Logan Bartlett: Private markets feel like 2021 again, VC capital concentration accelerating, IPO window uncertain

talk to Bryce about that more he did you see he he responded to my Apple intelligence thing we got Logan Bartlett here bring guys what's up how you doing good there he is thanks for having me on it's great to have you it's great to have you uh how's the uh how's the reception been to the market update you getting any push back uh or are you know VC's already sort of making threads based around your content and and sort of making it their own yeah well it's a you know we were done like a week or two ago with all the content and then uh obviously the market went uh went crazy and we had to like redo I don't know 50% of the slides or something so I uh thankfully it didn't end up being too stale we we froze all the data on Monday and Tuesday Wednesday end up actually being pretty tame uh in terms of the market trading so I think people can rip off all the slides for their annual meetings that are coming up here in the next couple weeks we're happy to open source and take credit for it give me the give me the oneliner is it so over are we so back are we poor are we rich how are you feeling private or public let's start with public I don't uh I don't is not a great answer but uh I would say it feels like we're in for a lot of uh that is flowing through the system and uncertainty just isn't a great thing for for any business and while it's not going to impact software companies or technology companies quite as much directly like the end customers for a lot of these different businesses are going to be impacted in a meaningful way and so until we get a little bit more clarity on to what end all of these things are being done and what sort of the end state is I don't know how you price in anything uh going forward and so now that obviously changes by the by the minute here so I it could be we're at some steady state here in the next couple days or hours or weeks or whatever it is and and this ends up all sort of feeling kind of stale but right now I'm not uh I'm not particularly optimistic about what's going on in the public markets I heard so Morgan Stanley uh equity research person said that coming out of their conference which was a week ago they said it was the most negative sentiment that he had heard uh I think with the exception of the onset of covid in the last 10 years from people sort of like looking at the markets um and I assume that's just a factor of uncertainty but yeah yeah is there do you think there's some sort of like Doge efficiency meme that's working its way through the market right now like I remember when Elon came into Twitter X you know laid off a ton of people there was this big question about like well what other software companies could do something similar but is that now that you're seeing it done at the federal level are companies thinking like hey maybe we should pull back a little bit on the investing and scaling I I I think we've sort of seen it over the last couple years or at least the last 18 months or so if you go look one of the slides that we put up in our deck was um sort of the tradeoff that's occurred between growth and uh free cash flow and to some extent that's the um you know the macro environment but also I think it's just the knobs being pulled a little bit between layoffs and hiring freezes and all that and so I think people have made the conscious decision that they can do more with less and I think AI is only going to um continue to pull that Trend forward uh is it is it cutting to the Bone uh like Doge maybe is doing or or Twitter did probably probably not people aren't taking it to that extreme but I do think people have really recognized that there's knobs that are a little bit more uh pullable than they would have appreciated otherwise and I think I mean if you look at the big software private Equity folks the vistas and the Tomo Bravos of the world like they've been doing this for the last it's 10 15 years I I just think it wasn't something that people really tried to do in the public markets and now we're seeing that actually occur in a more meaningful way for you as a multi-stage investor what advice are you giving to the sort of average seriesa founder in anyways like we could have massive uh uh sort of GDP uh could go negative but if you're a high growth software company that's just sort of hitting your stride you can still Thrive how are you kind of advising you know your portfolio companies around sort of Downstream Capital because as red point you guys are also you know a fund that can participate in some of these later stage rounds as well yeah um I would say that at least the last I mean the last five years it's sort of felt like so I've been doing this now for 11 or 12 years in the last four five have felt like um you know twice as long as the first half of my career just in terms of all the changes that have occurred that said it does seem pretty uncorrelated what's going on at like a high level macro with the early stage funding environment I think to some extent what happened after 2000 was the like uh sophisticated LPS really pulled out of the funds that they felt had gotten too bloated or too big and that's happened this cycle as well I think if you talk of smart endowments or pension plans or stuff they they've definitely um as fund sizes have gotten to three four five six billion dollars like those people have raised eyebrows and maybe voted with their feet to either scale down or walk away from uh those those funds but uh there's a lot of other money that has willingly and excitedly run into those big uh uh fundraises and so I think you're seeing Sovereign wealth and Middle East people come into those funds and give them you know what what uh two three 4500 million and so it ends up kind of being a rounding error if a smart pension walks away or endowment walks away so the way that impacts the startups I I think it's just at a very micro level like continue to execute in the will be there at least that's the way it seemed over the last couple years and I guess it's true until it isn't but all this stuff sort of feels um outside of the control of the individual Founders and so I would encourage people not to worry too too much about it uh yeah related to that I remember when the the market crashed kind of around I don't even know what we have the term for interest rate like post Zer era post Zer uh you were talking to maybe it was ail Michael or some one but about uh this idea of like there's a lot of dry powder and there was a lot of optimism say from entrepreneurs being like well the VCS have the money they're going to have to give it to us anyway and you were kind of explaining to folks well like the dry powder isn't necessarily sitting in their bank account like they have to make Capital calls the LPS might put pressure on them like funds might get downsized uh but it feels like maybe now the dry powder narrative was real and now like all the VC's figured out how to start deploying again and and deployment rates are up but how do you tell the story of the post Zer era to where we are now in terms of just the pace of capital deployment yeah uh it's a great question it's um I would say I've been surprised at how uh consistent people have been able to fund raise and I think there was really a triaging or kind of a hollowing out of the middle that occurred or maybe the the tier B uh if you will a tier 2 Funds where you saw a handful of those folks blow up uh or really struggle with their fundraises in some way but the the names that everyone thinks about or knows I think there was a concentration and consolidation of capital uh that came in and then you couple that with um some of our friends with with seemingly endless amounts of oil money coming into the the sector as well and it just it just sort of feels like uh we're in this new normal state where there's a lot of capital going around and I don't know exactly what school going to cause that to change uh it it feels like there wasn't a ton of Reckoning for sins that were made in 2020 and 2021 it feels like people were able to get a mulligan and say hey you know what like yeah we got a little crazy but now we've uh We've really doubled down and focused on what it is that we do well and people seem at least on the lp side seem to be largely forgiving or if they're not forgiving uh they's someone waiting to take their place in one of these name brand funds I mean it feels like yeah there's gyration and oscillations in the American early stage technology Market but where are you going to go if you don't invest in American Technology it's sort of like we all read the same books you look at the founders today and like everyone's read innovators dilemma or everyone's read like read the case study of Blockbuster Netflix and so we're dealing with a far more sophisticated like entrepreneur that's executing or CEO that's executing on AI right now uh and I I think similarly like all the LPS studied what happened after 20002000 or sorry 2201 like that was actually a great time to lean into to the asset class and so now we're at this prisoners dilemma where it would be theoretically a great time for everyone to lean in if other people backed out because then prices would depress but everyone's staying in and so it's actually leading to prices staying elevated which has been interesting I mean I think in the last couple weeks it feels like I I I've heard the the the meme or the the refrain that uh it's like so 2021 or it's got 2021 Vibes all over again uh this was pre the last seven days and so I'm not exactly sure how that's going to play out but that's definitely been the sentiment in the private markets from the VCS that I'm talking to is just sort of like uh gosh this feels like we're running this back and doing it all over again yeah I've had that I've had this feeling multiple times this year where a portfolio company is just raising like a you know big U round uh and depending on the lead I'm just thinking like I really wish I could sell into this round like even though I'm a Believer in the company it's just like you know getting so far over and and and the narrative is always there right like I'm thinking of like one company in particular that will go on name like really really strong narrative really strong traction it's just like setting prices at a point that you know basically pricing in the next you know potentially decade of growth uh and if that's the case as an investor you ideally would want to get out and then just invest you know rotate into another IL liquid you got your um do you get it's such a feature and a bug of the private markets that you're not like beholden to the Mania and you sort of get to play a long game and anything you're doing that when I talk to my private or my public market friends like uh they're envious that uh you know you can take a morning off and not have your entire world implode versus the public markets like stuff can hit the fan and you you your entire uh day uh could totally change at a moment's notice the flip side of that is you're you're really in for a long period of time and you don't get to say well I'll take a few chips off now because I think probabilistically there's a better opportunity that could come down and it feels like this is a good risk adjusted return that doesn't really uh that's not as accepted in the private markets I think increasingly though we're finding some of the financial products for that and I've seen more people or at least more opportunities to take a little liquidity uh I'm not sure it's totally uh socially acceptable at least for the institutional funds to do it I think it's far easier if you're an angel people are a little bit more understanding of that but it does feel like comes down it comes down to volume right if I if I put 25k into a company and it and it does well that you know and and I want to sell the position it's very different than you know you with like you know we have a $400 million position here and we're we're rotating out it's like there's probably not the the demand uh uh what just just one uh I I don't know if you you feel even free to speculate on this but something I've been confused by was you know the figure round getting priced around $40 billion like what do what in your mind do you think is the play there the you know Brett's last company spaed you could imagine figure you know uh I I think a Pure Play Human stock would do well you know uh at least a little bit a little while in the public markets but what do you think is some of these later stage companies that are still a ways out from like True commercial adoption but you know it you know especially now with companies like cor weave you know the the core weave IPO it seems unclear now if they're going to get out but like what's your read are are are any of these companies going to get out in the next year other than some of the bigger names like like chime i' I've heard um so a few different things there I guess I've heard uh I don't know if if you guys have heard different things with cor weave in the last little bit but it seems like there's there's a few people that are still kind of all systems go on IPO and are going to plow ahead and uh poor weave certainly doesn't ask my opinion but if I were counseling them it feels like just just get out there and I think having some AI story with with probably uh a bunch of institutional managers that want to exposure to some derivative direct trend of AI I would say it's probably as good a time as any especially when some of these bigger contracts are coming up in 2017 2018 like get out when you have a little bit of you know certainty of those cash flows coming from the Nidia and the microsofts and the open AIS of the world like I would encourage uh them to go um on the figure thing specifically um so so I looked at Brett's uh business vety which predates the last one uh I actually really enjoy I haven't talked to him in I don't know eight years or something but I really enjoyed uh that interaction now that was like a job Marketplace or something so very uh different than now he sort of become this like hard tech founder which is interesting uh from a job Marketplace thing um the the thing that I don't totally understand about figure in that round itself and this is a common phenomenon at the not the end but at at the peak of a lot of Cycles is you end up with a lot of these spvs getting formed in a meaningful way and you end up with managers trying to get uh write bigger checks for Rounds than their funds can actually hold and so it's hard to know exactly what the incentives at play for some of those names I I don't even uh I wasn't familiar with the names that they're talking about in leading those rounds but um it certainly seems from a funsize standpoint that those people probably can't Step Up and write those checks themselves and so then you wonder what are the incentives at play for the for the whoever is writing those checks like what are they thinking about uh and like what is the the executive team like what is their incentive uh to raise at this price um yeah I always looked at it I looked at it as if you're going to price it at 10 and say this is a pre-ipo round we are going to basically are we're planning to spack the company in the next year we think it's going to pop that type of round makes sense but if you know you're pricing it at four times that roughly it just feels like how do you actually get out of this who's going to get out of this position do the employees actually benefit um but that's just you know one one example skill issue spack at 80 SP why not why not I do think there's this retail demand for I mean if I were open AI I would try to get out sooner rather than later right because I think there's this demand both from institutional and Retail to have exposure to some of these things and if you look I mean uh Palante teers where they're trading and obviously there's a bunch of different considerations around that business but like uh I I think that if you went out and floated just a small percentage of your you know your overall business I think that there could be a lot of nice liquidity to fund a lot of the capex and you would trade at a really healthy premium so it'll be interesting to see who of like the big model companies actually tries to get out first speaking of going public do you want your uh private Market investor competitors to go public the general Catalyst you're excited you're like yeah I really I want you to go from you know I want to be able to see your fund returns yeah yeah closures are GNA be it's an interesting thing I so uh our structure is not one that we can or ever will try to have the Ambitions of doing that I I saw um when when when people uh there's certainly funds that that uh Act or either call themselves uh have leaders that that are more akin to a CEO than they are um you know investment partner or something like that and so I think from a financial engineering standpoint and like institutionalization of the asset class I'm excited to see people try these things um the cynical side of it when I compare uh a venture firm to a private Equity Firm and think about the incentives at play so if you're a private Equity Firm if you're Apollo or black stone or black rock or whoever it is right you're this big entity um the people within your firm can't can't really leave and compete with you because there's so much institutional infrastructure around one the Quantum of dollars that you actually need but then two the relationships with the debt providers the ability to process the deals the ability to get access through the bankers you can't just go hang a shingle or go join another competitor to compete with Blackstone or Apollo or whatever it is right and Venture it's so beholden I think at least to individuals and individuals can walk out the door and they can go raise 100 200 300 400 million dollars and like effectively compete with you in some way shape or form and so I there was an information report I don't know if it's true or not talking about GC moving from more carry to bonuses uh and I don't know if it's true uh information tends to do a pretty good job reporting I think um and like that uh was reported alongside some people leaving uh the organization and and you just wonder like as the incentive structures start to change and you start to be more institutional how do you retain the quality of people so like an an intellectual level I'm very interesting interested to see all this plays out and I respect anyone that's like innovating in some way on on a structure that has been stuck in some version for a long long time I I'm very curious about the Practical implications of how it's going to work with like aining individual talent and all that stuff yeah that's been that's been my big question if if you're somebody that you know wants to get into Venture and you believe in your picking ability and you think you can be one of the greats wouldn't you want to get the sort of Maximum benefit of that by getting carrye and being a part of a partnership versus you know oh I got you know I invested in you know the next slack and I got you know onetime little you know bonus yeah EXA who knows who knows how it'll work but you know I can imagine it's especially since the next option if you can't compete uh then it's it's fine you're kind of locked in like Goldman Bankers or Morgan Stanley Bankers or Apollo MDS or whatever it's it's hard for them to get the scale to go out and really compete and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't but like that RSU structure bonus structure kind of works when you can't really walk out the door and and hang a shingle and compete Venture you kind of can and so I think it's if you're good you know you can go raise we see a lot of these solo capitalists or whatever like small three four 500 million funds out there and so I think I I don't know retaining Talent is going to be an interesting thing to see have you like last question on this point have you seen solo the sort of solo GPS overpaying to win deals because like that's something like you know sometimes you see these sort of obvious power law companies like the Ander rolles of the world with a lot Gill sort of like you know leading rounds and that that makes that makes sense I think there's sort of consensus now that Ander is going to be a really massive company but when you see a solo GP come in and and write a a100 million plus check does that ever you know you know what's your what's your read on that because in from my perspective sometimes those marks don't even feel real when uh when you're you know there's something to be said of like okay red point like underwrote this and like you know they're like a an organization and a firm and it's not just like you know one or two you know major you know so so how do you how do you look at those rounds and I'm sure often times you're you're competing to win those rounds yeah it's um so I guess we've I've seen less of that phenomenon than probably 2021 and I would have to Rack my brain a little bit to think about like the big institu or institutional institutional solo capitalists are uh I think those terms are directly at odds with one another but the big solo capitalists that can write those checks I mean OT can obviously do that and he's the the one that certainly comes to mind um I would say honestly uh there's there's been some firms that um have continued to scale where I've probably seen that more than uh any individual kind of solo capitalist out there and I think there was this thing where um in 2020 21 it felt like um we rotated to the brand where we lived in this world where everyone uh was was just a zoom screen away and so you know Mark andreon and Doug Leone and Keith R boy and whoever was was could be in the room as quickly as I could be in the room uh because time and space weren't really constraints at all and so in that world I think there was a big gravitation to the big uh institutional funds because it was like oh my gosh I'm going to get Mark andreon involved and and that's amazing right um it feels like we've rotated a little more back to like who is my individual board member who is going to be on the ground with me dayto day like I'm going to solve for that person rather than the so like the just the brain P past a certain point right uh like obviously you must be this call to ride the ride with some some things and so you got to have enough credible uh brand as an institution but then it comes down to the individual a little bit more and so I would say I've probably seen more than the solo capitalist thing um I've probably seen more of uh hey this fund has a bunch of money and you might not be getting their number one person it could be their you know whatever their their uh reliever out of the bullpen uh that's coming in to do the round um and those are the ones that they're like really juicing the price a little bit on these things because they you know they want the asset in that way so I I think that's that's something I've seen more and more of of late uh I want to go back to the innovators dilemma and I heard you on a podcast maybe two years ago right when the Chachi P moment was happening debating is AI a sustaining Innovation or disruptive innovation how do you sit with it now how are you seeing it uh get adopted in the public markets and what narratives are taking hold there I still uh I still feel like there's an analogy that was made to me about Google uh and it was it was talking about um the Americans in World War II that like we got every opportunity to ultimately do the right thing and uh come into the war and like help determine the outcome uh and and I think that was the analogy I had heard uh about uh uh Google with AI that like they have all the things to their advantage be it the distribution of Google SEO be it YouTube content be what whatever it is like the talent the team the dollars all of that stuff to like figure this out ultimately um we'll see if that actually proves to be the case but I do think that that is largely true of um a lot of a lot of the incumbents in different sectors and and so uh the analogy that I think I used back then I think is still true is like if you go back and look at the Salesforce of mobile uh that was still Salesforce it was just like a mobile app of Salesforce and if if you go look and kind of go down the line like how did Netflix or Facebook there wasn't like a a mobile Netflix I mean I guess you could say Tik Tok is mobile Netflix in some ways but like there wasn't a pure playay mobile Netflix like a quibby that came out and was actually disruptive in some ways and there wasn't um Facebook there maybe Instagram was the one that like kind of hopped on being that but still it was like um it wasn't totally net new surface areas that ended up manifesting themselves around that stuff or or at least it wasn't immediately in the fullness of time maybe it could have been if if Instagram had stayed independent or if uh or if uh or what Tik tok's been able to do I think that seems to be the case here today where we're going to see these things that are that are new in novel within Ai and I draw aend to the Ubers or the whatsapps or whatever it is where these businesses that couldn't have been possible without a are going to form a lot of independent Equity value uh but a lot of it's going to be captured by incumbents in some ways and I think in Mobile Apple and Google probably captured the Lion Share of like Equity value that was created by the Mobile iPhone or whatever like those were the ones that really through the App Store and the actual phones they captured a lot of it and and I think in large part maybe with the exception of open AI like the vast majority of the equity value will probably end up accumulating to the Facebooks and the microsofts and the you know the Googles and I guess open AI as well um but I still think we'll end up with hundreds of billions of dollars of equity value created for you know the derivative companies akin to the to the Ubers and the whatsapps and the whoever else yeah I had this uh take I was noodling on yesterday about um it feels like Apple's missing the AI moment but does it matter because fa uh Microsoft missed mobile and they still made it work uh how do you feel things are going with apple intelligence obviously that John grber AR kind of shook everyone to their core uh do you think they're in trouble or is it overhyped or where's the narrative sitting with you these days so so the grber thing I mean obviously uh grber is like the goat of Apple coverage and so I you got to take everything he says almost like uh biblically in some ways that's like the canonical Gospel of uh of Apple you know takes um but I uh I have always hated Siri like I have always hated and then the Apple intelligence thing uh and the summarizations on the text I mean I love that if only as a meme like I enjoy screenshotting it and sending it back to my friends and like that's the best use case of Apple intelligence I've seen and so like when making fun of your product is like the best instantiation of your product it's probably uh not you know you're not on a good trajectory there culturally it just seals and this is this is probably more uh you know John ruber or Ben Thompson than what I profess to know about uh but it just feels antithetical to Apple's culture to uh execute on um AI in the way that I think you need to uh they are very like measure uh measure 35 times and cut once and let's do this all secretively and let's like try to control the ecosystem and keep everything uh like insular in some ways and that is just so antithetical to Ai and AI is about like proliferation and getting it out there and getting the data and taking the feedback loops and moving fast and trying new things and iterating and like I just think that's directly at odds with who they are and so I don't know how you change that and does I guess to your question does it actually matter um I don't know they have such lock in right is Apple what is Apple's market cap today I mean is it like a TR sorry trillion business yeah 3.

2 trillion it's like I I think they're probably going to mess this up and I'm not sure it's going to matter for them as a business and I think the sooner they realize that they they won't be able to execute on it the sooner we get these things in our product as a uh you know as a partnership rather than just open up the API and let the let the ecosystem flourish and you know let me change out the button for a different series well the the it's fine I still buy the I still buy the phones the other thing that nobody really talks about anymore because it just hasn't been possible is m&a like apple has so much cash if there are breakout you know consumer like products that make sense as part of the Apple ecosystem there's a there's a world in which they could actually just buy those companies and everyone quotes the 60 billion on their balance sheet or something but Apple has returned over a trillion dollars of cash over the last like 14 years like it is a cash generating machine at a scale I don't think their Acquisitions I think that's probably a better use of capital than what they bought to date not been the best acquirers you know it's crazy though I mean they they were uh Siri was acquired for them like uh I don't know 13 years ago or something 14 like they were early on all of this stuff and so clearly there's some like broken um execution elements at least within you know how they've gone about at the date which might not matter in the grand schema thing it's a it's a deterministic culture not a probabilistic culture and so it's misaligned with AI I like that that is that is very uh Ben Thompson or Ben Evans of VI I'm trying to be more piy yeah I like it I like it we got really no time left but I wanted to uh give you an opportunity to talk about ramp you when when they announced the new fund raise you you kind of like were poking a little bit of fun at yourself because you you did you basically uh you got found the local top but not the global top well and I think you invested a couple times during did yeah we invested in a billion and then like three and a half and then eight or whatever 82 or something uh yeah it was uh it was a it was a long uh a long run from there funny enough that that round that we ended up investing in at whatever 8 billion or eight and a half or whatever it was uh what's a couple hundred million among friends but I uh that was like December 21 when we were talking about it and then the round ultimately closed in January or February or something and so it was really uh last boat off the island in terms of like it internally the the zero interest rate uh kind of mindset and the thing that I've learned and this wasn't this has been the last five years for me basically since I so I joined red point in in December of 19 officially started in March of 20 and uh what what what I've realized is like price very rarely within some Zone has has mattered and when I find myself iterating a little too much on um on like oh I'll do it at this price versus that price it probably says something about what I think the ultimate outcome for the business can be and when when it's been the Investments that have worked the best are the ones in which I'm like I don't know exactly how this is going to play out or where the ceiling is on how this company can execute but uh I just need to be in business with these people and let's let's just see where it goes from there and obviously that's easier when you're talking hundreds of millions than is low single digits which is easier than high single digits which is easier than double digit billion dollars but like that mindset is one that I've I've uh internalized Where It ultimately says something about the quality of the company if you really think too too hard about the difference between this price or that price and so the funny thing about the ramp investment was the entire time uh for the last three years I was like telling our team internally it's I don't know when this is going to stop growing or what the cealing for this can be and at some point we're going to get to the other side of what that round was a couple years ago and so that was the first like public validation that it really felt like we had crossed that Chasm a little bit I think probably nine months ago a year ago it sort of felt like an inevitability that we weren't going to get stuck at you know some some Maximum that was beyond that uh but yeah I mean the the team just continues to execute at a level that i' I've never really seen before and I know you guys know them well and so it's been a fun one for me to be a part of and kind of work alongside well this conversation has been presented by Ram like every conversation uh go to ramp.

com to sign up use corporate cards all my conversations quite literally are presented by ramp I think my ability to do this job at this point is presented by ramp in some capacity so you guys have quite literally the ad play for it but I uh they keep me in business as well that's great amazing thank you so much for coming on uh when's your next are you gonna do uh is this report I feel like I see him twice a year or is it I think once a year is is usually I mean this uh this one I think took a lot out of our team internally there was a lot of late nights and weekends on this one so I think we're going to give our folks a little bit of time uh a little bit of respit uh before we run it back uh but who knows I mean the market keeps up we get more tariffs we we get things a little crazy maybe we'll need to come out of the would work and you know when the theme music plays you got to emerge for sure uh last last question for you we have Sam Lon and uh Seth uh Seth Rosenberg from uh Greylock coming on and slow coming on to debate AI in about an hour who's who let me give you guys a little bit of advice as someone that has moderated a debate with Sam leson before let me give you guys a little bit of I would I would encourage um if you if you have mute buttons on microphones uh I would encourage you to jump in and try to steer the conversation don't be a passive participant remember one people tend to be really mean to you when you do that and you let let let the bustering go on between him and let's say I don't know Zack Weinberg theoretically so I would encourage you guys to be active participants in that conversation we're excited we got our we got our boxing gloves we're going to throw them on we're going to get in the mix uh guys keep up the great work I'm a huge fan of what you guys are doing I appreciate anytime you want me I'm here thanks lot welcome all right guys see you bye yeah oh good fun did yeah we got to get the get the mute button ready have you seen that uh what he's referring to with Zack Weinberg were debating crypto it was Sam leson versus Zack Weinberg and Sam was making the case that like every real assets should be on chain and your mortgage should be on chain and like this is the future everything will be crypto and and Zach is just like okay like walk me through that at an extreme level of detail like how does this work legally how does how do the taxes on the land work like all these things and they just went at it and Sam was just going super super hard talking talking talking and then he kept being like I gotta go because it's kid bedtime like I like I really I really got to go but then but then he wouldn't let Zach get the last word so that he he'd want to like drop another filibuster on him it was like really frustrating for everyone and I guess uh people gave Logan some some negative feedback because he wasn't he wasn't aggressive on the moderation enough but I thought it was a great I I I found it very very entertaining to watch so I had a good time uh anyway should we do some uh good time some posts some ads uh all of the above over the next few uh minutes before Keon joins us from nucleus yes uh the shot the Chaser from xor SWAP the shot Claude thinking and 01 Pro have replaced all University instructors for me I can no longer watch any pre-recorded videos and then the Chaser is I bombed my second linear algebra midterm ouch two days later that's so funny and word grammar friend of the show says math is best learned from textbooks and practice problems not from Claude but also not from lectures so yeah just hit the books the books yeah I I remember I took the train up to Silicon Valley from Pasadena took me like 12 hours um but I had a uh a textbook on uh natural language processing like the precursor to llms this was back in like 2012 2013 and I just sat there and just read this whole textbook and taught me a lot I really enjoyed ITT are underrated when it comes to getting potentially goated when when when learning is the the vibe yeah textbooks are goated no I think the good thing for isan is that the models are going to get better and the good thing about the real world is nobody really cares if you're using an llm for for specific answers as long as you can do a little bit of thinking yourself yeah and you should be able to generate something I mean all the textbooks at this point have been scraped into these llms like you should be able to get the llm to essentially just reproduce exactly the text that's in the that's in the textbook now maybe that's IP infringement but uh you can certainly get the facts the question is were you just sitting there chatting and making it feel like you were learning uh it seems like you didn't you didn't actually get uh all the information into your brain but good luck on your next midterm uh let's go to uh pachy McCormick he says today much of the global GDP is not computer soon everything is computer this is the opportunity funny because there's it's true yeah uh but I was thinking about the everything's computer everything is computer thing and I think it I like the phrase more as a possessive than a contraction so the the actual quote is a contraction he was saying everything is is a computer basically and then he dropped the A and it was everything everything's computer everything's a computer uh but I I prefer the everything's computer as like what is the computer of everything it's like this like you know hive mind AI like yes what we're building is everything's computer it belongs to everything and and that just tells you like this this very weird futuristic networked uh Mega computer that controls everything it sounds even more SciFi at that point um let's stay with py yeah I mean like one more thing on this I think this is the opportunity and why so many people that were traditionally software investors are excited about investing in hard tech or the real world as a category when you look at some of these some of the biggest recent outcome the sort of flock safeties and rolls are these companies that have are software is critical to the business yet there's a major sort of real world component yeah um and uh you know I think that's just going to continue to be where some of the bigger outcomes are yeah teal had a good Riff on this where he he was like I keep investing in companies that aren't the internet and then they make money from the internet like SpaceX it's like a launch business but starlink is an internet company yeah and it's just like I keep I I I keep going it's like uh you know he's co-founder of open AI eventually invested in the business it's like it's a it's a consumer internet company now and like maybe that's where the value is and so there's all these weird things where you just keep coming back to the internet is this Ultra powerful force and the more you align yourself with it so your capitalism in the economy just kind of naturally pulls every company towards that and you know flock safety it's like yeah camera manufacturer but without the internet our company would be worth way less we originally wanted to be a newspaper and exactly everybody said hey technology why don't you put this on the internet yeah that's really the way to get ahead um should we stay on py go his breakdown what a week for the optimists devastating week for the pessimists devastating uh he breaks it down in his uh fantastic newsletter uh he says solar and wind pass coal in the United States that's a big milestone uh the United States can continues to MOG all in liquid natural gas exports uh NASA launches a m mission to study the sun I like that that's interesting I don't know what they're trying to get out of that I want to know more about what the goal of studying the sun is they're like they come back and they're just like it's bright so basically you know how people started the sun Austin the whole Austin crowd sure sure I don't think H has recomend that was like the meme was like wake up get some sunlight it's like get outside get some sunlight wake circadian rhythm stuff the the the sort of start of community in Austin sort of staring at the sun directly yep sort of maybe getting some benefit from that NASA's basically saying you know we see some opportunity here they haven't gone blind quite yet we should maybe check it out ourselves we should check it out ourselves y Gavin Newsome launched a podcast and py says hear us out yeah so uh this was cool uh Lulu's analysis of this was fantastic uh Gavin Nome the Gavin my my read on Gavin Newsome is he'd maybe start a podcast and he would just have people that agreed with him on he's taking the invting basically his political enemies on the and it's very humanizing you know he's he's got uh he's always been an incredib a much better public speaker than he has been um you know uh uh operator I would say like he's good with his words and I think the strategy is really smart and uh I think you know you're you were you know when we started this show you you probably said multiple times on the show like the person that does the most hours podcasting will win the election about attention attention is all need Gavin heard you say that he got the memo the podcast election I'm no but I think it's always smart you know that the joke is like the world doesn't need more podcasts but there still is white space and there ways to come in and get an Ed and no one was doing this which is an actual elector official talking across the aisle to uh some of the characters who have been labeled extreme I mean Steve Bannon is a very controversial issue uh very controversial figure uh not normally platformed by even Centrist media mainstream media but he I think Bannon did a did a interview with the New York Times the New York Times also had uh Mark andrion who they've written very negatively about in the past and they also uh had on courtesy Arvin who in the past has been extremely controversial and and someone that was not platformed by the mainstream media but some something is certainly changing uh well John do you know what happened around five years ago uh What uh California governor Gavin Newsome was photographed where wearing a Rolex Kermit wow uh which you can get onz shop over 23,500 luxury watches fully authenticated in-house by bezel team of experts go to get bezel.

set tention right people kind of Judge a lot of his uh fashion decisions he he had these he very sad time but he had this sort of like custom all this custom gear for the fire where he'd like pop up and be on on camera it was like really like you you got that like like specifically stitched to kind of like lar as like a firefighter um sometimes it works sometimes he's taking risks you know sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't y anyway we got Keon from nucleus coming on the show soon let's check in with producer Ben and see if he's on I think we got a couple more minutes um let's move on to another post uh project Europe is a joke says Arie Ramesh it's not the teal Fellowship for Europe if they take 6.

6% equity for 200k surprised so many European Founders are on board maybe for visibility $10 million fund size LOL an average US seed round make it non-dilutive then I'm all for it and Ki s it's a very European mindset to just be like just give away money just give away money make it non-diluted I mean the teal Fellowship is non-dilutive because it's a nonprofit but at the same time sure but it's but they're trying to they're asking for hand yeah they're trying to stimulate for-profit you know the founding of for-profit companies Europe it's fine to just do it as a seed fund it's fine I don't know I I haven't dug into it too much but let's read this critique uh from K sarin this is a founder of linear okay uh I set up a linear account for us to do some project management stuff yet but uh we'll see if we get you on there okay um but I'll read through it so Carrie or car says I think your critique is overly harsh and frankly reflects the kind of attitude that holds Europe back initiatives tend to get criticized unless they meet some impossible standard or align with absolute ideal set by someone is this the best deal globally no but by European standards it's probably average I see seed rounds at 20% for one to 1 and A5 million led by reputable VCS personally I'd rather raise less with simpler terms and go through these seed rounds but everyone is their own economic actor and can decide which deals to take or pass on someone has to provide the capital and there isn't the deal the teals to provide the capital in Europe you're also overlooking history in a lot of context you're comparing something just starting now to YC which began 20 years ago YC's original deal was 6% for 20K and it stayed that way for a long time none of the perks you mentioned even existed back then what you got was PG's Chile once a week and some advice um Priceless Chile when I went through YC in 2012 the deal was 7% for 125k the whole premise of YC and whether the economics made sense was simply about whether it could make your company at least 7% more successful uh if project Europe can do the same then it's worth considering so very interesting uh I'm in favor of project Europe uh We've also been working on our own project Europe internally at the show uh which is going to Europe going to Europe three months south of France wine tour doing doing the podcast spending lots of time on boats doing the podcast from the continent you know making Europe greater Grand one show at a time seven spend six 6.

6% of your time