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0:00:41 (funky music)
0:00:45 – Hey, what you doing?
0:00:48 – Programming our thermostat to 17 degrees
0:00:50 when we’re out at work or asleep.
0:00:51 We’re taking control of our energy
0:00:54 use this winter with some easy energy saving tips
0:00:55 I got from Fortis, BC.
0:00:58 – Ooh, conserve energy and save money?
0:01:00 Maybe to buy those matching winter jackets?
0:01:02 – Uh, no, we’re also getting
0:01:04 that whole matching outfit thing under control.
0:01:07 – Discover low and no cost energy saving tips
0:01:10 at fortisbc.com/energysavingtips.
0:01:12 Matching track suits?
0:01:13 – Please no.
0:01:17 – Mike has always wondered
0:01:20 what makes some people want to play action hero.
0:01:23 – When I see people speeding or skydiving
0:01:25 or surfing on hundred foot waves,
0:01:26 I always think, are you crazy?
0:01:27 What are you doing?
0:01:28 Because I’m like risk averse.
0:01:32 I’m trying to like, you know, keep Mike in one piece.
0:01:34 – But what about people who get their thrills
0:01:36 from playing cop?
0:01:40 This week on Explain It To Me, citizens arrest.
0:01:43 Is it a real thing and should it be?
0:01:45 New episodes every Wednesday.
0:01:50 – Welcome to Office Hours with Pravji.
0:01:52 This is the part of the show where we answer your questions
0:01:54 about business, pick tech, entrepreneurship,
0:01:55 and whatever else is on your mind.
0:01:57 If you’d like to submit a question,
0:01:59 please name all a voice recording
0:02:00 to officehours@propgmedia.com.
0:02:04 Again, that’s officehours@propgmedia.com.
0:02:06 I have not seen or read these questions.
0:02:08 Question number one.
0:02:09 – Hi, Pravji.
0:02:12 I’m Anna from Mexico, currently living in Chicago, Illinois.
0:02:15 First of all, thank you for all your hard work.
0:02:18 I listen to your podcast during my commute to school
0:02:21 and it always makes the ride more enjoyable.
0:02:25 My question is about APOs in Latin America.
0:02:27 One of the predictions you did for 2025
0:02:30 was that emerging markets will become
0:02:32 more attractive to investors.
0:02:35 I had the chance to work for a unicorn in the region
0:02:38 and ever since, I have wondered,
0:02:42 why we don’t see many IPOs in Latin America?
0:02:45 I truly believe that there are amazing companies
0:02:47 led by talented entrepreneurs,
0:02:49 but not many of them go public.
0:02:50 What do you think this is the case
0:02:52 and what do you think could be improved
0:02:54 to help more companies in the region
0:02:55 to take that step?
0:02:59 Thank you so much and thank you for choosing that question.
0:03:00 – Anna from Mexico.
0:03:03 I love your accent and the IPO market.
0:03:06 Since the pandemic, the IPO market in Latin America
0:03:08 has really fluctuated.
0:03:11 In 2021, the region raised about $19 billion,
0:03:13 mostly due to Brazil,
0:03:15 which accounted for about 85% of that capital.
0:03:19 Mexico, in comparison, had only one IPO in 2021.
0:03:21 So basically the IPO market in Mexico
0:03:24 could best be described as kind of like dead.
0:03:25 Other than that, it’s fine.
0:03:26 By 2022 and 2023,
0:03:30 IPO listings came to a complete halt in Brazil.
0:03:31 In the first half of 2024,
0:03:33 the entire Latin American and Caribbean region
0:03:35 registered only four IPOs.
0:03:36 Why?
0:03:39 Essentially, the boring stuff, interest rates.
0:03:42 Rates in Brazil rose over seven points
0:03:43 to nine and a quarter points.
0:03:45 Similarly, interest rates in Mexico
0:03:48 increased from 5.5% to 10.5% in the same period.
0:03:50 At the end of 2022,
0:03:52 the average policy rate in Latin America
0:03:56 stood at 18.9%.
0:03:59 Rising interest rates usually decrease investor confidence,
0:04:01 which typically means an outflow of capital
0:04:03 from equity markets into safer fixed income investments.
0:04:06 In short, when you’re getting paid a lot of money
0:04:08 just to put your money in bonds
0:04:12 or would feel like less volatile or safer investments,
0:04:13 the bar to go public gets much higher
0:04:15 and money flows out of equities
0:04:17 and into fixed income instruments,
0:04:20 thereby creating a less hospitable market for IPOs.
0:04:23 Additionally, the rise of populist left-leaning governments
0:04:25 in Latin America has deterred private investment
0:04:29 in the region, resulting in nearly flatline GDP per capita.
0:04:31 I’m actually quite bullish on Mexico.
0:04:32 I think for a few reasons.
0:04:34 One, more political stability,
0:04:37 I would argue, than the US to proximity.
0:04:40 As we try and divest away from China,
0:04:42 one because of geopolitical tensions,
0:04:45 but also just because of supply chain diversification.
0:04:46 I was on the board of chemical turbine outfitters.
0:04:48 We woke up one day and Mila COVID
0:04:51 realized that the disproportionate 60, 70% of our tops
0:04:55 were being manufactured in a five mile radius of Shenzhen.
0:04:58 And basically all 550 of our stores couldn’t get tops in time
0:05:01 and said, okay, even if it costs us a little bit more,
0:05:03 we need some supply chain diversification.
0:05:04 Basically up until COVID,
0:05:07 supply chain was run for the lowest cost, full stop.
0:05:09 How do we eke out more and more costs?
0:05:12 And it ended up we had absolutely no slack,
0:05:13 meaning any eruption at all.
0:05:16 And everything from your refrigerator to your garage door,
0:05:17 they couldn’t find parts
0:05:18 and the whole thing just kind of collapsed on itself.
0:05:21 So essentially the biggest threat to these companies
0:05:23 is no longer consumer demand,
0:05:26 which has been really strong for the last 16 odd years,
0:05:28 but supply chain interruptions
0:05:31 where basically consumers can’t get what they want.
0:05:33 So there’s this amazing
0:05:35 or this incredible inspired effort
0:05:37 towards supply chain heterogeneity
0:05:39 and then there’s supply chain diversification,
0:05:43 moving stuff out of China into Vietnam,
0:05:44 other Southeast Asian countries.
0:05:46 And also the big beneficiary has been Mexico,
0:05:48 which is now our largest trading partner.
0:05:50 So I’m actually quite bullish on Mexico.
0:05:53 IPOs in general seem to be in,
0:05:55 are they encyclical decline or structural decline?
0:05:57 And that is, it used to be,
0:05:59 if you wanted a company to be worth more
0:06:00 than a few hundred million dollars,
0:06:03 you had to access this deep pool of capital
0:06:04 called the public markets.
0:06:05 There just wasn’t enough capital available
0:06:06 in the private markets.
0:06:10 The biggest VC funds only had two or $300 million funds.
0:06:12 So you went public to access
0:06:14 these big pools of public capital.
0:06:16 That’s no longer the case.
0:06:17 People have gone further downstream
0:06:19 and when they see opportunities,
0:06:21 when they see the company accelerating in value,
0:06:22 they wanna squeeze more and more juice
0:06:24 in the private markets as institutional investors.
0:06:26 So they’re like, we don’t need to go public.
0:06:27 As a matter of fact,
0:06:30 if the existing shareholders or employees
0:06:32 want some liquidity, we can give it to them.
0:06:34 We can do secondary offerings.
0:06:35 We don’t want the scrutiny,
0:06:37 the regulation of the public markets.
0:06:38 So we’ll just stay private.
0:06:40 And oftentimes the private markets
0:06:43 are actually trading any premium to the public markets.
0:06:44 So what do you have?
0:06:47 The number of public companies has been reduced,
0:06:49 I think by two thirds over the last 30 or 40 years.
0:06:50 One, it’s harder to go public.
0:06:51 Two, there’s more regulation.
0:06:53 Three, it’s expensive.
0:06:56 And four, mergers and acquisitions
0:06:58 have taken a lot of public companies off of the rolls.
0:07:03 And finally, finally, being private is kind of equivalent
0:07:05 or maybe even more ideal than going public.
0:07:08 And typically, I think also what’s hurt the public markets
0:07:10 is by the time a company decides to go public,
0:07:12 it’s sort of the last stop on the full train.
0:07:16 And that is Google when they went public, enormous upside.
0:07:17 Same with Metta.
0:07:19 These companies still had enormous upside left.
0:07:20 Now most of the, again,
0:07:22 the juices being squeezed in the private markets.
0:07:24 So by the time it gets to the public markets,
0:07:26 it’s sort of like, well, we’ve run out of people
0:07:28 in the private markets who will bid us up.
0:07:30 Let’s see if we can find stupid retail investors
0:07:33 and some of the public market IPOs have underperformed
0:07:37 and it’s made a less hospitable environment.
0:07:40 But yes, the IPO market in Mexico is dead.
0:07:42 I hope it comes back for all of us.
0:07:44 Thanks for the question.
0:07:45 Question number two.
0:07:49 Hey, Scott, this is Kevin from Colorado.
0:07:50 Long time listener of the pod
0:07:53 and want to tell you how much I appreciate your insights
0:07:54 on helping young men.
0:07:57 Although I’d still like to consider myself young.
0:08:00 In 2025, I’m turning 40
0:08:02 and I’m increasingly feeling the responsibility
0:08:04 to make a positive impact
0:08:07 with the abundance of young men I interact with in my life.
0:08:10 I have three young boys, a younger brother,
0:08:14 four younger brothers-in-law and eight young nephews.
0:08:17 Outside of my family, I own two businesses,
0:08:20 each having many young male employees.
0:08:22 And I’m also active in my church
0:08:26 where I help mentor dozens of young men under 18.
0:08:28 I’m finding it hard to get involved
0:08:31 and help these boys that aren’t my sons
0:08:33 because I don’t want to overstep my bounds.
0:08:35 My question, Scott, is this.
0:08:38 With no shortage of opportunities,
0:08:41 how do you recommend I be more proactive
0:08:43 in helping mentor these young men,
0:08:46 especially those I can see are struggling,
0:08:50 without being overbearing or coming off as weird?
0:08:51 – Boss, you’re doing it.
0:08:54 You know, raising good men,
0:08:57 raising confident, loving, patriotic boys,
0:09:01 that’s kind of 90% of what you’re supposed to be doing.
0:09:02 In terms of helping other boys,
0:09:04 when I can’t stand the gestalt in our society
0:09:07 where we suspect men who want to get involved
0:09:08 in other boys’ lives,
0:09:09 I think that is one of the terrible things
0:09:12 about our society that is largely the fault
0:09:13 of the Catholic Church and Michael Jackson,
0:09:15 which I will not go into,
0:09:17 but your inclinations are the right ones.
0:09:18 One, getting involved in groups,
0:09:20 being a scout leader, you know,
0:09:22 teaching Sunday school, whatever it might be,
0:09:25 but sharing some of that confidence,
0:09:27 being a male role model in groups,
0:09:29 also recognizing, or what I think is a great trick
0:09:33 or not a trick, but I do this sometimes with my boys.
0:09:35 One, my boys are 14 and 17,
0:09:38 so no matter how wonderful or fat the vacation is,
0:09:40 unless they’re with other boys or other people their age,
0:09:41 they’re just not gonna have a good time
0:09:42 and they’re gonna get bored and angry
0:09:44 and make our lives miserable.
0:09:45 So I bring friends.
0:09:49 And what I find is I try and find or encourage them
0:09:52 to invite boys that may not have the opportunity
0:09:56 for whatever to hang out or do the kind of things we do.
0:09:58 So I like to bring my boys friends with them.
0:10:01 And I find you don’t need to do that much.
0:10:05 I think just seeing a healthy father-son relationship,
0:10:06 seeing, you know,
0:10:08 you trying to occasionally ask a few questions,
0:10:10 them asking you a few questions,
0:10:12 it’s really powerful ’cause the reality is,
0:10:14 and this is sort of, I don’t know,
0:10:17 disappointing, hurtful as the dad,
0:10:19 what you’re gonna find is with your sons,
0:10:22 they would draw a little bit or they’re just less inclined.
0:10:25 I have young men asking me for advice every goddamn day.
0:10:26 My boys don’t ask me for advice
0:10:29 ’cause they have this very healthy instinct
0:10:33 that says I need to break away from the pride.
0:10:35 And in order to make that a little less painful,
0:10:38 I start thinking my parents are idiots.
0:10:39 And what’s interesting is there’s research
0:10:41 that shows with teen boys,
0:10:44 they’re more apt to listen to their friends’ fathers
0:10:45 than their own fathers.
0:10:46 So what I would say is,
0:10:48 in addition to just doing the good work you’re doing
0:10:52 to get involved in groups where you might have an audience
0:10:54 of more young men or young people that you can influence,
0:10:56 whether it’s a church group,
0:10:58 or as I said, the Boy Scouts or volunteer groups
0:11:00 or coaching or sports leagues,
0:11:03 if you really feel like you have that ability
0:11:05 to connect with young men.
0:11:06 But also on a very basic level,
0:11:08 when you do stuff with your boys,
0:11:12 encourage them, ask them or just invite other boys
0:11:13 their age from your friends.
0:11:15 Especially, I think it’s doing God’s work
0:11:18 to kind of do a little bit of poking around
0:11:19 and find out where there’s single mothers
0:11:21 in your universe and say,
0:11:24 hey, I’m taking my kids to the football game
0:11:27 or I’m taking my kids to whatever it might be
0:11:30 to the beach, would John like to join us?
0:11:32 And I think you’re gonna find a lot of single mothers
0:11:36 are very open to their son spending more time
0:11:38 in the company of men trying to lead a good life
0:11:41 and around other boys, but thanks for the question.
0:11:44 We have one quick break before our final question.
0:11:45 Stay with us.
0:11:53 – Support for PropG comes from Quint.
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0:13:04 This episode is brought to you by Crescent Family Office.
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0:13:59 All investing involves risk,
0:14:01 including loss of principal.
0:14:09 Support for the show comes from Nerd Wallet.
0:14:11 Listener, a new year is finally here.
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0:15:11 – Welcome back, question number three.
0:15:15 – Hi, Scott, this is Marcela Terra from Miami.
0:15:18 I am a Colombian immigrant and just when I thought
0:15:21 I couldn’t love any of your content anymore,
0:15:25 I find out you have bought a football team,
0:15:29 not soccer football from my beloved country, Colombia.
0:15:33 I was just curious what motivated you
0:15:35 to join this group that is making the purchase.
0:15:37 And if you have any plans to ace it,
0:15:40 my country, I’m just so excited.
0:15:43 Thank you so much for all your wonderful content
0:15:46 and keep up the good work.
0:15:48 In another non-football note,
0:15:52 just wanted to thank you for showing up vulnerable
0:15:56 and emotional and loving and caring
0:15:58 and also being a baller because I think
0:16:01 that’s your very own brand of healing the world
0:16:06 and helping young men know that those two things
0:16:09 can coexist by sky.
0:16:10 Thank you.
0:16:13 – I’m gonna print this out and read it to myself very night.
0:16:17 This is one, I oftentimes think my producers hate me
0:16:19 and are just so sick of me because I know me
0:16:20 and I know how difficult I can be.
0:16:21 Actually, I’m not difficult.
0:16:23 I don’t think I’m difficult, am I difficult?
0:16:26 But I’m shocked that they let this get through.
0:16:28 So thank you for the really kind words.
0:16:33 So la equidad, the number,
0:16:35 the second best team in Bogota, Colombia.
0:16:38 This is, I don’t wanna say it’s a dream of mine,
0:16:41 but I had always toyed with the idea of I really wanted
0:16:45 to buy or to make an investment in Rangers,
0:16:48 the best team in Scotland.
0:16:49 Because my dad used to go to Rangers games,
0:16:50 I absolutely love football.
0:16:54 I love the idea of investing in a community
0:16:55 and I think it would just be a lot of fun.
0:16:59 Also, quite frankly, it’s sort of a,
0:17:01 I don’t know, a symbol of your success,
0:17:03 midlife crisis, I’m worried I’m gonna die soon,
0:17:05 arrested out of lessons.
0:17:07 I mean, all of that less admirable shit too.
0:17:11 And I met, so how did this come about?
0:17:14 I met some, I met this guy at an investor conference
0:17:16 who’s sort of the Yoda or the Svangale
0:17:19 of investing in teams and he scans the world for teams
0:17:23 and he tries to find teams that are economically viable
0:17:26 because they have a great player academy
0:17:30 and cultivate and chest eight players and then sell them
0:17:34 or they have kind of unrealized or unlocked TV rights,
0:17:36 whatever it might be, or they’re just not a well run team.
0:17:39 This kid literally needs a kid who’s in his 30s,
0:17:41 scours the globe for opportunities.
0:17:42 And he came to me and said,
0:17:43 I’m putting together an investor group,
0:17:45 which includes people much more famous than me,
0:17:48 including Ryan Reynolds and Rob McAlhaney.
0:17:52 And I got to know Rob because of my work on “Young Man”
0:17:54 and I was in “Welcome to Rexmer,” I was in an episode
0:17:56 and I just was so impressed with this guy.
0:17:59 He’s just such a lovely, talented guy.
0:18:01 And when I saw they were part of the investor group
0:18:04 and it was also an opportunity to spend more time in Colombia,
0:18:07 which I just think is such an incredible country.
0:18:11 And also quite frankly, this is a bite size.
0:18:12 I’m not buying Chelsea.
0:18:14 Chelsea cost four or $5 billion.
0:18:15 I’m not in that weight class.
0:18:18 This is a company that went for dramatically,
0:18:21 dramatically smaller purchase amount.
0:18:23 And I’m also a small owner,
0:18:28 or I think I’m gonna own something like 5% of the team.
0:18:31 But anyways, this is one part investment.
0:18:34 I do believe, I think I’m gonna make money here.
0:18:34 Why?
0:18:35 The fastest growing demographic group
0:18:38 isn’t seniors or Latinos, it’s billionaires
0:18:40 and the super wealthy.
0:18:40 What does that mean?
0:18:42 It means the assets is super wealthy by,
0:18:46 whether it’s hotel rooms in Santropé or Gulf Streams
0:18:49 or Loro Piano or Brunella Cuccinelli
0:18:52 or sports teams are gonna go up in values.
0:18:55 Sports teams typically have sort of a natural monopoly.
0:19:00 And so kind of Columbia League One does not have only,
0:19:04 they sequester, we can’t just start a football team.
0:19:05 MLS rights in the United States
0:19:07 are going for several hundred million dollars now.
0:19:09 These are essentially regulated monopolies.
0:19:10 Is that a good thing?
0:19:13 Probably not, but I’m taking advantage of it.
0:19:14 So what do you have?
0:19:18 You have an explosion in the customer base,
0:19:20 specifically wealthy people who buy teams.
0:19:23 And two, you have limited supply.
0:19:25 I like my math here, I like my prospects.
0:19:29 Also, you have this dynamic in terms of media
0:19:32 where people can now avoid ads.
0:19:33 Advertising has become a tax
0:19:35 that the technologically illiterate
0:19:37 or the poor have to pay except for sports.
0:19:40 And that is the only time I ever see adverts,
0:19:41 is they call them here in Britain,
0:19:43 is when I’m watching Arsenal play.
0:19:45 And that is the only time I’ll endure ads
0:19:49 is when I’m watching live TV, which is almost never.
0:19:50 I never watch live news anymore.
0:19:53 I don’t watch, I watch original scripted dramas.
0:19:55 So I’m able to avoid almost every ad
0:19:56 except when I watch live sports,
0:19:59 meaning the TV contracts will go up in value
0:20:01 because advertisers still need to reach people
0:20:02 in their fewer and fewer places.
0:20:04 They can reach them, see above live sports,
0:20:06 which means the TV rights deals will go up,
0:20:09 which means the value, the teams will go up in concert
0:20:11 with the number of buyers,
0:20:14 specifically very wealthy people going up.
0:20:17 But I don’t wanna pretend this is also not consumption.
0:20:19 I just think this is gonna be just so much fun.
0:20:22 I can’t wait to take my boys.
0:20:23 I can’t wait to go with my friends.
0:20:25 I can’t wait to have an excuse
0:20:28 to spend more time in Medellin and Cartagena.
0:20:31 I just think it’s, I’m just so excited about this.
0:20:32 I love Latin American culture.
0:20:34 I love the idea of spending more time in Colombia.
0:20:37 I love the midlife crisis, midlife meat crisis.
0:20:39 I like the investor group.
0:20:40 So this was an easy one.
0:20:43 And it’s not, you know, this is a lot of money,
0:20:44 but it’s not hundreds of millions,
0:20:45 not even tens of millions.
0:20:49 It’s for someone like me who is incredibly blessed
0:20:51 and economically secure, but not a billionaire.
0:20:53 So what is this?
0:20:55 This is capitalism meets consumption.
0:20:58 I just think it’s gonna be so much fun.
0:21:01 So famous last words, but I’m really excited about this.
0:21:05 And maybe I will see you at a lot, equidad game.
0:21:08 Oh my gosh, that’s right.
0:21:10 He’s coming in, El Pato’s coming in.
0:21:13 Moyase color, Moyat.
0:21:15 – That’s all for this episode.
0:21:16 If you’d like to submit a question,
0:21:18 please email a voice recording
0:21:20 to officehours@profitmedia.com.
0:21:22 Again, that’s officehours@profitmedia.com.
0:21:25 (upbeat music)
0:21:28 (crickets chirping)
0:21:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:02 (upbeat music)
0:00:10 – Hello, I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:00:12 This is the Remarkable People podcast,
0:00:16 and we’re in the business of helping you become remarkable.
0:00:19 So we scour the globe for the most remarkable people,
0:00:23 and we found a remarkable person named Mike Maples Jr.
0:00:26 And in the prelude, we were just discussing,
0:00:28 he and I go way back.
0:00:30 In college, he read my books,
0:00:32 which is kind of a disturbing thing
0:00:36 when people tell you that they read your book in college,
0:00:39 and now they’re way out of college.
0:00:43 But anyway, so he is a venture capitalist today.
0:00:47 He’s the co-founder of a leading Silicon Valley seed fund
0:00:51 called Floodgate, and he has invested in companies
0:00:54 like Twitter, and Twitch, and Okta.
0:00:57 He’s really one of the pioneers of seed capital
0:00:59 in the mid-2000s.
0:01:02 So with no further ado, Mike Maples Jr.,
0:01:04 welcome to Remarkable People.
0:01:07 – Hey, thanks Guy, and I’ve been looking forward to this.
0:01:09 I think I’ve probably known you much longer
0:01:11 than you’ve known me, because I got to know you
0:01:14 somewhat through your books when I was in college.
0:01:17 – Wow, like I said, that’s kind of a double edged sword.
0:01:20 Well, as long as you don’t think that I wrote Rich Dad,
0:01:22 Poor Dad, I call that a win.
0:01:24 So I’m easy to please that way, Mike.
0:01:26 – Yeah, yeah.
0:01:29 The ones I really remember in my formative years
0:01:31 were The Macintosh Way,
0:01:34 and then the other one was Selling the Dream.
0:01:36 And I think in Selling the Dream,
0:01:40 I was actually at Kepler’s bookstore when you launched it.
0:01:42 I probably have a signed copy.
0:01:43 And one of the aspects of it I remember
0:01:46 is I think it had the Macintosh product introduction plan.
0:01:48 – Yes, in the back.
0:01:50 – So at the time, I was a young product manager
0:01:53 at Silicon Graphics, and you didn’t really get trained
0:01:55 in marketing back in those days.
0:01:57 And so everything I knew about marketing
0:01:59 is just what I read in marketing books.
0:02:01 That was an actual introduction plan.
0:02:03 I was like, “Hey, man, I could really learn something
0:02:04 “from this.”
0:02:08 And then reading your books led me to Regis McKenna
0:02:09 and some of his work.
0:02:11 I always thought that he had some really good ideas
0:02:12 around relationship marketing
0:02:15 and how do you evangelize ideas.
0:02:17 Yeah, so I feel like I’ve probably known you,
0:02:19 hopefully I don’t seem like a stalker,
0:02:23 but I’ve known you since you were CEO of ACIAS.
0:02:24 – Wow.
0:02:26 – Man, you’re going back.
0:02:28 You’re going back so far.
0:02:29 I was young.
0:02:31 (laughs)
0:02:35 So I loved your book and I see so much stuff
0:02:37 that I agree with in your book.
0:02:39 And let’s start with something very basic.
0:02:43 Your book is all about getting these inflections
0:02:46 and getting insights from the inflections
0:02:48 and turning it into ideas.
0:02:51 So let’s start with a definition to help everybody.
0:02:55 What exactly do you consider an inflection?
0:02:59 – Yeah, so an inflection is a change event
0:03:02 that’s actually external to a startup
0:03:04 or any business for that matter.
0:03:08 And it allows a startup capitalist
0:03:10 to compete by changing the subject.
0:03:13 So what I like to say is that in startups,
0:03:15 better doesn’t matter
0:03:18 because business is never a fair fight.
0:03:19 And if you’re a startup,
0:03:23 you have to have some form of weapons
0:03:25 to wage asymmetric warfare on the present.
0:03:29 You have to turn the incumbents’ greatest perceived strengths
0:03:31 into their biggest weaknesses.
0:03:33 And the way entrepreneurs do that
0:03:34 is they harness inflections.
0:03:37 They use inflections to bend the arc of the present
0:03:39 to a radically different future.
0:03:41 And by doing that,
0:03:45 they deny the premise of the rules of competition.
0:03:47 They show up seemingly out of left field
0:03:50 and now all of a sudden they disorient the incumbents.
0:03:53 Airbnb did this in hospitality
0:03:55 and Twitter did this in blogging and communication.
0:03:58 But nobody ever when they saw Airbnb said,
0:04:00 “Well, how does that compare to Four Seasons?”
0:04:02 And nobody when they saw Twitter said,
0:04:04 “How does that compare to WordPress?”
0:04:07 It stood alone as an entirely new thing.
0:04:09 I like to say better doesn’t matter when you’re startup
0:04:11 because if you’re better,
0:04:14 then the customer’s gonna have an alternative
0:04:15 to your startup.
0:04:17 And why would they pick your product
0:04:19 when you’re 80% likely to go out of business?
0:04:20 They’re only gonna pick your product
0:04:23 if it can’t be reconciled with anything
0:04:24 they’ve ever seen before.
0:04:25 And if they say, “Oh my gosh, where have you been
0:04:26 all my life?”
0:04:29 And so the way that the founder achieves that goal
0:04:31 is they harness inflections.
0:04:33 They use the power of inflections to offer something
0:04:36 that would seem unthinkable before the inflection happened.
0:04:38 – But Mike. – Yes.
0:04:43 – Do inflections cause companies to succeed
0:04:47 or do companies cause inflections to succeed?
0:04:49 Which way does it flow?
0:04:51 – Yeah, so I like that question
0:04:54 and it is one of these kind of recursively existential
0:04:56 questions too, right?
0:04:58 And the way I internalized it was,
0:05:01 I was like, okay, what should founders care about?
0:05:04 And what I thought was, okay,
0:05:08 founders need some type of a power to change the subject.
0:05:11 And so when I think about an inflection,
0:05:13 whether the founder caused it or leveraged it,
0:05:16 what matters I think from the founder point of view
0:05:17 is three things.
0:05:21 One is just what is the specific empowerment?
0:05:24 Does it offer something that can provide a 10x benefit
0:05:29 or something radically unique that’s never been seen before?
0:05:31 Or is it just an API call that got added
0:05:33 to Stripes API list, right?
0:05:36 So like a good example of an inflection would have been
0:05:41 it was empowering was the iPhone 4S had a GPS chip in it.
0:05:43 And you could have had the idea for ride sharing
0:05:45 before the iPhone 4S, but it wouldn’t have mattered
0:05:47 because you couldn’t have implemented a system
0:05:49 that embodied that idea.
0:05:52 But now all of a sudden you have a GPS chip in the phone,
0:05:55 you can locate riders and drivers with an algorithm.
0:05:57 So that’s an example of something very empowering.
0:06:01 The second thing we wanna see in an inflection is,
0:06:02 who does it empower?
0:06:03 Who cares?
0:06:05 And in the case of the iPhone 4S,
0:06:08 a lot of people care ’cause a lot of people have smartphones.
0:06:11 And so the potential surface area of the empowerment
0:06:13 is very high because if you believe
0:06:15 that smartphones will keep happening
0:06:17 and they’ll keep having GPS chips in them,
0:06:19 then potentially that’s hundreds of millions
0:06:21 if not billions of people someday.
0:06:25 And then the third aspect of the inflection is,
0:06:27 I call it the empowerment conditions.
0:06:31 And so we’ve had nuclear power since the ’40s,
0:06:33 but we haven’t built a nuclear power plant
0:06:35 in the United States since the 1970s.
0:06:37 And so just because you have a power
0:06:39 doesn’t mean you’re gonna use it or be allowed to use it.
0:06:41 And there might be political factors,
0:06:43 there might be trust factors,
0:06:44 there could be a lot of reasons
0:06:47 that people don’t decide to adopt it.
0:06:49 So those are the three things I look for.
0:06:50 What’s the magnitude of the empowerment?
0:06:52 Who does it empower?
0:06:54 And under what conditions will people decide
0:06:55 to take advantage of it?
0:06:58 And under what conditions will they decide not to?
0:06:59 And if you can get all three of those things
0:07:02 going your way as a founder,
0:07:05 now it’s kind of like a rock and David slingshot
0:07:06 against Goliath, right?
0:07:09 Now you have something that you can bring to the party
0:07:11 that changes the subject.
0:07:14 – When I read your book and I read that concept,
0:07:18 I thought to myself, oh my God, this is such a high fence.
0:07:23 In a sense, you’re saying that every successful startup
0:07:27 either caused or significantly jumped on an inflection.
0:07:31 And I gotta tell you, I see a lot of startups
0:07:36 that I would hardly affiliate them with truly an inflection.
0:07:39 So are you that tough?
0:07:41 I mean, if somebody shows up at flood gate
0:07:45 and they just have something better, better,
0:07:47 do you just throw them out the door?
0:07:48 – Well, I don’t throw them out the door.
0:07:50 I wish them well, right?
0:07:52 But what I say to them is, look,
0:07:55 do you want to pursue an idea that has outlier,
0:07:58 unbounded upside potential or not?
0:08:01 And if you’re not harnessing an inflection
0:08:02 in your startup idea,
0:08:06 you’re competing in somebody else’s sandbox.
0:08:09 So the mistake most startups make is they say,
0:08:11 I want to go after big market.
0:08:14 And that makes sense on the surface
0:08:17 because big markets have lots of customers and revenue.
0:08:20 But the problem is that the founder often unwittingly
0:08:23 buys into a context, which is the market
0:08:26 as it’s defined as the market.
0:08:28 And if the market’s already defined,
0:08:30 then somebody’s defined it.
0:08:32 And that person has the advantage over you
0:08:35 because they get to define the discussion that occurs
0:08:37 and they already have the advantages of the incumbency.
0:08:40 And so therefore, it’s kind of like
0:08:41 if you’re competing over territory
0:08:43 that’s a tiny little municipality
0:08:45 and an already discovered thing,
0:08:47 you’re not gonna have as big of an upside
0:08:49 as if you’re Lewis and Clark mapping
0:08:51 the Louisiana Purchase territory
0:08:55 and discovering the undiscovered land.
0:08:58 And so I’m not interested in the total existing
0:09:00 or total available market.
0:09:01 I’m interested in the total future market.
0:09:04 I’m interested in a product that defines a future market
0:09:06 because it harnesses these inflections.
0:09:08 And so I just say to a founder, hey, look,
0:09:11 I’m not for everybody, but that’s what I’m in it for.
0:09:14 I’m trying to find startups that harness these inflections
0:09:17 in unconventional ways to create a product
0:09:20 that radically changes how people feel and act.
0:09:22 And to me, that’s where the startup wins
0:09:24 is when they do that.
0:09:25 There’s two ways to look at the future.
0:09:26 Do you believe it’s gonna be a new
0:09:28 and improved version of the present?
0:09:31 In which case the incumbents are gonna usually win that.
0:09:33 Or do you believe that the future is not gonna be able
0:09:35 to be reconciled with the present?
0:09:37 In which case the startup can win.
0:09:40 And by the way, you work for a guy who’s the master at this
0:09:42 and he did it even in a big company.
0:09:45 So like Steve Jobs, when he comes back to Apple,
0:09:48 everybody says, hey, you should license the Mac OS
0:09:51 and run it on Intel and you should have a clone market
0:09:54 just like Microsoft and IBM do and all this stuff.
0:09:56 Jobs didn’t do that.
0:09:59 Jobs always found a way to change the subject.
0:10:01 With the iPod, he found this inflection
0:10:03 in the sense of a tiny little hard disk
0:10:06 that he could put into a music player.
0:10:09 And with the iPhone, he waited until the technology was ready
0:10:11 that the touch screen was good enough
0:10:13 and that the power in the phone was good enough
0:10:16 that he could put Mac OS in a phone device.
0:10:20 But Jobs never competed by being better at something.
0:10:23 He always competed by showing up
0:10:24 with something radically different
0:10:26 and helping the rest of us understand
0:10:28 what was important about it.
0:10:30 And he did that by harnessing inflections.
0:10:32 He just naturally knew how to do that
0:10:34 because he knew that was his weapon
0:10:36 to sort of change the discussion.
0:10:39 – So let’s talk about what I consider
0:10:42 maybe the biggest inflection certainly in my career.
0:10:45 And I might argue in the history of mankind,
0:10:48 which is artificial intelligence.
0:10:53 And it seems to me that, you know, I use chat, GBT,
0:10:58 I use Claude, I use Perplexity, I use four or five LLMs.
0:11:01 And for the life of me, I cannot tell you why
0:11:04 I use one or over the other.
0:11:08 If you were to talk to the CEO of Claude or Perplexity
0:11:09 and you would tell them like,
0:11:12 listen, you’re just doing something better.
0:11:14 Maybe your model is better or something,
0:11:16 but you are not fundamentally changing.
0:11:19 How does Perplexity or Claude compete
0:11:22 against Gemini in Google?
0:11:26 I just don’t see how they differentiate.
0:11:27 – Yeah, it’s interesting.
0:11:30 And I love this question because it highlights
0:11:32 a real challenge I think right now,
0:11:35 which is yes, you want an inflection,
0:11:37 but you also want to have an insight.
0:11:39 It’s not enough to just have a powerful idea.
0:11:41 If a whole bunch of other people have
0:11:43 that same powerful idea,
0:11:47 then the opportunity gets somewhat competed away.
0:11:49 You want to be non-consensus and right.
0:11:51 So if we go back to the example of Lyft
0:11:54 and then we can relate it to AI, I suppose,
0:11:57 the iPhone 4S had an inflection
0:12:02 in terms of empowering people to locate riders and drivers.
0:12:06 But the founders of Lyft and Uber had to have the insight
0:12:07 that, oh, that means you could create
0:12:11 a transportation network that has network effects.
0:12:14 And that’s where the creativity of the founder comes in.
0:12:16 And now it’s obvious.
0:12:18 Now people are like ride-sharing, of course.
0:12:20 But at the time, it seemed crazy.
0:12:22 Like, who’s going to get in a stranger’s car?
0:12:23 They’re like, nobody’s going to do that.
0:12:24 That’s crazy.
0:12:27 Just like, who’s going to stay in a stranger’s house?
0:12:28 That’s crazy.
0:12:30 And so most of the great startups,
0:12:33 they have to have an insight because
0:12:35 if human beings are conditioned to like things,
0:12:37 and so if everybody likes your idea,
0:12:40 it’s too similar to what they already know,
0:12:42 which means it’s too much of an incremental improvement.
0:12:45 It’s too much competing on better versus different.
0:12:46 So the best startup ideas I’ve seen
0:12:50 have this quality of most people don’t like it at first
0:12:51 or don’t think it’s going to work
0:12:54 or they think it’s irrelevant.
0:12:56 But there’s a small subset of people who are like,
0:12:58 oh, my gosh, where have you been all my life?
0:12:59 I’ve seen the light.
0:13:00 This is amazing.
0:13:01 You want that.
0:13:03 You want to be non-consensus and right.
0:13:04 It’s not enough just to be right.
0:13:06 You have to be non-consensus and right.
0:13:10 So when I back to perplexity and Claude and these guys,
0:13:12 I don’t really think of them as startups
0:13:15 in the way that maybe you and I think of startups.
0:13:18 The way I think of perplexity and those guys
0:13:20 is I think of them more as like small versions
0:13:22 of big companies.
0:13:25 And if I think about those companies,
0:13:30 they’re not really trying to, in a capital efficient way,
0:13:34 create some asymmetrically radically difference.
0:13:36 They’re partnering with the big tech companies
0:13:38 to create scalable technology.
0:13:40 And I think it just happens to be
0:13:44 that right now, small versions of big tech companies.
0:13:47 But I don’t think of chat GPT and Claude and those guys
0:13:49 as like startup capitalists.
0:13:52 I think of them as probably someday a large division
0:13:53 of a big tech company.
0:13:55 We just don’t know which one yet.
0:13:58 In a sense, even though what they do is so exciting,
0:14:02 it sounds kind of boring when you put it that way.
0:14:03 I think what they’re doing is great.
0:14:06 I just don’t think of them as startup people
0:14:09 in the same way that I thought of the Lyft guys
0:14:10 or the Twitter folks, right?
0:14:12 I think of them as more like back in the day
0:14:14 when you’d have these joint ventures
0:14:17 between IBM and Apple or when you’d have big companies
0:14:18 spinning off divisions and stuff like that.
0:14:20 I think of it as more like that
0:14:23 than I think of it as classic startup capitalism.
0:14:28 – So with all this talk about the entrepreneurs,
0:14:31 the true entrepreneurs who are creating
0:14:34 or writing this inflection point,
0:14:37 I guess my big question for you, Mike,
0:14:41 is how do you separate the nutcases
0:14:42 from the pattern breakers?
0:14:45 Because at the time you hear some of these pitches,
0:14:48 you must think these people are nuts.
0:14:50 And then five years later, you say,
0:14:51 “Oh, they were so right.”
0:14:53 So how do you figure that out?
0:14:55 Who are the nutcases and who are the breakers?
0:14:57 – Yeah, and it’s funny, like some books
0:15:02 are born of experience and competence and expertise.
0:15:06 This book that I wrote started more out of embarrassment,
0:15:07 right?
0:15:08 I had passed on air bed and breakfast,
0:15:10 which became Airbnb.
0:15:13 And I would have made like thousands of times of money
0:15:15 if I’d done it.
0:15:17 And then I noticed that 80% of my exit profits
0:15:18 had come from pivots.
0:15:23 So Twitter had started as a podcasting company called Odio.
0:15:25 Twitch had started out as a terrible idea
0:15:27 called Justin.tv.
0:15:28 And so I’m looking at this and I’m like,
0:15:30 “What business am I even in here?
0:15:31 What am I doing?
0:15:32 Am I just throwing darts?
0:15:35 Should I just retire before I get exposed?”
0:15:36 And what I started to realize was
0:15:38 that these startup ideas that were working,
0:15:40 they were harnessing inflections
0:15:42 and they were non-consensus and right.
0:15:44 Now, here’s the tricky part,
0:15:45 and it gets to your question, I think,
0:15:48 which is when you’re non-consensus and right,
0:15:51 you don’t know that you’re right at first.
0:15:52 You only know that you’re non-consensus.
0:15:55 If you knew you were right, it would be too obvious.
0:15:57 And so the less obvious it is,
0:15:59 the less you can know for sure that you’re right.
0:16:03 So on some level, you have to try the idea.
0:16:04 You have to decide,
0:16:07 I don’t know if I’m 100% right yet,
0:16:10 but this is a non-consensus area that’s worth pursuing.
0:16:14 It’s worth my energy and time to figure out.
0:16:16 And if I’m not 100% right, I might pivot.
0:16:19 So how do you tell the difference?
0:16:21 What’s the right kind of crazy?
0:16:22 What’s the wrong kind of crazy?
0:16:25 The question I like to ask is,
0:16:27 is this from the future?
0:16:28 And I think William Gibson,
0:16:31 the cyberpunk author was right when he said
0:16:32 the future’s already here,
0:16:34 it’s just not evenly distributed.
0:16:37 For example, when Mark Andreessen worked
0:16:41 on the Mosaic browser at the University of Illinois,
0:16:44 he was in a supercomputer lab with a really fast network
0:16:45 and powerful computers.
0:16:49 His idea of what networks were gonna be
0:16:52 was a better version of the future
0:16:54 than Microsoft’s top-down or AOL
0:16:57 or the US government or AT&T or Time Warner’s view
0:16:58 of a tops-down network.
0:17:01 I think that the way you know
0:17:04 that a non-consensus idea is worth pursuing
0:17:07 is the authenticity of the founder
0:17:09 to that future that they’re pursuing.
0:17:11 I think that if you’re living in the future
0:17:13 before other people,
0:17:15 and you’re harnessing powerful inflections
0:17:17 before other people,
0:17:19 the odds that you’re gonna build the right thing
0:17:22 are much higher to be correct.
0:17:24 And so that your intuition about what to build
0:17:26 is far more likely to be right.
0:17:28 And so that’s what I really look for is,
0:17:31 I wanna know is this founder living in the future
0:17:33 for the rest of us?
0:17:36 Are they intrinsically motivated by that future?
0:17:39 Are they just pursuing what they think is hot?
0:17:43 And do they have insights about what to build
0:17:47 because of their authentic obsession with that future?
0:17:51 And I believe that that causes you to be more likely
0:17:53 to build the right thing,
0:17:55 but it also makes you more credible to early believers.
0:17:57 It causes other people to say,
0:18:00 hey, I agree that this guy Kawasaki guy
0:18:02 with this asius relational database here,
0:18:04 I think he’s noticed something
0:18:05 that others haven’t noticed.
0:18:07 And I wanna join that movement.
0:18:10 And I remember this from when you were a founder.
0:18:14 I think in your database at fourth dimension,
0:18:15 tell me if I’m wrong about this,
0:18:18 but your contacts, you would have a tag next to them.
0:18:21 And one of the tags was like true believer.
0:18:24 And Joe Lemont, my roommate college,
0:18:26 you had tagged him as a true believer.
0:18:29 And so that’s like these early startup markets
0:18:32 are animated by belief, not utility, right?
0:18:35 People buy from startups for aesthetic reasons,
0:18:36 not practical reasons.
0:18:38 And they do it because they co-create the future
0:18:39 with the founders.
0:18:42 It’s the early believers that do that with the founders.
0:18:45 And it’s the belief in a different
0:18:48 but aesthetically superior future
0:18:51 that drives people to move the present
0:18:53 to a different future together.
0:18:55 And so that’s what I’m looking for, right?
0:18:57 I want the idea that’s not consensus,
0:18:59 but I wanna believe that the person comes
0:19:02 by the idea honestly, that they come by it
0:19:06 by authentically pursuing a future that I can get mine.
0:19:08 (upbeat music)
0:19:27 – So today in artificial intelligence,
0:19:32 do you have any examples of this non-consensus
0:19:36 kind of inflection idea?
0:19:39 – Yeah, so I’d say that AI has been really challenging
0:19:42 for me because I see inflections every week,
0:19:46 but somebody shows up and says I have this great idea.
0:19:49 And I’m like, I would totally use that product,
0:19:52 but I don’t know why there’s not gonna be 10 just like it,
0:19:54 which means it doesn’t have enough of an insight.
0:19:57 So I’ll give an example of one that I think does.
0:20:00 So I’m involved with this company called Applied Intuition,
0:20:04 and they make autonomous vehicle simulation software
0:20:09 and software-defined platforms for the car companies.
0:20:12 And so let’s say your General Motors or Porsche
0:20:15 or you’re one of these big car companies,
0:20:19 Tesla has a software-defined car and you don’t really,
0:20:21 and you don’t really know how to build it,
0:20:23 and you don’t really know how to,
0:20:26 the electric vehicles are more like a software platform
0:20:30 architecture versus a supply chain with a bajillion suppliers
0:20:33 that you’ve all done business with for 50 years.
0:20:36 And so Casar, you and I started this company
0:20:39 with some friends of his from Google.
0:20:41 And so they’d grown up in Detroit.
0:20:43 Casar had worked at General Motors
0:20:45 after graduating from undergrad.
0:20:48 Then he went to Silicon Valley, was at Google for a while,
0:20:50 worked on the Google Maps team,
0:20:52 knew all the guys at Waymo.
0:20:56 And so he can go to the CEO of a company like Porsche
0:20:59 and say, hey, if you wanna have a software-defined car,
0:21:01 I’m your only path to getting there.
0:21:03 You don’t have the internal talent.
0:21:06 I have the best developers in the world
0:21:07 tackling this problem.
0:21:11 And you can only get this talent if you do business with me.
0:21:14 And now is Sam Altman gonna release a new version of chat
0:21:15 GPT that does that?
0:21:17 No, right, because he’s not in the business
0:21:19 of creating software-defined cars.
0:21:22 Those are examples of businesses I like
0:21:24 because it involves deep technology,
0:21:29 but it involves a multidisciplinary approach.
0:21:30 You have to not just be good at the AI,
0:21:32 but you have to be able to speak the language
0:21:33 of the car companies.
0:21:36 And you have to be able to implement systems
0:21:38 at global enterprise scale
0:21:41 and help the customer reach the promised land.
0:21:44 And it’s very strategic to these car companies.
0:21:45 They know they have to move in the direction
0:21:47 of being a software-defined car.
0:21:50 And so that’s the kind of stuff I’ve been seeing lately
0:21:52 that I get excited about.
0:21:55 But what if somebody says there’s only 25 major car companies
0:21:56 in the world?
0:21:59 How big is the market, Mike?
0:22:00 Yeah, and in that case,
0:22:03 you have to be able to get giant contracts, right?
0:22:05 You have to have individual customers
0:22:07 in the hundreds of millions of dollars
0:22:09 to make that business work.
0:22:10 But you can, right?
0:22:12 Bosch doesn’t have that many customers in the car industry,
0:22:15 but they probably do about $50 billion a year
0:22:16 selling to the car companies.
0:22:18 And so if you become the complete answer
0:22:20 to something that company cares about,
0:22:22 you can do pretty well.
0:22:25 But companies aren’t just gonna give $100 million
0:22:27 to just some bozo, right?
0:22:29 They’re not gonna give you a giant contract
0:22:31 unless they think you can really do the job
0:22:32 and you’re the only guy that can do it.
0:22:35 And so you have to have a particular set of skills
0:22:38 that people buy into, or it’s gonna be hard.
0:22:41 I don’t wanna really catalyze PTSD in you,
0:22:43 but can you discuss the cases
0:22:46 where you had a false positive?
0:22:49 In other words, that you thought someone was a pattern breaker,
0:22:52 but after all, didn’t?
0:22:54 Oh, sure, in fact, it’s most of the time.
0:22:57 My business is very strange.
0:23:01 Warren Buffett, I’ve heard him say rule number one,
0:23:02 don’t lose money.
0:23:05 Rule number two, don’t forget rule number one.
0:23:08 For me, rule number one is don’t pass on Airbnb.
0:23:09 If I had been wrong about Airbnb,
0:23:11 I could only lose 100% my money.
0:23:12 But if you’re right,
0:23:15 you can sometimes make a thousand times or more.
0:23:18 Buffett talks about his margin of safety.
0:23:22 What I care about is my margin of asymmetric upside, right?
0:23:24 I care about how big could it be
0:23:26 in the rare event that it works.
0:23:28 So I have this really weird way
0:23:30 of coming up with an investment thesis.
0:23:33 I’m like, okay, given that it’s 80% likely I’m wrong,
0:23:36 how big does it need to be if I’m right?
0:23:39 And if it can’t be big enough,
0:23:41 no matter what the odds are,
0:23:42 I just can’t invest in it
0:23:45 because I have to get paid for the risk I take, right?
0:23:47 I’m taking crazy high risk.
0:23:48 And so I’m like, you know,
0:23:51 unlike say Buffett who never wants to lose money,
0:23:53 I’m saying to myself, okay,
0:23:57 given that it’s 80% likely I’m gonna lose money,
0:24:00 in the 20% case, how big does it need to get?
0:24:02 Which is just a different way of showing up in the world, right?
0:24:05 It’s a different way of thinking about success.
0:24:10 So I don’t look at risk as the chance of success or failure.
0:24:12 I think of risk through an expected value lens.
0:24:15 I’m like, okay, in the 20% case it’s right,
0:24:16 how big does it need to be
0:24:18 to be a good expected value bet,
0:24:20 even though it’s risky.
0:24:23 – What if at the moment of making an investment,
0:24:25 it’s really not an assessment
0:24:28 of how big can something be
0:24:32 because you don’t know what this company’s gonna pivot to,
0:24:33 right?
0:24:35 So when you talk about Justin TV,
0:24:40 you couldn’t do an analysis of how big Justin TV would be,
0:24:44 but when Justin TV pivoted to Twitch, then you could,
0:24:47 but that wasn’t at the point of investment.
0:24:50 So how do you factor in the pivots?
0:24:52 – Yeah, and so the way I do it is,
0:24:55 I like to say, I don’t wanna study
0:24:57 the total addressable market
0:24:59 for the reason that you mentioned, right?
0:25:03 What I believe is that companies that harness inflections
0:25:04 define new markets.
0:25:07 And I can’t size a future market, right?
0:25:09 Future hasn’t happened yet.
0:25:11 So what I need to do is it reminds me in physics,
0:25:14 you have potential energy and mechanical energy.
0:25:18 And what I’m looking for is a future potential market.
0:25:21 And I believe that big future potential markets happen
0:25:23 from powerful inflections.
0:25:26 So the more powerful the inflection is,
0:25:29 the more capacity it has to change the future.
0:25:32 And the more capacity it has to impact the future
0:25:33 in a broad way.
0:25:36 And so what I do is I take a leap of faith.
0:25:40 I say, based upon this inflection, based upon this insight,
0:25:42 and based on the founders’ authentic match
0:25:44 to the future they’re pursuing,
0:25:46 I think the odds are in my favor.
0:25:50 I don’t have to know exactly how the dots will connect.
0:25:53 I only have to think that the odds are highly probable
0:25:56 that the founder will find a way to connect those dots.
0:25:57 I love this job saying,
0:25:59 you can only connect the dots looking backwards.
0:26:01 And I think that’s what he was getting at, right?
0:26:06 You’re pursuing opportunities that are ambiguous,
0:26:09 but that doesn’t mean they’re not a risk worth taking.
0:26:11 And so you’re betting on the founder’s ability
0:26:15 to navigate their insight to the right product proposition.
0:26:17 To the example that you gave with Twitch,
0:26:18 JustinTV is a terrible idea,
0:26:20 but they navigated the idea to Twitch,
0:26:22 which was a great idea.
0:26:24 But the inflections, the underlying inflections
0:26:26 were always there from the very beginning.
0:26:28 – Now, what about false negatives
0:26:31 where you turned down somebody and they turned out great?
0:26:33 What have you learned about why you made
0:26:35 false negative decisions?
0:26:37 – To me, those are the biggest errors in my business.
0:26:40 Passing on air bed and breakfast at the time
0:26:41 was a terrible idea.
0:26:43 I’ve passed on other good ones too.
0:26:45 We passed on Pinterest early.
0:26:49 We passed on a company called Anaplan, passed on Figma.
0:26:52 And so whenever we pass on these,
0:26:54 in fact, whether I saw them or not,
0:26:58 I keep this database if I call them 100 bag or startups.
0:27:01 So I have this list of a little over a hundred companies
0:27:02 and I study them.
0:27:05 I create a time capsule of what it looked like
0:27:07 at the seed round.
0:27:10 So I have the seed deck from Pinterest and Dropbox
0:27:13 and Airbnb and all these companies.
0:27:14 And I look at it and I say to myself,
0:27:17 okay, where was the signal?
0:27:20 What was the thing that would have told you to say yes?
0:27:24 And why did I have a failure of imagination and say no?
0:27:27 And with Airbnb, my failure of imagination was,
0:27:30 I thought people aren’t gonna want to stay
0:27:31 in a stranger’s house.
0:27:32 That’s crazy, right?
0:27:34 And it was around the time that Craigslist killer,
0:27:35 I was like, somebody’s gonna get killed
0:27:36 in one of these things.
0:27:38 And it was a screwed up meeting.
0:27:40 Brian couldn’t get the site to work in our meeting.
0:27:42 He had a room full of cereal boxes.
0:27:44 He was trying to sell me Obama O’s
0:27:45 and Captain McCain Crunch.
0:27:48 And so that’s the other thing I learned
0:27:50 is sometimes the pitch doesn’t go well,
0:27:52 but that doesn’t mean it’s not gonna succeed.
0:27:55 So I try to go back in time.
0:27:56 The other thing I’ve learned, Guy,
0:27:59 is that even the founders misremember how to happen
0:28:00 a lot of the time, right?
0:28:01 And so when it works,
0:28:04 everybody remembers the stuff they knew
0:28:05 and the good decisions they made.
0:28:08 But a lot of times they know things that weren’t so
0:28:10 at the time.
0:28:13 And so you have to be almost like Joe Colombo detective,
0:28:14 right?
0:28:16 You do a forensic analysis of what it looked like
0:28:17 at the time.
0:28:19 And then you got to ask yourself,
0:28:21 do any of the frameworks that we use
0:28:23 to evaluate these things,
0:28:25 would they have been useful here?
0:28:26 Would they have caused us to say yes,
0:28:28 or are we just breathing our own fumes?
0:28:31 Do we believe a bunch of stuff about what’s true
0:28:32 in the world that just didn’t true
0:28:35 or doesn’t capture the reality of this situation?
0:28:36 That’s what I try to do.
0:28:40 I try to go back in time and really understand it.
0:28:42 There’s a lot of things you can do to understand it.
0:28:44 You can look at the initial seed pitch deck
0:28:45 and you can say,
0:28:47 is that what the product ended up being?
0:28:49 Or did it end up being something different?
0:28:51 How long did it take for them to get to a million revenue,
0:28:53 10 million, 100 million revenue?
0:28:54 What caused that?
0:28:56 What kind of business model was it?
0:28:59 What was the defensible mode that they created?
0:29:02 You could start to kind of look for the signals
0:29:04 that would have clued you in that,
0:29:06 “Hey, this is a bet we’re taking.”
0:29:09 – I have not done what you just described
0:29:14 in any form as organized or rational or careful as you,
0:29:16 but my conclusion,
0:29:20 the more I am in Silicon Valley and around tech startups,
0:29:24 my conclusion is coming to that the older I get,
0:29:25 the less I know,
0:29:27 and I could almost make the case
0:29:29 that you should just invest in the stupidest things
0:29:31 that come across your deck
0:29:34 because that’s the ones that’s gonna succeed.
0:29:37 I cannot figure this out.
0:29:39 I would have never invested in,
0:29:40 as you say,
0:29:41 you’re gonna let a stranger stay in a house,
0:29:44 you’re gonna let a stranger rent your car,
0:29:46 you’re gonna let a stranger ride with you,
0:29:48 you would get in a stranger’s car,
0:29:50 get in a stranger’s house,
0:29:53 you would take a stranger’s tour or rental.
0:29:56 I would do none of those and look at that.
0:29:59 I’d be zero for three right there.
0:30:00 – Yeah, it’s tough, right?
0:30:02 And it’s a humbling game for sure.
0:30:04 And the other thing about it,
0:30:07 guy is like massive success is one Airbnb away, right?
0:30:11 You get one of those every 10 years, you’re really good.
0:30:12 It is a humbling game,
0:30:16 but like for me, it’s just so darn interesting, right?
0:30:19 We know a whole lot about business now,
0:30:20 but a hundred years ago,
0:30:23 there were no org charts and there wasn’t accounting
0:30:26 and there wasn’t corporate strategy as we know it.
0:30:28 There wasn’t Michael Porter Five Forces,
0:30:30 there wasn’t any of this stuff.
0:30:32 All that stuff had to be figured out.
0:30:34 And I think we’re at the beginning of infinity
0:30:37 of really understanding startup capitalism.
0:30:39 And so I just think a startup capitalist
0:30:40 is a different type of capitalist.
0:30:44 They don’t create value by persistently compounding
0:30:46 an advantage like a big company does.
0:30:50 They create value by doing something radically different.
0:30:51 And that’s another way to show up in the world
0:30:53 and be valuable.
0:30:56 And so I just think there’s so much to learn about that.
0:30:58 When I think that just like there’s a process
0:31:01 for building a great company that’s a going concern,
0:31:05 I think that there are processes and patterns
0:31:07 that can be understood about what it takes
0:31:10 to create a great startup that changes the future.
0:31:12 And there’s so little that’s known about it.
0:31:14 So we’re having this conversation right now, right?
0:31:16 It seems kind of random, right?
0:31:19 It seems like trying to predict the weather or something.
0:31:21 But to me, that’s what makes it so interesting
0:31:23 is it’s so hard to figure out
0:31:25 that it’s worth trying to figure out.
0:31:28 – I tell you, Mike, as I get older and older,
0:31:30 my strategy is get lucky,
0:31:34 but get lucky is not a good strategy.
0:31:35 – That’s pretty good sometimes.
0:31:40 – So I’m gonna take you down a rat hole
0:31:42 and you can tell me we don’t wanna go down this rat hole,
0:31:45 but you have the data to know these people
0:31:46 better than most people.
0:31:51 So I look at the current Mark Andreessen,
0:31:56 the current Elon Musk, the current Mark Zuckerberg.
0:31:59 And I ask myself, what happens to these people?
0:32:01 These people started off trying to make the world
0:32:05 a better place, democratizing, computing,
0:32:07 freedom of information, all that.
0:32:10 And now they turn into these MAGA people
0:32:13 and you got any thoughts about what happens?
0:32:17 Is it age or is it when you start being worth
0:32:19 a billion dollars or more or something just happens in you?
0:32:22 What happens to these people?
0:32:23 – Let’s see.
0:32:26 So I’m gonna tread carefully on the political questions.
0:32:27 – Why?
0:32:29 – But I mean, I guess we could talk about it some.
0:32:33 But one thing that I’ve observed in a lot of these folks
0:32:36 is that they tend to be disagreeable.
0:32:39 When you think about it, a startup
0:32:41 is a fundamentally provocative act.
0:32:43 It’s a disagreement with the present.
0:32:46 You’re showing up as a founder and you’re saying,
0:32:49 hey, the way you think the world is, I’m challenging that.
0:32:52 The way you think the world is, that’s not how it’s gonna be.
0:32:53 It’s not gonna be about taxis anymore.
0:32:54 It’s gonna be about ride sharing.
0:32:57 It’s not gonna be about cars with drivers.
0:32:58 It’s gonna be autonomous vehicles.
0:33:00 It’s not gonna be gas, ice cars.
0:33:02 It’s gonna be electric vehicles.
0:33:04 Yes, I am gonna start a company
0:33:06 that blasts rockets into outer space.
0:33:08 Even though my competition is the US government
0:33:11 and they have an infinite supply of money that they can print.
0:33:14 These people tend to be disagreeable.
0:33:16 And by that, I don’t just mean being a jerk.
0:33:19 They tend to just be willing to disagree.
0:33:23 Justin Kahn, before he started Justin TV,
0:33:25 he started a calendaring company
0:33:28 and Google launches a Google calendar.
0:33:31 And Justin decides to sell the company on eBay.
0:33:33 And I was like, I didn’t even know it’s possible
0:33:34 to sell a company on eBay.
0:33:36 Full distinct for $250,000.
0:33:38 Some of the disagreeableness is just the willingness
0:33:42 to be unconventional in how you pursue your ideas
0:33:43 and your mission.
0:33:47 I think that Elon is naturally disagreeable.
0:33:48 There are aspects of disagreeableness
0:33:50 that people don’t like,
0:33:52 but if you make the diamond,
0:33:54 not have the properties of the diamond,
0:33:56 it won’t cut glass anymore, right?
0:33:57 I think that most of these people
0:33:59 who create these outlier results,
0:34:01 they’re not normal people.
0:34:03 And they’re not normal in ways
0:34:05 that change the world for the better.
0:34:06 And they’re not normal in ways
0:34:08 that some people may not like.
0:34:11 But like Elon said on Saturday Night Live that time,
0:34:13 he’s like, I blast rockets into outer space.
0:34:16 I’m trying to change humanity.
0:34:18 Did you expect me to be a normal chill dude?
0:34:19 He’s just not gonna be.
0:34:21 That’s not who he is.
0:34:24 And so I’ve kind of learned that these people
0:34:26 don’t end up fitting neatly into a box
0:34:28 that you wish they would fit into.
0:34:30 And I imagine that you’ve known some founders,
0:34:33 you knew Steve Jobs way better than I ever would have.
0:34:35 But I imagine there were things that Steve did
0:34:38 that probably maybe you wish he didn’t do.
0:34:39 But it is what it is.
0:34:41 It comes with a territory.
0:35:02 I wanna end up with kind of a,
0:35:05 just like a quick series of questions.
0:35:07 I’m assuming that many entrepreneurs
0:35:08 are gonna listen to this podcast
0:35:11 and your legitimate successful VC,
0:35:14 they probably would love to be in front of you.
0:35:16 So just some quick questions,
0:35:19 very tactical and practical for an entrepreneur.
0:35:21 So question number one is,
0:35:23 how do people get to a VC?
0:35:26 Do they like send out 2,000 emails?
0:35:28 But how do people get to you?
0:35:31 The best way is to get a referral
0:35:33 from somebody that we respect.
0:35:36 And people tend to trivialize that discussion.
0:35:38 So people tend to say that just means
0:35:40 that whoever has the best network wins
0:35:42 and there’s gonna be certain people
0:35:45 who get excluded from being entrepreneurs.
0:35:46 But there’s a reality guy,
0:35:49 which is if you’re starting a startup,
0:35:52 you have to convince people to join your movement.
0:35:55 And if you’re sitting out there in the future by yourself
0:35:56 and nobody joins your movement,
0:35:58 that future is not gonna happen.
0:36:01 And so to me, it’s not a function
0:36:03 of how well connected you are.
0:36:06 Getting an intro from someone I respect
0:36:10 is a function of your ability to persuade somebody credible
0:36:12 that your future matters.
0:36:14 And that other people are gonna wanna join you
0:36:15 in that future.
0:36:17 And so, yeah, something could come over the transom,
0:36:19 but how am I supposed to know?
0:36:21 How am I supposed to know how good they are?
0:36:25 I’ve gotta find some way to validate
0:36:29 that their ideas about the future make sense
0:36:30 to credible people.
0:36:32 And by the way, it doesn’t have to be like Reed Hoffman
0:36:34 or Mark Andreessen that makes the intro.
0:36:37 It could be you’re living in a certain future
0:36:39 in synthetic bio,
0:36:42 and it’s a scientist who’s very credible in that area
0:36:44 is like this is one of the most amazing things
0:36:45 I’ve ever seen.
0:36:49 And so I just need some signal from the future
0:36:53 that’s valid, that validates the idea and the insight.
0:36:55 I’d say that’s the key thing.
0:36:59 If your insight is starting to get traction,
0:37:01 that should be a solvable problem, right?
0:37:02 There should always be somebody credible
0:37:05 who embraces the idea, who’ll make the intro.
0:37:09 So I’d say that that’s the primary thing that we look for.
0:37:11 – Okay, next question.
0:37:12 What do you want in the pitch?
0:37:15 What’s the content of the pitch?
0:37:18 – Okay, yeah, so I’ll give some super tactical advice on that.
0:37:22 All things being equal, I like to say slide number one,
0:37:26 say what you do as if I know literally nothing.
0:37:29 You don’t say we’re Airbnb,
0:37:34 we’re a marketplace for unused residential housing space.
0:37:35 I don’t know what that is.
0:37:38 That’s jibber jabber jargon.
0:37:40 What you want to say is something like,
0:37:44 we’re Airbnb, we let you read an extra room in your house.
0:37:46 And here’s why that’s important.
0:37:49 A lot of times you’ll get a pitch
0:37:53 and your 10 slides in, I don’t know what the startup does still.
0:37:56 And that’s hard to process, right?
0:37:58 And I’m sympathetic to founders on this front
0:38:01 because they get advice, they get bad advice.
0:38:03 They get advice that says millennials are a thing,
0:38:05 put that slide up front.
0:38:08 Marketplaces are a thing, talk about marketplaces.
0:38:10 And I’m 10 minutes in, I don’t know what you do yet.
0:38:14 So slide number one is what do we do is if I know nothing?
0:38:17 Slide number two is what do I know
0:38:19 about the future that’s not obvious?
0:38:22 Is really your chance to convey the insight?
0:38:25 Slide number three is anything impressive
0:38:28 that’s happened so far objectively?
0:38:32 Customers, patents, letters of intent,
0:38:37 just some proof that people in the world care about this thing
0:38:40 and that they’re joining the movement and signing up.
0:38:41 What I find is that the founder
0:38:46 can get those three things right quickly, 10 minutes in.
0:38:49 Now the venture capitalist is leaning forward.
0:38:52 Now, it’s funny, I think we rift on this earlier.
0:38:56 What happens too often is founders get bad advice.
0:38:59 And so they create what I like to call a Franken Deck.
0:39:01 And so what happens is they’ll pitch their advisor
0:39:03 and the advisor wants the best for them.
0:39:05 They’ll say, hey, VCs love marketplaces
0:39:07 ’cause they have network effects.
0:39:09 Don’t say you rent an extra room in your house.
0:39:12 Say we’re marketplace for residential real estate
0:39:15 ’cause marketplace, hot network effect,
0:39:17 those are the real estate big.
0:39:18 Okay, put that in there.
0:39:20 And then the founder say, oh yeah, you’re right,
0:39:21 okay, I’ll do that.
0:39:23 And then they’ll say the other thing is
0:39:25 this is an appealing service for millennials.
0:39:27 So you should have a few slides up front
0:39:29 that talk about the importance of millennials
0:39:31 and handcrafted experiences, all that stuff.
0:39:34 And you haven’t talked about the total available market yet.
0:39:35 So you ought to talk about that.
0:39:37 You need a few slides on that.
0:39:39 You need a few slides on the real estate market,
0:39:41 residential– – You need AI in there too.
0:39:43 – Today you’d say you need AI.
0:39:46 And so then what happens is you go in
0:39:50 with this deck of 20 slides and you pitch somebody
0:39:54 and the VC passes partly ’cause they don’t know what you do.
0:39:57 And then they give a reason in their pass note
0:39:58 for why they passed.
0:40:00 And it’s like, oh man, there’s another objection.
0:40:02 I better have a slide that counters that objection.
0:40:04 And so before you know what you have 30 slides,
0:40:07 each of which is designed to anticipate
0:40:09 and counter an objection.
0:40:11 And what I like to say to founders is
0:40:14 the only people that matter are the people
0:40:15 who believe your insight.
0:40:17 If a VC doesn’t believe your insight,
0:40:18 they’re not gonna invest.
0:40:21 There’s no way to overcome their objection.
0:40:24 They’re not gonna invest no matter what until it’s proven.
0:40:27 What you wanna find is the subset of people in this world
0:40:28 who believe what you believe.
0:40:30 That’s true of customers, it’s true of investors,
0:40:32 true of early employees.
0:40:35 Don’t waste any urges of energy on anybody else.
0:40:37 And the problem with the Franken Deck is
0:40:40 the person who was ready to believe doesn’t know what you do
0:40:45 because they got confused by just how convoluted
0:40:46 the pitch was.
0:40:50 And that person was gonna be much more likely to say yes,
0:40:51 if you just show up and say,
0:40:54 we let you rent an extra room in your house,
0:40:57 you’re gonna be able to do this because Facebook Connect
0:41:00 lets hosts and guests know who each other are
0:41:02 and people are used to online reviews
0:41:03 and everybody’s connected.
0:41:06 Millennials want these kinds of experiences and all that.
0:41:08 That’s the conversation you need to have
0:41:10 with the person who’s prepared to believe.
0:41:12 And the person who’s not prepared to believe doesn’t matter
0:41:14 because they’re not gonna do anything anyway.
0:41:16 And so their opinion doesn’t matter either.
0:41:18 This is the important point.
0:41:20 The source of their objection doesn’t matter
0:41:22 because they’re not gonna join your movement.
0:41:24 Only those who are prepared to join your movement
0:41:27 have valid input about your strategy.
0:41:29 And that’s really important I find,
0:41:31 is to say, hey, I’m only gonna spend time
0:41:34 with the people I think are ready to move with me
0:41:38 and I’m gonna bias my feedback collection
0:41:39 to what they say.
0:41:42 – I gotta tell you Mike, I gotta believe
0:41:44 that many entrepreneurs listening to this,
0:41:47 their heads are basically exploding
0:41:51 because they’ve been hammered and I gotta take feedback.
0:41:54 I gotta check off all the boxes and I gotta do all this.
0:41:57 And basically you’re saying you got them in three slides
0:41:59 and if you don’t get them in three slides,
0:42:00 you’re never gonna get them.
0:42:03 So just cut your losses, stop wasting time
0:42:07 and go find somebody who does believe the three slides.
0:42:10 – I think so and some people may disagree with me here,
0:42:13 but when you think about it, it’s inspiring.
0:42:16 When you realize that great ideas
0:42:20 are usually disliked by most at first.
0:42:21 By the way, that’s true of everything.
0:42:24 That’s true of Euclidean geometry.
0:42:27 It’s, you know, Copernicus, when he says the sun
0:42:29 is at the center, not the earth,
0:42:33 the pope puts him under house arrest and says,
0:42:35 hey, maybe you ought to change your opinion about that.
0:42:37 A lot of the great ideas in human history,
0:42:39 you know, people when Einstein proposed
0:42:40 the general theory of relativity,
0:42:43 they’re like, this guy sounds like he’s smoking weed.
0:42:47 That’s one of the most abstract, crazy things I’ve ever heard.
0:42:52 And so most great ideas are heretical at first.
0:42:57 And actually, if most people don’t like your startup idea,
0:42:59 that’s a positive sign.
0:43:03 If everybody liked your startup idea, it’s too incremental.
0:43:06 When you realize that, it’s inspiring, right?
0:43:09 When you realize, hey, given that most people
0:43:12 are gonna dislike my idea, who cares about them?
0:43:13 They don’t matter.
0:43:16 They’re not creating the future, I am.
0:43:19 I and my early believers are gonna create the future.
0:43:21 They’re not gonna have a say in it.
0:43:23 And so I need to go find who those people are
0:43:25 and not waste a single urge of energy
0:43:27 on anybody who’s not those people.
0:43:29 And so what we wanna do is we wanna find the people
0:43:32 who say, oh my gosh, where have you been all my life?
0:43:33 This is amazing.
0:43:36 I can’t wait to join your call to adventure
0:43:38 and go do this with you.
0:43:39 That’s what you’re looking for.
0:43:42 And the people who aren’t ready to accept your call
0:43:44 to adventure, their objections don’t matter
0:43:47 because they don’t apply to your adventure, right?
0:43:50 Only objections that matter are the objections
0:43:53 from fellow believers because they help you see the future
0:43:54 in a more clear way.
0:43:59 – Mike, I have more questions,
0:44:02 but there’s no question I’m gonna ask
0:44:05 that’s gonna elicit an answer that is a better way
0:44:08 to end this podcast than what you just said.
0:44:10 So we’re gonna (laughs)
0:44:11 – Okay, I like it.
0:44:14 – I call this the casino theory
0:44:16 and I often apply it to surfing.
0:44:20 So I’ll tell you the casino theory of surfing and podcasting.
0:44:23 So sometimes when you go to Las Vegas
0:44:25 and you have 50 bucks in your pocket,
0:44:29 you go to a casino and you bet it on blackjack or craps
0:44:33 or whatever and just magically you have $500.
0:44:37 So my casino theory is that most people have that $500
0:44:40 and they keep playing until they lose it.
0:44:42 But if you’re smart and you got lucky,
0:44:45 you got 500 bucks, you walk out, right?
0:44:49 You quit gambling, you walk out with the 500.
0:44:51 So the casino theory of surfing is
0:44:53 after you caught a great wave,
0:44:54 don’t try to keep catching waves,
0:44:56 you’re just gonna get disappointed.
0:44:58 And the casino theory of podcasting is
0:45:01 when you had a great answer like that,
0:45:02 you don’t ask more questions,
0:45:05 you just quit now and you end the podcast
0:45:07 ’cause that was a great answer
0:45:09 and all these entrepreneurs are on the world.
0:45:11 They’re putting pieces of their brain back in their head
0:45:14 because you just said something that’s contrary
0:45:16 to what they’ve heard for the last two years.
0:45:20 So that’s the way to end this podcast, Mike.
0:45:22 – All right, I appreciate your taking the time guy
0:45:24 and it’s great to see you
0:45:26 and congrats on all the success you’ve had
0:45:30 and many types of ways and scenarios, right?
0:45:34 You’ve been a polymath when it comes to the tech industry.
0:45:35 It was great to see you.
0:45:38 – I wish I could say that I caused
0:45:42 or really capitalized on inflections
0:45:47 as much as some of the stories that you wrote about.
0:45:49 And actually, if I think about it,
0:45:50 at the start of my career,
0:45:53 I got on the Macintosh inflection
0:45:54 and at the end of my career,
0:45:56 I got on the Canva inflection.
0:45:58 And I gotta tell you, in both cases,
0:46:01 I consider myself lucky, not smart.
0:46:02 – Yeah, and it’s interesting.
0:46:04 Probably you don’t wanna sell past the order
0:46:06 like what you said, you wanna end on the right note.
0:46:09 But the other thing about this surfing thing is,
0:46:11 if you go after the right waves,
0:46:13 you only have to be right once.
0:46:15 And so that’s the way I look at it,
0:46:17 is you wanna pursue opportunities
0:46:19 where you only have to be right once
0:46:22 because you’ll be spectacularly right.
0:46:24 The only way to really lose in entrepreneurship
0:46:26 is to lose your time.
0:46:28 Pursuing something that you realize
0:46:30 in hindsight wasn’t worthy of your talent and time.
0:46:32 And so we wanna go after ideas
0:46:35 that are waves that are worth surfing.
0:46:36 Because like you said,
0:46:38 if you catch the ideal wave, you did it.
0:46:39 – Thank you, Mike.
0:46:42 That was just a remarkable interview.
0:46:43 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:46:46 This is remarkable people and all you entrepreneurs
0:46:50 who just had all your myths exploded.
0:46:51 I empathize with you,
0:46:54 but better you hear it now from Guy and Mike
0:46:56 than you hear it two years from now
0:46:59 after all these rejections and disappointments.
0:47:02 So that’s how to be a remarkable entrepreneur.
0:47:05 I wanna thank the rest of the remarkable people team.
0:47:08 That’s of course, Matt as a Nismar producer,
0:47:10 Tessa Nismar researcher,
0:47:14 Luis Magana, Fallon Yates, and Alexis Nishimuro.
0:47:16 We are the remarkable people team
0:47:18 and we are hell bent for leather
0:47:21 on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:47:25 Until next time, Mahalo and Aloha.
0:47:30 (orchestral music)
0:47:32 This is remarkable people.

0:00:10 [MUSIC]
0:00:13 Hello, and welcome to the NVIDIA AI podcast.
0:00:15 I’m your host, Noah Kravitz.
0:00:19 Digital humans and AI agents are poised to be big news this year.
0:00:21 They’re already making waves, in fact.
0:00:26 At CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Logitech G’s Stream Labs unveiled its intelligence
0:00:31 streaming assistant, powered by technologies from in-world AI and NVIDIA.
0:00:35 The intelligence streaming assistant is an AI agent designed to provide real-time
0:00:39 commentary during downtime and amplify excitement during high stakes moments
0:00:41 like boss fights or chases.
0:00:45 The collaboration brings together Stream Labs expertise in live streaming tools,
0:00:49 NVIDIA ace technology for digital humans, including AI vision models that can
0:00:53 understand what’s happening on screen, and in-world’s advanced generative AI
0:00:57 capabilities for perception, cognition, and adaptive output.
0:00:58 But what are digital humans?
0:01:00 Where are they going to be used?
0:01:03 And where are they going to make an impact in the enterprise and
0:01:05 in gaming and entertainment in particular?
0:01:08 And how does a designer design in the age of digital humans,
0:01:10 agentic AI, and beyond?
0:01:14 Chris Covert, director of product experiences in in-world AI,
0:01:18 who’s press release, by the way, or blog post, I paraphrased heartily from in
0:01:21 that introduction, so credit to.
0:01:24 Chris is here to dive into these points and more as we talk about some of the
0:01:28 technology that I think is really poised to really make a big impact this year
0:01:33 going forward and kind of shape this new area of digital experience for all of us
0:01:35 in what we’ll broadly call the AI age.
0:01:36 But at any rate, Chris is here.
0:01:41 So Chris, thank you so much for joining the AI podcast and welcome.
0:01:42 Thank you for having me today.
0:01:45 It’s a pleasure to be here, not only as a longtime partner of NVIDIA,
0:01:49 but also as a huge fan of your recent announcements in AI at CES this year as
0:01:53 well, genuinely amazing time to be talking about AI in this space.
0:01:54 It really is.
0:01:55 And so you were at the show.
0:01:56 You were in Vegas.
0:01:57 Couldn’t make it personally.
0:01:58 I’ll be doing dice.
0:02:00 I’ll be doing GDC, but our team was there.
0:02:02 We worked on the project.
0:02:03 All right, so let’s get into it.
0:02:08 Tell us a bit about in-world, in-world AI for listeners who may not know.
0:02:11 We can get deeper into the assistant in particular,
0:02:14 a little later in the conversation, if that’s cool, just so you can kind of set
0:02:18 the stage for all of us about what it is that we’re going to be talking about.
0:02:20 Yeah, so I, you know, extremely biased.
0:02:22 I have the best job in the world.
0:02:25 And in-world, we make the leading AI engine for video games.
0:02:28 And I get to work with the most creative minds in the industry,
0:02:31 most creative minds in the world of gaming and entertainment to answer the
0:02:35 question, how can we make fun more accessible to the people that make our
0:02:36 favorite experiences?
0:02:40 And I’m not going to tell you it sounds like a great job.
0:02:42 It is, it is.
0:02:43 And I’m not just blowing smoke here.
0:02:47 And we’ll definitely, as we go through this, you know, emphasize fun,
0:02:50 accessible in people, and why I think those are the most important here.
0:02:54 But in-world’s mission is to be that AI engine for this industry, right?
0:02:58 The more that the technology progresses, the lower the barrier
0:03:00 to entry to make AI experiences.
0:03:04 But we find there are still challenges, regardless of if you’re a studio
0:03:08 with a massive staff or you’re an AI kind of native company building
0:03:12 up these experiences from grassroots, that there’s a massive gap
0:03:14 between prototyping and deployment of AI systems.
0:03:19 And then to do that and find the fun for a user for an experience
0:03:20 is still incredibly challenging.
0:03:24 So we offer not only the platform, but the services to help you
0:03:26 create that fun in a deployable manner.
0:03:31 So kind of briefly run down maybe what you guys talked about at CES this year
0:03:34 and then we’ll put a pin in the assistant, like I said, and come back.
0:03:35 Yeah, that’s awesome.
0:03:38 So blog posts is out there, fantastic videos out there.
0:03:41 A lot of demonstrations of what happened, but succinctly, you know,
0:03:45 to plug the collaborative effort here in World NVIDIA and Streamlabs
0:03:50 got together for CES and we put to the test this, you know, streaming companion
0:03:52 that could not only act as a cohost to a streamer,
0:03:54 but also serve to support the creator in other ways,
0:03:58 like handling production for them on their stream as well.
0:04:01 We showed a demo of this happening at the conference, always a risk
0:04:04 because you’re playing in a big space with low, you know, internet bandwidth.
0:04:08 But we played this over Fortnite and the streamer, the demo where in this case
0:04:11 and their agentic cohost, you know, chatting during the game,
0:04:15 grilling each other for bad rounds, reacting to trends that are happening in chat,
0:04:17 cheering together when you manage to get kills.
0:04:21 But then interestingly enough, you know, when chat or when the streamer wants a replay,
0:04:24 streamer has to just ask the agent, they’ll clip it,
0:04:27 they’ll set up the screen for that replay and they’ll keep that stream feeling fluid.
0:04:30 So it’s one of those use cases, again, trying to align on like,
0:04:35 where do agentic systems actually play in enterprise and this entertainment industry
0:04:37 is we’re finding they’re hyper specialized.
0:04:40 And in this use case, we have this perfect, you know,
0:04:43 one streamer has to wear all of these different hats during their stream.
0:04:45 How can an agentic system come assist them
0:04:48 so that they can focus on making the best content
0:04:51 and all of the other things in managing that content can be done for them.
0:04:54 So back in the day, and this is part of why we got to come back to it.
0:04:58 I did a lot of YouTube stuff and we tried to do some live streaming.
0:05:00 This was in like the early mid 2000s.
0:05:05 And I remember setting up, you know, open source plugins to try to get graphics
0:05:06 over the live stream.
0:05:10 And then I had like a secondary camera, you know,
0:05:13 like a phone with a camera with a USB cable and all this stuff.
0:05:14 But that sounds amazing.
0:05:17 So I’m excited to talk about that to kind of then back into it
0:05:19 or start with the technology and go forward.
0:05:23 A genetic AI cohost digital humans.
0:05:24 Let’s talk about those things.
0:05:27 You want to start with digital humans because we’ve talked about a genetic AI
0:05:30 and we’ll get to it and it has the different, you know, what an agent is or isn’t.
0:05:33 I think it’s still a little bit malleable and context specific.
0:05:37 But when we talk about digital humans, when InWorld talks about digital humans,
0:05:38 what are we talking about?
0:05:39 You know, that’s such a great question.
0:05:41 And it brings up an important distinction.
0:05:44 When most people say digital humans, they’re thinking of chatbots.
0:05:48 Text-based tools that respond with mostly pre-programmed scripts
0:05:52 to help a specific task or guide users through a set of questions or instructions.
0:05:56 But at InWorld, we focus on AI agents that go far beyond simple chat.
0:05:59 These agents can autonomously plan, take actions,
0:06:01 and proactively engage with their environment.
0:06:07 Unlike a typical chatbot, which waits for a user to have some kind of question
0:06:12 or response in and then that AI agent provides a canned response,
0:06:15 our agents at InWorld are designed to interpret multiple types of inputs,
0:06:19 whether that’s speech or text or even vision or sensor data.
0:06:22 And then dynamically think and respond in real time.
0:06:23 They don’t just answer questions.
0:06:25 They can initiate tasks.
0:06:26 They can adapt to different contexts.
0:06:28 And they can carry out sophisticated interactions
0:06:31 that make sense within the context of what you’re doing.
0:06:34 So if you look at where digital humans are used mostly today,
0:06:35 and again, I’m super biased,
0:06:38 it’s often in the high volume chatbot or, you know,
0:06:40 personal digital assistance space.
0:06:43 But if you consider where they can have the biggest impact,
0:06:45 that’s when they function as these truly autonomous agents.
0:06:48 Planning and acting and proactively helping people
0:06:50 in ways that traditional chatbots can’t.
0:06:52 It’s not question and answer.
0:06:54 It’s answer or question that I didn’t even know I had yet.
0:06:56 And that’s the core of our focus at InWorld,
0:06:58 building AI agents that can not only look human,
0:07:02 but can think and react and solve problems like one,
0:07:05 using multiple modalities to interact with their world.
0:07:06 In our case, a digital one.
0:07:09 When it comes to building with agentic AI,
0:07:13 do you feel even like you have kind of a solid vision
0:07:15 of what is to come even near term?
0:07:20 Or is it still very early days of figuring out everything from,
0:07:23 you know, trying different types of infrastructure
0:07:26 to, you know, sort of the design and higher level thinking
0:07:28 about how to architect these things?
0:07:28 That’s a great question.
0:07:32 And the reality is we’re shifting toward an agentic AI framework,
0:07:33 as I mentioned before.
0:07:37 And shifting toward that framework is no longer really an option.
0:07:40 It’s becoming essential for us and our partners.
0:07:44 When you need any sense of autonomy or kind of real time
0:07:46 or runtime adaptability, latency optimization,
0:07:48 any sense of custom decision making,
0:07:52 you need a robust framework that lets you take control of that stack.
0:07:55 No one platform is going to serve the needs of our industry
0:07:56 as standalone.
0:07:58 So building a framework that is flexible,
0:08:00 that is robust to the needs and growing needs,
0:08:03 changing needs, super diverse needs of our industry
0:08:05 is incredibly important.
0:08:06 What we’re seeing more and more of is enterprises
0:08:09 that want to own that architecture end to end.
0:08:11 What I mean by that is they need the flexibility
0:08:14 to decide what models to use, where to use them,
0:08:16 how data is fed into their systems,
0:08:18 how to manage compliance and risk,
0:08:21 all of these factors that require really custom logic
0:08:22 and custom implementations.
0:08:24 So it’s adopting this, you know,
0:08:28 agentic AI framework that really puts the power in their hands.
0:08:30 It’s not just about future proofing.
0:08:33 It’s about giving them full control over how AI evolves
0:08:35 within their organization at any given time, right?
0:08:37 The industry is going to move quickly.
0:08:38 We want to make sure our partners can move
0:08:41 just as quickly as they get inspired.
0:08:45 But to me, you know, my favorite key differentiator here,
0:08:47 Future of Inworld, why the framework model,
0:08:50 why all of these changes is that such a framework
0:08:52 doesn’t just guarantee technical flexibility.
0:08:54 That’s great, and that’s going to make a lot of people happy,
0:08:57 but it also opens up the creative design space as well, right?
0:09:00 By collaborating with people that are thinking
0:09:02 of the most outrageously beautiful,
0:09:05 outrageously wonderfully weird experiences
0:09:07 you could possibly imagine and giving them tools
0:09:09 that are opened up to really let them craft
0:09:11 their own AI architectures.
0:09:14 We’re really, you know, helping push the boundaries
0:09:18 of what and how we can deliver innovative experiences, right?
0:09:21 We made the jokes earlier, but if we say that conversational AI,
0:09:22 you know, this like chat bot nature,
0:09:26 is now feeling very entry level, it’s feeling baseline,
0:09:28 then what we’re doing with this agentic framework
0:09:30 is building out that blueprint for the future
0:09:32 so that our partners and our customers
0:09:37 can help imagine, build, and deploy AI experiences
0:09:40 that genuinely didn’t feel possible even six months ago, right?
0:09:41 Taking that to a whole new level.
0:09:44 If we go more than like two years out,
0:09:47 I’m at a 10% confidence level of where this is actually going to be.
0:09:50 Yeah, I appreciate the candor.
0:09:52 Yeah, it’s just, you know,
0:09:54 and I’ve been doing this a couple of times in my career throughout
0:09:57 where I’ll work with somebody in an advisory capacity
0:10:00 where we’re looking at the future three to five years out
0:10:02 and by the time we finish our analysis,
0:10:04 the thing that we had two years out is now open sourced
0:10:06 and you’re like, cool, so back to the drawing board
0:10:09 because it’s just the industry moves so quickly
0:10:13 that what is possible, it’s actually really hard to nail down
0:10:16 and we will get into kind of, hopefully in this conversation,
0:10:20 how designing around AI and these systems is that challenge
0:10:23 because I think we’ve learned some fantastic lessons
0:10:25 that hopefully people listening can take away as well.
0:10:29 I really see there, you know, when it comes to trying not to sound too obvious
0:10:31 when we’re talking about agents,
0:10:34 the evolutionary chain of how an agent will grow,
0:10:36 how an agent, you know, the technology behind it
0:10:38 will proceed in even the near future.
0:10:41 It comes all down to agency and again, it’s agents.
0:10:44 It sounds obvious, but what I really mean by that
0:10:46 is the complexity of that cognition engine
0:10:49 and I’ll try and crack this net with an analogy
0:10:51 and I’ll try and make it fast because I could talk about this.
0:10:52 Now, take your time.
0:10:53 We’ll take your time with the analogy anyway.
0:10:58 We have this, you know, first again is that conversational AI phase
0:11:00 and I’ll use a gaming analogy, right?
0:11:04 The conversational AI phase gives avatars, gives agents,
0:11:05 I’ll use them interchangeably today,
0:11:08 extremely little agency in doing anything other than speaking, right?
0:11:12 It may be able to respond to my input if I ask it to do something,
0:11:14 but it’s not going to physically change the state of something
0:11:17 other than the dialogue it’s going to tell me back.
0:11:19 So, I think in terms of an analogy,
0:11:21 like a city-building simulation game,
0:11:24 in this phase, conversational AI,
0:11:25 I can ask it about architecture
0:11:27 and it could give me some facts about architecture.
0:11:30 I can ask it about plans I have to build this little area
0:11:31 and it could give me some advice.
0:11:34 I could ask it, “Hey, how do I limit the congestion
0:11:37 or how do I maximize traffic over this little commercial area?”
0:11:41 And it could tell me in words how to potentially do those things,
0:11:43 but it won’t be able to do things like place buildings
0:11:46 or reconstruct roads or even select the optimal facade
0:11:48 for the style of the region
0:11:50 because that’s completely out of its scope.
0:11:50 And not to…
0:11:51 It can’t act.
0:11:52 Yeah, it can’t act.
0:11:53 It can’t act at all.
0:11:53 It is…
0:11:55 Okay, just making sure that I’m fine.
0:11:55 Yeah.
0:11:58 It is a very rudimentary perception,
0:11:59 kind of what is it seeing,
0:12:02 what context does it have and cognition,
0:12:04 how is it planning, how is it reasoning,
0:12:06 very simple engines that drive that.
0:12:08 Really, I’m going to talk to it.
0:12:10 It’s going to say, “Oh, you know,
0:12:12 this person cares about architecture.
0:12:14 I’m going to pull everything I know about architecture,
0:12:16 turn that into a nice response,
0:12:19 weave together kind of their question into my response,
0:12:22 and then boom, now we have simple conversation AI.”
0:12:24 But not too far ahead of that.
0:12:26 And I say that lovingly and endearingly
0:12:29 is a simple task completion AI.
0:12:31 It’s very much still call and response.
0:12:33 You have an action engine.
0:12:34 You say, “I’m having an agent
0:12:37 that can only construct new buildings
0:12:38 exactly where and when I tell them.
0:12:40 I can say place a building at this intersection
0:12:41 and it does it, boom.
0:12:43 I can say change the building to this type
0:12:44 and boom, it does it.”
0:12:44 Right.
0:12:46 And while you argue that
0:12:47 that requires a little bit more perception,
0:12:49 maybe a little bit more reasoning,
0:12:50 definitely some action,
0:12:53 it’s limited to an extremely small set of actions
0:12:56 and it’s pretty much just scripting with extra steps.
0:12:58 It knows what it’s going to expect.
0:12:59 It’s waiting for me to say it in a way
0:13:02 that it can map to that is the place of building action.
0:13:04 I’m going to place a building done.
0:13:08 If a language model provides the description,
0:13:11 including like I wish I could change the background
0:13:13 to mountains or whatever, right?
0:13:15 Or envision a background with mountains
0:13:16 and it can’t act, right?
0:13:17 Can the system be automated?
0:13:18 What you’re talking about
0:13:23 so that the language model can tell the action cognition model?
0:13:24 What to do?
0:13:25 I forget what term you used.
0:13:28 I have a large action model in my head,
0:13:30 which yeah, I have thoughts about that terminology,
0:13:32 but I don’t know if they’re my own thoughts or not.
0:13:34 So we’ll get into it.
0:13:36 But you’re definitely hinting at, and again,
0:13:38 I should have upfront said this.
0:13:39 There are four phases.
0:13:41 We are at phase two.
0:13:43 I think a lot of virtual assistants are at that phase two.
0:13:46 What you’re describing in kind of intent recognition
0:13:49 or kind of passive intent recognition even
0:13:51 is there are no formal names for this,
0:13:54 but I’ll call this like an adaptive partner phase
0:13:56 where the AI is observing
0:13:58 and responding to changes on its own, right?
0:13:59 And this is the natural evolution
0:14:02 of where a lot of AI systems are heading today.
0:14:03 CES, a good example of that.
0:14:05 I have no doubt throughout the year,
0:14:07 you’ll get really close to getting here
0:14:09 as another core standard.
0:14:10 I think right now,
0:14:12 a lot of the kind of simple task completion AI
0:14:15 is a core standard across enterprise and gaming.
0:14:16 This adaptive partner phase
0:14:20 where this agent in this analogy, extended analogy,
0:14:22 would notice changes like newly built roads
0:14:25 or new residents influx into this tiny area
0:14:28 and automatically adapt construction plans.
0:14:30 It’s not micromanaging every decision,
0:14:33 but it feels like you’re collaborating with an agent
0:14:36 or a unit that has just enough context
0:14:37 to make smart decisions on its own,
0:14:40 like an evolution of a recommendation engine
0:14:43 being driven by a cognition engine here.
0:14:44 So it’s not just learning,
0:14:47 but it feels like it’s learning what we need
0:14:48 even before we ask it.
0:14:51 And I expect to see, again, a lot of this in the next year.
0:14:53 Again, I think that’s phase three.
0:14:55 I think there’s still a phase four.
0:14:57 And I think that’s a fully autonomous agent.
0:15:00 And that stage, again, continuing our analogy,
0:15:02 is a player two, right?
0:15:04 Where player three is it’s adapting to us.
0:15:07 Stage four is, hey, this thing is an agent all on its own.
0:15:10 It feels like I’m playing against another human.
0:15:11 It is making decisions that feel optimal
0:15:14 to its own objectives, alike to mine or not.
0:15:18 And I think this is where a lot of people think
0:15:19 about agentic AI.
0:15:21 They think we are there today.
0:15:24 There’s quite a big gap in the deployment of these systems
0:15:26 to get to that truly autonomous agent.
0:15:29 That is kind of the gold rush right now
0:15:32 is creating a cognition and a perception
0:15:34 and an action engine ecosystem
0:15:38 that can feel natural to a user.
0:15:39 I’m speaking with Chris Covert.
0:15:43 Chris is Director of Product Experiences at N-World AI.
0:15:45 I made him kind of, I made us kind of put a pin
0:15:47 in their product announcement to kind of bring this
0:15:50 into the, from the abstract a little bit into the concrete.
0:15:52 I’m glad you humor me, Chris, because I think kind of digging
0:15:54 into, well, what does this stuff actually mean?
0:15:55 And it’s sort of moving.
0:15:57 And one of the things I should say it’s kind of moving
0:15:58 and evolving.
0:16:00 Maybe the lingo is moving, targeting,
0:16:03 but the tech and what’s actually happening is evolving
0:16:04 and still so fast.
0:16:04 All right.
0:16:07 So let’s talk about the big announcement from CES.
0:16:10 You said you wanted to talk through kind of the design
0:16:12 process a little bit and how you make these choices.
0:16:14 So if that’s something that makes sense to you to do
0:16:17 in the context of talking about the streaming assistant,
0:16:18 great.
0:16:20 And if not, take it whichever way you want to go first.
0:16:21 That sounds perfect.
0:16:21 Yeah.
0:16:23 So I’ll be honest around here, right?
0:16:26 In any demo that you see publicly,
0:16:28 especially when you have more than one company demoing it,
0:16:31 there’s a lot of design, but also a lot of urgency
0:16:33 to show something quickly and cool.
0:16:37 So of the things that I’ll say are design axioms
0:16:40 that I love to live by, we had to sacrifice some
0:16:42 just to make sure that something awesome could
0:16:44 be demonstrated at CES.
0:16:46 Putting a timeline on creative vision is always challenging.
0:16:47 But–
0:16:47 Right.
0:16:49 And that’s like you can’t– we live in–
0:16:51 I mean, I don’t build software for a living.
0:16:52 You do.
0:16:55 But we live in such an age of like, we’re past this state,
0:16:58 where beta became, all right, everybody ships beta.
0:16:59 And then we got used to it.
0:17:01 And it’s like, right, there’ll be updates
0:17:03 and downloadable content and this and that.
0:17:05 But not CES.
0:17:05 That’s the date.
0:17:06 Show up or don’t.
0:17:07 So–
0:17:08 Exactly.
0:17:08 Exactly.
0:17:11 But in terms of design, and this might sound odd,
0:17:13 coming from a tech startup on the call here today.
0:17:16 But my first piece of advice, regardless of who we’re
0:17:18 working with, is always to ignore the technology
0:17:20 and focus solely on the experience
0:17:22 that you really want to create.
0:17:24 Where is the value in the experience?
0:17:25 The why?
0:17:28 And as soon as you can lead, or not as soon as you can lead
0:17:31 with the tech, but as soon as you do lead with the tech,
0:17:32 hey, I have an idea.
0:17:34 What if we had an LLM that could?
0:17:36 You already are risking thinking too narrowly
0:17:38 and missing bigger opportunities.
0:17:41 And I genuinely would love to say the reason behind this
0:17:42 is because it’s human-centered.
0:17:45 I come from the intersection of autonomous systems, AI,
0:17:46 and human-centered design.
0:17:49 So I would love to say that it’s a human-centered approach
0:17:50 to design, and that’s why I do it.
0:17:53 But in reality, is that the technology just advances
0:17:55 so quickly by the time your idea goes into production,
0:17:58 that tech-grounded idea that you had now
0:18:00 looks like a stone wheel compared to the race car
0:18:01 you thought it was six months ago.
0:18:05 So again, like the urgency behind some of these things
0:18:08 is challenging, especially when you come from a tech-grounded
0:18:10 design principle standard.
0:18:14 So I’m a firm believer in the moonshot first approach,
0:18:17 where you begin by clarifying why you want to build something
0:18:20 before how you decide to build it, especially for anything
0:18:22 with a shelf life greater than just a few months at this stage.
0:18:24 Again, if you start with how you end up
0:18:26 with a bunch of low-hanging fruit,
0:18:28 and a bunch of low-hanging fruit makes for a really bad smoothie.
0:18:32 So what is a moonshot experience?
0:18:35 Like, I often refer in design thinking workshops
0:18:38 to the classic impact versus feasibility matrix.
0:18:41 And this isn’t like a very exciting conversation.
0:18:42 So I’ll try and keep it high energy.
0:18:44 But typically, when you’re looking at impacts–
0:18:46 I was just saying the smoothie.
0:18:48 Sorry, I couldn’t let the smoothie go unacknowledged,
0:18:50 but I didn’t want to interrupt it.
0:18:51 Well, we’ll come back to smoothie right for now.
0:18:52 OK, good.
0:18:55 Because again, this is that it’s in that quadrant,
0:18:58 or it’s in that matrix, impact feasibility.
0:19:00 Your low-hanging fruit ideas are the things
0:19:03 that are going to be low feasibility or low impact.
0:19:06 But typically, you’re aiming for the upper right quadrant,
0:19:09 which is the highest feasibility and the highest value,
0:19:11 where impact and feasibility are so high,
0:19:13 the ideas feel easy to build
0:19:15 and have a lot of inherent value in them.
0:19:17 But what I’ve experienced when working with partners
0:19:20 and their AI ambitions is that that’s actually a trap,
0:19:23 that that quadrant right there is doomed for failure.
0:19:28 Because often the ideas that are the ones worthy of pursuit
0:19:31 the most are the ideas that almost feel impossible,
0:19:34 but if real would deliver extraordinary impact.
0:19:35 Right, that’s right.
0:19:37 As you get closer to building that value,
0:19:40 and you’re going from idea to prototype to implementation,
0:19:45 the technology is likely grown in not only capability,
0:19:47 efficiency, but also accessibility in ways
0:19:51 that probably outpace our own kind of traditional lens
0:19:54 of what is feasible and our imagination of where the tech can go.
0:19:56 So that sounds like a lot of nothing.
0:19:58 So my actual advice is,
0:20:01 when we’re designing these types of experiences,
0:20:03 start from that moonshot that feels impossible
0:20:06 and then break it down into a functional roadmap.
0:20:09 What you saw at CES in this demo with Streamlabs
0:20:11 and NVIDIA and in-world technology
0:20:13 creating the streamer assistant
0:20:15 is actually just Horizon 1, that insight.
0:20:17 What can we build that gives us insight
0:20:20 into whether this is something that provides value?
0:20:22 Where does it provide value and to who?
0:20:25 The thing we demonstrated at CES
0:20:30 was just the first pass proof of concept of this capability.
0:20:34 The kind of upper potential of where this can go,
0:20:35 where we want this to go,
0:20:37 and where we’re going to explore its value
0:20:42 is still very much architected out toward a much longer roadmap.
0:20:45 And again, showing what we showed at CES
0:20:47 and what I love about this industry right now
0:20:50 is we’re able to show really compelling integrations
0:20:53 with very meaningful use cases in this industry.
0:20:55 I’m not about to wax poetic,
0:20:58 like our industry is the same as healthcare
0:20:59 or things like that and enterprise,
0:21:02 but showing digital companions, virtual assistants,
0:21:05 digital humans at the state that we’re showing them now,
0:21:08 knowing what’s to come is an incredible place
0:21:10 to look ahead and say, “Okay, cool.
0:21:13 This scratches an itch that either the market needed
0:21:16 or that technologically is doing something
0:21:17 that could never be done traditionally before.
0:21:23 Where this moves in the next six months to six years
0:21:24 is anyone’s game.”
0:21:27 Okay. So two questions, but they’re related.
0:21:29 One’s easy. The other’s a follow-up.
0:21:32 What is the availability of the assistant?
0:21:34 It was demo state very early.
0:21:36 Do you have kind of a roadmap for that?
0:21:38 I shouldn’t say availability of a roadmap.
0:21:40 And that might be the answer to the second part,
0:21:44 but what else is on the horizon for you for in-world AI?
0:21:46 I mean, you talked a little bit before
0:21:49 about the broader horizon for agentic AI
0:21:51 and avatars and assistants and such,
0:21:52 but you can go back there if you like.
0:21:53 What’s coming up this year,
0:21:56 kind of maybe near-term that you’re excited about?
0:21:58 Well, man, this year being near-term
0:22:01 is funny at InWorld because we move very quickly.
0:22:03 This year is many near-terms stacked against each other.
0:22:06 Well, right. And I’m figuring we’re taping now,
0:22:08 but it’s going to go live.
0:22:10 You know, there’s a little bit of a buffer
0:22:12 and we reference CES.
0:22:14 Yeah. So we certainly have productization ambitions
0:22:15 for this demo.
0:22:18 What we’re doing post-CES is we’re taking the feedback
0:22:21 of what we’ve built and we’re augmenting it in many new ways.
0:22:24 Again, what was built for the demo was a proof of concept.
0:22:27 As many proof of concepts on show floors are,
0:22:29 it wasn’t robust to all the inputs we would want.
0:22:30 It wasn’t robust to all the games
0:22:32 that we would want it to be playable with.
0:22:34 So we’re trying to build out that ecosystem
0:22:35 in an intelligent strategic way
0:22:37 so that if it were to go to market,
0:22:40 it would be usable to as many streamers as possible
0:22:42 who wanted to leverage this type of technology.
0:22:46 So keep your ears on the beat for what’s about to come out.
0:22:50 I have no doubt that between Nvidia, InWorld, and Streamlabs,
0:22:52 all announcements and all possible show floors
0:22:54 that we can show our advancements on
0:22:56 will be shown at the right time.
0:22:57 So super exciting for that.
0:22:59 As it relates to InWorld, oh boy,
0:23:01 it’s such a fascinating question
0:23:03 because a lot of what we’re doing,
0:23:04 we’re doing with partners
0:23:07 with such fascinating game development lead times
0:23:09 that I hope that we’ll be playing
0:23:11 more in-world driven experiences
0:23:13 in the next, you know, when this releases,
0:23:15 but also over the next four or five years,
0:23:17 depending on the scale of the company we’re working with.
0:23:21 So I’m genuinely excited for what’s to hold
0:23:22 as our platform develops.
0:23:25 Again, as we’ve seen in just the last year or so
0:23:27 with more and more competitive players
0:23:30 in the space of providing AI tools,
0:23:32 and then just fantastic partners
0:23:35 that are helping this industry become more accessible
0:23:37 to people of all different backgrounds,
0:23:41 really hope to see the, I wouldn’t say consolidation of tools,
0:23:43 but the accessibility, I’ll keep using that word,
0:23:47 the accessibility of different AI platforms.
0:23:50 Hey, I want to use this model, but in this engine,
0:23:51 to become a lot easier.
0:23:53 And InWorld’s goal is certainly to make that happen
0:23:55 for as many industries as we can,
0:23:58 in particular the gaming and entertainment industry,
0:24:00 but it doesn’t happen without partners like Nvidia
0:24:02 and the work that you guys are doing with ACE.
0:24:05 So where I, you know, where I think InWorld is going
0:24:08 is to make that easier, to continue to work with studios
0:24:11 to find the fun and to convince every player.
0:24:14 And in particular, you know, let me be honest,
0:24:16 the YouTube commenters that, hey,
0:24:19 there is actually a world here where this technology
0:24:21 is not only fun and immersive,
0:24:23 but it’s something that the entire industry views
0:24:25 as it’s gold standard.
0:24:27 So I think we’re there a lot sooner than we think.
0:24:29 I think it’s right around the corner,
0:24:33 but could not be more excited to continue
0:24:35 to work with creatives to help them tell stories,
0:24:39 to help them, you know, flex and use their imagination
0:24:42 as much as possible to make the best possible experiences.
0:24:43 We do it every day.
0:24:45 We may not see it in the near term
0:24:47 because games take a while to make,
0:24:49 but genuinely excited.
0:24:51 Excellent. Well, I’ll offer more fun.
0:24:53 The world always needs more fun to counterbalance everything else.
0:24:56 Chris, for listeners who would like to learn more
0:24:59 about anything specific we might have talked about
0:25:01 or just broadly about InWorld,
0:25:02 where can they go online?
0:25:05 Website, obviously, but are there social handles?
0:25:08 Is there a separate blog or even research blog?
0:25:09 Where would you direct folks?
0:25:10 Yes, to all of the above.
0:25:13 You can find all of that at inworld.ai.
0:25:17 And we have our blog for partners and experiences there.
0:25:18 We have technical releases.
0:25:19 We have research done.
0:25:21 All of our socials are linked there.
0:25:22 If you want to stay up to date
0:25:24 with all the announcements that we make,
0:25:26 we have a lot of fun and we like to talk about it.
0:25:28 So definitely stay up to date.
0:25:30 Fantastic. Well, thanks for taking a minute
0:25:31 to come talk about it with us.
0:25:32 We appreciate it.
0:25:35 And best of luck to you and InWorld AI
0:25:36 with everything you’re doing this year.
0:25:39 And maybe we can do it again down the road.
0:25:41 I love it. Thank you so much, Noah. Appreciate it.
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0:02:00 Jess has two young kids at home.
0:02:01 Be supportive.
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0:02:24 – Welcome to Raging Moderates, I’m Scott Galloway.
0:02:25 – And I’m Jessica Tarland.
0:02:28 – Jess, this is the part of the show where we banter.
0:02:29 – I’m reading the same note.
0:02:31 What would you like to banter about?
0:02:33 – Well, let’s bring this back to me.
0:02:35 Show, ask me what I do this weekend.
0:02:36 – What did you do this weekend?
0:02:37 How fantastic was it?
0:02:38 – Well, Jess, I don’t like to talk about me
0:02:41 or my personal life, but on Saturday morning,
0:02:45 I had my 14 year old, just me and him.
0:02:46 And so I said, what do you wanna do?
0:02:48 And I knew it involves something in football.
0:02:51 So we jumped on the Euro star on Saturday morning.
0:02:52 – Which is lovely.
0:02:53 – Amazing.
0:02:54 – Yeah.
0:02:55 – It takes two hours and 20 minutes.
0:02:59 Pancras, or St. Pancras Station is about 10 minutes
0:03:02 from where we’re living.
0:03:05 Two hours and 20 minutes later, we’re at Garde de Nord,
0:03:07 which is I think train station of North or something
0:03:10 in French, just for those of you out there.
0:03:12 And then we’re at the hotel.
0:03:15 We went and had an amazing, my favorite,
0:03:19 or our favorite lunch, we had steak frites.
0:03:22 And then we went to the most amazing little stores,
0:03:25 mostly chocolatiers and crepe stores.
0:03:27 And then we went back and napped and went to the pool.
0:03:29 When you have a 14 year old, you gotta go to the pool.
0:03:30 I’ve learned that.
0:03:32 – That lasts until high school?
0:03:33 – Yeah, no.
0:03:34 – That they’re into going to the pool?
0:03:35 – You know, his only criteria for a hotel
0:03:36 is do they have a pool?
0:03:39 And we always go to the pool.
0:03:42 And then we went and then we had a dinner
0:03:45 at the most fabulous restaurant at the top
0:03:48 of this new fancy hotel called Cheval Blanc.
0:03:52 And we got dressed up and then we got dressed down
0:03:56 and we went to the PSG Paris Saint-Germain football
0:03:58 that’s the major team in Paris.
0:04:00 Oh, someone’s gonna say, “No, they’re not.”
0:04:03 Ty Renz, which was a big disappointment for PSG,
0:04:05 but we went and saw the football game,
0:04:08 came back next morning, woke up, had a lovely breakfast
0:04:12 and then went to Notre Dame, which is spectacular.
0:04:13 – Oh, it looks amazing.
0:04:16 – Spectacular and then caught the US star back,
0:04:18 I mean, 24 hours and just it was one of those
0:04:22 incredible weekends with my son.
0:04:23 What did you do?
0:04:25 – Well, I went to a three-year-old’s birthday party
0:04:26 on Saturday morning.
0:04:30 There was cake, funfetti flavor, which is my favorite.
0:04:31 So–
0:04:32 – Do they rent a place or is it one of those
0:04:33 where it’s rich people in Tribeca?
0:04:34 Do they have to rent a place?
0:04:37 – Well, I think both of those types classify as–
0:04:38 – Wealthy.
0:04:39 – Rich people, ’cause if you can rent a place
0:04:41 for your toddler’s birthday,
0:04:44 they did it at their building, actually.
0:04:47 So, and I don’t know what they earn,
0:04:50 so I can’t comment on that, but it was a lovely party.
0:04:52 And then Saturday night,
0:04:55 we went out to dinner with three other couples,
0:04:58 which was very lively, a lot of fun.
0:05:01 We’re trying out a new babysitter.
0:05:02 It seemed to go okay.
0:05:06 The toddler by the end said, “I liked new babysitter.”
0:05:09 So, great, but it was nice to go out.
0:05:12 You know how you usually are out with one other couple,
0:05:15 but being out with three other couples,
0:05:16 tons of conversations going on.
0:05:19 We had a nice time, but home by 9.30,
0:05:20 asleep by 10, the usual.
0:05:23 – So, four couples that usually gives everyone permission
0:05:24 to drink more is what I find.
0:05:25 And two–
0:05:28 – There was a lot of drinking and a discussion
0:05:30 about how one person thinks
0:05:32 that their partner drinks too much.
0:05:34 – It makes company, that’s nice.
0:05:37 – Yeah, I asked to be excluded from the conversation,
0:05:40 ’cause also I barely drink, I’m not.
0:05:43 I’m a lightweight, and I guess not that fun.
0:05:45 And so, I’m always very uncomfortable
0:05:46 with those conversations.
0:05:48 – Yeah, so I’ll give you a little bit of a heads up
0:05:50 on what’s coming your way.
0:05:53 In about seven to 10 years,
0:05:55 you’re gonna freak out about the fact
0:05:58 that you’ve spent so much time just raising kids,
0:05:59 and that you’re losing your youth,
0:06:01 and you and your female friends will start parting
0:06:04 like fucking rock stars diagnosed with ass cancer.
0:06:06 You’re gonna start drinking like crazy.
0:06:09 You’re gonna start doing girls trips all the time.
0:06:10 You’re gonna abuse alcohol,
0:06:11 you’re gonna experiment with drugs,
0:06:14 and you’re gonna make all the guys trips
0:06:18 that movies have been depicted on seem like a tea party.
0:06:21 They talk about the midlife crisis that men have.
0:06:24 I think men’s are longer, but less severe.
0:06:27 The midlife crisis for women happens earlier.
0:06:28 Specifically, I think when they leave
0:06:30 kind of their birthing years and they’re worried
0:06:34 they’re losing kind of their hot girl 20s and 30s,
0:06:36 and they go ape shit.
0:06:37 So anyways, you got that coming.
0:06:38 You got that coming.
0:06:40 Well, well, that sounds like fun,
0:06:42 ’cause I, yeah, I’m definitely not doing any of that.
0:06:42 No, none of that.
0:06:43 At this point.
0:06:45 Well, it’s hard, you know, what are you gonna do?
0:06:47 Every once in a while, I have a lot of good friends
0:06:48 because I–
0:06:50 You have a second glass of Chardonnay.
0:06:51 Is that when you–
0:06:54 No, I’m not, wait, I have one drink also.
0:06:54 What is your drink?
0:06:58 I only drink Tito’s grapefruit and soda.
0:06:59 You’re so fancy.
0:06:59 It’s like a modified Paloma.
0:07:01 So here’s another prediction.
0:07:02 I mean–
0:07:04 You’re gonna start getting unsolicited bottles of Tito’s.
0:07:07 When I started talking about how much I love Zacapa,
0:07:09 I’d show up to events and they’d have a bottle of Zacapa.
0:07:13 So everyone, Tito’s for the lady.
0:07:15 Good, good, all right, enough of that.
0:07:17 Grape banter, I loved it.
0:07:18 Yeah, that worked, check that box.
0:07:20 In today’s episode of Raging Moderates,
0:07:23 we’re discussing Trump’s whirlwind first week in office,
0:07:25 how Democrats are responding to Trump,
0:07:27 and what it really means to be a moderate
0:07:29 in today’s political climate.
0:07:31 Okay, so let’s bust right into it.
0:07:33 Donald Trump has hit the ground running
0:07:35 in his first week back in office,
0:07:38 signing nearly 50 executive orders and actions
0:07:41 that are already sort of reshaping politics in our country.
0:07:43 These include escalating immigration crackdowns
0:07:48 or deportation flights in a southern border troop surge,
0:07:49 as well as targeting birthright citizenship
0:07:51 and freezing asylum programs.
0:07:54 On Sunday, he also got into a feud
0:07:57 with the president of Colombia over deportation flights.
0:07:59 Meanwhile, he has halted foreign aid worldwide
0:08:01 and revoked security clearances
0:08:03 from former officials critical of him.
0:08:05 Add to that his controversial pardons of January 6th
0:08:08 defendants, the confirmation of cabinet appointments,
0:08:10 including Pete Hegset, despite numerous allegations
0:08:13 against him and threats to eliminate FEMA
0:08:15 while visiting disaster zones,
0:08:18 including Hurricane Helene’s wreckage in North Carolina
0:08:20 and wildfire ravaged California.
0:08:22 It’s a whirlwind start that is already redefining
0:08:24 how America Governs communicates
0:08:26 and is viewed globally.
0:08:31 Jess, there’s a lot to unpack here from Trump’s first week.
0:08:32 What stood out to you the most?
0:08:34 – That there is a lot.
0:08:36 That’s the point, right?
0:08:41 We’re so quickly back to where we left Trump 1.0,
0:08:45 which is I’m gonna throw everything at the wall
0:08:47 and just see what sticks.
0:08:51 And it feels as though we have a bunch of angry teens
0:08:52 that are in charge of the government, right?
0:08:55 Trying everything, pushing boundaries,
0:08:58 waiting for someone to slap them on the wrist to push back.
0:09:02 Maybe that comes from, you know, part of the internal caucus,
0:09:05 but we’ll talk about that later on
0:09:07 with some of the DEI initiatives that they scaled back,
0:09:10 but like waiting for the courts to come and get them,
0:09:13 you know, hoping that they just can skate through
0:09:15 with some of this stuff.
0:09:19 I feel there’s an overwhelming sense of manufactured chaos
0:09:23 to everything and that we are living in the midst of,
0:09:24 you would know better than me.
0:09:28 If it is, in fact, the biggest branding exercise in history,
0:09:30 but this golden age of America,
0:09:33 and he has lots of social media spots about it
0:09:37 out there on all of his channels,
0:09:40 it feels like he’s just going full steam ahead
0:09:45 with this social media driven approach to governance,
0:09:49 loyalty tests, everything that he left on the table
0:09:50 from the first time around,
0:09:53 he’s picking it up and doing it to the nth degree
0:09:55 if he can get away with it.
0:09:58 And he’s just calling our bluff, right?
0:10:01 Just saying, well, come and get me, right?
0:10:04 So that’s my feeling writ large
0:10:07 about what’s gone on so far, what about you?
0:10:09 – Yeah, I think that’s right.
0:10:12 It feels as if one, you could argue this is leadership
0:10:14 that he’s had kind of four years to prepare
0:10:17 for what he would do and just hitting the ground running
0:10:19 and has decided, okay, I’m gonna, you know,
0:10:21 promises made, promises kept,
0:10:24 and it’s going aggressively at everything he talked about
0:10:26 and moving, you know, their fleet of foot,
0:10:28 signing executive orders on the dais.
0:10:30 So you could argue it’s leadership.
0:10:32 I like what you said, the world’s largest branding event.
0:10:33 I hadn’t thought of it that way.
0:10:35 I think that’s really interesting.
0:10:38 At the same time, you sort of flooding the zone,
0:10:41 which is so much shit or actions
0:10:45 that wouldn’t have flown before.
0:10:47 And one of the things about our government,
0:10:48 the reason why we have three branches
0:10:51 is it’s meant to have this wonderful intransigence
0:10:53 where we sometimes to a fault,
0:10:56 wrestle stuff to the ground and really examine it.
0:10:58 And there’s just none of that now.
0:11:01 The, I would give more points to the Trump administration
0:11:03 than I would give to the Democratic party right now
0:11:05 who appears to be just caught flat footed.
0:11:07 In this mixed of, can you believe this shit?
0:11:08 We don’t know what to do.
0:11:11 And trying to sign up for this PBS Hallmark Channel
0:11:14 bullshit of we need to come together
0:11:16 and we need to cooperate with the president.
0:11:17 And they’re all trying to,
0:11:21 they’re all in such shock about this win.
0:11:24 And, you know, while it was a small number of votes,
0:11:26 so you went kind of seven for seven in swing states,
0:11:28 they’re all trying to pretend to be more moderate
0:11:30 and say, I’ll work with the president
0:11:32 and they don’t want to come right out of the box
0:11:33 shitposting them.
0:11:34 I think that’s a failed strategy.
0:11:35 I think they wanted war.
0:11:37 I think we should have it.
0:11:41 I’m not up for normalizing an insurrectionist and a rapist.
0:11:43 So I guess that doesn’t make me a moderate
0:11:44 because I won’t sign up to this.
0:11:45 – Great.
0:11:47 We’ll just end the podcast right now.
0:11:50 – But I would argue that there’s this,
0:11:54 we have this sort of notion it’s time to come together.
0:11:55 – I don’t agree.
0:11:58 I think Democrats and moderate Republicans
0:12:00 need to come to the rescue.
0:12:02 I think some of this stuff is just so over the line
0:12:06 and so un-American, you know,
0:12:10 rescinding the security detail of people who he doesn’t like.
0:12:14 – With live Iranian threats to their lives.
0:12:16 I mean, if you have Tom Cotton,
0:12:19 maybe the hero in all of this,
0:12:21 which is frightening to me, but.
0:12:24 – Well, he wants a security detail when he’s out of office.
0:12:26 – Well, he definitely wants one on January 6th.
0:12:28 Oh, no, it was Josh Hawley.
0:12:31 He was riding away like a little girl.
0:12:32 No offense to little girls.
0:12:34 Some of it is just petty.
0:12:37 Some of it is the revenge tour.
0:12:40 Some of it I do think is rooted in a genuine ideology,
0:12:42 but then it’s always taken one step further.
0:12:46 And I’ve been thinking about this notion of
0:12:50 what is the kernel of truth that gets us
0:12:52 to the crazy place that we’ve ended up, right?
0:12:55 Because a lot of what’s going on right now,
0:12:56 I believe is Democrats fault, right?
0:12:59 Like we walked into very specific traps.
0:13:02 And so we ended up with people telling us,
0:13:04 essentially I want a bloodless revolution, right?
0:13:07 I want the establishment so far away
0:13:09 that I can’t even see Nancy Pelosi.
0:13:11 All of this makes me sick.
0:13:14 And I would rather take a flyer on the chaos agent
0:13:19 than have someone who is routine and boring
0:13:23 and also is afraid to say things that are common sense.
0:13:25 Like the thing that’s right in front of you.
0:13:29 So if we look at with the DEI revolution
0:13:32 that’s going on now, that comes from, you know,
0:13:34 after the murder of George Floyd,
0:13:36 that companies just added, you know,
0:13:40 50 to 100 DEI employees or it was crazy.
0:13:44 I was looking at data from Loudoun County, Virginia.
0:13:47 They have a DEI office that they’re spending enough on it
0:13:50 that they could hire 125 new teachers
0:13:51 if they took that money and did that.
0:13:54 Obviously a parent in that district is going to say,
0:13:56 I would rather have new teachers
0:14:00 than have dozens of employees in the DEI office.
0:14:02 For instance, on the trans issue,
0:14:04 we talk about this regularly.
0:14:06 If you’re going to say that it’s fine for Leah Thomas
0:14:09 to compete at the collegiate level,
0:14:12 people are going to think that you are insane on trans issues
0:14:13 and then they’re going to pick someone
0:14:14 who’s going to over correct
0:14:17 and take away protections for trans people.
0:14:20 On immigration, if you’re going to say the border is secure,
0:14:22 people are going to look at you like you’re a lunatic,
0:14:25 especially once migrants are getting bust
0:14:27 to northeastern liberal cities
0:14:29 and they’re understanding the implications
0:14:31 of how El Paso taxes has been living.
0:14:32 And we’re going to have the overcorrection
0:14:35 and we’re going to see stuff like this.
0:14:39 Like, I don’t even want to call it a rise in deportations.
0:14:40 I find it fascinating,
0:14:42 and this goes to the social media presidency
0:14:45 or just who has the best branding exercise of this
0:14:47 because they’re out there saying,
0:14:48 promises made, promises kept.
0:14:53 We deported 310 undocumented people or illegals,
0:14:57 they would say, I would say undocumented because I’m polite.
0:15:00 And Biden was deporting,
0:15:02 sometimes it got over 400 people per day.
0:15:05 I think on average, he was at 310 per day,
0:15:07 but the Democrats never talked about anything
0:15:09 that they were doing.
0:15:11 And that’s the difference in this.
0:15:13 If you leave people in the dark
0:15:16 about what your administration is actually doing,
0:15:18 and I’m talking about the stuff that matters to them,
0:15:21 not the stuff that feels ancillary or for show,
0:15:24 they’re going to pick the other person.
0:15:26 And now people are running around saying,
0:15:28 oh, well, Donald Trump is the toughest on immigration.
0:15:30 No, actually Barack Obama was the toughest on immigration.
0:15:32 And we have been deporting a lot of people.
0:15:35 People don’t know that border crossings are down 55%
0:15:37 at the end of the Biden administration,
0:15:39 after obviously a huge surge in the beginning.
0:15:44 So we need a new digital strategist, that’s for sure,
0:15:46 the next time around that we do this.
0:15:51 And I don’t know, have you listened to any of Chris Hayes’
0:15:54 interviews about his new book about attention
0:15:56 and like the attention economy?
0:15:58 – Oh, that’s a new term, attention economy.
0:15:59 Let me think, I started using that
0:16:00 about 15 fucking years ago.
0:16:02 Anyways, what did Chris Hayes said?
0:16:03 He’s discovered the attention economy?
0:16:04 What does Chris have to say?
0:16:07 – No, he didn’t, no, he didn’t discover it,
0:16:11 but he’s talking about it in context of recent outcomes
0:16:15 and this race just to be the first person to say something
0:16:17 that someone sees on their phone
0:16:18 and how meaningful that is for that.
0:16:21 And I cannot think of an instance where Democrats
0:16:24 were the first people to be able to say something.
0:16:26 It’s always the Republicans and usually it’s Trump.
0:16:28 – Well, just starting there.
0:16:31 So first off, I would like to see
0:16:34 the, what committee would it be?
0:16:36 – We need immediately, in my opinion, to get,
0:16:41 probably not Musk,
0:16:43 because I think it would be too much of a spectacle
0:16:45 and just bring him more power.
0:16:48 It’s like one of those villains in a comic book
0:16:50 that the more you throw shit at him,
0:16:53 the more he absorbs it and becomes more powerful.
0:16:56 But the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee
0:17:01 in my opinion have hearings in the tech industry’s
0:17:03 influence on democracy and its elections
0:17:06 because there, I think, is now emerging evidence
0:17:09 that basically Musk and Yacarino weaponized Twitter,
0:17:12 including creating thousands and thousands of accounts
0:17:17 to elevate misinformation and essentially spread
0:17:19 just a ton of propaganda misinformation
0:17:21 that had a real impact on the election.
0:17:22 I’m not sure it’s illegal.
0:17:23 It’s a private company.
0:17:25 He can do what he wants with it.
0:17:29 But I want her up there to under oath to say,
0:17:31 yeah, I knew that he was creating thousands of bots
0:17:33 pretending to be humans.
0:17:37 And we were elevating information or lies,
0:17:39 even though we knew they were lies,
0:17:42 such that it would influence the outcome of the election.
0:17:44 I just want her to go on record saying that
0:17:47 so Americans know what they’re dealing with.
0:17:50 And they have very effectively,
0:17:53 even if it’s Umberta Eco, the Italian philosopher said,
0:17:55 along the lines of the attention economy,
0:17:57 that it’s not what you’re famous for,
0:17:59 it’s just about being famous.
0:18:00 So say something incendiary,
0:18:02 and as long as you’re dominating the news cycle,
0:18:04 I mean, I feel like Republicans are dominating
0:18:06 90% of the news cycle right now.
0:18:09 And unfortunately, we have Senator Schumer,
0:18:11 who brightens up a room by leaving it,
0:18:14 just kind of doing nothing or saying nothing.
0:18:16 We have Speaker Emerita Pelosi,
0:18:21 who just purchased $50,000 to $100,000 worth of call options
0:18:23 on Tempest AI.
0:18:24 And when that was disclosed,
0:18:27 the company had its best one day performance in history
0:18:28 at 35%.
0:18:30 So she’s spending more time on Robinhood,
0:18:32 engaging what is effectively insider trading,
0:18:36 than actually paying attention to real issues.
0:18:39 You know, my question is, where the fuck are Democrats?
0:18:41 I don’t agree with a lot of AOC’s policies,
0:18:42 but at least she’s out there.
0:18:43 At least she’s trying to push back.
0:18:48 Where is Senator Klobuchar talking about,
0:18:51 you know, antitrust and competition and inflation,
0:18:53 and talking about how the tenure is surging,
0:18:56 and that these policies are incredibly inflationary.
0:19:00 We have, we’re literally fighting fire
0:19:01 with fucking squirt guns.
0:19:02 And when I say squirt guns,
0:19:06 I mean senior leadership in the Democratic Party
0:19:08 that is too old, too tame,
0:19:10 thinks they’re in a PBS drama,
0:19:11 where they, good sir,
0:19:14 and they like hit them with their glove.
0:19:15 I mean, enough already.
0:19:18 That this is insane that we don’t have,
0:19:20 I wanna see hearings on,
0:19:22 let’s immediately have a hearing
0:19:24 on this new crypto AI community.
0:19:27 And first thing is we need them to come,
0:19:29 this committee who organized by the president,
0:19:33 we should have the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing
0:19:37 investigate legal implications of Trump’s meme coins.
0:19:41 I want and bring the new head of this AI and crypto community
0:19:44 to explain the Trump and Melania coin.
0:19:46 Let’s have him go on the record and say,
0:19:49 what is this and is it good for the economy?
0:19:52 And we’ll be able to invite dozens of the 60,000 people
0:19:55 who bought this coin and are now off 70 or 80%
0:19:57 in about 72 hours.
0:19:58 Instead, we just sort of sit there
0:20:01 and give this bullshit, let’s time to come together.
0:20:04 There’s things we can work on together, work on together.
0:20:07 We had an immigration bill that the president basically
0:20:10 from Mar-a-Lago killed, so he could take credit for it.
0:20:12 And we’re all sitting around thinking,
0:20:14 it reminds me of the movie, “The Mission.”
0:20:16 I don’t know if you saw that movie
0:20:19 with Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons.
0:20:21 But Jeremy Irons plays this,
0:20:23 I’m gonna call priest, a religious figure,
0:20:26 and the British are coming basically to slaughter
0:20:28 this indigenous community.
0:20:30 I don’t know if it’s Argentina or Brazilian.
0:20:32 They’re missionaries, anyways.
0:20:34 And the priest, Robert De Niro is trying to get everyone
0:20:37 they know they’re coming to prepare for war.
0:20:39 And the priest says, we’re about non-violence.
0:20:41 And they’re slaughtered, of course.
0:20:42 I just watched a movie called “24,”
0:20:44 which was about the most famous Norwegian spy
0:20:47 of all things, and a woman stands up,
0:20:48 as he’s speaking to this university, saying,
0:20:51 why didn’t you try non-violence?
0:20:54 I feel like the Democrats have decided to try non-violence.
0:20:58 And I’m like, sir, say, I choose violence.
0:20:58 This is not working.
0:21:00 Sitting around trying to pretend
0:21:01 we’re taking the higher ground
0:21:04 and we’re gonna work with the president.
0:21:06 It hasn’t worked, folks.
0:21:09 We need to be calling balls and strikes here
0:21:11 and saying that this is, when you have the president
0:21:13 saying things like polluting blood,
0:21:15 and then you have the person who, in my opinion,
0:21:18 weaponized a platform to get him elected,
0:21:20 telling the far-right party in Germany,
0:21:22 you shouldn’t dilute your culture.
0:21:24 I mean, this is pre-Hitler shit.
0:21:27 And yet, I don’t see a single Democrat
0:21:30 with anything resembling a following of social media
0:21:33 out there saying, fuck all.
0:21:36 So yeah, right now, as far as I can tell,
0:21:38 we have one party and another party
0:21:40 that thinks they’re at Catillion
0:21:42 training their kids to be polite
0:21:46 and that peace and love will win out.
0:21:47 Thank you for my TED talk.
0:21:49 Okay, let’s take a quick break.
0:21:50 Stay with us.
0:21:54 It’s Today Explained.
0:21:57 I’m Noelle King with Miles Bryan.
0:21:59 Senior reporter and producer for the program, hello.
0:22:01 Hi, you went to public school, right, Miles?
0:22:03 Yes, go South High Tigers.
0:22:05 What do you remember about school lunch?
0:22:09 Oh, I remember sad lasagna, shrink-wrapped
0:22:10 in little containers.
0:22:11 I remember avoiding it.
0:22:13 Do you remember the nugs, the chicken nuggets?
0:22:17 Yeah, if I had to eat school lunch,
0:22:18 that was a pretty good option.
0:22:19 I actually liked them.
0:22:22 But in addition to being very tasty,
0:22:23 those nugs were very processed.
0:22:26 And at the moment, America has got processed foods
0:22:28 in its crosshairs.
0:22:30 It’s true, we are collectively very down
0:22:32 on processed food right now, none more so
0:22:35 than Health and Human Services’ secretary nominee,
0:22:37 Robert Fluoride Kennedy, Jr.
0:22:41 I’ll get processed food out of school lunch immediately.
0:22:43 About half the school lunch program
0:22:45 goes to processed food.
0:22:49 Hen the man who once saved a dead bear cub for a snack
0:22:50 fixed school lunches.
0:22:54 Today Explained, every weekday,
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0:24:07 – So a couple of things.
0:24:10 Democrats said all the stuff that you just said
0:24:12 before the election for months
0:24:16 and voters turned up and said, “I don’t care.”
0:24:18 Right, so I care.
0:24:21 Millions of people do care,
0:24:23 but the pivotal number that seven million people
0:24:26 who voted for Biden in 2020 sat home in 2024.
0:24:29 That’s how little they cared about
0:24:30 what you’re just talking about.
0:24:32 AOC is out there.
0:24:34 She posted before the inauguration,
0:24:37 people are asking me why I’m not going to inauguration
0:24:41 and I’m not going to the inauguration of a rapist
0:24:42 to use the term that you use,
0:24:44 though I know there’s a legal conversation about that
0:24:46 and I’m not looking to have a defamation suit.
0:24:48 So AOC is saying stuff like that.
0:24:49 She was on John Stuart’s podcast,
0:24:52 talking a lot like you are just now.
0:24:55 But I feel like for someone like Hakeem Jeffries,
0:24:58 who is a very unifying leader,
0:25:03 he is trying to figure out as Nancy Pelosi had to for years,
0:25:06 how to manage a caucus that is being pulled
0:25:07 in many different directions
0:25:09 because the difference between what goes on
0:25:13 for a safe seat Democrat and a swing seat Democrat
0:25:14 is like night and day.
0:25:17 And we’re going to have Congressman Tom Swazi
0:25:19 on for an interview later in the week,
0:25:22 talk to him about this as he’s from a swing district
0:25:25 and he was one of the first people out there saying
0:25:27 these are the issues I’ll be able to compromise on.
0:25:29 We got to work together like the Lake and Riley Act
0:25:31 for immigration and I’m definitely looking forward
0:25:33 to pushing him about the parts of that bill
0:25:37 that are definitely not good, right?
0:25:40 In terms of not projecting dreamers and minors,
0:25:44 but obviously you can’t affect any change
0:25:45 if you’re not in office.
0:25:48 And if these people want to continue to be reelected,
0:25:51 so they can even make incremental progress,
0:25:54 they’re going to have to work with the other side
0:25:54 to some degree.
0:25:58 It’s something like 83% of the American public
0:26:01 wants the two sides to work together.
0:26:06 And that’s why I think going back to the executive orders
0:26:07 and kind of the beginnings of this,
0:26:11 like it is important to look at the list of things
0:26:16 and to say this is stuff that I kind of understand, right?
0:26:19 Like if you want to call it a national emergency
0:26:21 on the Southern border,
0:26:23 if you want to put more resources down there,
0:26:24 I can get on board with that.
0:26:25 I completely understand it.
0:26:27 All the people who live along the border would tell you
0:26:29 that’s exactly the kind of conditions
0:26:30 that they’re living in.
0:26:34 But the stuff that you have to figure out a way
0:26:36 to effectively hold the line,
0:26:40 not just rail about it or post about it.
0:26:43 He’s basically undoing the entire asylum system.
0:26:46 I was watching Tom Homan, he was being interviewed
0:26:49 about what happens now to all the people
0:26:52 who had their customs and border patrol appointments canceled
0:26:54 ’cause they got rid of the CBP One app.
0:26:56 And he said, well, go to a port of entry.
0:26:59 And the whole point was that you don’t want people
0:27:00 showing up at port of entries.
0:27:02 I mean, there are tens of thousands of people
0:27:04 who have been waiting in Mexico,
0:27:07 some upwards of a year to do this the legal way.
0:27:09 Also completely forgetting the fact
0:27:12 that people who are here illegally do have rights.
0:27:14 That is enshrined in our constitution
0:27:15 that they have a right to legal counsel,
0:27:18 that they have a right to do process.
0:27:20 And the DOJ has new directives.
0:27:24 This is one that I thought this can’t be real,
0:27:27 where they’re now telling legal service providers
0:27:30 who get federal funding not to do their jobs,
0:27:32 not to help these immigrants that are here
0:27:36 who might have a completely legitimate asylum claim.
0:27:40 I already mentioned the DEI offices
0:27:41 in the Fairfax County, sorry,
0:27:44 I said Loudoun County before it’s Fairfax County.
0:27:47 So that’s obviously bad, but then you sprint ahead.
0:27:50 Did you see this, that the Department of Defense,
0:27:52 ’cause they took down all of their DEI stuff,
0:27:55 removed promotional video material
0:27:56 about the Tuskegee Airmen.
0:27:58 – Yeah, and women in World War II.
0:28:01 – Yeah, the Wasps, which is such a great name for it.
0:28:04 And it was Katie Britt from the center from Alabama
0:28:07 who tweeted, “Oh, this must be a mistake.”
0:28:08 And within a couple of hours,
0:28:10 the new defense secretary, Pete Higgs,
0:28:12 was like, “I’ve fixed it.”
0:28:14 But that feels like one of those circumstances
0:28:16 where they were trying it on, right?
0:28:18 They thought, well, we could just go ahead
0:28:19 and get rid of these things.
0:28:23 And if someone catches us, so what, we’ll put it back up.
0:28:25 – And we’re in the news, as long as we can.
0:28:27 – Right, and we’re dominating the cycle no matter what,
0:28:31 because all news is good news
0:28:33 or all press is good press, I guess.
0:28:36 And that’s a credo that Trump has lived by forever.
0:28:39 There’s also just such a lack of expertise
0:28:41 and willingness to want to do the work, right?
0:28:44 They want to eliminate things en masse
0:28:46 and not spend the time going through
0:28:48 and actually looking at what the relevance is,
0:28:52 like purging the government of any of those checks.
0:28:54 They got rid of, I think, 17 inspector generals
0:28:57 over 12 huge bureaucracies, right?
0:29:00 These are things that used to piss off
0:29:02 storied members of the Senate, like Chuck Grassley,
0:29:04 lost his mind in 2021.
0:29:06 Trump got rid of two IGs.
0:29:08 Now 17 have been removed.
0:29:12 Did you see this communication freeze for the NIH and the CDC?
0:29:15 Like in the midst of bird flu,
0:29:18 they can’t tell people what’s going on with something.
0:29:20 Yeah, exactly.
0:29:24 And the foreign aid freeze is just totally frightening.
0:29:25 – Yeah, I’m a chairman of the World Health Organization.
0:29:28 To your point about sticking our chin out,
0:29:31 I believe Biden’s first executive order had to do
0:29:34 with transgender athletes’ rights,
0:29:35 and it took him three years
0:29:36 for an executive order on immigration.
0:29:39 – And to your point, illegal border crossings
0:29:43 had dropped to about 45,000 in December of 2024,
0:29:45 but in December of 2023,
0:29:46 a quarter of a million people came across
0:29:48 the border illegally.
0:29:53 What I find sort of ironic and telling about these,
0:29:54 I don’t know what the term is, roundups,
0:29:57 or when the ice shows up,
0:29:58 they’ve decided the most efficient place
0:30:02 to quote unquote find these unproductive people
0:30:03 who are freeloading.
0:30:05 Is it workplaces?
0:30:06 – Right.
0:30:08 – I thought, so if you wanted to deport Americans,
0:30:09 you’d probably go to McDonald’s
0:30:12 or to their basements where video games are,
0:30:15 but with undocumented workers,
0:30:18 you go to places of work ’cause that’s where they are.
0:30:20 I thought that was sort of ironic,
0:30:22 but we had this coming.
0:30:25 We ignored the problem, it got out of control,
0:30:28 and just as you can never actually visually spot
0:30:30 a pendulum at the middle,
0:30:32 they have swung, they have taken advantage of this
0:30:33 and they swung back.
0:30:35 And quite frankly, I don’t have a problem
0:30:38 with deportations of undocumented workers,
0:30:39 but let’s start with those who are in prison,
0:30:41 let’s start with those who’ve now committed two crimes,
0:30:44 one crime coming over here, legal, the second one.
0:30:47 I think that’s absolutely fair game.
0:30:50 The, I mean, some of the other issues
0:30:52 that we really screwed up on,
0:30:55 we talked about transgender, we took just a,
0:30:57 I don’t wanna say irrelevant,
0:30:59 but an issue and gave them just a free gift
0:31:01 would purchase for parents all over the nation
0:31:05 who don’t wanna have their daughters kind of run over.
0:31:08 The macro, the biggest issue, hands down in my opinion,
0:31:10 is that a mix of identity politics,
0:31:13 weaponization by special interest groups,
0:31:16 essentially had the Democrats implicitly
0:31:19 and explicitly turn their backs on the group
0:31:22 that has struggled the most the last 40 years.
0:31:25 Everybody feels when young people aren’t doing well.
0:31:28 Their parents, society,
0:31:29 and these are the people on social media saying,
0:31:32 okay, great invidious, we’re $3 trillion,
0:31:33 I can’t afford rent.
0:31:35 So instead of focusing on policies like inflation,
0:31:38 how to build more houses, bring down costs,
0:31:41 lower enrollment instead of being weaponized
0:31:43 by these universities that are,
0:31:46 I mean, essentially some of the most corrupt organizations
0:31:48 in the world are seen as the center
0:31:50 of democratic politics, specifically my industry.
0:31:54 What is more of an epicenter of kind of democratic ideals
0:31:56 than elite institutions
0:31:58 who I just interviewed the president Dartmouth.
0:32:02 They have an $8 billion endowment and they let in 500 kids.
0:32:03 – Okay, excuse me,
0:32:07 but you’re not this elite cast enforcer
0:32:10 talking about big, big fancy ideals,
0:32:12 but you don’t want to give people this drug
0:32:14 that decreases obesity, anxiety,
0:32:17 gives them a shot at getting married, making money.
0:32:20 No, you’d rather hoard it just for you and your elite friends.
0:32:23 So let’s create a misdirected DEI.
0:32:26 Michigan, University of Michigan has 200 DEI officers.
0:32:32 60% of Harvard’s freshman class identifies as non-white,
0:32:34 but we need to have DEI on campuses
0:32:35 such that we can discriminate against,
0:32:38 what, white kids and rural states?
0:32:40 I mean, it’s just, we got so out of control
0:32:43 with the identity politics, the DEI apparatus,
0:32:46 not focusing on inflation, not focusing on young people,
0:32:50 that we just gave them a layup to become sort of,
0:32:52 you know, just go overboard, flood the zone
0:32:54 with a ton of shit.
0:32:56 I get it, we deserve it, we had it coming.
0:32:58 What I’m really disappointed about
0:32:59 is why we’re all taking it
0:33:02 and calling on people to work together.
0:33:03 As far as I’m concerned,
0:33:07 it used to be about a certain level of mutual respect.
0:33:10 You know, Democrats and Republicans at the end of the day
0:33:12 thought, well, if they get in power,
0:33:14 I want them to show me some mutual respect.
0:33:16 It seems to me like we need to move to mutual destruction
0:33:20 and say, look, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Stephen Miller,
0:33:23 if you want to start revoking security details,
0:33:24 just be careful what you ask for,
0:33:26 ’cause once you’re out of office,
0:33:29 my guess is you’re gonna be real fond of a security detail.
0:33:31 You know, if you want,
0:33:33 I mean, if you want us to stick the DOJ on you
0:33:35 after our guy gets in office,
0:33:38 but right now we’re giving them the impression that
0:33:39 if you hit us, we’re Gandhi,
0:33:42 and we believe that peace is gonna work here,
0:33:44 and I think it’s to our disadvantage.
0:33:47 I think we come across as total wimps
0:33:50 and there’s no incentive for them to say,
0:33:52 well, maybe we shouldn’t be cutting
0:33:54 the security detail of General Milley,
0:33:57 in case our generals that we like are under threat
0:33:58 after they leave office.
0:33:59 I don’t think there’s any sense
0:34:03 that we’ll ever hit back, so to speak, your thoughts.
0:34:04 – Yeah, to back up your point,
0:34:08 that I think it’s crazy that we had his whole transition
0:34:12 knowing exactly who he is, what he’s going to do,
0:34:14 he’s telegraphing it every day,
0:34:19 and that we showed up on January 20th at inauguration
0:34:24 and did not have a solid message or a plan for countering this.
0:34:28 – The Democrats response post inauguration
0:34:33 or the complexion, for me, defines the term flat-footed.
0:34:36 Just on our heels, not even responding,
0:34:41 just kind of paralyzed, just incredibly encephaletic
0:34:44 and not counter punching at all.
0:34:48 It feels to me like in terms of the viscosity or strength
0:34:49 of the Democratic Party right now,
0:34:52 we have, I’ve never seen us this week.
0:34:53 – That’s a major declaration.
0:34:55 I don’t know if it’s necessarily wrong.
0:34:57 I think the right attitude,
0:34:59 like Congressman Golden’s team has said,
0:35:01 we’re not gonna respond to everything that Trump does
0:35:02 ’cause you can’t live in the midst
0:35:05 of an outrage cycle constantly.
0:35:08 But if we just take it on the chin constantly,
0:35:11 I could see voters showing up again in 2026
0:35:13 and just saying, well, what are you about?
0:35:15 I still have absolutely no idea.
0:35:17 So Huckin’ Jeffries really wants to focus in
0:35:18 on cost of living issues,
0:35:23 and the Republicans have put forward all these EOs,
0:35:26 they have a bill about banning transgender people
0:35:29 from athletics, but they don’t have a cost of living bill
0:35:31 and JD Vance was on with March Brennan over the weekend
0:35:33 and said, well, it takes time to bring prices down.
0:35:35 When they had told us it would happen on day one.
0:35:37 So I think you have to keep hammering that,
0:35:40 but you also need to have a personality
0:35:42 and be able to go on a long-form podcast
0:35:45 and chill with people and talk about other things
0:35:49 besides politics and I’m not seeing that
0:35:52 from that many key players in the Democratic party.
0:35:54 Most people, myself included,
0:35:57 thought Biden went too far with his preemptive pardons,
0:36:02 but he may be vindicated in that in the long term,
0:36:04 that these are ruthless people
0:36:07 who have said in public forums
0:36:10 that they’re going to come after these folks
0:36:12 and that that was actually the right thing to do.
0:36:14 I mean, that’s a Mitch McConnell move, right?
0:36:16 It’s not a traditional Joe Biden move
0:36:18 to go for the absolute worst case scenario.
0:36:23 So, you know, I hope that if Kashpatal gets confirmed
0:36:25 and it looks like he will,
0:36:27 because it looks like everybody will,
0:36:32 maybe not Tulsi, that he isn’t as punitive
0:36:38 and as motivated by retribution as he details in his book,
0:36:40 but who knows?
0:36:43 And I wanted to add to what you were saying
0:36:44 about young people.
0:36:48 I was talking to a friend of mine whose brother is 30 years
0:36:51 old, went on a bachelor party, 13 guys,
0:36:53 10 of 13 voted for Trump.
0:36:55 And these were all liberal-minded guys
0:36:58 that went to university together.
0:37:01 And what we were discussing that I found so interesting
0:37:03 and it links also to the discussion
0:37:05 about what’s going on with higher education
0:37:08 is that we just are seeing now amongst young people
0:37:11 a new definition of what sounds smart.
0:37:15 So, it used to be, you know, all of your degrees,
0:37:19 your level of credibility was directly connected
0:37:22 to how fancy the school you went to was, right?
0:37:25 Like what kind of job you had,
0:37:28 how that you knew which fork went with which, right?
0:37:30 Like going back to the pretty woman scene, right?
0:37:31 Slippery little suckers, right?
0:37:33 Like that that was what low-class looked like
0:37:35 and high-class looks like someone
0:37:38 who dedicates their life to public service,
0:37:40 but also has a trust fund that they’re relying on
0:37:42 and went to Harvard for everything.
0:37:45 And now the people that are revered
0:37:46 or that folks think are smart
0:37:50 are the ones who are asking questions incessantly.
0:37:52 And it doesn’t matter what they’re questioning.
0:37:55 Like RFK, well, I’m just asking questions, right?
0:37:58 About the measles vaccine or fluoride in the water
0:38:00 or whatever it is that day.
0:38:04 And the right has weaponized that against us
0:38:06 to an incredible advantage
0:38:10 because all of these young people who are smart
0:38:14 and very well-educated now think that it is cool
0:38:17 and forward-thinking and what they want to see in leadership
0:38:20 for people to not actually know the answers to questions.
0:38:23 And I don’t know how you rectify that
0:38:25 because, you know, I talked to my toddler
0:38:27 and she’s asking questions all the time, right?
0:38:29 Like, but why, mom?
0:38:30 Mommy, why?
0:38:30 Why do we do this?
0:38:32 Why are you going here?
0:38:33 Why do I have to brush my teeth?
0:38:35 Why do I have to make my bed?
0:38:38 And then you fast forward
0:38:41 to where she’ll be in 25, 30 years, let’s say.
0:38:43 Is she gonna think Joe Rogan is the smartest person
0:38:45 in the world because he’s just asking questions?
0:38:47 I mean, even Lex Friedman,
0:38:50 someone is a very traditionally smart person, right?
0:38:53 In terms of education and productivity
0:38:54 is just asking questions.
0:38:58 Like asking Zelinsky, why don’t you just give up your country?
0:39:00 And that’s what passes now
0:39:02 as the folks that we should be looking up to.
0:39:05 And that’s leading to a set of government officials
0:39:07 who are also doing that same thing
0:39:09 who are just flooding the zone with wild questions
0:39:12 that then leave them with this route
0:39:15 that they can go through to throw all of this
0:39:16 administrative shit at the wall.
0:39:19 And we’re ending up with a government
0:39:21 that I’m sure will be in complete crisis
0:39:22 in a matter of months.
0:39:26 – Yeah, it’s definitely, I mean, we say this a bunch
0:39:29 that we’re sort of in uncharted territory.
0:39:31 It seemed like I’m just, you said something
0:39:33 that sort of, I don’t know, piqued my interest
0:39:35 because you know more about this than I do,
0:39:39 but that you believe Kashpatel will be confirmed
0:39:42 and that there’s a chance that Tulsi Gabbard won’t be.
0:39:45 And I would have reversed that, but I don’t know the latest.
0:39:46 What’s going on there?
0:39:49 – What, well, what’s going on is, I mean,
0:39:50 you saw Pete Hegsas go through.
0:39:53 So there were three no votes on that.
0:39:56 It was quite clear that Senator Tillis did want
0:39:59 to vote against him ’cause he required Hegsas
0:40:02 to write a letter to him answering specific questions
0:40:06 about accusations of abuse against his second wife.
0:40:09 There was a big New York Times piece about this.
0:40:12 And you can see if an unjoney earns his face
0:40:13 that she didn’t want to do this.
0:40:15 But when you’re threatened with a primary
0:40:17 and probably with violence,
0:40:20 knowing how the internet works, you do those things.
0:40:22 The reason that I say that I think it’s possible,
0:40:23 Tulsi doesn’t get confirmed,
0:40:27 Lindsey Graham over the weekend wouldn’t answer, right?
0:40:29 And how he was voting on it.
0:40:32 And I feel like if there is anyone
0:40:33 who’s not gonna get through,
0:40:36 it’s the one that people are being the quietest about.
0:40:39 And no one really talks about Tulsi Gabbard.
0:40:42 They’re talking about the other ones.
0:40:46 I think it’s feasible that Republicans decide
0:40:48 that RFK Junior is not actually a threat
0:40:51 to vaccines or whatever and let him through.
0:40:54 But it seems like they’re advertising,
0:40:56 having good meetings with Cache Patel.
0:40:59 And I haven’t seen one thumbs up MAGA post
0:41:01 with people standing with Tulsi Gabbard.
0:41:05 So, but I’m prepared for all of it to get through.
0:41:09 – I love someone said that Mitch McConnell voting
0:41:11 against Hexath would be like Hannibal Lecter
0:41:13 going vegetarian on his death bed.
0:41:18 It’s just like, don’t hold your breath.
0:41:19 But yeah, it’s-
0:41:20 – You did it.
0:41:25 – Yeah, again, he’s got very little to lose at this point.
0:41:27 Right?
0:41:28 – Totally.
0:41:30 – He’s leaving his old, I mean-
0:41:32 – Profiles encourage though, right?
0:41:36 That you’re doing it and then nothing really to show for it.
0:41:40 But, you know, I guess I appreciate it anyway.
0:41:41 – But you think Cache Patel is gonna get through?
0:41:43 That’s super interesting.
0:41:46 – Right now, I don’t, you know, who knows,
0:41:51 but it looks likely and people seem to be thinking
0:41:56 that Donald Trump is entitled to whatever he wants
0:41:58 in terms of a cabinet.
0:42:01 And usually people do get what they want.
0:42:04 There have been cases where it hasn’t happened,
0:42:07 but they strong arm everyone.
0:42:09 And they have this fleet of people online
0:42:11 just threatening anyone who opposes them,
0:42:13 including, you know, members of their family
0:42:14 will do things like that,
0:42:17 whether that is a sitting elected representative
0:42:19 or the president of another country.
0:42:22 Like this game that went on with the Colombians
0:42:25 about using military planes
0:42:28 versus the regular detention planes.
0:42:30 I mean, first of all, it costs three times more.
0:42:35 They can get up to $852,000 to send back migrants
0:42:39 on these C-130s, I think, or C-17s.
0:42:40 – It’s all about branding, right?
0:42:43 – And so it’s like a huge, it’s all the show.
0:42:45 And CNN was reporting this morning
0:42:48 that they want all of the ICE agents
0:42:50 to be wearing their vests.
0:42:53 And for this to be made for TV,
0:42:54 ’cause we’re in the Truman Show,
0:42:55 but like a really bad version.
0:42:57 – Yeah, the one jet blue.
0:42:59 Okay, let’s take a quick break.
0:42:59 Stay with us.
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0:44:16 (upbeat music)
0:44:20 – Welcome back.
0:44:22 Before we wrap, we gotta adjust something
0:44:23 we’ve been hearing from some of you.
0:44:26 Apparently there’s a feeling that we’re not quite living up
0:44:28 to the moderate in our show name.
0:44:30 Maybe we’re leaning a bit more into the raging side.
0:44:32 People say we’re more raging than moderate.
0:44:34 That’s a fair point.
0:44:37 So what does being a moderate really mean to us,
0:44:38 especially during this new administration?
0:44:40 Jess, you kick us off.
0:44:42 What do you think it means to be a moderate?
0:44:44 – Well, first, the fact that we’re talking about this
0:44:48 is your fault because you made me a comments monster.
0:44:51 And I went and looked at what people were saying
0:44:54 and there’s a lot of positive stuff.
0:44:54 But it–
0:44:56 – Oh, don’t look at the comments.
0:44:57 I mean, read the first five, learn from it
0:45:00 and then ignore it, just your own mental health.
0:45:03 – I stay up later than everyone in my household
0:45:05 so I could spend a good amount of time
0:45:07 comments doom scrolling.
0:45:10 But seeing a lot of this, like this is not
0:45:12 what a moderate means.
0:45:15 And I am completely willing to accept
0:45:17 that A, a moderate means different things
0:45:19 to different people.
0:45:24 And that also, I think of myself as a liberal moderate,
0:45:28 not someone who is a swing voter at this point.
0:45:31 And most people who advertise that are lying
0:45:33 ’cause there’s usually a crucial issue
0:45:35 that puts you into one camp or the other.
0:45:37 For a lot of people, it’s whether you’re pro-choice
0:45:39 or pro-life, and as a pro-choice person,
0:45:42 I would be hard-pressed to support
0:45:44 a candidate that was pro-life.
0:45:46 But I guess I wanted to talk about this
0:45:48 because I think what we share
0:45:53 and why we wanted to do this specific podcast together
0:45:57 under this name is because we wanna talk
0:46:00 about politics through the framework of pragmatism,
0:46:04 not just optimism or what we want to happen.
0:46:07 And that it’s important to have political discussions
0:46:10 that are cognizant of the guardrails
0:46:12 of the way government actually operates.
0:46:15 And also, I think most crucially,
0:46:18 understanding that the framework of a partisan worldview
0:46:21 is not how the general populace operates.
0:46:25 And the 2024 results were so indicative
0:46:27 of that transformation,
0:46:30 that people are not interested in backing a team
0:46:32 in the same way of anything they’re backing Trump
0:46:33 because they back that player, right?
0:46:35 Like that’s their favorite football player,
0:46:38 their favorite basketball player or whatever sport they’re into.
0:46:43 And I think that being a moderate right now is trying,
0:46:47 as per our earlier discussion,
0:46:50 to see the good in what the other side
0:46:52 may be bringing to the table and saying like,
0:46:54 “Sure, that works for me.”
0:46:57 And also I have constituents or I have people that I know
0:47:00 who absolutely feel that way,
0:47:04 recognizing the faults of the party that we both belong to
0:47:07 and then trying to find a way to constructively
0:47:12 and effectively push back where we need to.
0:47:15 And that’s how I see it right now.
0:47:17 I don’t, how do you see it?
0:47:19 Even though you said earlier, you’re not moderate.
0:47:21 So the podcast is over.
0:47:24 – I would define myself as kind of ground zero
0:47:25 for moderates.
0:47:26 And that is what, as far as I can tell moderates
0:47:29 are basically people that everybody hates.
0:47:34 And essentially, I mean, the generous
0:47:36 or the actual Webster definition would be someone
0:47:39 who has tempered views
0:47:42 and is somewhere in the middle on the political spectrum.
0:47:45 And the way I see it is I’ve tried as I’ve gotten older
0:47:48 to not be lazy and sign up for any political orthodoxy.
0:47:50 When I hear something crazy on the left,
0:47:54 I like to call it out when I think our democratic leadership
0:47:58 is too inefficient, feckless, cowardly, I call it out.
0:48:01 When I think DEI is out of control,
0:48:04 when I think that immigration is out of control,
0:48:07 when I think that social security spending is out of control,
0:48:10 you know, there’s some of their favorite policies
0:48:12 of the left, I call it out.
0:48:17 And when I am, you know, I’m vigorously pro-Israel.
0:48:19 It’s like, I don’t bark up any one tree.
0:48:20 I try to have my own views.
0:48:24 In this environment, based on where the political spectrum is,
0:48:25 I’m now seen as center left.
0:48:28 In the 70s, I would have been a Rockefeller Republican.
0:48:30 I just would have been, I would have,
0:48:32 I would have been in that party.
0:48:34 But I think it’s also just saying,
0:48:36 look, I’m gonna look at, I’m gonna be a critical thinker.
0:48:39 I’m gonna look at issue by issue.
0:48:41 And regardless of the political orthodoxy
0:48:42 you’re supposed to sign up to, you say,
0:48:44 okay, I’m not down with this.
0:48:47 And it’s almost like you become, unfortunately,
0:48:50 to a certain extent, the left is much harsher on moderates.
0:48:52 They treat you like an apostate.
0:48:54 Yeah, Scott, I thought we could trust you.
0:48:57 People from the Biden campaign, sign up.
0:48:59 Don’t you understand the assignment?
0:48:59 Sign up.
0:49:01 Well, no, he’s too fucking old.
0:49:03 What are we doing here?
0:49:05 And then people on the right are just like,
0:49:06 kind of write you off as a libtard.
0:49:09 But they don’t come after you the same way the left does
0:49:11 when they thought you were, quote unquote,
0:49:13 when we thought you were one of us.
0:49:17 So I see a moderate as someone who says,
0:49:19 okay, I’m gonna go issue by issue.
0:49:20 I’m gonna use critical thinking.
0:49:22 I’m gonna be unafraid to say this makes no sense,
0:49:26 regardless of the cult dynamics of pressure
0:49:29 to sign up for the full orthodoxy and narrative.
0:49:31 Because when the narrative gets crazy
0:49:35 or makes no fucking sense, you say, okay, I don’t buy this.
0:49:37 I don’t have a problem with deporting criminals.
0:49:39 I get the symbolism of it.
0:49:41 I don’t have a problem with a surge of troops
0:49:44 at the border, fine.
0:49:46 Deficits, anyways, my point is,
0:49:49 I’d like to think a moderate is someone who says,
0:49:50 I’m a critical thinker.
0:49:52 I’m gonna look at the issues
0:49:54 and I’m gonna decide one by one,
0:49:57 what I think is the right view on this.
0:50:00 I’m not gonna sign up and just say, okay,
0:50:03 I’m a fan, I’m a cultist, no matter what they say.
0:50:05 And this is true about the left and the right.
0:50:08 But I will say as someone who’s seen or identified
0:50:13 as a Democrat that I get more hate from the left
0:50:13 than I do from the right.
0:50:16 The right has just kind of written me off.
0:50:17 And that’s how it is in our society.
0:50:18 You gotta pick a side.
0:50:21 You can’t say, well, I wanna go issue by issue, right?
0:50:24 Do I believe women should have the right
0:50:25 to terminate a pregnancy?
0:50:26 Yes.
0:50:28 And the third trimester?
0:50:30 Okay, that’s worth a discussion, right?
0:50:35 If the woman’s health or the baby’s health is not in danger,
0:50:38 at the same time, nobody trusts each other.
0:50:41 So nobody wants to have anything resembling
0:50:45 kind of a moderate conversation.
0:50:49 In addition with Citizens United and gerrymandering
0:50:52 that has hard right and hard left districts,
0:50:54 there’s no political room for moderates anymore.
0:50:56 They can’t get elected, right?
0:50:58 Because basically every election now
0:51:00 with these hard blue and hard red districts
0:51:03 is decided in the primary.
0:51:05 So it’s basically who can be craziest.
0:51:07 Who can be more crazy left or who can be more crazy right?
0:51:10 And a moderate is just a recipe for not getting elected.
0:51:14 So I think in the media or as a commentator
0:51:16 or whatever you wanna call yourself a thought leader,
0:51:18 I think it’s especially important that we demonstrate.
0:51:20 It’s okay to be a critical thinker
0:51:23 and occasionally have your followers on threads
0:51:25 or blue sky come after you because you say,
0:51:28 yeah, I don’t get this democratic policy.
0:51:34 I think the vice president was a great senator.
0:51:36 I think she’d be a great Supreme Court justice.
0:51:39 I don’t know if she’d be a great president.
0:51:41 And then everyone comes for you.
0:51:45 And I’m not willing to sign up and blind,
0:51:49 bend the knee for C above an insurrectionist and a rapist.
0:51:51 – Critical thinking, look at every person,
0:51:53 look at every issue and decide where you are on it.
0:51:56 Because that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, Jess.
0:51:58 – No, I think that’s the right story.
0:52:01 And I think that there’s so much pressure
0:52:02 to always be a good soldier.
0:52:06 I certainly feel this in my role,
0:52:08 being part of the conservative media ecosystem,
0:52:13 that there are liberals who get enraged if I even say,
0:52:14 well, this doesn’t make a ton of sense.
0:52:19 Or this is an issue that 70% of Americans agree on.
0:52:21 Like, why can’t that just be our position?
0:52:24 It seems pretty normal.
0:52:29 Like, you know, the was a prop 36 on the California ballot,
0:52:33 making it not okay to shoplift up to $950
0:52:34 without getting arrested.
0:52:37 Like these are just obvious things.
0:52:40 And you should be able to have opinions about them
0:52:42 without people flipping out on you.
0:52:45 But I do think a critical component
0:52:48 of how we approach politics
0:52:53 and how people who are governing more in the middle do
0:52:55 is that they fundamentally understand
0:52:58 that it’s not the intentions that matter,
0:53:00 it’s the outcomes that matter.
0:53:03 And we just had an enormous outcomes election
0:53:07 where people said that governance in blue cities and states
0:53:12 is not meeting the moment, far from it.
0:53:16 That riding the subway is not a good option anymore.
0:53:18 That we don’t support law enforcement,
0:53:21 that we have people who are incompetent,
0:53:24 perhaps corrupt in big positions of power.
0:53:27 And that we are not living up to the covenant
0:53:31 that our elected officials make with the people
0:53:32 who send them there.
0:53:35 And that we’re actually failing ourselves
0:53:37 when it comes to our values
0:53:40 because of how poor that governance has gotten.
0:53:44 And that’s really crucial to how I think about politics
0:53:47 and how I think about my advocacy for policies
0:53:49 that I think will improve quality of life.
0:53:53 And more often than not, those policies are linked
0:53:58 to more liberal legislators or people who see the world
0:54:01 through a similar prism to me.
0:54:03 But I am completely open to the fact
0:54:05 that there are good representatives
0:54:07 from the other side of the aisle
0:54:10 that also live by those ideals
0:54:12 or certainly can meet us somewhere in the middle
0:54:13 to get something good done.
0:54:18 And I remember when the Democrats were funding MAGA candidates
0:54:21 to run against moderate Republicans.
0:54:26 And I understood it from a, we got a win perspective.
0:54:29 But it was upsetting to me
0:54:34 that good people like Peter Mayer in Michigan lost his seat
0:54:39 because we put in tons of money to back a crazy person
0:54:41 that would then go on to lose to the Democrat.
0:54:44 And I think that those are the kinds of things
0:54:45 that we need to explore
0:54:49 because we’re only gonna have a healthy political system
0:54:52 if we do have two thriving parties, right?
0:54:55 That are full of people that actually capture
0:54:58 the cultural and political zeitgeist of the country.
0:55:03 And the extremes on both sides are wildly dangerous.
0:55:07 And I think that the right more dangerous than the left.
0:55:10 But when you look at what people think
0:55:12 and how they’re talking about the issues,
0:55:14 you know that the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world
0:55:18 are not appealing to the general population writ large.
0:55:21 And that first sound like the Alonno Mars
0:55:22 or the Rashida Thalibs of the world
0:55:24 are not appealing to them either.
0:55:29 And so I think it’s important to be trying to stake out ground
0:55:31 to have these discussions about it to, you know,
0:55:34 bring people on from the other side of the aisle
0:55:37 or people who work regularly with Republicans
0:55:41 so that we can hear about how progress can actually be made
0:55:42 because they’re the ones,
0:55:44 we can talk all we want from our studios,
0:55:47 but they’re the ones actually casting the votes
0:55:50 for all of this and hopefully making a big difference
0:55:51 in people’s lives.
0:55:52 – Yeah, something I think the Republicans
0:55:54 have done much better than Democrats.
0:55:57 And your buddy Tim Miller, I thought made a great point on
0:56:01 from the Bollard podcast that they kind of the coarseness
0:56:06 and the, I don’t know, just the provocative,
0:56:09 sometimes stupid, sometimes weirdness
0:56:10 that’s come out of the right.
0:56:13 It came across as authentic, whereas Democrats,
0:56:15 it’s as if they’re reading off a press release
0:56:17 or believe that they’re crossing the Delaware
0:56:20 or giving an inauguration speech.
0:56:21 I mean, they’re just so like,
0:56:25 it’s like speak like a regular person for God’s sakes.
0:56:28 And the Republicans do that better than Democrats.
0:56:31 Also, it strikes me that a big component
0:56:33 in terms of what impacts people’s lives
0:56:38 and gives them the impression of the respective brands,
0:56:40 we have to get our shit together around on the ground,
0:56:44 running some of these Democratic cities.
0:56:49 A bunch of my friends lost houses in the Pacific Palisades.
0:56:50 And they basically all said the same thing.
0:56:53 They’re like, I keep hearing these excuses
0:56:54 where the reservoirs weren’t full,
0:56:56 the water pressure was down, whatever it is.
0:57:01 And he’s like, we pay 13% a year in additional taxes.
0:57:02 If I’m gonna have my house burned down,
0:57:05 I’ll move to Florida or Texas where I pay 0%.
0:57:09 It’s like, we should have the supersize gold-plated VIP,
0:57:15 a white glove government when you’re paying 13%.
0:57:17 And instead, some of the highest tax,
0:57:19 highest tax states are offering,
0:57:21 I mean, they’re expensive but bad,
0:57:23 which isn’t a recipe for a good product.
0:57:27 And the most expensive but bad metros right now
0:57:29 are governed by Democrats
0:57:31 who seem to be weaponized by unions
0:57:34 or whatever it might be, special interest groups
0:57:37 and are just taxing the shit out of their local residents
0:57:40 and doing head up your ass, you know,
0:57:42 enforcement like you’re talking about
0:57:45 where if you steal less than $900,
0:57:47 they don’t even prosecute you.
0:57:50 So I think until, and by the way,
0:57:51 I don’t think that’s true of New York.
0:57:53 New York has 12, I think it’s a total
0:57:56 of about 12 or 13% also in taxes.
0:57:58 But I would argue Manhattan is worth it.
0:58:02 I think it’s actually, I think Manhattan is well run.
0:58:05 And I don’t know about you, but I do feel,
0:58:09 I do feel that the subway feels a little bit different.
0:58:11 I’ve noticed that, I’m more aware.
0:58:13 – That’s an understatement.
0:58:15 – Yeah, you really feel it, don’t you?
0:58:17 – Well, I do personally,
0:58:20 but I don’t remember I grew up here
0:58:22 and have ridden the subway my whole life,
0:58:25 the number of people being like thrown in front of cars,
0:58:29 being punched, slashed, a woman burned on the F train.
0:58:33 That’s not normal.
0:58:35 Oh, things happen every once in a while.
0:58:36 – Agreed.
0:58:38 – And Cathy Hookle is definitely getting the message
0:58:42 because of Richie Torres, but it’s bad.
0:58:46 – Yeah, and also I just, in terms of crime, I think it’s-
0:58:48 – Well, crime is down, but those are also
0:58:50 to the point about the messaging of this.
0:58:54 No one, if they feel less safe and you come at them
0:58:57 with a bunch of statistics, it doesn’t matter.
0:58:58 – If I don’t feel safe on the subway,
0:59:00 if I can’t have my AirPods in,
0:59:03 ’cause I need to, I have to feel like I’m more aware.
0:59:05 All right, that’s all for this episode, Jess.
0:59:07 Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates.
0:59:10 Our producers are David Toledo and Chenenye Onike,
0:59:12 our technical director is Drew Burroughs.
0:59:14 You can find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday.
0:59:17 – That’s right, Raging Moderates on its own feed.
0:59:20 Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
0:59:22 Jess, have a great rest of the week.
0:59:23 – You too, Scott.
0:59:24 – Thank you.
0:59:26 (upbeat music)