Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio new We saw that with
Speaker 1: the stocks pairing games today.
Speaker 2: It's just a reminder that when we think we can't
Speaker 2: be surprised, we still can as certainly as investors, and
Speaker 2: that plays out the markets react very quickly, very swiftly,
Speaker 2: and you can see that clearly in the trade. All right,
Speaker 2: you are listening and watching Bloomberg BusinessWeek Daily, Carol Master,
Speaker 2: Tim's Stanevik life here and I believe we can go
Speaker 2: to our guest. We're doing this at a real time.
Speaker 2: You guys are seeing the sausage be made. Michael Lobe
Speaker 2: is with us. This is his home, this is his event.
Speaker 2: He's the founder and CEO of lob dot NYC, and
Speaker 2: he co founded Uncharted a few years ago, and I
Speaker 2: got to talk to you this morning. So I feel
Speaker 2: kind of doubly blessed to get some more time with you.
Speaker 2: The event is underway. Tell us about what you're hearing
Speaker 2: some of the things so.
Speaker 3: Far, well, I think that there's a great deal of buzz.
Speaker 3: Most people are saying exactly what you are, which is
Speaker 3: that they're doubly blessed just to be here and get
Speaker 3: to know everybody else. But I mean, the if you
Speaker 3: were to take a look at the background, you would see,
Speaker 3: you know, six hundred people talking to six hundred other people.
Speaker 3: It's quite the event. And what we really want to
Speaker 3: do is foster relationships between investors and companies, between companies
Speaker 3: and companies, and between you know, CEOs looking for talent
Speaker 3: and talent looking for CEOs. So I think I think
Speaker 3: a good time is being had by all. And certainly
Speaker 3: the weather has been totally cooperating. I think you had
Speaker 3: something to do with that, So I thank you for that.
Speaker 3: You're very welcome, right So, yeah, little tiny Wendy, if
Speaker 3: you could take that down.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of perfect. It beats the weather we
Speaker 1: had earlier this week. I was a little concerned about that.
Speaker 1: You know, an event like this, you've been doing this
Speaker 1: for a few years, started during the pandemic, started a
Speaker 1: lot smaller. How do you And I heard you say
Speaker 1: earlier today and your partner say this too, Noah, that
Speaker 1: he is running into people constantly. You say, yeah, they
Speaker 1: raised money as a result of being here. They found
Speaker 1: a co founder here, they found employees here. How do
Speaker 1: you measure the success of an event such as this
Speaker 1: In the days, weeks and months following.
Speaker 3: It, right, I wish we could because I should have
Speaker 3: a big on all that.
Speaker 1: Yes, so we were just talking to Damon John like
Speaker 1: you know, shark tank kind of thing. Yeah, maybe you
Speaker 1: could kind of get in on that.
Speaker 3: I don't know it for a long time. So, you know,
Speaker 3: I got to tell you we do solicit testimonials of
Speaker 3: exactly the things that you're talking about. We have quite
Speaker 3: a few of people saying, you know, I met my
Speaker 3: founder there about two years ago. Uh no, and I
Speaker 3: get an invitation and who was shrouded in mystery? And
Speaker 3: it was three women who had us go to an
Speaker 3: event downtown and they brought us up on stage. Everybody
Speaker 3: started a clap, And what that was is these were
Speaker 3: three women never met before. They were all, you know,
Speaker 3: elite athletes, and they decided they're should be a fund
Speaker 3: supporting elite athletes that they had a different point of view,
Speaker 3: a different sense of how to compete, and they all
Speaker 3: got along very very well, and that thesis led to
Speaker 3: a fifty million dollar fund. So it's that type of
Speaker 3: thing that you know, really propels us.
Speaker 2: Well, talk to us about you know capital, how much
Speaker 2: is out there for startups?
Speaker 3: Wow? You know It's funny things go in cycles. As
Speaker 3: you know, this is not an up cycle for capital formation.
Speaker 3: Last numbers I looked at and they're a little bit stale,
Speaker 3: but you know, down sixty or seventy percent. Certainly the
Speaker 3: secondary market, if that's any indication at all, does illustrate that,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a lot of illiquidity looking to get liquid.
Speaker 3: Not nearly as frothy as it used to be was IPOs,
Speaker 3: even though that's starting to unlock a little bit. So No,
Speaker 3: it's it is hard and the money does gravitate these
Speaker 3: days to AI, so you need, you know, if you have.
Speaker 2: So when there is an idea, when there is a startup,
Speaker 2: that's where it goes.
Speaker 3: It goes there, right. And what folks don't I think,
Speaker 3: really realize or appreciate is the forces at play in
Speaker 3: venture and venture funding, venture capital, which is I sometimes
Speaker 3: call it a beauty contest, and that is because there's
Speaker 3: one breakout winner in a category and then all the
Speaker 3: LPs are asking their gps, you know, what is your
Speaker 3: AI strategy? And if the answer is, you know, we
Speaker 3: think it's a little over sold, we think it's a
Speaker 3: little bit you know, frothy. Whereas there's going to be
Speaker 3: a couple of winners and a lot of losers. We're
Speaker 3: taking a wait and see attitude. The answer is bye bye.
Speaker 3: I'm bringing my money to that fund that made that investment.
Speaker 3: So a lot of pressure for them to jump in.
Speaker 3: And it's in those situations that you know, not so
Speaker 3: good deals are made.
Speaker 1: Right, So yeah, does it you know, in terms of cycles,
Speaker 1: does it feel like this AI cycle is different than
Speaker 1: previous tech hype cycles? And the reason I ask and look,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to hear or utter the phrase this time
Speaker 1: is different. But if you look out at the private
Speaker 1: markets right now, you've got skyhad evaluations. I think many
Speaker 1: would argue for open AI right, for anthropic, for perplexity.
Speaker 1: You have meta platforms coming in and dropping billions of
Speaker 1: dollars to buy forty nine percent of an AI company
Speaker 1: that barely existed. You have founders being poached. We're talking
Speaker 1: one hundred million dollar signing bonuses force an individual to
Speaker 1: go to a large company.
Speaker 3: Right, So I'm I look at my mailbox every day,
Speaker 3: I'm looking for one hundred million dollar check hasn't come
Speaker 3: in yet, Right, So if you're going to range.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, make make your web your web
Speaker 1: browser or your you know, your website dot ai and
Speaker 1: maybe it'll happen.
Speaker 3: I don't know that. So to me, and this is
Speaker 3: not quite answering your question, but I'm it's all about me,
Speaker 3: So I'm going to answer it from my perspective, which
Speaker 3: is that to me, it feels different. Now, what does
Speaker 3: it feel like? I've been around for long enough, so
Speaker 3: I'm something of the elder statement statesman here. I've been
Speaker 3: around long enough that I've seen a few cycles. This
Speaker 3: feels like the late nineties and the late nineties was
Speaker 3: the advent of the internet, right, and it feels this
Speaker 3: profound now. You know, people can say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: if we look back two or three years, it was
Speaker 3: NFTs and that was a false positive, and before that
Speaker 3: it was blockchain, which was sort of a false positive.
Speaker 3: And before that it was cannabis, and before that it
Speaker 3: was bitcoin. But this one feels real, and this has
Speaker 3: the possibility of disrupting entire industries. I had breakfast, by
Speaker 3: the way with a friend this past week. He has
Speaker 3: a unicorn business is worth almost two billion dollars. He
Speaker 3: has two hundred and seventy people, and he said, Michael,
Speaker 3: by year end it's one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 1: Meaning he is going to lay people off because AI
Speaker 1: has been selefficient.
Speaker 3: Right, fast growing company, super fast growing company.
Speaker 1: That's really scary, I know, but that's what's going on.
Speaker 1: And so do you think so do you think there
Speaker 1: is something? Do you think there is something to what
Speaker 1: Dario Amadae has said, who's the founder of Anthropic. Among
Speaker 1: the co founders of Anthropic, there are many that in
Speaker 1: a couple of years we're going to see a serious
Speaker 1: uptick in unemployment as a result of this tech, like
Speaker 1: this is something policymakers need to be freaking out about
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, look, I respectfully disagree, and all I have
Speaker 3: to go on is history and starting in the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 3: right when there was that industrial revolution in England, and
Speaker 3: we've burned down all the factories with a spinning wheel,
Speaker 3: thinking everybody would be unemployed. That has not happened, but
Speaker 3: markets employment people have an amazing ability to retrain themselves
Speaker 3: find the opportunities. In the end, I think we're going
Speaker 3: to be okay. Is there going to be some displacement.
Speaker 3: There's always some displacement. I hope you find out find
Speaker 3: something that we can have less lawyers because we'd use
Speaker 3: less wars. But I think at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: you know, brilliant people are going to find find their way.
Speaker 3: And the people you're talking about are very smart people, engineers.
Speaker 3: They will find their way. We're always going to need them.
Speaker 3: And you know, this is going to be like every
Speaker 3: other labor saving prediction. This is going to be just
Speaker 3: another one.
Speaker 2: All right, We're gonna unfortunately have to leave it there.
Speaker 2: But thank you for inviting us. This has been fun.
Speaker 3: Thank you for inviting me. Guys, I believe this is yours.
Speaker 3: Oh that's not what they told me. They said after today,
Speaker 3: it's all yours. That's not right, Michael, so nice.
Speaker 2: Oh the key is please Michael Lowe, founder and CEO
Speaker 2: of Lobe dot NYC. All right, coming up next, we're
Speaker 2: also going to get to I guess I want to
Speaker 2: say almost another serial entrepreneur, another biggest