0:00to rapid evolution in an old paradigm.
0:02Like this concept of websites is going to disappear very quickly before we know it.
0:06Nvidia is taking no balance sheet risk [music] on this. The people that are being stuck with the risk, I'm pointing but it's like my mother, your parents, it's the pensioners. The liability outlives the asset.
0:16This isn't a toll road. You know, how much money can you spin off versus the duration that these are useful for?
0:21No one's ever securitized compute. We have not answered the post labor existential question. We just haven't.
0:27buy code a home health nurse to show up in your living room to take care of you post surgery.
0:32Your financing risk is pretty low, [music] your talent risk is pretty low, and your upside is going to be way higher. Are you [ __ ] kidding me? That person just raised how much and what?
0:39I would say AI is a lot more akin to something like, you know, GPS on a phone or a database where it is a technology.
0:46Big stuff is really helpful for society right now because it inoculates us and makes us realize we can't trust what we see anymore.
0:57[music] [music] Hello.
1:16And welcome to a ridiculous episode of More or Less where my co-hosts, Dave Morin, Brit Morin, and Jessica did the terrible terrible judgment error of letting me host without them. They're all actually on vacation and I am actually also on vacation but pretending like I'm not on vacation. So, I'm thrilled to be here. We have assembled a world-class community here. I think this group represents every flavor and every area of venture capital investing known to man as well as like every
1:46product experience you could imagine.
1:47So, I'm very very excited to have a a great group here to run through. First, we'll start with we have Peter Jang here. Um Peter actually has a distinction. Peter is the one who brought me into Facebook in a lot of ways. He was running profiles right before I was. And so when I showed up on day one, he said, "Great, someone else can run this." And taught me everything I need to know, and then was very happy to peace off into his next project, which ended up being Instagram, and then Uber, and then Airtable, and then big role running product at OpenAI, and now is a dirty venture capitalist like the
2:17rest of us. So, Peter, [laughter] welcome. Uh it's good to have you.
2:20You're GP at uh Felicity Holt. Rachel Holt. I've actually known Holt longer than anyone on this call. I first met Rachel on our first day of Bain & Company orientation in New York in 2005, when she We sat down at orientation, about seven of us in Bain New York. As soon as there was a break in our seven-person onboarding, You cannot tell this story, Sam.
2:41Why not? It's a great story.
2:43I know exactly where you're going. I knew that this was going to come up.
2:47favorite story. So, basically, we have our first break at Bain & Company in a training. This girl who like is with six people she doesn't know, her new co-workers, takes the spider phone in the middle of the conference room, dials Comcast, and starts yelling at them. Just to set the tone. I was like, "This is an amazing. I love this." So, but Holt from there has done amazing things. She ran Uber North America.
3:10And first of all, I got my cable attached on day one.
3:14Did you get it that day? That was amazing. No one had their cable attached.
3:17Yeah, August 1st, 2005, Time Warner was there.
3:23Boom. Boom. So, she took those operational chops to then run Uber North America, has started Construct Capital, represents the rare DC venture capitalist, but a breed that is growing, and got to do a lot of business with her now. So, Rachel, great to have you on.
3:39Scott Belsky, I mean, look, Scott's done everything. I knew him originally when he was running Behance and founded Behance, which he sold. He's now a partner at A24 and and running A24 A Labs, founded it, and is thinking more about kind of the future of creative than anyone I know, so I'm thrilled to have him here. Scott Stanford, I mean, you started out in even dirtier job than venture capital, running Goldman or a big piece of Goldman for a long time on the TMT side. You can correct me on the details, but you somehow did that
4:07forever and then have had a an illustrious venture career. Now is the co-founding partner of Acme. And then Josh Wolfe, who does Do you even need an introduction at this point?
4:20Of course. So Josh, co-founder managing partner at Lux, which has done basically did the contrarian thing, which has now become consensus around defense and deep tech and hard tech and is kind of one of the men of the moment for things calling things like Anduril, etc. early and backing up the truck when that wasn't cool, which is now very cool, which means hard to seed invest in anymore cuz these numbers have gotten so big. So we have an amazing gang here and I I have my topic list, which obviously I had my bot write of what's going on to run
4:49through about what's going on with Nvidia, this crazy balance sheet stuff. Peter, we're going to have to talk a little bit of air table given the fact you ran product there for years and I was an investor and things like that. But Scott, you started out when we were BSing before hitting record.
5:06We want to start with Grok Bot?
5:07Well, yeah, I mean, I think that uh the agents have been a topic that we've all been thinking about and talking about for quite some time, but we're like just in this moment, it seems, where they're becoming like really useful on a consumer level. And I don't know about a lot of you, but I've been playing with some of these. They're always a little scary, these startup agents, because they ask you to like log in via Google and give it access to everything and you get those like crazy Google warnings of this is not a authorized, secure, blah blah blah, but you do it anyways.
5:37But I have to say, like, they're kind of blowing my mind and seeing some of the demos that people have shared in the last 24 hours of their Grok Bot. And I think it's a combination of obviously the agent capabilities, but also the memory and this notion of like having the bot have a computer instance of its own and even seeing their computer setup, it's truly this notion of someone with a screen and then you get this like consumer click of oh, anything you can do on a screen, they can do on a screen is like a really fascinating turning
6:07It it's it's a shift from help me do this to just do it.
6:11I'd like to point out that like I'm so down the rabbit hole on this that none of this stuff impresses me. I have a persistent cloud instance running in Digital Ocean. I had it do its own analysis of math right now. I'm not talking about the AI. My bot is running about 3 grand a month of infrastructure, database, app servers, etc. Whenever I want something it builds a new app for me, it like runs its own databases, etc.
6:34It's like and I actually interact all with it through email. So I like basically start email threads and I'll like ask it 50 things and then just it dispatches them, build an app, analyze my health, send me this cron job, whatever. So like I've given my bot so much infrastructure that I'm not that impressed with it has a computer, but I'm kind of curious if any of you guys I mean Scott, you built some crazy stuff with AI.
6:54You're not normal, Sam. So it's like I think that Yeah, I'm curious what others think, but it does feel like there's like a crossing the Rubicon moment for consumer accessibility and just the ease of onboarding and giving it authority for certain websites and just it's something seems to be clicking.
7:13But it's it's a rapid evolution in an old paradigm. This concept of websites is going to disappear very quickly before we know it and this concept of like help me do a bunch of stuff versus just do it, predict I need it, get it done. And uh yeah, I love the Comcast example, Rachel, of like you having to call Comcast. Forget that. Like there's no humans involved anymore. It it's I simply I don't even need to tell it that my cable's out. It knows my cable's out.
7:39It will reach out to the agent at Comcast. It will sort it out.
7:43No, no, but I mean, where were we last week, right? So, we look at this with such a microscopic lens. This is going to happen before we know it. And then we're all going to be sitting around looking at each other saying, "What are we supposed to do?"
7:55Comcast doesn't give a [ __ ] Like they're not going to like solve that.
7:58The reason why they're going to give a [ __ ] is when they get bombarded by a bunch of automated agents that are hitting them 24/7 saying, "Fix this." And they have to respond. And so then they rev up their agents, and then it's agent to agent, and we fish, or we ride on Boston Whalers, or we do whatever.
8:15So, to me the question cuz when you said it's inevitable, directional arrow progress, every one of us is going to have many, many bots doing many, many things from the trivial to the substantive.
8:25Because then it comes down to one key factor, which is trust.
8:29And we're screwing around with lots of different ones, and at some point I do believe that the distinction between them will be who do you trust or entrust with your data? Who are you giving your APIs? Who are you giving your inbox to?
8:44Who are you giving your calendar? Who are you Let me clearly grok.
8:47And whose answers do you trust? Like is the upshot, right? It's like whose matrix multiplying are you willing to rely upon in what scenarios? But Peter, you worked at OpenAI, give us the scoop.
8:55I think people's perception of AI is just going to it can even know we know it's continuing to change. And the the idea of trust is actually getting People are just starting to trust it a little bit more. Uh in the beginning everyone was so like kind of skeptical like, "Oh, it's going to steal all our jobs." Yes, it's taking some jobs, but the fear is going to be there until people really experience it. And I said this when I was at OpenAI, one of the best things that OpenAI did for AI was just make it just free and usable by anyone. To be like, "Oh, yeah, you could try it."
9:20Well, Peter, can I push you on that?
9:21That is the maybe your and my narrative, but there was a study I saw recently that said that AI is so hated, it's actually hated more than Jeffrey Epstein by the general public, right? It's like it is absolute it is the worst brand like you could possibly imagine. No one trusts it.
9:37I'm not disputing that. What I'm saying is that that barometer is going to shift over time. I was just on the a call with a bunch of creatives and maybe Scott, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this cuz you you're you're in the thick of it. Who, you know, they're writers who just started saying like how awesome it's been for them to build portfolios for their, you know, friends with Claude code that they were unable to do before.
9:57That's like not a conversation I would have had with them six months ago. I'm not saying where the trust is right now, Sam. I'm saying that that shifts as people get more comfortable with it and it's just a matter of time.
10:08Do you trust all models equally right now?
10:10Or there's some brands where you're like, I'm not giving it my data.
10:13No, I have an irrational distinction between what I use Claude for and what I use chat GPT for.
10:17But is that on trust or on performance, Peter? Cuz I think you're basing it on something different than a lot of other people.
10:23It's actually based on what has my history, to be honest. It's like, oh yeah, like it has all my work context on Claude, so I'm just going to it's easier It's like back in the day when we got iPhones and we had too many apps on our app screen, we started just choosing icons to like to just compartmentalize things, right?
10:38to say in terms of where this actually plays out. One, this idea that AI comes to be able to lock in your data makes no sense to me. You're going to like self-sovereign your identity in some way, shape, or form. I do it by owning all my own infrastructure and then I just point at different models for different types of tasks. It's like etc.
10:54But this idea that like with a consumer app, you're going to like lock people in because of their data, I just don't believe it. It's one of the only things that Europeans did well with GDPR. GDPR is a piece of [ __ ] but Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, but but some significant portion of the average population, which again today is probably just on chat GPT, is not anywhere near sophisticated sort of like what Scott said about you. You are special, you are unique, and you are advanced user. And the vast majority of people do get habituated and will just use what they've always been used.
11:20Sure, and that's why lots of people still use yahoo.com for search.
11:24[laughter] Yeah. So, it's not about I I never said that there's lock-in, Sam. I didn't say there was lock-in. I just said that there is like there's a irrational preference.
11:32Hey Sam, I'm going to go back there and ask like what's the ideal customer experience that would be most likely to be successful. That is like from a tech and trust lens is one thing, but from a consumer they like get the newer version of their iOS software and they get a magic text message that's like, "Hey, I'm the Apple agent. I've got all access to everything on your phone.
11:52Don't worry, it will never be in the cloud. It will never be exploited by a third party. What do you want me to do for you now?" And you just like go through and give it connectors and access as you need certain things. It saves your login as you need it. Why wouldn't they always win this?
12:05Well, I think Apple might win it, but I think the interesting thing is I don't think you want to be the one who takes on that liability. If anything, I think the goal is to like radiate out risk to other people and be like, "Well, we're not like to keep yourself safe and be the one that's aligned." Cuz like the reality is you're like Peter, you're saying that you think the ban is going to go up. The reality is the hacks are only going to continue to grow and scare people more and more and more, right?
12:26Not less and less and less. Everyone's going to have them. And so I just wonder if the real thing is going to be If you really want to win in like the new economy in this AI thing, you have to somehow figure out how to hoard the data and the trust and build the trust, but then when things go badly, always have a third party to point at to blame.
12:44I know I'm I'm with Scott on this. He's got the name advantage number one, but number two, I mean, Gemini just hit a a billion users. It's pretty obvious it's friction. You get rid of friction and most consumers are going to gravitate in that direction. People are lazy.
12:59I would question that metric. I think they're probably counting like the people who are just typing the search box and like maybe clicking expand. I There's many ways to game the metric, but I think distribution is a good part of it, but I do think consumers taste and their bar goes up in terms of what they want to use. They have to really like using. I mean, there's many examples of this in the past why certain apps win in the App Store and why others, you know, why Instagram took off and a bunch of the other ones didn't.
13:22Consumers have a discerning eye.
13:24Wait, sorry, just to be Consumers are also really cheap. Consumers want free and they're lazy and they're locking I mean it's it's kind of one of those things like is it really better experience or is it cheap, accessible, free, and habituated?
13:36Okay, so let me ask you this. Like Siri's available, when's the last time you trusted with a question?
13:41That's not a thing. That's not even the same class.
13:43That's why they hired Google to build a real AI agent, which will be here yesterday.
13:48I was just going I want to go back to Scott's thing because it was a sort of a profound declaration that Apple wins. And how you define that, but they have not spent the CapEx that everybody else has, which is an advantage. They have waited. You could argue that what they did in search, which is effectively get paid to let Google, you know, be on search bar in Safari and in ecosystems.
14:05They can do the same thing in AI now.
14:07There are two facets of my phone that are probably the most used at today, and Sam, you can enlighten me if there's something that you found for MCP plugins or others that cross your agents are working that are the highest frequency utility and to me the the least surface area exposed to AI are productivity, which are my WhatsApp chats and my text messages. It can ingest my Gmail, it can ingest my calendar, it can do search, it can query all of our internal docs, it can use my Google Drive.
14:33Location's pretty key, too. No one's exploiting it the way it will be exploited, but location's key.
14:38So, add those three things, though, because each of those are today's sandbox. Meta with WhatsApp, Apple with messages, although Claude can sort of access if you're using it through your laptop, and then you can use, which a lot of people don't trust, Greenpipe, which which basically does like constant DVR recording of your screen, and if your WhatsApp is open on your laptop, which is probably 10% of my utility, 90% on my phone, then it'll record your WhatsApp messages, but but those two things, to me, to Scott's point, feel like Apple could win on those.
15:07Add two more. Payments, so Apple Pay, so they're seeing where you're spending your money. And then the second thing is location, and I don't want to underestimate that. I created an app called Dippity, which I wanted to be like Snapmaps for old people. So, you can't see where people are, but you know if they're near you or you know if they're in town. So, I built this thing and it was it's pretty good. But, as I dug in, Apple and Google or Android have both locked Wi-Fi location. You cannot
15:36access it as a developer. And that's why Find My is so freaking accurate. But, me, the independent developer, I can't get near it. I'm looking at pinging towers. And and it's just stuff like that that I think Apple keeps a lock on. I don't want them to win. Let's be clear.
15:52Well, to be clear, I think there are certain things that Elon has said that I actually really grudgingly completely agree with. And like one thing I think he said several times, I'm not sure if it's his or someone else's, but I think it's true, is that the most hilarious outcome is usually what's going to happen. And Apple winning is the most hilarious outcome, right? So, I think that's like a very good chip in the factor of like Apple wins by doing nothing. And actually, it's not even cuz they didn't they tried to do nothing.
16:14From everything I've heard, Apple internally is extremely confused organizationally on AI. There's a lot of reasons they're having trouble moving forward on it. So, in some ways like organizational dysfunction creates the buffer for them to be highly successful by doing nothing, which is hilarious.
16:28That's the Apple thing. Here's the thing I want to ask about is like are we all just arguing about what has APIs and what doesn't? Like ironically, the reason that iMessage and WhatsApp are have some defensibility or lock into them is they don't have APIs. Like forget MCP. MCP is stupid. Like you can just use API. I don't really understand why MCP is a big deal when everything has an API you can just rip through it with stable, right? So, like there are things you can access programmatically, which have no barriers and therefore go into the hive mind. And then there's this interesting exception to it is like
16:58Apple as a platform owner, which can enforce API rules, right? And they can have effectively APIs to things that no one else can have APIs to, right? So, it's the real story just It turns out that openness and API is bad, right? And that what you really want is less closed the stack with valuable data you can have uniquely.
17:16I mean, this is literally what's going on right now in like the industrial in the physical AI world. This data is not readily accessible. You can't commoditize it nearly as quickly. And so, it gives startups like a chance to actually gain distribution in like a more methodical way before the mega platforms can swallow it up.
17:37Like this is exactly what we're seeing play out. And I think like digital and physical are two totally separate things. It all has to do with the availability of the data for the mega platforms. It is really closed. In some cases, it's not even like accessible by anyone. It's like on a PDF somewhere. Right? It's like literally the opposite.
17:56Will that continue more so, or you think that will Well, I think you it creates choice around who gets the data. In the continuum and the like the race between that's exists between startups and mega platforms, like in some ways you think it actually gives startups a chance, right? Because if they can gain distribution faster than like a mega platform can innovate or hyper scalar can commoditize it, those factors actually favor a startup maybe
18:25more so than than what you're seeing in the digital world.
18:28It it definitely evens the playing field. There's just a lot of data that's like it's not even in a PDF somewhere.
18:33No, the factories weren't connected.
18:35And that becomes their defensibility.
18:38[laughter] A good example is like we have a machinist population that's retiring and a lot of the knowledge is actually in their head. And I think that you know, companies that can go and figure out what does it sound like when a tool bit's going to break and how do you what is the path that you take? I mean, those are those are bits of data that I think you know, in some ways Sam, I think you and I saw this at Facebook. It's like what did Facebook do? It just digitized information that was in our head. Who's your friend?
19:01Yeah, 100%. I mean, yeah, you said we used to talk about it. I mean, like you talk about the composer in Facebook era, it was a data pump, right? It was an efficient free data pump to bring data online that couldn't exist anywhere else. And the reality is if you go way back in the Facebook history, the real story was on day zero, internet scary, so no one wants to post on it. You never going to put a real photo on it that it uh Facebook created the trust and security for people to take a bunch of real world data, photos, relationships, messages, etc. and bring it online right
19:31for the first time and created an enormous amount of value doing that, right? And so now we're in this weird multiverse where it's like the internet has all been scraped to hell, right? Like good luck New York Times with their lawsuit, right? But like that has been like copied a thousand times and distilled a thousand times. You have personal private digital information, what's in Gmail, what's in data data where people have some say in theory as opposed to it just all being like dumpable effectively. And so that's what we were talking about the trust, things
19:59like that. There's then like the the whole class of companies that are out there trying to in some ways build new data sets, the handshakes, the scale AIs where you just pay a ton of money and you turn financial capital in some form into like unique data. And then there's all the offline stuff. And so I guess the question for me is like assuming that multiplying big numbers is a commodity and will be, right? Like is the story you just like really you go back to day one which is like if your data isn't unique, you're not going to be valuable long term?
20:28I think there's also a class of data that you didn't talk about which is just something that Periodic Labs is doing which is like science data and material science data that doesn't even exist yet. You have to actually do what lab experiment to get that data. So absolutely like finding those bits of data has always been I think the name of the game. He's got it's going all the way back to Facebook and you and I used to talk about this in those small little rooms about how we're just trying to extract a bunch of data and how you obsessed you were about buying the DMV.
20:52Not just trying obsessed. I did No, that is true. Peter, we used to have meetings for what we should buy and my pitch was always that the Facebook should buy the DMV.
21:02[laughter] Okay, can I ask can I pivot the conversation a little bit? Unless people want to go further on that. There's another talk I'm curious people's take on, which is open router. Like talk a little bit about enterprise and things like that. If we're saying that your data is so valuable, right? And but at the same time enterprise really cares, oh my goodness, a guest visitor Jessica Livingston. Wow.
21:25going guys? [laughter] How's Sam doing?
21:29I'm so jealous. Continue on. I'm just here. I'm just you know, in the taxi listening.
21:35Jess, just to get you up to speed, we've got two Sams and we've got two Scotts, but there's uppercase and lowercase Scott. So I got Guys, [laughter] I I am so happy to see all of you. I just came back from the big city of Manhattan. So I'm I'm on route. But dive in. Dive in.
21:51Are you Wait, are you in New I just want to know for dinner plan, are you in Massachusetts or in New York?
21:56I'm in Massachusetts. I made it back.
21:58Oh, you are. Oh, great. I'll see you soon.
22:01at 3:30. It's It's really a miracle. I'm here.
22:04Open router, routing. Everyone wants cheaper stuff. AI the the makes your multiplication a commodity. There's no reason to pay a PhD to fold your laundry, but you also don't want to give open router all your data. Or do you? Or do you not care? Like how does that play out?
22:18I do think that the bigger question here, which is going to also bifurcate, it's not going to be one takes all, is open versus closed. And I am saying this obviously with a bias as I've said in the past that where you stand on the issue depends on where you sit in the cap table and we're large investors in Hugging Face. Which made a lot of news over the past few weeks, but I think that the future is for the more sophisticated users or for the enterprise, it's going to be your longitudinal proprietary repository silo of data that is yours. That is exactly as we were just talking about not
22:48ingested by the machines. And if you have that and can run open source models on that time series of data that is exclusively yours, whether you're a pharma company, a finance company, insurance company, a retail company, a venture firm, increasingly you are realizing that to get the benefit, you're giving a benefit. and you're going to say I'm not going to give that data, especially if I'm not going to give that data and watch as one of the closed labs competes me away. And you saw that first with Figma, which was sort of scary. And I think the push now from Anthropic and OpenAI to go into
23:17pharma and pharma companies saying, "Woah, woah, do we want to do this? Do we want to give them our data and then potentially open up competitors?" And I think there's a big move right now for them to try to ingest as much information from as many non-internet sources that they can. And I think that there's going to be a movement underway whether it is industrial, manufacturing, defense, pharma, biotech, and all of our personal data that we're going to say, "You know what? The models are good enough. They are performative enough, and I'm going to retain the sovereignty of that in the same way that Sam does, and I'm not giving it over." So, I do
23:47think that that's where the value's going to occur.
23:48So, where are we in terms of people waking up versus like door closing on the like are you think that these guys are going to get away with a getting enough data before people wake up that they're going to be competitive or do you think that the the game's too obvious?
24:00I think that this past month since the OpenAI Hugging Face moment, which I think, you know, there's probably three or four factors. That's one, companies waking up to the token economics and realizing like how much are our people spending and like what's the productivity gains we're getting, the rise of the Chinese models, and then a combination of like fear-mongering and regulatory capture attempt thereof against the contrast of people that have been in the White House and been the sort of AI czars that are warning about this and saying, "No, no, no, if you use these cutting-edge Chinese models, but you use it on sovereign hardware and in instantiations that are effectively
24:29air-gapped, you have nothing to worry about." So, where are we? I think that still, going back to the first point about habituation, the vast majority of people are just going to continue to use closed labs and trust it more, and they're going to try to ingest more and more and more. And you have whole teams, uh, particularly at Anthropic, but increasingly at OpenAI, that are trying to make big pushes into every enterprise. I mean, Scott, I'm not sure if you can reveal like at A24, but like a lot of proprietary data and information on everything from like every pitch that you've never greenlit to the ones that you have that never got made to, know, that's a trove of valuable information.
24:59I don't think anyone wants to like share their company data with a company. I I do know a number of startups who are kind of using Claude individual accounts and you know, using their wrap card type stuff and then now have to for whatever reason cuz of scale go to the enterprise plan and they realize it's like 10x more expensive and then they're realizing that they're using a lot of tokens for things that are pretty mundane and then someone on the engineering team is like, I think we can do this with this like open model that we can as Josh said,
25:27there's no risk. It's like local, we can mess with the weights and do whatever we need. And so they're now the next question is okay, what router should we use? And it seems to me like there's a lot of router options out there and it's going to be probably pretty commoditized pretty quickly. And so you're going to all have routers that direct all sorts of spend to look more local, more efficient models. Like this is going to become the default. My question is actually like what more opportunities do routers have to not become commoditized?
25:55Like I thought you were going to go in that direction. Like routers can start to carry logic around which models you should use.
26:01they're all going to do that. They're all going to do that, right? Like and they're already doing that. I think the question is I think it was what Peter started with which is like at some point like you do have to expose something to them or you just build your own, but like who do you trust, right?
26:13of companies are building their own.
26:14It's not rocket science to build it. And you know, Josh, I'm on the same side as you. I'm board member at Arena. We see every week the models change in who's the who's the leader. And not only that, Arena has a great insight into exactly for each use case, accounting or whatever, what is the actual leaderboard for it. And quite frankly, you don't need to drive a Ferrari to do the the task of a certain smaller job. You're going to see a lot more of this like I I I believe in a multi-model world and I believe there's going to be a lot of customization and tuning and you got companies like Applied Compute that's
26:44they're doing this and many others as well. So, I think it's going to be a pretty tough road for something like a router. I just I feel like either roll your own or you got to find another way to make a model your own.
26:55Okay, this is a great bridge. Can I bridge this? Let's talk about the crazy shenanigans Nvidia's pulling with financing these things. Cuz the the question you got to ask yourself, right, is like, okay, multiplying big numbers, kind of a global commodity, you're not going to have PhDs folding your laundry, you're going to route smartly over time.
27:13Like what percentage of things do you actually need an edge model for? It seems like you have this machines that can compute numbers, you have people who can use numbers being computed, and then a lot of stuff in the middle, right? And it seems like Open AI, I'm sorry, Nvidia with this new 500 billion Wall Street crazy alliance with everyone is propping up, putting a lot of computers in places. Like discuss.
27:35Do you guys Do you remember Lucent? I know I'm dating myself.
27:38Give us some history lessons, Scott.
27:40So Lucent, yeah, sorry, old guy. And hey, for the record, Sam, I'm now in my 13th year independent venture capital. I was in Goldman for 13 years. So at least you're 50/50.
27:51Well, no, no. And then I was at a startup in the dot bomb trying to beat Google, Look Smart, for 4 years.
28:00Why just look when you can Look Smart?
28:02Um So Okay, Lucent put up with that? Was that your contribution, Scott?
28:08[laughter] Yeah, that that explained the the bust right there. '99 captured. Lucent put what? 8 billion, 9 bi- I can't remember what the number was, into fiber.
28:18It's like a series A.
28:19Yeah, exactly. Yeah, your next series A.
28:22No, they put like 8 billion, which was a big number back in 2001, and they put it on their balance sheet, right? So they basically did vendor financing. They said, okay, everybody's going to need fiber. And they were right. What they were wrong, which is exactly what you were just talking about with open router and some of the other developments, is the whole concept of wave division multiplexing. Nobody baked that in. And all of a sudden you get a 100x improvement on Fiverr.
28:48And so, your demand and your pricing fall through the floor. Let's just assume for a second it doesn't fall through the floor, and we've got a half a trillion-dollar financing facility thanks to the six amigos that lined up to lend their balance sheet. None of this goes back to Nvidia. This is why Jensen's brilliant. He basically set this up as SPVs that will basically borrow against the take-or-pay agreements of the off-takers
29:16of the Neo Cloud guys that are saying, "We're all going to need $3,000 a month for our personal agents." And they are signing take-or-pay agreements. So, independent of whether or not, Sam, you keep your $3,000 agent alive, they still have to pay for the demand. So, for a couple years, To be clear, the $3,000 is just for databases and app servers. The agent costs something else. But, yes, point taken.
29:42Sorry. [laughter] I I don't want to cause any marital issues when you talk about shopping and budgets. The take-or-pay agreements give some security. Nvidia is basically saying, vaguely, "We're good for 25% collateral." But, the real onus falls on BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Asset Management, all the guys that lined up, and those are like pension funds, right?
30:03Those are assets they're managing for the public.
30:06So, okay, so is this even worse, Scott?
30:07Are people going to be like, "Not only is AI like using all the water and have the wrong answers and all this stuff, but it also is going to make most people poor in the process of like Nvidia stockholders being getting well off?"
30:19I mean, it's still a drop in in the bucket for overall assets for these guys, but you have to assume a double collapse, right? You have to see price collapse, and you have to see demand collapse, which is basically what we saw in the mortgage crisis, right? If you see both of those collapse, then you have a systemic issue. Otherwise, it's idiosyncratic, and it just will compress margins. If it's price, the way Nvidia set it up was they said, "Look, we're going to make these kind of generic and so anyone can use them. So, if I have a
30:49default from one off-taker, I can just move it to the other off-taker." And so, there's some good protections in there. But, it's fascinating and But, not if Apple wins. Not if they're doing it on device.
31:01I don't necessarily think Apple means on product I know. I know. I know. I'm just or edge.
31:05I'm just messing with you.
31:06Scott I think nailed this because the big difference whether lesson learned from Lucent Lucent actually from their balance sheet lent the money to their customers so that the customers could buy Lucent. Nvidia is taking no balance sheet risk on this. They're basically just convening the lenders.
31:23And And the lenders see that there's opportunity in the spread, but to your point, yes, the people that are being stuck with the risk I'm pointing but it's like my mother, your parents, it's the pensioners because that's the capital that's in those large funds um that are aggregated. And then you have like duration mismatch between like the hard assets and the finances. So, like the chip depending if you look at Meta or Amazon, debate whether it's a 3-year or 5-year depreciation, but it's, you know, called three. The debt amortizes over 10 years. The power constructs and contracts are like
31:5110, 15, 20 years. And so, by any measure the critic would be right to say that the liability outlives the asset. And anytime you have a mismatch, forget about bubbles.
32:03That's the problem. Yeah.
32:04Yeah, I mean, they're assuming, right?
32:06These are going to act like any asset that's going to spit off cash for a extremely long duration. And like this isn't a toll road. You know, this isn't something that like inherently is going to have value 30 years from now. And I think that's to Josh's point, like the fundamental risk and question is in that you know, how much money can you spit off versus the duration that these are useful for.
32:32Although just to push on this and this is a place that I don't actually know the answer, but I'm sure someone on this call knows better than I do. It's like in terms of it being a rail like, you know, how long the duration is and the value. How much of this is financing power and shells and things like that versus like the racked GPUs and connectivity? Cuz like I would argue that like the shell and the power and other things like that actually does have a longer duration.
32:55This is just pure chips.
32:57Yeah, and and look at the H100, right?
32:59Like the H100 used to be eight bucks or something like that per hour like two years ago and now you can get it for two bucks.
33:06Well, it was 170. It's back up to two something or whatever, but yeah, like That's at like two years.
33:12Rachel, yeah, Rachel and Josh nailed it right on the head. You you've got a mismatch of duration. It's a duration mismatch and so you have to assume you can stretch the longevity of the chips longer than what we've seen so far in the life cycle.
33:27And they're correlated. There's risk that's correlated here, too.
33:30And the interesting thing I wonder how much this is I mean like look, it turns out that in traditional data centers, at big hyperscalers, the computers have actually stayed valuable longer than expected is the upshot. Like people are still using, whether it's spinning discs or whatever, that's the people model it one way and I think everyone's over time been impressed that actually there's a more of a tail on it than people realized in a lot of ways.
33:52How much of the story of like actually this is better than we thought is being carried over into multiplying big numbers in this new era and is that part of the story that like Blackstone and Apollo is swallowing? Or is that above our paygrade? Which it might be cuz I'm talking in half truths.
34:06Or is it just they have so much money and nowhere to deploy it and they need asymmetry?
34:10I think it's a macro bet they're making and that's it. I think, you know, we're probably overthinking it. If Fitch is doing the rating work right now and they have an open consultation which basically means they're trying to figure out which end is up because no one's ever securitized compute. It is fascinating to think about securitizing compute. That's basically what's going on. And Jensen's a genius, right? He pitched Wall Street on this. Wall Street did not go to Jensen and say, "Hey, we have an idea." He went to Wall Street.
34:37So, the guy's genius. And to securitize computers pretty cool cuz no, it's not that. I mean, we've securitized other things. However, I have to do a shout-out to my last piece about Americans getting equity in the AI thing. If it's securitized, it makes it even easier for a dividend for all Americans, but that's for those of you who read my newsletter, all one of you on this call, Sam.
34:59I might not's opening it. I'm kidding.
35:01American participation all of this I think is a great virtue. I think that the Trump accounts, I think what Michael Dell has done, I think what what um uh Brad and Altimeter, I think it's awesome because uh you have generated you have a generation of young people that either are apathetic or feel left out, are driven to socialism and communism, are graduating with a higher unemployment rate than like the average American. Like all of that, like I just I think it's good. It'll take time and like the political entrepreneurs that are trying to co-opt these people, you know, it's like a race, but Scott's
35:29point on like the collateral and this like compute not having been collateralized before, we don't know the depreciation. It may be that new models, new algorithms are able to take older compute and find great utility out of it. The GPU boom that benefited first from crypto mining that then sort of fell off and then regained again from AI, you know, sort of saved. But these words are dangerous words, right? Just like this time is different are dangerous words. Collateral, debt, collateralized debt obligations. Like that was, you know, for let's say 20 years ago roughly. So, for the average
35:58you know, 27-year-old today, they were 7 years old when the [ __ ] was happening in housing, which was an asset class that we assumed could only go up. And then it was arguably, you know, if you read like the academic literature of like John Geanakoplos, it was a collateral problem. Like it wasn't just a bubble, it wasn't debt, it was just like the proverbial Merchant of Venice pound of flesh. It was the collateral. And the collateral became worthless and the debt became worthless.
36:23Analogy there like that moment from the film where Margot Robbie in the hot tub?
36:29Yeah, and hot Florida [laughter] and she's like I've got seven houses and you know, is that is Jensen her?
36:34No, because he's not as good looking.
36:37Yeah, the jacket doesn't do it for him.
36:39What you know, I always say Rachel, I'm not sure if you agree with this, but I always make the point, it's been wildly successful. I actually credit it to the housing crisis. Because basically if you look at the like seven or eight people we started being New York with, right?
36:52At being New York with in 2005. We were all basically coming up to private equity jobs exactly as the economy was falling apart. And so everyone who was going to go into private equity because that's what you did, basically got kicked out of private equity because there were no jobs, right? and everyone started companies and a huge percentage of them have been massively successful.
37:12And so, you know, it's it's very you know, that as much as we were young, it's very much in my mind what happened there and I think some of the weird unintended consequences of it.
37:20Why we have like the best three-year Bain New York class ever, right?
37:25It's what I mean, I I frequently say and I think it actually is in demonstrably true. No, no, I'd also say like I'm like the least successful person from that and I've done okay. Um, like so it's been fun.
37:35I wrote my social studies thesis on affordable mortgage lending in 1993. So I actually am the one to blame for the financial the housing crisis. In case you're looking.
37:47What happened to the whole report of these big AI labs like giving equity to the government? Is that did that just like disappear? Is that not happening?
37:55That was the most cynical [ __ ] I've ever heard from my perspective, even though I do actually like Trump accounts and the idea of the the index. But yeah, what did happen to it other than my personal take?
38:05I just don't know if like that AI lab equity is the right thing to distribute for obvious reasons, but I do think that there's some like the collateralized compute actually might be a better or some sort of like instrument that exposes you to the the of the rising appreciation of energy and computing. I don't know, like how do you get exposure and distributed like Norway did to like oil proceeds? Like address what Josh was saying.
38:30This was the op-ed I just did with the information and then the little interview that Sam Sam, what did you accuse me of being uh mercantilist or something?
38:39You're a mercantilist. You're a mercantilist. You're not a capitalist.
38:42And so then I came out with a a newsletter post of like the reaction to my idea was way more interesting than the idea itself. Of all the how it works.
38:51the ideological battles and but the title of the post was I don't have property in New Zealand. Cuz that's where all these conversations end. Everyone throws their ideology around and they go, "What's your escape plan?" And I don't have an escape plan. I'm with you, Scott. There's merit here.
39:06We have to rethink the social security system. We have to rethink Let me push on this for a second. Then I want to talk I really do want to talk about one or two other topics before we wrap on the day.
39:15I hear you and I totally think it'd be great to have Americans more dealt in in a lot of ways. I think in obviously I believe deeply in capitalism and would love people to be more pro-capitalist and feel part of the story. Here's the problem. Historically appeasement never works.
39:33Right? It just doesn't. It whenever you appease, you're like, "Okay." And the reality of capitalism, right, is that the story is supposed to be, "Hey, if you work hard and get lucky, you do really, really well." It's not a social security net story, right? And like is the American story I would say. Now, we had a lot of benefits. First, we had a country which unfortunately all the people who lived here originally died from plagues and then wars. We had a huge amount of space. We had natural resources. We had western expansion. We had the internet. We had all this terra nova, which meant that historically if
40:02you're an IQ 100 person and work hard, you'd do fine. If you had a shovel, then it was like, "Oh, just go to school and you'll do fine." Because there was so much demand for like intellectual jobs. Those stories have run out on the capitalism side, on the American side.
40:15It's not clear what the next story is, but the story of hey, here's a thousand bucks, hopefully it compounds in the market, I don't think solves the underlying problem of like, how do you create opportunity for people and like the American story of capitalism free enterprise?
40:28Two distinct challenges. One is a existential meaningfulness question.
40:33Ah, that's been my essay.
40:35And then the other one is how we fund this. How do we put food on the table and police on the streets and kids in school and all of that. So, they're linked, but they're very different. And I agree with you, we have not answered the post labor existential question. We just haven't. We don't need more poets, I don't think.
40:51this is a question of, you know, parents can have money saved for their children and screw them up, or they can have money saved for their children and not screw them up. You know, I've seen both instances happen and I don't think that there's a rule against one or the other. It's more about how it's done.
41:06So, it's like a culture and values and all that stuff is like what matters.
41:11I wonder what the instrument should be.
41:13I mean, what should the instrument be of these savings accounts, which I think of, you know, I'm also a fan of, that are being created for kids that are, you know, now being born. Like, what why shouldn't they get some exposure to them Some of them will become like the deadbeat kid that got, you know, a silver spoon and screwed it up, but I feel like a lot of them will also not graduate with college debt or debt for whatever education ends up looking like in the future and have a little startup capital to take a risk in their lives
41:41and all the other stuff. So, we're not going to solve it for everyone, but isn't that better?
41:45I'm very pro the Trump account. I think it's good and smart. I'm pro it. I I'm not convinced that the picture of how it compounds is so certain, especially as we're talking about resets and all this other stuff that, you know, we're trying to figure out right now, but like, I'm certainly pro it. I just accept with the exception of when people start lobbying for regulatory capture by giving a five hundred bucks of their stock to someone, right? Like that seems insane to me and we got to figure out how to like not have that happen. I want to pivot one or two more times before I lose you guys, and I really appreciate you you joining
42:14for this fun conversation. Open AI exec exodus, Brad Lightcap out, Kevin Weil who we used to work with out. Peter, you've been out for like years, so like you were just you're a forebearer on this. Like why and like what what's going on?
42:31My take on this is it's actually a feature not a bug. It's a feature of having insanely great talent. I think Sam is N of 1 at recruiting with really ambitious, talented people. And in a time when you can build anything, you should expect the churn. These are people who who want to go and kind of build something really really insanely great. And that's not a talent problem, that's just kind of a natural output of what he's optimized for. I mean you're seeing this everywhere. And also the other thing is that it's not just having the models, you have to have point the models with sense of obsession at a
43:01problem. And you know, like something like Periodic Labs, uh Liam left Open AI, we were the first check investors into that. They're doing material science. It requires a different level of obsession on building a wet lab. That just doesn't exist at a bigger companies, right? So the companies out there like Applied Compute, Core Automation, other Neo Labs. There's just that there's a point of view that you want to go chase, and if you're ambitious, you're going to go out and chase that. That's uh largely what I see from this. You have to point the models, and it's a great time to build, and so
43:30that's what everyone is really doing.
43:32Is it because of there's like this sense that these generalized models are the old news and specialized models are the future, and it's like going to be specialized models plus all these open local it's a great question. I I think there's a lot of stuff, and Rachel, you you and I lived this in Uber. The last mile problem is a real problem. You can't just strap GPS on phones and be like, "Okay, all right, let's give rides to people, right?" One of my analogies I use is like you can't vibe code a home health nurse to show up at in your living room to take care of you post
44:01surgery. There's a company I'm working with called Adaptive, based in New York, they're doing exactly this. They're like an AI sort of healthcare provider delivering healthcare. And that delivery, Rachel, you and I know this from Uber days, is not easy. There's a lot of stuff that goes on to make sure that that value can be delivered. And that requires an obsession that goes beyond, oh, AGI is going to solve everything. So, I think that's what it is. It's like when you're obsessed over a problem like that, you're going to go make a company and make it great.
44:26I've got a quick cynical take, which is uh Peter, how long were you at OpenAI?
44:29Year and a half or so.
44:30Okay. And Kevin, I think was there maybe 4 years, maybe a little bit less, uh 3 years.
44:35I think he was there for less than that, but yeah.
44:37Two. But my cynical take was going to be, you go, you're there at evaluation, you get stock, you vest, the stock appreciates, maybe appreciates very rapidly, and then you're looking at the incremental upside from where you are and what you're doing in a ever-growing thing and having to deal with more people and more politics and more knife fights and all that kind of stuff, or you can take the cachet of having been where you've been, and you have a robust market that will finance you. Kevin is going to go, he's going to start something, he's going to get funded. We're probably all going to be
45:06involved, you know, with whatever he funds.
45:07And I think that that's the simple calculus is um you believe in yourself, you your financing risk is pretty low, your talent risk is pretty low, and your upside is going to be way higher. And so, the incremental return on the incremental expenditure of your time is worth leaving. So, I don't think it says anything and I've been critical of every one of the labs at some point for whatever, but I don't think it says anything about OpenAI.
45:28So, but Josh, but can you build a company that way? Like with people coming in, stamping the card, getting instant free capital for their next startup? Like does that work?
45:37I mean, so far with OpenAI, valuation has gone from like, you know, sub 100 million to trillion and plus, and you've had six diaspora companies that have all achieved, you know, tens of billions of dollars that have spun off of it. And I think everybody looks at that. And by the way, the number one motivator that I've always found is somebody looks and sees a peer that they worked with and being like, are you [ __ ] kidding me?
45:59That person just raised how much at what? And then that becomes the catalyst, you know, moment where they're like, "I'm going to do that."
46:05Well, 100% the the talk track is usually and that guy's an idiot.
46:08[laughter] Look, I think I think all your point of view could be true, my point of view could be true. I don't think they're directly contradicting. I'm not saying that you think they are, but you're right. Like it absolutely when you have are able to take the risk to go build something bigger, that's kind of my point in what I'm saying is that these people are ambitious people who are like, "Okay." And implied in that is like, "Okay, I can stick around." And the way I'll put it is the physics of a big company, you know, Sam and I we we've been in big companies, there's the physics are just different. And the
46:36people who are wired to go or Sam Altman has assembled a a set of really great researchers who have these big ideas, you're going to want the freedom to do that elsewhere, too, right? So, again, it's just it's just a natural consequence.
46:48And there's two directions of emergence and jump ball. One direction is, "Sure, I agree with that." But the early OpenAI pitch was, "We're building AGI, winner take all. You're either on our train or have fun staying poor." Like it was like a one thing. That has kind of evolved into a lot of people who are really smart being like, "Oh my god, this is the moment where everything matters.
47:07Cost of capital zero. I got to take my shot. And by the way, I've already punched my card four times. If it does turn out to work, I'm protected. I've got plenty of stock."
47:15How different was it in the Facebook days? Cuz you had sort of the same dynamic.
47:20I think first of all, it's kind of funny cuz by historical standards then it was an incredibly meteoric rise.
47:25Facebook's valuation grew unbelievably slowly compared to the labs, right? And there were obviously generations. Like I would argue I was Peter, you were kind of generation one and a half, maybe. I was generation two at Facebook. There's now been generation three and generation four. But there's not 20 generations, right? There was like a a set of people who worked for four years, did great work, and then passed the torch. And that's happened like a few times. And actually, the core leadership team at Facebook has been unbelievably stable now for like a decade, right? Like which
47:55is a very different dynamic.
47:57And and Josh, the the other thing is that to look at is just to, you know, not to be too cynical is that like Facebook had great network effects. So, if you wanted to build anything in social, that's where you stayed. I got to say that if you take a look at AI like, you know, again, being on the board of Arena, it just changes every week. It's like, well, who's up there this week at this point, right? And I would say AI is a lot more akin to something like, you know, GPS on a phone or a database where it is a technology, but again, you you can't just like wipe code in Uber. You have to deal with all
48:25the real-world problems. You can't just wipe code in a home health.
48:28Your network effect is actually a profound point because I think that Meta has actually done an extraordinary job in their acquisition strategy. And I think part of the pitch that Mark has made at least in two of our companies is the scale that we can give you to deploy your product, whether it's a brain-machine interface like Control Labs or, you know, like is enormous.
48:45You're going to reach billions of users, and I don't know that OpenAI has done that. So, that actually is a good point.
48:51Yeah, I I learned how to do acquisitions from my time at Facebook. That was That's exactly the story.
48:56I don't want to keep Harvey here. I want to ask Peter one more thing, and then I want to pivot to a field before we close. Peter, and I I've not He's a friend, but I haven't spoken to him in about this in months.
49:06Is the Airtable Howie story I want to work on AI or what happened?
49:12I haven't spoken to him in a few months either, but let me tell you a few things. You talk about Airtable, the exit, the bending spoons, etc.
49:19I think there are two truths here, and both truths are true. Number one, I think founders are built differently. I mean, you know, founders are going to continue to build towards AI like you like you alluded to. Howie pivoted to Hyper Agent long ago. I think Scott built Scott, you know him well, right?
49:33Like he made that pivot, and he's been pivoting. And the thing is that acquisition, I think this is public knowledge, was had Hyper Agent carved out. So, that was really the the the legacy business that was acquired. So, great founders who have founded all these companies like Howie are going to continue to build cuz that's what that's in their DNA. And then fact, builders are to build. The second thing is, there's a real shift, and both of these things are true, right? And we we're seeing that at Felicis, too. So, in our last couple funds, over 20% of our capital has been deployed to global
50:02resilience, energy, manufacturing, defense tech, all stuff that you all are are investing in as well. On in science, I mentioned we were the first check in Periodic Labs because we believe that there's actually more real-world problems to be solved. So, I think both are true in terms of what happened with Airtable and how he's just from what I understand is just took to build. He's a fantastic builder.
50:21I agree. I want to go lightning round and call it a day cuz this has been awesome. And it's really This is fun, by the way. I don't know, you should do this again sometime. Rachel, I'll start with you.
50:30DC regulation, all that heavy stuff you're involved in, what are you thinking the most about right now that we have not discussed?
50:37I don't know about a DC regulation piece, but like life. Or just life.
50:41Life. I'll just go there. We happen to live in DC.
50:45Uh I mean, look, I know, I just think of you as my like DC person now, you know? Like I know. I I do live here, and sadly, that's becoming No, I mean, look, I think Uh I mean, Peter brought you know, just brought it up at the end. We're spending, you know, that they're putting 20% plus of their fund into these areas that uh Josh, you've been investing in even longer than we have, but like we've been focused on. And in 2020, when we started Construct, a whole bunch Now, those mostly LPs that we were talking about at the time, but people were like, "You're
51:14crazy to go" And the same people who said it, by the way, I was crazy in 2011 to join Uber because taxis are you're never you're never going to get a venture outcome.
51:24Weren't you at Clorox before that? What were you working on charcoal?
51:27One year. One year, yeah, exactly. Salad dressing. But like, you're crazy to go join a taxi company cuz it's, you know, it's slow-moving, it's heavily regulated, it's high cap ex. And like, those people just like didn't spend two brain cells thinking about what Uber was actually built.
51:45And I feel like it's the same thing that people were saying to us in 2020 when you know, we went out and started construct. First of all, there's a lot of software companies. Secondly, there's a lot of physical world companies that don't need to look like really slow-moving high capex companies. And you know, the only way we're going to get productivity is putting software into these spaces. And like if you looked at the signals even like four or five years ago, like the crisis was mounting. You know, we appreciate the
52:13markups that come from everyone piling into these spaces. We're also now the prices are going up like you know, to a crazy amount obviously on on some of these early stage stuff because a lot of people who like would never give these spaces kind of a second look are now devoting half of their I don't know, billion and a half dollar funds to them all over the place. So, anyway, it's an interesting time. People actually come through DC. It's great for our large conference room which now gets use and
52:43good for the existing funds and the purple dinosaur.
52:47Scott, we didn't really get into proof of craft provenance watermarks. You've been thinking about this stuff forever.
52:53Anthropic just is now watermarking text as of today. Like there's a lot of stuff going on. I mean, I I assume you are still deeply on this train. Can you give us a quick update on that?
53:06The C2PA, [laughter] it's the open protocol that kind of everyone signed on to for these content credentials to be added to assets that are generated or edited by the way for that matter, has been widely spread. The problem is on the consumer experience side.
53:23These companies like Instagram and you know, and products that are surfacing media, for them it's binary. It's like if it has a C2PA and if it says any AI was used, they report it as being made with AI. And then consumers are like, what the hell? I only used AI to like remove a blemish from my face. Like why are you labeling me as a slot maker? and and so there's we're in this like moment where there's a disconnect between the underlying efforts which I think are net net good to like help people be able
53:51to discern the provenance if they want to and the consumer interfaces that don't know how to surface this or merchandise this to the end user. So I feel like that's where we're at right now. I don't think it's going to go away, but I also think we're all going to be gradually inoculated and I think honestly like fake stuff is really helpful for society right now because it inoculates us and makes us realize we can't trust what we see anymore.
54:14Josh Wolf, got anything you're excited about we haven't hit on or you're freaking out about?
54:18Freaking about the rise of socialism and communism in our country.
54:22Yeah, I've noticed on Twitter you and I have that in common.
54:24Yeah, I've I've been like a center-left Democrat my entire life and my party has just like run far left and I'm yeah.
54:32Well, it's cuz no one has good like the marketing sucks on the center-left. There's no good marketing.
54:36But I grew up caring about the guy that lost the ovarian lottery and the Rawlsian sense and you know, needs a leg up and social welfare and but I believe in the American dream and Yeah, but the veil of ignorance is kind of [ __ ] Let's not go Rawls. You were a Rawls guy?
54:49Yeah, [laughter] yeah. No, I I I I believe that that's the right model for designing a society. You know, you wake up tomorrow and you don't know if you're going to be born in Brooklyn or Bangladesh, black or white, male or female, able-bodied Yeah, yeah. I agree with that part, but I'm more of a Nozick guy myself.
55:04[laughter] Um you know, I I I I think that um Europe is [ __ ] And there are bright lights of amazing entrepreneurs that are doing the very thing that Europe has historically not done which is risk-taking. The floor for Europe is higher than the US so people do not fall through that, but the ceiling is never been that high and I think that there are companies that are breaking through that, but I think Europe is screwed mostly for demographics and influx largely because political positions of people that are unwilling to assimilate. It is
55:34destroying society. I believe that there are bad foreign actors whether Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, or whatever, that are helping to foment that. And I do believe that the Sahel in Africa and the Maghreb, which is, you know, Mali, Sudan, Niger, uh Burkina Faso, you are one terror event away projected into Europe that that entire region becomes the West's next Afghanistan, all of which culminates in my conclusion that Europe needs very strong defense.
56:00It is very much a Tower of Babel of uncoordinated systems, but there needs to be an enormous expenditure, which they have all been under pressure of Trump and Rubio being sort of chastised at Davos and Munich Security Conference, but um Europe's got to spend. We're seeing some of our companies benefit from it, but Europe is at real risk, not just from Russia, but from violent extremists that are infiltrating the continent. And if you care about the West, you got to defend it.
56:24Do you think we need to go defend Europe again?
56:28I I I I flew over, we were in France uh for part of the summer, and I flew over. It was actually really amazing, just like you're you're in a plane, you're flying over the beaches of Normandy, and you're looking at Ohio and you know, and it's just like 80 years ago. It's like it's crazy, you know? Americans that long.
56:43No, it's crazy. It's two generations, three generations, like we stormed the beaches of Normandy against the Nazis. Like it's insane, you know? And uh we're we're we're not fighting Nazis, uh but it's like I don't know. It's it's wild and it's important, and I think a lot of people it's like too weak to be felt until it's too strong to be broken, and a lot of people are really not appreciating how serious this stuff is.
57:03Fair enough. Well, on that uplifting note, anyone else have anything else that Jumpball they want to throw out before we call it?
57:09[laughter] We're all going to die.
57:12First step is talking about it.
57:14[laughter] Second step is doing something about it.
57:17No, the second step is is funding. You fund these entrepreneurs that are taking it on. You're getting patriotic.
57:22I'm with you. I have my own takes on where the leverage and I can deploy on this stuff is. I do think I'm with you ideologically. I do think it's one of the trap problems of a Twitter or fun podcast with your friends who are all venture capitalists in different places is we can all fervently agree with each other and feel really good about it. You guys this is really fun. I appreciate you all joining. I hope you had fun doing it.
57:42This is great. Thank you all. I hope you all really enjoy the rest of your August and I'll see you around on the internet and in physical space.
57:51Awesome. Make sure your bot gets the recipe for Jess for dinner. She's going to be there like She's here. She actually just walked in.
57:58If she's still around maybe she's coming out. Are you coming out to end the show?
58:01I was going to say she checked in with us wanted to make sure it was actually happening.
58:04There she is. There she is. And I texted you a question based on what you said that I didn't understand. So if you could get back to me that would be great.
58:13Yeah. Yeah, she got a text from Jess.
58:16What should I for dinner?
58:19[laughter] Tater tots.
58:20No, I don't All right, everyone. There's also pizza.
58:26If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for @moreorless, @davemorin, @lesson, @jaylesson, and as for me, I'm @brit.
58:52[music] See you guys next time.
