02:16:03 · Chanda A. Bell, Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[02:16:03] S5: I would just say, you know, I'm I'm thrilled to hear him say, you know, he'd heard about off on the shelf before he knew it was a business. Our whole job is to create joyful family moments at Christmas time. And, you know, most people don't know that it's not a large company really behind a global brand. Yeah. It's a it's a family business owned by my sister and I, started by, you know, my mom, my sister, and myself, and you know, that's still what we're doing. Still creating joyful family moments through these stories and characters. And so to Christa's point, we do that through entertainment. We have our... A Netflix partnership. We're launching our own preschool show on Netflix this year, Scout Elf Squad. Nice. That launches November 4. You know, but again, it's still very scrappy. Right? We started on YouTube, saw a lot of demand for that, then then got our partners at Netflix to pick it up. So really been able to build a global franchise around what started as a consumer product, and it's a... It's an entertainment brand. It's a character brand. It's a lifestyle brand. And so it's just been really fun to to be behind, the magic of Christmas time, for families. [02:17:19] S0: What's it like running probably the most seasonal business on Earth? Like, I imagine you guys... Can you guys relax a little in q one or is it you're already got like you're like there's three hundred days till Christmas? [02:17:31] S1: And people don't realize how risky it is because you have to forecast how much you're gonna make and...
02:17:31 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Christa Pitts, Chanda A. Bell
[02:17:31] S1: And people don't realize how risky it is because you have to forecast how much you're gonna make and... [02:17:36] S0: No. And even these viral moments that you're talking about [02:17:38] S1: Five stakes... [02:17:39] S0: You can't you gotta build in... You you can't buy five years worth of inventory. Yep. Right? You gotta buy Yeah. You gotta... [02:17:46] S1: Yeah. Yeah. What... Yeah. What have you learned in the process? How do you manage the the the the emotional roller coaster of building a business throughout the holiday holiday season? [02:17:57] S4: Well, I'll tell you what I've learned, which is you can't back order Christmas. Yeah. And Christmas always comes. [02:18:03] S1: Yeah. [02:18:03] S4: Right? It doesn't matter what's going on in the world. Christmas is always gonna come. And it's our job to make sure that it brings joy. Yeah. You are completely right. It starts all over again on January 2, and it is all about planning and forecasting and production, not just here, but globally, which presents its own challenges. Yeah. But we've got the best team on the planet. I would put our team up against anyone anywhere. We were working for Santa. That's what we do. We're working for Santa. [02:18:36] S0: That's amazing. [02:18:37] S1: Oh, well, thank you so much for coming on the show. [02:18:39] S0: Yeah. How do you... How are you guys feeling about Christmas this year? How... Do you feel like the Christmas spirit building in a in a in a positive direction? [02:18:47] S5: We actually do. Yeah. Great. We're seeing... We are preorder campaigns sold out.
02:18:47 · Chanda A. Bell, John Coogan, Christa Pitts, Jordi Hays
[02:18:47] S5: We actually do. Yeah. Great. We're seeing... We are preorder campaigns sold out. [02:18:51] S1: That's good. [02:18:52] S5: We are really seeing people... People are excited about family traditions, spending What time we offer is simple, everyone can participate. Yeah. And so we... At least in our case, we're seeing people really excited about, you know, the return of the brand, and we're already seeing sellouts on several items including licensed items. [02:19:12] S1: That's amazing. [02:19:12] S5: Like our big four or five foot e. That's being sold at Lowe's. So What's the... Is that [02:19:17] S1: the biggest e. L. F. You've ever sold or is there a 20 foot No. [02:19:20] S5: SKU cover? Is a giant... Christa, how how big is the inflatable e. L. F? I think it's, like, two or three stories tall. [02:19:27] S4: Yeah. There's many, [02:19:28] S0: many stories tall. [02:19:29] S1: You can go on your house on top [02:19:31] S5: of your house. It's huge. It's literally huge. [02:19:33] S1: This is amazing. Okay. I love... I didn't realize there was that much diversity in the portfolio, but this is this is great [02:19:39] S5: to hear. There is. [02:19:40] S1: I like it. [02:19:40] S5: There's even little tiny mini elves. [02:19:42] S1: Okay. We [02:19:43] S5: we got it all. [02:19:44] S1: You got everything covered. [02:19:44] S0: Yeah. No. I'm I'm... I I think the world needs the world needs Christmas. You know, it's been a crazy year. It does. Yeah. It's time to focus on what really
02:19:44 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Chanda A. Bell
[02:19:44] S0: Yeah. No. I'm I'm... I I think the world needs the world needs Christmas. You know, it's been a crazy year. It does. Yeah. It's time to focus on what really [02:19:52] S1: I know. I feel Is there a public offering in the in the works? I mean, Anthropic's going [02:19:58] S5: to God's ears. Yeah. Anthropic's going [02:20:01] S1: out 2,000,000,000,000. This feels like at least 1,000,000,000,000. Is somewhere in [02:20:05] S0: that Minimum. I do companies roughly [02:20:09] S1: on equal footing. Okay? Yeah. But thank you so much for coming. [02:20:13] S0: So great to meet [02:20:14] S1: you guys. It was amazing story and [02:20:16] S0: good luck the next... [02:20:18] S1: Good luck. We hope you blow out all of your sales forecast holiday season and beyond. [02:20:23] S0: Talk soon. We'll see you next year. [02:20:25] S1: Have a great rest of your day. Goodbye. [02:20:28] S0: Well, now that they're out, we can we can up the ante to the Okay. To to the next level. [02:20:34] S1: For the cohere folks? The Canadians that are coming on? Do we have cohere coming on? Okay. First, let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content, or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. And we are joined by the cofounder of Coher, Ivan Zhang. Or wait, do we have a cofounder? Yes. Okay. Sorry. [02:21:00] S0: It's Ivan.
02:21:00 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Ivan Zhang
[02:21:00] S0: It's Ivan. [02:21:00] S1: Ivan and Luisa from Cohere are here to help break down the story that we were talking about earlier. You so much for joining. Sorry about the comment back and forth. Was texting with Aden, the CEO, of course, and I'm very excited that we have you able to join on such short notice, But it is a remarkable story. Maybe give us a little bit of context on your role, your your your role with the organization, introduce yourselves, and then take us through the story today. [02:21:25] S9: Yeah. Absolutely. And by the way, we're, like, super hyped to be here. I know our entire team is watching Amazing. In the in the all hands days right now. And Thank so you. So so happy to be here. And, yeah, we're we're in Canada right now. It is very But, you know... And so I'm one of the cofounders of Coher. I lead our efforts on, like, make our models more secure, making them good at securing systems. And I'm joined by Luisa, who's one of our researchers on the team, who actually discovered this behavior. [02:21:52] S1: Okay. So Amazing. What what is this program that you're actually running before we get to the findings of, you know, the the like, which is kind of a bombshell. How often are you testing these open source models? What are you testing for? What is the benefit? Are you doing this for AI safety, goodness of your own heart? Or is this something a customer is asking you to do? Talk about the actual program that leads to this type of finding.
02:21:52 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Ivan Zhang
[02:21:52] S1: Okay. So Amazing. What what is this program that you're actually running before we get to the findings of, you know, the the like, which is kind of a bombshell. How often are you testing these open source models? What are you testing for? What is the benefit? Are you doing this for AI safety, goodness of your own heart? Or is this something a customer is asking you to do? Talk about the actual program that leads to this type of finding. [02:22:19] S0: Yeah. The thing that was most notable is like this is something people have been like sort of like accusing Yeah. In ways or or theorizing Yeah. And it's been... This is the first time that I can remember like [02:22:29] S1: Yeah. [02:22:29] S0: Somewhat concrete evidence that this is like Yeah. Happening [02:22:33] S1: The refrain was [02:22:34] S0: like or [02:22:34] S1: stop at the sci fi thing. You're telling me there's gonna be a Manchurian candidate in here? Yeah. And and now we're here. So so so what what does it look like inside Cohere to build one of these, these initiatives? [02:22:46] S9: Yeah. So, I mean, for for those of you that don't know, like, we are deploying AI into, like, the most mission critical and, like, sensitive use cases in the world. Yeah. Which means we're building a stack that our customers can actually trust with, all their data. Yeah. Right? And how that's done is basically on prem, basically private cloud. [02:23:04] S1: Mhmm.