Dec 14, 2024 · 1h 10m · tbpn
Surviving a VC Holiday Party (ep22)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the Technology Brothers podcast, hosts John and Jordy deliver a satirical survival guide for venture capital holiday parties while exploring tech job-hunting strategies, venture fund economics, and frontier hard-tech developments.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.3 Guest teaching 1.2 Guest disagreement 0.9 The hosts pushing back 1.2
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 39:25 Premise dismissal on infant sleep gene editing
The hosts dismiss the viral tweet's assumption that parents want four-hour sleep genes, pointing out that every actual parent optimizes heavily for twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 1:05:15 Pushing back on EV credit card roulette logicJohn rejects the notion that credit card roulette is neutral expected value, demonstrating how individual ordering habits skew the payoff heavily in favor of large consumers.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 35:50 Arthur Rock identification correctionJohn corrects Jordi on the historical identity behind the Twitter handle, educating him that Arthur Rock was widely recognized as the original venture capitalist.
The host holds their own ▶ 52:10 Expert comparison of Thiel and Graham venture thesesJohn demonstrates deep institutional expertise by systematically contrasting Founders Fund's power-law underwriting against Y Combinator's company-launch model.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organizing Group Cinema Outings and Interstellar IMAX Experience | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Co-hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays open the show with casual personal anecdotes about organizing group outings to see Interstellar in IMAX. The dynamic is purely humorous, agreeable, and collaborative with light producer participation. | |
| The Founder's Strategic Survival Guide to VC Holiday Parties | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts build out an elaborate satirical survival guide for founders attending VC holiday parties. Both contribute escalating tactical jokes about wine chugging, stealth pitches, and bringing bodyguards without serious conflict. | |
| Listener Mailbag: Formalwear Resolutions and High-Impact Job Hunting | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | John and Jordi offer earnest career advice to a job seeker struggling in the tech market. They share actionable strategies regarding cold emailing length, high-conviction sample projects, and engineering recruiter outreach. | |
| Upgrading Community Honors: Reply Guy of the Week Award | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | The hosts highlight top social media interactions and announce the new weekly community award, highlighting Turner Novak's replies. The tone is self-referential, playful, and completely aligned. | |
| Brother of the Week: Mark Zuckerberg’s Gold Chain and Inflection Grants | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Jordi explains Justin Mares' Inflection Grants initiative and the charity auction of Mark Zuckerberg's chain. John adds humorous commentary regarding grant eligibility for tailored suits. | |
| Venture Capital Economics: Seed Round Fundraising Versus Associate Hiring | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | The hosts analyze a tweet discussing why raising a seed round can be easier than landing an associate role. John breaks down fund economics, explaining fund sizing, associate hiring, and portfolio option value. | |
| Community Artwork Spotlight: The Winter Sports Car Photoshop Meme | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | John and Jordi discuss anonymous tech leak accounts on X, specifically Arthur Rock. Jordi admits not knowing the historical reference until John reminds him that Arthur Rock was the original pioneer venture capitalist. | |
| Ethics and Practicalities of Near-Term Human Embryo Gene Editing | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | The conversation turns to near-future embryo gene editing and parenting trade-offs. The hosts push back on the premise that parents would want low-sleep infants, joking that every parent prioritizes 12-hour sleep. | |
| San Francisco Urban Conditions and Tech Industry Cultural Evolution | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | John shares personal historical context living in San Francisco's Tenderloin and reflects on the changing cultural response to street conditions over the past decade. | |
| Tech IPO Revival and Opportunistic Re-Applications to Y Combinator | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | The hosts evaluate the reopening tech IPO window and founders reapplying to Y Combinator, followed by Jordi sharing details on his defense tech venture, Deterrence. | |
| Motion Sickness and EMF Concerns in Electric Rideshare Vehicles | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Jordi explains why electric rideshares cause nausea due to regenerative braking and backseat EMF levels. John provides practical context around driver behavior versus passenger perspective. | |
| The Dude Culture Hierarchy of Male Address Terms and VC Etiquette | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | John leverages his firsthand experience with Y Combinator and Founders Fund to contrast Paul Graham's broad company-building philosophy against Peter Thiel's strict power-law monopoly model. | |
| Product Design Efficiency: WhatsApp’s Team Scale Versus Lean Platforms | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | The hosts debate organizational bloat, contrasting WhatsApp's 150-person design team against X's lean team of five designers while acknowledging underlying platform complexity. | |
| Orbital Manufacturing and Space Policy: Varda’s Washington Hiring Call | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | John details Crusoe's founding history of converting flared natural gas into compute, explaining how they pivoted from Bitcoin mining into full-scale AI infrastructure. | |
| Creator Platforms and Tax Strategy: Lucy Guo’s Viral Podcast Appearance | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | The hosts review Lucy Guo's creator platform announcements and discuss a charity stock picking leaderboard, admitting when they lack full background on the foundation. | |
| Timeless Entrepreneurial Principles: Brad Jacobs on Founders Podcast | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | John and Jordi analyze Brad Jacobs' operating rules and dissect the economics behind BuzzFeed's $82.5M sale of Hot Ones, examining enterprise value retention beyond host Sean Evans. |
Statements from this episode (26)
Hays: The best founders are often controversial like Jobs and Kalanick
“The best founders are often controversial, right? Steve Jobs, Travis Kalanick, Kalanick.”
Hays: Unknown seed-stage startups receive 3,000 applicants for entry-level roles
“Even relatively unknown seed stage startups will get. 3000 applicants. For a entry level role.”
Hays: Having someone on a podcast is the modern olive branch
“Having somebody on your podcast is the modern equivalent of an olive branch.”
Hays: Justin Mares launched $2,000 Inflection Grants for young builders
“Justin has created this thing called inflection grants, which is a program where if you're 25 and under and 2000 dollars would change your life, you can get a grant.”
Hays: Mark Zuckerberg's auctioned gold chain raised $100,000 for Inflection Grants
“And so this chain, they were able to secure
Mark Zuckerberg's former daily driver chain and auction it off and able to raise a 100,000 dollars for inflection grants.”
Hays: VC associate roles at most firms are SDR-like busy work
“The VC associate job is just not at most firms is not that you're kind of like a BDR SDR, like cold reaching out to companies. The good companies don't want to talk to the associates. And so it's just sort of like a role that has a bunch of busy work”
Coogan: Deploying $100M into seed rounds offers better returns than hiring associates
“If you raise a billion dollar fund and you put a hundred million aside for million dollar seed rounds, that's a hundred companies. You're not going to hire a hundred associates with a billion dollar fund. And so the math just plays out much better. You get all…”
Hays: Anonymous accounts leaked VC deals early in the 2021 bubble
“Last last bubble 20, 21, there was an account, I think it was called genuine info or something like that. That was just similar approach that was basically leaking major deal making that was happening, you know, months or two months out before it was getting p…”
Coogan: Tech markets are always viewed as either a bubble or a crash
“You're always in a bubble. You're either in a crash or a bubble. There's no normal time.”
Coogan: Gene editing advances will be smooth rather than binary step changes
“The problem with this is that, like, these innovations, like, it's not gonna be some binary step change. It's gonna be very smooth, and so, like, yes, every, every kid is gonna be healthier.”
Coogan: Many gene editing technologies will work post-birth through medications
“And a lot of these gene editing technologies will be possible once you're alive. There'll be medications. There'll be all sorts of different hacks.”
Coogan: Tech previously ostracized peers rather than defending speech on city decay
“And yeah, the tech industry hadn't learned to like circle the wagons at all. And so there was just, it was just complete, complete scapegoating and then just ostracization. And you just became an apostate very quickly for doing anything like this.”
Coogan: San Francisco post-COVID encampments became far more permanent
“The thing that I landed on as being like something that I noticed that was physically different was the number of barbecues that were on the street, like more permanent encampments because you're actually like living and cooking and like sometimes even hooking…”
Hays: ServiceTitan priced IPO at ~70 and debuted over 100
“Cause it was Service Titan. They priced it at like 70 and then it went out at like one over a hundred.”
Coogan: Ginkgo Bioworks went through YC at ~200M valuation
“Giggo Bioworks went through at like, two hundred million valuation.”
Hays: Defense tech ignores high-volume munitions manufacturing
“A lot of the high profile defense tech companies like Andrew roll have been going after these sort of very sexy programs like drones and autonomous submarines. And there hasn't been a player yet that's come out and made a made an effort to rebuild the sort of …”
Hays: Tesla vehicles emit high EMF levels, especially in the backseat
“Tesla's just emit like a ridiculous amount of EMF which is, you know, sort of low level radiation. A lot of people say that it doesn't Have any negative effects. But there's quite a lot of evidence that it might. And you can actually go on YouTube and just sea…”
Hays: VCs calling portfolio founders 'bud' should be diluted to zero
“I do think that if a VC calls their portfolio founder bud, they should be diluted to zero. Like, there should be, like, some type of new round with structure done to just dilute them to zero, because it's so condescending and should be taken out of the vocabul…”
Coogan: Founders Fund Exclusively Underwrites Potential Trillion-Dollar Monopolies
“The Founders Fund Teal model is, Very, very narrowly selected for monopoly power, power law outcomes. Can this be a trillion dollar company?”
Hays: Most VCs Claim Contrarian Power-Law Focus but Fund Routine SaaS
“Most investors will say, oh, we're contrarian. We're only investing in power law, monopoly companies, but then they'll do like a, Run-of-the-mill, like, B-to-B SaaS companies still. And so they're not actually, like, fully embodying that approach.”
Hays: X design team operates with fewer than five people
“The X design team, which now includes Brandon Jacoby, who you've covered on the show before the X design team, I think is under five people.”
Coogan: Microsoft is no longer GPU-bound because it hit an energy bottleneck
“I don't think it's that. I think that they're buying the maximum, and now they've hit a different bottleneck, which is probably energy.”
Coogan: Andrew Huberman is far more trustworthy on health than NYT
“I really would trust Huberman way more than the New York times.”
Coogan: Bill Ackman leads Robin Hood Foundation contest with 100%+ return
“And the leaderboard is Bill Ackman at the top with a total return of over a hundred percent. His long pick was Fannie Mae, and his short sector was financials.”
Hays: Dinners should be worthwhile even if paying for the whole table
“You want to be going to dinners where you would happily pay for everybody, and still feel like it was a good Just exchange, right? Because you're going for the company. It's not about the food. It's not about how much you ate. It's not about how much you drank…”