Ep: 215: Lead Levels and AI Matchmaking: The Future of Health and Relationships w/ Special Guests: Tom Schmidt on "The Macro," Priyanka Desai on Seed Investing, Paris Martineau on Lead in Protein, and Dini Mullaji on AI Dating Apps

[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, Tina 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 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 [00:33] Oh, oh, oh, oh. [00:35] That was me. That was me. [00:38] Weird. Weird. [00:39] Great. Here we are. We did it. We're live. [00:42] Welcome to Boys Club Live. Welcome, welcome. Live in studio from... [00:49] The heart of crypto, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. That's a joke. I say that sarcastically. We have a new co-host here today. [00:57] Miranda. Hello. Subbing in for our girl, Natasha, who is unwell. [01:02] Just, yeah, a little bit of a red shirt. [01:05] Yeah, which is totally... Which is perfect because there are enough of us to do that. Yeah. So, Miranda, I'm so happy to have you. I'm so happy to be here. It's such a treat. It's so fun. It's such a fun little special episode. So we have a really fun episode today. A lot of fun friends coming through. Let me just pull up my run of show here. Okay, so we have Tom Schmidt. [01:25] who we're going to talk about the state of crypto, where we're at, [01:29] Are we in a recession? Who is winning? Who is losing? I have a lot of questions for Tom.

[01:33] Priyanka Desai is going to come on and she is from Aiden Autonomous Venture Network. We're going to chat with her about she was just in Morfa. [01:41] So cool. So cool. I've never been, but it seems like very cool people go there and do very chic things. So excited to get her bio check on that. And then, um, [01:51] chat with her about what she's building and then [01:54] Didi Moolaji is the founder of Stitch, which is a personalized AI matchmaker. It's like [02:00] not a dating app it's a matchmaking app which i'm very excited to get to understand and then paris martineau is coming on she's an investigative journalist from consumer reports [02:12] She did a big viral piece on – [02:15] Lead. [02:16] In protein supplements that everyone [02:20] It's very, very concerned about, as am I, and as we should possibly be. Sure should. I will say the one thing that I've been thinking about with regards to that story is that the dose makes the poison. [02:32] So true. So I do want to... As is the case with everything. Totally. Everything in moderation, including lead. [02:38] Totally fine. Okay, so that's our show. Before we get into it, a couple notes from our sponsors and partners. If you've touched crypto in any way, chances are you've already used Polygon. Polygon sponsors this podcast. We love you, Polygon. It's the chain quietly powering a bunch of stuff that actually works, that people actually use, like Strips Crypto. [02:57] stripes crypto payments. [02:59] betting on polymarkets, prediction markets, and a bunch more. Thank you to Polygon for

[03:04] partnering with us on this live stream. And then BitKey.com. [03:08] A very cool hardware wallet. Hold on. Let me just get a visual app. I always feel like it's really important to get the visual on the big key. It's a high design situation. It really is. And I feel like people still don't know that this is – [03:22] hardware wallet, this little marble-- - Look at that beauty. - Puck thing here. [03:27] So Vicky's really cool. It's built by the guys... [03:31] Jack Dorsey, et al. [03:33] You may have heard of him. You may have heard of him. [03:37] Cool, a cool device, cool hardware wallet, two or three multi-sig setup built into every wallet. You hold two keys, one on your big key device and one in the app. A third is encrypted on a server and can't be used without one of the other keys. [03:48] Uh, so it's really cool. It's touch. Um, [03:52] Activated. Touch activated. [03:54] And I don't know. It's a cool thing. It is very cool. And they've really thought through a lot of the... [04:01] problems with the hardware. Yeah, I have a lot of feelings about hardware wallets and a lot of stress around it. Some PTSD. Totally. Just by proxy, really. I mean... [04:12] That's kind of the situation. I know. I've learned... [04:15] From experience on the timeline. Okay, so a few things going on today. I just sent an email out about the AWS... [04:23] outage. [04:24] which maybe we don't need to cover, [04:26] on this live show now, but I will say the one thing that I really thought was incredible from the story was the cost. [04:32] $75 million per hour, which like honestly kind of feels low.

[04:37] And that's totally given like the impact, cumulative impact. Right. [04:42] But I guess that is-- [04:44] Well, okay. So many questions, but it really was a long while. I know. I was like trying to... I slipped something into the newsletter, actually. Oh, did you? Yeah, on the AWS topic, which was also... [04:56] uh, therapy, talk therapy, virtual therapy sessions were down. Oh no, not, not the virtual therapy sessions. Well, for me, what happened was what the thing that impacted me the most was, uh, it was, [05:08] to 2:30 PM. [05:10] That's the time that my kid comes home from school and I have to park him in front of the TV. Sorry, I do for another hour while I finish my work. And I go to turn on the TV, to turn on Spider-Man. [05:23] the new Spider-Man who's willing to, and my fire TV remote was not working. And I was like, come on guys, like let's get it together. Um, so that's the one thing. And then yeah, very much on Amazon. Totally. [05:36] The other thing before we bring Tom up is this ring situation. Yeah. [05:44] He certainly... So Amazon's Ring is going to partner with Flock, a network of AI cameras... [05:50] used by ICE, feds, and police. So if you have a ring... [05:55] I don't know if it's an opt-in or opt-out situation, but... [05:58] I think there is an opt-out, but it's not an opt-in. So you kind of have to go through the steps, I think, of limiting what Ring is sharing. Okay. Let me just bring this up here.

[06:10] Just, you know, [06:11] They're... [06:13] Getting deeper and deeper into government spyware. So yeah, their first move. I think it's good to know. Totally. I think if you have a ring, um, it, [06:23] you can choose whether or not to opt in or opt out but i think you should know [06:27] You should. [06:28] You should consent. You should consent to having your [06:31] um, [06:32] Camera footage to be shared with the feds. Up to you. [06:38] Totally. Not for me personally, but whatever. And then the last thing here before we bring Tom up is a story that. [06:48] uh, [06:48] I don't think that you're briefed on. No, I can tell you about. Travis Kelsey is teaming up with an activist group to invest in and revive Six Flags. [06:58] You know, important, the important stuff. Yeah. Right. I will say that. Everyone's got to have a cause. Totally. So a famous activist investor. [07:10] Janna Partners and... [07:12] Travis Kelsey, NFL player. I thought you were describing... [07:16] Travis Kelsey as the famous activist. [07:21] They have accumulated one of the largest ownership stakes in Six Flags Entertainment and intend to press the company's leadership on ways to improve the struggling amusement parks. [07:30] operators business. [07:32] Um, shares in Six Flags search 17% on the news. I see that. Honestly, I don't really, it's kind of feels like low hanging fruit. I'm, I'm about it. Activism. I'm not sure if I can categorize it as such, but.

[07:45] I... [07:47] I'm bought in. Yeah. Well, I think activist investor being like he's he they are going to accumulate majority majority shares to try and change control. Yeah, I see. I see. Yeah. Right. OK, that's the role he's taking. That's the role he's taking. Got you. And I will say I think that Six Flags brand has changed. [08:06] depreciated over the years. So I think it's right for disruption. Right. And if anyone's going to do it. [08:14] It's Travis Kelsey. He's got the platform, so totally. [08:19] Okay. [08:20] Should we bring on our first guest? We should. Okay. We're going to trade places here, Tong. [08:24] Tom Schmidt, investing at Dragonfly. How you doing? Good. How you doing? Great. Great fit. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I was told I should be... [08:37] you know, dressing a little bit more adult these days. And so I'm trying to have you really been told that? Yes. And so this is this is a year of reformation for me. So I'm trying to and you're trying to bring a fit. Yeah. So no, it really works. I really like it. If you're too tall for this. [08:52] These are great tables, too. How's it going? I'm doing well. How are you doing? It's good to see you again. I saw you at the Aptos experience. Thanks so much for coming. Really appreciate it. Are you nearby? [09:03] Not to docks or a location. I'm in Manhattan, but, you know, it's a couple stops in the L, easy enough. Okay. Do you guys work in an office or are you a work-from-home kind of guy? We do. We have an office near Union Square. Okay. And then we have our other office in Singapore. So we're kind of 50-50.

[09:17] But I'm in New York. Okay. Do you go to Singapore a lot? [09:20] Maybe like twice a year, something like that. I was just out there for token, which is good. How was that? [09:25] Honestly, it's one of the better conferences I've been to of the kind of – [09:30] mega conference scale. I think [09:33] Historically, it's like you always get that weird... [09:36] kind of grifty like doge Lambo kind of kind of vibe. And this year that was probably at its lowest. It was actually like great. [09:43] talks, met a lot of great people, [09:46] It was just a lot more serious and kind of buttoned up. [09:50] Yeah, I don't know. It was great. Stablecoins. People have stablecoins. It felt more real than in the past. And I think that kind of stuff was always... [09:57] It kind of a big turn off to me, but [09:59] The other thing with these conferences, though, is that you walk around the [10:03] like the demo floor or the floor with all the booths. And it's like, [10:09] Dude, what are half of these companies? It's there's a whole other sort of sort of sub world within within crypto that I feel like I just don't have exposure to sometimes. Yeah, I know. I went to I had that experience at Bitcoin Nashville when I went. And how was that? Was that the last year? The Trump one? It was the Trump one. Yeah, that was the Trump one. And it was. [10:28] Yeah, it was a crazy experience. I was like, wow, I know like I write a newsletter every week and we cover the industry like I'm very too. [10:36] to attune to what's happening. [10:38] And I knew like 3% of what was happening on the floor, on the sort of demo floor. I feel like Bitcoin is also its own. It totally is. It really is. Okay, before we get too deep into it, I want to first get your draft tweet. Oh, yes.

[10:52] Okay, I was actually... [10:54] Thinking about this, and I had to transfer this over from my desktop because they don't have draft syncing. Although apparently he was working on this. Apparently he's going to ship it. [11:02] And also, I swear, I wrote this before. [11:06] There's a news story yesterday, Cadena, which is like a very OG blockchain. They put out some tweet that, like, the foundation is – [11:12] out of funds and they're ceasing operations. Yeah, I saw that. [11:15] Um, so this is something that's been on my mind for a while, apropos of our conversation, which is, uh, [11:20] Yeah. Okay. I'm also going to rip this. We don't need any more Netflix true crime docs. Instead, I want a Louis Thoreau-style doc on the lost cryptic teams of yesteryear. [11:28] The teams that manage their runway well but forgot to find PMF and now are stuck on their own little island like the last Japanese soldier. [11:34] What do they do all day? Do they have daily stand-ups? Do they LARP as real product teams? [11:37] I think we need a way as a society to allow them to have a clean... [11:41] honorable wind down and an off ramp and I love the capital to be reallocated. I love that. I love that. I, first of all, I think that that tweet is worthy of getting on the timeline. I just don't want to rip anyone individually. So maybe I'll let the Cadena thing. Yeah, kind of space. Too soon, perhaps today. But I do think about that same thing where and I not to name names, but I also know some teams that are like in this weird limbo where you're like, have a big treasury, but like nothing's really working. And what do you do at that point? [12:09] I don't know. I'm more like... [12:11] Okay, what do they do today? And what do you do going forward? I think... [12:15] you know, you want to allow an off-ramp because I think – [12:18] There's like awareness that, yeah, this is maybe like a misallocation of capital, like maybe it'd be better spent elsewhere.

[12:23] But also maybe they should just acknowledge the fact that, like, yeah, this product's not working. Totally. Be willing to throw it out and start new. Totally. Also, elsewhere in the tech industry, at least, we're very forgiving of things not working. That's what we're all trying to do is just – [12:36] puts source up against the wall in as responsible a way as possible. [12:40] Most of it won't work and that's okay. [12:43] That's the game we're playing. Yeah, I think that's true. But what is that off-ramp? I don't know. [12:49] Yeah, I think it is a weird crypto thing where – [12:53] Um, [12:54] like you said, in tech, I guess part of it is [12:56] in crypto, there's so much early [12:58] liquidity and this broader group of investors that buy a token that like, [13:03] I think professional VCs, investors, angel investors, [13:06] They get the companies wind down and they're okay taking the risk. [13:09] Here it's like, if you look at the Kadena thing, people got really pissed at them. Yeah. And it's like... [13:12] Look, I don't know all the details of it, but I think that is maybe kind of this weird complication where – [13:17] maybe the public at large is not [13:20] okay having kind of a cultural off-ramp the same way there is for the tech startup community. Yeah, well you have the guys on Twitter who bought like $500 worth of the token who feel hard done by and maybe rightfully so, but then they're super vocal in moments like that. Yes, those are always the angriest actually, the $500 guys or the $100 guys even. Totally. Okay, Tom, I wanted to chat with you just about the state of crypto. [13:48] Where are we at? [13:49] What's going on? - I ask myself that every day. I think every cycle,

[13:55] uh, [13:56] in my experience, rhymes in some ways, but it's different in its own ways. [14:01] I think this cycle [14:03] Um, [14:04] when I think about things that are different, [14:06] It does feel a lot more real this time in the sense of, okay, [14:10] The product usage is not purely cyclical the same way it was in past cycles. [14:16] I think a lot of the stuff is going to be very difficult to... [14:19] unwind or unratchet in the future. Like I think of kind of [14:22] The ETF complex, you think of a lot of stablecoin adoption, [14:26] I mean, [14:27] Talking about ETFs alone, these are obviously the most successful ETFs of all time. I think there was some tweet that, like, [14:32] BlackRock's making like half a billion dollars in fees just from the two ETFs they have live. And so it's like, [14:38] It's going to be very difficult, I think, to... [14:40] unwind like a lot of certain components of the industry that have gotten to where we've gotten so far, which is, again, very different than previous cycles. But I think overall it's just kind of this like – [14:50] kind of like the, I forget that there's like a term for it, but it's kind of like, [14:54] the boring success where it's like, yeah, we just kind of... [14:58] This stuff kind of gets molded into Web 2, and you end up using Web 2.0. [15:04] you know, stable coins and other products and, you know, sort of doing lending on chain. And it kind of just blends into the background. And you really think about that. And, you know, [15:10] I mean, in some ways, that's the way the tech industry also went, which was like you went from these – [15:15] very fringe weirdos in like the 90s to like, okay, more and more buttoned up. And then it's like, okay, now every big tech company is actually doing kind of everything. And everything's actually a tech company because every company is using technology and

[15:27] Crypto is kind of going through a similar path right now. And I think I look at stuff like Polymarket, which is, I think, very representative of the way [15:36] the industry is going to go in the future, which is like, you know, it's a mainstream understandable product. It's not just crypto for crypto's sake. But a lot of the actual crypto stuff just gets abstracted out and, you know, you can – [15:46] ACH or user debit card to get money on, you can set up a [15:51] Wallet was just your phone number, like a normal Web2 app. And then, yeah, you don't even know that you're actually making these trades on chain, but... [15:57] So that's kind of the way, you know, Web 2 went as well as, you know, everything kind of just gets spun up for you automatically. You don't really think about the fact that it's happening. Yeah. OK, so boring, but like complimentary. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's just like, you know, it's there was there was sort of a. [16:12] vision in the 90s that it's like, yeah, you can run your own email server at home, and everyone's going to be doing XYZ, and it's like, [16:21] Okay, yes, some of those were right. Some of those were just too early. But I think overall, mass adoption inherently means you need to add some abstraction, you need to add some sort of [16:30] you know, maybe conveniences at the sake of some of the ideology, but if the [16:35] sort of underlying is still the same. I think that's still kind of a win. And I think also just like, [16:41] that [16:42] quality of talent I see in the industry now is like, [16:44] much higher than in the past, maybe as a result where if you think of the people who were like, [16:49] very, very into crypto in like 2015. I think very ideologically aligned with early Bitcoiners. And, you know, I don't want to. [16:56] A lot of them are extremely smart and talented. They're our best friends. They're our best friends. Yeah. But from like a product and engineering chops perspective, I think that the quality now is a good amount higher. I like that. Okay. So you should be your investor. You're talking about from a product perspective.

[17:12] the right view to take when I ask the question, like where are we at in the market? But what about the, the, [17:17] Marcus out of it. Yeah. Um, is also hotly debated internally at, at Dragonfly. Um, [17:23] I think maybe the past few months, if you know, like kind of drivers of price action, [17:28] Certainly part of it is genius, and I think, hey, [17:32] crypto as this sort of industry as asset being [17:35] safe and underwritable and therefore investable. That was definitely part of it. And I think also being on the cusp of Clarity or BRCA passing [17:43] Two was obviously the rise of DATS and those being these sort of indiscriminate buyers that [17:48] Three, you could say, is this broader macro sort of melt up, which is a little bit what you see in gold and other asset classes. You know, it's probably some combination of. [17:57] of all of those, [17:58] I think the kind of debate internally is always like, well, is this going to be a [18:03] predominantly Bitcoin or Bitcoin-only cycle, or we're going to see kind of a true alt season again? I mean, [18:08] Bitcoin dominance is is is still quite high and that generally [18:12] It tends to indicate a top. [18:14] Um, [18:15] I don't know. I think the, again, the boring answer is like, I think it's going to be dispersion. Like, I think the playbook of previous cycles, which is like... [18:23] You raise some VC, you launch a token, the token, you know, gets an insanely high valuation, and then great, you kind of ride off into the sunset or there's some fairytale ending. Like, I just don't think that playbook is going to be repeatable forever. And inherently, that is... [18:35] the nature of playbooks is like there's alpha and then there's the decay and then you can't keep running the same, [18:40] the same story. And I think that's true in the market. There's very, very few tokens that have launched in the past two years that are like,

[18:47] top 100 tokens. It's like hype, [18:49] in a [18:50] I can... [18:52] Maybe like two others, but very few. Most venture tokens have not done super well. And so... [18:57] I think for teams... [18:59] That means, A, looking at a tougher environment, you actually need to find PMF, which I think comes back to like [19:05] I guess our initial, the way we started this conversation, and also just like the need to bring more talent in. And two is I think also other paths towards liquidity. Like we've always said – [19:14] Not every team needs a token. We've really encouraged teams to, you know, think deliberately about whether or not they should launch a token, if it's the right time, if the product is mature, et cetera. [19:24] And now we will see more teams, especially with a... [19:26] IPO window opening up and we're seeing, hey, more and more of these, especially, you know, exchanges and Circle. Yeah. Being able to IPO, great, maybe like that will be actually a path for some of these teams. There's kind of [19:36] swirlings of rumors around maybe this being [19:39] actually the way a lot of these labs entities end up [19:42] exiting too is like they kind of [19:44] backdoor into this like dat that then IPOs and it holds [19:47] you know, the wallet or the product and then also holds tokens into it. So I think it's, it's kind of like you, you show me the incentives and I show you the outcome and, [19:55] Right now, there isn't a... [19:57] clear sort of pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you go and just launch a token and instead, maybe teams should be exploring other paths too. And so it's, again, similar to other cycles, but [20:07] different in some ways too. [20:08] What do you think about the sort of take that DAFs are just a vehicle to buy back tokens that don't have liquidity in the market to drive the thrice?

[20:21] is definitely happening. Like you see some of these stats that get announced and it's like, okay, this token... [20:26] is either in some cases unlaunched, which is fucking insane to me, or it's very thin liquidity. And you look at the amount raised and it's like, [20:34] they calculate the value of the tokens based on like [20:39] some made up number and then the contribution is all in tokens. There's no actual cash into it. And so it's like, okay, what is this thing? And, [20:46] Again, in some ways, it's like you take an idea and you stretch it to its logical extreme. There's that's a K. Yeah, there you go. And it's like, okay, this is probably over. [20:56] Maybe that's where we're reaching with some of these dats. I don't think dats are dead. [21:01] Natural consolidation, we probably don't need like, you know, 20 E stats or 20 Bitcoin stats. [21:07] I think stats that have a unique asset can do well, especially ones that have a [21:10] you know, strong person sort of selling it. There's a natural story around [21:14] Why does your trade around MNAV versus just like it's a bunch of tokens in a pot once you go buy it? So you're Team Tom Lee, I take it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. So I don't know. I think – [21:23] anytime there's this overwhelming consensus that [21:26] um you know something is is overdone or or it's um maybe you know the next greatest thing in my mind that is often like the great counter signal so yeah i think everyone being bearish stats to me means like hey maybe we're reaching you know kind of the end of the cycle but i think there will probably be another another one for that okay we still got some room there uh you've been tweeting a lot about mega youth yeah can you uh i assume you're you're an investor we are an investor okay uh can you give me a explain it like i'm five on mega youth yes um um

[21:54] MegaEth is the first real-time blockchain. So they are targeting block speed or block latency times of five milliseconds. And you can see this in actually some of their demos where [22:06] You can play like Frogger. Every single movement is a transaction being made on chain, but it's like playable in your browser because five milliseconds is way below sort of the human ability to perceive latency. And so... [22:18] You know, the idea is, [22:19] hey, there's this class of applications that we can't access that right now, [22:23] not because of throughput, it's not because we can't process enough transactions, but it's because there's so much lag between when you send a transaction and when it actually lands on chain. So it's built as an ETH L2 using a paralyzed compute and sort of targeting this new class of consumer applications that can enable sort of true real-time experience like you would have on your phone, like you would have on like a normal Web2 application. And they have a bunch of cool products coming out with their main net. So I'm very excited for them. [22:53] Yeah, totally. [22:54] Okay, what is your take on... [22:58] The Ethereum Foundation... [23:01] discourse. Yeah. I'll frame it as that. Oh, man. And let you fill in the blanks there. Yeah. I, you know, look, this is something I'm a little bit at arm's length from. I met Tamaj a couple times recently in... [23:16] I think he seems great. I think... [23:19] on [23:20] it's very, very difficult to [23:22] steer an organization that is like as

[23:25] I think old and in some ways kind of rudderless as I think the EF used to be, um, um, [23:31] if you don't have a clear... [23:33] north star that is in everyone's head you end up kind of just having this very like muddled kind of kind of um experience and then it's like most people are [23:42] Afraid to make dramatic changes, right? They want to make changes at the edges. They're like, okay, we'll let a couple people go, or we'll rebrand this team or whatever. And so... [23:48] I'm at least I think it's very encouraging that [23:51] it seems like the EF is willing to take dramatic steps in terms of how it's organized, how it's presenting itself publicly, the types of things that it does, engaging with public markets. I mean, it's been engaging with... [24:02] some of these dApps, which is like unheard of, I think for the old EF. [24:05] and [24:06] I think I still... [24:08] miss a little bit of... [24:11] what is that North Star that gets beat in everyone's head? And when you think EF, you think, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think, like, the Solana Foundation has... [24:19] done actually a very good job of this, of like, hey, we're going to increase bandwidth, reduce latency. Even if people know this is the case, and they kind of have a very cohesive approach, [24:30] story around that. For EF, I think it feels like there's [24:34] They're caught between many different things of like, oh, do we – [24:37] really focus on the price of ETH, which they don't really talk about, it's fine. And do we talk about scaling the L1? Do we care about how do we interact with L2s? Do we sort of, [24:48] you know, privatize an L2 and bring one in house that people can use? Or do we, you know, have them have a common standard that they can use to interact with in some way?

[24:56] - Kind of unclear, and I don't think it's an enviable job. Like, I think it's very, very, very difficult [25:00] But, and it really is, hey, they're willing to make [25:04] some sort of action, and I think that's often [25:07] that, you know, [25:09] The failure scenario for these large organizations is they're just not willing to make any sort of action and they kind of just like end up drifting into an iceberg. Yeah, I think it goes back to sort of what you're saying about that earlier cohorts of crypto people being just super values driven and they're this. [25:28] What they're going through publicly now being like just some public growing pains and that being hard to watch and probably harder to go through as someone who's working within it. But it feels like there's some reconciling there that needs to happen that it's like we're all kind of. [25:46] waiting for. Yeah, I think that's well said. Also, to your point, this happening in public is probably very difficult to navigate, but... [25:54] um i'm heartened by a lot of the changes that i see and i'm long-term optimistic [25:59] Again, it is that weird thing you have to navigate of, [26:02] You exist in a market, you're competing with other blockchains effectively, [26:06] But you still want a little bit of this missionary, you know, idea log kind of kind of. [26:11] story to the foundation and it's not it's not strictly a company in the traditional sense [26:17] So how do you kind of navigate that? I don't know. It's tough. That was a very diplomatic way to answer this question. Yeah. Well, you know, maybe I should be on a job of the F or maybe the old EF, actually. I was expecting some spicier takes from you, but I respect it. Okay.

[26:30] Since I have you here and you're an investor, I'm curious what your take on gold is. [26:36] The gold, the asset. The asset. You know, locally at Dragonfly, we are solely crypto-focused. Totally. No, no, no, I know. Just for you personally. You know, look, I will say there's – [26:46] there's this interesting phenomenon where I think gold is, is, [26:50] It's like much more [26:51] more storied and mainstream of an asset outside of the U.S. I lived in Taipei for a little bit, and I had a Taiwanese bank account, and [27:02] when you go into the brokerage section of the bank account, [27:06] They have sort of the assets that you can invest into and it's like, [27:10] stocks and then it's like gold and then it's like, you know, bonds or, you know, everything else. And I just think that's like so... [27:17] bizarre and I don't think I've ever seen any U.S. brokerage that has that kind of clear breakout or breakdown. [27:22] So I think there's maybe this... [27:25] you know, kind of American bias when we think about gold is like, oh, this is weird boomer asset. And I'm like, actually, this is very global. And I think there's something going on there. [27:35] And [27:36] I don't know. I think that the kind of [27:39] People always say if you want to look at the price of an asset, you have to think about flows. [27:43] I think that kind of [27:45] counter-narrative for gold is like, well, this is [27:47] really the boomer asset, boomers are buying gold. How many Gen Z are actually gonna buy gold? How many millennials are gonna buy gold? [27:53] I mean, in some respects, I kind of agree with that. Like, it does seem like I don't think the younger generation is going to buy gold. Maybe they'll buy digital gold.

[28:02] I hate to be too prescriptive. I think the other interesting thing I've seen recently is, there's obviously these tokenized gold products, like Tether's had one forever, I think Paxos has one. [28:13] Um, [28:13] They've actually seen new... [28:16] issue and so not just like the that AUM has gone up to the price of gold has gone up i think their actual like [28:20] Gold share issuance has gone up like 50% or something. So clearly people are also... [28:24] buying gold on chain, like crypto people are buying gold. I don't know who they are, but if you're buying tokenized gold, I'd love to hear from you. It was maybe going to be me. I've been watching, you know, obviously the price movement of gold over the past couple of days, week. And then I found myself having like – [28:40] You know the term Schadenfreude? Yeah. Where I was like, when it dropped yesterday or today, and I was like, [28:45] Good. [28:46] And that's such a horrible thing to think. I don't even know where that was coming from. Did you feel envy? No, I was just like – I found myself being happy that the price of gold was going down. And I'm like, what a stupid thing to be thinking and feeling. But I do think it comes back to like it feels – [29:01] for millennials, which I am, and I don't know about, I can't speak to Gen Z, but, like, it does feel competitive to Bitcoin as, like, the alternative asset of, like, [29:08] I don't know. So anyway, there was a moment where I was going to buy... [29:12] tokenized gold. I'm glad I didn't. Yeah. But that was maybe maybe now's a good time to get in. Totally. Down seven. Totally. See, that's a good investor. By all means. Okay. I want to just wrap up here with your shill minute. My shill minute. So we've asked our guests to prepare 60 seconds shilling. Anything can be anything. Hmm. [29:31] And have you got something prepared? I do. Well, I was going to show Megith, but I feel like we actually already covered that. So that was great. I have a backup. Okay, great. Which is also a mega product. Okay, great. Give me one second to get the timer going.

[29:44] Okay. [29:45] 60 seconds on the clock. Okay. I'm going to show Megapot. Okay. It's another Dragonfly portfolio company. [29:51] They are building the first global lottery. [29:54] So if you think about lotteries, historically, they're all run by small local governments. They're government mandated. You can't make a private. [30:02] lottery and therefore the take rate on a lottery is like 60%. It's insane. [30:06] This is basically doing Uniswap, but for lotteries. So you can be the house, you can buy a ticket, you can do, you can buy a lottery ticket for like a dollar, do it programmatically on chain. And we have like a million dollar jackpot right now. It's pretty cool. I, um, I, you know, personally, I'm just like, this feels like the way that, that lotteries are going to go where it's not just run by some weird government somewhere, but you said this big global, you know, permissionless, uh, product kind of like DeFi. So that's my, that's my. Incredible. 10 seconds left. Um, Megapot. Megapot. Okay. Similar to, uh. [30:36] Pull together? Yes, although Megapot is a loss lottery, so not a no-loss lottery like Plutio. So it's actually like you buy a ticket, but then the flip side is for a dollar, you can win up to like a million dollars. Right now, I think the last— [30:51] jackpot winner they have won like 250k or something okay um so it's very cool um but yeah it's like [30:58] Right now, if you want to go buy a lottery ticket on your phone, you can't. You can go buy it, and they send someone – [31:04] to a convenience store, go buy you like a physical lottery ticket and bring it to you. And again, [31:08] you know, because it's government run, you generally, you're the take rate on that is like 60%, whereas this is like,

[31:15] You can also be the house. You can be the LP. I think it's very cool. I like it. [31:20] Okay, Tom, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. Appreciate you. Yeah, good to see you. Nice to see you too. We'll see you soon. Okay, Megapod. Let's get it up here. [31:32] .com? [31:34] .io? Okay. [31:36] Megapot.io. [31:40] Okay, pulling it up, pulling it up. [31:47] Great, thank you. [31:53] Okay, I'll publicly agree to the terms of service and privacy policy. [32:02] Live demo. [32:04] Today's jackpot, $804,000. [32:08] Oh, I'm in and on support. [32:10] get my my VPN fired up here uh cool I'm into it I'm really into it Brenda do you want to come come on in [32:23] Okay. [32:24] How's it going? [32:26] Thank you. [32:29] Thanks. [32:31] everywhere. [32:32] Um... [32:34] What a great guy. Such a great guy. Such a great guy. So smart. Really enjoyed that chat. Learned a lot. Really needed the mega ETH. [32:42] Me too. Thanks for having me. Me too. And he explained it so simply. So now I totally understand what it is. Perfect. Perfect.

[32:48] So I appreciate him so much. Our next guest is Tim. [32:53] Do... [32:55] Great, no problem. [33:01] Yeah. [33:02] You know? [33:03] Should we talk about the Louvre robbery? We absolutely should. [33:07] Wow, it seems like that was well received. Yeah, good reception in the room. [33:13] Okay. [33:16] So, [33:18] Here's a briefing. I'm sure everyone has seen it, but just so we're all clear in the story. [33:22] Yesterday? Monday. [33:24] Monday. [33:26] 9.30 a.m. [33:27] Thieves. [33:28] Parked a truck. [33:30] under the windows of the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre. [33:35] They... [33:35] It was like a truck with a big ladder on it. [33:39] They climb up classic. Totally. Totally. I love it. They climb up. [33:46] The latter. [33:47] They use a disc cutter. [33:50] Ocean's Eleven style, like straight from a movie. [33:53] get through the glass, which set off the security alarm. [33:57] Then this part of the story I don't love as much because it's mean and I don't like mean stuff, but they then threaten the guards with a disc cutter to... [34:05] Right. To get him away. Right. And... [34:09] then smashed two display cases, [34:12] While the staff evacuated the museum. In broad daylight. [34:15] In broad daylight. And then they got on to scooters.

[34:22] Waiting for them outside. There was getaway scooters. Getaway scooters. So French. It's so Paris. So European. Perfect. And then they drove away. So what they stole was... [34:34] They did not steal any paintings or any of that type of art, I suppose you'd call it. It was only jewelry. Straight for the jewels. Yeah, tiaras, earrings, and necklaces. And someone had said that this means... [34:49] They're calling it a commodity theft. They weren't after the art. [34:54] They were after the... [34:56] the stones and the diamonds to be able to remove them from the crowns or to like, I don't know, uh, melt down the gold. Yeah, it's exactly hardware. Yeah. Harder to, it would be harder to move. [35:11] a crown but they can melt it and take off the diamonds and then sell it. Kind of. Yeah. I feel like it's one of those things where some of them are [35:19] such precious gemstones and one of the kind gems that if they like showed up on [35:23] the black market, it would obviously be like Eugenie's. [35:27] Uh-huh. Right. Right. [35:29] Hero stone. I would think that the necklace as a necklace would be more valuable. I guess it's just that... [35:37] how... [35:38] much risk do you want to assume in order to own that? [35:42] as opposed to... [35:44] just [35:45] owning pieces of it that are really valuable. Okay. Okay. [35:48] Okay. Oh, I got paywalled. I want to bring up the jewels, but...

[35:53] I sort of like love a good old fashioned heist. I think it's so French and there have been many of these over the last few years. [36:01] Often sort of like around when we're heading... [36:04] to the Europe vicinity for a crypto event. So it really gets you kind of going. But there are some conspiracy theorists on this. Yeah, there's a little bit of a viral tweet [36:18] asking if this is maybe promo for the Four Horsemen or Three Horsemen movies, which is The Magicians with Woody Harrelson and... [36:29] Jesse, um... [36:31] I kind of am shocked. I didn't really realize this was such a successful franchise, but I guess they're going on to like their third season. [36:40] one or something and i think that bianca might be outside um okay hold on i need to pull up [36:48] Can I give you this? [36:49] four horsemen [36:52] Um, [36:53] This is four or three. [36:55] Yes. So Woody Harrelson was also spotted in Paris. Okay. Okay. [37:00] And [37:02] Basically, they do these crazy... [37:04] Magic. Is it a heist movie? It kind of is. Okay. Heist adjacent. Okay. And so... [37:11] There are, there's commentary that is like, imagine if, because there are also signs up everywhere that apparently Jesse's going to do like a magic trick in... [37:19] Tompkins Square Park. Oh, this is it? This is, she put it up on screen. There it is. Okay.

[37:24] Interesting. Yeah. I feel like that is probably if I'm Universal Pictures or not the press you're looking for. Well, not only not the press, not the liability I'm looking for either. Totally. I mean, the Louvre. Yeah. Would have to be in on it. [37:40] I just don't see a world where that institution is playing ball with this film in particular. But I love a conspiracy theory. Totally. Me too. So that times heist, it's got me written all over it. I love that. Thank you so much for bringing conspiracy into the chat. I didn't bring it up with AWS, so I figured this was my moment. Great. We ready? We're ready. Okay. Franca, come on in. Hi. Hi. [38:09] No worries at all. Priyanka Desai. Hi, I'm Dina. Nice to meet you. I don't think we've ever met before. I know. Red is your color. Thank you. Thank you. It looks great in you. Okay, so ops at Tribute Labs working on AIDIN, the first autonomous venture network. Correct. Okay, let's warm up actually with a draft tweet. Do you have a draft tweet prepared? I do. Okay. I thought I gave this one. I actually like looked at my draft tweets. Can I put this a little? Oh, [38:39] Okay, I love reading Substack. [38:41] Okay. [38:42] And this is kind of like shade. And I it's not. Please. We love shade. I also love subsec. OK, but I'm a little tired of like the subsec class of people just like talking about how much the Internet sucks all the time. [38:53] I heard. [38:54] It's just like a little exhausting. Yeah. And like, it's like the internet culture commentary. Yes. I'm just like...

[39:01] Let's move on. I really respect that. I would retweet it if it was on the timeline. I also feel like similar is people talking about – [39:12] endlessly about like internet trends and that being like this tired thing but those people are always tweeting about it i'm like if you're that tired of it stop tweeting about it like you know what i love doing is just going on chat gbt and i'm like hey can you scrape everything all the internet trends that you see on tiktok twitter [39:29] you know x whatever and then just give it to me in a report every day and it like does that oh my gosh wow and i'm like this is so much more efficient oh i love that you should can you share your prompt with me so that i can do that too so i'm like okay cool this is like a nice way i don't need to like read through like a sub stack analysis yeah yeah yeah yeah cottage core yes yes [39:48] I will still probably read that. Yeah, I will read it. Okay, thank you for that draft tweet. Okay, you were just in Art Blocks, Marfa. Yeah. What was going on there? Okay, so are you familiar with Art Blocks? Yeah, I am, but let's do a briefing. Okay, so Art Blocks has been around for five years, so... [40:06] It's this generative art platform. It takes generative art and then mints like NFTs out of it. They have like these sets that are anywhere from like 100 to 1000 in size. [40:16] People buy them, they're NFTs. [40:18] It's all like generative code and generative output in each of these mints. [40:23] So every year there's a weekend in Marfa, Texas, where Art Blocks will put together a weekend [40:31] I'm just pulling up. I'm listening. Yeah. And it's really just like a celebration of like gender of art.

[40:37] you know, the space, digital art in general, and a lot of the artists come, a lot of the collectors come, a lot of people who have other art platforms come. [40:47] It's like... [40:48] it's gotten bigger every year. So like the first year, [40:51] Like, it was, like, funny. It was, like, Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss were there, and they were like, this reminds me of South by Southwest, like, the first two years of it when it was just, like, a backyard, and then now – [41:00] Like the first year, I've been every year for five years. Oh, well, okay. The first year was like... [41:04] 100 people and then this year was like 600 and it's expanded beyond gendered in art so you have like people and [41:10] you know, all these other artists and like new kind of like the finance people have come into our a little like our art world of it. So you could kind of feel that energy a little bit there, too. Like Crypto Dick Butts had a party there. So it's like expanding beyond. But it's cool. It's like also Marfa is just amazing. Like if you like art. [41:28] Donald Judd Foundation, Chinati, like, it's just great. And it's, like, also in the middle of nowhere, and it takes, like, 12 hours to get there. Right. How was your journey to and from? I'm, like, still tired from it, but it's, like, two flights from New York and then a three-hour drive. Okay. And the fact that, like... [41:40] 600 people, people like do this. Yeah. That's, that's a big testament to it. It's like seeing your internet friends and it's a cool place to do it. Um, okay. So that's, so all of these, all of these pieces are generatively created. Can you speak a little bit more about that? Yeah. So, I mean, there's, it's called like algorithm art. I mean, there's like precedent for this, you know, even, you know, [42:02] early internet you could look at like solo it where they take and he took instruction and created art for it here you're taking like code instruction and then you can have different outputs but they're all related to the same like

[42:14] initial code they just have different outputs and then here what artblocks is doing is basically taking that code taking those outputs and then adding like [42:21] uh, [42:22] a medium to put it on. So that medium is NFTs. And so it's like the same code will have [42:27] different outputs, but they all [42:29] sort of are part of the same network and like look very similar. That's so cool. That's so creative. Have the same aesthetic. Yeah. Um, it's cool. Not to make it about money, but how's the, how's that market doing? Um, just generally not necessarily art blocks. Yeah. So art books, I mean, it's, it's kind of like the traditional art market. Like I have a lot of friends in that world too. And it's like the top end is still really strong. Yeah. The top, like, [42:49] whatever, 3% or 5% of work [42:52] is holding its value. And then like the rest, I mean, there's just, it's, it's people are still collecting it because they like it, but yeah, [42:59] I'm not sure there's going to be a financial return on that. [43:03] So I think those who like. [43:05] pick the writers early. The thing is, like, there's more artists coming in and, like, more great artwork coming out. I actually think the bear market... [43:12] largely has been good for that because... [43:15] The real ones stuck. It shakes out. It shakes out the tourists, like the tourists, basically. Yeah. So you're seeing the quality go up. It was good to have that initial hype cycle to bring people in. But a lot of people stuck around. [43:28] But definitely there's like. [43:29] a washout with people. Um, what's the, totally. What's the conversation around, um, [43:35] like AI... [43:36] slop in that space? Um... [43:40] It depends on the collector you talk to. I think some people are like the barrier to entry to create work is so low that anyone can be an artist and thus it's not interesting. There are people who think it's a – I'm one of these people that think it's like a new –

[43:56] It's a new tool. It's like... [43:58] I kind of tweeted this like a few weeks ago, but I view it as like the first scientist that created paint. [44:05] like in a way we're the first artists. I think similarly, like AI is... [44:09] is like that where it's this new, [44:11] tool and the initial people who use it, they might be like, [44:14] you know, these engineers or others, but like eventually the art, [44:19] folks are going to use this and have creative output out of it. I mean, we're seeing it with all these slot videos, but, [44:24] A lot of these slots, I think there's a lot of slot, period. I think we've just decided to call... [44:29] AI slop, but like actually slop exists in different forms. There's like Drew Austin wrote a really good blog post. He's like, I was walking past like [44:37] a grocery store and they were playing [44:40] Like. [44:40] I think like Nirvana or something. And I'm like, what is it at 9am? And like, that's slop. So like, I think we've lived in... [44:48] a slop world for a long time. People are just [44:51] for some reason, like using AI as a boogeyman to call... [44:54] bad slop, which some of it definitely is. Yeah. But there is going to be a turning point of extremely creative [44:59] thoughtful people that are going to use this, this tool and medium and create something like extraordinary. Yeah, I totally agree. Um, on the, uh, slop note, I also feel like there's real estate slop. Yeah. I live in Nashville and there's like, there's a lot of development that's happening in that city. And, and, [45:16] I mean, some of it's cool, but I look at a lot of it and I'm like, man, that's [45:20] that's a lot that's like stop building i saw a tweet that was like private equities like og slop and they're like pointing at those like apartment buildings in like the mid-sized growing cities and even precisely that yes slot bulls like those are all private equity owned yes companies and just like your blank coffee slop like all of this is like it's like private equity is actually the

[45:43] Like... [45:44] How do you, so you talked about some of the perspective of investors as it pertains to AI, but what do you feel like, [45:50] the artists, how are they feeling about it? [45:52] I think it depends. I mean, like, you know, if you go to, like – [45:58] crossover into like, we call it like trad art world, i.e. non-digital, I would call it. Like, [46:04] Those artists. [46:05] fucking hate. [46:06] AI. Yeah. And so even like Christie's did like an AI sale. There was like, [46:12] I don't know, like 5000 plus people. [46:14] artists who signed a petition against that sale against it. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I feel like it's appropriating. I see the perspective. Like, it's not like I don't see that perspective. I, [46:24] I get it. Um... [46:26] I don't know what the right answer is, actually. To me, it feels so inevitable that I'm like, it's going to be really... [46:33] the self-preservation around humanity when it comes to this technology is going to be really tough. Like we've already seen it in coding. [46:40] I don't know if you followed that like Tilly Norwood thing. [46:43] Oh, the actress. Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting to see that, like the amount of Hollywood creative celebrities come out and be like, there's no humanity in this. Like, you know, they were really it was the first time I saw. [46:54] like the creative class start. [46:56] really freaking out. I mean, they did a little bit in the Writers Guild strike a few years ago. [47:01] But this Tilly Norwood thing had like [47:03] You know, they were talking about on The View. It was like everywhere. And I'm like, this is, it's inevitable, but I also see their perspective. I totally do. My husband works in music production. [47:13] At this point where we're at right now, it's like he does scoring and

[47:17] you can [47:19] tell like there's a bunch of like AI scoring tools and and yes you know yeah and at this point like you you a b test it against something that's [47:29] been played by real instrument and has a real human behind it. And you're like, you can kind of tell. And you're like, okay, this is like, isn't as good. And it's not going to be as like, perceptive to us. Like, it's not going to have the emotional depth. [47:39] to be able to assign a score to a scene as well as a human can right now. Yeah. But I, I don't know. That's always gonna be the case. [47:46] like I don't know that's gonna be true in five years I feel like there's all these like studies that people post on Twitter I don't ever read them I just read the Twitter synopsis of it but like they well they're basically a b testing it to people I think there was one around music where they're like we're giving them a on AI music and just [48:01] normal songs. [48:02] or human songs and like people can't tell the difference. Yeah. And like, this is the worst this is ever going to be. So it's like, I don't, and it's, [48:10] Interesting. It really is. [48:13] Yeah, I think the creative industries, because coding has already been pretty much like it's been well accepted now that everyone is going to do AI generated code. I don't think the creative industry and like the influencer creator economy thing, I think they're starting to. [48:26] jump into that, but it's like, I don't think it's a fully hit yet how significant that's going to be. [48:32] like a couple of friends of mine started sending me like goofy AI, [48:35] videos and I looked at the Instagram account, it was like half a million followers. Totally. [48:40] that people are [48:41] digesting that content and enjoy it yeah i do think there's an arbitrage moment right now where like you can spin up a ai generated video account and like do like cats in grocery stores and like get

[48:52] millions and millions of views and then be able to monetize that on platforms like tiktok [48:57] and Instagram, but I don't think that, I think that [48:59] it's a small window where that's going to be happening. Yeah. It's going to crowd, but good for them. Yeah. Be able to monetize on that now. I know. Um, [49:07] What do you – so are we – [49:11] in the permanent underclass or are we stuck here? Where do we go from here? That's a really good question. [49:16] I mean, I've kind of resigned to it. I'm like, yeah. Yeah, there was this meme that was like, there's only four jobs left. It was like venture capitalist, data labeler, [49:26] like gambler and vibe coder. Like, I was like, honestly, that's so true. Yeah. Oh, and bikini waxer. I think that's going to stay. I don't know. Get some AI robots on that. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Maybe. Um, [49:40] Let's talk about venture investing. So tell me about Aiden. Okay, so Aiden is like... [49:46] So we at Tribute have been supporting venture DAOs for... First time about Tribute. Okay, yeah. So we have been supporting venture DAOs and venture communities for really... [49:56] long time, like the Lao, Flamingo. Some of them have invested in early stage companies. Some of them have bought NFTs, like, you know, Flamingo is one of the largest companies. [50:04] and most valuable collections, for example. [50:07] They've commissioned work. They've invested, you know, I think collectively have invested in like 300 plus companies. So you've learned a lot like the Dow thing, like you, there are a tremendous amount of learnings there and they're kind of all doing their own thing. And it's, it's, it's kind of amazing to see these communities evolve. [50:21] So Aiden was kind of born out of that with AI really in mind because when we started this

[50:29] ChatGPT was not freely available and [50:32] it became clear to us and the team that machine intelligence, like kind of what we're talking about, is only just going to get better and better over time. [50:39] How do we marry this idea of like a network? [50:42] and venture. [50:44] diligence using AI of a company. [50:46] And so Aiden combines the two. [50:49] basically like [50:50] I'll explain like the AI piece and then like the structure of it, but like, [50:54] as the AI piece, you can take any company website, deck, any other information, [50:59] And then like 30 minutes later, you'll get like a full memo. You'll get a breakdown of the company. It guesses the valuation. It estimates like. [51:08] growth and exit. [51:10] It'll surface all the information about the founders from their various socials. [51:15] We have [51:17] 40 diligence questions that get generated. We also have like an agentic [51:20] investment committee. So we have like these seven agents that [51:23] that will give you on their opinion on whether or not they would invest in the company. [51:27] It's like a very [51:28] thought out report. Very useful. Like we share it with founders and they like love it. [51:34] And it takes... [51:35] It doesn't take like... [51:37] a short amount of time to generate. So there's like a lot happening there. [51:40] So we have that piece. [51:41] And then we have a network tied to it. And we've, you know, we really like the idea of having, you know, human networks tied to AI. And that's really like, I think, where we're going to see the most growth. [51:51] And so the network piece is interesting. [51:53] Like we have the investors that every week vote on the best projects that. [51:57] Aiden, the machine. Human investors.

[51:59] Yeah. So human investors will vote every week. Like the best projects that aid and surfaces like human investors will vote every week via email. It's just like thumbs up, thumbs down. They get to read the report and dig into it. Listen to the podcast that it surfaces up like really like get all the information they need. [52:16] And then... [52:17] We also have a scout network that we're building out, which is like requires no capital. It's just someone like there's a lot of us who are in the startup scene, well networked. We're founders, operators, deck designers, lawyers. Like people see deal flow without realizing it, especially with the Internet. Like you don't need to be a. [52:34] partner at a VC fund to know when your friends are raising. [52:37] So we've created this network. We've had 300 people now, but they submit deals into this machine. They get to see the report as well. [52:46] And then they can submit that for funding. And if Aiden likes it and the LPs like it and it gets funded – [52:51] that individual who submitted the deal. [52:53] gets 50% of the carry, which is like, if you're familiar with the venture model, it's like, [52:59] you know, it's, [53:00] half of the upside most venture companies. [53:02] partners get. [53:03] which is pretty significant. [53:05] That's really cool. So are you able to do that because the operational costs of running this are so low? Yeah. Cool. So like even the management fees, which is not probably that interesting to people, but usually management fees for VC funds is like 2%. Here we're charging only 1%, and that's really just to do like the tax and accounting stuff. It's not like… [53:23] But yeah, because, you know, [53:25] The scouts are doing a lot of the work. They're submitting the deals, and then the AI... [53:29] is,

[53:30] diligence-ing all of it for you. So... [53:32] It's kind of just like this machine in a way. That's really cool. And part of our inspiration is like hedge funds have been algorithmic since the 90s. [53:40] I feel like even sports like Moneyball style, like the quants came in and now, you know, sports look a lot different. I think traditional adventure. [53:48] is great and it'll continue doing its thing. This is just like a different approach to it. What types of companies do you [53:54] founders, what do you feel like is well attuned to this model? So it's totally sector agnostic. So we'll see everything from a CPG brand like a... [54:04] you know, like... [54:05] Seen really interesting CBG companies all the way to deep tech companies. [54:09] drone companies, you know, AI, like Aiden has made two investments already. One is like an AI hardware company. [54:17] And then the other is like an AI music company, [54:20] Um, and so it's, it's just like, we were seeing crypto obviously. So it's just like totally across tech, like anything you can really like digest any company. Cool. [54:29] totally generalist. Where can people find it? [54:31] Aiden.Online. Okay. [54:33] What are you most excited about? [54:35] In in with Aiden or just like just like what category sectors types of companies like what are you I kind of feel like I'm interested in like battery tech right now. Oh interesting. Say more. Yeah. Well it's just more like thinking about the AI value chain because I feel like right now even in like public markets like everyone's obsessed with the chips and then it's like the data centers and then you know from there. [54:58] Um... [54:59] you have to think about energy. Energy is going to be huge.

[55:02] Maybe, you know, Matrix is kind of freaky because people are like harvesting humans for energy. But wait, what? I'm not saying that I want to do that. Sorry. I just think that energy is going to be important for data centers and data. [55:15] compute. Not talking about [55:18] that I just had the image of the matrix. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Got it. I thought, I thought you were like citing a startup and I was like, wait, are we, no, no, are we there? No, I don't know why you even brought that up. It just like came into my head. Yes. Now I'm picturing the thing in the back of the head. Because of that, I like always think about that when I go down the value chain because also like storage is going to be important for the energy. And then I just feel like there's a lot of innovation, innovation around like battery technology. Yeah. Heard. There was a moment there where I was like, should I pivot? [55:45] Into energy. I know. It's just going to be such an important thing to power... [55:52] what is going to be [55:54] Probably creating the permanent underclass. Yes. [55:58] Okay. We have our shill minute. So we're asking all our guests to do 60 seconds of shilling anything. [56:04] Could be anything at all. I mean, you gave us a great briefing on Aiden, but I don't know if you're prepared, if you have something else prepared. Ooh, I didn't have anything prepared, but let me... [56:15] Here are some examples of things that people have done in the past. [56:18] um, [56:19] Avi, the founder of Friend. [56:21] came on and shilled San Francisco. [56:23] And I was like... [56:24] just as the city, the concept of San Francisco. And it really worked on me. I was like, great, cool town. I should check it out for them. Interesting. There was a guest who came on last week who shilled –

[56:34] Like being basically like a... [56:38] Yes, and person. [56:40] Yeah. So it can be anything. But also if it's too much on the spot, I respect that. Let me think. [56:46] I mean, those are actually good shills, but I was eating this... [56:51] like last week. Okay, great. Let me get 60 seconds on the clock. Let's hear it. Okay. [56:56] So – [56:58] You know, I like love having something sweet after dinner. This isn't really sweet. It's actually more on the salty side. And I'm actually... [57:07] Blanking on the name of it. So this is not even helpful at all, but they're literally just grapes covered in like a [57:13] Sour candy. [57:14] Oh. [57:15] And it's like a healthy food. It's like a healthy thing to eat after dinner. Yes. Are they like a Whole Foods buy? Yeah, it's a Whole Foods buy. It's like kind of everywhere, actually. Miranda, what's that gummy... [57:28] Fruit. [57:29] that you had in your house. [57:30] True, true. You had it in your house. It's like a candy candy. [57:35] No, it's gummy sour on the outside. [57:40] No, it's not gummy. It's an actual grape with sour candy. Oh, I'm... [57:44] Yeah. [57:46] They're like... I posted on our pastor about that. Oh, you did? Because they're like... [57:50] They're like something I've ever had. I'm like, this is like so basic, but I like love it. Because I used to eat blueberries... [57:58] With salt. [57:59] Oh, and for riot. Okay. Okay. There it is. But I've been like into the fruit riot. Okay. I'll show that. So you showed it and that was a beautiful show. It was absolutely perfect. Wait, blueberries assault. Yeah, it's actually good. Say more. I mean, literally you just take frozen blueberries and like frozen, frozen. Okay. Sorry. I meant to say that. And then like pour sea salt on it and just eat that. It gets the job done. And then I discovered for right.

[58:29] But anything else you want to leave us with before you go? No, this is great. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. Really lovely to meet you, too. So nice to meet you. Okay. [58:38] You can carry on. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. [58:52] . [58:54] um, [58:55] Bye. [58:58] Just flipping right back on in. [59:00] Okay, our next guest. Oh, Stitch, AI matchmaker. Yeah. Excited about that. [59:05] Anything happen on the internet in the last 20 minutes? [59:15] Um, [59:16] Thank you. [59:17] Yeah, nothing that I can bring up. [59:21] But we do have a little bit of a... [59:24] a backup on our guests so we can just [59:26] Talk about how fun the Aptos experience was last week. Yes. [59:30] Shout out to Aptos. Truly. They did a great. World-class event. [59:36] Conference. Two-day conference in Brooklyn. Full move. [59:41] Really cool move. Really cool space. [59:43] Great program. Great programming. [59:46] high fidelity experience across the board. So [59:51] Yeah, that was great. Thank you so much for having us. And... [59:54] Check out. [59:55] our coverage. [59:56] Yeah. On the timeline. We went fully in. I will say...

[1:00:01] I'm excited for their... [1:00:04] They're perp decks that they're building. I wish I had the name of it. Perps and peptides. Perps and peptides. That's what it's all about these days. [1:00:11] If you want to join the perps and peptides group. [1:00:14] Group chat. [1:00:15] hit the DMS. Yeah. We'll get you in there. Um, someone said I really, Oh, Addy, Addy, Addy. First of all, [1:00:23] I'm going to bring her coming up here. Oh, sorry. [1:00:26] I have really mixed feelings about the salt and berries. I'm going to try when I get home. [1:00:30] But... [1:00:31] I can understand the mixed feelings for sure. [1:00:34] However, I'm intrigued. [1:00:36] I am too. But since Addy's here, I want to do my show minute. [1:00:41] on Addy's... [1:00:42] Art. Perfect. Here. [1:00:45] um, [1:00:46] So... [1:00:47] Addie Wagenknecht. I don't know. I'm sorry. I really probably butchered that. But... [1:00:54] Uh, [1:00:55] is an artist. [1:00:57] And she is an incredible fine artist. Fine. [1:01:03] And, you know, [1:01:04] Does this work here? There are no girls on the Internet. There's this one actually that I think about all the time. Let me get to it. [1:01:13] um, [1:01:14] Wow, I've never seen this one, glass ceiling. [1:01:17] Is it showing my screen? [1:01:19] Okay, great. [1:01:20] Um... [1:01:22] There's one where, oh, this one I love. [1:01:25] So I mean, Addy has been on many of your mood boards. Totally.

[1:01:33] Where's the one? Oh, this is the one I really love. I knew that was going to be the one. I love it. Stunning. And I think about it. Yeah. [1:01:40] It's very... It's very moving. It's a very moving piece. [1:01:44] Um, [1:01:46] First found her work through being in and around crypto and Web3 and have been like a devoted fan ever since. [1:01:54] So honored to have you. - Perfect show. [1:01:58] tuning in, Addy, we have to have you... [1:02:00] on the show. We have to have you on the show. [1:02:03] And maybe we'll do a berries and salts taste. It's nice. I love that. Oh, this one too. [1:02:12] Yeah. Really cool stuff. Really? Anyway, I'm going to – Really cool stuff, yeah. [1:02:18] I'm going to drop the link in the chat here. Everyone should check out her art. [1:02:23] Um, perps and peptides mentioned. Yes. Emily is in that chat, not to talk to her, but she's in that chat. And. [1:02:30] It's a great chat. There is some true alpha in the perfs and peptides chat. I do want to just do a little bit of a... [1:02:37] a teaser for next week. Um, [1:02:39] At first, we were going to not have a show next week. [1:02:42] Just a little hiatus moment. A little hiatus. Take a little break. [1:02:45] And then I had a really incredible call with... [1:02:49] The peptide guy. The peptide guy. The Chinese peptides guy, I'll say. I'll clarify. The guy. The hook. [1:02:57] And totally. And, yeah. [1:03:00] I was like, I actually think we need to do not only have a show next week, but have a show that's

[1:03:05] devoted entirely to a conversation about him and Chinese peptides. [1:03:10] It's Boys Club 60 Minutes. Yeah, it's a 60 Minutes episode about Chinese football. Into the gray market. Yeah. Yeah. [1:03:17] of Chinese peptides and shout out, [1:03:19] To those of you who... [1:03:22] Connected us. [1:03:23] Yeah, shout out to the folks who connected us. I feel like people have a lot of questions – [1:03:29] And he, he should have some answers. He should have some answers for sure. And he's, [1:03:34] like willing to do a Q and a style where people can drop in questions and, and, [1:03:39] He will to the best of his ability. [1:03:41] answer them. There's a lot around medical advice, not medical advice. Yeah. That he, um, [1:03:47] can't and won't be able to answer. But if you're curious about Chinese peptides, [1:03:53] Next week's episode will be a good place to start. I think we're going to try and do it on Wednesday. [1:03:57] Um, [1:03:59] And I should have my... [1:04:01] NAD supply by then. Are you taking NAD? I'm going to, yeah. Okay. Really curious about NAD. [1:04:08] I've been curious for... [1:04:10] quite some time because I am... [1:04:12] very pro IV drip and a lot of the IV drip studios rolled out NAD. [1:04:19] a couple of years ago, it just was [1:04:21] out of my price range for... [1:04:25] Yeah. [1:04:26] How much? Just many hundreds of dollars per treatment, and you have to sort of... [1:04:32] Do them regularly for a certain period of time and kind of like get your...

[1:04:36] Energy levels up. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then you do a maintenance protocol of some kind, if I understand it. [1:04:45] Yeah, this whole new world. [1:04:48] Thank you. [1:04:50] So, [1:04:50] Um, [1:04:51] Adi, I'll add you to perpsin peptides. Um, [1:04:55] Great. [1:04:56] She's not here yet, but yeah. Okay. [1:04:58] Thank you. [1:04:59] NAD Plus is a longevity one. [1:05:03] Okay. [1:05:04] I am not the expert, so we'll talk about it next week. But it is not a peptide, but it's in the peptide family. It's just like fewer amino acids. [1:05:12] acids in the chain or something along those lines. Okay. Okay. [1:05:16] But it has been called the Fountain of Youth. And... [1:05:20] The Hayley Biebers and Kendalls of the world have been filmed recently. [1:05:26] Getting their... Injecting? Yeah, juice. Okay. As, like, how they're never going to age. So... [1:05:33] You know. [1:05:34] I'm getting the... Worth a shot. ...the gray market DIY kit. [1:05:41] And this is just going to scratch my itch because I also have been served the DIY Botox, which is sort of... I know, you've been serving the talk about that. I feel as though the Overton window has shifted towards self-administring Botox. I won't. I won't. I won't. [1:05:57] I mean, if it goes well. [1:06:03] I have concerns. [1:06:05] But I'm also deeply curious. I mean, it's just the control... There's something about the control freak in me, too, that...

[1:06:10] tells me that i could maybe do it better i just feel like with that there's like there's facial anatomy yes [1:06:18] Science? Very much so. Yeah. Which is why people go to school for many, many years to be allowed to do this to others. [1:06:26] My body, my choice, you know. Totally. Amen, sister. Amen. I'm going to go to the University of YouTube if I do that. So next week if Miranda's eyebrows are like... Full Spock eyebrow to the max. Yeah. Okay. So it's NAD Plus. And then there's, for those who don't know, GLP-1s are peptides to use. They are. And GLP-2s and 3s. GLP-3s, which is the... And Reda. [1:06:53] And terzapatide. Ozempics and all those. Yeah, they're sort of like getting more and more... [1:06:58] innovative with those and... [1:07:01] Also, copper and different stacks. The Wolverine stack, the Glow stack. So bring your questions next week, but also get onto Peptide Talk in the meantime if you are a TikTok fan. [1:07:13] - Scroller like me because [1:07:16] There's a lot to be learned, and the before and afters... [1:07:19] are compelling. They really are. I will say the guy... [1:07:23] the peptide guy, the Chinese peptide guy, [1:07:26] has a really interesting story, kind of a crazy story, kind of a crazy guy. I can't wait. [1:07:34] call with me and [1:07:35] He just started going off about how...

[1:07:41] he thinks that Eli Lilly is like coming after them. [1:07:45] and like trying to de-platform them from [1:07:48] all of the digital spaces that they are on. I mean, you have to be like, use TikTok language, I feel like, to talk about a lot of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Totally. [1:07:57] I believe 100%. I mean, there's a lot of money there. [1:08:02] in people staying. Is Eli Lilly going to try and T-Pop from Voice Club Live? [1:08:08] Catching straight. Totally. [1:08:12] Okay, yeah. Realizing that I definitely do not know enough about peptides. [1:08:15] Um, [1:08:15] But also, like, Rode lip gloss, I think, is... [1:08:20] a peptide lip gloss. So this has been in... [1:08:24] the mind share for some time as far as topical usage okay [1:08:29] And now it's just injecting. We're talking about, yeah. Straight. Straight on in. Injecting. [1:08:35] Trigger warning. Yeah, which is honestly the reason why it's hard for me to ever imagine it. Totally. I saw something that was like – [1:08:42] Thank you. [1:08:43] I might have been reading this tweet wrong, but like a nasal... [1:08:48] Spray. [1:08:49] GLP-1? That would make sense in the same way that the intranasal insulin... [1:08:55] makes sense. And so, yeah, I think there's a lot to... [1:09:01] to be learned next week and beyond over the next couple of years. Okay. So set your calendars, peptides next week. Herps and peptides. And let us know if you want to join the group chat and that's a perfect segue.

[1:09:14] uh dd milaji come on in hi and dina [1:09:20] Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming. Of course. I'm so excited to be here. I will say I literally ran here. Oh, no. I just. [1:09:30] got stuck on an investor call and was like, "Oh shit, how do I tell them I need to go on a live show instead right now?" You do what you gotta do. How's the volumes and mics? [1:09:41] We good? [1:09:43] Okay, so you're the founder of Stitch, which is a personalized AI matchmaker. While you're talking, I'm going to just bring it up on the screen here. What's your URL? JoinStitch? JoinStitch.com. [1:09:59] Okay, so tell us. Okay, so my grandmother's a matchmaker, 26 marriages. So I grew up, I'm Indian, obviously, you can see that. So I grew up in like this very much like matchmaking culture. And we just do it for fun with my friends, you know, and like, I just love the idea of connecting people. Never thought that would be my career literally did like McKinsey, VC, early stage startup, business school, all of that realized the number one problem plaguing all of my friends in [1:10:29] were most concerned about how to find a husband. They were not that concerned about what is the next sales force. So it was really clear to me when I left GSB, I wanted to like build something in this space. So, um, built a different dating app with a different co-founder, shut that down. And then when the movement around LLM started, met my now co-founder and we thought, is this a moment for privilege expansion, right? Where matchmakers are

[1:10:55] you know, $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, could you actually replace the human matchmaker with AI and make it more efficient, more scalable, more accessible? And that's the dream of Stitch. I'm sold. Everyone's matchmaker. Okay, wait, first of all, a lot of things on what you just said. First of all, I love that this is like a family business. You're like, it's like a legacy that you've inherited from your grandmother. It's so cool to be able to do that. It's so cool to be able to share this with her. She used to do it with like her notebooks and her landline. [1:11:25] showed her like the back end like of what we use and she's like what is this yeah yeah okay so tell me a little bit how it works so you are actually talking to the ai version of me okay so you do you download search um on the app store unfortunately no androids is yet okay and you download it and then you go through an onboarding very very different okay from other apps so other apps make you write a profile put in six prompts six pictures anyone can do it and it takes five minutes [1:11:55] we go really in-depth. We spend [1:11:58] About 20 to 30 minutes, go doing a back and forth with the user via text to understand who they are, what they're looking for, what their long term goals are, all the types of things you would tell a human matchmaker, but you would never put on a public hinge profile. But then it builds this entire repository of information about you and things that really matter. We then actually hand review each person and make sure that there's at least five people we can introduce them to on the platform before we actually accept them.

[1:12:28] We're live in New York, SF, LA, Chicago. So obviously those are the markets where you can do this. And then once you're on and you're a member, you start getting sent intros and you tell the matchmaker what you like or dislike. So it's not just like a swipe and we have to guess, okay, was this because this person was too tall? You didn't like their smile, their brunette or anything like that. It was very focused on this idea that people are sharing the actual intimate details of like why they don't want someone. And there's no guesswork then. [1:12:58] bad buyer matchmaker. So it really feels like this white glove service. And what we've realized is that people are way more honest actually with AI than they are with humans. This is so personal. Like you just wouldn't tell me your like deepest, darkest secrets and biases, but you will definitely tell an AI as long as it doesn't feel like it's the United customer service bot. Yeah. What is it like revealed preferences versus stated preferences? And I feel like an LLM would be able to discern [1:13:28] time right think about with other apps you usually just build your profile once and then it's static here because you're constantly having that conversation and we're watching with users being like oh i don't know if i like xyz about this person and the bot will like send it back to you being like but you said you really value this so you know does that mean we should change this should we reduce your age image should we do that so it's like more reflective much more of a conversation okay um one thing that comes up for me is like [1:13:53] I, I, [1:13:55] A lot of what can be charming in a relationship is like places where...

[1:14:00] something that you thought you wanted is different than the person. Like how much does the AI allow for that sort of, [1:14:08] or the tool like allow for... [1:14:10] Maybe I said I want someone that's like this, but actually it turns out this person's like, [1:14:15] different in some way and that's like [1:14:18] okay with me. I think there's two things. People always are like, oh, does this mean like the AI knows who my person is? No, we can do a good job of actually filtering through based on the things you tell us. We're constantly telling people you cannot have such, like you cannot have 20 non-negotiables, but there are probably three to five things that really matter to you. So we divide them into like non-negotiables, nice to haves and red flags. So obviously amazing if like [1:14:48] have all five of your non-negotiables and all five of your necessary hats. It's not likely. And we continuously are helping people readjust and understand what does matter to you, right? Yeah. And people have, like, it is a learning process. And I think that's what a human matchmaker is really good at doing. It's like providing you that coaching and that support, which currently when you're swiping away, [1:15:07] You have no support. You're just doing that by yourself. Quite frankly, it's entertainment. Did you watch the materialists? Of course I did. We made so much content about it. Hated the ending. I just transferently only watch. I was watching it on a flight and we landed. And so I didn't get to see the last 30 minutes. So I don't know actually how it ended, but not good. OK, it's speaking very much to the world that you're operating in.

[1:15:31] How did it end? It ended with her choosing the broke guy. Like, I gather Chris Evans is hot. But, like, I don't think that's a... Like, why are you moving in with a 37-year-old man with four roommates who... And you have not solved any of the problems that you guys have had for the last decade. So it was just, like, this is an interesting way. I also thought, like... [1:15:51] the sexual assault plot line was just so unnecessary, like incredibly unnecessary and just sort of was used as a plot device without actually like dealing with this as like a really serious issue that one in three women face. Yeah, I was like, what? Yeah. That was weird. [1:16:06] jump scare that i don't know why they put that in there i totally agree um sorry spoiler alert for anyone who was dying to see dakota johnson looked incredible she looked amazing she hasn't aged she's beautiful stunning war had an incredible wardrobe um okay so that aside um is the in the app experience like is the ai then watching the chats no so once you both have said yes and been introduced and you both say something on the group chat the ai leaves okay so this is like [1:16:36] want you to feel like we're watching. But we follow up with you. So we'll be like, oh, so did you go on it? Like, you know, did you meet? Did you go on a date? And like, try and get that feedback to understand, okay, what did you say that you wanted? What happened on the date? And how does that now change what we know about you and how we're reacting? [1:16:54] some data on the dating results, like how successful the, the, the, [1:17:00] dates are as a result of being set up from an AI versus like a

[1:17:04] hinge or tinder or something like that so i think there's like again like there's two different things there's obviously final outcome and there's also time so i think what people are really appreciating is that they're not going through like 50 to 80 profiles a day and swiping through that people are very specific like if you're like i want to only date a lawyer from brooklyn right you can actually spend a lot of time on hinge and not get to that like [1:17:25] okay exact type of person right people are very specific like brunette so i want to date only indians who are from india i want to date someone so usually someone said i only want to date someone on bi side not south side oh my gosh yeah no no people are being very very specific like i don't think we'd realize how i'm sorry sister i can't it's like actually we do have that information so we can service those people but like also if you're going to add an eight other criteria probably not going to be able to do that yeah but i think it's it's a huge thing on saving people's time [1:17:55] People have spent 20 to 30 minutes building their profiles. So people have a high intent. And then what we're seeing is very high intent. I think, you know, the average age on Stitch is 33. The average age on Bumble and Tinder is 24 and 25. So if you just think about the type of user in their like early 20s and compare that to a user who's in... [1:18:16] you know, the early thirties, a sense of urgency. Like it's so completely different. Well, I also think the concept of matchmaking, [1:18:24] tonally is different than [1:18:26] And deaning yourself by swiping on a dating app. Yeah, and like dating that feels... [1:18:31] Yeah, like... [1:18:32] One is more rooted in sex than the other, I think. Yeah, for sure. For sure. But you can't take out the chemistry from the matchmaking. Yeah. Like that's the big thing we always tell people. It's just like, this isn't like an algorithm where it's like, oh, this is your ideal person. And like we, if you know, if we had a perfect set of data, we would be able to tell you, this is your soulmate. We can't do that because there is an X factor. There's probably five to seven people who you should meet. Instead of doing a needle in the haystack and having to go on 300 dates to find that, the promise of such is really how do we narrow that down?

[1:19:02] on and then actually go on those days. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm not, um, a single, but I have some friends who are at the moment and I, I don't envy the amount of time that's being spent in the chatting. Yeah. [1:19:16] and back and forth. And I'm like, you guys got to get out there and fail fast. You got to be in the in the space and it's exhausting. You know, that's actually the big thing. It's like you just hear people talk about it like, you know, they're exhausted. If you've spent 10 years of your life on Hinge, you just think about how long these platforms have existed. Why would you feel hopeful that now for the 10th time when you download it, delete and download it again, you're going to suddenly be like, yeah, my soulmate is probably here. Like this tooling is [1:19:46] So it's a really interesting space to play in. And then, you know, we've been live since December in New York. Oh, wow. Okay. Yes. So I'll get stopped on the street or like at events and people will be like, oh, I'm like dating someone I met on the platform. Literally, we had an engineer who came in for an interview and he was like, yeah, I'm actually dating someone who I like, I like downloaded the app just to test it out. And I've been dating over the last three months. I'm like, oh, [1:20:09] Oh, like, that's great. That's exactly what you want to hear. So I think for us, it's really like, how much time can we save? And actually, we think also about the time after, because there's things that you don't talk about on your like, you know, on date number one or on your profile. But we know those things, right? Like, I might know that you want to move back to Minnesota because your father's not well. And then I might and that's not something you'd ever put on a hinge profile. And that's not something that might be revealed until like, six weeks in, we know that.

[1:20:39] who's like, yeah, I'm going to, I want to move to like London. And then I want to move to Hong Kong and like really like experience all those places. So we really think about this as like, how do you save money? [1:20:49] time, effort and hurt while still making sure that people go out there and go on dates. Yeah, totally. What type of single person do you feel like this? [1:20:57] product is is [1:20:59] is good for, is attuned for? It is very much for serious, high intent data. Someone who's like, I'm looking to find someone to seriously date. It doesn't need to be about marriage. You definitely don't need to be South Asian because we got that question a lot. I'm like, we're not a South Asian dating app. But I think like the average profile is of someone on Sitch is someone who has spent time on other dating apps, is looking for long-term commitment and partnership, is very much like, is very well educated and is definitely like... [1:21:28] someone who you would probably hang out with yourself, you know, because we spend a lot of time curating our crowd. Yeah. Wow. So cool. OK, so tell me, like, where you're at with the company you raised from A16C Speedrun, like where? [1:21:58] with A16Z as well. And then now we are in four cities. We're doing about 5,000 introductions a day, which is pretty crazy when you think about it. We don't send you an introduction every single day. We have record-breaking conversion numbers in terms of people who are accepted and then turn into paid. Oh, so you go through first and then you're accepted.

[1:22:28] a subscription because your dating app should not be like Netflix. You don't need that permanently. What we did was we kind of treated it like either traditional matchmaking or like a fitness class where you buy three, five or eight setups from us. And so it's very value driven. Yes. So it's three for 90, five, 125 or like, so it's basically between 20 to $30 based on like the pack size. When you think about that, that's the price of a cocktail in New York. Per introduction. Okay. [1:22:58] Not to the point where it was like, oh, this is like a thousand dollar, two thousand dollar purchase that you then are thinking twice, because then that makes matchmaking a very different situation. [1:23:08] type of person, you know, because matchmaking does have a lot of stigma, no matter what materialists like material people who were all of the different people who were using her services. No one was like, Oh, this is like someone who's like cool. So we're really trying to destigmatize matchmaking is this like cringe factor and just say, look, you have a coach for everything, right? You have a therapist, you have a career counselor, you have a college counselor, you have a nutritionist, you have like all of these people who help you improve other parts of your life. So why is it that [1:23:36] With your love life, which is arguably the most important thing, you're like, yeah, let me just like wing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [1:23:42] Wow. I, I, um, [1:23:44] That's crazy. Okay. So you, you haven't raised your A. No, we haven't raised our A. We will probably raise it in, well, actually like, obviously because we're making a very, like a decent amount of money right now. So for us, we have like so much cash in the bank that it's not like a, oh shit, we're going to run out. So we need to do an A. But I believe, I have a really big vision. My co-founder and I have this huge vision of where we want to go with pitch, right? We're in four cities now. At the end of the year, we'll be in five. By the end of next

[1:24:14] second week of November. Very exciting. And then we're going to be in 20 cities by the end of next year. So it's a pretty aggressive growth strategy. And honestly, when you think about matchmaking, [1:24:28] we want you to only think about Sitch. So expect to be sick of seeing us, especially around like the holiday season, January and February, which is the peak dating season. January and February? Yes. Because think about you've, [1:24:41] it's new year's day like i am not going to be single in 2026 okay so jan 2nd is always the biggest day for dating app downloads i didn't know that and then you have that six week stretch where everyone is kind of like some thinking oh my god valentine's day valentine's day valentine's day i'm single oh so we see a huge peak there and so we'll probably raise an a in the spring great i love that um i can't imagine any uh january february i'm like i [1:25:07] doing everything I can to not leave my house, but I guess I'm not single. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If you were single and alone in the winter, people are like, oh, I need to do something. And also, you know, California, it's not that cold. In the South, it's not that cold. Like there's definitely markets in which it's, [1:25:18] It is in that cold. So people are very... I hope that Nashville is on your roadmap because... Yes, it is. Okay. That's where I live. And there's a big dating scene and people seem to spend a lot of money on it. So I'm like, you should tap into that. People keep telling us like go to the smaller cities. Yeah. Because like... [1:25:34] people are really exhausted with dating apps and feel like there's like so much fatigue of like, oh shit, there's this like tiny group. Like how do I... [1:25:40] find my person within that. Yeah. How do you combat that fatigue around dating apps? Like, I feel like that is like the dialogue around those apps. I think that people are really depressed when they talk about dating. Our whole thing with Sitch, like our marketing strategy has been very much humor first. That's been a really important thing. So if you see any of our ads, if you see any of our content, it is not like, oh my God, you're going to be single forever. Like, or like trying to sell these false dreams. It's very much like,

[1:26:08] We play into like popular narratives. We're doing this whole ad campaign right now about Halloween, which is like all the scary things you see on dating apps. Like we just, we want people to know that, right? We like had a whole campaign in 260 subway stations in New York, where it was like me as like a lawyer, one of those injury lawyers saying like, [1:26:25] Like basically saying, like, did you want a really bad first date? You might be entitled to a free setup. And people loved it. Like people, I think it's like remind and giving people something new. We've innovated on the product, the business model, and now the marketing. And I think that's what's capturing people's attention. Yeah, it feels really fresh. [1:26:41] I'm excited for you guys. Okay. Do you have something to shill for one minute? Yes. Okay. Let me just get 60 seconds of the clock. [1:26:48] Everyone needs to get a brick. We spend so much time on our phones. We are constantly scrolling. I'm always guilty of doing this. And honestly, you can put whatever timers you want on your phone. You are going to get through them. And you're going to be like, no, I need to see this TikTok that my best friend sent. You are wasting your life on social media. Get a brick and literally make sure that from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. you do not have access to any of your time stacks. I promise you, you will be so much more productive, so much more hot, so much richer. [1:27:18] Just get it. It's like $50. What's a brick? It's an RFID device. Like it's this little square. Okay. And you like attach it to your phone. And until you tap it again, all those apps are blocked. You cannot unblock it. Oh my gosh. It's incredible. Wow. It will change how productive you are. And I promise you it like will change everything in your life. I've been doing this and I've literally got everyone on my company hooked onto it. Huge. Huge. Huge.

[1:27:44] Yes. Yes. [1:27:48] Okay, link in the chat. Here we are in a minute. Perfect show. I'm going to check it out. I'm told. [1:27:55] full fact um thank you so much judy what a pleasure to have you on it was so much welcome back anytime um and i'm just really rooting for you thank you this is so much fun it's so great great thank you music okay thank you so much [1:28:15] Let's see. We're going. We're moving. We're moving. Okay. Just give me one second. [1:28:23] Brick. [1:28:27] We're smashing windows. [1:28:32] I'm okay. I think we can. [1:28:35] I think we can roll right in. [1:28:36] Yeah, in De Paris. [1:28:39] Thank you. [1:28:42] Paris Martineau. How do you say it? [1:28:45] Martina. Hi, Dina. Oh my gosh. I love how your glasses are matching exactly to your shirt and pants. Thank you. When I bought these, I had an editor be like, oh, are you gonna do a Billy Joel thing and get glasses for every outfit you do? And I'm like, that's too expensive. I could just buy all future clothes in these colors. Right, right. Well, it's totally working. I love it so much. It brings out your beautiful eyes. Okay, investigative... [1:29:09] That's probably the British way to say it. Investigative. How do we say that? Investigative. Investigative journalists at Consumer Reports. Yeah. Previously at The Information and Wired.

[1:29:20] Yeah. [1:29:21] We are, I am so excited to have you on. Okay, so you have had a viral, I will call it, without holding back, a viral podcast. [1:29:31] piece about [1:29:33] Lead in protein supplements. [1:29:36] Indeed, yeah. Take it away. Tell us about what you found. So at Consumer Reports, we decided to test like 23 different protein proteins. [1:29:45] supplements, powders and shakes for heavy metals and array of different other things. And what we found was kind of concerning. It was that... [1:29:52] Like more than two thirds of the products we tested had enough lead in one serving that our food safety experts say is like too much to have in a day. [1:30:03] And I was... [1:30:06] a little surprised at how viral this article ended up. Okay, let's just say 8.9 million views just on the tweet alone. And surely it's gone. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, it's kind of taken over the internet. I'm doing a lot of these sort of things. Yeah, I was surprised mostly, I mean, [1:30:22] I think the reporting is fantastic and our testing team did a great job, but I was struck by how many people use protein supplements. Yeah. And I think that's really what jumped out about this. Yeah. I had originally been thinking about it as like a... [1:30:35] Whenever I'm going to the grocery store, I see protein in a bunch of different products. Obviously, that's not what we tested. We didn't test like protein pasta or protein coffee, but protein's everywhere. Everybody's protein maxing, and that extends to supplement use. It's something – [1:30:47] The unique thing about protein supplements is like,

[1:30:50] People who are really into them, they take them every day or multiple times a day. And that's... [1:30:56] especially concerning if you've got something like lead in there yeah yeah because lead even at low levels uh it kind of like it lingers in the body and it can build up um yes so i will say a couple things um one i think you've totally hit a nerve and i think you hit like a protein maxing like thread um and then two when this article came out it hit the boys club slack like a bomb we were like because speaking to exactly what you're saying like we're regularly and taking [1:31:26] Tell us about what lead can lead to or what. Yeah. Lead. I mean, the general take, lead, not good. Not good. There's no known safe level of lead. That's according to the FDA. Okay. And it's really, it was interesting kind of looking into the history of like regulations on lead in food because it's basically just, it was... [1:31:44] Higher and then they keep bringing it lower and lower and lower in various foodstuffs at the limit for safety as more and more scientists come to the conclusion that, hey, there's really not a safe level of this to be ingesting regularly. What that means in your body is – [1:32:00] Lead kind of like lingers in your bones. The body basically thinks of it like calcium, like it kind of looks similar. So it will be taken up into the bone and kind of stick around there for a bit. It can also hang out in your blood, other bad places for lead to be. And what that does to you is it's especially a big deal, I guess, for... [1:32:20] children or people who could be pregnant because it can have serious effects on like your development and nervous system. Okay. But for adults as well.

[1:32:30] it's not good. Yeah. It leads to like hypertension, uh, immune suppression issues, stuff with your kidneys. It's, [1:32:36] bad news generally. Yeah. It feels akin to the microplastics conversation. Yeah. I feel like that's definitely a point of comparison. I saw people making a lot. And I think that part of the reason why... [1:32:49] this story struck a nerve with people is... [1:32:52] It's just surprising. People take supplements because they think they're a boon to your health. It's something that you can take to make yourself healthier and better. And they don't think about the fact that dietary supplements in the U.S. are kind of a Wild West. There's very little of the traditional regulation you'd expect, like something like over-the-counter drug or prescription medicine. It's even not that comparable to how we regulate food. [1:33:22] Okay. [1:33:23] This amount of lead not allowed in protein powder. There's no limit for that. And that's because how the FDA... [1:33:30] handles dietary supplement regulation is they kind of leave it up to the companies themselves to decide like what counts as harmful in the product and then like how much of that is harmful and to test for it themselves so it's kind of hands off okay i also loved in your piece uh well didn't love but i thought was so interesting was your um quote here when the fda does do inspections it overwhelmingly focuses on domestic makers that's a problem because a lot of these materials are sourced from foreign factories [1:33:57] That feels like a huge... [1:33:59] issue. Yeah, I was really I mean, I even reporting this, I was surprised to hear about kind of this whole like regulatory void. And I was surprised when you look into it, like,

[1:34:09] I reached out to the FDA and they said currently there's like about 12,000 registered supplement manufacturers. And that could be any sort of supplement, although protein supplements are hugely popular. And I've had 12,000. [1:34:21] The FDA only inspected 600 facilities last year. And I think the set is like 510 of those were domestic based. 90 were abroad. And that's just, you know, spot checking to make sure that these companies are doing what they say they're doing and complying with the law. Yeah. And that's not it's not good that there's such a huge swath of the market, both foreign and domestic, that's completely not watched out. What are there any that. . . [1:34:50] are better than others. Like for folks that still want to continue to protein max with, [1:34:56] supplements, like are there any places that you'd be like, yeah, this is maybe a little bit better or stay away from... [1:35:02] the plant-based ones or I know you probably don't want to make any. Yeah, we have, so in the story, we break down kind of our results into a couple different categories. There's two that were, had a lot of lead, so we say probably best to avoid those altogether. Others that we kind of break it down by how regularly you can have them while still being protective of your health. And there are some in the better choices category. There was one product that we had no levels of lead detected. Oh. It's all the way at the bottom. Oh, [1:35:31] The other ones in the Better Choices had like lower levels where it's fine to have them daily. But the main thing I learned when I was talking to kind of nutritionists and people in –

[1:35:41] The protein and exercise science space is... [1:35:44] For the average American, you probably don't need to be protein maxing. This is something that I was personally really shocked because I had totally gotten got. I still have a box of protein pasta in my cabinet looking at me ominously. Just because I assumed, like everybody else, was like, oh, I'm woefully protein deficient. Got to be, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most people are not. And you really don't need to be having more than the necessary amount for staving off deficiency. [1:36:14] like [1:36:15] people who are pregnant, like certain types of older adults that have muscle loss or like certain types of athletes. But it's not as simple as like if you go to the gym, you should definitely be taking protein powder, which is kind of what I had assumed it was. Totally. Totally. I really appreciated that piece in your in your report. [1:36:32] About, yeah, how the average American gets more than enough protein. [1:36:35] Yeah, like the average American woman, 135% of what you need. Average American man, 155% of what you need. [1:36:42] It's not technically harmful to be having more, but you really don't need to. And if you're getting to that higher level by – [1:36:49] taking in like supplements or things that could increase your risk of lead exposure, I might want to reconsider. Yeah, it might not be worth it. Yeah, there's some sort of big protein psyops that's happening that we need to a bit like a psyop because I think we just like see the word protein. You're like, Oh, yeah, yeah, let's go. It's one I talked to, I wish I'd been able to feature this more on the article, but it already got kind of long. But I had this fascinating conversation with a food historian who'd kind of like gone through the archives, researched the

[1:37:19] this astute point that it's one of the few like, um, [1:37:22] buzzwords in diet and wellness culture that hasn't been [1:37:26] had kind of like a backlash. Like, you know, it's not like the low fat diet, or down sugar, everyone's like, well, protein is good. [1:37:33] Having more protein can always be good. [1:37:35] Maybe it's coming. [1:37:38] I do think that the next one is Fiverr. [1:37:41] I mean, that is also the thing I've heard from a lot of people is Americans are just generally woefully deficient in fiber. If you want something to freak out about, you can look for fiber, I guess, because it's kind of hard to get the recommended amount of fiber. I know. The unfortunate thing with fiber, though, is that the supplement industry around fiber is like so old lady. Yes, that's part of the thing also. And it's just like it's harder to get in your foods. Yeah. So the turning to the supplement industry obviously opens up all the other doors we just discussed. [1:38:11] Thanks. [1:38:12] Kind of a mess out there. Yeah, I know. I'm kind of just like team eat whole foods. That's what all the kind of nutritionists or actual like scientists and researchers in the field tell me is they're like – [1:38:23] Just... [1:38:24] go and eat real food yeah have have a um a spinach salad i don't know yeah yeah it's not i mean i was similar a lot of things about this story surprised me but i was also surprised when i like looked at the research and like even vegans like can't get enough protein pretty easily by eating whole foods it's not that hard beans are great yeah everybody loves beans i love beans um i made uh [1:38:46] beans from dry, this

[1:38:49] Weekend, you know, when it's a dry pack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dry to wet. And – [1:38:53] It took... [1:38:54] Like four – like I was cooking those beans down for hours upon hours, and I was like, okay. I started this process two hours in. The beans were still hard, and I was like we got to just – the only way out is through. We just have to keep going. Yeah, no, I mean I do think that's also probably part of the reason why there's this protein mania. It's like it's really easy to just feel like, yeah – [1:39:15] I'm going to have a protein bar. I'm going to mix up a smoothie or something like that. Totally. Okay. So what does it feel like to have like a fully viral piece? Like what came back at you? It's strange. If you'd asked me this two weeks ago, I would have been like, oh yeah, I've had pieces go viral. I haven't had pieces go viral like this. There's like a certain level of like... [1:39:35] the story gets away from you and it's no longer your story. It's other people doing stories about your story or responding to their perception of your story. And that's odd. Yeah. Did you get any like weird stuff back? Did big protein come for you? Yeah. I don't know. Everybody's mad at me. Some of the... [1:39:54] The subreddits for some of the products we tested are really mad at me. There was one, I think, post that was like, why should we trust Paris Martineau or Consumer Reports? And I'm like, I'm glad you guys are having a fun time. Speaking of which, I'll be doing the Reddit AMA tomorrow. So the Redditors can get in my mentions if they actually want to. I love that. And get a response. I love that. [1:40:15] Um, you're just going straight into the belly of the beast. Yeah. One of my favorite, uh, snarky comments, uh, is someone said, um,

[1:40:23] Why should I trust a woman that only writes in lowercase on Twitter? And I'm like, that's a fair point. Oh, my gosh. I was like, that's the only criticism I can actually say is fair. They'll come for like at any – the most surprising angles. [1:40:34] Yeah, it's really odd. Wow. What are you thinking about working on next? [1:40:40] I mean, just generally food safety stuff. I had been covering tech for most of the last decade, kind of exclusively, and was really excited to jump into the food safety beat when I joined this investigations team and Consumer Reports. And it's been a great launch for that. But perhaps as you, I think we just talked about, there's a lot of food safety issues going on and a lot of products that I think deserve more scrutiny, either from a testing perspective or from a general reporting. [1:41:10] investigated. [1:41:13] Hit me up. Hit her up. All my information's on my website, paris.nyc. I love that. Okay, to wrap up here, do you have something to shill for one minute? Oh, I do have something to shill for one minute. Okay, great. Let me just get my 60 seconds on the clock here and take it away. [1:41:27] It's called Nick Vember. What if instead of November you spending instead of spending time with your friends and family and visiting cultural institutions in the month of November, you joined me in a crazy attempt to watch 30 Nick Cage movies in one month. Oh, my gosh. That works out to about one Nick Cage movie a day. Will it break your brain? Possibly. Will it change your brain? Yes. Wait, what are some Nick Cage movies?

[1:41:57] A classic Nick Cage face switcheroo movie. Other ones that are good, Snake Eyes. My sleeper fave of Nick Cage that I discovered last November is Vampire's Kiss. A very strange movie that kind of inspired American Psycho. That's Nick Cage. [1:42:16] who [1:42:17] hooks up with a woman and then may or may not become a vampire. Okay. Okay. It's, [1:42:22] A fantastic... Honestly, Nick Cage... The thing is, Nick Cage has done enough movies. You could have like five Nick Cage. Oh, here we go. Perfect timing. Did he do... [1:42:31] What's the one about stealing the Declaration of Independence? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's his probably his big... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's his headline. Okay. Yeah, that's a huge one. Okay. What else is his headline? He is a... [1:42:41] Nick Cage is very – so I started Last Nick Member from Nick Cage's early years going forward, and I would recommend that because he – The whole oeuvre. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a secret Coppola. He was originally Nicholas Coppola and got into – [1:42:57] film acting, basically, being like, I want to be a... [1:43:02] incredibly freaky auteur artist who takes almost a surrealist or kind of like post postmodern approach to acting and made some very bizarre choices that made a lot of people very mad at him and pissed off his uncle Francis Ford Coppola. So he changed his name to Nick Cage so we wouldn't have the Nepo baby sting on him. I did not know he was a Nepo baby. Yeah yeah yeah I mean Nepo adjacent uncle but basically I mean he definitely Nepo baby in the fact that he got a lot of role.

[1:43:32] Argue is the most Nepo baby sort of thing of all. Yeah, yeah. Another Nepo... [1:43:39] nephew or niece is, is her name Lola Young? [1:43:42] Uh-huh. [1:43:43] Her. [1:43:45] Do you know Lola Young, the singer? No. She's a singer. And the reason that I always think about her when it's like Nepo adjacent is that her aunt... [1:43:54] wrote the Gruffalo story. [1:43:56] And if you have kids, you know, this book is like, you know, the Gruffalo children's book. But it's just such a funny like Nepo baby. She gets Nepo baby allegations. And I'm like, well, it's the Gruffalo. It's the Gruffalo. But then on the other hand, I'm like, she probably has a ton of money. So maybe, you know. She's like Gruffalo dough. Exactly. Exactly. Paris, thank you so much for coming. Thanks so much for having me. And for stopping by. And the next report you do, please send it our way. We'd love to have you back. We do. [1:44:23] Okay, great. Thank you. [1:44:25] Music? Okay. Great. [1:44:53] We're live. We're hot mic. Hot mic situation. Totally. [1:44:56] You're a lot, mate. [1:44:59] Wow. [1:45:00] We did it, Jo. We did it, Jo, but also I learned so much. I learned so much today on this live stream. So much fun.

[1:45:08] Must... [1:45:10] Dig in to see where my protein powder, if it falls anywhere on the report. I know. I was thinking about you. You're a big protein supplement gal. I am. And I am. And I also could see it. I'm like, I try to be really, you know... Clean. Research-driven and clean. And I could totally... [1:45:28] See it ending up at the very tip top. Totally. I was also thinking about my creatine supplements, which Paris, maybe creatine could be next on your list there. [1:45:39] I'm so, yeah, great. I, that was that alongside the fiber. Cause it just, again, as we were saying earlier, everything in moderation. Totally. The, the, the. In general. What is it? The dosage makes the poison. The dose makes the poison. Right. Right. But I am taking creatine every day. So, um. [1:45:56] Right. That's a high dose, perhaps. Although... [1:45:58] I'm only taking five milligrams. I guess it just depends on the concentration of lead. It does. In the creatine, really, and other things. I heard this crazy thing that for creatine takers, which I don't know if it's true or not, but it just sounded so silly. [1:46:12] you have to take enough for it to move from your muscles into your brain. Like if you want the cognitive benefits, [1:46:18] You have to take enough creatine for it to move past your muscles into your brain. [1:46:22] Which just like is a very funny visual. And I don't think it's necessarily true. Did you, have you heard that before? No, but I think that's sort of the NAD. So not, maybe not muscles, but it is like saturate something. Okay. [1:46:34] And then you get the full benefits, which... [1:46:37] Sounds convenient for big NAD and big creosin. Okay. On that note, thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in. We had a really fun show. Thank you so much to all our guests for coming. And we'll see you next week for Chinese peptides. Yes, and also read malware. Yes. Boysclub.beehive.com.

[1:46:55] Dot com. There it is. [1:46:57] It'll dive into some of what we talked about today. See ya. Bye. Okay. That was CBH. Join us live on Twitter every Wednesday at noon. Or here, I guess.