I see a large IPM on the horizon.
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The place of 30,000 double.
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Trust the experts here by we are extra founder Melod.
I see multiple journalists on the horizon. Stand by.
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Blaze.
Double blaze.
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Finally, rock is team deathmatch.
We are experts.
Triple blades.
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Hardy clearing order inbound.
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Strike one.
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Activate go to retra mode.
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I see more and more journalists on the horizon.
So, you're watching TVBAPN. Today is Friday, March 20th, 2026. We are live from the TVN Ultra, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital. Let me tell you about ramp.com. Time is money. Save both. He's used corporate cards, bill accounting, and a whole lot more all in one place. Uh, we have a massive show. Two in-person guests today. Let's pull up the linear lineup. Linear of course system for modern software development. Enterprise 70% of enterprise workspaces on linear are using agents. We have RF Ken Moore from the men's wear industry insider.
No, he just is a men'sware.
He's an insider of the men's wear. Uh Mitch Lee from ArcBoats is coming on. Bucky Moore is coming in person from Lightseed. Steve Huffman, the co-founder and CEO of Reddit coming on. Then Quaid from Bezel who you know and love. He's been on the show many times. Anker Jane from Builts coming on to talk about uh credit cards, consumer cards, all all the fintech stuff he's working on. And then Michael Katzios from the White House. He's the science and technology adviser. He's coming on to talk about the new policy proposals that the White House has put forward around artificial intelligence. Um but first, I wanted to chat more about the breaking news from yesterday. Jeff Bezos is in talks to raise a hundred billion dollars for an AI manufacturing fund. Uh there was a funny post that was like, "He has $200 billion. Why does he need to raise more money?"
No conviction. No conviction.
No, it was funny. It was like it defin this this broke containment and got into kind of the anti-capitalist part of X. And they were like, "Wait, why are you asking people for money? You have all the money."
Uh but of course he wants to let other people in on the action. Well, I want to let it I I do wonder what his like GP commit will be.
That's what I was saying yesterday. I was like I would expect him to be like, "Yeah, I'm good for 20."
Yeah. You know, 20 or 30 or something like that. I don't know. Maybe he'll go even longer. Um but in general, I think the I think the idea of going around the globe because he's an international person at this point, uh hoovering up money from all over uh different sovereign wealth funds and then deploying that to help rebuild the American manufacturing base is a good thing. Um, I wrote about it today in the newsletter tbpn.com. And I also tried to uh, you know, do some searching and think about like what do you actually buy for hundred billion dollars, what does a portfolio look like? If it's a private equity style roll up, uh, if you're just taking out the market caps and you're sort of assuming the debt and continue to operate the business but then bring more efficiency to bear, uh, what are some of the top options or just what are the some of the options look like? The other thing is I saw a very viral post about someone that seemingly read the headline and thought like don't you have enough money already? Why do you have to buy all these companies and fire? Like they saw automation and they just assume like job loss and when I look at this I'm like okay if he's successful we will you know create uh we will actually start adding a bunch of new manufacturing jobs which we've been shedding.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, so headline numbers funny. If he had done 99 billion or 101 billion, I don't think people would make be making as many SoftBank comparisons, but of course, as soon as you hear 100 billion dollars uh for a mega fund, you instantly got soft. He's got vision. It's a vision fund for America. I like the idea of an American Soft Bank of an American vision fund. So, I'm generally pro. Uh and uh but of course people are going to make comparisons to SoftBank which has had some huge winners and a few black eyes. Uh Moss is a highval guy. Uh he's been the world's richest man briefly during the dotcom boom. It was reported that he was worth more than Bill Gates. It was pretty temporary, unclear exactly how much and of course there was no liquidity at the time. Uh but he's also held the crown for the man who lost the most money in human history after losing $76 billion in two years. You're supposed to do the WW for that, but he made it all back.
I I was preemptively hitting it.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah, he he did make he did make it all back. Uh he's made almost hundred billion dollars twice. I think maybe there was a moment when he had he had the title of making hundred billion dollars twice. One on Alibaba and then the second one on ARM. Uh he's made money on Nvidia and lots of other things. Um but uh the idea of an American soft bank, especially one focused on revitalizing American manufacturing, I like that idea. Um there are a million reasons why this is important project job creation, economic independence, national security, etc. Uh and you might just get more cool stuff like as manufacturing gets cheaper like the tools that you use, the cars that you drive, the washing machine in your home, uh the tires on your cars, uh all these different things get better, not just cheaper, but actually unlock new capabilities and new things that people people enjoy. And so I'm I'm I'm in favor of more manufacturing, more more economic development basically. Um I don't think the project is done by any means. Uh and so the question about like you know Jeff Bezos's role like he's a great operator and I think he's the right person to take the reigns and actually deliver here. So like Masa, Jeff Bezos has been through the ups and downs of the dot boom and bust. At one point, Jeff Bezos lost 85% of his net worth in like two years, but he made it back.
He did make it back and more. Uh he was worth like eight or nine billion and got down to his last 1 billion basically because of the stock drop in in Amazon. Uh but he built it but he but he not only kept Amazon alive, which I think everyone knows that, you know, Amazon went up during the com bubble and then crashed uh and then built back up. Uh but he also kept Blue Origin alive during that time because he's founded Blue Origin in 2000. Wow.
Before the crash. I didn't know that.
Yeah. Before the crash. So he was.
Yeah. So I I I some reason I assume I I assume that Blue Origin was just mimetic with Elon.
No. No. No. He did it earlier. Wow.
Uh and so he so he kept Blue Origin alive. And can you imagine how stressful it is? You're like, "Okay, I'm worth 10 billion. Certainly, I can have a little side project as a treat. And you're like, "Okay, I just lost 85% of my money.
I deserve I deserve a I deserve a side project that loses 20 million a month."
Exactly. Yeah. I don't know how much they were, but like But that doesn't seem unreasonable, but he was able to keep it going. Uh, of course, Blue Origin was a slow story all the way up until like last year when they landed New Glenn. Um and uh and so uh he kept both alive and he's never given up on the project Blue Origin that always has felt behind SpaceX for two the two decades that it's been operating but is now sort of unlocking new capabilities and is feels more real turtle mode.
Yeah, turtle mode for sure, but it's working. Uh and so like regardless of the fact that uh you know SpaceX is still ahead of Blue Origin, you have to give him credit for like operating that company efficiently and actually delivering a product that we all saw go up and come back. And so like the rockets did go up and land and come back and he's delivered people to space and back. Uh and so he's he's he's like achieved the goal and not lost all the money and not put the company in jeopardy. And so like clearly there's some operational uh narrative violation.
It is a narrative violation. What makes Bezos uniquely equipped to take on this type of project is the nature of his business over the last few decades. So, he's never really had the zero marginal cost luxuries afforded to other pure play internet founders. You think about Mark Zuckerberg, it's always been except with his ads business.
Yeah, he has that now, but that's very new um for a long time for very real contributor. a very real contributor now, but even even then uh it is much thinner margin than a Google or a Meta and it always has been because they've always operated in the real world and they've been competing with Walmart and Barnes & Noble and and Romans and all the other the big gross margins scare me. Yeah, he's always had thin thin margins until AWS really AWS was the first like okay this is like a monster cash cow and even AWS doesn't have 80% gross margins you know it is it is uh it is a a cash cow but uh it's a different shape and of course you go back to the Jeff Bezos lore and he had the door desk and the whole business was very scrappy for a long time uh and um Amazon's just always interfaced with the physical world so it's been even though it's a software company and a tech company it's always interfaced with the physical world uh and they've had to focus on operational efficiencies to scale. In 2012, Amazon bought KA systems which turned into Amazon Robotics and that's a big risk buying a big company and we think that you know if this turns into if this hundred billion dollar fund turns into sort of a private equity rollup you're going to ask the question can Bezos buy a company for 1 billion 5 billion 10 billion 50 billion who knows um and operate it and scale it and actually continue to deliver value and he certainly did that with Ka Robotics which turned to Amazon robotics which delivered over a million robots that are deployed across the operations network. So from fulfillment centers, warehouse automation, inventory flow, last mile delivery, all of these require tight integration between hardware and software to run smoothly. Bezos clearly loves this stuff and you can actually see it when you look at his face whenever he gives a tour of an Amazon warehouse or an Blue Origin facility. He's just beaming and uh he's absolutely obsessed with with this technology and and and the physical world. Um, and so the question I had was like, what should he buy?
Yeah. The other thing is like, you know, seeing all the different volume across Amazon and being like, well, it'd be pretty convenient if that was made here or this was made here or at least the some of the components were made here and it wasn't, you know, you didn't just have assembly here.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, there isn't I I hadn't considered that narrative, but there is a different flow where uh you're he's not sitting there being like, "Great, I love that so much of our volume is having to be shipped or flown across the ocean."
Ton of that. Yeah. And then also he's seen attacks from Teimu and Shien and Alibaba and AliExpress and a whole bunch of direct from manufacturing plant to customer and how do you respond to that? Maybe getting into the deeper in the supply chain makes sense. Although I'm not entirely sure that there's so little reporting at this point. It's it's the only line is that uh he'll be buying manufacturing companies. So there's a lot in the supply chain. So I wanted to dig through some stuff that could potentially be in the crosshairs for Bezos. Uh the first is Lear. They manufacture seats and electronic systems for the automotive industry. Um and a lot of these companies have huge revenues and small market caps. So Leer did uh 23 billion in 2025 revenue. The market cap is around 5 billion and so the business is operationally complex. I mean on a on a PE ratio it trades at like I think 13 price to earnings and so like you have these high revenues because you're in the manufacturing business but you low margin but yeah and this has been some of the concern around VCs investing in manufacturing businesses. Yep. and and just a general concern that uh you know they might today be getting valued on a revenue multiple y but as they get to the public markets people will expect them to be valued on on earnings and that is very different story.
Yeah. Uh Lear interestingly not the maker of the Lear Jet which sold to the Gates company which is not affiliated with Bill Gates. I was like is there a link here but there's not. Uh but Leerjet and Lear are two different companies although they both make physical things. Uh but there's a there's an opportunity here for the Bezos thesis that we are sort of you know gesturing towards. Um the business is operationally complex and AI can be applied across plant scheduling, supplier forecasting, visual inspections and more. This whole thesis of like the colors get less blue. There's upskilling that happens in the facility and you're able to produce more uh at scale. Uh Borg Warner is another example. They're a scaled auto supplier. 14 billion in 2025 revenue. Market cap is 9.5 billion. They're more focused on propulsion and power related systems. Uh they literally make uh turbochargers for internal combustion engines, although they've uh they they they have shifted their business a lot to be focused on electronic components. uh both in terms of making BA battery packs, motors, uh but they're actually already getting into selling turbine generator systems for data centers. They're part of the AI boom already. Uh and there's uh more opportunities to grow into different industrial power applications. Hexel is another company. They're the a leading producer of carbon fire carbon fiber reinforcements and resin systems for aerospace. They're guiding to two billion in revenue, but the market cap is five billion. So, a little pricier on a price p price to sales ratio. Uh, here's a fun one. Goodyear. Not only do you get blimps, which is got to be important if you're trying to go blimp for blimp with Sergey Brin. You just just jump to the front of the line. It's only a 1.8 revenue multiple criminal.
Yeah, it's so the market cap for Goodyear is 1.8 billion and revenue was 18 billion. So, they're they're trading at a point somewhere out there. There's like a VC funded tire company.
It's like 100x revenue and they're like we're going to go through a 1000x multiple compression over the next decade. Yes, you will. Uh but uh Goodyear's sort of the classic AI for manufacturing case.
They got to focus they got to get investors thinking about their their advertising blimp monopoly. Yep.
And scaling that business. Yep.
Quality control is really critical. Uh there's opport opportunities for downtime optimization. So if you can have better systems that limit downtime, you can produce more tires. The tire market is extremely competitive. You see Chinese tires on cars more and more. And so these are thin thin thin margin companies. And that's why the multiple so low. But uh getting good scariest scariest moment of my life in a car. Chinese Chinese tires. Old Chinese tires.
Uh but but you know a lot of people go in they say I need new tires. Just give me whatever's cheapest. And so if you're competing on price and you're a lowcost supplier, uh, every dollar counts. Uh, on the bigger side, you have Rockwell Automation. I don't know if you ever seen those videos for the Rockwell Turbo and cababulator. Have you ever seen these? We should pull this up. Let me let me find discombobulator.
It's it's one of the best like uh like uh you know, marketing videos. Uh, turbo incabulator. Let me find this. The Rockwell retrocabulator. I got it here. We'll we'll we'll watch this. This is a two-minute video and we'll see if you can Yeah. Yeah. Any of these uh Yeah, we got these. Uh if we can pull this up and uh let's let's play.
Here at Chrysler Motors Automotive Operations, research has been proceeding to develop a line of heavy duty transmissions that establishes new standards for reliability, durability, and quality. With customer needs as our primary focus, work is proceeding on the crudely conceived idea of an instrument that would not only supply inverse reality.
I think this is I think this is Yeah, I think this is Chrysler's like joke. Let's play the one that I that I shared from Rockwell. Uh this is this is the the good folks at Rockwell Automation who was a cool video headquarters research has been proceeding to develop a line of automation products that establishes new standards for quality technological leadership and operating excellence with customer success as our primary focus. Work has been proceeding on the crudely conceived idea of an instrument that would not only provide inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but would also be capable of automatically synchronizing Cardinal Graham meters. Such an instrument comprised of Dodge gears and bearings, Reliance electric motors, Allen Bradley controls and all monitored by Rockwell software is Rockwell Automation's retro encabulator. The retro. Now basically the only new principle involved is that instead of power being generated by the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it's produced by the modial interaction of magneto reluctance and capacitive interactance. Passive interaction. The original machine had a base plate of prefamulated amulite surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings were in a direct line with a panometric fan. Panometric. The lineup consisted simply. just it's just like such a funny in joke for electrical engineers because it's just a whole bunch of like slop basically like oh none of those terms mean anything. Uh but uh it really uh I don't know startup good startup launch video concept.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It really I mean it it it helps you like detect like are you inroup out groupoup basically. Uh very very fun. But uh they group what well were you able to clock it or were you like oh that sounds good. You know I mean it sounded silly.
It sounds silly. Um, so Rockwell Automation's on the bigger side. Uh, but they sit right at the intersection of factory automation, software and control. So although that video is a joke, Rockwell does uh does work on on factory automation already. So the thesis with this one is that uh the business is already already dedicated to industrial automation and so it's less of a turnaround, but it's a control point for pushing AI to thousands of other factories. So you're deeper in the supply chain. Uh it's expensive at 40 billion but potentially in the budget. Um do you think there's a world where he just buys a Ford motor company? Obviously I mean he wouldn't he would have to lever up. Yeah. But what is Ford now? I thought it's 45. But but I'm not but he's not going to just drop like raise 100 billion and then and then buy a company for entirely with equity. I I I feel like it will be deeper in the supply chain than a brand, but I don't know. It's possible. It's possible.
But he might say, isn't he already a big investor in Riven?
So, like looking deeper into that supply chain. And there's a few other car companies that've been been involved in. I just don't know that there's uh that like that's where the big opportunity is. It might be deeper in in the supply chain like bending the metal that goes into the bumper that this and that like you know, it's 12 steps deep. it's more boring. Um, but it's even thinner margins, less, you know, brand risk and brand value, but, uh, really focused on, you know, applying that actual like commercial excellence. Um, uh, but but I mean truly like that that your good your guess is as good as mine. Uh, there's very little uh there's very little to go off of. Also, there's a link to project Prometheus, which is the AI project. And so there's a chance that like this whole project is more aligned with the software singularity software only singularity and you wind up with you know buying a lot of things but everything's in line with like more data centers and this is more of like let's put the hundred billion dollars to work towards building you know compute capacity for projects. That feels like not what we're hearing, but uh it is it is one wonder if he would do anything on on like the solar side, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be interesting. Uh and then there's also the the option that we get some sort of Elon style mega corp with Blue Origin involved at some point like you know XAI and SpaceX merged. It's possible that Blue Origin and this vehicle come together with Project Prometheus in some in some way and then that goes public as a new entity. uh a lot of these uh he's he's actually mentioned the whole space data center thing before uh I think a a while ago wasn't it like more than a year ago I don't think yeah I think they also just filed something with the FCC yeah for the new cloud yeah it was like 50,000 satellites I think yeah so so he wants like a direct Starling competitor and so when you think about the full AI stack if he's really you know off off planet uh you know pilled uh and thinks he can get thinks he can get there even if it's like year or two behind or I guess what's the timeline for his Starling competitor? That would be like three years behind, four years.
Yeah. I mean, for for for the moon, he's supposed to be ahead, right?
So, maybe this will all go on the moon. Well, either way, it's a big move from an experienced operator with lots of opportunity ahead and it'll be fun to follow along.
And I'm glad he's back in the game in a big way, not just doing random, you know, side projects.
Bottle service or bottle service.
Yes. He's got to be spending more time and energy securing America's future than securing bottle service.
Well, you know, I mean, the guy can take a weekend off, but one photo from his weekend flies a lot further than, you know, he could be completely locked in and just grinding 80 hours and then he goes gets bottle service just one time. He was just there for 30 minutes on the yacht.
Not maybe, you never know. Anyway, let's uh let's let's first tell you about Gusto, the unified platform for payroll benefits and HR built to evolve with modern small and mediumsiz businesses. And let's also tell you about Figma. No matter where your idea starts, Figma make clog codeex or a sketch. The Figma canvas is where ideas connect and products take shape. Build in the right direction with Figma. And let's go over to Jensen on the All-In podcast.
Engineer at the end of the year. I'm gonna ask him how many token how much did you spend in tokens and that person said $5,000 I will go ape something else.
If that if that $500,000 engineer did not consume at least $250,000 worth of tokens I am going to be deeply alarmed. Okay. And this is no different than one of our chip designers who says, "Guess what? I'm just going to use paper and pencil. I don't think I'm going to need any CAD tools." This is a real paradigm shift to start thinking about these allstar employees. It almost reminds me of of what we learned in the NBA when LeBron James started spending a million dollars a year just on his health of his body like maintaining it.
Here he is at age 41 still playing.
It really is, hey, if these are incredible knowledge workers, why wouldn't we give them superhuman abilities?
Where does that go? If we if we extrapolate out two or three years from now, what is the efficiency of that allstar at an NVIDIA and what they're able to accomplish, what do they look like?
Well, first of all, things that that that um wow, this is too hard. That thought is gone. Uh this is going to take a long time. That thought is gone. Uh we're going to need a lot of people. That thought is gone. This is no different than in this in the last industrial re revolution. Somebody goes, "Boy, that building really looks heavy." Nobody says that. Nobody. Wow, that mountain looks too big. Nobody says that.
Everything that's too big, too heavy, takes too long, those thought, those ideas are all gone.
You're reduced to creativity. That's right. What can you come up with?
Exactly. Which means now the question is how do you how do you work with these agents?
Well, it's just a new way of doing computer programming. In the f in the past, we code. In the future, we're going to we're going to write ideas, architectures, specifications. We're going to organize teams. We're going to give them We're going to help them define how to evaluate the definition of good versus bad. What's the what does it look like when something is a great outcome? How to iterate with you? How to brainstorm. That's really what you're looking for.
Uh the internet is having a lot of fun with this. New Nuno says, "Guy that sells shovels says you should spend 50% of your salary on shovels." Uh but of course uh Jensen's point is uh gen generally correct which is that you should give your best people a lot of leverage.
Yeah. I do wonder what the like leverage ratio is in other industries. Like if you're a crane operator and you're making I don't know if you should give him the best possible crane.
Yeah. Like like is it possible that that if you're operating a $10 million crane or something, I don't know how much a crane costs or like a or a cargo ship cargo ship that's that's fing oil across the world. Uh how much does that crew cost? And then how much does the ship cost? And then what's the depreciation on that ship? Because it might be like a hund00 million ship that will last 20 years. So you're looking at $5 million a year. And if the crew total cost of the crew is like 1 million, well then you're actually spending more on the capital asset than the underlying talent and you're getting like leverage on top of that. And for a long time, software engineering has not been that. It's been, you know, $100 worth of internet and a couple thousand dollars on a MacBook and a lot of open source software because you're using Python and Linux and these things. And um I mean I guess you could maybe burden like your cloud budget once you actually deploy the app. Like if you think about if you're a Facebook engineer or Instagram engineer, you could push a feature that consumes a ton of compute. But this is also going back to like the AI talent war where you get back into if you're if you're a you know elite software engineer and you're like look I'm gonna be cons I'm going to be I'm going to be in charge I'm going to be managing half a million dollars worth of token budget over the next year. Well I'm want comp that's higher than that or something like that. It'll be very interesting to see how the uh the the value works there. A reasonable ballpark for the annual cost of a fully loaded cargo ship is around4 to $18 million. So, including the cash operating cost plus the depreciation. So, I don't know. Um, yeah, the uh this certainly isn't like the first industry to be hit with something like that, but it'll be interesting to see how it changes. Um uh in other news, the US Department of Justice announced yesterday three charged with conspiring to unlawfully divert cutting edge US AI technology to China. The indictment unsealed today details alleged effort to evade US export laws through false documents staged dummy servers to mislead inspectors and convoluted trans shshipment schemes in order to obfuscate the true destination of restricted AI technology. China uh said John Eisenberg, assistant assistant attorney general for national security. These chips are the product of American ingenuity and NSD will continue to enforce our export control laws to protect that advantage. Uh so the company uh SMIC Super Micro Computer Inc.
co-founder they caught him they caught him red-handed.
His name's Wall-E. He's arrested today or yesterday. He personally holds half a billion dollars of super micro stock. Still risked it all. And now he's facing 30 years in federal prison. That is crazy. Uh who's charged with smuggling billions in Nvidia servers to China. Use Southeast Southeast Asian Shell Company to funnel two and a half billion in servers to Chinese buyers. 500 million worth shipped in just three weeks in spring of 2025. That's a lot. Two and a half billion in servers feels like enough for like a frontier training run. Like that's a big big uh that's a big push. He built thousands of fake dummy servers to fool US compliance auditors caught on surveillance camera using a haird dryer to swap serial number stickers. And so uh ox giggy says this man is a billionaire and was removing labels with a haird dryer personally. You're simply not grinding hard enough. There's always there's always a grind set lesson in any story.
Let's take this over to LinkedIn.
It's also notable because because the there's the export uh tax or tip that you know that you're trying to bring chips out of the country that the the the US government kind of flips over the square terminal and they say tip please 25%. So you're looking at at hundreds of millions of dollars if these were even if these were chips that were able to be exported. We were debating the the flipping the iPad around, asking for a tip earlier today and I think our our joint stance was if the iPad is turned around, you got a tip.
It's just the etiquette is that you got a tip. Uh but is there any is there anywhere where that line crosses and you say I can't I can't possibly push something.
Funny thing is asks for tips really on online orders.
Online orders. Wait, but there will be a human delivering it or No, there's two separate tips.
There's there's the the person in the store who puts the things in the bag and then there's the delivery person. Yeah.
And they're as they they they flip it over twice.
Yeah. The game theory of this stuff is always hard because uh I feel like I don't know there's regulations on like taxes on tips, but it's very unclear if companies actually funnel how they distribute the tips. Like are you tipping the person? Are the tips grouped together? Were your tips pulled when you were uh a valet?
So even if you did a great job at at the hotel, the valet, they pool.
Bell staff, the people that like take you down to your room do not do not pool. And that was just the rules.
Oh, it's because I might be the one who parks the car. You might be the one who gets it. Well, in a in a dynamic in a dynamic where you have a bunch of valets that are waiting for cars, it would be a bad experience for the guest if the valet are like they see a nice car pull in and they're like fighting over themselves.
To deliver a service, right? It should just be like whoever's available should deliver the best possible service. Whereas Bell work is much more one-on-one. It's like I'm kind of your guide on the property. I'm going to like, you know, you you might have the person's cell phone. They might be texting you, etc. Interesting.
And so it makes more sense to not pull.
Well, tip your export control, tip your federal government.
I did there there I did have a funny story where there was a guy uh a beanire uh who used to come to the property and everyone knew that every every single thing the word we still have we haven't successfully kind of weld it into existence.
I think we're the I think we're the only people.
It wasn't We didn't come up with this term. It was delivered to us and then we appropriated it.
Um anyway, there was a guy who would come to the property. Any single thing he got help with on the property, he would tip he would tip a hundred. And so what it did cause chaos be like I'd love to refill your diet. be like waiting around like trying to be in the right spot to open a door because they knew it was it was a bit it got a bit out of I saw I saw a piece of alpha on Instagram reels that suggested that you tip the front desk person when you're checking in before you check in cuz you Yeah, that always feels like a bribe, but it is the right move. So, this is a big thing in Vegas, right? You're supposed to put it in between when you give them the card.
Oh, I saw this. Yeah, you stack the credit card and the ID and you put the $100 bill in there.
deliver that then then they have plausible reliability and they can be like oh like here you go or they can be like okay thank you and I'm upgrading you and I think if at least this person on Instagram was making the case that if you if you uh average out your tipping $100 for every room and you're buying like a $400 room but you get a $1,000 room upgrade every the only durable alpha is like you you want to tip before the service occurs.
Yes. If you tip the valet when they they bring you your car, yes, you're How do they know what kind of service?
So, if you're ordering at Starbucks and you want to make sure that they're going to enter your order correctly and get your name right, you got to tip up front and then say what your order is.
Walk up to the counter, say, "Flip it over. Flip it over. I'm tipping you first. Now, let's start the transaction." Anyway, uh when a broker who had bought Nvidia powered servers from the Southeast Asian company walk up to the walk up to the counter and say, "What's your tempo address?" Yes. Yes. Send him a machine payment. Yes. Automatically. uh uh when a when a broker who had bought Nvidia powered servers from the Southeast Asian company sent uh Sunny a text message containing a link to an announcement about Chinese nationals being arrested for smuggling AI chips into China. Sunny allegedly responded with sobbing emojis.
Scroll up. Scroll up so people can see.
Morning Bruce says, "Hey man, you're probably going to jail." Super Mo co-founder cry cry cry emoji and scroll down and you'll see Nick Carter literally this your son has passed away. It's the warthog explosion. Oh, okay. I guess we can't find it. It's weird. My ex is different.
Jordan Schneider apparently was all over this back in August of last year. He said a super micro ad in the middle of a Reuters piece talking about how tracking devices and AI servers just priceless.
Whoa. What did Jordan know? What did Jordan know?
Steve Alpha in China Talk. Head head over to Chinat Talk and subscribe. Uh he's got some amazing content, some amazing interviews and uh is a good friend of the show. And so there's there's clearly secrets to be unveiled through the Chinat talk archive. Uh let me tell you about Crowdstrike. Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. Crowdstrike secures AI and stops breaches. And let me also talk it talk to you about Cisco critical infrastructure for the AI era. Unlock seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco.
Thank you to the Cisco team for sending us us these mini McLaren helmets. They're sponsor McLaren and uh we are honored.
Yeah, we love F1. Uh I'm sorry, but this super micro thing is awful, but parts of it are genuinely hilarious. They literally used a hairdry driver to move serial numbers from real servers to dummy servers to throw in a warehouse and got caught on camera and the pictures have actually leaked.
Yes, it's a red It's a red hair dryer. That is that is remarkable. Uh Trunk Fan says, "Do things that don't scale." Classic founder energy. Uh yeah, definitely definitely that. Uh what else is going on?
Let's pull up this video. I I don't know if uh if if bone 6 minutes long the legend bone but Chinese entrepreneur boasts receipt of 200 Nvidia H200 GPUs in Beijing despite the US export ban and then explains how he circumvents the export ban. Wow. In January posted by Beijing based entrepreneur Sudi on the Chinese social media platform Dhin has sparked sign.
Wait, it's literally you can see watch this. Watch this access to rewind for a second. You can see a super micro logo.
Entrepreneur Sudi on the Chinese social media platform Din has sparked significant discussion. In the video, Sue boasts of Oh my god, that's like the biggest logo for Super Micro ever.
Wow. Bone Bone is Bone is absolutely crazy.
And this is from January. No, I I I'm telling you like a lot of I I mean I'm I'm sure the the folks in the Justice Department were working on this like earlier than this, but a lot of times like legal action will happen like downstream of like YouTube drama videos like there will be some like you know fake guru who's out there like running a Ponzi scheme and people will be dunking on it on social media and then it will get picked up by the So almost a year and a quarter ago somebody responded to Bone and says it's SMIC packaged and Bone says do you think SMIC is smuggling chips?
Wow. And uh the the possible it's a family familyowned business in Taiwan. I won't be surprised if there are some family members who want to make this money by setting up fake shell entities and smuggling chips for business partners in China.
Um Kevin Quac has a good meme that everyone enjoyed. They expect one of us in the wreckage brother. And uh it's not Jensen. Uh the Bane Bane meme. Uh it's very very funny. And uh yeah, the the SMIC founder I believe was at GTC just a few days ago.
He was I I I saw a picture of him with Jensen.
Yeah. Until the music stops playing, I suppose. Let me tell you about Labelbox. RL Environments, Voice, Robotics, Evals, and expert human data. Labelbox is the data factory behind the world's leading AI teams. And let me also tell you about public investing for those who take it seriously. Stocks, options, bonds, crypto treasures, and more with great customer service. Speaking of going insanely hard, says Joe Weisenthal. I'm obsessed with the name of the rocket that will take the first Chinese astronauts to the moon. It's called the Long March 10, the next generation crude launch vehicle. Long March is a great great name for just locking in the lock in the lockin rocket. Lockin rocket.
What are we talking about?
Kimmy gate. What's going on here?
Finn was. So, Cursor LA yesterday announced Composer 2, which apparently was composed of other models. Uh, did very well on Cursor Bench. A little bit odd with the charts on the the higher cost, lower cost, but seemed like it did well for Cursor's use case. Cursor fans were satisfied, I suppose. Uh Finn says uh that he was messing around with the OpenAI base URL in cursor and caught this account/Kimmy K2 P5 RL the and then some other numbers. So computer so composer 2 is just Kimmy K2 with RL at least rename the model ID. Well, the co-founder I believe or someone from cursor chimed in and said um and said uh it is in fact RL Kimmy K2 and this is why openw weight rules we the consumers get new improved models with minimal cost. Uh and uh it's Lee Robinson who is teaching developers at cursor. Lee Robinson says yep consu cons composer 2 started from an open source base. We will do full pre-training in the future. That's an interesting claim. I'm I'm wondering if they even need to. I I I don't know that there's any problem with using an open source model here. Uh he says only one quarter of the compute spent on the final model came from the base. The rest is from our training. So they took whatever compute went into K2 and then they 4x that or 3xed it and and drop that into RL. This is why eval are very different. And yes, we are following the license through our inference partner terms. So, I don't know. They're they're they're staking out their claim. They're making uh their their their strategy known. Uh Jack Morris says, "People are taking this the wrong way. Look at it like this. Composer one, Deepseek, probably. Composer 2, Kimmy, certainly. Composer 3 likely will be the first frontier base model pre-trained from scratch for a single domain coding. It's a scary thought, isn't it?" And so, people are taking both sides. Tyler, do you have a do you have a take on this? Yeah, I mean I think it's like very reasonable to to do RL on a on like some open source pre-train like that's makes a lot of sense, right? Because like you can kind of imagine that there's this dynamic where there's a post about this we can talk about but um like so so there's all this stuff about how okay claude anthropic trains a model and then Chinese open source labs kind of distill on it.
Yeah. B, you know, the actual implementation of how they distill it doesn't maybe doesn't matter that much, but you're kind of getting some form of like a little bit that's open source. Yeah.
And then you take that and then you can do RL to do like a specific hill climb on on some tasks like just coding.
And that's like a very good way to make a good model, right? So Prime Intellect, their most recent release was, I think it was GLM like 4.5.
Yeah. And then so they take that base model and then you do RL on that and you get this really great model because like RL is like where you can get a lot of these like small gains on specific tasks which can build up over time. So I think it like makes a lot of sense. It's not like a big dunk to be like, oh my gosh, they were just doing RL on this open source model. Like that's a very valid strategy. Yeah, that like makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, I think the criticism of... I think they probably should have come out and said they did it and not tried to position it as like we did a... they said, uh, what was this, was our first continual pre-trained.
So they kind of like using that word, like it would have been easier to be like, we took world-class open source models and improved them in order to create a product. Yeah. And I think people would have been like totally fine with that, right? It's probably to like, I mean a lot of, you know, American labs have done this and said it and everyone's like, 'Wow, this is great. This is a great model. I'm, you know, excited to use it.'
Yeah. Didn't Perplexity at one point create like DeepSeek 1776 or something like that where they were like, 'We specifically made it more American.'
After, I will say after I...
Oh, after you did that. Okay. Yeah.
So funny that you did that. Um,
Zephyr says, 'Cursed Rose for treating Kimmy like Voldemort.'
Not, I don't want to say the name. He did in fact put it in a post.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, Accelerate Harder says the funny bit is training from scratch impresses investors and Twitter, but it makes little sense for most teams while strong open source options exist. So Cursor actually did the smart thing but pretended they did the dumb thing and it nearly worked. So more of maybe a comms issue than a business strategy issue, but, uh, you know, we'll, we'll...
Yeah, I think there are some concerns maybe about the actual license of the model because, you know, technically like you are supposed to say, uh, that it is like Kimmy.
Yeah, usually you have to pass through these things like Android is built on Linux and that's in the release.
Likely to be some deal behind the scenes that actually means it's fine. We really...
I also, I would not be surprised if people have just not read the Composer 2 license doc yet or something and like it's actually just fully disclosed there and then people are like, I found in the URL, it's like it was also in the terms of service, like it was just in plain text somewhere that you just didn't find, who knows. Uh, let's see. So 3x Ellie is giving some comps on this. So 3x the training compute gets you a 1% improvement on SWE-Bench Multilingual and 21% on Terminal Bench 2.0. But K2.5 is in non-thinking mode. If those benchmarks are useless, it's weird that they're the ones reported in the Cursor blog, then something is wrong. So, people are going back and forth. But ultimately, I think this, uh, you know, where the rubber meets the road is ARR. Like Cursor has been growing. Cursor continues to grow even while they've, you know, been like steamrolled and the vibes have shifted. Uh, if people love this and people are using the product and it's a growing business and the market is growing so fast that they have a great business, um, that seems like, uh, you know, business continues as usual. Let me tell you about the New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange IPO.
Let me also tell you about Vibe.co, where DTC brands, B2B startups, AI companies advertise on streaming TV, pick channels, target audiences and measure sales just like on Meta. So, uh, should we move on?
Delvegate. Another gate. Another gate. Delvegate. So what happened here? Where should we start?
Uh, anonymous Substack pops up.
Yeah, these anonymous Substacks are interesting. Deep Delver clearly created just to share this particular story. No idea who's behind it.
Yeah. Incredible. Incredibly professional.
In their presentation, right? They're putting backups of the article.
They're saying reporters who want to get in touch.
Uh, they're sharing a Proton. Um, and so yeah, they make an argument that, uh, Delve has had a bunch of kind of nefarious activity, kind of duplicating reports, not basically just like a lot of their value prop I think was on the fact that they were using AI and speed and...
Uh, yeah, it doesn't look good at all. I don't believe we've had Delve on the show, but I searched the calendar and I got one hit for Delve and it's in a summary, it's in a summary of Bill Gurley's book that says it's a page turner that delves deep into the surprising, often zigzagging career paths of exceptional performers. There's something inspiring on every page is a quote from the New York Times bestselling author that he gave to Bill Gurley's book and just sort of wound up in our notes. Anyway, uh, so what actually happened? What is Delve? Let's start there.
Delve does SOC 2 compliance and HIPAA compliance. They've worked for a number of companies like Lovable, Clue, etc., etc. And, uh, yeah, you can kind of, I mean the article is like very, very, very long, okay, and detailed, but it just goes into...
Aaron Griffith shares like the key claim. And Aaron Griffith, uh, of course is over at the New York Times, uh, and she quotes this: 'Delve built a machine designed to make clients complicit without their knowledge, to manufacture plausible deniability while producing exactly the opposite.' Um, and a lot of people are having fun with the fact that the Delve founders were in the 30 Under 30, which of course has, uh, surfaced a lot of people. I think there's, are there really 1,800 30 Under 30 every year? That's true. Oh,
Or is that like, uh, is that like DocuSign?
I thought you were saying, I thought you were saying All In.
Oh, maybe overall. I know that there's multiple categories.
I think it used to be that there was actually 30.
And then Forbes realized like, what if we scaled this?
Yeah, this is the plan. Scale the Midas list. 100 Midas lists so you get 10,000 VCs paying you top dollar to rank. It should be an auction. Uh, so Austin Peter Smith says, 'Uh, not going to lie, as we've been going through a grueling SOC 2 process with Vanta, one of our sponsors, I have felt a lot of FOMO reading about Delve customers getting it done in three weeks. If all this is true, then no more FOMO.' So, uh, he's Milo,
There are some things that you just can't short. Uh, Milo pulled up a post from the CEO from April of last year that says, uh, the CEO says, 'When you step into the office and your founding AI engineer is on his third all-nighter. His team never stopped shipping.' Milo says, 'Third all-nighter of what? Compliance. I don't want my security company shipping 3:00 a.m. code.' So, uh, a very unfortunate situation. Uh, not going to make any, any real assumptions, but, uh, this story is definitely not over.
Well, let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI. Own the data platform that powers it. And let me also tell you about Lambda. Lambda is the superintelligence cloud building AI supercomputers for training and inference that scale from one GPU to hundreds of thousands. Okay, so the snakes post.
We're not doing the snake post. We're skipping. No, I hate snakes. We're not doing, I refuse to pull up a snake post. We're skipping straight to Bruce Lee.
Okay, we're skipping way down. We're watching John watch a snake video. You want to close your eyes?
This video is definitely like terrible to watch.
It's also fake. It doesn't exist. I'm Irish. No snakes in Ireland. Snakes on TV. Snakes are banned. We got to do that bit where somebody attaches like a rope.
No, you will not do that to me. Under no circumstances will we do this. We will be watching Bruce Lee fight Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon because this is the way that we pay our respects to Chuck Norris who of course passed away at the age of I think 86. Norris. He was 86. And this is one of the most iconic fight scenes in movie history. Have you seen The Way of the Dragon?
Of course not. This scene was unique. It was set inside Rome's Colosseum and it was often cited as a turning point for how martial arts were portrayed on screen. Uh, particularly because they didn't use actors. So both Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris were legitimately high-level fighters. Norris was world karate champion at the time. They cast him in part because of that. Uh, and it has a much more grounded, credible feel as opposed to like previously more stylized, uh, kung fu films. And you can see this with the, uh, Bruce Lee actually directed and choreographed this himself. So Lee had full control. So the director didn't say anything. And they do these cool like punch-in shots. Look at this. So you're seeing nice wide. You can see exactly where he is. There's no body double. And then we're going to zoom in. And then what are we going to do again? We're going to zoom in again. And so we see his face and he's just sitting there waiting. Brilliant shot. So much time to breathe and understand and feel what he's feeling. The music, footsteps, breathing, clothing, movement, the cat, of course.
Yeah. No snakes. I don't think, I haven't watched the whole thing. The camera often stays wide. This stands in contrast to something like The Bourne Identity. Very like fast cuts, close-ups. Much easier to get something that feels intense when you're cutting and chopping. It's much harder to make something like this where you see the full body. You see, now we're in slow-mo. They're shotting back and forth. The empty arena gives a gladiatorial vibe, a sense of ritual combat. Visually frames the fight as mythic, not just physical. Bruce Lee is learning mid-fight. Norris has the edge with his rigid karate form, but Lee adapts. He loosens his stance, increases his mobility, switches his rhythm. We got to talk over it or else we get demonetized and banned. So, I got to figure it out. Uh, anyway, uh, we're very sad that he is no longer with us, but, uh, he leaves behind a massive legacy and a portfolio of films, including the, you know, TV shows as well, Walker, Texas Ranger, which was constantly on TV when I was a kid.
Well, rest in peace to a legend.
Let me tell you about AppLovin. Profitable advertising made easy with Axon. Get access to over 1 billion daily active users and grow your business today. And let me also tell you about Sentry. Sentry shows developers what's broken and helps them fix it fast. That's why 150,000 organizations use it to keep their apps working. So, Bernie Sanders had a conversation with Claude. Video was posted yesterday.
Justine Moore says he did the meme.
Bernie says, 'Pretend to be a scary robot.'
Yeah. Yeah. Taylor Lorenz chimed in this too. This reminds me of that tweet that was like typing 'I'm evil' into a Google Doc and getting scared. Uh, yeah, there's a little bit of that. Will Manidis had another take. He said, 'A trillion dollars was spent on AI risk teams and no one thought to hardcode into the model to not tell Bernie Sanders that you do crimes.' Very funny. Uh, but this is the correct way to disclose that you're talking to an AI model.
Yeah. Do you think he was inspired by the Vanity Fair piece and then immediately shipped this?
The Vanity Fair piece like buried the lead and like it was surfaced in a bunch of screenshots later that made it look like the entire article was AI generated, which it wasn't. Like that Vanity Fair article did have access to a bunch of people and there are some interesting vignettes in there, but this is very clear from day one what's happening. Like he's talking to Claude and he's investigating and, you know, sharing his fears and I think this is a great way to actually share what you're doing and make it very clear. Uh, and so, uh, people are mixed on this. Miles says, 'Worst part of the Bernie video is using Sonnet. Not sure why folks are so mad about the other stuff.' That's very funny. And then delicious tacos. Delicious tacos.
I also smoked a grow and it's burning going like this. And then, no, no, don't click that.
But you can imagine what happens there. And then, uh, yeah,
Revenge did make the card for us.
Signed in. It's great. Anyway, let's move over to Montana. One and only Moonlight Basin. There's a property that made it into the timeline. Ooh, indoor pool. New.
Uh, got to visit the property a few weekends ago with...
I saw some promotional material for this.
Uh, it is absolutely stunning.
I want to have, uh, Sam, the founder of Cross Harbor, the developer on the show because he is, uh, he's basically in my view felt like he was the mayor of Big Sky. He's developed all these incredible properties. Donated a hospital to Big Sky too. Just said, 'Here's a hospital.' For the local community, which is amazing.
For 5.1 million, this safari-like estate comes with zebras.
Oh, you got a solution to my problem. I need zebras.
Animals roam free at California's 137-acre Oakhill Preserve, which has a five-bedroom lodge and a helipad. I'm loving this.
This is crazy. Okay. Wait. I can't believe the value here. Uh, I feel like anything that has zebras and tortoises should be up in the double digit.
Zebra, I don't know how much it costs to get a zebra, but you should get like a 10x multiplier on it.
It's like having an AI researcher.
Visited Africa for the first time in the 80s, he said, but his heart never left. He proposed to his now wife, Bernadette Craft, in a hot air balloon. That's elite. Above the Serengeti National Park. The couple got married in Nairobi, Kenya in 1988 and two decades after taking their three sons to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Brian started wondering how he could bring some of the African experience closer to home. 'Can I recreate a mini Africa that's a short distance away from our house?' Thus began a years-long process of developing a roughly 137-acre safari-like sanctuary in Ione, California. Is that Ione or Ioni? I don't know. Uh, with a helipad and a collection of animals including tortoises, alpacas, East African plains zebras, and cattle.
Uh, so now approaching the age of 70, Craft, who is a commercial real estate broker, entrepreneur, and aspiring screenwriter, is listing the vacation property for $5.1 million. Approximately 15 animals are included in the offering. That's only, uh, what, less than a 10x multiple per animal. Uh, known as Oakhill Preserve, the estate is about 40 miles from Sacramento where the Crafts live. The animals roam freely on the property with access to plenty of water and grass. Craft likes to drive around the estate in an old pickup truck he outfitted with benches in the back and lights in the front and rear. The idea is to go looking for animals like you would on a safari. Craft assembled the property by buying three separate parcels over a 5-year stretch, starting in 2007. It had the right amount of open space like a savanna and the right amount of trees like you're in a thicket. Craft improved the land, a former cattle ranch, bit by bit, starting with no-climb fences, roads, and underground power lines throughout the property. Craft said he tried to evoke Africa with curved roads and buildings with rounded edges. One of the first structures he built was a bunkhouse for a group of friends. 'I've got a group of knuckleheads,' he said. 'I did it with them in mind. It was a guy thing. The wives put up with all of us.' When someone says knuckleheads and you don't immediately think of a specific group.
This is amazing that California.
Just driving around this California estate and just seeing zebras roaming is amazing. Ostriches.
This is a treat. This is a treat.
A few years ago, Craft said his friends chipped in to buy him a Jeep with animal print paint. 'We were all having breakfast all of a sudden. I hear the theme of Out of Africa,' he recalled. 'Then one of the guys pulled up in the Jeep. It was quite a surprise.' He completed the main lodge on the property around 2018. Spanning around 4,200 square feet, it has five bedrooms. There's a cafe for dining near a creek in the property as well as entertaining space that Craft calls the cigar bar.
John, you have to get this place.
This is extremely me. Um, Craft said that he is at the estate every week. It's basically just a family getaway. His children and their friends spend time there too. And his oldest son got married there. Wow.
Why is he selling? What's wrong? This has got to be some Jurassic Park style thing where like he's been doing some rare zebra crossbreeds that are about to take over. He's like, 'Yeah, the electric fence works well. It's no climb.' You're like, 'But they've learned to fly.' I'm not exactly sure. The property has many outdoor amenities, including a basketball court. That's going to be big. Basketball's making a comeback.
Said selling has been bittersweet, but he promised his wife to list the property when he turns 70.
That's when you should be selling your primary home and moving to the...
Okay. I'm... How far is it? I own...
Ione in Amador County is home to wineries and equestrian properties and has become a second home market for people from the Sacramento area. The local luxury...
Strong. Yeah. It's really far, but it has a helipad. Yeah, six hours, six and a half hours straight shot, maybe seven hours straight shot in a car. But if my plan to ban speed limits happens and you can drive there 200 miles an hour instead of 65, you'll get there in 2 hours.
It's a flat 2 hours right now from San Francisco. But get this, if by train...
It'll only take you 6 hours.
Wait, did you guys miss this line? And it says, 'One of his friends discovered what he believed to be a century-old gold mine.'
Okay, he's just pranking everyone right now.
He just, I think he wanted to just show off his ranch, so he's like, 'Yeah, I'm selling.'
'I'm selling.' He's not selling this thing. Zero.
He just wanted the Journal feature.
We do need to get this guy on the show, though. He seems like he's just had a great life and a great time. Seems like a good person to learn the ins and outs of commercial real estate from. Uh, quickly, let me tell you about Plaid. Plaid powers the apps you use to spend, save, borrow, and invest. Securely connecting bank accounts to move money, fight fraud, and improve lending now with AI. And, uh, somebody who is selling is Orlando Bloom. He put his longtime Malibu home on the market for $12 million. He spent millions redoing the four-bedroom house. Now it's for sale. It can be you. Uh, it is above El Matador State Beach. You're going to have to tell me if that's a good beach. Is this a good...
Okay. It was the primary home for a full decade.
Sounds somewhat of a downside. Okay. So, it's in a gated community.
Uh, it's in a gated community. Only Jordi can tell us if it's a goated community, though.
The Malibu house has interiors by the artist and furniture designer Roy McMacken. Uh, Bloom did an extensive renovation that cost more than twice what he paid for the house. He bought the house in, uh, where he bought it in... sold, he sold a separate Malibu house, uh, in 2024 for 4.1 million. How much did he actually buy the house for? I forget, but...
2.5 and then I guess he spent more than five renovating it and now he's looking for 12. So he said he's reluctant to let go of the Malibu house, but he rented it out last year and realized that he likely was not going back there. 'It felt like it might be the right time to let it go,' he said. And he's somebody that picks up the phone when the Journal's calling, which we love to hear. Uh, listing agent is...
Basically, Chris has almost half of all the high-end listings in Malibu.
Do you know how he described the ground floor when Orlando Bloom bought this house? He described the ground floor as a bit higgledy-piggledy, which is a great line. It was a bit higgledy-piggledy, but, uh...
But I needed it for my knuckleheads.
I needed it for my knuckleheads. He said he's got the most amazing drives through the Malibu canyons. He's very...
It has a pool, a jacuzzi, and a sauna, I believe. Um, and so, uh, you can go check that out. There are some other amazing properties in the mansion section, but we will have to get to those later. First, let me tell you about Vanta. Automate compliance and security. Vanta is the leading AI trust management platform. And let me also tell you about Graphite. Code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. And without further ado, let's bring in our first guest of the show. RF Kenmore is in the Restream waiting room. Feel free to...
Let him inside. And we can give him a couple minutes because there is a tequila billionaire who is selling a Balinese-style Hawaii home for $32.5 million. It's designed to look like a temple. The house on Kealakekua Bay was built in Indonesia, disassembled, and then rebuilt in Hawaii. That is crazy. Billionaire John Paul DeJoria's Hawaii home has traveled almost as much as he has.
Just take the home and bring it to another...
That's pretty remarkable.
Island. So in the 80s he had the Balinese-style, Bali, from Bali, uh, that home designed and constructed by artisans in Indonesia then disassembled and shipped to Hawaii's Big Island where it was rebuilt on a waterfront lot. The process cost a couple million dollars. Uh, he's a co-founder of the tequila brand Patrón and the hair care products company John Paul Mitchell Systems. Now, the property with a shingled roof designed to resemble dragon skin is coming on the market for 32.5 million. Uh, what a remarkable property.
You really haven't lived until you've, uh, gotten food poisoning in Bali.
I've never been. Have you been to Bali?
Isn't it a really, really long flight?
It's a terrible flight. Right. It's very inconvenient. It's, uh, especially when you're a college kid and you're broke and you're just like...
I used to, with surf trips, I'd go and I would just search the rough dates that I'd want and then I would just buy the cheapest possible flight. Yeah. Which would usually involve like a 17-hour layover in like the worst place on earth. Amazing. But I would do it because my time was basically worth nothing. Love it. And, uh, it was worth it.
But shouldn't you have just gone to an island that has similar, like, features closer? Like we have the Caribbean. Is there not good surfing in the Caribbean?
You can't surf in the Caribbean. Great.
No. No. It's not to say there isn't good surfing in the Caribbean. But the Caribbean, all areas are seasonal, right? So different times of year it's going to be better conditions. But the Caribbean, you have situations where like it's really good for 6 hours and then it's flat. Whereas Bali, you're going to have like more consistent surf and it's an island, so you can like go around it depending on the conditions and whatever swells.
Okay. Well, I believe we have our next guest in the waiting room. So, let's bring in RF Kenmore into the TBK Ultra. How are you doing? Good to meet you. Thank you for taking the time. How are you?
What's going on, boys? How's it going?
It's fantastic. Uh, end of the weekend. You are looking sharp. Uh, we love having anonymous commentators on the show. What can you tell us by way of an introduction? What is your focus? How would you introduce yourself without doxing yourself?
Uh, yeah, big fan of menswear, big fan of the clothing industry, brands, apparel, products. Uh, I've worked in men's brands in the industry for over 10 years now.
Overnight success. It also says here you're a hotel bar evangelist. Explain that.
What's so special about a hotel bar versus just a normal bar?
It's an elevated experience.
Why? It doesn't necessarily need to be an elevated experience.
Why you can know about it. Follow RF Kenmore yet.
Okay. Okay. You agree? It's a bit of a filter, you know. You don't always have, uh, you don't always have people wandering in off the street. Sometimes the bar, you have to go through the lobby to a room to a room and just kind of filters people out, you know.
Mhm. Uh, I wanted to get the update on the menswear industry broadly. Where the, like, what's happening in clothing? Who's the biggest winner right now? Yeah. Who's the big... Yeah. Who's the biggest winner? Yeah. Who's on an absolute, uh, like generational run?
Uh, I mean, on the largest level, uh, I don't really know in terms of luxury or those like major players, but on the more like specialty sort of scale, probably Buck Mason, you know, kind of big in the conversation. They're, uh, opening tons of stores. I think they're up to like 50 or 60 stores now. And, um, men's, from what I last heard, men's still drives a pretty sizable portion of the business, which you don't really see. Usually women's overtakes as soon as you introduce it.
Um, oh, interesting. Probably not. So even so, would you expect at some point women's to overtake men's at Buck Mason or is it just the name is like so... it's just incredibly masculine. But maybe there's still opportunity there.
I would probably expect it to. From what I hear, it's doing really well. They have sort of a good, like, foundational business going with t-shirts and sweats and sort of like coastal, you know, linen and good fabrications.
Well, I would say a large part of their success is that they put a vintage Porsche in their stores, right?
Yeah. Have you guys ever seen their Porsches they have in the stores? Do they actually... We went to that suit fitting with, uh...
User. It was at a Buck Mason.
And they did have a vintage Porsche in the...
Yeah. Where did that trend come from? Is there like a clear lineage or is it just like a broad trend?
We need, you guys know your meme where it like traces the origins of every meme. We need to know your Porsche.
Um, I don't know. I know that ALD had the Porsche in their little Soho pop-up that they did for their Porsche collaboration and that might have predated any Buck Mason. Uh, yeah.
I mean, it makes total... I mean, it's funny because I've always appreciated, I really love your post when you're just kind of joking around being like, no, they couldn't possibly put a car in their retail store because it is so cliché now. But I think it's just a way for a brand to signal like who they are because cars are extremely personal. Yeah. It says, uh, if you're a car person and you choose to invest your money in cars, your car does say something about you, whether you like it.
Yeah, I would love to walk into a menswear store that had like a Dodge Viper sitting... SRT or, yeah, maybe, uh, like a Dodge Durango SRT. That was ideal.
The three-wheeler. What's that one that they always play the loud music out?
Oh, is that the Ariel Atom? No, a Slingshot or something. I forget what... Yeah. Who's going to be the first? Who's going to stand up and be the first?
What is actually going into, how does a brand thrive today? Everyone knows that apparel brands, uh, you know, you're having to spend so much money on inventory. You don't necessarily know what's going to be hot. Uh, but what are the brands that are doing the best in menswear doing from a supply chain standpoint? Are they, you know, leaning into US manufacturing? Are they, uh, getting, uh, or are they still like dependent on, uh, Asia or Latin America? What's the approach that's working?
Uh, yeah, I mean, there's no one in terms of supply chain or sort of like the operational side of the business. I don't think that there's one model that you have to adhere to. I know that COVID really scared a lot of brands into diversifying their supply chains. There were some brands that were just super, super heavily concentrated in China even with just one vendor base. And so that's really forced people to look into Latin America, India, um, different areas like that. But, um, as far as like what drives success, I think community is more important than it's ever been. Um, you know, you look at the run...
What does that actually mean though? Because usually when people like... for example, like I've bought a bunch of stuff from Buck Mason over the years but I've never been like identifying as like I'm in the Buck Mason community. Community to me would mean like you walk in and there's, you know, you got your Dodge Viper there and then they hand you a white Monster and there's like a mosh pit that you can like go and thrash to like Limp Bizkit with and like you're going to be fighting guys in the mosh pit but you're going to be building community through that. Got it. That's what it means to me.
Maybe you have a future in menswear.
You look like it. You're looking dialed. You're kind of mogging Jordi right now.
Yeah. Casual Friday over here has crept in to every day.
Well, you almost wore jeans to...
I was very close to wearing jeans, but I did throw on the dress pants. Uh, walk me through the guide to visiting New York. We head to New York every once in a while. We're usually at the New York Stock Exchange downtown. I believe it's in downtown, Wall Street. Uh, where's the best place to live? Where's the best place to hang out? What's the guide for the West Coast fellow who's visiting or planning to move to New York?
Yeah. Um, everyone's got different... That's kind of the cool thing about Manhattan that there's kind of different flavors depending on which neighborhood you go to. Um, I think the Upper East Side is coming back. People are rediscovering the Upper East Side, like kind of like they're the first ones to do it, which is funny. But my favorite neighborhood still is like the NoMad, Flatiron, uh, sort of area. It's central, but it's not in the middle of anything, if that makes kind of sense.
Does the city feel like it's back? Because there was a lot of like doom and gloom over like Manhattan, everyone's going to move to Florida, everyone's going to leave. And but what's the actual vibe on the ground been?
I, yeah, I think it's the same as it's always been. I think, you know, you walk around anywhere busy, uh, you know, you go to any of like the shopping areas, whether it's Fifth Avenue or Flatiron, or you go to a nice restaurant somewhere that's popular, they're slammed and they're impossible to get into. So I don't think...
What is your pitch for tech people who want to dress more, want to elevate their wardrobes in New York specifically? I feel like the finance guy has some sort of shape to them that's been established going back. There's lots of great reference points. You can say I'm a Gordon Gekko guy or I'm a Patrick Bateman guy or there's plenty of like iconic cinematic portrayals of the Wall Street guy. Uh, less so in the New York tech scene, but the New York tech scene is certainly growing and it feels like it has an opportunity to distinguish itself from the Silicon Valley scene.
Um, I don't know. I think you need to establish like a tribal council of tech leaders to really hone in on the personal aesthetic. But if you're an individual, I mean, I think a uniform is always a great place to start. Just pick a couple of good things, a top, a bottom. Um, and then buy really good versions of those things that are obviously well-made and that fit you really well. If you need to take them to a tailor or whatever to make that happen, that's good too. And then just buy multiples. And then from there, you can kind of introduce maybe a stylish piece that you found really interesting that, you know, just happened to be kind of like a one-and-done.
Uh, what's going on with various lifestyle brands in different kind of subcultures, whether that's running or golf? Are they all going to converge on a long enough time horizon because they need to to scale? What are you seeing there?
Well, I don't know if you saw my tweet about Melbourne. Uh, I guess they're converging. They're just grabbing at whatever hype, uh, they can find, transitioning from golf into run clubs. But I don't know. I mean, it's hard. Like, if you look at the hardcore running brands that are kind of driving the culture right now, Bandit, Satisfy, um, there's a couple smaller ones like, uh, Soar or I don't even know how to say it, um, in the UK, uh, or Soar. Could you imagine a world in which they pivot into golf or they expand, I guess better phrased, into golf? I don't know. I think that would feel kind of disingenuous and you would end up with this like desperate feeling brand identity and assortment. So I don't know. I think lifestyle is probably the more natural...
Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic where it's easier to break out and establish a foothold as a brand by really focusing on like a subculture like running. But then can you... is running, you know, what are you running from, right? Is it somewhat of an Instagram kind of, you know, fad, right? Are people... or can running support 10 different, you know, micro-brands over time? Probably. But at the same time, like it feels very on-trend right now to... uh, and yeah, we'll see.
Yeah, we'll see how durable it is.
So, outside of following you, uh, what's a good way for folks to get into menswear? If I'm talking to somebody, they're interested in cars, I might recommend Doug DeMuro, go down that rabbit hole. Uh, there's, you know, you could pick up a copy of Car and Driver. You could start watching Drive to Survive or just watch F1. You'll learn about cars broadly. Uh, what are the different entry points? What are the great, uh, you know, either creators or publications that you think, uh, help people get up to speed on menswear?
Yeah, that's, uh, that's kind of why I started tweeting, honestly. Um, it's hard. I don't know that there is one. And I think the offering in terms of voices and publications and more of like the institutional side of it, they're, uh, I don't know, I feel like kind of aimed a little high. Like they're looking at contemporary brands, they're looking at runway, they're looking at things that may not be super useful to most people. And so I found a really hard time trying to find relatable, digestible content or advice.
He's a buddy. But, uh, he's had a great podcast forever that kind of goes through and interviews a lot of the great kind of founders and creative leaders in the industry.
Yeah, he's cool. There's, um, there's that dude, uh, now I'm blanking on his name. I don't know.
Last question. Do you think surf brands can ever make a comeback? Do you think that any people will be like, I got to get the new Billabong drop. I got to get the new Quiksilver. Is there a chance? They've fallen off so incredibly hard that...
Yeah, the falloff is just insane. Like people, just like young teenagers, they want to wear Chrome Hearts and, you know, and streetwear. They don't want to be caught dead in Billabong, but...
Everything, all these things come back around eventually.
It's kind of funny. I was just talking to, uh, a buddy in the industry about this, how Billabong and Quiksilver, whatever, kind of, you know, they were tapped into culture. They were kind of running things, um, for a little bit. But now that, I mean, that vibe is probably running brands or golf brands maybe a little bit. Um, there is the one brand, uh, Florence Marine X, which John Florence is the face of, which is backed by the Hurley family and he's having a go at this sort of like modern, uh, take on a surf brand. You have Outerknown as well. Uh, Kelly Slater's Outerknown brand that he co-founded. It's definitely more of like a lifestyle brand.
Yeah. The question though is can any of these brands like break back into culture?
Can Billabong or Quiksilver break back specifically?
No. No. I'm just saying like even Outerknown and Florence Marine X, like you don't see like Instagram kids in a GT3 RS, you know, rocking like Outerknown. And my question is like, could you ever see one of those people, one of those archetypes, you know, rocking a surf brand? It seems like a stretch, but...
It's hard. Yeah, it's hard to imagine, but I don't know. I mean, crazy things happen.
Billabong's got to sign...
Uh, A$AP Rocky as creative director.
Most of the GT3 RS owners seem like the type to put the surfboard on the roof, which is like ridiculous. Obviously no one would ever do that. Uh, but...
I mean, this is... anyway, thank you so much. Great to meet you. Thank you for all of your, uh, commentary.
And we'll chat with you soon.
We will. You're the man. Let me tell you about Turbopuffer. Serverless vector and full-text search built from first principles on object storage. Fast, 10x cheaper, and extremely scalable. Uh, before we bring in our... oh, is our next guest available? Fantastic. Let's bring in from our boat. That's the sound of the boat going. You need to play that constantly.
Let's bring in Mitch. That's a good one.
From Arc Boats. How you doing, Mitch?
I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for hopping on. Uh, I'm super familiar with you. I think we talked on the phone a couple years ago, but, uh, since folks out there might not be, please introduce yourself and the company.
Yeah, my name is Mitch Lee, co-founder, CEO of Arc. Yeah, Arc is on a mission to electrify the marine industry, rebuild this very outdated, uh, industry around more modern electric powertrains. Yeah.
This is similar to what happened in rail many decades ago. Every train today is electrically powered. They're diesel-electric, hydrogen-electric, battery-electric, but they're all electric.
