Latest / The Learning Corner by Precursor / Episode #61: AI-Generated Reddit Hoax, Tech Career Crisis, Venture FOMO Reality

Transcript

Episode #61: AI-Generated Reddit Hoax, Tech Career Crisis, Venture FOMO Reality · The Learning Corner by Precursor

• 0:00
  So every signal you receive as an investor right now is you should be investing in hot,
• 0:05
  buzzy AI companies.
• 0:06
  If you wanna be part of
• 0:07
  the in crowd, if you wanna raise a fund, if you want LPs to care, if you want founders to care,
• 0:11
  and what if that's not your thing?
• 0:13
  And I think this is an exceptionally hard time to play your own game because all of the
• 0:18
  dollars are going to a small number of firms, and all of the dollars from those firms are
• 0:24
  going to a relatively narrow set of companies.
• 0:26
  So how do you play your own game when it appears like there's no money for it?
• 0:29
  It's the week of January 5.
• 0:31
  Welcome to the Learning Corner, a Precursor Ventures podcast.
• 0:39
  Welcome to the Learning Corner by Precursor, and happy New Year.
• 0:43
  It's the first episode of 2026.
• 0:46
  We had a couple weeks off, but we are so happy to be back.
• 0:49
  I'm Mia Farnam, and, of course, I'm joined by RGP and managing partner, Charles Hudson, where
• 0:53
  we will be talking through the articles and Goodreads that caught our team's attention over
• 0:57
  the past week.
• 0:59
  For our first post over the last week, a Reddit thread exploded across the platform, claiming
• 1:03
  to be written by an ex software engineer from a major food delivery company.
• 1:07
  The post detailed shocking insider revelations.
• 1:10
  Algorithms allegedly rigged against customers and drivers a priority delivery option that was
• 1:15
  supposedly just psychological manipulation, and most disturbingly, a hidden desperation score
• 1:22
  that tracked how badly drivers needed money based on how quickly they accepted low paying
• 1:27
  orders.
• 1:28
  The thread gained massive traction with thousands of reactions until it was exposed as
• 1:33
  a complete AI generated hoax.
• 1:35
  This led Casey Newton from Platformer to write the article debunking the AI food delivery hoax
• 1:40
  that fooled Reddit, documenting how he initially believed and then unasked the
• 1:44
  deception.
• 1:45
  Casey engaged directly with the supposed whistleblower to pick up the scoop, doing what
• 1:48
  really any good journalist would, asking for employee identification to verify his source.
• 1:53
  The whistleblower delivered what seemed like convincing evidence, a photo of an Uber Eats
• 1:58
  employee badge and an 18 page technical document detailing the system infrastructure
• 2:03
  behind these disturbing practices.
• 2:05
  Casey was almost convinced until he ran the employee badge photo through a foundational LLM
• 2:10
  and asked if it was AI generated.
• 2:13
  The model responded that most or all of the image was edited or generated with Google AI.
• 2:18
  When Casey confronted the whistleblower, they immediately disappeared.
• 2:21
  So while Uber Eats can rest easy knowing these specific allegations aren't true, the incident
• 2:26
  raises important questions about AI generated misinformation and how easily it can fool even
• 2:31
  experienced journalists and what other convincing hoaxes might be circulating
• 2:36
  undetected.
• 2:36
  What a way to enter into 2026.
• 2:39
  Immediate thoughts and reactions, Charles, from you on this one.
• 2:44
  And also, did you see the Reddit thread when the original post was shared?
• 2:46
  I know Marina shared she avoided food delivery apps once that circulated on Reddit.
• 2:50
  It's so funny.
• 2:51
  Your suggestion, I bought a brick.
• 2:53
  And I've been using Instagram and threads and Blue Sky a lot less since I got my brick, and I
• 3:01
  think I'm better for it.
• 3:02
  And I went on in one of my little breaks, and I saw all these people being like, I always knew
• 3:06
  those food delivery.
• 3:07
  Then one of my friends texted me a picture, a screenshot of Tony Xu from DoorDash being like,
• 3:13
  I don't think this is us.
• 3:14
  If it is, the people in char the people responsible should be brought to justice.
• 3:18
  And I was just like, wow.
• 3:19
  Like, what are people talking about?
• 3:20
  And then I read it, and this sounds too Black Mirror to be true.
• 3:24
  Yeah.
• 3:24
  I hate to say it's like too dystopian to be true.
• 3:27
  And when I read Casey's article, the two things that stuck out to me, like, one, this is only
• 3:31
  gonna get harder.
• 3:32
  And second, he has an advantage that the layperson doesn't have, which is he can email
• 3:36
  sources or people he knows.
• 3:38
  I'm like, hey, you work at a ride sharing delivery service.
• 3:42
  The person's like, we would never write some this is not how this is done.
• 3:45
  We would never write in this way.
• 3:46
  We would never and then some people were like, oh, it's interesting that the prose from the
• 3:50
  text and the quality of English in the comments don't match.
• 3:52
  I think we're just gonna have to get much better at this, and I think it's only gonna get
• 3:57
  harder.
• 3:58
  And I wonder in a world if you think about how much reach that post got, we talk a lot about
• 4:03
  clickbait and rage bait.
• 4:05
  This could take it to a whole another level like this, you know, that old adage about, you
• 4:10
  know, the truth is halfway around the world.
• 4:12
  I don't know.
• 4:12
  I always butcher these things, but you know what I mean.
• 4:13
  Lies can spread really fast on the Internet, particularly when there are people who are
• 4:16
  motivated either because they're pranksters or because they want the traffic or click views
• 4:20
  and the person, you know, got a lot of Reddit gold for this.
• 4:23
  So I I give Casey a lot of credit for also being like, hey.
• 4:27
  I almost got not like, hey.
• 4:29
  I'm like this avenger and I was never fooled.
• 4:31
  He was just doing what good journalists do, which is you get a piece of information, you
• 4:34
  try to verify it, and I think it's just gonna become much, much harder to verify these
• 4:39
  things.
• 4:39
  I also think, as we learned with social media, eventually people realized not every photo or
• 4:44
  text or everything from purportedly from some famous person is real.
• 4:47
  I also think people will develop antibodies to this stuff, But I think it'll get worse before
• 4:52
  it gets better.
• 4:52
  I think the the quote that you were thinking of was a lie can travel halfway around the world
• 4:57
  before the truth gets its boots on.
• 4:59
  That's right.
• 4:59
  That's it.
• 5:00
  Casey argues that AI is really just going to accelerate the speed of the lies and how
• 5:05
  quickly it spreads.
• 5:06
  And I could only imagine the amount of internal panic and angst probably happening at many
• 5:13
  massive tech companies or big corporations to basically be like, what internal teams do we
• 5:18
  need to stand up to start fighting any of this?
• 5:20
  Because like you said, maybe specific people with specific skill sets can figure out what's
• 5:24
  real, what's fake.
• 5:25
  But I mean, by the time that that post had traveled, there were probably thousands of
• 5:30
  people who had decided, I'm not gonna order from any of these apps anymore for the next
• 5:34
  week or so, or, like, really was like, this is the end.
• 5:36
  My question is, who are the stakeholders that really have important decisions to make here
• 5:41
  and whose responsibility is it?
• 5:43
  And I think the thing about it was it was perfectly tuned, rage bait.
• 5:47
  It took like a lot of the things that people, you know, conspiratorially or or in a dystopian
• 5:53
  way think about these apps and services, kind of plugged right into, I knew it all along.
• 5:59
  This this totally fits my mental model of,
• 6:01
  like, how this company I I I think people wanted it to be true.
• 6:04
  They wanted it to be true.
• 6:05
  I think that's why it was so popular.
• 6:06
  Super, like, I always knew these things had no moral fiber and they're exploitative and look
• 6:12
  at how they even talk about the people that work on their platforms.
• 6:15
  So it reminded me a lot of the politically motivated misinformation because it tends to
• 6:19
  play on biases or feelings that are already present in the person, and they provoke them in
• 6:24
  very direct and profound ways, and this one did that for sure.
• 6:27
  And the one thing that Casey said that struck me was in pre AI world, if somebody gives you
• 6:32
  an 18 page document, you don't really question if that's super fake.
• 6:36
  Because, like, who the heck is taking time, hours, resources out of their day?
• 6:41
  It's just not that just means it's real.
• 6:43
  But here, it took probably, what, thirty seconds to two minutes to spin up something
• 6:48
  like that with specific architecture around it for the average person who's on Reddit or any
• 6:53
  other public facing forum, how you'd be able to suss out what's real, what's fake from now on.
• 6:58
  I have some friends who work in expense management companies, and they, like, six
• 7:02
  months ago were like, we're just seeing this flood of fake receipts.
• 7:06
  What a way to splash into the new year.
• 7:09
  Well, our next piece is by Aneel Dash titled, how the hell are you supposed to have a career
• 7:14
  in tech in 2026?
• 7:16
  It addresses the grim reality of mass layoffs, people leaving tech in droves, and widespread
• 7:21
  unhappiness across the industry.
• 7:22
  Many of the most talented and thoughtful people feel really gutted about what the current tech
• 7:26
  landscape looks like and what their employers actually value.
• 7:29
  With the wave of AI companies, roles that used to be highly valued, like software engineers,
• 7:33
  now feel easily replaceable.
• 7:35
  People have moved into a depressing stage of clocking in and out, unhappy in their current
• 7:39
  jobs, or unsuccessful in finding new ones.
• 7:42
  Anil's advice is to take back control by understanding the systems you're working in and
• 7:46
  what your place and role is within them.
• 7:48
  Your value is determined by how much influence you can have on the system you help architect,
• 7:53
  so understanding power dynamics is crucial and how you can meaningfully shift power from your
• 7:58
  position.
• 7:58
  He also suggests that tech opportunities with healthier cultures may not be in tech.
• 8:03
  How novel.
• 8:04
  Instead, looking at industries lagging behind in innovation where you might find better
• 8:09
  culture outside the Silicon Valley bubble.
• 8:11
  He closed with the advice to plan for the long term because this phase will pass.
• 8:15
  I loved his quote, don't let your job get in the way of your career.
• 8:19
  And I feel like it's very general, so it's not just applicable to here in big tech, but wanted
• 8:23
  to pause for anything from your end on what came to mind when reading this one.
• 8:27
  When I read it, it made me remember that, you know, I've been working in tech for most of my
• 8:31
  career.
• 8:32
  And I would say there have been, like, two big changes I've noticed.
• 8:35
  One is, I think, for most of my career, probably the first two thirds.
• 8:39
  Most people like tech is kind of, I wouldn't say universally, but generally a force for
• 8:43
  good.
• 8:44
  It makes the world better.
• 8:45
  It brings people together.
• 8:46
  Whether that was true or not, that was the belief.
• 8:48
  Was that tech is like this equalizing positive force and that, like, I think a lot of people
• 8:53
  were, like, proud to be like, oh, yeah.
• 8:55
  I think back to the Arab Spring a long time ago.
• 8:56
  Facebook is helping all these people connect, and, you know, Google's organizing all the
• 9:00
  world's information.
• 9:01
  And maybe, like, for me, the first moment in my career where I was, like, maybe tech is has a
• 9:06
  more complicated relationship with morality was, you know, was at Google when the don't be
• 9:09
  evil stuff happened with China.
• 9:11
  And a lot of people were like, well, how do we reconcile who we say we are with the business
• 9:15
  demands of provide and that was, like, obviously, a a very challenging decision for
• 9:19
  the company.
• 9:20
  And then you had all the the comments about, well, should tech work with defense?
• 9:23
  It seems quaint now that that was even a thing when you think about how big defense tech and
• 9:27
  the military industrial complex relationship with tech has gone back to where it started in
• 9:32
  the beginning of time.
• 9:33
  We're very back.
• 9:34
  You know, anyone who hasn't read Margaret O'Meara's book, The Code, I would highly
• 9:37
  recommend that you read it.
• 9:38
  It's a really good history of tech's relationship with government and and the
• 9:42
  military.
• 9:42
  It goes back a long way.
• 9:43
  And then I think what happened is we went through this era of what I can only describe as
• 9:47
  warm fuzzies, employee empowerment that happened coming out of COVID where I think
• 9:51
  employers were genuinely concerned about employee well-being.
• 9:55
  And even if they weren't, they realized it was important to signal that they were.
• 9:58
  And you had ERGs, and you had mental health days, and you had work from home.
• 10:03
  And to be clear, tech has become big.
• 10:05
  And I think when I think about things like little tech stuff that YC talks about, tech
• 10:09
  used to be this underdog pirate industry that was an outsider, and now most of the really big
• 10:14
  companies by market cap are tech companies.
• 10:16
  Tech companies are some of the biggest companies in the world.
• 10:19
  Tech touches everything, and tech is no longer a little industry.
• 10:22
  And when you're a little industry, you can decide to stay out of policy.
• 10:25
  You can decide to stay out of a lot of stuff.
• 10:26
  But when you're a big business, policy impacts you.
• 10:30
  And I think tech has become a lot more political.
• 10:33
  And I think there were some folks who were really happy when tech getting political
• 10:36
  aligned with their political views around particularly in, like, 2020.
• 10:40
  And now that tech is political in a different way, there's a lot of people who are like,
• 10:43
  well, I didn't sign up for that.
• 10:44
  I didn't sign up for this.
• 10:46
  And tech jobs used to be safe and secure, and they're not anymore.
• 10:48
  They still pay pretty well by by all standards.
• 10:51
  And so a lot of ways, feel like tech has become like most big industries.
• 10:55
  And I talked to my friends at Big Tech.
• 10:56
  They have a lot of the same complaints that my friends in big consulting, big banking, other
• 11:01
  big big law, long hours, low job security, questionable connection between the work they
• 11:06
  do and their values.
• 11:07
  I'm like, these are the problems of bigness.
• 11:09
  I got some friends who worked for the federal government who were laid off, and they'd
• 11:13
  planned to work for the government for their whole lives.
• 11:15
  And they found other places to apply their skills in oftentimes in the same domain, but on
• 11:21
  the other side of the table industry.
• 11:23
  And I think Anil's advice is good, which is the upside of everything being tech is if you're a
• 11:28
  software developer, you can go write code at a different industry.
• 11:31
  You don't have to work in one of the big tech companies.
• 11:33
  And I think this is the natural natural maturation process.
• 11:37
  And I I do think part of the undertone here is I do think, maybe naively but from a good
• 11:41
  place, I think there were a lot of people who thought tech was different.
• 11:45
  I don't know if you've seen the Paul Graham thread like, hey, I thought when all my friends
• 11:48
  got rich, they would just be rich nerds.
• 11:52
  And that's like a very naive but I do think as someone who's been in tech for twenty years, I
• 11:56
  think the thing that's lost is there was a long time people like, well, people in tech are
• 11:59
  different.
• 11:59
  We're not bankers and consultants.
• 12:01
  And maybe a very, like, condescending way, we're, like, better than those people.
• 12:05
  We stand for something.
• 12:06
  We're working on problems of importance.
• 12:08
  Like Robin Hoodie
• 12:09
  asked Robin Hoodie and, like, we're trying to make the world a better place.
• 12:12
  They're just trying to make a bunch of money.
• 12:13
  And now the tech is of similar scale that seems to be less true, which doesn't mean it was
• 12:17
  never true.
• 12:18
  I think it's harder to argue that it's true today.
• 12:20
  And I think for people who got into tech in a more optimistic pirate y time, they're kinda
• 12:25
  like the people who joined the startup when it was 10 people.
• 12:28
  And now that it's a thousand people and you have to badge in you have to do, like,
• 12:32
  performance reviews, they're like, this isn't as much fun as as when it was 10 of us around a
• 12:36
  table at 10:00 at night shipping directly to production.
• 12:39
  But that it's not that anymore.
• 12:40
  Yeah.
• 12:41
  And it's not going back.
• 12:42
  Think that's not, to your point, like, a feature of bigness.
• 12:44
  Bigness.
• 12:45
  And I think that there are different phases of growth that suited each company at the specific
• 12:48
  time, but we're far beyond that.
• 12:50
  And so that's why I read this, and it felt like specifically the quotes around people feeling
• 12:54
  like they're just clocking in and out.
• 12:56
  That could be applied to every type of job ever when people just feel detached from the day to
• 13:00
  day work that they
• 13:01
  do and what the output is.
• 13:02
  That's most people's jobs.
• 13:04
  I felt like this was written for people of my generation of tech who are somewhere between
• 13:08
  their mid thirties and early fifties who joined the industry in just a different era and are
• 13:13
  trying to figure out, well, did the work change?
• 13:15
  Did I change?
• 13:16
  Did the world change?
• 13:16
  And the answer is, like, all of those things changed.
• 13:18
  It's all relative to my sister used to be a teacher and then pivoted into a massive public
• 13:22
  tech company.
• 13:23
  And coming from being a teacher in the lower income area in
• 13:27
  the middle of Yeah.
• 13:27
  Colorado to working customer success at
• 13:30
  this massive post IPO tech company.
• 13:32
  It was like a dream come true.
• 13:34
  And so all the things that I would assume people pre IPO for this specific company would
• 13:38
  complain about, she didn't have any of the those things
• 13:42
  Right.
• 13:42
  In front of some wine for her.
• 13:43
  She had to walk through what RSUs were the phone when she
• 13:46
  got her offer.
• 13:47
  It's almost a feature of just being in the industry for so long, you start picking apart
• 13:51
  what things used to be.
• 13:52
  One thing that this did make me think of, I mean, we talk to our founders and our portfolio
• 13:55
  all the time about what their talent needs are and what the gaps look like, and it feels like
• 13:59
  reading this article that there's a massive pool of talent that's either looking for a new
• 14:03
  job or wanting to leave their current one.
• 14:06
  Why is there this disconnect of these great people not being able to be paired with maybe
• 14:11
  newer opportunities that could put them back in that seat that they want with all this
• 14:14
  ownership and autonomy and less hierarchy?
• 14:17
  I think some of it is nostalgia and a wistfulness for the days gone.
• 14:20
  And and maybe some deep down hope that those days come back, but, Hugh, I don't think that's
• 14:23
  likely.
• 14:23
  Second, big tech pays really well.
• 14:26
  Golden handcuffs.
• 14:27
  Yeah.
• 14:27
  Again, going back to, like, law, consulting, and banking, these are also jobs that are hard
• 14:31
  to leave because it's hard to replicate the combination of comp and prestige.
• 14:35
  I also think maybe for some people say what you will, like, telling people you work at Amazon,
• 14:39
  Google, Facebook, Meta, whatever you wanna call it these days.
• 14:42
  People recognize those brands and those brands mean something.
• 14:45
  Working for some company that makes forestry management software that no one's ever heard
• 14:48
  of, it's a different cocktail party conversation.
• 14:51
  Also, think, you know, big tech has its own social network.
• 14:55
  We're moving from you probably have friends.
• 14:57
  If you're just like, hey.
• 14:58
  How do I go from big tech to a small software development shop in my neighbor?
• 15:02
  Like, how do I find these jobs?
• 15:04
  Will those people value what I will they be skeptical of, like, my I think it's hard to
• 15:07
  move.
• 15:08
  Not impossible, but hard to move.
• 15:09
  Do you think, Charles, that feels like, specifically right now, and maybe more so in
• 15:13
  San Francisco, people feel like working at the big tech companies is less of a sexy
• 15:17
  conversation in the cocktail parties than being able to say that they're working at something
• 15:21
  stealthy, something under the radar?
• 15:23
  Do you feel like that's more of the narrative now than ever?
• 15:25
  I think if you're in San Francisco, which is a pin drop of a city in the grand scheme of the
• 15:30
  world, I do think that San Francisco's always been other than times of recession and tech
• 15:35
  downturn, it's always been cooler to work.
• 15:37
  If you said, would you rather say I work at Google or OpenAI or Anthropic, I think most of
• 15:41
  would be like, I I think it'd be cooler to say I worked at OpenAI or Anthropic even though
• 15:44
  Google's doing a great job in AI too.
• 15:46
  Yeah.
• 15:47
  I think what's different is those startups aren't my sense is outside of research are not
• 15:51
  as aggressively poaching people from big tech as in previous cycles that was like, hey, if
• 15:55
  you were hanging around at Google and there was an up and coming startup, there was a good
• 15:58
  chance they were gonna, like, make a run and try to get you to come join them.
• 16:01
  Being in those places put you in a spotlight that made you attractive.
• 16:05
  And now I feel like with all this AI stuff, recruiting is so broken too, Where people are
• 16:10
  looking for talent, what talent looks like, what skills you need to have to be attractive.
• 16:14
  The fact that many these companies are just simply hiring fewer people.
• 16:17
  I think this is the other thing.
• 16:18
  If you've been at one of these big tech companies for a long time and you're reentering
• 16:20
  everyone I know who's had to deal with a layoff has been the job market today, you would not
• 16:25
  recognize it if you were thrust into it.
• 16:27
  It does not look like what you know.
• 16:28
  I I believe them.
• 16:29
  I have no reason to not believe them.
• 16:31
  Well, our last piece is by Roger Ehrenberg titled A Perspective on the Venture Business,
• 16:36
  aka normalizing the insecurities we all experience in this industry.
• 16:40
  Roger walks through all the classic challenges of the job.
• 16:42
  The highs are incredibly high.
• 16:44
  The lows are devastatingly low.
• 16:46
  The work never stops.
• 16:47
  You can always be doing more, and the FOMO and envy are very real.
• 16:51
  This cycle never ends, and any investor can be susceptible to these feelings.
• 16:55
  It's really just part of the job.
• 16:56
  Roger's advice is while you can always be doing more and constantly looking around at what
• 17:00
  everyone else is doing, you really need to look inward and play your own game while blocking
• 17:05
  out the noise.
• 17:05
  Mhmm.
• 17:06
  So while his main message is play your game, he shares if you're experiencing these feelings of
• 17:10
  self doubt and constant questioning, you're not alone.
• 17:13
  He always returns to his first principles.
• 17:15
  Do I believe in my hypothesis?
• 17:16
  Do I have an edge?
• 17:17
  Do I continue to perform well?
• 17:19
  Do I love the work that I'm doing?
• 17:21
  He ends it with really just saying you're human, so you can't be completely void of these
• 17:24
  feelings.
• 17:24
  But ultimately, you have to play your game.
• 17:27
  So obviously, wanted your perspective here, especially since you know Roger.
• 17:30
  I read this and, like, you know, everyone's like, how do you know AI slap?
• 17:33
  I'm like, well, if you know the person and you read it, I was like, this was Roger.
• 17:36
  And, like, I've gone to Roger with a bunch of questions in my venture career, and he's
• 17:39
  someone who was always gracious with me back when he was at IA and giving me his time and
• 17:44
  perspective.
• 17:45
  And this is something I've talked to our team about quite a bit Individually and as a group,
• 17:49
  there's a lot of highs and lows in this job.
• 17:51
  And the reason I really like this post is there's always been this, like, hey.
• 17:55
  I'm doing my own thing.
• 17:56
  Hey.
• 17:56
  I'm doing deep tech and everyone else is doing SaaS, or I'm doing CPG and everyone else is
• 18:00
  doing SaaS, or I'm doing consumer and everyone else doing SaaS.
• 18:03
  And it always felt like there was room in the industry to have a bunch of firms that were all
• 18:08
  kinda doing their own thing.
• 18:10
  And then AI hits, and I think two things happen.
• 18:14
  There are whole firms whose whole investment strategies were only doing AI.
• 18:18
  And if you're not investing in AI companies, you don't have anything to talk to those people
• 18:21
  about.
• 18:22
  They don't wanna meet your other portfolio companies.
• 18:24
  They might as well be dead to them, which is really, like, a hard message to hear.
• 18:27
  And second, all of the press coverage, excitement, all the sexiness, all the markups,
• 18:32
  all the LP interest is in AI.
• 18:34
  So every signal you receive as an investor right now is you should be investing in hot,
• 18:40
  buzzy AI companies.
• 18:41
  If you wanna be part of
• 18:42
  the in crowd, if you wanna raise a fund, if you want LPs to care, if you want founders to care.
• 18:46
  And what if that's not your thing?
• 18:47
  And I think this is an exceptionally hard time to play your own game because usually the
• 18:53
  signals you get in Venture are there's a consensus game that works for those people.
• 18:57
  There's a lot of other little ways you can win that are different.
• 19:00
  And as long as the way you're you're playing can win, you don't have to be in the
• 19:03
  mainstream.
• 19:03
  But right now, it feels like, as Roger mentioned, all of the dollars are going to a
• 19:07
  small number of firms, and all of the dollars from those firms are going to a relatively
• 19:11
  narrow set of companies.
• 19:13
  So how do you play your own game when it appears like there's no money for
• 19:16
  it?
• 19:16
  Yeah.
• 19:16
  And there's, like, really not much signal that playing your own game will be rewarded.
• 19:22
  And I read this, was like, this is the kind of thing that, as I've said, mean, everything
• 19:25
  works until it doesn't.
• 19:27
  And I think right now, the hardest thing and I have the same struggle Roger mentioned, which
• 19:30
  is I have a bunch of beliefs that feel like they're out of step with mainstream the right
• 19:34
  now.
• 19:34
  And I'm like, well, I'm gonna continue to hold these beliefs because I believe they're true.
• 19:37
  It feels harder every day because all of the system inputs I'm getting suggest that you
• 19:42
  should just do what everybody else is doing.
• 19:43
  And then when the fever breaks, everyone's like, why were we all doing that?
• 19:46
  Well, you were doing it.
• 19:46
  I was copying you, and it seemed like a good idea.
• 19:48
  And, like, we were all, like, you end up in this just weird place where everybody's copying
• 19:52
  everybody, and whether it's the right thing to do or not.
• 19:55
  And so I think it's a much needed timely message.
• 19:58
  But I'll be the first to admit, it is incredibly hard to do in this environment.
• 20:02
  It feels different than other consensus bubbles to your exact point in that.
• 20:07
  I mean, as investors, part of the job is to give advice and to kind of act as a sounding
• 20:11
  board.
• 20:11
  And when the game at a broader level has shifted and changed so much that I can't
• 20:15
  predict as easily, like, who'll be around to support specific founders because of what lane
• 20:20
  they're sitting in anymore.
• 20:21
  Like, complete investors have completely ditched their like, consumer as example.
• 20:25
  Completely ditched to go in a different direction.
• 20:27
  So I'm sort of like, I gotta replenish that list entirely if you're gonna raise a series a.
• 20:31
  I don't even know who's deploying in that direction.
• 20:33
  How do I find those people?
• 20:35
  Mhmm.
• 20:35
  To your point, you can do all the pre seed seed deals you want in consumer, but that is gonna
• 20:40
  be sitting in the back of your mind.
• 20:41
  And maybe the question is then I just need to be finding business that don't require as much
• 20:45
  venture dollars in order to be interesting.
• 20:47
  Maybe that's a different way to look at it, but it feels much different than the previous
• 20:51
  bubbles.
• 20:51
  And I think what you also have to accept is, like, you need founders who understand this
• 20:55
  too.
• 20:56
  I introduced one of our portfolio companies to prospective investors.
• 20:59
  There's nothing wrong with this company.
• 21:01
  It's exceptional, but I'm only doing AI right now.
• 21:03
  It's funny.
• 21:04
  I tell you, like, you can't tell somebody what they should be excited about.
• 21:07
  I mean, you can try.
• 21:08
  I don't think that's very effective.
• 21:09
  At some point, you have to accept right now AI is the game on the field.
• 21:13
  And if you're not gonna play that game, you have to have high conviction, and you have to,
• 21:18
  you know, remain solvent.
• 21:19
  As a fund, you have to be able to, like, stay in business.
• 21:22
  I look at our portfolio.
• 21:23
  We have plenty of non a businesses that are doing great.
• 21:25
  I believe at some point, attention will come back to those businesses, but we have to be
• 21:29
  around and alive as a fund when that happens.
• 21:32
  Otherwise, we don't get the prize.
• 21:33
  Well, great close for the first episode of 2026.
• 21:37
  We are all out of time today.
• 21:38
  Thank you, Charles, for popping in.
• 21:40
  Thank you to our listeners and subscribers.
• 21:42
  We will talk with you all next week.
• 21:44
  Thank you.
• 21:44
  Bye.
• 21:45
  Bye.