Holiday Special 2022
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How do I open again? welcome.

What is this show?

What are we doing? Welcome to how I built this.

No, I think again, so I put this, but that's not started.

Easy, you wait, you wait, you who got to know? Easy, me. Down the.

Welcome to this special episode of acquired the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm been gilbert and I am the cofounder and managing director of seattle based pioneered square labs and our venture .

fund p sl ventures. And i'm David role and i'm an old investor based in different co. But today then you are hosting me at your lovely home here in seattle.

Welcome to the studio.

It's great to bigger .

and we are your hosts. H, H.

H, H, happy holidays. Happy .

holidays.

And I I don't about you but ready to put back on twenty twenty two well, we have just talk about.

yeah well, listen, Normally I have like a script, like a thing that i'm looking at in front of me to know what to say now. But I don't really on this one other than to say join the slack. There are great people there, including probably you if you're listen to this episode, we don't think this is an entry point for a lot of people into acquired. We think this is probably if you're a fan, you are gonna listen to this, but I don't think this is going to be anyone sort of first shows. So we're going to try and go a little little deeper and nerdy er than Normal.

We've got a gentle gna recap twenty twenty two for the show, for tech, for us. Talk a little bit about what's ahead in twenty twenty three. We've got some extra.

extra fun indeed. okay. Listeners, now is a great time to tell you about long time friend of the show service now.

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Yeah, so learn how you can put A I agents to work for your people by clicking the link in the shower notes or going to service now dot com slash A I dash agents. With that, this is not investment advice. This is probably the episode of the year where we will come closest to things that might be interpreted as investment advice as we talk about things that we have liked, didn't like and predict future and all that.

So do your own research. Are I David? Where we start with are IT.

I think we got a recap twenty twenty two, despite the craziness of the year of twenty twenty two in the broader world tech markets, economy is a party great year for the show I have done here, my signature required episode, favorite memories from the air. We started the year. Tell swift, yes, it's like crazy that that was fears like three years ago.

we knew that at the end of the going to drop midnight IT seemed appropriate at that in the year where he was going to put on the concert and announced the tickets for the concert series with the most ament in human history, that we should, of course, kick your off with a tailor episode predicting the future. As usual here on acquired.

I think twenty twenty three, you may need to line her up for a follow up. We should do in a quiet session with tailor nature. Tailor come to you will come to your .

studio or maybe the long .

pond yeah long pound great.

I was reflecting on this is pret crazy that I think the announcement was that they had nine hundred stadiums worth of demand showing up to ticket master that com. And there's fifty shows having something like thirty five cats, but a lot of them have two nights like there's two nights in seattle here. And i'm sure not all nine hundred stadium worth can be counted as like actual demand.

Like I have to imagine when you know there's a youtube concerned or something, there are a hundred stadium worth of demand for fifty shows or something like that. So clearly, not necessarily all purchases in ten or not all purchase intent at the available Prices, but still there is just no way to service the amount of demand. A guy actually don't know how you solve this problem. Do you make all tickets ten thousand dollars so that you actually find the correct pricy glib um for the demand kind .

we are talking about another recent episode, banths son and american. The obviously that I should do is raise places to maximize revenue, but then that's pretty quickly gonna lead to limiting my reach and impact. I think Taylor cares a lot about her written impact.

and he could probably make the most money on this tour by having ten thousand dollar tickets exclusively and still fill all fifty stadiums. I don't know the Price, maybe two thousand hour ticket. You can do IT bad if you're playing for a fifty year career, then you sort of have to like cherney fan base over time. And recognized that .

the would be like that would truly be a farewell to her because that would create so much right off into the unset, so much negative reaction.

which, of course, would create even more demand if you knew I was her very well to.

Uh, this isn't making me think the reflecting back on that episode eleven months ago. So I don't remember exactly everything we said, but I don't remember talking as much about the obvious pointed this raises for me, which is Taylor is a rockstar in the internet. He's probably like the first really, really big internet rock star.

And the thing about the internet is the markets are bigger than you can ever imagine. The demand is larger than you can ever image. Even in niche products like like first protector or for required like these nitches are bigger than you could ever imagine. Now think about a mainstream pop star.

So the internet enables two things that enables the niches to exist. So there's way more artists that can make a living today. I think then if you think back to like the sixties or something where the labels would pick the ten bands of the year, and that's kind of IT, but why is IT that Taylor swift is bigger than the beetles, like what the beatles have had this much to? And two, when the only promotion that existed was from the labels in a sort of like the labels pick the winners and then those are the winners world.

well, is multiple things going on here. Like one is the dismember ation, or at least the reduction of power of the middle men of the labels yeah and everything else in the middle value chain. And like so much more, the value is now occurring directly to tailor.

But that's not an argument for why there .

is so much more to there also is a lot more demand for tailor than .

there was for the beetles just because the internet having several ways to reach a customer means that the most popular artist in the world is going to have just way more distribution period.

way more distinction, way more .

touch point label .

as hard as he was. And all the news about how hard to get tickets to these Taylor concerts, everybody knew when they were going on sale that IT was happening right through social media and the mainstream media amplifying that. And IT was hard to secure a ticket, but very easy to log on to take a master. Maybe not that compared to I don't even know how you would have ve gotten a ticket to a beetle show back in the day.

I assume you have to like go to the stadium box office and lina, yeah, they're going on sale and you would only know when they are going on sale because of radio ads and print ads. Maybe read .

Better in the newspaper. This is the thing I .

was thinking about when um I was caught up in the friday night friday night whenever ver IT was that people like twitters going down, like it's going to basically turn off tomorrow. I like mentally knew this is a system that would degrade slowly and fade into irrelevance. Not it's going to turn off tomorrow, but putting myself in the headspace of twitter doesn't exist soon.

I was like, how would I know if stuff is taking off? How will I know what the general consensus is around something? How will I know that the tenner has shifted? And this thing is not interesting anymore in that thing is interesting what I start reading the new york times many times a day and going deep in the many of the sections. I'm certainly .

not going to get that same kind of experience or understanding though that's .

super any kind of .

centralized publication, correct?

And it's the centralization that makes IT like less valuable and you'd never build like say, oh, nobodies talking about that because new york times is not a place where you go to find out if people are talking about something. It's a place where you get news. And so you'd literally have to, like in person, go to events and have a bunch of conversations to know what people are talking about OK.

Twitter doesn't exist tomorrow. Where do you go to find out what people in the world are talking about right now? I think it's tech.

Tok, yeah. But I think IT would be a much less efficient experience because of all video. The number of .

new tidbits of information you can consume per minute in twitter is high and reasonably low. In tiktok, it's ten to twenty versus two to three.

Why don't I get .

from swift to the formless, except for the pretty robust format that you .

fleshed out here? Well, you know, I can not prepare for an episode, even a holiday's bal. Okay, next one on my list, SONY SONY CoOperation, which I didn't think .

would be that interesting when we started. I know that, but I found myself being, like god, actually interesting company I had wanted to read made in japan because i'd heard IT was amazing. But as I looked back at, like trademark acquired episodes t fmc, the new york times, like I just didn't think this would be one of those.

And IT, very clearly, especially in the numbers, did become one of those. IT has at all mean that has the genius founder. IT has the probably the most adversity that we've ever talked about in any founding story in all required.

It's really hard to think of hand of a greater adversity that a company and founders have ever come than japan in nineteen forty five.

IT also has so many chapters. I mean, the crazier thing to me as if you look at the business as of the time we did the episode, they had five separate business units, all of which did a double digit percentage of their revenue. So it's super diverse and all of which did a double digit percentage of their Operating income. So like you have five businesses that are all reasonably the same size in top and bottom line in one house, well.

that we got well over two hours into the epode before we mentioned playstation. And then like the police station story, in enough itself, we can do an episode.

And the fact that we got from like rice cookers and world to like that crazy kota about spiderman is nuts in the back of my mind.

have been percuss ating IT. Could be fun to do a whole episode just on x packs. A, we need to do a microsoft series at some point. We talked a lot about and around microsoft on the show, but we've never covered microsoft and apple. We've microsoft .

have not done the google IPO.

apple, google oracle.

If we just wanted to cheat and like Spike the numbers as much as possible, we just like take the whole next season and just do you know, fang, basically.

I think we should do one of those companies a year, not even a season.

I think one year it's going to take three epo des to .

do which one we are able to fit amazon into two episodes. But amazon is only a what, twenty seven year old company.

And we didn't talk about a bunch of stuff, right? That was the way we skipped IT. We didn't really talk about alex a at all.

right? Sorry, everybody, we just lit up here, although I think there's enough voice personalization in those devices that if a piece of media says the a word, I don't think IT lakes up anymore.

Well, IT might because I have the sonus ones and the firm more and the sonus ones is different than the ones the day I was not actually makes. But mine will just like light up when people say things that are not that word and are just like in a movie, like when dialogues sounds too .

much like that. Here's my proposal and think we should do one of these big test companies a year for two reasons. One you for microsoft, for apple, I think goes are going to be three plus episodes to do that right? Yeah even at acquired length episodes. So it's a huge lift. But also I think we should spread IT out like because like you said, knew the t code would be if we just do a more back to back, but we would diversity of interest here, what we want to go for many years.

I even have a lot of fear around like doing a three part microsoft series where like are people going to be like i'm just out for the next three months because next year listeners we've decided is this is a little Better approximate. We're going to average IT every month. We're gona do a season episode and a special.

So either a season being like apple part one or a special being an interview with someone or acquired sessions or something that kind of doesn't fit the Normal form. And like that literally means that it's like all you're doing a three part microsoft thing. While I am out for q one on acquired.

I actually think about this. I've experienced this on um one of my carrots for extended car outs later, one of my favorite video game podcasts, ent arc. There are video game story, but clubs, so they choose a game you and then they'll do you know ten to twenty episodes playing through the game that's like the story, like litter from a literary prospect. That's really I ve. But if they choose a game that I don't have a large finances for, then it's anywhere from one to two months that i'm not listening to that show.

right? And three months is certainly long enough for someone to permanently change behavior. I don't think it's good for us if someone decides to take a three months break from acquire because it's one hundred percent chance they come back.

Yeah, we gotta think about the right way to do this.

Maybe i'm to focus on the downside and maybe IT will turn out that like while we may alienate some people, is the largest thing in acquire history because I wish OK that will keep going here on big episodes, but that the amazon episode was by far the biggest in acquire history when David pitch me on this idea, I was like, I don't know. Brad stone has written some excEllent books on this. There has been documenting ies.

Jeff basis is the most studied C. E. O in the world. I think until this recent elon madness, what can we bring to the world in the amazon?

I think that has become this year is something Christal zed for me, about acquired in the showing. What we do, I guess, IT always be our lens. Like what can we add get by doing? Because there's a lot of voices they are saying, lots of things spoiler earlier. This is part of why we haven't covered twitter because like .

there's nothing new. All the best technicians in the world are covering IT every single day. I mean, you have malvine. You've done prime back every single day. They are reporting the newest thing with not just reporting but true analysis behind the you have then ben Thompson the following day writing a reaction piece that's like, here's my even more thoughtful take on what happened.

Who has a whole platform dis and a bunch access and a .

bunch of insider sending your stuff breaking real time on twitter. So was one of these things where we're like there's no daylight here for us to talk about IT. We actually felt the same way about F, T, X.

Which I mean, you could argue that we did have a party plane F T X because sam was on the show last year. But like there was so much good coverage and good reporting going on and we're not reporters and we don't chose stuff in real time bb law that I felt the right way to have acquired. Add to the conversation is go to one hundred dollars of research on iron entry.

Insert of indirectly drives many parallels as we can, like we don't want to hit people over the head with. Like this is just like enough to ex where they had. This is more like how can we bring up ideas for people that they can draw their own parallels.

It's been interesting to watch this past week. I who knows if IT was going to or not, but I think at least two major new's alerts have run pieces in the past week with a title like how F, T, X compares to end IT was obvious.

It's obvious to draw that parallel.

They were probably in the works anyway.

yes. Is IT worth sharing more on that now?

Yeah, this, this is a holiday special. We can break the format.

Yeah, every time people, right, and they're like all you gotta do to take on this, it's like, I almost never have a taken real time.

Yes, is now what we do, I suppose.

the traditional acquired format of a company buying another company. We are some of the most well position people in the world to have a take on why that acquisition happened. What will make IT go well? What could kill IT?

Just like you killed grading the season, which, by the way, I love that I was so surprised when .

you are yeah yeah.

But like, look, things into volt next going to be eight year into the show yeah. I thought ben Thompson just set IT perfectly on our most recent episode within where he was like, know, when I was Young. I used to think when I got old that I would like, still be cool, and I would never be one of those old people.

And now that i'm old, i'm like IT old quite relatively. Now that I am all there, I think two things. One, being old pretty great, until I look at my peers who are still trying to be Young and IT just looks kind right, sad.

Like you've got a change, you ve got to evolve. And the show is changed to evolve to a point where I think, like, we are a different show. The show that used to do, oh, breaking foods got out today.

cancel everything today so we can do some quicker research at there. At times where IT still makes sense for us to do those, like john.

fully bringing in a new CEO marthy connection. That is, if ticket is not aged well.

yeah I I think you're right that it's OK that were something different now then then what the show was .

course what everybody listening .

thinks yeah last point on this F, T, X saga, which again, we're watching IT play out in real time. I don't know that, that we're acquired shines because we try to make ever Green pieces that sort of stand the test of time. And like every week, it's so different than that was the previous week.

These are kind of excuses. We probably just should directly say we totally had samon. We've wanted to tell the extraordinary story of F, T X, which was extraordinary. I mean, in a different.

you could not argue that IT is an extraordinary story.

I would do want to say, I am sorry if exposure that F T X got from acquired and every other publication, the world, our .

platform to sam and F, T X. And um yeah I do feel bad about that. I don't think there's any way we could have known at the time.

I don't want to stop having interesting people in companies on the show. You don't have coming company is so but yeah like, you know sex and like a lot of people lost a lot of money. Yeah so sorry .

if you were like on the fence on F, T, X, and you were like any of these things left or not, and then acquire, legitimize that for you. Next.

just if you have not listened to the SONY episode, i'm sure most of you have, but like.

it's so good. Oh my g amazing n SONY .

the SONY story, whether you like our telling him IT or not, but just like IT is a vastly underappreciated company and an under appreciated journey overcoming university. yeah. okay.

SONY do. We did in video this year. We did a lot this year.

Yeah, trying to think which of our silicon episodes I feel the strongest about in terms of like enlightening me about the way the world works. I think its first tmc, but NVIDIA is the thing that's the most interesting about the NVIDIA story. I think is Johnson bet the company three separate times and truly bet the company like if this initiative fails, IT will go to zero and IT worked three separate times.

The first time is when they shipped the card in whatever IT was nine months instead of two years, and they design the whole thing in emulation, never tested IT and shipped IT to customers. And that worked, I mean, worked enough. And maybe i'm forgetting the story in its entirety, but I think there was a Better company moment around programmer shatters and then a third one around the like seven year investment before the market was there in A I and CUDA building their own developing system.

Obviously open N A, I existed. true. Remember if dolly was out at the time when we did the invidia episode? certainly. Gp.

interesting ly enough, I think that one was. But I got to know a clam, right? The one that let the world on fire was dalley too.

Was darling too? yes. But now, as we record this, ChatGPT came out last week, like we are thinking about the A I science and how important A I is in a general sense. When we did those episodes.

NVIDIA stock had that crazy run long before we did the episode, like two years before we did the episode at the beginning of coffee. And so it's interesting that I don't think that was around gaming. I think that was around A I, the thing that was of selling that story.

And so IT, in a way, they are like crazy st. Invidia balls that were sort of buying at the top and selling the story as much as humanly possible. When when did IT peak on a late twenty twenty one? Maybe they were kind of right.

I don't think they knew that the next year would make A I S. Developments as obvious as IT has. But everybody who believe that A I was going to be this complete step change in the way that we use computers, and decided that buying and video a very high Price was the way too endure. That belief like that ended up happening very quickly .

soon after you. The moment when IT really hit me was when we were recording the L P. Episode that we did with jay and muti .

and with a GPT three based feature in our product, right?

And I was like, well, okay, you are dynamically rewriting copy on your customers websites using GPT three, okay, that I kind of place my mind. yeah. Like I can now see the business use cases for this.

You say you can see them, but we're in this very interesting moment where we've all seen three, three amazing proof of concepts. In the last six months, we saw dari to GPT three and now ChatGPT, which to me is actually the most interesting because the most meaningful changes that IT changed the modality that you interact with the A I model, it's either the same or is I think it's like GPT three and a half or something is a very similar model.

But we're interacting within a new way. And it's statement rather than being stateless says and it's sort of can preserve state, you can ask him more questions about. And so I think there's a little bit of all like a crypto one moment here.

Where is the first time someone explains to you a decentralized world computer? You're like, wow, that unlocks a whole world of possibilities and you say, what are they and someone says, let me think about that yeah, yeah. I feel very similar with ChatGPT, right? I'm looking and i'm like, wow, this unlike the whole world of possibilities and so much as what is that not like I feel Better than I did about the decentralized world computer. But I still can't articulate to you like when the absa a launched like, oh, this will be an an eighty billion dollar on demand car service market, but that's not well.

I think this is just naturally how markets play out though, right? Like we look back now like oh, when the APP store launched, IT was obvious but was IT at the time. I think we probably would felt very similarly back in that moment of, like, oh, apps on your phone. cool.

When I first saw the iphone, I thought this device changes everything because I was like, I wanted, once so bad.

the keynote, so many times between the keynote. And when I was, like, six months before the really came out, I was so hipe for IT. I just remember seeing the device.

my coworker s desk ts, to go and thinking, like, I need one of these things. This is like so much of the money that I have would be used to buy one as. So I think I bought the three g the next year or six.

one or one day. I didn't camp out overnight, but I waited in line for hours. Day one, really like the original one I just graduated from college, was the summer I graduated. I graduated, but I hadn't started work yet, but I had my signing bonus. I was like, this is where I am .

spending my money. I waited in line just to wait in line again. I went to the, I don't have enough money. I was seventeen and eighteen.

That's right. You had to pay for Price. There was no career subsidy for the original iphone, correct?

And so was funded just, I brought my low point shot camera. I took pictures of all the people, you know, getting their first iphones and playing with him and setting up. And did you deg go with you? No, I want my friend George. I remember feeling like this devices amazing. I remember really wanting to make apps for IT.

I made to do step until next year.

I sort of miss that whole first year of like you can't make APP. I don't think I was think he went then but like the APP that I made was IT to do list, it's not like I was like, oh my god, this is gonna be a way that you can help cars or or groceries or I was like, let me do the smallest possible thing on this and I think that's actually just how I think about products. I'm not a travel colonic like person.

I think I always sort of think in terms of like what products can I fully conceptualize of in seeing my head and understand all the hard stuff involved in IT. And draw a nice neat box around IT and just work toward shipping that thing that I can fully imagine. It's almost like I want to be able to do everything myself, which is why I think acquired has sort of come out the way that that has rather than us doing a unch of hard stuff I very much shy away from like uh, you'd have like send a bunch of people into grocery stores and like figure out all their inventory and I loaded IT, I just wouldn't do that.

But the idea of like, okay, there's this really nice neat package called an acquired episode. And IT contains these components. And David, I can make IT ourselves.

And what do you think the what would have happened otherwise would be if if we did the hard stuff. Well, like one thing we've been very explicit about in a trade off for the show and acquired as an entity in a business is we don't want to have a lot of employees.

We have a team, more shows. I think we try to do network would have taken people up on the book offers. There could be like a netflix show. There could be i'm trying .

to think is there anything we could have done or or still do that would just be like a fundamentally different thing, like everything you're describing would be building a gimlet or like and like, yes, that would be great. You know, we probably would make more money, 嗯， but that's that's like now what we want to do. But is there anything that would be like an uber versus to do APP IT?

Depends what on the believability spectrum you're willing to call part of acquired like we could have launched a new podcast, APP for acquired another podcast and then try to about IT with glow. We did a glow was originally going to be a new a new APP with experiments. Milton.

that was a boon. Duggle, yeah.

i'll validate your point. When the absa first came out, you could start IT and go, this is onna, change everything. But IT was only a select few people who actually saw the particular massive use case with a new thing. Yum, and that's how I feel about ChatGPT right now, like this thing, scary, powerful, and I don't .

actually know what to do. Most people, I think, are also in the same mode that you and I are of. Like, oh, I can see how this could rewrite, copy dynamically on a website, right? And I see that being, but that's the to do list version of what right I can do.

Yeah and this is fun early, like haf way through the year too. Okay, so we did in video. Yeah, that was so fun and I learned so much and now it's so much more important.

Obviously, these have the same dynamic. Yp, then we did amazon, and I include walmart, and amazon am so glad we did walmer first. That's why I have my head was, like to two episode.

Amazon, three. We really did three. Yeah, episode one was warmer here.

In order to understand the role of retail in amErica today is our first need to understand that everything we think of as a retailer or most things we think of as retailer are actually discounters. yes. And I totally didn't get that before doing the walmart epsom. I was like, well, there was like stores like walmer target and there's department stores which are like more expensive and opinionated and then the brands that have sort of their own stores, but like, I didn't conceptualize that the most common place that you buy things are actually discounters. And walmart was really the company that single handily created the way of the modern store period of which that amazon could take digital.

Yes, yes. And I was so blown away learning about with walmart how much of a tech company they were like. I think we sit on the episode and I I still think that they were the first applied technology company in america. I think this is a .

silly I think you've said this a few times now. I don't I don't agree with that. OK like this is okay. So technology at its pierced definition is anything that enhances the productivity of a human. So like the wheel is technology because what the same number of calories burned, you're able to go further, or a navigational instrument, which means you're able to get somewhere in shorter one of time. So I mean, maybe you could slow bit to like apply pology.

What makes me want to say that is they were a company who did business in an established sector, yeah, and they transformed the way they worked and ultimately the whole sector by applying technology to IT.

So the standard oil by applying technology to the old way that you used to extract oil from the ground fair.

And now I going, I guess like you could say.

the car companies or the lighting, the way of people like their homes.

But those I guess, the distinction i'm trying to draw, which may not be a valid one, is I think in all those cases, the business was the technology here. IT was a separate existing part of the economy that they were in that business, and they use technology to transform the way they do IT. Maybe it's a meaningless distinction.

interesting. I just feel like today.

like walmart would have been like a hot winter back start up.

What's interesting that the question with applying technology to an existing market is always what are you using the technology for? I would think that this with text abled businesses OK, what are you using technology for? And how does that make your financial statements of your business at maturity look Better?

Are you using IT to consolidate back office Operations to make your company more Operationally efficient and thus slower your cost structure? And thus with the same amount of revenue you just run at Better margins. Are you using yet because you are able to get Better distribution like the internet enables you to generate way more revenue because you're able to reach way more customers on the same set of costs.

And I always think about IT as like what are you actually using technology for in your business? And does that make IT a meaningfully Better business than none text able in companies? I think there's a lot of stuff in the world today that is a teenage LED thing that is not all that disabled when you look at the financials.

But one man is a perfect example of a tech able business that is like the right way to do IT.

And why what previously large number did IT collapse in their financials to a small number because of technology?

Well, certainly the coordination of the distribution yet and the way walmart built their supply change was vastly different than all of the third four traditional retailers and wait more efficient and made their financials work in a way that just wouldn't work for other, other retailer.

Here's legitimately enable them to have lower Prices to get more cost of us. Yeah, yeah, that's a strong argument. Agree to disagree that they were the first that sort of like brought technology.

But but yeah, that's a good point. Benchmark, benchmark, benchmark was super cool. I mean, that like a pinch me moment for do you like both?

I think we should be into debt format as much as possible going forward of we tell a story and then we have the protest.

This on, I think, acquired has been a bunch of iterations to find our way to that format that does feel like the plattner ic ideal of an acquired, a way acquired talks about a topic I do think is probably you and I, spending three hours, is diving deep from everything we can find, telling the story in the way that we sort of see IT. I used to think.

oh, what we can make us different and Better is we're gonna spend more time preparing than any other interviewer. We're gona take this super seriously. We only do one of these interviews amount this is like.

which is a tack technical .

strategy actually. Like, yeah, we probably do more preparation for our interviews than eighty ninety percent .

of other interviewers.

But what we did with benchmark, that's something that only we can uniquely do.

interesting. I only is aggressive, but it's something that are format. And the set of trade, ffs, that we make in our business makes IT easier for us to do that than for someone else.

I would think about strategy is about trade off. Like what's the original Michael porter journal entry called competitive strategy? And it's great.

It's like if anyone who hasn't read IT IT was in the harvard business review. I think when I first came out, something like twenty pages is very cold and is very straight forward. And he talks a lot about how there is Operational efficiency and their strategy.

And Operational efficiency is we're just gonna be Better. We're gna be more efficient, were going to do IT for cheaper cost. You are going to do more research than anybody else. But there is real strategy, which is trade, ffs.

It's the south former is not a right.

right. There is sort of the southwest model of like we are going to have a different model for where we keep playing, then every other airline we're not going to use the hub and spoke model work. And uh, everywhere that we fly to in a constrained set of places that we fly to is going to be a udo hub for us.

And we're going to keep our planes for to diversify and we're only going to have one model of air plane to that. They're easier to service and there's a hope on to trade off involved with that. That's our strategy even though it's comes a lot of downsides were going to lean into the upsides.

And I think like the lean into the upsides thing for us is if you're doing a super high city show benchMarks, probably not gonna feel like you're giving them a unique spotlight in a way to do something like that. If you do things that mayor may not enable deep trust from listeners, then there's people that are not gna want to come on the show because they don't know how they're going to come across. But if you always sort of lean into this, we have very few guests. We think there people that you really should hear from which, by the way, this is why the sbf thing burns me up so much as because like we try to be ridiculously selective then IT enables you to create content with people that otherwise are not going to go do the circuit yeah not to mention when we do three hours of content about the thing before IT adapts us to come in with that prepared.

That's what I was gonna to. There is an element in the case of the benchmark episodes, IT actually was all preplanned in advance, that we were gna do the episode just us, and then we were gonna a do the dinner with them that was planned before we even released at the first episode. But I do that we've experienced in the past with the show.

There are times where we will engage with a company, C, E, O or firm before having done any acquired content on them. And they're they don't engage fully, right? And then we do an episode just us. And then IT completely changes the time of the conversation yet.

It's like being willing to do the work to prove that you are a serious about caring about this topic, as you say you are. And by us having the format of you and I just doing these deep dives on companies, that is a differentiated strategy than an interview show. okay.

And ron, can I talk about IT super recent? I have nothing to add other than one. Anything is fund that add little corrections and additions as we go through here on the andron one, I neglected to point out that there is a company today called non oil and gas that's like an eighty million dollar company publicly .

traded as g glisters. Email ed, to spell this.

That's the upstream production business. So the oil and gas industry over the last thirty years that sort of fragmented into upstream and downstream, and I am, oh, I I am and that makes sense. And I think E, O, G is sort of their upstream business that span off, but IT is a publicly traded company that still there .

is the at on name. Yeah, I should look this up. Did they change the name .

officially to E O G? Or is the actual name is question IT is actually called e og resources like the name of the company .

is E O G that makes sense like the centered are.

although there is after many rebrand and iteration, some subset of artha Anderson was preserved as a tax organization that is now called the Anderson tax. Again.

interesting. Yeah cause I guess tax is separate from dit right?

Then tax audit and consulting and consulting became, I assume audit is what went away entirely. And I think they spun off tax in its own new name. That is now the tax.

Interesting.

which is crazy to me, that there was enough brand equity in Anderson left to sort of go.

You would thought that .

to be a story there.

I could be an L P episode, could be an L P episode. We talk a minute to go about trade off somewhere. You're talking about the benchmark and two partner. What in your mind, of the biggest trade offs that we make here?

quiet. I think we make a ton of trade, ffs. I think we are, maybe too, a fault period organization. That's the first .

of two people.

And I OK not a lot of content, right? A common wisdom, mister realest, content every week. We don't do that. That has downsides such as it's hard to become a top show in the charts if you're not constantly producing new content that works against the algorithms. But IT has upsides of now we can go to really, really deep research, a second one being really long episodes.

That's a massive trade off, like lots of people don't, anna, listen to you when you do that, but the people who do really like IT, another one being people often ask like you do another show, bring another host, you could leverage the podcast feed to promote other episodes of your new spinoff show with your new host where you have some of the economics of that. There's like a lack of purity to me that that's not acquired than that. I don't know why we would do that.

IT doesn't fit in the box. It's one of those things was sure you could make more money doing that, but IT goes in the too hard pile. I think you and I have a really big too hard pile in some ways that strategy. It's like if you actually believe in the set of trade, ffs, that you have, then you have to be willing to have really big too hard pile when there's a lot of people telling you there's low having fruit to be done, but often that low hing fruit is counter to your strategic tradeoffs.

It's interesting. I feel like you've always bit this way. I think in your life.

i'm cranky.

Um you so you're not cranky though you're wonderful.

But i'm cRicky about things like this like you're personnally ity you're not crackey personally .

ity first first r Jerry .

sign fell set up really well on the tim fairs show, which is one of the best podcast interviews 3， that's my first car out of tim asked, like tasty, come up with all the bits, like kai observe things. And his comment is, there are so many things that annoy me, I sit there and all I can see in the world is all the things are like a little bit wrong, and they are just really bother me. And then I write them down, and then I polish, polish, polish, polish, polish. And i'm not dry sign filled.

and I don't quiet .

epo de. All I can see are the sixteen ways that we couldn't make IT Better. I am proud that is out there.

But like really, all I can see are the flaws. I I have become much more this over time. I used to be not this way at all. I used to be like, I believe you can do everything, tradeoffs, like the ola did more the cold coach, playoffs, playoffs tradeoffs trade. As I become older though, like I completely have shifted and embrace today.

I think .

it's honestly crazy.

It's like a joke. Now, yes, is a joke.

What I try to do, I feel so bad. The only person I feel bad about what that is you I really you bear a huge print to that. Thank you.

You're also pretty good about lake. I said I was going to be done working today at six. And so just like not really doing anything after six, even if the text look kind of important, that's fine. Well, and I parented od, but that's true. Yeah, parenti is pretty forced me.

Yes, I was leaning this way anyway for sure. But like IT was like a massive, like title wave. I felt I was out like a water park, like a wave machine came along and like I was heading this direction anyway, voting along. And then just like walsh.

the issue is that now that you're doing IT pretty aggressively as uni amplify each other, because I have this thing where i'm like, this is a thing that David would say like not worth IT like this. I probably going to to talk about this. We did a lot of lives stuff talk about .

this and like i'm which we're super cool, like there are some amazing won opportunities in two.

but for lots of reasons there are way harder than doing. You're in my Normal thing. And are they worth IT? Are they that machine rilly am anny Better for how much harder they are for us? Probably not.

In almost all cases, there are our cases where IT is, but in almost all cases, no. And so I think this is one of the things we're like. You inspire me to be more personal ity. You asked the question and then I went to a place of like, oh, that's easy. We should not do anything live because the juices almost never worth the, which is probably too far like there's probably some middle and works like if pitched ook offers us the ability to do another arena show like, oh my god, we should do in a rena show. But the lighting of things that make this way harder, and Frankly, we less listenable after the fact.

actually the worst product, most of the are effects of. So let's recount this like cool, live stuff. Wait, this year we did the arena show and still is, like I can say that without laughing moment.

at least number two of the.

yeah yeah, wow, we did you in the show. We then also did a big live show in another country for the first time, uh, in the crazy Price. amazing.

He did L P. Show live at the T, C.

V event. Yeah the make dinner. Although IT wasn't a life public event, the amount of production effort to, for three days.

we set up three cameras. We bought a bunch of new microphones. We tested all the microphones. Big production left.

Big, big production left.

I mean, guests, so things that make production harder. Guests, yes, total wild card. They might .

cancel on you. They can do in .

person changes IT way harder. Like you and I are sitting here now. IT took an extra hour to set the subtle, this beautiful .

roaring fire next to use.

These three cameras are looking at IT the only two cameras on. Because here's a trade off we make. We don't have an engineer and we don't have a sound person or a video person who works with us.

So if you have been watching this on video for I don't know how long the last, like I guess that thing shot off half hour ago. We so talk about trade, ffs. And especially .

my camera.

especially in shooting stuff like live in person. There is a whole new web of things that could go wrong that just don't happen when it's unison zoom. yep.

Now at a live audience, that massively compounds IT. First of all, the sound color is going to be way worse. So that bothers me as personal ally person.

The audience gets anzy in their seats because no one can still, still for four hours. No one wants to attend a four hour brought. I mean, when you're at a sporting event, halftime quarters, you know you go concessions, you whatever. So IT makes the product different, and I think worse for the hundred and fifty plus thousand people who are going to listen after the fact. So it's an interesting compromise where for all those people is a worst product, but for the people in the room that we're optimizing for in the moment.

and I don't even know we optimized for that is so funny, my, but they are in a show like I was. The tickets cool, so cool. Everybody who came, the fact that so many people came and flew in from all over the world.

yes, we did Brooks run with people on the morning of a dinner with some sort of like friends of the show in previous gas and sponsors. And I, before I can less who has had on the show and then adapting .

IT was special. But it's looking back, and I had, you actually live this again yourself this year. But the father we get from IT, the more in my mind and in my emotions, the space the initial occupy is just like Jenny in my wedding, like all the apps, all the amazing special feelings of IT, and like my most living memories. Looking back on, both events are just a huge amount of stress and being, like, are people having them right now? Like, is this going well, like of my wedding.

I remember, but every time .

I think about that, I can not think about, you know, as being on stage in the middle show. And a when we got to act to and I was on, we didn't have breaks planned and like people needed to go to bathroom, get food and like math book.

was paying for all the free food and booze and everything up. And so of course, we were going to go and get for the first act. And it's like OK, I was a good time to .

go take into the open bar.

of course, play the anyway all like to say some of the live shows we've done are the most special experiences of the year. They have hidden value for required in a bunch of ways, like getting to actually talk with real people, like getting to hang out with the thousand people that came to the arena show like life changing ly cool to get to meet so many folks. And also always.

always remember that I, especially the after party after yes.

walking into queen all is very cool and just hang off hours and also at least ten, if not twenty times as much work for a product that I continually was worse for people who listen to IT that are average required episode. yeah. So it's like, again, it's a set of tradeoffs that we just have to be intentional about making next year rather than being like that would be a fun conference to speak out.

Oh, my god, I forgot a capital camp. Oh, capital camp. Yeah.

that was so cool. That was cool. That was a relatively low trade off because Patrick and brand and play in the team there.

they took care. Yeah, everything yes, absolutely. IT was different to because we created a talk for IT, so was less issues because there was no guest. So there was no sort of like guest risk. But like IT was the first time i'm a like in VC technology because but .

but the .

only thing that we had done that was similar was the acquired top ten, the best acquisitions of all time episode that we did. And so we had like a little bit confidence that you and I could produce a sort of talk about a thing that wasn't the entire history and strategy of a company, but that was a totally new format for us.

I'm curious what you think. I'm so that we did capital of campaign that to watch him was a fun switch up, but I think he was an inferred format. The Normal show like I put deck IT I what do you .

did most bit like .

was set a picture, but like I made a six years.

Yeah, that was cool, though. I mean, the nice thing about doing that is then we have a product we can sort of like take on the road to think we can share this publicly. You gave that talk again at an internal fund rise event.

Yes, which was super cool. I would love doing more of that like I got to meet everybody have funded like the, you know our biggest partner for the year and like the whole team, like all three hundred people at the company were there at the outside. That was very cool.

All this to say that leads me to believe that much like all the other trade after we make, we just need to figure out how do we eighty twenty 的？ What are the things that we care the most about and how do we not do the long tailor stuff? So I think that means pick like one episode per year to do a massive live show and throw the acquired super bowl slash wedding. And maybe once a year is even too often because god at a lift, but to then feel free to do a bunch of in person stuff with our partners, their sponsors, with people that we like work with on the show anyway. And when I just I continue to build deeper relationships with, but those are necessarily episodes yeah.

that has been a huge highlight for me for the year is I think we have found away. I don't know anybody would have thought I was like possible as a podcast, as a media business to like really build deep relationships with their sponsors in our partners. I think almost every single one of them, we did something like the funding SE all hands. So or you know a conference, most of them now a very large person or a sponsors we've invested in.

Yeah what five of them I .

think five yeah, that we talk about that in in a big modern treasury vouch, mystery, standard metrics we've .

invested in. And what was state .

metrics called on the just like we listeners in our audience, we've cannot always thought, has been one of our core tendance from the beginning of lake. We treat our audience as like equals to like more impressive than us lake, when we started the show, especially now even the folks who are listening to us are the folks who we want to invest. When we want to do business.

we want to do well. That's what eats me alive when I get something wrong in an episode. And it's a black mark to me and I can do anything but see IT is like, you know, i'm thinking of the people who I know listen to the show. Who are you listening to that and thinking up, he didn't quick at that, right?

Because that's how I am visions. Our audience think this way, but it's really be realized now. We think of our spotters the same way as our partners as like these are amazing companies like how can we build this deeper relationship with .

them as possible? Totally agree. I mean, the sponsorship model another way that we make a pretty significant trade off.

So we only do six months season long sponsorships. And we are ridiculously choosy about the people that we do that with. And because it's a six months s long thing, two, an audience of two hundred and fifty thousand people. That happened to be probably the most valuable audience in the world in terms of CEO, founders, engineers, capital, allocators. Certainly.

the set I made, the set IT, will be hubris of us to claim that we singularly required have the most. But of the are nit of media, right? The listeners to our na media, I think I questionably are the most valuable right ins in the world.

So it's a big ticket item whenever a sponsor decides that they want to work with us for the duration, for the reach and for the magnus de of who you are reaching when you reach them. And so it's like a big freaking commitment. And there's a trade off there in our business model, which is we're not going to work with that many people when we do.

But when we do, we want to go as deep as possible. And so that means that we can do things like engage with agencies or engage with dynamic ad inertial networks or a lot of other things that would make our lives easier IT probably also means that we can't outsor sales like you and I are the ones talking to the C E. O of the companies whose sponsor, which again, lots of trade off, they're very visit people. They're often hard to get a hold of, but there are people that we get to build really real relationship with.

This is one of my favorite trade off. So we have made kind, i've been saying is like these are the types of people who we would want anyway to build Debra relationships. So why would we lean into that as much as possible? On the completely opposite to the spector, though, something think highlights the trade off. And then i've really come to appreciate this year in the very beginning of required, we could did youtube and we've been saying for years in years we radio youtube at .

this point it's almost of a goten ah where like it's like seattle S N B A team. It's like maybe we should never redo IT.

So we can always, of course, of course, the quiet is going to a redo youtube. But I was so negative on youtube in the episode and the intervening years, I feel like you've just been a journey for me of like really coming to appreciate what a incredible product in business youtube is.

And this year, my big youtube appreciation has been they enable for many, many creators, people, to make their livelihoods with the exact opposite trade off of what video. You can just focus on content. And you, if you have an audience and can build audience, can make a good to great living on youtube and never engage with business, never engage .

with helper. I like, well, there's a money found yeah I writes software I applied to the storm and money comes out the other side.

which obviously like that's not the decision we would make you, but for the long tail, you know and master r and other niches of media that don't have as valuable and audience as us. Yes, that is an amazing thing. And most creators don't want to be business people like we want to be business people, we want to be entrepreneur is right.

by the way. I think that makes the content Better that we are because then you get first party insights rather than like if we were journalists sort of shooting from the sidelines like some of the stuff i've already talked about on this episode today is the strategic conversation that came out of a board meeting at I was in earlier. And so like us, engaging in business makes the show what IT is too fly.

That reminds me of the trade of what things like. Really, this is driven by being a parent, but I don't do boards anymore. Never say never, but man, taking back on times in my life when I was on five, six, seven boards, and as you are now, i'm on three .

OK that that sort of makes IT work. It's like you pick very few companies, you go very few minutes, a very acquired .

way of doing that a number. But even I like to do IT right. You really got to engage.

yep. All right. What's next on the agenda .

related dly show growth.

show growth.

IT was so fun talking to benton son about this and his growth trajectory and curve. We pretty amazingly doubled our audience again this year.

which has basically been true every year since we started seven years ago, which this is always one of these things where if I start up is only doubling year over year in the first two or three years. It's like, okay, well, it's not going to be a break out company. But if you can actually keep doubling for seven, eight, nine years, the numbers get pretty big. And so IT feels very different, transitioning from twenty, twenty to today, sort of looking over a two year span where .

even from last year to today. So we we hit over counter million subscribers.

which was sixty two thousand just twenty four months ago. So that's the crazy like that, the place where this sort of like out years of compounding is starting to show up for us.

And the thing that's been crazy to me is there still have been some kind of step change like amazon episode yeah was there was a step change for .

us for sure yeah, I think the previous highest episode to amazon had gotten just over one hundred thousand downloads, and that one got one hundred and seventy thousand.

And the day .

and when we say a quarter million, that is the unique number of people who listen to, especially our monthly active listener or cannot, across all platforms who engage .

with at least one episode. All of you listen to every episode is the cool thing about podcast and for us. And you know that IT is an open ecosystem that's not controlled by algorithms.

IT doesn't mean growth takes longer and it's harder and you have to do these step change functions. But then people become subscribers and they stick around. Amazon was a huge step, changed moment for us in terms of growth. And many of those new people subscribed, right? And so thus the subsequent episodes benchmark and ran like .

the two benchmark episodes were both way higher than one hundred thousand that we were at before amazon. And then iron now is charting to look pretty similar to amazon, the early .

only five, six days in. But like IT is going to be capital firm. Where is like amazon?

Everybody cares about amazon? Yes, yes, exactly. There's also this chronological thing where like every three or four episodes is our biggest episode ever.

And not necessarily because the content is more interesting, but because when you find a podcast you like, you stick around. So there is the sort of like cumulative effect where we drop a new episode. If we had dropped this in twenty sixteen, IT would have gotten a couple thousand lessons.

But because it's dropped on top of the entire base of people who are subscribe to acquire IT is really meaningful. And I thought ben brought up this really interesting point where he sort of asserted podcast are great because they're really sticky, but they're terrible to grow. He basically said, I don't know how you would grow a podcast if you didn't also have a writing platform that was easily fordable because pod castle really heard to share. And that sort of explains the reason why, no matter how hard do we try, we've really never been able to more than double in any year because pod casters sort of an inherently unhearing mechanism. So unless there's something that happens like you get feed dropped for free in an N, P, R podcast that brings you one hundred thousand new listeners right away, or we had in video part two, I think, got a large promotion and spot and that brings a bunch .

of new listeners that so we really only started kind of more directly working with you with the tailor swept episode.

which is why was our stat ninety eight percent year of the people who listen on spotify today were not listening this year, last year.

And we should be clear about what I mean by directly working with spotify. We're not owned by spotify, is no economic relationship like business model.

but they assign a create, manage that we have that we can .

contact relationships that spotify in a way that we don't have with any the other platforms. I mean, I think technically, we have a manager at apple like I don't know, email .

dress that is done .

a great job of, at least from my perspective, you know, engaging with us as creators. And I think starting good baLance between, like part casting is open ecosystem with all the benefits. And try dos that we've just been talking about you. But you can also like, do IT Better than apple. Apple has been set up terrible story of this industry.

You've brought this up before. Terrible in one respect. But like there are the reason why we have a direct connection with our listeners. It's like decking. The creation of a platform in an inner media is the reason why we have this really sticky relationship with listeners.

Such a good point, such a good point. Their internal strategy failure at all and execution too. Like I just feel like if you're an apple shareholder, you should be really angry at management about how they have mismanaged, like full the ball .

the in other ways. But I yeah I agree.

especially the type of business we are required is really enabled by the lack of algorithmic jangle hold on this medium.

So IT does sort of fect this interesting question that bent throughout, which is how do you grow a podcast when you don't have a secondary share able component? And I think we have tried to do this with the acquired website. Each episode has a page.

That page has a bunch shown notes. That page has a transcript that have a reason to consume IT. On that page, you can sign up via email. On that page, you can join the lack. From that page .

to the lack now has almost thousand, over thousand members.

Our preferred way to share an episode is the page because we sort of feel that that URL is like a nice way to package IT up for someone and say, listen to this. Unfortunately, our episodes are four hours long, so IT doesn't come with a deep link. Like IT would be really nice if as you scroll down the page and as you move through the transcript, or as you watch the video, or as you consume the audio, that was always updating the URL so that any different point you copy the U.

R. L. It's like this is exactly the overcast has the year.

But like those are inherently flawed because you don't know if someone likes to use that platform.

So like when I share that over castle with people I like, are they're to be like, what is this podcast player that I don't use? Why are you sharing IT to me in this weird way? There is a bunch of reasons that contribute to podcast being sort of inherited and shareable, our episodes being really long to make them especially hard to shares or moments insights. And there's been zilia and sort of like clip apps over the years.

But I do think actually, you know, we have not grown in the same way that like a viral product grows. But we've had really nice growth as a podcast. And I think actually growth happens because we inflated a network, particularly a company network, and then we get shared within the company, like in the company slack or teams just friend networks within within a company.

Yes, it's kind of interesting like i'm not particularly interested in additional growth. Yeah like especially .

at this point, yeah, I think it's it's great. That would be nice. I think ben was kind of making the same point in the episode we did with him. For all of us, additional growth is but not by treating of any of the things that we really care about the driver business.

right, or changing the audience mix. I was wildly relieved this year from the how many people took the survey, fifty hundred people. So that to the survey, which thank you.

If you did you thank you um that the audience makes pretty much the same from two two and a half years ago. The last time we made a survey which was awesome, I was I well, we managed to get two hundred thousand more of basically the same type of person. And he was hardening talking to ban cause.

IT sounds like he thought that he had bumped up against the market, that he was starting to saturate and then sort of accelerated and through IT again. And so IT feels like ban, I think he probably has close to a million people that consumes protector dot com for free in a given year. And so if he doesn't feel like he's bumping up against the time and we have a reasonably overlapping audience, that feels like pretty good proxy for us to say, well, we could probably at least four x from here, but I thought I don't really have like a strong desire to do. I think that would make our lives generally worse. If we did.

I think IT would be neutral. And I mean, some ways would be Better, in some ways that would be worse.

But if we were a video podcast, IT would make IT worse because we right at the limit right now, we're like we have all the benefits of we drop in episode that really matters to the people that we care about IT mattering to. And we don't get recognized on the street.

The episode with ben was about to tegor, obviously. So we didn't really talk about this, but I kept thinking about wanting to explore more and we should do here. Our business model is very different than bds.

And growth, again, like nice to have for us, comes with some set of trade off. There's some downside to IT, some upsides neutral to you, ana. You could argue maybe you think it's slightly negative to go. Maybe I think it's softly positive, like it's in the neutral zone. But because of our business model and everything we were talking about, like the depending of the engagement with the right people and the right sponsors, that's what drives are excitement about the and the business itself anyway, to forget it's different because he actually doesn't need to grow his business to keep growing. The number of consumers can some percentage them will convert to paying.

And right, you're saying for his revenue to grow, he must grow the number of subscribers, which means if subtribes are always a fraction, a fixed fraction of the set of people are reading anything on protector, he must grow the top line. Whether what you're saying for us is the revenue is not necessarily directly connected to audience size, right?

It's connective is not directly connected. And as we evolve the business model, more I in this a good place to talk about. Get one of our couple biggest sponsors and partners on the show this year. We and through kentigern, you too invested almost ten million dollars in the company this year. That's a very .

kindergarten.

very small, very and most of that capital came from the acquired audience community, like the L. P. capital.

Yet back that S P, V came in very large part from required audience. And so that's not like growing the audience, of course, increases the number of super high quality people. And we care about growing the high quality people in the audience.

And the bigger that size is great. But it's not that's tied to right the business about and lake, that was a transformational moment for us. I have enters an amazing company, but that's a whole new .

I was in recent insights. You can sort of test the hypothesis of like because you would have invested small amounts personally our sponsors before because we get insight into their business from getting .

to work directly with cees on those own like and we see products naturally.

The interesting thing we should invest a little bit, but you're inside of, okay, this is a growth round. This is a company that's doing really well. I concerted see how well they are doing, both from getting to like look at the investment pitch.

but also could I invest a meaningful .

amount of capital in this?

How could we put together .

a meaningful amount capital? And do I, as a host of acquire, have relationships with the owners of capital, the stores of capital who want to invest in this opportunity? Is was a really interesting way for you to sort of like prove out that hypothesis a little bit.

Yeah, there is no strain for you. IT is very .

much you maybe shocked.

you know, strap here, but it's not like we offside, like we didn't do a end of your special for kindling we're doing now for required, discuss our strategy and say, you know, I think we should find the opportunity to do a ten million dollar S. P. V. This year. But now he came naturally from everything was talking about you and quiet.

And just to put a finer point on the business being not entirely connected to the audience size, there were years where the audience went two x but revenue was ten x just because IT was a wildly underutilized asset.

but there were several years where revenue was zero. Yes, this was not a business is true.

But you know who's to say that we necessarily have the business model optimized? Do I think that there should be more sponsorships and episodes? no.

In fact, I think we should probably be a little bit tighter on them and shorter on them and find more ways to make the sponsorship segments even more differentiated where we're not just giving the high level pitch on the company, but doing more vouch insurance, one to one type stuff, where we can sort of like find a key insight with the company and story tell that together. I think leaning into the strategic differentiation that we have. And I know that sounds like jargon, but like we are, I think, the only ones who work this closely yeah, with our sponsor.

So what does that enable us to do that? No other podcast could do. I think that's like the lens that I want to keep taking to IT. And so to your point, the business is probably still unopened, mixed and IT will probably grow directionally with audience but can grow in other ways too.

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Next, we got stuck by next year, twenty, twenty three. Looking ahead, OK, first question for us, what episode topics gallery thinking about what we what's on the docket?

Let my list when .

that feels like an obvious one we should do at some point next year.

OpenAI, yeah, absolutely.

We talked about doing in at various points this year and especially like fitting in with the home series, but feel like we almost stood at .

twelve months ago, like I remember last year over the holidays doing some rap work for IT. And that, I think would have been kind of disastrous because we would have done IT. And I think we undersold like we wouldn't have .

been wouldbe been way too well. Yeah, if we do end up doing IT do IT relatively early next year. It's sort of ironic that the next elan company that will cover after our old space episode, his OpenAI m didn't do anything on twitter. We haven't any .

IT is crazy god, he's got his fingers and everything.

The twitter is just, oh my god, there's so much drama that so much drama I don't I don't like having this drama on acquired.

That is true. I think part of the reason why we haven't done a twitter episodes since we interviewed the cost to only twenty, twenty one.

maybe that way before.

All this is like the story feels less like a business story and more like A, T, M, Z story, which, yes, are pty.

I don't ever want to feel like tmc.

I won't say that like i'm not interested in reading all the tmc drama about IT. It's totally fascinating. And you know, if you can run a company on eighty percent less people that you are running IT before and nothing goes terribly wrong, that's super interesting for the world to know. Now of course, IT does not like all sorts of things are grown wrong. But to the extent that they can turn IT around and the business can be generate as much revenue as IT was before on a massively lower cost spaces, i'm very curious to know what the second order effects of that are.

But the story that, that are interest actually busy, just like that's not the we don't actually know that. yes. And everything that is being discussed.

drama OK. So open a eye. That's a good candidate. I was producing the worlds richest people at the other day. And for .

quired ideas are just for, you know.

Glad the names are very familiar to us and acquired listeners. The one that is not is burnt or no. Which one of the world's top five wealthiest people, and not in tech, not in finance, but in luxury brands.

I think IT be pretty interesting to go down the path of like really deeply unpacking brand power, you and brand power over generations and the concept of a house of brands and what brands mean to people and why you can know that it's the exact same leather that you're buying elsewhere. But because he has this mark GTA, you pay five hundred times more for IT. I would love to figure out what the right starting place is for luxury and and do that not acquired?

Yeah the point the reason to do IT is what you said, the underline brand, right? How do these amazing durable brands get built?

You I continue to want to do epic health care. I think they're like a huge force in the american economy. And I don't know if that ephod will be a hero's .

journey or an on or a NVIDIA. I suspect without having done any research, I suspect more than than an yeah, they are probably not a fraud.

But just a open question whether it's good for the world. Yes, great. Some value certainly captures a lot of IT. Does IT capture more than that creates open question.

One thing I definitely want to do more of and figure out how what's going to evolve these sessions. So we did the session with Jason kalyani. Yes, that was really fun and felt like a really cool way to do something or thought onal to the core required approach, but still really fun.

Maybe sessions or a format like sessions and up being what we do with protection nist of stories after we've done an episode, just us on them. Maybe we keep doing IT with interesting people, maybe both. But that felt like a really cool different type of interview than just a stand podcast interview.

I feel like if sessions evs into talking to people who do fascinating work about things that aren't necessarily their work, that's a pretty interesting use of the format that something that I want to explore because that statement can kind of take two directions. And I think either would make for an interesting sessions reason for existence. One is talking to the CEO fortune five hundred company about things that aren't their company.

They probably think about a lot of really interesting stuff and have a bunch of really interesting ideas. And they probably can't say a lot of the most interesting thoughts they have about their company because they're publicly traded and there's all sorts of S C, C stuff involved. But there's other conversations yeah .

but there are people and like they have feelings and emotions .

and those aren't the reasons people typically are trying to get them to come on podcasts.

That's one thing actually, that my wife, anne, wanted out to me after listening to the session we did with Jason and SHE was like, IT was interesting. IT was good. You guys could gone way harder on diving into the emotional side of Jason's lived experience and his feelings and like, especially when he mentioned, you know, tony shades passing and how that really impacted him in league LED, him deciding to make some changes and how he approached life and his work for the next few years. Like she's like that is an opportunity that you just let fall on the floor like you could have gone way deeper into that.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. The other thing that I was sort of implying in that statement is we could have people on almost as a prop like we're not interviewing them, but they're instead a piece of whatever discussion you and I wanted to have anyway.

Like, you know what if we had eric Fishery just like hanging out next year on the couch and we weren't talking about benchmark, but eric was just like timing in on a lot of this stuff and sharing his ideas. He's not the subject of the interview. He's a piece of the show. He's part of the conversation is a foil bounce ideas off .

of I would for sure do that with eric. That would be an amazing and a great privilege. You know, who would be truly the most interesting person to have as playing that role would be Peter fan.

Oh yeah, yeah. right. Sorry.

the whole bench ranker is amazing. That dinner is amazing. There were a few things that Peter said there when we were talking about the principle program. And Blake h, one of us, a camera with me, or you asked, so why do you guys have a principle, you know, like a, like a junior investment person, when clearly, like your whole, eat those as you don't do that? And Peters response, well, IT was like a because first consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, which is a famous quote from, I can't remember where is from that.

from some just like that out.

And just like that was the immediate response that lept out of him and is like, wow, I never thought that that would show up about my guest.

Yeah ah, that was great. Peter.

one of a kind, he is one of a kind .

other episodes that I wanted do, I wanted do into IT. I think that's a far more interesting and successful business than people realize in the vein of consumer brand. We got to do nike at some point.

Oh yeah.

I want to continue going back in time from walmart. And due ears.

nike is one that I really wanted. Do I know is that we don't do lives. I actually don't think this should be a live show. I want to go on site. I want to go .

to work again.

Good gene.

get to work out in.

But I feel like there's leg. I don't know. I image is because to see i've never been but the facilities there and like because it's such a athletic, like a physical thing, I want to go see, right, what it's like. That's a good point.

Yeah, that feels like someday we need to experience more physically. I know you can make that argument for a lot of them, like T, S, M, C. do. The episode would be much Better if you and I got to witness chips being fabled and feel what I was like to be in a body suit the little bit.

I know, I think mostly from the last days, but like the one of the key key moments in naki history is the deal oran. But like, what did you feel like when Michael came out to the campus?

Yeah, there's feeling the history. There has to be A A big thing, are IT. So before we get to our extended car fouts sort of reviewing twenty, twenty two, you and I both had big twenty twenty tools that's very worth a little bit.

I love this is we didn't intend this way. This is becoming much like the benchmark dinner that we recorded. Everything actually, before dinner experiment to eat.

we got a lot of good comments, like why are they just sitting there with cheese and on their plates? I I think they going to eat or don't they going to eat real food?

And like we did that yeah you been like that would not make .

for good video co or video cut.

We are going to.

after we finish here.

we're going to go, person, so at which we would definitely talk about our personal lives. What you had.

I had problem, the bigger life event that, yeah, you had a, yes, I got married. I was wonderful. I was here.

He was great. You were here. IT was really cool because in some ways, I thought IT wasn't going to feel different afterwards. And they, a lot of people in our generations date for a long time and live together and feel like life partners. But there is something totally different about being married. You having the ring on every day as a reminder, in the sense of like longevity associated with IT is really cool and a really totally different psychological place than I thought.

Well, and you go through this process and project together. Yes, the wedding, like from the moment you get engaged until the wedding, is this like, you know you like a butterfly going like a caterpillar going into cocoon, it's like a transformational period. yes. And I say, like I was here, you did the waiting at your house at right after moving.

Like why I want to play the twenty twenty two seven game yeah two times more people got married this year is just like you not get the venue and if you are, you're get a terrible day and you pay a lot of money for IT and you're not onna get any the things that you want out of .

IT that was proudly half of C. P. I inflation. right? There was nothing to use.

Day of my gomes man. You know, I have some great pictures together. Thank you for coming up and .

being a part of that. You did an amazing job and given that you do you do plan IT all yourself. You were the venue at your house like you is.

We're literally sitting where the D J was, like D J, into the dance floor out there.

It's been going to weddings after having been married because you're like, oh god, I just get to enjoy all of the the fruits of the couple's labor.

Yeah, IT really is when people say it's like the happiest day of your life, no doubt the happiest day of my life. And I think the like, energy and love and just overwhelming force that you feel from your closest friends and family when you're like walking down the eye and you feel all that energy on you is crazy. And it's an indescribable moment really. You IT was .

that was, I think, the biest personal life event plus for you this year. what's? We took a vacation .

to italy and never been to italy before. I was like a absolutely spectacular time. Rome, chiquita, france, copy. I god, the island of copies. incredible.

Never been.

It's just.

how beautiful have you been? degrees? I've not okay. Was curious how compares degrees.

I think it's similar to some of the sort of this one has some cool history associated with IT because at at one point the roman empire was sort of fleeing. And I don't know that was paranoya or is legitimate, but I thought that everyone in rome was coming in writing to kill him and so he like fled to copy and ruled from the island where he can sort to see in every direction to ort of of five is remote work remote work yeah .

that's like I was predigital no matter that's the cool thinking about italy and um every eur an country compared here but I feel like especially italy, the sense of history specially for you know two history buffs like yeah know you walk around rome FLorence son a roman especial influence and its own right is still ancient history compared to amErica but like rome, like you're talking about the ancient roman time .

and you I mean actually walking around the forum is wild because you're like literally looking at pillars that are. Three thousand years old, at least two thousand years old. yeah.

So we're thinking about where to go on A A honeymoon probably early to mid next year. And I like, I want to go back to italy. This is a magical place.

This is the problem, as you get older and you have cool travel experiences, you like, I want to go back to those places, but you also want experience new place.

the world, right? Like, I will die without seeing most of the world no matter how much I travel. And so should I try and put a dent in that as much as possible? Or should I say there's one spot in hawaii I really like and so every single year i'm going back there?

The answer is. Maybe had some of the plan for covets, but like I feel like i'm like decently up, unlike the like taking gadgets and like your like you, you made some interesting decisions about .

your personal technology. Apple.

yeah, yeah. Can we do an apple review for them?

Yeah, let's do IT. So got the ipad mini for required. We both to rock the many because it's very, very good for on stage as many more live stuff.

It's just me. This is the perfect device for live events. And any kind of where you're not sitting in front of a computer monitor.

easy to hold IT in one hand. I really want the big ipad pro. I have basically no use for IT like this is actually the device that suits my use case.

I think a little over a year ago, I got the macbook pro sixteen inch, which is, which has the level, this is our fire, which is the finest computer I never owned despite the display is unbelievable. Mean about the thing is not, I do have envy the m two macbook air, a thing is sexy. Like so then so like a lot of the capability of this one.

But when i'm traveling, and because what we do is so everything intensive, it's band with intensive. It's storage intensive. At the last year having like you just need like a desktop computer with you all the time, we're transfering hundreds of gigabits back.

And fourth, after we record for all the multiple camera videos, I want the good web camp that comes on this computer in case we have to do a remote of episode. I want the screen space because i'm also venture capitalist and i'm doing spread CD things. I have a hard time with a travel computer. So if they made an eighteen in computer and they made a three pounds, however, I might buy that one. Two.

when you're doing purely personal travel, do not bring this and just bring the ipad. No.

see you still bring purely personal. What are you talking about? I know there's not a single day where i'm on personal vacation where i'm not also doing something that's .

too even very too. I mean business .

wars things every single day where there's no one else that can do IT. And so either IT doesn't happen or we have to do IT. yep. And that's on top of like me being a professional venture capital list where like there's real obligations that come with and that you don't necessarily need the hey used computer you can find for, but like you need to be pretty responsive on a lot of things. And sometimes if you are, you need to you need real computer.

We need to make edits to an episode.

There's something I can do anything. Yeah, yeah. And I could do that on a smaller computer and and maybe this is totally overkill. Like when you got here today, I had left to go to a board meeting and then a lunch and then meet someone for coffee for an unprofiting that i'm working with.

And none of those things required a computer, but I brought my backpack with my computer in IT, all three, even though I knew I would never take IT out. Because if something came up, I would need to be able to let get away for five minutes to do something on my computer, put IT back in my bag and then go back to whatever I was doing. You just never know you. I'm probably overly paranoid on that, but it's like the one time you get burned changes your behavior forever.

Okay, so opposite of this, and where I thought you were gonna start.

So I really like, take pictures. I am a very big nerd about like understanding all the physics and as much of the black box that apple will let you understand of the computational photography engine. But I also have like I think it's tended nosis some things up with my wrists.

They fatigue super easily and I get basically tennis elbow. It's probably from having my computer with me all the time and and like counter ah so I have the iphone thirteen many. It's the correctly size phone.

It's the correct weight for a phone. A is the correct sort of rehabilitation phone, which I know apple used to name a feature which is a stupid feature. And so I was like gasters no, iphone fourteen many I would pay literally anything.

I don't know that is exactly right. But like four or five x the current iphone Prices in iphone fourteen pro, yeah like apple, if there's a test one in a lab somewhere, please send IT to me. I will again, like no Price sense to me around IT.

But I was like, I should try the new phone and just like play with the cameras and stuff. I got IT. As you would suspect, IT was too big.

IT was too heavy. I waited at thirteen days until the fourteen day return deadline. return. IT went back to my thirteen. And i'm thinking about by another thirteen many, because at some point the batteries going to die on this one. And if they never make another many again.

I want to have one like on .

input ld story just just like my nike's upstairs that .

i've got stacking the closet IT is the perfect size phone so I have um a twelve many right .

I didn't have good to you now before .

I A girl driving factor me as a new parent was the cameras I actually when I have a gotta yet it's because it's like that. But I went to the 40 pro ow， which I have never had any of the pro iphone like. I care about technology and I was just never compelled by, I don't care that didn't use to not care that much about photography.

And so is never that compelled by the pro versions. And I really cared about size. But now with a little one.

if I was apparent, I think I would buy the fourteen pro.

Well, it's a double. What I cared most about size was for portability when out about which that part of your .

life has going away.

That part of my life particularly like exercising. Now my exercises primarily walking extra er which has a lot of Carrying capacity. And I don't care that much about photo quality. I took very few photos before.

I mean, now just like something the best advice, I love talking to people who have older kids and be like because you just realized time just slips away like we got a kid in almost univerSally. I wish I taken more photos. I especially wish I had taken more videos to have the answer like I like the pro, have an order, but I am conflicted about IT like i'm really onna miss the form .

factor you are you're really onna miss IT yeah it's like not going to fit your pocket. Yes, it's going to be it's .

going to be transition.

And also, the camera mountain on this one is so large, the phone actually rocks. When you're leaving on a table in typing, it's fascine to see the set of tradeoffs apples been OK with in the name of getting the very best photos that they can do the thing which .

as a parent now i'm like, I see the business reason for doing that right OK. So keep on on the line up because you ve got .

another important large device. Yes, I ought the really heavy, uh, I see the apple watch fourteen, the apple watch ultra, which i'm sure next year is going to be the apple watch ultra two or the apple watch two ultra. Can curious how named apple watch ultra second generation? I imagine anyway, this thing is actually super light relative to how large IT is.

And you made the joke about lifting your arms. I like, don't feel IT anymore. And I think that happens with all watches over time. You are, if I get used to the weight.

But one of the big things saw me on IT is because I thought the reason I was going to hate IT was the weight I like put IT on on like this. I think it's the tiananmen blight for how largest it's big for sure. It's big.

It's beauty. The screen is yeah the super clear like you can look at pictures on IT it's really bright at two thousand eight. So like IT has a flashlight button because IT functions is a fairly effective flashlight.

The battery last like almost three days, which is totally game changing if you I think i've tracked every single night of sleep for four, five years now. And so that's like a thing that I that's a use case I really care about. I haven't one anything extremely at yet, like i've claimed. Ed.

mountain Helens, this great photo behind me.

Yeah, that's icon that I deal with. My dad used to this big backham trip every summer and I have not adventured in this thing but mostly because I i've just been doing less evening over the last year two but um I totally expect to use that for the stated purposes. But it's been awesome for me even not for the ultra type purposes that is advertised for the .

photo viewing. I would imagine as a really I would never think I want of you photos of my just like actually I think that .

a good number of times around like OK cool. I saw IT clearly enough now where I don't .

need to also put up .

on my fun to exact. The other interesting thing is the screen is just large enough, where IT kind of feels like a small phone and less like a big watch. And I think it's the edge to edge display, the fact that they have the leg you raised bezzle around IT all all around IT yeah IT hasn't on screen keyboard that you can use the finger swiping on. And so I literally can just like swipe on the keyboard to respond to text messages. So I can't decide if that's like really nerdy and like casio mid eighties and like that's not actually useful, but I apply done IT thirty or forty times since i've gotten that to respond a text messages very quick and that's been pretty nice.

The one thing I wish they had added that to me would be a maybe I kill ler future, but like a really, really nice to have would be some sort of biometric authentic ation in the watch. Because what I don't like when I, well, maybe with the ultra, I wouldn't have to take IT off to charge IT as much. But when I put my water back on after i'm charging IT and I got to into my pink coat time first, I don't understand why they can put a touch I D sensor. I may, I know the train set as much space as possible.

but like good you there's no biometric on IT. But I think a feature that IT does have is if you put IT on and then you take out your phone before you need to type in the past code on your .

watch and you face any on your phone.

your watches like reliably .

ly trust that it's gonna totally agree.

I'm like, why do I still need to type in the pass code? I swear I shouldn't need to pass out right now.

And I want the exact maybe I need a different watch and to solve the problem. But total is really liked to grab shiny things with screens and especially ones that are on your list while you're changing dies. And so the amount of times a day that I entered my best code, my watch is A A lot larger than used to be how we say.

right? So let's go with your apple will go a reverse order for you give me your apple line up and then let's go to your your interview okay.

so i'm still rocking the twenty twenty original OGM1 macbook care of which is so much more performance seems out there like this now， but like I still have tons of right.

I'm not sure you notice the performance.

yes. And like the leap forward that that m one chip boys was just incredible. I mean, performance battery life, a Price .

point crazy.

I don't know what these twenty, twenty original and one macbook air are going for, unlike ebay. great. Last to one. Now right now, yes, whatever they're going for a lake, I bet five hundred dollars age maybe less the amount of performance and longevity you can get for that dollar amount yeah .

it's crazy raise you're right. If it's only five hundred dollars, it's way Better then lets see you have I got twenty eighteen or twenty nine til machine. It's so worth IT to trade up to even an old m one because there just not that different after three years.

Yeah totally. I can imagine anything that a Normal human would need to do on a computer that the m one macbook can handle.

yes. okay.

So keeping up OK. So there's that we talked about my phone. I'm currently reckon the twelve many very mixed emotions about transitioning to the fourteen pro. And i'm rocking the original S E apple watch.

I forgot they made a watch. S E.

They have to know there is a new S E two. I don't know exactly what the S E two has. Feature said. I'm very attempted by the ultra for all the reasons we discussed how I recommend IT. My decision for going with the S E originally was I didn't have the always on screen and I actively did not want the always on screen. How do you find the distraction at all?

I like IT now, especially what the way finder watch face that comes on the ultra. When it's off, you still see the watch hands, but everything else is a black background. And then when you turn IT, it's gets through the White, the face comes on.

So I I like IT nice. I did not like the always on display on the phone when I had the fourteen pro. IT was like loud yeah felt like the phone didn't. It's like really on yes.

but on on the watch IT, uh, yeah it's subtle. It's not like notice I will say too.

I was in a coffee meeting today were I didn't need to call an uber so that I could get back here so that we could record and like IT was quite nice being able to like have to watch at a super.

What is the first thing about checking .

the time I was looking at at at like a hundred and seventy degree angle? And I used to definitely be the person that's like jerking my resort, like tapping IT to try to see the time. So it's like.

that is one. Yeah, how do you like I up up my hands under the table? And then like the tertiary sly, yeah. And then on the ipad, at the ipad bini, I had the one really only negative experience besides the just amount work that we end pitch book put into the reaction, was my old ipad got stolen after the arena show.

Criminal, literally .

criminal. I could still see IT on like the map and find my device where so it's things .

really like, just because I know where that as IT .

doesn't mean I should go there and you no definitely oh, man, but the mini, I really like the mini. It's not nearly as good for watching consuming content. Have an old ipad that would keep in the kitchen for what i'm doing.

the dishes and stuff and that you have promotion on, right? Like the mines don't have a promotion display. The hut and twenty hurts yeah.

No, no. I've got like a old, old ipad has promotion.

I feel like you used to have one with a promotion display.

No, maybe does. I think it's an original the first ipad that made seven. okay. You really that does that promotion, that does that promotion because .

that I actually missed when I was down grading from the new iphone down to the thirteen years because the non pro iphones have never had problem .

that the goes up to one hundred and twenty heart hurts, refresher y on the .

screen butter.

The money is great, though, for events is also really good. I've stopped a user of the kindle asis that I used for reading fiction at home. But when I travel, I no longer ring the kindle oasis. And I use this as a kindle. It's great for that.

I find like for a for outdoor stuff, you can't beat the kindle.

Yes.

I also find that night reading in bed, the ipad, even at the lightest setting, is kind of too bright.

That's true. When going to the beach, i'll still bringing the kindle. I won't I won't feel get bringing this to a beach.

Yeah, that's a good point because they're not waterproof. Unlike iphones, ipad are not waterproof. The device is still in my line up. That blows my mind, is in two thousand twelve as a college graduation gift, my uncle got me the seventy dollar kindle and that is still a kindle that I use and take on vacation. It's such a good product.

They are a league industrial strength .

yeah yeah and super light like I looked at at the oasis. But it's actually heavier er than my twenty twelve model.

The thing about the ois turbo White .

is really nice. I am made as of the paper White for sure. My kindle is actually worthless in bed because you need to light with the right Jenny.

I got the OS for the reason. Jenny night Allen, i'm a morning person and Jenny is a huge reader. SHE is a amy huge orgy. But he puts me to shame. SHE would stay up reading a and they with the later was like, i'm buying you this .

turn a later. It's for you and for me.

it's for you mostly for me.

right? So you're twenty twenty two personal year.

oh, twenty, twenty two personal year. Well, this was the year of adJusting to life as a partner. Daughter was born towards the end of twenty twenty. That was like most of the year was preparing and you know then like the first couple months. So like I mean, of course, we're thinking back now on the F, T X interview when we we had C M on.

was that your first interview back?

I was and I was still in the fog of war like IT was. I know we released the interview piso's.

I think Michael, we interviewed Michael first. right?

That's right. That's right. But all of that he was no more than two months old, probably less like it's such a fog yeah, the first few months.

But then this year has been genuine back to work. And he works in person. He works at same for the scope I like it's in person physical reform.

They put on physical performances. SHE needs to be in the office every day and weekend at nights. So yeah, this year was just about figuring out life like with a lot of changes. But we met early in college, so we were like babies.

you know and then we were you were together for seventeen years before having a kid.

teen years, 6 years， yeah, sixteen years before having, again, which were wonderful sixteen years and i'm glad at all that time together, pray, baby, but we hadn't had the like really renegotiate or relationship in a long time. So, uh, IT was like, oh, oh, flexing old muscles again. Yeah but but the last time was when we got married and like we didn't expect to hear you talk about that things are different when you get married like they really are.

All your life systems have to change. Your notion of self is only about one person, but after you're married, your notion of self includes another person whose emotions you can actually feel. So like when you're like looking out for yourself, you have to account for things that you currently don't know what I like. Very interesting .

phenomenon. yeah. And that is so true about getting Better than having a kid. I think that's like the biggest, well, so many huge things but one is like you now have this other being like when you get married, yes, you have to come for the other person and you're .

like in IT together .

you're no longer just you response hopefully you know can keep themselves alive. Can like if we're going late recording and acquired, if so should be fine. You know right when you have a kid.

right that's very star.

Yeah like you can't like twenty four, seven somebody needs to have is like a pretty foreground in their mental processes. Like I need the like algorithm. How i'm behaving needs to have at the forefront keep this kid alive and happy yeah and they're incapable of doing so their own end know you love this person so incredibly much in is really like unfathered ways and so it's like, yeah how do you like them integrate that back with your life. So that was been a lot of figuring that out for us.

And now like .

or now it's such a good is not that it's still difficult. He's a little year old now, 4 months。 It's so fun, like it's always been fun.

I've always, I ve not been I think a lot of parents, and especially a lot of dad, they don't love their kids immediately. And like, that's a very Normal thing of lake. You know what? Mom's to have this bed, lake kid pops on your lake well, but there's no instant love. I have the instant and a like very, very powerful and I still feel that. But like also like as they become more of a persons he's walking now he's talking like a little bit like but she's like, so clearly has a personality and like every day and like, oh well, like you are even more of a person than you were yesterday and like it's so fun and it's like also a lot easier than they just like the early days are so physically demanding, like on everybody, especially mums. But like any any caregiver, two of these .

things that like you can describe IT but having not experienced IT I don't actually know what it's like. I go cool words .

exactly highly, highly recommended but a in due type yeah .

other stuff for you this year personally it's .

sort crazy looking back on IT like so much changes when you paint. But we were both intentional about this. But also, I think I just naturally happened because IT is important part of our lives.

We didn't actually travel and he less we didn't travel in the early, early months, but we did. What do we do? Either nine trips with the baby in twenty twenty two, including going to the gal we made that a family trip when we went for breakpoint. What it's like actually was greatly, really hard.

very different IT seemed very hard.

The outside IT was hard. IT was hard. I'm really glad did IT really. Gb, we did IT. And the other big thing for us this year, we'd spend a lot of time over the last couple years think about where we wanted to live in general.

And then in anticipation of hunger, baby, and after having the baby jeni, I went around the axel so many times about california tsure are going to stay in california, about the the area, these families there, and and we genuinely really love IT there. But do we move to the suburbs? Where do we move? Do we stay in the city? We were in the city before, and we ultimately decided to stay in the city to stay in the same neighbor od.

We moved houses. But in the plan for now is we're just like gonna stay for the perpetuity. I in the city in which some people, I think, are like that, crazy.

why? Why live in sco period, especially post pandemic? Why would you raise kids in seven first s go? It's actually great.

Like for us, it's been amazing. We can walk. We don't have to drive. We don't have together in the car.

There's so much great stuff SHE really enjoys IT like she's a city kid. Like after break point, we went out in the countryside in portugal for a couple days. The baby was so bored.

Get me back till lisbon. Like so it's actually been really great for a thing in the city. We'll see if he get older, but will us the plan is great.

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Let's do IT. All right.

Should we start with books?

Let's do IT.

alright. I can't remember if I recommended this one because I read IT over the holidays last year. I think I might have been my first car out of twenty twenty two project hail very oh yeah.

I think i've read IT on your recommendation. That's right. Can be out very good. I think it's the best .

fiction i've ever read, definitely the best size I ever read. I think it's best fiction I ve read. The premise arrives at you in real time as you read IT.

So I don't want to give away the premise unless others SE stated. This is a spoiler free yeah a car. About the coolest thing about project team mary is how IT is basically all in our universe.

There's no big leap like a star track if they like take this leap of like well, there's warp drive and you don't really understand how works and that's fine. And now that we accept this black box, now we can go to other stuff. There's not like an accepted black box in project tel mary. There's just like all the known rules of physics that we know about. And yes.

it's hard side, but I think is the time yeah where it's like everything is like laws of physics ex writing .

for everything, right? So that was super cool. Another book that I finished about two months ago that I thought was exceptional. And every single person who listen to required to read. I think IT expands even broader than this audience, but this audience, in particular, eat IT up called the psychology of money more.

So we and when we happened on that call.

when I was like, I was two thirds through the book. And so IT was really fun, like getting to talk about some of the concepts with him while .

I was in real time adJusting them. But his now post twenty twenty and twenty twenty one bubble when like .

everything was crazy, we would .

have be great to read IT during tor also, yes, but IT includes .

I think i've i've made IT a carve out before the Morgans essay, how all this happened and every chapter of psychology of money is one of his essays. And so if you liked, if you read, how all this happened, which is amazing path of world war two through today, through the american economy and a lot of politics, and why different things happened, and how everything LED to the next thing, the psychology of money is awesome. Because IT incorporates all of that sort of like factual history with just really good perspectives and some excitation of research on what actually makes people happy and what investment strategies work when your goal is happiness.

I certain ly don't count for enough of that in my own financial planning.

Yes, morning makes a very strong argument in the book to basically put as much into S M P. Five hundred index funds when you're as Young as you possibly can and just never sell anything, it's like the most boring style of investing possible. That will probably be whatever you do.

Yeah picked up, read up. That will be good over the holidays. Book and else he got books. I do actually, i'm halfway through IT.

and I was tempted to not talk about because I I want to use IT for a future car out, but it's already so good. And this is another one, like listeners of the show especially eat this up. The parallel by sebastian Melody is .

IT worth reading, even if you're already stepped in the even I .

have done research on two hundred and fifty companies and all these venture funds and talk to the people that started a lot of these venture funds. And season knows more. He just goes deeper.

We just talks about these investments that like we think we've talked about the invest investments of all time, there are more. And like he cites them all numerically ally, he sites returns on early venture capital funds. He takes you all the way through product venture capital like me, there's George's storia and the artha rock. Any about like how all those partnerships sort of LED to the next ones and how certain structures were bad? And then the invention of the private limited partnership, fix all these problems.

You're gonna ve IT. okay. Might find that into the tree that's I got for books.

Oh, that's all I got, right? My books. I've got two acquired books that I can't believe. We did both these episodes this year, and we completely lifted on this very obvious sort of like, fun and fun moment.

You do not like wives.

I know i'm embarrassed by this. Like mostly for me, this is like an ultimate like David rose delic dad joke moment. My top two acquired books, and they genuinely are also my top two acquired books for the year made in japan and made in america.

I made that joke.

Did you told me I did to go back to the best .

or observed and capacity? Maybe 又是 maybe .

I just have dead brain。

But isn't that crazy that yeah they're .

both name that and they're both so .

good yeah sorry. How to .

recommend non acquired books that I read this year? I think I did this as a carve out, uh, the godfather serious, the books, mario used books, they are so good as good, Better than the movies. And the movies are are, in my opinion, of the best world time.

And then the other one is masters of doom. I know if I talked about that on the show we've thought about doing in the episode, and then lex did that like huge interview with carmax. So I felt less urgent presto IT, but really well writing book.

And then the author of masters of doom, David cautioner, just did a follow a piece, I think, in very fair of a follow interview. Do you see, I think this is you with T. V case, who's the cro advt.

a. And T. V is a prominent figure in the book, and he was the first, the first of one of the first professional female gamers ended up working.

Did you work? IT? ID. SHE may work briefly at ID, but then he joined rameri at his neck company.

After remark, mac broke up. crazy. Anyway, crazy story. And then he went on. He came out to little valley, and they are working a tWilly o and I .

was the to tell me about this. I'm not sure at the article, but I am really heard, yeah yeah.

so good. But the book and the follow article, great. And such T, V story is is amazing. So that's my, that's my article. Carve va two, which is our next category.

minus how all this happened. perfect.

I guess I imagine resonant arc, my favorite video game podcast, got all in a resonant arc and all in her, like my go to must listen every episode you two shouts ts, though, that I discovered this year and have become friends. David and a foundation ast, of course, wonderful show. And we've become close with David.

And like when you hear David on the show, he is exactly that, the way a real life like, so he come at the california, we have got a Better love. The other one, I have been a huge M K B H D fan on youtube, as I know you have to. Uh, the way form podcast that they do is great.

I've started like regularly listening. I really like IT and. Everybody David email who's on the M K B H C team. He's regularly on a host, a cohoes on the they take to the team on the way from the cast and like it's in the same vain is kind of the verge podcast likes all about the products of tech, but it's really well done.

I have become an increasingly large fan of the verge. I don't know how I sort of slept on IT in my head. I was like, go another one of these like n gadget gizmodo to type things.

But like, that was wrong. IT is my embarrassing to say. New favorite publication like nei is so smart and i'll basically go listen to me.

I talk wherever he is. Like that is a way for sure, get me to go listen to an episode of whatever the podcast. So I sort of like first in the over covet, I think was like I listened in line in any situation. And then like with the verge redesign, I sort of I don't think I realized how unbelievably thoughtful the team there is and how strategic they are.

There are one of the few publications that thinks about the fact that there are business too and thinks about the way to marry their business with their editorial and how they can uniquely show up in the world based on what they do differently than other people. And like, I think the new verge redesign is genius. Like I don't know what worker not, but I love the attempt.

They're also one of the few new sites in the world that actually gets a ton of direct traffic. So that's a huge thing that plays to their advantage that then they can do interesting things with. There's people that come to them to solve a problem in their life for the fill need.

It's so true. I mean, even me i'm in your way deeper in the product side as a fan of the product side of tech. And I am anytime there's a new apple device, right, there's a couple place I will go directly.

I will go to M, K, B, H, D and all the various properties that he they have now. And I will go to the verge. And I might consume some other stuff that comes to me on social media, but like I will directly go to parties. And I feel like my impressions realize that like he is world class on the product side of tech, but he also gets the business side.

oh yeah for sure, which is super rare, super rare. And like his like leal background, he gets over like interesting I P copyright stuff that's going on technology. I feel like his there's that Scott Adams effort.

You don't want to be top one percent at anything. You want to be top twenty five percent at the right. Three things and figure out how that to marry them together.

I feel like that's the I i'll also say I think the verge has been the thing that surprisingly the most helpful for me for acquired research this year. Like I did a ton of qualcomm research on the verge because they've done so much reporting on what come over the years. So big verge fan, I know that we don't have publication is .

like the category they've got cast of in podcast.

So back to podcast, I really said the episode of temper rs with Jerry sign fell from couple years ago. So good. The episode of human mad lab.

What alcohol does your body? Oh yeah, do. It's scary, scary stuff. And like, moderation is also bad.

There's no like, well, I only had one drink this weekend that devastating to your body versus zero. And this is certainly not medical advice but go listen to that podcast. It's just unbelievable the research studies that he's citing. Where is just so much more bad for you in every way than I ever thought? And I thought I was bad for you.

Yeah, you were already starting to drink.

yes. I mean, we both open tonight with cocktails. Well, you get to live.

This is a celebratory of IT.

That's right. That's right. My last podcast recommendation is smart. Any episode so fun, it's just so fun to go live in their world for an episode.

even like that one for a while last six months. Will you be back on right? Music.

music. And only I discovered any new music this year. I listen to a lot of Taylors with midnights. I did a ton of prep for our wedding, creating a bunch of different players for, like, different segments of the .

day that you put together all the playlist yourself.

Yeah, I mean, D J did all the work that a great D J does, but I sent him very highly manicured players that took several ones to put together earth. A lot of opinion in IT. So, you know, here's the dance, here's cocktail hour, here's dinner, here's so I was looking at my life, spotify, you in review, and I was like, all this is like my favorite songs from over the course of my life and my wife's life.

And that's where most of my music listening went this year. I'll also say most of my audio time, like even when i'm in the gym now, is podcast or audible books, mostly in service of acquired research. I just listen a way less music than I used to.

I feel like you do a large part of your acquired book research via audio box.

Almost exclusively painful for me to read the whole school .

book wave on the total opposite direction. I pretty much only do physical paper copies for required research.

I admired your attention. spin.

I'm interested to try. I do have an apple pencil for our ipad mini, and I wish I could write with the apple pencil.

be so cool and I narrow. I agree.

I agreed IT is like enough to dr anything, or like a fancied thing that changes the page, but like really just want to be the right with the apple pencil directly on any book the same way. Do you want a physical book? And for whatever reason, the tech guards just let me do that.

I have new music OK. Shockingly, he would not think that me, knowing me and has a new parent, would discover new music this year. But the baby loves Olivia arrigo less so now.

But when when he was like, I don't know between he, just like two months and six months will go through moments, right? Olivia at rego, almost without fail, turn on driver's license, like SHE would just be a wrapped in attention and like immediately come down, really like, I guess we have a teenager. So I listen to a lot of Olivia around. We go this year. H and she's very talented, a very impressive, very.

I get out .

to to my spotify, T, V. And movies.

yes. And door was my car out of .

everything here, because I did. I retouched .

a black panther recently.

IT was just as good.

So, and or I saw the new top gun. That was unbelievable fun. Like, put that on a big four K. T. V. With some around sound .

and just enjoy I watch that on a laptop. I got to go. I think they are rereleasing .

IT in dealers for release. Yeah being stairs after this and watch as seventy five inch like like it's a very good. It's a very good experience.

I watched everything, everywhere, all that wants the movie, and that movie gives you all the feels. That is a great, great movie, great one to watch together if you're looking for something to watch with your partner. Weird movie, kind of a size.

I kind of a rm com, but it's like a family dynamics movie, sad part, happy parts and visually stunning, so and great acting. I do not really want to talk about what it's about because it's it's one of those that I just don't want to spoil IT. But basically everyone will like this movie.

Great, good holiday movie.

Great holiday movie. I haven't watch season one yet because I felt like I just wanted to catch up as soon as possible because everyone was talking about IT. I'm now up to date on White lona season too.

That is a wild show. It's basically premises like you get eat to ten rich people that show up at this beautiful hotel, the White lotus insistingly. And there are in three or four different groups, so the plots will have follows different groups.

But the thing that runs through everyone is like, everyone is extremely certain life, very wealthy and like deeply unhappy. And then crazy, problematic stuff ensues from there. And it's visually stunning and the acting is great and you're simultaneous ly very mad and all these characters for doing stuff that they shouldn't be doing. But you also totally understand the characters are so well. Establish that you understand, based on their flaws as humans, why they are falling into these traps.

The real people is the reality is fiction.

Yeah, just very well, infection. And the first one was in hawaii. And I think it's a almost a completely different cast, but likes are the same general premise in italy.

So each season is a different.

I think that's what they're doing. Yeah, I watch a lot of TV this year. The vow on netflix is great, like trash T, V, to leave on in the background and is two seasons long. And IT is a documentary about a cult. And unbelievably, the cold leader is so wrapped up, maybe not unbelievably, for a cold leader in self qualification.

that like that sounds very believable.

For a cold leter fifteen, twenty years ago, he started recruited filmmakers to join the cold so they would shoot all this footage. So there's all this like very, very high production value footage over the entire life of the cold, all the way through the trial, which was only a few years ago. The next im called and like, do want prison for life.

And the bunch other people went to prison because like, they did terrible cult stuff, and the whole thing is just like perfectly documented the entire time because that I think IT was like part of the arrest that like all this document, all this stuff became A B footed yeah. So maybe maybe the flex pott, I don't know, but either way, very, very good background T, V, great apps. The only new .

APP that I started using this year that had any meaningful impact was a baby monitor. I just like everything is also fired.

And I have a few apps since moving houses that are sort of tied to like IoT type things. The only one that's not that I really like that I started using this year is a flie, which is ryan Jones is he's an end developer. He previously weather line, which was my fair weather APP and flight is sort of like the modern trip IT.

The best way to explain IT is like unbelievable. Good you, I to tell you real time information about your flight and it's tighten to like every available A P, I with every available airline. So you get information from flat before the airline notifies you of IT and often before I even displays on gates when you're in the air, I get push before .

I get this for flying back .

in a couple do when you get like. A thirty second heads up on a change before the mass of people behind you. It's very huge.

very well. That is an age that's .

although although .

now we just gave IT to I think he was .

even featured in the apple, he note. So we're not giving anybody any distribution here that they didn't otherwise already earn. But alright is just amazing indeed. Developer, it's been really fund like watch i've met anything but watch the success of his apps over the years. And this is just a fantastic experience.

Be found to do maybe A B A L P show or two, but we step some independent PS like those are interesting business stories.

totally. All right. Products I have won that actually comes with an APP great money is the robo rock s seven max.

Robo rock s seven max. Can I guess what is this, a robot vacuum? Yes.

is the competitor to roomba. And I think it's a show me company, you know how show me owns like large stakes and a whole bunch of companies that they like. Manufacturer R I think it's that, but it's just like I had a room bow.

I actually returned IT to get the robot rock instead. And the seven max is the like, I mean, like the worst product name of all time, but it's like the soup up self empty ying also has a light weight mop bilton. It's the first time i've actually had like robot where you actually can say, like this thing is robust enough that it's just gonna my life easier without fAiling or getting stuck or needing some kind of intervention IT just does its job.

What's prevent me from serious ly, considering robot vacuum is stairs, so you just need one for each floor exactly.

or you can move IT, but yeah, I went for two robots cks.

Given the show me um involved or potential, I would imagine you could probably ly get two for a less .

than the cost of .

a very expense. H oh.

I was expecting that to know there they are, premium Price st. Ah I just think but great, fantastic product.

Yeah I guess that is the solution. You just do one for each floor yeah and just .

or get used to Carry and it's fine. I I guess you're going to walk up, stay like, go to bed, see as well, just like Carry this thing under your ARM and set IT down and then starts at in the morning or something.

Hm, yes, great.

but I never thought about that. Just save your thousand box right there.

Uh, right.

that's talk. Sorry about IT.

Okay, what's the i'm intentionally in a limit, a parenting product.

this one I could really do a hole like.

yeah, maybe, but A B, so I just want this is a super project I never would have. But Debra bags, I like big. A brilliant idea, I wish I could take create for this.

I can't put the key essentials of a diver bag with our diverse wipes changing pad in a pouch, know you can get like a nice like pouch, whatever, like printing or like I didn't know where are is this from and then you could just move that pouch into whatever bag, or you could to care the power yourself, or put in your backup, or put in whatever like, rather than having a dedicated diverge. g. Keep the core centres of the diver bag in a pot that you can then put in other tags.

God, did this show is going worse. So I listening if you're still listening, i'm sorry. We will be back next year with Better content.

boy. But by the way.

at some point, if I apparently i'm .

totally going to be like i'm a less for you. Good on the universal product appeal. Couple of quick ones.

When I went back actually to the apple keyboard, I had a mechanical keyboard, which I really like, but I went back to the apple one for tedi. So convenient. It's convenient.

I have the microsoft ergonomic scutt too, and I love IT, but I think I type my password two thousand times a day more than I would if I just had .

my I seriously doubt we'll do this, but actually they could all for one hundred box and make a tony much. The dog to including the sound panel are so good, so easy to put up. I don't know. Listeners noticed from.

by the way, we have four l gatto lights in this room right now, an algo to stream deck. David and I used the algoma preempts, the wave excel, and then also the camera, the White camera that somehow turned off again is a mounted on the algoma boom. Mom, where my mike is Normally on my desk.

Yeah, they make such good stuff. The tom pillon, on particular, really, really good. And really, they have frames around them and then sticky stuff to mount. So like i've put up, probably twelve of them in total took less than an hour.

Oh, we also use the cm, link the cell the way that we pipe our cameras into our computer .

as webcams. Yep, huge.

huge algona fans. nice.

And then you added the agenda, a final new carver section of places.

places. Is here a copy .

that is my that yeah .

discussed? yes. Any for you?

No, we didn't really going where new despite all our travels. We've been the partial eliza m before we went back to sana barba. We try and go there every year, at least one a year at the beach for us and barbers, just amazing, lovely, lovely play on the lovely places and then very accessible from california.

We to find more. We did the E A episode down there. More required related reasons to trip .

lives down there.

He's GTA figure that out. That's right. Well, with that listeners, I think we will see you in twenty, twenty three. We would love to see you in slack will be hanging out there over the holidays if you want to listen to the L P show, we actually just recorded to other great L P shows that will be coming out soon. You can join and get those two weeks early at acquire data m slash L P.

Or you can search, acquire L P show in any podcast player and get access to them two weeks after L, P, S, get them. You think else. Steven.

one very, very important. Last thing, a big thank you. Yes, to all of you. We and we talked about to a lot on this episode.

If we truly have the best audience in the world, the best community in the world, but and I just print ourselves, like literally on a weekly of, not daily basis, that we get to do this, that I get to do this as a living. And it's all things to you. We just get so much joy out of putting this show together. And we include we can talk for hours just about the and all the fund.

whether that is interesting that other people remains to be seen, but every business should know their source of power and their source of differentiation and and is all of you. So thank you so much for being on the journey with us. It's been an amazing seven years.

and here's to seven more then.

Happy holidays.

Happy who got. The truth that the truth.