Sequoia's David Cahn on the AI talent arms race: $100M signing bonuses, 'con-sized' teams, and the gentle singularity shift

Senate in the studio. How you doing, David, brother? Welcome to the show. Now I can hear you. What's going on? What's going on? I can hear you. It's great to see you. Not much. How are you guys? Great to see you again. Long time no talk. Long time no talk. Did we talk yesterday or the day before? Yeah, yesterday.

Something like that. It's too long. I need every few hours. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, between the show and then the hour that we typically talk with you afterward, at some point we should just start, you know, streaming it live. Get up to get up to five hours a day. This is this is this scratches the itch a little bit.

Yeah. You guys haven't announced our month-long extreme podcasting summit in Malibu yet. I was going to wonder if you wanted to talk about that. I'm super down to talk about. I'm excited. I've been inviting other podcasters like you need to fly out. It's going to be summer podcasting entire month.

Rob, you have to have a podcast to go. Yeah. The summer of extreme podcasting in Malibu, California. I I I want to I want to create I want to create the center for I think we're going to tip it in Malibu though. Oh yeah. With the people that are coming. Yeah, for sure. The weather. Come on.

No one's like, "Hey, come visit Austin in the summer. " We need We need a fresh start. We need a fresh start, too. You know, there's something about the mothership where like I I think Austin works because you need to have like all the cross-pollination from Kill Tony and random people coming in.

Malibu is for monk mode podcasting. Yeah. But it's for Yeah. If you're a comedian and you're friends with Joe Rugen. Yeah. Obviously moved to Austin. That's really good for your career. Yeah. But that doesn't apply to us. So yeah, there's going to be a good crew uh amassing out there. Uh break us break it down for us.

what's top of mind for you before I I I have something. So, uh James from Profound announced their round today. Oh, cool. Uh he's coming on the show later today. Great. Uh uh David and I are both investors in Profound.

Uh they announced a $20 million series A led by Kleiner with participation from Nvidia, Saga, South Park Commons, and SV Angel. And of course, it's hilarious. It's hilarious the the lineup of investors and it's like Jordy and David. Yeah. Yeah.

It's GMO from Versell, Jordy and David and Jordan Singer, friend of mine snuck in there as well. So stacked they're building an answer engine helping uh teams, you know, optimize. But we'll get into that later. But but maybe let me let me actually there's a perfect like ramp crossover.

I don't know if you guys have heard of this little company called RAMP. Heard of that? Who's the player? So, I was actually in New York with James yesterday and every time the last few times I go there every few weeks and uh the last few times I've been there made sure to like spend time with him.

Uh James found and uh there's actually a funny way that I met him. So, uh Kareem obviously co-founder and CTO of RAMP uh is a good friend of mine. And the reason I think that Kareem is such a great founder is cuz he has this like divine discontent with everything that he does. So nothing's ever good enough.

The the product's not good enough. This go to market's not good enough. The sales isn't good enough. Like everything could be improved. And I was at dinner at his house like I don't know maybe like two months ago.

And this was going on and on about all the things that like need to be improved and things that he thought like he hated or whatever. And I was like, "All right, enough of this. Tell me like what you actually like. Like who are the founders or the products that you think are great?

" And one of them was Profound and James. And so I wound up looking looking James up on Twitter and I found that he followed me and so I actually followed him back and then we went up DMing and I was like, "Hey, are you in New York? " He's like, "Yeah. " I was like, "I'll be there uh tomorrow.

" He's like, "Come by the office. " Um and so yeah, I just thought it was hilarious that, you know, Kareem his his bar for excellence is excessively high for people and products and James Profound have exceeded that. Um so that's actually how I met James and why I was invited to invest in that round. Awesome. Love it.

Should we move on to Jimmy? Let's talk Jimmy. Break it down for us. Uh, how did you originally land on on Jimmy I as someone to profile? That that's a question I had for you guys because you guys both grew up or like lived in LA for a long time.

So, my interpretation of Jimmy I is like every single person in the music business knows who he is, but the average person doesn't. Were you guys familiar with him at all? Yeah, I was loosely.

But I think part of it when you when I actually think back it's like the the tech angle beats and Apple is probably about introduction to it. But also like reading stories about Dr. Dre because I was a fan and kind of like the the inner scope mafia like that was that was in the news when Dr.

Dre was like the one of the leading artists at that time. So Jimmy I is easily like top three people that I want to meet and I when people ask me like out of all the living entrepreneurs who you want to meet that that usually when I say that that's surprising many people don't know him.

I've been fortunate enough to have dinner with two people uh one was mentored by Jimmy and worked with him for a very long time.

Another person competed directly with him and the way that people speak about him there's like an unbelievable level of respect and just the the guy's unbelievably driven um really like relentless. And one of my favorite documentaries, so like you know this cuz like I read the same books over and over again.

I like read the same quotes over and over again, but I also watch the same documentaries over and over again. And so my favorite documentary is The Last Dance. Obviously you see what what comes up when I text you guys. It's Jordan from The Last Dance.

Uh but the second one would be The Defiant Ones, which I probably watch at least 10 times. And everybody's like, "Oh, what's the documentary about? " And if you go and like look it up, it'll say, "It's about the long-term friendship and partnership between Jimmy I and Dr. Dre that goes back, you know, three decades.

" It's like, "Yeah, it's about Yeah, but really it's a documentary about entrepreneurship. This is like if you think of founder mentality, you think of like the way entrepreneurs think, the way they act. It's like in that documentary.

And I've been wanting to do an episode on him forever, but there's just not there's no books about him. He's never written an autobiography or anything like that. So, I was like, you know what, [ __ ] it. I'm just going to watch the documentary again.

I'm going to take notes on the documentary and build an outline just like I would for a normal episode. And then I found every single good interview he's ever done and then transcribe that and then essentially combine all that to use that as like my own book.

Um, but I I think it's I'm really interested in these people that are not well known to like the general population, but everybody in their industry.

There's a great line from um Warren Buffett where he's like, "Hey, if you want to learn about an industry," he's like, "Enter every single like top CEO uh top executive in the industry, you might have to talk to 20 different companies.

" And then you always ask him like, "If you had to eliminate one of your competitors, I think he uses the example like if I gave you a gun and you only had one bullet and you could take out any of your competitors, who would it be?

" And he's like, and Warren's point, he's like, that's all you're gonna ask all these people, usually they're gonna arrive with the same question. He goes, that's the guy. That's the guy in his case you should invest in. Um Jimmy is very much so that in the music industry.

And I just find his I mean there there's there's a line in uh he's been like really good friends with Bruce Springsteen for like I don't know six decades, five decades, something like that.

And there's a line that's in the documentary that's also in Bruce Springsteen's book where Bruce was talking about and Jimmy has this mentality. He was like, I didn't want to be rich. I didn't want to be famous. I didn't even want to be happy. I wanted to be great.

And I think that's what really attracts me to to Jimmy I in particular and people like him is just this relentless drive where he started out with nothing. He started sweeping the floor in a recording studio to working with John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Dr.

Dre, Eminem, uh founding one of the most successful record companies of all time. Then saying, "Hey, I got bored of that. What I'm going to do next? I'm going to start Beats. " you know, growing that, starting his streaming service, and then selling that to Apple for billions of dollars.

Like, he's just incredible person. Insane. Um, did you get did you get much into his uh he has a program at at USC? Have you covered that at all? My buddy Ben Taft is on the board there. That's at the end of the documentary. That's actually funny.

The the the least interesting parts of biographies cuz everybody can understand like the struggle, right?

It's like you started out talking about family life all the trying to figure out your your path in your early career then you you might hit on something and then it's going well and then you take another step back and there's this whole like climb that everybody can empathize with.

One of the things that I think should be cut out of completely is the end where they're like I bought a building I'm so rich I donated a building named after me. It's like that's just not relatable. It's just not interesting. So yeah, it is covered in the documentary.

I of course was not going to put that on the podcast, but they probably want to talk about that, too. No, that's No, you like there's a great line. Actually, let me read this to you. Um, because here's the funny part. Um, Jimmy is a great storyteller, too, which I think is really important.

And I think above and beyond like yes, we're studying these great entrepreneurs to learn how to build a big business and take ideas from them like, "Hey, that idea work for them. We can use it for us. " But like more important that is like I building a business is just part of our lives. It's a huge part of our lives.

I'm interested in having like an interesting, fun, unique life. Like I want my kids or, you know, my friends after long after I'm gone to like read the life story of mine and be like, "Oh, this is a page turner. This is actually interesting.

" That is Jimmy has incredible stories, you know, for a five decade long career in um in music. And what I like is he intersects with all the other greats.

So, David Geffen, who is, you know, one of the the greatest, I think, entrepreneurs, investors of all time, and somebody that's like really reclusive now, and I really wish wasn't.

I would love to read his autobiography, but David Geffin started this huge like gold rush because he wound up selling his uh his record label for like $500 million. And I think with stock, it wind up being, you know, six or seven or $800 million.

And so when that happened, all the other people that were record producers just like Geffin and Jimmy were like, "Oh [ __ ] I need to start my own record label. " And so Jimmy goes, and David was his mentor. And he goes, "Hey, we kind of do the same thing, but you just made a lot more money than I did.

Should I start a record company? " And David goes, "You should definitely do it. There's a lot of people in the record industry way dumber than you are. " And it's like and and Jimmy talks about like that actually giving him inspiration. It's like, "Oh, wait. Okay, this guy's succeeding.

Gavin obviously, but other people are succeeding. Uh, and you know, they're not it's not just a test of intelligence, but there was uh there's all these different record labels start at the exact same time as Innercope.

And somebody in the documentary says this great thing uh where it says the reason that Innercope was successful versus a lot of other startups at the time was Jimmy was an animal, the most driven and brilliant person at the same time. He was never off and he didn't understand why everybody else wasn't the same way.

And so like these are the kind of people that like I like to study. These are the kind of people these are the kind of friends I like to make. These are the kind of people I like to be around. Just like they're fully alive and completely committed to what they're doing.

Do you have any insight into how he transitioned from sweeping the floor to actually engineering and contributing to studio sessions? Like you you you told us that story about I think it was Jim Cameron like reading textbooks while he was driving. Was that Jim Cameron? I think uh like there's usually James Cameron.

James Cameron. Yeah. Uh was there's usually like an arc where there's go to where the heat is, get in the room with the greats. And it seems like he was able to do that by like sweeping the floors and showing up and just being like I will do anything to be in the important place.

But then there's also this second step of like learn to contribute beyond just floor sweeping because you just [ __ ] nailed it. This is exactly what happened. So he his first his first two jobs in working in a record studio, he got fired. Okay. Uh the third one he gets set up. Why? This is amazing.

Very pro getting fired. So yeah. Well, because he's a college dropout. So let me I'll just like give you like the 15-minute version. Interrupt me whenever you want. Of the hourong episode and cuz it's like and especially because we're all fathers. I think this is like really important.

Like the one of the most important relationships is between father and son. And like if you really think about all the work that I'm doing, I'm going to hit, you know, the 400th biography read in like 3 weeks or 4 weeks from now. It's like all daddy issues all the way down. Like just stacked on top of each other.

You either want to be like your dad or you [ __ ] hate him and like trying to like we got ready for Oh, come on. Uh and it's it's going to be about the vacuum cleaner guy who I'm obsessed with. Somebody just Most people would be like, "Oh, for 400 you're going to do like Steve Jobs, like Elon Musk.

" You're like somebody doing really really power vacuum. Let's give it up for vacuums. Vacuums. That's why he's like go. You tell me another guy that has been running this company for 40 years, owns 100% of it. Highly likely.

I have a friend of mine, a guy I know actually tried to gave tried to I'm going to take a tangent real quick because this is a funny story. Uh you know Dyson owns 100% of his company. I've heard the rumors that he's taking out everybody's like, "Oh, he's worth $20 billion.

" No [ __ ] I've heard it taken out like five plus billion a year in cash and has for a very long time. That's amazing. And so it's like, wow, that makes Mark Benov look like a chump. Mark Benov sells $2 million of Salesforce every single day.

So he's making like $600 million a year in liquidity, but that sounds like dice. Wait, he's selling or is this so so Mark Benov has a retains the equity.

[ __ ] No, no, don't give me that [ __ ] Um, and so the the funny part is this guy I know um told me this story where you know he he's he's managing ever larger p uh pools of capital and has to keep buying more and more private businesses and so you can't buy a $500 million business anymore or two $2 billion business just doesn't move the needle and so he he gave a very friendly like hey would you guys be interested to Dyson uh to to sell and again I like highly disagreeable people I like people that are obsessed with their product they do it forever it's just like people like us Yeah.

And um that you can't buy. There's no [ __ ] number. It's just like I'm not for sale. Thank you very much. Uh and so they approached Dyson and I'm paraphrasing. His response was, "Fuck you. This is a family heirloom. " This is the paraphrase. Family heirloom. This is the paraphrase. That's amazing.

Let me Let me go back to Jimmy though. I talk about Dyson forever. Somebody just pulled a a tweet. They're like, "This guy's been tweeting about the vacuum cleaner guy for since 2018. " I was like, "Yeah, like you I saw I saw that I saw that post. I mean, this is great. David Lore.

But in 2019, you got like four likes on a post. You said like I just I just read my 83rd biography. Yeah. Yeah. I've slipped some of those in like isn't it like Jay Gould or something? It's like this is a person that only you know about basically and you've done like multiple episodes. No.

So, so we like I very few entrepreneurs living knew about Jake Gold. But the reason you should study him is because again I'm always interested in who's influencing the influencers, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Who was the one that influenced Steve Jobs? Right. That Edwin Land. Edwin Land.

I'm sending you Edin I'm sending you Edwin Landon shirts by the way. I'll bring it with you. No, but the uh Jay Gold thing is interesting and don't and then let me get to Jimmy if you want. I mean sure you can do whatever the [ __ ] you want.

But uh the reason I I studied Jay Gold and I've read a bunch of old books about him is because I'm reading biographies of Rockefeller and he was asked like who's the best businessman you know? And he said without hesitation, Jay Gold. I'm like well that's interesting.

And then Cornelius Vanderbilt, keep in mind when Cornelius Vanderbilt died, okay, he owned 5% of the money supply. That's like that's like the GDP metric for Stripe. They're like, "We want to power 1% of the GDP. " Founders need to be more ambitious. They they they put up the the the the page in the deck 1% of the TAM.

Yeah. No, no. Try to get 1% of the money supply. Five 5%. Well, you got to start somewhere, you know, 1% of the money supply. And so when when Cornelius Vanderbilt was in his 70s and he was by far the richest person on the planet, he said the smartest man in America was Jay Gold. Jay Gold was like 33.

And he had said that because they just went headtohead to compete over uh the uh the control of a railroad. And Jay Gold smoked him and then you interesting thing then Cornelius Vanderbilt actually sent hired hitmen to kill Jay Gold's uh partner. He didn't succeed. Yeah.

that kind of business was completely different than than it is now. But yeah, there's all these interesting stories in these books that nobody reads. That's why I love what I do and I try to like highlight them for people cuz I'm like these guys have interesting lives and they ride.

They worked on something for 50 60 years. What's the chance that they they built a wonderful business for six decades and didn't come up with any idea that you could use? Like that's ridiculous.

So, going back to Jimmy I, it's just like so he gets fired uh I forgot the first reason he got fired uh the first time, but the second time was they just gave him a 90-day trial and they just didn't think he was good enough.

They at on day 89 he gets fired smooth, you know, you you're you're missing dust all over the floor. The response they said to him was like, "This just isn't for you. Working in the music business isn't for you. " And this happens over and over again.

Like Sam Walton, you know, his first manager when he was working at CC Penney, he said, "Hey guy, I know you're interested in retail. Sorry to tell you, you don't have a future here. " And Sam's like, "Okay, how about if I become the most successful retail person in history and I'll build a $400 billion fortune.

How about that? " Like, so I I find like I I love when people, you know, doubt other people and they don't know what they're talking about and you're they're proven wrong. Uh but Jimmy being fired the first time is really important because then he goes to the record plant.

The record plant is owned and run by this guy name Roy Sakala who is a legendary engineer. The reason this is important exactly what you just said John is John Lennon after he was a Beatle wanted to work with Roy Sakala. So nobody will come into the studio on Easter Sunday and Jimmy I is from Brooklyn.

He's this old school Italian family. He gets Roy calls him. He's like hey we need help at the studio. No one else is coming in. You got to come in on Easter Sunday. And Jimmy's mom's like you're [ __ ] crazy. You know we're having a feast. This is church. You can't do this.

And and Jimmy says, he's 19, he goes, "I will do anything, anything to make this work. " Shows up to the studio. Roy says, "Good. I'm glad you're here. I was testing you. " In the room is Jimmy, Royce Sakala, and John Lennon. Oh, so he didn't even know John Lennon was going to be there. He showed up anyway.

And that was like the reward. Wow. Bingo. And so he said, he goes, "Listen, I would do there's a really interesting idea. " So I actually talked to Daniel Act, founder of Spotify about this.

Um, and his whole point was just like he's completely uh like he'll do anything it takes to get information that he feels is helpful. So when Spotify was going through a lot of rough trouble, he'd reach out to other tech his peers, other tech company CEOs. He says, "Hey, can I just like shadow you?

" Because like you say you can run meetings with like 30 people. When I run a meeting with 30 people, not like it's I don't even understand how you do this. And Daniel's like there's no ego involved. So he did this with like Mark Zuckerberg. He spent like I think a few weeks shadowing.

He goes, "I got Mark's [ __ ] coffee. I don't care. " Like, I'm there to learn. And so Jimmy was exact same way. He says, "I did everything they did. Like, I took care I cleaned the equipment. I set up the wiring. I eventually learned how to be an engineer. " He goes, "I figured out the way that John Lennon was.

" If you're He's from Britain. He's very particular about how he likes his tea. So, I memorized exactly how he wanted his tea. He goes, "The way I was about his [ __ ] tea was the way I was about everything. " He got so good at making John Lennin's tea that John Lennon wouldn't let anybody else make his tea.

So his point was like, man, you're these guys are they're legends are letting you in the room. Just be useful. Sometimes it's running an errand, sometimes making tea. Sometimes it's fixing the drum sound. And then John just felt he could trust them. And so John starts sending them to he he just takes him everywhere.

They go to LA together. They're recording in London uh in New York together. And like it's exactly what you just said, John. It's just like you get in the room and you do whatever you can to stay in that room. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

Uh I I want to talk about uh his his picking ability and how he became immediately successful. Uh you know, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks, you two, the list goes on.

How much of that do you think was a function of just like his innate taste and and ability to spot greatness versus just drive and relentlessness and just listening to every single possible what is what is the comp to the venture world where you can be a great venture investor even if your hit rate is like you know 5% because it just matters and getting you know actually getting into the companies that matter and move the needle and people will kind of forget about a bunch of misses and and companies that didn't go anywhere.

Okay. Yeah, you guys know I don't give a [ __ ] about venture, so I'm definitely not going to talk about that. But I will talk about how this relates to founders building great products. How about that? Cuz that's the only thing that's actually interesting and matters.

Um, so Jimmy's idea was, and the example I used in the podcast where he his thing is like, okay, producers, which you know, he was an engineer, then he turns into producer. He goes, producers are always like, I did this and I did that. He's like, this is the analogy for venture and and founders.

He's like, uh, would be producer and musical artist. He's like, I'll read this to you. He goes, you're only as good as the artist that you're working with. You're only as good as the founder that you're investing in, right?

Any producer or any venture capitalist who says, "I did this and I did that," is full of [ __ ] 99% of what's going on in the studio is the artist. And so his point was, I don't have, he wasn't the founder, right, in this situation. He says, "I don't have the talent. I'm there to do whatever I can.

I'm in service of them. " And so his whole point is like, if I want to be successful, that I'm going to pick the best possible talent. How do you arrive at that? Well, the the thing about excellence and greatness is like people don't actually know what it is until they like get close to it.

And so part of this is luck and randomness because Bruce Springsteen's most important album that he ever makes is Born to Run. Okay, that's his third album, right? Bruce is still doing it. He's one of the top selling artists. He winds up becoming a billion off his career and everything else.

But before then, his first two albums were not doing well. He was not doing well. And so, uh, Jimmy is the engineer on that album and he sees firsthand the level of work ethic and dedication that Bruce Springsteen will have to this.

And so, the way that Bruce was about like a drum sound is the same way that like a Steve Jobs was about every single pixel that's on any device that he's making. And so Jimmy tells the the the story where it's like Bruce would stand over me and say one word over and over again. He'd say stick stick.

And what that means is like we're hit the hit the drum again because it's not producing the actual sound that I want. It took them three weeks of just in the studio every day hitting that over and over and over and over again until Bruce got what he wanted.

Um and so once you see it's like oh and then what happens Border Run comes out winds up being one of the bestselling art um albums of all time. It's just a complete phenomenon. So now he sees the the level of craft that John Lennon puts on his work then and Bruce Springsteen.

Then he starts working with Stevie Nicks who just came out of Fleetwood Mac who was a [ __ ] legend. Tom Petty. Then he gets in the room with Dr. Dre 15 years later. You just know it when you see it. How much do you think it was driven by like like uh casting a wide net and meeting lots of people?

I'm I'm thinking about like as a founder, there's a very different approach to hiring talent. If you can think about this in the sense of like hiring talent, knowing who to work with than like the Bill Gates mindset versus the Jim Simons mindset. Like I think Jimmy's more of a Jim. That's exactly what I was thinking of.

Jim Simons his whole thing and I just did an episode on him too, right? Renaissance Technologies in case people don't know essentially just has a money printing machine. Yeah.

And and most importantly for this Renaissance Technologies hasn't is isn't in the business of hiring thousands of people and firing the bottom 20% every year. Microsoft for years. There's Yeah, exactly. There's no turnover. There's no turn. Microsoft is notoriously high churn and that's by design.

It's a very different thing. If you leave Renaissance Technologies, you you your money, your personal money comes out of the medallion fund and the medallion fund is a magic moneymaking machine. So, you do not want whatever you want to do in life, you don't want your money out of the medallion fund.

So, you will stay there. So, when you go and read Jim Simon's biography, it's that's a great analogy, John. Thank you. It's very similar to how Jimmy picked his talent where he's just like, "This is the most talented person I could possibly work with, and it may take me years to recruit him, but I will do anything.

I will go take I will go to his house. I'll meet his kids. I'll spend I'll do whatever possible. " And then what happens is then you read up on the people which I just did for the Jim Simons episode on who he recruited and it's like they weren't like normal mathematicians or PhDs.

Every single person was a mathematician or physicist or PhD working. They have like theorems named after them or they like they discovered something in mathematics. They were literally the best of the best. And so like Bono um and again I think some part of this is like pattern recognition.

saw the the edge that Bruce Springsteen had and then he gets introduced to Bono when you at the very early days of YouTube and he sees him perform he's like oh he's got the edge and so he's like let's work together Bono's like no let's work together Bono says no let's work together Bono says no and he says uh that he chases Bono says he chased us around the world until we agreed to come to the studio with him would not take no for an answer he happens to you he is like a virus and he takes over your organs and brains he just knows that this is going to work out well for both of you I don't think there's a a person live that won't listen to this Jimmy Ivy episode and get something out of it.

And it's just like this relentless pursuit of what you want to do. And his whole thing is like he wasn't a big fan of how the music industry they they they their their metric of success was like total records sold. His was like did you make a great album? He's like great is success.

A lot of people sell a lot of albums and they suck. If you can make something great first then you'll be able to get more customers, more listeners, and more everything out.

But the the the primary thing was great and there's a great example of this which I think is really important too and you see this all the time where at the end of the documentary towards the end uh Dr. Dre had he had all this the issues. He starts his own record label for the very first time.

His first two albums he puts out completely flop. And Jimmy's his partner and Jimmy has cor partners. They're like, "Hey, you need to fire Trey. " And Jimmy and this this is another thing I admire about him. He has these lifelong relationships. We have been friends for years. I hope I hope we're friends for decades.

You know, this is I'm not this is really important to me like these compounding relationships. And so they're like, "You need to fire Dre. " goes, "Yeah, we could do that and we'll save on my salary, too, cuz I'm going with him. " And so, what happens?

They try to [ __ ] fire Dre cuz these idiots that can't do what the artist can do, don't know what they're talking about. This guy's a generational talent. You're like, "Get him off the payroll. " And what happens? Jimmy is spending day after day after day doing these listening sessions with Dr. Dre. Dr.

Dre would come over Jimmy's house every day. They listen and try to find an artist for Dr. Dre to to work with. Jimmy gets his tape of Eminem at the rap Olympics, gives it to Dre. Dre's like, "What is this? " Right? And then they they Dre starts working Eminem.

He becomes one of top 10 selling records artists of all time. But more important than that, Jimmy says something that was great cuz at the very beginning, his first like two albums were super controversial. There was like protests. There was congressional hearings about Eminem's lyrics.

And he goes, "We weren't looking for like a white controversial rapper. " Yeah. We were looking for great. He's so consistent from the day one from when he's 19 till when he retired at close to 70. Great can come from anywhere. You just have to find great congressional hearings are such a success metric.

You know, Palmer Lucky told me that. He said the thing he learned from Zuck was that it's not you're not getting dragged in front of Congress because you did something bad. It's because you're being crowned as like the victor essentially. What what was Jimmy's approach to financing different deals?

How did he think about control? It was it possible to I I understand in the record industry there there there can often be like a parent label and then and then you can have a new label under it. Did you get anything there or did that not come up? He no he like he he actually does like really interesting deals.

I mean he keep in mind so like my metric of success is not like he wound up being a billionaire but that came like way after even if he never did beats to me he'd be unbelievably successful just with the life he lived and like the the experience you know probably made hundreds of millions but with beats he made you know billions uh there one of the things was like what we went especially with like a tech focus is like when he sells I think he sells like 50% of his of inner scope I forgot who maybe to MCA Okay.

And it was like for like $150 million. So it's like it's fantastic outcome, but when you we're talking about $3 trillion market cap tech company, so it looks small.

Um but but no, finance was not like a a focus on any of the interviews or any anything in the documentary other than like mentioning random dollar amounts with like taking in partners and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. uh on on the on the protests and congressional hearings.

Uh did you it feels like there is something there where uh when a founder is successful enough eventually they have to put on the suit and go to Washington and start lobbying and do something like that.

Uh, did you dig into any stuff that he was able to do or apply his methodology to even trying to smooth over that situation? Because it did seem like an existential risk to the rap industry at that time if they were really going to clamp down on explicit lyrics beyond just the the the content warning.

He he doesn't he doesn't state it like that.

That's part of the reason he had to sell like uh he he like went with one partner to another cuz like I forgot the company he was with but they were like hey like I think it was like underneath com it was like a bigger conglomerate that owned like another label and then under that label was scope kind of thing and they're like we have [ __ ] senators calling like we this is such a small part of our business like you have to go elsewhere because like I'm not I have a you know $200 billion cable company or something like this is not but I I but the I think the interesting part here is I think he He's he's a phenomenal marketer and that's what everybody would keep like a relentless salesperson.

Um I think that's one of his gifts. But I think he understood that like remember he signed like Marilyn Manson, Trent Resner, Eminem, like uh Tupac, he Deathro Records, like literally people were there was they were the rappers were killing each other. Like that was under inner scope.

And obviously he didn't want them to shoot each other.

But his point was with all of this with like this congressional uh protest and you know the the media saying that he's like a smuter and everything else like it's good for business and like it's it all this outrage cuz what happens when we were kids remember I was listening to Eminem.

Eminem was like a huge influence on me cuz I had this like all this like pen up anger about like my early life and like I I felt I was born into an environment that I didn't belong in and I was better than and like Eminem was kind of a soundtrack of like yeah like you I feel that way too and so like music is very much like a young person's game.

So you have like 60-year-old congressman or Bob Dole saying like you should listen to this. What as a kid you remember was like being a teenager like oh that makes me more interested. I want more of that and and he does this too like um with Beats. So the idea before the streaming service he had the headphones.

He's like it doesn't make sense for Dr. Dre to endorse anything. He he he had like sneaker endorsement offers and all this other stuff. And he said there's a great line documentary. He goes Dre [ __ ] sneakers. Speakers. You should do sneakers.

She's got that like, you know, high pitched Italian twang voice, which I absolutely love. And so they're like, "Bose the the leading at the time in 2006 or whenever this was h happening, the time the leading uh headphone uh product was Bose. " He's like, "Headphones to put you to sleep. I don't want to put you to sleep.

I want to make you move. I want you to get off your ass. " And so what happens is they made them distinctive so you could tell with the big logo on the on the on the ears what they were, right? And then he's like, "Our idea, my marketing idea is very simple.

I'm going to put them in with the best musicians on the planet. That's going to get everybody to try them and then once you try them, you'll stay because the the sounds good. And then he expanded out to athletes.

But what he did is he wind up spreading it to the 2008 uh NBA Olympic team or US Olympic team, the men's basketball team, and they it got banned and there was all this coverage because Beats wasn't an official sponsor, right? And so you can't wear them and so they wore them anyways.

They wind up getting fined and everything else. And Jimmy's like, "This is the best thing ever happened to us. " Makes sense. Uh, I mean, that's fantastic. We could do this all day. This is always a pleasing. Uh, we will talk. We'll see you soon. Uh, yeah. Next, next time we do this, it might be in person.

We got some plans. How are you guys doing? How are you guys? Are you Have you Are you going to But if people drop in, you're like, "Okay, guys, this is the end of the segment. Now you have to get up and leave. " We could do that. We're We're We have some ideas we'll share with you.

But you can just do a whole show with us. It's gonna be No, I can't I can't I can't do three hours of this. I can do three hours alone with you guys, but not You can do it. You can do it. You know what? In three hours, if it's live and not edited, I'm going to get cancelled. I'll get You'll be fine. You'll be fine.

You're good. You're good. We'll bleep out. We'll work out. We'll do 30 minutes, then 45, then an hour, and then two. What did they used to do on TV? There was like a twominute like Remember there was like a delay, like a tape delay. We'll need a tape delay for you. You're already swearing like a sailor.

So, we got to clean that up. Uh, we'll work on that. That that that means we're gonna have to we're gonna we're gonna go do the Porsche Experience Center. That'll be fun. And uh we'll have to get get behind the scenes of that. I cannot wait extreme podcasting. Senra in a GT3 RS, you know, just just tearing up the track.

What was the What was the Ferrari that I sent you guys? A12. Super fast. Fast competition. Competition. We got to do that one. Awesome. We'll talk to you soon, David. All right, guys. Talk.

Up next, we have Katherine Han from Han Ventures coming in the studio to talk about the stablecoin bill, the genius bill is slated to pass. It's on the front of the Wall Street Journal today and we're very guiding and establishing national innovation for US stable coins. We had her on the show and uh yeah,