SPEAKER_01: Hey, everybody, we're back. It's Monday. Oh my god, big week on This Week in Startups.

SPEAKER_00: Happy Monday. We're going to start the show with some tech news. We're going to talk about everybody's favorite social network. Be real. Makes me look like a troll. And apparently,

SPEAKER_03: I don't care because I'm still using it every day. And now I'm even getting ready to pay for it.

SPEAKER_07: Uh, yeah, they're gonna apparently they don't want to use ads. I have an idea for them to split the difference and maybe have some subscriptions and some ads. We'll talk about my idea. Molly will react to it. And speaking of social media, it turns out the platforms are finding the fake accounts that it may or may not turn out to be created by our intelligence

SPEAKER_09: agencies in the US military. Yes, and possibly the biggest problem is how easy they were to

SPEAKER_03: sniff out. Then we go into the latest with Apple. You always get penalized for being an Apple early adopter. There's a little bit of a bug in the iPhone 14 Pro camera. We'll break that down a little

SPEAKER_08: bit for you. And then we'll cover Jeff Lawson, friend of the pod and founder CEO of Quilio saying they are planning to make anti-racist layoffs, what that means and how we should think about layoffs

SPEAKER_00: in the era of diversity and inclusion. And that is not all. We also have another great segment of We Live in the Future. We're talking about maglev, super fast, fully electric transportation,

SPEAKER_17: could it ever. If it ever happens in Canada, they raised a half billion dollars. They want to go 600 miles an hour. God, I hope this happens. We live in the future every Monday. And like every

SPEAKER_21: other Monday, it's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This Week in Startups is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. A business is only as strong as its people and every hire matters. Post your first job for free at linkedin.com slash twist. Notion is one place for notes, docs, projects, and everyday work that goes way beyond a wiki. Get started for free at notion.com slash twist. And Odoo is a fully customizable and fully integrated suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business. Your first app is free forever. And right now, Odoo is offering $1,000 off your first implementation pack at odoo.com slash twist. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash twist.

SPEAKER_25: All right, Molly, it's Monday. We're back. Oh my Lord. Is it going to be a big week this week or you think it's going to slow down? No, it's never going to slow down ever. It's never going to slow

SPEAKER_29: down. How's your weekend? We're full steam ahead on the crisis and it's not going to stop. Uh,

SPEAKER_03: I had a lovely, I had a lovely weekend of like friends and coziness and football and socializing

SPEAKER_29: and cooking. Like it just could not have been more delightful. My operation crazy hummingbird lady is just like in full swing. They're all over my front yard. It's working. Wait, hold on. Wait,

SPEAKER_34: this is a new thing. Yeah. I know you were doing letterboxing of spoons, but that's, that project's done. I finished that. I finished that. And now I'm on operation on stuff

SPEAKER_03: are you doing now? I just want to attract all the hummingbirds because I love them so much. Hummingbirds are amazing. I like, I redecorated my stoop with my fall mums and I planted some lantanas to attract even more hummingbirds and it is working. My front yard is filled with hummingbirds

SPEAKER_05: and I'm just like a nutty old bird lady. You literally are transforming. I'm transforming

SPEAKER_17: into a dad. I'm like literally talking about my nest thermostat and doors being open and you're doing hummingbirds and letterboxes. We're turning into our parents. This is what's happening. Oh my

SPEAKER_00: Lord. But you should see my friend stupid. So ready for fall. I'm literally gonna have like a crockpot party. Like I'm like it is fall and it's gonna be 80 degrees in two days. So look for the space to end quickly, but the hummingbird thing is working. It's working so well that during one of our investment

SPEAKER_52: meetings recently, one of them flew into the house. So that was a problem. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I, we have, um, we've got like California door situation, like large sliding doors, open outsource space and frequently we'll get a hummingbird or a sparrow to come in. Luckily the birds of prey that surround, uh, the peninsula here, you know, below San Francisco, all the way down. There's, we have birds of prey everywhere. Oh yeah. They're everywhere. I mean, we have Turkey

SPEAKER_57: vultures. We have Hawks. We have bald eagles now on the peninsula. They've been spotted multiple times,

SPEAKER_07: bald eagle population roaring back. So I feel good about that. But I, I was, uh, I went to the East Bay, took my three daughters on a daddy daughter date. It was very nice. Um, and shout out to, uh, you know,

SPEAKER_17: my wife's Korean. So my kids are half Korean. So I try to really work on the Korean culture stuff. So we went for what's called Ja Jam Young or Ja Jam Young. It's a Korean dish that I'm absolutely obsessed with. It's noodles with like, uh, onions and pork on top of it. Incredible. Uh, and so I was getting my eye exam last week, which I have to talk to you about cause we live in the future. Um, cause you know, I got my grandpa glasses when I make a day trade and make a J trade, um, I literally got laser eye

SPEAKER_29: surgery and still have to wear readers. So what did you find out? Because I need it. Okay. There are

SPEAKER_60: eye drops. Oh yeah. I heard about this that you put them. She gave them to me on, on Friday.

SPEAKER_64: And I'm looking at a piece of paper had just done a test and there were five paragraphs and I got to

SPEAKER_07: the third one that I put my readers on, you know, my grandpa readers that you just get for two bucks off of Amazon three for five, whatever. And, um, she gives me the drops. I can read like I have the grandpa glasses on. So, whoa, what's going on here? So there is this new drop you can get. I got a prescription for it. It's sold out right now. Uh, but I'm going to be getting it later this week. I'm

SPEAKER_69: waiting for them to fill the prescription. I leave the place 20 minutes later and take out my phone, which I cannot read Robin hood or superhuman with these tiny fonts.

David Friedberg: Mm hmm. Because it does those two apps don't change for human in particular, like why does have to be so small? Okay, some folks like to have a design aesthetic. And you know,

SPEAKER_07: they have great eyesight. And so great. But you know, when you change on your iPhone, the size of the font, some apps will change other but some apps don't because it will break the design that they've gone for. So they're just like put on glasses. Anyway, I pull out Robin Hood, I pull out superhuman. And I can see for the first time in three years,

David Friedberg: and it really works. Yeah, it works. And it's sting. I've heard some people say that

SPEAKER_06: they can stay first put them in. It's like you got a little, uh, pepper, you know, you ever get mustard or pepper in your eye by accident? Yeah, or something like a little pepper dust

SPEAKER_07: for five seconds, it felt like it just had to blink three times and it was fine. Okay, this is life changing if this is the result. And then I looked at my Tesla, my Model Y. I think it's called Benuity is the name of these drops. I look at the I look at the maps, and I see the map clear while I'm driving. So now I was having this issue when I wanted to use the interface. You know, some aspects of the interface would be too small for me to see it. And I had to

SPEAKER_22: put my grandpa glasses on halfway down, look at the road, then look down was disaster. Oh, that's

SPEAKER_80: this is game changer. That's danger beauty is what it's called. Yeah, I read the New York Times because

SPEAKER_03: I was in the same boat. I was just like, this is absurd. I, you know, paid all this money went

SPEAKER_29: through this whole LASIK thing, you know, fixed my I'm gonna die in an earthquake vision, but still have to wear readers. It seems like that people have reported the stinging and a little

SPEAKER_03: bit of like red, like droopy dog thing. But honestly, I feel like that's because this is version

SPEAKER_27: yeah. And the fact that this exists, and is just going to keep getting better is a game changer. So game changer my, uh, what do you call a doctor who works on your eyes? What are they called?

SPEAKER_07: Optometrists. Optometrist. Okay. Listen, I don't have a name for that. So this is my first time since I was a kid. So the optometrist happens to be Korean. She's friendly with my wife who goes there. And she told me about this judge him young place. So I went to Oakland. So I got this big weekend for me. I got a great recommendation for judge him young. So the name of the place is gangnam g-a-n-g-n-a-m jajang j-a-j-a-n-g. This is as good as the dragon on Vermont in LA, LA, we have the biggest Korean district outside of Seoul in Korea. And I don't live there anymore. So I know. Yeah, this is like our

SPEAKER_29: little Korea town. This little stretch of Oakland is totally Korea town, you get super authentic food, and they are helpfully tell you how to eat it a lot of times.

SPEAKER_89: Yes. Well, they will. Yes, because they give you the pajang like the little dishes around it, they'll give you vinegar, they'll give you soy sauce, they give you a couple of dipping sauces, you need to ask and it's okay to ask, they'll totally tell you. Yeah, like for some when you're

SPEAKER_22: getting barbecue, they give you sesame with salt in it. And you're like, what is this for? It's like, it's only for the beef, you don't put the bagogi in there, because that's already dressed. It's for the beef that has nothing on it, no marinade. Anyway, then I went to a place called Milk Bomb.

SPEAKER_07: So I just looked and I told the girls, here's all the highest rated ice cream, here's the pictures. And they see a donut filled with ice cream with toppings on. Yep.

SPEAKER_06: Which for six year olds and a 12 year old fire is like, I mean,

SPEAKER_07: head explodes. So we went and got blues. Then Sunday, uh, I took them to like some gymnastics stuff. And then for breakfast burritos, which, you know, breakfast burrito with a hash brown and bacon in it is, I never thought you could put a hash brown inside a burrito. They went crazy for that. Then if there wasn't enough going on this weekend, because it was a rainy weekend, I took them to an escape room. Escape rooms are amazing. Highly recommend. I'm going to do it for us for a team

SPEAKER_62: activity, but do it so fun. It was great. It was great. Yeah, I don't know. I've never done one.

SPEAKER_29: And I have no good reason. I think it's just like the last couple of companies I worked for, we're not based here. Also journalists never do anything fun. We don't do any team bonding.

SPEAKER_101: Just complain about the world. Just complain. Be cynical. Just be mad about stuff. Just be mad. Trust me. I was one. I know. Just complain about stuff. The world's going to hell. Just mad.

SPEAKER_102: The world's going to hell. And why would you bond? You're just a lone wolf out here trying to... The world's coming to an end anyway. Trying to bring down a president.

SPEAKER_08: It's your highest, best goal. Exactly. Well, you know, now it's, uh, I am so optimistic. I feel super optimistic. So, uh, and we had, oh, by the way.

SPEAKER_108: Got a little work done because it was a rainy Sunday. Watched football. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_114: What a football weekend. Who's your team? No team. I'm a little teamless. I grew up

SPEAKER_115: as a Packers fan. Cause you know, I grew up in Montana and North Dakota in Montana, you either rooted for the Broncos or the Packers. And I just could not,

SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you remember the Broncos in the nineties. That was kind of a thing. Yeah. Everybody in their full, you know, head to toe gear. Yeah. So for a long time, I was a Packers fan. Then I sort of stopped being a Packers fan kind of just in time. Then the Raiders moved, the Niners is don't do much for me, but I guess it's time. I don't know. My brother's just

SPEAKER_29: sold me on Tom Brady. Have you been to a 49ers game?

SPEAKER_03: Well, we're going to, we're going to go, my brother and I are going to the Bucks Niners game in December because we want to see Tom Brady.

SPEAKER_121: Ah, maybe I'll go to that.

SPEAKER_16: What may or may not be his last season. Well, I bought, I accidentally bought two extra tickets. Oh, they're pretty good seats. So if you want them.

SPEAKER_125: Yeah, sure. Um, we're, how good are they?

Chamath Palihapitiya: Well, they're not Jake. How good their club, their club seats. That's good. That's good. Um, I'm friendly with, um, Jed York, who I think is the owner,

SPEAKER_89: uh, and runs it.

SPEAKER_131: So you're, so you're fine. So you don't need my ticket.

SPEAKER_89: No, no, but he's incredibly generous to me. Like, he's like, Hey, you want to come on the field or,

SPEAKER_07: you know, whatever. So shout out to my, my guy, Jed York. But, uh, I've gone to maybe two or three games down there. What a great experience. And I've gotten really, I haven't gone to the field yet, but I've gotten some, the suites there is quite an experience. I don't know if you've been to the suite level is bonkers. Like they'll just make you whatever food you want. And it's incredible view. And they lowered the suites down to like, so the suites are actually like, that's great. I feel like suites are always

SPEAKER_03: too high. This is the dumbest thing I have ever done. The stupidest. Oh, ethics journalism thing I've

SPEAKER_29: ever done was that I got invited to go to WrestleMania at Levi when it first opened. And I was like, I don't think it would be totally ethical for me to do that, which is the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life because I should have gone to freaking WrestleMania at Levi's stadium. That

SPEAKER_34: would've been awesome. Well now, see, now you're a venture capitalist doing random acts of journalism on this program. No conflict, no interest, no conflict, no interest. I mean, if somebody wants to come and they're a founder of a company, venture capitalist sponsor, let's go. Silicon Valley bank, shout out, get us in your suite, whoever will come. I'll be a Niners fan. I guess I could, you

SPEAKER_17: know, uh, and we did a little nice thing. Brad Gerstner had us over to his barn series, a little private series. You and I did our first public experience. That was fun for you. Yeah. Yeah,

SPEAKER_147: it was great. It was awesome. Jason and I triggered the technocrats together.

SPEAKER_06: Uh, I found out subsequently there was like a major, uh, Facebook and a major Google person there. So when I was giving the major Facebook person, actually, we're, we're good now. Oh, okay. Good.

SPEAKER_154: Yeah. Oh, you're, you're Cinderella and clean up my mess. Uh, no, I remember she yelled at me. She was upset at you. Yeah. That was my mess. Yeah. That's good. It's good. Good to have debates.

SPEAKER_155: All right. She's doing God's work. I'll tell you what. Anyway. Yes, we got a lot to talk about fun.

SPEAKER_06: No. All right. I think we got through everything. It's a lot on the dot. We got through the, uh, banter here. We got through the banter. We got through the banter part of the show. So we can catch up, which is key. It's key. I think it's good. People, you know, people are starting to call the show Molly and Jake

SPEAKER_157: Al in the morning. So they like the, you know, Molly and Jake Al of this, uh, We need to get some sound effects. A little morning Zoom situation. Like Molly and Jake Al in the morning, you know, like whole Z100 zoo radio package done.

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SPEAKER_08: I don't have to explain how awesome LinkedIn is and all these features, you know that because you're on it every day. And this is why small businesses rate LinkedIn jobs, number one in delivering quality hires versus leading competitors. LinkedIn jobs helps

SPEAKER_22: you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to faster. And did you know, every week nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? That's right. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash twist. That's linkedin.com slash TWIST to post your first job for free.

SPEAKER_164: Terms and conditions apply. I'll tell you what I did not do yesterday. I didn't do my B reel

SPEAKER_29: because I was just having such a cozy blanket day and I didn't want to because you know who is is fresh fresh is timing his B reels. He is not being real with his B reels. I busted him at that

SPEAKER_03: exact event. He's like, Did you do your B reel already? I'm like, Yeah, when the notification came up. He saved it. He is saving his B reels because you know, the point of B reel is when you get the notification, you're supposed to be real. Right? No precious just hanging on to the notification until something cool is happening. And then taking his picture and posting late on purpose.

SPEAKER_29: Interesting. When he's doing something cool. So people are already hacking B reel in a million different ways. But all this shows you is that it's the thing we're all talking about and the thing that everybody's doing. And the question we've all been asking is like, Great, when is it going to make some money? And how and is that going to ruin it? And today we have some news.

SPEAKER_64: Oh, we do have a B reel. Fantastic. We did have news a couple weeks ago that they raised a month around. Yep. Congratulations to them. So be real. And we had news last week that tick tock

SPEAKER_13: out suck them. Stone cold. Stone cold suck them. Yep. Stone and stole everything. Just suck them hard.

SPEAKER_03: Just no shame in that game at all. Like copy pasta straight up. And then now it turns out that be real is starting to talk about how to make money. And according to the Financial Times, be real is based in France. We should note according to the Financial Times, be real is quote, keen to avoid the pitfalls of its US competitors. And by pitfalls, they mean paid advertising. Okay, be real trying to monetize without advertising. Let's see, it's recent raise. So they're gonna do merch. No, I mean,

SPEAKER_181: first doesn't make a lot of merch, I guess they're going to introduce a lot of money.

SPEAKER_17: Nice, but you're not gonna make them you're not gonna not for the amount of venture capital areas merch not going to work. They're not doing a live event. So it just leaves one thing.

SPEAKER_186: Subscription. Exactly. Yep. So is that what they're doing? Apparently, they are going to

SPEAKER_29: introduce some paid features. And try to get people to try to monetize that way. And perfect. At least it's convincing investors. It seems they have, they're in the process of raising an 85 million dollar series B at a $600 million valuation. Led by Yuri Milner, my pal from DST Global. Yuri

SPEAKER_22: famously did the 10 billion ish round for Facebook. As we learned in the power law book, he bought some shares lower and some preferred shares higher to blend his price. I think more to the $8 billion

SPEAKER_17: valuation. Anyway, that was one of the great bets of all time in Silicon Valley. And everybody that Yuri Milner was paying too much. So here again, it was betting on a $600 million valuation for a company with no revenue that wants to do subscription. But I think he's gonna do it again. I think this

SPEAKER_03: company is smart. Yeah, somebody should try at scale doing something like it. I mean, right, like, I guess I would like to see someone try that. It's unclear what those would be. It sounds like they aren't likely to launch until q3 2023. I am having a heart. I mean, honestly, like if it's a yearly thing, like if I just pay and download it from that, like I'm thinking of the thing I the app I pay the most for is all trails. I pay for that too. Right? Which I use it four times

SPEAKER_29: a year. Probably saved my life on this trip in Montana, where we use the downloaded topo maps to figure out like, literally how to find a path, you know, path that is the page feature, right?

SPEAKER_58: You can download maps and have them all offline, multiple views, you can get the topo lines in the

SPEAKER_201: satellite and have it all offline and not what's a topo line this topography or something topography.

SPEAKER_29: So you can see like, if you're supposed to be if you're down the hill, and you're supposed to be up the hill, you can use the topography map to figure out what elevation you should be at. And what is it? I think it's 60 bucks a year for all trails. I think it's a little less 20 or 30 something like that. Maybe I always get it on sale. It's pretty cheap. So I could imagine a scenario in which I was like, you know what, be real.

SPEAKER_203: I'll down I'll I'll pay 10 bucks for the year 20 bucks for the year I'd pay 20 bucks for the year

David Friedberg: for be real. I think people would pay and you don't need everybody to pay. You just need 10% of users to pay. Right. Exactly. To have a huge business. What's it? How many people are using this thing?

SPEAKER_29: Apparently, advertising has not been completely ruled out according to the Financial Times, but they don't want it to be intrusive if it occurs. Let's see. Okay. I know there are 100 million, right?

SPEAKER_148: 15 million daily active users. Oh, 15 million daily active users. Yeah.

SPEAKER_207: Okay. So I wonder what they're... But it was 10,000 users a year ago.

SPEAKER_89: 15 million a day is a lot of people. 15 million a day. So these are... This is cumulative downloads or downloads per day. Worldwide installs from the app store on Google Play, but it doesn't say...

SPEAKER_07: No, that... Does it ever go down? Does the chart we're looking at ever go down? If it doesn't, then it's cumulative.

SPEAKER_08: So... And there's no commas there. So I can't see if that's a billion downloads or something of the app.

SPEAKER_213: What's a million? It's a million? Or it's 1.2... Million? 12 million.

SPEAKER_69: 12 million downloads. 15... No, it can't be because it's 15 million daily.

SPEAKER_214: Is there 15 million daily? So it's 1.2 billion? 120 million downloads or 1.2 billion.

SPEAKER_07: So it would make sense to me that it was over a billion downloads because they have 15 million a day. We 1% of the downloads using it a day. They probably have triple the number of monthlies. They might have... If they have 15 million a day, they could have upwards of 50 million a month.

SPEAKER_08: If you were to get, of the 15 million daily, 10% to pay, that would be 1.5. 1.5 paying $30 a year would be 100 million in just pure profit a year.

SPEAKER_17: Great start. And if they 10X from there, billion dollars a year in revenue.

SPEAKER_219: So great start.

SPEAKER_29: And if they really do make the pitch, which no social media so far has had the muscles, the biceps. Chutzpah? The chutzpah to pitch. The ball? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: Like nobody's just come along and said, hey, we'll give you a really great, nice, clean experience with no targeted advertising that follows you all over and stalks you if you pay. Nobody has ever like just said it just like that. And it would be really interesting to see. And then, you know, you should get a little extra.

SPEAKER_58: Like you can keep your be real photos and you can do this with them. And you know, whatever, like a little additional.

SPEAKER_22: Here's what I would do. We'll see. You do, um, do 30 bucks a year. Mm hmm. Uh, which is five bucks a month, right? No, it's less. Five bucks a month would be 60. So it's 250 a month, 250 a month, 30 bucks a year.

SPEAKER_07: You get a special logo on your name. And you get to do like one or two extra features.

SPEAKER_22: Like maybe I could, uh, get extra lenses or I get to do an extra B rail at the time I want or something with the time issue. Maybe you get to do a retake or something. But anyway, come up with something fun.

SPEAKER_227: Mm hmm.

SPEAKER_22: Then I would sell one advertiser a day gets to sponsor be real. And that sponsor gets to have a little logo at the bottom left of every image that shared that day. So if it was the walking dead, so good. So good at that.

SPEAKER_230: I'm a good product.

SPEAKER_193: Anyway, if it was the walking dead new season, if it was some new Disney film, if it was the new Prius, whatever your jam is, they get a little image that comes up on the bottom

SPEAKER_07: left, does a little spin and then disappears and becomes really small. So one global advertiser a day, you price it at a premium $200 CPM. So, you know, it winds up costing a million bucks a day. And you just say, you know, to whoever it's a million bucks a day. And these days before the holiday and before, you know, what they call it is a Black Friday, Cyber Monday, those are 3 million. You want those days, those are three, they're premium days, every other day is a million. And you can buy them now.

SPEAKER_22: Watch people race in because their scarcity and buy all that inventory out. So good. And then they get the affinity of supporting a super cool hipster place. That's how I would do it. And no tracking. The only tracking that occurs is if you click. So no tracking on the app. If you choose to go to their website, well, of course, you're going to get tracked. The end.

SPEAKER_241: What do you like? Rate my idea. So good. Rate my idea.

SPEAKER_242: Rate my idea.

SPEAKER_241: Ah, you are a good product guy. You're good. You're good. You're good. You're good, kid. You're good. You're good.

SPEAKER_244: By the way, you know this guy dropped out of high school, the kid who built it. I want to get this guy on the program. What's his name, Xavier, wait, the school was Xavier Niels 42.

Jason Calacanis: That's the coding school that he went to. He went to this coding school in France called Xavier Niels 42.

SPEAKER_17: And that's a weird name for a school, but okay. Yeah. So he dropped that. He doesn't have a high school diploma. He went to.

SPEAKER_06: He's 26 years old. And now he's going to be worth like, if he owns 25% of the business, I don't know how many co-founders you got. Kids worth a hundred million. Good for him. And they're talking about him. This is why you don't go to school.

SPEAKER_251: Go to college. Go to developer school.

SPEAKER_252: Amazing.

SPEAKER_03: Love it. I had not realized actually, side note on until today that the Figma founder was a Teal fellow. He was a Teal fellow.

SPEAKER_62: Yeah. But I did not see Peter Teal anywhere in the breakdown of the money made. I didn't either. So this is a failure on Teal's part.

SPEAKER_58: He was one of the people who took the hundred thousand to not go to college.

SPEAKER_05: Is that what the Teal fellows did? Yeah. Yeah. Listen, you can say what you want about Peter Teal.

SPEAKER_07: That was a brilliant idea. I love that idea. Yeah. Like, you know, it's super disruptive. It made an interesting statement. Here we are talking about it and now it has an outcome. Right. So what he did was he's like, I'll pay a hundred thousand dollars to quit and go do something interesting in your life. What did that do?

SPEAKER_89: It brought every iconoclastic pirate rebel samurai in the world to say, yeah, give me my hundy. And yeah, you're a weirdo with interesting ideas, Peter Teal. I'll come hang out with you and have coffee.

SPEAKER_08: Brilliant move. He's like, I want all the weirdo mutants in the world and I'll pay you $100,000 to come here. Peter Teal has his moments. He has his moments. I will say that. I just watched a talk with him about California.

SPEAKER_22: Uh, he did he have like some talk at one of these like Republican things and his California talk was surprisingly self-aware and he went through the Republicans like position on things and he savaged Republicans for being like the most negative group of people and not being like super positive with an actual plan, but just being like regressive and anti everything. And he said, we need to have like a prosperity plan that actually is positive or too negative.

SPEAKER_17: I was like, go Peter. Wow. Self-awareness. I'll send you the link. Cool. Cool. I gotta have Peter back. Where's his money going? Just whatever.

SPEAKER_262: I mean, you could do both things at the same time. You could be betting for your team. You could be a genius and also perpetrating evil. Yes. Sure. 100%.

SPEAKER_89: Well, I mean, it's there's a million things about Peter and his positions that are incongruous because these people who are partisan. They their partisanship and their own personal opinions.

SPEAKER_64: Like they're totally partisan and they just want to win, even if it's against their personal opinions and Peter's gay and married.

SPEAKER_22: And they want they can't find 10 Republicans to do the marriage bill. I mean, it's like, hello, like. You're all pro gay or the majority of Republicans are pro gay marriage. Why would they vote for it? It's like, oh, they don't want to lose the evangelicals.

SPEAKER_17: I mean, it's just the height of cynicism and unprincipled behavior because they just want to win without actually thinking about the issues. So I'd like to put that aside.

SPEAKER_268: But yes, anyway, I did not.

SPEAKER_29: I just had not known that he was a Teal fellow. And obviously, clearly some of these alternative paths are producing. They're not going to all it's a power law thing. Don't assume you're going to have the same outcome by dropping out of high school

SPEAKER_113: and going to coding school.

SPEAKER_46: However, you're going to do better than if you went to college. If you become a good program, I tell you that. You think so? A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_07: If you quit, if you go to coding school instead of college, we had a thousand people do that. Mm-hmm. Let's say a hundred for easier. Mm-hmm. A hundred people go complete coding school, complete college. And let's just put independent of degree in college, but a non-coding degree. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_275: Non-coding degree, bachelor's, coding. Who's going to be making more money? Because coding school is only six months a year.

SPEAKER_277: Let's just say it's a year of coding school versus a four-year degree. Who do you think is going to be doing better in the workplace five years in? Making more money.

SPEAKER_279: No.

SPEAKER_219: I mean, if you went to school for finance, you're going to be making more money. Maybe. Undergraduate degree in finance? I'm not so sure, on average.

SPEAKER_29: Yeah, I don't know. You're probably right. I don't know if we're right in the long term. I worry, like, I think that we're rapidly approaching a tipping point where computers are going to be doing the coding. So there's- Possibly. So that learning the design around it, or the implementation, or the business plan, Yeah. Like, that might end up being valuable. We might, like, circle back around.

SPEAKER_17: That could be funny, actually, because it used to be the developers were like, yeah, dime a dozen. I just need a couple of developers. It's really the Steve Jobs who, you know, coordinates the whole thing, who's important.

SPEAKER_115: Right. And increasingly, for front-end stuff, for, you know, like, I don't know, we're not, we're, we're creeping up on that.

SPEAKER_05: I think these tools- Not now.

SPEAKER_17: No, there are tools that, like, the, you know, the Google, the Gmail thing, where it tells you, like, what you're about to write, and it guesses your next three words. Yeah. There is the equivalent now on GitHub and other services, GitLab, whatever it is,

SPEAKER_22: that will write some of the code for you and say, hey, oh, you're doing a login for Facebook. Boom, here's the code. Or I think you're doing that. Would you like this code snippet? Yeah.

SPEAKER_181: So we're going to get to dolly for code. Yes. Very soon. Like very soon. Yeah. Five years. Uh, it's already starting to happen.

SPEAKER_22: I mean, how many times we use that Gmail thing? Does it actually guess correctly? Yeah. One out of three.

SPEAKER_17: Terrifyingly often. Yeah. 50%. I think it's at 50% for me. I like to write my own words. So when I see it just out of complete, um, contempt for how good it is,

SPEAKER_05: I just rewrite it with more. I know I do too. I never let it. That's so funny.

SPEAKER_128: I have the exact same oppositional defiance where I'm like, yeah, nice try.

SPEAKER_13: No, I'm just gonna make, I'm just shifting. It's like, I'd love to. And it's like, invite you too. And I'm like, yeah.

SPEAKER_307: Welcome you too. See you at? Exactly. Like, screw you. You got it. I'll be like, hope too. And it'll be like, talk to you soon. I'm like, catch up shortly. Yeah. I will not just, I do not. You're not gonna win machines. No.

SPEAKER_62: Fight against the machine. Rage against the machine.

SPEAKER_312: If you are a startup, you need to sign up for Notion. N-O-T-I-O-N. Notion is the greatest piece of software I've used in the last couple of years.

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SPEAKER_314: Literally, it's built into Notion. Notion.com slash twist to start for free. Again, Notion, N-O-T-I-O-N, Notion, what a great name, .com slash twist to take the first step toward your organization dominating and being productive.

SPEAKER_315: And the knowledge base has arrived and it's gorgeous and it's beautiful and it's Notion. Notion.com slash twist. Okay, speaking of raging against the machine.

SPEAKER_316: Yeah, same segue in my brain. Same segue in your mind.

SPEAKER_00: Woo, the information war is real, friends. Okay, and we suck at it. And unfortunately, like spoiler alert, we're not even very good at it. We're doing it, but we kind of suck at it.

SPEAKER_03: The Pentagon ordered an audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after social media platforms found fake accounts suspected of being run by the US military. So these are accounts that, for example, advanced anti-Russia narratives citing the Kremlin's imperialist war in Ukraine and warning of the complex direct impact on Central Asian countries and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_29: They found the sort of these are anonymous sources in the Wall Street Journal, but they noted that

Jason Calacanis: US Central Command, CENTCOM, is one of the groups whose activities are facing scrutiny and that significantly they found that the pretend personas employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China did not gain much traction and that overt accounts actually attracted more followers.

SPEAKER_03: And it sort of sounds like, according to the journal, that literally Facebook came to CENTCOM and was like,

SPEAKER_281: guys, if we can figure out that it's your accounts, so can the Gen Z's.

SPEAKER_07: And the thing is, we found all the Russian accounts, right? And that was part of the Mueller report. Everybody's like, oh, there was no Russian interference, Russian hoax. Except the Mueller report has all these indictments and they found all these boiler rooms where they were creating all these memes and all this stuff. There was Russian interference, it's proven. Did it impact the election? Probably didn't change it, but it definitely impacted it on the margins.

SPEAKER_22: But the truth is, even those kind of sucked and were easy to identify. The problem is, is anybody trying to identify them and do they take them time? Do they take them down before they have their impact? Right. So even if they're easy to identify, if I got you to think Hillary Clinton is a lizard with the Pizzagate basement thing, if I influenced you in the 60 days and you found out about it six months later, well, it's too late, it already impacted the election. And so we're done here.

SPEAKER_321: Yeah. So I, I don't doubt that they're easy to spot.

SPEAKER_29: I don't doubt that they're easy to spot. And I'm sure that there are some that are less easy to spot. And this, this piece makes a good point.

SPEAKER_03: Quoting people saying, you know, look, our enemies are doing this. Like psyops is real. We are in an information war, full stop. That is a huge way in which countries, all kinds of countries, including ours and including

SPEAKER_29: Iran and including China and including Russia are attempting to gain advantage and leverage. That is unquestionably happening. And so, you know, sources in the government are saying to the journal, like, I hope you don't think that we shouldn't be engaging in this, considering that it's happening. You wouldn't like it. Otherwise it's a completely one-sided war. It's a two-sided war.

SPEAKER_63: We have to do it. But the more important thing to do here is to go find existing people who are influential and flip them. That's what we need to do.

SPEAKER_07: We need to find like, oh, hey, this person's a crazy, you know, you know, left or right person. We need to meet with them and be like, hey, we got you on these things.

SPEAKER_326: How'd you like to come work for us? By the way, we know we got you on these things.

SPEAKER_01: Taxes, whatever, grift that they're doing. Oh, hey, grifter. We know you grifted this.

SPEAKER_89: Um, we'd like you to continue your grift. By all means, continue to grift and we will part in your grift.

SPEAKER_01: But we would like you, um, there'll come a time where you're going to post some things for us. That may go against what you're doing here.

SPEAKER_330: But there will come a time when we're going to ask you.

SPEAKER_16: I like it. That's what I'm doing. Assets, cultivating assets. By the way, that is almost certainly also happening.

SPEAKER_214: You can be sure there are MAGA assets working for the government. And there are WOKE whatever assets on this side.

SPEAKER_22: They got them all dialed in. And whenever they want, they're like, yeah, we're going to have you dialed this way or that way.

SPEAKER_89: Not for political reasons, but maybe for the safety of the country. Maybe to, you know, find out the maniac reasons.

SPEAKER_66: Yeah. Yeah. Like, uh, these maniacs from January six, what's the name of them? Oath keepers keepers.

SPEAKER_89: Like those idiots are so dumb that they were putting stuff. The reason they're all going to jail is because they all put this stuff into group chat. We're going to flip the election. We're going to take over the government. I mean, they're so dumb. The oath keepers in this whole group of people are so dumb that when they wanted to, uh, do this conspiracy, they let anybody into group chat and said, here's the conspiracy. Yeah. They were so dumb. They didn't even do it in person where they could say, everybody put your phones in the drawer here. We're going to scan. Everybody lifts your shirt. The mob knows how to do this. The mob doesn't use group chat. Yeah. We'll go to the clubhouse.

SPEAKER_34: Go to the clubhouse for God's sake. Play some poker. And then we're gonna have a real conversation.

SPEAKER_22: And like three guys might ask you to strip down to your skivvies to check if you're wired.

SPEAKER_147: Not saying I know, just saying.

SPEAKER_128: I'm not saying I've been in a situation where people check for wires. But telling me, I'm like, so believe me, you're just speaking my language right now. I'm listening to all the gray man books.

SPEAKER_03: And then I just, I binged that on my rainy day. I binged that terminal list show on Amazon prime, which is unbelievably violent. But I'm just like in full spy mode right now. Yeah. So this, there couldn't have been better timing for me to see this article today and be like, yeah.

SPEAKER_342: But by the way, house of dragons.

SPEAKER_06: I don't want to Thursday. We'll talk about it. I'm sure I just watched house of dragons last night. Yeah. Literally, they're just like murdering wives.

SPEAKER_01: Just everybody's getting murdered. It's just, they were like, this time will be different. Nope. Nope. Everybody's getting murdered. Nope.

SPEAKER_344: Everybody's being raped and tortured and murdered and stabbed. It's insanity. It's insanity.

SPEAKER_345: It's like a crazy bait and switch. Like, I think they were just like, no, no, no. Don't worry.

SPEAKER_01: Lure you in. And by the way, at the end of the show, two people will come on. And it will be very great gender representation.

SPEAKER_326: And they'll explain to you what happened and why it's from female gaze. And why this is, you know, but anyway, it's just chaos.

SPEAKER_348: And I will, I will be sure to. I love it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: It's an incredible show. I'm reading the recap. I really liked the book version of this. I just read the recaps. Cause I can't stomach it. I can't apparently.

SPEAKER_06: Any trauma in your life. Or you don't like murder and torture. Rape and anything else. Please don't watch the show. They should put a giant. They must be a huge trigger.

SPEAKER_29: I mean, it's funny that I just watched a show where like, literally a guy gets gutted and paraded around by his intestines. And I was fine with that sort of, but like this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: This is this. It's the sadism.

SPEAKER_157: It's the sadistic nature of some of these shows that. It is. It's not like somebody just randomly gets murdered or it's a war.

SPEAKER_62: It's like gleeful. They just like. It's the gleeful torture of humans.

SPEAKER_157: It's the glee.

SPEAKER_62: All right. Well, listen, our military needs to be better at this.

SPEAKER_06: I'm sure we will be. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_03: I do want to point out one thing I thought that was kind of interesting. They said the two most followed assets in the data, a report by Grafica and Stanford, what were that? Um, they said the most successful accounts were overt accounts that publicly declared a

SPEAKER_29: connection to the US military. So just like be influencers. Yeah, there's a ton of these Chinese accounts.

SPEAKER_366: We're the military and we're awesome.

SPEAKER_64: There are known Chinese state actors who have interacted with me and many other folks who are like, you're wrong about what's going on in Shanghai with the lockdown.

SPEAKER_22: They'll just interact with you. Yeah. So it's almost like you get to interact with the press secretary, you know, like there's always a. Yeah. Yeah. Own it. Or for them, it's journalists like their journalists work for the state. So you're like, oh, hey, Kara Swisher. And it's like, yeah, I'm Kara Swisher of this Chinese morning, whatever, Harold. And, but they work. Imagine if Kara Swisher worked for Trump or Putin or whoever's in charge. That's what's happening in China. So you have this like high profile journalists who will argue with you.

SPEAKER_06: And you're like, I'm having an argument with the journalists like, like half journalist, half. You're like, I don't think you're a hundred percent objective here.

SPEAKER_63: Yeah. They don't have exactly the same line between a journalist and the CIA PR machine.

SPEAKER_62: Um, interesting. Um, let's.

SPEAKER_13: Interesting that people are monitoring this. Oh, of course they are. We're in an active information war. I mean, when you talk to like, you know, NatSec people, they're just like the idea that

SPEAKER_29: we would talk about conflict with China without talking about information is such a bizarre, you cannot segment these things out. Or even like Russia's Ukraine attack also is an information war like everything.

SPEAKER_06: Sure. I wonder if these, do you think they put these fake, maybe the accounts that got busted, they put out there to get busted on purpose.

SPEAKER_05: So you don't get the real good ones. I know what I wonder too. I'm like, I would just put out the klutzy one and hide the good one.

David Friedberg: They probably have like four layers. Like, here's the ones we know you're going to catch real easy. Here's the ones we know you're going to catch next.

SPEAKER_07: These are the ones that you may or may not catch. And then these are the ones where we actually flip the people and you have no idea.

SPEAKER_157: And those people will never say because the second they do, we're going to indict them for the 20 crimes they did that we know about.

SPEAKER_29: That's the stuff I love. I love that. So I love that. I mean, like, I don't believe for a second that we just, and maybe this is me being naive and hopeful, but I don't believe for a second that we're just like, so clunky at it,

SPEAKER_378: that we're just like, Hey, fellow kids, I would like to talk to you about US national exceptionalism skateboard on the show. Yeah. Like no way.

SPEAKER_379: Hey, would anybody like to talk about the insurrection or Ukraine?

SPEAKER_101: Right.

SPEAKER_102: Hello. Hey, guys. What do you think about like, I don't know, storm in the capital? Like, no, there's a gray man version of this.

SPEAKER_382: Maniacs.

SPEAKER_102: There are people who are good at it. Yeah, this guy.

SPEAKER_382: We hope.

SPEAKER_102: We hope.

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SPEAKER_13: That's odoo.com slash twist. Let's talk about, let's just have a little fun now with the high, high cost of being an

SPEAKER_03: Apple early adopter because you never don't get burned by buying Apple products first out the gate. Yeah, wait three months. There are reports that the iPhone 14 Pro, Jason found this one early this morning, the iPhone 14 Pro camera, apparently when users try to operate it, the fancy new camera, whatever it does, that's fancy and new because there always is that with a new iPhone.

SPEAKER_128: It evidently makes a rattling noise and the image is insane. You got to watch this video. It just watched the video.

SPEAKER_13: I mean, it feels like an angry hummingbird fart sound.

David Friedberg: It's crazy. I mean, it is feels like it's about to blow up. It's like mission impossible. Like the message you're just heard is about to explode in 10 seconds.

SPEAKER_03: So that's a tick tock user named Damien who posted this and said this pretty much only happens in like Snap and some sort of third party app. They because it only happens on third party apps. People think it's probably a software bug because of course it is because of course, Apple did not give these third party app makers the specs for their fancy new camera stuff because they might have like leaked it. Wait, why would it vibrate then?

SPEAKER_148: I don't understand. There's like, how does it vibrate? Why does it vibrate?

SPEAKER_115: I don't really understand that. But maybe it's just like, I mean, software controls everything. So maybe you're activating the shutter and no, no, no image state.

SPEAKER_330: It has something to do with the, the, the speculation is it has something to do with optical image stabilization, right? So it's, so the stabilization is like wild. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_393: Okay. I'm too hard. Yeah. This is like one of those quick fixes. I think they get the fix out for this in, you know, like two days or something.

SPEAKER_03: This is why you wait, like I'm waiting for 16.1 or whatever the new iOS is. Just call me when there's a 0.1 and then I'll download it. And then you get the next, you get the second shipment of new iPhones.

SPEAKER_164: So you never buy the first stuff.

SPEAKER_173: Well, and here's the thing that's really important.

SPEAKER_07: There are like these, um, analysts in China and Hong Kong who know all the supply chain. They are saying the demand for the iPhone 14 pro is insane right. So this indicates, um, that the pro version is selling higher than the 14 according to what's being ordered for it. So they're going to have like maybe 10% more phones sold or whatever. So I think my J trade of apple is going to be higher is going to be like a big win. Cause despite inflation, the great jobs and the spending of Americans continues, even though interest rates have gone up, mortgages are absurdly expensive. We're getting close to triple or it's over two X what it was.

SPEAKER_17: Yeah. Mortgages are over 6% and I got locked mine in at two point something. Like absurd. Yeah.

SPEAKER_399: I mean it's more than triple at the, what the lowest rates were I think. Is it really triple now? Or triple, and maybe not more than.

SPEAKER_01: Cause it was 2.2 maybe at the 2.3 I think I got mine at. And now it's over six. So that is almost triple. It's two and a half. Almost triple.

SPEAKER_29: I mean, it's crazy. Um, and yet Americans be shopping. Like nobody is slowing down. They're just putting it on credit cards.

SPEAKER_03: They're figuring it out. Like, oh, buy now, pay later. We have money buy now, pay later galore. And it's so interesting. Cause the iPhone 14 was like the most perfunctory of updates. I mean, it was like, they could barely even be bothered with the, to, to sex it up and make it seem like this is an awesome must have update. But for people who've been holding on since the 12 or the 12 mini, you know, it's like anybody who skipped an update now wants this one. And they're saying that they are actually going to switch production lines potentially because they are forecasting an increase, uh, of iPhone 14 pro models by about 10%.

SPEAKER_279: Now that could also be because people didn't buy that many new iPhones during the pandemic.

SPEAKER_07: Or maybe Apple put in a small order. Cause they thought there would be headwinds in the economy and they were wrong.

SPEAKER_06: Maybe.

SPEAKER_07: Yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_402: Yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_07: It's hard to tell what's going on in the economy right now. Like we keep raising the rates. We're going to raise the rates again. The market has collapsed. It's been bouncing along the bottom, but we still have a lot of jobs, but unemployment may be ticking up a little bit, but it's still historically low. The amount of inventory in the hot markets is going through the roof for homes, but the home prices haven't come down that much, but price cuts are starting to happen. But mortgages have two and a half X. So I feel like we're right in the slush, like where everything's changing. Like we're in the middle of the hurricane and we're going to know like in the fourth quarter, what actually happened. Right.

SPEAKER_29: Cause all the data is trailing. All the data is trailing. There is only one thing that I can predict with confidence. And that is that Apple will sell a record number of iPhones.

SPEAKER_359: Just like it always does. It's so crazy to me, but I, you know, but I think it's like a subscription service at this point.

SPEAKER_07: Yeah. I feel like we've underestimated the value we get from our smartphones dramatically. And therefore, because we bought them originally for 400 bucks, 500 bucks, we never conceived of what a great deal of $500 smartphone was. A $500 smartphone that you could sell for 200 after three years, or even say a hundred after three years means $400.

SPEAKER_06: $400 is about a dollar a day if you kept it for a year. But if you kept it for three years, it's like 35 cents a day. 35 cents a day for a product that does what a smartphone does for you. Most people are using their smartphones five, six, seven hours a day.

SPEAKER_63: It means net, net, you're paying five cents an hour to use this thing. Yeah. It's worth much more than that.

SPEAKER_411: The amount of value you get from it is worth much more.

Jason Calacanis: I mean, it's the thing that untethered you from your desk.

SPEAKER_03: It's the thing that opened up a window into the entire world and all of the world's information. It is the thing that gets you where you're going. If you're going somewhere, like if you think about anxiety, depression.

SPEAKER_413: Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_414: Loathing, self-loathing, all these things are part of this.

SPEAKER_03: Ruined all our damn lives, ruined our necks. Like it's, you know, it's why everything hurts all the time because everyone's like,

David Friedberg: Do you have that thing where you go like this and you crack your neck because you've been hunched over so much? Yeah. Text neck. Text neck.

SPEAKER_07: And I think a lot of people are, I think the eyesight issue is because of the phone as well. I am starting to do a little digital detox when I'm out with my girls. Sometimes I will put my phone into airplane mode, leave it in the bag, try to challenge myself for the entire dinner to not touch it. So I'm now having to discuss with my wife, like, Hey, listen, I'm going to be out with the girls, but I'm going to be phone light. I will keep it on, but assume I will not see your text. You got to call me and I have it on do not disturb, but I have you on my favorites list. So you will come through if it doesn't call me twice. I think it comes through automatically if you do that.

SPEAKER_277: So yeah, I'm trying to detox a little bit on the margins. But yeah, it is what it is.

SPEAKER_17: It's, you know, you take the good with the bad and you have to have some discipline.

SPEAKER_419: Yes.

SPEAKER_17: All right. Speaking of the economy and layoffs and jobs. The rifts continue. People continue to cut down the size of their organizations. I think this is something we expected would happen to the end of the year. Mm hmm. So.

SPEAKER_89: There are always second order effects when you do this.

SPEAKER_08: I think we you and I on this very podcast, maybe a month ago. Uh, people were like, hey, the impact of these is going to screw with the diversity inclusion progress people are making. Mm hmm. And I said, yeah, you know, I I'm trying to remember. Do you remember what our thesis is or the sign were about why this would happen?

SPEAKER_29: Well, I think we were saying that much like our story notes that that for companies who really embarked on very specific hiring efforts, they have new employees who are likely to be. And also your your potentially your least expensive employees. Right. Are going to be people of color, people from underrepresented minorities, because you have made this like specific effort to beef up hiring or even like, I mean, I think we straight up saw it in Warner Brothers where it was like they had a whole slate of people and shows media in particular where it was like you brought on a whole bunch of people to do more diverse programming.

SPEAKER_03: Mm hmm. And then just nuked them all. And so it basically looks like at least at Warner Brothers. It's like people are saying it looks like. The optics. That Zod Zod Slav is just trying to get rid of all the black people. Yes.

SPEAKER_122: And it's you know, it's unclear. It might just be that these are new initiatives that have yet to make any money and it was the easiest thing to cut.

SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I think that another way to look at it would be a lot of these companies really cared about diversity inclusion. They tried it. I don't know, let's say in the developers. Uh, and there's a pipeline problem there. Maybe they couldn't fill those positions as much as possible. But they found Oh, my God, in customer support in marketing and whatever other categories, some entry level thing somewhere we're hiring a large number employees. Oh, we could get our diversity goals there. Mm hmm. So they said, Okay, well, let's just get the diversity win because the world is really pissed at us, rightfully so. So we'll try to get more diversity on the customer success team. Okay, now you don't have as many customers, your Airbnb, your Twilio, your whoever. Okay, we have too many customer success people, we're going to automate some of that. And we're gonna make cuts. But that's where your diversity inclusion was, you know, doing really well. And now all of a sudden, your diversity numbers crash or crater because of that. So Twilio made an announcement that they were cutting 11% of the workforce last week. And this is where we knew somebody would anticipate this. But I didn't think somebody would vocalize it. A friend of the pod, Jeff Lawson, said the layoffs would be carried out through an anti racist anti oppression lens to avoid dramatic impacts to marginalized group. Okay, good intent, right? Mm hmm.

SPEAKER_17: But he's now getting dunked on everywhere. Uh, because of this, because we were like, well, that means you're. Going to lay off the white people or the Asian people. And here we are in the circular, uh, racism, anti-racism discussion. What do you think?

SPEAKER_29: Yeah, it's a, I mean, it's a super messy discussion and it's a hard thing to have.

SPEAKER_03: Said because he said it. On TV, right?

SPEAKER_29: Like there was no. There's no, there's not a lot of room for nuance or even explaining what that means. Like if, if what he means is. Literally a lens. Like, we're just going to make sure that we're not using unconscious bias to get rid of employees without thinking we're going to keep this top of mind and ask ourselves what it means for our company.

SPEAKER_03: Or we're going to say, wait, did we actually just staff up customer success with more diverse hires instead of actually, you know, creating training?

SPEAKER_29: And like, are we going to make up for layoffs that we have to do? Like this could mean so many things within an organization, but we are so, uh, racially triggered right now as a country, um, and really divided with a lot of like overt racism that is manifesting as like, oh, well, when you say this stuff, you're just virtue signaling or being woke or whatever. And as opposed to like trying to correct longstanding problems and be conscious of what it might look like when you do layoffs at your company. It's just like, it's a, it's a hard and a, and a deep and a nuanced conversation to have,

SPEAKER_122: which means of course that we're not going to do any of that when we talk about it.

SPEAKER_89: This is also the first time this, let's face it. This is the first time that we've had a down market since diversity and inclusion existed as a practice.

SPEAKER_07: So, you know, we've had a, what we had a 2008 to 2021 to 2021, 2022. Bull market. So you have 14 year bull market. We all knew it would come apart at some point. I thought I started sounding alarm at about 10 years, 12 years. Hey, this probably won't last, uh, Bryce for it. So somewhere in those 14 years, probably the second half of it, these tech companies were getting, you know, they were getting really scrutinized. Hey, show us your numbers. They started showing their numbers. So now they're attuned to this. So what do you do in layoffs? Somebody who works in diversity and inclusion is going to say like, Hey, wait a second. Did you, I'm trying to hit my numbers. You gave me a mandate and now you just cut my numbers in half. Okay. So now we have to look through it through a lens. Well, what does that even mean? And now I can tell you what's going to happen here. Um, you're going to have somebody who was laid off or some group of people say, they're going to find some attorney who's going to take on this case. Well, was I fired? Cause I was white or Asian or otherwise Indian, whatever the overrepresented group is. And that's the chaos we're in right now. Nobody has any goodwill. Nobody has any thoughtfulness about this. It's all just dunking. I think when in fact, Jeff's a great person who wants to be thoughtful.

SPEAKER_03: Being thoughtful about this is the only right. Like the reason that companies are in a position where their newest employees are all people of color is because of structural bias. And it would be very easy as a company to basically be like, yeah, we just made this list and we didn't think about why we made this list. And we didn't think about who's on it.

SPEAKER_29: And if you have a list and it's 90% people of color, you know, the, the marketplace story that this links to points that out or quote someone from an HR and staffing firm saying like,

SPEAKER_03: you could put together a list and then look at it through this lens and be like, huh, this list is 90% people of color. It doesn't necessarily mean you change who you lay off, but it would mean that going forward,

SPEAKER_115: you'd be like, how did that happen? And how can we correct? Sure. And we speculated, right? How can we plan for the fact that there's going to be a bunch of Twitter threads about

SPEAKER_27: how we laid off 90% of our people of color? Yeah. You have to be very careful about this.

SPEAKER_07: And also, by the way, this is going to be a Supreme Court case next month. I believe schools have been dealing with this because they want to have a diverse group of

SPEAKER_22: people at the schools. And there are a couple of demographic groups that have over indexed on standardized testing, which was how they were deciding who got in. Now they're like, Okay, we're going to not use that, or we're going to use other criteria, which feels like you just rug pulled the people who you told for 30 years to focus on standardized testing because that was the way in. And now you're rug pulling them. And now they don't get

SPEAKER_17: to get in because they did the standardized testing prep that you told them to do. It's the whole thing is super gnarly. It's like, yeah, it's going to be crazy when this Supreme Court thing comes out. I think it's going to be like, it's going to be like another Roe v Wade bomb. People are going to be like, how do I even think about this? Like, I'm trying to figure out how I think about it.

SPEAKER_22: Right? Like, should it be merit based based on IQ tests, but aren't IQ tests a little bit biased? And then are there actually innate differences, like the book the bell curve found in different demographic groups on how they score an IQ tests? Then is that because there actually is IQ is of course, your definition of IQ, right? And it turns out like your definition of IQ and who made the test was a bunch of white Western European people. And I mean, but one example, like they said,

SPEAKER_29: it's a great example, right? Because it's sort of like everything fundamental that we think we know

SPEAKER_03: about how to evaluate people is built on some kind of a rotten system. And then how do you start over? You can't start and there will be anybody pretending that there won't be losers is lying to you. There will be winners and losers. People who historically would have gotten jobs who were mediocre who maybe now won't because someone better will come along. And you won't just like

SPEAKER_05: opt into the thing that was your birthright before.

SPEAKER_07: And to go full circle. We had this discussion with the first story on be real. Like, are you is even going for a higher education to an Ivy League school or whatever school? Yeah, going to set you up for success as much as learning to be a coder or to learning to be an entrepreneur going to found a university, whatever it is. And seeing how you do on that path, because those people seem to be the ones who are accumulating power and wealth in society. So we're like sitting here fighting over the IQ test and the Ivy League and how they let people in when in fact, it might be the developers and entrepreneurs who inherit the world and change the world. And it might be your skills that actually define it, not your ability to ace some standardized test, which, you know, I thought there was a really interesting example I heard on a podcast, find the sources, but they were doing the analogy part of the tests. And they're like blank is to blank, like cup is to saucer. And it's like, by the way, the concept of a cup and saucer is a uniquely like European English thing. Like, if you're from, you know, I don't

SPEAKER_03: know, India, China, Africa, South America, maybe Ireland, like depending on where you write, if you weren't a country that was colonized by the British, you might have never have saucer means nothing to

SPEAKER_34: you. Saucer means like something flying in the sky. Like it means like a frisbee. It doesn't mean

SPEAKER_89: who puts a plate under a cup and why is there a plate under a cup? Like you drink from a cup, you may drink from a jar, you know, but like, a saucer? What does that even mean? So you miss that, you're gonna, you're gonna fail that question. So a lot of this might be a rigged system

SPEAKER_22: that is antiquated that the whole thing needs to be thrown in. Right. No easy answer here, folks.

SPEAKER_29: Anyway, it's messy. I honestly, I congratulate Jeff for opening up race human, like a really

SPEAKER_03: nuanced conversation and saying like, we're going to keep trying because this is downturns are when companies historically stopped trying. Like it's easy to try hard at diversity when you have the luxury and you've got the extra money and you've got the, you know, the, whatever you're not in some kind of a

SPEAKER_29: crisis. And as soon as things get tough is usually when companies are like, we don't have time for

SPEAKER_17: that. So good for him. How about also giving people the benefit of the doubt? I saw him getting savaged

SPEAKER_328: on like, you know, all different places, social and in news stories. It's like, how about somebody

SPEAKER_07: who has created massive economic value and opportunity for the world made every product and service 10% better. And, uh, just, we just assume that they're a good person because they've

SPEAKER_06: done great work prior and we just give them the benefit of the doubt. Like I just, how about we

SPEAKER_03: start there like that? Right? Like I don't, if you're, if you're in tight, if you, if somebody comes along into the world and is like, I'm just trying to make things incrementally better for as many people as I can. And your response is to be like, you're just a woke idiot and a libtard and a snowflake

Jason Calacanis: like that's not, that's on you. That is telling that saying more about you than it is about him

SPEAKER_03: because good for him, but also yes, social media is the worst. And we could have, and you can have a

SPEAKER_474: thoughtful discussion about it, right? Like, I think that's, where's the thoughtful discussion about

SPEAKER_478: this issue. That's right. Like we just have, I'm not mad. I mean, I'm mad at Twitter.

SPEAKER_17: We just had a thoughtful discussion about it. Like, okay. Yeah. Like it's, it's complicated. It's complicated. You gotta be thoughtful. And it sounds like what he said was intentional

SPEAKER_13: and you have to try. And if everybody who tries gets like screamed out of the room,

SPEAKER_07: they're going to stop trying. My first reaction was he should have said nothing because it's easier to just put your head down and say nothing. Right. And, but if you say nothing,

SPEAKER_22: then you're not having the discourse. We couldn't have had our discourse here without him saying something. So this is the problem in the world. You want to have an intelligent,

SPEAKER_07: discourse about something, but the cost of even bringing it up is like, you're going to get

SPEAKER_17: savage. So I think we have to steer towards having like, um, giving people the benefit of the doubt

SPEAKER_22: and then having a thoughtful, vibrant discussion about it. Right. Because I feel like what we have

SPEAKER_29: now is intellectual terrorism. Like it really is sure. And it shut people down from talking.

SPEAKER_22: Yeah. Shut people down, attack them. Like you and I have this conversation here. How many people are willing to even have this discussion? And we're two white people having this discussion who are successful and who are, you know, in the Western world in Sanford Bay area. So like, it's hard to

SPEAKER_17: have these discussions. I'm willing to have them, but you got to come to it with this could be like the first time society is actually going through this. I think it's the first time society is actually going through this. And so let's just be thoughtful folks. Okay. Uh, it's Monday. So we live in the future.

SPEAKER_03: Yes. Here we go. Toronto based trans pod has unveiled plans for something called a flux jet. Which is a fully, this is so up my alley, a fully electric transport system. That's a hybrid between

SPEAKER_494: an aircraft and a train. Okay. What does that even mean? It looks like a hyperloop to me, but

SPEAKER_128: it's like a flying maglev. I mean, it's definitely maglev. It's a, it currently in the concept stage,

SPEAKER_03: but would involve an 82 foot long train that levitates magnetically to reduce friction. So they

SPEAKER_497: have these in Japan already, these maglev trains. They go 300 miles an hour, 250. Yeah, this is bonkers.

SPEAKER_03: And then I'm trying to figure out at some point, it sounds like they plan to build a, there's some, there is some hyperloop stuff in here. The company, uh, plans to build a 200 mile vacuum tube network between Edmonton and Calgary to cover that trip between the two cities in 45 minutes. It would carry up to 54 passengers. Uh, those passenger tickets would be 44% less than plane tickets and it would pull power. This is what's so interesting is that it wouldn't be additional strain on the grid. The idea is that it would pull power from the existing electric grid through magnetic fields.

Jason Calacanis: So just sort of like relies, I think on the existence of electricity. Okay. Confusing for propulsion.

SPEAKER_63: I'm down. Yeah. Okay. They're going to build a 200 mile vacuum tube between Edmonton and Calgary. So they're building the hyperloop basically. And they've raised 550 million from British investors. Wow.

SPEAKER_29: Yeah. Um, they say the total project is expressed expected to cost $18 billion. The, the trains

SPEAKER_115: would go 621 miles per hour faster than a commercial jet and three times the speed of most high speed

SPEAKER_07: trains. So we leave every two minutes. Incredible. 54 passengers. Yeah. I mean, the, the big challenge here, at least in the developed world, like fully developed world is regulations. Uh, we don't have the ability to tell people we're putting this thing through your backyard and we have regulations. And this is the big problem in the United States. Like to just get this built there. They're doing it

SPEAKER_22: between the, their plan is to do the triangle in, uh, Texas with high speed rail, Austin, Dallas, Houston is a triangle. And so eventually if you complete the triangle, you know, it's going to be like super fun and fast to go between those cities and the economic impact of incredible. But then you look at somewhere like the Northeast corridor, there's so much regulation, so many different jurisdictions that we can't ever get the excella to go a reasonable speed. I mean, don't even get me started

SPEAKER_03: on California and their high speed rail project. That's like 20 to 30 years in the making. And it's just, let me just light billions of dollars on fire every single year instead of, well, and here's

SPEAKER_81: some, here's the punchline would save so much. I mean, gigatons. This is a gigaton scale solution,

SPEAKER_22: but it's, I think they, the problem I have with this California one is they said it would be like 125 or 150 miles per hour. And I'm like, wait a sec. Yeah. If we're going to invest tens of billions of dollars, we're not even getting the speeds they have in Japan and China. Like, can we get this to 250 miles an hour and make it less than three hours? Like if it's still three hours to go from San Francisco to LA or they, you have to go, it slows down when you get closer. Like do you realize nobody's going to stop flying in planes? Like the promise of Southwest at, you know, $99 a flight and it's an hour flight. People are just not going to get,

SPEAKER_269: they're not going to go to the train depot, which they have to take, take some half an hour,

SPEAKER_29: 45 minutes. I mean, I wonder like, I wonder if Canada will have different regular, like you wonder to the extent, I mean, it's funny, right? Cause democracy is so messy. It's like, yeah. Yeah. Like some government would have to come along and basically just declare eminent domain and be like, we're building this and we have to build it because it's a climate crisis and it's that,

SPEAKER_62: or you all fall into the ocean and die the end. And like, I'm not going to happen. But yeah, the eminent domain thing is like, I have an idea for it. Like

SPEAKER_07: we really care about property rights here and everything like that. I think there's got to be some like absurd payment to people where they get like four times, whatever the assessed value is. Right. If eminent domain happens and the community in California gets to vote on it, there's

SPEAKER_17: got to be some trigger. We're in a democracy. We can say, Hey, this is for the greater good. Speaking of which I won't say, you know, like, uh, exactly where I am in the peninsula. Uh, but I just got the email from my NIMBY neighbors.

SPEAKER_22: I got an, um, yeah, the NIMBY neighbors email me. Would you be considering, would you build an ADU on your property so that we don't have to build housing? And they're like, here's how we skirt the housing. If this many of us build ADUs. And then we say, we're going to give it to our domestic staff, or we're going to rent it publicly. And we put it at this price. Or we rent it to our kids. So there's like a whole little cobble going around, just like the Atherton

SPEAKER_17: story. So I'm, I'm infiltrated. None of them watch the spots and they don't know I'm infiltrating, but accessory dwelling units, you know, what they call nanny units or in-law units.

SPEAKER_298: Right. They're not, they're not a substitute for housing. They're great. They're great to have,

SPEAKER_03: they allow multi-gen housing. You know, you can put one or two people, maybe a couple, like it's great when your teenage kid wants to live in there, but like that does not solve housing.

SPEAKER_464: Well, here's the thing. They're doing this, but they're doing it to skirt the regulations of

SPEAKER_17: building more units. I mean, that's just astonishing. And they're kind of ex, I don't want to say they're explicit about it, but they're explicit about it. So I'm collecting my information and just like, really like a fly on the wall, listening to these conversations. The, here's the, here's the grip, the rich people grip,

SPEAKER_22: build these ADUs, pretend you're renting them and get an extension on. Cause if you say you're, if you have the intent to build it and you file the form. So if I'm willing to file a form, we can push the issue of multi-unit out 10 years is what the discussion is. So the accessory, well, which makes sense because you're, even when you're building units, like in the Atherton story with, um, you know, uh, uh, Mark and Laura Andreessen. In that case, if you said, Hey, we're building the units, that's what the government's looking for, right? We're looking for you to break ground and part of breaking ground is filing. So this is the grip. If we all file that we're doing ADUs,

SPEAKER_58: we're in compliance. We can get down the road for 10 years. Potentially don't have to build any ADUs

SPEAKER_17: even for 10 years, let alone any multi-unit. What if I change my mind and somebody else then decides that they're going to do it so that, you know, we, we keep, or I do it. And then I changed my mind

SPEAKER_22: that I was going to make it a low rent one. Yeah. So they had me fill out a form and it's like, who is it for yourself, domestic help, or, you know, anybody who wants to rent it and what price? And they're kind of like, make it a low price and make it. Anybody can rent it.

SPEAKER_13: So then we check that box, right? So the manipulation, the fix is in the, the biggest

SPEAKER_128: enemy to humanity is all the damn humans, right? Like this was also most of the reporting that I did

SPEAKER_29: around lithium extraction in the United States. Like we need to extract lithium in the United States. We're going to have to mine our own resources. Of course we want to be energy independent in the

SPEAKER_03: future. And everyone's like, yeah, I totally agree. Unless that mind is anywhere near me. And then,

SPEAKER_275: hell no drill, baby drill. Let's go. I mean, I think it all changes because of what happened with this, Germany Putin relationship. Like I was, I don't know if you saw my tweet this weekend. I was,

SPEAKER_07: I just went down the geothermal, uh, rabbit hole. Yeah. It turns out like building people stopped doing geothermal because it was like expensive compared to just like putting a furnace in, but it turns out geothermal means like you don't need gas and you're independent off the grid, but it's a pain in the ass to put one in for 15 to 30 K instead of one for 5 K. But if the Germans do this and they're pretty good at like, um, you know, like the government's pretty good over there at getting shit done. Yeah. If they just said, Hey, we'll buy every geothermal unit, we'll pay to put it in anybody's home or give you a 50 year loan for it.

SPEAKER_63: They could just reduce their dependence on Putin every year by, you know, a couple of percentage points until they're completely energy independent. And nobody's even talking about geothermal.

SPEAKER_29: I know geothermal is such a weirdly neglected part of the energy mix. You know, we had quays on they're doing like the rhythm millimeter wave drilling for like super deep, like ultra deep

SPEAKER_03: geothermal. And what was so cool about them is that not only is geothermal totally an overlooked technology, which just makes no sense. There's, there's an X, I think it's a Google X spin out dandelion. I want to say is a geothermal company that's operating in the Eastern seaboard region. Um, but what's so interesting about geothermal is that you can take people who and equipment from the fossil fuel industry, but just convert them right to drilling, right? Basically your

SPEAKER_541: geothermal like they're drilled down. That's the issue is if you install this, right? Yeah, my understanding, you correct me if I'm wrong, you're more of an expert than I am. You have to

SPEAKER_07: drill a hole. So it's a pain in the ass. And but it used to be like, but it used to be really hard

SPEAKER_22: to drill holes. Now you're saying it's getting easier to drill them. So you drill a hole like they can go like 40 feet down 50 feet down. So if it's freezing in Boston, or it's 100 degrees in, you know, I don't know where in California, it turns out the earth is going to be either warm

SPEAKER_07: or cold down there. So if it's really hot where you are, it's 50, 40 degrees under there, it'll cool your air to 40 degrees. And if it's hot, if it's freezing cold, it's going to be 50 degrees down there. So we'll help heat your home. Yeah, turns out 50 degrees,

SPEAKER_482: good temperature for humans. Yeah, that's what it is down there.

SPEAKER_29: I mean, it's super, it's really fascinating. We have so many options.

SPEAKER_03: For we actually really do have so many interesting options for energy. And we're just not even all right. It's just been too easy not to do it. And those days are over now. And so

SPEAKER_532: we're gonna have to start doing it. The install is expensive and time consuming.

SPEAKER_17: But the benefit in the long term is extraordinary. Same with solar, same with battery, same with you.

SPEAKER_29: And there are actually geothermal incentives in the new inflation reduction act. Yes, that was a big,

SPEAKER_139: the geothermal community got very excited about that, because usually they're like completely

SPEAKER_17: ignored. We didn't do the Do Kwan story, but Do Kwan from Luna's allegedly on the run. That's

SPEAKER_330: all you need to know. Yep. Interpol is on the case. Great man. Great. Awesome. Red note is coming.

SPEAKER_22: Who knows? All right, everybody, what a great episode. Don't forget tomorrow, I'm going to speak with Vinny Barara, who is Preet Barara's brother. And I'm going to talk about the launch of his new startup Mojo.com, which lets users invest in pro athletes, just like their stocks, and they're

SPEAKER_08: launching and they're doing it with football just in time for the season. Really fascinating interview, fascinating guy. Can't wait for people to hear that discussion. Same. Great conversation and

SPEAKER_03: you know, is not going to be a slow news week. So just keep coming back every single day. See you

SPEAKER_14: tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Bye.