Why did OpenAI buy you? >> We had a very interesting history with OpenAI in that we were sort of contrarian supporters when it was initially rumored that OpenAI was going to put ads in ChatGpt. The general response was this is bad. We don't like ads. But we are the guys who love ads and we think ads are a really powerful business model and we think ads can make things free. If you want to be open AI, you're going to need an adup supported version of your product. All right, let's first right into it. Uh we're joined today by John Kugan and Jordi Hayes, who are the creators of TBPN, a popular daily show covering the biggest stories in tech and business. Uh so you both host TBPN, the daily live show that became OpenAI's first ever acquisition this spring. You've hosted names from Zuckerberg to Alman to Nadella. Before we get to the OpenAI deal, take us back to the beginning. Give us go all the way back 17 months and give us your backstory. >> Long time ago. >> We met through a mutual friend who connected us because we were in a similar stage of life. I guess we'd both started companies uh in Silicon Valley, raised money from actually two of the same venture capital firms. uh never met, but we both were living in Los Angeles, had kids, and were sort of looking for what was next. >> And LA is a terrible place to live if you work in tech outside of hard tech. Uh and we didn't see ourselves building a hard tech business. We both had some media background. I built a influencer marketing company in college. John had a big YouTube channel. >> Yeah. >> And we did what what had never really been done before. Two guys in tech decided to start a podcast. It was revolutionary. >> Um, no. So, uh, we met, we we just loved talking. Uh, we would call each other, even though we didn't even know each other that well, and just talk about different ideas and >> what was happening. Uh, and eventually decided to record one of the conversations. We sent it to uh, a guy named David Senra, who has David Senra by David Senra, popular podcast, and also the founders podcast. if you've uh >> uh listened to that. >> And he's one of the strongest believers in the power of podcasting that like we're still early, that it's not too late to start a podcast if you have a good idea, something fresh to offer. And so he was extremely encouraging, told us that we should uh take it deadly seriously. >> Yeah, we hadn't published an episode, but we sent him a a Google Drive file. He listened to it. I was shocked that he listened to it >> because who has time for another podcast? And uh but he did and he yeah he said like you know take this 10 times >> as seriously. He saw something in us and you know we kept going from there. >> And so he sort of encouraged us to treat it like a business like a startup not like a side project. And that's something that we quickly uh identified as one of our key differentiators was that we had lots of friends and we'd been in these situations before. My YouTube channel I was running it on the side while I was also doing a business. And there's a lot of people that have investment firms that also have podcasts or they have a company and then they start a podcast to promote that company. And there weren't that many people outside of uh the the traditional media. Uh there weren't that many insiders that had transitioned and become full-time creators. uh Dark Cesh Patel obviously in that group, David Senra, there's a few others, but it was a smaller group than I think the podcast charts let on. When you scrolled through and you saw hundreds of hundreds of podcasts, most of those folks were not spending 40 hours a week. >> It was and and still is low status to some degree. Like there's there uh I remember when we would tell our friends in the early days cuz we told people with like a handful of episodes we were like we're going full-time on a podcast and like we have supportive friends thankfully. They were like yeah like that excited for you. That's awesome. But you know in their head they were just thinking >> like wow they're down on their >> completely lost. >> Couldn't come up with a single sass idea. What are they thinking? Um and so we started taking it really seriously and that unlocked a lot of things that unlocked uh interviews with bigger >> Well, yeah. Before we get there, we should talk about like why we initially got any traction at all is because we weren't doing interviews. We did >> like 150 hours with just the two of us talking before we had done >> a single guest. And instead of having there were shows that we love like acquired is is you know uh an amazing product but it's like one topic and we would have uh you know we would talk for 90 minutes but we'd cover 50 topics. >> Yes. 30 50. >> So we'd read the whole Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times. We'd pull from random headlines. We'd pull up uh tweets and posts on different social media sites. We'd print out the posts. So, we'd typically have a stack of posts and we would uh pull them up and and through them. Uh, and Jordy has one there. Uh, we would discuss it. Sometimes we'd just be laughing about it. Sometimes we it would take us on a tangent. We'd talk for 10 minutes, but then we would clip that reaction to that post and then quote tweet the original post. And so, that was sort of a do things that don't scale moment. It was a a love letter to whoever uh posted that original idea or that take or whatever they posted. And uh as you know from posting oftent times the numbers get really big. You get a thousand likes on something and it all kind of just melts into the background and it becomes just noise and you see the number go up. But if someone quotes your post with a thoughtful commentary that's filmed in 4K with cinema cameras and the hosts are wearing suits and they print it. They took the time to print out your post. It's just wow. These people went a lot further to say something. I'm at least going to see what they had to say about the thing that I fired off in the shower. Right. And so that just told individual people, maybe 50 people a day, got a little message from us. Hey, we exist. We liked what you said and here's our commentary. And then they followed us. They reposted it. They quote tweeted and said, I can't believe this happened. What is this? This is weird. This is interesting. And so that was interesting like 0ero to1 moment. >> Yeah. Early lessons in going to zero to one was, you know, need some element of format innovation. Like podcasts are incredibly noisy, incredibly powerful, but we came in with something that was a truly unique product because one, there was no one else that had us talking about crazy ideas for 90 minutes. We had a monopoly on that. >> And then a real focus on marketing the show, treating the show like a product that we make every day, but we were incredibly fixated on on marketing that product. And I think that and that that that happened through clips and and and um you know the love letters concept, things like that. >> So also I think you guys recognized a real gap in the market and that is two white guys hosting a podcast. >> Exactly. >> I've heard nothing you said the last five minutes. I was so excited about that joke. Um >> what did you guys do? What did you guys do before this? Uh, I grew up in LA, studied economics in college, moved out to Silicon Valley as soon as I graduated, joined. >> Where you Where did you grow up? I'm from LA. Where did you grow up in LA? >> I grew up in Pasadena. I live there now, actually. >> And where'd you go to college? >> I went to Nor Eastern in Boston and then I went out to Silicon Valley. Was was sort of on a finance track post uh great financial crisis. was very interested in that but then uh got uh bitten by the Y cominator bug reading Paul Graham's blog uh reading hacker news wanted to move out to Silicon Valley maybe join a tech company realized that a lot of the big tech companies I wouldn't be fit for the corporate ladder wanted to start a company uh started one company teamed up with a Y combinator company uh the first business I started was called Soilent it was a meal replacement shake >> you probably had a couple soilents over the years Yeah. You heard about that? It was like a decade ago. >> That was one of my favorite viral Soil and Green. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure name for a food product, but >> that was the point. The point was like it was it was rage bait. It was rage bait. Like everyone had >> liquid death, that kind of thing. >> Yeah, liquid death. Same thing. Um and so and so, uh yeah, I was like I was interested in technology and working on software startups, but then we got pulled into uh this consumer package goods direct to consumer boom and grew that company a bunch, raised a bunch of money, eventually sold that company, started another company with basically the same team. uh but then got that company to scale and um had the opportunity during COVID to sort of think about what was next. Started a YouTube channel and then eventually went over to Founders Fund to become an entrepreneur in residence and that gave me a lot of free time to explore what was next and that sort of set me up to be ready to go full-time on something uh completely new when the right when the right pitch came my way. We're not very good at uh being concise as you can tell. We talk we do this for three hours a day. We'll we'll have we'll have hit the 4 hour mark uh by by the end of the day of of podcasting. We really love this. But uh I grew up in the Bay in the Bay Area. Was always obsessed with uh the idea of building companies, building startups. I I built a first ever company was a skateboard company when I was 12 because I figured out that the boards that I was buying in California for $35 would be a blank Canadian maple board, I could get them made with my logo for $17.50 in the Midwest. And so I I went and raised like $500 to do my first run. Uh and so started selling skateboards. That was kind of when I caught the bug. took me about a decade from there to build like a real business that could support my life. But I started uh I actually met a number of podcasts while in college. And this was at a time where you'd have like a podcast with an incredibly loyal fan base, tons and tons of downloads. Uh and they'd be in the top 10 of, you know, whatever category they were in. And they'd be running like zero ads, which sounds uh which sounds insane, but they would just be doing it for the love of the game. and maybe they had another bid business. And so I went to them and I was like, if I can bring you advertisers, can I take a cut? And so I started doing that. And that uh over time turned into a company called Branded Native, which is still running today, but uh does like YouTube, you know, creator advertising for uh a bunch of different brands. And so I didn't raise money for that business. It got profitable uh quite quickly. And I started taking the profits and investing those in other startups. So then over the last however many years I guess eight years invested in like 70ome startups eventually started a fintech company uh I started maybe the most 2021 zerp company ever company called party round which was Venmo for fundraising and investing because I would get invited to invest in a startup and then I remember the first time somebody said like well I'll I'll send you the docs and then you can just wire after that and I was like wire transfer I'd never actually done a wire. I had never actually done a wire transfer at the time myself, like a like an outbound um >> push. And so I was like, why is this not like Venmo? Uh a lot of VCs thought that was a great idea in 2021. As you can imagine, everyone in their, you know, mom was was investing in startups. Um and uh had built like a fairly viral brand on on X for that business. Ended up evolving it into a banking product over time. uh that was building a stablecoin basically a stablecoin bank. Uh the month that we launched FTX collapsed which uh killed a lot of excitement that people had around crypto as as you as you can uh imagine and then a few months after that SVB collapsed and people started really caring about how much FDIC coverage they had. Uh we at the time had standard like 250k of coverage and uh our average customer balance was like a million dollars something like that. And so people are like I was telling our customers like yeah this there's a bank run that's happening like you need to be practical with your business. We ended up um getting Aqua hired by a company called Row in New York City uh and then work there. And that's like when uh when I met John um >> ready for this. We we we had been like both both of us had gone through the sort of like Silicon Valley factory had had some wins, had some some losses, had been like I would say very humbled by >> Yeah. >> by like work and life, right? Like I went I went from being like, you know, running a hot startup >> Yeah. and uh to basically like having my business blown up by like you know the the the market dynamics and then I'm sitting there I've got like a one-year-old son at the time I've got another on the way like that's like deeply humbling and so I think that um based on like what we do and what we talk about they expect us to be like you know maybe cocky or something like that but I think we came at TBPN uh from a very we had been humbled by Silicon Valley been humbled by startups and I think that has informed our coverage. Right. Right. Like I think we give people we always would give people the benefit of the doubt. We we like took a strategy early on which was called uh golden retriever mode which is an idea that you know John John can can uh has described many times on the show but like being in a golden retriever mindset and trying to act show up in the world and at least that was our role with TVPN is showing up as like golden retrievers. You're like happy friendly and dumb. >> Yeah. you know, >> not trying to be, oh, I'm I I I got this person. I'm smarter than them. I'm the smartest one in the room, always. Uh being, yeah, a little humble in some ways. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you don't need me to tell you how much hiring great people matters. But the time and resources you have to spend to get it right are precious commodities. Sourcing, connecting with, and screening candidates can quickly eat into time better spent on your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. 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So, I I'm fascinated by and a little bit jealous because I what I've seen is that you guys this year are going to you're tracking towards and we I'm very open about our business and transparent about the economics because I want young people to learn about money and building businesses. But 11 employees uh five million in ad revenue in 2025. You're tracking past uh from what I see here 30 million in 2026 bootstrapped profitable zero outside capital show was 17 months old at acquisition. This is what struck me though around 70,000 viewers per episode across platforms and 58,000 YouTube subscribers. So, here at PropG this year, we'll do I think about 20 million and we do substantially more downloads in video views than that. And yet, you guys have 50% more revenue and my So, now granted, I'm the idiot reading Zip Recruiter ads or telling people to drink Ziotics before they go get up. >> I introduced them. I introduced the founders of Ziotics. I love them. >> I just ordered a bunch. It's a fantastic product. >> Yeah. connected the team. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I connected the team. Stephen, the one of the co-founders went to high school with me. I absolutely love that product. We sorted a bunch. >> I spent a lot of money on it. Is it because you guys are selling just sponsorships as opposed to ad insertions? Like how do I get the same revenue per viewer that you guys >> Yeah. So, it's a couple things. So, one, because I started this company, Branded Native, and I had done literally done thousands of like influencer podcast, YouTube, you know, deals. So, I was obsessed with the commercial side. Uh, and early on with that business, if I would connect an advertiser with a content creator and the first few ads went well, I would immediately book out like an annual deal because I thought it was in the interest in both companies. I was like, the advertiser wants to allocate budget effectively. The content creator wants predictable revenue. Uh, and so I would do that when I could. Um, and it and it worked well. And so for this business, like you know, we had a small team uh and the knowing that we were having to show up and be live for three hours a day. I knew that we weren't going to have time to be doing a lot of ad sales. So I basically wanted to uh we only sold advertising on an annual basis, which was good for us and good for the companies. So for last year, you know, we had kind of projections. Since this was 2025, our first like full year uh in business, we had projections and we would show those to advertisers and say like, "Hey, this is what we think we can do for the year." Uh they would sign on, but they'd be on a fixed rate. So, they would be committing to annual annual spend with us, but they'd be on a fixed rate. So, if we grew beyond what we were projecting, it was just like, you know, uh you know, free incremental uh impressions or or reach. And so, that was super important. uh also because we wanted the ability to know how much revenue we were going to have in the month of March and April and and May and things like that because we wanted to hire a team. We wanted to invest in our space. We have um what I would say one of the most unique, you know, podcast studios in in the world. that you know it's not uh it's certainly like sub a million dollars but uh you know we invested a ton of ton of money into equipment last year and part of that was like having this predictable revenue stream and then the other thing that the other approach that we took was uh you know I was pitching advertising with us as like sponsoring a Formula 1 team. So, you know, it wasn't like we were going to we we would run ads for every every company every day, but then we would put their logo on like, you know, merch that we would make. We would put their logo on clips. If we did, you know, anything IRL, we would show up for them there. And so, it was like, you know, actually like, you know, a big tech company sponsoring a Formula 1 team. They know they're going to be on the car. They know they're going to be here. They know they're going to be everywhere. And so by having like, you know, basically one contract and then we were very open and upfront and it was part of the show that we were we loved advertising. Like we truly think it's amazing. I was like, I love that somebody anywhere in the world can listen to this content for free that we put so much uh effort uh into making. Uh and it doesn't matter who you are, it's just free. Like it's uh it's truly it's truly an incredible business model. It's very aligned. Uh, and so we were very I would say a lot of podcasts in tech, not you, I think you're very commercial. Um, and that's a that's a compliment, but a lot of podcasts in tech were like above above ads. They were like doing ads would be low status because I have a venture fund and I get management fees and and things like that. Um, and then the other thing is like we had a focus early on and it's still our focus which is we believe that there's 200,000 people in the world max that we make content for and these people are running businesses. They're investing in the companies that uh of of the founders that we talk to. They invest tens of billions of dollars a year. They can, you know, run companies that spend billions of dollars a year on uh everything from advertising to to software to cloud etc. And uh we always believed that that was a big enough audience for what we were trying to do because we in this business you we go live for three hours every day. We don't we can't afford to talk about things that we aren't interested in. We can't afford to be explaining to people like what AWS is. You know, we can't we don't we don't have the time nor do we want to take the time to explain SpaceX's business in the year 2026 because we assume that our audience has been following SpaceX and understanding SpaceX for a decade plus now. >> Yeah. The other thing with uh the the audience we found Yeah. Yeah, we just found ways to get ad impressions to people that don't normally don't see ads. I I think you've talked about this too uh about how certain powerful people basically don't experience advertising. Uh we figured out how to get ads to them. One of the ways uh during our inter before our interview with Mark Zuckerberg, I read him a ramp ad directly because our ads are integrated. put the headphones on and John started >> cuz I have to do an ad read before the interview starts and with with what we're doing right now. I'm sure the ads will be sliced in later. Uh although shout out Ziotics, they did get a freebie in here. But uh our ads are integrated. So uh there might be a Fortune 500 CEO is coming on and right as they're coming on they hear an ad right uh throughout the interview they're looking at our screen which has all the corporate logos including the RAM sponsorship right there. Uh, so there's ad integrations and logo placement there. And then after they hop off, they might still hear us read the next ad. And then every time we share one of their clips, um, a lot of a lot of, uh, media companies and shows and podcasts have a clipping strategy, but they don't monetize the clips very well. So all of our clips have brands on them, logos, and then at the end of every one minute clip is a full ad read. And so, you know, of course, some people scroll to the next video by then, but a lot of people do stick around and they do see that ad impression. And so the actual ad impressions goes much further. and these clips if it's if it's some you know AI for legal company that's on that's going to get sent to the competitor company even if it's a very small audience it's going to get sent around that small community and so that clip might only get a few thousand views but it's going to be with the right people because it's essentially trade trade media. >> Yeah. The other thing that we did, we realized early on that if we were going to be doing live podcast style ads, we weren't going to be able to do a 90-cond ad. Like people would just immediately bail. >> Uh and so we we pitched advertisers on instead of giving you a smaller number of 90-cond ads, we'll give you, you know, 250 20 second ads. And uh really selling that like repetition and frequency. So, I've memorized all the ad reads. We have buttons that we can pull up and and they take over the screen to show you the graphic really quickly, but it's not long enough that you want to pull out your phone and tap tap tap tap tap. >> And just to give you an idea of how the how how the advertisers get like sort of like strange incremental reach, we made a bunch of merch early on that people were really excited about. And we never sold merch because it's not our core business. and and it wouldn't really move the needle from a revenue standpoint. Uh but we would there were websites that were making fake TVPN merch. They're still out there and putting our advertisers all over the merch in the way that we did. So they were building a business selling our advertisers >> uh you know basically like impressions for our advertisers. And so >> um >> so yeah and I think I think it was you know I I think like the TBPN story is as much around like marketing innovation and business model innovation and format innovation >> as it is timing right the timing of of launching a show like this during >> one of you know the most historic technology cycle of our lifetimes certainly plays a part as well. Yeah, I think that's really interesting construct or model. Think of it as a Formula 1 team because I find that our most lucrative deals and it sounds like you figured this out sooner than us or we'll just say to um you know an AI company uh you're we're going to use your data. We're going to talk about you all the time. We'll disclose that you're an advertiser, but we want X dollars and we're not going to get into this whole impression CPM game. We kind of managed to bust out of that. >> No. and and you're you're instantly losing when you do that because if you're advertising enterprise products, one customer can pay for the entire >> Yeah. >> ad like placement, the entire deal, right? And so that was something we recognized early on with RAMP. I was like, yeah, we're going to get you or at least help you close a public company and if that is the only customer that we get you for the entire year, >> job's finished. >> The everything else is free. Everything else is free. And so, yeah, we we had a couple of consumer partners early on, but we realized that like like the people in our audience can actually go and buy $5 million a year of this SAS company or or they can spend $20 million on cloud or they can spend >> $50 million on on inference, but they can only buy like one aid sleep, right? Or maybe two. >> Yeah. >> Right. And so we realize like the best use of our ad inventory is should be entirely and so our friends with consumer companies we'll just support them like John's drinking Andrew Huberman's you know yerba mate company and we don't even charge money for that because >> yeah we just we just like them. Let's talk a little bit about I I hadn't heard of you guys and then I heard about you all the time because you're my understanding is your first acquisition or media acquisition of OpenAI and the rumor is you guys got sold for the low hundreds of millions which is I don't think any company any podcast at least less than two years old has ever gotten sold for nine figures much less what sounds like more than that call it a 20x plus revenue multiple which media businesses never trade at. So my first question is why did OpenAI buy you? >> I think they saw what we were doing online and wanted to partner with us in the way that our brands had. So we we had a very interesting history with OpenAI in that we were sort of contrarian supporters. So going back to the fact that the show is very pro- advertising when it was initially rumored that OpenAI was going to put ads in ChatGpt. The general response was this is bad. We don't like ads. But we're the guys who love ads and we think ads are a really powerful business model and we think ads can make things free. And it was like if you want to be open AI, you're going to need an adup supported version of your product. Otherwise, like that like Silicon Valley, we were like looking around being like you guys think that everyone in the world can spend $20 a month on on software. And you don't realize that like there most American households will like cancel a $10 a month streaming product if they don't have a show that they love in that very very moment. We were we were very pro- ad and so we were celebrating milestones along that path in a very sort it was like half ironic sort of funny but also we did believe it was a real model and we had done a number of stunts on the internet. Uh we ran a Super Bowl ad uh that that did shoutouts for everyone in our community. We had launched a product called clawed with ads that was sort of making fun of the anthropic ad that was targeted at it was punching at open AAI and OpenAI couldn't really punch back and so we were laughing about that and so we' done a couple of these like viral marketing campaigns and to be able to work with us this was the deal that made the most sense to to help on the marketing side and that and that includes things from billboards to the next Super Bowl ad. I hope we can have a really strong voice in. >> Yeah, we had been very loud about, you know, the need to it it felt like before AI was like real and before it was something that we used every single day, the technology industry and the labs like needed to use fear-based marketing to raise the necessary capital to build a lot of these models. and and it basically by like the midpoint of last year we were seeing that like this sort of like fear-based approach to selling the product is going to just go really really really badly and it has right like you know look at public opinion around AI people are scared of it even though they find it very useful in their in their day-to-day life and so >> we had been we had been unofficially giving open AI advice >> every single day through the show being like, hey, like, where's our Steve Jobs? Like, >> we just going to be like, and I'm not saying that's just talk about like just talk about what the product can do for you. Cuz there'll be a model release and they'll talk about the stats and the benchmarks. Instead of just being like, well, now you can go and ask for a custom piece of furniture and it will just give you exactly the image of the piece of furniture that you want, you can just go get it made for cheaper than what you would get somewhere else or something like that. Like there's all these different use cases that come up and they always come with like a blog post and metrics and it's not just like hey you can go use this thing for this particular problem now. >> Yeah. And the other thing is that we were always we were sort of ironically and unironically pro technology throughout the entire >> throughout the entire show. We still are. We think that there's so many companies that that you know compete with OpenAI that are that are fantastic. like SpaceX is one of the greatest American companies in history. >> Anthropic is one of the greatest American companies in history. Uh Google, you know, all all these players like we generally >> just want the American technology sector to do well. We have friends at at at all of these companies. >> Well, thank God you guys are here because they're they're they could use the help. It's uh >> Thank you. >> It's been pretty rough there. Um >> yeah, and I'll give you another example. So like I when there was rumor that that OpenAI was going to do an adult mode and and again like uh this was in Q Q3 Q4 of last year. >> I thought announced that. No, that was a rumor. >> He he you well he announced that that they were planning on working on it or rolling it out under a certain umbrella that would be maybe age gated or something, but it never launched. But there was >> and that's the kind of thing that that's the kind of thing that like I was very >> I I was like there's no way to there's no in my view there was no way to defend that kind of action in the same way that I don't think there's a way you can defend Zuckerberg launching you know prediction markets you know integrating gambling into into it gambling >> I think the defense is it's good for shareholder value but I I appreciate what you're saying um >> I don't think that's going to get I would I would bet that both of those will launch both, but you guys are closer to it than I am. >> You think Meta will launch a a a gambling product that includes prediction prediction product that includes cash and money? Because if because there there was some rumors in the reporting that it might be all for like social points and I think that's a much more nuanced discussion. Like I I I I'm not pro gambling, but also I've played role playing games where I've been like, I want my score to be really high. And I don't know that trying to get the highest score on Tetris is the same thing as being at a Vegas casino until 4 a.m. with real money. >> It's fun to from a commentator to talk to other commentators and feel free to push back because, you know, as you get older, you've start kind of figure out what you you know, you don't know what you don't know. My sense is the business story that's unfolding in our world right now is I think we're going to find out post World Cup that there was more money wagered on World Cup games on calcium poly market than have ever been wagered on anything before in history. And I think Zuckerberg who is a brilliant business person and only has one concern and one brand association and that is delivering shareholder value. It's not protecting youth. It's not start you know stopping young girls from cutting themselves. It's not concern about radicalizing young men. It's not the polarization of our country or coursing of our discourse. It's about shareholder value. And to be blunt, that's kind of what private companies are supposed to do, right? Uh and I think he looks at calcium poly market and says, I know I'm going to take a two billion person hose and fire it at this and potentially take some of that 1050 hundred billion dollars in value that these guys are creating. So I think it'll be a direct ripoff. Yeah, >> I don't know. I don't know. I just look at it as like if he really cared about shareholder value, he would be running what is the greatest business in the world, which is Meta Platforms. >> So stay focused. You think he should just stay focus? >> Yeah. Yeah. I think Meta would tra I personally think Meta is like a a $3 trillion company and is going to permanently have a discount on it because of the metaverse, because of AI. >> Well, the metaverse is basically gone. He's basically shut that down. >> No, no, I know. But I'm but I'm just saying like >> as a shareholder like at any moment could disappear. >> Yeah. The business >> it's like it's like the the goose eggs but then the eggs get taken by the goose and get sent off to a different farm and you're like ah where am I where's my golden egg? I I I do always wonder about the feedback loop of like you identified a bunch of problems with the with the platforms. Um and I and I do wonder like there sometimes there is a there's a flywheel there where uh you know kids get addicted to social media, the next generation doesn't let their kids use the platforms, they don't get addicted, then that destroys shareholder value. And so if you're thinking long term, you're suggesting that >> you think >> he owns 100% of the voting stock or whatever, you know, he can think long term. You think he's thinking, "Oh, I'm I'm I'm not going to publish. I'm going to be more thoughtful and uh measured around potential harms to young people, including evidence internally that show Hold on. Show depression because their parents because their parents >> are going to see that and when these kids grow up and realize that they had eating disorders >> and anxiety that they're not going to let their kids do it. Do you think that's actually influencing him right now?" >> That's that wasn't my claim. My claim was that he has a long-term economic incentive. >> Agreed. >> He might be ignoring that incentive to >> the terminal but the terminal value 25 years out is pretty is pretty low, right? I >> Yeah, maybe. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> I like this. So, let me let me bounce a thesis off of you guys and then I want >> one more one more thing guys I wanted to close the loop on. Uh, I think the simple the simple explanation is like it is culturally in Meta's DNA to launch a version of the hot thing regardless of what it is. And so it doesn't in in consumer yeah in consumer it's like it doesn't matter that it's gambling and that it is objectively harmful. It's the new hot thing in consumer, so we're going to do it. And and uh >> if it's photos, it's photos. If it's videos, it's videos. You acquire or you build internally. >> They're the they're the largest second mouse in history, maybe beside Apple. I think I think Zuckerberg is a genius at looking at something that's working and saying reverse engineer it and then again, let's get our two billion people on it. A couple just business stories. I like this game where, you know, we we go back and forth on something. I'm curious what you guys think of. So, a tech IPO, I think it's pricing tomorrow that it hasn't gotten a lot of attention, but JP Morgan and Goldman are taking them out. >> Spoons. >> Yeah. The the Bergkshire Hathaway of forgotten but beloved brands, 88% recurring revenue. You guys are probably too young for this, but AOL, Vimeo, we transfer, you know, some some pretty good businesses. Basically, buy these things. I don't know if they buy them on the cheap, but buy them at what they probably think are reasonable prices. use AI or whatever it is they do to kind of quite frankly get efficiency. >> Italians. >> There you go. And then lay off. >> No, that's literally that's that's that's the view. It's like it salaries are much cheaper in Italy than in the US if you buy an American >> and they hire really young people. They they claim it's brilliant young people, but they hire young young inexpensive people out in Napoli that went to wherever the Bone or whatever. >> Anyway, I'm just curious what you guys think of this IPO. What is your prediction on it? Do you like the company? Uh thoughts bending spoons pricing tomorrow. >> So we've had we've had uh Mr. Ferrari on the show. I think he might be coming on tomorrow. >> I have not tracked the price. We don't give like specific financial advice and like buy sell ratings. Um I I don't know. I don't know what's your take on it. Let me think. >> Yeah, because so we our origins are in the private markets, right? Yeah, >> like John and I don't really do a lot of public markets investing outside of index funds. Like we >> uh the the DNA and the the core of the show is that we're >> trying to understand markets and strategies. We don't have to talk about valuation. I think it's a good company. >> I I have no I have no idea. I I think that uh you would like let's go let's go actually line by line with their with with uh >> what what's the market cap what's the PE ratio I think that's the biggest question >> Q1 2025 there's a lot of growth there only 13% organic it's mostly a roll up but the Q1 2025 was uh about 270 million and they lost 120 million Q126 they're now at 625 and they pivoted to profitability like 27 million. So call it $2.5 billion run rate and the valuation I think is somewhere between 18 and 20 billion. So >> about eight times revenues. The bull case is this is a SAS company at a decent valuation with great brands, consumer brands, 88% recurring revenue. The bare case is that it's highly levered. It's four it's its debt is four times which is pretty large leverage. Um, and I'm trying to figure out I like the company because I love these brands and I love the idea of consolidating the back end. >> What do you love about what do you love about the brands though? Is it just like nostalgic for you? >> Cuz I look at these brands and I'm like I've used almost every one of them once over the years. >> You have since churned, >> but I I churned and I don't like I like going and working with a company where I know that the founder is spending 14 hours a day obsessing. I think the problem here is that you're an early adopter and you move on to the next thing to early adopt. I look at it and I say they're making a single dollar from AOL. That dollar is going to be around a thousand years from now because if they're still able to make money from a company that's so old and like they've already faced disruption from cloud, disruption from mobile, disruption from AI is probably not going to hurt those companies either because these are very resilient. if they've made it through so many transitions, I feel like the the the risk of like getting eaten by the big labs or getting slopped by some competitor that just clones you with vibe coding, that's much more of a risk when you're a young company that's growing and everyone's like, "Oh, they're making a lot of money. We should copy that." No one's thinking, "Let's copy Vimeo. Let's copy AOL or whatever else they have in the portfolio." And as we've talked to some of the people that run those legacy brands, they're built on relationships at this point and advertiser partnerships. And it's not the same go to market motion that you see in some high growth hot startup in Silicon Valley in 2026. So I don't know. >> Let me give you another one. I want to get through two more before you guys start your daily three-hour podcast, which sounds like torture to me. >> Why don't we just stay Why don't we stay on and you open the show with us. here. >> Polygamy pol wait podcast polygamy. So >> something >> the uh curious on your take on Snap and I this this comment is pregnant with a or this question is pregnant with a comment. I think I'm actually thinking about buying some Snap. I think the biggest unlock in the tech market right now would be if Snap spuned Spectacles Group. Um >> that yeah that's the big looming question. >> Well yeah you have a business they did a one and a half billion in Q1. So they'll do somewhere north of six this year trading at a $7 billion market cap. Again, it has like the ult if if Zuck has like a, you know, a 30 to 50% discount on his business because he's kind of erratic and just does what he wants. Like, you know, Snap has like, you know, maybe uh 80% discount on it because >> stocks down 93% in five years. Yeah, I'm saying 80% relative to where maybe maybe it should trade. Y >> um >> still zero marginal cost and network effect. So even if someone vibe codes a direct competitor, it's not going to have the liquidity pool of content. I agree with you. Um but the question is people have been asking for the spa the specs spin out for years. Is it going to happen or company? We don't know. >> Yeah, it's hard it's hard to tell. There is something where I think you get in that seat and you enjoy the life of being the CEO of this company and handsome billionaire model. >> Yeah. >> You think it's okay? >> I think it might be good. >> It's like being the dictator. It's like the the dictator of an online nation of of you know Zoomers. >> Yeah. It's a pretty good gig. >> Yeah. And I think if you're a shareholder, you just have to know that you're going into that. Support for the show comes from Jevity. Most people who get blood work done hit the same wall. Results come back. You get a nod and everything looks fine. And then you go about your day. But what happens when something does come up and you're still left to your own devices? Your blood work flags something, but now you need to figure out what to do about it. Jevity was made to close that gap. It's the first all-in-one precision health membership. As a member, you get access to a dedicated threeperson care team, including a functional health expert and longevity clinician. They review your blood work and build a plan personalized to you. Then, whatever you need, such as supplements or prescriptions, are shipped to your door every month. And their full body testing goes beyond blood work. For example, you can get gut microbiome analysis, genetic testing, cancer screening, and more. It's testing plus clinical support plus intervention allin-one membership. Here's some data. 93% of members see meaningful improvements from their first to second round of blood work. Right now, listeners can get 20% off membership at govity.com/proofg. That's goggi.com/propg for 20% off your membership. Another thesis I want to test the independence that's supposedly in your acquisition. I've never seen a flipping like what's happened with OpenAI and Anthropic. I've never seen Hertz or Avis overtake Hertz the way Anthropic has overtaken a Open AI. Your thoughts? >> Didn't happen with Apple and Microsoft a bunch >> that it didn't happen in 90 days. I my sense is this has been the most vicious number two to number one I've ever seen in the corporate world. And you may not even agree that they've superseded them. Thoughts? >> I mean I I I think that's clear on the ARR numbers that have been leaking out. Um >> what are those? I haven't seen those. >> I mean, there was a like a lot of this comes from like complete anons, but uh I think >> yeah, the state the state of the state of news is like very funny where like one account with 60 followers on X will just say something and then that that suddenly has taken us back. I I agree with you. It's it's one of the most remarkable stories in history. It's a story about >> the value of focus, right? like that that to me is the is the um it's it's uh we had never seen be because I I think it will be imprinted in like we're in a situation where like the market for intelligence is growing so quickly that there's so many companies that are doing well like the number seven codegen startup is like crushing it and raising it like a billion multi-billion dollar valuation because because like there's just so much demand and so that is part of it and then I think this story will be imprinted on a bunch of founders today which is that like don't get complacent you got to focus like you have to respect your you have to give ultimate respect to all of your competitors and I think there people couldn't imagine something like this because it hadn't h like it hadn't happened before so it wasn't >> or at least at least in this way like historically it's like well you had a few years to see this kind of thing coming. So like ultimately both companies are doing incredibly well. They both have amazing products and I'm I'm we again we are glad that uh I am just glad that that uh both these companies are here in the United States. Uh and and that we have a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth and a seventh and an eighth that are here in the US as well. Um I do have one one for you. I want to get your take. I don't know if you saw Masa's slides from last week. He put out a new deck. Uh and he had some uh he had some pretty interesting slide. He says he's talking about the value of like soft how you should value Soft Bank. He says what matters is not the eggs, it is the goose itself. Because he's saying like SoftBank is being valued at three eggs, but the goose is not valued. And he says, "What matters is not the eggs. It is the goose itself. The true value >> is the power to keep >> the power of memes." >> Yeah. Do you think because he had another slide and I'm going to pull this up. He had a slide in 2019 that just said SPG shareholder value and it had a bunch of unicorns and an arrow that said toward further growth. And I think the stock is up like 5x since then. Uh he said it was because of AI traffic that's why it's going to go up. So, he's actually had some pretty good calls, but the real question that we've been debating is like, is he aware of the power of just like silly goofy memes? Because it it does pretty accurately convey like the idea he's trying to get across, which is like, you're valuing me based on my eggs, but why aren't you valuing the goose that's producing those eggs? But >> ridiculous. >> I'm curious what you think. >> Whenever I read his decks, I think, okay, you know, our uncle's back on meth. I don't I I don't I just don't get them. And I'm convinced that he's actually an agent of the CIA who's been charged with transferring oil capital back from the Gulf to America with crazy ideas that PIFF and Mubalaba fund and then transfers it to US entrepreneurs. So I think he's an agent of the CIA charged with reallocating capital or repatriating capital back from the Gulf. >> We have a tinfoil hat in the uh in in our studio. >> If you were here if we were here well >> no that's the problem. goose. >> I'm listening. >> The goose. >> He's the goose. He's the golden goose. He's our He's our golden goose. Uh I just think I just have to give him I I I give him credit for for putting together the silliest slide ever in 2019 that that you know, years and years, you know, four years before Chad GBT that he was like AI traffic is going to cause our stock to go up a lot. And he called it perfectly. >> Yeah. So, last question. You guys have been very generous. First off, let me say I'm really happy for you guys. What are you doing with all this money? And you can't say nothing. And I never really thought about the money. Like, give me >> Have you heard of a Nissan Morano Cross Cabriolet? It's a convertible SUV of them. >> No. Mo uh we It's a It's a process. I think next house for most of us. >> Well, I would say this. When I started working when I started working >> when I started working on companies like all like >> all I wanted was a was a was a like a fourbedroom house in a fourbedroom h I mean I just wanted a fourbedroom house in California. >> Yeah. So 10 off. >> No, no. Yeah. Well, it's crazy, but no, I think I was lucky to to have built, you know, built my first company and done done well with that. And so I think we're we started the show doing it for the love of the game. Like John and I, we get off the show, like we get in the car to go home, we call each other, we just keep doing the show. Well, we just like we we genuinely just love talking about this stuff and it's uh it's a blessing to be able to do it every day. >> Yeah, that comes through. And you guys you guys are both dads. How how old are your kids? >> I have a 5-year-old and then twin two-year-olds basically >> Vietnam. >> Exactly. Which is why the money is odd because the things I want money can't buy. You know, like you want time with your kids, you want peace and quiet, you want to end a tantrum gracefully, you want to educate the 5-year-old properly, you want to, you know, get better at chess and not win by too much of a margin, but win every once in a while. Right. Exactly. These things are important and money can help, but it's a it's a small piece of the puzzle in my >> Yeah. I think I think we we built the we built the business around our family life. We see our kids. We see our kids every single day. I have a four-year-old and a 2-year-old and another on the way. And um >> but a third on the way. >> We spend a lot of >> third on the way. >> Good for you guys. >> We're going to have six between us. >> That's another edge that we have. Like we have something to work for. Most male podcasters don't have children if you look at the top of the charts. >> I didn't think of that. They don't have kids. So, uh, what a lot of young men listen to this podcast, what advice would you have for for guys who are just about are kind of thinking about having kids? >> I don't know. Early on, we we recorded in in that test episode that we uh did, we we we were kind of playing this exaggerated character and Jordy had this quote where he was quoting Deval Ravocant saying, "Work like a lion." And it was very funny because the way he delivered that line was was like so overthe-top pathy and thoughtful and so like high on his own supply with that line. But I do think that's a little bit of the story here. >> You mean Nval was >> No, you you were you were playing like an exaggerated character. >> Oh, I was in I was in character. >> You were in character and you were and you were saying work like a lion like you had coined it even though it was clearly a quote. And it was anyway um I do think that's a little bit of the story here which is that we there's a lot of time to explore a lot of time to build skills in a bunch of different areas. And like we didn't even really go into this but I spent like years learning every single piece of camera equipment every single piece of microphone equipment and all the different tools that we needed lighting. So that on day one I was able to bring that and then coach the team and hire great people that could advance that. And now they know a lot more than me but it took a while. I also spend a lot of time programming. So if we have someone on who's working on a software company, which most of people are, I'm a little bit more fluent there. Jordy had done all sorts of things in branding and and you know, marketing strategies and and actually building fintech company and he's deep in crypto and there's all these different areas that came together through these like little sprints that finally came together into like the right. >> Yeah. I think I think uh credit to credit to our our spouses like at least personally like my my wife is an amazing entrepreneur. She actually she went to NYU and would would sit in on your class. >> Oh yeah. >> Back in the day. She never she said she could never like actually get into the class, but uh she would just go. Um, but we, you know, we, you know, once we had kids, we established like one of us, like we were like, it's time to divide and conquer because if we're going to be, if we're going to be great parents and and uh have a great like it's hard to it's hard to excel at two things at once. And so the focus was like you're going to my wife made, you know, sacrifices with her career, which was to just because she could be, you know, raising venture and she's invested in a ton of great companies and all that stuff. She locked in on on the household and I locked in on on work and we had very clearly established that at least for a few years that was going to be how we were going to operate. And that allowed me to be the best version of myself and be, you know, overly obsessed with the work that we were doing. And it allowed our kids to to be uh to get all the love and attention that that they need that they've needed to thrive. And that means when I go home over the last few years, it's like I get to be there with them. I get to be present. I get to be as great of a dad as I can. But I wasn't worried about like, oh, what what what exact preschool are they going to or or when is music class? Like we had fully divided and conquered. And again, that's like a temporary sacrifice. Um, but has delivered, you know, great results for us. And I think you only get that by like really clearly establishing that versus just assuming things or or hoping that that it'll end up that way. The other the other piece of advice for young people is probably around like where to live, where to go. There are these cities that are complete vortexes. San Francisco is like this AGI vortex right now. It's a vortex for venture capital and startup energy. And I'm extremely glad that I moved to San Francisco right after college because I was exposed to a ton of different aspects of the industry just naturally. I don't think I would have done well if I had stayed there permanently. I think that by leaving San Francisco, it gave me a completely different perspective on the world. That has then allowed me to succeed even in tech, even though I'm outside of the vortex and and more than anything, it's just good for my life personally and my well-being, I think. But um I think that as a young person there's uh there definitely is some a lot of value to if you want to be in finance going to New York City is probably good early on burning the ships. My first I lived in a I I lived in a one-bedroom apartment. The tenderloin with three people. It was $1,500 a month. We it was complete squalor, but we were in the mix and we got exposed to a lot of things and that was extremely valuable. And I think that uh just putting yourself in the action very early on, no matter what the cost, if you're if you're early in your career, can have a lot of benefits. >> John Kugan and Jordy Hayes are the creators of TBPN, a popular daily show covering the biggest stories in tech and business. I'm really I'm h it's it's your story is such a nice story. You're impressive young men who did something you're good at and you had a great exit. But more than anything, I'm just really glad that young, talented men are having a lot of kids. I think it's wonderful to have kids being raised in households, loving, secure households with very present fathers. So, I I think that's actually the nicest thing about your story. Very much appreciate your time today and congratulations on your success. >> Thanks for having us, Scott.