Inside Silicon Valley's VC Playbook | WTF is Venture Capital? - 2025 Edition | Ep. 24 - WTF is with Nikhil Kamath

From Engineering to VC: Deedy Das's Path and Anthropic's Story How you guys see different sectors evolving? Where can me, as either a investor or somebody looking to start my career as a young man or woman, have enough tailwinds that it makes sense to spend the next decade? So maybe we start with small introductions, maybe 2 minutes on who you are, how you got to be, where you are and what you're doing now. Would you like to go first? Speaker 2 Sure, I started depending on how far back you wanna go. I was from. Speaker 1 India. Speaker 2 Why DD? My real name is Debargo Das. In the city of Calcutta, that's not as uncommon a name as you'd think. But even in the city of Calcutta, where I'm where I'm from, nobody could say that name. So very quickly in high school, we had to call me something else, and my initials are DD. But then they didn't solve the problem because then you have to explain what my name actually is anyway. And so then I just came up with the moniker DD and not DD, the Dexter's sister. And so I spelt it a little bit differently and that's what stuck. So that's stuck in high school and it's been DD ever since. Speaker 1 So what did you study? When did you come here? What do you do now? Speaker 2 Awesome. So 2011 got to America for the second time. I was here as a kid for a bit. I went to Cornell. I just studied computer science. I did my undergrad and my masters. First job was Meta in New York. Did that for a year, then went to Google in New York, travelled a little bit. So I spent some time in Israel, Bangalore and then I was on the founding team of a company called Glean, which is GC backed company as well and spent a good four years there. Towards the end of my time at Glean, I went from doing engineering to managing to running their AI product line. Speaker 1 What did Glean do? Speaker 2 Glean started as an enterprise search business, happy to dive in to what that means. And then it evolved into generally an enterprise assistant and knowledge finding tool for bigger companies to figure out, hey, like answers to questions like what do I do for onboarding or what is our holiday policy? Or even very specific questions about what does this person do at the company and how can I find this doc, all of that stuff. Glean is now like a $7 billion company. It's done fairly well so far. After four years there, I decided to try something else. I'd my friends would joke I in a span of two years, I went from engineering, management, product and then venture. But I was just looking for something fun to do. And so I joined Menlo about a year and a half ago, and I'm at Menlo right now. Speaker 1 And what does Menlo look at specifically? Speaker 2 So you know, Menlo, to give a background, has been around for quite a bit of time. It's a 48 year old fund. We are now investing out of a $1.5 billion fund, but we have like about 7 billion under management. Our focus right now is, you know, our maybe landmark investment today is where big investors in Anthropic. But our focus right now and my focus at least is seed and Series A deals for AI, SAS, infra sort of all over now. Nowadays everything is a bit of AI, but the entire fund does everything up to like a Series B and sometimes CS and DS as well. So we also do have a good biotech practice and a consumer practice and the rest of the stuff we do is primarily like software adjacent. Speaker 1 What is the anthropic story? Can you summarize for us? Speaker 2 Oh my God, what is the story? The anthropic story was and May. I'm probably not the best person to tell the story, but a few people left open. AI wanted to do a foundational model company somewhat differently and they built A and both of them hadn't figured out a business. And now Anthropic has sort of built a model that eventually became very good at coding and it got a ton of recognition for that. And then it's sort of now Anthropic, I would say is a company that's, you know, trying to solve AGI, but they believe they're out there is through reasoning, coding and things like this. They very distinctly do not really do much outside of text to text models. So less audio stuff, video stuff, things like that. And that's really their primary focus. And in terms of a business, they just serve enterprise customers primarily. They do have a consumer app, but that's not not really the the prime business. Speaker 1 Thank you. Would you like to go next? Nikunj Kothari's Transition from Startup Operator to Venture Capital Sure. I'm the crunch. I, I moved to the states half my life ago. Nico and I were just chatting about it 17 years ago. I went to Urbana Champaign to do electrical engineering and computer science. And then I moved to the Bay 13 years ago. Which you mean, I don't know what happens to both of you when you knew people in their 20s come here. I feel like a boomer. It's like feel like legitimately feel old. They're like, when did you move here 13 years ago? And they're like, look at me and they'll start eye rolling like. Speaker 4 Three weeks ago. Speaker 3 Exactly. And then I was an operator for 11 years. I started my career at LinkedIn. I spent two years there and then quickly got the startup bug. Did 4 startups back-to-back where I was the first PM and a few of them I joined a company called Hall which did enterprise communication. I joined and one week later Slack launched, which was a tough one year but I heard. Speaker 2 That one. Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. I picked the. As venture capitalists say, you picked the right area but the wrong horse. I just. Speaker 4 Had a great URL but that right hall dot. Speaker 3 Com We still have hall.com. Speaker 4 Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Speaker 3 Atlas involved the company didn't want to go back to a large company and then I joined a company called Ship. They did first pile parcel delivery. I got really enamoured by the physical world. This is peak Uber days. Uber was crushing. Spent two years there, really loved, enjoyed like you know, how do you build end to end products? IOS web, but with a large operations angle. And then my best friend worked at Open Door, which is a real estate company, He said. Why don't you come join the team there? Speaker 1 Can you tell us a bit about Open Door? We were discussing earlier, but it's interesting. Speaker 3 Yeah, it's it's in the news right now because it's become a meme stock that's like growing really well. But I still fundamentally believe in the mission. So I think unlike other countries in the world where a transaction cost for buying or selling a home is 1% or lower, in the US it's 6%, which means when you're trying to sell a home, agents take 6% of the Commission and that's crazy. Residential real estate is the second largest asset class in this country and there's a 6% tax doing that, which is just mind boggling to me as like someone looking at the space. And so the company was founded by 4 founders, Keether Boy, Eric, JD and Ian. And their model was we will buy our home unseen. So every home that's bought and sold in the country is on a register called the MLS. And so using machine learning, they said, hey, we could figure out what the true value of this home is. So you enter an address, answer a few questions and we give you an all cash offer to buy the home in one minute, which is very different than you having to stage your home and list your home and pay an agent a transaction fee in one minute. You get that fee so. Speaker 1 An open door held the inventory. They owned it open. Speaker 3 Door held the inventory. So yeah, we would buy the home, we would refurbish it and then we would buy. From the buyer perspective, you can enter any home anytime you want and you can buy the home all online, all transaction. It was a great journey. I like you know, some of my formative learnings came from there. Spent four years there, had to like, you know, solve the company 2020, had to file 35% of the company and then we went IPO six months later. Yes, craziest 6 months of my career. But then I only like doing early stage. So I joined a company called Meter which does networking hardware. Speaker 1 I'm meeting him tomorrow. Speaker 3 I know. Yeah, yeah, he's he's yeah. He's amazing. I wish I get the opportunity to back people like. Speaker 1 GC did a big round there as well I think. Speaker 4 Yeah, recently, yeah, yeah. Speaker 3 Yeah, it's a 10 year overnight success story coming around for 10 years. Two brothers. Speaker 1 Tell us a bit about meter. Speaker 3 Yeah, So similar to Open Door where, you know, there's so much friction in the home buying and selling journey today. If you want to equip a space like this for Internet, it takes six different entities to do it. There's the Internet service provider, there's the hardware maker, there's a cabling installer. There is like, you know, other things you have to do and then you have to maintain the networks over time. And imagine doing that for like a 10,000 square, 100,000 square feet space. And so companies have to pay CapEx. You're paying 10s of thousands of dollars in hardware upfront and you get nothing on day zero. So meters completely transformed the model where you pay nothing upfront. All the hardware is meters and you just pay per month per square feet. And they take care of all the hassle and also the maintenance. So you just like point to a space and meter takes care of everything. I did 1010 years of startups by then. And so I, I was just looking to figure out a way how can I help founder in the plural rather than a founder singular. And I wasn't sure if I want to do investing. And so I was very lucky that the Khosla Ventures team and Vinod especially were very kind to have me there for a year. I was very open. I don't know anything about investing. I've done Angel investing, but that's very different. Spent a year there and really enjoyed it. The team is exceptional. They can only say good things, but I decided I only wanted to be part of a small fund only doing seed and Series A. Each investment is like, you know, very few investments a year. Like I have a more concentrated strategy. And so I just joined a new fund called FPV Ventures about a couple of months ago. Speaker 1 How big is the fund? Speaker 3 Fund is about 5. It's a fund too. It's $525,000,000. We primarily will focus on Series A, but we'll do some seed and Series B depending on the when we beat founders. Speaker 1 Right. And is there like a sector focus? Speaker 3 No, very generalist and that's what attracted me towards the fund. Our fund one has everything from biotech, quantum computing, AI, chip design to consumer fintech. Very much the the FPV stands for Founder's point of view and we mostly care about the founder and the team that we meet. Speaker 1 Nice. And how old are you, Nikuch? Speaker 3 I'm 34. Speaker 1 And DD is 32. Speaker 5 32. Speaker 1 You're married. I'm married. I have two kids and Didi. Speaker 2 Not yet. Speaker 1 OK, Nico, new. Speaker 4 Yorker State of mind, Yeah. Speaker 3 Hopefully soon I have people watching this eligible bachelor. Speaker 1 You live in New York. Speaker 2 I used to live in New York. Now, now I'm here. Speaker 6 Yeah, new. Speaker 1 York is probably a better city to be single. Speaker 2 It is not probable. It is 100% a better. Speaker 6 City. Speaker 4 What are you going to do about that? Speaker 1 Nico, how old are you? Niko Bonatsos's Investment Philosophy and Market Perspective I'm 40, so I'm a little bit older, yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, tell us about yourself. Speaker 4 But it's spent all of my time with technical young founders. Like my real passion is to obsess with technical founders who are building products for themselves. I'm originally from Greece, made in Greece, grew up in Greece and the UK. I've been in this part of the world Silicon Valley, since 2009 when the App Store was about 1 year old. Good luck. Key, upon graduating from Stanford to join Journal Catalyst, spent the bulk of the previous 15 years there and have been mostly investing in first time founders who have bold ideas. They're the customers of their own products from all over the world. It's big time between here and New York. Speaker 1 And is there a sector that you look at? Speaker 4 I, I used to look more into consumer stuff, but then what happened is over the last few years made it hard to not turn towards very young founders, Gen. Z Ers and a lot of them have been AI curious and most of the interesting ones the last few years were like enterprise IT. So honestly I wouldn't care less about the sector. For me, it's like if you're as smart as you sound that like 16192325, how much smarter can you be in five years? Because the idea will change, the product will change, the market will evolve. And what do I know? Preceder seed. I own, you know, perspective on the product or the market. I'm not that smart. Speaker 1 Is that also Neeraj's team? Do you work with Neeraj? Speaker 4 Neeraj joined us with the Venture Hwy. team a couple of years ago. You have worked with Neeraj, of course. Speaker 1 Yeah, Hemant and Neeraj are really good friends of mine. Speaker 5 Awesome, yeah. Speaker 1 We end up hanging out a lot also because they have the India connection. Speaker 5 Absolutely, yeah. Speaker 1 Great people. Speaker 5 Great people. Speaker 1 So what I was looking for today is we seem to be at some kind of a crossroad where the rate of change seems to have got gone up in the world around us. I allocate money. I have, I don't know what I would call it, private equity, venture capital, whatever the term might be. And I've been in the US for a large part of the last two months trying to get allocation to different companies here. So I'll share with you which those companies are along the way and maybe we can debate them together and if it's the right valuation or not. But more importantly, I want to arrive at how you guys see different sectors evolving, not today, but 10 years from now. Where can me as either a investor or somebody looking to start my career as a young man or woman, have enough tailwinds that it makes sense to spend the next decade in? Yeah, interesting exercise. Speaker 4 Sounds fabulous. Speaker 5 Sounds great. Identifying High-CapEx Sectors and Venture Capital's Biases OK. So should we start with, maybe I'll go 1 by 1 and ask you guys to name one sector that you should absolutely stay away from as a investor or as somebody starting up for the next decade? Let's start with DD, alright? Speaker 2 Put me on the spot. You know, it's, this is a hard question to answer because I have such a venture lens on this. And you know, when you invest as a venture capital fund, there's certain attributes of a business you're always looking at and you need a certain return profile for this investment to make sense. So typically sectors that are really tough to invest in are very high CapEx sectors. And it's not to say that those businesses are not good businesses, they're phenomenal businesses in some cases, but it's just not, it does not have the return profile that most venture investors want. And there are exceptions to that. And there are certain ways it can be very different. But broadly, I would say it's, it's hard to disentangle myself from, from that bias. Like usually when you're buying up, like, I don't know, you're buying up tons of real estate. That's, I mean, open door is a separate story, but then it's, it's a tough thing to invest in, for example, as a as a venture capitalist. Speaker 1 So get the venture lens just as an investor or somebody starting a job in an industry, which do you think has the most headwind in the next 10 years? Like somebody emails you from a particular industry, you'll be like, OK, I'm not going to open this event. Speaker 2 I mean, I don't, I don't think I have a very strong bent against any particular industry. I'm trying to say like all industries are actually pretty important. There are some that are maybe falling now, but it's impossible to know how, how they would do in in 10 years, right. Like you, like I'll give you an example maybe it's probably not really going to answer your question. But if you take something like manufacturing, which is a pretty traditional industry, which may not have much takers in, in the venture community. There are some fantastic manufacturing businesses that are going to be built especially in the next 10 years that have a whole other set of interesting problems to solve. Like how do you solve a labor problem? How do you manufacture in certain countries, if can you even do that? What does tariffs mean for manufacturing in different places in the world? So I, I think there's interesting businesses in all sectors. It's really hard and I don't know if I'm curious actually what you guys think is often when you you have to have an open mind as an investor to hear out the idea in a certain sector because often it's from the places you least expected that an interesting idea shows up. Speaker 1 So you don't have a sector bias really. Speaker 2 Not really. Like I can hit you with some the pithy lines of like, oh, who knows what's going to happen to software engineering, but like it's, it's not really a bias against a sector. It's just so hard to tell in the in the future what's going to happen. Speaker 1 Nikunj. Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't think, I think to I think some some industries don't have the exponential rate of progress that you need to be a venture capital like a business that can attract venture capital. And so I think those you have to realize like venture capital is like an accelerated. Speaker 1 I think we should not fixate upon the term venture capital. Speaker 3 Or, but then I don't think. I think every industry is very interesting. Speaker 1 Let's say, let's say you have 100 bucks, $100, Yeah. Where would you put it? It's a very binary outcome. And where would you not put it? Speaker 3 I think anything that is not technology like Forward I would not put it. But that's my bias because I've been an engineer. I've been here 17 years. But does that mean that you can't make money off a traditional, like my dad's a textile in textile industry? He's doing really well. Like, you know, would I put $100 or would I put a dollar there? Like, it's probably not because I just don't understand that business really well. And he's surrounded by like, mills and other, like, you know, those are all traditional businesses with very little technology. They're still all printing money. Yeah, but it's it's this is the bias. It's like This is why we can't, I can't disassociate venture capital or technology from the way I view the world because that's what I understand. You put me in a traditional business, put me in lad's business, I will like, you know, bank it up the business the next day because I don't get the whole. But I do think. Speaker 1 Like are tariffs helping you, Dad? Speaker 3 Oh I mean it doesn't hurt. Most of his customers are Indian, most of the mills are in India. So it doesn't really affect him at all. But I think from a so I think for me, it's very hard to disassociate technology or venture capital from like how I would invest because that's what I do and that's how like how I view the world. But to to this point, actually AI has actually made most industries that were uninvestable suddenly investable. Speaker 1 For example. Speaker 3 For example, like any industry that's collecting large amounts of data was like, you know, prior, like prior, like you wouldn't invest in them because you were like, oh, there's no clear way for you to understand this data, no clear way to take action on this data. Now that's become an actual like asset because now you can either fine tune models or you can actually do something interesting with them that that suddenly unlocks, unlocks value out of those and. 2021, interest rates spiked up a lot and ChatGPT launched at the end of 2021. It was the literal perfect intersection because when interest rates rise up, everybody's costs went up. Everybody's costs went up. Means everybody wants efficiency. Everybody wants efficiency. What is the only boat that is lifting? Like, you know, what is the only tide that's lifting all boats? It's AI. So factories are now asking and coming and begging for solutions that never used to happen before. Long sales cycles. Nobody wanted to invest there. Agriculture people were like, you know, traditional industry, nobody wanted to touch. They were like, what's the tailwind there? And so all of those industries that felt a little bit archaic, a little bit that hey, nobody wants to touch. Suddenly the buyer's waking up saying, hey, I'm want a solution. And so people are rising to the occasion and building things. And I actually push, I mean, I'm on the opposite spectrum of DD High CapEx is actually OK because there's ways to finance it. And we're finally finding a way that everything's getting cheaper. Robotics is a good prime example of that. But I don't think CapEx is the big problem anywhere. It's just like, can you find a tailwind in that industry? And that's what makes it good for venture capital. It's very hard to like dissect the two. I wouldn't know. I don't know what I would do about. Speaker 1 Technology. So interest rates going down now will have the opposite effect. Speaker 3 I don't think we're going to go back to Zerp and I anytime soon. So interest rates might go down like 50 bits or but it doesn't change the outcome that much. The genie is unlocked once you get used to high efficiency. Why would you do? And then if you look at what Gen. Z wants to do now, they don't want to work as a dishwasher in a, in a restaurant. They want to be the next influencer or build the next business. How are you going to replace that labor? Technology is the only way you can do that. Whether it's factory workers, whether it's back office workers, whether it's, you know, dishwasher, this is the only way that you can do it. And that's great because suddenly that area that was not investable before has certainly become because everyone's a buyer is knocking. Speaker 5 On their door asking for it. Speaker 1 Interesting, Nico. Speaker 4 So as an investor, early stage investor, I would just, you know, like avoid anything that's super, super, super hot. If it's like it's an early investor, like if it's like something that everyone is going after, if it's an idea that's getting tried now 100 times, it's probably too late. You know, as a very early investor, of course, the founders matter the most, as we all have agreed here already. So if you think, you know, this is the founder or the team that are going to defy the odds, they're going to out execute everyone else in that very capital intensive, labor intensive, you know, business, go for it. But otherwise, you know, anything that at the very early stage, there are 10 companies going after it, it's probably too late in today's universe. I would avoid, you know, like doing anything in China as somebody who is US based, that's not a controversial statement. 10 years from today, a lot might happen and, you know, a lot might change and. Exploring AI Cogen, AI Scribes, and Rapidly Growing Markets Nicole, what is too hot today that everybody's going after? Speaker 4 Do you want to give some ideas? There's. Speaker 2 So many reinforcement learning, OK, reinforcement learning environments is a hot space. Reinforcement learning as a service as a hot space. Speaker 4 How about some AI Cogen tools? Speaker 2 AI Cogen is. Speaker 3 App builders. Speaker 4 App builders? Yep, Receptionist. Speaker 2 AI receptionist multiple applications of voice for, you know, the same sort of 10 things are are pretty hard. Speaker 4 I mean, it's honestly amazing, you know, when you open up your e-mail as a venture capitalist or like you know, your ex or any other inboxes, you have like honestly 9 out of 10 inbound requests you receive, they all sound the same. Like, so if you're trying to do something, it's to break the pattern of like everything sounding the same and try to find something that's like, ha, maybe this is different. Of course, it's hard to decide yes or no to take a meeting without knowing the founders. That's where you know, we're being trusted matter or like founders that don't have resume could be the ones that could thread the little there's a lot of the very young founders for like 161823. They might not even be on LinkedIn because transit is not on LinkedIn. Or if you go there, have a bunch of random internships and some of my favorite, you know, social media posts that I love saying are like the NVIDIA CEOs, where before NVIDIA, you know, you go. Speaker 3 Denny's. Speaker 4 Denny's Dennis, and you see some of this and you're like, yes, how can I find one of those people? You know? Right. Yeah. Speaker 1 Which are some of the popular companies which are doing the things you said? AI code Gen., Reinforcement learning, AI receptionist name some names. Speaker 2 I mean there are Anthropic doing AI code Gen. but they're pretty good at it. Speaker 4 It's also cursor. Speaker 3 Right. Biased. Speaker 4 There's also cursor. Speaker 2 Cursor Cursor is also doing AI code Gen. of course. So these are both fairly successful companies that at least so far. What else did we talk about? Speaker 1 AI receptionist voiced applications for the same. Speaker 2 I mean, there's, I can't even remember some of these names. But I mean, it's not, it's trivial to find a hot space. I mean, you just have to, if you go on like say the YC list, I mean, you're going to find every year has some patterns. And and I guess what Nikos is saying that, you know, those patterns are maybe the the hot ones that yeah, I don't want to put words in here. Speaker 1 What's the pattern this year? Speaker 4 Cursor for something. Speaker 2 Cursor for. Speaker 4 So there was a funny, you know, tweet the other day that said Y Combinator stands for Y Cursor. You know the CNYC stands for cursor because if you went to like the demo day or like the company directory over there and type cursor, it could be cursor for property management, cursor for investors, blah blah blah. Speaker 3 The the one crazy space I've seen in the last year is just like the AI scribes for healthcare companies. Typically when you see, you see like one move ahead of the pack and you know others are just doing you look at the AI scribe market. There's at least eight companies I know all doing double digit $1,000,000 in ARR, all started within the last few years and all growing double digit month over month. Just crazy. Like you just don't see a market like that to give them the voice side. This is like someone just like, you know, transcribing your notes. Speaker 1 This is like a pro, right? You're talking about something you should you should look at. Speaker 3 No, I'm just saying, you asked like what are the hot markets? I'm just saying there are hot markets. But sometimes as VCs, we look away at the hot market because the markets, but the markets so large that they can be 6 players all growing like crazy. So it's still like a market I wouldn't look at now because I feel it's too late, but as an early stage investor. But it's crazy that even though there are these markets where there's too many players playing, there's an example of 1 where you have like many, many players all doing very well. Deep Dive into AI's Frontier: Data, China, and Reasoning If you could each identify a trend in AI that is changing that somebody who is unaware like me does not know, what would you say 1 nuanced trend that is changing in AI well. Speaker 2 There's a, there's a couple I could say, well, I don't know, hard to guess what you may or may not know, but. Speaker 1 Imagine nothing. Speaker 5 Well. Speaker 2 One is like talk of the town is how much Zach wants to pay people. And so the some people call it like engineers being athletes of today, which is interesting. It's not really tech tech focused, but it is a theme. The second I would say is, you know, we've run out of public data and you know, we talked about RL in a different context earlier, but you know, reinforcement learning has been the primary technique for with which models get better over time and acquiring data to do good reinforcement learning is quite different than how you would acquire data otherwise. So that is another trend. Speaker 1 So when everybody runs out of data, they create synthetic and keep improving the models. Speaker 2 It's not exactly like that. I mean, in reinforcement learning, you basically want an environment where there is certain rewards you can get. Sometimes they're extremely verifiable rewards, in which case it'd be RLVR. Sometimes they're more nuanced where it's like text, like how do you verify that? But there are, you can use an LLM as a judge to verify that. So there's various kinds of rewards. But it's, you know, one way to think about it is, yes, you are generating an environment where there's rewards and you're making the model become better at that task in a similar way that you would do, for example, when Google did Alphago and you train an AI to learn a game. You have a reward, which is winning the game, and then you figure out the steps in the middle. So it's not really synthetic data per SE that is also used, but it's a different step. But that's, that's what I meant by reinforcement learning. Let's see what else #3 I think is not talked about enough is China, which is, you know, the, the, the narratives around China are interesting because most people in America, I feel don't want to even recognize how good these models can be with perhaps far less capital expenditure, right? Like they're, they're not spending that much for talent. They're not spending that much in even GPU resources. They don't have the, the latest cutting edge GPU resources, yet somehow they're able to come up with models that are not perhaps the best of the best, but they're quite good. They're frontier as, as you, as you say it. And so those are some, those are just some. Speaker 1 Nico, would you like to add? Speaker 4 Did you mention evals? Speaker 2 I did not mention. Speaker 1 Explain what it is. Speaker 4 So when let's say you know, you're an attorney or you're a doctor and then there is an AI or consultant and there is AAI model that is trying to replicate some of the day-to-day tasks that you do. There are always some corner cases, some exceptions that the model bikes off even after you trained it, you know, with all the world's data that's available out there won't get to. So when you recruit A consultant or at the doctor to take a look at it, they could come up, you know, with some of the exceptions and further, you know, refine that model. And I think that's a very big market opportunity that's opening up right now. It will be going on, you know, for a long time because you can bring in entire new professions and model them that you couldn't do, you know, as well today. And it's just coding basically. Speaker 5 Mm hmm. Speaker 3 Nikuch I think the recent news that everybody was jumping on was that, you know, Open AI won the IMO gold and then DeepMind also did that as well. I think that was interesting, but I think a lot of people missed in the details was open AI also had this competition where they just barely came second, where they had a single model running for 10 hours straight, where no direction whatsoever. He was able to reason figure out plan, go ahead 10 steps back, but for 10 hours straight it was able to do something. And I think that just like blew my mind that shows like what the future capabilities will be where we're no longer like we already, even if you stop all AI development today, these models are already phenomenally good to think and reason and give us interesting solutions for a long period of time. And that's like mind blowing to me that we've already reached here and everybody's kind of just like poop dealer. I'm kind of like walking away next. And so imagine you can throw these models at like, problems are 10 hours straight, like, you know, whether it's the bare minimum of doing research on DDS, every tweet on Twitter to like studying 1000 technical papers by the best researchers and trying to find hidden connections between them. And it's that I think that's mind blowing. I think this was not the case even two years ago. That's why agents, AI agents sucked. It's because they couldn't reason, They couldn't understand. And in two years, just with the models getting better, all of these things are now unlocked, whether it's research in the biotech space to like, you know, astronomy, like we'll be able to find new stars. I think we haven't even touched the frontier what these models can do. And we're only limited by like compute energy and like essentially data, which I think continue to be the three modes that kind of continue along from the models. Speaker 5 Perspective. Speaker 1 Anything else? Speaker 3 I, I, I think we just you, you know, I think the, everybody talks about AGI and ASI at this like 1 moment. I think my heart take would be like, AGI is kind of already here. But like humans like when we take away more ride with the first time, it's mind blowing to us. And then the next time you're just kind of like on your phone checking Twitter. I think we're already there with these models today, but these models are smarter than most humans already. And we've kind of just been like whatever and kind of like walked away. And I think This is why it's going to be a continuous spectrum where we will claim Asia is not here maybe 10 years from now, but it's already kind of here in the North. Theoretical definition maybe, but in a capabilities perspective it's already better. Speaker 4 Yeah. And I think another area that's becoming critically important is like what is the data set and the models that we can use to recreate the physical world. So in the world where we can have a lot of the robots that would do a bunch of the manual labor that it's hard to hire people for because they don't want to or it's expensive, how do you get to the five nines that you described? And you know, there are not that many companies use the example of autonomous vehicles that have been taking photos, videos and other inputs of the offline world like way more Tesla. There are few companies. So where else you know, can you find other sources of such data, either real world data or synthetic data on the cheap that's labeled and easily readily to use. This is a very important space and has applications that can be in defense tech and for all sorts of robotics. Yeah, so many, many that is embodied intelligence space, how you feed them with data. It's going to be one of the most amazing ones to do business in the next few years. Speaker 1 Do you think there's a use case in India for that? Speaker 2 For specifically what Nico said, yeah, that's that's a complicated one in terms of like use case in India. How do you mean? Like will self driving cars make it to India or Will? Speaker 1 Let's say a robot has to make a sandwich. Yeah. Does it have to train on some visual data? That will be a job for someone else. Speaker 2 The training part, yeah, it depends. There's a couple of different ways that people do it. There's this whole technique called SIM to real where, you know, you try to simulate it as much as you can, but then it's impossible to simulate the physical world. And so then you typically get other sources of data. And yes, there are some as, as far as I understand, maybe maybe you know more. There are labelers that will label this data in, in various companies. And those labelers can be sometimes in India, sometimes elsewhere. Speaker 5 Yeah. Speaker 3 In Philippines, like I mean, that's was Scale's biggest market. Like there are towns where it's almost like, I mean, it's like night and day difference, right? But there are towns where it's like light all night. And the entire team there is working on some version of labeling now. It could be labeling text, image, video. Last year. I've talked to many start-ups where they are basically building things that they give to workers in countries where laborers on the cheaper side, where they're doing everyday tasks and collecting that data and then feeding it to the model. It just makes sense. It's like, you know how Bpos exist in these countries. The new BP OS are these labelers who will be basically getting data that these large language model companies need to help make the models better. It's just the next natural transition. Speaker 4 Yeah, I think in many parts of the developing world where labour is really cheap, it might be harder to see some of these applications very quickly because the economics might not make sense. And then the real bottleneck for having robots, you know, companias for our daily tasks is that we need to make them. So if you think about, you know, the supply chain and everything required to make a gazillion of them, we might have AGI first, you know, before robots actually start attacking us and taking over the mints of production. And the future, you know, might be bright, you know for them, but not as much for the human race. Speaker 2 Just want to throw this out there because I get a lot of people telling me who are not as intimately familiar with the I telling me, oh, this is just pattern matching, this is just the Internet, yadda, yadda, yadda. If you look up this paper called Alpha Evolve from DeepMind, it is literally a paper where there are these simple math problems that everybody can understand, which is, you know, hexagon packing. You have a hexagon, how many of 123456 up to north hexagons can you fit? And how big is the surrounding hexagon? How small can you get the hexagon and pack all of this stuff in? And Alpha Evolve has made novel solutions on this problem that, you know, that haven't been improved upon in 20-30 years. So just to be clear, like AI is very much pushing the frontiers of, of human knowledge just in bits and pieces today. And we're going to see more of it. I just wanted to throw that one out there, but. The Economic Impact of Declining Birth Rates and AI's Influence What else do you think is changing? Like if you had to predict think of me as I am an idiot because I know nothing about this but. Speaker 2 You're not an. Speaker 1 Idiot, I'm asking you to like, prophesize five years ahead and paint a picture of the world for me. Speaker 2 One thing I think about probably I don't know how much you guys think about it, but one thing I think about that is not talked about in this regard and maybe five years is a bit short for this, probably 10 to 15 is is just birth rate decline. I think that's a very real problem. I know it is also a funny problem because in there's all these sorts of reasons why it's happening, but it's especially stark and even if you go as far as like South Korea, you know, in two generations that country maybe like a 10th or less of the population it is today. It it's really bad. Speaker 1 And but that has anything to do with AI. Speaker 2 It has a lot to do with the economy and it has a lot to do with AII mean. I mean, this is I'd love to explore this with all of you guys. It's not a very well formed thought, and I'm not an expert in this by any means, but a lot of economic growth is subtly tied in with the growth of the population, the growth of consumption overall. I mean, AI is no good unless you have somebody using something at the other end, like transactions have to be done for economic value for everyone to be prosperous. And so if we see a world where there's this rapid decline in population, what does that mean for the economy? What does that mean for like clothing stores? Are you going to be able to sell clothing anymore or are you going to sell much less? Like what happens to the stock of that business? So I, I don't know, I think that's a less explored problem, but it's going to be a slow burn, but it's something that, you know, has. Speaker 1 Transactions have to go up for productivity to go up. What if the value of the transaction goes? Speaker 2 It's possible. I, I think the amount that productivity there's like an economic definition I guess and then just the general definition to go up to counteract this effect is I think somewhat unrealistic. But again, I'm not an economist, so I don't know. Speaker 1 And how does AI exaggerate birth rate decline? Speaker 2 I don't think necessarily has anything to do with AII think there there is. Speaker 3 There's a very clear chart, like essentially 2009, it started declining. We all know what launched in 2009, just the iPhone. So it's not AI as much as like our addiction to just digital media and phones in general and AI you're. Speaker 1 Having less kids because of iPhones. Speaker 3 I mean, there's no, you can't directly, you can't directly point to it, right? There's no research that is that clear. But it is like 2009 across the world. And it's because like we're just becoming more and more dependent on a digital, our emotional needs are being satisfied by more on the digital side, whether it's like, you know, us watching YouTube Shorts versus going to a bar to like date someone. And I think AI will accelerate this problem for sure. Like again, I, I, I, I do think we are, we are confiding more in ChatGPT then we talk to like our closest humans, including like our own partners. And I, I do think that that has happened. And there's no, there's nowhere that you can ever draw it's Direct Line. But the the trend is clear starting when the mobile phone came out. Speaker 4 Young people now have less sex because they're addicted to their phone and, you know, they don't even know how to interact with another human, especially in in the in the post COVID world. You could see it with younger people who missed out in school for like a year or two and they were having a hard time interacting with other people in the offline world. So when you have, you know, less sex or you end up having it much later in life and you get a lot of the dopamine from digital experiences, what does it mean? You know, for like the fertility rate, what does it mean for a lot of the vice powered industries in a world where in the US and the West, you know, you have Ozempic doing really well. What does it mean for suppressing other vices beyond dozen, you know, excessive, you know, eating. So that stuff is like very interesting to just think about, like the second order effects that are very hard to imagine because, for example, you know, like the go back to tech with a VS, right, The FA VS are everywhere. What does it mean, you know, for the economy around gas stations or Costco or like, you know, anyone who's applying stuff to parking lots? I have no idea. You know, there might be in this country amazing businesses, you know, that are supplying products and services to the sub verticals. Yeah, the rate is dramatically accelerating. For the first time, there is a new form of intelligence that is going to be on par or overtime superior to a lot of the stuff that we as humans, you know, can do. So, you know, if you can borrow ideas from the world of sci-fi, what does it mean? Does it mean that we're going to somehow fade in the background? We're going to be like the same way that we have pets or cats and dogs right now. AI will love us and will feed us. APAI will assume the means of production. We'll have universal basic income. We'll be happy. Maybe we'll start having more sex. I don't know. Maybe the NBA will have 10,000 teams. Maybe everyone will be a supermodel, do sports or become a poet. But then all the important decisions around running the world, allocating resources, this new form of intelligence is going to make these decisions take over. And you know it's going to be the new species that writes the history books. Who does? Speaker 1 It's a bit like a democracy and a smarter, benevolent, maybe benevolent dictator on top. Speaker 5 Yeah. Speaker 1 Is it important that we are making the decisions if something smarter is more capable? Speaker 4 There are a lot of questions that, you know, this question raises here, right? One of the good news is that AI still today is powered with electricity. So we're unhappy, we unplug it and we're good, right, Because the battery technology is not that sophisticated, you know, and enduring yet. But yeah, it does matter a lot. You know, who are the creators of this super powerful pieces of software and systems? Because if they themselves, you know, are all made of the same cloth and they have groupthink, they won't be able to cover a lot of the different voices that humans from all over the planet and different backgrounds might have. And unfortunately, you know, for the world, tech is moving really quickly. Policy cannot cut up. Like in like, the hardest thing honestly, that we face right now is even if you're like a PhD in AI working for one of the foundation model companies, you can't keep up with the pace. This is the single hardest thing. So imagine being, you know, like a policy maker or somebody who thinks about that stuff all day long. How do you keep up and you know, the tech is improving in the background. This this is really tricky. Speaker 1 Do you personally believe the world will get there, where we become like cats and dogs in the background? Speaker 4 I don't wanna believe in that world, but is there a scenario that this might happen? Yes, there is a scenario that this might happen. Speaker 3 But I think I have the more optimistic take, which is like, see, since the industrial evolution, humans have just known to increase efficiency. It's like singular like, you know? Speaker 1 Now it makes sense that you worked at Koslav inches so. Speaker 4 Every year productivity is going up what like couple of percent and even the Internet, you know? Speaker 3 Like, but the point being is like, we've always found a way to do more. Jobs have come and gone. Typewriters used to be a thing, no longer a thing. Pace is accelerating, but pace has always been accelerating. Maybe it's just an exponential curve. And that's why we're feeling that we're on, we're on the roller coaster, right on the edge. And that's why we're feeling it. But I think I believe like in an abundant future where like, like, you know, I believe actually like we'll have more time to do more leisure full activities. Like the work day might go down from 12 hours a day to six hours a day. And that means we have more time for like art and music and entertainment. And I don't know, like spending time with like our loved ones. That's my take on the decision. Like that's like the abundant scenario. Speaker 4 It's already happening today like. Speaker 3 If. Speaker 4 You should take way more. Right before you were behind the searing world. Now you are reading you know it is to it. So nice. Speaker 1 But this also happened 2000 years ago, say Greek society. Not everybody had to work because they were doing so well. Yeah, philosophy was a thing where people sat and spent their lives philosophizing what they should believe in, what they should not believe in. Maybe the world goes there. No. Speaker 4 It will, yeah. There will be 10,000 teams in the NBA. As I said, we're all going to be philosophers and poets. Maybe we'll have a lot more sex and we can leave like our own version of Brian Johnson. It will leave for like 2000 years. Might very well happen. Yeah, I'm. Speaker 2 A bit more apprehensive on the abundance situation because I think the abundance and narrative necessary. There will always be certain people with less resources and as long as you have less resources, you will want more resources. And so the abundance mindset I think is a luxury of a few and there is no way you can convince somebody who grows up from AI don't know poverty stricken family in India. You can't. Speaker 1 Before you go ahead. Debating Abundance, Capitalism, and the Search for Meaning Yeah. Speaker 1 Does abundance hit proportionately proportionately to the modes of capitalism when there is abundance? Speaker 2 Absolutely. That's what history has time and again told us. If you read my favorite book, Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty, every time there is growth and development, inequality increases. I don't think there's very many situations where that's not the case. Speaker 1 But he makes a case for that donut economics, right? Like the marginal utility of money beyond a point. Speaker 2 Yes, that's was done. That's correct. And but that Despite that, I mean, I think still think we have a very far gap to fill before, you know, the entirety of society is above the point where the marginal amount of money means nothing. I mean, we see it in a in a little bit, right? There are people who, I mean, I think about this all the time, but. Speaker 1 Also, think about this, you were just saying fertility rates are dropping such that countries in two generations will have 110th the number of people they have. So that changes everything too, right? Speaker 5 Yeah. Speaker 4 But let's talk about that. What if we have the artificial womb? I just had, you know, a baby through a surrogate. I'm in my early 40s. My wife is in her early 40s. Honestly, it's amazing. I, I think we need to make having kids cool again. It's not as much about the incentives, but it's more about the narrative. Like, so if we're all to become a lot more religious, this perhaps would mean that they would get married, you know, earlier. This would probably mean that where the religion to propagate, you would have, you know, more kids earlier. So one of the reasons, for example, why in Latin America the fertility rates decline in some of the steepest in the world is because Catholicism in many of these countries is not as cool as it used to be in previous, you know, decades. Speaker 1 So would you bet on religion making a comeback because it ought to? Speaker 4 I think it is making a comeback, yeah. And part of the reason is after like 15 years being stuck on a small screen and after, you know, 20 years of going to Equinox, Boris boot camp or whatever, you know, these institutions are for you. Depending on where you live, you're trying to find other places that have a meaning. By the way, there might be an AI religion that gets formed, who knows that it's going to fulfill the most on needs that some humans might have. But yeah, I do think religion is making. Speaker 3 I think it's all about a search for meaning. That's where I like like going back on the abundant side. It's like search for meaning eventually ends up coming with people and the byproducts of people, not from a kite's perspective, but whatever we end up doing. And I think if going back to the poverty side, I think we live in a place where more people die of calorie surplus than negative. I think that's now that's why Osanthic is doing so well. Obesity is the number one killer rather than I know that's not what you were trying to say, but I think going back to that point, we already live in an abundant future where I don't think the income disparity I agree with that is my #1 fear. But I don't know what the solution there is because Ubi experiment has been tried and it'll be interesting to see as that gap goes bigger what happens. Speaker 2 Yeah, I actually agree with all of your points. I Yeah, well, my only difference is the search for meaning and the Maslow's hierarchy of need is after a couple of other things. And it's not always just about. It's about I think humans own perception of status, Sure, and where they are. And like, you know, obviously the food in America is not as much of a problem and calories is not. But yeah, that's kind of. But I think we do agree. I think just separate. Speaker 5 Yeah. Speaker 1 OK, so we spoke about. Speaker 5 Huh. Speaker 1 What are you saying? Say it out loud, I'm sorry. Speaker 5 No. Every time a cell threat car passes by, it's. Speaker 1 That's OK, it'll sound natural. Speaker 3 Only. Only in San Francisco, he reminded you. He didn't remind you of. Speaker 2 The Spy, The way most are gonna detect the Nikhil Kamath podcast. Everything. Everything we were just talking about. Speaker 3 How? There's a Netflix series called The Spy. It's about Israel. He didn't. Speaker 1 Keep rolling. Speaker 3 In Iran, Syria. In Syria. Oscars. Yeah. And the way he gets found out is like he's talking on this frequency with their particular frequency and they have these cars that are just driving by and they catch him on that frequency. So it very much reminded me of the way most passing by causing our frequency. Speaker 1 To imagine what must be happening to spy technology and all this, right? Speaker 3 Oh my God, can't even that's. Speaker 2 Crazy. Speaker 1 Everything is watched and heard in perpetuity. Almost. Speaker 2 I mean, weapons technology with AI is also, you know, not it's a very investable asset and people are investing in it and some some crazy things come out of it. Navigating Technology's Impact on Childhood and Digital Detox I think we should all assume that we're living our lives in public now. And it's a little bit hard to say that if you're somebody you know and you're like 40s or older, but pretty much, you know, every second or third building now on the street has some cameras installed. Speaker 5 Phone. Speaker 4 With a camera you have a city with self driving cars or cameras. Like with all these sensors, you're living life in public and then everything, anything you ever say online, in theory you know somebody can track it. So imagine being somebody who is in elementary school right now by the. Speaker 5 Moment you started using. Speaker 4 Computers if you created you know your account like on the iPod and now you're using charger PT to help you with your homework and you can share your feelings. Everything you know is getting trucked. I mean, parents are putting their. Speaker 3 Newborn on Instagram that's like, you know your digital identity is already being published that's right without your choice. Without your choice, Yeah, Now it's just like the moment you push a digital device and any ages had and it's gone. What do you guys do for your kids? Do you? Speaker 6 Have. Speaker 2 Plans to put them on Instagram. I haven't used Instagram in four years. Speaker 3 So I think one of the thoughts I have which. Speaker 4 Is like a hopefully positive thought is, you know, by the time my kid is going to be a teenager, the iPhone won't really exist in its current shape and form. So like one of the things that I'm amazed by that could be a predecessor, you know, to this argument I just made coming true is when you have really young kids interacting with technology, they do so with their hands or with voice and then you put them in front of a laptop, they see the keyboard and they freeze. Like what am I supposed to do with this thing? You know, because so far I've been talking to my iPad or, you know, my dad is, you know, like iPhone. So I think, you know, 4 to 4 project with new software and new AI first hardware, how we could interact with technology. The small screen might not be as addictive, you know, we might actually have it in our brain. Do you think that could become a business? Exploring the Rise of No-Tech Retreats and Sci-Fi Predictions In itself, no. Speaker 5 Tech No. Speaker 1 Devices disconnected? Is it a real estate project around? It is already a business, so like people. Speaker 4 Here around San Francisco, they would go for like 3-4 day silent retreats or we don't use technology to find themselves to clean, you know, their, their souls. It's already a business and it's going to become more and more of a bigger trend. I mean, for some time and first half of the previous decade, Burning Man was that. Now suddenly no Starling destroyed it, that aspect of it. But you know, this was a part of what burning mud served to the technology of that era. India has Vipassana which is similarity. Speaker 1 Yeah, sorry, no sci-fi. Speaker 5 Books. Speaker 3 I I exclusively only read sci-fi. It's a perfect picture. In the future, I think it's snow crashes the book where they basically had these bars where you go in and like everything electronic is turned off and it failed to people very unnatural and weird because they don't have everything in their brain recording or intelligent an extra intelligence layer. And that's the future people will do to feel human again. Like you know, snow Crash. Snow Crash is an old. Speaker 1 Sci-fi book? What are the books of today's sayings, if you're reading them? Speaker 3 There's I mean, I only read like older books, like the newer books obviously like Blake Crouch is excellent. Like I highly recommend reading everything he writes, but like it's like really all the books is fun because it shows you 20 years in the future. Now people are using like AI as the base and building on top of that. But three body problem is like my absolute favorite I've read. What is the three body problem? Talk about it. Speaker 5 Talks about just like. Speaker 3 Everything from interstellar space to how like humanity travels to different places. I wouldn't do it any justice like trying to explain the core fundamental science things. But I highly recommend reading it. And there's if you don't want to read it, just watch the Netflix series, which is a poor adaptation, but I know people like video more than reading nowadays. So it's unbelievably good. It has cut us a lot of pieces on society, culture, governance, interest, like, you know, interstellar space to just like even human emotions. It's like very, very, very well done. You brought up an interesting point. You know, like. Speaker 4 People have an easier time watching video instead of reading because now we're constantly distracted and the push notifications and technology are so addictive and want to get our dopamine heat. So like going back to what you were discussing before, you know, there are these offline retreats, but there are also some applications out there like Clearspace and Opel and others that help you have like a digital detox on your phone. They're all growing and all of them are growing. Speaker 3 So this is. Speaker 4 Like, you know, speaking, it's like evidence that consumers are voting with their dollars to block the most addictive products out there, most often social media products. And there is even a new class of like consumer hardware start-ups that are creating versions of dumb phones with some core utilities. Because one would argue, if you cannot call Uber Waymo, that's a problem. Speaker 5 If you cannot. Speaker 4 You know, text your loved one, that's a problem, but you really need to have all the different messaging apps or social media apps on your phone. Probably not for the sake of playing devil's advocate, because as much. Speaker 2 As I love your guys's argument, I want to buy that. On the other hand, like I was looking at the stat for how much YouTube is watched in the world and if you do the numbers, the final result I got was 2% of all human waking hours is on YouTube. That's an insane amount. And look, I'm there some assumptions. So maybe 1%. So I mean that's rising too. So I think I, I still worry about it because sure, some people are detoxing, but it's like a vice is a vice. I mean, you can stop some people from gambling, but there's a reason the law is prohibited. It's because people are drawn to vices. I was in India for two weeks and. Speaker 3 I mean, I've seen the rise of Geo and cheap data everywhere in OR like, and I go once a year for two weeks and it's crazy. It's like, you know, the security guy at 3:00 AM in the morning is watching like a YouTube video, which like, you know, and it's like probably terrible for his eyes. And like, it's like, I didn't see anybody like, yeah, it's like everywhere because it's so cheap. Data's proliferated. So I mean, I don't, I think the genie is out. I think it's kind of one of those like, we live very privileged lives being in the Bay Area. We can be like, oh, we need to do digital detox. And people are like still making money and all of those things. You realize we're making a YouTube video right now. I know. Speaker 5 That's great, I hope this is YouTube education. Speaker 4 Section, right? That's a good part of YouTube. It's like having someone in broccoli. Great. It's not like McDonald's. What do you think happens to matchmaking? How Digital Twins and Offline Experiences Will Reshape Dating Dating apps what happens to dating apps yeah, we just. Speaker 5 Met one yesterday that's. Speaker 4 Why I'm asking? Speaker 1 Which one niche? Speaker 5 Oh. Speaker 1 Nandani, Yeah, Nice. Speaker 2 They will evolve. Speaker 4 Because. Speaker 5 Probably it will. Speaker 4 Be a continuation of some of this, you know, AI products that know everything about you and they know everything about a lot of other people that might be a good fit for you. And they could be able to make durated intros and could be able to handle the beginning of the conversation so that you get to the actual, you know, like date. Because today's AI apps in is the West. They're more like entertainment products than actual dating apps. Yeah, I think you get the dopamine from matching not. Speaker 1 From dating, right? So it's something like 30% of people. Speaker 4 Who are in the swipe left and right, They've never been on a date. Yeah. And then these products were built for, like, a different generation where, you know, people were not as gender fluid. And for example, you know, if I'm like somebody who is on the younger side and is bi, just having like a straight profile on Tinder, it doesn't serve me as well. And the other thing that's going on, unfortunately, is there's a lot of data discrimination. Speaker 5 That's happening. Speaker 4 On the dating apps, so something like 8 to 10% of the guys get 80% of the dates. This is really bad news for humanity and this speaks to a need. Speaker 5 That's in the background. Speaker 4 Like a demand or something new. So like, for example, if you're a guy and you're not getting any dates on any of the popular online dating apps, the best thing you can do is delete it from your phone, sign up with a new location. Ideally you input a location next to an airport. Cause over there there are a lot of people coming in and out and the algorithm gets rerouted, you know, again. So like, I think the future of online dating is going to be part of what people are using like GPT to do their homework. It's like anyone who's young now and they're just addicted to that behaviour, they would expect a similar kind of experience for other parts of life, I think. Speaker 5 I believe. Speaker 3 Like we'll all have digital twins. Like it just makes sense. Like, you know, we already do in ChatGPT in the memory layer. Like, we're inputting so much of our information in there. And so I think dating just evolves very similarly where, you know, why swipe left or right, where if your digital twin is able to just figure out from this ocean about the digital twins, who's the best match for you. They do the early conversations and then you just get to meet them and you just trust the algorithm to do the curation. Today in Tinder, you're just filling out a profile that has stale data. But imagine if you could take your deepest, darkest, like all the things that you put in ChatGPT today to do the matching for you. It'll be far more effective because it does all the matching. And it's like, OK, then you have a slider. It's like, how different do you want them? Or if you have three different dates, it's like, you know, one's like truly a Magic 8 ball and one's like ideally matched to who you are. But is it an industry that you would bet on? Speaker 5 You would want to allocate money behind it. There's a. Speaker 1 There's one. Speaker 2 Of the dating apps in our mentalist portfolio is like Raya, which is was a good investment, but generally dating apps today are you'd have to have something unique for it to be a good bet. I think you know, Nico probably knows more, but you guys both are more consumer investors than I am. I mean, with consumer, it's just really tough to bet on these things unless you see some element of traction already. Like you need to know that it works, but correct me if not you. And Facebook was a dating product in the early days. Speaker 4 So would you invest in the next Facebook that's going to look very different than it? Yes, you would what is the single best dating product today if you're a very successful person, probably Instagram. It's over there, you know you. Speaker 5 Can slide. Speaker 4 Into other famous people, beautiful people's DMS and they would reply back at you. Speaker 5 But over time, you know these things. Speaker 4 Will evolve and then I think there's something to be said about offline experiences around dating becoming a lot more desirable for people like in a world where like you know the online experiences are very addictive and we have them in abundance what becomes course they're very awesome cool offline experiences so anyone who. Speaker 5 Has the means would. Speaker 4 Want to be part of that? If somebody's building a dating app, they should. Speaker 1 Solve not just for meeting someone, but also for the date. Absolutely. Yeah. So. Speaker 4 I I work with one team called 222. They're in New York. How do you spell that 22? Speaker 1 2 dot. Speaker 2 Place. Speaker 4 Is the website and what those folks are doing something very simple? You're a newcomer to New York City or to LA or San Francisco. You want to meet others. You can go and do a cooking class together, or you can go and have, like, dinner, you and two other friends of yours and seven strangers. And then alongside 97 other people, you can go to a bar and people pay their subscribers to to that. And it's growing really, really quickly. So the future of dating apps will be. Speaker 1 More offline than online, yeah. And let's wiping. I think that part. Speaker 4 Dime has come to run it's course. OK, so we've established. Speaker 5 Humans could become. Speaker 1 Like cats and dogs, religion will do. Recap of Societal Shifts: AI, Fertility, and Human Evolution Well, maybe a new. Speaker 1 AI, religion fertility rates will drop. Speaker 5 And that rate might? Speaker 1 Exaggerate. We also said matchmaking will change digital twin offline Instagram is where a lot of people date today. We said socialism and. Speaker 5 Capitalism will. Speaker 1 Move closer to centre, I don't know. And then and that one. Speaker 3 I, I plead the fifth, I think more capitalism. Speaker 2 You know I visited. Speaker 4 I visited South Korea this past Christmas. Yeah. And I went to, like, a viewpoint where you can see the closest town of North Korea in the Demilitarized Zone. And it's striking to see the difference. It was one of these clear days because normally there's a lot of pollution that you cannot see. So I could see the streets of that town. And in the 30 minutes I was at that coffee shop, I didn't see a single car. And I was like shocked because I was like, whoa, you know, we're just like 2-3 miles away and here there is stuff happening. And over there, you know, poor people who happen to be born there not because of their own volition. And they're stuck in the ice ages instead of economic, you know, groups. So like. Speaker 5 There's certain places where you can. Speaker 4 Compare contrast, you know the different systems. Sadly, still we also said off the grid. Speaker 1 Businesses will do well. Digital detox with personal kind of stuff. Video over reading. Speaker 5 Will continue to. Speaker 1 Grow video will continue to get shorter. You want a dopamine spike sooner. I mean, capitalism, I think will always reward. Speaker 2 Whatever hacks your brain to give you reward immediately in dopamine and that means that's why there is shift to shorter video. It's an easier hack for the brain. What if we have like brain implants? Speaker 4 And, you know, there are going to be ways to hack people's brains or a new form of digital drugs will be invented, You know, like neuro Link. Yeah. Speaker 1 Neurolink. It's one of. Speaker 5 The companies that are building. Speaker 4 The brain implants, right? But like historically, you know, we've like images more than text with like video more than images with like sort video more than like long form video. But I'm saying if most people, you know, many people have brain implants, there will be new things they'd like. And would you get one if somebody were to tell you here? Speaker 1 Nico is a brain implant which will increase your IQ by 40%. Speaker 5 I'm sure there could be a reason. Speaker 4 For me to do it, you know, by that time I might have some cognitive decline, right? And I won't like that. Or maybe like optional like some. Speaker 1 You're OK and somebody offers it to you and see if you had. Speaker 5 Said to me a few. Speaker 4 Years ago you could speak all of the world's languages with a brand implant. It would be like sign me up now. Unfortunately, unfortunately, some of this, you know, like Ray Bun smart glasses, you know, are getting there. So this might not be the use case that gets me. But you know, there's if you can have like cognitive superpowers, why not? Or if I could have a part in my head at all times or there's a monologue going on in my head, you know, at all times, like thinking too many things. If that you know implant can help me pacify it, great. Speaker 5 What do you think happens to urbanization? Do we? Examining Densely Populated Cities and Real Estate Trends All still want to be in densely populated cities. I think so because this has been the. Speaker 4 Case you know since the very beginning of humanity like we tend to be more and more dense you know so it is it's great for we're also sell animals it's great for the planet it's great for if that were true wouldn't we be 1 block of. Speaker 1 People in every country or one block of densely populated people. Why do we have states? Why do different states have different cities? Because the world has been around for long enough. But in many. Speaker 4 Countries now, which you know countries was a new idea from the 19th century. In many countries you see certain cities where you have like, you know, 20-30, forty, 50% of the population you know, but not 100. Speaker 1 Not 100%, no. Speaker 5 Unless it's a very small one. Speaker 4 Like Singapore, right? Yeah, yeah. But think of a country. Speaker 5 Like the US if. Speaker 1 That was a prevailing trend. There would be 1 block either on the West Coast or East Coast where everybody would live. I think natural resources, matter, energy. Speaker 3 There's a lot of other factors also. Climate change, climate changes, climate matters, terrain matters, economy, economy matters. Like it just doesn't. People choose to leave and go somewhere else. So I don't think it's that simple. Would you bet on urbanization to continue? Speaker 1 With Nico as well, 100% yeah I also think. Speaker 3 But I think, I think it'll, it'll continue. But then as the income disparity grows, real estate grows, sorry, as we get more and more things in the digital world like real estate actually becomes far more expensive. Why? Because that's. Speaker 1 The only. Speaker 5 Asset people. Speaker 3 Can hold on to. That's a real block train, man. Yeah. Speaker 4 Yeah, it's a supply. Speaker 3 Constrained asset, it's a supply. Speaker 2 Constrained asset, but if there are one. Speaker 3 10 the number of people. Speaker 1 And there's infinite land in the world. I don't think there'll be 110 the number of people. Speaker 3 The cycle of decline. Speaker 5 Does it ever go? Speaker 1 Up. We don't know, right? I think it does, but. Speaker 5 It has. Speaker 2 Happened, I mean, declines in civilizational population have happened in the past for mostly war, yeah, and other other sorts of reasons, famine, disease. But this time it's not that. This time it's not that. But I think that part humans generally fix themselves. So I'm optimistic. Just going back to the digital detox side, right, like? Speaker 3 You know, But what if you know? We all live, you know, like. Speaker 4 120 years, right? Yeah, which is believable for folks for now, you know, like getting born or they're like 10-15 years old. So if that happens, the population decline is not going to be as quick as, you know, we might think it is. And, you know, normally for the population to grow, it depends really on the number of fertile women and how many years they have that they're fertile. So that's a constraint that nature or God, you know, gave to us. So what if, you know, you could like 3X the number of fertile years that we have today, or we could have artificial wombs, but we all want to live longer. I. Speaker 1 Think. Speaker 5 Most people. Speaker 4 If they believe in a better future for themselves, they want to live longer. Most people would say yes and this believing in a better. Speaker 5 Future. Speaker 1 Tomorrow is a very recent phenomenon. Before the industrial revolution, if you asked anybody how do you think you will be 5 years from now, most people thought they would be worse off. This is new that we've seen growth. Speaker 2 For as. Speaker 1 Long as we have in some form or another, it is, yeah. Speaker 5 So longevity and Wellness as. Biotech Advances and the Future of Human Lifespan A business Good place to be, great place to be. Speaker 5 In any country, this. Speaker 4 Is the first time you've said great this? Speaker 1 Evening, Yeah, Thank. Speaker 5 You. Yeah, right. Speaker 4 And that's. Speaker 1 My copilot right now. Speaker 4 What do you think? Speaker 1 I think. Speaker 2 Long, longer term, great places to to be, to, to invest in. I think biotech is taking a lot of interesting strides in terms of drug discovery. So how do we solve a bunch of the diseases that cause early death? I think is really important. There's a lot of. Speaker 5 Cool work going on there. Speaker 2 Longevity. I think it's a slower burn. So you know, I'm optimistic, but on a slightly longer time horizon. That's the name, right? Speaker 4 I guess so. Speaker 2 I guess so. And then I so I am a very optimistic about biotech overall. Speaker 5 I think the artificial. Speaker 2 Womb thing is interesting for sure, but I think it does cause into it calls into question some. Speaker 5 Concerns around. Speaker 2 You know, how many kids will one person be able to have? Because then it becomes a, you know, purchasable asset. Can you have 1000 kids if you can just artificial room them? Maybe some people might want to do that. Well, religion has solved for that. Speaker 4 It becomes uneconomic, you know, according to most religions, to have many kids. At the extreme ends, though, I think that we. Speaker 2 Could see some interesting things happen there. We need robots to help. Speaker 4 Raise them too that too that too, and this would be probably. Speaker 2 More expensive. Speaker 4 Or you would need a lot more space. Speaker 6 And. Speaker 4 Since real estate is. Speaker 5 Becoming more expensive, That's a real. Speaker 4 Limitation Do you think real estate will continue to become more? Speaker 1 Expensive. Do you believe in that finite supply? One of the issues that we have in the. Speaker 4 Western world is that the productivity in the construction industry has been stagnating or certain decades going down. So unless we fix that, unfortunately, you know in most places real estate will continue to become more expensive, right? So we were. Speaker 5 Doing this exercise see at the end of. Speaker 1 The day we are all capital allocators, right? Analyzing Education and Private Company Secondary Markets for Growth All four of us in one way or another, maybe on the venture side, the private equity side, whatever. So we were trying to. Speaker 5 Arrive. Speaker 1 At what statements hold the most value for us from a rate of change is increasing world is changing 10 years from now which industry would have grown the fastest I'm going to share the statements 1 by 1 and maybe we can all open disagree agree rate them the first one I'll. Speaker 5 Say is Indian. Speaker 1 Families with rising income reducing family size, we'll invest in premium education. Outcome focused education will take preference. What do you guys think? Great. Speaker 5 In only this particular, I think in general. Speaker 3 That will happen, yeah. I'm just saying Indian because you're sitting. Speaker 1 In India, doing this exercise, Nico, do you think everybody will spend more on education? No. Speaker 5 But certain. Speaker 4 Cultures like in India or in South Korea or where it come from in in Greece they absolutely do because they see this as a viable path to improving their chances of their offsprings doing well. In the US. The average person does not care about spending money on their kids education. My kid is bought at math, the teacher is bought. That's changing. Speaker 3 Why is that culturally? Speaker 1 It's an immigrant. Speaker 5 Nation and everybody has. Speaker 1 Become successful in the recent past. So didn't they distinguish the successful from the unsuccessful also through the lens of education? Who is they? Speaker 5 Like all the American. Speaker 4 People. Speaker 1 Even you know you. Speaker 5 Forget when you. Speaker 4 Made it to the top. Often you forget and. Speaker 5 For a lot of folks. Speaker 4 This is not priority number one. If you're like an immigrant yourself or you're somebody affluent, you of course do care a lot about it. Yeah. Speaker 5 Every society in the. Speaker 2 Past that has achieved pinnacle status has always shifted to arts and culture as their way to to spend time, whether it's sports or something else. And in America it's a very sports oriented culture more than it is an education oriented culture. Like you said, I I don't know too many, you know, can I ask you guys to give it a rating one to 10? Speaker 1 This one, yeah, the. Speaker 2 Education. Speaker 5 1/8 or 9. Speaker 2 OK. Speaker 5 Same, I'm like a 10 for like you. Speaker 4 Come from like a country that's on the up and up. Yeah. OK, Nikunj. Speaker 5 Outcome focused. Speaker 1 Education, yeah. Speaker 3 Will be the IT is the future nine OK secondary. Speaker 5 Markets. Speaker 1 For private companies will become a big thing 10. Speaker 5 Again, these are moments in time, right? Speaker 4 Because there are moments when regulators and the incentives are aligning for public markets to be open and to welcome companies at a much earlier stage. There are other moments that this is not the case. So at the moment, you know, we're living in during a time where a lot of the value is captured by private investors on the way up. Like you now see quite a few companies that are worth $100 billion plus, whereas back in the day you. Speaker 5 Know. Speaker 4 This was not the case, like when Facebook went public and was valued on day one over $100 billion. I think they were the first ones ever, you know, to do that in 2012. And could you also argue that tomorrow? Speaker 1 A lot more really large companies will want to avoid a circumvent taking retail money because they'll have to be over regulated if they do if. Speaker 5 Indeed, you know they have to be. Speaker 4 Over regulated and they have a choice because they can get funding from other places. Yeah, they might avoid, but if we bring down the regulatory constraints or capital from other sources becomes more scarce, this could be an option for me. You know, somebody who lives in the US, it's actually sad that the retail investor, the pension funds, the low fees, ETFs cannot have access to some of these wealth, you know, sooner rather than later. It's sad 100%, but I don't think it's. Speaker 1 Changing anytime soon right at the. Speaker 5 Moment it looks like it's not. Speaker 4 Going to change sometimes then, yes, yeah. Speaker 5 It's like 8 or 9. Speaker 3 There's. Speaker 5 Access. Speaker 3 I think if you think about like imbalance in the future or disparity like access becomes the primary thing that only a few people have and that's the sad aspect and access for the gate kept. Speaker 1 The access for the gate kept and I think that's the. Speaker 3 That's the sad aspect. Speaker 5 But do I see it? Speaker 3 Changing anytime soon? No, incentives are just not aligned. Do you guys want to rate the statement, Nico? Speaker 1 Secondary market. Speaker 5 Secondary markets. Speaker 1 Marketplaces, they're going to be strong forever. Speaker 4 For the next 10 years. Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it's a five, Yeah. Speaker 5 What? Speaker 4 Yeah, TDI said 10. Speaker 5 I don't. Speaker 2 I don't see it changing Nikuch. Speaker 5 Split the middle take. Speaker 1 7. Speaker 3 Right. I think, I don't. I think it'll change. I think it'll change in the end, start of next decade. The Aging Population and Healthcare's Growing Economic Share The world. Speaker 5 Will be older and. Speaker 1 Sicker Wellness, hospitalization, longevity. Great sectors to be in. I think there are two different statements. Speaker 3 In my opinion, explain I don't think. Speaker 1 You. Speaker 3 I don't. Speaker 5 Believe the world will. Speaker 3 Be older and sicker. Why not? I mean. Speaker 1 We're. Speaker 3 Constantly 1st I believe like as kind of Didi mentioned, like biotech is the application area where I do believe US discovering new things will be the most like literally 1 sector will discover the most things where AI will be useful as biotech and I think that will help transform most of the common diseases. Why we die. I mean Ozempic is already doing with obesity, which is a huge factor. So I do think we'll live longer and like healthier, but I do think that will take in. Speaker 1 That is agreed. World will be older. If we live longer, world will be older. Yeah, So that's right. So older, No. And. Speaker 3 Not sicker, Yeah. And then average. Like, do you think about median happiness years? Let's put it like in a like philosophical way. No, I'm more thinking how many people are sick? Speaker 1 At one point of time, because money can be made by treating them. How many? Speaker 5 People, do you want to answer? Yeah. Speaker 2 I, I I was going. Speaker 5 To be pretty strong. Speaker 2 On this one, I mean, just again, this is a side effect of birth rates decline. So as birth rates decline, the demographic imbalance will switch to having more older people. I think you have. Yeah, you sneak in. You're right. I mean, you have to debate the baseline of what sicker means, but you know, that's what I was thinking. Generally if you're. Speaker 3 Talking about the. Speaker 2 World being sicker because there are more older people and older people are generally sicker. Yeah, I mean, that is, that is factual. Also, we've just come out of COVID. Speaker 1 After many, many decades. Speaker 5 We had something. Speaker 1 Like that, maybe there'll be more. Perhaps. But even without. Speaker 5 That I would say the world. Speaker 2 Is older people get sicker, people will be older, therefore people will be sicker. And then longevity, Wellness and all of that. Very important also because of how connected we are, right? Speaker 1 Now, when something transmissible comes about next, we'll all get it much faster than we did historically. That's why I say sicker. Like I was sitting with somebody from Moderna last weekend. They were saying we got really close with bird flu. But the world has gotten to a point where if I have something which is moderately infectious, the odds of the last person in the world not catching it are low today. But I think we'll be able to. Speaker 3 Come up with an antidote faster and distribute it faster. Also, I think that's the corollary that I don't think we get. Like code would have been much worse without mRNA. A lot of these things that didn't exist like 10-15 years ago. And I think that pace is only going to accelerate. So I'm that's what I was trying to like understand I think the acceleration of us making things better. Yeah, let me put it more specifically, I think. Speaker 1 The ambiguity goes away in 2035. I'm reviewing the portfolio that is being invested in today. Will the business of. Speaker 5 Treating sick people have. Speaker 1 Done well by then I think we're rating that. Speaker 5 I mean, in the US it's. Speaker 3 Already what 19% of USGDP goes in healthcare, that number will go up 100%. Speaker 1 Yeah, that. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 5 The number will go up. Does it mean it's a good? Speaker 4 Business, yes, exactly PBD because like if. Speaker 3 You are like in. Speaker 4 Healthcare services or you run hospital stuff. Most of them are not great businesses, however. Speaker 5 You know, if you find ways to bend. Speaker 4 The coast curve, Oh my God. Amazing all the trends are on your side. I suspect there are. Speaker 5 Better businesses outside of the. Speaker 1 US because the US has a problem which is very unique to itself, right? That's right, like the multiples. Speaker 5 Of hospital companies. Speaker 1 In India are like 100 times rough especially. Speaker 5 If you've been able to build a brand around. Speaker 1 It do you like to rate this Nico? Older sicker world, I think. Older. Speaker 4 Yes, Seeker I it's a definition thing. But like, you know, is this market going to become much bigger between now and 2035? Yes, it's like a nine, you know. Speaker 5 9 Nikunj Yeah 8. Speaker 3 Senior. Speaker 5 Living this is. Speaker 1 Something we invested in. Funnily enough, me and. The Evolving Landscape of Senior Living and Its Benefits Hemant did this deal. Speaker 1 Together we did a couple. Speaker 5 In senior living. Speaker 1 Were you part of that? I'm aware of it, but I was not part. Speaker 4 Of it, No. Yeah, yeah. Thoughts. Speaker 5 The world will be. Speaker 1 Older. Speaker 5 Senior Living. Speaker 1 Affluent, senior living well, some of the fastest growing cities in the. Speaker 4 US are the villages in Florida. If there's something to be said, you know, about that model expanding to other countries. I think, you know, this one has like very awesome long term, you know, prospects and especially in the developing world, there's like people become more affluent, their kids are fewer, they don't live with them, but they move for economic opportunity in other parts of the country or other parts of the world. You need this U aids to be close to other elderly people and or individuals or are going to be able to help you. This particular deal we did together. Speaker 5 Is. Speaker 1 A company called Primus and the data he was showing us is if a 70 year old man or woman is at his facility, which is a very affluent like high end senior living facility, the quality of life and the longevity of. Speaker 5 Their life goes. Speaker 1 Up by a significant premium because they have community trend. And he showed me this really crazy research. Like when my dad was sick, I got him a nurse. So then he didn't have to do anything. He didn't have to move. Somebody was doing everything for him. That's the worst thing you can do for your parent. It's very counterintuitive, but I think just that community, the having to play with someone, having some competition, being organized, playing memory games, walking all of that with like, like aged people changes everything. Absolutely. Yeah. So if you read about. Speaker 4 Blue Zones, which are like the different parts of the world where they have the highest percentage of people who are 100 years old, plus the shared trait that they all have to demonstrate is community. So like in Okinawa and Japan and Nikaria and Greece and like, you know, other parts, you're somebody, you know, who's like 100 years old. Your kids might be dead or incapacitated. But because every day, you know, in your village, you're socializing and you feel like you have responsibilities, this is what keeps you going. We rated this highly in India. Speaker 1 Even though there is such a big societal stigma about senior living, I think the misconception one has is at a certain point with your parent, you're almost being selfish by keeping them at home with versus allowing them to make more choices of their own. It's a hard thing. Speaker 5 Especially in India to. Speaker 1 Overcome. I don't know how it's in Greece, but but you know, because in Greece. Speaker 4 Again, you know, the standard of living went up and then the cost of living, cost of Labor also, you know, went up. What saved a lot of families was like, Eastern European labour talent that visited the country and stayed there as illegal immigrants and then got legalized. But in the beginning, you know, if you had your kid, your elderly parents sent to like a senior living. Speaker 5 Facility, everyone would look. Speaker 4 Down on you. So the preferred choice was to have somebody from Georgia or Romania, you know, do the work for you. But then you realized all the stuff that you mentioned, you know, that your dad, your mom wouldn't interact with anyone else. The cognitive decline would be faster. So now, you know, after like 30 years of doing what I said, some of the much better senior living, you know, businesses are looked up more nicely or favourably. You guys want to comment on senior living? Speaker 1 Would you send your parents? It's a tough. Speaker 2 One I would there is some bias. Speaker 5 Against it. Speaker 2 As as you said, but you know, maybe that decision will change over time. I think it depends on what they want to do as well. I, I, I do think in, in my particular case, I'm lucky that they have a good community already at home. So that does solve a bunch of the problems. But you know, who knows how this goes. But generally on your question, you know, in the US very much in the rest of the world, slightly less just because there's different dynamics, social intercultural dynamics in different parts of the world. There is also taboo and things like that. So I I'm not as sure, but in America high you good? Yeah, I think. Speaker 3 It's not a question of like. Speaker 5 Me sending. Speaker 3 Our parents, like my parents luckily, and my parents and my grandparents live together and I think that's nice, like from a community standpoint. And that's very rare. Not many people have that. Speaker 1 Yeah, we're very lucky that. Speaker 3 Everybody likes each other, but it's not a question of me sending my parents or not. It's a question of like them choosing them, choosing what to do. It's like at the end of the day, we all the three brothers, we all live in separate houses. They live in their own house and what they, what do they want to do? I think it makes sense. Like I've, I, I think both from a community standpoint, but from a, as labour gets more expensive, like economies of scale standpoint as well, it just makes sense for more people the same stage in life to live together. And do you guys like to read the statement, Nico? Speaker 1 Senior Living. Speaker 5 I'm like a. Speaker 1 9. Speaker 4 Eight Yeah 9. Speaker 3 Like unless they're. Speaker 5 Like infectious diseases? Speaker 4 Like COVID, you know, senior living facilities. Speaker 5 Are going to do really well. Speaker 4 I know some of these like 1 of. Speaker 1 Them with Prime is their plan is to have golf carts and you drive around inside the community. It's by a lake. It it's not like living in polluted Bombay or it makes a huge difference like just the air quality alone changes so much. It's air quality. Speaker 5 It's one of the biggest. Speaker 4 Killers, yeah, and. And like in the world and like, one of the reason why people are having like, liver failures is because of the air pollution, you know, where they live. It's like, yeah, that's one of the. Speaker 5 Biggest, you know, risk. Speaker 4 Factors or like health risk factors for life in the world. So any technology that's helping alleviate air pollution or making, you know, gasoline cars and other such things, you know, that's prevalent, we'll do really well. Speaker 5 The next one is content. Speaker 1 The theory we were discussing is with search being disrupted in the manner that it is and people let's assume use Google a lot lesser or any kind of search platform that is throwing up ads and if anyone wants to build. The Interplay of Content, Product, and Discoverability in Branding A brand. Speaker 1 Social media might exist in some form, but Google Ads and the likes of that will not work. So to be able to build a brand, you have to be able to hold attention one way or another through some form of content. And video is working right now. So the alpha between a brand that does well and a brand that doesn't do well, content is going to be the biggest differentiate. Thoughts. That's the. Speaker 2 Premise, yeah, I very much agree with that and. Speaker 4 Like for every generation, if you know how to speak whatever, you know, the medium where content gets viewed is fluently, you can do really well. So for example, there is, you know, that Spanish olive oil, Grazia, I forget what it is, you know, that became like a $70 million plus, you know, business in a couple of years just because they know how to appeal to young people. Or like, are you today accurate? Do you know how to speak X will do well. Are you a young consumer founder who knows how to speak TikTok? You will do well, yeah. And you know. Speaker 5 In a few years will be. Speaker 4 Something else, I don't know what that it will be, but whoever knows how to play that game, well this is golden. A $0.10 is all you need. I think DD is doing. Speaker 5 Well, at that. Speaker 1 Absolutely, you're doing. Speaker 5 Pretty well yourself, absolutely. Speaker 2 What are you going to? Speaker 4 Pivot. Speaker 5 Into with. Speaker 1 All this attention that you have, I don't. Speaker 5 Do content for. Speaker 2 You know any practical purpose, which is why I've never went into things like video. It's like saying I don't make money for any practical. Speaker 1 Purpose. No. No it's not. It's not the same. Speaker 2 It's it's like I, you know, everyone's presumably got an education with some goal of making, having some job. There's other reasons to do it, but having something, but I genuinely don't think I ever did anything online to get an audience or to have money or to have anything otherwise. I, I mean, what I would tell people is like, yeah, if you want to do content just for that purpose, then you would. There's always easier ways to do it. You do humor, you do hot topics, you do very debatable, questionable things. And I mean, some would argue I have done some of that, but not much. I think that kind of content gives you a different kind of. Speaker 1 Attention, the kind of content you're creating gives you trust. Speaker 5 Relevancy. Speaker 1 Relevance. Speaker 5 In a way. Speaker 3 Trust. Speaker 1 When I first started one of my first. Speaker 2 Kinds of things I would post about is just immigration. And the only reason I would do it is because I found myself telling all my friends the same thing over and over again. So I'm like, let me just write it down and then you can go read that. And so I, I don't see it as a, for me at least, it was never meant to be a, a business, but to the statement, I mean, Nico. Speaker 5 Definitely knows about this. Speaker 2 Trend. But there's so many of these like 1617 eighteen year old kids who out of nowhere they come up with an app. But I think they've been brilliant. I was doing a call. Speaker 1 With Sam Altman and he told me the same thing, I was like, what should young people do? He said. Most of them look like they want to be influencers, but I think they have the best idea ever. Being influencers was the best idea ever by creating content because you're capturing attention and if the. Speaker 5 Attention can. Speaker 1 Age, I don't mean tenure in the sense of it becomes old, but as you grow older, if your viewers grow with you in age as well, you keep their attention for a long time. Like look at Taylor Swift. It's insane, right? She she could soon. Speaker 4 Be the richest person in the. Speaker 3 World, I wouldn't be surprised. Speaker 1 And. Speaker 5 Today what I was going to say on the app. Speaker 2 One was it's not even them trying to be influencers, it's them actually figuring out how to do their own marketing strategy at a almost nothing cost. Right. They what they will do is they'll pay off people to they'll pay off other people to make disc or sorry on discord to make tick tock videos and then have like some Commission based agreement. And then these apps are making millions and millions of dollars of money of revenue and they're sitting at home in their in their parents garage going like, OK, well, I made all this money and I spent nothing. So I think it's not them being influencers, It's them figuring out how to tap into the ecosystem to get distribution for the thing that they've built. Because what they identify, at least the examples I'm talking about, what they identified is all of these apps look the same. The only thing that matters is distribution. So let me go to the App Store, figure out all the apps that are basically commodity, make my own and then figure out distribution. That's my money. Storytelling matters, right? Storytelling. Speaker 4 Matters like we're all soccer for. Speaker 2 Amazing stories. Speaker 4 So whoever knows how to tell a story in a very compelling way and get a lot of attention for it because they speak the language of where wherever stories get shared that that moment in time, this is super powerful. I think the other side, I think there's. Speaker 3 In the last three years, there's been almost too much attention on attention. While I agree content helps you grab attention and attention spans are declining, I think there's too much empty calories. Like I mean same audience and you only get it more from the lens of let's. Speaker 1 Say Nikunj tomorrow is starting a chocolate brand or AT shirt brand or any kind. Most of an economy is consumption, right? 6070% of money spent in the US is on QSR restaurants. Say you start a fast food restaurant in America. How do you find your audience if not for content? So my my push there. Speaker 3 Is like it's there's two legs to a stool. There's too much attention on attention just like can you get people in the door? But what is your way? Let's say Nikunj, tomorrow start. Speaker 1 Selling some version of McDonald's. The best way is to have the best. Speaker 3 Product it's like even then how are you discovered? Speaker 1 Like how traditionally everything has been. Speaker 3 Discovered which is word of mouth like. I think there is still power in that. Like, you know, I'll give you a good example. Like, you know, Swati's restaurant in Ahmedabad, it's in Bombay as well. The snacks, yeah, same food I go. Speaker 1 There every year. Speaker 3 And eat, it's always full and they spend $0.00 in marketing forever. Even in today's day and age where there's a million restaurant, that restaurant is full every day by 5:30 PM or. Speaker 5 9:00 PM and. Speaker 3 Because the product is still phenomenal, but what are the odds of that for every? Speaker 1 Swati that succeeded, I don't think. I think that's why I said there's two legs. Speaker 3 To a stool. I think there's far too much attention on attention, especially in today's economy. Everybody wants to Twitter viral launch video, but the product thing sucks and I don't think that lasts like you look at the churn number, right? I mean, the product has to be good regardless, no? But. Speaker 1 That is. Speaker 3 Changed nowadays there's so much attention and attention that people are discounting building a good product where they can kind of did he say it in a in a white labeled world where you just have to build an OK product and this distribution matters, I think that will Peter out in the long run won't the quality of with. Speaker 1 Increased productivity by virtue of AI? Won't the quality of a product get democratized to a large extent? I don't know. I think it's. Speaker 5 The 10%? Speaker 3 Problem the last mile problem was forever be there. This is why Jiro still builds the same sushi 80 years later and like you know, kind of continues to it. I think I do believe that This is why I'm thinking the opposite. I think there's too much attention and attention. I do think you need eyeballs, right? Like there's nobody comes to their restaurant and what's the point of building a restaurant? But I think the product needs to be phenomenal in this AIH otherwise it's just slop. Like that's what happens. Like you know, when when TikTok trend goes viral, 20 people copy it and 20 people copy the same app. There is no differentiation. And then you build little bit of value, but the only compounding value is retention. Can you build a retentive product where people come back and that only comes with quality. Think of some products that come to mind. Speaker 1 That have done really well at mass scale today. What do? Speaker 5 You buy often that you. Speaker 1 Think is a spectacular product from a differentiation lens, digital physical like. Speaker 3 Apple to buy iPhones? Yeah, yes. Speaker 4 Yeah. Is that because of the product? Speaker 5 Or is that? Speaker 1 Because of it's compensation advantages, right? Speaker 3 Like it's there's no attention. What does Apple spend money on? No, they spend money on. Speaker 2 Ads comparatively compared to their gross. Speaker 3 Margin profile, their marketing spend is very low. Yeah, but I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I mean. Speaker 2 This is obviously, I think this is kind of obviously true that you can't, you need retention and you need, but that's changing though last year. Speaker 3 More than ever I have felt this changing and you think people don't focus? Speaker 2 On yeah, like they look at Mr. Beast. Speaker 3 Festivals, the only reason it sells is because attention. The product. I've had it, it's horrible. Horrible for the kids, it's horrible for. Like, why did you try it? Why? Because I was just curious. Yeah, but again, it's 2. Speaker 5 Legs to the same stool. Speaker 3 I'm just saying there's far too much attention on one end. Yeah, I think I'm focusing more on discoverability. Speaker 1 Yeah, because you get to that point and then comes the question of retention. Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, you need attention because now. Speaker 3 In a sea of the same, how do you differentiate yourself? Content will always be the differentiator one way or the other. But I know I think it's going to be a revolving door if you don't focus enough on the product. The pendulum is swung on the other side is what I'm trying to argue where I think it can go back to like we need both kind of one or the other. I'm looking at the last five year. Speaker 1 Bucket as the bucket of performance marketing where you gave Google money to show your product in different places and you paid for the number of clicks. And I'm looking at what is the next transition from that. Yeah, I mean discoverability. Speaker 5 Especially the consumer. Speaker 3 It's all TikTok because it's the only free channel left. But if you build something that grabs attention, you get a lot of attention. Everything else has become pay to play. Should be known. Yeah. Should we rate this content? Speaker 1 Importance of content in building a business. Nico or? Speaker 5 Anything that's like, you know, consumer? Speaker 4 Facing or presumer facing discoverability. It's like a it's a pen PD Yeah, without, without. Speaker 2 That caveat and I would say like 8 or 9, fairly important, not the only thing because there's 7. Speaker 3 Important, but not the only thing that's needed. Do you guys see a world where David. Speaker 1 Is winning against Goliath. The Rise of Individual Brands Against Corporate Giants People don't want to buy from corporations, but they want to buy from individual brands. Speaker 5 Yeah. I mean we have to getting some. We're in the. Speaker 2 Business of backing David's, yeah. Speaker 6 I think this is happening more and more with. Speaker 4 Offline experience or you wanna like in. Speaker 5 The. Speaker 4 Universe of like tourism, right? You wanna have the bespoke artisanal? Speaker 3 Guide or like. Speaker 4 The hotel that has it's own story or go to the restaurant that's mom and pop, you know? Do you feel like this happened? Speaker 5 Because the last. Speaker 1 1020 years we bought. We bought products behind the corporation because trust was so deficit in society that we didn't know what went into it. Today we care less about trust and we are buying artisanal, handmade. We are buying into individuality again. And is that a trend that's here to stay? Speaker 5 I do like how you framed. Speaker 4 It and it depends on the society that you live in and you're economic participant. I would also add that very often you don't want to be buying the same brands that your parents were like might be the case for detergent, but to go to the same, you know, hotel chain that they want, it's not as cool for you. So like every generation has its own cool brands, experiences that they resonate with. And a lot of the large corporations at least you know, in the in the West have had like a, they've lost a lot of their fund equity with the youth. I mean generally the question of David versus? Speaker 2 Goliath, you, you always not, not in every situation, but David's are a great bet to to make because Goliaths are usually bigger businesses. They have established practices, they lose their eye on the ball. They're focused on managing things at scale, sometimes reducing cost. So not maybe not just the hotel example, but even for many other cases, most businesses do not have any systemic effects of scale that can't be disrupted in other ways. So yeah, in many cases, I would definitely bet against on the David versus the Goliath. Of course, there are other cases where that is not a good bet, but yeah, older businesses. Speaker 5 Will get disrupted. Speaker 2 Generally for most industries and good thoughts, yeah, cycle of. Speaker 3 Life will continue, you know, big. It gets too big, too horizontal, not enough depth. Small has that. And then from a consumption perspective, I think people will continue to stay away in which means they want the new thing, they want to differentiate themselves and that will continue to want them to do whatever version of artisans. Speaker 5 Perfect want to read this I just. Speaker 1 Have like 4 more and then we I'll tell you how much you rated which one and which is probably a good sector to focus on for the next decade. David versus Goliath Nikunj the 10 is pro David. Speaker 3 And zero is pro Goliath, correct Nico, I'm like. Speaker 1 An. Speaker 5 An 8. Speaker 4 I would say a. Speaker 5 7 because there are some. Speaker 2 Places where scale definitely matters, but in many cases they don't. One good example is in tech. Speaker 4 Where you see something like 6-7 companies that created the bulk of the market cap. If that's a way to measure it over everyone else. The last, you know, 30 years. So I had this thesis. Speaker 1 Two years ago that by virtue of cost per mile or kilometer, most vehicles will become EV or hydrogen focused in a very short period of time. Analyzing EV Adoption, Cost, and Geopolitical Factors in Mobility So I I spent two years investing in everything from electric scooters, electric buses, trucks, even a flying electric taxi company. When I look. Speaker 5 Back at it. Speaker 1 Now, a lot of these bets did play off, but the adoption to EV seems to be slowing down and subsidies are being taken away, not just in the US but also in countries like India and other places. What do you think is the future there for 2035 adoption of electric vehicles in hydrogen versus IC? I think it's for somebody to buy a. Speaker 4 Vehicle and let let's pick a neutral country right that's not the US it's not China like but one in Latin America or like a smaller you know country in Europe. The consideration you. Speaker 5 Know would be. Speaker 4 What is the cost? How often, you know, would I need to maintain it? What's the cost of ownership? And you actually do see that a number of the Chinese car manufacturers that make EV's that here in the US you don't see on the street are actually winning. They're far ahead because the. Speaker 1 Price and the total. Speaker 4 Cost of ownership is pretty awesome. So when I visited, you know, different, you know, such countries over the last few over the last year, like in Colombia or like in Portugal or like in Greece, I was seeing car make brands that I had never seen before. Then I was Googling them and they're like massive. So do I think this? Speaker 5 Is a trend that. Speaker 4 Will continue, yes, I do think it's a trend that will continue. Might not be everywhere, but in a lot of, you know, countries because people want to have a car. It's a means for them to unlock more productivity and get to work and make more money. I do think it's a trend that's not gonna stop. I'll give you the number in India. Speaker 1 If you buy a EV scooter, it costs about $2000. If you buy AIC scooter, it costs you about $1000. But if you ride the scooter for 40 kilometers a day on a EV scooter, you. Speaker 5 Save 5. Speaker 1 $100 a year cost of running and much easier to maintain because the number of parts are exponentially lesser, but still adoption is not. Speaker 5 That high? Speaker 1 Why? Why do you think adoption numbers have slowed as much as they have in the US? Can it just be because the Chinese are making spectacular EVs which are years ahead of them and they don't want to even compete in that market anymore? What is it? Why did the subsidies go away? Even I don't think you can. Speaker 2 Buy any of. Speaker 4 The Chinese EV cars here, right? No, you can't. That's the biggest issue. If we were to truly operate like a free market, I think they would be doing pretty well. The same in India like you can't buy Chinese. Speaker 1 Vehicles. But are Americans not buying American EVs because they can't buy Chinese EVs? It's just the cost thing. Well, it's. Speaker 5 Not to what I. Speaker 4 Said it's cost. Speaker 2 And convenience. There's not enough chargers and it costs too much. If the cheapest car was an EV, everyone would buy an EV. Do you think that'll change? Speaker 5 In the next 10 years. Speaker 1 What percentage? Speaker 5 Of cars on the road in. Speaker 1 10 years will be EVs in America. I think it'll change and that's. Speaker 2 Primarily because of Tesla. That's the only car company that moves fast. And so if that's the only car company that is allowed to operate, then yeah, then they will figure out how to get the cost down one way or the other. Do you say 100% of cars will be EV in? Speaker 1 10 years, I don't know 100%, but I would say. Speaker 2 Like it would a majority of cars will be EV in 10 years. In my mind a good proxy would be like what? Speaker 4 Percent of cars that are getting sold today are EV right? And this could kind of tell you how the future might look like. And like around 2020% sub 20. Speaker 1 Percent. I don't know but. Speaker 4 So yeah, if that number is accelerating and the it's it was accelerating. Speaker 1 But the pace of acceleration has slowed down, yeah. So part of it is incentives, part of. Speaker 4 It is the economic cycle. So whenever there is a slow down in the economy, the used car market is doing much better than the new car market. Or like, you know, when we had the disruption with COVID in the supply chain, new cars became more expensive and harder, you know, to buy because you would have to wait for longer. So there are these factors too. But do I think that, like EVs anywhere in the world are going to be the majority of cars over the next 10 to 15 years? Yes, I do think so. Yeah. I think we. Speaker 5 Dramatically overestimate. Speaker 3 How fast people will adopt new things and cars are a big asset in the country. It's like saying America will build 10 million homes. We won't. It's just harder. And US, especially from a market perspective, used car market is massive, always has been, boom or bust. And you won't. It's very hard to just change it. Like new cars will be built but they're far more expensive. And so I actually think without the incentives, in 10 years one could argue they won't be made. Speaker 1 More expensive? They'd probably be cheaper. They'd likely be cheaper. This is where like if. Speaker 5 The free market. Speaker 3 Depends on where you're sourcing it from. If you does it have to be US made then no it can still source from a free market. If free market existed I would be very pro and I have two EV cars at home. Just to be clear. Like I would be very pro like, oh, we'd see 10% of the market be EV, but otherwise it'll be a slow trickle till these cars go out of yeah, another vector to to consider. Speaker 4 Perhaps is in places where we have a lot of autonomous vehicles adoption if indeed the total cost of operation or like an autonomous vehicle is you got to be EV first or then you know. Speaker 5 That's. Speaker 4 Another market that's going to be growing very quickly, right? Want to rate it? Speaker 5 Nico. Speaker 1 I think I'm like a. Speaker 4 Seven, you know, or an 8 yeah 777 to the statement that. Speaker 1 By 2035 majority of cars will be easy. Yeah. Speaker 5 America. No, Worldwide. Speaker 2 07. Speaker 5 Probably less. I mean it's like it depends on like. Speaker 4 China, India, Nigeria, Brazil, right, Like Indonesia. Yeah, I think those countries will adapt. Speaker 1 Faster because if efficiency the amount of. Speaker 5 Energy. Speaker 1 Lost between generation and endpoint usage is lower in EVs and people will adopt there because the cost to travel per mile will be lower. Yeah. And what what if I were to say to you? Speaker 4 Not in India, but in China. Huge air pollution problem, the Chinese government says. Hey guys, from now on if you want to buy like a gasoline car, no problem. It's going to be like 50% more expensive. The the same is happening already like in India. Speaker 1 Many cities are saying that if you're bringing a truck into the city, if it's not EV, it's not allowed. Oh, there you go. So that's again another vector. Speaker 4 That pushes demand even further, right? But then why only 7? Speaker 5 Because I'm not as fluent. Speaker 4 In the, in, in the exact numbers and it depends on like this four or five big very populous countries, right, right. Speaker 5 I think if it's new cars. Speaker 3 Like 100% of new cars or new cars in 2035? Yeah, that'd be like 7 points for new cars, I was thinking. Speaker 4 Like total cars. Speaker 1 Yeah, let's say for. Speaker 3 New cars. Speaker 1 And then, yeah, I'm like. Speaker 3 9. Speaker 4 You know, yes, same. Yeah, like because I was. Speaker 1 Thinking you know the. Speaker 4 Average lifetime of a core in a bunch of countries, like, you know, 12 years. I was trying to do that math. Yeah, that that was in the VC math. Speaker 3 In your life. Speaker 2 Hello 9 as well I think 8. Speaker 1 Primarily. Speaker 2 Because I think. Speaker 3 Especially in the US, like with the Conservative government, like oil and gas is not going anywhere. It'll take a long time for us to like move. Like from a politics perspective EB Force is not going to be very popular for the next 6 years. But from a cost perspective. Speaker 1 The cost of everything. Speaker 5 Else. Speaker 1 Compared to fossil is falling so quickly but the problem is batteries again it's like. Speaker 3 American choice, like, you know, it's like I can go fill up my petrol pump wherever I want. I can go to a gas station, I can kind of like have this I don't want to wait for 45 minutes convenient is battery technology is not evolving fast enough like we I'll give you an example we invested. Speaker 1 In this electric truck company which has interchangeable batteries like battery swap, the largest company which does battery swap in the world is called Sani in China. So these trucks drive with two batteries at a time. They go to something which is as small as one container box and the batteries are swapped in the same amount of time that it would take for you to stop at the gas station and fill fuel. Each battery gives you a range of 700 kilometers. SO2 batteries together let you drive 1400 kilometers. India end to end, let's say is, I don't know, 4005 thousand kilometers. What that means is the number of petrol stations that you require in itself come down exponentially. You probably only need 50 container. Speaker 6 Size. Speaker 1 Stations across the country to get these trucks to go across the length and breadth of the country. I think the model is changing significantly, even for a country as broad and wide as India. Speaker 5 Yeah, I think replacement as you mentioned. Speaker 3 Like 8 is the I won't be a 10 because it'll still be choice and people will choose. It takes a while to flow in. Like even today. That I disagree with. Really. Like charging stations are good enough like every in America. Infrastructure is already there. People are still voting to not buy EV cars even though they're cost appropriate. It just takes time for people to change. Right, OK, point. Speaker 5 #8 of 10. Speaker 1 Beauty as a category. Exploring Investment Potential in the Expanding Beauty and Luxury Markets Beauty products. Speaker 5 10. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 5 Same. Yeah, yeah. And beauty. Speaker 4 And content. Speaker 5 Are are in. Speaker 2 Line with each other. I mean, look who are the wealthiest, you know, like people. Speaker 4 Outside of tech, anyone who's in beauty and luxury? Yeah, luxury, Luxury. Speaker 5 Beauty and luxury. Speaker 3 Yeah, luxury. Also 10. Speaker 1 No any. Speaker 5 I was saying who? Speaker 3 Are the. Speaker 4 Besides wealthiest, you know, like individuals or families outside of technology, Anyone who's in beauty or in luxury goods. Speaker 5 Should I just add them and make them one beauty luxury? Speaker 1 And then like if we're want to take. Speaker 4 A glimpse into the future. We would go into South Korea where indeed they have one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. But they're massive exporters of culture. And over there, if you're a man, there is a more than. Speaker 5 50% chance that you use beauty. Speaker 4 Products every single day, yeah, so. Speaker 5 Like again, you know this guy's. Speaker 4 Population you know will shrink but if everyone was like 80 years old looks like a 50 year old that's a good trade for most people and the surgeries in South Korea we've. Speaker 2 Been ideating what to build in beauty we're. Speaker 1 Trying to come up with something. Any ideas what could work as a product category in beauty? Yeah, now. Speaker 5 Like beauty gives you. Speaker 4 Confidence, right? No, but if I want to build a brand in beauty. Speaker 1 Like we have a team which does a lot of consumer brands that we'd run, not just invest in if we build for beauty, what what do you think would work in today's day cycle? Can you help me eliminate my? Speaker 2 Wrinkles. Speaker 4 Right, I would pay for that. Could you make Botox? Speaker 3 You know. Speaker 4 90% cheaper I would pay for that right anti. Speaker 5 Aging and anything. Speaker 1 Anti aging that's. Speaker 4 More easily to get to and cheaper yeah I think make for men to make it more accessible and cooler with content. You can do that. Yeah, you could do that too at the opposite, Dick. I think I would build like. Speaker 3 A very high end luxurious brand for like the top 10% of Indian males for Indian. Speaker 5 Males. Speaker 1 You're talking about India, right? Speaker 5 No, not. Speaker 3 Necessarily, yeah. Speaker 1 I'd I'd I'd take the opposite. Speaker 3 Route so like I'd take if take hard problems. Speaker 5 Like anti I'm guessing you. Speaker 3 Fall into the top 10%. See. Speaker 1 Would you buy? Yeah. What would you buy? Speaker 5 Whatever you. Speaker 1 Buy like makeup. I think this is where. Speaker 5 Like also the other. Speaker 3 Aspect. It's like invisible. Like what? What is invisible today? Is there like an invisible foundation that makes me look five years younger? Sure. Yeah, we. Speaker 5 Would I know nothing about beauty? But I I mean. Speaker 2 I think there's all of these things are credible. I think there is a gap in male beauty, but I think women are obviously the primary consumers of beauty products. So there's a lot you can do there. I just, I know nothing about it. I mean look into Ozempic, you know most. Speaker 4 People take it, it is beauty every week because they don't want to be on a date. Like, I know a lot of people like us. Speaker 5 Yeah, or in their. Speaker 4 30s or 40s, everybody never had any, you know, issues with their weight. But they don't want to be on the diet. They don't eat everything. They take us up because it's a beauty product. Yeah, I'm guessing. Speaker 5 Longevity and Wellness, you guys. Speaker 1 Will rank highly as well. Yeah. 10s, yeah. Speaker 5 It's a question affordability. So it would be. Speaker 4 9 You know, longevity and Wellness, yeah. Speaker 1 For you, yeah. Speaker 5 I think like. Speaker 3 At what price? Speaker 5 Point matters, but. Speaker 3 As a category? Yeah, 9 or more of an 8. Speaker 1 It's like. Speaker 2 Hentai recession. I mean, have you guys ever? Speaker 3 Like taken a flight. Speaker 4 That's connecting through Istanbul in Turkey, of course. What do you see there? Speaker 3 Great airport. Speaker 4 Great airport, yeah. Speaker 2 Isn't that? Speaker 4 Freaking insane. Yeah. Where was that industry like 10 years ago? Yeah, wasn't there. Yeah. Yeah. And now, thanks to TikTok and content, it has become like a global destination. Live events. Speaker 1 Concerts. Speaker 5 Theaters. Shifting Dynamics of Concerts, Theater, and In-Person Experiences Plays I would. Speaker 5 Even put something. Speaker 1 Like a high end restaurant is a live event. I think the nature of live events is. Speaker 2 Shifting to People want to advertise that they were. Speaker 5 At a live. Speaker 2 Event on their Instagram predominantly. I think that's the main purpose for most people that go to go to live events or others do it, you know, on your behalf. Speaker 4 And you lose your job as the whole world that learned last week. Speaker 2 Everyone wants to go to a good Coldplay concert, you know, So, but generally I'm, I'm more neutral on live events because I do think attention capture is going to be more massive on digital. And so there is going to be a smaller set of people in my mind that want to go to live events. Yeah. Speaker 5 Net volume. Speaker 2 Not maybe not number, but the net volume of time spent at a live event. I don't really have a strong view that it goes up. I actually don't know. Nico, what do you think? I think most live events. Speaker 1 Historically have been. Speaker 4 Like shit businesses to run that in a world where the offline experiences become the scars in a world where we get tired of being online in front of our screens for 14 hours, there's going to be a premium. You mentioned Taylor Swift. There's a reason why she's a billionaire. She's figured out how to make so much money from her super funds. And to the extent more and more Taylor Swift's exist, which I think you know, will be the case in the individualistic driven, you know, society that we live in today, live, live offline experiences will do really well. I mean, it could be a restaurant, you know, like what if you know the Japanese, you know, sushi serve you mentioned was more capital is driven. Wouldn't you want to do it in front of like a massive arena, you know, or tour the world and do it? Maybe scarcity matters, though. I think it's. Speaker 3 Scarcity is never a good point. Yeah, yeah. Scarcity will never go. Speaker 4 Away. Speaker 3 Desirability comes from scarcity, so one of the rate live events. Speaker 1 Nico, I'm like, you know, like. Speaker 4 An 8. OK, 5. Speaker 2 OK. Yeah, I think. Speaker 5 Philosophically, I want more live events. Speaker 3 But I'm indeed even short term it's like 6 like where we'll move towards live events, 6 again, you know, like they're mostly ship. Speaker 4 Businesses but like look into like what happened with the World Cup for like the clubs for soccer in the US like this was a brand new revenue stream out of nowhere like the winner pocketed over 100 million, you know, dollars. Chelsea with the Europeans, you know, you know Snopes and we don't care about it. But if the numbers you know go up, which is likely in the future, would you pay attention to it? Probably you would, but I bet still that. Speaker 5 Digital coverage. Speaker 3 Of soccer will have a higher percentage from an eyeballs and viewership perspective percentage of time perspective than live events. But supply and demand comes in there, right, like the. Speaker 1 Supply of digital is for everyone. The novelty of live is, yeah, but I think that's what we're betting on is like. Speaker 3 My way of getting a score is like what do you think percentage of time goes up in live events versus digital? I would bet screen time goes up higher than live event time. And then my thing. That's response to you, Nico. Speaker 2 I think there's more concentration in live events, but not necessarily net volume increase. I think more people gravitate to the Coldplay concerts, the Taylor Swift concerts, the that is fair thing and the Chelsea game. But you know, I think most events that are not places you want to be seen are not like that. Interesting. That's why when you look into most ticketing businesses. Speaker 4 That serve the long pill. They're really shit. They can't make money. Nobody says people don't pay. Yeah. OK. Last one. Speaker 5 Climate Tech What what what? Understanding Climate Tech, Energy, and Its Geopolitical Implications What is climate attack? What's? Speaker 4 The definition Carbon capture. Speaker 1 The thesis. Speaker 5 Behind the statement is. Speaker 1 Someday soon, I mean, it could be carbon credit trading if there were one large event where, say, 10,000 people die, Say there's a flood in Miami, the water levels keep rising. Suddenly everybody will go back to. Speaker 5 Climate and start taking. Speaker 1 It very seriously like climate tech could even be. Speaker 5 Software. Speaker 1 Like I was at this, I'm part of this group called the Gates Pledge, where I think your colleagues, a couple of them are there. One of them is there. And there was this professor this year who was showing a model that he had built where the base case is world's temperature will rise by 1.6° by 2100. And what can you tweak in the software which changes it? Is it a carbon tax? Is it lesser amount of coal? Is it more allocation to nuclear? There are funds like Breakthrough Energy which are working on this. So all of this somehow comes into climatic. Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, we need to do something about. Speaker 4 It the challenge is you know that for many humans, it's hard to relate. Even if I live in Miami and there's a huge flood, then I lose my home, then I might move somewhere else and I might forget about it. Or my local politician, you know, who is responsible for coming up with subsidies or incentives, that stuff like, you know. Speaker 5 Doesn't get them. Speaker 4 Necessarily re elected in the next, you know, cycle actually fairpoint there was a fire here in California. Speaker 1 And everyone's forgotten about it, yes. Speaker 4 We we forget. It's really unfortunate. I mean, same, same class to health stuff like, you know, we had COVID and yeah, nobody remembers COVID. Speaker 5 I think you know Nico Moderna. Speaker 2 Remembers their stock price is down. Speaker 1 From 400 to 30. Speaker 5 God bless those guys. Speaker 4 I think climate. Speaker 5 Tech is an overloaded. Speaker 2 Term because it means so many things and a lot of it is a bad word, especially in venture for a bunch of historical reasons. But energy I think unambiguously positive. And energy is a big part of climate. So. And you mean like renewable energy? Speaker 1 All energy How do we get? Speaker 2 Cheaper, better, more sustainable energy, yes. So everything from nuclear to solar to geothermal, I mean, different. Can we have fusion, right? Yeah, different. Speaker 4 Propensities of working and I. Speaker 2 Think that is climate tech. I mean if we can figure out how to get energy in a hyper dense way then we won't need to solve all these other problems. So yeah, geothermal fits into climate. Speaker 1 So energy, yes, rest. Speaker 2 Of climate tech, ambiguous on definition but like you can come up with like creative solutions. Speaker 4 Right, like whenever in the world we have massive volcanic eruptions, there is a cooling of the temperature, you know, on the planet. So like, could we do any of that, you know, in ways that is safe for all the industries and humans that are running on the planet could be powerful or like finding creative ideas, you know, to have a very positive effect and then economic manner. Like could we paint all of the Sahara desert in any way that's reflecting, you know, back some of the heat? Who knows the. Speaker 5 Challenge. It's a very. Speaker 4 Complex. Speaker 5 You know, space. It's like trying to. Speaker 4 Cure cancer, like cancer is not one you know, disease you know, and every little one of the solutions contribute. But then you pay attention to subsidies and capital and labor intensive and it's more project finance and I think there's a subtler point in all of. Speaker 2 This stuff because you know Nicole, I know you're going to ask this as an investment lens. And so being bullish on a lot of these things doesn't necessarily make them easy investments because you look at biotech, you look at energy, it's just the failure rate is so high that you might be like, of course these things matter but investing in these things may probably lose me money in most cases. But if you remove the venture lens and you buy the. Speaker 1 Incumbent with a Moat? You at least want to be in a sector you think has statements perhaps? Yeah, I think that's fair to say. Speaker 2 Yeah, because I'm not looking at it from the venture lens. I'm. Speaker 1 Looking at it from my investment lens overall, so I'm going to say climate, tech, energy largely. Would you bet on that? Speaker 5 Number. Speaker 1 Didi, I would say it's. Speaker 2 You know, all of AI is built on more compute and energy. So that is one reason. But 99 Nikunj Yeah, I mean, if I had to back. Speaker 3 And agnostic of where else I could put my dollars, if I had to bet on climate, yeah, I would definitely put. But like 7. You cool? Yeah, it would be an 8 because like. Speaker 5 We need more. Speaker 4 Energy, this is one of the ways you boost productivity. That's one of the ways you boost economic growth. AI is like a hog for energy but I actually think the world gets worse. Speaker 3 In the near term, because energy will become the fundamental limiter, which means we will frack more, we'll pull more from the ocean because nuclear fission and fusion will still take time to build. You can't build solar panels fast enough. That's why I was like A7. I'm like, do I believe climate tech will solve? Yes, but it'll take a longer time period. But the world will get much worse in the next 10 years from a climate change perspective. So so data. Speaker 5 Centers at least back. Speaker 1 Home in India have become like a real estate play almost Yeah everyone and their cousin and uncle and aunty are building data centers Makes sense who build apartments up until. The Real Estate Play and Geopolitical Significance of Data Centers Yesterday. Speaker 1 Do you think bubble now? Not yet, no. Speaker 4 Bubble if you buy into it now, yeah. Speaker 5 The multiples are not high, you get. Speaker 1 These companies at 16 to 20 a better depending on which geography you pick, data center businesses you think it's a good place to get. Speaker 5 Allocation, But do you? Speaker 1 Have any real estate arbitrage? Speaker 4 Do you have any energy arbitrage? I would look into that. Everyone has a different narrative 1. Speaker 1 Is near a power station. 1 is also a real estate player, so they have real estate arbitrage. Different people have different. Speaker 5 Thing India. Speaker 1 Has we mandated that financial data of Indians has to stay in India and as much as a big chunk of data created is in India, So if they mandate that all Indian data has to be in India, it becomes, I think that's a very good narrative that will be. Speaker 4 Driving, you know, local pockets of demand in many different countries. And then can you bet on the operator that over time will be the consolidator? Yeah. Like if you can find that awesome entrepreneur, I think it could be a good trip. I still think it's underrated. Speaker 5 I think the amount. Speaker 3 Of compute in each country. Do you think compute will get more efficient with time? Speaker 1 We'll need less space in a data center, but we'll continue to use more and more of it. Speaker 3 You think I mean Google? Speaker 2 Just announced. Speaker 3 They like double their token usage in three, three months. Google like I think we just at the very early innings of how much token usage, even with efficiency, we're going to use far more compute. Even with chips getting better, we'll still use more I think. I don't think that goes away for the next 10 years. Now the question and then each country will use compute and energy as they're like, it's like a nuclear weapon, like you will have this like you will want to keep ownership of this. But right now it's a big geopolitical risk where like Saudis especially and other countries are holding this whether it ships or and that becomes a strategic geopolitical asset for them. India will not want to be left behind rated. Speaker 1 Data centers and. Speaker 5 Investment. Speaker 3 9 depends on the person today. Niko for 2035. Speaker 1 Again in this an exceptions business, so. Speaker 4 We've made back A7. Is he gonna pick the right operator that has all the other right conditions? But as it's a broader trend, yes, I will be A7. I'm actually lower because I think. Speaker 2 Yes, there's a need for compute, but to Nicos point, there's so much that goes into running a data center. Do you have the skills? How often do you have to renew the hardware? Like what are the hardware you're putting into that? How much does that cost? How much are you selling it for? Like there's a lot of things that go into the business of data centers. So yes, will data centers exist? And generally, yes, there will be more and more, but some data centers are extremely bad businesses. Multiples have not been also good. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 3 Yeah, multiples haven't. Haven't been. Speaker 2 Good. And there's ways to really fuck that up, right? You can demo, buy a bunch of NVIDIA and then sell inference and you might be making like pennies on the dollar. So you know, it really depends. So overall I would say 6. Speaker 5 I'm going to ask you. Speaker 2 Advice on a few companies? Speaker 1 I've been reviewing when I'm here. The Lucrative World of Speculation, Gambling, and Prediction Markets I had a thesis that when we all have more time at hand, when abundance comes about and productivity goes up, I majored a guess. Speaker 5 That humans. Speaker 1 Will go back to what they always intrinsically did. One big activity is speculation. So I was speaking to companies like Call SHE and Polymarket. What do you think of them as investments? Speaker 5 Forget the regulation side of it. Forget 1 is. Speaker 1 US1 is US gambling is a good investment, I mean. Speaker 2 Gambling will always will always be good as long as it's legal. So people, it's a vice. It's a vice investment. People like to speculate and make money off of it. That's you think even today at the crazy multiples. Speaker 1 That they're at, yeah, I, I think. Speaker 2 So I. Speaker 5 Mean. Speaker 2 The more people come in, more of those markets become liquid, they become more investable, they become market makers, more institutional players might come on. There's a whole bunch of things that can happen around prediction market. So I think it's a it's a great, it's a great thing. I would I would like it. I think you said forget regulation. Speaker 4 Regulation was called she's. Speaker 1 Regulated in the US Poly market is more on the blockchain, peer-to-peer betting, more international customers. I'm guessing Robin Hood will soon figure out whether they're a partner or they're going to replicate what they could maybe easily replicate. There's so many moving parts when it comes to regulation, I don't know how to put it in a box. Yes, like assuming that regulation. Speaker 4 Is like sold, you know, or the category, is this going to be a great category? Yes, I think it's a great category because it's entertainment. You already have evidence from several of these that the consumer eyeballs you know are really there. You have like a well driven business model for some of these that really works for other industries. The margins are can be pretty awesome depending on how much the regulators would want you, you know, to work with them. And then the new cycle is great news for all of these businesses. So overall, again, you know, regulation risk aside, pretty bullish about the category. Yeah. So I mean it's in. Speaker 5 The class of. Speaker 3 Entertainment as a whole, especially with abundance. There's going to be infinite money in time. Do you bet Nikuch? I feel like. Speaker 1 You're closeted. Something in your outsides. No, no, no, I play. Speaker 6 I I play poker quite. Speaker 3 Frequently. Speaker 5 I feel like there's another version. Speaker 3 Of Nikuch. Speaker 1 That he doesn't let on I. Speaker 5 No, I play. Speaker 3 Poker. That's the only way. Speaker 6 Top 2% of sports bettors worldwide. Speaker 4 I play FIFA a lot. Speaker 5 What's your vice, Nikunj? Speaker 3 What's my vice? Probably. Speaker 5 Just like, yeah. Speaker 3 Probably poker is like I spend a lot of time playing. Poker is not a vice. Come on. Speaker 1 Get creative, I don't have. Speaker 3 They're so composed on the. Speaker 4 Outside. Speaker 1 Inside has to have something else, no? I've always been like my my. Speaker 3 Friends growing up always called me like a granddad. I've always been that way. I like sleep like this is like getting my Do you enjoy being called a granddad? Yeah, I have. Speaker 1 No problem. Not no problem. Speaker 3 Did you like it? Yeah, I was. Speaker 1 Like perfectly fine with it. Speaker 3 I don't know something about like. Speaker 5 Maybe I have more. Speaker 3 Wisdom than the average person that maybe the vanity side of it could be but. Speaker 5 Your friend that. Speaker 3 Answer that's. Speaker 5 Such a. Speaker 6 Granddad. Speaker 2 Answer to Yeah, I don't see the vanity of wisdom. I see the. Speaker 1 Vanity in many things, but the older person kind of vanity. I don't see why it appeals to a young, young boy. I don't know. I've never been. Speaker 3 Yeah, I maybe I've just been very. Speaker 5 Comfortable like. Speaker 3 You know, like I want to go to sleep at 9:00 PM, sleep at 9 PMI know that's your projection. Yeah, no, that is. Speaker 1 Loving husband. Speaker 3 Two kids. Speaker 1 Electric cars? You should ask my wife, yeah. Speaker 3 How did you meet your wife? Speaker 2 You were. Speaker 1 In high school, this is. Speaker 3 Just like textbook. Speaker 1 Fairy tale? No. But the craziest the. Speaker 3 Craziest thing about our life story is we never dated, we never lived together. I just knew her for 10 years and then one day I asked her would you marry me and she said no and then I convinced her. Two months later we got engaged. More textbook. Speaker 2 Right. Speaker 6 Yeah. Speaker 1 I wish I had the time to. Speaker 5 Poke it. Speaker 1 Not today, though. Speaker 2 Not today. Speaker 5 I. Speaker 1 Wonder if you asked Chachi? Speaker 5 PT. Speaker 2 Describe me in 3 words based on everything that I know. I would love to know what it says. My phone's there, we can try it now. Speaker 3 I can try it right now. What model should we use? I don't know. O3O3 is. Speaker 2 Probably the O3. Speaker 6 Of course. Do I go to? Speaker 4 I. Speaker 2 Have O3 prompt based on. Speaker 3 Everything that might take a while, you know? Yeah. Speaker 2 About me Oh. Speaker 3 My God, you know, describe me. We're going. Speaker 4 To burn a few trees. Speaker 3 In the rainforest. Speaker 4 You know, just to know, just to know. Speaker 2 Two months energy. Speaker 4 I'm actually super curious now, all right. Speaker 2 He probably watches what he says to chat. Speaker 1 GPT as well. No, no, no. Speaker 3 I actually never used. Speaker 2 The is that somebody? Speaker 3 Else keeping your data for you, right? Speaker 1 I actually. Speaker 5 ChatGPT knows me. Speaker 3 Probably better than anybody else in life. Wow, is that a good thing? Speaker 2 No, it has to be because you. Speaker 5 Spend so much. Speaker 3 Time sharing your thoughts everything I write everything I talk about everything like every thought goes through it wow I'm fully bionic that way wow yeah yeah I mean same it says oh I. Speaker 2 Hate the last one, it says. Speaker 3 Analytical, proactive, visionary. I don't think the last. Speaker 5 Grace, but the. Speaker 3 Other two probably true. That's great. New LinkedIn headline. Speaker 4 Now tell Chachiti, tell me the truth. Speaker 6 Tell me the real truth. Speaker 5 That's funny. Speaker 3 This is This is the real. Speaker 2 Podcast I love this assessing the real truth let's. Speaker 3 See, normally I'm like little bit. Speaker 1 More. Speaker 5 Robing but today. Speaker 1 There's so many people and we're talking about something I want to get out of the way. Yeah, fair enough. Speaker 2 Superpowers. Speaker 5 Pattern Spotter. Speaker 3 Relentless editor. Agency amplifier. Can I write the Please be funny? Speaker 2 I'm gonna. Speaker 1 Write, speak like Jung, a therapist I really like. What are my shadow traits I don't want to take cognizance of? Speaker 3 Chris Pack did this thing called slash Graham on DEA browser. Do you guys see this? No. What is it? It's basically. Speaker 2 Psychoanalyzes. Speaker 3 You slash what it's called slash. Speaker 2 Graham based on Graham. Speaker 3 Duncan, who's like who did this basically prompt? It's a very good prompt. It goes through your Twitter and just like psychoanalyzes you, I posted mine online so you can see it, what it said about me. And so everything I've thought through everything. Yeah, Yeah. What did it say? You could also. It's reflecting right now. You could also. Speaker 1 Ask if he's a gambler you. Speaker 4 Can ask. Speaker 6 Him, my biggest vice is poker. Speaker 2 What are my biggest vices chart? Speaker 4 GPT tell me OK this is getting better. Speaker 1 Oh my, you're an expert. Speaker 5 Prompter. Speaker 4 I love it, I love it. What does it say? Speaker 3 The tyrant of efficiency, that's. Speaker 1 True wow. Count seconds like. Speaker 3 Coins. Speaker 1 And curses every idle breath that is true. Speaker 2 The Specter. Speaker 3 Of control. Speaker 1 Fears chaos more than failure, maybe. Speaker 3 The armor of intellect. Speaker 1 A. Speaker 5 Polished exterior. Speaker 1 Forged from logic and data deflects feelings, both yours and others. Speaker 5 The mirror of validation reflects. Speaker 1 Only on achievement, each milestone fades the moment it is reached, demanding the next brighter proof, the shadow of. Speaker 5 Exhaustion. Speaker 1 Invisible. At first it whimpers. Speaker 5 That stamina is. Speaker 1 Limitless. Ignore it long. Speaker 5 Enough and it steps forward. Speaker 1 As burnout better deep but not not that different. Speaker 2 Better like little. Speaker 5 Bit less. Speaker 1 Filtered Yeah, I wrote a post called I'm not good. Speaker 3 Enough that talks about every failure I've had in life. So this is where humans are better than. Speaker 4 AI, we're vulnerable. Yeah, you can use it, you know, for advantage. OK, let's rate speculation. Speaker 1 Like polymarket? Yeah, Polymarket. Speaker 2 All of that stuff. Speaker 1 I mean. Speaker 2 Without regulation, I'm a 10. OK, I'm a nine, you know. Speaker 5 Without regulation. Speaker 4 OK, nine, especially if you're getting. Speaker 3 It's like part of entertainment for me. Nice. Speaker 1 OK, so. Speaker 5 When we spoke about how the world. Speaker 1 Will change. Summarizing High-Potential Industries and Unfair Advantages Let me first summarize what got the highest marks. So we said beauty and luxury is like a great sector to build in 30 out of 30, followed by speculation and gambling great sector to. Speaker 5 Build it, Oh vice business is. Speaker 1 Vanity. Yeah. Speaker 2 Yeah, it's just vanity. Yeah, followed. Speaker 3 Strangely by. Speaker 1 Education, which is outcome based, yeah. Speaker 5 Then came. Speaker 1 World older seeker senior living content, EV adoption. Yeah. Speaker 5 Those had the same number. Speaker 1 That's interesting. Speaker 5 We'll put this up on a chart and. Speaker 1 We'll say what each of you said and why they said it. I feel like this is very useful data, both for capital allocators like us, but also if I'm a young kid looking to start something, it allows me to extrapolate a rate of growth, so at least I have some tailwind in the industry that I'm building, right? Speaker 5 So I know I would disagree with that last. Speaker 2 Bit yeah, why I I think so much. Speaker 1 About. Speaker 2 Building is more about where your unfair advantage is, not where the macro is going. And so I think, you know, we'll take beauty for an example like I, I'm sure some of us have friends. I have friends building in beauty often I think, you know, not doing a great job is not because I don't believe in beauty because I think you don't have any unfair right to win. You don't you're not doing this correctly. So I think that that's a bigger part of the equation for me, especially when, you know, young people come to you for advice. Then you're not gonna say just because I think beauty products are gonna do well that you should go do build a beauty product. Those are not you know, are you still going to contest that your unfair? Speaker 1 Advantage is distribution because of content for me, yeah. Speaker 2 On what and anything you want to build tomorrow 100. Speaker 1 Percent. That's one of them, yeah. Speaker 2 The main one probably it's the. Speaker 1 Probably the the rarest. Speaker 2 One, I mean, I would say I have some unfair advantage on like selling to big enterprises, but so many other people do. Are you worried that you might? Speaker 1 Be perceived as a content creator versus all the other stuff that you do and hence you try and push it away. Yeah, 100% I don't want. Speaker 2 People perceiving me as that, I think it's a terrible tagline. I don't want to be called an influencer or a content creator. Why not? Why not? Yeah. Speaker 5 Because this is, I think it comes with. Speaker 2 An association that I do not enjoy, right? Like I, I do it for a certain kind of reason. And I don't think most people who do it do it for that same reason. And I think when you use the label, then people interpret it for the, the, the, the latter, like they think you're doing it for fame, glory, yadda, yadda, yadda. And I don't think I am. And so therefore I don't like the, the label. But isn't it like a form of storytelling? Speaker 4 Form of arts. If you called it a storytelling teller, I would be like, call me that. Speaker 2 All day, there you go. But I like it's it's very different than calling somebody. Isn't every influencer a storyteller? Speaker 1 At the end of the day, I don't think so. Speaker 2 That's definitely not tell me one very popular. Speaker 1 Influencer who doesn't tell stories Well, I don't want to dislodge some some people. Speaker 6 Let's say this like if. Speaker 2 You go on some of the the top profiles on, on, on, on X or whatever on X and most of them are not telling stories. They are inciting rage. That's that's not my game. You could argue that's some kind of story, but like, that's not really a story. They're not trying to convey anything meaningful. It's a rage bait. They're not taking the contrarian. Speaker 1 Narrative to the populist one, right? Some of them. Speaker 5 I don't think I. Speaker 2 Mean, I think, you know, there's a couple of trends that one of them is that, but so a lot of people can be popular on various different platforms doing things that don't involve storytelling. What you're also seeing is sharing. Speaker 1 Nude photos of yourself. I mean, yeah. Speaker 4 Exactly you're. Speaker 2 Telling some kind of story. Have you done that? Speaker 1 Have I done it? Speaker 4 Not like, you know, for popular demand. Yeah, happened. I suspect you're left-leaning. Speaker 1 Almost socialist. Speaker 5 Almost socialist. Just. Speaker 1 Cause is Greek. Speaker 4 How so? Speaker 2 I don't know, just the things you're. Speaker 4 Saying. Speaker 1 Things I'm saying OK, there was a. Speaker 4 Distaste for capitalism? Speaker 1 Which came across when you said something earlier. Well, I've. Speaker 5 Been working in the. Speaker 4 US for the last few years as a capital level, clearly. I'm confused, you know? Yeah. Speaker 5 Fairpoint Yeah. OK. I'm going to ask you guys for another opinion. Speaker 1 On a company called Harvey Harvey AI Thoughts Legal tech Legal AI wow, these are. Exploring Legal Tech's Future and Second Mover Advantages in AI Very these are. Speaker 2 Companies I've been meeting in the last two. Speaker 1 Weeks and I've been like trying to figure out how to maybe do something with them allocations. It's difficult to get answers out of VCs. Speaker 2 On companies like this in my, in my understanding, do you have exposure? There's yeah, there's no incentive for us to ever share a negative view on anything. No, I think Harvey's a great company. But in general, asking VCs about companies is bad because if they're invested, they have to be positive, and if they're not, they still have to kind of be positive because with the caveat that you are not. Speaker 1 Invested you can give me a more objective opinion, not on camera I never. Speaker 3 Get it on camera. You just can't like basically every company. Speaker 2 You're going to ask us about. All of us are going to say great things like that's what's going to happen almost no matter what, unless it's a clear disaster company that, you know, you might say. Speaker 1 What about a? Speaker 6 Company. Speaker 4 I mean, you can give some criticism, you know, would you go all out? You wouldn't, right? I don't know as much about, you know, Harvard to give you an informed opinion. OK. And I'm not saying that to sound politically correct, but so I think they're building on the right side of history. They are. Have they been amazing at signing up a lot of the largest law firms on the planet? They have. Has this led to them achieving a capital like fundraising advantage? It has. Does this mean that has this translated into them recruiting amazing people? It has. Is their product the best in the space? I have no idea. Not close, you know, to the company, but as you know, Nikunj was saying the product has to be really good, you know, because the torness or better or worse, you know, after FOMO goes away, they do care about these things. So like, you know, given where they are now, probably you would get a really good informed opinion about them if you talk to many of their customers who've been bombarded by everyone else and their mother who've been starting AI legal tech companies. That's actually one of the basis we miss here that has that have been so busy. So if someone is starting now a new legal tech company said Series A, probably you would say no to, you know, in the US because that's so busy. I have the opposite take on that I think. Speaker 3 Not on Harvey, but I'm saying in general, especially with the RL focus and model stabilizing, I think the era of second mover advantages starts this year or starts now basically maybe we'll start seeing even companies started three years ago be disrupted by a better product now the the David Wilson Goliath will be in just three years. Can the better product out distribute them or not? But for example, if somebody came in with like a seed Series, A bet that takes in like an established giant, not Harvey, but in general in any area, but they have clearly a better product. I would still be interested in at least like exploring that bet, even though they've been out distributed just because we're seeing such crazy advances on the technology side and the stacks are leaner, gross margins are better question is just about distribution. If it if it's as great as you sound please. Speaker 4 Give us a call, OK? Speaker 6 Can I ask what is? Speaker 5 India's play. Speaker 1 In all this, like you know I'm talking to young. Analyzing India's AI Ambitions, Talent, and Cultural Dynamics Entrepreneurs in. Speaker 1 India. Where does India fit in? You can be candid. Speaker 5 Don't say on camera. I won't say this. Speaker 1 That and the other, I think, a big. Speaker 5 Problem. Speaker 1 In many parts of life is when we don't recognize that there is a problem. I don't think you can find a solution if you don't first get there and that's. Speaker 5 Where I think what you mentioned. Speaker 4 Before is important, like having a knowledge of where the trends are happening and where you know the growth is going to be. Sure you always want to play, you know, for your strengths, but isn't it even more amazing when you can play, you know, towards your strengths in the biggest market opportunities? Like I find myself incredibly lucky that, you know, 17 years ago said I'm going to go and have a career in tech because none of my friends, the people I grew up with, you know, did that. And it's just a lucky accident, you know, for me. So like just knowing where the trends are heading to, it is important for lack of youth, yeah. Speaker 5 I mean I can give a couple of thoughts on. Speaker 2 In India and AI. Speaker 3 And generally. Speaker 2 I've been somewhat public about this too since some people have not liked it, but I think unlike. Speaker 5 Other things. Speaker 2 Other kinds of technology in the past where you could create a local economy with that technology. I mean, for example, you have your even fairing services and the gig working booms, the Oyo, you know existed in India just like an Airbnb would or you have an Ola just like an Uber. You can create local versions of those businesses that work for that area and you're not really competing unless that other company comes and tries to compete in that area. On the on on AII don't think there is any local advantage. So I think everyone is competing on the same playing field. And there are a couple of common things that come up that people say, hey, these could potentially be local advantages. Like 1 is OK, let's get data for languages in India. Like, yeah, that's that's great. I think that's perfectly valid. If Google doesn't pour more resources and try to get the same thing and you have an advantage that makes sense. I like that view. But for most other things I think I would love to see, I would say India try to compete on that global scale. And that needs capital, that needs talent, that needs, you know, just a, a desire to want to be on the cutting edge. And in my mind, it's not there yet. I mean, I think that's empirical. None of the top models are Indian models. They're American and they're Chinese in any field, I mean audio, video, image. So I would say in the global playing field of AII mean the most prominent Indian figures are probably like somebody like an Arvind that perplexity or maybe some of the researchers at some of these labs and things like that. So therefore, in my opinion, today they're I wouldn't say they're competing at a global level. I don't know if they have people on the ground have ambition to, but I think, you know, there's a couple of gaps to be filled. And if we do have a change, I mean the ambition is definitely. Speaker 1 There What can India do to get competitive in this realm? I think one of the. Speaker 2 Things, that is, I'll say, an observation. Speaker 5 1st and I'll answer the. Speaker 2 Question. I think one of the observations I have in general about how how India reacts to technology is India reacted to AI like I want to be a part of this well after this was a thing. And that general mindset will rarely make you win at a thing. And so if you compare that to China, for example, I mean, there are many differences. I mean, China has had so much local talent, so much development in math, so much research in AI for many, many years. PLLMS that allowed them to then capitalize on that and go like, OK, look, we can probably do something here too. We have the base built out. And I think for India to do something in, in AI, like I don't know if a lot of that base is built out, there's a huge talent leakage problem. Most of the top AI talent in India is here, right? And we're literally a three square mile radius from where we are. There's a talent problem, There's a there's a comp problem. Why would AAI researcher want to be paid in rupees? I don't. I want to be paid $1,000,000 or $100 million like they're getting paid here. And then there's a general systemic problem on like on account, which is capital is a little bit harder to get and then resources are harder to get. And then people haven't done work on GPU's in India. If you go to, if you go into Bangalore today, how many people have ever programmed a GPU? Very hard to do anything in AI if you've never programmed a GPU. If you're starting from scratch, you're going to have to catch up. So I think there's a lot of systemic factors. And then to solve that problem, invest in core research, figure out how to keep talent in the company, in the country. And you would have to do it a long time before something picks up for you to be able to take advantage of that. There's no accident that China was able to take advantage of that. They had a lot of foundation built in many, many years. So that's my take. I've I've. Speaker 5 Spent, you know, half. Speaker 3 My life here, most of my professional life, all my professional life here. So I don't have a view on the Indian market. I mean, a lot of things DD says, I echo. But I do think we have to kind of the best. I think India has A2 decade advantage from a pure median age perspective. Like the youngest talent in the world is in India right now. And I feel like if you don't capture it in the next two decades, like that shifts to Africa or shifts to the next country. And I feel I don't know what the answer is, but I would love to see us capture the advantage there, at least from a pure being in the prime perspective, India. And this is in prime from a population standpoint and like the depth of talent and the depth of like, you know, young people. So that's one that's the optimistic side. Now, what do you do with it? Is is the main problem and I, well, I kind of echoed differently than DD. Like you don't need the best AI researcher. I mean, it would be great if India had a lot of greater AI researchers and they all stay there. But the brain drain problem has been true for the past 50 years and will continue to stay true. All the best Indian entrepreneurs I know are trying to move here. But you try to figure out like where in the playing field do you play? Like you know, Freshworks is a great example where they like took a product that in but figured out the right markets for it. Is there products in this new AI application era or are there products in the biotech space? India has insane amount of talent and hospitals and vaccines like centers out there like manufacturing side. Take manufacturing as a sector like, you know, the China and plus one model can really benefit India. So take the sectors it's going to be phenomenal at and then go from the very bottom up to the top and see how can you to allocate capital people training to win those markets versus play the me too movement. I feel like a lot of Indians I meet in India just like have this envy and they look at the US market and they want to be in the US market versus play the games you're. Speaker 5 Going to be excellent. Speaker 3 At and then find ways to like I mean the things I mentioned again, but I don't know the Indian market as well. It's like, but I do believe like the China N + 1 is happening, like it's 100% happening from manufacturing. It's not an AI, but that's what. Speaker 1 I'm saying don't. Speaker 3 Like don't miss the AI board, but play on the application level, which I think India still has fantastic product engineers and designers who can go build that. That's a talent that is easily portable from the pre AI era. And then pick the markets where it's going to be excellent. And I don't know if that's minerals, I don't know if that's mining, I don't know if that's robotics. I don't know the Indian market. But instead of playing the me too side like, hey, I want to do this also find it's going to be excellent at and then concentrate capital in people there. Wouldn't you guys just say that now is? Speaker 4 Probably the best time it's ever been for a young prospective founder to ever become active in India because. Speaker 5 You know, access to. Speaker 4 Knowledge. Relatively relatively, yeah, to. Speaker 5 Our own bust. Speaker 4 Exactly so. Speaker 1 Access to. Speaker 4 Knowledge thanks to your podcast and everyone you know being. Speaker 5 Part of the global. Speaker 4 Internet generation, it's no longer a problem. The size of the local market it's been, you know. Speaker 5 Larger. Speaker 4 Than it's ever been there are enough, you know, India for the world companies that are now setting the bar pretty high. There are enough very successful founders on the ground like yourself or like over here in the US, but anyone can look up to. So like I would be, you know, very excited to not even consider, you know, moving to the US or maybe come here for a couple of years and then go back and build. By the way, just on that previous one, I. Speaker 5 Want to say this? Speaker 2 Was I was just talking about foundational AI layer for apps and other everything else in the AI layer 100% many reasons to do stuff in India. So that could that be the bigger market tomorrow? Speaker 1 100% it is. Speaker 2 Already. Yeah. Speaker 3 Right. I mean, I didn't understand for example, why Indian? Speaker 4 Doesn't have more amazing gaming companies, you know. That could be because of the amount of money required. Speaker 1 To build like a AAA game is substantial and the risk capital for that is not there. You don't need AAA games, but I think it. Speaker 2 Exactly. Yeah, I think the. Speaker 4 Future of gaming is largely not going to be AAA like in a world where everyone is part of the Internet generation. The more brains you have online, the more creativity you can unlock with AI. Everyone has superpowers. Can we have, you know, next generation of like, you know, TikTok games, whatever that means from like somebody who is like 15 years old and they've been making stuff online for the previous seven years somewhere in India. That's more likely than ever before. I've thought about this a lot. Speaker 2 And I've tried. Speaker 1 To arrive at what the answer to that particular question should be, could be, yeah, I think it's cultural. We. Speaker 5 As. Speaker 1 Indians from a very young age our thought to run away from risk. We are trained not. Speaker 5 To. Speaker 1 Depict any form of rebellion. Our teachers are not our teachers. Our teachers are our gods where questioning them is almost offending them. Religion plays a huge part in our cultural biases as well, so we have. Speaker 5 To some extent, nobody's. Speaker 1 Going to like this answer, but we have to some extent become a society which does not cherish or encourage contesting the norms of the day and I think that's bad for innovation. Is it changing? Speaker 5 I hope it is. I hope it is. Speaker 1 I don't know if evidence depicts that, but I hope it is because we have the change. No, with access to education, I mean chachi. Speaker 3 Pitti's number one market is now India. Like just like those kind of like with Jio, like kind of everybody having access to the Internet. Like now it's like, you know, fact checking and you know, people say something. I'm I'm curious. I know. I think the Internet teaches you many things. Speaker 1 But I think culture, our culture, is more a factor of our schools and what we see in our homes. I don't know can. Speaker 2 Patriotism. Speaker 5 Be sold. Speaker 1 Like you mentioned earlier, there are a lot of brilliant Indian. Speaker 5 Minds who are in. Speaker 1 The US who are post the financial event. Speaker 5 Yeah. Speaker 1 Where I don't truly believe him that it's it has nothing to do with money. But they might also want to project a similar thing. And for them coming back to India and starting something and adding patriotism to that same projection, projection could make a lot of sense because I'm trying to collect people patriotism. How can you make this you know? Speaker 4 Be like, really cool. Yeah. Patriot is it? Yeah. Like what we're saying? Speaker 1 Before you know. Speaker 4 Having kids would become really cool, being a patriot and doing the right thing for your country. So it'd be really cool, like it was after the Second World War in the Western society, right? And then for the honey bit, Doge kind of did. Speaker 3 That for the government in the US, right? You know, it got like really smart people. There's some of them, some of our peers are still there. I think they'll have to be unfair advantages back. Speaker 1 Home in India. Yeah. Like I've not thought about this enough, but say you're a. Speaker 5 Patriotic Indian. Speaker 1 Who paid X amount of tax? Or you came back to India just for the patriotic pursuit by giving up something substantial. Maybe there's a total line on a road and you have a separate line. Maybe you have a card? Speaker 5 Which treats you. Speaker 1 Differently with a government agency, I think some kind of unfair advantage has to be weaved into the narrative to make this work. But if at all it is plausible, it would be a great thing to attempt. Yeah, Laxmikan said earlier. There's. Speaker 5 2. Speaker 2 Stools or two in the stool, you can get people to be excited about coming back to India, which is a lot of people are retaining them when they're back in India. Is is challenging. I mean, I think if you could build like a separate city. Speaker 1 See, the one great thing India has going for it, I think personally, is a labor arbitrage. A kid living in a hacker house in San Francisco is living a certain quality of life. If I take him back, give him two cars, 2 drivers, a Coke and this and that and the other, and he's working essentially online all day long, and he still gets to spend, I don't know, 150 days a year here while building there. Maybe there's a use case which works for both. NRA City, Let's. Speaker 5 Make it happen. Speaker 2 And and and. No, no air pollution. Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. It doesn't have to be near any of the big. Speaker 1 Cities. Yeah, yeah, I. Speaker 4 But this is where like a. Speaker 5 Lot of people move to. Speaker 3 SF and especially like people who are used to the quality of life of India and others and the quality of life in SF is horrible. Speaker 1 Yeah, but the reason like? Speaker 3 Depends. Yeah, depends on how you how you feel like quantify many of the people that all about your meeting. Speaker 4 The 20 year olds who just moved here three weeks ago, three months ago or two years ago, they're over the moon. Yeah. It's as if, you know, they're doing drugs and their head is like exploding from joy every single moment. It's one of the most common thing, young people. Speaker 2 That you and you guys both know this is. I have never felt surrounded by like minded people in my life and now the nerds are here and they wanna talk about what I wanna talk about, not like the bullshit that everybody else wants to talk about. And that's why people love SF and that's quality of life. It's not like walking on the street or having a maid and a driver. This project to work critical mass has to be achieved, yes. Speaker 1 But I don't know what critical mass and what is that number? Do you wanna be surrounded by 100 nerdy kids? That could be possible. Is it 10,000? I don't know, but it it depends what you're solving. Speaker 5 For right? Speaker 4 Because like, if I'm a nerdy kid that was bullied my entire life, I come here, I have the highest status in this society because here, you know, you're a nerd. You're like top of the line. It's like you have your own, what you said, you know, your own lane in the highway and when you want to pay the tolls, you know, just you, nobody else. And then everyone around you who is a nerd understands you. You're like, Oh my God, people believe in me. Until now, I was bullied. Yeah. This is like insane, you know, It's like being like a slave. Speaker 5 And getting liberated. Speaker 4 Yeah, the. Speaker 5 The. Speaker 3 Example I gave everybody is like only in SF in the entire world, when you quit your job, everybody says congratulations, Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, that's a good one only. Speaker 4 City in the. Speaker 3 World. This doesn't happen anywhere else. In India. You're whacked, probably like your parents are, like, you know, what are you doing? Like in any other country. It's like, Oh my God, I'm so sorry for you. Yeah, Nico meets a kid. He's like left a job. He's like, congratulations, you're the term sheet and. And again. Speaker 4 You know, like, I think the good news is that this Internet culture for like the young generation that's chronically online is becoming a global phenomenon and this were like you. Speaker 5 Know talent is. Speaker 4 Universal but opportunities not like it's raising all boats right? So like Critical Mass, you can now have online in the world of abundance, offline even in a big city. Speaker 5 You know it's. Speaker 4 Harder to find those people if not everyone you know is alert. I disagree though. I mean, Kovid was a great. Speaker 3 Reset, but it moved right back the one couple of years that New York City in the US. Speaker 4 In terms of seed states was looking better Yeah and neighborhood in New York or? Speaker 3 Like anywhere else, you can find it, but it's just like people. It's just like a magnet effect. It is just, it just everybody gets it, right? Like for the past 50 years, Silicon Valley has done this again and again and again. It's hard to disrupt network effects. Yeah. Speaker 4 It is hard. I mean, I'll tell the story about one of my. Speaker 2 Really, really close friends from New York. They're like been friends for 12 years. He moved this year and he's lived in maybe like 5-6 different cities in in America. He came and and in month three or something, he's like, dude, I found my people. Yeah. Where were these people? Yeah, like This is why I wasn't enjoying my time in Miami and New York. It's like, I don't want to talk about all of that. I don't want to do all of that. And it's like, sure, he did it offline or like online as well, but I think it's just a different sensation when you're like, man, these are like real people around me who actually want to just explore curiosity. I mean, here's some other things that we take for granted now, but no one talks about wealth in SF Yeah. Some circles, yeah. Yeah. Speaker 3 Sure, but I. Speaker 2 Mean compare that to India where it's like, it's so in your face, like how rich somebody is is so in your face. Here, people don't have to drive a fancy car to show they're rich. They don't have to wear fancy clothes to show they're rich. That's one people make economically absurd decisions. People will reject offers to make millions and millions of dollars a year because they believe and like that just doesn't happen anywhere else. You bless all those people, especially the founding. Speaker 4 Engineers, God bless. We wouldn't do. Speaker 6 Well, if founders. Speaker 4 Wouldn't do well. Speaker 3 If there's like you. Speaker 4 Know unique class of people, founding engineers or founding talent that show up a day after your company gets funded or get started and they get like 1/3 of the equity that you get God bless those people. They're the foundation of the industry. They start up in the. Speaker 2 Venture capital industry. Speaker 4 Well, I think that's. Speaker 5 A good note to end tonight. Speaker 1 On I think we spoke for a fairly long. Speaker 5 Amount of time almost. Speaker 1 Three hours, but thank you guys for. Speaker 5 Doing this. Sorry. Speaker 1 I troubled you a little bit. That's OK. If you were alone with me, I would have. Speaker 3 Troubled you a lot more. Speaker 1 More than welcome to. Speaker 3 You could have dug 10 times deeper. Maybe the Internet will be. Speaker 2 OK. Thank you, guys. Thank. Speaker 1 You. Thank you. Speaker 4 So I was going to ask you like, have you? Speaker 2 Seen the reel of yourself imitating you on podcasts and what do you think? I think he's really talented. I wish I could act. Speaker 1 That well, so actually I think commented or I. Speaker 5 Sent him something and I. Speaker 1 Said great job. I think he's doing a good job. That's nice. That's nice. Speaker 2 When are you inviting him to the podcast? Speaker 4 Someday soon. Speaker 6 Why not, right?