SPEAKER_01: hey everybody hey everybody i'm exhausted molly do the intro please just he's just crawling to the finish this guy thursday just partying this friday this week sunday let me just drag me you

Jason Calacanis: know what peanut you just sit back and relax and have a lozenge i got the intro we're going to break down kim kardashian's new private equity firm on the on the show today we're going to talk about how if at all it might change private company investing but even more than that how all the ways that this

SPEAKER_06: is absolutely within kim kardashian's core competency this family's core competency and how really there's no reason it's not going to absolutely crush then it's thursday we have our guy leon harris back on for some streaming math we're going to we're going to geek out about tolkien and fantasy series and then we're going to talk about this ridiculous budget for rings of power

SPEAKER_11: and figure out exactly how many new prime subscribers amazon would need to be in the black and i'm going to speculate a little on whether amazon has staying power around content we'll see

SPEAKER_14: uh i talked to him one of my top seven media moguls in history uh the last two nights playing poker

SPEAKER_18: with him and i won't say who it is but he gave me some insights that i'll share today yeah it's a good

SPEAKER_22: it's gonna be a great show uh stick with us am i here stick with me i i i'm on three hours of sleep

SPEAKER_25: for five nights stick with us it's gonna be a great it's gonna be a great show this week in startups is brought to you by open phone as a startup founder a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back but using your

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SPEAKER_06: waiting we've just been sitting on our hands we've been chewing our fingernails i cannot believe this story broke literally after our little gossip fest yesterday we get the huge breaking news that kim kardashian is launching a private equity firm called sky partners s-k-k-y get it because kim kardashian to invest in consumer and media brands she's in the biz kim will serve as co-founder and co-managing partner with 16-year carlisle veteran jay sammons or as i will forever call him the other guy because it's kim's firm as far as chris jenner kim's mom will be a partner at the firm kim of course uh an entrepreneur full stop she founded skims in 2019 which was valued at 3.2 billion dollars after that company raised 240 million dollars and uh sky partners intends to make controlling and minority investments in quote growth oriented market leading consumer and media companies they'll invest in consumer products digital e-commerce consumer media and entertainment hospitality and luxury i mean that

SPEAKER_29: sounds like core competencies right there of the family well yes this is fascinating yeah it's totally

SPEAKER_35: fascinating um kim is an incredible entrepreneur if you look at what she's done um she is a distribution

SPEAKER_40: channel onto herself the kardashian name is a distribution channel and it's really hard to reach those first million consumers right if you're building a business we look at this every day molly how are you going to get your first hundred customers how you get your first thousand you know with kim kardashian or the kardashians writ large all of them um and i don't know if they're all involved here or to what extent i don't know how they divvy up between the sisters and the mom

SPEAKER_11: ownership of these projects or you know right there's no word about the sister so far but the mom

SPEAKER_43: is going to be a partner great so you know it's obviously kim's driving this kim does something you you know i think probably tens of thousands of people buy it you know the first week perhaps even

SPEAKER_40: hundreds of thousands depending on the product market fit so it's not like she can come out of the gate and be like i don't know here's a tequila and they sell a million bottles but i do think if she comes out and says hey here's a tequila she sells tens of thousands of bottles hundreds of thousands and that is when you're cranking a brand molly that first couple of cranks is the hardest cranks now when the flywheel gets going and you've got the hundred restaurants that want to you know distribute it and they want the affinity the affiliation with kim and they want to have kim tweet here's where you can find my new tequila i'm just making up an absurd example that's not not in line with her brand obviously tight-fitting underwear makeup hair products this is her brand it is aesthetics it's female aesthetics it's beauty uh and um so but that's what that's what i would be looking for here is how could she crank that first couple cycles of a cpg brand a consumer baggage of goods and with this carlisle veteran when they go buy something what is the private equity fund trying to do they're trying to accelerate you know really two things the growth obviously we all want things to grow but there's another piece which is private equity wants to uh really uh crank the earnings the profit right where does profit go

SPEAKER_43: when we are talking to cpg products ourselves it goes to marketing spend and now you have a goddess like i mean she is she is athena yeah you know just basically coming down from on high and saying here it is kim's tequila or whoever's to kill it is doesn't even have to have her name on it and you've just taken out i don't know probably the first 10 million dollars in marketing spend right is her is right social and her being so if this is a brilliant brilliant brilliant dare i say brilliant brilliant play on her part yeah i mean it really truly is and then even if

SPEAKER_06: you are spending on marketing if if this is the family that's advising you name another entity name another family or even single human being who has a better and more laser sharp understanding of what american consumers want god help you right you may not love the fact that what american consumers want is every single thing the kardashians are selling but they do and you are a fool if you think that that's not what americans want like they understand the american psyche better than maybe almost anyone ever has and so even if you're spending money on marketing if she's telling you where to put it

SPEAKER_40: you're winning yeah and in fact um a group of folks who are in the business a friend of mine gavin uh baker he's the chief investment office at atreides and uh i'm friendly with gavin we have a bunch of mutual friends and i've hung out with him a couple times pretty smart uh dan says hey kim kardashian posting you know about a portfolio company blah blah is incredible value add we talk about that all time is part of our value add is you and i when you invested in sale planners but one example and you and i talk about hey here's our thesis of why we invested in sale plan well you know there's going to be thousands to tens of thousands of people who now in our industry know about it and then you know and i and i helped you know helped um get uber you know on the map right with my uh social media following it's nowhere near this level but you know in the market in the investment community is and gavin beggar says top quarter easily top decile day one i'm dead serious and um you know just there's consensus here amongst people who are in this industry that this is a you know a power move and um yeah good on kim i mean the ambition here uh is pretty amazing we were kind of goofing off yesterday about being in the cycle and um you know harran when you said who else the only other

SPEAKER_18: person that came to mind was trump but he's such a narcissist idiot who is so toxic right that i think

SPEAKER_29: there was a moment right there was a moment when he was a hundred percent one of the right it was

SPEAKER_06: like him and the kardashians know what americans want and then unfortunately the ego took over and it got too crazy in there and now it's like it's all about what i want i being trump but no they still

SPEAKER_29: they still get it they still understand how to sell they also still own their social media accounts

SPEAKER_40: so this is the other piece here this is where you know we look at social media they didn't get booted i mean when they i i did say this on cnbc i think i said you know when they when they took away trump's social media accounts that was the incineration of a billion dollars a year um in value now i don't know that he understands as as much of a you know media savant as also trump is i don't think he

SPEAKER_43: understands or has any ability to build an actual really good brand it's like all this stuff is so

SPEAKER_70: schlocky more and not thoughtful um but he did build that brand the apprentice he did did build

SPEAKER_29: the trump pudding pudding because now it's just pudding up here ah there's not you know right like like at some point you gotta be honest about what was and what is like it's a theory you know and then

SPEAKER_40: if you look at the people he surrounds himself with like there was no they didn't um accelerate the brand value whereas i think kim has uh i don't know this exactly but is kylie the sister who has

SPEAKER_74: the lip gloss that everybody talks about or the lipstick is the one that she was on the forbes cover

SPEAKER_11: like as the first self-made billionaire and everybody had a bit about it and it was like you

SPEAKER_77: know what you do it you do it beauty is a real phenomenal yeah well first of all it's a real

SPEAKER_06: category and like a few guys who don't take it seriously i mean to take it take it seriously at your peril if you're an investor exactly says the guy who's on the board of lashify because you're no dummy like these people know how to sell it's just but it's written it's been really interesting one i think to see that in the ways in which we're kind of like post kardashian mockery like there are a

SPEAKER_11: lot of serious you know money guys out here like you were just saying with this tweet exchange who were

SPEAKER_06: like yeah no this is going to absolutely destroy there's also been an interesting um thread about what this means for uh the investing the private the capital markets industry and we should continue i

SPEAKER_11: think to say that this is private equity that we know of right and not vc but there was an interesting

SPEAKER_43: it's private equity very different what happens is private equity and venture capital uh get put into by lps so like if you were talking to the harvard endowment you're talking to yale

SPEAKER_40: this is private company um investment now they do it very differently private equity looks at very well established brands and buys a controlling interest typically and they operate the companies they roll up their sleeves they hire operators so a private equity firm like kim's new one might have you know 40 mba sitting over here they buy this tequila brand that i'm making up uh and uh then they get to work on it right so they they go in how they own 51 they're like yeah this is a great marketing department you're all fired we're bringing in our marketing people they'll do a better job oh okay yeah here's here's supply chain great we got a supply chain person they've done this 20 times we're going to lower the cost you know by 27 we're going to increase distribution by 50 that's how we make

SPEAKER_88: our money whereas vcs we place bets on management we go to the board meetings we try to steer it uh and

SPEAKER_40: try to get it to 10 million then 100 million then a billion dollars in revenue and then the private equity guys try to like hawks you know coming in birds of prey try to steal from us but and we try to

SPEAKER_18: get ipo so they're they're all under the umbrella of the same private company they're in the same

SPEAKER_11: sort of investment category for lps which is like it's risky investment it's a smaller it's a private

SPEAKER_95: company portfolio private company investment on the program today is darina coolia she is the founder of open phone welcome to the show darina thank you so much jason great to be here you know i've read the ads a couple times here it seems like you're charging too little for this product it's

SPEAKER_99: 10 bucks a month per number how are you able to do this so affordably 120 bucks a year 150 bucks a

SPEAKER_100: year per person is nothing so we are a very self-serve product which is why many of our competitors offer much more expensive tiers is that they rely on like a customer success rep or someone help you out to set things up we are very self-serve now we do have customer success managers who are amazing a lot of our customers are founders and startups they like things to just work without

SPEAKER_95: instructions without they'll read the manual they'll watch the videos they don't want to talk to a human they just want to set it up and go and you made the product so simple absolutely that's where

SPEAKER_99: the cost savings comes you don't have to have a sales team going out there selling it and you know

SPEAKER_100: the other big thing is that the way we also grow and i think it you know the way we get a lot of customers is that we have very strong word of mouth and people like tell others about us and i mean all of that contributes our business model kind of makes sense it makes sense for us to be able to to offer it at a very good price all right everybody here's your cta the old call to action twist listeners

SPEAKER_95: 20 off any plan for your first six months just sign up at open phone dot com slash twist and if you got an existing number no problem they'll put it right over open phone dot com slash twist o-p-e-n-p-h-o-n-e dot com slash twist today for 20 off so what's interesting is like there was uh

SPEAKER_06: somebody asked um praying for exits the vc meme account run by an anonymous vc on our show twice yeah somebody said you know hey thoughts on these celeb vc partnerships in general and uh there was this was just an interesting comment saying venture capital has now reached the public consciousness and this is just step one of how this industry is about to drastically change no elaboration on this but i did think it was kind of interesting and then there i've seen some comments on twitter today that were like okay vc is about to become vc and private equity and private company investing is about to become a lot higher profile people are going to want more transparency than has existed before like you're like you're making a skeptical face you don't think this is

SPEAKER_43: like the moment this is not a sea change the moment everything changed the problem is you know you really have to double click uh and look at each individual celebrity because i listen i've been down

SPEAKER_40: this road for a decade uh obviously you know i'm high profile uh and i've tipped over into you know more uh non-tech awareness of me as an investor so i do get the opportunity to meet celebrities i do get the opportunity to meet people in sports or whatever and um you know i and i bought both in terms of they want to become investors or invest alongside with me like in a syndicate kind of format or they're doing a company and when you start double clicking on it you know the majority of the time over 90 percent the celebrity is not enough to move the needle to make it like a thing yeah yeah kim kardashian is very

SPEAKER_43: different uh and and in fact trump is so when trump did his spac is it truth social is his paradoxically

SPEAKER_11: truth social is the product the spac has a different name okay so when he which by the way is like all

SPEAKER_118: falling apart of course but so not enough not enough but in that case it did what his brand was

SPEAKER_40: enough to get some number of people to sign up and to get the spac off the ground that's our point here is that the number of celebrities who could even use their celebrity to manifest um a raise ten thousand or a hundred thousand people using a product this is rarefied air and the problem is molly people look at the numbers of followers people look at um you know the what looks like a lot of engagement and then what you have to do is you have to look at their comments and you have to look at the clicks and you have to look at the sales mr beast kim kardashian donald trump when they do something people show up in person when they you know mr beast just did his first mr beast burger and the first mr beast burger

SPEAKER_43: kind of was hit or miss um they were having other restaurants make the burgers kitchens yeah exactly or other restaurants other restaurants so he he it was not ghost kitchens as much as like hey you got

SPEAKER_40: the local diner here in boise you can be the mr beast burger and you'll deliver them but he did a

SPEAKER_18: first store and i saw alexis ohhanian our friend um from seven seven six um congratulations to serena on an epic career his wife um uh did you see that final game oh my god i cried i got a little teary-eyed

SPEAKER_43: it's just so nice to see somebody have a great career you know yeah um and then just to be

SPEAKER_40: it's something about like sports where they they kind of wrap it up and you can see the joy on their face but for all of us it's sadness but for them it's like i'm exhausted although i did i will say

SPEAKER_125: i don't know if you watch her uh interview right after the match it's like you never know she's like

SPEAKER_127: she's like i don't know maybe i mean you could you know probably not she's probably not gonna

SPEAKER_130: unretire i mean i think a little flame burns well she's a vc now too so she's a vc now too and so there's somebody who actually could move the needle i think um maybe not to the level kim uh or

SPEAKER_40: trump or whoever could um but what i look at is the actual engagement so when you look at mr beast i think 10 000 people showed up for this opening so mr beast is the type who could get 10 000 people to show up somewhere trump is the type of person get 10 000 people to show up for a rally i believe serena probably probably falls in that kind of we'll find out um yeah and and those

SPEAKER_43: people could do it but most celebrities cannot they might have a big following but there's no alignment

SPEAKER_40: with the product you know i'm saying yeah and so that's the really big piece is that their fan base has to align with a product and in some way click you know and that's what doesn't i mean that's why this is not going to be like the big trend in the future it's not it's not it's going to be one out of a hundred celebrities will be able to i would say this needle i guess though i would say the question

SPEAKER_116: is less about whether there's going to be more celebrity partnerships in vc and more about whether

SPEAKER_06: there's going to be this greater awareness of vc is it going to popularize this yeah you know you had like some representation in super pumped you had a little more representation of it and we crashed like it's it's like good point in the i mean you know six or seven years ago the zeitgeist like whenever it was i took over marketplace i started with like a week-long series on like what the hell is vc right complete black box like nobody understood the funding mechanism now it's like much more yeah

SPEAKER_40: culture i i think that's correct actually yes so i would agree with that it's in the zeitgeist uh in fact as i said on the show i'm here in la i'm meeting with my reality tv company there'll be an announcement a couple weeks i mean people are really excited about this new show i'm doing and we'll see if it gets on air the last one didn't but nbc had uh famously um bought the option on it and uh that was like five years ago six years ago and did make it on air for whatever reasons i won't get into but my partner on it or the production company kind of imploded um might be able to do some math there but this new company um turns out has worked with you know pretty high level reality stars i'll leave it at that now it's becoming um so yes it is in the zeitgeist it is very much in the zeitgeist you and i talking about vc sunday school the number of people making micro funds uh rolling their own rolling funds with angel list with ashore with carta so the infrastructure is now built um you know syndicates we played our small role my book you know it is happening um there is that uh famous

SPEAKER_18: rock and roll band ah what's their name not the killers anyway they're vcs as well i hear that they're legit there's a rock and roll band that raised like a hundred million dollar fund reportedly really um wow the chain smokers thank you the chain smokers what are the chain smokers are they rock and roll are they okay so there's an edm uh band called the chain smokers they're they're edm the

SPEAKER_148: chains i don't know i i i i i don't know i couldn't tell you one nation i thought okay whatever anyway

SPEAKER_40: whatever some band what i've been told is that these djs chains markers i know people who've met with them um that we've we've traded social media you know uh pleasantries um the chain smokers my

SPEAKER_43: understanding is are actually interested in being vcs on the daily so this is the other thing as a celebrity are you actually interested in meeting with you know you said you're doing eight meetings a week some weeks like eight times 40 weeks kind of your minimum amount of work you need to do to actually find some decent companies are you willing to do three or four hundred half hour to hour meetings

SPEAKER_40: write notes debate them with other investors on your team right like it's kind of all encompassing

SPEAKER_43: it's taken over two-thirds of your life uh and the other there is obviously doing the show or

SPEAKER_11: something without a fact you're adorable this show is two-thirds of my life jason oh the show is two

SPEAKER_18: there it's like two hours a day oh okay i thought it was this was two or three hours and the rest of

SPEAKER_154: my tvc but okay we'll have to talk about that we'll we'll go through my calendar together i mean calendar

SPEAKER_112: reviews are a good thing to do um for everybody so anyway anyway i think i think most people you know

SPEAKER_40: it's like i have a lot of friends who have dabbled in hollywood david sacks made a film uh thank you for thank you for smoking did very well he hasn't made a second one and david sacks made thank you for

SPEAKER_18: smoking yeah yeah i was i was actually uh went to sundance with him uh when he had it there and we um did the sundance thing together so that was 15 years ago something crazy um and he also bought the rights to the paypal story so sax is the rights holder to that and i think that's going to be made into a series um that's public knowledge so uh but you know he hasn't done something since because because it's hard and it doesn't pay well so when vcs want to make movies and stuff like that they're just like oh my god this is so painful and you take 10 years to make a project and we make a prototype

SPEAKER_40: or an mvp in 10 weeks and then vcs are like and then when a celebrity comes to vc they're like well usually when i walk into a room everything just you know everybody fawns over me and and i don't do

SPEAKER_18: any work i say three lines and i'm out and i get my check then they start doing this and they're like okay i got to meet with 30 companies and then meet with the top five three or four times and then over two years get to know them and then make one bet that's too much work so both parties when

SPEAKER_40: they go to the other side are like ah you know i'm doing this reality show if i if it winds up getting on air i'm gonna have to come down to la every four months tape for 10 days and it's going to be in saturday it's gonna be 12 hour days you know and still do this and still do my day job still be a

SPEAKER_18: parent so it's just hard it's hard when you try to do two different disciplines is what i think

SPEAKER_40: and some people like kim can pull it off serena right well even even serena if she wants to do it like could serena be the number one tennis player in the world a mom and vc you know sometimes things

SPEAKER_18: break you know there's only so much what i think is actual energy you can put into a discipline yeah

SPEAKER_06: what's probably very very smart about kim kardashian doing this specifically is that again that it's not even really it's not even a split focus like it's a it's actually just a new avenue to continue doing what she is already crushing probably in the world and so it's so if you think about it it's not like trying to combine three you know disparate things being a mom and the number one tennis player and a vc it's like oh i'm just here building brands and extracting unbelievable value from them it's effectively

SPEAKER_11: formalizing kind of the same job which i think is is even more um of a sign that she's going to kill

SPEAKER_43: it that this this firm is going to kill it i don't see why yeah for her this is like okay i put my name on this there's people who are private equity experts i don't need to learn that business reinvent

SPEAKER_40: it from you know zero like you coming here right like you do have a support system around you you know and you can ask questions and so you you could start on you know arguably second or third base and then you just find the company and close the deal so she'll have that ability right then they can bring her in strategically like okay we vetted this enough that we can bring kim in and have them meet the founders of this company and start collaborating or we didn't vet this enough this is you know or this is not really what it seems to be let's not waste kim's time with it right so that's good and so in that way i think you're exactly right molly this is a new venue for her it's a new platform but she doesn't have to create the platform whereas everything else she's built in her life she has to through sheer force of will and her own personality manifest keeping up with the kardashians skims like

SPEAKER_18: she had to manifest those things build them from zero zero to one here it's one day one and she just gets to leverage it which is exactly correct very very good point molly we have lon harris coming up

SPEAKER_11: next on this week in streaming and he is so locked in and stoked on the deep deep tolkien knowledge we're going to talk about uh house of the dragon and the lord of the ring series and just geek out on tv for

SPEAKER_188: a little bit i'll give my one word reviews i have trunk feelings you hear me say this all the time

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SPEAKER_190: h-e-l-p-w-a-r-e.com slash twist for a thousand dollars off all right everybody recovery week continues

SPEAKER_193: i got the afterburners on can we get you some media light over there or something i think i need an iv

SPEAKER_195: i got back from burning man lotty dotty it's thursday my guy lon harris is here twitter.com slash lawns follow him we'll play stump the lawn later um you know i had a big burn uh and you know

SPEAKER_118: two sunrise burn out of three nights i'm sleeping three hours three hours a night basically came back had to hop on a flight had 24 hours at home to host my poker game at the final code conference give a nice um i gave a nice toast to uh my friend sky date and my friend brooke cammerling give a nice toast to a kara swisher who's retiring from the code conference oh the code conference may continue

SPEAKER_199: they just need an impresario hmm maybe even a duo maybe even a duo molly like to know to keep it

SPEAKER_202: going but i don't know you know anyway and the guy bank off about my last company's running it um

SPEAKER_195: no announcements yet uh but they're looking for an impresario i think uh because kara swisher's

SPEAKER_206: moving on uh to her next adventure yeah anyway i wrote about this this morning bob eiger spoke there uh that's in that's in today's inside streaming yeah so bob was here he said uh twitter that they

SPEAKER_195: when they looked at buying twitter famously you know uh molly disney was going to buy twitter um jack was on the board of twitter and then they woke up at one point and realized oh i'm sorry do we want

SPEAKER_43: to host the most vitriolic putrid yeah absolutely horrific discussions in all the world to create

SPEAKER_118: more joy at disneyland with these wonderful characters and be associated with that what the

SPEAKER_11: are we doing it's not not an obvious synergy right there not an obvious brand synergy i mean what do

SPEAKER_212: they think is going to happen to daffy duck on twitter donald daffy's warner brothers donald what

SPEAKER_118: are they gonna happen to donald duck he's gonna get brigade at day one mini no it's the violence towards mini on twitter would be you know unbearable i mean we already see it that's like all of the

SPEAKER_219: twitter arguments that are already happening she-hulk twerking set them off for nine days i gotta say

SPEAKER_11: i like legitimately this morning was thinking about how twitter is really genuinely a net negative for

SPEAKER_06: our society like who have we who have we even without become because i you know whatever i spent an hour looking at tweets this morning about the queen and then was like you know what people

Jason Calacanis: are actually irredeemable like humans might be irredeemable and twitter is just the vector for it like who are people that it's just like you know what i'm gonna go on this public forum and just be

SPEAKER_139: like the worst the worst i think that's kind of how you win the game because i feel like it and that's how is how i will win and i'm just like yeah we suck it's weird because it's like there's

SPEAKER_228: the there's the troll there's the people who oh i get to be anonymous this is i'm gonna let my i unfurled in like no there's no checks on me i can say whatever i want to whoever i want yeah

SPEAKER_230: internet message board there's obviously those people but i feel like it brings out a side of all of us that

SPEAKER_231: is also bad like not everybody is that bad we're not all trolls but everybody i feel like almost every comment i get back on twitter is like basically a version of here's why you shouldn't have tweeted this like here's why this is a bad tweet and it's like you could just move on with your like you don't need to come and criticize everything i say you could just and that it brings that out of us

SPEAKER_233: we are we're we all get like that when we're on there you read a tweet you're like this guy's

David Friedberg: an idiot and it's i gotta i have a new tagline it's true twitter bring your worst self it is it

SPEAKER_235: brings out the worst in all i really believe that genuinely i believe that yeah you know people are

SPEAKER_239: like bring your whole self bring yourself bring your worst fake twitter commercial because i love

SPEAKER_243: disney i recognize that that's true but i'm on there all day i'm obsessed with it i can't like i couldn't i i don't even remember the last day i didn't tweet like at all where i didn't check twitter

SPEAKER_245: or look at twitter or tweet something maybe if i was on vacation or something that's it twitter

SPEAKER_251: the most loathsome place on earth brought to you by disney the worst place you can't stop going

SPEAKER_139: twitter do you want to be mad twitter where dreams come to die right let's get pissed together about everything all right let's get happy about things let's get happy about things it seems like i'm just

SPEAKER_247: going to apologize to the audience that my voice is still not anywhere near acceptable nor is it going

SPEAKER_257: to be any time in the near future i'm going to lady gaga tonight uh because my my my my my pal

SPEAKER_202: my pal gaga gaga gaga um is going to be uh tearing up steph you call us steph as you call her

SPEAKER_263: you know that was actually a little bit of culture lady gaga lady steph i mean like i think she does go by everything um you know yeah so if you want i saw that documentary in there people do definitely call

SPEAKER_266: her like step first yeah yeah no no i i met her i've met her a couple times yeah she's a cool

SPEAKER_271: person they're not that type i'm not no yeah not yet but um first names first so uh yeah this is

SPEAKER_195: like two days of hosting the poker on top of three days of burning man gaga tonight and then this will be recovery weekend i promise you it'll be minty uh and honey from this point for for myself i'm

SPEAKER_202: guaranteeing it i will i will get back on track you're you're sure you're shining bright from the

SPEAKER_118: playa so what else can we ask yeah exactly have you been have you burned no one believes no no

SPEAKER_231: lon has not burned officially that's the i it honestly sounds like the worst the worst place in the world for me like i i'm not i'm not judging anybody i'm not doing right i'm not just like physically face of the physical world uh i'm not judging anybody like i'm not trying to be pejorative like it's bad if you go like i'm glad people go and love it and i love when la clears out so like it's great i just for me personally and what i'm like as a person it sounds like i would be miserable

SPEAKER_280: i don't think i would like you don't like the dust and the cold and the heat just standing around in

SPEAKER_245: the heat and the dust and you're outdoors 12 14 hours a day people just like running around like oh it's a little chaos chaos and you're getting lost it's pretty beautiful exhausting and who's got

SPEAKER_284: the water and oh i didn't bring that forgot my flashlight and i i'm good i'm i'm fine here in the city

SPEAKER_11: and trade my body for some ice like it's like that's just tiring um okay i'm aware i could wander

SPEAKER_291: off into the wild and just disappear like something got mad max it feels like mad max like i look at him just like oh no all right there is there is a barter system let's talk about how it works let's

SPEAKER_01: talk about tv i don't know man i looked at the agenda okay go let's talk about streaming house of

SPEAKER_11: the dragon and rings of power are both a couple episodes in and from the the kind of business and streaming perspective here it seems like both of them are turning out to be winners they're pulling in

Jason Calacanis: numbers close to commensurate with their budgets does that seem to be the case line

SPEAKER_236: uh i mean as best we can tell with with rings of power we are really like at the we're at amazon's

SPEAKER_231: mercy like whatever they want to tell us about how it's doing we're like okay but but they seem very happy with it so whatever metrics they're looking at whatever numbers they're looking at it seems like they're happy it's we already know it's coming back for a season two and i feel like they're probably primarily looking at engagement buzz mentions conversation and by those metrics obviously it's doing great there's been a ton of discussion not all of it positive but it's right it's certainly been driving a lot of engagement and discussion and discourse online which is drawing all this attention toward prime video so i can't imagine they're upset with how it's been going so far i think it would have been much more like a wheel of time scenario would have been more of a concern where it kind of came and went and it doesn't really feel like it made that big of an impact on the culture and i'd be like that would have been more of the concern and it doesn't look like

SPEAKER_11: that's going to happen this time are there like is it hitting in the meme land i mean are there gifts

SPEAKER_73: like i haven't really been i haven't wanted to look it up too much online because there was the whole like review bombing drama and that this is right and you know i think we're still very much can somebody

SPEAKER_118: explain what review bombing happened i did see that go by and they turned off reviews but where were

SPEAKER_43: these reviews occurring because i i to the best of my ability there's no longer reviews on netflix or

SPEAKER_243: amazon prime it's amazon it's amazon and then rotten tomatoes are the two areas we were talking about and so both of them are being review bombed we think review bombing as a term it just means as opposed to

SPEAKER_231: one person coming and leaving one review that's positive or negative a person who may or may not even have seen the show with some kind of pre-informed agenda is going to come in and leave like 10 one star reviews to drive the metrics down that's the idea it's just like it's brigading it's brigading if i come into the reviews and i write i don't like this show it's bad one star that's not review bombing that's just me writing a negative review but if i go do that 10 times this show's bad orcs shouldn't be like that this you know and then one star every time especially if i haven't seen it then it's considered a campaign designed to drive down the numbers on this show so amazon said that's what was happening on prime video so they turned off reviewing only for three days and said they wanted to set up a moderation system to ensure that these were legit reviews and not spam or trolling but it's it nonetheless communicated the idea that they're censoring they're you know they're censoring the reviewer not allowed to speak i've been silenced about my views on why hobbits can't be uh other

SPEAKER_40: colors the issue i think is you know a lot we should have solved the review system at this point you should only be able to post a review if you're an amazon prime member and you've watched the show so they should give you the opportunity like on audible you get to review the show after the show after you've listened to the audiobook then it prompts you to right just like you would verify purchasers like so you have verified viewers would be a much better system here so you could sort out you know i'm saying molly like we know disney knows that people finish she-hulk and then they could write the review so that would get rid of the concept of one person doing 10 at least i mean yes

SPEAKER_202: listen life insurance so important and getting it will give peace of mind to not only you but your

SPEAKER_321: family and your loved ones and they depend on you right and you need to have that financial cushion just in case the unthinkable happens well policy genius it's an insurance marketplace and that means it's easy for you to compare quotes from all the top companies like aig prudential you know these famous names but they're all in one place and they're all going to compete for your business so you get the lowest price on the best insurance and you can save 50 or more on life insurance just by comparing quotes with policy genius genius is in the name this is a genius idea options start at just 17 a month 500 000 in coverage hey maybe you want to add a zero to that just click the link in the description here in our show notes or i just want you to head to policygenius.com to get personalized quotes in minutes and the right policy is there waiting for you and your needs the licensed agents that policy genius work for you not the insurance companies and that's critically important they're here to help you through the entire process they're gonna hold your hand and it doesn't add extra fees they don't sell your details to third parties and they've helped listen to this over 30 million people shop for insurance and they've placed over 150 billion dollars in coverage nobody does it better head to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save that's policygenius.com it just seems a little insane that you would have to spend

SPEAKER_11: that much capex and person hours and whatever to create a system to just like get rid of people who are like mad that hobbits are black i mean for god honestly wait hold on a second because i did watch

SPEAKER_325: the lord of the rings episode one and i but hold on a second they're both bad hold on there's like

SPEAKER_327: two ways to go with this i think i have like three three directions i i want to go with this and this is

SPEAKER_43: the least of the the most interesting ones to me but i guess we have to address it up top oh once

SPEAKER_46: again are people having a problem with mythical creatures that don't exist in the real world having

SPEAKER_219: different skin tones yeah yes that's the issue i mean this is these people are way back this goes way back into like tolkien fandom there's always been and i'm not saying this is true of jrr the man

SPEAKER_231: himself who seemed to have been a pretty wonderful guy but uh within his fandom there's always been this a little bit of a white supremacy threat like this is the glorious peak of western you know when ben shapiro's like yeah western judeo-christian like this is they had a good run fantasy medieval you know european this was the height of whatever so a lot of people take that weird racist stuff seriously and and they've decided that a show that said even in a fanciful impossible version of medieval europe should not include people who were not in medieval europe but this is stupid for a bunch of reasons one is there were people of color in medieval europe i mean was it africa and europe kind of

SPEAKER_228: shakespeare memorably wrote a play about one you may have recalled it uh so that's already but also lord of the rings includes a lot of new work like potatoes tomatoes trees and also yeah well right but i'm saying like those are new world products so if it's set in medieval europe before they discovered the new world they don't have tobacco the native americans gave us that so we're already including

Jason Calacanis: elements that were already anachronisms if you will and also these are not history books they are in

SPEAKER_76: fact sweeping fantasy borrowed heavily from somebody else's sweeping fantasy like everybody loves that

SPEAKER_231: shot of denethor in return of the king eating those tomatoes you know he's like really grossly popping those cherry tomatoes and it's about the credit of the goo going everywhere and you cut between that and the battle there were no tomatoes in medieval europe those are from the new world

SPEAKER_263: yeah i i'm gonna go hobbits are okay i this is the problem i mean this circles back to our little banter about twitter where everybody brings their worst self it's like what's the worst thing i can

SPEAKER_345: think right now and express and you know half of it's trolling and half of it's racism anyway all of

SPEAKER_301: it's boring there's also massage sorry i cursed again oh yeah don't forget the misogyny the lead

SPEAKER_231: character is galadriel who tolkien himself describes as a basically a god elf she's the most powerful greatest elf in fact in lord of the rings and this is in the movie you've got no excuse folks in the movie lord of the rings they're like would you like the one ring and she goes i can't take it i would be even more powerful than sauron if i had that ring yeah she trumps everybody she's the most powerful

SPEAKER_116: but they still don't want her to be the main character i mean i'm sorry like it is literally not credible to me at this point that people are out here like there's not racism and sexism in our society when they're literally like they're taking the time to review bomb she'd be i mean just it's

SPEAKER_40: the same one percent it's the same one percent of idiots and they're doing this for attention and we shouldn't give it to them let's get to let's just get to is it a good show or not i have watched let's do that the first episode of lord of the rings rings of power i have watched the first three episodes

SPEAKER_168: of house of dragon or house of dragons house of the dragon house of the dragon because they're tar

SPEAKER_233: the targaryens their sigil is a dragon so they're the house of the dragon i have not watched the second

SPEAKER_118: episode of the rings of power um but i am ready to give my one word reviews the house of the dragon is my one word review is exceptional it's exceptional the show is thrilling the storytelling is fantastic episode three crushed it they advanced the storyline by a couple of years the action is extraordinary it is class a entertainment it's on par with game of thrones the original series it will stand right

SPEAKER_43: next to it i believe if it keeps up at this pace and i think it's only increasing it is a unbelievably worthy second effort and it establishes that this is the new star wars or marvel they can do 20 shows

SPEAKER_40: of this it's not going to get old for people is my prediction there is so much story to be told

SPEAKER_356: to be told that is my one word it's exceptional anybody else have feelings on the house of the

SPEAKER_231: dragon i'm curious then we'll go to uh i i'm i'm with you i really enjoyed it i at first i was worried about the these it's a lot smaller scale game of thrones is like this family's over here this family's over here and this family's here and here's all the politics and all the stuff that this is going on the other continent like right away episode one you're sort of thrown in the deep end and this one is much more like this one kind of situation that keeps spiraling more out of control uh but i really feel like they've they've already managed to kind of suck me in i like that we get to spend more time with each of our characters here because there's just fewer of them and i agree that that sapachnik

SPEAKER_303: really killed that that episode three battle sequence with the pirates on the amazing uh episode

SPEAKER_360: two this is molly i think you know when i look at a series what the the burn is uh when i look at

SPEAKER_40: episode one they established this interesting group of people you know it's like a seven and a half out of ten episode two we really started to understand these people and we get to like an eight and a half nine and then episode three comes and it's just straight out ten episode three is a ten of ten there's no really it's like smash it like this is incredible it's one of those where

SPEAKER_245: i watched it twice if i'm being honest it's the it hits the exact game of thrones formula that works

SPEAKER_236: it's like a little bit of the politicking a little bit of the mystery what's to come i watched the groundwork and then a huge epic battle 20 minute dragon battle sequence to wrap it all up so and

SPEAKER_356: did you get to catch it yet molly or no oh you watched the first one yeah i'm a hard no thank you

SPEAKER_11: on that show yeah i'm like an emotional chicken like i don't want to see the slaughter and the child brides and this and i don't know like those shows like i said i went over this last time i was like

SPEAKER_06: it's too much for me got it okay i have low emotional bandwidth for that that series in

SPEAKER_11: particular i mean i read the books like i loved him whatever i just that one i don't know if i can do i mean the next two episodes have no crazy misogyny but don't they have a child isn't there

SPEAKER_228: a full-on child bride oh yeah like oh no it is it is about like sire you can't marry her she's but 12 and he's like i'll wait to have sex with her until she's 14. and she's like don't worry you won't

SPEAKER_382: have to bed me until i'm 14 or whatever yeah that's there that's okay yeah i mean it was a different era it's not even that's not even why like they're just i will i'll tell you what you objected

Jason Calacanis: to yeah for the purposes of this series or this weekend streaming episodes i will do what i did with the last with game of thrones and i'll read the recap so that i'm up on it because i sort of like to

SPEAKER_130: read the recaps and know what's happening yeah i would tell you if i thought it was like over the top but yeah we read the recap and then you make your own decision i mean i watch a lot of like

SPEAKER_73: really violent action movies like i don't know there's something i don't know there's something it's just a little those i don't know but i don't have to give you hazard like what it's interesting

SPEAKER_231: we have both of these shows on at the same time because martin kind of intended his world as like the anti you know everything in talking is kind of whimsical and fanciful they're like classic adventure stories and he was like what if you had like a fantasy world but in like our horrible world

SPEAKER_245: where everything is random and cruel and brutal and nothing like prophecies don't necessarily come true and sometimes everybody just gets killed for no reason and like so yeah like game of thrones

SPEAKER_231: it's like it's this purposefully really like harsh brutal merciless kind of world and i that's not for

SPEAKER_06: everybody i i get it right but i will read the recaps because i do actually like to do that so i know what's happening and then in terms of lord of the rings i watched the first episode please uh and

SPEAKER_392: started the second episode and then my life one where we do it lovely okay episode one lovely i

SPEAKER_356: am i i'm into it unpack please unpack what did you like about it i think i i mean i think like you can

SPEAKER_06: see the money in the production value i uh thought that galadriel like slaying that big monster was just like such a sick fight scene despite everything else i just said i was like that was awesome i think i mean i think all the characters at this point feel a little thin because they're brand new and it's the first episode and i'm fine with that i think it looks really beautiful and i was surprised and i'm okay with the pacing i think lon you were tweeting about this the kind of fantasy pacing is like deep fantasy doesn't hustle in storytelling but i was like okay with that i thought that the this the scenes are really pretty the the world building is great like the people are pretty i

SPEAKER_399: don't know i'm into what's your one word one word and then i'm back i mean yeah fantastic would be my

SPEAKER_400: my one wow i'm a big fan i mean look as i was saying to bali before we started like i even like those

SPEAKER_231: hobbit movies like i'm a sucker for tolkien i read it at a i read lord of the rings and hobbit at a very pivotal eight i was like 14 or something and i loved them and i love those peter jackson movies i've always been into this world so i'm an easy i get that i'm an easy sell but uh yeah i thought it was amazing and yeah i mean sort of to what molly was saying too so many of these streaming shows they're big budget they look good but they still have that look and i really like netflix's sandman but it had this where it's three or four characters in the foreground and then there's like a big beautiful animated vista behind them the marvel movie like thor 11 thunder which is on disney plus today is also like this like natalie portman and chris hemsworth are there in the foreground with their weapons and

SPEAKER_236: then you know everything is sort of god city is dropped in behind them and i don't even think like russell crowe is not there on the same day as as uh you know chris and and and this doesn't feel like that at all they build sets and they put these guys in the forest and they're like run up that mountain

SPEAKER_231: and it feels tactile and physical and real in a way that the other shows just don't you can't your eye

SPEAKER_402: isn't really fooled we can tell when you're in a burbank orion problem uh the book problem yeah that's

SPEAKER_139: such a great observation too and you've made it before but i don't think that it was as clear to

SPEAKER_06: me until i watched the lord of this lord of the ring series that sense of because it's true it's like when the background gives you uncanny valley you don't it like i haven't been able to articulate it as well as you just did but that's exactly it and this feels really everything just feels really

SPEAKER_228: solid and true those actors were all in a cave they were in a cave there wasn't a troll there but they were all in a cave and they were running around and like that's a real set yeah and you can

SPEAKER_231: your eye can tell our brains are so good our eyes are so well trained we could spot it immediately even with all the special effects they're throwing at it yeah and look i'm not saying that those other show like i like marvel movies i i like sandman a lot it's good and in it and we we praised kenobi

SPEAKER_407: and they were inside the magic box it can be it can be very good but how much better but you can tell the difference nothing matches people walking on a real mountain nothing nothing matches it i think this

SPEAKER_43: is where um i think these big streamers are going to have to really have um a sick they're gonna have to have a sit and say do we want to churn this stuff out and you know get you your obi-wan fast you want it fast or you want it good and i think this is a part of the situation here i loved obi-wan but when they did that darth vader and obi-wan fight scene where it cracks his helmet as i predicted uh and gives them the scar um they were on you know a light box they're in a box i mean we none of us can talk about that set of like stalactites and you know they're throwing some rocks and be like oh yeah they built that set like no that is not the desert they did not go out to some desert

SPEAKER_06: the street for me they were exactly and it's hard to have like an emotional connect because because if you grew up reading i mean i also grew up reading tolkien and reading fantasy and just like there's some kind of depth of feeling that you get it's almost like yearning like fantasy makes you hungry like emotionally hungry to be part of that world and have magic and you know it's like this like deep intense feeling and you could actually imagine having that feeling about this show whereas for as much as i enjoyed kenobi like i really did obi-wan loved it i never felt a hundred i'm not thinking about it later no it didn't feel that same sense of like immersion and kind of like

SPEAKER_11: long like i want to be an elf on the in the in the ven or whatever well i mean if you look at like

SPEAKER_419: whatever your greatest films are their ability to take you to that place like i think about blade

SPEAKER_43: runner and the practical effects there i actually like in my crazy blade runner fandom like tried to find a spinner car tried to find you know like i was gonna buy one and it was like there were like two left and they had destroyed them all and they were kind of in hiding like but the practical effects of the spinners was they literally had some people in la who spent a year or two building just the cars of blade runner you know which really do set and they did those down in downtown la and some other

SPEAKER_40: locations you only do get a sense of place and i did get that for the rings of power good good you

SPEAKER_43: know but i'm trying to figure out where this story is going you know is this about sauron you know and it just if i am a little disoriented if i'm being honest after one episode yeah and i'm just disoriented a bit like who are these characters what is their motivation there's too many characters in the first episode to for me to like understand what's going on which i guess is how some people felt during lord of the rings who didn't read the book right but i am i am i have no navigation for this story like tom clancy

SPEAKER_11: like you read the first chapter and you're just like i just ingested 150 names and i don't know what it's about but by the end you have whittled it down but this is just gonna give it a headline

SPEAKER_228: yeah i'm very curious as to what kind of timeline they're planning on because they are moving very

SPEAKER_231: gradually but i think the threads are already there that if you know tolkien well enough you could be like i get i get what where we are it's basically doing what lord of the rings did the the previous version a lot of people very confident evil is gone we defeated sauron or morgoth in the last age and now middle earth is free of this dark evil but there are those individuals spread around middle earth who have some other insight and think that perhaps the dark one is just in hiding regaining his strength and is going to return so we're going to follow all of those people as they eventually come together and become the force that's going to drive sauron back at least till the third age when the events of lord of the rings and there was that did you guys see have you watched long enough for the meteor to shoot across the sky did you have not seen episode two i have nothing but uh a being arrives from the sky and lands in in a town outside where some of those they're they're harfoots they're called they're the the predecessors to hobbits that's probably going to be a centrally important figure who's going to be an important figure in rounding up a lot of these disparate elements from around middle earth now we do know from tolkien this is not a split there are a group uh that that came from the sky there's differing opinions about whether this was during the early third age or the second age uh saruman would have been the first followed by gandalf and radagast and there were two others the einar the ishtari there's something that's called the wizards yeah so

SPEAKER_437: did i just figure it out i like literally just as you were saying and i was like oh

SPEAKER_231: there's a scene in episode two where the the harpoots use the harpoots use jars of uh fireflies as like lights that's how they like they use them as lanterns and there's a scene where uh the being that crashes from the sky opens the jar and seems to communicate with the fireflies he kind of whispers to them and then they listen to him which is if you watch your your lord of the rings there's another character that has the ability to to talk to animals and give them little messages i might

SPEAKER_443: cry i'm so well there's there i can't believe i'm such a slow burn on that we don't know whatever

SPEAKER_243: saruman traditionally is thought to be the first to arrive but it doesn't feel like a saruman character

SPEAKER_449: mm-hmm well yeah things could be happening uh at different uh this is going to be really annoying

SPEAKER_11: for you jason this is going to turn the tables on all those episodes where you got super deep into star wars lore because me and lon are going to be like oh my god i'm here for it i'm here for it

SPEAKER_451: i'm here for it i'm totally here for it i think you know i was talking yeah yeah so we're following

SPEAKER_231: elrond and galadriel and the the high elves and their sort of take we're going to follow this strange the stranger as they're calling him and the hobbits and what they're up to and it would also make sense that character has a lot of affection for hobbits it would make sense if

SPEAKER_40: they first arrived and got to know the hard foots first i play poker with an iconic uh media mogul

SPEAKER_360: um say top five to seven in the history of media and i played poker with him the last two nights and hung out and we had and we sat we sit next to each other poker topics we like to chat um and uh um he said uh you know that he uh really was taken with game of uh house of the dragon thought you

SPEAKER_40: know a lot of things okay um but i was talking to him about the economics of it that's what i wanted to get into here so i have some insights from top top five seven media mogul in history uh that i can sort of uh convey here without saying who he is the first thing he told me you know when i was like this isn't a billion dollars like why would they do this molly and he said you know this is a bezos vanity play essentially has nothing to do with reality there is no there this does not pencil out it is not intended to pencil out this is a a a a ceo play like a vanity ceo you know tentpole strategy had nothing to do with the reality of ever being able to for this to pencil out because uh even though there's a this reported billion dollar number out here they spent and i don't

SPEAKER_43: know if this is public knowledge or not but 250 million on the license for the ip you know let's

SPEAKER_70: just pause that's out there so that is a just to pause for a second a quarter of a billion dollars to the token estate and time warner which shares it or whatever it's called warner they received 250 million dollars in cash for the story for the ip let's just let that sink in for a

SPEAKER_168: second that has nothing to do with one paintbrush on one backdrop one actor salary one makeup kit

SPEAKER_231: it's just fair mind to it's just for the lord of the rings and the hobbit it's not for all of

SPEAKER_228: tolkien's other writings so they can't adapt stuff from the cimmerillion they like they're limited so they didn't even buy all of the guys work they don't even own the whole library this is extraordinary

SPEAKER_43: to me 250 million dollars a piece of ip what this got me thinking is like but how long did it take for

SPEAKER_345: that ip to bake so when is the source material from does anybody know the the year yeah uh would

SPEAKER_231: have been the 30 30 so he started so anyway basically it was he was back from world war one yeah a few years in between it's got to be he was working on it in the 20s uh probably published by late

SPEAKER_464: 20s early 30s the hobbit and then lord of the rings would have followed many years later pretty

SPEAKER_40: extraordinary i don't know if any ip has ever had a hundred year um what would you call that when

SPEAKER_470: something stews uh something i mean shelf life or marinating i like i like a marinade

Jason Calacanis: and then one chunk of it just one chunk of that piece of steak quarter of a billion dollars quarter

SPEAKER_168: billion dollars for i mean one bottle of wine that's marinated for a hundred years and we have ip that's marinated for a hundred years and still entertaining people molly he's he's gonna he's in a

SPEAKER_228: little bit of an interesting cultural place just because it's it's a foundational text for a whole genre like as opposed to there are a lot of books that were written in the 20s that people still

SPEAKER_231: read you know theodore dreiser or whatever but like he created this entire format that people are still

SPEAKER_473: writing new stories in today and it really it's a foundational if you're into the fantasy genre you

SPEAKER_217: kind of have to read tolkien so point of privilege did the concept of a dwarf or an elf or a hobbit

SPEAKER_116: exist before token used those terms yeah yeah so there's the whole there's the whole like who he's who he borrowed heavily from right there was that other there was that existing work okay yeah oh

SPEAKER_228: there's so many i mean i don't know there's so many he was a scholar i mean you have to think of it like he was a linguist and a historian right so yeah he was like borrowing little elements from this myth

SPEAKER_231: and that myth and this folklore and that culture and so almost everything from lord of the rings was inspired by a norse legend or a old english poem or that it's like and he was that he had that kind of mind like he was like a genius and so yeah and in fact in marvel full of all of this stuff that

SPEAKER_202: it's all baked into this one world and in fact in marveled thor as a character exists as a god

SPEAKER_40: and yeah we could all go make a thor story today it just couldn't be well that it was free

SPEAKER_407: if you were stan lee and jack kirby back in the 50s you gotta you gotta crank out four issues before

SPEAKER_231: lunch it's like what story can we do ah what about that guy he's got a hammer history yeah exactly yeah yeah and i think that's what's so funny we're so reverend about comic book stories today and it's like those guys were so ditko was like ah spider-man he goes to the moon okay like they had 10 minutes

SPEAKER_405: you know they got their corned beef sandwiches on the way they gotta like grand this out and today we're so

SPEAKER_489: precious but oh you can't thanos wouldn't do that it's canon yeah and it's just like they were making

SPEAKER_116: it up but yeah so i mean i like well i love this thread too about the bezos vanity play because

SPEAKER_06: reportedly he did effectively issue this order like go get me a game of thrones we need a thing like that for amazon and so uh no expense has been spared the series we think cost 58 million dollars per episode 465 million total for all of uh season one's eight episodes so including the ip amazon has spent more than 700 million dollars on season one so there's some back of the envelope math here that we can do about i mean again like it doesn't seem like it particularly matters to amazon or bezos at least who is not in charge anymore so you got to wonder what andy jassy's thinking like now he's saddled with this thing right he's like i guess we're riding this horse now yeah to the tune of however many billions it doesn't seem to matter them to them whether it uh ever breaks even or makes money or whatever however if amazon prime costs 140 a year 15 a month then 3.3 million prime subscriptions assuming new ones assuming like for whatever reason 3.3 million

SPEAKER_80: years were to sign up yeah or years of of right let's say if it was a million who stayed for three

SPEAKER_40: years it would be right similar right that would pay for the production cost yeah not the ip to put the 250 on top so yeah if you put it would be 50 percent more so it'd be like five million to break even here and that would be to my friend who's in the media business that's the penciling out like the number actually at some point makes sense is that even possible do is there any credible number of

SPEAKER_43: incremental amazon products or i suppose molly you could also say people who didn't cancel because to get this yeah if you were and some number of people i guess canceled prime i don't think many people do i think it's a pretty sticky product so and it is very hard to tell this because people don't buy prime for prime video but in this case how many people do we think would buy prime video

SPEAKER_243: who don't have it to get this people would right i think people would it is yeah it's very hard to quantify in those kind of numbers and i don't think five million of them would i would also note though

SPEAKER_231: that uh amazon's strategy has kind of shifted in the early days when they were first competing with netflix they were trying to keep up with netflix they were releasing new shows constantly every week this big new thing they've they've pumped the brakes there's fewer amazon originals and a lot of them are more cost-effective like the league of their own was the other big and recent amazon original you know that there's a production value behind it but it's nothing like what they're doing here so they're kind of picking their battles more these days obviously the boys has turned into a big franchise for them and they're putting a lot of energy there they made a big play with that wheel of time show that's going to come back and do season two that one to me feels like more of a maybe questionable call at this point i don't really know if it had that kind of impact but i feel like they are kind of slowing down and so they can focus more on these level these huge projects

SPEAKER_245: that are going to bring in you know theoretically a lot more attention i'm really curious to see if

SPEAKER_06: this strategy remains i really am because jassy is not this kind of ceo like bezos i think you know he got the hollywood bug hard and you saw this who ah there's some other i'll think of it there's some other media property where it was like clear that they had gotten the hollywood bug and they wanted to go really big hollywood and then it just was like that's not the right play here i have a hard time believing that andy jassy over time i think it's going to be a slow you know like back pedal away from because throwing money into the black hole that is entertainment is not a long-term growth strategy like we have just never seen that really really work and if you're amazon you're printing money with cloud and you know like retail is almost its own kind of break-even business i just

SPEAKER_11: i wonder how much longer i just wouldn't get attached to amazon originals i guess is what i'm

SPEAKER_40: saying here okay um i guess what we have to look at here is this is uh we can look at the profitability of amazon as a corporation all stools of the all legs of the stools three four legs whatever it is and we could say dropping a billion dollars of cash on something that is this you know uh discussable every year uh like he did on james bond right so i would say it throwing money into the black hole is correct unless the ip has staying power like we've seen with disney uh or perhaps you know some iconic

SPEAKER_43: hbo ip like dc comics so here's how i look at they're actually spending a billion dollars here i know

SPEAKER_40: that they got the 500 million number for production they get the 250 million dollar license they've also been promoting the heck out of this it's got to be a hundred million dollar marketing spent right that's where i think the billion dollar number comes in we're like where's the other 250 i think the 250 is billboards you're seeing like so they're really trying to make the amazon name out there so

SPEAKER_43: if you want to be loved by a large number of people for delighting them with ip that just you know is

SPEAKER_40: not it makes no logical sense and they're spending here if it is a billion dollar number two million dollars per minute 120 million dollars per episode not just you know 50 60 million because we it's eight episodes into a billion is probably the number here right so we're we're over 100 million per episode 125 million in fact which for 60 minutes is two million dollars a million dollars a minute god

SPEAKER_11: now i'm gonna pause every single minute and look for the two million dollars in every scene i think

SPEAKER_40: you could i think you know it's uh well you can see it and remember half of it's not there because

SPEAKER_243: it's for marketing and ip rights but anyway the other the other amazing thing here is no marquee stars usually when you think of your spending is correct that crazy no robert jr half of it's just brad pitts

SPEAKER_245: quote you know george clooney here no angelina like the nobody from this show is you know recognized like they're as character actors and stuff but i believe i believe this is an incremental

SPEAKER_40: 1 million subscribers i i do believe there are a million fans of token here in the united states i'm not i don't i can't even venture to what's happening outside of the us and i don't know exactly which markets amazon prime exists in outside the us because it it's not every country i mean it's

SPEAKER_43: a they're around most of the world at this point but the amazon prime for delivery amazon doesn't operate in every country because you know there's there's walmarts and targets of prime video

SPEAKER_245: actually there are there are some countries that don't have the prime video delivery but they carry the amazon programming on another service i'm gonna go with the number of million if i go with the

SPEAKER_43: number of million and i think you know half of them stick around for good which is you know they stick around for five ten years that means cumulatively i think there's maybe three million years of prime three million years of prime hundred million hundred fifty dollars total per year hundred dollars per year maybe some outside the united states i think there's three or four hundred million dollars in incremental revenue here i think there's a third of this gets paid off and the

SPEAKER_202: other half or two two thirds is a watch does that happen every season like if you do season well yes

SPEAKER_539: i do think it does i do in every year no i think it could i think if it builds it could and that's i

SPEAKER_345: think what was also how many seasons should there be here is this a five season type thing or a three

SPEAKER_303: season type thing do we have i don't really have a sense at this point of how big a story they're telling i mean i i don't know if you may even know at this one we're definitely getting at least one

SPEAKER_40: more season if you probably this is five percent of the income of say aws you know like the profits ah yeah you you and maybe it's if the loss is seven percent you know is seventy percent of five three

SPEAKER_43: percent so to make everybody in the company feel great to make the world love you to take a swing at the bat i kind of like it i like it i think it's a fine you know we're looking purely at

SPEAKER_231: this is a prime video sign up play but they are also reviving interest in this valuable ip that

SPEAKER_245: they will own for moving forward so the idea that if you get a bunch of people into lord of the rings

SPEAKER_520: again you could sell books or merch or experiences or video games or did they know they own the

SPEAKER_84: fellowship of the ring and the two towers as part of this did they i think i think they own uh

SPEAKER_231: the lord of the rings books so i think they could do stuff with other stuff that's in those books they don't own and the other the extended universe stuff but yeah they wanted to down the road remake the lord of the rings as a movie or something for a tv series that they i right i believe that they

SPEAKER_520: could i think that's part of it fantastic so all right um i like i like like a tie-in game or a you know ride or a show or this you know like that that's definitely something that disney is coming

SPEAKER_407: soon yeah like that disney's already mastered this and they're thinking of it on a much bigger level

SPEAKER_29: i'm time stamping this right now no way we're gonna get two seasons of this show and then it's gonna

SPEAKER_06: and then jassy is gonna be all cloud all the time he is a server guy this is gonna be a distraction

SPEAKER_202: what would happen at amazon primeland like you'd pack boxes like you go in you put your amazon

SPEAKER_06: outfit on you pack boxes you tape them and all right we gotta get jason we gotta get jason to a flight but i will be caught up on what's happening in house of the dragon by next week

SPEAKER_127: we caught up on lord of the rings and we'll uh see you tomorrow everybody thanks a lot