01:09:07 · Ice Cube, John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[01:09:07] S4: Yes. Yes. [01:09:09] S0: But, it'd be fun. It'd be fun. I I... You you mentioned sponsors. You mentioned the the revenue ramp. I'm interested in how you've been, thinking about prediction markets, betting sites. We saw last year, like, every league was sort of... Are they going call share? Are they going polymarket, DraftKings? Have you solved that puzzle? Are you still thinking about bringing, those markets into the league in some way? Is there demand for that? How have you how have you personally sort of grappled with the last year of, like, the rise of prediction markets? [01:09:42] S4: Yeah. I mean, we, we've been talking to them all, seeing which one is ready to be, you know, a real partner Mhmm. With the Big3. You know, you can you can definitely, you know, I guess gamble on on those sites or or have fun with those sites with the Big3. Yeah. But we want to, you know, be a part of it in some way, shape, or form. Mhmm. But it gotta be the right partner and the right commitment. [01:10:10] S0: Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Jordi, do have anything else? [01:10:15] S2: No. This was great. [01:10:15] S0: Yeah. This is fantastic. [01:10:16] S2: Very cool, [01:10:17] S0: Congrats on the on the progress, the the the the s four filing and the SPAC merger with Graph Global Group. I'm sure it'll be a huge a huge run ahead of you. I mean, amazing [01:10:28] S2: Public company CEO. Multiple you company.
01:10:28 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Ice Cube
[01:10:28] S2: Public company CEO. Multiple you company. [01:10:30] S0: Know, years and years of hard work to get here, years and years of hard work ahead of you, but we're extremely optimistic. [01:10:37] S4: Do yourself a favor. [01:10:38] S0: Yeah. [01:10:38] S4: Buy t o n t. [01:10:40] S0: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Cube. [01:10:42] S2: And not financial advice, though. [01:10:43] S0: Right? Financial advice. Have a great one. Cheers. Talk to you soon. [01:10:48] S2: See you. Have a good one. You
01:10:52 · John Coogan
[01:10:52] S0: know, more startup founders should do that. You know? You get somebody coming on from a Databricks or a base 10, they should say, just throw out the ticker. Throw out the... Invest in the private markets. Why not? Why not? There there... There's some more... There's a debate about the cybersecurity news. The Pentagon is treating a rash of freezer malfunctions that affected refrigeration and freezer units at commissaries that serve several US military bases in August as a as a suspected cyber attack. People are saying IoT was a mistake all along. A lot of people are just asking me a question, like, how are the refrigerators connected to the Internet at all? That's sort of crazy, but, of course, you might want to see the the the system. Like, is... Like, I want an alert on my phone if the refrigerator is not at the right temperature. So officials said that they've been in touch with French counterparts about a similar attack that hit more than 350 French supermarkets this... Earlier this month. On a... At least six on base commissaries were affected in late August per Reuters review of the base's social media posts. In at least one case, the cooling unit's temperatures were raised overnight report... Reporting and resulting in spoiled food. Could be... Script Kitty could be a a true cyber attack from a geopolitical rival. Crazy, crazy times. But overall, I was listening to Sam Altman on Cheeky Pint this morning, and he said he was he was he was sort of pleasantly surprised by the progress around the PHP exploit and the fact that the industry responded so quickly and so effectively. What do you think, Jordi? What are you laughing at? What what...
01:12:28 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[01:12:28] S2: GR says, but John, my refrigerator needs WiFi cameras and a two terabyte a month data usage limit. [01:12:34] S0: You gotta be able to tweet from it, for sure. Now, return to the the old thing, the icebox. You want the you want the gentleman stopping by in a in a gas powered vehicle to deliver you a cube of ice that you will use to refrigerate your milk. Maybe they'll come back in Milkman. Maybe that's maybe that's what Did happens [01:12:53] S2: you see that Weil, Gotshal, and Mann Mann? I don't I don't actually... I'm not familiar with this firm, but a very large wall... Law firm. It's gone bankrupt. [01:13:03] S0: It's on the cover of The Wall Street Journal. Yes. I saw it. [01:13:07] S2: Can you pronounce it? [01:13:08] S0: Storied law firm, Weil Gotshal, to a close. I just kinda steamrolled that one. Let's see.
01:13:15 · Jordi Hays
[01:13:15] S2: Turner Novak says, I'm genuinely curious. How does a law firm go bankrupt? They literally just sit at computers and charge people 1 to 10,000 per hour to do things that AI is now automating. No offense at all, there's a lot of expertise required to do this. How does that not print money? John Woo followed up and said, it's confusing why a major multi billion dollar law firm is going bankrupt, so I talked to a bunch of lawyer friends about why Weil could suddenly be insolvent. Unintuitively, law firms are basically fixed cost businesses. Revenue comes from a concentrated core group of rainmakers. Let's give it up for rainmakers. Those rainmakers carry the whole business while the rest of the business basically drags, a word I'm not gonna say, junior partners or rainmakers in training, they can't yet bring in huge load bearing dollars. Interesting placement of load bearing. Everyone else, associates, back office staff comprises one gigantic fixed cost center, not to mention basic overhead like offices, revolver interest, etcetera. The problem with law firms in particular as opposed to other advisory businesses like banking, consulting, accounting, is that the clients are inherently portable, so any partner can take their team and clients and leave. Doing so de leverages the rest of the partnership because a small number of partners carry most of the revenue while leaving behind fixed costs. Once there's a crisis of confidence, it no longer makes sense for partners to stay because they're now getting underpaid in profit share relative to their revenue potential. If they were to leave for a mega firm like Kirkland, they'd be properly compensated for their earning potential instead of being saddled by rising fixed costs as a percent of revenue. There's not much IP or brand moat in a law firm. Clients follow partners and the process of crafting exceptional judgment is mostly in partners' heads. And lastly, the partners are the equity in the firm. Law firms have no terminal value. So when the partners leave, it's as if a huge chunk of the firm equity walks out the door. TLDR law firm bankruptcy is basically a crisis of partner confidence, and the resulting departure spiral saddles anyone remaining with the gigantic fixed overheads of running a billion dollar business. So
01:15:24 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[01:15:24] S0: good. Be clear, this is not a bankruptcy. I think that I think that's why there's a lot of confusion on the timeline about this. They're just winding down the operations. It's more akin to, like, a a venture capital firm not raising the next fund. It's not that they went bankrupt and had some sort of, you know, balance sheet issue. It's just that they don't want to continue with the current firm structure. Those lawyers will diffuse to other firms, start their own practices, do all sorts of stuff. But it's not it's not bankruptcy. Like, they're not going... They're they're winding down the firm, which is still surprising. Like, it's on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. [01:15:59] S2: But they're working with restructurings. [01:16:01] S0: Yes. But that's but that's not... It's not bankruptcy. It's like it's like every partner has a different stake on the equity. There is value there. And how you decide where that goes, that's the... That's why you bring in a restructuring firm. It's not that it's like in the hands of creditors, like the the... I believe the partners will own the the assets. I would be very surprised if it's like they're... I mean, I don't know. [01:16:24] S2: Amendment pretends as great succession planning by the greedy boomers. [01:16:28] S0: Just shut down? What does that mean? [01:16:30] S2: No. I mean, like, you know, one read on this is that the the the partners, the rainmakers [01:16:36] S0: Mhmm.