00:57:07 · Molly O'Shea
[00:57:07] S2: Today's episode is sponsored by VCX by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. Learn more at getvcx.com. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called Generated Assets, and it brings AI into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. Here's how it works: You type in an idea like powered supply chain companies with positive free cash flow or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25% year over year. Publix AI then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single US stock, evaluates them, and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis. What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included. And before you invest, you can even backtest your idea against the S and P 500, so you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. And beyond generated assets, Public lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto all in one place. They'll even give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your investments over from another platform. If you want to build a portfolio that actually reflects your thesis, visit public.com/sorcery, paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosure is in the description. Enterprise AI runs on Merge, the AI infra platform for integrations, agent tooling, and model orchestration, so your teams ship product, not plumbing. Mistral, Dropbox, and Drata already trust Merge in production. Start building at merge.dev. Founders scale faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, Get visas handled fast and get back to building. Visit deal.com/sorcery. That's deel.com/sorcery. So you're
00:58:52 · Molly O'Shea, Israel Slodowitz
[00:58:52] S1: a pilot. You've been flying for over ten years. You fly a lot. What are your biggest health hacks? [00:58:57] S0: I don't know if I'm the health healthiest pilot. Oh. But [00:59:01] S1: That's what exactly what people wanna hear. [00:59:02] S0: Well well, I think I think, know, I you know, flying around is, like, is not the healthiest thing in general. Like, fly flying so much, sitting in a chair for that long, you know, like, probably not good. So I don't fly that [00:59:16] S1: much that much anymore. In a chair flying a plane versus people sitting in a chair, like [00:59:20] S0: On a commercial airline. [00:59:20] S1: Doing ad sales. Like, I don't know. [00:59:22] S0: It's totally different. I guess it's true. But sometimes I think, like, the when you keep changing time zones, really messes with you. You're going across the, you you keep changing your circadian rhythm, you're flying coast to coast or across the Pacific. These things over time, they start to really, really, really mess with you. [00:59:40] S1: How do you stay hydrated? [00:59:41] S0: I drink a lot of water. [00:59:43] S1: Just water? You don't add any fancy electrolytes? I know. Am I supposed to? Really? Yeah. Yeah. You're supposed to. [00:59:47] S0: That's the whole thing. I didn't get all the I didn't get all the all the tips. Yeah. But no. It's wow. Look at that. Tell you, I Cali there's just nothing like California. [00:59:58] S1: I know, Brett. I wish you were getting b roll of this. [01:00:00] S0: Gotta get some b roll of that mountain there.
01:00:00 · Israel Slodowitz, Molly O'Shea
[01:00:00] S0: Gotta get some b roll of that mountain there. [01:00:02] S1: We haven't covered this yet, but what are the hidden fees that people encounter when chartering? [01:00:07] S0: This is like a a whole whole episode. [01:00:10] S1: Really? Yes. Actually, why? [01:00:11] S0: And because I'm very passionate about it. Oh. The easy one is deicing. So a lot of times, you know, when you fly charter, if the plane has to deice, sometimes you don't even realize, maybe it wasn't even snowing, but the plane got in the night before and snowed overnight. And then before you got to the airport, they they need to deice. Sometimes that could be more than twice the cost of the actual flight itself. Seriously? Yeah. We've seen it, like, $24,000 de ice bill in Aspen. So de icing is something that charter companies will typically pass along to the broker, which will pass along to you. And it could be a surprise because you a couple weeks later, you get the bill. Like, wait a minute. I I thought I paid for this flight. And if you read the contracts, specifically, it says they can pass along. When you, work with, fractionals, NetJets, Flexjet, right, typically, they'll bake it into the price. So they'll include it in the in the price, and they'll sort of absorb it across the system. And this way, nobody gets any any surprises. The second one and the one I'm much more passionate about is the is the event fees. So recently, we've seen private equity come into the private aviation space. They're buying these FPOs. They're called FPOs, the fixed based operator, where you park the planes.
01:00:11 · Israel Slodowitz, Molly O'Shea
[01:00:11] S0: And because I'm very passionate about it. Oh. The easy one is deicing. So a lot of times, you know, when you fly charter, if the plane has to deice, sometimes you don't even realize, maybe it wasn't even snowing, but the plane got in the night before and snowed overnight. And then before you got to the airport, they they need to deice. Sometimes that could be more than twice the cost of the actual flight itself. Seriously? Yeah. We've seen it, like, $24,000 de ice bill in Aspen. So de icing is something that charter companies will typically pass along to the broker, which will pass along to you. And it could be a surprise because you a couple weeks later, you get the bill. Like, wait a minute. I I thought I paid for this flight. And if you read the contracts, specifically, it says they can pass along. When you, work with, fractionals, NetJets, Flexjet, right, typically, they'll bake it into the price. So they'll include it in the in the price, and they'll sort of absorb it across the system. And this way, nobody gets any any surprises. The second one and the one I'm much more passionate about is the is the event fees. So recently, we've seen private equity come into the private aviation space. They're buying these FPOs. They're called FPOs, the fixed based operator, where you park the planes. [01:01:17] S1: People just sling that term around all the time.
01:01:17 · Molly O'Shea, Israel Slodowitz
[01:01:17] S1: People just sling that term around all the time. [01:01:19] S0: Yeah. People assume that you know, but it's basically where the planes park overnight or people get on and off the airplanes. And what this private equity companies have kind of realized is that, you know, they can't really adjust the fuel price so much because everybody knows what the fuel price should be, right, based on, like, oil prices. But what they realize is that they have this monopoly on ramp space on the ground, and that their only way to really squeeze additional margin out of out of these businesses is to to sneak in these event fees. And they've really, in the last year or two, gotten very egregious. I mean, you'll see event fees for I saw an event fee for Harvard graduation. Like, That's not a special event. You don't need a special event fee for Harvard graduation. Of course, there's Super Bowl, there's all those. And sometimes those can get ridiculous. They could be in the 20s or 30s or $40,000 just for a short slot to drop off or pick up. Again, another area where going fractional really helps because these companies, they'll pre commit 500,000 square foot of ramp space knowing the masters are going to have hundreds of arrivals. So it still costs you something, but it's significantly less. But event fees is something that really caught everybody by surprise. And I think there needs to be some correction where these businesses are significantly taking advantage of of of their industry.
01:01:19 · Israel Slodowitz, Molly O'Shea
[01:01:19] S0: Yeah. People assume that you know, but it's basically where the planes park overnight or people get on and off the airplanes. And what this private equity companies have kind of realized is that, you know, they can't really adjust the fuel price so much because everybody knows what the fuel price should be, right, based on, like, oil prices. But what they realize is that they have this monopoly on ramp space on the ground, and that their only way to really squeeze additional margin out of out of these businesses is to to sneak in these event fees. And they've really, in the last year or two, gotten very egregious. I mean, you'll see event fees for I saw an event fee for Harvard graduation. Like, That's not a special event. You don't need a special event fee for Harvard graduation. Of course, there's Super Bowl, there's all those. And sometimes those can get ridiculous. They could be in the 20s or 30s or $40,000 just for a short slot to drop off or pick up. Again, another area where going fractional really helps because these companies, they'll pre commit 500,000 square foot of ramp space knowing the masters are going to have hundreds of arrivals. So it still costs you something, but it's significantly less. But event fees is something that really caught everybody by surprise. And I think there needs to be some correction where these businesses are significantly taking advantage of of of their industry. [01:02:39] S1: What's the craziest thing that you've seen? In terms of, like, event fees? Or Anything.