This Week in Startups
00:20:54 · Jason Calacanis, Amanda Bradford
[00:20:54] S2: That's what I was trying to do. If I asked you to do it for a probiotic soda, that's also pretty hard. So do probiotic soda. [00:21:02] S1: Our example for us was we would do some PR stunts. We had a helicopter, We had a party in Montauk in Upstate New York, and we flew people out on Blade, which is this elite helicopter that people take to the Hamptons. We put three blind dates on that. Then you invite Press. So that's the trick, is you got to invite Press to your party. Obviously give them a free ticket. Tell them there's going be all these interesting people that they're going to cover. Maybe if you have some sort of out there thing that might be controversial, it's good to kind of mix that in. Maybe you have, I don't know, Replit is doing something that, I don't know, they're gonna copy OpenAI or they're gonna go head to head against [00:21:41] S2: That would be actually a good one if you add a little controversy. This... What is... Not distilling or deconstruction, but a reverse engineering. [00:21:51] S1: Yeah. It reverse engineering? [00:21:52] S2: What's your better term for it? [00:21:54] S1: Distilling. Yeah. That's good name. Could have, like... You could [00:21:57] S2: be like, oh, we're gonna have a distillation of Photoshop, best distillation of Grand Theft Auto or something as a competition, You can actually watch people distill a piece of software. [00:22:07] S1: The best hit will be Silicon Valley engineers. [00:22:10] S2: Distilling photoshop kills trillion dollar company....
00:22:10 · Jason Calacanis, Amanda Bradford
[00:22:10] S2: Distilling photoshop kills trillion dollar company.... [00:22:12] S1: Together to overthrow the rest of the tech industry, and it's us against big tech. [00:22:17] S2: Alright. I I think this was too easy for you. Do the probiotic soda. It's mega hard. [00:22:22] S1: My gosh. I guess you'd find the people that are really into the probiotics and have all this- [00:22:26] S2: That's health. Healthy people. [00:22:28] S1: Well, not everybody believes in all that stuff. But I would, yeah, you would find your influencers that focus on this space, right? Obviously invite them if you can. But if you want to have someone that has a talk about maybe there's different schools of thought on probiotics, should it be in a drink, or maybe it should be in an injectable? Maybe it should be in a pill? And are there new pills coming out that think the soda has too much sugar in it? Or whatever it might be. And so I think having, again, fostering debates in more of a, don't know, what do they call it? A salon of where people are exchanging ideas that are maybe a little hot takes, I guess, I would say. [00:23:04] S2: Yeah. Actually, probably the adjacencies would be those people would be into those glucose monitors. They would be into GLPs, which means if they were into those things, they would be into, like, a Brian Johnson. They might [00:23:16] S1: not be into drinking your probiotics. I think there's some people that [00:23:19] S2: There's probably some people. Yeah. Brian Johnson might want a suppository or something. Don't know. He's into kind of weird stuff.
00:23:19 · Jason Calacanis, Amanda Bradford, Lon Harris
[00:23:19] S2: There's probably some people. Yeah. Brian Johnson might want a suppository or something. Don't know. He's into kind of weird stuff. [00:23:26] S1: Or like implanting poop inside you from someone else. Like, that's the hot That's what he's been doing. [00:23:30] S2: That's why I'm bringing it up. [00:23:31] S1: That would be good to show the press. Like, this guy is showing how he inserted someone else's feces, and it made him healthier. [00:23:37] S0: Because it [00:23:37] S2: took a turn. [00:23:38] S1: It took turn. Brian Johnson's But that's what [00:23:40] S2: we're trying to do is try to bait the press. [00:23:42] S1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you Show want to show them that sort of like a weirdness in your group or whatever. [00:23:47] S2: Well, actually, bring that up because did anybody see these peptide parties, Silicon Valley story trend? Who saw that story trend on social? Yeah, it looks like a third of the audience, a quarter of the audience. That was an example. They did a peptide party, and they're like, Yeah, people are shooting each other up. And you're like, With heroin? They're like... No, peptides. It's even worse. Your ACL is never gonna feel better. Your torn ACL will feel great. All right, let's give it up for a man. Well done. [00:24:22] S0: No Jason Kalicatis today. He's traveling the world doing many impressive, events, but you do have me, Lon Harris. I'm here in the studio and calling in from the East Coast, our old friend. He's back again. Alex Wilhelm. Thanks so much for being here, Alex.
00:24:22 · Lon Harris, Alex Wilhelm
[00:24:22] S0: No Jason Kalicatis today. He's traveling the world doing many impressive, events, but you do have me, Lon Harris. I'm here in the studio and calling in from the East Coast, our old friend. He's back again. Alex Wilhelm. Thanks so much for being here, Alex. [00:24:37] S3: Oh, it's such a treat. I love being Diet Coke Jason Standen. It's my favorite job to play. [00:24:42] S0: You're full sugar Coke, Jason Standen. How are you? [00:24:45] S3: Very sweet, Molly.
00:24:45 · Alex Wilhelm, Lon Harris, Amanda Bradford
[00:24:45] S3: Very sweet, Molly. [00:24:46] S0: Before we get any further into the show, we're gonna be looking back at some very classic, beloved iconic twist clips from both from the year 2017, funny enough. And then we, Alex, and I like to revisit these classic moments and then see what new conclusions, new ideas we could draw from these, fascinating deep dives with some of our favorite founders of years past. Obviously, full of tactical and practical advice you can apply even today if you are running a company. But before we get into all that, I do wanna call attention to this device that you can see hanging here on my lapel on on the side of my jacket. That, of course, is a plot note pin. If you just tap it, a little light comes on, and it starts recording everything that's going on around you. Everyone's speaking amazing for transcribing your meetings or discussions you're having with team members in the moment. The... Anything that you don't wanna forget, you just record the plot. It goes on to the plot app. It goes on to the web. It's... They've got summaries. They've got transcripts. They could turn it into whatever you want. Meeting notes, a lesson plan if you're a teacher, whatever you want. It's a very impressive product. Alex, you you played around with. You got a plot pin. [00:25:57] S3: Oh, I've used plot quite a bit. I mean, what I use it for is actually recording arguments with my spouse. So then later on, I can feed it into a LLM judge and then decide who was more or less in the wrong. It's really great for your marriage too. [00:26:08] S1: 100%.
00:26:08 · Amanda Bradford, Lon Harris, Jason Calacanis, Alex Wilhelm
[00:26:08] S1: 100%. [00:26:09] S0: A lot of insight into Alex's 2028 divorce proceedings. [00:26:13] S2: Do that. That was a joke. [00:26:14] S0: Don't do that. But if you do wanna get good, positive, healthy relationship uses out of your plot pin, go to plot.ai/twist. Use the code Twist, and they're gonna give you 10% off your Plod note pin. Thanks so much. We applaud Plod, as Jason likes to say. [00:26:34] S3: Yes. We do. Now we're gonna look at some interviews, Lan, that I think are very important to put into context because we often talk to leading CEOs in the moment when they have just done the latest thing, and we don't have context about what happened afterwards. So I love it to rewind the clock about a decade to some truly iconic companies to see what they were talking about in the what were we curious about, and then how does their progress line up with where we are now? So who's first? [00:27:00] S0: So first, we're going to take a look at, this classic moment from Jason and Patrick Collison of Stripe. This was originally published on 04/11/2017. It was filmed at the launch festival twenty seventeen. This was twist episode seven twenty three for those of you keeping track by number. [00:27:18] S3: And we're gonna kick off with a clip in which they talk about the metrics that Stripe was seeing at the time, and then we're gonna have a fun little comparison to where the company is today. Roll the tape.