-
Unknown A
Juan is back, Lon Harris is back. And we got to talk about all these super bowl commercials because so many of them are tech related and there's a lot to say.
-
Unknown B
First of all, I was shocked at the number of technology ads because we put together a list for the show today and it was like 10 or 12 or 13. That's like $100 million in tech spending.
-
Unknown A
This is not something you should do when you have a small amount of money. But if you're $1 billion company, got over $1 billion in your bank account, why not do it? And here's what you should do if you have under 100 million. You want to participate in this? I might do this next year. You should do a spec super bowl commercial, let it out and say, if we could afford a Super bowl commercial, this would be our super bowl commercial. So you can hijack the super bowl commercial by releasing your not super bowl commercial or we can't afford a Super bowl commercial, but we made one anyway. You should punk rock this.
-
Unknown C
This week in startups is brought to you by Lemon IO. Get access to Lemon Hire, a platform with more than 80,000 pre vetted engineers that you can interview within 48 hours. Get $2,000 off your first hire at Lemon IO Hire today. OpenPhone. Create business phone numbers for you and your team that work through an app on your smartphone or desktop. Twist listeners can get an extra 20% off any plan for your first six months at openphone.com twist and coda. Coda empowers your startup by bringing words, tables and teams together. Strategize, plan and track goals effectively. With all your valuable data in one place. Go to Coda IO Twist to get started for free and get six free months of the team plan.
-
Unknown A
All right, everybody. Welcome back to this week in startups with me, Alex Wilhelm. I'm Jason Calacanis. We got a full docket today. Some of you who are old school Twist fans might remember Lon Harris who was like the original newsreader here. He would read the news, I would comment on it. My friend Tyler Crowley would also comment if that was the old school crew. Well, guess what? Lon Harris is back in the fold and he's helping me with editorial across a number of projects including this one. And today I thought we'd bring him on Alex because he's a popular culture wizard. Lana's back. Lon Harris is back. That's right. Back in the fold. And we got to talk about all these super bowl commercials because so many of them are tech related and There's a lot to say and he's a good, good media guy, Lon.
-
Unknown B
First of all, I was shocked at the number of technology ads because we put together a list for the show today and it was like 10 or 12 or 13. That's like $100 million in tech spend. So help, help me out here. Is that a normal amount of technology ads for a Super bowl or is this a much more tech heavy, you know, rundown?
-
Unknown D
Yeah, we've seen the mix go a lot more tech over the last, I mean, five, seven years, something like that. A lot of tech projects have had huge hits and really like sort of come out of nowhere and like found a huge audience. So there's precedent to be, which we're going to talk about. Their 2023 Super bowl ads are widely credited with. Like, here's Tubi. Start watching Tubi. And of course, now they dominate the free ad supported streaming space. So I think that's what a lot of these other companies, that kind of precedent is what a lot of these companies are looking at. And we're going to talk about, I think booking.com is another one where it's sort of like this relatively little known service that did a bunch of big game ads and now they're like one of the major players in their space.
-
Unknown D
And I think a lot of other companies are trying to sort of get in on that.
-
Unknown B
Okay.
-
Unknown D
At the same time, we've seen less interest from the kinds of brands that we once would have thought of dominating. Fast food, beer trucks. They're starting to spend more of their ad money on, you know, digital platforms, other kinds of alternative media. So both of those things happening at the same time, we've sort of reversed the trend.
-
Unknown A
Fascinating. What makes, in your estimation, Lon, as we get ready to watch these ads, what makes a breakout super bowl commercial? Because that's a new. That's a different genre than just a normal commercial which hits you with repetitiveness. There's something that's got to be tent pole or big about this. You know, when it comes to my mind, obviously, the 1984 commercial from Apple.
-
Unknown D
Sure.
-
Unknown A
The Cindy Crawford pepsi commercial from 1985, I think, because I think I was like 15 years old when I saw that one and that one is burned in my memory. Pretty simple one. But I don't know if we make those anymore. What makes, to my original question, a great super bowl ad in your estimation? And you can get in on that too, Alex, if you have.
-
Unknown D
Yeah, I mean, to me it's just, it's Cutting through the noise. This day is like the busiest advertising day of the year. And so if you're going to do something big that day, it's got to be like, I've got to really do something extreme and crazy that captures people's attention. You have to avoid, I think, being too cheesy. I think, like, if you remember the Mr. Peanut funeral thing from a few years ago, they built it up so much. They did get everybody's attention in a way that was lame. And then they had nothing to do with it. Once they got your attention, it was like, all right, Mr. Peanut's dead. And now he's like a. A baby or. It doesn't really even make sense.
-
Unknown B
It never made sense. You had to pay too much attention. And also, I don't think about Mr. Peanut that much. Like, no offense to our friends that grow legumes, but, you know, it's not really my. My jam lawn.
-
Unknown D
Exactly. So I think it's a two part thing. You've got to cut through the noise. But then after you do that, you've got to have some kind of memorable hook or some kind of message or some kind of. That resonates a little bit and people relate to and are interested in.
-
Unknown A
What's your thesis, Alex? You have a thesis as to what makes a great commercial for you or just generally.
-
Unknown B
I have a me test, Jason, which is. I love to see a brand take a shot on the Super Bowl. I love to see people that don't have the money go for this prize and try to win. And so my favorite example of this was Oatly. They had that annoying ad of the CEO, like, playing piano, and everyone was like, that's the worst ad ever. I thought it was fantastic because it got everyone talking about Oatly. I mean, as an oat milk guy, that worked for me. Sadly, as I'm about to show you, I don't think it actually worked out for the company as much because as you can see from this chart, they're now only worth about $24. But I still liked the fact that they went for it and tried something that was actually a little bit on the edge. Not in terms of, like, amount of skin per se, but just like our CEO playing piano.
-
Unknown B
Come on now.
-
Unknown A
I love that. I think when we look at these, there seems to be some genres or formats, lon, that are kind of clicking with people. One is the entourage, the ensemble. I'm going to throw a lot of pop culture at you at once. Dunkin Donuts, you know, we're Going to send three, four, or five celebrities at it. Uber eats. We're going to put ten celebrities at it. So that seems like one genre. We're going to just cameo the hell out of this. Another genre seems to be we're going to touch on your heartstrings with a country music song or a slow, thoughtful monologue, maybe like Harrison Ford did this year or other people have done before.
-
Unknown D
Or a narrative about family, generations. Parenting flags. Relatable emotional content that resonates.
-
Unknown B
Shall we play the booking.com ad that we're all kind of talking around here? I feel like.
-
Unknown A
Yeah, let's get to it. These are generally 15, 30 seconds, but let's take a look at bookings. Okay.
-
Unknown D
Booking.com has something for everyone. Right this way.
-
Unknown A
Okay. I love the Muppets. What about something more family friendly?
-
Unknown B
One Vegas hotel for the.
-
Unknown D
What if we hate everything?
-
Unknown B
We Africans? Stafford, exactly what you're booking for.
-
Unknown D
Booking.com booking.
-
Unknown A
Listen, I am a Muppets super fan. As you can see. I know each of these characters, and I want to laugh, and I want to have it connected in some way. And nothing connected. None of the jokes mattered. They just threw the five most popular Muppets in there. But there was nothing in the storytelling here. So I give this, like, a wasted opportunity. It's a. Like a. It's a D for me, as in dumb. Done.
-
Unknown B
Well, now compare that to what Rocket put together, which was a almost homage to America. Back to the flags comment. And having children and building a family. Watch this one.
-
Unknown A
I did see this one.
-
Unknown B
Let's get you home.
-
Unknown A
Man.
-
Unknown B
It's a great song.
-
Unknown A
West Virginia. West Virginia.
-
Unknown B
Well, this.
-
Unknown D
This has a tie into the game. They.
-
Unknown B
It does.
-
Unknown A
Yeah.
-
Unknown D
This is exactly what I'm talking about in terms of, like, unique, clever ways to grab people's attention.
-
Unknown A
I mean, we all know it's, like, really special to have kids and going home. Oh, here we go.
-
Unknown D
And everybody knows all the words to this song, which is very.
-
Unknown A
Like.
-
Unknown D
There's not that many songs that cross every cultural barrier that an entire football stadium can sing along to.
-
Unknown A
Yes. This is universal.
-
Unknown D
Everybody knows is this song Take me.
-
Unknown A
Home, and it's got the soldiers coming home, which that always. Those reuniting videos get me every time. Own the dream. Okay, so rocket dot com.
-
Unknown D
But they actually got the stadium to, like, sing along during the game. So this had a live. During the game. Yes. Stunt component.
-
Unknown B
A moment of unity and spirit inspired by Rocket.
-
Unknown A
Oh, so after the cur. Wait, hold on. After the commercial, they got the stadium to sing it.
-
Unknown D
Exactly. Because everybody knows Country Road, Take Me Home. It's one of those songs you can get a whole stadium to sing together.
-
Unknown B
But the NFL originally said no. So there was going to be a pre taped sing along, but then at the last minute they got permission from the super bowl to essentially extend their ad by 15 seconds afterwards by inciting the audience to sing. So 75 seconds for the price of 60. Well done.
-
Unknown A
Yeah, or they paid a little extra. But either way, I think that this is an upsell but a smart one because, yes, I've never seen anybody tie the commercial into the actual live arena. I guess you have points for that. I did see online lawn people were saying this was a pro life ad and I was like, okay, it's pro life because his baby's in it or something. But I think it got co opted. Like, this is the pro life ad founders. Let's be real, let's keep it a buck. Finding great developers is hard. It's like one of the hardest things you have to do in our industry, especially when you're trying to run and scale your startup. But here's the good news. I got a tip that's going to save you time, money and a ton of headaches. You need to check out Lemon IO.
-
Unknown A
Lemon IO has thousands of on demand developers who can help you. They have done all the work to find and vet great developers who are experience, who are results oriented and who charge competitive rate. Great developers we know are hard to find and integrate into your team. So Lemon IO will handle all of that for you. They're only going to offer you handpicked developers with at least three years of experience. And if something goes wrong, Lemon IO will find you a replacement developer ASAP. A bunch of launch founders have worked with Lemon IO and they have told me they've had a great experience. So here's your call to action. Go to Lemon IO Twist and find your perfect developer or an entire tech team in 48 hours or less. And Twist listeners get 15% off the first four weeks. So stop burning money. Hire developer Smarter. Visit Lemon IO Twist.
-
Unknown D
Yeah, I think they, they tend to claim a lot of media content that is just about parenting family and that is not the exclusive domain of the anti abortion movement. Some people who support abortion choice also have families. It is, it is true.
-
Unknown A
Okay, it is true. Alex, you, yes, you have a family and you are pro choice.
-
Unknown D
Ok, so that has residents for him and yet he is not on the pro life side. So I don't, I don't know if that's entirely fair.
-
Unknown B
I can see though, how everything is viewed to depend prism of culture wars today, Jason. So I think that people are looking for, like, is this for me or against me? Is it for me or against me? That is the most generic pro family, yeehaw America thing of all time. It's for everybody I like.
-
Unknown D
And also, even that, even that song, it's about West Virginia. It's about like rural. The real Americans, Americana. But, you know, there's nothing in it that's offensive to people who live in big cities. John Denver was for everybody, so John.
-
Unknown A
Denver was for everybody. And as I always warn my friends who want to become pilots, if you got a great life and you're rich and you're famous or any combination of those things, love, you've got a family. You don't need to be an experimental pilot. It's like right in the name, like test pilot. You don't need to do that. If you're rich, you're powerful, you're famous, you could have a test pilot. You could let other people be the test pilots. I'm of course referring to the fact that, yeah, people don't know John Denver died young flying like some experimental plane.
-
Unknown D
Listen, some guys just have a need for speed. Jason. You can't.
-
Unknown A
No, it's just how. I got to tell you, it's so dumb.
-
Unknown B
It's diving, experimental flying and motorcycle driving.
-
Unknown A
None of that.
-
Unknown B
Don't do them.
-
Unknown D
Also experimental subs. Please let James Cameron do the submarine tech. He's. He's the expert.
-
Unknown A
That's another one down there. And his son decide they're going to go on an experimental submarine. If it has experimental or test in the word.
-
Unknown D
If. If it's being operated with a PlayStation controller, you don't need to be on that dud.
-
Unknown A
Not. Okay, so I'm going to give D to the bookings one because they didn't use the IP properly.
-
Unknown D
I agree, I agree.
-
Unknown A
They hooked me in and I didn't get, for example, when they had them coming down the slide, I was like, oh, I wonder who's going to be in the water. Muppets in the water. That might have hooked me in. Or like, it could have been a crossover with maybe Oscar the Grouch being in there. Right. And get a little Sesame Street.
-
Unknown D
Yeah, I think Disney, I think that the contractually. I think Sesame Workshop co. Owns those characters. I don't know if Disney can use Sesame street characters in an ad. Disney fully owns the Muppets. They can do whatever they want. Well, So I feel like it might have come down to that.
-
Unknown B
We're debating IP rights inside of corporate communications during a major sports event on television. God, this is America.
-
Unknown A
What's the other. Who did the. The rocket one? I give that a B plus. I like that a lot. Made me feel stuff. Give it a B. B plus. What do you give it?
-
Unknown B
I would give it an 85. So kind of a straight B, I think. I think it was good quality, but I'm not going to think about it a week from now.
-
Unknown A
And bookings, you got anything for bookings? What do you give that?
-
Unknown B
23 out of 100.
-
Unknown A
F minus half. Minus. What do you give it?
-
Unknown D
What you said about it was the jokes didn't land. It didn't feel like the Muppets because it's not funny like the Muppets. If you had one or two Muppet show level gags, I think it would have been like, oh, my God, the muppets did a booking.com ad. But as it is, it just feels like, yeah, they're in it, but it doesn't matter. That.
-
Unknown A
And there is another opportunity here when you're going to use the Muppets. The Muppets interacting with famous people, that always lands. So you have a Miley Cyrus in there with one of the Muppets. That could have worked. You get like a LeBron James or, you know, a Luka Doncic, some basketball player interacting with them at the hotels. Now you got something good. Can we just go to the number one ad? I want to go to the one that was my favorite. This I thought was the best one. This is a plus for me.
-
Unknown D
I'm giving my score for sure. The old 10 of old Squarespace.
-
Unknown A
No idea what he just said, but I love this guy.
-
Unknown D
He's going to tell you the tale of old Squarespace. Oh, oh, Squarespace. Old Squarespace from. From many youngs ago could be Squarespace for yourself. So.
-
Unknown A
I saw a movie, Lon. You probably saw it as well. The Banshees of Inner Sharon. Yeah, of Inner Sharon.
-
Unknown D
He's parodying that right now.
-
Unknown A
Yes.
-
Unknown D
Yeah, for sure.
-
Unknown A
I love that film.
-
Unknown D
It was really good.
-
Unknown A
And I like this because everybody could have a Squarespace in the local bar, in the town, the. The musician singing musical lessons. Everybody needs a Squarespace. And I like this actor a lot because he's weird.
-
Unknown D
Barry Keegan. I also think it hits on the idea that Squarespace has been around forever. Like, by Internet standards, they really are the oldest, most reliable, most infamous and iconic. So the idea of taking that and going back to, like, early 20th century, you know, Like, I think that's. There's. There's something interesting there, too, that they're getting at. It's. It's. It's interesting branding for them.
-
Unknown A
I like the whole look and feel of it. To me, it was my favorite. What. What did you think, Alex? You want to give it a letter grade? It's A plus for me.
-
Unknown B
I liked it a lot, so I give it an A minus, maybe. I'm a big fan of certain Irish comedians and so forth, so all that landed really well for me. And I've always liked Squarespace. But I will say that it does provide a really fun contrast between, like, we having fun online and rural Irish countryside in the mud. And so I. That contrast, to me, really sold the idea, like, the Internet's better than the way things used to be. So it felt like progress to me while being very polite, and that resonated quite well with me. I liked it.
-
Unknown D
Yeah. I mean, it's great. It's funny. That's what I was saying. Like, it's funny in a way that, like, the other ads are, like, cute. Like, you'd be like, oh, they got the Muppets. This actually has jokes like him throwing laptops and them crashing into the mud in front of these, like, peasants. Like, that's funny.
-
Unknown A
Yes.
-
Unknown D
And I think just even that imagery lands better than most of the other ads we've been looking at.
-
Unknown A
I feel like they took a chance too. Right? Like, somebody at an agency was like, you know, it'd be great. Did anybody see Banshees of inisherin? And, like, two people raised their hand out of 20 people in the room.
-
Unknown D
Right. Like an Oscar nominated, a prominent movie, but not a movie everyone has seen.
-
Unknown A
Why do I like this film so much? It was an odd film, but I found it captivating. Why is Banshees of Inisherin captivating Law?
-
Unknown D
One of the things I think is so interesting about it is it was sort of conceived as, like, this kind of parable. It's sort of about the Irish national character. It's about the Irish Civil War, which sort of takes place literally in the background of the movie. I think it also resonates just on a personal level. The. The idea that you can have a friendship that suddenly falls apart and that feels like a relationship or like a breakup in. In. In a powerful sort of way. And. And, you know, the idea that that male friendship is so mysterious and we don't really understand the nature of it and why it starts and why it ends and, and what, what keeps people in one another's orbit and not. And I think that that, that is very resonant for people. It's something we sort of don't think about all the time. But is there.
-
Unknown A
That's such a great recap. Okay, we got to go. Open AI, right, Alex, like open AI has tons of money laying around. So super bowl ads are what, 5 million now?
-
Unknown B
8.
-
Unknown A
8 million. First of all, inflation. What are these poor companies?
-
Unknown B
Yeah.
-
Unknown A
All right, so they're doing something pixel. They're using the dot.
-
Unknown B
So fire to wheel to horses. This is all about progress.
-
Unknown A
We're watching things in agriculture, okay. And the dot is what you see when you use it. Now we're getting into ships, going to the new world, we're going to colonize other countries. Now the railroad is polluting everything.
-
Unknown D
It's like pixelated in a way. But it also has that kind of pointillist, like that artwork sort of style where it's all made of little dots. It looks cool.
-
Unknown A
Dial up.
-
Unknown D
I like the animation on it. Help me practice asking for a race.
-
Unknown A
All progress as a starting point.
-
Unknown B
And then I love the way it ends. It does not say OpenAI. It says ChatGPT founders.
-
Unknown A
Every missed call is a lost opportunity. And potential customers, they're not going to wait. They're just going to move on to the next service provider, the next company. You need Open Phone so you never miss another call. And you don't want to lose track of who you followed up with, who you haven't followed up with. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system built for entrepreneurs like you. For just $15 a month, OpenPhone gives you a dedicated business line to keep your personal life separate from your business life. And they now have AI powered call transcripts and summaries so you know exactly what was discussed on the call and what your action items are. No more missing follow ups. Automated messages ensure that no customer is left hanging. An open phone works through an app on your existing phone, Android or iOS or on your computer or both, like I use it.
-
Unknown A
And it integrates with HubSpot and hundreds of other systems, making it easy to manage calls anywhere. It's affordable, it's award winning and it's trusted by over 50,000 businesses. Think about that, including businesses that are growing fast like yours. So here's your call to action. Sign up and start using your new business number in just minutes. Right now, Openphone is offering 20% off your first six months when you go to openphone.com twist that's O P E N P-H-O-N-E.com twist. You know how to spell open, you know how to spell phone. Therefore you know how to spell openphone.com twist for 20% off for six months. And if you've got existing numbers with another service, open phone will port them at no extra charge.
-
Unknown B
So here's the thing that I was curious about. Jason, before you give me your rating, I want you to vet the performance of this ad. So here is a Google trends chart of chat GPT.
-
Unknown A
Oh, okay. The term, the word.
-
Unknown B
Yes. So, so this is 7:30, I think the ad was around here. And it didn't actually have that much of an impact compared to what I expected. And for reference, here's the same search with Kendrick Lamar over superimposed. So.
-
Unknown A
Got it. So people were like, what is Kendrick Lamar? Who is Kendrick Lamar? Why am I watching him? Because he is a niche kind of. That's a deep pull in the rap space. I mean, compared to Jay Z or Beyonce.
-
Unknown B
Oh, no, no, he's bigger.
-
Unknown D
Kendrick is huge, man. Kendrick had a huge 2024. That song was everywhere.
-
Unknown A
I thought he was like the, the rapper's favorite rapper.
-
Unknown B
He was. But as, as he said, how'd you let a conscious rapper go commercial? Kendrick has 86 million monthly on Spotify. And then you said Jay Z. Jay Z has. We all love Jay Z. Jay Z is 34 million.
-
Unknown A
Okay, all right. So that's all because of that song. Probably got really popular.
-
Unknown D
He already had like, you know that he did the Black Panther song with SZA at the Super Bowl. That was a huge song. Humble was a really big song. DNA. DNA was a big.
-
Unknown A
I mean, I like him, but I, I. What I heard yesterday on the socials and from folks was who is Kendrick Lamar? Yeah, but you may be function of white rich people not knowing who Kendrick Lamar is. I think that's more of a function.
-
Unknown D
Following right wing commentators. And they do that. Did you see? I don't know if you saw it. There was a collection of tweets. Literally, this happens every single year. Right wing guys are like, they should get a marching band. They should get a country music band. Well, who are these people? Why are they doing these offensive songs? It's every. It doesn't matter when it was the weekend. It doesn't matter who they book.
-
Unknown A
That was terrible. The weekend.
-
Unknown B
Here's Josh Wolf from Lux Capital on the Kendrick Lamar super bowl performance. He says, replying to Godsod who said that this was a new low for the Halftime show. Beg to differ, says Josh. Lyrical genius, double entendres, and pure creative genre breaking poetry. My kids know every word. So I think that, you know, even amongst the rich old white people employed.
-
Unknown A
Okay. I think it's generational for sure, that a lot of people that I would agree with.
-
Unknown D
And it might also be. It might also be regional. Like, I'm from Los Angeles, where Kendrick is also from. Yes, he is enormous here. I mean, he's. He's the biggest rapper in the world right now in Los Angeles.
-
Unknown A
For me, it's still Prince. I think Prince had the best.
-
Unknown D
Oh, I love the Prince Halftime show is. Is a classic. It's a legend. It's legendary. No, nobody's arguing that.
-
Unknown A
Let's rate the. The ChatGPT one. The ChatGPT one, for me, I think, esthetically was pleasing. Like, I think it was an interesting graphic design. I don't think it hooked me in. In any way of, like, this is why this is important or something. I'm a little bit cynical maybe. I feel like this is a missed opportunity. They had that beautiful, engaging video, and it should have delivered with a message at the end in the way the 1984 commercial did. So that was evocative. You know, it told a story. And then at the end, they had this, like, iconic line. You know, find out why 1984 won't be like 1984. You know, it had, like, a little punk rockness to hear at the end of this. They were like, what. What do they say? Like, how to do a term paper or something like that. They threw in a couple of searches.
-
Unknown D
Like that felt like people asking Chat G kind of basic questions. But I think the weirdest thing of all is that they progress always has a starting point. Like, that's their mech. You know, what that feels like to me is when, like, Enron used to take out those ads where it was just like a crop growing in a plant and like a grandmother hugging. And then it's like, we're building the future. Enron, like, where it's so general. It's like, what?
-
Unknown A
Daniels Midland Company?
-
Unknown D
What is this for? Like, Chat GPT is a product. You can, like, show me what it does and how to use it.
-
Unknown B
All right, all right, so let me. Let you.
-
Unknown A
Why I give it a C. I give it a C. I go, yeah.
-
Unknown D
I go, I. I mean, I. I like the ad as a piece of animation. It looks cool. I go, yeah, C, B minus.
-
Unknown B
Something like that.
-
Unknown A
Okay, what do you got?
-
Unknown B
This is my favorite ad of the super bowl, really, Because I loved the way it started with the pre technology era, the first sparks of what we consider to be human innovation. Fire the wheel. And then it took you through this really kind of fast paced, rewatchable, I would say progression through the modern era. And to me it's a very optimistic message that we are still making progress of the scale of first flight, microchips, et cetera. And this is the future. And then it sells it at the end with a very easy. And you can go play with it for free. How cool is that?
-
Unknown A
It's. I mean, it's okay. I would have done. If I was going to punch it up, okay. I would have directly connected what AI could possibly do in the way the AT&T T commercial did. You will. And if you pull up the AT&T commercial, what they predicted you will do, they predicted easy pass. They predicted like Netflix. They predicted a lot of interesting things. I would have used this to then take fire the wheel, you know, dial up and then shown you a self driving car. I would have showed you a robot, like feeding chickens and getting the eggs from the coop. I would have shown you how insane this is going to get. I would have shown robots on the surface of Mars. I would have really gone for like a, you know, a surgeon robot using AI.
-
Unknown D
Yeah.
-
Unknown B
So this is that ad, right?
-
Unknown D
This is an interesting comparison though because I feel like on some level we're in a much more cynical age than we were. And if you tell people here's what's coming, here's the future and show the moonshot ideas, I think we have a lot more built in cynicism for that in 2025. People have been hearing that stuff for years. You know, like we're in a post where's my flying car?
-
Unknown A
Era that you will commercial. What year was that? Because man, you look at that. They showed a pda. A personal digital device is long before the iPhone with a stylist on a beach. So that was saying like you're going to send a fax from the beach. I mean they, they kind of missed it by like 10ft, right? They were, they were in the general facility, which is you could take a video of your kids and then post it to the Internet for the world to see or something. Or you could do a livestream. And then they show GPS never getting lost and they show going through a toll. What were the other things in there? It went by so fast.
-
Unknown B
Well, you know, I'm going to scrub through it. But it was 1993, I believe was that 1993? So, yeah. Also wireless Internet, because he was on the tablet from the ocean. I thought that was pret.
-
Unknown A
Yes.
-
Unknown B
And they also showed the book on the screen.
-
Unknown D
Right, that's what I was gonna say. Some sort of research tool or in early Internet, you know, you'll be able to read any book instantly, you know, Right. On a screen.
-
Unknown A
Yeah.
-
Unknown B
I mean, but it's better than they showed because they're in a library in that photo, in that. In that video. But at home now, you don't have to go.
-
Unknown A
And this was 1993. So this is before the web browser, just to give people an idea. This is during the AT&T dial up era. They showed a video phone booth, a remote medical consultation.
-
Unknown D
But think about how much more optimistic people were about consumer technology in 1993. We were right on the verge of all of these innovations that were real and existed but just were like. Just about, you know, like the Internet, we knew all new was real. It was just very slow. And you had to get like AOL to use it. I just feel like today there's been so many more promises that we then haven't quite lived up to. I don't know if you can sell people on the Future is now. In the same way.
-
Unknown B
Osprey says that Nike was the winner. I did like the Nike AT Non technology. It was kind of a women's sports homage. I watch a lot of.
-
Unknown A
Oh, yes, that was good. I like that one too. Yeah.
-
Unknown B
I was like, oh, it's Asia Wilson. Oh, it's Caitlin Clark. You know, that was fun.
-
Unknown A
I think there was an Uber eats one again.
-
Unknown D
Yeah.
-
Unknown A
With Matthew.
-
Unknown D
Matthew McConaughey playing key figures from NFL history.
-
Unknown A
I like this one not just because of my history with Uber. What I liked about it is when you drop historical references and you can follow along with this kind of rapid drops of things. Like they do the Refrigerator Perry, they do the Buffalo Bills, and they call it a pig skin. Like Ice Cream Saturdays. Ice cream sundaes. There you go. Okay.
-
Unknown D
Also, Sean Evans from Hot Ones right there. Another. Yeah, another fun little cameo.
-
Unknown A
Smart.
-
Unknown B
I love Hot Ones.
-
Unknown D
Me too. A big, big holiday.
-
Unknown A
Can't eat out of a cup. Ted founders like me, you've got a lot on your plate. Running a startup means you got to manage an endless to do list. Tons of tasks. Right. You got to do your chores as a founder and you got to juggle dynamic priorities. One day it's sales, the next day it's development, then it's product, then it's raising Money. And that's why I rely on Coda C O D A to keep everything in our organization under control. Coda is the all in one platform that brings together the best of documents, spreadsheets and apps all into a single scalable workspace. And you know, it's so much more than when I say a to do list, I'm using that as like somewhere I start. Okay, I rattle off a couple of things that need to be done, but then my team builds databases and workflows into Coda so that repetitive tasks become automated and information is shared and there's a single source of truth.
-
Unknown A
Our training documents, our meetings with founders, everybody who we co invest with, LP relations, we do it all on Coda. And it gives us the flexibility to adapt to shifting priorities. We set our okrs and we balance all that ambition we have with practicality. There are templates that you can use to start you on second or third base projects like Twist 500 where we're trying to catalog the top 500 private companies. That's being done inside of Coda. When you go to twist500.com, it's a coda based website, public facing, but a database and a system for us to track those companies on the back end. It's a all in one hub for startups. It's literally a Swiss army knife that we can use in any situation without having to go research another SaaS product and another template and another login and another debate and negotiation with a SaaS vendor for yet another five or $10,000 a year.
-
Unknown A
And hey, it's my money. I would rather use Coda and have everything in one place, one login and then hook it all together. It's intuitive, it's powerful, it makes our workflow seamless. Coda empowers your startup to strategize, plan and track goals effectively. Take advantage of this limited time offer just for startups. Go to Coda IO Twist today and get six months free of the team plan. Very generous, thank you to the Coda team. That's Coda IO Twist to get started for free. Well done, Coda. I give this one a B. I liked it. I love anything where there's like pop culture references seeded through it.
-
Unknown D
Yeah.
-
Unknown A
So I give it a B plus because I liked when they this part when they got the refrigerator Perry.
-
Unknown D
I always remember playing Ditka right there.
-
Unknown A
Yeah. Playing Dicka. It's pretty fun.
-
Unknown D
Yeah, it's fun. Yeah. I, I also liked the Instacart I thought was kind of similar where it was all the different ad mascots together. Like, it was. It was doing, like, an Avengers end game, but for at, you know, characters from other ads. Like, that's her. Monkey Baby from the Mountain Dewad. There's Chester Cheetah.
-
Unknown B
How do you know all those names?
-
Unknown A
I told you, he's pop culture Monkey Baby.
-
Unknown D
There's the Doughboy. There's the Jolly Green Giant.
-
Unknown A
Jesus. How do you do it? I'm. I'm, like, literally trying to keep up this Jolly Green Giant. You're right.
-
Unknown D
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's more to this, Mr. Clean. It's Kool Aid Man.
-
Unknown A
Kool Aid Man. There's the Cheeto guy.
-
Unknown D
I don't remember what the. The dogs in wiener suits. There's the Energizer Bunny. So, yeah, another, like, point at the. Do the DiCaprio meme. Point at the screen when you recognize a character going by.
-
Unknown B
Okay. Ah, right.
-
Unknown A
The DiCaprio meme.
-
Unknown D
So they get. It's a really strong. From a. Yeah. There's the Old Spice guy.
-
Unknown A
Spice Guy. Yeah.
-
Unknown D
It's just. It's hitting so many memes and ideas and familiar characters that it keeps people's attention.
-
Unknown A
Yes. Much like the Uber one. So that's a theme when you have the density of the plot with characters, et cetera, and you can point to it and it's. It's like that south park episode where they had member berries, remember? Nope.
-
Unknown D
You're exactly right. Yeah. It's. It's any. Any chance to. You. People love Easter eggs. They love references like. It's like a. It's like Deadpool 3, but for a commercial fan service.
-
Unknown A
Fan service.
-
Unknown D
Fan service, exactly. But for commercials. A sad commentary in a way that you can have commercial fan service, but you can.
-
Unknown A
In the Instacart ad. Do we think that Instacart split the cost of the ad? Which eat with everybody who got a mention. In other words, they pooled their money. Or do you think they said, hey, if you give us your IP, give us Mr. Kool Aid, Mr. Clean, we'll just put them in there free of charge. But you got to give us the rights to.
-
Unknown D
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. That's an interesting. Like, obviously, if you are Pillsbury, why wouldn't you want the Doughboy in there? It's like, okay, he's one of the prominent mascots. We want him included.
-
Unknown B
You know, I'm with Lon on this, but I'll also throw in that Fiji, the CEO of Instacart is on OpenAI's board. So in my personal 5D chess board that I have in my head, I'm thinking that everyone wants to be on Fiji's good side because she's so close to open. AI Ergo, everyone said, you can have the Kool Aid man for free in your advertisement. And so they didn't have to pay anything. But I don't think they contribute.
-
Unknown A
So I give a B plus to this one. So we have. We have some genres here. You got the Dense fan service one. We got that as one. And then we have the Heartstrings Country Roads one. And another heartstring one that I loved was my guy, Harrison Ford, who's a Tesla guy, by the way. I know that. You know, I talked to him at a Tesla event one time. But he's a. He's a big Tesla guy. But he did a Jeep commercial which was kind of like a crossing the aisle kind of commercial. And, hey, you might like to plug it in or you might like gas. I think that was kind of the point of it. Let's play a little bit of that one if we have the Jeep one. But you saw this one, right? Lon, what do you think of this one?
-
Unknown D
Yes, I liked it. I mean, I feel like Harrison Ford, the last few years, he's really sort of taken ownership of his role as, like, America's granddad. And I think we all. We all have such strong emotional connection feelings for him, more than, you know, like, you could put Walton Goggins in an ad. And he's a good actor. I'm a big, righteous gemstones guy, but it's not the sort of person who evokes the same feelings as Harrison Ford. And so I think there's just a gravitas, a cultural significance that he has that. That only a handful of other guys have. Tom Hanks. You know, how many. How many American actors are really in that. In that world? Maybe Samuel L. Jackson, who also made a notable appearance, but not that many. If you put him in something, everybody's paying attention because he's. He's America's granddad. I mean, it's indie. It's Indiana Jones.
-
Unknown B
Matthew McConaughey, to me, has become the Salesforce guy who also does some acting a little bit.
-
Unknown D
He's in a lot of ads. He was in two ads this year.
-
Unknown B
That's too much. That's saturation. That's brand dilution. Matthews.
-
Unknown A
So they're doing, like, a lot of Americana. He's at a barn. Like, he's in his J Ranch era. He's in his ranch era here as well. And there's a part of this where it shows the plug in and it shows like people going different directions.
-
Unknown D
If Kevin Costner hadn't bailed on Yellowstone to do his Horizon films, he could have done this. Like it's, there's the plug in.
-
Unknown A
See, look, there's the Rubicon plug in hybrid.
-
Unknown D
It's like that, like, you know, he every. Everybody, it doesn't matter if you're a big city liberal, if you live in a red state, if you're a farmer, a rancher. Everybody loves Harrison Ford. He's universal.
-
Unknown A
And I like the joke at the end where he's like at my last name. And I love Jeeps. So I, I thought this was cheeky. I thought it was heartstring pulling. And I'll tell you how effective this was. I've always wanted to own a Jeep Wrangler. My wife has always wanted to own a Jeep Wrangler and we just never got around to it. You know what I did after watching the set?
-
Unknown D
What, you bought it?
-
Unknown A
Yes. I didn't buy a Jeep, but I went and I looked at the Jeep inventory around me here in Texas. I was like, I should get a Jeep for the ranch.
-
Unknown D
I assume if you. Yeah, I just assume that's, that's on a level. You could just impulse. That's it. That's a J impulse purchase.
-
Unknown A
It could be a J impulse purchase, but I didn't.
-
Unknown D
Because I want to build up a little while. I have to think about it, do some research for you. Just, just go online by it.
-
Unknown A
Well, the only reason you have to do a ton of research on this by the now is I was on car and driver. Like Jeep has so many options. You can go hybrid, you can go regular, you can go two door, you can go forward, you can go hard top, you can go soft top, you go Rubicon. You could go six speed, you could go manual, you can go automatic. I mean it's so many options. It's fatigue with the Jeep.
-
Unknown D
I feel like that's part of the bit though, isn't it? It's like an all customizable, like year knee, whatever your specific needs are. There's a Jeep for that, you know.
-
Unknown A
Yeah. But they do have a Jeep hybrid. Now there's a Jeep Wrangler plug in hybrid. I didn't know that. Yeah. I was looking at the Jeep Wrangler Hybrid. I was like, well, that's kind of cool. I wonder how many miles it gets or whatever.
-
Unknown D
They're getting their ROI on That on that Ford commercial already.
-
Unknown A
I mean, it made me want to know what's up. And I don't think they have. Do they have an all electric one yet? I don't think they have an all electric Jeep yet.
-
Unknown B
I'm not sure. But I do know that every time I see a Jeep gladiator with the top and the doors off, I'm like, that is the tank top of trucks. And I always really want one. But my, my driveway is not long enough to have that, plus my wife's car in it. So it's just, I can't buy one. I don't have room for the ranch.
-
Unknown D
Yes. It's not a very practical, big city vehicle, but for the ranch, I could see it totally making sense.
-
Unknown A
What's the story, Alex, with Matthew McConaughey securing the bag from Benioff? Because Benioff is constant running around with celebs. He's got the guy from Japan who's, his, like, best friend. I forgot. That guy's, like, either an artist or a musician that he's always hanging out with. Then he's got Matthew McConaughey on the payroll.
-
Unknown B
Yep.
-
Unknown A
And then there's another celebrity he had on the payroll for a while. Well, I, I, this idea that, like, Matthew McConaughey is, like, the strategy officer of what is his official role and how much money is he getting paid to do this?
-
Unknown B
So I, I wouldn't look this up. And according to reporting from 2023, Matthew McConnell is getting paid, quote, more than $10 million a year to serve as a creative advisor and TV pitchman. And that's according to the Wall Street Journal. So how much money is $10 million a year? It's about $27,400 per day. And I gotta tell you what, Mark, I'll do it for half.
-
Unknown A
I mean, it's a big number. 10 million bucks. But I guess if you've got, like, $100 billion company, I guess you can give somebody 10 million. But that's a lot of cheddar.
-
Unknown B
Yeah.
-
Unknown A
I don't know what people get paid. Juan, would he be considered a list? Like Tom Ford, like, Harrison Ford is a list and George Clooney's a list.
-
Unknown D
We're in a very strange time in the movie industry. Conventionally, yes, he would have been, like, he would have been who you'd normally think would be, you know, Oscar winner, like, was in all those rom coms, had a, as a big.
-
Unknown A
He's a legit guy.
-
Unknown D
But in 2025, there's really only A handful of people who, like we know, can definitely open a movie. Even guys like Will Smith are no longer like sure things. And Will Smith is more.
-
Unknown A
It's basically Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad.
-
Unknown D
Yeah, I mean, Cruz. Even Cruz had a stumble with that last Mission Impossible. Like, who is still an A lister? It's hard to say.
-
Unknown A
Lon, great job. We'll see you on another episode soon. We'll drop you off. And we got a couple of business stories to get through today that are critically important. Well, that was fun. And what I like about that is we really got to talk about all the great Internet companies spending money on this. This is not something you should do when you have a small amount of money. But if you're a billion dollar company, got over a billion dollars in your bank account, why not do it? And here's what you should do. If you have under a hundred million, you want to participate in this? I might do this next year. You should do a spec super bowl commercial, let it out and say, this is what if we could afford a Super bowl commercial, this would be our super bowl commercial. So you can hijack the super bowl commercial by releasing your not super bowl commercial, or we can't afford a Super bowl commercial, but we made one anyway.
-
Unknown A
You should punk rock this. I'm going to advise a bunch of my startups. If you have 10 million in revenue and you want to go spend 100k making a not super bowl commercial, I'll retweet it for you. I think it's like a really good idea to punk rock and gorilla market into the super bowl and release it.
-
Unknown B
With a press release and then also say, or if you wanted to take it up one, one notch higher, say, this is our band super bowl ad. They wouldn't let us play this. It's 2x or 2y. And then people will talk about that as a controversial free speech point. And then you get even more play.
-
Unknown A
By the way, I think you know the meditation app did an election night commercial. I don't know if you saw that. This is 2024. They did it. Okay, so it's a couple of months ago. I remember getting a lot of feedback on this. They just did a silent ad. We brought this ad space to give you 30 seconds of silence.
-
Unknown B
Yep, it's pretty effective because I'm already talking quieter.
-
Unknown A
I'm already on NPR Voice. Yep, just silence. You're welcome. I mean, it's so powerful when you think about it. Like it's election night. Everything is going chaotic and comms like, boom. And I know this because calm was the number one app of the year according to Apple. They gave it the app of the year, not just health, but overall when Trump became president, as a like kind of subtweet troll of Trump. Like, listen, I know it's going to be chaotic. Captain Chaos is in. You know, get calm. So when Trump won, I was like, this is going to be great. We're going to sell a lot of eight sleeps and a lot of calm meditation apps. People are going to be all high strung and bent out of shape. Okay, what else do we got in the news? There's a bunch of news going on. This is rapid fire. Go through it.
-
Unknown B
All right, so AI news to kick things off. There's an enormous event going on in France. We talked about this just for a hot second at the end of last week.
-
Unknown D
J.D.
-
Unknown B
Vance is going, I think Modi is going. But the whole point is that France has unveiled a lot more spending than we expected. They're putting together a over $100 billion private investment pool, Jason, to build data centers, investing companies. There's a new PAN eu, kind of like AI corporate consortium being put together that general catalyst is a part of.
-
Unknown A
Okay.
-
Unknown B
And I think it's a pretty big deal, frankly.
-
Unknown A
So they put a pool of capital together. Viva la France. They're going to try to compete in data centers and AI, as we talked about, they got tons of nukes, they got tons of energy. This gives them a pole position. So what a forward thinking country in that they decided, you know what, we're not going to shut our nukes down. We're going to lean into nukes because we know we don't want to. We don't have oil in France that I know of. So if we don't have that, let's go clean. Let's build extra nuclear. They were 80, 90% nuclear at one point. Now they're probably 60, 70% nuclear and 20% renewables. But if you have extra capacity for nuclear and people need data centers. Absolutely. Why wouldn't you put data centers in France and get some pano shock a lot.
-
Unknown B
And yeah, I mean, I hear croissants in France cost a lot less than croissants in the US so I'm aborted. It's 109 billion euros and it's called the EU AI Champions Initiative. Oh, that's the general catalyst thing. There's a bunch of AI stuff coming out of France right now. And I know people have given Europe a lot of stick for its regulatory posture. They do seem to be shifting, Jason and I think that it would be great to have two hubs of AI development in the free world to counterpoint China. And then finally, one last thing here. Mistral, the French foundation AI model company and Helsing, the European defense company are going to work together on AI defense tech for Europe. And I thought that sounds very American. So we have a big investment, we have less regulation and we have guns. Europe is going American on AI. Yep.
-
Unknown A
Hey, pay your fair share. I love it. And then yeah, we had talked last week that UAE was going to invest in data centers there. And so this is great news. And if you want to play a part in the AI future, there's a couple of ways to go about it. Obviously you could have great PhDs coming out of your universities who know how to write code, etc, you could have energy, you could have data centers. There's a lot of ways to go about it. And you could lower regulation so things can move faster. Good on them. I also saw, you know, and I, and I replied to you. Sam Lesson, who worked, he's, I think he's Slow Ventures is his venture capital firm and he had worked at Facebook for a long time and obviously his wife is the Jessica Lesson. From the information which we sometimes quote here.
-
Unknown A
Oh yeah, he did a really interesting tweet. You can pull it up. He says simple/obvious AI company to build, replace do not reply at email addresses with please reply at. And you know, you could read his like little pitch on it. But my lord, I always hated do not reply emails because I'm like, if you could get a reply from a customer, like why wouldn't you want that? Like that makes total sense. But you know, with AI you could have people reply and then send them a thoughtful AI based reply first and then if they need a human, they could ask for a human at any point in time. Just kind of like you do on the phone where you say I need an agent. And yes, somebody should build please reply at. As a company. Just take his advice here. This is a great idea to just build an AI email gateway that does this and this only where it's human in the loop, you make a web interface.
-
Unknown A
I mean this could change everything for small businesses. What a great obvious idea. And you know, you just have to be willing to iterate on it. But I just wanted to give him a shout out because that is a great idea.
-
Unknown B
I think it's a great idea and it actually makes me pretty encouraged about how much space there still is in the market to take modern AI technology and apply a legacy systems to improve the overall consumer and customer experience. To use kind of a buzzwordy term, this isn't even that hard off the shelf technology. Jason, you could make it with pretty much, I think any major LLM API. But here's the question that I have. Build it or buy it? If you're a company, would you want to pay a SaaS fee for this or would you want to just have your own crew spin up your own version of it?
-
Unknown A
I mean in all cases you have this, it's a feature, it could be done internally, yada yada. I would say if you make it and it's $99 a month for up to 10,000 emails and it's $1,200 a year, why would anybody build it?
-
Unknown B
Because it's cheap.
-
Unknown A
A developer's gonna cost you a hundred thousand dollars in a year of work to do it. And like Squarespace, you know what I always tell people about like using Squarespace? They constantly add features to it. So it wasn't like a Shopify competitor, it was like more for like a beautifully designed website. And Shopify was for E commerce, but they added the E commerce features. Then they, you know, it wasn't for selling content. Like maybe Patreon or some of those other platforms are for, we can sell content or email newsletters or videos and then they added that. So what you could do with this is you make it for email, then you add it to WhatsApp, you edit the text, whatever. But it's a really great wedge and what I would do is I would make it free for under a thousand emails. Yeah, yeah. And just see what happens.
-
Unknown A
So if somebody wants to do this idea, you know, find a friend or two, email me jasonalicanis.com Go to launch co apply and build a prototype. If your prototype's good, I'll give you 25k or 125k to go to Founder University or you know, to the launch accelerator. It's just such an obvious idea. I'm happy to give people their first check to give it a shot. If they're actually developers and they make a prototype so somebody can clip this and put it on, you know, our request for startup, shout out to Sam Lesson. Great idea. I think you could build it for 25 to 125k, no problem.
-
Unknown B
So in baseball on your weekends.
-
Unknown A
Yeah.
-
Unknown B
The Mendoza Line is kind of like the threshold at which someone becomes like ineffective at batting. I think it's like a 0.2 batting average. I wonder if they'll be a SaaS line. Like if you charge less than 1/10 of the cost of a developer for your SaaS product, no one's going to build it because it's so much cheaper to buy it. And I wonder if there's a way we can, we can use that to like frame what software products might be.
-
Unknown A
Three developers. If you have to put three. If the cost of building something and maintaining it in your company is three developers, you're probably not going to do it because you got other things you'd want to put the three developers on. But under three developers, you probably just want to buy it, right? So for us internally, we built all of our systems for tracking companies using Coda and Notion and Zapier and some other tools that was under three developers of work like you could have. I think we probably have in total 3, 4 people on the team spending 20% of their time, each like less than one full time person. And they're not even developers, they're just savvy business people who know how to use these kind of scripting tools. So yeah, it might be like a two developer rule. If it's over two developers or more just, you know, we'll do it in, you know, or if it's under, takes under two developers, just buy the software that's out there.
-
Unknown A
There's something there where you, you don't want to waste too many developers on a project.
-
Unknown B
So you don't have too many projects. I mean, we talk a lot about how focus is so important for startups and then we also talk about rolling your own software. Well, those do kind of contrast a little bit.
-
Unknown A
Well now you got a management team that instead of doing their job is managing the building of the infrastructure for the company. So you got to really think, is this worth doing? And I can tell you at the core of running an accelerator or an incubator is processing a large number of applications efficiently, tracking a large number of companies and their progress. So when you're an at scale investor, it does make sense to build custom software. If you're a firm that does six investments a year and you process 2,000 applications, yeah, you can use off the shelf Software. We have 20,000 applications, we do 100 investments, we're tracking, I don't know, a thousand companies that we've either invested in or that are in our programs like Founder University. So yeah, we need customers software. You know, there was another story that you had put on the docket about it.
-
Unknown A
Unemployment on the rise. I thought that was a very interesting story.
-
Unknown B
So on Friday we showed a chart showing that there's been a pretty sharp decline in how many new people were being hired into tech roles in the US And I found some more data on that. So according to Department of Labor data that the Wall Street Journal published, the Number of unemployed IT workers here in the states rose from about 100,000 to about 150,000 last month.
-
Unknown D
Month.
-
Unknown B
And that pushed IT unemployment from 3.9%, kind of below the national average just a little bit to 5.7%. Now some of this is end of year cleaning house companies letting people go and so forth. But I, I wouldn't have thought in today's moment when there's so much opportunity in technology that we would have a higher unemployment rate for IT folks than the average American worker. And the question is, is this AI showing up in the numbers?
-
Unknown A
Jason, I think it's two things. One, there's the software in IT is getting better and better and it's being offshored. So that combination of offshoring and let's call it self serve. So you are in a remote company, you have a problem with the Mac Mini or whatever I sent you or the camera, if the microphone, the camera and the Mac Mini are, you know, well constructed in the software, like Restream is well constructed. Are you going to ask for tech support from producer Court or Chris or are you just going to try to solve it yourself? You're probably going to just try to solve it yourself to not bother them and you'll be a little self reliant and the answers are there. So I don't think it's AI replacing the person. I think it's the person replacing the IT person. I think what IT is is the customer, you know, the executive going to chat GPT and saying how do I underline in word?
-
Unknown A
That's what's happening here.
-
Unknown B
Okay. So essentially people are more empowered by improved software and improved ability to go out and find their own answer. So in an IT context, going back to your early IT experience, we just need fewer bodies. Okay, I'll take that.
-
Unknown A
You're not going to call the support desk if you can call an AI. So instead of calling the support desk, go to ChatGPT, go to YouTube, go to Gemini, ask the same question. Yeah, go to Grok, and you're probably half the time going to solve your issue. So the number of calls coming into the help desk go down because of AI. So this is a very weird one. It's not that AI is like exactly Replacing the person. It's that people are going to AI to solve their problems. And I suspect this will happen with lawyers and accountants as well, and doctors, all of those professions. Before we call our attorneys, we upload a document to ChatGPT and we ask it, is this a standard safe? Has anything been changed? Here's the standard safe.
-
Unknown B
Smart.
-
Unknown A
So before you call your attorneys and spend $800 1200, shout out to expensive attorneys everywhere, you should shout out, yes, shout out. You should, as a founder take the document and just ask ChatGPT to analyze and say, how is this term sheet I got from a venture capitalist different than the standard term sheet? Then when you go talk to your attorney, you could also upload as an employee, here's my non compete, non disclosure, whatever you signed. When you, you know, my assignment of IP, you could ask ChatGPT to analyze it, summarize it, and then you can go to your employer or your employment attorney and say, hey, who owns my IP in this case, if I use my own laptop on the weekends? All of this is to say the first third or the first half of questions for professional service people are going to be answered not by Google but by ChatGPT.
-
Unknown A
Boom, we're done.
-
Unknown B
This goes back to we talked about Glean the other day on the show, which is essentially AI for internal corporate answers and Yahoo was a customer so I actually got to use it for a second before I quit and they just hit 100 million ARR. So there's another example of just this playing out in the market. I will say though, I think for biggest, the biggest companies you're going to need IT staff because their internal systems are so complex. It's a little bit harder to chat GPT your way out of them. But for anything under a thousand people, I think you're dead on.
-
Unknown A
All right, so we're going to have a big week this week with earnings. I'm just going to pick my top three that I want to go over. You can pick your top three and we'll meet in the middle. I really want to understand what's going on at Robinhood, Reddit and my third choice, let's see, Zillow, Shopify, Freshwork, Similar Web Lyft and Solar Winds are going to come out on Tuesday. So I guess I got to go Lyft is my choice there because, you know, I want to see how they're responding to the situation with self driving. I gotta go Robinhood and Reddit because I think those two are crushing it and super important to Robinhood. I never sold a share of Robinhood. We distributed from our first fund, our Robinhood investment at like, I don't know if it was 18 or 20 a share. I think it's at 50 bucks a.
-
Unknown B
Share right now and growing 634.
-
Unknown D
What up?
-
Unknown B
0.8. Look. But look at that tear from the beginning of 2024 when it was 1314 bucks a share. It has been ripping all through the last year.
-
Unknown A
Give it the lifetime one because happened. This. This is a really important lesson for everybody.
-
Unknown B
Lifetime. This is.
-
Unknown A
Okay.
-
Unknown B
Perfect is. Yes.
-
Unknown A
So this is the lifetime chart. That peak is when Cathie Wood and when it went public and I was locked up for the first six months. So if you look at that chart, I think it peaked early at 50 or $60 a share. What was the peak?
-
Unknown B
This was. The peak was 70.
-
Unknown A
Okay, so this is really important. It went to $70 a share. And did it go public in 22 or 23?
-
Unknown B
I think it was very early. 22. It's August 21st. I'm sorry.
-
Unknown A
Okay. Wow. August 21st. So I couldn't sell. August 21st was so Zerpie kind of zerpee in the air. And so people went nuts for Robinhood. And then it came crashing down. Everybody's like, oh, my God, it's a terrible company. I was like, this company's great. People love this product. I'm not selling. I'm gonna hold Robinhood forever. Little did I know that Robinhood would continue to crush it. And if you just watch it, it comes back.
-
Unknown B
It does.
-
Unknown A
And now here we are, $56 a share. You know what? And it's peaking right now. I'm not selling it. I think I told everybody, I think that this is going to be a trillion dollar company. What's the market cap of robinhood right now?
-
Unknown B
50 billion. Exactly. So I changed the chart. If you're watching the YouTube version, and I threw on Jason. This is just the federal funds overnight target rate, the Fed rate, as we call it. And what happened was, you can see this was very much in the ZERP era, the early trading period. And then rates went up and there's a bit of a lag. And then Robinhood rises. But one thing I think people forget about Robinhood's resurgence was frankly, it made tons of money off of holding a lot of cash from its customers. And so when the price of money went up, a lot of fintech companies saw a pretty substantial boost to their. Their revenues. So the Fed giveth and the Fed take us away. But Robin's one of my favorite examples of how the Fed can really be on both sides of a trade.
-
Unknown B
Now you wanted Reddit, let me pull it up for you.
-
Unknown A
Yeah. So Wednesday I think we, we have Robinhood and Red. I don't know if they announced beginning of the day, end of the day, but we could probably grab like Zillow is an interesting one on Tuesday coming out as well because that would give us some insight into the changes that occurred with that settlement in the real estate market. So maybe Tuesday we grab Zillow lift. Wednesday we grab Robinhood, Reddit. Thursday I guess we got to do Coinbase with all the changes in crypto and then maybe Airbnb because that's like an interesting bellwether. So there I got six that I'm interested in. You can pick a couple as well. And that gives us like what we'll cover this week because there's so many startup lessons from, from that cohort of six. Right? And it's a marketplace. Marketplace. Marketplace Content marketplace. Marketplace. So it's five marketplaces, one content company.
-
Unknown B
I want to the one only one I want to add, Jason, is what I have pulled up right now, which is Monday.com. they're up 28% today because they reported this morning. And I have it's rare to see a SaaS company jump that much in the current moment. And just so people know, what does it take to crush As a public SaaS company, revenue growth of 32% year over year, faster than expected, better adjusted EPS than expected. And they've they guided to about 1.21 billion for this year, which was above estimates. And they're generating tons and tons of cash. So all you have to do is be at the pinnacle of public market growth, have expanding profitability, insane free cash flow generation and be analyst expectations. And you too can have a greater than 10x multiple.
-
Unknown A
I mean, they got a billion in yearly revenue. That's great. They're making money, they're profitable, they're growing at over 30% year over year. All of this is great. So maybe this is the beginning of the return of SaaS. And I bet you that their employee count is half of what it was at the peak. I bet you that's the trend is that they probably had like a thousand employees and now they have 500. Because in order to get those earnings to go up like this, you got to have some discipline, right? There has to be some discipline. And look at all that free cash flow. Wow. They can start buying their shares back. I mean, this is one of the things about if SaaS is going to be perennially undervalued by the public markets, then these SaaS companies can go private like Zendesk did, I believe.
-
Unknown A
Or they could start buying back their shares. So they really have two options of how to take advantage of valuations being low, start buying back shares, which Uber's doing because they perceive their shares were low. Or you could take the company private and then.
-
Unknown B
No, no more of that. No more take privates, only publics. I, I just, I really want more IPOs this year. Elsewhere in the world, OpenAI is taping out its chip with TSMC, which means that they're moving forwards on having their own hardware. Keep in mind that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, everyone's doing this. We also have a bunch of chip Companies in the Twist 500, including Etched, which we're trying to get onto the show. They are making Transformers specific.
-
Unknown A
Everybody wants etched on the show. So if somebody knows somebody at Etched, let's try to get that locked up. Founder Friday's announcement. Founder Fridays Tech is where founders host other founders in groups of ideally six to eight, or enough to go around a roundtable and talk about what was your big win for the last month, what are your big challenges. That's the format. That's all it is. But imagine if you're a founder, you're home alone, you're in Miami, you're in Austin, you're in San Antonio, wherever you are. And you got to sit with five other six other seven other folks and answer that question, what's working? What's not working? And then give each other advice. It's the simplest format I ever came up with. It's the most effective format I've ever come up with. We decided we're going to do a Founder Friday city competition.
-
Unknown A
Oh, we used to do this in the old days with meetups. We're doing a Founder Friday competition. Each city is going to have the ability to have a little startup competition amongst their 6, 7, 8 founders. You know, each give their best pitch, then whoever they want to represent them in the nationals will get to go. We're going to make a bracket. We'll have eight international cities, eight U.S. cities. You know, they'll all battle each other and then we will wind up with like four quarter, you know, whatever, four people in the finals. And then we'll rank them and we'll have a show where each of these folks get to pitch for two minutes, take a question from Alex and I and then we'll pick the winner in each of the brackets. So there'll be an additional great reason to join a Founder Fridays group or run one in your city.
-
Unknown B
It's free.
-
Unknown A
I love this for founders.
-
Unknown B
I love it. I love it.
-
Unknown C
I love it.
-
Unknown B
I love I love demos. I love founders. I love vetting things. I love asking questions. I'm 100.
-
Unknown A
There it is. So sure there he's Alex x.com Alex I'm x.com Jason he's got a newsletter. It's called Cautious Optimism. I have one. Just type in Jason Calicana stub stack. You'll find it. Sign up for it. I'm going to start writing some email newsletters. I decided good. Now that we got Lon here to help me with ideas and we'll see you all next time this week in startups.com docket to see Wednesday's docket ahead of time you can ask questions in the docket. Thank you to Notion for hosting the docket.
-
Unknown D
It bye.