Determining Success for a Startup, Bundling & Unbundling, Big vs Small Dev Teams
How's that noise?
Dax:What noise?
Adam:It sounded like a cat.
Dax:I think it was just a squeak from my mic. Boom.
Adam:Oh, my video is on. Oops.
Dax:Oh my god. What is that?
Adam:What is it?
Dax:Are you dressed like me?
Adam:I'm sorry. What? I dress like you. You and Ken. I mean, you guys wear these cool necklaces, and, like, you're not the only men that can wear necklaces.
Adam:I can wear a necklace. I totally pull out the necklace.
Dax:It's funny because you're calling it a neck necklace, and me and Ken would call it a chain.
Adam:Is that not what they're called?
Dax:You already It's not a necklace. Okay. Oh my god. It's really that that looks like a Cuban link too. You really Oh, really?
Adam:Maybe it is. From Cuba. Yeah. I'm gonna wear it to Miami and just see if anybody says anything. Just, like, see, like, would people just think, oh, this is how Adam dresses when he's, like, in person?
Dax:It looks a little off on you. I can't tell what it is. Like, something maybe it's just it's just so out of A little character.
Adam:A little off.
Dax:But, like, why?
Adam:This is a joke. Right? You know I'm not actually gonna burn that list.
Dax:Joke, but I'm like, why does it look so funny?
Adam:That's what I wanna know. Because, like, I thought about how when I put I so I bought this just for this, just to gag you, just to prank you. But I thought about, like, it's gonna look so weird on me. I put it on. It does look so weird on me.
Adam:And I thought, like, it doesn't look weird on Dax or Kin. Why? What is it about me?
Dax:It did you go is that, like, a real chain?
Adam:I don't know. I got it on Amazon. I mean, it's I don't think it's real gold. I think it's gonna
Dax:say because because look how, like, could it look how, like, yellow it looks? It looks like Yeah. What cartoon concept in gold. And mine's, like, you know, like, a little dull.
Adam:Okay. So if mine were duller, would I look normal? And, oh, do I got to tuck it in the shirt? I got to tuck it in the shirt.
Dax:Well, it depends. Sometimes I tuck it in. Sometimes I don't. Well, now we can't see it at all.
Adam:Now you can't even see it. Yeah. Just a little subtle, like a little little is that nice?
Dax:That's funny.
Adam:Okay. I'm taking it off.
Dax:I think you should start trying to trying to get, like, a real one and I'm not
Adam:no. I'm not actually aware of it. Funny.
Dax:This is so funny. I'm gonna
Adam:send this back. Amazon returns are too easy.
Dax:So I've worn one for a while, but it's because it's like something my mom got me. It's not like Oh,
Adam:nice. It's like sentimental value?
Dax:Yeah. It wasn't like initially, it wasn't like, oh, I'm someone that wants to go get a chain. But then, Liz's dad so the one I'm wearing now is Liz's dad's. Mhmm. Because he had one that was, like, super old, and he gave it to me.
Dax:And it looked really bad because it was old. Oh. But then we took it to a place and they polished it, and then it looks, like, amazing now. Yeah. And it's, like, worth a good amount of money.
Dax:So it was, like, a nice nice thing.
Adam:That's awesome. Yeah. I I don't know why it looks so weird on me, and it doesn't look weird on you. I really I'm not making fun of you. It looks totally normal.
Adam:If this is what it would be like if I got a tattoo, it would look totally wrong. Maybe.
Dax:Yeah. It is crazy how people's, like, personality can kind of affect their appearance. But Mhmm. So, like, some things just don't match. But I I don't know.
Dax:When you're in Miami, you can put this one on, and we'll see if it looks weird still.
Adam:Okay. Yeah. We'll see if anyone notices that you're not wearing 1 and then I am wearing 1. I was
Dax:gonna come out of you being like, wait. Did you lose your chain?
Adam:Adam's borrowing it for an experiment. I'm sick, by the way. I don't know if that was clear.
Dax:Yeah. No. I could tell. My my nose is a little stuffy, but I don't think I'm sick.
Adam:Interesting. I slept terrible. Do you track your sleep? Have we talked about this, like, 3 times?
Dax:Sleep, so it's like I can't not track my sleep. You know? Do you
Adam:know, like, what a sleep score is?
Dax:Yeah. My sleep score is always amazing every single day.
Adam:Really? Like, how amazing?
Dax:Like nineties.
Adam:Really? You're like, Casey. I get like, eighties are good for me. Most days are in the seventies, and this morning was, like, 47.
Dax:Okay.
Adam:I slept, like, 3 hours. I couldn't sleep because of how sick and stuffy. So, like, I'm not gonna get better because I'm not sleeping, you know? You're checking your score.
Dax:Okay. 85 today. But I I went to sleep uncharacteristically late today. But What
Adam:the why did you go to sleep so late? You mean last night?
Dax:I was actually working. I was super into into work. You know that thing that I always say where if you just change up your workflow, you get a productivity boost even if Yeah. The workflow is no better? So that kind of happened to me yesterday, because do you remember I was asking a while ago, like, hey.
Dax:Has anyone made a better front end for GitHub issues? Because I'd love to, like, actually use GitHub issues for SST stuff. And it's just so slow, and you're managing this stuff day to day. Mhmm. And I know and I know there was an app that, like, synced the issues to linear, and it would be bidirectional.
Dax:So changes you made in linear would reflect back. And I used it a while ago, but it was, like, a little off. But then I remembered, oh, linear actually released a native version of this. So they have this thing where you can connect your GitHub, and it syncs everything into Linear. Also, like, it just, like, kills me how good they are at stuff.
Dax:Like, you connect it like a normal kind of GitHub thing. Then they have this migration assistant flow to, like, import your existing issues. And they just, like, thought of, like, every little detail. It's like they knew that, okay, sometimes some of the users and the GitHub issues are gonna be people on your team, so let's help you map them. Like, just every little detail was just flawlessly executed and just like, damn.
Dax:Even the places where like, that's less about, like, speed and performance, and that's more about just, like, really good UX.
Adam:Getting the details right. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. So even there, they did a great job. So you sync it over and it's perfect. Like, everything works. Like, everything synced bidirectionally.
Dax:They have, like, a native like, a different comments UI pops up so that when users are commenting on GitHub, they, like, still show up inside of linear ticket as though it's, like, a native comment and everything. Yeah. And it all just works. And it's obviously fast since we perform it like linear. So now they just fix GitHub issues.
Dax:Like, you just don't have to use GitHub issues at all if you're maintaining a project, and it all just works. And I have to, like, go look at the GitHub issue screen again. So that that, like, really excited me. So I was, like, just burning down a bunch of issues.
Adam:Is there actually an issue or a sorry. That was gonna be stupid. Is there actually a problem with GitHub issues, or is it just GitHub notifications? Because that's the thing I hate about GitHub is notifications are meaningless. There's just so many of them.
Adam:If you do anything at all in GitHub, you just get overwhelmed, and then you don't look at them anymore because they're pointless.
Dax:Yeah. I feel. I think notifications are much much more broad problem because if you even if you just create an issue, you, like, might miss the fact that someone replied and everything because notifications are bad. Yeah. I don't really like, when you're actually working on like, when you're someone that's working across a bunch of issues, your workflow isn't really notification driven.
Dax:It's just, like, you want a view where you see all the most recently updated issues in that order and you just go through. So that's what I get in linear. And then, obviously, linear has notifications as well and that also just works. So, yeah, it's funny because a few weeks ago, I was like, man, someone should just build this. Someone should just build, like, a better file for GitHub issues.
Adam:But Linear already did.
Dax:Linear was just, like yeah. It's, like, their scope is broader if they, like, also solved this problem as, like, a subset of whatever they're doing.
Adam:That's awesome. That's an interesting, start up product thing. I hate the term product market fit. It just sounds every time the people who say it just bother me. Yeah.
Adam:I know it means something, but it just bothers me, the people who talk about product market fit. But I guess, like, from a startup strategy perspective, just make a broad thing and then be like, oh, you know what? A lot of developers are using this. Let's make, like, a thing that makes it really good for developers. Is that a strategy that other people like, have you heard of this?
Adam:Do people do this? Does this have a name?
Dax:Well, this happens all the time where, like, someone with a better because there'll be, like, a bunch of people trying to, like, solve a problem. Then someone with like a better angle on it solves many problems and also that problem and like kills you. So that's usually like, if you look at SST ION, like, we were always thinking from that perspective of what would what could come out that could make SST, like, irrelevant. Yeah. And we realized, like, the moment someone does something like what we're doing, but not pinned to AWS, where it's irrelevant because, like, their thing can do our stuff and other stuff.
Dax:Yeah. But, yeah, you kind of have to always, like, watch out for that. The other thing I was a little bit interested in then with this is, yeah, this thing where, like, you build a front end, a better front end for an existing, like, big product, That usually doesn't work out, but in Linear's case, they're like they're obviously big on their own, so it's a little bit different. But this thing I described with GitHub, they're doing it with everything. They're doing it with, like, Asana, with Jira, with with all the existing software.
Dax:Mhmm. So you can literally be on a team that's like, we've been using Jira for 10 years, and you're like, I fucking hate this. You personally can go create a linear account and just use linear, and the rest of your team won't even know.
Adam:That's amazing. Yeah. Because a lot of people hate those tools, like Jira and Rally and whatever.
Dax:Yeah. And, like, you're never gonna convince certain teams to put an effort to switch.
Adam:Or I was on a team that went through, like, 4 of them and ended up back on Rally. It was, like, started one place and then ended up back on it, like, 8 years later. It's like they can't they just can't decide. Like, every PM or person, every top stakeholder decides something different. And then there's, like, a 6 month migration, and then they're on it for a year, that whole thing.
Dax:It's fine with a lot of these tools. Like, the unsaid thing is is the tool is not the problem. It's like, you're the boss. Exactly. It's hard to use.
Dax:It's hard to be organized and, like, have a good process. So
Adam:That it just makes you think about organization sites. Man, my brain is slow today. I mean, it's always pretty slow. But just heads up, it's gonna be rough. Like, you're gonna try to have a normal conversation with me, and I'm just gonna be like, boom.
Dax:But, like, normal then.
Adam:Ouch. Yeah. Just organization size. Like, I feel like sometimes I I talk about the small team thing. I know you talk about the small team thing a lot.
Adam:Like, the future belongs to these tiny teams that can do more and more all the time, more leverage per person. So you have these small teams doing big, big things. But then there is, like, the other side where you need the big, big companies. Like, Amazon has to exist because you can't do what Amazon does with AWS with a small team. Lots of those cases where there's big companies that need to exist.
Adam:I feel like in the middle is where you're in trouble. Yeah. Like, if you're, like, 200 engineering team, I don't know. I just good luck. Like, I feel like a team of 5 is gonna come in under you and do what you're doing, but better and more efficiently.
Adam:Or, like, you're just never gonna compete with the big company. Right? Is there, like, any theory around this? Why do I keep searching for validation? I keep looking for, like, has anyone written a book about this?
Adam:Could you tell me what it's called back? How do I just we could just talk about it.
Dax:It's it's funny you bring this up because I've I've been thinking a lot about this over the last couple days as well. But before we get into that, there actually is a theory of what you're talking about, but again, much more broad, but it actually applies to this. Mhmm. Just in general, middle zones in approaches tend to be really bad. And there's, like, lots of cases like this.
Dax:Like, it's very it's good to, like, go to extremes. Yeah. But, like
Adam:If you're doing a little heroin, that's okay. A lot of heroin, also okay. But, like, middle zone heroin, not so good.
Dax:Need to
Adam:go all in or or just dabble.
Dax:Yeah. Otherwise, what's the point? But I think we've talked about this a little before, like, Taleb's a lot of Taleb's work is built on this idea. This barbell strategy idea is what he calls it.
Adam:Oh, right. I'm sorry.
Dax:Just the 2 waits at the end. Nothing in the middle. But, yeah, it's funny because I had this weird feeling where, of course, me, you, a bunch of people harp on this. Small teams are important and good and can do a lot. It's a thing that's in the air.
Dax:Like, oh, yeah. Like, a lot of times, small teams out ship bigger teams. So we do talk about it a lot. But at the same time, I feel like we we don't talk about it enough and it should be driving people insane because there are so many examples that we just take for granted and don't look at where a small team is acts is like demolishing a bigger team, like destroying a bigger team. Yeah.
Dax:And we're just like, oh, yeah. That sometimes happens. But then when you think about it, like, what the hell? Like, that is crazy that, like, someone spending 1,000,000 of dollars and having no impact, and we're just, like, okay with this. Like Yeah.
Dax:I was joking the other day where I'm, like, people should be, like, committing suicide when they find this out, when they find out that, like, a small team is doing that. Like, it should be that. It should be nearly humorous.
Adam:Your sense of humor is awesome. Like, you've never laughed more on the podcast than when you just talked about suicide. That was awesome.
Dax:I'm just, like yeah. I'm just picturing, like, you know, in Japan where the samurais, like, commit
Adam:something Oh, like, it's like a no wonder. Okay. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. I'm just like, people should be doing that because I was and to again, to brag a little bit, so indulge me. There's, like, a set of companies that are considered, like, SST competitors or in the same zone as us. Mhmm. And I was looking at their NPM stats from, like, around the time that SST came out.
Dax:They they all kind of came out at the same time. And completely flat charts for all of them. Like, barely any growth, like, insanely small to the point where I'm just like, how are they motivated to, like, get up in the morning and keep working on this? Like, it's just not working. Yeah.
Dax:And you look up all these companies, and they're, like, so much big I mean, they're not, like, huge 200 person companies, but, you know, we're 3. They might be, like, 10. Some of them are, like, 30. They have, like, full time people doing stuff that I spend, like, 10% of my time doing and wish I could spend more.
Adam:Yeah. And
Dax:it's it's just not working at all. And, like, how do people go on every single day? Because I know if I'm looking at their stats, they're looking at ours for sure. And aren't they just like, what the fuck?
Adam:Is it possible that not every dev tools company looks at those stats?
Dax:Impossible. It it seems impossible.
Adam:Is it possible? Because sometimes I'm surprised by humanity. There's things where I'm like, why would anybody ever do that? Why do they have to warn you not to do that? And they're like, well, there's people that would do that.
Adam:Right.
Dax:So is
Adam:there is there a possibility they're just completely oblivious, and that's not a metric they care about or track or think about?
Dax:I guess I guess what I'm describing I am describing people where I'm like, I don't understand how they're operating. So it is possible, but, like, they gotta at least be looking at their own stats. Right? Their own stats are just flat. Just
Adam:flat. That's a stat. Maybe they're looking at their website traffic or something. Maybe they're looking at some stat that's not the right stat.
Dax:They're publishing stat. They're publishing NPM packages, but they're not looking at NPM download. That's what I'm talking
Adam:about. I
Dax:look at NPM downloads.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they I don't know. I guess okay. So because I was thinking, like, I've never looked at NPM stats for anything, but I guess, like, I don't publish NPM packages, so that makes sense.
Dax:But if you're, I guess business trying to, like, distribute NPM packages.
Adam:Business actually publishing an NPM package, you would be aware of the stat. So it should be a 100% participation in the looking at NPM download stat if you're a DevTools company, sounds like.
Dax:I think so. But I guess yeah. I guess anything is possible. But it's just like and they're doing all the same things. They're like writing these long blog posts where they they've they write these blog blog posts that are like more detailed than anything I remotely have the attention span to read or write.
Dax:Like, I've never put that much effort into producing anything, like that. And, like, they do that, and they put in all that effort, and then I look at their chart, and it's just, like, there's less downloads that week. You know? It's just Yeah. How do they go on?
Adam:So you look at the stats a lot. Maybe they're just going on the other end of the barbell and just not looking at them at all.
Dax:They're just
Adam:still like, we're gonna work on our business,
Dax:and we're not gonna we're not gonna, like, observe anything about it. We're just gonna keep pushing stuff
Adam:out there. It's like the people who yeah. The people who are like, I'm just gonna keep making content. I'm not gonna look at the numbers. It's like that that whole attitude.
Adam:It's like the confidence. Like, I don't need to see it.
Dax:I don't need to know. Is you gotta you know, you need to send your quarterly investor update. So
Adam:That's a good point.
Dax:Away from it so much.
Adam:Yeah. Okay. So then they all have to be looking at those stats because that would definitely be something that an investor in a DevTools company would be like, wait. All my other in dev tool portcos send me NPM memos. Don't you have NPM baggages?
Dax:Let's get
Adam:some numbers. Okay. So they're all just oppressed. That's the answer. Is
Dax:there I don't think they are. Like, how are because for me, I like my motive and my whole and our whole team is like this, our motivation, our emotions, how we feel, what we feel like working on. It's so driven by looking at those things because it's basically a pulse on whether what we're doing is working. And I can't imagine like, the thing that strikes me is if my chart looked like theirs, I would have started over with a brand new company, like, 5 times over by now. Like, there's no point in continuing when it's that ineffective.
Adam:So I don't I don't think this is specific to dev tools. I think this is the broader Yeah. General. Talking about the Zirp thing, the the zero interest rate. Like, I just think there's a there's been an era of startups where it's like, you're not really concerned with metrics or how things are going.
Adam:It's like, we have runway. We have 2 years of runway. Like, we raised a bunch of money. Who cares? Yeah.
Dax:Like, do
Adam:do some founders honestly just not even care if it works out? Is it just like this is a ride? It's like I
Dax:think it's something that way.
Adam:Good time.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Raise some money. Had a a office space in the Bay Area. I don't know. That's probably now I'm getting way too specific. I mean, that was a lot of people, like, 8 years ago.
Dax:Had office space in the Bay Area on Market Street on the 4th floor. Who are you talking about? Sorry.
Adam:I'm thinking about specific founders here. No. There was an experience with a very large, consumer website. The founders, had an office, and they had they told us about their baller water. Now that's it, and they're not gonna hear this.
Adam:Like, that they they literally had water bottles printed that said baller on them, and they were so proud of it that they told us. They we just we just met them. We got in a circle with them, and they're like, yeah. We just got our baller water in. Check this out.
Adam:And they're, like, showing us the photos. And that's what I think about most founders in Silicon Valley. It's like
Dax:That's so funny. Baller water. Good job, guys.
Adam:Because they just raised, like, $60,000,000. So, like, they had all this cash, and they were a couple of, characters. Man, I'm white. I'm such a white guy. Couple of characters.
Dax:With their baller water. Old what
Adam:do you mean is that's a I'm not sure if that's a white or an old thing. I'm both, so it could be either.
Dax:Yeah. That's really funny. So I saw a tweet a couple of days ago. I think it's by Suhail, like, the Mixpanel founder that hit at Mighty, and now he's working on this AI image thing.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:He was like
Adam:Good looking guy. Can I say that? I don't know.
Dax:Just Good looking guy.
Adam:See his little avatar. He's got a good good good photo, good avatar. You know? He's got a nice appearance to him.
Dax:Like, he looks clean?
Adam:Yeah. I don't know. It's a good he's got a good profile photo. I don't think it's so much his face and his appearance as it is like, good job on that photo. Like, he's got, like, the right lighting.
Adam:Everything about it, it's like it's really accentuating the good parts of him, I feel like. Does that make sense?
Dax:You should be rich tweets when he's proud of him. Yeah. It just popped in my
Adam:head, and I just had to say it. It's like, that's what I do on the podcast is I'm just gonna say what's in my head, and that was in
Dax:my head. So I don't remember exactly what he said or how he phrased it, but it was something along the lines of, like, when you're a founder, the stakes are so high because your dream job is at stake. Because, like, for a lot of founders, I mean, they love their day to day, and it's, like, the best job ever. And if the company doesn't work out, they lose that job. And I relate to that so much.
Dax:I was like, I love my job so much that if the company doesn't work out, that's gonna be, like, the biggest loss for me that Yeah. I can't do the same thing every day anymore. So that is like extremely motivating. So, but yeah, I guess you're describing what you're describing also makes sense where I'm like, maybe people don't like they're they're not that emotionally attached to it. They're just, like, kinda seem more like a normal job.
Dax:And if it ends, it ends, and they move on to the next thing.
Adam:Or it was just too easy for long enough. Like, if you raise $60,000,000 off one meeting and it was pretty easy, maybe you're like, I don't know. If it doesn't work out, I'll just do it again.
Dax:Like, how
Adam:hard is this, this founder thing? Piece of cake when there was just money everywhere. I don't know. Maybe fundraising just got too easy, and so people didn't really realize the opportunity in front of them. Like, how many I want yeah.
Adam:I wanna know now. Like, how many founders after their startup fails because we know 95% of startups fail or whatever. After they fail, what is the, like, breakdown, like, the Gantt chart or whatever? That's not a Gantt chart. You know what I'm talking about?
Adam:Like, the bars get smaller.
Dax:Yeah. You're talking about the one with the what is the
Adam:It's like a funnel like a funnel chart.
Dax:Okay. But the reason I'm laughing is because that was an orgy chart that was going around.
Adam:What? I I honestly didn't see it. Like, on Twitter or something?
Dax:Yeah. I've just it's funny that I'm forgetting it because everybody was making jokes about this type of chart now because
Adam:Recently? Like, this is I'm topical on accident?
Dax:This woman who's, like, pretty notable. She's, like, she's technically a sex worker, I guess, in that field, but she, like, has, like, this autistic level of, like, analysis over everything in that world. Yeah. So she, like, had a birthday orgy for herself and she like documented in detail, like the process. And she like created one of those funnel charts to see what the outcome of people that, like, applied to be part of it and, like, where they ended up, like, all the way at the end.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. They're, like, fully detailed. So everyone was, like, joking about that because it was, like, really insane. But that that's triggering. Yeah.
Adam:I only see them in, like, Google Search Console or whatever. I'm just looking at website analytics, but I'm sure that topical ref well, no. I'm gonna lean into it. Yeah. That's what I saw.
Adam:And I'm just bring I'm bringing it up because I'm on top of trends. But you know what I mean? Like, I wanna know where do startup founders end up. Where do they go after their startup fails? Do you know?
Dax:Yeah. A lot of people were talking about this, and this kind of happened where and I I think this is, like, a huge signal of who you really are. A bunch of people that raised money in the last 2 years or so, like, right when like, on the cusp of before everything became a lot harder, a lot of them returned the money and went back to their jobs in big tech.
Adam:Interesting.
Dax:And to me, that's, like, impossible for me. Like, I would never do that. I would try a million ideas so there were $0 in the bank before I like moved off of it. But there were a lot of people that did that. They like left their PM job at Google, started a company, spent a year's worth of burn, gave the money back and went back to that job.
Dax:So, yeah, I think it it it was like a random yeah. I'm just gonna go try this for a little bit type of
Adam:Interesting.
Dax:Thing that was available to a lot of people for a while.
Adam:Yeah. I don't know, like, if I would have done that if I didn't have a cofounder that was good at sticking with stuff. Like, I don't think I would return the money. I think I would just, like, keep trying.
Dax:Yeah. Like, returning the money is a crazy point because you're like
Adam:Yeah. That's a weird conversation.
Dax:Option to try more. Yeah. Yeah.
Adam:Man, I do remember the beginning. You're just taking me back. This probably has nothing to do with it. I'm just now I remember in, like, early days after quitting jobs and not having like, it took us a year to fundraise. We thought it'd take 6 months.
Adam:So, like, we liquidated IRAs. I mean, we literally were down to, like because we had one employee, and we were down to, like, I don't know if we can pay him, and this is gonna feel bad.
Dax:Mhmm.
Adam:And then we raised our seed. So it was a happy ending. But, man, there's some stress in the founding thing. And I guess I never really thought about, like, my pull to stay in this job. But yeah.
Adam:No. I I mean, I we definitely fought really hard to to keep the company alive because it was like our baby. I think it was more that than it was like I mean, my job looked pretty similar before. It's like I was on my own anyway. I don't know where I'm going with this.
Adam:Just you just made me think. You made me think for the first time today. I've just been taking baths and drinking herbal tea.
Dax:The other thing that I read that I think is really interesting advice is so you were talking about how many of these people may have raised a bunch of money and they were like, that was easier. I can probably just do it again. Someone was like, people should operate more like they're NBA players, where there's a small window where they're gonna make a lot of money, but that's gonna go away. And they have to live live a whole lifetime in whatever they built.
Adam:Such a good
Dax:And, like, that advice probably would have been really good for a lot of people.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. That's that's perfect.
Adam:I think, like, some I mean, I do stuff with sports. Right? Like, our start up is very sports centric. So I think about these salaries and salary caps and all the stuff that goes into it. And and it's hard if you follow sports not to think about, like, wow.
Adam:A lot of these guys, like, 30, and it's like there's a cliff, especially depending on position and the sport you play. Like, your career is literally 10 years, and Mhmm. That's just such a different life. But then you think about technology, and it's like, I don't know. How much longer is our window?
Dax:Yeah. So, like, you never know, so you might as well operate that way. Another funny thought where I was like, you know, I think I'm pretty smart and pretty good at my job, and I'm wondering if everyone that's better than me is already retired, and that's why I never hear from them. I feel like if you're, like, better than me, you're, like, at the point where you're already, like, very successful, and then you're just like
Adam:You made your money, and now you're out.
Dax:Yeah. And you're out. So that's what it feels like on Twitter, doesn't it? Does it kind of feel that way to you? Like, when I describe it that way, it's like like, we're definitely at a level, and there's no one, like, really above us.
Dax:And then I'm assuming the people above us are just, like, above it all because they're crazy rich.
Adam:So I I am not you. I don't one, I don't actually have lots of good things to say. So I feel like on Twitter, you probably do feel like, why is everyone else an idiot? I don't feel that way because I'm also an idiot. On the barbell, you're on one end, then I'm on the other.
Adam:We'll just say that.
Dax:No. That's not true. You feel like everyone's an idiot too. Don't lie.
Adam:I don't feel like everyone's an idiot, but
Dax:I I guess, like post things and you get replies, and you're like, why are people so
Adam:stupid? Yes.
Dax:You definitely feel that. Yeah.
Adam:I've felt that. Yeah. But I I would also say that my personality is very, like, deferred to authority. So I always assume there are people above me at all times
Dax:No. That are
Adam:keeping things okay.
Dax:I do too. But but my point is they're not they're never around in our in our circle.
Adam:So they just cashed out, and they're like, I'm done here. There was, who's the founder? Wow. I'm I'm blanking on his name. Founded, like, an analytics thing that got sold to Stripe.
Adam:No. I'm butchering this. ProfitWell? No. Is that a company?
Adam:There's a founder who is kind of, like, in our community, in the, like well, more like the the, like, startup indie hacking space, probably. Not really our community. But he's, like, somebody that you bump into on Twitter and sold this I wanna say it's like Stripe or something like that for, like, a 100,000,000. And you kinda saw him tweeting still for a little while, like, about what he's doing with his money, and you kinda got to, like, live vicariously. Like, that's what that kinda exit would be like.
Adam:Like, this is the kind of stuff you'd be dealing with and thinking about. But then he did taper off. I don't feel like I see anything from him anymore. I wish I knew the company or the founder name or who it sold to. I wish I had any detail here.
Dax:This vaguely sounds familiar to me. Does it? I think so. But, yeah, it's kind of exactly that. I just feel like there's no one that's, like, 10 x better than us that's, like, in our circle.
Dax:So, honestly, they're retired.
Adam:They're retired. They're done. It was to Paddle. Sold it to Paddle. I think it was ProfitWell.
Dax:Wish I could remember this thing. Like the Paddle
Adam:board company? Like the payments.
Dax:Oh, no. Hold on. Okay.
Adam:The payment. Okay.
Dax:I'm sorry. No. No. I got I got this graphic to you, which is which I think is awesome. So in Miami and maybe in other places, there's a company called Paddle, p a d l.
Dax:Uh-huh. And they just go around anywhere there's, like, a beach or any kind of coastline, and they'll just drop a bunch of paddle boards there. And you can just grab them and use them whenever you want. What? And it's just like a subscription that you pay for.
Adam:It's like the scooters kind of same business model, I guess.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. But it's, like, way more fun and, like, way more useful. And they're everywhere. Like, anytime you see anytime you're, like, near any water, they're just one of those things that you just go out in
Adam:it if you want.
Dax:That's interesting. P a d.
Adam:It's, Patrick Campbell, patticus on Twitter. Sold ProfitWell to Paddle HQ. There you go. Does he tweet still is the question. April 25.
Adam:Oh, wait. That was a repost. I think he tweeted on March 12th, but that's about the pace. Yeah. It's like a few weeks ago, like, a tweet every few weeks.
Adam:If I sold for a 100,000,000, that's probably where I'd be at.
Dax:Maybe. Go the other way.
Adam:Oh, really? You're just gonna tweet constantly? You have nothing else to do?
Dax:Well, why not have nothing else to do? And I'll have, like, infinite I'll have, like, no reason to, like, be like, well, maybe I'm wrong.
Adam:You know? Oh, yeah. I could
Dax:be like You know you're right now. We'll just look at my 100,000,000. So
Adam:Well, how yeah. How much? So okay. Here's a question for you. It's not well formed.
Adam:None of my questions will be worth well formed today. How much do you think, like, you're doing the right things right now and there is a percentage chance it turns into a huge exit, or you get unlucky and it doesn't, or you make mistakes and it doesn't. What do you think the breakdown is of your outcomes? Like, I guess what I'm getting at is if there were 5 DAXs. Oh, god help us all.
Adam:If there were 5 DAXs, we would all feel so bad about ourselves. But if there were 5 DAXs and they were all doing exactly what you're doing right now, would you feel like you made the right call if one of those ended up with a $100,000,000 exit, or they just got lucky? Like, do you feel like at this point, you're doing everything you can, you guys as a group, and it's really gonna come down to luck and not I mean, like, as long as you continue to not screw up. This is a terrible question. There's so many qualifiers.
Dax:I don't know. I feel like we're most likely not gonna succeed. And if we at this point, if we do, I don't think it's luck. I feel like we're there's like maybe like a lot of historical luck that, like, got us to a point where we even, like, met each other and started doing this stuff and all things that
Adam:go into
Dax:that. But, like, from this point forward, I don't know. I feel like if we don't succeed, it's just because the idea it's really just that the idea didn't make sense. I think that's it's actually that pure at this point. Like, I think I
Adam:think I need to frame it differently. So maybe it's just that, like, with your continued excellence and navigating the right paths and doing the right things and just being good at what you are doing, like the 3 of you. I would guess that with all of that combined, you can ensure some kind of success. You're going to make it in some way. Well, maybe you can't ensure it, but I'd say, like, I bet I would bet on you guys making it somewhere.
Adam:But the difference in, like, a soft landing somewhere because somebody needed to scoop you up because it wasn't gonna work out financially and, like, a $500,000,000 exit, that's the part that feels like luck to me. It's like the numbers it's all the the external forces you can't predict, market timing, the people, the strategic, people that would end up scooping you up and what's going on for them. It just feels like there's so much in terms of the size of the exit that is just, like, literal luck, and you have no control over it. Did you agree with that?
Dax:I would definitely say there's an aspect to that, especially in the past couple of years. You see these big acquisitions where you're just, like, in hindsight, like, did that make any sense? Also, by the way, most m and a fails. Like, most acquisitions, like, do not it's not looked at in hindsight as, like, this this made sense. Yep.
Dax:That's also there. But I think, again, just depends on your company. It depends on what you're doing. I think for us, it actually feels a little bit different. I feel like we constantly have options to make decisions that would get us a medium or, like, decent thing.
Adam:Oh, I see.
Dax:And it oftentimes feels like we're very explicitly not taking those.
Adam:Because you know the barbell theory. You've read Taleb. You're like, I'm not going in the middle. We're going up to the end the big end.
Dax:Yeah. I feel like we're all aligned in that. We're like I don't know. We're we just we rather go all or nothing type of thing in a lot of cases. Like, if you look at where we are right now, you know, we have thousands of real companies using our stuff.
Dax:We could probably spin up, like, one of the most successful consulting businesses in in this space just because we have that pool of people, like service based. Like, we can offer our services and, like, you know, probably make a like, more money than any of us really would need. Yeah. And that option is there, and it's always there. And it continues to be there.
Dax:It needs to grow and get more and more attractive. But, like, I don't think any of us are, like, even a little interested in that.
Adam:Not tempted at all.
Dax:Yeah. So that's, like, an explicit decision. Right? Like, we're, like, choosing. But it feels like it is a kind of in our control.
Adam:Sorry. Here's my actual question. This is where it was born out of. If your company let's say, SSC died or had a, what you'd call a a low end outcome Mhmm. Versus big made it moment, huge, whether it's an acquisition or just financial, like, you guys make so much money.
Adam:It doesn't matter anymore. You have, like, on the other extreme, amazing outcome. Do you actually feel like you were smarter? That, like, would you feel smarter if you had the big outcome? Like, you actually did the right things?
Dax:It's funny though because, like, I would say yes, but not in, like, oh, I did, like, a 100 right things or, like, navigated every step right. It just feels like the initial bet we made was right. It's kind of it just feels that binary and that simple. It's kind of like trading a stock. Right?
Dax:Let's say you buy an option and you're like, okay, I bet that this stock will go up over $1,000 in 6 months. Yeah. You don't have to do anything in those 6 months. And whether you were right or not is a good binary thing. So it kind of feels that way.
Dax:Like, if we're right about our model of the world Yeah. We will be successful. If we're not successful, it's just because we were wrong about it. And I I think I think what it comes down to is earlier in my career, I wouldn't have said that because there was, like, a ton of execution risk. Like, I could have had the right idea.
Dax:I've had the right idea a bunch of times, and I just, like, executed it poorly. Yeah. That's usually why it failed. But I think we're all at a point now where it's, like, that's not why we're gonna fail. It's not gonna be, like, we weren't smart enough or we did the wrong things.
Dax:It just comes down to, like, the correctness of the original idea.
Adam:Yeah. I think the reason I'm asking is I have had some very near miss acquisitions. Mhmm. And, well, one in particular like, I know, like, it's not a done deal unless it's a done deal. I know all the the tropes about acquisitions and, like, well, how do you know you were even really close?
Adam:We were really close, like, really close to an acquisition that would have been life changing money. It's a big tech company, so it would have been, like, cool to be a founding engineer that sold his company to x. Not x. Sorry. That was like like a fake fake company.
Adam:I'm not saying the name of the company. So, like, I definitely had those moment weeks where I just I thought that was my life now. Like, we just had this huge, outcome and things will never be the same. And then it fell through, like, at the final hour. And then everything has changed since.
Adam:It's like, that is not my life. I mean, I'm doing okay, but, like, there was a completely different world in front of me that I thought was where we were headed, and then it was taken away. And it's like, at the end of the day, I don't feel different. I don't feel like I'm smarter or dumber because that fell through in the way that it fell through. It just feels like we got really close, but and, like, in my mind, what we've done is worth that because we got so close.
Adam:It just didn't happen for reasons. And I guess that's where I detach, like, my abilities and smartness from, like, the outcomes, I guess. Maybe that's just an excuse. I don't know. Maybe I'm just, like, coping.
Dax:I I think the difference I think the difference here is actually pretty straightforward. It's, you were already a product market fit. So for me, if you look at the way I describe everything, we're not there. So for me, my obsession is so whether it's very simple as binary. Like, does this make sense or not?
Dax:You got past the point where you were like, this thing definitely makes sense, and it's working.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. And then there, I can see how it's like, now you're just looking at the range of outcomes, and it kinda seems random. What happens? Yeah.
Adam:Okay. So it was product market fit. I'm glad that you brought us back to product market fit after I said, I hate when people talk
Dax:about product market fit, and then you said it.
Adam:It is the thing. I don't know why it bother me. It's I think it's just the the group of people I've heard talk about it the most.
Dax:No. Of course. It's not it's just any business term just gets like, someone learns it one day, and they're like, this is gonna make me sound smarter. And they just shove it Yeah. Exactly.
Dax:Into everything. So that's one aspect. The other aspect, I think, is and, again, I'm just making stuff up, and it's totally possible I'll feel different. It's hard for me not to feel like any acquisition, even a big one. Like, there's some negative feeling with that for me.
Dax:It feels like a failure in a way.
Adam:Really? Wait. So, like, the pot the only real like, when you guys keep going for big, what is that big outcome? Like, public
Dax:company wanna build something where yeah. Like, that's that's the goal and
Adam:I mean, that is not like that's never happened in the dev tools space. Like, there's plenty of examples.
Dax:Yeah. So it's like It's
Adam:just I don't think about that. I think I'm just such a because I'm on a very different end of the product spectrum. I think about acquisition as, like, the ultimate. That's where you end up. But public company is
Dax:Yeah. But so then what do you do after that?
Adam:I don't know. Play golf?
Dax:Yeah. Just say, I I might be at a different phase of my life, and I might, like, think differently. But just in this moment, if you're if today we got, like, an amazing acquisition offer and that would make me wealthier than I ever need to be. Mhmm. I would probably take it, but then a part of me would be like, well, it like didn't work out, and now I gotta go bet on a new thing.
Dax:Interesting. Which I'm sure I'll be excited and happy to do and like we've talked about, but like, you see how there's, like, some negative, like Yeah. Aspect to that whole thing. Like, the your idea and your vision didn't materialize.
Adam:I wanna have a public company. You sold me. I feel robust. This is like you've really changed something in my brain. Like, I'm viewing acquisitions differently now.
Adam:Like, that's the easy that's the losers' layout.
Dax:Yeah. Because, like, you, like, ran out of steam. So it's Yeah. It's, and it's I think it's less about IPO and more about, like, you have a vision for what the ultimate version of everything you're doing could end up at. Yeah.
Dax:And acquisitions end before you hit them. Yeah. So that's a negative feeling for me. It's like all of the the dreams that I had are not going to happen. I'm not going to find out if they're right.
Adam:Interesting.
Dax:I'm not going to, like, get to do all of that. And, like, of course, when you get Acquire, you get to still work on that stuff, but it's, you know, never never the same. What are
Adam:are there some good examples of, like, acquisition that was great, that went well for them to acquire?
Dax:It's, like, the classic one.
Adam:That's a good one.
Dax:Yeah. But, like, I don't even think the Instagram founders are really how involved were they in that process? Like, I feel like it was great for Facebook, but I don't know if
Adam:Yeah. I was talking just from that perspective, like, from the acquirer's perspective. Because for I mean, the founders, it mostly works out. I mean, sometimes it doesn't, I guess.
Dax:The WhatsApp one's another example where, amazing for Facebook. Crazy, crazy exit. Like, massive like, what is it? Like, 20,000,000,000, 19,000,000,000, something insane?
Adam:Yeah. It was, like, 17 people on the team or something.
Dax:It wasn't that small, but it was very small.
Adam:Small?
Dax:Prefer acquisition size. Yeah. It was, like, an
Adam:interesting Instagram? Was this Instagram was, like,
Dax:12 or 13 or thumb something. Yeah.
Adam:Okay. Maybe that's what I'm thinking.
Dax:But WhatsApp was just massive. And then the the founder literally, like, left being, like, fuck this. Left, like, some crazy amount of money on the table. I think it was, like, 6, 700,000,000 or something like that. Yeah.
Dax:And then gave $50,000,000 to signal to be like, here, I'm gonna fund you for life. And you guys just, you know, continue with my vision for what I think communication should be about. So Yeah. Like, yeah, obviously, the money is huge, and you can't discount that. But you see how there's, like, something Yeah.
Dax:In your heart that is missed. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. No. I get it. The I'm still stuck on the, outcomes for the companies that could acquire.
Adam:So Facebook, good at acquisitions.
Dax:Yeah. They're good at acquisitions.
Adam:Also, Disney. Like, they bought some IP in their day
Dax:with Star Wars.
Adam:Lucas. Yeah. Marvel. That's worked out pretty well for them, I think. Interesting.
Adam:ESPN, maybe not working out so well. I don't know.
Dax:What are they weren't they acquired? Oh, the ESPN is acquired by Disney.
Adam:Yeah. I mean, the ABC, which owned ESPN. I don't know how
Dax:it happened. But does everything just does Disney just own it? It's kinda so crazy to me that Disney is not like
Adam:Disney does own everything.
Dax:Every time I find out about how their fingers are in literally everything, I'm like, how are they not, like, worth 10 times as much as they are? Like, they just control all entertainment. Like, all entertainment.
Adam:No. It's true. Oh, just like every store, every little gas station in the Ozarks you go in, there's, like, Disney coloring books. Like, it's amazing how their merchandise has, like
Dax:Merchandising. Yeah.
Adam:Filled every nook and cranny in this country and the world. But the ESPN thing is interesting. Like, I don't know if you follow any of the sports rights.
Dax:I don't know anything about it.
Adam:Tell me. Well, like, so sports rights, like TV deals, are enormous. Right? And, like, these leagues just keep getting to demand higher contracts for live TV rights for their sports stuff. So then they start like, the NFL start spreading it around.
Adam:They, like, get Amazon to buy 1 game a week and and all these companies bidding against each other, and they've just driven up rates. Well, at one point in the peak, when ESPN had a 100,000,000 subscribers because of the cable bundle like, everyone had ESPN in America whether you watch ESPN or not. And it was like most channels I know some weird stuff that I don't know why I know this why I know why I know. But, I'm just realizing this is not common knowledge. Most channels in the cable bundle, they're getting, like, 11¢ per subscriber.
Adam:And ESPN was getting over $10 a subscriber. It was some insane number. So they had this crazy, crazy revenue where they had a 100,000,000 subscriber base at the peak, and every like, basically, the cable bundle was subsidizing sports right deals going to the moon, and they were spending enormous amounts of money for very long term contracts on deals with the NBA, NFL. And now things changed. I I don't know exactly today, like, where things are at, but there was a period there in the middle where it was like, is Disney gonna have to offload ESPN?
Adam:Like, it it's just gonna kill Disney because they're like the big cash cow of Disney. They brought in so much money and then they spent so much money, and it's like, how are they ever gonna get out of that? Like, as the the cable bundle fell apart and people had to go to direct streaming, like, it takes a while to build that business, and ESPN, couldn't really work those rights out. Like, they couldn't do direct streaming. Okay.
Adam:I'm getting into way too detailed, synopsis here. Why are we talking about ESPN? What happened? I'm sorry. Did I just black out?
Dax:I don't I don't know how we got we're talking about Disney should just be giant, and then
Adam:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Dax:You're like, ESPN is not
Adam:doing well for them. Yeah. Sometimes giant companies, you know, they get into trouble. They make one too
Dax:many moves. Yeah. The sports rights thing is crazy. So, like, like, tech companies get the are, like, buying rights too now. Right?
Dax:I mean, I heard about that.
Adam:Yeah. Because they all have infinite money.
Dax:Yeah. I mean, this is a classic thing where it's not exactly this, but have you heard of I don't wanna butcher the pronunciation, but something like Baumal's cost disease?
Adam:No.
Dax:So there there's this thing that can happen where if one industry experiences crazy productivity gains, like example in this case, the tech industry, they force increased costs on completely unrelated industries that have maybe don't even have the ability to like, like they haven't experienced the same gains. So just think about like a worker, When there was so much money to be made in tech, a bunch of workers started to, like, shift into tech. And if you want to now have those same people and you're not in the tech industry, but you need those people, you now have to pay more all of a sudden. Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:So it can, like, ruin other industries just because one is doing well, and they're, like, completely unrelated otherwise. So it's kinda like what's happening here where the tech companies have so much money. So now the traditional players have to, like, meet that bar, but they don't have the same type of business that can deliver that amount of money.
Adam:How does any business compete with Apple? If Apple's like Yeah. Like that if if the NFL deal expires and Apple's like, yeah, we'll just pay, like, double whatever anybody else would pay. Like, nobody can compete with their cash. Yeah.
Adam:Like and why not just own, like, all NFL TV? Like, why not just be like, it's Apple now. Watch football. Enjoy.
Dax:You can only watch on Apple devices. Right. I
Adam:mean, only it only is in America anyway since I'm gonna hurt the Android crowd internationally. Nobody cares about football. Not this football.
Dax:I feel like Apple users don't care about football.
Adam:No. They don't. That's a terrible overlap. But I'm just saying, like, they have so much money. It's like
Dax:Yeah. I don't know. That's true. Yeah.
Adam:How do you compute their traditional media company and yeah.
Dax:Yeah. We'll see what happens. I think we're, like, entering the beginning of an era where we're really gonna, like, understand what happens in these cases. Because I think these companies are now finally looking to really expand into places that are like, weirdly seems unrelated. Like, of course they always have, like, a point of entry into it, but, like, 10 years ago, if you were like, Apple's gonna buy, like, the NFL rights, you're just like, what the fuck?
Dax:That makes no sense. But we're at the place where that kind of thing is starting to happen now. Yeah.
Adam:I mean, Twitter bought some games, Amazon Prime, like Twitter. NFL on Amazon Prime. Yeah. Twitter air a lot aired.
Dax:Oh, is this what everyone was complaining about with the
Adam:No. That was peacock, which makes
Dax:a little more sense because
Adam:that's like NBC. So it's like a traditional media company. But, yeah, people were upset because you had to subscribe to Peacock to watch this one playoff game. That was a huge playoff game. I mean, the NFL playoffs are they're all the games are big, and they got a ton of subscribers.
Adam:I'm sure those people all canceled their accounts after they watched the game.
Dax:This is it's this is such a fascinating thing because, this I feel like this always happens where we were all annoyed with cable because we were like, I don't want to I don't care about these like 90 channels. I only watch 10. And we're like, just give me, like, an on demand service. And then, like, something like Netflix came out. We're like, oh, cool.
Dax:Netflix. I'm gonna play Netflix, and I kind of get this. Then another thing came out. Then another thing came out. Then another thing came out.
Adam:We're rebundling. We unbundled. Now we're bundling it back up.
Dax:Worse because, like, you're now you're crazy fragmented that the UX experience of it is terrible because you're, like, juggling multiple apps and, like, logging in a different setting.
Adam:Is like, I wish I had one service that bundled all these different streaming services into 1, like cable.
Dax:Yeah. Or it's unbundling rebundling thing. But this I feel this always happens where this thing with it's happening with LLMs now where, like, you know, there's chat JBT, and it worked well. But then now there's this other one that, like, is better in some cases. So you're like, maybe I should use that one.
Dax:But then sometimes it's worse. So then you have to switch back to the other one. So it's just like yeah. You can always bet on and I'm, like, obsessed with this concept. I was just like, it crossed my mind where it's like I think we talked about where I'm like, we always imagine the future to be neater, but actually usually more chaotic than it is now.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These things always end up more messy. It's just like it's kind of a Yeah.
Dax:Entropy. Exactly.
Adam:It's like a law of the universe.
Dax:Yeah. I it's funny because I I I had that thought, but I don't know if you knew what entropy was, so I didn't think of that. Ouch.
Adam:I will say I was pretty proud of myself when I came up with that word. It popped in my head, and I was like
Dax:I can see the Entropy. I could see the pride in your face. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:That's so funny that
Adam:you did use that word. How many words did you not use being dumbed down just to talk to me? That's funny.
Dax:Yeah. But I yeah. Okay. It's it's not just me. I was also like, do I need to make this metaphor again?
Dax:Like, do I need to say P again? Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna avoid it this time. Okay.
Adam:But, yeah,
Dax:it's like it's like guaranteed. Oh, and also speaking of the LM thing, there's another thing I wanted to talk about where I'm constantly seeing these tweets where they're like I think you're you may be experiencing this too because you're using some of these tools, but people are like, wow. Claude, Opus, whatever, is so much better than chat g p t. Like, how many examples?
Adam:Oh, no. I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about these aggregator people who are, like, here's 10 of the best
Dax:examples. Yeah.
Adam:Like, SOAR is blowing everyone's mind. Yeah. Here's the 10 best examples.
Dax:Well, that that that's a
Adam:There's, like, a million
Dax:of those streams. That's a different thing. But then people are, like, oh, like, I'm I'm just using Cloud for everything, and they're using it through the API. Oh, it's cheaper and, like, gives me better results. But this stuff is so noisy right now where Yeah.
Dax:When chat gbt came out, it was good, but they're clearly, like, messing with the cost to them performance spectrum. And they've, like Yeah. Made it worse. Claude just came out, so they're, like, trying to show off how good they are. There's no guarantee that they're not gonna, like, make it worse over time.
Dax:The price we're paying for these things are totally made up. Like, we don't know if they're subsidized. We don't know, like, what the rationale for it is. So it's impossible to tell right now. Like, if I'm going to build a business that uses this feature, it's like there's, like, no stability.
Dax:Like, is the feature gonna get worse over time? Is it gonna get 10 x more expensive over time? Does that break my usage of it? It's just so hard to tell. Yeah.
Adam:It's it's so hard to evaluate. Is are the outputs actually good?
Dax:Because you
Adam:can, like, spot check. You can just do, like, arbitrary tests. But, like, across, the whole point of these things is to take, like, very general input and then do something very specific with that. But, like, you can't test all the inputs. So, like, most people who say, oh, this model's better than that model at this type of thing.
Adam:You haven't tested that much. You don't know. Like like, there's very little actual data around. I mean, there's these benchmarks, and that's, I think, interesting to talk about.
Dax:But they're they're, like, the public versions of the model, they're, like, tweaking the hardware behind it all. It's not really like tweaking, like so then it's, like, it's good this week, but then 2 weeks from now, it could be worse. Like, I don't know.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all very interesting.
Dax:It it does make me wonder for AWS because they are usually very precise with their pricing where they're like, this is what it costs. I don't remember them ever raising prices. They usually bring prices down. Yep. But with something so undefined like this, like, whatever they're charging for Bedrock, like, can you rely on that?
Dax:Because they historically
Adam:Can they know they won't have to raise?
Dax:Yeah. It seems really difficult in, like, this crazy flurry of trying to get these products out.
Adam:Yeah. Like, the the Claude models, the anthropic stuff, is that not open source? No. I thought they were, like so Bedrock can have, like, proprietary models too? I thought they just
Dax:They have a deal with Anthropic. Yeah.
Adam:So why don't they have OpenAI stuff? They just haven't done a deal?
Dax:Azure has that deal.
Adam:Oh, okay.
Dax:I think it's a good setup for these companies. It's, like, just work on making the models, and then Amazon work on distributing them, Azure work on distributing them.
Adam:So is that the only way cloud is distributed? How how do people use cloud?
Dax:They have a direct API.
Adam:Okay.
Dax:But, obviously, it's better when it's embedded in in a cloud provider.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:And I'm like, yeah, just don't even have the direct API, I think. I guess for ease of use and stuff, but yeah.
Adam:There's some some nerds on Twitter that won't be able to use your thing anymore, but who cares?
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I see I saw a post where someone was like, I switched from OpenAI to ChatJBT, and my cost went down 30%. And I'm like, yeah. How long is that gonna last?
Dax:I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these things tend to be very easily swappable, so it's not a big deal. But, yeah.
Dax:I'm having a tough time, like, modeling any kind of costs or anything with it. Mhmm. Difficult.
Adam:Yeah. It's a big black box right now. Yeah. But there's a lot of growing optimism around this big black box taking us to the promised land. I don't know about the robots, though.
Adam:Every time somebody shows one of these videos of a robot, like, running around in the jungle, let's stop making so many robots because this is how they're gonna get us. If we're worried about AI safety, maybe cool it on the robots. Like, let's figure out the the software part first, and then then let's give it a body. But there's so many of them now. People are all really trying to get the robots out there.
Adam:See how this ends.
Dax:It's wild to me how difficult the robotic stuff is because I feel like we've been seeing robotics demos for, like, as long as I can remember.
Adam:Oh, yeah.
Dax:And they definitely get better, but I'm like, they still, like, can't do shit. You know? Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. And it's
Dax:like, damn. This is a very hard problem. And I think they're adding in the AI stuff now, which makes it, like, quote, unquote, like, learn and understand things in a dynamic way. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm actually just talking about, like, its physical capabilities and how it moves and the fluidity of the movement.
Dax:It's just, like, wow, they suck still compared to compared to us.
Adam:Muscles and bones, turns out, are pretty good at moving around in space and joints.
Dax:Like Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. It's a hard thing. It's a hard thing to mimic with metal and silicone and whatever else.
Dax:I think realistically, we're probably just gonna have clones that we enslave.
Adam:What? Where did how did we get here?
Dax:Well, if you can't get there with muscles if you can't get there with metal, like, the only option is
Adam:You think we're gonna clone wait. Hey. Walk me through this. You think? Okay.
Dax:I was just kidding, but, you know, definitely, like, a sci fi concept that comes up.
Adam:Well, yeah, I need to understand what is the concept. Like, we would you would clone yourself, and that becomes a baby that 31 years from now will be like you. What are you doing with that clone?
Dax:I'm taking its organs for myself.
Adam:30 years from now? Oh, I see. Because you're old now.
Dax:It's gonna be a little blood boy.
Adam:Young or ew. That's creepy. That's like a sci fi thing. I feel like
Dax:this is a this is like a sci fi concept that comes up all the time.
Adam:Interesting. I don't think I've seen any movies like that. By the way, don't watch, Outlaws.
Dax:What the hell is Outlaws?
Adam:It's like a hap it's an it's like on Netflix. It's a happy Madison movie. Why do people like Adam Sandler movies? His sense of humor is so stupid.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:I know. It's just, like, so over the top and, like I don't know. I always thought I liked Adam Sandler, but you watch a movie, and you're like, yeah. This is totally what Adam Sandler would think is funny, but it's not funny.
Dax:No. But he's got a weird spectrum of stuff. So I think he he has, like, really stupid stuff. He has slightly stupid stuff. He has stuff that's, like, really weird and really good.
Dax:What was that a 24 movie?
Adam:So there was a serious movie he did, wasn't there?
Dax:There's a there's a bunch of good movies that were done. Yeah. Yeah. But I think his older comedies are good. Like, it might be nostalgia, but, like, Happy Gilmore and, like, all the stuff that happened.
Adam:But they're so over the top. And, this one is like a modern movie. And when you see the overtop, this in a battered comedy, I'm so dazedly. It just was too much. It was just stupid.
Adam:My wife and I just looked at each other for an hour and a half. Like, what what are we watching? Why do we do this?
Dax:Okay. There was a movie called Uncut Gems. Have you seen it? No. Okay.
Dax:Adam Adam Sandler is a main character, and this is, like, one of the most stressful movies you will ever watch in your whole life because he's this guy that owns a jewelry store or something like that. Really weird character and he's a degenerate gambler And the whole movie is fast paced thing of him, like, getting into these scenarios where he's literally gonna die because he's, like, gambled too much and someone's gonna kill him. Like, eking out a way to, like, gamble again and, like, getting back to even then doing it again. Just over and over and over and over and over and just like it's like there's, like, crazy, like, buildup of just stress and how the hell can people live like this?
Adam:Oh, I do not wanna be stressed when I'm watching a movie.
Dax:It was a good movie. You should watch it.
Adam:I just don't I wanna I wanna just enjoy myself. I like being, like I think I do like movies that make me, like, confused. Like, I think I like the ones I think I like the ones where at the end, I'm like, I don't even know what just happened. Because I I seem to be drawn to them, like Inception. Movies that you feel like you'd have to watch a lot.
Dax:Well, you watched Tinker of Taylor Soldier's Spy, you said, and that is
Adam:the epitome of that.
Dax:Yeah. It was a lot of that. I don't know what happened, but I like how I'm feeling right now.
Adam:It's in the heart, not the head. Yeah. Alright. I've I've kinda blown my nose so bad, but I can't talk on a mic any longer today. This is I feel awful.
Adam:I've got so many different weird things going on. So I keep thinking the thing I'm doing next is, like, next week, but it's actually after that.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm
Adam:coming to Miami. I can't wait. It's gonna be so fun.
Dax:Booked your flight? You did. Right?
Adam:I booked my flight. I don't have a hotel for the extracurricular activities yet. I probably will get one because, I don't know, sounds like a lot. But I just feel like I'm gonna miss out on, like, the camping experience, like, the fun.
Dax:No. No. We'll we'll we'll all just hang out together.
Adam:And then I'll just go to sleep.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah.
Adam:I'll go back to my hotel. Okay.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:There's gonna be some people sleeping at Dax's house, and I kinda wanna, like, I don't know, roast marshmallows and, like, tell spooky stories. But
Dax:I feel like it's funny because I feel like everyone is adult AF. So everyone's just gonna wanna go to sleep at 11.
Adam:So Yeah.
Dax:It's probably even earlier.
Adam:11? You gotta sit until 11? Okay. I'm getting a hotel for sure. So you guys are talking about going to bed by 11.
Adam:No.
Dax:I'll send you some places by me. It'll be like a 10 minute walk, which will be nice.
Adam:Get a different yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just like somewhere really close. And then React Miami.
Adam:Good times. Everybody's coming to Miami. It's gonna be fun.
Dax:Yeah. We started planning our party or, like, let's start planning because she's very good at that stuff. And she's on a huge list, of things that we need to do. But it's gonna be fun. We're gonna try to figure out, like, we might have a good food truck or something similar.
Dax:Oh, cool.
Adam:Yeah. Look at you guys.
Dax:We're gonna have decorations.
Adam:Official. Decorations? Oh, like balloons? Sorry. I don't know what decorations
Dax:Where's where's it gonna make it feel like over the top? You're in Miami, Florida.
Adam:Love it. Yeah. Alright. I'm gonna go blow my nose.
Dax:Okay. Enjoy that. How would
Adam:that be?
Dax:If there's blood, go to the hospital.
Adam:Ew. No. Wait, really? I don't know. If there's ever blood,
Dax:then No. No. No. My nose bleeds all the time. Okay.
Dax:Okay.
Adam:When I
Dax:think too hard. See it. See it, actor. It's pretty sweet to it.
