10 Startups w/ Stock Grants That’ll Make You A Millionaire | Sara’s List 2024

All right, today is everybody's favorite episode. It is the Sarah's List episode. So we're talking about 10 companies that you can become wealthy with without having started it or invested in it or joined earlier. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel. Sarah's List. And I got a little presentation for you. If you're on audio, get over to YouTube right now because I have slides that are gonna be fun. So, uh, it's called Sarah's List. This is Sam's wife, Sarah.

Uh, that's hilarious.

She's on the COVID of My First Million. And the reason why is because she has an unlikely story, a story that I hadn't really heard. And when I heard it for the first time, it kind of shocked me, which is, I think when I heard this, she was about 30 years old at the time. She was a self-made millionaire. Uh, but she didn't start a company. She wasn't, you know, killing herself working 100 hours a week like we were. She wasn't paying herself scraps. She was getting paid a nice salary with nice benefits. She worked at a great company that had good culture. She didn't have to make risky angel investments and get lucky. She was not a high-profile exec that just got, you know, some huge pay package. And she wasn't lucky like the Facebook graffiti guy that just got a bunch of stock from, from Facebook and, you know, made $70 million. And so her story was almost incredibly boring. It was incredibly simple. And I just couldn't believe it. I was like, I'm trying so hard to make, make a million bucks here. That was such a better path. And so just to recap, you know, self-made millionaire, didn't start, didn't have to start the business, didn't have to do risk angel investing, wasn't a high-profile exec, wasn't the graffiti guy. What she did was she joined Airbnb. And so if you look at this chart, this is Airbnb's valuation over time. And there was a period when Airbnb started that was the high-risk period. That's the flat part of this curve. And to join Airbnb then, you had to see something that was not obvious. You had to believe something that took a huge leap of faith. You had to work like crazy in a tiny apartment. There's a fun video, by the way, of them taking like midday dance breaks where they just played a bunch of— everyone stands up from the desk and they're dancing. You had to do weird startup stuff. There was a guy with stinky feet, probably. That's not even what we're talking about, right? She joined after it had crossed, you know, a $10, even, right, Sam? $20 billion valuation.

Yeah. And if I remember, like, they already had that huge office. Do you remember that huge office at 888 Brannan?

And yeah.

I imagine there was like 1,000 people plus working there. Like, it wasn't small.

For the listener, people cared about, quote, these people. These people was Prince Harry and his wife. Yeah, see, I don't even know who it is.

Point proven.

I rest my case. By the way, did you know this? Sesame Street and 7-Eleven launched VC funds during this time. And so they had their own venture funds. Everybody Everybody was getting in on the game, but nothing lasts forever. And so since then, just to give you some data here, so since then, about 36% of startups who have raised money since then have raised at a lower valuation. That's not to count the companies that died or the companies that are avoiding raising because they don't want to raise down rounds. This is like transactions that cleared. One-third of them are clearing at a lower price of all startups. It's even worse if you look at late-stage startups. So later-stage startups, which are the ones we're talking about, Series C, Series D, they're down between 30% and 60% on average. That's the— that's the— that's what you're seeing across the board. Sad news. Two-thirds of employees right now that are working at these companies are working for options that are actually worth zero, and they probably don't even realize it yet, meaning they got a pay package of stock options at a $24 strike price. That stock is currently trading in secondary for $8. So all of their shares are underwater. Currently, only 33% of the shares are in the money, as they say.

All right.

So what did we pick? We picked about 11 companies. I think we shared one company, but we had each picked around here. Here's how we did. So it's not great. All the stuff I just told you is basically our big fat excuses as to why it wasn't great. We both had 2 hits. So 2 things that did, that did go up in a sort of step change way, you know, sort of 3, 4x so far in the 3 years. I had 2 that were down, like valuation lower than it was previously. You had 3 that were down. And then there were some pushes. And a push basically is like, has the same valuation as it had before,, but that's actually sort of a win because you beat the market. So you didn't achieve the Sarah's List dream, but you didn't take the huge write-down that a bunch of—

you're wrong about Next Health. Next Health is wrong.

Next Health is wrong on here. Oh, is it actually up?

Well, the word next— there's two companies. One is Next, one is Nex. So I think you, you— there was a little confusing.

Uh, but someone in the research department's getting fired here.

No, they're just, they're just missing a T. Uh, OpenStore, uh, well, so OpenStore is down.

It's un— it's unclear, but I mark it as down. And it's a little intellectual honesty. I don't think— I don't believe that it has, uh, achieved its, its, its, uh, its status to be called up. I— we have it as a TBD. I gave it a, uh, a less generous interpretation of down just to make my own grading harsher. This is not about them. It's about me grading my own picks more, more so.

And you think Figma's down too?

Well, Figma tried to— it's not a down, it's a push here. It tried to sell for $20 billion. Didn't clear, that the transaction didn't go through. So that would have been a 2x. But then the last, I believe, round of funding— and this, by the way, this is not all very obvious. So companies don't always announce their valuations. There's leaked valuations to the media, which are not always true. There's valuations that come with a bunch of strings attached. So maybe you've got a good number, but there's all these caveats and liquidation preferences. And a lot of this was we asked people who own secondary stock marketplaces, we said, hey, what is this company trading at right now. And so it's incomplete information, right? We're doing the best we can here with private stock information that you don't, you don't always have.

By the way, Sarah, my wife, who this is about, had a job offer at Figma like 3 months before their acquisition offer, which like it had that gone through, I believe it would have been a 2x return based off the valuation. So we almost, we almost had a mini hit again, but not quite.

Yes, exactly. All right. Let's get to the 2024 picks. We're going to try to do better now. The good news is that any picks you made, anything in the vintage of 2021, like I said earlier, all the companies basically got shellacked. Everything got re-underwritten. Everything got corrected. But now where we're at, I think we are at a less hypey period of time. And so this cohort of picks I think should be better. But again, not financial advice. Really, neither me nor Sam actually are trying to go get jobs. This is kind of like what we would do if we were going to get a job. Sam did this with Sarah when she was looking for jobs. So this is for fun. Uh, let's just put that out there. We're not giving financial advice here.

So I have like 5 or 6, but then I got a bunch of other ones that were like, it's like scrap. Like I didn't quite get to. What do you think is the, let's say we each bring 5 to the table. I bet you there's going to be at least 3 that we are overlapping on. What do you think?

Yeah, 2. I'm guessing 2 overlaps. And by the way, I'll say I think a good hit rate on this— good hit rate would be 6 out of 10. 6 out of 10 have a step up where 5 years later— we're not even 5 years after the 2021 ones yet. We're only 3 years in. But 5 years later, that they're sort of like a 4 or 5x in valuation. If 6 out of 10 did that, I think that would be a great thing. I think 3 out of 10 would be sort of the lowest bar that I would accept.

All right. You want to go first?

All right, I'm gonna go first. I'll start with an obvious one. It's probably one that you have too. OpenAI. And by the way, there are no bonus points for difficulty in business. The fact that everybody knows OpenAI, I'm not trying to give you a secret company, a secret stock tip you've never heard of. The point of this often is that the companies that are gonna be big juggernauts are hidden in plain sight. So OpenAI currently valued at $103 billion. It's doing about $3.5 billion a year in revenue already. The bull case. So what do you need to believe if you're going to join this company that you, that you think it's a serious contender? It's the first credible Google competitor in about 20 years. It is something that actually could displace, replace search, which is like, you know, when people need an answer to something or they need help with something, where do they go? It's the fastest growing company ever. That's nice. So it took them, you know, 2 or 3 months to reach 100 million users. Uh, it's 5 times faster growing than the next fastest product ever. It reached $3 billion in revenue in the last, you know, in like 3 years, which is pretty crazy. And it's unique because it's an enterprise company, it's a consumer company, and it's a dev tools company at the same time. I think that's pretty, pretty unique and gives it a lot of upside. What you would be worried about if you were looking at OpenAI is it's probably the most competitive market on earth right now. You are getting competition from every— the most well-funded startups of the most brilliant people, as well as the biggest tech companies in the world, Facebook, Google, Amazon. Everybody is coming after this market. So that's the downside is will OpenAI retain their lead or not?

Yeah, yeah. The problem with OpenAI— can you get a job at OpenAI? Not only is it the most competitive, like, not only is it the most like competitive space, like I imagine they have to have one of the more competitive like job applicant pools. Dude, I read some crazy stat that Tesla has something like 50,000 people a day applying to work there. And I have to imagine that OpenAI, it's somewhat similar where they are just like inundated with applications.

Well, yeah. I mean, but we're talking our listeners, the cream of the crème, the cream of the crop here. This is the crème de la crème. So yeah, of course they can get a job wherever they want.

So would, oh, well, OpenAI 5x the current valuation. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. That, that, yep. I agree with you. Um, all right. You want me to do one? Mm-hmm. All right. I've got one called Retool. Do you know what Retool is?

I know Retool. I use Retool and I, wish that I invest in Retool. I tried to invest in Retool early on and I missed it.

I'm not a user of it, so it actually would be best as a user, uh, explain what it is.

So every technology company has the same situation that they would all homebrew a solution for. The situation is you need a backend admin panel. So you have this, I'm sure, with Hampton where, uh, oh, we need to add or remove a member, or hey, this person changed companies, they're asking if we can update their, their thing, or hey, can we change their membership status from active to suspended or whatever, whatever, some admin function that you need to do. And it doesn't come out of the box with whatever, you know, you're using 10 tools to run your business, but like, this is the, what's the tool for your business? And so Retool is a simple way to make the admin, you know, uh, panel for admin system for your, for your company where anybody in the company who's not a developer can actually go in and, you know, add, remove, you know, make changes to essentially the database. That's like the simplistic way of saying it. It's basically a backend tool for any business that you can customize and your developers can build once so that anybody in the team can use. So it's an internal tool.

That's a one-chart business right there.

That's a one-chart business. And not a lot of people focus on that because you kind of focus on things that you see and use versus things on the backend that you maybe you kind of get, you don't really touch that often. But the business has crushed it. And so they launched in 2017. Their latest valuation is $3.7 billion. They've raised $150 million from Sequoia and a bunch of other great companies. Listen to this growth. First 9 months, $500,000 in revenue. In 2018, they hit $2 million in ARR. In 2024, they hit around $100 million in recurring revenue. So it's got to be one of the faster growing businesses out there. And I've been watching interviews with this guy David, the founder. Dude, he's amazing. Uh, he's a— he's an amazing company. So at a valuation of 3.7, uh, I think there's room to run. I think there's a 5 or 10x potential here. Uh, I mean, that's got to be a— they got to be— be a huge business,, but the market is just massive and I like the guy.

Was he like a little guy?

Like, how do I invest?

He was young. I think he, I think he was like a college kid almost.

Yeah, he looked like he just could have been any employee at the company. He was wearing his own shirt. Anyway, so Retool, I like the pick. Valuation is high. So I think 4 or 5x is tough from there, right? To become a $15 billion company is tough, but I think it's a good, really good company. All right, let me give you my next one. The next one, Mercury. You're nodding. Do you have this one?

It was on my, uh, I had it on my list and then I removed it because I thought you were going to pick them.

I did pick Mercury. So Mercury is a company that I use. So I'm a, again, look at, look at the tools you use that you don't want to change. Um, so I use Mercury for, I think not 1, 2, but like 6 of my companies now. Um, it's just an amazing product. So the valuation is still in that sweet spot range where it's, I think it's $1.6 billion right now. So the valuation is, is there, here's the bull case. Here's what you need to believe. It has a rare combination of things.

Well, hold on. What, what, so Mercury is just a bank that is built for small businesses and it's easier and simpler to use. It's basically just a normal bank, just easier and better.

Who do they use?

So they use like Choice Bank, I think, and Evolve Bank underneath. So they're what we call like a neobank, you know, just like a finance platform basically. And the bear case, the other thing that, you know, the worry would be, can they grow with their startups? So some products are great because you get them while they're young and you grow with them. And other products, you get them while they're young and then they graduate off you. And as soon as they become really valuable customers, they take their business elsewhere. I think they're going to be able to grow with startups, but that would be the risk here. I didn't find, honestly, much of a bear case. Do you? I don't know if you have a—

Yeah, I've got a bear case. I think I almost always bank with Chase because I've just always been afraid of, can I access my money? And it happened recently where a lot of people were using Mercury as— I mean, not to shit on Mercury, they were using lots of different things, uh, and they couldn't get their payments out or their payroll out, uh, because of the bank, uh, the banks are working. And SFB was one of them. They're no longer in business because they're this huge company that mismanaged a bunch of stuff and it didn't work out. And so, yeah, I think that's a massive bear case. I think that the reason I bank with Chase is because if Chase were to go out of business and have the issue that Silicon Valley Bank had, America would basically go under.

Too big to fail.

Yeah. And I always knock on wood when I say that, but a little bit like that where it's like, you know, I think Chase is like— I would have to look at the stats, but it's something like 5% of like Americans use it. So it's like a pretty big deal. And so, yeah, I think that's a bearish case as to why.

So I don't think that's necessarily a bear case because first of all, they have like, I think, $5 million FDIC insurance now. Like, they offer like 20 times more FDIC protection than, than they, that they need to, or than the average bank does. So I think they've, they've got some features that help with that. But the other thing is like, I think the proof is in the pudding with this, which is that if, uh, while it's understandable to say, oh, you know, I, I choose to go with a too-big-to-fail bank, if you just look at kind of where the startups are voting with their feet, this thing is growing so fast that obviously people are making that choice already. So it's not like a future scenario. It's like today that choice exists and people are making the choice to go to Mercury. So I don't see a reason why that would change later necessarily. Like usually when I think about a bear case, like what could go wrong in the future, whereas what you're talking about, which is maybe people just prefer to use a traditional kind of 100-year-old bank because of the track record, they have that choice today and people are like choosing to do the other one. So, you know, I think that's less of a bear case.

Last weekend, because I'm a client at Chase, they gave me box seats to the US Open and it totally worked. I'm going to bank with Chase for as long as they'll have me, so long as I get tickets to the US Open. So as soon as Mercury, like, starts doing these wide-eyed perks, they ain't shit. Like, I want— I want a fucking fruit basket. I want a gift basket. If I don't get a gift basket, you don't get my business. I've changed, man.

I mean, I'll take a 20-piece nuggets from Chick-fil-A. Like, I don't— I'm not— I'm a simple man. I don't need the US Open. This is easy.

Oh my God. They took me— I got these like amazing seats to the US Open and it worked. It worked. Look like it worked. I get it. I fell for the trap. And so— but yeah, no, I think Mercury is a great business. I think the founder is pretty badass. So yeah, that one's good. All right. So you said that, uh, you were going to look at like the founders and, and, or no, sorry. You said you're going to use your P&L. So, uh, where you spend some of your money. I like that. I also do like, where do I spend some of my time and where do people spend some of their time? And so a tool that I'm playing with, it's called Cursor. And I think Cursor is pretty amazing. And so, and I'm going to tell you not my story, but the reason I've been using it, but there was this little girl, she's 8 years old. Her father's on Twitter and her father's a developer, I guess. And her father tweeted something out. Saying, I'm trying to teach my little girl how to code and we're using Cursor. And here's a FaceTime of her, like a Loom, like a screen record of her learning how to code. And within 12 minutes or something like that, she's built a website and she used Cursor. So Cursor is this really cool tool. It's got a lot of hype right now. It just kind of— the easiest way to describe it is it's sort of like Squarespace, Wix, or any of these other website builders, but it uses AI and you talk to it a little bit like a person and it makes it really easy to edit code. Now there's a bunch of pros and cons to this business. The pro is I think it's amazing. Like I think that this tool's awesome. I've been playing with it. It's super good. Their latest valuation is $400 million. I don't think that that's insane. So that's like, there's opportunity there. I think that the con, and this is a big con, which is these website building tools, dude, their PE multiples are shit. So you look at like Squarespace, Wix, Weebly. Do you remember all these? Like, they don't trade that well, so they can do billions.

I think you're pigeonholing it as a website builder. It's not a website builder, it's a, it's an IDE. You can code anything.

You can code anything in it, but it's still, I think, in that category in terms of, uh, you don't think it's in that category in terms of competitors?

Uh, GitHub Copilot, Replit category, where it's a, where it's a coding environment where a programmer can become now an AI-assisted programmer. So however good you were, however efficient you were, however productive you were as an engineer, as a programmer, you can now be, you know, some multiple more, maybe it's 1.5x more productive, maybe it's 10x more productive as the AI improves. And so I don't think, because, you know, Wix and Weebly, these are like, you know, my sister needs a website for her preschool. So she goes to Squarespace and makes a website, she's not going to, she's not gonna go to cur— well, today she's not going to Cursor for that. And also those tools could never do what a Cursor could do where it could build full applications, you know?

Yeah, I feel you. I feel you. I still think that like, all right, so, uh, we use, I use Bubble, you know, Bubble. Mm-hmm. Um, Bubble's like an app builder. Uh, this is a little bit of a competitor to Bubble. And in my head as an investor and at potentially as a user, I think it comes into like, it uses, it's like the same churn. As a small business or a website builder where you spend $10 a month and there's not always a massive reason to stay on the platform versus all the other competitors. Like it's pretty easy just like up and try different ones. Do you know what I mean? And so for that reason, I think it's a little bit similar in the terms of, in terms of valuation.

Right.

Um, okay.

I have a, I have, I was, I looked at Cursor very close. In fact, they were on my first draft of companies to be on here, but then as I did more research, I went with another company that you'll see at the end of this.

So, okay. But what do you think about Cursor for a $450 million valuation? What do you think?

I think, I mean, I think you're getting high upside, high downside there. Cause, uh, you know, that valuation is not based on, it's not based on revenue. Um, it's, it's based on like, you know, this, this vision of what the future might look like. And that's great. And I think Cursor's awesome right now. If I could invest in Cursor, I would totally invest in Cursor right now. But I think it is more risky than some of the other ones we've talked about so far.

I think that's true. They're at a $10 million run rate, I believe, or I don't know if it was run rate or that's actually what they did in revenue, but yeah, it's tiny compared to the valuation. What do you have then instead? What's your competitor doing?

I'll show you. It's my last one, but I, um, can't rearrange the slides here. So you're going to have to wait on that. Um, when you told that story about that little girl, I thought you were pulling a Kamala Harris and you were going to say that little girl was me at the end. And I was pretty ready for that emotional landing. Instead you were like, that was just somebody's daughter.

I just follow grown men's daughters on Twitter. I don't know. It was like, where are you getting your tech advice? Dude, it was, are you, did you see that video?

I did not see that one, but I've seen some kind of amazing things. Cursor demos right now, all the rage, dude.

All the rage. All right. Keep going. All right.

My next one. I don't even know if you've heard of this company, Epirus. Do you know this company?

No.

Okay.

So I don't like that name. Epirus.

Yeah. Epirus. So this is a Joe Lonsdale company. It is a weapons company, a defense company. And I don't know enough about Epirus because it's a very secretive company. Um, and it's very private. To tell you that this is the pick. What I actually did was I put this here as a placeholder, as a general strategy. So one thing I would do if I was interested in this kind of Sarah's List concept, finding a company I can go join that the stock is going to be— my stock package is going to be appreciating rapidly. I'll get a 5x in 5 years. I think that the way Anduril hit for us last time, there are now like 10 more Anduril type of companies that exist that are inspired by Anduril. That are worth checking out. Anduril itself might still be a contender, by the way, um, but there are more companies. So Epirus is basically, uh, it's like long-range, you know, like defense weapon or whatever.

Dude, if you go to their website, it's Epirus Inc. It basically looks like some type of like electromagnetic thing that shoots like radio waves into the sky and brings down drones and planes.

Exactly what it does. It's an EMP pulse that will take down, you know, a drone or a missile or something like that. Without being a bomb. Like, you don't have to, like, you don't have to bomb something. You could just disable it.

It's just magic.

There's a great story, by the way.

Is David Blaine the CEO? Because this looks magical. Like, when I see, like, invisible rays—

it's such a good pickup line. I'm gonna use that next time I try to, like, talk to a founder. Be like, but are you related to David Blaine? Because this is magical. Is he your cousin?

Um, it does look like magic.

I, but I, from the outside here, dude, how do you even get that person? So let's say you're Joe Lonsdale, which, like, I guess that's kind of answered the, answers the question because he's a big shot. But if you're not a big shot and you want to get, like, some CIA buyer into a field in Texas to like show up, like to, to wow him. Like, who do you even phone call? You know what I mean?

Like who? Well, I think there's multiple answers to this, but I'll just give you a couple of data points. So the very first thing is that there are bids, there are like RFPs that you can participate in. There are, there are like, you know, uh, the government has a process of procurement where they need to be able to go solicit proposals. So you can go look at those, you can go talk to those. The second thing is When we were at his house after we recorded the podcast with Joe, we were walking out and there was like 10 like senators there for lunch. And it's like, oh, this is how you build your network. You, you, he's like hosting a lunch for like 10.

Did he like bring you out the back door?

Like, uh, like a business? No, literally, well, because Elon was coming over and he was like, hey, it might be easier for you if you just want to go this way. And we were like, easier for you or easier for me? Like, uh, maybe for both of us. All right, good. Fair, fair enough. Uh, because I'm literally in my basketball shorts.

Did he hand you $20 and bought you an Uber?

He's like, don't forget your lunchbox. And then I like wandered off to a bus.

Um, yeah. Was there apple juice waiting for you at the doorway out?

It's truly how it felt. And by the way, I couldn't have been happier with the arrangement. I did not want to be a fish out of water either. So I think that's one way. There's also a great story he told on the pod about how Peter Thiel was telling them, like, dude, because when they started Palantir, he was like a couple years out of college. He wasn't that old yet. And he had a lot of kind of like the pride and hubris of a tech kind of genius type of person. And he is a genius type of genius level person. But going in and saying, you guys are dumb, we're smart, is not the answer either to sell to these things. And so they hired this guy, Alex Karp, who's still the CEO of Palantir. And one of the reasons why I was like, this guy was just like very, very good with relationship building, with networking, with being accepted by these buyers. And then he recruited like ex-government people to be like door openers, like warm handshakes to help them get in the room. And I think that that's how they got—

I want to do an entire podcast next time just on the New York Times article on Alex Karp. Very funny.

Very good. Very interesting.

Yeah, very good. Uh, all right. I buy into that. I— to me, working at Epirus or any of these national or these defense businesses, it's sort of like working at a porn company where like you, like, probably most of the work, uh, might be like—

tell your mom you work in video entertainment.

Well, yeah, like most of the work is like normal, like just a normal job. It's boring. But then like you see the output and it's like, fuck, like death or destruction or like, like pretty like raunchy shit.

If you're fair, their tool, this Epirus tool, just in this case is like a non-death tool. It's disabling the electricity without bombing anything. But yeah, yeah, definitely some of the other ones are, are a lot more like, yeah, this is war.

Yeah, we're like, the output of this, whether it's right or wrong, uh, it's still like a— you, you, it's— you go to bed every once in a while, I imagine, with a heavy heart, even if you're doing everything right. Um, all right, I haven't— I have another one, and I am— you know that, what is that called, that, uh, Midwit meme where there's people who are on like this The dumb guys are at the far end where they just don't think things are— how does it go?

You're on one of them. Let's just put it that way. You're showing that you got one of the sides nailed. There's the kind of the beginner, the caveman who's just like, you know, build product, talk to customers, right? And then the Jedi's also like, you know, I should just build a good product, talk to customers. And then the guy in the middle is doing like over-analysis, overthinking, over everything. But I feel like you, you did a good job, like, you know, uh, like, like a mime, you like acted out the meme. It was great.

I am what I am. Uh, I took that approach with a couple of these. Dude, have you heard of this company called Wiz?

I've heard of Wiz. I don't know what Wiz does. I looked at it and I was like, I don't understand this enough, dude.

I was like, okay, what does that even mean?

Yeah.

It's like a Tinder bio. Jesus. Yeah.

Well, he looks not like what I thought. Um, actually your first line about like, don't let my gentle whatever, fool you. Like, I'm here to whatever, handcuff you to the bed. I don't know what he said, but like something like that. That's what I heard. He's— he just looks like a good— it looks like a Midwest nice guy, uh, when I look at these photos. I was really expecting a lot more hardcore looking of a guy, which is just from my Google image search.

Dude, when you see a guy wearing a t-shirt who sells to like suits or the NSA or whatever, like these like big, big shots, I think that like you're secretly very dangerous. Like, you know what I mean?

Um, and let me tell you something here. So, um, okay, so check this out. There's a part of the Wizz story that I think is pretty interesting. First of all, interesting pick. I think they have such a high valuation that you're really betting this is like one of the mega-cap tech companies to do this. Okay, fair enough. The, the thing that scares me is anything that grows this fast, you know, what goes up must come down in a way. This is not— it's not as Lindy, it's not as you know, when something is a slow compounder, you actually trust it more than an explosive but not like, doesn't have a long track record.

Dude, but that's the goal of this thing is things that could 5x in 3 years. That's fast growth.

5 years. 5 years.

Yes.

Whatever. Yeah, true. True. But I guess what I'm saying is like, it might be priced in. I don't know. So let me tell you something that's interesting about this. So when I saw this company's growth so fast, there's a natural question of, well, how? Have you heard about the story about this guy named Gilly? That's associated, associated with Wiz.

No, but I'm in.

All right, so who is Gili? I don't even know how to say his last name.

Ranon.

Ranon. Something like that. Gili Ranon. Let's call him—

dude, is it all these guys, by the way, they're Israeli, like, special force guys? Yeah. So they all—

this guy's ex-Israeli military intelligence. Yes. He also invented CAPTCHA. He invented WAF, which is web application firewalls. He did a bunch of other stuff in cybersecurity. He was a partner at Sequoia. Very well respected in the cybersecurity world. And he started a VC firm called Cyberstarts, and they're the first investor in Wiz. Now check this out. So let me just read you this excerpt. The numbers for the, for the VC fund Cyberstats are phenomenal. The fund that specializes in cybersecurity, funded by Gil only 6 years ago. Here's, here's how it goes. So 22 companies, combined value $35 billion. 5 of the 22 are unicorns. So a higher hit rate than YC. First and foremost is Wiz, who's breaking all the records. 4 of them were sold in the last 12 months. So, you know, like successful exits for a total amount of $1.5 billion. In the last 3 months, their companies have raised $1.8 billion, blah, blah, blah. His portfolio shows an IRR of more than 100%, which is, you know, unusual for even the best performing funds. Not a single company has failed so far in his portfolio, and it is currently ranked in the top 5 of all VC funds in the world due to these achievements. Okay, so then you say, well, hold on, what is, what's working? What's, what's actually happening here? And then you say, then there's something called the Gil Ronanan model. And basically what he does is he's got this mafia of the chief, the CISOs. So the, the chief security officers, um, at all these enterprise companies and they're all in his pocket. They all respect him. They think he's got the Midas touch. He's done so much in the space. He builds a relationship with them, but then he makes them essentially partners. Like, I think like carry partners in his fund.. And so what he does is he basically has like a bribery network is what my understanding of this is. Not what they called it, but like, corruption's awesome.

Corruption's awesome.

I pick winners. I just thought this guy was awesome because he wrote cool emails and he's got a dope smile. Turns out, you know, there's good reason.

There's a wolf backing him.

Yeah. Well, a lot of 'em are from, uh, I think it's called Unit 8200, something like that. It's like the NSA of Israel. And so if you look at like some of the largest security companies, so it's like, uh, I don't want to talk totally outta turn here, but I think it's like Palo Alto Networks and all these like multi-billion dollar companies. They all came from that unit. And so it turns out with this guy, it's more of a— they're, they're, they're definitely working together, but I thought they were just working together because they were all from like the same crew, you know? It's like they all went to high school together. Turns out there's like a blood oath.

Neither you nor I know jack shit about this, but it sounds like a movie and we're pretty fascinated. That's— I think that's what's happening here. It sounds like some oceans of love and shit.

And can I— a big dummy like me came to the great conclusion as, uh, this Fucking smart. Genius.

Yeah.

All right, what do you got?

All right, my next one is a quick one. Neuralink. So Neuralink is currently valued at $5 billion. It's got like pretty much no revenue. Here's the case. Elon, they put a chip in a guy's head and he's like playing video games on a Twitch stream now. Uh, it's pretty crazy. The first patient, they have a huge technical milestone.

Was he paralyzed or he had MS?

Yeah, he's a quadriplegic, um, you know, so he can't— I think he can't move his arms or his legs, I believe. And now with his brain, he's just playing chess and use— he basically can use a computer with his brain now just by thinking.

Okay.

But you're missing the whole point of this list, which is like, how do you like not like stress out all the time and like things like that and have a good job?

These companies need the, they need the personality hire. They need the guy who's bringing smoothies to the office. They need the guy who's a good time to be around. They need the guys that willing to do the dirty work and, uh, go clean up the files and go organize things.

Do you think that Elon has a personality hired?

Yeah, I think he does, dude. I think he's got literally meme lords that work for him. I think he's definitely got personality hired.

I don't know, man. I agree with you on so many things.

I know some dummies that work at Tesla. Let me put it that way. I have some like, who's this? My cousin works at Tesla. Then you meet the cousin. It's like, does he work in the tire shop? Who's this guy?

Yeah, I feel that. But Neuralink's not that. How many employees do you think they have?

Uh, I have no idea. I would guess like probably like 100 is my guess or somewhere like plus or minus 50. Uh, I have no clue. That's too small to hide. You're assuming— I didn't say Sarah's List is the chill life. It's not, it's not the rest and vest life. I, I think maybe we have a misunderstanding there. Maybe Sarah wasn't doing as much work as I thought.

No, it's like a 40-hour work week. I, I don't know if Neuralink is a 40-hour work week. If it is, then I'm on board.

Okay. Fair enough.

Fair enough. Um, all right. Uh, I'll do, I've got 2 more maybe. All right. You had OpenAI. Now I wanna, I wanna vote with my attention a little bit. I use OpenAI every day, but you know what else I use a ton is Perplexity. Um, do you use that?

Me too. Me too. Yeah. I use Perplexity as well.

Now, how would I explain the difference between the 2? I think Perplexity is—

Perplexity is when you need the answer to be right. Yeah. ChatGPT is when you have a variety of random things and when you wanna brainstorm, it's not as important. Yeah. If I'm doing research for this pod and I need to say a number that's not gonna be, be wrong, um, Perplexity is a better bet than ChatGPT.

So Perplexity, I think their latest valuation was $3 billion. They've raised $415 million. Uh, so it's already like very big, but I think the market's huge. I also think when I find like interesting stories about the founders and I love it. So what's the CEO of Perplexity? I know how you spell it.

Arvind, I think is his name.

Arvind. All right. So there's a funny story about Arvind. He grew up in the same area as the Google CEO and he grew up vegetarian and his mom wouldn't let him eat eggs, the Perplexity CEO. And he like grew up and like, no, you can't have eggs. And he's like, I need more protein. She's like, you can't have eggs. So he sees a YouTube video of Sundar from Google saying, yeah, introduce eggs to my diet, um, in order to like get more protein. And then the mother's like, okay, you may have eggs. And so the fact that, and he goes on, is that where I thought you were going with the story? He, he goes on. That's why, dude, listen, he goes on to like have this story where like, they're like, dude, Sundar in my household was like God, where it was like, well, if he does this, then you must do this. Right. And so imagine being raised in such a toxic environment where you are either him or you are a failure. And so far he's doing pretty good. So like, that's again, that's like Sam being a dummy and voting on a company just because the, uh, the pattern matching, the founder's trying to like prove his mother, uh, you know, make his mother proud. That's a strong, that's a strong motivation. So no, but I do think the, the company is going to get significantly larger.

Like the episode of like Always Sunny where Charlie's trying to date and they're like, Charlie, what about her? She's great. She's got a good job. She's nice. She's, he's like, she doesn't like milk.

And it's like, what?

Charlie's like, no, she's lactose intolerant. It's like, you know, basically it's like, what are your, what is your criteria, Charlie? What are you doing here?

Is this a ridiculous pick or what?

No, I don't. I think a lot of people would say perplexity. So I don't think your, your logic, I think is ridiculous. I think you're, you somehow are landing at the same conclusions as the geniuses. But the way you get there is unique, I would say.

No, I picked it because I use it. I like it in terms of getting— in terms of valuation right now, $3 billion. So a lot. But I mean, I don't know, it's like a fast-growing space.

It also seems like a company that could get bought. So like, you know, OpenAI ChatGPT is like aligned with Microsoft. And Google's trying to do Gemini and all this stuff. But like, if Perplexity keeps executing, you know, it's the way that Facebook bought WhatsApp for $20 billion, right? Like, at a certain point, if you are a better version of their core product, of one of these large companies, Google being the kind of the main one, you know, you're a very good acquisition target, even if your standalone business may or may not reach there. I have no idea. But like, it gives you multiple outs. The downside is like, it seems like no tech company could do big M&A anymore. So maybe that path is not as realistic. Um, but I don't think it's a bad pick. I think Perplexity is an interesting pick. Do you want to do your, your other one? And then I have one last one.

Let my last one is Traba. Have you heard about Traba?

I've heard a lot about Traba because there's like a Traba, uh, there's like a Traba PR mafia that's out there and I, I am not.

All right. So let me start with, I don't, I'm not part of that mafia because I do not want to work there. I think it sounds miserable. Um, but there's a bunch of freaks who do wanna work there. And if you are one of these freaks, this is a, a place to let your freak flag fly. Um, I'm not a fan of it.

And, but can you explain that? So I think it's kind of like, here's a simple explanation of the culture. Most tech companies are like, we value diversity and balance and we want, you know, well-rounded people. And Travis was like, yo, we're doing China in America. They're like, yo, we're working like the Chinese over here. Like we're doing the 996 model. We're here to create a trillion-dollar company. We are gonna just like compete ruthlessly to get there. And that's pretty awesome.

Let, let me explain what it is and then we're, and then I'll, I'll, I have some of their, uh, I have a little bit from their deck on when they onboard employees. But basically Trabba is, uh, software, I guess you would, you, it's not just software. You wouldn't categorize as just software. It's, it's a little bit of everything, but it's a, uh, it's software and a way to get part-time or fast workers when you are a manufacturer or, or a big company like that staffing.

Industrial staffing.

Yeah. So it's software plus like actually getting the people to show up, uh, to, uh, to— if you're a big factory, if you're something where you need, uh, you know, 100 new employees or something like in a week to do X, Y, and Z, they make it really easy to find and get those people to actually show up on time. I think their traba.com, their website, I think it like— that's their tagline, which is get workers to show up on time tomorrow or something like that.

Traba.work. Yeah.

Sucker born every day. It's like, I Googled where I could work the most hours and I found you guys.

Yeah, they're pretty insane. I think they only have like 150 employees. I think the valuation is something like, uh, $150 million, I think.

Uh, no, it's gotta be higher than that.

I, I, I don't, I, I, I only saw a handful of numbers, uh, on their valuation. Is it higher than that?

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, maybe it is.

The, the valuation isn't public. I think I was trying to like triangulate a bunch of old, uh, articles and I don't know if there's a current one out there, so I can't say exactly what it is.

Uh, just, yeah, all I'm seeing is the Founders Fund $22 million round, which, yeah, that would probably be more like what you're talking about.

So it could be worth more. I don't have the information. I just am doing a bunch of guesswork out of, uh, just articles that were live. Uh, but people say that it's growing like 5x per year, which is like huge. And a lot of smart people who, even though I think they're douchebags like Keith Rabois, they're behind, uh, the company and they're definitely smart.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah, moving on.

All right, what do you have?

All right, my top pick, my finale. Drum— I don't want a drum roll because it's going to seem anticlimactic because it's the same company I picked last time that is not— that was not a winner in the last one, meaning it didn't 5x. It's Replit. Oh man, I think I am more bullish on Replit than any Uh, any tech company right now.

Are you so bullish on it that if you could bet all of the money that you have into that company, you would do it?

No, I'm not foolish, but I would, I did invest in the company and I then on top of my fund investment, I wrote a personal check on top of that. It's probably the only one I've done that with. So, you know, my actions do line up with this, but I wouldn't bet all of my money on this because I don't need to do that. So here's, here's my case. So 3 years ago when we did this episode, Replit was at about a $1 billion valuation. It had 5 million developers. At the time, it really had no like AI story or tailwind, and revenue was small to nonexistent.

What was it then?

They don't announce, they don't say, but it's because it wasn't, it wasn't a priority and it wasn't meaningful. So now everything has changed except for the price. So the 5 million developers has become 20 million developers. That no AI tailwind has become a huge AI tailwind. And small revenue has become scaling revenue. He, Amjad, came out and said 2024 is our, basically like has been our commercial year. Like revenue is scaling rapidly.

Dude, what's it do?

Okay, so what does, by the way, here's the, do you know the Replit story? It's kind of amazing to be honest. So the Replit story is Amjad grew up in Jordan, which is a place I've never been. And it's sort of this like, you know, the world is very large and there's people, there's talent everywhere, but the opportunity is not as evenly distributed. And so He used to code, he used to love programming, but he didn't have his own computer at first. And so he would go to internet cafes, basically borrow a computer, and he would code, he'd learn to code. But the problem with that was that every time you go to an internet cafe, you're going to a different computer, and you're not, like, none of your stuff is saved from last time. And if you ever learned to code, like, one of the first things you do is you first have to, like, set up your environment. And so you need, like, your IDE, you need to install all the packages for the language that you're gonna be using. If it's Python, you need, to install those files on your computer for it to work. And you need to save those somewhere, you need to host it somewhere. There's all these things that go into coding. And so he had this unique problem, which was he wanted to code and he was so disenfranchised where he didn't have his own computer that he was doing it at internet cafes for a while. And then even after that, you know, he worked at Yahoo briefly, like once he, you know, kind of graduated and he was still just sort of always annoyed with this like friction that it takes to get set up. And so he, as a side project, created this thing that was, it was called something else, REPL something at the time. And REPL is this like programming term. But basically what he wanted to do was he's like, can I make a cloud-based programming environment? Basically like my environment, but instead of it being local to my computer, have it be in the cloud. It's because he saw Google Docs. He's like, oh my God, Google Docs is amazing. This is, instead of having to have Microsoft Office, have this software on my computer, have the file on my computer, I can just go to any computer anywhere, go to a doc. The whole editor is built into the website, which is amazing. I didn't even realize— got it— websites could do this. And wow, multiple people can like edit the same Google Doc at the same time. This is incredible. Can I do that for coding? So that's where he started. And so, and so he built it as a side project for many years. So he worked at Yahoo as a side project. Then he worked at Facebook and it was a side project. He worked with the guy at Facebook on the team that the infrastructure team and the guy who created React, which is like now like, you know, the huge programming framework React. And somewhere along the way, like, Replit basically starts to get a little bit of momentum. It gets like 100,000 users as his like side project. And it was— he worked at Codecademy and Codecademy was teaching people to code online and they discovered his project. They're like, dude, some random guy from Jordan created a programming thing that like all of our customers who are coming to learn at Codecademy they could just code in the browser. They don't need to have like their own thing. And so it's a side project for many years and he wants to make it a main project. You know, he's not taking it very seriously. He can't raise any money for it. And he applies to YC 3 times. He gets rejected 3 times. And after getting rejected the 3rd time, he's pretty, you know, discouraged. He's like, all right, man, whatever. FYC, who cares? And, but the thing was that developers really thought this was cool cuz it was like kind of a technical achievement to do this. To do this, he had to like write his own compilers and write his own shit that like, would work in the browser. It worked with any language. And so, um, there was, for example, Atlassian created a competitor to this called Glitch. And Atlassian had like a good track record of like Trello and Jira. Yeah. Like they built like developer-friendly tools. So Glitch comes out, huge PR move, raises a bunch of money, and they said it's coding in the browser. And he's like, oh no, they're doing it. And he goes, but they're like, it's all JavaScript cuz JavaScript is everything. And he's like, well, I made this choice, this technical choice to support any language. And these guys are saying it's all JavaScript. And initially they got this huge boost, but he started to notice that like this little language Python started to get really popular on Replit. And he's like, I think they're missing the boat. I think Python is the thing. And Python became the language of choice for machine learning. It became the language of choice for backend development. It became the, the language of choice for a bunch of like big waves. And he was the only one that could support Python. So Glitch ends up dying. That Atlassian company ends up, ends up failing on, uh, in it.. He just keeps chugging along. And so along the way he, he had this like kind of indie support. So it was used by a lot of students, a lot of teachers, a lot of coding boot camps, but that was kind of looked at like a toy, like, oh, that's cute. But those are just like beginners who have no money, who, whatever.

Yeah. I'm reading about him on Hacker News. Like he was controversial there, but a lot of people loved him. Some people disliked him. Is he aggressive?

So early on he was really loved on Hacker News, not him, but like Replit was really loved. Cause it was like kind of cool that you could do this and it actually worked really well. 'cause he's, you know, a great programmer. And one person who was reading Hacker News really liked it, and that person was Paul Graham. Now, Paul Graham had retired from YC. He was living in the UK in this like mansion, and, um, he's not a part of YC anymore. And Amjad had got rejected from YC 3 times, but Paul Graham was like, dude, I think this is awesome. And he tells Sam Altman, who's running YC at the time, he's like, you gotta talk to this company Replit. So he goes to meet Sam at, at the time was a hybrid office of OpenAI and Neuralink before OpenAI was a big deal, back when OpenAI was just a research nonprofit. And he meets Sam and Sam's like, hey, you know, I don't know anything about you, but Paul really likes your thing and he wants me to check this out. And you know what? You should just like talk to Paul. He told me, but like, I'm not the guy for this. You should talk to Paul. Here's his email. So Amjad ends up trading emails, like long emails. He said like, I should turn this into a book someday of like, my emails back and forth with Paul, like the philosophical foundation of Replit, which was like, what if you could enable like 10 times more programmers in the world? Because this whole thing was about opportunity. So how do you make a programmer who doesn't even have their own computer, who doesn't know how to start, who doesn't know how to like get everything installed in their environment, all this stuff, how do you decrease all the friction? And eventually, and even in his initial like plan was like, we'll have AI that will help you code. It'll be your programming assistant. This was back before AI was a thing. It was like 2014, right? Like people weren't even talking about AI back then. And it's in his original slide deck. I have a, a slide here for you. Lemme show you. This was his master plan for his seed deck. We're gonna grow by building tools, signing up teachers and students. We're gonna build a simple network and an AI-assisted interface that blurs the distinction between learning and building. And eventually we'll become a platform where people come to learn how to code, code, explore, and host their code. Um, this is exactly what they've done. It's like the Tesla master plan 10 years later. This is his master plan 10 years later. They've done exactly this. The company's 10 years old now. More than 10 years old, basically. He, I think he started this stuff like before 2014. And so it was, again, it was a side project for a long time, only became like a full-time project. And there's like, he shared the email like, hey, got rejected again from YC. Um, and he's emailing Christina, who was his first investor. Christina is the founder of Vanta, another company I was going to put on this list. She wrote the first check into Replit, um, as a scout. And, uh, Vanta is a company that, you know, in 5 years has reached $100 million. She went through YC, but the way she did it was she just YOLO'd it. She just like moved to a city and he, he writes this email to Christina. He's like, got rejected again. Hard to raise money right now. I might just YOLO, just move somewhere low cost and just start building this thing. Um, that's, that maybe was what I'll do. And so look at this chart now. So this is Replit developers year over year. It's literally like a perfect hockey stick. And Paul Graham posted this and he's like, the crazy thing about this is that This does, this is an impressive chart for any company, let alone a company where the users are developers, meaning all of these developers are gonna build things that they has their own user base. That is crazy. Um, and so this is the growth. So back when we did this in 2021, we were here and now we're here.

It's like, how many developers are there?

Uh, so GitHub has about 100 million users.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

By the way, GitHub, some crazy stats on my research of GitHub. GitHub is used by 90% of the Fortune 500. It probably has like the most enterprise penetration of anything besides Microsoft Office. Um, like Salesforce is 80%, GitHub is at 90%, which is pretty insane.

What did they, uh, get sold for?

So GitHub sold back in 2018 for $7.5 billion. And at the time they were doing about $250 to $300 million in revenue. GitHub now does about $2, is about a $2 billion run rate.. And by the way, the fastest growing feature, the thing that makes up 40% of the growth of GitHub's revenue growth is Copilot, is the AI-assisted coder that now does, you know, a few hundred million a year in revenue already after, you know, just a couple years profitably. And so that is the most successful, you know, AI, uh, implementation in any, in any company so far is GitHub's Copilot.

Why do people—

$300, $400 million a year product.

Why do people dislike this guy? Is he aggressive?

Well, he said something which is just like, you know, uh, Hacker News is, you know, when you're the underdog, they love you. And then as soon as they hear your big funding round, they go and they just say how terrible you are. There's all— there's, there's, you know, whatever. There's people ever— I actually included, uh, this is part of my bull case, is they got the kiss of death.

So it says they raise this money, and then here comes this guy, B. Fineman, who says, this is another company I felt is going to implode. They don't do anything that's, that's interesting, let alone proprietary. The CEO is an ass and everybody knows that he acts as if a browser, a browser REPL is going to change the world. I have no idea how their valuation is so lofty, but the core technology is so easily duplicated. Yeah, go ahead, go try it. Since the, since the heavy lifting they used to do has become obsolete. So classic, you know, go read the launch of Dropbox and Airbnb and other companies like this. This is like, you know, there's always one of these comments at the top of their, their, their posts that you want to frame. So check this out. This is the AI growth. So the thing, the criticism of Replit would've been, great, you're getting a bunch of developers, but they're all young and how are you gonna make money off of students and teachers? And I think the, the misunderstood part of this, right? Because if you wanna find something at a low valuation, it's not that low valuation is just another way of saying misunderstood and mispriced. So what, what would be misunderstood here? What, what would you need to believe? The thing you need to believe is that this is a leapfrog technology. So like, I don't know if you've ever seen those graphs of like in Africa, it's like landlines, like landline adoption of mobile, of phones in, in your home was like really, really low. Or bank accounts was really, really low. It was like, you know, some, I don't know, 10% of the population had bank accounts and landline phones. But then, and so you would think, oh, if this is linear, you start with the landline phone, then you get a cell phone, or you start with a bank account, then you start getting, uh, mobile pay like Venmo or whatever. Um, actually those are easier to adopt and because they're on your phone, they're quicker, they're lighter weight. And so cell phones and mobile payments became this like huge adoption. And Africa actually has a higher rate of mobile payments than America. It has a higher rate of cell phone adoption than America did at the time because it was, it was a leapfrog technology. It was easier to adopt the smaller thing, the newer thing than it was to adopt the old thing. And so, um, one of the things that Amjad said I really liked, he goes, Um, you know, people will— all the criticism of Replit is great beginner people use Replit cuz they learn how to code and it's just really easy to get started. And the criticism is that like, you're not gonna get like big developers to switch, you know, you know, 20-year vets to switch to, to Replit. And he goes that the better question is if I have 20 million, uh, you know, sort of earlier on in their, their coding career coders right now, and this is a place where they can get started with no friction, build in any language that they want. They have AI Copilot built in. They can host it. They don't need to know how to set up their servers. And there's a community of other people that they can like, you know, borrow code from and share from and answer questions with. Why would they ever switch? Like you're saying people will never switch from that to this. Yeah, you're like, like these people will never switch back to, oh, actually go make your life harder.

I think that's a great point. What valuation did you invest in?

I think like $900 million.

How'd you meet him?

I've never met him in person. This is a company I kind of admired. I used it and I went, you know, just looked at him and read about it and it just immediately was, it ticked my boxes. So by the way, this is kind of interesting. So JetBrains, which is another one of these, like the, probably the most popular coding environment for like Java developers. It's a bootstrapped company that does $270 million in revenue. $100 million in profit, $134 million a year in free cash flow with 6 million users. Um, $0 raised since it started in the year 2000. And so like, I think, you know, when you look at what is Replit's revenue potential, I think it's, it's a lot bigger than this because this has multiple things.

So what do you think they're worth right now?

What is Replit worth?

What do you think they're worth today?

Well, their last valuation was $1.1 billion.

I know, but what do you think is like, if they were to raise again, it would be, uh, at what valuation?

Should call the founder, be like, looks like you got a real ringworm on your hands. Congrats, dude.

Like, I think it's mispriced and misunderstood. I think gets discounted for being just something for beginner coders when I think actually it's like a Snapchat or whatever. It's a product where that's the generation you want is the people who are going to be using this thing for the next, you know, 20, 30 years. It's riding a huge tech wave in that like it is perfectly positioned to ride the AI wave because AI programming is a thing. Yesterday, Sergey Brin was at the All-In conference and he's like, Yeah, I code with AI. He's like, yeah, I got back into coding. I use AI. Basically, I just kind of tell the AI what to do. It's like, dude, the founder of Google is like, yeah, I wanted to build this thing, but I just, it's easier actually just for me to just tell AI to do it. And it kind of wrote all the code for me. It was awesome. He's like, then I showed it to my team at the Google AI thing. And he's like, I told them, I said, more of you need to be using this. And he's talking to the top programmers in Google, which is kind of amazing.

Dude, this is awesome. I think you gotta ask this guy out for prom.

I think I just did.

I think you just did. Is this like you asking Taylor Swift? You know, like someone— this is, um, you've convinced me. What's the downside?

I mean, what, what is the downside?

Uh, let's see. I mean, you had that for every company.

That they're not gonna be able to make as much revenue as you think, that people will graduate off of Replit and decide that— are they remote?

Are they a remote company?

No, actually, another, another Sam bull signal. They're not remote. And not only that, they moved from SF to Foster City to like build their own cult there. And he's like, why wouldn't we? Why wouldn't we move 40 minutes out and, uh, just make— be like the kings of this little area and have like the best, the best environment without the problems of San Francisco, but still being in, uh, still being close enough to the talent density?

I think that, um, You used all this great logic and all these silly arguments and all these numbers and facts and data. You should have just told me that he wants to build a, a commune in Foster City and I would've been, I would've been on board. I do.

Any deadlifts? You like that? I know you like that.

Does he really deadlift?

Yeah, he's a powerlifter.

Yeah. I mean, powerlifter, power gains. Like it makes sense. I think my, my simpleton strategy can almost be as effective as yours.

If you look at the, our last, um, I think our lives would say yes, it does.

Right? Yeah.

Like, uh, there's no knock on that. I, I strive to be more like you. I think you, you have it right.

No, I'm only teasing. It's part of me is being simpleton just because I literally don't understand that. Like when you're explaining that to me, I'm like, I have to learn what all this means as we go. Um, yeah, it's fucking complicated. Did I ever tell you the story about, dude, these guys are geniuses, by the way. These guys are geniuses to like, and be able to invent things like this. I just think I just like, I'm like, we're not the same.

Well, I wrote two words that I would almost never write in a slide deck. I wrote mission-driven and visionary for Replit. And those are so cringe. You can't, you're not even really allowed to say those unless there's an exception, which is this dude from Jordan who was like, God, I really wanna increase access to, for kids like me, built us as a side project when there was no money on the line, there was nothing for years, just kept kept tinkering away, building it, building it, building it. Um, in his master plan from 10 years ago in the seed deck was talking about how he's gonna have an AI assistant in your coding terminal that's gonna help you write the code. Um, and did exactly what he wrote, you know, 10+ years ago. That is mission-driven and that is visionary to me.

Well, mission-driven, being into mission-driven and, and, and visionary stuff, that's only cringe when it's not true. When it's true, it's awesome.

Well, it's 'cause it, yeah, 'cause it gets abused, right? It gets, it's like gets used and abused by everybody. There's no like, there's no, um, there's no earning that badge, right? You just get to use it if you want, which bastardizes it. But like, you know, you look at something like Neuralink or whatever, um, and you gotta give credit to these people. Like, you know, when there's, there's videos of Elon talking like, you know, decades ago about the 4 or 5 like most important things to do. And he's like, you know, the, the advent of the internet, You know, uh, creating clean, you know, sustainable energy future, uh, creating artificial general intelligence safely. He literally was saying these things for, for so long.

But you don't need to be mission-driven and a visionary on world-changing things to be intoxicating. Like that, that makes it awesome. But you can, like, if I meet someone who's into something, uh, like relatively trivial and they're, they're passionate about it, I still, I get like turned on. You know what I mean? 100%.

Dude, the Nick Gray episode, it's like This guy, his Rockets to Mars is like the 2-hour cocktail party, right? It is helping people toot their harmonica and have a good time for 2 hours and meet strangers and make some friends. And he is more into that than anybody I know, than probably anybody that there is. He wrote a book about the thing, for God's sake. And then on top of it, even though I literally don't want to do that, like I would, hate if I had to host one of those things. I love being around Nick because that energy is so, like you said, intoxicating.

It's the perfect word for it. Yeah. When I am— and so when I see a guy like this Replit thing, I'm like, I don't really care about any of that stuff, but I care that you called your shot and I'm into it. Uh, during COVID when we all had to work from home, I got to hear Brian Chesky give these, um, like monthly or, uh, weekly meetings. And he was like in his bedroom and he looked horrible. He looked like shit. Uh, because like his business was like on top of the world. And then it's like, I don't know if we're going to be in business. And I have like 3,000 employees and like travel is literally the worst thing on earth. Like Airbnb is paused. And I remember seeing his talks and I thought like, dude, I will— I want to fight for this guy. Like if I was on his team, he has got me bought in. And that— and so my point being is that mission-driven and visionary attitude That is actually really important when it comes to a value, uh, how valuable a startup can get.

This founder's got the thinnest neck I've ever seen. I'm in.

To use what terms?

The Bachelor. Oh, you don't, you don't know that? That every contestant, I play sports.

Everybody watches Bachelor.

You're like, I have triceps and biceps.

My T levels are over 300. So I don't understand. I can tell you the difference between a barbell or a dumbbell bench press and why, why each is good. You could tell me all about, uh, the golden bachelor. You're absolutely right. Priorities. Um, all right, that's the pod. That was good. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Ari. Thank you to, uh, everyone listening.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.