Caveat Emptor?

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Hello and welcome to Learn, Make, Learn, where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better.
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My name is Ernest Kim and I'm joined by my friend and co host Joachim Groeger.
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Hey Joachim, how's it going?
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I'm doing well.
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It's the end of the year.
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We've been doing this for a year.
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I was thinking about that, you know, I also got very fixated on the 25 before 25 thing, so I was very motivated that we get this in.
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We're recording on December 30th, so.
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Yeah, I feel, uh, I feel good.
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I feel good about that.
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We're going to squeeze this in somehow.
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How about you?
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Yeah, yeah.
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Oh, geez.
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As you might have heard, I've been a little bit sick over the past couple of weeks.
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But otherwise, I've been pretty well, definitely enjoyed this, the holidays we've had over the last couple of weeks.
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But yeah, to your point, this is episode 25, our final episode of 2024.
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Hopefully we'll get it edited and published before the end of the year.
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and our topic today is caveat emptor or buyer beware.
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And we'll explain more of what we mean by this in just a minute.
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But let's start with some follow ups.
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if Joachim, do you have any follow ups to our previous episode on MKBHD or any episodes prior?
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so a friend and I'm going to try and get them onto the podcast, listen to the MKBHD panels episode.
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It was very interesting to hear from someone who is, uh, themselves not embedded in any of this, wasn't part of the, the discussion, and hearing their perspective on just how wild it is, that's that this stuff happens and people are not aware of it.
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And it just plays out, partly because it's interesting from the perspective of we are in a little echo chamber of, Oh, we're, we have our ears and eyes out for that stuff.
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But then also when people hear about it, they go like, wow, this is crazy that this stuff is going on.
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So that's the only thing I can actually add to our MKBHD discussion that.
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Yeah.
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If more people listen to it, they might be surprised about the wackiness of, of the tech world and, and the weird subculture that exists with YouTube influencers who then cross over into being product makers and the strange space that that inhabits.
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I think it's still interesting.
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We didn't quite get into the broader YouTube ecosystem because everyone's got branded everything now.
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But, um, yeah, it was quite interesting to hear from someone who was doing that.
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Well, outside of our discussions, and hopefully we can get them on the podcast to talk about where they're coming from, because I think they have a very unique perspective.
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Uh, they're actually an artist, so that could be quite cool.
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So anyway, I'm giving a little tidbit for 2025 there.
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So yeah.
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But what about you, Ernest?
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Did you have anything that was, related to, MKBHD or anything else.
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Yeah, yeah, actually, um, but that's a great shot.
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It would be great to get them on the shows as well.
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And I mean, I think I don't know if you've heard about this at all, but if you follow the entertainment news, there's been this huge story about.
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Blake Lively and, uh, her co star and the person who directed that film, It Ends With Us, and this kind of shadow PR campaign that they waged.
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So, um, I think a lot of people are surprised to learn about, um, these things that happened kind of behind the scenes.
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Uh, but yeah, my one, uh, bit of, uh, follow up was actually also to our, uh, previous episode on MKBHD as panels app and pricing in general.
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Um, And, and it has to do with MKBHD or Marques Brownlee.
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He posted a recap video for the year, uh, titled WTF Happened in 2024.
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And um, if you found our discussion about Marques Brownlee interesting, I think you'll find this recap of the year interesting as well.
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And we'll include a link to that video in our show notes.
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Um, I think the, the reason I found it interesting is that for one, it's a, it's a great illustration of why he's been able to build such a.
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Huge following, uh, over the past, what, decade plus now, I forget how long it's been from.
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Uh, he speaks in this video, this recap of the year, he speaks to the successes he's had over the past year, which are numerous, uh, and extend beyond the world of tech and content creation, but he doesn't shy away from the controversies that he was mixed up in over the course of the year.
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And he also openly acknowledges the mistakes he made, including the launch of the panels app that we discussed.
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And, you know, I have to admit, I found that admirable.
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And so it seems that many of his viewers, uh, for example, a viewer named at Carlos Ocasio 2247 wrote the following in the comments to the video.
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So quote, thank you for owning up Marques and thank you for learning.
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Hopefully you can see that a lot of us will still be here for you guys, unquote.
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And that comment itself received.
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1, 200 likes, which is kind of amazing
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That's crazy.
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Yeah.
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a comment to the video received 1, 200 likes, while the video itself, uh, as of our recording has received, 112, 000 likes.
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thousand likes.
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so, you know, speaking to his popularity, but, you know, kind of building on that, this also highlights a point that Joachim made in our last episode about the parasocial relationships that form between content creators and their viewers.
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You know, not that I'd ever encourage anyone to risk their sanity by wading into YouTube comments, but if you wanted to see this dynamic in action, just take a look at the comments to Brownlee's video and you'll see example after example of the sorts of illusions of intimacy, friendship, and identification that mark parasocial relationships.
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And I know that the concept of parasocial interaction has existed for decades, but it's clear that it's become more intense in our contemporary media landscape.
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And I think this is particularly true Uh, particularly problematic for men who are experiencing what's come to be called a friendship recession with 20 percent of single men in America now reporting that they have zero close friends on, this could be a topic for an entire episode.
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So in the interest of time, I'll just include a link in the show notes to an episode of the 1A podcast that's focused on this topic, as well as a fantastic episode of the People I Mostly Admire podcast that features an interview with a social scientist and author named Richard Reeves, who's focused a lot of his recent work on the broader challenges faced by boys and men today.
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So we'll include links to both those things in the show notes.
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All right.
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So, Jumping to our episode today, uh, we're going to talk about the principle of caveat emptor or buyer beware, but specifically within the context of product innovation.
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And, I'll start with a little bit of a backstory of what inspired this topic for us.
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And it came from a recent trip that my wife and I took to New York.
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It was our, it was my actually first holiday trip to New York in Uh, gosh, over a decade.
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I grew up in New York, um, but, uh, haven't been back in, in quite a while, uh, at least not for a holiday.
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I've been back for work a couple of times, but not on holiday.
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And it was a great trip.
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We had a great time.
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We saw, um, some friends, but one of the things I had hoped I'd be able to do while we were there was try out some fancy high end headphones.
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That's so specific.
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And just by the way, I just need to like, we need to be very clear how niche that is.
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Like you go to New York city and what you're looking forward to is testing out high end headphones.
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I just, we need to dwell on that moment for a second.
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It's on, it's on, uh, it's on brand.
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That's all I want to say.
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know it sounds pretty random, but I had this particular interest in trying open back headphones and specifically planar magnetic open back headphones.
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And, And the reason I wanted to do that while in New York is that it's, it's pretty, uh, difficult to find places where you can just try out these headphones.
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Uh, there's nowhere, at least that I'm aware of in Portland, where I was, I would have been able to try out the headphones I was interested in.
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So, um, that was something that was kind of on my list of things to do while we're in New York.
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And fortunately we were, able to make time to do that.
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Uh, I went to this great store, um, called audio 46, which is on 29 West 46th street in Manhattan.
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That's their name, audio 46.
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This is not sponsored.
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Uh, they, there was no commercial interaction here.
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It's just that, um, they had the headphones that I wanted to try.
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And it was actually a really great experience.
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The person who helped me out, just gave me tons of time was very patient really engaged my wife as well, which is fantastic So she actually ended up really enjoying the experience even though she really didn't have any interest in in trying out Fancy headphones, but there were some specific models that I was interested in and they had All of them there.
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So specifically the headphones I tried were the Sennheiser HD 800 S, which are like a legendary, uh, set of headphones have been around largely unchanged for, I think over two decades now, which is remarkable, you know, for any kind of electronics equipment to be around for that long, which, you know, speaks to how good they are.
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So, uh, tried those, those are open back, but not planar magnetic.
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And then also, uh, tried this, uh, A set of headphones from a brand called Focal, which is a French company, specifically the Focal Clear MG.
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Uh, and then also the, uh, uh, two headphones from a company called Hifiman.
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A lot of reviewers pronounce it Hifiman, but it's just spelled Hifiman.
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It doesn't sound right, does it?
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Yeah, so I'm just going to say Hifiman.
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Uh, the model I wanted to try is called the Arya Organic.
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They didn't have that, but they did have a different version of the Arya called the Stealth, and they had a version of the Arya that I wasn't aware of, which was the called the Hifiman Arya Unveiled.
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And, um, all of these, with the exception of the Arya Stealth, are in this sort of 1400 territory, in terms of price point.
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The Arya Stealth is, is a fair bit lower than that, it's about 600.
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Um, so I tried them all, and I think the good thing is, I knew a little bit about them, but I didn't know too much, and I just let my ears dictate my preference.
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Um, and after listening to them, I can't, I, it was very clear to me that the set that I preferred the most was this Hifiman Arya, Unveiled.
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And it was the same with my wife.
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She said very clearly, these are the ones that Sounded best to her.
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And, um, so I actually did buy them.
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Um, these all require an amp as well.
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So I had to buy a headphone amp.
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Oh, wow.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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Real.
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I mean, a true investment.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It was a little ridiculous.
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It was the one splurge I made during this trip.
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Um, but so I came to learn afterward that there are lots of misgivings in the kind of high end Headphone community about this unveiled concept that Hifiman has, uh, offered over the past year or so.
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so.
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you know, we could go into this whole sidebar into what are planar magnetic headphones and what's unveiled, but I'll keep it short and say that.
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these were all open back headphones, meaning that, um, if you're in the room with a person listening to these headphones, you can hear what they're listening to.
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It's not but Uh, in that sense, they're incredibly impractical.
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All these things were incredibly impractical because they're the very opposite of noise canceling headphones.
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You know, you can hear a bit of what's in the room around you.
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People in the room can also hear what you're listening to.
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So they, they're really only meant to be used at home in a quiet room, um, with an amplifier attached.
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It's very specific,
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very specific.
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Yeah.
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The whole reason I did this is that I've, I've bought expensive, somewhat expensive headphones in the past.
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I guess what people would call mid fi things like the, uh, Apple AirPods max or, Bang Olsen type headphones, which I guess a lot of audiophile people would consider like lifestyle headphones, but I've I've never been happy with them.
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I've always felt like, why are these things as expensive as they are?
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They just never kind of wowed me with the audio quality.
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So I just.
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Thought, let me at least try these things that are, ridiculous amounts of money and see if I'm actually impressed by them and see if they, you know, kind of move me and give me an emotional reaction.
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And they did.
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Uh, and so that's why I ended up actually buying this HiFiMan Arya Unveiled.
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They, they were so much better than any headphone I'd ever, ever, ever tried.
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And actually, All of those headphones were very, very good, much better than any headphone that I'd ever tried.
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And then across them that Arya Unveiled was very clearly to me, to my ears, better than the rest.
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And so, you know, once after, I didn't do research until after I bought them, I came to learn that this Unveiled concept is somewhat controversial and it's because they, not only are they open back, But they completely take away any of the material that would, in most headphones, protect that driver.
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I see.
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Um, and that's, thus the, the unveiled terminology.
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And the, the rationale that Hifiman, gives is that I'm quoting them here by removing the traditional grill that protects the drivers.
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Arya unveiled eliminates sound wave reflections that can distort and muddy the audio.
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This innovation creates an open transparent listening experience, allowing you to hear every detail with breathtaking accuracy.
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That's their language.
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Any open back headphone is going to give you some degree of that.
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You know, that's the whole idea of open back headphones, but they're saying it's that it, this does it even more.
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And I would say that I, I, I heard a very clear difference between the Arya stealth, which they had in the store and this Arya unveiled, you know, the versions of the same model, and to me, the Arya unveiled was clearly better, whether it's the It was because of this unveiling, or it was for other factors, I don't know.
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But to my ears, the unveiled version was clearly superior in terms of the audio quality, which is why I went for them.
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in researching this, after the fact, I came to learn that a lot of audio high end headphone reviewers feel like the unveiled concept, uh, creates undue risk because, by taking away any of those sorts of grills that might protect the driver.
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It means that it's a lot easier to damage the driver.
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it's one nano less than a nanometer thick.
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So it's, it is a very fragile thing.
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And not only that, the driver is surrounded by these very powerful magnets.
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So if you happen to have, let's say, a paper clip on your desk, uh, that's, that's near the driver, you know, there's this fear that that would get sucked into the headphone and damage the driver.
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And, you know, it's, it's to the point that one, uh, YouTube reviewer, the title for their review is for one of the, uh, a different HiFiMan, um, unveiled headphone.
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The title is something like these headphones are terrifying because they're just terrified that they're going to damage, uh, the drivers, you know, which is fair because they are quite expensive.
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Right.
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Um, so.
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It was interesting to me that there is this, um, uh, perspective that, um, HIFIMEN has this responsibility to, uh, to the customers to, to not expose them to this level of risk.
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Uh, so I found that really interesting because even after learning of this, of these concerns, I am glad.
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That hyphen has put out this product because I think the audio quality, uh, is worth it.
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if that's what it takes to deliver this level of audio quality, I feel like, um, I'm willing to assume that risk and it's not as though, um, hyphen doesn't provide you with some mechanisms to mitigate the risk.
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So the headphones actually come with what they call veils, basically just these covers.
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that magnetically attached to the outside of the headphone.
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So when you're done listening, the idea is that you put the veils on and you can actually listen to them with the veils on.
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And it's, it's a massive difference in audio quality.
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So, you know, clearly the fact that they're open does do something.
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So that's what kind of precipitated this topic, right?
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So how much risk is it fair for a brand to subject the customer to?
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It's worth noting too, that HIFIMAN does offer a warranty, but only for defects.
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So, you know, I think that is another reason to potentially be concerned that, you know, it is a more fragile product.
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And if I damaged the product, um, because let's say I put it down and it sucks a paperclip into itself, you know, I'd be on the hook for that.
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So, um, it is a far higher degree of risk than you'd encounter with any.
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Typical headphone.
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That's absolutely true.
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Are they repairable?
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I mean, is it, is it possible, like, if something does damage that they can be opened up and they can be repaired?
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Either, you probably would have to send them back to the shop, uh, the manufacturer, I assume.
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Yeah,
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that part of their culture, at least, that,
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it's a, it's a good question.
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I'm not sure.
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Um, I would guess, you know, I shouldn't say that because one of the things that I've seen in various Reddit threads is one of the things Hifiman is doing.
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criticized on consistently is their lack of customer service.
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oh,
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So Yeah.
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maybe a little bit more background on this.
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Uh, HIFIMAN is a China based company started by, um, a person who actually, uh, Uh, he started the kind of precursor to the company when he lived in New York and he had a great appreciation for music and he, uh, spent a lot of time attending concerts at, uh, um, at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.
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And he felt that the headphones available at the time, while maybe delivering a high degree of accuracy, didn't do a very good job of replicating that experience of hearing music.
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In real life, and so that's what led him to start this company that eventually became Hifiman, and they're pretty interesting in that they've very aggressively pursued innovation.
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They really are pushing the envelope.
00:19:57.678 --> 00:20:08.670
And in some ways it kind of reminds me of the old days of Apple, you know, kind of the iPod days of Apple where There's that expression that Steve Jobs used at the time, but basically obsoleting themselves.
00:20:09.424 --> 00:20:18.365
Very quickly and you know, Steve Job's perspective on that was if we don't do it, then our competitors will so better that we be the ones to obsolete our own products.
00:20:19.244 --> 00:20:25.315
Um, but that's pretty unusual in that sort of high-end audiophile space, right?
00:20:25.315 --> 00:20:31.025
Where things up till now until, recently have been pretty static and innovation's been pretty slow.
00:20:31.025 --> 00:20:37.894
So, that's another, reason why there's maybe some segments of the audiophile community that.
00:20:38.349 --> 00:20:41.710
Uh, aren't, so happy about Hifiman and their approach.
00:20:42.660 --> 00:20:45.920
So it just felt like it could be an interesting topic of conversation.
00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:46.269
I think.
00:20:46.575 --> 00:20:50.295
this is maybe a, a relatively innocuous version of this.
00:20:50.825 --> 00:20:58.535
You know, we're talking about super high end headphones, you know, and who no one's going to cry for me if I damage my headphones, right.
00:20:59.174 --> 00:21:13.005
on the maybe other extreme end of this is I'd say Tesla and the approach that they've taken to basically in allowing their own customers to beta test their self driving software, which.
00:21:13.460 --> 00:21:24.740
Has actually led to some people dying, uh, not only the dryer drivers, but people who've been, um, struck by, uh, people driving cars in self driving Tesla's in self driving mode.
00:21:24.894 --> 00:21:26.703
you know, that's at an another extreme.
00:21:26.784 --> 00:21:29.564
Hyperman clearly isn't the only example of this happening.
00:21:29.574 --> 00:21:47.801
There's other examples of, um, uh, companies, you know, maybe pushing the envelope with innovation and putting customers, Or at least, uh, expecting their customers to accept a higher degree of risk than, um, is perhaps typical.
00:21:48.392 --> 00:21:54.571
So it was something that I was really curious just to hear what you, you thought of, uh, Joachim.
00:21:54.571 --> 00:22:01.663
And then maybe we could talk about it more broadly too and what implications it might have in terms of product creation But what, what's your perspective on this?
00:22:02.919 --> 00:22:03.128
Yeah.
00:22:03.128 --> 00:22:17.679
It's kind of interesting to hear a high end hi fi company trying to mimic the innovation model or production cycle model of a software company aggressively updating things at such a pace.
00:22:17.778 --> 00:22:20.278
Like you said, in hi fi that doesn't happen very often.
00:22:20.638 --> 00:22:23.285
It's a pretty stable industry.
00:22:23.315 --> 00:22:26.595
there's well known brands that do a very specific thing.
00:22:27.369 --> 00:22:39.140
They have found their niche with stuff and if anything they generally will go backwards and they'll just like reissue old speakers with new technology or things like that in the hi fi domain.
00:22:39.140 --> 00:22:41.740
So it's interesting to hear that this exists.
00:22:41.779 --> 00:22:44.130
And I can also see your side and stuff.
00:22:44.130 --> 00:22:48.269
People know that there's a risk and you understood the risk because you could, you heard the description is very clear.
00:22:49.203 --> 00:22:56.973
knowing what you're getting yourself into is very different from becoming a beta tester for something that's more critical, right?
00:22:56.973 --> 00:23:01.423
Is the risk being mitigated or is the risk just being transferred?
00:23:02.094 --> 00:23:17.403
Um, and I think that's kind of where I feel more in the technology domain, the companies are shifting risk to the consumer as opposed to trying to mitigate it as best as possible, but then saying, Hey, don't worry, like we will keep updating if we detect problems in, in anything.
00:23:18.105 --> 00:23:25.965
I think the broader landscape is the thing I was trying to wrap my head around, which was Why would you play this game as a company?
00:23:25.965 --> 00:23:41.006
Why would you want to innovate, but then have this risk in the system, where customers will, will want to, well, we'll be exposed to a bad experience and then you say, you promise you'll make it better down the line or something like that.
00:23:42.211 --> 00:23:45.421
And it seems like it is just because everything has turned into a race.
00:23:45.931 --> 00:23:50.671
It's a race for supremacy, a race for dominance, as opposed to a race for quality.
00:23:51.171 --> 00:24:02.076
And it's interesting because we haven't actually built markets from the ground up to favor quality, which is the thing we care about, right?
00:24:02.346 --> 00:24:08.175
And this is the common story about the capitalist system, everyone's gonna out innovate each other.
00:24:08.776 --> 00:24:11.435
But actually, that really doesn't seem to happen.
00:24:11.506 --> 00:24:12.776
You just have to be first.
00:24:12.895 --> 00:24:14.026
Get there first.
00:24:14.796 --> 00:24:19.445
Get a critical mass of people, to believe that you are the first person to do something.
00:24:20.756 --> 00:24:21.766
Everyone believes it.
00:24:22.306 --> 00:24:27.395
And then when everyone's locked in your damn system, you start promising all kinds of stuff And then you hope that it all works out.
00:24:28.096 --> 00:24:32.276
that works for software, that works for social networks, that works for Netflix, YouTube, whatever.
00:24:32.276 --> 00:24:34.576
Like, those things are not critical settings.
00:24:34.935 --> 00:24:58.386
But It certainly feels like now we are expected to have a high threshold of tolerance to that type of risk And you know, it should just be kind of like well This is the price of innovation and that's what we have to pay But the great irony is that the corporations never pay that price They just shifted it over to us I think the, the idea that we just have to race to be first is, is the root cause of a lot of these things.
00:24:58.436 --> 00:25:02.166
And you don't have to be first in terms of quality.
00:25:02.166 --> 00:25:06.606
You just have to be first in terms of the person to capture enough of the market.
00:25:06.606 --> 00:25:09.027
And then you can shape the narrative of what happens next.
00:25:09.477 --> 00:25:16.767
that was a kind of a, a broader point around the crazy market dynamics that we have now, but Tesla is perfect example of that first.
00:25:17.196 --> 00:25:22.336
mass market electric car, uh, first to build out its supercharger network.
00:25:22.856 --> 00:25:33.237
And so as a result is now the de facto standard setter for everyone else, even if the quality of their vehicles is not up to snuff in many dimensions.
00:25:34.132 --> 00:25:38.461
The Cybertruck is a perfect example of just how deranged their thinking has gotten.
00:25:39.152 --> 00:25:46.791
Basic safety features that automotive engineers worry about day in, day out, and work on for years to get right, they just kind of rush out.
00:25:46.791 --> 00:25:58.602
I don't know if you were aware or watched the videos of people testing out the auto closing functions on the front hood and then being able to squish carrots and cut them apart and the thing doesn't respond.
00:25:58.602 --> 00:26:00.642
It just puts more force on it to get it closed.
00:26:01.021 --> 00:26:02.362
You know, absolutely.
00:26:02.842 --> 00:26:07.751
The opposite of where we've come from of decades of people intervening to make sure these systems are safe.
00:26:08.231 --> 00:26:13.652
But you just have to get out there, get it at first, and then you control the narrative of this is innovation, this is the price of innovation.
00:26:13.662 --> 00:26:23.862
I remember getting a ride with someone and they had a Model X we were driving and They were just saying how wonderful the car is say this car is just incredible.
00:26:23.912 --> 00:26:30.846
You know, it works perfectly and uh, yeah, except sometimes the doors don't open properly.
00:26:30.987 --> 00:26:31.287
Yeah.
00:26:31.307 --> 00:26:33.076
But aside from that, then they're fine.
00:26:33.376 --> 00:26:38.817
And then there was that one time that I couldn't get it to charge properly and close the thing, but that was okay.
00:26:39.176 --> 00:26:41.307
And then there was the, the display.
00:26:41.307 --> 00:26:44.166
Well, that just shut down while I was on the highway, but I think it was okay.
00:26:44.166 --> 00:26:48.217
Cause everything rebooted and you're just, you're just thinking, wait a minute, what's happened here.
00:26:48.817 --> 00:26:51.836
You've lost the ability to have a sense of where the risk is.
00:26:51.846 --> 00:26:56.892
You're taking on this risk, but you're taking it on kind of in this, hazing kind of way.
00:26:56.892 --> 00:26:58.201
Like, this is the price of innovation.
00:26:58.201 --> 00:27:00.241
If you are at the frontier, this is what is expected.
00:27:01.311 --> 00:27:02.541
That's, that doesn't sound right.
00:27:02.561 --> 00:27:09.241
And when someone on the one hand is telling you it's 100 percent safe, or this is the price of innovation, and you have to pay it, something has gone wrong.
00:27:09.291 --> 00:27:20.648
Yeah, so that's, yeah, so I think, going back to the hi fi thing think we all understand like vinyl record players, are finicky and fragile and the cartridges can be damaged and your records can be damaged and scratched.
00:27:21.409 --> 00:27:24.028
It's kind of the price of doing business and you know it when you're going in.
00:27:24.328 --> 00:27:29.199
You're not expecting to be able to throw a vinyl record across the room and it should play.
00:27:29.868 --> 00:27:31.929
You could probably get away doing, away with that, with that.
00:27:32.324 --> 00:27:35.634
a CD, and then playing that CD, a couple of scratches will be okay.
00:27:35.723 --> 00:27:41.404
So, having that clear understanding of what it is that you are buying and where the risks are is important.
00:27:41.545 --> 00:27:46.345
Uh, and you hope that the person who is making the thing has done everything to mitigate those risks.
00:27:47.150 --> 00:27:50.109
So, yeah, I think that's the, that's the main thing.
00:27:50.109 --> 00:28:06.069
I guess it's about agency and whether you're being coerced into something that you don't want to be, uh, involved in, you know, I don't want to have a system installed while I'm driving without knowing what it is that it's going to be doing, but that's kind of the culture that we've become accustomed to because we're so used to it on apps.
00:28:06.660 --> 00:28:10.940
Our apps that we use on our personal devices are not going to crash our cars out of nowhere.
00:28:11.299 --> 00:28:19.680
But when you do an over the air update on the car in the background, and you're just beta testing me, and I have agreed because I signed a contract once when I bought the car, that's pretty different.
00:28:20.099 --> 00:28:37.769
Yeah, I, I have to say I'm really of two minds when it comes to Tesla, which I do think is probably the kind of example of this because the stakes are so high, but you know, so I absolutely acknowledge all of that.
00:28:38.829 --> 00:29:09.182
And yet I would also say that Yeah, I had an opportunity to talk to somebody who works in the automotive industry and I brought up Tesla and I assumed that they would really badmouth Tesla, But they, their perspective was that, as someone in the automotive industry who worked for a company that made internal combustion engine cars, that Tesla had accelerated the adoption of electric cars by many years, if not decades.
00:29:09.922 --> 00:29:11.872
And I think that's absolutely true.
00:29:11.872 --> 00:29:15.821
And that's a net positive for society.
00:29:16.821 --> 00:29:21.071
You know, to transition away from ICE cars.
00:29:22.436 --> 00:29:34.737
And it wouldn't have happened as quickly if it weren't for Tesla and the aggressiveness with which they approached that space.
00:29:34.787 --> 00:29:40.596
Um, and then I, I think by extension, you could say similar things about self driving.
00:29:40.906 --> 00:29:56.701
I think that if we are ever able to actually, uh, deliver on self driving at scale, which I think is still a pretty big if I think there would be some pretty big net positives for society associated with that.
00:29:56.701 --> 00:29:57.971
I think it would be safer.
00:29:58.412 --> 00:30:03.602
You know, the Waymo experience today suggests that it would be significantly safer.
00:30:04.102 --> 00:30:08.642
It would offer mobility to a lot of people who currently lack mobility today.
00:30:08.642 --> 00:30:12.521
So getting there, I think would be a net positive for society.
00:30:12.521 --> 00:30:17.362
But, you know, is it, is it worth it?
00:30:17.362 --> 00:30:17.682
Right.
00:30:17.682 --> 00:30:18.261
I guess.
00:30:18.301 --> 00:30:20.761
Uh, and to your point, I think it is all about agency.
00:30:20.761 --> 00:30:33.122
And I do think that there is, responsibility on the part of the user there, you know, there are safeguards built into Tesla's, uh, I forget what the autopilot or whatever they call it.
00:30:33.741 --> 00:30:35.021
System in terms of.
00:30:35.751 --> 00:30:46.211
saying that you're meant to keep your hands on the wheel, you know, and people are, are not adhering to those finding ways to bypass them.
00:30:47.692 --> 00:30:58.051
Um, so that's, to me, the fuzzy territory of how far does the product maker's responsibility extend?
00:30:58.730 --> 00:31:01.589
Yeah, I can, I can see, I can see that.
00:31:01.599 --> 00:31:11.547
Actually, the examples that you gave are very interesting because, I spoke about this idea that if you get somewhere first, you control the narrative of the world that we live in.
00:31:12.126 --> 00:31:14.166
And so it is true.
00:31:14.257 --> 00:31:19.737
We have the competition to get electric cars on the roads was totally spurred by Tesla.
00:31:20.284 --> 00:31:26.153
I would argue that it actually was not necessarily because the technology was something that people wanted to do.
00:31:26.173 --> 00:31:27.784
It was more that they wanted to mimic.
00:31:28.344 --> 00:31:31.163
the stock market performance of Tesla.
00:31:32.003 --> 00:31:43.324
And that is why they needed to follow that narrative that said, I can't have this guy running around saying he's the future of the world when I'm, you know, I've, I know how to build these things and we should be doing that.
00:31:43.324 --> 00:31:45.653
So everyone hopped onto the electric car bandwagon.
00:31:45.663 --> 00:31:58.334
And we're now seeing a lot of the consequence of that, which is Crap ton of cars are going unsold, a lot of like high depreciation on electric cars, which is insane, uh, even high end ones losing 30, 40 percent within no time at all.
00:31:58.344 --> 00:32:04.703
I think that the, the competitive force that took over was more the narrative force that took over.
00:32:05.364 --> 00:32:11.513
As a result, there's a danger that we missed what else could have been done with that time.
00:32:11.983 --> 00:32:14.284
So, like a benevolent.
00:32:14.719 --> 00:32:16.209
Electric car manufacturer coming out.
00:32:16.628 --> 00:32:17.628
They say, here's the electric car.
00:32:17.628 --> 00:32:18.138
It's very cool.
00:32:18.138 --> 00:32:18.699
It's very fancy.
00:32:18.699 --> 00:32:20.098
It's only for the top 1%.
00:32:20.769 --> 00:32:22.118
But guess what we're going to do next?
00:32:22.628 --> 00:32:24.608
We're going to be building public buses that are electric.
00:32:24.788 --> 00:32:33.509
We will work with cities to create dedicated lanes where we can take advantage of the combination of self driving, dedicated lanes, safety, and mass transit.
00:32:33.588 --> 00:32:40.903
Because the Simple truth of a car is, is it takes up a lot of space relative to how many people can fit inside of a car.
00:32:41.443 --> 00:32:45.463
But a bus doesn't have those types of constraints, so buses are definitely the way forward.
00:32:45.534 --> 00:32:56.503
And if we could have a fleet of highly organized, self driving, plus piloted, uh, public transit systems with dedicated lanes, where the only traffic that is there most of the time is going to be buses.
00:32:57.243 --> 00:33:06.663
A lot of the things would be resolved as well, and people would have access to something that is affordable and where they can actually elect the officials that design those systems and update the system.
00:33:06.673 --> 00:33:12.973
So that to me is like a counterfactual world that we've never been able to experience because of this race.
00:33:13.338 --> 00:33:15.338
To get there first and do those things.
00:33:15.368 --> 00:33:22.989
And so, yeah, that's just the kind of the mini, uh, alternative world that I sometimes wonder, like, what would that have looked like?
00:33:22.999 --> 00:33:27.878
There was actually a brief period in England where a small company called Arrival was toying with these ideas.
00:33:27.878 --> 00:33:40.669
But then interestingly enough, they went completely bananas and started promising electric planes and then they collapsed, but they had a great design, which was a modular, uh, skateboard, as they called it, where they just had this.
00:33:40.913 --> 00:33:45.334
platform, you just plunk whatever you wanted to plunk on top of it.
00:33:45.344 --> 00:33:53.683
And then their initial pitch was UPS trucks and, uh, Royal Mail delivery trucks, which is the equivalent of the USPS in the UK.
00:33:54.304 --> 00:33:58.394
Um, and then they also had like small buses as another thing.
00:33:58.403 --> 00:34:00.469
And that would have been very interesting to see that.
00:34:02.038 --> 00:34:15.018
And again, Tesla has benefited from huge state subsidies, but ultimately it's making a car that very few people can access and doesn't overcome the fundamental constraints of the physical space that a car takes up.
00:34:15.018 --> 00:34:28.673
So I didn't want to go off topic, but there was a piece of me that wants to think about those other worlds that could have been, and could we have achieved Even more if we had gone in another direction.
00:34:28.724 --> 00:34:41.304
I throw that as a counterpoint to to Uh where you were coming from on this but no, I I agree with the fact that there's no doubting it that without tesla We wouldn't have mainstream car manufacturers producing electric cars.
00:34:41.434 --> 00:34:48.014
I mean there wouldn't be ford electric cars I'm, pretty sure that we would we would not be seeing that, you know, and they're pretty pretty sweet as well.
00:34:48.014 --> 00:34:48.284
So
00:34:49.889 --> 00:34:51.079
No, I think that's a great point.
00:34:51.079 --> 00:34:57.708
Um, gosh, we could go off on a whole tangent about buses too, because I'm, I'm a huge bus advocate.
00:34:57.728 --> 00:35:03.298
I think this, being in Portland, this fixation with light rail is ridiculous.
00:35:03.298 --> 00:35:04.838
Like, I mean,
00:35:04.943 --> 00:35:05.614
it's so wrong
00:35:05.818 --> 00:35:17.494
the billions of dollars that they are spending on light rail that is being unused when you could just use, Create dedicated bus lanes, you know, oh, gosh, we could, yeah, It
00:35:17.659 --> 00:35:18.849
But yeah, that's another topic.
00:35:18.849 --> 00:35:22.378
Maybe that's, that'll be next year we'll talk about like urban design
00:35:22.523 --> 00:35:23.884
Yeah, yeah,
00:35:24.018 --> 00:35:24.278
Right.
00:35:24.278 --> 00:35:24.539
Yeah.
00:35:25.293 --> 00:35:36.398
but I do think that's an interesting point because it speaks to the challenge of the difference between concept and reality in that, you know, like even with, uh, Rivian.
00:35:37.539 --> 00:36:05.693
I think they've kind of inched towards that in the, in the work they've done in terms of building cargo vans, uh, working with, um, uh, Amazon and I believe UPS to make, delivery vans, which is, you know, I think maybe a step on the way towards maybe developing something like a bus, but how much they've struggled with, Just the productization, cause I think Steve Jobs talked about this too, like ideas are a dime a dozen, right?
00:36:05.693 --> 00:36:07.043
It's so easy to have an idea.
00:36:07.043 --> 00:36:12.923
What's so difficult is to turn that into a product and not just a product, but a profitable product that.
00:36:12.934 --> 00:36:15.114
allows you to make the next product.
00:36:15.884 --> 00:36:29.034
I think that's the thing that Musk understood to a degree that I think to even today, a lot of, his competitors still don't seem to understand.
00:36:29.684 --> 00:36:34.744
You know, you can see the struggles that Rivian's having to be profitable.
00:36:34.753 --> 00:36:35.713
They're still not profitable.
00:36:35.713 --> 00:36:37.713
They still lose money on every vehicle they make.
00:36:38.434 --> 00:36:52.135
So, um, it shows why I think there is this impulse to try to control the narrative, to try to maybe You know, fake it till you make it.
00:36:52.574 --> 00:37:22.590
That's classic Silicon Valley approach, um, so that you can get That funding you need to keep you afloat until you can get to the version that you can sell at scale that can actually, generate enough revenue to actually, um, make your company a going concern without that, um, venture funding or without that, um, equity, uh, that is built on kind of the hope of what the company is, will be versus what it actually is.
00:37:24.369 --> 00:37:28.429
And I do think it's a very dangerous approach.
00:37:28.820 --> 00:37:36.960
You see things like, uh, the company that, was promising this, you know, magic blood, uh, analysis machine, you know.
00:37:37.840 --> 00:37:41.550
Yeah, Theranos, you know, I think that's another great example of the.
00:37:42.190 --> 00:37:44.269
Uh, the dark side of this.
00:37:44.780 --> 00:38:04.130
Um, and yet when it gets into domains like automotive, the amount of capital required is just so enormous that you almost need this sort of hocus pocus to make people believe in what this kind of potential future is.
00:38:04.730 --> 00:38:05.929
it's a really tricky challenge.
00:38:06.190 --> 00:38:10.170
I think the, the fun thing about this HiFiMan.
00:38:11.300 --> 00:38:14.409
Product is that it gets us maybe to a smaller scale.
00:38:14.619 --> 00:38:36.068
That's a little bit more relevant to, um, people making product on an, on a day to day basis,,, you know, it allows us to maybe think about this problem on a more accessible scale, and I have to say, I do, maybe this is because I had the experience with the product, but I do come down on the side of pushing the envelope.
00:38:36.128 --> 00:38:38.108
I think that's maybe my bias as well.
00:38:38.108 --> 00:38:47.469
I love innovation and I love brands that are willing to take the risks required to kind of, um, push industries to new places.
00:38:47.798 --> 00:39:01.565
And I've listened to some interviews with the founder of HifiMan, and who knows, it could just be a bunch of smoke and mirrors, but I do get the sense that he really does want to make better products.
00:39:02.096 --> 00:39:11.610
And he has this, the same sort of impatience that I saw in Steve Jobs He wants to push things further to be better.
00:39:12.226 --> 00:39:15.916
and you know, Hey, a byproduct of that is that he makes money.
00:39:16.547 --> 00:39:22.657
Um, and he establishes a leadership position that kind of gives him some, um, added wiggle room.
00:39:22.666 --> 00:39:26.726
But I get the impression that fundamentally.
00:39:26.876 --> 00:39:44.606
What's driving him is this desire to make better products and to get to this dream that he's talked about of replicating audio in a way that just feels truer to life and not just accurate, but actually true to the experience of listening to audio in a, in a perfect environment.
00:39:45.407 --> 00:40:05.362
While I absolutely acknowledge the downsides, my, Take is that it's worth that as long as as you've said, as long as you give the customer agency Let them know what the risks are so that they're making it a choice with Knowledge not not tricking them
00:40:06.376 --> 00:40:06.637
Yeah.
00:40:06.637 --> 00:40:09.567
This is where I kind of, I agree.
00:40:09.677 --> 00:40:14.827
So I think everything we've always talked about has been, Hey, push the envelope, take the risk.
00:40:14.976 --> 00:40:15.836
Do something new.
00:40:15.876 --> 00:40:25.217
I agree with innovation, the risk, the fact that there are people that just want to do things differently than they have been, I think is essential.
00:40:25.347 --> 00:40:34.516
This is also why, uh, I think in our time now, having artists and people who are musicians, they're always thinking What if something was different?
00:40:34.646 --> 00:40:36.976
And I always think about that.
00:40:37.197 --> 00:40:38.016
What if it was different?
00:40:38.137 --> 00:40:40.166
So I think that's a really important force in the world.
00:40:40.166 --> 00:40:43.967
And I think it brings risk with it because you're trying to imagine an alternative that doesn't exist.
00:40:43.967 --> 00:40:46.047
And you're going to try and manifest that in some form.
00:40:46.407 --> 00:40:59.871
What's interesting is I think The way forwards is actually to get that engagement from your customer way, way earlier, potentially, as opposed to waiting for the product cycle and innovation cycle to be completed, bring them on with you with on the journey.
00:40:59.931 --> 00:41:06.806
So part of me wonders why aren't we innovating more on the ownership innovation models upfront?
00:41:07.210 --> 00:41:16.030
So that we are all participants in the actual process as citizens, all of us, you know, someone wants to do, Hey, I want to build something.
00:41:16.030 --> 00:41:16.880
That's really crazy.
00:41:16.880 --> 00:41:18.110
And it's going to take a lot of money.
00:41:19.170 --> 00:41:24.240
Are we willing to use public funds that are actually now going to be directed to that thing?
00:41:24.291 --> 00:41:25.601
And you can all vote.
00:41:26.195 --> 00:41:27.835
Do you want your funds to go to this thing?
00:41:27.846 --> 00:41:30.596
And you will all have a slice of whatever comes out at the other end.
00:41:31.186 --> 00:41:35.715
Um, now as a citizenry that you're involved in the innovation process.
00:41:35.746 --> 00:41:37.675
Cause I do think that innovation is so costly.
00:41:37.675 --> 00:41:38.115
You're right.
00:41:38.126 --> 00:41:39.365
It's impossible to do this.
00:41:39.385 --> 00:41:47.815
And private enterprises has proven time and time again, that it doesn't really want to do it because it's so risky and very, very expensive, which is why so many innovations have come from.
00:41:48.150 --> 00:41:54.960
the government sector, like they initiated broad research agendas that had absolutely no commercial end in sight.
00:41:55.070 --> 00:41:59.291
And it was only much, much later that we realized, Oh, crikey, this is all really, really valuable.
00:41:59.291 --> 00:42:01.331
And it's built the future that we live in today.
00:42:02.360 --> 00:42:13.210
So maybe the model is, has to be flipped and, and we all participate right at the beginning, you know if everyone puts a dollar from the adult population of America, that would fund a lot of this stuff.
00:42:13.210 --> 00:42:15.690
So, maybe that's the way to move it forward.
00:42:15.751 --> 00:42:18.501
We actually start thinking about the funding model as something very different.
00:42:18.501 --> 00:42:22.860
It's not just, you have to convince the ten VCs in this valley that you're doing something meaningful.
00:42:23.251 --> 00:42:26.710
But you have to actually convince the citizenry that this is worth doing.
00:42:27.141 --> 00:42:29.831
And we will have the checks and the guards and the balances.
00:42:29.831 --> 00:42:33.081
And we would be, as a citizenry, saying, You It's okay.
00:42:33.081 --> 00:42:34.831
I only have a dollar at stake here.
00:42:34.871 --> 00:42:40.050
It's okay if it gets delayed by three years, because I'm playing the long game here for this thing.
00:42:40.471 --> 00:42:47.471
And I have these other hundred projects that I've put one dollar in that also might generate a return for me and for the country as a whole.
00:42:47.481 --> 00:43:01.286
It's almost like an anarchist quasi libertarian decentralized way of like picking innovation and funding innovation that way, where you actually like directly pitching to the citizenry and There's other things that have to come into focus, right?
00:43:01.286 --> 00:43:08.251
You have to be able to educate everyone and Everyone will feel invested, literally, in these things.
00:43:08.251 --> 00:43:10.570
So I could imagine that could be quite interesting.
00:43:10.621 --> 00:43:11.391
Let's open it up.
00:43:11.490 --> 00:43:15.161
And then maybe that will then unblock a lot more of the innovation.
00:43:15.621 --> 00:43:17.021
So then the ownership model changes.
00:43:17.041 --> 00:43:17.871
Everyone's an owner.
00:43:17.891 --> 00:43:22.101
Everyone's becomes, I mean, these are essentially nationalized companies then.
00:43:22.170 --> 00:43:34.846
I think it's also a great selector because then if you are really, really interested in just making the thing and you don't really care about having your name and your ownership on it, But you care about the idea and the frontier that you're pushing.
00:43:35.376 --> 00:43:39.715
You take any deal that would get that going so that you could see it come to life.
00:43:39.735 --> 00:43:43.385
I think, um, and who knows what kinds of things would emerge.
00:43:43.655 --> 00:43:49.275
We would have fewer, uh, companies emerge that are just interested in that initial IPO.
00:43:49.755 --> 00:43:55.655
to cash out and then walk away as quickly as possible from whatever dumpster fire they've they've actually been hiding from the market.
00:43:55.795 --> 00:43:57.576
I mean, Rivian is exactly facing their problem.
00:43:57.576 --> 00:43:58.856
They were able to IPO.
00:43:59.356 --> 00:44:03.262
But now they're subject to the whims of the market on a quarterly basis.
00:44:03.432 --> 00:44:05.992
And you're trying to build a brand new.
00:44:06.485 --> 00:44:12.646
Everything, you know, they're doing vans, they're doing trucks, they're doing SUVs, they're doing a smaller SUV.
00:44:13.036 --> 00:44:24.925
It feels like that should have been something where potentially we could have all been participants in it and having a very active citizenry participating in the innovation process, you know, and then someone could say I don't want to do this.
00:44:24.996 --> 00:44:38.666
I feel it's a bigger question that we're pulling on a thread here, that is the really difficult piece of how do you get innovation going, how do you get everyone involved in it, I think is the way to move it forwards because there is risk inherent in it.
00:44:39.126 --> 00:44:42.045
We're not always going to make good decisions in aggregate, but guess what?
00:44:42.115 --> 00:44:45.835
We're already making pretty bad decisions in isolated VCs doing things.
00:44:45.835 --> 00:44:56.110
I mean, we work and Theranos, as you said, The list is long of very, very grifty, uh, companies that have nothing, that did nothing for us.
00:44:56.110 --> 00:45:06.240
I mean, I think the graveyard of dot com companies is also a perfect example of just money being, you know, evaporating from one second to the next, which is just crazy, you know?
00:45:06.260 --> 00:45:15.101
So, yeah, maybe that is, maybe we need to stop Turning them into speculative financial assets and turn them into like, this is a ticket that you hold.
00:45:15.501 --> 00:45:19.201
It's a bond and It's not gonna be resellable.
00:45:19.240 --> 00:45:21.630
It's just you are this thing.
00:45:21.641 --> 00:45:24.481
You get to hold something from this company in the future.
00:45:24.501 --> 00:45:24.831
That's it.
00:45:24.860 --> 00:45:27.740
It's a, uh, it's your library pass to it.
00:45:27.740 --> 00:45:28.061
So
00:45:28.096 --> 00:45:42.360
well what that actually brings to mind I'll dig up the names, um, and include it in the show notes, but I, uh, learned about a filmmaker, an indie filmmaker who used a platform.
00:45:42.851 --> 00:45:46.271
And again, I can't remember the name of it, but I'll find it and I'll include it in the show notes.
00:45:46.271 --> 00:45:53.826
But, um, Unlike Kickstarter, it's a platform that enables you to provide, share equity in a project.
00:45:54.175 --> 00:45:58.115
So it's not like, you know, Kickstarter, you kick in, you're basically pre buy.
00:45:58.686 --> 00:46:04.135
Uh, whereas here you're actually getting equity in something and this filmmaker used it to fund his films.
00:46:04.686 --> 00:46:12.876
And so if you had bought, uh, you know, invested in his projects, then you would actually continue to get.
00:46:14.286 --> 00:46:20.516
So if it, if the film is made and goes to market, you would get returns from, um, the box office.
00:46:20.775 --> 00:46:25.396
And then if it goes to streaming, you would get returns from those, that streaming sale.
00:46:25.396 --> 00:46:29.025
If he sold DVD rights, you would get a return from that as well.
00:46:29.025 --> 00:46:30.516
So you're truly.
00:46:31.391 --> 00:46:33.431
Getting equity in this project.
00:46:33.440 --> 00:46:36.130
And that, you know, is persisting over time.
00:46:36.590 --> 00:46:52.670
So, um, there are some interesting examples of that, you know, they're kind of few and far between, I'd say, but I do agree that there's a lot of opportunity there to, um, to think about, uh, different ways of, uh, kind of funding and enabling innovation.
00:46:52.670 --> 00:46:56.420
Um, I guess I'd say like in the case of, uh, Rivian and.
00:46:57.255 --> 00:46:58.045
Tesla as well.
00:46:58.405 --> 00:47:10.005
They've sort of kind of done it in their pre buy model, or I guess whether they call it like pre deposit model, um, it's just that it's not quite enough.
00:47:10.565 --> 00:47:16.916
That alone is not quite enough at that, you know, scale of automotive to really fund the manufacturing.
00:47:16.916 --> 00:47:19.295
But in other contexts, maybe it is.
00:47:19.936 --> 00:47:35.670
Um, I think the challenge there though, is you still need to build some kind equity in terms of brand equity to, to be able to build enough of an audience to get that investment.
00:47:36.951 --> 00:47:43.661
So, you know, that's the challenging bit in the case of this indie director, he had done some films previously using the traditional model.
00:47:44.155 --> 00:47:51.155
So he had some name recognition, so he was able to leverage that to, to kind of tap into this new approach.
00:47:51.755 --> 00:48:02.856
Um, you know, as we've talked about, we've, you see folks like MKBHD and other YouTubers who've built brand equity, being able to leverage that into products.
00:48:03.306 --> 00:48:05.335
So I think that's the challenge is if you're.
00:48:05.521 --> 00:48:15.760
Kind of this no name person, but you have a great idea and you have even the know how, how do you get that funding necessary to turn that into an actual product?
00:48:16.291 --> 00:48:21.681
Um, without maybe resorting to the kind of classic models that exist today.
00:48:22.365 --> 00:48:39.246
Yeah, it's, I think it's one of those, I don't think government is a solution to all of these things, but I do think, like, they can create a playing field, you know, that is more level and allows for the, for things to be moving in the right direction, as opposed to beauty pageants and, and these types of ways of doing things.
00:48:39.255 --> 00:48:40.485
So, who knows?
00:48:40.545 --> 00:48:56.630
I, I, I think you're right that there's, exactly, Kickstarter's a great precedent for it, but as you said, it's pre purchase, uh, and so, but then we live in the world of the SEC that will regulate orange groves because they're selling slices of that, and that, you know, it's kind of wacky.
00:48:56.791 --> 00:49:12.246
It's just so strange that, I get it, I get why you'd want to protect it, but then bring it into the, into the light, and, and come up with a way so that we can actually provide these, uh, These mechanisms that get people involved in, in the process early on.
00:49:12.306 --> 00:49:13.056
So, yeah.
00:49:13.391 --> 00:49:33.121
One, one last thing I'll note is that I am exercising my, um, the levers I can pull, I guess, as a consumer in terms of, uh, I mentioned one of the brands, one of the products I tried was, uh, this thing called the, uh, from a brand called Focal, which is a French brand.
00:49:33.130 --> 00:49:41.601
Um, and one of the re I was interested in there is the Focal Clear MG is the headphone I tried.
00:49:42.041 --> 00:49:49.981
I was interested in that product one, because it, it gets good reviews, but also because Focal owns, uh, this other brand called Name.
00:49:49.981 --> 00:49:57.976
Um, which is an English hi fi product company, and I own this wireless speaker called the Namuso 2, which I really, really like.
00:49:58.615 --> 00:50:03.655
But I recently learned that, uh, Focal's now is owned by a private equity company.
00:50:04.246 --> 00:50:06.715
I didn't learn that till after I, I trialed the product.
00:50:07.226 --> 00:50:11.376
But, moving forward now, I'm not going, they're kind of out of my consideration set.
00:50:11.376 --> 00:50:34.780
So that's one, you small thing I'm doing to try to exercise, you know, what little, um, leverage I have, you know, is to, to, whether it comes in the, this space or in the watch space to try to avoid these companies owned by private equity, because I do think that they're an incredibly corrosive force in the world.
00:50:35.726 --> 00:50:36.126
Yes.
00:50:36.346 --> 00:50:38.005
Another, that's a whole episode.
00:50:38.005 --> 00:50:49.820
I think as well, like what have they done to products and what have they done to companies that make stuff and how does that, the financialization of every entity turned into, you know, destroying innovation.
00:50:49.820 --> 00:50:52.380
I think that's, yeah, that's the whole thing.
00:50:52.380 --> 00:50:53.001
So, yeah.
00:50:53.826 --> 00:50:57.735
All right, well, now that you've heard our perspectives, we want to hear from you.
00:50:58.385 --> 00:51:01.815
Please share your thoughts with us at learnmakelearn at gmail.
00:51:01.815 --> 00:51:06.025
com or on threads at learnmakelearnshow.
00:51:06.025 --> 00:51:06.045
com.
00:51:06.405 --> 00:51:07.295
all one word.
00:51:10.422 --> 00:51:20.773
all right, now let's actually move on to our recommendation section, but given that we're recording this at the end of 2024, we thought we might take a look at the year more broadly.
00:51:21.362 --> 00:51:28.742
So Joachim, do you have any, let's say, products of the year that you want to highlight, whether it's for good or for ill?
00:51:29.733 --> 00:51:34.092
Let me start with negative stuff and then we'll see if we can find some positivity.
00:51:34.672 --> 00:51:36.893
I think it's been an interesting year.
00:51:37.362 --> 00:51:38.472
We just spoke about.
00:51:38.972 --> 00:51:44.543
risk being transferred to the consumer and things being updated as they go along and everything's going to be okay.
00:51:44.813 --> 00:51:57.532
Two products that we've discussed in the past come to mind, the Rabbit R1 and the Humane AI pin, uh, which have now basically, I mean, Rabbit is still trying to get its OS to work.
00:51:57.532 --> 00:52:01.722
So they are at least trying to do something.
00:52:02.132 --> 00:52:03.672
It's not going well at all.
00:52:04.132 --> 00:52:40.163
Um, Uh, and Humane is kind of Thrown in the towel and just said, yeah, we just want to be bought out and who's, who cares what actually happened again, very ambitious projects and just really came out way too early and put on all of the Hassle of figuring out what's wrong with the system onto the end user, which just feels terrible So it doesn't even feel like you were beta you were probably pre alpha, you know on some of these products So I would highlight those as pretty awful awful releases and Uh Yeah, kind of disappointing in the technology domain.
00:52:40.682 --> 00:52:47.012
Very, very recent and still very fresh this year is anything iPhone.
00:52:47.233 --> 00:52:50.273
You know, uh, I think that's been very disappointing.
00:52:51.123 --> 00:52:56.342
The, the hardware is, you know, how many more times do we need?
00:52:56.532 --> 00:52:59.802
How many more pixels do I need and smaller pixels do I need on the screen?
00:52:59.802 --> 00:53:01.842
How many extra buttons do you want to add?
00:53:02.253 --> 00:53:06.222
Uh, is this AI thing actually real that you're adding into this?
00:53:06.222 --> 00:53:07.543
Is this just an annoyance?
00:53:07.902 --> 00:53:10.052
Um Yeah, pretty, pretty lame.
00:53:10.052 --> 00:53:13.742
I think that was literally the word that we used to describe the event when we were talking about it.
00:53:13.762 --> 00:53:15.193
It's like, it's just kind of lame, isn't it?
00:53:15.902 --> 00:53:19.463
Um, so yeah, those are my, my negative ones.
00:53:19.632 --> 00:53:20.302
What about you?
00:53:20.302 --> 00:53:24.172
Did you have a, a bad product thing before we share our positive product?
00:53:24.697 --> 00:53:34.568
Yeah, yeah, actually, so kind of also on the Apple, uh, topic, uh, for me, the worst product of the year was the, uh, Apple Vision Pro.
00:53:35.277 --> 00:53:44.023
And I should caveat this by saying I still am very bullish about extended reality and very much believe that it will be.
00:53:44.992 --> 00:53:48.623
the kind of what does represent the next era of computing.
00:53:49.353 --> 00:54:01.802
Uh, but I, the reason I think the Apple vision pro is the worst product of the year is that it, I, I believe is the represents the wrong direction in that space.
00:54:02.222 --> 00:54:33.862
And Apple's invested so much time and money and, um, technology into this specific direction of trying to recreate reality in a headset that I think it's going to weigh them down like this technical debt that they're going to incur from this product is going to persist for years and it's going to slow them down in terms of their ability to innovate in the space and I think by consequence slow the whole space down.
00:54:34.432 --> 00:54:51.378
So, That's why I think it's, it's the worst product of the year because it's going to, you know, not only hurt Apple, but hurt the whole space, uh, in the near term, uh, because Apple, you know, is such an important player in the technology space.
00:54:52.043 --> 00:54:55.150
Yeah.
00:54:55.244 --> 00:54:58.385
of being such an important and gigantic company is one of their missteps.
00:54:58.445 --> 00:55:00.264
It will negatively affect everyone.
00:55:00.264 --> 00:55:06.655
So anytime something else comes along, a small innovator that might've cracked something, we will always view it through.
00:55:07.014 --> 00:55:18.505
Literally through the lens of the Apple VR failure, which is why I think, you know, when the Newton failed, the PDA, pen based PDA, took a while to recover from that.
00:55:18.534 --> 00:55:22.605
Even the iPhone was very risky because everyone said, Oh, remember when you guys did that PDA?
00:55:22.625 --> 00:55:33.599
Oh my God, don't do that again, So, yeah, I never thought about The fallout from that being much broader and being quite, quite bad having such powerful people fail.
00:55:33.650 --> 00:55:33.960
Yeah.
00:55:35.880 --> 00:55:37.039
How about on the good side?
00:55:37.050 --> 00:55:40.260
Do you have a, uh, product you enjoyed this year?
00:55:40.659 --> 00:55:48.730
Yeah, so this year, I, I'm always, I don't know what I'm doing wrong with my apparel choices.
00:55:49.070 --> 00:55:55.264
Mostly pants and trousers, I, I just seem to always buy not good stuff.
00:55:55.335 --> 00:56:03.824
Just before we started talking here about our, uh, what products do we think for 2025, I'd realized that there's a company that makes trousers that I've been happy with for the last year.
00:56:03.844 --> 00:56:05.094
And I didn't even notice it.
00:56:05.105 --> 00:56:11.394
I bought pretty premium stuff and they will just, they just break and are not very strong.
00:56:11.925 --> 00:56:15.045
I had mission workshop pants that I really loved.
00:56:15.420 --> 00:56:16.500
They just started shredding.
00:56:17.039 --> 00:56:23.510
I had ether apparel trousers that I had also, again, pricey stuff, hoping that it would be good.
00:56:23.869 --> 00:56:32.610
Um, but then this brand came across my radar as I was doing research, which was Outlier NYC.
00:56:32.610 --> 00:56:36.909
I think I didn't appreciate how good that product actually was because until I started thinking about it.
00:56:36.909 --> 00:56:49.639
They make all kinds of apparel, they, I think they'd like to class themselves as kind of the technical apparel, you know, practical, uh, stealthy for the inner superhero, whatever, you know, that you have in your mind.
00:56:50.230 --> 00:56:55.980
So I bought first a pair of what they call their future darts pants, which are slightly skinny.
00:56:55.980 --> 00:57:02.800
And then I started reading too much Derek guy, and he was very anti like tight clothes and tight suits.
00:57:02.960 --> 00:57:03.590
Yeah, he's great.
00:57:03.619 --> 00:57:07.239
And he would show these Daniel Craig pictures where Daniel Craig suit is way too small.
00:57:07.719 --> 00:57:09.599
And he said, the clothes should hang off you and so on.
00:57:09.599 --> 00:57:21.099
So and then I'm like, Looking at what people, you know, Japanese lookbooks are doing, and I'm like, oh wow, everyone's wearing slightly looser trousers, and so then I was like, I wonder if Outlier does stuff.
00:57:21.099 --> 00:57:29.250
So the pair of pants that I, the pair of pants that I eventually bought, the pair of pants I eventually bought were the Strongworks.
00:57:29.644 --> 00:57:34.764
Which are incredible, they're, um, not super tight, so they're loose fitting pants.
00:57:35.144 --> 00:57:39.965
Um, they're made of strung twill, which is their name.
00:57:40.135 --> 00:57:46.355
Um, the material that they use, which is a combination of, like, nylon and elastate.
00:57:46.375 --> 00:57:47.994
So it's like synthetic materials.
00:57:48.445 --> 00:57:53.664
Uh, and one of the bits is suplex, which is from nylon.
00:57:54.135 --> 00:58:03.724
Uh, and it's just this very robust material that has a, a coating on it that allows it to be a little bit water repellent and it's just so good.
00:58:03.744 --> 00:58:06.215
I just forget that they're there.
00:58:06.264 --> 00:58:09.675
I just wear them and they're always my go to because they're such high quality.
00:58:09.864 --> 00:58:13.284
I've not had any problems with the fabric fraying or anything like that.
00:58:13.284 --> 00:58:14.344
It's all very breathable.
00:58:14.875 --> 00:58:21.045
And so in the end, I've now realized I've bought like three different styles of pant from this company, Outlier.
00:58:21.574 --> 00:58:24.644
later on, I found out that William Gibson is a big fan of the brand as well.
00:58:24.644 --> 00:58:27.344
So now I feel totally justified in my fandom.
00:58:27.385 --> 00:58:33.844
But anyway a long story about basically pants that finally fit me and I feel comfortable with, but I would recommend them.
00:58:33.864 --> 00:58:36.855
They're a little bit pricier, but I was buying pricey things.
00:58:37.114 --> 00:58:41.664
I should say, I was buying expensive things that didn't have the quality to back them up.
00:58:41.664 --> 00:58:47.409
And so far, these are Uh, costly, they cost a lot, but it feels like that's because the materials are good.
00:58:47.829 --> 00:58:49.570
They are made in New York City.
00:58:49.599 --> 00:58:51.769
Those fabrics have been woven with care.
00:58:52.409 --> 00:58:59.739
I mean, someone is taking the time to make good clothes that, that are, uh, robust to daily life and daily use.
00:59:00.190 --> 00:59:04.269
Um, so I'm very happy with them and yeah, I didn't appreciate it until I sat down.
00:59:04.269 --> 00:59:06.280
I was thinking, what is this product that I use every day?
00:59:06.280 --> 00:59:09.139
And it's kind of faded into the background and I don't appreciate it enough.
00:59:09.489 --> 00:59:09.750
Yeah.
00:59:09.820 --> 00:59:10.179
Here we are.
00:59:10.860 --> 00:59:11.739
How about, yeah.
00:59:11.780 --> 00:59:12.269
How about you?
00:59:13.369 --> 00:59:14.030
That's a great one.
00:59:14.030 --> 00:59:20.920
Well, I actually, um, I'll share what I think is the most, to me, the most important product of the year.
00:59:20.920 --> 00:59:22.300
And then I'll share a favorite as well.
00:59:22.300 --> 00:59:22.550
So.
00:59:23.050 --> 00:59:27.449
Kind of building on my point about the Apple Vision Pro being what I think is the worst product of the year.
00:59:27.500 --> 00:59:34.639
I think the most product, important product of the year is actually the Ray Ban Meta Smart Glasses, the Generation 2 that they released this past year.
00:59:35.340 --> 00:59:45.559
Again, I'm not saying those are my favorite products, but I, I think they're the most important because I actually think that they, with that product, have defined the form factor for extended reality.
00:59:46.119 --> 00:59:55.135
Uh, I think a lot of people, including Meta, have been surprised by how positively they've been received by even kind of non techie people.
00:59:55.655 --> 01:00:18.744
Uh, and so I think they've come to realize that this sort of, uh, you know, blends into the background form factor, low tech, relatively low tech as compared to Apple's very high tech approach and relatively affordable, um, Product is the way to go.
01:00:18.945 --> 01:00:22.695
You know that the Ray Ban MetaSmart Glasses don't have a display.
01:00:23.155 --> 01:00:27.144
They are working on a version that will have a very simple rudimentary display.
01:00:27.824 --> 01:00:34.025
But, you know, I think they've realized you don't need to have, you don't need to try to recreate a reality, which was Apple's old approach.
01:00:34.375 --> 01:00:47.840
Instead, Just let people actually see reality through the glasses and use other inputs, uh, like audio, uh, and maybe some haptic sort of, uh, approaches to, as the interface.
01:00:48.190 --> 01:00:53.260
So I think that is the success of that product has been really important.
01:00:53.695 --> 01:01:03.795
So I think that's the most important product in terms of the favorite you've inspired me in terms of emphasizing trousers, or I would say pants, but I know our European listeners would all laugh at that.
01:01:04.295 --> 01:01:12.554
But, um, so there too, I've this past year have discovered, um, two great products.
01:01:13.065 --> 01:01:13.614
Trousers.
01:01:13.625 --> 01:01:19.735
So, uh, one for more kind of everyday wear is from a small brand called Orslo.
01:01:19.744 --> 01:01:21.025
It's a small Japanese brand.
01:01:21.625 --> 01:01:25.255
Um, you'll have to find, you know, they're carried by boutiques.
01:01:25.675 --> 01:01:29.445
Uh, there's one in Seattle, actually, a boutique called Glasswing that
01:01:29.489 --> 01:01:29.869
oh yeah.
01:01:29.869 --> 01:01:30.190
Yeah.
01:01:30.394 --> 01:01:30.894
yeah.
01:01:31.235 --> 01:01:31.605
Yeah.
01:01:32.135 --> 01:01:32.824
a really nice shop.
01:01:32.835 --> 01:01:36.974
But what I, so Orslo historically has focused on denim.
01:01:36.974 --> 01:01:45.469
Um, But generally in like high quality textiles and so that's one of the things I really appreciate, appreciate about these pants.
01:01:45.480 --> 01:01:52.900
So specifically, their French work pants, I believe is what they're called because they offer quite a few different pants.
01:01:53.599 --> 01:01:59.409
And the reason I love these pants is one, the materials are very nice, but two, they feature this.
01:02:00.264 --> 01:02:02.304
I think they call it just a fifth pocket.
01:02:02.784 --> 01:02:05.394
It's a pocket that's right alongside the hip.
01:02:05.844 --> 01:02:13.434
And it's, I guess, maybe historically would have been used as a place to put your brush as a French painter.
01:02:14.559 --> 01:02:15.050
Yeah.
01:02:15.594 --> 01:02:21.715
the great thing is that it's sized just right to fit an iPhone, including I have the iPhone.
01:02:22.804 --> 01:02:23.815
15 pro max.
01:02:24.135 --> 01:02:26.905
So it even fits the max size phones.
01:02:27.235 --> 01:02:39.304
I don't know if it would fit the 16 pro max, which I believe is a little bit bigger, but it's not only does it fit it, it fits it in just the right spot so that you almost forget that you have it on you.
01:02:39.914 --> 01:02:49.465
Uh, cause you know, that's something that I find very challenging with all of, you know, my traditional pants is if you put it in the front pocket, it's just really uncomfortable.
01:02:49.980 --> 01:02:53.500
I find that it also, you know, pulls your trousers down.
01:02:53.909 --> 01:02:57.230
If you put it in your back pocket, you can't sit down.
01:02:57.230 --> 01:03:01.659
So, uh, this location on the side is just right.
01:03:01.730 --> 01:03:05.400
Easy to access, but, um, just gets out of the way.
01:03:06.260 --> 01:03:11.250
So, for everyday trousers, I really enjoy these Orslo French Pants.
01:03:11.585 --> 01:03:12.545
work pants.
01:03:13.135 --> 01:03:20.974
And then for outdoors, uh, there's a small, again, a small Japanese brand called Yama Tomichi.
01:03:20.974 --> 01:03:22.864
It translates to mountain and road.
01:03:23.364 --> 01:03:27.284
And they offer these fantastic hiking pants.
01:03:27.835 --> 01:03:31.934
Uh, and, uh, they're called their five pocket pants.
01:03:32.445 --> 01:03:34.894
Uh, and they offer a few different versions.
01:03:34.914 --> 01:03:36.844
The differences are all just in the materials.
01:03:37.215 --> 01:03:41.985
But again, the reason I love them is that they have this additional pocket.
01:03:42.485 --> 01:03:46.625
And in the case of the Yamato Michi pants, the pocket is on both sides.
01:03:47.070 --> 01:03:53.070
So, you know, whether in the, or slow, it's only on the right side and the Yamato Michi, they offer it on both sides.
01:03:53.070 --> 01:03:58.380
So what, you know, whether you're righty or lefty, you can find a just the perfect place to put your phone.
01:03:58.769 --> 01:04:10.079
In the case of Yamato Michi, the placement's even better such that you can even like jog and you won't you know, notice that the phone is there.
01:04:10.079 --> 01:04:12.889
It's incredible how perfect the placement is.
01:04:12.889 --> 01:04:17.539
Yeah, you could sit down even with the, uh, the phone in your pants.
01:04:17.570 --> 01:04:37.664
Um, and again, it's, they've really thought it through where the positioning is low enough that you can have a backpack with a hip strap on and it won't get in the way of that but, um, high enough that it's easy to access and won't bounce around if you're walking or even, you know, maybe light jogging.
01:04:38.295 --> 01:04:42.105
So, um, the Yamato Michi 5 pocket pants.
01:04:42.485 --> 01:04:54.175
My preferred versions are what they call their DW version, which stands for dual weave, which is very lightweight, but still works in a range of conditions.
01:04:54.784 --> 01:05:07.585
And their merino wool version, um, which is a little heavier because it's, it's merino wool, but oh man, for this time of year, it's just so nice.
01:05:07.614 --> 01:05:19.005
And they, the merino wool version, I think looks nice enough to be worn in, you know, even fancy casual sort of dress occasions.
01:05:19.364 --> 01:05:29.474
So, uh, uh, you know, we'll provide links to all these things, but, um, I, I've loved them and, uh, you know, kind of like outlier small companies making great products.
01:05:29.675 --> 01:05:39.135
I think what's really great is when listeners go on to their website, is the, the weight of the trousers is visible in the, the, the catalog.
01:05:39.135 --> 01:05:47.536
So you can actually just go, yeah, like you said, the Merino is, weighs in at 427 grams as opposed to the normal five pocket pant, which is 239 grams.
01:05:47.545 --> 01:05:57.740
So it's, you know, It's pretty informative, like just straight off the bat, like they're already helping you navigate the complexity of what they're doing, but it's immediately comprehensible.
01:05:57.751 --> 01:06:00.130
Like it's the most important piece of information, you know, if you,
01:06:00.936 --> 01:06:08.615
that's one of the things I love about Yama to meet you is that they, you can tell the people that make the products, love the products they make.
01:06:09.335 --> 01:06:20.206
They really geek and They're super honest about the pros and cons, you know, so, so many brands, you know, it's like, Oh, every single one of their products is the best ever.
01:06:20.626 --> 01:06:23.835
You know, so how are you supposed to know which one is right for your needs?
01:06:23.856 --> 01:06:31.496
Whereas, you know, you're not to meet, she's very open about the doubt, you know, shortcomings of, of one product, you know, versus another.
01:06:31.965 --> 01:06:37.385
So, um, they really help, help you kind of get to that, the right product for your needs.
01:06:37.735 --> 01:06:40.460
Just two caveats I'll say is for Yamato Michi.
01:06:40.721 --> 01:06:47.681
One, um, they do sell online and they do ship overseas, which is pretty unusual for a small Japanese brand,
01:06:47.731 --> 01:06:48.210
that is,
01:06:48.550 --> 01:06:56.090
but, um, their products sell out very quickly and their five pocket pants are very popular.
01:06:56.090 --> 01:07:02.831
So you kind of have to, you know, they do publish a schedule of when they're going to post inventory.
01:07:03.101 --> 01:07:10.715
So, you know, in advance, but for a lot of the products, you have to kind of Camp out at, in my case, uh, in our case, like 2 a.
01:07:10.715 --> 01:07:10.976
m.
01:07:12.065 --> 01:07:13.775
time is when they released their products.
01:07:14.275 --> 01:07:17.096
Uh, and then the second caveat is just sizing wise.
01:07:17.755 --> 01:07:21.215
Uh, their products are, um, kind of Japanese sizing.
01:07:21.215 --> 01:07:26.445
So you'll most likely have to go up one size to get a Western size.
01:07:27.275 --> 01:07:36.226
Uh, but outside of those small, you know, challenges, I, I'm just such a huge brand, a fan of both brands, uh, Yamato Michi and Orslo.
01:07:37.731 --> 01:07:38.201
nice.
01:07:38.320 --> 01:07:40.590
I love that.
01:07:40.791 --> 01:07:42.291
uh, pant or trouser talk.
01:07:43.471 --> 01:07:44.150
Yeah, exactly.
01:07:44.231 --> 01:07:45.201
Good way to end the year.
01:07:45.760 --> 01:07:52.831
Um, but, uh, I think that does it for us, you know, so thank you so much for joining us over the course of our first year of doing this learn, make, learn thing.
01:07:53.431 --> 01:08:01.960
Um, it's certainly been a learning experience for us and we hope it's offered you some insight or at the very least some food for thought as well.
01:08:02.630 --> 01:08:05.061
Uh, and speaking of which we want to hear from you.
01:08:05.525 --> 01:08:14.195
So whether it's feedback, questions, suggestions for future episodes, please send them on through to us, uh, at learnmakelearn at gmail.
01:08:14.195 --> 01:08:18.395
com or on threads at LearnMakeLearnShow, all one word.
01:08:19.305 --> 01:08:27.626
So thanks again for joining us in 2024 and we hope you'll follow us into 2025 for the next LearnMakeLearn.