Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Everyone is building AI wrong

Transcript

Everyone is building AI wrong · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
The best AI companies won't use LLMS.
0:02
Here's why most founders are building the wrong thing.
0:05
Everyone's chasing ChatGPT rappers while the real money is
0:09
buried inside the boring businesses making 100 million a
0:12
year. Cabinet factories, paint mixers,
0:16
ball bearing manufacturers. They're all sitting on decades
0:19
of proprietary data, proprietary SOP, chemical formulas, machine
0:24
configurations. And nobody's talking about them
0:27
because software engineers and cattle ranchers don't hang out
0:30
at the same bars. Now the kids at Stanford and MIT
0:33
are building for space and quantum computing while ignoring
0:37
AI for actual industries. There's a class divide keeping
0:40
founders away from the unglamorous problems that print
0:43
money. Meanwhile, these factory owners
0:46
would love to partner. You just have to show up, tour
0:49
the facility, and actually talk to one of the people doing the
0:52
work. So here's the play.
0:54
Find a lower middle market company with unglamorous IP.
0:58
Tour their factory. Don't waste time with the sales
1:00
team. Talk to the guy making 20 bucks
1:03
an hour who actually runs the machines and fixes the things
1:06
when they break. Build 1 hyper specific feature
1:10
so niche you can describe it in five words or less.
1:13
Even sell one enterprise license for 83,000 a month.
1:17
That's $1,000,000 ARR from literally 4 lines of code
1:21
packaged as an executable. But before you even start, check
1:24
three boxes. Do you have distribution on your
1:27
cap table? Do you have defensible IP?
1:30
Do you have an industry expert involved?
1:33
If you can't check all three, don't build it.
1:36
So ask yourself, are you building a company or are you
1:38
just building your ego? Because the real arbitrage isn't
1:42
in the technology, it's in the the relationships nobody else is
1:45
making. Welcome to AI for founders.
1:47
I'm Ryan Estes now that's from Josh Firstos, executive founder,
1:52
CEO, advisor and the guy who launched 4 companies last year
1:56
by finding modes where nobody was looking.
1:58
This interview is for founders who want to escape the AI hype
2:02
cycle, find distribution on their cap table and build 0 to
2:05
one products that actually sell. Now Are you ready to build
2:09
differently? Head to AI for founders.co for
2:12
frameworks that 27,000 AI founders use to validate their
2:16
next move. Every week 0 fluff just builders
2:20
building and drop a review. If this made you rethink your
2:23
whole strategy now this show runs on Kitcaster.
2:26
Get booked on the world's top podcast with kitcaster.com.
2:30
That's Kitcaster by MO Burst. Josh, welcome to the show.
2:48
Thank you so much for joining me.
2:50
Thanks, Ryan. It's great to see you.
2:51
Absolutely. So we're midway through January,
2:54
which means most people are falling off their their
2:57
resolutions. How are you doing with your
2:59
resolutions? 75% going well, yeah.
3:05
Mostly, Mostly going well, yeah. Nice.
3:07
What were some of your resolutions this year?
3:10
Oh geez, It was actually like to reduce the number of active
3:13
projects I have a given time. And the other one was to reduce.
3:17
I started vaping during COVID, so we're trying to.
3:21
Yeah, that's a tough one. Vapes are so delicious.
3:23
What's the What's the bridge Zens?
3:26
Yeah, yeah. It's currently Zens.
3:27
I don't have any right now so but we're getting there.
3:31
Yeah, it's incredible to see like the penetration of Zen's,
3:34
like everybody I know is on Zen's, you know?
3:37
Yeah. I mean, I think there's an
3:38
underlying thing here though where it's like even like the
3:41
how much nicotine has penetrated the market in general.
3:44
I think it's probably an indicator for overall stress of
3:47
like individuals. So I don't know, it's, it's just
3:51
interesting where it's like, you know, previously you would think
3:53
you like people in any kind of industry, they go off like smoke
3:56
breaks and these kind of things. And now you people inside of
3:59
offices with nicotine in their system 24/7.
4:02
Yeah. Yeah.
4:04
Well, and the the way they're marketing, I mean, there's like
4:05
a there's the whole, what is it called athletic nicotine in that
4:10
company. I have, you know, so there,
4:13
there there's a performance enhancing aspect to it.
4:16
Also, to your point, stress, it's probably the best cope in
4:19
the world. I mean, you can't smoke
4:21
cigarettes, obviously, but man were they delicious too.
4:24
Oh yeah, I hate how they smell. That's the thing.
4:27
It's like so like it would be it's almost easier where like
4:31
there's more of a shame associated over.
4:34
Like I spell like shit, my breath is bad and all these kind
4:36
of things. And with the Zens you're just
4:38
like, I feel like this is turning into a Zen commercial.
4:39
So I I don't advertise getting addicted to nicotine.
4:45
Yeah, please do not but boy, it's a trick.
4:49
Awesome man and then you, you want to try and limit projects
4:52
now I, I think let's hang here for a minute because doing
4:56
research on you, you've got multiple exits last year I saw
5:00
that you you created at least four different companies before
5:04
we got going here. You you mentioned at least two
5:06
others in stealth. So and I think for a lot of
5:09
founders, this becomes a tough point.
5:13
You know, I think early on AI was kind of labeled as being
5:17
this productive productivity, kind of like cheat code where
5:21
you're like, hey, maybe in the future we'll be able to work for
5:25
Tim, Tim Ferriss hours and everything will get done.
5:28
But really what happened is we just 10X to everything that
5:31
we're doing on output. So talk about your propensity to
5:34
take on new, new projects and kind of what challenges that
5:38
presents. Well, I think it's moving into a
5:41
new chapter in my life overall where I think I've been for a
5:46
long time. I wanted to be the founder CEO.
5:50
And I think that like for some emotional reason, I desired the
5:53
control and the creative. Like, you know, well, control is
5:58
the really word I'm looking for. And as I got it through it, I'm
6:01
like, you know what, like I got better and better and better at
6:03
delegating. I figured out what I was really
6:05
good at, which is like, I'm really good at product.
6:07
I'm really good at attracting talent.
6:08
I'm really good at raising capital.
6:10
And you know, there are objectively better people out
6:12
there that can grind sales every single day.
6:15
There are better technical people out there.
6:17
And so it's like, if I can go. And the other thing is like, I'm
6:20
really remarkably good at zero to 1.
6:22
Like I've I've coached like over 120 companies and zero to 1
6:25
mostly through optimistic accelerator where I've been like
6:28
an executive coach and sales coach for a lot of companies.
6:30
But then outside of it as well, I'm like, OK, this is my
6:32
specialty. And honestly, GTM and zero to 1
6:36
does not get paid well. So then how do I leverage that
6:39
skill set to scale better throughout my life?
6:42
And I'm like, OK, it's I do the zero to ones, I delegate down by
6:47
like moving myself, promoting myself upward to more manage the
6:49
company, hire ACEO, you know, these kind of things.
6:55
And then I get to do what I love, and then I get to give a
6:57
lot of people really cool opportunities.
6:59
And it's more scalable that way. Yeah, yeah, I I agree.
7:03
Zero to 1 is is the fun stuff. It's also the brutally hard
7:06
stuff. You, you must have frameworks in
7:08
place it just from trial and error.
7:11
So when you're thinking go to market from, from, from a zero
7:15
company like what are your, what's working right now?
7:19
What's working right now for me on the zero to one companies?
7:21
Yeah, it's it's funny, like years ago I was thinking about
7:25
like, oh, how can a company be hyper specific, right.
7:27
And I'm still just being like bigger than what I think of
7:30
hyper specific right now. It's just more, more more
7:34
niched, like unbelievably niched.
7:37
And like that doesn't mean it's a small market necessarily.
7:41
It's just on the actual problem being solved is hyper niched.
7:44
And I guess it's less surface area to really focus on.
7:49
So we can hyper focus on like the offer.
7:53
And I, I kind of try to circle all products around an offer now
7:55
where it's like, if I can't describe the product that we're
7:58
doing in 5 words at each one text and a website, then it's a
8:01
bad product. Like there only really needs to
8:05
be 1 core feature for the entire product.
8:09
And then around the actual outbound methodology around
8:12
that. I think the hack now is just
8:16
having really good people will have really good networks.
8:19
Because like as you move through the whole AI era, I think it's
8:22
moving closer to the pre compute era where it's about trust and
8:26
it's about individuals and it's about people's existing
8:29
networks. So it's putting the right people
8:31
in the right places that have the existing distribution to be
8:33
able to get people excited about the products and then going
8:36
through awareness phases to the broader public.
8:38
Beyond that, I'm really big fan of partnership and like
8:43
compensating people that bring in customers, even if they're
8:45
employees, like just broadly doing Commission structures for
8:49
anyone who is interested or passionate about our products.
8:53
Yeah, it's. Talk, talk about that a little
8:57
bit. You're talking about creating
8:59
the a team that has their own personal distribution.
9:02
What would that look like? Yeah.
9:04
Well, it's, it's pretty simple, right?
9:05
Like pretend you're building like I'll give you an example
9:07
from like a robotics company that we're working on this year.
9:10
So to do it, we found a really niche problem that we want to
9:14
solve inside of these like lower middle market factories.
9:16
And then we partnered specifically with the people
9:20
that had this problem already. So we gave them early equity and
9:23
the equity's milestone towards sales goals.
9:27
So one, they're getting a product that helps serve a
9:30
purpose inside of their own businesses.
9:32
But two, they're people, they are already inside of the like
9:35
small networking circles of people who own these kind of
9:37
factories, you know, so organically they're going to get
9:41
excited because they're kind of Co building as design partners,
9:44
but also they are bringing in the early, the early customers
9:49
that drive the initial revenue and they're going to calm down
9:51
an equity for that. Cool.
9:53
So for that's interesting. So for design partners, you are
9:58
you like to bring in people that are actually sharing equity
10:01
stake, What kind of percentages are we talking about?
10:04
It's different per company like and it also is different between
10:08
what the advisory role necessarily is.
10:11
I'd say like I have something size 15% overall, like pretty
10:15
significant amounts, but it's like my check boxes are do we
10:22
have distribution or can we find locked in distribution on the
10:25
cap table? Do we have intellectual
10:28
properties emote and then like, are we or can we include
10:34
industry experts? Because I like, as I broaden
10:38
out, I don't believe that. Like I know what I am an
10:40
industry expert in, but I'm also very aware of what I'm not.
10:43
And I don't like to get, I like to walk into building products
10:46
kind of as a stupid person where I'm like, I have no assumptions.
10:49
I generally know like what users want and what works and I can
10:54
kind of rein it all in, but I'm never going to be the expert of
10:59
knowing how you know, what is this called a cabinet factories
11:05
function. You know, like I've never built
11:07
a cabinet in my life. I've also never run a factory in
11:10
my life. So like walking into the room,
11:13
the stupid person is just basically the the title of my
11:16
biography. Yeah, it works out well.
11:20
But I I really like these parameters.
11:22
So you you said distribution on the cap table.
11:25
Do you ever like look for what would there's kind of a category
11:28
of influencer, which is like a influencer Co founder where
11:31
literally they're brought in specifically for distribution.
11:35
You see this in celebrity endorsement deals all the time.
11:38
Yeah. One of my partners, Moussa, he
11:39
runs or rather we were on a company called Volume Maps.
11:42
He built up a company called Ginger relatively recently,
11:47
which is a, they do brand deals for micro influencers and the,
11:52
the young woman that's running the company as CEO that got a
11:55
giant stake in it, she's an influencer.
11:58
And, and then we've also looked at this for CPG products.
12:00
Like we were looking at cigars a while back of like partnering
12:03
white labeling cigar brands with like influencer stuff like that.
12:08
I, I think it can all work, but I think that like your micro
12:12
influencer CEO is probably the person that can, will actually
12:15
run the company, whereas like doing like Kylie Jenner is not
12:18
going to run your company. You know what I'm saying.
12:21
So it it depends on kind of what your objectives are and the
12:23
higher up you go into the commercial brand deals, the more
12:27
it trends towards Consumer Packaged Goods and less it
12:30
trends towards technology. Yeah, 100% because the the
12:34
market, the Tam is way bigger, right, Yeah.
12:37
Yeah, cool. Oh, it's like also like Kevin
12:40
Costner, whoever is not going to be talking about Salesforce or
12:43
like, you know what I mean, Grammarly or whatever it is,
12:45
like, that's just not their audience.
12:47
Unless it's Samuel L Jackson, and then he can sell anything on
12:50
planet Earth. Yeah exactly.
12:51
If if anyone listening can grab him for their SAS app then good
12:54
luck. Totally.
12:56
That's very interesting. I I've never heard that as kind
12:59
of like a, a validation point is like, hey, we have to have
13:02
distribution built in. You're if you're working on a a
13:05
tool that doesn't check that box, like where would you go to
13:08
start looking for a a partner for distribution?
13:12
Well, I wouldn't even start the project.
13:14
Wouldn't even start. Yeah, yeah, like those are boxes
13:17
that need to be checked to even start.
13:19
OK. And go over those again.
13:21
That was very interesting. Industry expert.
13:25
Intellectual property distribution partner.
13:28
Totally. So as far as the IP goes, like I
13:31
mean, I think that's a big threat with AI too.
13:33
Is that like it's it, it seems like with software the the
13:37
barrier of entry is getting lower and lower and lower.
13:39
So what? What are some qualifications of
13:42
basically IP that can't be protected?
13:46
I mean tons of IP camp, like there's, you know, millions of
13:49
businesses out there that have internal data that like for
13:52
niche industries that each people aren't thinking about.
13:55
Yeah, talk about that a little bit.
13:59
OK, pretend you wanted to make I'm pulling this out of my butt.
14:02
Pretend you wanted to make an artificial intelligence that is
14:05
best like helps mix paint better or help people in factories that
14:08
mix paint. You know, you're not like I'm
14:11
sure some company that is paint mixing has tons of SO PS and
14:15
documentation on the right chemical paint mixtures to do
14:18
that, that they're likely keeping internally as some kind
14:23
of like company secret recipe or whatever.
14:26
You know, I like this is this, it's for every single industry.
14:31
Like people have standard operating procedures and they
14:34
have data inside of their internal systems and broadly
14:37
they're underutilized. So like, that's what we look at
14:39
and like if anyone's out there and wants to partner on that,
14:41
let me know. Cool.
14:43
Do you think that's the opportunities are still vast
14:45
that people have this reservoir of data, they have this industry
14:48
expertise that could be applied to software in some capacity,
14:51
they just don't know it or what. What do you think the the the
14:54
barrier or or basically why haven't people done it so far?
14:58
It's a class divide. It's like it's socio economic.
15:02
It's a bunch of things. Like it's the fact that, like
15:04
the kids that go to Stanford and MIT are not the same kids that
15:07
become electricians and like carpenters and work in the
15:09
factories and they just don't have friends that do those
15:11
things. So they start focusing on
15:14
problems, Admittedly larger Tams, like we want to do space
15:17
stuff or we want to like improve inferencing in quantum or like
15:20
things like this, you know, but they're not looking at like, you
15:24
know, AI for cattle ranches because that's just like the
15:28
overlap is very thin between, you know, your average software
15:32
engineer, your average cattle rancher.
15:35
Is that a tribal thing? I mean, I, I don't think that
15:38
cattle ranchers and software engineers have that much in
15:40
common to like to commonly be friends.
15:42
Like I think that's, you know, like so I I don't think they
15:46
hang out at the same bars that frequently, but I don't want to
15:48
over generalize. Yeah.
15:52
Well, and also, I mean, that is like, I mean potentially like an
15:57
attribute of our culture that's less savory right now as
16:00
everyone's in their corners. Well, I'm our cattle rancher
16:02
guy. I don't mess with AI.
16:04
Like those two things somehow can't overlap, do you?
16:08
So if I'm thinking about like, man, I, I think I could bring
16:11
some like some tools to this kind of business.
16:13
Cattle ranching is a great one because you know, there's, it's
16:16
a legacy business with big checks, big opportunities.
16:20
And so far, you know, technology really hasn't seeped in.
16:24
Is there a way to kind of conquer some of these tribal
16:27
divides that you've seen if you are looking for like a paint
16:29
mixing company or manufacturing firm?
16:33
Yeah, it's just be a normal person and don't think you're
16:36
better than anyone and realize that they have skills in a
16:39
different direction than you are and you're not better than them.
16:41
And like, you could totally just call people and say, hey, I'm
16:44
this person. Like I'd love to like tour your
16:45
factory and like talk to you like and like just do it in a
16:49
way where you're not trying to sell something.
16:51
Yeah. Like there's a way into all this
16:53
stuff. It just takes persistence.
16:55
And like I like after I sold my last company in cute, like I, I
17:01
would just go to friends who like maybe their family owned a
17:05
ball bearing factory and they'd be like, oh, like this and like
17:07
this is kind of boring. And I'm like, no, I want to go
17:08
to the ball bearing factory. Like can I have a tour and I go
17:11
tour a ball bearing factory or for any printing factory or like
17:15
I'd like, I just went to go see a bunch of things.
17:19
Yeah, see anybody do something do that.
17:21
Yeah, I, I totally agree. You know, I, I live in Denver
17:26
and just up the way in Golden is the Gore's manufacturing plant.
17:30
And like watching, watching somebody make that much beer,
17:34
you know, and ship it is fascinating.
17:37
It's amazing. Yeah.
17:38
And like you might have a more difficult time partnering with
17:40
Coors on it. But like a small family owned
17:42
business, like we're talking like you're not necessarily
17:45
small, small, I say lower middle market like $100 million a year
17:48
kind of business. Like it's still probably owned
17:51
by like two brothers who built it like 30-40 years ago.
17:54
And like you could, you could probably find a way in.
17:58
That's really interesting that this moment too in particular I
18:01
know is a a tough point for a lot of founders, which is post
18:05
exit. Let's say you have life changing
18:08
type money and an exit. Well, you're, you're left with
18:12
kind of a, a dark night of the soul because what made you a
18:15
successful founder is also going to drive you when you exit your
18:19
company. So it's like, which project do I
18:21
take on? What do I do?
18:23
The the some great advice I've heard is that you need to stop
18:27
for a minute at least. You have to take a a break
18:29
because otherwise you'll start like popping things off and like
18:33
you're, you're not really oriented for reality yet.
18:37
So doing things with your hands, I've heard is like really good
18:39
for those moments. But I really like this
18:42
recommendation, which is to go find, you know, go find the ball
18:45
bearing manufacturer down the street that doesn't have hosted
18:48
tours. It's not course, you know what I
18:50
mean. I'm not exiting through the gift
18:52
shop but like go see what they're doing as a way just
18:55
maybe to like spark curiosity. Yeah, go talk to the dudes that
18:58
manage the machines. Like honestly, like I remember
19:00
the first texture I went on, they all wanted to like talk to
19:03
like the sales people and these kind of stuff.
19:04
They're like, oh, here are all these people.
19:06
And I had way more fun. And the owner was really happy
19:09
about this, that I spent most of my time there talking to the
19:13
guys who like fix the machines and like, you know, you know,
19:17
set up the robotics and all this kind of stuff because that's
19:21
where the value is. It's not in talking to a sales
19:23
or marketing department. It's talking to the guy who
19:25
makes 15 to $20.00 an hour who like does the stuff.
19:29
Yeah. And doing the post exited
19:32
founder thing, yeah, it's like your ego is it's, it's rough.
19:36
Like I'm in a group called PEF. It's really wonderful.
19:38
I I'm super thankful for them. It's a post exited founder
19:41
organization and there's about 1500 exited tech CEOs in it.
19:45
I'm going to go on a lot of trips with them.
19:47
And it's been really, really good to hang out with other
19:50
people in this situation. So I wish I'd followed my
19:54
fiance's advice and took a lot longer off, but I think that
19:57
there's a search for meaning and purpose that happens after that
20:00
point, and I don't know if I personally figured out what that
20:05
purpose is yet. So the experimentation is more a
20:09
this is not this is me trying to experiment and try a bunch of
20:12
things and I just happened to be building a bunch of companies.
20:15
Yeah, amazing. That's what you're telling
20:19
yourself. How, how, how much time did you
20:22
take off? A month and 1/2.
20:28
That's a long weekend man, what are you talking about?
20:31
It was really boring. It was profoundly boring and I
20:33
was kind of sad, to be honest. It was it everyday you're like,
20:36
I'm I'm not going to I'm not going to do this.
20:38
I'm not going to do this. You only have so much willpower.
20:40
After a minute, you're like, you know what, come on, let's just
20:42
dive in. Let's go.
20:43
Yeah, I was just really I, I think that it's an identity
20:46
issue. It's a funny thing is like when
20:48
you're building a company, your ego becomes so tied up with the
20:52
company itself. And then you get people talk
20:55
about what is it called imposter syndrome or whatever it is.
21:00
So like when you're first building a company and you raise
21:02
all the venture capital so that you feel slightly like an
21:03
imposter and then you end up like becoming that person.
21:07
And then when you sell it, you realize your ego is so tied up
21:10
into being that person. You've no clue who you are.
21:14
Really freaking weird. And then you go like, you're
21:17
like, I'm just Josh. And then you have to accept the
21:19
like, what? Just being a a humanist I
21:21
suppose. Yeah, no, it's, it's very
21:24
destabilizing though. I I know that because in another
21:27
lifetime I had a career as a musician and when I threw in the
21:31
towel on that, it was, it was very similar.
21:33
It was like, well, I was always the the songwriter guy, like who
21:37
am I now? Which is it's a, it's a tough
21:39
place for a human to be. So it, but what I found is like
21:43
helpful is to maybe tether you to things that aren't
21:45
necessarily outcome based. Do you have anything like that
21:48
in your life where you're like the woodworking guy or something
21:50
like that? Oh, yeah, Like me and my friends
21:52
play Dungeons and Dragons, and it's like my sanity.
21:55
It's like every Saturday playing D&D is the best thing in my
21:58
entire life. Yeah, it's it's D&D and it's
22:03
like listening in books. Yeah, a meaning and purpose.
22:07
That's that's another great conversation.
22:09
You said you're not completely like dead set on what that is
22:12
yet. What's in the range?
22:13
What is what are the the meaning and purpose for your life?
22:17
Ask a small question. Yeah, like the overarching thing
22:20
is like a reduction of human suffering, but figuring out how
22:25
to get there is a challenging little pickle, right?
22:29
So I, I wish I had the answer. I, I feel like every person I've
22:33
ever met that has like stated that they have like come to a
22:36
new level of enlightenment is actually the furthest person
22:38
from that imaginable. So like, I'm not going to try to
22:42
give advice on like how to, like, achieve your purpose
22:44
because I'm not necessarily there.
22:47
I'm just experimenting and like when it clicks, it clicks.
22:50
Well, it's interesting you say enlightenment because Buddhists
22:52
will say that people love their suffering.
22:56
They're addicted to it. Yeah, I would agree.
22:58
Yeah, so it's like if you're alleviating human suffering,
23:01
it's almost like you're you're robbing them of one of their
23:05
loves. Possibly.
23:06
I think that like there's different degrees of suffering,
23:09
right? Like like there's a suffering is
23:11
in like you're toiling away and you're practicing something like
23:14
that every single day. And that's what I enjoy.
23:15
Like, it could really adapt more to like, the movie Whiplash,
23:19
right? Like that's maybe positive
23:20
suffering, but then it's like, I don't want people to suffer in
23:25
the way that, like, Schindler's List, that is suffering, Right.
23:28
Yeah. Yeah.
23:28
Like so like like. Totally, Yeah.
23:33
So the the what I'm talking about is more up on the the
23:36
suffering dial potentially. Totally, yeah, I, I, I agree
23:40
there's, there's a few different dials on that potentiometer.
23:44
Amazing. Cool.
23:45
Let's let's kind of hang here too.
23:47
You're in between things. You, you exit your company,
23:50
you're getting advice from your fiance, you're taking some time
23:53
off. Who else is kind of advising
23:55
you? You're also have this group.
23:56
Did you join that group post? Yeah.
24:00
Yeah, yeah. Did you find camaraderie, people
24:03
going through the same things? Yeah, it's a lot of them are a
24:06
lot older than me. So it's like lucky to know a
24:09
bunch of guys who like are, you know, late 40s, early 50s, this
24:13
kind of thing. A lot of them had way more
24:14
significant exits to me, like well known companies that you,
24:17
you know, the name of. And I went on a trip to, when we
24:23
went to a trip to Israel and did like a bunch of R&D stuff there,
24:26
went to Quantum Labs and it was really interesting.
24:28
Also it was interesting just being in a country during a war
24:32
where like, you know, there's ballistic missiles and a high
24:35
end bomb shelter and we went clubbing afterwards.
24:37
There's just really, really interesting time to spend with
24:39
like 20 other exited founders. You can go over a lot of these
24:42
guys in Miami. Just in December, we went
24:45
hunting for pythons. I have a picture of that I don't
24:49
know I can share with you. So yeah, in the Everglades,
24:53
Python hunting and then, you know, just, it's been, it's been
25:00
refreshing, but it's hard to explain why.
25:02
I think they're emotionally at the same spot where it's like,
25:07
what do you do when you feel like you have nothing to prove?
25:09
But then also maybe the thing you want to prove is to
25:12
yourself, and what is that? Yeah, you were you were in
25:17
Israel for the the conflict with Iran or.
25:21
No, when the ceasefire broke between them and Hamas in
25:28
January of last year, we went during the ceasefire and then it
25:32
broke like my second day there. It's wild.
25:35
Yeah, Israelis are tough. You know, they have the the
25:39
shelters. You know, I've done calls where
25:41
during that time with Iran, where they're like, if I have to
25:43
get off real quick, I'm just going to go over here for 20
25:46
minutes until the alarms go off and then I'll be back.
25:48
I'm just like God Dang. Yeah, it was a crazy experience
25:52
of my life. One, like beautiful spot, really
25:56
interesting talking to a lot of people on the ground, like the
25:58
difference between like what you see on TV and like, I don't
26:02
know, maybe it's a conversation I don't want to have right now
26:04
here. But really, really, really
26:07
interesting trip. Really eye opening.
26:09
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting that you hear
26:12
it your whole life, that money doesn't buy happiness, but
26:14
sometimes it actually does increase your suffering.
26:17
I, I have always wanted to have like a like a ludicrous moment
26:21
or like a rapper moment where it's like, dude, I made it.
26:25
I just want to like throw money in the air and get like diamonds
26:29
in my teeth and just like enjoy it.
26:31
Why can't we enjoy it? Why is that a question to me?
26:34
Why can't we enjoy it? Yeah.
26:38
I, I think it's probably a, a cultural thing that has more to
26:42
do with where you actually just like where you find joy, right?
26:47
Like I, I don't know, I mean, it's something that you
26:51
definitely could do. I know people have a lot, a lot,
26:53
a lot of money. And I would say that the things
26:57
that they're looking for at that point are more familial
27:00
connection, being there for their kids, you know, like
27:03
having really good friends, these kind of things.
27:07
Like everyone I know who when they were younger talked about
27:11
like wanting a Ferrari or wanting a Lamborghini or these
27:14
kind of flashy things with money.
27:15
It seems to be that their life looks like a heart rate monitor
27:19
where it's like, you know what I'm saying?
27:20
It's up and down and up and down and up down.
27:22
It's really chaotic. And the people I meet that have
27:27
done really, really well for themselves in business, I think
27:29
that it's because they didn't get rich overnight, you know?
27:33
Yeah, and I think that it's they're looking to do something
27:38
more generational and they probably have more purpose and
27:40
thought behind it. I don't know.
27:43
It's a, it's an interesting question.
27:44
It's like this whole concept of like greed is good with that.
27:47
But I, yeah, I don't know. I think it's up to the
27:53
individual, but I broadly don't think that that would make you
27:55
happy. Like I, I've been to enough
27:58
clubs and had, you know, done enough stuff where I, I don't
28:03
think that that brings joy. Like I feel like it's like the
28:07
thing that brings joy is like close meaningful friends and
28:11
like deep connection. And maybe even deep work too.
28:15
You know, I I don't run in the ultra elite circles by any
28:18
means. I've probably met maybe a half a
28:20
dozen billies, you know, but they're all still at right in
28:23
the driver's seat. They're like, they love this.
28:25
They love the game for the, for the game of it.
28:28
And of course the financial thing is, is a great plus.
28:31
But once you're you've crossed that threshold, it's never
28:33
enough. You know what I mean?
28:35
If you're playing that game. But ultimately maybe is there,
28:39
is there a, a place where, where that you can talk about like,
28:42
no, it's it's going 0 to one. I'm zero to one guy.
28:45
If you're if that's, if that's Josh, you know, it's like, no,
28:47
that's what I actually enjoy doing.
28:49
That's why I like to spend my time there.
28:51
Yeah, I mean, I, I think when I was a little kid, I really
28:54
wanted to be an architect. And I really like the idea of
28:56
like designing buildings and these kind of things.
28:58
And I realized that buildings were really expensive, so that I
29:00
got myself into software engineering eventually because
29:02
I'm like, you know, I may not be able to afford building a
29:05
skyscraper at, you know, 16 years old or ever.
29:09
Like it's kind of expensive. So might as well design like
29:13
small little products that people can enjoy and I can
29:15
enjoy. And I think it has more to do
29:19
with creative expression. Yeah.
29:21
Or solving problems and these kind of things.
29:25
Yeah. I mean, like, I still have the
29:27
deep desire to ring the bell on Wall Street.
29:30
Like, that's one of my biggest things that I haven't been able
29:32
to do in my life. Like, there's two main goals,
29:34
which is, like, one, take a company formally public on Wall
29:37
Street, and the second one is to be the ambassador to some kind
29:44
of country by the time I'm older.
29:46
It'll be really fun. So those are the kind of two
29:50
overarching goals, yeah. Do you think there's going to be
29:53
more IP OS this year? Do I think there's going to be
29:56
more IP OS this year then last year?
30:03
Maybe maybe I I did a talk. So I do these talks to these
30:08
idea dinners like these macro cap funds.
30:10
And like the way that we've described the market has been an
30:13
anxious bull market where it is a bull market, but like it's
30:18
bulls in a China shop just wrecking everything where it's
30:20
like it's not really we'll have high profile ones like I believe
30:23
entropic SpaceX, maybe you see a data bricks or something like
30:28
that. Maybe open AI goes what is it
30:37
canvas looking at it as well. Yeah, there's some good ones,
30:43
probably more than last year, but I think we'll have a flood
30:45
of them and we probably won't have them for a bit because I
30:48
think these are like kind of the built up ones.
30:50
And I'm trying to think of like what's behind these guys, like
30:52
stripes from waiting forever. But it's a lot more effective
30:56
right now in the venture market just to be acquired because all
31:00
of the money is consolidating around so few companies.
31:03
So yeah, probably more IPOs this year.
31:06
I I would love to see Apple scoop up Anthropic or something
31:10
like that. You.
31:11
Know they won't, I mean well. So like my argument again said
31:14
is they signed the deal of like Google, like I think have they
31:17
already signed that or did that? I think so, yeah.
31:20
I, I know it's I, I too am like kind of wistful for IPOs in
31:25
bringing that era back, but I'd also like to see some mega
31:28
acquisitions. Well, yeah, I think that it's
31:33
it's really difficult for like the sort of pounder to even go
31:37
to IPO right now because they like one the valuation IPO like
31:41
these companies are IPO ING above a trillion dollars, right?
31:44
Like that's insane. So the amount of private capital
31:48
that's required to actually do that is pretty immense.
31:50
And I think that like a lot of the capital in the future is
31:52
probably going to be allocated more likely to infrastructure
31:54
projects where it's like energy build out things like this,
31:58
defense build out. Like you, you look at like
32:00
defense budget going up by 50%. Like we're going to trim really
32:03
hard into defense start-ups, intelligence start-ups, these
32:05
kind of things. And then infrastructure for like
32:10
more American based manufacturing, probably more
32:12
robotics companies, these kind of things.
32:14
Broadly, I think that like the average founder is under
32:17
equipped to work on those kind of projects.
32:19
So I think that this is going to go a bit of a different
32:23
direction than we kind of expect where people kind of wrote up
32:26
these, oh, like you can make a little AI company and it's going
32:29
to go sky high. But realistically, I think that
32:32
these companies are better off doing an acquisition at Series A
32:35
than trying to pile on more capital and dilute themselves
32:37
down because the level of competition that's required to
32:43
actually like to win at that. I, I just don't think capital
32:47
want to go where that is. Like there's a whole restructure
32:50
in venture capital and private equity right now, two more cash
32:52
flowing businesses. I think the game is changing in
32:57
a really, really, really big way.
32:59
And the companies that you're going to see in the near future,
33:01
like AI companies will be the new small business.
33:05
They will not be the new stock outside of a few of them, like
33:11
you understand what it's like entropic or entropic like Open
33:15
AI and Google to some extent like are effectively the Amazons
33:19
and ebays and Shopify's for a new generation of small
33:25
businesses and vertical AI businesses, be that an
33:27
accounting firm or be that like, I don't know, like a marketing
33:31
agency. They're more infrastructure.
33:35
Yeah, exactly. It's like when cloud came out,
33:37
you know, like there was really like one or two big cloud.
33:41
There's a bunch of cloud providers, but realistically at
33:43
this point what we have AWS, Microsoft, GCP and Oracle and
33:47
just Azure and AWS alone is like the vast majority of the market.
33:55
Yeah, yeah, It's fascinating. We'll see.
33:58
I mean, I don't know, from anecdotally from my position, it
34:02
feels like the, the, the economy's in a great position.
34:07
It seems like everyone's very or not ambitious, but optimistic
34:13
about, you know, technology, particularly right now.
34:16
I mean, obviously there's some like competitors in the space,
34:18
but like it feels better. It feels different than it does
34:21
a year or did a year ago. Yeah, I think it's normalized
34:24
into a sense. It's I think as long as the like
34:31
SEC continues to be the SEC and the Fed continues to be
34:34
independent, then it'll be all good.
34:36
Like those are my biggest indicators.
34:37
Like there's more political threat to the stability of the
34:39
economy than the actual economy itself, if it makes any sense.
34:43
So like like the deal with like Netflix and Paramount, like
34:50
really interesting where like. Has that closed?
34:56
Are they're still working through that?
34:58
They're still working through that.
34:59
I think that they noted that they would rather take the deal
35:02
with Netflix just on the grounds that they believe that it's a
35:05
better partner. And I believe the Paramount
35:08
offering was the largest leveraged buyout offer in human
35:12
history. It was mostly like golf money
35:15
piled up. So like the inevitable merge
35:18
company would have like an obscene amount of debt.
35:21
It was a really, really crazy idea.
35:26
But yeah, I, I don't think there is necessarily AI bubble.
35:28
I think we'll all catch up to it.
35:29
And it really refers back to like when we overbuilt like
35:32
fiber infra, we ended up using a lot of that fiber infra.
35:39
I think it'll cool down though. I think it's going to be less
35:41
hot. I think defence will be really,
35:43
really hot. Space will be really, really hot
35:45
and AI will get less hot. Yeah.
35:48
Because like when you look at early stage venture capital
35:50
right now, I would say that like putting AI next to your company,
35:54
unless you're doing something like really, really interesting
35:56
with really unique data sets, then.
36:01
It's so ubiquitous that like at some point it's just like now
36:04
with AI, it's just going to wash off.
36:06
But you just assume that it's, it's already built into
36:08
everything. Kind of like what you were
36:09
saying. It's yeah, it's infrastructure.
36:12
You know, it's like, yeah, cool man.
36:15
We've meet. We've met the time in the
36:18
podcast where we do the quantum round.
36:21
Are you ready? Yeah, go for it.
36:22
OK, before we do, actually, I really like kind of the the tone
36:25
of this, this conversation because we're kind of diving
36:29
into a little bit more of the emotional side of of what it
36:32
means being a founder. That being said, that beautiful
36:36
painting over your right shoulder there.
36:38
What does, what does that elicit in you?
36:40
How does how does that make you feel?
36:42
Calming, I guess. I really like abstract art.
36:45
I know this isn't necessarily abstract, but it's I think it's
36:48
fairly calming to me. I like it for a lot of different
36:52
reasons. My fiance bought it for me from
36:55
an artist in South Florida and I think it gives a lot of color to
36:59
the space and I think just generally Blues are relaxing
37:03
thing in red bring passion. Yeah, it kind of looks like a
37:06
meteor hitting the Earth, I'm not going to lie.
37:09
Yeah, I can see that. It's I don't know.
37:14
Which might be telling if like it maybe it is a meteor and
37:17
you're like, yeah, very calming. Yeah, it's like, it's some kind
37:21
of like, it could be a supernova explosion.
37:23
It could be like I, I, I see it as very calming though, and it's
37:26
I, I don't know what it is, but whatever you see in it, it's it
37:29
meaningful to you, right? Yeah, it's super cool.
37:31
I love it. I've been like vibing out on it
37:33
the whole time. OK, first question.
37:36
Which founder stereotype do you secretly embody and wish you
37:40
didn't? Which?
37:42
Founder stereotype is secretly embody fuck.
37:48
It hasn't been reflective in this conversation, but like the
37:53
freaking we work guy. I, I I definitely not like in a
37:57
literal sense, but I know I have the capacity of people hyped on
38:00
basically anything. And I, yeah.
38:07
That guy was charming though. He was like smoking joints in
38:10
the office and like had aura, you know?
38:12
No, exactly. He's fantastic.
38:16
Nice. OK, as AD and D guy, what'd you
38:18
think about the series finale of Stranger Things?
38:23
Give it like a 7 out of 10. Like I felt better about it than
38:27
I felt like for the ending of like this.
38:29
Ranos are lost. That's a review.
38:31
Yeah. I thought the last season of
38:33
this was better than like how they ended Game of Thrones, but
38:36
that's not like high credit, you know?
38:39
Right, Game of Thrones, I'll give you, but The Sopranos was
38:41
kind of like a Pitch Perfect ending.
38:44
I don't know. Yeah, it's, that's fair, That's
38:47
fair. Yeah.
38:49
The way I'm trying to communicate this is I think it's
38:51
a A7 is a strong strong seven, maybe a 6 1/2.
38:56
Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair. You know, the best part about
38:59
the the series finale is then I went back and started watching
39:03
the season one with my kids, and that is an absolutely
39:06
bulletproof, perfect show. I mean, Series 1 is money.
39:11
It's so good. Yeah, the first, it's like the
39:13
first two or three seasons that were really good.
39:15
It just, it fell off. I mean, it's such a big lap.
39:18
I mean, this, I think the writers wanted to move on to
39:20
other stuff like their actors. It's the problem with working
39:22
with kids as well is like, who knows?
39:27
I'd say they phoned it in a little bit.
39:29
Yeah, totally. Well, and the drama in the first
39:31
season is like really intense, you know, like, like when Nona's
39:35
husband is around and like, it's like, there's like, it's,
39:39
there's a lot of yelling and like you feel like the, the
39:41
parents are always mad, you know, So it, it did feel like
39:44
the 80s. Well, what's the craziest thing
39:46
about it is like when the Demogorgans like got over that
39:49
military base, I remember in the first season or second season,
39:51
there's like, like the kids mom is like fighting one of these
39:54
things, something like that. And you guys like shooting them.
39:56
And if things happening, I'm like, what the hell is going on
39:58
here? Like you're just changing the
40:00
rules in your own show. Yeah, I know I get a little but.
40:04
Yeah, like for shows on TV right now, it's like, I don't know,
40:09
it's fine. It's fine like.
40:12
Cool. Talk a lot about distribution.
40:15
I like that when if founders are kind of like want to increase
40:19
their own distribution, personal branding, let's call it, where
40:22
would you invest time and money dude?
40:25
I'm trying to figure that out right now.
40:27
I, I mean, that's probably why I'm here.
40:29
So like the newsletters, podcast, etcetera, Instagram,
40:35
LinkedIn, whatever, you know, the best people that do
40:39
distribution. And this is probably something
40:42
that I want to this is not probably it's something I
40:44
definitely want to improve by myself are people who truly do
40:47
not give a fuck from the standpoint they're like willing
40:49
to do wild things, put their name out there and do things
40:52
that are shocking, you know, keep the attention like the guys
40:56
who run like sperm racing, incredible founders, so getting
41:00
ridiculous amounts of attention. So there's there's definitely
41:02
like a formula here which requires you to shed any kind of
41:06
like sensibility about judgement and just really, really, really
41:11
go for it. But it also depends on the kind
41:14
of distribution you're trying to get.
41:15
Like the majority of people that like I want to be speaking to at
41:18
this point in my life are mostly like family office and private
41:21
equity people. And I don't really particularly
41:25
care about like getting no general public hyped up on
41:27
something. I'd rather just partner of an
41:29
influencer for that. So I like really small circles
41:33
in really highly credible areas is what I do.
41:37
But I don't know. I I had APR firm I had.
41:42
I've tried a bunch of things. So go in depth as a opposed to
41:45
breadth, at least for you personally.
41:47
Yeah, but I mean, I, I think that I need to do the other one
41:50
later. I think I'm kind of being
41:51
pussyfooting around it. I think I'm waiting for just
41:54
like the thing I really want to like yell at top of the rooftops
41:58
about. Like when finder's ready, I'll
42:00
probably go do that. I kind of miss like standing on
42:03
stage and like doing all the speaking stuff, but.
42:09
Yeah, well, it's interesting. I mean, like, thinking about
42:12
distribution, just the last couple of weeks, the guy that
42:14
exposed all the like, the Somali daycare center scandal, like
42:19
that, his video got like 500 million views and he was like a
42:22
prank guy. Yeah, exactly.
42:25
You know, So I mean, it's just like whoever picks up, but The
42:27
thing is like his stuff got amplified by other distribution
42:30
networks. So it's like it's you got to be
42:33
tied into the chain of distribution where you do
42:36
something. But really, if you know someone
42:38
with a bigger microphone and they know someone with a bigger
42:40
microphone and it gets microphoned all the way up, you
42:43
know, Yeah, A. 100% zero to 1. So your only goal is to make
42:48
$1,000,000 ARR as fast as possible.
42:51
What product would you build or what category of products would
42:54
it be make? $1,000,000 ARR as fast as
42:56
possible. Yeah, you'd make a hyper
42:59
specific product for an enterprise and sell one license.
43:02
Sell one license 83,000 monthly. Yeah, yeah.
43:07
What would be example of that or who did that well?
43:10
My lawyer gave me a great example of this actually, and I
43:13
wish I'd made a product like this.
43:14
He had a friend at MIT that figured out that the routing
43:19
system for the Internet was like not encoding data as fast as it
43:23
could. It was like losing bytes like
43:25
that. And so he created like a small
43:28
little package EXE that he sold to the telecoms.
43:32
And this is like a few line of code like at best.
43:37
And yeah, that like licensing deal to the telecoms to
43:40
distribute over like every router in the country and made
43:43
like sense on overall data distributed.
43:47
Amazing. Yeah, like millions and millions
43:49
and millions and millions of dollars on like 4 lines of code
43:52
packaged up in EXE for a hyper specific use case.
43:55
Love it. You know, a lot of what you're
43:57
talking about is bringing up a lot of like family stuff for me.
44:00
There's there's a legend I have in my family.
44:02
He's a uncle. I think he's like a like a
44:05
cousin's uncle or something. He's like my uncle, but not
44:08
really that kind of guy. But he redesigned the clips that
44:13
711 uses in their coolers and just sold 711 the clips and got
44:18
FU money and that was it, you know, retired to yacht life and
44:22
it was like literally he just spent 10 years working in 7-11.
44:26
I was like, I can make this better.
44:27
Did boom. That was it.
44:29
Yeah. What I've learned about it is,
44:31
and so another thing I'm trying to work on is like, I'm too
44:33
transparent with like clients from standpoint.
44:35
Like I always want to be like, as honest, triple like as
44:38
humanly possible. But then you ended up giving
44:40
away the secret sauce and it's actually like you can like
44:43
because you're charging based on value for those like 4 lines of
44:46
code that you're packaging up is that you, you need to hold like
44:51
I need to hold my poker hand a little bit tighter, honestly.
44:54
And I think that's where the value like that's where the
44:56
arbitrage effectively is. Nice.
44:59
Yeah, cool. What LO Ms. are you using and
45:03
how do you use them? I use Manas mostly for research
45:08
and then I just use Opening Eyes business mode that's tied into
45:12
all the rest of my stuff for like actual products.
45:18
Some are on llama just because of like they they can't be on an
45:22
actual LLM. So it has to be like an offline
45:24
LLM, but it's not recording data.
45:25
And then generally like if it's an API usage, it should be
45:27
clogged. But so personal use I use open
45:30
AI and then Manas for research professional like work for a
45:37
company inside of a product clod professional work instead of a
45:41
company that needs to be hyper secure and offline llama.
45:45
Yeah, nice manus. I haven't heard it pronounced
45:47
like that, but I'm going to start pronouncing it like that.
45:49
That was a big manus. Manus OK, I don't know.
45:54
I only agree. Whatever meted just bought.
45:56
I mean, totally. A year and a half, yeah.
45:58
That was a big acquisition and I think super good for for Manus,
46:03
largely because everyone was afraid of like the Chinese
46:05
robots stealing your personal information, like they don't
46:07
have it already. But now it's like all buttoned
46:09
up in Singapore, so yeah. It's cool, great company, really
46:13
really really good tool like. Great product.
46:15
I agree. Yeah.
46:16
Like the fact that the other tools don't have computer use
46:20
that is that elegant actually annoys me.
46:23
Yeah, I I agree man. The output is just gorgeous.
46:27
I really like it too. You mentioned listening to a lot
46:30
of audio books, like what are some of your favorites?
46:33
My favorites? Oh God, they're so boring.
46:35
Where's my phone to tell you what I've read this year?
46:37
They're boring. You like boring books?
46:39
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Primarily, like I read like, or
46:42
listened to rather like a history of Richard Feynman's,
46:45
like entire life. And like all the studies on
46:46
physics. I did one that was based on, you
46:50
know, like Maslow. He's like a hierarchy of needs.
46:52
I realized I didn't really know much about him and like his
46:54
actual research. So like there's a whole book on
46:56
like everything Maslow did in his life and all of his
46:59
psychological research. There's like finance books in
47:03
there. You like biography?
47:06
So too. What?
47:08
You like biographies? I really don't read a lot of
47:11
biographies, like truly I don't like, I'll explain the kind of
47:15
person I am really simple. Like when I was a little kid and
47:17
I went to the book fair, I'd buy almanacs, right?
47:20
Like I'm like an 8 year old who would watch C-SPAN.
47:22
Like I'm weird. Like so like I like dense
47:27
information. Released my jam and yeah, I
47:33
don't know, it's actually, I read a really good one or
47:36
something. I'm sure I remember the name of
47:38
it. It was a study of a bunch of
47:41
really like CEOs of incredible, what we call now boring
47:44
businesses, the main giant companies.
47:46
And like mostly like between the 60s and the 80s, unbelievably
47:49
fascinating. Like really enjoyed it because I
47:52
was like working on spin out and I was thinking about like, oh,
47:54
the strategy really isn't being done a lot right now.
47:56
So I don't look back. Historically.
47:57
I'm like, when were people doing this?
47:58
Because like, if everyone's doing roll ups right now for
48:00
private equity, there has to be a thing where we untangle the
48:03
roll ups. And then I realized this is a
48:06
secular thing in the economy between roll ups and like, you
48:09
know, unrolling the companies up and ended up doing like this
48:13
immense amount of research. And that was fascinating just to
48:16
see how conglomerates are made and how conglomerates fall
48:19
apart. Like even like the
48:21
reconciliation that like Microsoft is basically doing the
48:25
same thing Johnson and Johnson did at this point.
48:28
It's like not a vastly a different business.
48:30
We think of it as a technology company, but it's just a
48:31
conglomerate at the end of the day.
48:34
Yeah, well, it, it, it is cyclical and you see it like
48:37
politically, right, the how the tides you, you get like, you
48:40
know, now we're starting to see this big wave of socialism
48:43
until, you know, that gets, you know, unpopular and then like
48:46
the big free market capitalist comes back up.
48:49
And so, yeah, there is like kind of a parabola between 1982 and
48:54
right now and all kinds of different domains, you know?
48:57
Well, it's like you can conceptualize time.
48:59
It's like I've seen about this recently.
49:00
It's like it's a circle moving like this, but the circle is
49:02
also moving forward, almost like the way that you look at like a
49:05
planet orbit. You know what I'm trying to say?
49:07
It's spinning while moving forward.
49:08
So it's like time is cyclical while moving through a longer
49:11
cyclical timeline that repeats at different like larger
49:15
intervals. And I know like, Ray Dalio has a
49:20
lot to say on this, like Peter Zeihan has a lot to say this
49:23
from like a geopolitical angle. But it is interesting to come to
49:26
the complete end of an era. And I do see this as the end of
49:29
an era like it. Feels that way.
49:31
Yeah. And we'll have to see what like
49:33
the next era necessarily is like.
49:36
It's it's quite, it's quite interesting.
49:38
Yeah, no, I I totally agree. And like, you know, reading
49:42
boring books, I also, you know, I, I like history, I love
49:45
business, entertainment or infotainment, this kind of
49:48
stuff. And I think largely it's around
49:50
this reason because we're just as humans so stupid that like if
49:54
you, when you read that material, you're like, Oh my
49:57
God, they were going through the exact same things we were.
50:00
We're just repeating these cycles over and over again,
50:03
basically with the breath being like a human life.
50:05
So it's like every 40 years there's like popular trends that
50:10
just emerge and re emerge and you have to redeal with them and
50:13
and just keep going through it. So I think it's interesting.
50:16
What do you think about like, So what was the movie or, I'm
50:20
sorry, the TV show on HBO about that family?
50:25
They're like they own. It's basically Rupert Murdoch's
50:29
whole family. Yeah, yeah, Succession.
50:31
Succession, yeah. So business entertainment, do
50:34
you think you bullish on that in 2026?
50:36
For shows. Yeah, just for like,
50:38
entertainment. More like I love Silicon Valley.
50:40
I think I put I put Veep into that category as well.
50:43
I think Veep is fantastic where it's just like these really the
50:46
jobs that most people won't have and like putting out like how
50:49
absurd it actually is. So yeah, like Succession is
50:51
great. Veep is great.
50:52
Silicon Valley is great. I think we could do less with
50:55
like founder documentaries. I think it's getting a little
50:58
crazy. Like, I think it's just like
51:00
advertising a movie form. Like Ford and Ferrari was good.
51:02
I don't think we need like a Nike movie.
51:06
I don't know, a it's it is what it is.
51:09
But yeah, Succession was a good show.
51:11
Cool. Yeah, I agree, Josh, this has
51:14
been so fun, man. I love bouncing around.
51:16
I, I appreciate you opening up a little bit about maybe some of
51:19
the more tender spots about about work in general, but I, I
51:23
feel like I got so much out of this.
51:25
I'm going to be able to pull a bunch of really cool frameworks.
51:27
I love your, your checklist for validation.
51:30
It's been incredible talking to you.
51:32
I also want to give a shout out to organization that I know is
51:35
important to you, which is Doctors Without Borders and what
51:38
a great organization. Any stories or or favorite
51:41
things about that group? No, So I'll tell you why I
51:44
appreciate them. It actually came from a book I
51:46
read when I was really young. It's called A Long Way Gone, and
51:49
it's about child soldier and Sierra Leone.
51:53
And yeah, like I just after I read that as a kid, I started
51:57
like learning a lot about like the UN camps and how people
51:59
would like go out there and actually help these people post
52:01
wars. And I think it's a really
52:03
righteous thing to do, like to have to go to school for so long
52:07
for a profession that's very technical and then spend your
52:10
life giving back. So I just, I think they're
52:13
really incredible people and they deserve support.
52:15
Agreed. Think they're awesome, Shout out
52:17
to them Doctors Without Borders, they're everywhere.
52:19
You guys can just Google that if you don't know about them
52:21
already and learn more. Josh, thanks so much for joining
52:24
me. I really appreciate it.
52:25
Yep. Have a wonderful day.
52:26
Thanks, Ryan. Bye.
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