Latest / Beat The Odds with Dre, Rodney, & Brylan / Hospice Fraud Web, Figma's Bloodbath & The Tim Cook Farewell
Transcript
- Rodney: Yo, what's up Dre? How you doing? Dre: It was good man, was good. I'm doing well man. We here today without our boy Brylon. He he gotta rest up. He gotta rest up. Rodney: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he had a had a procedure. Dre: Yeah, yeah, the wisdom teeth man. I remember when I had that operation that shit sucked. Oh Yes, bro, I got all I think you have two at the top two at the bottom if I'm not mistaken I got all four of my important one day Got put under under the anesthetic Got the whole procedure moved. The pain was definitely there for sure. They gave me a bunch of medication They gave me a bunch of medication Rodney: ⁓ you had it too? You had it too? Dre: But I wasn't trying to get addicted to it, so I wasn't really taking it like that. I was only taking ibuprofen. I was like, I don't want nothing too strong. I was a little nervous to take it. But yeah, definitely not something light for sure. So yeah, riding this and rest, man. Rodney: ⁓ okay. ⁓ shit. Yeah. I would have took it. I would have took that joy. I would have took exactly what they gave me. You know, I have been putting mine off and I have four that needs to get pulled and I want to do it all on the same day, bro. I want to do it all on the same day. Dre: that's fine. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. them put ⁓ me. I was only gonna do it if I was gonna be put to sleep and they put me to sleep ⁓ so but some people don't do it. I mean, which is not like I don't think they put everybody to sleep I don't know if everybody can put this leave some people be work when they do it But I think they'd be numbed up and everything, of course So but still I I just only want to be don't even want to hear nothing and see none Rodney: Yeah, of course, of course. That's that. Yeah. What? when wake up, how do you feel? So you wake up, okay, you're good at first, right? You wake up, you ⁓ feel, you wake up, you're like, you feel all right. Dre: You feel all right, but you just feel pain and soreness in your mouth. Of course, right? Cause you just got drilled in the mouth. Rodney: But like, is it like, how bad though? Dre: Like instant. No, it's it's not. It's probably not going to be as bad first because you still on the meds. You know, was like, so which is good, right? Because you can kind of ease into the pain. not like it's like, ⁓ you wake up and you like instantly like right away. No, it's not like that. But I don't know. This experience might be different for everybody. For me, it was like just a throbbing pain, just annoying like nerve pain. But it only lasted a few days. But for me, ibuprofen was good enough. Rodney: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, I stopped trying to- okay, okay. Dre: Otherwise I would have took the other stuff. I can't remember what it was what they prescribed me But I don't know. I just always have heard like horror stories of people like getting addicted to pain meds Sounds like Sounds like you know, I'm a little nervous cuz it might be too good You know what I'm saying? I sound like no, I'm just gonna stick to you profane, but it didn't last that long maybe like a week of like intense pain Intense to moderate pain and then seduced after that and I was good to go But I have been putting it off for a while Rodney: Yeah, that's true though, people do. Yeah. Dre: Trust me, for years down there. get it done. Rodney: Man, gotta, man. Yeah, seems like I'm not gonna have a choice, man. Like, cause it's, yeah, to the point where I'm not gonna have a choice. Like I just gotta take care of it. So I'm gonna have to take some time out. But hearing what Brian was saying earlier, it's not making me want to rush into it. And that shit's not it's like, right? So. Dre: For sure. No, no, no, not at all. Not at all, not at all. All right, where you want to start? We got a couple of things on the board today, Rodney: ⁓ let's see, let's see, man. look, let's just jump right into the fraud. Let's just jump right into the fraud. got the hospice fraud. Yeah. Hospice fraud update. A few positive. ⁓ I mentioned how this guy Nick Shirley, this young new journalists is out there looking for fraud. I think he first started. Dre: Okay, the hospice fraud, right? It's hospice fraud update. Okay. Rodney: in, it may have been Minnesota and yeah, and he went out to LA and California to look for fraud because he had heard that a lot was going on out there and he found it and. Dre: Yep, I believe so. Rodney: I already painted the picture before, but I just wanted to reiterate, like some of the things that he was seeing was he'll pull up to these, for example, like an old motel, an old motel somewhere in the middle of LA. It looks like almost abandoned. He up, there's brand new BMWs, there's brand new Mercedes, know, Benz is everywhere. I think I might've even seen a Phantom. I I might've even seen a Phantom in the... in the parking lot. And you, this is like a motel, old motel. It looks broke down, but like all these. Now mind you though. It is not unusual to see luxury cars in Los Angeles. So that's not necessarily meaning that there was a crime there going on there. Cause there's luxury cars all over LA. LA is one those places you go and you're like, does everybody have a Beamer, a Benz, a Ferrari? Like does everybody have a G Wagon? But nah, like. Dre: Thank you. Rodney: These places were pretending to be hospice centers, in some cases daycares, but we're going to focus on the hospice stuff. And RFK Jr. came out and he said that they found over 400, I think the number is closer to 500 fraudulent hospice offices around Los Angeles. And when they closed them, Nobody called with any complaints. So isn't that a little bit suspicious? Like if, if, if you close, even if you close 10 hospice centers, you would think they would get at least one, two, maybe three calls. Dre: Hmm. Yeah. Rodney: asking like what's going on we like we need this money. My grandma goes there, my grandparents go there, or I work there, what's going on? No calls and you've closed down 500? Dre: Yeah, so clearly it's wrong it's obvious Rodney: Right. Right. it's, it's, I really don't know what to say. I feel like the story speaks for itself. It's like, what else? What's going on here? Dre: So people are being arrested as well, right? Have they made any arrests? Rodney: They made some arrests. I don't know how many arrests. I don't know exactly how many arrests they've made, but they've made some. It may have been, I recall correctly, a ⁓ dozen. Dre: So from a quick search I just did, it seemed like, I don't know if it's connected to Nick Shirley's story. I'm assuming it is because it's California dealing with hospice, so I'm assuming it's all interconnected. He just probably exposed one part of a bigger web. But 21 people have been charged with $267 million in hospice fraud scheme in California. They said it was one doctor, Dr. Ravi. They said he was one of the most connected doctors in California. Rodney: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Dre: Nearly 2,800 patients across 126 California hospice locations in 2024, approximately 20 times the state average. Federal records show $71 million in Medicare reimbursements tied to him. Just for 2024. Rodney: Cheers. What? Dre: So it is obviously rapid fraud. So when Nick Shirley exposed is, yeah, the locations, but obviously there's the fraud, fraudulent Medicare billing and reimbursements that are tied to that, specific doctors that are being unfolded and that's 21 people. So obviously this was a sophisticated, somewhat sophisticated scam, right? Where it took more than just one or two people to kind of facilitate it. And I'm sure that's just a... Rodney: Yeah. Dre: surface ⁓ was really there in California as we know California is a very very large state. Right? So I'm sure I'm sure somebody in one area saw this happen in another area and just replicated in another area and they replicate like so I'm it's all all throughout California. So I'm sure this is only to start. Rodney: Huge, huge, huge. This is one of those things that when they go follow the money it's gonna uncover a bunch of people that we did not suspect. I mean, they've already have, because it's two dozen people already that are being charged. But it's seeming like hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen. as you said, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Dre: ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. guess we'll keep watching it. We'll keep watching it because obviously this is an active investigation throughout, California I mean these arrests were just announced a little over a week ago. So these are brand new I would expect to see more coming out on this. So yeah, we should definitely keep keep giving updates I think it's fascinating when Nick Shirley is doing I think exposing this fraud at the state level I think is really interesting. So I'm looking forward to seeing a little more what more stories he has on the horizon for the year and next year. Rodney: Yeah, me too. And speaking of Jess, Minnesota, I didn't mention this before the call, but I saw this trending and it's kind of lined up a bit where one of the people, one of the representatives of Minnesota's house, her name is Ilhan, I think. I'm not sure if that's two I's or of those is an L, but I think it's Ilhan Omar. And And I really hope I got her name correct because I just haven't heard anybody say it out loud, but she went from having a 30 million dollar net worth to after someone stuff that they surely kind of put out there. Dre: ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw that. Mm-hmm. Rodney: in the original daycare fraud stuff. Not to say that she is connected to that, but because Minnesota was being looked at more, people are looking at things like, hey, okay, you got a net worth of 30 million. It was in the public, you didn't, like, it was in the public and all that. And now she's saying that her net worth is $100,000. And she's saying that $30 million was an accounting error. So are just wondering maybe what, what, is going on there? So I'm not saying she's guilty, but I'll tell you what, this is the worst time to have a accounting error by that large of a number. Dre: Okay. Rodney: Like this is if you if you are innocent, this is the worst time to have an accounting area of not just 1 million Not 2 not 5 not 10 30 million dollars Dre: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's a crazy mess up for sure. Yeah. I did, I did see that story. And I remember when Nick exposed the fraud in Minnesota, she came up because she is of Somalian And so like that's the, the group that of Nick Shirley was kind of highlighted in Minnesota. You know, I mean, he wasn't necessarily focusing on that group. He was just exposing the fraud and it happened to be a correlation. Rodney: Somalis. Yeah, Somali. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Dre: Of individuals who were involved in that fraud. And so of course the question goes to she involved in that Because that population is not that large there. It appears to be that large I think it's like I want to say between 100 200 thousand simoleons in minnesota in in total I believe Right. And so from a voting standpoint, they do make up a large percentage of people. But an overall like population standpoint, they're relatively small and so that means the community is small right and so for her ⁓ Rodney: Right. Yeah. Dre: to ⁓ be where she is in the senate i'm sure she she knows what's going on in the state of minnesota, right? So it's hard for me to believe that she had no idea What was going on? She had no idea that this was happening in her state, right? Like I don't know it seems Seems a little bit suspicious to me and then the net worth thing again. I don't know that seems a little bit suspicious to me, but you know ⁓ it's a coincidence Rodney: Yeah. Right, yeah. Look, there's no way that you're stealing millions of dollars, her to the side, even though she definitely, in my opinion, knew. There's no way that people are stealing millions of dollars and people who are not involved don't know. There are people who are just family, friends, maybe even the toddler that you didn't know was listening to your conversation. There are people that knew. Like there's a lot of people that knew about this and didn't say anything and maybe even benefited off of it. wild and it does beg the question, how much fraud is there really? And does it all go back to? Dre: You Elon tried to Elon tried to tell us like it's it's crazy. Just just how much like I went to a I went to an air show this weekend here in Houston at the Houston Aerospace Museum they had like the Navy and the Air Force and Marines and stuff in town and so Some of the things they show was like their drone vehicles that they have these are unmanned unarmed vehicles, right? bro the The cost of these things is insane, bro. Like one of these things can be between like one and $5 million. And then you see, the drones that Iran is producing for like $30,000. Right now. Maybe ⁓ extra margin is not called fraud, but it's called something because it's like, how are they able to get away with these crazy charges? You know what I'm saying? So ⁓ like the fraud is, so baked into institution. That it's just hard, it's hard not to skim off the top. It's hard, you know, it's kind of like, it's hard, it's hard not to take it because it almost seemed like there's no repercussions for it in government. seemed like everybody's in, it seemed like everybody's in on it, but the citizens, you know, but the everyday citizens, everybody else is in on it, you know, behind the scenes. Um, but I use that as an example. Like, you know, that's a, these are big corporate companies that are overcharging the government. mean, again, that's not fraud, but it's part of the waste. Rodney: Right, I see what you mean. I see what you mean. Right. Right. Dre: You know what I'm saying? probably it asked it contributes to the race. And at some point, to me, it kind of does become fraud because at what point is the markup so excessive that, I mean, you just charge, you just overcharge it for the sake of overcharging. Rodney: Yeah. I mean, honestly, and I know this doesn't sound right, especially to true entrepreneurs and true people in the business. But when you're selling stuff to the government, if you're making over 500%, like just, mean, come on. if you're making over 500 % and that's just a number that I thought I was like, okay, double, get it. Triple maybe. Dre: Hahaha. Rodney: for you pushing it, but if it costs you. 100,000 make something and then you charge the government $600,000 and it's just there's real reason. It's just like even if the R &D cost you 100, like it just come on now. Come on, it's it's it. I do think it's funny you mentioned it yet. It does have this thin line of what is fraud. If you're taking an excessive profit, from government funds or government agencies, like it does to see it does seem like fraud. does like fraud. And that's probably one of the reasons why people like Elon come in and make cheaper I'm not saying NASA was trying to defraud anybody, but Who knows all the vendors and contractors that they use to build those rockets and how much they were charging versus when SpaceX went to build these rockets and figuring out they can build cheaper reusable rockets. And just imagining how many other things and I, and it seems like even with, with, Andrew from Palmer lucky, it seems like he's also going and doing things just off the fact that we can save money building things for war. And it's, ⁓ it'd be way better than what's already been used. not only is it better. Dre: Mm-hmm. Rodney: One thing that he mentioned was a lot of weapons that they build can be manufactured like a Ford factory, GM factory. so that adds a whole other layer of reusability. If ever got a war, it wouldn't just be, got to go get this this one factory or these two or three factories. We could literally use. all the infrastructure that we have to build these things. Dre: Mm-hmm. Rodney: We need, definitely need more of an audit at the same time. I think we know why these audits are not going through crystal Dre: 100 % 100 % Well, shout out to Nick Charlie, man. I'm excited to continue to support him and to support work. Oh Yeah, they already warned him to get security I saw people warn him and he spoke about it as well I'm sure he has gotten security at this point for sure because he's been attacked by people So I hope he got security but even though security is not always not enough, know Charlie Kirk has security as well And clearly that wasn't enough to spare his life Rodney: He needs to be careful, man. He... then. Honestly, he's too young to know the danger of what he's doing. I think he's too young and naive. I love his work. Don't get me wrong. But I think the kid is 21. This kid does not know what he's doing, Dre: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Shamoff asked him about that when he was on the All In podcast. And his answer to me implied that he doesn't understand. But I think that's the beauty of it because we all have been there before. And so he doesn't understand, yeah, it's pure. you know what? This is what's going to allow him to do his best work because he isn't jaded mentally by danger and all. He's just in the work. He's just literally in the work, which as a fan of good journalism. Rodney: Yeah, it's pure. It's pure. He's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he is. Dre: I love that. to point, it's obviously some real world physical risk to that. I do hope that some people who are older in his life, his parents, grandparents, whoever, are in his ear and I hope he's listening to them for sure. Rodney: because I knew that he was young and naive when he was like what's wrong with uncovering fraud? Dre: I'm ⁓ Rodney: said, ⁓ am I doing wrong? Dre: Yeah, wow. Rodney: Yeah I said, he gotta be 21, 22. He said, what am I doing wrong? Dre: And those crazy is he He cutting off like big pipelines of cash. It's not like it's like a hundred thousand two hundred thousand a million Ten million. No, this thing is cutting off hundreds of millions of dollars Which means that money was literally flowing to some people to families like to a lot of people where these are Tens of millions hundreds of millions of dollars and he coming in and like Rodney: Yes. Yeah. Millions. Yes. Families. Families. families. Dre: getting these investigations and they're just cutting it off. So people are real hurt. There's people who are really hurt and who are really angry at him because he has infected their day to day life. Rodney: destroying it. Yeah. Very angry. Hopefully he hopefully lives a long life and and yeah, he focuses on the work and people. They just find a better way to, I guess, make their money because. Because I wouldn't do that job, I wouldn't have I wouldn't do his job. ⁓ Dre: It seemed like a very rewarding job, but I wouldn't want to it I do it anonymously. Rodney: That's the job. the job. Yeah, he because I can't even say he's brave because he's fearless because he doesn't know like I I love what he's doing but to be brave you got to be scared you like you have to be he's scared ⁓ he got scared once he got hit Dre: See, see about. Yeah, yeah, no, he not he not scared. He don't even understand what's going on yet I mean he understand the fraud aspect but brain might not even fully understand that he gonna start to realize that every state gonna have this problem and you know look at it, you know at one point you know realize ⁓ this is a hundred billion dollar problem He gonna look at the web of what he's uncovered if he even they would even go that far at some point somebody gonna stop him Cuz it's gonna become too much Rodney: ⁓ yeah, everywhere. Hopefully, right now they're cheering for him because he was in Minnesota and he went to California. Okay, go to Texas. to Florida. Go Texas, go to Florida. He'd be wondering, he's why are they upset? Dre: thought about is he gonna come to Texas next I thought about that. I don't ⁓ know Rodney: This is a kid. He should, if he's so focused on the work, should. He should, that'd be dangerous though, cause ⁓ would learn real quick how things are really set up. They're cheering them on now. Yeah, they're that on. They're cheering that on. Go to Florida, go to Texas, go to work, go, ⁓ Dre: Bye. Yeah, yeah. No, the Republicans, they're gonna steer him, they're gonna steer him where they want him to go next. He gonna be in Michigan next. Rodney: I can tell he's a little bit of a punk. He's not seen the bigger, because he should go to more than just Blue States. That's just like almost the obvious thing that would be good for his career is to expose all fraud. But he's a young dude, so he's probably falling behind with the older guys that he looks to or saying where to go. Dre: percent. Rodney: And so he's probably just doing that. Dre: Well, I think part of what his journalism is, and I could be wrong. I think this was the case in Minnesota, and I'm sure it was probably the case in California. It came from an insider who had inside information and who of came to him and said, hey, you should take a look at what's happening here. And he just happened to kind of like dig deeper into it. And so I'm sure if there was somebody in the state of Texas or in the state of Florida, and maybe they already have, I'm sure at this point he's probably getting flows of information. Rodney: ⁓ shoot. Dre: Hopefully credible information from all over the place, but I'm sure someone probably, you know, stood up as a whistleblower in either of those states and brought something before him that was credible. I'm sure he would take a look at it. I just know that was the case in Minnesota. Again, I don't know about California cause I don't know how that originated. ⁓ but I think it just takes a whistleblower, know, to kind of provide some insight. Rodney: Yeah. Yeah, hope they embrace him. I just hope that the guys that currently support him would still support him when he goes ⁓ these other places. Cause I don't want, cause I ⁓ like as a young guy, when you start to learn more about how things work, can kind of, that affect you. hopefully, hopefully they treat them just the same as they do now. And he doesn't lose any of that, that, that and validation, I guess that he, that he's probably getting right now. ⁓ But yeah, have other topics that they give you. Dre: If he goes the other side, yeah. Yeah. 100%. Rodney: it Claude? Claude had something going on? Dre: Yeah. okay. So Claude design, just what like ⁓ Friday, think, or Thursday, Friday, I don't know. Some, some late, someday late last week, brand new feet product, ⁓ feature. They can basically do full fledged UI design and, graphic work directly and Claude. So it's a imagine, you know, this is actually pretty pertinent for what I do for, for, for my, for my company. Rodney: I think so, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Dre: So we put together decks every month, consolidating and reporting around marketing how SEO is performing, how paid ads are performing, how content that we may have posted for a client is performing. And we basically put it into a deck so that the client can review it, share it around other people in the organization. Historically, this deck has been put together manually. ⁓ People to go fetch the data. put, you know, I might have a template, you put together slides. Tons of people can relate to that, right? If you work in a company today and have to present anything to your leadership team, you've experienced that. If you've had to prepare for a board meeting, you've experienced that. Clot design essentially kind of takes that entire process and simplifies it, right? And so it basically becomes your design, your designer for you. And it is really trained on like user interfaces. And I've used it a little bit and so far, so far it's been, it's been really good. But I think that the story that I thought was really interesting here is not even just a product. Cause I expect nothing less from a product standpoint, from Anthropic, as we've talked about before, they're really good at product releases. They're very good at now in use cases. They're very good at executing on the product. Like we all agreed is phenomenal product. So that wasn't really the story. The story to me more so was Figma. think the date that. the this was announced. Figma stock had dropped like five or 6%. I think it had probably even dropped even more. But since Figma IPO last summer in 2025, this this the stock is down. The stock is down 80 % from post IPO highs and 50 % year over year. So now I think it's sitting around 18, 19 dollars a share. Rodney: geez. This looks horrible, ⁓ cheese ⁓ my goodness. Dre: Yeah, this year has been a bloodbath for them. It's been a bloodbath. 30 % it dropped 30 % in January, 13 % in February, another almost 30 % in March. Yeah, so it's not a Rodney: ⁓ my goodness. And weren't they supposed to be getting acquired by but it fell through? Is that what happened? Dre: Yeah. At one point Adobe was going to acquire them, I think for almost $30 billion. they ended up going public, I think at like 60, a little bit north of 60 billion. So imagine that at that, when they went public, was, it was, it was crazy hype, right? Like they were almost double what they were going to initially get purchased for. So, you know, from a board and from an executive standpoint, they probably thought that was the right decision. We were going public where obviously worth all this and that. Now you look at them today, then I mean, they're fraction of that, right? Rodney: Yeah. Do they, is crazy. So do they think that... Dre: Yeah, the market cap right now is nine is nine. Let's just say $10 billion to be fair. Rodney: So were they trying to convince the market that they were the next Adobe? Is that what they, I mean, cause you go public at $60 billion. Right. Right. That's not like, that's not no little, that's, that's basically saying, Hey, the stock is going to be, that's basically saying, Hey, look, companies worth 60 billion, but we believe it'll be one day we were 120 to 200, 300. Dre: That's a lot. Rodney: I guess I'm just, don't know where that, that come from? I mean, I get it because. Dre: There was a lot of excitement when they were public. I don't know why the stock went up 250 % the day of closing. Yeah, they closed nearly right under $70 billion, $68 billion market cap. Rodney: I can only guess, I think Figma is one those products that... It's really nice design tool. As we were talking about before this call, before this podcast, there was sketch. There was once Zeppelin. guess there was Adobe Photoshop as well, but they came in and of shut ⁓ all up and they became like the default design tool for startups, for just personal projects, the ease of use of creating a design and then sharing it. That was a big one, I think, because most design software was Dre: Yeah. Rodney: You have to download it. It has to run on your computer. And they pretty much just took that to the cloud. Dre: Yep. They basically were like Google docs for design. Like that was like the whole premise when they came out of it was like, I'm pretty sure they really leverage the same web technology as Google docs. Right. So you can collaborate simultaneously with somebody else from a design perspective, which bro, don't think people don't even realize at that time, you could not do that. You literally had to have the same file and be editing different layers in that file. I hope you merge it together and there's no problems. Rodney: Right. No, you couldn't. Dre: But like the idea of you collaborating in real time on the same thing and seeing the changes in real time was not, was not a thing back then. And they were revolutionary when they came out. I mean, like you said, they kind of crushed, I mean, and I'm sure some of those tools are still around, but they're no more, they're just shell of what they were, right? They're former selves. Rodney: Exactly. Like was, that was such a, that was such a innovative to do. I mean, now we take it for granted that we can design stuff just by going to a website at, and a high level. But. I guess now with Claude coming out with the design tool, that kind of does beg the question, how many other huge software tools will Claude and ChatGBT be able to kind of knock out? I mean, this is, I mean, I'm not saying things are done. There's a possibility that they can do something. I just don't see what exactly they could do because they already were on a downward slope. before cloud design. Dre: Yeah. I just don't think there'll be as big of a business from a valuation standpoint as they once were, but I still think they can be strong where they are continually continuing to be strong right now is on collaboration. Right. So they're still strong in that area where design teams, you know, if you work on big design teams, you know, if you worked on big product teams, you know, you got a lot of people collaborating, you got product managers, you got engineers, you got designers, you got legal, you got copy, you got all these people that need access. So, you know, unless Rodney: ⁓ right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Dre: You know, Claude is trying to really with them deep in that aspect. I think Figma will still have a lane, you know, will they still have the evaluation? Probably not. But I think all software, all software right now is reevaluated for the next era of Right. I think also, I think you have to, I think you have to take a look at every software company and kind of reevaluate what is their actual mode. I mean, we just saw to go into another set, you know, a segment into software. I don't know if you saw the announcement from Salesforce. They just launched something called Salesforce. I think it's called 360. I believe it is where they basically have created an entire API layer for all of their products and services. So basically you can, you can just interact. Everything has been turned into an API. And then they've, they have like the MCP server as well that you can kind of use to interact with all other services because they're realizing that the interface is changing. Rodney: Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. Dre: The interface is going to be different. You may interface with Salesforce and Claw. You may interface with Salesforce and chat GPT or Gemini in Grok, whatever the case may be. It really is just the backend, at least in the case of Salesforce, that is really powerful. But again, my point is I think every software is having that, is undergone a from a valuation standpoint. So, Figma is just one they may even want to going back private again. right? That may give them more leverage that they don't necessarily have to respond to the public markets because the public markets can be brutal to executive teams or management teams rather in of how they make decisions, right? It's hard to be clear minded when you got analysts beaten down your throat every single quarter asking you are you going to do to counter this and now you got to be defensive instead of being offensive. Again, it changes the psychology I think of how you run companies. So Rodney: It does. Dre: You know, we'll see, we'll see what happens there. But, um, but yeah, they're, they're, they're, they're down, they're down big time. So it might be a good short opportunity for some people. Uh, and I don't know the last thing on the, on the clock, cause you asked a question about what, what other. Verticals essentially are they're going to go after just today. I haven't played around with it yet though, but just today they released a feature where you can build live dashboards directly. Like you can connect data. Rodney: Yeah. Dre: Uh, to live dashboards directly into clause. So for example, if you, you know, want to check your analytics for your app or analytics for your website or cut your CRM, whatever tools you have, if you want to take that data connected to claw and then you can essentially go live dashboard. So now, you know, you may not need a tool like Tableau or you may not need a tool like, you know, Microsoft power BI, right? I mean, those are advanced analytic tools. So, you know, I would expect it to take some time before a clock, you know, gets to that level. But that clearly is what they're building towards. Again, that was a whole product segment category of just building analytic tools, right, for websites and web applications, right? now they're going into that, making that much easier. So it seemed to be that they're slicing, I don't know how they're doing it. mean, you know, how they're, what the strategy is behind it, but they're slicing after these verticals that are very, very deep from a productivity standpoint. Rodney: Yeah. very interesting to think about how the AI strategy is going to end up being. just, it just overall, I'm curious to see how it unfolds over time. On one hand, I'm thinking they should focus. But on the other hand, this could be the things to focus on. They are probably seeing usage patterns, trends that are saying, hey, people are asking Claude to do this and it doesn't do this well, but there's tons of people who are asking this. It wouldn't surprise me if they were looking at something in the background, product managers were looking and they saw people asking Claude to make designs and do all types of stuff. And they said, you know what? Since people are already asking us, let's just add that. it doesn't have to be, I think, ⁓ that does still leave room for something like FIMBA to exist because They might still be the premier solution for just as every Microsoft Apple laptop has a notepad. There's still note taker apps like notion, obsidian, et cetera. So maybe Figma will end up being fine, but I will I don't see I mean, it's hard to see a turnaround from where they're, mean, they've, they've, they've, they've fallen a lot. it's, it looks bad, but ⁓ well, hopefully, hopefully they do a turnaround and figure things out. And, okay. So. Speaking of like just companies, this was random. This came up, it'd like an hour before the pod. Tim Cook stepped down as CEO. Tim Cook has been the CEO of Apple for, it looks like 11 years. And stepped down and who's going to replace him is guy named John Ternes. And was working for Apple for last, me get the, let try to get, try to get the exact, it looks like 25 years as a senior senior VP hardware engineer. I believe that's, that's, that's somewhat of the title. Dre: I 25 years. Rodney: Essentially he was working in the hardware engineering space. So we had to mention it because Apple is probably maybe what, still top three tech companies, maybe top three companies on the NASDAQ. So. We don't know really though, if there has been any reason Tim Cook is stepping down, like if he's sick or even lying, something like that. He could just be like, look, I ran it for 11 years. This is a new phase or. Maybe there was the results sort there. I don't know. It seems like Apple is still pretty good. Dre: Well, he's not stepping away though. He's not stepping away. He's going to be going into the, I think, executive chairman role. So he'll still oversee the board. still oversee some management stuff, you know, like just making sure like the company's going in the right direction. I think they say he's going to handle like some policy stuff because, you know, he has connections in the government and stuff like that. So he'll be helping unblock for them, but just not running day to day as with the CEO is, you know. Rodney: Interesting. I see. Dre: That's to see your role doing day to day. So he won't be doing day to day, but he'll just be executive chair. Rodney: Yeah. He's been doing it for a long time. He's probably tired. Dre: He has been doing it for a long time. And I do think that we are in this transition period right now. And so it's just probably time for a refresh. But what I thought was most interesting is let's go over some of the numbers. Because think if there was an executive Hall of Fame, I think you've got to put him in there. Because his numbers, they're They're ridiculous. So let's over exactly what the numbers are. So the Tim Cook error. Tim joined August, 2011, and he's going to be leaving September of this year. When he joined in 2011, Apple's market cap was $350 billion, which was huge. Today, Apple's market cap is $4 trillion. That's a thousand percent growth. That's more than 10X. It became the first public company to hit a trillion dollars in 2018. Rodney: Wow, yeah. care. Dre: Uh first company they had uh, two trillion dollars in 2020 and then eventually it hit four trillion dollars at four trillion dollars, which is crazy annual revenue in 2011 the annual revenue was 108 billion dollars Today or fiscal year 2025 annual revenue was 416 billion dollars So it's more than 4x. That's a 285 growth Uh the most recent quarter alone. Um Apple is dead $143 billion in a single quarter. That's in Q1 of 2026. That's up 16 % from last year. Let me repeat that. In Q1 of this year, Apple has hit $143.8 billion in revenue in a single quarter, up 16%. These are crazy growth numbers for revenue that is a crazy side. This is over a hundred billion dollars. Even if revenue grew 5%, that would be amazing. Hell, if it grew 3%, that would be amazing. We're talking about 16 % double digit growth year over year in the quarter. The services business, when he joined in 2011, the services business was doing $2.95 billion in revenue. Today, Apple services business does a hundred plus billion dollars in revenue. It's essentially a fortune. 40 company inside of Apple. could be its own corporation and it will be listed on the Fortune 40 list. Some of the services that he helped kind of steer was, I mean, the services included in that are Apple Music, iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple TV +, Apple News, Fitness +, and Arcade. So those are all considered under services. All of those services combined to a hundred plus billion dollars. He helped grow the retail stores to over 500 locations. operations in 200 plus countries. They're damn near in every single country. mean, I think it's like 230 countries or 20 countries, something like that. They're damn near in every single country. They've added over a hundred thousand employees since he's been there. They got over 2.5 billion active devices. And the new product categories launched under him were Apple watch, AirPods, Apple vision pro, and then the Apple can silicon, uh, transition was all under him. Those are huge. So again, if we're just talking pure numbers, again, if there was a hall of fame for executives, I think he had to have he be first ballot, no question, his Jersey being the Raptors. I mean, those are impeccable numbers. He has to be one of the best considered of the best, if not the best executive and public Wall Street history, just based on the returns. Rodney: I think it's undeniable. I think there was always a question of when he was appointed as CEO in 2011, whether or not he would live up to the legacy of Apple, especially Steve Jobs. And it looks like, yeah, the numbers show he did. And Apple is not only Are they doing well? They're doing great. They're doing phenomenal and they're still growing. They're not. They're not falling down. slowing down. still growing. Somehow they managed to still, even hundreds of millions of dollars of ⁓ value, they still managed to get even bigger. They still managed to make other products. yeah, Tim is ⁓ clearly amazing CEO. I'm looking forward to seeing how John does things. I don't know who he is, just like how I didn't know who Tim was. before, but yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Dre: Yeah, it's interesting kind of seeing the arc of their executives, right? Because Steve was the creative visionary and, you know, he laid the foundation for which could an innovative to just generate creative products, right? And then you had Tim Cook, who was a supply chain genius. I just read this book about how Apple essentially build China right and how they basically is about essentially how they built the supply chain, which is remarkable I mean, it's an engineering marvel in and of itself how they were able to create these supply chain networks and manufacturing to where it is today and then you see what China has basically taken it and What they're doing with electric vehicles and other areas. It's because they learned that from Apple They learn manufacturing from Apple Apple taught them how to manufacture how to make machines how to do precision manufacturing But it's amazing, right? Tim Cook kind of scaled the supply chain. And John is coming in as the hardware guy, the guy that deeply understands hardware, deeply understands silicon, seems to be the right set skills for where the world is heading to next. And so it's interesting to kind of see each layer of the cake from land and groundwork for creativity to having the guy that understands how to scale that on a scale to now the guy who can really take it. who could innovate on top of it for the next chapter of computing. So yeah, I think it goes to show that Apple's management team seems to very thoughtful in how they approach this. yeah, I think he's going to be really successful. At he got all the resources to be successful. mean, the only thing that can kind of mess it up is himself, I Rodney: Yeah, Apple is just the best at making computers. That's just what that's just clear. They make the best computers and they the computers come in in all these different forms where they're not always like a traditional computer. Of course, you have the MacBooks, even the new MacBook Neo, which is at a much more affordable price point of $500. It's ⁓ Dre: crazy. Rodney: It, that expands the ecosystem even, even more. It's like, if you, if you get that, the likelihood that you get the iPhone? What's the likelihood that you get the iPad? ⁓ it's, it's, they want you in this ecosystem. They've created this world essentially, and they want you in it. There's a lot of value in it. It's a closed loop. And thinking that John is going to be the guy who. brings forward the Pros and then maybe even the consumer version of Vision glasses that are lighter, ⁓ slimmer. but I see that unfolding. So I'm looking forward to that. Dre: Likewise, likewise. All right, what else we got? We got anything else? Or are we wrapping it up? Rodney: I think we're wrapping it up. I think that's the last. Let's see. Should I make one comment on anthropic? Let me see. Let me see. Let me see. Let me see if I got anything. Dre: Go for it. What you got? They're fired on all cylinders right now, man. So I don't know what can be said about them. Rodney: What can I say? What can I say? What can I say? Well, know, me and Brylin have a bet. I'm upset it's on record. Me and Brylin have a bet. I'm not going to say the amount, it's five figure amount. Something along that. Maybe it's not that much. I always confused. Four figure, I think. But still. And bet is. if by November 1st, 2027. if the narrative on the topic has changed, in which case they are widely known Better yet, let me phrase it this way. Enthopic by that date is not still known as the good guys, then I win. It's just that simple. Right now, they're the great guys, they're the good guys. And Ryland, his take is that they will remain good guys. They'll remain the great guys. And my take is they will be known as hypocrites. They will be known they won't be known as the good guys. They'll be looked at as villains by everybody who has played in the game. Right now, they look great. They're doing great, their products are doing pretty good. They've had a few bumps in the road, but for the most part, they seem to be doing okay. But I think that narrative is going to shift. I think that. They're not going to get away with wiping away a million jobs and remain good guys in the eyes of the public. They've been able to do so thus far. even saw, especially with the government move, the government move, they denied the government, people started downloading Claude and leave chat, GBT and blah, blah, blah. How do you transfer your information over? Dre: Mm-hmm. Rodney: And people, I guess, believe that they wouldn't, I don't know, but they, guess, so I think that will change. But I guess that's all I'll say on that. Like you said, they're doing well right now. can't, what can I say? But the bet is 2027. So there's plenty of time. Yeah, yeah. Dre: ⁓ So we got a little bit of time then yeah, we got plenty of time then we got plenty of time We'll see how it plays out. But yeah, all right. This is a good one, man Rodney: Yeah. All right,