Search Captions & Ask AI

The Stablecoin Future, Milei's Memecoin, DOGE for the DoD, Grok 3, Why Stripe Stays Private

February 22, 2025 / 01:45:41

This episode features discussions on various topics including the rise of Stripe, the impact of remote work, and the recent controversies surrounding meme coins. Guests include the Coulson brothers, who share insights on their experiences with Stripe and the tech industry.

Jason Calacanis hosts alongside David Friedberg and Chamath Palihapitiya, who reflect on their past experiences in Silicon Valley and the evolution of Stripe. They discuss the missed investment opportunities and the growth of Stripe into a major player in the fintech sector.

The conversation shifts to the implications of remote work, with Jamie Dimon's recent comments on the inefficiencies of virtual meetings. The guests weigh in on the balance between remote and in-office work, particularly for early-career professionals.

Additionally, the episode touches on the controversial promotion of a meme coin by Argentine President Javier Milei, which resulted in significant financial losses for investors. The hosts critique the ethics of such endorsements and the broader implications for leadership.

Finally, the episode concludes with a discussion on the potential for AI in addressing complex scientific challenges, including the development of new technologies for disease resistance in plants and the future of research funding.

TL;DR

The episode discusses Stripe's growth, remote work challenges, meme coin controversies, and AI's role in scientific advancements.

Video

00:00:00
all right everybody welcome back to the
00:00:02
number one podcast in the world I am
00:00:07
your host Jason calanis and with me
00:00:09
again couple of my besties David
00:00:12
fredberg you know him as our Sultan of
00:00:14
science lots to get into today Sultan
00:00:16
huh how you
00:00:17
doing I'm keeping busy thank you keeping
00:00:20
busy jamath and I on Valentine's Day we
00:00:23
had a little Trio we were on MK Ultra
00:00:26
podcast and it hit number four Allin
00:00:28
podcast of course number one uh trat
00:00:31
Reflections on our Megan Kelly our
00:00:34
triumphant Megan Kelly Valentine's
00:00:37
spectacular I was fine it was good okay
00:00:40
wow thanks you're such a great performer
00:00:42
here giving me so much to work with
00:00:44
chamath as always but it was a great
00:00:46
great pod shout out to our friend and
00:00:47
friend of the Pod Megan Kelly and also
00:00:51
we've got an incredible Duo for the
00:00:54
first time we've invited a Duo to join
00:00:57
us in The Red Throne David Sax's seat
00:01:00
busy saving the country but we're really
00:01:03
excited Coulson brothers are with us
00:01:06
thank you for having us you guys want to
00:01:07
hear a great lost porn story John has
00:01:09
one for you the last time we met jamaath
00:01:12
was 18 years ago when we were working on
00:01:16
our prior startup automatic with Harge
00:01:19
and and cool tagar you were how old they
00:01:22
were 17 18 19 was one of these San
00:01:24
Francisco setups where it was like a
00:01:25
two-bedroom apartment there was a few of
00:01:28
us living there I think maybe six people
00:01:30
working out of there and a normal number
00:01:32
exactly normal number is to load up a
00:01:34
two bed apartment with and then jamath
00:01:36
you came and and visited this is what's
00:01:38
so brutal about this okay I could have
00:01:40
invested a
00:01:43
dollar one single dollar and I would
00:01:45
have made a billion dollars I remember
00:01:47
meeting these guys and I was with Alan
00:01:50
Morgan who was my boss at the time I was
00:01:52
a junior principal at Mayfield shout out
00:01:55
and I think we tried to guys I don't
00:01:58
know if you remember Patrick and John I
00:01:59
think we tried to invest in in the
00:02:01
business or it didn't happen or then you
00:02:03
ended up shutting it down but right away
00:02:05
you spun back up and started stripe and
00:02:08
I just watched from the sidelines the
00:02:09
whole way it is such a first of all it's
00:02:12
an amazing it's an well no it's an
00:02:14
amazing place for silen valley where you
00:02:15
can like see these people just keep
00:02:18
pushing the boundaries up and up and up
00:02:20
number one number two the thing that is
00:02:22
such a learning for me is like why
00:02:23
didn't I just pick up the phone and call
00:02:25
them at any point in the last 17 years
00:02:28
what am I thinking so
00:02:31
brutal let your winners
00:02:33
[Music]
00:02:38
ride and instead we open source it to
00:02:41
the fans and they've just gone crazy
00:02:43
with
00:02:44
[Music]
00:02:47
it it is oh my God so brutal two things
00:02:50
one um first you probably don't remember
00:02:53
this but I remember that meeting that
00:02:54
you know we offered you you you want
00:02:57
something to drink we did not have a
00:02:58
broad selection I think we had water or
00:02:59
or milk in the fridge and and you asked
00:03:03
for a glass of water um and so I went
00:03:06
over to the sink and I realized that we
00:03:07
hadn't really been on top of the the
00:03:09
washing up so I had to sort of gingerly
00:03:11
wash a glass for you to get your glass
00:03:14
of water which um can't remember if you
00:03:16
touched it over the course of that
00:03:17
meeting but then secondly like when we
00:03:18
started out with
00:03:20
stripe like the fintech sector basically
00:03:24
didn't exist I mean the the the word
00:03:26
hardly existed and didn't exist yeah
00:03:29
yeah people just didn't think that I
00:03:31
mean you know teenagers weren't actually
00:03:33
teenagers at the time but you know
00:03:34
people in the early 20s college kids
00:03:36
taking on you know PayPal or the
00:03:38
incumbents or regulated Financial
00:03:39
Services or whatever you know people
00:03:40
just didn't think it was a good idea so
00:03:42
I don't know uh you you you you
00:03:43
certainly were like the vast majority of
00:03:46
investors we spoke with in the first
00:03:48
year or two of stri turned us down so H
00:03:50
you were you were not anomalous John
00:03:54
tell us what that meeting was like and
00:03:55
to just take you back to the moment
00:03:57
here's a picture stop stop here's a
00:04:00
picture no striking here's a picture of
00:04:03
pre
00:04:05
pre nine figure chath oh my God and this
00:04:09
is when he shopped at Macy's does that
00:04:12
maybe that jogs some memories John when
00:04:13
that guy walked in with his khakis and
00:04:15
that light pink Brooks brother shirt
00:04:18
what did you think I don't know I think
00:04:19
you can uh you can go back and find
00:04:21
historical photos of anyone and use them
00:04:23
to like if that's the worst historical
00:04:24
photo you have that's pretty that's
00:04:27
pretty lightweight stuff exactly Jason
00:04:28
do you want to tell everyone in the
00:04:30
audience what stripe is and I mean do we
00:04:32
have to okay stripe processes payments
00:04:35
this is a 10 plus year old startup that
00:04:40
basically if you're a startup company
00:04:41
and you want to do transactions you use
00:04:43
stripe for example the all-in startup
00:04:46
uses stripe to pay for the tickets and
00:04:48
then we give these guys for some reason
00:04:50
a half million dollars every year no
00:04:52
discount they don't sponsor the event
00:04:54
and uh they're making a fortune they got
00:04:56
10,000 employees and uh the company
00:04:58
changed the world we've never been uh
00:05:00
we've never been offered to sponsor the
00:05:01
event I didn't know this was the this
00:05:03
was an option but he hit us up for a
00:05:05
half Millie last year I mean maybe this
00:05:07
year you we can hit you up negotiate it
00:05:09
live that's broadly accurate I would
00:05:11
just fact check that it's nowadays not
00:05:13
just startups even though they run on
00:05:15
strip also the world's artist
00:05:16
Enterprises Herz Amazon Ford all these
00:05:19
kind of companies and so when we started
00:05:21
out with stripe we thought it would only
00:05:23
be for startups like we thought those
00:05:24
were the people who needed a problem
00:05:25
solved and we thought payments was
00:05:27
broken for them and as time went on we
00:05:30
just found out it was kind of broken for
00:05:31
everyone and so sorry and is it public
00:05:33
how much volume you guys do a year do
00:05:35
you guys talk about that it's more than
00:05:36
a trillion dollars a year a trillion
00:05:38
dollars a year is process through your
00:05:39
network yeah which works out to you
00:05:41
Global GDP is around 100 trillion year
00:05:44
so it works out to around 1% of global
00:05:45
GDP and you could say well you know GDP
00:05:47
is is final goods and and you know
00:05:50
stripe processes more than only final
00:05:52
goods so it's not if only you say that
00:05:55
okay well look you could say it's not
00:05:56
exactly the right or a fair comparison
00:05:58
or something but but stripe mostly is
00:06:00
used to sell final goods so I think it's
00:06:02
I think it's reasonable and just the
00:06:04
other thing I'd say is you know people I
00:06:05
think reasonably think of stripe as a
00:06:07
payments company because you know that
00:06:09
is certainly what we started out doing
00:06:10
and uh and it's uh certainly the largest
00:06:13
line of our business but the thing we
00:06:15
kind of realized a couple years in is
00:06:17
that you know what business like the the
00:06:20
the structural secular thing that's
00:06:21
happening is that every kind of money
00:06:24
movement is going from being manually
00:06:26
orchestrated to being orchestrated by
00:06:29
software
00:06:30
and there's you know some program
00:06:31
somewhere making the thing happen and so
00:06:34
because of that like just because of
00:06:35
what we hear from customers and the the
00:06:37
pull there we're now you know helping
00:06:39
with lending we're helping with card
00:06:41
issuance we're helping with Treasury and
00:06:43
money storage we're helping with
00:06:44
crossborder money movement stable coins
00:06:46
we got to talk about St coins got a
00:06:48
stable yeah why' you do a stable coin
00:06:50
stable coins are finally happening and
00:06:52
they're really useful like we followed
00:06:54
crypto for a long time the Bitcoin white
00:06:55
paper dropped in 2008 the year before we
00:06:58
started working on stripe and so it's
00:06:59
been funny where stripe and crypto have
00:07:02
grown up together and you know we tried
00:07:04
to make Bitcoin happen as a payment
00:07:07
method on stripe just wasn't that good
00:07:09
as a payment method I mean it's good as
00:07:10
a store of value as kind of a gold
00:07:13
substitute but transactions are slow
00:07:15
transactions are expensive you never
00:07:17
know exactly how much you're going to
00:07:18
get because it's not denominated in
00:07:19
dollars the stable coins are now really
00:07:22
good if you look at you know something
00:07:23
on an ethereum L2 or salana or something
00:07:25
like that and so we bought a company
00:07:27
called bridge late last year who is
00:07:29
building the stripe of stable coins and
00:07:31
so if you're I mean I think you guys
00:07:33
have talked about them a little bit but
00:07:34
you know people like SpaceX using them
00:07:36
for treasury management people using
00:07:38
them to offer US dollar services to
00:07:40
people all around the world just stable
00:07:43
coins are I think the first really big
00:07:46
payments use case and I think it's
00:07:47
finally coming because the tech is good
00:07:49
enough is there a moment guys where is
00:07:51
it a regulatory event where you'll say
00:07:53
the Visa Mastercard dapoli can get
00:07:55
challenged is there a set of boundary
00:07:57
conditions that you have written down
00:07:59
where when you can check a few of these
00:08:01
boxes you know that it's time for those
00:08:02
companies to get dismantled the behavior
00:08:05
we're seeing right now is that stable
00:08:08
coins are most interesting and seeing
00:08:10
most adoption where there is some crossb
00:08:12
component and so uh you need to manage
00:08:15
corporate treasury around the world you
00:08:17
want to send remittances to people in
00:08:18
other countries often it's people in
00:08:20
other countries want to whole dollar
00:08:21
balances or things like that what we've
00:08:23
always seen is that I don't know in the
00:08:25
US things work pretty well in Europe
00:08:28
things work pretty well and so we even
00:08:30
see this pre- crypto where the way
00:08:33
people pay for stuff has been radically
00:08:35
changing you know UPI in India picks in
00:08:37
Brazil you have all these designed by
00:08:39
central banks actually really good kind
00:08:41
of government run venmo Solutions those
00:08:44
have all happened in Emerging Markets
00:08:46
broadly and not in the US and Europe we
00:08:48
certainly keep our eyes peeled for that
00:08:50
changing at some point but I think right
00:08:52
now I don't know P would you characteriz
00:08:53
it that way that like a lot of the
00:08:54
interesting stuff we see is happening
00:08:56
internationally yes so you know with
00:08:58
respect to visa and Mass Master Card I
00:09:00
think an important thing to keep in mind
00:09:01
is that most of the interchange fees
00:09:03
that are charged to Merchants and you
00:09:04
know you mentioned what we charge the
00:09:06
all-in podcast you know the vast
00:09:07
majority of that flows right back to the
00:09:09
uh to the issuing Banks uh in the form
00:09:10
of interchange and almost all of that
00:09:13
flows right back to the consumers in the
00:09:15
form of you know the lending that the
00:09:17
that the you know the cards themselves
00:09:18
represent but then also in card rewards
00:09:20
like card programs are not actually big
00:09:22
profit pools uh for most of the major
00:09:24
Banks and so I think any you know any
00:09:26
substitute for for visa and MasterCard
00:09:29
in that sense you know the sort of a
00:09:30
question of well are the consumer
00:09:31
rewards going to go down are the
00:09:33
consumer protections going to go down
00:09:34
will we be extending less consumer
00:09:35
credit and maybe other points in that
00:09:37
space are viable but you know it it is a
00:09:38
set of trade-offs and it's not as simple
00:09:40
as this this enormous rent extraction
00:09:42
happening John's totally right I think
00:09:44
the interesting use of stable coins is
00:09:46
cross border is outside the US I mean
00:09:48
the big use case that's taking off right
00:09:49
now is consumers in other countries
00:09:52
seeking to hold dollars you know we in
00:09:53
the US here today you know we obviously
00:09:55
benefit from being able to do that the
00:09:57
vast majority of people in the world
00:09:58
have kind of a are subject to a worse
00:10:00
currency worse in the sense that it's
00:10:01
less stable H it's more inflationary you
00:10:03
know storing savings is is is much less
00:10:05
favorable uh you know if you look at the
00:10:07
nirra for example there are a lot of
00:10:08
people in Nigeria and the the currency
00:10:10
there has devalued by a factor of you
00:10:12
know three or four over the last couple
00:10:13
years and so that use case of consumers
00:10:15
being able to store dollars is really
00:10:16
exploding and we think about this really
00:10:19
as kind of an analogy to the to the euro
00:10:21
dollar system where you know the euro
00:10:22
dollar system in the 70s and 80s this
00:10:24
was a way for companies to store dollars
00:10:27
and to you know have something more
00:10:28
stable and and and reliable and so forth
00:10:30
but it was only except I mean I think
00:10:31
the minimum transaction size was like a
00:10:32
million dollars so there's kind of a
00:10:34
very high barrier to entry whereas with
00:10:36
stable coins now you can be a consumer
00:10:38
in Ecuador and you can have like A1 us
00:10:41
balance and that was just not a product
00:10:42
that was accessible to you before and so
00:10:44
I think it's I think it's a really big
00:10:45
deal you know certainly for people in
00:10:46
those countries and in some sense also
00:10:48
for the us because the dollar status as
00:10:50
the world's Reserve currency I think is
00:10:52
is is know process of becoming much more
00:10:55
deeply established yeah that is the huge
00:10:57
win for allowing stable coins and you
00:11:02
know making them legal giving them rails
00:11:03
putting aside tether and all the bans
00:11:06
and fugazy stuff they've been doing or
00:11:09
have done and all the lawsuits that
00:11:11
they've lost and the bands in different
00:11:12
countries having usdc having yours and
00:11:15
other ones in the United States means we
00:11:18
can regulate them and they have to buy
00:11:19
treasuries and so okay dollar Supremacy
00:11:22
continues and that's fantastic but right
00:11:25
now Allin just using the example could
00:11:28
accept
00:11:30
payment in stable coin correct with
00:11:32
stripe we just check a button we get
00:11:33
stable coins yes okay so then the next
00:11:35
piece I have we follow with you
00:11:37
afterwards to make sure we I'm actually
00:11:40
really excited that you guys are going
00:11:41
to be sponsoring the all in Summit this
00:11:43
year that's actually exciting super
00:11:45
exciting no freeberg is great at
00:11:47
securing the bag yeah the thing that's
00:11:49
interesting though is if let's say we
00:11:51
had a Millie sitting in our stripe
00:11:53
account and then we had to pay a venue
00:11:55
or pay other vendors and we're sitting
00:11:57
there in uh yourk coins called bridge is
00:12:00
that what it's going to be called or is
00:12:02
called bridge is the is the company is
00:12:04
the platform and you know that's like
00:12:06
there there okay so they're not
00:12:08
stra correct correct but you all have a
00:12:10
stripe stable coin at some point yeah
00:12:12
like one Bri actually has one already
00:12:14
yeah Bridge has a a small stable coin
00:12:16
for but we don't need to get into
00:12:17
details but but bridge is primarily set
00:12:19
of software apis got it but you'll
00:12:21
obviously have a strip stable coin the
00:12:22
point is if you turn on stable coin
00:12:23
acceptance with um you know for for all
00:12:25
in today that'll use usdc perfect now
00:12:28
could we then go pay people from our
00:12:31
stripe account and then you could lower
00:12:33
our fees if they were also doing stable
00:12:36
coins is that exist today or is that
00:12:38
something coming next year look you
00:12:41
could pay people in stable coins but
00:12:43
again to the point of where you'll see
00:12:45
adoption first paying people via bank
00:12:47
transfer in the US like yeah it's not
00:12:49
great it's kind of slow everything like
00:12:51
that but it's fine it's not the biggest
00:12:53
problem today yeah yeah exactly whereas
00:12:56
the people who are using Bridge it's
00:12:58
like scale AI is you know they have to
00:13:00
pay the contractors all around the world
00:13:03
and when you want to get money to people
00:13:04
in the Philippines that starts to get
00:13:06
really annoying and expensive and so
00:13:08
just from our point of view the like
00:13:11
real hair on fire problem is the
00:13:13
international stuff and domestic I
00:13:15
assume you're paying domestic suppliers
00:13:17
it'll come later I think you're I think
00:13:18
I think you're answering narrowly to you
00:13:20
know stable coins I think everything you
00:13:21
just said is is right but I will say I
00:13:23
think Jason your intuition that man it's
00:13:24
really inefficient and annoying to you
00:13:26
know engage in B2B transactions and to
00:13:28
get these invoices paid and like the
00:13:29
whole system and if you look at most
00:13:30
companies they're losing 1 two 3% of
00:13:33
Revenue to AP and AR now some of that
00:13:36
might be because of the transaction
00:13:37
rails themselves a lot of just because
00:13:39
of you know baroke inefficient processes
00:13:41
uh where you have humans sending
00:13:42
invoices humans reconciling them you're
00:13:44
trying to line up transfers in your bank
00:13:46
account statement and figure out you
00:13:47
know what corresponds to what and so on
00:13:50
and that's super inefficient and so
00:13:51
we're separately I mean Cil con would be
00:13:53
part of the solution here but but but
00:13:54
there's more to it separately we're
00:13:56
trying to solve that with a product
00:13:57
called stripe billing which we actually
00:13:58
just announced last week has passed you
00:14:00
half a billion in uh in ARR and so uh we
00:14:04
we could send an invoice to somebody
00:14:05
which right ex so it's like fresh books
00:14:08
or whatever those other products in the
00:14:09
market are all amazing all the back
00:14:11
office is there a version of a network
00:14:13
effect inside of stripe for their
00:14:16
customers where if I just allowed you
00:14:18
guys to just be integrated into my GL
00:14:20
somehow and you gave me some kind of
00:14:23
phantom bank account why isn't it just a
00:14:24
ledger entry if I'm just making a
00:14:26
payment from me to somebody else that's
00:14:29
also on strip the thing we really want
00:14:30
to solve is all the calculation the ID
00:14:34
verification the risk like those are the
00:14:36
things that are actually expensive um uh
00:14:39
if you if you look at this flow uh it's
00:14:41
where companies lose their money today
00:14:42
having said that you're right um you
00:14:45
know we're the fraction of money
00:14:47
movement on stripe where you know the
00:14:49
two counterparties are both part of the
00:14:51
stripe network is obviously growing and
00:14:53
so I think that'll be another way we can
00:14:55
reduce fees over time although again I
00:14:57
actually think the biggest part of that
00:14:58
is is going to be because we reduce
00:14:59
fraud like both counterparties are known
00:15:01
and like I talked to a company a payroll
00:15:03
company recently and they were
00:15:05
describing you know how big a deal it is
00:15:07
for them that you know people sign up
00:15:08
you know frauding companies whatever and
00:15:09
you know they can lose millions of
00:15:10
dollars in a single attack and so having
00:15:13
some kind of trusted node rather than
00:15:15
just like routing an account number that
00:15:17
would be a really big deal for them look
00:15:19
you have a very good pulse and what I
00:15:21
would say is that as a subset of the
00:15:23
economy you probably reflect a large
00:15:26
part of the global economy have you ever
00:15:28
been approached or have you ever
00:15:30
considered on a regular basis publishing
00:15:33
some sort of economic sentiment one of
00:15:35
the big things that we've talked about
00:15:36
is how many backward revisions there are
00:15:39
to everything from non-farm payrolls to
00:15:42
GDP that they've become so unreliable
00:15:45
and so it's very difficult for people
00:15:46
that are transacting in Market to know
00:15:49
what to
00:15:50
do have you guys ever thought about that
00:15:52
because I'm sure that you have a much
00:15:53
more accurate sense of where the economy
00:15:55
is than many other people we have and I
00:15:57
feel a bit ruthful you know with you're
00:15:58
asking that question because I feel like
00:15:59
on some level we should have done it um
00:16:01
the thing that makes it kind of tricky
00:16:03
is because two two things one stripe is
00:16:06
not like a full CR section of the
00:16:07
economy you know we're more biased
00:16:08
towards online we're more biased towards
00:16:10
Innovative companies you know whatever
00:16:11
that that you know it's kind of net that
00:16:12
out somehow and you know there can be
00:16:14
these stories where I mean during Co
00:16:16
like the online economy was doing great
00:16:18
H the offline economy was sort of a
00:16:19
different story so the interpretation
00:16:20
can be a bit tricky but then just the
00:16:21
second thing is the stripe business is
00:16:22
growing so quickly and changing so fast
00:16:24
that again you know it's not necessarily
00:16:26
representative of of the EC economy and
00:16:29
even if stripe is way up year overy year
00:16:30
you know you you have to be a bit
00:16:31
hesitant in drawing conclusions from
00:16:32
that having said that I think in
00:16:34
principle you could draw you know some
00:16:35
conclusions and you know one thing we we
00:16:37
we did look at uh was just inflationary
00:16:39
data over the last couple years and I
00:16:42
think you can construct and the team did
00:16:44
construct a pretty reliable kind of
00:16:46
leading indicator huh for inflation and
00:16:49
so we would like to share that openly
00:16:52
because you know I think it's I think
00:16:53
it's a public good forther to be better
00:16:54
and more reliable economic data all
00:16:56
right freeberg before we get into the
00:16:57
doc you got any question for the boy
00:16:59
here if you were to kind of build the
00:17:01
financial system from scratch today
00:17:05
we've got Swift we've got banks that
00:17:08
store assets we have credit cards and
00:17:12
these credit card networks then we've
00:17:14
got transaction service providers that
00:17:16
sit on top of this what's the right
00:17:18
solution if we were to build a financial
00:17:20
system for the world from scratch today
00:17:23
and can you guys see a world where we
00:17:24
Bridge away from the credit card
00:17:26
networks where we move out of some of
00:17:28
these Legacy systems or they so deeply
00:17:31
ingrained and everything that it's it's
00:17:33
going to continue to be this thing where
00:17:34
we've got to build these complicated
00:17:36
Solutions into an around the legacy of
00:17:39
financial infrastructure I'll give my
00:17:41
view and then I'm curious about um
00:17:44
Patrick has I would say firstly there is
00:17:48
just general Tech scalability you know
00:17:49
there's the um you know the finance
00:17:51
industry has its version of the M shafts
00:17:53
for sure where uh everything should be
00:17:55
uh you know highly scalable in real time
00:17:57
and I think in a way stable coins are
00:17:59
solving something that you would you
00:18:01
don't technically need full
00:18:03
decentralization to do but the ability
00:18:05
to make kind of realtime payments any
00:18:06
hour of the day or night is a useful
00:18:08
property and again some private systems
00:18:10
have uh also built that I think a big
00:18:12
one for us is trust and the fact that
00:18:16
the fraud problem hasn't really been
00:18:18
solved in online payments a big reason
00:18:19
people come to stripe is basically we
00:18:22
are a reputation Network across the
00:18:24
internet economy and so when someone
00:18:26
comes and buys something from a stripe
00:18:28
user
00:18:29
93% of the time we have seen that card
00:18:31
before and so the merchant can know
00:18:34
something and know that they can trust
00:18:36
this end user and it's gotten to the
00:18:38
stage now where if someone comes along
00:18:40
and buys with a credit card if they're
00:18:42
you know signing up with an email
00:18:43
address or a phone number or something
00:18:45
that we haven't seen before that is just
00:18:47
ipsofacto
00:18:48
suspicious because you know they are
00:18:51
coming along and maybe trying to a
00:18:52
stolen credit card or or or or something
00:18:54
like that and so a big part of what
00:18:56
stripe ends up doing is act as a
00:18:59
reputation Network to keep fraud out of
00:19:01
the system that maybe you would have
00:19:03
wanted to design in from from day one
00:19:06
well In fairness jth told me I could use
00:19:08
that credit card anytime I wanted I
00:19:10
don't think he remembered but I think
00:19:12
you need to turn my account back on and
00:19:13
freeberg I just got news from our CEO
00:19:17
John MasterCard just canceled their
00:19:18
sponsorship of all in Summit so this is
00:19:21
costing us a fortune this podcast so far
00:19:23
two things one to your point about just
00:19:25
all these different networks and so
00:19:26
forth I think stable coins are going to
00:19:27
be a big part of
00:19:29
a big part of the solution actually
00:19:30
don't think that's going to supplant all
00:19:31
the consumer facing networks I think
00:19:32
we're going to see consumer facing
00:19:33
networks built upon and that you know
00:19:35
substantially leverage these things but
00:19:36
I think stable coins will probably be
00:19:37
the common Rail and then just secondly I
00:19:39
think part of what you're hearing is
00:19:40
most businesses lose more money to fraud
00:19:43
than they do to the kind of pure
00:19:44
transaction cost themselves and you know
00:19:46
you're hearing us talk a lot about fraud
00:19:47
here uh and that's because one it's just
00:19:49
it's it's a huge economic cost for these
00:19:51
businesses today and there's even
00:19:53
indirect costs where you make the
00:19:54
consumer experience more hostile because
00:19:57
you have to protect against uh you know
00:19:58
possible fraud like you know why why do
00:20:00
you have to type in all lock out my bank
00:20:02
account yeah all this stuff exactly but
00:20:04
then secondly I think these we can just
00:20:05
see in the data these problems are
00:20:07
actually getting worse and harder
00:20:08
because you know ml AI
00:20:12
globalization yeah exactly and so like
00:20:15
you know various fraud metrics across
00:20:17
the industry and the ecosystem are way
00:20:18
up over the last couple years now and
00:20:19
striped actually down by 80% but it's
00:20:21
it's really becoming a cute issue all
00:20:23
right and we'll get into uh staying
00:20:24
private longer and when you guys are
00:20:26
going to pull the IPO trigger later in
00:20:27
the show but we got to get through this
00:20:29
docket we got so many great topics to
00:20:30
talk about let's get to our first story
00:20:32
here it's a kind of a fun one Jamie
00:20:34
Diamond went on a rant about remote work
00:20:37
and and zoom uh in a town hall and uh
00:20:41
here's a snippet a lot of you were on
00:20:43
the zoom and you were doing the
00:20:45
following okay you know looking at your
00:20:47
mail sending text to each other when ask
00:20:49
the other person is okay not paying
00:20:52
attention not reading your stuff you
00:20:54
know and if you don't think that slows
00:20:56
down efficiency creativity creates
00:20:58
rudeness and stuff it does okay and when
00:21:01
I found out that people are doing that
00:21:03
you don't do at my goddamn meetings you
00:21:05
go to meeting with me you got my
00:21:06
attention you got my focus I don't bring
00:21:08
my goddamn phone I'm not sending text to
00:21:10
people okay it simply doesn't work the
00:21:13
Young Generation is being damaged by
00:21:15
this that may they may or may not be on
00:21:17
your particular staff but they are being
00:21:19
left behind they're being left behind
00:21:21
socially ideas meeting people in fact my
00:21:24
guess is most you live in communities a
00:21:26
hell of a lot less diverse than this
00:21:28
that's not how you run a great company
00:21:30
we didn't build this great company by
00:21:32
doing that by doing the same semi
00:21:34
disease that everybody else does colon
00:21:37
Brothers tell us about how you run
00:21:38
stripe are you remote does this resonate
00:21:41
with you four years after uh we've come
00:21:43
out of the
00:21:44
pandemic I love listening to Jamie
00:21:46
Diamond rants like I feel like that's
00:21:48
business ASMR um business ASMR that
00:21:53
itself s to be a great podcast I was
00:21:55
about to say I'm subscribing that's an
00:21:56
instant $10 a month subscription
00:21:59
what do you think yeah I don't know
00:22:01
people just said a lot of sh during the
00:22:03
pandemic like do you remember it's like
00:22:05
oh handshakes are going to be over
00:22:06
business travel is going to be over
00:22:08
every company is going to be fully
00:22:09
remote I would say stripe
00:22:11
broadly is in a pretty similar spot to
00:22:13
where it was beforehand which is most
00:22:16
people go into an office like most
00:22:17
people are you know uh part of our San
00:22:19
Francisco office or New York or Dublin
00:22:21
or or Singapore wherever and then we
00:22:23
have a bunch of people also who work
00:22:24
remotely I think kind of obviously you
00:22:28
know Jimmy is right on some points I
00:22:30
think also working remotely has had a
00:22:32
bunch of benefits where there's a way
00:22:34
larger talent pool available to
00:22:36
companies like stripe and there's a lot
00:22:38
of people you know you see uh kind of
00:22:40
the two body problem where it allows a
00:22:42
lot of couples where you know maybe one
00:22:44
partner is assigned to some Hospital in
00:22:47
Idaho and like they don't get to choose
00:22:49
what hospital necessarily they got
00:22:50
assigned to and the other person gets to
00:22:51
work a a high paying Tech job and so I
00:22:54
don't know I think when like like one of
00:22:56
the theories for declining dynamic in
00:22:58
the US in declining tfp is that
00:23:00
allocative efficiency uh of of you know
00:23:02
people declined as women enter the
00:23:04
workforce because now you have you know
00:23:07
what John describes this two body
00:23:08
problem where you know both people have
00:23:09
to make coordinated
00:23:11
switches and
00:23:12
uh remote work Sol it actually yeah
00:23:16
freeberg you're running a company now
00:23:18
you're the CEO of ohalo tell us uh does
00:23:21
this resonate with you what do you think
00:23:23
especially about younger people his
00:23:24
point and like being rude or being
00:23:26
focused being in the media and then like
00:23:29
maybe there's too many meetings where
00:23:30
people are partially paying attention
00:23:32
maybe there should be half as many
00:23:33
meetings and people should be paying
00:23:34
attention what do you think well there's
00:23:36
always room for optimization there we we
00:23:38
deal with this too too many meetings too
00:23:40
many people I think what was most
00:23:41
striking for me about the Jamie Diamond
00:23:43
rant and the resonance it seems to be
00:23:45
having particularly in Silicon Valley
00:23:47
and particularly with folks that are in
00:23:49
leadership positions or on boards is
00:23:52
that this is another example of what I
00:23:54
think is kind of a different tenor for
00:23:57
leaders in business right right now
00:23:59
relative to where we were a few years
00:24:00
ago leaders are starting to step up and
00:24:03
speak their mind and speak more directly
00:24:06
and lead from the front rather than lead
00:24:08
from the back I think the last couple of
00:24:10
years and I would say that the whole
00:24:12
kind of transition a away from wokeism
00:24:15
and coddled employee workforces which is
00:24:17
something that a lot of folks talk about
00:24:19
I'm I'm not trying to just characterize
00:24:21
it I'm just saying that's the
00:24:21
characterization that's been placed on
00:24:23
it is that the employees made the
00:24:25
decisions and then the leaders kind of
00:24:27
said okay I'm Ed to the employees whims
00:24:29
and needs and look at what's gone on
00:24:31
with Zuck he said you're with me you're
00:24:33
against me here's a buyout option Elon
00:24:35
obviously was an Exemplar of this at
00:24:37
Twitter uh We've now seen this become
00:24:41
coinbase Brian and his letter and we've
00:24:43
now seen this become I think a bit more
00:24:45
of a standard in the kind of emergence
00:24:47
in the postco era that leaders can lead
00:24:50
from the front speak directly and say
00:24:52
this is the way things are going to be
00:24:53
my job is not to coddle my employees my
00:24:56
job is to lead my employees so that our
00:24:57
organiz
00:24:58
our team wins and we achieve our mission
00:25:01
that's the objective it's not to create
00:25:03
a family workplace for everyone to be
00:25:05
happy all the time it's to help the
00:25:07
organization succeed and so I think I
00:25:09
have heard from people individually I've
00:25:11
seen this tenor shift underway right now
00:25:14
um and I think that Jamie Diamond is
00:25:15
another kind of Exemplar of this that
00:25:17
that seems to have some resonance all
00:25:18
right shth I want you to respond
00:25:20
specifically to this next clip let's
00:25:22
play the second clip about
00:25:24
organizational bloat every area should
00:25:26
be looking to be % more efficient if I
00:25:29
was ready to depart with 100 people I
00:25:31
guarantee you if I wanted to I could run
00:25:33
it with 90 and be more efficient I
00:25:35
guarantee you I could do it just I could
00:25:37
do it in my sleep and the notion these
00:25:40
bureaucracies I need more people I can't
00:25:42
get it done no because you're you're
00:25:44
feeling that request that don't need to
00:25:46
be done your people going to meetings
00:25:47
they don't need to go to someone told me
00:25:49
to approve some his wealth management
00:25:51
that they had to go to 14 committees I
00:25:54
am dying to get the name of the 14
00:25:56
committees and I feel like firing 14
00:25:58
chairman of committees I can't stand it
00:26:01
anymore all right shth the bloated
00:26:03
bureaucracy at big companies your
00:26:05
thoughts well you know there's that
00:26:07
adage that says something akin to 50% of
00:26:10
advertising is useless we just don't
00:26:12
know which 50% yeah I think it's
00:26:14
probably true for most corporate
00:26:17
structures in general which is that a
00:26:20
lot of the organizational bloat has
00:26:22
evolved because of the way that people
00:26:26
have responded to how you use technology
00:26:30
so meaning if you went looked back 50
00:26:33
years ago if you look at that famous
00:26:34
picture of the Microsoft early team they
00:26:37
didn't rely on software necessarily
00:26:39
there wasn't Salesforce there wasn't
00:26:41
workday there wasn't all of this
00:26:44
infrastructure and so instead they
00:26:45
probably organized by what they were
00:26:47
good at and they just tried to do things
00:26:49
efficiently and I suspect that many
00:26:51
companies in the absence of Technology
00:26:53
found a way to just be very efficient
00:26:55
that started to change when you had
00:26:57
these rigid demarcations of where one
00:26:59
job ended and another job started and
00:27:02
part of why that happened is because you
00:27:03
had all this software that went in and
00:27:05
convinc people this will create
00:27:07
efficiency but in return the chief
00:27:09
marketing officer's job is X Y and Z
00:27:11
this is how the roles are defined this
00:27:14
is how people do it and so I think that
00:27:16
the reason why things have become so
00:27:18
bureaucratic and Bloated is that there
00:27:20
is just this propensity to run towards
00:27:23
software because you think it's a
00:27:26
solution at best it's a
00:27:29
symptomatic Aid it doesn't address the
00:27:31
root cause and in fact it promotes
00:27:33
bureaucracy and it promotes the bloat
00:27:35
that Jam's talking about and if you look
00:27:37
at Jim's p&l he spend $6 billion dollar
00:27:40
a year on it and I suspect that if you
00:27:43
screamline that you'd actually have half
00:27:45
as many people because they'd be doing
00:27:47
the job in a wholly different way and by
00:27:50
the way the the counterfactual to it is
00:27:52
if you look at companies like Facebook
00:27:54
or Google or Tesla or SpaceX who design
00:27:58
and I'm sure stripe is the same who
00:27:59
designs a lot of stuff internally that's
00:28:02
custom built for their or I think the
00:28:05
way that you see this in the revenue per
00:28:06
employee and a bunch of these other
00:28:08
metrics in terms of the efficiency of
00:28:09
those companies so I think what he is
00:28:11
talking about is that he is a
00:28:14
victim of this push to productivity
00:28:16
because he would look like a lite if he
00:28:18
didn't adopt technology but by adopting
00:28:20
the off-the-shelf stuff he introduces
00:28:23
organizational blo because these things
00:28:25
are demarked very very rly you got the
00:28:27
marketing team as you mentioned using
00:28:29
HubSpot and then you got like the sales
00:28:31
team using I don't
00:28:32
know organizational bloat the other
00:28:35
thing I just want to say on the first
00:28:36
topic is I've mentioned this
00:28:39
before other than Engineers who are who
00:28:43
are naive but can be extremely
00:28:45
productive from day one there are very
00:28:47
few other job types where naivity is an
00:28:51
asset most people early in their career
00:28:54
are in a jcurve where they are
00:28:56
negatively contributing and the
00:28:58
go everybody down and the whole goal is
00:29:01
that you invest in these people so that
00:29:02
they come out of the J curve there are
00:29:04
probably other jobs that are like
00:29:05
engineering but many many are not and so
00:29:09
I think it's important to get the kind
00:29:10
of mentoring you get by being in an
00:29:12
office and in the absence of that I
00:29:14
think these young people like Jamie said
00:29:16
are totally lost that's that's on them
00:29:19
but then for the company they're
00:29:20
completely unproductive and useless
00:29:22
which is on us hey John uh Toby I I
00:29:25
don't know if you know Toby from Shopify
00:29:26
but he did this like zero based
00:29:28
budgeting kind of concept for meetings
00:29:30
he just purged all meetings at the
00:29:31
beginning of the year he just like
00:29:32
deleted everybody's meetings from the
00:29:35
top down I'm curious how you think about
00:29:38
bloat and just all of these meetings and
00:29:41
committees do you worry about that at
00:29:42
strip we know Toby very well and I don't
00:29:45
know I always feel like yeah we should
00:29:48
I'm tempted to uh take some of the ideas
00:29:50
like we haven't done the meeting
00:29:51
deletion one and you just say oh the
00:29:53
meetings get recreated but they measured
00:29:55
it and they didn't it sounds like uh and
00:29:58
I do always enjoy Toby's perspective
00:30:00
which I think that you know many
00:30:02
organizational problems are in fact
00:30:04
software problems and you know you just
00:30:05
need to write a script to literally like
00:30:07
I think he wrote the script to all the
00:30:09
meetings uh you know from the Google
00:30:11
Calendar instance but uh there's kind of
00:30:13
this Purity that uh uh you're you're
00:30:15
over intellectualizing your problems and
00:30:17
I do agree with jamat on the remote
00:30:18
thing where like it's it's very
00:30:21
dangerous I one thing that can be
00:30:23
dangerous with as CEOs think about this
00:30:25
stuff is I think there is these unfair
00:30:29
anecdotes that feel unfair that get
00:30:30
people really riled up the quiet
00:30:32
quitters the anti-work subreddit you
00:30:34
know all these talk of people working
00:30:35
two jobs and that generates a lot of
00:30:38
energy with corporate leaders but you
00:30:40
don't want to design your policies
00:30:41
around like the bottom 5% of the company
00:30:44
that would be a horrible mistake yeah
00:30:45
you want to design your policies against
00:30:47
the top town and we have some like
00:30:48
outrageously productive remote people
00:30:50
and they're off and again the cabin
00:30:51
Idaho somewhere just you know Co coding
00:30:53
up a storm the thing that we have seen
00:30:55
and interestingly we measured this
00:30:58
before covid cuz we were doing a lot of
00:31:00
remote hiring and we wanted to see we
00:31:02
wanted to see how much we should lean
00:31:04
into it is that it is not good for early
00:31:06
career people we could actually measure
00:31:07
it in our productivity Data before the
00:31:09
whole discussion about remote work
00:31:10
happened during covid and it's bad from
00:31:12
a work point of view it's also just bad
00:31:14
from a personal point of view where they
00:31:16
go mad because they're 23 years old and
00:31:18
they're not Sol conf exactly literally
00:31:22
solitary confinement it's ridiculous and
00:31:25
by the way breaking news here Jamie
00:31:27
Diamond now now uh knows which 2,000 or
00:31:30
I'm sorry
00:31:30
1,739 employees to lay off first there
00:31:33
is a coworker.org petition to get Jaimie
00:31:37
to retract his statement so the optin
00:31:40
has been created if I know Jamie I know
00:31:42
he'll be uh retracting that statement
00:31:44
right away absolutely he will bend to
00:31:46
the pressure of those 1700 mids Patrick
00:31:49
how do you deal with mids at stripe how
00:31:51
do you deal with the mids the people who
00:31:53
I'm not saying you have any but maybe
00:31:55
you've run into because you got over
00:31:56
10,000 employees when somebody's average
00:31:59
that must make you crazy how do you deal
00:32:01
with it no the median employee at stripe
00:32:03
is awesome the median employee Atri
00:32:05
employee at stripe is is not the median
00:32:08
person in the population at large
00:32:10
although I think the median person in
00:32:12
the country is we um you know we
00:32:14
employ well no I was using the term mids
00:32:17
mids are people who are just average
00:32:18
people not the above average strip
00:32:20
people who opt into that but how do you
00:32:21
deal with low performance is kind of
00:32:22
what I'm getting at well look you need
00:32:24
to have an aggressive Performance
00:32:25
Management culture and to stay on top of
00:32:27
that and look at it's not it's it's not
00:32:29
good for anyone to keep those people
00:32:30
around because nobody likes feeling that
00:32:32
they aren't succeeding and so if those
00:32:34
people are you know their careers aren't
00:32:36
advancing they're not getting you know
00:32:37
positive feedback from their manager
00:32:39
from their peers they aren't shipping
00:32:40
things like whatever this is just like
00:32:41
not a good equilibrium for anyone so we
00:32:43
really try to you know stay on top of
00:32:44
that we track it closely the thing just
00:32:46
on this discussion broadly to say is I
00:32:48
think people very readily fall into a
00:32:50
kind of
00:32:51
normative moralizing perspective on this
00:32:54
stuff of people should be in the office
00:32:56
they shouldn't be in the office but like
00:32:57
there's a lot of should here I think
00:33:00
it's helpful to just one kind of as John
00:33:02
referenced with you know some of the
00:33:03
analysis just you know be quite
00:33:04
empirical and objective and just like
00:33:06
look at what the data says and and then
00:33:07
second just recognize there's a lot of
00:33:09
heterogeneity as in people have
00:33:11
different preferences people have
00:33:12
different abilities to work effectively
00:33:15
you know when they're by themselves and
00:33:16
you know some don't organizations are
00:33:18
doing different kinds of work Nvidia you
00:33:21
know last I checked is doing pretty damn
00:33:22
well and you know Jensen is on the
00:33:24
record of saying he know doesn't give a
00:33:26
about where you work coinbase
00:33:28
Shopify you know they're all these you
00:33:29
know remote first companies and then you
00:33:31
know I was recently ched the folks at
00:33:32
Jane Street and they really believe that
00:33:35
you know being collocated and be able to
00:33:37
share ideas on the trading floor and so
00:33:39
forth is is really important but I don't
00:33:41
think these pictures are NE or these
00:33:43
worldviews are necessarily contradictory
00:33:44
they probably hire different kinds of
00:33:45
people or in different kinds of
00:33:46
businesses and so on and so I don't know
00:33:48
I guess I'm just skeptical of flat
00:33:50
shoulds in this space and many to yeah
00:33:54
many paths to Heaven uh all right so
00:33:56
let's move on to our next story
00:33:59
last we just keep in mind and labor
00:34:01
productivity in the US is up like 20% in
00:34:04
the last 10 years and so just like again
00:34:05
you just you just look at the data just
00:34:07
the median person in the economy or the
00:34:08
average person is H is producing 20% on
00:34:11
an inflation adjusted basis more than
00:34:12
they were 10 years ago yeah that's going
00:34:14
to keep wrapping up with AI and all
00:34:16
these amazing tools that are coming out
00:34:18
we'll leave that on the side for now
00:34:19
because that would be an hourlong rabbit
00:34:20
hole we could jump down but we got to
00:34:22
get back into Doge the number well I've
00:34:24
heard a couple criticisms of Doge one of
00:34:26
them is it's one-sided we're only
00:34:27
hearing about you know people on the
00:34:29
left doing griffs and US Aid the other
00:34:32
one is hey you're you're pointing at
00:34:35
little tiny things like USA when are you
00:34:36
going to get to defense spending and
00:34:39
Social Security well here we are
00:34:41
Washington Post is reporting that in
00:34:43
between doing sets of 47 push-ups
00:34:46
defense secretary Pete hegf asked senior
00:34:49
leadership at the Pentagon to develop a
00:34:51
plan to cut 8% from the defense budget
00:34:55
each of the next five years that's
00:34:56
compounding 8% here's a chart we're
00:34:59
talking about close to 300 billion in
00:35:01
savings over 5 years if uh they hit
00:35:04
which isn't a crazy Target 8% a year
00:35:06
it's just crazy in our country where we
00:35:09
haven't even been able to have our
00:35:11
defense department pass a basic audit if
00:35:14
you've seen those type of reports let's
00:35:18
pause there and just talk about military
00:35:21
spending chth I think that military
00:35:24
spending needs to sit Downstream from
00:35:29
technology because if you if it doesn't
00:35:31
you're sort of misappropriating the
00:35:33
money and what I mean is that we're
00:35:36
inventing incredible capabilities in Ai
00:35:39
and autonomy I think that you need to
00:35:42
take those things first and figure out
00:35:43
how to productize them because I think
00:35:45
that builds the kind of modern war
00:35:46
machine we need otherwise what happens I
00:35:50
tweeted about this Nick maybe you can
00:35:51
find it but like the CBO red flagged a
00:35:54
project where the Navy was about to
00:35:57
appropriate $1.2
00:35:59
trillion to build frigs now there's a
00:36:02
body I think of of military planning
00:36:04
that says this is a projection of power
00:36:06
and so you need to spend this kind of
00:36:07
money because people want to see the big
00:36:09
boats and the Big Iron in the water okay
00:36:11
and and maybe there's something about
00:36:13
that but the reality is you can't be
00:36:15
spending three or four billion dollars a
00:36:17
boat and taking you know eight nine 10
00:36:20
years to build these things it's so this
00:36:22
is not sustainable and part of why they
00:36:25
do that is it's not coupled to what's
00:36:28
actually happening with respect to
00:36:29
Innovation where there are core pockets
00:36:32
of companies Sanic just announced a $600
00:36:36
million raise today sa drone announced
00:36:40
hundreds of millions of dollars of
00:36:41
contracts with the Navy andril is doing
00:36:43
that with the army so I think that
00:36:45
military spending needs to happen
00:36:46
Downstream from what's actually
00:36:48
happening in technology broadly speaking
00:36:51
we don't have that what you have instead
00:36:53
are system integrators with extremely
00:36:56
deep connectivity that are able to
00:36:58
contract well not necessarily to invent
00:37:01
well freeberg any thoughts there on
00:37:05
cutting defense spending obviously we
00:37:07
have uh to chat's point amazing Founders
00:37:11
like my guy pommer lucky cutting the
00:37:14
cost of very important uh AR he hates
00:37:17
that's my guy my bestie oh no we it's
00:37:19
all a joke everybody calm down we just
00:37:22
have a little hates you Jason heally
00:37:25
listen I know all the board m
00:37:29
Rel to your Ranch he loves J he loves it
00:37:33
everybody needs a foil uh it's all sorts
00:37:35
of problems for the rest of us when you
00:37:37
go out and talk about people for no
00:37:38
reason it's great what are you talking
00:37:39
about I never talk about stripe
00:37:41
guys you don't have any beef with
00:37:43
employees mids for no reason for no
00:37:45
reason you're just like oh what about
00:37:46
your mid was a hypothetical yeah okay I
00:37:49
did say that you you guys pocketed 500
00:37:51
large look we we can come to the summit
00:37:54
and you know Palmer Style just like
00:37:57
long list of things I've said
00:38:01
about yes absolutely shout out to my guy
00:38:04
Palmer lucky but what do you think
00:38:05
freeberg for serious let's get back on
00:38:06
track here okay so here's what I here's
00:38:08
what I think if you take defense down to
00:38:10
First principles there was an excellent
00:38:12
tweet that we were all texting about
00:38:14
yesterday it made the
00:38:16
observation that Trump's negotiations
00:38:18
with Russia and China where there's all
00:38:21
of this Heming and hawing about those
00:38:23
negotiations being complying with the
00:38:26
wants and needs of dictators
00:38:28
may actually be a shift in strategy on
00:38:31
the global relationship the United
00:38:33
States has with other Global powers in
00:38:37
particular a shift from the objective
00:38:39
being about us Primacy and the us being
00:38:43
kind of the sole great power on Earth to
00:38:45
recognizing that that's no longer the
00:38:47
case and that in a multi-polar world we
00:38:50
no longer need to invest in Wars need to
00:38:53
invest in conflicts need to invest in
00:38:56
defense with supposed allies to try and
00:38:59
build up our strength across the globe
00:39:02
and I'm not saying that this is
00:39:03
necessarily the right strategy but it
00:39:04
was an observation that maybe the
00:39:06
Strategic imperative is now to have kind
00:39:08
of a a multi-polar stance in the world
00:39:10
rather than a stance of Primacy and in
00:39:12
that framing you then ask the question
00:39:15
okay at make that the case now if we do
00:39:18
agree that we are all going to settle
00:39:19
into a new world where China Russia the
00:39:21
United States are not necessarily equal
00:39:24
Powers but shared Powers across the
00:39:26
globe in that
00:39:28
context do we need to have as much of an
00:39:31
investment in global defense do we need
00:39:33
to continue to pour dollars into
00:39:35
building up arsenals and military bases
00:39:38
and troops and stations and positions
00:39:40
All Around the World perhaps not perhaps
00:39:41
the world gets divided peacefully and we
00:39:44
open up global trade relationships and
00:39:46
everyone benefits economically from the
00:39:48
advances in technology and improvements
00:39:49
in productivity and the world order is
00:39:51
peaceful but multi-polar maybe that's
00:39:54
the new era that we're entering and in
00:39:56
that context you need as much of a
00:39:58
defense and separately to chamat point
00:40:00
there's different technology that's now
00:40:02
in play we've seen it in the Ukraine
00:40:03
Russia context that a $10,000 drone can
00:40:06
destroy A10 million piece of equipment
00:40:08
and China now has drone factories that
00:40:10
can output millions of drones each month
00:40:12
so if China develops this new type of
00:40:14
Arsenal with millions of autonomous
00:40:16
flying systems that can go and attack
00:40:19
troops and attack expensive pieces of
00:40:21
equipment do we really need aircraft
00:40:23
carriers do we really need tanks and I
00:40:25
think that's the whole hegf Le um Trump
00:40:28
Le conversation that's underway in
00:40:30
defense right now number one multi-polar
00:40:32
number two therefore we don't need as
00:40:34
much defense spending number three maybe
00:40:36
the defense spending that we do do
00:40:38
should account for the new technology on
00:40:40
in play in the battlefield and that
00:40:42
really changes the character of how the
00:40:44
defense department is structured and how
00:40:46
funding is structured so that's really I
00:40:47
think the way to look at it versus hey
00:40:49
let's just cut defense spending for
00:40:50
cutting sake um and that might be what's
00:40:52
going on right now a holistic view of it
00:40:54
Patrick any thoughts on uh what we're
00:40:56
seeing in fense Tech and uh saving money
00:41:00
through Doge well obviously what um what
00:41:03
you know Andel and others are doing is
00:41:05
is pretty amazing um but you know we're
00:41:07
we're obviously not defense experts uh
00:41:09
but sort of just bring the credit card
00:41:10
merchant uh perspective uh to Bear here
00:41:13
uh you know we naturally just go and
00:41:14
look at the the time series um and the
00:41:17
sort of the data around it and I guess
00:41:18
I'm struck by again maybe I'm getting
00:41:20
some of the details wrong here I'm this
00:41:22
is outside of our Zone but as far as I
00:41:25
can tell the cuts proposed over the next
00:41:28
couple years of the for the defense
00:41:29
department are of approximately the same
00:41:32
magnitude as the reduction in the
00:41:34
defense budget that occurred between
00:41:36
2010 and today and so it's not like this
00:41:39
is some unprecedented transformation in
00:41:42
DOD budget uh we we we've done this and
00:41:45
then secondly you know as far as I can
00:41:48
tell one of the most ecumenical
00:41:51
uniformly shared bipartisan issues in
00:41:54
Washington is the in efficiency and the
00:41:58
pricacy of Defense procurement you jimes
00:42:00
Fallows writing a book about this in the
00:42:02
late 80s you had you know Augustine's
00:42:04
laws and their whole book about this
00:42:06
just everyone seems to you know uh
00:42:08
fervently believe um that defense
00:42:10
procurement is monstrously inefficient
00:42:12
now you know it's possible to make
00:42:15
budgetary changes without fixing that
00:42:17
but obviously the prospect of meaningful
00:42:19
Improvement there uh seems uh seems like
00:42:22
it would be you know really
00:42:23
beneficial and if I can just give a
00:42:25
quick book recommendation this book Boyd
00:42:28
by Robert korm about John Boyd the Air
00:42:29
Force Colonel who you know was part of
00:42:31
the reformist uh movement I feel like
00:42:33
everyone in Silicon Valley has that book
00:42:34
on their shelf and no one's actually
00:42:36
read it but it is a exactly it it is
00:42:40
kind of referencing sprinkling some UDA
00:42:41
Loops into your remarks uh always helps
00:42:44
exactly yeah yeah yeah um sounds smart
00:42:46
but uh that is a great book and it's a
00:42:48
book about Air Force procurement
00:42:50
essentially where he had his you know
00:42:53
basically the story is that the Air
00:42:54
Force generals of the time wanted planes
00:42:56
that were bad and he had a theory about
00:42:58
better fighter jets uh and he had his
00:42:59
fingerprints all over the F16 and the
00:43:01
A10 and the F-15 and uh various aircraft
00:43:05
and it was a real battle to get the Air
00:43:09
Force to produce better aircraft and
00:43:11
they really you know the generals really
00:43:12
wanted these bad aircraft that they had
00:43:14
planned and so that's a fun read at this
00:43:16
moment in time when it feels like we
00:43:18
have this similar transition from man to
00:43:21
name of the book again I know there's
00:43:22
many books about it's called Boyd by
00:43:24
Robert corm and it's a it's a really
00:43:26
engaging read it's also just very well
00:43:28
written it's this kind of narrative
00:43:29
non-fiction style yeah this there it is
00:43:31
okay everybody another book selection
00:43:33
from the all-in book club brought to you
00:43:36
by stripe use the code Allin to get a
00:43:40
year free of got the stripe press books
00:43:43
absolutely oh you do actually have a
00:43:44
series of cool books yeah we'll uh we'll
00:43:46
plug those towards the end uh all right
00:43:49
shath you added a crypto update crypto
00:43:51
corner is back we had an exciting week
00:43:55
of innovation in the crypto space last
00:43:57
week Argentine president mle who is a
00:44:01
hero to a lot of people in uh on the
00:44:04
right or for government efficiency
00:44:07
promoted a meme coin it was called Libra
00:44:09
dollar sign Libra and uh he originally
00:44:12
tweeted this private project will be
00:44:15
dedicated to encouraging the growth of
00:44:18
the
00:44:19
Argentine economy uh with a link to
00:44:22
Libra for his citizens to go buy it and
00:44:24
buy it they did but he deleted that
00:44:27
tweet when this whole thing came apart
00:44:28
and said I was not aware of the details
00:44:30
of the project and after having become
00:44:32
aware of it I decided to not continue
00:44:35
spreading it the market cap ripped 4
00:44:37
billion it crashed 95% as these meme
00:44:40
coins always
00:44:41
do 74,000 Traders
00:44:45
lost almost 300 million 24 wallets had
00:44:49
losses over a million and mle has been
00:44:51
sued 100 plus times already and this
00:44:55
just happened last week he's being
00:44:57
investigated by his own government now
00:44:59
and uh there is an impeachment uh
00:45:02
attempt underway by the opposition mle's
00:45:05
team told CNN that his endorsement of
00:45:07
the coin was a mistake really oh wow
00:45:10
going on a limb there according to
00:45:12
insiders Malay never actually owned any
00:45:13
Libra and was not associated with the
00:45:15
coin I think family members maybe put
00:45:17
him up to it the details of why he
00:45:21
promoted it remain a little bit unclear
00:45:23
there's a lot of speculation jamat your
00:45:25
thoughts it's kind of crazy I mean he
00:45:28
was on such a positive upswing of
00:45:30
momentum it doesn't make much sense why
00:45:32
he got embroiled in all of this the the
00:45:35
problem with this though is I think that
00:45:36
the cover up is always worse than the
00:45:38
crime itself so the first message was
00:45:41
you know very Clinton esque like I did
00:45:43
not have sexual relations with that
00:45:45
woman he was like I did not endorse it I
00:45:49
just shared it was his justification for
00:45:52
how he how he um could rationalize what
00:45:57
he did the kid that's behind this thing
00:46:01
Hayden Davis I think is his name he was
00:46:03
on coffeezilla was an incredible one
00:46:06
hour did you see that the coffee Zilla
00:46:08
intervie well I saw I saw some of the
00:46:09
clips on X and it was pretty Brazen
00:46:11
because he he essentially said that he
00:46:13
had Javier Malay in his pocket and then
00:46:16
there were text messages that use some
00:46:19
pretty colorful language to basically
00:46:21
say the same thing then on top of that
00:46:23
there were some text messages that
00:46:24
seemed to implicate malle's sister as
00:46:27
having got some of the money from all of
00:46:29
this I don't know the whole thing just
00:46:30
makes absolutely no sense that he was
00:46:32
doing so much good and now he's goingon
00:46:35
to go through this whole cycle of trying
00:46:36
to wash his hands of this whole thing
00:46:38
it's a complete waste of time and effort
00:46:41
I don't know why he did this and there
00:46:42
was another like interesting little
00:46:44
tidbit uh fredberg uh friend of the Pod
00:46:48
David pornoy supposedly he's been
00:46:51
getting in on this and he's a gambler
00:46:52
and he loves gambling and he looks at as
00:46:54
gambling obviously he had put reportedly
00:46:56
millions of dollars into this and this
00:46:58
guy we're talking about gave him his
00:47:00
money back this guy also has something
00:47:03
like a hundred million sitting in a bank
00:47:05
account anywhere what's your take on all
00:47:06
these meme coins
00:47:07
Freer I don't like them I don't think
00:47:11
that they're okay like good I don't
00:47:13
think they're productive all right I
00:47:15
think that a bunch of people are going
00:47:16
to put money in and lose money and a few
00:47:19
people are going to make a lot of money
00:47:21
and you know but at the end of the day
00:47:22
it's no different than the people that
00:47:24
sell trading cards or the people that
00:47:26
create and sell Collectibles and get
00:47:28
paid for them and this is just
00:47:30
effectively a digital Collectibles
00:47:31
business unfortunately I think it's like
00:47:33
Amplified by like a thousand X because
00:47:36
Collectibles businesses have friction
00:47:38
and they're manual and you got to ship
00:47:39
them and this creates um a bit more of a
00:47:42
digital frenzy where you see the social
00:47:43
feedback loop happen really quickly in
00:47:45
real time and that drives these things
00:47:47
to a high value which means people have
00:47:49
the ability to lose a lot more than the
00:47:50
otherwise qu but look I mean these are
00:47:52
not helping the financial system get
00:47:54
rebuilt as we talked about earlier
00:47:55
they're not uh creating productive value
00:47:58
they entertainment mechanisms just like
00:47:59
any other kind of gambling system might
00:48:02
be and you know people can choose to do
00:48:04
that if they want but personally I'm not
00:48:06
into it I just think it's stupid but
00:48:07
whatever Patrick their own yeah do you
00:48:10
think these are like Collectibles or do
00:48:13
you think they are perceived by the
00:48:17
people buying them more like Securities
00:48:19
and more like Bitcoin they do uh to
00:48:21
steal me on the other side of the
00:48:22
argument uh they do trade with a ticker
00:48:24
symbol they are traded uh on major
00:48:28
platforms like coinbase and Robin Hood
00:48:32
and people share charts about them and
00:48:35
so where do you stand on it you're in
00:48:37
the finance business mem coin's good
00:48:39
mcoins
00:48:40
bad I'm basically with Dave I mean I
00:48:46
well they seem to me to be maybe
00:48:49
analogous to to gambling um which you
00:48:53
know I don't know that we want to ban
00:48:55
gambling uh like if you're
00:48:57
able to do it responsibly and you
00:48:59
understand what you're getting into and
00:49:01
so forth like I guess that's fine but as
00:49:04
you
00:49:06
say judging by the tweets that I see
00:49:09
there are a lot of ticker symbols and
00:49:12
charts and prognostications about future
00:49:16
price trajectories and so forth that
00:49:18
lead me to think that people are placing
00:49:19
somewhat more weight on the asset and
00:49:22
security value of these uh as compared
00:49:24
to the I don't know some numinous
00:49:26
intrinsic
00:49:27
aesthetic value
00:49:30
so John maybe two things could be true
00:49:33
here people are gambling and they are
00:49:35
being presented as financial instruments
00:49:38
and they're trying to trick the suckers
00:49:39
at the table the suckers in this case
00:49:41
being the people who voted for Malay to
00:49:43
chat's point this is the unbelievable
00:49:45
self home of the of the decade yeah look
00:49:49
I don't like meme coins I think they're
00:49:51
bad and I think they're part of like
00:49:54
Patrick said a broader swaye of things
00:49:56
that we need to figure out Society where
00:49:59
the legalization of sports betting and
00:50:02
combined with highly targeted
00:50:04
advertising I don't know if you guys
00:50:05
have seen the stats on you know whales
00:50:07
in sports betting losing very large
00:50:09
amounts of money and it's just these
00:50:11
heartbreaking tales and there's a very
00:50:13
large number of them of people kind of
00:50:16
losing much more than they expected and
00:50:19
I don't know we have to to reckon with
00:50:22
these societal questions I don't think
00:50:24
the super easy answers they come along
00:50:25
from time to time learned recently that
00:50:28
um state lotteries are a relatively
00:50:29
recent phenomenon like I think it was
00:50:31
one state started doing it in the 1970s
00:50:33
and then a bunch of the other states
00:50:34
followed suit but it's kind of odd when
00:50:36
you step back that like I pass a
00:50:38
billboard on 101 for you know the state
00:50:41
of California trying to you know get me
00:50:43
to buy Lottery a negative e EV bet yeah
00:50:47
just like but but that's become very
00:50:48
normalized and so I think it's a bucket
00:50:50
of hard questions here around you know
00:50:52
beam coins Sports gambling whatever I
00:50:55
don't know what you do but there's a lot
00:50:57
of meme coins are not the only place you
00:51:00
find these very heartbreaking stories
00:51:02
this is the this is the first time where
00:51:03
they've actually talked about at least
00:51:05
where I saw the details of how this
00:51:07
stuff happens because he laid it out and
00:51:09
there's these people called snipers that
00:51:11
go and like pump up the bids right as
00:51:14
soon as the coin gets launched and then
00:51:16
they're able to Fe so there's like this
00:51:19
entire mechanism Soo shady I was gonna
00:51:22
say some there where I I feel like the
00:51:24
specific thing within beam coins
00:51:26
probably most pernicious is like the
00:51:28
rugging
00:51:29
dynamic and if you could have meme coin
00:51:32
girl but without the without the pump
00:51:36
and rug if it was like I don't know just
00:51:38
some mimetic tracker of some sentiment
00:51:40
or something like maybe that' be okay
00:51:42
but the the the like the particular way
00:51:44
in which they seem to be you know
00:51:46
employed is like yeah some some sort of
00:51:48
discontinuous run up and then well the
00:51:49
rug what do you think J I agree with you
00:51:52
chath uh Malle had the greatest PR run
00:51:55
of all time I think
00:51:57
I mean he became an inspiration to all
00:51:59
of us here in America who were concerned
00:52:02
about the deficit and outof control
00:52:04
spending and ridiculous departments we
00:52:07
heard Jamie Diamond talking about
00:52:08
ridiculous committees and all this
00:52:10
nonsense I don't know if you guys
00:52:11
remember but remember he was like
00:52:12
minister of culture AA and minister of
00:52:15
genda AA this was the precursor to of
00:52:19
course Doge where now we're like USA
00:52:22
deleted Department of Education deleted
00:52:25
you know defense department Min - 8% and
00:52:28
you know what I really find terrible
00:52:31
about this is that what it means for
00:52:33
leadership what mle did was he rug
00:52:37
pulled the people who put him in office
00:52:39
the people who voted for Malay are the
00:52:41
ones who got hurt here and when you
00:52:44
think about leadership at its core it
00:52:46
really is about putting the needs of
00:52:48
your constituents ahead of your own
00:52:50
interest the needs of your investors in
00:52:52
the case of you know if you were running
00:52:54
Stripe Right you got to think about all
00:52:56
these shareholders leadership you know
00:52:58
at its core is I think setting the
00:53:00
example right you set the St the
00:53:02
standard the moral the ethical The Vibes
00:53:05
the culture you set that standard he had
00:53:07
set such a great standard that we all
00:53:09
loved and you know the appearance of
00:53:13
impropriety is impropriety in my mind
00:53:16
that's the leadership standard that
00:53:17
should be here so even being near this
00:53:19
your sister launching it your brother
00:53:21
launching whatever it is he then went on
00:53:23
to taunt this is where I really you know
00:53:25
like people make mistakes but and this
00:53:27
is a stupid one to make but the taunting
00:53:30
of his own followers you know I'm out on
00:53:32
Malay right now this is what he said the
00:53:34
reality is if you go to the casino and
00:53:36
lose money I mean what is the claim if
00:53:38
you knew that it had these
00:53:41
characteristics this is another failure
00:53:43
of leadership leaders own their mistakes
00:53:45
they don't attack the victims you take
00:53:46
ownership of it and the way you should
00:53:49
judge people I think is what they do
00:53:51
when they're given a lot of power and
00:53:53
what they do when they make mistakes mle
00:53:55
is a failure on all of those those
00:53:56
fronts it's absolutely
00:53:59
abhorent that's it thanks for coming to
00:54:01
my TED
00:54:03
Talk No I'm just I'm on fire about it I
00:54:05
just think it's like really terrible do
00:54:07
you need help getting off your moral
00:54:08
grandstand now I do
00:54:11
actually yeah I'm over I'm sorry I
00:54:13
actually care about morals ethics and
00:54:15
Leadership I think that there's a
00:54:17
standard set by these people that's what
00:54:18
I that's what I think about when I think
00:54:19
about you yes of course thank you uh all
00:54:23
right with friends like these cson
00:54:24
brothers can you imagine imag please say
00:54:27
okay I'm so annoyed can you please say
00:54:28
their
00:54:29
name pronounce the goddamn
00:54:32
eye I'm pronouncing the Irish okay we we
00:54:35
speed things up a little bit we we put
00:54:36
them together it's a little bit
00:54:38
different you wouldn't know this from
00:54:39
being from Sri Lanka a great
00:54:41
country you guys wouldn't know why
00:54:43
anyone watches this show would you yeah
00:54:46
I don't
00:54:47
knowbody says no context for this why
00:54:50
you make every show a train wreck and we
00:54:52
have to get it out of the the banter is
00:54:54
why why people come people listen you
00:54:56
know so many TV shows are about it's
00:54:58
nice to have friends I mean you look at
00:55:00
friends or How I Met Your Mother my wife
00:55:01
and I are rewatching The West Wing right
00:55:03
now and it's basically a show about you
00:55:05
know yeah but it's just like all buddies
00:55:07
and loyal to each other and everything
00:55:09
and I think the underlying idea behind
00:55:11
lots of TV shows is it's nice to have
00:55:13
friends and I think that's the the
00:55:15
success the all in sng by the way is an
00:55:17
Inc is an incred which season are you on
00:55:19
it's an incredible show we're up to
00:55:21
season four now God I gotta get five or
00:55:24
seven never got in on the west of course
00:55:26
sorin left after season 4 and so many
00:55:29
people said of the whole thing about the
00:55:32
great debate that America needs to have
00:55:33
I think is still like the missing aspect
00:55:36
of modern politics is the great debate
00:55:39
yeah well the great debate is like let's
00:55:40
talk about the topic that's at hand and
00:55:42
talk about it on the merits of what's
00:55:44
right for the country as opposed to
00:55:46
everything being about attacking because
00:55:47
the other side brought the idea forward
00:55:50
and now we have to attack the other side
00:55:52
and frame the idea as being beneficial
00:55:54
to them and hurtful to us nothing
00:55:56
actually gets resolved because we don't
00:55:58
end up having objectivity around these
00:56:00
conversations around some of the major
00:56:02
issues that the country faces many of
00:56:03
which by the way both sides have valid
00:56:05
points of view and if we can kind of
00:56:07
have the great debate if we can have
00:56:08
these conversations like Doge right like
00:56:11
abortion like you know the rights of
00:56:13
States like spending like there are all
00:56:16
these things that we should be talking
00:56:17
about rather than use that moment as a
00:56:19
way to attack the other side politically
00:56:21
so I can make sure I've got points and
00:56:23
Kudos leading into the next election
00:56:25
cycle it's just awful anyway I missed
00:56:27
that about the West wi it feels like a
00:56:28
purest like just a beautiful like way of
00:56:30
thinking about I wonder what it would be
00:56:32
like to watch the westwing and then
00:56:34
House of Cards back to back that's
00:56:36
something I should no but it's like
00:56:38
really a ju to position those two
00:56:39
different shows yeah but they've isn't
00:56:41
The West Wing kind of the opposite of
00:56:43
what you just said you want the all in
00:56:44
to represent because I see I see the
00:56:47
westwing as being sort of fully immersed
00:56:50
in and representing you know one sort of
00:56:52
particular worldview there was you know
00:56:55
there was inms since we look back on the
00:56:57
990s at the Clinton years or something
00:56:58
as you know this period of great Harmony
00:57:00
in the country and you know that Harmony
00:57:01
might have been great and the economy
00:57:02
was doing well and you know all the
00:57:03
things um but it wasn't exactly a period
00:57:06
i whatever I wasn't here in the 90s but
00:57:08
you know from afar it did not feel to me
00:57:10
when I was eight or whatever as a period
00:57:12
of tremendous ideological uh debate and
00:57:15
fervor and schisms and all the rest
00:57:18
during the 90s during the Clinton era
00:57:20
you're think yeah yeah and I think I
00:57:22
mean maybe I'm wrong but I think of the
00:57:23
west wing as you know a kind of
00:57:25
recapitulation
00:57:27
maybe they were I mean maybe they were
00:57:28
the compromising party because I mean
00:57:31
tell me another modern Democrat
00:57:34
president that's had any point of view
00:57:35
on balancing the budget and creating a
00:57:37
surplus which was aligned with the
00:57:39
Reagan point of view at the time and he
00:57:41
kind of you know again as Jal says he
00:57:43
was a Centrist and he brought brought
00:57:45
the the parties closer together rather
00:57:46
than further apart with how they I agree
00:57:49
with Patrick the thing that makes the
00:57:51
westwing a great show is that it's about
00:57:53
The Insider nature of the White House
00:57:55
and the West Wing where you see these
00:57:57
characters like Toby who would never be
00:58:00
a star in any other show under any other
00:58:03
circumstance on any network ever and
00:58:07
instead he's one of these Central quasi
00:58:10
good quasi nefarious bully kind of you
00:58:13
know he was like a the precursor to the
00:58:15
Rah Emanuel archetype in the Obama White
00:58:17
House I think I also find it funny where
00:58:20
you know the way uh Dominic Cummings has
00:58:22
talked about just his experience of life
00:58:24
in government was that it's so
00:58:26
distracting trying to get anything done
00:58:28
because you know you have some plan you
00:58:29
get up in the morning and you're going
00:58:30
to go do something that matters for the
00:58:32
country and then you're just instantly
00:58:34
by 8 a.m. you know sideswiped by some
00:58:36
kind of silly controversy of the day
00:58:38
that's basically many of the episodes of
00:58:40
the westwing where they like have some
00:58:42
actual important thing that they want to
00:58:44
get done and then they just get whed by
00:58:46
a silly controversy yeah seems to me
00:58:48
like you're also the product of the
00:58:52
technological innovation that occurred
00:58:54
during your presidency and during your
00:58:56
term and if you think about Clinton he
00:58:58
got to ride the internet and this
00:59:00
massive economic boom and you look at
00:59:03
you know Reagan the pce boom I mean
00:59:06
sometimes the timing really matters I
00:59:08
think um though I think you know and
00:59:11
again I'm not any Grand expert on the on
00:59:13
the Clinton years but I think you know
00:59:14
it is interesting where you know one of
00:59:16
the first acts of the Clinton presidency
00:59:18
was the was the deficit reduction act um
00:59:21
you know Dave to your point you know
00:59:22
when's the last time that a you know a
00:59:23
Democratic president you really really
00:59:25
cared about the deficit and I think
00:59:26
federal spending fell by Five Points of
00:59:30
GDP over the course of the of the
00:59:32
Clinton presidency which is really not a
00:59:33
small amount you know so obviously there
00:59:35
were some kind of structural Tailwinds
00:59:37
from you know technology and the
00:59:39
internet and all the yeah a bunch of
00:59:40
that was defense but but like
00:59:42
nonetheless so he did the in the last
00:59:45
two administrations and you look at
00:59:47
California there were massive Windows of
00:59:50
surplus and there were massive Windows
00:59:52
of a surging stock market over the last
00:59:54
eight years and we plundered and we
00:59:57
wasted them by adding 16 trillion to the
01:00:00
debt during a good time like what's
01:00:03
going to happen during a bad time just
01:00:05
absolutely brutal let's move on where do
01:00:08
we want to go here we got grock 3 we got
01:00:11
the China private sector we got a
01:00:12
victory lab for freeberg I want to ask
01:00:14
you guys questions about Arc Institute
01:00:16
and the Evo model we should do that
01:00:18
let's do the arc Institute freedberg why
01:00:21
don't you ask the question Patrick runs
01:00:23
the arc Institute right okay yes I'm one
01:00:25
of the co-founder and then there were
01:00:27
scien and you guys are fund of it or
01:00:29
yeah maybe you guys give us the a lot of
01:00:31
money into this yeah yeah so the arute
01:00:34
is a nonprofit it does basic biology
01:00:36
research it's in paloalto Nexus Stanford
01:00:38
it's about 230 people today and uh yeah
01:00:42
John and I are among the funders of us
01:00:43
but there's a there's a bunch of other
01:00:44
very generous donors can you explain
01:00:47
idea of curiosity driven research that's
01:00:49
on the website yeah there's kind of two
01:00:50
things behind this so the first is
01:00:52
scienti the vast majority of biology
01:00:54
scientists today receive NIH grants
01:00:57
doing basic research and the NIH grants
01:00:59
are one just hard to get and annoy to
01:01:01
get you know assigned TOS spend 40% of
01:01:03
their time working on Grant overhead and
01:01:04
so forth but worse like even more
01:01:06
perniciously the grants are very
01:01:08
restrictive in terms of the kind of
01:01:09
science they can do and so we ran a
01:01:11
survey of scientists back a couple years
01:01:13
ago of top scientists and four out of
01:01:16
five like 79% of them told us that if
01:01:19
they could just spend money however they
01:01:21
wanted if they weren't kind of limited
01:01:22
by you know what they're prescribed by
01:01:24
these nhh grants for told us they would
01:01:26
change the research agenda a lot um and
01:01:29
so I think the analogy here is imagine
01:01:30
if there was only one VC firm and it was
01:01:33
run by the government how would that VC
01:01:35
firm had strong opinions on what kind of
01:01:37
companies people should build exactly
01:01:39
and you know literally the the grand
01:01:41
panels at the NIH are um they're
01:01:43
consensus based like explicitly they've
01:01:46
consensus based scoring mechanisms and
01:01:48
they you know penalize you if you're
01:01:49
doing work outside of your field and so
01:01:50
forth so I we we kind of we go to all
01:01:53
this work to train these amazing
01:01:55
scientists and then we sort of don't let
01:01:56
them pursue their best ideas that's kind
01:01:57
of problem one and Arc The Arc
01:02:00
investigators you know they're fun to do
01:02:02
whatever they want curiosity driven
01:02:03
research and then the second thing
01:02:05
behind Arc is is this idea that you can
01:02:07
kind of divide diseases into three
01:02:08
categories you know you have infectious
01:02:10
diseases and we we you know broadly
01:02:12
speaking know how to you know generate
01:02:14
cures for and treatments for infectious
01:02:16
diseases we've monogenic diseases like
01:02:18
one genetic mutation or something and we
01:02:20
don't know how to cure those in most
01:02:22
cases but we can we can you screen for
01:02:24
them and so on um and then we you know
01:02:26
what the biologists call complex
01:02:27
diseases where there's some kind of Gene
01:02:29
environment interaction that's most
01:02:30
cancers most autoimmune diseases most
01:02:32
neurodegenerative diseases and so forth
01:02:34
Alzheimer's things like that exactly and
01:02:37
we've never cured a complex disease and
01:02:39
you know many of these diseases are very
01:02:41
tragic precisely because you know we not
01:02:43
only have we not cured them we don't
01:02:44
even have treatments as you know as John
01:02:46
says uh in in the case of Alzheimer's
01:02:48
for example and so you know the question
01:02:51
is can we do something about this and
01:02:52
you know what would a research agenda
01:02:54
and program that you know can that can
01:02:56
help you know shine some light on these
01:02:58
complex diseases look like and our
01:03:00
hypothesis you know we'll see we'll see
01:03:02
uh how much it's born out but our
01:03:03
hypothesis is that we've gotten a couple
01:03:05
of new technologies over the last couple
01:03:08
of years single cell sequencing we can
01:03:10
sequence the the DNA or the RNA just
01:03:12
like in one cell uh We've you know fancy
01:03:15
new functional genomics and crisper
01:03:16
Technologies uh so you can make these
01:03:18
you know fine edits and perturbations
01:03:20
again even just in a single cell and
01:03:21
then obviously you have Transformers and
01:03:23
Ai and ML and all this stuff and this is
01:03:25
kind of a new
01:03:26
read think write Loop in biology that
01:03:30
just didn't exist a decade ago and again
01:03:32
the question is is this powerful enough
01:03:34
now to you know solve some of these
01:03:36
previously intractable uh diseases and
01:03:38
so yesterday Arc released this new uh
01:03:42
Foundation model for biology it's the
01:03:44
largest biology ml model ever it's it's
01:03:48
it's actually I think the largest open
01:03:50
source AI model ever this is evo2 you're
01:03:52
talking about EO the number two Evo two
01:03:56
and so it's not just open weights like
01:03:58
uh like you know the Deep seek model or
01:04:00
or llama or something it's actually it's
01:04:02
open source and the training code is uh
01:04:04
is public and you know you can people
01:04:07
can go read the blog post of the paper
01:04:08
whatever the thing I find amazing about
01:04:10
Evo and that just really surprised me is
01:04:12
so it's trained on nine trillion base
01:04:15
pair Gene tokens so you know uh chat gbt
01:04:18
llms are normally trained on on you know
01:04:21
the on on human language this is a a
01:04:23
language model but it's trained on on
01:04:25
DNA the language of life and there's
01:04:28
only one human genome in the training
01:04:30
set it's mostly other
01:04:33
species and even though it's only seen
01:04:35
one human genome it's state-of-the-art
01:04:38
at predicting the pathogenicity of human
01:04:42
genome mutations and so you know a
01:04:44
famous mutation is the brocha mutation
01:04:46
for breast cancer like it's
01:04:48
state-of-the-art at predicting the the
01:04:50
pathogenicity the harmfulness of uh of
01:04:52
brocka mutations again it only desite
01:04:54
never having seen one humans it's it's
01:04:57
only seen one human genome and that
01:04:58
human you know did not have these
01:04:59
pathogenic mutations and so it's it's
01:05:02
kind of learning something deep across
01:05:03
the tree of life and I know I find that
01:05:05
pretty cool and sorry is there a
01:05:07
phenotypic data set that's used in
01:05:09
training so I think like you know
01:05:12
typically right and so when you're
01:05:14
building
01:05:15
models in typical like genotype by
01:05:19
phenotype models you're trying to look
01:05:20
at the phenotype the physical
01:05:21
characteristics of the organism what can
01:05:24
it do what is look like what are the
01:05:26
features and then you look at the genome
01:05:29
and so that tells you hey these are the
01:05:30
specific genes or alterations or
01:05:32
mutations that drove this particular
01:05:35
phenotype is kind of what the model
01:05:36
tries to learn over time with the
01:05:37
objective being hey can I ask it to
01:05:39
define a genotype or a genome based on a
01:05:42
phenotype based on a physical set of
01:05:44
characteristics I'm looking for vice
01:05:45
versa maybe you can just help us
01:05:47
understand what what is it trained on
01:05:49
and how you know how did that kind of
01:05:51
you know prediction in braa you know how
01:05:53
how is that possible great question so
01:05:56
it's totally unsupervised that is to say
01:05:58
You Know You're just showing us lots of
01:06:00
genomes uh and any kind of latent
01:06:02
structure that it learns is just based
01:06:03
on trying to figure out how to kind of
01:06:05
organize uh that knowledge but we're not
01:06:07
showing it any labeled data or
01:06:08
phenotypic you know kind of outcome data
01:06:11
or you know what have you and so then
01:06:12
you're able to you can give it a genetic
01:06:15
sequence and ask relative to its
01:06:18
understanding of genetic Universe how
01:06:20
lightly is this particular sequence and
01:06:22
so then you can do things like uh like
01:06:24
you know predict anomalousness or
01:06:26
pathogenicity or whatever right you can
01:06:28
also then kind of using the embeddings
01:06:32
of the upper layers we need to get two
01:06:33
technically here but like you you can
01:06:35
train another model on top of the model
01:06:38
um and uh and even if you show it maybe
01:06:40
only a couple of examples it learns very
01:06:42
quickly okay kind of here's you know
01:06:44
here's how the weights of evo2
01:06:47
correspond to this particular task and
01:06:49
those uh those sort of models trained on
01:06:51
top uh turn out to be you know really
01:06:54
accurate you guys open source the base
01:06:56
model or you open source the fine-tuned
01:06:58
or both we open source the base model
01:07:01
but there's no kind of proprietary
01:07:03
reason that we didn't open source the
01:07:04
fine tunes like it's really easy to
01:07:05
produce them and yeah if anyone wanted
01:07:08
one of them we we we'd happily share it
01:07:09
where does it stand in the spectrum of
01:07:13
different tools that folks would would
01:07:15
use to solve these Life Sciences
01:07:16
problems there's cell models that are
01:07:18
being developed by some then there's
01:07:20
these protein models where does this fit
01:07:23
this kind of landscape of of um of
01:07:26
foundation models in biology it's
01:07:28
obviously very new so it's a um it's a
01:07:30
bit of an open question sort of how
01:07:31
exactly people are going to find you
01:07:33
know ways to to to use it and and
01:07:35
applications for it part of I think is
01:07:36
cool is
01:07:38
that proteins and RNA and I mean
01:07:42
phenotypic expression and everything you
01:07:44
know all these things sit on top of the
01:07:45
DNA like in some sense the DNA encodes
01:07:47
everything because you know the the
01:07:49
whole organism comes from the DNA and so
01:07:51
I guess the question would be and you
01:07:54
know we don't really know yet is DNA all
01:07:56
you need uh and with EVO One we saw some
01:08:00
you know encouraging uh suggestions that
01:08:03
for example you can build really good
01:08:05
protein structure prediction models out
01:08:07
of a DNA Foundation model even if you
01:08:09
don't train on a lot of you know protein
01:08:10
structure uh data so but I I'd say just
01:08:13
it's a really exciting time and it's
01:08:15
kind of an open question and I don't
01:08:16
know if you analogize evo2 to I don't
01:08:19
know whether it's gpd2 or three or
01:08:21
something but you know I think we're
01:08:23
going to see a similar Cambrian
01:08:24
explosion of of applications over the
01:08:27
next couple years the thing we really
01:08:28
excited about at ARC is is training yeah
01:08:32
cell State models and trying to better
01:08:35
understand you know how cells you know
01:08:36
what what causes them to change States
01:08:39
and so we're thinking a lot about that
01:08:40
but but you know the reason the the
01:08:41
weights are in hugging face and
01:08:42
hopefully we'll be surprised in in what
01:08:44
Patrick do you just expect that over
01:08:46
time as stripe continues to grow you can
01:08:48
just take the ex some of your own excess
01:08:51
capital and other people will do the
01:08:52
same and keep funding Arc and then if
01:08:54
there's something that Arc creates or
01:08:57
innovates on if it can generate some
01:09:00
amount of money it would just kind of
01:09:01
flow back is it meant to be
01:09:02
self-sustaining or is it always just
01:09:04
going to be via patronage from
01:09:06
successful folks that just want to keep
01:09:07
it going John and I are you know we are
01:09:10
ourselves very committed to it and um
01:09:13
and you know we're we're kind of
01:09:14
underwriting it in that regard but well
01:09:18
one we're just lucky where there's a a
01:09:20
growing donor pool of other people
01:09:21
supporting it I think it's just better
01:09:22
for an institution if it's not kind of
01:09:25
be P into the whims of you know one
01:09:27
donor one group of donors or something
01:09:28
so I think that's just a much healthier
01:09:30
uh structure for it I think there's also
01:09:32
a larg group of people who are just
01:09:33
becoming interested in science and
01:09:35
realizing I mean you know Jason was on
01:09:36
his uh his moral Pulpit my Pulpit is
01:09:41
that you know all is not well in basic
01:09:43
research uh in the US today and again
01:09:46
the way to see this is to just talk to
01:09:48
the scientists themselves and they tell
01:09:51
you um how kind of
01:09:52
inhibited they are and you know the the
01:09:55
the kind of problems caused by the
01:09:56
strictures and structures around them
01:09:59
and we don't see Arc as you know the
01:10:01
answer hopefully it can be sort of one
01:10:04
point in the space but then you know
01:10:05
there's other people doing cool stuff
01:10:06
you know Brian Armstrong of course
01:10:07
started ACC companying the longevity
01:10:09
space and Yuri mner and other started
01:10:11
alos and you know this is people this
01:10:14
the Chan
01:10:15
Zuckerberg Institute and so you know
01:10:17
people are trying different things but
01:10:20
no Arc is um you know we're we're very
01:10:22
happy to support it and then if if you
01:10:23
know it's possible that Arc over the
01:10:25
long-term become self- sustaining but
01:10:26
you know that's well that was my next
01:10:28
question is yeah it takes a while to get
01:10:29
things into the clinic so you know we're
01:10:31
not holding out for that tomorrow well I
01:10:33
you know when they uh they have this
01:10:34
technology transfer department at every
01:10:36
major university where when scientists
01:10:39
get grants and they work on some
01:10:41
Innovation it gets monetized and so what
01:10:44
happens here who owns the Innovations
01:10:46
how do you license them because it would
01:10:48
be amazing if it just wasn't based on I
01:10:51
believe you guys have put over a billion
01:10:53
dollars into this that was my
01:10:54
understanding is that true just like you
01:10:56
guys are over a billion dollars into
01:10:57
this effort not quite the numbers yeah
01:10:59
not quite the numbers are public so Arc
01:11:02
spends around 100 million a year oh okay
01:11:05
and it started about uh three years ago
01:11:09
so so hundreds of millions of dollars
01:11:11
this is a really significant thing yeah
01:11:13
and and again I want to emphasize there
01:11:14
there are other donors um so it's not
01:11:17
just us but I mean it's a nonprofit
01:11:21
there there have been spin outs and
01:11:23
there will continue to be and so if one
01:11:24
of those know really if one of those
01:11:26
becomes madna or you know the next OIC
01:11:29
or something then you know that could be
01:11:31
really good for Arc and Arc might have
01:11:32
an endowment and be able to kind of
01:11:34
self- sustain and so forth uh we're
01:11:36
we're there's no Prospect for us to make
01:11:38
money on it in the sense that you know
01:11:40
it's aprit yeah well actually John yeah
01:11:43
just one thing there I was talking to a
01:11:45
friend of mine you could if this thing
01:11:47
actually hits you could flip this
01:11:48
nonprofit for profit I got a guy you
01:11:51
could talk to John go ahead oh strays
01:11:55
on the whole like modeling world we talk
01:11:57
a lot about the idea that you can kind
01:11:59
of use a computer State the phenotype or
01:12:02
the physical characteristics you want in
01:12:04
a biological organism and have the
01:12:06
software resolve the whole genome all
01:12:09
the DNA needed to make that physical
01:12:11
organism real and it can do it from its
01:12:15
prediction ability on what genes what
01:12:18
combinations but we're a couple orders
01:12:21
away from that right I mean I think like
01:12:22
ultimately we we always talk about hey
01:12:24
we want to be to define or have the
01:12:26
software Define the plant that can grow
01:12:28
on the surface of Mars it knows the soil
01:12:31
type of Mars it knows the air you know
01:12:33
it knows that it's carbon dioxide based
01:12:35
it's 10% of the Earth's atmosphere it
01:12:38
this is what the day the daylight
01:12:40
structure looks like it needs to be wind
01:12:41
tolerant and then the software predicts
01:12:44
an organism that might be able to do
01:12:45
that you know and obviously there's a
01:12:47
lot of this predictive work going on in
01:12:48
proteins then the higher order is cells
01:12:51
so single cell organisms microbial
01:12:53
organisms and then ultimately multi
01:12:55
cellular organisms so plants and then
01:12:56
finally animals where you could
01:12:58
basically create organisms from scratch
01:13:00
using software because we have all the
01:13:02
other tools to biologically put these
01:13:03
pieces together today but this is a
01:13:06
great kind of I I view it as a pyramid
01:13:08
there's a ton of phenotypic data that
01:13:09
still needs to be fed in ultimately to
01:13:11
kind of have us all understand protein
01:13:13
protein models and and a lot more to it
01:13:15
but it's a great I think I think that's
01:13:17
right like you can uh this there's a
01:13:19
certain amount you can probably derive
01:13:20
sort of uh you know from first
01:13:22
principles just by looking at the
01:13:23
genomes but I think the really powerful
01:13:24
model model are going to need to do
01:13:26
exactly what you say and to feed in a
01:13:28
lot of ancillary phenotypic and and just
01:13:30
kind of other data how they fa in
01:13:32
different environments and the
01:13:34
sequencing data got ahead of the
01:13:35
phenotyping data because there's so much
01:13:37
sequencing data that's com in so you can
01:13:39
do a beautiful job predicting like
01:13:41
correctness in a genome but and this and
01:13:44
the sequencing data is really nicely
01:13:45
digital whereas you know the phenotypic
01:13:47
stuff it's like well even is the data
01:13:50
yeah totally Dave sorry while we're in
01:13:52
the science corner I have a question for
01:13:53
you Dave which your strawberries you
01:13:54
might know answer to this a bunch of
01:13:57
tree species around the world are under
01:13:59
attack so in Ireland we have this
01:14:01
problem of the Ash dieback Ash is kind
01:14:03
of Ireland's national tree they use it
01:14:04
to make Hurley which is you know the for
01:14:06
the national sport and uh since the
01:14:08
mid-2010s you know especially as the
01:14:10
live plant trade has ramped up we need
01:14:11
to get a a hurl for uh for for for Jason
01:14:14
Jason absolutely I put right here on the
01:14:17
Shelf the American chestnut here yeah no
01:14:20
exactly I was going to reference the
01:14:21
American chestnut as well in the US but
01:14:23
it feels like we have this real problem
01:14:24
and it's so
01:14:25
where so many beautiful trees are under
01:14:27
attack the bar the bark beetle in in
01:14:30
California and you know the the various
01:14:31
conifers that we're losing so we got to
01:14:33
Sol the blackp disee the blackp fungus
01:14:35
and cacao and coffee is being destroyed
01:14:37
TR4 is destroying banana right now Doom
01:14:40
let's go no no like it's a real like is
01:14:43
a real this is a real issue down to the
01:14:45
science corner here so this is um yeah I
01:14:47
mean this is exactly what we aim to
01:14:49
address at ohal so in some cases you can
01:14:52
actually silence a gene that's a
01:14:53
suppressor of immune function of the
01:14:55
organism which can actually improve
01:14:57
disease resistance but how do you do
01:14:59
delivery of that do you like this
01:15:01
Airborne sprays or what's the yeah how
01:15:03
do how do how do you treat the tree yep
01:15:05
so ultimately if you're going to use a a
01:15:08
genomic method you would transform the
01:15:11
genome so you would edit the genome and
01:15:13
you would regenerate a plant or
01:15:15
regenerate a tree and then propagate
01:15:16
that tree okay but then like we we have
01:15:17
to replant all the trees we to replant
01:15:19
the trees we'd have to replant the trees
01:15:21
and ultimately do custom projects can we
01:15:24
do a little thing on Ash in Ireland
01:15:25
absolutely that is some of the work we
01:15:27
do so we announced a few weeks ago a
01:15:29
partnership with University Florida to
01:15:32
use our methods to basically introduce
01:15:34
disease resistance for major fungal
01:15:36
pathogen that's destroying the Florida
01:15:38
strawberry crop and so that's what we
01:15:40
call a trait program at ohol where we
01:15:41
can identify specific genomic trait that
01:15:44
we can go and introduce into that plant
01:15:46
but then you're right you do have to
01:15:47
grow all the plants back and then put
01:15:48
them back in the ground that's the
01:15:50
second best to to Pure Extinction but um
01:15:52
I have in in Ireland I ended up owning
01:15:56
this kind of country house and uh virgin
01:15:59
woodlands where you know Woodlands that
01:16:02
Ireland was used to be fully forested
01:16:04
and then was denuded with the arrival of
01:16:06
Agriculture and there's uh some kind of
01:16:08
ancient Woodlands on it that are from
01:16:09
the original when Ireland was fully kind
01:16:11
of covered in trees and I find the die
01:16:15
off of species very sad and so we got to
01:16:17
get yeah but no it's I'm not like I I'm
01:16:19
I'm very optimistic like we know how to
01:16:21
address these Solutions we know how to
01:16:23
regenerate the trees we can we we can do
01:16:25
this quickly we can resolve these
01:16:26
problems but you are right I think you
01:16:28
should be selling a skew a skew to the
01:16:30
people in Tahoe like you know the Tahoe
01:16:32
Basin has been
01:16:33
so worse than decimated as in decimation
01:16:36
is only one in 10 which is like you know
01:16:37
half the half the trees in in Tahoe have
01:16:39
been hit by by bark Beetle so those are
01:16:42
very interesting ones because insects
01:16:44
you can actually build very specific
01:16:46
defense mechanisms against uh insects
01:16:49
but we generally have to improve genetic
01:16:52
diversity and in doing so you know there
01:16:55
there's a natural resistance because the
01:16:57
evolutionary like like the reason we
01:16:58
have a TR4 problem in banana all the
01:17:01
world's banana that we grow commercially
01:17:03
comes from one original banana clone
01:17:04
called dwarf Cavendish and they took
01:17:07
that one plant they cut clippings of it
01:17:09
put it in the ground grow another plant
01:17:10
cut clippings of that and they kept
01:17:11
multiplying it so all the bananas we eat
01:17:12
and all the bananas that are planted
01:17:14
across tens of millions of Acres
01:17:15
worldwide come from one original clone
01:17:17
and because of that this fungus has been
01:17:19
exceptionally capable of evolving itself
01:17:22
to better eat that banana plant and so
01:17:25
60 cents of every dollar we spend on
01:17:26
bananas today goes towards fungicide
01:17:28
we're spraying these banana trees once
01:17:30
or multiple times a week to kill this
01:17:32
fungus we're consuming that it's super
01:17:34
expensive and if we had genetic
01:17:36
diversity if we had better genetics in
01:17:38
the banana programs around the world
01:17:40
we'd be able to radically matter what
01:17:42
the administration says you think we
01:17:43
need more diversity are you in favor of
01:17:46
Dei freedberg they cornered you
01:17:48
freedberg I got you got to make one
01:17:49
promise to me here it comes you're not
01:17:51
going to start working on Raptors I
01:17:53
don't want to see any of these Raptors
01:17:54
running around uh San Francisco okay
01:17:57
jamaath your thoughts here on um science
01:18:00
corner here it's been a really
01:18:01
enthralling one the Raptors are coming
01:18:03
for you I find it
01:18:07
incredibly inspiring that there's just
01:18:10
so much movement in these foundational
01:18:12
models it's incredible like every day
01:18:14
just seems like there's something new
01:18:16
the biggest problem that I think that
01:18:19
the commercial Community is going to
01:18:21
deal with is how to actually take
01:18:22
advantage of it because you're kind of
01:18:24
head spins because you don't exactly
01:18:25
know where to start the biological
01:18:26
models are are different in that I think
01:18:28
it's a much smaller population of people
01:18:30
that will use it and I think they do
01:18:33
have to figure out how to take these
01:18:34
models and and complement the existing
01:18:37
pipeline they have the pipeline they
01:18:38
have right now I think is pretty brittle
01:18:40
I think we all know that in life
01:18:42
sciences my wife struggles with
01:18:44
this a lot is how to complement a very
01:18:48
traditional Pipeline with this kind of
01:18:50
stuff so I see it firsthand in how she
01:18:53
tries to allocate Capital towards these
01:18:55
problems on the other side I just think
01:18:57
these foundational models are really
01:18:58
incredible and I think that I was
01:19:00
completely wrong
01:19:01
on a couple of my earlier thoughts one
01:19:05
thought that I had for a long time was
01:19:09
it just seemed like all these base
01:19:10
models were ASM toting and so I was not
01:19:13
convinced where all this
01:19:15
capex would go in a productive way like
01:19:18
why are you buying all these Nvidia gpus
01:19:20
and then I think if you looked at
01:19:24
Colossus the elon's Colossus xai built
01:19:29
the largest data center over 100,000
01:19:32
gpus going to 200,000 in 122 days I mean
01:19:36
basically what he
01:19:38
proved was that there are still valuable
01:19:42
gains in
01:19:44
pre-training and so the larger the
01:19:46
cluster the more value that there is now
01:19:48
he also benefits I guess from the
01:19:52
X feed but was really interesting so now
01:19:55
I'm like a little bullish on Nvidia I'm
01:19:57
like oh my God if this is true then all
01:19:58
this capex may be justified you could be
01:20:00
buying a lot of stuff then you look I I
01:20:03
actually also just to maybe Riff on this
01:20:05
grock 3 thing for one second I had three
01:20:08
takeaways my first takeaway was I was
01:20:11
sneakily surprised on the pre-training
01:20:14
upside on having a larger cluster so I
01:20:18
think that that's very Pro Nvidia
01:20:20
actually and and it's actually also just
01:20:22
really good in general for foundational
01:20:24
model so I think like that's like a
01:20:26
really positive thing the second thing
01:20:29
is I don't know if you watched the live
01:20:31
stream but did you guys hear some of the
01:20:34
stuff that these guys had to pull to
01:20:36
pull this thing off one of the most
01:20:38
incredible so the way that Elon narrated
01:20:41
it
01:20:42
was we first had a physical problem so
01:20:45
we just had to search all around the
01:20:46
country for one single location where we
01:20:49
could actually put 100,000 gpus and they
01:20:52
found it which was an old Electrolux
01:20:54
Factory in
01:20:55
Memphis that's kind of
01:20:57
interesting he only had like 15 megawatt
01:21:00
and he had to get a quarter gwatt and so
01:21:02
he had to basically buy every useful
01:21:04
generator that was available but then
01:21:06
they had to liquid cool it and so they
01:21:08
bought onethird of all the portable
01:21:10
liquid cooling capacity in America and
01:21:13
located it on Prem but then they figured
01:21:16
out that there was a power problem so
01:21:17
then they took all these Tesla power
01:21:19
packs and then had to do power smoothing
01:21:21
which had them had to rewrite all of the
01:21:23
Power Pack firm
01:21:25
in all of this you know how we talked
01:21:28
about deep seek being this moment where
01:21:30
we had lost sight in America of uh
01:21:33
Capital being the source of innovation
01:21:36
he proves actually a more generalized
01:21:38
rule that I took away from this which is
01:21:40
you always have to have a constraint so
01:21:42
meaning let's say that there's like
01:21:44
infinite capital in his case and
01:21:46
infinite talent because he can basically
01:21:48
recruit anybody he wants what did he do
01:21:51
instead he created this artificial
01:21:52
constraint of time and so he was just
01:21:55
able to sayou going to get this done in
01:21:57
a moment and Nick I show the the third
01:22:00
graph that the guys at artificial
01:22:01
analysis sent to me I just want to put
01:22:04
it up here because it shows you guys the
01:22:06
quality of grock 3 relative to the
01:22:09
amount of time that they've spent on
01:22:11
this problem is to me what's staggering
01:22:13
so if you just sort of project the rate
01:22:15
of change of this and this is without
01:22:18
judging open AI or anthropic or anything
01:22:21
else those guys have been doing it for
01:22:23
years these guys have been doing it for
01:22:25
a year and they did all of this mcgyver
01:22:30
engineering and were able to pull this
01:22:32
off so that's my second takeaway is that
01:22:36
Innovation needs a constraint sometimes
01:22:38
it's Capital sometimes it's talent and
01:22:42
sometimes it's time and so if you can
01:22:45
basically
01:22:47
be just
01:22:49
completely rigid on one of those
01:22:51
Dimensions you can get a great team to
01:22:53
create something so that was an
01:22:55
interesting takeaway and then the third
01:22:56
is I think what this also speaks to is
01:22:58
the notion of like a cetu right which is
01:23:01
like the Japanese word for like
01:23:03
companies that work together while still
01:23:05
remaining independent conglomerates yeah
01:23:08
lose part it's more interl companies
01:23:10
inter you know Koreans have chals right
01:23:13
Japanese Japanese have cetus but this is
01:23:16
the manifestation of an American ketu
01:23:19
which is Elon is able to get Engineers
01:23:22
from Tesla he's not just buying the
01:23:24
power packs he had them re-engineer the
01:23:26
actual firmware in real time on site and
01:23:29
so there's this this positive ability to
01:23:33
just like organize effort and human
01:23:35
capital like look could we all stand up
01:23:37
at Data Center and go and buy $500
01:23:39
million a power packs from Panasonic
01:23:42
absolutely it would take a few months 18
01:23:45
and then when it looked like we need to
01:23:46
rewrite the firmware it would take
01:23:47
another 18 months to your point Jason so
01:23:49
it's really incredible what what these
01:23:51
guys are able to do together those are
01:23:53
my it was really really inspiring chath
01:23:55
a book I think you might find really fun
01:23:57
is uh it's called Henry Kaiser builder
01:23:59
in the American West but Kaiser is kind
01:24:01
of underappreciated these days he was
01:24:03
the Elon of his time he started as a
01:24:05
road builder of all things he won the
01:24:07
contract to build the Hoover Dam he
01:24:08
built the Hoover Dam he started a
01:24:09
shipyard during World War II uh yeah
01:24:12
exactly this made cars he he he decided
01:24:14
to make cars he decided to make
01:24:15
airplanes stations TVs the the famous
01:24:19
4day Liberty ship uh remember the
01:24:21
propaganda win during World War II of
01:24:23
you know they were able to lay down that
01:24:24
was at the Kaiser shipyards Kaiser
01:24:26
Permanente spun out of them as part of
01:24:29
their
01:24:30
um John I was literally TR was saying
01:24:33
that pulling up my notes from the book
01:24:35
um and uh just he was just a complete
01:24:37
phenam and he just kept finding new
01:24:39
Industries it's like oh building cars
01:24:41
how hard can it be oh building airplanes
01:24:43
how hard can it be yeah I mean that is
01:24:46
the nature entrepreneurship the nature
01:24:49
of Entrepreneurship is doing something
01:24:51
delusional and then just letting you
01:24:53
know most R preneurs just do one
01:24:55
delusional Thing Once and stay that like
01:24:57
again Elon and Henry Kaiser back in the
01:24:59
day it's in the world of atoms very hard
01:25:01
things short timelines and S San
01:25:04
Francisco now kind of at least in the
01:25:06
physical domain stands for a kind of
01:25:08
stasis you know it takes you 10 years to
01:25:10
you know build anything um but when he
01:25:12
had the ship the toilet the ship
01:25:14
building yards here he went from zero to
01:25:17
100,000 people in Richmond in one year
01:25:20
he basically built the city of Richmond
01:25:22
California how do you how do you but
01:25:24
guys okay let's just double how how do
01:25:27
you think these guys pull this off
01:25:30
I personal sacrifice massive personal
01:25:33
sacrifice I understand that Jason but
01:25:35
I'm I'm talking about like tactically
01:25:37
pull this off where you have to be on
01:25:40
site at some point organizing this team
01:25:42
directing this team being able to help
01:25:45
isolate these problems fix them it just
01:25:47
seems impossible to do it once let alone
01:25:49
six I don't understand how they do I
01:25:51
actually have some insight to this just
01:25:52
from knowing Elon this lot of these
01:25:54
things compound a lot of what he learned
01:25:56
in Material Science doing SpaceX and
01:25:59
about making uh the engines and then
01:26:02
working with metal you see in his
01:26:05
production at Tesla and specifically in
01:26:09
the Cyber truck he has learned so much
01:26:12
about factories I don't think there's a
01:26:14
person on the planet who knows more
01:26:15
about factories now having built a
01:26:17
battery Factory a space Factory an
01:26:20
engine Factory and a car factory and now
01:26:22
building Optimus on of that so these
01:26:24
things compound and then a lot of the
01:26:27
engineers will float between the
01:26:28
companies so there are folks who have
01:26:30
worked at SpaceX who then go do a tour
01:26:32
over at Tesla Etc and a number of those
01:26:37
wound up coming into
01:26:39
um you I'm going to read you a few
01:26:41
quotes in this book I'm just going to
01:26:42
see if they remind you of of anyone
01:26:46
Kaiser's managers challenged convention
01:26:48
from the start as Builders they were
01:26:50
expert at coordinating workers and
01:26:52
materials Kaiser was almost contemptuous
01:26:54
of traditional methods his Partners had
01:26:57
long since despaired of getting him to
01:26:59
follow customary
01:27:00
procedures in preparing his bids for
01:27:02
each new job Kaiser would try to
01:27:04
conceive every possible technique that
01:27:06
might justify uh making a bid low enough
01:27:08
to win the chob once the construction
01:27:11
was underway he was forever trying to
01:27:12
come up with ideas that would expedite
01:27:14
the work perhaps more than any other
01:27:16
Builder he believed that the faster a
01:27:18
job gets done the lower the costs can be
01:27:21
that's incredible incredible well and
01:27:23
what happened with
01:27:25
is they had told Elon that it would when
01:27:29
he wanted to use other network operation
01:27:33
centers to host Colossus you know and he
01:27:36
looked they were not available and when
01:27:38
he did find quotes from them they told
01:27:40
him 18 to 24 months he just determined
01:27:43
hey if this there's no reason to even do
01:27:45
this if I can't get this done in you
01:27:47
know a 100 days or something why even
01:27:49
join the race I'm going to be so far
01:27:51
behind and if you look just to wrap this
01:27:53
segment up and get on to our final two
01:27:56
segments if you look at these two charts
01:27:59
about grock it's now uh and you know
01:28:02
listen these benchmarks and these Arenas
01:28:04
and testing there's a lot of controversy
01:28:06
around them and people keep leapfrogging
01:28:08
each other but they they do give us I
01:28:10
think our best shot at looking at
01:28:12
progress this is The Benchmark here for
01:28:15
grock on a bunch of different tests Math
01:28:18
Science and coding and as you can see
01:28:20
grock 3 has now eclipsed Gemini which is
01:28:25
uh
01:28:26
Google's llm and deep seek from China
01:28:30
Claude and chat GPT 40 and so to your
01:28:34
point it's pretty impressive yeah top of
01:28:38
the lmis
01:28:39
leaderboard the the thing here I think
01:28:41
freeberg I'd like to get your um comment
01:28:44
on is if Hardware is the
01:28:48
constraint does that mean that the
01:28:51
person who understands hardware and
01:28:53
buildout as chth was pointing to does
01:28:56
that mean that they by default win Jason
01:28:59
hold on this is what's counterintuitive
01:29:00
it wasn't clear because no it was not
01:29:03
yes I would guess that the last couple
01:29:05
of iterations it seemed like open AI has
01:29:09
moved to what comes after the base model
01:29:12
meaning in the allocation of resources
01:29:14
in terms of what they were creating and
01:29:16
so this is what's so counterintuitive he
01:29:18
was like No And so I I don't understand
01:29:21
what he knew that everybody else didn't
01:29:22
know but that the size of that cluster
01:29:25
made no sense and it could only be a
01:29:27
result like this where he basically
01:29:29
proved that there was still value in
01:29:30
pre-training where size actually led to
01:29:32
better outcomes that's that's not that I
01:29:35
think that was counter it's super
01:29:36
consequential is my is I'm in complete
01:29:39
agreement with the chth and just
01:29:40
freeberg to wrap the segment up and put
01:29:42
a bow on it we see these llms they've
01:29:45
made incredible progress as we just
01:29:46
heard from ev2 or evo2 I'm sorry a Gro
01:29:50
and we're making these giant gains in
01:29:52
space uh you know in work and
01:29:56
specifically in space Dave do you think
01:29:58
this will get us any closer to
01:30:02
Uranus so sad so sad it didn't even land
01:30:05
okay let's do our final don't even don't
01:30:07
even acknowledge don't even acknowledge
01:30:08
it do not acknowledge it because we'll
01:30:09
just do more of it I tried to get your
01:30:11
mouth to do one he wouldn't do it okay
01:30:14
last two segments we're going to talk
01:30:16
about staying private longer and when
01:30:17
you guys are going to go public and then
01:30:19
there's an asteroid coming what do we
01:30:20
want to do first boys you want to talk
01:30:22
about this asteroid coming is it the end
01:30:24
of the world if it hits us what's going
01:30:26
on NASA dropped the probability of it
01:30:29
hitting Earth to one and a half% so
01:30:31
every day when the sky gets dark they
01:30:33
can do a better job seeing this asteroid
01:30:36
that everyone's freaking out about so we
01:30:38
finally got a good night sky two nights
01:30:40
ago the telescopes were able to get a
01:30:43
better trajectory reading on it and that
01:30:45
allows the models to make estimates on
01:30:47
the probability of this asteroid hitting
01:30:49
Earth in 2032 when it's projected uh to
01:30:54
our orbit and so right now the
01:30:56
probability is estimated at 1.5% that it
01:30:59
will hit the earth and based on the size
01:31:01
of this asteroid there's this range it
01:31:03
goes up to 320 feet in diameter as small
01:31:06
as 80 feet in diameter which actually
01:31:08
can have a pretty big effect on how big
01:31:11
of an energy release there would be if
01:31:14
it actually uh you know hit the earth so
01:31:17
even on the high end if it was call it
01:31:19
300 feet it would be the equivalent of
01:31:21
call it a 20 Megaton bomb wow which is
01:31:24
not insignificant if it were that big it
01:31:26
would hit the earth if it was smaller
01:31:28
than that it would probably just
01:31:29
detonate me air and create a massive
01:31:31
shock wave and and Firestorm but the
01:31:34
region that it would decimate would be
01:31:36
limited uh to probably a couple dozen
01:31:39
miles up to a thousand miles of effect
01:31:41
and if you look at the total surface
01:31:42
area of the Earth you know we're talking
01:31:44
about 10 to 15% of the earth having
01:31:46
people that habitate you know enough
01:31:48
people to habitate probably going to
01:31:49
land in an ocean right I mean all right
01:31:50
yeah so it's one and a half% chance of
01:31:52
hitting the Earth and then call it a 15%
01:31:55
chance of it hits the Earth causing loss
01:31:56
of life 10 basis points it hits a city
01:31:59
one basis point City and right and then
01:32:00
it's a function of how big it is if it's
01:32:02
actually as small as 80 feet then it's
01:32:04
not going to be that significant even if
01:32:05
it does get close to habited area so
01:32:08
yeah I'm not losing sleep over over
01:32:10
there did you come across in your
01:32:11
research I feel like this is a real boys
01:32:13
are monitoring the situation moment did
01:32:15
you come across the tunguska event
01:32:18
research so that one Inc yeah so uh I
01:32:22
don't you want to talk about it go ahead
01:32:23
yeah Ju Just um no one knows this in
01:32:25
1908 an asteroid hit the earth it hit an
01:32:28
relatively uninhabited part of Russia it
01:32:31
was a first off the asteroid did not hit
01:32:33
the Earth because it got so hot on
01:32:35
re-entry there was an air burst and it
01:32:38
was a thousand harashima in size the
01:32:41
explosion yeah they have here the 60
01:32:42
meter asteroid and they have the megat
01:32:44
tonage somewhere wow it's the yeah
01:32:47
largest impact event in recorded history
01:32:49
obviously there was you know stuff
01:32:50
before recorded history it flattened 80
01:32:53
million trees
01:32:55
weirdly basically no one was killed
01:32:58
because he was so uninhabited but this
01:32:59
is quite comparable to the one that NASA
01:33:02
is talking about that's right it's about
01:33:03
the same size y exactly and I think you
01:33:06
could take a little bit of reassurance
01:33:07
maybe that we have had similar size
01:33:09
asteroids hit before and there is some
01:33:11
existence proof that despite the giant
01:33:14
explosion you know it doesn't show up in
01:33:16
the climactic data for 198 Tusa asteroid
01:33:18
was at like 160 200t so if if this
01:33:22
asteroid is in that range and it the
01:33:24
Earth you have this kind of explosion in
01:33:25
the
01:33:26
air if it gets above I think 250 roughly
01:33:30
is where they think that it doesn't burn
01:33:31
up fully in the air and it actually will
01:33:33
strike the Earth but yeah that's um
01:33:36
there you go this is roughly what we saw
01:33:38
happen what we think the size will be
01:33:39
right if it hits is there a counter
01:33:42
measure I don't mean to get all sci-fi
01:33:44
here great question yeah but is there a
01:33:46
countermeasure possible and like if this
01:33:48
thing was coming let's say in five
01:33:51
years size yeah relative to the Earth
01:33:54
this is like tens of thousands of
01:33:57
kilometers an hour right it's it's a
01:33:59
it's a very fast moving object it's
01:34:01
pretty small right 160 ft so you've now
01:34:04
got to figure out the exact trajectory
01:34:06
get it perfectly right get a launch off
01:34:09
of the earth and intercept this thing at
01:34:12
the exact moment that you need to to
01:34:14
push it off course or detonate something
01:34:16
near buy it to to redirect it so
01:34:18
technically very complicated very hard
01:34:20
to pull off but this is exactly why we
01:34:22
have this planetary defense
01:34:25
funding at Nasa which is to track these
01:34:27
objects and this is another example by
01:34:29
the way where I would say AI can play an
01:34:31
important role and I'd love Patrick and
01:34:33
John to aine on this but I have a thesis
01:34:35
that like AI more than anything unlocks
01:34:38
deeply complicated project for humans
01:34:40
that would otherwise be kind of
01:34:41
infeasible in the pre AI era I think in
01:34:43
the post a era we're going to be like oh
01:34:45
here's all these projects that we do
01:34:46
that are like oh you know we we on a
01:34:48
daily basis we mine to the Center of the
01:34:50
Earth and we get cool like Rare Earth
01:34:52
minerals from like 500 miles down and we
01:34:54
go to space and colonize the moon and
01:34:56
all these crazy things because AI
01:34:58
unlocks these large scale projects that
01:35:00
would require millions of people to do
01:35:02
things in a coordinated way and AI can
01:35:04
be very smart in this way but I think AI
01:35:05
could play a role also in these
01:35:07
planetary Defense Initiative Concepts
01:35:09
jcal in the future where you can
01:35:10
actually build an a complete project
01:35:12
model in software on how you would
01:35:15
actually address this problem and then
01:35:17
you know go execute it with Automation
01:35:19
and but yeah there's a planetary defense
01:35:21
function at Nasa they track these
01:35:22
objects and they're funded to do it so
01:35:24
we hope that NASA continues to get
01:35:26
funding to do this work very important
01:35:27
and guys it just came through that NASA
01:35:29
just dropped the probability of a impact
01:35:32
event to about a one-third of 1% so it's
01:35:35
gotten even smaller which is we can all
01:35:37
go to sleep comfortably tonight all
01:35:38
right all right now everybody's been
01:35:40
waiting for Patrick John you founded the
01:35:44
company in 2010 it's uh 15 years later
01:35:47
the entire LP industrial complex and
01:35:50
venture capitalist everywhere I'm sure
01:35:52
some employees are wondering when will
01:35:55
stripe go public and under what
01:35:56
circumstances and what's the hold up
01:35:59
here why aren't you public
01:36:02
already yeah look um I think people
01:36:05
sometimes hold us out to be dogmatic or
01:36:09
something on this topic whereas we feel
01:36:12
like so many other people out there in
01:36:15
the world are dogmatic and we just Tred
01:36:17
to be pragmatic H us you know Keith was
01:36:19
on the show and he was saying you know
01:36:20
he believes companies should go public
01:36:22
as quickly as possible I don't know
01:36:23
maybe that's the right thing for some
01:36:25
companies but uh in at least Stripes
01:36:28
case that that hasn't been the case I
01:36:30
also think the environment has changed
01:36:32
quite a bit where it used to be the case
01:36:35
to that to do any return of capital to
01:36:37
shareholders you know or if you needed
01:36:39
any kind of large sums of money you
01:36:41
needed the public markets that's
01:36:42
obviously not true today where uh the
01:36:45
you know stable private markets exist
01:36:47
but we look and we say is strip better
01:36:49
off at the moment as a private or a
01:36:51
public company and you know up to this
01:36:53
point we have determined private that
01:36:55
could change at some point but it's kind
01:36:58
of no Dogma from our point the last
01:37:00
thing I'll just say is you know I think
01:37:01
Keith made the argument people generally
01:37:03
make the argument that it is critical
01:37:05
for discipline to be public and public
01:37:08
companies run in a more disciplined
01:37:10
fashion and I think that's hogwash like
01:37:13
if you need a 25-year-old Fidelity
01:37:15
analyst asking you to double click on
01:37:16
your capex blah blah blah blah to run
01:37:18
the company with discipline something is
01:37:21
horribly wrong at the company and you
01:37:22
need new management and so that argument
01:37:24
has never
01:37:25
really resonated with me basically what
01:37:28
you guys are saying is for your
01:37:31
intellectual perspective you get a lot
01:37:33
more return on the time you spend
01:37:35
talking with the private investors you
01:37:37
have and your team and then and
01:37:40
customers and customers and it would
01:37:42
just be delive and you would have your
01:37:44
outcomes quite honestly if you had to
01:37:46
talk to these other folks who are
01:37:48
talking to you and 50 other companies
01:37:50
don't really know much of anything maybe
01:37:52
very surface level and then may actually
01:37:54
distract you and force you to make
01:37:56
decisions you don't want to make we're
01:37:57
not even that negative not that negative
01:38:00
I was going to say but but it's um
01:38:02
there's no spiritual status associated
01:38:04
with being public like why be public it
01:38:06
is a cheaper source of deeper and more
01:38:08
liquid capital and so if you want
01:38:10
cheaper and uh and more liquid Capital
01:38:12
then you know by all means go with it
01:38:14
but you know it's it's not it's not more
01:38:16
moral and and I think you know again
01:38:19
it's it's just helpful to sort of get
01:38:20
away from uh from that kind of framing I
01:38:22
also think it's noteworthy if you look
01:38:23
at Financial Services in particular and
01:38:25
we're kind of a company at the
01:38:25
intersection of financial services and
01:38:27
Technology being private for a long time
01:38:29
is is the norm so you know Bloomberg is
01:38:31
a private company Fidel is a private
01:38:33
company vanguard's a private company
01:38:34
Jane Street's private company um gold
01:38:37
citel secur Citadel Citadel yeah Goldman
01:38:39
waited 130 years to go public JB Morgan
01:38:42
waited 70 years to go public Visa waited
01:38:44
Visa waited 50 years to go public and
01:38:47
you know again those are all kind of
01:38:49
different times in history so that's
01:38:51
saying you can draw def them but I but
01:38:54
well I I think the thing in financial
01:38:55
services where there's always a tendency
01:38:58
uniquely here to be kind of procyclical
01:39:00
and I think you need to be kind of
01:39:02
particularly careful as a public
01:39:04
financial services company to avoid some
01:39:06
of those Temptations and some of those
01:39:07
Tendencies and so you know I think that
01:39:09
that that's a unique Dynamic that
01:39:11
applies uh in our space and uh and then
01:39:14
you know Financial Services generally if
01:39:17
you look at companies like SpaceX
01:39:18
they're able to provide this yearly
01:39:20
liquidity which actually is probably
01:39:21
better because it Smooths out a lot of
01:39:23
all and then people can get back to work
01:39:25
and just kind of are you guys profit by
01:39:27
the way we are profitable yeah I'm
01:39:30
profitable like a fully loaded Gap net
01:39:32
income basis not like a community
01:39:34
adjusted e but a stuff but shout out
01:39:37
Adam Newman come on the prod
01:39:39
anytime you gotta wear
01:39:41
shoes yeah I do think we
01:39:44
think as it comes you know pertains to
01:39:48
people joining the business and being
01:39:50
compensated you know everyone loves the
01:39:51
idea of an IPO pop but if you look at a
01:39:54
bunch of the other fintech companies you
01:39:57
know Square really great company 70% off
01:40:00
its 2021 Peak PayPal 80% off their 2021
01:40:03
Peak if you're an employee and you join
01:40:05
those companies in 2021 it's not a great
01:40:08
feeling and so again I think the um the
01:40:10
the lack of Val you know the the good
01:40:13
and the bad is you are Nas priced every
01:40:15
single day by the markers but it's not
01:40:17
only a bad thing the framework you know
01:40:20
if I'm trying to predict our actions
01:40:21
like the framework we use is is kind of
01:40:22
two things one I I think you know what
01:40:24
matters is less kind of the returns in a
01:40:26
given year and more duration and so the
01:40:29
question is you know what enables the
01:40:30
best compounding on sort of a 10-e Time
01:40:31
Horizon and you know what's best for
01:40:32
shareholders uh as you really take kind
01:40:34
of the the longer term perspective and
01:40:35
then just what's best for customers and
01:40:37
you know what you know helps you build
01:40:38
the best products and you chat you kind
01:40:39
of said it where you know at least at
01:40:40
this juncture with the business growing
01:40:42
at this rate we want to spend the
01:40:44
marginal hour with h with some customer
01:40:46
and and I think you guys have gotten
01:40:47
this sense like this is our life's work
01:40:49
you know we're not going anywhere we'll
01:40:50
be very happily running stripe in 10
01:40:52
years time in years time and there's so
01:40:54
much going on in this space where we
01:40:56
spent a bunch of time talking about
01:40:57
stable coins talking about AI everything
01:40:59
like that and it's hard enough to stay
01:41:02
ahead in the world of business you know
01:41:04
without all these distractions like you
01:41:05
said and so it's just a question of how
01:41:07
do you set yourself up to win and do
01:41:09
right by a new one in a the world's
01:41:11
pretty competitive I think if you had to
01:41:13
Steelman the bill Gurley point of
01:41:15
view there are very few Founders that
01:41:17
are probably as Steely eyed as you guys
01:41:21
and so what I think a lot of Bo members
01:41:23
in most other situations that are not
01:41:25
stripe deal with is what is a good
01:41:29
forcing function to keep these folks on
01:41:31
track focused and focused and thinking
01:41:34
in a multi-decade kind of way and they
01:41:37
found that the public markets I think do
01:41:39
that more than anything else that's
01:41:40
probably the most compelling for the
01:41:42
folks that would otherwise maybe get
01:41:44
distracted but then for guys like you
01:41:45
that can frankly just do it it's it's
01:41:48
great all right impressive it's really
01:41:50
impressive congratulations well
01:41:51
appreciate you guys coming on the
01:41:52
program come back anytime you were
01:41:54
awesome today and listen let's recap
01:41:57
what have we
01:41:58
learned people got to put some pants on
01:42:00
and get back to work constraint makes
01:42:02
for great art Stripes going public in
01:42:04
2050 chamath lost five billion not
01:42:08
investing uh the coulson's read a lot of
01:42:10
books but I'm still kicking live and
01:42:12
kicking bro he's still in the arena got
01:42:14
a lot of chips still to fire so see what
01:42:16
happen to fire fire fire South American
01:42:19
president shouldn't have their own meme
01:42:21
coins and life finds a way we are and
01:42:26
and you pronounce a kison obviously as
01:42:28
aison because you know we're down the
01:42:30
road and carry and we go and get some
01:42:32
eggs and bakey sometimes okay coming to
01:42:35
South by Southwest brought to you by the
01:42:38
co cison brothers and stripe a Allin is
01:42:42
headed to the South by Southwest they're
01:42:44
not sponsoring it I'm joking Allin is
01:42:46
headed to South by Southwest on March
01:42:47
13th me and freeberg are going to sit
01:42:49
down and do our interviews two besties
01:42:52
on the future of Med media and building
01:42:55
businesses in this new media ecosystem
01:42:57
we're going to have a casual party food
01:42:58
drinks the whole thing event is going to
01:43:00
be uh pretty intimate couple hundred
01:43:03
seats when are you guys do this March 13
01:43:06
you opt it out me and freeberg want to
01:43:08
do it oh Thursday no K doker and uh it's
01:43:13
by application only with a small $30
01:43:16
registration fee of which stripe will
01:43:18
take $19 go to allin.com events to apply
01:43:22
I'm not B about it and programming note
01:43:26
the besties are on a tear we were on
01:43:28
Megan Kelly last week and next week our
01:43:31
bestie fredberg is representing us on
01:43:34
Celebrity Jeopardy we can't say what
01:43:37
happened get the clips ready get the
01:43:38
clips get the clips ready we are going
01:43:41
to do a recap of every single question
01:43:44
when when do you when do you when ises
01:43:45
it air on Monday next week I think I
01:43:47
don't know Wednesday at 900 p.m.
01:43:49
Wednesday Wednesday at 9M perfect before
01:43:51
the taping yum yum H yeah perfect
01:43:55
perfect there he
01:43:56
is between Anna
01:43:59
Navaro she's from The View right well
01:44:01
she's pretty angry I've seen clips of
01:44:03
her she's I should have gotten some
01:44:05
counsel ahead of signing up for
01:44:06
Celebrity Jeopardy on the lack of upside
01:44:09
in doing this and you will see why we'll
01:44:12
talk next week oh no bye oh no you lost
01:44:14
not good you
01:44:16
lost view you didn't lose to the view
01:44:20
did you look guys I'm just telling you
01:44:23
got 160 IQ The View put together doesn't
01:44:26
have 160 IQ let me just tell you well
01:44:29
we'll talk about it
01:44:30
afterwards don't tell me they got you on
01:44:32
pop culture you're pretty good on pop
01:44:35
culture oh no no comment okay love you
01:44:37
guys I got to go love you bye bye see
01:44:39
you next time bye
01:44:41
boys let your winners
01:44:48
ride and instead we open source it to
01:44:50
the fans and they've just gone crazy
01:44:52
with it Love You Queen
01:44:55
[Music]
01:45:01
of
01:45:03
Besties that's my dog taking your
01:45:09
driveway oh man
01:45:11
myit we should all just get a room and
01:45:13
just have one big huge orgy cuz they're
01:45:15
all just useless it's like this like
01:45:17
sexual tension that they just need to
01:45:18
release somehow
01:45:25
P we need to get merch
01:45:30
[Music]
01:45:34
our I'm going in

Episode Highlights

  • Stripe's Impact on Payments
    Stripe processes over a trillion dollars a year, revolutionizing how transactions are handled.
    “Stripe processes payments, changing the world.”
    @ 04m 32s
    February 22, 2025
  • The Rise of Stable Coins
    Stable coins are becoming a significant payment method, especially for international transactions.
    “Stable coins are I think the first really big payments use case.”
    @ 07m 46s
    February 22, 2025
  • Jamie Diamond's Remote Work Rant
    Jamie Diamond criticizes remote work and its negative effects on the younger generation.
    “The Young Generation is being damaged by this.”
    @ 21m 15s
    February 22, 2025
  • Leadership in a Post-COVID World
    Leaders are now speaking more directly and leading from the front, moving away from coddling.
    “My job is not to coddle my employees; my job is to lead my employees.”
    @ 24m 56s
    February 22, 2025
  • Defense Spending Debate
    Discussion on the need for military spending to align with technological advancements.
    “Military spending needs to happen downstream from what's actually happening in technology.”
    @ 36m 46s
    February 22, 2025
  • Meme Coin Controversy
    Argentine president Mle faces backlash after promoting a meme coin that crashed 95%.
    “I was not aware of the details of the project.”
    @ 44m 27s
    February 22, 2025
  • The Great Debate in Politics
    Modern politics lacks objectivity, focusing instead on attacking opposing ideas. "The great debate is like let's talk about the topic at hand."
    “The great debate is like let's talk about the topic at hand.”
    @ 55m 39s
    February 22, 2025
  • Complex Diseases
    Despite advancements, we have yet to cure complex diseases, which remain a tragic reality. "We've never cured a complex disease."
    “We've never cured a complex disease.”
    @ 01h 02m 37s
    February 22, 2025
  • Genetic Diversity in Bananas
    Exploration of the banana industry's reliance on a single clone and its vulnerabilities.
    “60 cents of every dollar we spend on bananas today goes towards fungicide.”
    @ 01h 17m 26s
    February 22, 2025
  • The Power of Constraints
    Elon Musk's approach to innovation emphasizes the need for constraints to drive progress.
    “Innovation needs a constraint sometimes; it's capital, sometimes it's talent and sometimes it's time.”
    @ 01h 22m 36s
    February 22, 2025
  • The Tunguska Event
    In 1908, an asteroid caused a massive explosion in Russia, flattening millions of trees.
    “It was a thousand Hiroshima in size.”
    @ 01h 32m 41s
    February 22, 2025
  • Stripe's Public Future
    Stripe's founders discuss the timing and reasoning behind remaining private.
    “There's no spiritual status associated with being public.”
    @ 01h 38m 02s
    February 22, 2025

Episode Quotes

Key Moments

  • Financial Infrastructure17:20
  • Defense Budget Cuts34:51
  • Leadership Crisis52:31
  • Leadership Failures53:43
  • Research Issues1:09:41
  • Predictive Biology1:12:24
  • NASA Update1:35:29
  • Creative Constraints1:42:00

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

Related Episodes

Podcast thumbnail
E117: Did Stripe miss its window? Plus: VC market update, AI comes for SaaS, Trump's savvy move
Podcast thumbnail
E75: Fast shuts down, board culpability, Elon buys 9% of Twitter, deplatforming's evolution & more
Podcast thumbnail
E65: VC markup dynamics, Russia/US tensions over Ukraine, Altos Labs raises $3B, Stripe mafia & more
Podcast thumbnail
E133: Market melt-up, IPO update, AI startups overheat, Reddit revolts & more with Brad Gerstner
Podcast thumbnail
E130: DeSantis's Twitter Spaces, debt ceiling, Nvidia rips, state of VC, startup failure & more
Podcast thumbnail
New SEC Chair, Bitcoin, xAI Supercomputer, UnitedHealth CEO murder, with Gavin Baker & Joe Lonsdale
Podcast thumbnail
E5: WHO's incompetence, kicking off Cold War II, China's grand plan, 100X'ing American efficiency
Podcast thumbnail
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on tokenizing stocks, expanding access to private shares, fintech's future
Podcast thumbnail
E23: Radical DAs, breaking down FB/Google vs. Australia, sustained fear post-vaccine & fan questions
Podcast thumbnail
E101: Ye acquires Parler, Snap drops 30%, macro outlook, VC metrics, valuing stocks & more