Sam Lessin: the VC factory model is dead and zombie unicorns are haunting the ecosystem

the show, Sam. How you doing? I'm doing great. How are you guys doing? We're doing fantastic. Uh we just had a fantastic conversation with Carol Husman and Locky Groom over at uh Physical Intelligence. Did you see the demo of their uh their cleaner robot? The the room I love Rocky. I haven't seen him in a bit. I know.

Is this the folding robot? They've been folding. They've been folding in like a warehouse for a while. Yep. Well, they're doing it in the real world now. The demo was they they they sent the robot out into the field. It cleans someone's house. They say it's about 50% accurate.

They're getting ready to deploy it once it gets to 99% accur. What does a 50% accurate cleaning robot do? like half the time. Yeah, it it can fold half of your shirts prop uh properly and half of your shirts improperly. Look, in fairness, that's probably better than I could do. I'm not much of a folder myself.

I'm terrible at it. I'm terrible at it. So, you know, I would be a terrible laundry robot personally. Yes. Uh great to see you, Sam. Always fun. You guys are crushing it. I'm loving the vibe. You You're both full time now. Like ads. Yeah. Ads. Yeah. Yeah. We can never never side hustle. That's our never side hustle.

Always full hustle. Yeah. Um what's uh what's going on in your world? You know, I don't know. I've been traveling a bunch, but I'm I'm back. And uh traveling as a venture capitalist. H how does that work? Oh, just for fun, guys. Not for work, please. Yeah.

No, I just But I would imagine such a prestigious career path is so demanding that you would never be able to take a day off. Never. No. I I am a slave to Zoom. I just sit here and zoom back to back. You seem to have cracked the code. What's your stance on uh Zoom?

You do you invest much purely over Zoom or are you just meeting everybody at this point? You know, it's a really interesting question.

I I personally think Zoom Zoom's had like a really interesting impact I think on venture capital cuz initially people were all bowled up on how Zoom and this like no meetings in person was going to open the funnel and people would like invest all over the country and we break down walls because all of a sudden physicality like there was like this kind of euphoric Zoom will be democratizing type thing going on.

Um, and I, it's interesting. I do think that Zoom means that people like me and venture capitalists are willing to take more meetings than we otherwise would be on like interesting topics with people that like again like it's just like the barrier is lower. You'll meet with more people.

Now, does that actually result in more investments? Unclear.

Um I I think it might invest in like broader sets of first meetings uh just cuz the barrier is lower and like if the meeting gets boring after 15 minutes I can just do my email and say ahuh right so like it's like there is some breakdown in like access but it's not clear to me how much that resolves to like actually broader access means in fact I think that's one of the big things that's interesting about AI broadly right now is you know there's this narrative like with autoscripting I get the number of pitches I get that are like halfritten written by AI or written by AI is like out of control, right?

I don't know what people think they're doing with those cuz they're all just going to get deleted, right? And if anything, the irony is the fact that the barrier now is so low to those emails means that even the ones that actually are legitimate just get archived because like on the margin they're probably spam.

And so there's this interesting thing where AI is actually leading making venture capital, I would argue, more insular, right, than it was before, not less insular, right? So there's all these like unintended consequences going on of Zoom, of AI, of all this type of stuff in VC. Yeah.

Email, you just got to use it like text messaging. Just no no subject, no body at all. Just whatever you have to say, just put it in the subject and send. Yeah. Look, I actually am a hu I'm like probably I'm old. I'm like 41, right? So I'm like a huge I love email. Like I think it's great. And I'm an inbox zero guy.

But I also like run aggressive filters on my email and like am fine not responding. Like I don't consider email a contract that because you sent me something I'm required to send you something back. I think you just have to treat it differently. Um what about on text? Are you an inbox zero on text?

Text I take pretty seriously. Um actually so that is like I I kind of have a pretty quick SLA on text and I I tried to make sure that not everyone knows my actual phone number. Um, yeah, let's put let's put Sam's phone number up on the screen for everyone.

Uh, so you can text him if you have to get Well, I'll give you my plug, which is, you know, one of our companies is called Open Phone, which is a great company. And that I use an Open Phone phone phone number for a lot of things where you want to put it up on screen and it's great. It's like a second text inbox.

It's not really the purpose of the company. It's more sophisticated than that, but I I I like it for that. That's great. We should We should set an open phone. We should. Yeah. Yeah. For me, I I I like to think of the hierarchy of like, you know, inboxes, right?

Email, uh, but then now it's like, okay, you have XDMs, uh, iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal. If you want to get in touch with me, show up and grab me by the collar shake until I hear what you have to say. That's the only I mean, I I so I have like my stack is text is incredibly important and serious.

That's like a one hour SLA, but it's limited. Email I take very seriously. Like I really care about email. Um but then people are like you should be in my Discord server or like Slack. I'm like abso fuckingutely not. Like I think those things are disasters. I refuse to engage with them. I hate everything about them.

Despite the fact slow one of the seed investors in um in Slack and so I have to thank Stuart for making us some money. But like I just like can't deal. Uh I refuse to deal. Yeah. Uh let's Yeah. Take us through that. Should we talk about uh venture capital?

I actually want to start and go back to your 2023 piece uh which is on the timeline. Uh you called out uh this is October 16th, 2023, the shutdown of the VC factory line and the death of the factory farmed unicorn narrative.

Um the awkward crowd into seed investing by multi-stage firms, the mirage of AI and LLM startup investing. the post-pandemic fundamental cultural change impacting startups. Um what which one of those grade yourself? Yeah.

How would you how would you grade your I obviously grade myself excellently on all the um no I mean I think like look I try to pull up every few years and just especially in times of uncertainty like what is going on like where should we be spending time and attention I think you know two years ago you know those were the big themes for me is one we were very used to for 10 years as a fund effectively operating this factory line.

We take in companies at a certain stage. We know what metrics they have to hit. We give them the money. We then package them and send them on to our friends at Series A who then send them on to be and da da da.

And the whole thing works beautifully because at the end we pop them out into the public markets and retail investors buy them and life is good. And I was just saying like after the pandemic, you know, people wanted that to come back and I was like this is not coming back.

Like this whole the market is it's a mixed up market. you know, we've basically produced a bunch of these things which are on paper unicorns, but like they're not fundamentally important businesses.

And more importantly, the there's been this huge release which is the biggest platforms in the world can just keep getting bigger. Like I remember a time when like a hundred billion dollar company was a huge company, right? People thought there was a limit to how big the biggest could get.

And so there was this constant hunger in the public market for what's the next $3 billion company that's going to grow really fast. And there was coverage for that. People cared about it. And now the obvious answer is just like put more money into Amazon, put more money into Meta. Like there is no upper bound.

And so I just think the markets have shifted, demand from consumers has shifted at the at the public has kind of rippled back to the ecosystem.

You know what we have now and you know I have this in the 2025 version is what I'm calling zombie corns right so there's all you know people thought people friends of mine were like oh we're going to see this mass extinction of these unicorns. They're all going to die because you know they're going to run out of money.

No one's going to fund them. The liquidation preferences are huge. they can't go public. They actually mostly didn't die, right? What they did do is they basically sacrificed growth. They cut their burn a lot. They kind of got marginally profitable. They can kind of exist. And they're kind of zombies.

They're just they're out there. They're not going anywhere, but they're also not going public. There's no market for them. No one knows how to buy them. The liquidation preferences are set up so that no one wants to deal with them, and they're just going to kind of exist.

So, so the the factory line is broken at the late stage because there's no offramp, but in many ways in many ways the sort of early stage preede to seed to series A is still accelerating as though there's an off-ramp. I don't think I don't think it is actually.

I think this is like one of the I think the part of the 2025 deck are trying to think about what's going on. I actually think what we now have weirdly is effectively several markets for companies that are pretty decoupled from each other and kind of have their own logic and exist in their own vacuum.

So like there is a public market like the public market exists. It's the biggest, right? Um there is a private market now. There are companies that are private and will like probably never go public or ne for various reasons.

The way that companies are valued by the latestage private and the public are actually just different. like what's valued is different, how people think about them is different. Large LPs actually invest in both. So they don't care.

They like but there's basically like running two parallel universes that don't have a lot of operability.

Now at the early stage I actually the same thing is going on right which is like there is a kind of seed to preedeesque market that exists and people compete and people get excited and there's kind of a market clearing price for startups and invest. Sure.

But then when you say, well, what do you what does it take to hop from an early stage, call it like preede seed, maybe sneaking into A to like a legitimate B and beyond growth round? There's no more like magic numbers you hit and like a valuation framework that's consistent. It's actually much more about belief.

You know, I I say in the deck, it's a lot about this kind of new math of people want downside protection and then an option on infinity, right? And so like what's the average of infinity and zero? It's infinity, right?

So the way people are backing into valuation is so the entire factory is predicated on $1 million in ARR equals series A at price blah blah with 30, you know, 30% growth and $10 million in AR like triple triple double double. You can come up with all these frameworks.

Everyone kind of agreed on and there was just like market clearing action in prices and now I actually think there's just like distinct markets of belief um that are really hard to move between. U yeah. Well, uh, does this necessitate like a different model around growth?

We kind of saw this with like the crossover investors like Tiger, but a lot of growth funds have this downside protection mandate, no zeros, but let's underwrite to a 3x.

Uh, and and yes, I mean, I hear the I hear your infinity thing that does happen every once in a while, but I think in general, a lot of growth investors are just saying no zeros and let's triple our money uh over this deal.

Uh but should you have more later stage growth investors that are thinking more like portfolio construction at the seed stage? I I look I think that the answer to that basically is I don't even know when they talk about we're underwriting to a 3x. Yeah. Who's buying, right?

Like everything is about the marginal buyer, right? There is no value on anything, right? It's all about like a DCF. I mean, you could you could justify the cash flows, right? You could comp to the public market.

The pro the pro but the problem with first of all comping to the basically nothing at late stage is trading comp to the public market really, right? And we can get we can get into like why and how.

I think I think that look the DCF comp to the public market that way that is the factory model right it's basically saying like hey I have a late stage thing I put money in it's going to triple the DCF looks like this it's has this much profit margin like this is the story package sell to the public market the public market buys on that same story like that that was the mentality that persisted for a long time and it was a great system for a lot of for moneym for a lot of people right I actually think that again the public market now is like well if I kind of just want those types of metrics why don't I just buy more of the mag 7 like I don't I don't even want to dick around with your subscale offering like I don't care right like I think and there's reasons for that it's because the big LPS are bigger it's because of meme stocks like there's a whole bunch of stuff going on there right that like kind of makes that happen but the net outcome is there is no offramp to the so then the question is when you're underwriting at a late stage you're not you also have to underwrite to someone buying from you right and like the question is what are they buying and why are they buying it, right?

And I think this is where it gets a little bit squirly because I do think, you know, I'm not the only one saying this, but like private to private transactions are going to happen way more, right? Like you're going to look just as it happened in private equity, like funds will sell the funds.

Then the question is, well, what is the buying fund paying, right? They're going to pay, they need some margin. They need to have a framework in their heads about how they're going to sell, right?

So then they're going to you're going to be pay you as an early stage fund are no longer underwriting to some late stage to some DCF to the public market. You're really underwriting to who's going to buy from you. What's their narrative on buying? Like why do they want to hold this? Right?

Like what's their time horizon? What's their purpose? And like the irony of the whole thing is like honestly those prices are going to probably be much lower than what the DCF might otherwise imply, right? How do you think about how do you think about funds, you know, selling an entire fund?

And I'm talking about venture funds, maybe selling to other um, you know, kind of like not continuation vehicles, but just other secondary buyers versus trying to sell off and kind of like prune the portfolio and say like, well, at the end of the day, look, I I think it look the fun side of funds, you're just going to take some massive discount on that right?

Because in the end of the day, like if someone's buying a fund from you, they're really only buying the winners and the rest is right? And like so in an ideal world, they just carve out the pieces they want.

Like I want this position and this position and this position because I care about these companies or I have an infinity thesis on them.

Like everyone has to have I actually think the infinity thesis really matters in terms of how people are thinking about how big things can get and whether they matter or not in the world. And then everything else it's like it's basically worth zero, right?

Um, you know, we were joking at our firm about like we were joking about starting right off CO, right? Because that's the other funny thing that happens, right? Is you just kind of give up on positions and you sell them for a dollar to take the tax the tax advantage, right, on it.

Every once in a while, the hilarious part is you sell something for a dollar because you give up on it and it turns out being worth something, right? So, like there's a whole business up hoovering up, you know, irrelevant positions, but I don't know. I like it. Does it happen? Yes. Do GPS sell piece of the GP? Yes.

But that's complicated because the reality is at least the public market only really values the fees, right? Which mean like so it's basically I've been having trouble because I wrote this 2023 thing that I was pretty proud of and I think was honestly pretty accurate about what was going on.

Understandably, it's been two years. I wanted to update it and be like, well, where are we now? And like there are things I think I got mostly right. There are things that I think are wrong. But I think that the real story is end of factory model, the factoryy's over. Mhm.

What the the the the yada yada yada on is we're now I think entering this period where like you don't even think about it as one integrated capital system. They're just like different parallel universes. Like everything in the world is regionalizing and fractionalizing. This is happening with globalization.

We're having a del globalization moment. This is happening with all sorts of things. I think it's happening with capital too. There are just literally distinct ecosystems and people play in multiple of them, right? But they have their own valuation logic etc.

And then I think like the way people value companies as a result has changed. What you should be looking for has changed. The types of CEOs you want to back has changed. Um it's just a new world. Um did you dabble much internationally?

This was a very 2021 2022 thing with funds thinking that you know they they win a deal and like you know like 10,000 miles away and and then like in hindsight it's like you have to think like why did you win this deal?

Why didn't you know uh why why are you uh you know so lucky to have the opportunity to back this company and then a lot of them just you know are derivative and and the only yeah the only we've always invested in Israel um when it made sense I think the the USIsrael relationship is strong I think there's a lot of good techn there's a lot of reasons that makes sense and so that's always been a thing we've done we know it well enough to like be confident investing there I again I think that's the thing for us historically is yes in a Zoom world, you'll take the meeting in Europe, right?

Cuz like it's interesting and like, you know, no one's accounting for your time as a venture capitalist. So, if you're interested in something in Europe and they really want to talk, like sure, you'll do it.

But we're so lazy, right, that like I don't want to deal with like there's always an exception like we have done a handful of deals that are kind of outside the wheelhouse, but it's of of looking at but I kind of believe that there's really something to, you know, be New York, be San Francisco focused, pick a few geos, understand them, understand how they fit into the global capital world, etc.

Um, so no, we didn't get drawn in too much Europe. is uh what what is your interpretation of the rumor around OpenAI potentially buying Windserve for three billion? It's the it's not an AI cherry on top business. It's a rapper. Is it bull market for rappers now? Are we going to see tons more acquisition?

Slow is going to FOMO into a bunch of rappers. Yeah. FOMO into every rapper because they're just going to get hooed up.

I mean, my my take was maybe, you know, OpenAI buys one, then Anthropic needs one, then Amazon needs one, then Google needs one, and all of a sudden you have like seven unicorns getting bought, everyone's making money, everyone's generationally wealthy. That's the good ending, right?

I don't look I really am pretty cynical slash don't think that we're going to see a lot of aqua hire AI type stuff in this era. I think there's a few reasons that one is like what are you really buying, right, in some of these things? like you can are you buying talent?

That is not un unreasonable, but you know, and we've seen that. We've seen people like effectively quote unquote buy companies that are literally just for like the one person they want to pay $200 million to cuz they really think they're special because they need an ex.

Look, some people are going to get massively overcomped. That will happen. I don't think it's an investment thesis. It is what it is and I think it won't happen that much, but we'll see. I think there's going to be are you buying technology? It's like the thing about AI and a lot of where we're going is like why, right?

Like software is getting commoditized. Like what is it? Like if you're buying technology, you got to be buying some really important technology, right? And I think that's like an the third thing you in theory can buy is just distribution, right?

Which is like if someone really has, you know, for whatever reason got their hooks into a few key contracts or like, you know, they have a tailwind, like fine, you buy distribution and that that can be worth something. But look, honestly, it just seems like all very squirrely to me at this moment.

You know, the thing I'd say in venture capital is there will be random walk. Some random stuff will happen, right? And like I think you can't get too, you know, twisted around that you certainly shouldn't be chasing random walk. Um but no, I don't I don't personally see it.

And if anything, I'd say like look, I was part of this, you know, my first company was acquired by Facebook in the era of Aqua Hires, right?

And um I think the and I say this with some humility but also perspective is like I think when you go back and look at like what was really bought there and was that a good use of capital by most of the aqua hiring company I think the answer is probably not you know like that era is kind of over people aren't that special you know the big companies just because they have such incredible access to capital and distribution at this point they can kind of just build whatever they need anyway right so anything that does happen will be highly bespoke as opposed to like industry-wide trend is my personal view.

How do you think right now about the dynamic between 30 to$50 million early stage funds versus you know 30 plus billion dollar aum funds in in some ways they uh the the the the tiny you know uh upstart funds benefit from these big platform funds coming in and sort of marking up deals right the returns look good but maybe I just think they're complet like they're two completely different business models right like I think is the thing this goes back I pull about like fra r regionalization and fragmentation of what capital even is, right?

If you're running a $50 billion venture fund, you can't possibly be deploying that well early, right? And actually, you're paid to move gross dollars. The problem you're solving for LPs is you have some massive LPS. They're like, I want exposure to private markets. It's really hard for me to go find how to do that.

I would love you to deploy as much capital as possible and like effectively the way you get paid is on fees. You're not getting paid on carry. Like that's you know if you have a $50 billion fund making 3x on that so you're making money on carry is like extremely difficult to impossible.

Like the numbers just don't add up. You're getting paid to deploy and that means your business model is attracting more capital tell you have to return enough to justify it right but like you're not actually shooting for maximum DPI or actual returns. You're just shooting for that.

And by the way, just further doesn't the big, you know, I just see this all the time where I have friends with funds that that are maybe sub $50 million funds and they're investing into like even if the big platforms just periodically dipping down into seed when when they have a, you know, really like the founder or whatever and then suddenly the round is like, you know, six on 40 and then tiny fund and then the tiny fund is like you could get a bunch of bangers and you just do the math and you realize like they're not making they're not going to be making DPI either.

And they're not getting the the latest stage what happened after 20 in 2023 era which I I wrote about then is like the latest stage capital allocators who again are paid fees to deploy gross. They're like they're weight deployers. They're mass capital deployers. They got they they couldn't deploy.

So a bunch of their junior people in particular are like well I need to do something to justify my paycheck. So they started dipping into seed, right? Cuz like they're bored, right? And they're like we can't deploy big checks, so we might as well deploy small ones. And by the way, no one cares, right?

like it's such small amounts of money. It's irrelevant either way. That completely messed up the seed markets cuz it got super undisiplined, right? And like it did because it's candidly we do the same thing at slow to like the angel market, right? Whereas we we it's a recursive problem.

Like we will write $100,000 checks off a meeting cuz it's kind of irrelevant to us and it's just relationship building and like whatever, but there's some poor angel who's out there trying to price it properly and we don't care and then we it up for them. So like it's it's a recursive problem. um that did happen.

I think mostly honestly the latestage guys with AI have a narrative where they can put billions of dollars to work and do their actual jobs. So they've mostly pulled out of up the early stage markets because they have better things to do with their time. That's actually what they get paid for, right?

Um and just to make a finer point on that, you know, a lot of these late stage public platforms, they really are like setting themselves up to go public. Here's the thing about that. when when they go public, the actual way re like the public markets value these funds has absolutely nothing to do with returns.

It is 100% the fee base, right? And so their their structure and their incentive structure is 1,000% about earning fees and just making enough returns to justify the fees they charge and raise more money. Like that's what they do. Then there's the early stage market.

Here's the thing about those $50 million funds, right? Um ultimately you got to eat. you got to actually deliver DPI, not just marks, right?

And and so marks are nice, like they're fine, but I think what we're going to find in a lot of ways is the the tr the the gulf between I have on paper made a bunch of money or these deals look good versus like, oh no, I actually returned capital.

I like made you money, you should give me more money and I made myself money doing it. That's a pretty big gulf. And I think what we're going to find is that, you know, a the market, most of those funds are going away because they don't have that and they're not going to.

B, there could be a world where latestage funds start saying, okay, at some discount to the last round, I'll buy out these seed funds effectively and give them some DPI, etc. But then the problem for the seed funds is that mark they were using to be like, look how smart I am. That's not what they're getting paid, right?

That's like that's like the high water mark some investor invested later for primary and when you come around and say hey by the way would you like to buy my shares I and they're like well we'll take more and it'll lower our average cost base they're not paying what they what they paid for the primary right and they're looking at their portfolio and they're like I need to do this for 80% of my bets basically in order to like actually and then it's like you know yeah and so look I mean the upshot the really simple way to think about it is like if you're an early stage investor you have to make money like that paid for people are saying, "Hey, I'm going to allocate a small amount of money to you.

" By the way, it's not efficient, right? Cuz if you're even a mediumiz LP, someone's running a $50 million fund. What are you going to give them? Like a few million bucks, you don't care unless they make you a ton of money, right? And so, like, if you make them a ton of money, you're doing your job.

You get to keep playing. If you don't, forget it. And that's just in a completely different game than what it means to be a late stage capital allocator in the private markets. Yeah. I have uh kind of a random topic, but there's there's two early stage kind of publicity stunts going on this week. One is by Roy Lee.

He launched Cluey Clue Lee uh cheat on everything. I'm not sure if you saw this, but it was very controversial and he's kind of like a troll, almost like a Nathan Fielder type, really kicking the bear. And then there's also this uh artisan uh company announcing their $25 million series A with a billboard on the wall.

I love billboards as you know. Yeah, we love billboards here. We're sponsored by Adquick. We love billboards. Um but uh you know the the the positive take on this is that hey like they're breaking through. They're getting attention. Attention is valuable. Distribution's important.

The counter to that is uh should they even need to do that? Shouldn't they just be heads down building? Uh where do you sit on that continuum?

I I guess the question I would ask is what percent what is the track record of companies that started with marketing stunts that ultimately were important or successful right my sense is the track record off the top of my head is zero right well I mean Facebook was very viral I'll give you an example I'll give you an example so the challenge with going super viral early and I had this with party round is that people get a fixed idea A lot of people get a very fixed idea of what your business does and then you run into this like product marketing challenge which you know people are aware of your business but they're aware of it for something that you may not even do anymore.

And that's why I was talking with Cli founder yesterday of like you need to be committed to like iterating and basically burning the whole brand down because you might find in two months that the real opportunity is something else.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point and like I I'll do a step further which is I in my experience really successful things. You actually want fairly high barriers to entry so that the people who show up as your early customers are like deeply in need of it and true believers, right?

Cuz if they're deeply in need of it, they're going to put up with a lot of crap to get what it is you're offering out of it because they're deep because they really care. Like they showed up first and they like have a real stake in it. Um and then they become true believers in that cult that advocates.

I think if you have too much attention too quickly from a not fervent enough audience, you get distracted. You have to deal with a bunch of the wrong stuff.

People are flighty like so I think there's this irony which is like it all how you get your first 100,000 10,000 people and the barriers to entry there are like really and I'll give you a kind of counter example which actually kind of is a marketing stunt if you get into it which is quite by accident.

You know uh and I kind of started this jelly jelly Memecoin blew way the hell up. Went crazy, but was supposed to be like a component of the app Jelly Jelly. We've been working. The app's super cool, but like the app was not ready, right?

Like when And what's been really interesting to watch is because the app wasn't ready. You got a bunch of people in. Most of them bounced. They're like, "This isn't ready. This is weird. " Whatever. But you did attract a kernel of like crazy true believers that are really engaged with it.

And then it's kind of like a fire. Like you kind of blow on the coals of that, right? and you kind of keep iterating and working. So, I guess that's a long-winded way of saying I think the history of companies that start with a marketing stunt and blow up big is pretty poor.

There probably is a way to like be very inefficient and like blow up something big or say something, funnel out 99% of the noise. Y somehow find that kernel 1% work with that 1% and like treat it like kind of the embers of a fire, right? And grow up. So that's kind of the the mental model. It's like how you handle it.

Got it. Uh last question. How cooked is Tesla. I mean, look, I I I've been in the camp of like Tesla's a meme stock for a long time, right? Um and I think Tesla's a meme stock, right? um you know and so I um yeah you posted uh maybe it was yesterday no it was this morning if Elon can move Tesla stock up by 7.

5% by saying he's stepping back from Doge against the backdrop profits and revenue they did then yes he probably deserves the $56 million difference as a pay that is what the markets his attention is worth. Uh, I thought that was pretty on those.

Yeah, look, it's it's it's um Elon is the greatest marketer of our generation. Um, he's the greatest capital uh raiser of our generation. You know, he is the greatest I think storyteller. I mean, there's a lot that he's really really really good at, right?

And um, you know, I think he's the ultimate cult influencer in a lot of ways, right? And he's built a lot of cool companies doing that, but it is so belief driven. And I think this is kind of the thing where it's like, you know, what does Tesla work from a DCF perspective?

We talked about public markets and how you value these things. Not a fraction of what it's traded at, right? But it is absolutely he is great at the infinity story, right? The infinity story is so big and infinity, you know, plus zero equals big number. Everything's about the marginal buyer.

And it's incredibly loved because retail investors want something to believe in. Like they want something they can that can go to infinity. It's the same thing with the Mars thing. It's like, look, I again, I find the whole Mars thing in SpaceX so frustrating. I love SpaceX.

It's like, you know, I think it's an amazing company. Like, what they do is incredible, right? And there's a lot I love in the whole nine yards. The Mars narrative is so frustrating because it's so disingenuous on one hand, right? Like it's just like the the predictions are out of control.

Like it doesn't make any sense from like a fundamentals perspective, but my god, people need something to believe in, right? And so believe in something. Well, I think Tesla's coming back.

I think they're going to put a naturally aspirated V12 with a gated manual in a new car and they're going to sell 700 million cars in a single quarter. I love that. If Tesla did that, I would be even I would buy Tesla stock just because that would be awesome. There we go. We cracked it. We cracked it.

It's going to happen. You heard it here first. Uh, thanks for stopping by, Sam. This is fantastic. We will talk to you. Thanks for coming on. Got it. Next up, we have Bridget Mendler of Northwood Space coming into the studio. Very exciting. I