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Speaker 1: All Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed zetron Today

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Speaker 2: I am joined barcul Zone Media's Robert Evans, and he's

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Speaker 2: joining me to talk more about the growth that all

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Speaker 2: costs rot economy. It's the thing that's making your beloved

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Speaker 2: tech products worse to make someone else hundreds of millions

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Speaker 2: of dollars. And it's so good, Robert. We love it,

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Speaker 2: don't we, folks.

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Speaker 1: I'm having a great time. I love that I used

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Speaker 1: to make a living teaching like people who would pay

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Speaker 1: you to the company. I worked for huge amounts of

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Speaker 1: money to be trained in like how to use Google

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Speaker 1: more effectively, all these little dorks and stuff that allow

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Speaker 1: you to like really specialize your search settings. And I

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Speaker 1: love that. Just in the last couple of years, Google

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Speaker 1: has placed a shot gun to the base of their

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Speaker 1: searches engines. Skull pulled the trigger, and now a bunch

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Speaker 1: of people are desperately trying to be like, oh, there's

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Speaker 1: this new perperplexity AI or this other AI search engine,

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Speaker 1: like it's much better. And it's like, no, it's slightly

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Speaker 1: better than Google now, but they're all worse than Google

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Speaker 1: used to be. None of this is a step forward.

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Speaker 1: They're just pains in the ass.

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Speaker 2: So one of the reasons that that's happening isn't just

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Speaker 2: the public markets. The public markets are a big part

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Speaker 2: of the problem, and they're the ones that incentivize this

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Speaker 2: whole growth or costs phenomenon. But I actually want you

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Speaker 2: to know that this has another cause, and it's private

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Speaker 2: investing and venture capital. Those are the ones who are

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Speaker 2: pretty much putting a thumb on the head of innovation

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Speaker 2: that is stopping great companies being built by incentivizing well,

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Speaker 2: kind of a form of slaughter, fattening up pigs to

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Speaker 2: sell to the market, rather than making something innovative.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like like some sort of like a pig sheep

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Speaker 1: hybrid like a peep.

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Speaker 2: But you could eat the meat from there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I think it would probably be like like

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Speaker 1: the like the clone from the fourth Alien movie that

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Speaker 1: just is begging for you to kill it, but then

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Speaker 1: you know, you get some sort of fucked up bacon.

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Speaker 2: But instead of getting that fucked up bacon, what you

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Speaker 2: actually get is more like the creature from the Thing,

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Speaker 2: the weird spider creature, which is funny, scary, but not

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Speaker 2: particularly useful.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, probably not very tasty.

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Speaker 2: So before companies like Uber reached the public markets. They're

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Speaker 2: fueled by a much more violent and reckless form of funding,

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Speaker 2: venture capital. Venture capitalists can be seed stage investors or

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Speaker 2: regular guy putting ten grand into a company, all the

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Speaker 2: way up to massive firms with hundreds of people like

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Speaker 2: Andresen Horowitz, who invested early in Facebook and Airbnb.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Like the thing that I've always that I came

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Speaker 1: to realize about like venture capital money just from studying scams,

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Speaker 1: is you have like Corey Doctor talks about this a lot.

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Speaker 1: But like in traditional scam terminology of this period called

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Speaker 1: like the bezel right, which is the time between starting

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Speaker 1: the scam when everybody else realizes it's a fucking scam.

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Speaker 1: It's the period in which you're making a bunch of money,

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Speaker 1: and like that's that's where all of these VC people

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Speaker 1: like make their fortune. You know, some of the companies

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Speaker 1: they back do turn out to be long term profitable,

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Speaker 1: but they don't have to be. If you can just

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Speaker 1: sort of get this IPO where everybody values it super

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Speaker 1: highly for a while and cash out what you have

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Speaker 1: in the company during that period of time. If the

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Speaker 1: company fails a few years after its IPO, if it

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Speaker 1: turns out that like it wasn't really a good business,

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Speaker 1: you still get rich. Like the key thing is, it's

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Speaker 1: great if you wind up making a successful business in

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Speaker 1: their eyes, but you don't have to for them to

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Speaker 1: make a lot of money, right, They just have to

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Speaker 1: have to be able to get out before you know,

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Speaker 1: the scam reaches its its conclusion, they.

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Speaker 2: Have to reach a liquidity events, so either selling that

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Speaker 2: company to someone else or taking it public. And a

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Speaker 2: big thing is the venture capital. Yes, like all investment things,

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Speaker 2: is always just evil at its core, but it used

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Speaker 2: to be much smaller. Used to be maybe a billion

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Speaker 2: dollars in a year that would go into tech startups.

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Speaker 2: Now it's in twenty twenty two, it's like two hundred

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Speaker 2: and forty billion dollars. And I'll get to why that's

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Speaker 2: an obscene number later, specifically around crypto. But when it

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Speaker 2: was smaller, investment wasn't done with these ideas of these five, ten,

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Speaker 2: twenty x multipliers. It was I want to put money

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Speaker 2: early into this company because I think they're making a

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Speaker 2: good product that people will buy. The problem was companies

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Speaker 2: like Google and Apple to a lesser extent, but really

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Speaker 2: companies like Facebook getting these massive multi billion, hundred billion

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Speaker 2: dollar valuations. Suddenly startups stopped needing ten twenty fifty one

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Speaker 2: hundred grand at seed stage and started needing two to

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Speaker 2: five to ten million dollars at the seed or even

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Speaker 2: series A stage. And suddenly venture capitalists started moving away

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Speaker 2: from this idea of good businesses that could last without them,

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Speaker 2: and they started to go into a form of kind

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Speaker 2: of of symbolic capital, investing in things that looked value

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Speaker 2: but aren't necessarily valuable at their whole. As a result,

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Speaker 2: they create this ecosystem where these companies go through this

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Speaker 2: kind of volatile, irrosive cycle of growth, with the only

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Speaker 2: goal being that they get to a stage when they

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Speaker 2: become someone else's problem, either by listing on the public

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Speaker 2: markets or selling to a much bigger company.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and the whole crypto industry is essentially taking that

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Speaker 1: like it comes out of everyone. People who came to

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Speaker 1: expect this and in a lot of cases got rich

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Speaker 1: for the first time through this chunk of the tech

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Speaker 1: industry and then realized, well, if we create a way

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Speaker 1: to utilize some of these these psychological phenomenons and like

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Speaker 1: some of these ideas without any kind of regulation, like

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Speaker 1: that's where crypto comes from, right Like it's it's purely

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Speaker 1: the scam aspects of this with none of the real businesses.

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Speaker 2: And you're completely right, And I will shortly get to

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Speaker 2: that as well, because yeah, here's let me set the

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Speaker 2: scene of the current state of the value up emerges,

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Speaker 2: they're considered the next big thing. They ideally reach unicorn status,

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Speaker 2: which refers to them being worth a billion dollars, and

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Speaker 2: they experience unprecedented growth, they explode, and nobody asks the question, hey,

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Speaker 2: you make in more money than you're spending. Open Ai

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Speaker 2: is a great example of this. Right now, they get

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Speaker 2: these articles saying, oh, we've got over a billion dollars

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Speaker 2: in revenue. No one's saying, are you how much you

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Speaker 2: spending to get there? But suddenly, after all of this

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Speaker 2: venture investment, after all of this hype, they're challenging the

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Speaker 2: big dogs of their industry. They're getting in there and

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Speaker 2: they raise more and more money, and then they buy

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Speaker 2: up a few more companies and now they're at this big, fat,

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Speaker 2: nasty penultimate stage when people begin to ask if it

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Speaker 2: was a good business. And at this point they either

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Speaker 2: have to sell it to someone else or take it public,

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Speaker 2: So the destination may change, but the journey's always kind

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Speaker 2: of the same. You grow, you grow, you try and

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Speaker 2: find a business model, you grow a bit more, and

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Speaker 2: then you face reality. The idea the deal state, by

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Speaker 2: the way, for venture capital is before this point reality

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Speaker 2: should not interfere with making money. So venture capital pumps

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Speaker 2: millions and billions of dollars into these ideas that might

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Speaker 2: kind of sell a product or a service, but really

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Speaker 2: just resemble something that was worth something in the past.

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Speaker 2: Perhaps the founder is a white guy who looks kind

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Speaker 2: of like Mark Zuckerberg. This is literally a phenomena. In

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Speaker 2: the twenty tens, it was guys who looked like Mark

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Speaker 2: Zuckerberg wearing hoodies. Or maybe it's hey, Uber's a big company.

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Speaker 2: What if you're the uber for something else, Uber for laundry,

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Speaker 2: for example. Yeah, a lot of those companies die, and

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Speaker 2: what they're trying to do is keep the dance going

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Speaker 2: until someone is dumb enough to buy them, or they

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Speaker 2: can convince Morgan Stanley to help them go public. And

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Speaker 2: the real problem with the value right now is people

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Speaker 2: are conflating the concept of great ideas with things they

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Speaker 2: like and things that might sell, and the result is

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Speaker 2: less innovative things are happening. These companies that are getting

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Speaker 2: the money Open Aye, getting ten billion dollars mostly in

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Speaker 2: cloud credits isn't making the world better. It's looking a

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Speaker 2: major startup into being a customer of Microsoft and making

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Speaker 2: a product that has yet to really prove itself.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people are surprised by that. But like

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Speaker 1: what we mean is not that like you can't do

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Speaker 1: things that are cool or surprising with this stuff, but

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Speaker 1: that that does not could like that does not conclude

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Speaker 1: with it being a great business. Right A bunch of

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Speaker 1: people are flipping out about that new them the video generator.

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Speaker 1: We can make a minute song video that kind of

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Speaker 1: looks like a California boom town or whatever, and it's like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's cool, but like, is this number one something that's

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Speaker 1: realistically going to be used in some things? Yeah, I'm

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Speaker 1: sure it'll be in some things. This is going to

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Speaker 1: like replace actually making movies? Well, probably not. And that

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Speaker 1: kind of means there's probably a pretty limited amount of

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Speaker 1: money that you're going to make with this right now,

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Speaker 1: Like it's it's it's something that could potentially be a

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Speaker 1: business that is profitable, but could it be a business

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Speaker 1: that is more profitable than the amount of money they

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Speaker 1: are continuing to shovel and open AI. That actually is

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Speaker 1: still an open question.

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Speaker 2: And the problem is that I'm not even saying that

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Speaker 2: venture capital shouldn't happen. I do think it is a

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Speaker 2: necessary force to get some ideas off the ground. But

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Speaker 2: the problem is it's controlling the valley now, and as

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Speaker 2: a result, the things that are getting funded are the problem.

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Speaker 2: It's not that there are no good ideas, it's not

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Speaker 2: that there are no good founders. It's that the funding

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Speaker 2: is coming from an increasingly more centralized group of people

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Speaker 2: who are pretty much and I get everyone's profit seeking,

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Speaker 2: every investor wants a return, But there are venture capitalists

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Speaker 2: out there who just don't care about creating new things.

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Speaker 2: In fact, they're very, very very focused on keeping the

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Speaker 2: status quo going. And that's where Andreason Horowitz comes in.

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Speaker 2: My absolute favorite venture capital firm. You may remember them

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Speaker 2: from Facebook.

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Speaker 1: Reason Yeah so.

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Speaker 2: Andreason Horowitz is amazing because they are large firm and

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Speaker 2: they have various partners who all walk around making speeches

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Speaker 2: and they do their tweets vaguely saying like decentralization is

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Speaker 2: the future and it's good because of that, and you're like,

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Speaker 2: what does that mean? And then they don't want to

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Speaker 2: talk to you any further. Chris Dixon being one of

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Speaker 2: the more ugly ones, a partner that is entirely focused

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Speaker 2: on cryptocurrency, which I'm shortly going to get to. And

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Speaker 2: nowhere was Andrews and Horowitz more crooked than crypto. The

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Speaker 2: scam that Andreson Horowitz pulled on the crypto markets in

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two should be studied

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Speaker 2: as a financial crime, and indeed it should be one.

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Speaker 2: What it actually is is a way that they managed

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Speaker 2: to turn basically money into more money without ever creating

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Speaker 2: anything of value. They pumped billions of dollars into these

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Speaker 2: things called Web three companies, which were allegedly new companies

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Speaker 2: that were decentralized, but they were really just shells for

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Speaker 2: a cryptocurrency token that someone could then hype and sell

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Speaker 2: before the sec got aware of the problem. And I

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Speaker 2: really must be clear how few of these companies actually

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Speaker 2: did anything. Let me take a step back, let me

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Speaker 2: explain how cryptocurrency companies made their money in like twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty one, twenty twenty two. They would put out some

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Speaker 2: a website for the thing, and they would say, we're

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Speaker 2: going to do a decentralized social network and we're going

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Speaker 2: to have this token. This token will reward people for

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Speaker 2: the contributions to the social network. There were like eighty

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Speaker 2: different versions of this idea. That token would then get

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Speaker 2: a financial valuation through trading on various different crypto exchanges

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Speaker 2: Binance or coinbase in many cases. And at this point

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Speaker 2: you think, cool, what does the company do? And that

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Speaker 2: was the wrong question to ask. The companies don't really

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Speaker 2: do anything, or they're just traditional companies that have created

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Speaker 2: a token as a means of monetizing a market. What

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Speaker 2: Andrews and Horoids would do was invest in these companies

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Speaker 2: and then receive a massive amount of these tokens at

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Speaker 2: this vastly discounted price, kind of like how it works

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Speaker 2: with stock and startup, and then you would hope, in

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Speaker 2: the case of the stock for the startup, that you

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Speaker 2: could sell it on the public markets or perhaps you

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Speaker 2: could sell to another company. This usually takes about five

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Speaker 2: to ten years. But what was amazing about the crypto

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Speaker 2: scam was Andrewson Horowitz only had to wait a few

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Speaker 2: months for these tokens, which they had bought at massive

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Speaker 2: discount to list on say coinbase, a major cryptocurrency exchange

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Speaker 2: where Mark Andreson has a board seat. This allowed them

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Speaker 2: to dump all of their investment, which they got at

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Speaker 2: this remarkably small price, onto retail investors, believing that they

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Speaker 2: were in the ground floor. They basically invested in the

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Speaker 2: stock market, invested in Morgan Stanley, invested in every part,

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Speaker 2: and just funneled money between places. It was completely insane,

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Speaker 2: and they be billions of dollars doing this. I feel

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Speaker 2: crazy whenever I read about this stuff, because it happened

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Speaker 2: in broad daylight.

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Speaker 1: It's it's you know, you can say what you will

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Speaker 1: about like the ability of anyone to accumulate that much money,

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Speaker 1: but it at least even with like I don't think

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Speaker 1: Zuckerberg deserves certainly wouldn't say he deserves to have billions

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Speaker 1: of dollars. But if you say, if you like, say, okay,

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Speaker 1: this guy's crazy rich, he's worth this many billions.

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Speaker 2: What did you do?

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Speaker 1: Well, he made this thing that everybody uses. That is

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Speaker 1: a thing, right, as opposed to like this, which is

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Speaker 1: how did he become a billionaire? Well, he played a

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Speaker 1: really really fancy version of the shell game they play

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Speaker 1: on the street in New York and all those movies

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Speaker 1: from the eighties.

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Speaker 2: And it's crazy because there was one called Definity they

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Speaker 2: invested in school. It had a token called ICP Internet Computer.

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Speaker 2: I think it stand for that's not done anything. That

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Speaker 2: company's never made anything, No one's using that, there are

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Speaker 2: no users. But Andres and Horwitz made so much money

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Speaker 2: off of it. At the beginning of the pandemic, Mark

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Speaker 2: and Dreson did this big bloviating posting it's time to build.

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Speaker 2: But I think the real fun scam of this, the

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Speaker 2: thing that makes me laugh but also cry, is that

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Speaker 2: there was a prolonged period where Andresen Horowitz and many

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Speaker 2: venture capitalists invested in building nothing. They found these shell

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Speaker 2: companies that they then filled full of venture dollars. In exchange,

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Speaker 2: they got a bunch of tokens that they were allowed

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Speaker 2: to dump onto the markets. They conned so many people.

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Speaker 2: They invested in Yuga Labs, who makes the board ape

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Speaker 2: Yacht Club.

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Speaker 1: Ah, that one's gonna pay off. That investment's gonna pay off.

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Speaker 1: I've seen their their bored ape world of Warcraft thing

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Speaker 1: that they believe it's going to be the future of

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Speaker 1: social networking or whatever.

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Speaker 2: And this is the thing. These companies never really built anything.

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Speaker 2: They invested. They got the early ape coin. I really

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Speaker 2: hate saying this stuff out loud, very annoying. Yeah, they've

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Speaker 2: got the ape coins and they were able to profit

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Speaker 2: off of that, and then they have the temerity to

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Speaker 2: say Christison went on hard Fork the New York Times

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Speaker 2: podcast and said, oh, yeah, we don't invest in anyone

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Speaker 2: who has their own tokens. It's just they're just fucking liars.

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Speaker 2: They're just liars lying to us.

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Speaker 1: All I do kind of wonder that one of the

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Speaker 1: things that makes me makes me believe some sort of

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Speaker 1: like universal spirit guiding reality, is that like Peter Jennings

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Speaker 1: had to die when he did, we simply couldn't have

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Speaker 1: had a world in which Peter Jennings was explaining ape

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Speaker 1: coin to people over the television like that. That wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have been allowed. Like that's simply unimaginable.

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Speaker 2: And it's just having to sit there here and say, yeah,

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Speaker 2: ape ape coin, that's how they made them money. Ape chain,

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definity Ic. It's these things that sucked. But

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Speaker 2: also as funny as this is, this was a prolonged

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Speaker 2: period when nothing was created other than money for already

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Speaker 2: rich guys. The people that were disadvantaged by dumping these

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Speaker 2: tokens were regular investors who, in twenty twenty one to

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty two believe that the crypto market was going

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Speaker 2: to make them wildly rich and it didn't. Coinbase, who

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Speaker 2: andresen Horitz invested in, they helped millions of people lose

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Speaker 2: billions of dollars because they did a Super Bowl commercial

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Speaker 2: in February twenty twenty two, which eventually led Well, I

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Speaker 2: think if you invested on that day, if you waited

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Speaker 2: to sell any later than March, you would have lost

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Speaker 2: your shirt. You would have just been at a loss. However,

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Speaker 2: if you'd wait it, it's now back up to sixty

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Speaker 2: seven thousand, So who the fuck knows either way.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: The big thing with the crypto craze was that it

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Speaker 2: was the most pornographic version of the problem of venture

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Speaker 2: capital today in that it was entirely symbolic value. It was, oh,

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Speaker 2: a decentralized computer, what a novel idea? Are we building it?

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Speaker 2: Who knows? But we have a token today. Yay, let's

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Speaker 2: make some money. And in twenty twenty two, crypto startups

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Speaker 2: raise thirty three billion dollars a venture capital, which is

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Speaker 2: more than ten percent of the two hundred and forty

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Speaker 2: one billion dollars that was invested in that entire year. Jeezuz,

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Speaker 2: And none of them have made a real product. Yuga Labs.

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Speaker 2: You laugh at the bored Apoch Club, but that is

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Speaker 2: actually one of the few real products that actually launch.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they do seem to be making a video game.

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Speaker 1: It looks like shit, but it does seem to be

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Speaker 1: a video game.

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Speaker 2: And I think that it's a symptom of a much

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Speaker 2: larger problem, both in that they're not investing to actually

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Speaker 2: make cool tech happen, but they're just trying to make

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Speaker 2: as much money in the most lazy way possible. But

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Speaker 2: I also think there's another problem. I don't think these

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Speaker 2: freaks actually know what good looks like anymore. And nowhere

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Speaker 2: else is that more obvious than Adam goddamn Newman. Yeah, baby,

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Speaker 2: we love him so Adam Newman. For those of you

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Speaker 2: who don't know round, a company called we Work. We

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Speaker 2: Work's business model was that they would buy or lease

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Speaker 2: a building and they would sub lease it to people,

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Speaker 2: allowing them to run their company out of it or

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Speaker 2: use a coworking space. Theoretically a good idea until you

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Speaker 2: looked at the financials, where it constantly bled money almost

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Speaker 2: immediately because real estate is a terrible investment. Yeah, and

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Speaker 2: also it was way too cheap. It was way too

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Speaker 2: cheap from the very beginning, so they were always operating

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Speaker 2: a loss.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's he Newman. The thing that's interesting about

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Speaker 1: him because he and Elizabeth Holmes were kind of having

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Speaker 1: their glory days around the same time, and they're both

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Speaker 1: very similar figures. Newman was much smarter because he chose

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Speaker 1: he picked a field where like no one was going

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Speaker 1: to vengefully come after him for fucking up, because everyone

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Speaker 1: in real estates some kind of con artist at that

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Speaker 1: scale as opposed to trying to get into like blood science.

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Speaker 2: But what's great about it is he turned a company

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Speaker 2: that was at one point worth forty seven billion dollars

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Speaker 2: into one worth ten point sixty five million dollars, and

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Speaker 2: then the company died, it went into Chapter eleven bankruptcy.

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Speaker 1: We all love it.

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Speaker 2: And right now those cleaning up the mess, if we work,

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Speaker 2: are just desperately trying to renegotiate its debts and just

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00:18:59,480 --> 00:19:02,280
Speaker 2: being like his company. I'm sorry I can't pay you

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Speaker 2: due to this business model which I have inherited. At

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Speaker 2: one point we work traded at five hundred or something

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Speaker 2: dollars a share, and I believe right now it's like

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Speaker 2: zero point zero five cents. See the thing thing now,

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Speaker 2: there's been a show about we work with Jared Lito

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Speaker 2: in it of Morebius fame, and this is one of

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Speaker 2: the more legendary startups.

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Speaker 1: And I tend to I choose to believe by the

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Speaker 1: way that it is within the Morbius cannon, that this

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Speaker 1: is what he's doing when his character is not unshowered

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Speaker 1: in a hoodie fighting crime.

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Speaker 2: Fighting Matt Smith from Doctor Who. So as we've established

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Speaker 2: Adam Newman aka Morbius, he you'd think, Okay, this guy

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Speaker 2: famously TV show about how bad he was at business,

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Speaker 2: this guy'd be run out of town.

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Speaker 3: Right wrong.

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Speaker 2: Adam Newman managed to raise in August twenty twenty two

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Speaker 2: three hundred and fifty million dollars for his new co

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Speaker 2: company Flow Great.

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Speaker 1: I love how people learn lessons.

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Speaker 2: And what's great about Flow is when you go and

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Speaker 2: look about actually what it is, no one can really

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00:20:10,160 --> 00:20:12,480
Speaker 2: tell you. It appears to be a rent to own

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Speaker 2: apartment company, but it isn't obvious what the actual difference

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Speaker 2: is between it and I don't know what BlackRock's been

385
00:20:19,920 --> 00:20:23,240
Speaker 2: doing for years, what the asset management firms have been doing. Nevertheless,

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Speaker 2: Mark Andresen absolutely busted. Is not everywhere to get three

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00:20:27,359 --> 00:20:30,919
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million dollars into this company. They claim

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Speaker 2: that there will be community oriented features and that there

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Speaker 2: will be something special about being involved in Flow. Now

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Speaker 2: you think that I'm just being vague. It's been like

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Speaker 2: a year and a half since this company went out

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Speaker 2: and there's really nothing that like out there for it.

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Speaker 2: And I think it's because Adam Newman just was someone

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Speaker 2: that Mark Andreson remembered.

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Speaker 3: I'm not.

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Speaker 2: I still cannot work out why this happened. He's always

397
00:20:54,880 --> 00:20:57,479
Speaker 2: been full of shit. Just to be clear, because there

398
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Speaker 2: was this, Andrews and Horowitz actually really used to video

399
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Speaker 2: an interview with Adam Newman. He was describing home ownership

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Speaker 2: and why home ownership was very special. He was saying,

401
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Speaker 2: it's the difference between cooling your own building supert to

402
00:21:11,440 --> 00:21:14,359
Speaker 2: unclogged the toilet or unclogging it yourself. And he was

403
00:21:14,359 --> 00:21:16,919
Speaker 2: saying that doing so and I quote, shifts your thinking

404
00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:20,080
Speaker 2: from being transactional to actually being part of a community

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Speaker 2: and feeling like you own something, but you.

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Speaker 1: Don't want them to own anything. You just want them

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Speaker 1: to have to do shit that the landlord is supposed

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Speaker 1: to do.

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Speaker 2: But also, if I have to unclog my shitter, I'm

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Speaker 2: not sitting there being like yeah, damn, I love the community.

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Speaker 1: I'm like, what the hell right, Well, it's also like

412
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Speaker 1: it's it's fucked up because like one of the I

413
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Speaker 1: mean this is actually unclogging your toilet is always on

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00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:47,719
Speaker 1: the person using the toilet. That's not really saying that

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00:21:47,720 --> 00:21:50,960
Speaker 1: that that involves changes based on whether or not you're

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Speaker 1: the landlord. But one of like the bit like renting.

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Speaker 1: A lot of things that suck about renting, namely the

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Speaker 1: fact that like it keeps getting more and more expensive.

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Speaker 1: But one of the if it's of renting is that

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Speaker 1: if something breaks, you're supposed to just be able to

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Speaker 1: call the owner and they have to fix it. It's

422
00:22:05,520 --> 00:22:08,439
Speaker 1: not on you if you're fucking ac breaks, it's on

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Speaker 1: them to make it work. And he's saying that like, no,

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Speaker 1: if you if you are responsible for fixing things but

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00:22:14,600 --> 00:22:17,399
Speaker 1: have absolutely no ownership of them, it's fine because that

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Speaker 1: makes you part of a community, and that's that's nuts.

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Speaker 2: But also that just to be clear, that quote is

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Speaker 2: from an interview he gave at Andrew's and Horowitz at

429
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Speaker 2: his investor. Yeah, if I was watching that as an investor,

430
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Speaker 2: unless I was completely disconnected from humanity, I'd be like,

431
00:22:33,560 --> 00:22:36,520
Speaker 2: this guy's never unclogged the toilet, this guy's never on

432
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Speaker 2: this guy's never done home maintenance. Also, why would you

433
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Speaker 2: call your super to unclog your toilet just just have

434
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Speaker 2: a plunger unless Yeah, they nearly backed that bad boy up,

435
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Speaker 2: and I have.

436
00:22:47,160 --> 00:22:49,000
Speaker 1: To have done a lot more damage than that.

437
00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:53,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're literally shitting bricks in this case. But

438
00:22:53,119 --> 00:22:55,439
Speaker 2: I think it's more indicative of the fact that I

439
00:22:55,480 --> 00:22:57,960
Speaker 2: don't think Adam Newman has had a normal human experience

440
00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:00,640
Speaker 2: in quite some time, and I don't think Mark Andresen

441
00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:04,280
Speaker 2: has either, And yet he just got this insane amount

442
00:23:04,280 --> 00:23:07,360
Speaker 2: of money to address problems allegedly related to a thing

443
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:08,679
Speaker 2: he does not understand.

444
00:23:09,119 --> 00:23:10,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, love to see, which.

445
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 2: Is also something he's been proven to be bad at.

446
00:23:13,600 --> 00:23:18,120
Speaker 2: Adam Newman lost billions of dollars of soft Bank's money,

447
00:23:18,119 --> 00:23:20,520
Speaker 2: which is really funny when you think about it, and actually,

448
00:23:20,560 --> 00:23:22,840
Speaker 2: do you want to hear a fun scam. He took

449
00:23:22,880 --> 00:23:25,760
Speaker 2: a loan out on his stock at we Work and

450
00:23:25,800 --> 00:23:28,400
Speaker 2: he actually had to put his stock from we Work

451
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:32,440
Speaker 2: out to soft Bank, took real money from them and

452
00:23:32,760 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 2: leveraged his stock, and then soft Bank was like, hey,

453
00:23:35,520 --> 00:23:37,119
Speaker 2: if you don't pay this back, we're going to take

454
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:38,600
Speaker 2: your stock. And he was like, yeah, sure, fuck you,

455
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:42,239
Speaker 2: I'll just I'll like that stock's worth like thirty dollars. Now,

456
00:23:42,280 --> 00:23:44,199
Speaker 2: I'll just keep the real money and never repay ye

457
00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:47,720
Speaker 2: see it, bitch. But this is the thing. This is why,

458
00:23:48,560 --> 00:23:51,119
Speaker 2: And I think situations like this are where people are

459
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:53,920
Speaker 2: going to start really getting black pilled with the tech industry.

460
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 2: So I think that you see things like this happening

461
00:23:56,840 --> 00:24:00,560
Speaker 2: and you think, are they laughing at us? Yeah? Like,

462
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,040
Speaker 2: is this in a sane world? Adam Newman wouldn't see

463
00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:07,280
Speaker 2: a single dollar for the rest of his life. Yeah,

464
00:24:07,320 --> 00:24:10,959
Speaker 2: he got three hundred and fifty million goddamn dollars. It

465
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:13,800
Speaker 2: was immediately a billion dollar company before it done anything.

466
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:16,280
Speaker 2: And all they have to show for it is a

467
00:24:16,320 --> 00:24:20,400
Speaker 2: six hundred and thirty nine unit apartment building for Lauderdale.

468
00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:24,320
Speaker 1: Yeah. And when you see a guy with the record

469
00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:27,719
Speaker 1: that Newman has get a company valued at that. What

470
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:31,640
Speaker 1: that means is that investors investors are not are are

471
00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:34,120
Speaker 1: not valuing it that much because they think it will

472
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:37,120
Speaker 1: actually make that much money. They're valuing it that high

473
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:39,640
Speaker 1: because they think this guy is good at spin enough

474
00:24:39,680 --> 00:24:42,359
Speaker 1: that we'll be able to flip this shit and get

475
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:45,040
Speaker 1: some money out of it before the company collapses. Right,

476
00:24:45,400 --> 00:24:47,880
Speaker 1: we can do an IPO, our shares will be worth money,

477
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:50,159
Speaker 1: and then we cash the fuck out. That's what they're seeing,

478
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:52,480
Speaker 1: and they may be right. It may wind up being

479
00:24:52,560 --> 00:24:55,760
Speaker 1: it like we work made some people a lot of money.

480
00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:59,720
Speaker 2: But that's the thing. I actually wonder if that system

481
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 2: work anymore. Yeah, I don't know when whether they're going

482
00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 2: to be able to get liquidity on this, because real

483
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,919
Speaker 2: estate is a fairly well it can be a variable asset,

484
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:12,959
Speaker 2: but it's also kind of an annoyingly real one. You

485
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:15,159
Speaker 2: can't really go to someone and be like, actually, this

486
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:18,240
Speaker 2: apartment building's worth fifty million dollars more because of the

487
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 2: future of innovation. No, No, it's a fucking apartment.

488
00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:22,040
Speaker 1: Yeah.

489
00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:26,240
Speaker 2: And I just think that Venger Capital has completely lost

490
00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 2: the plot and has lost its ability to say what

491
00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:31,679
Speaker 2: good is they just it's almost like there are some

492
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:35,200
Speaker 2: of them who are con artists feeding corn artists. Yeah,

493
00:25:35,240 --> 00:25:38,120
Speaker 2: and some of the largest investment arounds the last few

494
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:41,040
Speaker 2: years have just gone into systems like this, gone into

495
00:25:41,040 --> 00:25:43,880
Speaker 2: things that when you look at them, you're like this,

496
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:46,400
Speaker 2: this doesn't need this much money. Why are you doing this?

497
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:49,439
Speaker 2: And I think it's because they just are gamblers. I

498
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:51,920
Speaker 2: just think they're gambling, and they're gambling based on an

499
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 2: increasingly small amount of information because it's been twenty years

500
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:58,119
Speaker 2: since they've done something. No there was a company called Noom,

501
00:25:58,200 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 2: which was a weight loss app that connected with coaches

502
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 2: and various things. They raised five hundred and forty million

503
00:26:03,560 --> 00:26:08,120
Speaker 2: dollars in twenty twenty two. Not sustainable and not profitable either.

504
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:11,119
Speaker 2: But also the entire weight loss industry is worth about

505
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:15,919
Speaker 2: four billion dollars, So you're saying they are worth that much.

506
00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:19,359
Speaker 1: Of an eighth of the whole industry. Yeah, right, And

507
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 1: if I'm mathing right now, yeah.

508
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:22,960
Speaker 2: I was also failing to do the math in real

509
00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:25,919
Speaker 2: time there, but oh whatever, people know, people know how

510
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:28,280
Speaker 2: dumn math good. Clubhouse is one of my favorites that

511
00:26:28,320 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if you remember Clubhouse. It was this

512
00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:34,960
Speaker 2: audio app that grew during the pandemic, and everyone said

513
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 2: this is the future, and what it was was it

514
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:40,439
Speaker 2: would be it's basically Twitter spaces. It's what we know

515
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:43,080
Speaker 2: as Twitter Space is now a live audio room where

516
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 2: you can go in and have, in this case, extremely

517
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 2: vacuous tech conversations. It was big during the pandemic because

518
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:51,600
Speaker 2: everyone was at home and you have people on Mark

519
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:54,120
Speaker 2: Andrews and who of course had invested, going on there

520
00:26:54,119 --> 00:26:56,680
Speaker 2: and saying stuff like, oh, the future of technology is

521
00:26:56,720 --> 00:27:00,199
Speaker 2: the future and I've won. Wow, Mark, thank you. And

522
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 2: there was this weird period where almost every other almost

523
00:27:03,560 --> 00:27:05,639
Speaker 2: every week, there was some kind of valuation story that

524
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:08,239
Speaker 2: would quote unquote league and it would be like, oh,

525
00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:10,399
Speaker 2: it's worth two billion dollars. Oh, it's worth four billion

526
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 2: dollars now. And then they started disappearing and nothing's really happening,

527
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:18,399
Speaker 2: and as people started leaving their houses again after the

528
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:22,119
Speaker 2: lockdowns ended, Clubhouse just kind of faded to black. The

529
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:24,600
Speaker 2: thing that pissed me off about that was the amount

530
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:27,720
Speaker 2: of stories in major media outlets claiming that Clubhouse was

531
00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:31,679
Speaker 2: the future, the future specifically of radio, which is a

532
00:27:31,720 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 2: twelve billion dollar industry. Totally yeah, that constantly has trouble

533
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:40,680
Speaker 2: making money, not that we know anything about that, but.

534
00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 1: I mean also, you know, the fun thing about that

535
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 1: to me is that, like we know really well what

536
00:27:48,720 --> 00:27:51,920
Speaker 1: like the issues that radio has with making money are

537
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:55,400
Speaker 1: like due in part to you know, ways in which

538
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:58,639
Speaker 1: advertising and stuff has changed, but like pretty durably, the

539
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:02,240
Speaker 1: things that people want out of radio are like people

540
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:08,879
Speaker 1: they like talking about things they're interested in. Right, initially

541
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 1: that was like people DJs, they liked talking about the

542
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:15,680
Speaker 1: cool music. But it's expanded now beyond that. But it's

543
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: never just been like random unscripted conversations between people who

544
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 1: have mics of varying quality. Like that's not particularly a

545
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: thing that folks have ever expressed a desire for. And

546
00:28:29,800 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 1: it's weird to me that anyone thought that like Clubhouse

547
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:35,160
Speaker 1: was going to be interesting beyond a very specific subset

548
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:38,360
Speaker 1: of people that wanted to suck these these people's proverbial dicks.

549
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 2: And it felt like a corn in real time as well,

550
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 2: because they were pushing Andrew S Norwittz was pushing every

551
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 2: partner they could to use it. They were paying celebrities

552
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 2: to go on there, they were getting anyone they could

553
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 2: to get on the platform, and they were very clearly

554
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 2: behind the scenes trying to get someone to buy it.

555
00:28:55,880 --> 00:29:00,840
Speaker 2: And then Twitter just built Twitter spaces that everyone's like, oh,

556
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:03,800
Speaker 2: we can just use this on a network that we use. Clubhouse, now,

557
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 2: by the way, is really funny. It's ninety percent scams

558
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 2: or ninety percent people doing manifestation stuff. It's amazing. But

559
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:13,600
Speaker 2: there was a brief period where the venture capital elite

560
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:16,800
Speaker 2: had spread around enough journalists and enough people on Twitter

561
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:19,560
Speaker 2: that they truly believed this was the future. But if

562
00:29:19,600 --> 00:29:22,280
Speaker 2: you sat there and really thought about it, there was

563
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 2: never a point where it could make money. Like you said,

564
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:29,719
Speaker 2: unscripted stuff, unscripted stuff's difficult. It's very difficult. Even when

565
00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 2: you have great, really great chemistry with someone, you can

566
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:35,760
Speaker 2: trip over stuff as I just did. There are numerous

567
00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:38,280
Speaker 2: things that can go wrong. And let's just be honest.

568
00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 2: None of these tech people were particularly eloquent to begin with.

569
00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 2: Yet based on everyone's conversations, everyone's saying, this is the future,

570
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 2: this is how what's our clubhouse strategy? What are we

571
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:51,680
Speaker 2: going to do on Clubhouse? Nothing? Nothing, because you're so boring.

572
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:54,160
Speaker 2: But it raised so much money. I think it raised

573
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:58,360
Speaker 2: over a billion. It was ridiculous. And yet this is

574
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 2: what venture has become, pumping up these very shitty businesses,

575
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:07,880
Speaker 2: these non entities, these features rather than products, and the

576
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:10,280
Speaker 2: result is that the money is not going to actually

577
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:13,640
Speaker 2: innovative things. And I get it. The venture takes risks.

578
00:30:13,920 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 2: The whole point of venture capital is it's risky money.

579
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 2: That's why you buy a half percent or a percent

580
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 2: of a company for I don't know, a million dollars

581
00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:24,320
Speaker 2: just choosing random numbers. There there is a risk to air,

582
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 2: and capital is required to get a company off the ground.

583
00:30:27,960 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 2: But the massive, massive amounts of money going into these

584
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:34,240
Speaker 2: non entities, into these, in the case of Flow Adam

585
00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 2: Newman's thing, very boring remakes of already boring and kind

586
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:43,200
Speaker 2: of not profitable businesses to begin with. Yeah, the result

587
00:30:43,280 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 2: is that you get a venture capital industry that makes

588
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 2: startups require their existence. You get companies that cannot function

589
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:55,000
Speaker 2: without venture capital. You get lossy companies like Uber who

590
00:30:55,080 --> 00:30:58,560
Speaker 2: get bigger and bigger without ever finding a business model

591
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:02,440
Speaker 2: because venture capital keeps them alive until they've completed the

592
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:04,800
Speaker 2: dance that less than go public or gets sold to

593
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 2: someone else. And companies like Uber are actually a great

594
00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 2: example they're taking public and they get these massive windfors

595
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:15,360
Speaker 2: from vcs, yet they immediately find themselves in this horrible

596
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 2: position where they have to start dancing for the real

597
00:31:17,560 --> 00:31:21,600
Speaker 2: public markets. That's why Uber has become my chilge is

598
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 2: get an Uber in some markets and it's much more expensive,

599
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 2: yet the drivers are making less money. It's because we're

600
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 2: in a situation where Uber now has to become a

601
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:31,760
Speaker 2: growth that all costs startup, rather than just a venture

602
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:36,920
Speaker 2: backed welfare recipient. And it's just it's a deeply depressing

603
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 2: time because people making real companies, people making new ideas,

604
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 2: people young people in the tech space are now going

605
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:48,479
Speaker 2: into this and seeing that the people getting money are

606
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 2: just people that look like other people that have made

607
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 2: money before, that have ideas that aren't even particularly good,

608
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:56,960
Speaker 2: but they sound like something you can flog. The amount

609
00:31:57,000 --> 00:31:59,560
Speaker 2: of money going to AI right now for companies that

610
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:02,640
Speaker 2: have no business model at all, let alone a path

611
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:05,120
Speaker 2: to revenue, they just don't. They just trying to grow

612
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:08,360
Speaker 2: and grow and grow. It's just a deeply depressing time.

613
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 2: VCS they put I think forty one billion dollars into

614
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:17,800
Speaker 2: crypto between Jerry twenty one and twenty twenty two, and

615
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 2: that was all without Crypto ever having done anything. It's

616
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:22,600
Speaker 2: what twenty twenty four now, like I just had to

617
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 2: ask that, and Crypto is still not doing anything. There's

618
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 2: still nothing. There's still bitcoins worth sixty seven thousand dollars

619
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 2: and there's still no crypto use case. The Metaverse, which

620
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:37,720
Speaker 2: you would by now have heard an episode about, did

621
00:32:37,760 --> 00:32:41,240
Speaker 2: absolutely nothing other than rebrand something we'd had for upwards

622
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:43,840
Speaker 2: of fifteen years, and they raised one hundred and twenty

623
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 2: billion dollars in twenty twenty two. These concepts are what

624
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:52,479
Speaker 2: are getting money. Innovation isn't Innovation is not enough to

625
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,520
Speaker 2: get you investment these days, and venture capitalists no, the

626
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 2: thing that you want to do to a VC is

627
00:32:57,920 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 2: find a way to get them in on a scam

628
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:03,960
Speaker 2: that you invented. And that's not going to help this world.

629
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 2: It's going to destroy the tech ecosystem if we're not

630
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,959
Speaker 2: care for. And quite honestly, I have no idea what

631
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 2: changes the tide on this other than a major startup dying.

632
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 2: So when right in the rot economy, originally my mate

633
00:33:26,040 --> 00:33:28,160
Speaker 2: Casey and I were talking about fire and how growth

634
00:33:28,240 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 2: is like a fire if you build a nice, sustainable fire.

635
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 2: It will keep you warm, cook your food, sustain your life.

636
00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 2: But if the only thing you care about is how

637
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:38,920
Speaker 2: big your fire is, then all it's going to do

638
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:41,479
Speaker 2: is set fire to everything around it, and it's going

639
00:33:41,520 --> 00:33:44,520
Speaker 2: to require so much more to keep it burning. Eventually

640
00:33:44,520 --> 00:33:47,600
Speaker 2: you'll have nothing left. But if you desperately desire that fire,

641
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 2: you'll constantly have to find new things to burn, no

642
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:54,000
Speaker 2: matter what the cost is. And that's kind of where

643
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:57,040
Speaker 2: the markets are at this point. We've kind of turned

644
00:33:57,040 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 2: the private and public markets over to arsonists. We've created

645
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 2: the conditions where we celebrate people like Marc Andresen for

646
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:08,880
Speaker 2: making these big investments, these big bets, these big nasty

647
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 2: companies that don't do anything, or the even bigger firms

648
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:14,879
Speaker 2: like Google and Meta who were just turning against their

649
00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:18,000
Speaker 2: users and rightly turning against the people, the tens of

650
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:21,880
Speaker 2: thousands of people that they regularly fire. Venture capital and

651
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:25,840
Speaker 2: the public markets are no longer rewarding good businesses or

652
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 2: good CEOs that run good sustainable companies. They're rewarding arsoness

653
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:33,240
Speaker 2: people that can steer the kind of growth that raises

654
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 2: the value of an asset, even if that value isn't

655
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:40,280
Speaker 2: even attached to the value it provides to humanity. Elon

656
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 2: Must's success, everything he's done with Tesla, didn't come from

657
00:34:44,400 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 2: his love of science or that he ended the monopoly

658
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:51,360
Speaker 2: of the internal combustion engine. It came from his ability

659
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:57,120
Speaker 2: to manipulate symbolic value, his hypeerman mentality. He worked out

660
00:34:57,160 --> 00:34:59,719
Speaker 2: in as early as twenty thirteen that anyone in the

661
00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 2: world in a media outlet would cover the fact that

662
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 2: he spoke about anything.

663
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:04,759
Speaker 1: Mm hm.

664
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:07,720
Speaker 2: He's made so much money for him, and people buying

665
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:11,640
Speaker 2: Tesla stock pretty much do lies in half truths. There's

666
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 2: always a good reason to buy Tesla for an idiot

667
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:17,879
Speaker 2: in the market because Elon Musk's always saying, oh yes, sir, now,

668
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:20,480
Speaker 2: Tesla's will now drive side to side. It doesn't matter

669
00:35:20,520 --> 00:35:23,160
Speaker 2: if it's true, doesn't matter if it never happens. Elon

670
00:35:23,239 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 2: Musk promised autopilot for years and years and years until

671
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:28,920
Speaker 2: it actually arrived, and then it would arrive in these

672
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:31,440
Speaker 2: little bits and chunks, and then it started killing people.

673
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 2: Tesla isn't a good company. It's a good stock to buy,

674
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 2: and that is a problem. That is where we are

675
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:42,880
Speaker 2: right now with the public markets and with the private markets.

676
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:46,359
Speaker 2: We're not far behind. So Google summed up a shy.

677
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 2: He hasn't paid two hundred odd million dollars a year

678
00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:52,640
Speaker 2: because he's a good CEO. Google's destroyed Search. We've been

679
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:56,879
Speaker 2: over that at nauseum, and it sucks. You'd think that

680
00:35:56,920 --> 00:36:01,200
Speaker 2: someone who destroyed the most beloved tech used by billions

681
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:03,960
Speaker 2: of people, that has changed people's lives and will continue

682
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:07,799
Speaker 2: to do so. This is empirical fact, the damage he

683
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:10,320
Speaker 2: has done to the tech ecosystem and his core product,

684
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 2: yet he's rewarded. He's paid this obscene amount of money.

685
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:17,720
Speaker 2: The fact that Google's core product is getting worse doesn't

686
00:36:17,719 --> 00:36:21,320
Speaker 2: matter at all, because Bishai is paid because he finds

687
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:24,400
Speaker 2: new innovative ways to increase the growth of the company,

688
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 2: even if doing so makes the product suck. And the

689
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 2: consequences are that these companies will continue to invest in

690
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 2: things that grow the overall revenue of the company or

691
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 2: their market share over everything else. They will mass hire,

692
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:41,319
Speaker 2: they will mass fire, and they'll do so because there

693
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:44,799
Speaker 2: are no consequences from the market. They don't care. All

694
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 2: they want to know is that the company will continue growing.

695
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:51,440
Speaker 2: Venture capitalists are just as bad. They don't mind as

696
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 2: long as you have enough money to keep going to

697
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:56,600
Speaker 2: the next funding round. As long as you can keep

698
00:36:56,760 --> 00:36:59,799
Speaker 2: growing this symbolic value. It doesn't matter if you hire

699
00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 2: and fire people around them. It doesn't matter if your

700
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:05,279
Speaker 2: product's kind of won key, as long as it's good

701
00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 2: enough to flog to someone else. Look at the AI industry,

702
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 2: Look how bad chat GBT is at certain things, Look

703
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:15,520
Speaker 2: at how bad clawed anthropics one is. Doesn't really matter

704
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:18,480
Speaker 2: because AI is the future. We can make money off

705
00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:21,960
Speaker 2: of that at some point. And I think that this

706
00:37:22,200 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 2: is really the problem, and it's the thing that unites

707
00:37:24,600 --> 00:37:27,759
Speaker 2: the private and the public markets. We're not building things

708
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 2: for humans anymore. We're building things for humans that invest money.

709
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:36,360
Speaker 2: We're building symbolic capital. And when you do that, you

710
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:40,160
Speaker 2: will strangle innovation, and you'll do it at scale. You

711
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 2: will build tech for nobody. You will build tech that

712
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:46,239
Speaker 2: sucks and doesn't do things and burns money, and in

713
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:50,440
Speaker 2: the case of AI, probably rainforests. And the result is

714
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:54,040
Speaker 2: just a shitty or worse world. Until we see a

715
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:57,719
Speaker 2: seismic shift in how investors treat the companies they invest in,

716
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:00,560
Speaker 2: both private and public. This cycle is going to continue,

717
00:38:00,600 --> 00:38:03,960
Speaker 2: and it's going to make us dumber. I guarantee you

718
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:06,440
Speaker 2: that we're going to see every single one of the

719
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 2: companies that you've recently seen lay off thousands of people

720
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:12,160
Speaker 2: do mass hiring in a year or two. They don't care.

721
00:38:12,440 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 2: They're not punished for this. The labor markets in America

722
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 2: don't punish them, the governments don't punish them. They will

723
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:21,640
Speaker 2: keep fucking with human capital as much as they can

724
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:24,879
Speaker 2: because they don't won't get punished for it. No one's

725
00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:28,320
Speaker 2: going to hold it against any startup that's done massive layoffs,

726
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 2: even if the CEOs are incredibly well paid and ran

727
00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 2: the company into the ground. Companies aren't structured anymore to

728
00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 2: evaluate whether a business is sustainable or good or make

729
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 2: something useful. The only thing that they're interested in is

730
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 2: making something they can flog.

731
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: Yeah.

732
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:44,440
Speaker 2: Like.

733
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:48,080
Speaker 1: One of the important things to understand about how all

734
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:52,439
Speaker 1: of this fits together is that the actual business from

735
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 1: most of these tech guys has very little, if not nothing,

736
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:59,080
Speaker 1: to do with producing a product or getting people to

737
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 1: adopt a product, having any kind of impact on the

738
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:06,360
Speaker 1: way people actually use technology. The actual business is in

739
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:11,360
Speaker 1: conning other people to think that a business has a value, right, Yeah,

740
00:39:11,400 --> 00:39:13,840
Speaker 1: Like that that's become the game which is you know,

741
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:16,680
Speaker 1: we're doing our episodes on Steve Jobs these next two weeks.

742
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:18,799
Speaker 1: A lot of bad things will have to say about him.

743
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:21,279
Speaker 1: But he actually did care about, like making a thing

744
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 1: and convincing a lot of people to use that thing,

745
00:39:24,560 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: and he was good at that. And it's become so

746
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:32,520
Speaker 1: abstracted and so much about just the bezel, just about

747
00:39:32,600 --> 00:39:35,600
Speaker 1: tricking people so that you can make money before everyone

748
00:39:35,719 --> 00:39:39,759
Speaker 1: realizes that it's a fucking god. I don't think it's

749
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:42,239
Speaker 1: I think it's probably bad for society that that's the

750
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:43,360
Speaker 1: best way to make money.

751
00:39:44,160 --> 00:39:47,440
Speaker 2: And I think that you're exactly right. The way we

752
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:50,319
Speaker 2: look at companies, the way we value businesses, the way

753
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:53,600
Speaker 2: we value startups, public companies, it doesn't really matter, is

754
00:39:53,680 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 2: just fundamentally broken. It's creating these really nasty cycles where

755
00:39:58,600 --> 00:40:02,280
Speaker 2: humans are hired and fired, scale, where companies make products

756
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:05,600
Speaker 2: worse so that we use them more. Things become more

757
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:09,040
Speaker 2: difficult to enrich someone and make our lives worse. And

758
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:12,240
Speaker 2: it really is. It goes further than tech as well.

759
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:15,600
Speaker 2: It's at the center of everything. Look, why are so

760
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:18,480
Speaker 2: many bosses mad about you not coming back to the office.

761
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:21,359
Speaker 2: It's because they bought a bunch of real estate that

762
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 2: they never needed or they've leased it, I guess. And

763
00:40:24,200 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 2: then they were like, well, I don't do any real work.

764
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 2: And I think what business looks like is when someone's

765
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:32,560
Speaker 2: at an office. Yeah, And it's because we don't really

766
00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 2: as a society understand what executives do, because we've never asked,

767
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:40,960
Speaker 2: We've never really sat and thought, why does an executive

768
00:40:40,960 --> 00:40:43,719
Speaker 2: get paid so much more than others? What is it

769
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:46,600
Speaker 2: that they do? And I think the pandemic and the

770
00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:50,359
Speaker 2: mass remote work we saw really highlighted that. I think

771
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:53,319
Speaker 2: it really showed everyone exactly how big that con was.

772
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 2: But I think that I think that we're on the

773
00:40:57,480 --> 00:40:59,640
Speaker 2: verge of an awakening to this kind of thing. I

774
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:02,839
Speaker 2: think as the labor market becomes so much worse, as

775
00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:05,640
Speaker 2: so many game studios, for example, lay off so many people,

776
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:08,799
Speaker 2: they're going to start realizing the executives are making all

777
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 2: the money while everyone does all the work, and none

778
00:41:11,080 --> 00:41:13,439
Speaker 2: of these people are connected to the product, And we're

779
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:16,760
Speaker 2: going to keep building things for nobody other than investors

780
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 2: until we're at a point where we have entire business

781
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:25,640
Speaker 2: ecosystems building for nobody. Just look at the crypto industry

782
00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:30,359
Speaker 2: yea billions of dollars into Look at that. Look at

783
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:33,279
Speaker 2: the crypto industry. Look how big that con was. Look

784
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 2: how much money went into nothing, went into creating nothing.

785
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:41,000
Speaker 2: Because that's where we are as a society, that's where

786
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 2: innovation is today. In a real ecosystem, in a real

787
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 2: tech ecosystem, the heads of the industry wouldn't be trying

788
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:50,759
Speaker 2: to find ways to crow bot ai or crypto or

789
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:53,160
Speaker 2: metaverse into it because the market's like it. They would

790
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:55,759
Speaker 2: be saying, I'm not sure that this is a thing,

791
00:41:56,120 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 2: let alone a business model. None of these companies get

792
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:03,799
Speaker 2: bled for these bad decisions, and as long as they don't,

793
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:06,920
Speaker 2: they're going to keep making them. And I think it's

794
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:08,719
Speaker 2: going to and I have a wider theory I have

795
00:42:08,840 --> 00:42:11,040
Speaker 2: that it's going to take one of the major tech

796
00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:14,680
Speaker 2: firms dying to change something, and I think it's possible.

797
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 2: I think Facebook is, weirdly enough, the one that I

798
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:20,360
Speaker 2: would call first, just because the ad models die. But

799
00:42:20,520 --> 00:42:23,000
Speaker 2: until that happens, we're just going to keep having these

800
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:27,479
Speaker 2: cycles where the markets don't blame anyone for anything other

801
00:42:27,520 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 2: than the consumer. The consumer is made to almost apologize

802
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:34,400
Speaker 2: to the vendor. It really sickens me. I think that

803
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 2: this is really what this is the joke offying in

804
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 2: real time that I get because I've been in the

805
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:41,440
Speaker 2: tech industry since two thousand and eight, and I've been

806
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:43,960
Speaker 2: right about games since like two thousand and four. So

807
00:42:44,040 --> 00:42:48,319
Speaker 2: I've seen tech as a blob go from something that was, oh,

808
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:51,080
Speaker 2: you have nerdsy like tech, and people use laptops, to

809
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:53,680
Speaker 2: everyone has a phone, to everyone is on some level

810
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:56,439
Speaker 2: connected to the tech industry. Now it's impossible to remove

811
00:42:56,480 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 2: from our lives. But now I look around and the

812
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:04,160
Speaker 2: things that are being created and the things that are

813
00:43:04,200 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 2: being hyped up, they're not for people anymore. Yeah, and

814
00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:13,560
Speaker 2: then the actions of the CEOs don't seem to actually

815
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:17,520
Speaker 2: mesh with reality. Why did nobody get fired for over

816
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:20,760
Speaker 2: hiring In twenty twenty two, so many companies one hundreds

817
00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:23,120
Speaker 2: of thousands of tech workers were laid off. How did

818
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:28,000
Speaker 2: nobody get fired for just hoarding human capital? How did

819
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:29,799
Speaker 2: nobody get fired for that?

820
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:31,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, or for like I mean, if you want to

821
00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:33,160
Speaker 1: see it, for the way that these people. How did

822
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:36,800
Speaker 1: nobody get fired for wasting tens of millions, hundreds of millions,

823
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 1: billions of dollars in stockholders' money, right, Like, stuff that

824
00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:45,680
Speaker 1: should have gone the way that they see things out

825
00:43:45,719 --> 00:43:48,800
Speaker 1: in dividend payments was instead spent on people the company

826
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:50,879
Speaker 1: apparently didn't need. How does no one lose their job

827
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:53,080
Speaker 1: over that? If that's the way you're looking at things,

828
00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:54,880
Speaker 1: that seems like the real problem.

829
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 2: And the amount of layoffs that happened and the amount

830
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 2: of well, I think it was Google spent a billion

831
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:05,920
Speaker 2: two billion on Severance alone. Yeah, how did sun Dar

832
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:08,040
Speaker 2: Pashai not get fired for that? Why did he get

833
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 2: so much money? And I hate to say, I think

834
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:12,479
Speaker 2: the answer is people are not people in the eyes

835
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:14,040
Speaker 2: of the markets. They don't give a shit. It's just

836
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:16,680
Speaker 2: a fuel. This is just the cost of fuel. This

837
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:20,680
Speaker 2: is like oil to them, except there are sometimes annoying

838
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:22,960
Speaker 2: laws that stop me getting rid of the oil quite

839
00:44:22,960 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 2: as fast. And I think what the tech industry really

840
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 2: needs to realize is nothing lasts forever. Nothing lasts forever,

841
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:35,879
Speaker 2: and nothing grows forever other than a cancer. And at

842
00:44:35,920 --> 00:44:38,920
Speaker 2: some point, this whole growth of all costs economy is

843
00:44:38,920 --> 00:44:41,160
Speaker 2: working pretty well for now, but at some point the

844
00:44:41,200 --> 00:44:45,200
Speaker 2: markets will turn on them, because at some point someone

845
00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:49,320
Speaker 2: has to notice, somebody who is investing has to notice, Wait,

846
00:44:51,040 --> 00:44:54,320
Speaker 2: are these actually good companies or are they just growing

847
00:44:54,480 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 2: and then contracting, and then growing and contracting and just

848
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:02,680
Speaker 2: never really making anything within the pro It's just deeply worrying.

849
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:06,239
Speaker 2: I actually worry about the health of the tech ecosystem

850
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 2: long term if we keep pursuing this. We have private

851
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:13,160
Speaker 2: companies that are building things to sell to large companies,

852
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 2: and large companies that are building things to market their

853
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:19,560
Speaker 2: own stock to investors, and at some point a consumer

854
00:45:19,600 --> 00:45:24,680
Speaker 2: gets served somewhere within that equation, but nowhere near to

855
00:45:24,719 --> 00:45:29,160
Speaker 2: the level that it should dictate anyone's choices. A product

856
00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 2: may be profitable for a while, but there's a line

857
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 2: at which profitability comes at the cost of functionality, and

858
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 2: your company may simply not be able to grow anymore. Look,

859
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 2: a business that can't generate profit isn't a good business,

860
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:44,600
Speaker 2: and a business that can never generate a profit deserves

861
00:45:44,600 --> 00:45:48,520
Speaker 2: to die. These seem like obvious things, but they just

862
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:53,080
Speaker 2: don't apply to anyone other than regular people. And the

863
00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:58,080
Speaker 2: net result of this rotten economy, this broken thing that

864
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 2: rewards people that create symbolic capital, is that it kills innovation.

865
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:06,080
Speaker 2: If capital isn't invested in providing a good service by say,

866
00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:09,200
Speaker 2: a profitable business, it will never sustain things that are

867
00:46:09,239 --> 00:46:13,239
Speaker 2: actually useful to society. Companies aren't incentivized at the moment

868
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 2: to provide better services or improve lives outside of the

869
00:46:16,200 --> 00:46:18,720
Speaker 2: ways in which they can drain more and more blood

870
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:21,759
Speaker 2: and revenue and growth from customers, and right now the

871
00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:25,560
Speaker 2: street doesn't care. Just look at Facebook and Instagram, two

872
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:30,040
Speaker 2: beloved products that have now grown exceedingly profitable while not

873
00:46:30,280 --> 00:46:34,760
Speaker 2: providing the basic function that made them big. And frankly,

874
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 2: look if capital wishes to call labor and title as

875
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:41,920
Speaker 2: they have so many times, if they wish to treat

876
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:46,240
Speaker 2: people like shit. As it stands, the private and public

877
00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 2: markets are not working for you. They're not building things

878
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:53,640
Speaker 2: for you. They're not building things for anyone. Google, as

879
00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:57,120
Speaker 2: it stands, is forcing Gemini, their generator of AI, into

880
00:46:57,160 --> 00:46:59,800
Speaker 2: every corner of their company, not because it's going to

881
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 2: make your life better, but because it's going to make

882
00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:03,359
Speaker 2: them seem more futuristic.

883
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: YEP.

884
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:07,960
Speaker 2: As long as private businesses are funded by venture capitalists

885
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:11,120
Speaker 2: that are not interested in funding innovation and just want

886
00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:14,280
Speaker 2: to find more ways to flog money to larger entities,

887
00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:16,359
Speaker 2: we're not going to see a better world. We're not

888
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:19,239
Speaker 2: going to see cooler tech things. We're going to get

889
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:23,320
Speaker 2: increasingly more expensive and convoluted versions of things we're already

890
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:27,239
Speaker 2: paying for. I hope things can change, I really do,

891
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 2: but with the current crop of venture capitalists, I'm not

892
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:35,640
Speaker 2: holding my breath. So thank you for listening to today's episode, Robert,

893
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 2: thank you for joining me as well, YV. This wonderful,

894
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:45,399
Speaker 2: happy episode we've done. It's funny. It's in my day job,

895
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:48,600
Speaker 2: my PR firm, I do run into decent companies that

896
00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:51,680
Speaker 2: are doing well, that actually make more money than their spending,

897
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 2: that actually have business plans. But occasion I talk to

898
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:57,000
Speaker 2: someone who just throws like eight buzzwords at me, and

899
00:47:57,040 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 2: they'll have raised this crazy amount of money and you

900
00:47:59,160 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 2: look at them and you're like, am I in the

901
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:04,880
Speaker 2: wrong game? Should I be pot? There is this weird

902
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 2: sense you're like, am I what am I missing here?

903
00:48:08,840 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 2: And I think that that's what fuels a lot of this,

904
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:13,080
Speaker 2: that there are these people getting so rich or nothing.

905
00:48:13,600 --> 00:48:15,759
Speaker 2: The people like they must they can't be lying.

906
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:18,480
Speaker 1: It has to be something. I have to be missing something,

907
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:22,280
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, you're you're not. The business is entirely.

908
00:48:22,680 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 1: It's a confidence game. It's like, pretend you have the

909
00:48:26,280 --> 00:48:30,279
Speaker 1: confidence that this is such a world changing product even

910
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:33,760
Speaker 1: though it's really just Uber for dry cleaning or whatever

911
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:36,920
Speaker 1: that Like, if you don't get in on the ground floor,

912
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:39,279
Speaker 1: you're going to be left behind, or like you know

913
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:41,600
Speaker 1: with crypto, this is the way all money is going

914
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:43,160
Speaker 1: to work, and you have to get in now or

915
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:47,120
Speaker 1: have fun being poor or yeah. Same basically the same

916
00:48:47,160 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 1: shit about AI, right, it's always and honestly, whether or

917
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:54,560
Speaker 1: not there's actually a good product, it's always the same,

918
00:48:56,120 --> 00:49:01,120
Speaker 1: the same thing, right, like you, Yeah, it's alf fomo.

919
00:49:01,200 --> 00:49:04,560
Speaker 2: And it sucks because it can be better. There is

920
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:07,080
Speaker 2: a way. The thing that I always talk about is

921
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:11,160
Speaker 2: there is an alternate universe where Uber actually could have

922
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:14,399
Speaker 2: been probably the most disruptive company of all time. Had

923
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:18,600
Speaker 2: Uber tried to scale slower and charged more and had

924
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:23,200
Speaker 2: real employee benefits and a paycheck that they gave people,

925
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:26,439
Speaker 2: it would have had to grow very slowly and would

926
00:49:26,480 --> 00:49:28,799
Speaker 2: have cost more in venture dollars, But I think that

927
00:49:28,840 --> 00:49:31,320
Speaker 2: company would have worth been worth trillions and actually changed

928
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:34,160
Speaker 2: the world, like truly, had they used it as a

929
00:49:34,160 --> 00:49:37,840
Speaker 2: way to actually create a bullwark for labor versus a

930
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:41,360
Speaker 2: way to screw workers again and again so venture capitalists

931
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:43,759
Speaker 2: can get rich. It could have been amazing, but that's

932
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:46,760
Speaker 2: not how these people are thinking. They're not thinking ten twenty, thirty,

933
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:49,120
Speaker 2: forty years. They're thinking five to ten years, so I

934
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 2: can get the fuck out of this. Yeah, and it's

935
00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:55,600
Speaker 2: so oh, it's so depressing because a better world as possible.

936
00:49:55,560 --> 00:49:58,319
Speaker 1: That these people, because of the amount of money they've made,

937
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 1: in large part in tech, they've taken over everything and

938
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:04,440
Speaker 1: so they're applying this lot. I mean, we could talk

939
00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:06,880
Speaker 1: about journalism, right, they're applying this logic to the media

940
00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:10,239
Speaker 1: properties they buy, which, like, that's not why you have

941
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:13,360
Speaker 1: a newspaper, right, Like, that's not the value of a

942
00:50:13,400 --> 00:50:16,439
Speaker 1: newspaper is not its ability to like get a bunch

943
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:18,640
Speaker 1: of hype around it. And like we saw this with

944
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:21,600
Speaker 1: Vice where it was valued at billions and billions of

945
00:50:21,640 --> 00:50:23,799
Speaker 1: dollars and then it collapsed. Because no, that's not how

946
00:50:23,840 --> 00:50:26,799
Speaker 1: newspapers work, right, That's essentially what Vice was trying to be,

947
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:29,520
Speaker 1: And that's not the way that they're not worth money

948
00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:31,640
Speaker 1: in that way doesn't mean you can't make money off

949
00:50:31,680 --> 00:50:34,359
Speaker 1: of them. There's a number of papers like the New

950
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 1: York Times that are very profitable institutions. It's just you can't.

951
00:50:38,680 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 1: It's not gonna give you that kind of like astronomic

952
00:50:41,640 --> 00:50:43,600
Speaker 1: or turn on investment that you do when somebody invents

953
00:50:43,600 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 1: a fucking iPhone. It shouldn't have to.

954
00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:49,480
Speaker 2: But what's crazy is like inventing the iPhone was very profitable,

955
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:53,320
Speaker 2: but Apple also is something with it. It's actually useful.

956
00:50:53,680 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And I think understanding about what people wanted,

957
00:50:58,400 --> 00:50:59,840
Speaker 1: you know, I.

958
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:04,520
Speaker 2: Think that that's the ultimate problem. I don't think that

959
00:51:04,680 --> 00:51:09,680
Speaker 2: people running tech companies actually experience real people. They don't

960
00:51:09,760 --> 00:51:14,280
Speaker 2: have real problems. But also they don't speak to real people.

961
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:18,520
Speaker 2: Adam Newman thinks, oh, my toilet's clogged. I will now

962
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:21,439
Speaker 2: call someone else to one clog it. Just I would

963
00:51:21,480 --> 00:51:25,320
Speaker 2: never use a plunger. What's that? What is a plunger?

964
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:27,560
Speaker 2: I would actually love to ask him if he knows

965
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:31,239
Speaker 2: what a plunge. It looks like, yeah, it doesn't. But

966
00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:33,440
Speaker 2: that's the thing. These people are disconnect.

967
00:51:33,080 --> 00:51:35,520
Speaker 1: Kind of guy who just moves that happens.

968
00:51:35,880 --> 00:51:38,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, can't use toilet anymore, go get rid of it.

969
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:41,799
Speaker 2: But I think, to wrap it up, it's there is

970
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 2: this genuine sense throughout all of this through the original

971
00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 2: rock Economy piece. Everything I'm talking about, that these people

972
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:51,240
Speaker 2: don't experience real life, that they've made so much money,

973
00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:53,799
Speaker 2: and that they think they've found a way to con

974
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:57,560
Speaker 2: money out of the world, that they just don't think

975
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:00,440
Speaker 2: about human beings and human problems anymore. And as long

976
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:04,120
Speaker 2: as these people are in power, Texit.

977
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:09,160
Speaker 1: Risk, yeah, so is everything else. Well this was fun.

978
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 2: Yep, there we go. Robert, thank you so much for

979
00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 2: joining me.

980
00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me on and thanks for being

981
00:52:17,840 --> 00:52:21,279
Speaker 1: you know, the Shai Hallud of content. You know, just

982
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:26,080
Speaker 1: like the sandworm excrete spice which allows the navigators to

983
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:31,080
Speaker 1: live forever and navigate through faster than light travel. You

984
00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:38,520
Speaker 1: also produce spice trying to shovel and dune references.

985
00:52:38,600 --> 00:52:39,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, there we go.

986
00:52:39,480 --> 00:52:42,359
Speaker 2: Re sponsored by Jim. Thank you so much. Thank you

987
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:43,160
Speaker 2: so much for listening.

988
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:53,440
Speaker 3: Everyone, Thank you.

989
00:52:53,360 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 2: For listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of

990
00:52:56,080 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 2: the Better Offline theme song is Metosolski. You can check

991
00:52:59,080 --> 00:53:01,960
Speaker 2: out more of his music and audio projects at mattaslsk

992
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:04,279
Speaker 2: dot com, m A T T O.

993
00:53:04,520 --> 00:53:07,799
Speaker 3: S O W s Ki dot com.

994
00:53:07,840 --> 00:53:10,120
Speaker 2: You can email me at easy at Better Offline dot

995
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:12,439
Speaker 2: com or check out Better Offline dot com to find

996
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:15,080
Speaker 2: my newsletter and more links to this podcast. Thank you

997
00:53:15,080 --> 00:53:18,680
Speaker 2: so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of

998
00:53:18,719 --> 00:53:21,640
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit

999
00:53:21,680 --> 00:53:24,680
Speaker 2: our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out

1000
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:27,759
Speaker 2: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1001
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:28,480
Speaker 2: your podcasts.