0:02

All Zone Media.

0:05

Welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed zetron

0:19

Today I am joined barcul Zone Media's Robert

0:21

Evans, and he's joining

0:24

me to talk more about the growth that all costs

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rot economy. It's the thing that's making your

0:28

beloved tech products worse

0:30

to make someone else hundreds of millions

0:33

of dollars. And it's so good, Robert. We love

0:35

it, don't we, folks.

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I'm having a great time. I love that I

0:38

used to make a living teaching like

0:41

people who would pay you

0:43

to the company. I worked for huge amounts of money

0:46

to be trained in like how to use Google

0:48

more effectively, all these little dorks and stuff

0:50

that allow you to like really specialize

0:53

your search settings. And

0:55

I love that. Just in the last couple

0:57

of years, Google has placed

0:59

a shot gun to the base of their searches

1:02

engines. Skull pulled the trigger,

1:04

and now a bunch of people are desperately trying

1:06

to be like, oh, there's this new perperplexity

1:09

AI or this other AI search engine,

1:11

like it's much better. And it's like, no, it's

1:13

slightly better than Google now, but they're all worse

1:16

than Google used to be. None of

1:18

this is a step forward. They're just pains in the

1:20

ass.

1:21

So one of the reasons that that's happening

1:23

isn't just the public markets. The public

1:26

markets are a big part of the problem, and they're

1:28

the ones that incentivize this whole growth or

1:30

costs phenomenon. But I

1:32

actually want you to know that this has

1:35

another cause, and it's private

1:37

investing and venture capital. Those

1:40

are the ones who are pretty

1:42

much putting a thumb on the head

1:44

of innovation that is stopping great

1:46

companies being built by incentivizing

1:49

well, kind of a form of slaughter,

1:52

fattening up pigs to sell to the market,

1:54

rather than making something innovative.

1:57

Yeah, like like some sort of like a pig

2:00

sheep hybrid like a peep.

2:02

But you could eat the meat from there.

2:04

Yeah yeah, I think it would probably be like

2:07

like the like the clone from the fourth

2:09

Alien movie that just is begging for you to

2:11

kill it, but then you know, you get

2:14

some sort of fucked up bacon.

2:15

But instead of getting that fucked up bacon, what you actually

2:18

get is more like the creature from the Thing, the

2:20

weird spider creature, which is funny, scary,

2:23

but not particularly useful.

2:25

Yeah, probably not very tasty.

2:26

So before companies like Uber reached the public

2:29

markets. They're fueled by a much more violent

2:31

and reckless form of funding, venture capital.

2:34

Venture capitalists can be seed stage investors

2:37

or regular guy putting ten grand into a company,

2:39

all the way up to massive firms with hundreds of people

2:41

like Andresen Horowitz, who invested early

2:44

in Facebook and Airbnb.

2:45

Yeah, Like the thing that I've always that I

2:47

came to realize about like venture capital

2:50

money just from studying scams, is you

2:52

have like Corey Doctor talks about

2:54

this a lot. But like in traditional scam terminology

2:56

of this period called like the bezel right, which

2:58

is the time between starting

3:00

the scam when everybody else realizes it's

3:02

a fucking scam. It's the period in which you're making

3:04

a bunch of money, and like that's

3:07

that's where all of these VC people

3:09

like make their fortune. You know, some of the companies

3:11

they back do turn out to be long term profitable,

3:14

but they don't have to be. If you can

3:16

just sort of get this IPO where everybody

3:18

values it super highly for a while

3:21

and cash out what you have in

3:23

the company during that period of time. If

3:25

the company fails a few years after its

3:27

IPO, if it turns out that like it wasn't really

3:29

a good business, you still get rich.

3:32

Like the key thing is, it's great if you wind

3:34

up making a successful business in their eyes,

3:37

but you don't have to for them to make a lot of money,

3:39

right, They just have to have to be able

3:41

to get out before you know, the scam

3:43

reaches its its conclusion, they.

3:45

Have to reach a liquidity events, so either selling

3:48

that company to someone else or taking

3:50

it public. And a big thing is

3:52

the venture capital. Yes, like all

3:54

investment things, is always just evil

3:57

at its core, but it used to be much smaller.

3:59

Used to be maybe a billion dollars in a year

4:01

that would go into tech startups. Now it's

4:03

in twenty twenty two, it's like two hundred and

4:06

forty billion dollars. And

4:08

I'll get to why that's an obscene number later,

4:11

specifically around crypto. But when it was

4:13

smaller, investment wasn't done

4:15

with these ideas of these five, ten,

4:18

twenty x multipliers. It was

4:20

I want to put money early into this company because

4:22

I think they're making a good product that people will buy.

4:25

The problem was companies like

4:27

Google and Apple

4:30

to a lesser extent, but really companies like Facebook

4:33

getting these massive multi billion,

4:35

hundred billion dollar valuations. Suddenly

4:38

startups stopped needing

4:41

ten twenty fifty one hundred grand

4:43

at seed stage and started needing two

4:45

to five to ten million dollars at

4:47

the seed or even series A stage.

4:51

And suddenly venture capitalists started moving

4:53

away from this idea of good businesses

4:55

that could last without them, and they started

4:58

to go into a form of kind of

5:00

of symbolic capital, investing

5:02

in things that looked value but aren't

5:04

necessarily valuable at their whole. As

5:07

a result, they create this ecosystem

5:09

where these companies go through this kind of volatile,

5:12

irrosive cycle of growth, with

5:14

the only goal being that they

5:16

get to a stage when they become someone else's

5:18

problem, either by listing on the public markets

5:21

or selling to a much bigger company.

5:23

Yeah, and the whole crypto industry is essentially

5:26

taking that like it comes out of everyone. People

5:28

who came to expect this and in a

5:30

lot of cases got rich for the first

5:32

time through this chunk of the tech industry

5:35

and then realized, well, if we create

5:37

a way to utilize some of these these

5:39

psychological phenomenons and

5:41

like some of these ideas without

5:43

any kind of regulation, like that's where

5:45

crypto comes from, right Like it's it's

5:47

purely the scam aspects of this with none

5:50

of the real businesses.

5:51

And you're completely right, And I will shortly

5:53

get to that as well, because yeah,

5:56

here's let me set the scene of the

5:58

current state of the value up

6:00

emerges, they're considered the next

6:02

big thing. They ideally reach

6:04

unicorn status, which refers to them being worth

6:06

a billion dollars, and they experience

6:09

unprecedented growth, they explode, and

6:11

nobody asks the question, hey, you

6:14

make in more money than you're spending. Open

6:16

Ai is a great example of this. Right now, they

6:18

get these articles saying, oh, we've got over a billion

6:20

dollars in revenue. No one's saying, are

6:23

you how much you spending to get

6:25

there? But suddenly, after

6:28

all of this venture investment, after all

6:30

of this hype, they're challenging

6:32

the big dogs of their industry. They're getting in there

6:35

and they raise more and more money, and then

6:37

they buy up a few more companies

6:39

and now they're at this big, fat, nasty

6:41

penultimate stage when

6:44

people begin to ask if it was a good business. And

6:46

at this point they either have to sell it to someone

6:49

else or take it public, So the

6:51

destination may change, but the journey's always

6:53

kind of the same. You grow, you grow, you

6:55

try and find a business model, you grow a bit more,

6:58

and then you face reality. The idea the deal

7:00

state, by the way, for venture capital is before

7:02

this point reality should not interfere

7:05

with making money. So venture capital

7:07

pumps millions and billions of dollars into

7:09

these ideas that might kind

7:12

of sell a product or a service, but really just

7:14

resemble something that was worth something

7:16

in the past. Perhaps the founder

7:19

is a white guy who looks kind of like Mark

7:21

Zuckerberg. This is literally a phenomena. In the

7:23

twenty tens, it was guys who looked like Mark

7:25

Zuckerberg wearing hoodies. Or maybe it's hey,

7:28

Uber's a big company. What if you're the uber for

7:30

something else, Uber for laundry, for example.

7:32

Yeah, a lot of those companies die, and

7:35

what they're trying to do is keep the dance

7:38

going until someone is dumb

7:40

enough to buy them, or they can convince Morgan

7:42

Stanley to help them go public. And

7:45

the real problem with the value right now is people are

7:47

conflating the concept of great

7:50

ideas with things they like and things

7:52

that might sell, and the

7:55

result is less innovative things are happening.

7:58

These companies that are getting the money Open

8:01

Aye, getting ten billion dollars mostly in

8:03

cloud credits isn't making the world

8:05

better. It's looking a major

8:07

startup into being a customer of Microsoft

8:10

and making a product that has yet

8:13

to really prove itself.

8:14

Yeah, I think people are surprised

8:16

by that. But like what we mean is not that like you can't

8:18

do things that are cool or surprising

8:21

with this stuff, but that that does not could

8:24

like that does not conclude with it being a

8:26

great business. Right A bunch of people are flipping

8:28

out about that new them the video

8:30

generator. We can make a minute song video that kind

8:33

of looks like a California boom town

8:35

or whatever, and it's like, yeah, it's cool,

8:37

but like, is this number

8:39

one something that's realistically going

8:41

to be used in some things? Yeah, I'm sure it'll

8:43

be in some things. This is going to like replace

8:46

actually making movies? Well, probably

8:48

not. And that kind of means there's probably a

8:51

pretty limited amount of money that you're going

8:53

to make with this right now, Like it's

8:55

it's it's something that could potentially

8:57

be a business that is profitable,

8:59

but could it be a business that is more profitable

9:01

than the amount of money they are continuing to shovel

9:03

and open AI. That actually is

9:05

still an open question.

9:08

And the problem is that I'm not

9:10

even saying that venture capital shouldn't happen.

9:12

I do think it is a necessary force to get some

9:14

ideas off the ground. But the problem

9:16

is it's controlling the valley now, and

9:19

as a result, the things that are getting funded

9:21

are the problem. It's not that there

9:23

are no good ideas, it's not that there are no good

9:25

founders. It's that the funding is coming

9:27

from an increasingly more centralized group

9:30

of people who are

9:32

pretty much and I get everyone's profit seeking,

9:34

every investor wants a return, But there

9:36

are venture capitalists out there who

9:39

just don't care about creating new things.

9:41

In fact, they're very, very very

9:43

focused on keeping the status quo going.

9:46

And that's where Andreason Horowitz

9:48

comes in. My absolute favorite

9:50

venture capital firm. You may remember

9:52

them from Facebook.

9:55

Reason Yeah so.

9:57

Andreason Horowitz is amazing because they are large

10:00

firm and they have various partners who all

10:02

walk around making speeches

10:05

and they do their tweets vaguely saying like decentralization

10:07

is the future and it's good because of that, and

10:10

you're like, what does that mean? And then they don't want to talk

10:12

to you any further. Chris Dixon being

10:14

one of the more ugly ones, a

10:17

partner that is entirely focused on cryptocurrency,

10:19

which I'm shortly going to get to. And

10:22

nowhere was Andrews and Horowitz more crooked

10:24

than crypto. The scam that

10:27

Andreson Horowitz pulled on the crypto

10:29

markets in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two

10:31

should be studied as a financial crime,

10:33

and indeed it should be one. What it actually

10:36

is is a way that they managed to turn basically

10:38

money into more money without ever creating anything

10:41

of value. They pumped billions of

10:43

dollars into these things called Web three

10:45

companies, which were allegedly

10:48

new companies that were decentralized, but

10:50

they were really just shells for a

10:53

cryptocurrency token that someone could

10:55

then hype and sell before the sec

10:57

got aware of the problem.

11:01

And I really must be clear

11:03

how few of these companies actually did anything.

11:05

Let me take a step back, let me explain how cryptocurrency

11:08

companies made their money in like twenty twenty one,

11:10

twenty twenty two. They would put out

11:12

some a website for the thing, and they would say, we're

11:15

going to do a decentralized social network

11:17

and we're going to have this token. This token

11:19

will reward people for the contributions

11:21

to the social network. There were like eighty

11:24

different versions of this idea. That

11:26

token would then get a financial

11:28

valuation through trading on various different

11:31

crypto exchanges Binance or coinbase

11:33

in many cases. And at this

11:35

point you think, cool, what does the company do?

11:38

And that was the wrong question to ask.

11:40

The companies don't really do anything, or

11:43

they're just traditional companies that have created a token

11:45

as a means of monetizing a market. What

11:48

Andrews and Horoids would do was invest

11:50

in these companies and then receive a massive

11:53

amount of these tokens at

11:55

this vastly discounted price, kind of like

11:58

how it works with stock and startup, and

12:01

then you would hope, in the case of the stock for the startup,

12:03

that you could sell it on the public markets or perhaps

12:05

you could sell to another company. This

12:07

usually takes about five to ten years. But

12:10

what was amazing about the crypto scam

12:12

was Andrewson Horowitz only had to wait a

12:14

few months for these tokens,

12:16

which they had bought at massive discount to list

12:18

on say coinbase, a major

12:20

cryptocurrency exchange where Mark Andreson

12:23

has a board seat. This

12:25

allowed them to dump all of their investment,

12:27

which they got at this remarkably small

12:29

price, onto retail investors, believing

12:31

that they were in the ground floor. They basically

12:34

invested in the stock market, invested

12:37

in Morgan Stanley, invested in every part,

12:39

and just funneled money between places. It

12:41

was completely insane, and

12:44

they be billions of dollars doing this.

12:48

I feel crazy whenever I read about this

12:50

stuff, because it happened in broad daylight.

12:53

It's it's you know, you can say

12:55

what you will about like the ability of anyone to

12:57

accumulate that much money,

12:59

but it at least even with like I don't

13:01

think Zuckerberg deserves certainly wouldn't say

13:04

he deserves to have billions of dollars. But if

13:06

you say, if you like, say, okay,

13:08

this guy's crazy rich, he's worth this many billions.

13:10

What did you do?

13:11

Well, he made this thing that everybody uses. That

13:13

is a thing, right, as opposed to

13:15

like this, which is how did he become

13:17

a billionaire? Well, he played a really really

13:20

fancy version of the shell game they play

13:22

on the street in New York and all those movies

13:24

from the eighties.

13:25

And it's crazy because there was one

13:27

called Definity they invested in school.

13:29

It had a token called ICP Internet Computer.

13:32

I think it stand for that's not

13:34

done anything. That company's never made anything, No

13:36

one's using that, there are no users. But

13:39

Andres and Horwitz made so much money off of it.

13:42

At the beginning of the pandemic, Mark and Dreson

13:44

did this big bloviating posting it's time

13:46

to build. But

13:49

I think the real fun scam of this,

13:51

the thing that makes me laugh but also cry,

13:54

is that there was a prolonged period where Andresen

13:57

Horowitz and many venture capitalists invested

13:59

in building nothing. They found these shell

14:01

companies that they then filled

14:04

full of venture dollars. In exchange, they got

14:06

a bunch of tokens that they were allowed to dump onto

14:09

the markets. They conned

14:11

so many people. They invested in Yuga

14:13

Labs, who makes the board ape Yacht Club.

14:15

Ah, that one's

14:17

gonna pay off. That investment's gonna

14:20

pay off. I've seen their their

14:22

bored ape world of Warcraft thing

14:24

that they believe it's going to be the future of

14:26

social networking or whatever.

14:28

And this is the thing. These companies never really

14:30

built anything. They invested.

14:33

They got the early ape coin. I really

14:35

hate saying this stuff out loud, very annoying.

14:38

Yeah, they've got the ape coins and

14:40

they were able to profit off of that, and then

14:42

they have the temerity to

14:44

say Christison went on hard Fork the

14:46

New York Times podcast and said, oh, yeah, we don't

14:48

invest in anyone who has their own tokens. It's

14:51

just they're just fucking liars. They're

14:53

just liars lying to us.

14:55

All I do kind of wonder

14:57

that one of the things that makes me makes me believe

15:00

some sort of like universal spirit guiding

15:02

reality, is that like Peter Jennings

15:04

had to die when he did, we simply couldn't

15:06

have had a world in which Peter Jennings was explaining

15:09

ape coin to people over the television

15:11

like that. That wouldn't have been allowed. Like that's

15:13

simply unimaginable.

15:15

And it's just having to

15:18

sit there here and say, yeah,

15:20

ape ape coin, that's how they made

15:22

them money. Ape chain, Oh yeah,

15:25

definity Ic. It's

15:28

these things that sucked. But also as

15:30

funny as this is, this was a prolonged

15:32

period when nothing was created other than

15:34

money for already rich guys. The

15:37

people that were disadvantaged by dumping

15:39

these tokens were regular investors

15:41

who, in twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two believe

15:44

that the crypto market was going to make them wildly rich

15:46

and it didn't. Coinbase,

15:48

who andresen Horitz invested in, they

15:51

helped millions of people lose billions

15:53

of dollars because they did a Super Bowl commercial

15:56

in February twenty twenty two, which

15:58

eventually led Well, I think if

16:00

you invested on that day, if you

16:02

waited to sell any later than March, you

16:04

would have lost your shirt. You would have just been at a

16:06

loss. However, if you'd wait it, it's now back

16:08

up to sixty seven thousand, So who

16:11

the fuck knows either way.

16:13

Yeah.

16:15

The big thing with the crypto craze was

16:17

that it was the most pornographic

16:19

version of the problem of venture capital today

16:22

in that it was entirely symbolic value.

16:24

It was, oh, a decentralized

16:26

computer, what a novel idea? Are

16:29

we building it? Who knows? But we have a token today.

16:31

Yay, let's make some money. And

16:33

in twenty twenty two, crypto startups raise thirty

16:36

three billion dollars a venture capital, which

16:38

is more than ten percent of the

16:40

two hundred and forty one billion dollars that

16:42

was invested in that entire year. Jeezuz,

16:44

And none of them have made a real

16:46

product. Yuga Labs. You laugh at the

16:48

bored Apoch Club, but that is actually

16:50

one of the few real products that actually

16:53

launch.

16:54

Yeah, they do seem to be making a video

16:56

game. It looks like shit, but it does

16:58

seem to be a video game.

17:09

And I think that it's a symptom

17:11

of a much larger problem, both

17:14

in that they're not investing to actually

17:16

make cool tech happen, but they're just trying

17:18

to make as much money in the most lazy

17:21

way possible. But I also think there's another problem.

17:23

I don't think these freaks actually

17:25

know what good looks like anymore. And

17:29

nowhere else is that more obvious

17:32

than Adam goddamn Newman.

17:36

Yeah, baby, we love him

17:38

so Adam Newman. For those of you who

17:40

don't know round, a company called we Work.

17:42

We Work's business model was that they

17:44

would buy or lease a building

17:47

and they would sub lease it to people, allowing

17:49

them to run their company out of it or

17:51

use a coworking space. Theoretically a

17:53

good idea until you looked at the financials,

17:55

where it constantly bled

17:57

money almost immediately because

18:00

real estate is a terrible investment. Yeah,

18:02

and also it was way too cheap. It

18:04

was way too cheap from the very beginning, so

18:07

they were always operating a loss.

18:09

Yeah, it's it's he Newman.

18:11

The thing that's interesting about him because he and Elizabeth

18:14

Holmes were kind of having their glory days

18:16

around the same time, and they're

18:18

both very similar figures. Newman

18:21

was much smarter because he chose he

18:23

picked a field where like no one was going to vengefully

18:26

come after him for fucking up, because

18:28

everyone in real estates some kind of con

18:30

artist at that scale as opposed to

18:32

trying to get into like blood science.

18:36

But what's great about it is he

18:39

turned a company that was at one point worth

18:41

forty seven billion dollars into one

18:43

worth ten point sixty five million

18:45

dollars, and then the company

18:48

died, it went into Chapter eleven bankruptcy.

18:50

We all love it.

18:52

And right now those cleaning

18:54

up the mess, if we work, are just desperately

18:57

trying to renegotiate its debts and

18:59

just being like his company. I'm sorry

19:01

I can't pay you due to this business model

19:03

which I have inherited. At one

19:06

point we work traded at five

19:08

hundred or something dollars a share,

19:11

and I believe right now it's like zero point zero

19:13

five cents. See the thing thing

19:16

now, there's been a show about we work

19:19

with Jared Lito in it of Morebius fame,

19:21

and this is one of the more legendary

19:24

startups.

19:25

And I tend to I choose to believe

19:28

by the way that it is within the Morbius cannon,

19:30

that this is what he's doing when his character is not

19:32

unshowered in a hoodie fighting

19:35

crime.

19:35

Fighting Matt Smith from Doctor Who. So

19:39

as we've established Adam Newman aka Morbius,

19:42

he you'd think, Okay,

19:44

this guy famously TV show about

19:46

how bad he was at business, this guy'd

19:48

be run out of town.

19:49

Right wrong.

19:52

Adam Newman managed to raise in August

19:54

twenty twenty two three hundred

19:56

and fifty million dollars

19:59

for his new co company Flow Great.

20:01

I love how people learn lessons.

20:04

And what's great about Flow is when you go

20:06

and look about actually what it is,

20:09

no one can really tell you. It appears

20:11

to be a rent to own apartment company,

20:13

but it isn't obvious what

20:16

the actual difference is between it and I

20:18

don't know what BlackRock's been doing for years, what

20:21

the asset management firms have been doing. Nevertheless,

20:23

Mark Andresen absolutely busted.

20:25

Is not everywhere to get three hundred

20:27

and fifty million dollars into this company.

20:30

They claim that there will be community oriented

20:32

features and that there will be something special

20:35

about being involved in Flow. Now you

20:37

think that I'm just being vague. It's been

20:40

like a year and a half since this company went out

20:42

and there's really nothing that like out

20:45

there for it. And I think it's because

20:47

Adam Newman just was someone that Mark Andreson

20:49

remembered.

20:50

I'm not.

20:51

I still cannot work out why this happened.

20:53

He's always been full of shit.

20:56

Just to be clear, because there was this, Andrews

20:58

and Horowitz actually really used to video an

21:01

interview with Adam Newman. He was describing

21:03

home ownership and why home

21:06

ownership was very special. He was saying, it's

21:09

the difference between cooling your own building supert

21:11

to unclogged the toilet or unclogging it yourself.

21:14

And he was saying that doing so and I quote, shifts

21:16

your thinking from being transactional to actually

21:18

being part of a community and feeling

21:21

like you own something, but

21:23

you.

21:23

Don't want them to own anything. You just want

21:25

them to have to do shit that the landlord

21:27

is supposed to do.

21:29

But also, if I have to

21:31

unclog my shitter, I'm not sitting there being

21:34

like yeah, damn, I love the community.

21:35

I'm like, what the hell right, Well,

21:38

it's also like it's it's fucked

21:40

up because like one of the I mean this

21:42

is actually unclogging your toilet is always

21:44

on the person using the toilet. That's not really

21:47

saying that that that involves changes

21:50

based on whether or not you're the landlord. But

21:52

one of like the bit like renting. A lot

21:54

of things that suck about renting, namely the fact

21:56

that like it keeps getting more and more

21:58

expensive. But one of the if it's of renting

22:00

is that if something breaks, you're supposed to just

22:02

be able to call the owner and they have to

22:04

fix it. It's not on you if you're fucking ac

22:07

breaks, it's on them to make it work.

22:10

And he's saying that like, no, if you if you

22:12

are responsible for fixing things

22:14

but have absolutely no ownership of them, it's

22:16

fine because that makes you part

22:18

of a community, and that's that's nuts.

22:21

But also that just

22:24

to be clear, that quote is from an interview he gave

22:26

at Andrew's and Horowitz at his investor.

22:29

Yeah, if I was watching that as an investor,

22:31

unless I was completely disconnected from humanity, I'd

22:33

be like, this guy's never unclogged the toilet,

22:35

this guy's never on this guy's never done

22:37

home maintenance. Also, why would you call

22:40

your super to unclog your toilet just

22:42

just have a plunger unless Yeah, they nearly

22:44

backed that bad boy up, and

22:46

I have.

22:47

To have done a lot more damage than that.

22:49

Yeah, yeah, you're literally shitting

22:51

bricks in this case. But I think

22:53

it's more indicative of the fact that I don't think Adam

22:56

Newman has had a normal human experience in quite

22:58

some time, and I don't think Mark Andresen

23:00

has either, And yet he just

23:02

got this insane amount of money to address

23:05

problems allegedly related to a thing

23:07

he does not understand.

23:09

Yeah, love to see, which.

23:10

Is also something he's been proven to be

23:12

bad at. Adam Newman lost

23:15

billions of dollars of soft

23:17

Bank's money, which is really funny when you think about

23:19

it, and actually, do you want to hear a fun scam.

23:22

He took a loan out on his stock

23:24

at we Work and he actually had

23:26

to put his stock from we Work out

23:29

to soft Bank, took real money from

23:31

them and leveraged his

23:33

stock, and then soft Bank was like, hey,

23:35

if you don't pay this back, we're going to take your stock. And

23:37

he was like, yeah, sure, fuck you, I'll

23:39

just I'll like that stock's worth like thirty dollars.

23:42

Now, I'll just keep the real money and never repay ye

23:44

see it, bitch. But this is the

23:46

thing. This is why, And

23:48

I think situations like this are where

23:50

people are going to start really getting black pilled with the tech

23:52

industry. So I think that you

23:55

see things like this happening and you think,

23:57

are they laughing at us? Yeah?

24:00

Like, is this in a sane world?

24:02

Adam Newman wouldn't see a single dollar

24:05

for the rest of his life. Yeah,

24:07

he got three hundred and fifty million

24:09

goddamn dollars. It was immediately

24:11

a billion dollar company before it done anything.

24:14

And all they have to show for it is a six hundred

24:16

and thirty nine unit apartment

24:18

building for Lauderdale.

24:20

Yeah. And when you see a

24:23

guy with the record that Newman has

24:25

get a company valued at that. What

24:27

that means is that investors

24:29

investors are not are are not valuing

24:32

it that much because they think it will actually make

24:34

that much money. They're valuing it that high

24:37

because they think this guy is good at spin

24:39

enough that we'll be able to flip this shit

24:41

and get some money out of it before the company

24:44

collapses. Right, we can do an IPO,

24:46

our shares will be worth money, and then we cash the

24:48

fuck out. That's what they're seeing, and they

24:50

may be right. It may wind up being it like

24:53

we work made some people a lot

24:55

of money.

24:56

But that's the thing. I actually wonder

24:58

if that system work anymore.

25:00

Yeah, I don't know when whether

25:02

they're going to be able to get liquidity on this,

25:05

because real estate is

25:07

a fairly well it can be a variable

25:09

asset, but it's also kind of an annoyingly

25:12

real one. You can't really go to

25:14

someone and be like, actually, this apartment building's worth

25:16

fifty million dollars more because of the

25:18

future of innovation. No, No, it's

25:20

a fucking apartment.

25:21

Yeah.

25:22

And I just think that Venger

25:24

Capital has completely lost the plot

25:27

and has lost its ability to say what good is

25:29

they just it's almost like there

25:31

are some of them who are con artists feeding

25:33

corn artists. Yeah, and some

25:36

of the largest investment arounds the last few years

25:38

have just gone into systems like this,

25:40

gone into things that when you look at them, you're

25:42

like this, this doesn't need

25:44

this much money. Why are you doing this? And

25:47

I think it's because they just are gamblers.

25:49

I just think they're gambling, and they're gambling based on

25:51

an increasingly small amount of information

25:54

because it's been twenty years since they've done something.

25:56

No there was a company called Noom, which was

25:58

a weight loss app that connected with coaches and

26:00

various things. They raised five hundred

26:02

and forty million dollars in twenty twenty two. Not

26:05

sustainable and not profitable

26:07

either. But also the entire weight

26:09

loss industry is worth about four billion dollars,

26:12

So you're saying they are worth that

26:15

much.

26:15

Of an eighth of the whole industry.

26:18

Yeah, right, And if I'm mathing

26:20

right now, yeah.

26:21

I was also failing to do the math in real time

26:23

there, but oh whatever, people know, people

26:25

know how dumn math good. Clubhouse is one of

26:27

my favorites that I'm not sure if you remember Clubhouse.

26:29

It was this audio app

26:32

that grew during the pandemic, and everyone said

26:34

this is the future, and what it

26:37

was was it would be it's basically Twitter

26:39

spaces. It's what we know as Twitter Space is now

26:41

a live audio room where you can go in

26:43

and have, in this case, extremely vacuous

26:46

tech conversations. It

26:48

was big during the pandemic because everyone was at home

26:50

and you have people on Mark Andrews and who of course had

26:52

invested, going on there and saying stuff

26:54

like, oh, the future of technology is the future

26:57

and I've won. Wow, Mark, thank you. And

27:00

there was this weird period where almost every

27:02

other almost every week, there was some kind

27:04

of valuation story that would quote unquote

27:06

league and it would be like, oh, it's worth

27:08

two billion dollars. Oh, it's worth four billion dollars

27:10

now. And then they started

27:12

disappearing and nothing's really happening,

27:15

and as people started leaving their houses again

27:18

after the lockdowns ended, Clubhouse

27:20

just kind of faded to black. The thing

27:22

that pissed me off about that was the amount

27:24

of stories in major media outlets

27:26

claiming that Clubhouse was the future, the future

27:28

specifically of radio,

27:31

which is a twelve billion dollar industry.

27:33

Totally yeah, that constantly has

27:35

trouble making money,

27:38

not that we know anything about that,

27:40

but.

27:41

I mean also, you know, the fun

27:44

thing about that to me is that, like we

27:46

know really well what like

27:49

the issues that radio has with making money

27:51

are like due in part to

27:54

you know, ways in which advertising

27:56

and stuff has changed, but like pretty durably,

27:58

the things that people want out of radio

28:01

are like people they like

28:04

talking about things they're

28:06

interested in. Right, initially

28:08

that was like people DJs, they liked

28:10

talking about the cool music. But it's expanded

28:13

now beyond that. But it's

28:15

never just been like random

28:18

unscripted conversations between

28:20

people who have mics of varying quality.

28:23

Like that's not particularly a

28:25

thing that folks have ever expressed

28:28

a desire for. And it's weird

28:30

to me that anyone thought that like Clubhouse

28:32

was going to be interesting beyond a very specific

28:34

subset of people that wanted to suck these these

28:36

people's proverbial dicks.

28:38

And it felt like a corn in real

28:41

time as well, because they were

28:43

pushing Andrew S Norwittz was pushing every

28:45

partner they could to use it. They were paying

28:47

celebrities to go on there, they were getting anyone

28:49

they could to get on the platform, and they

28:52

were very clearly behind the scenes trying

28:54

to get someone to buy it. And then Twitter

28:56

just built Twitter spaces that

29:00

everyone's like, oh, we can just use this on a network

29:02

that we use. Clubhouse, now, by the way, is

29:04

really funny. It's ninety percent scams

29:06

or ninety percent people doing manifestation stuff.

29:09

It's amazing. But there was a brief

29:11

period where the venture capital elite had

29:14

spread around enough journalists and enough people

29:16

on Twitter that they truly believed this was the future.

29:19

But if you sat there and really thought about it,

29:21

there was never a point where it could make money.

29:24

Like you said, unscripted stuff, unscripted

29:27

stuff's difficult. It's very difficult.

29:29

Even when you have great, really

29:31

great chemistry with someone, you can trip

29:33

over stuff as I just did. There are numerous

29:35

things that can go wrong. And let's just

29:37

be honest. None of these tech people were particularly eloquent

29:40

to begin with. Yet based

29:42

on everyone's conversations, everyone's saying, this is the

29:44

future, this is how what's our clubhouse strategy?

29:47

What are we going to do on Clubhouse? Nothing?

29:50

Nothing, because you're so boring. But

29:52

it raised so much money. I think it raised over a billion.

29:54

It was ridiculous. And

29:57

yet this is what venture

29:59

has become, pumping up these very

30:01

shitty businesses, these non entities,

30:04

these features rather than products,

30:07

and the result is that the money is not going

30:09

to actually innovative things. And

30:11

I get it. The venture takes risks. The

30:14

whole point of venture capital is it's risky money.

30:16

That's why you buy a half percent

30:18

or a percent of a company for I don't know, a

30:20

million dollars just choosing random numbers.

30:22

There there is a risk to air, and capital

30:25

is required to get a company off the ground. But

30:28

the massive, massive amounts of money

30:30

going into these non entities, into these,

30:33

in the case of Flow Adam Newman's thing, very

30:35

boring remakes of already boring and kind

30:38

of not profitable businesses to

30:40

begin with. Yeah,

30:42

the result is that you get a venture capital

30:44

industry that makes startups

30:47

require their existence. You get

30:49

companies that cannot function without venture

30:51

capital. You get lossy

30:53

companies like Uber who get bigger

30:56

and bigger without ever finding a business model

30:58

because venture capital keeps them alive until

31:01

they've completed the dance that less than go

31:03

public or gets sold to someone else. And

31:06

companies like Uber are actually a great example they're

31:08

taking public and they get these massive windfors

31:10

from vcs, yet

31:13

they immediately find themselves in this horrible

31:15

position where they have to start dancing for the real

31:17

public markets. That's why

31:19

Uber has become my chilge is get

31:21

an Uber in some markets and it's much more expensive,

31:24

yet the drivers are making less money.

31:26

It's because we're in a situation where Uber now

31:28

has to become a growth that all costs startup,

31:30

rather than just a venture backed welfare recipient.

31:34

And it's just it's a deeply depressing

31:37

time because people

31:39

making real companies, people making new

31:41

ideas, people young people in

31:44

the tech space are now going into this and

31:46

seeing that the people getting money are just people

31:48

that look like other people that have made money before,

31:51

that have ideas that aren't even particularly

31:53

good, but they sound like something

31:56

you can flog. The amount of money going to AI

31:58

right now for companies that have no business

32:00

model at all, let alone a path

32:02

to revenue, they just don't. They just trying

32:04

to grow and grow and grow. It's

32:06

just a deeply depressing time. VCS

32:10

they put I think forty one billion

32:12

dollars into crypto between Jerry

32:14

twenty one and twenty twenty two, and

32:17

that was all without Crypto ever having done

32:19

anything. It's what twenty twenty four now, like

32:22

I just had to ask that, and

32:24

Crypto is still not doing anything.

32:26

There's still nothing. There's still bitcoins

32:28

worth sixty seven thousand dollars and there's

32:30

still no crypto use case. The

32:33

Metaverse, which you would

32:35

by now have heard an episode about, did

32:37

absolutely nothing other than rebrand something

32:40

we'd had for upwards of fifteen years,

32:42

and they raised one hundred and twenty billion

32:44

dollars in twenty twenty two. These

32:47

concepts are what are getting money. Innovation

32:50

isn't Innovation is not enough to

32:52

get you investment these days, and venture capitalists

32:55

no, the thing that you want to do to a VC is

32:57

find a way to get them in on

33:00

a scam that you invented. And that's

33:02

not going to help this world. It's

33:04

going to destroy the tech ecosystem if we're not care

33:06

for. And quite honestly, I

33:09

have no idea what changes the tide on this other

33:11

than a major startup dying.

33:23

So when right in the rot economy, originally

33:25

my mate Casey and I were talking about fire and

33:27

how growth is like a fire if you build

33:29

a nice, sustainable fire. It will keep you warm,

33:32

cook your food, sustain your life. But

33:34

if the only thing you care about is how

33:36

big your fire is, then all it's going

33:38

to do is set fire to everything around it, and

33:41

it's going to require so much more to keep it

33:43

burning. Eventually you'll have nothing left.

33:45

But if you desperately desire that fire, you'll

33:48

constantly have to find new things to burn,

33:51

no matter what the cost is. And that's

33:53

kind of where the markets are at this point.

33:55

We've kind of turned the private and public

33:58

markets over to arsonists. We've

34:00

created the conditions where we celebrate

34:02

people like Marc Andresen for making these

34:05

big investments, these big bets,

34:07

these big nasty companies that

34:09

don't do anything, or the even bigger

34:11

firms like Google and Meta who were just turning

34:14

against their users and rightly turning

34:16

against the people, the tens of thousands of

34:18

people that they regularly fire. Venture

34:21

capital and the public markets are no longer

34:23

rewarding good businesses or

34:25

good CEOs that run good sustainable

34:28

companies. They're rewarding arsoness

34:31

people that can steer the kind of growth that raises

34:33

the value of an asset, even if that value

34:35

isn't even attached to the value it provides

34:38

to humanity. Elon

34:40

Must's success, everything he's done with Tesla,

34:43

didn't come from his love

34:45

of science or that he ended

34:47

the monopoly of the internal combustion

34:49

engine. It came from his ability

34:51

to manipulate symbolic value,

34:54

his hypeerman mentality. He worked

34:56

out in as early as twenty thirteen that

34:59

anyone in the world in a media outlet would

35:01

cover the fact that he spoke about anything.

35:03

Mm hm.

35:04

He's made so much money for him, and

35:07

people buying Tesla stock pretty

35:09

much do lies in half truths. There's

35:11

always a good reason to buy Tesla for

35:14

an idiot in the market because Elon

35:16

Musk's always saying, oh yes, sir, now, Tesla's

35:18

will now drive side to side. It doesn't matter

35:20

if it's true, doesn't matter if it never happens.

35:22

Elon Musk promised autopilot

35:25

for years and years and years until it actually arrived,

35:27

and then it would arrive in these little bits

35:29

and chunks, and then it started killing people. Tesla

35:33

isn't a good company. It's

35:35

a good stock to buy, and that is

35:37

a problem. That is where we

35:39

are right now with the public markets

35:41

and with the private markets. We're not far behind.

35:45

So Google summed up a shy. He hasn't paid

35:47

two hundred odd million dollars a year because

35:49

he's a good CEO. Google's

35:51

destroyed Search. We've been over that at

35:53

nauseum, and it sucks.

35:56

You'd think that someone who destroyed

35:58

the most beloved tech used

36:00

by billions of people, that has changed

36:02

people's lives and will continue to do so. This

36:05

is empirical fact, the damage

36:07

he has done to the tech ecosystem and his core

36:09

product, yet he's rewarded.

36:12

He's paid this obscene amount of money. The

36:15

fact that Google's core product is getting

36:17

worse doesn't matter at all, because Bishai

36:19

is paid because he finds new

36:21

innovative ways to increase the growth of the company,

36:24

even if doing so makes the product

36:27

suck. And the consequences

36:30

are that these companies will continue to invest

36:32

in things that grow the overall revenue of the company

36:35

or their market share over everything else. They

36:37

will mass hire, they will mass fire,

36:40

and they'll do so because there are no consequences

36:42

from the market. They don't care. All

36:44

they want to know is that the company will continue

36:46

growing. Venture capitalists are

36:48

just as bad. They don't mind as

36:51

long as you have enough money to keep

36:53

going to the next funding round. As long

36:55

as you can keep growing this symbolic

36:58

value. It doesn't matter if you hire and fire

37:00

people around them. It doesn't matter if

37:02

your product's kind of won key, as long

37:04

as it's good enough to flog to someone

37:06

else. Look at the AI industry, Look

37:09

how bad chat GBT is at certain

37:11

things, Look at how bad clawed anthropics

37:13

one is. Doesn't really matter because

37:15

AI is the future. We can make

37:18

money off of that at some point.

37:21

And I think that this is really the

37:23

problem, and it's the thing that unites the private and the

37:25

public markets. We're not building

37:27

things for humans anymore. We're building things

37:29

for humans that invest money. We're

37:32

building symbolic capital. And

37:35

when you do that, you will strangle

37:37

innovation, and you'll do it at

37:39

scale. You will build tech for nobody.

37:42

You will build tech that sucks and doesn't

37:44

do things and burns money, and in

37:46

the case of AI, probably rainforests.

37:49

And the result is just a shitty or worse

37:51

world. Until we see

37:53

a seismic shift in how investors

37:56

treat the companies they invest in, both private

37:58

and public. This cycle is going to continue,

38:00

and it's going to make us dumber. I

38:03

guarantee you that we're going to see

38:05

every single one of the companies that you've recently

38:07

seen lay off thousands of people do mass

38:09

hiring in a year or two. They don't

38:11

care. They're not punished for this. The

38:14

labor markets in America don't punish

38:16

them, the governments don't punish them. They

38:18

will keep fucking with human capital as much

38:21

as they can because they don't

38:23

won't get punished for it. No one's going to hold

38:25

it against any startup that's done

38:27

massive layoffs, even if the CEOs are

38:29

incredibly well paid and ran the company

38:31

into the ground. Companies aren't structured

38:34

anymore to evaluate whether a business is sustainable

38:36

or good or make something useful. The

38:39

only thing that they're interested in is making

38:41

something they can flog.

38:43

Yeah.

38:44

Like.

38:44

One of the important things to understand about

38:47

how all of this fits together is that the

38:50

actual business from

38:52

most of these tech guys has very little,

38:54

if not nothing, to do with producing

38:57

a product or getting people to adopt

38:59

a product, having any kind of impact on the way people

39:01

actually use technology.

39:04

The actual business is in conning

39:07

other people to think that a business has

39:09

a value, right, Yeah, Like that

39:11

that's become the game which is you

39:13

know, we're doing our episodes on Steve Jobs these

39:15

next two weeks. A lot of bad things will

39:18

have to say about him. But he actually did care about,

39:20

like making a thing and convincing

39:23

a lot of people to use that thing, and he was good at

39:25

that. And it's

39:27

become so abstracted and so much about

39:30

just the bezel, just about tricking

39:33

people so that you can make money before

39:35

everyone realizes that it's a fucking

39:37

god. I don't

39:39

think it's I think it's probably bad for society

39:41

that that's the best way to make money.

39:44

And I think that you're exactly right. The

39:47

way we look at companies, the way we

39:49

value businesses, the way we value startups,

39:51

public companies, it doesn't really matter, is just

39:53

fundamentally broken. It's creating

39:56

these really nasty cycles where

39:58

humans are hired and fired, scale, where

40:01

companies make products worse so that we

40:03

use them more. Things become

40:05

more difficult to enrich someone and make our

40:07

lives worse. And it really

40:09

is. It goes further than tech as

40:11

well. It's at the center of everything. Look,

40:14

why are so many bosses mad

40:16

about you not coming back to the office. It's

40:19

because they bought a bunch of real estate that

40:21

they never needed or they've leased it, I guess. And

40:24

then they were like, well, I don't do any real work.

40:26

And I think what business looks like is when

40:29

someone's at an office. Yeah, And it's

40:31

because we don't really as a society

40:33

understand what executives do, because

40:35

we've never asked, We've never really

40:38

sat and thought, why does an

40:40

executive get paid so much more than others?

40:43

What is it that they do? And I

40:45

think the pandemic and the mass remote

40:47

work we saw really highlighted that.

40:50

I think it really showed everyone exactly

40:52

how big that con was. But

40:54

I think that I think that

40:56

we're on the verge of an awakening to this

40:59

kind of thing. I think as the labor market

41:01

becomes so much worse, as so many

41:03

game studios, for example, lay off so many people,

41:06

they're going to start realizing the executives

41:08

are making all the money while everyone does all

41:10

the work, and none of these people are connected to the

41:12

product, And we're going to keep building

41:14

things for nobody other than investors

41:17

until we're at a point where we have entire

41:20

business ecosystems building for nobody.

41:23

Just look at the crypto industry

41:25

yea billions of dollars into Look

41:29

at that. Look at the crypto industry. Look

41:31

how big that con was. Look how much

41:33

money went into nothing, went

41:36

into creating nothing. Because

41:38

that's where we are as a society, that's where

41:41

innovation is today. In

41:43

a real ecosystem, in a real tech ecosystem,

41:46

the heads of the industry wouldn't be trying to find

41:48

ways to crow bot ai or crypto

41:50

or metaverse into it because the market's like

41:52

it. They would be saying, I'm not sure that this

41:55

is a thing, let alone a business

41:57

model. None of these

41:59

companies get bled for these bad decisions,

42:02

and as long as they don't, they're going

42:04

to keep making them. And

42:06

I think it's going to and I have a wider theory

42:08

I have that it's going to take one of the major

42:10

tech firms dying to change

42:13

something, and I think it's possible. I think Facebook

42:15

is, weirdly enough, the one that I would call first,

42:17

just because the ad models die. But

42:20

until that happens, we're just going to keep having

42:22

these cycles where the markets don't

42:25

blame anyone for anything

42:27

other than the consumer. The consumer is made to

42:29

almost apologize to the vendor.

42:32

It really sickens me. I think that this is really

42:35

what this is the joke offying in real time

42:37

that I get because I've been

42:39

in the tech industry since two thousand and eight, and I've

42:41

been right about games since like two thousand and four.

42:43

So I've seen tech as

42:46

a blob go from something that was, oh,

42:48

you have nerdsy like tech, and people use laptops,

42:51

to everyone has a phone, to everyone is

42:53

on some level connected to the tech industry. Now

42:55

it's impossible to remove from our lives. But

42:58

now I look around

43:01

and the things that are being created and the

43:03

things that are being hyped up, they're

43:06

not for people anymore. Yeah,

43:08

and then the actions

43:10

of the CEOs don't

43:12

seem to actually mesh with reality. Why

43:14

did nobody get fired for

43:17

over hiring In twenty twenty two, so

43:19

many companies one hundreds of thousands of tech

43:21

workers were laid off. How did nobody

43:23

get fired for just hoarding

43:26

human capital? How did nobody get

43:29

fired for that?

43:29

Yeah, or for like I mean, if you want to see it, for the way

43:32

that these people. How did nobody get fired for wasting

43:35

tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions

43:37

of dollars in stockholders'

43:40

money, right, Like, stuff

43:42

that should have gone the way that they

43:44

see things out in dividend payments

43:47

was instead spent on people the company apparently

43:49

didn't need. How does no one lose their job over that?

43:51

If that's the way you're looking at things, that seems like

43:53

the real problem.

43:55

And the amount of layoffs

43:57

that happened and the amount of well,

44:00

I think it was Google spent a billion two

44:02

billion on Severance alone. Yeah, how

44:05

did sun Dar Pashai not get fired for that? Why

44:07

did he get so much money? And I hate to

44:09

say, I think the answer is people are not

44:11

people in the eyes of the markets. They don't give a shit.

44:13

It's just a fuel. This is just the

44:15

cost of fuel. This is like oil to

44:17

them, except there are sometimes

44:20

annoying laws that stop me getting rid of

44:22

the oil quite as fast. And

44:25

I think what the tech industry really needs

44:27

to realize is nothing lasts

44:29

forever. Nothing

44:31

lasts forever, and nothing grows forever

44:33

other than a cancer. And at some

44:36

point, this whole growth of all costs

44:38

economy is working pretty well for now, but at

44:40

some point the markets will turn on them, because

44:43

at some point someone has

44:45

to notice, somebody who is investing has

44:48

to notice, Wait, are

44:51

these actually good companies or are they just

44:53

growing and then contracting, and then

44:56

growing and contracting and just never really

44:58

making anything within the pro It's

45:01

just deeply worrying. I actually worry about

45:04

the health of the tech ecosystem long

45:06

term if we keep pursuing this. We

45:09

have private companies that are building things

45:11

to sell to large companies, and large companies

45:14

that are building things to market their own stock

45:16

to investors, and at some point

45:18

a consumer gets served somewhere

45:21

within that equation, but nowhere

45:24

near to the level that it should dictate anyone's

45:26

choices. A

45:28

product may be profitable for a while, but there's a

45:30

line at which profitability comes at the cost of

45:32

functionality, and your company

45:35

may simply not be able to grow anymore.

45:38

Look, a business that can't generate profit

45:41

isn't a good business, and a business that can never

45:43

generate a profit deserves to die. These

45:45

seem like obvious things, but they

45:48

just don't apply to anyone other

45:50

than regular people. And

45:53

the net result of this rotten economy,

45:56

this broken thing that

45:58

rewards people that create symbolic capital,

46:00

is that it kills innovation. If

46:02

capital isn't invested in providing a good

46:04

service by say, a profitable business,

46:07

it will never sustain things that are actually

46:09

useful to society. Companies

46:11

aren't incentivized at the moment to provide better

46:13

services or improve lives outside

46:16

of the ways in which they can drain more and

46:18

more blood and revenue and growth from customers,

46:21

and right now the street doesn't care. Just

46:23

look at Facebook and Instagram, two beloved

46:26

products that have now grown exceedingly

46:28

profitable while not providing the

46:30

basic function that made them big.

46:34

And frankly, look if capital

46:36

wishes to call labor and title

46:38

as they have so many times, if

46:41

they wish to treat people like shit. As

46:43

it stands, the private and public

46:46

markets are not working for you. They're

46:49

not building things for you. They're not building

46:51

things for anyone. Google,

46:53

as it stands, is forcing Gemini, their

46:55

generator of AI, into every corner

46:57

of their company, not because it's going to

46:59

make your life better, but because it's going to

47:01

make them seem more futuristic.

47:04

YEP.

47:04

As long as private businesses are funded

47:06

by venture capitalists that are not interested

47:09

in funding innovation and just want to find

47:11

more ways to flog money to larger

47:13

entities, we're not going to see a better world.

47:16

We're not going to see cooler tech things.

47:18

We're going to get increasingly

47:20

more expensive and convoluted versions of things

47:22

we're already paying for. I

47:25

hope things can change, I really do,

47:27

but with the current crop of venture capitalists,

47:29

I'm not holding my breath. So

47:33

thank you for listening to today's episode, Robert,

47:35

thank you for joining me as well, YV.

47:39

This wonderful, happy episode we've done.

47:42

It's funny. It's in

47:44

my day job, my PR firm, I do run

47:47

into decent companies that are doing well,

47:49

that actually make more money than their

47:51

spending, that actually have business plans. But occasion

47:53

I talk to someone who just throws like eight buzzwords

47:56

at me, and they'll have raised this crazy

47:58

amount of money and you look at them and you're like, am

48:00

I in the wrong game? Should

48:03

I be pot? There is this weird sense you're

48:05

like, am I what am

48:07

I missing here? And I think that that's what fuels

48:10

a lot of this, that there are these people getting so

48:12

rich or nothing. The people

48:14

like they must they can't be lying.

48:15

It has to be something. I have to be missing

48:18

something, and it's like, no, you're you're not. The

48:20

business is entirely. It's

48:22

a confidence game. It's

48:24

like, pretend you have the confidence that

48:27

this is such a world changing

48:29

product even though it's really just Uber

48:32

for dry cleaning or whatever that

48:34

Like, if you don't get in on the ground

48:36

floor, you're going to be left behind,

48:38

or like you know with crypto, this is the way all

48:40

money is going to work, and you have to get in now

48:43

or have fun being poor or yeah.

48:46

Same basically the same shit about AI, right,

48:48

it's always and honestly,

48:50

whether or not there's actually a good product,

48:53

it's always the same, the

48:56

same thing, right, like you,

48:59

Yeah, it's alf fomo.

49:01

And it sucks because it can be

49:03

better. There is a way. The

49:05

thing that I always talk about is there is

49:07

an alternate universe where Uber

49:10

actually could have been probably the most

49:12

disruptive company of all time. Had Uber

49:14

tried to scale slower and

49:17

charged more and had real

49:19

employee benefits and

49:21

a paycheck that they gave people, it

49:23

would have had to grow very slowly

49:26

and would have cost more in venture dollars, But

49:28

I think that company would have worth been worth trillions

49:30

and actually changed the world, like truly,

49:32

had they used it as a way to actually

49:35

create a bullwark for labor versus

49:37

a way to screw workers again

49:40

and again so venture capitalists can get rich. It

49:42

could have been amazing, but that's not how these people

49:44

are thinking. They're not thinking ten twenty, thirty,

49:46

forty years. They're thinking five to ten years,

49:48

so I can get the fuck out of this. Yeah, and it's

49:51

so oh, it's so depressing because

49:53

a better world as possible.

49:55

That these people, because of the amount of

49:57

money they've made, in large part in tech, they've

50:01

taken over everything and so they're applying

50:03

this lot. I mean, we could talk about journalism, right, they're

50:05

applying this logic to the media properties they

50:07

buy, which, like, that's not why

50:09

you have a newspaper, right, Like,

50:12

that's not the value of a newspaper is

50:14

not its ability to like get a bunch of

50:16

hype around it. And like we saw this with

50:18

Vice where it was valued at billions

50:20

and billions of dollars and then it collapsed. Because

50:23

no, that's not how newspapers work, right, That's essentially

50:25

what Vice was trying to be, And that's not the way

50:28

that they're not worth money in that way doesn't

50:30

mean you can't make money off of them. There's

50:32

a number of papers like the New York Times that

50:35

are very profitable institutions. It's

50:37

just you can't. It's not gonna

50:39

give you that kind of like astronomic or turn

50:41

on investment that you do when somebody invents a fucking

50:44

iPhone. It shouldn't have to.

50:46

But what's crazy is like inventing the iPhone

50:48

was very profitable, but Apple also is

50:51

something with it. It's actually useful.

50:53

Yes, yes, And I think understanding

50:56

about what people wanted, you know, I.

51:00

Think that that's the ultimate problem.

51:03

I don't think that people running

51:05

tech companies actually experience

51:08

real people. They don't have real

51:10

problems. But also they don't speak

51:13

to real people. Adam Newman

51:15

thinks, oh, my toilet's clogged. I

51:18

will now call someone else to one clog it.

51:20

Just I would never use a plunger.

51:23

What's that? What is a plunger?

51:25

I would actually love to ask him if he knows what a plunge.

51:28

It looks like, yeah, it doesn't. But

51:31

that's the thing. These people are disconnect.

51:33

Kind of guy who just moves that happens.

51:35

Yeah, can't use toilet anymore, go get

51:38

rid of it. But I think, to wrap it up, it's

51:41

there is this genuine sense throughout all

51:43

of this through the original rock Economy piece. Everything

51:46

I'm talking about, that these people don't experience

51:48

real life, that they've made so much

51:50

money, and that they think they've found

51:53

a way to con money out of the world, that

51:55

they just don't think about

51:57

human beings and human problems anymore. And

52:00

as long as these people are in power, Texit.

52:03

Risk, yeah, so

52:06

is everything else. Well this

52:08

was fun.

52:09

Yep, there we go. Robert, thank you so much

52:11

for joining me.

52:12

Yeah, thanks for having me on and

52:15

thanks for being

52:17

you know, the Shai Hallud

52:20

of content. You know, just like the sandworm

52:22

excrete spice which allows the

52:25

navigators to live forever

52:27

and navigate through faster

52:29

than light travel. You also

52:33

produce spice trying

52:37

to shovel and dune references.

52:38

Yeah, there we go.

52:39

Re sponsored by Jim. Thank you so much.

52:42

Thank you so much for listening.

52:43

Everyone,

52:53

Thank you.

52:53

For listening to Better Offline. The editor

52:55

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52:57

Metosolski. You can check out more of

52:59

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53:04

S O W s Ki dot

53:07

com.

53:07

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53:17

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