David Friedberg: Okay, everybody, we have a huge, huge, huge show for you today. Lots of fascinating news and special guests.

SPEAKER_02: Special guest, the queen of TikTok, Taylor Lorenz, to talk about her newest scoop for the Washington Post because they just keep coming. Jason calls them the Tay-bomb. I think we can all agree that's what they are. In this case, Facebook hired a GOP public relations firm to trash TikTok.

Jason Calacanis: I love that we don't call them meta.

SPEAKER_05: We're just going to stick with Facebook. We're not buying what you're selling. It's still Facebook. It's still loathsome. And the SEC in additional news is considering cracking down on SPACs a little bit. And we talk about how you should contextualize making bets on risky companies and what kind

SPEAKER_06: of disclosures perhaps would help the SPAC space become a little more respected and maybe a little more disclosure that could help it with, let's face it, it's been a rough ride

David Friedberg: for the last year for SPACs. And speaking of making big bets, we're going to talk about FAST.

SPEAKER_02: A one-click checkout startup that seems to be going slow.

SPEAKER_11: Aw, great pun. The producers really get me. They get me.

SPEAKER_12: And you know this is part of the whole brouhaha with Ryan Bresla and all these VCs going back

SPEAKER_15: and forth. And so once again, we're being pulled into this.

SPEAKER_16: Dax are being leaked. Tea is being spilled. Tea is being spilled. The beef is being braised.

SPEAKER_19: It's got to be a great show. Stick with us.

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SPEAKER_23: The queen has arrived.

SPEAKER_06: Surprise! The queen has arrived. In her third or fourth appearance here on This Week in Startups, Taylor Lorenz is here. And I think is Drew here too? I don't know if we have both, but they dropped a huge story today.

David Friedberg: And so maybe you can cue up the story, Molly, while we get the model. We'll get Taylor's video up.

SPEAKER_27: Yeah, bombshell story from the queen, Taylor Lorenz. A tay bomb, as Jason's calling it. If you will, a tay bomb. And co-authored by Drew Harwell. A story noting that Facebook, noting for the first time ever in previously unseen emails, Facebook paid a GOP public relations firm to trash TikTok, to literally start seeding stories across the country, placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that, as it turns out, actually originated on Facebook and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor.

SPEAKER_06: All right. And with us, the queen of the tay bomb. Tay Mo is here. Hi. Thanks for coming. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_26: You've been working at the Washington Post for 17 seconds. And has lobbed 17 tay bombs, one for every second.

SPEAKER_06: She had two big dunks in the first month, two huge drops. And this is after a little bit of a mini brouhaha where some folks were like, maybe don't shine so bright. So that's got to feel good that you come in and drop some big stories.

SPEAKER_12: How did you find out about this? What was the source and the origin of this?

SPEAKER_26: Because now I think- Not literally who was the source. What's that? I said not literally who was the source. Well, yeah, don't out the source, but how did you come to this story?

SPEAKER_06: Because I'm assuming now that you're so high profile and you've built a brand for yourself,

SPEAKER_39: which we can talk about the sort of contentiousness in media with the old guard saying, don't build a brand. The Washington Post is a brand.

SPEAKER_05: I think you've become kind of the nexus, the super router of breaking social media stories. So maybe you could unpack that.

SPEAKER_41: Yeah, definitely. Well, this story I actually started to look into months ago because I noticed a lot of these kind of dubious TikTok trend stories blowing up in local news. I get Google alerts for TikTok and they kind of dominate the Google alerts. I spent a lot of time on TikTok and I was like, none of these trends are real, like the

SPEAKER_42: thing. And it actually was leading to certain school districts to shut down school for the day. So kids are missing education because parents are terrified of these viral TikTok trends that

SPEAKER_41: there's really no evidence exists. So I started looking into it and kind of looking into local news. I started to, yeah, sort of investigate the origins of some of this stuff. And I also started to notice, you know, these op-eds that were all using really similar language, like the letters to the editor in different regional papers.

SPEAKER_45: You could post the, you know, sentences into Google and you would see multiple versions of that in totally separate districts around the country.

SPEAKER_06: So what's an example of the trend, you mentioned these trends that were faux trends and you can spot them because listen, you're on TikTok, you understand how the mechanics work.

SPEAKER_46: If it's a trend, it's a trend, like it goes big, correct?

SPEAKER_27: Yeah. And if you wouldn't mind, like unpack that specific trend that you're talking about, because I got an email from my school about that, you know, the credible thread on TikTok thing. And that's a really beautiful example of one of these things that was apparently completely planted.

SPEAKER_41: Yeah, they're totally bogus. So, you know, I'll use the slap a teacher one as an example.

SPEAKER_42: So what happened actually was somebody posted this insane list of like fake TikTok trends

SPEAKER_41: to a parent's Facebook group. It went viral actually on Facebook because local police officers started to warn it. They started to send out these emails to parents like, hey, be careful. There's this trend where teenagers are slapping their teachers and recording it.

SPEAKER_42: It's viral on TikTok. That's not a thing. Like, it's just not. And there's been a few things like that. I mean, it reminds me a lot of the Tide Pod challenge, if you guys remember that. Of course. A few times when YouTube was named for all of these trends. But it's sort of similarly, it's this panic. And, you know, I think it's a lot of things like parents not really knowing what's happening on TikTok. So they're kind of like, well, better be cautious, better keep our kids home.

SPEAKER_41: It's fear of new technology is at the root of all of this, I think. And then obviously Facebook stoking those fears, you know, taking this dubious trend story in one market and trying to replicate it across other markets to generate outrage.

SPEAKER_06: So you see these local news stories, you do the gumshoe and you figure out, hey, there's similar language here and it's not a trend. So your Spidey sense is going up.

SPEAKER_12: How do you make the connection that Meta is stroking the fire here?

SPEAKER_41: Well, I basically just started asking around and then sort of, you know, I have a lot of sources. I cover TikTok. I had actually posted a Twitter thread back in January when Blumenthal came out against some TikTok trend that was not a TikTok trend. And I was like, this is crazy. Where is all this stuff coming from? And I kind of documented Blumenthal's comments and kind of how wrong he was.

SPEAKER_45: And then people started reaching out to me and I sort of got ahold of this stuff and then targeted, I found out about the Targeted Victory connection and investigated and got ahold of all the emails.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So tell us about Targeted Victory and this firm and why it's relevant that this firm mostly

SPEAKER_68: does work for, for the GOP if it's relevant.

SPEAKER_41: Yeah, no, it's super relevant. Um, I mean, Targeted Victory has actually worked with Facebook for a while. Um, so they actually helped orchestrate that meeting between, um, a bunch of conservative people and Mark Zuckerberg, you know, when they were saying that we were being silenced a couple years ago. Um, but their relationship has deepened, um, specifically since the TikTok threat of the TikTok ban. Um, I think it's really relevant that they're using this Republican firm one, because they're trying to engage in a lot of sort of tactics and work to court Republican lawmakers who have wanted to be really tough on China or wanted to be really tough on sort of things, protecting the children, right? A lot of the messaging that you see in this stuff against TikTok is kind of dog whistling to the ideology that really resonates with Republicans, like saving the children, right? Um, child predators are out there and TikTok is dangerous. We need to protect the children or anti-China stuff. Now, TikTok like deserves criticism, right? Like we should investigate the, the relationship between ByteDance and China. That's a very worthy investigation, but they're using this really inflammatory language and seeding

SPEAKER_71: these op-eds that kind of stoke fears that as of yet are unfounded.

SPEAKER_60: You know, one of the interesting questions is, and I've had this debate with David Sachs

SPEAKER_12: on all in pod and actually tell her, you and I have debated over the years, like, is TikTok a front for the Chinese government? I take a very cynical position of dictators. I think you were like, Hey, show me the evidence. The last time we talked about it, which might've been like two years ago. Well, now we have the evidence. The Chinese government has shut down all the companies there. So it's kind of leaning towards like, maybe my cynicism was directionally correct. Like Chinese government does have the keys to the kingdom. They did pass legislation that all of the data, you know, they need to have access to it. And they shut down a bunch of education companies.

SPEAKER_39: Putting that aside, I'm trying to figure out Zuckerberg's politics because he made a bunch of donations to left-wing people. He threw Trump off the platform, but Peter Thiel's his mentor. And he's backing this kind of, he's engaging targeted victory, which is the most cynical kind of approach I think you could take. Is he playing both sides? Is he a secret Republican? Cause that's the thing I need to find out.

SPEAKER_74: I know. And by the way, I'm cynical about all of this stuff too.

SPEAKER_41: I mean, as a reporter, I just, as a reporter too, it's like, you kind of have to wait for the receipts and that's like, this are so good. Cause you have the receipts. Um, with Zuckerberg, I think she honestly is just, we'll do anything that's in the best interest of his company. I think he will align himself with really dark people.

SPEAKER_42: I think he's just out for himself as a true. You know, look, he's going to put it.

SPEAKER_79: Late stage capitalist. Say it. He's a late stage capitalist. I was going to go mercenary, mercenary, whatever.

SPEAKER_12: I mean, he does not care which side he wants, both sides on the platform. And when he saw the Republicans were going to leave because they felt like he was maybe

SPEAKER_39: putting the thumb on one scale, he's like, okay, let's put them on the other scale. Let's get Ben Shapiro in here. Let's get Alex Jones in here or whatever.

SPEAKER_05: Um, and I, I think both of these platforms are a bit dangerous, uh, if unregulated. So when you look at it now, and as your, you know, knowledge of this continues to evolve, let me just ask you bluntly, putting aside this political issue, because it shows us Zuckerberg's true stripes, stripes, you get his receipts, do not trust this person. He's a marauder. He does not care about people. He cares about winning. He should be regulated. I think it's becoming very clear and you don't have to be a cynic. You can just look at the receipts.

SPEAKER_06: Like you're saying, okay, efficiency is one of the main components in startup success. We all know that, and that's what Coda is all about. Coda is the all in one doc for teams, your text and tables live together in the same documents, which helps any team collaborate more efficiently. They've got thousands of templates to work with, or you can take the playbooks published by some of the best innovators out there and use them for yourself. Coda works right out of the box and it's customizable. So you can create a wiki or a knowledge hub for your team on board, new hires quickly and adapt fast to any major or minor changes in your business. And here's how we use Coda at This Week in Startups. My guy Presh made an upvoting system on Coda for questions and topics that you as the audience want to hear on this podcast. If you go to thisweekinstartups.com slash questions, you can submit your question or topic that our producers might include in the show. How awesome is that? And if you go to their repository, you can actually take this Q&A voting system for yourself. So here's your call to action. Coda has an amazing program for startups to help optimize and support your docs. Go to Coda.io slash twist to get a $1,000 credit right now. Coda.io, C-O-D-A dot I-O slash twist to get that $1,000 credit. But now let's go back to TikTok.

SPEAKER_05: Would it not be much better for America, independent of the dirty tactics here,

SPEAKER_12: if it was not a Chinese company with all this data and an algorithm programming our children? Because TikTok is absurdly influential on kids' brains.

SPEAKER_39: I mean, maybe you could expand on exactly how much impact TikTok has had on young people.

SPEAKER_74: Yeah.

SPEAKER_42: I mean, I think that we should absolutely question TikTok. And I think, I mean, part of the reason I like doing these stories is because there's really legitimate concerns around TikTok, specifically around the algorithm and the way things snowball and how it's sort of basically built for like mob justice and a level of mob attack that like could not be facilitated even on Facebook. It's just that when we look at these like local fake viral stories, that almost distracts from the real danger of it. And so that's what I think is important to talk about. Like you mentioned, Jason, TikTok also just has a level of cultural relevance that Facebook doesn't have as the ability to really shape young people's views on things. It has a huge misinformation problem. I mean, people, there is no like media literacy on TikTok at all.

SPEAKER_41: Like you see these with all of these sex trafficking panics, like the Wayfair scandal, you know, where people thought the Wayfair was selling children. People just gobbled that up on TikTok with zero skepticism.

SPEAKER_42: And unlike Twitter and other social platforms where there's journalists or, you know, people that can kind of moderate that conversation and fact check, TikTok is like Lord of the flies. And so I think it's terrifying, right? To think about that kind of impact and the way that we're seeing it manifest in the real world. I always give the example of Adrian's kickback. Do you guys remember that last year?

SPEAKER_91: No, I remember West Elm guy.

SPEAKER_42: Okay. Also another good example, although not as a physical world. Um, so Adrian's kickback was this thing where this kid's 15 year old, uh, this 15 year old's like birthday party went viral and thousands of kids ended up showing up at Huntington. Oh, I do remember this.

SPEAKER_94: Yes. Right.

SPEAKER_42: That is something where, okay, it's a kid's birthday party. Right. But think about something like that with, for instance, storming the Capitol, right? Like just the ability to mobilize that many people and reach that many people and encourage them to act. It's just so much stronger on TikTok than it ever is on Facebook.

SPEAKER_71: And I think we're going to see that play out in dangerous ways.

SPEAKER_12: It's why, why is it so much easier on TikTok? I think some people don't understand how TikTok works as the default.

SPEAKER_27: So maybe you could just educate people on the, and that sort of lack of feedback, right? You watch this thing. There's no comments like break down exactly why it is so much easier to sort of spread something unchallenged.

SPEAKER_105: Yeah. Well, so TikTok's primary sort of mode of consumption is not through a following feed.

SPEAKER_41: Every American social network, you as a user have to subscribe to someone's content to see it, or it's re-shared by someone you follow, right? Like a Twitter retweet. TikTok breaks all of that.

SPEAKER_42: It is just an algorithmically programmed feed that distributes content to you. You don't have to follow a single person on the app. So things can break out and reach millions within minutes because nobody has to opt into that

SPEAKER_41: content. So when that algorithm goes off the rails and starts feeding sort of dangerous things, it can just spread a lot quicker. And Molly, I forgot what you just asked.

SPEAKER_107: Oh, that's okay. I actually have a follow-up related to this whole idea though, which is, well, okay.

SPEAKER_27: What I actually was saying was you mentioned that like on Twitter and Facebook, there may be some moderation, but there's also sort of pure moderation. Like TikTok has comments, but no one ever looks at them, right? Like no one ever sees them. And so if somebody is in the comments being like, actually, here's the truth, you know, everything in your video is a lie. Like I never see that. I just watch my cute husky videos and I never see if they have been fact-checked.

SPEAKER_105: Absolutely. I mean, a lot of people don't engage with the comments.

SPEAKER_42: A lot of young people do engage with comments, but the comments are all also algorithmically ranked and no one is going to upvote a lot of stuff that calls stuff false. I mean, people don't, there's such a willingness to believe stuff on TikTok. It's worse than boomers on Facebook. I swear to God. Like I've never seen a platform with so, that's different for truth. And there's no way to moderate yourself out of that. There's no way that TikTok can moderate content at scale. We need media literacy.

Jason Calacanis: Like we need people to. Do you think it's because of the, the, the face? I mean, literally like the fact that you're watching someone on video and they're, because

SPEAKER_27: they are engaging enough to show up in the algorithm, that means they're probably charismatic. They might look good. You know, they've got a good production value. Like as I can just, if I read something on Facebook or Twitter and all the nuances lost and all the humanity is lost, like it just can go by me or I can be like, this doesn't sound right. But when you're watching like a good looking person sincerely tell you something and they

SPEAKER_110: put some work into it. Like, I wonder if there's something about the medium that makes it more compelling in that

SPEAKER_105: way, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And a lot of times it's like your peer, right?

SPEAKER_41: Another young person or another person of your identity, like promoting this misinformation or wrong info or whatever.

SPEAKER_42: It's a much more visceral and personalized platform. And people have parasocial bonds, right? It's a platform that's run by influencers. And we know that people are more likely to trust news that they get from a content creator or personality versus a nameless media brand.

SPEAKER_115: It's, it's much more persuasive video than text.

SPEAKER_12: You know, an image is more persuasive than text and a video is more persuasive than an image. And then an influencer is more persuasive than an average person.

SPEAKER_06: So you put all this together, you know, the truth is we have a foreign government that, uh, is a

SPEAKER_39: dictatorship and a communist country that now has a tool and a plug directly into the youth of America that is completely not able to discern truth anymore. And it's not their fault. It's the nature of these platforms. They could literally program our country. And if you think about what an amazing job the Russians do at disinformation, misinformation

SPEAKER_05: with the KGB, if we're not allowed to have our social networks inside of China, I think it's a no brainer to ban tick tock here and then let another American company, you know, pick up the mantle, which is what would happen if we did ban it.

SPEAKER_117: Now you sound like Zuck though.

SPEAKER_118: Can we go back to the meta part of a little bit, which is like, what you're saying is true.

Jason Calacanis: Yes. And also Facebook is programming the out of us and given Facebook's close connections to, for example, you know, primarily GOP public relations firms or Peter Thiel.

SPEAKER_27: Like, I think we should be probably equally, which, you know, they all have anyway, like

SPEAKER_121: I'm not saying the Russian propaganda.

SPEAKER_27: I'm just saying, I think we should be equally skeptical of both of them.

SPEAKER_02: Actually, like somehow this Facebook scandal story has turned into a bad Tik TOK story, but like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Everybody's playing the same game here.

SPEAKER_125: You're saying meta in a way is if you ban tick tock, Facebook gets the business. We're actually handing it to Facebook. What do you think?

SPEAKER_121: I'm not sure that I would rather suck. Then what's the way out? Triller China. Like, which is a confusing thing to say.

SPEAKER_129: No, I'm with you, Molly. There's no, there's no good guy here.

SPEAKER_41: Like, these are both really dangerous, large, multi-billion dollar tech conglomerates in different ways. And I don't think Facebook is great at sort of mitigating this type of harm either.

SPEAKER_60: If it was banned, who would pick up the mantle and all likely would Triller be? Where would all the creators go?

SPEAKER_05: If you, because I think it's inevitable. I'll be totally honest. I think it's inevitable. No. I think it's inevitable tick tock gets banned because it's just too much of a risk factor for the United States to have everybody on a social network controlled by a communist country.

SPEAKER_42: Yeah. And I don't know. I mean, this is the problem too, is the app is so sophisticated and it's such a better product and they've sort of forced all of these other companies to get put on notice. Like the way that tick tock mints content creators is something that YouTube could never do. Right. So I don't know, you know, if it gets banned, who knows? I think that Facebook or YouTube would pick up the man YouTube.

SPEAKER_138: Yeah.

SPEAKER_42: And they're not, you know, great at this stuff either. So we're in a pickle. I also, I mean, I think that in general, the only way that we're going to stop a lot of this harmful stuff is by educating people and, and teaching young people media literacy.

SPEAKER_41: Cause there's no way to like kind of squash all these platforms or that these platforms can, can moderate stuff at scale.

SPEAKER_142: There's just not, we need people to be more skeptical and learn critical thinking.

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SPEAKER_27: I don't see a situation in which TikTok actually gets banned. I think there would be so many, like, then do you pull every movie out of China? Do you pull all the NBA out? Like the kind of geopolitical relations of the, like that would, I just don't see that happening. The economic ties between the two countries are too strong given everything else. However, I think that Taylor gets to the really central point, which is that the platform is not necessarily, the platform alone is not the problem because social media will continue to exist and will continue to be great at manipulating people. And so the question is, how do we train people not to be manipulated so easily?

SPEAKER_118: And can we, like, we might not be able to, it's sort of the way our brains work. We're programmable.

SPEAKER_41: Yeah, I don't have the answer. I think it's really hard to, because there's just not been a lot of innovation in the social space in America. You know what I mean? We were in this sort of like winter and now you see people talking about web three and crypto. I mean, I don't think any of that's going to be a better system either. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_12: Taylor, if you were in charge, which eventually you're probably going to be at this pace and

SPEAKER_06: you could press the button, would you ban China from having TikTok here? That's option one. Number two, would you ban them from having a default to the algorithm or number three, some other solution?

SPEAKER_41: I would try to find some other solution only because I don't want to be quoted as saying Taylor Lorenz wants to ban TikTok.

SPEAKER_157: Got it, okay, so what you're saying is maybe you feel like you would.

SPEAKER_42: It's dangerous and harmful in a lot of ways and my goal with reporting stories like this is to focus, like, help people really understand that stuff.

SPEAKER_159: What about an age limit?

SPEAKER_42: An age limit?

SPEAKER_45: I mean, I wish there was like an age limit where people could start to recognize propaganda. I don't, I think.

SPEAKER_160: Yeah, this is a curriculum problem, right? Like, you, I don't, I, like, gun to my head, I couldn't tell you which platform I think

SPEAKER_27: is more dangerous, meta and Facebook or TikTok, but what I can tell you is misinformation and

SPEAKER_110: propaganda and disinformation are the most dangerous and I would love for my kid to be learning that in school.

SPEAKER_60: I, uh, I think we should, number one, force them to disclose the algorithm.

SPEAKER_06: So when you are, when you open your thing up, it should say, here is how we are waiting your behavior here. Number one, we think you like bulldogs. Number two, we think you like, you know, Lizzo. Number three, we think you like this. And therefore we showed you this because of these reasons and signals click here to edit or turn off the algorithm and it has to present you with that for every hour you're on the service. It presents you your algorithm, uh, explanation. And then Twitter should have to do the same. And Facebook should have to, all algorithms should be presented every X number of hours

SPEAKER_39: of utilization with clear way to opt out of the algorithm or, uh, to tweak your own algorithm.

SPEAKER_05: Um, and if you don't do that, then you can't operate a social network here.

SPEAKER_42: I like the idea of more transparency. I doubt that any tech company would ever get on board with that, but I do think that's why

SPEAKER_165: I think regulators would have to force it. Right?

SPEAKER_41: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot like you can download and request your data and stuff, but nobody ever does that.

SPEAKER_42: And I think you're right until there's like this consumer facing product and awareness. People just don't think, but even with awareness, people just want to believe, you know, we just see this over and over again. People just want to see information that confirms their beliefs. They, they want to see stuff that plays into their preconceived notions and they don't want to be confronted with stuff that doesn't.

SPEAKER_41: And that's, it's hard when you're running these platforms to, you know, that are optimized for engagement to get people out of those bubbles.

SPEAKER_118: Yeah.

SPEAKER_27: I don't want to take us all the way down a nightmare rabbit hole, but you can't help, but notice how the narrative that this PR firm has been pushing dovetails so well with kind of

SPEAKER_173: the QAnon, like, protect the children.

Jason Calacanis: Explain what that is, Molly, for people who don't know QAnon. Right.

SPEAKER_27: So people who are not familiar and my God, I hope you are because the QAnon dog whistles are far, far and wide, including in Supreme Court judge questioning. But QAnon is this cult effectively that states and Taylor can probably stay that say this better than I can, but in which, you know, adherents believe that like Donald Trump is the one true king and president. All Democrats and most celebrities are satanic cultists who maybe eat children, but certainly traffic them that are, they're all pedophiles and that there will be this great storm in which

SPEAKER_68: they're all rounded up and killed. And Donald Trump is restored as president.

SPEAKER_12: And it was a subreddit where it started, right? Like, then they have been trying to reverse engineer the right internal.

SPEAKER_42: Yeah, I started, I was actually started with 8chan. I mean, I've been sucked up in that. If you Google me, you'll think that I'm a child predator. That's a constant attack against the media. And Molly, I mean, that's what struck me so much in reading, you know, the documents that I got hold of that outline the strategy from Targeted Victory. It is a hundred percent feeding into those narratives because those narratives really well

SPEAKER_57: with conservative leaning parents, parents in general, right? It goes back to the satanic panic types, type stuff.

SPEAKER_02: It's always worked, right? Like whenever you want to put into place a law that like takes away somebody's rights,

SPEAKER_27: you say that you're doing it to protect the children. Like you do. That's what FOSTA and SESTA were about. But looking like drawing those parallels, I think can't be, it can't be overstated how, how, how deliberate that is to rile up a certain segment of the country that's extremely actively active and kind of scary.

SPEAKER_182: Yeah. You guys, you guys might not remember this, but in the eighties, uh, we used to play

SPEAKER_05: something called Dungeons and Dragons and there was a Dungeons and Dragons back in the day where they said it was a satanic, uh, game where you would play against the devil and dragons. I mean, it was Lord of the rings, basically the crib token. Um, and that people were becoming, uh, satanic, worshiping kids were becoming satanic, worshiping

SPEAKER_186: maniacs because they were Dungeons and dragons that were murdering each other in rituals or something was, well, none of it was true, but it made for great television.

SPEAKER_42: Um, yeah, I mean, I like, that's terrifying to think of what that would, you know, like how those messages would be fun today.

SPEAKER_190: I think because of the internet just allows this stuff to spread 10 times further.

SPEAKER_60: Um, the thing that's so pernicious about the story you broke today. So again, congratulations on that. And, uh, great scope, great job, uh, undeniable talent, just breaking story after story. Um, the, the really pernicious thing about this for me is Facebook is using something that I think is a genuine concern to serve their needs. And this is where the devil mixes lies with truth. You know, it's one of the really hard things for people to do is parse this Facebook.

SPEAKER_06: Uh, has bad nefarious intent. And I think China does too, and they've now become bedfellows. And that's where, you know, I think journalism, especially the type you practice, which is on the ground investigative is super valuable for society. I know you get a lot of pushback and blowback on Twitter from time to time, and we can debate things, but the fact that you keep putting up these kinds of numbers and stories, uh, is,

SPEAKER_60: uh, really impressive, you know, just Molly and I, both as journalists, commentators, whatever, you know, respect to you and, uh, to your coworkers, we're giving you a hard time before you even got there.

SPEAKER_196: Oh, I was that, what, what was that about? Was that like a real thing or like, and now for the tea? No, I just like a little tea, like a sip in my whole career.

SPEAKER_197: I mean, first of all, I don't mind starting on Twitter at all is Twitter, but as to what

SPEAKER_41: is Twitter for, like, I don't mind if people want to come for me on Twitter. Like I'll happily reply. You know what I mean? I don't know how long you followed my work, but like, I've been on this beat for 10 years.

SPEAKER_42: People. I loved you at the Atlantic so much. Yeah. Daily Beast before that. And I mean, and Mike before that, but people, people dismiss this beat. I write about things that I get it, it's young people, things it's, I'm not a real tech reporter, you know, for the whole first part of the 2010, it was like, Oh, Taylor, you're covering content creators. That's not really tech reporting. Meanwhile, now all these VCs have like creator economy in their bio. It's, it's a slow March towards like understanding this stuff. And I think that we just need to take it seriously and do the real reporting on it so that people can really understand these platforms and the implications of them. I think DC media hasn't traditionally understood that. That's how we got Trump, you know? Like, I think that's, it's failing to understand the mechanisms of online influence leads to

SPEAKER_142: a certain blindness about culture and the world. So, um, I don't, you know, I don't care.

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SPEAKER_206: You listen to them on the show. All right. Great job, Embroker.

SPEAKER_42: But it's all good. Also, Josh Dawsey that was like joking about me is one of my very good friends. So, like, I read his tweet as a joke, like knowing him really well, and we were laughing about it.

SPEAKER_06: It's an interesting conversation that, you know, journalists can't be brands and they, you know, should be subservient to the bigger brand. Yeah, it's important that a brand have a value, whether it's the New York Times, The Economist, Washington Post, whatever. But it's also important in today's day and age, uh, that the byline stand for something as well. So I thought it was petty when they were like, you know, I don't know exactly what comment you made, but you said, Hey, listen, I have to build my brand too. And I think that's fair. And like Molly, what is a brand care swisher is a brand, you're a brand and you'll rise and fall with your work. And I have to tell you, like, you know, we, we differ in some opinions, but your work is exceptional period, full stop.

SPEAKER_39: So if anybody's got criticism, it's just, I, I, will you, did that add a little motivation, all that criticism? Cause I was talking to Molly offline when we were in a group chat. I was like, you know, I got to think when they came for you, that maybe you were like,

SPEAKER_87: you know what, now it's time for me to, to put up some, uh, to, to, to, to, to start dunk.

SPEAKER_41: This happens every time. Like, I don't know if you remember the drama when I started the New York times, people were like, so mad that I got a job at the New York times.

SPEAKER_42: This just happens all the time. Um, I, yeah, I mean, I just get a lot. I know I'm a good reporter and I know that I'm getting hired at these places. Cause I'm a good reporter. And I think building a brand online helps engender trust with, with your, you know, with your followers and the people need your work. And by the way, like, I believe in legacy media. That's why I keep working for these legacy media brands. I could make way more money as a sub sub stack.

SPEAKER_213: Yeah. They offered you a big time.

SPEAKER_42: I want to, I believe in the power of institutions.

SPEAKER_41: Um, but yeah, I mean, I definitely, uh, when I had my like white house, tick talk or scoop or whatever, I got so much validation by making. All of these political reporters that were on me, aggregate my story.

SPEAKER_215: Just to be, you know, it is great.

SPEAKER_218: I mean, the re-aggregation. Well, I think you and you and Molly have like a three hour lunch in your future.

SPEAKER_118: I know that in some ways we're not big believers in offline, but we're going to

SPEAKER_27: have a long offline conversation about the New York times someday, because I think our experiences were somewhat similar there.

SPEAKER_06: Yeah. Hey, tell us about the book. You took a little sabbatical to get the book done. Yeah. Do we have a title for the book yet? Can we pre-order it?

SPEAKER_39: Give us a little, uh, feedback on what we're going to be reading about and when does it drop?

SPEAKER_41: Yeah. Um, it's called extremely online. Um, it's about the rise of the content creator industry. So sort of from like 2005 ish to now, um, from sort of bloggers and YouTube stars and myspace stars to kind of the, the rise of the influencer boom, live streaming, all of this. It's sort of how the whole creator economy emerged.

SPEAKER_231: Jason, I know you've been there for a really long time. I think some of your old blog posts are like 2011.

SPEAKER_30: Um, it's not going to work on, uh, YouTube's farm no more. Yeah. Some famous ones.

SPEAKER_42: I remember that. Um, so yeah, it's about that. I, uh, I think the pre-order is, it's not coming out till next spring book timelines are so long.

SPEAKER_231: Um, you can, when the pre-order is up, you can pre-order it, but just follow me in the

SPEAKER_60: meantime, uh, if you go to Goodreads, I just did a quick Google search. Yeah. So it's not on Amazon yet, but it is on Goodreads. So they tend to get a little ahead of the, uh, everybody. So extremely online, the rise of influence and the creation of the new America of a new American dream by Taylor Lorenz is up there. So go ahead and follow it there. And it does not seem to be on Amazon yet, but if you follow it on Goodreads, I'll give

SPEAKER_12: you an alert. I'd love to have you back on when the book comes out and, uh, when the next Tay bomb, we are now officially hashtag Tay bomb, T-A-Y-B-O-M-B.

SPEAKER_237: So when the Tay bomb comes, everybody's gotta throw up their Tay bomb hashtags, uh, congratulations

SPEAKER_06: again. And thanks for, um, you know, keeping everybody informed, you know, the thing that I think really resonates with me, uh, about what the work you're doing is.

SPEAKER_39: Yeah. It seemed light. It seemed whipped cream. It seemed like it was part of like the culture section or styles, but, you know, as young adults become adults and they start voting and they have jobs and these things get bigger and it influences elections and it influences, influences the economy and geopolitics. You know, like your beat that was, you know, in the style section, or maybe over here in culture has now become politics, economy, uh, and international relations, especially

SPEAKER_240: with what's happening in Ukraine.

SPEAKER_39: Like, should we believe any Ukraine video we see on Tiktok? Like, how do I, this is a question I have, I see these Ukraine, I see these Ukraine war videos, or should we call it the Russian war instead of Ukraine? I feel like when we say Ukraine war, we're blaming them.

SPEAKER_75: This Russian assault on Ukraine, how do I navigate if it's true or not? Yeah.

SPEAKER_41: I mean, it's really crazy. I wrote a bunch about this as well. Um, and there's just so much misinformation, old video game footage. That's being like repackaged that's sick, like all in four. Um, I think you just have to use, I mean, this is just goes back to basic media literacy, understanding things like looking at things. Just, I assume everything is fake.

SPEAKER_66: Just assume everything is fake.

SPEAKER_243: I think that's just assume fake until otherwise confirmed.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Yeah. And it always look, it always was it like Taylor's beat was always all of the things that you

SPEAKER_68: just said and not everybody was prepared to realize that. By the way.

SPEAKER_105: At the hotel in 2016, the night that Trump, you know, issued his acceptance speech, I

SPEAKER_42: got credentialed for that because I had covered that campaign aggressively and watched where the conservative ministers were leaning. Everyone was hating on me. Um, once again, so it's always been intertwined, but I think, I mean, Adrian's kickback is a perfect example.

SPEAKER_41: I can't, when the first political mob, you know, starts on TikTok, you can point to these like cultural things as, as the sort of the Genesis.

SPEAKER_42: So it's really important to understand early because they're going to all have horrible implications.

SPEAKER_12: 100%. All right. We'll let you go. A bunch of backed up, uh, media appearances. Everybody follow Taylor runs on the Twitter and the tick tock. You've been doing a lot of, uh, look in the camera, tick tocks too. So that's, that's definitely, you've definitely upped your tick tock game. You were kind of passive on there and now you're doing like one a day when every other day.

SPEAKER_231: Yeah. It's good for sourcing. You got to be where the people are, you know?

SPEAKER_254: Yeah. I mean, that's how you caught that story. Do your beat. Like everybody. Do your beat.

SPEAKER_255: Anybody complaining about Taylo work harder. I agree. You know, that's what I tell everybody. People were like, oh my God, Y Combinator is giving more money to founders.

SPEAKER_39: Oh, J Cal and Molly are getting, you know, uh, this great deal when they run an accelerator. I'm like, well, then shut up and run an accelerator and work harder. You're working hard. You're, you're, you're tracking down these stories. And for the lazy older people, stop criticizing Taymo and Taylo and just work harder.

SPEAKER_259: Try and break, try and break news on my beat. I would love that.

SPEAKER_260: Yeah. Come at her.

SPEAKER_259: I love it.

SPEAKER_260: All right. We'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_02: Have a great day. Cheers. All right. So we got a little news for you today.

Jason Calacanis: And the big news of the day is that the sec is meeting today, kind of maybe right now, March 30th, as we are talking to discuss a crackdown on specs, specifically the part where you're evidently allowed when you're going public via spec to say whatever you want about what your company is going to do and accomplish and achieve. And in this case, the sec is considering some rules that would allow investors to sue over, over what they're calling quote, embellished projections. Hmm. Hmm. Okay.

SPEAKER_173: Everybody embellishes projections. Well, projections is kind of implied.

SPEAKER_06: Would you make a projection as a publicly traded CEO that was not aspirational? Right. Well, if you did, I wouldn't want to buy your stock. Right. So I guess the question is, if stock, if SPACs had performed well, and there weren't so many of them, would this be on the table? I think the answer is no. Right. I think this is a reaction to some of the really poorly done SPACs around specifically the EV market. Mm hmm. Um, and so I think this is kind of a reaction to the public blindly buying Rivian, Fisker,

SPEAKER_12: Nicola. Some of those are actual frauds and being sued for fraud, like Nicola. Mm hmm. Other ones are just fantastic, fantastical delusions like Fisker in my mind. That's my opinion. And then some of them are just overpriced nonsense, like Rivian, where they are just getting credit for things 90% of what they've, they're getting credit for 98% of what they

SPEAKER_06: haven't done. And so who's responsible when a market is out of control, everybody wants to point fingers fingers when it goes down. But I'll tell you this, the people buying those SPACs were not buying them because they

SPEAKER_12: wanted to buy a healthy company and have it appreciate at more than 7% or whatever the average of the S and P is. And they wanted to have the alpha, the difference above the average return of the market.

SPEAKER_06: They weren't trying to hit 10% returns. Let's be honest. These people were gambling. They were just picking a random number on the roulette wheel and hoping it went 10 X. And so, and they weren't doing any research. They were suspending disbelief.

SPEAKER_39: You know, they were using as Chamath said on the last all and clapping as a strategy,

SPEAKER_05: like, you know, clapping to get, you know, blackjack does not help you get blackjack. It may make you feel good, but it's, you know, clapping at the blackjack table does not influence the card.

SPEAKER_39: So I think this is, I'll be honest, a little bit silly because people buying SPACs were, you know, I, I think they were in it to do what we do Molly, which is by Mason companies and pretend they were venture capitalists and not have to do the work. Yeah. None of them were doing none of the retail investors doing the work. Now, does that mean that Niccolo is not responsible for the fraud that they are alleged to have perpetrated? No, they should go to jail. They should lose everything when they're caught. Just like Elizabeth Holmes should, or Bernie made off shit or anybody else involved in this kind of nonsense. Should Flisker and Rivian. Well, did they lie? Did they have ambitious projections and did people suspend disbelief and all throw their money on, you know, 32 black and then double down on, you know, black over red.

SPEAKER_05: I mean, these people were just gambling. And so fine.

SPEAKER_02: I mean, here's what, here, here's the part I think is interesting is that they seem to be targeting. Yes, inaccurate spec forecasts, but specifically, they propose curbing the legal protections.

SPEAKER_27: This is according to Bloomberg. And this is, by the way, still like anonymous sources. So until this actually, like we said, they're probably talking about it right now. So we don't know.

Jason Calacanis: But one of the specific things that Bloomberg notes is that it would limit the legal protection. Some blank check companies have relied on to make bullish forward looking statements about the firms they plan to merge with. So obviously, that's just the specs. But what that made me think of was like, let's take Rivian. Let's say you weren't gambling. Rivian comes out, goes public through a spec, has deals inked with Amazon and a deal inked with Ford. And that is a big vote of institutional confidence. And you're like, they have this deal with Ford, they're going to make trucks for them.

SPEAKER_121: It's going to be great. I actually, oh, Rivian was an IPO, not a spec.

SPEAKER_06: It was an IPO, but I think it does fall into the same suspending of disbelief. I think Lucid Motors might be a better one, because I believe that was a spec. That one was a spec. Yeah.

SPEAKER_12: And they, you know, when you, I think we have some, some numbers here, but yeah, they. Nicola, Lordstown and Lucid Motors were all specs.

SPEAKER_68: Okay.

SPEAKER_12: And Nicola was too, you know, so I think the, the mechanical thing here is when you're buying a company to merge it into a spec, which is how these things work, you create the special acquisition corporation, special purpose acquisition corporation to buy one of these. The person who's buying it can make projections about, cause they're not the actual company when it's an IPO, it's actually the management making that. So people know this is a special device. Should these special devices exist?

SPEAKER_15: Sure. Why not? It's a, people understand it's different and it's a more risky thing, which means more return.

SPEAKER_27: But I think you're saying if you're going to go after, so you're saying if you're going to, I mean, if you're going to go after bullish projections, like you can't, I don't think you can ignore other IPOs. Right. In that case. I mean, certainly like. Elon Musk makes a lot of wild projections at earnings. Yeah.

SPEAKER_293: He just hits them. You can't. The problem is he just hits them constantly. Maybe one year late, but. Or more.

SPEAKER_256: Or more. Well. What about the guy in the robot suit? I think that was funny, but I would not, this is the perfect thing. You know, the robot suit, I would say is the perfect example.

SPEAKER_06: Sorry, Nick. Of like, he is going to say, this is coming and everybody's going to laugh for three years. And then all of a sudden it's going to show up, you know, like that's exactly what happened with the model S and then it won car of the year.

SPEAKER_148: I guess what I'm saying is singling out SPACs for punishment around bullish projections is disingenuous.

SPEAKER_27: Like if you have a problem. I agree.

Jason Calacanis: With bullish, with overly bullish projections that don't turn out to be true with companies that are trading on the public markets that should apply to every company. Not just a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_06: Yes. And I think Rivian is one of the perfect examples where people are conflating. They're literally conflating a letter of intent or a brand or a logo being associated with a company with actual performance. So that is clapping at the blackjack table.

Jason Calacanis: And then that company goes public and the deal all of a sudden falls apart and is gone. Ford is like, oh yeah, we're no longer partners with Rivian. And everybody who invested is effectively a bag holder, which I guess is, you know, all the more reason.

SPEAKER_304: Any of those people aren't the only problem here of those people who made the bet.

SPEAKER_255: How many of them saw the contract with Ford?

SPEAKER_06: How many people read it? How many people asked to see it? How many people went on Twitter and said, can they cancel? How many went to the annual shareholders meeting or wrote a blog post, a medium post saying, should we discount this because we've never seen the contract? Should we discount this because we don't know the terms or it's canceled? Those are the questions you have to ask as an investor. We ask these questions all the time. You've been through the diligence process now so many times, Molly. And how many times did we, do we find red flags? Like, and then we have to decide as an investor, do we want to ignore the red flag? Or do we want to say it's a minor red flag that's surmountable or it's a major red flag? Yep. And then you look at it in relation to the valuation and that's when reality sets in. And that's no different in us back then.

SPEAKER_27: Any company going public, either you're doing, you know, I mean, specs obscure some diligence and they ask you to trust that the holding company has done that work. Right. You're like a, you're like a syndicate member. Yes. Believe that we've done the diligence. Right. But still do your own.

SPEAKER_15: But still do your own. And then maybe here's a concept, maybe bet sizing. So let's say you did fall in love with the Rivian and you're like, you know what?

SPEAKER_06: I need to put, I've allocated $50,000. I'm going to invest in, you know, really risky projects that I hope have a disproportionate return. And I get a sense Rivian, Nicola, Lordstown and Lucid and Fisker all fit into this thesis. Mm-hmm. And I got this $100,000 sitting here. I'm making $100,000. I'm making it. Okay. Maybe you put $5,000 into five of them. And then you see, keep the $75,000 over here. And then you start looking at how it's trading and how their deliverables are.

SPEAKER_39: And then every quarter, you look at the performance of those five companies and you say, okay, I'm going to put every quarter, another $10,000. So over the next eight quarters or so, I'll put on average $10,000 into one of them. That performs the best.

SPEAKER_06: Let's say Nicolo collapses. You sell your shares. You lose half your money. You get that $2,500 back, you put it into the best performing one. Then you, whoever the best performing one is this quarter, you give them 10K more. Now the next quarter comes along. Okay. It turns out, I don't know, Rivian's doing the best. Lucid is doing the best. They delivered the most cars. Great. I'll put another 10K in. And you just keep reallocating based on that. And then you look at the whole space and you're like, the whole space is garbage. And BMW and Tesla and Ford are crushing it in EVs. Okay. You know what?

SPEAKER_323: I'm going to put it into those three. It's called being an adult and doing analysis and shaping your bets over time. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_35: Like the SAC can either say, we're not comfortable with SPACs as a vehicle for sneaking someone in the party without properly checking their ID and vaccine status.

SPEAKER_27: Yes. Or they can say, this is part of the market and the protections are all applied equally. And everybody needs to be careful about what they're doing. Yeah. Like they can't singling out these cats, like saying like, this is terrible and maybe shouldn't exist, but we're going to let it exist.

Jason Calacanis: But we're going to make special rules for it versus anything else in the public markets is frankly absurd.

SPEAKER_06: Well, here's the thing, the way SPACs work is, you know, the people who buy the SPAC are trusting the manager. So you're buying the manager, whoever they are, I won't mention any names here to find a great company. And then you watch the pitch of what they're buying. Uh, and then you decide if you want to buy into that. It's riskier than in some cases going directly into a company or a company that's older. Everybody wanted to get in earlier. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_255: Okay. If you want to get in earlier, welcome to my world. 80% of the bets I make go to zero. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: And I, I've been saying this as all these SPACs come out, which is, if this is what you want to participate in. This is, this is the big boy table. This is the big girl table. You're no longer at the kiddie table. This is where like, it gets a little dicey. So the sec can only protect you so much.

SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, I mean the sec, they're already sort of, you're already have an ability to group your investments, right? By low, mid and high risk. Yep. Yep. Like what if the sec just said, we consider specs to be in a higher risk category.

Jason Calacanis: Like if you think of your, you know, if you break it up like a retirement fund, right? Yeah. Vanguard fund, you got your 20, 40 or 20, 60 or whatever. Like maybe the sec could just say, Hey everyone, specs are higher risk. They're more akin to the Vanguard, 20, 30 fund than the 20, 80 fund. Correct. Boom. Done.

SPEAKER_27: They don't have special rules because some of them might turn out to be fine, but just understand that this is a slightly riskier capital situation. I don't know.

SPEAKER_182: Done. Yes, we're done here. I mean, I think that's what you should do.

SPEAKER_06: And just to go through, you know, another example here, or just to give you a little update on how specs are going, the market is working. People are looking at the SPAC category now and saying, okay, it was easy money in the beginning when the market was hot and people were doing stonks and there were stimmy checks and everybody was at home betting on stocks in the future instead of gambling on basketball and football and baseball and whatever else they gamble on.

SPEAKER_16: Well, according to Bloomberg, just 46 new SPACs have de-SPAC so far this year, raising 8.9 billion. We are in a different world.

SPEAKER_39: The market has corrected. People are now looking at SPACs and saying, okay, those are risky. I'm not going to participate in them anymore. Or if I do participate in them, I'm going to do it with a smaller footprint of cash. Right. Which is like scratch off tickets or the lottery or any other, you know, high risk activity. Right. You need to do your research, bet small amounts. As the company grows, you can always allocate more capital to it. Absolutely.

Jason Calacanis: If we're in an inverted yield curve environment, then SPACs aren't going to be that attractive. If people have money to lose, they can bet bigger.

SPEAKER_06: Which means if they're out of favor and nobody wants them, there might be some cherry picking you could do here. If you lost a ton of money in SPACs and they're all on the floor, you could actually start following them. And a great thing to do would be to, if you really are trying to learn how to invest. If like my brother was asking me, this is what I always use as my disclaimer. And they're like, I'm obsessed with SPACs. I'm like, okay, take a thousand dollars. And here's what I want you to do. You should pretend it's a hundred thousand. Take the thousand dollars and allocate it to 10 SPACs at a hundred dollars each. And then I want you to reallocate every 30 days. So on the first of the month, you reallocate based on the data, your instinct, what you've researched. Do that for 12 months. And then look, did the thousand become 2000 or did it become 500? And then did you learn anything? And were your bets, write down your bets, write down why you reallocated, why you dropped one, why you doubled down. And this would be, then what you can do is you can add two zeros to it.

SPEAKER_05: So what I did when I was starting to learn poker is I would go down to Hollywood park. I played the smallest game possible $1, $2.

SPEAKER_06: And I would add three zeros. So I pretended I was playing a thousand dollar, $2,000. And what that did in my mind was it allowed me to pretend that I was really, you know, investing large amounts of money. And so I would play better. And then I would pretend I was playing a dollar, $2 again, and I would try any strategy I wanted to. And I wrote about this in my book, Angel, where I started playing what I call Jedi poker. I put the blaster shell down. I literally would peel up my cards at the poker table and put my thumb over them. Everybody at the table thought I knew what my cards were. I didn't know what my cards were. Wow. And then I put my poker chip back on top of it. I'd look at the table and I would make my decision solely on what the other players were doing. And then I could, I started saying, I think that person's weak. I think they're bluffing. I think that person's strong. I think they're medium strong. Okay. If they're medium strong, if I re-raise them, they're going to fold. And let me try taking my time. Let me try checking my cards twice before I make my bet. Let me try making fast bets only where I just, so I could see if they could pick up on my tells. And this became like amazing because sometimes when I play Jedi poker, I played better poker than knowing what my cards were. And I was like, wait a second, this game is not just about my cards. It's about what cards they think I have and what cards they're representing to me. And so that's the advice I'm trying to give people here by not giving financial advice, but giving thoughtful advice on how to learn. And one of the lessons here is if you want to be a private market investor, and that's what specs kind of are, even though they're publicly traded. Be careful. Well, it all is.

David Friedberg: It's all gambling.

SPEAKER_27: This is just higher risk gambling. And so just choose your risk accordingly. I'm sort of like, I mean, maybe I'm making a hard turn from public radio here, but I don't understand this sort of, you know, parochial, like overly parental approach. Like, well, only certain. I mean, you know, we've talked at nauseam about accredited investing and the rules for that and why there need to be these sort of extra protections.

Jason Calacanis: But like, it feels a little hypocritical to me to say, we're going to allow this vehicle to exist, even though it's inherently and fundamentally risky. And then to then come along and be like, we're going to make special rules for this thing that we specifically allowed to exist.

SPEAKER_06: Like, no, no, if it's fair game, it's fair game, but you're what you're realizing is that this parochial patriarchal, you know, nanny society leads to people, um, abdicating their, um, decisions to the referee, as opposed to just playing the game better themselves. And so the SEC is the referee. I understand, you know, maybe there are some more disclosures that could happen.

SPEAKER_256: Maybe they should like make more meaningful, right? Like make meaningful. If you have rules, apply those rules.

SPEAKER_35: Equally.

SPEAKER_15: Yes. That's what they're trying to do is make the SPACs not have this exception and make them have a little more ownership.

SPEAKER_06: Yeah. Because you have this dynamic where it's a holding company that people bought the shares of the holding company, trusting the person running the SPAC. The SPAC lead is you're buying the SPAC leads ability to pick a company. Yep. That's what you're buying the SPAC. And then in an IPO, you're buying the company. So just in your mind, let that sink in. Mm hmm. If you think the person who's sponsoring the SPAC is credible, thoughtful, then back them. If you don't, then go buy stocks direct, or here's an idea by the Vanguard funds, use Wealthfront. I'm a previous investor and they got acquired where they just charge the lowest fees.

SPEAKER_05: Put your money in and don't take it out and just set it and forget it and then move on to other things in your life like investing in yourself.

SPEAKER_136: So we're going to move on to our next story. But producers have a question. Producer Nick, you have a question for Molly and I. Let's hear it.

SPEAKER_359: Yeah, I'm curious if you think that instead of regulating the projections that the companies make, you think it might be bet more beneficial to retail investors if the SEC regulated the terms of the deal on the promoter side. So a lot of times in these SPAC deals, promoters will buy like less than 1% of the company and get a massive like tens or hundreds of millions of dollars deal fee. And it essentially incentivizes them to bring anything public.

SPEAKER_363: Not not really 100%.

SPEAKER_06: Yeah, they're 100%. They should disclose that. Not only should they disclose it, there should be a page on the SEC where you see all the SPAC deals. And it's in a database format. And you could see the average investment by the promoter, the average fees by the promoter, and then you could rank them and sort them just like you could sort executive comp. You could sort, you know, price to earnings ratio, put it in context. So this SPAC promoter has 1% $10 million invested in the deal. This person has 4% and $4 million, right? Because the percent is one number. But if it's a huge SPAC, it might be a bigger actual real number, right? Or smaller. So you just give people the data and then tell them where on the spectrum it lands. Just like when you weigh yourself and you get your BMI, you should know, well, for a 50 year old male, here's where you stand. And it helps you contextualize what your ideal weight is. Right. And that would, if you measure it and you disclose it, then people can take into account. And then now the managers are going to say, oh, maybe I should, this doesn't look good. Maybe I should put more money in and maybe I should have a holding period. So how long will I be on the board? How long will I hold my shares? Am I locked up?

SPEAKER_26: I think the SPAC promoter should be locked up for like five years or something like that. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_27: So I mean, I think. Yeah. Yes. It makes perfect sense to regulate the mechanics because the mechanics are where things get sketchy. If you're trying to, if the incentive is bring as many deals as possible, that's venture capital, right? That shouldn't be public markets. Like there should impact be a bar for companies to go public, not to be naive, but you know, hope springs eternal. So regulating, I think to Nick's point, the mechanics of that, that would, that make it easy to distort because there's too much financial incentive to push things through quickly. For example, makes a lot more sense than saying like, don't have bullish projections. Yeah.

SPEAKER_335: Yeah. And then one of our notice.

SPEAKER_60: Um, and I think you're exactly right. Molly. Uh, one of our node eat members in the YouTube chat. We tape the show live every day. If you want to watch us do it live, uh, youtube.com slash this weekend, you can hit subscribe and hit the bell.

SPEAKER_15: So you get alerted when we go live. Francis asked me, Jason ever think of doing a SPAC?

SPEAKER_06: Uh, I was, uh, intrigued by the concept. But what I realized is I do my best work, not in trying to sell, uh, the public markets on buying a stock, uh, but on working side by side with the founders in the early days to get product market fit.

SPEAKER_12: To build a team, get to 10, 20 employees and get to two, 3 million in revenue. That's where my zone of excellence is. And, uh, I think in life, you gotta do what you enjoy and where your zone of excellence is. I would not wanna be involved in these SPACs necessarily, unless it was one of our companies that I did shepherd there. Yeah, sure. I would, I would consider being involved in it at that point, maybe. Uh, but there's plenty of people who do this and it's less interesting for me.

SPEAKER_223: Also, it seems like a lot of paperwork. I'm just saying, maybe not as much paperwork as it should be, but a lot. That's exactly the point.

SPEAKER_25: I'm not feeling it.

SPEAKER_05: If you start doing these things, what's gonna happen is your life will become meeting with lawyers, regulators, accountants, not talking to founders about their product and their team and their culture.

SPEAKER_06: And that's the fun part. You gotta pick what you wanna do.

SPEAKER_25: Bolt's one click checkout competitor fast is having trouble raising a hundred million dollars at a $1 billion valuation. According to the information, the article cites at least three people with knowledge of the numbers.

SPEAKER_06: Uh oh, according to the information, which generally gets things right. It's a paid, uh, service, I think 30 bucks a month or something.

SPEAKER_12: So it ain't cheap. A couple hundred dollars a year. Um, and so they're not doing this for click bait. They're doing it, you know, in a pretty thoughtful way over the information. I will give them credit for that. In 2021 fast generated 600 K in revenue with 500 employees. This makes me feel good about generating $4 million at inside.com with. Yes.

SPEAKER_374: 25 employees or 4 million in advertising for this week at startups with nine employees. And did you laugh, but.

SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, but did you raise a hundred and $2 million series B in order to, I mean, they raised $102 million and managed to generate. Around $600,000 in revenue with 500 employees. So.

Jason Calacanis: I'm not that good at math, but. But. Back of the envelope.

SPEAKER_26: Back of the envelope. Revenue per employee around a thousand bucks. A thousand bucks. I think. Yikes. $1,200 of revenue per employee. Yeah. So their competitor bolt, which I believe is the one.

SPEAKER_12: Formerly run by startup Jesus, uh, psychedelic startup founder. Now Ryan Breslow, no judgments.

SPEAKER_60: I think psychedelics are cool. I don't encourage you to take them, but I do think they probably have some medical validity and should be researched further. I shout out Tim Ferriss.

SPEAKER_06: Fast employee fast hold employees. Its goal was to process 1 billion in transactions, 2021, again, top line revenue. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_39: How much do you make from that is the key. Yeah. And this is where the devil is in the details.

SPEAKER_25: According to investor presentations fast, 2021 transaction volume only reached 30 million, which is a fraction of 1 billion. Roughly a third. Last close round was $102 million series. Yeah. 3%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: Oh my God. 3%. Right. Cause I said a billion.

Jason Calacanis: See, this is why I don't do math ever.

SPEAKER_380: And certainly not live. You just have to do math slower. Reporters plus numbers equals mistakes.

SPEAKER_87: Literally, uh, could somebody send, uh, Molly and I a calculator that if we do the math and the calculator, we can literally hold it up and show.

SPEAKER_05: That would be amazing. Yes, please. It is like something that people have stopped doing in life, which is math. And I do math with founders in meetings with them. And they're like, how did you do that? I'm like division. So just let's keep a calculator. I like to show what that equals.

SPEAKER_04: Can I reverse Polish notation, please? Fast last close round was $102 million. Anyway, $102 million.

SPEAKER_382: $102 million. Yes.

SPEAKER_04: I mean, so I will say VCs led by mafia.

SPEAKER_02: Hmm.

SPEAKER_27: I mean, there's so many levels of this that are interesting, right? It's like, here you have Ryan Breslow complaining about the Stripe mafia. Stripe led this round that pumped $102 million into this company that didn't seem to do a lot with it. Uh, Breslow, of course, like mentioned fast in his first manifesto and implied that this was one of those companies and all the, and by the way, yesterday, I mean, VCs on Twitter were so enraged like that. This is the sort of like poster child for the company that just like great founders just get left out. Right. They don't raise anything.

Jason Calacanis: And this, these, for whatever reason, people just keep throwing good money after bad into this company. Evidently, that was the reaction on, on Twitter, at least.

SPEAKER_06: Yeah. So now is the issue here that fast was backed by Stripe to go after bolt. Is that the accusation?

Jason Calacanis: That was Ryan's accusation was that fast was basically like spun up almost created whole cloth by Stripe to go to kill bolt. Right.

SPEAKER_06: And then I believe the Sequoia VC was the one dunking on Breslow. And this is where like VCs should just stay out of it and be like a little bit elder States people. And maybe stay above the fray because this is inevitably what happens.

SPEAKER_12: If you start all these fights, it's hard enough to run a company, but if you start picking fights and, you know, poking the hornets nests. What's going to happen is people are going to start leaking your numbers and you're now going to become the target of investigative journalists. And, you know, back and forth on Twitter and all of this sniping between companies, investors, et cetera, when you should have your head down trying to get product market fit. And so I always tell like my founders, if you want to get involved in this, like high stakes public fighting, you know, make sure you're fighting up.

SPEAKER_39: Make sure you know how to do Kung Fu because you have no idea where the energy is going to go. This is like, this is why MMA is such a compelling sport because one crazy kick can knock a person out. You know, the person who's the underdog could get somebody in a chokehold and, you know, get them to submit like weird stuff happens. And that's what you're seeing here. Everybody wanted to have their two cents. Ryan Breslow started spouting off mafia nonsense. The fast person was spouting off. You know how great they were. That kid can never stop promoting. Stripe is making big bets. The VCs are coming in, having their say, just everybody shut up. Right.

Jason Calacanis: Well, you go find, go find great. Like you to the point that other founders were NBCs were making yesterday. Go find other great founders.

SPEAKER_27: Like you're going to have a fight to the death cage match on Twitter about basically like two identical white guys with two identical companies.

Jason Calacanis: Work harder. Go find other companies to fund for God's sake.

SPEAKER_05: Just go fund another company. And just like, and I just tell founders sometimes like enough of the fighting.

SPEAKER_87: Can we focus? You know, and this is coming from me, somebody who spent a lifetime fighting. I get it. You know, like, I know I was like point.

SPEAKER_04: Do you really want to die in the stay above the fray hill? Because that doesn't sound very fun for you. Listen, you can have playful fun and fighting.

SPEAKER_12: Anytime I get into like fights now, it's typically playful. Um, and it's, it's not like intended to, you know, like be taken too seriously. Focusing on your customers, focusing on your margins, unit economics, your team is what's important here.

SPEAKER_06: And this, the bigger picture here is getting to scale is hard. Getting product market fit is hard. And if your metric for success is raising money at increasingly high valuations, um, and getting in fights with people, you're going to fail. You're going to fail. And now the market's going to whip saw you because you've raised so much money that when you are only generating a thousand dollars in revenue per employee and you're burning money like a drunken sailor. Well, you know, this could be the start of the debt spiral where people stop believing in the business. So now you got to really prove it, keep your head down, work hard, stay out of the fray.

SPEAKER_05: The end, unless you got the numbers to put up, you know, like if you want to start dunking on people. All right. So just, you know, Molly, we have these incredible nodi gang members here. We watch the show live with us circle. YouTube.com such this weekend.

SPEAKER_87: And sometimes man, they just hit the logo shot and Toby Zang coming in hot. It's a heat check moment for him. He's at the logo. He throws it up. Nothing but net. Toby Zang fast would generate more revenue.

SPEAKER_373: If all the employees came Uber drivers. Oh, my savage.

SPEAKER_408: It's just like, I need my red flag for that. I need my red flag. I need that as a foul. That is a foul. Oh my God. Unnecessary roughness.

SPEAKER_16: Roughing the kicker. Flagrant too. For the love of God, Toby, that was savage. But in fairness, if people work 250 days a year and they made $4 per Uber X ride, they would only need to do a ride a day to make more.

SPEAKER_374: Maybe five bucks a ride.

SPEAKER_410: You can hear J. Cal in the calculator right now, like. But I did the calculator. Quick math.

SPEAKER_134: If you work 200 days a year and you F off for the other, you know, 50 work days.

SPEAKER_02: Toby's getting a Twitter thread. Toby's getting a Ryan Breslow-esque Twitter thread from the, from the fast CEO.

SPEAKER_411: Listen, here's what fast could have done. Fast could have bought a case. To be fair, this is true.

SPEAKER_04: Many of the companies in our portfolio. We're making a lot to our bed. Yeah. But our companies are not starting fights all over Twitter. Don't get up on your startup.

SPEAKER_413: Listen. And become an Uber driver.

SPEAKER_12: Fast could have bought a case of water at Costco for 25 cents a bottle. Bought a bag of ice, put it in a cooler. Fast employees could have gone to the, you know, warriors arena and sold ice cold water for a dollar a bottle.

SPEAKER_16: And done that for the 80 games a year.

SPEAKER_12: Dirty dogs. Dirty dogs.

SPEAKER_16: You were better. They.

SPEAKER_06: And have some sausages and just, could have been street vendors and done better. They could have taken, they could have gotten Boo-leg warrior shirts and sold them outside the

SPEAKER_130: arena. Or enough. You should not be dunking. some cement shoes.

SPEAKER_419: Hey, everyone. Producer Nick here. I want to tell you about the SaaS Syndicate. If you're a founder of a SaaS company with a product and market, our investment team wants to talk to you. Head over to thesyndicate.com slash SaaS, S-A-A-S, to apply to raise from the SaaS Syndicate. And you can join Jason's Syndicate of over 9,000 accredited investors at thesyndicate.com.

SPEAKER_421: Producer Justin here. Know a cool startup? Check out openscouting.com, where anyone can refer a startup to our investment team here at launch. Even if you don't know the founder, if you're the first to flag a company for us and we decide to invest, you'll get 5K in cash or 10% of our carry.

SPEAKER_425: Hey, everybody.

SPEAKER_424: Producer Rachel here.

SPEAKER_425: Are you an early stage startup that has product and market, some traction, and are looking to raise at least $500,000? Apply today to Remote Demo Day for your chance to pitch to over 9,000 investors in Jason's Syndicate. Submit your application at remotedemoday.com. Our next event is on April 27th.

SPEAKER_419: And if you want to learn how to invest in startups from the world's greatest angel investor, and no, we're not talking about Chris Saka, then head to angel.university to apply. The four-hour workshop costs $300 and all proceeds are donated to charity. To date, we've donated over $175,000 to various charities, and you can see the full list at angel.university slash charity. The four-hour workshop costs $500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,