- Duration: 29 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01KN2DPZRKVDW818461EBRW05B (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01KN2DPZRKVDW818461EBRW05B)
Transcript
[UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Today is the 31st. [Jeffrey Evans]: So I think we’re kind of done on 13. It looks like the 31st is the health care access. [michael]: I’m seeing that in Ocean 13, the 31st is five slide deck and then health care. Yeah, okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: There’s 13. [michael]: Anything you want to talk through on 14? [Jeffrey Evans]: I’m just looking through. I’ll look at these. OK. Again. OK, cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No, where do we go now? [michael]: Um, okay. Well, we have some stuff on our side, uh, as usual, but I always, you know, I want to start just with like, what’s been up, you know, what have you been, uh, thinking about what have you been doing? Anything worth, uh, thrown out there? [Jeffrey Evans]: Um, Now, I mean, there’s an interesting take on Anthropic looking like they’re going to own the enterprise and OpenAI looking like they’re going to own the consumer. [michael]: Yeah, I agree with that. [Jeffrey Evans]: And that if they get those two wins, then that’s the win. But then they’re trying to sort of throw it out there. That’s one angle. Another angle is that OpenAI is going to own the consumer, and there will be a paid version for the consumer. But what happens? [Jeffrey Evans]: But how does it ultimately play out if Google is going to offer Gemini for free? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [michael]: And does this all need to become ad-supported? [Jeffrey Evans]: That’s actually more interesting. Play. Where do you think it goes? [michael]: Do you think it does become ad supported? I don’t know. It needs to at some point, but I don’t know. [Jeffrey Evans]: I mean, the question becomes like, you know, can you offer two different, the free version and the non-free version for people? Because if you kind of look at it said, well, globally can opening I get 300 million paid subscribers. I think they’re getting close to 200 million now. But that’s an unknown number. So 300 million paid subscribers at month 20 is $6 billion a month. So that's a $70 billion revenue business. That’s a big fucking company. Can it be profitable? I don’t have any fucking idea. I mean, you’d hope so. [michael]: That size, they figure out a way to do it. But yeah. [Jeffrey Evans]: Um, but you know, how did it become like, then the flip is that, that, but that’s not a, I don’t know how the places in monetize. Like, how is it, how does, how do Anthropic or open AI become a mag, a mag seven company? Hmm. [michael]: Okay. [Jeffrey Evans]: But that’s the question right now. You know, Apple’s revenues last year were 420 or something, 415 billion. And they had a net income of like 115 billion. So to get to that level, you need to 60 billion is an incredible business, but it’s not one of the best in the world. That’s true. [michael]: It’s like, it’s like Uber or Airbnb versus Facebook or Google. Right. Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [michael]: So what, what, what are your thoughts? Like how, how would they get there if it was going to happen? Like thought experiment? [Jeffrey Evans]: I don’t know. I gotta think about that. I mean, they would get there with that. They would get there, you know, with consumers or with ad and, and with, and with enterprise. And I think ultimately it’s going to have to be with a non-consumer paid profit level, which is ad and affiliate supported. Or are we looking at the front end of like a new app store? Is it a new ecosystem? [michael]: These are all unknowns. [Jeffrey Evans]: It’s just an interesting take, I don’t know. [michael]: They’ve tried to launch like an app store I think like two or three times now at this point, right? And it’s just, for whatever reason, hasn’t caught on. [Jeffrey Evans]: Well, they haven’t really tried. They’ve sort of delayed their doing of it. I think it’s unknown. [michael]: Interesting. [michael]: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what it would take. Like, you see that, Mistral just raised another round, and all the messaging around it is that they’re a data center company and an infrastructure company now more than a model company, which is interesting. Yeah. [Jeffrey Evans]: What’s that? Yeah. [michael]: Yeah, basically. [michael]: Just right into NVIDIA’s pocket. [michael]: Or someone’s pocket, probably theirs. [Jeffrey Evans]: But it’s funny because $830 million dollars. As far as data center, this stuff goes, it’s peanuts. Yeah. [michael]: You know, they raised 830 and [Jeffrey Evans]: Opening, I just raised one hundred and one hundred and ten billion. [michael]: I mean, you know, European VC is not American VC. [Jeffrey Evans]: No, I’m just saying it’s just weird, like the scale of the scale of the capital raise. [Jeffrey Evans]: That may be an interesting take also is NVIDIA is the most capital intensive company in history already. [Jeffrey Evans]: Are they? [michael]: Oh yeah. [Jeffrey Evans]: I mean, I’m sorry, not NVIDIA. Open AI. Oh yeah. [michael]: That makes sense. I mean, that was the big knock on Uber for so long. And now, 15 years later, they’re finally 20 years they’re finally profitable right yeah but you could argue that they’re at a weak point because um of all the self-driving now being you know out there is uber gonna accrue value or are they gonna bleed it I don’t know but well but if you’re uber and you’re looking at this and I think that they will soon you’ll just start self-driving an Uber. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah. [michael]: I mean, that was what Travis always said. He wanted that. And then they sold it off to Toyota for what? 400 million bucks or something. [Jeffrey Evans]: It doesn’t mean they won’t take one of the other companies and say, great, let’s just, let’s put, you know, if people are going to move to self-driving cars, uh, for ride share, they’ll just put self-driving cars on Uber. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [michael]: People like that shouldn’t be what caused him to go to business. Like, uh, like let, let the startups do the R&D for us, basically. [michael]: Okay, so if OpenAI is now the most capital intensive business of all time already, what does that do to, I don’t know, everything from investor sentiment to, you know, How does that impact their outlook? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I just want to see something real quick. Hold on. [michael]: Yeah, no worries. All good. [Jeffrey Evans]: What’s up? This is very funny. You want the list? Yeah. [michael]: 110 billion, but it’s raised more than 110 billion. [Jeffrey Evans]: Uh, right. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: So OpenAI is number one at like 160 plus billion. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Anthropic is number two at like 60 to 70 billion. [michael]: Exit number three at somewhere between 25 and 30 billion. [Jeffrey Evans]: Waymo is number four at 25 billion, which is wild to think about. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Databricks five at 14 billion. WeWork six at 14 billion. [michael]: billion whoops whoops uber 13 billion spacex 13 billion strike nine billion and then by dance seven to eight billion so it’s the most like it’s an interesting article to be had in this yeah maybe share that drop that link in the chat and I’ll share it with all I will. [Jeffrey Evans]: And some of them like ByteDance didn’t really count because some of their money raised was when they were profitable, you know? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [michael]: It’s crazy to think about that, though. Like, I’m surprised Databricks is that high, honestly. But just comparing like Stripe to like the New Guard, it’s such a difference, 10x almost difference for the top ones. [Jeffrey Evans]: Well, the AI companies are all the most capital intensive in history. Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Anything else you want to? [michael]: Throw in there, um, on that topic together. I don’t know what the article is, by the way. [Jeffrey Evans#+#michael]: Okay, to be sent here for sure. Okay. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I have to stop at the top five. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No, I got to go. I got to go. Okay. [michael]: I just said, I’m just saying. [Jeffrey Evans]: I’m sending this to you and I’m… [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: I’m sending it to you and you can forward it as needed. [michael]: Okay, perfect. I’ll send it over to him. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Jeffrey Evans]: It’s not perfectly formatted, but it makes sense. Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What else? [michael]: Let’s see. And go into the ones we were brainstorming a little bit. [michael]: Okay, I didn’t know about this, but Austin, maybe you and Austin talked about this. He was saying something about like a poker tournament in Monaco. Are you still planning on going to that? [Jeffrey Evans]: Oh, on Thursday, potentially. That’s the plan, unless something changes up. But it’s not in Monaco. Monaco’s a company, it’s in San Francisco. Oh, okay. It says Monaco Invitational for cards, I’m confused. Okay. [michael]: We could just do something simple there, like thanking Sam for organizing it. And I don’t know, sharing any thoughts you had going into it. Austin already drafted something simple. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah, we could do it after, that’s fine too. [michael]: because who’s gonna be there? [Jeffrey Evans]: It should be pretty interesting. [Jeffrey Evans]: Cool. [michael]: Okay, we’ll hold off on that one till after, I’ll have Austin follow up on that after the event, if you do end up going. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [michael]: Okay, so wanted to know if you were interested in exploring any posts about just like deepening your, like what you share on social. So like any interests or sort of passion projects or pursuits outside of like Mantis, like how has it shaped you as an investor or as a partner to founders, any sort of like corollaries we can draw there? [Jeffrey Evans]: That’s an interesting, I used once. [Jeffrey Evans]: I played guitar in a little band in college and still like to play guitar. And before I spent any time in the music industry, if you asked me to play guitar, I would say, yeah, I play guitar. And I spent some time in the music industry and met professional guitar players. And I said, I don’t play guitar. That’s seven levels beyond what I thought I was doing. [michael]: No different than when I was in high school and I was captain of the basketball team. [Jeffrey Evans]: I had this thought and dream of playing major college basketball, maybe someday making it to the NBA. And then I met the really good players in my league who were being recruited. To small division one schools and realized that I didn’t play basketball. [Jeffrey Evans]: And the analogy goes back to looking at founders, there’s a lot of people, maybe it’s in five coding, there’s a lot of people that are coding stuff to make things happen. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: And I think it’s amazing. But the people who are, who are the people who are at that level of the professional musicians, professional athletes, and we’re trying to invest in the people who are the builders at the same level as those people. [michael]: I love that analogy. I think that makes total sense. It plays into the whole a 10x engine is 1,000x more valuable than a normal engineer. Yep. [Jeffrey Evans]: So I think that’s an interesting one. [michael]: I still like to play guitar, by the way, but I don’t know what that was. [Jeffrey Evans]: We could, I mean, I love golf. I don’t know what the analogy is. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: What’s that? Sorry. [michael]: You love golf. I play as much golf as I can to just fucking suck. [michael]: I recently tried to learn how to play golf and I have good hand-eye coordination, so I thought I’d be really good at it, but the form is very unnatural to me. It is not interesting. [Jeffrey Evans]: I don’t have an analogy. It’s not intuitive. Yeah. [michael]: So it is not, um, you know, like, like the physics of golf and how it works is not where you’ve been trained on anything else from a sports standpoint, sort of like how the physics of the dynamics of building a startup are not that you’ve been trained on in working at company. You want to deepen either or both of those? So like, for example, what does a professional athlete equivalent startup founder do or look like that, you know, the every man would not do? [Jeffrey Evans]: The golf analogy is you watch people go out on the course and I love it, right? And I’m getting better, getting better. You know, learning stuff like you have to, you know, to create compression, your hands have to lag behind your body. You know, and which is really hard to do. It’s not, it’s not intuitive, so on and so forth. So there’s this, but then when you look at a professional golfer on the course, they, they never look like they’re swinging hard. That’s true. And they certainly get clubhead speed, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like we look like we’re trying to swing as hard as we can and look like idiots. [michael]: And it’s just, it’s just, it’s fluid, but it’s also really still. [Jeffrey Evans]: Like they, like that, that, that backswing and that movement and all the way up until impact, there’s just a lot of stillness and poetry in it. [Jeffrey Evans]: There’s no, there’s no unnecessary necessary energy being spent. [michael]: There’s an analogy there to what it takes to be a startup. That’s true. This is actually pretty timely. So Austin, when you listen back to this, we got the masters coming up. I think it’s two weeks. [Jeffrey Evans]: And two weeks. [michael]: Let’s try to time this post with like that Friday. [Jeffrey Evans]: When you watch the masters, think of your think of the best Yeah, exactly. [michael]: Cool. That’s a good one. Anything we want to add to what the professional startup founder does or looks like to make the equivalence with the professional golfer or the professional athlete in general? [michael]: Like the attributes that they have. [Jeffrey Evans]: I think relentless focus. [Jeffrey Evans]: And The right way to say this, once the shot is taken, it’s taken. So what you need to do is worry about what’s next, not what’s in the past. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Oh, yeah. [michael]: Did you watch the Duke game, Duke UConn? [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah, I went to Duke for grad school, by the way. So it’s painful. Oh, I’m so sorry for bringing that up. One of the best games ever. Yeah, it was a great game. [michael]: But I was watching the sort of, you know, all the clips on social afterwards, and everyone was showing John Shire, like he was watching the play. And then as soon as it goes in, he just like is on to the next thing, like it’s over for him. You know, he’s like, alright, let’s figure out how to use these point three seconds or whatever. I think, you know, elite folks discipline sort of work that way. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah, I think I don’t like that one. I think Shire’s now got a reputation for blowing big lead. [michael]: Oh, we don’t, we don’t need to use Shire. We don’t need to use Shire specifically. [Jeffrey Evans]: Well, you know, you know who was on in the next one. There’s a great, I don’t know if it’s not on that one too, maybe like around Wimbledon, there’s a great Roger Federer. You ever heard his speech about points, winning points? [michael]: No, I love Federer, but I’ve never heard, I’ve never heard that. Yeah. [Jeffrey Evans]: So he gave a graduation speech, and he said that he’s won 86% of the matches he’s played, or something like that. He goes, and guess what percentage of points he’s played he’s won? What’s the answer? [michael]: 55. Oh, that’s great. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: point was that he said, when the point is over, it’s gone. It is irrelevant. And if you get upset because you screwed up one, you focus on being upset, you won’t win the next one. [Jeffrey Evans]: Or if you get too cocky because you just had the best shot, it’s going to be on SportsCenter Top 10. You think about it, when the second point’s over, it’s gone, and it’s out of your mind, and you’re focused on the next point. You can always life focus on the next point, you have a chance of winning. And the other point was, you know, we need to, you know, I’ve won barely more than half the points I played. And I’m one of the best players in history. [Jeffrey Evans]: Both of those are great. [michael]: I’ll find out for you. [Jeffrey Evans]: Damn. [michael]: I love better. He was the best. You ever read the the David Foster say about Federer? [Jeffrey Evans]: No. Oh, it’s so good, man. I forget what it’s called. [michael]: Let’s see if I can find it. In tennis, perfection is impossible. Here. Roger Federer as a religious experience. It’s great. I’m going to drop it in the chat for you. [Jeffrey Evans]: Here. Don’t listen to this. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: See, that’s a long link. [michael]: I’ve got it. Here we go. That is a long way, but okay. I’ll watch that later. Yeah. Um, and I’ll send this to Austin too. So he has it as well. [michael]: Um, cool. Let’s see what else we got. Um, yeah, I don’t think we’ve talked about this much either. Um, like what, maybe in the very early day we did a little bit, but what sort of made you initially decide to go to venture and sort of take this path? Like what point did you know this was the right next step, right? Like move to make? [Jeffrey Evans]: You know, for me, it was about being around people who pushed me intellectually. [Jeffrey Evans]: Yeah. And that I spent some time, you know, I built startups, I built tech companies, and I spent some time in the music industry. And I realized that I needed to be around people who push me and those people didn’t really, weren’t really in the music industry. [michael]: Was there a specific person or a specific moment where you were just like, this person is operating on a level that pushes me and I want to be around more of that? [Jeffrey Evans]: When I was in the tech industry, almost everyone I was around was someone who had some level that I could learn from And that’s the only industry I found it in, for me, was tech. Yeah, that’s how I felt, too. [michael]: Like, even just coming out of college, I just was never inspired by the people I was around, and then I had the opportunity to come to Silicon Valley. I was like, well, OK, that seems a lot better. [michael]: Okay, let’s see. Okay, usual question, just bringing this one up. Any sort of portcos that we want to highlight right now or wait till the next quarterly update or how should we think about that? [Jeffrey Evans]: No, let me wait for the next step. I’ll get you stuff in a minute. Cool. [michael]: um and then austin found a post that he wanted me to send to you it’s kind of long so I’m going to send it to you uh over text after this um but he was just curious if you had any thoughts about it and like whether you should have agreed or disagree with with what it’s saying so I can send that over to you and you can just take a pass when you have a minute Cool. All right. Well, that’s all I got. Anything else on your side? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: No. [Jeffrey Evans]: All right, man. [Jeffrey Evans#+#michael]: Good to see you. And hopefully next time I see you, my house will not smell like boxes and I won’t be sick. It’ll be great. [Jeffrey Evans]: All right, man.