Will Manidis: legacy healthcare software companies — not startups — will win the AI adoption race

sure you're listening uh you should sign up for ramp check it out check it out tell them the technology brother sent you tell them the techy um anyway uh I'm excited to have will this perfect timing this is exactly how I wanted to time it up we have two posts that were coming in uh I believe Will's here in the chat let's bring him in can we hear him will how you doing welcome hey how are you guys doing to tbp there he is uh you're a little out of frame there but let's see if there we go there we go great you got me you're perfect uh right away uh I got to give you credit for something important which is introducing John and I you uh you did it thank you for the 70% equity in the technology Brothers I was really excited to Tender that in this most recent round really proud of what you guys have done uh no you had amazing um insight and uh you know taste you you I remember you the intro was basically like you guys are the only two people I like in LA you should meet something like that so glad tpg could buy all of my equity in this beautiful brand in this last round at 200 times forward yes yeah yeah yeah um it's amazing to have you on uh you've been on the show many times before uh as a poster as a poster first time as a guest and uh yeah it's uh we're looking forward to having you as a regular yeah so I want to get your reaction to the this post from from Aya she says going for aimless walks is one of the worst things give me a coffee shop a bookstore a friend's house I will walk eight miles no problem but around the block are you insane why would you want each step to be meaningless your outdoor time dumped into an empty void and I feel like you've had a couple bangers about uh about walking I have one here from you I've met many people who turn their lives around by walking around aimlessly for a couple hours a day what's your take on walking would you recommend it to the next generation of wil mantises yeah I think you got to walk like it's the only way to get comfortable with yourself you're sitting alone you're silent you're not staring at a wall you're moving I think aa's life might be meaningfully different if she's hitting you know 20K 30k 40 steps 40K steps a day really the difference between you know boys and men happen in between that 10,000 and 20,000 step a day goal so for Ali prescribe you know 50,000 steps that'd be a good start did you actually put up 20K yesterday like are you on are you in that tier I feel like getting to 10K no-brainer but yeah what do you actually recommend no but but to be clear getting to 10K is extremely difficult it's very our lifestyle now which is show up to our building we're going to get treadmills so we're going to be walking while we do the show do you think that's a do you think that's a a suitable substitute for actually walking outside or should we just have a film crew with close activity you got to be outside you got only counts worthless not good for your soul so you think we should have like a you know TV Camera production trailer following us while we shoot the show while we're walking around yeah I don't see a reason why this desk can't be on Wheels moving with you like this show should be happening in Loop Central Park all day that makes sense yes yeah uh how is New York these days beautiful spring here yeah already the the issue with New York is a 20K steps a day in the winter is like deadly right like you just can't do it but in the summer like you can hit 40,000 step days into trouble right yeah yeah 40K days I mean last time I was there you actually the meme worked on me and I walked all the way from I don't know uptown to downtown and back and it was fantastic and it took like hours and hours and hours it but doing the loop of Manhattan is like a great once a year tradition or whatever walk all the way down to the loop like that's that's the perfect day in the city yeah talk to us about Hobbies uh you've got one that we're particularly interested in well he won an award for it yeah he's an award-winning awardwinning uh model boat Enthusiast yeah yeah I mean I think like the best hobbies in the world are the ones where the average participant like 85 years old and post economic and I'm a proud member of Central Park Model yach Club selling you know comically small and large model buts really hard to get out on the water in New York and it's much easier to get on the water in Central Park you know you can sail around remote control go quite fast win some races it's a good time uh is that a model boat right behind you is that the sail of a boat six six six feet of model boat right behind me my office has been relegated to uh to storage um talk about the rise of Christianity in Tech I think you're you're attracting like a a greater rise in Christianity in the west right like I think we tried this kind of post-religious thing through the ' 80s 90s 2000s and it just seemed like it it led to Universal depression I mean particularly in Tech Trey Stevens leading the way there TR Michelle right on the west coast but I also think in New York there's incredible young Christian Movement happening like Church of the city of New York is baptizing you know like a couple million people a week at this point it's incredible how quickly this is going the question is how do you turn this into a durable movement that lasts over time slightly worried that this going to be like a five-year wave going to be trendy going to fade out Christianity is the most important thing that's ever happened to me I don't know how we fade that out over 20 years but feels like a relatively important thing to focus on are you worried about uh kind of Christianity becoming a lar or cultural Christianity being a substitute like yeah this this like feels like the issue right like even when you go to service in San Francisco it does feel a little bit like this is like a networking event right like why am I here for services and also pitching my startup right it seems like it's good that there's like an elite you know an elite Christianity that you know Elite somewhat lead cultural taste here that seems good but the fact that we're treating it somewhat like a golf club is a little concerning I do think the lar like all love to the gundo burough but the the things that come Downstream of that feel feel not particularly great got that makes sense um what where what which companies uh specifically in the private markets are uh benefiting most from the sort of from AI within Healthcare what what companies are you excited about I'm sure you get pitched uh pretty much every company in the space if they're not pitching you uh what are they even doing what what areas do you think are are actually getting um maybe not uh you know I I would say like consumer adoption but like real Enterprise adoption you obviously worked in this in this problem space for for quite a long time yeah I mean the the the take I have here is that Legacy Healthcare companies are actually going to be the winners during this wave I think as you see kind of AI adoption happen in healthcare you're to see widgets get adopted right doctors requesting ambient scribes you see big companies like a bridge coming out of that but ultimately ambient scribes are the front door to the electronic medical record system they're certainly not the entire Suite of software that a physician might use and unlike the world we're used to in Tech the person who purchases software and the person that uses software in healthcare are not the same person right Physicians are using it Hospital admins procuring it there's a big divide there which means they have different Computing priorities I am radically more excited by the opportunity of big Legacy Healthcare software businesses taking modern AI Innovation installing it onto their user base and scaling that out than I am any kind of Novel net new startup like I think we will see a thousand kind of AI enabled executive fiscal startups happen over the next six months I don't think any of them are going to last I think we'll see a thousand pill Mills I will spin up over the next six months I think they're all going to jail right Healthcare is just not a place that reward this kind of net new novel distribution plays but I do think Legacy distribution and Healthcare is the most underpriced asset in the world right now and if you can take that plug AI on top of it very interesting outcomes do you think there's Alpha in being you know a young cracked AI engineer implementor but instead of starting a company going to work for one of those Legacy companies working your way up becoming the CEO yeah tremendous Alpha I mean if you think about like how big like install base is the most underpriced thing in software right now I think everyone's used to seeing these companies go you know Z to 100 and then you know probably back down to zero right this is Geremy thing the iron Condor law or whatever right but I think there is like something really underappreciated about a company that has had like you know 140 million in reoccurring Revenue over decades yeah like that's switching cost that install cost that velocity and the ability to Pilot software on top of that install base at scale it's just something you can't beat like I don't think you can do that from that new startup that trust that brand that installed that's pretty cool do you think any of the bigger VC funds maybe going public will have the money to buy into that and then drop AI on top of it hard to know I mean I think a lot of this is ground up adoption like I work at a large you know publicly traded EMR right now and we're certainly seeing AI happen in every aspect of our product Suite but it's it's really a matter of making these tools accessible right and I think as you see a commodification happen at the model layer right maybe open AI is not worth $140 billion or whatever when you can sell llama and run them locally and build these product features that upskill software engineers in these companies and like very smart people go and work for them I think the outcomes will just be better yeah uh do you have any insight into why SBF is getting uh to podcast from uh jail because John posted about this yesterday which was a good line with if if you can now tweet and podcast from jail is that not sort of putting out a signal what is the punishment yeah time pulled off your sentence right like this feel like punishment yeah exactly uh yeah what's your take on that broadly uh you always uh at least within the group chats you you always have good takes here I I just think SPF is you know this incredible fixture I will be shocked to see if he serves this whole sentence yeah he has like very strong proof that if you donate enough money to the right people you can kind of bend the world around you I sincerely hope he stays in jail for a very long amount of time interesting uh can you tell us uh do you have any good an anonymized you don't need to name names but good stories of of of frauds or or malfeasant in the startup or financial world that you think might be uh illustrative or educational for the listeners I mean I think like I have a great tweet about this falc of the deep Tech fraud Playbook of how to build you know a billion dollar company without shipping any technology and I think we're seeing some incredible Innovations happen in the Deep tech for AUD Arena right now where we have companies that are raising you know hundreds of millions of dollars on technology that uh does not exist will never exist and uh is plainly Impossible on the face of it based on you know a basic and rudimentary understanding of physics has that happened for years though I mean that's happened for years with like cylindra Theos like this this Playbook seems to be repeating itself forever is there yeah but I feel like we're getting like incredibly tested you know playbooks right the acquisition of mass amounts of La based real estate right arm tattoos from the CEOs sick biceps like this is just like fundamental Innovations on the art that we haven't seen in a long amount of time got it got it well said uh will you are are you 27 Now 26 26 uh you've uh come of age in a kangaroo Market you've played it very well the Kangaroo Market for those that don't know we talked about this on the show yesterday you know has historically you had bull markets where things go up bare markets where things go down kangaroo markets you're just sort of like bouncing all over the place what's your general read in my view we've seen more top signals in the last three months than any point in my uh adult life uh what's is there any more gas in the tank are we are we in a sort of like Tech uh Tech super cycle or is it just down only from here on out I think we got a couple more 10xs left to go I think we got the ceilings far from where we're at now I just think we have a couple you know 10x sell Downs on the way too it just feels like the rate of you know up down up down is only going to increase fragility in the Market's going to Skyrocket too right as you see like billions of dollars in Venture chasing you know clawed plugins that you know write some basic code for you we don't understand how any of the stuff works fragility is going to go up Market's going to cycle a bunch Mega cycle feels crazy it just feels like if you're not making money along that path I don't know what you're doing what are your thoughts on Leverage right now I I there right two great jery gon idea two kinds of guys in the world right cash Chads leverage Kings right I am a cash Chad I run my accounts net cash I've never had leverage in my life no credit cards debit cards only right there are certainly guys that live on The Leverage hierarchy are able to run that not my playbook two different kinds of people in the world interesting that makes sense uh you just advice for young people advice for young people don't take out credit cards no credit card that yeah okay bu byy comically large model boats they're a very good store of value I got another one Speaking of young people do you think there's an opportunity to go uh Downstream of the teal fellowship and offer funds to middle schoolers to uh drop out of Middle School to pursue uh deep Tech hard tech impa think about this with ramp employees right like we find every 14-year-old that works at ramp right we find everyone that Zack Zack Frankle has recruited from from local Bay are in middle schools and we give them a million dollars to start an expense tax start off I I feel like that is just like clear Alpha in the market right now we need to go younger we need to go into the benches of ramp yeah to the benches of ramp the benches the benches from the benches to the trenches there you go that's where we need to go uh what are you uh what are you reading these days I know you've got uh rare books and and manuscripts maybe some of them you can't talk about but uh what's top of mine I am working on republishing an amazing book that I cannot say the title of but it's a history of political corruption in Louisiana in the 1960s it is you know so good that the author that wrote it was shot 14 times in the chest with a Shotgun by the subject of the book that's how you know you're writing something important that's how you know you're writing something good I recently purchased the rights to that that should be coming at some point in the next two to seven years soon as I figure out how to actually publish this thing um but really focused on political history right now I think there's a huge amount of alpha left there what about a uh what about a book that's already in publish or already in print uh best thing I read recently was a Brent bore recommendation that I'm scrolling through my Amazon trying to find the name of okay oh another good one Santa Monica partner's letters letters on small cap investing kind of a classic of the genre um on finding undervalued businesses traded on very weird and esoteric markets yeah for sure uh talk to us about the transition from uh you know semi liquid uh startup founder to uh much more liquid post exit founder are you uh have you been focused on getting a liquid Again by making a high volume of of startup Investments are you uh more interested been focused on getting a liquid by buying very large model boats I think this is kind of where the Market's going I think it is it is clearly an underpriced asset and I'm moving size in the model Boone industry right now are you looking at any uh startups that might act as like marketplaces for model boats you know we're partner liquidity is a bad thing you never want to Mark to Market you never want to be able to liquidate assets ideally the perfect asset is impossible to liquidate and impossible to Mark right it's just like a black hole you put money into yeah and this model boat I have my eye on built from wood uh from Henry Kissinger's desk in the West Wing um just it's a perfect asset it's impossible to Mark cool impossible to Mark awesome uh well it's been great having you you guys any uh we look forward to as uh the cycle you know continues to uh you know make progress and unravel we'd love to have you back on the show to uh to discuss good to have you guys excited to collect my equity on this Enterprise yep yes you deserve it you deserve it you worked hard for it yeah you did thanks have a great Friday bye what a guy what a character yeah I mean the character on X is an very authentic representation of of will um that uh that's always refreshing when you meet somebody that you sort of know online or that has a sort of online Persona the online Persona is uh you know exactly the same as the offline Persona he had some riff a while back about like uh VC ghost writers making like like $700,000 a year or something and it like threw all the VCS into it into like a complete frenzy because they're like wait are people doing this like should I be spending this much money on my Ghost Rider yeah and he fantastic way to manifest these things I would I would really love to know if there was any truly exceptional posters that were just 100% ghost written because ghost writing is pretty easy to track um when it's when it's sort of like mid uh posting oh totally totally yeah every everyone can buy like the the yeah the mid the the default just kind of like the threads the the the the the the current thing memes all of those are very monetized but truly inspired bangers uh very very difficult for example pavl asaru hav posts I've got two and only two hiring criteria one do you have that dog in you two are you nice with it not put that we got to put that in Banger archive not ghost written I think I think it actually has been on Banger archive I think that's where I found this um but uh yeah when we ran into P he said the nicest thing anyone could possibly say about your posts and he was like do you guys write those yeah because he was like you guys like like I love the account well we specifically decided to turn it on yeah because we realized we were covering the top posters in the world we had to prove that we could compete totally totally you got to be in the arena you got to be in the arena yeah otherwise you won't be respected um let's cover some posts uh Alexis should be joining any second okay so YC Paul Graham yeah Paul Graham says it will be y combinator's 20th birthday in four days I'm pleased to uh I'm pleased by how young YC still feels as an organization it would be dangerous for YC to become too established since YC is training startups it has to remain startup is itself but it requires a constant effort to stay that way we talked to Gary tan yesterday about that and uh it's yeah it it's it's so interesting because it'd be so easy for YC to scale up and become just a massive asset manager um but of course it would lose a lot of what makes it special yep and I think Gary is uh yeah Reinventing uh what do they call it like refounding the company when you take over like he needs to make aggressive changes and so people see those and they're like oh like you know AI is writing all the code or they're doing defense Tech now it's like no change would have been death yep he has to take risks and then some of those will be rolled back some of them will be successful but you only get power lot outcomes when you're when you're testing lots of like really high variant stuff yeah and the uh YC is in a situation where they are in a highly competitive environment right there's so many alternatives to YC's Capital you can go raise if you're a exceptional founder you could go and raise from the cison brothers from uh the Airbnb Founders I mean I I truly think the the biggest change was that when YC started it was it was $177,000 and then it's scaled up and now it's 500 but Sand Hill Road VC firms their doors were closed to Stanford new grads which is Unthinkable now every single Stanford nrad can easily get a meeting at a sandill Road Venture Capital firm that is completely ready to write a 500K check yep and so all of a sudden what YC is is not just hey we're willing to take a shot on a kid with a $20,000 check and see what they do um like the Airbnb guys could not have gotten funded directly like they like they were not in there's some there's some iconic pass emails out of the original where where people like like clearly weren't taking it seriously weren't taking meeting it used to be if you wanted to start an uh an if you wanted to start a company in Tech that meant you're going to build a website and building a website required racking servers and buying Hardware but of course the cloud computing era happened right as YC started and so all of a sudden there was a big uh opportunity to do a whole lot more with a lot less it's all all the AI it's interesting it's like it's like could they go back to 18K because uh you know like they're giving 500 it work yeah like like like uh maybe uh you know like I'm I'm actually you know I'm excited I mean I love that that you know the YC Founders get 500k and they can go and do stuff and I think it's great but um I think it's interesting to to to I'm I'm very interested in following what happens with pmf or die because they're spending a lot less they're spending 25k which is very much in like the 2005 the Alexis Ohanian era of YC like it is crazy that they that he built redit with uh yeah 20K to start yeah wild and and you can still do that and maybe you can do it more now because of the the the AI tools it's not quite as different as like from going from capex to Opex yeah um because it's it's going from uh hiring extra software Engineers to write more code to paying a bill so it's it's so it's not a it's not like a cash flow management change yeah but uh it is interesting uh the Willman itis group chat is is popping off I assume yeah judging by your face it sure is they're live texting us it's great um I I say I want to pull up this video and watch uh Ben I'm going to send it to you quickly if you can pull it up I want to I want to play the video of the Dig announcement uh that we're going to be discussing with Alexis while yeah let's play that Jason carman's texting me those live numbers look good baby uh I haven't checked them but thank you Jason I'm glad that you're looking at my stats so that I know uh I'm sure we'll R after what's the book uh that that raboy recommends score takes care of itself yeah yeah the podcast downloads take care of itself yeah yeah I mean Jason fully believes that like he just goes and makes something like brilliant for like months and months and months and yeah goes viral every time because he's not like over over engineering it uh anyway Ben let's kick it over to the Alexis Ohanian video announcement so what we've got today is dig.

com it's with two G's di.

com now give the power back to the people dig rewrites the internet's front [Music] page Tech darling dig skyrockets with millions of loyal start welcome to the Kevin like none of those images of Kevin rose on all the different you know magazine cover no I was pre I was post sure I visited it our perspective on the world has shifted a lot you don't want to live in the past but now we actually have the technology to make better healthier community experiences this is a team up I never would have imagined 20 years ago this is so K it makes sense that you would be relaunching dick.

com as its original founder but teaming up with Alexis Co oh good shot oh that's a great shot I love it whoever shot this is for a long time and rightfully so like I'm excited for this is like a media project like a story you know I I I don't know if if I've been like oh I really need dig right now but I'm I'm down I think this is one of those things where the asset had been been basically languishing yeah yeah and I remember I advertised on dig at some point I think in 2018 2019 um and it was it was seemingly like the the content quality was down dramatically yeah and so trying to return it to its former glory is a worthy undertaking and then the other news from Alexis this week we're basically just going to start covering it and we'll get some at the very least we'll get some good backstory um oh Alexis just tweeted that he's coming on in five I guess the uh I guess the audience uh guilt tripped in guilt tripped him in thank you Brothers um thank you everyone tweet cover the Alex uh Tik Tok announcement and then with him we can um yeah this is so funny I mean we need a we need a board of like people that have talked about buying Tik Tok add it to the list um my my true and and Hardline stance is I will support literally any American buying Tik Tok I don't care if you have $5 if you say you're going to buy Tik Tok you have my support yep because I'm I'm there for it so we magic is real we got at tvpn on Tik Tok and I I think we're GNA just post a video up there that says like posting this video every day until an American owns Tik Tok we're not really willing to to sort of invest in building an audience on the on the on the Chinese platform yeah uh so I'll read this time article it says Reddit co-founder Alexis henan has joined billionaire Frank mccort's bid to acquire Tik Tok uh mccort's internet advocacy organization project Liberty announced this week that Ohanian uh uh an investor married to tennis star Serena Williams had joined a Consortium called The People's bid for Tik Tok uh Alexis had posted I'm officially now one of the people trying to buy Tik Tok us and bring it on chain Ohanian said in a series of posts made on X uh project Liberty says it will provide more uh users more control over their online data if successful in its bid project Liberty said the technology will serve as the backbone of the reason designed Tik Tok ensuring that privacy security and digital Independence are no longer optional but foundational when asked by an ex-user on Monday what he would call Tik Tok if he purchased it uh Ohanian said Tik Tok Freedom Edition amazing um uh under a federal bill passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by President Joe Biden last year Tik Tok was required to cut ties for a china-based parent company bite dance or face a ban by January 19th and uh as our audience knows Trump extended the deadline for Tik Tok to find new ownership until early April so we're really coming down to the line here uh and uh mccort has a consorti which includes Shark Tank Stars Kevin oy we got to get Kevin on the show to talk about that um he's got to get Trump's attention I know Alexis isn't huge Trump supporter or anything but he's got to get the attention of the president y if he wants to get this deal done I say he goes and a bunch of billboards outside of mar Lago that is a play and you know how where you would do it add quick add quick and you know what add quick oh yeah oh yeah I'm thinking what you're thinking you're thinking what I'm thinking I'm thinking what you're thinking add quick uh raise their uh