Apple, OpenAI & Why Nobody Makes Money in AI | The SaaS Apocalypse

The advantage in Silicon Valley was actually knowing how to write the software. So you would kind of be dumb about a bunch of other stuff and not very professional and get away with it because you had the magic wizard hat. And now that everyone has the magic wizard hat, I think it's quite bad for Silicon Valley's like comparative advantage. Hi everybody, welcome to Morales. How's everyone's week going? Hey guys. Dave and I are down in LA coming to you live from the up front summit, which is the pinnacle event of LPs and GPs across venture capital. And let me tell you. I want to know what athletes are coming. I feel like the athletes are the MVP. So there are no athletes. They're always like Serena Williams. No, I know. Like, these are like super nerdy tech people. I don't I mean, I don't think so. But I will say, if you ever wondered who listens to more or less, it's these people. I got a lot of podcasts love today from all the LPs and GPs. So, so that's our target audience guys. And hopefully the list on Friday, once they're back from LA. Exciting. Okay. So Brits got the LA report. What's going on in the pool house, Sam? Well, I'm brought to you today by Miller's craft meets. Miller's craft meets. No, but your t-shirt looks like a Taylor Swift t-shirt. It's not. It's a hot dog shirt. The hot dog revolution has been what is the hot dog revolution and is this a weird and new window to something sexual? Oh, that's a great way to sell hot dogs. I hadn't thought about that. No, this is Uncle breakfast company Steve Bookbinder has got a new meets company. I'm a proud and proud meet investor. You know, AI is taking all of the software margins to zero. So now we do meet. Wow. You know, because the AI can't the AI can't disrupt meat. Well, true, except for it can because I got vision. And a very cool company. Here we go. Here we go. That's using computer vision to like weigh cows and detect the healthiness of cows. That's fine. That's fine. Which then goes into a marketplace where people can buy the meat. And so, so AI can help sell meat. It's fine. I was pitched years ago on a company that would kill fish with AI more efficiently so that they wouldn't get poisoned. You basically be killing animal, right? And it feels adrenaline. It fucks up the meat. So this was and it turns out it's like quite difficult to like kill fish quickly, like factory farm fish. And so the meat always gets fucked up. So these guys have an AI, a fish killing AI. So these things are happening. Can you check back in on that one? How's it doing? Yeah. I'm sure probably pretty well, honestly, but it's like, I don't know. It's the fish killing AI. Like put the fish in like a little tube and the AI would figure out where the brain is and then poke it, kill it with one shot. So can't we do this to kill like the bad fish that we don't want near our shorelines, like the sharks? Well, you have to put them in like a tube first. It was like, I like put them in a tube and they shot a nail through its head. We can put sharks in a tube. Sharks in a tube. You don't need to do that. Honestly, if you let people like just kill sharks, people would love that shit. It's just more of a policy thing. I think I think they do in some parts of the world. And then there's the whole documentary about why we shouldn't kill sharks because it ruins the ecosystem blah, blah, blah. But that's like shark, that's shark propaganda. We can get rid of the sharks. I don't have an issue. Sorry, that's what I thought. I was like, I know Jess wouldn't care because she could surf more. Yeah, this would be fine. I don't know that we could. I mean, sharks have been around way longer than we have. I feel like they would find a way. The sharks always find a way. I'm not going to fuck around with the shark. That's all I'm saying. At some point, we're going to figure out how to translate shark language and the sharks are going to be like, what are you guys been doing? That's true. They are ancient overlords. I kind of feel like sharks don't have language. They're just silent killers in the sea. They're only languages killing. I will say this. A shark versus AI summer Hollywood movie would be amazing. Oh, it's like jaws 3.0. It's like there's some, there's some scenario where like an AI has been told to kill all the sharks. And like the entire movie is an epic battle between like robots and sharks. And like I could just imagine that being a great movie. Okay. Well, that's a good sign project. Well, here's what we're going to talk about today, everybody. We're going to talk about the ups on summit. I need a little more color. The LPs. How are the LPs doing? It's been a big week of headlines. We've got some doomsday reports out that have the markets particularly spooked. They're not reports. They're just like philosophy pieces. Sure. Philosophy piece. Narrative precedes all else. Everything is narrative. People who only care about narratives anyway. Yes. Sometimes I read the agenda and then we circle back. Yes. So that's what we're doing. We're going to get on the cryptos and if they're okay, then we've got some AI earnings. Everybody loves some AI earnings. And then of course we have to check on all our bots and see how we're doing. But we're saved the bots for the end guys. Guys, I'm totally back on cloud. Cloud is this where I'm bad again. Okay. That's the preview. But first, we have to congratulate the victor. Mr. Dave Moran who got it. Oh, God. Mr. Stan Lesson. But how many seconds in a ski race? A second. But that's a lot. We crashed through the finish, which slowed him down. So it would have been two seconds. Oh, that's not true. I mean, I think both of you were crashed and left and right. But let's hear from the athletes. You know, over here placed forth in the women. Weren't that many women? So we don't need to talk about me. I didn't even try because I didn't want to just put myself out there. But Dave, what is it like to once again have the top honor? Well, it's nice to still have it, I guess. And it's always good to do a ski race. I'm nursing bruises and dealing with gate bruises, which is, I guess, that's what I do this time of year-of-year. You need the pads. Happy to still have it. He wears the pads. He goes as so hard that he bruises the pads. I had pads, but I still. I don't know. Those gates were actually pretty soft days. Those are not hard gates. You might want a tough happy or a scam. We've learned that you and I have different constitutions. But Sam, how does it feel like so close to gold yet not there? Honestly, there's one thing I don't mind Dave beating me. Dave is in the Junior Olympics team and I contest that I am as good a skier if not better in certain conditions. But there's no question Dave is a faster ski racer than I am. That's just not like a point of contention after 20 years. This is not a contest of 20 years. Where you surprised how close you even got? No, no, it's about what it always is. So, great. That's how it works. Our son, Ansel, came and fit in the kids and I know that your sons came in higher than him. I think there's a next generation more or less ski racing that's going to start ramping up over the next couple years. So watch out. Ansel might, I think he's inspired to start ski racing. I mean, my six year old beat me, guys. And I'm a good skier. Yeah, our six year old really fucking put down some times. It's amazing. And our nine year old did well as well. But the six year old just went for it. Your six year old is very impressive. The six year old is impressive. Soon enough you and I can just drink a bunch of beer and throw beer cans that are children as they go down the course and like that's going to be even more fun. We're just so close. Let's start with bringing cowbells. Let's start with that and then we'll take it from there. Okay, well, we just had to props where props are due Dave Moran. Still number one. Okay, upfront. Like what is the vibe? Like is it AI red-pilled? Is it wearer or IPOs? Like what's the vibe? No, the vibe is a lot of GPs and not very many LPs. Is it just sadness? No, it's like slim. I would call it neutral to positive. But there are not very many LPs here this year, which everyone is commenting on. Oh no. And like every GP is here. GP's I wouldn't expect to be here or here. So the GPs are looking for the money. A lot of GPs are here not fundraising. Yeah, that's what they all say. Yeah. I was going to say never be fundraising. Yeah. You can't say or fundraising. They're doing networking so they're prepared for their next race. But I've heard a few things. One, they finally started charging some LPs that were getting a free ride and then a lot of them backed out. Second, there's a huge no storm, obviously in the East Coast. So a lot of LPs got stuck, apparently. I don't know if that's true. That's what I would say. And then I think a lot of LPs just don't have money right now. And apparently this is the worst fundraising market ever and everyone's complaining about it. They're funds early and just like closing it wherever they're at. So everyone's waiting for liquidity from all these theoretical IPOs that are happening. The IPOs are having what? Let's say more about why it's the worst ever. It's because the LPs are kind of at their peak level of exposure because they're, you still see like eye popping fund raises from injuries and horror rates thrive. Well endowments in particular have this denominator effect where like they're way over allocated and venture and so they're just not spending. And recent Horowitz and thrive are raising from like the Middle East and not necessarily like universities at this point. So there is a lot of talk about sovereigns in Middle East by the way, like two years ago at this summit. A front sum to buy. Is that where we go? Oh, up front. Aboo. Two years ago it used to be like, oh my god, I can't believe. I can't believe that fund raised Middle East money and now everyone's like, so did you go over Middle East this time around, bro? Like yeah, yeah, dude. So that was just expected, except for I think all now all the Middle East people are tapped out. It used to be like they thought this thing was shiny and now it's like old. To be fair, none of the people telling us that were bros. They were all women that were telling us to go to the Middle East. There was one bro. There was one bro that told me that it was tapped out just saying the Saudis don't have any money. The oil fields are dry. We have to go back. You know you should go as Canada. Well, she go to the oil. No, no, specifically Piff is dry. Oil sand. The way he is not dry. It was fun to hang out with a lot of GPs though, I will say. And like everyone kind of like talk about what's actually going on in this AGI, AI agent world. Are you even in bussiness software anymore? Like, yeah, what are the GPs doing about the Sassopocalypse? News flash. Nobody has any clue. Everyone thinks something different right now. Yeah, it's like all over the board. A lot of people aren't hiring junior people at their firms, though. The story hasn't changed in three years. Like interest rates are extremely high. Venture Capital is an asset class that you know doesn't return like the rest of the blah, blah, blah. And so this isn't a new story. This is the same story that's been going on for three or four years. It's just like more of the same. And there is some, I think optimism about what's going on with OpenClaw and with AI and with the AI agent engineering and you know where things are heading. But I would say that most people are saying that they're doing the, they've done the fewest deals that they've done in the last four quarters this quarter. And we heard that from a lot of people. Here's what's funny and just so on brand. I have to say this is so on brand. You know what our last slow ventures meeting was about slowing down? No, we've like done more investments in the last quarter than we've done in the last year. We finally, like we're just, we've got to be contrary. And so we raised our funds last year, not at the upfront summit and we're fucking spending money. Like there's no hot dogs tomorrow. Same worry about why? Yeah. Because there's good stuff. It's like for us, it's just like when's there good stuff and when is it cheap? Because we're cheap. Well, that's the other thing people are talking about. It's very binary. It's cheap or super expensive right now. It's either like a $50 million pre on a seed stage company or like a five. There's not a lot of in between. Guys, I've done two, two and a half posts in the last eight months. I'm very proud of myself. So where are the bargains in venture? You post things on Twitter. I see. Yes. People respond to you with their business plans. You pick the ones that are good and you fund this. But it's all about the Twitter posts to idea, to ship posting company cycle. That's how we made it. That's how we generate returns. I'm not friendsame. I was going to ask you, you had an post about, you've had several posts. One this week about, I'm going to get it wrong. But when intelligence goes to zero, what happens? Yeah. In bunting intelligence, bad business. It's like everyone's like, all these computer scientists running around gleefully talking about how computers will commoditize human intelligence. And so all the humans will have no jobs. And they're kind of like sad about it, but they're also kind of proud of their power. But what they fail to realize is that, you know, the original narrative was someone would get to AGI and then that would be the end of the game is not how this is playing out. Everyone's going to get to the same shit. It's all commodity. It's all going to get price to the cost of energy. And it's all worthless because if things are abundant, then they have no value. So I'm just like guys, if you really, like, if you really believe they were moving towards a world of abundant machine, matrix multiplication intelligence, y'all in the pretty bad business. Something hard is not a mode anymore. Software is not a mode anymore. I mean, I've been, I'm like, I haven't fun with this because it's a little while. It's a bit of a motor, have we lost that too? It can be if you can only uniquely create it. So I think this is like, this is my new precision, right? On this, which is like, these people, like I was talking to some entrepreneurs actually to today who I felt like I was listening to like a 2021 pitch, but like we did the user research and talked to the buyers. And the problem the buyers have is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we were building software to address the buyer need. And I'm like, what universe are you living in? Right? Like if you believe that the tendency is to like all this shit is like commodity software, they can be cranked out, which is the direction where I'm not saying we're there yet, but we're in that direction. You can't build a business doing a thing of buyer thinks they want right now just because it's like, and it's just software. It has to be that you're doing something where you write software, right? And you basically give it away, right? Or it's like basically free. You don't bank on a software, but you use it to build some sort of durable compounding data asset or trust asset or marketplace asset where like they have to keep using you because you're fundamentally structurally better at something that is defensible, right? Where you have a compounding advantage. But this idea, like anyone who believes that they can build a business because something is hard right now as opposed to because there's some compounding inherent advantage to it. It's not going to be attackable. It's like, okay, okay. We have a company in our portfolio called Polsia that a week ago had like 100K AR. It's a new company. And it's pronounced R. I actually was thinking of bringing Ben on the podcast because it's been so fun to watch him. We need some guests by the way, guys. I mean, I love you all, but like we need some guests. And Lear was really pissed. We haven't asked him back yet again. We got some good people from upruns. I want to be our guest. That's it's like because they need to raise money. Be our guest. Be our guest. Well, he didn't even need to raise money. Okay. So Polsia.com/live is this like, don't like the name. It's AI's. Can I say it to you? No. Yes. Share with the public. Don't give it away. Don't give it away. Just think about words you can make with Polsia. That's all. I'll leave it with that. Telling your story. That sounds like a female body part to me, just going to say. Okay. So it is showing. This founder is a sole founder. He has no team. He just booted up all these agents to build this business. And if you go to Polsia.com/live, it's the agents running the business in real time showing you everything they're doing. And this company has gone from like 100 KAR, to like 700 KAR in like less than a week right now. And it's like, you can see the graph on the dashboard page. Are they doing a good job running the business? Is the business making more money than before? Yeah. Yeah. That's why there are. Yeah. It's crazy. And it optimizes all of the spend and like efficiencies of running ads for you. You can start businesses on this platform and it like does the same thing for you if you have a business idea. And it'll just like start doing things for you and like running your business for you. So people are like booting up many, many businesses. It's really amazing actually. So if you want to start a small business, you can use Polsia. It'll do research, help you do naming. But guys, these businesses aren't going to need capital from UVCs. Yeah. It doesn't need a capital for you. We're not saying that they need capital from VCs. I'm just saying it's an example of like this agentic universe exploding right now. And people like, I think the tale of two cities is we've been talking about for a while. I'm going to make a business called Polsia Clone that just takes whatever policy that figures out and just re-implements it and gives me the ARR right and lets them spur all the tokens figuring it out. I mean, this is a tendency towards zero right? Like there's no margins. I don't know. I don't know man. Like Polsia took this guy quite a while to develop. This isn't something that was just vibe coded in a week. Like he's been building this system for over a year. I believe that. I believe that Dave and his with respect to a found right, I have never met. Sam, this was a founder. We backed it slow. I worked with this founder several times before he's extremely talented. He's from Paris. I'm sure it's all true and is not to knock him personally, but from a pure first principle's perspective, he knows like anything. It's like blazing the trail is much harder than following, right? It always is. So like someone shows you the roadmap, you can kind of get there faster and cheaper. And so I just wondered what to agree with any of these businesses that people can boot in a box or whatever. It's like, even if you think about it as like a token spend, it's like if you spend 100,000 tokens to figure it out. And I can spend 10,000 tokens to clone it, right? I'm not saying that it never works, but I'm saying like that's kind of how market efficiencies work. And the more the bots are in the game and can do it dynamically, it just will, it'll just collapse margins so quickly is my sense. Well, this raises a question I had, which is our business is just going to operate in secret more because of this and like. It's a pretty cynical take. No, it's actually how capitalism works is like you, the whole point of capitalism is to collapse margins. It's like a black hole. It's gotten so good. It's outmoting itself, right? Which is like, you can beat everything to the marginal dollar much more quickly because bots can't be the most powerful. And so, you can't be the most powerful person to do it. And so, I just don't know that like, I just don't know that it's like going to be this perfect machine. But productivity and profits are not the same thing. Are they, I mean, I don't necessarily. Not necessarily. But like, I just think that like, there's more activity. People are going to find interesting things. So, sure. But here's another way to look at it. If you looked at the number of photos taken over the last decade or one social media, it was like, through the roof with the iPhone, right? Or like, the amount of likes and comments on a service. Through the roof. Through the roof. Built a huge business. One person did or five people did. But maybe the producers of all those things, all that activity, right? Investing in people that create the chart. Sure, but that's not, but, but no, no, but I don't invest them for creating content. I invest in them for building cults and communities and affinity groups. Like, there's a big difference, right? Like, I understand, but you think that there's profit there. What's to say there isn't that. I just only is about token spent. It's like, basically, or like, this is the thing I've seen a lot of people get excited about in different things. Or like, we want engineers to spend as much money on AI. And that's like a measure of productivity is the spend. And you're like, no, that's like not sensible. Like, it should be, it's the margin that you care about. It's the profit. It's not just like, you don't get credit for spending more money, right? Or for creating more things. Absolutely. I think that you want to look at value created, per token, right? Just like you're saying, Sam, like just because somebody creates content doesn't mean that they create a cults, doesn't mean that they create a community. Doesn't mean that they create a marginal. But the value per photo taken has never been lower, right? Like in the world, because we take, because it's so cheap to take photos, you take photos of garbage constantly. There's no actual value to it, right? The value tends towards zero of the incremental piece of content or the incremental thing as the cost tends to zero. But that doesn't mean there's any margin in it. And there doesn't mean any value in it, right? Well, but you can use a stream of photos to create a community. No, but if you look at my camera roll, I'll take a thousand photos for one good one, right? 909, if I didn't take those, the world would actually be a marginally better place, they're actually negatively valuable, right? So thousands that like is great, right? And so I just think it's like this equation people are doing right now, like more tokens spend, more intelligence burn. Look, I'm the first one to admit, I probably spend, I think thousands of dollars a month right now on various web services that I wasn't a bunch of months ago, right? It's all for fun. I enjoy, I don't mind. I'm learning from it, but like there's not super valuable. It's just me fucking around, right? Like if it went away tomorrow, my life is not worse off. It's literally the same. Yeah, but Sam, I think to your, to your creator fund thesis, like all the streams of digital creation that have come about because of the rise of the internet have resulted in people being able to create new kinds of value and new configurations and new community. And so there's a lot of things that are going to be happening in the internet, but I think that there's a lot of things that are going to be happening in the internet. And so there's a lot of things that are going to be happening in the internet, and I think that there's a lot of things that are going to be happening in the internet. And so there's something that you keep in mind though is like, look, on the flip side, the first thing comes to mind is the great old like Henry Ford quote, which you can have a model tea in any color you want so long as it's black. And so we went through a phase where like you could have colors and a lot of colors that it makes people fundamentally better off, like probably not it's worth a market drew you right but like I don't think it like matters right like from like a big picture perspective. And I would give on the crater fund is like, look, I 100% believe obviously put a lot of money where our mouth is and whatever that were in this era where people are fleeing to the margins of these like cult communities with deep super interests in different areas and that becomes their like points of affinity. Does that make us better off like no, I think what's happened is like basically the entire we lost the ability to be the best basketball player in our town or to have meeting or if you're the car dealer. To feel really good about being the rich guy in town because you want to use car dealership like the globalization the internet blew away all that and made people super sad because they realize they're not the best basketball player they're not the richest they have no role in their town. A eyes only going to accelerate that because people sense of meaning goes away. So the market draws us towards cult in community right in these extremes and weird shit in order to like create a sense of purpose and meaning like that's all for sure happening right like flat earth makes a hundred percent sense. But like I don't know that there's any like deep value to that it's kind of just shifting it around I think their sense of meaning is going to go up. I think our sense of meaning is cratering right now and so relative to where we are today. Yes. I don't know man. I think I think I think people's sense of meaning has never been worse. I want to just take stock of where everyone's positions are we're debating for those who might remember what's going to happen to capitalism in an AI era. Sam thinks it goes to zero because things commoditized and Dave makes the point that productivity has always been coupled with greater business growth over time or new technology right in my summarizing that correctly. Well, I don't think capitalism is a zero. I think capitalism does exactly what capitalism does which is ring all the margin of everything and make goods as cheap as possible right. So who makes money in that world Sam? That's the problem right is that if capitalism works perfectly no one makes money like that's the irony of capitalism right is that like capitalism. But it doesn't work perfectly Sam. It's good it's working a hell of a lot better than it did. There are always bottlenecks but but people who build things that help with the bottlenecks make money. Well, but Sam's point is if AI takes all the inefficiency out of the system the inefficiency is where the money's made. It's not going to happen. Or does the money just go to the few instead of yes, I think Brits got it. I think Brits got it which is what happens is and again, I'm not like this is not a value to this statement of fact is that if you own something that is fundamentally valuable and compounding you're going to do great right if you own scarce assets that are not digitizable or replaceable you're going to do great. But if it used to be hey you had some baseline value as a human as a male which is you could drive a railroad spike that was like super good that was a lot of confidence in that people felt really good about the fact that had fundamental value that's gone. Now it's just not that complicated with like a white color work most of it gets blown away right and when that gets blown away that means that the few compound really nicely and they're going to do great great time known assets great time to like be in that in that advantageous position. But there's no the latter is gone and the value doesn't get shared which is how you're going to end up with revolutions because is again this isn't even this isn't even I think even all on guard to say anymore it's like look. The people need a sense of purpose and meaning and security and safety then the value they can drive in the society and unfortunately there's no question that AI is just sucking that out of the system for most people. Okay Dave what give us a response and then we're moving on there are we've talked about this before there are four million iOS engineers in the world there around six million Android engineers and there's something on the order of three to four billion users of software in the world. And so another narrative is that everyone has been stuck using the software created by the few and that people have not had their own agency over how they create and therefore consume software and that really what is happening right now is that AI at least over the next couple of years is going to make it much easier from way more people to create their own software. Share their own software with the people around them and maybe even millions of people not necessarily billions but I just think even if you only see call it a three X improvement like let's say it's going to be 30 million people creating software for the three billion like that's going to be a massive amount of value created and a whole bunch of people that feel like they have new purpose and new agency in creating software for each other. But I just don't think software is valuable like I think what to be specific about what kind of value David like you know I'm trying to think of example like you can be entertained in that's value but make zero dollars right you could there's something that actually helps build a business that has different kind of value there's something that has like social capital which has a different kind of value some software still going to be valuable to your point earlier Sam and what we talk about what but actually there's an interesting question what what software forget ecosystem forget network. Fact forget data what software is possibly going to evaluate is even valuable now no but I mean software coupled with like a data asset like a marketplace like a social that's the key question. But I think this is a really new point but I think this is an important point like there was there's been a world for a long time we're literally just doing the brute force of writing a bunch of software was in and of itself a defensible position like I wrote a lot of software and because I wrote a lot of software and I'm not actually trying to argue so that's going to go that's gone on. Right so like the there's there's ecosystems you can build or trust you can build with software as an initial on ramp to it the problem is that when anyone can write all the same software super fucking fast like instantly or very close to it can be very very hard to compound new versions of that because anything that starts working six other people are going to instantly be able to do or just do themselves so it's very hard to use software as an on ramp into a new it's not impossible. I actually think we've invested in some businesses that are doing this nicely but it's very very vanishingly hard to do so it's just an interesting problem because like yeah I agree like I written I've committed more lines of code this month that I did last summer with cursor I committed more lines of code with cursor than I did by hand the year before there's more diffs being put. Sure but like it doesn't like have any value right like there's no economic value to the gifts and I would argue that what it can do for me personally writing my own software. It's not terrible but it's not like massively valuable like it's just stuff I'm playing with right and so I think the bar of like can you are the are millions of people going to find new ways to write personal software that makes them dramatically better off or has economic value to other people like I'm just kind of skeptical. I just feel like the people were locked out from even playing this game Sam it's that people in Silicon Valley and around the technology community had the ability to combine software and a new business or business model or emotion around the creation of a new business it was the combination of the two. The created a lot of value over the last 20 years and unless you knew how to speak the language of software like you couldn't do this and so now you will be able to do this so what is that really mean though just to push one I think it's bad for Silicon Valley not good for Silicon Valley right because the reality that was the super I actually argue the average person in Silicon Valley is not as smart as like the average person in New York finance right they're not the best marketers they're not the best at anything we advantage in Silicon Valley. The advantage in Silicon Valley was actually knowing how to write the software so you can kind of be dumb about a bunch of other stuff and not very professional and get away with it because you had the magic wizard hat and now that everyone has the magic wizard hat I think it's quite bad for Silicon Valley is like comparative advantage right like that's just like I think going to happen. And then to the question is when you give everyone the magic wizard software to make shit are they going to make shit like dramatically better than like what they're to do that she and I'm just like more skeptical than that I don't think I think it will happen like certain things maybe like maybe what happens is like stuff like terrible EHRs that have been possible to replace like EHRs are a great example of a business electronic health record systems like why are they so shitty like they're shitty because they're just so huge. Right that no one could possibly compete with Cernor Epic or McKesson because it literally would just take too much engineering time to compete with them and so they've been able to like sit on monopolies that are really shitty for a long time does that get blown up maybe I mean they do a very powerful ecosystems to and they can now move much faster to but so like I'm not saying nothing will happen but I think this utopian like now that we can all write software GDP's like I I don't buy it I actually have anything like a lot of things like that I'm not going to do that. Anything like a lot of people who like had a skill that was valuable and allowed them to a lot of comfort and like to feel like that are rolled economically whatever are just going to get eviscerated and it's very possible like it's replaced by nothing. Okay, yes, this is what the whole economy is terrified about or curious about or have some opinion about so. Well, this is there's a great chart. I love there's a chart I posted on Twitter. We should post in the comments. I this is not mine for once. You could testically but it's great it's like I think it's from the economist and it's like the title is AI could end scarcity and humanity or boost trend growth by point 2% percentage points and it's basically like this chart that is like the line going up and then two lines the range goes like this to infinity into zero with like the thing is no one's in a fucking give a shit or bet on the point 2% growth right which is exactly what we're seeing you're either in gold or you're in copper right like or you're in both because you don't. Fucking have any clue but all you know is that you do not want to be on the train of slowly growing profits which is why all software companies to zero right on the narrative it doesn't even matter if it happens. Okay, look at the chart I have one more topic slash question for you guys who should buy PayPal. Didn't play who should buy what's going on why is it in play give me the give me that overview does not mean Venmo is going with this they are one coming should we try to buy Venmo you know it was messaging message you and me Dave about buying Venmo guys I asked a different question Sam come on let's try to buy Venmo wait wouldn't only fans want to buy this Sam. I only only can have an afford PayPal even with his depressed stock price what is the price of PayPal 40 billion dollars. Here's the problem here's the thing was interesting about PayPal it's really like what are you buying. Like your buying distribution the customer you know the brand so maybe the data right the does I don't think the brand sucks I don't think the brand sucks. I don't know isn't it just like a ton of like banking interconnect all kinds of crazy fintech stuff that you is very hard to build up over years. You know there's only one way to know what you're buying which is a sick clod bought on it say cloud what the fuck is this thing. Hey I don't know what you replicate it what part of this 40 billion dollar price can I replicate for what it's worth the fact that this whole idea that you could just like. That's a great example it's like someone at some point I think we're there yet some P.E. shop could sit there and be like okay PayPal's garbage right like I bet the infrastructure is terrible like I bet it's all a mess. It's really a customer set of records like whatever there's a bunch of assets to it. Historically like I can never touch this like you have to kind of build from what's there like there's no way we can touch this right like it's just so we're stuck with whatever it's like I do wonder if you can just like look take these assets spend millions of dollars billions of dollars on tokens and just like repot the entire thing like it's just an interesting future right or you can just rip apart everything. And like all of it and spit up an AWS and since then like how would you grow it from there like what's the end case for PayPal well PayPal I think makes half a billion half a like a shit load of money. Like on fees right like sure so what's the like again what's back to the competitive mode. I don't want to spend time dealing with this but I'm saying someone out there in terms of how what businesses will exist the business of like buy the PayPal spend millions on tokens and like repot it. It really is the distribution it's like the PayPal buttons that are embedded across the right how much would you pay for PayPal well here's an interesting question I was thinking of this is like his in a non Trump administration is no way you could buy. This is why it's all happening now one shot and so this why it's happening now is like this is the one chance for stripe to sneak through becoming effectively a US monopoly on payments. And so the question is I actually think it's for stripe less about the business and more about the politics of it which is if you do it now the next administration is going to go apes shit. The question is only like clearly you should buy it and just consolidate the whole thing like and that's an amazing position to put yourself in but not at what financial cost at what political costs when everyone goes to get you know called before Congress like it's actually a question of the call sense of like how much time do they want to spend in Washington DC in hearings in like three years from now that's like the real question of the whole thing. Well I don't know if I were them from what I've seen in my life the answer is is not worth the headache like we've done really well we're going to keep doing well PayPal is not really a threat we're happy for them to continue to put her along and not spend all of our lives in Washington DC but maybe they I don't know that's like that's the person it's much more personal question than a business question. And back to the like long term where PayPal goes if agent commerce really is where this is all going does it matter that you have distribution across all these websites everywhere or like you know that you can pay check out with PayPal you're going to have tolls everywhere else right we a great story and the information this week about the the SaaS stuff and all these businesses and how they're thinking about sort of toll booths on the internet versus. Meaning like I want to go buy something from Nike calm and use my credit card like why would I need to use PayPal well it's like is your age does your agent have access to Nike and at what terms yeah right yeah what like that's going to happen but if you're in a big network the terms are probably going to be better just like to any of these payment infrastructures matter when my agent just has my credit card I think I mean it is a great question this is capitalism Brett you're describing it. If everything's efficient there's no margin that's how these things work yeah PayPal down to zero I also think PayPal you know all of it maybe you Facebook people will understand this more but the whole like login race that we sort of witness that still think like PayPal I log into a lot of sites with your PayPal ID all the time because what what it used your annual ID. You in 2002 what's happening I don't remember the last time I've done that I kind of want to switch to an a well address Sam what are you like what is your wife doing over there I like the a well I like team a well I'm going to like look guys should we change our email addresses to at a well calm you know what I like people does anyone want to hear from the person who's using the target in question everyone ever emailed with in the music businesses on an a well email address. Oh guys a well mail is free and helps keep you safe sounds like a plan to me go for a test I think PayPal has a really great experience for just like login address cards like I think it's just one of the fastest to be honest and have a lot of information stored up in there so it's really surprising I have a lot of new thoughts about you as it as online yeah it's all like out look come on. It's not a problem it feels like you were using comic stands also and all of your memos internally possibly I don't know but but also we're all using Venmo constantly which is part of PayPal so I'm down open yeah I think there's a lot of that only fans want to acquire this Sam don't they need to build up their tipping infrastructure now only login with only fans actually might do the future because I got to tell you that only fans has incredible KYC. So I think that is a real thing there we go I bet let's see just try let's see over under on them actually but I bet they don't this whole I don't know they're too smart to it's not worth it it totally in a normal business environment. It non political where miraculously they would be allowed to buy it they should clearly buy it in a world where you're going to be able to buy it because Trump is president. But it's clearly going to get is scrutinized like you wouldn't believe and you're going to get a colonoscopy for the next 10 years if you do it why would you screw up like a perfectly you're in a great position why would you mess with that I mean you're because your VP of policy testifies not you that is not how it works something like that and you know well know it. Show up for one session but I don't know I mean yeah I will say my spidey sense of why it won't happen is just the it's the nature of the leaks have been like try all the loons galore you can just tell like how these stories get out there and this has been one like someone that's like put their finger up to the win to figure out which way it's going so that makes me a little more dismissive of it but I don't know you know a non agente story that we turned into an agente story I have a fun fact for you guys so. The information recently published the list of all the people working not all the people that some of the top people working on what we now know is open AI smart speaker hello first I saw that we feel about a smart speaker speaker is it a second speaker or is it a thing in your ear because I've seen both no there's a there's a whole there's a family of app the family. Okay, but aren't there a couple years away this is honestly the most distracting company in the history of the world like it's kind of wild there is a lot going on do you want to guess who's one of the people who's working the top people working on this project okay give us a hand Adam Q do you know who Adam Q is no no do you know another Q who works in tech. I have a son Eddie son I do know I do know Adam Adam's great actually I met Adam when he was younger he's on this project. Oh that's cool. So anyway we've got a little that's a weird family dinner. I did. Yeah that's an awkward things. Good. There we go. You can now reach me at Sam W. Lesson at a well.com and he's sending me feedback there there's a lot of ads in this thing. Can you get into it with pop three. Oh man I still have pop three. We can avail also what what device what device do you think is way up in sales this year from the early 2000 from the early 2000 early 2000's there's a single device that all Gen Z people are trying to buy now it's almost like a man. It's not a phone. No you're getting closer though you're getting warmer. A digital camera you know no ready it's the iPod original OG with the click wheel people are all over even buying this thing guys you guys know that I already I hate Apple but Apple's lack of cat backs has made me start liking them because it's just so great with like you know cat backs it's amazing. You probably what have apples top I don't know what the metric is but you are top customer of Apple you do not hate up to be clear I literally just came from the Apple store to buy another laptop I have like I'm start of a hundred thousand dollars of Apple devices here I just don't like why why do you need so many laptops I was actually trying to explain this to my son because he said Sam has a MacBook and I'm like that's because Sam buys a new MacBook every month well this one actually is for another one of my sons but yes the point is I am I am my ratio of hatred of Apple no no what would it be devices purchase devices purchase divided by hate is an off the charts but I love their coming out ahead in this is fine they're definitely going out ahead I I absolutely love their fuck you cat spend it makes me very happy the only thing that make me love them or and actually might turn me is if they do a big product allows me to reintroduce the 2001 iPod with the click wheel I just go all the way back and be like yeah you enjoy your agents we're releasing a click wheel and we're going to make more money to you full analog yeah God that would be the best acquire mod retro it would be better than the little sock holder they have you know that would be so good the sock what are people how are people talking to these old iPods it's like an old fire wire device how do they even get stuff on to it Gen Z swap smartphones for single purpose iPods is like the head okay Gen Z is putting down phones and picking up iPods I love it release the retro iPod you cowards these are all headlines from news this week literally in the last day Gen Z is just like we're going to be the least productive generation of all time they're modified with new batteries and 160 gigabyte storage they're selling out on eat at CDV just saying okay well what's old is new is new is old agents and iPods all the way down dear friends we should let our listeners and viewers go because they've gotten their agentic dose for the week with that we will say that we will see you again back here next week for another episode of more or less bye bye thanks everyone if you enjoyed this show please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple podcast Spotify YouTube or wherever you get your podcast find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for at more or less at Dave Mauren at lesson at J lesson and as for me I'm at Brit see you guys next time