The Exchanges

Q Um, here is, and to wrap up the AI segment, if you're open AI, and you see Grok, You're Sam Altman. You're playing with this thing. What goes through your head?

A Well, so Dave and I did this cost analysis over lunch, because that's what we do, of how much money has gone into each to build what seems like very competitive platforms, LLMs. Um, and so, twelve billion has gone into Grok, and, and OpenAI, you have to sort of discount the Microsoft dollars, because a lot of it's for compute, but an estimated twenty billion. Into open AI. So, you know, almost double what Grok has used to build a very similar, if not better performing, LLM. And so I think, I think Sam Altman and the open AI team should re like really think, you know, and this was what happened with deep seek, right? It was like, how could we be undercut by costs so much? And so I think that's a real outcome of this.

AI assessment note: “how could we be undercut by costs so much?”

Q is really more apt to how I think a lot of these people do think about it. And, you know, many of them have told me flat out, you know, you, who are the nodes at your company who do X, Y, and Z? And I, I always thought that was fascinating because it, Turns a lot of it on its head. But Britt, what's your reaction to all this?

A Okay. Two things. One, now that I'm up to speed and read the essay, Paul Graham does talk about the idea that a lot of founders are gaslit by their own VCs, right? And the problem with that is most VCs haven't been founders themselves. And I think that's becoming more and more important. And obviously all four of us on this pod are former founders, current founders. And We know what it takes to be a founder. And I think that if you are a founder out there, it's not only good for you to find VCs that have been founders and understand what it's like to be in that position, but I also think like you should consider your board composition in a way where even your non-investors on the board might have more empathy for you as a founder or understand what it's like to be in that chair. I think there's just, there's a lot more that goes into the full understanding of that role when you have those people on the sidelines Like championing you.

AI assessment note: “Paul Graham does talk about the idea that a lot of founders are gaslit”

Q And zealots, right? To your point. But Britt, over to you. What are, what are you holding in your head and thinking about?

A So a couple things. One, I think anytime you need a flow chart to explain how your board works and is hired, you're probably starting from a bad position. Um, the second thing is I feel like Satya is getting like all this credit for like saving open AI and like, you know, doing the right thing. And I don't think a lot of people are recognizing like he like hit a Hail Mary and he was Screwed. And like, frankly, I'm surprised that Microsoft and Sequoia and Thrive, like didn't do more board diligence when they were investing all this money to figure out like this board, this board was like not adequate for the type of company that this has become. And so now, oh God, I'm going to lose it. Loving billion dollars overnight. I better like figure out how to like, you know, hit this one out of the park and get Sam to join me or else I'm screwed. And like, Microsoft barely is holding on to its stock price right now, and we'll see what happens next, but I just feel like if that didn't happen, like, it would be a world of trouble, and I think a lot of, like, fingers pointed at Satya to be like, what the hell were you doing when you invested and not, like, doing all this, like, diligence around the board itself?

AI assessment note: “So a couple things. One, I think anytime you need a flow chart”

Q Did you do Pernuvo? Which one did you do?

A Tell the people. I did QBio, but I also did, like, back in the day before QBio, like, actual DEXA scans, um, three 60 body, um, scans. I did my VO two max every year. And I would compare year over year to see like how my body was changing physically and then internally and all the, all the blood tests and urine tests and all those things too. And I think it's really awesome for preventative healthcare. I think AI obviously is going to help a lot. I think that it's an interest. It's like going to be interesting from a privacy and data standpoint of like, now do these companies own the data and they're analyzing it with AI. So what does that mean? And then I also think there's going to be a lot of like false positives and people are going to have some really bad Um, outcomes.

AI assessment note: “I did QBio, but I also did, like, back in the day before QBio”

Q really clear-cut cases, I find it hard to see that benefiting the ecosystem. And, like, just one more note on this, you know, Adobe, a ton of different design software, obviously, Figma, In the design software arena, but, like, I do worry about the precedent this kind of sets, and if it says that, like, really all kinds of acquisitions are off the table, but what do you think, Britt?

A Okay, so first of all, Scott Belsky, who was a key part of this acquisition, was our only fifth wheel this season on more or less, and did not comment on the status of the acquisition at the time. But if you guys remember, Adobe announced this intention to acquire Figma in early September, twenty-twenty-two, which was A, before the AI craze burst with OpenAI and everything else, B, before the markets really kind of fell out from under us. And, you know, if you look back in time, I think that the valuation that they were giving even then was probably part of the bubble valuation. And I do think that Adobe has really stepped it up quite a bit this year. Thanks to Scott, actually, a lot of their new product releases and AI integration has been really compelling, I think. And if I'm Adobe, I'm like, I kind of dodged a bullet. I think that we've got a lot of our shit together. We are building a lot of really cool things. And maybe this was too high of a price to pay for a really great piece of software, but Something that, you know, within the last 15 months we maybe could have made a big dent in ourselves. So I think that the time lapse that this has happened in is really interesting as a bullet point to the story.

AI assessment note: “And if I'm Adobe, I'm like, I kind of dodged a bullet.”

Q Okay. But what do we do about that? Or what we, what do you guys do about that? Because that's a reality today.

A Once people start realizing, once the everyday person in Texas that I grew up with is like, whoa, I made a thousand dollars from this random AI thing I created, which I don't think is gonna happen today, but like maybe a year from now. And that's gonna, that sentiment's gonna spread and people are gonna be like, whoa. And by the way, Dave and I did an hour long meeting with our head of school this week. It was just like, Every time we do conversations with like normies, like the head of school or whatever, they're like, what? I can like do all this stuff, but like all the parents hated and everyone's, you know, everyone's disputing how we should use AI and how should we do all these things. But also like, I could run my school more efficiently.

AI assessment note: “Every time we do conversations with like normies, like the head of school or whatever”