Erik Torenberg joins Andreessen Horowitz as GP to lead media strategy and podcast network expansion

deal.

uh you know first round draft pick many times in his career max contract probably four-year deal you know one-year cliff who knows messing with you good beautiful logo in the back welcome to the stream how you doing Eric thank you uh a longtime listener first- time caller thanks for thanks for having me on guys huge fan yeah great to take us through the anatomy of the deal uh did they did they sit down with your parents tell you hey we're taking him to the big leagues how did it come together I mean I imagine you're close to a lot of folks over there for a long time.

But is there anything you can share about how someone becomes a general partner at uh a storyried venture capital firm? They they brought a briefcase to my parents house and uh yeah, you know, just been working the family for years. Yeah. I I I love it. I love it.

But yeah, I mean I mean seriously, I mean you you've you've known the team for a long time. Uh what what what were the conversations like and uh how did it all come together? It it's funny. Part of me wants to ask like um why didn't you ask me this a few years ago? Why didn't they try to recruit me a few years ago?

Sure. But uh it's kind of like when someone amazing asks you out, don't ask too many questions. Just just say yes. Kind of my my philosophy.

But basically what happened was u so Mark and I have been close for a long time and every year I basically you know sort of give him a state of the union on my on my career and how I'm thinking about things. And this year I was like, "Hey, I know I want to marry venture into what I'm doing. I I have this media company.

We've got sort of this founder social network thing. " And everything around my career has been either investing or building communities, networks, media for founders. Yep. And so I was just like, I want to do it again, but I'm figuring out what what is the right structure, how how to do that.

I can start something, I can join something early. And then Mark's like, why don't you just do this at A16Z? That's awesome. And I was like I I hadn't really considered it because such a big firm you know so specialized.

I'm a generalist investor um you know a more talent you driven early stage and he and I think like would I fit in at you know 700 person firm like like and he's like let's let's talk about it with Ben. So then me Ben and Mark have a bunch of conversations. Katherine's involved too.

the other partners get involved and basically they had had a desire to go much bigger on on on on content like separate from me and they kind of liked what I was up to at Turpetan with sort of this network approach. Yep.

And they crafted the right dual role that's a mix of investing and a mix of kind of media network stuff and I that's how over a few month period we just you know like kept falling in love with each other even more love with the opportunity and so here I am.

No, there's this there's this thing in in in venture specifically investors.

They spend all their time working with founders and they and they and they think I need to be a founder like I have to start my own firm and then you realize like you can potentially have like a thousand times more impact if you join a platform and make it better and leverage all those resources.

So I I think it makes a ton of sense. Um I have I I want to go back like way way uh in your early days. How did you how did you get so good at networking? Uh, I think it's like, uh, you're probably like, you know, the best the best to ever do it, the Michael Jordan of networking.

Uh, and yeah, I don't I don't say that lightly. Like it's it's, you know, it's extremely impressive. Uh, and I'm curious like, you know, if you identified early that you were just good at it or it just felt like riding a bike and you didn't. Yeah. You know, it it just was totally natural. Yeah. Well, it is interesting.

First of all, I just say I appreciate the compliment. Uh, and no one who's good at it wants to be known as the thing that they're that they want it to be like like Delian's got a good network, but it's like a byproduct of the stuff that he does. And so, yeah, we we uh I I would say hopefully similarly too.

I mean, I think the the way I realized it, I was doing this music tech company out of college, Rap FM. It was kind of a idea. It was like chat roulette for rap battles. It it made no sense as a as a business, but it was just kind of a out of college project. We somehow raised some money for it.

This is when Twitch Twitch was getting off the ground. People were like, "Hey, Twitch for music. Maybe that'll work. " And live Justin TV, live video, etc. And I got people noticed that I had the skill for evangelism, like getting people excited about things, attracting talented people.

You know, what do great founders do? They attract capital and labor, right? Um, and so I I was I had some skill for that even though the idea was dumb and people were like, "Hey, you you you have something here.

" And then, but I didn't put it together until Product Hunt, which is the thing I joined next where like and you know, Ryan was CEO and he really got that off the ground.

But I helped him sort of like bring that out of thin air like you know create a strong community and network and in that period I was like this is my superpower.

I like up until that point up until age 24 25 I hadn't identified a superpower that I had and I was just like I'm just going to triple down on this and so then starting on deck and village um and and what is it I think it's just like a desire to like an obsession with people um like who is everybody what are they doing but then also desire to help them and think about sort of people dynamics and but then also this that's like highest level but then the next level is like build communities and networks that sort of help each other where people can help each other like even when you're sleeping.

Um, and so that's what I spent a lot of time thinking about and and doing. I want to talk about media, but first let's talk about some of the industries that you're interested in on the investing side. Andre has a fund for every vertical now, bio, gaming, defense, you know, crypto enterprise.

Um, what's interesting to you and is there any crossover? uh we we kind of have this take that like media can be fun and lucrative but media is really hard to invest in.

If you want to invest in media you got to be on the platform side you got to be in Spotify, Tik Tok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook like those were the power law outcomes in media. People don't really think about them as media but if you were in YouTube early you did very well.

Uh very hard to invest in in companies that are more in the middle. uh what are you seeing in terms of uh are you excited about any investments on the media side and then also what are you excited about in the other section sectors of the Andre portfolio?

So I I think Jessica Lesson really sort of helped popularize sort of the bootstrapped media company sure that that Turpetine has followed. I think you you guys are following. Um I I think it just it doesn't make sense for for this kind of business for the reasons that you're you sort of indicated.

U but people can do very well. Um, and so I in general, you know, because I did a music company, a lot of people pitch me music. I'm like, I don't like this business as a business. Because people I I do media, people pitch me media.

I don't want to invest in in in media companies, but I do want to I do want to build a lot of media out of Dre Harowitz. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah.

I and I do want to partner with a lot of independent creators um like yourselves, like the Lenny Richkis, like the Happy Stemings, like like you know, all these guys who are building, you know, really awesome cash flow businesses, super lean, making a ton of profit. Sure. Well, and and sorry to interrupt.

One thing I think is interesting is that um venture require venture outcomes require scale yet media and and one of the things that makes media is amazing is anti-scale, right? It's like having for us it's like having CNBC meets X, right? It's like it's a niche thing, but it's great, you know, for a very core audience.

And on that note, I think you've done this very well with Tarpentine in terms of like verticalizing out and being like, hey, there's this sort of show on a niche topic and it may only be interesting to 50,000 people in the whole world, but those 50,000 people like that's the show they're like waiting for it to drop, right?

or it's or it's a a group chat that only has 50 people, but it has, you know, maybe like more activity for that those 50 people than any other social platform that they use. So, um can you talk about um how you think about like sizing sort of like projects, right?

Because not everything that should be done should be massive, right? 100%. Um the it's interesting. There's this business industry dive that really um taught me about something. It's a business that not a lot of people know about but it's immensely successful.

A lot of people when they think about media businesses of the last 15 years, they think about like BuzzFeed and Vox and uh these kind of like you know Upworthy these businesses raised a bunch of money in the 2010s and totally crashed right there was you know there was a bunch of venture firms uh you know this one included do doing sort of you know consumer media businesses and people thought you know they were going to ride the platforms and they were grow they were big you they were growing but then sort of the you know as as you alluded to the platforms you know took the value is where the value was it was in distribution not and and these were just like content farms on top of them.

But an undertold part of that story is that business media has actually done pretty well. Uh this company industry dive which is just a collection of niche trade publications.

So things like utilities, weight, HR, pharma, just like valuable niche like newsletters um sold for $500 million I believe to Informa which I I believe is like a $10 billion trade show company. Wow. So business media business events. Yeah.

there's there's quite a good business there uh in in trade stuff on the B2B side because you know if you have the leading HR publication and you know you have 50,000 even 5,000 you know decision makers reading or listening to your thing that becomes a great channel for people who are trying to sell to that audience to um to reach them and they're willing to if if it if if they if making one sale can be tens of thousands of dollars for them they're they're willing to to spend quite quite a lot to to to reach out audience.

So the so the premiums um on the CPM are are just fantastic. And so and Sean Griffy, the CEO of Industry Dive, has been like educating the market on this. And so I heard him and I and I then I looked at his I think they're incredible at business. I think they're incredible at sales.

I I I wasn't like blown away by the content itself. You know, they're a great business and they built something much bigger than I have. But I was like, "Wow, I think more people could do this. " And the business work week also is is is doing this.

And I wanted to do sort of a Silicon Valley take on that of like, you know, Lenny Richki is is the is the goat of this for product managers, the newsletter. Yeah. I think he's almost at like a million subscribers. You I think he's printing cash. Um and I was like, hey, there's going to be a Lenny for for HR.

There's going to be a Lenny for CFOs. There's going to be a Lenny for every position in every sector. Um I want to I want to create that. I want to create this rollup. Um, and we started on the podcast side because that's what I know. I think that there was g gap in the market for like, you know, the best of of X.

And, um, we did that. I think I think we had, you know, uh, reasonable success. And, um, I'm excited about adding additional businesses or business models on top of that. Investing being one of them. And I think ACZ is the best place to do it. Makes sense.

Um, what do you think about the different business models in media between ad sales, subscriptions, monetizing through trade shows or merch or products? I've seen I'm a big fan of Doug Deur Demiro.

He kind of like, you know, value captured at the very end of building massive scale with cars and bids, his online auction platform for cool cars made in the modern era. Yes, I'm a fan. I know this whole tagline. Um but uh but in general like what uh what what mo what business models do you think work in tech?

What business models do you think work in other industries uh in in trade publications versus more traditional journalism? Uh how are you thinking about the landscape of like monetization of media? Well, yeah, it's it's really fascinating question.

It depends on what niche like if if you're if you're as big as someone like Mr. Beast, you want like a mass market thing. Yeah, even Mr. Beast. do wonder if and I'm I'm friends with him and I I think he's genius.

Um but I I do wonder if that's the right if that's the most optimal business to be like and I like he's also getting to gaming too, but like should Mr. Beast have like um sort of a cash app competitor or like or I I I was pitching a VPN BeastVPN because he has a global audience, low churn, high margin.

It's not VPNs are not suitable for venture backing typically. It's all marketing. That's the entire expense is just getting people to install the VPN. So, you know, it doesn't matter where his audience is, they can sign up for the VPN. Yeah. Yeah. Silly, but I don't know. Probably not a good fit, but it was funny.

You guys had the founder of Honey on who's who's a very good friend of mine and he's building a really great business. I just invested in um on the ad blocker side, but like Mr. Beast was saying that he brought a lot of Honey's traffic. And so, should he have created a Honey competitor back?

Like, there's got to be something that's bigger. Yeah. Has better margins, you know, than than chocolate that's more defensible? Well, there's an interesting there's an interesting thing with media, which is like this idea of uh value value creation versus value capture.

And it's possible with media to create a massive amount of value but not fully be able to capture it. That being said, one of the best ways to capture value is to just put out amazing content and then invest in the companies that sort of come around from that.

So, I think that people have had this idea of media um of one of the best business models for media being investing. Yep. Yet that doesn't mean, you know, starting a solo GP fund and just having a podcast necessarily. Like it can look a lot of different ways.

And that's why I'm uh I'm excited about Tarpentine in the context of A16Z because you can make the best podcast about biotech.

It's less about how do we how do we, you know, scale this to, you know, millions of ad revenue and more so like how do we just have the most important conversations in biotech happen on this, you know, podcast and then invest in some of those companies and and see the the return from that.

Yeah, I I I I know you're still like, you know, second day on the job. Um, but uh I'd love to know kind of how you are thinking about the current A16Z media landscape. Uh people talk about like oh future was kind of you know didn't get didn't roll out the way they wanted.

At the same time it's like if the named partner can go on Joe Rogan like you're kind of winning. Um and so you know I think about like the Joe Rogan appearance as like probably worth a thousand at bats that maybe you know are strikeouts or whatever.

Uh but but you know, how do you balance the uh let's build an intermediate like a in-house media product versus let's empower the team to go and make a statement on other shows like what Mark did with uh with the with the Rogan appearance. Totally. Um yeah, it's a it's a fascinating question.

So, I'm still I'm still getting up to speed with the with the exact history, but my outsider version of it is that the the the future Well, let me step back. What I love about Andre, and it's not limited to Andre, but that they they try a bunch of stuff. Yeah. uh like like you guys, right?

Like TBPN, you know, you guys had a few different iterations before coming to this this one that worked and people don't see that, you know, like making video content for for years before this and and you making all sorts of like amazing uh branded content and doing all sorts of experiments and and you guys tried it with different people first and you figured out the format that works like a couple years in or a few months in.

So um similarly I think future was a good idea idea and I think it's possible there's some version of that that that comes back you know they already do a lot of long form content that I loved their everyday carry for founders where they would just ask the they would ask the founders in the portfolio hey like tell us what apps you have on your phone right now.

Yeah. And that was it. And it was just like a listical of like okay the founder of you know some amazing company like data bricks like what's he using on a for his email client and it's like that's just interesting. I don't know. It's like yeah it's like total insider baseball.

It's totally like oh it's only Andrea portfolio companies or whatever. But like I don't care. I just want to know like what these people are using. It's interesting. I don't know. Totally. So so it took they took a first stab. I think there were a lot of great things about it.

I think it also coincided with sort of the increase in decentralizing into different funds, right? Like they used to be main fund and now they're sort of different funds. And so there's some org complexity perhaps around that.

I think there's much more buy in and much more like maturity in the org to do something like it again. That's not immediate priority for me. I'm I'm on the content side separate from investing. I'm more focused on the on the podcasting to begin with. Sure.

But um to your so I to your question around um own shows verse creators I think we're going to have a mix.

So we we have some flagship shows right now we have the Benmark show as show and we're going to have vertical shows relative to the funds totally but then I want to sort of really grow the turpentine network and you know the limitations of Turpetine was that we were a bootstrap business so we have to make money from other shows but and doesn't have those same limitations.

So, we want to like do something like an affiliate network where we can partner with amazing shows, help them get distribution, help them make more money, and kind of make it a no-brainer for them to be part of this sort of broader uh podcast network uh that just sort of extends our influence and friends.

And I think what's interesting is that if this works in podcasting, there isn't like a premier tech podcast network that works with like the best shows like and there are some, you know, I love um what is doing, but that's only that's like seven shows. Those shows are great.

Um and I love um uh you know, HubSpot's doing some good stuff, but like you know, Lenny's not on a network, Dores is not on a network. There's a bunch of people because they don't need to be, but but if you can make it a no-brainer, um I think there's something interesting there.

And if that works in podcasting, maybe it can work with newsletter writers, maybe it can work with YouTube creators more broadly. Um, this kind of like extended like I love what Slow is doing. They have a creator fund.

Um, it's super super cool Andre Games video that was produced by Secret Tape, which runs this uh video game documentary channel called No Clip. So, they will do like the full history, the most definitive documentary about like HalfLife or Counterstrike, and they'll go and interview all the people that worked on it.

these really really amazing uh things. And it was actually a viral video like it got almost 500,000 views. And it's uh this is why games like Balders's Gate 3 are so rare. Just like a deep dive on the history of Balders's Gate, this like great role playing game.

And I just saw this and I was like, "Oh, like that like it's it's awesome that they like they that they they found the right match of like the the team behind No Clip and these documentary, Secret Tape, like they're great at creating. " And clearly Andre Games, A16Z Games, was just like go run with it.

and it worked out really really well. So I I I love the idea of like that that partnership model you you described. What do you think about the infrastructure uh around group chats, right?

Like every every nobody wants to download another app, but at the same time like you do run into limitations everybody that's built on, you know, you've built a number of communities, right?

And I'm sure you've like hit the limits on Slack, hit the limits on, you know, run into issues on Discord, you know, uh, Signal has its limitations, WhatsApp, like how do how do you think about um scaling these sort of like vertical, you know, group chat like if you product a group chat is just like a it's a curated social network, right?

Um, and h how do you think about the infrastructure surrounding that? You think there's opportunities there? Yes.

So, first just zooming out, I think a lot of the last interesting most interesting conversations over the last um five years to me have been in group chats and I've been in some with you guys where where that's happened.

And I think it's just because you know Twitter X just social in general became a little bit too noisy, a little bit too public and you needed to have these kind of like private spaces just to have conversations without a bunch of people sort of like getting in the getting in the replies.

Um, and you know, there could have been a world where Twitter that just happened in the DMs, but what for whatever reason, um, that that it moved out to different different group chats. And so, but the the platforms are not really built for, you know, Signal, WhatsApp.

They're not really built for like hundreds of people in a chat, right? You know, they get notifications for every message. Um, the identity is messed up. Um, sometimes John Kugan just adds a bunch of random friends on a Christmas Eve.

you have to text me and say, "Hey, are you uh going to stop or are you going to keep going, John? " Uh cuz I made you an admin when this is a lot smaller and there's much more powerful people in the chat now. Why are you inviting all your friends?

Yeah, that was back when I cared when I tried to moderate the chat that since you know Bology just bology goes biology and I can't you go full biology all the time. It's great. That's that's what you live for.

So I um I've thought about this for for a long time and I worked with Shriram um when he was at and because he built out their group chat operation. They basically have dozens of group chats, different verticals, different categories in what's all separate chats.

There's no like master directory like um so I mean what it should be is like a real social network of like a thousand super interesting people and you can crossromote and it should be um sort of you know like interoperable in some way with certain permissions. WhatsApp's not built for it right now.

we've just optimized for ease of use. Um I I think that in the next five years like uh someone is going to build a group chat social network where um every day well you guys cover the current thing every day.

Um but Twitter is too slow in the way that like like Twitter um sort of obsoleted the New York the traditional media by just being way faster and I think there's going to be something that's even way faster than Twitter.

And by that like clubhouse got into it a little bit where it's like it's basically like the beef of the day. Like every day someone gets in a fight or there's some drama and there's going to be a platform where they just fight live that that I feel like that's just going to happen.

Like I remember with Mike Salana and Chess Buddhy like that infinite entertainment and and and so group chat is just so much more live. I mean Vlad Tennv and Elon Musk like was iconic. Yeah.

So I I was actually working on a product um that was going to be like Pub House for group chats where where you chat live with a public audience but you can sort of tear the permission gates and there's a speaker and an audience really had some magic but I think I actually think you people said they got too big and and they did but and you know they're pioneers so kudos to them but I think that also the audio format's a bit hard you can't like scroll audio the way you could scroll text and so I think group chat format is the right one.

I was working on it. Um, but then I, you know, spent time with with Mark Drees and decided to have other plans. And I also met another team that I, I'm not gonna announce here yet, but introduce you to them. And when they're ready to announce, they will, who's building this.

Um, and I I think it's really exciting product. I think the um, as you said, Jordy, the bar for a new app is really high, but there's a bunch of different ways that WhatsApp and Signal just aren't built for it, and I think you could do a 10x better product there. So, I'm curious.

No, I was asking in hopes that you were incubating or or funding or something there. Well, you you found it. You found the right one, it sounds like. But um but yeah, it just seems like such an obvious opportunity.

When when when I hear about you running, you know, multiple groups, I'm just like, wow, it sounds really exhausting the second that you get even more. Even just one is a lot, right? Even one is a lot. Uh excited to see that roll out. I have a hot take I want you to react to. Market maps are underrated. Oh, interesting.

um say flush out the case. Uh I just think that uh they got really like overhyped and they were kind so I mean the basic ma the basic mechanism of a market map is it's inherently viral because when Andre puts out a market map of like all the gaming startups like every gaming founder is going to be on that list.

They're all going to repost it and so it's just naturally like bait for the algorithm that it's going to get a lot of attention. A lot of quote tweets, oh thanks so much for including me, right?

Um, but then it became like very like cringey and it was like, "No, you should you should be like thinking more deterministically about the future. You should be more aggressive. You should be thinking more about even like bigger problems like the the far future, the world.

" uh but but uh you know I' I've I've gone back to market maps and I think there's maybe something interesting there just to kind of take you on a tour of all the different approaches when there is uncertainty about something like uh AI at the application layer and how that's applying even to legal like everyone kind of knows Harvey but there's probably seven different companies in the legal AI space probably 50 70 and they're all taking slightly different approaches and it's kind of a nice like little window into this industry that you might not be immersed in.

And so it creates some value for, you know, keeps the associates busy, keeps the partners busy. Uh but it's also just uh maybe maybe we can get past the uh the criticism that like, oh, market maps are too basic and cringe and maybe just go to like, hey, actually, they make sense.

If you read a Goldman Sachs report or Morgan Stanley report on Wall Street, you would often see something that looks like a market map. It's just instantiated in equity research, right? Or equity capital markets research. I'll go further. So, I agree with you, but I I'll one up you and say I think lists are underrated.

Like Forbes has trained us to think that yes, you know, the lists suck or they're obviously always gamed or everyone's going to go to jail if they're on a list, hypothetically speaking, but um you know, we've joked about sort of the or you're like the Forbes 29 or 29 or something. Yeah. Yeah. I think you should do that.

I mean, I don't know if it sucks. Maybe we do it. Maybe we do it or collaborate or something. But discovery discovered like knowing what people think about people is really important and it's it's what we do all the time. We're like who's good, you know? Um who who's emerging? Who should we pay more attention to?

And I think that functionality sort of like market maps, we've like the execution has gotten sloppy and so we've sort of thrown the baby out with the bath water. But um those things they do perform best which is why they get gamed. But if they're good, they're they're really valuable. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

We're actually going to do a Midas list competitor. It's going to be a hundred of the top VCs. It's $100,000 to be on the list. A million dollars if you want to be on the top 10. Uh but yeah, just uh email Jordy if you want to be on that list if you're listening. Uh we'd love to have you.

I love your whole corporate media like rant. Oh yeah, independent media is dead. Corporate media is the future. You're either backed by a trillion dollar venture fund or you're you're chilling for RAMP and Bezel and Adquick and Numeral and asleep and Wander. One of the others.

On a more on a more serious note, I'm curious if you're seeing from group chats the edge that you used to be able to get from the internet.

Like internet used to be a place you could, you know, uh Blake Robbins talks about hanging out on the edge of the internet, but like uh uh but but you could be in these sort of different sub communities and sort of discover somebody.

And you know, we had this this uh kid uh this 21-year-old named Roy who like rocketed to like uh almost 80,000 followers in like a few months. And historically that would have been like some you know maybe he would have had gotten kicked out of Colia and like two people would have heard about it on X way.

But now it's like information moves so quickly. Is it, you know, are you seeing group chats as like the sort of where you get an edge, right? Because it's like, you know, more niche down. There's like less there's less noise, there's less attention.

Maybe if there's a thousand people in the group chat, like, you know, it's there's less like almost like leakage like how do you where where do you think about So, it's it's really interesting.

So, a few years ago when people were more sort of centralized on on on Twitter, um there was more of a desire to um to it was critical to go to group chats because some someone uh would sort of was quicker to cancel you or call you out or there was just like more friction. But social media has bulcanized a bit, right?

the whole blue sky exodus um sort of you know people going to threads whatever people leaving X uh like it's a bit and then Elon sort of you know with his sort of uh new impact on sort of the like free speech dynamic or even just like everything's about politics all the time so people are more comfortable speaking up on X but they're because they're more comfortable speaking up in public they're also more comfortable speaking up in private so I've seen what happens is these like eight people group chats you me and John had a great one for a couple years are now there's less of a need for them.

it disbanded.

Now there now we're in like multiund people group chats because people are more public and I think it's cool that you know we have people who disagree like we have this you know one chat where uh our good friend Mark Cuban gets gets in you know great debates uh you know I thought you weren't supposed to say people's names in that chat I thought the whole reason was Chattam House rules you were supposed to say a a a you know billionaire somewhat leftwing who he was lampuned on Silicon Valley.

Yeah. Reality show the he pitches. He um he went on a podcast with Vake. They had a debate. Um so this is public because they they I said their names. They did a debate on DEI in our chat and then they took it to the podcast. That's cool. They mentioned the chat.

So I'm I'm comfortable mentioning their names um as as people who have had debates. And it's just fascin thoroughess. Sure. Sure. Sure. And and we all learn from it. And he gets some dunks in too. And that that's a dynamic you just won't see anywhere else.

And I didn't even see it a few years ago because you wouldn't even think to put people who disagree in the same chat. So um so yeah, I'm still seeing the alpha. Well, the most important group chat to me is the one that's just me and you, Eric. Our one-on-one group chat. That's the best group chat in my my DMs.

Uh thank you so much for coming on. This is fantastic. Eric, uh little request. You're the first uh Andre partner to come on the show. Let's get the rest on a lot more. Thank you for I'm here to you only Nixon can go to China. Only Torberg can go to TBPN. I'm here. I'm here to broker the relationship.

Are you Are you Kissinger or Nixon in this analogy? Yeah. I think you're great to have you sneak in through the back door and then and then Nixon makes his arrival. We're we're very excited to uh to to watch you work and collaborate and uh congratulations again on the move. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Bye. Bye.

Uh next up, we got uh Jack Whitaker coming in to the studio. Uh the author of the fantastic Substack Bunny Hopping. I wonder if that's a reference to Counterstrike. I'm a big fan of bunny hopping. I don't know if you ever did that or if that was before your time. Is that like a BMX reference, too? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You can bunny hop on a BMX bike. Uh, but he wrote a great post. Pre-training isn't dead, it's just resting, GPC 4. 5, the value of reinforcement learning and the economics of Frontier Training. So, welcome to the stream, Jack. How are you doing? Boom. Doing great. It's great to be on the show. Thanks for coming on.

Little context for everyone. Jack is helping us