The Information profiles TBPN: Abe Brown calls in to defend his 'bro culture' piece

this day and age. And I posted that god forbid men have hobbies. There's nothing ridiculous about two guys meeting up at a members club. Yeah. And having a sauna and reading reading the journal.

And he thought I was joking with him, but I was dead serious that we had actually been in the in the sauna just a little bit earlier. You quote in the article, "This was in the sauna pointing to a bedraggled a section of the journal besides on the club's dining room table. It has sweat all over it.

" Yeah, there's the wide version of us because it's been stretched. Even wider. It's great. Um, yeah. So, I had to prove to him. I actually did invite him to the morning workout. I said, "Meet up with us at 6:30. It's chess day. We'll we'll we'll hit some PRs on the bench and then we'll go in the sauna. We'll talk.

We'll get breakfast. " Uh, he was he was traveling around. Couldn't make it, so he just came to breakfast. So, I had to prove to him by showing him the sweat on Not the first not the first time we've invited somebody to a workout, though. It's the best. And then had them come up with some range of excuses.

Oh, I'm not going to be able to get there at six. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. It is a It is a high bar, but yeah. Um, you know, do coffee meetings. Naval says, uh, set your opportunity cost extremely high. He said, "Meet like a lion. " Meet like a lion.

Be hitting bench when when you're meeting with Naval is the original the lion does not concern himself meme. Like that's where that came from basically. Work like a lion. Basically, he doesn't concern himself with much. He doesn't he doesn't concern himself with email. Yeah. Doesn't concern himself with coffee meetings.

Um but the gym meeting it's highly efficient. Uh actually I mean I I I Strauss Zelnik the CEO of Take Two owns GTA putting out GTA 6 soon. Uh he is famous for uh doing workouts and doing workout meetings.

And so I read that book and I kind of adopted that and started doing uh workouts with Ben and talking to him about the business while we're working out. And it's just a fantastic flow. It's the best way to hang.

Um, so they go on, he goes on, Abe goes on to write, "Kugan and Hay is live streamed TBPN, which they originally christened the Technology Brothers as a knowing nod to the concept of a tech bro on X and YouTube from 11:00 a. m. to 2 p. m. Pacific and published the recording on Apple Podcast and Spotify.

When I found them sitting down to breakfast at the Jonathan Club, they had mostly prepped their opening commentary on the news.

Airbnb's revamp, the Trump administration's proposed changes to chip AI chip exports, and they had a number of guests booked, such as Founders Fund Delian Aspuov, Lux Capitals Josh Wolf, and Eugenia Cudia Kudya, whose startup Replica AI hopes to develop chat bots that can serve as human companions.

So, here's where it gets interesting, John. Yes. says, "Like the show's audience, the guests are attracted to quote unquote TBPN. " Yeah. Like it doesn't it's not a real thing. Like it's not a real thing. As a safe refuge from the mainstream media, one that projects an unabashed, unapologetic enthusiasm for tech.

I think this is my best line in here. I'm glad Abe included it. We genuinely love the private markets, the venture capital industry, the startup industrial complex, and yeah. So, so, so there's something interesting here.

TBPN is in quotes, but I'm I'm on a different article from the information and it and it reads, "Jim Kramer, CNBC's Mad Money host, took a swipe at our report today, and CNBC isn't in quotes. " Why is it? That's so interesting. I wonder in the Oh, it could be a bug in the CMS and the content management system.

Maybe they should switch content management systems. I like if they're making if bugs like that are sneaking it into articles. Aes, our boy. Yeah. And I'm gonna just I'm I'm gonna assume that it was just an accident. Probably just a mistake.

Uh anyway, since TVPN debuted last October, Hayes and Kugan have warmly welcomed investors from pretty much every major firm venture venture firm in existence. Let's go. Uh we're Switzerland. We're Switzerland over here. A marker of the podcast widening appeal, Sequoia, Kla, Lightseed, I could go on.

A week or so ago, they dispatched one of their four producers to Las Vegas to set up a mini studio at Andrees Horowitz's annual investor day summit where the firm's executives could chat about tech, the news, and what they were presenting to their investors. A level of access no one in regular media would ever get.

Thank you uh to Eric and the whole team at making that happen. And I want to do more of those. I I I'm talking to KOA about that. I think that's like an interesting thing.

uh the the sit down with like the full partnership to get the full scope of like how everything fits together because most most founders even in my career I've interacted with like every fund but usually just a single partner and so you you know you usually have this very like point like maybe you've listened to Mark Yeah.

or and then you've interacted with uh you know David George on a deal or David Haber on a deal or something like that. Um, it's rare to be able to see like all in one and I I I like the way that that came together. So, I'm hoping to do more of those. Anyway, so it it goes on.

He includes uh TBPN in quotes again uh which is TBPN is in quotes every single time it's listed and the information includes TBPN in quotes. Uh anyways, he goes on talks about some of the guests that we've had. I thought this was funny.

Uh Augustus D Rico whose startup Rain Maker Technology uh has come on the show has a skyhigh dream of commercializing cloud seeding a process of adding chemicals to the atmosphere to increase precipitation. Uh he's a good writer. Skyh high dream it's it's a good line.

As Hayes and Kugan have won attention from a swath of the technarati and have achieved a constant social media virality. their consistent social media virality. Their audience has remained incredibly niche.

While they see X as their main platform, they have just about 130,000 followers on their accounts and the one belonging to the show. On YouTube, TBPN has only around 7,000 subscribers. Um, it's weird to be like incredibly niche. 130,000 followers. Like, how many you got, Abe? How many?

Hey, let's let's pull up Let's go analytics. No, let's go analytics for analytics. Last time you dropped a 20k banger on the timeline. Let's check it out. Let's see. Let's see how wide. You know, Jordy has 100,000 likes on a post. 150 150k likes. Is that niche? Is that is that niche?

Oh, you know that uh my sean ping video on YouTube has three million views. You know that my analysis of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse attempts has 8 million views. How niche is that? How niche is that? No, we're niche. We're proud. We're proudly niche. Proudly niche. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean this is actually something we think about is like is like there are obvious TAM expanders. Politics is the obvious one. Um and we've and we've deliberately said we're not going to try and TAM expand. Is A watching? Abee's watching. He says I demand a rebuttal. Should we let him call in right now?

Yeah, let's have him call in. Okay. Send him the link. Send the link. Send him the link. Abe, come on in. Demand. Come on in.

Um anyways, uh they have no investors and profess to have zero intentions of raising capital unless those investors didn't mention our incredibly complex corporate structure because we do have a nonprofit that's into an LLC that feeds into a COP that feeds into the labs which is of course owned by Wilmanitis.

Will Mandis Will Mandis uh I I this was a a fun quote uh which I stand by. We could go out and within an hour I guarantee you we could raise probably like 15 million and I believe that would destroy us. I think that's true. So we very intentionally not raised it would be it would be your final party round.

The final party round. The final party round if the final round because I mean realistically every we could get everyone but it would it would very much change it would very much change the dynamic of the show. It would be it would be less fun.

Uh, I asked RAMP CEO Eric Lyman what he found so appealing about the show and he likened their approach to how ESPN chronicles sports where Sports Center has players, coaches, and games to celebrate and explain. TBPN is founders, investors, and developer conferences.

They're they're able to bring to life the personalities, the playbyplay, and capture the zeitgeist. Thank you, Eric. That's a great quote. That's exactly what we're going for.

Uh, Kug and Hayes often hear themselves compared to ESPN commentators, but the analogy is sort of lost on them because putting a major dent in their broken broke credentials, neither watches much sports content to Hayes, the natural comparison is to Clubhouse, an audio social media app that was popular for a moment during the pandemic.

We've taken what the magic of early Clubhouse was, where you could hear an interesting uh an interesting investor or founder talking in real time about what was happening that day, what's in the news, and turn that into a show.

Ultimately, TBPN, allegedly, if it exists at all, if it's a real thing, hopes to better capitalize on the same broad truth about tech relationship with old school media that underpinned Clubhouse.

More and more Silicon Valley has come to distrust traditional journalists, perceiving them as holding an unshakable bias against the industry, part of an undeniable broader shift in American culture against the established media.

Many within tech have tried to build their own in-house media operations or have rapaciously thrown millions of dollars at would be disruptors like Clubhouse. Mo most such efforts have flopped, mounting to little more than lame public relations. Guggen and Hayes seem to have found their sweet spot.

They maintain just enough independence from their subjects, but feel none of the pressure for critical coverage most journalists in their position would. They also get far on their twin blessings of easy charm and boyish good looks.

And now this is interesting because charm is a little it's a little bit of a charged word in my culture. Totally Irish culture. Yeah. So I'm Irish obviously. For those that don't know, Hayes and Kugan, we're both Irish. Scott's Irish. And so, you know, St.

Patrick is obviously a famous snake charmer and and charmed all the snakes out of out of out of Ireland. And so it's it's it's kind of like racial humor. Is this like is it racial? I don't racist, but it's racial. It's definitely racial. And so, yeah, it's a little bit edgy, but I I mean, I appreciate it. It's fun.

We're in the postwoke era. We're in the anti-woke era. Totally. If Abe wants to go there, Abe can go there. He can go We can go charm for charm with anyone. We can go charm for charm with the best of them. It's just a little crazy cuz I haven't been called. You don't normally think potato.

You don't think of information editor as an edge lord. Yeah. No, you don't. But but he snuck in. Yeah, it's good. It's a little It's a good It's a little little dig little dig. Oh yeah, I saw him chugging Guinness passed out like a drunk Irishman. You know, he didn't go that far.

He stepped it back, but he still threw in a little bit of the Irish a little dig of the Irishness. Yeah, makes sense. They have an interesting They have an interesting voice that I don't think many people could pull off, said Ashley Vance, the Elon Musk biographer and former New York Times and Bloomberg Jouro. Jouro.

They use Jouro. I thought that was our word for them. And Bloomberg, he's taking it back. Abee's taking back Jouro. Wait, that's actually interesting because he he highlights earlier. No, he highlights earlier in the article that we took back Tech Bro.

They're taking back Jouro and and but but you know, Tech Bro was a slur. We took it back as Technology Brothers, but he's taking back Jouro. He's kind of inverting it. He's saying, "I'm not a journalist. I'm a jouro. " I'm a jouro. It's kind of cool. I like I'm into this. That's kind of cool. Jouro Jouroism is back.

Yeah. What is it? What is it? Kibits. Do you know what that is? Because it said Ashley came on for a kibbitz. Uh look on and offer unwelcome advice, especially at a chat. Oh, chat. Okay. So, he came on for a chat. Yeah. And he's coming on uh he's coming back next week. Uh he's been traveling, shooting a movie.

Very cool stuff. I don't know if you saw his cinema rig, but he's got like 25 different cinema cameras. It's amazing. I'm very excited to see what he's doing. I don't want to leak too much of Abe is Abe is in the temple. He is. Okay, let's bring him in. Abe, we got to get to the bottom of this. Abe.

Okay, we're falling in. Wow. Abe on TBPN for the first time ever. I could go into exactly why uh you know um CNBC doesn't get quotes and you guys do, but that seems boring. Let's talk more fun. Wait, wait, hold on. Hold on, editors. Uh, the Chiron's way wrong. Can we put the information in quotes?

Can we put the information in quotes? Put the information in quotes. We have to Hey, uh, it's fantastic to have you on. Uh, we talked about this earlier. We knew we knew uh I mean Jessica Lesson's husband was going to come on later later today.

And it would have been a funny kind of dynamic if this had been a hit piece, which we obviously didn't know until uh around 9:00 a. m. when you when you hit publish. So, uh it this will be a fun show end to end. Yeah. Uh it was great. I I I don't know.

Is there anything else that I mean, you've been listening to our analysis. Uh anything else you need to get off your chest?

No, I I I think the story, you know, is a piece of fair and accurate journalism and uh you know, you guys are you guys are doing what you do best, which is, you know, common commentating on the news on the breaking news about uh the brothers.

Wait, I have to ask, did you intentionally use the word jouro instead of journalist when talking about Ashley Vance? Yeah, because we think of jouro as like a tech bro style like dig. Like it's almost a slur for journalist.

It's kind of, you know, guys, in the way that you're funny on camera, I also try to be funny in the way I write. Uh, you know, just to, you know, make the make the make the jokes go around. No, you nailed it. You nailed it. I mean, you got us. We were cracking up. It's great. It's really good.

Uh, I I'll be back in LA soon and uh I'll take you up on the sauna. Let's do it. Fantastic. We can't wait. Let's do it. Yeah. We got to get a big one in the new studio. like uh we got to like basically dedicate 2,000 square feet, a single sauna for sure.

Uh hey, uh thank you for the fun and fair coverage of what we're doing. Fantastic. Uh and uh likewise, you guys are a good hang. Don't be uh don't be too nice to Sam. Okay. Okay. We won't be we'll be we'll be rough on him. We'll put him in the streets, though. Bye. Awesome. Thanks for jumping on. See you. Look at that.

Look at that med meeting media technology. Yeah. All together just broing down. Love to see it. Um they give a little bit of our background but then go on to talk about how we met uh mutual friend. Did they actually not they didn't they didn't name Will Mandis. You didn't name it Will Manitis.

Um saw an opportunity for tech focus podcast that could analyze industry news with a light irreverence and wasn't tied to a single company or venture firm. Last fall, they had enough free time on their hands to record a couple test episodes when they attended Peter Teal's Hereticon at the Fena Hotel.

Oh, they put founders in quotes. [Laughter] Oh, no. They sought out feedback from David Center, host of the popular Founders podcast, if you could call it that. Wait, did did Abe actually tell us why they put it why he puts it in quotes? I don't think he No, he said he said it wouldn't be fun. Okay.

It would be fun, which is Yeah. Yeah. Which is fair. No, I mean it makes sense. You're introducing this to the first time to your audience. Like we're given a hard time, but like obviously it's called TBPN. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's it like like if if TBPN becomes like driving news and the information months from now has written about comments that were said on TBPN and they're citing us, I imagine that we will become unqued. Like we will we will earn the removal of our quotes. earn your throwing off the shackles of the quotes. I'm excited.

That's uh that's definitely on the on the vision board right next to TBPN arowan smoothie. You heard it here first. We're working on it. Um uh uh David Senra previously advised Kugan on his YouTube channel. Uh this is funny because like it was very very informal, but I did learn a ton from David.

I remember the very first time I I talked to him. I was doing my YouTube channel like very much part-time on just like one day a week on the weekend when I was bored. I just put up a video and I did one a week. Uh and it was growing and it was doing well.

Um and I was just like wait like you have this podcast that's like this is pre deal. This is pre invest like the best partnership and pre meeting Patrick and stuff. So the show was pretty small at that time. And I was like, "Wait, you do this full time? " And he was like, "Yeah.

" And he swore upon I was one of the first advertisers on Founders Podcast. I had no idea for Capital. Yeah.

I was I was like one of the first one or two and it I I certainly won't mention it here, but uh and and the funny thing is I had actually reached out to David and I really didn't I I I listened to the first episode and I reached out to him and I was like would you this was this was at a time that was like yeah every tech company should be a media company which I don't agree with anymore but I was like would you consider like joining like he told me his ad rates and I was like well what if we just like acquired founders and in hindsight that was like such a ridiculous thing to ask cuz David never under any circumstances would have done that or anything like it.

Um nor would it have been good for the show but uh but yeah at at that time it was like very very Yeah, you know. Yeah. No, I I remember getting on the phone with him and and he was telling me like I was like do so do you do this like full-time? Like how do you even make that work? He was like and he swore a bunch.

He was like absolutely like I I don't do anything else. This is all I do. And I was just like super impressed that he'd been able to make this work. And it is like a niche show. It certainly was at the time, but he obviously found a really high value audience and was already monetizing it very well at that point.

He had like a payw wall for some of the episodes. He was starting to do some advertising. He's evolved the business model a ton and probably 100x the product quality was incredible. Yep. But he was like it was it was just it was just him. No employees, nothing like just like building building. So it was very very cool.

Um, and so yeah, I mean I learned a lot from him and kind of kept growing the the channel and then eventually evolved into this. Uh, he thought that the two shared natural chemistry and encouraged them to go all in on the concept, which we've told about, which we've talked about before.

For a model, he suggested they look at sports commentator Pat McAfee. Senra admires McAfei's always on persona. What is Pat doing right now? I bet he's live streaming, he said. And I wasn't exactly sure because we we've looked to Pat for as a as like a a role model in in many ways.

Um, but I wasn't exactly sure where that came from. But I thought the most interesting lesson that I learned from David was that he actually did not tell us you guys should live stream. He told us you should take this 100x more seriously. You should go harder. You should go full-time on this.

And what was interesting is that the we were doing a weekly podcast with no guests. And once we started taking it way way more seriously and working on it constantly, then switching it into a daily show, switching it into a live show, switching it into a guestled show, all of that just happened very naturally.

He didn't tell us tactics. He just told us exactly what he what he says on every we left Miami and we decided to go to two or three days a week. Three days a week. Yeah, maybe it was three days a week. But then I remember the realization that we would stop recording. Yeah.

and and we would be on X like an hour later and I'd just be like, I wish we were doing the show tomorrow. And then we just eventually we decided to go to five days, then we decided to go live, then we decided to add guests.

I even remember talking to you about like maybe we should do like one day a week, five hours, and then slice it up. So, we're releasing one hour per day podcast weekly. And and it was a terrible idea, and I'm so glad we didn't do it. Um it's it's it's a way way better way better um uh format.

And so, uh, Abe goes on to write, "Soon Kugan and Hayes landed on an early gag that helped them gain attention, print out posts from X from founders and investors, then dress up in suits and film themselves with top-end 4K cameras discussing the posts, a very hightouch approach to assembling retweets.

Uh, later they started to share the clips and tag the the posts authors uh on X, and the authors would often frequently pass on the clips themselves, giving Kugan and Hayes some of their first virality.

The pair set themselves up on the 10th floor office that Kugan rented in the Jonathan Club, hired a small video production crew, who they sometimes refer to as just the guys. Well, since well, they're all young men.

Um, and uh over the course of the next several months, the TBPN hosts and the guys have adopted a steady rhythm. When Kugan and Haves go live, two of the guys control what appears on the stream, including the Chirons. Uh, the bit of text below the guest. It's funny.

I didn't even we didn't even know the the term Chiron for like we had been doing a Chiron for quite a while and we were I had to explain it to basically everyone on the team because we all learned but I had in fact heard the term before.

Um but yeah um you have a background in big television John that you don't know about. No I I've been to NAB I've been a nerd for like production for like several years and so I' I've been like loosely familiar with all this stuff.

watched a lot of YouTube videos explaining how churches do live streams because megaurches are delivering at a level that is equivalent to Fox News on 1/100th of the budget. And so you can just go on YouTube and search church live streaming setup and they will have tested everything and they share all the information.

It's a bevy of resources. It's it's fantastic and some of them do like virtual productions. It gets crazy. Uh anyway, they tried they try to make these funny. One example, venture capitalist yaps about venture capital. Uh, I'm excited to share a screenshot of of Abe Brown, writer at the information.

Did you see the final Chiron? So good. So good. Uh, steady crawl. The show's sponsors appear next to the Chirons. Uh, along with a ticker available of available polyarket bets with Kugan Hayes seat as telling indicators of market sentiment and their audience's interests. That's true.

Another of the guys spends the entire show, entirety of the show, cutting up clips to publish across social media as quickly as possible. Fourth, Ben Kohler. Let's hear for Vice President Ben, who worked with Kugan on his YouTube videos, serves as head producer.

On a traditional TV show, a producer would normally pre-inter a guest. Sounds really boring to help to help both the guest and the host. But Kugan and Hayes prefer to wing it. And since they're never brandishing any sort of gotcha question, we'll hit you with some gotchas.

We're just going to do nerdy gotchas about scaling laws and and gotcha and buildout timelines and and end to end algorithms. We're not going to ask you about your personal life or your politics discuss politics. Um the informality doesn't discomfort their guests. There's no prep.

They just sent me a Zoom link and I joined, said Sham Sankar, Palanteer's chief technology officer and a veteran of many CNBC hits. To fill the guest spots, Kugan Hayes tap their rolodexes and industry connections. Unsurprisingly, they've started to get inbound requests.

We're at the point where we're getting 20 pitches a day from PR firms. Kugan said, "We turned down 95%. " His rejection method is simple. He goes to X and checks whether they've shared recent what they've shared recently, their number of followers, and whether they follow the same people.

Yeah, I'm generally looking for like are they tapped into the news? Are they following technology stories?

Are they are they you know I wouldn't say this is this is this is one part of the process but certainly we've had people on that don't have a presence and we actually want to do a lot more yeah totally but but if you're getting a pitch instead of a warm introduction to it's very hard to get a pitch from someone that's very dry and then because every once in a while there's someone who who is interesting that just happens to have a stale PR team that's kind of pitching broadly and that you got to kind just deal with that.

But most of the time if there's just some stock like big you get these big emails with all these bullet points of everything the person's accomplished and then they link you to their LinkedIn account and you search them on X and like they're not really in the conversation and if they're not in the conversation it's going to be hard for them to join and have a conversation actually bring something really they're just going to come on with talking points and so it's pointless or if they come on with LinkedIn takes from it's not good two months ago not good work.

Hayes and Kugan delight in their shtick for the show which includes opening bottles of Don Peran to markets growth. A constant tongue-in-cheek shilling of ramp ramp ramp which makes expense account software that would exasperate many mad men. But not us. Not us. Not us. Switch your business to ramp. com.

Save time and money. Just do it. We had a whole running gag with Abe the entire time. We probably pitched him ramp seven different times at least.

At one point, I introduced him to Eric over at RAMP and I uh and then I immediately followed up, acted like I took him off the email thread and told Eric, "Here are the talking points we're sticking to. You got to post that. I got to post that.

" And and it was just a whole bunch of details about ramp and how Abe at one point said, "Guys, I don't care about expense management software. Please stop pitching me something to that effect.

" And we said, well, I, you know, a lot of ramp customers felt the same way at some point, but once they understood just how much time and money they could, we had so much fun with it. It was great. So much fun. Thanks for Thanks for being a good sport. Yeah, he was a good sport about it.

And a preference to always appear in suits, their visual trademark. Kugan gets his suits from a tailor whose identity he wouldn't reveal. Hayes likes user a New York based uh I guess they're a brand now but they are primarily a tailor. It's Laura Piana fabrics assured me. I guess me and Jimoth have that in common.

Watch peeking out from doxed. They doxed your watch. They doxed my watch. They doxed your watch. The suits are a little dig at Silicon Valley's preference for the inform informality of cotoaxi which is that how you pronounce that? I've never I've never heard that before. Never worn it.

Um, Hugan hopes they serve another purpose, too. It's going to make it easier to appeal to public company CEO who's running TBPN. Oh, we got single quotes now. We're upgrading. Oh, because it's inside double quotes. He still hit the quotes. Got us. I was so excited that we were halfway to no quotes.

We were getting double quotes. Now we're getting single quotes. The next thing's no quotes. Uh, by his PR team that's maybe more conservative and more riskaverse, he said. So, when they pull up an example, they see a very clean package and everyone's in suits. And that's true.

I I want to be a place where uh big public company CEOs can come on and it doesn't feel like we're disheveled not taking this seriously.

Um um it needs to be brand safe even for big tech companies that want to you know uphold a very serious brand standard that they would that they would feel comfortable on Bloomberg or CNBC. They should feel comfortable here as well.

Uh the external appearance that's the external appearance at least this is when he's putting us in the truth zone. putting us in the true zone. Abe, internally, the atmosphere is decidedly informal.

When the show wrapped on the day one, on the day I was at the Jonathan Club, Kugan and Hayes casually stripped down to their boxers in front of me and the crew, changing into t-shirts, shorts, pants, and sneakers, and then issued a few instructions on finishing the day's production and preparing for the next day's show.

Well, he got us, John. There is we we do at times wear normal clothing. We do. Uh, waving goodbye to the guys. We loaded into Hayes Mercedes-Benz Gwagon. Wow. He didn't even He didn't even say the most important part. It's an AMG. It's an AMG. It's a G63. Yeah, it's a really important detail. Leaving that out.

That feels intentional. Trying to take you down a peg. Could be a G5. Yeah. I like it though. It's more It's more subtle. Yeah. Yeah. It's a dude. He's just leaving it open. Could be any type of G Wagon. Yep. And we so we drove Abe over to Hollywood to see our new 4,000 foot studio uh that we just signed a lease on.

Abe says it dwarfs the size of the current set they have in the Jonathan Club. We are in a very small space on this set. Uh and they're looking forward to the increased flexibility it can give them, including the ability to get up and walk around while streaming and basically screaming too. Yep.

Uh right now we basically sit down for three hours and half hours. we get up for like a minute in between, but the energy will be so much better when we can stand. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. Um, they'll also have the opportunity to host inerson guests, something we're very excited about.

We have a bunch of people lined up and we should be able to make those uh those in-person uh sessions really special. Uh, and I asked them about the dream bookings. Of course, we've talked about this before. Our dream bookings are the Magnificent Seven, like all of them.

Uh, we want the CEOs of of Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, and Meta Platforms, and Tesla. We want them all the Thanos glove of of uh of technology leaders. We want them all on the show. So, if you know someone, please make it happen for all of us. Um, but we still have a lot to do on the production side.

We want to be a fantastic show. We want their first appearance on TBPN to be memorable and uh cinematic and cinematic and and and enjoyable and and I think you know uh and most importantly I think it's less about like asking like the hard-hitting questions.

It's more like what are the questions that the investing community actually wants to hear? How can we dig through those and drive those questions that move markets? That's what's most important. Yep.

Um, and so, uh, the the the questions are less gotchas about random things that don't really matter to earnings, which is what a lot of the news has become in tech and business because the audience are not investors.

We want to focus on the questions that investors actually care about, which is more often, how's capex looking, which is like, is that a gotcha? Well, for some companies it might be. If their capex is looking rough, it might be. Satcha says, "We're happy to be leasers.

" Is that is hitting him with a question about his pivot away from data center builds a gotcha? Like certainly not to a normal person who doesn't invest in the stock, right? But to uh to someone who really cares and owns a lot of Microsoft stock, it's probably pretty important anyway.

Uh it might be easy to design a show that would appeal to one or two of them, but it would be difficult to do uh one that could attract the entire set. They've all done podcasts, but there's no podcast that has done all seven. And uh says Kugan, that's me.

On the drive over, Hayes mentioned a dream prop for their Hollywood set. He and Kugan have already already have a small gong in their Jonathan club that they rang on the show when talking about a company's notable achievement, but he would like to buy an even bigger gong.

Looking around at the Hollywood studio, he could see how nice a an extra-large version might look. "Yeah, we finally have the space for itong," he said. Oh, what a fun. Oh, I can't wait. We need a 50 foot by 50 foot gong that requires a group of people to stop it from ringing when you drive a car into the gong. We do.

Um, we're working on it. Uh, what should we move on to? We I mean, the main thing we have to cover, so yesterday X was a nightmare. Uh, DMs weren't working for a lot of the day, which was rough for us on the show. Apparently, there was literally a fire in the data center.

So yeah, a fire broke out Thursday morning at a data center in Hillsboro, Oregon, leased by Elon Musk's X, forcing an extended response from emergency crews, according to multiple sources who spoke to Wired. Uh the sources required anonymity as they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the company.

Firefighters arrived at Hillsboro Technology Park in a suburb west of Portland at 10:21 a. m. Man. John. Portland, Oregon. vandalis. Uh uh you think this is you call an arson? I have no idea.

I don't even know how you how you vandalize or or commit arson in a data center, they seem to lock down the Yeah, but the every time I see Portland in a headline in tech, it's some type of This is pretty advanced stuff to figure out where the data centers are. Okay, I'm sorry.

If you're a extremist and you want to bring a bunch of gas, Will Manitis posted that whole thread about shooting the transformer and taking down all the electrical infrastructure and how like you can basically take out the energy infrastructure with just small arms.

So like an AR-15 shot at a transformer can take off a whole a whole whole piece of the grid. And so you would think that they'd go after that. I don't know. It's very very very odd. Hopefully they sort it out quickly. Yeah. So it's interesting. So before Tesla's have been setting on fire.

So maybe X data center is So this is interesting. So before Elon bought Twitter, the company had three data centers in Sacramento, Portland, and Atlanta. This ensured that if one data center went down, traffic could be shifted to the other two and split so no single data center was overwhelmed.

Around Christmas Eve 2022, Musk shut down X's data center in Sacramento in an effort to cut costs. The company experienced a major outage in the wake of the shutdown. Over the next 6 months, the company moved more than 2500 server racks from the S Sacramento facility to data centers in Portland and Atlanta.

So, it sounds like they have two core data centers now. Okay. I want to rip through a bunch of stuff really quick. I'm just going to rip through this stuff. Um, so, uh, Donald Trump just signed an executive order about nuclear and so we're going to try and have some folks on uh very quickly and slot them in.

might be 230, but I'm talking to some nuclear folks about uh coming on and breaking it down. I haven't even had a chance to read it yet, but it's out apparently. Uh I don't know if you want to dig into that. I also want to give you the final analysis on Apple's AI struggles.

We've been dipping our toe in and out of the story