SPEAKER_00: Hey, everybody, it is Tuesday, June 7. Jake Allen, Molly Wood coming at you with a big new show. I'm going full radio and I don't know why. Welcome to the show. I've said it before. We'll SPEAKER_01: say it again. Media is a terrible business coming at SPEAKER_05: you. Buzzfeed is tanking their stock is absolutely getting decimated their market cap is worth less than their revenue what we're gonna talk about what this means for the employees the future of the company and the stock market writ large. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, and my new my new motto math is a harsh mistress. No more. By the way, bitching about dongles. We hope the EU is mandating at long last that USBC ports be standard by 2024 death to lightning. Right? Praise Jesus. I don't like government David Friedberg: intervention. But in this case, I'm gonna go with it for the good SPEAKER_16: of the environment. And we've got a startup of the day in the sports space and a we live in the future segment for an ear SPEAKER_17: transplant. It's pretty amazing. It's gonna be a great show. SPEAKER_18: Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by open phone. As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back. But using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them. Open phone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of your existing devices. Visit open phone.com slash twist to get 20% off your first six months. Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website. Go to squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And Thorn. Thorn empowers people to take control of their long term well being with a proactive science based approach to health. Through a variety of at home tests, Thorn teaches you about what your body needs and provides the right high quality certified nutritional supplements for you. To get started and take 10% off your first order, head to thorn.com slash you slash twist. SPEAKER_20: BuzzFeed. Ouch. Is the really short headline here. BuzzFeed shares dropped as much as 41% Jason Calacanis: this week. Yesterday, I believe on Monday, marking their worst one day percentage drop in trading history. Of course, BuzzFeed went public via SPAC in December 2021. The stock since then is down more than 72%. It's now trading at around $300 million. And if you're watching live, you can see this chart of the stock drop. And it is just, we've seen a lot of cliffs. I know this isn't as SPEAKER_23: bad as like the snap cliff, for example, but it was over 33% drop in the last. Yeah, this is because SPEAKER_25: the lockup was ended. So when you go public employees, venture capitalists, typically, Chamath Palihapitiya: private market investors will be locked up for six months, typically, and when the lockup comes up, SPEAKER_16: you know, people may want some liquidity. But those people if they have faith in the company, and they are in fact insiders, and they've probably been investors or employees of the company for a long time, basically, I'm not gonna say they're trading on inside information, Molly, but they're informed participants in this company. In other words, they might have invested 10 years ago, and or been on the board for a long time, have received investor updates, or they may have been in the building and worked there for a long time. So for them to sell in such a major way, and for there to be no buyers, Chamath Palihapitiya: is the problem. Now, if there were buyers who wanted the stock, you know, great, then it might drop 10%, 20%. We saw that when masa was clearing his position at Uber. Well, you'll see it when venture capitalists are clearing their position in any IPO if they choose to do so. But usually, you know, the insiders will stick with it, maybe they sell a little bit, but they generally don't like to sell on the day the lockup expires. So this is very telling, it is a vote of no confidence, in fact, SPEAKER_29: by the insiders. And you really need to think about that the company is now trading around a $300 Jason Calacanis: million market cap. And that is really less crazy. Yeah, like only slightly less than the total 2021 revenue, which was 397 million. But that's such a good point about the lockup and how it represents people who work there were issued early stock and are like, we're out. Yeah, the Wall Street SPEAKER_34: Journal quote, a BuzzFeed spokesman attributed the volatility to the lockup period, which he said, SPEAKER_29: expired on June first, he said the company had very low float and a few owners of its stock making it sensitive to extreme fluctuations when major investors sell. So a float so people know is Chamath Palihapitiya: the number of shares available to trade freely. So you'll typically have the insiders own a bunch of these shares and you have a small number of people in the public who own it. And so with a smaller float, you could have more volatility. Now to be fair, it seems like even at the time, Jason Calacanis: I think even when they did the SPAC, investors had pretty low confidence, according to the Wall Street Journal's coverage back then, it said 895th Avenue Partners Inc SPAC's announcement, following that announcement, about 94% of the $287.5 million the SPAC raised was withdrawn by investors. So as soon as it went public, they cashed out is my understanding. Yeah, or I think the SPEAKER_16: way technically the specs work is, they make an acquisition, and then there is a redemption possibility. So if you don't agree with it, you bought it 10, you have the ability to get out of it. SPEAKER_29: So I think that might be that the investors, you know, when they found out what 895th Avenue Partners SPEAKER_04: was going to buy said, Oh, yeah, that's not for me. I'm out. I see. So they pulled out of the actual SPEAKER_32: vehicle, the special acquisition company. Gotcha. Ouch. Okay. So that's so again, another vote of no SPEAKER_00: confidence. I mean, and this look, this sucks. We're sitting here, you know, veterans of the media industry. It is hard to have to face this over and over and over. But media is not a great business. SPEAKER_25: It's a really tough business. Ad based media specifically also challenged. You know, they work great as small, independent, owned businesses, they thrive, they can have solid, SPEAKER_50: you know, not ridiculous margins like software, but okay, margins. And so they're not really meant to be traded as public companies unless they hit a massive scale like a Disney, or even the New York SPEAKER_29: Times has done okay, still a tiny company. But really subscriptions are maybe more in favor by the public markets. And obviously, nobody is going to subscribe to a bunch of listicles what BuzzFeed's SPEAKER_38: knows for known for, right? So they started doing really good journalism. To be fair, they really Jason Calacanis: did start breaking, you know, and they think had to because they were they built a lot of growth on the listicles. And then they really did build a quality journalism product. But unfortunately, it's very likely that the quality journalism product didn't sell as well as the listicles in terms of clicks, right? Like it's a tough, the digital, I mean, what's interesting about the New York Times is that by far the fattest margins and the most money they make is on the print subscription. Still. Yeah, like SPEAKER_55: digital media is particularly difficult. Yeah, and just having a lot of subscriptions creates a base of users. So you know, at least you have predictability and the stock market does like SPEAKER_16: predictability, whereas advertising is not predictable going into a recession, owning an SPEAKER_29: advertising business. Well, what happens in a in a recession, everybody clenches a little bit, maybe you spend a little less, maybe you cut your advertising 10%, 20%. SPEAKER_16: So I would say the percentage of advertising being cut will be similar to the percentage of layoffs. So when you see 10 20% layoffs, you probably see 10 20% as well cut from advertising budgets, it might SPEAKER_29: be more extreme in a company that's broken. And some companies might increase their spend into a recession because advertising gets cheap, they get more value for dollar and their businesses are doing well. But if we do the back of the envelope, which we love to do here, current market cap of 320 397.5 million revenue in 2021, not even 2022. And if you look at their q1 2022 earnings report, Molly, they only had 74 million in cash. Now they don't lose that much money, but they're in a bit of a cash crunch, which might be why people are also concerned. They have 98. At that time, they had $98 million in accounts receivable, and 143 million in debt. So this Chamath Palihapitiya: business has debt on it. So the debt outweighs the cash and cash equivalents. So this is challenged. They had an operating loss of 35 million. In q1, they lost 44 million. So you start looking, you put all this together, Molly, the risk of ruin looms large here is very similar to Peloton situation where, you know, maybe SPEAKER_29: people think this company could actually not be able to thread the needle. Yeah, in a recession. Well, and you look at the losses. Jason Calacanis: This is why you want to have cash in your bank account. Seriously, and the losses are widening, right? Like the the net loss was four times larger year over year than it had been in the same quarter of the year before like that's it's because it's a hemorrhage situation now. So yeah. Oh, my God. Could BuzzFeed go? I mean, talk about a like cultural moment. Well, where you know, we talked yesterday about the weird Binance SPAC situation, how it was going to Binance took a big stake in Forbes and was going to take it public via SPAC. And probably because of these signs, that SPAC was scrapped, like they just said, no way. And it was sort of a combination of I think the SPAC environment itself, but also just these hard SPEAKER_62: realities about about media and advertising. Yeah, I mean, or BuzzFeed like fortune could take a quick Chamath Palihapitiya: investment from FTX, Binance, and they could just buy part of it. And then they could write great crypto SPEAKER_16: stories. You know, you had vice media value to 5.7 billion. I think BuzzFeed top valuation was 1.7 billion. Vox media has been over a billion. So I think what we're going to see with all of these companies is, you know, maybe they're worth one times top line revenue, two times top line revenue, 10 times bottom line. So if you have, you know, three, four or 500 million in revenue, you're worth SPEAKER_29: three, four or 500 million. Now, if you had 100 million in profits, Molly, well, then you might be 100 million times 10, you might actually be worth a billion. So for BuzzFeed to be worth a billion dollars. Again, I think they have to have at least 100 million in profits. How do you get 100 million Chamath Palihapitiya: profits? They've got to cut a third of their costs or something crazy like that. I mean, they're losing money now. So, you know, they not only do they have to cut the 50 million, they're losing a quarter SPEAKER_25: or whatever it is, they've got to cut another 100 million on top of that. Yeah. So they got to cut 150 Jason Calacanis: million in expense. And they need to pay for something probably. I mean, you look at you look at the information and Axios, which has like a very expensive, you know, subscription tier for newsletters. Yeah, it's the companies I think the media companies that have figured out how to make other companies pay expensive subscriptions as part of work are the ones who I think are going to be able SPEAKER_67: to pull through this down turn. Listen, lots of founders are loosey goosey with their personal phone numbers, they put it on their company documents, they use it on sales calls, email SPEAKER_68: footers, it's all over the place. What happens if that salesperson leaves the company? And now people are calling, and that person's gone on, maybe they went to a competitor. And now they're using their personal phone number to get sales from previous emails that they sent under your email address. But you will clean up all this mess with open phone, they help you create a business phone number for you and every member of your team. And it works through an app on your smartphone or desktop. You pick a number, you install the app, bada bing, you're done. That's it. No need to carry two phones like back in the day. And by the way, we can tell you open phone is amazing because our sales team uses it every day. I kid you not, we use it every day. That's why we're such fans of this. Open phone is already super affordable, a starting price of just $10 a month. Twist listeners can get an extra 20% off any plan for your first six months by signing up at openphone.com slash twist. And if you have an existing phone number with another service, no problem. Open phone will port them over for free. So head over to o p e n p h o n e.com slash twist. And listen, we get credit for you using the service, you're gonna love it. And you're gonna save 20%. Okay, great deal for everybody. Chamath Palihapitiya: I've come to some conclusions about the media space. Yeah, you know, in my career, because we all spent our careers there. It's not a venture investment. Yeah, it's not venture investable. Yeah. But content is SPEAKER_16: king. And content is super important. So the place I've come to, and you might see it in my behavior is media plus something. Okay, so there's two businesses I am CEO of right now inside and launch. And if you look at both of them, it's media plus something Molly in launches case, what is it media plus what plus investing? Okay, very good. Correct answer. So the media business is like, Oh crap, what's happening? The media business helps the investment business and the investment business, SPEAKER_50: of course, informs what we make here every day because you and I work with a team of 21 people looking at startups. So you and I become super smart about this. Look at your first six months, Chamath Palihapitiya: we were talking with Brad Gerstner, bestie number five, and he was just over the moon at watching how much you're learning. And so we share that with the audience. Now we look at inside.com inside.com has SPEAKER_29: over 4 million in revenue. And we've been profitable, I think, six or seven of the last SPEAKER_16: eight quarters, we've got over $2 million in cash, businesses doing great, email newsletters and events making money, but it is now a media business plus something. What's the plus something that I SPEAKER_01: added in the last couple of months, a social network. Okay. So here we go, folks, if you this is SPEAKER_05: is what this is just Jake house observation. Yeah, media businesses are great. People love media, people love content, it's super engaging, it's top of the funnel. But you need something else. And you need something that scales. So inside.com now has profiles, it's got a social network, and it's got a social news product. And next week, we're going to drop the jobs. So you will be able to on inside, go to inside.com slash crypto slash jobs, and post a job for free, or browse jobs, and we added questions. So now you can post, you can add friends like a social network, you can post questions, you can post a news story, comment on a news story, and you'll be able to post jobs. So you start looking at that, it starts looking like Reddit, and LinkedIn, right. And so that was my intent, because Reddit started doing content, they started professionalizing their AMA department and LinkedIn has tried a couple of times to do more content. So my thinking is, if you're great at content, we'll build some other business and attach a high scale business to it. And for BuzzFeed, what would be a great high scale business Molly, if we were to think out loud here, what could you add to BuzzFeed with this very popular audience of media savvy coastal elites, SPEAKER_82: perhaps young people who like listicles, maybe it's very millennial driven, what could you add to that? I mean, they should start a creator business. Okay, great. SPEAKER_84: What a great idea to do that one. Yeah, sure. You could have SPEAKER_16: What were you gonna say? I was gonna say, I know this sounds silly. But there are casual games that are the equivalent of the New York Times crossword puzzle, that if you added them to BuzzFeed, and I went to BuzzFeed, and I was into cats, and there was a casual game about cats, or a strategy game or Wordle type game or Pictionary type game. Remember, there was another viral game. So if they had some sort of a casual game studios, you know, maybe that could scale. So all these people come there, and then they get into playing casual games with each other, just top of funnel, you know, whatever, what a 50 million people go to BuzzFeed 100 million people go to BuzzFeed, and then flow them into casual gaming, maybe, or games of skill, right, like poker, or Farmville type things, you know, you start thinking about those games, Zynga poker, imagine you had Zynga poker like games under the farm, under the content. So I came there, 20 great pictures of cats, or I read this, you know, some coverage of, you know, Tom Cruise, and then it fed into Oh, here's a cool game I can play, or I can play solitaire, or I can play poker with my friends. And you know, I'm looking to because people are looking to waste time, right, BuzzFeed is a time waster, like a little guilty pleasure, if you will, a little, maybe I don't want SPEAKER_43: to say junk food. With some occasional legitimate news. It's well, you know, it's hard to yes, for me and my brain to remember that I know they want a Pulitzer, SPEAKER_38: right? I think they want a Pulitzer, like, yeah, I think they want a Pulitzer, SPEAKER_90: sorry to the people over there want a Pulitzer, I still have, it's hard to separate those two Jason Calacanis: things. It's really true that like, news is either a premium subscription, like the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal, or the information, The Economist, or it's a loss leader for the thing that actually makes you money. Like, this was my experience at CNET over and over and over, it's got a good, you know, pretty good news department, I built the video department, we built podcasting, all of those were secondary to the primary goal, which is get people to come and buy technology and get leads. Like there's, and there's a, there's a huge, and it doesn't SPEAKER_63: matter to CNET if nobody knows who they are, because they make a crap ton of money on people coming to their site, and buying products, and it generates leads. Eventually, they get some SPEAKER_29: affiliate revenue, because you bought a laptop, or you put in your contact information to go to a webinar by some storage company, because you're part of some big company. And there's some SPEAKER_16: enterprise storage solution from EMC or Amazon, totally you bought into. So, yes, now I think they could be breakeven businesses. So if you look, here's the good news for BuzzFeed. You make 20% SPEAKER_29: cuts, you're at breakeven, or 5%, it might be 20%. Maybe you do some salary reductions, right? That's what I've always said will be the next shoe to drop Molly, when we start seeing salaries being renegotiated. Yeah. And BuzzFeed seems like a perfect example that they just go to the, you know, staff and say, listen, for this business to be worth anything, and for your shares to be worth anything, we're going to be cutting executives 10%, and everybody else 5%, or top executives 15%, the next year 10%, and then everybody else 5%. That gets us there, we don't have to do layoffs. So you have that conversation, or you just cut 15% and don't make any salary cuts. So you can do that either way. People have different philosophies of that. But that'll be probably the next shoe to drop at a place like BuzzFeed. And then you say, Listen, we're gonna break even on this business, but we're building a podcast business underneath it. We're building a creator one where we're gonna, you know, have a social network built into BuzzFeed where people can share recipes and photos of themselves, Jason Calacanis: whatever it is, something where we can get a crap ton of money from brands to promote those that like, you go straight, you know, you don't try to sugarcoat that as news. Like it's a creator studio SPEAKER_100: where you're getting paid by brands. They had that already. They had they were the one of the SPEAKER_50: first to do on con. Yeah, yeah, they were the first to do that quite controversially, because SPEAKER_34: you couldn't tell what was sponsored content there. And they were pretty cutthroat about it, right? SPEAKER_32: Yeah. So they're in the perfect position. Just turn on that turn on the merch funnel. SPEAKER_71: But they could do a merge funnel. Yeah, that's I mean, barstool sports. Actually, here's another perfect example. Barstool sports made a little bit in advertising a lot in merch. SPEAKER_16: Yeah, some in podcasting, but ultimately, they got bought by a gambling company, a way trying company that uses them to get barstool people will buy will will gamble on sports. So Chamath Palihapitiya: they're a funnel. Yeah. So perfect. Just like fortune is now a funnel for crypto. SPEAKER_109: I don't think it is 100% Well, you know, it's been SPEAKER_10: interesting. I sold barstool to Penn National Jason Calacanis: Gaming. Sorry, Penn National Gaming. That's right. Well, and like in things that I have been a little bit bitchy about. If I'm being honest, you know, there's been this kind of ongoing thing of Justin and Ben Smith, the two Smith guys, of Bloomberg and Ben Smith, who was at the New York Times, and they've been sort of going around trying to like, raise money for this media company that was like super vague. And every time somebody interviewed them about it, it was like they bolted on another thing like, oh, we're for foreign readers and English language and this and that. And they've been trying to raise what sounds like venture investment, I think you probably investment overall, but even just venture investment. And you have to wonder if like, there was enough of a bubble that even media seemed like a good investment. And I have to wonder if those those days are over now. I'm like those days are over. I'm all in on the public radio model, man. Like listener supported SPEAKER_09: journalism is a great model. We also known as subscriptions like they're right, they're donations SPEAKER_16: and subscriptions or donations. And even those are I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all the public radio folks went to a monthly subscription, a monthly donation, which could be called a monthly Chamath Palihapitiya: subscription. Would you like subscription? Totally. So it's here's the thing. Venture capital is for high growth rocket ship businesses. These are not rocket ship businesses. These are slower growth businesses. Their trees do not grow to the moon. They're not going to have software margins, nor are SPEAKER_16: they going to be, you know, $10 billion companies. And if you're in venture, you're trying to hit that $10 billion mark, $1 billion. If a couple of them hit a billion, that's nice. But it's not going to return your fund in all likelihood as an investor in these large funds need to be able to return their Chamath Palihapitiya: fund. And they're just not going to do that. So people made some frisky bets on some of these things. And, you know, they got a little too loose, you know, BuzzFeed, Vice, Vox, they could all be great SPEAKER_16: businesses with solid margins, but not for venture capitalists, for private equity folks, for people SPEAKER_50: with a different return profile, Molly, people who want to return two times their money, three times SPEAKER_16: their money, you know, not, you know, 100 times their money. So let's keep moving. And to the folks over at BuzzFeed, you know, hopefully, my tip helps think about a business like, you know, the people who are buying ads on your site, just if they're buying a lot of ads on your site, maybe you should be in that business as well. So who was buying barstool ads, wagering companies, maybe there's somebody making merchandise, you know, like Amazon basics type stuff, maybe direct to consumer, maybe there's a BuzzFeed brand to be made, maybe you make BuzzFeed, you know, cool design products, and that's SPEAKER_29: your business and the content flows people to that high margin business. Jason Calacanis: It's a great idea. It's a great idea. Maybe they have a very trendy, like popular media and video business. Just merge it up. Merge it up. Maybe. Yeah. Okay, we got some exciting news for you right David Friedberg: now. We're going to give one twist listener $1,000 in Squarespace credits. You ever go to a SPEAKER_68: company's website, and it looks absolutely gorgeous? Well, we want to show off your best web designs. It can be anything, a landing page, a feature flow, a design aesthetic, anything that would wow your users. So use your creativity here. The possibilities for submissions are endless, and you can imply it's super simple. You head to showusyourspace.com, which will redirect you to a tweet for me at Jason. Then you reply to the tweet with a short video image, link, gif, anything that shows off your space. Then my team and I will feature the best submissions on this week in startups. So we're going to plug your startup, your landing page, your video, whatever it is. And I'm going to pick one of these winners to give them $1,000 Squarespace gift card. Today, we're going to highlight a submission by Twitter user Jonah Salita, and it's called Dial with two L's. It's a mental health app focused on Gen Z. You can check out the product at dialapp.com with two L's. The site looks great because you guessed it. It's built on Squarespace. Come on. We knew it was built on Squarespace. That's why it's so beautiful. And don't forget you get 10% off at squarespace.com slash twist by using the promo code twist. Um, I love this story. Let's talk about Jason Calacanis: your less risky bets. In some ways, Uber taking a play from Apple seeing what works and then doing SPEAKER_25: that. Yes. Uber eats is coming for gold belly. Apparently tech crunch has the announcement. Chamath Palihapitiya: Gold Bell belly CEO Joe Ariel was on episode 1283. As you know, I'm a huge fan of gold belly. Um, and Uber CEO, uh, Dara Kajra Shahi was on episode 1226. Well, here we go. Uh, Uber is becoming a super app. Obviously I have a horse in this race. I'm still a large shareholder. Uh, and, uh, they are SPEAKER_16: doing nationwide shipping on Uber eats. So if you're on Uber eats and you're ordering tonight's meal, what if you want the Peking doc or you want blood sews barbecue or, you know, um, Sarge's deli, uh, or SPEAKER_29: waffles and dinges in New York city? I don't know what that is for my time. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, you SPEAKER_05: can start doing these things where merchants will, will do this. Uh, obviously a lot of brands have been doing this direct where they ship and they make a nice living on this. So if you're a magnolia SPEAKER_16: bakery, uh, they were on gold belly, but you could also buy direct from them. And I think I've bought direct from them. So a lot of these iconic brands of food that people loved from their, you know, local neighborhood, and then they moved somewhere or they heard about it, uh, or they experienced it SPEAKER_05: on vacation. Let's say you want to get great bagels. Sometimes I will order great bagels or I'll order a great pizza or order the Peking duck kit. It comes to you with like dry ice, Molly and like far too much packaging. Oh yeah. For it to be justifiable for every night, but maybe only five or 10% more packaging than your, your normal door dash or Uber Eats. So as a once in a while thing to celebrate some food you love from around the world, it's a great idea. Um, so gold belly really became like a Jason Calacanis: sensation during the pandemic in particular gold belly has been around for a long time and has a really big catalog of local restaurants that you can order from. And you know, it's like a lot of the tourist favorites, but not completely. I did like a Philly night for my boyfriend for one of his birthdays during the pandemic because we couldn't really go anywhere. And he went to Penn and I got cheese stick. Like I looked up, you know, what's the actual cheese stick place at the locals. Like it was on gold belly. I had them delivered. Like it sort of became this fun phenomenon. And, uh, it's, I think helped a lot of small businesses. Like it's a really big small business story. And it is also, it's just Uber Eats coming for this, like very popular business. And it's kind of cool competition. A friend of mine made the point that the gold Uber just would have bought him. Yeah. So now we have SPEAKER_148: like competition and we get to choose who does it better. I mean, you know, maybe gold belly is not SPEAKER_16: for sale. You know, that's a possibility. Maybe they try, you know, they might have. So that, that, that's often what happens. And, and sometimes one of the really, um, elite competitive tactics, Molly, Chamath Palihapitiya: I've done it myself is to start a competitor. If the competitor won't sell to you, I won't say which company that was, uh, what the circumstances were, but I advise somebody straight mafia, SPEAKER_16: a straight mafia behavior, but it's like, listen, if you're not going to sell to us, we're going to start a business. In fact, Google started Google video famously because they couldn't buy YouTube, uh, at some point. So like, okay, well, if we're not going to get that business, we need to be in the video business. So let's start Google video and Google video was like the most boring, you know, utilitarian, you know, upload your video, share it with the world. It's going to come up on Google search, but you know, you look at that. It was like, that was a SPEAKER_05: scary moment for YouTube. Wait a second. If Google puts a video tab and I had written about it at the time, man, Google puts a video tab. That's game over. Cause they have images and news and people are like, they'll never make a video tab. Sure enough, six months later, they put the video tab. And I think maybe it was a year later, they owned YouTube. So, you know, it's kind of like, we're either you're selling or we're competing. Yeah. And, and I think that's like an honest way to do this. So for gold belly, maybe they want to sell to Uber. Maybe they want to sell to DoorDash. And this is Uber's way of saying, Hey, we're, we're going for this business one way or the other. Right. And we don't have to acquire customers. By the way, Uber doesn't have to acquire customers. SPEAKER_33: We've already got the customers. They already have the customers. Now they need the merchants. Jason Calacanis: Yeah. Some of them might say, right. It's just, I think it's a really, it's just going to be interesting to watch. I did not even know, by the way, speaking of like the power of branding, I know all about gold belly and that's what we all use. DoorDash does this evidently. Yeah. And it looks like maybe just cats is deli right now. Um, but they're working in that direction too. I mean, I I'm all for this. Like for one thing, I think it's great for businesses to be able to ship it. It's like Shopify, but for the real world, they don't have to do any work. SPEAKER_16: You know, it's like, and here's the thing on merchants. Many of these merchants may already be on Uber Eats. Think about it. Cats is deli is almost certainly on Uber Eats. Good point. So they already have a relationship. So you're just like, Hey, check this box to ship outside SPEAKER_05: of New York City. Boom. Like damn may not be like, you have to go like gold belly's got to go door to door and convince the merchants to do this. Yeah. This would be like Airbnb saying suddenly, SPEAKER_16: would you like to rent your home for, you know, would you like to put a conference room in your SPEAKER_05: home? If you put a conference room in your home, we'll have a business section. Imagine there was a conference room availability like there used to be a company that did breather I think was the name of it, where they would do conference rooms. So if you and I wanted to have like a this week in startups meeting every month, we could have a couple people come we rent the place for the afternoon. Imagine Airbnb said, we're gonna put a tab called office space, you know, you know, business spaces. Man, they could compete with we work. And then all the people who have things could say, set up if imagine you could set up the apartment with a Murphy bed where it folds up. Is that the one the Murphy bed that you fold up like that? And you said, Hey, if you're ordering this as an office, we're going to put a table out a conference room Wi Fi is going to be on and you can, you know, we'll put eight desks around eight chairs around a big desk. And that desk will be a folding desk, you know, we'll put a table cloth on it, you're all set. So the person who's the host that switches it from SPEAKER_82: bedroom studio apartment to collaborative office co working space. It'd be killer. Um, why did they not do that? I don't understand. SPEAKER_164: Well, well, yeah, everybody, you know, so good time you focus on. SPEAKER_20: Well, yeah, I mean, one thing at a time. But yeah, it just is really interesting how this has become a big thing to do. And I'm excited about it. I think it's great. It's probably more work for the Jason Calacanis: businesses because they have to figure out the packaging and the dry ice and you know, yeah, the packaging is all that. But it's a it's a super smart move by Uber for the reasons that you SPEAKER_167: say they already have the economies of scale. Well, and Gold Belly has probably gone to all of these businesses already and taught them how to do the dry ice and had webinars with them. Totally. So yeah, they're just like, SPEAKER_16: they literally can just take the Gold Belly list. Thanks Gold Belly, RIP Gold Belly. And the Uber Eats list. I mean, you take the Gold Belly and Uber Eats list, you know, when you cheated in school on a multiple choice test, and the teacher holds the two things up to the light and looks through them and it's like, Okay, you guys got the wrong ones, correct the right ones, you just hold those up and you'll look for what is, you know, maybe it's 70% of Uber Eats and goal, maybe 70% of Gold Belly is already on Uber Eats and DoorDash. You just go after those 70. And then Chamath Palihapitiya: the last 30, you know, that'll be your slow, that's your roadmap for who to go after next, SPEAKER_29: they've already been taught how to do dry shipping, they already have some space set up in the kitchen or somewhere in the facility. And UPS is already coming there to pick up the Gold Belly packages. So it's no sweat off their back to do, you know, DoorDash and Uber Eats. So I think this is the SPEAKER_50: super, the super app nature of Uber is going to be very compelling over time. I wish Uber payments had SPEAKER_29: worked. That would have been super cool if we could have sent each other money by Uber payments, you know, or like, they already have splitting checks. But I think gifting is a really, really Chamath Palihapitiya: powerful one for Uber. As is like visitor tickets, like I would love to see more of the experience things like last minute tickets, which is in Dara's wheelhouse, like imagine, you're in New York, and it's like, here are 100 last minute tickets on a tab. And it's like, here's the countdown clock, boom, buy some tickets to you know, Broadway or a concert, just last minute style, or Hotel Tonight style, last minute hotel rooms, another brilliant feature. Jason Calacanis: This is where I think it's really going to be interesting to build or buy question, or the build or buy or aggregate, right? Because we've talked yesterday about iMessage potentially becoming that super app, and they won't have to build out a delivery network, or you know, they've just got apps in the app store. And if they integrate them better and stop, you know, they're moving away from that kind of like really siloed model. So if it's like, I'm on the, the, the front, the screen, the home screen of my phone, and the what is it called the red, what's the ticket thing, red, blah, blah, blah, or Hotel Tonight, or whatever, they all have like a location enabled widget, that's just like, do you need a hotel tonight? And then I can do it through iMessage. And yeah, it gets real, Chamath Palihapitiya: this is why I always felt like, you know, Google, Amazon, and Apple, were the eventual buyers of Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash, and Postmates. At some point, one of those companies would say, you know what, they get a little frisky, like, Amazon's the obvious one. But Google and Apple are the non obvious ones, but pretty sticky. You know, these delivery apps are pretty darn sticky. Jason Calacanis: They are. So you don't even have to buy them. You just support them, you just be their best friend, Apple becomes Uber's best friend. Yeah, they just didn't. And all of a sudden, SPEAKER_49: iMessage is the super app. Yeah, I know, see. But with Dara in charge, you know, SPEAKER_29: I could totally see Apple buying Uber. I know that sounds crazy. But I could see Apple or Google SPEAKER_16: saying I buy them. Well, because then you would get 100% of the margin from those businesses. And when you're buying a business and your Google or Apple, the business has to do 10s of billions SPEAKER_29: of dollars in revenue for it to move the needle. Yeah. And that's why Whole Foods was bought by Amazon. It was like enough revenue to actually be meaningful, right? And that's really what happens SPEAKER_16: with these acquisitions. You know, sometimes they're technical. And for the talent, like, um, deep mind the AI company Google bought. Other times you're like, Hey, YouTube could actually move SPEAKER_05: the needle. And we've seen that happen, right? YouTube's revenue could actually move the needle. Android actually moved the needle for Google. So it usually falls into one of those two camps. Did beats move the needle for Apple? I wonder that $2 billion acquisition probably not. But I think it SPEAKER_29: got them a demographic maybe they didn't have access to. Like Android had such a good footprint in urban markets, you know, in cities and maybe with internationally and internationally. So beats became, you know, like a way to sort of get the urban market and younger market, which maybe they SPEAKER_50: didn't have a good enough foothold. And so it gets into the store, you buy the beats by Dre. And then maybe you buy the iPhone because it works better with the beats by Dre. I think that was there. That was the back channel I heard. Yeah. I know that dealing with your personal SPEAKER_192: health and your wellness can be daunting, especially right now. And by right now, I mean SPEAKER_00: something like the last three years. Well, that is why Thorne created a care system that's personalized, preventative and holistic while still being backed by science. Being any kind of a high performer is incredibly difficult. Even if you're just sitting all day long at a desk, remember sitting is the new smoking. Okay, this is all where Thorne can help Thorne offers at home tests that identify where you need the most care. They offer things like a gut test that analyzes your gut microbiome, a stress test that measures your stress hormone fluctuations. These tests help eliminate the guesswork for good health by providing personalized steps for how to eat, how to exercise and even what supplements you should take. And then Thorne has a range of multivitamins and supplements that you can subscribe to. Because again, this is personalized health and wellness. You take a quiz, you get the answer that is built for you. Get started, take 10% off your first order by heading to Thorne.com slash U, the letter U, slash twist. That's Thorne.com slash U slash twist to save 10%. Well, speaking of Apple. SPEAKER_197: Yeah, we got to talk about this one because this is your wheelhouse. This is, you must be happy. SPEAKER_20: I'm so delighted about this. I think we all should be the EU is shutting down competition SPEAKER_00: for dongles. Hallelujah. The European Parliament has ruled that the USB type C port will be standard for all EU mobile phones, tablets and cameras by fall 2024. It's going to be called the amended radio equipment directive because the EU loves to give things really fun names. Sure. Telegram, telegraph. They're focused on the interoperability of charging solutions. It's been coming for a long time. Apparently there was a proposal for it that was tabled back in September of 2021. And now for sustainability reasons, they're saying, well, not completely. They're saying the law is intended to make products in the EU more sustainable, minimize electronic waste and quote, make consumers' SPEAKER_204: lives easier. Okay. This is what we all want. This is what we all want. And you know what, SPEAKER_00: Apple, you could have just done this. And now you're going to be stuck with a stupid rule that has USB-C, even if you want to develop some better standard than USB-C, now you're going to be stuck with a rule about the USB-C. And I don't care. And I don't feel sorry for you because my watch and my computer and my freaking phone all have three different chargers. And that is ridiculous. Chamath Palihapitiya: It's super ridiculous. And you know, it's like, this really is a law specifically designed for Apple. SPEAKER_16: The market made this a no brainer for everybody else. Why would I create my own standard? Well, the reason to create your own standard is because you have a monopolistic channel, SPEAKER_29: and you don't allow interoperability. And you can charge 40 50 60 70 bucks for cables or charging bricks. And you can then deprecate and say accessory not supported for, you know, cables I buy with multi head dongles like I was loving these, you know, cables I was buying from Taiwan on Amazon from SPEAKER_05: third party sellers that had all three. And you can have a USB-C amazing USB two and a iPhone lightning. And then all of a sudden the lightning stops working. And you know, it works last week. Why isn't it working this week? And you know, this part of me literally broke it. They broke their own standard so that they could sell their own stuff. This is an example of the free market did its job. And then one company Apple held out. The free market did its job. You can't buy an Android phone that doesn't use USB-C. You can't buy a laptop that doesn't use USB-C. You can't buy anchor products or any brick that doesn't use USB-C because you can sell a USB-C product now without a charger and you just say charger not included that's on you. And people are like, Yeah, that's fine. Why would I need another USB-C cable? I don't need one. I've got 20 in a draw, but lightning cables. Yeah. So SPEAKER_20: congratulations. Here's why. Yeah, let's do we should do a little back of the envelope math Jason Calacanis: here. Okay. To explain why Apple has held out this whole time and why they keep breaking those cheap. Amazon cables. So since Apple stopped including accessories, they've sold roughly 200 million iPhones. Okay, the lightning cables, headphones and the charging connectors all retail for at least $19 each. And that's their discounted prices now. They used to be much more. They used to be much more and you can buy the like, you know, faster charger and ones that are more. Apple's gross margin on those is roughly 38%. Ridiculous. So if you have 60 bucks in accessories, which you need if you have more than one Apple device times a 60% materials cost times 200 million iPhones, then Apple has made Chamath Palihapitiya: 7.2 billion dollars. Incredible. Yeah, it's just pure profit profit. And these cables, you know, you're SPEAKER_16: talking about billions of cables around the world that nobody trash. And so you know, Apple Tim Cook with this constant green, you know, I don't want to say greenwashing because I do think they are probably one of the best companies when it comes to being green. Like you can't be green and then have a billion extra cables produced, you know, like just do the right thing independent of all of the earlier cables, Jason Calacanis: like break them, which ensures that they are trash. They are landfill. Whatever Apple has done on the green side, like I don't care that they're recycling cobalt. The fact that they deprecate their own hardware and the cables that quickly makes it indefensible. I just feel that whoever the VP of dongles SPEAKER_29: that Apple is and they're going to lose their job. I felt bad for them. Oh my god, these memes are SPEAKER_231: going to be crazy. Oh my god, Nick, did you make these? These are amazing. EU mandates all mobile SPEAKER_29: phones, tablets and cameras to use USB C Apple's cheap dongle complexity officer. Well, well laid off looking for a job Apple when they can they can't make make you carry seven different cables anymore. SPEAKER_238: In the EU. In the I mean, yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. We love to SPEAKER_29: see a quick hit. Enough big talk from Big Tech today. Here's our startup of the day. Religion of SPEAKER_05: sports. This is a sports media production company co founded by Tom Brady and Michael Strahan and filmmaker and entrepreneur Gotham Topra. They've raised $50 million in Series B funding for religion of sports. It was founded in 2017. And it started with unscripted documentary style programming and has SPEAKER_29: since launched dozens of shows with other elite athletes. Titles have been distributed on streaming Chamath Palihapitiya: platforms Facebook, ESPN, Apple TV plus. And along with creating unscripted, they're also looking to build outside projects with the funding. One's going to be NFTs for athletes. Of course. And trading cards have out a comeback. So we will do something there. According to Axios religion of sports, CRO Amit Senkharan commented on how star backed production companies are great for streaming services. Quote, SPEAKER_25: the market has grown and that has led to an opportunity for networks to invest in niche programming when you're doing something with an athlete or talent. People already know you don't have to set SPEAKER_246: the back story. They come with built in distribution. I mean, you see this with Draymond's podcast. Um, uh, which he's doing, uh, with, um, Colin, I guess is doing that with him. Um, and yeah, Chamath Palihapitiya: you, you know, you bring your whole Twitter following. So this is going to be a major thing. Jason Calacanis: And it's a hot space. Apparently there's several of them already. There's Spring Hill Entertainment founded by LeBron James and, uh, Maverick Carter entertainment production company. Yep. There is, um, 35 ventures founded by Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman. Yep. Uh, unanimous media founded by Steph Curry and Eric Payton. I mean, this is an interesting follow on to the media conversation we were just having, right? Like can, so this works when times are hot. Does this, does star power work? Cause I feel like, I don't know how you've gone through this, but like I've gone through many a podcast project where the idea was, well, we'll just book a bunch of big name stars and then everybody will listen to it. Actually, it doesn't happen. It doesn't translate to lasting audience. So I'm super curious to know if this actually will. So, you know, I think SPEAKER_29: the, the, the interesting thing that's happening here is I think we are having people who are stars in the league do this while they're, um, active. So Draymond has been doing this after playoff games. And, um, I just heard on the last bill Simmons show after the warriors just absolutely annihilated SPEAKER_05: the Celtics. Sorry, Bill. Um, he had actually a talk about this and he says he sees it as just like an extended press conference, which I get it's like a press conference where you ask yourself the SPEAKER_16: questions. Uh, but he made up a good point, which is, you know, at some point, these narratives that are being done by players while the season is happening. Um, not like post season, not highly produced and edited, but live and live to tape kind of stuff. You know, it could become part of the storyline, uh, which could be super interesting. In other words, Draymond says something in the, in the post game show that now impacts the next game or impacts the series. Now the coach has to deal with it, you know, and, and I guess at some point somebody was live streaming from the locker room. I don't remember which word or TV team that was, but Bill mentioned it on his show. So this is going to have an impact on it. Uh, but people have the ability to broadcast from their phones. Now, there are some athletes who are incredibly charismatic, like Draymond, um, and instead of, or JJ Reddick's doing really well right now, but typically it's after they leave the league. So what the real story here is, is that people are going to do this while they're in the league. They're going to be doing media stuff while they're playing in games, which is super fascinating. It is because it Jason Calacanis: creates a living documentary, right? A real time documentary of these teams. And also, of course, SPEAKER_00: they're doing it while they're still playing. Cause there's so much more relevant. Like it, you know, it's, it's sort of interesting to listen to a retired player. If that retired players like Michael Jordan, if not, it's not as interesting. So they're capitalizing on the actual moment of fame, creating drama around the sport they're already doing, which creates a lot of Jason Calacanis: interest. Um, and they're also getting, you know, maybe securing the bag while they're at the SPEAKER_05: height of their fame. It's fascinating. And look, you know, people like Charles Barkley, my understanding is he makes like 10 $20 million a year doing inside the NBA and the stuff that comes SPEAKER_29: from it. He's making I think the most he made actually talk to dream on about this was seven or SPEAKER_16: eight million, I think when he was a player. So now after being, you know, a top, you know, 50 player in the league, he makes more money. Now we're tired, you know, just doing inside the NBA. And as he should, he's an incredible talent and draws a big audience. A lot of these projects have been vanity projects, where you're doing, you know, or pet projects, you're doing media that you want to see in the world, which is what rich people have always done. They've backed movies they want to see or series or magazines, depending on the era. And so a lot of this with LeBron James, their patrons, SPEAKER_71: they're like patrons are doing media, the Steph Curry has one he's doing like, you know, and they produce scripts. So it's stuff they want to see in the world, if it makes money, if it breaks even, SPEAKER_16: it's, you know, affluent people, you know, making media because they get enjoyment out of it, which is also totally valid. I think what will happen is, I'm going to go out on a limb here is I think, you know, one or two of these athletes is going to are going to become so good at it that they could in fact make what would be considered like the next at the the athletic or the next ESPN or the next bar school stool. So I do think this is the future of media. I think someone like a Draymond Green, who understands how to do it firsthand. I mean, he's solo doloing these podcasts he's doing, which is an incredible skill. And they're really good. Like I look forward to watching his and as much as I look forward to watching Bill Simmons after a playoff game. So I consider those like SPEAKER_05: two different complementary media types for me as a sports fan. And I could see Draymond then building enough audience in the way Charles Barkley has now Charles Barkley probably has no interest in competing with inside the NBA or creating his own version Molly. But I could see someone like Draymond doing that I could see him making the next big media company. So then Jason Calacanis: though he could fund it himself, you know, right. So then back to our earlier conversation, though, about investability. Yeah, this religion of sports has raised $50 million in Series B funding. Yeah, no, right investment. I mean, they're not in they're not in their private equity. I think, I think no matter what, even with star power attached, like, I don't think you're getting all SPEAKER_71: the money back time. So you make you know, if you get two or three, two or three times your money, and you get to be in business with a bunch of athletes, and it's a bunch of sure, you know, SPEAKER_16: maybe rich people who are funding and who are capital allocators who have an affinity for the person, a lot of media creation is because people have an affinity and want to see it in the world, movies, books, magazines and podcasts. So that is valid. And then what's also valid is somebody could potentially build the next great media brand from this. And that's what I'm looking at is there will be one or two that come out of this that actually build the largest and I mean, actually, you start with Obama, they did that giant Netflix deal, right? And that was what was that $50 million they did a deal and then they did it with Spotify as well. Yeah, and Obama is so I think these are, you know, actually, themes here is a theme, people who have huge followings, host, when they're playing, whether it's, you know, being the actual active president of the United States, Trump or Obama, then what do they do next? How do they capitalize on that following, SPEAKER_29: whether it's an athlete, or a politician. And now you see it with whatever, the fukaka, stupid Trump platform, what is it? Oh, yeah, social truth. Oh, man, that's a good name. SPEAKER_05: I think that's what Elon calls it trumpet. So like trumpet, or, you know, Obama did a really nice podcast series I enjoyed with Bruce Springsteen. And the two of them talking I found delightful. And so now Obama's, I think, doing that particularly well. So it's all the same themes. And most of them are going to be corny. Most of them are not going to make money. Most will fail. And there'll be one or SPEAKER_29: two, that could be the next big franchise, right? And I could see it being Draymond. I'm just saying SPEAKER_49: I put it out there. Okay, I like that. Place a bet, man, place a bet. I would, for sure. Let's do SPEAKER_05: we live in the future. We love doing startups. We love doing we live in the future. Yeah, really, SPEAKER_20: especially because especially when the future is just like, you get a whole new year, assuming that SPEAKER_00: you need one. A Texas woman has received a 3d printed ear transplant, which a biotech startup SPEAKER_140: made from a sample of her own cells. Okay, yeah, we live in the future for sure. Okay, explain who's SPEAKER_00: doing this. So this company 3d biotherapeutics. It's a biotech company in based in Queens, New York raised 10 million. Shout out Queens since I know, right? Shout out Queens. Shout out flushing was founded in 2016 raised 10 million dollars, which actually doesn't even seem like that much considering SPEAKER_23: 3d printing years, years. So also, I don't know what's always so funny about ears, but it's funny. SPEAKER_281: It's funny. They're unique appendages. Yes, they're all weird looking and unique. SPEAKER_00: So this woman was suffering from a thing called microtia, a deformity of the outer ear, basically Jason Calacanis: during pregnancy, while she was in the womb, the ear did not fully form. So it leaves behind SPEAKER_00: this kind of smaller, like not quite complete ear. So 3d bio and Dr. Arturo Bonilla, a pediatric ear reconstructive surgeon in San Antonio, like they took half a gram of cartilage from her own underdeveloped ear. I mean, look at those bananas. Oh my Lord, banana pants. They ship the sample and a 3d scan of the healthy ear from San Antonio to 3d bios lab in New York City. They isolate the cartilage formation cells, supplement them with nutrients and mix in a collagen based bio ink SPEAKER_192: loaded into a 3d printer. Yeah. And in 10 minutes, of course, this 3d printing is fast. They have a new year. Well, they ship it overnight to the surgeon who implanted it just under her skin Chamath Palihapitiya: above her jaw bone. Boom. Here. Uh, the first of many, uh, this will continue and we will see more and more complex body parts printed. People have done the valves of hearts. Um, at some point, SPEAKER_16: you ever see the fifth element when they're 3d printing, you know, based on just the hand. Yep. Of, uh, you know, the woman, uh, the movie is amazing elements. So great. Femka Jensen, SPEAKER_200: I believe. No, it's, um, no, the other person. Um, ma la la la la. Yes. That one. Yes. Um, the one who went on to do all the, um, zombie movies, the zombie movies. Yes. Um, she's awesome. SPEAKER_71: Uh, one of our noties will tell us her name. Out the wash. Mila Jovovich. Mila Jovovich. Thank you. I was so close. No, no, I got it myself. I was about to look. You did? I was like, David Friedberg: literally. Okay. Because it's my favorite, like top five sci-fi film for me. Blade Runner, SPEAKER_43: Prometheus, uh, fifth element. Yep. Excellent. What else do I love up in that? Kind of now dune. I put the new dune on that list. That movie is amazing. I didn't watch it. I watched the first 15 minutes. My wife said we have to watch it together and we have another time, but we're going up to Tahoe for the summer and we got the movie theater. So we're going to dune it out. SPEAKER_20: Watch it. Don't do what I did, which was watch it on the plane. It's not a good airplane movie. Yeah, no. Poor Villanueva. Is that the guy named Villanueva? Yeah. SPEAKER_34: He just, he's a big fan of the show and he's crying right now. He's damn. He is. SPEAKER_43: Villanueva. Villanueva. Um, wait, didn't he also do fifth element? SPEAKER_05: Did he? Did he? No, he did Blade Runner 2049. Anyway, we're going off on a tangent here. We really are. The fact is like that. See, this is where the producers could find the actual clip. SPEAKER_29: Oh no, of course. That's one of my favorites. That's Luc Besson. Luc Besson. Yes. But anyway, they basically in this chamber, here we go. Thank you very much. YouTube.com says this weekend to watch the show live 10 to 12, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. most, uh, days. Uh, and you see their 3d printing with a bunch of goo going into this thing and they start with a SPEAKER_05: little hand that they take from the wreckage and 3d print the rest of the body from the DNA. And it's just a wonderful thing to watch because they do the bones first and then they do the it's, it's actually, they do it very poetically. If you remember they, they, all of the muscle fibers get stringed over the bone after it gets built. SPEAKER_38: Um, and this is why we live in the future is about it. 100% is don't you think this inspired the open of, um, Westworld? Yes, of course. When I saw Westworld, SPEAKER_16: I was like, they just stole this from the fifth element, but this is like, they pull, Chamath Palihapitiya: like they pull the sh the, the, the, the, um, the muscle fibers over the body, you know, like, uh, they're like, almost like they're weaving, you know, it's like, it looks like a loom of some type. Uh, what a great, uh, thing. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna have all organs. We're gonna Jason Calacanis: have body parts. Like it really, we do live in the future and the future could be super cool. SPEAKER_34: I mean, we start with the ears. They're doing valves in the hearts. Uh, we already have like, SPEAKER_16: you know, they, they replace your hip. So each body part, you know, the brain is going to be, uh, you know, the last one, but you know, other things they, they might be able to, to do relatively quickly. Um, and they're already moving skin grafts back and forth, you know, because that's just easier, but I mean, the ability to 3d print your own skin sounds like a no brainer to me. So victims, you know, tragically, uh, or, you know, you, SPEAKER_29: you lose some, you know, in some, you know, violent accident, you lose some skin and you lose some muscle. Why can't we replace that? That seems like that's possible. So I'm just thrilled for our kids that, you know, like there's going to be like this whole level of stuff and we got to experience, you know, maybe cancer being manageable. I was talking to a cancer doctor this weekend and you know, the, the, the mortality rates have just flipped, you know, people are surviving breast cancer. You know, even some of the ones that were, you know, considered pretty, pretty gnarly brain cancer or pancreatic cancer. They're now starting to be able to manage those. So I think we're going to SPEAKER_98: go from management to maybe lifetime management or something. Absolutely. And MRNA. I mean, as you Jason Calacanis: know, as, as much as we've managed to like screw up the magic of the technology that created these coronavirus vaccines, we're very close to like a universal coronavirus vaccine because this MRNA technology is phenomenal and it could eventually be, you know, there are viruses that cause cancer. SPEAKER_00: Like we really are on the verge of an incredible rate. They're literally working toward a cure for HIV that could be here very soon. Like we live on the precipice of a phenomenal biotech. SPEAKER_50: Be optimistic folks. I mean, we're sitting here in a recession, layoffs, Ukraine, China, Taiwan, China, US. There's so many things for you to have anxiety about. I, the reason I, I created the, we live in the future segment, and I'm, I'm so obsessed with us doing it, you know, one, two, SPEAKER_16: three times a week is because when you watch this show, I want people to be, I want their, I want people's optimism, Molly, to match reality. And I feel like right now our optimism is that like a 10, I'm sorry, optimism is that a two and our reality is a 10. Yeah. And if I could get people to a six or seven in their optimism, I think we would all, you know, come to our daily lives with a little more enthusiasm. All right. It's been a great show and we'll see you next time. Bye bye. Bye bye. SPEAKER_68: If you are a founder of a pre series a company, you haven't raised that series a yet, which is SPEAKER_10: really hard. Well, we wanted to invite you to founder university. This is a two day intensive course. It takes place on June 13th and 14th. It's remote. It's free. We limit the number of people who can come and we asked you to apply. And this virtual workshop is free for founders and helps you understand how to fundraise and pitch, how to hire great people, how to build a world-class product, how to execute on your sales and marketing and some growth techniques as well. The launch team and I have been doing this for a long time. It has been amazing for us to get to know founders and that's why we do it. Of course, we want to help folks as many as possible. That's part of our mandate, but really our mandate at launch here at this week in startups and you know, the syndicate, which is where we invest, we meet and invest in companies is we want to back builders. And so we use these events as a way to get to know you. And if you're building something and we see you're credibly building something interesting in the world, well, then we want to invest in you. So truth be told, every time we do found a university, a half dozen of those people we wind up funding in the next year or so. So it's a great way for us to spend time with entrepreneurs. We're going to be joined by a lot of experts. My friend, Becky DeGraw, who's my attorney from Wilson Sincini will be speaking at the event. Fitbots co-founder Jesse will be speaking. Marlowe's CEO, Mary Fox will be speaking. So we get a bunch of our portfolio companies who have been crushing it and who have learned a lot and we've seen that they are qualified builders. We have them come speak at the event. So you see how we do things here at this week in startups and launch and the syndicate. We like to create a flywheel. We invest in people who come out of founder university, some number of them really crush it and become world class companies. And it's not guaranteed, you have to do the work, folks, the ones who do, then we have them speak at a later founder university. So a lot of the great companies we've met came to a founder university, they got to know us, they learned something that was worth their time. And that's really what we do with the agenda. We try to make it worth your time to take two days off work, uh, essentially now it's remote. So, you know, you can consider it your weekend, even though it's taking place around the week. Um, you consider it professional development. And if you learn one or two important things about running a company, fundraising, growth, hiring, well, those one or two things will pay for those two days. I am absolutely certain of it. Now you have to apply again, so you can register at founder.university. Yes, it's a great domain name. So go to founder.university and sign up. We also have a course called angel.university. If you want to invest in the companies and you think the philosophy I've explained here about how I invest in companies, and I'm invested in over 300 of them. Um, if you think this is an interesting, um, way to meet startups early, help them and invest in them. Well, you can read my deal memos as we invest in new companies and you can join us on that adventure. And I do this through a course called angel university that has raised close to $200,000 for charity. And you can sign up for angel university at angel.university. We do it four times a year, great program. Uh, and it's just me and my partner, Mike Savino talking about, uh, how we pick companies, how we evaluate them, how we diligence them, how we source them, like founder university is a source of investment and deal flow for us. And, uh, that three or four hour course, actually, I think it's more like four or five hours is well worth your time. All the proceeds from angel university go to charity. And again, over 175,000, I think at this point, it's gone to charity. So we're very proud of that work. And founder university is free, but you do have to apply. And we do pick people who have built a little bit of something. So we're looking for you to have some skin in the game. We have a founder university 12 week program, which you can also see at founder.university. We'll be starting our third cohort shortly. And you can apply for that program. If you have not started building or you're very early stages, haven't incorporated yet, you're nowhere near the of the series a you're kind of in the solo or co-founder situation. And you're just starting to build maybe, maybe you've incorporated, maybe you have it. And that's a 12 week course. And that's another great one that we do. So please join us founder.university. And if you want to invest in these great companies, angel.university.