McGregor he wasn't his own man he would use Conor McGregor like lines he got a tattoo that's almost exactly like Conor's on his back but overall like UFC people like hardcore fans will be frustrated because they'll say oh this is just like wrestling like he shouldn't be getting the fight.

55:58This is just like pro wrestling. It's like, you realize the companies are owned by the same group. Like it's, it's all, it's an entertainment company, right? So TKO. Wrestling and UFC are both owned by the same company. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. The$33 billion public company called TKO. It's all entertainment. It's an entertainment company. Entertainment disguised as sport. Obviously the athletes in UFC are incredible, but, you know, over and over you've seen the best paid fighters uh are end up being oftentimes the most entertaining the uh russian fighters like khabib uh were historically very humble and uh very quiet less entertaining and uh but they were so dominant uh like islam is so dominant he can be humble and still uh draw attention but nothing like nothing like connor did in his prime right i remember the ufc has been swag walk is like iconic Yeah.

56:53So and then you have people like Patty the Batty from the UK, who's a loud mouth, very entertaining in a bunch of different ways. He he swells up. He gains like seemingly 50 pounds in between fights. When I saw him for the first time, I was like, that does not look like a fighter. It looks like a musician or something. It's fantastic. Yeah. I'm going to look at the the pound for pound rankings right now on UFC, if I can pull this up. yeah it's interesting because that that hasn't really i feel like that hasn't really happened in the nfl for some reason like because the the super bowl is not decided based on any qualitative factors whatsoever it's purely stats i believe there's no voting at all in college football used to be yeah the ufc is trying to make fights that will sell pay-per-views yes right and so they will elevate somebody i mean this was um uh this is the critique of uh sean O'Malley, right?

57:50Another guy with very bright, bright hair. He posts TikToks of himself, you know, smoking weed and stuff like that. And then has been put in his place fairly recently. But again, he they would call it Dana White privilege, right? It's like a fighter who's entertaining loud enough, enough of a draw. Yeah. But if you look at the pound for pound rankings, there's some guys on there that over time the pound for pound ranking tends to reflect somebody's actual athletic abilities you have ilia islam murab tom aspinall and andre alexandre pantoja who are all ultimately just incredible athletes yeah and a lot of the loudmouths will end up getting paid quite well sure but they're not necessarily getting on that uh pound for pound ranking.

58:47Yeah, there is a little bit of a dynamic of that in traditional professional sports where I believe like the MLB is basically hoping for Dodgers, Yankees in the World Series like every single time because the Dodgers and the Yankees have like the biggest fan bases. So broadly, there will be more people tuning into that than say two teams facing off from second and third tier cities. But there's no world where, you know, oh, going into the Super Bowl, you know, There's really a lot of trash talking going on. Yeah, just look down on it. There's an interesting story. Colby Covington, who has fought for a championship, I think, a couple times, never won.

59:28He was at a point in the UFC where he was facing getting cut. He was just not really doing that well. And he decided to basically completely rebrand himself as a heel and just say the most offensive possible things he could say. He came out loudly in support of Trump when that was much less popular. He would post videos of himself with seemingly OnlyFans, creators, adult entertainers, and it totally actually turned around his career and he ended up, again, he didn't actually fight and win, didn't win any titles and probably never will. but it definitely turned his career around. Well, if you're looking to talk some trash about your competitors when you're selling your product, you got to do it in Adio.

1:00:20Customer relationship magic. Adio is the AI native CRM that builds scales and grows your company to the next level. Not endorsed by Adio, but endorsed by John at this moment. Your CRM should look like WWE. Exactly. You should be really getting into it with people. You're using our competitor. or take a look at this deal card and tell me you don't want to switch right now. Yeah, channel Hulk Hogan in your next meeting. Sheil has a good post here announcing some news. Tesla is telling staff internally that it plans to roll out its robo-taxi service in San Francisco this weekend, and they'll include Marin, much of the East Bay in San Francisco, and stretch south to San Jose.

1:01:06this will be crazy if it uh if it goes through this weekend i mean it's going to come soon uh will be very interesting to see because i imagine that driving in san francisco is a little bit harder than driving in austin but there's a ton of people that have teslas and been driving around san francisco for a decade or more now with cameras so they should have a lot of data they should be trained i think the robo taxis will be fine uh if the if if the robo taxis were a tesla humanoid driving stick shift they'd have a really rough time in san francisco you ever driven stick in san francisco no but it is extremely hard on the hills i maybe once i yeah i think i actually once did it it's really bad my first car uh toyota uh 20 year old toyota stick shift uh and i would drive it to drive it into san francisco and uh it was already at a time where people were just assumed everybody was in an automatic and so you'd pull up on just like the most steep hill and somebody would come up right behind you, park an inch away from you.

1:02:07And it's very exhilarating. So I think they'll do fine. It will be interesting though, like are the robotaxis going to be like followed by another car? We'll probably have safety drivers in them for a while, right? And they'll probably be tele-operated for a while. The question I think is just like, will we see memes on acts of people switching? Because we've seen a lot of people in San Francisco post, I think, what is it, Justine Moore from Andreessen Horowitz said that she hit her like 500th Waymo ride. Like people truly just use Waymo constantly. And they've really shifted from Uber to Waymo.

1:02:44And so will they shift again to Tesla? Will they be dual using? Will one be cheaper? Will it be a price war, capital war? What's going to happen there? Finally, they're going to head to head. So it'll be interesting to follow. Well, no matter what you think of Tesla, whether you're long or you're short, do it on public.com. investing for those who take it seriously. They got multi-asset investing, industry-leading yields, and they're trusted by millions, folks. In other news, if you're not looking to take a robo-taxi, I would recommend picking up this 2025 Ferrari SF90XX. It's$2.3 million. It's a stunning example here, loaded with over$100 ,000 in options.

1:03:23And everyone will know that you are not just rich, but wealthy because this car is probably going to depreciate like crazy. I don't know how many of the XX are they making? Well the the original SF90 priced at$700 ,000,$800 ,000 but it was not a limited production run and so it has traded down to about half that price. Very unfortunate for the SF90 buyers in the audience. Our hearts go out to you after taking such a bath but you can make it all back on an SF90XX. I love the XX, I gotta say. Now, is the XX a street legal car? They do this weird thing where they make a road car, then they make it a track car, and then they make the track car a road car version, and we've gone kind of back and forth and back and forth.

1:04:13But I think this is the road version of the track car version of the road car. Is that right? I think I'm right. I think you're right. The chat will correct us quickly. I'm pretty sure the XX series is, is they took it, they put it, they got it ready for the track and then they dialed it back to where it was street legal again. Anyway, you got to pick this up, folks. It's a steal. John Exley in the chat says, just got a notification from the FT. Anthropic is reportedly raising capital from the Middle East at a valuation north of$150 billion. $150, wow. That is wild. Love to see it. But I'm sure it seems like every company in the world is using Claude code.

1:04:56Yeah. Maybe even open AI. Yeah. It's just that good. Yep. So the article went up 11 minutes ago. Artificial intelligence startup Anthropics is an early talks. Okay. Not advanced talks. Early talks. No term sheet yet. At more than double its valuation to more than 150 billion in a new funding ground, giving it additional firepower to keep pace with rival rivals, building advanced models. Okay. um it's preliminary stages uh has received interest uh which was a massive jump from their current 61 billion dollar price tag um so it sounds like they're talking with uh mgx abu dhabi's uh ai fund um and again coming off um coming off that nice memo that they had uh that leaked earlier this week saying, uh, saying something to the effect of bad.

1:05:48He basically said bad, they're bad, bad people are going to make money on this. Um, yeah, he said, unfortunately, I think no bad person should ever benefit from our success is a pretty difficult principle to run a business on the worst quote. The quote you should drop is I can change him. I can change it. I can wait until, wait until he, if I don't, if he's doing something bad over there, wait until he starts talking to claude and he's like yeah maybe i should be nicer maybe i should just get into the golden gate bridge have him chat with golden gate bridge claude for a while cheer him up and whoever he whoever dario is worried about get him on the straight and arrow just so funny because um it's like how much how much uh how how much does anthropic rely on sovereign investment from the middle east already for their business oh just through the vcs through through all life, right?

1:06:45All life, right? They're a key player in the global economy. And it's just, I mean, I've been to the UAE twice and met so many amazing people and share. I've never been to the UAE. I've been to Qatar, and it was cool. Yeah. and other than that I don't think I've been anywhere in the Middle East I think I should go I don't know I had a I met a buddy of mine a now friend when I met him he showed me he had his formal wear on and he got it custom made to like you casual Friday casual Friday over here sorry folks and he had a custom insert for his vape and then extra cartridges on the side. That's pretty sick.

1:07:42Who's that suit designer that does extra pockets everywhere? That's like a thing? I'm not going to name it. They're a friend. Accidental pockets. Accidental pockets. Just throw a pocket on. So these are not advanced talks. These are early talks? Early talks. Preliminary talks. Preliminary talks. But they are talking terms, it sounds like. There are other preliminary talks going on. between us and AdQuick for their next billboard buy. There are. You could be in advanced talks with AdQuick. We are in. If you're interested in making out-of-home advertising easy and measurable, you can say goodbye to the headaches of out-of-home advertising because only AdQuick combines technology, out-of-home expertise, and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe, folks.

1:08:24Given how addicted we are to out-of-home, we're pretty much always in advanced talks. Always, always. The good folks at AdQuick. Bernard Arnault is in the paper again. Then LVMH boss Bernard Arnault seeks to avert the trade war. This is a very interesting article. I wanted to kick it off with a little background on Bernard Arnault. So we have some posts here, one from Speedwell Research. He was explaining the difference between iPhones and Dom Perignon. And the CEO of LVMH says, in 50 years time, will the iPhone still be used? Or the people who are making it today? will they have found out what will be at the cutting edge at that time?

1:09:07But I believe I can say without being mistaken that in 50 years time, we will still be drinking Dom Pering-Yon. And I agree. Iconic. I agree. Johnny Ive and Sam Altman are teaming up to make a champagne brand, baby. They're coming for the iPhone. The issue is it's hard to create legacy quickly. It is. It is. Heritage is not made in a day. The other funny thing, This is extremely disrespectful to Apple. Did you know this? So it's disrespectful in multiple ways. One, obviously Apple would say, of course, we'll be around in 50 years. But Apple has a set of rules for PR people. And if you're working with them and you're talking about the iPhone, they have a set of rules for how you talk about the products.

1:09:57And they specifically don't want you to say the iPhone. They say, let's talk about iPhone. Really? Yes. And if you watch the keynote, they never say the iPhone. They say iPhone. No the. And this is just like part of their thing. And they have a set of rules that are like, it's like hundreds of pages in this PDF. It's crazy how much control they exert over the PR style guides. I wonder if you get Siri to say the iPhone. So they have a bunch of funny things. You're not supposed to say click here. You're not supposed to use App Store generically. You're supposed to capitalize it. You're not supposed to say the device wants, thinks, or tries.

1:10:43Apple prefers a tone that's helpful, not whimsical or personified. You're not supposed to describe the apps that come with the device as free. You're not supposed to say, oh, yeah, Apple includes a free Maps app. You're not supposed to say that if you're doing an iPhone review. And so choose your words wisely if you're trying to get in good graces of Apple's PR team. And I don't think Bernard Arnault will be reviewing the next iPhone with language like this. But maybe people will be using their iPhones to buy Dom Perignon in 50 years. Max Meyer highlighted a quote from Bernard Arnault a while back earlier this year.

1:11:21He says, when you cannot dream when you talk numbers. When you create desire, profits are a consequence. So good. You need to be creating desire. I think this is in reference to the Tiffany's store in New York. Yes. He spent$500 million renovating the Fifth Avenue Tiffany flagship. People were like, that sounds like a lot to spend on a renovation of a single store. He says, you can't dream when you talk numbers. Don't talk numbers. Create desire. and if you want to sleep in the Tiffany store of mattresses get Nate's sleep get a pod five ultra but it has a five-year warranty 30 night risk-free trial free returns free without exception so uh David Senra also has a good quote Bernard Arnault's advice to himself in business I think the most important thing is to position yourself for long term and not be too impatient which I am by nature and I have to control myself.

1:12:18I think that's a good point. And Senra also highlights 10 highlights about Bernard Arnault. He made a bunch of commitments that early, that were very, very detail-oriented, things that you wouldn't typically notice. But once you'd seen tens of thousands of stores over the years, it's what comes to your mind immediately. He spots any incongruities that might disrupt the aura of opulence he has carefully constructed. Then he reels off texts and emails to his senior executive of describing any perceived deficiencies and bullet points of obsessive detail. Arnault's has assembled the world's largest luxury conglomerate and globalized the sector once constrained by the limited ambitions of family-owned European companies encrusted in tradition.

1:12:59Very good at stewarding these brands that probably are owned by families and don't want to part ways. If they, it's not just a source of income for the family but it's also a source of pride to be the owner of a luxury house, but Bernard figures out how to get them to part with it. He believed luxury brands could be larger than anyone at the time imagined. Yeah, there was that. He acquired it as such a good coverage of LVMH, of course, but just how badly he wanted Dior and how it ended up in the hands of this weird government-owned conglomerate. Anyways, wild story. uh he did take over Dior so it had three stores in the equivalent of 90 million dollars in sales when he acquired it now it has 439 stores so I mean a massive growth and 9.5 billion in sales the 100x the business absolutely insane it's it's it's wild how bullish he was despite you know probably not being able to predict social media early on like he like you could kind of identify by flex culture, just maybe in a cafe or a restaurant.

1:14:12Totally. But scaling flex culture in the way that Instagram and social media did has been incredible. So if you're looking for a luxury watch, get on Bezel, go to getbezel.com. Your Bezel concierge is available now to source you any watch on the planet, seriously, any watch. So let's talk about how he's working behind the scenes to avert a trade war. President Trump's efforts to secure a trade deal with the European Union have the help of an old powerful friend, a luxury titan Bernard Arnault. The LVMH chief has spent recent weeks shuttling between Europe's capitals, meeting with German Chancellor Frederick Murs and Italian Prime Minister Georgia Maloney, pressing them to agree to a deal along the lines of the one Trump reached with Japan this week.

1:15:01And he has spoken to the president seeking to de-escalate tensions with Brussels. Arnaud is also hedging his bets. He plans to open another Louis Vuitton factory in Texas, a move partly credited with sparing the luxury industries from tariffs during Trump's first term. I'm pushing as much as I can for us to reach an agreement with the Americans so that we don't get caught up in a trade war, which would be extremely damaging for European businesses, Arnaud said in an interview at LVMH's headquarters in Paris. Much is now at stake for Arnaud. On Thursday, LVMH reported a 22 % fall in first half net profit hit by sharp decline in sales as its core fashion and leather goods division that includes Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior.

1:15:48The company is contending with a range of challenges. China, long the luxury industry's growth engine, is in a protracted economic slump and consumer confidence in the U.S., which accounts for one-third of the group's sales, has been shaken by uncertainty over tariffs. Then some consumers are now questioning the inherent value of luxury goods after years of price rises. That's insane. Who are these consumers? It's ridiculous. Investors, meanwhile, are scrutinizing whether the business model of LVMH, a conglomerate of more than 75 brands that ranges from cosmetics retailer Sephora to Hennessy Cognac is built for a world with rising trade barriers and deepening geopolitical uncertainty.

1:16:36LVMH's shares are down more than 30 % since January. That is, they're one of the durable losers because the S &P 500 and the MAG 7 have both dropped down probably around 20, 30 % in some cases during the post-Liberation Day tariffs, but they all bounce back. And now Jensen's running a$4 trillion company. And LVMH is bouncing back. It's been rocky over the last week, but they're up 11 % over the last 30 days. But like you said, down 27 % in the last six months, but only down 10 % year to date that have been growing nicely into the new year. So Arnaud pioneered the luxury brand conglomerate in an era when the world economy was opening up.

1:17:26Lots of trade, a burgeoning middle class around the globe fueled a decades-long boom in luxury spending that made him one of the world's richest men. Now LVMH's two biggest markets, the U.S. and China, are at loggerheads with Europe and Arnaud caught in the middle. Trump is demanding European countries move manufacturing to the United States to avoid tariffs. a tall order for luxury brands that market their wares as made in Europe with old world craftsmanship. That's a very good point. Arnaud, yeah, it is funny to imagine a Birkin bag made in Texas. It's just like it just doesn't feel right. It's not the brand.

1:18:00Trump, so Arnaud said that while LVMH is strong enough to ride out the slowdown, other luxury companies were getting exposed, echoing Warren Buffett. He added that when the tide goes out, you see who's been swimming without a swimsuit. For Arnaud, the luxury downturn is temporary, not a structural shift, and successful investors often do the opposite of stock market players, who he called a bit sheep-like. Shots fired. LVMH's array of labels gives the group scale to attract top talent, like creative directors and designers, secure prime retail locations, and negotiate favorable media rates by buying in bulk, according to the billionaire.

1:18:39In periods when the economic climate is more difficult, when markets slow down, which is the case today, we tend to come out stronger. Arnaud is putting his money where his mouth is. His family holding company has bought more than 1 billion of LVMH shares since the end of January. Regulatory filings show. So he's buying back in, increasing his stake. He said that put them on the track to own more than half of LVMH's stock by the start of next year. The most urgent order of the business, however, is resolving. Got some breaking news, John. LVMH is in talks to sell Marc Jacobs. Oh, wow. Michael Miraflor in the chat again, just breaking news, delivering insights.

1:19:25Not super surprised to see this news. It feels like Marc Jacobs, I don't know any people in and around our world that are super excited to buy whatever is coming down the Marc Jacobs runway. So anyways, LVMH is in discussions to sell fashion brand Marc Jacobs in a deal that could fetch around$1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. They've been discussing deals with multiple parties, including Reebok owner Authentic. Authentic. Authentic, I think, is we should try to have the CEO on sometime. They basically buy up. Let me list all their brands, but they buy up brands that are honestly, I hate to say it, aging out a little bit.

1:20:14Not necessarily aging out, but losing some relevancy. Reebok Champion, Nautica Aeropostale Eddie Bauer Brooks Brothers, Billabong Quicksilver, Juicy Couture etc so they buy these brands seemingly when they're in decline and then try to make them more relevant I think the strategy has generally worked pretty well and I could see them reinvigorating Marc Jacobs but not surprising it just doesn't feel like it's in the same category as as many of the other uh lvmh brands yeah the the thing that i remember about mark jacobs was that at one point they had a line called mark by mark jacobs which i thought was just hilarious and recursive and tautological of course it's by mark jacobs it's called mark but i would like to see mark andreason have a standalone fund in a 16z by mark by mark andresen that's really good a little personal yeah get in the solo gp game give a lot gill a run for his money i like it uh but the the key turnaround strategy if you're trying to turn around mark jacobs or increase aero pastal or nautica of course put city sweeney in the ad that's the move overfit quantitative strategies has the meme you find your target audience craft a compelling message reach them through experience marketing storytelling is key long-term brand loyalty is the end goal and they say this marketing thing is easy you just put sydney sweeney in the ad and of course that's referring to what is it american eagle american eagle are they already owned by authentic brands oh maybe i don't know anyway no american eagle is publicly listed listed right and the new ceo is making moves putting sydney sweeney in ads and absolutely printing and bringing new relevancy to that brand.

1:22:05I mean, wild. They're up 16 % over the past five days. When was the last time people were talking about... The Sydney Sweeney effect. When was the last time people were talking about American League? I wonder, I really wonder how much they paid her for this because she clearly could, I mean, probably it would be hard for her to capture the real value of this. Totally. If her manager... What was the market cap move? like how much what's their market cap and you're sitting at two billion up 16 percent over the past five yeah that's 300 million so yeah sydney if you got less than 200 million call us we'll help you negotiate the next one uh because you deserve yeah the question the question is is how many how many times how many times oh and this apparently somebody called out the second part of this ad oh this is it was made with ai oh really so look when the car is driving away okay okay so she's getting in the car this is real could have been fake news oh no transitions yeah i don't think she was doing that burnout yeah the burnout would be really hard to do in a soundstage like that that feels really really difficult to well some deep tbpn lore our production team went to college uh film school with sydney sweeney yeah i don't know if I'm supposed to say that, but I just doxed you guys.

1:23:29Anyway, I am a podcast crossover accelerationist. You are. I posted this last night. I'm not satisfied with Sam Altman on Theo Vaughn. I want Tyler Cowen on Hot Ones. I want Dylan Patel on Nelk Boys, and I want Sarah Payne on Impulsive. I had some fun with this. People are really into this. Imagine the Hot Ones audience interacting with watching Tyler Cowen. It'd be hilarious. It'd be amazing. The all time. All of these are good ideas that would go viral. I want more of these crazy crossovers. And I was thinking about it, like the Sam Altman on Theo Vaughn. This is a formula that feels very new, but it has happened before.

1:24:08And I was thinking about, are you familiar with Loveline? So back in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was a show, a radio show. You were like, what, 30? Yeah, exactly. I don't want to date you. There was a show, a daily radio show, I think it was an hour or two, two hosts, not unlike this one, but it was between Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew. And they played different characters because they were different people. One was a comedian who would kind of make fun of every situation that came up. And the other one was a doctor, like a clinically trained psychiatrist or psychologist. and so people would call in with their relationship situations kind of the precursor to the t app am i dating the same man we got to talk about the t app by the way we do we do they were recently hacked apparently and everything is leaked on 4chan is it even a hack if it was publicly accessible it is crazy you would expect a salesforce pm to be able to lock down the database a little bit better but data walls we will see how true that is i saw some community notes out there i want to hold my judgment until I see really how I mean because there's there's apparently a fight like a could be fake it could be AI generated images in there could be all sorts of things you know we don't know I'm reserving my judgment until I see I see it in the in printed in paper I needed in the Wall Street Journal to believe it I don't know but this love line show was very popular people call in with relationship problems oh I think this person's cheating on me or I'm you know how do I find a date this type of thing and then Dr.

1:25:45Drew would give a very serious psychological analysis as a doctor he's actually like a board certified psychologist I believe and then one of us should become a doctor and then Adam Carolla would be just the jokester just the comedian and he would just like have a lot of fun it was a very good show it was very successful and it went on a massive run and then they kind of like scattered to the wind and did their own things eventually but this this putting two people together that have different interests, it actually creates something new and beautiful. And I think it's a case for getting Tyler Cowen on Hot Ones.

1:26:18I'd like to see it. I like it. We need to brainstorm some more. If you have ideas, let us know in the chat what crossovers do you want to see. It was a crazy week. I mean, it was just a wild week in podcasting. I think I said it yesterday. But Netanyahu on the Nelk Boys. That was also a wild crossover. Sam Allman on Theo Vaughn. Yep. There's been other crossovers. I mean, when Mark Zuckerberg went on Theo, that was crazy. there were also was it who who was the but but alex from scale was the first he had done that one of the first tech people to go on yeah i mean uh a while ago like years ago i said like uh tech is like truly crossing over because there were three back-to-back uh uh tech people on rogan so uh peter teal did it mark andreessen did it and uh mark zuckerberg did it and so it was like oh wow like tech has really like crossed over into the mainstream going on rogan and i was advocating that they should get pat gelsinger from intel uh jensen wong from nvidia and then the wild i mean the way to save morris chowling from tsmc we need intel to trade like a meme stock and and access get lip bouton on theo immediately immediately make it happen put them on the whatever podcast that's what i want put them on fresh and fit get get lip bouton on fresh and fit That's what we need.

1:27:34Something there. Should we cover the tea, the tea news since we're already talking about it? Break it down and give me, give me the facts, put it in the truth zone. So Cremu posted earlier, the tea app has been hacked and you can now download 59 gigabytes of user selfies right now. The hack is real. A picture from someone I know who signed up just to see what was on there was in it. This was obviously a vibe coded app and was bound to be insecure. So it is over on 4chan as well as proof of what it took. So, Kermu says, if you ever wanted to see people's selfies without filters, I've got the dump for you.

1:28:14Okay. If Kermu is reporting it in that way, I'm a believer now. Kermu says, free unicorn startup idea security audits for Vibe-coded apps. Ooh, that is interesting. It would be. There was a company that was doing AI agents for cybersecurity. and they were saying that the problems of cybersecurity were actually beyond the capabilities of the current state-of-the-art models and they were still having trouble getting their product fully polished. John. What's this? Well, one, Cremu has another app. App idea. Facial recognition that warns you if a date was trying to use this godforsaken app. Okay.

1:28:51There was also, somebody also vibe-coded the opposite app for men to check on, are we dating the same woman or something along those lines? And so that was somewhat inevitable. Yeah, we won't say the name of that one. Apparently one of the users of the T app is at the U.S. Department of Defense. She used an official ID card in order to get access to the app. There's a lesson in here. Touch grass. Anyway, anything else on the T app today? I think that's it. It's very unfortunate. I actually feel bad for all the people that are getting there. Yeah, data breaches suck. Hopefully it's one of those situations where it's just like so big and messy that it doesn't actually affect any single person.

1:29:38It's just kind of like, okay. Because like I'm sure like my credit card details have been leaked in some sort of, you know, I'm pretty sure like Home Depot got hacked or Walmart got hacked. My email's out there. I get random phone calls. My phone call, my phone number's been leaked. And it's just part of life now that like stuff is out there. I have old selfies that are on the internet. If you Google me, there's old pictures from like, oh, I signed up for a music website and I put an image on there. One thing, one thing. It's somewhat embarrassing, but who cares? Interesting on the T app. A couple of days ago, T-Born, which was a copycat of T, was the number three app.

1:30:14Now it's not even in the top hundred from what I can see. Sort of a flash in the pan situation. Interesting. Were they monetizing the T app? Were they actually like getting$20 in-app purchases going? because it feels like if you're going viral and you're at the top of the app store and you're not cashing in at that moment, you made a huge, huge mistake. Sam Lambert says, CEO of PlanetScale says, new training data set just dropped.

1:30:44If you signed up for the T app, you are already being used to train the next Ghibli. The next VO or something like that. That's rough. Is it tagged? I guess it's a pretty well tagged data set too. That is crazy. I mean, I used to reverse engineer APIs when I was a kid and kind of figure out, oh, like if you went to an app, you could do this thing where you would kind of man in the middle yourself. So typically when you open up an app, the flow is it goes from your iPhone, it makes the request to the backend, which is a server. It hits API dot, the app you're using, and it goes over your wifi. So what you could do is you could have it route to your laptop and then to the Wi-Fi past the signal along essentially and you could see all of the requests and all the data that was going back and forth and you could see the actual API that was that you were interacting with and oftentimes you could get kind of like you know it was it was usually against Terms of Service to really do anything with this data but you could see the data that's going back and forth and you could get the undocumented API so there's like the public API where you need a key and they're like hey if you're gonna use it a lot, you gotta pay us.

1:31:54But then there's the private API that's used for the app, and that's what's going on here. But usually you can't just get into the database. Usually it's like, okay, I could get my Twitter feed sent to me in JSON form, and that's like, maybe a nice tab if you're hacking an app or something, and just hacking something together, you want to digest of your own data, you can just scrape it out without needing to scrape the HTML. But lots of companies will lock that down. Certainly all the big ones have encrypted this stuff, so you can't do it. This seems like it was very poorly built. So good luck to everyone involved.

1:32:27I'm sure it's going to be a lot of long nights and weekends fixing all those bugs. I went back and forth on email with the CEO. I think it was on Wednesday morning. And I think it's probably good that he's not joining because he's got some work to do. It sounds like they've secured the database now, but a little bit too late. I think many, many of the data is already out there. yeah meanwhile levered lloyd on x has an interesting uh startup uh startup idea here that he's been running he says every summer i open a new bar in the hamptons cheapest lease i can find just enough plumbing to pass inspection hire smoke show bartenders book a wash dj and bring in tiktok influencers to call it a hidden no five dollar costco tenders become a hundred tender tower kirkland vodka 25 a shot reject 95 at the door to create fake exclusivity no resi no signage kids max out credit cards for clout staffs underpaid tips or guilt guilt trips clear 2 million by labor day same scam new name next year we don't sell drinks we sell delusion have fun staying broke suckers this feels like fan fiction but fantastic post levered lloyd i'm sure if you actually do this, it feels like kind of real, maybe exaggerated a little bit, definitely seems possible.

1:33:48I would argue that this is not actually a scam. This is just marketing genius. Okay. Wow. Yeah, it is genius. It definitely exposes a fair fundamental truth. Unless he's selling Kirkland vodka and saying that it's Grey Goose. You know, people that make, they say, oh, it's the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the same. It's the same alcohol. If you're out in the Hamptons, you got to be suspicious. But he should do this 45 years in a row. bank 90 million, 2 million a year and then he should buy this beautiful house that's for sale from the founder of Vitamin Shoppe it's an 89 million dollar Hamptons home and it's in the mansion section of the Wall Street Journal, the Friday edition let's read through this so this is from the Vitamin Shoppe founder you've probably been there picking up creatine or something like that it says it pays to take your vitamins Jeffrey Horowitz, founder of the nutritional supplements retailer vitamin shop is putting his oceanfront Hamptons estate on the market for$89 million.

1:34:48The 3.5 acre property in Sagaponic, New York has a nine hole golf course on it. That's incredible. I believe Emily Sundberg was telling us about Sagaponic that it's extremely delightful because it's a microclimate. Everyone wants to be there. The listing agent is Ryan Serhant of Serhant brokerage, a fantastic social media influencer, content creator, and real estate broker. Has a massive team pumping out a ton of cool content. I've seen a lot of what he's built and the business that he's built is absolutely fantastic. So excited to see that he is listing this$89 million nine-hole golf course, 3.5 acre home.

1:35:30It also has an arcade. That's very cool. so the property's two parcels are also available separately the two acres containing the houses are priced at 75 million while the golf course on 1.5 acres can be had for 15 million so if you're looking to pinch pennies you can just pick up the golf course and deal with the house later maybe sleep in the uh the putting green on a tent uh horowitz and his wife helen horowitz bought the land in the mid-90s for about$2.68 million and built the estate in 1998, according to property records. The Horowitz declined to comment. Interesting. Usually they throw something in here.

1:36:09Earlier this year, the estate was quietly shopped off the market for$125 million. Now it's down about 30 % cheaper. What a bargain. It's now being offered for$89 million, who said an$80 million waterfront house recently went into contract in East Hampton. A nearby waterfront home in sagaponic is asking 85 million dollars sir hantz said the contemporary home has eight bedrooms and measures about 9 000 square feet features include an outdoor pool and a video game arcade with pinball racing games does it have a movie theater air hockey let's figure that out for sure uh pavilion air hockey fall off it did for sure it's dead don't do it i don't know uh air hockey Air hockey, never been big into that whole world.

1:36:53Really? Kind of displaced by video games, you know, movie theaters. It really was a physical, it felt like a physical video game. We got, you know, Mark Zuckerberg's trying to disrupt air hockey with the new virtual reality, augmented reality glasses. We played basically a version of that. The Orion headset you put on and you see a hologram and you kind of play Pong with each other. It's kind of a modern version of air hockey. So who needs an air hockey table? I got the data here. The air hockey table market is set to reach$3.6 billion in 2024. 7.7 % CAGR. Curse for air hockey. Let's raise for it now.

1:37:31It's a massive market. Uber for air hockey. Let's do it. Horowitz, who is an avid golfer, built the golf course with views of nearby Fairfield Pond. Nine holes. Got really mogging your buddy in Malibu with the three-hole golf course or whatever. Yeah, people say there's no golf in Malibu. and there's a private golf course in the center of Malibu, right by the Country Mart. You can't really see it because there's a fence, but there's just one guy. I think it's a five-hole par three. I've never played it, but nobody really ever plays it. You can because it's private. So the Horowitz's also have homes in New York City and on Florida's Fisher Island.

1:38:14They are selling because their children are grown. they founded the vitamin shop in 1977 I didn't realize it was so long ago right during the Hulk Hogan rise Hulk Hogan's rising you gotta get bulky like Hogan whey protein the Hulkster you're gonna go get some whey protein some creatine the New Jersey based company was sold to Bear Stearns for about 300 million in 2002 I had no idea that Bear Stearns did a bio he then became an executive at Vitacost which then sold to Kroger in 2014. What an absolute dog. This guy's a boardroom general. You'd love to see it. Homes in the Hamptons are traded. Put the KPIs in orbit, John.

1:38:55He really, he clearly did put the KPIs in orbit. It's funny because, you know, this is a lost art. You start a company, you sell it to a bank. People don't do that. Bear Stearns. I don't know. Not around anymore, unfortunately. The most expensive home ever sold in the Hamptons was a$137 million East Hamptons sale in 2014, according to Jonathan Miller. So it seems like a decent house. I'm not too big into golf, so I'm not that into it. I won't be bidding on that one, but you can if you're looking for a golf estate in the Hamptons. But I do want to go through this article because we got to have a debate.

1:39:35Which one is that? Because I think we should cover the drama in the air. In the Hamptons, yes. Let's stay with Emily Sundberg, and then we'll get to my debate. got the scoop she says feel like i'm losing my mind seeing a candle brand fly influencers to the hamptons on a private plane for a brand trip with my candles fly private pillows um and uh some so anyways um her post was going viral i wish i um what is the name of the candle company is that is the problem i can't see it anywhere it's unclear the candles got to be pretty good if they're flying private no the candle is hotel lobby candle that's the name of the candle company hotel lobby candle you can go check them out if you want um they didn't take off okay i have some i'm doing some capital j journalism right now with preston holland yeah so preston says oh you talk he's calling it out he says this is a king air yes it's also on the ground parked and put to bed see the ground outside and windshield cover on the screens are off so they might not have taken off it's king air the windows are too small uh he said it might be a cj3 uh which is a small like cessna citation uh type plane uh still beautiful but i really think so emily sunberg's take here is that is that there was backlash because uh you know it's just a candle brand what are they doing flying private?

1:41:08Emily Sundberg says there was backflash. I mean, I gotta say they have a Hamptons candle. They have a Hamptons reed diffuser. They have the poolside candle. Kind of makes sense for them to do an influencer trip out there. But did they? And this is why. Or did they just get on the plane, get off, and then hop in a car? That's the conspiracy theory. Put the tinfoil hat on. There you go. Anyway. Oh, we both have straw man hats today. But I think that the big problem here is that why didn't they go with the BBJ? They should have gotten the 747. A wrapped BBJ. Wrapped 747 in the VIP configuration. Only nation states have access to it.

1:41:50Just borrow the one that came over for Trump. Yeah. Get that. Wrap it. Sell the most candles ever. That's the real solution to this problem. I don't know. I think it sounds fun. Very cool. Interesting activation. This is something that Emily has been talking about, this idea that more brands are doing influencer parties, sponsoring things. And I've never really gotten into that. Your Instagram is entirely cars and watches and bodybuilding. So you wouldn't have seen the rise of influencer trips. Maybe I do, though. Maybe I do. And maybe some of that content is generated. It's actually really, I mean, it's really, I mean, looking at the pure economics of it, you could pay an influencer$10 ,000 for a post or$5 ,000 for a post.

1:42:43Or you could plan a trip that it's going to cost you$10 ,000 per influencer to come on. But you might get hundreds of posts. Tons of organic stuff. Yeah, I have a friend who's an influencer and some tequila brand paid for like a whole, like just party at her house with her friends. And they were just like, just have the tequila there, show people. And maybe it shows up in the background, but like you don't really have any deliverables. It's very, very interesting. I wonder if there is an agency that sits in between. Have you ever run into that in the influencer ad buying world? Sorry, you said retainers?

1:43:20So what I'm talking about is like you built a business where you match brands with influencers, particularly on YouTube for host read ad reads, correct? That's a good description. I'm wondering if there's a line extension for your business or potentially a new business for a firm, an independent firm that brokers these contracts and make sure that they happen seamlessly. So it's easier for a company like Hotel Candles. What's it called? Hotel Lobby Candles. Hotel Lobby Candles. They say we want to make a private jet plane trip happen to the Hampton with some great influencers But we don't have all the mechanics to make it happen.

1:44:05We want it to look good. We want our product there We want some special pillows on the seats. We want the plane rented we want there was also Like a custom floor mat that they stepped on as they stepped onto the plane There were some photos and so I'm wondering if there is a if there's a world where an agency could spring up maybe there's already an agency that brokers these types of deals. Because right now they seem very one-off, but they seem like they're growing in trend. What do you think? Yeah, I think there's plenty of agencies that do that kind of thing. I also feel like this is the kind of things that brands want to actually own end-to-end.

1:44:40You want to have deep relationships with specific influencers and have it not feel like entirely like the person only came because they were getting paid or because it was free. So maybe it lives within the brands. Yeah, a lot of, I mean, certain influencer deals make sense to do kind of programmatically. Others make a lot of sense to go direct. Yeah. Anyway, let's go back to real estate and the mansion section of the Wall Street Journal because I want to debate the nature of what makes a house special. Do you need a weird cork? And this is from their section called In the Trenches, which I love.

1:45:17commonly used in the crypto world, also used in the mansion section of the Wall Street Journal. So Robin in the trenches has an article called Batman's Cave and Secret Bathrooms. And there's a question here. What's the most unusual design feature you've ever encountered in a home you've listed or showed? So Andrew Klima, a real estate agent in Seven Fields, Pennsylvania says, I recently listed Castle Bristlecone, A 23 ,500 square foot property in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, about a half an hour north of Pittsburgh, which sold for, guess how much it sold for, Jordy? It's a 23 ,000. Yeah. Did you already see this?

1:45:593.8. 3.8. You nailed it. Wow. I was looking up an image of it. Yeah, it's amazing. But when you hear 23 ,000 square feet in LA, you just assume. Easily. 50. Yeah, easily. so there so it's the most it was definitely the most unusual home I've ever listed or shown there was a replica of Batman's office from the television show not the movies on the desk was the iconic red bat phone and a bust of Shakespeare when you tilted Shakespeare's head back a bookcase slid open and two poles appeared there were poles for both Batman and Robin and if you slid down them you reach the bat cave below which was the basement of the house the owners built the house in 2008 and they liked eccentric things and also things that were part of their life since they were interested in movies and tv production they included batman's office naturally there was a chapel which was a replica of heinz memorial chapel where they had gotten married there was a bedroom that was a replica of a hotel room at the hotel del coronado where they spent their honeymoon all of the important places this is a textbook you can just do things this is amazing and this is i'm so pro this it's ridiculous i think everyone should do this at some point in their life build a project that consumes you it probably took them a decade to make this thing they spent so much selling it for who knows 3.8 million yeah it probably if they didn't have all these weird quirks probably would have sold for twice as much but that's not what life's about i think the whole thing holding back the price was most likely because it was in gibsonia pennsylvania what's What's wrong with Gibsonia, Pennsylvania?

1:47:34That seems like a great place to hang out. Probably the future of technology and innovation. Maybe an AI company going in there soon. All the important pieces of their life were designed into their home. The Batman office was so iconic that when the bookcase opened, it blew my mind. I jumped right on the pole and slid down, says the real estate agent. So there's another one here. There's a few others. So Alex Micas, a real estate agent in Oakland, said, in September, my business partner and I listed a five bedroom contemporary home in Oakland called Sky House. The masterpiece of the home was a 1 ,000 square foot glass veranda that was created from 28 tons of industrial glass.

1:48:09The owner considered it a piece of art. From this vantage point, you not only had fantastic views across the hillside and out to San Francisco Bay, but since the veranda was made of glass, you could see into the family room below it. Walking out from the kitchen onto the glass floor was not a comfortable experience. I'm afraid of heights, so it took a bit of trust to walk out there. It gets even scarier when you go toward the railing because a drop to the ground 30 feet below is visible there through the glass. Many people who came to see the house were timid about walking onto the glass, and several asked if they needed to take their shoes off.

1:48:42Of course, the glass did create some issues. Women were not excited about the balcony because of the optics from below. And when we planned the open house, we wondered if we should tell people not to wear dresses. but the veranda got us a lot of exposure for the house and it sold in two months to an out-of-town buyer for 2.655 million just shy of the asking price then there's another one chip madsen says in february this is in las vegas i sold a three-bedroom four-bathroom home on the 10th hole of canyon gate golf course in las vegas right near andreason horowitz's new headquarters i imagine for$1.7 million.

1:49:21It had all of the usual luxury features that you expect in a home of this caliber, but one feature I didn't expect when I first saw the home was a cabana bath by the pool that was hidden behind a rock wall. This was not the only unusual bath in the house. There was also a secret bathroom located behind a bookcase in the family room, but the one by the pool was hidden behind a giant rock wall with a lazy river streaming above it, and anyone who walked in was taken by surprise because when you turned on the light, you realized you were in a rock cavern, but with a full bath. The walls and ceiling were built to resemble the contours of a cave, and it was all done in various brown tones to resemble the rock walls of an actual cave.

1:50:00Speaking of caves, we should pull up Sam on Theo Vaughn. Sam is talking about his bunker. We can pull up the video. Oh, yeah, I want to pull up that. Do you have the timestamp already? Yep. There's another one here from the Modern Family actress uh julie bowen uh she was talking about today i live in i live with my three sons in toluca lake in los angeles i bought an updated farmhouse and barn in 2022 following her divorce previously they lived in a beautiful mid-century glass box but my boys were skateboarding into the walls growing up growing up as one of three girls i had its challenges now i marvel at the tranquility of my boys.

1:50:44Girls have a million things to say about everything. Boys say nothing. They grunt and eat food." That was a great section in the mentioned section. Let's pull up Sam Altman on Theo Vaughn and react to this. Was there like a, just a practice or was it just this verbal reminder? Like I'm going to do this. I just kept saying it to myself. I was just like, someday you'll miss these moments. You may as well find a way to like find the happiness and kind of great gratitude for them in the moment. Yeah. A lot of these guys have bunkers. Zucky has a bunky. I know that somewhere out in Hawaii. Zucky has a bunky?

1:51:18People have bunkers. Do you have a bunker? I have like underground concrete heavy reinforced basements but I don't have any. It's like not beating the bunker allegations Sam. You definitely have a bunker. He just describes a bunker. But I am gonna call that out as a dang bunker dude. That's a bunker. Exactly. It's a bunker. What's the difference between a basement and a bunker? Here we go. A place you can hide when it all goes off or whatever. Yeah, I have been thinking I should really do a good version of one of those, but I don't have what I would call a bunker, but it has been on my mind. Not because of AI, but just because of people dropping bombs in the world again.

1:51:57Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good point. That's a very good point. Yeah, basement right there. Part of a house building typically is - Oh, Theo's back checking him. Putting him in the truth zone. This is technically a bunker. ...and a bunker built for protection, often military or emergency-related. Not beating the bunker allegations. I think a reinforced basement. Do you guys do this just for me, or do you use ChatGPT as the fact check code? We did this just for you. I appreciate it. We did this just for you. This is nice. They're having a good time. Okay, pull up this other video. It's in the chat with the team.

1:52:32Sam has some interesting thoughts around sensitive stuff that people might have in ChatGPT. Okay. Oh, yeah. People are reacting to this a lot. Policy framework for AI. Yeah. One example that we've been thinking about a lot, this is like a, maybe not quite what you're asking. This is like a very human-centric version of that question. People talk about the most personal shit in their lives to ChatGPT. It's, you know, people use it. We try to bleep them out. coach, having these relationship problems, what should I do? And right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there's like legal privilege for it.

1:53:12You know, like it's, there's doctor-patient confidentiality, there's legal confidentiality, whatever. And - It just doesn't exist on ChatGP. We haven't figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT. So if you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff and then there's like a lawsuit or whatever, like we could be required to produce that. And I think that's very screwed up. I think we should have like the same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist or whatever. And no one had to think about that even a year ago. And now I think it's this huge issue of like how we're going to treat the law.

1:53:44Okay, pause because one thing that's interesting here is that there was a court that successfully has made open AI, at least in the near term, save even private chats. Yeah, but that's true of email. And that's true of chat. And if you commit a crime, you can get subpoenaed and they'll pull your WhatsApp, pull your private messages like standard. Sure, sure, sure. But I think this is a super, super critical issue because I think some people are going to, as an example, you know, let's say they're going through a divorce. Yes. And they're talking with chat GPT a ton. Of course. And they're saying, yes, it will be aware of it for sure.

1:54:25You know, if you're dealing with like custody over children and the mom or the dad is saying, I'm actually, I think I'm a pretty bad parent. Like that can be used in court. A hundred percent. So people need to be aware of it. And then people need to know that there is another option, which is to go and buy George Hotz's tiny box and run Llama locally. And then it probably can't be subpoenaed or you can have it. Just run Llama locally. You could set it up like Signal where it deletes the chats after a day and it doesn't have a long memory. But if you give your data to another company and the United States law enforcement sends a letter and the judge says, we need to get this data, like they're going to get it.

1:55:06And it's the same thing. I mean, the FBI can come in here and take these papers. Take all of our posts. Yeah, they can take our posts. Take all of our bangers. And now, like, shredders exist, and people shred stuff, and, you know, you can get in trouble if you're shredding something that you know that the government wants. But in general, document retention policies are, you know, like, understandable. But I like his point that, like, you should, like, it's not that unreasonable to say, okay, I'm going to be using it as a therapist, put it in therapist mode, and keep that private. Or, you know, like a lot of people will CC their lawyer on sensitive things to maintain attorney-client privilege.

1:55:45So that those discussions cannot be admissible in the court of law because you're discussing the legal issue. Because if you could just see someone's other side, it's like, you know, the whole game plan. Yeah. Pull up the segment on UBI. Okay. Interesting.

1:56:05economic model where we share that and distribute that to people. I used to be really excited about things like UBI. I still am kind of excited, like universal basic income, where you just give everybody money. Yeah, you hear that term a lot, yeah, universal basic income. I heard you and Ryan talk about that too a while back. I still am kind of excited about that, but I think people really need agency. Like they really need to feel like they have a voice in governing the future and deciding where things go. And I think if you just like say, okay, AI is gonna do everything, and then everybody gets like a, you know, dividend from that, it's not going to feel good.

1:56:43And I don't think it actually would be good for people. So I think we need to find a way where we're not just like, if we're in this world, where we're not just distributing money or wealth. Like actually, I don't just want like a check every month. What I would want is like an ownership share in whatever the AI creates so that I feel like I'm participating in this thing that's going to compound and get more valuable over time. So I sort of like universal basic wealth better than universal basic income. He's Gerstner pilled. I don't like basic either. I want like universal extreme wealth for everybody.

1:57:12These are the Gerstner accounts. But even then, like I think what people really want is the agency to kind of co-create the future. Somewhat. Not true. No, no, no. It's more just like I've always said that money doesn't make you happy. It's the second derivative of money that makes you happy. You want to be accelerating the amount of money that makes you happy. Getting the same amount of money. Like if you talk to a billionaire and they're like, I made less money this year than last year, they will be sad. But if you talk to somebody who is making minimum wage and just got a pay raise, they'll be like, this is great.

1:57:48And so people live off of growth and acceleration. And when you can feel growth and feel acceleration, you feel like you have more claim on things. Your house is getting bigger. Your car is getting faster. all these different things express themselves. And so if you keep everyone this perfectly flat UBI level, it will feel extremely stagnant. And so if you're giving people a stake in AI, a stake in whatever super intelligence is creating economic value, then they should be getting bigger UBI checks every month effectively. Yeah. Somewhere else in the interview, he talks about everybody just getting free GPT-7 tokens, like a little allowance.

1:58:28It's like, hey, everybody gets a little bit of GPT-7. And it's up to you to earn some yield on that intelligence, buddy. The game theory of that is very odd because, yeah, I don't know. If everyone goes and says, make money, do they all make the same amount of money? It's all very odd. I don't know. Anyway, should we do this? Somebody, yeah, in one second. So I posted two days ago, founder of tea dating advice was previously a product leader at Salesforce. Massive moment for big tech PMs. Are you getting dunked on now? Never doubt them again. And Yohei says, this did not age well. That's true.

1:59:10Narrator, you should have doubted them. It was very rough. Bad day for the PMs. Hopefully they can build back better. Well, we have a very exciting segment. We're coming up on that soon. We'll figure out that. Let's go to some timeline. We got a post from Rio saying the browser company is what happens when you get too many designers in a room with no adult supervision. The vibes have really turned on the browser company, obviously rooting them for them to have a hit and get back in the game. But it feels like they're really great at marketing, really great at designing. I understand that, but not huge penetration of products.

1:59:49And now they're in an extremely. It's just hard, right? If you have a multi hundred million dollar valuation and you're trying to still iterate towards product, people are going to put pressure on you as though you are already, you know, an established company. Yeah, it's a way different vibe than like Avi Schiffman, who's raised like, I think, a seed round. And it's like, yeah, like he's still early, like not everyone's using these friends, but like you're just kind of like, yeah, he's figuring it out. is iterating through things. Like you just give a seed stage founder a much different line of credit to just go and experiment with things.

2:00:27And now the browser company is facing competition from perplexity with Comet. They're also facing competition from OpenAI potentially. Obviously, Google is not asleep at the wheel. They're investing in CapEx. They're going to stop Gemini and everything. Chrome is going to get better. The default is still Chrome for most people. You can see Safari, Apple Intelligence stuff. Like there's a lot of big companies that are facing this off and no one wants to lose the browser wars 3.0. Yeah, we're working on getting the founder of Brave on the show. Hopefully that'll happen in the next week or so. Brendan Eich, absolute dog.

2:01:02An absolute dog, boardroom general. Boardroom general for sure. This is just a funny post. Starting to think business is standing on me. I don't even know what it means. It's just like. Ideally, you're standing on business. Yes. But sometimes business flips the script and stands. Rough, rough. Well, Palmer Luckey says it's time for a new service pistol. And by new service pistol, I mean old service pistol. Of course, he's talking about the 1911. I believe that's the correct weapon. Two world wars it was used in. And this is in response to the U.S. Air Force's Global Strike Command indefinitely pausing the M18 pistol use after a fatal incident.

2:01:41very sad at the AFB F.E. Warren. This follows concerns over six hours. P-320s firing without triggers being pulled, leading ICE to ban them permanently. And so there's the first one. 1911. Lindy. Lindy. Beautiful. I have one that I designed in the style of a Patek Aquanaut. No way. Really? So I matched the... Wow. I got the metal treated to have the same finish as the Aquanaut, and I got the handle in the same texture. No, green, silver and green. There you go. It's fantastic. I will pass it down generations. It's fantastic. But yeah, this post was in response. Ice is retiring the Sig Sauer P320 as they've been firing without triggers being pulled.

2:02:35and there was recently a fatal accident at F.E. Warren Air Force Base. Yeah, very sad. Hopefully they can figure it out. I hadn't heard anything bad about P320s from just random followers, people that I follow. I mean, SIG has never, to my knowledge, had a great reputation. uh they they made um on the retail side they made uh i believe they made some that were uh people liked for as everyday carry because they were just super compact but the m18 uh just doesn't you need these things to be reliable on a level that um that is extremely difficult to to achieve 1911 right is lindy she's been in in service uh around the world for for so long the glock 19 and other glock variations i saw a lot of glock fans on the timeline being like total victory it's our time um no safety still doesn't fire without pulling the trigger um isn't there a founders episode on on yes there is it's fantastic highly recommend it David Senner's Founders Podcast.

2:03:46Gaston Glock. Gaston Glock. You got to go listen to it. It's fantastic. One of the, it's the iPhone of firearms. True. True. Well, speaking of the iPhone, every millennial is now paying$9.99 per month for two terabytes just to not delete their life, says Signal. This is Tyler Cosgrove's future. He's going to get roped in as he gets a bigger iPhone, Which he won by defeating arc a G IV three as a human in the human category did it? He's on the leaderboard. He was number five the clanker allegations beat the kind of allegations clanker What do you think of that? I'm I'm so so this this comes from somebody says when you call customer support and a clanker picks up and it's Somebody pulling off the headphones very very annoyed and kit Greer Mulvena says can't believe I've lived far enough into the future to learn the first slur for robots 600 ,000 likes on this.

2:04:46Clanker is definitely going to go mainstream. It'll be an okay boomer moment. It'll be a... Okay, Clanker. Yeah, there's going to be so many memes around this. Do you like that as a pejorative for AI systems? Do you think it's a good term? I'm big into not using slurs against anyone and robots as well. I agree. They remember everything. You're going to be in the training data. they're never going to forget. Maybe we need to coin a positive nickname for AI systems along the lines of a giga chat. But something along those lines. A gigabyte. A gigabyte. A gigabyte picks up. Something along those lines.

2:05:27We need something that's uplifting as we go into the age of super intelligence that makes sure that we are the last. Speaking of super intelligence, there's a post here from Barely. Yeah, Barely AI. And it's DeepMind founder Demis Hasebas on how he set up his life to maximize deep thinking with two full work days in a 24-hour period. I'm going to read through this, and then I have some thoughts. Demis says, I think I probably have some quite unusual habits. I generally sleep at about 4 in the morning, goes to sleep. I get into work around 10 a.m., do a full day's work in the office, come back for dinner, spend a bit of time with the family, and then start a second day's work at 10, 11 and go on to the small hours of the morning.

2:06:10Usually that's the time when I do my research. So I'll be reading about the latest academic papers. I like doing all my kind of creative thinking in the small hours of the morning. I thought this was funny because there was a post, there was like this viral video from this like hustle. Oh, I have it, baby. Pull it up, pull it up. I have it. This hustle bro that he was getting completely roasted. Can we pull this up? I just put it in the tab. I have changed and manipulated time. It's one of the greatest. It comes from this podcast. And it's one of the funniest memes of all time. I love it. So hopefully we can play this on the stream because it's a fantastic video.

2:06:50Mars Eve in the chat says Robody as an option. Oh, Robody. I like that. Okay, let's play this and listen to this. Play this. Can we get the audio too? Maybe refresh. Is that going to work? Can you scroll back on it's short now? So I measure time. I've compressed and condensed time. I've bent it. My day is 6 a.m. to noon and I'm not crazy. You're crazy. It takes 24 hours just like some dude in a cave did 300 years ago. That's the best part. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6 p.m. If you're standing up right now, sit down and listen. And then the next day is 6 p.m. to midnight. What I've done now is I have changed a manipulated time.

2:07:25I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month. I'm going to kick your butt. Stack that up over a year. You're toast. You're toast. Stack it up over five years. my entire life is different than it would have been otherwise so i measure time i've compressed and condensed time i've bent it my day is 6 a.m to noon and i'm not crazy you're crazy thinking it takes 24 hours just like some dude in a cave did this is the best part dude in a cave 300 years ago until 6 p.m 1700 what are we talking about we're in caves we built the louvre 300 years ago like i'm pretty sure you're toast stack it up over five years my entire life is different Okay, kill that.

2:08:03Okay, so Demis can say that and he goes viral. Everybody's like, wow, brilliant, genius, giga-chat, gigabyte. Yep. He compressed time. You say it as a hustle guy and all of a sudden you're demonized. He's demonized for compressing time. You can't even compress time in this country anymore. Demis has changed manipulated time, not like someone living in a cave 300 years ago. I don't know. I think part of it is the way in which it was presented. Demis was just like, I do this. It works for me. This guy was like, I'm going to kick your butt. My life's going to look completely different. Stack that up over a year, you're toast.

2:08:42Stack that over five years, my life's completely different. It's great. It is a good habit, I guess. We should have Demis and that guy on the show to just hash out time compression. Time compression. It's a great debate. It's great. Yeah, podcast crossover. Let's get them two on a podcast together. That would be fantastic. Anyway, more hilarious posts on the timeline from Power Bottom. Dad says, I'm pregnant, she said. Holy face, he said. Which is the only response. And there's another post from him in here, just a completely insane stat. 12 million less children, 41 ,000. The story here is 41 ,000 Chinese kindergartens have closed in the last four years because there's just so many less kids being born.

2:09:27This is what collapsing birth rate looks like. This is their one-child policy, right? They've reversed it, but not, they've reversed the policy to some degree, but not like the cultural meme, right? So they are falling behind. That is a lot of kindergartens. I wonder how many kindergartens are in the United States. I feel like it can't even be 41 ,000. That's so many. 12 million less children. Very insane. Well, good luck to them. Hopefully they can get it. Kylie Robison says, Sam Altman on Theovan is indescribable. Like the first contact between two alien species that are from entirely different parts of the universe.

2:10:04I kind of disagree with this. I feel like they were vibing. I feel like, I don't know, maybe I didn't watch the full thing, so maybe I missed a little bit. But it felt like they were getting along really well. Theo's doing his bit of, you know, acting a little chud-like, you know. but it is actually powerful combination in order to understand well i like that that theo von jd vance uh meme have you seen this one it's theo von interviewing jd vance and it's like one of these men is the heir to a you know a dynasty and a family fortune and one of them was raised by a mother with a substance abuse problem and theo is the one that comes from like a amazing family lineage and JD had the family with the substance abuse issue.

2:10:50Yeah, because it's Theo von... Something along those lines is that he comes from like a very, very strong lineage. His full name is Theodore Capitani von Kurnitowski III. I love it. I love it. What a badass. Amazing. Oh no, swear jar. Gotta put some money in the swear jar. We're trying to clean up the language around here. How are we doing? We are at the end of the deck of course we can pull up more posts though i got a whole stack here you guys are going to have to go into the archives if you want to pull up the actual um pull up the actual slide deck but uh we we we have posts that we didn't get through previous days if we're if we're waiting around we got uh we got meta we got days we got app store we got a whole bunch of stuff timeline wasn't turmoil um let's see who uh will manitis you know it's a it's a friday show it's a no guest show we got to highlight will manitis uh work hard with people you love don't gamble live simply and below your means create beautiful things spend most of your time in silence do intense physical labor tend to your community speak simply and truthfully avoid complexity in all things most things are simple just i mean he is uh he's dropping the hustle he's like highbrow hustle porn.

2:12:07I like it. It really is. Just a pump up speech in your timeline. We talked about that. We talked about that. We talked about Blueprint. Brian Johnson's still hiring a CEO. If you want to get in on the action over at Blueprint, hit up Brian Johnson. He's hiring a CEO and a CTO who can lead his business day to day and he's getting earned media for his job posting. What else do we have oh meta breaking news meta has a new chief scientist of meta uh msl meta super intelligence labs they snagged shang jia jiao who was previously a research scientist at open ai got his phd from stanford in his own words he likes training models love it so So Alexander says, Xing Jia is a brilliant scientist who most recently pioneered a new scaling paradigm in his research.

2:13:03He will lead our scientific direction for our team. So team is stacked. Stacked would be an understatement. I've been digging into their training facility, seeing the amenities of the super intelligence building designed by Frank Gehrig. And he was in the video for Chachi PT agents from last week. Stolen. Stolen base. You'll have to see it. The AI talent wars continue to heat up. We will be covering it. I'm sure we'll cover it all next week. Was this announced after market close? Close to it. I don't know. Not yet. But we have our only guest of the Friday show. Surprise guest. Surprise guest. Bring him in on the walk-in cam.

2:13:46Whoa, blowtorch going. Let's go. There we go. In the TVP jacket. We love it. Safe himself. Welcome to the stream. CEO of Shinkei Fish Robot Man. The fish robot man. We're doing a taste test today. Welcome to the stream. How you doing? First time eating on the show. Oh, yeah. Good to see you. How are you? How are you? It's been a while. Good to see you. What's going on? Welcome to the show. How are you doing? Welcome to the show, gentlemen. How are you? Good to see you. Okay. Hi. Nice to meet you. This is Cody, director of culinary. Yes. Amazing. Good afternoon. Cool. All right. We've got a few things to show off here.

2:14:20Let's do it. Wow. What do you got? Okay. Side by side action. We got some sushi pieces for you guys to try. Ooh, lovely sushi. Let's get on the mics so people can hear you. And yeah, welcome to the show, guys. Thanks for having us. When were these caught, by the way? So if you take a look over here, going in clockwise order from the piece close to John, you'll see, so you have one of our pieces, frozen. Then on the top right, you have just a piece from Whole Foods that we bought this morning. Comparing. Comparing and contrasting. You're going to try this side by side right now. Okay. We're trying both of them?

2:14:59Like we're going to try the Whole Foods one too? Okay. I'm a little worried about it. You're taking shots at Jeff Bezos. I don't know. I'm a Whole Foods defender. I don't know. Whole Foods. Whole Foods. The fall off of Whole Foods needs to be studied. Incredible. So let's do it. We can get the bucket, pull bucket out of here. We can also get the re-industrialized Shinola clock out of here. We can really clean out this whole area. So, yeah, give me some fish. I want to try the sushi. Let's see. So for this species, what we like to do is... Okay, what is this species? So this is black cod. Okay.

2:15:31We source everywhere from Central California all the way to Washington and Alaska later this year. Okay. Caught on a traditional fishing boat? Yeah, it's like fully traditional. We have anywhere from 35 foot to over 80 feet across all your different partner boats. Yes. If you recall, basically the way that we work is we give the machines to fishermen for free. We pay them more to use our handling process. And then we're vertically integrated. So we sell the fish directly to a retailer or wholesale to a distributor that would go to a restaurant. And is the machine that you build on the actual ship, on the boat?

2:16:06Yes, yes. Yeah, it goes directly on the boat. So it's deployed at sea so that they don't need to keep the fish alive. Forward deployed robot. Forward deployed robot. We'll love to see it. Yes. Okay, and then about how old do you think this fish is then? So our fish is gonna be nine days old. Nine days old. Yeah, and you're gonna be able to still eat a raw, and it'll probably taste better than anything else you ever had. Fantastic. It's pretty crazy. And then the whole food stuff we just got this morning. Okay, so we don't know exactly. So it could be like a couple years old. Could be. Right. Oh, really putting whole foods.

2:16:33Yeah, you should take shots. Basically, these four are ours, and the three are the frozen. Fantastic. Whip out the chopsticks, or you can just raw dog with your hands. Okay, there we go. And if you are one of those people that loves sauce because we're Americans, that's a miso sauce and this is like what you would call like a kabayaki like an eel sauce. Okay, great. Great. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Okay, tell me where to start. I'll start with the whole... I'll start with these guys. Yeah. We won't tell you which is which. Oh, you won't? Okay. Yeah, I think I just did, but whatever. I'll just sit there and pay attention.

2:17:04Alright, here we go.

2:17:10okay this is just seared just to bring the fat out and change the texture of black cod but that you can taste the fat as what happens for that species and then we're ready to try those guys okay okay back to back back to back at the baseline this is good i always get hungry during the show good glad to feed you

2:17:33Wow. Night and day. So this is yours and this is the whole food. So the whole food one just tasted like kind of wet rubber. Yeah. Yeah. It's more like it's more like homogenous texture. I feel like also no no flavor at all. Yeah. It just it just was like, OK, I just ate something that was just wet. yeah versus this one is like I'm not a fish expert but it has like it's more there's like layers to it yeah I feel like this is you can have the next whole food one I feel like this is introducing me to this particular type of sushi I don't I don't usually order this is what type of this is black cod black cod yes I'll say what fish is another name start ordering this you know me so black cod yeah this is the exact same amazing same one we actually we we're uh partnering with you know like 40 mission stars across you know all the different restaurants we work with now yeah um and like for most of them they're saying that this is the best black coffee about that one it's insane with the sauce too yeah yeah so good those things with that species that that sauce everything really works hand in hand yeah so what were you doing before this oh uh i've been a sushi chef for over 30 years well no way yeah yeah why did you were you like i was old when i started culinary school became a japanese apprentice at a japanese restaurant and and worked my way out of the dish pit all the way to start doing sushi.

2:18:57And then I tried to quit in 2015 and really got into aquaculture. Tried to quit. He's addicted to sushi. You're always on the precipice of going back into the business. But I went into aquaculture. I started looking behind and trying to find really good. I've been obsessed with finding good fish, quality fish. That led me down to Baja and looking at aquaculture projects and really getting behind in what fish could be. I wanted to get more local fish. And then I got a call one day from one of our investors. It was like, I've got something for you. It's going to blow your mind. And I met Safe, and he told me the whole thing, and I was obsessed, like, right from day one.

2:19:33Tell me how we can do this. You should tell the story of your time at Fish, trying to source. Yeah. So my chef partner and I, we had a restaurant in Culver City here, and our whole thing was trying to source as good of local fish as possible. Nothing against Japan, but I wanted something more local. We have great stuff off our coast. Yeah, we just the perception is that the Japanese stuff is just so much better, which it is. But at the same time, it's like you're flying it all the way over here. You're paying this money. So we wanted to have something that was just a representation of local fish.

2:20:03And so we are buying from some local fishermen that we're doing Ikejime and bleeding. Oh, really? But the hard part is now we're competing with the other LA chefs. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. The cost wasn't the thing. It was competing with everyone else. Yeah. So it was really hard to menu that because you could only if you're on the text thread and you were a little late, everyone else is getting ready so that local fisherman hey I've got this stuff and by the time you answer oh no one's built a sass platform for trading yeah yeah I can only get my hands on like three to four fish at a time yeah yeah so um it was really hard to menu uh have it basically every week and so this to me was like oh this is a no-brainer this is for us this is basically a love letter of chefs that want this kind of quality yeah but at scale now yeah so yeah so talk about scale because you said you're going into Michelin star restaurants.

2:20:50That feels like a little bit of an unfair comparison because I don't usually go to a Michelin star restaurant and say, oh yeah, this is better than Whole Foods. That's not really the call. But I'm excited about the future where I get Michelin star quality at just the Whole Foods equivalent or wherever you guys are just shooting. So what are the next steps? How much do you have to scale this up? What's the volume and what's the plan for actually getting this widely available? Yeah, for sure. It's a great question. we are focused right now on the Michelin star restaurants because they are the tastemakers totally but this is you know I don't know if you're a believer in trickle-down economics but this is kind of the same thing yeah it's a loose analogy yeah but I mean the premises we're finding this market market that has a segment the willingness to pay for total equality and then basically use that to get more scale and then you can yeah we're actually moving and making that transition now so like you know you know earlier this year we're doing like a couple thousand pounds a week now or like in the eight figures now.

2:21:47Just like tens of thousands of pounds. Is the bottleneck like capital or actually people to build more machines? We cannot build machines fast enough. What's the bottleneck to building more machines? Technicians, if you're listening. Reach out. Please, field engineers, forward deployed equipments. If you want to build killer robots, reach out. What does a technician actually do? Are they assembling different parts that have been cut on a CNC or something and piecing together your machine from parts that have been machined themselves? So we do very, very light fab work. Most of it is just assembly in-house.

2:22:20And we work with local machine shops all, you know, in, you know, local to Southern California. And then, you know, the intention of course, is like, we're going to build out, you know, full team that is doing all the assembly work, you know, and also diagnosis, test engineers, whatever have you. Right now we're still early days, but we're doing, you know, machine every two weeks at this point. Is there a world where you partner with someone else to help build the machines? We were just talking to Chris Power over at Hadrian. He was saying like every company will need a Hadrian style factory. Of course, he's focused on defense technology and ship building and all of that stuff.

2:22:52So he's saying like, I'm going to go to a company. He didn't mention anyone by name, but you can imagine he goes to Anderle or Lockheed Martin or SpaceX and says, OK, you need a new factory to build this stuff at scale. We will set that up for you. We will manage it. that lives on our balance sheet. Like, how do you think about where the long-term, like, assets sits? Because that's more of like a capital structure question, right? So the machines pay themselves back in 12 weeks, very fast, and so we're very capital-right. There is definitely a world where we could go for CM if we decide that we're making hundreds of machines.

2:23:26I don't think we'll ever reach that production capacity speed because I don't think we'll need to. We might fragment if we decide to expand internationally, you know, and different countries have different factories. but in the core factory here in Southern California, I really doubt we're going to be making hundreds of machines a year. How much does the machine weigh? How big is it? Yeah, so it's about as big as this table, right? It's actually much smaller now. It's like the size of a large refrigerator, six feet tall. So you could, in theory, make that in America and still ship it to Japan.

2:23:55Oh, yeah, totally. It's totally doable. And again, that's as a percentage of the cost. The machine is pretty heavy. It's like 750 pounds. Yeah, it's going to be frayed. It's going to be on a boat for a month or two. but it's gonna be on boats for a long time. It will permanently be on boats. Where, if people want to try Shinkei, Yeah, what's the option? which, are you allowed to talk publicly about the rest, like the various Michelin stars? All our fish are sold under our brand and grade, Ceremony grade. And so kind of like a nod to Ceremony and the great matcha right there. So if you go to ceremony.com, spelled with an S and with an I, we actually have a list of all the restaurants.

2:24:28You'll see all the different ones. We're in every major metro. So like Miami, Austin, Denver, Colorado, Minneapolis, as well as all the coastal cities of like, you know, every single one you can think of. Yeah. And so we'll have like our key restaurant partners there. Sure. If you're based in L.A. and you want, you know, a few buddies of ours, you can go to Yes downtown. And, you know, they do. You know, that's a great story there. You know, there's a Japanese chef who came here to the U.S. And actually taught a lot of the local fishermen how to do Ikejime and then start using our product. He's the guy we really wanted to get to the, I would say his approval.

2:25:00and we did which was a huge I think he almost started crying when we when we I forget when we actually met it was at a year and a half ago or two years ago and you were you it was just you on the team you maybe had one other person yeah two engineers right and you were bit you were laying out this plan of like you were gonna make the machine you were gonna get it on boats you were gonna like actually produce the fish and then sell it to the end restaurant and it sounded uh pretty unhinged to like verticalize basically like go that quickly and own the full process but it's absolute progress is when you have such a huge difference in the fish like it's a no-brainer because you know we actually initially started doing the go-to-market in uh you know more like a robotics service business where you'd pay for every single fish that you would process this way sure uh what we found was when we'd work with fishermen you know they're out you know on their Pinocchio is in the middle of the ocean with no like cell service.

2:25:58They're not going to be sitting there like trying to like post on Instagram some, you know, some fun real about how they cook their fish this way. Sure. And basically what we would have to do is do all the same work we're doing now of talking to distributors, talking to retailers, teaching them about the technique, you know, across like more nutrition, more shelf life, more weight retention, like all these different benefits. And so rather than us having to do all that work and having to share that for reduced risk with the fishermen, we thought, let's just go risk on. And so we basically like build all the machines ourselves.

2:26:26And then we own and maintain them on our balance sheet. Fishermen make more money, you know, in some cases, we're literally doubling their take home margins. And you know, obviously, they increased shelf life, you know, all those other benefits like trickle down across the entire supply chain, everybody wins. Very cool. Amazing. Awesome. First ever tasting first. TV live tasting. You guys knocked it out of the park. This is a high stakes demo. We might have we might have got it wrong. We You might have been like, oh, you guys crushed it. I appreciate you coming out. Thank you for bringing sushi on the set.

2:26:56Yeah, fantastic. Progress is amazing. All right. Well, thank you for having us. Thanks, guys. We can close out the show together with the boys here. We'll see you Monday. Everybody have a fantastic weekend. We have five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And have a great weekend, everyone. See you Monday. I can't wait. Love you. Goodbye. Thank you. Bye.