SPEAKER_00: Okay, everybody, Molly's on vacation. But first up, we have some solo dolo Jason news. SoftBank has reported the Vision Fund had a $21 billion investment loss last quarter. DTC beverage brand house does not have enough cash to continue operations. So we talk about how investors look at their portfolio and make tough decisions in this kind of a market. And then we go through my J trades for trade so far, you got Stitch Fix, you got Amazon, you got Disney, you got Warner Brothers Discovery, one of them's up over 16%. And one of them's down over 12%. We're gonna get into my J trading experiment is not investment advice. And then after we talk about J trading, we're going to have the CEO of NutriSense on the program. It's one of my early investments. They do continuous

SPEAKER_01: glucose monitoring, which I believe is going to really help turn around this obesity epidemic. It's going to be a great show

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SPEAKER_05: store and use the access code twist to sign up. All right. Now, first

SPEAKER_06: story. I think this will be one of the greatest videos in the history of investing. SoftBank reported the Vision Fund had a $21.7 billion investment loss in the quarter ending in June. If you don't know what SoftBank is, they are the ones who had the Vision Fund. The Vision Fund famously was investing in a large number of unicorns during the peak of the bubble

SPEAKER_00: we're just coming out of. We work famously Uber, DoorDash, many different companies and they were investing at very high valuations

SPEAKER_07: famously 40 billion plus for we work and they exited their entire position in Uber now at a gain, which is pretty interesting. They had the largest venture fund ever, they raised $100 billion. Remember a lot

SPEAKER_00: of it from the kingdom from MBS and Masayoshi son is been one of the great investors of our time but he is a to say he is a swing for the fences type investor would be an understatement. He is a swing for the moon type investor. Masayoshi son didn't report on job cuts at SoftBank and SoftBank is a publicly traded company, but it's

SPEAKER_06: essentially like a holding company. He famously invested in Alibaba. So those shares are in SoftBank, the Uber shares were in SoftBank, the DoorDash shares, etc. And based on this massive collection of assets he has, he's able to take loans and then invested more companies. And so he has been the most aggressive investor in the history of venture capital and capital allocating. And this video where he does his

SPEAKER_00: quarterly report. I've literally now watched it. I'm on my second viewing of it. It is extraordinary. We'll play some clips from it in a

SPEAKER_07: moment. Here's what the Financial Times article quoted covering the story said son Masayoshi son, this is his last name said on Monday that SoftBank would now subject itself to dramatic group by cost cutting exercise after a $59 billion investment gain at the two vision funds almost completely reversed over the past six months. In other words, they were up $59 billion on their investments. Now just let that sink in almost $60 billion in profits over like a five year run essentially from when he invest started investing in Uber and making these huge bets. These were people were incredibly critical of these bets. But some

SPEAKER_00: of them did in fact pay off SoftBank has a $71 billion market cap right now. It's down massively from the peak well over 50%. And

SPEAKER_07: let's get into his presentation. This is a chart of their

SPEAKER_00: quarterly net income, and how they've done since 2017. And you can see, you know, you know, they have most have mostly up quarters during this peak 2017 2018 2019 2020. These were like the incredible years of this boom. And some losses, obviously,

SPEAKER_06: because you're swinging for the fences. But oh my god, the last two quarters, sequentially q4 and q1 have been disastrous for them. The largest loss in not only SoftBank's history, but in Japan's history, I think he said, I'm not sure if it's the largest lost in investment history either. That would be an interesting thing to take a look at. But if you look at how it kicks off the presentation, very dramatically, he showed a portrait of Tokugawa Ieyasu. This is the founder of the first shogun of Japan's shogunate. They ruled Japan for 60 years during the 1800s. The portrait features Tagawa frowning after losing a battle and having his army destroyed and barely making it out alive. Masa likens the famous Japanese shogun to himself in this 68 second, very dramatic clip. I'll see you on the side of 68

SPEAKER_13: seconds. This is a portrait of Tokugawa Ieyasu. He actually made a big loss against Takeda Shingen and came back. In the background of that, Tokugawa Ieyasu had to face Takeda Shingen, which is much, much larger army than theirs. And most of the allies actually said this is going to be the losing battle so that they should not go for it. But actually, it's better to stay at the castle. However, Tokugawa Ieyasu didn't want to lose his face so that he get out from the castle, had a battle, made a complete loss and suffer and came back. And that actually learned lesson, he tried to remember and remind his own learnings and put it into this drawing. So since the foundation of Softpan Group, I made two consecutive quarters loss. So previous quarter and this time quarter, consecutively, we made three trillion yen level of the loss. So in total, six trillion yen loss was made in the past six months. So I believe I need to remind that myself.

SPEAKER_00: Pretty amazing, like self-awareness here going out and the people of Japan are very humble. They have a great sense of giri of responsibility. And he takes total ownership of these bets. And you as you're watching it, you're you're seeing the lessons he learned betting on the late stage of Uber, which wound up being actually a huge hit for him, he's now sold all of his Uber shares. And that's one of

SPEAKER_06: the things in the portfolio that's made him billions of dollars. But he also talks about we work. And famously, if you've seen the we work documentaries, podcasts, Hulu show now that we talked about here. That was a pretty brutal moment of hubris for him. And so he gets asked during the q&a, in fact, the first question the q&a

SPEAKER_00: about what he's learned his lessons learned as an investor. Now as a capital allocator going into my second decade of doing it, I started with the company that he bet the farm on Uber, that was like my big head, as you know, as an angel, about 11 years ago, and now I'm in my second year as a private market investor. And I've started doing J trading, which is investing in public companies. In a way, I'm not saying I'm modeling my career after a Masayoshi son, but I am certainly looking at him and saying, What has he learned? Just like I said, what did Bill Gurley learn? What did Michael Moritz learn? What did Doug Leoni learn during you know, these moments of booms and busts and capital allocation, and really understanding how the public markets work and how they value companies and understanding how the private markets work. And then being able to combine them, I think made you the ultimate investor, I think it makes you the ultimate business thinker, because you get to see companies in their nascent state when they're forming, and then as they're scaling, and they're becoming the largest companies in the world. And that's what I'm trying to thread the needle on. If you're watching the show, you're watching me learn, you're watching me build my team, add people to the team. And this clip, to me, was just

SPEAKER_06: amazingly clarifying, because Masayoshi is 65 years old. He is one of the greatest investors of all time. He is absolutely, without question, the most audacious investor in the history of investing. And so here is just an amazing moment captured.

SPEAKER_13: So the lesson I learned are so many, but the for Vision Fund One, we were making a big swings, Uber, DD, WeWork, we had spent almost 120 yen level of the investment per case. So we've been making a big swing and couldn't hit the ball. That was happened in the Vision Fund One, because my feeling was very strong, my emotion was very strong to specific companies or business. So that's something that I learned. So we became more systematic, and also smaller tickets, and try to make sure that we have better profitability in Vision Fund Two. So that's why that we became relatively smaller ticket size in Vision Fund Two compared to Vision Fund One. So rather than aiming for the home run, but try to aim for first base hit or second base hit, make sure that we have a good hit. So I believe that we were on the kind of a bubble on valuations. So that's all my responsibility as a commander.

SPEAKER_22: Amazing. And he says there, he put a trillion dollars into Uber, DD, a

SPEAKER_00: trillion yen into Uber, DD, and WeWork each, which would be $7.4 billion into each company of the Vision Fund. I'm not sure if that's

SPEAKER_07: exactly correct. But I think he's saying approximately and obviously that's a translator speaking. That's not his voice. He doesn't speak in a female voice. But if you think about that, DD got

SPEAKER_06: delisted, shut down by the Chinese government. They're in the process of being, I believe, relisted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. And the government, you know, has been really giving

SPEAKER_07: them a hard time. I think they were too successful, like Jack Ma, Uber made him money. And then we work was a complete disaster. But even we work, he might wind up pulling a rabbit out of a hat and getting to break even on that since he bought the

SPEAKER_00: whole enterprise. And it's done pretty well since then. But what's very interesting is he says, Hey, listen, I got to hit singles and doubles. Now he's 65 years old. He's only hit Grand Slams, Alibaba being the biggest one, Uber being the next biggest one. He's a Grand Slam slugger, who's now saying I'm gonna maybe I should hit some singles and doubles. That's a

SPEAKER_27: moment of clarity in terms of thinking for somebody who's been at

SPEAKER_22: this for decades. If you're running a startup, you know that every little bit of help counts between running your team, building the product, getting compliant, hiring people, studying customer support, everything. It's overwhelming. I know that I work with y'all every day. But the Microsoft for startups founders hub is here to help you. They're going to help you build a better startup from day one, whether you're plugged into Silicon Valley or not. Microsoft for startup founders hub is a digital platform created by founders for founders and they give you amazing benefits. The first one right off the bat unbelievable, up to $150,000 in Azure credits and then one to one technical advisory on scalability, best practices, security, your tech stack, all that stuff, and you get access to a huge mentor network plus free dev tools like GitHub enterprise access to partners like open AI bubble and others free Microsoft software, including outlook and teams and much, much more. The program is open to everyone. There's no fundraising requirements. You don't need to know somebody. They want to support all founders. It takes just five minutes to apply and startups get all these massive benefits immediately. So learn more and sign up for Microsoft for startups founders hub today. Act, you're going to write this down right now. Stop what you're

SPEAKER_30: doing. Get a pen, get a paper aka.ms slash this week in startups. That's simple aka.ms slash this week in startups. I disagree with

SPEAKER_00: him. Just gonna put it out there. If he was up 59 almost $60 billion. And he had just sold a third of his position along the way if he had trimmed the big winners as he went and banked some

SPEAKER_30: wins and build up some cash reserves, they wouldn't have had this huge loss. This would have been much less to, to bear. And I think that's the lesson for me is actually I think his big bets were pretty amazing. Now you can't make each of those work. And there is a problem with the bubble. The market was very frothy. He came in, he arguably created the bubble. So let's just pause there for a second. He's saying there was a bubble. And this is where I think maybe has a blind spot or maybe he didn't actually think to say this. In truth, what he should have said was I created a

SPEAKER_00: bubble, I wanted these companies to get so big, that I overfunded them. And this is where we must pause and think about the overfunding of companies. We had Tina Sharkey

SPEAKER_07: on from brandless, I think they had received 100 $200 million

SPEAKER_30: dollars from SoftBank. A lot of these companies receive so much money from SoftBank. Because they had so much money to put to work when you have $100 billion fund, you can't give somebody 25 million, you got to give them more money. When you meet we work or Uber, you want to give them a ton of money to try to make them the huge winner to block everybody else to go on this global expansion. So what should you do if you're a

SPEAKER_06: founder and you're faced with that situation, the optimal situation is to take the money at the high valuation, but deploy it slowly, which is in fact, what Uber did, Uber kept a lot of that money that kept building up the war chest. And that gave them the ability to work out all these issues and

SPEAKER_30: be the lat the proverbial last man standing last person battle amongst the on demand economy companies. Door dash also raised a lot of money from Masayoshi son. And they also are

SPEAKER_00: one of the last people standing here. But we were imploded. So why? What's the difference? Well, we were took all that money. And they did not stick to their knitting. What made we work particularly special was that they found locations where there

SPEAKER_07: were massively under market rents. And then they convinced tech people by having a really beautiful modern interior and a culture and they're there a group of people who were hip and cool, maybe a lot of gender diversity and beer and parties. As you saw in the documentary was a specific specific part of his vision. I'm talking about Adam Neumann now was to have a lot of women in the space, a lot of parties, maybe a little gender diversity so people could meet their future spouse or somebody they could date and have this crazy party. They did this so

SPEAKER_22: well that they convinced people to put their office space, including my team, which had office space at the we work in the tenderloin. Literally the worst possible place you could ever have an office was the tenderloin on Turk and Taylor Street where we work had set up one of their first locations, they got it so cheap that space. And they were probably charging $100 a square foot net net when you looked at what you paid for. And they probably rented it for 20 or $30 a square foot. And they got that huge spread. Then what did they do when they got all this money, he started looking for premier buildings on the most expensive rent districts, and then was underselling them. So

SPEAKER_30: they flipped their model. And this is where jet fuel, which is what venture capital is venture capital is jet fuel, it's designed to make rockets go fast and to get escape velocity, the rocket is the startup, the jet fuel is the money, escape velocity is profitability. When you look at this metaphor, what you can do with the jet fuel, if you're savvy is you can put it in tanks, and you got all these tanks on your property and you got a rocket ship factory over here. And like Uber did, they can say we're going to do India, we're going to go to Japan, we're going to go to Australia, and we're gonna put a little bit of fuel in each of these rockets, we're going to do Uber freight, we're going to do Uber Vitals, we're going to do Uber self driving, we're going to do Uber pool. And they put a little bit of jet fuel into each of those rockets to see if they got escape velocity. Some did some didn't Uber pool probably didn't

SPEAKER_37: work. But it was a good experiment. Uber in China and Russia, they wound up selling their assets to the people there. So they got the silver metal, not the gold. In other words, they use the jet fuel aggressively, but intelligently. Now

SPEAKER_30: there's a big difference between then taking your rocket and throw it into the fuel tank, and then lighting the fuel tank on fire. That's what we worked in. That's not how jet fuel works. So jet fuel can blow up. That's what brand list did, I think to like, they were just drowning in jet fuel, you have to be very careful with the jet fuel, it's volatile, and it will blow up

SPEAKER_37: your startup. It's fine to take a bunch of jet fuel, but put it in a stable tank away from the factory. That's why the factory is over here. And the jet fuel is over here, they put a little bit of distance like a parking lot, or five parking lots between those two things. So the jet fuel doesn't blow up the factory. This

SPEAKER_30: is basic physics, you don't need to have your PhD to understand this. And unit economics is what all this comes to. If you look

SPEAKER_06: at the unit economics of, you know, DoorDash, Uber, and we

SPEAKER_00: work, they were using that fuel, right, to get more consumption. So how do you get people to consume more of a product, you make it super cheap, you make the ride so cheap that people can't help

SPEAKER_07: tell their friends about it, you make it so convenient to get a delivery, that people were like, why would I go to the store if I can get this delivered to me for free, and then you make a habit out of it. And then you slowly increase the prices to reality. And if you can thread that needle, you'll see what

SPEAKER_00: happened to Uber in the last quarter, you'll see it happen with DoorDash. And we saw it happen with Amazon. That's the Silicon Valley playbook, you can discount a price to get more

SPEAKER_07: people to use a product. And if you do that, and you do it wisely, you can use that jet fuel to get escape velocity and build a huge world changing business. And that's what masa is in the business of doing. So I love the fact that he's thinking about singles and doubles. But he did create the bubble in many ways. He wrote that $4 billion check to we work at a $47 billion valuation after 20 minute meeting with Adam Neumann. And so you know, we

SPEAKER_43: work is now worth like $4 billion, like, you know, less than a

SPEAKER_44: 10. And so masa gave the following quote, when we were

SPEAKER_00: turning out big profits, I became somewhat delirious. And looking back at myself now, I am quite embarrassed and remorseful. I think that is maybe overstating it a bit. I don't think he should lose his aggressive tendencies. I think he should continue to be aggressive. But you have to look at is with WeWork, I believe we works previous round was 10 billion. And then he went all the way up to 47 billion. What he should have done is been more aggressive and said, Hey, I'll give you a

SPEAKER_07: billion dollars at a $15 million valuation, right? But you have to

SPEAKER_00: love that he is honorable, and that he takes ownership of this. And he's a good steward of capital at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_07: Because I do believe that even though he's upside down right now, he could make this actually turn into a big winning portfolio. Even though he overpaid there are in the documents the ability to get his money out first, right? So there's a couple of concepts here in venture capital, if you even if you invest at these high valuations, your money comes out first, you sort of have a backstop. Softbank did sell the

SPEAKER_06: rest of their Uber holdings between April and July at an average price of $41.47 per share, for a gain of $1.5 billion. So it was still a very profitable trade for them. They

SPEAKER_07: first invested in Uber in 2018 and was a large, they were the largest shareholders at one point. But this would explain a lot of the downward pressure on Uber shares as well as that they were clearing that big position. I had heard that through the grapevine, along with Uber Softbank also sold at stake in Opendoor healthcare company Guardian and Chinese real estate company Baku. So this is interesting because I asked which SPAC people thought was the most promising for a J trade and

SPEAKER_06: they've been saying Opendoor. So I will be looking at Opendoor this week as a potential J trade and I'm looking for your feedback. We'll go to J trading in a minute and shout out to our Frank Keith. In total, this resulted in a $5.6 billion gain for Softbank. So they're selling what I would argue is the winners to get some cash in the bank. They should have done this earlier. Obviously, that's in hindsight. Despite this Softbank's Vision Fund still reported a loss of $21.7 billion in the quarter ending July. And so that was Softbank's fiscal Q1 technically. But again, they're a holding company. So these assets can rise and fall. And in fact, their shares in Alibaba, which I think we're at 300 are now at 90. Those lost to theirs, right? They're trading at a third and a large portion of Softbank's value is the Alibaba stake. According to Market Watch, Softbank will buy back up to 400 billion yen or about 3 billion of its own shares over the next year to try and boost its share price closer to the net asset value net asset value very simply, is the value

SPEAKER_07: of all these investments they have. So Softbank has the Vision Fund, which is their venture arm. That's the majority of their assets. That's what that value is when we look at the value of the company. Their net asset value is essentially those vision funds. That's where all the holdings are, including Alibaba, Alibaba's lost 300. Alibaba was lost two thirds of its value. So as Alibaba goes, Softbank goes, and they're going to buy back a bunch of their

SPEAKER_06: own shares. 400 billion yen or about 3 billion of its own shares over the next year, try and boost their share price closer to

SPEAKER_07: asset value. They also talked in this discussion about their loan ratio to their asset value, which they can control. And so they've been basically have loans of something in the range of 15 16% on the value of all these assets. When you look at Softbank, it's essentially like a holding company of a bunch of public assets and private assets, which is what I'm trying to do in my career is trade both those. I'm very fascinated by Softbank just as a public entity that you can study and watch, as they accumulate all these positions in companies. If you're an accredited investor, you

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SPEAKER_06: Better Tomorrow Ventures tweeted a thread on SoftBank's vision fund today. We'll have Sheil on the program at some point. He said SoftBank vision fund one is marked at 135 billion if you believe their marks plus 35% in five years. SPY is plus 70% during this time promise I don't believe their marks. So that's an interesting issue here is do we believe the marks the private company values inside of SoftBank's holdings in relation to their net asset value, the public ones are easy. Just look at the stock price, how many shares they own? Boom, you know, but the

SPEAKER_00: private ones, somebody's got to put the value on it. SoftBank does this themselves? How conservative are they? Who knows?

SPEAKER_06: But he did say they look at the public comps to price their private market investments. And so it's gonna be very interesting to look over the years and see what happens with all of these public and private companies. One slide in the deck I thought was particularly interesting was this chart, which if you're watching us at youtube.com slash this weekend, you can see the vision fund one investments and their SoftBank's gross gains and their multiple uninvested capital moic as we call it in the

SPEAKER_07: business multiple uninvested capital Uber, plus 1.5 billion, but only 1.2 x moic, they exited that position. In other words, the multiple on the invested capital. So they only made a modest return their door dash $7.1 billion gross gain 11.5 moic, right? So the multiple uninvested capital in a venture

SPEAKER_00: fund, you know, you're hoping for three x kind of. So whatever cash came in, you got to three x coming out of that, and they're

SPEAKER_06: still holding their door dash, apparently slack, three x moic, we work not yet exited DD. $9.3 billion loss, we work is a $3 billion loss, not yet exited grab 329 million dollar loss, again, not yet exited. So they're holding on to some positions, we'll see. But I thought was most interesting was the approved investment amount at vision funds. And they said this highlighted their investment discipline q1 in 2021 q2 q3 q4, you see a plummet from 20 billion 12 billion 9.6 billion 2.4 billion, and then last quarter 600 million, this actually might be a

SPEAKER_00: mistake. If you could actually deploy money, you would want to deploy it now when the valuations are low. But unfortunately, they didn't take chips off the cable, they didn't apparently have a lot of cash here, they're dealing with these huge losses, now would be the perfect time to be buying into these companies, which is what I'm trying to do a J trading, I'm trying to do privately. So sure, great to have more discipline. But my lord, if you gave Masayoshi

SPEAKER_06: son, you know, $10 billion to deploy now he could buy a lot of great companies, I think at very low prices, and this will be something we'll continue to watch. So if you haven't seen the video, I posted it over at inside.com, we'll put it in the show notes here. It's worth watching, I think, especially if you're a capital allocator, watch the whole video, I really enjoyed watching it. Another hot market was DTC brands, direct to consumer and friend of our pod, Helena Prince Hambrick was on the pod talking about her company house. Remember, they were the low alcohol, direct to consumer drink based out of Sonoma County,

David Friedberg: they'd raised the seed round and with a bunch of famous folks. And in

SPEAKER_07: a tweet thread today, like an hour before I went on air, Helena wrote that their lead investor declined to move forward with

SPEAKER_00: their series A and they were in the process of closing. She said, they're going through an ABC. This is an assignment for the benefit of creditors. If you've never heard that I haven't heard this term since maybe after the dot com era and a little bit after 2008. Basically, it means you're going to shut down, you're going to sell all the assets, and then you're gonna give the money to your creditors. So the creditors here, they could have some loans, they could have employees who are owed money, they could have equipment leases, they could have rent, they could have inventory that they've bought. So there's a list of creditors, the creditors

SPEAKER_07: all put in their claims, they sell everything, they take the money, it's essentially similar to a bankruptcy. And these DTC

SPEAKER_00: brands have been hard. It does not surprise me. I think you'll see a lot of these ABCs. One of the things that happens with these ABCs is that there is an opportunity, if you're super brave to buy the brand. So if somebody really loved the house brand, you might be able to come in and they raised a $4.5 million seed round. So maybe there's $4.5 million invested in this

SPEAKER_07: company, plus all the work that people did in it. Okay, let's say you look at the house brand, and you're like the logo, the goodwill of the brand, what is that worth? Well, and maybe the

SPEAKER_00: customer list, if there's 10,000 people in the customer list, and you put a value of $10 on each of them or $100 that could be worth

SPEAKER_07: your 100,000 or $1 million. But let's just say $25 for each of the people on the customer list. And I'm making a number up,

SPEAKER_00: there's 10,000 of them. Okay, $250,000 in value in that list. And let's say if you were to build the brand, all the marketing that's been done. And if you were to build it over again, and maybe there's some inventory, so maybe there's $100,000 in

SPEAKER_07: inventory somewhere that you could buy for 25,000. Maybe you could

SPEAKER_06: buy the list instead of for 250k for 25,000. And maybe the logo and the website and the domain name for 50,000, you might be able

SPEAKER_00: to buy all these assets for $100,000, and then try to restart it, you'd have a clean cap table. And so sometimes what you'll see is somebody who is in love with the brand has an affinity for it, will then just take 100 grand and buy the asset. I almost did this with mouth.com. We were investors in mouth.com.

SPEAKER_07: And somebody wound up buying it. I don't remember what it eventually sold for, but a couple 100 grand and we had a couple

SPEAKER_06: 100 grand into the company. And I really love the domain name. And I really love the branding. But I didn't want to run the mouth.com assets, when they went out. And so you'll see a lot of this in the.com era. We saw a lot of it. After 2008, we saw some of it. And I predict you'll see a lot of this. And I actually tried to buy the Cosmo brand Cosmo.com, which was like go

SPEAKER_58: puff 15 minute delivery service in New York City, and JP Morgan wouldn't sell it to me. I also tried to buy the path.com brand. I thought that was a cool like social network brand. And I was going to try to buy it and get Dave Moore into give me this blessing to maybe pursue it as like a private social network. But the

SPEAKER_06: company that had bought it was a Korean company, they weren't interested in selling it to me. So sometimes these brands just die. And it's really sad. And we'll see a lot of this, I

SPEAKER_07: believe, you know, I don't know about blaming the Series A investor who didn't come through. It's a dynamic market. If the company was really strong, they might have had five offers. The challenges I think D to see requires a lot of patience. And

SPEAKER_06: the return profile is hard. And so what's happening here, and this is no dig to the team at house is if you're a venture capitalist, you're looking at your 50 investments of active companies, you might have two funds, you got invested in 100

SPEAKER_07: companies, you got 50 left, you know, look at those 50. And you're gonna say three buckets, the winners, the companies that are losers are just not going to make it, they're losing a ton of money, and then everybody in between, it's very easy to say, okay, we have some dry powder here, we've got some capital

SPEAKER_00: left, let's put all of that money into the winners, the winners will then increase our funds winnings in a down market. And those fund managers are panicking right now saying, we got to put every dollar of dry powder we have into whatever our winning companies are, so that the fund I was talking about Mike before the multiple invested capital, so the mic goes up. So let's say your fund is currently two x Mike, you want to get to three and you got some dry powder, are you going to put it into the company that

SPEAKER_07: doesn't have product market fit has some product market fit or high strong product market fit, it's as easy as that. If there's a company with strong market fit, you have to put every

SPEAKER_06: dollar into the ones with strong, you have to be cutthroat about it at a time like this, because you're not at the beginning of your life cycle, you're in a down market, just like Masayoshi

SPEAKER_30: son is being cutthroat, and he's blaming himself. That's actually happening as a microcosm of inside of venture funds. If they're smart, I have to deal with this Masayoshi son has to deal with it and everybody in between. If you're a founder, you need to have an honest discussion with yourself, which bucket am I in my strong product market fit, I'm going to be okay, as long as I don't run out of capital, and I keep myself cashed up moderate medium product market fit. Okay, I'm gonna have to make cuts, I'm gonna have to really focus on that product market fit and really focus on getting some cash in the door. So I can thread the needle here. So if there is a little bit of leftover capital,

SPEAKER_75: I might be able to convince people I'm in that bucket or I'm moving into that bucket. But if you're in this bucket

SPEAKER_27: way down here, it's over, there's no other way for me to tell you it's over, you'll have conversations with VCs, they

SPEAKER_30: might take the call, but they're not going to have the ability to really give you the two years of capital you need to get there in this market. And that's the reality you're going to have to face is you might have to go into what we call in the business cockroach mode. That's cockroach mode. Everybody's laid off, we're going to have two people who are working half time to keep the brand alive and fulfill orders until we get to the other side of this. And ABC like an assignment for the benefit of creditors is the extreme version of that you might have a month of runway. And what you can do in these situations I've seen done is somebody can come in and say I

SPEAKER_00: will give a loan to the company of $250,000. But I am senior to everybody. And I get if the company doesn't raise money, that 250k is going to convert into a million dollars paid back to me and 20% of the company and if it doesn't happen, and we do not raise the million dollars, I own the company essentially on

SPEAKER_07: all the assets. And so those kind of really cutthroat deals are

SPEAKER_06: what I witnessed, I really sadly witnessed a lot of my friends

SPEAKER_00: go through it. And essentially, then founders quit. And then all of the companies that didn't have product market fit get flushed out of the ecosystem. And what happens when all of them get flushed out of the ecosystem? When they all get flushed out of the ecosystem, all that talent then goes to what's left, what's left companies with partial product market fit, they're triangulating, they're getting close, and strong companies, which then makes those companies stronger. So let that sink in. That's the cycle we're going through. And the way out of the cycle is for the talent at companies without product market

SPEAKER_06: fit. And I'm not saying houses one of them. I'm not I'm not jumping. I don't want to beat up on house here. But any company that's going to go out because we don't know the details of that.

SPEAKER_00: But the companies with out product market fit, all the talent there that are working really hard banging their head against the wall trying to figure this stuff out. They go to the strong companies, which that means a strong companies even

SPEAKER_74: stronger, which makes them profitable, which makes them go public, which makes the VCs distribute money to their LPs. And thus the cycle starts again. Here under the lesson, I want to

SPEAKER_22: tell you about an awesome new community. It's an app, it's called Prometheus, and I'm addicted to it. It's basically a hyper focused version of Twitter. But it's focused on markets, venture capital, trading stocks, and it's filled with people who are fund managers, and who are capital allocators. It's like my dream come true. And if you love twist, and you're into that stuff, then you've got to go sign up for Prometheus at Prometheus alts.com right now. And here's the secret sauce. This is a bunch of fun managers and potential LPs on a platform talking to each other about raising capital, deploying capital, I started putting my J trades on there. And I'm getting tremendous feedback from the community. If you're an accredited investor, Prometheus is going to help you find new fund managers to back like me. And if you're a fund manager, like I am, you're also going to be able to get access to potential new LPs, limited partners. If you're just a civilian, you're not an LP, you're not running a fund jet, but you're into tech. Well, you can just go there and you can learn. And it's really the only platform where you can talk to these verified professional fund managers, it's all signal, it's no noise. Prometheus solves the problems of visibility and access to alternative funds, and it has lower investment minimums. So more investors can get involved. Here's what I want you to do. You go to Prometheus Alts, P R O M E T H E U S A L T S.com. Or you just type in Prometheus and you find it in the app store. But you have to use the promo code TWIST twist to get in. All right, let's go to J trading. Just a quick

SPEAKER_30: update. I've made four trades to date. I have the domain name J trading.com. I'm not saying this is coming to CNBC or Bloomberg. But I

SPEAKER_06: mean, wouldn't that be fun if I had my own show about trading? After

SPEAKER_00: Jim Cramer, and I just I'm going to be honest with you, all my trades are up at J trading.com. You can see what price I got in. Remember,

SPEAKER_30: the goal here is for me to learn. I am a neophyte at trading public equities. I don't do that. I've never done it. I've always thought I had no edge. Now, I recognize I have no edge, but I want to learn. And so the vehicle for me learning will be j trading.com. I'm going to put a million or $2 million into this as my current intention. I could change that I could put more I could put less I could shut the whole thing down. Who knows? Now, why do I want to learn public market investing? Well, I find myself having to figure out when to distribute Robinhood shares, Uber shares, all these companies of mine going public or companies that are pre going public could go public could never go public. They might SPAC desktop metal went out on a SPAC. All of these companies I as a private market investor, I'm now running into the public markets. And I'm learning about

SPEAKER_06: the public markets just by a function of that and having to do distributions. But I would like to be an expert at it. And I

SPEAKER_00: think that'll take me five or 10 years to have some level of expertise. But I'd like to go faster. If I can become an expert in five years or less, I think that'd be a good goal for me. So I set a pretty audacious goal, which is to learn in public, and to try to find companies that could five x in 10 years, in other words, beat the market beat the index, maybe not what I would expect to do in venture, but actually a five x fun in venture would be top

SPEAKER_06: like 2% or something or 1%. But I'd like to set an outrageous goal for myself. And right now I've made four bets. And I'll just go through this. That's just very quickly with you. I did stitch stitch

SPEAKER_00: fix because I saw Bill Gurley, who's an insider by a million shares or so. So I thought, hmm, insiders, this is what one theory, if insiders are buying the stock, and they've been with it as a private company, and he's been with this public company, maybe

SPEAKER_07: that's a good signal, I'll place a small bet about 5000 shares. And that's up. And then if you look at the percentage, that's up, I think the percentage is 16.43, say over 16%. This is not

SPEAKER_00: investment advice. This is not investing advice. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm learning in public. If you follow these trades, which one of my friends told me they're going to do, I told them, please, if you're going to follow these trades, do it with money, you can afford to lose because I don't know what I'm doing. The goal here is to learn. And I need you the audience and anybody who's an expert on this stuff to tell me when I'm wrong. So I'm going to talk about each trade, I'm going to give my thinking here on air, I'm going to talk about it

SPEAKER_30: on Twitter, I'm going to tell you my theories, and then try to have you tell me it's a stupid theory. So is following insiders a stupid theory? Well, I did that. And I'm up 16% on this. So I'm feeling like, maybe I need to do another J trade where I follow another insider into their shares. I saw that the CEO of iHeart Radio, Bob Pittman had bought some shares in his own company. I don't know how much that is in relation to his net worth. I know Dara at Uber last year was buying a bunch of shares of Uber. So who knows, I think I'm going to find more insiders buying their own shares. Then number two, Disney, why did I buy Disney, I feel like these brands will last for the ages. And my theory on that was, there is going to be a fundamentally new business in having a billion subscribers. Remember, Disney was not really in the subscription business, right? They were in the IP

SPEAKER_37: business, they would license their content to other people. And now a direct one on one relationship with customers. I

SPEAKER_00: said it on CNBC years ago, I know Disney has been not a great company in terms of returns. But they're getting to hundreds of

David Friedberg: millions of paid subscribers. They own Star Wars, they own Pixar, they own the Disney characters, they own Marvel, they own parks, I

SPEAKER_00: think the subscription, they're just scratching the service, the amount of easy wins that they have not accumulated is ridiculous. Inside of the Disney Plus app, there's no merch. Who is running Disney right now? Chappic. Listen to me, this is a message for Chappic. I don't know you. But for the love of God, let Disney Plus sell merch. My kids are in it all day. After they watch Encanto, upsell them on Encanto stuff when they're watching the Mandalorian. Let them buy baby Grogu. We bought three baby Grogu's, three daughters, three baby Grogu's. I've spent more on baby Grogu's than I have on Disney Plus. Let it sink in, Chappic. Okay, listen to J Cal. I'm J trading your stock. I own how many shares? 250 shares. I need a voice Chappic. Cut this and send it to him. In the Disney app, you have my credit card. There's a website called Amazon. It has something called one click. You can have one click inside of Disney Plus. I'm looking at Marvel. And it

SPEAKER_27: says buy the comic book by the t shirt. Why can't I buy Disney theme park tickets inside of Disney Plus? Why don't you upsell me when I'm watching Star Wars on that crazy $5,000 Star Wars experience? Why

SPEAKER_82: is it you feel like you don't like money? You don't want to grow the stock? We're trying to get five x out of the stock. You're gonna

SPEAKER_85: have to be more aggressive. I like how you're sacrificing your kids to advertising. So you can see the Disney stock appreciate I want my kids

SPEAKER_30: marketed to because this is gonna pay for their college. This is a trust funds if I give them trust funds. Okay, so Disney I'm up 5%. Now this is all in a month. But my theory again, is Disney will have 1 billion subs. I also think Warner Brothers

SPEAKER_06: Discovery could also be join that 500 million to a billion

SPEAKER_00: club. But we need to get Grogu purchases on the menu there. And then for Warner Brothers, it's very similar, they got to get

SPEAKER_07: their did they've got to get everything dialed in my Amazon shares up 6.5%. So I'm winning there. That's my biggest position in dollars. I have 1000 shares of Amazon. I'm getting my ass kicked by this Warner Brothers Discovery about 3000 shares. I'm down six times. I'm down 12, almost 13%. As of this morning, I think I'm buying more. I think I'm buying more. The chaos leads me to

SPEAKER_06: want to buy more because HBO Discovery, these brands, CNN, I think they own CNN to and HBO and these things aren't going

SPEAKER_00: anywhere DC Comics. And I think Zaslav is a killer. I think Zaslav will do whatever it takes to pay down the debt to make that cash register saying to fire people to reorganize. He's a murderer. Zaslav is an assassin. He's a killer. I think Warner Bros. Disney

SPEAKER_85: had something like $50 billion in long term debt. They have a lot

SPEAKER_00: of debt from this merger, and they will slowly pay it down from profits. But it's good to have a little bit of debt and invest in the brands. That's my belief. But it's definitely something and Michael Burry, it's his third largest holding, I believe. So that's the guy from the big short. And there's another there I have is like, follow the winners. Michael Burry, I think, bought his shares at like $25. So he's sunk. So Jake, I'll got in at 60. Michael Burry got a 25. Now this thing's trading at 14. I

SPEAKER_07: think I might just buy more. I might buy more. Because I think there'll be three or four winners in this space. Netflix, I might have missed my opportunity there. But with Warner Brothers Discovery, man, I think that's going to become a juggernaut. I

SPEAKER_06: think that could be huge. That's a J trading. Now if you want to

SPEAKER_00: check it out, j trading.com. I my next theory is that SPACs are so derided and hated at this point. And people have so little faith in, you know, the collection of facts that came out. And I gave people a warning about them. That like you're, you're investing like a venture investor, if you're investing in these companies, and the YOLO craziness where everybody was like, I don't need to understand the revenue, I don't need to understand the growth, I don't need to understand product market fit, that all went out the door.

SPEAKER_33: And that to me, and nobody is looking in this pile, there's a

SPEAKER_00: big pile of SPACs. Somewhere in there, I believe, is a 10 or 20x, I want to find the 10 or 20x in the SPAC pile. So here's

SPEAKER_30: what I want you to do. This is your homework. For J traders out there, I need you to look at the price to sales ratios, I need you

SPEAKER_06: to look at the earnings, I need you to look at growth, I need you to look at management, I need you to look at the product, we're looking for a management team, that is hardcore. We're looking

SPEAKER_30: for, you know, like Amazon hardcore, like Tesla hardcore management team, like we're going to win Zaslav, you know, I'm looking for Slootman level management, wartime CEOs, I need assassins, killers, samurai. So number one, in the SPAC pile, I'm looking for three things. Number one, killer, killers running the

SPEAKER_37: company. Number two, a product that is transcendent that people love that they won't shut up about. Okay, product, product, product. Okay, and then we want to see growth, we want to see some sign of life here that that product market fit and that killer team is actually resulting in the cash register ringing. That's my three criteria. You're the J trading army, you're my J traders, I need you to get out there. And then give me some

SPEAKER_30: ideas. I'm looking for ideas. Okay, I need your ideas. Is it open door? Is it Joby? Is it desktop metal? There's something in the SPAC stack. That's going to go 10x or 20x there must be right and nobody's looking there. So if nobody's looking there,

SPEAKER_37: and everybody's buying Amazon. And now they're buying Stitch Fix because me and Bill Gurley are in it. We got to go find the next

SPEAKER_30: name. We got to go find the next name. I need you to slide into my DMS or email Jason at calacanis.com producers at

SPEAKER_06: this weekend startups.com and get me the next big win. I think it may be open doors on that shortlist. Everybody keep I know, it's down 40% or so in the last six months. But people keep

SPEAKER_00: telling me to check out open door. Hmm. Hmm. And don't IPOF me. Don't talk to me about Chamath's facts. Chamath's my guy. We're besties. But please, please, I am not responsible for Chamath. Chamath is not responsible for J Cal. We're friends. Don't come to me and ask me what IPOF is. I don't know what IPOF is. Okay, and if you reply to me and say some conspiracy theory about IPOF, I will snap block you on Twitter. Because I don't have time to be speculating and then somebody is going to think that I know something I don't. I'm not

SPEAKER_07: trading Chamath's facts. I'm not trading IPOF. Please make your own investment decisions is not investment advice. J trading.com.

SPEAKER_01: All right, next up on the program is Alex Skrill. He is the CEO of

SPEAKER_30: Nutrisense of which I'm an investor and they've been crushing it and we break down why the company has done so well. And why continuous glucose monitoring could be the secret to weight loss and health

SPEAKER_06: and getting rid of the obesity problem in America. Why does your glucose spike? Well, I use this continuous monitoring device. I

SPEAKER_74: use Nutrisense. I fell in love with it. I invested in the company. And this is a great interview. So stick with us. All right, Molly

SPEAKER_44: next on the program is an entrepreneur that we invested in. His name is Alex Skrill. And he's from Nutrisense is a SaaS platform

SPEAKER_22: that I wanted to try because you know, I struggling with my weight. And I was trying to understand what was going in in

SPEAKER_44: my chemistry. And Nutrisense lets customers track their glucose levels. And it also combines it with a coach, which is exactly what I was looking for. The company was formed in 2019. And we actually had them at the first remote demo day, which was in December of 2020. We started that program remote demo day for people who are listening remote demo day.com just as a way to meet founders during the pandemic. And then we wound up investing from our third fund and our syndicate invested a bit of money. And we've been delighted with the results since then the company has over 8000 paying customers back in q1 of 2021. They did 484,000. And this year in q1, they did 1.7 million plus so four times revenue. And we've talked about this as you become an

SPEAKER_105: investor, Molly, you're looking to see if your companies can, you know, double triple revenue. And when you got a company that's

SPEAKER_06: doing something in that range, or better, in this case, that's really, really great. And the product works because it's not just giving your blood glucose level. They're also tracking sleep

SPEAKER_44: and diet and you can put in the food that you're eating. And then all of a sudden the coach was like, Hey, what did you eat here? What was the spike? And it turned out for me, Molly cereal was the killer and the order in which I was eating food. So then I switched to eating vegetables, then protein and then maybe having any dessert, sugar, flour, carbs, man, did that change the profile of my

SPEAKER_77: glucose spiking and it really helped me with my weight loss. So welcome to the program, Alex. Hey, Alex, welcome. We're not

Jason Calacanis: just an investor, customers do amazing. Yeah, I mean, it is

SPEAKER_113: always something mundane like cereal right in the mornings where you're just like, Oh, wow, like this, this cornflakes or whatever

SPEAKER_117: I've been eating is spiking my sugar like crazy.

SPEAKER_105: It was weird. I was doing it at night. Actually, I would get like, super hungry at night. And now, what I'll do is I'll just

SPEAKER_06: have either full fat ice cream, or I'll just have a scoop or two, or I will have Greek yogurt. I mean, sometimes I'll sprinkle in some keto granola, a piece of fruit or whatever. And man, you know,

SPEAKER_44: getting your blood sugar level under control is a key part of weight loss. Is that what people are using NutriSense mostly for? Are these quantified self people? Are these people who are overweight? Who's using NutriSense? Who's the ideal customer? Who are these 8000 people paying to monitor their their glucose level and have

SPEAKER_120: Yeah, yeah. I mean, when we went into this, you know, my expectation was it is going to be a lot of folks who are quantified self, who are

SPEAKER_122: more data driven performance optimizers. But what we realize is that those folks are fairly educated on their diet, they're fairly healthy, and they're doing it out of curiosity more than anything. And the people who are getting the most value out of the actual program were the regular folks like, like us, you know, not not professional athletes. They were the people who are struggling with weight loss, struggling with prediabetes in the family or type two diabetes in the family. And really trying to understand what it is they should eat for the long term to stay healthy as long as possible to be able to, you know, stay healthy into their 50s and 60s, and never develop diabetes in the first place.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah, talk to us a little bit about the science, like this idea that glucose monitoring is such a key. I have a mom who's type one diabetic. And I do feel like I've been sort of saying for any really, really one of my closest friends, and there is this sort of like, wait a second, if we all ate like a diabetic, it seems like we could be healthier. So talk about the science of like how monitoring glucose levels does play into weight loss and health.

SPEAKER_126: Yeah, so I actually think monitoring in general, should play a much larger role

SPEAKER_122: in healthcare, right? Like, if we think about how we do healthcare now, it's very much about reacting to acute things that happen. You go to a doctor, they say, oh, something's out of whack. You need to take medication, you need to have a procedure. But that's sick care, right? You just diagnosed like something serious. And now we need to treat it rather than following following your data and your trends while you're healthy, and understanding when your trends are becoming unhealthy in the first place. Right? If you think about how we diagnose cars and planes and software, all of these things, you know, we're monitoring every single aspect, every single component and making sure everything's working correctly. But with us with humans, we're just kind of waiting for something to break until we, you know, and at that point, we try to treat it. And so glucose, you know, my journey started with monitoring my cholesterol, which is much harder to do, because you need to do, you know, constant lipid testing, you need to understand. And it became so tedious that I actually got my own cholesterol testing machine at home. And it's kind of similar, you know, you kind of prick your finger, collect some blood. But you get the data much more frequently, and you can actually correlate that data with what you're doing, right? Like I ate high fat or a keto, and here's what happened. Or I switched to high carb, and here's what happened. And so that consistent monitoring and having that data is what I think is really beneficial here. Glucose in particular was interesting because of the technology that was available, right? So when you look at the type one diabetes space, the CGM devices have become cheaper and more effective over the last 10 years.

SPEAKER_128: And CGM is continuous glucose monitoring. Sorry, not to interrupt.

SPEAKER_113: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, CGMs are the continuous glucose monitors. I mean, they've become fairly tiny, almost, they're still slightly invasive. There's a little, a little filament that kind of goes under your skin. But it's basically that's like the little jobby that you wear on

SPEAKER_132: your arm.

SPEAKER_122: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just a little quarter sized white puck that sits on your arm. And it just sits there for 14 days, just tracking your glucose levels the whole time. And what's great about that is, you know, as you're tracking your meals, you don't have to remember what you ate, you just can, you know, make a note, take a photo. And then you can see the glucose spike associated with that food. And a lot of people discover exactly what Jason discovered, which is like, hey, this cereal I've been eating all my life, every single morning is causing a huge glucose spike. Probably not healthy

SPEAKER_126: in the long run, but you can't really tell until you're much older. And these, you know, these health problems start to actually develop and show themselves.

SPEAKER_123: And just, sorry, just to go back to like super basics. Why is a big glucose spike bad?

SPEAKER_136: Yeah, so it's kind of like kind of like redlining your car at every stoplight, right? Like you're

SPEAKER_122: really putting a lot of stress on the engine. In this case, your pancreas has to work hard to lower those glucose levels, especially if you're not using it. Like if you're, if you're a marathon runner, you know, you eat a pizza before your marathon, you'll be fine because your body is, I mean, again, it is stress, but your body is using that energy for something. If you're just kind of dumping sugar into your body, making your, you know, pancreas work, but your muscles don't really need this energy, then it ends up going somewhere, right? So either, either you gain fat, or over and over again, you know, your pancreas having to work hard leads to

SPEAKER_138: pre-diabetes, potentially type 2 diabetes, if you keep doing it over and over.

SPEAKER_44: Gotcha. One of the nice things I learned as well, Molly was just going for a walk

SPEAKER_06: for 15 minutes, man, did that have an impact on lowering my glucose levels. The spikes would just become maybe half as much a third as much two thirds as much, you know, depending. And so a lot

SPEAKER_22: of times if I felt like I ate too much, like, why did I do that? I made a bad decision. And I'm like, you know what, I can kind of correct this decision if I just go for a walk. And the little puck that you put on, it's kind of like a round, oversized, you know, bandaid, and the filament is a needle.

SPEAKER_44: But it is the thinnest needle you could possibly imagine. Like you can't barely see it when you're

SPEAKER_06: looking at the puck. And you use this little button to snap it on, you push it on, and you don't feel it. So that was the thing I had. I was like, Did I do this right? And then it was like, Oh, yeah, I did. Because it's literally such a tiny, I think maybe getting bitten by a mosquito, you would feel

SPEAKER_22: more. So yeah, people who are scared of it. It's not very scary. Is that ever going to work without

SPEAKER_105: having like a needle like that? Like, is my Apple Watch ever going to track my photos or Fitbit or

SPEAKER_149: something? Or my contact lens? I want to contact someday. Contact that would be cool. The needle

SPEAKER_113: is actually used only to apply the filament. So the filament is flexible. It's like a little flexible thing. That's why you don't you don't feel it under your skin. But totally, I mean, there

SPEAKER_122: are there are companies working there's a company out there called biolink working on a micro needle version of this, which basically scratches your skin and gets that fluid to come out. And basically measuring those same measuring those glucose levels in the fluid, but you know, not having to put something under your skin. And of course, optical is something people have been

SPEAKER_113: mentioning for a very, very long time, you know, every year, it's kind of coming next year. But

SPEAKER_122: essentially, the issue there is accuracy, right? Like how accurate can they get this to be? And you don't want it to be inaccurate, just in case people misuse it. For example, if a type one diabetic uses it to inject insulin, and the device is not accurate, they could essentially hurt themselves, right? And that's why the accuracy is so important here. We are not working with type one diabetics. So you know, if somebody is using insulin, they do need physician oversight. We typically work with folks who are, you know, fairly healthy and want to monitor their

SPEAKER_138: health. Some of them are maybe pre diabetic or kind of getting close to type two diabetes.

SPEAKER_154: Tell us about the dietitians and the role they play. I know you have 50 of them now,

SPEAKER_06: I'm assuming they're working from home, I had very nice interactions, and surprising ones where they

SPEAKER_22: I don't know exactly how it works. But maybe they see on some intranet somewhere, all the spikes that occurred in real time. And this is what I'm imagining. And they just ask you what happened or they look at your food, obviously, this is all with permission, it's part of the service.

SPEAKER_44: But do most people use the dietitians? And what impact does a dietitian being in a chat room with you monitoring this do for you?

SPEAKER_113: Yeah, absolutely. So when you sign up, there's actually a health questionnaire and a goals

SPEAKER_122: questionnaire. So we're asking you what what it is that you want to achieve with this program. So people come in and they say, Hey, I want to have I'm predisposed to to diabetes in my family, and I want to prevent prediabetes, or I want to lose some weight. And we actually assign a dietitian who happens to be an expert in the thing that you're trying to achieve. So whether that's weight loss, where there's a lot more accountability, and the dietitian really just, you know, working with you and setting goals for you. And there are some folks who need more education than others. So there's a lot of education around glucose and how to use glucose measurement day to day to understand we what you should and shouldn't eat. So dietitian is assigned to every single person who signs up. It's basically free for a month for everyone who signs up. And then if you want to do it continuously, there's a small fee on top of our on top of our monthly subscription fee, where you can work with the dietitian, you know, hands on 24 seven, you're basically chatting with them through the in app chat. So it's not like a video call or an audio call, you're basically, you know, you're able to ask them questions. And then they reach out

SPEAKER_138: proactively as well when they see something like a big glucose spike or a big change in your data.

Jason Calacanis: Let's talk about pricing because it's not inexpensive. It's $245 a month base, right? How long do people typically sign up for? And then how much more is the dietitian?

SPEAKER_113: Yeah, so you can think of it as kind of like a gym membership, we have a cheaper $200 a month version if you

SPEAKER_122: sign up for a longer period of time, and 250 if you sign up for the basic three months period. And the dietitian is an extra $50 on top of that. So

Jason Calacanis: can you imagine a scenario where like, I know that our medical system and insurance is not super focused on prevention and wellness. But can you imagine a future where somebody could have this prescribed and have it be part of their insurance package?

SPEAKER_113: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is with so many self insured employers out there, right? They're

SPEAKER_122: trying to optimize for costs. And if you come to them and say, hey, a hundred of your employees are using NutriSense, and they love it, and they've lost this much weight, and they've improved their, they've improved their blood sugar. I don't see why somebody wouldn't be interested in doing it for their company. And, you know, once self insured employers are on board, it becomes easier to talk to

SPEAKER_159: larger health groups as well. Yeah, I can see that being an awesome benefit, Jason. Well, I mean, it is definitely

SPEAKER_171: Thanks. Thanks. I'm putting them on blast.

SPEAKER_172: Well, it is, you know, I do think we've been talking about this, we had the land beyond and talking about their sort of, you know, affordable, quote, unquote, you know, concierge doctor at 3000 a

SPEAKER_06: year, this is a similar price product. You know, these things are not yet cheap. But what I've learned with technology is uber black quickly becomes uber x becomes lift line uber pool, you know, or jump mobility lime scooters, whatever, you know, innovation just keeps happening. And I think we do need to get to a place where we have an honest discussion about what are we spending on healthcare, especially for young people or younger people before them, you know, the plane or the car breaks down, this is like not having a check engine light, or only having a check engine light, but not having what pilots see pilots know the temperature, the speed, the altitude, the oil pressure, how much fuel is in, they really have a lot more detail on what's going on with the car.

SPEAKER_172: And that does become a discussion with the maintenance crew, right. And they can see the history of things. And I think this whole IoT movement internet of things for people who weren't here for it is going to have like this sort of second or third wave where we're going to have more sensors around I just got a sensor for CO2 monitoring as an example. And I've been carrying it around my house with me when I work out. And I was like, wow, the CO2 levels in the house are amazing. The HVAC is working well, I have also some sensors for, you know, California fires, Molly, just to make sure everything's nice and clean. And then I was working out and I brought the sensor with

SPEAKER_30: me and all of a sudden, for the first time, the carbon monoxide went off. And I was like, what's going on here? It's a problem in the gym. It's like, I'm the problem in the gym.

SPEAKER_37: I am running. I'm huffing and puffing. And then I opened the doors and put on the air purifier

SPEAKER_172: just to get some air circulation on and just boom dropped immediately. And I was like, wow, you know, this is why I might be feeling a little dizzy on the treadmill. Because I'm not getting enough oxygen or the carbon monoxide level is triple what it was, you know, previous to the doors being open and the air filter being on. And you know, that's just about one example. I think temperature sleep with eight sleep where investors in that company, I think we're going to start to see these items. And Alex, I don't know if you agree become part of a collection where people will drive their own health. And I think that, to me, with you know, the calm investment as well is what I'm interested in is people taking control of their own health outcomes, people picking their foods wisely, picking their exercise wisely, and just, you know, making an investment in time, because it really isn't money, it doesn't seem in all cases, you could use this product for the three months, right, subscription, and at least get some basic understanding.

Jason Calacanis: And it wouldn't be that much compared to what you would pay if you got sick. And if you all of a sudden were a diabetic, and you had to pay for your insulin, for God's sake, you know, I mean, the amount that people have to pay, like a type one can't help it, right, their pancreas doesn't

SPEAKER_181: operate. Yep. But it wouldn't be like one type. Yeah, it also might be one visit, right, Molly, like, right, it might be one visit. Exactly. I think this special and it's so hard now to like,

Jason Calacanis: go to the doctor, you can't be assured of good care. And so this idea of prevention and wellness,

SPEAKER_132: and like you're saying, this independent control feels so much more valuable, it saves you

SPEAKER_172: in all kinds of ways, right? I mean, just agency over your own life and not relying on the government, or the healthcare system, or the education system, like, it's great that we work on those. But I just think some radical agency will actually change it. Because if your doctor, think about how your Alex, your relationship with your doctor and your healthcare providers change, when you are coming in with your glucose levels, with your sleep patterns, with your weight, and how it's changed. When I started doing that, the entire relationship changed. The doctor was like, well, you're on top of this. And I'm like, Okay, so what's your advice? He's like, keep doing what you're doing. And I'm like, Yeah, really? Like, why do I have a primary care doctor anymore? Like, I literally did not invest all that much in terms of time or money to have the doctor say, Yeah, just you're like the least of my

SPEAKER_189: problems. Keep doing what you're doing. I'm like, What else can I do? He said, not much.

SPEAKER_113: It really has to do with what doctors are trained to do, right? They're trained to they're trained to diagnose and treat rather than educate and help you help you monitor and help you understand. So if you think about it as education, right? Like, instead of, but we used to have tutors, right? People used to be tutored one on one. And if you have that sort of relationship with a doctor

SPEAKER_122: or with an expert, your outcomes are way better than if you're sitting in a classroom for 500 people and just kind of consuming the same generic information, because everything is personalized. It's about your data. It's about how you're behaving. Yeah. And it's not just the you know, something that kind of applies to everyone, because we all learn differently, and we all respond to foods differently. And we all deal with different health issues, right? So I 100% agree. I think the IoT movement, you know, look at what we've done with heart rate. Recently,

SPEAKER_138: we started with just workout heart rate. Now it's used for sleep. Detection right in your aura ring. With I think your eight sleep also measures heart rate, right?

SPEAKER_44: And sleep, everything. It is literally the quantified self movement. And just, you know,

SPEAKER_06: let's call it healthcare agency, or your your own having agency of your own health, really is what this is about and getting educated yourself. And it's really very simple. I think mental health falls

SPEAKER_22: into this as well. We're very quick, I don't mean to go all Tom Cruise here, you know, hey, this kid's got a problem. This adults got a problem. Hey, here's a lot of here's the menu of all the things you can do your brain. And we can just start flipping chemistry switches here. And I am not by the

SPEAKER_181: way, we know almost nothing about. So yeah, let's definitely get in there and just start.

SPEAKER_34: Exactly. You went there, Molly. I don't want to use this. Molly, don't start jumping on your couch here. We don't want to go full Tom Cruise. But we've done the research. I took all the Tom Cruise drugs. I'm ready to jump on the couch. Don't be glib, Matt Lauer. I don't know if you guys remember that we started yelling about Lauer for being so glib and that Matt Lauer didn't even

SPEAKER_22: know what SRIs or serotonin was. It's it literally is Tom Cruise is a hero in some ways for his confrontation with Matt Lauer on that. Yeah, because he was 100% on the right. He's like, you're reporting on this kids are being given these drugs. And everybody's laughing at Tom Cruise. He's like, but you're the person who's on Good Morning America, broadcasting to five or 10 million people, and you don't even know the research like, and I think we all have to get this research. If you look, Tom Cruise's was advocating for diet, exercise, sleep. Yeah. And maybe like going out with your friends and having great relationships. If you talk to any therapist, and you know, anybody who's in mental health, they will tell you, how are you sleeping? What are you eating? Are you exercising? And tell me about the relationships? Do you have positive relationships with people at work and friends and like, that's where they start. And if you actually tackle those four

SPEAKER_152: things, you too, will make a movie as great as Top Gun Maverick, and you have the age of 60, and you

Jason Calacanis: don't need you will not age. It's either that or Scientology. And I guess I would prefer to believe in sleep and diet. Although I'm starting to wonder the Scientology is basically Scientology

SPEAKER_74: collection of self verse. No, it's a collection of stuff. I know people in Scientology, a lot of my

SPEAKER_22: close friends. No, it is. And listen, I'm I'm an atheist. But it is a collection of self health tools, tools, that a mad scientist named L. Ron Hubbard, who was a, you know, science fiction author, collected. So he kind of did what I'm doing right now. And I'd like to announce that

SPEAKER_210: caliconology will be launching. Alex, you want in on this time? It was only absolutely no, a new

Jason Calacanis: like a study came out not to belabor this, but a study came out last week that was like, hey, you know, this whole idea that serotonin levels are what caused depression in your brain? Yeah, that's not true. There were highly there were huge doubts about that science when it was reported. But that is what led to all this the SSRI treatments. And it appears to be inaccurate a myth, which is why SSRI is work for like, you know, 2% of the population because they're effectively a placebo, but it does like increasingly, right? It's like the more you look into anything, the more you discover that it's like inflammation, which is diet and sleep. Yep. Full stop and exercise like it's just,

SPEAKER_219: it shouldn't be that simple. But it is. Yes, tell us, you know, have you stopped taking all of the

SPEAKER_221: uppers and downers that it requires to take to be an entrepreneur in this environment?

SPEAKER_113: Nootropics? Are you doing it? I am limiting my coffee intake now to like just weekends. Honestly,

SPEAKER_105: it's just it. No, no, come on. Come on. Stop with the caffeine. Caffeine is great. I, I'm going to select it for this. I'm going to I'm going to pick the coffee. No, I actually I love

SPEAKER_113: coffee. Just like whenever I start drinking coffee, my tolerance builds up so quickly. I just go from one cup a day to like four cups a day in like a week. And I see. Okay. Yeah. So I tried to try

SPEAKER_230: the terror cafe also a lunch. Actually, I've been looking at it. I actually really like it. What

SPEAKER_105: is the TK? What is the TK to coming out? That's what I can't say. But I will say I have seen it. And it's hot. Here's what I would do. I'd buy the the one that's out right now. It's great.

SPEAKER_06: TK to I don't want to steal any thunder will be great too. But you know, it might be more expensive. I don't know. But I would just buy the TK one. Enjoy it. When the TK two comes out, whenever that is, you gift the TK one to somebody. And it's a nice gift to give somebody. That's my plan. Right? You know, just move it to your ski house. The the old one, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_24: I mean, I don't know if you need it at your beach. Molly, did you move it to your beach house? Because I don't know if you do ice coffee there. I put mine in the private plane.

SPEAKER_44: On the private plane. Perfect. I should have known that. I actually gave the terror cafe to

SPEAKER_06: Chamath as a thank you gift because he did a favor. It's a great gift, actually, by the way. Right. Listen, Alex, thank you for letting us invest in your company.

SPEAKER_00: It was great to get in early continued success. It's fantastic to see you performing so well as an entrepreneur and staying focused. What has been if you were to give advice to the entrepreneurs listening subscription businesses and product market fit? What do you think the secret to running an organization as a founder is that can hit this vaulted goal of tripling revenue year over

SPEAKER_06: year? How did you do it? And what's the advice do you have here as we wrap up?

SPEAKER_113: Yeah, I mean, I think I give this advice more to technical co founders. Because one thing that they forget is to actually find, you know, find find out who their customers are early and learn how to sell to them and learn how to market to them. I mean, it depends on whether you're B2B or whether you're B2C, but like start selling your product as early as possible, start getting interest as early as possible, because a lot of people build for too long before they ship, right? And that's, it's sort of a cliche, like they say ship often. But a lot of people still, you know, we're all type A, we will all want this thing to be perfect before we actually ship it. And then we, you know, give it to the rest of the world. But having a co founder who was able to sell while I was focused on building

SPEAKER_136: division of labor, division of labor, that's right. And a bias towards

SPEAKER_06: action. There you go. bias towards action. Semplify this is a US Marine Corps. And then eventually taken on by Amazon in our industry, a bias towards action is critical as a founder and product velocity matters. And as Reid Hoffman says, if you are not in Paris by your view, one you ship too late. Great to read to come back on the program. I've seen me in a while. All right, listen, Alex, continue success. And yeah, keep us updated on your progress. We'll see you in a year.

SPEAKER_180: Congrats. Can't wait to try it. Thanks. Pleasure to be here. I guess I'm fine. Take care.

SPEAKER_33: Okay, everybody, make sure you tune in tomorrow. I got my boys from acquired. They're back. The

SPEAKER_30: acquired boys are back. And we're gonna go deep into this VC downturn, what it means for founders, what it means for capital allocators, angel investors, seed funds, and maybe some more soft bank vision fund reflections. And we got some amazing notes on Amazon AMZN, which I think is my second. That's my second pony. They're doing pretty well for me. And we'll go into talk a little more about J trading with the boys. See if they have some insights for me. They're always good. We'll take a couple of questions from the Nody gang. It's going to be an awesome show.