SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, welcome to the show. We're doing news again today because there's another big news drop in the gaming space. Bungie makes Destiny. They were the original creators of Halo, which is now owned by Microsoft. Microsoft, as you know, recently bought Activision Blizzard. What is Sony going to do? Oh no! Buy Bungie, but not Halo. So we're going to break down a little bit what this means for Sony, what it means for the gaming industry at large, this weird interconnected web

Jason Calacanis: of gaming studios, how they work together, and if other big tech giants should look for M&A targets

SPEAKER_06: in gaming. And then we're going to talk about our startup of the day. It's called Medify and they

David Friedberg: allow pro gamers to teach newbies one on one for an hourly rate. It's very similar to a portfolio company that we'll talk about as well called Blaze that does something similar for athletic training. So it's never been a better time to be a creator. And we talk about the entire creator economy. And basically the this new Mendici effect we're seeing where people can work from home, make a

SPEAKER_10: podcast, be a creator, be on Twitch, and make tons of money or enough to not go to work.

SPEAKER_12: It is a great world. And then finally, we wrap with Shopify CEO Toby Lutke joining Coinbase's

SPEAKER_13: board as Coinbase continues to basically staff up for, I don't know, world domination.

SPEAKER_16: And there are so many interviews coming this week. It's going to be a blockbuster week for This Week in Startups. It's going to be a great show today. Stick with us. Stick with us. Yes.

SPEAKER_18: This Week in Startups is brought to you by Boast. If you're a startup developing new software or R&D, you may be owed up to $250,000 in cash back from the government. Boast helps you get that money quickly and easily. And the first 50 customers will get 10% off their first year by mentioning promo code TWIST at boast.ai.twist. OpenPhone. As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back. But using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them. OpenPhone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of your existing devices. Visit openphone.co slash twist to get 20% off your first six months. And Real Good Foods is modernizing frozen foods and has become one of the fastest growing brands in the US. Everything Real Good Foods makes is low in carbs, high in protein and made from real food ingredients. Go to realgoodfoods.com and use code TWIST for 15% off.

SPEAKER_00: All right, everybody, let's get to the news. There is a lot of it more news in the world of gaming. This was actually breaking during the Monday show. And we just could not get to it for obvious reasons.

Jason Calacanis: So much news.

SPEAKER_07: But in video game acquisition, tit for tat Sony announced yesterday that it's going to acquire

SPEAKER_00: video game developer Bungie for $3.6 billion. Bungie, of course, creators of the popular first person shooter Destiny, the original makers of Halo. But I am sorry to say because Halo is my game. I actually got very excited about this and was like, good job. But I had forgotten that like, Halo is actually with Microsoft, which we'll get to later. They don't get Halo, but they do get

Jason Calacanis: Destiny. How do we feel about this as a counter to Microsoft's Activision Blizzard purchase?

David Friedberg: Yeah, I mean, I am not a console gamer. I'm a desktop gamer. And I play real time strategy like Starcraft and Age of Empires old school. Like, I only play games that are 1020 years old. And I only play them once in a while. But Halo for me. Yeah, same. Yeah, I think kind of similar here. So this does seem to be in the best interest of consumers, which is to say, I love the full stack of you buy this, you know, piece of hardware, you buy a subscription, and they just keep adding stuff to it. And so I think if this means when you buy your console, and you get your Netflix style, Amazon Prime style subscription, you get more content. Great. I mean, it does make you wonder if these are going to be platform exclusives going forward, or if Microsoft and Sony will take the approach that Microsoft had, which is like, we'll make Office for Mac, we'll make it for PC, we'll make it for Android. And, you know, Steve Bomber tried to stop or I guess he held back Office for iOS and Office for Android so that they could try to do their own operating system. And Satya Nadell, I guess coming on the show soon. Definitely. He released Office on Android and iOS. And I believe like Microsoft Office is one of the top apps, you know, or some of the top apps in productivity. So I hope that they make these cross platform. And they keep making it for PC and you know, for the

SPEAKER_40: other person's platform, but it seems like it's in the best interest of consumers.

SPEAKER_00: So Microsoft did say I think it is especially this exclusive thing. And you know, my my feeling on this is that while I don't think the FTC would necessarily put a stop to these acquisitions, I think they would have some questions. And so Microsoft has already come out and Bungie has already

Jason Calacanis: come out saying we're not going to make the Activision Blizzard games Microsoft said exclusive.

SPEAKER_00: Bungie said they will not be making destiny platform exclusive. So I think that is great. But there is going to most likely be some value add that you get for subscribing to, you know,

Jason Calacanis: Microsoft Game Pass and whatever the Xbox thing is called now, I think, or PlayStation. Is it just still PlayStation Live? Like I would imagine they're going to use this to leverage some benefit.

SPEAKER_00: But it is it's interesting as a counter. My brother, who is the actual gamer in the family, I'm like still a relatively casual Halo and Tetris kind of gamer said, though, that he thought if Sony really wanted to kill Xbox, they should have bought EA. Yeah, that while Destiny is a big deal,

Jason Calacanis: it is it's no Call of Duty. And it might not have gotten them all the way to unstoppable.

SPEAKER_45: And Electronic Arts is still independent. Yep. And they're too big to be bought.

Jason Calacanis: I mean, Sony has the cash we did. We did the back of the envelope math over text yesterday. Sony has the cash to do it. That one I do wonder, though, if it might not be too big to chew off or like big enough that they were worried about, you know, some Snoopy. Actually, it's 36 billion is the market cap

SPEAKER_10: today. It's down 2% today. It looks like the stock price has not changed in five years. It's basically

SPEAKER_52: traded in a range of $80 to $140. So it's basically trading at the top end of its range hasn't changed

SPEAKER_10: much. Yeah, it feels like a target to me. I wonder if like Google or Facebook or, you know, Amazon or

David Friedberg: Netflix bought Electronic Arts, how that would shake things up. You know, Amazon's got a ton of money. Netflix has a ton of money. Netflix could absorb it and then get into the gaming business. And when you buy Netflix, you get all the EA stuff. Would that be a good move? I mean, I, I wonder why Apple

Jason Calacanis: and Netflix have stayed away from games to the extent that they have, particularly when Apple is making this M1 chip that could be running games. Like, I don't really know why they have not embraced this

David Friedberg: industry at all. And I don't know because they want to stay neutral and have an app store and just take

SPEAKER_62: a 30% of everything. Right, exactly. And so then I went and then so they've got that that economic

Jason Calacanis: reason, although they are now making their own content right with Apple TV. So it seems like there may be inching closer and like take advantage of this hardware. They're dipping Apple TV.

SPEAKER_67: What do we call Apple TV? Because I have Apple TV is the hardware device. And then I've watched shows on Apple TV like Ted Lasso. He's just plus right Apple TV plus is the name of the service or something.

SPEAKER_00: I don't know. Not good at naming. But and then in terms of Netflix, like they've sort of maybe dabbled here and there and gaming but never really gone there. I don't I and maybe it was bandwidth

Jason Calacanis: constraints initially, right? Initially, it was probably just like, we don't want that streaming burden. We already pay enough. Yeah. But I would think now it wouldn't be such a big deal. I don't really know. But Netflix has just not seemed interested in that market. And I think it's interesting. Honestly, I think as they start to continue to face the headwinds from HBO and Disney plus that we've talked about so much and Apple and other streaming services, maybe it'll start to

SPEAKER_82: look more attractive. Yeah, I mean, also Google has this is it stadia stadia? I thought that died. I think they already did they did they kill that? It is not like Google keeps trying something

David Friedberg: called like play game services like a subscription service. And I have Apple games as a subscription service, which when you have kids is pretty cool. Because when they go to the App Store, it says Google or it says Apple Arcade. And all of those games have the ads and the mana and the upselling

SPEAKER_52: for coins taken out of them. And so I just tell my girls listen, you can have anything in the arcade.

Jason Calacanis: I think I'm wrong about Google Stadia. It does seem that it still exists. Stadia Pro, according to Forbes five days ago, as a stronger lineup of games in February, then PS Plus,

SPEAKER_94: it was maybe that article that made PlayStation go. Yeah, and it's, I think it's Android based and they have their own is it a hardware device now or no?

SPEAKER_21: I think so. There's also a piece about a clear stadia controller selling $370 on eBay.

SPEAKER_94: Huh? I know there's a controller. I wonder if they actually have a con I don't think they have a

SPEAKER_63: console console streaming. It's just yeah, it's streaming. So their bet is that you can stream the stuff from the cloud and put the CPU on the cloud and bandwidth will be good enough.

Jason Calacanis: Hmm. Yeah, I don't have to be in play, right? I would think especially now, right? As of yesterday, I would think if EA is not in play, I don't know why. And they're doing good content,

SPEAKER_00: too. They have a friend who is a video producer there who did that show that won a bunch of awards,

Jason Calacanis: the one about the Sims. So they're, they're dipping a toe into TV and other content production as well.

SPEAKER_10: Yeah, I mean, they have The Sims, Command and Conquer, Mass Effect, Madden. They're all their

SPEAKER_60: sports stuff is really strong. I'm not a big gamer. I just you know, you have kids, it becomes kind of hard to there's only so much time people. Well, yeah, I mean, it's like when you get when I play

David Friedberg: one of these like real time strategy games, like a match can take half an hour, an hour. And it's like, unless everybody's asleep in the house, and I'm up, I can't do it, right? It just doesn't

SPEAKER_12: feel bad. I mean, you think you can lose time quickly on Tick Tock? Try Halo. Like,

Jason Calacanis: yeah, I mean, you can have a 12 hour session. Yeah. And then boom, it's two hours later. And you're like, Oh, no, no, no children have eaten. If you're a startup developing new software or

SPEAKER_117: investing in R&D, you may be owed up to a quarter million dollars $250,000 in cash back from the government. But the R&D tax credit program is very complicated. That's why most people don't take advantage of it. It requires a bunch of technical and financial justifications for the IRS. And that's where Boast can help. Boast is a platform that helps startups get cash back from the government. They integrate with over 60 different software providers, which automates document gathering. This helps Boast deliver the fastest IRS compliant R&D tax claim in the industry. Companies like Bevy Labs and Dooley have recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars with Boast over the past few years. So what is the cost? Well, Boast only makes money once you've gotten cash back. If you don't get paid, they don't either. And if you do, they'll take a modest percentage between 10 and 20%, depending on the volume of your return. So the upside is free money from the IRS. And the downside is no risk. So here's your call to action. The deadline to claim is approaching fast. So contact Boast today. The first 50 customer signups will get 10% off their first year filing. Just

SPEAKER_00: mention the promo code twist. Anyway, I think EA is in play. I don't know who would buy them. I'm curious about why Netflix has not gone that route at this point with streaming games, but I guess EA, it wouldn't be a good acquisition for them because EA doesn't do a lot of streaming games. They're still

SPEAKER_52: console base. And this is a de minimis acquisition. You know, Sony is worth 140 billion. This is 3.6 billion. You know, it's like 1% of the company and it's a game changer. Netflix does have like a stranger

David Friedberg: things game. They're kind of dabbling in taking their IP and making little games out of it that don't exist inside the Netflix app. I think, I think they link you to an app store. So yeah, I mean, I think Netflix is going to wind up having, they're clearly thinking about IP with the stuff they're building as opposed to licensing IP. So making games is a way to kind of pull people into that. And I saw Lucasart, uh, launched like three Star Wars games in the same day. So, you know,

SPEAKER_52: Disney is really going for it with their gaming stuff. So it's, it's a, it's a no brainer, uh,

SPEAKER_07: get somebody, yeah, let's start like, we need a, we need a, like a clock, you know, like a countdown. Yeah, like an acquisition timer for EA at this point.

SPEAKER_132: Who's it going to be? This has got to be a great thing for independent video game studios, because as these get acquired, you got to think the top people at these companies are going to be

SPEAKER_134: like, you know what, we made our money, we had stock options, whatever, let's go start our own

David Friedberg: little game studio. And so when people see acquisitions and they think that's bad for the industry, what they don't realize is the talented people, when these companies get bought, they get so much money that they then have a life choice. Do I want to work at Microsoft or Sony? Or do I want to go be a pirate again and be a rebel and, you know, start a company. So I think what you'll see is a lot of people who are super talented leave these big flagships and

SPEAKER_52: start the next generation of flagships. So it'll actually wind up being a very vibrant ecosystem, just like all the Google folks left to start the next generation of companies. And now we'll see Airbnb and Uber executives leaving to create the next generation of companies and so on and so on.

Jason Calacanis: That's a great point. I had not thought of it that way at all. I definitely was like, oh, these companies are so big that they're going to push all the little studios out, but you make a great point about just sort of the turn in the industry itself. I mean, granted, that doesn't, that doesn't welcome a ton of newcomers necessarily. But it does at least keep the cycle of competition going.

SPEAKER_141: I think it makes people rich, who then have, you know, whatever, five, 10, $50 million in their bank

David Friedberg: account from those sales. And they're like, Okay, I don't find meaning being this many steps from the decision maker, right? So if you were at Bungie, or you were at Blizzard, Activision, you might be two or three desks away from or levels away from the decision maker, then you get bought. And now you're like six or seven, you know, and you're like a unit within a unit within a unit and, you know, within a giant company. And you're like, Okay, well, I've got this money sitting in the bank. And there's four or five other people who do too, we don't need to make a salary for the next three or four years. Let's go start our own company. And then you go to investors. And they're like, Oh,

SPEAKER_52: you don't you've you've already built your prototype because you funded it yourself. Great. Yeah, here's 10 million. Go for it. So great point. It's gonna be I think it's gonna be great for the industry. Any any other notes on this deal? I mean, I think the only other thing is just

Jason Calacanis: sort of fun, which is the the fascinating intertwining like how nepotistic this industry is and then Bungie itself. And what a weird ownership history it's had, especially when you consider kind of the all the Halo drama, right, which is that in 2000, Microsoft got the exclusive rights to Halo made it an exclusive, it became this huge hit. Yeah, kept on failing to make the movie.

SPEAKER_00: That was so weird. Yeah. And then Bungie in 2007 splits from Microsoft becomes its own privately held company called Bungie. And then independent Bungie signed a long term contract with Activision to

SPEAKER_154: publish destiny. Yeah. And sounds like the Marvel IP. Keep going. It totally is like you need a PhD

SPEAKER_00: to understand all the different ways that these companies are connected. But I bring that up partly

Jason Calacanis: because it's super interesting. And it's really dishy. And so there was a really funny tweet about it. But also it completely validates your point about all these people who know each other, who have worked together in some way for years, who built these games together, and they were at this company in this company, but it was still the same company, whatever, who you know, are going to want to split

SPEAKER_159: off and make something new. Right? Yeah. So I guess we'll be waiting for the announcement that Sony spins out Bungie at some point. That's like the next the end game is that's what yeah, this time Blizzard has spun out for Microsoft to be its own independent because they weren't getting

SPEAKER_52: anything done internally. Well, and when those things happen, what typically happens is whoever did the acquisition then retires. So somebody at Sony retires, somebody at Microsoft retires. So let's say Satya leaves Microsoft, you know, 10 years from now, somebody else comes in like, you know, at this

David Friedberg: gaming thing, these units aren't working, somebody in the unit lobbies them, hey, can we have our company back? Can we spin it out? And they're like, Yeah, sure. This isn't a priority for me. I'm focusing the company on these three things. And this is the fifth priority. So sure, you can leave. So that's how these things wind up going is when the top level person leaves, they didn't anoint this deal, it wasn't their deal, they don't want to be defined by it and getting it out of the company

SPEAKER_63: becomes like a statement in and of itself, right? Like, we're not doing this anymore,

David Friedberg: which is what happens to when a movie studio flips over. Whoever the previous person running the

SPEAKER_52: movie studio or the TV network looks at all the things in production, and they're like, my name's not

David Friedberg: on these things. And I have a certain number of slots and bullets that I can fire. I'm not going to take the old guard and make them famous for the show, cancel all that stuff,

SPEAKER_164: or put it in permanent hiatus. So another studio can do it and make us look bad. But we're not going

SPEAKER_16: to do it because I want to promote my projects, right? That's what they call production hell in

SPEAKER_58: Hollywood. That happens in startups.

Jason Calacanis: The other and then the final business point, or business question I have is whether these acquisitions actually signal a little bit of weakness in console gaming, because PC gaming has really been on the rise. And, you know, we talked about like, the kids are playing Minecraft, I think Fortnite, although was also on console, I believe brought a lot of kids to PC gaming. And so we polled

SPEAKER_00: our live audience on YouTube and asked what console they own. None was 43%. 43% of our audience

Jason Calacanis: at least owns no console 30% of them own PlayStation 12% own Xbox 12% own Nintendo Switch. That was it was 155 votes. Interesting. But it does that just that one tiny data point did make me wonder if they, you know, Sony and Microsoft are trying to shore up their libraries to make their consoles more appealing.

SPEAKER_10: Yeah, you have so many other entertainment options and gaming options. I bet you if we put in here,

David Friedberg: do you do do you do PC gaming? Right? Because we asked about consoles, right? PC gaming is another interesting one. Because I think everybody, I bet you our audience business audiences, maybe an

SPEAKER_52: a skewing older audience is just really into PC gaming. Yeah, I feel like the really serious people are

SPEAKER_164: into PC gaming and having a keyboard, as opposed to a console controller, but maybe I'm wrong.

Jason Calacanis: Think about it now, like, internet access, like internet's gotten faster for a lot of people, you know, even Xfinity, which is evil in a million ways just keeps making the speeds faster, right? So the streaming, if you have broadband internet access is a lot more possible than it used to be. TVs can do so much, like you can do so much casual game streaming through a television with casting or other technologies. And it does make me wonder if making the investment in a console is still worth it. Although we did just buy the new Xbox. Listen, lots of founders are

SPEAKER_06: loosey goosey with their personal phone numbers. They put it on company documents, they use it for sales calls, and more. And that makes everything messy. You don't know who's calling a sales prospect or somebody from your kids school? Should you pick up? Should you not? Well, open phone helps you create business phone numbers for you and your team. And it's so easy to use. It works through an app on your smartphone or your desktop. So there's no need to carry two phones like I did back in the day, and I kind of still do. There's always a backup. Just pick a number, install the app, and you're done. And here's a feature I love. You know how you can create a shared email for customer support, right? You create support at your domain name. Well, now you can have a shared phone number with multiple employees fielding calls and texts. So you can put on your website or your social media, call us and talk to a sales rep, call us and talk to customer support or customer success. How amazing is that? And what if you could do it super affordably and easy and control it through a nice web interface? Well, my team is using open phone now for this exact reason. And it's amazing for us to do support for the syndicate.com as but one example. So here is your call to action. Open phone is already super affordable. It's as low as 10 bucks a month for a user. It's basically free when you think about it. So this listeners can get an extra 20% off any plan for your first six months by signing up at open phone.co slash twist. And if you have existing business numbers with another service, well, they can port them over for free. No problem. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. So head over to open.co slash twist today. Okay, great job open phone. We love the

SPEAKER_188: problem. Oh, you did buy the new Xbox? Yeah. What are these things go for now? Are they 500

SPEAKER_00: bucks or something? I wanted Halo. No, I mean that the new one whose name I can't even remember. It's like the Xbox X and the X plus is was like 300 bucks. Oh, it's pretty affordable. Yeah, it was,

SPEAKER_89: it was inexpensive. It was enough to be like, let's go to Best Buy and get it. I want Halo.

SPEAKER_52: I bought my wife a new iPhone Max. And I was like, I'm gonna get her the largest memory because,

SPEAKER_13: you know, because I do tech support. Right. You know, $9,000. Come on, Apple $1,500. I was like,

David Friedberg: what? I was like, I think that I was like, did I put two in the basket by accident? I literally thought for a second, did I put two of them in there or something? And it was 1499 or 1599 for the two terabyte or maybe it was one terabyte. And because I would say a third of problems when I do

SPEAKER_52: tech support, our memory, a third, our connectivity and a third or other, you know, like rebooting memory, whatever errors. I mean, I'm holding on to my iPhone with my cold dead hands at this point.

Jason Calacanis: Like I'm not, that is absurd. I mean, I'm on the 12, I have the iPhone 12 mini, but I'm like, I'll replace them to the point now where, I mean, it is, it is not an easy, like an impulse, you know, you're not just going to upgrade because it's about 700 bucks and that's what you paid before, which was already absurd, but at least you're used to paying it. Now I'm like, I'll replace the freaking battery in this thing. I'm calling the genie spark. Bluetooth won't work.

David Friedberg: Like it's not a mindless. I agree with you now. Like I used to always tell everybody like, listen, it's a thousand bucks. It's 800 bucks. You trade it in, you get half the money back. I would literally get the newest one every year. And I would be like, listen, if it's 900 bucks and I'm getting 400 bucks back, it's 500 a year for a phone. It's a buck 50 a day. I'm on this thing a couple hours a day. It's worth it to have the best one. And listen, I'm in the tech business.

SPEAKER_26: I need to be on the best one. Yeah. I agree. I'm now looking at it going, maybe I get six more months out of this and it's not $4 a day. Yeah.

David Friedberg: Cause I know we're at like, if you were, if you were to get 500 bucks back and it was a thousand

SPEAKER_52: dollars and you replace it every year, it's $3 and change a day, or maybe it's three bucks a day.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah. It's still a pretty good deal, but. And when it starts to be 1500 bucks and also you start to consider like, if you like me have started to have a little more awareness of the impact on the environment every time you get rid of a phone, I mean, at least now they're taking them back and they might recycle them. But every time I buy a new one, that's a phone they have to make with cobalt and nickel and rare earth, you know, it's like a lot of materials go into that that aren't like,

SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to be environmental buzzkill over here, but it, but I, you know, I do two considerations together have definitely made me pause a lot more.

SPEAKER_10: I, and you know what? It sounds silly as well, but I'm also like, and these goddamn boxes, like why apple do I have to get a giant expensive paper plastic wrap box? I don't care about the unboxing experience, right? Like literally they should just come in a little sleeve that protects it made out of paper. They should have 50 of them stacked in a tiny box and forget about these

SPEAKER_210: goddamn boxes, everybody. So true. I know that Steve jobs pick it up, just put it in a paper bag, man.

SPEAKER_214: Yeah, we're done here. Like just hand it to me. I don't need my toothpaste is in a tube and I don't

SPEAKER_00: need a box around it with plastic around that. Every single part of it has plastic around it. Every part. Like, come on. I know the packaging situation with Apple in particular is like,

SPEAKER_66: at this point, like, come on. No. You know what? And Apple's so full of BS, because they're like, oh, and by the way, I'm Tim Cook on the roof of the $6 billion building. We just did something for you. We're not giving you a charger anymore because we know you have one.

SPEAKER_67: It's better for the environment. And I'm like, but you're still putting it in a giant freaking box wrapped in plastic wrapped in plastic inside with layers and like who wants the manual? Have you ever looked at any of the paperwork in your phone? No. Right in the garbage. They all do the same thing.

SPEAKER_13: You transfer it with the information. It's an identical phone. Like, come on. It's so dumb.

SPEAKER_66: Yeah, I totally agree. This is a message to Tim Cook. Two types of ordering. You can order unboxed and you and you get $10 in credits in the App Store. Box. You don't get the $10. Right? Yeah. Now you're it's costing you seven. That $7 goes to app developers.

SPEAKER_67: Just give me a $10 credit on my phone for some App Store stuff. And we're good. Yeah. And the same thing is for app. I don't know if you started doing this on Amazon. Did you

David Friedberg: say you could pick a prime day? You can pick a delivery day and then you get a credit. Yeah. So no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's that which is like bundle it and they'll give you a dollar in like digital credits. There's another thing they're doing, which is called Prime Day. You pick what day of the week you want to get a big box from Amazon and everything you order

SPEAKER_89: gets bundled by default into that box. Kind of cool. That's good. I like that. Yeah, because

Jason Calacanis: too many boxes. Yeah. It's really annoying. I mean, it's really interesting. There's just, there's been this rising conversation about the idea of circularity, a circular economy, which is how does stuff go back in, right? Like, does it get recycled at the end of life? Is there a way to dispose of it? That doesn't make me feel like an hole as a consumer. And what's driving that,

SPEAKER_00: obviously is like, sure money and packaging is a hugely like cost intensive part of production, but also consumers like us being like, Hey, it's crappy customer service. If you leave me with a pile of trash that fills up my tiny little California can or that I can't recycle, which is unacceptable. I just think it's so interesting as a consumer proposition for us to be like,

SPEAKER_52: everybody has to do my move. This is my move. This is my little silent protest. I've been doing for years. I go to the apps Apple store. Yeah, I buy whatever I'm going to get. I unbox it in the store.

David Friedberg: I put the entire MacBook Detrius there. I unpack my iPhone. I leave it on the counter. And the person's

SPEAKER_188: like, Oh, you forgot your box. I'm like, No, I didn't. And I'm like, you could throw that away. I don't need it. And I leave it there. That is so smart. It is such a power move.

SPEAKER_15: Because literally, they don't know what to do. So here is your protest, everybody. So good. That's so good. Every time you go to the Apple store,

SPEAKER_66: I want you to unbox everything. And if you bought six things, unbox all six things, because they love that place to be clean. And leave it all over them. You know, like,

SPEAKER_67: put it where the watches are. Because that's a beautiful stand. You know, when they have all the watches later, I just cover everything. And all that,

SPEAKER_98: all that trashy little plastic, just like, we're on so good film that the film on the camera that,

David Friedberg: you know, I do this literally every time. They look at me like I'm crazy. They're like,

SPEAKER_89: Oh, okay. Oh, that's incredible. So I chose violence. Yep. That's my own little social proof protest. It's freaking beautiful. Freaking beautiful. It does work. It literally works.

SPEAKER_00: It's all look, consumers still have a lot of power. And this is taking, you got to use it every way you can to make this stuff. However, I will say that the chat pointed out that there are laws, I believe, maybe not everywhere. I lost this comment, because it's going so fast.

Jason Calacanis: Let's say that Josh got says it's law that a manual has to accompany an electronic device.

SPEAKER_241: Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. But it could still be

David Friedberg: that they give you the option. I like the option. Would you like frustration free packaging? What would you like to be frustrated? Would you like the packaging? So when you go to the store for the most popular items,

SPEAKER_67: they should just hand it to you. And like you I love the idea of like a little paper, easy to rip eyes, you open it up and your unboxing is the experience of like,

SPEAKER_16: opening up a chocolate bar, right? Make it like opening up the golden ticket chocolate bar.

SPEAKER_174: Yeah, because you know, Apple can make it pretty. They can come up with a way to make it beautiful. And it makes it sound good. Make it that paper that dissolves in water like, you know,

SPEAKER_89: or the sound the nice crisp sound of ripping, you know, nice parchment paper. Yes, that would be

David Friedberg: so nice. I love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_141: We got a startup of the week. This the show is this week at startups. We talk about all these big

SPEAKER_67: companies. But I said to the production team, our producers, get us some startups. So they found a great startup. I am fascinated by this one. Let me tee it up for you, Molly. We have a startup of the day. And we're going to try to do this every day. We won't succeed. But if we can do it three or four days a week, that'd be great. So this startup is called Metafy M E T A F Y. And they do live coaching, not for math, not for race car driving or tennis or golf. We've seen those things before.

David Friedberg: What they're doing is one on one live coaching for video games, which I need, because, you know, I am trying to get better at some of these new games. And I don't want to play Fortnite. And then with one of my nephews or nieces or something get demolished, I would pay 50 bucks, 25 bucks an hour to have somebody just level me up very quickly. So they connect gaming coaches to those who want to learn how to get better with games like StarCraft all the way to sports betting, which is super cool. I am going to get StarCraft 2 coaching. I am signing up for this. And I can't wait to because I only play Protoss. I don't play any of the other ones. I don't read the manual. I just have a good time. And I stay in the Silver League. And I'm happy. But they make money by charging

SPEAKER_52: students a 5% fee, not by taking a cut of the coaches income, which is kind of nice.

Jason Calacanis: Interesting. Well, and also that incentivizes them. I mean, it's they're talking about getting coaching from pro gamers. So there's that benefit too, which is like, you can sign up to literally see the person that you watch in an esports tournament, maybe coach you that's a big deal. Mm hmm. In, you know, certain communities who are really, really, really into gaming and literally that know the names of esports players, which, you know, I shouldn't laugh. I mean, a lot of us know the name of, I mean, we all know Ninja, like there's something that everybody knows dream. Um, this, before I get to this actual startup, though, this made me think of another reason why a you would want to do this and why PC gaming, I think has been on the rise. And that is streaming. So everybody wants to be Twitch streaming. And it's so much easier on a PC than it is on a console. And so I think that that has probably also driven people to PC gaming and

SPEAKER_00: also would drive them to want to do this because when you're streaming, if you're streaming onto YouTube or you're streaming onto Twitch, you do not want to get killed over and over.

SPEAKER_06: No, don't be a Jerry. They will destroy you. We all know how hard it is to eat healthy when you're working crazy hours, but thankfully real good foods is working hard to help. They make nutritious foods more accessible to improve your health. And they're one of the fastest growing frozen food brands in the U S I've tried their foods. They're amazing, delicious, really well done. In fact, they just went public back in November under the ticker symbol RGF. So congrats to the team over there on their IPO. And they make all the foods you love Italian entrees, pizza, Mexican breakfast sandwiches. I've had the pizza. Very good. All 100% grain free, low in carbs and high in protein. You know, that whole thing that makes you lose a little bit of weight and a little bit healthier. I'm doing it. It's working and it's all made from real food ingredients. Real good foods is perfect. If you're trying to cut back on those carbs, like I am, or get more protein from real food, which I'm also trying to do. Maybe you're just trying to eat healthy in general. And this is a great option as opposed to maybe, you know, ordering something in that's not as good for you. So they are now available in the freezer sections at Costco, Walmart, target, and most grocery stores nationwide. And a big goal of theirs is to support food banks across the U S by donating 1 million nutritious meals. So here's a call to action for you to go to real good foods.com and use the code twist for $15 off. Learn more about real good foods at real good foods.com and follow them on social

SPEAKER_263: real good foods at real good foods. Great job. Real good foods. Really enjoyed the product.

SPEAKER_134: This is a very significant raise. They're calling it a series a $25 million. It was led by tiger global.

David Friedberg: So that means I would put the value of this company at $125 million after the $25 million was put in. So the $100, this is my guess. I don't know the valuation, but if it's a series A, the investors probably want to own 20%. So $25 million, 20%, you know, would be $125 million total value. So $100 pre companies worth $100 million, you put the $25 million in. Now the company has $25 million in their bank account. The value of the company, $100 value of the $25 million, still $25 million, $125 million,

SPEAKER_67: is what I'm going to guess. Alexis O'Hanian, a friend of the pod, co founder of Reddit, co founder of initialized capital, who now has his own firm called 776 was also, I guess, leading the round with tiger, according to our notes, a lot of angel investors in there, like our friend of all from Angeles, Steve Galanis, from cameo, who's been on the pod. They're putting a million dollars toward a fund that will invest over the next 24 months into tournaments and stuff like that. So that's great. Josh Fabian is the founder. And here's a quote from crunch base. I guess crunch base now competes with tech crunch to cover startups. It's kind of funny. They spun crunch base out of tech crunch. I've been pretty honest about how I feel about venture capital. And generally, it's not good. Tiger gives me access to capital and they stay the bleep out of my way. So I guess this

SPEAKER_52: is part of the whole anti venture capital, which is kind of silly, to be honest, like venture capitalists are overwhelmingly supportive and awesome. And so, you know, for the bad behavior by venture capitalists or the annoying behavior venture capitalists is like less than 10%. I would argue,

SPEAKER_132: actually, since I've been on both sides of the table, that I would say bad behavior by founders,

SPEAKER_203: slightly more than bad behavior by venture capitalists. Yeah, yeah. On a percentage basis.

SPEAKER_00: I mean, I look, I, it seems to me, I could understand why in a hot market, a super competitive

Jason Calacanis: market where you're like, I can raise money this way or that way or a Dow or this or that, that like, there's, there's increasing, it seems to me that there is increasing resentment about the idea of the ownership, right? Taking ownership in the company, which like, okay, when the market crashes,

SPEAKER_00: and there's no other way to make money, like, you know, to me, this is the market sentiment is a side effect of yes. And also the idea that, that startup founders feel like they have been pushed to make

Jason Calacanis: business decisions that they might not have otherwise made so that the venture capitalists

SPEAKER_276: can get these big returns. Yes, these are all true statements and, and, and the year of end,

David Friedberg: word of the year 2022 22. But here's the thing, you're absolutely right. This is peak market behavior when people either don't, you know, raise at high levels, are nagging venture capitalists, or generally blowing through money, you know, like drunken sailors. It's a peak market. And, you know, this kind of entitlement, you know, in Josh's statement here, I'm not saying he's an entitled person, but it's a little obnoxious as a comment, and a little, it sounds a little entitled, it's kind

SPEAKER_67: of a bad look. You know, if he needs money, it's, you know, he's certainly going to go to venture capitalists to get it, like if the company needed to get a bridge or something. But here's the truth.

SPEAKER_66: If you really don't like venture capitalists, and you don't like going fast, and you like going slow and methodical, build off revenue. Yeah, build a bootstrap business. That is an option. Our friend, Alex, who had a really good appearance last week, Alex is great at Alex. Yeah.

SPEAKER_67: Yeah. He tweeted, Medify raised 25 million cool company would have loved it when I was less okay with being terrible at games. Yeah, that is true. It makes childhood me happy that games are no longer

SPEAKER_63: this thing that only we nerds do, but something that everyone can enjoy. Well, 100% agree.

SPEAKER_00: I think that's totally true. And also, I would say, I think there's a bigger business story here, too, that we shouldn't forget. Like, this isn't just about making people able to have more fun when they're playing games. Like, let's go back to the part where this company is also going to put this

Jason Calacanis: capital to invest into competitive tournaments and other gaming community events. This is about

SPEAKER_00: creating future creators, right? It's about growing the entire streaming gaming ecosystem, so that these these people who are learning how to play games better from pros can become pros, or at least that is the money off of. And that that is what like, if I were looking at this, I'd be like, Well, that's cool. You can learn how to be a better gamer. But like, how are you gonna make a

Jason Calacanis: billion dollars? See, I'm learning? Yeah, the way you make a billion dollars is that you start to create a bigger and bigger and bigger gaming ecosystem, so that more people want to do this, you grow the pie. But this is this is actually fundamentally a gaming and a creator economy

David Friedberg: story, I think. Absolutely. Yes, there. That is the dream for a lot of young folks. They want to be YouTubers, they want to be Mr. Beast, or they want to be ninja. They want to be able to make money off of this. And let's face it, even if you make but, you know, three or $4,000 a month, it's it's enough if you are living not in a major city, to sustainably live by playing games. And, you know, when we talk about, Oh, what are people going to do for a living? The fact that there are so many streamers, or people on Cameo or people on YouTube, or people doing podcasts that are making enough money to survive, it's almost like the Mendici family, you know, in Florence, like, we have this new Mendici kind of effect where people are able to do art, be able to pursue their passion, whether it's a podcast or being, you know, a tick tock entertain a comedian, somebody who does impersonations, somebody who does video games and streaming, and you can kind of make enough to exist as that artist. And that's pretty cool, isn't it? That actually is such a nice way to put it

Jason Calacanis: like it really we're like, there are patrons. I mean, that's the idea that Patreon is built on. But also, there are patrons that come in all kinds of different forms. And it's, I mean, you look at like, China actually has perfected and really advanced this kind of digital creator economy with purchasing digital goods, giving gifts, you know, tipping creators and

SPEAKER_00: live streamers. And I do think that it is just becoming bigger and bigger. And it is kind of a nice way to look at it that like, there are lots of ways for you to have a job that might not have

Jason Calacanis: traditionally been considered a job. And these streamers aren't just in some cases, making a pretty good living like, they're making a lot remember when there was a twitch hack and all of the salaries were leaked, like the amounts of streamers making six figures like they're making

SPEAKER_48: more than they would if they had a law degree, several are making I'd say at least 10 or 15 are

SPEAKER_10: making seven figures. Yeah, I mean, so even just taking those out, you know, you start to have this,

David Friedberg: like, you know, they talk about the long tail. Yeah, I think there's like this fat middle that's emerging, right. And the fat middle is like, I don't need to get a job. And the long tail is I have spending money. And the top fat part of the tail, you know, the other, yeah, the top of the tail is people who are like, you know, millionaires. But I just think they're increasingly making this middle part that is, you know, okay, we I have enough money to live doing this, it's pretty freaking compelling, I have to say. It is really. And also, next time you're on a podcast where

Jason Calacanis: someone is talking about how people just don't want to work anymore. The fact is, people have a

SPEAKER_00: lot of options to work in a lot of better ways that are very fulfilling. I mean, the comparison to the I think it's the Medici's in Italy, but that comparison is really apt, right? If you can do this, as opposed to getting yelled at in a restaurant behind a counter, or driving a truck, you're going to do

SPEAKER_02: this. And increasingly, that's going to be an option, but it's not going to show up in the jobs

SPEAKER_301: report. It's not going to show up as employment. I don't think OnlyFans is showing up in the jobs report or Twitch streamers, right? You know, putting all judgments aside of how you feel about

SPEAKER_67: adult workers or whatever. But you know, if you just look at it, you're right that those don't show

SPEAKER_66: up and you know, the these folks could also maybe do DoorDash two days a week and make some money from

SPEAKER_67: that and do streaming for three days a week. Yeah, all of these put pressure on the people who have arduous jobs to pay a fair price for the pain of having to pack boxes at an Amazon warehouse every day and or like you're saying having a bad boss and that's good for the economy. We have an investment in a company. I'll just give a shout out to them blaze b l a y z e.io. We can pull it up on the

David Friedberg: screen. And they're doing one on one coaching not for video games. But this will blow your mind. They're doing they have coaches now across soccer, basketball, you know, partying, motorcycle, car racing, all these different things. And what's great about it is, you know, when I met the founder, car racing is extremely expensive. Car racing is like, you know, $5,000 to have somebody go out with you for the weekend and make you better at it. But you can videotape your videotaping your car racing. Anyway, they can give you tips for you know, whatever 200 bucks. And they can draw on the video. And you kind of get it like email, you know, asynchronously. Yeah. And the person who's the coach doesn't have to drive to your, you know, racetrack spend a week with you. So there's kind of

SPEAKER_00: like this is happening all over the place. I mean, I just think that we are so everybody we're like, right now, our society is like proto Neo in the matrix, right? Like we're so close to being because if you need to know something at this point, that thing is on YouTube, or that thing is on a coaching app. Like, we're all just, I mean, we talked about the future of work. And I think actually that our startup of the day Medify, that's an investment in the future of work, even though it sounds like a video game startup. Yeah. But the future of education is what we should really be talking about. Because like, what are you going to learn at school at this point, practically jack into the back of your head? I know Kung Fu. Yeah. I mean, it literally is like

David Friedberg: that. Anytime I have a problem with a device, I don't even like when I was just unpacking a humidifier because it's up in the mountains and it's dry air. And I was like, Okay, I'm going to try to set this up just, you know, by looking at it. And then I was just like, I typed the name of the company, you know, set up on YouTube. Boom, there's a video, I go to that video, I put it on 2x speed,

SPEAKER_16: but you can do that now on YouTube. And I just watched this person set it up. While I set up,

David Friedberg: I didn't even look at the manual. And then you have a problem with your dishwasher or whatever device it is, you just type it into YouTube, somebody has made a video where they were frustrated by something, spent two hours figured it out, and then they shared it in 90 seconds.

SPEAKER_00: And now you're done. It's so great. Totally. And that's, you know, I mean, just the how to do category on YouTube, like the idea, I mean, my boyfriend built me this studio that you see right now had never built a thing, built an entire room, like electrical, got some help with drywall,

Jason Calacanis: you know, now is like, I'm gonna build a sauna. I'm like, okay, there will be 10 to 20,000 videos on YouTube that are good or 200,000 videos on how to build a sauna. So I just I like, I find it all so fascinating in terms of creating options. Somebody in the chat was like UBI incoming. Why would it?

SPEAKER_312: Why would it have to come? You can now make a job out of any frickin thing on the internet. It's

SPEAKER_58: amazing. Find your passion. Yeah, UBI is like, I we had a giant you listen, I don't have a problem with,

SPEAKER_67: you know, people having a tough time getting unemployment or whatever. What I would say about UBI is we had an experiment for the last two years, in some cases that was UBIS or adjacent, right? And what happens when money drops from the sky, and people have nothing to do, like, things get weird, they start buying NFTs, you know, or people start buying drugs and overdose or, you know, people need to have meaning and purpose in life. And that's the problem I have with UBI is, okay, what's your purpose? Why do you get out of bed? And not everybody, but we all have people in our lives who, you know, maybe they had a trust fund or something, or they had like money gifted to them.

SPEAKER_316: Do they? Are they happy in life? Do they have purpose? Do they wake up every day? And are they happy? Maybe not, you know, maybe not.

Jason Calacanis: I didn't really mean to start a UBI conversation. I think that's sort of true. I think there are people who won't want to, I think we probably need a baseline of support. What we did see also during the pandemic in our great UBI experiment is like, child hunger in the United States was cut in half. Right. That was great. I mean, so there were some really true and people were like, wow, I'm able to pay my rent. And because I have a baseline of support that keeps me in my house,

SPEAKER_00: I can get a job where previously I was too unstable to get a job. So like, there's pros and cons, obviously, but I guess what I mean to say is that it has always been the way of America and humans to create more work. Right? Yes. Like, so we have this big freak out about which is, you know, we're like, what's gonna happen when robots take jobs? Exactly. And AI takes jobs and whatever. And it's like, people are gonna make money playing video games. You could argue about the pros and cons of that for sure. But people are finding, like, the river finds a way.

David Friedberg: Exactly. And like, as but one example, I'm a big Knickerbocker fan. I love my Knicks. And my fan CP, the franchise, a franchise, created Knicks fan TV on YouTube after every game. And then once a week, and when this breaking news, he talks about the Knicks. And you know, he has a community just like we do here on YouTube. And I've met all these friends. And they have this like super chat feature. We don't turn around here because we have advertising, we don't need the money. But where you can double click and give and people give him super chats while he's talking and he reads the super chats for five bucks. But when the Knicks win, I'm so happy that he does this probably 20 times a year, I give him 50 or 100 bucks. Now, like, I'm giving him $1,000 probably a year. And I look at it as

SPEAKER_67: I'm a patron. If I went to dinner, that would be what this would cost me and I'm getting as much entertainment as going out to dinner. I just want to see him keep going. Right. And there's other people like Chuck D the famous rapper musician, he gives 25 bucks 50 bucks, you know, every other game. And we're just trying to keep this guy doing it right. And hopefully he'll be able to quit his job. And then we have this incredible Nick show that we get to watch. Yeah. And there's got to be another 20 or 30 fans who put up $2 to $20 tips as well. So I got to think he's making maybe $500 to $1,000 every episode with 80 games a year, you know, okay, maybe we're getting there. Maybe we're getting to 40 grand or 60 grand, you know, which is, you know, I don't know enough for somebody to

SPEAKER_60: quit their job, but getting close. Yeah. Monetize your interests, everybody coming up. So let's

SPEAKER_00: keep talking tech news. Yeah. The latest this is just sort of interesting and also a very 2022 sentence. Coinbase added Shopify CEO Toby Lukey to its board, which is interesting for lots of reasons.

Jason Calacanis: Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong announced the appointment saying Toby's experience as a founder and CEO scaling his business from a small niche online marketplace into what has become a critical

SPEAKER_07: backbone of global e-commerce will help guide Coinbase as we seek to bring crypto to more people

David Friedberg: and businesses around the world. That's great. We have seen this before. Zuckerberg had Mark Andreessen famously on the board, who is a founder who turned into a venture capitalist, Peter Thiel on the board, founder, you know, of PayPal, who turned into a venture capitalist. And then he also added the

SPEAKER_332: door dash CEO, I think to the board, Tony. And I think he already had the Dropbox. Did he have Dropbox?

SPEAKER_316: Uh, CEO drew Houston on the board. So anyway, if you're the founder of a company, and you want to

SPEAKER_58: have like really good discussions around your board, like capital allocators are great. Capital allocators

SPEAKER_67: are previously founders have both. And then people who are at scale, it's pretty great. The one thing I

SPEAKER_66: will say about this is, it's going to be a lot more men on boards. I was a lot of white men said it. I

SPEAKER_00: was like, Do they have any ladies on that board? But probably not. Right? So reputation is, here's the

SPEAKER_66: thing. The in the in the if you look at diversity, let's just take gender as one portion in Silicon

SPEAKER_63: Valley. It's gotten a lot better over the last 10 years, everybody would agree the number of companies

SPEAKER_66: being led by women is just exploded. That being said, there is a trailer here, which is, if you're

SPEAKER_67: only going to pick people who've been on public boards, or whatever, you know, there's a trailing 10 year 20 year lag, just like there are for venture funds. So I always encourage people when

David Friedberg: they're looking at diversity statistics, you have to look at the number and the percentage of people who've been funded recently, not just the dollar amounts, right? Because the dollar amounts are trailing indicators, right? That's which companies survive, which means which companies are 10 plus years old. And so, you know, in this case, I think if you're only going to pick CEOs of successful public companies, it's going to look like 20 2005 to 2010, or earlier. So you're not going to have as much

SPEAKER_52: diversity.

Jason Calacanis: I would say I think the other aspect of this that I find interesting is that, you know, I waded into this

SPEAKER_00: once on Twitter, I don't think we've had a full fledged conversation about crypto targeting men so

Jason Calacanis: specifically as its primary audience and demographic, right? Not even targeting, but like crypto, it's

SPEAKER_330: basically targeting it, or is it just turned out that way? Because they were like, it's underground in a

SPEAKER_00: lot of like, dudes are into it, right? I mean, there's the crypto bro concept. And then there was a Twitter thread that I jumped in on that was basically like, everybody I'm talking to in the crypto space is going into go is heavily targeting sports marketing, which is code for looking for men, right? Like, I'm a huge sports fan, and also a longtime business journalist. And if you say that you're going to sports marketing, like, this was around the time of the crypto.com arena name change. Yeah. And so it's sort of like if there's clearly a target demo here, that is well defined, but

SPEAKER_07: potentially limiting, it's limiting.

SPEAKER_347: I think it might not be as nefarious as you think. I don't think it's nefarious at all.

David Friedberg: Oh, okay. I think it's horrible. Actually, now that I realize it is horribly nefarious, you know what's happening? It's crypto is more analogous to gambling than it is to startup investing or investing in stocks, right? So if that's the case, who bets on sports, that's overwhelmingly a male behavior, you know, for whatever

SPEAKER_67: reason, maybe women are too smart to waste money, you know, maybe they think about the long term consequences of things. I don't know the, you know, Darwinian nature of why men are so apt to gamble

David Friedberg: versus women. But that's what that that's what this indicates to me in terms of why crypto is so appealing to men or why they might be doubling down and advertising to men.

SPEAKER_97: Right. And then you do start to get without a doubt, right, then you start to get a population, like you

SPEAKER_00: start to get behaviors, I would say that like, at this point, seven out of the 10 rando trolls who show

SPEAKER_73: up have dot ETH as their display name, like you start to get it in pockets. There are toxicity pockets.

SPEAKER_00: It can be incredibly toxic, there's no doubt. And so then you have this like kind of crypto bro culture, and it gets perpetuated. And the more like, dudes you add to your board, the more you continue to perpetuate that culture. And listen, I'm not so much complaining about the culture, as I am pointing out that as a business strategy, it's limiting, right? There's only if you can't grow beyond a certain population. When you are claiming that you're going to decentrify,

SPEAKER_08: decentralize and revolutionize finance. Like, it's a it's a narrow link.

SPEAKER_52: There was at that famous Bitcoin conference in 2021. There was a dude. And let me say that whole conference was dudes on stage. I mean, it might have been literally like 97% dudes, based on what I saw, somebody could fact check me on that one. But they have this concept of being a Bitcoin maximalist.

David Friedberg: And then they have a subset of that, which is a smaller subset for sure, which is Bitcoin toxicity. And what that doctrine states, and it is a doctrine. And this guy, Nick ZM, kind of explained it. And he

SPEAKER_301: explained toxic maximalism is important for the survival of Bitcoin, that you have to attack

SPEAKER_354: anybody who attacked Bitcoin. Yes. And that is like, really gross. And that's why they create

SPEAKER_67: all of these anonymous accounts that are under a year old that have no followers, but that follow 100 people who will reply to you if you say anything negative about Bitcoin, the explicit strategy in this group of people is to reply to you and say have fun being poor, okay, boomer, whatever, or attack your physical look like they did for me. This is before I lost the weight. And it was, you know, like, you're fat, you're old, you're dumb, have fun being poor. And I'm like, I'm not poor, I own over a million dollars worth of Bitcoins. I'm just saying, like, there could be another technology that would be better than Bitcoin. And like, when I took that position, which is a really strong position, like, all technology gets replaced with better technology, Bitcoin will be replaced at some point, there's a 100% chance of that with a better technology. All you have the bet you're making is when that happens. Is that going to happen in five years or 15 years? But it's between those two numbers in my mind. Yeah, it's between those two

SPEAKER_52: numbers, right? Like, pick a technology, like, almost all of them get replaced, or commodified,

David Friedberg: or commodified within five to 15 years. Yeah, with very rare exceptions, you know. And so, anyway, I agree with you. It's pretty toxic. But all that being said, back to this story, anything away from Toby. No, I don't think either of these guys are toxic. I actually, we never talked

SPEAKER_132: about the coinbase. Don't bring your I wasn't here, then you weren't here back then. But that would have

SPEAKER_194: been an explosive discussion. Because I was kind of like, I kind of agree that like, for startups,

David Friedberg: kind of important that they don't take on every single issue. And coinbase has objectively done

SPEAKER_67: much better since they said, do not bring social issues to work as a business. Now, is that good for society or not? That's a whole nother story. But you know, I know it's hard. I'm not saying people's I think his I love the fact that Brian did not apologize, double down and just said, listen, don't work here. And it's kind of worked well, if you actually care about social justice issues, like, don't go work there. He doesn't want to talk about it. Right? He created a filter,

SPEAKER_00: for sure. He's set the tone of the culture and gave the employees an option to leave. And they were in a market where people had plenty of options. So like, and he gave them huge severance. He gave, right. That was the power move. You do you you're the CEO of a private company, you can absolutely do that 100%. And to me, that is exactly though, the kind of it just raises the same question for me, which is do you want your audience to get bigger or not? Do you want your customer base to get bigger? Do you want maximum hiring options? And do you want maximum customer possibility or not?

SPEAKER_376: And the answer is no. The answer is no. The answer is a hard no. Like, we want people to work

SPEAKER_67: here who care who are obsessed with the global financial system. And that's it. And that's what he said. Yeah, you know, and like, so if you care about those things, like this, not the guy to work

SPEAKER_07: for. Yeah, I mean, props for being honest, man. Love it. Don't make people guess. Don't make people

SPEAKER_383: guess. I only have five minutes. And I do not want to cut this short, because this story is

David Friedberg: amazing. That's such a good story. Let's just tease ahead. All right, here's what happened. It was 2010. Twitter was a new thing. The iPad was coming out. Everybody knew it was coming out.

SPEAKER_16: Yeah, I had a three month old, no two month old. Yeah, you know, in the room next door. And it was like two in the morning and changing diapers or whatever. In LA. I was sitting there in bed with my wife and I was on this Twitter thing. And I was like, I'm going to tell everybody that I have the

SPEAKER_52: iPad that's coming out tomorrow at this keynote because everybody knew was coming out of the keynote

David Friedberg: that had that much had leaked. And I proceeded to describe the iPad that Steve Jobs had given

SPEAKER_52: me under NDA and that at midnight the NDA ended so I could talk about it. Because they had I think I said like they made a mistake on the NDA. They put the 26 or whatever. And I described a product that

David Friedberg: could not possibly exist in 2010, which is it had two cameras on it. The battery lasted like three days.

SPEAKER_67: It had was powered by solar power, all of them connected together in a mesh network to create a free internet access for everybody globally. And that it had a DVR that could store like 100 hours. And it had an AI assistant, you could talk to it. This is long before Siri. And I came out with the most ridiculous tech specs that would have drained a battery in 2010 in 15 minutes. And that had an HD tuner in it. So you could and it recorded like every state anyway, it was like a crazy spec. And like, I just thought it was so obvious that this was a joke. Um, especially because I said it had, um, fingerprint security on it, which didn't exist at the time. And that it had essentially like thumb pads on it where it was like Nintendo we like and you could play Farmville. And I was playing Farmville over it and the farms would go over three or four iPads and you could build a you could put four iPads

David Friedberg: together and make a giant farm. And it would like, you know, do it at the bezel or whatever. I just came up with the most absurd specs. And then I fell asleep. And then I fell asleep.

SPEAKER_194: And my wife goes, do you think you should really do that? You might piss off Steve jobs on fire. And I'm not sure why I

SPEAKER_16: woke up in the morning, I kid you not with 100 phone calls and text messages and insanity and we will tell that story on tomorrow's show. Speaker 1 See you then. Speaker 1 Bye bye. Speaker 1 Stick around. Speaker 1 Stick around. It's insane.

SPEAKER_402: Speaker 1 Hey guys, Rachel reporting here on February 14th and 15th, we'll be hosting a Founder University intensive. This is a two day program for founders. Now this course is only open

SPEAKER_404: to women founders. Speaker 1 We'll be hosting a course open to everyone on May 9th and 10th. You can apply for both at founder.university. And applications for the longer 12 week Founder

SPEAKER_405: University program are due on February 14th. And you can also apply for those at founder.university.

SPEAKER_407: Follow Jason and Molly on Twitter at Jason and at Molly Wood.

SPEAKER_408: Speaker 1 If you're not a boomer and prefer TikTok, search for this week in startups to find the fan account at this underscore week underscore

SPEAKER_410: in underscore startups and our official account at TWI startups. But honestly, the fan account is way

SPEAKER_411: better than ours. And if you're still not tired of hearing from Jason six days a week,

SPEAKER_412: you can hear and read his book angel at angel the book.com slash audible.