Ep 194: Dumb B!tch Hour. Circle IPO, Special Guest Mattie Fairchild from Polygon, xAI acquires X, College Admission Essays, Las Vegas Visitor Decline, God's Country, Yankee Torpedo Bats

[00:01] Dumb Shower is a weekly live chat on all things tech, crypto and pop culture news brought to you by Boys Club, a New York based media and creative studio. DVH is hosted by myself, Dina Burke and Natasha Hoskins. Hi. Co-founders, marketers and entrepreneurs that have built our careers in new tech and startups. We're also proudly the dumbest bitches in the room and we love to learn in public. DVH is recorded live and best consumed as a video podcast. Here's this week's show. [00:31] you [00:34] Welcome to Dumb Bitch Hour. This is a live stream where we come on and we explain all of the things that we're trying to understand ourselves in the most accessible and dumb [00:47] bitch way we can imagine. We are the dumb bitches. No one who comes on is a dumb bitch or watching you unless you want to be. And then we welcome you with open arms. And we're so happy for you to be here. [01:01] Okay, we are going to cover a bunch of stuff today. So we're going to talk about the Circle IPO. We're going to have a special guest on Maddie from Polygon. [01:12] which we're very excited about. [01:13] we're going to talk about x to x ai sale college administration essay discourse open ai raise las vegas last vegas also down bad and we have some oh that's me i'm sorry we got a typo we got a typo and not one of the um fonts is matching in this deck there's like a million different fonts not really sure what happened there but on brand

[01:39] It's a bit. We're committed to it. We caught it and just decided, meh. We should just make it all Comic Sans next time. [01:45] There it is. There it is. Okay, next slide. [01:50] So, [01:51] Exciting stuff. [01:53] Dina, do you want to take those or I can take it? Oh, sure. Yeah. We are doing our second annual... [02:00] Net Gala, May, [02:03] Second. [02:04] Friday, May 2nd. [02:05] And [02:06] New York with our [02:08] friends. [02:09] at Polygon. [02:12] We did the NAC Gala last year. [02:14] Uh, and that's why it's our second annual. And it is, if you're like, okay, what is that? [02:21] Great question. It's our take on the Met Gala, an internet native version of the Met Gala that's called the Net Gala. We probably actually even shouldn't say Met Gala anymore. We really probably shouldn't. Although that would be a story in and of itself. But yeah, it's basically... [02:38] an irreverent take on [02:41] that other event and our version is way fun. Lots of dancing and art and internet personalities. We have [02:52] potentially a very interesting internet personality that we'll be announcing soon. And yeah, it's in New York, May 2, we have not released any information on RSVing yet. So you haven't missed anything. [03:05] But if you are planning to be in New York, [03:07] that night. [03:08] keep an eye out for

[03:10] the invites to go live next week is what we're planning. And so happy to be doing it at Polygon. And it's going to be a great time. Anything I missed? [03:17] No, great. Except that you got to start getting your fits together. We're, we're really, really, um, daily checking in on that aspect of it with each other. I did just send Kate something. [03:28] And I need her thoughts and opinions. I have like two directions, two or three potential directions I'm going with. And I got to tell you, it's tough out there. It's tough out there if you want to spend not zero dollars. If you want to spend zero dollars and you want to get something, it's really tough. But yeah. [03:45] Kate, I'm curious to hear your thoughts when you... I can't wait to see... Kate's also... [03:50] working with me on my [03:52] on sourcing some jorts for me. So Kate just really does a lot of [03:56] heavy lifting. Fashion is my passion. We're going in two very different directions. Nina's wearing jorts and I am googling naked dress. Inside you there were two wolves. [04:14] Okay let's get started here. I want to jump in to the Circle IPO. [04:19] Now, [04:21] um [04:23] This is really a very juicy story for a certain type of person. And I don't know where folks are going to land on the spectrum, but basically... [04:35] the [04:36] Circle, which is the company that... [04:39] makes the USDC issued or filed their K-1 and it was released yesterday. That means, excuse me, their S-1. And that means that

[04:50] they are going to be going public soon. And in the act of going public, they have to disclose all this information. So this [04:58] is a moment where everyone gets to basically like look under the hood and see how the business is doing they release financial statements they also release all this documentation about like what they feel like their competition is the risks or opportunity so it's like a juicy moment for getting really into what's happening at a company and so this happening in share with circle [05:18] For folks who don't know, USDC is huge. It has, there's $60 billion of USDC in circulation, not as big as Tether. So Tether has over twice that, so $144 billion. And that is brought up within this paperwork and within the discourse online. But just for context, it's like the, I don't know, the seventh or eighth largest cryptocurrency by market cap. [05:48] Yeah, so very exciting for the industry. I think just generally, I'll say that to start. Like, it's net... [05:55] very positive. Everyone's excited about it. [05:57] Everyone getting into the weeds of it. Everyone has something to say about it, as you can imagine, when everyone's up in your business. But I think just like generally everyone's like, okay, this is great for us. We need some good news. Things have been sideways, like awesome. [06:13] So, [06:14] getting into the details. [06:16] I saw a lot of...

[06:21] like rage-baity tweets around like uh like circles financials revealed worse than you could imagine and then like you get into it and you're like wait they're just they're rage-baiting me basically yeah totally and it's perfect rage-bait material um okay so there's a couple things that [06:38] I wish I could zoom in. The screen is so small for me. So I'm not able to like really pull out what I wanted to. I'll just do top line. So. [06:49] one of the things that people are talking about is a low 2024 margin. So I think if we zoom in [06:55] uh i don't know what line that is it when i looked before it was like in the middle of the page but if you go to 2024 and go down i think it was like 155 million they do wait one net income or what are you looking for net yeah [07:07] Net income for 2024. [07:11] Uh, [07:12] 155669. So that is relatively low compared to [07:20] their gross [07:22] revenue. And so what people are calling out there is like, basically, [07:27] in the filing, they're like, oh, wow, a lot has been [07:30] Um, [07:31] disclosed about actually where their revenue flows to. And a lot of it is going to [07:38] basically like [07:39] exchange platforms as [07:42] what some people are calling like a distribution tax. So they're paying a lot out the door to your coin bases, your whomever, [07:49] to... [07:50] basically like

[07:51] make sure USDC gets used. And this is, it looks weird when you see it for the first time, but it's like totally common practice. Okay. And so there's nothing like, [08:01] There's nothing illegal about it at all. It's just like when you look at it, when you look at the numbers, you're like, oh, actually, [08:06] those platforms are actually [08:08] Benefiting. Really well off of the stablecoin success. And then the other thing is... [08:16] Oh, I didn't, I didn't put this in, but there was like a, [08:19] look at [08:22] Basically, like number of employees that Circle has top line, the net income that Circle has and also just like the volume that Circle is doing versus Tether, which I think they have like 100 employees. Like looking at them side by side, you're like, wow, like Tether's very lean, right? That's very lean. OK, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Very lean. And so. [08:45] you know, it's fine, but it's interesting to look at. And then the other thing that people are talking about here in this tweet especially is [08:52] this person is [08:54] talking about how [08:56] a lot of their revenue is driven from [09:00] basically interest rates, interest on interest rates. And if interest rates go down, which they're slated to do, then it might not be as [09:12] compelling. [09:13] It will affect the margins of business. Yeah. Okay. It will affect the revenue of the business. So that's another thing. And then just finally, this is like total speculation and this is just people spouting off online, honestly, but, um,

[09:26] Some of this is, which is what this person is saying in this tweet, which honestly is a great tweet. I'm not just saying this person, but just, I saw a lot of discourse on it was now that things are going to be [09:38] like deregulated basically and up until now like there's been a few players that have been able to play in the big leagues with [09:45] like serious financial instruments and products like that are interact with trad fi and circle is one of these companies okay and it's been hard for anyone else to get into that game because um just a regulation it's been unclear like they've been doing it for a really long time so that's why they've been successful at it and but now in a deregulated crypto environment where [10:07] There's more that's able to be done. Banks are going to get into the game. Other financial institutions are going to get into the game. And so some people are saying like the writing's on the wall for a business like Circle, where up until now they've had like a cornered market on stuff like this. Regulatory capture. Exactly. And so now as other people start to flood into this market, are they just like, hey, I want to get some cash now so that like make hay while the sun shines for them? [10:35] before it starts being more of an open market. Competitive. To come in. Yeah. That's good. Oh, interesting. Okay. [10:41] So cool stuff. This, they, uh, started in 2013 or something like that. Yeah. They've been living a long time. Okay. Crazy learning a lot. Really, really good stuff. Really exciting. I'm happy, happy to see it. Love to see it.

[10:57] Great. Okay. Next slide here. [10:59] Maddie special guest special guest Maddie I'm gonna bring you up here on stage how's it going oh my gosh I am so freaking excited to be here thank you thank you all for having me [11:13] We're so excited to have you. Maddie has been a boys club [11:17] like since day one almost like been a boy forever. So we're so close to that. Yeah. It's, it's funny how when you join a community, everybody and same with the company, everybody that's been there for longer than you feels like they've been there forever and forever have seniority. Um, but then as time keeps going, that starts shrinking and shrinking, but I still feel like I'm new to it just because I joined in December, whereas I think there was like an October group back in the herd [11:47] I'm like a six week, a six week difference of seniority. But I do remember there was a 5 a.m. moment where I had popped up because my cats had woken me up. And then suddenly there was a podcast to listen to. And so, yeah, getting to hop on and listen to y'all talk about the Las Vegas origin story is something I'll always remember. That's deep lore. That's deep lore. Yeah. Wow. First podcast episode. [12:17] We'll have to do something fun for that. [12:20] Okay, that's crazy pants. Maddie, do you want to give a little intro for yourself and the work that you're doing? And yet just so folks have context.

[12:30] Yes. So my name is Maddie Fairchild. I'm the head of founder developer relations at Polygon. And what that means is basically I work with builders. So it's developer relations, working with developers, coders. But what got me to join is the founder part of it in addition to that. [13:00] Before Polygon, I was working at Optimism, but then before that, I was in the video game industry when I did the entrepreneur thing. I ran my own studio for a little while. Before that, way, way long ago, like 20 years ago, maybe, I was a copywriter. So I did notice the different fonts going on in this high deck, and it wasn't going to come out. I didn't see it. [13:30] this isn't exactly copywriting but it's kind of adjacent to your copywriting skills where there's been like little PR not crisis but like just little moments where we're like making decisions about how like just different things that happen and we're like how does boys club want to talk about this or show up about this and I like the number one person whose advice I trust most on all things related to that like PR comms like copy is you you have

[14:00] And it's no surprise that you were a copywriter. But you also... I don't know. It's beyond copy. It's also... [14:07] sensibility. That's actually my mom's fault or to my mom's credit because the family business is PR. She's been in it for years and years and years and just the dinner table conversation was, how are we going to solve this and that crisis? And I remember her hopping on a phone call and calling a reporter and saying, actually, we're just going to squash this and actually doing so in like 30 minutes. Yeah. [14:31] Well, it runs through your blood then. Okay, Maddie. So we love Polygon, obviously. They're partners and also just like a really great team. And we've had a lot of fun working with them. What are the types of things? Like what are the types? You're like, okay, I'm working with people who want to actually want to build businesses. What types of [14:50] businesses are you seeing and like what's the categories that you're seeing are most attracted to [14:55] to Polygon or the ones that you're encountering most often. [14:57] And, yeah, so when I joined, one of the first things that my team was working on was a grants program. And so it's called the Community Treasury Grants Program. And the reason it's called Community Treasury is because it's run by the community. It's run by a board of community members that set the vision and where it's going. But then my team needs to put that into action. And there's a lot of stuff to do.

[15:27] turned it into 12 grant programs. And so instead of just us giving it, how do we work with somebody who can allocate it on our behalf and be able to go into a lot of different industries? So there's a grant program going on right now for D-PIN. There's one for RWAs. There's a couple for AI, a couple for meme coins, and then some like general track ones. And so there's a lot of [15:57] we're all in the AI business now. Even if we're not explicitly AI, it's in everything. It's all of the projects coming in. You're either using it or building it or applying it in some way. And you're seeing this in hackathons also. The other one is really we need to move away from grants. That's what's more and more clear here is we were calling it the grants program. We're [16:27] small piece of like a capital allocation strategy. And for many teams, it's a trap. Like if you're, y'all, y'all have started a business and you know, all the joys of runway. And if you're relying on grants for runway, it's just miserable. And you, that's where you get grant hoppers and zombie teams. And but then also I was really thinking that it's a form of lead generation at the start and it's really expensive lead generation and it's kind of not clear what the impact is.

[16:57] season three and working with the board and with teams for, in addition to like the 50,000 pole, a hundred thousand pole, whatever that amount might be, how can we actually apply this across the whole ecosystem for larger projects, for things that help them grow, like incentives that can go back to the community. And ultimately there's so much more to life than grants. Like there's so many, and that's still a piece of it, like that you do still need some number that can [17:27] for coming over to the chain. But then... [17:31] You can do just much larger fun stuff. And that's what we're seeing people start to propose across the community. And so if anybody out there also has an idea for what would you do with a million poll to grow the entire ecosystem, like pitch it, let's, let's try to do it. [17:45] Thank you. [17:45] So for y'all too, by the way. [17:48] I love it. Are you, so I'm curious, this transition from how sort of the industry and you specifically have thought about grants in the past to sort of where you're at today. How do you feel like the teams that you're talking with and working with are responding to sort of that? [18:03] transition in the way that you're thinking about it? Are they understanding? Are they catching up? Like, I'm curious what those conversations have looked like. The thing, yeah, the thing that stands out to me most is teams are now more willing to play a longer game where, and when, when I first joined Optimism, everybody's always asking about grants. It's the number one thing that you get asked when you're at a conference. And if you don't have a good answer

[18:33] grants. So you do need a way to say yes to them. But then it's only about 25% of teams that apply for a grant will ultimately get it. They used to scare me like, oh, man, we're going to be saying no to 75. And some of those are going to be good teams. And some of them are going to be upset. But really, it's saying the no is super valuable, like it might not be an idea that you continue. But also 25% is a shit ton. Like that's a lot of teams that then now you're supporting. And so [19:03] It was DevConnect. And I was sitting having a Turkish coffee. And several teams came up to me and said, I got a grant. I'm so excited about what we're building. And that the nature of that conversation had changed. And I think we're seeing that a lot more, that it's not about this immediate grant. It's not about I have to have this 50,000 tokens in order to survive. But rather, it's signaling alignment. [19:33] committed to the chain. It's about saying, how do we get to this next milestone to then start growing the business? So we reworked that on my team and with how we work with, uh, developers and startup folks to then say, once you get the grant, [19:47] How do we support you? So how do we market you? How do we help you build your own personal brand? We do like a weekly Kaido space that help people grow, grow their social media chops. And teams are much more willing to do that, even if it means that they get told no, a couple times.

[20:17] Like most of them are going to tell you no, but you only need one to say yes. And then it's off to the races when all of the rest of that starts coming together. [20:25] what's the Lady Gaga quote? I always think of that. Oh, you see one in, yeah. She says, um, [20:33] I think it was what, A Star is Born, the press tour? With Bradley Cooper. Yeah, and she goes, there's, yeah, 99 no's in a room, all it takes is one yes, right? Something like that, and then she said it like a hundred times on that press tour, and then there were all these compilations of it, and it was so funny. It was so good. You probably have no context for it, but we'll share you the link after. I have heard that in other forums, but I did not know it as a Lady Gaga quote. [21:03] She didn't start that quote. She didn't originate that quote. Yeah, she's an originator. [21:11] Okay, Maddie, so you wrote a really beautiful thread yesterday or the day before, and [21:18] Trans day. I think March 31st. [21:21] March 1st. [21:23] National trans, national trans, global trans day. It should be global. There's a couple of them. This one is trans day of visibility. Okay. Do you want to tell, it was so beautiful and you, you wrote one [21:36] Last year, number two, and that one was equally as beautiful. And yeah, just curious, like, floor is yours, if there's anything that you want to share about that or that experience that you feel...

[21:49] comfortable sharing here. That means a lot. Thank you. And I actually just had a secret plan with all of this and it coming up, which is really, I just wanted to thank [21:59] y'all to thank boys club. I'm going to get all emotional. So before I do that, taking a step back, I am trans. And my trans journey is really, really closely linked with my crypto journey. Both started over the pandemic. Turns out if you lock yourself in a room with none of your coping mechanisms and nothing but the internet and your feelings for a year, you end up reevaluating [22:29] I'm in the right time. It's been super, like my, like tech has been super supportive. My friends have been super supportive. But one of the other reasons is because when you're starting out that transition, you're actively looking for how do I join some new communities? How do I, like, you're just looking for models of behavior and just places where you can be super awkward and how to just develop this new self. So that's what got me looking for women in crypto communities, [22:59] women in crypto communities and found this one that was exactly the type that I wanted to be, the kind of cocky, but also kind of self-deprecating with this really specific style that I wanted to do. And so thank you for helping me. Thank you for giving me behavior I wanted to model really early on. I imagine that might be also terrifying for some reasons because

[23:29] exactly what I wanted. [23:31] Oh, Maddie, that means so much. You have been such a gift to not only the community, but to me personally and to Dina I know as well. And so it means a lot to hear that we've been a part of your journey. And I think over the last few years have seen you like [23:47] color in who you are. And that's been so fun to watch and like a real honor to be a part of. So I'm, [23:53] What a little love fest we had here. I was not expecting it. And I can bring it back to the question where, yeah, it has me thinking a lot about visibility, about what my own goals are for that. It's not something that I put front and center in my Twitter profile because I like to command people having that information and to have some control over when that appears. But I also, it's not a secret. And it is something that [24:22] you have to balance because I think it's important to see trans people out and about that it is hard, but that there's also joy to it, that it is possible to find thrilling and supportive communities. It is possible to be on stage and talking to people and to show the like, it's one of the best, well, it's possibly the best decision that I ever made. So yeah, trying to make it one of the most interesting things about me, but not the most salient at any time. [24:48] I love that. I really love that. Okay, Maddie, we have a couple more minutes with you here. Thank you so much for sharing that. I don't want to even talk about it too much, so I feel like I'm going to cry. So I'm like, I just- Working as intended. So I just so appreciate you and echo everything that Natasha says. Okay, we're going to move from something very serious to something very dumb. So we started this last week with Mike from Rainbow, Smooth Brain Takes.

[25:12] This is called dumb bitch hour. This is, you do not have to identify as a dumb bitch, but this, in this particular segment of the show, basically the prompt is what's your most smooth brain take on a number of topics that we're going to do a quick fire run through on. [25:27] They don't have to, they should, they don't. At one point, Mike was like, good. Good was his thing, which is hard on the brain. I can't wait to say pass. We're great, great, great. We're just going to go really fast and don't overthink it, is my advice to you. Okay, we're going to start Smooth Brain Takes with Maddie. [25:45] "Smooth Waring Take" on college admissions essays. [25:49] So [25:50] I would rather them be a college admission PowerPoint. But I'm the only person that feels that way. Wow, I love that. Love that. A slide deck. I love that too. A slide deck. That's great. Okay. The Beatles casting news. [26:04] I have no idea what this is about. Is it a movie? Is it a biopic? Are we mad? It's the internet, so we're probably mad about something. Yeah, there's a lot of discourse around it. It's just like the four people that they have chosen is kind of a funny group to cast. And so everybody's weighing in, as you can imagine. [26:25] uh no worries perfect perfect response uh who are they who's the weirdest [26:31] oh um no we're gonna get yeah we're gonna get to that okay we're gonna cover this um okay next maddie's smooth brain take on jensen huang's jacket collection

[26:44] Thank you. [26:46] Thank you. [26:48] It reminds me of like, I don't know, when Elizabeth Holmes does it, like it's like this weird dismissive thing. And what an interesting flex to say, I'm going to do the Elizabeth Holmes Steve Jobs thing, but it's going to be a different, exactly the same thing, which then wraps it around that you then have to make a choice. [27:18] And so then why not just bring that around and spend a massive amount of presumably money and also time to do the same thing that exactly this narrow group of people will notice. I love that take because it's sort of like... [27:33] like a meme around people in Brooklyn is like, it's, it takes so long to look this bad. And like, that is like, yeah, [27:43] I'm just kind of what you're saying. [27:46] Okay, next one here, USDC versus Tether. So we just talked about that a little bit, but curious if you have any smooth run takes on that. - I think that's where my answer is yes. - Yeah, I just like that. - It reminds me of a couple of years ago for Luna, [28:03] for the algorithmic stable coin that after that collapsed and was super painful for everybody, somebody tweeted, "Hey, don't forget to diversify your stable coin portfolio." [28:14] Oh, no, you have to diversify your stable coins, which is not quite what I expected there. Yeah, not financial advice as ever. But yeah, thank you for that. Okay, next one. The meme Gary Tan, please help.

[28:27] I also don't know what that one means, except Gary Tan is someone the Twitter algorithm loves to put into my feed. And every time I click into it for saying, oh, wait, why? Where did where did this come from? So he hit my radar with Y Combinator, but then also being really upset with the direction of San Francisco. Yeah. Yeah. So I would guess that this is about I like I like that for me. Also, this is just turning into why is this on this list? Let's pick this up. [28:57] in the show. Okay, last one here. Tariffs. I'm gonna bet that I feel bullish if he's upset about something. [29:05] Okay, that's a good test. Okay, last one. Tariffs, love them or hate them? [29:12] *laughs* [29:14] I mean, there's only one answer, which is hate them. I wish I could compare it. I was hoping you would just get us some rage bait. [29:23] If I was really on it, I would come up with some kind of protocol incentive comparison. But it really does seem like the opposite of like any kind of liquidity incentive that you put to try to move it to your chain, which is let's figure out how we can depress the network effect as much [29:44] so I would like which I'm sure is super controversial I was going to say I'm like opposite of smooth brain yeah that's not a smooth brain I love it Maddie thank you so much for coming on it was so so nice to spend some time with you and you're welcome anytime

[29:59] Well, I love y'all dearly. And thank you so much. Have a good time talking about Gary. [30:10] Love Maddie. So good. Okay, we're gonna jump in here. Incredible visual to the X, the sale of X to [30:29] has merged with social media platform X in an all stock deal. The transaction values XAI at 80 billion and X at 33 billion. [30:39] One of the things that Elon really emphasized about this merger is that it will integrate data, AI models, computing power distribution and talent to unlock new potential. So basically, like these companies are getting married. What can that what can unlock with all of those living in the same house? [31:09] So XAI, one other note here, XAI launched less than two years ago. It was, and the founding mission was uncovering the quote, true nature of the universe and is positioning itself as a competitor to open AI. So that's like the TLDR on all of this. The main thing that I've seen a lot of great tweets about this and this one being one of them, another one that the guy swimming was.

[31:38] The guy swimming in a pool and dumping a water bottle on top of himself, which I really love. What I like about this is this happening is... [31:51] More so... [31:52] it's just paperwork essentially it's just like a cleaning up of paperwork but like i would love to think that [31:58] there's something happening here that like, [32:01] in a few years we'll learn about and be like oh that was so he's so smart he's 10 steps ahead of all of us because he did x y z i'm certain that that's happening here i don't know what that is i wish i've scoured the internet for a take on [32:15] tax? [32:17] Maybe tax, maybe tax tax, maybe some like, um, like this could be like a really stupid take, but like something about data. [32:27] collection for llms through twitter like i don't know but i think he could have done that before anyway so i don't know we'll see what happens i think that um i just love the memes were top tier i'm guessing you didn't listen to the rogan [32:44] episode where it didn't didn't catch that one but what do you say give me the scoop well the funny thing is i was actually trying to get information like this um i didn't finish it yet but the first like 30 minutes is just them testing it out and the ai is like just a really mean sassy [33:04] Oh, Grog? They're testing out Grog? It was like, but the AI one, like for the new company.

[33:10] Okay. Okay. They made it seem like it was different than Grok. So. Okay. Okay. One of the clips that I... [33:17] like [33:19] I never fail to watch. I've seen it maybe a hundred times. And if it's on my feed, I will click in and I will watch it. It's Miley Cyrus. [33:28] on Joe Rogan. [33:29] and they're watching the video of her dancing at like the MTV music awards or something like that. And he like attempts to roast her and he's like, oh, yeah, I'm always doing the same thing. [33:42] always doing the same things on your shows or whatever. And she's like, yeah, just like you. [33:46] I tune in all the time and it's all the same shit. And I was like, so good. I'm going to drop a link somewhere. It's an incredible, incredible, like subtle roast that has made me before that. I was like, cool. Miley Cyrus. After that, I'm like, Miley Cyrus is a good hang. Like that's like, it was so natural to roast him that I was like, okay, she's, she's really locked in on something. Um, okay. Next slide here. What are we talking about? Okay. I know nothing about this story. [34:16] Okay, we're gonna be talking about the college admission essay discourse. I'm gonna be really brief on this one, mostly because I don't want to it's a it's a [34:25] What we're basically talking about is a child. Okay. A stupid... [34:30] admission essay and it has gone turbo viral like 25 million views or something on X oh damn okay but it's a kid you know like 17 year old

[34:40] I get 18. Yeah. Like he's just like, I, it, part of it feels bad where you're like, yeah, [34:46] That wasn't my take on the whole discourse. It was more... It's the take on my discourse. I do stupid stuff all the time. You know, like... [34:58] Totally fair. Aligned, but also, and like, yeah, we should not be roasting a child. But I was more so about like the discourse of college admissions, period, not his. That's what I was thinking when I saw him. Oh. [35:13] Okay. Yeah. I think it has broadened the conversation. You're probably early on it. I was early to it. Yes. So I didn't get the full spread, but yes, it has gone to everyone's now talking about their, what they were, their college admission. Um, anyway, just to get back to the story and then we can, we can broaden, uh, [35:33] a man, Zach, [35:34] goes... [35:35] viral [35:37] for these two posts. It's like a thread, basically. And the first tweet is this one that says, 18 years old, I got great grades. And then he lists all the places that he applied. And they all have X's next to them, except for Georgia Tech, [35:49] U Miami and UT and like other the other ones that he has X's next to are Stanford, MIT, Harvard, blah, blah, blah. [35:55] which is basically like I applied to all these places. I only got into these two. [35:59] then the next tweet in the thread is he's like this is my college this was my admission essay like [36:04] what do you think? It was kind of like, I'm [36:08] it was like here here's my here's my personal statement like here's the stuff and

[36:18] it [36:19] was [36:20] abysmal you're like reading it between like your [36:26] i you're covering your face and you're reading can you read some of it i think okay so i'm just gonna read one section okay [36:33] He goes, it's about... [36:35] One thing that I do think you're missing on his original tweet is that he claims to have a $30 million ARR business. Yes, that's basically what he's talking about in the essay. He goes to say... [36:49] The prompt of the college essay is what has sparked personal growth for you, basically. And he writes the saying where he starts it and he's basically like, I told my mom, I [36:59] I'm never going to go to college. And, and then he's like, I'm never going to go to college because I want to build a business. And basically he starts, [37:06] and [37:07] detailing like he was 10 when he started coding and he then did that he had his first llc when he was 13 he had all this stuff where he gets into the weeds of like that and then [37:18] And he's using very like [37:20] thesaurus language. And 50 cent words where you're like, whoa, why are we using that word? It's giving... [37:30] Milchak in [37:32] uh severance oh i don't know but she doesn't know i was gonna say adolescence part two but that's really heavy so um yeah that not quite maybe um and so then he starts so he's talking about this business that he made and he basically made this thing that's like

[37:54] Cal AI or something like you point your phone at it and it [37:57] tells you how many calories is. I don't know. He like did this app or something that's about calories and food and he builds it into this business. And he's like talking about how he's like a kid that's like hiring people who are 24 years older than he just has this whole thing about the business. And then he has this like kind of realization where he says, [38:17] A month later, I was still searching. Serendipity brought me to this rock garden in Kyoto where I where young jobs once searched for a similar. No, no, I wasn't magically struck with the right answer like I wanted, but the deliberate imperfection of the stones. [38:33] The paradox of asymmetry is both chaos and order lodged itself in my mind. A quiet contradiction. I come look at. So that's basically, that's the tone. Oh, man. Wow. Okay. Also, the comparison to Jobs, like, like. Crazy. You can't unsee that. You can't unsee it. So he. [38:52] everyone [38:54] I fear, I hear... [38:57] I, I... [38:58] read this. I hear this, I read this. And [39:02] I like... [39:03] fear [39:04] I've done [39:06] similar. Totally. Oh, I have. That's what comes up for me. That's what comes up for me. Like I've been here. [39:13] And the problem is the core... [39:16] issue at this point is that [39:19] you now have a distribution mechanism like Twitter. [39:23] that can take your stupidity

[39:26] And you're... [39:27] waxing poetically and move it [39:31] as far as the mind can imagine. Totally. And it's not good for us. It's not good for us. So anyway, I feel... Zach Valdergari, whatever, he will... This... [39:44] He'll never forever attached. Every woman he will ever go on a date with. Will read this. At some point. In their search of him. And so I. I do want to say that. [39:58] - Yeah. [39:59] it's kind of like a litmus test where most people are like, [40:02] this. [40:03] as I saw it basically and like no shit. [40:06] why he didn't get in. Because part of [40:09] the thing that he's kind of [40:12] pointing to a little bit with the initial tweet is like, I did such, I'm so qualified. Yeah. I didn't get into this. Is that it's, it's, [40:21] it's a little bit like... [40:23] You could read it as, well, college is so competitive nowadays. You could also read it more politically if you wanted to. And I think that that's part of why it went viral is because of that reading. The way people were perceiving it. Exactly. Which I actually don't know if that's what he intended or not, but that was what came through in at least the first. That was one way to read this week. Well, if it makes him feel better, I didn't get into UT Austin. So he got in there. Okay. [40:53] One thing I do want to say, there was a really great tweet, which I do really agree with. I'm not trying to dunk on a teenager, but I think turning tech CEOs into celebrities has done serious damage to the brains of young men. And I think that that really encapsulates it for me. A hero worship thing that is...

[41:10] wrong and a steve jobs as messiah vibe is not good totally okay next story that's this is how i felt about it i i saw the tweet and i was like it's just clearly his paper you know his uh admission and i'm like i ain't reading all that for the listener it's our favorite it's our favorite meme ever i ain't reading all that i'm free though or sorry that happened [41:35] Can this be in every deck? I hope so. I hope there's a reason that it's there every time. Okay, I'm going to go through a lot of info on what's happening over at OpenAI. They've had a big few weeks here. Okay, Monday, OpenAI announced a $40 billion raise at a $300 billion post-money valuation, one of the largest private funding grounds in history ever. Okay. [41:59] It was led by SoftBank. One of the reasons or one of the one aspect of the allocation of that 40 billion is a rumored 13 billion that will go to funding towards OpenAI's Stargate infrastructure project, which is [42:17] we've talked about before, but it's it aims to establish a network of AI data centers here in the United States. So that's part of what people think some of this raises about. The other part of it is that [42:30] Last Monday, OpenAI posted that they released their new model. I think it was last Monday. Anyway, they recently released their new model. Sam Altman talked about how OpenAI gained 1 million new users in a single hour. And a lot of this reporting came from Kylie Robinson, her piece in The Verge, which is really good. So go read it if you want to dig in more. So a lot of this information is coming from her and that article.

[42:56] So in large part... [42:59] That influx of new users came from their new image model, their new model that's really good with images and the Studio Ghibli inspired images. [43:11] "AI" art that people were obsessed with and still are. [43:17] And then Sam announced last Wednesday that the company would release a [43:22] a powerful new open weight language model with reasoning in the coming months. So there's going to be additional models and focus more on reasoning and like a smarter sort of chat that is coming our way. [43:35] So that's sort of what they've been up to in terms of like, [43:39] their their narrative, what they're controlling around what they're doing and why. [43:45] Again, in this article, she digs into why they're raising this much money and why this much capital. The tweet here from her is busy day over at the old cash burn warehouse, which is really funny. And what she talks about is despite this like explosive growth and 12.7 billion in revenue this year alone, which was an increase from 3.7 in annual earning the year prior. [44:09] OpenAI claims that they won't be cash flow positive until 2029. So, [44:15] Um, [44:17] Me too. And those protect the projections for 2029, get them to a whopping 125 billion in revenue. That's a quote from this Kyler. Um,

[44:30] Kelly article. So... [44:32] That's crazy. That's a crazy amount of money to be burning. Um, [44:38] I saw a lot of chatter about that. It's like due to the computing power that's required. Also, I saw a [44:47] a stat. [44:48] that I can't remember. I wish I'd saved it, but I think it was nearly $2 billion in like, [44:54] like in staff like their their staff burn like what they're paying their employees and i'm like that's [45:02] Are there open roles? [45:06] Because I will, I'll be there. [45:09] Okay. And then let's see, half a billion users use ChatGPT Weekly, 20 billion paid plus subs, which we talked about last week, 200 subscribers. [45:19] a month. So that's a lot of money coming in. Yeah. So if we go to the next slide here, [45:26] I'm like, where do they bank? Like, that's so much money to have in one... [45:30] spot like they're just earning interest on that cash too right like it's a lot of money and making a lot of money money making a lot of money um so here's a great tweet uh here it's a screenshot from uh the big short where um michael scott what's his name um steve colbert michael scott is on the phone and he said hey there's a bubble and the tweet says open ai is raising capital at a 90 billion

[46:00] So there's some fear around that. And then next slide here, [46:07] Sam, just like on Twitter, I enjoy him as a follow on Twitter. I find it to be... [46:13] refreshing. I don't know. There's a humanity to his [46:16] Twitter presence that I really respect. So he said, we're getting things under control. [46:23] So basically they released the new model and the like image capability to free users this week. And it didn't go well. And it wasn't working for most people. And so he tweets, we're getting things under control, but you should expect new releases from OpenAI to be delayed, stuff to break, and for service to sometimes be slow as we deal with capability challenges. Which I was... [46:46] really tempted to copy pasta that for boys club but i didn't because i thought it would be too niche and then he follows up that tweet working as fast as we can to really get stuff humming if anyone has gpu capacity in 100k chunks we can get asap asap please call which is just like a wild can you imagine wild tweet can you imagine having those capabilities being like get sam on the horn [47:16] And later that day he said, "Lol, I feel like a YC founder in, quote, build in public mode again." So that's what's happening over at the Cash Burn warehouse. Interesting stuff. [47:26] um crazy stuff they do know how to stay on top of a news cycle [47:30] They really...

[47:31] Yeah, every week we're chatting about them. Really impressive stuff from their comms team over there. [47:38] Okay, we have nine minutes. We're going to go through some quick hits here. Quick hits. This is really just a little interesting note. Las Vegas visitor volume down 11.9% and strip gambling down 110 million or 13.8%. So this is our Las Vegas story here. Room rates down from 269 per night to 198 per night. Really, the reason I put the story in is because it gives us an opportunity to our favorite thing ever, which is talk about Las Vegas. [48:08] We go back to the previous slide. Room rates down to 198. And I was like, oh, offsite. Girl trip. Girl trip. Let's go. I love Las Vegas. It reminds me of a tweet that I saw. [48:21] in the, we're going to talk about recession indicators weekly, I think on this pod, but [48:27] we talked about it last week and one of the tweets, Oh, actually I put it in the newsletter and it was something about like, um, you know, it's a recession when basically like the girls are leaving the strip club. They're like, I don't want to be here anymore. Like, [48:39] The money's not here. The money's not here anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally, totally. I do think that some of this data is skewed because last year, this time last year, they had hosted the Super Bowl. And so there could be some weird judging that's happening with the numbers and the data. But I think also... [48:55] people there's some truth to this that people are feeling like they don't want to go to las vegas they're they're giving up the las vegas trip for more of a staycation travel generally like is taking a hit i um

[49:08] I saw that there was like some airline data that was released recently that was crazy how much, um, [49:17] bookings are down and i wonder if some of that is correlation to how easy it is to just gamble on your phone these days and also gambling on your phone yeah [49:25] that I think is coming up for people too. So Las Vegas may or may not be taking a hit, but, uh, I want to see those room rates come way down so that we can get ourselves there. Totally. What's the one that doesn't have the, um, the four seasons Las Vegas. If you guys, if anybody listening is going to Las Vegas, they need a recommendation. I know exactly where you should stay, depending on what you're looking for. If you don't want a casino four seasons, Las Vegas, it's great. You're in the mandolin Bay. So you can walk over and get to a casino. If someone else in your party [49:55] My personal favorite is Encore. Win Encore Towers the best. So anyway, call me. I'll help you book it. Okay. Quick heads. Kate, get me to God's country. Tell me what's going on here. Okay. Everything got unplugged on my end. So can you hear me? Is this working? Okay, great. Get me to God's country. So Morgan Wallen or Waylon? [50:17] Don't know. I always thought I was Waylon, but now I'm hearing Wallin. Oh, well now maybe I don't know. I don't know. Well, I think they said Wallin on SNL. So I'm like, okay, maybe you were all wrong previously. [50:31] Or maybe it's just me and my friends. Anyway, Morgan Wallen was the musical guest on SNL this past Saturday. And famously, at the end of the show...

[50:43] he, the hosts are usually like, okay, bye, the cast is on stage. The musical guest is there and they're all like, what a good show. And they just kind of like teehee until the credits roll. But he just walked off past the camera off stage. [50:59] and didn't do the tea heeing with the cast. And so people are like, Oh, he's a little sour puss. [51:03] Well, one note I just have to say is that that is like... [51:09] The credits of SNL are like, [51:11] It's an iconic thing. It's 50 seasons of people... [51:16] You hug each other. And as a viewer, you're watching and you talk about the credits. If you're an SNL watcher, you're like, oh my gosh, who hugged who? Where's their beef? It's a very- [51:31] So then right after that, he posts to his Instagram story, the photo of his plane. So he did not go to the after party like not everybody does, but most people do. There's an SNL after party for everybody. And then so he posted his Instagram story picture of the plane he's about to get on. And at the bottom, it says, get me to God's country. [51:53] and is that nashville does he live in nashville yes he lives in nashville or tennessee i don't know where nashville god's country gina god's country yeah he's in god's country not now she's like get me out of god's country no for real i'm like i gotta take a trip to new york um and so then one of the snl writers put on his story and uh the visual here is just a

[52:16] truck a Krispy Kreme donut truck in the street and he said get me to God's country and it's clearly in New York um and then I shit posted all over Instagram immediately it was just [52:29] For my friends and everyone, it was "Get Me to God's Country" for, you know, Broadway, Myrtle, Intersection, everybody loves that image. Costco. [52:40] Cafe, Texas Roadhouse, Buc-ee's. [52:46] you name it and so of course it trickled to twitter very quickly um and [52:51] We have some funny visuals for you. Someone did Roku City. [52:57] There was just really good ones. And some were super niche. [53:02] The line holds a lot. The line does a lot of work. Totally. I think I'm going to... [53:07] I think I'm going to write about this in the newsletter. My favorite one that I've seen this far is a picture of, this is such a deep cut. People need to be like so locked in on the internet to get this. It's a picture of what is somebody's, [53:19] home like living room area and if you know it it's Britney Spears where she does her dances like where she does her live dances and she's not in it though so like you have to be like and I saw it and I immediately knew I was like oh the Britney Spears house and I was just like oh my gosh that's a deep cut the bigger the deep cut the deeper the better so yeah agreed and then [53:43] He dropped official merch.

[53:47] which to me looked like sponsored by Coors Light, [53:50] uh you know get me to god's country and someone quote tweeted pop craves tweet about it and said no morgan honey we weren't laughing with you we were laughing at you that's so funny i i my one of my favorite tweets which kate you and i shared a laugh over was the one that was like have you guys ever stopped to consider that uh musical theater kids are like the most insufferable [54:20] it was either... [54:23] What's her name? She was in Parent Trap. She just got incredible work done. Lindsay. Lindsay. [54:29] lindsey lohan she's like in a pool by herself i think it's like a famous meme but i can't i can't recall exactly what it is and someone just tweeted bali or something like that in a pool i think so yes i think so and the tweet is something like more uh have no idea who morgan wallen is like basically like i don't know what's going on but i don't need to know and i was like man i'm so jealous of this woman um okay we only have two minutes here should we skip over garyton please [54:59] Okay, Kate. [55:00] Brief us. Oh, actually, Kate, can you talk about the bat thing? I need you. I actually need to learn about this. [55:07] Yankees torpedo bats all over the timeline. I will quick disclaimer, not a baseball fan. I love sports, but baseball is not a real sport. So you're the you're the biggest baseball fan in this live stream. Baseball fan on the planet. And I know everything about it. OK, take it away. So the Yankees team.

[55:30] They made new bats that basically look bigger, look heavier. They're still following all the regulations, but they're shaped differently. [55:43] So, [55:44] and they are just hitting home runs. They're crushing it. They're undefeated at the moment. [55:49] um and people are like oh whoa and so people are just making they meet the regulation they're just shaped differently [55:57] Correct. It seems like they shouldn't be able to do that. That's the discourse. Okay, interesting stuff. It's like when three pointers and basketball became more popular and people like the game's not as exciting anymore. [56:09] okay also that's the last thing that baseball needs because everyone is oh my gosh so bored by baseball so right you need a stretch at the seventh inning because we're all falling asleep i digress go off go off so the memes are really funny on this one usually i mean most of them are just kind of you know dick jokes but the no babe i love your bat the torpedo ones scare me [56:39] massive, the size of like a human being glove. [56:43] Okay, so I thought the Torpedo Bat story was about this image on the left, which is like a drinking apparatus. [56:49] that people have fashioned from like, it's a plastic bat basically that people are drinking beer from. [56:54] I thought that [56:56] That was what people were talking about with the torpedo bats. But they're talking about actual bats that are used in the game. [57:00] Correct. Okay.

[57:02] Yes, the image here is they had baseball shaped cups with beer that were very popular. And now they have an apparatus that it can just stand on its own. [57:13] And the nation that excites is what the tweet says. Good stuff. Wow, really funny. OK, well, we didn't have time to cover Beatles bio pic cast. So you'll need to research that on your own. But it's always fun to be here. There was a lot. There was a lot. [57:32] optimistic. Yeah, talk to, we didn't get to, recession indicators. [57:37] We'll cover this next week. Yeah, we'll have a weekly sink on recession and caters. Okay, everybody, thank you for joining us. Always a blast. So fun. Thank you again to Maddie for joining. And we'll see you next week. [57:51] Bye. [57:54] Okay, that was DBH. Join us live on Twitter every Wednesday at noon. Or here, I guess. [58:07] Thank you.