Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a lot of all things tech, and I want
Speaker 1: to start this episode with a little bit of a story.
Speaker 1: Back in January, I attended ce S with a small
Speaker 1: team of audio and video crew. This in itself was
Speaker 1: pretty unusual, as in the previous years I had just
Speaker 1: gone to c e S all by myself. I was
Speaker 1: shooting a ton of videos every day, both for How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, my former employer, and the Forward Thinking video series.
Speaker 1: But one thing that caught my eye while I was
Speaker 1: there was a concept car called the f F zero one.
Speaker 1: The car looked super sleek, really futuristic, kind of a
Speaker 1: mix between a spaceship and the Batmobile. The cockpit could
Speaker 1: hold one whole person, had a glass roof and racing
Speaker 1: bucket style seat, had a fin that extended from the
Speaker 1: back of the cockpit along the length of the rear
Speaker 1: of the car. And yeah, it was a crazy looking thing.
Speaker 1: Rather than a steering wheel, it had a steering yoke
Speaker 1: and you would plug a smartphone into the center of
Speaker 1: the yolk. And it create a little display there. Likewise,
Speaker 1: the dashboard had, you know, several digital displays built into it,
Speaker 1: and it had kind of this sleek wrap around appearance.
Speaker 1: To get in and out of the thing, the cockpit
Speaker 1: would open along the top and you have to kind
Speaker 1: of scrabble over the side again, kind of like a
Speaker 1: race car. And according to the reps who were talking
Speaker 1: up the concept car to the attendees, uh, the the
Speaker 1: idea was this vehicle could if it were operational it
Speaker 1: was not, it could go from zero to sixty miles
Speaker 1: per hour or arounds per hour in about three seconds,
Speaker 1: and it would have a top speed of two hundred
Speaker 1: miles per hour or about two kilometers per hour or
Speaker 1: maybe even more. And it had a total output of
Speaker 1: one thousand horsepower. The approach this company was taking was
Speaker 1: pretty interesting too. The chassis, the representatives explained, was kind
Speaker 1: of a modular thing, and an electric motor would provide
Speaker 1: the power needed for the drive train with a motor
Speaker 1: position near one of the four wheels, and you could
Speaker 1: add electric motors and batteries to the chassis to boost
Speaker 1: the vehicle's performance. So the F zero one that we
Speaker 1: were looking at, the one that was on display was
Speaker 1: to have four motors, one for each wheel, which would
Speaker 1: give the car such impressive specs, well, impressive theoretical specs,
Speaker 1: because like I said, it wasn't actually operational. The car
Speaker 1: was pretty much checking all the boxes for a concept car.
Speaker 1: It was sleek, beautiful, technologically advanced, and absolutely impractical. But
Speaker 1: concept cars are not meant to be production vehicles. Their
Speaker 1: platforms for showing off different ideas, and some of those
Speaker 1: ideas might find themselves in slightly more modest vehicular designs
Speaker 1: in the future. The modular chassis was really the selling
Speaker 1: point for the company. With that approach, you could theoretically
Speaker 1: use the same basic chassis for lots of different models
Speaker 1: of vehicles. A simple city vehicle might only need one
Speaker 1: electric motor it's not going to get a super high
Speaker 1: speed and just needs to be efficient, and suv that
Speaker 1: could go off road might need all four electric motors
Speaker 1: to provide the torque necessary to go over the terrain.
Speaker 1: But with this you know, business model, the company could
Speaker 1: potentially be extremely nimble when it came to producing different vehicles,
Speaker 1: assuming that it could actually get things off the ground. Now,
Speaker 1: the name of the company showing off this car was
Speaker 1: New to me, it was Faaraday Future and had only
Speaker 1: been around for a couple of years, quietly working on
Speaker 1: the design. Everyone at ce S could see that the
Speaker 1: company was aiming to compete with Tesla for the future
Speaker 1: of electric vehicles that you know, had a lot of
Speaker 1: style to them. But today's episode isn't just about Faraday Future.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's more about the man who provided a
Speaker 1: lot of the financing to Faraday Future for several years,
Speaker 1: a man who was running other businesses at the same
Speaker 1: time while also taking on the full time job of
Speaker 1: avoiding creditors in China, and a lot of what we'll
Speaker 1: learn will sound really familiar to those who listened to
Speaker 1: my earlier episodes about Ponzi schemes and so so on.
Speaker 1: Although I want to be straight with you guys here,
Speaker 1: while the various incarnations of this man's businesses have been
Speaker 1: described as kind of being Ponzi schemes, I think that's unfair.
Speaker 1: I think it's different, um, and I'll get to why.
Speaker 1: But today we're going to explore the story of the
Speaker 1: bankrupt billion an air entrepreneur, jiahuit Ting. He was born
Speaker 1: in the north of China in the Shanshi province, it's
Speaker 1: a place filled with historic buildings dating back more than
Speaker 1: a thousand years. In fact, that has more historic buildings
Speaker 1: than any other province in China. The main industry in
Speaker 1: Shanshi is coal mining, so it sounds like a really
Speaker 1: unlikely spot for a billionaire tech entrepreneur to emerge, but
Speaker 1: that's kind of what happened. Jahuiting studied finance and administration
Speaker 1: while he was in school, and at twenty two years old,
Speaker 1: he got a job working tech support for the province's
Speaker 1: tax office. But he wasn't there for a year before
Speaker 1: he quit his job to found his own technical consultant company,
Speaker 1: and he became something of a serial business startup guy.
Speaker 1: As then he founded a lot of companies, and all
Speaker 1: this stuff gets really complicated and intertwined with one another,
Speaker 1: which is one of the running themes and running problems
Speaker 1: of this story. I'll try to stick with one company
Speaker 1: as much as I can for the sake of simplicity
Speaker 1: before switching to another, but as you'll learn, there's some
Speaker 1: crossover going on here that makes things really messy. However,
Speaker 1: let's talk about his first company. It was two thousand
Speaker 1: two and Jiah formed a wireless telecommunications company called Sinotel Technologies.
Speaker 1: It's a bit challenging to pull up a lot of
Speaker 1: really detailed information about companies in China, but from what
Speaker 1: I can gather, the company started off as being a
Speaker 1: handset distributor, so essentially it was in the retail business
Speaker 1: of selling phones that were made by other companies in
Speaker 1: the Chinese market. This business evolved significantly. In two thousand six,
Speaker 1: cin Hotel formed a subsidiary company called x Bel Union
Speaker 1: Communication Company Limited, which was a wholesale distributor for electronic
Speaker 1: parts and systems for telecommunications companies. So now his clients
Speaker 1: weren't just you know, the average citizen, but actual telecommunications
Speaker 1: companies themselves. By two thousand and eight, the company's main
Speaker 1: business was quote the provision of network infrastructure solutions to
Speaker 1: tell cos, which involved the design, installation, and enhancement of
Speaker 1: indoor and outdoor wireless coverage so as to provide or
Speaker 1: enhance wireless signals for mobile users end quote. Now to me,
Speaker 1: that sounds like the company was helping big telecommunications companies
Speaker 1: in China build out infrastructure like cell towers and signal boosters,
Speaker 1: but I could be wrong about that. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, the Singapore Stock Exchange began listing Sin Hotel
Speaker 1: Technologies on that market, and it would trade at a
Speaker 1: few cents per share for years until fifteen, when Jah
Speaker 1: and his sister in law gen Wrong offered to buy
Speaker 1: outstanding shares at nine point eight Singapore cents per share
Speaker 1: in an effort to take the company off the public
Speaker 1: market and return it to being a privately owned company.
Speaker 1: Ja hinted at this possible ability in the two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen annual report for Sin Hotel, and that report stated
Speaker 1: that CINATEL had been facing a few challenging years in
Speaker 1: a row. According to Jah's letters to shareholders, CINATEL was
Speaker 1: seeing lower revenues, resulting in a net loss for the company.
Speaker 1: His explanation was that the Chinese telecommunications companies were cutting
Speaker 1: back on costs, so CINATEL was making fewer sales because
Speaker 1: telecommunications companies weren't budgeting for their services anymore. And in addition,
Speaker 1: Jah said that the telecommunications companies weren't really great at
Speaker 1: keeping up with payments or as he said quote in addition,
Speaker 1: we experienced a longer collection cycle as our tel co
Speaker 1: customers delayed payment due to their internal restructuring process end
Speaker 1: quote so it wasn't looking so hot. So what was
Speaker 1: up with the move to take the company private? Again,
Speaker 1: we frequently focus on private companies going public. Going public
Speaker 1: can raise an enormous amount of money for a company,
Speaker 1: but it comes with its own costs. Being publicly traded
Speaker 1: means having to follow more regulations and meet expectations of
Speaker 1: financial analysts. It also means having to disclose stuff such
Speaker 1: as revenue, costs, profit or loss. And if your goal
Speaker 1: is to get some bigger company to swoop in and
Speaker 1: acquire your company, that is way easier to do with
Speaker 1: a privately held organization than a publicly traded one. In
Speaker 1: this case, Jaw was also facing another tough reality. Sinotel
Speaker 1: shares had lost value for three straight years. The Singapore
Speaker 1: Exchange put the company on a watch list, meaning that
Speaker 1: it was actually in danger of being delisted from the market,
Speaker 1: which would also be a huge blow. All right, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna switch gears for now, but Cinateel will pop
Speaker 1: up again. Before we get to the end of this episode,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about another company that Jaw founded
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, so two years after he founded Cinateel.
Speaker 1: This one was called Leshai Internet Information and Technology a
Speaker 1: k A. L t V l E t V. This
Speaker 1: company would be the one that would turn Jaw into
Speaker 1: a billionaire, though then itself is something I'm going to
Speaker 1: have to explain more a bit later because it's complicated.
Speaker 1: The early core business of lead TV was streaming video.
Speaker 1: Three years before Netflix would offer a streaming video platform,
Speaker 1: Jaw was doing it with Lee TV. The service partnered
Speaker 1: with Chinese film and television companies, and in time job
Speaker 1: would launch a sister company called le Shai Holding Beijing
Speaker 1: as the source for media that would then publish over
Speaker 1: at Lee TV. So, in other words, he started making
Speaker 1: original series and films very much the way Netflix would
Speaker 1: later on. The service has multiple ways for customers to
Speaker 1: watch content, so there are subscription models like Netflix, but
Speaker 1: there are also add supported versions kind of like Hulu,
Speaker 1: and there are pay per view options. For the first
Speaker 1: few years, it was hard to get customers. According to
Speaker 1: the Verge, it quote wasn't particularly popular in China for
Speaker 1: most of its existence end quote. But when that popularity
Speaker 1: did take off, things really started to get hectic. Exactly
Speaker 1: when that happened is still kind of beyond me, as
Speaker 1: finding information about Chinese companies here in the US is
Speaker 1: really really tricky, and many of the sources I found
Speaker 1: didn't always seem entirely reliable. So rather than include something
Speaker 1: that's just you know, poorly sourced or wrong, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say I don't know when it really took off,
Speaker 1: but certainly by fourteen, the same year when CINATEL was
Speaker 1: in big danger, Jah had reached billionaire status thanks to
Speaker 1: Lee TV. Jah had ambitions of heading up an entire
Speaker 1: conglomerate worth of businesses. When Lea TV began to perform well,
Speaker 1: he began looking at ways to expand in to other
Speaker 1: tech fields like smartphones and smart TVs and eventually cars
Speaker 1: Leshi Internet Information and Technology would hold its I p
Speaker 1: O on the Chinese stock Market in and spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: last year, the Chinese Stock market delisted the company as well.
Speaker 1: Learn things have just not gone so well for all
Speaker 1: these organizations over the last few years. Jaw's vision was
Speaker 1: that he was going to create an empire, or more accurately,
Speaker 1: an entire ecosystem. The goal was to control the hardware,
Speaker 1: the software, and the content, making a sort of one
Speaker 1: stop shop for all your tech needs. And so he
Speaker 1: formed a brand called Lee Echo with the Echo standing
Speaker 1: for ecosystem or ecosystem if you prefer. The parts of
Speaker 1: that ecosystem included smartphones, TV, electric vehicles, sports content in general,
Speaker 1: online finance, and cloud or internet tech chnology. Now, depending
Speaker 1: on which source you're looking at, Lee Echo became the
Speaker 1: all encompassing brand name, or it existed kind of side
Speaker 1: by side with other Jia enterprises. It's a bit hard
Speaker 1: to suss out. And making this even more difficult is
Speaker 1: the fact that sometimes one of jaws companies would purchase
Speaker 1: a division from a different one of his companies. So,
Speaker 1: for example, sin Hotel Technologies had as a subsidiary a
Speaker 1: company that was called x Bell Investment. The purchasing party
Speaker 1: of that particular division was drumroll please, Lee Echo. Now.
Speaker 1: That happened in when Sinotel Technologies was going through that
Speaker 1: rough patch of consecutive annual losses that I talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: and so part of the way Jaw offset the enormous
Speaker 1: amount of money that the company was hemorrhaging at the
Speaker 1: time was to sell off a subsidiary to one of
Speaker 1: his other companies, to bring in some cash and shift
Speaker 1: the money around a bit, and most importantly, to maintained
Speaker 1: control of that subsidiary, just under a different corporate structure.
Speaker 1: And this kind of illustrates how things are a bit
Speaker 1: wild west way out east. We have to remember that
Speaker 1: prior to nineteen seventy six, China's economy was entirely dominated
Speaker 1: by state run enterprises. As China was and is a
Speaker 1: communist country where the state owns the means of production.
Speaker 1: But maud Ze Dong, the chairman of the Communist Party,
Speaker 1: died in nineteen seventy six, and since that time the
Speaker 1: country has gradually embraced some aspects of capitalism, with a
Speaker 1: sort of uneasy relationship between the government and private enterprise.
Speaker 1: Many companies are largely or entirely owned by the government,
Speaker 1: and since the Chinese government has taken a more hands
Speaker 1: on approach in private enterprise within the country, probably because
Speaker 1: of a healthy fear that without direct control, these companies
Speaker 1: could get powerful enough to challenge government authority. And I
Speaker 1: can't imagine where they got that idea anyway. The reason
Speaker 1: I mentioned that is the financial industry in China is
Speaker 1: a bit more loosey goosey than in western nations, and
Speaker 1: part of that is because of the tenuous balance between
Speaker 1: capitalism and communism. This fragile arrangement includes how companies raise
Speaker 1: money from investors and secure loans, and all of that
Speaker 1: will be really important for the rest of our story.
Speaker 1: So after we take a break, I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: the Chinese stock market, because that's going to play a
Speaker 1: pivotal role in how jaws fortunes have fared over the years.
Speaker 1: And I'll talk about jazz companies and how they became
Speaker 1: something like a shell game with Jaw attempting to keep
Speaker 1: all the shells moving to hide the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: none of them actually had a p underneath them. If
Speaker 1: you don't know what I'm talking about, the classic shell
Speaker 1: game is when you have like three nutshells and a
Speaker 1: single dried p and you put the P under one
Speaker 1: of the nutshells, and you shuffle them around a bit,
Speaker 1: and you ask your mark to pick which of the
Speaker 1: nutshells has the P under it. Except you ditch the
Speaker 1: p ages ago you're no sucker. That's what marks are for. Well,
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'll talk a bit about how
Speaker 1: Jaws companies were kind of doing this, whether intentionally or otherwise,
Speaker 1: and how Faraday Future comes into the picture. But first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. I mentioned a bit before
Speaker 1: the break that I would explain about how Jacques became
Speaker 1: a billionaire and how it's complicated. Well, the reason it's
Speaker 1: complicated is because a lot of jaws wealth is tied
Speaker 1: up with his stock ownership of his various companies, like
Speaker 1: how much of the companies he personally owns, which means
Speaker 1: the amount of wealth he has depends in large part
Speaker 1: on the value of those companies and by extension, the
Speaker 1: stocks of those companies. So let's talk about the Chinese
Speaker 1: stock markets. The Shanghai Stock Exchange traces its history to
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, but that history also has a big
Speaker 1: old gap in the middle. After the Communist Revolution in
Speaker 1: China in nine, the stock exchange went by by for
Speaker 1: about four decades. It would reopen in along with it
Speaker 1: came a new stock exchange called the Shenjen Security Exchange. Alright,
Speaker 1: so we all know about the stock market, I'm guessing,
Speaker 1: but let's kind of go over some basics. We know
Speaker 1: that you can buy shares or stocks in the company,
Speaker 1: and that these stocks ostensibly reflect the value of that company.
Speaker 1: But let's dive into that a little bit further. So
Speaker 1: a share is, when you get down to it, a
Speaker 1: piece of ownership of a company. So if a company
Speaker 1: were to issue one hundred shares and those shares represented
Speaker 1: one of the ownership of the company, and then you
Speaker 1: bought one of those shares, you would own one percent
Speaker 1: of that company. If you had bought ten shares, you
Speaker 1: would own ten percent of that company, and so on.
Speaker 1: When the company makes a profit, it distributes that profit
Speaker 1: among shareholders, and it could do so in cash, which
Speaker 1: means you would get a payment equivalent to your percentage
Speaker 1: of ownership of the company. So if you owned one
Speaker 1: percent of the company and the company generated a profit
Speaker 1: of one thousand dollars that it was going to distribute
Speaker 1: to its shareholders, boom, you would get a ten dollar
Speaker 1: check and you keep the stock. So as long as
Speaker 1: the company is making a profit, so do you. Another
Speaker 1: way that companies can pay out profits is in share dividends.
Speaker 1: This is when a company, instead of sending out cash,
Speaker 1: pays its investors with additional shares of stock. So let's
Speaker 1: say you had ten shares in the company and you
Speaker 1: get a ten percent dividend because the company has hit
Speaker 1: a profit. Then the company pays it out and shares.
Speaker 1: Now you've got eleven shares. You get an additional share
Speaker 1: because of that dividend. A company might do this in
Speaker 1: order to keep more of its own cash on hand,
Speaker 1: so it's giving you extra ownership of the company rather
Speaker 1: than you know, doling out cash. But this also comes
Speaker 1: with the danger of diluting the stock. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of other methods for distributing profits, but that's enough
Speaker 1: for us right now. The stock price itself is supposed
Speaker 1: to reflect the value of the company. Hypothetically, it reflects
Speaker 1: the amount of money we expect that company to make
Speaker 1: in profits over a given amount of time, and the
Speaker 1: more likely the company is going to rake in profits,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, the higher the share price, or the more
Speaker 1: shares of stock the company will issue. One way to
Speaker 1: keep stock price down so that the average person can
Speaker 1: still invest is to issue more stocks. Because the value
Speaker 1: of the company is supposed to remain the same. You
Speaker 1: can't double the value of a company by doubling the
Speaker 1: number of stocks out there. Instead, if you double the
Speaker 1: number of stocks, then the price of individual stocks will
Speaker 1: be cut in half, so that the value of the
Speaker 1: company and being preserved. This is a very very basic
Speaker 1: way of explaining this. So if you take the number
Speaker 1: of stocks that a company has issued out, and you
Speaker 1: take the price per individual share of stock, and you
Speaker 1: multiply those together, you get yourself a rough estimate of
Speaker 1: the value of a company. But here's the thing. This
Speaker 1: doesn't always match up with reality. For example, the recent
Speaker 1: Game Stop story comes to mind. The stock price has
Speaker 1: been all over the place. It was around twenty dollars
Speaker 1: before the Wall Street Mets crowd really jumped on it,
Speaker 1: and then it hit around five hundred dollars per share
Speaker 1: at its peak. But as I record this, the price
Speaker 1: is now around sixty four dollars per share, and that's
Speaker 1: a pretty wild ride. And obviously we all know the
Speaker 1: Game Stops value has not changed that dramatically that quickly.
Speaker 1: That would be impossible unless Game Stops executives were to say, hey,
Speaker 1: it turns out the land we purchased, complete with mineral rights,
Speaker 1: is sitting on top of a literal gold mine, and
Speaker 1: then later said, also, it turns out that any percent
Speaker 1: of that gold has disappeared. So while a stocks price
Speaker 1: is supposed to reflect the value of a company, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's more accurate to say that it reflects the perception
Speaker 1: of a company's value, which is something that can change quickly.
Speaker 1: The actual company value when you really get down to it,
Speaker 1: doesn't change that fast, but our perception of it can
Speaker 1: change very quickly. So if enough people jump on that bandwagon,
Speaker 1: it can boost the stock performance even more and you've
Speaker 1: got yourself speculation going on. That's when investors aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: so much interested in investing in a company long term
Speaker 1: because they believe in it. They're more interested in kind
Speaker 1: of placing a bet that they're going to get a
Speaker 1: big payoff by buying stocks low and selling them high,
Speaker 1: because that's the other way you make money from stocks.
Speaker 1: You can make money by holding onto stocks and just
Speaker 1: collecting dividends, or you can make money by selling off
Speaker 1: shares of stock that you will own if you got
Speaker 1: in when a company is doing really well and the
Speaker 1: share prices have grown, or your number of shares has
Speaker 1: increased dramatically, or better yet both, then you can cash
Speaker 1: out and pocket the profits. Now, the reason I explain
Speaker 1: all of this to you is because we have to
Speaker 1: remember the stock exchanges in China were very young when
Speaker 1: Jah was making these companies, and the opportunities to invest
Speaker 1: in stuff in China and to profit from it were
Speaker 1: rare before that. Happened. Investment represented a way of getting ahead,
Speaker 1: something that otherwise wasn't much of an option in China.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eight, the entire world was plunged into
Speaker 1: an economic recession. Now, don't worry, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go into all the reasons why that happened. But China
Speaker 1: was no exception, and there was a bit of a
Speaker 1: reckoning in the Chinese stock market. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that Chinese government did was to take a very
Speaker 1: bold approach to promoting the stock market. So the idea
Speaker 1: here was that China as a nation would benefit from
Speaker 1: a robust stock market. So the messaging wasn't really, hey,
Speaker 1: invest in the stock market and make money and improve
Speaker 1: your situation, which is a much more kind of individualized approach. Now,
Speaker 1: the message from the Chinese government was, let us push
Speaker 1: China to glory by investing in these companies, which will
Speaker 1: elevate us all and push China to its rightful place
Speaker 1: in world powers. Kind of a more patriotic perspective and
Speaker 1: one that reflected the communist philosophies, which is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a bad thing, mind you, but it's very different from
Speaker 1: how we perceived stuff like the stock market here in
Speaker 1: the West, where it tends to be more about specific
Speaker 1: companies and increasing the wealth of investors. The messaging was
Speaker 1: going out to the entire population of China, and so
Speaker 1: the Chinese stock markets saw a flood of new investments,
Speaker 1: mostly coming from individual investors. Now that's in contrast with
Speaker 1: most other stock markets, where the individual investors represent a
Speaker 1: more modest percentage of the overall trades on the market.
Speaker 1: Most of the trading is going between big investment companies
Speaker 1: dealing in thousands or millions of transactions. In China, the
Speaker 1: drive was overwhelmingly coming from the common Chinese citizen. But
Speaker 1: many of those investors didn't have very much savvy when
Speaker 1: it comes to analyzing a company's value and making good
Speaker 1: investment decisions, and so there was a trend for well
Speaker 1: trends in which investors would jump on bandwagons for certain companies.
Speaker 1: The increased buying activity would push stock market prices up,
Speaker 1: which encouraged more people to jump on board under the
Speaker 1: perception that these companies were skyrocketing and value and there
Speaker 1: was a general move toward over valuing companies. So it
Speaker 1: was pushing the stock price to the point where the
Speaker 1: market valuation of a company was much higher than the
Speaker 1: company's actual value. So let's say you're someone like Job
Speaker 1: who owns a large percentage of shares in various companies
Speaker 1: that you have founded and you currently run, and as
Speaker 1: that stock price goes up, the value of all those
Speaker 1: shares increases and you become a billionaire, at least on paper. Now,
Speaker 1: your assets are not liquid, meaning you don't actually have
Speaker 1: all that cash on hand to you know, buy stuff.
Speaker 1: But your wealth, as represented in the ownership you have
Speaker 1: in these companies that are doing well in the stock market,
Speaker 1: is real, and you might make some pretty extravagant purchases
Speaker 1: for yourself. But the question is, then how do you
Speaker 1: make these extravagant purchases if you don't actually have all
Speaker 1: that cash on hand. Well, one way to do that
Speaker 1: is to secure loans against the wealth that you have
Speaker 1: on paper that collateral. So you go to a financial
Speaker 1: institution and you say, I want to borrow X million dollars,
Speaker 1: and because I own X million shares of stock, you
Speaker 1: know I'm good for it plus interest, And the financial
Speaker 1: institution says, yes, Mr Jah, let me sign the check.
Speaker 1: I think you can see where I'm going here, Because
Speaker 1: the same is true for big businesses in China. The
Speaker 1: businesses with their overinflated values would secure loans in order
Speaker 1: to expand operations, and there was a real danger that
Speaker 1: these companies would over extend themselves and when it came
Speaker 1: time to pay back the loans, they would be in trouble.
Speaker 1: That right there is called foreshadowing. But I want to
Speaker 1: cover a couple of other points about the Chinese market. First.
Speaker 1: One regulatory body that China has is called the Chinese
Speaker 1: Security Regulatory Commission or c s r C, which in
Speaker 1: began to ease up on restricting certain market practices, both
Speaker 1: of which are acceptable but can also get out of control.
Speaker 1: And one of those is called trading on margins or
Speaker 1: buying on margin, which is where you borrow money in
Speaker 1: order to buy shares, and if the shares go up,
Speaker 1: you can sell them off or you know, earn dividends,
Speaker 1: and then you pay off the loan you took out
Speaker 1: while keeping anything extra over the loan plus interest. So
Speaker 1: let's say a stock costs ten dollars, but you only
Speaker 1: have one dollar, so you put your one dollar in
Speaker 1: a margin account as collateral, and you get a loan
Speaker 1: for ten bucks. Then you use the loan ten dollars
Speaker 1: to buy your stock, while your one dollar, that's your money,
Speaker 1: sits in that margin account. And let's say that the
Speaker 1: stock price doubles to twenty dollars and you decide to
Speaker 1: cash out, So you go back and you pay off
Speaker 1: your loan plus interest, and you get your one dollar
Speaker 1: collateral back, so you keep whatever is left after you've
Speaker 1: paid off the loan plus interest. So let's say that
Speaker 1: it was just a dollar and interest, so you had
Speaker 1: to pay back eleven dollars, and you've got to keep
Speaker 1: nine dollars from the increased stock price plus the one
Speaker 1: dollar you had in collateral, so you just made nine bucks.
Speaker 1: But if the stock price were to go down, well,
Speaker 1: now you have that ten dollar loan to pay off us.
Speaker 1: The financial institution has your original one dollar in collateral,
Speaker 1: and that's their's, and now you're in debt. Yikes. The
Speaker 1: other practice the c s r C began to allow
Speaker 1: in twosen was short selling, which I've talked about a
Speaker 1: lot with the Game Stop story, but essentially, this is
Speaker 1: when you bet that a stock price is going to
Speaker 1: go down, not up, so you borrow shares that are
Speaker 1: not yours there from some other investor and you sell
Speaker 1: those borrowed shares at whatever the current market price is,
Speaker 1: and you wait, though how long you wait depends upon
Speaker 1: the nature of the loaned shares and the agreement there,
Speaker 1: and you watch for the price to go down. Now,
Speaker 1: at some point, you've got to buy back those borrowed
Speaker 1: shares because you have to return them. They're not yours.
Speaker 1: You have to return the shares to the person you
Speaker 1: borrowed from, and hopefully the stock price will have gone down,
Speaker 1: which means you're buying back the shares for less money
Speaker 1: than you sold them for and you get to pocket
Speaker 1: that there. Friends, So if you sold a borrowed share
Speaker 1: at ten dollars and you bought it back when it
Speaker 1: was at five dollars, you would have earned five bucks,
Speaker 1: and you would return the borrowed share to the investor
Speaker 1: you took it from. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with
Speaker 1: short selling, though it does sound like you're rooting for
Speaker 1: a company to do poorly. Sometimes it's just that a
Speaker 1: company is doing poorly and you have the chance to
Speaker 1: make some money off of that. But market pressures can
Speaker 1: make the challenges that corporations face way worse. So let's
Speaker 1: say a company stumbles a little bit, and there's a
Speaker 1: big rush to short sell, and that snowballs and makes
Speaker 1: the share price go even lower, or, as is the
Speaker 1: case here in the West, you've got these big influential
Speaker 1: hedge funds that may attempt to game the system a
Speaker 1: little bit to push stock prices down in order to
Speaker 1: benefit wealthy investors at the cost of the company and
Speaker 1: the company's employees. Short Selling can be a legit strategy,
Speaker 1: but it can also be harmful. But then again, so
Speaker 1: can speculation, which is on the flip side of the coin. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the Chinese market was incredibly volatile, with people short selling
Speaker 1: and a lot more buying on margin, and all the
Speaker 1: elements were there for a major catastrophe, which came to
Speaker 1: a head in the summer of when the Chinese stock
Speaker 1: market bubble burst. For months, stock market volatility was even
Speaker 1: more pronounced in China, and companies saw massive losses. Among
Speaker 1: them were companies like Jaws. And it couldn't have come
Speaker 1: at a worse time. I'll explain more after we take
Speaker 1: this break, all right, So we know that jaws ambitions
Speaker 1: included creating an entire ecosystem of products that would have
Speaker 1: heavy integration with one another. To do that, his companies
Speaker 1: needed to expand beyond their core businesses, and that meant
Speaker 1: securing very loans against Jah's own wealth and the well
Speaker 1: doing of those companies in order to either acquire other
Speaker 1: companies that were in those businesses or otherwise build out
Speaker 1: facilities so that Jah's own company could do it. And
Speaker 1: the Lee Echo brand would extend to all sorts of products,
Speaker 1: including phones and televisions, and these were real products. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just ambition. It's not like Jaw was running a
Speaker 1: scam or anything. He really was trying to do what
Speaker 1: he wanted to do, and the company was selling stuff,
Speaker 1: just not in huge numbers. So, for example, in Lee
Speaker 1: Echo sold three million televisions, which does sound like a
Speaker 1: big number, but the more established Chinese TV companies were
Speaker 1: selling twice as many as that, And when you consider
Speaker 1: the population size of China, you also realized that three
Speaker 1: million is really a drop in the bucket. That expansion
Speaker 1: of his companies trying to do way more stuff wasn't
Speaker 1: just the suite of products that Jia wanted to produce,
Speaker 1: but also extended beyond the borders of China itself. One
Speaker 1: market the company got into was India, In early lee
Speaker 1: Echo entered the Indian smartphone market, launching five super phones,
Speaker 1: which is what the company calls smartphones, and also some
Speaker 1: smart TVs with the promise of content streams and other services.
Speaker 1: As part of this aggressive marketing strategy to disrupt the
Speaker 1: established smartphone market in India, the company was selling these
Speaker 1: products either at cost or maybe even at a loss,
Speaker 1: the idea being that while lee Echo would take a
Speaker 1: hit on hardware sales, the company would make up for
Speaker 1: that with service subscriptions, which isn't that different from how
Speaker 1: companies like Microsoft and Sony will sell game consoles. They
Speaker 1: sell them more or less at cost, so they're not
Speaker 1: making the money off the hardware because the real money
Speaker 1: is in the games or software side of things. The
Speaker 1: company and now it would build out a seven million
Speaker 1: dollar manufacturing facility in India with the goal of producing
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand smartphones per month. But lie Echo was
Speaker 1: trying to do this in India before the country had
Speaker 1: really established a content infrastructure and culture there, so the
Speaker 1: paid content model wasn't really established in India in general.
Speaker 1: That means that the company wasn't really making any money
Speaker 1: in India yet, and it really needed to hold out
Speaker 1: for the long game for things to turn around to
Speaker 1: establish this paid for content kind of culture, and there
Speaker 1: was no guarantee that that was ever going to happen. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the financial crisis back in China was putting a real
Speaker 1: squeeze on Lie Echo, and so in one year after
Speaker 1: getting into India, Lee Echo largely pulled the plug, laying
Speaker 1: off more than eighty percent of all employees in India.
Speaker 1: While he was trying to muscle into the Indian market,
Speaker 1: Jiah was also taking aim at America. So all these
Speaker 1: areas kind of take place in the two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: to two thousand eighteen time frame. The official entry into
Speaker 1: India was around two thousand sixteen to two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: Aiming at America would begin around in a more secuitous
Speaker 1: way in sixteen, in a more direct path. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to start with the direct path first, even though
Speaker 1: that happened later in sixteen, Lee Echo announced it would
Speaker 1: acquire the company Video, which is the largest of the
Speaker 1: United States based television manufacturers, and it was going to
Speaker 1: do so for the princely sum of two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: This would let Lee Echo get into the American TV
Speaker 1: market without having to establish its own relationships with retailers
Speaker 1: and with forming a manufacturing center, and all of that
Speaker 1: sounds like a fairly solid idea. Only one problem. The
Speaker 1: fact that lie Echo was falling apart back in China
Speaker 1: from an economic standpoint meant that it really didn't have
Speaker 1: the cash to throw around for an acquisition like this.
Speaker 1: Jacques had secured so many loans based on his personal
Speaker 1: ownership of Lee Echo stock and had really overextended way
Speaker 1: too far, and it became clear that the two billion
Speaker 1: dollar acquisition deal just wasn't viable. In a year after
Speaker 1: the company's had announced this deal, it all fell apart
Speaker 1: and Visio wasn't acquired after all. Video sued Lee Echo
Speaker 1: for sixty million dollars in damages as a result, and
Speaker 1: among the charges was one that stated that Lee Echo
Speaker 1: executives knew about their company's finances and how they were
Speaker 1: in severe trouble when they first proposed the acquisition, meaning
Speaker 1: that the executives were trying to lay railroad track down
Speaker 1: after the train had already been derailed. That case would
Speaker 1: ultimately get settled out of court in ten and the
Speaker 1: terms of the settlement remained private. Oh and then Visio
Speaker 1: went to court again in twenty nineteen, claiming that Lee
Speaker 1: Echo violated the terms of that settlement, although the terms
Speaker 1: themselves still remain private, and Physio sought out a judgment
Speaker 1: against Lee Echo, but not against Jiah for reasons that
Speaker 1: will become clear shortly. Okay, but what about that circuitous
Speaker 1: route that I mentioned that happened in Well, this is
Speaker 1: what finally brings us to Faraday Future, that car company
Speaker 1: that showed off the concept car I saw on. The
Speaker 1: company operated in stealth mode for about a year and
Speaker 1: in began to release little teasers of videos that seemed
Speaker 1: to indicate it was positioned to be a Tesla killer,
Speaker 1: taking aim at the other upstart electric car company marketing
Speaker 1: you know, fancy electric vehicles to customers. Also fund with
Speaker 1: Tesla and Faraday if you happen to know the origins
Speaker 1: of those names, and another fund side note, Tesla didn't
Speaker 1: post an annual operating profit until January twenty twenty, and
Speaker 1: that was operating profit. That's not the same as annual
Speaker 1: profit after due factor and all the other opponents. So
Speaker 1: my point here is that Tesla, a company that launched
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, went nearly two decades before having
Speaker 1: a year that posted an operating profit. So it's a
Speaker 1: steep klimb, is what I'm saying. Anyway, in Nick Sampson,
Speaker 1: who had formerly worked as an engineer for Lotus for
Speaker 1: ten years and then at Tesla for two co founded
Speaker 1: a new car company that being Faraday Future. The other
Speaker 1: co founders were Tony Knie, who was an executive with
Speaker 1: Lotus China before becoming a senior vice president of Lee
Speaker 1: TV and heading up efforts to develop the electric vehicles
Speaker 1: over in that company, and then Ja Hua Ting, who
Speaker 1: was funding the whole thing back in China. Lee Echo
Speaker 1: in the form of Lee TV, had already started exploring
Speaker 1: electric vehicles, including autonomous vehicles the Lee c Pro car
Speaker 1: that's l E capital S capital E capital e uh.
Speaker 1: That one made a cameo or was supposed to in
Speaker 1: Transformers five. In fact, when Jah wanted to unveil the
Speaker 1: Leasy pro at a special event in San Francisco, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to do it because the company really
Speaker 1: only had two of the vehicles made at that point.
Speaker 1: One was in London about to try and star and
Speaker 1: Transformers five, and the other one got damaged on its
Speaker 1: way to San Francisco. So it's somewhat confusing that jab
Speaker 1: who was showing off the LEAs pro in, was also
Speaker 1: bankrolling another electric vehicle company in the form of Faraday Future,
Speaker 1: and that an executive from Lead TV was one of
Speaker 1: the other co founders of Faraday Future. It was almost
Speaker 1: like he was entering a market to compete against another
Speaker 1: company he was already in charge of. Like it's weird man,
Speaker 1: And I'm not even touching the fact that he also
Speaker 1: invested in another electric car company and reportedly started to
Speaker 1: make decisions that were harmful against that company in an
Speaker 1: effort to not have it compete against his companies. That's
Speaker 1: a whole other can of worms. But the two companies
Speaker 1: would make things even more weird. Patent applications for Faraday
Speaker 1: Future technologies included illustrations that had Lee Echo logo designs
Speaker 1: incorporated in them. While the companies admitted that there was
Speaker 1: an agreement to share i P between the two entities,
Speaker 1: they maintained that they were totally separate companies, or sometimes
Speaker 1: that they were two companies in a very tight aligned
Speaker 1: strategic partnership. The communication was muddled and it raised a
Speaker 1: lot of questions, and along with those questions were some
Speaker 1: about Jia's role. Officially, he was nothing more than a
Speaker 1: major investor bank rolling Faraday Future and Americans startup looking
Speaker 1: to disrupt the automotive industry. But former Faraday Future employees
Speaker 1: would speak to the press, almost always anonymously, to reveal
Speaker 1: that Jah was much more hands on with the company
Speaker 1: than anyone would admit in public. Before its debut at
Speaker 1: c e S, the company had already announced plans to
Speaker 1: open up a one billion dollar manufacturing facility in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Speaker 1: By July, those plans were scuttled because by then Jah
Speaker 1: was in some pretty serious hot water back in China,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't doing so great in the United States either.
Speaker 1: Lee Echo had purchased a large amount of land from
Speaker 1: Yahoo in June two thousand sixteen for two hundred fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars as part of this overall strategy to have
Speaker 1: Lee Echo and Faraday Future kind of share resources. But
Speaker 1: less than a year later the company had to sell
Speaker 1: off all that land as the financial struggles back in
Speaker 1: China were really coming to a head. Lee Echo sold
Speaker 1: the real estate to a different Chinese company for two
Speaker 1: hundred sixty million dollars, so hey, at least they sold
Speaker 1: it for more than they bought it. Though when you
Speaker 1: factor in all the costs associated with owning that much
Speaker 1: land in Santa Claric, California for that amount of time,
Speaker 1: I think they probably didn't net much of a profit.
Speaker 1: In the end, they may have just broken even. But
Speaker 1: what the heck was going on back in China? So
Speaker 1: remember I said Jaw was bankrolling Faraday Future and all
Speaker 1: these expansions for his other companies, and how he was
Speaker 1: doing that by taking out loans against his considerable stake
Speaker 1: in those companies. Well, the loans had come due and
Speaker 1: the Chinese stock market had dealt a pretty big blow
Speaker 1: to Jah's own wealth, and Jaw did something fairly radical.
Speaker 1: He didn't pay back the loans. The Chinese government was
Speaker 1: demanding that he returned to China to pay off the
Speaker 1: various loans he had taken out, and Jiah's response was
Speaker 1: eventually to step down as CEO of the Lee Echo
Speaker 1: companies in the Chinese government ordered all his assets in
Speaker 1: China frozen. Jaw relocated to the United States, with his
Speaker 1: explanation amounting to there at a future needs me, and
Speaker 1: he became CEO of the company in two seventeen and
Speaker 1: sold off most of his shares to a company called
Speaker 1: ever Grand Group, which is a Chinese real estate company,
Speaker 1: but he stayed on as CEO of Faraday Future and
Speaker 1: retained a good percentage like thirty of the company. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the creditors in China were demanding he returned home to
Speaker 1: face the music. The House of Cards was falling down,
Speaker 1: Lee Echo was hitting a low point. Lee TV was
Speaker 1: shown to be stagnating as well. Faraday Futures was struggling.
Speaker 1: Jaw was on a debt blacklist back in China. At
Speaker 1: one point he sent his wife and his brother I believe,
Speaker 1: to China to try and settle debt issues because he
Speaker 1: wasn't going to go in person, which didn't reflect well
Speaker 1: on him, and as I understand it, his wife subsequently
Speaker 1: filed for divorce. Though I cannot say that that particular
Speaker 1: decision was, you know, pivoting on this, this choice to
Speaker 1: send her to China instead of him self. I don't
Speaker 1: know the details for it. He is pretty private about
Speaker 1: his personal life, so I don't know what all that
Speaker 1: is about. Fairy Future was not faring any better. Allegations
Speaker 1: from partners ranged from charges of wrongful termination to failure
Speaker 1: to payback debts. One case came from Miles Bernal, who
Speaker 1: said he was hired to manage some very expensive mansions
Speaker 1: that were bought through a shell company called ocean View Drive,
Speaker 1: which was owned by you guessed it or du Jah.
Speaker 1: He said that he was wrongfully terminated by the company
Speaker 1: and that he witnessed many cases of Jahn and his
Speaker 1: team co mingling finances from Faraday, from ocean View Drive
Speaker 1: and from other sources, as well as making use of
Speaker 1: company assets for personal reasons and more. Again, those are
Speaker 1: his allegations. Meanwhile, Faraday Future was losing top talent, including
Speaker 1: people who are brought on board to try and wrestle
Speaker 1: the company's financials into something a little more straightforward and transparent.
Speaker 1: Stefan Krauss, who came from BMW, would serve as the
Speaker 1: chief financial officer for a relatively short while, but he
Speaker 1: found it impossible to do his job because Jaw wasn't
Speaker 1: listening to his advice, so Krauss left the company in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, though Faraday Future would say that he had
Speaker 1: actually been fired from the company. So it all depends
Speaker 1: upon whose point perspective you believe, and according to a
Speaker 1: lot of journals and magazines. It was only ever grants
Speaker 1: two billion dollar investment that kept Faraday Future afloat. But
Speaker 1: job messed that up too, because, according to the Verge,
Speaker 1: jab prematurely spent eight hundred million dollars of that two
Speaker 1: billion dollar investment. As soon as he received the eight
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar installment, ever Grand then said, jah, dude,
Speaker 1: you gotta knock that stuff off. We won't give you
Speaker 1: the rest of this investment unless you agree to distance
Speaker 1: yourself from Faraday Future. And then in the two parties,
Speaker 1: jaw and ever Grand would argue over which of them
Speaker 1: was violating their agreement the most. It was bad enough
Speaker 1: that Nick Sampson himself resigned in October, which must have
Speaker 1: hurt because he was one of the co founders after all.
Speaker 1: He sent a letter to employees that the company was
Speaker 1: quote effectively insolvent end quote which must have hurt even more.
Speaker 1: The company was laying off our furloughing employees quickly as
Speaker 1: corporate resources dwindled. Evergrand and Faraday eventually settled their differences,
Speaker 1: but it meant that Evergrand drastically reduced its investment, didn't
Speaker 1: give over any more of the two billion dollars, and
Speaker 1: it reduced the amount of stake that it agreed to
Speaker 1: take in the company. Faraday began to sell off assets
Speaker 1: to try and keep above water, including their company headquarters.
Speaker 1: With the thousands of employees now reduced to just a
Speaker 1: few hundred of them, and investors now wherey of Jaw
Speaker 1: at long last, weren't eager to help bail him out. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the company entered into a restructuring plan, and Jaw formed
Speaker 1: a trust with the purpose of paying off those debts.
Speaker 1: So his Faraday Future assets were placed within this trust,
Speaker 1: the idea being that the trust would oversee the repayment
Speaker 1: of loans. But his past mistakes were really catching up
Speaker 1: and various courts were freezing his assets because of his
Speaker 1: failure to pay, so he had less to leverage in
Speaker 1: an effort to repay his debts. Jaw was effectively forced
Speaker 1: to resign as CEO of Faraday Future. He was replaced
Speaker 1: by Carston Breitfeld. Jaw still owns a massive amount of stock,
Speaker 1: but he no longer leads the company, at least not
Speaker 1: in name, and in October two thousand, nineteen, Jab filed
Speaker 1: for personal Chapter eleven bankruptcy. The bankrupt billionaire. See by
Speaker 1: that time, he had a massed about three point six
Speaker 1: billion dollars in debt in China, and as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: his wealth is mostly tied up with shares in various
Speaker 1: companies that had taken a pretty massive hidden value, and
Speaker 1: a lot of those assets were frozen by various governments
Speaker 1: around the world, and he wasn't swimming in cash. In
Speaker 1: other words, Jaw's argument was that he really needed his
Speaker 1: creditors to give him some slack so that Faraday Future
Speaker 1: could hold an I p O and go public, at
Speaker 1: which time Jaw's steak and Faraday would give him the
Speaker 1: money he would need to pay off his creditors. But
Speaker 1: if the creditors didn't let him do that, he would
Speaker 1: be forced to liquidate all his assets and pay pennies
Speaker 1: on the dollar, giving each creditor far less than what
Speaker 1: he actually owed them. In late January twenty one, Faraday
Speaker 1: Future announced a plan to go public through a merger
Speaker 1: with Property Solutions Acquisition and sp a C or special
Speaker 1: purpose acquisition company. I mentioned these in an earlier episode
Speaker 1: of Tech Stuff, But it's a company that exists solely
Speaker 1: for the purpose of buying out a private company to
Speaker 1: take it public so that the private company doesn't actually
Speaker 1: have to go through the I P O process, which
Speaker 1: sounds shady on the surface of it, but it is
Speaker 1: totally legit. And considering how fair day futures prospects have
Speaker 1: been entangled with jaws financial problems, it might be the
Speaker 1: only way to get fair day future as a publicly
Speaker 1: traded company. And it could also mean that jaws shares
Speaker 1: in the company will be good and he can follow
Speaker 1: through on his promise to pay back creditors since all
Speaker 1: his stake is essentially held in trust for that purpose.
Speaker 1: And so here we are. I had started to research
Speaker 1: this more as a story about Faraday Future, which I
Speaker 1: think I might still do at some point, maybe a
Speaker 1: year down the road, to kind of see how this
Speaker 1: shift to being a public company will go for a Faraday.
Speaker 1: But as I learned more about jaws background, I became
Speaker 1: fascinated and wanted to dive more into that. I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of lessons to be learned here,
Speaker 1: including how fast trends and stock markets can have disastrous
Speaker 1: consequences not just for individual investors, but also for business leaders.
Speaker 1: Jaw never would have found himself in a predicament that
Speaker 1: he was in if if it hadn't been for such
Speaker 1: rapid inflation and the value of the companies he founded.
Speaker 1: Though it's kind of hard to feel badly for a
Speaker 1: billionaire who allegedly spent most of his time in huge
Speaker 1: mansions in California while avoiding creditors, But just to be
Speaker 1: entirely fair, it's a remarkable thing to be a business
Speaker 1: leader and to see your business explode in value, and
Speaker 1: it would take a very level head and a pretty
Speaker 1: stable financial environment to be able to, you know, to
Speaker 1: navigate those waters responsibly. And I think that the various
Speaker 1: situations in China just meant that that was exceedingly hard
Speaker 1: to do. So I don't know job personally. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, whether or not his decisions were all made
Speaker 1: on good faith. It seems like a lot of the
Speaker 1: earlier ones certainly were. I don't know for sure. That's
Speaker 1: just the impression I get, but it definitely turned into
Speaker 1: a big message. Actually, the more I was researching this,
Speaker 1: the more I was like, I feel like investors don't
Speaker 1: really do a lot of homework before they start pouring
Speaker 1: billions of dollars of investment into things, and that in
Speaker 1: itself is a big problem. But that wraps up this
Speaker 1: story of that particular entrepreneur. I'm sure we will follow
Speaker 1: up on his adventures in the future, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of cover someone who was, you know, a
Speaker 1: complete mystery to me before I started researching this episode.
Speaker 1: And if you guys have suggestions for future topics I
Speaker 1: should cover on tech stuff, whether it's a person in tech,
Speaker 1: a company, a trend, a specific technology and how it works.
Speaker 1: Let me know the best way to do that is
Speaker 1: over on Twitter. The handle I use is text stuff
Speaker 1: HS double and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tex Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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