SPEAKER_00: When I closed my Patreon that night, the way I did it was I was on a live stream and I said for, I can't remember the exact numbers, but I was like, for every thousand subscribers we get, something like that, live while I'm on air, I'll do a shot of Patron because I'm leaving Patreon. Anyway, about 12 shots later- 12,000 subs, wow, you must have been- So I was, and I was really doing it. So not only was I wasted, but I doxed myself live on air because when I went finally at the end of the night, when I went to delete the account, which we were showing- SPEAKER_05: It had your address, oh no. SPEAKER_08: You press delete and then your email pops up. Oh, no, oh, your email, great. It wasn't my address. SPEAKER_09: This Week in Startups is brought to you by 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. Northwest Registered Agent. Starting your business should be simple. With Northwest Registered Agent, you can form your entire business identity in just 10 clicks in 10 minutes. From LLCs to trademarks, domains to custom websites, they've got you covered. Get more privacy, more options, and more done. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash twist today. And lemon.io. Hire pre-vetted remote developers. Get 15% off your first four weeks of developer time at lemon.io slash twist. SPEAKER_14: Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to This Week in Startup. Dave Rubin's gonna be with us in the second half of the show. You know him from the Dave Rubin Show and Locals, Voice of the Right. Lots to talk about with him about the media business, but we have a full docket. I gave Lon some time off here so we can just ping pong and volley back and forth through this docket a little bit faster than we normally do because there's a lot going on, Alex, and we need to get through this for our audience. I know Chime is going public. Explain what Chime is. Explain the deal. SPEAKER_18: All right. Chime is an American neobank, which means that it's a digital software service that does banking-like things. It is an incredibly well-funded fintech startup here in the United States. And its valuation went to, I think, about $20 billion back in 2021. And Jason, we've been waiting for this IPO for a very long time, given its scale of value, how much money was put into it, the number of investors, SPEAKER_20: and finally, it's gonna go public. So do you want a quick rundown of the numbers? SPEAKER_14: Yeah, I think it's always a good idea. And this is absolutely fantastic. We're tracking M&A, and we're tracking IPOs. So on the IPO train, eToro is filed, yeah? SPEAKER_24: They were gonna go out. eToro priced last night, Jason, and it's currently trading, and it's doing well. SPEAKER_14: Oh, so eToro is out. That's the Canadian version of Robinhood. Yep. Then there's Chime going public. And did we have any other IPOs this year so far that we've been tracking? SPEAKER_28: Well, we're taking a look at Klarna, of course. Klarna, right. SPEAKER_18: And StubHub is in the wings. Puro pulled back. And of course, CoreWeave went out earlier this year. So that's our current kind of list of things. But there are, people keep telling me, Jason, that there are so many companies in the pipeline. So I'm expecting, given that eToro priced above range, sold more shares, and is trading well, SPEAKER_31: and we're seeing Chime list, I think we could see quite a few more offerings unlocked shortly. Got it. SPEAKER_32: So here's what I want. Just as we get going here in 2025, IPOs by month, we record them, SPEAKER_33: we put it in the docket so that we can kind of track this and the velocity of it and M&A above, you know, some minor amount, let's say 50 million or more. Just so we're kind of tracking this on a monthly, quarterly basis for our audience. All right. So Chime is like Mercury Bank. It's like Ramp. It's like that category of Neobank. New Bank is the other one, NU Bank for South America. These are extremely popular because Bank of America and other online banks are terrible. Garbage. Right. SPEAKER_14: And this is a really important lesson, I think, for startups. Banking seems like the most difficult group to go after, right? Like how could you possibly take on big banks? Yeah. It turns out they are amongst the most hated. So one of the great ways to make a startup is to look at the index of which companies are least trusted, Alex, and most hated. When you find companies that people feel abused by, it's really easy to construct a better product. Now, they might try and stop you. There's regulation, etc. But if you were to look at the drug companies, they're hated. And what do people love? Compounding pharmacies and cost plus drugs. People hate the cable companies and cable modems. SPEAKER_33: What do people love? Starling. Or, yeah. So this is a tried and true model. SPEAKER_14: People hate when there are monopolies that are captured. And my Lord, if I'm Bank of America, I've got to be a little bit nervous because I was talking to a group last night, or I should say yesterday, we had our first founder Tuesday here in Austin. I'm trying to get this whole in-person thing going. So we had a dozen founders here. We spent the day with them from 10 to 4. We got some barbecue at Stubbs in the middle. And I was amazed. They all use, you know, Mercury Chime, RAM cards. SPEAKER_37: They are rabid consumers of this vertical. SPEAKER_18: Yeah. I'm a Chase customer in my personal life, and I used to have a Citibank account back in the day, but I moved out the, you know, northeast and then out here. Citibank decided, Jason, can start charging me a monthly fee and then won't let me close my account unless I send them a notarized letter. That is the level of customer service that you get from existing banks. They're terrible. Now, Chime is riding the way that you outlined. So in 2024, revenue 1.64 billion, up 31%. And that's a faster pace of growth than they saw the year before, 27. So Jason, a little bit of revenue acceleration over at Chime. And also in the first quarter of this year, revenue is, I think, of about 550. So we're on a plus, you know, over $2 billion revenue running for this company against a 2021 error valuation of about 25. Now, I can see a lot of arguments why this company could get very close to that 2021 price. I don't know if it'll surpass it per se, but then again, eToro did much better than I expected on a slower revenue growth pace. So the market doesn't have a lot of appetite for fintech products, which I think is going to throw a halo on your brexes, on your ramps, on your alpaca dot markets. There's a lot of companies out there right now that are in the fintech space who are probably cheering these two companies on as champions, really. For sure. Gosh darn DPI. And that's what I want to bring up next, Jason. So who owns Chime? Well, 5% and greater shareholders include DST Global, Puzzling Capital, Access Industries, General Atlantic, Menlo, Cathay Innovation, and our dear friends, of course, over at Iconic. SPEAKER_39: What's the share price going to be? Did we see that or it's not done yet? Not yet. This is the first S1. SPEAKER_18: That'll be in the first S1A. Got it. So we're dying for that. But the company seems super healthy. Really quick account creation growth, improving ARPU, improving gross margins. They had a period in 2023 when they actually managed to reduce some of their costs as they grew, Jason, which is how they managed to go from losing hundreds of millions a year to something like 25 million on a net basis last year. So essentially break even, lots of cash, growing just an EBITDA. It's a winner. SPEAKER_40: They make their money from the transaction fees, I guess, like other credit card companies or interchange fees SPEAKER_44: like banks make money from. Yeah, they get a percentage of the money flowing through the system. SPEAKER_45: Yes, but what's really interesting is that's going down as a percentage of their total revenue. So the revenue mix SPEAKER_18: is improving because there is a little legitimate risk, and they talk about this in filing, that local laws of the state or perhaps even federal level could undercut the interchange revenue stream that they enjoy. They give a couple of examples of that. So they're also doing other things like, you know, you can pay a fee and get your salary earlier. They get fees from out-of-network ATMs, and all of that added up to about 28% of their revenue SPEAKER_31: in the first quarter of this year. So slowly diversifying the revenue away, but they still make a lot of money off transactions. SPEAKER_14: 10 times revenue. They're at 2 billion in revenue. They're going to go out for 10 times revenue would be 20. Yeah. Maybe it's 12 times revenue, 24 billion, and that matches their last private company. So this issue you've heard about here and on All In Constantly, and the hand-wringing of the private valuations got ahead of the eventual public ones. Well, I don't know when that last round was. Did you say it was last year or two years ago? SPEAKER_49: August of 2021. So literally peak ZERP. SPEAKER_14: Four years ago. So think about that. Four years, they were at 25 billion. Four years later, they're going out at 25 billion. So the catch-up to the extraordinary valuations we saw on peak ZERP, the overhang for a fast-growing company was four freaking years. So that's a lot of hand-wringing. Congratulations to the board of that company and to the management team and all the rank-and-file employees because four years of going sideways and hard work to get to the exit, it's not fun. You know, you're used to the scoreboard going up and they had the scoreboard go sideways but now comes the new, this is the new starting line for them. They're going to have a public currency, they can buy other companies, they can put this money to use and it's going to raise their profile. When a company goes public, more people know about it, more people engage with it. People didn't know Airbnb and Uber in, you know, there's probably like a third of the country that didn't know about those companies. They hear them going public, Google when it went public, it just fills in like the last third of the laggards who don't know about it because they hear, oh, this went public and they become more aware of it, they engage with it more. So maybe somebody sees Airbnb go public, they've heard about it but they never used it. Maybe they go from being, you know, in that messy middle of, you know, adopters of technology and they say, oh, you know, maybe I'll give it a shot because it's public, it legitimizes the company. So if somebody didn't want to use Chime, maybe they would. eToro, they went public, priced at $52 a share, $5 billion valuation, ballpark. So that's another great one SPEAKER_53: that got out the door. Any notes on eToro? SPEAKER_55: All right, founders, let's talk about your website, huh? It might be a little bit of a sensitive subject, you might be a little embarrassed about it. Let's fix that right now. If you're launching something new, SPEAKER_57: give your brand the refresh it deserves. You're working so hard on your company and your website looks terrible. Do what I do, SPEAKER_55: use Squarespace. It's the all-in-one platform to make a stunning professional website and it's ridiculously easy to use. It's going to work for everything. If you're selling products, it's got all that e-commerce built in. If you're selling services, it works perfectly. And they have a new AI product called Blueprint. Want more control? Well, of course, you can choose one of the award-winning templates and use the intuitive drag-and-drop tools to make it your own. Easy peasy. Squarespace equals the most functional and beautiful website on planet Earth. Go ahead. Squarespace.com slash twist to get a free trial and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash twist to get 10% off your first website or domain purchase. SPEAKER_58: That's squarespace.com slash twist. Yeah, just really SPEAKER_18: briefly, everybody. So they dropped a $46 to $50 IPO price range. They priced above that, always a bullish sign. They also sold more total shares in their offering than expected. So the scale of the fundraise, Jason, was larger. Now, I think it was about half secondary, so it's not like all the money went to the balance sheet, but certainly unlocks a lot there. And as of right now, as we record this show, it's trading for $66.50, up 28%. That is enough of a gain that people will complain that it was mispriced, but I would say also provides enough of a cushion that it probably won't fall underneath its IPO price. So frankly, straight up, not gonna lie, this is a win. Shout out to them. It feels so lovely to be talking about companies that are now trading versus companies that might in the future. SPEAKER_44: Yeah. And it's a $5 billion company. This isn't a $50 billion, $25 billion. SPEAKER_33: This is the kind of IPOs we wanna see. We wanna see one, two, three, four, five, $10 billion companies getting out because that gives the public the chance to maybe ride up from $5 billion to $100. Sure. they can get a 20X or a 10X off their investment. And Neon is selling to Databricks. Obviously, Databricks is a public company that's done very well. Yeah? SPEAKER_61: No, it's still private. It's still private. Okay. SPEAKER_33: Snowflake's public, Databricks is remaining private. Wow. SPEAKER_62: Yeah. SPEAKER_18: They spend a billion dollars roughly on a startup called Neon. And I'm gonna tell people what it does and a little bit about it and not go too much deeper because we don't have database, Jason. They took database tech, put it up in the cloud as a managed service and are doing quite well with it. The reason why Databricks wants them is not strictly because they have cool technology, a growing customer base and so forth. It's because in 2024, they discovered that agentic AI and what they offered had a really lovely marriage. And so they saw a lot of demand from the agentic AI space. As a result, you know, Databricks wants people to build agents on top of their store data inside of Databricks. Kind of a match made in heaven. The only thing I couldn't find for us today was, though I'm going to go ahead and say at a billion dollars of Databricks stock, presumably, not cash, investors that back to this company are going to be very happy given that it only raised like $120,000, $130,000. SPEAKER_67: Yeah, you know, in the announcement, I saw the announcement on the Databricks page and there was a really interesting fact I didn't think of. SPEAKER_14: You know, AI agents are, they don't care about resources, right? They just want to solve the task you're doing. So they're not thinking, oh, you know, what is this going to cost you? AI agents, it says here, we're creating four times as many databases versus humans. In other words, agents are going to be like, I have some other ideas of databases we can create. I'm going to just rip. And so if you look at this chart here, it shows humans versus AI agents in October of 2024. This means people are going to spend more. And if they're spending more and they're doing more work, they're probably going to have a stickier product. Yes. That's a reason to buy a company like this. If people get more value from your product and you're creating all these databases, getting all these results, that means it's stickier. I was lamenting how like terrible AI is in Slack. And then people are like, oh, do you not have the upgrade? I'm like, oh my God, it's going to cost me $5,000 a year or something like that for a team of 20, 25, 25 people maybe in our Slack instance. And now I've got to make a decision. It's like, well, this cognitive dissonance, I just hate when they make AI an upsell. But then somebody's like, oh, why don't you use, is it glue David Sachs' AI first version of Slack? Yeah. And I'm like, oh, I forgot about that. You know, like I literally forgot about it because when I went to try it last time, I was like, okay, it's a little early. Let me give them six months to kind of get these features we would need to move over. But now I'm seriously considering moving us out of Slack because of this AI issue. It's not AI first. And I'm trying to just simply summarize what happened. So then the Notion founder reached out to me and he turned on AI in our account. I'm going to meet with him later this week. It turns out Notion SPEAKER_33: will ingest your Slack or has a Slack API. And people are saying that Notion does a better job of summarizing Slack than Slack does. So that's super interesting. Then I was like, wait a second, why don't I have a desktop client? I should have a desktop item. Like, isn't this the promise of Copilot with Windows? SPEAKER_44: And obviously Apple is never going to get this done, but I downloaded a chat GPT desktop app. I need a desktop app. SPEAKER_33: Somebody please let us know at TWI Startups at mention us on Twitter X. SPEAKER_14: Is there not a desktop app that will read my Slack client for me and just end run the application level and run the back end and just read all my new messages and summarize them for me and then just, you know, on the side say, hey, by the way, you know, while you were away, here's what's going on in the Slack production room, the investment team room, et cetera. Where is that? Where is that desktop app? SPEAKER_18: Also, can that desktop app do my email too, read my email for me and like summarize them so I can quickly respond to people and just chew through it while I'm like taking a walk? SPEAKER_75: If you use Superhuman, I literally turned all this on in Superhuman SPEAKER_14: just yesterday in the settings because, you know, they've been rolling it out and I'm like, I got to be thoughtful about this but I now have Superhuman auto-labeling SPEAKER_33: all my inbound email. So when I look at it, it says marketing, pitch, marketing, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch in my inbox. It doesn't do it but it's doing it in my other box right now and then it is reminding me if I don't get back to an important email. So that is built SPEAKER_44: into Superhuman, full disclosure, we're the first investors in the company. Founder of HubSpot will claim he is and Dharmesh is going to claim he is because we were both investors in Reportive and then Raul worked us both to be the first investors in Superhuman and then told us each we were the first investors so I will take claim to that SPEAKER_34: even though maybe he got his check in first. I don't know whose wire came in first. SPEAKER_78: I'm not going to get in between the two of you on that but I do think if you're the first or second money into a company doing that well, you're both going to get your credit in due time in the form of a check. SPEAKER_44: Yeah, fair enough. Okay, what else do we got? I guess I did a tweet about AMC or just about the movie industry and how clueless they are SPEAKER_67: before we run out of time I think that's a really interesting story maybe you could tee it up for us. SPEAKER_18: Alright, so Jason has a view here about how the movie industry should work on bringing more people in and AMC big theater chain if you don't know also a meme stock out there they're going to have a discount Wednesday promotion Jason essentially if you're a part of the AMC loyalty program you get half off tickets for Wednesdays I presume Wednesdays the slowest day of the week for movie theaters so why not offer tickets at a discount get more bodies in sell more popcorn etc. I thought it was kind of a winning idea you had a very divergent view and you thought it was kind of stupid and so I'm going to go ahead and bring up your tweet here because I think it somewhat speaks for itself. Okay SPEAKER_44: yeah, I mean I think the movie industry is clueless I might have said something you know SPEAKER_33: a little more colorful there but everybody has seen the example of the epic pass in skiing skiing was this dying industry and this company epic and another one iconic and some others bought a bunch of mountains put together a consortium and said all you can eat ski as much as you like you want to ski five days a year 500 bucks you want to ski 50 days a year 500 bucks and then they boiled the frog to the point in which my epic pass is a thousand a year my icon pass might be 1200 and buying a ski ticket in order to incentivize people buying these season passes SPEAKER_14: what they did was it's now two or three hundred dollars to ski for a single day which anybody can say you know by the fourth day you're now in the all you can eat mode so what do you do you book a second trip you book a second weekend and then you enjoy it more and then you become addicted to it I mean this is like all you can eat fentanyl like if you could come up with a system for like an epic pass for drugs like I mean you'd kill everybody but that's what they did with skiing they made skiing into a drug for a certain cohort of people where you just get that high you want to keep doing it movies have done the opposite movies have said every time you want to come here we're going to make it more painful for you you want to buy a ticket and you bring your family of five great you know it's 10 bucks a ticket on average 50 bucks and you want to buy stuff at the concession stand it's going to be 10 bucks per person minimum probably more like 15 so family of five you know if mom and dad sit it out and the kids get $15 each now you're at 95 bucks SPEAKER_92: 95 bucks for two hours of entertainment that's not cheap right SPEAKER_14: and so people and then maybe you got the epic pass maybe you go skiing for the entire day for free SPEAKER_93: founders if you're serious about raising money SPEAKER_57: you need to set up your business the right way tight is right and it all starts with having a registered agents investors simply won't fund your business if it isn't structured correctly before a VC can wire you the first dollar they're going to check is your company incorporated is it in good standing and compliant missing a filing or losing your status I mean it's just going to be a deal breaker for the VC it's like you're not taking things seriously and that's what happens during due diligence that's when a VC makes sure they're not making a mistake by giving you investment dollars and hey angels do this as well and that's where SPEAKER_95: Northwest registered agent comes in SPEAKER_57: for just $39 plus state fees they act as your registered agent they handle all the paperwork they keep you compliant and they make sure investors see you as a serious business that's worth funding in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes your business is officially set up and investor ready Northwest handles filings they protect your privacy and they ensure that you never miss a deadline these are the chores that you don't want to have to deal with you need a partner and Northwest registered agent is that partner thousands of founders trust Northwest because they keep businesses in good standing and with their expert corporate guides you get real support you don't get bots you get real people on the phone so here's your call to action very simple easy peasy lemon squeezy don't let bad paperwork cost you your next funding go to northwestregisteredagent.com slash twist and get your business investor ready today for just $39 SPEAKER_96: plus day fees you can set up your company the right way fast private and compliant go to northwestregisteredagent.com slash twist today SPEAKER_14: so people are making these trade-offs in their mind then they were like oh yeah we need more money so how do we get more money watch a movie in 3D that you never asked for 3D oh we're going to put it on IMAX we charge another $3 so now you're getting to $16 oh yeah we're going to make it a luxury theater you're going to be able to order food to your seat now the $10 SPEAKER_33: in popcorn and drinks went to $25 to chicken fingers etc I literally spent $250 when I go to the movies now let that sink five people $250 about $50 a person I go to an IMAX I like the IMAX theater that's $18 a ticket and everybody orders dessert and so it's basically combining dinner anyway if they just went with an all you can eat model of $20 per person and then maybe if it's a family of five you discount a little bit you get to $50 per month for a family of five we would go to the movies two or three times a week they could do I believe what the ski industry did which is make people addicted again to the experience of going out and seeing movies but because there are different people in the ecosystem trying to optimize different things the movie theater is trying to optimize the food the movie industry is trying to optimize the ticket price the cable TV providers are trying to optimize getting these things out of theater into their streaming services to get your $15 a month so now you've got three different constituents and then you've got poor mom and dads which you're not in this phase yet but you will be in another couple of years where you're just trying to do something with the kids on a Saturday or Sunday and laugh and have joy with them and keep them entertained and you know maybe have some shared experiences SPEAKER_75: you have four different people going in four different directions there is only one direction SPEAKER_33: enjoy yourself and give people a good deal they should let the movie studios buy the theaters and then all you can eat and Netflix should have a theater chain Disney should have a theater chain and they should have reciprocity where you can see unlimited Disney unlimited Netflix if you have either of those subscriptions or they could balkanize it and be like Epic and Icon Pass where some people might pick both people want all you can eat so two really good ideas for founders to think about today can you create all you can eat it was a movie pass that tried to do it didn't work because they had to deal with these different folks but Spotify did figure out an all you can eat model Netflix did Disney did etc so try to look at a space and create an all you can eat model and see what happens second how interesting would it be to find something that's hated and make it all you can eat sometimes people SPEAKER_53: hate certain hotel chains they charge too much I wonder if I paid let's think of a number for unlimited stays in a hotel married hotels unlimited stays a married hotel on average is 300 a night I'm thinking something in there depends on the city yeah okay so a thousand hotel room nights would be 300,000 so anyway 300 well 300 times 300 is roughly 100,000 so $100,000 paid in advance you have unlimited stays in Bonvoy hotels and if there's availability you could stay in another one I would pay that every year yeah if I was a single SPEAKER_14: guy I would certainly pay that and just travel the world I bet you they could sell that for $150,000 a year $10,000 a month $15,000 a month and make it all you could eat or if you said you could buy a thousand hotel rooms for $150,000 in advance and then just use them over three years people would do these kind of deals so it's something to think about when you're approaching entrepreneurship is to think about making people a dictature product and SPEAKER_33: giving them some extraordinary deal which would create a lot of press around it so maybe what the movie theater chain should do is say we're going to sell a thousand of these passes for unlimited for a thousand dollars and you can bring a thousand for a thousand and you can bring up to four people with you I would buy it immediately immediately I would buy it SPEAKER_62: and then charge the next $1,200 SPEAKER_18: and see where demand goes make a bunch of money and it's free publicity and Jason you made a really good important point it's going to get people back into the theaters right now they're too big they're too empty they're too expensive and they have fixed labor costs so like you need to have more bodies in there and wouldn't it be great if for once we had a good headline about the media business absolutely David Friedberg: all right everybody special guest today Dave Rubin is with us you know him because he's an entrepreneur SPEAKER_114: he's a podcaster former lib now MAGA I don't know how you like to describe yourself you and I spoke everybody knows the Rubin Report I don't have to like you know SPEAKER_115: like drag this out here because you're SPEAKER_116: you too famous let's see how long you can go with this intro come on give me three more minutes off the top of your head SPEAKER_118: let's roll SPEAKER_114: last night we spoke at Joe Lonsdale Mutual's SPEAKER_33: University of Austin and 80 or so students in the first class they're all picked because they're brainiacs they got high SAT scores we found out and I was like wow you're in town we should talk because I wanted to talk to you just about the business and how your business specifically right wing media has it became huge and now maybe it's in a transition but people also maybe don't know that you created locals SPEAKER_122: and then you sold that to Rumble so you're like me a podcaster and an entrepreneur right SPEAKER_123: we just have reverse entry points because I was a political guy that became a tech guy I suppose and you're a tech guy that became a political guy SPEAKER_124: so it's a nice it's a nice meeting there I got dragged into politics SPEAKER_122: you started as a comedian I mean I really don't I'm not as obsessed about politics SPEAKER_52: but is it exhausting to you because you're due five days a week SPEAKER_123: five days a week live plus however many interviews I do on top of that is it exhausting SPEAKER_126: talking about politics and the pace SPEAKER_14: that Trump goes at and the vitriol now like you have to be on one side you are complex you have many I think characteristics of people on the left moderates and the right but you live in a world like I do where you're forced to pick sides so what's it like to be I guess in some ways loved by the right as somebody who moved from the left and then also under this crazy scrutiny where just like I was on the left they want you to pass a purity test on the right and there are some parts of the purity test that maybe you pass or you don't so what's it like and how do you manage the psychology of being under constant scrutiny assault and just dealing SPEAKER_33: with a pace of news like the pace of news and text I mean that's fast SPEAKER_132: yeah SPEAKER_33: but in Trump politics SPEAKER_136: it's absurd right SPEAKER_00: well basically it's like life has become endless doom scrolling on this thing right that's sort of the pace of everything is just can I scroll and scroll and scroll almost to the point where you see good things or positive things and you just don't even look at them and you're just waiting for some disaster and you know back in the day and people don't remember this but guys of our age remember it websites used to have an ending you'd go to CNN.com and there was an end SPEAKER_140: to the page and it would say go back to the top but then you know the endless scroll came in and it just daily mail SPEAKER_00: those are some long stories and it just goes and it goes and they just pump more to you and you know our brains are not quite wired to that so first just quick on the exhaustion part it is exhausting and politics is infuriating and we talked about this a bit last night once you kind of know the people on both sides of it you know public how they are publicly and you know how they're privately and you see how the sausage is made there's a lot of stuff that is theatrics performative all of that and then you kind of see the disconnect between how people behave in their private life and how they're publicly all that stuff is kind of exhausting SPEAKER_140: I would say but like you I've built a great life doing this so I am able I've made it a very high priority SPEAKER_00: for me to put this thing down I do every August I go off the grid for a month I've done it eight years in a row no phone no TV no news where do you go what do you do I've done Bora Bora a couple times we've done tree houses in Mexico literally just disappear disappear and do I read I read a little bit is the world SPEAKER_146: there when you come back is the world SPEAKER_00: still there you think the world won't be and you do miss things one year I missed the Afghanistan withdrawal I missed John McCain dying I missed when Biden chose Kamala as VP you miss things Chamath Palihapitiya: okay founders let's keep it a buck finding the right developers is tough it's hard especially SPEAKER_55: when you're trying to run and scale up your startup you got a lot to do and Lemon.io is going to save you time they're going to save you money and a ton of headaches and they're great at what they do they've done work to find and vet developers who are experienced result oriented and they charge competitive rates and you also know that great developers can be hard to find and integrate into your team so Lemon.io handles all that for you startup shoes Lemon.io because they only offer hand-picked developers with at least three years of experience and who are the best of the best the creme de la creme a bunch of launch founders have worked with Lemon.io and they had great experiences here's your call to action go to Lemon.io slash twist and find your perfect developer or tech team in 48 hours or less and twist listeners get 15% off their first four weeks stop SPEAKER_150: burning money hire developer smarter visit Lemon.io slash twist SPEAKER_00: but you come back and you know for the first like five days of it every year the same thing happens I'm kind of freaking out you know my hands going SPEAKER_154: in my pocket like where is the thing where is the you know it's like a shadow SPEAKER_114: arm right SPEAKER_140: no it really is SPEAKER_114: like those people who lose an arm and you feel it and they reach for something with no arm SPEAKER_140: well it's like you know I'm sure you get it too the phantom buzzing you get the phantom SPEAKER_00: I don't really get it anymore but it used to be a real thing but I think by doing the disconnect that I do this will be my ninth year doing it that has been one of the things that's allowed me to stay sane because we know a lot of the same people and we're a lot of the same world so many people go into the political thing with good you know most people do things for good intentions and they just you know the clicks the fame the money whatever it is SPEAKER_159: it just starts making you crazy SPEAKER_158: yeah where do you fail currently and where do they love you sure SPEAKER_33: so that is psychologically I think part of the strategy is to in your replies attack you get SPEAKER_53: brigaded yeah and I have had coordinated brigading you know Sachs has sort of made fun of it on the pod where you know he called off like the MAGA people but I know how the brigading works because there's group chats that you and I SPEAKER_163: is he able to control the people that's good to know David Friedberg: well no he I mean that was kind of SPEAKER_163: the joke nobody can control but there are group chats where SPEAKER_33: they will share a Dave Rubin tweet a Jason Calacanis tweet a Sachs tweet and say okay go go and you know it when you're a super router and you have a following because okay this tweet just went from you know I think my average tweet gets 50,000 views or so and okay this one's getting 400,000 this one has 1800 replies the average one has 100 yeah what's going on here SPEAKER_168: and it turns out that suddenly none of these people follow you and they're like how did he get my mentions SPEAKER_00: the second I tweeted it out you have 50 people telling you to go kill yourself exactly you know some version of that it's psyops yeah no it really well they coordinate in telegram and they're doing it in I don't know if it's 4chan or just whatever these underbelly things are but that is what SPEAKER_171: they're doing there's no doubt SPEAKER_14: about it and it does affect you psychologically if you're unaware of it yeah and I noticed it when it came to Ukraine because I had like dictator bad as we follow like hey dictators are bad and democracies flawed as they can be are a better operating system as a Gen Xer it's like yeah more democracy good less democracy bad but man because of Sachs and his position on it which people couldn't understand SPEAKER_33: like why is he so pro-Putin that just kept coming up in my replies and I was like oh this is either like you know some Putin people trying to promote this or anti-Ukraine people whatever or it could just be his followers like there's some coordinated effort here and I was like yeah this actually reinforces my belief yeah well that's actually makes me dig in SPEAKER_00: well that also is one of the reasons that you really better know what you think and why you think it otherwise you will be pushed you will suddenly tweet something that you think is fairly innocuous or not particularly dangerous politically and you'll get SPEAKER_159: owned by these people and it will be unrelenting and it will go on for days and suddenly you'll be like wait a minute did I really SPEAKER_00: miss the mark on that one and then little did you know that it was a bot farm in Russia or it was out of South Korea or it was just coordinated by the frog people on Telegram SPEAKER_140: or whatever it might be and that's why it's really important well it's also why it's important that once you have a certain following you really shouldn't pay that much attention to the responses which kind of sucks in a way because I want feedback right like of course you want feedback that's why it's nice last night to sit in a room SPEAKER_00: with you know 80 young people and really like you could see they were really listening to us like they were real the questions were great by the way and and some were kind of combative which was really nice actually totally fine yeah but you know SPEAKER_159: the anonymity of this thing the distance of this thing it has changed us so far how old are you I am 54 54 without this thing we're the last generation that grew up where'd you grow up SPEAKER_182: I grew up in Brooklyn yeah in Brooklyn SPEAKER_183: okay so I'm from Brooklyn originally I grew up in Long Island lived in New York SPEAKER_140: City most of my life but you know I would come home from school get on my bike yeah and disappear with my friends for eight hours and then I showed up for SPEAKER_186: dinner and my mom we're yeah we were last day kids SPEAKER_00: we were free range but we were the last generation that fully fully had that and that is why I think Elon being involved with Trump has been so formative because we needed the boomers for some reason would not hand this thing over yes and Elon I think just did an unbelievable job of finally being like hey there's another generation here we're still we have some you know experience we're still young enough that our bodies work we have some energy stop with you geriatric people SPEAKER_189: I'm Mitch SPEAKER_190: McConnell glitching on TV and then Biden it's just SPEAKER_114: I don't know this gerocracy or whatever they call it geritocracy I'm like how are these let them retire SPEAKER_192: let them retire SPEAKER_193: well it's I think we would all gladly send SPEAKER_00: them into retirement so it's not about letting it's that they for some reason have decided not to let go I don't know if there's another example of this literally in world history of a generation that refused to let go now you might blame us in a weird way you might blame the Gen Xers for not grabbing it more you know like that there's something there that why didn't the Gen Xers be like no no no no no you guys can't do this anymore you're 87 and you're running for re-election for the 40th year in a row and all of this shit so whether it's our fault or their fault or whatever it is part of what's going on here that feels so crazy in the world it's a technological revolution right which we're about to have another one because of AI but it's also just this weird generational tension I mean even now as you know I'm a big Trump supporter but the guy is basically 80 years old 81 he's double David Friedberg: the age and I said this in one of our mutuals very public person got really upset at me SPEAKER_33: and was like please don't say that and I'm like he's twice the age of the VP SPEAKER_196: yeah literally right J.D.'s younger than me David Friedberg: two J.D.'s J.D.'s 39 I think so he's if you doubled his age he'd be three years younger than Trump SPEAKER_187: right and look I don't want that's sinking and the weird SPEAKER_00: thing is I don't want to be ageist so I don't hold that against him as long as he's cognitively there the different I mean I don't want to get into the whole Biden thing which is you know but it's like that was that I was doing videos in 2019 talking about his obvious cognitive problems I'm not a wizard I'm not from the future it was just pretty damn obvious oddly though I didn't write a book about it like Jake Tapper which is now number one on Amazon great SPEAKER_198: good for him SPEAKER_114: I think that might be I know it's controversial but I haven't read the book yet I will give it a listen SPEAKER_52: might be self-aware or it could be CYA you could you could take the cynical hey it's CYA you know SPEAKER_14: he's part of the media whatever or he could feel like I'm really kind of pissed off that you abused my trust and there was this grand conspiracy and I want to get to the end of it because I was a sucker at the poker table SPEAKER_202: which do you think because it seems fairly obvious it could be a little bit of both SPEAKER_14: it could be he gave them the benefit of the doubt because of pre-existing relationships and because maybe he's on that team and he's as a journalist you know they said like no no he's fine you know obviously he's older and he stutters and he's got a speech impediment and he's had that for a long time but yeah he's sharp because when I talk to my friends Mark Pincus Reid Hoffman people I've known for a long time and even Shamath like when's the last time you saw him how was he and it was always the same thing like yeah I had lunch with him had breakfast with him and he was great I mean it wasn't like it's still like talking to your grandpa it's not as quick and he doesn't understand AI but SPEAKER_199: that in and of itself is a problem on top of what you referenced last night related to the sundowning that they were obviously hiding him at certain parts of the day yes I mean SPEAKER_204: grandpa had a bad day yeah you know and Dean Phillips they give him so much credit I don't know if you got to spend any time with Dean Phillips he's worth having on by the time SPEAKER_206: I wanted to have him on he had already gotten out have him on SPEAKER_33: your pod and talk to him you'll be so impressed because he's a Clinton like yeah he probably has more in common with you than Trump you know and you probably in a non partisan world would vote for him because he believes in you know whatever you're doing in your personal life is your personal life which is I think a Republican position historically yeah SPEAKER_210: you know it's your limited government leaves it to you to live your life yes SPEAKER_32: literally when I moved to Texas you know maybe we'll talk about when I'm on your show and I'm the guest but you know SPEAKER_33: like that was an American value I really cherished was like and when I came here and I bought my horse ranch and I was talking to the guy with the ranch I was like hey can I do this on my ranch he's like it's your ranch you mean the one you just bought I'm like yeah he's like yeah you can do that on your ranch I'm like hey can I do this on my ranch you know like shoot guns or whatever I have a shooting ranch and he's like yeah yeah no it's your ranch son it's your ranch now you can do that I was like can I and he's like son I'm gonna stop you right there it's your ranch do what you want don't bother your neighbors and when the fence goes down that's when you and your neighbor split the bill and that's when you interact it's the fence SPEAKER_220: and it is like a really ingrained here that's the fence and when I grew up SPEAKER_14: in Brooklyn and you grew up in New York we all took the subway you had your seat I had my seat you have your space I have my space we deal with each other you're gay I'm straight I'm Irish you're Greek you're black Hispanic whatever we just all deal with each other nobody cares we all gotta get to work we're all suffering through the same delay on the subway the same bullshit we gotta deal with rats on the subway whatever it is and we all just got along but you kind of just respected each other for who you are and it was just so beautiful I don't know what happened to this goddamn country SPEAKER_226: where everybody SPEAKER_14: has to be at each other's throat over your political affiliation who cares the least interesting thing about anybody is which party they're in SPEAKER_00: yeah well I'm completely uninterested in which party and I like I like assessing people on their beliefs and all of those things you're completely right I use the subway a lot as an example because as someone that lived in New York City most of my adult life and I had grandparents that were in the city that I was always going to when I was a kid you're right like you'd get on the subway and it was everybody from everywhere of every age and color and background and religion and whatever and it's not even that you respected them per se but you just didn't get in their way and they didn't get in your way I mean you'd all put cram in together and you'd elbow everybody but you didn't elbow them like oh I'll elbow the gay guy and not the Greek guy or something it was just like we're all in it together I gotta get to work and that's what the danger I would say of what the woke thing did to the country over the last decade plus it started whittling us down to these very very unimportant things right like like okay so you're Irish fine that means you have a heritage and you know okay great that's great and hopefully there's probably some foods you like and traditions you have and we just went to an awesome SPEAKER_159: St. Paddy's Day thing in Miami and I drank my I'm not a beer guy but I had a margarita that had some green stuff in it it was fantastic everybody was wasted by 2 p.m. it was amazing no judgments but you don't look at somebody and be like yeah well exactly but you don't look at people and be like all right you're Irish I must think this about you you're a Jew I must think about this you're black I must think this about you and once that thing crept into the system it basically started shredding us apart and I lay most of the blame on this on the good liberals I'm not talking about the crazy progressives that did this or the Marxists or whatever SPEAKER_00: the good liberal who just said I am so damn tolerant that I will let anyone say or do anything at all times I will be tolerant of intolerance and once they ushered that in the progressive movement the radical part basically was like look at these suckers what an what I always liken it to what I wrote about in my first book that it's basically I'm sure you've seen it the original alien movie from 1977 if you remember which is the best of all the movies maybe the second one might be better but SPEAKER_240: Ridley Scott James Cameron did the second I think it's just perfection SPEAKER_00: but if you remember at the end of the first movie the after the alien has now ransacked the ship killed everybody basically except Ripley and the robot who's the doctor and you find out that he's a robot halfway through the movie he basically is saying how he admires the alien because the alien has no morals it just accomplishes what it wants to accomplish and this is what I've tried to explain to people about the left like the modern left or the progressive movement you don't have to like what they're doing but you have to respect that they have basically taken over the host they took over the country incredible and they destroyed so much and you could say SPEAKER_244: oh they're all idiots and they're purple haired morons and okay well it happened on your watch it was effective for a time yeah SPEAKER_33: the same book agent and so we met through our book agent and I actually introduced him to Elon and we used to have dinner together the three of us all the time in LA it was that didn't end well but SPEAKER_114: well it didn't end well but I'm gonna try to I'm gonna try to bridge it and bring it back but they're at each other's throats right now SPEAKER_44: but you know he described identity politics to me you know as a cul-de-sac he's like you know you get into this thing and you just start spinning it's never enough SPEAKER_00: so they've infected I mean they just the amount of stuff that they have destroyed I love basketball like basketball outside of my family basketball is my thing who's your team so I don't even have a team anymore and I'll tell you I used to have a team I'll tell you that in a sec but the reason I don't have a team anymore is because politics destroyed the NBA once they put that BLM logo on the court and then every time I turned on inside the NBA with Chuck and Kenny and Ernie Johnson I was like I'm listening to people lecture me about racism that's just fine but it's not what I'm coming to basketball for so if you look at my YouTube search thing when I'm doing cardio every day I watch the same games that I watched from late 80s Lakers to the Bulls run in the 90s up to about the end of Kobe and then and then it became political my favorite player of all time is a Texas guy actually Clyde the Glide sure I played for Houston with Blazers originally in Houston and one of the greatest moments of my entire life was for my birthday about seven years ago my agent SPEAKER_199: just sent me I open up my text he says happy birthday and it's Clyde's phone number and then we've become text buddies since then and I was like SPEAKER_257: that's like of all the little things that you get you guys SPEAKER_258: you guys beat my Knicks and Patrick Ewing and John Starks back in the day well so that was the 94 team SPEAKER_00: Clyde was traded to them in 95 but yes that was game six great series you remember SPEAKER_263: the Elijah Juan just nipping that John Starks shot in game six and that's what turned the whole thing SPEAKER_265: that would have been our and now it's this year might be my Knicks year you love that team that 94 I mean I started going to Knicks games SPEAKER_204: in the early 90s and that's been my passion ever since SPEAKER_33: and I literally went to the Pistons games in Detroit wonderful city by the way if you haven't been to Detroit I know SPEAKER_07: I've been not in some years SPEAKER_33: incredible how they've turned that city around the people are great and it's awesome to go to road games because I'm a New Yorker or I lived in the valley like getting good seats was you know a five figure affair in the first two or three rows it was like 10 $20,000 a seat SPEAKER_53: which is disconnected from reality so then I was like wait a second I live in Austin now I'm just going SPEAKER_14: to go to Philly and second row or first row in Philly is like $1,000 or $2,000 or $3,000 I got courtside in Detroit for $3,000 a seat which would have been four rows back five rows back at the Warriors etc so I was like oh my god it's free and I get to see a new city it's incredible so if the Knicks clear Boston and go to Indiana which would be an incredible series I'm going to literally just go to the Indiana games SPEAKER_273: what do they charge in first row SPEAKER_14: probably $12 I think it's like $12 for two you and I can go SPEAKER_274: and you get Reggie to bring you your I mean literally SPEAKER_14: I stayed in the best hotel in Detroit the Shinola Hotel based on the watch company gorgeous I was in a suite that was like the presidential suite like 2,000 square feet it was $400 a night I was like god damn it this is incredible SPEAKER_277: I sat courtside SPEAKER_00: for the first time about two months ago now I'm going to name drop for a second but Bill Maher called me said you want to come to the Laker game I sat courtside SPEAKER_08: with Bill and it was just as someone that loves basketball I've never I've been to a million basketball games no it's totally different SPEAKER_00: when you're on the wood we probably went to the same games because I used to go to the Knick games all the time especially when the Blazers or Houston was in town but to sit courtside when you're right SPEAKER_189: and you hear the squeaking SPEAKER_187: and you hear all the trash talk you can literally hear the sweat fly off them SPEAKER_263: it's so awesome if you love basketball there is nothing better SPEAKER_246: it's literally the greatest thing ever and I said to myself if I ever make any money I made a bunch of money and I was like I don't spend it and I talked to my wife about it and she's like what do you love and I was like I love skiing and I love the Knicks SPEAKER_220: and she's like well we have to spend like this amount of money per year if we're going to end with this amount of money for our daughters SPEAKER_33: like just a little like here's how it trails off for a 54 year old and I'm like can't possibly spend that amount of money a year like I'd have to start flying private or something and I was like but I could go to Japan and ski every year and treat myself to cat skiing which is a thousand dollars a day which is pretty you know rich compared to just using Europe and I bought a ski house and then I started sitting courtside at Knicks games SPEAKER_53: during the playoffs and I said you know during the playoffs I'll just go and I won't worry that I spent ten thousand dollars SPEAKER_37: on tickets I'll just go and enjoy it SPEAKER_289: I mean what's the point of having it if you can't enjoy it SPEAKER_00: people feel all this guilt about success and it's like I used it's funny before I was successful I had a weird thing about success in some sense like I don't know I was like as I started because you know there's a weird thing about fame also sometimes you can kind of become famous and then people think you're automatically rich SPEAKER_08: so when I SPEAKER_291: when I first started gaining notoriety on YouTube I was still broke I was making maybe 50 grand a year maybe the first few years SPEAKER_00: of doing it and I was putting all that money back in SPEAKER_08: so I barely had a dime actually but yet I was famous so I'd go places and people would know me now you did locals yeah SPEAKER_294: I know this because I SPEAKER_14: during COVID discovered Scott Adams yeah who started doing this local things I paid and subscribed to it for a while because I was like I really want to see what's going on over here and I remember Sam Harris was talking to me I helped him set up his podcast and he was originally on Patreon SPEAKER_33: but he started doing Casper ads and whatever and he's like oh this advertising is not good because when I talk about I don't know radical Islam or whatever you know priests and Catholic church issues they're going to drop me or I can't have the advertisers oh my god I'm going to have to like have my business development people go talk to the advertisers every episode and give them credit so he goes to Patreon then he's like oh my god Patreon starts kicking people off and he's like okay I'm going to roll my own and he kind of rolls his own subscription service and he's like this is the way I'm going to do it and you did locals yeah great domain name that's like a $500,000 domain name SPEAKER_302: how much did you pay for that SPEAKER_301: about $500,000 actually but it turned out that one of our investors a guy by the name of Andrew Condru SPEAKER_00: who's an old tech guy from well he's not that old but I mean he was like one of the original tech guys from like the 90s he had it he had it just sitting there so originally he licensed it to us he was an investor but licensed it to us and then eventually when we sold the company SPEAKER_199: why did you decide to do a startup and then so it's very connected to what you just described right there I was on Patreon just like Sam SPEAKER_00: Jordan Peterson a couple other people and then they started banning people for crazy reasons one of the reasons was there was a guy by the name of Carl Benjamin who's big British YouTuber and he went on not on his Patreon account not on his YouTube show that was being funded by Patreon he went on someone else's show and he said the N-word but he didn't say it to be racist he was mocking the alt-right at the time so he was basically playing out a character and he said the word without any warning Patreon blew up his channel that was it they didn't send him a you have to retract this you have to delete this blew up his channel that day SPEAKER_08: I was on tour with Jordan Peterson we were both making a night I was making most of my money on Patreon at that point Jordan was already had been selling books and on tour and whatever I was on tour with him making a nice amount but most of my I was making about 30 grand a month on there that was basically SPEAKER_00: the budget for my show and Jordan and I sat down and we were like this is intolerable we got to figure out something Jordan and I then tried to do something together but that was right when Jordan was getting sick we had that year where he really got quite ill and then I was like alright I'm going to try to do this on my own my brother-in-law is an Israeli startup guy as all the Israelis are I was like can you build me something he's like SPEAKER_311: I'm going to need five minutes but I think I can do it and basically five million people SPEAKER_313: they got like SPEAKER_311: seven million startups I'm like SPEAKER_263: how you got 1.2 each you know they're under a lot of pressure it's a small piece of land they're under SPEAKER_00: a lot of pressure but basically I said can you build me I'm going to leave Patreon can you build me a subscription thing that's it and I want direct connection with my audience I don't want any algorithmic nonsense I want to own the data I want to own the emails all of I want to do it the right way because it was for me anyway we did that when I closed my Patreon that night the way I did it was I was on a live stream and I said for I can't remember exact numbers but I was like for every thousand subscribers we get something like that live while I'm on air I'll do a shot of Patron because I'm leaving Patreon anyway about 12 shots later 12,000 subs wow you must have been so I was and I was really doing it so not only was I wasted but I doxed myself live on air because when I went finally at the end of the night when I went to delete the account which we were showing SPEAKER_05: you press SPEAKER_00: delete and then your email SPEAKER_08: pops up SPEAKER_06: oh your email great SPEAKER_00: it wasn't my address but my personal email popped up which of course was blah blah blah long story short we delete that and the next day I was like wow I have a success here and then I was like I want to spawn this off to other people so Scott Adams was one of the first two or three people we brought on board we built it for him originally the way we were going to do it and I think this is how you and I got in touch originally what we were going to do was white label it to people so you would have your own app because I remember yeah I was David Friedberg: thinking about it too I was like watching that area and I was like this is a super interesting area I want to invest in it or start something but then you know one of the things that happens is SPEAKER_33: as you know if you figure out advertising and it takes off like this podcast I've had 14 years I was one of the first five podcasters it's been sold out for 13 SPEAKER_323: of the 14 years and it was SPEAKER_53: only year it wasn't sold out was during COVID where we had maybe five advertisers two or three because they were like we can't do business so please let us push our ads back but yeah I just think it's such a SPEAKER_26: great idea to do the subscription well so SPEAKER_135: right so subscription look if you have a base of people that like you like it's it's a great business now of course SPEAKER_00: you're eventually going to hit a ceiling on that but basically we thought so originally locals was white labeled so I had a Rubin report app then once we brought on Scott I think we had a prototype for his white label but then suddenly like 10 other people reached out to me here in Austin bunch of other SPEAKER_276: people and then SPEAKER_329: Michael Malice is here SPEAKER_276: yeah yeah but he's part of Daily Wire now SPEAKER_330: is he part of Daily Wire now oh no Michael Malice oh you're thinking of Michael Knowles David Friedberg: Michael Knowles who's in Nashville Michael Malice is the guy SPEAKER_276: who's kind of he's the ancap I call him the he's an anarchist SPEAKER_00: yeah he's an anarchist but he's not a white supremacist no not at all he's the most one of the you should have him on he is one of the most wonderful people you will ever meet but an anarchist he's a complete anarchist he doesn't believe in government at all wow he's been to North Korea like the guy has a you know his parents came from Soviet Russia he's got a really I kind of SPEAKER_336: probably would like to hang with a guy like that sounds like a good hack he's here in Austin we should get drinks like he's a SPEAKER_00: great great human being anyway I brought him on and a few other people and then quickly we realized all right the white label thing isn't going to make sense there so let's just put it all it doesn't scale yeah we do all that and then and then it's really successful I was like holy you know oh and then Saks came on as an investor and really once Joe Lonsdale was an investor Joe Lonsdale was an investor but once we got Saks then everything else opened up because once we got Saks suddenly Naval was like I'll put in money and Joe put in money it just opened up all the doors for us and the beauty of the of the Saks thing is that we were at SPEAKER_199: Peter Thiel's New Year's party in Miami I don't know this is like five years ago or so my invite got lost it's a SPEAKER_37: very gay New Year's SPEAKER_340: yeah I guess you know I wanted to go to that for me it was just the average New Year's but you know SPEAKER_341: I want to go to Peter Thiel's very gay New Year's party can I be your plus two that can be your age SPEAKER_168: so we go and this SPEAKER_00: very pretty woman comes up to me and she says she's a big fan and we're chatting for a while and then she says I want you to meet my husband David and I I took a picture with her and then I walk away and some guy's like oh how do you know David Sachs I didn't even know who David was Jackie Sachs yeah it was Jackie I didn't know who David was I wasn't really that even though I was in tech at that point it's not my world I come from politics and comedy whatever the best thing that I could say about David is literally two days later I called him up I was like hey listen I know we just had a quick chat your wife seems to like me we had a 15 minute conversation I showed him some numbers he called SPEAKER_199: me the next day he's like let's do it and then it just opened every door for us and next thing you know we got acquired by Rumble and Rumble SPEAKER_309: went public so SPEAKER_210: so nice and you owned a nice piece of Rumble yeah we sold all for stock I did not take one die smart SPEAKER_155: so you're good I'm good SPEAKER_347: I like it I'm good but I still got this SPEAKER_155: jacket that you complimented me on it's like a Chinese SPEAKER_114: you don't think the Trump tarot stuff was crazy you had to look at that and think no I didn't you can watch SPEAKER_168: my videos from those days even when the market crashed I just thought it was a SPEAKER_00: comes to investing I'm not that I'm not that aggressive like when my guys were like it's dropping you should probably start buying I if we get look if we get 40 countries that come back with better deals and maybe we get 10 countries that let's say it's a wash and we get a few that it's not good it still was a net good the little pain point as you just said the markets back so I just you know my SPEAKER_220: take on it is I want to get your opinion about the nature of Trump SPEAKER_33: you SPEAKER_220: know the guy SPEAKER_359: he SPEAKER_33: I studied him before he came on all in I never really told this story but I'll tell it on your podcast SPEAKER_34: later when I'm on your pod but SPEAKER_275: I studied him major we're doing the rare back to back pod it's SPEAKER_302: a double feature but I studied SPEAKER_33: him and my perception of him is a key piece to his psychology is being respected yes you agree yes SPEAKER_14: like it is a major part of it yes and even beyond respect being loved like actually people loving him for who he is and he's not like the perfect character he's obviously flawed in some ways and you know bombastic and people don't like his style maybe they love his style whatever it is but I just knew he would reverse all of this stuff with the tariffs if things went the wrong way because his overriding principle is to be loved by the American people so do you think this wasn't the plan no I think he was doing a SPEAKER_33: we can put them into these three buckets these ones are inconsequential because we don't do a lot of trade with them these five are 90% of it it's a Pareto principle it's the power law these five are the ones that oh you put it at 50% I'm making it 150% and it was this attention seeking crazy shake the globe and now shake the globe as a concept is fine I get the reality TV the attention getting there's these concepts and negotiations to anchor in a crazy part it's all very well established but I think when you're dealing with something that has second and third order downstream effects you can't shake it too violently and when it comes to the economy you talk to anybody who does macroeconomics they're alchemists they have a little bit of science a little bit of magic and they're trying to read the tea leaves but they actually don't understand these systems it's like weather systems you can understand some pieces of them it's quite possible we could break things in the economy and the thing that was going SPEAKER_07: and they were like SPEAKER_33: we're going to have to do layoffs we're going to not put our Christmas summer orders in we are going to not do this new product line and we're not investing in this new thing it takes a decade five years minimum two or three years to set up these supply chains and they didn't fully realize exactly how this would go to mainstream like when Besant was saying this is a mag 7 problem not a mainstream problem yes first stroke of the pen it's a mag 7 problem it's a market problem and then week six it would have been massive layoffs and the Trump layoffs would have made him oh the stock market comes roaring back I knew he would SPEAKER_53: reverse his entire position if it didn't go well SPEAKER_00: right so look I don't think either one of us can speak to exactly what was in SPEAKER_08: happened I think you would agree has been pretty good right I mean we're gonna assuming we get the landings that we think we're going to get it's SPEAKER_370: possible he will yeah have more fair trade deals over time yeah SPEAKER_00: I think the way I would put this is when I was first coming around to Trump so this is now got to be six or seven years ago do you know Eric Weinstein yeah of course so I had Eric on the show and he really I was trying to get him to come along too so sort of what I've been doing with Bill Maher for years I've tried to bring these people along right and Eric just couldn't get there he kept he's a bull in a china shop he's a bull in a china shop and I said Eric well the don't really exist would we all like in like our heart of hearts or in like if SPEAKER_159: everything was as highly functional as we'd like it to be would we like him perhaps to be more you know now he's changed where I do think he's more statesman like but could we have gone without some of that stuff sure could we have gone with some sure but that's just not exactly how the world works so we finally got one guy that was willing to do all of the things that none of us were willing to do and to me the results of that have been SPEAKER_00: now we see how calcified the mainstream media was how he was working against big tech I mean in retrospect the fact that the old regime of Twitter took him out and what they did to parlor and when you SPEAKER_33: restraint that could have been a much different outcome for America SPEAKER_375: Dave Rubin I appreciate the hour it has been a pleasure now I have to figure out how to get you for the SPEAKER_199: next hour we have a two I'm going SPEAKER_53: side or they are thoughtful about the stuff like I do I'm kind of disappointed in some of my friends that just are have that Trump dedication syndrome SPEAKER_240: who had that great joke I would never be