00:00:00
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg business Week Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
00:00:32
Speaker 2: Carol Master Chimstanevik Live here at uncharted in Southampton.
00:00:35
Speaker 3: A pool behind us, lots of people around us. There's a lot going on.
00:00:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of people drinking poppy too. Did you see that?
00:00:40
Speaker 3: I did see that.
00:00:41
Speaker 4: Lots of people are drinking poppy. You know, find a problem and fix it. That's the context of talking about this company.
00:00:47
Speaker 2: How many times can we talk to you venture capitalists like they say, that's what people have to do, That's how you have to think about starting a company. And that's exactly what our next guest has done.
00:00:56
Speaker 3: And sometimes it's a.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: Personal like problem or situation that lead you to creating an amazing company, one that actually gets bought out by PepsiCo for one point ninety five billion dollars, And that happened last year.
00:01:08
Speaker 3: We're talking about Poppy.
00:01:09
Speaker 2: Allison Ellsworth is co founder of the company, and she joins us here at Uncharted.
00:01:13
Speaker 3: Welcome, Welcome, Nice to have you here with us.
00:01:15
Speaker 5: Thank you, and hey, let's call it two billion, right.
00:01:17
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay, we're round up. We're good work.
00:01:20
Speaker 6: Round up.
00:01:20
Speaker 2: It's a lot of money. Tell us, though, I love the backstories. I watched these guys know Shark Tank a lot. That was certainly something that played in But tell us about how you came to create this company.
00:01:31
Speaker 5: I think, like most great things, I created it because I had a personal problem. I had some gel gut health problems. I started drinking apple cider vinegar. Hated the taste, and I wanted to create something that tasted better. Have you guys ever taken a shot of apple cider vinegar? No?
00:01:46
Speaker 4: I have not.
00:01:47
Speaker 3: I know lots of people who have this disgusting.
00:01:49
Speaker 5: So I went to my kitchen and I created the first version of Poppy, went on to get a deal on Shark Tank, and now we're in every grocery store in the nation.
00:01:58
Speaker 3: It's wild.
00:01:58
Speaker 4: It is pretty wild, really crowded space, and it's hard. I mean, you could walk in into any sort of convenience store or grocery store, and those are the companies that have succeeded in getting the shelf space. Just getting the shelf space is difficult. How did you do that?
00:02:14
Speaker 5: In the beginning, we hired really smart people. So after getting a deal in Shark Tank, our network was opened up.
00:02:21
Speaker 4: So that's where everything change.
00:02:22
Speaker 5: You bring in people that know the industry. Beverage is really hard. Someone downstairs just asked me they wanted to do a beverage and I said, one, it's capital intensive. You have to have a lot of money. You're shipping liquid across the US manufacturing shelf life. There's so many things that go into it, and you really want to surround yourself with smart people. And the beverage industry is small, so network, network, network.
00:02:43
Speaker 2: It's really about who you know in the beverage really because you're fighting for shelf space essentially, right.
00:02:48
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then you're working with the retellers. And we were before the time, like we were calling ourself soda. We were revolutionizing so for the next generation, and they were like that's hilarious, you know, And so they didn't know where to put us on the shelf stas like basically we're in the sparkling water set. We were, you know, in enhanced water. They didn't know what we were. It was hard.
00:03:07
Speaker 4: Well, now, the idea of a functional beverage, like everybody kind of knows about that. You guys were early to that. Of course, I'm curious what you see out the landscape right now that is missing, Like if you were to develop something right now, what would it be.
00:03:18
Speaker 5: Well, I am developing something right now and we're launching the Fall to fit that gap. But it's what it is is it has to be better for you and not so better for you that It's just like people don't understand there's a lot of adaptogens and all of these things. Protein is really big right now, but I don't know. Would you like to drink a carbonated protein drink.
00:03:37
Speaker 4: I've tried a carbonate protein drink. It wasn't easy to drink.
00:03:40
Speaker 3: It's tough.
00:03:40
Speaker 5: I'm telling you. I wouldn't do that, but I will say something that's just a little bit better. And that's what we did at Poppy.
00:03:45
Speaker 4: So have you figured it out?
00:03:47
Speaker 5: I have figured out we're launching in the fall.
00:03:49
Speaker 4: But launching as is right now? Or do you still have to iterate on the product together.
00:03:53
Speaker 5: There, we're loaded, we're hiring, we're going. And it's one of those things that what we have so much we learned at Poppy from building team and scaling that, like why would.
00:04:01
Speaker 3: We not do it again?
00:04:01
Speaker 4: Are you raising money for it? Are you bootstrapping it?
00:04:03
Speaker 6: A little bit of both.
00:04:04
Speaker 5: Right now, we're going to use our own money for about you know, two point five million or so, and then I would love to de risk and bring in strategic partners that can help really catapult the business.
00:04:14
Speaker 2: What are you learning about the marketplace in terms of products, types of products that people want today?
00:04:19
Speaker 5: You know, it's that movement within Maha that we're really seeing no dies, no artificial ingredients. It like actually drives me insane when my kids have cheetohs or Doritos and Pepsi's changing that, right, They're taking the dies out of it. So I think it has to be just ten percent better or thirty percent better. It can't be one hundred percent better for you. People still want full flavor. America likes flavor. It has to taste good, and that has to be king. Taste is king?
00:04:44
Speaker 3: Is it more expensive to do things so expensive? Yeah?
00:04:49
Speaker 2: And without all these additives are. It really is cutting corners.
00:04:53
Speaker 5: And people get really confused around the word like natural flavors.
00:04:56
Speaker 3: Naturally it's nothing.
00:04:57
Speaker 5: It's very confusing and how it's made and what are in the natural flavors? No, it is. But if you think of like, you're not organic, it's not even non gmo. There's so many things that go into it. So I think it just has to be better for you. I do think non gmo is important and people are reading labels more than ever.
00:05:13
Speaker 3: Is it more expensive to do though?
00:05:14
Speaker 5: It's absolutely more expensive. Okay, yeah, artificial ingredients, all of those things are really cheap. But really what the most expensive thing is the packaging. The packaging more so than what goes into it, and then the shipping cost and all of that that goes into it.
00:05:29
Speaker 4: We're speaking to Allison Elsworth, the co founder of Poppy, which she sold for two billion dollars to PEPSI. We'll call it that last year. She joins us at the Uncharted Summit.
00:05:38
Speaker 3: You can round it up.
00:05:39
Speaker 6: You are so right.
00:05:40
Speaker 4: You're doing this for a second time, essentially. I'd imagine you learned a ton the first time you did this. What are you doing differently to get this product onto the shelves, to get into the hands of consumers, to get consumer and brand awareness across the country that you didn't necessarily know how to do until you maybe failed at doing this or found the right niche for it.
00:05:59
Speaker 5: With pop where entrepreneurs fail a lot of times as they refuse to professionalize their business. So the first thing we're starting with this time as an org chart, we're seeing what can we do to build an incredible team around us? And you hire eighteen months ahead. You don't hire for now, and you don't let your ego get in the way of growth of like I need to do, I need to do every job. And that's one of the biggest mistakes the entrepreneurs do is they don't hire people smarter than them because they think they know everything. So for us, that's one of the biggest lessons is professionalize the business, bring in like incredible people and build a platform that can scale.
00:06:34
Speaker 2: What is it like to sell a business that's been you know, your baby and you created it and it was.
00:06:39
Speaker 3: Really personal for you. I've talked to lots of founders, you know, a lot of them have their name on the company.
00:06:44
Speaker 2: And when you let go, you know, initially it's great because it's a lot of work, a lot of hard work, and your whole life is the business.
00:06:53
Speaker 3: But at some point it's like it's hard.
00:06:55
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean essentially it was ten years of my life, never taking vacations I had through kids while doing it, and then you're gone, Right, the business has gone overnight. You're no longer in eighty hours a week. And people don't talk about the post exit blues. It's a real thing. It's an emotional roller coaster. And look, money gives you freedom to do what you want, when you want, with whomever you want, but it doesn't give you purpose. So find your purpose and that's what we're doing again, because if you find your purpose, money will come.
00:07:23
Speaker 3: How soon did you have to find your purpose after something?
00:07:25
Speaker 5: I mean it took us. I've set golf for like four months and then I was like, okay, I beat my husband a couple times. I was like, okay, I'm over this, and you know, we had fun, but I've really missed the team, I missed the build. It's just the entrepreneurialism that people have. That's the craziness, right, It's why we do it.
00:07:41
Speaker 4: Well, what's it like? Raising money this time around it because you don't I'm guessing you don't really have to be proactive about it. People are knocking down the door after an exit like that.
00:07:48
Speaker 5: It's actually like so many people are like begging to actually invest. But for me, we are only going to take strategic money that can actually make a move. And it's when I say strategic, it's the network. It's how can we network in.
00:08:00
Speaker 4: Them, So money from a distributor, money from a company that could potentially.
00:08:05
Speaker 5: Retailers, people that can celebrities, influencers. Talent is a huge piece of how we skilled Poppy.
00:08:12
Speaker 3: But it matters because you want to be able to drive where you want to go.
00:08:15
Speaker 5: Correct, Yes and small right, I think I could probably call a lot of retailers and go into them really quickly, but I think you have to be intentional and build a brand, start in like those better for you retailers from the whole foods to the targets to the sprouts, and then really grow versus going so mass so big, which I think a lot of people could make a mistake.
00:08:33
Speaker 3: So you don't want to make the announcement now.
00:08:34
Speaker 5: Also, I know not quite a great audience. I love bloom Yes, I know, but yeah, stay tuned.
00:08:43
Speaker 4: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.
00:08:50
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five e's During this listen on Applecarplay and Android Otto with the Blow Work Business Up, or watch us live on YouTube.
00:09:04
Speaker 2: Alan Pypercuff really needs no introduction. We're going to give him one anyway. He's a giant in the world of venture capital. He has been in this industry for six decades. He's helped to build some of the best known companies investing in them, including Apple America, Online Office Depot, Cadence Systems, Audible, Axios, and more.
00:09:22
Speaker 3: He is also.
00:09:24
Speaker 2: The founder and former chairman of New York Magazine. He is chairman emeritus and co founder of great Croft. He co founded Apex Partners more than fifty billion in assets under management. He's also chairman and co founder of Primetime Partners, and he is with us at un Charted.
00:09:40
Speaker 3: You have a long introduction.
00:09:41
Speaker 4: You've been doing even go through his books, Carol.
00:09:43
Speaker 2: He said, I know, I did it. He says, I've been doing this a long time. You've been doing this a long time.
00:09:48
Speaker 7: Fifty six years in the venture business. Yeah, when I started, it wasn't even a They didn't call it venture capitalize.
00:09:54
Speaker 2: You have seen so, I mean, what do you think of venture capital today versus what it was like when you started.
00:09:59
Speaker 7: Well, when I guarded, it wasn't called venture capital. I had this idea of going into early stage companies and we opened an office and if I sat there, the phone wouldn't even ring. I mean, nobody even knew that people like us existed, and if we did, it was all outbound. I mean, we had a cool and fine deals and we had to convince them that it would be a good idea to have a partner. And if you think about it, most people started businesses, particularly back then, they didn't want to partner. I mean they were business owners or startup they just didn't think of that. Friends and family was where they would get money if they had to get money.
00:10:40
Speaker 4: How do you feel about how it's evolved where basically, if a founder has a big exit, they got a family office, that family office starts doing some venture investing. You even have people who really just go to Silicon Valley to try to become venture capitalists, How do you think it's evolved?
00:10:56
Speaker 7: There's a lot of money around. That's the best thing I can say. I remember, this is one person's perspective. There's a irrational exuberance. To quote quote Alan Greenspan who passed away recently, valuations of startups early stage deals are out of sight and it makes it difficult to think about how you make venture returns of ten times in your money of you know a startup precede is you know thinks they're that one here today you know, twenty five million dollars and they've been in business for three months. But that's you're up against that and.
00:11:42
Speaker 4: What caused that? Like, it's obviously inflationary.
00:11:46
Speaker 3: Our money just a lot of money being around.
00:11:48
Speaker 4: What caused what caused that multiple to happen?
00:11:50
Speaker 7: You know, I don't even think about it as inflation. I think that there have been too many funds raises. It's been too easy. Although you talk to most people, I'll tell you how hard it is to raise an early stage fund. But certainly, you know, if we go back three, four or five years ago, the industry has flooded because when they read about or hear about people who've made money and lots of big money they want to be you know fomo. That's you know, that's the problem right now in the AI world. I mean the AI world is I am certain getting a lot of people into the business or investing in it because somebody they know just made ten twenty thirty million whatever in an aideal that doesn't have revenues yet or certainly doesn't have profits. I mean, you know, we've been through cycles before, and you know we're in one right now of a lot of people want to be part of the game. Alan.
00:12:53
Speaker 2: What do you think though of a space Ax which was around for a long time but coming out with you know, Megavalu valuation it's.
00:13:01
Speaker 4: Older company, it's an older company in Facebook, Yeah, yeah, that's crazy.
00:13:05
Speaker 3: Yeah. Or we're looking at open AI and Anthropic like are these.
00:13:08
Speaker 2: Ones things are new companies, but I mean are the valuations crazy? These are companies that you talk about that are kind of I.
00:13:17
Speaker 7: Want to be honest, I have not invested in the in the AI field, and I certainly don't want to deprecate the industry or those kinds of investments, but I can look at it with it some certain degree of objectivity because I've seen that kind of excitement in the internet business. I saw sell you the business I saw. I've seen it every every industry where people you know, want to be part of it. And what's happening. The kind of valuations we're seeing today are you know, astronomical and it's hard to get your hands around, and I personally, I think it's very exciting. I'm not participating, but if you're buying the space exit a two trillion dollar valuation, and if you're an adventure business, I guess we're out of that stage. But you know, you want to make five or ten times in your money, and you got to think it's going to be worth ten or twenty trillion. These are numbers that you know when I started, I'm sorry, when I start out in business, if you made a million dollars, you got to be so rich. And you know, we never even went through the phase a billion. I mean, we just jumped from being a millionaire to a trillionaire. I mean, I assume there are people starting out now today who want to make a trillion. I guess they'll make a billion on the way. But it's just it's an exciting new area and I think there's going to be a lot of failures and there'll be some great successes. And I just don't know how to pick it, because how do you pick a terminal value and extrapolate it to some revenue multiple or profit level because it's so much in the hereafter, But the herift is pretty pretty exciting of it.
00:15:03
Speaker 3: You know, do you think it's wrong?
00:15:05
Speaker 2: I feel like we have a bit of a gut feeling when you look at the AI spend in the build and tapping equity and debt markets, and then you have what you often hear people talk about the circular financing of a company investing in a company that they're going to be buying tons of products for.
00:15:20
Speaker 3: Of course they're going to create some demand.
00:15:21
Speaker 2: Is it wrong to feel like, well, wait a minute, this feels a little uncomfortable to me.
00:15:27
Speaker 7: It's a little uncomfortable because I mean, I recently someone came to me answered they asked me a question of whether they should invest in a chip company. No, it should me. They were investing in an AI company and they were being secured by their chip inventory. I mean, you know, I don't know how I couldn't give an answer. I have no idea, but it.
00:15:52
Speaker 3: Feels a little questionable, right, Yeah.
00:15:55
Speaker 4: Well, maybe a way that I'd be curious to hear your thoughts would be.
00:16:00
Speaker 7: I'm in longevity, yeah, you.
00:16:03
Speaker 4: Know something about Yeah, we're going to get to that in a second. I just I want to talk where where we are in this cycle, maybe because I mean, like we we mentioned throughout the broadcast that you were an early believer in America Online and really what that did for the Internet today and.
00:16:20
Speaker 7: Start out as a game company, by the way, it's it's incredible.
00:16:23
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's how really most people of a certain age were introduced to the World Wide Web and it created Like I said, you know, it's how Mark Zuckerberg got to experience the Internet and then create Facebook from from a dorm room. You also saw what happened with Aol Time Warner, you know. So I'm just curious where we are in the cycle.
00:16:44
Speaker 7: I'd say to you that I am concerned by the extraordinary interest that everybody has in the subject of AI, and it has so many unknowns to it. I mean, I certainly am as excited as everybody else, and I have I think it's either five or six AI search engines on my phone, which I'm happy to show you, and I use try to use as many as I have, and I probably should have another one or two. And I like playing around with it, and I use it constructively. And who knows, I mean, how big this is A this is probably I will say it's probably the most significant revolution. And I've been part of the PC revolution. I've anticipated in through Apple. I invested in the first cell phone company, which was through an auction of spectrum by the US government. I was in the storage area, I was the Internet area, but I didn't participate, but I certainly lived through the chip of revolution and the probably as exciting as AI is bio, the biotech revelution, which is still going on, because that also has infinite amounters of upside. Just in the last few weeks, it's really exciting that bunch of deals in the happening stuff and pancreat solving pancreatic cancer and prostate possibly and they're now one hundred and fifty three trials going on for dementia in some form of cognitive problem.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about because you have been an investor in longevity for a while, what is you think the most interesting companies opportunities and ideas that have been coming across When it comes to longevity, well, you know.
00:18:41
Speaker 7: We we don't really have any public companies as yet, and I don't think we can put it in the same classes as AI AM. I'm honest, I don't see that kind of extraordinary upside. Valuations are very high relative very few exits, and the valuations for these exits are not extraordinary, So I can't put it in the same area as competing with people who are in vesting in AI. But I mean I personally invested in a company that's in a biotech area working on solving the problem of radiation therapy in solving all kinds of cancer cuts. A company called Alpha Tora which has got using alpha rays instead of gamma rays, not yet fully on the market, but most of the things we're involved in our caregiving telemedicine. We have a chain of i'd say longevity clinics about twenty five and called cynogenics, which is that's a very hot area today. Everybody everybody wants to find some way where they can do something, whether it's taking hormones or taking vitamins forever and living the right kind of life that they can live. Longer.
00:20:08
Speaker 4: Well, we've asked you the easy questions, so now let's get to the hard questions and solving the political problems of our time.
00:20:14
Speaker 6: Long time you were talking about my book.
00:20:16
Speaker 7: I mean, but that's the political Yeah.
00:20:21
Speaker 4: Long time active in the Democratic Party. We just went through some primaries in New York. A lot of questions about what happens in the midterms, who Democrats will put up for twenty twenty eight. In your view, what should the future of the Democratic Party be?
00:20:37
Speaker 7: I think the Democratic Party it's starting to evolve. I mean I haven't been specifically particularly a supporter of anyone in particular, and including the mayor, and I'm very much aware of the sweep he had an influence. I think the Democratic Party is more, in my opinion, in a more open party than the Republicans, which right now is just I mean, it's of one mind. I think that the influence of the social Democrats is if the Demos act Democrats are smart, will be open to their influence along with other elements, and that perhaps the party will be not a unidimensional party, but will have ment more open arms and bring in people of different you know, some of who focused on diversity and some of who are concerned with income disparity, which is an area by the way, I know it may be surprising, but I am very, very concerned about income disparity in what's going on right now is going to create more billionaires, truly it is, and the working class. You know, most people in this country have to have W two's and earn a living and it's hard to equate that, and I think that has to be very much addressed in the upcoming election. I think the Democrats have a lot of I think I personally believe we're going to sweep the elections in November, and that's because of how I feel the other party has behaved and based on its leadership, and I think it's created a very toxic environment. I think Democrats will come out in force wherever they are, for any segment of the Democrats. And I think that there are a lot of good people in twenty eight who are you sitting around and not sitting around there. They're making themselves known, and I think you're going to see I mean, you could see another TV interview of ten people again, but ten really good candidates looking I'm looking forward to them when I hope I can get emotionally involved that I want to support one of more of them.
00:23:02
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five eas during Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
00:23:15
Speaker 4: We are all trying to figure out how to work, how to live, how to thrive in an AI world. Nobody really knows what it's going to be like, how it will change productivity, and how it will become part of our lives. Except what for our next two guests. That's they have all the answers. Fortunately, you going to find out they wrote a book about it. The book is coming out in October, and they're going to share some of their secrets with us today.
00:23:37
Speaker 3: They are indeed.
00:23:38
Speaker 2: Lack Anath is global managing partner of the venture capital firm Next forty seven. Kevin Mayney is a New York Times bestselling author. He's written many books, including The Transformation Principles, also New York Times bestseller The Two Second Advantage. He's also wrote The Maverick and His Machine, Thomas Watson Senior, and the Making of IBM. We've been talking about that he likes to write, and he writes about a lot of stuff.
00:23:59
Speaker 3: They do.
00:23:59
Speaker 2: Both both join us that uncharted here in Southampton. They've got a new book coming out, the two of them, The Human Machine Company. It's the name of the book, and it comes out in October. Welcome, Welcome. I do feel like this idea of AI and what it means for all of us as workers, as individuals, and how it impacts our life.
00:24:19
Speaker 3: Tell us little bit about the book, either of you can start.
00:24:22
Speaker 6: Okay, Yeah, for a shot.
00:24:23
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:24:24
Speaker 8: I think we were very deliberate in calling the book the Human Machine Company, Yeah, because we wanted to. Instead of saying AI, throughout the book, we use the word machine intelligence. So I think the idea there is to say we've had a breakthrough in machines being able to do cognitive work, which is really the chat Gipet moment that all of us experienced, And the book is really saying, just like electricity allowed us to do physical work and lighting and other things, we think that this machine intelligence is a very import utility that will change all of our lives in very significant ways. But at the same time, it's not some undefinable magic that we have to wait for like AGI or or where AI.
00:25:14
Speaker 4: Is just replacing a human.
00:25:15
Speaker 8: So the way we thought about our book is how does a combination off the person and the human being and the machine intelligence working together, How does that change how we do everything?
00:25:26
Speaker 4: So how does it change organizations? Kevin, come on in here, because you, like Carol said, you've written a lot of books, and writing is one of those things that I think many people would argue could be very easily disrupted by some of the technology that have you read some of the writing It does yeah nowadays, but in the future it could be better and better. I mean I was shocked to see what it can do in a really short like early and early iteration of it. And look, we talked. I've talked to college professors who are literally teaching like seniors going off to medical school about medical rights, and they're like, it's so clear that these kids are putting their stuff into chat gypt and they're doing it. Are you after after working on this book, working with Locke, are you are you optimistic about the future?
00:26:13
Speaker 9: Well, yes, but but let me answer there's a there's a couple of different questions there.
00:26:18
Speaker 6: What about right, So, like one of the things we get to in the book.
00:26:22
Speaker 9: Is that so right, now, AI and you know, the capabilities are something new and you know, so, you know, one company adopts it, and it seems like, you know, that's got a competitive advantage because they're doing stuff with AI and some other companiesn't. But that's going to change completely right over the next three to five years or whatever, and every company is going to have their access to you know, to AI. So then what the AI could produce all the just basically becomes the same, you know, a level play field for everybody.
00:26:51
Speaker 6: So then the difference is what can the humans do? On top of that?
00:26:55
Speaker 9: What can the humans imagine that you couldn't possibly have done before? And the same thing is with writing. I mean, look, you can even look at it today. Let's say that writing is kind of going to constantly get better and better, but all a right, AI writing is going to be this sort of like you know, level set the same, right, What's going to be the differentiator is like what somebody like me or you guys can bring to you know, to the conversation that AI is not going to be able to come up with because AI is basically trained on everything that's happened before. It's not something that thinks about like something that is never existed before, right, Like that's that's so that's the human being role. So look, I mean, every every iteration of new technologies that have come along have automated away some kinds of jobs. It's always created new kinds of jobs we've never thought of before. But it's also given people, you know, ways to to you know, create an entirely new ways. Right on top of like you don't have to go you know, farmers don't have to go out and like plow the field by hand anymore, so they can like come up with new crops to do it, you know.
00:28:03
Speaker 6: I mean you can think of the thousand different examples.
00:28:04
Speaker 2: But like when we have these conversations about mythos or something, you know that you are creating something that can actually think and make decisions and enact upon it. Like do we need to come on back in do we need to kind of think about this differently? Like what is going to be that human interaction that we have.
00:28:23
Speaker 8: I hear various versions of this, like you know there's agi and the ability to think and so on, but I think we've actually done some work with to really try to understand what lms are and what.
00:28:34
Speaker 4: They actually do.
00:28:34
Speaker 8: They don't really think what they are.
00:28:37
Speaker 4: At least.
00:28:37
Speaker 8: The models as they exist today are probabilistic machines. They're very wonderful ones because they given a question, they reconfigure themselves to give you a very very legitimate answer that makes sense to you, to us as human beings based on what they're being trained on. But it is not right to think about them as actually thinking. At least that's the way we understand. Elegent says, they exist.
00:29:01
Speaker 3: Today today today as they exist today.
00:29:04
Speaker 8: Exists today, and there are other new model variations that people are coming up with. And I personally feel like this whole idea of AGI is more the definition that I'm more comfortable with to say, we don't really have to go to AGI or anything like that. For certain activities. Can the machine intelligence do human like reasoning? And that is very possible today, So I don't want to substitute that for thinking. In fact, the work what Kevin and I write in the book is to say practically every human job we can conceive of can be split into things that now a cognitive machine can do, and then a human being can do. And this is going to happen in job after job, whether you're in sales or product or whatever.
00:29:47
Speaker 4: Will the cognitive will the machine part of that bucket get bigger and bigger as the technology gets better.
00:29:55
Speaker 3: That's the beauty of it.
00:29:56
Speaker 10: It will get bigger and bigger.
00:29:58
Speaker 4: But some people might say that's necessarily beauty if the human part of it gets smaller and smaller.
00:30:03
Speaker 9: Well, but but it and and it's hard to believe this looking at you know, like where we sit that we're kind of like in the middle of a plot that's evolving and you can't see where it goes. But generally speaking, like if you look at we looked at history a lot to try to understand. And we also turned to a really amazing paper that we ran across called what was the title that paper, uh.
00:30:26
Speaker 6: The Princeton Paper, A normal A normal technology.
00:30:31
Speaker 9: To these these Princeton researchers to this paper, and they were basically kind of pointing out, like the use historical examples and at that that AI is is not all that different from other breakthrough technologies like electricity or the internet the thing and it actually takes a long time for the the technology may change really quickly, but humans don't. And organizations, which are organizations of humans take time to truly absorb these technologies.
00:30:57
Speaker 4: And and and make it, you know, a.
00:30:59
Speaker 6: New way of war.
00:31:00
Speaker 9: But each time that that does, it does that, it also creates entirely new things that because humans human nature is you. You know, you want to do, you want to work, you want to create, you want to you want to get ahead, you want to make money.
00:31:13
Speaker 1: You know.
00:31:13
Speaker 9: I can't imagine this world where suddenly everybody just goes.
00:31:16
Speaker 6: Ah, the machines can do everything. I'm just gonna sit around and play golf.
00:31:19
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think that people. I don't think people want.
00:31:22
Speaker 4: That on that world.
00:31:25
Speaker 3: But I don't think people want that.
00:31:27
Speaker 2: But it's like, you know, when you're a publicly held company, you have fiduciary responsibilities to make yourself as profitable as possible.
00:31:33
Speaker 3: Right, And so if you think I can do this equipment, I mean we've seen it before.
00:31:38
Speaker 2: Like you pull in different systems technology that makes you more efficient and you don't need as many workers.
00:31:43
Speaker 3: So like, I just wonder what the competition.
00:31:46
Speaker 8: A competition would also do the same. So the way we at least we are more optimistic about the adoption of AI, as you can see, and not very advocate, we're not very dystoping about it. What we're we saying is like it is going to be available as a utility, and maybe the cost of it is going to come down, and maybe people wouldn't consume one model, but they consume many models to do.
00:32:06
Speaker 2: Actually had a guess you said that the cost that the cost of tokens were coming down to.
00:32:10
Speaker 8: Have come down massively, But again, many many different things have happened. But what we're saying is that what the secret of a business lies in its people, its methods, and it's data generally and AI. The adoption of AI by all the competitors in the industry still basically levels the playing field on that front. And some people can get a momentary advantage and fire small number of people, but then fundamentally competitors are going to catch up and then what's different about you? And we talk about this example, if you are writing a customer success AI for let's say Northstrum or Walmart, you can't necessarily like what's different? The AI intelligence is the same, but the methods they're decision making, the the data that we Northstrum has is different from what Walmart has, and what they're trying to achieve is different.
00:33:01
Speaker 4: So, Kevin, one thing that I'm interested in is the way that schools need to change, or the way education needs to change. Higher education needs to change to prepare students to enter a world that is a human machine world. What do you think is the answer to that? Well, you know, so one.
00:33:18
Speaker 9: Of the things we get to in the book is that the what you might call the last mile intellectual things that people do, which is like coding is a perfect example, right, somebody dreams up, you know, an application that should have you know, the world needs and you know how how much to work whatever. But then you know, before AI write, like a team of people had to do what the last mile work, which was basically we using a tool to cre create something, you know, things like uh, you know, just writing like press releases in a marketing I mean that's that's just like that's last mile work. Those things are going to go away. And if those things go away, then what you need to you know, teach people is not anymore like that.
00:34:00
Speaker 6: How to do those how did how to do that? Wrote work with tools?
00:34:04
Speaker 9: What you what people need to learn is how to think creatively how to you know, and goes back to like you've probably read and heard a lot of this, is that like liberal arts is the new you know, the the new master. We just had a conversation about, right because because it's it's like it's about how to think, how to solve problems.
00:34:24
Speaker 3: How to ask the right questions the right question, how.
00:34:27
Speaker 9: To put how to put a bunch of things together the dots together that that you know, no machines ever going to do. Those are the things that are going to be of great value, you know, going forward.
00:34:36
Speaker 6: And that's the way.
00:34:37
Speaker 4: Well, I just hope the kids who are staying up late working on this papers are actually working on this papers in the liberal arts colleges and they're not putting them in a chat with you too. But I agree with you.
00:34:47
Speaker 9: You know, there's we we we talked to this guy a really interesting book called The Skill twenty seconds. Okay, So, but but this is a problem that that is being addressed and that others are aware of right now, is that if you don't train this younger generation to do, you know, to have this kind of thinking, we're going to.
00:35:05
Speaker 4: Start to lose that.
00:35:07
Speaker 6: And and if if we lose that that's going to be an enormous problem for society.
00:35:12
Speaker 3: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.
00:35:19
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five eastering. Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
00:35:33
Speaker 3: We've got two.
00:35:33
Speaker 2: Voices that are key to making this all happen. To be quite honest, we're talking about Michael Lobe. He is the founder and CEO of Lobe dot NYC. Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted, co founder of Top Shelf Ventures, and again sitting right here to wrap up the day.
00:35:47
Speaker 4: But they are hosts.
00:35:49
Speaker 3: They are our hosts.
00:35:50
Speaker 2: So we should say thank you, thank you, thank you, like this, like that, like that. It's been an interesting day. We've had some amazing conversations. I'm sure you guys have been out and about talking to folks. Michael, what are you hearing? What's well?
00:36:06
Speaker 10: I'm hearing that the food is great? Have you had any of the food?
00:36:08
Speaker 3: Do you know what I am starving?
00:36:10
Speaker 5: Are you?
00:36:10
Speaker 2: I keep doing is smelling all this amazing food? So as soon as I'm out.
00:36:13
Speaker 10: Of this, I'm going to bring you some.
00:36:17
Speaker 3: I'm going to hold you to it.
00:36:18
Speaker 4: I had the tacos earlier. They were fantastic.
00:36:20
Speaker 10: They are fantastic.
00:36:22
Speaker 4: And one of the things about this is everybody gets a steak apparently. Oh yeah, it's not just everybody.
00:36:30
Speaker 10: What's going on here?
00:36:33
Speaker 2: Stop talking about food because I'm starving, So tell me about the conversations, all right, But.
00:36:37
Speaker 11: Before that, you should know one thing, which is No and I share a lot of things, including we're both half Jewish. Okay, that the food is going to be good. Food is going to be good.
00:36:47
Speaker 6: Is that what you're expecting.
00:36:50
Speaker 11: Yeah, By the way, there's a secret about the half Jewish thing. Ready, we're the Jewish part is from here to hear, computational math, business models like no problem, okay, down from here to here right right? And if you don't know what that word means, look it up.
00:37:05
Speaker 10: You know what it means.
00:37:08
Speaker 11: Yeah, you can tell we know, I know, right, So you know we we can bench press, we can do a lot of things that you know, I mean, Jews are great at like staying inside all day, right, but you know we can actually do athletics.
00:37:26
Speaker 12: Are you guys tired of talking about bench pressing. Yet I figure it's got to be exhausting on.
00:37:31
Speaker 3: All day about press ai every year.
00:37:35
Speaker 4: One of the one of the things that I want to talk about, and I actually heard you talking about this just before our broadcast, Michael, and and that's the idea of the sort of the DNA of uncharted, and that's making sure that the people here are not just enjoying good food, but they're enjoying good food and conversation which with each other, because that's what it's about. It's not about meeting one or two new people, you said, it's about meeting ten new people. It's about meeting twenty new people. Yeah, it's about that network. That's what this is about.
00:37:58
Speaker 11: Well, let me let me start by saying the original thesis and what God is going in this is that.
00:38:05
Speaker 10: Entrepreneurs are an oppressed class.
00:38:08
Speaker 11: Right, and they work like the Dickens, you know, they are one hundred hundred and twenty there are more, by the way, divorces of mental health issues. And they do that despite the fact that four three companies out of four fail, right, three out of four venture back companies fail. And these are the people, by the way, and once you're an entrepreneur, you're unfit to work at Bloomberg or anywhere else, right because you are you're you're you're just you're just incorrigible, constitutionally unemployable, unemployable, so you got to get back in the horse and start something else. So it is highly risky. The pay sucks until there's you know, a payout and it happens.
00:38:51
Speaker 10: If it happened, if it happens right.
00:38:53
Speaker 11: And you know, the second most prevalent form of funding is they raid their own four one k, so they're mortgaging their future for the present.
00:39:03
Speaker 10: That conviction, you know, and you dare not tell your significant other because that would be a problem.
00:39:08
Speaker 11: But this is for entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs make this world, our economy go around and all you have to do, and you guys can try out all these statistics. Compare us to the EU EU as more people than the United States. Oh my god, we've got ten times more unicorns, giant businesses. Think of what you guys have been talking about all last week, SpaceX and Nanthropic and all that stuff. That's not from Germany, that's not from France.
00:39:38
Speaker 2: What's the magic sauce here in the United States.
00:39:41
Speaker 11: Okay, I've had this conversation with many Europeans, and I believe and we believe there's many, many things like we have this ecosystem, this capital ecosystem, which by the way, is framed around the possibility.
00:39:55
Speaker 10: Of failure, right, and in Europe.
00:39:59
Speaker 11: You cannot fail. You just can't fail. It is something you wear with you all the time and forever. And here you get a bunch of entrepreneurs. We've all done this, We've all that's things that have like you know, been disasters. And then in retrospect, it was like, what was I thinking, you know at the time. And you get them around in a circle, you give me each a beer and they talk about it, and they say, ha ha, I was such an idiot with that one. We're allowed to do that in this country, and we have. I'll give you one stat which is of the twenty most valuable tech companies in the world, twenty most valuable tech companies is measured by market gap, sixteen are American. Yeah, so we're four percent of the world's population, eighty percent of the great tech companies in the world.
00:40:46
Speaker 4: Hey, Noah, come on in here before we let you guys go and Carol can actually go get some food. I'm just curious about the ideas that you have been able to interact with here because you are one of these founders in addition to being the CEO of Uncharted.
00:40:58
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:40:58
Speaker 12: I mean, look, since last Uncharted, I've co founded in a company. I think you just interviewed my co founder moments ago. And I can tell you now having seen this from multiple sides of the table, literally and figuratively, the journey of being a founder is one of the most difficult, getting your teeth kicked in every single day, and yet there is just no other way for people that have reread this way and born this way and trained this way from people like Michael, who I'm forever grateful to have as a mentor and partner. It is incredibly lonely, it is incredibly difficult, and it is incredibly noble, and it's equally rare to be in an environment like this, which is not only stunning but so potent with conversations of people who just get it. They understand what it means to go through it and build and why it is so damn important.
00:41:38
Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube always on the Bloomberg terminal.
00:42:09
Speaker 7: Mm hmm
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Bloomberg business Week Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
00:00:32
Speaker 2: Carol Master Chimstanevik Live here at uncharted in Southampton.
00:00:35
Speaker 3: A pool behind us, lots of people around us. There's a lot going on.
00:00:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of people drinking poppy too. Did you see that?
00:00:40
Speaker 3: I did see that.
00:00:41
Speaker 4: Lots of people are drinking poppy. You know, find a problem and fix it. That's the context of talking about this company.
00:00:47
Speaker 2: How many times can we talk to you venture capitalists like they say, that's what people have to do, That's how you have to think about starting a company. And that's exactly what our next guest has done.
00:00:56
Speaker 3: And sometimes it's a.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: Personal like problem or situation that lead you to creating an amazing company, one that actually gets bought out by PepsiCo for one point ninety five billion dollars, And that happened last year.
00:01:08
Speaker 3: We're talking about Poppy.
00:01:09
Speaker 2: Allison Ellsworth is co founder of the company, and she joins us here at Uncharted.
00:01:13
Speaker 3: Welcome, Welcome, Nice to have you here with us.
00:01:15
Speaker 5: Thank you, and hey, let's call it two billion, right.
00:01:17
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay, we're round up. We're good work.
00:01:20
Speaker 6: Round up.
00:01:20
Speaker 2: It's a lot of money. Tell us, though, I love the backstories. I watched these guys know Shark Tank a lot. That was certainly something that played in But tell us about how you came to create this company.
00:01:31
Speaker 5: I think, like most great things, I created it because I had a personal problem. I had some gel gut health problems. I started drinking apple cider vinegar. Hated the taste, and I wanted to create something that tasted better. Have you guys ever taken a shot of apple cider vinegar? No?
00:01:46
Speaker 4: I have not.
00:01:47
Speaker 3: I know lots of people who have this disgusting.
00:01:49
Speaker 5: So I went to my kitchen and I created the first version of Poppy, went on to get a deal on Shark Tank, and now we're in every grocery store in the nation.
00:01:58
Speaker 3: It's wild.
00:01:58
Speaker 4: It is pretty wild, really crowded space, and it's hard. I mean, you could walk in into any sort of convenience store or grocery store, and those are the companies that have succeeded in getting the shelf space. Just getting the shelf space is difficult. How did you do that?
00:02:14
Speaker 5: In the beginning, we hired really smart people. So after getting a deal in Shark Tank, our network was opened up.
00:02:21
Speaker 4: So that's where everything change.
00:02:22
Speaker 5: You bring in people that know the industry. Beverage is really hard. Someone downstairs just asked me they wanted to do a beverage and I said, one, it's capital intensive. You have to have a lot of money. You're shipping liquid across the US manufacturing shelf life. There's so many things that go into it, and you really want to surround yourself with smart people. And the beverage industry is small, so network, network, network.
00:02:43
Speaker 2: It's really about who you know in the beverage really because you're fighting for shelf space essentially, right.
00:02:48
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then you're working with the retellers. And we were before the time, like we were calling ourself soda. We were revolutionizing so for the next generation, and they were like that's hilarious, you know, And so they didn't know where to put us on the shelf stas like basically we're in the sparkling water set. We were, you know, in enhanced water. They didn't know what we were. It was hard.
00:03:07
Speaker 4: Well, now, the idea of a functional beverage, like everybody kind of knows about that. You guys were early to that. Of course, I'm curious what you see out the landscape right now that is missing, Like if you were to develop something right now, what would it be.
00:03:18
Speaker 5: Well, I am developing something right now and we're launching the Fall to fit that gap. But it's what it is is it has to be better for you and not so better for you that It's just like people don't understand there's a lot of adaptogens and all of these things. Protein is really big right now, but I don't know. Would you like to drink a carbonated protein drink.
00:03:37
Speaker 4: I've tried a carbonate protein drink. It wasn't easy to drink.
00:03:40
Speaker 3: It's tough.
00:03:40
Speaker 5: I'm telling you. I wouldn't do that, but I will say something that's just a little bit better. And that's what we did at Poppy.
00:03:45
Speaker 4: So have you figured it out?
00:03:47
Speaker 5: I have figured out we're launching in the fall.
00:03:49
Speaker 4: But launching as is right now? Or do you still have to iterate on the product together.
00:03:53
Speaker 5: There, we're loaded, we're hiring, we're going. And it's one of those things that what we have so much we learned at Poppy from building team and scaling that, like why would.
00:04:01
Speaker 3: We not do it again?
00:04:01
Speaker 4: Are you raising money for it? Are you bootstrapping it?
00:04:03
Speaker 6: A little bit of both.
00:04:04
Speaker 5: Right now, we're going to use our own money for about you know, two point five million or so, and then I would love to de risk and bring in strategic partners that can help really catapult the business.
00:04:14
Speaker 2: What are you learning about the marketplace in terms of products, types of products that people want today?
00:04:19
Speaker 5: You know, it's that movement within Maha that we're really seeing no dies, no artificial ingredients. It like actually drives me insane when my kids have cheetohs or Doritos and Pepsi's changing that, right, They're taking the dies out of it. So I think it has to be just ten percent better or thirty percent better. It can't be one hundred percent better for you. People still want full flavor. America likes flavor. It has to taste good, and that has to be king. Taste is king?
00:04:44
Speaker 3: Is it more expensive to do things so expensive? Yeah?
00:04:49
Speaker 2: And without all these additives are. It really is cutting corners.
00:04:53
Speaker 5: And people get really confused around the word like natural flavors.
00:04:56
Speaker 3: Naturally it's nothing.
00:04:57
Speaker 5: It's very confusing and how it's made and what are in the natural flavors? No, it is. But if you think of like, you're not organic, it's not even non gmo. There's so many things that go into it. So I think it just has to be better for you. I do think non gmo is important and people are reading labels more than ever.
00:05:13
Speaker 3: Is it more expensive to do though?
00:05:14
Speaker 5: It's absolutely more expensive. Okay, yeah, artificial ingredients, all of those things are really cheap. But really what the most expensive thing is the packaging. The packaging more so than what goes into it, and then the shipping cost and all of that that goes into it.
00:05:29
Speaker 4: We're speaking to Allison Elsworth, the co founder of Poppy, which she sold for two billion dollars to PEPSI. We'll call it that last year. She joins us at the Uncharted Summit.
00:05:38
Speaker 3: You can round it up.
00:05:39
Speaker 6: You are so right.
00:05:40
Speaker 4: You're doing this for a second time, essentially. I'd imagine you learned a ton the first time you did this. What are you doing differently to get this product onto the shelves, to get into the hands of consumers, to get consumer and brand awareness across the country that you didn't necessarily know how to do until you maybe failed at doing this or found the right niche for it.
00:05:59
Speaker 5: With pop where entrepreneurs fail a lot of times as they refuse to professionalize their business. So the first thing we're starting with this time as an org chart, we're seeing what can we do to build an incredible team around us? And you hire eighteen months ahead. You don't hire for now, and you don't let your ego get in the way of growth of like I need to do, I need to do every job. And that's one of the biggest mistakes the entrepreneurs do is they don't hire people smarter than them because they think they know everything. So for us, that's one of the biggest lessons is professionalize the business, bring in like incredible people and build a platform that can scale.
00:06:34
Speaker 2: What is it like to sell a business that's been you know, your baby and you created it and it was.
00:06:39
Speaker 3: Really personal for you. I've talked to lots of founders, you know, a lot of them have their name on the company.
00:06:44
Speaker 2: And when you let go, you know, initially it's great because it's a lot of work, a lot of hard work, and your whole life is the business.
00:06:53
Speaker 3: But at some point it's like it's hard.
00:06:55
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean essentially it was ten years of my life, never taking vacations I had through kids while doing it, and then you're gone, Right, the business has gone overnight. You're no longer in eighty hours a week. And people don't talk about the post exit blues. It's a real thing. It's an emotional roller coaster. And look, money gives you freedom to do what you want, when you want, with whomever you want, but it doesn't give you purpose. So find your purpose and that's what we're doing again, because if you find your purpose, money will come.
00:07:23
Speaker 3: How soon did you have to find your purpose after something?
00:07:25
Speaker 5: I mean it took us. I've set golf for like four months and then I was like, okay, I beat my husband a couple times. I was like, okay, I'm over this, and you know, we had fun, but I've really missed the team, I missed the build. It's just the entrepreneurialism that people have. That's the craziness, right, It's why we do it.
00:07:41
Speaker 4: Well, what's it like? Raising money this time around it because you don't I'm guessing you don't really have to be proactive about it. People are knocking down the door after an exit like that.
00:07:48
Speaker 5: It's actually like so many people are like begging to actually invest. But for me, we are only going to take strategic money that can actually make a move. And it's when I say strategic, it's the network. It's how can we network in.
00:08:00
Speaker 4: Them, So money from a distributor, money from a company that could potentially.
00:08:05
Speaker 5: Retailers, people that can celebrities, influencers. Talent is a huge piece of how we skilled Poppy.
00:08:12
Speaker 3: But it matters because you want to be able to drive where you want to go.
00:08:15
Speaker 5: Correct, Yes and small right, I think I could probably call a lot of retailers and go into them really quickly, but I think you have to be intentional and build a brand, start in like those better for you retailers from the whole foods to the targets to the sprouts, and then really grow versus going so mass so big, which I think a lot of people could make a mistake.
00:08:33
Speaker 3: So you don't want to make the announcement now.
00:08:34
Speaker 5: Also, I know not quite a great audience. I love bloom Yes, I know, but yeah, stay tuned.
00:08:43
Speaker 4: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.
00:08:50
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five e's During this listen on Applecarplay and Android Otto with the Blow Work Business Up, or watch us live on YouTube.
00:09:04
Speaker 2: Alan Pypercuff really needs no introduction. We're going to give him one anyway. He's a giant in the world of venture capital. He has been in this industry for six decades. He's helped to build some of the best known companies investing in them, including Apple America, Online Office Depot, Cadence Systems, Audible, Axios, and more.
00:09:22
Speaker 3: He is also.
00:09:24
Speaker 2: The founder and former chairman of New York Magazine. He is chairman emeritus and co founder of great Croft. He co founded Apex Partners more than fifty billion in assets under management. He's also chairman and co founder of Primetime Partners, and he is with us at un Charted.
00:09:40
Speaker 3: You have a long introduction.
00:09:41
Speaker 4: You've been doing even go through his books, Carol.
00:09:43
Speaker 2: He said, I know, I did it. He says, I've been doing this a long time. You've been doing this a long time.
00:09:48
Speaker 7: Fifty six years in the venture business. Yeah, when I started, it wasn't even a They didn't call it venture capitalize.
00:09:54
Speaker 2: You have seen so, I mean, what do you think of venture capital today versus what it was like when you started.
00:09:59
Speaker 7: Well, when I guarded, it wasn't called venture capital. I had this idea of going into early stage companies and we opened an office and if I sat there, the phone wouldn't even ring. I mean, nobody even knew that people like us existed, and if we did, it was all outbound. I mean, we had a cool and fine deals and we had to convince them that it would be a good idea to have a partner. And if you think about it, most people started businesses, particularly back then, they didn't want to partner. I mean they were business owners or startup they just didn't think of that. Friends and family was where they would get money if they had to get money.
00:10:40
Speaker 4: How do you feel about how it's evolved where basically, if a founder has a big exit, they got a family office, that family office starts doing some venture investing. You even have people who really just go to Silicon Valley to try to become venture capitalists, How do you think it's evolved?
00:10:56
Speaker 7: There's a lot of money around. That's the best thing I can say. I remember, this is one person's perspective. There's a irrational exuberance. To quote quote Alan Greenspan who passed away recently, valuations of startups early stage deals are out of sight and it makes it difficult to think about how you make venture returns of ten times in your money of you know a startup precede is you know thinks they're that one here today you know, twenty five million dollars and they've been in business for three months. But that's you're up against that and.
00:11:42
Speaker 4: What caused that? Like, it's obviously inflationary.
00:11:46
Speaker 3: Our money just a lot of money being around.
00:11:48
Speaker 4: What caused what caused that multiple to happen?
00:11:50
Speaker 7: You know, I don't even think about it as inflation. I think that there have been too many funds raises. It's been too easy. Although you talk to most people, I'll tell you how hard it is to raise an early stage fund. But certainly, you know, if we go back three, four or five years ago, the industry has flooded because when they read about or hear about people who've made money and lots of big money they want to be you know fomo. That's you know, that's the problem right now in the AI world. I mean the AI world is I am certain getting a lot of people into the business or investing in it because somebody they know just made ten twenty thirty million whatever in an aideal that doesn't have revenues yet or certainly doesn't have profits. I mean, you know, we've been through cycles before, and you know we're in one right now of a lot of people want to be part of the game. Alan.
00:12:53
Speaker 2: What do you think though of a space Ax which was around for a long time but coming out with you know, Megavalu valuation it's.
00:13:01
Speaker 4: Older company, it's an older company in Facebook, Yeah, yeah, that's crazy.
00:13:05
Speaker 3: Yeah. Or we're looking at open AI and Anthropic like are these.
00:13:08
Speaker 2: Ones things are new companies, but I mean are the valuations crazy? These are companies that you talk about that are kind of I.
00:13:17
Speaker 7: Want to be honest, I have not invested in the in the AI field, and I certainly don't want to deprecate the industry or those kinds of investments, but I can look at it with it some certain degree of objectivity because I've seen that kind of excitement in the internet business. I saw sell you the business I saw. I've seen it every every industry where people you know, want to be part of it. And what's happening. The kind of valuations we're seeing today are you know, astronomical and it's hard to get your hands around, and I personally, I think it's very exciting. I'm not participating, but if you're buying the space exit a two trillion dollar valuation, and if you're an adventure business, I guess we're out of that stage. But you know, you want to make five or ten times in your money, and you got to think it's going to be worth ten or twenty trillion. These are numbers that you know when I started, I'm sorry, when I start out in business, if you made a million dollars, you got to be so rich. And you know, we never even went through the phase a billion. I mean, we just jumped from being a millionaire to a trillionaire. I mean, I assume there are people starting out now today who want to make a trillion. I guess they'll make a billion on the way. But it's just it's an exciting new area and I think there's going to be a lot of failures and there'll be some great successes. And I just don't know how to pick it, because how do you pick a terminal value and extrapolate it to some revenue multiple or profit level because it's so much in the hereafter, But the herift is pretty pretty exciting of it.
00:15:03
Speaker 3: You know, do you think it's wrong?
00:15:05
Speaker 2: I feel like we have a bit of a gut feeling when you look at the AI spend in the build and tapping equity and debt markets, and then you have what you often hear people talk about the circular financing of a company investing in a company that they're going to be buying tons of products for.
00:15:20
Speaker 3: Of course they're going to create some demand.
00:15:21
Speaker 2: Is it wrong to feel like, well, wait a minute, this feels a little uncomfortable to me.
00:15:27
Speaker 7: It's a little uncomfortable because I mean, I recently someone came to me answered they asked me a question of whether they should invest in a chip company. No, it should me. They were investing in an AI company and they were being secured by their chip inventory. I mean, you know, I don't know how I couldn't give an answer. I have no idea, but it.
00:15:52
Speaker 3: Feels a little questionable, right, Yeah.
00:15:55
Speaker 4: Well, maybe a way that I'd be curious to hear your thoughts would be.
00:16:00
Speaker 7: I'm in longevity, yeah, you.
00:16:03
Speaker 4: Know something about Yeah, we're going to get to that in a second. I just I want to talk where where we are in this cycle, maybe because I mean, like we we mentioned throughout the broadcast that you were an early believer in America Online and really what that did for the Internet today and.
00:16:20
Speaker 7: Start out as a game company, by the way, it's it's incredible.
00:16:23
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's how really most people of a certain age were introduced to the World Wide Web and it created Like I said, you know, it's how Mark Zuckerberg got to experience the Internet and then create Facebook from from a dorm room. You also saw what happened with Aol Time Warner, you know. So I'm just curious where we are in the cycle.
00:16:44
Speaker 7: I'd say to you that I am concerned by the extraordinary interest that everybody has in the subject of AI, and it has so many unknowns to it. I mean, I certainly am as excited as everybody else, and I have I think it's either five or six AI search engines on my phone, which I'm happy to show you, and I use try to use as many as I have, and I probably should have another one or two. And I like playing around with it, and I use it constructively. And who knows, I mean, how big this is A this is probably I will say it's probably the most significant revolution. And I've been part of the PC revolution. I've anticipated in through Apple. I invested in the first cell phone company, which was through an auction of spectrum by the US government. I was in the storage area, I was the Internet area, but I didn't participate, but I certainly lived through the chip of revolution and the probably as exciting as AI is bio, the biotech revelution, which is still going on, because that also has infinite amounters of upside. Just in the last few weeks, it's really exciting that bunch of deals in the happening stuff and pancreat solving pancreatic cancer and prostate possibly and they're now one hundred and fifty three trials going on for dementia in some form of cognitive problem.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about because you have been an investor in longevity for a while, what is you think the most interesting companies opportunities and ideas that have been coming across When it comes to longevity, well, you know.
00:18:41
Speaker 7: We we don't really have any public companies as yet, and I don't think we can put it in the same classes as AI AM. I'm honest, I don't see that kind of extraordinary upside. Valuations are very high relative very few exits, and the valuations for these exits are not extraordinary, So I can't put it in the same area as competing with people who are in vesting in AI. But I mean I personally invested in a company that's in a biotech area working on solving the problem of radiation therapy in solving all kinds of cancer cuts. A company called Alpha Tora which has got using alpha rays instead of gamma rays, not yet fully on the market, but most of the things we're involved in our caregiving telemedicine. We have a chain of i'd say longevity clinics about twenty five and called cynogenics, which is that's a very hot area today. Everybody everybody wants to find some way where they can do something, whether it's taking hormones or taking vitamins forever and living the right kind of life that they can live. Longer.
00:20:08
Speaker 4: Well, we've asked you the easy questions, so now let's get to the hard questions and solving the political problems of our time.
00:20:14
Speaker 6: Long time you were talking about my book.
00:20:16
Speaker 7: I mean, but that's the political Yeah.
00:20:21
Speaker 4: Long time active in the Democratic Party. We just went through some primaries in New York. A lot of questions about what happens in the midterms, who Democrats will put up for twenty twenty eight. In your view, what should the future of the Democratic Party be?
00:20:37
Speaker 7: I think the Democratic Party it's starting to evolve. I mean I haven't been specifically particularly a supporter of anyone in particular, and including the mayor, and I'm very much aware of the sweep he had an influence. I think the Democratic Party is more, in my opinion, in a more open party than the Republicans, which right now is just I mean, it's of one mind. I think that the influence of the social Democrats is if the Demos act Democrats are smart, will be open to their influence along with other elements, and that perhaps the party will be not a unidimensional party, but will have ment more open arms and bring in people of different you know, some of who focused on diversity and some of who are concerned with income disparity, which is an area by the way, I know it may be surprising, but I am very, very concerned about income disparity in what's going on right now is going to create more billionaires, truly it is, and the working class. You know, most people in this country have to have W two's and earn a living and it's hard to equate that, and I think that has to be very much addressed in the upcoming election. I think the Democrats have a lot of I think I personally believe we're going to sweep the elections in November, and that's because of how I feel the other party has behaved and based on its leadership, and I think it's created a very toxic environment. I think Democrats will come out in force wherever they are, for any segment of the Democrats. And I think that there are a lot of good people in twenty eight who are you sitting around and not sitting around there. They're making themselves known, and I think you're going to see I mean, you could see another TV interview of ten people again, but ten really good candidates looking I'm looking forward to them when I hope I can get emotionally involved that I want to support one of more of them.
00:23:02
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five eas during Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
00:23:15
Speaker 4: We are all trying to figure out how to work, how to live, how to thrive in an AI world. Nobody really knows what it's going to be like, how it will change productivity, and how it will become part of our lives. Except what for our next two guests. That's they have all the answers. Fortunately, you going to find out they wrote a book about it. The book is coming out in October, and they're going to share some of their secrets with us today.
00:23:37
Speaker 3: They are indeed.
00:23:38
Speaker 2: Lack Anath is global managing partner of the venture capital firm Next forty seven. Kevin Mayney is a New York Times bestselling author. He's written many books, including The Transformation Principles, also New York Times bestseller The Two Second Advantage. He's also wrote The Maverick and His Machine, Thomas Watson Senior, and the Making of IBM. We've been talking about that he likes to write, and he writes about a lot of stuff.
00:23:59
Speaker 3: They do.
00:23:59
Speaker 2: Both both join us that uncharted here in Southampton. They've got a new book coming out, the two of them, The Human Machine Company. It's the name of the book, and it comes out in October. Welcome, Welcome. I do feel like this idea of AI and what it means for all of us as workers, as individuals, and how it impacts our life.
00:24:19
Speaker 3: Tell us little bit about the book, either of you can start.
00:24:22
Speaker 6: Okay, Yeah, for a shot.
00:24:23
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:24:24
Speaker 8: I think we were very deliberate in calling the book the Human Machine Company, Yeah, because we wanted to. Instead of saying AI, throughout the book, we use the word machine intelligence. So I think the idea there is to say we've had a breakthrough in machines being able to do cognitive work, which is really the chat Gipet moment that all of us experienced, And the book is really saying, just like electricity allowed us to do physical work and lighting and other things, we think that this machine intelligence is a very import utility that will change all of our lives in very significant ways. But at the same time, it's not some undefinable magic that we have to wait for like AGI or or where AI.
00:25:14
Speaker 4: Is just replacing a human.
00:25:15
Speaker 8: So the way we thought about our book is how does a combination off the person and the human being and the machine intelligence working together, How does that change how we do everything?
00:25:26
Speaker 4: So how does it change organizations? Kevin, come on in here, because you, like Carol said, you've written a lot of books, and writing is one of those things that I think many people would argue could be very easily disrupted by some of the technology that have you read some of the writing It does yeah nowadays, but in the future it could be better and better. I mean I was shocked to see what it can do in a really short like early and early iteration of it. And look, we talked. I've talked to college professors who are literally teaching like seniors going off to medical school about medical rights, and they're like, it's so clear that these kids are putting their stuff into chat gypt and they're doing it. Are you after after working on this book, working with Locke, are you are you optimistic about the future?
00:26:13
Speaker 9: Well, yes, but but let me answer there's a there's a couple of different questions there.
00:26:18
Speaker 6: What about right, So, like one of the things we get to in the book.
00:26:22
Speaker 9: Is that so right, now, AI and you know, the capabilities are something new and you know, so, you know, one company adopts it, and it seems like, you know, that's got a competitive advantage because they're doing stuff with AI and some other companiesn't. But that's going to change completely right over the next three to five years or whatever, and every company is going to have their access to you know, to AI. So then what the AI could produce all the just basically becomes the same, you know, a level play field for everybody.
00:26:51
Speaker 6: So then the difference is what can the humans do? On top of that?
00:26:55
Speaker 9: What can the humans imagine that you couldn't possibly have done before? And the same thing is with writing. I mean, look, you can even look at it today. Let's say that writing is kind of going to constantly get better and better, but all a right, AI writing is going to be this sort of like you know, level set the same, right, What's going to be the differentiator is like what somebody like me or you guys can bring to you know, to the conversation that AI is not going to be able to come up with because AI is basically trained on everything that's happened before. It's not something that thinks about like something that is never existed before, right, Like that's that's so that's the human being role. So look, I mean, every every iteration of new technologies that have come along have automated away some kinds of jobs. It's always created new kinds of jobs we've never thought of before. But it's also given people, you know, ways to to you know, create an entirely new ways. Right on top of like you don't have to go you know, farmers don't have to go out and like plow the field by hand anymore, so they can like come up with new crops to do it, you know.
00:28:03
Speaker 6: I mean you can think of the thousand different examples.
00:28:04
Speaker 2: But like when we have these conversations about mythos or something, you know that you are creating something that can actually think and make decisions and enact upon it. Like do we need to come on back in do we need to kind of think about this differently? Like what is going to be that human interaction that we have.
00:28:23
Speaker 8: I hear various versions of this, like you know there's agi and the ability to think and so on, but I think we've actually done some work with to really try to understand what lms are and what.
00:28:34
Speaker 4: They actually do.
00:28:34
Speaker 8: They don't really think what they are.
00:28:37
Speaker 4: At least.
00:28:37
Speaker 8: The models as they exist today are probabilistic machines. They're very wonderful ones because they given a question, they reconfigure themselves to give you a very very legitimate answer that makes sense to you, to us as human beings based on what they're being trained on. But it is not right to think about them as actually thinking. At least that's the way we understand. Elegent says, they exist.
00:29:01
Speaker 3: Today today today as they exist today.
00:29:04
Speaker 8: Exists today, and there are other new model variations that people are coming up with. And I personally feel like this whole idea of AGI is more the definition that I'm more comfortable with to say, we don't really have to go to AGI or anything like that. For certain activities. Can the machine intelligence do human like reasoning? And that is very possible today, So I don't want to substitute that for thinking. In fact, the work what Kevin and I write in the book is to say practically every human job we can conceive of can be split into things that now a cognitive machine can do, and then a human being can do. And this is going to happen in job after job, whether you're in sales or product or whatever.
00:29:47
Speaker 4: Will the cognitive will the machine part of that bucket get bigger and bigger as the technology gets better.
00:29:55
Speaker 3: That's the beauty of it.
00:29:56
Speaker 10: It will get bigger and bigger.
00:29:58
Speaker 4: But some people might say that's necessarily beauty if the human part of it gets smaller and smaller.
00:30:03
Speaker 9: Well, but but it and and it's hard to believe this looking at you know, like where we sit that we're kind of like in the middle of a plot that's evolving and you can't see where it goes. But generally speaking, like if you look at we looked at history a lot to try to understand. And we also turned to a really amazing paper that we ran across called what was the title that paper, uh.
00:30:26
Speaker 6: The Princeton Paper, A normal A normal technology.
00:30:31
Speaker 9: To these these Princeton researchers to this paper, and they were basically kind of pointing out, like the use historical examples and at that that AI is is not all that different from other breakthrough technologies like electricity or the internet the thing and it actually takes a long time for the the technology may change really quickly, but humans don't. And organizations, which are organizations of humans take time to truly absorb these technologies.
00:30:57
Speaker 4: And and and make it, you know, a.
00:30:59
Speaker 6: New way of war.
00:31:00
Speaker 9: But each time that that does, it does that, it also creates entirely new things that because humans human nature is you. You know, you want to do, you want to work, you want to create, you want to you want to get ahead, you want to make money.
00:31:13
Speaker 1: You know.
00:31:13
Speaker 9: I can't imagine this world where suddenly everybody just goes.
00:31:16
Speaker 6: Ah, the machines can do everything. I'm just gonna sit around and play golf.
00:31:19
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think that people. I don't think people want.
00:31:22
Speaker 4: That on that world.
00:31:25
Speaker 3: But I don't think people want that.
00:31:27
Speaker 2: But it's like, you know, when you're a publicly held company, you have fiduciary responsibilities to make yourself as profitable as possible.
00:31:33
Speaker 3: Right, And so if you think I can do this equipment, I mean we've seen it before.
00:31:38
Speaker 2: Like you pull in different systems technology that makes you more efficient and you don't need as many workers.
00:31:43
Speaker 3: So like, I just wonder what the competition.
00:31:46
Speaker 8: A competition would also do the same. So the way we at least we are more optimistic about the adoption of AI, as you can see, and not very advocate, we're not very dystoping about it. What we're we saying is like it is going to be available as a utility, and maybe the cost of it is going to come down, and maybe people wouldn't consume one model, but they consume many models to do.
00:32:06
Speaker 2: Actually had a guess you said that the cost that the cost of tokens were coming down to.
00:32:10
Speaker 8: Have come down massively, But again, many many different things have happened. But what we're saying is that what the secret of a business lies in its people, its methods, and it's data generally and AI. The adoption of AI by all the competitors in the industry still basically levels the playing field on that front. And some people can get a momentary advantage and fire small number of people, but then fundamentally competitors are going to catch up and then what's different about you? And we talk about this example, if you are writing a customer success AI for let's say Northstrum or Walmart, you can't necessarily like what's different? The AI intelligence is the same, but the methods they're decision making, the the data that we Northstrum has is different from what Walmart has, and what they're trying to achieve is different.
00:33:01
Speaker 4: So, Kevin, one thing that I'm interested in is the way that schools need to change, or the way education needs to change. Higher education needs to change to prepare students to enter a world that is a human machine world. What do you think is the answer to that? Well, you know, so one.
00:33:18
Speaker 9: Of the things we get to in the book is that the what you might call the last mile intellectual things that people do, which is like coding is a perfect example, right, somebody dreams up, you know, an application that should have you know, the world needs and you know how how much to work whatever. But then you know, before AI write, like a team of people had to do what the last mile work, which was basically we using a tool to cre create something, you know, things like uh, you know, just writing like press releases in a marketing I mean that's that's just like that's last mile work. Those things are going to go away. And if those things go away, then what you need to you know, teach people is not anymore like that.
00:34:00
Speaker 6: How to do those how did how to do that? Wrote work with tools?
00:34:04
Speaker 9: What you what people need to learn is how to think creatively how to you know, and goes back to like you've probably read and heard a lot of this, is that like liberal arts is the new you know, the the new master. We just had a conversation about, right because because it's it's like it's about how to think, how to solve problems.
00:34:24
Speaker 3: How to ask the right questions the right question, how.
00:34:27
Speaker 9: To put how to put a bunch of things together the dots together that that you know, no machines ever going to do. Those are the things that are going to be of great value, you know, going forward.
00:34:36
Speaker 6: And that's the way.
00:34:37
Speaker 4: Well, I just hope the kids who are staying up late working on this papers are actually working on this papers in the liberal arts colleges and they're not putting them in a chat with you too. But I agree with you.
00:34:47
Speaker 9: You know, there's we we we talked to this guy a really interesting book called The Skill twenty seconds. Okay, So, but but this is a problem that that is being addressed and that others are aware of right now, is that if you don't train this younger generation to do, you know, to have this kind of thinking, we're going to.
00:35:05
Speaker 4: Start to lose that.
00:35:07
Speaker 6: And and if if we lose that that's going to be an enormous problem for society.
00:35:12
Speaker 3: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.
00:35:19
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five eastering. Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
00:35:33
Speaker 3: We've got two.
00:35:33
Speaker 2: Voices that are key to making this all happen. To be quite honest, we're talking about Michael Lobe. He is the founder and CEO of Lobe dot NYC. Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted, co founder of Top Shelf Ventures, and again sitting right here to wrap up the day.
00:35:47
Speaker 4: But they are hosts.
00:35:49
Speaker 3: They are our hosts.
00:35:50
Speaker 2: So we should say thank you, thank you, thank you, like this, like that, like that. It's been an interesting day. We've had some amazing conversations. I'm sure you guys have been out and about talking to folks. Michael, what are you hearing? What's well?
00:36:06
Speaker 10: I'm hearing that the food is great? Have you had any of the food?
00:36:08
Speaker 3: Do you know what I am starving?
00:36:10
Speaker 5: Are you?
00:36:10
Speaker 2: I keep doing is smelling all this amazing food? So as soon as I'm out.
00:36:13
Speaker 10: Of this, I'm going to bring you some.
00:36:17
Speaker 3: I'm going to hold you to it.
00:36:18
Speaker 4: I had the tacos earlier. They were fantastic.
00:36:20
Speaker 10: They are fantastic.
00:36:22
Speaker 4: And one of the things about this is everybody gets a steak apparently. Oh yeah, it's not just everybody.
00:36:30
Speaker 10: What's going on here?
00:36:33
Speaker 2: Stop talking about food because I'm starving, So tell me about the conversations, all right, But.
00:36:37
Speaker 11: Before that, you should know one thing, which is No and I share a lot of things, including we're both half Jewish. Okay, that the food is going to be good. Food is going to be good.
00:36:47
Speaker 6: Is that what you're expecting.
00:36:50
Speaker 11: Yeah, By the way, there's a secret about the half Jewish thing. Ready, we're the Jewish part is from here to hear, computational math, business models like no problem, okay, down from here to here right right? And if you don't know what that word means, look it up.
00:37:05
Speaker 10: You know what it means.
00:37:08
Speaker 11: Yeah, you can tell we know, I know, right, So you know we we can bench press, we can do a lot of things that you know, I mean, Jews are great at like staying inside all day, right, but you know we can actually do athletics.
00:37:26
Speaker 12: Are you guys tired of talking about bench pressing. Yet I figure it's got to be exhausting on.
00:37:31
Speaker 3: All day about press ai every year.
00:37:35
Speaker 4: One of the one of the things that I want to talk about, and I actually heard you talking about this just before our broadcast, Michael, and and that's the idea of the sort of the DNA of uncharted, and that's making sure that the people here are not just enjoying good food, but they're enjoying good food and conversation which with each other, because that's what it's about. It's not about meeting one or two new people, you said, it's about meeting ten new people. It's about meeting twenty new people. Yeah, it's about that network. That's what this is about.
00:37:58
Speaker 11: Well, let me let me start by saying the original thesis and what God is going in this is that.
00:38:05
Speaker 10: Entrepreneurs are an oppressed class.
00:38:08
Speaker 11: Right, and they work like the Dickens, you know, they are one hundred hundred and twenty there are more, by the way, divorces of mental health issues. And they do that despite the fact that four three companies out of four fail, right, three out of four venture back companies fail. And these are the people, by the way, and once you're an entrepreneur, you're unfit to work at Bloomberg or anywhere else, right because you are you're you're you're just you're just incorrigible, constitutionally unemployable, unemployable, so you got to get back in the horse and start something else. So it is highly risky. The pay sucks until there's you know, a payout and it happens.
00:38:51
Speaker 10: If it happened, if it happens right.
00:38:53
Speaker 11: And you know, the second most prevalent form of funding is they raid their own four one k, so they're mortgaging their future for the present.
00:39:03
Speaker 10: That conviction, you know, and you dare not tell your significant other because that would be a problem.
00:39:08
Speaker 11: But this is for entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs make this world, our economy go around and all you have to do, and you guys can try out all these statistics. Compare us to the EU EU as more people than the United States. Oh my god, we've got ten times more unicorns, giant businesses. Think of what you guys have been talking about all last week, SpaceX and Nanthropic and all that stuff. That's not from Germany, that's not from France.
00:39:38
Speaker 2: What's the magic sauce here in the United States.
00:39:41
Speaker 11: Okay, I've had this conversation with many Europeans, and I believe and we believe there's many, many things like we have this ecosystem, this capital ecosystem, which by the way, is framed around the possibility.
00:39:55
Speaker 10: Of failure, right, and in Europe.
00:39:59
Speaker 11: You cannot fail. You just can't fail. It is something you wear with you all the time and forever. And here you get a bunch of entrepreneurs. We've all done this, We've all that's things that have like you know, been disasters. And then in retrospect, it was like, what was I thinking, you know at the time. And you get them around in a circle, you give me each a beer and they talk about it, and they say, ha ha, I was such an idiot with that one. We're allowed to do that in this country, and we have. I'll give you one stat which is of the twenty most valuable tech companies in the world, twenty most valuable tech companies is measured by market gap, sixteen are American. Yeah, so we're four percent of the world's population, eighty percent of the great tech companies in the world.
00:40:46
Speaker 4: Hey, Noah, come on in here before we let you guys go and Carol can actually go get some food. I'm just curious about the ideas that you have been able to interact with here because you are one of these founders in addition to being the CEO of Uncharted.
00:40:58
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:40:58
Speaker 12: I mean, look, since last Uncharted, I've co founded in a company. I think you just interviewed my co founder moments ago. And I can tell you now having seen this from multiple sides of the table, literally and figuratively, the journey of being a founder is one of the most difficult, getting your teeth kicked in every single day, and yet there is just no other way for people that have reread this way and born this way and trained this way from people like Michael, who I'm forever grateful to have as a mentor and partner. It is incredibly lonely, it is incredibly difficult, and it is incredibly noble, and it's equally rare to be in an environment like this, which is not only stunning but so potent with conversations of people who just get it. They understand what it means to go through it and build and why it is so damn important.
00:41:38
Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube always on the Bloomberg terminal.
00:42:09
Speaker 7: Mm hmm
