00:47:39 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:47:39] S0: before Before my time. [00:47:40] S1: Before your time. But it it did have like a chilling effect. I remember being at South by Southwest and a friend of mine who's a venture backed founder at the time was was really into doing handstand push ups and was doing handstand push ups at a at like a party that was being thrown that were people just kind of hanging out and he was just doing some handstand push ups As one does. As one does. And and there was a value add reporter there and wrote about it as a characterization of like how bro y the situation was, but didn't include his name. And he was like, I dodged a bullet. Because like, could have been forever outed his I mean, in many ways [00:48:15] S0: does many ways, he could have built his aura I agree. If he if he was named. [00:48:20] S1: In the modern era, it would have been incredibly bullish. Mhmm. But at that time, it did feel like something that could destroy you. It was it was a very tense time. Very, very tense time. [00:48:28] S0: Roy Lee, would not have, done well during that era. Yeah. Maybe he would have maybe he would have changed the meta though. Because he's making he's making shirtless posts on the timeline. Yeah. Bringing them into the modern era.
00:48:28 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:48:28] S0: Roy Lee, would not have, done well during that era. Yeah. Maybe he would have maybe he would have changed the meta though. Because he's making he's making shirtless posts on the timeline. Yeah. Bringing them into the modern era. [00:48:42] S1: Yeah. It is it is it is an interesting interesting thing. Like, Valleywag would probably be writing about Cluely a lot and framing it in a different way. There's already probably folks out there who are framing Cluely as particularly bad on the other side of the aisle or in the in the anti tech category. But it just doesn't seem to have the same effect. It certainly doesn't stop venture funding or customers or any of that. It doesn't it seems to be that we're in a different era where people people in tech were were clearly, it was controversial in tech. People were definitely divided. [00:49:14] S0: I think it would be good if there was some law that required if if media company wanted to write about someone's physique, they should have to post physique. [00:49:23] S1: Oh, their own physique. Yes. [00:49:25] S0: So that should just be in the footnotes. [00:49:27] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:49:27] S0: Yeah. It's important context. [00:49:30] S1: Anyway, in other in other news, Fin, the number one customer the number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bake off, number one in ranking on g two. Go check out fin.ai.
00:49:30 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[00:49:30] S1: Anyway, in other in other news, Fin, the number one customer the number one AI agent for customer service, number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bake off, number one in ranking on g two. Go check out fin.ai. [00:49:43] S0: And OWN is apparently helping launch a media company. Yeah. And so, you wanna go work for OWN or this new company, which I believe is called Cool Tech News, go check it out. They're looking for a producer. [00:50:00] S1: The founder of Nikola, the electric vehicle company that went bankrupt and landed its CEO founder in prison for a brief time. He was in jail for life, then he got pardoned. Just did a sit down interview with Tucker Carlson, and Nate Anderson from Hindenburg Hindenburg Research had a lengthy rebuttal to this that I thought was pretty interesting. So Nate says, I am Nate Anderson, the founder of Hindenburg Research. Reference [00:50:33] S0: Okay. And just for context Yes. If people haven't seen this yet, Tucker is basically positioning the takedown of Nikola as a woke witch hunt. Is that is that is that an accurate summary?
00:50:33 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:50:33] S0: Okay. And just for context Yes. If people haven't seen this yet, Tucker is basically positioning the takedown of Nikola as a woke witch hunt. Is that is that is that an accurate summary? [00:50:45] S1: It's it's kind of unclear. I think he's I think he's more just really, really open and digging into, hey, Trevor Milton. Like, tell your side of the story. And, it seemed like it seemed like Tucker didn't come with really strong opinions. At least for the part that I saw, it didn't seem like he was taking a super strong stance on, like, whether hydrogen is a good strategy or what happened. I haven't dug in in dug in but a lot of it a lot of those claims, think, don't come from Tucker. I think they come from, from Trevor Milton. And so the the real debate it seems like is between Nate Anderson and Trevor Milton's side of the story. I wouldn't say that in this podcast interview, Tucker has a particular like thesis that he's advancing. He's more just asking Trevor Milton to tell his side of the story. [00:51:36] S0: And people are not People [00:51:38] S1: are not happy with this for sure. [00:51:39] S0: People saying pitiful. Someone else is saying Trevor Milton is a convicted fraudster and pathological liar. Other guy is saying terrible take, scam artist platformed. Anyways, another person just says, seriously? Question mark? And even TikTok investors is [00:51:57] S1: TikTok investors? Memeing [00:51:58] S0: it just being like, wow. This is I mean, is [00:52:00] S1: a lot of people got burned. Right?
00:52:00 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[00:52:00] S1: a lot of people got burned. Right? [00:52:01] S0: The funny thing too is is he was Wasn't he initially prosecuted during the Trump admin?
00:52:08 · John Coogan
[00:52:08] S1: Yes. So, Nate goes into this. He says, I'm the founder of Hindenburg Research referenced repeatedly in this bizarre fantastical interview. During my career, I helped expose numerous financial scams including over a dozen Ponzi schemes and numerous instances of public companies lying to and stealing from investors. Of course, he's talking about Hindenburg Research, his firm. I am immensely proud of the career of that career including our work on Nikola Motors referenced in this interview. Trevor Milton is a convicted fraudster held criminally responsible for the incineration of hundreds of millions of dollars in retail investors' hard earned money and should and as should be unsurprising, Milton in this interview seems just to fabricate key events and information out of thin air. Unfortunately, with zero critical questioning or pushback from Tucker. For starters, contrary to Trevor Milton's implications that his prosecution was some sort of Biden administration conspiracy, conveniently neither Milton nor Tucker share that the investigation into Milton was started and disclosed in September 2020 under the first Trump admin as well as before the twenty twenty election. There were numerous inaccuracies throughout this interview. The claim that Hindenburg paid employees for inside information is patently absurd. The key whistleblower discussed in the interview was only briefly a contractor for Milton. He was so horrified by what he viewed as Milton's repeated false claims that he did a tremendous amount of research on his own unraveling numerous additional suspected lies that Milton peddled to the investing public. Further, Hindenburg didn't coordinate anything with media or the DOJ. Such entities ran their own investigations for the for their own purposes unconnected to us. There was ample evidence that Milton misstated numerous aspects of his business and as as the company later itself acknowledged. What's interesting is like, I feel like when we talked about the Marques Brownlee Escobar phone, like MKBHD kind of broke that story and did some investigative journalism, wound up getting his hands on the phone. And then the DOJ or the FBI came and said, hey, we want that phone as evidence. We'll give it back to you maybe in five years.