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Category: Venture Capital
Tags: AIInvestmentStartupsTechnologyTrends
Entities: AnthropicCornell UniversityDDFPV VenturesGates PledgeGleanGoogleHarvey AIKleiner PerkinsMenloMetaNikonOpen DoorOpenAIStanford UniversityVenture Highway
00:00
How you guys see different sectors evolving? Where can me as either a investor or somebody looking to start my career as a young man or woman have enough tailwinds that it makes sense to
00:16
spend the next decade in? [Music] Ready?
[Music]
00:42
Yeah. Yeah.
It's done. [Music]
00:59
So maybe we start with small introductions, maybe two minutes on who you are, how you got to be where you are, and what you're doing now. Would you like to go first?
Sure. Um you know I I started well depending on how far back you want to
01:14
go. I was I was from India.
Why DD? Why DD?
My real name is Debbar Hodas. In the city of Kolkata that's not as uncommon a name as you'd think.
But even in the city of Kolkata where I'm where I'm from, nobody could say that name. So very quickly in high school we had to
01:30
call me something else and my initials are DD. But then they didn't solve the problem because then you have to explain what my name actually is anyway.
And so then I just came up with the moniker DD in not DD the Dexter's sister. Um and so I spelled it a little bit differently and that's that's what stuck.
So that
01:47
stuck in high school and it's been DD ever since. So what did you study?
When did you come here what do you do now? Awesome.
So 2011 uh got to America for the second time. I was here as a kid for a bit.
Um I went to Cornell. I studied computer science.
I did my undergrad and my my masters. Uh first job was Meta in
02:05
New York. did that for a year.
Then went to Google in New York, traveled a little bit. So spent some time in Israel, Bangalore.
Uh and then I was on the founding team of a company called Glean, which is a GCbacked company as well and spent a good four years there. Towards
02:22
the end of my time at Gleen, I went from doing engineering to managing to uh running their AI product line. What did Glean do?
Uh Glean started as an enterprise search business. Um happy to dive into what that means.
Um and then it evolved into generally an enterprise assistant and
02:38
knowledge finding tool for bigger companies to figure out hey like answers to questions like what do I do for on boarding or what is our holiday policy or even very specific questions about what does this person do at the company and how can I find this doc all of that stuff um clean is now like a $7 billion
02:55
company it's done fairly well so far after four years there I decided to try something else I' my friends would joke I in a span two years I went from engineering, management, product and then venture. Um, but I was just looking for something fun to do and so I joined
03:12
Menllo about a year and a half ago and uh I'm at Menllo right now. And what does Menllo look at specifically?
So you know Menllo let me to give a background is been around for quite a bit of time. It's a 48-year-old fund.
Um we are now investing out of a $ 1.5
03:29
billion fund but we have like about 7 billion under management. Our focus right now is, you know, our maybe landmark investment today is we're big investors in anthropic.
Um, but our focus right now and my focus at least is seed and series A uh deals for AI, SAS,
03:46
infra sort of all over now. Nowadays, everything is a bit of AI.
Um, but the entire fund does everything up to like a series B and sometimes C's and D's as well. So, right.
Uh we also do have a good biotech practice and a consumer practice and the rest of the stuff we do is primarily like software adjacent.
04:03
What is the anthropic story? Can you summarize for us?
Oh my god. What is the story?
Um the anthropic story was and may I'm probably not the best person to tell this story but a few people left OpenAI
04:20
wanted to do um a foundational model company somewhat differently and they built a and both of them hadn't figured out a business and now Anthropic has sort of built a model that eventually became very good at coding and it got a
04:37
a ton of recognition for that and then it sort of now Anthropic I would say is a company that's you know trying to solve AGI but they believe the route there is through reasoning coding and things like this um they very distinctly do not really do much outside of
04:53
texttoext models um so less audio stuff um things like that and that's really their primary focus and in terms of a business they just serve enterprise customers primarily they do have a consumer app but that's not not really the the prime business.
05:09
Thank you. Would you like to go next?
Sure. Um, I'm Nikon.
I I moved to the States half my life ago. Nico and I were just chatting about it 17 years ago.
I went to Urbana Champagne to do electrical engineering and computer science. Uh, and then I moved to the Bay
05:25
13 years ago, which when you meet, I don't know what happens to both of you. When you meet new people in their 20s come here, I feel like a boomer.
It's like feel like legitimately feel old. They're like, "When did you move here?" 13 years ago.
and they're like look at me and they'll start eye rolling like 3 weeks ago. Exactly.
Um and then yeah I was an
05:42
operator for 11 years. I started u my career at LinkedIn.
I spent two years there and then quickly got the startup bug. Um did four startups backtoback where I was the first PM at a few of them.
I joined a company called Hall which did enterprise communication. I
05:57
joined and one week later Slack launched which was a tough one year but uh heard that one. Huh.
Yeah. Yeah.
It was I picked the as as venture capitalists say you picked the right area but the wrong horse. You guys had a great URL back then, right?
Whole.com. We still have.com.
Yeah.
06:12
Amazing. Yeah.
Uh a class bought the company, didn't want to go back to a large company and then I joined a company called ship uh that did first pile parcel delivery. I got really enamored by the physical world.
This was peak Uber days. Uber was crushing.
Um spent two years there. really loved enjoyed
06:29
like you know how do you build end toend products iOS web but with a large operations angle um and then my best friend worked at open door which is a real estate company he said why don't you come join the team there can you tell us a bit about open door we
06:45
were discussing earlier but it's interesting yeah it's it's in the news right now because it's become a meme stock that's like growing really well but um I still fundamentally believe in the mission so I think unlike Like other countries in the world where a transaction cost for
07:01
buying or selling a home is 1% or lower, in the US it's 6%. Which means when you're trying to sell a home, agents take 6% of the commission.
And that's crazy. Residential real estate is the second largest asset class in this country.
And there's a 6% tax doing
07:18
that, which is just mindboggling to me as like uh someone looking at the space. And so the company was founded by four founders uh Keith Boy, Eric, uh JD, and Ian.
And their model was we will buy your home unseen. So every home that's
07:33
bought and sold in the country is on a register called the MLS. And so using machine learning, they said, "Hey, we could figure out what the true value of this home is." So, you enter an address, answer a few questions, and we give you an allcash offer to buy the home in one minute, which is very different than you
07:49
having to stage your home and list your home and pay an agent a transaction fee. In one minute, you get that fee.
So, and Open Door held the inventory. They owned it.
Open door held the inventory. So, yeah, we would buy the home, we would refurbish it, and then we would buy from the buyer perspective, you
08:05
could enter any home anytime you want, and you can buy the home all online, all transaction. It was a great journey.
I like you know some of my formative learnings came from there. Uh spent four years there had to like you know saw the company 2020 had to fire 35% of the company and we went IPO 6 months later.
08:22
Yes. Craziest six months of my career.
Um but then I only like doing early stage so I joined a company called meter which does networking hardware. I'm meeting him tomorrow.
I know. Yeah.
Yeah. He's he's Yeah.
He's amazing. I I wish I get
08:38
the opportunity to back people like him. GC did a big round there as well I think.
Yeah, recently. Yeah.
Yeah. Um yeah, it's an 10 year overnight success story.
Company's been around for 10 years. Two brothers.
Tell us a bit about meter. Yeah.
So, similar to open door where you
08:53
know there's so much friction in the home buying and selling journey. Today, if you want to equip a space like this for internet, it takes six different entities to do it.
There's the internet service provider, there's a hardware maker, there's a cabling installer, there's like, you know, other things you
09:09
have to do. Uh, and then you have to maintain the networks over time.
And imagine doing that for like a 10,000 square ft, 100,000 square feet space. And so companies have to pay capex.
You're paying tens of thousands of dollars in hardware up front and you get nothing on day zero. So meters
09:24
completely transformed the model where um you pay nothing upfront. All the hardware is meters and you just pay per month per square feet uh and they take care of all the hassle and also the maintenance.
So you just like point to a space and meter takes care of
09:40
everything. I did 10 10 years of startups by then.
And so um I I was just looking to figure out a way how can I help founder in the plural rather than founder singular. Um and I wasn't sure if I want to do investing and so I was very lucky that the coastal ventures
09:57
team and the node especially were very kind to have me there for a year. Uh I was very open.
I don't know anything about investing. I've done angel investing but that's very different.
Uh spent a year there and really enjoyed it. The team is exceptional.
I can only say good things. Uh but decided I only wanted to be part of a small fund.
Um
10:14
only doing seed in series A. Each investment is like you know very few investments a year like I have a more concentrated strategy and so I just joined a new fund called FPV ventures about a couple of months ago.
How big is the fund? Uh fund is about five it's a fund too.
10:30
It's $525 million. Um we primarily we'll focus on series A but we'll do some seed and series B depending on the when we meet founders.
Right. And is there like a sector focus?
No very generalist and that's what attracted me towards the fund. Our fund
10:45
one has everything from biotech, quantum computing, AI chip design to consumer fintech. Very much the the FPV stands for founders point of view and we mostly care about the founder and the team that we meet.
Nice. And how old are you, Niko?
11:01
I'm 34. And DD is 32.
32. You're married?
I'm married. I have two kids.
And DD? Not yet.
Okay, Nico, you're New Yorker state of mind. Yeah, hopefully soon.
I have people watching this eligible bachelor. Thank you.
11:19
You live in New York? I used to live in New York.
Now, now I'm here. Yeah, New York is probably a better city to be single.
It is not probable. It is 100% a better city.
What are you going to do about that, Nico? How old are you?
Um, I'm 40.
11:35
Okay. So, I'm a little bit older.
Yeah. Yeah.
Tell us about yourself. But I spent all of my time with uh technical young founders, right?
like my real passion is to obsess with technical founders who are building products for themselves. Um I'm
11:51
originally from Greece, made in Greece, grew up between Greece and the UK. I've been in this uh part of the world Silicon Valley since 2009 when the app store was about one year old.
Got lucky upon graduating from Stanford to join um
12:07
Journal Catalyst. Uh spent the bulk of the previous 15 years there.
uh and have been mostly investing in first-time founders who have bold ideas. They're the customers of their own products from all over the world.
Uh I split time between here and New York.
12:23
And is there a sector that you look at? I I used to look more into consumer stuff, but then what happened is um over the last few years made it hard, you know, turn towards very young founders, Jenzers, right?
uh and a lot of them have been AI
12:39
curious and most of the interesting ones the last few years were like enterprisey right so honestly I wouldn't care less about the sector for me it's like if you're as smart as you sound at like 16 19 23 25 how much smarter can you be in 5 years
12:55
because the idea will change the product will change the market will evolve and what do I know preed or seed my own you know perspective on the product or the market I'm not That's smart. Is that also NRA's team?
Do you work
13:10
with Neroj? Uh Nirroj uh joined uh us with uh the venture highway team a couple of years ago.
You have worked with N of course. Yeah.
Hund and NRA are really good friends of mine. Awesome.
Yeah. We end up hanging out a lot also because
13:26
they have the India connection. Absolutely.
Yeah. Great people.
Great people. So what I was looking forward today is we seem to be at some kind of a crossroad where the rate of change seems to have got gone up in the world around
13:44
us. I allocate money uh I have I don't know what I would call it private equity venture capital uh whatever the term might be and I've been in the US for a large part of the last 2 months trying
13:59
to get allocation to different companies here. So I'll share with you which those companies are along the way and maybe we can debate them together and if it's the right valuation or not.
But more importantly, I want to arrive at
14:15
how you guys see different sectors evolving. Not today, but 10 years from now.
Where can me as either an investor or somebody looking to start my career as a young man or woman have enough
14:31
tailwinds that it makes sense to spend the next decade in? Yeah.
Interesting exercise. Sounds fabulous.
Sounds great. Okay.
So, should we start with maybe I'll go one by one and ask you
14:48
guys to name one sector that you should absolutely stay away from as a investor or as somebody starting up for the next decade. Let's start with DD.
Wow, you put me on the spot. Um,
15:06
you know, it's this is a hard question to answer because I have such a venture lens on this and you know, when you invest as a venture capital fund, there are certain attributes of a business you're always looking at and you need a certain return profile for this investment to make sense. Um, so
15:24
typically sectors that are really tough to invest in are, you know, very high capex sectors. And it's not to say that those businesses are not good businesses.
They're phenomenal businesses in some cases, but it's just not, it does not have the return profile
15:41
that most venture investors want. And there are exceptions to that and there are certain ways it can be very different.
Um, but broadly I would say it's it's hard to disentangle myself from from that bias. Like usually when you're buying up like I don't know
15:57
you're buying up tons of real estate that's I mean open door is a separate story but then it's it's a tough uh thing to invest in for example as a as a venture capitalist. So forget the venture lens.
Okay. Just as a investor or somebody starting a job in an industry which do you think
16:13
has the most headwind in the next 10 years? like somebody emails you from a particular industry, you'll be like, "Okay, I'm not going to open this even." I mean, I don't I don't think I have a very strong bent against any particular industry.
I'm trying to say like all
16:30
industries are actually pretty important. Um there are some that are maybe falling now, but it's impossible to know how how they would do in in 10 years, right?
Like you like I'll give you an example. Maybe it's probably not really going to answer your question, but if you take something like
16:45
manufacturing, which is a pretty traditional industry, which may not have much takers in in the venture community, there are some fantastic manufacturing businesses that are going to be built um especially in the next 10 years that have a whole other set of interesting problems to solve like how do you solve
17:02
um a labor problem? Um how do you manufacture in certain countries?
If can you even do that? what does tariffs mean for manufacturing in different places in the world?
So I I think there's interesting businesses in all sectors. It's really hard and I don't know if I'm
17:17
curious actually what you guys think is often when you you you have to have an open mind as an investor to hear out the idea in a certain sector because often it's from the places you least expect it that an interesting idea shows up. So you don't have a sector bias really?
17:32
Not really. Like I can hit you with some of the pathy lines of like oh who knows what's going to happen to software engineering but like it's it's not really a bias against a sector.
It's just so hard to tell in the in the future what's going to happen. Nikon.
17:48
Yeah, I don't think I think to I think some some industries don't have the exponential rate of progress that you need to be a venture capital like when like a business that can attract venture
18:04
capital and so I think those you have to realize like venture capital is like an accelerator. I think we should not fixate upon the term venture capital or but then I don't think I think every industry is very interesting.
Let's say let's say you have a h 100 bucks, $100. Yeah.
Where would you put it? It's a very
18:20
binary outcome. And where would you not put it?
I think anything that is not technology like forward, I would not put it. But that's my bias because I've been an engineer.
I've been here 17 years. But does that mean that you can't make money
18:35
off a traditional like my dad's a textile in textile industry. He's doing really well.
Like you know, but would I put $100? Would I put a dollar there?
like it's they're probably not because I just don't understand that business really well. Uh and he's surrounded by like mills and other like you know those all traditional businesses with very
18:52
little technology. They're still all printing money.
Uh but it's it's this is the bias. It's like this is why we can't I can't disassociate venture capital or technology from the way I view the world because that's what I understand.
You put me in a traditional business, put me
19:07
in dad's business, I will like, you know, bankrupt the business the next day because I don't get the whole But I do think like are tariffs helping your dad? No, I mean it doesn't hurt.
Most of his customers are Indian. Most of the mills are in India, so it doesn't really
19:23
affect him at all. Um, but I think from a so I think for me it's very hard to disassociate technology or venture capital from like how I would invest because that's what I do and that's how like how I view the world.
But to to D's point actually AI has actually made most
19:40
industries that were uninvestable suddenly investable because for example like any industry that's collecting large amounts of data was like you know prior prior like you would wouldn't invest in them because you would like oh there's no clear way for you to
19:55
understand this data no clear way to take action on this data. Now that's become an actual like asset because now you can either fine-tune models or you can actually do something interesting with them uh that that suddenly unlocks unlocks um value out of those and 2021
20:13
interest rates spiked up a lot and chat GPT launched at the end of 2021. It was the literal perfect intersection because when interest rates rised up everybody's costs went up.
Everybody's cost went up means everybody wants efficiency. Everybody wants efficiency.
What is the only boat that is lifting like you know
20:30
what is the only tide that's lifting all boats it's AI so factories are now asking and coming and begging for solutions that never used to happen before long sales cycles nobody wanted to invest there agriculture people were like you know traditional industry nobody wants to touch like what's the
20:45
tailwind there and so all of those industries that felt a little bit archaic a little bit that hey nobody wants to touch suddenly the buyers waking up saying hey I'm want a solution and So people are rising to the occasion and building things and I actually push
21:01
I mean I'm on the opposite spectrum of DD high capex is actually okay because there's ways to finance it and we're finally finding a way that everything is getting cheaper. Robotics is a good prime example of that.
Um but I don't think capex is the big problem anymore. It's just like can you find a tailwind
21:18
in that industry and that's what makes it good for venture capital. It's very hard to like dissect the two.
I wouldn't know. I don't know what I would do without technology.
So interest rates going down now will have the opposite effect. I don't think we're going to go back to zer and era anytime soon.
So interest
21:35
rates might go down like 50 bips or but it doesn't change the outcome that much. The genie is unlocked once you get used to high efficiency.
Why would you do? And then if you look at what Gen Z wants to do now, they don't want to work as a dishwasher in a in a restaurant.
They
21:52
want to be the next influencer or build the next business. How are you going to replace that labor?
Technology is the only way you can do that. Whether it's factory workers, whether it's back office workers, whether it's, you know, dishwasher, this is the only way that you can do it.
And that's great because
22:08
suddenly that area that was not investable before has suddenly become because everyone's a buyer is knocking on your door asking for it. Interesting, Nico.
So, uh, as an investor, uh, early stage investor, I would just, you know, like, uh, avoid
22:23
anything that's super super super hot. It's like it's an early investor.
Like, if it's like something that everyone is going after, if it's an idea that's getting tried now 100 times, it's probably too late. You know, as a very
22:38
early investor, um, of course, the founders matter the most as we all have agreed here uh, already. So if you think you know this is the founder or the team that are going to defy the odds are going to outexecute everyone else in a very capital intensive labor intensive
22:54
you know business go for it but otherwise you know anything that at the very early stage or 10 companies uh going after it it's probably uh too late in today's universe I would avoid you know like doing anything in China as somebody who is US-based that's not a
23:10
controversial statement 10 years from today a lot might happen and you know I love my chance. And Nico, what is too hot today that everybody's going after?
Do you want to give some ideas? There's so many.
Reinforcement learning.
23:27
Okay. Reinforcement learning environments is a hot space.
Reinforcement learning as a service is a hot space. How How about some uh AI codegen tools?
AI codegen is app builders. App builders.
Yep. Receptionists.
23:42
AI receptionists. multiple applications of voice for you know the same sort of 10 things are are pretty hot.
I mean, it's honestly amazing, you know, when you open up your email as a venture capitalist or like, you know, your ex or any other inboxes
23:58
you have, like honestly nine out of 10 um inbound requests you receive, they all sound the same. Like, so if you're trying to do something is to break the pattern of like everything sounding the same and try to find something that's like, huh, maybe this is different.
24:16
Of course, it's hard to decide yes or no to take a meeting without knowing uh the founders. That's where you know being throws matter or like founders that don't have a resume uh could be the ones that could thread the middle because a lot of the very
24:31
young founders if they're like 16 18 23 they might not even be on LinkedIn because Gen Z is not on LinkedIn or if you go there have bunchs of random internships and some of my favorite you know social media posts that I love saying uh are like uh the Nvidia CEOs
24:48
where before Nvidia you know he goes Denny's and you see some of these and you're like yes how can I find one of those people you know right which are some of the popular companies which are doing the things you said AI codegen reinforcement learning
25:05
AI receptionist name some names I mean there are anthropic doing AI codegen but they're pretty good at it um there's also cursor right biased there's also cursor cursor cursor is also AI codegen of
25:21
course. So these are both fairly successful companies at at least so far.
What else did we talk about? Um AI receptionist voiced applications for the same I mean there's I can't even remember some of these names but I mean it's not
25:38
trivial to find a hot space. I mean you just have to if you go on like say the YC um list I mean you're going to find every year has some patterns and um and I guess what Nikos is saying that you know those patterns are maybe the the
25:54
hot ones I don't want to put words in your what's the pattern this year um cursor for something cursor for so there was a funny tweet the other day that said Y combinator stands for Y cursor you know the C YC stands for
26:09
cursor Cuz if you went to like the demo day or like the company directory over there and type cursor, it could be cursor for property management, cursor for investors, blah blah blah. The the one crazy space I've seen in the
26:25
last year is just like the AI scribes for healthcare companies. Mhm.
Typically when you see you see like one move ahead of the pack and you know others are just doing you look at the AI scribe market there's at least eight companies I know all doing doubledigit
26:41
million dollars in ARR all started within the last few years and all growing double digit month over month which is crazy like you just don't see a market like that to give on the voice side this is like someone just like you know transcribing your notes
26:57
this is like a pro right you're talking about something you should you should look at. No, I'm just saying you asked like what are the hot markets?
I'm just saying there are hot markets but sometimes as VCs we look away at a hot market because the markets but the markets so large that
27:12
they can be six players all growing like crazy. So it's still like a market I wouldn't look at now because I feel it's too late.
But as an early stage investor, but it's crazy that even though there are these markets where there's too many players playing, there's an example of one where you have
27:28
like many many players all doing very well. If you could each identify a trend in AI that is changing that somebody who is unaware like me does not know, uh what would you say?
one nuanced trend that is changing in
27:46
AI. Well, there's there's a couple I could say.
Well, I don't know. Hard to guess what you may or may not know, but imagine nothing.
Well, one is like talk of the town is um how much Zach wants to pay people. Um so
28:01
the some people call it like engineers being athletes of today, which is interesting. Um it's not really tech tech focused, but it is a theme.
The second I would say is um you know we've run out of
28:18
public data um and you know we talked about RL in a different context earlier but you know reinforcement learning has been the primary technique for with which models get better over time and acquiring data to do good reinforcement learning is quite
28:34
different than how you would acquire data otherwise. So that is another trend.
So when everybody runs out of data, they create synthetic and keep improving the models. It's not exactly like that.
I mean in reinforcement learning you basically want an environment where there is certain rewards you can get. Sometimes they're extremely verifiable rewards in
28:51
which case it' be RLVR. Sometimes they're more nuanced where it's like text like how do you verify that?
But there are you can use an LLM as a judge to verify that. So there's various kinds of rewards but it's you know one way to think about it is yes you are generating an environment where there's rewards and
29:06
you're making the model become better at that task in a similar way that you would do for example when Google did Alph Go and you train an AI to learn a game you have a reward which is winning the game and then you figure out the steps in the middle um so it's not
29:22
really synthetic data um per se that is also used but it's a different uh step but that's that's what I meant by reinforcement learning. Um let's see what else.
Number three I think is not talked about enough is um China which is
29:38
you know the the the the narratives around China are interesting um because most people in America I feel don't want to even recognize how good these models can be with perhaps far less capital
29:54
expenditure. Right?
Like they're they're not spending that much for talent. They're not spending that much in even GPU resources.
They don't have the latest cutting edge GPU resources yet somehow they're able to come up with models that are not perhaps the best of the best but they're quite good. Um
30:10
they're frontier as as you as you say and so those are some those are just some Nico would you like to add Did you mention eval? I did not mention explain what it is.
So uh when let's say you know you're an attorney or you're a
30:25
doctor and then there is an AI or consultant and there is a AI model that is trying to uh replicate some of the day-to-day tasks that you do there are always um some corner cases some
30:41
exceptions that the model by itself even after you train it you know with all the uh world's data uh that's available out there won't get to Uh so when um you recruit a consultant or uh the doctor uh
30:58
to take a look at it uh they could come up you know with some of the uh exceptions and further you know refine uh that model and I think that's a very big market opportunity that's opening up uh right now and will be going on you know for a long time because you can
31:14
bring in uh entire new professions um and model them that you couldn't do you know as well today and it's just coding basically. Mhm.
I think the recent news that uh
31:30
everybody was jumping on was that you know OpenAI won the IMO gold and then Deep Mind also did that as well. I think that was interesting.
But I think a lot of people missed in the details was um OpenAI also had this competition where they just barely came second where they
31:48
had a single model running for 10 hours straight where no direction whatsoever and it was able to reason figure out plan go ahead 10 steps back but for 10 hours straight it was able to do
32:03
something and I think that just like blew my mind that shows like what the future capability ilities will be where we're no longer like you know we already even if you stop all AI development today these models are already phenomenally good to think and reason
32:19
and give us interesting solutions for a long period of time and that's like mind-blowing to me that we've already reached here and everybody's kind of just like whoopdilah kind of like walking away next and so imagine you can throw these models at like problems for
32:35
10 hours straight like you know whether It's the bare minimum of doing research on Diddy's every tweet on Twitter to like studying thousand technical papers by the best researchers and trying to find hidden connections between them. Um, and it's
32:52
that I think that's mind-blowing. I think this was not the case even two years ago.
That's why agents AI agents sucked is because they couldn't reason. They couldn't understand.
And in two years just with the models getting better all of these things are now unlocked where you know whether it's
33:08
research on the biotech space to like you know astronomy like we'll be able to find new stars. I think we we haven't even touched the frontier what these models can do and I think we're only limited by like compute energy and like essentially data which I think continue
33:25
to be the three modes that kind of continue along from perspective. Anything else?
I I I just I think we just you you know I think the everybody talks about AGI and ASI as this like one moment. I think my hot take would be like AGI is kind of already here but
33:41
like humans like when we take a Whimo ride we the first time it's mind-blowing to us and then the next time you're just kind of like on your phone checking Twitter. I think we're already there with these models today.
But these models are smarter than most humans already. Uh and we've kind of just been
33:57
like whatever and kind of like walked away. And I think this is why it's going to be a continuous spectrum where we will claim Asia is not here maybe 10 years from now but it's already kind of here in my in the not theoretical definition maybe but in a capabilities perspective it's already better.
34:13
Yeah. And I think another area that's uh becoming critically important is like what is the data set and the models that we can use to uh recreate the physical world.
So, in a world where we can have a lot of the robots that would do a bunch of the manual labor that it's hard
34:30
to hire people for because they don't want to or it's expensive. Um, how do you get to the 59s that you described?
Um, and you know, there are not that many companies to use the example of uh autonomous vehicles that have been taking photos, videos and other input of
34:47
the offline world like uh way more Tesla. There are few companies.
So where else you know can you find other sources of such data either real world data or synthetic data on the jeep that's labeled and easily readily to use. Uh
35:04
this is a very important space and has applications that uh can be in defense tech and all sorts of robotics. Yeah.
So many many you know this embodied intell intelligence space how you feed them with data is going to
35:19
be one of the most amazing ones to do business in the next few years. Do you think there's a use case in India for that uh for for specifically what Nico said?
Yeah. Oh.
Oh yeah that's a that's a complicated one. In terms of like use
35:35
case in India how do you mean like will self-driving cars make it to India or will they say a robot has to make a sandwich? Yeah.
Does it have to train on some visual data that will be a job for someone else? The the training part um it depends.
There's a couple of
35:51
different ways that people do it. There's this whole technique called sim to real where you know you try to simulate it as much as you can but then it's impossible to simulate the physical world.
And so then you typically get other sources of data and yes there are some as as far as I understand maybe maybe you know more there are labelers
36:08
that will label this data in in various companies and those labelers can be sometimes in India sometimes elsewhere. Yeah, in Philippines like I mean that's was scale's biggest market like there are towns where it's almost like it's like night and day difference right but there
36:23
are towns where it's like light all night and the entire team there is working on some version of labeling now it could be labeling text image video um last year I've talked to many startups where they are basically building things
36:39
that they give to workers in countries where labor is on the cheaper side where They're doing everyday tasks and collecting that data and then feeding it to the model. It just makes sense.
It's like, you know, how BPOS's exist in these countries. The new BPOS are these
36:55
labelers who will be basically getting data that these large language model companies need to help make the models better. It's just the next natural transition.
Yeah, I think in many parts of the developing world where labor is really cheap, um it might be harder to
37:10
see some of these applications uh very quickly um because the economics might not make sense. And then the real bottleneck for having robots, you know, company us uh for our daily tasks is that we need to make them.
So if you
37:27
think about you know the supply chain and everything required to make a gajillion of them we might have AGI first you know before uh robots actually start attacking us and taking over the means of production and the future you know might be bright you know for them but not as much for the human race.
37:43
Just wanted to throw this out there because I get a lot of people telling me you know who are not as intimately familiar with AI telling me oh this is just pattern matching this is just the internet yada yada yada. If you look up this paper called alpha evolve from deep mind, it is literally a paper where
38:01
there are these simple math problems that everybody can understand which is know hexagon packing. You have a hexagon.
How many of 1 2 3 4 5 6 up to n hexagons can you fit and how big is the surrounding hexagon? How small can you get the hexagon and pack all of this
38:16
stuff in? and Alpha Evolve has made novel solutions on this problem that you know that haven't been improved upon in 20 30 years.
So just to be clear like AI is very much pushing the frontiers of of human knowledge just in bits and pieces
38:33
today and we're going to see more of it. But I just wanted to throw that one out there.
But what else do you think is changing? Like if you had to predict think of me as I am an idiot cuz I know nothing about this but you're not an idiot.
I'm asking you to like prophesize five years ahead and
38:48
paint a picture of the world for me. One thing I think about probably I don't know how much you guys think about it but one thing I think about that is not talked about in this regard and maybe 5 years is a bit short for this probably 10 to 15 is um is just birth rate decline.
I think that's a very real
39:05
problem. Um, I know it is also a funny problem because there's all these sorts of reasons why it's happening, but it's especially stark in even if you go as far as like South Korea, you know, in two generations that country may be like
39:21
a tenth or less of the population it is today. Um, it it's really bad and but that has anything to do with AI.
It has a lot to do with the economy and it has a lot to do with AI. I mean, I mean, this is I'd love to explore this with all of you guys.
It's not a very
39:37
well-formed thought, and I'm not an expert in this by any means, but a lot of economic growth is subtly tied in with the growth of the population, the growth of consumption overall. I mean, AI is no good unless you have somebody using something at the
39:53
other end. Um, like transactions have to be done for economic value, for everyone to be prosperous.
And so if we see a world where there's this rapid decline in population, what does that mean for the economy? What does that mean for like clothing stores?
Are you going to be able to sell clothing anymore or are
40:09
you going to sell much less? Like what happens to the stock of that business?
So I I don't know. I think that's a less explored problem, but it's going to be a slow burn, but it's something that, you know, has transactions have to go up for productivity to go up.
What if the value of the transaction goes up?
40:26
It's possible. Um I I think the amount that productivity there's like an economic definition I guess and then just the general definition to go up to counteract this effect is I think somewhat unrealistic but again I'm not
40:42
an economist so I don't know and how does AI exaggerate birth rate decline? I don't think necessarily has anything to do with AI.
I think there there is um there's a very clear chart like
40:57
essentially 2009 it started declining and we all know what launched in 2009 just the iPhone. So it's not AI as much as like our addiction to just digital media and phones in general like and AI people having less kids because of
41:14
iPhones. I mean there's no you can't directly you can't directly point to it right there's no research that is that clear but it is like 2009 across the world and it's because like we're just becoming more and more dependent on a digital our our emotional needs are
41:31
being satisfied by more on the digital side whether it's like you know us watching YouTube shorts versus going to a bar to like date someone and I think AI will accelerate this problem for sure like again I I I I do think we we're confiding more in chat GPT than we
41:47
talk to like our closest humans including like our own partners and I I do think that that has happened and there's no there's nowhere that you can ever draw a direct line but the the trend is clear starting when the mobile phone came out young people now have
42:03
less sex because they're addicted uh to their phone um and you know they don't even know how to interact with another human especially in in the in the postcoid world, you could see it with younger people who missed out on school
42:20
for like a year or two and they were having a hard time uh interacting with other people in the offline world. Um so when you have you know less sex or you end up having it much later in life and you get a lot of the dopamine from digital experiences, what does it mean
42:36
you know for like the fertility rate? What does it mean for a lot of the vice powered industries uh in a world where in the US and the west you know you have ompic doing really well what does that mean for suppressing other vices beyond just like
42:52
you know excessive you know eating so that stuff is like very interesting but just think about like the second order effects that are very hard to imagine because for example you know like to go back to tech with AVs right if AVs are everywhere what does it mean you know for the economy around gas patient or
43:08
Costco or like you know anyone who's supplying stuff to parking lots. I have no idea you know uh there might be in this country amazing businesses you know that are supplying um products and services to the subverticals.
Um yeah
43:24
the rate is dramatically accelerating. For the first time there is a new form of intelligence that uh is going to be on par or over time superior to a lot of the stuff that we as humans you know can do.
So, you know, if you can borrow ideas from the world of sci-fi, what
43:40
does that mean? Does it mean that we're going to somehow fade in the background?
We're going to be like the same way that we have pets or cats and dogs right now. AI will love us uh and will feed us.
The AI will assume the means of production. We'll have universal basic income.
We'll
43:57
be happy. Maybe we'll start having more sex.
I don't know. Maybe the NBA will have uh 10,000 teams.
Maybe everyone will be a supermodel, do sports, or become a poet. But then all the important decisions around running the world, allocating resources, this new form of intelligence is going to make
44:14
the decisions take over and you know it's going to be the new species that uh writes the history books. Who knows?
It's a bit like a democracy and a smarter benevalent maybe benevalent
44:30
dictator on top. Yeah.
Is it important that we are making the decisions if something smarter is more capable? There are a lot of uh questions that you know this question uh raises here right one of the good news is that AI is still today powered with electricity.
So if
44:46
we're happy one plug it and we're good right because the battery technology is not that sophisticated you know and enduring yet. Um but yeah it does matter a lot you know who are the creators of these super powerful pieces of so
45:02
foreign systems because if they themselves you know are all made of the same cloth and they have group think they won't be able to cover a lot of the um different uh voices that humans from
45:17
all over the planet and different backgrounds might have. Uh and unfortunately, you know, for the world, tech is moving really quickly.
Policy cannot catch up. Like in like the hardest thing honestly that we face right now is even if you're like a PhD
45:34
in AI working for one of the foundation uh model companies, you can't keep up with the pace. This is the single hardest thing.
So imagine being, you know, like a policy maker or somebody who thinks about that stuff all day long. Um, how do you keep up?
45:53
And you know, the tech is improving in the background. This this is really tricky.
Do you personally believe the world will get there where we become like cats and dogs in the background? I don't want to live in that world.
But is there a scenario that this might
46:09
happen? Yes, there is a scenario that this might happen.
But I think I have the more optimistic take which is like see since the industrial revolution humans have just known to increase efficiency. It's like singular like you know now it makes sense that you worked at Kla Ventures.
46:24
So every year productivity is going up what like couple of percent. And even the internet you know like but the point being is like we've always found a way to do more.
Jobs have come and gone. Typewriters used to be a thing no longer a thing.
Pace is accelerating but the pace has always been
46:40
accelerating. Maybe it's just an exponential curve and that's why we're feeling the we're on we're on the roller coaster like on the edge and that's why we're feeling it.
But I think I believe like in an abundant future where like like you know I believe actually like we'll have more time to do more
46:55
leisureful activities like the workday might go down from 12 hours a day to 6 hours a day and that means we have more time for like art and music and entertainment and I don't know like spending time with like our loved ones. That's my take on the situ that's like
47:10
the abundant scenario. It's already happening today like if you take way more, right?
Before you were behind the steering wheel. Now you are reading you know did this to some but this also happened 2,000 years ago.
Say Greek society not everybody had to
47:26
work because they were doing so well. Yeah.
Philosophy was a thing where people sat and spend their lives philosophizing what they should believe in what they should not believe in. Maybe the world goes there.
Nope. It will.
Yeah, there will be 10,000 teams in the NBA. As I said, we're all
47:42
going to be philosophers and poets. Maybe we'll have a lot more sex and we can leave like uh our own version of Brian Johnson.
It will live for like 2,000 years. Might very well happen.
Yeah, I'm a bit more apprehensive on the abundance situation because I think the
47:58
abundance narrative necess will always be certain people with less resources and as long as you have less resources, you will want more resources. And so the abundance mindset I think is a luxury of a few and there is no way you can
48:13
convince somebody who grows up from a I don't know povertystricken family in India you can convince before you go ahead does abundance hit proportionately proportionately to the modes of capitalism when there is abundance absolutely that's what history has time
48:29
and again told us if you read my favorite book capital in the 21st century by thus picity every time there is growth and development meant inequality increases. I don't think there's very many situations where that's not the case.
But he makes a case for that donut economics, right? Like the marginal
48:45
utility of money beyond a point. Yes.
Goes down. That's correct.
Um and but that despite that I mean I think still think we have a very far gap to fill before you know the entirety of society is above the point where the marginal amount of money
49:02
means nothing. I mean we see it in a in in a little bit right?
There are people who I mean I think about this all the time, right? But also think about this.
You were just saying fertility rates are dropping such that countries in two generations will have onetenth the number of people they have. So that changes everything too,
49:18
right? Yeah.
Yeah. But let's talk about that.
What if we have the artificial womb? I just had, you know, a baby through a surrogate.
I'm in my early 40s. My wife is in her early 40s.
Honestly, it's amazing. I I think we need to make having kids cool again.
Yes, it's not as much about the incentives,
49:36
but it's more about the narrative. Like, so if we're old to become a lot more religious, this perhaps would mean that you would get married, you know, earlier, this would probably mean that um for the religion to propagate, uh you would
49:51
have, you know, more kids earlier. Yeah.
So one of the reasons for example why in Latin America the fertility rates decline in some of the stas in the world is because Catholicism in many of these countries uh is not as cool as it used
50:07
to be in previous you know decades. So would you bet on religion making a comeback because it ought to I think it is making a comeback.
Yeah. And part of the reason is uh after like uh 15 years uh being stuck on a small screen and after you know 20 years
50:23
of going to Equinox Bars boot camp or whatever you know these institutions are for you depending on where you live you're trying to find other places that have a meaning. By the way there might be an AI religion that gets formed.
Mhm. uh who knows uh that is going to
50:40
fulfill the emotional needs that uh some humans might have but yeah I do think religion is making I think it's all about a search for meaning that's where like I go back on the abundant side it's like search for meaning eventually ends up coming with people and the byproducts of people not
50:57
from a kites perspective but whatever we end up doing and I think if going back to the poverty side like I think we live we're in a place where more people die of like calorie surplus than negative. I think that's now that's why like OAMPic is doing so well like obesity is the number one killer rather
51:14
than I know that's not what you were trying to say but I think going back to that point we already live in an abundant future but I don't think and the income disparity I agree with that is my number one fear that but I don't know what the solution there is because UBI experiment has been tried and it'll
51:31
be interesting to see as that gap goes bigger what happens. Yeah, I actually agree with mo all of your points.
I I my only difference is the search for meaning in the Maslo's hierarchy of need is after a couple of other things and it's not always just about it's it's about
51:46
I think humans own perception of status. Sure.
And where they are um and like you know obviously the food in America is not as much of a problem is not but yeah that's kind of but I think we do agree I think just separate Yeah.
52:04
Okay. So, we spoke about Huh?
What are you saying? Say it out loud.
Sorry. No.
Every time a self-driving That's okay. It'll sound natural.
Only only in San Francisco.
52:20
Remind me remind me of the spy. It's the wayos are going to detect the niclad podcast.
Everywhere. We were just talking about there's a Netflix series called The Spy.
Yeah, it's about uh is you can keep rolling around in Iran,
52:37
Syria. In Syria, Damascus and the way he gets found out is like he's talking on this frequency uh with a particular frequency and they have these cars that are just driving by and they catch him on that frequency.
So, it very much reminded me of the you
52:54
know whimos passing by causing our frequency loss. Imagine what must be happening to spy technology in all this, right?
Oh my god. That's crazy.
Everything is watched and heard in perpetuity almost. I'm guessing I mean we weapons technology with AI is
53:11
also, you know, not it's a very investable asset and people are investing in it and some some crazy things come out of it. I think we should all assume that we're living our lives in public now.
Mhm. And it's a little bit hard to say that u if you're somebody you know in
53:28
your like 40s or older but uh pretty much you know every second or third building now on the street has some cameras installed. Y everyone has a phone with a camera.
You have a city with self-driving cars.
53:44
cameras like with all these sensors um you're living life in public and then every anything you ever say uh online uh in theory you know somebody can truck it. So imaging being uh somebody who is
54:02
in uh elementary school right now by the moment you started using computers if you created you know your account like on the iPad but now you're using Chad GPD to help you with your homework and you can share your feed links everything you know is getting
54:18
tracked. I mean parents are putting their newborn on Instagram.
That's like, you know, your digital identity is already being published without your choice. Without your choice.
Yeah. Now it's just like the moment you push a digital device in any age's hand
54:33
is gone. What do you guys do for your kids?
Do you have plans to put them on Instagram? I haven't used Instagram in four years.
So I think one of the thoughts I have which is like a hopefully positive thought is you know by the time uh my kid is going
54:49
to be a teenager the iPhone won't really exist in its current shape and form. So like one of the things that I'm amazed by that could be a predecessor, you know, to this argument I just made coming true is when you have really
55:04
young uh kids interacting with technology, they do so with their hands or with voice and then you put them in front of a laptop, they see the keyboard and they freeze like what am I supposed to do with this thing? you know cuz so far I've been talking to my uh iPad or
55:20
you know my dad is you know like iPhone so I think you know if we're to project uh with new software and new AI first hardware how we could interact with technology uh the small screen might not be as
55:36
addictive you know we might actually have it in our brain do you think that could become a business in itself uh no tech no devices disconnected real estate project around you. It is already business.
So like people
55:52
here around San Francisco they would go for like 3 4 day silent retreats or we don't use technology to find themselves to clean you know their their souls. It's already business and it's going to become more and more of a bigger trend.
56:07
I mean for some time and uh first half of the previous decade uh Burning Man was that now sadly no Starlink destroyed it that aspect of it but you know this was a part of what Burning Man uh served
56:23
to the technology of that era India has Basina which is similar right yeah sorry no sci-fi books I I exclusively only read sci-fi it's a perfect picture on the future I think it's snow crash was the book where they basically had these
56:40
bars where you go in and like everything electronic is turned off and it felt to people very unnatural and weird because they don't have everything in their brain recording or intelligent an extra intelligence layer and that's the future
56:55
people will do to feel human again like you know snow crash is an old sci-fi book what are the books of today's saying if you're reading them um there's I mean I only read like older books. Like the newer books obviously
57:10
like Blake Crouch is excellent. Like I highly recommend reading everything he writes.
Um but like it's like reading the older books is fun because it shows you 20 years in the future. Now people are using like AI as the base and building on top of that.
U but threebody problem is like my absolute favorite.
57:26
I've read it. What does the threebody problem talk about?
Uh it talks about just like everything from interstellar space to how like humanity travels to different places. I won't do it any justice like trying to explain
57:42
the core fundamental science things. But I highly recommend reading it and there's if you don't want to read it just watch the Netflix series which is a poor adaptation but I know people like video more than reading nowadays.
So uh it's unbelievably good. It has touched a lot of pieces on
58:00
society, culture, governance, inter like you know interstellar space to just like even human emotions. It's like very very very well done.
You brought up an interesting point you know like people have an easier time watching video instead of reading
58:16
because now we're constantly distracted and the push notifications of technology are so addictive uh and we want to get our dopamine heat. So like going back to what you were discussing before, you know, there are these offline retreats, but there are also some applications out
58:33
there like Clear Space and Opal and others that help you have like a digital detox on your phone. They're all growing and all of them are growing.
Yeah. So this is like, you know, speaking uh it's like evidence that consumers are voting with their dollars to block the most addictive um products out there,
58:51
most often social media products. And there is even a new class of like consumer hardware startups that are creating versions of dumb phones with some core utilities because one would argue if you cannot call Uber or Whimo
59:08
that's a problem. If you cannot you know uh text your loved one that's a problem but do you really need to have all the different messaging apps or social media apps on your phone?
Probably not. for the sake of playing devil's advocate because as much as I love your guys'
59:23
argument, I want to buy that. On the other hand, like um I was looking at the stat for how much YouTube is watched in the world.
And if you do the numbers, the final result I got was 2% of all human waking hours is on YouTube. That's
59:41
an insane amount. Um and look, I'm there some assumptions, so maybe 1%.
So I mean that's rising too. So I think I I still worry about it because sure some people are detoxing but it's like a vice is a vice.
I mean you can stop some people
59:58
from gambling but there's a reason the laws prohibit it. It's because people are drawn to vices.
I was in India for 2 weeks and I mean I've seen the rise of geo and cheap data everywhere in like and I come once a year for 2 weeks and
00:13
it's crazy. It's like, you know, the security guy at 3:00 a.m.
in the morning is watching like a YouTube video which like, you know, and it's like probably terrible for his eyes and like it's like I didn't see anybody like Yeah, it's like everywhere because it's so cheap. Data's proliferated.
So, I mean, I don't
00:31
I think the genie is out. I think it's kind of one of those like we live very privileged lives being in the Bay Area.
We can be like, "Oh, we need to do digital detox and people are like still making money and all of those things from You realize we're making a YouTube video right now." I know.
00:46
That's This is YouTube education section, right? That's a good part of YouTube.
It's like having salmon and broccoli. Great.
It's not like McDonald's. What do you think happens to matchmaking?
Dating apps. What happens to dating apps?
01:01
Yeah. Uh we just met one yesterday.
That's why I'm asking. Which one?
Niche. Oh, Nandi.
Yeah. Nice.
Uh they will evolve because they do.
01:17
probably it will be a continuation of some of these, you know, AI products that know everything about you and they know everything about a lot of other people that might be a good fit for you. uh and they could be able to make um
01:35
curated intros and could be able to handle the beginning of the conversation so that you get to the actual you know like date because today's uh AI apps in the west they're more like entertainment products than actual dating apps. Yeah.
I think you get the dopamine from
01:51
matching not from dating. Right.
So it's something like 30% of people who are in the swipe left and right they've never been on a date. Yeah.
And then these products were built for like a different generation where you know people were not as gender fluid and for example you know if I'm like um
02:08
somebody who is on the younger side and is by just having like a straight profile on Tinder doesn't serve me uh as well. Then the other thing that's going on unfortunately is there's a lot of um data discrimination that's happening on
02:24
the dating apps. So something like 8 to 10% of the guys get 80% of the dates.
This is really bad news for humanity. And this speaks to a need that's in the background like a demand for something uh new.
So like for
02:42
example, if you're a guy and you're not getting any dates uh on any of the popular online dating apps, the best thing you can do is delete it from your phone, sign up with a new location. Ideally, you input a location next to an airport cuz over there there are a lot
02:57
of people coming in and out and the algorithm gets rerouted, you know, again. So, like I think the future of online dating um is going to be part of what people are using like GPT to do
03:13
their homework. It's like anyone who's young now and they're just addicted to that behavior, they would expect a similar kind of experience for other parts of life.
I I think I believe like we'll all have digital twins like it
03:29
just makes sense like you know we already do in chat GPT and the memory layer like we're inputting so much of our information in there and so I think dating just evolves very similarly where you know why swipe left or right where if you're digital twin is able to just
03:45
figure out from this ocean of other digital twins who's the best match for you they do the early conversations and then you just get to meet them and you just trust the algorithm to do the curation. Today in Tinder, you're just filling out a profile that has stale
04:00
data. But imagine if you could take your deepest, darkest, like all the things that you put in chat GPT today to do the matching for you.
It'll be far more effective because it does all the matching and it's like, okay, then you have a slider. It's like how different do you want them?
Or if you have three
04:16
different dates, it's like, you know, one's like truly a magic eightball and one's like ideally matched to who you are. But is it an industry that you would bet on?
You would want to allocate money behind it. There's a there's one of the dating apps
04:34
in our and Menalist portfolio is like Rya which is was a good investment. Um but generally dating apps today are uh you'd have to have something unique for it to be a good bet.
I think you know Nico probably knows more you guys both are more
04:49
consumer investors than I am. I mean with consumer it's just really tough to bet on these things unless you see some element of traction already.
Like you need to know that it works but correct me if I'm wrong. And Facebook as a dating product in the early days.
So would you invest in the
05:04
next Facebook that's going to look very different than it? Yes, you would.
Uh what is the single best uh dating product today if you're a very successful person? probably Instagram because over there you know you can slide into other famous people beautiful people's DMs and they would reply back
05:21
at you. Um but over time you know these things will evolve and then I think there's something to be said about offline experiences around dating um becoming a lot more um desirable for
05:37
people like in a world where like you know the online experiences are very addictive and uh we have them in abundance what becomes cars the very awesome cool offline experiences. So anyone who has the means would want
05:52
to be part of that. So somebody's building a dating app they should solve not just for meeting someone but also for the date.
Absolutely. Yeah.
So I I work with one team called 222. They're in New York.
How do you spell that? 222.
06:08
Is the website. And what those folks are doing uh something very simple.
You're a newcomer to New York City or to LA or San Francisco. you want to meet others, um you can go and do a cooking class together or you can go and have like
06:25
dinner, you and two other friends of yours and seven strangers and then alongside 97 other people, you can go to a bar uh and people pay uh their subscribers to to that and it's growing
06:40
really really quickly. So the future of dating apps will be more offline than online.
Yeah. And less swiping.
I think that paradigm has come to run its course. Okay.
So, we've established humans could become like cats and dogs.
06:56
Religion will do well. Maybe a new AI religion.
Fertility rates will drop and that rate might exaggerate. We also said matchmaking will change.
Digital twin, offline, Instagram is where a lot of people date
07:12
today. We said socialism and capitalism will move closer to center.
I don't know. I think that one will I I plead the fifth.
I think more capitalism. You know, I visited um I visited South Korea this past Christmas.
07:28
Yeah. And uh I went to like a viewpoint where you can see the closest town of North Korea in the demilitarized zone and it was striking to see the difference.
It was one of these clear days because normally there's a lot of pollution you cannot see. So I could see the streets
07:43
of that town and in the 30 minutes I was at that coffee shop I didn't see a single car and it was like a shock because I was like whoa you know we're just like two three uh miles away and here there is stuff happening and over
07:58
there you know poor people who happen to be born there not because of their own valition and they're stuck in the ice ages instead of uh economic growth. So like there are certain places where you can compare and contrast you know
08:14
the different systems uh sadly still we also said offthegrid businesses will do well digital detox with passa kind of stuff video over reading will continue to grow video will continue to get
08:31
shorter you want a dopamine spike sooner I mean capitalism I think will always reward whatever hacks your brain to give you reward immediately in dopamine and that mean that's why there was shift to shorter video. It's an easier hack for the brain.
What if though we have like
08:47
brain implants and you know there are going to be ways to hug people's brains or a new form of digital drugs will be invented you know like neural link yeah neural link it's one of the companies that are building the brain implants right but like you historically
09:02
you know we've liked images more than text we've like video more than images we've like short video more than like long form video but I'm saying if most people you know many people have brain implants there will be new say they'd like and uh
09:17
would you get one if somebody were to tell you here Nikico is a brain implant which will increase your IQ by 40%. I'm sure there could be a reason for me to do it.
You know, by that time I might have some cognitive decline, right? And I won't like that or
09:33
no like optional like some you're okay and somebody offers it to you. If you had said to me a few years ago you could speak all of the world's languages with a brain implant, it would be like sign me up.
Now unfortunately or fortunately some of
09:49
these you know like Raybun smart glasses you know are getting there. So this might not be the use case that gets me but you know there's if you can have like cognitive superpowers why not or if I could have a part in my head at all times or there's a monologue going on in
10:05
my head you know at all times like thinking too many things if that you know implant can help me pacify it great what do you think happens to urbanization do we all still want to be in densely populated cities
10:20
I think so because this has been the AC since the very beginning of humanity like we tend to uh be more and more densities. It's great for uh we're all social animals.
It's great for the planet. It's great
10:35
for true. Wouldn't we be one block of people in every country or one block of densely populated people?
Why do we have states? Why do different states have different cities?
Because the world has been around for long enough. But but in many uh
10:53
countries now which is you know countries was a new idea from the 19th century um in many countries you see certain cities where you have like you know 20 30 40 50% of the population you know but not 100 not 100% no unless it's a very small one
11:09
like Singapore right but think of a country like the US if that was the prevailing trend there would be one block either on the west coast or east coast where everybody Nobody would live. I think natural resources matter, energy, there's a lot of other factors
11:24
also. Climate change, climate change, climate matters, terrain matters, the economy, yeah, economy matters.
Like it just doesn't people choose to leave and go somewhere else. So I don't think it's that simple.
Would you bet on urbanization to continue with Niko as well?
11:39
100%. Yeah.
I also think but I think I think it'll it'll continue but then as the income disparity grows the real estate grows uh sorry as we get more and more things in digital world like real estate actually becomes far more expensive
11:54
why because that's the only asset people can hold on to that's a real blockchain man yeah it's a supply constrained asset it's a supply conrained asset but if there are onetenth the number of people and there's infinite land in the world I don't think there'll be one the number
12:10
of Oh, the cycle of decline, does it ever go up? We don't know, right?
I think it does, but it it has happened. I mean, declines in civilizational population have happened in the past for mostly war um and other other sorts of reasons.
Famine, disease,
12:25
but this time it's not that. This time it's not that.
I think that part humans generally fix themselves. Um so I'm optimistic.
But going back to the digital detox side, right? like you know like what if you know we all live you know like uh 120 years right
12:41
which is believable for folks who are now you know like getting born or they're like 10 15 years old so if that happens the population decline is not going to be as quick as you know uh we might think it is and you know normally for the population
12:58
to grow it depends really on the number of fertile women and how many years they have that they're fertile. So that's a constraint that nature or God, you know, gave to us.
So what if, you know, you could like 3x the number of fertile
13:16
years that we have today or we could have artificial wombs. But we all want to live longer, right?
I think most people um if they believe in a better uh future for themselves, they want to live longer. Most people would say yes.
13:31
And this believing in a better future tomorrow is a very recent phenomenon. Before the industrial revolution, if you asked anybody, how do you think you will be 5 years from now?
Most people thought they would be worse off. This is new that we've seen growth for as long as we
13:46
have in some form or another. It is new.
Yeah. So, longevity and wellness as a business.
Good place to be. Great place to be.
In any country, this is the first time you've said great this evening. Yeah.
Thank you.
14:02
Yeah. Right.
That's my co-pilot right now. What do you think?
Um, I think long longer term great places to to be and to to invest in. I think biotech is taking a lot of interesting strides in terms of drug
14:19
discovery. So, how do we solve a bunch of the diseases that cause early death I think is really important.
There's a lot of cool work going on there. longevity.
I think it's a slower burn. So, you know,
14:34
I'm optimistic but on a slightly longer time horizon. Um, hence the name, right?
I guess so. I guess so.
Um, and then I So, I I am a very optimistic about biotech
14:51
o overall. Well, I think the artificial womb thing is interesting for sure, but I think it does cause into it calls into question some concerns around, you know, how many kids will one person be able to have because then it becomes a, you know, purchasable asset.
Can you have
15:09
thousand kids if you can just artificial womb them? Maybe some people might want to do that.
Well, religion has sold for that. It becomes uneconomic, you know, according to most religions to have many kids.
At the extreme ends though, I think that we could see some interesting things happen
15:25
there. We need robots to help uh raise them too.
That too that this would be probably more expensive. Um or you would need a lot more space and since real estate is becoming more expensive, that's a real limitation.
Do you think real estate will continue
15:40
to become more expensive? Do you believe in that finite supply?
One of the issues that we have in the western world is that the productivity in the construction industry has been stagnating or certain decades going down. So unless we fix that uh unfortunately you know in most places
15:56
real estate will continue to become more expensive right? So we were doing this exercise see at the end of the day we are all capital allocators right all four of us in one way or another maybe on the venture side the private equity side whatever.
So we were trying to arrive at
16:14
what statements hold the most value for us. Uh from a rate of change is increasing world is changing 10 years from now which industry would have grown the fastest I'm going to share the
16:29
statements one by one and maybe we can all opine disagree agree them. The first one I'll say is Indian families with rising income, reducing family size will invest in premium education.
16:46
Outcome focused education will take preference. What do you guys think?
Agree. In only this particular I think in general that will happen.
Yeah. I'm just saying Indian because we were sitting in India doing this exercise.
Nico, do you think everybody will spend more
17:01
on education? No.
Uh but certain cultures like in India or in South Korea or where I come from in in Greece, uh they absolutely do because they see this as a viable path to uh improving their chances of their
17:17
offsprings doing well. In the US, the average person does not care about spending money on their kids' education.
My kid is bad at math, the teacher is bad. That's changing.
Why is that culturally?
17:32
It's a immigrant nation and everybody has become successful in the recent past. So didn't they distinguish the successful from the unsuccessful also through the lens of education.
Who is they like all the American people
17:49
even you know you forget when you made it to the top often you forget and uh for a lot of folks um this is not priority number one. If you're like an immigrant yourself or you're somebody affluent, you of course do care a lot
18:04
about it. Yeah.
Every society in the past that has achieved pinnacle status has always shifted to arts and culture as their way to to spend time whether it's sports or something else. And in America it's a very sportsoriented culture more than it
18:21
is an educationoriented culture like you said. I I don't know too many you know.
Can I ask you guys to give it a rating 1 to 10? Uh this one.
Yeah. The the Indian education one.
Uh eight or nine. Okay.
18:36
Same. I'm like a 10 for like you come from like a country that's on the up and up.
Yeah. Okay.
Nikon. Outcome focused education.
Yeah. It will be the it is the future.
Nine. Okay.
18:52
Secondary markets for private companies will become a big thing. 10.
Again, these are moments in time, right? Because there are moments when um regulators and the incentives are aligning for public markets to be open
19:11
and to welcome companies at a much earlier stage. There are other moments that this is not the case.
So at the moment, you know, we're uh living in during a time where a lot of the value um is captured by private investors on
19:27
the way up. Like you now see quite a few companies that are worth hundred billion dollar plus whereas back in the day, you know, this was not the case.
Like when Facebook went public and was valued on day one over hundred billion dollars, I think they were the first ones ever, you
19:43
know, to do that in 2012. And could you also argue that tomorrow a lot more really large companies will want to avoid or circumvent taking retail money because they'll have to be overregulated if they do.
20:00
If indeed you know they have to be overregulated and they have a choice because they can get funding from other places. Yeah, they might avoid.
But if we bring down the regulatory constraints or capital from other sources becomes more scarce, this could be an option.
20:16
For me, you know, as somebody who lives in the US, it's actually sad that the retail investor, the pension funds, the low fees, um, ETFs, uh, cannot have access to some of these wealth, you know, sooner rather than later.
20:32
It's sad, 100%, but I don't think it's changing anytime soon. Right.
At the moment it looks like it's not going to change anytime. Yes.
Yeah. It's like eight or nine.
There's access. I think if you think about like
20:48
imbalance in the future or disparity like access becomes the primary thing that only a few people have and that's the sad aspect and will be gatekeep. And I think that's the that's the sad aspect.
But do I see it changing anytime
21:05
soon? No.
incentives are just not aligned. Do you guys want to rate the statement, Nico?
Secondary market, secondary markets, market places like they're going to be strong forever for the next 10 years. Yeah, I think it's a five.
Yeah, five.
21:20
Yeah, it's a 10. I don't I don't see it changing.
Nico, let's split the middle. Take seven.
I think I don't I think it'll change. I think it'll change in the end start of next decade.
The world will be older and sicker.
21:38
Wellness, hospitalization, longevity, great sectors to be in. I think they're two different statements in my opinion.
Explain. I don't think you I don't believe the world will be older and sicker.
21:54
Why not? I mean we're constantly impro I think first I believe like as kind of DD mentioned like biotech is the application area where I do believe us discovering new things will be the most like literally one sector where we
22:10
discover the most things where AI will be useful it's biotech and I think that will help transform most of the common diseases why we die I mean ompic is already doing with obesity which is a huge factor so I do will live longer
22:27
and like healthier but I do think that will take investment longer and longer and that is agreed world will be older if you live longer world will be older yeah so that's why so older no and not sicker yeah and then average like you think about median happiness years let's
22:44
put it like in a like philosophical way no I'm more thinking how many people are sick at one point of time cuz money can be made by treating them I I mean, you want to answer? Yeah, I I I was going to be pretty strong on this one.
I mean, just again, this is a
23:01
side effect of birth rate decline. So, as birth rates decline, the demographic imbalance will switch to having more older people.
Um, I think you Yeah, you're right. I mean, you have to debate the baseline of what sicker means.
But, you know, that's what I was thinking.
23:17
Generally, if you're talking about the world being sicker because there are more older people and older people are generally sicker. Yeah, I mean that is that is factual also we've just come out of co after many many decades we had something like that maybe there will be more perhaps but even without that I would
23:32
say the world is older people get sicker people will be older therefore people will be sicker and then longevity wellness and all of that very important stuff also because of how connected we are right now when something transmissible comes about next we'll all get it much
23:48
faster than we did historically that's why I say sicker like I was sitting with somebody from Mona last week and they were saying we got really close with bird flu but the world has gotten to a point where if I have something which is moderately infectious the odds of the last person
24:05
in the world not catching it are low today but I think we'll be able to come up with an antidote faster and distribute it faster also I think that's the corollary that I don't think we get like would have been much worse without mRNA a lot of these things that didn't exist
24:21
like 10 15 years ago and I think that pace is only going to accelerate. So I'm that's what I was trying to like understand.
I think the acceleration of us making things better. Yeah.
Let me put it more specifically. I think the ambiguity goes away in 2035.
24:36
I'm reviewing the portfolio that is being invested in today. Will the business of treating sick people have done well by then?
I think we're rating that. I mean in the US it's already what 19% of US GDP goes in healthare so
24:52
that number will go up 100%. Yeah that the number will go up does it mean it's a good business yes exactly TBD because like if you are like in healthcare services or um you run hospital stuff most of them are not
25:08
great businesses. However, you know, if you find ways to bend the coast curve, oh my god, amazing.
All the trends are on your side. I suspect there are better businesses outside of the US because the US has a
25:23
problem which is very unique to itself. Right.
That's right. Like the multiples of hospital companies in India like a 100 tanthrop especially if you've been able to build a brand around it.
Do you like to rate this Nikico older sicker world? I think older uh yes seeker I it's a
25:43
definition thing but like you know is this market going to become much bigger between now and 2035 yes it's like a nine you know nine yeah eight senior living this is something we
26:00
invested in funnily enough me and Hmon did this deal together we did a couple in senior living. Were you part of that?
I'm aware of it, but I was not part of it. No.
Yeah. Yeah.
Thoughts? The world will be older.
26:16
Senior living, affluent senior living. Well, some of the fastest growing cities in the US are the villages in Florida.
Mhm. So if there's something to be said, you know, about that model expanding to other countries, um I think, you know, this one has like
26:32
very awesome long-term, you know, prospects and especially in the developing world as like people become um more affluent, their kids are fewer, they don't live with them, but they move for economic opportunity in other parts of the country or other parts of the
26:48
world. um you need as you uage to be close to other elderly people andor um individuals who are going to be able to help you.
This particular deal we did together is a company called Primus. And
27:04
the data he was showing us is if a 70-year-old man or woman is at his facility, which is a very affluent like high-end senior living facility, the quality of life and
27:20
the longevity of their life goes up by a significant premium because they have community. That's right.
and and he showed me this really crazy research. Like when my dad was sick, I got him a nurse.
So then he didn't have to do anything. He didn't have to move.
Somebody was doing everything for him. That's the worst
27:37
thing you can do for your parent. Uh it's very counterintuitive but I think just that community the having to play with someone having some competition being organized playing memory games walking all of that with like like aged
27:56
people changes everything. Absolutely.
Yeah. So if you read about uh blue zones which are like the different parts of the world where they have the highest percentage of people who are 100 years old plus uh the shared trait that they all um have to uh
28:13
demonstrate is community. Yeah.
So like in Okinawa and Japan and Nicaria and Greece and like you know other parts you're somebody you know who's like 100 years old your kids might be dead or incapacitated but because every day you know in your village you're socializing
28:29
and you feel like you have responsibilities this is what keeps you going. We rated this highly in India even though there is such a big societal stigma about senior living.
I think the misconception one has is at a certain point with your
28:44
parent, you're almost being selfish by keeping them at home with you versus allowing them to make more choices of their own. Right.
Yeah. It's a hard thing especially in India to overcome.
I don't know how it's in Greece but
29:00
same but you know because in Greece again you know the uh standard of living went up and then the cost of living cost of labor also you know went up. What saved um a lot of families was like Eastern European um labor talent that
29:17
visited the country and stayed there as illegal immigrants and then got legalized. But in the beginning, you know, if you had your kid, your uh elderly parents sent to like senior living facility, everyone would
29:32
look down on you. So the preferred choice was to have somebody from Georgia or Romania, you know, do they work for you?
But then you realized all the stuff that you mentioned, you know, that your dad or mom wouldn't interact with anyone else. The cognitive decline would
29:48
be uh faster. So now, you know, after like 30 years of doing what I said, uh some of the uh much better senior living, you know, businesses uh are looked up more nicely or favorably.
You guys want to comment on senior
30:04
living? What do you send your parents?
Um, it's a tough one. Um, I would there is some bias against it as as you said, but you know, maybe that decision will change over time.
I think it depends on what they want to do as well. Um, I I I
30:21
do think in in my particular case, I'm lucky that they have a good community already at home, so that does solve a bunch of the problems, but you know, who knows how this goes. Um but generally on your question you know in the US very much um in the rest of the world
30:37
slightly less u just because there's different dynamics social inter intercultural dynamics in different parts of the world there is also taboo and things like that so I I'm not as sure but in America high yeah I think it's not a question of like
30:54
me sending our parents like my parents luckily my parents and my grandparents live together And I think that's nice like from a community standpoint and that's very rare. Not many people have that.
Yeah, we're very lucky that everybody likes each other.
31:10
Um but it's not a question of me sending my parents or not. It's a question of like them choosing what to do.
It's like at the end of the day we all we're three brothers. We all live in separate houses.
They live in their own house and what they what do they want to do?
31:26
I think it makes sense. It's like I've I I think both from a community standpoint but from a as labor gets more expensive like economies of scale standpoint as well.
It just makes sense for more people of the same stage in life to live
31:41
together. Would you guys like to read the statement Nico senior living?
I'm like a nine. Eight.
Yeah. Nine.
Like unless there are like infectious diseases like COVID, you know. Yeah.
Yeah,
31:56
senior living facilities are going to do really well. Yeah.
No, some of these like one of them with Primus, their plan is to have golf carts and you drive around inside the community. It's by a lake.
It it's not like living in polluted Bombay or
32:12
it makes a huge difference like just the air quality alone changes so much which air quality is one of the biggest killers. Yeah.
and and like in the world and like one of the reason why people are having like liver failures is because of the
32:27
air pollution you know where they live. It's like yeah that's one of the biggest you know risk factors um or like health risk factors for life in the world.
So any technology that's helping alleviate air pollution or making you know
32:43
gasoline cars and other such things you know less prevalent will do really well. The next one is content.
The theory we were discussing is with search being disrupted in the manner
32:59
that it is and people let's assume use Google a lot lesser or any kind of search platform that is throwing up ads and if anyone wants to build a brand social media might exist in some form but Google ads and the likes of that
33:15
will not work to to be able to build a brand you have to be able to hold attention one way or another through some form of content and video is working right now. So
33:31
the alpha between a brand that does well and a brand that doesn't do well content is going to be the biggest differentiator thoughts. That's the premise.
Yeah, I very much agree with that. And like
33:46
for every generation if you know how to speak whatever you know the medium where content gets viewed um is fluently you can do really well. So, for example, there is, you know, that uh Spanish uh
34:02
olive oil gratia. I forget what it is, you know, that became like a $70 million plus, you know, business in a couple of years just because they know how to appeal to young people or like are you today hacker?
Do you know how to speak uh X? Will do well.
Are you a young
34:20
consumer uh founder who knows how to speak Tik Tok? You will do well.
Yeah. And you know in a few years will be s something else.
I don't know what that it will be but whoever knows how to play that game well this is golden but tensson is all you need.
34:37
I think DD is doing well at that. Absolutely.
You're doing pretty well yourself. Absolutely.
What are you going to pivot into with all this attention that you have? I don't do content for you know any practical purpose.
Uh which is why I've
34:53
never went into things like video. It's like saying I don't make money for any practical purpose.
Uh no no it's not it's not the same. It's it's like I you know everyone's presumably got an education with some goal of making having some job.
There's
35:09
other reasons to do it but having something but I genuinely don't think I ever did anything online to get an audience or to have money or to have anything. Otherwise, I I mean, what I would tell people is like, yeah, if you want to do content just for that purpose, then you would there's always
35:25
easier ways to do it. You do humor, you do um hot topics, you do very debatable, questionable things.
And I mean, some would argue I have done some of that, but not much. I think that kind of content gives you a different kind of attention.
The kind of
35:40
content you're creating gives you trust, relevancy, relevance in a way, trust. When I first started, one of my first kinds of things I would post about is just immigration.
And the only reason I would do it is because I f found myself telling all my
35:55
friends the same thing over and over again. So I'm like, let me just write it down and then you can go read that.
And so I I don't see it as a for me at least, it was never meant to be a a business. But to the statement, I mean, Nico definitely knows about this trend,
36:11
but there's so many of these like 16, 17, 18 year old kids who out of nowhere, they come up with an app, but I think they're being brilliant. I was doing a call with Sam Alman, and he told me the same thing.
I was like, "What should young people do?" He said, "Most of them look like they want to be
36:28
influencers, but I think they have the best idea ever." Being influencers was the best idea ever by creating content. cuz you're capturing attention and if the attention can age I don't mean tenure in the sense of it becomes
36:44
old but as you grow older if your viewers grow with you in age as well uh you keep their attention for a long time like look at Taylor Swift it's insane right look she could soon be the richest person in the world I wouldn't be surprised
37:01
and but then I what I was going to say on the app one was it's not even them trying to be influencers. It's them actually figuring out how to do their own marketing strategy at a almost nothing cost, right?
They what they will do is they'll pay off people to they'll pay off other people to make Discord uh
37:16
sorry on Discord to make Tik Tok videos and then have like some commissionbased um agreement and then these apps are making millions and millions of dollars of money of revenue and they're sitting at home in their in their parents' garage going like okay well I made all
37:32
this money and I spent nothing. So, I think it's not them being influencers, it's them figuring out how to tap in to the ecosystem to get distribution for the thing that they've built because what they identify, at least the examples I'm talking about, what they identified is all of these apps look the same.
The only thing that matters is
37:48
distribution. So, let me go to the app store, figure out all the apps that are basically commodity, make my own, and then figure out distribution.
That's my money. Storytelling matters, right?
Storytelling matters. Like, we're all suckers for amazing stories.
So whoever knows how to tell a
38:03
story in a very compelling way and get a lot of attention for it because they speak the language of where wherever stories get shared that that moment in time. This is super powerful.
I'll take the other side. I think there's in the last 3 years there's been
38:21
almost too much attention on attention. While I agree content helps you grab attention and attention spans are declining.
I think there's too much empty calories like I mean same audience look at it more from the lens of let's
38:36
say Nikon tomorrow is starting a chocolate brand or a t-shirt brand or any kind most of an economy is consumption right 60 70% of money spent in the US is on QSR restaurants say you start a fast food restaurant in America how do
38:53
you find your audience if not for content so my my push there is like it's there's two legs to a stool. There's too much attention on attention.
Just like can you get people in the door? But what is your way?
Let's say Nikun tomorrow starts selling some version of
39:08
McDonald's. The best way is to have the best product.
It's like even then how are you discovered? Like how traditionally everything has been discovered which is word of mouth.
Like I think there is still power in that like you know I'll give you a good example like you know Swati's restaurant
39:24
in Ahmedabad. It's in Bombay.
Swati snacks. Yeah.
same food. I go there every year and eat.
It's always full and they've spent zero dollars in marketing forever. Even in today's day and age where there's a million restaurants, that restaurant is full every day by 5:30 p.m.
or 9:00 p.m. And
39:42
because the product is still phenomenal, but what are the odds of that? For every Swati that succeeded, I don't think I think that's why I said there's two legs to a stool.
I think there's far too much attention on attention, especially in today's economy. Everybody wants a Twitter viral launch video, but the product sucks and
39:58
I don't think that lasts. Like you look at the churn number, right?
I mean, the product has to be good regardless. No, but that is changed.
Nowadays, there's so much attention and attention that people are discounting building a good product where like you know, kind of di in a white labelled world where
40:14
you just have to build an okay product and this distribution matters. I think that will peter out in the long run.
Won't the quality of with increased productivity by virtue of AI, won't the quality of a product get democratized to a large extent?
40:30
I don't know. I think it's the 10% problem.
The last mile problem will forever be there. This is why Jirro still builds the same sushi 80 years later and like, you know, kind of continues to do that.
I think I I do believe this is why I'm thinking the opposite. I think there's too much attention and attention.
I do think you
40:46
need eyeballs, right? like there's nobody comes to the restaurant and what's the point of building a restaurant but I think the product needs to be phenomenal in this AI age otherwise it's just slop like that's what happens like you know when one Tik Tok trend goes viral 20 people copy it and 20 people copy the same app there is
41:02
no differentiation and then you build a little bit of value but the only compounding value is retention can you build a retentive product where people come back and that only comes with quality think of some products that come to mind that have done really well Let mass scale today.
41:19
What do you buy often that you think is a spectacular product from a differentiation lens digital physical like Apple? You buy iPhones.
Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. Is that because of the product or is
41:34
that because of it's competing advantages, right? Like it's there's no attention.
What does Apple spend money on? They spend money on ads comparatively compared to their gross margin profile.
Their marketing spend is very low. Yeah.
I'm not disagreeing with you at
41:50
all. I mean this is obviously I think kind of obviously true that you can't you need retention and you need but that's changing though.
Last year more than ever I have felt this changing and that you think people don't focus on Yeah. Like you look at Mr.
Beast Fastables. The only reason it sells is
42:07
because attention, but the product I've had it. It's horrible.
Horrible for the kids. It's horrible for like Why did you try it?
Why? Because I was just curious.
Yeah. But again, it's two legs to the same stool.
I'm just saying there's far too much attention on one end. Yeah.
I think I'm focusing more on
42:23
discoverability. Yeah.
Cuz you get to that point and then comes the question of retention. Yeah.
I mean you need attention because now in a sea of the same how do you differentiate yourself? Content will always be the differentiator one way or
42:39
the other but I don't I think it's going to be a revolving door if you don't focus enough on the product. The pendulum is swung on the other side is what I'm trying to argue where I think it can go back to like we need both can't have one or the other.
I'm looking at the last five year bucket as the
42:56
bucket of performance marketing where you gave Google money to show your product in different places and you play paid for the number of clicks and I'm looking at what is the next transition from that. Yeah, I mean discoverability especially like consumer it's all Tik Tok because it's the only free channel left but if
43:13
you build something that grabs attention you get a lot of attention. Everything else has become paytoplay.
Yeah. Should we rate this content?
Importance of content in building a business. Nico for anything that's like you know
43:29
consumerf facing or presumerf facing discoverability it's like a it's a 10 yeah um without without that caveat and I would say like eight or nine fairly important um not the only thing
43:45
say seven important but not the only thing that's needed. Do you guys see a world where David is winning against Goliath?
People don't want to buy from corporations, but they want to buy from individual brands. Yeah.
I mean,
44:01
we're in the business of backing Davids. We're in the Yeah.
I think this is happening more and more with offline experiences. Where you want to like in the universe of like tourism, right?
You want to have the bespoke uh local artisal guide or
44:20
like the hotel uh that has its own story or go to the restaurant that's mom and pop, you know? Do you feel like this happened because the last 10 20 years?
We bought we bought products behind a corporation cuz
44:37
trust was so deficit in society that we didn't know what went into it. Today we care less about trust and we are buying artisal handmade.
We are buying into individuality again and is that a trend that's here to stay?
44:53
I I do like how you framed it and it depends on the society that uh you live in and your economic participant. I would also add that um very often you don't want to be uh buying the same
45:09
brands that your parents were buying. It might be the case for detergent but to go to the same you know hotel chain that they went it's not as cool for you.
So like every generation has its own cool uh brands experiences that they resonate
45:26
with and a lot of the large corporations at least you know in the in the west have had like they've lost a lot of their brand equity with the youth. I mean generally the question of David versus Goliath you you always not I mean
45:42
not in every situation but Davids are a great bet to to make because Goliaths are usually bigger businesses. They have established practices.
They lose their eye on the ball. They're focused on managing things at scale.
Sometimes reducing cost. So not maybe not just the
45:57
hotel example, but even for many other cases, most businesses do not have any systemic effects of scale um that can't be disrupted in other ways. So yeah, in many cases, I would definitely bet against on the David versus the Goliath.
Of course, there are other cases where
46:13
that is not a good bet, but yeah, older businesses will get disrupted generally for most industries. My good thoughts.
Yeah, it's a cycle of life will continue. You know, big big gets too big, too horizontal, not enough depth,
46:30
small has that. And then from a consumption perspective, I think people will continue to stay away, which means they want the new thing.
They want to differentiate themselves and that will continue to want them to do whatever version of artisal that might be.
46:46
Perfect. Want to rate this?
I just have like four more and then we I'll tell you how much you rated which one and which is probably a good sector to focus on for the next decade. David versus Goliath.
Nikon, the 10 is pro David and zero is pro Goliath. Correct.
47:01
Nico, I'm like an an eight. Um I would say a seven because there are some places where scale definitely matters but in many cases they don't.
One good example is in tech. Mhm.
Where you see something like six seven
47:18
companies that created the bulk of the market cap if that's a way to measure it um over everyone else the last you know 30 years. So I had this thesis two years ago that by virtue of cost per mile or
47:35
kilometer, most vehicles will become EV or hydrogen focused in a very short period of time. So I I spent 2 years investing in everything from electric scooters, electric buses, trucks, even a
47:53
flying electric taxi company. When I look back at it now, a lot of these bets did play off, but the adoption to EV seems to be slowing down and subsidies are being taken away, not just in the US, but also in countries
48:10
like India and other places. What do you think is the future there for 2035 adoption of electric vehicles and hydrogen versus IC?
I think it's for somebody to buy a vehicle in let let's pick a neutral country right that's not
48:26
the US it's not China like but one in Latin America or like a smaller you know country in Europe the consideration you know would be what is the cost how often you know would I need to maintain it
48:41
what's the cost of ownership um and you actually do see that a number of the Chinese car manufure uctors that make EVs that here in the US you don't see on the street are actually winning. They're far ahead
48:57
because the price and the total cost of ownership is pretty awesome. So when I visited you know different you know such countries over the last few um over the last year like in Colombia or like in Portugal or like in uh Greece I was
49:15
seeing car make brands that I had never seen before. Then I was googling them and they're like massive.
So do I think this is a trend that uh will continue? Uh yes, I do think it's a trend that will continue.
Might not be everywhere but in a lot of you know
49:31
countries because people want to have a car. It's a means for them to unlock more productivity and get to work and make more money.
Um I do think this is a trend that's not going to stop. I'll give you the number.
In India, if you
49:48
buy a EV scooter, it costs about $2,000. If you buy a IC scooter, it costs you about $1,000.
But if you ride the scooter for 40 kilometers a day, on a EV scooter, you save $500 a year
50:05
cost of running and much easier to maintain cuz the number of parts are exponentially lesser. But still adoption is not that high.
Why? Why do you think adoption numbers have slowed as much as they have in the
50:22
US? Can it just be because the Chinese are making spectacular EVs which are years ahead of them and they don't want to even compete in that market anymore?
What is it? Why did the subsidies go away even?
I don't think you can buy any of the Chinese EV cars here, right?
50:38
No, you can't. That's the biggest issue.
If if we were to truly operate like a free market, I think they would be doing really well. The same in India, like you can't buy Chinese vehicles, but are Americans not buying American EVs because they can't buy Chinese EVs?
50:54
It's just a cost thing. Well, on to what Nico said.
It's cost and convenience. There's not enough chargers and it costs too much.
If the cheapest car was an EV, everyone would buy an EV. Do you think that'll change in the next 10 years?
What percentage of cars on the road in
51:10
10 years will be EVs in America? I think it'll change and that's primarily because of Tesla.
That's the only car company that moves fast. And so if that's the only car company that is allowed to operate, then yeah, then they will figure out how to get the cost down one way or the other.
Do you say 100% of cars will be EV in 10
51:26
years? I don't know 100%.
But I would say like it would a majority of cars will be EV in 10 years in my mind. A good proxy would be like what percent of cars that are getting sold today are EV, right?
And this could kind of tell you how the
51:41
future might look like and around 20 20% sub 20%. I I I don't know but um so yeah if that number is accelerating and the it's it was accelerating but the pace of acceleration has slowed down.
51:57
Yeah. So part of it is the incentives part of it is the economic cycle.
So whenever there is a slowdown in the economy, the used car uh market is doing much better than the new car market or like you know when we had the disruption with covid in the supply chain, new cars
52:14
became more expensive and harder you know to uh buy because uh you would have to wait for longer. So there these factors too, but do I think that like EVs um anywhere in the world are going to be the majority of cars over the next 10 to
52:31
15 years? Yes, I do think so.
Yeah, I think we dramatically overestimate how fast people will adopt new things and cars are a big asset in the country. It's like saying America will build 10 million homes.
We won't. It's just
52:48
harder. And US especially from a market perspective used car market is massive always has been way boom or bust and you won't it's very hard to just change it like new cars will be built but uh they're far more expensive and so I
53:03
actually think without the incentives in 10 years one could argue they won't be m more expensive they' probably be cheaper they'll likely be cheaper this is where like if the free market depends on where you're sourcing it from if you does it have to be USmade then no can you still source from free market if
53:19
free market existed I would be very pro and I I I have two EV cars at home just to be clear like I would be very pro like oh we'd see 10% of the market be EV otherwise it'll be a slow trickle till these cars go out of another vector to to consider perhaps is
53:35
in places where we have a lot of autonomous vehicles adoption if indeed the total cost of operation or like an autonomous vehicle is you got to be EV first or Then you know that's another market
53:50
that's going to be growing very quickly, right? Want to rate it, Nico?
Yeah, I think I'm like a seven, you know, or an eight. Yeah, seven.
Seven. Seven to the statement that by 2035,
54:06
majority of cars will be EV. Yeah.
In America? No.
Worldwide? Oh, seven.
Probably less. I mean that it's like it depends on like China, India, Nigeria, Brazil, right?
Like Indonesia.
54:22
Yeah, I think those countries will adapt faster because of efficiency, the amount of energy lost between generation and endpoint usage is lower in EVs and people will adopt there because the cost to travel per mile will be lower.
54:40
Yeah. And what what if I would say to you not in India but in China huge air pollution problem.
The Chinese government says, "Hey guys, from now on you want to buy like a gasoline car, no problem. It's going to be like 50% more expensive." The same is happening already like in
54:56
India many cities are saying that if you're bringing a truck into the city, if it's not EV, it's not allowed. Oh, there you go.
So that's again another vector that pushes demand even further. Right.
But then why only seven? Um because I'm not as fluent in the in
55:12
in the exact numbers and it depends on like these four or five big very populous countries. Right.
Right. Right.
I think if it's new cars like how what percent is new or new cars in 2035? Yeah.
That'd be like a seven.
55:28
Oh, it's for new cars. I was thinking like total let's let's say for new cars.
Oh then like yeah like nine you know. Yes.
Same. Yeah.
Yeah. like because I was thinking you know the average uh lifetime of a car in a bunch of countries like you know 12
55:44
years I was trying to do that math. Yeah the VC math in your head nine as well I think eight primarily because I think especially in the US like with the conservative government like oil and gas is not going anywhere.
It'll take a long time for us to like
56:00
move like from a politics perspective, EV force is not going to be very popular for the next six years. But from a cost perspective, the cost of everything else compared to fossil is falling so quickly.
But the problem is batteries again, it's
56:16
like American choice. Like you know, it's like I can go fill up my petrol pump wherever I want.
I can go to a gas station. I can kind of like have this.
I don't want to wait for 45 minutes. convenience is battery technology is not evolving fast enough.
Like we I'll give you an example. We
56:31
invested in this electric truck company which has interchangeable batteries like battery swap. The largest company which does battery swap in the world is called Sani in China.
So these trucks drive with two batteries
56:48
at a time. Yeah.
They go to something which is as small as one container box and the batteries are swapped in the same amount of time that it would take for you to stop at a gas station and fill fuel. Yeah.
Each battery gives you a range of 700 kilometers.
57:03
So two batteries together let you drive 1,400 km. India end to end let's say is I don't know 4,000 5,000 kilometers.
What that means is the number of petrol stations that you require in itself come
57:20
down exponentially. You probably only need 50 container size stations across the country to get these trucks to go across the length and breadth of the country.
I think the model is changing significantly even for a country as broad and wide as
57:36
India. Yeah, I think replacement as you mentioned like eight is the I won't be a 10 because it'll still be choice and people will ch it takes a while to flow in like even today I disagree with like charging stations are good enough like
57:51
every in America infrastructure is already there people are still voting to not buy EV cars even though they're cost appropriate because it just takes time for people to change right okay point number eight of 10 beauty as a category
58:07
beauty products 10. Yeah.
Same. Yeah.
Yeah. And beauty and content are are are in line with each other.
I mean, look who are the wealthiest, you know, like people outside of tech. Anyone who's in beauty and luxury.
Yeah. Luxury.
That's luxury.
58:24
Beauty and luxury. Yeah.
Luxury also. No.
No. I was saying who are the besides wealthiest you know like uh individuals or families outside of technology anyone who's in beauty or in luxury goods
58:41
should I just add them and make them one beauty luxury and then like if we want to take a glimpse into the future we would go into uh South Korea where indeed they have one of the lowest fertility rates in the world but they're massive exporters of culture and over there if you're a And
58:59
there is a more than 50% chance that you use beauty products every single day. Yeah.
So like again, you know, this guy's population, you know, will shrink. But if everyone was like 80 years old, looks
59:14
like a 50-year-old. That's a good trade for most people.
And the surgeries in South Korea, we've been what to build in beauty. We're trying to come up with something.
Any ideas what could work as a product category in beauty? Yeah.
Now
59:33
like beauty gives you confidence, right? No, but if I want to build a brand in beauty like we have a team which does a lot of consumer brands that we run not just invest in.
If we build for beauty what what do you think could work in today's taste cycle? Can you help me eliminate my wrinkles?
59:50
Right. I would pay for that.
I think could you make Box, you know, uh 90% cheaper, I would pay for that, right? Anti-aging, anything anti-aging that's more easily to get to and cheaper.
Yeah, I think
00:06
make for men to make it more accessible and cooler with content, you could do that. Yeah, you could do that, too.
I have the opposite take. I think I would build like a very high-end luxurious brand for like the top 10% of Indian
00:21
males. For Indian males, you're talking about India, right?
No, not necessarily across. Yeah, I I' I'd take the opposite route, which is like I'd take if take hard problems like anti-aging.
I'm guessing you fall into the top 10%. So, would you buy?
00:37
Yeah. What would you buy?
What? Whatever you buy like makeup.
Uh I think this is where like also the other aspect of it's like invisible like what what is invisible today. Is there like an invisible foundation that makes me look 5 years younger?
Sure. You would?
00:53
Yeah. Would I know nothing about beauty?
But I I mean I think there's all of these things are credible. Um I think there is a gap in male beauty but I think women are obviously the primary consumers of beauty products.
So there's a lot you can do there. Um I just I know nothing
01:09
about it. I mean look into Olympic.
You know, most people take it. It is beauty every week because they don't want to ever be on a diet.
Like I know a lot of people like us. Yeah.
Or in their 30s or 40s. They never had any, you know, issues
01:24
with their weight, but they don't want to be on diet. They want to eat everything.
They take us on because it's a beauty product. Yeah.
I'm guessing longevity and wellness, you guys will rank highly as well. Yeah.
Tense. Yeah.
It's a question affordability. So, I would be in nine.
you know,
01:39
longevity and wellness. Yeah.
For you. Yeah.
I think like at what price point matters, but as a category, yeah, nine. I'm more of an eight.
It's like anti-recession. I mean, have you guys ever like taken a
01:55
flight that's connecting through stumble in Turkey? Of course.
What do you see there? A great airport.
Great airport. Yeah.
Isn't that freaking insane? Yeah.
Where was that industry like 10 years ago? wasn't there.
Yeah. Yeah.
And now thanks to Tik Tok and content,
02:12
it has become like a global destination. Live events, concerts, theaters, plays.
I would even put something like a high-end restaurant is a live event. I
02:28
think the nature of live events is shifting to people want to advertise that they were at a live event on their Instagram predominantly. I think that's the main purpose for most people um that go to go to live events or others do it you know on your behalf
02:45
and you lose your job as the whole world learned last week. Every everyone wants to go to a good Coldplay concert, you know.
Um, so but generally I'm I'm more neutral on live events because I do think attention capture is going to be more massive on
03:03
digital and so there are going to be a smaller set of people in my mind that want to go to live events. Yeah.
Uh net volume not maybe not number but the net volume of time spent at a live event I don't really have a strong
03:20
view that it goes up. I actually don't know.
Nico, what do you think? I think most live events historically have been like [ __ ] businesses to run.
But in a world where the offline experiences become the scars in a world where we get tired of being online in
03:36
front of our screens for 14 hours, there's going to be a premium. You mentioned Taylor Swift.
There's a reason why she's a billionaire. She's figured out how to make so much money from her super funds.
And to the extent more and more Taylor Swifts exist, which I think, you know, will be
03:53
the case in the individualistic driven, you know, society that um we live in today, live life live offline experiences um will uh do really well. And it could be a restaurant, you know, like what if,
04:08
you know, the Japanese, you know, sushi stuff you mentioned was more capitalistdriven. Wouldn't he want to do it in front of like a a massive arena, you know, or tour the world and do it maybe?
No. Scarcity matters though.
I think scarcity is a good point. Yeah.
04:24
Yeah. Scarcity will never go away.
Desiraability comes from scarcity. So, want to rate live events.
Nico, I'm I'm like, you know, like an eight. Okay.
Um, five.
04:39
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, I think philosophically I want more live events, but I'm with TDU and short-term it's like six like where we'll move towards live events. Six again, you know, like they're mostly [ __ ] businesses, but like look into like what happened with the World Cup for
04:56
like the clubs for soccer in the US. Like this was a brand new revenue stream out of nowhere.
like the winner pocketed over 100 million you know uh dollars Chelsea uh with the Europeans you know you know snobs and we don't care about it but if
05:11
the numbers you know go up which is likely in the future would you pay attention to it probably you would but I'd bet still that digital coverage of soccer will have a higher percentage from an eyeballs and viewership perspective percentage of time perspective than live events
05:27
but supply and demand comes in there right like the supply of digital is for everyone on the novelty of live is Yeah. But I think that's what we're betting on is like my way of giving a score is like what do you think percentage of time goes up in live events versus digital?
I would bet screen time goes up higher
05:44
than live event time. And then my think response to you would I think there's more concentration in live events but not necessarily net volume increase.
I think more people gravitate to the Coldplay concerts, the Taylor Swift concerts, the fair and the Chelsea game. But, you know, I think most events that are not
06:00
places you want to be seen are not like that interesting. That's why when you look into most ticketing businesses that serve the long tail, they're really [ __ ] They can't make money.
Nobody shows up. People don't pay.
Yeah. Okay.
Last one. Climate tech.
06:17
What What What is climate tech? What's the definition?
carbon capture. The thesis behind the statement is someday soon, I mean it could be carbon credit trading.
If there were one large event where say
06:35
10,000 people die, say there's a flood in Miami, the water levels keep rising, suddenly everybody will go back to climate and start taking it very seriously. like climate tech could even be software like I was at this I'm part of this
06:52
group called the gates pledge where I think your colleagues a couple of them are there one of them is there and there was this professor this year who was showing a model that he had built where the base case is world's temperature will rise by 1.6° 6° by 2100 and what
07:08
can you tweak in this software which changes it? Is it a carbon tax?
Is it lesser amount of coal? Is it more allocation to nuclear?
U there are funds like breakthrough energy which are working on this. So all of this somehow comes into climate.
07:26
Yeah. I mean we we need to do something about it.
The challenge is you know that for many humans it's hard to relate. Even if I live in Miami and there's a huge flood and I lose my home, then I might move somewhere else and I might forget about it.
Or my local politician, you know, who is responsible for coming
07:44
up with subsidies or incentives. That stuff like, you know, doesn't get them necessarily re-elected in the next, you know, cycle.
Actually, fair point. There was a fire here in California and everyone's forgotten about.
Yes. We we forget.
It's really unfortunate.
08:01
I mean same same applies to health stuff like you know we had co and yeah nobody remembers co I think you know modera remembers their stock price is down from 400 to 30 bucks. God bless this guy.
08:17
I think climate tech is a overloaded term because it means so many things and a lot of it is a bad word. Um especially in venture for a bunch of historical reasons but energy I think unambiguously positive and energy is a big part of climate.
So and
08:33
you mean like renewable energy all energy. How do we get cheaper, better, more sustainable energy?
Um yes. So everything from nuclear to solar to geothermal I mean different
08:49
can we have fusion right? Yeah different propensities of working and I think that is climate tech I mean if we can figure out how to get energy in a hyperdense way then we won't need to solve all these other problems.
So yeah geothermal fits into climate. So energy yes rest of climate tech
09:04
ambiguous on definition but like you can come up with like creative solutions right like whenever in the world we have massive volcanic eruptions there's a cooling of the uh temperature you know on the planet. So like could we do any of that you know in ways that is
09:21
safe for all the industries and the humans that are running on the planet could be powerful or like finding creative ideas you know to have uh a very positive effect in an e economic manner like could we paint all of the Sahara desert you know in a way
09:37
that's reflecting you know back some of the heat who knows you know the challenge it's a very complex, you know, spaces like trying to cure cancer. Like cancer is not one, you know, disease, you know,
09:53
and every little one of these solutions contribute, but then you pay attention to subsidies and capital and labor intensive and it's more project finance. And I think there's a subtler point in all of this stuff because, you know, Nichol, I know you're going to ask this as an
10:08
investment lens. And so being bullish on a lot of these things doesn't necessarily make them easy investments because you look at biotech, you look at energy, it's just the failure rate is so high that you might be like, of course these things matter, but investing in
10:24
these things may probably lose me money in most cases. But if you remove the venture lens and you buy the incumbent with a mode, you at least want to be in a sector you think has wins perhaps.
Yeah, I think that's fair to say. Yeah, because I'm not looking at it from the venture lens.
I'm looking at it from a investment lens overall. So I'm going
10:41
to say climate tech energy largely. Would you bet on that number DD?
Um I would say it's you know all of AI is built on more compute and energy. So that is one reason but nine nine.
10:58
Yeah. I mean if I had to bet agnostic of where else I could put my dollars if I had to bet on climate Yeah.
I would definitely put like seven ego. Yeah, it would be an eight because like we need more energy.
This is one of the ways you uh boost productivity. That's
11:15
one of the ways you boost economic um growth. AI is like a hog for energy.
Mhm. But I actually think the world gets worse in the near term because energy will become the fundamental limiter which means we will frack more.
We'll pull more from the ocean. Uh because
11:31
nuclear fision and fusion will still take time to build. You can't build solar panels fast enough.
That's why I was like a seven. I'm like do I believe climate tech will solve?
Yes, but it'll take a longer time period. But the world will get much worse in the next 10 years from a climate change perspective.
So
11:48
So data centers at least back home in India have become like a real estate play almost. Everyone and their cousin and uncle and auntie are building data centers.
Makes sense. Who built apartments up until yesterday.
Do you think bubble now? Not yet.
No
12:04
bubble if you buy into it now. The multiples are not high.
You you get these companies at 16 to 20 ebita depending on which geography you pick. Data center businesses.
You think it's a good place to get allocation?
12:19
But do you have any real estate arbitras? Do you have any energy arbitr?
Everyone has a different narrative. One is near a power station, one is also a real estate player.
So they have real estate arbitrage. Uh different people have different thing.
India has
12:36
uh we mandated that financial data of Indians has to stay in India. Y and as much as a big chunk of data created is in India.
So if they mandate that all Indian data has to be in India, it becomes I think that's a very good narrative that will be driving you know local
12:51
pockets of demand in many different countries. And then can you bet on the operator that over time will be the consolidator?
Yeah. Like if you can find that awesome entrepreneur, I think it could be a good trait.
I still think it's underrated. I think the amount of compute in each country.
13:08
Do you think comput will get more efficient with time? We'll need lesser space in a data center.
But we'll continue to use more and more of it. You think I mean Google just announced they like doubled their token usage in three 3 months.
Google like I think
13:23
we're just at the very early innings of how much token usage even with efficiency we're going to use far more compute h even with chips getting better will still use more I think I don't think that goes away for the next 10 years now the question and then each
13:39
country will use compute and energy as their like it's like a nuclear weapon like you will have this like you will want to keep ownership of this right now it's a big geopolitical risk where like Saudis especially and other countries are holding this whether it's chips or
13:56
energy and that becomes a strategic geopolitical asset for them. India will not want to be left behind.
Rated uh data centers and investment nine depends on the person today Nico 20 35
14:11
again you know this an exceptions business so we be back a seven cuz you got to pick the right operator that has all the other you know right conditions but as a broader trend yes I would be a seven I'm actually lower because I think yes
14:27
there's a need for compute but like to Nico's point there's so much that goes into running a data center. Do you have the skills?
How often do you have to renew the hardware? Like what are the hardware you're putting into that?
How much does that cost? How much are you selling it for?
Like there's a lot of
14:43
things that go into the business of data centers. So yes, will data centers exist?
And generally, yes, there will be more and more, but some data centers are extremely bad businesses. Um, multiples have not been also good.
Sorry. Yeah.
Yeah. Multiples haven't been good.
And there's ways to really
14:58
[ __ ] that up, right? You can deol buy a bunch of Nvidia and then sell inference and you might be making like pennies on the dollar.
So, you know, it really depends. So, overall, I would say uh six.
I'm going to ask you advice on a few companies I've been reviewing when
15:15
I'm here. I had a thesis that when we all have more time at hand, when abundance comes about and productivity goes up, I wagered a guess that humans will go back to what they always intrinsically did.
15:31
One big activity is speculation. So I was speaking to companies like Khi and Poly Market.
What do you think of them as investments? Forget the regulation side of it.
Forget one is US, one is gambling is a good investment. I mean
15:46
gambling will always hap will always be good as long as it's legal. So people it's a vice.
It's a vice investment. People like to speculate and make money off of it.
That's you think even today at the crazy multiples that they're at. Yeah, I I think so.
I mean the more
16:02
people come in more of those markets become liquid. They become more investable.
They become market makers. More institutional players might come on.
There's a whole bunch of things that can happen around prediction markets. So I think it's a it's a great it's a great thing.
I would I would like it. I like it.
I think you said forget regulation.
16:20
Forget regulation because she's regulated in the US. Poly market is more on the blockchain peer-to-peer betting more international customers.
I'm guessing Robin Hood will soon figure out whether they're a partner or they're going to replicate what they could maybe easily replicate.
16:36
There's so many moving parts when it comes to regulation. I don't know how to put it in a box.
Yes. Like assuming that regulation is like sold, you know, for the category.
Is this a going to be a great category? Yes, I think it's a great category because it's entertainment.
You already have evidence from several
16:53
of these that the consumer eyeballs, you know, are really there. Um, you have like a well-driven business model for some of these that really works for other industries.
um the margins are can be pretty awesome depending on how much the regulators
17:08
would want you you know to part with them and then the new cycle is great news for all of these businesses. So overall um again you know regulation risk aside um pretty bullish about the category.
17:24
Yeah. So I mean it's in the class of entertainment as a whole especially with abundance there's going to be infinite money and time.
Do you bet, Niko? I feel like you're closeted something in your outside.
No, no, no. I play
17:39
I I play poker quite frequently. I feel like there's another version of Nick Quinc that he doesn't let on.
I No, I play poker right now. No, no.
Top 2% of sports batters worldwide.
17:57
I play FIFA a lot. What's your wise, Nikon?
What's my wise? Um, probably just like Yeah, probably poker is like I spend a lot of time playing.
Poker is not a wise. Come on.
I don't have
18:14
You're so composed on the outside. Inside has to have something else going on, right?
I've always been like my my friends growing up always called me like a granddad. I've always been that way.
I like sleep. Like this is like being Did you enjoy being called a grand?
Yeah, I have no problem. Not no problem.
Did you like it? Yeah, I was like perfectly fine with it.
18:31
I don't know something about like maybe I have more wisdom than the average person that maybe the vanity side of it could be. But answer that's such a grandad answer to I don't see the vanity of wisdom.
I see
18:46
the vanity in many things but the older person kind of vanity I don't see why it appeals to a young young boy. I don't know.
I've never been Yeah. I maybe I've just been very comfortable
19:02
like you know like I want to go to sleep at 9:00 p.m. sleep at 9:00 p.m.
I know that's your projection. Yeah.
No, that is loving husband, two kids, electric cars. You should ask my wife.
Yeah. How did you meet your wife?
We met in high school.
19:18
This is just like textbook fairy tale. No, but the craziest the craziest thing about our life story is we never dated.
We never lived together. Um I just knew her for 10 years and then one day I asked her will you marry me and she said no and then I convinced her.
2 months
19:34
later we got engaged. More textbook, [Applause] right?
Yeah. I wish I had the time to poke it.
Not today though. Not today.
I I wonder if you asked
19:50
Chachi PT describe me in three words based on everything that he knows. I would love to know what it says.
My phone's there. We can try it now.
I can try it right now. What model should we use?
Uh, I don't know. 03.
03 is probably the 03. Of course.
My go.
20:06
I have 03 Pro. No, based on everything.
That might take a while, you know. Yeah.
About me. Oh my god.
You know, describe me. We're going to burn a few trees in the rainforest, you know, just to know.
Just to know. Too much energy.
I'm actually super curious now. I
20:22
All right. He probably watches what he says to Chachip as well.
No, no, no. I actually have never used the Is that somebody else keeping your data for you, right?
Oh, I actually Chachip knows me probably better than anybody else in life. Wow.
Is that including the wife?
20:38
No, it has to because I spend so much time sharing your thoughts. Everything I write, everything I talk about, everything like every thought goes through it.
Wow. I'm fully bionic that way.
Wow. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, same.
20:53
It says, oh, I hate the last one, but it says analytical, proactive, visionary. I don't think the last ages, but the other two probably true.
That's great. New LinkedIn headline.
Now, tell me the truth. Tell me the real truth.
21:12
That's funny. This is This is the real podcast.
I love this. Uh, assessing the real truth.
Let's see. Normally, I'm like little bit more robing, but today we're so many people and we're
21:28
talking about something I want to get out of the way. Yeah, fair enough.
Superpowers. Pattern spotter, relentless editor, agency, amplifier.
Can I write the Yeah, go for it. Please be funny.
Yeah,
21:44
I'm going to write speak like Yung. A therapist I really like.
What are my shadow trades I don't want to take cognizance of?
22:01
So Chris Pack did this thing called / Graham on Dia browser. Did you guys see this?
No. What is it?
It's basically psychoanalyzes you. Slash what?
It's called slash graham based on Graham Duncan who's like who did this basically prompt. It's a very
22:17
good prompt. It goes through your Twitter and just like psychoanalyzes you.
I posted mine online so you can see it what it said about me and so everything I thought through everything. Yeah.
Yeah. What did it say?
It's reflecting right now. You could also ask if he's a gambler.
22:33
You can ask him. My biggest vice is poker.
What are my biggest vices? Chad GPT.
Tell me. Okay, this get this getting better.
Oh my. You're an expert prompter.
I love it. I love it.
What does it say? The tyrant of efficiency.
22:50
It's true. Wow.
Count seconds like coins and curses every idle breath. That is true.
The spectre of control fears chaos more than failure. Maybe.
Yeah. The armor of intellect.
23:07
A polished exterior forged from logic and data deflects feelings both yours and others. The mirror of validation reflects only on achievement.
Each milestone fades the moment it is reached, demanding the next
23:23
brighter proof. The shadow of exhaustion, invisible at first, it whimpers that stamina is limitless.
Ignore it long enough and it steps forward as burnout. better
23:38
deep, but not not that different. Better like little bit less filtered.
Yeah. I wrote a post called I'm not good enough that talks about every failure I've had in life.
So this is where humans are better than AI. We're vulnerable.
23:54
Yeah. And use it, you know, for advantage.
Okay. Let's read speculation like poly market.
Yeah. Poly market all that stuff.
Yeah. I mean without regulation I'm a 10.
Okay. I'm a nine you know without regulation.
24:11
Okay. Nine especially if you can include it's like part of entertainment for me.
So nice. Okay.
So when we spoke about how the world will change. Okay.
Let me first summarize what got the highest marks. So we said
24:27
beauty and luxury is like a great sector to build in. 30 out of 30.
Followed by speculation and gambling. Great sector to build.
All vice businesses. Vanity.
It's just
24:43
vanity. Yeah.
Followed strangely by education which is outcome based. Yeah.
Then came world older sicker senior living content
24:58
EV adoption. Yeah.
those had the same number. That's interesting.
We'll put this up on a chart and we'll say what each of you said and why they said it. I feel like this is very useful data both for
25:14
capital allocators like us, but also if I'm a young kid looking to start something, it allows me to extrapolate a rate of growth. So, at least I have some tailwind in the industry that I'm building.
Right. So, I would disagree with that last bit.
25:32
Yeah. Why?
I I think so much about building is more about where your unfair advantage is, not where the macro is going. And so I think, you know, take beauty for an example.
Like I I'm sure some of us have friends. I have friends building in beauty.
Often I think you know not
25:48
doing a great job is not cuz I don't believe in beauty is I think you don't have any unfair right to win. You don't you're not doing this correctly.
So, um, I think that that's a bigger part of the equation for me, especially when, you know, young people come to you for advice, then you're not going to say just because I think beauty products are
26:04
going to do well that you should go do build a beauty product. Those are not, you know, are you still going to contest that your unfair advantage is distribution because of content?
Uh, for me, yeah. Um, on what?
On anything you want to build tomorrow? 100%.
That's one of them. Yeah,
26:20
the main one probably. It's the probably the the rarest one.
I mean I would say I have some unfair advantage on like selling to big enterprises but so many other people do. Are you worried that you might be perceived as a content creator versus all the other stuff that you do and hence you try and push it away?
26:37
Uh yeah 100%. I don't like people perceiving me as that.
I think it's a terrible tagline. I don't want to be called an influencer or a content creator.
Why not? Why not?
Yeah. Because this is I think it comes with an association that I do not uh enjoy.
Right. like I I do it for a certain kind
26:54
of reason and I don't think most people who do it do it for that same reason. And I think when you use the label then people interpret it for the the the the latter like they think you're doing it for fame, glory, yada yada yada.
And I I don't think I am. And so therefore I
27:09
don't like the the label. But isn't it like a form of storytelling form of art?
If you called it a storyteller I would be like call me that all day. There you go.
Um, but I like it's it's very different than calling somebody. Isn't every influencer a storyteller at the end of the day?
27:25
I don't think so. That's definitely not true.
Tell me one very popular influencer who doesn't tell stories. Well, I don't want to diss some some people.
Let let's say this like if you go on some of the the top Twitter profiles on
27:43
on on on X or whatever on X and most of them are not telling stories. They are inciting rage.
That's a that's not you could argue that's some kind of story but like that's not really a story. They're not trying to convey anything meaningful.
It's rage bait.
27:59
They're not taking the contrarian narrative to the populist one, right? Uh some of them I don't think I mean I think you know there's a couple of trends and one of them is that but a lot of people can be popular on various different platforms doing things
28:15
that don't involve storytelling. What you're also seeing is sharing nude photos of yourself.
I mean yeah exactly. I mean you're telling some kind of story.
Have you done that nude? Have I done it?
Uh not like you know for popular demand. Yeah.
Haven't not yet.
28:31
I suspect you're left leaning. was almost socialist.
Almost socialist. Oh, that's just cuz he's Greek.
How so? I don't know.
Just the things you're saying. Things I'm saying.
Okay. There was a distaste for capitalism which came across when you said
28:47
something earlier. Well, I've been working in the US for the last, you know, 15 years as a capital.
I'm confused, you know. Yeah.
Fair point. Yeah.
Okay. Okay, I'm going to ask you guys
29:02
for another opinion on a company called Harvey. Harvey AI thoughts legal tech legal AI.
Wow, these are very These are companies I've been meeting in the last two weeks and I've been like trying to figure out how to maybe do
29:18
something with them allocation. It's difficult to get answers out of VCs on companies like this in my in my understanding.
Do you have exposure? There's Yeah, there's no incentive for us to ever share a negative view on any.
No, I think Harvey is a great company, but in general, asking VCs about companies is bad because if they're invested, they
29:34
have to be positive and if they're not, they still have to kind of be positive because Okay, with the caveat that you're not invested, you can give me a more objective opinion. Not on camera.
You never get on camera. You you just can't like basically every company you're going to ask us about, all of us are going to say great things.
29:49
Like that's is what's going to happen almost no matter what unless it's a clear disaster company that you know you might I don't know you anything bad about a company um I mean you can give some criticism you know would you go all out you
30:05
wouldn't right um I don't know as much about you know Harvey to give you an informed opinion okay and I'm not saying that to sound politically correct but do I think they're building on the right side of history they are. Have they been amazing
30:21
at signing up a lot of the largest law firms on the planet? They have.
Has this led to them um achieving a capital like fundraising advantage? It has.
Does this mean has this translated into them
30:38
recruiting amazing people? It has.
Uh is their product the best in the space? I have no idea.
Not close, you know, to the company. Uh but as you know Nikun was saying the product has to be really good you know because at for better or for worse you know after
30:54
FOMO goes away they do care about those things so like you know given where they are now probably you would get a really good informed opinion about them if you talk to many of their customers who've been bombarded by everyone else and their mother who've been starting AI
31:10
legal tech companies that's actually one of the spaces we miss here that that have been so busy. So if someone is starting now a new legal tech company seed series A probably you would say no to you know in the US because that's so busy.
Um
31:26
I have the opposite take on that. I think um not on Harvey but I'm saying in general especially with the RL focus and model stabilizing I think the era of second mover advantages starts this year or starts now basically where we'll start seeing
31:42
even companies started 3 years ago be disrupted by a better product now the the David versus Goliath will be in just 3 years can the better product outdistribute them or not but for example if somebody came in with like a
31:58
seed series A bet that takes in like an established giant not Harvey but in general in any area but they have clearly a better product I would still be interested in at least like exploring that bet even though they've been outdistributed uh just because we're seeing such crazy
32:15
advances on the technology side uh and the stacks are leaner gross margins are better the question is just about distribution if it if it's as great as you sound please give us a Can I ask what is India's play in all
32:30
this? Like you know I'm talking to young entrepreneurs in India.
Where does India fit in? You can be candid.
Don't say on camera I won't say this that and the other. I think a big problem in many parts of life is when we don't
32:49
recognize that there is a problem. I don't think you can find a solution if you don't first get there and and that's where I think what you mentioned before is important like having a knowledge of where the trends are happening and where you know the
33:04
growth is going to be sure you always want to play you know for your strengths but isn't it even more amazing when you can play you know towards your strengths in the biggest market opportunities like I find myself incredibly lucky that you
33:20
17 years ago I said I'm going to go and have a career in tech because none of my friends the people I grew up with you know did that and just a lucky accident you know for me so like just knowing where the trends are heading to is important for like the youth
33:37
yeah I mean I can give a couple of thoughts on in India and and AI um generally I've been somewhat public about this too since and some people have not liked it but I think
33:56
unlike other things other kinds of technology in the past where you could create a local economy with that technology I mean for example you had your even sharing services and the gig working boom so oo you know existed in
34:13
India just like an Airbnb would or you have an Ola just like an Uber you can create local versions of those businesses that work for that area and you're not really competing unless that other company comes and tries to compete in that area. On the on AI, I don't
34:30
think there is any local advantage. So I think everyone is competing on the same playing field and there are a couple of common things that come up that people say hey these could potentially be local advantages.
like one is okay let's get data for um languages in India like yeah
34:48
that's that's great I think that's perfectly valid if Google doesn't pour more resources and try to get the same thing and you have an advantage that makes sense I like that view but for most other things I think you I would love to see I would say India try to
35:05
compete on that global scale and that needs capital that needs talent that needs um you know just a a a desire to want to be on the cutting edge and in my mind it's not there yet. I mean I think that's empirical.
None of the top models
35:21
are Indian models. They're they're American and they're Chinese.
Um in any field I mean audio, video, image. So I would say in the global playing field of of AI, I mean the most prominent Indian figures are probably like somebody like an Arvin that perplexity or maybe some
35:37
of the researchers at some of these labs and things like that. So therefore in my opinion today they're I I wouldn't say they're competing at a global level.
I don't know if they have people on the ground have ambition to but I think you
35:52
know there's a couple of gaps to be filled and if you do have ambition I mean the ambition is definitely there. What can India do to get competitive in this realm?
I think one of the things that is I'll say an observation first and I'll answer
36:09
the question. I think one of the observations I have in general about how how India reacts to technology is India reacted to AI like I want to be a part of this well after this was a thing and that general mindset will rarely make
36:24
you win at a thing. Um and so if you compare that to China for example, I mean there are many differences.
I mean China has had so much local talent, so much development in math, so much research in AI for many many years prels
36:43
that allowed them to then capitalize on that and go like okay look we can probably do something here too. we have the base built out and I think for India to do something in in AI like I don't know if a lot of that base is built out there's a huge talent leakage problem most of the top AI talent in India is
37:00
here right and literally a three square mile radius from where we are um there's a talent problem there's a there's a comp problem why would I AI researcher want to be paid in rupees I don't I want to be paid a million dollars or hundred million dollars like they're getting paid here um and then there's a general
37:17
systemic problem on like on just capital is a little bit harder to get and then resources are harder to get and then people haven't done work on GPUs in India. If you go to if you go into Bangalore today, how many people have ever programmed a GPU?
Very hard to do anything in AI if you've never
37:33
programmed a GPU. If you're starting from scratch, you're going to have to catch up.
So I think there's a lot of systemic factors and then to solve that problem invest in core research figure out how to keep talent in the company in the country and uh you would have to do it a long time before something picks up for you to be able to take advantage of
37:49
that. There's no accident that China was able to take advantage of that.
They had a lot of foundation built in many many years. So that's my take.
I've I've spent you know half my life here most of my professional life all my professional life here. I don't have a
38:05
view on the India market. I mean a lot of things DD says I echo but I do think we have to kind of the best I think India has a two decade uh advantage from a pure median age perspective like the youngest talent in
38:20
the world is in India right now and I feel like if you don't capture it in the next two decades like that shifts to Africa or shifts to the next country and I feel I don't know what the answer is but I would love to see us capture the advantage there at least from a pure for
38:36
being in the prime perspective. India and I is in prime from a population standpoint and like the depth of talent and a depth of like you know young people.
So that's one that's the optimistic side. Now what do you do with it is is the main problem and I but I
38:52
kind of echo differently than DD like you don't need the best AI researcher. I mean it would be great if India had lot of great AI researchers and they all stay there but the brain drain problem has been true for the last 50 years and will continue to stay true.
All the best Indian entrepreneurs I know are trying to move here. Um but you try to figure
39:09
out like where in the playing field do you play like you know Freshworks is a great example where they like took a product that but figured out the right markets for it. Is there products in this new AI application era or their products in the biotech space?
India has insane amount of talent and hospitals
39:26
and vaccines like centers are there like manufacturing side. take manufacturing as a sector like you know the China N plus1 model can really benefit India.
So take the sectors it's going to be phenomenal at and then go from the very bottom up to the top and see how can you
39:42
allocate capital people training to win those markets versus play the me too movement. I feel like a lot of Indians I meet in India just like have this envy and they look at the US market and they want to be in the US market versus play the games you're going to be
39:58
excellent at and then find ways to like huh which I mean the things I mentioned again but I don't know the India market as well it's like but I do believe like the China N plus1 is happening like it's 100% happening from a manufacturer AI not in AI like but that's what I'm saying don't like don't miss the AI
40:15
board but play on the application level which I think India still has fantastic product engineers and designers who can go build that. That's a talent that is easily portable from the preAI era and then pick the markets where it's going to be excellent at.
I don't know if that's minerals. I don't know if that's mining.
I don't know if that's robotics.
40:32
I don't know the India market. But instead of playing the meto side like hey I want to do this also find it's going to be excellent at and then concentrate capital in people there.
Would you guys say that now is probably the best time it's ever been for a young prospective founder to ever become
40:50
active in India because you know access to knowledge relatively relatively yeah to our own past exactly so access to knowledge thanks to your podcast and everyone you know being part of the
41:07
global internet generation it's no longer a problem. Yeah, the size of the local market, it's been, you know, larger than it's ever been.
There are enough, you know, India for the world companies that uh
41:23
are now setting the bar pretty high. There are enough very successful founders on the ground like yourself or like over here uh in the US that anyone can uh look up to.
So like I I would be you know very excited to not even
41:40
consider you know moving to the US or maybe come here for a couple of years and then go back and build. By the way just on that previous one I want to say just was I was just talking about foundational AI layer for apps and other everything else in the AI layer 100% many reasons to do stuff in India like that.
41:56
Could that be the bigger market tomorrow? Um 100%.
It is already. Yeah.
Right. I mean I don't understand for example why Indian doesn't have more amazing gaming companies you know that could be global leaders the money required to build like a AAA game is substantial and the risk capital
42:13
for that is not there but you don't need AAA games but I think it exactly yeah I think the future of gaming is largely not going to be AAA like in a world where everyone is part of the internet generation the more brains you have online the more creativity you can unlock with AI
42:29
everyone has superpowers course can we have, you know, next generation of like, you know, Tik Tok games, whatever that means from like somebody who is like 15 years old and they've been making stuff online for the previous seven years somewhere in India. That's more likely
42:44
than ever before. You know, I've thought about this a lot and I've tried to arrive at what the answer to that particular question should be could be.
Yeah, I think it's cultural. M we as Indians from a very young age
43:01
are taught to run away from risk. We are trained not to depict any form of rebellion.
Our teachers are not our teachers. Our teachers are are gods where questioning them is almost offending them.
Religion plays a huge
43:19
part in our cultural biases as well. So we have to some extent nobody's going to like this answer but we have to some extent become a society which does not cherish or encourage contesting the norms of the day and I
43:35
think that's bad for innovation. Is it changing?
I hope it is. I hope it is.
I don't know if evidence depicts that but I hope it is because we have to change with access to education. I mean Chachi's number one market is now India
43:52
like just like those kind of like with geo like kind of everybody having access to the internet like now it's like you know factchecking and you know people say something I'm I'm curious I know I think the internet teaches you many things but I think culture are
44:08
culture is more a factor of our schools and what we see in our homes. Fair enough.
Can patriotism be sold? Like you mentioned earlier, there are a lot of brilliant Indian minds who are in the US
44:24
who are post the financial event. Yeah.
where I don't truly believe him that it's it has nothing to do with money but they might also want to project a similar thing and for them coming back to India and starting
44:39
something and adding patriotism to that same projection could make a lot of sense I'm trying to collect people patriotism how can you make this you know be like really cool patriotism yeah like what we were saying before you know having kids should become really
44:54
cool being a patriot and doing the right thing for your country should be really cool like it was after the second world war in the western society right for a hot bit doge kind of did that for the government in the US right you know it got like really smart people there some of them some of our peers are still
45:09
there I think there'll have to be unfair advantages back home in India like I've not thought about this enough but say you're a patriotic Indian who paid x amount of tax or you came back to India just for the patriotic
45:25
pursuit by giving up something substantial Maybe there's a toll line on a road and you have a separate line. Yeah.
Maybe you have a card which treats you differently with a government agency. I think some kind of unfair advantage has to be weaved into the narrative to make this
45:42
work. But if at all it is plausible it would be a great thing to attempt.
Yeah. Like Nun said earlier there's two two uh stools or two balls in the stool.
you can get people to be excited about coming back to India which is you know a lot of people are retaining them when
45:58
they're back in India is is challenging I mean I think if you could build like a separate city see the one great thing India has going for it I think personally is the labor arbitrage a kid living in a hacker house in San Francisco is living a certain
46:14
quality of life if I take him back give him two cars two drivers a cook and this and that and the other and he's working essentially online all day long and he still gets to spend I don't know 150 days a year here while building there maybe there's a use case which works for
46:30
both NRI city let's make it happen and and and no air pollution yeah yeah it doesn't have to be near any of the big cities I but this is why like a lot of people move to SF and especially like people who are used to the quality of life of
46:48
India and others and the quality of life in SF is horrible. Yeah.
But the reason like depends depends on how you if you like many of the people that all of us here are meeting the 20 year olds who just moved here 3 weeks ago, 3 months ago or two years ago,
47:04
they're over the moon. Yeah.
It's as if you know they're doing drugs and their head is like exploding from joy every single moment. It's the most common thing young people that you cook and you guys can both know this is I have never felt surrounded by like-minded people in my life
47:21
and now the nerds are here and they want to talk about what I want to talk about not like the [ __ ] that everybody else wants to talk about and that's that's why people love SF that's quality of life. It's not like walking on the street or having a maid and a driver.
This project to work critical mass has
47:37
to be achieved. Yes.
But I don't know what critical mass is that number. Do you want to be surrounded by a 100 nerdy kids?
That could be possible. Is it 10,000?
I don't know. But it it depends what you're solving for, right?
Because like if I'm a nerdy kid, I was bullied my entire life. I come here, I have the highest status in
47:54
this society because here, you know, you're a nerd. You're like top of the line.
It's like you have your own what you said, you know, your own lane in the highway. And when you want to pay the tolls, you know, just you, nobody else.
And then everyone uh around you who is a nerd understands you. You're like, "Oh
48:11
my god, people believe in me." Yeah. Until now I was bullied.
This is like insane. You know, it's like being like a slave and getting liberated.
Yeah. The the example I gave everybody is like only in SF in the entire world when you
48:28
quit your job everybody says congratulations. Yeah, that's a great point.
Yeah, that's a good one. Only city in the world.
This doesn't happen anywhere else. In India, you're whacked probably.
Like your parents are like, you know, what are you doing? Like in any other country, it's like, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry for you." Here, Nico
48:45
meets a kid, he's like left his job, he's like, "Congratulations, here's a term sheet." Like, yeah. And and again, you know, like I think the good news is that this internet culture for like the young generation that's chronically online is becoming a global phenomena.
Yeah. And this where like you know
49:02
talent is universal but opportunity is not like it's rising all boats right. So like critical mass you can now have online in a world of ab abundance offline even in a big city you know it's harder to find those people if not everyone you
49:19
know is inert. I disagree though I mean co was a great reset but it moved right back.
A couple of years that New York City in the US in terms of seed states was looking better. Yeah.
any neighborhood in New York or like anywhere else you can find it. But it's just like people it's just like a
49:35
magnet effect. It just everybody gets around like for the past 50 years Silicon Valley has done this again and again and again.
It's hard to disrupt network effects. Yeah, it is hard.
I mean I'll tell a story about one of my um really really close friends from New
49:51
York. We're like been friends for 12 years.
He moved this year and he's lived in maybe like five six different cities in in America. He came and and in month three or something, he's like, "Dude, I found my people.
Where were these people?" Like, "This is
50:06
why I wasn't enjoying my time in Miami, in New York." It's like, I don't want to talk about all of that. I don't want to do all of that.
And it's like, sure, he did it off offline or like online as well, but I think it's just a different sensation when you're like, man, these are like real people around me who
50:23
actually want to just explore curiosity. I mean here's some other things that we take for granted now but no one talks about wealth in SF in some circles.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sure. But I mean compare that to India where it's like so in your face like how rich
50:38
somebody is is so in your face. Here people don't have to drive a fancy car to show they're rich.
They don't have to wear fancy clothes to show they're rich. That's one.
Um people make economically absurd decisions. People will reject offers to make millions and millions of dollars a year because they believe And
50:55
like that just doesn't happen anywhere else. God bless all those people, especially the founding engineers.
God bless. We wouldn't do well.
Our founders wouldn't do well if there's like, you know, unique class of people, founding engineers or founding talent that show
51:10
up a day after your company gets funded or gets started and they get like oneird of the equity that you get. God bless those people.
They're the foundation of the industry, the startup and the venture capital industry. Well, I think that's a good note to end
51:26
tonight on. I think we spoke for a fairly long amount of time, almost 3 hours, but thank you guys for doing this.
Sorry I troubled you a little bit. That's okay.
If you were alone with me, I would have troubled you a lot more. More than welcome to.
You could have dug
51:41
10 times deeper. Maybe the internet will.
[Music] Okay. Thank you guys.
This Thank you. Thank you.
Mhm. So, I was going to ask you like, have you seen the real of yourself imitating you on podcast and what do you think?
51:57
I think he's really talented. I wish I could act that well.
So, actually, I think commented or I sent him something and I said, "Great job." I think he's doing a good job. That's nice.
That's nice. When are you inviting him to the podcast?
Someday soon. Why not, right?