Anthropic Files Its S-1, Nvidia Buys Into Meta, and Microsoft's 60,000 Buyouts

0:01What is up, everybody? Welcome back. This is The Full Port. We’re going to be going over so many things today.

0:06We had Anthropic filing for their IPO, NVIDIA investing in Meta, Robinhood doing what, well, Bass would do, doing a giveaway competition, and so much more.

0:20As always, I am tuned in with my partner in crime, gmoney, the legend, the myth, the CryptoPunk.

0:28How are you doing today, brother? A lot to go over. We’ve got special guest today, Justin Taylor, joining us at 11 in 30 minutes.

0:35A lot to get through in the next 30 before he comes on. We should jump right into it.

0:41Yeah, I think the big news overnight or yesterday was Anthropic filing their S1, which means that they’re going to go public.

0:50I think people are expecting it the week of Thanksgiving, which I think is interesting because usually it’s a very low-volume week.

0:58So it seems like it’s going to be a busy week for the equity markets to share. So I thought that that was interesting.

1:06I think that it seems from the recaps I’ve seen of stuff online that it was not as bad as feared, right?

1:17I think a lot of the sell-off in the AI complex has been around people being like, oh, you know, I think it started right after Micron reported.

1:30It continued through the other memory companies reporting.

1:34I think it almost culminated last week with Meta’s reporting.

1:40And when I say culminated, I feel like the onslaught of negative news.

1:44And I think that combined with Elon kind of like leaning into the negativity, which we discussed a couple weeks ago on here about the possibility of Elon kind of playing these games to kind of try to pull up the ladder behind them.

2:02And it seems like Anthropic is trying to get out the gate sooner rather than later.

2:06I think there was a ton of negativity around Anthropic being able to hit numbers.

2:11And I think the S1 made it be like, all right, it’s not as bad, right?

2:15There’s still – it seems like there’s still a material slowdown in terms of growth.

2:23And I think that there’s a material slowdown in terms of profitability from my understanding is that even though tokens – the number of tokens used is going up, the profitability per token is going down.

2:40So I think that that’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

2:43But I think to me, like probably the biggest, most important thing is – or for Anthropic is that they’re getting this out the gate, right?

2:50And so I think that combined with – I think there was some sort of $60 billion worth of financing announced overnight.

2:58There was a couple big financing news, right?

3:02Like I think Meta is doing a raise for $25 million.

3:06It got upsold. I was a little confused because last week on the call they said that they weren’t going to issue stock until 2027.

3:14And now I believe they’re issuing stock in the low 600s, $25 billion this week.

3:22And then I think the rest of it, I think another – I think it was $60 billion next year to come.

3:30So obviously they’re going to be doing stock sales to finance the AI buildout, right?

3:36And I think – This just leans it. There’s more – the larger companies, though, they’re going to have more expenses coming, and they want to have cash on hand, which I think is a good thing.

3:45Like that would make me bullish knowing that we have a level of like foreplanning and like, hey, here’s what our spend is going to look like.

3:55And we don’t want to be relying on revenue, which maybe actually should be a little bit of a negative part.

4:01Well, listen, I think from a cash on hand perspective, it’s a good thing.

4:05If you want to bring up my chart, my screen real quick.

4:08I mean, after Meta reported, it did trade as high as like $750 after hours.

4:16And then it opened below $700, and then it’s been for sale ever since.

4:22Now, I think obviously kind of what we talked about last week was the fact that it started selling off when they said that, you know, Muse is not – they haven’t figured out how to monetize Muse yet.

4:37And I think also now after the fact – now we know after the fact that they were out trying to raise money, right?

4:45And so I think that that’s what’s been weighing on the stock.

4:48But I think, again, ultimately, you know, there’s been, I think, an onslaught of stuff coming out from AI.

4:54And I think, you know, if you’re a bull, you’re bullish.

4:58If you’re – like it’s like every data point.

5:00Okay, well, wait. I actually – I pushed back there quite hard because I think, yeah, if you’re a bull, you’re bullish.

5:05But the selectivity of where you’re bullish is going to, I think, start to become more important where I do see like the shopping and monetization of the LLMs outside of, hey, are you coding?

5:19Are you doing heavy work?

5:21Whoever gets the consumer side right, that is a massive, massive like push up.

5:26And if Facebook or Meta is like, hey, we can’t – we haven’t figured it out, we’re struggling to figure it out, I think there is – Well, I mean, they’re still really early, right? Like so I wouldn’t expect anybody to have it figured out, right?

5:38So it’s like – you know what I mean? Like they’re – to say that they have to have it figured out from day one I think is a ridiculous claim.

5:45And so I think them, much like everybody else, is trying to figure out – you know, Anthropic and OpenAI who have been at this the longest still haven’t figured it – Like in a world where let’s say token costs are going – trending towards zero, I mean, we’ve been having – everybody’s been having this conversation.

6:04It’s like they have to go into these separate and different verticals, right?

6:08And so one of them is life sciences, right?

6:11The other is security, right? These are all things that people are like, all right, well, if we go into this vertical and we can figure out how to monetize, right?

6:18Like, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some sort of defense security suite that comes out of these products of these labs in order to monetize, right?

6:30Where it’s like, oh, yeah, we’ll sell this to you for whatever, $1,000 a month for an enterprise level for just like security, right?

6:37For the best security system, right? And so I think like, again, and this is – what you’re going to be seeing here is it happens across the board, right?

6:45Meta is going to figure – Meta has some of the smartest people on the planet working on these problems.

6:50And they’re probably one of the top organizations that understand consumer behavior maybe more than anybody.

6:59Maybe like TikTok might be the only other organization that understands consumer behavior as good as quickly as Meta and maybe Amazon as well.

7:09But like I think that, you know, I think that they’re going to figure it out and I think they feel confident in it.

7:15And again, like I just think like what’s happening right now is it seems like it’s the slowdown that at some point was going to happen.

7:23But then the question is, I think the real bet is, is this over?

7:28Does the bubble pop from here or is this just kind of like a speed bump, right?

7:32And so I use my own use cases of AI and I even – I’ll give like a little bit of an antidote from this weekend.

7:41And I was out to dinner with my family and my extended family and my aunt was – who’s like very – I wouldn’t say like – you know, she’s older.

7:52She wouldn’t say – I wouldn’t say she’s technologically on the edge.

7:55But she was telling me how she uses AI for like kind of like everything now, right?

8:00She uses – she’s like it’s a better Google.

8:02She’s like it’s very cool because it’s like it’s very easy for me to write my emails now.

8:07And I see that with my parents where things that I would have had to do for them, it would have taken, you know, 30 minutes to like an hour.

8:17And now it just takes like two seconds because I just tell AI what to write, right?

8:22So it’s going to be – it’s going to be massively adopted.

8:25And so I think it’s even happening faster than I kind of thought it would because I feel like the older people in my circles are adopting it faster than they adopted like email like 20 years ago, right?

8:39Sure. Yeah. I don’t think this is anything new though.

8:41I think everybody sees that the adoption rate is going up.

8:44It’s replacing a lot of the mundane simple tasks that maybe the older generations who have not been the early adopters are starting to come around to.

8:55And that’s good for consumer level.

8:57I think we’re still – probably like the – that’s one of like many fronts that these labs are still trying to figure out and these consumer-facing companies are trying to figure out in addition to shopping, in addition to coding, et cetera, et cetera.

9:11So it’s good.

9:13It’s – we’re evolving.

9:14We’re getting more mature even though the adoption rate is like 2% of global internet users or, you know, computer users or – Yeah, yeah. I think what was – I think like probably the bigger news that I think from yesterday was that Microsoft offering to buy out.

9:33I think like – Would you take it? Here’s my question. Would you take the money or would you stay at your job at Microsoft?

9:41I don’t know. Did we get – did we get actual information on what the buyout package looks like?

9:48I believe it was – I thought it was like a year’s salary.

9:52Was it – was that what was said?

9:55So then it’s like you either get – you either take the buyout package or you get laid off?

10:00So – Well, let’s take a look. I’ve done that. No, it was like a, hey, I believe it was you’re in a high-risk position to be laid off. We’re willing to give you a sweeter deal to just chop it off here and you have, I think, like 30 days to go after it.

10:20So, for those who don’t know, Microsoft is offering buyouts to 60,000 people, which is 20% of its staff, and essentially it is reducing its headcount because it just sees AI, one, replacing all these jobs, but also it wants to invest more into its research and, you know, it doesn’t want to basically spend double for what it can replace.

10:48in the coming months here. So, I think it’s a trend that we’ll start to see across a lot of the large, large employed providers in the space, not only in tech, but I think across the entire landscape.

11:02I think probably the one that’s gotten the most notice in recent years has been McDonald’s of all places that has kind of said, hey, like we can use these order kiosks, AI, etc.

11:14We really only need somebody to take the money and cook the food or taking the money part and going away.

11:22I think the kiosks are great.

11:24No, they’re great.

11:26So, I went to a Mexican restaurant last week, last Monday, and I walked in and I was so confused because there wasn’t like an order window.

11:39There was only like the takeout window was like all the way down and there are all these computers set up and it wasn’t like all chain or anything.

11:46It was just a normal like mom and pop and I was like, oh, what the heck?

11:50And they’re like, I actually asked them. They’re like, well, it’s cheaper to just have these four computers here.

11:55And like, it saves us like two months of salary for something we would pay.

11:59They’re never late. They’re here. And they were like kind of joking about it.

12:03And obviously, that is not like AI.

12:06But they were like, look, like we’re moving in this direction of like we don’t need human workers for certain tasks.

12:12Why use them? I think that in this, I’m going to, I’m going to, a little bit of a side rant here, but I like, I love this, right?

12:21Because one, it’s like that all that person is doing for the most part anyway, just entering, they’re just pressing the buttons for you on the computer in front of them.

12:30But I do think, and the thing I appreciate a lot about the McDonald’s kiosk that has, you know, especially in the United States has become a pandemic or, you know, a very big issue is the tipping culture at these kiosks where they ask you for a tip of like at least 15% to just like give you the food at the counter.

13:00And I’m like, I’m all for tipping when I’m getting service, but like you’re asking for a tip to like, and I was very annoyed.

13:08I think the other day I went and I ordered at like a local like mom and pop type of these QSRs and like it asked for the tip.

13:15And then I’m like, all right, I’m going to be sitting like down over there.

13:18I’m like, all right, cool. Like you’d come back and pick this up in 10 minutes.

13:20I’m like, so why am I tipping you?

13:22Right. Like, you know, like it’s a, it’s a hefty tip and all I’m asking for you is to literally just come and walk the food over to where I’m sitting.

13:29And like, you know, I just, it’s one of those things where it’s like, uh, people are like stuff like this, I think is going to bring in, uh, automation.

13:38You know, when we take a look at like what people are going to want this, this type of automation in their lives because you’re like, oh, why am I paying an extra 10 to 20%?

13:49It will, it does cut two ways though, where you’re going to have a workforce who has their jobs and their, you know, what they’ve been doing eliminated.

13:58Um, and that ultimately is probably going to be one of the big talking points as we go into the new election.

14:04Um, well, we’ve mentioned before AI, I think is going to be the number one or number two topic of the coming election.

14:12And I would put on the list under sub AI, uh, jobs and security being the two topics that we hear the most.

14:21Um, and you know, the stance of this show, if you’ve been listening, uh, it is a national defense, uh, positioning and there’s also kind of a, a lean towards, okay, we’re in a different world and it’s going to require a government.

14:35That does things a little differently to take care of the citizens that are impacted by it.

14:40Cause it will impact people.

14:41Yeah, no, I, I agree. And listen, I think this is like a big, to your point, this is going to be a big talking issue, um, next presidential election.

14:49So it’s going to be stuff that we’re seeing more and more.

14:52Um, I know we have a couple, a couple of minutes.

14:55Let’s let’s, should we get into like the crypto stuff?

14:57Let’s touch real quick. Uh, Elon, as we mentioned, we call gmoney called this on previous show.

15:04Um, Elon is pulling up the ladder behind him.

15:07Uh, and he is basically spreading doubt, fear, uncertainty, uh, across the entire market.

15:16Um, I, I think, I think it’s working for the most part because he’s kind of scaring everybody.

15:22Um, and he came out with some stuff about how the Neo, uh, clouds are essentially going to get evaporated.

15:29Um, what’s your take here?

15:31Obviously this is going to hurt, hurt the, the debt markets in very bad.

15:36I think they actually have been affected by this quite considerably, uh, over the last two weeks.

15:43Um, we did have on, uh, David from USDAI who seems to be positioned correctly here as a company.

15:52They’re making $50 million in revenue annually.

15:54Uh, they just did an airdrop and a token buyback, $1 million.

15:59Um, curious where, where do you see that side of the market, that impact, uh, if that’s something you’ve been looking at right now?

16:06So I’ve definitely been looking at it.

16:08I definitely, it’s, I definitely think it’s interesting.

16:11Um, I would love to have David on again at some point soon or somebody from the USDAI team.

16:17I think, um, the real question here is what kind of demand is there to finance these chips from, you know, let’s say the chip ecosystem investors if there’s no airdrop, right?

16:36And so I think some of the things that we’ve seen on the timeline is people were disappointed, uh, with the size of the airdrop and the, the percentage of tokens that were airdropped to, to the holder base.

16:48So, um, I think the really interesting thing is like how much of that capital is going to be committed to financing these GPUs if the people that were counting on the airdrop previously, and that would be, you know, an increase in the risk, in, in the risk that they receive, um, being lower.

17:05Right. And so, you know, shout out to the team on, on the buyback stuff.

17:09I saw that, I think I saw it yesterday, yesterday morning and I was like, oh, all right, cool.

17:14That’s, that’s very, that’s very cool. And as, as I’ve said before, I’m, uh, I’m an investor in, in chips since, uh, you know, before they, they launched the token a couple of years ago because they were originally an NFT, uh, loan company.

17:27So, you know, like the chart looks pretty, pretty good, pretty decent.

17:33I know you have it, you have the price action here over the last couple of months, but you know, it’s, it seems like it’s forming a cup and handle.

17:40I think to me, it’s one of the, uh, the, the major horsemen of the AI trade, uh, in terms of, you know, this cycle where it’s the intersection of crypto and AI.

17:51But I do think like at this point, my, my first question is how much capital do they have that’s willing to lend in their network if the triple A stuff isn’t getting lent to.

18:04Right. And so I think that’s where like the question comes, but I, I do think that like, if these things are so profitable, then what, what’s going to happen is these interest rates go higher, uh, because that’s where you have to go to find, to find the capital to, to get, uh, to get loans against this stuff.

18:22And yeah, that, I think that’s like my major question at this point.

18:25Right. Cause especially when you have Elon, one of the leaders in the space, basically saying that these companies are going bankrupt, then like, do you really want to be lending against GPUs?

18:35So I think I would love to hear David’s feedback and people that are on the ground because you and me, like, we’re just, we’re just not close enough to the market there, you know?

18:45So yeah, I would love to understand where he sees the weak point, uh, in that market, obviously the big short is not going to repeat itself bar for bar, but it does feel like there is somewhere in that ecosystem right now.

18:59Well, an incredible short opportunity because the smartest people in the world are all saying it’s coming.

19:05Um, I’m not sure if there’s any publicly exposed vehicles there, obviously on the private side, hundreds and hundreds of entities are exposed.

19:15Um, and we already know, we’re going to feel, uh, the tide pull back on them.

19:20Um, happy to jump into the crypto side.

19:23Obviously, uh, we’ve had Bitcoin, um, in the headlines, uh, lighter and hype in the headlines.

19:33Um, and I think everything here also going to be affected by the upcoming Fed meeting that we have, uh, on the, uh, coming up here.

19:44Um, look, I, I think we’ve seen a considerably volatile industry, uh, get more volatile as we see risk off kind of happen here with some of the uncertainty in the market.

19:58Um, USDAI, as we mentioned just a moment ago.

20:02It was one of the big tokens from yesterday. A lot of people kind of jumping over there because of the buyback.

20:09And one thing I’ve noticed, anybody that seems to echo what Hyperliquid is doing, that has revenue, is willing to do buybacks, immediately gets uprated by the ecosystem.

20:22It does seem like it is a methodology that we’re going to see only become more popularized.

20:27And I think it’s good that they did it. The airdrop, as we mentioned, came in a little bit smaller than people expected.

20:34And they are in kind of a niche that is going through a turbulent moment.

20:38But I will say USDAI is making a decision here that if they can figure out their loan side, if they can get more people willing to loan, maybe not the AAA stuff.

20:51And that revenue continues and they keep putting it back into the token, I do think that this is a token that I would have my eyes on in a long position.

21:01Now, it did just pop quite a bit. It’s up like 17, 20 percent from its average over the last couple of weeks.

21:08So, maybe I’ll play on that a little bit.

21:13And even our good friend, GoodAlexander, kind of tipped his hat to that, saying that there was a good amount of value accrual hitting to that token.

21:21Again, the buybacks are great.

21:24Unfortunately, not in a great position.

21:27Robinhood Chain, who peaked several weeks ago with on-chain volume, has only dwindled more over the past weeks.

21:34We’re seeing a day-by-day volume decrease within the trenches, within crypto right now.

21:42Again, nothing of a surprise due to what we’re witnessing on the risk market, as well as I think we have a consumer, an educated consumer now within the trenches, who understands they’re playing a game of bundle tokens and extraction.

21:59And I do see a lot of people shifting back over to perps.

22:03Perps volume has increased.

22:05However, we’re in a weird moment where I’ve identified that we have a group of people who are like, I love memes because I can put a soul, two soul, three soul in and make a thousand soul.

22:16But they understand that the trenches aren’t the same and they aren’t like they used to be where you can do that.

22:22Nobody’s holding. There’s no communities forming. We don’t get any runners the same way we used to.

22:26And you have those that go over to perps and they’re like, yeah, I can still make my money and I’m here for the money.

22:32We have this weird group right now that is looking for dopamine in trading.

22:37It’s not just a financial thing.

22:38And I know you hate this side of it, G.

22:40So I do think, though, it is a problem that needs to be solved.

22:45We’ve seen people try to do trading competitions, squads, calls, VCs, things that even Lute has been building to get people a little bit more involved into the trade and maybe even mature the trenches a bit.

23:00But I do think we’re going to see maybe a shift towards what Kraken has done, where Kraken’s just kind of leaned in and made an ecosystem of like, yes, you can start on the meme side, but there are so many more mature things and bringing that to your average consumer across the board.

23:18But Robinhood announced their $700,000 in prizes up for grabs with some of the stupidest, like, no shade to the teams, you know, those companies.

23:32But, like, could you have picked a random group of tokens to reward people for trading?

23:39I don’t know why they didn’t do it for the entire chain or every crypto token.

23:44I assume, my assumption here, is that those teams put up the money as a marketing ploy or there is a conflict of interest that the in-house counsel is basically saying, hey, do not reward users for trading on your chain.

24:00I know that there was some speculation that Robinhood had kind of juiced the volume on the chain and they were privy to that happening.

24:08And they’re probably trying to tread lightly here with, even if that’s a rumor, not putting their foot anywhere near that trap right now.

24:18PONS which we originally had called and did like a thousand or a hundred or 10x, excuse me, since our original call has only dropped day over day since that peak.

24:32And we’re kind of just waiting for liquidity and volume to come back at this point.

24:35So, I kind of, I want to go back a little bit to what you were saying about the meme coins and how, you know, I think these are all, this is all related to me on chain.

24:46And I was thinking of putting a post out about this last week and maybe I’ll do it at some point later today or tomorrow.

24:53But if you were to go through the chronological order of things in crypto, a couple of years ago, you know, well, in 2017, you had ICOs, right?

25:03And so you had ICOs, you could get into an ICO, it starts trading, it’d be an immediate 10x because all the tokens were unlocked.

25:11The team wasn’t incentivized to build anything.

25:14And so they could scam, take the money, sell the token, scam, get out, right?

25:19So then in 2020, 2021, you start having lockups, right?

25:25Where in order to kind of get through regulations, you could raise money as a venture-backed business and then be like, we’re going to do a token in the next 6 to 12 months.

25:35You’re in this round. The token is going to start trading in 6 to 12 months.

25:39It’s going to be a low float, high FDV token.

25:43That’s where that meme started, right?

25:45Because people would be like, yeah, you know, we just did a round at 100 million and now the token is going to ICO TGE at like 5 billion.

25:53So you have a 50x on paper.

25:55It’s only, you know, 1% of token supply.

25:58Retail comes in. They’re buying the top, goes down 99.9%.

26:03All retail loses, right?

26:05As VCs and insiders are selling their bags from, you know, I think we even saw that like a lot of like insiders would be selling their bags from side wallets, right?

26:16That aren’t team allocation wallets.

26:18So then because of that, you have the creation of memes where people are like, all right, well, if we’re buying these, this vaporware at, you know, a billion dollars, that’s not worth it because there’s no supply, then we might as well just like create our own fake internet money tokens.

26:34And that’s where like memes came from, where you can get in from a really low supply.

26:38These things pump and run.

26:41And then, you know, we all believe the community forums, it goes to 10 billion, whatever, right?

26:48And so then Pump.fun really democratized that, whereas before you needed to have like some sort of technical skill.

26:55You needed to invest in a dev and all of this stuff.

26:58And then Pump.fun made it so that I could just have an idea, launch a ticker, it bonds, and it goes, right?

27:05And so I think what we’re at right now, and, you know, and it’s kind of crazy because I think we see it now in the timeline where you see all these people bundling their tokens.

27:16And they’re sitting there and they’re like, oh, this is exactly how you do it.

27:20And it’s like, oh, well, that’s like crime. Like what you’re talking about is legit, like straight up illegal.

27:25And so, but I just think it’s like we’ve kind of come full circle where these people are now doing what these PC-backed high, low float, high FDV memes were doing a couple years ago where they’re like, yeah, like I own whatever, 3% in my public wallet.

27:43But I own 20% in my sidewallets and I’m dumping on the side while I’m long on my main wallet.

27:50And it’s like we’ve kind of come that full circle moment.

27:53And like it’s like that meme where like the concentric, the circles get smaller and smaller like each bubble.

27:59It’s because people are extracting more and more, right?

28:01And so as people launch these memes, like, you know, Pump.fun, all these launch pads earn that money and that money isn’t getting fed back into the ecosystem.

28:11Whereas like in previous cycles, like if you made money, like.

28:15You were turning around and throwing it right back because it was, it was users like these, these teams are not like corporations.

28:22They were you and I launching a token and then being like, all right, we’re going to make $5 million and then we’re going to like, we’re going to buy up other tokens and we’re going to take this 5 million and make 50 million.

28:33Nobody was like, hey, we’re going to make 2 million and go to Miami and Brickell and rent a Lambo.

28:39That unfortunately has become the new meta.

28:42Right. Yeah. So, you know, I just think that like, I think it’s all interrelated, right?

28:47I think part of the reason why you’re seeing volumes really dry up on Robinhood is because again, people are like, oh, why are you, you know, a lot of people have been like, oh, this, this entire trading competition is tone deaf.

28:58And I agree. I think it’s a little bit, it’s very tone deaf for the market, but also you need to realize that this is like a publicly traded company that they’re sitting there and they’re like, what’s the best use of capital?

29:10And where are we going to get that ROI?

29:12The ROI is not to make people mean coin millionaires.

29:17The trading, the trading terminal space.

29:19And I, again, I can talk to this as one of the competitors in the space is one of the most cutthroat and profit driven.

29:25And like, nobody, nobody is in that space being like, oh, we’re just going to build.

29:30It is, it is ruthless.

29:32And so like every decision they’re making is calculated for market share and profit.

29:37That’s the only two things going through every single terminal is how do we get more market share?

29:42How do we get more profit?

29:45And as you can tell, I will note this pump is the only company that has stayed around as a dominant player in that vertical, even Axiom a year ago, if you’d said, oh, well, Axiom is going to fall and lose the number one spot.

29:58Many people would have said you’re insane.

30:00And now we have, I think, what, Axiom co-founders going and playing, you know, poker at the lodge.

30:09And, you know, they seem to be not as aggressive on, like, the social route.

30:13And they’re like, hey, we’re just going to be pro.

30:15So there are ways to this.

30:17Pump has something figured out.

30:20But I do expect them to get some pressure here.

30:23And I do, the unexpected one might be Coinbase.

30:26That is my, I mean, we can jump into that at another point here.

30:29I do want to bring in our guest of the day, Justin Taylor.

30:35He’s an executive in the marketing world.

30:38X, XVP from, yes, we can.

30:42Yeah, we can hear you. XVP from. What’s up, brother? X, Twitter, WWE, Activision.

30:50You’ve done a lot.

30:53Wanted to have you on, mainly because I know you’ve been doing a ton with AI and automation for your level or for your, I guess, your daily things and what you do for work.

31:06But additionally, we’ve had some good conversations on how AI is affecting you.

31:10One topic that we had on the show earlier before you hopped on was going over this Microsoft buyout where they’re basically laying off 60,000 people because they can have their jobs replaced.

31:23You and I talked about new grads and how they’re being affected trying to find jobs where essentially every new grad job is doable by AI at this point.

31:33Do you, I mean, do you think that that’s going to become a real issue for?

31:38I mean, look at Facebook’s earnings.

31:41Their earnings are way up. Their headcount’s way down. Wall Street loves it. Like, the stock market loves it.

31:47They’ve, they’re like the best actual use case that shows that they were pretty clearly we’re going to lay people off because we can automate this.

31:55And they have been and their earnings keep going up and they’re doing really well.

31:59You know, I can only speak to marketing and related fields.

32:03But, you know, when AI first started to become a thing, I was like, I’m screwed.

32:07AI is going to take my job. AI is going to take marketing eventually. And what I’m learning is actually, it’s become very beneficial for me.

32:16What I’m quickly understanding is that it’s taking most of the lower to mid-tier jobs.

32:23And where I would be giving feedback to a person, I’m now giving feedback to AI.

32:28And so it’s driving down costs for brands, but it’s driving up costs of senior marketers because taste, judgment, understanding of strategy doesn’t change.

32:40It’s just, I’m giving feedback to something different now.

32:43So, you know, I, now that I’m consulting full-time, I’ll take the place of a 10-person agency because, you know, as an example for a previous client where I’d usually do all the strategy work, I did the strategy work, I did the design work, I did the web development work, doing some of the performance media work because the tools are just there now.

33:04So for young people, yeah, it’s like really tough.

33:07You know, I was having my daughter help me with some stuff and I can get Muse or Claude to do anything she can do in five minutes now.

33:13So it’s, it’s, I have like struggling to give her stuff to do and that’s worrisome, but it’s, it’s the trend and, you know, there’s positives and negatives to it a lot.

33:25Like now when I, when I present work, the feedback I get is like, that sounds like AI or that, that’s the type of stuff you deal with more than it’s like, oh, I don’t think that’s right for me, for me and my brand.

33:35It’s like, that sounds like AI is like a, is a feedback to me here all the time now.

33:40Yeah. I, I, one question I have is how old’s your, your daughter, like age range?

33:45She’s senior at Boulder.

33:47Okay. All right. So like 2021.

33:49So that’s like, what, what advice have you been giving her as somebody that’s about to enter the workforce? Cause again, she wants to get that experience, right.

33:59To get to the level that you’re at in order to really utilize these tools.

34:04But I’m sure she knows how to use these tools.

34:07But then the question is like, how do you get that experience?

34:09Because exactly to what you said, if a lot of these entry-level positions, like, I think it’s great for productivity now, but then like, how does.

34:17How do you find that next marketer or that next position to be a senior level exec in 20 years? If they don’t get that experience now. Yeah. I just wrote about this actually yesterday.

34:29It’s going to be tough. I think your job now is you need to be really good.

34:33It’s at a skill.

34:35Like you need to be like a skilled laborer at this point and understand how to deploy agents now. Like that’s it. So you need to learn quickly how to be really good at performing paid media.

34:46And then you need to understand how to build and perform a paid media, like network of agents that you can deploy. Otherwise you’re useless.

34:54So. Yeah. But you’re, it sounds to me, cause like I’ve, I’ve thought about, like, I just think like we’re going to a world where you just have to be more entrepreneurial.

35:02Like no matter what you are and it’s not like, Oh, I’m going to go get a job at Coke as you know, an intern learn, like, you know, the ropes of, uh, CPG marketing.

35:15And then like, it’s like, you probably are better off starting your own little CPG brand, whether it fails or succeeds, I think is moot, but you understand like everything that’s involved with that. And then eventually like 10 or 15 years from now when Coke is like, all right, well, we need like a new up and comer.

35:33Oh, this person has been messing with all this stuff for the last 20 years.

35:37Right. Like. Yeah, I agree with you. I don’t have a really good answer, honestly, because like, well, how does that person actually learn that skill while they’re by themselves?

35:46You know, I learned how to be a good marketer because I had to actually do the work, get things wrong, learn from more senior people, a good strategy look like.

35:54And with that removed, you know, some of the companies I consult with, I see like a really good example is a company I work with.

36:02They have a social guy that’s pretty young and he is using an AI tool to help him concept and post all of the social media posts.

36:13And I came into the business and he’s going me through, going, take me through what they’re doing on Twitter or X, what they’re doing on Instagram, TikTok.

36:20And I go to TikTok and the account that everything was running on wasn’t the brand’s account.

36:26And I’m like, what, what is this?

36:28And he goes, oh, well, Claude told me since performance wasn’t really good on our brand account to just start a new account and do that.

36:36I’m like, but you don’t even talk about the brand on this account.

36:38He’s like, yeah, that’s what Claude told me to do.

36:40And like, that was the response I was getting.

36:42He was, and he was just like earnestly like, no, that’s what AI told me to do.

36:46So that’s what I’m doing. And he’s like, and then AI told me in six months to change it into the brand name.

36:51And I’m like, well, what about the six months now?

36:53And he’s like, I don’t know. This is what AI is telling me. And that was his response. But he had no one senior telling him, actually, that makes no sense.

37:00You’re wasting dollars of this brand business to do this.

37:02And so that’s my worry about this, either entrepreneurial or whatever, which I think is a good, is, is right for a lot of people is how do these young people actually learn these skills in the end?

37:14People can get really good at AI, but being really good at AI and being really good at a skill or different things, you know? Well, it’s, it’s for, it’s just forcing people to have to do stuff, right?

37:24Like you can’t, I think that originally you saw a lot of people that adopted into AI who are like, I have to do something.

37:32There are a lot of like hard steps.

37:34Oh my God, AI is so good.

37:36And then we’ve almost swung too far on the pendulum to the side of like, okay, AI just knows best. It’s always going to know what’s best. And I’m going to trust it blindly when, I mean, I know, I know engineers that I’ve talked to who are like, yeah, it was really good at like getting all of this, like, you know, busy work out of the way.

37:55But if I trusted AI, like, and put this in like part into production, it would blow up and destroy and like the factory would burn down.

38:03Yeah. I mean, again, I can only speak to like more marketing related stuff, but definitely there’s been trends in big brands, especially that their inference costs have gone up significantly as they’ve implemented AI tools into the business.

38:14And what they’re seeing now is actually productivity hasn’t gone that much up that much because more junior people are just using it to replace their work and actually, you know, work.

38:27So if you give a junior marketer, you know, some Claude plan and tell them to put a brand strategy together, they’re still just doing a brand strategy, but they’re doing it with cloud. So, you know, businesses are like, okay, well, unless we figure out how to have more senior people just be able to run agents, which I think a lot of business haven’t figured out yet, we’re actually not more productive at this point.

38:48We’re actually just replacing our workers with Claude tools that they’re just managing now.

38:52Yeah. They’re paying for the person to work the job plus the inference on top of it, which is right. Yeah. And I mean, so that’s like a, that’s a, you know, when you implement any tool into a business, it’s how do we actually use the tool?

39:05How does our work actually need to change?

39:07What does that mean? I think a lot of businesses rush to give AI tools without proper training or proper understanding. And then, you know, other company I work with, everyone’s developing custom software and the CEO is like, what do I do? I gave a, I gave Claude pro plans to everyone.

39:22Everyone’s built custom software and cloud for their job.

39:25And none of these custom softwares speak to each other.

39:28What do I do once any of these people leave?

39:31Right. And this is like an infrastructure problem for businesses that want to really implement AI into their companies.

39:37So I have a question for you on your consulting practice.

39:41Yeah. Are you utilize, are you consulting within marketing strictly and then just using AI tools to make yourself more efficient, or are you talking to some of these businesses and being like, here’s how you implement AI in your marketing yourselves?

39:58Right. Cause like, you know what I’m saying? Like, are you being like an AI slash marketing consultant?

40:02Or is it just like a marketing consultant that uses AI tools for productivity for yourself?

40:06Mostly I’ve been doing the first, which is using it for myself.

40:10I have used it for, I have done the second a bit.

40:15And, you know, what’s interesting is every company I’ve worked with has been varying levels and different.

40:23You know, something that’s come away for me is, you know, in the 2010s, sysadmins, system administrators, was such an important thing for big businesses.

40:35And I can see I had dinner with a buddy the other night, and he’s basically like an AI sysadmin for businesses now, which I think is going to become something really important, which is, okay, you know, if you’re a CPG company, and you sell your products at Walmart, Target, Shopify, TikTok shop, you have inventory management systems, you have all this backend analytics, who’s actually figuring out how to integrate all this stuff for you into your Claude tools?

41:05How do you have a repo that everyone’s working from with the same information that is useful?

41:11And people in existing businesses don’t have anyone to do that.

41:14And so I’ve done a little bit of that kind of sysadmin work for businesses, which is like, actually, how do we get your data to actually work hard for you?

41:23So I’ve done that side of work a bit.

41:26But now the other side, I’ve done the everyone’s using AI tools, and it’s like overrunning this company.

41:31And actually, how do we pull this up and make this work for us, which is a whole other problem, completely different.

41:36What do you, like, what, outside of, like, the labs and, like, using Grok and, you know, the CERN chat, like, where, what services do you think are undervalued right now?

41:47Like, actual, like, companies that you’re using where you’re like, yeah, like, everybody’s going to be using this in the marketing world.

41:54I mean, for marketing, I use Higgsfield, like, significantly.

41:59With it plugged, with the MCP plugged into Claude, that’s been a lifesaver for me.

42:05I tried using, like, I do a lot of deck stuff.

42:07I thought Gamma was going to be useful. It’s not.

42:12I use, I think the real check or hack is that people, the thing with, like, MCPs is, like, they’re developed for a set of skills that are really, like, boilerplate.

42:25And what ends up being really interesting is, like, how you decide to get them to work for you.

42:30Like, for example, I use, Fireflies is probably the most important tool that I use, but not for, like, what I think it’s just meant for.

42:40So, you know, it basically, like everyone, it’s a recording your conversations tool.

42:44It comes in your Google Meet or whatever. And that’s been helpful, but actually using it to record all of my conversations, having it plugged into Claude.

42:53I have a Claude scrape my Fireflies every day that then transforms everything into a notion with all my thoughts and how I think about things and how I talk about things.

43:04And then that learns my tone of voice.

43:07So whenever I write anything, whether it be a deck, whether it be a newsletter or whatever, now my, like, AI understands my tone of voice and how I speak.

43:17And so for me, Fireflies has been invaluable, but not as, like, the standard set that people have it for.

43:24And it’s built a notion library for me over the last, like, six months of every conversation I’ve had and how I speak, how I speak in approach marketing.

43:34And so for me, it’s been, like, crazy.

43:37Like, what I’ve also learned is, like, as all these new AI tools come online, the most important thing ends up being, like, they need context, right?

43:44Like, I started using Muse, and it needs context.

43:48And so as a person, you don’t usually have a lot of context you can feed these models.

43:53You, like, can’t really feed it your tweets or X posts or whatever.

43:57And so a lot of other people, besides that, they don’t have context to give these platforms.

44:02And so I see it’s really important for people to build a massive backlog of context about who they are, what they do, how they write, what they talk about, what they’re interested in.

44:11And so for me, like, my newsletter, Substack I write is really helpful, but Fireflies is invaluable for that.

44:18Can you give us, can you walk us through your setup?

44:21Like, what LLMs are you using?

44:23How are you using them? Like, it’s really interesting because, like, a lot of the flows that you’re describing, I do the same.

44:28I just have Granola instead of Fireflies.

44:30But I have it all go into, like, a central repository, my knowledge base, where I can access it from anywhere.

44:37And, like, for me, I have it right now.

44:40I’m using Grok. But, like, I have a Mac Mini where I store everything so that if, let’s say, I want to use Claude today or I want to use Opus or Codex or whatever, depending on which model on any given day is better, I can just have it access all my memory stuff.

44:55So, like, what’s your setup like? Well, you’re better than me. For sure. I haven’t gone there yet.

45:03And I think, actually, part of the issue I’m having right now is I’m using Muse and Instinct, and they’re not connected to Claude.

45:09And so everything has to go up into, like, the knowledge base, where I’m hoping, I know Claude Duet’s been announced, so I’ll probably end up going that way.

45:17But I use Claude as, like, my, basically, my daily driver.

45:24I’m using it, actually, less and less now that I’m using Muse a lot more.

45:27But I use Claude, all of my Fireflies, my Google, everything flows through Claude.

45:37Claude updates my Notion every day.

45:38So Notion kind of exists as my kind of brain that Muse and everything else log into.

45:44So I’d be interested, can you, does Muse or Instinct connect to your, like, brain?

45:51So I set up Instinct for, like, a second because, like, everybody was talking about it.

45:58I didn’t really like it. I like having different agents and, like, different threads for different topics.

46:04I don’t like a single thread, personally.

46:06I just am like, oh, I want to talk about expenses.

46:09All right, let me just talk to this bot about it because it’s not, like, when I’m trying to find, like, the thread, it just gets lost.

46:16It’s like, oh, I’m, like, I’m focused on health and then this and then that.

46:20And then it’s just, like, I feel like I forget too much.

46:23So I didn’t really like Instinct that much.

46:25I thought Muse, I’m super curious what you use Muse for.

46:28But, like, I have found right now, for me, Grok works the best.

46:33Like, Grokbot is, like, incredible.

46:35I’ll try it out.

46:38Muse, well, I mean, touchy subject for me right now.

46:43But I was using Muse for, well, I’m using it to, it does outreach for me on LinkedIn.

46:49LinkedIn is where I spend most of my time in social now.

46:52Okay. So it does a lot of outreach for me.

46:55It, like, checks all my comments and everything, my DMs and everything.

47:01Muse is also, like, it scrapes all my emails and gives me my to-do lists and stuff every day, which is helpful. It’s tracking all of my, like, Stripe payments and everything for my newsletter and payments and does all my invoicing and stuff for me, which is really good.

47:17And then I had it, I set it up to run my Twitter account.

47:20And I’d been having them run my Twitter account.

47:25But I, so I stopped paying attention to Twitter for a little while, and it started running way too negative. And now everyone hates me on Twitter.

47:33So I had to turn it. Can we talk about that? Yeah, we have to talk about that. So how long have I had to turn it off? I had to turn it off. That was the perfect segue, because I definitely wanted to bring up some of the stuff you’ve been tweeting about. So how long ago did you start?

47:47Uh, I don’t know, a while ago.

47:49I just, like, I stopped using- A while ago, like a month ago? Yeah, yeah, like a month ago.

47:54And I just stopped, like, checking it as much.

47:57I’ve been, like, like, for me, I have 95,000 LinkedIn subscribers.

48:02I actually have an agency managing my LinkedIn now.

48:04I get a bunch of creator-influencer offers coming through LinkedIn.

48:09I get a lot of brand stuff coming through LinkedIn.

48:13And so I just, like, stopped using Twitter as much.

48:16And so I set Instinct and then Muse off on it.

48:19And, yeah, I noticed, like, a couple days ago, it, like, shit on BAYC’s, like, TCG thing.

48:27And it just, like, went insane.

48:29And I saw Gargoy replied and was not happy with me, which I can totally understand.

48:33I, like, didn’t know what to do. I was, like, should I delete this?

48:37Like, should I- Saying, like, hey, this was, like, my AI agent sounds like the new- You know how celebrities would be, like, oh, I got hacked?

48:44You know? Yeah. So I was, like, I didn’t know what to do with it. And I was, like, I’ll just leave it. It’s fine. But, yeah, yeah. So I had it set off. But, like, I think to its defense or something, you know, I was being pretty negative on NFT stuff, like, months ago.

49:00And it hooked on to that.

49:01And so it just started posting. So I guess, like, that’s kind of what- I guess that’s where I would push back on.

49:07Because it’s, like, that wasn’t your first negative post.

49:10And, like- No, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for sure.

49:13The Jack Butcher post that you put out, where I know you got, like, a ton of feedback on, myself included. Was that AI as well?

49:21No, that was me. That was- No, I felt like- Here’s what I think. Like, like, I think NFTs go through a cycle of- which I think is unfortunate, where they just copy what the meta is.

49:35Whether it be TCGs right now.

49:37Everyone’s got to do a TCG to make money.

49:39Whether it be metaverses.

49:41Whether it be making toys.

49:43And it feels easy. Like, it feels like- it does feel a little extract-y to me that, like, everyone’s making- TCGs. Pokemon is big, so now we’ll all make TCGs.

49:53It doesn’t feel real original or breaking out of what’s going on.

49:57And so, like, I did say something, I think, about the Azuki one a while ago.

50:02And, you know, I see everyone hating on founders of NFT projects, conversely, that are trying anything new or creative, and then being upset that they’re not supporting the projects enough and stuff like that.

50:14And to me, Jack has turned NFT drops into his art to him. I mean, they’re NFT projects with an interesting, what’s it called? An interesting mechanic for the most part.

50:29And then he just moves on to the next one. And nobody gives him shit about it ever. But everyone gives people lots of trash about other projects. I think they’re very innovative. I thought what he did was really innovative.

50:42Oh, there’s a difference between, like, art and, like, hey, right.

50:45Yeah, I’m like, I don’t know. So if you drop a 10,000 PFP project in an interesting way and never supported it, and then the founders never do anything again, people get very upset about it. And they’re like, where are the people supporting this more?

50:57I think, so I generally agree with you. But I think where I would push back is that Jack’s brand is trying, like, that’s his brand, right? Like, I think if his brand was not that, then I think he would get, he would get pushback on it.

51:11Because I think, like, there are artists that do a lot of drops and people are like, oh, like this, like, why are you doing more stuff, right? Like, you know, keep the rarity, like all the things that you hear NFT people talk about.

51:23But I think that Jack, you know, to his credit has developed a brand where I’m going to try new stuff. And, like, I think a similar, I think somebody in a similar vein is Rhinotic, who’s, like, the founder of PunkStrategy, did Fake World Assets, right?

51:39Like, all this stuff where, you know, you don’t, I think you don’t get to the most interesting things by iterating once, right? Like, you have to keep on iterating.

51:47I agree, too. But, yeah, I think the line’s pretty thin. You’re right. Jack has done that really well.

51:56But, yeah, I mean, my point, I think still, I mean, he’s done how many projects has Jack done? He’ll come do another one in a while. He’ll make another bag. And he’s done a really good job of setting that up for him, I think.

52:07Cole’s doing it now. I mean, Cole’s dropping NFT projects left and right.

52:11No, I think it’s playing out a little differently for him where he was, like, this is the next big thing. Like, he actually stood behind me.

52:17Like, Jack is, like, hey, I’m just, I’m creating to be a creator and an artist. And, like, you can buy it. You don’t have to buy it. I’m not promising you that I’m going to, you know, turn this into the greatest brand.

52:29It’s just, like, hey, I’m creating to, you know, be an artist.

52:32Where Cole, like, Cole came out and, like, literally was, like, I’m going to take over Robinhood chain. And, yeah, that, he doesn’t have Robinhood chain earlier, it seems like now.

52:44I also think, like, I mean, how many L2s drop where everyone gets super excited and does NFTs and tokens and then people just rotate, you know, as well?

52:53Well, it’s the meta. Like, there is a level of, like, go to where the money is within crypto. And we saw this with Robinhood where everybody all of a sudden was, like, I’m going to drop my NFT project on Robinhood.

53:06I’m going to do a token on Robinhood. Then the meta became meme stocks on Robinhood where almost all the volume left Solana for, like, a two-week period.

53:17And if you weren’t dropping a token paired with a stock that was a meme or, like, you know, funny about the meme, then it wasn’t going to take off.

53:27And so it’s a little bit less on, like, people are being opportunistic, but it’s also the nature of, like, the system we’re in, which is you have to, if you want to play this game, you got to play it where the money is and the volume is.

53:42I think what makes Robinhood different than, like, Blast or Abstract or whatever else was that, at least I think what’s interesting is, okay, Robinhood is, like, this stock exchange or whatever you want to call it.

53:57And so a lot of the Web3 projects that came out of it were related to stocks, like stockbrokers and stuff like that.

54:03And so people actually innovated on the chain when it launched to do interesting things related to the stocks, which I think is a huge positive and I think is the problem a lot of L2s or stuff come into is they launch, but the discernible difference between them and anyone else is zero.

54:20And so it’s fun for a little bit, but it’s like, why do we need an actual other L2 or Robinhood, at least I’m like, okay, we’re kind of, like, pushing this in the direction of the stock market to a degree and people that are doing interesting things here are related to on-chain stocks or whatever.

54:36And so that at least feels like there’s some consensus that there’s some interesting community that could live here, I think.

54:43I agree with you. I think, to me, one of the most interesting things I thought about Robinhood was the fact that, like, we were kind of running back DeFi summer, but this time with equities, right, with things that weren’t worthless tokens that you needed to sell as possible, right?

54:59It’s like, oh, I’m earning NVIDIA. And I think there’s something there, and we’ve spoken about on the show a bunch, where I think there’s something there where when I receive my rewards as, like, a stock versus, they technically, like, I could receive it as cash.

55:13I could receive it as USDC. But there’s something about, like, receiving it as a stock where psychologically, in my head as a consumer, I’m like, oh, I’m, like, building my portfolio, right?

55:24But, like, technically, it’s cash, right? Like, I could instantly sell it and get that cash. But there’s, like, some psychological switch there that I think happens that has made it, I think, very interesting.

55:34And I, like, found it incredibly interesting there.

55:38I remember when I got Robinhood, I don’t know, eight years ago or something at this point. And for signing up, I got to, like, there was, like, a lottery ticket, and I had to pick a square, and I scratched it, and I got a stock.

55:51And that was just, like, it was, like, it was, like, a penny stock or something I got, but it was crazy. Even my, like, all these digital pack gachas, like, I’ve just, where’s the stock one?

56:02I’m surprised somebody on Robinhood hasn’t made, like, a gacha stock thing yet. But, yeah, I...

56:10Yeah, we should chat offline. I’ve, like, I’ve been talking to a team that’s working on that.

56:16Okay, yeah, because it just makes sense to me. But, yeah, I like, I mean, I’ve always thought the best next use case for crypto, to me, is on-chain stocks.

56:29Like, for sure, I can see, I can see NFTs becoming part of it in an interesting way. I just think, like, it actually has good use cases.

56:39You know, I think AI and Web3 need to come together probably in a more meaningful way soon. But for now, like, yeah, I think what Robinhood’s...

56:48That’s what I like about it, like, compared to, like I say, these other...

56:51I don’t understand why the world needs more than, like, five chains in general. You know? I don’t know.

56:58But, yeah, I don’t know. I find it interesting. I think that AI coming together with Web3 will be an important step, too.

57:07Like, I don’t think it really has in a meaningful way. I like Venice and what Venice is doing to a degree.

57:11But otherwise, I think there’s a lot of interesting space with, like, verification that’ll come in the future when everyone’s making AR videos of Trump.

57:20Like, how do you end up verifying what’s real? I think on-chain is a really important place to play there.

57:25Like, I agree with that. I think that it’s really...

57:29Like, I find myself more and more when I see something that’s, like, outrageous that I’m like...

57:34Like, I need to, like, go on Google or, like, ask Rob, like, is this real?

57:39Like, am I being rage-baited here? Or...

57:42I fell for one really bad this past weekend.

57:46And it annoyed me to an extent where I was like, oh, wow, like, we’ve crossed the valley where, like, I’m...

57:52Who am, like, actively looking out for it? I’m getting fooled.

57:56Yeah, I mean, so...

57:58That’s how I worked in social media.

58:00Like, for the most part, when social platforms came out, the amount of people posting on social media was going up significantly.

58:09And so the platforms were happy.

58:12There was so much content. More and more people were posting on everything.

58:15And then we kind of hit, like, a valley.

58:19Less people started posting on social media.

58:21Making good social media content got more difficult.

58:24So, you know, you probably post on Instagram all the time when it came out, but now you hardly post. Like, my daughter posts on Instagram once, you know, every three months now, right?

58:34Kids, young kids don’t post on social media.

58:37So, what did businesses do?

58:39Well, they needed to figure out algorithms to bring interesting content to you because the people you know weren’t posting interesting content, right?

58:47Like, your circle of all your friends weren’t posting every day on IG and IG stories.

58:51So, all right, now we need to build algorithms to go find that content for you.

58:55Great. Okay, so we’ve built these systems where following doesn’t matter as much, but algorithms matter a lot more. Okay, but now what’s happening?

59:01Now, making content is becoming extremely easy because everyone is making AI content.

59:07So, algorithmic fees are getting flooded with content.

59:12So, now we’re asking AI or, you know, algorithms to go through, find the most, not just find the most interesting content to you, but find the most interesting, maybe truthful content or whatever.

59:23And, you know, the question stands, what role do these platforms have to play in verifying AI content, finding content that maybe you’re like, fuck, I just want real content, I don’t want AI content or whatever.

59:34So, my hypothesis is going to be that I think we’re going to go back to following is going to start mattering more again because algorithms, I think people are going to start getting sick of, like, algorithms bringing them content that’s AI or run into problems like gmoney have.

59:50So, you know, LinkedIn announced that they’re actually changing their feed back to mostly being your following.

59:56And I think, like, we’ll potentially start seeing that.

59:59X did something similar recently, I think.

1:00:02I don’t think my feed seems that way recently, but I know they announced it.

1:00:05I don’t know. I feel like I click one thing and then I get flooded with that topic for better or worse.

1:00:11So if I find something interesting, I just try to click on the first two things on it.

1:00:15So that way I’ll see more on it.

1:00:17But I don’t think it’s solved in any way, shape, or form on X yet.

1:00:22But I think probably the best solution I’ve been thinking about is probably to just curate my feed through GrokBot.

1:00:29Because now your GrokBot can connect to X and it doesn’t use the API.

1:00:35So you’re able to do it for free.

1:00:37So basically you can just connect everything you want and just kind of create your own feed in the GrokBot app.

1:00:44The thing with me is like I think about is like I post on LinkedIn every day.

1:00:52And over time, more and more percentage of my comments are very clearly coming from AI.

1:01:00Not from real people, from real people, like real accounts of people.

1:01:03But the comments are written by AI and it’s very clear to me.

1:01:07And I know, I mean, I see on X, like, I mean, I was mostly using it.

1:01:13And I saw the comments on most of the comments are maybe real people writing with AI.

1:01:17And I’m like, okay, well, at some point, like, this gets slippery.

1:01:21If it’s more and more people’s AI writing and people’s AI writing back, like, what, you know, that internet theory.

1:01:29Right. Like, yeah. Where are we actually headed to on these platforms?

1:01:33Yeah. I do think, like, I’ve been, I personally have had the personal, like, for me, I spend most of my time on X.

1:01:40That’s my most valuable social media account.

1:01:43But I do think, especially in the world of culture, I think Instagram is probably the most important social graph, in my opinion.

1:01:52And I’m super curious, like, what they plan on doing with the bot situation.

1:01:57Because I think they’re in the spot to be, like, to create a human-only social media platform.

1:02:03Right. Because they’re already, like, it’s already, I think it’s probably the hardest to create, like, a fake account on.

1:02:10Right. Like, it’s not the easiest, but it’s also, like, it’s not, like, I think it’s way easier to create a fake account on pretty much any other platform except for Instagram.

1:02:22Whoa, no, no, no, no, no. Look at all of the fake influencers that have been going viral recently on Instagram.

1:02:30And it’s all Higgsfield.

1:02:31Higgsfield is going out to creators and saying, like, we’ll give you $20,000 if you get, you know, 100 million views this month.

1:02:39And everybody has been going out and making these fake people and using the cloning tech from using the base video to make, you know, we saw, like, Spongebob characters doing, like, viral videos.

1:02:53The big one that went really viral was that guy kicking the soccer ball, missing the goal, and, like, spilling the beer.

1:02:59Like, if you haven’t seen that video, you just haven’t been online.

1:03:02But it’s that all of these videos are, one, I’ve enjoyed consuming them because it’s, like, oh, my God, like, what is the next meme going to be?

1:03:12I think the platforms understand they can’t get rid of it.

1:03:16It’s going to have to exist. But at the same time, you know, Gene Palath or whatever the guy’s name was, the guy with the crazy hair that was doing all the, like, airboxing videos, he went hyperviral.

1:03:28And for two weeks, nobody knew if he was real or not real until, you know, the PumpFunCAA got added to the bio.

1:03:36And then everybody was like, damn, it’s clearly AI now.

1:03:40But we’re past that level of is it real or not?

1:03:45Well, it’s kind of funny, Hunter, because that just made me think of that Rumpelstiltskin meme that people were like, oh, this is from the Rumpelstiltskin that, like, takes a step back and does, like, the toe dance or whatever.

1:03:57Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was an NFL touchdown dance last weekend.

1:04:00Yep. You know what I mean? Like, and that was AI. Like, I had to look it up because I was like, somebody told me it was AI.

1:04:05I was like, I don’t know. This looks like it was a movie from, like, the 60s or the 70s.

1:04:10And then I looked it up, and it was, like, made by an artist that did it with AI that did it a couple, I think, a couple months ago.

1:04:18And then it just started going viral. And it’s, like, in fact, it’s, like, all over culture, right?

1:04:22To the point that it was a touchdown dance last weekend.

1:04:24Dude, it just makes me realize, like, how important it is, like, as individuals building out your, like, own AI infrastructure is, your own knowledge base, your own understanding.

1:04:36Because wherever all these things go, like, I try to be as prepared as I can to, like, integrate new things as they come up.

1:04:45Like, I mean, I don’t know, I can see X or a platform like it just being AIs speaking to each other at some point.

1:04:51And then it just, like, you know, it alerts you when there’s something worth addressing for you, you know, to a degree.

1:04:57Like, I, you know, I got a DM on LinkedIn.

1:05:00The guy even said in the comment, hey, I called, help me write this.

1:05:04Muse caught it and then brought it to me.

1:05:06Did a background check on the guy and his business and was, like, hey, I think this is something you should really respond to.

1:05:13It responded to the guy. They set up a meeting for me. And so at some point I’m, like, I’m using LinkedIn as an intermediary for this platform, which I thought was crazy.

1:05:23And, like, yeah, at some point I could, I’d like to be able to be, like, hey, take all my knowledge base and start making marketing videos for me through Higgsfield and posting them on Instagram.

1:05:31But I think you’re right. Instagram still is, like, the most, like, culturally forward platform.

1:05:36I think even though TikTok does the views, like, at the end of the day, as someone in marketing, when you’re going to hire an influencer or a creator or a photographer or anybody, the first thing you do is you check their Instagram.

1:05:50And, like, so that’s still, like, the center of gravity for culture, I think.

1:05:57Yeah, it’s going to get weird.

1:05:59It’s going to get so weird because I only see it accelerating.

1:06:04Higgsfield, obviously, like you said, big core part of that.

1:06:06I’m curious, the one big question I did want to ask you with regard to Higgsfield today was, you know, they’re not using their own models.

1:06:15They’ve been kind of just doing a marketing play of accumulating customers.

1:06:19What, do you think that that is a valid strategy?

1:06:24And do you think more companies are going to lean into just marketing that they own a service?

1:06:30And then, you know, I don’t know.

1:06:32I had a long conversation dinner with an engineer last night about this.

1:06:36I’m interested in what you guys think.

1:06:38I mean, I see models, like, I see chains, I guess, to a degree, to make a, like, Web3 comparison.

1:06:45Like, at the end of the day, how, as technology furthers, how many models do we actually need?

1:06:53And has it become the service layer built on top of these models that becomes the value?

1:06:58I don’t know. I mean, as sitting here today, I don’t know how many millions of ones we’re going to need.

1:07:05Maybe we do. Maybe at some point Higgs builds, like, actually need our own one that’s going to be the best for marketers, maybe.

1:07:14Maybe it’s very clear that there’s a lot of cheap people just building stuff on top of existing and marketing them as service isn’t easy because it’s just easy to do.

1:07:22And, like, you know, why not just do it?

1:07:24Why not make a little money on people giving you $10 subscription for stuff that’s built easily on top of these things?

1:07:31I don’t know. I mean, sure, if Higgsfield came out with one, I would pay for it because, you know, I would, it would help me significantly.

1:07:40Is it necessary? I don’t know. I don’t think I’m smart enough to give you the right answer, honestly.

1:07:45I’d love to hear what you guys think, though.

1:07:47I mean, I think we’re in a, there’s two different races happening right now.

1:07:51One is the actual, like, technology front, and that takes hundreds of millions, billions, actually hundreds of billions of dollars to compete in at this point.

1:08:02And then on the other side, it is a marketing race of who can accumulate the most consumers on a platform.

1:08:09And, yeah, I think the problem is, oh, two things.

1:08:13One is, like, is models like software?

1:08:16You know, like, is there a Microsoft and an Apple that make your operating system?

1:08:20And then, you know, the applications actually become what’s really interesting on top of it.

1:08:25I think also we don’t really have a good, I think we need a language that works across all of this.

1:08:32All of these elements, which we don’t have right now.

1:08:33Like, so, for instance, any documents you make, any videos you make, whatever, we’re still using, like, Web 2 ones.

1:08:40Like, we’re still using Google Docs to push all of our stuff from Cloud.

1:08:44We’re still using MP4 files.

1:08:46We’re still using very heavy files and, like, archaic systems now that are very Web 2.

1:08:54I think at some point you’re going to need a Web 3 system of, like, communication between models and stuff that doesn’t require.

1:08:59Like, if I’m building a Google document, why do I need a Google document to speak across?

1:09:06It doesn’t make sense, right? At some point there should just be a video format, an image format or whatever that can transcend and go very, very quickly across.

1:09:15And then the other thing I was going to say is I don’t know – my wife is never going to pay for ChatGPT.

1:09:23Like, I just – she’s not. She’s just not. Like, she doesn’t need it enough. You know, is there – I think Anthropic and ChatGPT and OpenAI and Wall Street were on the thought that everyone’s going to start paying for these models.

1:09:37Like, I don’t think – I don’t know if that’s true.

1:09:40Like, you know, are they actually going to become big businesses by signing everyone up to pay?

1:09:45They’re giving away these models for free.

1:09:47I haven’t paid for Muse. Like, I don’t – you know, I don’t pay for ChatGPT.

1:09:50Are people actually going to sign up for these things and pay 10 to 20 bucks a month to the point where these businesses are going to grow?

1:09:57Because I don’t know if that’s how they’re going to be profitable or not.

1:10:01Well, I do think, I do, I mean, this, we were talking about this before you got on the show a little bit, whereas I do think at some point, they’re going to go into different verticals.

1:10:10Like, for instance, like, would you pay, maybe, as a business owner, would you pay $100 a month to have, let’s say, like, a legal model so that you no longer need, like, a lawyer, right?

1:10:21Yeah. You know, there’s a lot of issues. I agree with that. But, like, I’d be like, yeah, I’d pay $100 a month to have, like, legal counsel, in-house legal counsel that could advise me on any and all, like, legal matters that I have.

1:10:35And I don’t have to call up a lawyer for, you know, $500 an hour at least, right?

1:10:41But that ends up being, okay, is that, that’s like an enterprise.

1:10:45That’s what I think ends up happening is, like, people like ChatGPT end up having to go enterprise, and the services layer becomes a really interesting layer, to your point, I think, but I don’t know.

1:10:56Yeah, I think, like, even as I’ve thought about it, and I’m sure you’ve had this experience as well, where there have been times when, I always tell this example where a couple months ago, I made an app for myself to use.

1:11:10And, like, I did it, like, in Claude, and I was just like, hey, this is what I want to do, and it made it, like, the longest and hardest part of it was setting up an Apple developer account, which, like, I had to do it myself, and that took, like, five minutes.

1:11:25And so I was telling my friend about it, and she was like, oh, can you make me an app?

1:11:31And I’m like, all I’m going to do is just ask you a couple questions and literally just put that into AI.

1:11:39Like, I’m basically your interface.

1:11:41But, like, I think that was, like, a great example of, like, I think you’re still going to see that, like, AI consulting type of thing, where people are like, oh, I want the AI to do this.

1:11:51And I’m like, I mean, I can do that for you, but, like, you could also just, like, type it into the field yourself.

1:11:57So that’s why I think are, is, like, are the number of users of Claude and ChatGPT going to continue to go up significantly?

1:12:06I don’t think so. But I think the lawyer tool that somebody builds is going to go up for, like, that kind of stuff.

1:12:13Like, one of the most valuable companies out there at this point because they have bespoke, like, subject matter expertise in legal against, you know, large models.

1:12:24And I think, actually, Sam Altman came out and talked about the middle layer of AI at one point where he’s, like, you will have labs come out with the most impressive generalized models out there.

1:12:36And then you’re going to have consumers that have very specific needs.

1:12:39And in the middle of that, you have people that take this great, you know, Claude, you know, Opus 5.5.

1:12:45They take subject matter expert and understanding of that problem with a specific output in mind and take that model and then provide a solution to the end customer, which kind of Higgsfield has done.

1:12:56They’ve taken these generalized models and then just made it easier to use and a better workflow.

1:13:01And people are paying for it.

1:13:03And that’s why they’re worth billions of dollars now.

1:13:06Yeah, I mean, gmoney’s example is the real thing.

1:13:09Like, I’ve taken a lot of calls just like that, too.

1:13:14Like, I have a friend that’s a designer who’s redesigning his website.

1:13:17And I was like, hey, you can code it in Claude or Framer.

1:13:21And he’s like, I don’t know. And I was like, okay, I’ll do it for you.

1:13:25He’s like, no way. I’m like, dude, it’s like, it’s not that deep.

1:13:29It literally takes, like, five minutes of my time.

1:13:31Like, it’s funny because, like, to that point with building this app, you know, like, I have, like, an agent that monitors an email box.

1:13:39And I have her going back and forth where she’s utilizing it, testing it, giving her feedback.

1:13:44The agent reads that, fixes it, and sends it back.

1:13:48And then, like, she was like, oh, yeah, like, how do you think the app is coming?

1:13:51I think it’s really good. I’m like, I haven’t looked at it.

1:13:53Like, I have no idea what it looks like. You know what I mean? Like, you just, I’m just, like, in the loop to make sure that, like, it doesn’t go wonky.

1:14:00But, like. It’s so interesting, like, the skill sets across everything that are playing well right now are people that are just curious.

1:14:10People have the patience to try new things.

1:14:11Like, I found, like, you know, the Fireflies thing for me, I found by just, like, being like, wait a second.

1:14:17There’s a different way for me to approach this problem and think about it.

1:14:20But I hosted on LinkedIn how to build your website with Claude and a live stream, and I had, like, 50 people show up, and that were just, like, mind blown.

1:14:29And it’s, like, you see, especially, you see a lot on LinkedIn.

1:14:32You see it on Twitter, too, where people are, like, launching these new tools or, like, oh, my God, you don’t need a CMO anymore.

1:14:39I built this system that does all this stuff for you.

1:14:42And people are just buying it hook, line, and sinker because they just have this block about going in and learning these things themselves, where it’s, like, not that deep.

1:14:51Like, when people are, like, I don’t even know how I would start working with Claude.

1:14:55I’d be, like, just say that to Claude.

1:14:57Right. Like, that’s what I tell, like.

1:14:59Yeah. To me, that was the biggest unlock was because, like, I had it, too, when I was first setting up Claude code where I was, like, hey, can you help me set this up?

1:15:08And then, like, to a more technical friend.

1:15:10And they were, like, just ask Claude how to set it up.

1:15:13And then, like, he walked me through the setup.

1:15:15And then it’s, like, oh, wait, I don’t need to ask anybody any questions ever again.

1:15:20Right? And, like, that’s, like, the things unlock.

1:15:22Right? It’s, like, wait, I don’t know how to do this.

1:15:24All right. Like, how do I do this? And then, like, wait, do this for me, actually.

1:15:28I don’t want to know how to do this.

1:15:30Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, every day I’m, like, excited about where it’s going now.

1:15:37Like, I had some, like, you know, my wife is, like, in a bunker and is, like, we’re all getting replaced and we need to take our money out of the bank account because AI is going to, like, hack in.

1:15:44I still have that. I actually have that trepidation with my ledger still.

1:15:48And, like, at some point, are we going to need to figure out a more secure way for our crypto?

1:15:53Because I’m just, like, at some point are these hacking our seed phrases and stuff.

1:15:57I just figure I’m probably way at the back of the line.

1:16:00And once people that, like, you know, have way more money start to get hacked.

1:16:04You know, we’ve had this conversation here on the pod as well where it’s, like, they’re – so crypto is, like, the most battle-tested honeypot in terms of cryptography over the last 20 years.

1:16:16Like, they’re going to go after the electrical grid, the power systems, the current financial systems.

1:16:23Like, there’s going to be some regional bank that gets hacked for, like, you know, half a billion dollars or more or whatever.

1:16:28Because those systems are not nearly as battle-tested as – like, crypto is just so adversarial in general that I think before they come for our magic internet money, they’re going to go for, like, real systems first.

1:16:40Yeah, good point. Like, that’s what I tell myself to be, like, ah.

1:16:44But, like, you know, I like what to do, right?

1:16:45Like, yeah, the ledger thing was crazy, though, with all the – That was wild. That was wild. But I will – I say this every show that we bring this up.

1:16:55As much as there is, like, security penetration concerns, the same technology that is weakening it can be used to improve it.

1:17:03So, there is kind of, like – you know, there’s a race to who finds innovation first, the people that are trying to get into these systems, or the people that are saying, like, how do we make encryption, you know, harder to crack?

1:17:18Part of this is a computational limit.

1:17:22So, why don’t we just make things harder to compute because we do have a limited amount of compute in the world?

1:17:28So, that – there are some, I guess, saving races on that note.

1:17:34Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, I, like – you know, I still miss the, like – I sound like someone talking about high school 25 years later, but I still miss the, like, 2020, 2021.

1:17:45Like, we’re all just trying to figure this out.

1:17:48Everything is, like, a crazy Wild West.

1:17:51You know, what makes crypto interesting now is in what made it interesting then.

1:17:56Like, I got into it because I’m like – It’s not the Wild West anymore. Yeah, I got into it because I’m like – I actually like this, like, ownership of my own assets thing, and that, like, it’s a way from, like, Web 2.

1:18:07It’s this whole different infrastructure and Wild West of people that are building and believe in something completely different.

1:18:13And now, like, we’re talking – you know, it’s all about institutionalizing, like, security.

1:18:19Things get reversed when things get taken.

1:18:22And, you know, it’s in such a different place now, which is still interesting.

1:18:25I mean, it’s just interesting in a different way.

1:18:28Like, Web 3.0 now feels like it’s going to survive once – like, it really gets adopted and ends up being just another technology as part of, like, the broader world.

1:18:40Yeah, unless all the companies boycott having their stocks tokenized, which has been the big topic recently.

1:18:47Can they do that? I mean, if I buy a bunch and I just tokenize it, is that, like, illegal at some point?

1:18:52Yeah, they’re – I forget what stock market agency is doing it, but they went to the 66 entities that are underneath them and said, hey, you need to speak up if you don’t want to be tokenized.

1:19:05We’re going to tokenize all of you. And I believe 22 of the 66 have come back and said, we reject this.

1:19:12But is it, like, if I buy 1,000 Tesla stocks and I issue – yeah, right, it’s a security.

1:19:18I issue an NFT that’s each Tesla stock and back it with – Basically, like, the way it works is, like, you kind of need to put it into some sort of SPP, your trust-like entity, that will then issue it on-chain, right?

1:19:32Because, like, you as Justin can’t put it into an NFT, right?

1:19:36Because then people are trusting that, like, you’re holding it, right?

1:19:40Like, you personally are holding it, and you’ll deliver it when they want it.

1:19:43But, like, the way a lot of these tokenized stock platforms work is, like, they have this SPV vehicle that holds the stock one-for-one so that if you want to redeem it ever, you can redeem it pretty easily.

1:19:55But can I do that? Like, can you do that legally without the – you know, is that legal?

1:20:00They exist. There’s, like, a ton – like, pretty much.

1:20:02Yeah. Like, basically, like, the way I see it, like, the way, the analogy I make is, like, it’s basically stablecoins all over again.

1:20:10So it’s, like, you want to kind of be the leader of this tokenized equity issuance platform.

1:20:17And so that’s why everybody’s, Robinhood’s building one, Kraken’s building it, Binance, Solana has a couple different contenders, Base started building one.

1:20:27Like, they all want to do it because it’s, like, very similar to what we saw happen with stablecoins over the last decade, right?

1:20:34Do you think we’ll see a deviation in price between, like, the traditional stock and the on-chain stock?

1:20:41For sure. We’ve seen that already with some of the meme coins, especially on the weekends.

1:20:45Weekend trading, after hours.

1:20:48But, yeah, and then I think we’ll see deviations between different platforms themselves, right, depending on how they’re structured, right?

1:20:55So if maybe, you know, like, it’s very similar to, like, kind of, like, treasury tokens, right, where you’re just like, oh, well, how much of this is actually redeemable?

1:21:05Do we trust that these guys actually hold what they say they hold?

1:21:09If there’s a run on the bank, do they pay everybody out?

1:21:11So, like, when times are good, like, none of that’s an issue, right?

1:21:15But when times are bad, when people are like, are you solving?

1:21:19Like, can you deliver my stock is when you see, like, all these dislocations.

1:21:22The same type of stuff that happens with stablecoins, right?

1:21:25Where people are like, oh, can you deliver the dollar of value that I think I have, right?

1:21:30And so, like, Tether and USDC have been, like, you know, very strong and they have the network effects and they’ve always had, like, audited, well, Tether sometimes audited balance sheets.

1:21:41But, you know, it’s like the smaller ones that are like, oh, wait, like, this is an algorithmic stablecoin and it’s not actually backed by a U.S. dollar.

1:21:48And when the run on the bank happens, that’s when, like, people are fearful.

1:21:51So, what happens if, this is definitely an area I don’t know as much about.

1:21:55So, let’s say you’re a stock and you have a, you give interest quarterly.

1:22:01Like, if you own the tokenized one, then does the person that had the SPV get that interest, you know, or that dividend?

1:22:09That’s part of what they’re figuring out now.

1:22:11Yeah, everyone’s different. But, like, the goal is ultimately to, if you own a stock that gets interest, that gets a dividend, like, you’ll get that dividend.

1:22:20That’s where everybody wants to go.

1:22:22In USDC?

1:22:25Probably in USDC and then you could have it, like, auto buy the stock, like, reinvest your dividends.

1:22:31I’m sure you can do that. You can do that with regular stocks today.

1:22:34But, like, this is all stuff that, like, I won’t say you’re building the plane as you’re taking off and flying.

1:22:43Like, it’s kind of like that, right?

1:22:44But, like, if you wait for regulation, it’s kind of too late, right?

1:22:48Like, the stablecoin bill just came out, what, last year, you know, this year, last year?

1:22:54And, you know, that game was decided.

1:22:57The winners were decided years ago already, you know?

1:23:00Do you guys think, like, once the midterms are over, Trump has no more elections to, like, worry about?

1:23:08Whether it goes well for the Republicans or not, like, besides the point I’m making.

1:23:14I wonder if he starts going heavier on crypto stuff or his family starts going heavier on it once they’re, like, through the last major election that matters to them.

1:23:22And so they start actually, like, going heavier on crypto because they care about it and they’re less worried about anything else.

1:23:30I think it depends on the results of the midterms.

1:23:33I think that’s one. And then two is I think it depends on whether or not one of his sons wants to run as well, right?

1:23:42Because, like, if one of his – they want to work on, like, the legacy, whatever, political family at this point, then obviously they can’t scam and grift as that hard.

1:23:52And also, you know, like, if, like, he’s going to get impeached because they have, like, majority to do it, then he probably has to put the brakes on that as well.

1:24:03I don’t think they should. I mean, if the Democrats – I’m not the biggest fan of Trump, but I think it’s a mistake to try to impeach him.

1:24:10Like, I just think it – if I was the Democrats, I think it just plays into Republicans.

1:24:15Right. Yeah. Like, long-term.

1:24:18But, yeah, I don’t know. I was – I’ve been thinking about that, too.

1:24:21It was just, like, all right, when’s – yeah, did the sun start grifting more or whatever once?

1:24:27I think it just depends on what their political ambitions are, right?

1:24:30Like, and I don’t – I don’t think I know – I’ve heard anything about political ambitions from them, but I’m sure – listen, like, if they’re anything like their dad, I’m sure they’re at least considering it.

1:24:39They’ve end-gamed this out already.

1:24:41They know how this plays out in their own minds.

1:24:44Yeah. Well, we’ll see soon. I thought it would be more positive for, like, you know, Solana or, like, other, like, American-based Robinhood probably, too, that investing in, like, chains that are very firmly from America would matter.

1:24:59Who knows, though? Who knows what they end up thinking?

1:25:04Well, as I said, we’ll see very shortly here how things start to play out.

1:25:08I know we have a lot on the horizon here.

1:25:13Even this week, we have a Fed meeting.

1:25:17Justin, I wonder, maybe before we wrap up here, any closing thoughts, anything that you are equally excited for?

1:25:26Any tips for people in the marketing world, businesses building in this landscape you haven’t been able to talk about yet?

1:25:33Well, it’s really good to chat with both of you, especially, I mean, Hunter and I still talk on the phone late night randomly all the time.

1:25:39But, gmoney, it’s nice to chat.

1:25:41I mean, in a while since we had dinner in L.A., like, God knows how long ago that was now.

1:25:45Amazing. Yeah.

1:25:49No, I mean, look, I think the most important thing is if you’re somebody that’s young, and I think to gmoney’s point earlier, you continue to experiment.

1:25:58There’s no right answer to all these tools.

1:26:00Like, don’t try to think anyone’s a genius.

1:26:04There’s a new tool and a new thing every day.

1:26:06It’s just like getting in there and trying to figure it out yourself.

1:26:09And not using, I think the other mistake is people start trying to use AI to replace what they do now.

1:26:15It’s about enhancing what you do and being able to do more, which is really important.

1:26:19I think figuring out your AI infrastructure for you is really important.

1:26:23I’d say the last thing is, like, I’m spending a lot of time with creators right now.

1:26:27You know, I have two YouTubers that have 15 million plus subscribers as clients right now.

1:26:34And the creator space is getting more and more interesting.

1:26:39For big creators, like the ones I work with, but for smaller creators as well, businesses are more and more relying on creators to make their content and not making it themselves.

1:26:50And so there’s a real opportunity if you’re a creator with 100 to 500 followers even, you can make good money.

1:26:56There’s UGC platforms that you can sign up for, like Tribe is a good one, T-R-Y-B-E, where you can make content for brands and make good money just by, like, making content yourself.

1:27:09Creators and influencers and affiliates are becoming part of marketing infrastructure at a really fast pace.

1:27:16And so if you’re someone young out there, there’s a lot of ways to hustle and make good money and figure out how to make content.

1:27:21I think at the end of the day, being able to make content, whether it be podcasts or posts or something, like, you know, I have a subsect of those really well.

1:27:29You just figure out what your place is.

1:27:31And for not everyone, I know this is on X, it’s not going to be X for everybody.

1:27:35And that’s, like, totally fine. Like, you might be great at something else.

1:27:38And so it’s just, like, find what you’re good at. But it’s funny you say that because, like, for us, like, obviously starting this pod up, you know, we post it on Spotify, YouTube, everywhere.

1:27:47And, like, it’s all automated now through, like, our agents.

1:27:50It’s, like, it’s pretty crazy, like, how fast.

1:27:53The editing, too? The editing, too, yeah. Like, we edit it and then, like, all the clips.

1:27:59Like, we have a clipping agent and then we have a producer agent that will post everything and then, like, comes up with, like, run of show.

1:28:06Like, you know, in the mornings before, like, with all the overnight news.

1:28:11Are you guys using a platform? I know there’s a couple, like, services that do that.

1:28:14Or are you guys doing it yourself? No. I mean, I think at this point we’re probably using Grok.

1:28:19I know we’re using Grok, Claude.

1:28:24Are you using anything else?

1:28:26We use Obis Clips as well. But, like, on, like, even, like, the technology side of this, every graphic we build is using probably four, three or four layers of different AI to get every graphic and, you know, topic created for the show.

1:28:45So, and it’s stuff that, like, previously I’d probably be spending $1,000 a show on somebody to create a lot of this stuff and go figure it out and do the research for.

1:28:57And now, obviously, like, there are APIs behind some of this stuff that either Lute has built internally for their own use or, you know, we have economy to scale with.

1:29:08But I’m sitting here like, oh, my God, like, no, this would have ever been possible unless I was, you know, A16Z with an entire crypto division to do it for us, which is insane.

1:29:18Good for you guys. Yeah, I mean, clipping is really important.

1:29:22Like I said, I have a, I work for one of my clients, Clip Farm is a clipping company, and we clip for Clash of Clans, Minions, Fox, like, massive businesses we do clipping for.

1:29:35And, you know, long form is just a way to get short form now.

1:29:39Yeah. And clipping is, like, what matters.

1:29:43So. Do you ever think it’s going to rotate off of clipping?

1:29:46Because before it used to be, like, you have to be making YouTube videos.

1:29:49Like, that is so, so, so important.

1:29:52And now we’ve probably over-indexed to the point where, like, people are making, they’re doing things for the clip, which is harming them.

1:30:00Uh. Do you think we move out of clipping at any point, or is it just?

1:30:04Well, YouTube still matters. I actually just put this stuff together. That was helpful.

1:30:0914.2% of all TV viewing in America is YouTube.

1:30:1526% of the content viewing on YouTube is creator content.

1:30:22So, you know, long form still has a play. YouTube still is like the dominant player in everything.

1:30:32But, well, clipping for businesses is very different, right?

1:30:35Like, if you’re a brand and you have a trailer for your movie coming out and you run it as a performance add-on meta, you, everyone sees it as an ad. They know they’re consuming an ad.

1:30:47And so, it is, that’s what it is.

1:30:50When you, when you hire a clipping company, your trailer turns into hundreds of different clips from that trailer.

1:30:57A meme, the funny parts, people being like, oh my God, I want to go see this.

1:31:03You pay a lower CPM. CPM means thousand views you get.

1:31:07You know, for clipping, if your, if your original content’s good, you do, you get like a dollar to $2 CPM, which is like incredibly low.

1:31:14And, and so, your video’s going to be viewed significantly more.

1:31:19Once your money runs out, the, the, when you, when you do a performance media campaign, you know, the views stop, right?

1:31:27You don’t get views anymore. Whereas when you do clipping, those clips last forever and the views continue to go up.

1:31:32Uh, and so the, you know, the benefits are, uh, people don’t see it as an ad.

1:31:37You continue to get views. One, one piece of content can turn into thousands.

1:31:41So, you’re like testing the algorithm, like what’s the most interesting part of these trailers.

1:31:45You can get exponentially huge amount of views for it.

1:31:48Um, the downside is like, there’s some controls around geography and demographics, but not as tight as you can with a performance media campaign, obviously.

1:31:59Um, you know, you have to be able to be okay with this going everywhere.

1:32:04So, you know, for businesses, I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon.

1:32:08And it’s not, I don’t think it’s going anywhere for like, there’s a lot of, uh, probably won’t name names, but there’s like definitely big Twitch streamers, uh, and podcasters that using it a lot.

1:32:17So, I don’t think it’s going away.

1:32:20Uh, I think people learn to do it themselves.

1:32:22Like you guys have a lot better, but the problem you guys have is like, you’re clipping it, but you don’t have distro, right?

1:32:26Like you’re distributing the clips onto your own channels, but like, you know, there’s, you know, there’s an army of clippers that have TikToks accounts with the hundreds of thousands of views that just post clips from podcasts.

1:32:38Right. And you guys might be like, damn, I need to get onto those.

1:32:42So, you know, there’s like a big spend component to that, which is like, it’s a content play.

1:32:47It’s a distro play.

1:32:50But distro isn’t off, like there are organic ways of getting it, but a lot of, and why I said like people over index on the clip and they do things for the clip is they don’t have to spend, you know, uh, $20,000 a month on like a clipping network.

1:33:05Like some of these big brands do, if they know they do something that like a clipper is going to want to post.

1:33:10Cause the clipper is like, that’s so insanely polarizing that everybody’s going to watch this and it’s going to go viral.

1:33:16And I’ll, I’ll make 20 bucks off of posting this.

1:33:18Yeah. I mean, I talked to a Twitch streamer who was, who did a, uh, he did like a, a trip somewhere really crazy, you know, and he streamed the whole thing.

1:33:29And he’s like, the only reason I’m doing this is so people clip it.

1:33:32It’s like, that’s it. He’s like the long form, the version I’m, you know, he’s like, yeah, it’s great that, you know, I’ll get 10,000 people to watch the stream live, but I’m doing it to clip it and get it clipped because that’s actually going to drive where people are going to sign up for my YouTube.

1:33:47People will sign up for my Twitch.

1:33:49I’ll monetize.

1:33:51Like, you know, they see it, they see it as just some, they see long form as a means to short form, which not everyone does, but like, you know, podcasts to agree too, right?

1:34:00It’s like the, the short form clips or when you guys might get one clip from this one, probably not one with me in it that gets way more views than the base podcast ever would have.

1:34:11Right. Sure.

1:34:13That’s a good point. That is actually what I noticed when I was going through YouTube was our top performing by view content is shorts.

1:34:23Um, and those have converted the most to new subscribers, which is a fascinating concept that more people should probably be aware of.

1:34:31Yeah. I mean, I had a, um, I had a call with Gary V like a month ago and I was like, by the way, he’s like justice engaging.

1:34:39And when you have a one-on-one with them, I don’t know if you guys have, it’s like, he’s talking on a podcast.

1:34:43He’s just like, so engaging. He speaks in like, like good clips, you know, like he’s like clippable, even like one-on-one.

1:34:51And I was telling him, I’m like, look, man, I’m like, I’m posting on LinkedIn all the time.

1:34:55It’s going really well. I have this newsletter that’s, that’s doing well.

1:34:58And, you know, I have a big following on Twitter, which probably hates me now, but I still have a big following on Twitter.

1:35:02I’m making video content now, uh, a lot that’s going on Instagram.

1:35:07I’m like, but I’m like, it’s just so much.

1:35:09I’m like, where should I focus?

1:35:11And he’s like, nowhere.

1:35:13He’s like, you need to just do, put as much content as you can everywhere and see how it goes.

1:35:18And like, you know, same for you guys, like it’s the long form, it’s the posts, it’s the clips.

1:35:22You just kind of like push it in every direction.

1:35:25I’m very much of the Gary Vee school of content is like, and I tell people this all the time is like, he’s like for years, he’s been saying like, you need to put out like at least 10 pieces of content every day, you know, across like all these different platforms.

1:35:39Like, you know, like whether it’s like one post on X, one on LinkedIn, three on TikTok, four on Instagram.

1:35:45It’s like, you just need to be out there, right?

1:35:47And like post as much as possible.

1:35:49He has an army to help him. I mean, I have an agency helping me.

1:35:54And I post, so I post on LinkedIn every day.

1:35:57I write three newsletters a week.

1:35:59I make three videos a week.

1:36:01Like, and then I also have brand clients.

1:36:04I have clients I have to deal with. And I’m like capacity, that like capacity.

1:36:09It also is like, I run out of ideas sometimes, you know, you like, I have to write a newsletter for tomorrow.

1:36:14And like sitting here today, I think I’m going to write about is like what Hunter and I have talked about.

1:36:18Like, I think consumer facing websites will start to go away as agentic, agentic websites will be the new thing that people will start building.

1:36:29And like, but I run out of ideas sometimes.

1:36:32Like, sometimes I’m just like, I don’t fucking know what I’m going to say today.

1:36:35You know, I don’t know. Like, I got to go shoot a video. I’m like, I don’t know what I’m going to write about.

1:36:40What are you going to talk about? Paul, don’t leave it up to me. He has like a volume of past content that his team can pull from, thankfully.

1:36:45And he’s just so good at this.

1:36:47And I’m just not there yet.

1:36:49I mean, he’s been doing it for 20 years.

1:36:52He’s the GOAT, right? The GOAT, dude. Like, new level of respect, you know?

1:36:57And sometimes he says stuff. I see a video clip and I’m like, nah, I don’t agree with that.

1:37:03And then you see another one. It’s like, great. And it’s like, well, that’s what he’s doing. He’s just like putting and pushing ideas out into the ether.

1:37:11And that’s what happens when you’re doing volume of content.

1:37:14He’s also not like worried about being wrong.

1:37:17Like he can, he’d be like, yeah, I got it wrong.

1:37:19But I put up a thousand shots and over that thousand shots, you know, even if only a hundred of them are right. I know it’s, his hit rate’s way higher, but you know.

1:37:27Yeah. I mean, I think that’s okay. I think like to a degree, like when I write about Jack Butcher, that’s what I’m thinking about a little bit is like nobody like ever questions this stuff.

1:37:34And I’m like, I don’t know. It’s like his 10th project.

1:37:37Does that, and by the way, I think a lot of people.

1:37:39Where it’s like, yeah, like he’s doing something right.

1:37:42He’s great. I, I got a lot of DMs from people actually with big followings that were told me they were too scared to say anything publicly about it, but it agreed with me, which I thought that was interesting, but anyways, like, I think it’s important to be thought provoking or ever, not as negative as I’ve been.

1:37:56I need to be better about that, but yeah, I mean, it’s about putting the concept on the timeline, more positive Justin on the timeline.

1:38:03I know. I actually thought about that. I was like, I have to be much better about it.

1:38:07But yeah, it’s like you, you, a lot of times I write things and people are on my newsletter and people will say, Hey, that like provoked a thought for me or whatever.

1:38:18And that’s like, means you’re doing something right.

1:38:20And Gary is fantastic at that. He’s very good at being thought provoking.

1:38:23And even if it’s like, you know, I got off of him and you know, I asked him like, I don’t know, like, and he’s just like, he’s like, yes.

1:38:30He’s like, you need to be schizophrenic with your content.

1:38:33You gotta like be all over the place.

1:38:35And I’m like, okay. And I’m like, God, I don’t know. Like, can I be, I don’t know what that means for me.

1:38:39I need to take what he said as his advice and figure it out for me.

1:38:42Um, but yeah, man, you guys are probably a time, right?

1:38:46Yeah, I was going to say, Justin, thank you for hopping on, uh, incredible conversation.

1:38:52Super fun. Um, and anybody that’s doing marketing or working in the world of created agencies should give you a follow on Twitter at the smarmy bum, swarmy bum, uh, Justin, fantastic.

1:39:05Catch up. We’ll catch you up, uh, soon.

1:39:08Cheers, mate. All right. Peace out, guys. Peace out. Yep. Bye. Gee, what a fantastic show. So, uh, we’ll, uh, we’ll end here with one note, uh, on the forward look for the week.

1:39:19Uh, we do have in one day, one hour and 46 minutes, the Fed decision, uh, all eyes should be there, um, with Warsh.

1:39:27Uh, and then we have some big earnings coming up after the close Wednesday, uh, tomorrow Alphabet and Microsoft Thursday, Amazon Coinbase and strategy.

1:39:38All those super, super important.

1:39:41And then we have 10, almost 11 billion in Bitcoin options expiring on Friday.

1:39:47Um, lots of volatility ahead.

1:39:50I would say there’s going to be, uh, a lot of signals in the market.

1:39:55And so plan accordingly. I don’t know if you have any outlook on any of those.

1:39:58Um, no, I...

1:40:03We’ll talk about it on Thursday, I guess.

1:40:05We’ll cover it on Thursday.

1:40:06Everybody, thank you for tuning in. Shout out to chat. Love to see it. And we’ll catch you on the next one. If you’re not, make sure you’re subscribed on YouTube.

1:40:14I’m going to be putting out more there. Until then, we’ll see you on Thursday morning.

1:40:17Cheers, guys.