SPEAKER_00: Today's episode of This Week in Startups is brought to you by MailChimp. Manage lists with up to 2,000 subscribers and send 12,000 emails per month for free with MailChimp. And by Sourcebits. Visit www.sourcebits.com to begin your mobile app

SPEAKER_01: development journey. Hey everybody, it's This Week in Startups. It's our news roundtable. It's Friday. I'm wearing a tie. Peter Pham is with us. You know him from being a serial

SPEAKER_02: entrepreneur and he's got his new incubator here in Los Angeles. Marshall Kirkpatrick, another famous person in the internet industry. You know him from his blogging and he's got a new startup. Megan from Launch is going to read the news. And Tyler, you are absolutely positive that we're going to get an insight. We'll see what happens. You promised an insight

SPEAKER_04: right now on This Week in Startups.

SPEAKER_09: Oh, hello everybody. Hello everybody. My name is Jason Calacanis. This is the program known as

SPEAKER_02: This Week in Startups. If you're wondering what this program is about, it's about startup companies, specifically in the technology space. Internet companies, you know, like you're out of the Facebook, the Twitter, the interwebs. And on our Friday show, we do a roundtable. We talk about what's in the news with us today. Peter Pham. Peter is a serial entrepreneur and the companies include, while going backwards, Color.

SPEAKER_19: Color, Bill Shrink. Bill Shrink and Photobucket.

SPEAKER_02: So, two, great success and one, unknown yet. Color, is the jury still out? It's still early. And there was some controversy about you leaving. Color, is it controversial or not controversial? Not controversial. Why'd you leave then?

SPEAKER_22: You know, different vision.

SPEAKER_23: Different vision. That happens sometimes. No hard feelings. Still friends?

SPEAKER_24: Definitely. And still a shareholder? Very much so. Okay, so?

SPEAKER_25: Things are going great. It's a grown-up business, so you move on and you go on to the next thing. And the next thing, of course, is you're running an incubator here with Mike Jones in Los Angeles. We'll hear

SPEAKER_02: about that later. On the Skype. No, on GoToMeeting. I hope it's GoToMeeting, not Skype. Skype's on that audio. It's pretty bad. Oh, I'm trying to find a game. Is Marshall Kirkpatrick there?

SPEAKER_28: Hi, Jason. I sure am.

SPEAKER_30: Great to... Now, wait a second. ReadWriteWeb is no longer owned by Richard McManus. He sold it,

SPEAKER_33: right?

SPEAKER_32: That's the truth. Yep. Same media acquired ReadWriteWeb just a couple weeks ago after seven years

SPEAKER_35: of long, hard work by Richard and a whole crew of people. It's now part of an even bigger

SPEAKER_36: family and they're going to move on to do more bigger and better things.

SPEAKER_38: And so what does that mean for you? You still write a little bit or are you going to just...

SPEAKER_40: Yep, I'm still doing a little bit of writing for them, but far less than before and I'm not involved in the management and administration. I have moved on to build my own thing, which I'm real excited about. A startup called Plexus Engine.

SPEAKER_42: And what is that going to be? Is it announced yet or unknown?

SPEAKER_40: I have not announced much about it. If you look on my personal blog, I've written about it some, but it is a web application that discovers emerging and topic expert knowledge on any topic. Wow. It's super fun. That sounds promising. I've had a data-driven approach throughout my career and now I'm working on productizing that. Awesome. Hey, launch it at the launch conference.

SPEAKER_47: Preparation for the show.

SPEAKER_46: Launch it at the launch conference, March 7th and 8th. And that would be awesome. Hey, Tyler, how are you doing? I'm doing fine, thanks. Good. Hey, one thing I want to tell everybody about before we get into the news, and we

SPEAKER_02: do have a lot of news, is that MailChimp is the most awesome program for managing your email. You may have seen this week I wrote two emails. One about... What did I write this week? Founders define reality. Based on the Warren Bennis episode, I wrote a little bit about sort of how founders can, you know, what they really do for their teams is define

SPEAKER_25: the reality of the situation and then actually give them hope that they can get to the next milestone. And boy, did I get like, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people responding to that email. I got 20,000 people on this list. It's the way I communicate with my constituents and it's equally as important as this program. I mean, in both reach, people at different times and in different ways, email is critical. Please, please go try MailChimp. And for your business, I mean, don't be trying to manage emails in Excel spreadsheets or Google Docs. That's just a total waste of time. Don't be buying desktop software. Use software as a service. What that means is the software's in the cloud. You log in. You send your email and you get all kinds of great statistics. And one of the interesting features they just launched, which we're going to be trying in the next email, is if somebody in your email

SPEAKER_02: campaign clicks on a link, you can then categorize them in your database. So like, you know, hey, I got all these 20,000 emails. I don't know who's in what city. And when I say I'm going to London or Paris or Tokyo or New York, and I want to meet with people, well, wouldn't it be great if I could just email that segment? Now I can do that. I can send an email that says, hey, click on these links. If you're interested in what I'm doing in New York, click on this link. And then forever, I can have that person tagged in the database as a New Yorker or somebody with an interest in New York. You get the idea. You've used MailChimp before.

SPEAKER_54: They have an awesome iPhone app too.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the great things about the company is they're doing so well. This is when you bet on a winner and you pick a winner. They're doing so well that now you know that they're going to be on every platform. And you're never going to have to worry like, oh, they're going to come out with an iPad app? Of course they're going to have this feature. They're going to have that feature. These guys are in it to win it. They've got, you know, dozens and dozens of awesome developers. I can't say enough great things about the

SPEAKER_58: product. It just works. And the free plan is always free. 2,000 subscribers for 12,000 emails per month. Free. Awesome. Hey, so Megan.

SPEAKER_61: Wait, wait, wait. I noticed something here. What? The last couple of times you've done MailChimp, there was something missing. There we go. There you go.

SPEAKER_64: Thank you. It's not you. It's in my contract. I've got to. All right. Listen, I'm not monkeying around, people. I'm telling you to use MailChimp.

SPEAKER_02: Okay? She? All right. Hey, Megan. First time reading the news. No pressure. Lon couldn't make it. He's on strike. I think we can't get the contract negotiations once again have broken down. God damn it with Lon. It's always a contract. You never know with him. It's like he's at, you know, he keeps moving up in his career, and then the show takes a back burner, whatever.

SPEAKER_70: Anyway, Megan, you're going to read the news for the first time. What's the first story? Yes, indeed. The first story is the incubator debate. Andrew Clay Schaefer recently wrote in

SPEAKER_69: a blog post that he thinks the recent explosion of incubators isn't necessarily a good thing.

SPEAKER_72: Schaefer argued that unless an incubator can make hands off to investors personally or get the right audience in the room for demo day, then the value of the program is severely limited. In an article about the post, Om Malik said that he believes most incubators will end up flaming out. So a question for you guys is, do you agree with Om? Is there a glut of incubators, and are they helping or harming the startup industry?

SPEAKER_76: Well, interestingly enough, we have Peter here who just started an incubator with Mike Jones.

SPEAKER_80: To clarify, we call ourselves a studio. And I think the nomenclature of incubator, you know, the old days CMGI or Ideal Labs or B companies.

SPEAKER_30: Right now, there are people who are 25 years old who don't know what a CMGI or an Ideal Lab is.

SPEAKER_81: So, well, in today's world, it's Betaworks, Light Bank, right? They incubated Groupon.

SPEAKER_82: And so, you know, our perspective is a little different. There's accelerators, which is why

SPEAKER_81: Combinator originally called themselves an accelerator. Techstar is an accelerator. That's the three to four month class, and you get mentors, and you can have a set start date.

SPEAKER_87: So, are there too many or too few or just enough? Are they worth it or not for entrepreneurs? I mean, it's a big question.

SPEAKER_82: Looking at this, you know, six years up in the Bay Area, now coming down to LA,

SPEAKER_90: the markets are a little bit different. I mean, the entrepreneurs down here don't have the ecosystem. They don't have the mentors. They don't have, you know, people to call and run into

SPEAKER_91: on a daily basis to get that strong advice. I mean, he's critical for an emerging market. I definitely think. Look at New York four or five years ago, and, you know, I think Techstars did a tremendous job. And Betaworks, both.

SPEAKER_92: And Betaworks, absolutely. Tons of companies have emerged from them.

SPEAKER_82: Mentorships and advice and help is always necessary, and I think, you know, Mucker Labs is doing a great job. Amplify is doing a great job.

SPEAKER_94: There's six of them now in Los Angeles, and Launchpad, I guess, is the only one that's been multiple years. All of them are in the first year.

SPEAKER_82: Yeah, I mean, look, our perspective is we're a studio company. You know, we are all operators, Mike Jones, myself, Ryan Sitt, Mike McAdams, Tom Dare, there's five partners. We operate the

SPEAKER_90: company on a daily basis. We help recruit the team. I mean, there's no time set. It's not 30, 60, 90 days. We are co-founders of each and every company we're working on.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I mean, this argument that there's too many, I mean, the incubator debate is sort of predicated on, the argument that there's too many incubators is predicated on there

SPEAKER_25: being too many startups. Right. So let's work backwards from that. The bigger picture is, are we producing too many startups

SPEAKER_30: with diluted management teams? So that's a function of the fact that it's easier than ever to start them. Right. And so the question then remains, so that's the reason. And the incubators are a

SPEAKER_25: sexy place for, you know, guys who are third or fourth time burnt out, you know, founders to then go do something for their ADD that's a little bit more fun, right? It's like more fun for you to work on three or four companies at once than just one. And it also spreads the risk. And there's an economic reason why 40, 50-year-old guys and gals might want to do these and put their experience to work. And it's fun.

SPEAKER_107: I think they're not only created equal. So, you know, that's the big piece of it is that

SPEAKER_82: maybe the root of the story is there's a lot of people calling themselves accelerators or incubators. And the reality is the team behind it, right, aren't successful. They're losers.

SPEAKER_109: I mean, that's the thing I find is that there's some of these incubators and I say, who's running

SPEAKER_15: it? And the person says, it's this guy. I'd never heard of that guy. Who's running it again? What have they done? Have they had an exit? Have they raised venture capital? Oh,

SPEAKER_30: they worked as a marketing guy at a company that raised venture capital and then got merged with another company that then went out of business and is trading as an over-the-counter

SPEAKER_79: pink sheet? I mean, it's like, you do see this, right? I think I see folks that we don't know about, but maybe there's value there at the end of the day. Oh, come on now. You're being very magnanimous. I mean, you see there are losers running incubators.

SPEAKER_82: There's too many people that I think fundamentally are not helping the right types of companies.

SPEAKER_118: Right, right. And the other thing I think we start seeing is the dilution of talent is that, especially in the Bay Area, what I was starting to see in the last couple of years

SPEAKER_120: is not enough great people are kind of coming together to do one great company.

SPEAKER_122: The dilution of teams. Hey, Marshall, you've been covering this, obviously, story since

SPEAKER_87: the last couple of years. What do you think? Are we just too many incubators now? Are we weakening the ecosystem with too many weak fish, you know?

SPEAKER_40: Oh, I think that there's such a blue ocean of tech innovation that's still out there to capture that spreading out the efforts has a big upside as well in terms of innovation

SPEAKER_35: and new technologies. And if there's management training and assistance being made available from a wide variety of sources, I think there's big ups for that too. And, you know, there's certain stages in the process, like Techstars last week just released, with the Kauffman Foundation, like a global incubator application process for a whole bunch of incubators. So there will be steps taken to alleviate some of the pain points in the process.

SPEAKER_126: Yeah.

SPEAKER_127: The reality is there's three, four cities that might have an incubator problem for every city.

SPEAKER_30: You know how many cities wish they had an incubator problem? Yeah, I guess it's a high class problem is what you're saying. Like LA now has six incubators.

SPEAKER_02: And what that means-

SPEAKER_130: But the population's large and there's a ton of talent. There is, yeah.

SPEAKER_132: You know, we're seeing guys out of some of the biggest companies in LA saying, you know, I always thought about doing a startup, but I don't know-

SPEAKER_02: And you guys are like a way for them to get into the pool with some other people, like instead of just jumping into the ocean and it's like all alone and scary.

SPEAKER_82: It's just, as we all know, you know, we started companies by ourselves and without having mentors and without having people and getting advice, it's hard. And I think access to capital, especially

SPEAKER_90: in LA, if you look at the market, there's a lack of confidence with the ability to raise any money down here. And that's what I've been noticing, you know, whereas Silicon Valley,

SPEAKER_137: you can kind of go to a Coupa Cafe and run into money.

SPEAKER_02: Right. It's like almost like the, you were saying before when we were off air, like people here are asking for money and up there, you know, the VCs are asking them, can I put

SPEAKER_109: money in? It's a totally different dynamic.

SPEAKER_140: Absolutely. And the quality of the entrepreneur and the individual is the same.

SPEAKER_109: You believe the entrepreneurs are the same? Absolutely. Yeah. I think that they're close. You know, with these incubators, if you look at them

SPEAKER_25: as, I think what people are missing is, if you look at the incubators as college, you would say this is the greatest college program ever made because it's free. You have upside that is potentially unlimited and worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You have a steady job

SPEAKER_109: for at least six months or three months or a year working on it, depending on which program you're going to. And you're going to learn more in six months than you would in 60 years

SPEAKER_25: in college. So just everybody-

SPEAKER_82: DeVry to Harvard, right? I mean, the scale is there. At the end of the day, it is going

SPEAKER_145: to be an education process.

SPEAKER_46: Yeah. I think in my mind, I just look at all of them like, you know, they're all just colleges.

SPEAKER_25: They're MBA programs. And what a better way to get an MBA to actually do stuff. If you've gone through TextMars or Y Combinator or any of these programs, you are going to be much

SPEAKER_02: further along than people who go for MBAs. You're an MBA, right? No. Thank God. All right, let's do the next story.

SPEAKER_151: All right, next story. Yahoo hires Scott Thompson as CEO. Who? Scott Thompson as CEO.

SPEAKER_72: Thompson leaves a job running eBay's large PayPal online payments unit. In an interview with All Things D's Kara Swisher, Thompson says he was approached in November about the Yahoo job, although sources said it was just offered this week and took eBay by surprise. Of the position, Thompson said, its potential is still enormous, but the dialogue has not been about what the company is. I want to get this wonderful brand to be where it could be again. So as a starting point, this is a great starting point. Thompson admitted that his lack of advertising experience could be problematic, as it's Yahoo's biggest business. So the question is, was Thompson the right hire, and will he be able to make any substantial changes, or would someone with more ad experience have been a better source?

SPEAKER_158: Let's be honest. Anybody know who Scott Thompson was before the announcement? Marshall, did you know who this person was?

SPEAKER_159: I can tell you some interesting things about him, but no.

SPEAKER_160: Okay, so tell us the interesting things about him, because nobody, I don't think anybody

SPEAKER_35: really knew who was running it. That's my bad. And that's a shortcoming on our part. I mean, the guy has been managing a company that records a billion dollars in revenue every quarter.

SPEAKER_40: And you know, he's no fool. So I think he'll probably be an incredibly capable manager. He's got a financial services background, obviously, but he's also got a computer science background.

SPEAKER_35: And at PayPal, he was all about mobile. So if you believe that mobile is an important part of the the media and advertising landscape in the future, then Scott Thompson is a great experienced guy to

SPEAKER_47: bring that to Yahoo.

SPEAKER_82: What do you think, Peter? I think Marshall nailed one piece. He is an engineer. Right. I mean, that is huge. Yeah. It's either product, you're the product person, you're an engineer. Or a salesperson, Tim Armstrong. Or a salesperson. Yeah. It is, you know, that last line, right? Thompson admitted that his lack of advertising experience can be problematic. I mean, Yahoo, at the end of the day, it is a advertising company. They are the largest publisher in the world.

SPEAKER_174: I mean, yeah, Larry Page and Sergey Brin had a ton of advertising experience before they built the largest advertising platform in the world.

SPEAKER_177: I like that he's an engineer.

SPEAKER_178: Yeah, I mean, I love that. I mean, Facebook, I mean, Mark Zuckerberg. What was Mark Zuckerberg's advertising experience? I mean, if you build a product that gets great traction in the market,

SPEAKER_180: the advertising solves itself. So that's just... It's a great start that, again, having a technology background, that's huge.

SPEAKER_174: Well, the thing I liked about it was I saw in the interview, he said, you know, at PayPal,

SPEAKER_25: he spent 60% on building the current platform and maintaining it or whatever, 30% on what was coming next, and 10% on speculative products. Which I don't think I ever heard Carol Bartz talk about what their product strategy was, ever.

SPEAKER_183: Ever.

SPEAKER_25: You know, she fought with Mike Harrington, famously. You know, like, she, you know, got into it with Kara Swisher and said, why not talk about product?

SPEAKER_187: Yeah.

SPEAKER_25: You know, and this, I think this is one of the lessons here is like, a product-driven person is going to attract other product-driven people. Right. So he's going to, I think, get some respect from potential hires and hopefully retain,

SPEAKER_189: you know, some talent.

SPEAKER_114: Some talent. Yeah, but you kind of wonder what talent is left at Yahoo. It's, I don't know.

SPEAKER_25: At this point, I mean, if you have this many incubators, if you have any hustle, and this much angel investing, wouldn't you leave Yahoo?

SPEAKER_191: Well, I think, well, in the valley, in the valley, right? I mean, they're getting recruited by Google. They're getting recruited by Twitter. They're getting recruited by Facebook. Airbnb.

SPEAKER_140: I mean, there's a lot of great opportunities out there. Right. And, you know, I think the ones that choose still bleed purple.

SPEAKER_02: I guess so. And it just feels like, if you're working at Yahoo, I wonder, like, what are you

SPEAKER_201: thinking? Like, is all these other opportunities around you?

SPEAKER_82: It's still a massive property. It's still, I still use, I mean, I think, I don't know why I still use it for fantasy football. Yeah.

SPEAKER_178: But the management turmoil, it's just, you got to wonder, with all that management turmoil. Is it still 500 million uniques?

SPEAKER_208: Yeah. It's something crazy. I mean, yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's. I guess mems, yeah. Okay, let's hear the next one.

SPEAKER_69: Google Plus sees massive membership growth.

SPEAKER_72: Google Plus recently had its strongest month ever, and at least according to one analyst, is on track to reach 400 million users by the end of the year.

SPEAKER_211: Are you going to read this whole entire thing?

SPEAKER_214: It is quite long, so I'll probably have to cut it out.

SPEAKER_105: Pick your favorite two bullets, but just a little tip on reading the news. For sure. Pick two.

SPEAKER_214: Pick two. Okay, for sure. So, um. I mean, it's basically, I feel like I'm reading the Wall Street Journal here. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_69: It's quite lengthy, for sure. Experian Hitwise reported Monday that Google's social networking site experienced a huge

SPEAKER_72: traffic jump in December, and more than doubled its traffic in just one month. Let's see. This growth rate is significant since Facebook, which is now at 800 million users, didn't pass 60 million members until nearly four years after its debut. At this rate, Alan predicts Google Plus will reach 400 million users by the end of 2012. What? Go ahead. So, do you think Google Plus membership will pass Facebook in the future, and will the increase in Android phone sales be a big contributing factor to Google Plus' success?

SPEAKER_221: I'm trying to figure out how you get from 60 to 400 million.

SPEAKER_222: If they add 20 million people a month. I think he's doing percentage month-over-month growth.

SPEAKER_58: I think he's being a little aggressive there. Yeah, that's quite aggressive. You know, for me, I look at the... That's compounded. That thing is compounding the growth. Yeah, big time. I said I think they're going to take a third of the market. They'll be Yahoo to Google, you know, in this equation. And so, this puts them well on the way. I mean, this puts them on the way to half of... But, of course, Facebook's not standing still. Right.

SPEAKER_230: Facebook will be past, I mean... A billion. A billion. Easy.

SPEAKER_231: Yeah. I don't know, man. It's... You use it? On and off, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a different conversation.

SPEAKER_40: I post every day to Google Plus. Not nearly as much as I do to Twitter. And I'm cheering for them, but I think there are signs that it doesn't look fantastic. Hmm. What are those signs? Well, specifically... So, it's hard to know how much activity there really is, right?

SPEAKER_36: With all these users. That's what everybody says. It's one thing to have new users. It's another to have active... But one place you can look is at the new brand pages. About six weeks ago, they opened up... Let brands create their own pages. And everybody rushed in and created one. But now, four to six weeks later, there's almost no activity there.

SPEAKER_40: It's declined substantially. Only 30% of the top 100 brands are posting more than three times a week, according to Simply Measured.

SPEAKER_243: Right. And that's not a good indicator to me.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. I mean, the brands are going to be motivated to be where the customers are, and there's not a lot of customers here.

SPEAKER_30: But the fact that they're even participating, I mean, it does say something. And I think this makes them the second largest social network now.

SPEAKER_02: And the product is great. So, I'm very bullish on it, I think, because you said before the conversation is different there. The conversation is... How is it different?

SPEAKER_131: Well, you notice it, I'm sure. And I'm sure Marshall's... Well, I want to hear your...

SPEAKER_82: Is when you post on Google+, because it's not 140 characters, because it's also public, a little bit different conversation. So, I still post different things on Facebook versus Twitter versus Google+. And, you know, it is hard to maintain three. And it's... For people who have ADD like us, we can probably do it. Which one... For the mass population, it's hard.

SPEAKER_175: Which one do you use more? I use Twitter.

SPEAKER_251: Twitter's the most. But after Twitter, which one? Facebook. Or equal? Facebook.

SPEAKER_90: And then Google+. Interesting. Twitter's just too easy. Twitter's too easy to not do it all the time.

SPEAKER_257: Yeah. Marshall? I'm on the suggested user list of Google+, and I have far more followers there than on Twitter.

SPEAKER_35: But if I post something that doesn't have a link in it, and then opens up a real visually compelling preview, what have you,

SPEAKER_40: I get no comments at all. I've tried it over and over again. Really different from Twitter in that way.

SPEAKER_258: You don't get any comments on Google+.

SPEAKER_36: Unless I post a link. Then, lots of comments, lots of discussions. That's a fascinating observation. Why is that?

SPEAKER_35: Nothing. I think it's a... Visual design? Yeah. I think it's a visual wasteland, potentially, if you don't post a link with an image in a preview,

SPEAKER_36: and people who are using the service are so hungry for something other than white space, they just gravitate towards that.

SPEAKER_33: I will say what they've gotten right. The resharing feature really seems to work.

SPEAKER_30: You do the plus ones on our channels. Yeah, the plus ones.

SPEAKER_02: I was just on my Android. I had the Samsung, which is really a great company. They're kicking ass right now. Ass doesn't get me a square drawer, right? No, I shouldn't. So any clarification? I'm pretty sure. Anyway, they're kicking butt, and that Samsung Galaxy 2, I mean, it is such an amazing phone. And now, I went in the app store, and I'm looking at apps, and it's telling me which one of my friends have plus one-ed the apps. Well, that's the biggest problem with apps today, which is, which app should I download? There's too many apps. And now to see which one...

SPEAKER_94: They don't have a list of which ones your friends have plus the most. YouTube lately?

SPEAKER_131: YouTube now, my homepage on YouTube is awesome. I get to see what my friends are plus one-ing.

SPEAKER_25: To me, those are the little nuances where plus one is helpful. This is why Google is desperate to not be Microsoft.

SPEAKER_15: This is why they've just become Microsoft, because Google Buzz, Orkut, was charming, but small. It didn't work. Buzz was fascinating, but they stopped building on it. So it was like, oh, well, you're a fascinating start, but then you gave up. And then third time? Yeah. Oh, my God. It's good. It's good.

SPEAKER_25: Or it's going to be great, and then fifth version is going to be excellent. That's exactly how Microsoft killed everybody in the world in desktop applications.

SPEAKER_58: You know, WordPerfect 5.0, 10.0 was laughing at Microsoft Word, or Excel was considered, you know, laughable compared to Lotus 1.2.3. We're seeing it happen in front of our eyes. Google is relentless now. Well, look at Mail.

SPEAKER_90: Gmail version one now to now. Google Docs version one to now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_278: Google Docs is becoming a viable competitor to Microsoft Office.

SPEAKER_61: There's a big difference, though, which is in Google+, I don't think of it as my friends at all, the people I'm interacting with, where Facebook I tend more to. And there's much more value in what your friends are doing, what movies are watching. You said, you know, what your friends or apps they're liking or whatever. Or, you know, when you have all those people following you on G+, and you have more than you do on Twitter, certainly more than on Facebook, but how relevant are those people to you personally? I don't know. But what this reminds me of, in terms of prognosticating the potential success of G+, is much like trading with the yen.

SPEAKER_282: Insights from Tyler.

SPEAKER_30: It's like trading with the yen. Yes. Hold on.

SPEAKER_284: Hold on.

SPEAKER_30: By yen, you mean the Japanese currency, clearly.

SPEAKER_284: Yes.

SPEAKER_15: And trading with the yen.

SPEAKER_285: Yes.

SPEAKER_15: In the stock market?

SPEAKER_285: Yes. The foreign exchange.

SPEAKER_15: The foreign exchange. So if you trade with the yen. Yes. And the yen, it's been a decade of...

SPEAKER_286: No, it's been about four years of decline. Four years of decline. Very steep decline, yes.

SPEAKER_287: Very steep decline of the yen. No pun intended. And so how does that relate to Google? Because right now, if you trade... This is the insight I was not able to... Right. No, you will though. Watch.

SPEAKER_61: So with Japan right now, Japan's own government... Oh, buy on the dip. ...is trying to... The currency is so strong right now at 77 yen to the dollar that it's hurting their own economy. Wow. Right? People will not buy Toyotas because Toyotas are too expensive because the yen's so strong. Right. It's a problem for Japan. Right. So Japan's own bank goes in and says, right, we can fix this.

SPEAKER_127: It's in our power to fix it. We will devalue our own currency by flooding the market with paper, right?

SPEAKER_298: Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_127: And you can benefit from that in that trade. Right. You know what I'm saying? Right.

SPEAKER_61: So Google, in the same way, can very easily, at any time they feel like things aren't going the right way, start featuring those brand pages that Peter's talking about in the Google result for that brand. Oh, sure. Sure. And it's like...

SPEAKER_87: So what you're saying is with Google's massive traffic footprint, they can print money. They can tell the story of Google Plus's growth themselves. Correct. I agree with that. And I think that you saw it when they put it in the top left of the navigation. That was a sign that I think that was a massive turning point.

SPEAKER_305: And that could just get bigger and bigger or smaller.

SPEAKER_25: Or it could be on the homepage. I know. Or when you load the homepage, it could be your feed could be underneath the search box. I mean, the thing that Google, you know, it's really interesting here is people say Google

SPEAKER_15: will never change that homepage. You know, they're never going to be a design-driven company. Blah, blah, blah. Larry Page takes over. Steve Jobs dies. Steve Jobs, you know, influences them. Never is a big word. You know, it never is a big word. And now, and they're never going to be a content company, but they buzz the gap. YouTube. YouTube. It's not a content company, but they're hosting the election debates.

SPEAKER_25: They're giving $100 million to companies.

SPEAKER_308: They're doing live.

SPEAKER_25: Yeah, they're giving $100 million to content companies. We're not a content company. I mean, it's a little bit strange. It's Google. It's Google. They're now Microsoft. Hey, we have a new advertiser, which means I should have like a little horn here.

SPEAKER_316: I can be like, and they are Sourcebits. Hey, Sourcebits is a leader in mobile app development and software design. I met with the guys when I was up in San Francisco, a really smart team. They do design-led engineering, and they count Hershey's, GE, and Coca-Cola among their clients. And actually, it was interesting. They're backed by Sequoia, which I found out later, which is always nice. And just really well-designed stuff. Here on my iPad, I have loaded this really interesting app they made, BOA for iPad.

SPEAKER_25: And actually, you used the Nightstand. We both had the Nightstand app. We both had the Nightstand app. We were on the list of their apps.

SPEAKER_30: But, you know, they know how to do really great design. This app shows you demographics in your area versus other places. And they're a design house, so you can go get design services for them, have them build your iPad app.

SPEAKER_58: And, you know, everybody's behind the eight ball on apps. And Sourcebits has all these great engineering teams. More than the engineering, though.

SPEAKER_61: Their differentiator, in my mind, is their design is so smooth and nice.

SPEAKER_127: Like, they're, this is my app that I use for my wake-up.

SPEAKER_321: Oh, that's your wake-up app, yeah.

SPEAKER_127: You know, it's so funny, because I was looking for a nightstand app. It's the details. They put the weather. They built that for you? No. I mean, you download it in the store, but they've got the weather and everything. It's slick. The details. Right.

SPEAKER_326: And you can pick all the different styles. You pick what style. Yeah, you pick all your different. Yeah.

SPEAKER_127: Smart guys. Wait, wait, check. You want to see one of the coolest animations I've seen on an iPhone? What's that? The world clock watches when I turn it.

SPEAKER_160: Woo. This is what you're saying. Totally.

SPEAKER_25: Yeah. So, design-driven. They're up in San Francisco, and let's face it, you know, everybody's behind on building apps, and there's not a lot of app talent up there. These guys have brought a bunch together. If you're a brand, if you're a startup, if you're a large company, small, medium-sized business, whatever it is, go check out SourceBits.

SPEAKER_316: Really great guys, and I really appreciate them partnering with us on the show and helping us bring these great entrepreneurial stories and new tech news to you guys. SourceBits, SourceBits, www.sourcebits.com. Tell them Uncle Jason sent you. And, yeah, thanks for sponsoring the show. Great job, guys. All right. Next story.

SPEAKER_72: All right. Walmart Labs makes tech acquisition. Walmart's technology division, Walmart Labs, has acquired Small Society, a mobile agency in Portland, Oregon, for an undisclosed sum.

SPEAKER_336: Speaking of mobile, right? Everybody's behind the eight ball. Good.

SPEAKER_72: In a blog post, Walmart said that the company will join another acquisition it made in the Northwest, and both will work closely with its Silicon Valley offices. Small Society has developed apps for large organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, Zipcar, and Starbucks. So, why would Walmart choose to build its own e-commerce platforms and social media tools rather than rely on existing options? Hmm.

SPEAKER_340: Retail's about to get screwed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_76: And actually, they bought for $300 million, Cosmics. Cosmics, yeah. Which now, those guys run the division.

SPEAKER_343: Super smart guys. Yeah. The Cosmic guys are really brilliant engineers.

SPEAKER_344: Yeah. It was sort of like in, like, mini-competition in the early days. We're through, like, sort of topic pages, landing pages before that business got decimated. So, what do you think?

SPEAKER_46: What's Walmart's motivation?

SPEAKER_166: They realize that Amazon is winning, and if they don't go digital, they're going to lose. This is a great article.

SPEAKER_131: Did you read why Best Buy is going to go out of business as a fortune? That was a good article. Great article. And you read this article, and you realize people aren't going to go to physical stores anymore.

SPEAKER_349: I mean, if you're...

SPEAKER_251: And what do we do with all these physical, huge stores?

SPEAKER_349: I mean, are they just going to be... Really cool, loft conversions.

Chamath Palihapitiya: No, seriously. Does that mean, like, a Walmart gets... No. Walmart, I think... Look, Walmart is massive.

SPEAKER_131: It's the Best Buys of the world that I'm absolutely concerned about. The Walmarts... I think Walmart will always be Costco, Walmarts of the world. Right. ...need to exist.

SPEAKER_94: Hmm, interesting.

SPEAKER_187: What do you think, Marshall? What is Walmart up to here?

SPEAKER_354: Oh, Walmart is building an incredible team over there in that mobile labs division.

SPEAKER_35: I mean, these folks here at Small Society are friends of mine from Portland, but they're putting together just a knockout team. They've got Ben and Dion, formerly of Palm and Google, and the One Riot guys, in addition to Cosmix, Iran, Hammer, Lahav, that led the creation of OAuth, the spec that made mashups between so many apps possible. It's just a dream team of bleeding-edge engineers. What are they building?

SPEAKER_105: I mean, what have we seen out of Walmart that's in any way impressive?

SPEAKER_35: They're building mobile and social shopping apps that you're going to be able to use in the store that will take note of what you're buying, of where you are in the store, and it will, they'll serve up recommendations, they'll create all kinds of value-added services on top of real-time, super-targeted shopping experiences using the mobile devices you're carrying around in your phone. You know, retailers are concerned that people go into stores and they look up reviews on Amazon or elsewhere, and then they leave the store and go buy someplace else, and really like cutting-edge retailers are saying, let's flip that around and turn that into an asset instead of a liability of that mobile device.

SPEAKER_76: Ah, so you come into the store, and then you look up the reviews, and you see the price

SPEAKER_359: I do that all the time.

SPEAKER_30: Is, and if the price is the same, do you buy it?

SPEAKER_94: It depends, honestly. Or do you just want to have it delivered because you have Amazon Prime? Sometimes it depends on how large the physical object is. Right, you're just like, I don't want to, I don't want to even carry it.

SPEAKER_361: Do you have Amazon Prime?

SPEAKER_360: Of course.

SPEAKER_361: Do you have Amazon Prime? Yeah. Megan, do you have Amazon Prime? I just don't know what to do with the boxes.

SPEAKER_362: And then what about you, Marshall? Do you have Amazon Prime?

SPEAKER_366: No, I don't. Ugh.

SPEAKER_362: What? Ugh. What, Marshall?

SPEAKER_366: What?

SPEAKER_369: I shop local stores here in Portland most of the time, to be honest. I need to be from Oregon.

SPEAKER_371: Oh, he's that hippie, Ned. Your Oregon doesn't count. It's like a hippie commune up there.

SPEAKER_242: It is a hippie commune. Do you make your own soy milk up there? What's going on?

SPEAKER_374: If I could get something with a bird on it, you know, on Amazon, I probably would. You could make it.

SPEAKER_377: No, but it's like, when you talk to Amazon, Amazon Prime is a cult. I love it. I think Amazon Prime is going to trump. It's like Christmas every three days. It's absolutely going to trump Mormonism, Scientology, and Catholicism. Amazon Prime is the religion of the future.

SPEAKER_384: Because I now take out my phone. I shouldn't know what to do with the boxes. I might not have a whole bunch of boxes.

SPEAKER_344: I'm having box anxiety as well. Are you having box anxiety? You don't buy that much.

SPEAKER_390: I don't buy that. What's the joke that called Amazon is the deforesting?

SPEAKER_377: The deforesting. I'm trying to figure out what I do with the boxes. I give them to my daughter. We draw on them and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_344: But I just, I've been in a battle with my wife over mouthwash. You know, she's like crazy organic into everything healthy. And I'm like, I'm an old school guy from the 50s. I like my Listerine, like the one that burns your throat.

SPEAKER_393: You don't use electric shaver. You're still old school. I'm using a straight razor, you know.

SPEAKER_109: Anyway, so we're in this battle. She keeps giving me the organic, like terrible mouthwash.

SPEAKER_15: You use it and you feel like you're drinking sugar. And so I go on Amazon Prime. She goes, yeah, you know, you can order stuff automatically.

SPEAKER_361: I'm like, oh, I win the war. I go on. I find the amount, the one I like. I calculate how many ounces I'm going to use in like 10 seconds. I'm like, I'll probably use one of those every three months.

SPEAKER_384: I pick once every three months. They ship me the bottle of Listerine for four bucks. They give you 15% off just by putting it on reoccurring. Subship from Commerce.

SPEAKER_397: That's their whole version of Subship from Commerce.

SPEAKER_384: I mean, think about it. Free shipping of a big, large bottle, you know, of a half gallon of a couple liters of this stuff.

SPEAKER_398: The carbon footprint on that might be questionable.

SPEAKER_25: No, but the carbon footprint winds up netting the same because if we have all these cars going there, I have to drive my car. It's not like I'm walking to, you know, Whole Foods

SPEAKER_361: to get this organic garbage mouthwash, you know. But I mean, I think that this is the future is that people are just going to put everything on automatic,

SPEAKER_401: it's brought to their house, and they never go to retail again.

SPEAKER_301: Walmart, I think they're...

SPEAKER_61: Getting back to Walmart. This is why they're in trouble is because your excitement that I have as well, I know Peter has it.

SPEAKER_403: I'm getting excited by Walt Mouthwash.

SPEAKER_61: I know.

SPEAKER_384: But the first thing people are going to do when they listen,

SPEAKER_25: I guarantee you, people are going to listen to the show and they're going to go, I mean, they're going to go set up mouthwash and toothpaste on automatic... Why would you waste the cycles in your life

SPEAKER_15: to think about toothpaste and mouthwash when you could automatically have it brought to your house? Unless you don't have a doorman or something, I understand that.

SPEAKER_406: Well, I think if you look at Shopkick, right, in terms of the mobile, like Walmart could start doing what Shopkick's been doing.

SPEAKER_82: What do they do? It's a mobile app. When you walk in the store, it might unlock offers. It says, go over to the TV section and I'll get a $5 coupon for something else.

SPEAKER_118: It physically makes you do things in the store to unlock coupons.

SPEAKER_61: It's really interesting. The other smart thing Walmart's done, though, to protect themselves is put supermarkets in their stores. Right.

SPEAKER_344: You can't get milk on delivery.

SPEAKER_61: And gas stations. So they're putting these things...

SPEAKER_344: There are some consumables you're not going to get, but I mean...

SPEAKER_61: They bundle that with their store, so now you're going there anyways and you might as well pick up the thing.

SPEAKER_411: Walmart essentially will... You can go there and get anything. Plus their pricing...

SPEAKER_384: But you can get Amazon private. I mean, if you live in the boondocks... Boondocks of nowhere,

SPEAKER_30: you know, you live in the outbacks of Alaska or Montana or, you know, whatever, in some podunk, you know, two-stoplight town, you can get whatever we can get,

SPEAKER_344: you know, as quickly as we can get it. That's what Amazon has done. Is that what people want? Or do they want a Walmart that's two hours away? If you want... You know, there are people still like

SPEAKER_414: touching and feeling products.

SPEAKER_413: Can you get that through Amazon, Brian?

SPEAKER_414: Not yet.

SPEAKER_413: See?

SPEAKER_105: I don't want to say anything. You can get a gun about two miles from this office here. Right, I know. You can at Walmart. You can buy a gun at Walmart?

SPEAKER_418: Yes! I didn't know that. All right, next story, next story. Now we're obsessing.

SPEAKER_420: All right, next story. Chrome extension warns you when you browse a SOPA supporter's website.

SPEAKER_69: Genius! The Chrome browser extension, No SOPA, gives users a warning message reading SOPA supporter. This company is a known supporter of the dangerous Stop Online Piracy Act.

SPEAKER_422: Okay, now go to the question.

SPEAKER_69: Okay. So does anyone want to step up and defend SOPA?

SPEAKER_105: Yeah, great. I'm sure they... No, I mean, the more important thing is

SPEAKER_02: what about the SOPA blackout day? Marshall, what's the chances is that going to... Do you think that that will happen? And if it does happen, what does that say about where we've come as a society?

SPEAKER_427: And Google's on it? Facebook's on it? Yeah, but we have to actually unplug the internet, Marshall.

SPEAKER_32: Oh, I don't know what it says. Things are crazy, but it seems like it's inevitable

SPEAKER_35: that this battle's going to happen. I mean, I've read that outside of the United States, people refer to this as the great firewall of the United States. But, you know, vested interests just insist on trying to assert control over the web. So the grand battle

SPEAKER_36: between hackers and control freaks will have to happen someday. It may as well happen now, I suppose.

SPEAKER_41: Yeah, and I think the interesting thing is how quickly...

SPEAKER_30: It didn't seem like anybody was mobilized, and then it seemed like Reddit and some of these other places, like everybody is like, whoa, this is a wearer. And I really think

SPEAKER_25: that infographic, like you have to understand, you know, it's not... Congress has to understand how the internet works. It's no longer okay to not understand, and we have to understand

SPEAKER_02: how Congress works. It's very interesting. In the early days of the internet, I remember John Perry Borla telling me the government and the forces at work are going to stop the internet. I said, they can't stop the internet. What are they going to do? He's like, they'll pass laws.

SPEAKER_114: I'm like, they can't pass laws about the internet. What are they going to do? Put people in jail for using the internet? And like, now it's coming to that. Basically coming. That's what they're going to do. I mean, Chad Hurley's going to be like led away in cuffs for creating... I mean, that's the insanity of this. Like, if you don't have the ability to open a forum or a bulletin board, it's like saying the person who provides a Volvo is responsible

SPEAKER_384: if somebody runs a red light or does a hit and run. Like, how is YouTube responsible for the copyright infringement of the people who use it? I mean, why don't they individually prosecute people? They put that kid in jail for the Hulk thing or whatever. The guy who stole the work print

SPEAKER_25: of the Hulk or whatever, he's in jail for a year or two. Like, consumers are going to get the message, don't steal if you put individuals in jail.

SPEAKER_61: I don't think it did because the record industry tried to sue the bejesus out all those downloaders and they did and people didn't stop downloading music. Well,

SPEAKER_105: obviously the better thing is to provide

SPEAKER_25: a solution that's fair and easy to use. Better products. Yeah. Well, a better product would just give them what they want at the price they want and it doesn't have to be free. I mean, the $1 app store has shown that

SPEAKER_17: and music has shown that but wouldn't that be an amazing day if Google didn't work?

SPEAKER_377: For the love of God, can we turn the internet off for a day? That'd be great.

SPEAKER_439: That would be awesome.

SPEAKER_377: Yeah, like, why don't we have like every first

SPEAKER_33: Friday the internet goes off.

SPEAKER_61: But getting back whoever's behind this bill realize when Google

SPEAKER_127: and Facebook and the whole frickin' internet Oh,

SPEAKER_442: they'll be voted out of office.

SPEAKER_377: You have to realize you're a schmuck. This is going to be great for the internet. You know what this is? This is the moment

SPEAKER_23: in time when Power to the people. Well, when Power to the People but I really think that what this is is the generational shift. Young people versus old people.

SPEAKER_87: This is the moment at which the old people say enough is enough we have to control this thing and young people say hell no. Get that. Get off my internets.

SPEAKER_02: I'm telling you that these senators and congressmen have no idea of the wrath of my personal army.

SPEAKER_448: Don't mess with the World of Warcraft.

SPEAKER_02: Don't mess with

SPEAKER_23: people know I'm loosely affiliated

SPEAKER_344: with the anonymous movement.

SPEAKER_449: Go ahead and address your people.

SPEAKER_344: Let me address my people. This is a message to anonymous to my legions.

SPEAKER_02: You have been given permission to now take down all senators and organizations that are pro-SOPA. Oh wait, you're doing that already. Carry on. I'm not going to endorse illegal behavior or harassment of individuals

SPEAKER_384: who support SOPA. But I'm going to laugh my ass off when you hack into their accounts and show them wearing tutus or whatever sick, demented.

SPEAKER_452: Slightly harassed.

SPEAKER_384: Yeah. When you break into their emails and show how many times they're on Craigslist trolling for whatever, you know, I can't wait. If you're one of these goddamn congressmen or senators with all your goddamn stuff and skeletons in your closet, why on earth would you poke the tiger? Get the F off

SPEAKER_456: our internet. Seriously. It's going to be awesome. This is going to be like the Clone Wars. It's like,

SPEAKER_458: f***ing notice.

SPEAKER_30: Oh, it's two. I know, I don't have change. I'm putting the 20 in. What am I going to do? I mean, Marshall,

SPEAKER_344: I know you're there wondering what the hell is going on over here. What are the chances that SOPA passes? I mean, you've been following it. What are the chances?

SPEAKER_124: Well, legal specialists say that the odds aren't good for this particular

SPEAKER_40: legislation, but that it isn't alone and that there's more to come.

SPEAKER_15: Right. So this one, and see, this is the problem. I almost don't want people to think that this is going to get resolved.

SPEAKER_470: No way. This is going to be

SPEAKER_25: an ongoing battle. And you know what will happen is there'll be some terrorist attack and you know what? All those loony people who are like the government is taking over and they're using the war and they're using 9-11 to spy on us, they were right. Who knew that these loopy people who were like when they're like the government just wants to read all your emails or they did it. They were right. The insane people who were walking

SPEAKER_377: in the street with the signs, they were right for once. The government took all of AT&T's feeds

SPEAKER_384: and they're listening to everything we're talking about. They're taking everybody's email. No warrants. It's out of control. You clearly aren't

SPEAKER_166: using the Google Chrome incognito mode enough.

SPEAKER_377: That doesn't even matter. You know,

SPEAKER_166: Google,

SPEAKER_02: I think that it's gotten so out of control now that it's going to take serious, I don't, I think it's going to take guerrilla warfare. Like, I don't think that this will be solved through peaceful means. I think that the forces are so intent on invading 100% of our privacy and so intent on taking over the internet and shutting it down and controlling it

SPEAKER_15: that the only hope we have is not legislation. It's people like Anonymous and Reddit personally attacking and harassing these people to the point at which they realize, like, don't F with the internet. Like, you cannot. We want it. We earned it. We own it. It's not yours. It's going to take personal, like, attacks on these people

SPEAKER_316: and I don't endorse them.

SPEAKER_35: So sometimes those groups are wrong, though. Was it Reddit? Was it Gawker? Was it Daily Dot? I can't remember who reported the other day

SPEAKER_36: about an angry mob descending on a congressman for alleged support of so much. And he wasn't

SPEAKER_25: a supporter, yeah. Oops. Yeah, I mean, it's going to happen all over. And this is what, you know, when you, I don't want to bring up terrorism,

SPEAKER_30: but, you know, like, when terrorists have a point and then they blow up and kill a bunch of people who were innocent bystanders, then the point gets negated and this is going to turn into, this is what,

SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's all turning into a science fiction novel in front of our eyes. If you step back for a minute and you just watch from 9-11, the creation of the internet, 9-11, and now SOPA, like, this is a science fiction novel for control of information and for personal freedom between corporate entities who, and the powers that have money who are now or it's Verizon, AT&T, or George Bush, or big oil,

SPEAKER_384: they're all losing all their power and they're doing whatever it is to hold on.

SPEAKER_481: It's all lobbyists anyways.

SPEAKER_483: Next story.

SPEAKER_69: Okay. Amazon further squeezes retail chains. Major retail chains released their December sales figures, which were largely disappointing,

SPEAKER_72: while Amazon's outlook remained bright. Wall Street forecast a 40% year-over-year sales growth for Amazon in the last quarter. Wow. Barnes & Noble, whose biggest competitor is Amazon, expects retail same-store sales to grow a meager 1% this year. Target's December sales were below expectations in electronics and music and movies and books. Best Buy also reported lousy sales growth and predicted declining margins, with comparable store sales growing only 0.3% during the fourth quarter. While e-commerce makes up less than 5% of U.S. retail sales, that number continues to grow while brick-and-mortar figures decline. So questions for you guys are, Amazon has had success with the Kindle Fire, so should they still be focusing most of their energy on e-commerce or hardware or both? Hmm.

SPEAKER_487: What should Amazon be doing at this point, Marshall?

SPEAKER_286: Building their own distribution network. Take out the carriers, trucks. Take out the trucks. You think they should buy UPS

SPEAKER_489: or FedEx? Yeah. I think that that's brilliant.

SPEAKER_127: So here's the

SPEAKER_61: thing. I was on the phone, because I have Amazon Prime. I get a text message when it gets delivered. Brilliant. You do? What? Oh, yeah. What? That's a feature. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. I'm setting that up. So it gets delivered, and it says it's delivered, and I go to my front door, and it's not there. So I wait a couple hours, still not there. So I call up UPS, you said it's here, UPS says it's here, it's not here. And then they said, oh, well, the shipper has to initiate the whatnot. I'm like, okay, here we go. Call Amazon. Amazon's incredibly nice about the whole thing. And the lady on the phone at UPS says, yeah, Amazon. I get them both on the phone. I'm like, oh, yeah, you're going to play that game? Watch this. Boom. You're both on. Talk to each other, right? And the girl from Amazon says, don't worry, we'll figure this out. And UPS girl, your data's wrong. We know how to do this better than you do. You can hang up the phone now. Really? Yeah. Wow. Because the girl on UPS was saying, oh, you have to call this other phone number. And Amazon's like, yeah, right, no. Hang up the phone. We know what we're doing.

SPEAKER_502: Yeah.

SPEAKER_61: And I hang up the phone with UPS, and Amazon says, I said, you know, you guys should just buy UPS. She goes, well, what was her wording? Her wording was like, let me just say, you should do your own. You should ship your own or do your own shipping in small cities and test it out. She's like, well, you know, I can't say something like that. No, she goes, they have delivery. Wouldn't surprise me if we, I said Jeff should buy Amazon or UPS or something. She goes, wouldn't surprise me if he does, but I can't say too much about that. Right. And she said a little more, but I was like, wow, sounds like they're already doing.

SPEAKER_15: It's clearly that would be a great branding session. I think even the retail stores, which I heard from people that they've been mulling over, I think doing small outlets where you go just to learn about the products, get support. That's what Best Buy is for. Which is what Best Buy is for. Best Buy is the Amazon showroom. Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_361: And so why don't they just make an Amazon showroom?

SPEAKER_509: Did you see the one where they have these boxes at the PO boxes so you

SPEAKER_510: can accept delivery? Lockers for people

SPEAKER_509: who... What?

SPEAKER_510: In Seattle. So she was telling me this as well. Lockers? In Seattle, Amazon

SPEAKER_61: gives you lockers where the business can have these lockers and you have it shipped there and you can pick it up there if you want in this locker.

Chamath Palihapitiya: How do you get it out of the locker?

SPEAKER_513: They give you code.

SPEAKER_61: There's a code.

Chamath Palihapitiya: A package comes, there's going to be a code, a scientist locker, you walk up, it's one time use. So you can put it at a train station? It's for people who can't take delivery of boxes.

SPEAKER_15: Yeah.

SPEAKER_25: Oh, that's so genius. Isn't that how it works in China? Like everything's like either cash on demand, you know, cash on delivery, COD, or they have like lockers kind of a thing. But that's brilliant. So you take out your smartphone or you look at an email, you get the code and that locker code changes.

SPEAKER_518: A lot of people can't accept

SPEAKER_519: delivery.

SPEAKER_25: No, I mean when I was in New York I couldn't accept

SPEAKER_361: delivery because I was at home during the day. Your neighbor's going to steal their stuff. Right, so leave it on my doorstep? No. Put a flat panel TV on the doorstep? It was crazy.

SPEAKER_17: Hmm, interesting. That's a great idea.

SPEAKER_35: So delight users, use data, optimize the process, and be thinking about mobile, right?

SPEAKER_36: Amazon, Walmart, probably too early to write anybody off that's ready to jump in and make a serious bet and all that put together. Best buys data will look super different.

SPEAKER_61: Those are things Barnes & Noble isn't really doing other than the Nook, but here's the chart of the week for Barnes & Noble. They just did their earnings report. Yeah. Let me pull up my screen here, and this was, for me personally, I'm kicking myself for not having done this trade because over Christmas I was buying last minute stuff that was sold out on Amazon at Barnes & Noble, and when I got there I had some books that I had gotten as gifts that I had not cracked that open, you know, still in saran wrap. I go to Barnes & Noble and I'm like here's some big, can I exchange these for these other things I want to get? No, there's no exchanges of anything of any kind. I'm like, is that just this location? Like, you know, I think it's the, so I went to like three locations, every location that Barnes & Noble allowed, no exchanges of any kind. Right, so they're so

SPEAKER_186: desperate now, they're

SPEAKER_30: so playing on their heels, they're so tilted that they're ruining the customer experience to try to preserve what little revenue on their declining scale they have.

SPEAKER_61: That was my indication. That's a super challenge.

SPEAKER_531: Best Buy restocking fees. They are horrible returns.

SPEAKER_394: I've never bought anything on Best Buy. I would never buy anything. Why would you buy something at Best Buy instead of wearing it on Amazon?

SPEAKER_529: Look at the numbers. Yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_384: Only 5% of commerce occurs online right now.

SPEAKER_534: Yeah, but this was a 20% drop.

SPEAKER_384: We're two decades into this. Really? Only 5%? I mean, why doesn't all of it occur?

SPEAKER_535: You actually still can't buy cars online.

SPEAKER_536: You can't buy them. I mean, eBay Motors. No, no. eBay Motors. You know eBay Motors? Which is weird. I just bought a new car online. No, you can't

SPEAKER_537: check out and fill out the paperwork. I just bought a

SPEAKER_127: Toyota online. What? I did. The new electric plug-in. You paid for it online? I didn't pay for it online.

SPEAKER_543: So you ordered it but you're going to go in and do that paperwork in the store.

SPEAKER_544: It's against the law. Isn't that weird, by the way? Yeah, it's a

SPEAKER_384: protectionist thing.

SPEAKER_545: You cannot buy a car online.

SPEAKER_384: Even eBay, I just saw that on eBay, somebody bought a classic car on eBay Motors, a

SPEAKER_02: Corvette, whatever, and then they didn't actually, weren't able to buy it. And they said, eBay is, they do these auctions for cars but you don't actually buy the car.

SPEAKER_30: You, on Honor System, have bought the car but either party can back out. Right.

SPEAKER_547: They use escrow services.

SPEAKER_30: No, there's no escrow service. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_114: No, you have to go to the dealer and then give the money so you can back out. Unlike other things in their system with escrow services, they don't do that for cars. It's crazy. Next story.

SPEAKER_69: Iowa tested social media's ability to make political predictions.

SPEAKER_72: Although politicians are active in the social media sphere, Twitter, Facebook, and the like didn't appear to play much of a role in Mitt Romney's victory in the Iowa caucus. Jen Deering Davis of TweetReach, a social media analytics service, said, we track more tweets in an hour about a single TV show than we have in five days about all nine candidates. If the outcome had been predicted by social media score cards alone, Ron Paul would have been the clear-cut winner, as he garnered considerable pre-caucus hype on Twitter and in the tech press. Question is, while political movements like Occupy have taken off with the help of social media, when will we see it become a bigger factor in elections? What do you think,

SPEAKER_554: Marshall?

SPEAKER_40: I think that elections are such a cluster that

SPEAKER_35: it is, that all bets are off when you look. You can pick a Hollywood blockbuster by frequency of tweets. You can use tweets really well in day in and day

SPEAKER_40: out, Gov 2.0 stuff. They have been for years in Iowa, in particular, just using it to communicate with constituents.

SPEAKER_36: But come crazy election season, there's just too many factors, too much on the line, and it just gets too loopy to predict anything.

SPEAKER_25: Yeah, and also, the people who vote tend to

SPEAKER_15: be much older. Yeah. And this is very much an age thing. I mean, 50, 60, 70-year-old people are, like, probably the majority of the voting populace are over

SPEAKER_25: 40, I'm guessing. And this must correlate exactly with Twitter usage. Like, it increases as your age decreases, and voting increases as your age increases. So, it's a negative correlation. It's just, you know, it's just so obvious. And also, you have such a terrible group of people running in that primary, and it's such a small little primary, that, I mean, what were Barack Obama's statistics? You know, like, I mean, he was off the charts. Why he failed to young people? I mean, this is really a generational thing. Anybody, there's no young people voting for any of these Republicans. I mean, anybody under 40

SPEAKER_23: who's voting for any of these Republicans is an idiot. I mean, they're all terrible. I mean, except for Ron Paul. Ron Paul's got actually sort of a point of view, but these other guys are terrible. Yes, is social media going to have any impact?

SPEAKER_563: It will.

SPEAKER_114: Of course, yeah. On the main election, it will. On the main election, absolutely. But it turns out, most of what, I mean, what it's really good for is getting, doing fundraising and big

SPEAKER_80: news cycle and big kind of controversial news pieces. Yeah, but they're not,

SPEAKER_377: which is the politicians are not in control of, right? Yeah. So what else, how does it play a role? Definitely fundraising is the main way.

SPEAKER_556: How about Google Plus Hangouts? Well, we see all nine, you know, probably not.

SPEAKER_571: Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_61: Back to the point that I think is underlying this number seven is when you get enough people on Twitter, the aggregate data can be used in interesting ways, like there's supposed to be some slight pre-indicators to stock market activity based on...

SPEAKER_573: Stock twits. I mean, sentiment

SPEAKER_574: analysis is there. Well, nobody's made it work. You're saying that you believe it's going to work? I mean, if it's worked,

SPEAKER_558: why aren't people trading based on it?

SPEAKER_572: From my understanding,

SPEAKER_578: there are. Yeah, there are. There's a lot of great social data.

SPEAKER_572: Like the big, big, big industry banks are spending time looking at that stuff.

SPEAKER_15: They look at it just like they might read a newspaper story or message board forums in the past. I can't tell you,

SPEAKER_61: every single big investment bank has one guy dedicated to trying to crack that nut because if they can...

SPEAKER_361: I don't think they've cracked it is my point though. They probably don't talk about it. If they did, you

SPEAKER_25: wouldn't know. It's a rigged game. Why would they share? Well, that's what I... Everybody pitches me on that. We're going to do sentiment analysis on stocks. It's going to be a great startup. I'm like, we're going to charge you $100 a month.

SPEAKER_582: We're just doing a good job of stock twits.

SPEAKER_25: Are they?

Chamath Palihapitiya: I mean, that just seems more like a community. That seems more like a sports community. Well, people are then using that fire hose to

SPEAKER_82: then plug it into their own hedge to then do analysis. I'm a huge fan of social data doing sentiment analysis and making predictions.

SPEAKER_205: Yeah. I just don't know that if it's there yet. And also, how do they actually know when somebody says, like,

SPEAKER_23: this is dope, that it's not... Or, this is bad, like, it's bad, like, it's bad, it's good. You know, like, people use words that are not

SPEAKER_109: specific. They're running it through Mechanical Turk and asking a human to then sample it and say it's up or down.

SPEAKER_572: That's what I've heard in an analysis is. Your zip code and find out what people mean in that zip code when they say that. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_287: What do they say, Marshall?

SPEAKER_36: Sentiment analysis is a dark art that requires a lot of manual labor for sure.

SPEAKER_592: But a person can certainly discover a lot of interesting things by doing social graph analysis for expert and emerging information discovery, if you will. Ah.

SPEAKER_595: See, now this is where Marshall's going to have a really good startup, which... Are you raising angel around? It's what you're

SPEAKER_109: doing, right? Are you raising a round?

SPEAKER_600: I'd love to talk about that offline.

SPEAKER_23: This is what you've got to do. You've got to get me to be the referrer on AngelList. You know where there's a referrer? AngelList is amazing. It's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_114: It's unbelievable. I think AngelList and Kickstarter and Second Market save the economy. Naval... I think it's the future of the whole United States

SPEAKER_23: job creation, everything. Anything that Obama's doing, they should stop, take all that money, just give it to Naval, Nivy, give it to Kickstarter, Yancey, and give it to Barry over at Second Market.

SPEAKER_384: Just take whatever billion dollars, give them each $300 million and say, just give it to anybody who you think deserves it. Talk about startup

SPEAKER_605: economy. I mean, Naval...

SPEAKER_384: Yeah, I mean, I sent something out to, as the referrer, I'm now like the number three or four user on there in terms of followers, 7,000 followers. I need some followers. Then I forwarded it and it said that 700 of them

SPEAKER_15: were accredited investors. Really? And then the person told me, they set up two dozen meetings because of it, and then another person, which we won't say who, said they closed around in two weeks after I did that for them. Wow.

SPEAKER_384: So there's a thing where somebody can be the referrer, and Fred Wilson just referred somebody. It's basically like if somebody like Fred or me or whoever refers somebody, you instantly get all these meetings, and then angel investors are lemmings. Everybody's just like, oh, this is hot. What?

SPEAKER_91: We saw the same thing. I did a couple deals on angel listing. It's like investors. Oh, it's so powerful.

SPEAKER_23: I love the idea of sentiment analysis, though, around specific groups of people and topics. Marshall, that's brilliant. So if you had 100 people who were technology experts, and you took just the top 100 pundits, you know, M.G. Siegler, you, me, Ryan Block, Peter Rojas, whatever, people who write about Apple, and then you said, give me all their posts that mention Apple or these specific products, and then did sentiment analysis on, or just analysis of, their discussion of the latest MacBook Pro or Thunderbolt. how valuable would that real-time Thunderbolt trend information be to somebody? Would they be able to make some sort of bet on Thunderbolt? Or something else, right?

SPEAKER_40: In a community that you're already a part of, that you're tracking closely, that might be less valuable than in a community that you're jumping into from the outside quickly and

SPEAKER_592: looking for that kind of information.

SPEAKER_15: Right. So if there was a group of people who were in the mobile advertising space, and I don't know who are the people in mobile advertising, and I hear them talking about the new IEDS president, to

SPEAKER_33: get some analysis of what they think of that appointment.

SPEAKER_61: You're essentially getting into weighted sentiment analysis, which is like clout mixed with sentiment analysis.

SPEAKER_15: And everybody makes fun of clout.

SPEAKER_361: Chris Saka's dogging clout. You know, he's like, you opted out of clout, he doesn't, I mean, I think he's got like a philosophical thing of putting a number on a person's value, which I understand. Yeah. But we need to get

SPEAKER_619: done.

SPEAKER_324: It's like I'm falling apart. Two. Well, of course, I

SPEAKER_316: have to do it in twos because I only have 20s. But there's a great story that somebody told me. I don't know if it's true. A woman comes up to Sammy Davis Jr. in Vegas and says, hey, Sammy, can I get a change of a 20?

SPEAKER_310: And he said, baby, 20 is change.

SPEAKER_627: Pretty good, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_310: That's pretty good. No, but I think, what were we talking about?

SPEAKER_628: I don't know. What's next? Next story. Last story.

SPEAKER_420: Okay, next story. Network?

SPEAKER_310: HIPAA? Health Information Privacy Act? Wait, sorry, last story? Last story? No HIPAA. HIPAA, everybody says no. We don't care. Okay. Next story. Give us another one.

SPEAKER_72: All right, so Kanye West hiring tech guys for a new startup. Okay, that's interesting. Give us one line about that.

SPEAKER_69: Cool. After a long sabbatical from his Twitter account, Kanye West returned to the internet last night with a flurry of thoughts. Yes. The big news, he's forming a new company, Donda, named after his late mother. Not entirely clear what the mission of the company is, but it seems like the tech side can get involved. As Kanye tweeted, he says, I am assembling a team of architects, graphic designers, directors, musicians, producers, writers, publicists, the list essentially goes on. Keep going. Okay, keep going. Okay, where was I? Publicists. Producers, musicians, producers, writers, publicists, social media experts, app guys, managers, car

SPEAKER_72: designers, clothing designers, DJs, video game designers, publishers, tech guys, lawyers, bankers, nutritionists, doctors, scientists, and

SPEAKER_653: teachers. So that's 28 people, and

SPEAKER_655: I guess the only thing we can take from that is that cocaine is a hell of a drug. I mean, Jesus Christ,

SPEAKER_30: what drug is this kid on?

SPEAKER_657: Did you see the concert when he was in town?

SPEAKER_30: I missed it. I had tickets that I wound up selling. The Throne concert? Unbelievable. I saw him the last

SPEAKER_658: time on the Throne before that. He is a creative genius. It was this...

SPEAKER_603: Now, was it him and then Jay-Z or Jay-Z and him together? It was them together.

SPEAKER_131: The whole time? Two hours and 45 minutes, it was together, then separate, then together we're taking vocal breaks, but like two hours and 45 minutes of

SPEAKER_80: just insanity. I had tickets to it. Insanity. It was unbelievable. You have to... When you see him perform... He's amazing. He's a true talent. But I mean, this is a...

SPEAKER_660: I had a friend who

SPEAKER_02: used to send me crazy emails at 3 in the morning, and then I would get a second email from him at 7 or 8 a.m., and it would just say, that was an Ambien post. Forget it.

SPEAKER_663: Because he used to take Ambien, and he would wake up and write me these long emails that made no sense.

SPEAKER_664: I think...

SPEAKER_663: Did you read his

SPEAKER_82: whole... I read the whole stream, yes. I didn't read the whole stream. He has creativity, and he wants to express. He was trying to figure it out, right?

SPEAKER_61: And then he called up Elon Musk and went over and visit Elon and showed him all of his plans. He did? Yes.

SPEAKER_449: No, he didn't. He did. No, he didn't. Oh, yes, he did. No, he didn't. Go look at Elon's Twitter feed.

SPEAKER_666: Yeah. Yeah, he visited Elon. No! Yes!

SPEAKER_127: There's a photo with them together at SpaceX. Are you out of your mind? No!

SPEAKER_579: Like two days before this... A couple days, yeah. Yeah, a couple days before... I think it was last

SPEAKER_61: week. But it sounds to me like a classic... I don't mean any disrespects things, but it's like a manic... Late night,

SPEAKER_579: manic phase of creativity, and we've all been there. I think the biggest... I hope he does something. I think he's a

SPEAKER_82: creative genius. I think that what Twitter... To me, the story biggest story was his expression in real time on Twitter. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_131: And forget, you know... I give him props for that. It was awesome. It was like... You could totally tell it was from the heart. It was just a stream of consciousness, consciousness, and to have somebody like him at his... I mean, he is a genius. Right.

SPEAKER_406: How many Grammys now? I mean, he just... So many. He prints them, right? Right. And for him to... Imagine Steve

SPEAKER_131: Jobs, 10 o'clock

Chamath Palihapitiya: at night, spending 20 minutes on Twitter, just like thinking and talking. Steve Jobs didn't do that. He just went to the customer service emails and then just responded to people. No, to me, the bigger story was the power of Twitter into listening in on somebody's thoughts for 20 minutes. That was amazing.

SPEAKER_23: I'm telling you, this is Kovacier and Ambien. This is what my friend used to drink. He used to drink cognac and Ambien. That would put... Wouldn't that like... It could kill you. Yeah, I'm not suggesting you do Kovacier and Ambien, but... I mean, this is insane.

SPEAKER_30: I mean, he just basically listed every profession possible. And he's really going to have car designers and video game designers. He wants

SPEAKER_689: everything to be more beautiful. And nutritionist. He's a designer. He was inspired by the

SPEAKER_35: fashion people say that over the springtime, in particular last spring, he was spending more time at the front row of

SPEAKER_592: fashion shows than almost anybody else in the fashion industry. Wow.

SPEAKER_401: I heard he

SPEAKER_15: did like an internship or on this stream, he was saying he did an internship for four months somewhere, then another place for four years. And he's got some LV association where he could make a pair of shoes. Nike. Nike. He is a creative genius.

SPEAKER_406: He's a little bit out of control. He saw the concert and also his previous albums.

SPEAKER_202: I know, I know the whole story. And I saw the last concert series. I think he's just, you know, the thing is I think it was

SPEAKER_17: heartbreaking when his mom died. And clearly he's like, he was lost for that year when he

SPEAKER_605: almost died. I mean, right? Well, car accident. Car accident.

SPEAKER_17: Yeah. Interesting. Kanye West and the tech industry. Maybe Kanye West should be CEO of Yahoo. There you go. If Kanye West was CEO of

SPEAKER_384: Yahoo. He wouldn't create albums. Let's just play this out for a second.

SPEAKER_25: Yeah, I'm with that. If Kanye West became CEO of Yahoo, would Yahoo be a better company or not? Assuming somebody

SPEAKER_30: can come in there and just say, all the stuff that's working already we're not going to destroy and let Kanye unplug. The guy who's now CEO, he's in charge of all that other stuff, and Kanye's doing all the new products. How many people would go work at Yahoo?

SPEAKER_706: I think some people would.

SPEAKER_30: Well, why doesn't Larry Page call Kanye and just say, come work at Google? Because they got that crazy Google lab in San Francisco nobody's allowed to go to where all

SPEAKER_23: the secret stuff is. They can just have him work there. Kanye as CEO of Yahoo.

SPEAKER_709: I don't think that's what he wants, exactly.

SPEAKER_23: No, I know. He wants to start his own company. Or just do projects?

SPEAKER_82: I think it sounds like projects. It sounds like he just wants to take his Are you in touch with him?

SPEAKER_91: Are you in touch with him, Peter? I think that what he wants to do is take his creative Peter's in touch with Kanye.

SPEAKER_23: It's so clear to me now. Now I get it. You're in touch with Kanye and you're going to do a shoe dazzle e-commerce thing with him, aren't you? Shoe dazzle. You know shoe dazzle is pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_79: You are infatuated with shoe dazzle, in fact. I'm infatuated with Beechman, shoe dazzle. You love this new commerce model. I love it. And you think celebrities are the driving force in it. I don't think all the time. I think it's a big piece of force for some of these

SPEAKER_82: guys' success. Kim Kardashian? Yeah, look.

SPEAKER_716: Think about QVC, Home Shopping Network. It's driven by John Rivers, whoever comes out.

SPEAKER_81: Thighmasters. How do they sell? Because people listen to celebrities.

SPEAKER_717: So you are in touch with Kanye and you're going to do, tell me

SPEAKER_79: now if you're not in touch with Kanye. I don't even know where you're falling into these jaws, no. What I'm saying is what... Do you think Kanye, let me ask you this way, would Kanye West

SPEAKER_25: make a great shoe dazzle type service in your mind?

SPEAKER_719: I would think so.

SPEAKER_25: Is there anybody who would do a better job in your mind?

SPEAKER_94: Is he in the top ten? Top five? Look, Nike gave him a contract to create shoes. I would think so.

SPEAKER_25: And you're the ultimate deal guy. You got T-Mobile

SPEAKER_527: and all that stuff. You're the great deal business guy.

SPEAKER_25: You can't get in touch with Kanye?

SPEAKER_721: Kanye is amazing.

SPEAKER_344: You heard it here first, folks. I am guaranteeing that Peter Pham is in touch with Kanye and that he's going to get something done.

SPEAKER_17: Don't ever play poker with me. I will take all of your money, Peter. Hey, when are we going to play, by the way? We can play tonight. There's a game going on in Hollywood. I got to go there for like two minutes. Listen, this has been an amazing

SPEAKER_25: show. Marshall, congratulations on hiring Kanye to work at your startup. Is there a name for this new startup, Marshall?

SPEAKER_726: Yep. If you go to

SPEAKER_35: plexus, P-L-E-X-U-S engine.com, you can sign up to get early access to the beta.

SPEAKER_36: Looking like we're going to start letting in the first couple hundred people in a couple months. Hey, you want to

SPEAKER_30: launch it on March 7th at the launch conference? I'll give you a spot.

SPEAKER_730: Let's talk about it. You just have

SPEAKER_731: to keep it under wraps. You can't do any press until that day. You know how it works. A thousand

SPEAKER_732: people will be there, all the top angel investors. By the way,

SPEAKER_733: congratulations. It's awesome to make that jump.

SPEAKER_109: A lot of journalists are doing it. Sol Hansel is doing it now in New York.

SPEAKER_25: Jeff Jarvis was one of the original guys to do it. I don't think it worked out. Rafat Ali. Who else?

SPEAKER_738: Rafat.

SPEAKER_25: Rafat, who worked for me, first job was working for me. I think his first job was me or inside.com. You made some money. For me, then inside.com. Then Sarah Lacey is now doing one and Paul Carter is doing one.

SPEAKER_02: Sarah and Paul are creating content sites. In a way,

SPEAKER_191: starting a venture firm for Arrington and MGE, I guess. That's a huge difference.

SPEAKER_739: It's making a huge jump. I love it.

SPEAKER_15: You know who the original

SPEAKER_25: journalist turned venture reckless is? Moritz. Michael Moritz went from journalist covering Apple, wrote

SPEAKER_30: the original book on Apple before anybody even knew who Apple was, to joining the venture firm that backed Apple. Talk about a story there.

SPEAKER_58: Hey, Marshall, congratulations on that. Everybody follow at Marshall Kirkpatrick. No, at Marshall K.

SPEAKER_742: At Marshall K.

SPEAKER_58: Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_316: Peter Pham, at Peter Pham, of course, on Twitter. And the name of the incubator is? Studio. Studio. Science.

SPEAKER_745: Science. So science.com they'll find it there? Science-inc.com. Science-inc.com. Wow, a dash in the name.

SPEAKER_731: Yeah, at Science Inc. Is that what? You have at Science Inc.? Of course we do. Okay, so at Science Inc. And if people

SPEAKER_25: wanted to apply to be part of the incubator, what type of things are you looking for? Again, we don't have an application. Okay, but if somebody were trying to get a hold of

Chamath Palihapitiya: us, same as you Yeah, but I mean, what type of things are you looking for? Great entrepreneurs, man. Just great ideas, great entrepreneurs. But how does it work technically? Like you give them 15 grand like by a combinator? How does it work? Typically. Broad strokes. Yeah, broad strokes is depending on the business, we'll fund it as well. We actually have, we raised money from Rustic Capital. I heard you guys have

SPEAKER_753: like 10, 20 million dollars. Raised 10 million dollars. I heard you

SPEAKER_754: oversubscribed. We did a really, we have a great amount. Rustic Canyon, social capital.

SPEAKER_755: Oversubscribed or not?

SPEAKER_754: Terminology is irrelevant.

Chamath Palihapitiya: We raised 10. Could you have raised more? Yes. So you oversubscribed.

SPEAKER_145: That's what it is. So, you know, the way we look at it is great entrepreneurs, great concepts and ideas that we want to be co-founders of.

SPEAKER_30: So you want to be co-founders so you're going to get a big equity stake but they're going to get to get a salary and they don't have to worry about

SPEAKER_25: raising money initially. So if you come into Y Combinator, you're going to live off ramen for 15 grand. Here, somebody who's a serious exec could come in and make a salary still, be able to pay their mortgage or for the kid's school and

SPEAKER_30: still raise the money.

SPEAKER_758: They work with five partners that are operators. Right.

SPEAKER_30: So that's the thing. See, this is why you told me the original concept. If somebody else had told me that concept, I'd say it's not going

SPEAKER_02: to work but if that somebody is Bill Gross or you and Mike Jones or John Borthwick with Betaworks, it seems

SPEAKER_30: like that, then I say it works. But for those people at home who think they're going to start an incubator or an accelerator or a studio or whatever you want to call it, if you don't have a pedigree and you haven't built multiple successful companies, please for the love of God, don't do it. And if you're thinking about joining one of these things and the person's pedigree shows they have not done multiple successful companies, failures, successes, raised money, exits the whole kabang, don't join it.

SPEAKER_02: I mean, why would you join to get advice from somebody who hasn't succeeded in life? I'm looking at some of the pedigrees and I'm saying, no.

SPEAKER_23: This pedigree I'm saying, yes. I appreciate it. Science Inc. is a yes. Thank you. Hey, Tyler Crowley, how's everything on that squeal? Good. Good. Awesome.

SPEAKER_762: I know. You're trying to get money. Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_384: He showed me it? I know, it's great. I get out from 25 grand, 50 grand, take a check, here you go. We'll take it. We'll not take it. Really?

SPEAKER_764: He had 10. Oh, I got people better than him. I know, but I'm the first. Whoa. Okay, I guess the show

SPEAKER_344: is over. No, no, no. Listen, let me tell you, he does have people better than me. I actually agree, and I introduce him to those people.

SPEAKER_25: But the fact is, he won't take it, and I told him, you know, listen, it's a moment in time.

SPEAKER_02: Take the money down. Yes. Because all it takes is some jerk-offs to run a goddamn plane into a building, or for the...

SPEAKER_772: Feast when the food is served, my friend.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, and all it takes is some jerk-offs to put a bunch of bad

SPEAKER_30: loans into these derivatives, and then sell them, and leverage them up, and then the entire economy collapses, and guys like us who are out there, now Marshall's one of us, who are

SPEAKER_02: building stuff. We have to suffer, because the whole economy collapses, because some D-bags decide they're going to blow up a goddamn building, or they decide that now's the time to, you know, take all these bad mortgages and sell them to consumers and grandmas, you know, on their deathbeds in Florida, you know, and rape their bank accounts. These goddamn D-bags will screw up the economy every 36 months, 48 months, and you know what? Taking the money. Take the money down. If you're an entrepreneur, take the money down, build something great, you're going to get judged on a body of movies, not one, you're going to make five movies in your career, and it costs money to make movies, so

SPEAKER_377: don't be some kind of martyr, Tyler. Take the money and go build it. Are you afraid of success?

SPEAKER_704: No, not at all.

SPEAKER_377: What is this like? Are you trying to be the plenty of fish guy?

SPEAKER_704: I love the plenty of fish guy.

SPEAKER_377: No, I know, but that's

SPEAKER_02: like a one, you know, looking at, for every Craigslist or plenty of fish guy who, like, you know, did it with no design and, you know, no

SPEAKER_25: resources, there's, you know, a thousand Airbnbs, Facebooks, you know, and Googles, and, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_406: We are, we are, we

SPEAKER_776: beat them up. This is a whole other episode.

SPEAKER_406: Whole, we do a whole two-hour segment on this.

SPEAKER_778: You're trying to get him to join the incubator, aren't you? I'm trying to help you.

SPEAKER_406: You're trying to get him

SPEAKER_361: to join science.

SPEAKER_781: I would love to.

SPEAKER_25: And if you do, then you'll have three of my guys in your incubator. Ryan, Bud Key, Sean Percival, and Tyler.

SPEAKER_782: Tyler would be awesome.

SPEAKER_15: Listen, I know I'm the talent creator. I know that everybody goes and tries to get my guys and tries to make them founders. It's fine. It's fine.

SPEAKER_58: I think that's a good thing. All right, everybody. This has been a great show. Thank you so much to App MailChamp. Thank you so much to our new sponsor at Sourcebits.

SPEAKER_02: Great guys. Sourcebits.com. I'm making great apps. And if you know somebody, you know, like we all get these phone calls. I need somebody to help me, but I need an app last week.

SPEAKER_114: Just think. You need an app. Your friend needs an app. You don't have time to build Sourcebits. They're the source for the bits.

SPEAKER_612: Sourcebits.com.

SPEAKER_789: I'm going to check it out.

SPEAKER_25: They do good work. They do good work. If you guys had something, you need something to get done real quick. You know, it's just like you can't, well, we could get a developer

SPEAKER_316: or these guys could start it off and then hand it off. Good guys. Thank you, Sourcebits. Thank you, Marshall. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Megan. Hey, good job. Thanks for having me on the show. First time today, really? First time reading the news. Very good. Very good.

SPEAKER_330: I'm going to go clap for Megan. Hey, thanks to the crew, Brandon, and Alec Baldwin out there, and Carolyn, and everybody.

SPEAKER_316: We'll see you next time on The Swing Assurance.