Funny Business
00:26:25 · Robbie Hicks
[00:26:25] S1: It was... I thought it was really weird, Tom. We covered a bit on our pod, like, the back end of last year, even the start of this year. Just... There was weird vibes in the funding scene about people, like, not saying there's not imbalances and there's not a bunch of other stuff going on there. And I think for us, even we had to try to rope in a couple of times for conversations and Lachlan and I have been so intentional about not trying to see gender or anything like that when we've done our pod. And we've had... If you go back and look at the amount of guests and things that we've had, we've had people from all walks of life, doesn't matter where... Who they are, where they've been, where they come from, what nationality, what sexual preference, all that sort of stuff, but we don't lead with that. So for us, we try and not sit in the fence, but it's not what the the purpose of our pod's about. And I think that there's a lot of people out there at the moment in this space that started getting some attention and some PR and some press that helped whatever their self interests were. And it rode this wave of negativity that really it was like a tall poppy thing but on steroids where these people would chime in and the way I see it, the way I viewed it, it's a form of online bullying. Yes, it's from where they think it's from like a good cause or a good place or where they're trying to do it, but the way they're going about it to me, it was like, that's... It was really, really wrong. And it felt like the people who were doing... Were getting rewarded for doing the wrong behavior. So whether that was getting like AFR articles, a bunch of other stuff and like, I I think of like the one example we covered it and I I was like the the dude who went a bit nuts from Givetree. You know? Yeah. Sam... I think it's Sam Sam Joel or whatever it might be. And again, like, don't know what's going on in his life, but the amount of like public scrutiny of people like... And he did the wrong thing. Right? What would happen if he went and killed himself? And all these other people rode his his bad luck and his bad efforts to go and get their faces in headlines and shit. And I feel like that was just... It it just set a bad precedent.
00:28:13 · Robbie Hicks, Adam Miller
I felt bad for you lads when you actually had some good news and things to celebrate that you were sort of like roped into the storm of, they're two boy... They're two men. Let's fucking kill them. You know? It was it was weird. [00:28:25] S2: Yeah. I I can't comment on the give tree example. I'm not really sure about the details of that. But I do think that there is this, like, thing nowadays where pylons, like, can happen, like, quite quickly and quite heavily. So, like, someone may have, like, a justified piece of criticism and, like, the opportunity for social media networks is great because you can actually comment freely and criticize other people, and that can become a debate of different ideas. And theoretically, that would be good because you can learn about different points of views and people can come to understandings and consensus. But often what happens is that someone will criticize, then you get hundreds of people piling on, and then, like, almost the pile on becomes worse than the original fence of whatever of whatever happened. And, yeah, I just see that as, like, a feature, not a bug of social media platforms these days. Like, I think those are quite rewarded, like, to the algorithm as well. [00:29:16] S1: Yeah. They love it, man. They just drive eyes. They drive attention. People are tuning in. It's like bad reality TV, but it doesn't...
00:29:16 · Robbie Hicks, Lachlan Bradford, Adam Miller
[00:29:16] S1: Yeah. They love it, man. They just drive eyes. They drive attention. People are tuning in. It's like bad reality TV, but it doesn't... [00:29:22] S0: I get why we like reality TV and stuff now because, like, we used to love all the movie stars and, you know, TV shows and stuff like that. Now it's like, no. We wanna see, like, real life people heartbroken. I wanna see... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wanna see [00:29:33] S1: them crying first. [00:29:34] S2: I I think a really big part of, like, what we're doing with our media stuff is that we're really, really passionate about... We we sort of call it, like, techno optimism, but just taking a really positive and optimistic lens about technology in the sense that there's so many people building world changing technologies that can help a lot of people and trying to put those messages to the surface. Like lifting people up rather than, like, sort of shouting at people and trying to put others down. Like, you can still have a point of conviction, but then be really, really positive and optimistic. So that's, like, we're always thinking about how... What's the positive angle to something rather than trying to push someone down. [00:30:07] S0: You'd be really good on a debate team, Adam, I reckon. You're just articulate, precise, and just I want you in my corner. [00:30:14] S1: Are you scared of tech, though, though? You can be optimistic, but you're [00:30:16] S0: still scared of it? You are. Are you? [00:30:18] S1: I'll say it. [00:30:19] S0: There... There's a lot
00:30:19 · Lachlan Bradford, Adam Miller
[00:30:19] S0: There... There's a lot [00:30:19] S2: to be scared of. Right? Like, we've been sort of having debates and chats about AGI recently. There's a really good pod... Podcast called the Dwarkesh podcast, which is all about emerging voices in AI and, you know, like, I... I'm... I see so much goodness coming out of AI companies and applications in education and health, like, just what... Like, how you use it in your company and software and stuff. There's a lot of scary things about, like, the development of AI and a few companies having all the control of it and what that could do to society, what that could do if, like, AI sort of runs rampant and stuff. So there's there's scary things out [00:30:54] S0: there.
00:30:54 · Lachlan Bradford, Sachin, Robbie Hicks
[00:30:54] S0: there. [00:30:55] S3: I I also think that, like, in Silicon Valley in particular, when people become really big in the business and tech world, they then go into politics, which is often dangerous in my opinion. Like, if you got famous for your building a technology company and you're a computer science person, of course, you know, you have power and you have opinions. But they again will become really engrossed in politics, and I think that can be dangerous as well. And I also just think people in tech often take themselves too seriously. Like, I saw this a lot in venture capital. People would come in saying, this business is gonna change the world, and it was literally like some, like, accounting software. And no no hate to accounting software, but, like, I think there are parts of the tech world that take themselves too seriously and other parts that need to be celebrated and have more light shone on them, which is what we're, you know, passionate about doing. [00:31:38] S0: I think it's it's gonna be fun. Like, I [00:31:40] S1: feel like doing over the next few years, we're just gonna go through such a crazy period of change. Like, AI is still up and coming. It's it's still new in the scheme of... I reckon we felt like the ripple effect of what it's gonna do [00:31:51] S0: It's like having a mobile phone. To the workforce.
00:31:51 · Lachlan Bradford, Robbie Hicks, Sachin
[00:31:51] S0: It's like having a mobile phone. To the workforce. [00:31:52] S1: I I see it more like it's it's been a tricky last say twelve, eighteen, twenty four months where some of the bigger corporates, not in the startup space, are starting to see... I I think what it is is like the realignment and then reshift, reorganization, whatever you wanna call it of of corporate workforce. And I think that that's really interesting for us is like the people who... We got a lot people in our circle who aren't really tech or start up focused and we're like trying to tell them about shit that's going on. It's like, no. No. [00:32:22] S0: It's gonna gonna fuck you [00:32:23] S1: up a little bit. So it's like, trying to take an optimistic approach to that. [00:32:26] S3: I you guys are gonna be popular at parties saying that. [00:32:28] S0: Yeah. It's gonna fuck you up. It's it's hard because you see that. I I feel like you see it all [00:32:32] S1: the time. Like, there's bunch of announcements last week, like, Telstra just dropped another bunch of staff and all sorts of things. So it's like, there are positives, but I feel like it's a weird it's a weird mix whether you're either on the winning team, so, like, you're some startups where they are making the tech or you're not really... It's gonna... That shift, I think, is gonna happen so quick that a lot of, like [00:32:51] S0: People are gonna get slapped [00:32:52] S1: in Joes. Yeah. They're get slapped up and, like, wake up and they're [00:32:55] S0: Totally. I think I