02:05:10 · Jordi Hays, Sean Frank, John Coogan
[02:05:10] S0: What's new in manufacturing land? Oh. You know, this You you guys were trying to develop US manufacturing, like, way before, like, American dynamism was, a category. Like, this is something that you guys have been, like, exploring and dabbling with for a long time. But what's what's the latest? [02:05:30] S6: Yeah. So like we actually worked with the government in like 2022 to get something called like a general exclusion order. So like we have a we can we can very easily now get people to get banned from importing, Like like if we if they value that RRP. But to do that, you have to prove that you're like a important part of the American economy. So to do that, we actually bought the the largest independent watchmaker in America. It's called like a it's called FTS five to IMP Solutions. They're in Arizona. So we own them. [02:05:57] S1: Yeah.
02:05:57 · John Coogan, Sean Frank, Jordi Hays
[02:05:57] S1: Yeah. [02:05:57] S6: So if you ever buy American made watch, I probably made it. No way. But it's a really hard business. That's crazy. Watches watches suck. Yeah. We do wallet production there. Okay. You know, we probably spent 2 or 3 or $4,000,000 like getting that whole thing set up to actually produce wallets there. But then like the Trump tariffs made it really hard to get steel because there's a huge global tariff on all non American steel. That means everybody wants American steel, so now it's really hard to get it. And we have wait for those things to work themselves out. But look, most manufacturing's already very automated. Like, you guys have spent time in China. I'm going back to the next month. Yeah. It's like they don't have that many people in factories. It is robots and assembly. And that can be done basically anywhere. [02:06:39] S1: Yeah. [02:06:40] S6: And then it's just getting the raw goods to wherever you actually wanna manufacture stuff. And with steel and batteries, we can't do that in America yet. So we we have to build a supply chain. It'll be like a ten year thing but the future is gonna be hyper local manufacturing for sure. [02:06:54] S1: I like the idea of you getting into steel manufacturing. That would be electric. You just make your own steel, fully vertically integrated. [02:07:01] S0: Is now the best time in history to start a consumer brand? [02:07:06] S6: Well, I would say probably like January 2012 when Facebook ads just rolled out. That was probably the best time. [02:07:13] S0: But now is the second best?
02:07:13 · Jordi Hays, Sean Frank, John Coogan
[02:07:13] S0: But now is the second best? [02:07:14] S6: For sure. I mean, one, it's moded from AI. Like I would hate to be trying to sell software right now. Sure. Right? And a lot of services, I'd hate to be in that business. Yeah. People are gonna buy stuff forever. Right? You have birthdays, you have Christmas. The American consumer is still incredibly strong. Yeah. We really just had the best q two of all time and that's with a war in Iran, like in Oh, yeah. [02:07:36] S1: And inflation and all sorts of stuff. [02:07:38] S6: Yeah. And like it all actually like looking at [02:07:39] S1: Consumer confidence is so low, even though consumer spending is is holding, you you you there's always nervousness about will there be a pullback. [02:07:48] S6: Yeah. There's been nervousness for like six years. Yeah. But I'm telling you, the Ukraine war in 2022 Yeah. There was a noticeable decrease in ecommerce activity. Really? And right now, it's not happening. Things are actually ripping. So I think it's a great time. [02:07:59] S1: Think Total vibe session. Yeah. Total disconnect between what people say in the Pew research and then what people actually do. [02:08:05] S6: Dude, if I had my Shopify notifications on, it would just be chiming all day right now. I think people are yeah. It's it's definitely a vibe session. Mhmm. So it's a great time to be selling stuff.
02:08:05 · Sean Frank, John Coogan, Bernt Øivind Børnich
[02:08:05] S6: Dude, if I had my Shopify notifications on, it would just be chiming all day right now. I think people are yeah. It's it's definitely a vibe session. Mhmm. So it's a great time to be selling stuff. [02:08:15] S1: That's great. What are you thinking on the creative side? Are you Higgs field maxing with, like, all these workflows to generate endless AI videos? Are you seeing progress in AI images? What what's working? We just talked to the souffinator about the this study that showed that when AI is clockable, it underperforms. But when it's not identifiable as AI, if it's just a product image and it just looks indistinguishable from CGI or a photo, it over performs sometimes. [02:08:46] S6: Oh, dude. Pull up my Facebook ads library and it is tons and tons of AI generated static ads. [02:08:52] S1: Okay. [02:08:52] S6: Right? [02:08:52] S1: Static. [02:08:53] S6: Yeah. Because the the statics are actually like, you can build like ad factories, like totally automated. Yeah. So, you know, you take a Hicks field, you use an MCP, you bring it into like your harness of choice like a codex. [02:09:02] S1: Yep. [02:09:03] S6: And you can generate 10,000 static ads [02:09:05] S5: Yeah. If you [02:09:06] S6: wanted to. Right? And we just have that running twenty four seven. [02:09:08] S1: Yeah. [02:09:09] S6: They get pumped into a Facebook ads library to test it. [02:09:11] S1: Yeah.
02:09:11 · John Coogan, Sean Frank, Eric Seufert
[02:09:11] S1: Yeah. [02:09:12] S6: And then the winners go to a different ads library to like a different ad account to actually scale those up. Yep. So the static stuff is totally solved. Yeah. And I would hate to be trying to do ads without it right now. Yeah. Yeah. Right? I actually built a spreadsheet yesterday or like a presentation slide by hand and I felt like I was a caveman. It's like that's like we're working with like the ads of like the password were Video, we still do a lot of it. It's mostly just as like cut scenes and like a hypercut. [02:09:37] S2: Sure. [02:09:37] S6: So like we want to have motion or somebody talking or whatever. We'll do a lot of that. [02:09:41] S1: Yep. [02:09:41] S6: But it went viral yesterday, the the Seinfeld fully AI episodes. That is really really good. It's getting very close to actually being indistinguishable. [02:09:50] S1: I thought it looked really good. I thought the editing pacing was wildly Yeah. [02:09:54] S6: I agree with [02:09:54] S1: I thought there was like the gaps in the humor, like the pacing is so key to that. It was like but from a fidelity perspective, it looked indistinguishable from the show. [02:10:03] S6: Yeah. So it's like it's very inhuman in like the the way they talk or whatever, but like that's gonna be fixed. Like that's coming in two more model updates, I'm sure. And then and then it's like, yeah, all video will be fixed.
02:10:03 · Sean Frank, John Coogan
[02:10:03] S6: Yeah. So it's like it's very inhuman in like the the way they talk or whatever, but like that's gonna be fixed. Like that's coming in two more model updates, I'm sure. And then and then it's like, yeah, all video will be fixed. [02:10:13] S1: What about using AI either to write deterministic scripts that can assemble hypercuts in different because if you have a picture of the wallet, a picture of a a person putting in their pocket, a person stepping out of a car, a person on a beach, you might want to sequence those one two three four, two one three four, two three two one four, and get every possible variation on the the those different video clips. Are you using AI? Do you already have a system for that? Is that already automated? Is there what's the future of that? [02:10:44] S6: Yeah. That's still very human in the loop. Right? So we have like, you know, two amazing editors who would do all the hyper cutting themselves. Okay. And now, they are using Hicks Field and just getting, you know, hundreds of more variations. Yeah. Going through those in the upcoming rooms. [02:10:56] S1: Got it. Got it. And they can probably even do some like style transfer and filtering on top of the raw footage that they have to like [02:11:01] S6: Yeah. And sometimes like, you know, it's a robot. It'll it'll make stupid decisions. Yeah. It's like it'll it'll go like, you know, wallet to something, you know, falling in the ocean. [02:11:08] S1: Like, what the hell are doing here? Yeah. It's just complete hallucination.