#72: Citizen Journalism & Accelerated App Deployment (with Guillermo Rauch!)
01:09:38 Share

Ala is the equivalent of N, B, C, or the near times, or a very polished media platform. And prompt is a .

social media influence to the like. They were literally the gay keepers. Now we have the opposite, right? Like all these figures can reach directly whoever they want.

They don't need the video face with, like the blekeke business outlooks in their history. News organza are gonna go for being preached to subscribe instead of informing subtribe, right?

They completely went down this rabbit hole, created echo chAmbers of their own people, showed out much more direct citizens style journalism this time around, and a movement was made.

There is a question of the algorithms, right? Will the algorithm select you that you are in the four u tab? Grog is deciding what the first gotten. I G decides to say, what's important today is that camera finally concede des to trump.

Put test more.

Like a little friends, welcome to another week of more or less. We had election.

We did. IT was a great moment of democracy.

I were in red today because I guess for .

all republicans.

yeah. okay. So sam, you kick us off. Why was a donal trumps election a great moment for democracy?

Look, I not about the candidates. I just, I just am so proud of america. It's like we are the strongest nation in the history of the world's three hundred million people. And we're able to have a peaceful civil election, a democracy, to democratically elect someone in the super polar ized environment and a candidate one and that who is now president. And like that's pretty on a historical on historical basis, it's pretty magical that as a country and as a nation that we can do that, that is like america, ais, deep superpower.

And would you said the same thing if he's telling everybody?

Well, not if you like, if people were riding on the streets and trump like a trump, people were like marching around, like i'd feel may be a little bit differently and look so I guess the reality is maybe we had the easy win because like it's been a very decisive Victory right um for trump. So like what are you going to complain about right? To some degree, I mean you can complain about a lot of things, but IT is what IT is.

But I don't know you think it's going to celebrate. I I woke up very feeling great, grateful this morning that someone who clearly have the population, but less than fifty percent of the electorate really hates, is becoming president. And in after being called every name of imaginable and regards what you think about him, like gonna, be a peaceful transition. And we can have a war of words without fighting for real and like that, again, on historical basis, that's pretty magical. And I think one of the amazing things, the united states, so go america, from my perspective.

what do you guys think morns?

I I would love to be able to say the same thing four years or now, but i'm worried that I might not happen .

one thousand percent. And the reality is, I think of you at the whole thing. And people observation with january the six, it's right, which is like that really was a disGraceful moment, right? And I understand and I agree with everyone who was super upset about that, and i'm really just hoping that was a Normal right and and that was a one time oopsy and not indication of .

a broader trend.

I big py, huge, as big as you can get.

The generous take is that if you you know, watching his speech last night, I was actually sort of shocked at how metered IT was. You know you really could have taken a Victory lap and kind of didn't IT left me somewhat shocks, I guess, given how much the trial and you know intensity there's been around this and then the decisiveness of this points to a very large movement. And i'm for montana.

The movements been somewhat obvious to me for a few years as you saw my home state went plea read last night. And so he's at the forefront of this movement and IT may be that he didn't understand the the power of the movement back then and maybe understands little bit more now I don't know. That's like the generous take on IT. The other thing that I guess I would i've been focusing on is what happened in separate cisco. And I think that separate cisco is actually a really interesting.

It's not a Normal is actually everything is kind of ground zero for I think with the future of the liberal side of the house, looks like you had a city that ten years ago experimented with a lot of deeply progressive policies that largely most of them, you could argue, eighty percent of the progressive ideas just flat out didn't work and resulted in a pretty chaotic and very messed up city that we all have to deal with. And the community here came together, got really focused on policy over identity. Um you didn't see almost no identity politics and ce ever to go this time around.

People are focused on very serious policy issues. They elected a new mayor, new commissioners. Yeah go danuta yeah congrats danuta. Uh or overhauling the charter. There's like all kinds of things that point to you the liberal side of the house actually learning some pretty serious lessons .

and really criminalizing stealing.

that's a good idea. Property crimes illegal again. And I think it's actually a sort of a bright spot and what was otherwise a pretty bad strategy on the liberal side of the house. And so maybe we are looking at what the future the party looks like and seven to go right now.

Yeah, i'm science o and I I get hear pointing I mean, I really I think about this morning and I do think big, big, big picture, it's pretty clear this is all about people want houses and the and the economy, right? I think that's like the big picture absolutely. I mean, from the people I ve talked to you who voted you know for trump, who you might not have expected to for all sorts of reasons.

They're like I built on groceries, rightly wrongly. That's like you have come pay attacks on that and like that, is that the easy policy? But I think there is a deeper thing going on, which is I honestly think that like what we saw from a strategy perspective in terms of the future these parties is that trump because he's a reality T, V, show star. One of the best IT was really the forefront of modern communications .

and .

how to tell stories in the internet age. And I cannot overstate how much the demarcate do not understand, at least at the national level.

for sure they don't. Let's put a quick man that I need to give a listener some road map to the episode as a unfolds OK. We got our initial housing and doing all the way. I do think we should spend some time on what sam is talking about, which we we are little more experts on than than other political topics, which is the communication, the media, the story telling. We talked about this potentially being the influence our election last week.

Has that played out? I want to make sure we also get through some of uh, the implications for tech policy crypto A I information at a great subscriber coal this morning with some experts on that. And anti trust mean a con someone is. So fourth, and at some point, we're going to just a guest pop in as well. So we've got a lot on the agenda, but why don't you pick up the communication point, say more about what you think trump got right and the um Harris got wrong?

We tried to a few angles of this before, like the infant strategies, I think a high level. You know the thing that I think people really don't understand fully, I haven't internalized about the internet versus a called broadcast media, is in the area of broadcast media.

Communication was precious, right? Like you got your sound by IT and that sound might Better be perfect, right? And you Better like appeal to everyone because he was going, the same thing was going to everyone. And like everything was about that, and like you thought cma did, was this strategy of saying almost nothing, right, being almost nowhere and then trying to mean icy.

And like, we've the needle on the perfect message, every trump is obviously a volume guy, right? He just says everything at scale, right? And I want him that that drives a lot of people nuts, because he says a lot of crazy shit, right? And like wrong things, right? And I understand why, especially if you are trained in last generations media, that will drive you crazy and seem insane.

But the whole thing is like high volume game, where a only the real you basically can iterate as much as you want because the communication is free, that you can just be constantly talking and trying to find the one two gems that matter a breakthrough, then you just hang your head on those. But then just as importantly, because the channel is always open, the stuff you say that's crazy. You can just say another thing tomorrow, which is not how the traditional media of mass media work.

So you had shot at the evening news, that was your shot. And so I just think that there's like a massive sea change in like if you think about IT, it's like it's internet communication with an open fat pipe where you can speak to everyone all the time, lends itself towards going for home runs, thousand next winner statements, thousand winter moments. And then just like wearing very easily everything else, right? It's kind of almost like ceeon investing, right? It's a game of gone for that thousand x.

Whether I would argue that broadcast media feels a little bit more like growth investing, we're like you can't miss and you have a fewer bullets, right? So I feel like to visualize this ma log. Alas, entire strategy and the democrat strategy is last centuries playbook for how to run, communicate.

I mean, even now I give people are saying, well, comm might win because for the first time ever, they have like a field organizer running the campaign that never happen before. I using an have an amazing ground game and you like ground game in the physical world. But that's not where this is happening.

This is happening on the internet, right? And so like I just feel completely, you know, set aside policy, set asset, all the other stuff, like if you just get down to how do you run a modern campaign with targeted influencers in the places that matter without the open pipe versus mass media? You know, biggest voices like trump, just like either intentionally or by happiness, has exactly the right internet strategy and carmona has exactly the wrong internet strategy.

So a couple of us him um I think some really interesting points. I think one point about the there's been a lot on um I think the ground game still does matter in in fact, one question i've had is specifically trying to pinpoint the ways must impacted the election um because obviously there's his digital game like twitter and all of that and people who fall this far closer than I say really like the grassroots ground grain and pansy's vania was really um entirely german by which I don't know enough to know other than smart people are telling that.

But I guess, and you know you raise a really interesting point, is a completely different communication strategy. Say everything, call Nancy polo c and explosive, say journalists should be put in jail if they don't reveal their confidential sources. See what sticks, don't worry.

How should the media cover that? Because this is already raising. I think an interesting question that I broke my silence, and I used to have a column, guys I used to at every week, nine years and or so, IT only comes out sporadic.

And your busy woman.

come on, it's fine. It's still there. It's still dusted off and my people are still there to thank you. But this morning I published a peace. Really getting into, I think, the bind that major news orgasms are in bit all system of the mistakes they're being making early on. But i'm curious, sam, sort of like probably asking you for advice on this. But but I am because you're very knowledgeable like in a world where not just trump the Kennedy is hard to cover but the fundamental forms of like how powerful figures communicate, which you say anything at any time obviously, each of those sound bites cannot be a headline cluster across the times or can they they don't need to be.

in some ways that would be like a silly thing to do, right? They don't need. Like this is the fundamental problem of the modern media is IT used to be the media controlled the pipe.

They controlled like what was going to be his brain. And there was a really interesting economy around that because if you're a candidate, you have to talk to the press because that's how you get to people, right? Like they were literally the gatekeepers.

And there was a really economy because you could easily trade with that like, okay, like we will get out the thing you want to say, but in return your ressource, you're going to give us things you don't or like we onna have a civil discs about this. There is a whole a social economy to the pipe, right? There was something it's A A connector cable with like you know a chip on in the pipe, right? That works really well.

Now we have the opposite, right? Like all these figures can reach directly whatever they want. They don't need to be that's bad. Both be for in that good for them. They can run this alternative dia strategy to a point.

But IT put, depression is really awkward place because they no longer have a bargaining ship with these people to work with, like they don't. And because of that, that makes them, by default, go very negative on everything, because there is no trading right? Like like well, you're going to say all the positive things yourself.

So like the default is the healthy thing today when i'm seen the default ratee saying, well, if you're going to say everything positive yourself, then we're only going to for the things that are not being said, which they increased this very A I think like contentious relationship because IT used to be good and bad. And now the default eno, nothing has has to. The default scenario is everyone as well. You're going to say the crazy good stuff yourself. We will say the bad stuff.

there is some truth to that. But i'm asking a different question, which is like, what should the media? What should I just count traditional me, right? What should non social media, professional news organizations? How should you cover that?

Isn't that the by vacation of this? Like what sams analogy is saying is that camera is the equivalent of nbc or the earth times or a very polished media platform and and trump is a social media influence or and so like how would the information cover everything in social media? Influencer says.

that's treeing all day and I don't need to cover everything.

I think and and I think that's not just as asking is like how do I covered that? There is so much garbage in, garbage out? Like what are the key headlines here changing everyday? I think the to figure .

out like you've to assume that the channel is constantly being chafed and nine nine percent doesn't matter. No one wants to follow everything down. Trump says no list of all everything anyone says.

Find the James, figure out what's real and what's not real. Figure out what he believes and doesn't believe, right? Become the trust and source. We're basically your job is to read everything he writes, talk to every person he talks, to have all the sources on the inside and people to separate out what is reality and truth from like bluster or not, real or chafing yeah.

you've nailed IT samon. We've talked about IT several times on this pad bit. My framework for this is that trump is A U F, C character or W, W E.

character. And so everything that he's doing is it's it's like it's an act, right? And so nothing that actually going on is the real deal.

And so the job of the real media people who do this professionally is to figure out what the truth is, right? Like what's the what's the real thing under the smokescreen? What's the real thing under the entertainment?

right? I agree with up.

That's the actual thing that most people don't understand. And to some extent, I think this election is the first real social media election. And IT happened in a way that we didn't expect, right? Like we thought that this was gona happen when facebook and twitter and O A and then through the twenty tens we thought there were social media elections. But this was the first election where you had candidates going directly to the people through podcast, right? Like podcast, we're an enormous part of the selection.

I think. Well, amazingly, really one of the two candies and that was the proper right.

I know but that's i'm making your point, sam, which is the trump went to the podcast just literally talk to people directly in their ears, which is what we're doing right now um and one of them didn't right. And so you've got a really good example of the old media and the social media campaign once again. And maybe the maybe the other party will or the democratic party will actually learn the lesson this time.

Um we thought they learned last time around and the time before that. But you know maybe this time they will actually learn. But just back to your question, I just think you're already doing the right like you're doing this in doing IT quite well in tax. You already know the answer to the question, right? Like you've been dealing with this media environment for a very long time.

I mean, yes, and I actually I think the next four years may be as consequent l for the future of professional news publications. Is any that in recent memory? And this is that thing a lot because the news industry has been under sort of attack and distress and visit for IT like somewhere or others since like even like long before the internet. And so this is a long, long march, but I I think so many things could be landing um in a moment in a big way. And you know yes, it's very simple to say, don't cover what trump says, cover what he's gonna do .

watch their feet, not their mouth, right.

of course but by all the calls trump runs will run his administration in a way where he might not know what he's gonna do until he thinks that he does IT and his advisers don't know what he's going to do. So I think it's a unique chAllenge, not one that I think that's the right principle. But in reality, I don't think that's how you play out that you sort to tune out his statements and then there's some other sense of truth or authority that's easy .

to get that what about tuning IT out? It's about listening to IT and then finding the truth.

right? And I meet two points. One is yeah I think what you're basically pointing to is the fact that like for the last hundred, probably years to be grand about IT, what the media dies in washington is actually covered the bureaucracy, right? Like it's basically be in the thing like the bureaucracy functions a certain way and their inputs to IT.

And if you really understand the bureaucracy from the outside and who actually moves, what files and what cavities and how things actually work, you can go like behind the scenes and talk to those people. And figure was actually gonna en and tell people reality versus kind of perception, right? And I I think what's happened in the digital age is for a whole bunch of reasons, including we can the A I.

And efficiency and technology is like the patterns of the remote, racy changing quite rapidly. And to your point, we're moving into a very cult personality driven era because of that fat pipe of communication is now available. So here's a question is, you know, if you said that all of trumps next four years going to be completely done in his head, was talking to no one and no one will have perspective on IT. And this is the budget random statements. And you then is very, very hard to cover.

The reality is, is what actually happens in court court elite ite circles we are all in this is people run around and say, yeah, he's saying that like people in the know and we're say if he's saying that they really never going to do that and everyone officially yeah the democrat, the media is well, how can you say that he clearly said x, so like we're gona hold on to that and then everyone who was like, I don't know about and IT sounds really dangerous you like, I believe the man he said another was thing then I don't believe him that this bluster, and I think that the the future of media has to be sorting that out, sorting in out with those human connections. Like in the end of the day, what does the media really do? IT basically finds out the inside secrets of the elites now, and then just tells everyone else the secrets.

When we are seeing more and more like the media platforms that are able even leverage ji to do some of this, right, to figure out, in fact, check a bunch of these things, figure the right point of you, the left point of you, the medium point of view, like where consumers are leaning on this, all of that. Yeah but no way.

I I me yeah just and I will publican ter on the A I I did for IT.

I really like.

I would you use A I to like leverage, like the topic you post about today about the york times, the headline, you know, coming up being pretty ridiculous this morning. I journalism .

very nearly more nearly than, I don't know, probably any other journalism. M, I define journalism as uncovering new facts that largely people want hidden. Like, I mean, I don't define IT that way, but like, I think that is an incredibly incredible value to the world, to society, to.

And IT does not always have to be tagging tic, although by definition, like what has become abundant information become abundant knowledge, what's happening in the world has become abundant. Opinion has become abundant, but there are important facts that journalists can get out responsibility that um and so when people talk about A I and journalism doing that like A I can't do that. I can do a lot of the other things.

I just more point yeah yeah .

but that's one journal in the sentiment analysis, right mean in content. It's content right? And IT could be something news organizations fall into their products IT for sure. Um just one more point on this though two I mean I and we talked about the washington post which are the saw this flood of cancellations when bazoo um declined uh pulled the up and uh or the opinion peace um the president's endorsement.

That really would have made .

a difference. But everyone was shocked that so many people laugh. And I was not at all shocked because those were people who had come for opinion, for the hot takes, for being preached to. And already today, and we're taping this the day after the election, we're seeing publications like slate, known as a sort of progressive left ley and publication that are treat, trumping, champing their surge and subscriptions. And i'm worried again that again, faced with like the bleachers business outlooks in their history, news organza are gonna go for the being preached to subscribe instead of the informing subscribe. And this is going to a only accelerate, perhaps precipitously, what we've seen in terms of decline and trust in these organizations that are really the only ones with the current war with all to employee like thousands of journalists. And and that's what i'm worried about.

I just think you're right. Just this is what happened. This is literally what happened. And I think is also largely why the twitter x thing happened, largely why podcast were such a big part of this election.

Because I do think the media organizations you just describe IT perfectly, they completely went down this rabbit hole, created echo chAmbers of their own, you know, making, and largely in a huge group of people sought out much more direct citizen style journalism this time around. And a movement was made, right? Like.

that's literally what happened. I I weave a guess and I want to get to him, but I say that they put to put one five. There is like, one da opinions cheap, right? Like this is like the greatest marketing moment that the liberal publication to see for a long time.

I like, oh shit, everyone's super outrage and wants to spend twenty dollars on something like you have to be dumb to not go pick up those dollars if you're slate. I mean, in the short terms that i'd say two opinions really cheap to produce, right? It's outrages, very inexpensive.

And so we think of a purely business perspective. The biggest problem is that these things are called news organza. They're not news org ization.

They're just like opinion content s right that suck up people's outrage dollars. And like I I as a business person, totally get that totally respected. You probably do need a new class of actual journalists and products, which, by the way.

just you run one of I think that's actually the truth.

You're already doing that. And then you have a you just have a brand confusion problem because the problem is just from a very breast tax perspective that these are not actually news org ization. There are ways of shopping up outrage dollars and turning into opinion content have captured history ally the news brand which screwed because they're not actually news about this.

Perhaps we could just be information perhaps that the rebranding, right?

Yeah, you have to see the .

news brand and we've completed our advertisement for the information today.

Oh my gosh.

I mean, I know I could go on.

Dave dot chen day, you're such a fan of sams points today. They said, nailed to say, like five times already in this up.

there are good ones. Sometimes he win.

Sometimes I win and say.

sam, I used to think that the volume, sam used to tell me behind closed doors all the time, day, you need to get out there. You need to do way more volume and I didn't believe that. And this podcast has taught me that he's right. Like it's really, really good to just be they're .

talking a men.

Okay, bright .

introduced .

again.

I'm so .

happy to see .

this person. I'm so a vers o mo is .

one of the .

was like on the forefront of what's happening with all things A I even has some um post election uh, trauma. Maybe I could say have not not from the election results but from what's happened with versus over the last many .

days but also so .

I think would want to come on and give us kind of early of the land, both in terms of the next four years, but also where where this all can lead to within tech because of a tram presidency. But first, maybe can you just give the the the public a little bit of a background on what is the and well.

first more, can we just assume because we are in your investors, you're not, oh my god.

their users. God wish the .

ero and we love you. And doing .

the disclosure your point, i've trained well.

O, K, I love IT.

Will you do the labor or retriever version of what IT is?

You do like that, by the way, that's the ultimate endorsement because you all are investors and you have me on and you love the product, so is legitimate endorsement. So yeah, so you mention the forefront of A I so where celebi ls the front end, the cloud, we host everything that is between a visitor of the internet and a really cool new product on on the web. So the front end of complexity, for examples, built with our technology.

Um a lot of the innovators in A I using for sale to create new kinds of applications, but also we host things like e commerce news. In fact, in terms of the election, we hosted the election microsites for washington post. We hosted Polly market.

That calm, which was extremely hot. This election a quite literally hot in terms of lag, how many servers now margin for structure took uh to help them scale to the tremendous m amount traffic that they got yesterday. Um so so you ever sell is the the easiest place of zero to one in an idea. And increasingly, that's being done with the eye. So people like literally, just like creating applications on the fly with the eye.

Gently push you. I'm a laboratory trip. Very cute dog. Explain this to me like i'm a puppy.

This is in flaught ble.

Yeah, this is like an A I prompt.

are you hero? Qu.

two point o, he looks nothing like elaborate atrial.

I like the laboratory dog needs to make the hero .

paris on this. A O G, uh, so I think of that is like the, or a small child, the best place to host applications and build to them, especially when they're pushing different years, like A I applications or things that will get a lot of traffic all of a sudden, like good having with polar market yesterday and every year is getting easier and easy, easier if you use them, like foundational cloud infrastructure today, like A W S.

Or usher, is really, really difficult to turn your idea into reality. It'll take you a team of experts and they'll take you weeks just to set up the foundations imagine versus just giving you the foundations on autopilot so that you just focus on your idea. And there are a lot of people building their ideas on the platform. Uh, we do hundreds of billions of request per month and we hold some of the largest west, the internet and some of the molest website, the internet. So it's for everybody.

right? I'm not sure of the laboratory understands, but i'll go play.

then i'll figure that out. You know, same as somebody who's know you ve built things on heroic, we'd built things on all these versions of this over the years. I will say i've built more stuff with versa this year. Uh, then really any year i've been building anything. And i'm just so impressed with the tools that gero is made that just make they make software engineers lives easier straight up, like you can sign up now, you can build stuff fast.

And again, I remember I have the privilege of having asked you these very dumb questions mid summer yeah I think we met at a conference so I already know the answer to that mean german was a speaker at um the information A I summit right yeah distance from my office.

Thanks for choosing great location.

Go, we make IT convenient coming back two x next year twenty, let go. But like why does this need to exist? Like why and what are you what are you fundamentally leveraging ing that all the other ways that people build websites today um are missing?

Yeah IT really depends the size size of the customer. For e commerce websites, for example, we just give them a lot of new revenue because we make their website so fast that you put IT on her cell and you get Better seo, you sell more stuff. People convert at a higher rate. So for under a com e asic, like when you buy shoes, mersea is behind the scenes, hopefully of the best experiences on the internet. Most they don't won't know, but they will like that website more because he feels Better. So when think of IT is like a global acceleration system, not only just the way to build IT um in the other reason that is needed is that uh especially with the elephant of A I and code generation versely almost becoming more like a design tool is that is so easy to create software these days. Yeah actually I made I A David in b uh in a trip uh in q to in tokyo and we were generating software on our phones.

This is when you guys came back. Instead you would started like three companies on your vacation and we were like, yeah.

yeah, yeah. This is the future, guys.

How more in of you german?

I were walking around kyoto and we're just making software while we're having a conversation like .

IT was unbelievable.

You think you guys been in i'm trying to play our more or less point. They have website with your cell right now and i'm getting a bundle installed issue.

So let's not trouble sh live from the air.

And once you get this up and running, you're going to use IT for everything.

If you want to build with A, I go to be zero dot dev, which is sort of like our um think of IT as like the laboratory of the world will start with the zero where as first sell is for the for the web engineers.

So you're just using the more technical versions that .

got to take IT down a nuch. I'm pretty acto labor as far as labs.

So i'm interest give like them behind the scenes of what with internet traffic right .

before the election yeah ah so we saw some attacks. Uh, so part of our job is to distribute traffic globally. So uh, when we were in japan and we were accepting any of these websites like nintendo, uh, IT was likely routing us to the versus region in japan so that we could establish A A low latency link and run through the best possible experience for us in japan.

And so what versa does is, is a global footprint uh, on top of the class to again make IT like super fast to execute this websites everywhere. But also ah we mitigate attacks and we mitigate like massive spice of legitimate boat traffic. And we we become really good at detecting what is human traffic and what is bought traffic.

And then within the world, bot traffic, what is a good bott and what is a bad bott? A good bot, for example, is google. You want google to crown .

your website?

yeah. There pens .

on which google, yeah.

exactly. So so now there is kind of like an intermediate of like i'm not so sure, bot, which is all the A I labs in, recently became controversial dad by dance, put up a massive crawling Operation that was like even doring some of the other A I loves. And then you actually that's up to the customer, like do you want buy dance to like sort of like scrape ball your website multiple times today.

But then there is also legitimately bad about like they create activity that is sort of designed to impede and deny the service. And we saw over the past forty eight hours quite a bit of that. The largest attacks that we saw, which we estimate was actually probably targeting some of our customers in the so like prediction market space, uh, for reasons that I can fully share.

But the attack was pretty simple, one hundred and fifty thousand and eight PS, a globally distributed botnet. Uh, easy for us to mitigate. But again, like if the customer is just trying to figure out the internet and create application IT would have been trivial ly put offline. And when you think about we actually versa has a lot of crypto websites, a lot of a decentralize networks, a lot of a the front end to a lot of the uh N F T companies and decentralized changes at seta.

The monetary losses that can be incurred in can actually be used for trading, right? So like if you attack Polly market or you attack calls, then i'm assuming ing that the attackers may have interest in mind the round lake, manipulating the outcomes of a bed and so on. And so for so luckily we weather the storm and our customers so so no impact. But I do think it's interesting that leg the battle field really is becoming sort of uh, the your ability to put this things online and in straight m them, which I think is a very new thing of this election.

So how do you charge? Can you charge like a place of vega on what you say.

people I expecting we would be interviewing .

him about .

your alive.

Let's go so like, I don't like you. You're savings .

become a teach me .

and it's like humans cloud flare, right? To defend the web, right? And in presumably, if you're so good and you're stopping all these attacks that with real, real money, shouldn't you be taking a percent off the top? No, we want to charge some basic hosting fee that we .

only want to charge for legitimate traffic, right? So we don't charge for mitigating the attacks. Of course, we believe that security has come by default. Like if you create an apple internet, you should never have to worry about the bad actors.

In fact, my metaphor to this, if you all were around ably, probably all of us here in this, in this room where when I first got my windows P, C, I got bias is so fast, I don't even remember the tool bars. I would get added to our browsers lag with my ware of all kinds. Windows became anonymous with leg.

You have to sell a bunch of anti ira software, otherwise your personal computer is not safe. And then I switched to the mac, and I never want, never worried about identifiers again. For self point of view in this world is if you're going to create an application, especially one, empower everybody in the world to create applications and deploy them.

IT has been secured by default. So we don't we don't charge you for mitigating this really large attacks. We charge you for the power. Think of IT as the power that you use. So we said, if you were, you were a nuclear power plant, uh, to render your application, which has there in degrees of complexity.

for example, people, it's like not as good as business as extortion, like it's a Better business if you're going to be like look like you. I just I wonder if you're not like really fully leverage .

in the business model.

Thank you. You're talking to adventure capitalist that gives creators contracts that take all of their future earnings from you.

Not all of .

them think .

bike ten percent, it's fine. David. Remember David chafing my channel at sign?

okay. Can we talk about the acted like some of the elections here? Did you want to continue .

to the I learn from the OK I I .

wanted know I mean some of the implications, right? Everyone are talking about, especially around A I um is that it's it's definite going to be accelerating now. But we all know crypto is something that in rison and tremor in cahoots.

but less of the A I will be used for like fake content to some extent. I don't know what you all think about this.

You mean in the marketing, I think we saw IT and we laughed, right? I mean, like yeah that the deep fakes went pretty quickly from the lake, you know abc news breaking news alert every time there was a deep fake e to a kind of like our brain sort of figured that out. And i'm not to say there aren't things that we should be concerned about, but I am surprised like how quickly .

yeah I think that goes to the conversation with me before about pye size, right? Which is like in a constrained mass media environment, your super, super scared of like one wrong thing going to the pipe right in in internet era. The reality is like is just noise.

IT just raises the volume of more noise there. So much of IT there is an impact, which is IT devalues the n thing even more because you like it's all just noise, who cares? But like IT just raises the temperature on everything. But IT is far less of like a specific attack that anything once worried about. I like a credible deep fake and more just like you don't pay .

and anything yeah and there seems a broader lesson in there about human .

psychology to anyway. But if one of the alcoves is like less regulation within the AI industry, good thing that a good thing that I .

think my my perspective .

has always been, everyone is to be empowered to create. Everyone needs to be able to own their own. Domain name is one of our sort of court tenets. Uh, I do I do like that we have all social networks that people can post to.

But if you're not betting on open protocols and and access to like the source, I think the good direct to consumer own your your space on the internet like you own the information dot com. That's amazing. Like ask them .

how many U R else he s for something amazing.

Some how many areas do you?

I pop those things like pets. I'm sure David does. I'm just buying one right now.

Two guys remember, by the way, more, and when we had a whole skeet trip like a decade ago and we only bought a.

did we do A? I did a competition with somebody. I forgot to, as you guys, about which couple owned the most domain names.

I wants to do a party in separate disco or if you come, you have to have a name tag of your favorite domain .

me that you or how many so um we send dominium, which is actually a terrible business, but we understand the systematic of creators, which is that again, our goal is go from zero to one as fast as possible with the least of the late acy. And we realized that like people get stuck at like naming their thing and so important because they become emotionally attached to the creation and they want to move forward with that.

So we do offer uh very, very, very fast uh domain search and purchase uh and I do on my own fair show of the names back to point. Yeah no it's is so important that um there's this question of like freedom of speech and x that sensor versus not sensor and whatever there is a question of the algorithms, right which I think is a meta question story can post anything but will the algorithms select you such that you are in the four u tab? And so I think fundamentally still will be a die heart of spry to own your own space of the internet and and making short of that remains sort of the open platform for everybody.

Can I push on that? Like obviously, like that's historically been true, you know in a lot of ways, but all this you know who you route to, what websites are a available where the whole like effectives social contract to the internet breaking down anyway. So like sure, like we is like a relatively low level of the internet, right, like DNS and like owning at that level. But if you're kind of either anything the of like blocked at a google to like you know not in the A I interface all the way through, like how do you think about that? I got a longer term basis because it's sure you can own your corner, but IT is still a social contract and anyone cares that you have on D.

N. S. yeah. One thing I think a lot about from the A I point .

of view .

is we're gonna relying more and more and agents to go and get information for us. her. And that's that's already happening with perplexities, already happening with the A I overview panel on google search.

And so if if what you're producing is content that is set of lake specks in general, knowledge is very likely that you're you're not even gonna get back back links. Does someone is going to search on google? For example, what is H T D P.

IT used to be a valid content marketing strategy. And lake marketers in the in the values to do this, like create a lot of content, uh, so that when people search, you'll hit the keywords and whatever. But increasingly, a lot of that traffic will just stay in the A I fronts, right? Because IT IT becomes part of the A I overview or IT becomes part of the perplexity summary. I think the opportunity is actually interestingly in um. Focusing on the individual perspective, focusing on like the kind I should see the stuff that you post like this big images on on twitter, which actually going to hate them but as I can read.

yeah you you're not the only one that hate s them you know i'm going to do about that nothing.

You just did you pay him to say that, sam? I mean, this was like, that was like a perfect like you.

You're never gonna get summarized away by A I review. This is seems perspective.

some might say, is ahead of my time. I'm worried about the image crepes eventually yeah but you know, yeah I mean, some might say is ahead of my time at the anti AI able.

The question is whether the A I even cares.

Some might think so.

I I call this a frontier content when you have content that got like life passes, the great A I filter and most of that thing is going to be experiential, like personal, uh, is probably not going to amplify a lot of hot takes and like things that before you algorithms kes in general, which is league like a strong opinion that someone holds that again like it's it's IT goes beyond the previous of A I I don't think really interesting twitter is that they have this like clock summaries.

Like clock is deciding what the tour of you all gotten them. But like grog decide to say what's important today is that, uh, camera finally concede des to trump. So we are we are starting to see sort of like a is act as like the editorial room of a lot of the content that we create. But after you click that, we're still there. So but .

that's fuck I mean, like like just to push you like the thing that I think you people really missed out, this is like that's fine um at the first pass. But people forget that the the internet is not just an information platform, technically is an information economy. It's a content economy.

And the thing I think is so fucked about this whole A I move is like in the one boxes in the direction is like you're just gonna break the entire machine for truth, right? Because that you just get a reflection of whether the economics are of the system. And if the economics are, I would just going like there's no way to model tize IT or even now it's like it's easy to monitor ze hot takes but not actual information or truth. Then like the screw like you're just going to end up like completely stamping the entire information as as as as an information machine. So I don't know I I know I think you're right that that's the direction will head in, but IT is like a total tragedy of the commons where like these things are going to consume themselves and die.

But so I think that this is the reason that maybe the commons is a tragedy and that we should move in the direction of this era of more personal apps, right, and more like not just more personal apps but smaller social contracts, right? Like you know, the ability to create a APP for you are a smaller community that you are a part of and do IT very quickly. And you know these types of things.

And gammer is one of the first ones that really, I think, clarified gear. I think you are telling me in japan that there's something like four million software engineers on earth today. Uh you know that's a really small number .

yeah for what do we do which is react, which is like the france there is four million, is the best estimate we get from google and from creating interfaces, which is very much like a design thing, right? Like is like a creative act, is very small, like we should get like a billion people creating software.

And I think that this is also, I think kindly ke part of your journey is if you get everybody to create software, you're now like decentralizing IT yeah uh, you're creating less like software, tries to do less. Sales force is like the tower of winning the office. Sales force is the thing that uh, like katari like a source. More and more software, there's a banger thread on x like how like IT sales was built itself through ema. Yeah like how they bought marketing cloud and says with commerce cloud.

IT was like instagram and x and all these things are like the low income housing of the internet and like we need to like move people out of these things into their own housing, right? Enable infrastructure that like helps people talk to him. I just play .

devils of a kids on a few point. I I like everything you guys are saying and then think it's.

brother, right? I don't.

No, no, you have to like this one. This is like objective who who likes huge bundles les of software and instead of software that is created .

to you and created but .

a couple people, one people who still don't want to do the work. So yes, the the barrier that entry or ceiling or whatever could plum IT. But that s is still more work for me to build my own social media site than to use another one. And then there are other things like network effects and economies of scale that come in also, I thought I was really interesting at some point, but I think you were there for this, that our women's event this year, someone we were asked, I was asking someone about what new things are gonna built with A I. And they were basically saying, you know, like a personalized internet.

And then they began describing something that was essentially yahoo like IT wasn't that sort of was right? And so I I think the history of a lot of these things like tent towards personalization, but we haven't all build our own like decentralized banking systems yet, which is maybe possible. So I don't know. Like there is one point of view, which just the tools aren't good enough yet. And I think that's .

probably you guys actually, I would argue, uh, so I I have two interesting arguments for you. One is imagine if creating the information that come, i've taken you a fraction of the time and resources like the software of IT.

I had nothing to do. The software, the software is already easy. I mean, this is the kind of thing with you .

is that the software is not is not for example, i'll give you a very concrete example that our customers face chAllenges with. Um a lot of our customers have a complex business models. Ag by the three articles and he can't be gamed and google needs to get the full version of the article. But but also like you have like one time article and share your s like these things are not trivial actually to do them well and to do IT with high performance and high conversion rates. This is why does come to us all the time saying like I need to migrate off this pilot unk that I have please make IT fast and the lightful all and personalized and so if we can lower the bear to entry so that there's more Jessica a lessons .

out there ah because he is in the missing that the to information but the very information is actually like good reporting, like the work of being a journalist. What else I agree that like having actually in the early days as in turn built a lot of these things that like you know perma links and like share article infrastructure river is like it's not trivial, but it's damn close to trivial already and it's certainly tending that way. So I I think you can probably lower the barrier or a little.

我是 because and it's going to get eastern and easier。

It's tending that way for I mean.

it's just trending that way. It's just it's been trading that way forever that way. I mean, like so IT will keep trending that way.

The and that's a thing.

So we have basically, by the way, if I just summarized the step function changes we have uh on frame really hard like actually that was legitimately, Harry, how to buy software and throw IT into the information closet, then we get a cloud.

You still pretty hard actually .

like figuring out of this instance is in nettle, ork and whatever infrastructure, then we get server less. That's the space where versie lives in. And now we're getting A I, which that is another ten nex. So if we start from on prem to I generated persons software, IT became a thousand times easier. And if he becomes a thousand times easier, you need less of this, like super apps, but just a book again.

just to push you again. Like, look, I get I agree, I think we'll all agree the broad trend. But like right now, I take Jessica AA business for information business.

Like what happens right now practically speaking, you have a bunch non technical people that used to start world press kind of annoying the customers. Then they can start on sub stack and went for a while like, oh, some stack socks and they charge too much. So I switched to ghost, which is the same thing.

But easier, right? You can say, hey, ghost has its limitations and by the way, we can do A I ghost and like you can have IT more customer. Sure, you can do that. I think there's some marginal advantage to IT, but in my mind, that's like a five to ten percent problem of like more great businesses, not like the ninety percent problem that doesn't mean not worth doing, but like IT does mean like to me, IT fits very nicely and introductory of like guess it's much easier to start all sorts of businesses for all sorts of technical reasons, right?

Yeah, I only think my point of view is, is generating software is actually the killer APP of A I I was interview in freedom today for our internal he was talking about how much conviction microsoft got into OpenAI because of the effectiveness of copilot. Like when SATA soc pilot, when they were doing the initial iterations, they had to actually wait more ambitious applications. They wanted to create where they are.

And the one that in that are being the killer APP is making people more productive at producing code. And what's happening now is that because the models are getting so much Better, we're finding out that we need to make the models Better for producing code. And so you use something like, uh uh h claude and and which is actually one of the main models of powers.

The zero and IT became like ten times Better at designing software. All of a sudden, n IT became ten times Better at creating react applications. And so let's just look at the numbers, right? Like there's four million react developers. I can move that from four million to fifty million travel. I because now like you just speak english to that thing, even if like IT doesn't do one hundred percent of the job, is just like this, like infinitely available assistance.

So I might push to you my push to you as an asset venture capitalist is, I think you're on the right side of history, but IT doesn't. Is not clear to me how you become soup. Get paid a lot for IT because there's a lot of ways you'll get there.

And like it's just generally true, the various to entry and doing a lot of this stuff going to come down. You building software is nice. I do IT all the time. And like people will build a lot more of IT. But if the marginal cost of building IT goes towards zero and like that's the general term of history, my big concern for your company will be you're not going to get paid enough for IT, right?

Because like it'll be commodity still need the influence IT, right? So it's not just about like writing the code, but if you have if you emerge writing the code, if you emerge a great experience for the designing, if you if you put in a lot of the taste that I think is really important into the process from the greater point of view, because A I mostly generates slop.

That's something I agree with you actually like we do have the whole day idol and again insein ly high bar because there is way too much spending and way too much type and a lot of IT is the slop like a lot of IT looks horrible ah in one of the things that actually we've differentiated in is uh the vast majority of generations we produce ah embed our taste into how we would design software. They embed even are like sort of like a device system component library in from there on we allowed to consume ze things so you have to find that sort of baLance between IT has been really easy but also has to be high quality but also customizable. And I do think that um making something ten times or a hundred times more abundant will have very, very, very a deep, deep implications of the industry.

So we're almost the time here, but I feel like we have time to hit you with a couple more lightning questions. We talk a lot about startups on this pot and and we talk a lot about how much the venture capital model has changed dramatically in a way that's really bad for a lot of startups. I'm kind of curious, like a what's this non obvious started up that you're kind of excited or entries by that you think kind of shows something in the ecosystem people .

could be missing minutes as love yesterday is not, uh, is not a surprise to anybody. I was really excited to all the market before you blew up uh because uh I I unlike I think a lot of people in silicon valley, I try to stay true to my convictions unless they have overwhelming evidence to the county. I was an early love to a bit coin, and I never saw anything that would change my mind about IT like the way that people in silken value been like pivoting away from IT, like there was no new news, like nothing broke about the photography.

Nothing changed about like the the fundamental promise of IT it's about, but like the whole silicon valley swish to like A I I guess like if you are an encysted people to A I right and I was actually chatting with someone about the history is like it's kind of incredible how bipolar we can be in like chasing this hype waves um where as what I saw in Polly market is starting to see in a lot of other uh companies is give value to the customer and use the centralized and infrastructure under the hood but don't lead with the decentralized infrastructure. This is an implementation ation detail. And so Polly market is the first company that first of there's there's been a few.

but there's a lot very .

but nothing scream script about IT. I was actually opening at yesterday because I was current about how the election was going. Uh and that that is really cool ah because I think we going to see a lot I was checking with the head of trip to at a stripe.

I'm excited about stable coins as well. So this is also kind of true to the promise of ourselves. Focus on the front and experience and plug in whatever stuff you want on the back.

And in fact, bunging the one that benefits your business the most. Whatever is a different payment gateway, what a, whatever is a different content system, data abase, whatever. We ouldn't care as long as experience is fast and the lightful. So there was one, one that, uh, comes to mind really quickly, but i'll hit you up if I had another .

one I applied you for not actually I don't think having A I anywhere on your um no no deploy A I S you almost don't say I in your home page because I agree with that. But the second, the second this is actually true of most things, is whenever people are excited about infrastructure, beware, right? Like infrastructure, we should disappear.

That's the points of infrastructure. And IT only gets exciting once it's gone. I so you almost don't say I I in your home page almost yeah .

IT should be great products.

What about like, okay, what's your favorite chap up said .

but um well the one we built a and bias obviously be .

zero but I made the ones you you like do you .

like a geri claude.

whatever? Like which of these do you find yourself using the most? And then i'm gna ask you, like the latest thing you use .

them for yeah so I use the combination of so I use one that perhaps you don't hear as much um which is what the questions going towards. I use rails A I, which is like extension to the Operating system. So the inquiry multiply ice. So I I breath command.

I love a command .

shift space bar. And then I get access to a bunch of different models. And you can try to with them in context of whatever .

i'm doing at the time.

I do believe that there will be A I embedded into everything that we we stop referring to IT incessantly. And I think one of those points, one of those places will be the Operating system. I don't know how much slop apple shipped with apple intelligence, but I do like that.

It's a layer that permits across multiple touch foods with customers to lake. There is apple intelligence in apple mail. There is apple intelligence in notifications.

And that is more realistic of a future of A I A I just everywhere and we don't talk about IT. Um and so red gas is filling in that gap for me today. Got IT and like what's a .

query you would use IT for that doesn't relate to like coating or work or anything.

Everything I tweet get IT picked to death. So um like I used IT for like proof reading a lot of what I say goodness .

the opposite of how we we uh approach our social media here of specifically .

sam it's also .

actually this inspires .

me to create a lot more AI that passively watches the things you say or like listening to that like you know how like jg, I was in both. James, hey, jie, can you check the thing like I always think about like A I should be like feeding us ideas or corrections or or or or things uh on top what are doing and saying in the absence of that， the fascinating I can do is you an interrupt from what i'm doing quickly, console the eye without losing context in the least number of key strokes, and then come back to the task.

So a lot of IT is proof reading, or like whenever my memory is faulty, like its so amazing to be able to sort of have a tool that embraces imposition in the query. So in very abolition that the vector search space stuff, because what is doing effectively is you always have IT like in the tip of your tongue and you have things that surrounded in vector space, but you can just quite grab the thing and that's what like drag A C I for me like, oh, what was that thing completely like a unclear and then he gives me that clarity. And being a native uh spanish speaker, you could imagine so many idiom and words that just like escape my mind and I need to bring into like l van round.

nice logy. Okay, do you guys have any final things to grow beer and honor any final? Like what else is happening in the world?

Game a why don't you to say I compete with like I in your laboratory fever talk track wanted you just feel like I compete with cloud flare because that sounds like you get the core what .

you do because that s doesn't help you build. Doctor comes later. Ah of course we compete with daughter, but I see them as like I am thankful for what they've done to the internet.

Because there was a lot of software that needed, needed badly to be secured. IT was defective. I would go down when traffic waves would hit. IT was badly bd bad architecture, not cloud. And so they made a lot of sense in that world. Uh with love is more like the me of like I don't think I don't think about you because when customers university never end up needing cloud flare, but they are coming to us to build software, not to uh sort of like see IT or or not fair enough, but that's good to that.

You know it's a very that that the answer strikes me as something i've been trying to grow into founders for eleven years and so i'll just grow IT until you now. But like everyone so afraid, like it's actually helpful, I think, for a lot of people to have the comparison to other services and then you can talk about where you're Better. But I think some founders are afraid to be like more of this for that.

You know.

when I launched the information, if I tried to convince people that, like, we were nothing like the wall sty journal or bloomberg, difficult and if I was just like, yeah, we're similar and that we do this, but here's what we do that way Better. So anyway, I think would be OK in your pitch. I would argue .

the opposite, like the information is so unique to me that I never to compare you anything else.

Yeah.

that's true. I get that advice sometimes .

to get that.

I know you .

could prime with a comparison and then my mind will let go elsewhere.

So that be asking me why I comparison other things, but I do not learned for journalists.

It's helpful to know that we think of ourselves and yeah I C I O or so for sure, bring IT up spending too much on cloud and at mi and the websites still sucks. That's actually what I tell them.

See now sam will invest. That's a IT.

So I think I won't say here's my basic my thing on this kind of just we've .

been welcome .

cloud flare, the internet.

internet took him down, I thought against .

go here so so .

i'm actioned, not on A V P M right now for this very reason. But I would say so the I think the thing about silicon valley is we've been trained on these terranova narratives right at home studying, right, like the early internet. What was so exciting about IT was a totally home setting.

IT was like. Herry, there's a new thing. Go out and stick claims and like you're not competing with party one. It's all terrible glow ocean.

The funny thing is that I actually think that that people love that narrative because IT sounds a mostly so can valuation like they don't want to like pete, they they are nice people. They're not like they are. They they want to fight.

But I think what's happened and where we are now is like where in a fight era, right, we're like there isn't terranova like A I is not terranova, right? A I is just new weapons for a war. And so as a result, like you just wanted be like, no, like this is we're now fighters.

AI are new weapons and like we're fighting over the same territory. Where is doing IT with new tools? And I think that just like a different mentality were like in a fight you like fighting bill and fighting cloud flare versus like, no, it's all new.

You know IT really depends on for startups where were hardly ever for A I started were hardly ever fighting cloud for. So for example, uh uh just use example from the election Polly market IT was all IT was born on in versa uh for a washington post were fighting acai and for a minnesota r tribune we fought on bram and they moved off of what the legacy into the new homestead land of sale. So IT depends on who you're talking to you.

I think for enterprise, you're absolutely right. Like when you get into a deep enterprise, I was fighting for your workload. And like the big banks in in, in, in the big insurance companies, they have twenty vendors courting them. At any given point, there is more of a nigh fight.

Yeah.

okay, we covered a lot of ground guys more than anything else. We should a ground we should hit. I mean, other things happening in the world.

but the Price of the next time I ked today.

I think it's seventy .

five today. Seventy five.

What is of those?

I mean, i'm actually shocked some, i'm shocked that what was the move? Ten percent? Fifteen percent.

I'm actually shocked that he was so small. Does IT say something about how small the crypto market actually is? I feeling the the .

markets take like two days to correct them.

No, he is also already like dramatically Prices in. I mean, it's like not I don't know. I think I think people it's interesting question. Are you a big dose holder? gear?

So I organized the first doge conference in the world.

It's amazing. When did you buy your first doge coin?

So I got something from the greater and the grater. What he did was a hilarious thing. H, he forked bitcoin. Change two lines of code.

I'm and in .

launch was of was doggin. He added inflation, which was that one parameter, and he changed how many coins existed.

Well, any sold all of his for like a .

moster metta or .

something like the r girl.

And i'm looking back at my first doge email in twenty fourteen, where sr. Girl is a friend of all of our thanks a few of us. I note about IT saying this is interesting thing called dodged coins being used in like uh .

in uh redit for like .

weird tipping shoe like super theses on IT in it's a .

great and now I might become .

the american currency no, it's of a joke. Although I will say the only cyp IT I have like ten million those. This was a .

happy dog.

just like ten dollars.

I bought ten million doors.

What you talking ve lost a lot of curve to a lot of different places.

Well, that was stolen.

Other other people lost. A silbert .

has some of my big coin. Fortunately, I live thanked. And and, and a facebook server somewhere buried in some archive has about ten million those, if anyone can find that. For me.

the spirit of IT was like fun, and just like experimenting and tinkering. And I think maybe to bring a full circle to what dave and I originally connected over, just make people creators again, less consumer drone, like infinite social media needs. And whether is launching your own group to currency or creating your website, your publication or anything more serious, I think it's is a worthwhile pursuit.

But people love being drones.

I think what they like wake up and .

but I am get super compelling with no. Thank you for joining us. This was really fun and thanks for putting up with a you know our half pitch session, half media criticism and yeah.

i'm going to try deploy our website and universal and add a chatbot.

I mean, we are s and is a super .

creator fun.

And to all our listeners, viewers back channel. Thank you guys for the insights for joining us. IT is a very interesting time right now, and we are sight to share our opinions what we're hearing and hear from all of you. So thank you guys. If you haven't make sure to check out the feeding on youtube as well, some of the shorts eclipse were sharing.

and i'll see you here next week. Bi guys see you.

If you enjoying the show, please leave us a virtual high five by reading IT and reviewing IT on apple podcast, spotify, youtube or wherever you get your podcast. Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for at more or less at dave morin at lesson at j lesson. And as for me, i'm at bread. See you guys next time.