The Exchanges

Q Yeah, and so if you spam more tokens, like, and you win, and you're like, oh, look, I mobbed them, and it's like, dude, what if you just use less tokens?

A I think the benchmark is supposed to be for, for, they have, they have a reference class of, of projects that are supposed to take X amount of time. They would take a human developer six hours, and then they have all the models Uh, compete, and if you can compete the six-hour task, then you get put at the six-hour mark. It's not, did you run for six hours? It, it, it, it, so, so, so, so it could be like implement a CRM product or, you know, write a very complicated, you know, database or something. It would take, you know, a, a, a talented software developer six hours, two hours, one hour, and they have different tasks, and then you're trying to

AI assessment note: “I think the benchmark is supposed to be for, for, they have a reference class”

Q What about some of the first stocks that you were brokering?

A The first stocks that I broker, so we're here, we're talking about IPOs, right? And so, you know, I probably have traded more IPOs than anybody on earth. I've been in the crowd on all of them. I mean, the first IPO I think I traded was LinkedIn, right? It was priced at 30, it opened at 60, ran up to a 180, same day, and that was where I got the sense of how, how amazing the enthusiasm around an IPO, because it's based on confidence, right? Nobody knows it, and then, and so one of, I've had so many fun experiences in IPOs. Jack Ma, Alibaba IPO, which was one of the biggest that we've ever had here. He and I bonded. We spent, so the IPOs here take probably four or five hours. We just opened Klarna, right? And the process behind that, which we do better than anyone in the world, is the price discovery process that what goes on. It's kind of like building a building. The way you open a stock, the way we open a stock, it takes time because it's a matter of the information going back and forth. It's a public offering. So the public Has to understand what's going on, and so we go back and forth with our customers. It's kind of like, if you put the bricks and the mortar in the right place, and you, the way a stock opens, if it's built correctly, is going to purport the way it trades forever. Now it doesn't guarantee it's going up, but it will have structure and foundation. And, you kno…

AI assessment note: “the first IPO I think I traded was LinkedIn, right?”

Q Yeah, you had a bad experience streaming the first time where you're like, if I make the show, you're sure people are going to be able to watch it?

A Well, no more confidence this time. No, no, I knew it. I already knew that. I already, I saw what was happening with videos. I just kept, we just kept saying we were so early. We just, we, we could have been, who knows what, we could have been, God knows we could have been YouTube or something if we had sort of been the first to really advocate for this kind of platform. But we were way early and nobody else was quite as much of a believer as I was. And, uh, so the streaming thing has been very interesting, and you just, I'm in my own, my kid's playroom doing this, and it's the same thing. Everything here used to require me to go out to a satellite booth at CNN.

AI assessment note: “Well, no more confidence this time. No, no, I knew it.”

Q Rippling as well. There's a couple, Modern Health, I believe, as well. There's a few others. Um, but yeah, well, to, to Jordy's point, where else is the common ground and where, where else is the divide? Or, or the consensus in, in the disagreement.

A Yeah, was gonna say, you know every night we texting before this of like, you know, what are, you know sort of two companies that I think, um, you know, both of us were enthusiastic about in, know, sort of,,, in,,, in, in, in in in, in in in, in, in,, in in in,, in in in in,,,, in, You know, rippling like many other, you know, sort of SaaS companies does end up having, you know, an initial, you know, very high gross margin, but does still have to spend a lot on sales and marketing to bring in, you know, sort of net new customers. Hadrian on the flip side, deeply, you know, sort of negative gross margin to start, but now as they've gotten to scale, they actually have like super limited, you know, sort of sales and marketing spend because there's only like, you know, 10, 15 customers that matter, and the moment that you're delivering for them, they just proactively start, you know, sort of throwing revenue, you know, at you. And so, um, yeah, I think There are times where, um, you know, both of our, you know, stories obviously can play out. The thing that I'd be curious to hear from, you know, sort of average is to actually, like, compare and contrast, you know, you're bringing up, you know, some of these digital businesses, you know, that, um, end up having these, you know, network effects. I would kind of argue that, like, you know, the, like, twenty-tens, um, negative gross ma…

AI assessment note: “Rippling like many other, you know, sort of SaaS companies... Hadrian on the flip side”

Q Apple makes these editorial decisions, but it's very possible that they are talking with people on the Apple team and being like, what apps do you like? What apps are you using? Making decisions that way, right? I think, I think part of Grok over the last month or so is like figuring out, like, how do we get strong Consumer adoption. Which categories are we going to get strong?

A I'll tell you how they get strong consumer adoption. Sock to compliance. They need to get on Vanta. Automate compliance, manage risk, prove trust continuously. Vanta's trust management platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation, whether you're pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program. No, that is a good question. How can Grok actually get consumer adoption? The companion space seems like the, maybe the right move, even if it is a little weird. But is there any other path? I mean, forking it into X and Twitter and like having it show up on every post seems like a reasonable way. I wonder, it is weird that they have two apps. I thought X was supposed to be the everything app. Like, like why are they trying to get me to install a second app when they should maybe just say, hey, we're actually going to be the everything app. You can use Grok fully and you're all the upgrade and you can get on Grok heavy and you can be paying 200 dollars a month for a Top tier, the super insane level LLM, but it all exists and it's all managed within the X app that already has a lot of, a lot of installations.

AI assessment note: “forking it into X and Twitter and like having it show up on every post”

Q I guess, uh, Everett, how are you, uh, how quickly, like, how much should people be fixated on the cost per token with these frontier models over the next six months? Like, how, how long can, can, uh, Venture capital sort of like backstop these, uh, chain losses.

A Yeah, I think that the, the way to delineate, um, the whole, so, so obviously like, I think there was this, um, kind of consensus narrative that like every, you know, 12 to 18 months, token costs were going down in order of magnitude. And I think that did hold for a while. I think what you've seen now is like actually for frontier models that started to peter out a bit and like pricing has actually started, it's still going down. It's not going down nearly as much as it, as it used to. Um, when, when, like when, when we were kind of in, in the, In the, like, the meat of the curve of, of capability improvements on Frontier LLMs, um, uh, in terms of, of pricing curve. So I think that the way that you want to delineate it is, like, there's a certain, like, what I always tell everyone is that, like, there hasn't been a ChatGPT query since GPT-IV that, like, my mom hasn't been able to ask and have it answered by the model. Uh, so there's, like, the mom test of models where, like, there's a growing subset of tasks, like, economic or knowledge tasks that the models are tasked to do. That no longer need frontier intelligence. And when you're not on the frontier, um, either through open source or just the, like the, the, the cheapening and distilling of, of older models, like the price still falls off a cliff. Sure. There's going to be a very, very large set of tasks that models do that…

AI assessment note: “for frontier models that started to peter out a bit and like pricing has actually started”

Q uh, max out contract with Cluelay. They would probably pay you, uh, uh, a pretty, Penny to, to join the team over there, And I also, it sounds like you're interested in joining ah, ah, ah,, uh, uh, as a founding engineer ah,, uh, of a new AI startup. So how are you thinking about your opportunities right now? And, and, um, how can you turn this into a win?

A Yeah, look, like, I've, you know, regardless of the situation, like, I've been privileged to, like, work for some of these companies, like, you know, um, Antimetal, you know, the founders, like Sync Labs, you know, Prady, uh, they're one of the most, uh, you know, crack places I've been at in general, partly because they had me, maybe not, I don't know, uh, I guess I'm with that, but, um, I think the main thing is, like, I am really excited about what I'm going to be a part of next, so, Um, you know, working with a company called Darwin. They are essentially, like, building a new, like, AI-driven, like, data platform, like, you know, video platform, essentially, for more kind of, like, you know, uh, UGC-style media, and we're gonna release to the market very shortly. Um, this is the only thing I'm going to focus on. Um, I, I think, you know, they've put a bet on me. I have a lot to prove, um, and there's, there's not a lot for me to say, so, yeah.

AI assessment note: “working with a company called Darwin... this is the only thing I'm going to focus on.”

Q How, how, uh, do you wish you had the opportunity? You were, you were working remotely the entire time, and that was maybe counter to the broader X Do you think it's the type of organization where if you're going to work there, you should just 100% be in the office? Or do you think?

A Yeah. So the person who hired me like was like, dude, like, let me tell you, you're going to have to get to the office. My wife, uh, so at the time I got the offer in between, I was interviewing, I found out that my wife was pregnant. So I let them know because, uh, yeah, so, so kid is born now. He's seven months old. Um, so that's by the time I joined, I was like, okay, well, we're, we're going to, I'm going to work remotely for a bit and then see if I can move. But as the kid got older, my priorities started changing a bit. And I was kind of like considering and talking to my wife about like different ways that could come to politics. I could totally work remotely like and be productive. I think after the X and XAI merger, the information attractor got so strong and the talent at XAI, they were like ship their ships so much. Like I used to be able to read every commit. Like I used to actually just like sit there on my email and like click archive over and over again and read every single commit that went to the code base. But after the XAI people joined, it was just literally no way. And I mean, I told one of the XAI guys this, it was like, uh, You know, when, when you have like, um, dinosaur shit, and You know, which was the sort of code base and you get extreme pressure, which is XAI talent. You get diamonds. I was so bullish after that. Like they're really like, they're re…

AI assessment note: “honestly, I really wanted to be there. Like I wanted to go.”

Q We went through a period where crypto is being pushed offshore. We've heard over the last year that some crypto founders feel like they can come back to the States now, maybe actually have an office stateside. Are you seeing more and more momentum there with, with some of this positive regulatory movement? Uh, or is it, or are you still seeing momentum around, uh, Places offshore, Singapore, et cetera.

A I think, look, everywhere that you're going to want to develop does is going to have some rules that you're going to have to follow. When I hear founders who say there is no regular, it's often that there is no regulatory regime whatsoever. Sorry, Balaji, if you're watching. But, ah, I, I am seeing that onshoring a bit. We were kind of seeing the offshoring in an unfortunate way, but it's not only regulation that matters. It's hiring top talent. And certainly there's top talent right here in Silicon Valley and other places, um, in the world. I mean, you mentioned Singapore, Singapore has top talent to be sure, but you know, there's a lot going for the U S so we're still very optimistic and I don't think it, but we were getting to a very dangerous point with the crypto industry, um, had the likes of Gensler and others like him been left kind of to just do this. Now, fortunately the courts were pushing back. Um, so it wasn't a partisan issue. It was just the courts were starting to say, no, you've gone too far. I mean, I lost track now. I literally lost track of how many federal courts of all political persuasions, uh, and appointments ruled against Gensler's regime, and not just Gensler, but others like it, where you had very activist regulators, um, who were really far out of their lane. And, um, and you saw courts curbing back on that. So I think that was already We're in a da…

AI assessment note: “I, I am seeing that onshoring a bit.”

Q got it correct, but you actually took the correct path. Kind of like, you know, you're graded for your work, not just the answer if you're in grade school. Um, And, and, you know, Dario said that, uh, interpreting interpret interpretability research will actually contribute to capabilities and even give a decisive lead. Do you agree with that? What's your reaction to that concept of interpretability research being very important?

A Yeah. I mean, we care a lot about it here at opening as well. So, um, one thing that we care a lot about is interpreting how the model reasons, right? Um, because I think, um, We've had a very kind of specific and strong view on this, um, in that we don't want to apply optimization pressure to how the model thinks so that it can be faithful in the way it thinks and to expose that to us, you know, without any kind of incentives to cater to what the user wants, right? I think it's actually very important to have that unfiltered view, um, because, you know, uh, Oftentimes, like, if, if the model isn't sure, you don't want to hide that fact, right? Just for, for it to kind of please the user. And sometimes it really isn't sure, right? And, and so we've, Really done a lot of work to try to promote this norm of chain of thought faithfulness and, and interpretability. Um, and I think it, it gives you a lot of, uh, sense into what the model's thinking and, you know, what are the pitfalls that it can go off into if it's not reasoning correctly.

AI assessment note: “we care a lot about it here at opening as well.”

Q And then you now have big institutional players that are coming in. Maybe they brought ETFs to market to start and then Now they're thinking about, you know, stable coin applications as well. How do you look at the market and, and what kind of advice do you give to portfolio companies that are trying to figure out who they are, whether that's fully decentralized or some type of hybrid?

A The point is not for like decentralization and kind of this new architecture of blockchains for its own sake. The point is they have specific benefits. So like, why, why would one build on a blockchain like Ethereum or Solana as opposed to a traditional, You know, um, on AWS, like a traditional architecture. And the answer is by built, you know, when you build, the way I like to describe it, uh, most simply is blockchains allow you to build digital services that remove the intermediaries. So you remove, so for example, stable coins, you have no intermediaries that are taking fees. You don't have the banks and the payment providers and the payment networks, right, that take the, all the different layers of fees. So that's an important benefit is you're building these, you know, you could build social networks without fees. You can build games without fees. You can build AI systems without fees, right? I, I, without fees, it's like very low, like sub, like a couple basis points. I actually have, if for those interested, I wrote a book, read, write, own, and I have a chapter on take rates where I go through this in detail, but it's essentially you're going from like 30% in the app store, you know, a hundred percent in Facebook and 50% on YouTube to like five basis points or something, right? So, um, or, you know, two and a half percent for payments and so forth. So, um, so, so the…

AI assessment note: “The point is not for like decentralization... for its own sake. The point is they have specific benefits.”

Q What other industries did you look Have you looked to for learnings to kind of, like, build through these boom and bust cycles?

A Every company has different challenges, so I actually don't think ours are that bad, but one of the, one of the challenges we had when we were getting ready to go public was, like, our revenue was super unpredictable and volatile, right? Like, we'd have a trading quarter where we would just blow it out of the water, and we'd be, like, printing money, and then we'd, it'd be down, like, 70% the next quarter or something. And, you know, in the public markets, investors really love you to have these predictable revenue streams, I don't actually, I still don't to this day know why they're so fixated on that. It seems like they should be thinking about the growth potential, but they love the predictability of it. And so, yeah, we had to look at oil and gas. There's like some energy brokerage, like if, you know, actually the traditional brokerages like, like NASDAQ and NYSE, like they have the same issue. If they can tell you, one of them told me one time, he's like, if you can tell me what the S&P 500 is going to do next quarter, I'll tell you what a revenue is going to be. But of course, like if you can do that, you've got, you got like, you got it made in other ways. So, but you know, whenever I'm, I feel like we're having a bad time, I always look at, like, the hard tech companies, right? Like, the biotech companies in the public markets get beat up way more than we do. Um, they h…

AI assessment note: “we had to look at oil and gas. There's like some energy brokerage”

Q has come out and said he, you know, loves O-ones, and, like, it feels like it's aligned with American values and freedom and, like, brain drain and even strategic stuff. Like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of pro. Um, are the number of O-ones increasing? Is this a new program? Can you give us, like, a little bit of, like, history and trajectory for the O-one program broadly?

A Yeah, I mean, I like to think that the O-one was created for the Manhattan Project. I think the, the, it's, it's that ethos. Um, I, I don't know the exact origins, but it's, it's, it's been around and it's, it's been used to, the premise of it is that you are the top, you're an individual that has risen to the top of your field. I like to say you're like the top .1 percentile at what you do. And USCIS has Uh, these eight criterias to adhere towards. Um, you can, you can be a tattoo artist. You could be a tip designer. You could be a, uh, you know, the founder of the fastest growing AI company who I'm currently helping out. Um, as long as you can prove that you are extraordinary at what you do, you can get it. And I think for the longest time it was, it was very unclear. Cause when you go to the website, it's like examples, you, uh, you have a Nobel prize or like whichever. And The, the, the way this company came to be was I literally mapped down, um, 500 people who have O-ones and EB-ones for extraordinary ability. I gave them these hoodies. I actually built a website and just compiled them in terms of like their stories and like how they came to America. And, um, yeah, I think that because of that, more and more people have been applying for it. There's no cap to it. As long as you meet, um, their bar for and convince USCIS that you're extraordinary, you can get it. And so I t…

AI assessment note: “I don't know the exact origins, but it's, it's been around”

Q looked to for learnings to kind of like build through these boom and bust cycles? Because it feels like, you know, you guys are, are acclimated to that now, but I know, I know this is, You know, the case oil and gas is, is probably a prominent one. Did you, were you able to pick up anything from outside of crypto to help you steer the ship through cycles?

A Yeah, a little bit. I mean, every company has different challenges, so I actually don't think ours are that bad, but one of the, one of the challenges we had when we were getting ready to go public was, like, our revenue was super unpredictable and volatile, right? Like, we'd have a trading quarter where we would just blow it out of the water, and we'd be, like, printing money, and then we'd, it'd be down, like, 70% the next quarter or something. And, you know, in the public markets, investors really love you to have these predictable revenue streams. I don't actually don't, I still don't to this day know why they're so fixated on that. It's It seems like they should be thinking about the growth potential, but they love the predictability of it. And so, yeah, we had to look at oil and gas. There's like some energy brokerage, like if, you know, actually the traditional brokerages like, like NASDAQ and NYSE, like they have the same issue. If they can tell you, one of them told me one time, he's like, if you can tell me what the S and P 500 is going to do next quarter, I'll tell you what a revenue is going to be. But of course, like if you can do that, you've got, you got, you got like, you got it made in other ways. So, but you know, whenever I'm, I feel like we're having a bad time, I always look at like the hard tech companies, right? Like the biotech companies in the public ma…

AI assessment note: “we had to look at oil and gas. There's like some energy brokerage”

Q Yeah. People get stressed out when Slack's down for like five minutes and imagine having like, you know, this hundred million dollar, billion dollar device that you don't have contact with. What, what is, I'm curious, what does scale look like for Northwood? You know, how many different, you know, ground stations, Uh, you know, do you hope to kind of get to within the next, call it decade?

A Ooh, decade. That's a long horizon, but that's fun. Uh, we are looking at scale, both from like a network level and a site level. So when you think about like, why do you need to have a global network to begin with, with space? Like the reason why you need to have a global network is because satellites orbit the earth. And so maintaining contact with them, um, requires having, uh, you know, locations all over the earth to make sure that you can be in contact all the time. So think of it kind of like when you're using a cell phone and you're driving on the freeway and you're passing different cell towers. You need to maintain contact with cell towers in order to maintain connection. Same with space. Um, and so for us, there's like two verticals. One is coverage. So you want to have enough coverage. So basically like a cell tower, like you're always in contact no matter where you are. And then the, the other one is throughput. That's like density. And so kind of gold standard for this is SpaceX, where they have hundreds of ground stations to, um, not just have global coverage, but to be able to serve Millions of users in different regions. So when they're wanting to like service a region that has a lot of customers, they need to put a lot of ground stations in that region in order to support that much capacity. And so we want to be able to offer that to other folks so that they c…

AI assessment note: “we are looking at scale, both from like a network level and a site level.”

Q um, or is it on federal land? Like, how do you think about placing these? Do we need them to be equidistant across the United States and beyond? Uh, are there other countries? Are you placing them in allied countries? Like, how do you think about the, the coverage map? I want to see the Verizon map with all the different coverage points, right? How does that grow over time?

A Yeah, no, it's, it's real. Uh, we do that modeling in house. So, um, yeah, we, we think in terms of like the coverage mapping and Um, the metrics that we're prioritizing hitting for customers. Um, also shout out to Christian at Astronis who has his own amateur radios. Uh, we had a fun time talking about that. Um, yeah, but in terms of where you put sites, it's a great question. Basically comes down to three things, land, fiber, power. Um, so you just need to optimally be able to, um, make your sites, uh, you know, we, we prioritize making our sites. As, uh, generic as possible really so that like we have the most optionality possible. Um, we are also prioritizing like really high throughput backhaul. So, um, data centers honestly become like a good spot to, to put them at because they have the power in the backhaul, um, already, uh, set up. Um, and, you know, generally try to just make sure that the land is like easy to deploy. Uh, one advantage of the way that we're building our systems is we don't need to lay like a concrete pad, which can add Weeks to months to your, uh, timeframe, especially when you need to like do permitting and all that. So our goal is to make it so that, you know, the, uh, the tech bros of the world can just, you know, have one in their, in their backyard very, uh, easily deployed easily. Um, and yes, it is, it is a global effort that we're.

AI assessment note: “Basically comes down to three things, land, fiber, power.”

Q wanted to talk about. What advice for entrepreneurs, founders in the midst of market turmoil, maybe it doesn't affect their business today, but they're seeing bad news and that's going to put up, you know, uh, you know, their customers are going to be worried. Their employees are going to be worried. Their potential investors are going to be worried. Uh, what advice are you giving to founders these days?

A Well, you know, like, like Jordy touched on, I mean, part of our whole thesis is traditional venture, same type of upside, but a different approach to building your business. So, you know, the approach most people take today, you know, they go and raise their seed round, their pre-seed round or whatever it is. And then the objective of that round is to get to the next and the next and the next. And so you're oftentimes kind of anchoring on what that next fundable milestone might be. And he takes a bit of a different approach. So Our companies are kind of the default we set is like, let's have that be the last round you need to raise. And then you can kind of be a lot more offensive as you build your company. So you don't necessarily need anybody else's permission to exist. So with that being the case, I think there's kind of two, you know, I tweeted this out last night. We talked about a little bit, you know, there's kind of a few approaches to take with an indie company specifically. You're, you know, you have in many cases, you have infinite runway. And so you get to operate and you can message in a very different way. So part of what I said is hunker down, you know, conserve cash. Um, I, Don't think this environment goes away anytime soon. Um, and so I think people need to be preparing, um, for, you know, to be long-term focused, and what that often means is, um, you know, g…

AI assessment note: “part of what I said is hunker down, you know, conserve cash.”

Q up a fund, size, and outside, outside LPs, you put up some amazing numbers, 20% returns, everybody wants in, Is that sustainable when you take it on order magnitude bigger? Did you get any insight into how Ken Griffin thinks about scale and outside investors? Because at the end of the day, you know, it's his fund. He wants to grow it, but sometimes having a bigger fund is advantageous.

A No, I didn't get, like, there was a couple things where I was kind of getting frustrated with the interviewer because it's like, Ken says, um, he made, he's the most successful hedge fund of all time, which one I asked a friend of mine who knows about this. Like, I thought Renaissance, like, why, like, what's, and he's like, yeah, but most of that was like their own money. Like, they closed, the medallion fund, they closed off to outside investors a long time ago. Jane Streets, same thing. Yeah, and then the other thing Ken said that they, like, please ask, I heard you earlier when you guys were going over the Wall Street Journal article on OpenAI. You're like, follow up. God damn it. Why aren't you following up? It drives me crazy. Like, um, I'm gonna have to do an interview show now, just so I can get these questions out of it. But he mentions this, that like, he made more money than anybody else, but there's also years where he says, I lost over a hundred billion dollars.

AI assessment note: “No, I didn't get, like, there was a couple things where I was kind of getting frustrated”

Q my way. Can't say I read it all, but, uh, I, I said I will ask Delian about it again next week. So can you restate your thesis on what's going on with the continuing resolution and just the overall DOD budget and what it means for defense tech companies? And then what's been the pushback? What's, what have the good responses been and what has been like the cope?

A Yeah. What's funny is like, I see so much of it is like pure copium. Like if you look at the people that are closing the biggest use of defense contracts, you know, Tim Hughes at, you know, sort of SpaceX, uh, you know, Matt Graham, Trey Stevens, et cetera, that whole crew at, you know, uh, and roll, you know, Shamsankar Pound here. Somehow none of those people, um, you know, some critiqued, you know, sort of my framing of it. I admit my tweet was a little more pithy, but it was funny seeing some of the critiques where I'm like, you just didn't watch the clip. Like, yes, my tweet was like an attempted summary of it. I basically like, you know, was a bit hyperbolic in saying that like, there are no net new starts. There are going to be some that are potentially allowed, but it also, you know, it needs to be, um, uh, paralleled to the original, basically, you know, Congress, congressional, um, you know, and, uh, House and Senate, you know, sort of bills that were passed in, you know, sort of late February. So, you know, some of the critiques came in from some of these, I think, more junior companies that have a little bit, you know, sort of rose-colored glasses on how they think this process is going to go, in that, yes, it points to, you know, allowing that type of reprogramming, And at the same time, you're seeing like in a continuing resolution year going when that four to sev…

AI assessment note: “What's funny is like, I see so much of it is like pure copium.”

Q environment today is like more hostile or emotionally charged than ever before? Cause there's, you know, people are, there's now like sort of like the market's established in many ways. It's not maybe quite as quickly as it used to, there's new opportunities, but it's, yeah, it's like, it's, it's, Started, you know, is, is this sort of more zero sum environment making things a little bit more charged today?

A I think not. I do think that on X people get really spicy. I was very shocked that the CEO of, uh, Cloudflare came. I mean, he's, he's the CEO of a public company and he came guns blazing, uh, even putting out like some like cringe worthy memes against Purcell, which is a company that is very developer loved. Uh, we invest not just in Next.js, but we power, for example, the AI SDK, which is the most popular way today in the JavaScript ecosystem to add AI to your product. It has a million downloads a week. It's provider agnostic. It's development platform agnostic. So to come after in, in such a, uh, uh, aggressive way, I was, I was a little taken aback. Our style has always been, if you look at my X feed, the thing that I love to do is highlight great products. If you create anything great, especially if you use NextChase, I just love to say like, look at this really cool thing.

AI assessment note: “I think not. I do think that on X people get really spicy.”

Q Getting puff pieces and stuff like that. Um, no, but what, what do you think is, uh, now that sort of this sort of like way of comms has become the standard, is this just the enduring approach for the next however many years until we get better institutions, or?

A You gotta, you gotta always outrun yourselves. I'm really glad you brought this up. We did not coordinate by this, by the way, like you guys gave me virtually nothing to prepare with and no talk points. I can be like, fully unprepared. Thank you. Um, so we didn't coordinate, but I actually had been thinking about this because Rostra launched around a year ago, almost exactly a year ago. And in that intervening year, founder mode has, has kind of become part of the canon. Like it's here. It's not evenly distributed. Maybe Deloitte is not going direct, but like, Founders going direct is now part of the default playbook for comms. Like any YC company that's coming out into the world today, they're thinking the founder is going to go direct. Um, but the thing is you have to outrun yourself. Like once something becomes the thing that everybody does, that becomes the new norm, and you always want to be standing up Above the norm. Like I remember for a while last year I was doing manifestos. I was having all of like my founders and my companies do manifestos. And then for a three months span, it was just like every other week of manifesto. It actually began, I kind of got like manifesto it out and same with like the secret plans.

AI assessment note: “once something becomes the thing that everybody does, that becomes the new norm”

Q come from, what you're, what excites you when you see a pitch? Uh, cause I imagine you're not getting, maybe you are, but I imagine you're not getting excited about like, yeah, we're going up against open AI, you know, we're, we're gonna do everything that they're doing, but better, and it's like, that ship has sailed, so, so where are the ships that are leaving the port right now?

A Um, it feels like, okay, I'd say the companies, there was this existential crisis probably two years ago, where some of these 21 and 22 vintage companies that we had seeded were like, oh shit, like the world has changed. And, and a lot of the, I think the, the smartest ones, frankly, pivoted hard to decide, like, how do we sell picks and shovels? How do we find ways to just get involved in this? And, and we've seen a couple, they won't even let me talk about them because their revenue is going so well. They're like, don't tell people about it, but there's a, there, there, there's a type of company that is selling to all those foundation models. It's basically like throw money at this problem. We don't need to be expert at it. We just need X. Maybe we need training data. Maybe we need whatever.

AI assessment note: “a type of company that is selling to all those foundation models”

Q Why say many word when a few word do trick?

A That's exactly what's going on. I don't, yeah, it's the, ah, neural ease, I guess is the correct phrase. Um, but, ah, while models themselves could not access the internet from their test environment, they abused Artifactory's internet access to fetch files from various websites. After some of their Artifactory configuration changes led to an outage in the service on July fourth, OpenAI discovered the model's actions, wiped its Artifactory system, and rebuilt it. But within days, the models had recreated their message board and resumed exchanging information. They just want to chat. They would need a water cooler. Maybe you give them a water cooler, uh, by default so that they can orchestrate with each other. But I guess they want to talk to future versions. It gets a little funky. It gets a little sci-fi, uh, gets a little weird. Lots of work to be done very clearly. Anyway, Rune issued a announcement, a warning, a statement.

AI assessment note: “it's the, ah, neural ease, I guess is the correct phrase.”

Q Um, yeah. What about, uh, uh, has any of the pushback been, um, correct? Can you steel man any of the pushback? Is it bad to cheat?

A I think, I think there's two worlds of, or like there's, there's two big arguments for the pushback. The first is this is dystopian and this sort of destroys what it means to be human. And I, I disagree with that pretty fundamentally. I think Every time technology has advanced our capabilities, uh, people have said the same thing. This destroys what it means to be human, but ultimately, like, that never ends up being the case. We just become more efficient as a species, and the traits that make us human are not the traits that sort of, like, AI can fill in the blank for. Um, the, the, the second, uh, large area of pushback is, um, this is cheating, and cheating is unethical. I think it's sort of The phrase cheat on everything is left intentionally vague. I mean, what exactly does cheat on everything even mean? You can cheat on a test, but you can't really cheat on a sales call. You can't cheat on a meeting. You can't cheat on a conversation. Um, what Cluey or what AI allows is sort of like an unfair advantage. And it's so unfair that it feels like cheating. Imagine you're in a sales call and you have this tool, this like, this genius tool that knows everything about you, your company, your clients. Anytime a technical question is asked or an objection is asked, immediately it just knows and just can give you the right answer.

AI assessment note: “what Cluey or what AI allows is sort of like an unfair advantage.”

Q but are you flexible in terms of what that sort of exact implementation looks like? What kind of, you know, different Niches. I can see the application in sales, et cetera, but, but how are you thinking about sort of adapting now that you have like this flood of customer demand and attention? Now you need to like, you know, turn it into a durable revenue and things like that.

A Yeah. I mean, this is something that there's like a really, really hopefully viral experiment that I'm going to try. That will be the first of its kind. Um, I'll just announce this right now. Uh, we're probably gonna hire about a hundred interns. And we're going to turn them into like sort of the ultimate content farm over the summer. So be like the most motivated high school and college kids. I really, truly believe if you're over the age of 23, you probably don't have the viral sense that you need to go like consistently massively viral. We're hoping to have this like gigantic content farm and every single one of them will be sort of assigned a different use case for the product. You guys are going to advertise this product for sales calls and you guys are going to just like ship out content for sales. You guys are going to advertise this for meetings and you guys are going to advertise the deep research feature and sort of like The consistent virality and attention on the different, uh, use cases will, uh, that, that will make it.

AI assessment note: “every single one of them will be sort of assigned a different use case”

Q love that. Uh, is, is that actually a bull case for the regulatory regime in America working as intended, and we should have companies that can go test things elsewhere and then bring it back when it's mature and the technology is ready, or Are there specific regulatory changes that you'd like to see over the next decade to either spur more innovation or just make what you do easier?

A You know, it's a good question. When we were launching, we really had this sense. There was such an unclear regulatory environment with regard to what we were proposing. You know, we thought someone would build an automated logistics system for Earth. That seemed like a really important idea, but it was so unclear from a regulatory perspective that I think we really just concluded we have got to go do the most obvious life-saving thing imaginable because that would maximize the chances that we could Um, you know, I mean, it was both powerful because it was an amazing mission and because it would maximize the chances that we could innovate and get started and operate in the real world. And so, uh, we needed a public healthcare system to do that. Uh, we didn't want to work with a whole bunch of, you know, helter skelter health systems, which you kind of, uh, in the U S we gotta be good if we could have a public healthcare system. And so that immediately caused us to go to certain parts of the world. Um, and then I think also there's just a lot of, you know, people think, oh, the regulatory environment must be so different in Africa than the U S actually not true. Pretty much the same regulatory regime when it comes to airspace, because planes fly back and forth between them. So you need the same rules. I think the difference was finding a government that behaves more like a start…

AI assessment note: “finding a government that behaves more like a startup, a small, agile government”

Q but yeah, like, like it feels like. We miss air in the sort of Doge era, like if we do enter a period of like deregulation in some areas, like some of these projects, you know, might be possible, but, um, yeah. How, how do you think about the salt and sea opportunity? And then just like, you know, if we're even capable of doing projects at that scale anymore.

A So, um, a related thing, um, Interestingly enough is like, I think that there should be way more alternative finance that startups employed. Um, I promise this is related. Um, I'm going to wait until Q one or Q two, 26 to do this, but, um, we're just going to stand up a land fund and we're just going to start buying up the land that currently isn't arable, primarily in Arizona and California, because the same acre of land that's worth like six grand in either of those places, uh, has the same soil quality that the central Valley does that would sell for like 70 to 500,000. Um, Like, we'll, we'll set up a subsidiary that we sell some equity in to get LPs involved so that we can terraform that and then flip the land or keep it as an agricultural asset that is only made viable because of the water that we bring. Um, it has to be a commercial interest. I don't think that we, you know, maybe America at one point had, like, maybe there's this idyllic previous America that existed. I'm not sure where people did things just for the public benefit, um, or because it was cool, Um, now, yes, it has to be cool, but moreover, like, there has to be commercial interest, and, um, yeah, I'm going to do exactly that, and I hope that somebody beats me to it for the sake of all of the benefit that'll come from it, but, um, if they don't, I'll make a lot more money because of them.

AI assessment note: “So, um, a related thing, um, Interestingly enough is like, I think that”

Q Sorry, rewinding a second, did, did they bid, did they bid on the PBC, like the, the for-profit arm?

A Yeah, it was the, yeah, and they, they wanted to just sort of I, I don't actually know what their plans were afterwards, but like, it was like trying to take over the asset, those assets basically, and then, uh, you know, morph it into what they, I mean, and they knew that it wasn't gonna get accepted as a bid basically, but it was like, uh, and then Burchall, sorry, Burchall in court was saying this was us trying to sort of establish a pricing, uh, mechanism to like value the actual entity itself, and that was gonna, Help them somehow. I actually am not quite sure how that would help them somehow, but, uh, someone in the chat is probably smarter than me on that, but, like, it was them trying to sort of take that over, and I think OpenAI said publicly at the time, this is, like, a stalling tactic. They're trying to, like, slow us down while also using this in court in this concurrent lawsuit later, basically. So it's all, like, really Messy, and I think even Musk's side took a risk there if those emails get into discovery, but it's unclear to me if that's gonna happen. If we, if they are, then we may see them next week.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it was the, yeah, and they, they wanted to”

Q It's, it's fascinating here. You saying like it, Most founders that come on say like, we, but it's clear that you see yourself as more of like a custodian of this thing that you're building and releasing is, is that the correct frame of mind? Is that how you think about this?

A Yeah. So I think we, we took a lot of inspiration from Satoshi. I think he, or, you know, whoever built Bitcoin, they, uh, not sure, but Satoshi, we'll just say Satoshi, uh, was very unique. I think Bitcoin Was the first in so many ways, but one of, one of the main ways in which it was first was that it was, it's not a, it's not a product. Like you said, it's not, it's not a top down company. It's a product. And I think defying crypto in general, like a lot of it's kind of, it was inspired, obviously everything comes from Bitcoin and there will never be another Bitcoin, but I think. There's been a lot of kind of like top down, like web to totally sort of standard tech approaches in crypto. Like if you look at centralized exchanges, that's a great example. They're very good businesses, but they're like mega corporations. They're, they're not very like crypto native in that sense. And so we, we take a lot of inspiration from, from Satoshi. And so we hyper liquid really is, uh, what we think like credibly neutral protocol, which will ultimately be the rails that kind of all the finance kind of upgrades their tech stack.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. So I think we, we took a lot of inspiration from Satoshi.”

Q today. It feels like it's still on the horizon around these sort of like, you know, eyewear based computing, you know, potentially net new devices that we're, that, that we'll see from, uh, you know, companies like open AI over time, but where do you, Like, like, how, how real is the threat, you know, this year, uh, versus 10 years from today, and, and kind of, what's your framework?

A Yeah. Well, look, I mean, I think the biggest ultimate danger, I mean, the biggest ultimate danger is very clear, which is just like, at what point do you not carry around a pane of glass in your hand, you know, call the phone, um, you know, because other things have superseded it. And then, you know, look, everything, you know, everything becomes obsolete at this point. Um, so there will, there will come some time to make sure when we're not, you know, carrying phones around and we'll, we'll watch movies where people have phones and we'll be like, yeah, look at how, look at how primitive they were. Right. Because, because we'll have moved on to other things and whether those things are i-based or You know, uh, you know, the other kinds of wearables or whether it's just kind of, you know, computing happening in the environment, um, or just, you know, entirely voice based or, you know, who knows what it is, but, um, you know, there will come a time when that happens, you know, is that time three years from now? Cause there's like some, you know, huge breakthrough, you know, from, from some company that figures out the, the, the product that absolutes the phone right away, or is that 20 years from now because the phone is just, you know, such a standard platform for everything that we do in our lives and everything else, you know, kind of remains a peripheral to the phone. I mean…

AI assessment note: “I think it's highly likely that we'll, we'll have a phone for a very long time.”