SPEAKER_00: Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. We've got an amazing show for you today. Molly Wood is with me again, my co-host. You can follow her on Twitter at Molly Wood. She's gained like 20,000 followers since she started here, which is awesome. I know. Thanks, boss. Yeah, that's pretty

SPEAKER_01: good. Just call me partner. Don't call me boss. Thanks, partner. You've been doing this as long

SPEAKER_05: as I have. I know. He's like, I don't like it. I don't like it. Yeah. So anyway, we're going to talk about Microsoft absolutely crushing their earnings. They're printing money. Satya is doing

SPEAKER_07: an amazing job. He's like the low-profile, just absolute assassin in tech right now. Absolutely

SPEAKER_10: crushing it. And then? And then we follow up on the Stripe Mafia thread yesterday from the

SPEAKER_11: Bolt CEO. There was a bit of a pylon by the VCs. Jason, of course, jumped into that pile because the man cannot resist. And we, I'm not going to lie, we indulge in just like reading

SPEAKER_14: a couple of fun tweets because it was low stakes. It was memetastic. High amusement factor.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Ben, Molly and I get in a little bit of a debate. We have different opinions about Joe Rogan's

SPEAKER_18: podcast on Spotify, but we may have found some consensus of how to deal with COVID conversations. Neil Young has to have his music removed from Spotify because he's so offended by Joe Rogan's anti-vax slash misinformation accusations, I guess. And then we go deep into podcasting, right?

SPEAKER_11: We go deep into podcasting, our history with podcasts. And then of course, a startup of the week and a request for an all new startup. Who among you can fix Amazon?

SPEAKER_24: Jason, an RFS request for startups. Stick with us. It's going to be

SPEAKER_26: an amazing episode this week in startups is brought to you by our crowd. Our crowd helps you invest early in pre IPO companies alongside professional VCs. If you're interested in investing, you can join our crowd for free at O-U-R-C-R-O-W-D dot com slash twist. Notion is one place for notes,

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SPEAKER_28: All right, Molly, what's in the news today? Lots of news.

SPEAKER_11: In the news today, we're actually going to start with some earnings. It's going to be earnings week, and I suspect there will be some interesting stories, but we just could not walk on by the fact that

Jason Calacanis: Microsoft may have, in the words of Jim Cramer, had its best quarter ever. In its history. In its

SPEAKER_38: entire history. Do you have supply chain woes, other companies? Microsoft does not. Do you have customer

SPEAKER_39: issues or problems with hiring other companies? Microsoft does not at all. Microsoft is on pay.

Jason Calacanis: Its revenue was up 20% year over year this quarter to 21. 20% on a very big number. Zero. Like, who thought Microsoft was a hyper growth company? Just saying. On pace for almost $200 billion of revenue in fiscal year 2022, which would also be a 20% increase over 2021. They matched earnings. I think

SPEAKER_11: that the big takeaway for me was that they matched earnings on gaming, and that was almost $5.5 billion in revenue, which sort of helps to explain why they're continuing to invest there. But again, when you look at where all of this money is, first of all, it's still in Windows, right? It's still in the boring stuff. Productivity and business up 19%, $15.9 billion. That includes LinkedIn. LinkedIn,

SPEAKER_47: LinkedIn up 37% year over year. Yeah. Makes total sense. I mean, if you just think about LinkedIn as solving problems for business people, like hiring, marketing and marketing, like just those two things, finding leads and finding employees,

SPEAKER_50: like that's like the core thing that businesses do every day. We need talent and we need those leads, like the Glenn Gary leads. We need the good ones. So that combined productivity and business process

Jason Calacanis: is that includes Windows. That includes Windows, that includes the Microsoft, the 365 solutions that

SPEAKER_11: that you either pay for as a subscriber or consumer, or they bundle it in now in enterprise. I mean, they're doing a lot of like, quite clever bundling, like they did in the old days to get people to buy everything at once. So it's enterprise licenses, and it's consumer. The cloud business, of course, continues to be bonkers as your revenue alone up 46% year over year, intelligent cloud revenue up 26% to $18 billion. And then personal computing up 15%, Xbox up 10% year over year search and news

SPEAKER_39: advertising search. And I mean, they're even crushing it. It's a sleeper, you know, like they

SPEAKER_58: maintain that. I think they're somewhere in the 10 to 15% market share. So it's it's small, but you know, they have an advertising business there and it works. And default browsers work and being

SPEAKER_11: the default search engine and having news, it works. And I think they're licensing Bing to things like

SPEAKER_58: Apple, maybe to smart speakers like I think DuckDuckGo might use Bing and then wrap it. I think that might be how they build their search engine. Yeah, they used to be Yahoo had their own search API,

SPEAKER_05: Google had one Google kind of shut it down because they didn't like the idea of people competing with them. Go figure. And then Yahoo had search monkey. And they just never doubled down on it. But there would be like 30 search engines right now if Yahoo had kept that business going. It was a really cool idea. And I think Bing picked up that mantle. But when we look at this, there's three business lines. I don't know how they separate them. But productivity and business process about 16 billion until the cloud, just over 18 billion. And then personal computing, which is super confusing, because I guess it doesn't include personal uses of office software, but it does include search news,

SPEAKER_68: Xbox, and that's over 17 billion rounded up to 18. So all three business lines are almost exactly the

SPEAKER_11: same amount of money. Interesting, pretty interesting, too. That is fascinating. And then they don't, they don't reveal exact revenue, for example, LinkedIn, Azure, which is interesting. Smart. They don't want to tip their cards, right? They don't want any, they don't need Google and Amazon finding out exactly how much money they're really making on, on Azure, I would assume, if I had to guess, I would say personal computing means like Dell buying Windows licenses to put on

SPEAKER_53: their hardware, as opposed to an enterprise computer and Dell sells, you know, 1000 workstations, like every gaming laptop that has Windows pre installed, I will say the Windows product

SPEAKER_00: is pretty phenomenal. Now, it's like really works. Well, it's tight. And gaming, who knew, but, you know, we thought gaming would maybe go to iPads and Android and turns out like hardcore gaming is just cementing itself into PCs. And now all these kids, and you have a kid and I have kids, they all want a PC because they want to do Minecraft, Roblox. Which Microsoft owns. Yeah, they want to do

SPEAKER_58: Fortnite. I mean, my daughters are like, I need a Microsoft account. I'm like, No, you don't. They're like, No, no, I seriously need a Microsoft 365. I'm like, No, you're too young for office. Like, No, I need it for Minecraft. Right. So now I've got to make my three daughters, you know, accounts on

SPEAKER_11: this service. Interesting. When you think about the fact that, like, there's this sort of behind

Jason Calacanis: the scenes trend, like, Yeah, you're right. PC gaming is totally back. That's so interesting.

SPEAKER_11: It's driven by Minecraft, which Microsoft bought and just quietly returned all of the kids to and then let people build like player versus player like there's PVP servers and Minecraft now so that kids who aged out of Minecraft can now still play Minecraft because they fight, they get to kill each

Jason Calacanis: other. Yay. I mean, I just don't I have yet to identify a misstep by Satya Nadella at all. Even the hardware, even the surface hardware is pretty cool. Sorry.

SPEAKER_47: Yeah, everything is pretty good. The surface hardware is delightful. I spoke at an event that gave me a surface. I was like, thank you. That was very nice of them. And that's a good gift

SPEAKER_00: because those things are nice. Yeah, it was like two grand. I, you know, I have too many computers. I really got into Chrome operating system for a while. But then when the pandemic happened and everybody started using Zoom, Zoom sucked on Chrome and in a browser. So my whole team like abandoned Chrome, but in our offices, we had Chrome boxes on the back of Dell 38 monitors, man, it is so great and so stable. And that seems to be also getting an incredible foothold in education. So I don't know if your kids have like Chrome laptops at school, etc. So, Oh yeah, Chromebooks galore. So weird how Microsoft and Chrome have won the hearts and minds of this

Jason Calacanis: generation and Apple hasn't. Yeah, Apple just went, Apple went premium, like full stop, right? They

SPEAKER_11: abandoned the like education market to some extent. I mean, they still have a little education discount, but what are you gonna do with 15% when the starting price of everything is $600, $700. They just

Jason Calacanis: decided we're a premium brand. We're about our margins. It's working. All around the world,

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SPEAKER_31: But I think like as a, as a sort of CEO to emulate, like when you look at CEOs that are just crushing

Jason Calacanis: it, I, Satya, what is so interesting about Satya Nadella is that he is crushing it. So he's so quiet, right? He's not in the mold of the CEO that is in the news. I actually wrote a piece for the Atlantic about how Microsoft, I did, by the way, that was a total humble brag. That was a not humble brag.

SPEAKER_106: It's pretty good. Atlantic, that's a pretty great byline.

SPEAKER_107: They hired me for one piece so far.

SPEAKER_64: Do you pay well? Pay well or no? Oh God, no, no, no. It's magazine. Come on. You're there for

SPEAKER_111: that. Magazines used to pay one to $3 a word. I used to get paid one to remember those days?

SPEAKER_114: Yeah. 800 words, 800 bucks, 1600 bucks. Those days are over. Is it about that dollar a word? Nah, it's like 50, 75 cents a word, I think. I mean, I just can't get out of bed for that.

SPEAKER_117: I wrote about how they, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it for any other brand. Let me tell you that.

Jason Calacanis: But what I wrote about is that they have, they have managed to evade the antitrust scrutiny

SPEAKER_11: and even the ire of Google and Facebook and even Apple to some extent because they're boring.

SPEAKER_120: And none of these, well, boring. Hey, there it is. Oh, look at that. Oh, I like the box. Maybe

SPEAKER_30: I'll do an Atlantic story. You should do an Atlantic piece. You know what? It feels really good.

SPEAKER_18: Listen, I don't want to talk out of school here, but let's just say like the editorial page of the New York Times likes my opinions from time to time. You saw I did like the Q&A with Kara Swisher.

SPEAKER_127: And, you know, they kind of like, maybe J Kyle should be on the editorial page. I mean, listen, they're the Amazon of media right now. They will eventually acquire us all. So like,

SPEAKER_47: just lean in. Not this spot. Not resistance is futile. Um, well, I think the other thing here is, do they have a market dominant position in any of these?

SPEAKER_134: They don't versus AWS, Amazon's cloud. They don't versus video games writ large, right? We talked about that. We pulled up all the top video games.

Jason Calacanis: But like neither does Apple with phones and they still keep getting right. It's like, they've got the store and then it's so under this under this sort of new scrutiny of antitrust, which includes acquisitions of which Microsoft has made many that potentially reduce competition when it includes gatekeeping of which Microsoft is certainly still guilty, right? They're still

SPEAKER_139: pushing bundles. Oh, without a doubt. They're still pushing bundles big customers.

SPEAKER_58: That you're not forced to. So it's not like when you load windows, you can't use a Chrome browser.

SPEAKER_05: And it's not like you can't use Google Docs. And they don't have the majority of the operating system. So it's almost like they have a plan to not dominate in any one category, but to be the number

SPEAKER_07: one, two or three player in all categories, right? It's a really interesting strategy, like duopoly,

SPEAKER_32: right? Or maybe three, maybe top three. And it's probably probably is pretty good, right?

SPEAKER_151: I was like, what do you call that? There are throuples. So yeah, three part monopoly. I think

SPEAKER_135: that actually makes sense. I mean, it is it is the the total like quiet dominant strategy. And if it is in fact a strategy, it's working gangbusters as this quarter shows. Well, and the product has gotten

SPEAKER_47: better. They were known for making janky products like, you know, like we take them four or five versions to make something refined. They did something well with UX user experience where things have gotten easier and better to use like the Xbox or Outlook or 365. I was at a meeting with some Seattle company and they were using their version of zoom or hangouts. I forgot the name of it

SPEAKER_164: teams. Maybe I've got the name of their video. Have you been on their video product? Are you talking about the Microsoft product? Yeah, teams. Yeah, no teams. It's kind of like

SPEAKER_00: funky fresh like everybody's got a different size panel and you're moving around and it's like that little panel vibe they have in their UX. I was okay with it worked reasonably fine. The

Jason Calacanis: Microsoft Amazon one is reportedly terrible. I've only been on it once and it was not great time.

SPEAKER_11: Wait, there's an Amazon one? Oh, yeah. Amazon does not let you use tools from other people. So they have their own version of like Google Docs internal. But when you have a meeting with Amazon

SPEAKER_169: people, you have to use chime. Because they don't want competitors knowing who's on their calls.

SPEAKER_11: Yeah, no competitors in the room. I mean, it's so Bezos, right? Like not even in the room. What the other thing before we move on that I want to say that I think is so interesting about Microsoft, or maybe

SPEAKER_135: you don't want to move on. But you know, is that what this also does is just put the nail in the

Jason Calacanis: coffin of all of the pundits, probably myself included, who said that once Microsoft failed

SPEAKER_135: at mobile, they were like done as a company. They should circle back around on mobile. Should

SPEAKER_07: they? Why bother? Um, I guess that if you look at the surface, it's very popular, right? Mm hmm. Okay. And they could never get an app store going. But I didn't they make a surface

SPEAKER_68: phone at some point? I wonder if like a heart or they made an Xbox phone. I know they were talking

SPEAKER_182: about that. I just wonder if they had if they came back around and had phones, if they would do well or not. I don't know. It's interesting because they have 70 they have 75 billion in profit this year.

SPEAKER_151: I mean, or will hit something like that. I mean, what do you do with all that money?

SPEAKER_11: I guess he says they are trying with an Android version. See, that's the dilemma is that you pretty much have to use Android like you can't. There's such a duopoly now in operating systems. You're not going to you cannot be a new mobile OS. So they're saying they're trying with Windows is trying with Android, which we'll see stock, by the way, up about 5% as of 1 30 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday market cap 2.27 trillion dollars. Amazing. And then Apple's at 2.7 or something or

SPEAKER_190: they 3 trillion. So I mean, right, right behind them. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. I have to say be great to have satya on the program to talk about startups. We should have him on. We should have him on. Come on the pod. He's so nice.

SPEAKER_193: I think it'd be a great conversation. Yeah, I saw an interview with him where

SPEAKER_18: he's talking about one of his kids is got special needs and it was quite impactful.

SPEAKER_107: I will tell you having talked to Satya once for sure, maybe he's not like twice, I think the most

SPEAKER_11: dynamic interview. You didn't hear that from me because we definitely want him on the show.

SPEAKER_200: We would love to have him on the show. But what you're saying is he kind of just, he's plain

SPEAKER_201: spoken. He's doing, he's not even that plain spoken. No, he's pretty like businessy. Like he's

SPEAKER_11: just a very CEO interview. And I think it sort of fits with this like, again, whether it's strategy

Jason Calacanis: or personality, he's not a bragger. He's not that brash. He doesn't like make headlines when you talk

SPEAKER_21: to him. He's like, he's a careful, deliberate, almost like purposefully boring.

SPEAKER_58: Yeah, there are people who are execute. Yeah, there are operators like that. I mean,

SPEAKER_206: Sheryl Sandberg is the same way, right? She's just a consummate operator. And they just talk about operating the business as best they can. And totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_208: All right. Well, congratulations to the Microsoft people. You're making great products and

SPEAKER_209: and you're printing money. So congrats and also really good at acquisitions. I have to say the LinkedIn acquisition was smart.

SPEAKER_11: Yeah. Well, and people make fun of them, right? They're like, you're buying Minecraft. Duh. Dumb. You're buying LinkedIn. Boring. And Satya is just like, heads down. Let me roll right over you

Jason Calacanis: while you talk about how boring I am.

SPEAKER_213: I think that we could do a draft. We also got GitHub, right?

SPEAKER_05: Here's an interesting draft. We take the top like five companies and what they bought. We put them all into a bucket. And then we draft like three of us, you know, me, you and like some other guests, we draft which of those acquisitions we would want to have to start a new company. So it's almost like if we added, you know, three expansion teams to the NBA, and then those teams got to draft players from the other teams, right? So you'd be like, I'll take Giannis, I'll build my team around

SPEAKER_02: staff. I'm going for the future. I'm going to get this person, right? It's kind of like a fun

SPEAKER_219: thing to do. Who would you build your team around? Right? Like, you know, I think I'm going YouTube,

SPEAKER_220: maybe, you know, I like the YouTube as an anchor, right? It's just an absolutely crushing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_224: Okay, I like this. I might. I don't want to tip my cards. An acquisition draft would be kind of

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SPEAKER_00: The story that's not fun dying. So you ate your vegetables, everybody. We got you through earnings, and we're going to go through all the earnings. And so here we go. Yesterday, there was a bunch of back and forth where the CEO, Ryan Breslau, who was on this pod, who had the four day work week at his

SPEAKER_58: company. He's the CEO of Bolt. He was saying how Stripe is a mafia, Y Combinator, plus Sequoia, plus all Andreessen Horowitz. We covered it on yesterday's show. You can go back and listen to it. But essentially, the long and short of it was Y Combinator, the VC community, Hacker News,

SPEAKER_05: are in some grand conspiracy to block his company Bolt from getting funding and getting into YC and trending on Y Combinator. As I said yesterday, Y Combinator's Hacker News is at the domain name,

SPEAKER_111: news.ycom. It is the alumni of Hacker News talking about technology. It is not an independent news

SPEAKER_05: source. Of course, they're going to vote for their home team, whether it's Airbnb, GitHub, or Stripe. So there's no conspiracy there. And there is a bit of a conspiracy.

SPEAKER_132: Well, it's not a secret conspiracy, right? It's just how business works.

SPEAKER_05: It's how a community works. I mean, if you go to a community of Taylor Swift fans and you try to convince them that Katy Perry is a better singer, it's not going to work.

SPEAKER_11: Yeah, perfect. Perfect analogy.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah. Like Lady Gaga's stands are not going to embrace Katy Perry. Anyway, putting that aside,

SPEAKER_00: and it feels like that level of drama here. It does actually. Going and collecting all the great investors is a known blocking strategy that basically everybody does. When people buy your shares, then their opinion and who they voted for is that team. It's like buying season tickets, right? You're going to, if you bought season tickets to the Warriors, you're a Warriors fan. If you bought it for the Lakers, you're a Lakers fan. You're going to root for that team. You're not rooting for another team. So although I have sympathy for the Bolt CEO and how it feels to be on the other side of this kind of competitor with this kind of execution, I don't

SPEAKER_14: think it's a grand conspiracy, right? That being said, yeah, he got a little beat up and it seemed

SPEAKER_00: excessive. It was a little weird to see the VC community, which is supposed to be above the fray. This is what I was taught coming into it, you know, is that if you're a VC, have a little decorum Yeah, and you don't pile on founders. It's just like, right? I don't know. Classless power dynamic

SPEAKER_11: thing, right? Like you don't, especially if you have privilege, you're in the position of privilege

SPEAKER_02: information, potentially. It doesn't. Yeah. Yes. And this was when a Sequoia partner, which obviously I'm associated with Sequoia, Sean McGuire tweeted the following in response to Ryan's thread. I can't sit utterly by while this steaming pile of chocolate ice cream emoji goes viral. I like Ryan and have known him for years. That said, almost everything is supposed to run. Most importantly, the real reason why he struggled to raise is because his metrics haven't been good enough. Every round had metrics that were two rounds behind their competitors at the same time. And so this is the problem. This was

SPEAKER_246: a classless low blow from Sean. And I told him that public. Yeah, Jason replied with the following. This is

SPEAKER_11: not cool. Sean McGuire, even if you disagree with Ryan's thread, and it's easy to disagree. And I did on

SPEAKER_107: the podcast. As a top VC, you shouldn't take shots at this company or share their metrics. It's just not a

SPEAKER_247: classy move. Sean replied, So I'm supposed to let someone outright lie and tarnish good people's name for

SPEAKER_18: their own motives. Make sense. Sorry, not how I roll. I call nonsense when I see it, which is kind of like what I do. So I appreciate that you're a full brawler. Also, I didn't say his metrics. I told the truthful reason why firms have passed on the company. I looked at two rounds when I was at GV. So wait a

SPEAKER_53: second, I didn't share his metrics, but I did. Like, I mean, not sharing specifics is that's a

SPEAKER_251: distinction. Okay, he didn't give the chart, but he's basically gave you. He basically said why this company is not raising money at the pace it wants to, which is like, somebody confides in you. And

SPEAKER_00: they're like, Listen, you know, it'd be like you're confiding with an attorney or, you know, like a divorce attorney, an attorney, a therapist, your doctor, and then they go and tweet it. Like, No, Sean, that's not how this works. You don't get to use the data you got in an investment meeting at GV. Under, you know, the the rules of investing, which is you, you know, consider that information sacrosanct, right? It was told to you in this trusted space.

SPEAKER_117: Yeah, wow. And then you got really mad. I see. BC code is clear. You don't weaponize this. I'm quoting Jason, but I'm not going to do an impression because I'm not doing it.

SPEAKER_11: You know, you don't have your code is clear. I would if I could do like just enough of a Brooklyn accent, I would love to. Yeah, exactly. Don't weaponize inside information to attack a founder or startup. How dare you dude seriously? It's hard enough to be a founder. You don't need

SPEAKER_14: a top VC attacking you like this with confidential information.

SPEAKER_73: Yeah, and that was the end of the conversation. Then he said into my we talked in DMs. I think I said into his DM and I was like, Dude, seriously, you know, not cool. And he said, What am I supposed to

SPEAKER_261: do? And I'm just like, shut up is what you're supposed to do. Shut up and be a high profile

SPEAKER_00: VC with power dynamics and you get to write the check. So just shut up. You know, or you could just say you disagree with it like I did, you know, and you could talk about it without taking the inside information you got as a VC and using it and weaponizing it against the founder. Because now founders are going to go, Look, VCs like Sean share their share our confidential information.

SPEAKER_201: Mm hmm. Yeah, that's it. I mean, honestly, I gotta agree with you there. I think that's not

SPEAKER_11: well, also, let's be real. I don't think that metrics even assuming that this is the case,

Jason Calacanis: and we should not know this, right, which is like, Oh, your metrics came in under your competition.

SPEAKER_64: It seems to me as a relative newcomer here that metrics is not like everybody here is a quant investor. Metrics are not always the only decision making factor, right? Like they matter. But it is quite clear that there are times when the founder matters, the addressable market matters, the growth potential matters even more than like hitting your numbers week after week after week. So I feel like

Jason Calacanis: not only is this an overshare, it might be a little bit disingenuous about the the true reasons

SPEAKER_50: why people don't always get funded. Yeah. And of course, you know, then Gary Tan, who's like, super nice guy worked at Y Combinator and worked on Hacker News and was in like the second or third

SPEAKER_276: class with posterists, which is a very cool startup that I used to love to use. You know,

SPEAKER_50: great entrepreneur, great investor, he's saying, like, Listen, the whole thing's just fiction,

SPEAKER_18: Hacker News doesn't like vote down competitors. It doesn't need to the community will just do that automatically. Like we talked about this. It's the home team. Like you're, if you're on the

SPEAKER_50: Taylor Swift, you know, subreddit, you're not going to have Lady Gaga, Katie song, Katie and the Lady Gaga are not making it to the number one slot. And so, you know, I sort of agree with that. But

SPEAKER_18: then Marc Andreessen, of course, you know, who was classless, decides he's going to dunk on the founder, as an investor in the company. And then he did that meme of the superhero, like Superman, having two choices to pick from work Fridays blame stripe. And I just thought that was classless. But

SPEAKER_208: then I sort of tweeted like, Well, but of course, it's, um, it's Marc Andreessen. So that's kind of

SPEAKER_280: what he does. Anyway, he's just not Mark's not over me turning him down or Andreessen Calacanis

SPEAKER_282: Horowitz. It was originally gonna be a CZ. They wouldn't do a CZ. I said, if it's not a CZ, then I'm not in I'm out. Yeah, it's just alphabetical guys.

SPEAKER_73: Well, and it was like Horowitz was like, No, it's a 16 Z, you can be a partner, you can get great economics, but we're not putting you in the name of the firm. And I was like, Well,

SPEAKER_280: I'm out. So no, they just never got over that. So what can I say? Now you're blocked.

SPEAKER_285: Now blocked, because I wouldn't join the firm. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not.

SPEAKER_17: We'll never know, because Jason follows VC code and doesn't share.

SPEAKER_02: I mean, what's the point of me sharing that I was the original co-host of Pivot that and

SPEAKER_134: trim off and Jim bank off couldn't get me or trim off. And so they went with like the B team, you

SPEAKER_290: know, G, I don't can't see it. I don't talk about parts I didn't get you know how like actors

SPEAKER_05: you know, like actors are reticent to talk about the parts they passed on because then the other person took the part and did a good job and they don't want people to, you know, yeah, you don't

SPEAKER_134: want to take away from the other person's performance. That's how I feel about it, you know,

SPEAKER_101: in this sort of thing. All right. Listen, when you're a founder, it's totally fun to trade war stories with other founders and recently balloon CEO, Amanda Greenberg, one of my awesome portfolio companies told me how Vanta's sock to solution helped her save an important deal in the final hours. I kid you not. Well, balloon, they sell SAS productivity and collaboration software. That's why I'm invested in it. And they needed 10 documents in place within 48 hours in order to close the deal. Well, Vanta saved the day by supplying customizable templates and helping them through the process to close. So if you don't have your sock too tight, you know, you're not going to be able to close those major customers. That's why Vanta's compliance software makes it so easy to get and renew your sock too. They continually test against technical and non-technical sock to

SPEAKER_07: requirements. And they partner with over two dozen audit firms who have been trained to file sock two reports directly within Vanta. On average, Vanta customers are sock to compliant in just two to four weeks. Compare that to three to five months without Vanta. And guess what? Vanta is going to give you a thousand dollars off your sock too, just because you're listed to this week in startups. So here's how you get the thousand dollars off. You go to Vanta.com slash twist. V-A-N-T-A dot com slash T-W-I-S-T. That's Vanta.com slash twist for a thousand dollars off. Thanks Vanta. Anyway, yes. So the

SPEAKER_11: pylon, then Jason chimed in on the VC pylon. I will say like the meme, the production team rightly points out that this did upgrade the meme team a little bit. Marc Andreessen's like that was it was actually somewhat funny. The Jason then chimed in on the VC pylon. VCs are proving the bolt founder

Jason Calacanis: correct by ganging up on him right on right now on Twitter, just classless. And then you today tweeted

SPEAKER_00: about the best. Well, no, I just want to make a point on that. Like he's saying that like all these VCs ganged up on me and there's this conspiracy. And then what did the VCs do? They confirm his own paranoia by mocking him and attacking him relentlessly with their huge followings. Yeah. Like it's just

SPEAKER_18: better to shut up, you know, and just collect your money. Stripe's a hundred billion dollar company, $200 billion company, you own 5% of it, like ensure your five or $10 billion. Like you don't need to go dunk on the other founder. It's just weird. Yeah. And then the and then went

Jason Calacanis: on, you went on to say like, look, if you want to bolt can beat stripe, here's how. So yeah, useful information. Sure. As opposed to just like yelling at folks. Patrick might not be happy.

SPEAKER_11: Then it got hilarious. Like it really did. There were some funny tweets, I will say if we're just going to engage in the kind of, let me, let me just unpack. If you really want to be competitive,

SPEAKER_02: Ryan, here's what you do. Aside from working Friday, which is funny. If Stripe makes their money

SPEAKER_58: from their API, right? Like, and from their transaction fees and like being the standard, just make a product that goes up against that and it's free. Right? So you take wherever their

SPEAKER_02: margin is, like, let's say they're making money because they charge, they get 1% of all transactions, like make it 25 basis points and just compete hard on that. In other words, destroy your

SPEAKER_05: competitor's margin. That's the move here. That's what I think is the move.

SPEAKER_220: Yeah. Are you listening to that? Which is what Internet Explorer did to Mark Andreessen's

SPEAKER_05: Netscape browser. I mean, you remember this Molly, like it was like, you would go to Comp USA and buy Netscape browser for 50 bucks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_318: It cost money. You bought your browser. It cost money. Long before Microsoft forced you to use it by bundling it with Windows, they made it free. They made it free. Yeah. Which then really

SPEAKER_320: screwed Mark Andreessen's business. Like that's how you, if you really want to fight the mafia,

SPEAKER_50: that's how you do it. That's like Elliot Ness, you know, you know, the Chicago way,

SPEAKER_323: you get them on tax evasion. Take the knees out. Basically. Take the knees out.

SPEAKER_324: All right. Let's give us some of the funny memes. Let's go through the funny memes. Let's have a dramatic reading of some of the tweets.

Jason Calacanis: Delian on Twitter says, you know, it's actually crazy how much technologies change over time. Netflix used to mail CDs. Now their production studio is streaming. Amazon used to sell books. Now they run the world's data centers. Stripe used to be a payments API. Now they're an Irish mob.

SPEAKER_332: That's pretty funny, actually. He has his moments, Delian. I give a credit. Ashley Mayer said, I once tried to compete with Stripe and woke up to find a severed unicorn head

SPEAKER_336: in my bed. I played. I played. Pretty good.

SPEAKER_318: Teddy blank. Stripe should put the bolt guy's whole Twitter thread in their S1, which

SPEAKER_339: said, cold, cold. Buy our stock. We are hardcore. We are hardcore.

SPEAKER_280: Logan. Logan, who's pretty good at the Twitter, Bartlett, said, I seriously wish Shilohga Valley was this badass. That's pretty funny, actually.

Jason Calacanis: That's good. Yeah, exactly. And then Eric Newcomer, who is friend of the pod, so great.

SPEAKER_107: I was terrified for my life to say anything about this before now, but Stripe has been forcibly taking a cut of my revenue since I started my newsletter. He's in the protection racket for

SPEAKER_347: journalists. He's in the protection racket. That's how Stripe is taking 75 basis points of his money every month for protection. Oh, that's hilarious. I mean, they were excellent.

SPEAKER_02: Jordan Scales, J. Dan on the Twitter, updated his LinkedIn. He's a software engineer at Notion, which is a great, great product that we love and use. And he was a senior software engineer at Stripe from November 2017 to August of 2020. And he put in his job capsule there. I was

SPEAKER_332: responsible for going on Hacker News and downvoting our competitors.

Jason Calacanis: And finally, a hilarious tweet that you kind of have to see to really appreciate from YC founder Robert J. Salvador, which is a picture of all of them and a Photoshop of the Sopranos album cover, basically. The Stripe Anos.

SPEAKER_50: The Stripe Anos. It doesn't roll off the tongue perfectly. It doesn't. You got to see it. To see like a bunch of nerds as, you know, like a mob family is kind of hilarious. It is a little bit hilarious.

SPEAKER_125: They're going to literally break your legs with their API.

SPEAKER_358: So, you know, it was, you know what, sometimes it's a fun day on Twitter.

SPEAKER_50: This is kind of one of the new PayPal mafia, like it's PayPal. And then you've got this next

SPEAKER_195: generation, the Stripe mafia. But congratulations to both of them for taking up the news cycle for two days in a row. Yeah, bravo. Mission accomplished.

SPEAKER_360: We're done now.

SPEAKER_200: And we're done. And seen. And seen.

SPEAKER_361: Mean, as we talked about in the production meeting, mean time to meme. Mean time to meme. Mean time to mainstream meme.

SPEAKER_00: The mean time to mainstream meme here was less than 24 hours. I mean, we literally got to like the afternoon of the accusations and we were already memeing it as opposed to like with Chamath on all in the other week.

SPEAKER_361: I took a full like 48 hours to get to mean mean time to mainstream memes.

SPEAKER_20: I think that the stakes were a little higher on that one. Maybe.

SPEAKER_17: So there had to be some like legit, extremely upset, you know, and you're like, wow, how do we make kind of a joke about, well, also you'd have to try to figure out like,

Jason Calacanis: do I want to make a joke about this sort of ongoing genocide situation?

SPEAKER_140: Right. Yeah. Kind of hard to decide. It's tricky.

Jason Calacanis: This one was easy. I mean, that one about the tech companies, how Stripe had, you know, morphed into the

SPEAKER_159: Irish mob. That one was out minutes later, really.

SPEAKER_73: All right. We got to talk about my guy, Neil Young. I'm a huge Neil Young fan.

SPEAKER_00: I know Neil. I'm not like besties or anything like that, but I've hung out with Neil. Cool cat.

SPEAKER_02: And he told Spotify to remove his music over Joe Rogan's vaccine misinformation. And this feels to me like a pandemic peak moment. Like this might be the sign the pandemic's over, but why don't you walk us through this?

SPEAKER_11: Interesting. That is an interesting direction for you to go with this. Yeah. According to NBC News, because the letter has since been taken down, Neil Young posted

Jason Calacanis: this letter on his website called a message to Spotify saying he wanted his managers and his record label to let Spotify know that he wanted his music off of their platform. Rolling Stone said it's because, quote, according to Neil, Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines, potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them. He made it very clear that he was referring to Joe Rogan's podcast. Now, of course, this comes on the heels of a bunch of medical professionals, I think over a hundred doctors basically writing to Spotify. A few hundred healthcare professionals signed a letter to Spotify saying that Spotify needed

SPEAKER_11: to have a misinformation policy in place because, as they claim, Joe Rogan had Dr. Robert Malone on his show who promoted false COVID claims and theories.

SPEAKER_64: And this is, of course, in addition to Rogan himself, like getting COVID and saying, you know, I took the horse paste.

SPEAKER_73: I mean, Ivermectin is also used for humans.

SPEAKER_18: So they argue like taking the horse, if you if you claim it's for just for horses, you're kind of also misidentifying it.

SPEAKER_39: Oh, I'm sorry. I like that. My burden of truth here is higher than saying that it's okay to take a medicine that is

Jason Calacanis: sometimes used for horses and sometimes used for humans, but never used for COVID. Yeah.

SPEAKER_39: But it's still I should you're right.

Jason Calacanis: I should be more specific while they make things up and kill people. I mean, I'm not I'm not dunking on you, but it's that is totally what the internet would do,

SPEAKER_378: right? They'd be like, Oh, actually, Ivermectin is using humans all the time. You are spreading disinformation. Yeah. Yeah, that's how it is. That's exactly how they are.

SPEAKER_47: I mean, in fairness, like, I don't think anybody really understood

SPEAKER_18: exactly how to deal with a once in our lifetime pandemic, because it's once in our lifetime, like, none of us are experts. And this one more like five times, like, it is a hard. It is a hard topic to try to figure out, right? We've all had a hard time figuring out, like, what risks we're willing to take over time. Right?

SPEAKER_117: Yes, definitely. And I think that if you have a once in a lifetime pandemic, two things are happening.

Jason Calacanis: One, you're absolutely right, right? Like a lot of the freak out that everybody's having is misdirected rage at the fact that the pandemic exists at all. Like, we don't want it to exist. We don't want it to be a reality that even if you don't think schools should be closed, the fact is some schools are going to close because they don't have enough warm bodies to keep school open right now, right? Like, we don't want that to be true. And so we are lashing out at the people who are trying to muddle their way through this, the best they can. And do masks work.

SPEAKER_05: And also, right, right. Like, maybe they know, I mean, the way I look at it is like, there was no downside to wearing a mask. And then with Omicron, like, maybe it's pointless to wear a mask.

Jason Calacanis: Like, both of those things could be true. Both of those things could be true. And so, even though it's true that we are upset about this pandemic,

SPEAKER_11: and we are all having a hard time working our way through it, and the longer it goes, the more society is really, like, fraying.

Jason Calacanis: Like, it starts to feel like society is coming apart a little bit at the seams. And also, some stuff is objectively untrue.

SPEAKER_393: Yes.

Jason Calacanis: And is being promoted heavily by people with really big platforms.

SPEAKER_00: That is the issue with Joe Rogan. I look at Joe Rogan, and I'm like, okay, I remember Howard Stern from my youth.

SPEAKER_18: When I was growing up in New York, we talked about this on our private chat. He was incredibly controversial. He was a good interviewer. He was compelling to listen to. The government tried to censor him. And all that did was draw more attention to him as being an authentic person.

SPEAKER_00: And people who hated him or liked him would listen to him more, because at least they felt like the guy couldn't be censored and he was authentic. Joe Rogan is a huge Howard Stern fan, studied him. And then, I don't want to say copied it, but I think he evolved it into the podcast format and became the number one podcaster in the world, right? Right. When I look at it, I look at it, Joe Rogan's a comedian.

SPEAKER_05: He'll have anybody on the show who's entertaining. That is his benchmark. Is the person entertaining? Not is the person correct. And they want to talk for three hours. He stole that long form thing because when people talk for two or three hours,

SPEAKER_111: yes, sometimes people will say things that they wouldn't have said in a 20 minute, you know, controlled environment. And sometimes hour two or three can be really compelling. But this is the guy who's a comedian, MMA fighter commentator, who hosted a show where people drank shakes of blended, disgusting worms. Right. Or, you know, like bull testicles or whatever. Like, he's the host of Fear Factor.

SPEAKER_396: Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: Like, why are we... All that is like, well, why are we talking about it? It was because like Spotify spent a hundred million dollars to acquire his content and make it exclusive.

SPEAKER_11: And now Spotify is in the position of essentially having become a publisher. Right. Because they've acquired this content and they're putting it out on their platform. And there are legitimately questions now about how they're going to deal with content that that may stray into this territory of like dangerous. And I think what is particularly interesting is that everything is content. You know my theory on this. Everything is content. And once it becomes content, it becomes moderation. There's always going to be pressure to moderate. Sure. I especially think this is interesting in the context of Neil Young,

Jason Calacanis: who the Nota gang is pointing out, had polio as a child, saying like attempting to apply this kind of like business based peer pressure. Like, I don't want to be on this platform if this is going to be a platform that spends all of this money to acquire content that is potentially dangerous to its listeners. That I think is very interesting.

SPEAKER_401: And that happened with how it's done. Like Howard Stern was on who, by the way, spoke out against Joe Rogan.

SPEAKER_135: Like he's like a pretty anti-vaxxer.

SPEAKER_47: Like he would not be appreciative of this comparison.

SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, I mean, people make it all the time with him and he does not appreciate it or anything. But, you know, Howard also had that problem where people were threatening to leave CBS radio or, you know, because it was some big conglomerate that Mel Karmazin was running. And yes, it created blowback in other places.

SPEAKER_18: And they also had on the radio that woman who was a homophobe. I forgot her name.

SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say the wrong name because she was like one of those talk radio hosts who felt like gay people were going to go to hell kind of thing.

SPEAKER_58: And it was like they had her on the platform, too.

SPEAKER_00: And so with Joe Rogan, I look at it and go like, he's interviewing somebody, but that doesn't mean he's endorsing them.

SPEAKER_251: And he's like, he's like a self. Well, no, but he has everybody on the program.

SPEAKER_408: And then it's like, does he have everybody on the program?

SPEAKER_46: Everybody, like you just had Jordan Peterson on. There's a whole thing on Twitter about the stupid seven year old crap that I like.

SPEAKER_412: He does. I mean, he has Alex Jones on who he is trending.

Jason Calacanis: And there, you know, there was like a whole back and forth with Eric Swalwell, I think somebody who had sent him a death threat in his DMS. And he was like, Joe Rogan show is one of the places where I started to become radicalized. Right. Like there's a drift because this is America right now. Everybody's picking a side. And I think it is unquestionable that Joe Rogan is picking a side.

SPEAKER_58: I look at it. I'm just like, guy's a comedian. He has a bunch of wacky people on.

SPEAKER_05: It's like, and he literally stole that whack pack concept, I think from Howard, which is how we would have all these weird people on. And I think he has like his own whack pack, which is like Alex Jones and previously Milo Yiannopoulos and some of these, you know, whoever folks, I just don't,

SPEAKER_112: who is taking it so seriously and getting their medical advice from it. Seriously? Really? I don't. You really don't think that influencing is a thing?

SPEAKER_02: I'm just talking for myself. I didn't get my, I did not literally get my, you know, health information from Howard Stern or Joe Rogan, you know, or any other comedian.

SPEAKER_29: Well, you did, but that does not, and that doesn't mean that other people aren't. People are. So what are we going to do?

SPEAKER_117: Like in a vacuum of Joe Rogan? I mean, maybe we should just be honest about Joe Rogan.

SPEAKER_11: Like Joe Rogan is at times peddling misinformation that is dangerous to people. And then this becomes a business question, like separate again from the content.

SPEAKER_201: Yeah. This is a business question for Spotify.

SPEAKER_11: And to what extent is it going to continue to be, are they platforming misinformation? Is it potentially dangerous? Do they want to be associated with that going forward after they have set up basically their

Jason Calacanis: new model of we're going to spend a crap ton to acquire content?

SPEAKER_423: This is the kind of, what would you do if you were Spotify? Let me ask that. What, what do you think Spotify should do? Should they get rid of Joe Rogan? Should they never have signed him?

SPEAKER_46: I mean, I don't know. I'm not in that position and I'm glad I'm not.

SPEAKER_50: Yeah. I mean, I'm really glad I'm not.

SPEAKER_18: I think that I have a really easy solution. They should just go hire five scientists to start the all in of, you know, science and

SPEAKER_05: promote it, you know, side by side with Joe Rogan. And then those empower those people to take apart the claims on Joe Rogan. And that would be an incredible podcast. Imagine a podcast where they literally just fact check Joe Rogan every day. And like how to like a after Joe Rogan, you know, kind of podcast. Like literally that somebody must be doing that right now. So if two or three intelligent people got together and said, after Joe Rogan talks about science,

SPEAKER_111: we're going to actually fact check. And they, because somebody was doing that at all. And I forgot who this account was.

SPEAKER_07: Yeah. They would fact check us.

Jason Calacanis: There's a lot of disinformation researchers, though, who say that that doesn't fact checking doesn't really work. It just like repeats the claims. Joe Rogan is always going to have a bigger audience than somebody who's like, I don't like Joe Rogan. I mean, there are already people in the chat who were like, if Molly doesn't like Joe Rogan, then she's dead to me, right? Like, it's not gonna work.

SPEAKER_11: Like, I heard a lot of compelling things in the three hours that I listened to this Joe Rogan show. Now I would like to spend some more time seeing if those things are true.

Jason Calacanis: Like, you believe him like people, you know perfectly well that when people are fans, they believe you.

SPEAKER_358: They believe you. Sure. Maybe Spotify, honestly, I guess what I would do is just put a label on it.

Jason Calacanis: Like this isn't this is like they do on editorials on TV or something like this. This content is not endorsed by Spotify, right? This is our

SPEAKER_18: Or I wouldn't have a problem with that if they said this show has disputed claims. Here are those disputed podcasts and link to them. Like that's kind of what Facebook is trying to do. Walk the line.

SPEAKER_213: I don't think Joe Rogan would have a problem with that. I think he would want to actually hear where he's wrong. Yeah. I think actually he would.

SPEAKER_11: I think he would have. I think everybody is now radicalizing in opposition to each other. And there there's a personality type that the more opposition they encounter, the more

Jason Calacanis: they entrench. And that is that that as this sort of like as the bookings go on, that seems to be a trend. I don't know that for a fact. Right. But what I think you do see is people being like in response to the reaction I am getting, I am digging in or I am radicalizing further. I mean, that's how radicalization works. You don't just do it in a vacuum. You do it in opposition to some other force.

David Friedberg: Apparently, I'm just getting a note here from the producers.

SPEAKER_140: The number 23 podcast on Spotify is called Joe Rogan Universe.

SPEAKER_02: And it's by somebody named Adam Thorne, who is talking about Joe Rogan. So there it is.

SPEAKER_11: They're saying Joe Rogan experience review. His show is called experience. I think I report review and analyze. See, now that's smart. Like, okay, use the halo effect. Yeah. It also isn't. It doesn't say it's like it helps us get the most out of Joe's world class show. So I think this is a fan pod, not a fact check pod. Right. But I would be very interested to see.

SPEAKER_50: If somebody wants to have a top 100 podcast, just fact check Joe Rogan every day. I guarantee you'll be in the top 200.

SPEAKER_18: Call Her Daddy is like a very sexually explicit one. And I think they have a disclaimer on that because it's sexually explicit. So I think like, I don't mind the disclaimer labeling stuff is yeah, that seems to be the best solution.

SPEAKER_00: And honestly, if people, you know, inside of if the people inside of Spotify cannot handle,

SPEAKER_111: they were like part of the music thing, but they can't handle the podcasting thing, they just quit. Like, just leave the company.

SPEAKER_58: Like, they're not changing, you know, after spending a half billion dollars on Gimlet, ringer, call her daddy, Joe Rogan, etc. Like they're not, they've decided to produce content.

SPEAKER_11: Yeah, the end. And now you're and now and this is just why I think this is so interesting as a matter of business. And now there's a who's sorry.

Jason Calacanis: Now like content is a mess. It is a messy business.

SPEAKER_64: And somebody's always yelling at you. It's like being the president. It's the worst job in the world.

SPEAKER_111: Bob Iger had the green light to buy Twitter and to buy BuzzFeed. And he bought neither.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah, he bought Star Wars. He bought Pixar. He bought Marvel because he said, you know what, these things are contained.

SPEAKER_111: He literally was going to buy Twitter. Can you imagine if Disney owned Twitter right now? No, it was insanity.

SPEAKER_452: They would be like, oh, my God, it'd be like the anti brand.

SPEAKER_111: Mickey Mouse supports Nazis. And they would like screenshot like a Mickey Mouse Nazi tweet on Twitter and be like,

SPEAKER_05: how dare you publish this? It's like, it's an open platform. Yep. I mean, that's the other thing.

SPEAKER_07: It's like podcasting is an open platform standard. It's like saying web browser. When you say podcasting.

SPEAKER_11: Well, it was until Spotify acquired it and made exclusive. That's the part where you become a publisher.

SPEAKER_251: So yes, they made some of them exclusive, but you can still add any URL of an RSS feed to

SPEAKER_18: Spotify, Apple, etc. So I saw this bigger thing, which was like, we need to, you know, sensor and we need to, you know, these platforms need to stop allowing these podcasts. And it was like, they're not selecting them. The podcast is just a dumb player.

SPEAKER_00: You can put any URL that people just don't fundamentally understand how that works, because there's like three things going on. You have buying content. You have featuring editorializing, like here's some great content we're surfacing for you and curation.

SPEAKER_05: And then there's like, this is a web browser.

SPEAKER_219: Ma'am, you can put whatever you want into it. Like you can put. Ma'am, this is the Wendy's.

SPEAKER_457: Ma'am, this is the way.

SPEAKER_219: Sir, you're in a Starbucks.

SPEAKER_11: There is an approval process. I think though, for podcast, like on Apple podcasts, you have to submit it. To be in the directory. To be in the directory. Exactly.

SPEAKER_32: But you can still put in any URL you want. You can happen. You can do that.

SPEAKER_05: 100%. Three things happening. There's, we paid for this content and produced it and we own it. We curated it and we say, hey, this is a cool one. You should check it out. So we're endorsing it, but we didn't pay to produce it. And then there's the third one, which is like, it's, you can add whatever you want.

SPEAKER_391: You can open stuff up and you can add whatever you want.

SPEAKER_05: You literally could add a terrorist organization, Nazi organization podcast to Apple players. By the way, Microsoft, you can also open a Nazi website, white supremacist website, and Internet Explorer or whatever they call their browser now. Edge.

SPEAKER_111: Where's the browser? Just call it Internet Explorer and stop changing the name of the browser.

SPEAKER_64: It's also stop trying to get me to use edge. Bless you. I know we talked about the.

SPEAKER_464: I know. Would you like to switch your browser? Would you like to switch? No. If I wanted to switch my browser, I'd go into settings and switch it. Stop asking. I really don't want to. I really don't want to. Chrome.

SPEAKER_469: Here's my thing. Ask once.

SPEAKER_111: I'll let you ask once. Apple, Microsoft, Chrome, everybody. Ask me one time. Stop asking me to change my browser. Are you sure?

SPEAKER_45: Producer Justin says with Spotify, you cannot add any RSS. That's not true. And listen to it.

SPEAKER_00: I don't believe that's true because Patreon makes custom feeds when you pay for something.

SPEAKER_18: Patreon custom RSS feed. Spotify. You're telling me if you pay for something, it will not work. If you pay for a Patreon custom feed, it's not going to work. I don't think so.

SPEAKER_474: I don't know. In Spotify, yes.

SPEAKER_477: They recently did a partner or anchor introduced the feature that you can get access to paid feeds through their mechanism. But you can't. I can't just copy paste my anchor RSS, my Patreon RSS feed and drop that in Spotify. As far as I know.

SPEAKER_202: Add an RSS feed to Spotify.

SPEAKER_190: Log into podcasters at Spotify. Click on your show settings update. That's if you're the show producer. That's your show. That's your show.

SPEAKER_482: That's to submit. How do I manually? Yeah.

SPEAKER_19: I don't know.

SPEAKER_484: Is that true? Noties, let us know.

SPEAKER_19: Yeah, maybe you're right. Does Spotify really not support? I'm on a Reddit thread. Does Spotify really not support this? No, they're lacking many of the best functions of other podcasters. It really is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_11: Because it's not really a podcatcher or even a browser. Spotify is a content aggregator. Like again, this is why I think that's so interesting as a business question.

Jason Calacanis: They're a content aggregator, not a browser, and not even like a search, right? Especially in more and more and more as they start to acquire stuff and make it exclusive. And that's why, like, I almost wonder if that wasn't. And frankly, there's been a lot of reporting that says it's not even the best thing for the people who got these deals. Like their traffic is dropping because it's exclusive. Like I just, I wonder.

SPEAKER_18: That's why we didn't do it with all in. I won't say which platforms courted us, but we were courted early on when people

SPEAKER_02: jump into the top 100 or 200 pods. They were like, Hey, and this week in startups, we've had people, you know,

SPEAKER_07: make overtures and stuff like that. And I was like, listen, we want to be indie. There's a reason we're indie. We do not want to limit where people see it. And, you know, and then every platform is like, Hey, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_58: And I was like, there's really two things I want to work on YouTube and RSS feeds.

SPEAKER_134: Anything that's not those two, I think, you know, is, you know, very secondary.

SPEAKER_02: Like you can explore marketing on Twitter and TikTok, but like, no, I don't want to build your platform. No, I want open standards.

SPEAKER_11: Yeah, totally. Me too. And when you don't, and you know, for years and years and years, this question of publisher versus platform has been plaguing these platforms and the closer they get to

Jason Calacanis: publisher, the more they find themselves in these.

SPEAKER_164: This is the problem I've had with Spotify.

SPEAKER_228: And I've talked to Daniel about it over and over again. Most recently when we were now part of their video, um, project, uh, and they're like,

SPEAKER_00: you have to use anchor and I was like, I don't want to use anchor. We have an RSS feed or ready for video. Just take that. And they're like, you have to use anchor.

SPEAKER_18: I was like, no, I don't want to use anchor. And I just, I emailed Daniel and the anchor CEO. And I was like, why are you breaking podcasting standards? This is why people hate Spotify. You keep breaking the standards. And they're like, no, no, we're going to do it. It's just now just for the beta. And I was like, really, is it just for the beta? Or because I'm calling you out on breaking podcasting standards. You know, are, are you telling me you're going to do it? So I like, I think I'm having a little influence on Daniel by constantly telling him like, listen, Daniel, you're hated by the podcasting community for a reason. You keep breaking podcasting centers.

SPEAKER_00: The fact that they don't allow you to add a URL to Spotify is ridiculous. Clip this, send it to the anchor CEO, send it to Daniel. This is stupid. If Apple and Google and everybody else lets you add a spot of your own custom RSS feed, then just do it. Spotify and stop trying to break podcasting. It's offensive. Like we built podcasting. You're benefiting from podcasting, but you want to break open standards. Like anchor CEO, Daniel C, Spotify CEO. Please stop with the breaking of the podcasting standards.

SPEAKER_07: If you want to court podcasters and support the open standards. Explicitly. Enough. No, I just really get pissed off about it.

SPEAKER_11: Like we were here. Well, no, but we love it. I'm just like not saying a word because yeah. We were here first.

SPEAKER_07: We were here first. We created that standard. We built the standard. We built this. Don't break it. It's not broke. Don't break it.

SPEAKER_11: And Apple walked the line for a long time. Like they created an ecosystem, but they did not break it. They curated it.

Jason Calacanis: They made a directory. They wouldn't give anybody any metrics like they for a long time. I mean, I say this all the time. In fact, I told my son the other day, he was like somebody, somebody invented podcasting. I was like, no, no, no. I invented podcasting, right? Adam and Dave Weiner invented an enclosure. And then in 2005, Tom Merritt and I at CNET started what became the first commercially successful podcast. Yes. Full stop.

SPEAKER_358: Full stop. Yes. The model that we are doing right now was me and Tom Merritt at CNET. And then advertisers were like, huh? Apple seems to control this whole thing. And like, we can't get any metrics. They're like, I'm on a website. I can tell when like a bird flies by.

Jason Calacanis: But on a podcast, I can only tell if you download it. And I don't know if you listen and I know. And so the bottom fell out and everybody got out of podcasting

SPEAKER_11: for like a decade until finally, like NPR came along and was like, well, we don't have to care that much about money. So we're going to do this and reinvigorated this space.

SPEAKER_509: Except for me, I was here the whole time too.

SPEAKER_00: I knew we were here the whole time. Yeah. But what I just told everybody was like, listen, we're going to make an estimate. You don't get to tag the users. This is my big problem with anchor.

SPEAKER_18: I was like anchor. I don't want to give you, I don't want to have an anchor fee. Because I don't want you tagging and studying our users. I want people to have their privacy. And you know, everybody is trying to then invade the podcast listeners privacy. And I don't like that. I don't want our users and listeners to be in some database.

SPEAKER_08: Totally. And they assured me that they're not going to put our users in a database and sell ads against them or try to because Apple, you know, the short version of that is Apple

SPEAKER_11: almost killed podcasting once by trying to strangle it in an ecosystem. Spotify is risking the same thing. And frankly, I think exclusive content is part of that. It's part of the slow strangling. I don't love it.

SPEAKER_18: I don't love it, but I respect the rights of the content creator to do an exclusive if that's in their best interest and that's what they want.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_50: Right? Like if, if you're the ringer and the ringer says, you know what? I want my payday, you know, and Bill Simmons wants to get paid.

SPEAKER_515: I'm happy for him. If Joe Rogan wants to get paid, call our daddy wants to get paid. Fine.

SPEAKER_00: That's their choice. And what I like about that, Molly, is when those three people come out of the top rankings, that moves the next group of people up. So like, whoever, anybody.

SPEAKER_517: Yeah, no, but it's true though, Joe Rogan was number one on Apple. Right. And now he's not.

SPEAKER_64: Right. So does it ever benefit the creator? That's my question. It actually goes back to the conversation we had yesterday.

SPEAKER_11: Yeah, but then you get a big paycheck once and then you fade over time as opposed to potentially continuing to grow.

SPEAKER_05: Which is exactly, to go full circle, what Howard Stern did.

SPEAKER_07: Howard Stern was like, the satellite radio people were like, listen, you're, I think Howard was reaching like 10 million people at the peak, maybe 20. It was like, he was the most listened to. You remember his influence during that 90s period for some period of time. Huge. You know, he was huge. Everything. He would sell, he was like Oprah. Like Oprah and him could move, you know, a million bucks if they had somebody on or sell out a concert or make it the number one movie of the weekend. And then they gave him like a quarter billion dollars to move over to Sirius.

SPEAKER_05: Sirius got 2 million paid subscribers. 2 million people paying 10 bucks a month is a quarter million dollars a year. They basically passed that money on to Howard. Sirius basically bought him into irrelevancy.

SPEAKER_523: Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: They took, he lost 90% of his audience and he got paid. Yeah. That's why I, I'm in it for the influence.

SPEAKER_47: I'm in it for as big of an audience as possible. So that's why I say no to all these deals.

SPEAKER_64: Yep, exactly. That's what I mean. I just don't, I think long-term it's better for the platform than it is for the creator.

SPEAKER_526: But I would like my TV show. I mean, seriously, when are they going to put Jason Calacanis on TV? Like I had a TV show. Let's freaking go.

SPEAKER_324: We lost all the weight. That's why all TV ever wants you to lose weight.

SPEAKER_126: I had a reality show on NBC. We did a pilot and everything. It's just my partner on it turned out to be a monster.

SPEAKER_526: Yeah. Anyway, we don't talk about that anymore.

SPEAKER_529: All right, your day will come. So much for that. A lot of tea. But yes, you know what the problem is?

SPEAKER_19: It's just too much work to work with the TV people. Oh yeah, it's terrible. It's just so much. You've had TV deals, I guess, right? Or like people talk to your agents.

SPEAKER_533: Oh yeah, exactly. And people, and you know, I was trying to,

SPEAKER_11: like I had a half hour broadcast quality show on CNET that I was trying to get CBS to pick up when I worked there. Like, oh, I shouldn't even, things I shouldn't say,

SPEAKER_135: but whatever, who cares? It was years and years and years and years ago. Like TV nightmare.

David Friedberg: It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. They want to water everything down. They want to break it.

SPEAKER_02: That's why I like the streamers. So like I have, I want to do. Anyway, I'll talk to you about it off here.

SPEAKER_11: I'm with Sebastian here. Death to the intermediaries. I mean, that's exactly what these platforms are, right?

SPEAKER_107: In the next decade, content creators and consumers, no middleman controlling the tabs.

SPEAKER_182: There will always be some. That's basically what's happened.

SPEAKER_19: I mean, that's basically what's happened. I do, I wouldn't mind being on HBO Max or like a Netflix show. I wouldn't mind that.

SPEAKER_91: I have a great idea for a Netflix show

SPEAKER_21: that's basically like an HGTV style show where you decarbonize your house, but it's like a makeover, like decarbonizing makeover.

SPEAKER_111: Oh, that's a great idea. Right? Decarbonize it. Yeah, like sustainable living with, yeah, sustainable makeover.

SPEAKER_492: It can be sexy. I'll talk to my agent. I don't have an agent anymore. I get called by all these people. Do you have an agent or no? You don't have an agent.

SPEAKER_201: Sort of, but I'm like in, I'm in the hip pocket of an agency as opposed to like a signed deal.

SPEAKER_545: Yeah. I, they just come to me and pitch me on stuff. That was the time of the show

Jason Calacanis: when we overshare, by the way.

SPEAKER_182: Yeah. Anyway, it's just so much easier to do your own thing. Is there anything else in the news that we need to talk about here?

Jason Calacanis: I don't think so. Come on.

SPEAKER_116: We ended on such a great rant. Great Jason rant. Yeah. I think it's a great Jason. We planted our flag in podcasting.

SPEAKER_02: I will say just in the startup space, there's a company called scratch pad. It's kind of like I'm told superhuman for Salesforce. They just raised $33 million Series B. I've never seen this, but it was led by my bestie at craft. Um, and I don't know what the valuation was, but, um, I think people know Salesforce

SPEAKER_07: as like a legacy kind of, uh, app. You know, it's, uh, it's been around for a long time. Therefore it may not have the freshest interface and this new concept of superhuman and notion, these really clean interfaces.

SPEAKER_11: Um, so it's like, it's funny how you can build a business. It's basically like an iteration on a big existing product that should be better and isn't. Yeah.

SPEAKER_64: And then your scratch pad and you raised $33 million startup of the week, by the way, this is what's happening here. We need a sting for that too.

SPEAKER_18: So anyway, I think it's very interesting. I, I don't know anybody who uses it. I haven't seen it, but I do think that you can make a new interface, a modern interface on top of an existing product really does, um, create some magic. Yeah. And I think it's like, I don't, I don't have a category for this. Startup concept, but I like it. So what's a website, Molly, that has a ugly, disgusting, horrific interface that could look gorgeous

SPEAKER_164: and modern like notion and superhuman. Amazon.

SPEAKER_553: That was the first one that came to mind for me is Amazon. Really?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. I was just thinking if somebody made a gorgeous, terrible. All right. This is a good idea. Okay. So here's what I want.

SPEAKER_555: This is a great idea.

SPEAKER_201: I want some design the same thing simultaneously. I think it's all the same thing. Yes. We're like Amazon. Wow.

SPEAKER_557: So this is my RFS request for startup. Yes.

SPEAKER_07: I'll give you a hundred grand and our accelerator. We'll work on this together. My request for startup is somebody builds a front end that is stunningly gorgeous. Or Amazon and maybe two other at scale, platforms for shopping. Yep. And lets you build cars. Let's be honest. Yeah. So this interface could imagine a gorgeous interface that looked beautiful on your desktop. And when you search for something, ski equipment, right? Like you're looking for a pair of ski goggles. All of a sudden, a gorgeous interface comes up with the ski goggles from Amazon and Walmart and whatever. Etsy. And you just. Whatever. Etsy. Some sort of meta search engine.

SPEAKER_00: And then you can add it to your carts and you authenticate with, you know, all five platforms. And it could be like a browser extension. That makes us gorgeous. And then you just get the affiliate fees from those places.

SPEAKER_195: Yeah. That would be a good enough business.

SPEAKER_201: And then roll in a decent freaking recommendation engine on top of that, because not only does Amazon have a truly terrible AI, but its recommendation engine still is astonishing. Amazon's recommendation is just scary.

SPEAKER_572: Someone it's just. It's scary. I feel like they're like reading my what you think it's bad.

SPEAKER_358: Oh, total garbage. I'm like, first of all, stop recommending me a product that I already bought. Second, if I search for a product and then I buy it and then I send it to like my mom in North Dakota. Why are you still recommending that product to me? Your AI is not smart enough to know I sent that to someone else.

SPEAKER_444: You're talking about those edge. You're talking about those edge cases. What I'm talking about is. Oh no, I'm talking about every time I go there.

SPEAKER_576: I'm like, I don't want any of this.

SPEAKER_111: You know when they bundle the three things together? Okay. So I'm not talking about the homepage experience. I actually agree on the homepage experience. They don't surface great stuff.

SPEAKER_00: When I'm on the product page and they're like, buy these three things together. Yeah. I always find the two other things are super relevant. And then if you page down, they build that little comparison

SPEAKER_05: where they're like, here's what you're looking at this anchor battery pack. And then here are the four or five knockoffs. So I can be like, oh yeah, those suck. Or, oh, that one does look better.

SPEAKER_07: I think that's actually how I found anchor. I was looking at some battery pack and then anchor came up as a competitor. I was like, whoa, that looks like it's got better specs. And I clicked on it and went there. Right. So I like their skew page, but I agree their homepage.

SPEAKER_02: Like their newsfeed is not.

SPEAKER_64: No, it's terrible. Like the actual shopping recommendation is just hysteric. It's just, it's actually laughable at this point. Like, I agree with that. The homepage. Yeah.

SPEAKER_579: Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: I, I also have been pitched over and over again on the concierge service.

SPEAKER_07: I, uh, you know, where somebody helps you find what you're looking for, helps you make a decision. I always thought that that would work at some point. Um, and a wire cutter is probably the best manifestation of it, but I do think there's a startup idea. Let me run this one up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes.

SPEAKER_584: Let's put this in the toaster and see if it gets golden brown.

SPEAKER_02: Here's what I'm thinking. Q, you know how the wire cutter, yum, yum. You know how the wire cutter, like you just feel like, all right.

SPEAKER_05: If I pick on the wire cutter now owned by the New York times. And apparently the wire cutter. Media.

SPEAKER_18: Well, yeah. The New York times is kind of like, oh, you're, you work for the wire cutter. We pay you half as much as the New York times writer. So like, but we work prices hard. They're like, yeah, but no, you're not fancy.

SPEAKER_195: You don't, you're not journalists.

SPEAKER_590: You're not journalists, even though you do a better job. Let's be honest. It really is pretty amazing that they just do not value the wire cutter people. And it's like they print money and like they're better than the journalists at the

SPEAKER_18: New York times at what they do. Like, how could you, how could you make them second class citizens inside the New York times? I guess because they can.

SPEAKER_592: It's not just weird that they're like, so pro union at the New York times and so liberal and they hate their own unions.

SPEAKER_11: They, the leadership of the New York times is not pro union at all. Not at all. Like that was a freaking dog fight at the New York times.

Jason Calacanis: So then the wire cutter comes in. They do not relate. Let me tell you, as somebody who wrote about technology at the New York times, that is not a coverage area that they have any respect for. Like they have started to have respect for it now because it's like, oh, is Facebook really, you know, detrimental to democracy?

SPEAKER_11: Fun story forever. But, but like product stuff and do they want unions? Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_18: I was hoping three or four of those wire cutter people would just come up with a new product idea and pitch me because I tried to invest in Brian's company 10 times when he was at like

SPEAKER_597: a $10 million valuation. He was making like a million dollars. I was like, let me put $2 million into this. And then he winds up selling for like, what did he sell for 30 million or 40 million? And I understand like he owned 80% of it. So like, congratulations. But I was just like, oh my God, don't sell this thing. Like I can, I can help you get $5 million in secondary shares. Sell your personal shares to an investor.

SPEAKER_18: I'll put 2 million. I begged him not to do it. I like asked him four times.

SPEAKER_11: Had totally forgotten about this. But I remember now that his whole deal with wire cutter was that he didn't want to, it was, it's such an interesting founder story because he didn't want to grow it.

Jason Calacanis: It was almost like Craigslist where like once it got, once Craigslist existed, Craig was like, I'm never iterating on this thing again. And Brian was like, I want to live in Hawaii and just let the wire cutter run itself. And then I'm sure that he was like $30 million. Great, that's a win. And now if you like open up the wire cutter in a browser and then open up the spruce.com in the next tab over, because they're doing effectively, the spruce is a home recommendation site. So they do a lot of what wire cutter does, aggregated content just for your home. And they do product recommendations. And lately what I've discovered is all of the SEO takes me to the spruce before the wire

SPEAKER_32: cutter and look how fricking beautiful it is like this. Pretty good. Yeah. I'm looking at my go-to and now I'm like spruce for everything.

SPEAKER_02: I have too many ads, but okay. Yeah. Um, look at that, the spruce. Yeah. I'm looking at the electric heaters and I, that's a really good tell for me if it worked and they literally copied the, um, wire cutter format. Yep. They did it a little bit better, but it's prettier.

SPEAKER_07: Maybe it's prettier. Maybe. I don't know.

Jason Calacanis: They have that SEO too, somehow like they're coming up a lot. They're, they're really, they're kicking. Maybe we just invest in that.

SPEAKER_19: Maybe we should just invest in the spruce. I, I believe in that. Maybe they've already raised money. But anyway, um, here was my idea. Yeah. You have these people who are, um, you know, experts.

SPEAKER_00: Maybe we just do this on this. We can start it. But anyway, they have these people who are category experts and they need what, like to do that review of the electric heaters. What, what would you need to resource to do that Molly in terms of like cost?

SPEAKER_18: You have to buy them, right? So you have to spend a thousand dollars on electric heaters because you don't want to get them for free.

SPEAKER_02: Yep. So you got a thousand dollars in electric heaters you have to buy. And then what do you have to do?

Jason Calacanis: You have to hire somebody to test it one to two testers, depending like, do you want a light or you want consumer report style lab stuff? Or do you want individual reviewer with anecdotal, you know? So then you probably need a lab that could be, that could be real estate and lab installation.

SPEAKER_08: Or it's done out of somebody's home and that person, you know, Exactly. So what would it take to do that?

SPEAKER_07: How many weeks slash how many editorial days would it take to make a spruce page or a wire credit page on electric heaters? And to test it.

SPEAKER_622: And to test it?

SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that whole process.

Jason Calacanis: And so you're, and you're popping up the website from zero or the website already exists?

SPEAKER_02: Let's just assume I wanted to make that one page. Forget about building the website, building the team. Just one page on here are humidifiers. Here are phone chargers.

SPEAKER_07: Here are electric heaters. So we'll stick with electric heaters. How long does it take that writer?

SPEAKER_300: How many days to do the electric heater review and make that great page?

SPEAKER_386: I'm going to say to make this great page,

Jason Calacanis: you could do it in two weeks. Your review would be a little light. So 10 days would be light. The primary time here that's built in is the time with product, right? The getting it in, figuring out some installation, if it's like an actual appliance, and then having a proper amount of time to test it on minimum a week, like most beautiful and well

SPEAKER_318: thought out a month.

SPEAKER_02: Got it. So you buy 10 of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_18: For whatever it is, 100 bucks each on average, you spend a day working on each one, and then you spend another week getting your thoughts together, and architecting and then a week polishing it and

SPEAKER_628: publishing it. So it's 20 editorial days. And that editor would get paid, what? 1000 bucks a week, 2000 bucks a week, 1500 bucks a week, something like that.

SPEAKER_629: Yeah, something like that.

SPEAKER_628: So 1500 bucks a week. So each of those pages cost $6,000 in editorial costs and $1,000 in

SPEAKER_187: $1,000 in buying the products. So $7,000.

SPEAKER_632: Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying per, I try to think unit economics when I'm going through business. Exactly. So it's $7,000 per product. Page.

SPEAKER_318: $7,000 per product page. Yep, exactly. Inclusive of what the writers get paid.

SPEAKER_628: So somebody from the Wirecutter or the Spruce or somebody who formerly worked there, can they DM me

SPEAKER_164: and Molly? You can just DM us together.

SPEAKER_74: I mean, I do know some people had seen it, which is still doing this earlier. Yeah. So we could probably...

SPEAKER_634: So here's what I want to do.

SPEAKER_74: I want to run a test. DM us and tell us.

SPEAKER_126: No, no. I want to poach somebody. So I want to poach somebody. Okay.

SPEAKER_02: Okay. Looks like Consumer Reports has 130 researchers, scientists, engineers, testing experts. I want to hire somebody to do this for us and give them the seven grand and make it into

SPEAKER_07: a podcast episode where you and I talk to them about, you know, their reviews. And then we just have a landing page. ThisWeekinStartups.com slash phone chargers slash TVs.

SPEAKER_557: You want to get into your reviews?

SPEAKER_641: Like what?

SPEAKER_557: I love product. You love product. I love product. I really do. But I don't want to do any of the work and I don't want you doing any of the work.

SPEAKER_366: Really? Because I'm so excited about my EV reviews. When's my EV review coming out?

SPEAKER_645: Okay, fine. Well, I don't know. That's to producer Charles.

SPEAKER_11: Well, we can be picky, actually. So the EV reviews, let's use that as a test case for both audience and advertiser interest because yes, we do love product. And frankly, we already sold out.

Jason Calacanis: And how could we integrate this with like a product hunt or even like,

SPEAKER_64: how can we turn this into an investment opportunity? They're trying out like brand new stuff potentially. Who wants to fly in the drone?

SPEAKER_382: Yeah, this is what I want to do. I want to have the ThisWeekinStartups reviewer come on.

SPEAKER_18: Tell us like, hey, listen, and the ThisWeekinStartups lab, we did X, Y, and Z, and here's what came out of it. And this is the one you should buy. And then you and I would ask them probing questions,

SPEAKER_127: make sure they did a good job. And then that's it. You know, there are a ton of creators doing this. We could find a creator and partner with them.

SPEAKER_648: Yeah. Yeah, find us a creator.

SPEAKER_214: If anybody wants to do this, pitch us.

SPEAKER_649: I'd like to try it. And then, of course, the EV reviews, but that's like a whole nother ball. That's a whole other thing.

SPEAKER_127: Yeah, that's doing a part of my decarbonization can be sexy strategy. Doing a car review.

SPEAKER_628: I think that's also like a 10 full days, five to 10 full days when car and driver does it. What do they spend? They go to the track and everything.

SPEAKER_201: They do like the long term ones now that are six months. And yeah, I mean, I think a month minimum.

Jason Calacanis: A month to do a real fully fledged car review, right? Not the like, you'll see when my Audi review comes out. It's like I had it for two weeks.

SPEAKER_64: I did like a two to three minute video. Like, sure, fine.

SPEAKER_169: I think Consumer Reports is a public company. I'm sorry, nonprofit.

SPEAKER_02: Because I was going to try to I was going to try to buy it at some point when I was doing a gadget and stuff like that. I was like, somebody figure out how we buy this thing. And they're like, hey, schmuck, it's a nonprofit. You can't buy it.

SPEAKER_654: I was like, everything's for sale. Get me the attitude.

SPEAKER_655: And they were like, these people are weird, man. You can't.

SPEAKER_546: They're just like a bunch of weird people in Connecticut or something. I forgot where they were. And they're like, you can't buy these people. They're just.

SPEAKER_11: You know what? Consumer Reports has that I did not know actually is a really big government relations team.

Jason Calacanis: And they do a ton of policy and lobbying stuff.

SPEAKER_21: Like they turn a lot of the safety stuff into policy recommendations. And they've got a whole like Washington relationship thing. That's very interesting.

SPEAKER_659: Yeah. I don't know about this organization. I wonder what their whole budget is. Oh, here we go. We have it.

SPEAKER_484: Wait. Amounts are in thousand subscriptions, newsstand and other sales. 226 million dollars.

SPEAKER_661: What? It's way bigger than you think.

SPEAKER_533: There are two. Yeah.

SPEAKER_661: Holy cow.

SPEAKER_484: Wow.

SPEAKER_68: There's gotta be somebody who worked at one of these three organizations that we can poach to run this for us, Molly.

SPEAKER_02: For sure. Because we're sold out already. Our advertisers are sold out. They're happy. This would be like a neat thing to do on the show. I love those product reviews. You love product reviews. It'd be good. Let's get a, let's start our own land.

SPEAKER_07: Great. Love it.

SPEAKER_668: All right, everybody. That's it. There's enough show for one day. It totally is.

SPEAKER_667: All right. I have, I have one thing that you should see, Jason. Oh no. That came out during the recording.

SPEAKER_538: Oh, what is it? Wait, am I going to see it all live? Are you playing video or something?

SPEAKER_02: Oh no. That's the work Fridays that. Oh no. Wait, Mark Andreessen did that's below my line.

SPEAKER_667: To you.

SPEAKER_673: Oh, to you. He tweeted it at you.

SPEAKER_667: He quote tweeted your original tweet. Kind of gross for a big VC to dump on a founder. But then again, it is Mark. And he, but he, he's not following me. How did he do that? He probably unblocked you to just drop this.

SPEAKER_643: Oh, so that's the same strategy he does with Jack. He unblocks Jack.

SPEAKER_11: Wait, can you drop the Twitter link in here? This is really hard to see on our little screen here. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07: Oh my God. He's not blocking me anymore. Oh, so he unblocked me this opportunity.

SPEAKER_350: Say everything you've been wanting to say, go, go, go. I could just, I could just, uh, I know what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a screenshot of it. And then I'm going to do this guy. What was Jack's tweet?

SPEAKER_02: He said like this guy unblocked me just to get me Jack's exact tweet. And I'll just cut and paste that. Remember Jack said this guy untweeted me, unblocked me just to do this lame tweet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_678: This guy unblocked me just to share the lamest.

SPEAKER_373: Just to dunk on Chamath in the world.

SPEAKER_678: CC at Jack.

SPEAKER_427: Oh no. Oh my God. You know why this is so contentious, Molly? No, because there's, because there's so little at stake.

SPEAKER_683: Right? Totally. Because it doesn't matter. Because it literally doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_685: It's just a bunch of rich people acting stupid. So pull up my neck. I just did mine.

SPEAKER_590: This is mine. Let the tweet wars continue. There's nothing at stake. It's so funny. Mark and Jason's a trip. He's actually a secret fan. I'm told by his, like, I would say who. But let's just say I have people inside the building. I've got my people inside the building. And Mark Andreessen loves J Cal.

SPEAKER_228: And he loves all in pod. And the fact is he copied my playbook of doing podcasts. And he, none of his pods can beat any of my pods.

SPEAKER_691: The end.

SPEAKER_19: Poor our pods. No.

David Friedberg: Sorry. Oh, where's Andreessen Horowitz in the ranking? Oh, yeah. How many? I know. We're just really. 30 billion dollars in assets under management. And they can't.

SPEAKER_695: They can't even. They can't even come close to either of the pods we do. Come on, Mark. Just pack it in, kid.

SPEAKER_592: Just collect your money and retire. All right, there it is. Molly.

Jason Calacanis: This might be my favorite show of the whole almost month that I've been here right now. It's the part where we literally just hang out. You know what?

SPEAKER_219: I didn't sleep last night. I drove up to Tahoe at the middle of the night. I had to get up early and make eggs for the kids. I mean, I lost my internet. It's just been crazy. All right, everybody.

SPEAKER_701: There's been an amazing show. Go ski. You've earned it, kid. I'm Jacob. You've earned it.