028 Somalia Fraud and Billionaires Taxes in CA

[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right. Happy New Year, Paul. [00:00:03] Speaker B: Happy new year. [00:00:04] Speaker A: Yeah. 2026 new year. Welcome back. Yeah. Yeah. So welcome back to the Gregory and Paul Show. I'm Gregory. [00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm Paul. [00:00:14] Speaker A: And we break down latest in SaaS, startups, AI, whatever the Internet happens to be arguing or debating about. And boy, were there a lot of arguments this week. I didn't have a lot of this stuff on my. My bingo card. Crazy taxes coming out of California, driving billionaires out of the state, Somali fraud all over supposedly allegedly all over the country. Wow. There is just. There is so much to discuss on a calm Friday after New Year's. [00:00:57] Speaker B: How was your New Year? [00:00:59] Speaker A: Yeah, tell me about. Well, so. Well, tell me about your New Year's first. You're over there in Toronto. [00:01:05] Speaker B: It's cold, it's freezing. But we're in the process of moving our house. So that was a. That's a. That's always a painful people think to over the holiday. Moving over the holidays, gang, spending time with the family. We still got to enjoy our Christmas in the years just a little bit. Nobody got sick, which is. Which is a blessing. So. [00:01:34] Speaker A: So wait, did you hire movers? [00:01:37] Speaker B: We were going to. [00:01:40] Speaker A: You're not done yet? [00:01:41] Speaker B: It's not done yet. So I think we'll be wrapped up being weak week or so. [00:01:46] Speaker A: Dude, moving is exhausting. [00:01:48] Speaker B: It's exhausting, isn't it? [00:01:50] Speaker A: You. [00:01:51] Speaker B: You moved a couple months back, right? [00:01:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like I've moved way too many times. Right. We owned a bunch of houses in California. We kept moving, right. And then every time I do it, I'm like, like, never again. And then of course, like, right, so we sold a house, California. [00:02:06] Speaker B: We moved here. [00:02:07] Speaker A: We had an apartment for only a year and a half, and then we moved out of that. Like, I've just moved a lot and like, it's tiring. [00:02:12] Speaker B: It's so tiring. And I. I think the next time we'll definitely not move in the winter, especially in Toronto. It's. We were gonna move on a couple few days back. It was a huge snowstorm. I think you were in New York as well. That was fun. That was not fun. I don't know. It's just. It's weather you have to cooperate with. [00:02:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Hey, is there like a. A noise in your in or is there could something happening? I hear like a bunch of feedback. Audio feedback. Is that you? Yeah. Oh, there we go. That's way better. [00:02:54] Speaker B: Okay, so that's definitely audio. Give me this. [00:02:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:07] Speaker B: Is this. Is this a little. [00:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I still hear like it sounds like. It sounds like you're in the Arctic and the wind is whistling by you. [00:03:16] Speaker B: Oh, that's. That's. That's the condo. [00:03:20] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Really? [00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, we. We. We have a. In the winter, we just have a whistling. Give me a. [00:03:27] Speaker A: That's better. It was the wind whistling by you. [00:03:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, this is. This is just a part of the condo. It's. It's insane. Give me a second. I'm gonna close the door. [00:03:42] Speaker A: Okay. [00:03:43] Speaker B: Okay. How's this? Is this much better? [00:03:46] Speaker A: Holy, dude. What are you in an igloo there? And. [00:03:50] Speaker B: Yes, that is literally. That's literally part of the problem is there's high pressure in the condo. And in the winter, you just clean up service [00:04:01] Speaker A: crazy. Well, yeah, I got. I got brutally sick. I flew back to New York. I thought I was like, I'm gonna have the best trip ever. Fly off Christmas Day and see my family and got first class, and I'm watching movies, and I'm just having, like, the best time. I spent, like, a day in New York, saw my family. It was great. I had dinner with them. Hadn't seen in a long time. And then I woke up in the hotel room. Top five most sick I've. I've ever been. Ever been lied in bed, Fever. Just a tiny little hotel room in New York City with, like, no windows. Like, a window that just faces like an air shaft or something. And I just. I'm on my, like, my deathbed, just lying there. I didn't eat anything or drink anything all day. Just like. Just kind of just lucid dreaming. [00:04:54] Speaker B: Oh. [00:04:55] Speaker A: Got up and finally stumbled around to the drugstore to get some, like, Gatorade and cold medicine, and I could barely eat, like, a Clif Bar. And I sat in bed, I watched holiday movies, which was so comforting. Actually. It's Christmas. I'm like, watching Willy Wonka and all the classic holiday, and I'm like, this is actually so relaxing. It's just like Christmas movies. They went back to bed, so I don't know. It's like 24 hours of, like, sleep. And then I kind of felt better, and I saw some friends, and then I flew back, and, like, I'm still sick, like, seven days later. Just. Just brutal. But I was excited to do our podcast anyway today. Talk about all of these crazy things that we missed. [00:05:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:46] Speaker A: Do we. Do we kick it off with, like, the Somalia stuff? Like, that stuff is out of control. Like, if you're not on X, you don't know about this. There's actually. I watched The all in podcast, they kind of summarized it. Yeah, pretty succinctly. So there's been people investigating fraud in Minneapolis for a long time regarding the Somali community. And that they. The accusations is that. And some of these have been convictions. They found, like, daycares that are fake and are billing the government for daycare and collecting, you know, government money to. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Subsidies. [00:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah, subsidies to do a daycare that. Not really a daycare. Not operating daycare, not taking care of anybody. And so the local news has been doing this for like a long time. And then this guy, this like, kid, Nick Shirley, created this video where he went and investigated a bunch of these with some other guy in the video. Have you seen this guy, Dave, with the video? And then they uncovered a bunch of them where like, same kind of thing. Like they just don't look like great daycares. And all they did was like, ask if they could have their kid in a daycare or they could. Like, that was kind of funny. Like the investigative journal, journal journalism. Like, he didn't really dive into the accounting or anything. He just basically was like, is this a legitimate daycare or not? Which is like, quite fascinating because, like, anybody could have just showed up and like, asked these questions like, this isn't some, like, deep forensic accounting piece. I thought that part. I think that's why people are so, like, are so surprised by all this because, like, the most basic kind of. [00:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it wasn't even like, Correct. It wasn't like Wall street fraud. It wasn't like white collar fraud. It was legitimately just empty daycares. Like. Right. [00:07:53] Speaker A: Well, they weren't even. It doesn't even look like there was any attempt to. To cover it up, to like, pretend that they were operating as daycares. Right. Like, they don't look like any daycare anybody want to send their kid to. They're not operational. Like, you can't just walk in and like, apply and have your kid go there. [00:08:13] Speaker B: Right? [00:08:13] Speaker A: Like, which is what a normal daycare would do. Right. They're so. They're just. They're not even pretending to be like a real. [00:08:20] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:21] Speaker A: A real business. [00:08:23] Speaker B: So the. I had an interesting conversation about this with. With a friend. It. It. He raised kind of like a good point, which is there's. There's two sides to this story, right. One is kind of like the focus on the community, specifically the Somali community. And the second thing is there's a wider topic of fraud in general, in society. So the. The point that he was trying to make was that broad is everywhere so he owns a company that actually solves fraud in the medical insurance. [00:09:02] Speaker A: Your. Your friend does industry. Okay. [00:09:04] Speaker B: Correct. So he's. He, he kind of like pulled me aside. He just said, look, this is. There's two layers. So much fraud, it could actually almost replace the entire gdp. Sorry. No, no, that's cool. So the real question here is like, is this kind of like the normal situation now in America where fraud is just everywhere? And this story just came out because of the community aspect to it aspect, so people are paying attention. Not because of the broad piece, because of the community piece. [00:09:46] Speaker A: I think the explanation is quite simple. I think that, like, fraud went to the moon during COVID I think, like, things like the PPP loans, like, like they just gave them out to people. Like, like, how would you even. We started to blur the lines of like, what was fraud and what wasn't. I think, I think, I think Covid. I don't think there's anyone out there who disagrees with me. Like, Covid was terrible in every regard. And then the way that we handled it was just unbelievable, right? Like, ran up the debt and the interest rates and the. Just, just the mismanagement. Like, I've never. I, I cannot believe. I still can't believe that it was handled the way that it was handled. And so I think with like, things like PPP loans, like, like, do. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Are. [00:10:37] Speaker A: Are there fraudulent ones? Because, like, the. Well, I was saying, like, the requirements of like, what was required to get them, like, wasn't clear. So you could say that like, every loan was legitimate, therefore it's all fraud. Right? Like, we just, we, we changed the dynamics of how these things work in a way that was like, very unhealthy, I think. And I think it made it easy to commit other types of fraud because, like, they weren't being investigated. There was like, restrictions, all kinds of stuff. And I think it has been cleaned up since COVID and I, I think that that's what happened. And the scale, the fraud is really large. And so there's a lot of people who are benefiting from it and like, they don't want it to be uncovered. So there's like, a lot of incentives for the fraud to, to continue. I hope it's not the case that we just continue to experience enormous amounts of fraud in the United States. [00:11:32] Speaker B: I. So it kind of like lends to the general feeling of the young people where we feel like unless you're pushing the boundaries a little bit, you're always behind. So, you know, like in the crypto industry, as well. Right. Rug Pulse is a form of fraud, I would say. And it's. It just happens so often. The community just kind of accepts it, accept that things like this have happened. I. I just wonder if. I don't really have an opinion on this. I do think that this is a societal problem. It's a problem that we collectively have to address. And I don't really know what. What the solution to it is. [00:12:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I don't know. That's a tough one. I don't really know what the answer is. I guess, like, at the highest level, I think that, like, people exposing fraud is good. [00:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:34] Speaker A: And that like, I was generally supportive of like Elon and Doge. Generally supportive of like whatever the work Nick Shirley is doing. I'm generally supportive of people like going out there and trying to expose fraud. I guess, like, I'm very much against the argument that it's just small, it doesn't matter relative to the size of the budget or something. I think that that is a garbage argument that like, fraud is bad and it should be dealt with. And the idea that, like, we should just accept some level of fraud, like, I don't agree with that. I, I agree some level of fraud [00:13:11] Speaker B: will exist, but don't think that it always exists. [00:13:14] Speaker A: Yeah, but I don't think we should have the attitude that should be tolerated or that it's somehow acceptable, like fraud is not acceptable. I think it. We need to be very clear about that. And maybe that's what's changed is like, there's a. There seems to be a lot of people out there who perhaps believe that some level of fraud is like. Is okay. [00:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Correct. [00:13:36] Speaker A: And so, yeah, I think that that's really bad. [00:13:39] Speaker B: I think that's really bad. And they're. I think in California there is the False Claim act, which allows private companies or private individuals to file a lawsuit against any company or individuals on the behalf of US Government against essentially fosters. They get a cut of whatever is recovered. Maybe like 15 to 20%, let's say. [00:14:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Some kind of whistleblower. [00:14:12] Speaker B: There's a whistleblower. Correct. So I think that's probably a good first solution towards this. And then maybe it is just better accounting, better tech, better traceability of how a dollar moves through the economy. I know we talked about blockchain in the past. I think insurance industry blockchain could solve a lot of problems on, you know, a piece of. Piece of claim or are properly filed and properly paid out. [00:14:55] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean, I don't think It's, I mean, it doesn't seem like it was hard to, to like, investigate this fraud. I think the problem is that like, fraud is there's, and, yeah, not Right. There's not enough enforcement and there's not enough interest in, in preventing it. I think that there's like, a lot, there's just, like I said, Covid blurred the lines between like, what's fraudulent and what's not. I think people have lost some perspective on like, what is legitimate, what's not. Like we just gave loans out to people to not work. [00:15:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:26] Speaker A: Like, I don't think that was a good idea personally. [00:15:29] Speaker B: Right. [00:15:29] Speaker A: It's not, it's not fraud. Like the government said you could do it, people applied for it, they got the loans. But it's, it's a very unhealthy place to, to be. And so I think it set this precedent that like, there's just all kinds of money available for people and, and like, what did you have to do to get a PPP loan? Like, it wasn't clear. Right. So, yeah, I think we're in this place now where like, it's, it's the, the, the, the clarity on like, what is fraud? What's not, is the problem. [00:16:02] Speaker B: It is blurred out. [00:16:03] Speaker A: I think we can clean it up. [00:16:04] Speaker B: But yeah, so you just basically have to like, essentially be very clear about the punishment if you're caught. Right. Actually, you know, you should prosecute some people who may or may not get committed fraud during that time or continue to do so. And really it's just about kind of like being vigilant, I guess. Right. Like right now the problem is like, who do you even report these to? Who, who cares? Is it the government? Is it like it really unclear how or who cares about these things? [00:16:48] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I, I, so do we have the update? I mean, there's some, there's some facts we could look at regarding this specifically. Right. Like there was some like, so, so, so in addition to like what Nick Shirley and has been happening on X recently, the FBI has been investigating this. There have been prosecutions, there have been. People have gone to jail. Right. So like there has been something at work for a long time in this area. It just wasn't like a national story. It just like took off recently. Like this video that Nick Shirley made went crazy viral. Like I think he said 500, 500 million views. So it really brought, brought it all to light. I mean, what I saw with the response from the Trump administration was that they're pausing all payments to all daycares in the United States. And then they're gonna ask them for proof and re. Establish, like, which ones are legitimate, which ones are not. Which seems like the kind of response I would expect when something like this happens. Like, let's just look into all this stuff and make sure that, like, money's going to, like, legitimate daycares. Like, I think it's totally. I mean, that's how I do an audit my own department. If I ran a company, right, and we found people like, defrauding the company, like, I would pause all outgoing payments and I'd say, like, we just need to like, review everyone's paperwork and make sure everything's in order. So I think, like, that as a response is like, completely rational. It's like what any, any corporation would do. So why would the government behave in some way? [00:18:31] Speaker B: We just need to. Exactly. We just need to do a government level. I think it's. I actually think that there could be a lot of cool tech built into these things that solves the problem. I don't know what it looks like. [00:18:45] Speaker A: I mean, like, it's. I don't even. It doesn't seem like tech is the problem here. Right. Like, these things are so easy to [00:18:55] Speaker B: catch. [00:18:56] Speaker A: They're so easy to. To define. Right. Like. Like, like literally, like, it's not. Like, it's hard to determine that. And if they are legitimate, like, they're not operating within the parameters that I would expect, like a daycare to operate in. Like, they're just bizarre, right? [00:19:16] Speaker B: Maybe it's just. Yeah. I. I don't know what the solution here is, but it's cool that it's coming to light and people do care about this, and I do think there's lots of opportunities for. For if anyone wants to work on this problem. I mean, that's kind of what Doji was. So [00:19:35] Speaker A: what else do you want to say? Do you have anything. Yeah. Anything else you want to say about Nick Shirley or. [00:19:41] Speaker B: No, I think it's. It's cool that people like this is. Bring these issues to life. We've been talking about inflation is on the show as well. And I think this is really one of the larger problems is solving fraud. [00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess, like, I would go and say something like, look, I think the. The rise or the embrace, let's use the term like that of citizen journalism is. Is excellent. I'm all for, like, I'm all for individuality and individualism and the idea that people can do Things and start YouTube channels and investigate stuff and take. Take Take, take things into their own hands and do things. Like, I, I'm like a really big advocate for that. I've always been since I was very small. I think the idea that, like, people don't feel or don't want you to feel empowered anymore is really bad. Like, some of the things that Mandami said it is swearing in in New York, like, I'm really against collectivism and the idea that the state is going to take responsibility for a lot of things that you should be responsible for. And, and I, my opinion, like, that's the part of collectivism which I really disagree with. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that there's a definitely group of people who are pushing for more and more government and state intervention and more and more things. And I like the idea that whether it's citizen journalism, whether it's entrepreneurship, whether it's people like going out on social media and starting newsletters and doing things, like, I think people should do things and should take on responsibility from no matter how smaller or how big. I think it's excellent. And I'm really against the idea that, like, people seem to be enthusiastically giving up agency and giving up responsibility to, like, the government. [00:21:50] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Right. As long as they're not wrong. As long as they, they're more than welcome to do things. As long as, you know. [00:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:02] Speaker B: Productive, valuable way of doing things. [00:22:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a, that's of course. Right. Like, yeah, I, I, I, I guess just to be clear. Yeah. I advocate for people to do productive things and positive things and things that are constructive and are going to contribute to their community and contribute to society. Like, and that's what, that's what I think entrepreneurship in particular is about. Right. People going out there and starting businesses and doing things. And I think it's fantastic. And trying to take responsibility and create value and do something excellent. I think it's, I think there should be much more of that. I'd love to see more people excited about that and less people excited about, like, relinquishing control and giving other people and bureaucracies responsibility to, like, do things and take care of you. Like, I just think that's terrible. [00:22:58] Speaker B: Agreed. All right, let's move on. I added this, like, to the document as well. I. So the news from the last couple weeks on was Meta acquired a company called Malice AI. I thought it was super interesting because Metis Acquisition is a AI company. Is a AI company that helps you. It's like an AI worker. They started out with creating slides, creating fully automated slides. You can use it to print websites. There are. It's very similar to Canva and it's interesting because there's a. Manus was a Chinese company, but the founders moved the company to Singapore and kind of divested. Tesla used to be an investor of Manus, but they did a share buyback. They kind of fully decoupled. So what's really interesting here is that even though all of the discussion of China and US are competitors in the AI field, it seems like there are still couplings going on here. It seems like the playbook for Chinese AI companies is to actually build the tech in China, then move the company to places like Singapore and then sell to the US companies in conference. This is really interesting and I actually have not predicted that this will happen. It kind of also follows the same book as Canadian tech. I would say like a lot of US start companies, build it initially in Canada, then move the company to the US and position wise we tend to try to either go public or sell in the US So by far still US is. Exactly. Yeah. By far. US is still a huge, huge attraction to tech companies especially. [00:25:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Because Tick Tock is Chinese company, but they have the CEOs out of Singapore. Isn't he a Singapore national? [00:25:36] Speaker B: Yeah, correct. So he's a Singapore national. [00:25:39] Speaker A: Like he has a passport from Singapore at least. I don't, I actually don't know the details in that. He's not born in China, right? [00:25:45] Speaker B: No, he's Singapore. [00:25:47] Speaker A: He's probably born in Singapore. Yeah. And then they owned the US entity, Right. So that, that model has been around for a long time. Even most like tech companies that I've been involved with that were from Asia, they almost all were headquartered in Singapore. Like even if you're an Indian company or you know, from somewhere else in Asia, I'm trying to think even like Australian company, like not all of them, but like it's just so much more affordable and effective to do your business out of Singapore that everyone. It's like the Delaware of, of South Korea. [00:26:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Right. [00:26:27] Speaker A: It's just, it's just easy to set up a company there and, and manage it. [00:26:31] Speaker B: Right. It's easy to set up a company. But what I'm kind of like, kind of want to call out is they build a lot of the tech. Right. Like so, so the problem with China right now is can they prevent all of their talents, their engineers, AI researchers to stay in China? Seems like they are not able to do this, especially with these kind of acquisitions. Right. [00:27:07] Speaker A: I don't know. It's a good question. I mean like, so I think like what you're getting at is you've got this interesting, like let's call it a rivalry between China and the United States. [00:27:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:25] Speaker A: And so there's this rivalry. There's like certain aspects of the US Government that don't want to enable Chinese for whatever reason. Yeah. And are restricting technology exports. Right. And China's has a similar attitude. It's like there's this rivalry. You know, there's certain things that they're doing in China that they don't want the US to get access to. But then there's also just like market forces and entities and companies and people are just doing business between China and the United States and in some ways are, are, are like forcing the entanglement that like certain elements are trying to untangle. Right. So you've almost got this process of like tangling and untangling all at time happening. Right? [00:28:16] Speaker B: Correct. [00:28:17] Speaker A: Like with Nvidia is a good example. It's like it's. They're allowed to export, they can't export. They can export some things and then they change their mind and like back and forth. Or TikTok's another good one. Right. Like, like the US can't make up its mind about exactly how it's working and it's not clear like what the Chinese control is over the company. Right. There's a lot of opaqueness, so there's [00:28:40] Speaker B: a lot of fitness. Yeah. [00:28:43] Speaker A: I mean we're in like a really interesting situation with it. I mean I'm, I tend to think that the status quo just prevails, that people try to put guardrails around certain things and control certain elements and. But more or less things will continue as they are. There was a point where American companies were, wanted to, wanted to operate a lot more in China and China made it really clear that like they did what I would claim was like confiscation of property. Like there was a lot of entities that they just, the Chinese government just said, nope, these are ours. And they kind of stole the properties from American companies, entrepreneurs, whoever. Right. I think like this was a while ago. Rupert Murdoch was the first one to call this. He's like, you don't have, you don't own your property in China. They took away certain aspects of his network and stuff. So Chinese have been like confiscating different aspects of companies and IP and property for a while. And I think that that's where like there's obviously from the American perspective and that's where I think American businesses were reluctant to, like, make those investments in China because the rules just kept changing. So Google had a Google China at one point, and they switched it all to Hong Kong Facebook. And so China has, has like, gone through this process of like, nationalizing a lot of different businesses and assets at the expense of, like, American companies. And so Americans are reluctant to get too involved. But on the same token, like, Americans want the business, and so they're trying to figure out, like, how they operate within China that makes sense for them to continue to operate, minimize any of the risk or losses that they might face by dealing with them. [00:30:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I, I think you're correct on all of the fronts. What I'm kind of interested to see now is American companies are now absorbing Chinese talent. Right. Instead of kind of penetrating the Chinese market, they're circumventing it. They're absorbing Chinese talent through geopolitic geographies like Singapore. I actually think that's really interesting because what this kind of tells me is that big companies like Mana is hedging the bets a little bit. They are, they're. Yes, they. They have their. Developing their own model, but they're also kind of hedging the bets with overseas Chinese talent and all of the engineering work that the Chinese. [00:31:20] Speaker A: Well, yeah, here's the tweet that you, you put in the doc from Chama, right. With like the Chinese saying that. I mean, basically they said, like, reunification with Taiwan is, is inevitable. [00:31:31] Speaker B: That's what the Chinese says. Correct. So the, the geopolitics here is chips are getting more expensive. Right. You kind of already mentioned this about Nvidia. The. The GPU costs are set to double in the next 12 to 18 months. So all the big US companies like Meta, who doesn't have the same capability as Google and Amazon, are looking to hedge their bets. So seems like this might be the obvious way to do this. Right. And it's cool that while we're getting this split, we're also seeing merging some areas, like Meadow declaring. [00:32:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the Chinese will just talk big. I don't think they'll do anything with Taiwan. It's funny because, like, I saw this and then some. I was like on YouTube today and I saw the Taiwanese response. So, I mean, the Taiwanese government is defiant. Like, I was like, these guys have got balls, dude. Like, they're like quoting Sun Tzu and the Art of War and they're like, prepared for anything. And I'm like, wow, dude, that's like, that's like a statement, right? Like, so So I think as a lot of it's political posturing, you know, like how this all plays out, I don't know. People are going to continue to try to diversify the computer chip supply chain. Right. Like they're building foundries in the United States and China's trying to build foundries in mainland China. Those things take a long time and they're very hard to like set up. And so it's not clear like that. I don't even know if it's good to work. Taiwan is unique in their ability to create a lot of these semiconductors. And will that business actually be able to be duplicated somewhere else? There's a part of me that thinks no, it's theater. They're trying to do it, but it's so hard. It just might not actually [00:33:44] Speaker B: be. [00:33:44] Speaker A: Boundaries. Yeah. Are any of these founders in the United States operational? No. Right. Not a single like semiconductors come out of any of them. And it's been a while, like five, ten years, right? [00:33:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So I know, I know that Chinese are trying to create our own architecture to fully decouple away from America as well. So by far all of the chip designs are American made for American design. So we only just manufacture it in places like Taiwan. So the Chinese, if the Chinese really, really wants to be coupled, they have to have their own architecture. Right. So. It's exactly the same thing, which is we're not 100% sure that's achievable. So maybe like the answer is we create these kind of neutral zones. So Taiwan is this neutral zone where yes, there's tariffs, Nvidia sells to both Chinese and the U.S. singapore is obviously neutral zone where you can Chinese companies move there and also allow these entities to be acquired by US companies. [00:35:03] Speaker A: So I think, I think, I think if I was a nation like Taiwan and somehow I was so lucky and, and hard working that I was able to corner the market on semiconductor manufacturing. Like, dude, that is like a really, I think that's actually an excellent. And they, that there's, that is Art of War. Like they are in I think a very powerful position to protect their sovereignty and security because like it's the only place in the world to get these things. And both the China, well, both China, US China are going to talk, talk big. But I think the likelihood that they get invaded is actually quite low because like very low. The disruption would just be like on, on like China and America can't have that get disrupted, right? [00:36:02] Speaker B: It can't be disrupted, correct? [00:36:04] Speaker A: Yeah, cannot, it cannot. So like that is their security like that Taiwan has. That I think gives them an incredible amount of, like, leeway and power, you know, and is the reason that, that their, their sovereignty to some degree. Whatever, whatever they have today. I don't know how you want to define it, but like, I, I think it guarantees their security. I think like a nation like Ukraine, the food situation is important, but it's not critical and it's not the only place so like, you could make a calculated bet to invade that country, which I think went really poorly for Russia. But, like, they did it. I don't think that's likely that happened to Taiwan because of like, the critical infrastructure. And I think that on the part of Taiwan, it's quite, quite smart. And I don't know, I don't know if now we've made enemies with everyone, the CCP on the Internet, but like, here we are, [00:37:07] Speaker B: which is. I think it's important. Let's say, let's see how it plays out. Yeah, the closer to hope billionaires are leaving places like. [00:37:22] Speaker A: Okay, my favorite. [00:37:23] Speaker B: Yeah, let's talk about this because of a couple things, right? Billionaire attacks was one of them. [00:37:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, keep going. I got something to share, but you keep, you keep talking. [00:37:35] Speaker B: Yeah, so building attacks was the obvious one. And you know, just the, the unfavorable ecosystem that the politicians are paying for the tech. For the tech billionaires. So they're going to places like Austin. [00:37:52] Speaker A: Let's look at this here, see if I could zoom with the. Zoom in on for. Oh, yeah, great. That's good. So I think this, this post that Peter Walker just put up today, I think summarizes the entire thing quite well. He's got, he's got David Sacks [00:38:09] Speaker B: here. Really. Viral tweet. [00:38:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just said like the billionaire tax. Right. So the summary is that we should share. So we should, we should explain the background of the billionaire tax that Sachs is talking about. So. Because I looked pretty deeply into this, I don't know how much you've researched it, but like, it's a, it's a, it's a quirk of the California Constitution. So the state of California has a direct democracy element to it that I believe no other state in the United States has. And so what this means is that enough, enough voters, enough citizens of a state get enough signatures. You can get any law put on the ballot that the voters just vote, vote on. This doesn't exist anywhere else. Like, I can't. You. And I just can't go and get a law created in the State of Washington, State of New York or state of versus Vermont. And then it just gets voted on by the people. So California is this like wacky direct democracy that it, it sounds great. In particular someone like. I'm a big believer in like individual liberty and freedom and even democracy. But I would say that this particular iteration has been the source of an incredible amount of dysfunction in California. And so no politician is. Well that's probably not true. It wasn't, it wasn't backed by a political group of people. It didn't go through the legislature. It's totally gone through this like third, third party situation. Right. The people that authored this crazy billionaire tax are the California government workers union. Just the government workers. Right. And what they wrote was what I would characterize as a crazy law that's going to be a one time 5% tax on total assets of anybody who with a billion dollars or more. Right. And so there's so much to talk about just with this crazy law. In my opinion, his law is crazy like, like it's taxing like, like how it taxes Sergey's stock holdings in Google. Like he would be forced to sell a bunch of Google shares to pay the tax. Like it, yeah. It would tax David Sachs's home. It would tax like just any asset that you own. Like Peter Thiel famously has billion dollars in his 401k which is like a tax shelter and is not normally subject to tax. This law would tax that. It would like it. It does a lot of, a lot of things that like I think all of those things are bad. I think like taxing unrealized gains on assets is bad. I think additional tax on top of people's property where they already pay taxes like is crazy. I think taxing tax shelters like 401k, that's one of the promises of that vehicle is that like it's a tax free thing and like what you don't like that Peter Thiel has a lot of money in there. That's, that's one thing. But like reality is like that's how the law works and we should respect that law for every bit. As a 401k and the idea of like a special law that can tax that I think is frightening. It's one of the reasons that like for I've, since I was young, I've always been a relatively weak advocate for 401k because I think that laws like this will come. I think that like they're not really. The tax shelters are not real and they're not strong which is A different conversation. [00:41:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I think somebody really called it for what it was. It's a confiscation. [00:41:56] Speaker A: That's what I think. [00:41:58] Speaker B: Right. It's, it's really not a tax. It's a one off confiscation of people's property upwards to 5% of billions of. Billions of dollars. That, that's, that's crazy. [00:42:09] Speaker A: Right? Poorly implemented. And then so, so this, I know it's a long explanation, but like, so the government workers unions are the ones who like, need to ensure that their pensions are paid out by the state. So they're the ones that have all of the incentive to do something crazy like this because all they care about is their pensions. [00:42:29] Speaker B: Pensions. Right, right. [00:42:31] Speaker A: And so this confiscatory tax that hits on all of these like, taboos that shouldn't be hit on just demonstrates like, I think the dysfunction of California and like the length that certain groups are going to go to try to like, get, you know, paid on promises that the government can't ultimately keep. So we know that like, there's all these liabilities out there regarding like health insurance and pensions and monies owed to like, government workers in particular that we can't pay for. We don't have the money to pay for them. And so they're going to create a really difficult dynamic where there's going to be some big fights over fundraising or funding like this. And there's something people have talked about since I was a kid, right? And so now we're like, the chickens have finally come home to roost. We're finally in a situation where the fights are real. We're trying to find out how to fund these things that we know we can't pay for from the pencils. [00:43:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:43:34] Speaker A: And so, so, so to be super clear, like, this law has not passed. Right. It's just that, like, the threat of this law might pass is what's created all of this like, you know, noise, which I think is even really interesting. Like the law is not, in fact, it's not, it might not pass. It's gotten so much attention recently, like, I don't know if it'll pass. But the problem is like, it's demonstrated that governments like California might do things like this that are just so crazy that like, why would you stick around and wait for it to happen? And that was why brings us to like this tweet from David Sacks saying, like, hey, as a response to socialism, Miami will replace New York City as the finance capital and also replace SF as the tech capital. And he said this after he announced that his venture capital firm, Kraft Ventures, was opening an office in Austin because he would need to open an office there last day of last year in order to qualify that his business or his venture firm is now domiciled in the state of Texas in order to avoid having to be subject to that's crazy tax that might, that might not happen. Might not even happen. Right. And so a lot of people got up in arms and got crazy about like David Sacks saying, like, hey, the center of gravity might shift from Silicon Valley to, to Austin. [00:45:08] Speaker B: Places like Austin. [00:45:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And so, and so Peter created this great graphic about like, hey, you know, like, is it, is it true? Like, is Silicon Valley dying? And, and I had some debate with him on here too, you know, talking about this thing that like, there's always this narrative every 10 years that like, Silicon Valley is dying and it's going to go somewhere else. And so he did a great job, I think, at like, showing that Austin is quite small when it comes to the amount of venture capital. So he says right there it's a 9x gap. And the money invested, I would note that like, yeah, the amount of money invested though is larger than Seattle. And Seattle is considered a pretty serious tech hub. You have both Amazon and Microsoft here. But there's more money going to startups in Austin today. So. So I think there's some interesting things that, that you can like, learn from this chart ultimately, like, I guess, because you might take here, like. So I wrote that like, hey, Y Combinator started in Boston 2005. I remember when that was a big tech hub. And 20 years, a lot of things can change. And so he wrote me back and we kind of talked about, you know, [00:46:18] Speaker B: Boston is still a big tech. Right. So do you think that like, money is a vc Money is a good indication? [00:46:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really good point. So I mean, I, I wrote that like, hey, Sachs is hyperbolic. Like, Sachs did say it'll replace sf. I think that's like hyperbole. It's a kind of a crazy statement. I don't think it's mathematically accurate based on, particularly on like Peter's data here. Like, quantitatively, it's not going to rep. Austin will not replace San Francisco in a year or two. Could it replace it 10 years or 20 years? I actually think yes. And that's what I wrote was like, hey, it's got more Fortune 500 headquarters in any other state today. Texas today is number one Fortune 500 headquarters. That is recent. So like, in 20 years I think it's possible. There's a lot of things that could happen and it could not happen. But I do think that the idea that Silicon Valley is home of high tech being permanent is not the case at all, and that it wasn't even the case 25 years ago that there are a few firms from Silicon Valley. And then you and I talked about this, you had the dot com boom, so the 90s, and like PayPal in particular, right? And everyone's familiar with PayPal mafia. David Sachs is PayPal mafia. Elon Musk is PayPal mafia. Basically everybody that you have heard of who's big in like Silicon Valley high tech basically was involved or worked at PayPal. It's. It's incredible. [00:47:51] Speaker B: Actually. [00:47:52] Speaker A: Dave McClure from 500 Startups even was at PayPal, right? So you have that phenomenon which is like.com and the PayPal IPO in particular, which just minted a bunch of wealthy people who are very excited about investing in startups and then had the iPhone and that was be my generation, right? 2008, 2009, iPhone emerged and you had the iPhone ecosystem. And a lot of investment went into like iPhone apps and companies like Uber emerged from that. Uber is probably the greatest example of like an iPhone native mobile application. It utilized GPS before anybody else was doing with it. And incredible, incredible company, right? So I think that like, in order for Austin to really become a tech center of like significant clout to perhaps rival Silicon Valley would require an event like that. It needs to. It would require like an iPhone type of ecosystem. It will require like a PayPal type event. And so there is one on the Horizon. [00:49:10] Speaker B: Yes, [00:49:12] Speaker A: the SpaceX IPO. So Elon's moved SpaceX to Austin, I guess technically Twitter and Xai is still in California is what I read. But the SpaceX IPO, which a lot of people say will happen next year, could be the type of catalyst that brings a ton of venture capital to, to Austin. You'll have like one of the biggest. It may be the biggest tech IPO ever. I mean, we're not talking like a small ipo, right? It's like the size of. That's what people misunderstand too. [00:49:52] Speaker B: That's going to be like [00:49:55] Speaker A: the paypal one was big at the time. Really, really big, right? Like, and they had that much money from it. So same idea here. Like, it's not a small one. Like, this is going to be the biggest ever. And like, what will that do for Austin? Will that create a bunch of like new money that wants to go in and fund all kinds of interesting startups and is fairly Austin centric like I think it's possible. [00:50:19] Speaker B: I think so. I think it's very possible. Especially if Austin stays hardware focused. I think Texas could become the Shenzhen of us. It absolutely could. There is lots of smart people working at SpaceX. Once the liquidity happens in a year or two they could invest into other hardware companies. I know unreal is also presence in Austin or in Texas. It just makes sense. [00:50:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:54] Speaker B: I don't think Austin will replace all of San Francisco or the Valley. The Valley could stay more software driven. AI is not going to change. AI is not going to move to Austin. But it could create an interesting dichotomy where or software happens in the Valley and hardware happens in Austin. [00:51:19] Speaker A: Yeah, like I think so. So I think that there are. So I'll be more contrarian here. Like I think there's plenty of scenarios where like Silicon Valley becomes very painful for people to operate in and they do move to Texas. [00:51:32] Speaker B: Right. [00:51:33] Speaker A: And, and so I don't think it's a given that software stays in Silicon Valley, you know? Yeah, I don't think it's a given. I, I think there's a lot of people making this assumption and you know, I don't think it's like that's why I bring up the Boston example. Right. That Y Combinator was actually started in Boston and you and I were talking about there used to be all these tech companies in Boston and then it became very oh became very unfriendly at tech because of non competes. So that was what really broke Boston. So Boston started enforcing them so people would start a company and they would have some success. And then one founder's like I'm out of here, I don't want to deal with this anymore. I want to have a new company do something cool. And they would sue that guy and be like you can't, you can't compete with us. You know you signed a non compete and like well I'm going to Silicon Valley and that's what happened. And the non compete I believe there's even like a couple of test cases because they tried to enforce them in California and that's why California is known to be like totally unenforceable. Any non compete, no matter where you've signed it, signed it on Elon's calling on Mars. California will protect you. Which is something I always thought was fantastic. One of the things I loved about California Air Force moved there. [00:52:52] Speaker B: Right. [00:52:52] Speaker A: Was that they were really. I know it's an interesting Quirk for a company that for a state that's become so synonymous with socialism that they were actually an advocate for like a really cool core aspect of free market capitalism that they didn't enforce non competes, I think it's fantastic and I think that's really, really important and like why Silicon Valley was a success. [00:53:14] Speaker B: Do you think that there is a similar thing that Austin can offer? So like obviously the tax is better. [00:53:23] Speaker A: Great question. [00:53:24] Speaker B: Do you think that's enough? [00:53:27] Speaker A: Great question. So, okay, so this is start to get so. So I think everything, everything I've said so far I think is pretty factual, pretty based around it. I've been pretty, pretty grounded. So there are, there are a bunch of other things happening. Let's call them like moonshots. They're long, they're. They're moonshots, they're not guaranteed to work. But there are all kinds of things happening in state of Texas that could be game changers if they happen. So there's like a Texas stock exchange that I don't know if it's launched or it's been established, but the idea is that a lot of the, what is a term for it? A lot of the governance regarding like esg. The esg governance in American stock exchanges, like requiring companies like all kinds of requirements right? About reporting and like climate reporting and like how many women you have on your board and all those things. They're actually New York state laws. So New York State has a lot of clout when it comes to governance on stock markets because the New York Stock Exchange and the nasdaq, they're all located in New York State of New York. And so that's where a lot of those regulations came from. And there are a group of people who were not happy about that, including me. Like I don't think a lot of those things are great for businesses in spite of being a vegetarian and someone I want to point out that doesn't own a car and rides a bike everywhere. It's not like I am some kind of crazy climate denier, but I'm very into free markets and I'm really into individual freedom and I'm not into like lots of government intervention. And so I'm supportive of the idea that there'd be a stock market somewhere else that will let companies list and wouldn't force, force them to abide by a lot of these regulations, which I thought was fine. If companies want to like do those things and they do them, I think that is great. I'm very against forcing people to do things and it's kind of like my biggest disagreement with a lot of, like, lefty people I know is that, like, I support a lot of these ideas. I just do not support forcing people to do things. [00:55:55] Speaker B: There's no room. Okay, that's interesting. So there's. There could be a new stock exchange that's a departure from the New York Stock Exchange. How does that. Do you think they'll offer founders incentive to list there as well? [00:56:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So. Right. It's very new. So. Okay, so this is where it starts to get a little theoretical. Right. It's like if I was launching a new. This is the fun part. Right. The conversation. Like, if I was starting a new stock market, like, how would I get people to list on it? Well, I'd make my listing requirements simpler. I'd make them easier. I'd make them, like, lower barrier entry. I'd allow smaller companies to list. Right. Like, go down the list of all the things you do. Oh, so like, if I move to Texas and I've got this, like, cool SaaS company and we're doing like, $100 million in revenue, it's like, let's go live list on the Texas Stock Exchange and do an IPO and, like, millions. Yeah. [00:56:53] Speaker B: The cost. [00:56:54] Speaker A: Deuce would be way lower. It'll be cool. We'll get, like, the, like, Lone Star state logo somewhere. Right. Like, like, I could see it be, like, really attractive to startups to want to list on that. And they don't have to actually be in Texas as far as I understand. Right. They could be in California still as well. But I just see this, like, shift in the center of gravity away from California. Right. And that there's people working on things like that. I also think that, like, costs are lower, so you could get employees. It's easier for them to, like. There's some other basic arguments. Right. Silicon Valleys are expensive. Like, it's hard to, like, hire and manage big staff there unless you're, like, a total rock star. Unless you're, like, OpenAI raising 40 million. $40 billion. And maybe the best of the best will decide that California is where they need to be for whatever reason. Right. But it'll attract a lot of other companies, I think, to places like Texas because it'll be, like, much more low cost in terms of, like, operating, which I think is great for entrepreneurship. So we'll see. Like, you know, Gary Tan was pretty clear on Twitter recently saying that, like, hey, David, like, I don't know about all of that, like, why Combinator is [00:58:14] Speaker B: going to stay Here he's very focused [00:58:17] Speaker A: on making, which is fine. Like, and I see like, why common ers model, right? Like they're really early and I mean, I continue to focus on the Bay Area too, with my business or like all the vibe. Your SaaS events are in San Francisco. I still love California. I still love San Francisco. I go there once a month. I think it's a fantastic place. And so I can see like when you're at the early, early stage and you're trying to grow these companies, like having a larger venture ecosystem around them to absorb these companies is really important. Right. So Y Combinator is probably not the first pioneer to enter a market like Austin. You probably need larger, more established companies to move there, which is what's happening. So if larger, more established companies move there, smaller companies move there to service them and the smaller companies move there to hope to get acquired by them. I think that that's the model that for a market like that to grow into something much larger than it is today. I think the Peter Walker numbers are quite interesting from Karna too, that the numbers are really small in terms of dollar invested. Yeah, it's not big in terms of dollars invested in venture capital in Austin, but you could make a couple other arguments. Like dollars invested in startups have gone way down the last five years. [00:59:37] Speaker B: True. Exactly. [00:59:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Actually these parts of I didn't want to argue. I like Peter and I didn't feel like making a big argument on LinkedIn. But there's a, there's another side to all this. Is like venture capital dollars are the lowest they've been in five years. Venture capital deals, deals are low five years and the vast majority is going to 10 AI startups. So you could say that like venture dollars just outside of like OpenAI anthropic, a few other people cursor. There's just not that much money. So all the numbers look small. Austin, Seattle, New York, whatever. And that if the fundraising environment change, like the Space X like some of these IPOs happen, open AI, [01:00:28] Speaker B: it could [01:00:29] Speaker A: unlock it and it could shift it to a market like it could shift to a market like, like Austin. I'm not, I'm not bullish on a market like Miami for high tech. I do think that Florida, I, I, you know, I'm from New York. I was just in New York. I love New York. New York is in trouble. Like those finance guys, they can't wait to get out of Manhattan. Like I don't think New York will survive as a financial. That's the funny part. With David's tweet is like, I think there's more evidence that Silicon Valley is quite healthy and quite strong. And the shift to Austin, I mean, I can paint a picture where I think it'll happen and I even consider moving there. Like, I really believe in it. I think it's really cool. And I think a lot of what I said could happen, but I think it is inevitable that most finance leave New York and they move to Florida. Like, inevitable that dad is coming. I, I. With Mandami now in charge in New York. [01:01:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:30] Speaker A: And let's see what they do. But like those guys, that's gonna happen [01:01:35] Speaker B: on a shorter horizon than Silicon Valley builders moving to. [01:01:39] Speaker A: They can't wait to get. [01:01:41] Speaker B: They. [01:01:41] Speaker A: They are like golden. [01:01:42] Speaker B: They're ready. [01:01:43] Speaker A: Oh, man. Yeah, they are. [01:01:45] Speaker B: They are. They're ready. [01:01:47] Speaker A: I don't think that they. I think it's like, was it. J.P. morgan and Jamie diamond are still gonna. There'll be a few people that remain. Or he's at least painting this picture and posturing that he'll stay. [01:02:01] Speaker B: Stay in New York. Citadel is already moving to Miami, so. [01:02:05] Speaker A: Or Citadel from Chicago is like just. It's just the Chicago Board. Is the Chicago Board of Exchange still there? Like, it's just over for like Chicago as a financial hub and then all the other stuff over in the next 10 years. It is inevitable they will move to move to Florida. I don't like the weather in Florida. I do not have Florida. [01:02:33] Speaker B: Too much. Too much alligators. Is there alligators? [01:02:36] Speaker A: Too many. Like, it's the humidity. Like, I went there. Have you been there? Like when they're like November and it was like, hot. I'm like, I can't. [01:02:44] Speaker B: I just. [01:02:44] Speaker A: It's just Florida. It's just not. I don't know. I just don't. I much more see myself in Texas, [01:02:50] Speaker B: Austin, the dry heat. Yeah. [01:02:52] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's, I think it's. I think it's a done deal that will eventually move. I can't move back to California. It's really cold here in Seattle. And I think Texas, you know, Lance Armstrong, Samara could ride a bike and do some racing and. And also I'm gonna get a cowboy hat. I think it'll look really good in cowboy. Yeah. My wife, she's like, you would look good as. I'm like, yeah, I would. I'll look awesome as a cowboy. I'm gonna do some cowboy stuff. [01:03:23] Speaker B: You don't have to. You have to maybe pick up the barbecue. [01:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Eating. Eating meat. Yeah. You know, I I do, I do, I do like Texas barbecue. Like I do. You know, I, I, I'm not like a super strict vegetarian. I, I do eat meat here and there. Uh, like if that's all that, like I went for thanks for Christmas dinner. That was like all they had there was like, it was like beef tallow potatoes, beef and then Yorkshire pudding, which is like beef dripping pudding. Like as if it was, it was like three beef. I was like, okay, I guess I'll eat some of this. Oh my God. [01:04:06] Speaker B: For Austin, they, I think they need to figure out what they can offer to founders and companies. Right? [01:04:15] Speaker A: Are you gonna move to Austin with me? [01:04:17] Speaker B: Oh, we did think about it a couple years back. It's a little bit more complicated for us because we're Canadian, but my wife's Canadian. [01:04:27] Speaker A: I can marry you too, Paul. Come on. [01:04:33] Speaker B: Well, we'll make it work somehow. [01:04:35] Speaker A: They'll figure it out. You'll figure it out? Yeah, I think, you know, I mean, like, look, dude, who knows what happens, right? Like, does the state of Texas might, I don't know. I, I think there's a lot that can happen. I, I think it's a really interesting debate. And last, last scale share is like this billionaire tax that just happened. I think that what people perhaps are missing is, it's, this isn't like a one time thing. Like I think that the fiscal situation in California is so dire that they will just continue to do things like this and that's what will drive out a lot of the startups. Yeah, that's, there might be people who stay who can afford it. I guess Google could just pay it and maybe they decide like, we'll just stay here and it's worth it, we'll just keep paying all this money to save California. Like, okay, that's their decision. I wouldn't make that decision if I ran Google. But there's a point where it's just like this just doesn't make any sense. And the other really bizarre thing, so biology pointed this out. All these cities, so Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, the only business that is propping them up is these tech companies and the city governments are doing everything they can to drive them away. It's very strange, I think, but I think that the pressure, that's why it's important to understand that government workers are the ones who wrote that law. Because those people, they don't really have a lot of options. If you're relying on the government to pay your pension, you need to find a way to get that Money you don't want to forfeit that you've made your bet. Right. So that's why, for me, for me, I try to be really fair and try to explain as much as I can about both sides of this. Like, and I think it's. I think it's a very difficult situation that, like, cities and states are in and they'll find themselves in over the next 10 to 15 years. [01:06:50] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think 10 years horizon there will be. [01:06:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it's gonna be. I mean, I don't see any way out of it. Right. Like, the numbers are so insane. Like, the amount of money they owe and the amount of money they collect, they're still spending. It just doesn't add up. And so I don't. I don't know how. Yeah, I don't know how it works. All right, let's talk about one more thing. I want to talk about the event. [01:07:23] Speaker B: It's happening in March. [01:07:26] Speaker A: Yeah, March 11th. Yep. Yeah, the [01:07:33] Speaker B: number two. [01:07:34] Speaker A: Yeah, you came to the one at TechCrunch in 2025. So we'll be doing another one. This one is going to be at the AWS Builders Loft, which I'm super excited about. And we've already had a bunch of people apply. And so early applications are open if you want to apply to this. We're going to make it a pitch contest this time. So not only will there be demos, not only will there be, like, speakers, not only is, like a mixer, you can meet people, but we'll have five startups get up pitch, and then we'll give an award to our number one pick of the evening. [01:08:10] Speaker B: So that's gonna be awesome. [01:08:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it's gonna be. It's gonna be great. Like, we got a bunch of interesting people lined up. We've got sponsors. Yeah, I'm really excited about this and I'd love to do some kind of meetup in Austin. So if anyone out there is interested and wants to work with me on that, I'd love some ideas support. Like, where do people typically do these things? They'd be fun to kind of test waters and give myself a free trip to Austin. Yeah. [01:08:47] Speaker B: This is March 11th. [01:08:49] Speaker A: Yeah, March 11th in San Francisco at the Amazon Web Services Builder Loft. So they have a space that they provide to people in the community, work with startups for events. They have an incredible space. It's going to be. It's going to be great. [01:09:10] Speaker B: It's awesome. So apply now. [01:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah, applications are open if you're interested in attending or interested in presenting. Like, apply. We also of course, accept applications from investors who want to hang out, meet people if they play in the early stage. Angel investors. Small firms, small VC firms. You know, we had about a hundred investors sign up for the last one. Yeah, yeah. So, hey, Bay Area still is the home of venture capital, that's for sure. [01:09:45] Speaker B: That's true. That's true. It's where VCs want to hang out with no other city. [01:09:55] Speaker A: Are we good? [01:09:57] Speaker B: All right.