029 A16Z 15B fund, AI reality checks, and why Bowie was right

[00:00:01] Speaker A: All right, let's do this. [00:00:03] Speaker B: Oh, my God. I'm ready. I'm ready. Okay. Welcome back to the Gregory and Paul Show. I'm Gregory. [00:00:10] Speaker A: I'm Paul. [00:00:12] Speaker B: And we break down the latest in SaaS, startups, AI, whatever the Internet is debating this week. [00:00:20] Speaker A: That's right. [00:00:20] Speaker B: Of course, of course we aim for smart takes. Many times we end up with really stupid ones and we will get made fun of on YouTube. But you know what? We make fun of them right back. That's been fun, right? [00:00:33] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Some of the comments, we love memes way too much. [00:00:40] Speaker A: We're just, we're just all about the memes. So every, every week we go live at 3:00pm Eastern. And what time is over there? 12:00pm West coast time. [00:00:56] Speaker B: West Coast. [00:00:57] Speaker A: And then we distribute everything to YouTube and podcast platforms every week. And we're being. How we're doing on YouTube, we're actually getting thousands of views per clip. [00:01:10] Speaker B: I mean, YouTube has taken off. Right? Like, look, I, I've, I've been on and worked on plenty of podcasts that had less views. [00:01:20] Speaker A: Right. [00:01:20] Speaker B: So we on average are doing like 25,000 views a month. Some of them pop, some of them don't pop. Yeah, we're closing in on 100 subscribers. It's great. It's exciting. We get all kinds of silly comments. What was I telling my wife? Actually, YouTube comments are a special kind of stupid. [00:01:46] Speaker A: Tell us more. [00:01:48] Speaker B: They're fun. I think, like, it's like every, every, every platform out there has its own kind of unique character. And like the comments on YouTube, they're very interesting. I think there's a lot of people that just stumble into it and they have no context at all and they like to make fun of us. And so it's been fun to make fun of them back. [00:02:08] Speaker A: That's right. [00:02:09] Speaker B: The one guy was like, obviously very young kid and he's like, what are these two 50 year olds trying to have a podcast on? And where, what did he say? Like something about like the room we're in, like, it looks lame. And I just like, bro, I'm in your mom's bedroom. And he was like, oh, it was really funny. [00:02:28] Speaker A: It was a good, it was a [00:02:30] Speaker B: good, very juvenile way to handle it and I'm very proud. [00:02:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the charm. Exactly. That's what we. Until we get millions of subscribers, we don't have to be too serious about everything. [00:02:43] Speaker B: Dude, I've been posting on Internet since I was 12, 2. So like, I know how to handle that. [00:02:47] Speaker A: 100. Exactly. It was before then it was RSC, IRC chat rooms, and now it's YouTube comments. It's the same. [00:02:54] Speaker B: I, I guess like I ever even remember the AOL chat stuff. Like, I mean, I mean, I. Look, I'm not trying to handle these trolls, man. [00:03:03] Speaker A: That's it. [00:03:04] Speaker B: So, so we do, we do welcome your comments on YouTube. If you make silly ones, we'll make fun of you. If you make smart ones, we'll engage you. And that is about how it's gone. [00:03:17] Speaker A: Exactly. And then we finally figure out how to go live pretty much on every single platform after what, like a year and a half? [00:03:25] Speaker B: Oh, my God. So we're actually now, right. [00:03:29] Speaker A: We're live on YouTube. We're live on X on my account. We're also live on LinkedIn on my account. And then we'll. We'll take about another six months before we figure out how to go live on both of our accounts. But we're almost. [00:03:44] Speaker B: We, we, we're doing well with guests. Very excited that we have Ross Simmons booked to come on the show in, I guess in two weeks. [00:03:53] Speaker A: That's big. That's gonna massive. [00:03:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's gonna be really big. We're basically like a legit C level podcast now. [00:04:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. I see the podcast. [00:04:05] Speaker B: We're on the A list. We're not even on the B list. We're kind of on the C list. But that's fine. That's right with me. [00:04:11] Speaker A: Straight to DVD. [00:04:12] Speaker B: Oh my God. Yeah, basically, right. Straight to YouTube streaming. Okay. [00:04:16] Speaker A: Okay. [00:04:18] Speaker B: Dude. The biggest news of the week, Yeah, I think was the A16Z fundraiser. [00:04:28] Speaker A: Right, right. How much money did they raise? 16 million. Something ridiculous. [00:04:33] Speaker B: Like super tanker loads. Here, let me share this. 15 million is what I. [00:04:41] Speaker A: Right. A small nation's GDP amounts of money. [00:04:46] Speaker B: That was my joke. It's like it's. It's basically a sovereign wealth fund size venture capital firm. [00:04:54] Speaker A: Right. [00:04:55] Speaker B: Insane. And then I'm actually featuring this. I just read this entire thing from Paki McCormick. So he's another investor, venture capitalist. He's affiliated with the firm, he's invested in companies that they're invested in. But they asked him to write something about a 16Z, which I thought was really cool. That outside of all the things that they're saying, and of course they're saying all these nice things about themselves that they found someone else. That kind of chime in, provide some perspective. They're obviously not unbiased. They're not a journalist, they're another investor. Someone who like, affiliated with the firm. But I Thought it was very cool because like he's very knowledgeable about a 16Z, knowledgeable about high tech investing and had a really unique perspective on what they're doing. And dude, some of the numbers in here are just astounding about how successful a 16Z is. That's been like one of the biggest criticisms is like it's just gotten so large. Like can they, can they keep going? [00:05:57] Speaker A: Right. [00:05:57] Speaker B: This is the new, the new fund structure or at least what they've published. So they raised 15 billion and that's going to be distributed into these five different funds. But that is in addition to over 90 billion in terms of what they call regulatory assets under management. [00:06:23] Speaker A: So I have no idea what [00:06:26] Speaker B: they added $15 billion and create these new funds in addition to all the money that they're managing. Like it's, it's enormous. It's really, it's really, really impressive. What were you saying about these funds? [00:06:37] Speaker A: Yeah, well, first of all, I feel like they're getting to a point where normal people, especially like people like myself, I have no idea what they're even talking about anymore. You know, like for example they, they have a category over here called America Done in. But that's a bucket of a whole bunch of things. Right. Like American manufacturer space infrastructure that's away from growth and AI related fields. It's really interesting how that's broken down. [00:07:11] Speaker B: Did they describe. They don't have a, I'm sure there's a manifesto or like a mission. [00:07:16] Speaker A: Yeah, they do, they have that fund. [00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:19] Speaker A: ABC16Z web page about this. It's to support American national interest. It's investing to manufacturing space. They go pretty deep into, you know, throughout the last 100 years or so starting from spaceflight, Manhattan Project, moon landing, Internet, the mobile revolution, and then now SpaceX and also gen AI. So it's, it's cool. The narrative that they're storytelling around this whole entire investment thesis. I think it's really cool. [00:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah, they've really pushed that in the marketing in general, which is actually not something that addresses article, he comes at it more from like insider perspective. People who know the industry and like how this thing works. But what you're calling out is that their whole let's call it pro America branding, I would, you could even call it MAGA branding. Right. They've have not been shy about their support for Trump and, and like how they have a vision for like how they see the United States and the things that they, they, they want to invest in. Yeah, I think very obviously that's The American Dynamism Fund, of course. [00:08:39] Speaker A: Because, like, I. Well, tell me if I'm wrong. Right? [00:08:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:42] Speaker A: I think the, the machine that sustains all of this is some kind of narrative and storytelling and marketing. Do you remember, like a couple years back during COVID EA, or Effective Altruism was like this huge thing on Twitter. Nobody knew what it actually meant, but it was everywhere. Everybody had that like EA tag in their Twitter handle. And A to Z was kind of like a driver of this. They came out with a lot of thought piece around ea. It was just kind of like a Crutcher tool. And a lot of founders raised money off of their manifesto. [00:09:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that was, you know, that was spf, right? He was all about. [00:09:29] Speaker A: That's right, yeah. Spf. And I mean, yeah, A to Z was. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Let's come back to the point because I want to, I want to share this thing. For me, for me, this point is super important. And this is what a lot of insiders point out is that they've raised so much money, how can they possibly have great returns? It's a fair, it's a fair assessment. Like, venture capital is typically seen as a boutique industry. Right. So this thing says that like all of those investments back with this 2009-2014. So the funds that they raised back then, which they were getting the same criticism back then that the funds were too large, they wouldn't be able to make a return on those funds. Dude, the returns are insane. It's a 853 billion at least, if you believe they're reporting. And that's a whole different discussion. Let's just. [00:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. [00:10:25] Speaker B: Face value. [00:10:26] Speaker A: For sure. [00:10:28] Speaker B: It's insane. Like on paper, they did take all of that capital and create an incredible amount of value with it, in spite of all the haters and who said that it was too big and they couldn't do it. Right. So I think it's, in my opinion, they're incredible. Really clear. Like, if you have a track record like this, of course people are going to give you. And they were 15, $50 billion. [00:10:55] Speaker A: And they're not early stage investors. Correct. A to Z. [00:11:00] Speaker B: Well, so that's another great question. So Paki talks about that too. I don't know if there's a headline here. So what's your. [00:11:07] Speaker A: Yeah, what's the average stage of companies? [00:11:10] Speaker B: So what he said was that the A16Z philosophy in investing is to invest in winners. And Marc Andreessen, I think, has always been very clear about this from the very beginning. He was one of the first people who said, like, there's 10 important deals in Silicon Valley and your job as a venture capitalist is to be part of them. Like, he kind of like looked at it from this winner take all perspective that I don't think is perhaps even popular today with a lot of investors. [00:11:40] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:40] Speaker B: They look at it as like categories and they look at it as like trying to like, be diversified across different industries. He looked at it as like, venture capital is a place where there's 10 deals that matter and you got to be in those deals because those are the outliers. [00:11:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:54] Speaker B: And so their perspective is that they want to be in the winners. And if they're in the winner and they believe it's the winner, they just double down at every stage. So they don't, they don't really focus on stages. [00:12:09] Speaker A: Stages, right. [00:12:10] Speaker B: The way that a lot of other investors, venture capitalists do. Right. Like, you'll meet a lot of people, they're angel investors. They invest like the early stage of the first check in. That's one thing. Right. There's a couple people called first round Capital because that's what they do. They do the first round. [00:12:24] Speaker A: First round. [00:12:25] Speaker B: There's other people who like, focused on like series A and B. That's traditionally been, I think we're most Silicon Valley venture capitalist focused. Like firms are established or have a product, maybe they have some sales and we're going to throw a bunch of money at them and try to accelerate that growth. That, that's kind of like, for me, what I think of like venture capital was like trying to cherry pick through a bunch of like, guys who just invented some crap in their garage in Silicon Valley and maybe they've got some traction. And which one of these do we think could become a big company? [00:12:58] Speaker A: Picking the winner is hard though, right? I think that's, that's, that's my own. They've obviously figured out a way to pick the winner consistently. So that's, I think a lot of VC firms are shied away from saying these things because picking a winner is hard. [00:13:18] Speaker B: Dude, they are fantastic at it. [00:13:21] Speaker A: Right? [00:13:21] Speaker B: I, I don't, I don't know how they do it. [00:13:23] Speaker A: Like, would you say they're the most successful venture capital in the last spend? [00:13:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I, I think, I think you could make a credible argument today that they're the most successful venture capital firm ever. Now we'll see how it plays out. Like, it'll take a while, but I, when I was younger, most people pointed to like, Sequoia, Sequoia the leader, Right. Maybe Kleiner Perkins. They start a lot of money locked up in Apple and things like that. It's also hard to determine, like, what metrics you're using to who's the best. Right. Or who's the largest, who's most successful. But like, dude, these guys have just changed the game. And like, it's. It's impressive, right? [00:14:09] Speaker A: He. [00:14:09] Speaker B: He does go in his article too, and talk about, like, what are the things that are different about them? [00:14:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that was my next question. Well, what is like, one or two things that make. [00:14:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:19] Speaker A: Makes them so different from. [00:14:20] Speaker B: So this is a great story. So, like, because I've always been a fan of Marc Andreessen since I was a kid, right? Like, Marc Andreessen for people who don't know. Listen to this podcast, right? Like, if you're under, like, 35, like, you might not know the full story. Like, Andreessen's basically a guy who invented the web browser. [00:14:37] Speaker A: He is. [00:14:37] Speaker B: Yeah, like. Like he. He not Al Gore. Mark Andreessen, like, invented the open Web and the Internet. Right. [00:14:45] Speaker A: That's scary. [00:14:45] Speaker B: So the Internet existed at the time, but he created one of the first web browsers at a computer lab in like, Wisconsin or somewhere in the Midwest when he was in college. And yeah, he's like the. He's like the. The grandfather of the modern. Let's call it Web. There are other types of, like, Internet applications. Like email would be an example of an Internet application that's not the web uses the Internet. It sends things across into the Internet and uses the Internet. [00:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, totally. [00:15:15] Speaker B: And you have a client server, all this stuff. Right. But it's not the web. So he did the first web browser and there are other competing models. And the closed systems, like Awel being example, used to, like, download, used to get the God CD ROM in the mail, installed the software locally, booted up the software, and then it went onto the Internet and they controlled all the elements to it. Like, that was most people's perception of the Internet was a closed network not far from like, Facebook or Instagram. They're kind of closed systems, right? So he invented the open Web and, you know, is like the. Basically the creator of this stuff, right? And so they had that company, Netscape. Netscape went public. Netscape was an interesting, like, you could. You could kind of like, they're kind of like a lot of people compare them to OpenAI today. They were like, really successful, but ultimately they really struggled in the public markets because the way to summarize it was like, they created the web browser Netscape. You paid for copies of Netscape put on your computer and then used it to go on the Internet and go to the web. And then Microsoft created a competing Internet browser called Internet Explorer and gave it away for free. Very, very difficult for Netscape to compete. And then Netscape was eventually sold, perhaps, I can't remember, like it struggled. And that's when you know, they had a couple other companies but ultimately they decided to go into, into venture capital. And like one of the things that at the time when they started the firm, so it's like 2006 or something, 2007, they, they were really committed to like founder led companies. Which now seems obvious. [00:17:03] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. [00:17:04] Speaker B: But at the time it was not popular. So usually what happens, Silicon Valley, let's say in the 80s and the 90s you had some engineers or some people or Steve Jobs, some hippie, right? They invented something and then they usually found like a professional CEO to run the company. So Google, remember CEO, what's his name? Eric Schmidt. [00:17:26] Speaker A: Right, Eric Schmidt, that's right. [00:17:29] Speaker B: So that was the model. Like they, they had some like crazy technical founding team people and they got like a CEO. Yeah, Andreessen. Andreessen is definitely the one who said let's just invest in the founders. [00:17:42] Speaker A: Right? [00:17:42] Speaker B: Founder led CEO like Zuckerberg and I mean like Steve Jobs too. Right. So Steve Jobs is probably the original, but it wasn't, it wasn't common. And now like everyone knows about founderly companies whether it's like Coinbase and Brian Armstrong or Carlson Brothers. And that is basically the Airbnb. Yeah, that's basically the model today. So they were the ones who really advocated for that. And I remember that was like their original thesis was like we're going to make investments in founder led companies. And that's the whole idea of like the follow on rather than like we're not Series A, we're all about founder led. And if this founder is building a fantastic company, like why would we stop investing? Let's just keep investing. And then I think you could, you could use the term king making, which is not a term that I think a plastic. But I think they pioneered this king making strategy where if you have enough money and you're a big enough firm, you've made some good investments by just giving that company a lot of money. You can create a king because like you can just give them so much more funding that they can clobber over their competitors. Which was basically the softbank MASA strategy was he was like writing those big checks and giving startups like huge amounts of money. Christmas strategy too. It's, it's not. I guess in some ways I think jury is out on whether it works or not. But I don't know. I mean like this new fundraise from A16Z and some of the companies that are in the pipeline to go public. I think it's going to be hard to argue that king making the. [00:19:16] Speaker A: Doesn't. Doesn't work. So I think they directionally got a few things right. The most recent thing like you said, is just picking or investing doubling down on the founder. That is something that wasn't always the case. It's kind of crazy to think that wasn't the case now. Right. [00:19:37] Speaker B: But now common. Right. Like it's so common. That's the way most people think about startups now. [00:19:42] Speaker A: Correct. [00:19:42] Speaker B: But that was definitely like, like you [00:19:45] Speaker A: want to go public with the founder. Right. That's sticking around for 10 plus years. That wasn't the case. [00:19:53] Speaker B: The whole idea that like the. And this part I think makes a lot of sense. Right. That a founder CEO like okay, let's go down the list of like why a founder CEO is successful. Like I like to call it perhaps the Napoleon strategy. And the reason I use Napoleon as example is like I can't remember what history class. I can't remember what it was where like we're talking about Napoleon. And I was like look, it's very obvious to me why Napoleon is the greatest general of all time because he was also head of state. So America has not produced general as great as Napoleon because like by design the Pentagon and the political structure. Yeah. Are separated and are to some degree in conflict on purpose. [00:20:46] Speaker A: Right. [00:20:46] Speaker B: People maybe we'll talk about later but people get frustrated about American democracy at times and they're and, and like there's gridlock and there's disagreement but disagreement is built into the system in the United States and it is explicitly done to prevent a Napoleon type situation where you're like head of state, tyrant, head of military. Well, let's, let's call Napoleon a tyrant. Like I like during. [00:21:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Because Napoleon is a hero in France. [00:21:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:19] Speaker B: Like Napoleon's tomb. If you go there. Now we're getting off topic. [00:21:22] Speaker A: I feel like. [00:21:22] Speaker B: But if you go to Napoleon tomb in Paris, it's awesome. [00:21:25] Speaker A: You should go. [00:21:26] Speaker B: It's amazing. But he is revered, right. And like he was one of the, let's say the greatest general of all time. Maybe next to like Alexander the Great. But Alexander Grace the same Example, head of state and head of military. So he gets like, we're going to invade this country tomorrow and we're going to do this thing next week and I'm going to make you king of Egypt. Like they just have all the power. And so they're able to like align the political and the military in a way that like American democracy is not designed to do so. So that maybe it's a long explanation, but like what it shows is that the founder CEO is like the Napoleon. They can align a lot of things inside the company and execute in a way that a hired CEO can't do. [00:22:12] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:14] Speaker B: So I think that's my favorite example of this would be Steve Jobs. So he owned all the stock, right. He's the controlling interest of the company. He can't be outvoted by the board or shareholders. And this is a long time ago. So a lot of people probably don't know this, but like when he launched the Apple store was very controversial because he had conflict. The Apple Macintosh and Apple products were sold through third party retailers. They were sold a whole bunch of places. Right. And then he went and competed with them. He built his own store. And so I've been in companies and I've been in these debates, I've been in these meetings where like channel conflict is a huge problem. Right. Like we sell XYZ through this method. If we go into this new method, there's now a conflict. The people that we rely on for sales might get frustrated. [00:23:01] Speaker A: It's chump. Yes, it's very. That's right. So it's like self cannibalization as well. Right. You're cannibalizing other products or just it's [00:23:09] Speaker B: a conflict with your distributor. [00:23:11] Speaker A: Distributors. [00:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. And Steve Jobs just did it. He's like, I don't care. There's no channel conflict. I'm going to build my own channel. It's going to be awesome. And he spent all that money on the stores. People at the time were like very skeptical. It was, it was like, yes, you're [00:23:25] Speaker A: going into retail as a tech company. That was crazy to think about. [00:23:32] Speaker B: It's crazy. And like they're incredibly successful with it and no one else has ever duplicated that strategy and been anywhere near as [00:23:40] Speaker A: successful as Apple, maybe Facebook or trying to be. [00:23:44] Speaker B: Because Facebook doesn't have great stores, do they? [00:23:47] Speaker A: No, no, not, not in terms of like the retail stuff, but like the way that, you know, the founder is still Zuckerberg, still the, the head of the state. [00:23:55] Speaker B: I don't know. I I don't know, dude. Steve Jobs is like, he's the Napoleon [00:24:00] Speaker A: of tech tech in the last 20, 30 years. Okay. [00:24:05] Speaker B: Well, anyway, the A16 stuff is really exciting. Anything else you want to say on this topic or should we move on to something else? And we've talked a lot about it, so. [00:24:14] Speaker A: No, I think they're, they're awesome. I'm excited to see what kind of company that they invest in. I know that they have a early stage fund called Speed Grow one. I'm very, very bullish on there. They're focused on. Seems like a lot of gaming companies which, which is fun. Very few. [00:24:31] Speaker B: I'm glad you brought that up. I would say that, like, that I was, I was working on something else and that came up was like, how many, like seed or early stage investments they've made. So they are like playing at every level. It's, I think, very hard for other investors to figure out a strategy that's, you know, unique or going to give them an edge over a 16Z. They look, they look really formidable right now. Right. They're making early stage investments, they're making seed investments, they're making like series E investments all the way up the chain. I think it's hard, it's hard to compete if you're not a 16.0Z right now. All right, what do we want to talk about next? [00:25:17] Speaker A: Should we talk about this piece, the AI adoption 2026? I have some thoughts around this. I think it's super important, especially as more and more people and companies are jumping onto the AI bandwagon. Okay, so at the high level, this is. I know, I know. I'm going to summarize. Review this. This is a company called Sentry. Their leadership just sent out this memo. Essentially what it summarizes is just another call to a big company's tech force to adopt and get good at with LLMs and AI. How it's different is that I think it is correctly called out that this thing is here. It's not a hype. If you use the tool correctly, you will. It will be a force multiplier for developers and not just developers, for any kind of white collar worker. Let's say if you do not adapt and learn These tools in 2026, I think you will be left behind. And businesses are kind of drawing and lining the sand, for example, Sentry here, that these things will come into your performance evaluation. They have metrics, they are measuring how, how many lines of code, let's say, or PR requests or whatever their measurement is, are touched by LLM. That is a departure from let's say two years ago, especially even last year where LLM adoption is very like hand wavy. It's very aspirational. It's a lot of like not really measurable. It's not very measurable. Now we're getting into a stage where AI adoption is completely measurable. Dev leadership or CTOs are saying, I want 80% of all pull request or lines of code are touched by AI. And then the human should only be in the loop at the final, final stages. I think that's huge. [00:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I, I mean so much to unpack here. Okay, how about this? Like, so you're our resident Vibe coding guru. [00:27:46] Speaker A: Sure. [00:27:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I would think that's fair. What, what do you, what do you think about large firms? So you have a small firm, you were other small firms perhaps? [00:27:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:57] Speaker B: What do you think about like large firms, these mandates and Vibe coding? What does it mean for companies of this scale? [00:28:03] Speaker A: It's so you have to treat AI as a tool. You can't be scared that it's going to take over people's jobs. I honestly think we're even. We're not even. This memo is not good enough. I don't think you can just go top down and say, hey, everybody in the company needs to learn AI, use these tools, get comfortable with it. And then you're going to measure based on some, some metric. I don't think people are going to adopt this. I think large companies will divide the force into two. One is AI native and two is how the status quo is. And they're going to methodically measure the output between those two and they will pick the winner. So really, really this is like, you know, during the early days industrial revolution. People with cars or people with steam engines just comes in and disrupts everything. It's going to be people that knows and is experts of AI versus people who just refuse to, to change. [00:29:12] Speaker B: And what do you think, what do you think it means for like software engineering? Like, like I, I keep hearing lots of rumors about like layoffs and like softening of the market. Like yeah, what do you think about all that? [00:29:26] Speaker A: So, so I think software engineers, we, we had the luxury of not worry about things like project management, talking to people, gathering requirements at a high level. I think the most successful software engineers will become project managers as well. So you'll have to branch out, talk to people, spend most of your time in meetings. I know a lot of individual contributors hates that, but for example, a lot of CTOs who wrote the first line code in their startup eventually becomes a people manager, right? [00:30:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:11] Speaker A: I think all software developers will have to go through that transition. It's possible. Most CTOs do this, right? I myself even did this at my previous startups where at the very early stages I roll all the code and then I hired people so that I transitioned into people management or project management. I think this AI is just speeds that up. You have to do that because the machine's writing all the code. [00:30:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, why don't we. I think this fits really nicely with all the Tailwind stuff. Yeah, we should definitely talk. [00:30:50] Speaker A: We should talk about this. [00:30:53] Speaker B: About that. Let's see if this is the. Okay, here's the. I have the. I have the. I have the tweet here. Why don't you summarize this? Yeah, here it is. [00:31:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So Tailwind, Tailwind CSS is probably the most used front end library today. If you go to any website or web applications, they all have that look and feel. The joke is that everything has a purple gradient. All of that comes from Tailwind. It's literally just like Tailwind shotcn a couple of these libraries and most of AI generated code uses a Tailwind as a front end library, a front end model. And the story here this week is that the founder of tailwind, or the CEO, did a podcast where he did a 30 minute talk just himself walking on the streets of Toronto. Kind of almost like a heartfelt thought around how he laid off 75 of his workforce, going from four developers down to one, due to the fact that they've been consistently losing revenue for the past year or two and they have not figured out how to recover those revenue and they had six months of Runway left. And part of the blame, he said, was the fact that his website traffic was down something like 40 to 50% because software developers stopped visiting Tailwind's documentation where they did a lot of the upselling. This, this basically means AI overview or developers using AI is skipping a lot of the touch points where open source projects can upsell. So this creates a huge problem for open source projects where they give software away for free. They spend a ton of time documenting methodically how to use their tool. AI just slops all of that up and not give anything back. That's a huge problem. [00:33:15] Speaker B: Yeah, so I've heard this from other people too. Right? So like if you sell a framework, a lot of the like frameworks and like libraries, all of those things, like there's not the same need that there once was. Right. Stack overflow is not the one where the famous traffic is. [00:33:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:38] Speaker B: Is way down. Because like you could just vibe code, all that stuff. You don't really need to go and access the library anymore. But that's my question. And like, so anyway, he posts that podcast saying like how frustrating this is and he had this outpouring of positive support and responses. And like, that's what I thought was really interesting about this was like, there's still a role for these frameworks because without them that the tools don't have the material to train on. [00:34:11] Speaker A: Yes. But basically what this means is that writing code. So like if you listen to him, right. He's still very passionate about writing code. His developers are very passionate about writing code. All open source developers fundamentally are very passionate about writing code. Yeah. So basically this is like the perfect example that coding by hand is becoming an art form. It's like it's, it's art now, right? It's, it's a passion project. You don't get paid a lot of money to write code anymore. But if you talk about it and you build something beautiful. [00:34:48] Speaker B: But don't these things still need a framework to open to train on? Like if all the frameworks go, it's just like the, it's just like the, the writing. Right. Like, because my opinion is that the output of all these LLMs just gets worse and worse and worse over the last year and a half. Like it's just unusable now. The stuff that I get out of chat GPT, it takes so much effort and to edit it now that like, I mean I get value from it. But it's clear to me that like it's training on more and more garbage. Yeah, it's garbage in, garbage out. And so that was my question is like, isn't that the same thing on the coding side? Like if it doesn't have all these like high quality 40 hours eventually. [00:35:25] Speaker A: Right. So coding is a little bit different because there is a mathematical correctness to coding. [00:35:30] Speaker B: You can, There's a logic element. Yeah. [00:35:32] Speaker A: There's a logical element. Right. You can tell them to fix this until it's correct. With creative writing or writing in general, there's no really like benchmark to say, make this correct. With coding there is, right. Like you can literally say make this 10 times faster and it will give it a bunch of tools. Yeah. As long as you give it the measurement tools to. [00:35:56] Speaker B: So there's no apocalypse where there's not enough like stuff for it to train on. [00:36:03] Speaker C: Correct. [00:36:04] Speaker A: Correct. So because it's a self improving machine Right. Literally, that's how I use agents. [00:36:09] Speaker B: Find a solution. Yeah. Because that's what I couldn't figure out. Or like, I was curious to understand, like, does it mean that the future. There is no future for writing, like, frameworks and, like, libraries. I've met other developers and teams that, like, were successful at selling these types of things, and that was exactly what they told me. They're like, there's no future in this at all. [00:36:31] Speaker A: There's no future. [00:36:32] Speaker B: No matter how successful our framework, our library is, like, it's not going to matter going. Going forward. [00:36:40] Speaker A: I think so. I think so. [00:36:42] Speaker B: Fascinating. It's so interesting because, like, on the creative side, like, I think the output of ChatGPT blows. It is the worst. Like, it used to be what I thought was pretty good. I was kind of happy with some things and, like, I use it and it's just terrible. I switched to Gemini on some things and it's marginally better here and there, but Gemini has some really bizarre hangups. What'd you want to say? [00:37:12] Speaker A: So I think that's just a symptom of, like, the iteration cycle. With writing, your iteration cycle is much longer than writing a piece of code, Right. Writing a piece of code immediately, within 5 to 10 minutes, you can get a feedback on if it's good or not. [00:37:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And you can measure everything, right? [00:37:29] Speaker A: You can measure everything. Correct. [00:37:31] Speaker B: Speed, output, the efficiency. Like, did it do it in fewer lines? Yeah. There's tons of ways to, like, determine if it's good. [00:37:38] Speaker A: Right. So actually this is not really LLM discussion. This is a tooling problem. A tooling problem, as in software developers spent a lot of time creating tools to tell you how well a piece of code has performed. So like speeds, debuggers, performance measurement tools, observability tools. It plugs into all of your running software to immediately tell you if it's working or not. Creative writing, I think, will evolve there. We just need more tooling around. Around that. I don't know what that looks like, but. But that's the direction that we probably. [00:38:19] Speaker B: I'm really, I'm really negative on it in general. I think that, like, I'm going to say something very extreme. I think that LLMs as a creative solution are a total failure. And they will, I would say, at this point, after spending a lot of time with it and doing a lot with it. [00:38:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:35] Speaker B: They will never, never replace creative people, ever. Like, the more I worked with it. So I've been using it since the very beginning. I do a lot with it. I Use it every day. It'll never replace a talented creative person. [00:38:52] Speaker A: Of course. [00:38:53] Speaker B: And I'm even skeptical now that how many junior people does replace. The output is so inconsistent and so poor. It takes so much effort to manage. I don't see a future at all where there's like a huge amount of automated content that's high quality. [00:39:16] Speaker A: That's high quality, correct. Yeah, yeah. [00:39:18] Speaker B: I see lots of low quality stuff and I did make this argument that like, overall I think the quality is better because I think people, most people are just terrible writers. And I think that like, it actually does solve for that. So there were like a lot of things that were just like. My joke was like, pre AI post AI, LinkedIn is better. Post AI. There's a lot of people say, oh, it's too much AI crap and AI slop. But I'm like, look, dude, I remember the old LinkedIn. I still think this is better overall. [00:39:49] Speaker A: Yes, yes, exactly. I think it's just like, again, it's kind of like the great equalizer. Right. Early days of Internet, there's like spelling mistakes everywhere on the Internet. Now with AI, there's like no spelling mistakes. [00:40:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Just nonsensical E spam that like, I don't even understand what people are talking about. Like, I don't actually get any of that anymore. I. It's very clear what people kind of want. So like, that part's cool. I think that's. [00:40:12] Speaker A: That part's cool. For example, like, Grammarly was a big thing back in like 20, what, 16, 2015. They fixed, right. [00:40:20] Speaker B: Like 10 years of Grammarly. I have what, 20 million words edited or something? Crazy. Grammarly congratulated me. [00:40:28] Speaker A: Right, Exactly. So like 10, 15 years ago, when you wrote stuff on the Internet, you worried about grammar. And now with AI, who. Who's. Who's even thinking about grammar, it's actually like more, more humanizing if you make grammar mistakes, which. [00:40:44] Speaker B: But it's so repetitive in the way it. And like it also just uses just tons and tons of like awkward phrasing that aren't. [00:40:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:53] Speaker B: That don't actually make a lot of sense. [00:40:56] Speaker A: No. [00:40:57] Speaker B: I post all the time. I'm like, here's another completely circular. Like it does this circular logic. It writes things that like ultimately make no sense. [00:41:07] Speaker A: It. [00:41:08] Speaker B: It does all kinds of very, very odd stuff that like, I just got very frustrated because like, I haven't able to figure out how to get rid of it. Like it just keeps doing it. [00:41:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:16] Speaker B: And it's so inconsistent. Like I have these threads and things that I've, like, trained on for, like, a long time, and sometimes the output is just bizarre. Like, I look at it and go, like, what? [00:41:25] Speaker A: So I think it will get better. So this is. This is what my brain is going towards. It's. It is as if it's a foreigner learning English for the first time. Right. Like, they use phrases that's like, not day to day. Right. They would use, like, two formal English when they're speaking to you, and you're like, okay, that's weird, but I understand. But, yeah, you know, that's not something that we would usually say. AI is at the same stage. It's like, alien or foreign intelligence that learned English through some weird way, and they're trying to, like, speak to you as if they're human. I think it will get better. They just need to train more on things like our podcast, and they'll pick up on pricing. [00:42:18] Speaker B: I don't buy it. I think that, like. Yeah, I used to think that. Yeah, it's just gotten worse. I think that, like, I think it turns out there's a lot of contextual information that you need to communicate effectively, and it'll never be able to access that. Like, it doesn't know that this email is coming in, this content. You have to, like, tell it all of that stuff. Like, and it turns out that I think there's an infinite number of permutations. [00:42:47] Speaker A: Correct. Correct. [00:42:48] Speaker B: And things change. So, like, what used to be cool on Twitter is not cool anymore. Like, people don't write the same. People don't write threads. [00:42:55] Speaker A: People don't write threads. People talk differently every time. [00:42:58] Speaker B: Like, it just keeps changing. [00:43:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:00] Speaker B: And it'll never keep up with that stuff. So, like, yeah, I don't know. That's kind of where I landed. Finally. I just was like, you know what? It's. It's a cool tool. It helps with some things, but it's. It's only marginally better. And I don't see it. I don't see it, like, replacing. [00:43:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:43:20] Speaker B: Right what I do or what a lot of people do. You know? Like, I don't know. I'm even skeptical of, like, the automated SDR stuff. I keep seeing, like, I keep hearing about it everywhere, and, like, maybe it'll work, but I still think it's an over. It's over engineering the problem that, like, you don't actually need all the content to be automated and the way that most people are trying to do it. Like, I still. And I get these things on LinkedIn times. They're like, super long it's like, it's just, it's just way over engineered for. All it needs to say is like hey, do you want to come to my event? And I'd be like looks cool, let's do it. Like rather than just like really long like email that spent all this effort like reading my profile and spitting it all back to me. [00:44:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:11] Speaker B: I just think that like, like the, I guess like eventually I think the, the chips will fall in all the right places. Like people figure out the places where it works well. [00:44:21] Speaker A: Right. [00:44:21] Speaker B: And they will, they won't automate the places where it doesn't work well. And people are still experimenting. [00:44:26] Speaker A: Right. [00:44:27] Speaker B: And there's this idea to like automate everything. [00:44:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Just automate everything. [00:44:31] Speaker B: And that eventually you're going to figure out like these things don't work as well. It kind of reminds me of [00:44:38] Speaker A: like [00:44:38] Speaker B: auto generated or personalized creative in advertising. So dynamic creative do this idea around. [00:44:46] Speaker A: Right. [00:44:47] Speaker B: 1995. [00:44:48] Speaker A: Right. [00:44:49] Speaker B: And what always happened was that to dynamically create the ad creative on the fly for each impression, the like compute processing overhead, the data overhead, it's so enormous to do it well that like there's not a giant improvement in performance. So there's no reason to do it, [00:45:11] Speaker A: to do it in the first place. Right. [00:45:13] Speaker B: I've seen this play out over and over and over. Like I ever have ever worked. We had some dynamic creative tool and someone to get excited about it. We'd start working, working on it and, and we would start to do all these tests and then we'd be like okay, like we actually have some of it working. And then it, it didn't improve the performance all that much. I think a lot of the AI content wound up being like that. [00:45:32] Speaker A: It's exactly like that. You generate a lot of things, you want to get them correct. A lot of effort, a lot of computation. But. [00:45:39] Speaker B: And then you're like what did I get? It could it converts at the same level as just like, like I said, hey, what's up? Come to my event or hey, what's up? Check this out. The really labor intensive one doesn't perform any better. I know it's funny. It's like, it's counterintuitive I think for some people. But I've seen this many times actually not like once or twice. I've seen a lot. [00:45:58] Speaker A: It's because everything's just random. That's what it actually. [00:46:02] Speaker B: Well the context I think matters the most. So like when the message comes and who is it coming from? [00:46:12] Speaker A: Right. [00:46:12] Speaker B: Context is maybe like 50 I think that's what a lot of people don't understand is that the context matters. The context is like a lot more [00:46:18] Speaker A: valid context, timing of it. [00:46:21] Speaker B: Right. [00:46:22] Speaker A: Matters more. [00:46:23] Speaker B: The context matters a lot. Like who is it coming from? [00:46:26] Speaker A: And. [00:46:26] Speaker B: And like what is your perception of how they would like say it, do it, Communicate. Yeah. All right, what else do we have on our agenda for today? [00:46:40] Speaker A: We should talk about. Well, this stemmed from our last week's conversation about the linear exit tax. Right. California, 5% going to this one again, [00:46:53] Speaker B: My man's last week. [00:46:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that. Oh, we gotta give people what they want. Well, the net and. Well. Okay, so the next interesting question is, let's say that people are actually being serious by accident in California more. Where should they go? I know, I think you mentioned Austin. You're. You love Austin, right? [00:47:13] Speaker B: Oh, this is a funny question. [00:47:15] Speaker A: Other people are mentioning Utah of all places. [00:47:21] Speaker B: Oh, right. Where's that tweet? Yeah, there was some whole thing about that's been in the cards for a while that people are moving to Utah. [00:47:29] Speaker A: People are moving from California to Utah. Miami is obviously a big popular tech hub as well. Some. Austin is a high on the list. Or even Tennessee. [00:47:43] Speaker B: Yeah. All the tax free states. [00:47:44] Speaker A: All the tax free states. What's your, what's your thought behind this? You're awesome. [00:47:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, look. So I've been very, I've been very public about leaving California. I was in California a long time. I love living in California. I love living in the, in the Bay Area. But I became convinced that like the real estate market had peaked a couple years ago and that the future of California looks really challenging to me. Like the state just has an enormous amount of unfunded liabilities. Like, like most states, like most governments, it's not unique, but it's just, it's really big in California and if anything ever happened to real estate market, it could just be catastrophic. And so actually the story is that I owned a house in Northern California. It was worth a fortune, just like all the homes in California. And I was like riding bikes with my buddies and he heard that like people were like losing their fire insurance. So I mean, California. So then. Yeah, right. So all of California. [00:48:48] Speaker A: Yep. Fire risk. [00:48:50] Speaker B: Yes. And you had that massive fire in Santa Rosa five years ago where like crazy, all kinds of homes burned down that were like zoned, actually not in a fire zone. Massive amounts of property. All kinds of people, like lost their homes. People lost their lives. It's very sad. And I know a lot of people connected to it and like that Was the, the turning point where the insurance companies said, hey, like, this is a big problem for us. Like, real estate in California is prohibitively expensive. It's. It's crazy expensive. It's very expensive to ensure this stuff. And now we're finding that, like, areas that we thought were safe actually are not safe. And the state has put all kinds of, like, restrictions in place when it comes to, like, yeah, there's a board that manages. [00:49:42] Speaker A: They're raising the price. So. Right. [00:49:44] Speaker B: Insurance. So the insurance company's response was like, well, we're just going to leave the state. We're not going to insure homes, which everyone kind of like, like, kind of laughed at. And then I started, like, running into people I knew owned homes near me that were like, I can't get fire insurance anymore. Now I have to go on the state fire insurance. And it's $2,000 a month. That's just $24,000 a year to get your home insured if you lose the insurance. [00:50:12] Speaker A: So I, I looked into that's actually, that's considered cheap. $2,000 a month, first of all. And then there's the, the California. The state provides this. I think it's called fair or something. [00:50:24] Speaker B: Correct. [00:50:26] Speaker A: And it doesn't actually cover anything besides fire. So. Yes. Yeah. [00:50:32] Speaker B: It's crazy. And so, like, I knew all kinds of people. Like, there's all kinds of areas that are like, fire hazard. And I was like, I was like, this is bad. This is really bad. And my, my take was like, look, this has the potential to crash the entire market. Like, because everyone else I knew, they, like everyone was so cavalier about it. They're like, oh, it's no big deal. We'll get it from the state. I'm like, this is not good. [00:50:58] Speaker A: No. [00:50:59] Speaker B: And then if you're. If like big swaps become uninsurable, it can, it can bring down the entire market. Right. Because the. How homes are worth. So anyway, I looked at all this and I said, now, like, I'm out of California. I think this is really bad mix. And I'm just one man. Like, I don't know how to solve any of this. [00:51:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:51:19] Speaker B: I'm out. So, like, California, we sold our home at the peak. And everyone. It's just like my whole story about moving to California from New York. It's the same thing. Everyone told me. I was wrong. Everybody's like, you should stay. It's not a big deal. It's all going to come back. San Francisco is going to be revitalized. And I was like, nope, I don't agree. I think that like, this is a big problem and I don't see it getting resolved. And then boom, we move to Seattle where it's tax free state, it rains a lot, so there's no fire hazard here. And then you had the Pacific Palisades fire in Southern California that just like torched a massive, I mean, probably the largest natural disaster in the world by dollar value. Like burned all these like Hollywood homes, multimillion dollar homes, Malibu homes. And I was like, look at that. Like, and the impact is that insurance went up and the state insurance went up. There's going to be special taxes now to pay. Like, disaster was exactly what I thought was going to. Or it was one of the potential risks that I identified. I was like, I'm out. Like, I don't know how to deal with this. And now, like, I just think that, like, I don't know, I think it's, it's super high risk. I don't want to be part of it as much I love California and I'd love to live there again. I think a lot of people are looking at us going like, would they see what I see on top of all the new issues, right? So like billionaire tax, okay, I'm not a billionaire, so I'm not affected by it. But what's to stop them from like taxing people with less money? That's true. [00:52:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:53] Speaker B: And then I think it gets into like, this is the one that really bothered me was the. An exit tax or a transfer tax is actually what they call. I looked it up, that's what they call it in Berkeley. So I owned a home in Berkeley. And when you sell it, they don't call it an exit tax, they call it a transfer tax. Transfer the ownership of that property, someone else, you have to pay a special tax. So California, I believe, will institute one of these. They'll see all these people are leaving the state and they'll just go boom, transfer tax on anybody who sells their property. And like, and like a property that you already own, like, there's people like, own these properties, they've paid them off, they've paid tax on it. Now there's extra tax. Like, I just think it's wrong. And, and the other thing I think about all this is that, is that it's really bad for business, right? Like, who wants to move there? It creates dynamics that are just really unhealthy. And that's why I think you see all of these very vocal people on X or Twitter saying, like, I'm Moving to Utah. I'm moving to Tennessee. I'm moving to Florida. I'm moving to Texas. Moving to Seattle, whatever it is. [00:54:08] Speaker C: Right. [00:54:08] Speaker B: Because it's already so expensive to live in California as it is. So why deal with it? [00:54:16] Speaker A: How. Do you have any advice for people that's looking to do what you did? What's. To leave? Yeah, what's. What do you. What would you say to them? Or what's. How do they. How should they. How should they approach the. The research? [00:54:31] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, like, look, I think everyone's got to figure out what works. [00:54:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:35] Speaker B: For them. I still think, like, if you're young and you want to have a startup and you get accepted a Y Combinator, it's a great place to be. Right, right. [00:54:42] Speaker A: Right. [00:54:42] Speaker B: You don't have as much, like, legacy or tied into the. So. So I guess at a high level, there's lots of responses to, like, the challenges that California faces. Right. We just had Spencer Pratt, who is now running for mayor. Right. Like, there's all kinds of times. So there's a group of people, like, Gary Tan's been very vocal about this, too. He's from San Francisco. He wants to make it better. So, like, there's a lot of responses. I'm not saying that mine's the only. Only response. I think if you. You want to leave, you got to figure out what kind of lifestyle you want to have. Right. It made sense for us to come here. There's Amazon. It might make sense for other people to go to Miami. I don't like the humidity and the hot climate of Florida, so, like, not a great option for me. I know other people who've moved to Austin, they love it. It's a little hot there too, [00:55:37] Speaker A: but, [00:55:37] Speaker B: you know, you can ride bicycles. Lance Armstrong's from Austin. [00:55:41] Speaker A: Do your own research. [00:55:42] Speaker B: Yeah. I think you just gotta figure out what works for you. And there's a group of people who want to stay and they want to try to change things, and I support that, too. I think that that's great. It wasn't the option for me, which is fine. I mean, I'm not from California. Right. I'm from New York, and I love New York and I love the East Coast. And so it was really fun to spend all this time in California, but I guess I'm a believer of, like, I think it's a privilege that I have U.S. citizenship, have a passport, and I could live anywhere. And I always thought that was excellent. I loved that I could just get on A plane, move to California, have a great run in California and then decide like, you know what, I'm going to go live in Washington State and have a new life here. Like, I think that is just an enormous privilege. And so, yeah, I guess at a high level I would just exercise that. Like, if you're an American, you can live all over the United States. It's amazing. It's so great. It's such a privilege. And there's all these really interesting places that you can like live and, and be a part of. And now with like remote work and low cost air travel, you can run a business. I think from a lot of places. You don't necessarily need to be right in New York or California like you'd like you once did. And I think that, that, you know, there's, there's some arguments like, is it shifting back to the Bay Area? Is it not? I think the long term trend is actually a, away from all of those places that like, the need to be in one of those metropolitan areas will. Is, is, let's use the term, like reduced. It still matters, but I don't think it matters as much. And I still think like, long term there's a lot of options. [00:57:16] Speaker A: It's a great place to live. Yeah. Okay, gotcha. Okay, what's, what's next on the docket? I think we have. [00:57:24] Speaker B: Oh, we got a couple more, man. [00:57:24] Speaker A: Okay. [00:57:25] Speaker B: Okay, let's do, let's do the. Dude, David Bowie, man. [00:57:30] Speaker A: I. Okay, tell us more. [00:57:32] Speaker B: Is that this one? Okay, let, let's, let's, let's play this clip and, and then we could tell a little story about it. All right, so here we go. [00:57:48] Speaker C: I don't think we've even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying. [00:58:08] Speaker B: It's just a tool though, isn't it? [00:58:09] Speaker C: No, it's not. No. Now it's an alien life form. [00:58:13] Speaker A: What do you think? I mean, when you think then about [00:58:16] Speaker C: is there life on Mars? Yes, it's just landed here, here. [00:58:20] Speaker A: But that's, it's a simply a different delivery system there. You're arguing about something more profound. [00:58:25] Speaker C: Oh yeah, I'm talking about the, the actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything that we can really envisage at the moment. [00:58:35] Speaker B: So like, dude, this is from like 1999 where David Bowie is doing an interview and asked about. [00:58:40] Speaker A: That's crazy. [00:58:41] Speaker B: The Internet. Yeah. Like his. [00:58:43] Speaker A: Let's. [00:58:44] Speaker B: Let's just finish it up. [00:58:45] Speaker C: The interplay between the user and the provider will be so in sympatico. It's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about. But it's happening in every form. It's happening in visual art. The breakthroughs at the early part of the century with people like Duchamp who were so prescient in what they were doing and putting down the idea that the piece of work is not finished until the audience come to it and add their own interpretation. And what the piece of art is about is the gray space in the middle. That gray space in the middle is what the 21st century is going to be about. [00:59:23] Speaker B: You were supposed to. Dude, it's so wild. He basically. [00:59:26] Speaker A: He just. [00:59:26] Speaker B: He just nails the entrant in a way that, like, still, I think to this day is correct. And nobody at the time saw it. They just thought, like, oh, it's a content delivery tool. And he's like, dude, it is really different. And I think, I love that last piece about, like, the audience being able to participate and interpret that. Right. People show up on our YouTube channel and start, like, all kinds of comments and. [00:59:51] Speaker A: Right. [00:59:51] Speaker B: They don't agree with us. They think we're old. [00:59:55] Speaker A: The art form is the gray area between the audience and your products. Do that. What the. [01:00:05] Speaker B: You know, it blew my mind. It's excellent. Right? And, like, don't really expect David Bowie to be the person to have that kind of insight into the. [01:00:15] Speaker A: Into the Internet, Internet tech. [01:00:17] Speaker B: But I was just impressive. Like, I told you that my friend worked for DavidBowie.net in, like, 98. David Bowie, at that point when that clip came out, he had his own, like, Internet company, and it was an isp and you could get an Internet as an Internet service provider, and you could get Internet access from davidbowie.net and you could, like, dial up your little modem and you could go on the Internet and it was all branded. David. [01:00:48] Speaker A: Right. [01:00:52] Speaker B: Pretty cool. [01:00:52] Speaker A: Yeah. There. So there's. I feel like there's a little bit of a parallel right now with AI Right? He. He. In the video, he said, do you know how expensive it is to get involved in Internet? I feel like that's the same way with A.I. right. [01:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah, that one's funny, too. I think you're. I think you're actually totally correct that, like, we probably don't understand the implications of the AI revolution in general. Right. Like, you know, something I said earlier today or about, like, I'm not happy with the content it produces because I'm coming at it, and I think a lot of people are coming at it from this lens of, like, trying to do the things that we already do with the tool. [01:01:29] Speaker A: Right. I mean, we know better. Like, we have more knowledge than it can produce one. [01:01:34] Speaker B: So when AI starts. I think basically when AI starts to do its own thing, it's how this all changes, right? Like, correct. Autonomous robots, autonomous driving, autonomous content agents. Like, we're very early, and they don't work very well, but when it starts to do its own thing is when I think the real promise of AI starts to emerge. So, like, just writing great content for me or being like, an sdr, I think that's, like, a pretty boring, pretty, like, lame iteration of it. It's gonna emerge something, I think, unexpected and really exciting. And it's definitely within the realm of, like, autonomous agents. And I don't actually think we fully know or comprehend no. What that's going to be. [01:02:20] Speaker A: No, exactly. [01:02:24] Speaker B: Why'd you have fun today? [01:02:26] Speaker A: This is awesome. Feel like we talked about everything. Is there anything else that we. [01:02:31] Speaker B: No, I think we're all good. [01:02:32] Speaker A: Okay. All right. Shall we end it here? It was a great episode. All right, thanks, everyone. [01:02:37] Speaker B: Thank you. Bye. Bye. [01:02:38] Speaker A: Bye.