Venture Roundtable: SpaceX IPO, AI's PR Crisis, and the Defense Tech Bubble | E2270

25:16And so here we are, where we're going to walk ourselves into a trap, I think, again, that if we don't do things right, and we don't actually think through the consequences of this as a society, we could walk ourselves into a position where AI is taking jobs the same way that china took our jobs and we have a huge disenfranchised worker base that isn't like upset about the fact that they're doing a job isn't upset the fact that they're being a cabbie and now all of a sudden they get to carry luggage they might like it they're providing for their family like i can't speak for them but i think everybody that has a job that is providing for their families takes some at least on being a male you take some pride in that and you want to do that and so i think we're walking our way into that sort of like blindly yeah i think it's just It's too simple for Silicon Valley to say, hey, we're going to pay you and everything's going to be fine.

25:59I don't think that's going to happen. To be clear, Larson, I am with you. I am not a fan of UBI because it takes away purpose. But I am for taking a look at the disparity in wealth, which is incredibly real and is going to get worse. It's going to get worse. It's going to get weird. We're going to have the first-time founder who's like a billionaire outcome, one dude with sort of like AI agents running his company. That's inevitable. That's going to happen. And then it feeds into the Elizabeth Warren AOC stuff again, where the wealth disparity is there. And so I think especially I think this is already playing into the Democrats favor.

26:30If, you know, the right somehow can get its act together and put some policies in place and some ideas in place and at least have the conversation. I don't even look at it. We are. I don't even look at it as a political issue. I look at it as being a thoughtful member of the elite, the one percent, the two percent, the creators. If you're a thoughtful person, you probably give a bigger tip than a person who's part of the 99 % or the 90%. You probably give huge tips. I give absurdly large tips because I'm like, well, I got lucky in life. I think we need to explain to Americans that we're all in this together, a little more esprit de corps.

27:10And the problem is entrepreneurs look at the nonprofit sector and they're like, the nonprofit industrial complex is a bunch of who are maxing, who are wasting all this money. And they just think, well, I don't want to do that. And then they're like, the government's corrupt and they're doing fraud. So why would I want to pay more taxes or have my wealth seized? So there's got to be a third way to give back. All of us want to give back. Like, who on this call, raise your hand if you're going to give away at least 5 % of your net worth. It's like everybody. Yeah, everybody is. Everybody is. So why don't we just get ahead of it and say, listen, if we all get lucky and we hit these home runs, we're going to give away at least 5%, 10%.

27:49and this is how I'm choosing to do it. And I'm going to choose to do it when I'm a little bit younger and choosing to do it now before the pitchforks come off and before we get 20 Mondamis in office and before AOC becomes president. I'm thinking very pragmatically, Larson. And if you have a better suggestion, I don't know, Sal, you want to get in on this. I think you got great points there. Yeah, curious to yourself. It's not just about redistributing the wealth, though, I think is Larson's point. It's not just about, hey, you're getting crushed by this big tsunami. I do think it's really important here, though, to bring a bit of a dose of historical humility to these things, at least on the side of the equation of like knowing what's going to happen.

28:26At the outset of the Industrial Revolution, when the steam engine was created, people thought no one would ever work in factories again. And of course, then the Industrial Revolution happened, right? It's like, I think we're just like very bad at predicting how these things happen. What I think is obvious here is that the world is going to look really different. And so that rate of change is going to be greater than it ever has been in the past. But I think it's hard to, like when you start to say, hey, let's let someone on a marble dais in Washington just write a law that's going to fix this problem.

28:57It's like, I don't know if you're going to like the results of that. It's very hard to predict how these things play themselves out. You don't want to constrain people from being able to build. The world's greatest moderator and the world's greatest angel investor needs the world's greatest solution for managing his funds. So I want to tell you about PaperOS. and why we use it here at our own companies, Launch and the Syndicate. PaperOS has helped over 10 ,000 founders and investors, including me, automate their workflows. Their tools will help take you through handling the operational details I don't want to worry about because I'm busy meeting founders and looking for great companies.

29:29PaperOS has made the onboarding process so seamless for limited partners. Their investor intake forms, automated subscriptions, it just takes all the busy work out of managing our syndicate and it automates capital calls, investor accreditation, tax filings. These are the chores of running a fund or a syndicate, and they have saved me and my team hundreds. Actually, now it's probably thousands of hours. Our friends at PaperOS want to give you a complimentary$10 ,000 credit. Just go to paperos.com slash twist. And if you prefer price discrimination, you can go to paperos.com slash disgrazian. I want to bring up some data, just to kind of put this into context.

30:08Here's a Polymarket we're tracking that goes into the chances of an AI data center moratorium being passed, bringing this up because I believe AOC and Bernie have both endorsed the idea. Kind of a small market, not a ton of volume yet. But what's really interesting to me is this number isn't zero because to me, the chance of this actually happening is zero, but the market's pricing much higher than that. How does it reconcile? I got to know how they reconcile this. Is it a moratorium like in Maine or Vermont where there's no data centers or is it? No, it's anywhere in the United States. Okay, so - This is a federal ban on - Wait, wait, wait.

30:39It's a federal law or it could be a local ban? No, this particular market results to yes if it's a federal ban, national ban. It has to be a national ban. Okay, because that's important because the chances of it being a local ban, I think are 100%. 100%, exactly. Somebody is going to do something dumb there. What do you think, Delian? Yeah, I think the likelihood of a federal ban, at least obviously in the current administration, feels like a 0 % chance, but I think it was AOC plus Bernie actually did put forth a bill to try and, you know, sort of, you know, put a, you know, entire federal ban in place.

31:08I think there's something like eight or nine states now that have, you know, sort of bills, you know, currently, you know, sort of in work. I think it's like New York, Illinois, Washington, you know, sort of a few others. I do think almost certainly we'll see, you know, probably 15 plus states that have a moratorium on it within the next like 18, you know, sort of months. I think the likelihood that like a Texas or a Florida ever put a moratorium on this, you know, sort of zero. And I think it's one of these like self-immolating, more left-wing, you know, sort of state habits where it's like, yeah, we're not going to have this like economic opportunity.

31:37We're not going to like, you know, you know, you know, advance our grid. It just seems like a, you know, sort of insane, insane outcome. The one place where this, you know, has a benefit, it is, you know, I admit that like I may not always be the most, you know, sort of bullish on space-based data centers, but if you can't build them on earth, then if space is the only option, definitely good place to do it. Shout out, shout out to StarCloud, one of my favorite companies in the entire world. Larson, is this free money? Is this free money? this 26 % on polymarket? I don't think it's free money.

32:05I'd have to read through it a little bit more. I don't know. You think there's a chance of a federal ban? I don't think that's what this polymarket says. I was looking at it very briefly. I think it's like a ban anywhere in the United States, not at a federal level everywhere in the United States. In a democracy where 80 % of people in both parties are negative on it, like I don't think it's a zero. It's hard to conclude that. What other thing that 80 % of people across the aisle agree about would you put at a 0 % chance of happening? One more time, Alex. Let's read, because that was in the details here.

32:33I'm thinking about wagering here, because if it is 24 % chance, people think it's a 24 % chance of a federal ban. I'm putting 100 dimes on this. I'm going to collect my 24K. Yeah. So let's just see if my reading comprehension holds up here live. So here is the actual market rules. This market will result to, yes, if a bill erecting a qualifying moratorium that prohibits or suspends approvals for new data center construction or major expansions anywhere in the U.S. is passed into law by December 31st, 2026. So my read of that was it is a ban across the entire nation. And I think someone else read that as if there's any ban any place, but that's just not how I think the whole thing here reads.

33:15Anywhere versus everywhere. I think that's our arbitrage there. So if we can understand that, we could place a bet. All right. I mean, I don't mean to hijack the program here, Alex, but I think we should comment as five white men. Delian, are you a white guy? I don't know. I think so, kind of. Somewhere like that. Definitely browner than your average white man. Okay, so as five white men, what do we think of Mark Andreessen's comments on retard maxing? That self-reflection for entrepreneurs is a terrible idea. I think we have to discuss this. Do we have the clip of him? I mean, it's... I'm going to pull up the Mark injuries and introspection quote right now.

33:55From the David Cerna podcast presented by RAMP. Okay. Or not. Shout out to RAMP. You don't have any levels of introspection? Yes. Zero. As little as possible. Why? Move forward. Go. Yeah. I don't know. I just, I've found people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past. It's just, it's a real problem and it's a problem at work and it's a problem at home. So I've read obviously 400 and I think now 10 buyer fees of history-grade entrepreneurs. And that was one of the most surprising things. Like what's the most surprising thing that you've learned from this? like, oh, they have little or zero introspection.

34:22Like Sam Walton didn't wake up thinking about his internal self. He just woke up, he's like, I like building Walmart, I'm going to keep building Walmart, I'm going to make more Walmarts, and just kept doing it over and over again. And you probably know if you go back, before 100 years ago, it never would have occurred to anybody to be introspective. Like it's the whole idea, I mean, just all of the modern conceptions around introspection and therapy and all the things that kind of result from that are, you know, kind of a manufacturer of the 1910s, 1920s. Say more about that. Great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff at any prior point, right?

34:48It's all in construct. All right. Who wants to take the first shot at this? I'm going to back clean up on this one. Let me, okay, Larson, get in there. My buddy actually sent him the YouTube channels on Maxing. Actually, somebody who works with me here at Harpoon. And so that's how Mark found out about Maxing. He's like, hey, what you're trying to say is actually this. And it actually took off from there. Obviously, my buddy didn't coin Maxing, neither did Mark. But ultimately, that's what Mark's been running with in recent interviews. And I think that, you know, it's an interesting point. I mean, I'd be curious, is Elon being introspective or is he just going and building and waking up and moving forward?

35:19So I think it's an interesting way to think about things. I think Elon's been pretty clear about this. Move forward. Yeah. Rumination is like very, it turns out rumination, which he mentions, I thought the key quote here, Delian, was it's a problem at work and it's a problem at home. And that was the tell for me. Rumination is a very unique way and dwelling on the past is a really unique way to make your life miserable. And what I've always found is people who have like obsessed about the problems in the past and who are fearful of the future and can't live in the present and, you know, have some purpose in the present, they just don't accomplish a lot.

36:05So if you're talking about this extreme pursuit, Delian, if you're going to sit there and be like, I made seven mistakes in my startup and my career, I made 14 more and there's 21 mistakes. And then I went home and my spouse told me I had these other five things that I'm a fuck up on. And then, you know, what if I have another 28 mistakes I make in the future? You're just going to be paralyzed. And there's something magical about just having a purpose at executing. That's, I think, what Mark is talking about. And it's for elite folks. You need only watch Michael Jordan in a recent interview. they um that famous uh interviewer from good morning um good morning america interviewed him about his nascar team and he talks about competition and it's like yeah no no i'm a miserable person because i'm so competitive gail king gail king it's it's awesome interview anytime michael jordan's interview watch it if you haven't seen that incredible documentary last dance like that's who mark and drees is talking about extreme pursuit delian requires, do not overthink this.

37:12Because if you overthink it, you're going to be like, well, what's the point of bouncing a ball and putting it in the basket more times than the other person? That's meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Your thoughts on retired maxing and rumination, Delian? I literally had this prominent investor last week in DC come up to me and be like, Ido, I regret not having invested in the C-Round of VARTA. And I think we just thought ourselves out of it. Because it was just like, if you sat there and thought about it, there's so many ways that you could have like thought yourself to like the failure case.

37:39But like, I should have just bet on the fact that you guys would just figure it out day by day and eventually figure out how to turn it into business. And it's like, yeah, I just like had this strong instinct that you are like wanted to start the business. If you look at our like seed round pitch deck, it looks nothing like, you know what it is today. If you look at the like early days of SpaceX, it's not like they were talking about Star Link in like the very early days. It was like Elon kind of went on this like exploration trip to like, you know, Russia to like go buy some engines. They sort of spat in his face.

38:02He's like, F that. He kind of did it a little bit of vengeance. He had a chip on his shoulder. He liked, you know, sort of space things. step by step, you know, sort of figured out how to turn into like the behemoth of a business that it is today. But it has very little to do with like the original chip on his shoulder that he had. And I think a lot of like the best businesses in the world look like this. And so, yeah, I do think the greatest entrepreneurs look like that. And I think the people that are probably happiest at home, you know, sort of look like that too, where it's like, yeah, just don't overthink, you know, follow your instincts and just like, you know, go through what you got to do.

38:27And I think partially why I have Village Idiot in my, you know, sort of bio on Twitter. It's like, you know, I like originally got called that way back in the day by one of my, you know, sort of colleagues is like, you know, sort of branding of like, you know, what I do on Twitter. And I was like, yeah, it's actually like a thing that I'm somewhat proud of. Like, yes, I think I'm like, you know, smart, et cetera. But like, I, you know, I think I, you know, sort of trust my instincts and go forward. All right. Before Sal jumps in, I'm just going to read a definition of introspection. So I feel like we're talking about several different concepts under one umbrella here.

38:51Introspection, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is examination of and attention to your own ideas, thoughts, and feelings. It does not demand rumination. It does not really demand backwards looking or overthinking. So are we actually talking about the right thing here, Sal? This was exactly what I thought when I saw the video. I think Mark's great and he's brilliant. I would take the other side of this where it was just like, he talks about like never looking backwards and only looking forwards. And then he goes on this long historical exposition about Napoleon, which is like hilarious, right?

39:19I think there's an important distinction here between like therapy culture and like, you know, forced self-doubt and historical kind of, you know, looking back over the last 10 years of your business, you look at the founding fathers obsessing about the Greeks and the Romans. Like, I don't think it's bad to look back. I think like looking back grounds us in our past and our heritage. And I think is kind of essential to moving forward towards the future. But I also think just sort of like whiny self-help therapy culture is a deleterious thing. So I think both of those can be true. I think that's absolutely right.

39:53I think like, I'm an anxious person by nature. So I have to actively go against my brain spinning its wheels and doing what the investors who missed out on Varda did. But I don't think that is, you know, antithetical to also knowing how I'm doing or thinking about why I'm doing something. Because I think that just helps me be more accurate, Jason, just more direct and less frazzled and more focused. So to me, it's a positive in the direction you're describing, if that makes sense. Yeah. The context here, Larson, is all about execution for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, their partners who are placing the bets.

40:24For that group of people, what we've learned over time is making a decision quickly, living with the results of that decision and not, dare I say, overthinking it too much is a much better strategy than spending all your time ruminating and debating and having decision paralysis. So, you know, the reason this one hit a nerve is because it was a bit ambiguous. You know, is this is he dunking on the therapy or is he talking about what's the best practice? The truth is the best practice is the person who moves the fastest, who is the shark, who is the most cutthroat, who makes quick decisions, iterates fastest, fires anybody who is a ruminator and promotes anybody who's an executor, wins in the game we play.

41:10This is a rule set for the game we play. Just like Michael Jordan's advice is a rule set for competitive sports at the highest level. This is not how to have a great life as a parent who is retired and who works to live. This is the advice for 0.1 % of the population. That's how I took it. What did you take it as, Larson? To tie things into what you're saying, we had a saying in the SEAL teams that effectively says that an average plan executed swiftly and aggressively is better than a great plan executed in the opposite manner. Wait, you were a SEAL, Larson? I was. I'm the only one that hasn't written a book yet, so I'll get on the train or run for Congress.

41:46Thank you for your service, bro. Congress is the new book, So I guess I'm behind. But yeah, so I think that I think that that actually puts a bow on it for me. And how I think about it is like, listen, we can overthink this. Or at some point, you just got to, you know, one more time. Give me give us that quote again. When you first heard it and when you first implemented it. Tell us first first heard it in training. So, you know, every every is a common quote that I'm probably butchering slightly because it's been a while. But effectively, the quote is that, hey, an aggressive plan or excuse me, A average plan executed violently and aggressively is better than a perfect plan executed in an opposite manner.

42:25So I think that actually works for startups. I think it works for life. I think it works for everything, basically. And there's certain situations where you can be longer-term thinkers. But when you have a target objective and you have a mission you need to go on, and it actually is important, you need to go out there and overwhelm the enemy with overwhelming fire superiority. And it's the same thing in business. I mean, Delian's doing the same thing in his industry. He's overwhelming the industry with overwhelming fire superiority. against any competitor, anybody else out there. And that's why I respect him so much and the other founders that are out there building audacious things with that mentality.

42:56Here's the exact quote. A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week. General George S. Patton. I've heard of him. Here we go. Excellent movie if you haven't seen it. So with some introspection, we would have known that it was Patton. So I guess we're maybe wrong in terms of like, you know, not doing that. No, you violently executed the quote here. I violently executed. Yeah, violently executed. Listen, I'm not worrying to look this shit up. I'm retard Maxson. You know the Maxson guy? He's my favorite on YouTube. Pull up Maxson from YouTube for a second. Delian, have you seen him?

43:28I have only just heard about it from Larson this morning. So what I love about this guy is he shares my love of having a stogie at the end of the day sometimes. Go for a hike on the ranch. He's got like his little mini backyard ranch. And sometimes at the end of the day, I'm like, I don't need to ruminate. Just go for a walk with my bulldogs. I get out of Stogie, I smoke a cigar, and I'm like, I got a great life. So he sits there with his cigar, with his Weber grill. He hits the cigar.

44:00Friday. Friday's one of those days. I don't know. Dude, do you feel it? Look at the sun kind of shine. You feel it's like a sundress. there's like a you can smell the sweat or a like a sundress wait people watch this yeah i it doesn't matter what he's saying it's how he's saying it he's just like friday friday good i i also have friends that smoke a lot of weed and sound like that they don't even have a youtube channel i don't know why it makes sense to me but i don't know he's like friday's good it's like a sundress i'm like sure i'm in fuck it friday is in okay i got it um all right this by the way people are losing their mind on threads and blue sky is falling right now if you go on blue sky right now literally it's like there's there's two bizarro universes x and blue sky and you put them together and the same story is like on x it's like a manifesto It's a call to arms.

45:09And on Blue Sky, it's a, with the greatest philosophers of our time, we're saying self-reflection. And here's the definition. And oh my God, it's amazing. Like we should all be like, and I got so much out of therapy and I went to group therapy and I went to this therapy and changed my life and I had a positive experience. It's so great. I recommend that every X user for every 10 hours you spend on X, you should be required to spend 10 minutes on Blue Sky and vice versa. the two services as a tax it should be it should be the bubble tax it's a bubble tax sal perfectly stated if you want to consume games it's a 14 we're seizing five percent of your bubble all right roe connor and aoc and tucker calls it all agree megan kelly five percent asset seizure of your of your maxing slash virtual signaling.

46:04While we're on this very important topic, because you guys - Don't drop to a commercial. No, no, I'm not. We're done. All the ads are done. All the ads are done. I blasted through them because your face was green light every time. For your maxing at eight sleep, there's a new metric, Delian. How were you during sleep last night? Yes. Brought to you by Whoop. Whoop has also got a new looks maxing score. Didn't Whoop just raise an enormous round? yeah 10 million dollars yeah dude they're rocking i was blown away by this so uh because aura ring also raised an enormous round they're both looking at like what billion dollar years in revenue terms it really feels like hardware is is back with such a wild vengeance as the value of software goes down it feels like hardware is just skyrocketing uh but we are seeing some people like uh michael eisenberg from the left or aleph i'm not quite sure to pronounce that i'm talking about kind of a defense tech hardware bubble i'm curious what you guys think about the uh let's stop on your previous question, which we should let the guys answer, which is in a world of no moats, suddenly having a hardware device tied to your software has made your company 10 times more appealing to investors.

47:14Whereas 10 years ago, hardware is hard. I don't invest in hardware. Now it's the opposite. It's like there's no moats in software. You better add a hardware component to this product. So do you know what this Whoop cost a year? I mean, I'm paying for it. I think it's 20, 30 bucks a month. Can somebody look it up? I think I'm paying$300 a year for this, which is a big number. If there's a million people with this, and there's got to be hundreds of thousands, they must have a million subs by now, right? Two million, three million? How many subs do these services have, Aura and Whoop? If they have three million at 300 a year, this is a big number what the frick is this pricing page you think they would make this easier to find I mean this is what Claude's for why did I even do it the old fashioned way they don't want it easy to find because you're retard maxing yeah dude don't overthink it there's a difference there's three annual tiers one which is$199 a year or peak$239 or life$359 so I presume Jason you're on the life plan I don't know I don't know, man.

48:20And Whoop has more than 2.5 million members worldwide as of early 26 heading into its IPO. 2.5 million. At 200? 500 million in revenue, 20 times revenue, 10 billion. That makes sense, actually. And they're going to do a billion in revenue this year. That's their target. So, yeah. The numbers make perfectly fine sense. I have no beef with the Whoop or ORA rounds. I just think it's interesting to see how the hardware companies really seem to be just crushing the world right now while we watch software stocks just collapse on the public markets. It's terrifying. Delian, you're nodding your head. You guys were early on the hardware front with all your Android investments.

48:53Yeah. We also originally did the series B of eight sleep yesterday back in the day, although like at a hundred posts. So like, you know, today that would be a seed round, I guess. But yeah, I feel like, you know, we've always had, you know, sort of hardware and like, you know, the portfolio pretty proudly, right? Like, you know, SpaceX early on and early on, I think in my like, you know, set of venture investments that I've done, I think probably something like 85 % of them basically have like a material hardware, you enterprise. And so it's been interesting. It's like, I remember back in the day, my former colleague now, you know, general partner at Benchmark, Everett Randall, he's literally always poked fun at me.

49:25He was like, whenever there's like high margin, high growth software, like I'll do that. If there's ever like super low margin CapEx intensive, like hardware businesses that are negative gross margin, send us a Dalian. And that's kind of funny. Cause I feel like, you know, Benchmark literally just did like a spiked investment, you know, into a star cloud, you know, in order to, you know, you know, poke, poke back at the bear. So yeah, yeah, I've definitely been long hardware and it's fun to see the Vidali come around to it. Larson, you guys at Harpoon and Founders Fund are both in Northwood, right?

49:57Oh, yeah. Bridget. Yeah. Talk to me about what attracted you guys to that company in particular, because it kind of crosses both the space, American resilience, and industrialization things. I think, first of all, Bridget's a force of nature. So I think any great startup needs to have a force of nature founder. And I think she's absolutely one. But ultimately, when you think about access to space and all the data aspects we're talking about, whether it be data centers in space or just EOIR satellites, we are at a huge gap in the market in terms of bringing that data down to Earth and doing it in an effective, modern way.

50:28There's legacy incumbents in the space that just are not modernizing in a way that we need to do, whether that be from a national security or commercially applicable way. And I think she's really hitting a very nice niche in the market that is going to grow to be very, very large. And if she hits her milestones, I think there's gonna be a very big company very quickly. Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think what's underappreciated is as much as we're all seeing like Starlink blanket, you know, sort of the sort of planet with, you know, sort of internet. If you're operating satellites up in space, you actually do not have that same internet access.

50:58So, you know, at Varta, for example, we get to talk to our satellites once every like two to three hours, roughly for, you know, sort of 15, 20 minutes. And so think of a satellite effectively in some ways is like a backend server rack that you have access to, you know, are SSHing into you and like communicating with. but you don't get to talk to it 24 seven. And so that requires like a lot of autonomy. It's pretty frustrating and like makes operations, you know, sort of relatively difficult. If you're like space exercise, sure, you can go invest into building out a whole ground station network yourself.

51:24And they've obviously done that. But if you're even Varta, which, you know, even other companies that have like, you know, sort of multi-billion dollar valuations, you're still dependent on some of these like super old school providers. The biggest one is a company called KSAT, which is like a Norwegian state owned basically entity. I think it got founded in like 1982. It's like, they're like software interfaces, is literally like Fortran and FTP. It's like, it's not like they're like a modern API based system. And so, yeah, when we like, you know, sort of met Northwood, it was just like this thesis that I been thinking about for a long time, but there just wasn't really like a great entrepreneur going after it.

51:53And she has like the best, you know, latest, you know, she just had her latest round led by Mina at Washington Harbor, who like deeply understands how to think about like these like project financing, CapEx intensive, how do you layer in like public, you know, sort of, you know, funds, you know, debt, you know, capital alongside, you know, sort of venture equity, because it's the type of thing that's going to have to go and build out a lot of basically physical infrastructure here on the ground. But on the other side, hopefully I'll be able to talk to my VARTA satellites basically 24-7 rather than very intermittently right now.

52:23I'm confused by your lack of connectivity, and I presume it's just ignorance. But I know that AWS and Azure run ground control communications setups. They announced it and never did anything. AWS basically bailed on their whole AWS ground station thing. So yeah, nobody's done it. uh i'm kind of crazy um so you know maybe some of those companies may or may not yeah be future future well when they're now watching amazon and blue origin chase spacex it really feels like an extra mistake because now they have no base to stand on what a fuck up yeah yeah obviously like amazon's you know trying to roll out amazon leo they just announced that you know sort of deal with delta which like again i think you know elon tweeted about earlier today it's like yeah delta is gonna really take a hit on that like united at the end of the year i think has something like 80 percent of their like you know domestic air you know you know um airplanes are going to have Starlink on it.

53:07Yeah, at some point, like I think a lot of us on this call almost certainly would prefer to fly United, even if it's like slightly more expensive or inconvenient timing, if you know they're going to have Starlink internet on board. 100 % I'm making my decision on who to fly based on this. Like 1000%. And United said they're going to be 100%. I think JetBlue also said they're going to be 100%. And I think Delta just announced they're going to use the Amazon Starlink competitor. So I have a thesis that business travel is going to 2x, 2x because of this technology. I know it sounds crazy. And I think people would pay.

53:45I know they're making it free. I think people would pay for a Starlink subscription, even if they didn't have Starlink at home. This is how it should be deployed. If you get on a plane, you get a low bandwidth for free, like no video, like whatever. You get one megabit. But if you pay for a Starlink subscription of 20 bucks a month, 40 bucks a month, or you have Starlink at home, you have the 60 to 120 version, then you get the high speed on the plane. This would take Starlink subscriptions to the moon. I mean, I guess they don't need to because United's picking it up. But I will only fly United or especially on international where you're four hours over the ocean and they're like, oh, by the boy, you can't work for four hours.

54:26We're going to just dribble in your texts randomly. It's nuts. Sal, can you put Starlink on your jet, your private jet? I don't have a private jet, so I can't answer that question. Didn't fall for the classic journalistic technique. I don't talk to poor people. Delian, go ahead. You were going to say something. Oh, I was going to say just like, you know, we're not that far away, I think, from, you know, Apple eventually just putting in a phase ray antenna on one of these things. And now you have Starlink coverage basically on your phone, literally no matter where you are. So you could be on your, you know, sort of PJ that has Starlink installed, or there's a world, you know, I've done the exact physics on this, but like, you know, I think if you like have a window seat basically, and you have, you know, a face-free antenna on one of these, even if the jet doesn't have it, your phone still basically has access to, you know, basically Starlink.

55:09And that is true whether or not you're on a jet or you're like, I don't know, middle of the Mediterranean. Where are they going to charge like three bucks a month to a carrier for this? Two bucks a month? That's the rumor I'm hearing. Yeah. It's a little bit of a cabal, like the first carrier to drop in some ways. like they're you know it's always it's kind of bad for t-mobile verizon at &t etc because like their sort of moat is like their physical infrastructure here on the ground and so the moment that one of them starts to offer this in some ways they kind of break their like entire moat and like valuation and so you know i think it's more likely than not that like if you add up all of the carriers the united states and their valuations today i think that all gets transferred to spacex over the course of like the next you know basically 10 years but it's a question of like how long can they hold off until then and if you if you oh sorry go ahead if you look at the if you look at the broader infrastructure picture, the ultimate moat is infrastructure, right?

55:55So like all these, all these cell towers are just being leapfrogged by things like Starlink, you're seeing this kind of happen throughout the economy. So I think base power is sort of like a modern take on how you distribute power. You've got all these nuclear companies, we were an early Oklo investor, for example, that are that are out there kind of generating energy, all these pieces of infrastructure are kind of being rethought. And to your point, I think we're in this moment where hardware is in vogue, but I think it's also like we're coming back into contact with reality in a lot of ways.

56:23All of a sudden, it matters that we need to be able to generate a lot of energy really quickly. And so all of a sudden, people are thinking about generation and distribution of energy in a way they haven't in 100 years. I think to your kind of point, your question, Alex, around military, all of a sudden, we're thinking an awful lot more about this after Russia, Ukraine, after Iran, like all these kind of old realities are coming back up to the surface. And I think we're moving back towards reconsidering these kind of critical industries, which are actually the biggest industries. So like energy is the largest market in the world, right?

56:56But largely very, very little innovation. And so I think it's a huge opportunity for us to reopen all these sectors that we have kind of seeded to inertia for the last several decades, even among the tech industry. Have we improved the government procurement process enough to support a rapid enough purchase cycle for defense tech companies so they don't get stuck somewhere in like delay hell? Because that's my concern with companies like Sironic. Like, I love what they're building. I love that they raise capital. But they're selling, no offense, to the Navy, which is an enormous bureaucracy, which is part of a larger bureaucracy, which is run by Congress.

57:29And so that just scares me from a customer profile point. I think that we are. And everyone throws barbs at, you know, the acquisition process. But the fact of the matter is, is that companies have been doing it for the longest time, like, you know, forever, effectively. A lot of our companies that we actually take for granted now, whether it be AWS started as GovCloud with the CIA and other things like that, these things have happened. And it's part of the reason why we started our firm is that we didn't think that modernization in the public sector was necessarily required acquisition reform.

57:54That said, we definitely need acquisition reform. We definitely need to get through the valley of death. But I think that the people that criticize the valley of the death probably aren't the founders that are maxing and finding a way to get through to it in the first place. And so I think that we do need it. It is a good thing. We do need to solve for it. But that said, I think there's always been an opportunity here. And that was one of the confounding things to me when I first moved to the Valley, first started working in venture is like this budget exists. There is a playbook to do it. It is ugly.

58:19It requires lobbyists. It takes all these things that are difficult and a different muscle movement from a go to market versus like PLG and things like that, that everyone got spoiled with in the dot com boom coming out of Silicon Valley. And I think there is some ways to go out there and get big, lumpy contractual opportunities. and you have to inform these requirements and build technology sort of like, and make sure the government knows about it before it's pre-wired for somebody else out there. And so it does take more capital. It does take more patience, but I think it's always been an opportunity and hopefully it's becoming even more an addressable opportunity for our young founders to go out there and achieve more efficiently.

58:54Yeah, I wanna get answered this question though, because I'm really curious about the harpoon perspective. People were talking about how Andrew Hill shares were the hardest things to get in the world. They were the number one thing people wanted to find on secondary markets. Valuations are getting pretty hot. We've seen a number of multi-billion dollar rounds go into American defense tech companies. Essentially, are we seeing too much capital go into quickly? Now that I'm opposed to them, I'm just curious if we're in a bit of a defense tech bubble. I think that we are. And I think that it's, you know, but to frame it, I think that we are always in a pseudo bubble anytime anything gets topical and hot in Silicon Valley or in the venture capital or tech community.

59:26I don't think this is any different than, you know, the dot-com wave, the mobile wave, you know, SaaS, you know, crypto, so on and so forth. I think there's people that were early to it, like Founders Fund and others. and there's people that are sort of like later to it. And I think that price is what you can pay, value is what you get. And I think that right now there is an oversupply of capital going in here and paying very, very high prices for things that may not pencil at the end of the day. But that said, we are gonna see more winners coming out of this space, is my belief. I think we're not only gonna see the andrels, we're gonna see other solutions that are gonna be large as well, maybe not the same scale, but I think it depends on your fund size as well.

1:00:00If you have strong ownership at an early stage and you have a reasonable fund size, I think you'd be very successful. If you're a multi-billion dollar fund and plowing a lot more money, the upside must be much, much, much higher. So I think that we are sort of like in this competitive pressure. And I think venture capital and startups are sort of like real estate. Everyone wants to have the nice home and the nice neighborhood and a great location. And I think that that's how everyone is infatuated with AI and defense slash hardware right now. And capital is moving that direction and prices are just going up.

1:00:30Yeah, we need more for the military than just drones, be they in the sky, on the water or underwater, Larson. So where in Defense Tech do you think there's not enough attention paid where there's a lot of opportunity today? I think something that we're looking at is the supply chain for a lot of these critical components that go into all of these systems. So there's subsystems, there's critical components, many of which go all the way back to rare earths that are in China. at Hill and Valley that Delian put on. We talked a lot about the pharmaceuticals industry, pharmaceutical precursors, and going through trials, and all that stuff is just done much more efficiently and better at scale in China with automations.

1:01:02And so ultimately, I think that we're looking at really investors, a lot are looking at the application layer, which the application layer are the things that gets the bazooka contracts. It's the Ceronics, et cetera, of the world. That's the application layer products. But ultimately, I'd be really curious to see how people are reconciling domestic supply chain if we really are decoupling from China. we don't have the domestic supply chain to fit into, you know, more recent NDAA and legislative aspects. I'd be curious to get Saul's, you know, take on this in terms of like how we sort of like, you know, you know, rebuild that, how we re-industrialize all of that.

1:01:34Because I think that is sort of like the next, the next frontier where we got to solve those problems, whether the venture backable or not, I'm not sure yet, but we got to solve that problem. Saul, you're up. There are alternatives on a lot of these things. So we, we invested in a company called Whetstone, which is an undersea mining company. And it turns out, we have known how to mine the bottom of the ocean for a long time. Just about everyone signed something called the International Seabed Treaty. Permit me a little bit of like a law professor digression here. The United States never signed this thing.

1:02:04And the admin earlier this year issued an executive order saying, we're going to go do this because G just nuked the global supply chain for rare earths. And it turns out there's tons of neodymium sitting there on the bottom of the ocean, you don't even have to drill for it, you just dredge. So I think there are a lot of options that are being, you know, sort of considered now that wouldn't have been considered in previous eras. You've got companies like Vulcan, MP Materials, and a lot of other folks who are out there saying, hey, we just, as a sort of national priority, need to make sure that we have access to these things.

1:02:37And, you know, when those supply chains are stress tested and interrupted, that's when you start to see both innovation and people starting to spend more time on it. So I'm actually optimistic about our ability to get ourselves back onto solid footing here. But it's encouraging to see the quality entrepreneurs taking these problems on. You didn't see that 10 years ago. So I think that's been something that's been, as an investor, really exciting for us. I think the important thing, though, is like these companies do need to stand on their own two feet, like in the commercial market with their unit economics.

1:03:10Like it cannot be that the only way that you compete against China is with, you know, sort of significant and sort of like indefinite government support. Like, yeah, there's definitely, you know, sort of certain ecosystems in China where like, you know, the state propped them up for some period of time, but they eventually got to like phenomenal unit economics. I think my fear with some of these like re-industrialization projects that the United States has actually funded even over the past year, year and a half, is some of them I think are just like going down the total wrong tech tree that is just like trying to copy what China did 20 years ago in some ways, just restoring it back to the United States.

1:03:40versus I think there are certain other projects that I think are leapfrogging ahead of China in a way that allows them to, even without government support, ultimately actually be the best commercial player. And so, yeah, similar to both Larson and Sal has been an area that we've been pretty actively investing into across the board. And that panel with Alicia Jackson and Zach Kleinberg, et cetera, for Hill and Valley was basically my sort of like pet project. It was probably the one that I spent the most time making sure to put together because I was like, it's just a topic that has not talked about enough.

1:04:08Senator Young is really phenomenal on it. Alicia Jackson's phenomenal on it. Zach's phenomenal on it. There's actually a whole white paper that we put out, you know, sort of same day of the forum on how to reshort this stuff back to the United States. Where are we going down the wrong tech tree from a governmental perspective? Because I'm really curious about where we're making these missteps, Delia. That's not a gotcha question. I'm just legitimately curious. You were so confident when you said that. I'm curious where we're making errors so we can correct them. We can't make improvements until we know what we're doing wrong.

1:04:36um i like i'm gonna i think plead the fifth on that one i don't want to you know some of any you know sort of name slash i think some of these things will end up you know turning into huge lawsuits and people get hauled in front of congress and go to jail so it's all it's all retard max until the question i'm gonna plead the fifth well give me give me the question here like um more specifically yeah uh one of one of the friends of the program says that the government in its industrial policy regarding uh reshoring and re-industrializing america is taking things down the wrong path. So Jason, how would you define a positive industrial policy for the government that would accelerate resiliency while also not falling prey to regulatory capture and waste?

1:05:17So give me like three examples of this. Were you talking about the CHIPS Act? Let's do rare earths, silicon production, and new pharma. So rare earths is the simplest one possible. If you can figure out a way for the federal government to work with local states, and we believe in states' rights, it's the United States of America. We have a system of 50 different competing regions, and they get to have some level of sovereignty. I think the best thing to do is for the executive branch to work with the senators and the representatives from the local ones and say, which five states would like to be the beneficiary of this large low interest loan that it's a low interest loan with an equity kicker that makes Americans profitable like they could have been with the Tesla loans back in the day.

1:06:10Remember Solyndra, Tesla and Fisker and one of the companies paid it back. We got payback with interest from that Obama era incentive, but we didn't get options or warrants in Tesla. And they could have very easily because remember Tesla was on the brink. So a very simple process. Hey, you're a rare or its company. We've got a billion dollars here. You can ask for 10 million to 100 million loan. The states can get involved. If your state doesn't want to damage 100 acres in the middle of the forest and you're Maine or Vermont or California and you're precious about it or it's very dense, by all means, opt out.

1:06:47But if you're Texas, Nevada, Utah, and you want this commerce and you want this tax, that's the way to do it. It's just give a loan and then give upside. And then the American populace would have 5 % warrants in a company that becomes worth $10 billion. It's very simple. Incentives matter. And states get to opt in. And states get to opt out. I don't mind this fact. I have come to the conclusion after Roe v. Wade becoming a state issue that there is something incredibly important that the founding fathers figured out about keeping a nation from becoming controlled by a king, which is states getting to opt out.

1:07:32And this, I think, leads to the discussion of, do states have any rights with AI? And of course, like California is going to go wild and they're going to regulate AI. I understand that that doesn't fly with our industry, whatever. But living in Texas now and watching people in Nevada and Florida crush it and run the tables on California, it's kind of like the system works really well. It's a better system to have states competing with each other and the federal government saying, yeah, it's an open competition. And here's some money. And yeah, then you don't have to complain. If you're California and you're like, we don't want you ripping up this beautiful state.

1:08:08It's going to be perfect and pristine. Great. That's what your populace wants. Awesome. Nevada, how do you feel? Texas, Do you want data centers? Texas is like, hell yes, we want data centers. Everything west of Austin is like, there's nobody there. It's empty. Go for it. Rip it apart. Build data centers. We're already ripping the oil out. Who gives a shit? Go for it. We want the tax revenue. We want the jobs. Awesome. Competition. Great for humanity. But under your model, Jason, the states get warrants when they participate. So you would end up with some public ownership of private companies.

1:08:41Yeah. Non-voting. Okay. Yeah. Just like they own the note, they own the loan. Yeah. So they own the loan. So what's the difference between owning a loan that gets paid back at 1 % or 4 % and owning a loan as well as you get a million warrants for a dollar each. And if that goes public at 100, you make 99 and you... Oh, because I think the government will screw it up. And I think the government, when they have an interest in a company, is going to basically turn it into the state operation in that case and squeeze out other things. I'm going to pull the Founders Fund libertarian card here and say, I don't like that idea.

1:09:16It's too much intermingling of public and private money. But I like where your head's at. And we don't have to solve this today, but this goes back to the top of the show. How do we build an economy? It's just, you know, we can't both be in a bubble for like hard tech reindustrialization companies and need the government to be kind of like subsidizing it. I think the way that you sort of get more of this, more of the innovation that you want is by pulling restrictions out of the way of these entrepreneurs who have incredible capital markets available to them. There are people who will fund these things that did not exist in the past.

1:09:48So I think I'm incredibly bullish on this sort of reindustrialization. And I think the way you get it to go faster is not to just kind of throw government money at it. Because so often when you throw government money at something, you create a subsidy, but then there's just so much regulation. It's like you give them both things have to happen. Strongly. And first is regulation. Right. First is regulation. A hundred percent. Yeah. After regulation, if you still don't have like if it's still not economically viable, Sal, to build chips in America. And we know Taiwan's getting picked up by China in twenty seven or twenty nine or whatever it is.

1:10:27and the investment community is like, yeah, I don't want to pay for a money-losing fab that can never compete with what's coming out of Taiwan and China, then what do you do? So if you've gotten the regulation done and you still don't have an economic model, then I think - I'm going to fight both sides of your hypo. One, we have not removed nearly enough regulation. I 100 % agree. And two, Saronic just raised a couple billion dollars to do exactly what you just said. The money does exist to do this. And we there are sort of a lot of investors who are not only patriotic and care deeply about the future of our country and our ability to defend ourselves and project force.

1:11:03It's also that, you know, we think these things are really valuable. Right. Which is why I think you see. Can we think of another example? Like, I don't know, making commodity drugs. Or something like, is there some other example? Oh, you're just you're just saying whatever is the least economic thing. I think the hard case you're speaking to, I think, is places where, you know, there's extreme subsidy in the Chinese government and it forestalls U.S. investment. Correct. Our capital markets won't do it because just like Delian saying, we're looking at and saying there's no way to make money because they're artificially keeping prices low, either because they're incredibly good at it and have a 20 year head start or because they subsidize it or both.

1:11:45Or both. So those are those are tougher calls. Yeah. OK. Yeah, I think, I think like, sometimes I like don't totally, you know, sort of buy that argument where I think people like think that the reason that like, you know, sort of Shanghai is such a great place to like, you know, do consumer electronics is like because of state funding. It's like, no, at this point, they've just built by far the best ecosystem for that type of talent to that type of, you know, sort of production. I think like, you know, in relation to, you know, sort of bio, you know, sort of the best, you know, sort of attempted list in the past couple of years was like ABC, you know, sort of incubation resilience, right, which was trying to like, you know, reshore and create the like, wooshy biologics, wooshy small molecules, which is like a generic, you know, or drug producer in China and bring that, you know, basically back to, you know, back to America.

1:12:23But, you know, I think a lot of why they like, you know, ultimately, you know, sort of didn't end up, you know, sort of working out the way they wanted was like, both didn't really figure out how to pair, you know, some public and private dollars. But again, there was no like, you know, actually studying China and looking at like, you know, how do you actually get ahead of that? Like a bit of why Wuxi, you know, sort of, you know, works in China is like, they just have infinite low cost labor, you know, basically chemists. Yeah, I think there's just some things here that are uneconomical the private debt markets are just not going to finance.

1:12:50And I think that's where Uncle Sammy is to step in and say like, this is imperative to our national prosperity and security. We need to invest in this because it's sort of like during TARP, buyer of last resort thing, whether or not that was a good policy. I think we have a similar type of thing that's happening right now. We need to be a funder of last resort to get things on step, to validate the unit economics, and then let the private markets take over. What mechanism would you use for that? And what are some target areas, to Jason's point, where you think that would apply? I go back to the pharmaceutical industry, I think is a great one.

1:13:19I think it's like not talked a lot enough about. I think it's extremely important to the health of our entire populace. We went through a pandemic. All of these things are really important. And I think that's something that we need to invigorate here. Obviously, you know, semis and TSMC and all that stuff is already talked about a lot. And I think that we're making good progress towards that. But I think, you know, thinking about the health and security of our populace, that's one that's not talked about enough. Jason, who should lead the nation in getting that done? Do you think should that be governors or do you think that's a federal question?

1:13:47If only we had a business focused, you know, chief executive in the White House who wasn't starting endless foreign wars and who was a great negotiator and had all the technology community and business community willing to come to the White House anytime he snapped his fingers. We have like half of that right now. Unfortunately, the entire administration has been distracted by a forever war. If that ends, like Trump is on his way to doing this, you know, and it's I think Michael Bloomberg, Trump. you know, my, you know, Jamie Dimon Eisner, pick your CEO, Schultz, CEO, former CEO who becomes president, who can explain this to politicians in a very deft way and explain to the American public that this is not grift.

1:14:37That's really the only reason why people get upset about this is they think, oh, they're just giving Intel$10 billion because Intel is a fuck up and they can't make a real business. So they're giving, they're maxing tax dollars to the most maxed company. When you really just need to make small incentives, remove, obviously removing, you know, the regulations. Great. And then this is what I liked about the loan program is people opted into it. They paid it back. And if you just put a little warrant coverage in there, then it makes up for all the losses. I'm not saying it should be like the purpose of our government, but in the case of we don't have pharmaceuticals, you want a private public partnership.

1:15:18You don't want the government doing anything except maybe protecting citizens. They suck at whatever they do. Look at the education system. Look at our healthcare system. We pay two or three times any other country for healthcare and for education, and we get half the results. When people propose a government policy, they're always imagining like a philosopher king administering it, but actually you get the DMV. Like that's the important thing to remember. This is why Singapore is so interesting to me. Have you guys been to Singapore before? One? You haven't been? I have. It's worth going. And just in that country, the way it was set up by Lee Kuan-Yu, Lee Kuan-Yu, who is like, that's my government warrior CEO, like war mode CEO.

1:16:10They have this perfect balance of anybody who works for the government. That is the most elite job you can have. If you were the equivalent of a Harvard MBA, you came out of Stanford, you go work for the government there, you get paid twice the private sector. So they'll pay 400 ,000 for somebody to work. And they're like, we want the government here to be the highest functioning in the world, not the place people who are looking to work 20 hours a week, take a ton of vacation and, you know, get some pension. It's literally the elites, the elite performers, not elites like in the way we use it here in America.

1:16:42The most elite performers consider working for the government this incredible thing. It's kind of like the Navy SEALs, Larson, where it's like you say you're a Navy SEAL. We're all like, whoa, that's legit. We need all government to have that. You need to have like 80 percent of the people that try out for any role in government don't make it because you're not good enough. And there needs to be that level of prestige and those types of people that are in the seat. As opposed to government being the place where people who can't cut it. Don't get another job. Yeah, and that's the turnaround we need.

1:17:13I mean, this is why you can say what you want about Doge or just making the government smaller. If we're sitting here and our industry is like, you know what, we can do this with 10 % less people. like our government for the last 50 years under all types of government, you know, Republicans, Democrats, and everybody in between, moderates, et cetera, has been like, you know what the solution here is? Let's build the size of the government. Like, that's never the solution. More of adding more to what's not working is almost never the solution. It's like hitting the accelerator while you're spinning, you know, on ice coming out of a turn.

1:17:51You're like, That's not what you do. Just hold the steering wheel straight and just ride it out. Just adding more speed never helps a rocket that's off course, right, Delian? No. And then, so speaking of, we are now sort of L minus exactly four hours to when humans go back to the moon for the first time in three years. I'm so excited. Tell us about this, Delian. What is the story here? Why is this happening? Why is our government doing it? What exactly? that they're going to go around the moon for 10 days with humans on the top of this Artemis rocket. That's what I know. Why? And what are we going to prove by doing this?

1:18:27Yeah, I thought there's this really phenomenal article. I don't know if it makes sense to, you know, sort of bring up written by this guy, Eric Berger, last night at Ars Technica, talking about like why for the first time he's excited about, you know, sort of this mission versus he hasn't been for the past couple Artemises. I would say post like the space shuttle era, right the which got you know sort of shut down um you know during um uh you know the obama era nasa just got really lost like it was just like a very confusing architecture that they were saying for coming back to like the moon and mars they're talking about basically putting like a space station in low earth orbit uh sorry in moon orbit as like a way station on the way down to the surface of the moon but they didn't really have a plan to get down to the surface we're gonna put them on out your astronauts orbiting the moon but what's the point because like the whole point is like the moon has resources you can mine it you can build things there but like if you're in orbit around it you can't you sort of do that and he was like this time it finally feels different and a part of it like jared has just done some phenomenal work in the past like i think he's been you know sort of you know uh you know nominated or you know confirmed for the past three months he shut down all the nonsense all the things that just felt very confusing and vague and had no clear plan at nasa for the past 15 years he basically shut down this is the third time that this you know sort of vehicle was launched but it's the first time where it kind of makes sense in a technical tech tree you know sort of roadmap where we're basically repeating effectively the Apollo 9 slash 10 missions, which were basically missions that like went to the moon and got close to the moon, but came back, but we're basically testing the system.

1:19:48And then we're basically doing that, you know, sort of same thing. Um, this vehicle has basically flown, you know, basically three times. Uh, the first was, I want to say in, uh, 2014, um, the second time, and that was like really, you know, so lower with orbit mission coming back. Uh, the second time was in, uh, 2022 there, the, you know, sort of spacecraft went much further and higher up and we practice basically reentering at a faster speed. And this time we're basically going around the moon um the change that he's also made is for the next mission artemis 3 what we're going to do is rather than going back to the moon again we're actually going to practice docking with either a starship lunar lander or the blue origin lunar lander which is um you know a good practice test for eventually that docking basically happening by the moon and then artemis 4 would be ideally the first you basically boots on the moon and that's currently planned for i believe um you know late 2028 um i you know the the rocket and the spacecraft honestly may or may not be the ones that we actually use to go back to the moon.

1:20:40So a bit of this is Jared sort of inheriting the historical architecture. But what he has pushed is like, we are going to start launching this rocket way more frequently. We're gonna be flying the spacecraft way more frequently. And I think that gives him the political air cover for like, if in a year, 18 months, this rocket, which right now has flown like, you know, three times in the last 15 years. So not particularly high cadence. If they don't get to Jared's new cadence, he'll probably just shut that program and then pivot fully to some like Starship, Dragon, you know, Blue Origin, Blue Lander, et cetera, type of, you know, architecture.

1:21:07so um i think today is like super super exciting um you know going very very close to the moon and you know doing a really good practice basically you know for a lunar landing run um and it's furthest humans have been away from earth in you know 50 53 years um but also i don't think we have like a super obvious like here's how we're gonna you know so get back to the moon and you know put boots on it you know immediately yeah but we're freaking trying and that makes me so happy like this entire art of this thing the fact that we're doing it just brings joy to my heart jillian I want to go to the moon myself.

1:21:35So the faster we go there, the faster I have a small chance. Jason, are you excited? You're going to launch? Show it to the girls? I mean, I guess I'm excited. I think I've become a bit numb to the excitement of launches since Elon is doing one every three days and they're so predictable now, which I think says something. It's kind of like, are you impressed when, I don't know, like the, I mean, are people in Japan impressed when they get on a 200 mile per hour bullet train? No. Like, am Americans impressed when you get on one? Yes. But this has become the new normal. Like, we're able to go to space every day.

1:22:17I mean, what is the cadence right now of hopping on a Falcon? Like, the Falcon is the one that goes up every two or three days now. What is the number of Falcons? 150? 160 miles a year? And what you'll love, Jason, is in November of last year, for the first time in American history, we had more rocket launches that month than days in the month. And that was the first time that's ever happened in American history. That was Falcon 9 and everybody else, but basically daily now. So basically, basically, it's like the train, it's like getting the B train or something. It's like, yeah, you can get the bus.

1:22:53You can just show up at Starbase or in Cape Canaveral and hop a flight to space. I mean, that is mind-blowing. Where were we 20 years ago? It was like there were 10 a year, 20 a year. I don't know. Who knows? It was like a couple of months. So we've now, more time has now elapsed from the first moon landing to today than time between the first flight at Kitty Hawk and the moon landing. So like in another way - Not quite, not quite. It was 66 years. Is that wrong or it's close? Yeah, it's very close. It's very close. It was 66 years from Kitty Hawk to Hawk. Yeah, yeah. But close. I mean, the Concord, like, you know, this is like one of my big regrets is I remember, I didn't have enough money to take a$5 ,000 Concorde flight.

1:23:34But I remember the Concorde because I lived in Brooklyn and it would leave out of JFK and you would hear it sometimes. And you knew people who took it in New York and you could get to London in three fucking hours. Like, come on, folks. And then poor, what's the... Boom. Boom is like now Boom's on a side quest, not a pivot. I incorrectly called it a pivot, but they're on a side quest to make, you know, energy at data centers. And I'm like, for the love of God, why don't we have the ability to get to Japan in five hours, man? Come on. Because then you would always be in Japan, Jason. Yes. Okay.

1:24:14Am I, I'm the blocker now? Like, why can't we drive 120 miles an hour on the roads in America? Like why there are safe enough cars to have the Autobahn. why can't we just say the left-hand lane is for cars that have been built in the last 36 months that have these feature sets and go 100 miles an hour you know if you're if you're driving with fsd at 100 miles an hour in the left-hand lane and you don't have junkers and like vans from 1974 in there it would be completely safe like we just need to be a little more aggressive in terms of like or like raise the bar in terms of transportation it's like it's we're optimizing for the cheapest possible ticket and the worst possible experience.

1:24:56I just want to have inspiring transportation. Well, after this conversation, I'm pretty excited about the future in terms of compute and improving America's industrial capacity and going back to space. So I'm pretty optimistic, Jason. I think we're making good progress. Don't be so down. No, I'm just there's some things that feel like I need right now. I need to be able to get to Japan faster or I want to drive faster on the roads. and we're just, come on. The future's got to get here just a little bit faster. If you had to put your money on, if you had to bet on Anthropic or OpenAI at this point at the same valuation, is there the same revenue now, Alex?

1:25:36It depends on how you count. OpenAI is about a$25 billion run rate. The last Anthropic number was$19 or$20 billion, but there's a lot of questions about how they're doing hyperscaler cuts and if they're counting gross or net revenue. So it's a little bit tricky. Okay, entire net worth. minus your primary residence has to go into one. Your entire fund has to go into one bet. Anthropic or OpenAI, go. Who's first? I'm going Anthropic and probably something. I'm going Anthropic because like all the founders I know are using Cloud Code. I think it's really sort of like taken off. I think that the excitement of OpenAI also had a lot of tumult with it, right?

1:26:14With Sam almost being gone. Now he's back. the spat with Elon. I don't want to underestimate Sam Altman, but I also think that Anthropics seems to have captured lightning in a bottle right now. But they have their own issues. Department of Law, so on and so forth. So who knows? Entire net worth has to be, except for your primary residence, has to be put in Anthropics or OpenAI. Three, two, go. I think it depends what matters next. And so, you know, force me, I'll say Anthropics. I think Anthropics is sexy this week. Last week, it was OpenAI. I think it's like what I think what matters, though, as between those two is sort of the business model, like what's more defensible and what's more scalable, you know, what consumer versus enterprise.

1:26:57Dalian, I don't know if you've got a bet here. We're over a billion at cost in both businesses, so I'm not allowed to say which is my favorite child. OK, if your friend, Alien, was asked this question, what would he say? your friend a little bias towards let's say okay how about this paul esproho my little brother who's the cto of a really cool company in new york definitely spends a lot more on anthropic than he does open ai and what is his what's your little what's your baby bro's company give him a shout out here uh silna health uh they basically uh make this ai that uh helps clinicians with prior authorizations so basically uh back in the day you used to like you know give care to your patient and then you'd submit that treatment plan you know back to your insurer and then they would you know basically either accept or deny it.

1:27:42Now they've sort of switched around the sort of work process where before you give care to the patient, you're supposed to do a prior authorization and make sure that the insurance will pay for it at a time. And so they help out with that newly mandated process and get you paid more accurately and on time. Go Pavel. All right. This has been an amazing episode of Twist, April 1st. Well done, Sal, Larson, Delian, and Alex. Great job. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.