104 – Dr. Oz as Trump’s Pick for CMS | A Game-Changer or Controversial Move?

[00:00:00] If you enjoy this content, please take a moment to rate and review it. Your feedback will greatly impact our ability to reach more people. Thank you. Well, not much going on in the news right now. Yeah, it's kind of slow. Wow. Every 15 minutes is another, another political something or. I don't know. Lots of news going on.

Yeah. Fast, fast acting, uh, Trump transition team in full effect. Every day there's a new, uh, appointment announced or some type of initiative that's going to happen or not going to happen or, you know, people saying, Oh, wow, that's a good pick or wow. That's WTF. Right. It's definitely entertaining. Uh, how things going on other than that?

Um, go well. I mean, the, uh, the deal is a lot of really interesting. And I'm starting to see. Companies that are using AI to get a lot more done faster, better, more effectively. They need less money. That's kind of [00:01:00] exciting for new deals. It makes me think the existing portfolio needs to, you know, Catch up quickly.

Sure. But, but I think good overall. Good. Good. Uh, we, we had the, the, the news about fun to come out. Oh, right. Right. Yeah. Come out this week. Yes. Um, so yeah, it's good. We're in business, which is, uh, which is great. And we can join you in now looking at new deals. We haven't looked at deals in over a year. Yeah.

Uh, so we can join you in looking at new deals and, you know, seeing what's out there. I'm excited to take a fresh look at the market today. Um, still think there's a ton of exciting things, but also a little bit, you kind of want to wait until we maybe get to February or March to kind of get a sense of where things are going, uh, cause they are, they are shifting quite a bit, quite, quite quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing that's not really health related is the crypto market is just crazy. I mean, every day it's a new, new [00:02:00] thing. Be fun. I mean, we've been watching it for long enough now. Get to watch new people at Thanksgiving. There's going to be a lot of discussions. So what is this? I mean, it was 2021.

How can we still be having like, what is this thing? Conversations, right? All these new people coming into the market. I mean, I think, you know, the number going up attracts people like, gosh, it's almost a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. Number go up. I mean, it seems like magic, right? It's like, Oh, let me just watch my.

80, 000 turn to 90, 000, 90 turn to a hundred. Yeah. It's a, I don't know. I, I, I think that's been a little bit split for me. It's been both fun to, to see crypto have its day after being in a winter. And I hope that that also. ends up being a little bit of foreshadowing for what we're going to experience in the VC industry because I think they are, they're related.

They're not quite the same, but they are related in terms of how the regulatory environment, um, really locked up value for the, for the crypto asset class. Uh, and at the same time, um, [00:03:00] I bemoan the blind spot of the democratic party to not see this coming before that was a complete unforced error. It's just, yeah, I feel like I don't want to talk about it anymore, but.

Every time I think about it, it's just like, how dumb. Yeah, and why do you want to pick on a group that has a whole bunch of money and they'd like to Get to have regulations created and they're smart. Yeah. Yes. Like once they realize the game is political, they're just going to start playing politics.

Right. Yeah. Anyway, you put together a good show that we got to actually focus on. So let's, let's dig in

starting with the economy. So pal had a conversation when we were recording last week. Yeah, that's right. I think we were recording as he was doing this talk. Yeah. And what's, what's [00:04:00] the, so basically he was, he was talking about, How the economy is growing really quickly, you know, kind of post election.

There's a lot of financial assets that are up, uh, jobs that are being created. There also are layoffs, but he focused on a lot of positives around the economy. And then he didn't say exactly, but really kind of telegraphed that there's no need to rush to more rate cuts and maybe they won't cut in December, but he didn't say that definitively.

He just kind of floated on the table that they're not going to. They're not going to automatically be cutting every, every meeting. When's the next job number coming out? Um, I don't know. It's probably first week in December. Be my guess when it comes out. Yeah. Um, there'll be an inflation number and a jobs number before the next meeting.

Yeah. So I bet he's really gonna make a decision based on that job number. I mean, he, he was able to. And I think inflation, I think inflation is going to be up again. We'll see what happens. [00:05:00] But. Maybe, maybe, but, but the, the jobs number, cause I feel like August and September, everyone was really focused on the jobs number more than, you know, inflation.

It's just like this jobs number is getting out of control. And I haven't heard that much about it in October, November. I think part of that is because of the election just taking all the oxygen out of the room. Um, We're going to be able to return to a little bit of focus on how we're doing from an employment perspective in December.

So, yeah, that probably will influence whether or not he does 25 because 25 basis points is it's pretty harmless, quite frankly, um, either way, uh, you know, I think. The bigger statement would be pausing and doing nothing or going 50. I think there's almost no chance he does 50. Um, there are people screaming for it actually out there.

Uh, the risk on folks are getting a little scared that, you know, inflation going back up, you're going to pause. But I, I also think when you look at all the numbers, you look at crypto, you look at [00:06:00] the, um, the stock market, the Russell performance. I think people kind of think the days of, of the fed sort of driving whether or not risk assets are going to.

You know, grow or attract new capital. Um, it's kind of over to your point, Lynn last week show, um, the, the correlation between, uh, the fed fund rate and, you know, the 10, 10 year yield on bonds is like, it's disconnected, you know, he's not having the effect of this drops that drops, right? Yeah, that's right. I think he lost a little credibility or influence on the bond market by doing the 50 right at, right.

At first. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I feel like it's probably a balance of risk between inflation and full employment. So having a cautious, we'll see how the data comes out is probably healthy to do. Next door from Bloomberg here talking about rent. Inflation won't ebb until [00:07:00] 2026. Obviously rent is kind of a sticky thing, generally speaking, six to 12 month leases.

Um, so it's, it's pretty durable, you know, once it kind of gets set in the cycles, don't, don't unwind very quickly. Yeah. Um, well maybe scroll down for people that are watching, there's a pretty good chart in there, right there. The way they calculate rent is, you know, kind of artificial. And so the yellow line is, is.

what they have in their calculations. And then the black line is if you were to sign a new lease, like right now, right. Growth in cost of rent is. And so, yeah, it's, it's done on a lag. The Fed does that intentionally, but it's a pretty big component of CPI. So it's going to make inflation sticky higher than the Fed wants it to be.

Yeah. But we've been talking about that for a while. I don't see it getting to 2%. almost ever for a while. No, but it's part of the backdrop of next year. Uh, inflation is very meaningful to, um, [00:08:00] health systems and labor, you know, rent is likely to be, uh, how people pay for shelter, large percentage of the workforce for health systems.

Um, and it's going to be the backdrop for all the markets we're going to be tracking next year. So, uh, pals already said, he's going to finish out the rest of his two terms. And so while I, while I don't think it. It plays the role that it played, you know, the beginning of this year and certainly, you know, most of last year, still an important backdrop for us to be tracking.

Yeah. Yeah. There's no question. Inflation is really important to health systems, but, but to everyone really, um, I don't know how much the Fed can control it. Moving into VC markets, Taylor Med raises 40 million for medical cost assistance and exclusive from Axios. I really liked this deal. We didn't get to look at it, but, um, it basically is helping.

with the out of pocket sort of patient portion of a hospital or doctor bill, which, you know, it's the biggest [00:09:00] cause of personal bankruptcy. It's, it's hard for a lot of people to meet that, especially, you know, the co insurance. Unfortunately, not a lot of people understand co insurance. So they think they have great coverage, and then they don't have great coverage.

They get hit with a bill. So this firm is sort of one, Collecting those people and then offering them either programs that are already out there that they don't know about where they can get assistance or helping them spread the payments out over time. There's been lots of these before, but this one seems like it's, um, you know, put together pretty well.

And there's a bunch of health systems that have been helping stand it up. Of course, they want to get that source of payment, but they don't want to do it in a way that. is challenging to the patients or causes bad press, which both have happened before. Yeah. I have a lot of respect for the founders behind this deal because it's one of those kind of boring, not super tech deals.

Yeah. Right. You know, how do we just connect people with the resources that they don't know [00:10:00] are available to them that can help them in sort of a time of need? It's, it's a definite win win. It's great for patients to know the options that are available to them. Cause here's the thing. Once you get hit with a bill, you're in that situation right now, how you figure your way out of it is an entirely different deal, but the bill is real.

It's a real thing. And the challenges you already typically have gotten the services. That's right. There's no choice on what to do already have it. That's right. Uh, and so just making people aware and connecting them with all sorts of, um, options is, is, is really very, very cool. Uh, the city impact folks are in this deal and, and, uh, I'm, I'm co invested with them on a deal.

They're, they're really, really smart healthcare folks. So, um, best, best of luck to Taylor men. Yeah, I agree. Good, good looking deal here. Zarminelli health scores 40 million seed from general catalyst. Another exclusive from Axios. Uh, this is a pediatric health score. Start up and kind of multi specialty deep on tech in person clinics offering [00:11:00] primary and urgent care as well as telehealth and messaging for non urgent questions.

This was a really surprising seed deal in my mind for two reasons. One, it's 40 million seed deal to pediatrics is a complicated and challenging place to make money. Yeah. I'm looking at a deal, but it's a very specific deal in, um, physical therapy. in early childhood interventions. Doing all pediatrics in a multi specialty group is Maybe that's why they raised the money.

But then they're also going to 30 states right now. And just ambitious general capitalists is if nothing, they're not ambitious, they're ambitious, incredibly ambitious, incredibly ambitious. I don't think there's anyone more ambitious out there than them right now. You know, really committed to putting true risk capital in healthcare.

There's no question in healthcare and, and with the, with the Clarity of we're going to change the way the system operates. Um, you know, so for anyone who [00:12:00] says that venture capital cannot actually do that, I think GC is trying to, it's a big bold bet, but, uh, I got to say, the more they do this, the more I like them.

Yeah. You know, the more they do stuff like this, I'm like, this is pretty cool. We, we, we are not, we don't have a capital backing to do these kinds of deals. We have to play it much more safe. Uh, but they've, they've got the assets under management. So it's, uh, it's pretty cool. All right. Uh, smart ring maker aura, and I've been aura.

User for, I don't know, seven, eight years. A while. Yeah. Picks up 75 million series D and ink strategic partnership with Dexcom, but that's 75 million came from Dexcom. Right. Um, so, you know, I don't think that's like a super big deal for Dexcom writing a 75 million check. And at the same time, that's. That's a big venture check.

Yeah. You know, um, Aura is, uh, expecting to see their annual sales double this year to roughly 500 million. Um, the [00:13:00] company is profitable. And it was priced at 5 billion. So, I mean. That's pretty good. Yeah. Worth talking about because Aura is already a big Player in the wearable space. Yes, and I like the ring.

I don't have one, but I like the the ring kind of use case It's easy the long battery life. You can just wear it and forget about it. Yeah So it's I think it's good in the Dexcom partnership. I think makes a lot of sense. Well Dexcom Is a legitimate medical device company, like not a consumer health and wellness wearable company.

And so to me, um, especially as someone who's been an aura user and watching them over the years, kind of slowly progressed towards really becoming more of a healthcare device, but never losing their consumer roots. Um, this to me is very interesting because it's like, okay, they're already profitable. So now what are they going to do with that 75 million, right?

You know what I mean? If you're already doing a half a billion in revenue [00:14:00] and you're profitable, this is, this strategic infusion is for purpose and, you know, likely to take maybe a new version of your device into the true medical device realm. You know, we talk about sleep all the time and the, how, how sub.

par of sleep studies are, and no one enjoys them and all these kinds of things. I mean, if they can really get into the healthcare market of sleep, that could be a really, really interesting thing. Yeah. And then I think there's also a chance they will innovate around the ongoing chronic care management of diabetes patients, because that's where Dex, and that's where Dexcom is.

And I think it's a lot of wearable metrics that you get. Not just sleep, but heart rate, heart rate, variability, all, all of the, even activity, I think you probably can get off it. Um, that if you integrate it with the Dexcom, you know, blood glucose monitors and insulin pumps [00:15:00] and things could be really powerful.

Tell us a more complete story. Yeah. Right. Uh, scene health raises 22 million in the series a for culturally focused pace. So I love this story because, uh, Nova's portfolio company and just care, loves to see the pace market growing. Um, but this is, uh, this is great. Another pace business. I'm very bullish on the pace, uh, model and love to see it being expanded.

Um, you know, with VC dollars prior to this, uh, Kaiser Permanente launched a pace business. Um, Walsh Carson is, is pretty deep in the pace space. So yeah, and it's in, it's in LA. Um, and then focused on Asia Pacific Island population. So I think that cultural focus really is helpful in elder care just because you're communicating to them in the way that they have lived their whole life.

And it's hard for me at 54 to change how I think about things. As you get older, it's hard. It's hard to change. So meeting them where they are around a culturally competent thing, I think makes [00:16:00] sense. Yeah, it's great. So love to see that. Alloy raises 16 million Series A to expand menopause care platform.

So menopause definitely as far as women's health. Yeah. It's the hot, it's getting all of the attention, right? Yeah. We just passed in foundry on a menopause pre seed investment because we were nervous, it was too much big dollars, a lot of, a lot of big high profile people and investors and money. I love the team, but we just decided to hold off.

And then this comes out a week later. Yeah. It feels like the, the space is going to be very competitive. Well enough capitalized. Um, yeah, there's a huge market opportunity. There's plenty to go around. I mean, they estimated 17 billion globally. Sure. Um, but there's a lot of big players in it. And so an ally alloy, I think, You know, be a good addition, but I think it's also going to be competitive.

Yeah. Uh, so this was a kind of, I don't know, an interesting story in the VC [00:17:00] space. Yeah, it's a little bit inside baseball stuff, but I think worth just touching on, especially for the founders or management teams or people that are thinking about raising capital. Yeah. So this is from a Wall Street Journal pro venture capital section.

The headline is most venture investors want their startups to go public, not this one. And this basically is a, is a tale of. How important it is to really think through the scenarios of your term sheets and your deal sheets, um, when you are giving out preferred, uh, when you're giving out rights to block transactions and things of that nature, uh, because when it is time to actually Go to a transaction, um, and you need to kind of see what do you need internally rights wise in order to be able to move forward with it, you may find out that one of your investors was not somebody who you were very aligned with throughout the process, and then you can't actually get the deal done.

Yeah, so this company, Orion Biotech, they took in a strategic investor from Alcon Research, which is [00:18:00] very common, uh, whether it was a C or D round, later stage round, and maybe a roughly 100 million round, and Deerfield is the kind of lead investor, very large, Uh, multi stage venture capital firm that I think you're co invest.

We know them. Um, and they're good. But in this case, they brought Alcon in and in, in every preferred. One of the reasons it is called a preferred is there's other features, other voting rights, other aspects of the preferred. And there's a section called protective provisions where you need to get a certain threshold of that class of stock to agree to something.

If you want to do ABCD, sell the company, raise money and go public is one of those and you can set the threshold at different levels. It might be 50 percent would be a normal majority. You could have 60%. You could have two thirds. They set it at two thirds and Alcon has one third and so [00:19:00] that you can't get to.

Two thirds, unless you have every other person agree. And they don't want this company to go public because it would be competitive or they've gone sideways or they, they don't want it to. So they're blocking it. The company is suing, but I, and it's not in court yet, but I, I think it's a pretty straightforward lawsuit that they lose.

I mean, the retrovisions. are pretty clear and it's very common. It's not like a unique thing. It's almost a cautionary tale. It's a cautionary tale. It's a cautionary tale for sure. I mean, uh, and, and probably one that you and I don't think about a whole lot because we're so early in the stack, right? That mostly by the time something gets to C or D at best, we're trying to, you know, throw in on the pro rata.

We're not, we're not, you're usually not deciding, uh, an exit if a company makes it that far in their capital stack, but I'm worried about the The series a or B that's right. That's right. And there's the same kind of dynamics in that, but [00:20:00] usually you're much more aligned. Yes. Yes. When you're on air or whatever, usually much more aligned.

AI investments are booming, but venture firm profits are at a historic low. One of my buddies in, in, uh, one of my group chats took a screenshot from this article and sent it over the balloon. It's kind of a good, yeah, no, not that it was, it was this chart here that shows sort of the decreased cash flows and.

You know, talking about how it's at an all time low and, uh, I hadn't read the article, but my response to him was, uh, you know, I hate to say it, but I think Trump probably makes this better. And then, like, right under this chart in the article, uh, it says venture capitalists say hope for change is that the incoming Trump administration might loosen regulations and spur more deal making in part by installing business friendly regulators.

Um, but yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's the bottom line, right? We've, we've been, I mean, since COVID, uh, We've had two real difficult things to fend with in this industry. One, uh, fed fund rate going from 0 percent to five plus, uh, five and a half, five, seven, five, [00:21:00] depending on how you slice it. Um, that's obviously problematic because it shifts a whole bunch of capital out of the, um, out of our space and into fixed income.

So that, that was not good. And our, our investments, when they do well. They pay a whole bunch of money in eight years. Yeah. And so now you have to discount that at a much higher discount. Right. Yes, obviously. Yes. And then the second thing is you couldn't do M and a, the IPO markets were closed, you know, and look fair, fair play.

Uh, Too many people tried to shove SPACs out, uh, during the pandemic. So there was obviously that pendulum had to swing back from all that nonsense. So, you know, fair play to that IPO markets, obviously very, very, very, very slow. And then MNA has just been challenged and blocked left and right. I mean, you know, that Adobe Figma deal still looms over the industry, right?

Yeah. Well, and we just talked about the aura ring. I mean, [00:22:00] it's a profitable business with a lot of revenue, half a billion in revenue, global, um, 20 years ago it would have been public and they're taking a series D investment instead. It's just like, what's going on? It's not, um, is not an efficient capital market.

So, um, I think the headline of the story is we're seeing activity and, um, up valuations and it's getting more healthy again, at least in AI, but we haven't seen a lot of distributions and yeah, there's hope. Hopefully we will see it come to fruition. Dr. Oz is named to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

And, uh, Trump says that Dr. Oz will work closely with RFK Jr. Yeah, so I don't know how I feel about this. I mean, he is a physician, a physician leading CMS, I like, but there's a lot. Do you remember we had Dr. Oz at HealthFinder? Yeah, [00:23:00] yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he spoke at the event. Yeah, he was on the Sharecare panel.

Right, right. Yeah, I think he's a good person. Speaker, all the picks, and I'm stealing this from Emily, but they all are like really wellness, health wellness, even longevity people, and not so focused on the traditional incumbent healthcare where you're treating people in a hospital. I mean, dude. Which is good.

I have no problem with this, like, you know, uh, my buddy, uh, my buddy Ovik, um, in, in our Aspen, uh, you know, group, he, he was recently with Dr. Oz and had a picture of him and I'm like, the dude looks fit. Yeah, he looks great. You know, he's got a t shirt and shorts on and I'm like, that guy looks fantastic, right?

I mean, and he's going to be, you know, An advocate for fair treatment for [00:24:00] physicians. That was the first thing that I thought of. Emily and I were talking, we're talking about him and saying, okay, well, what's going to be his, his posture. And of course the first place to go was to me, this was not a crystal ball thing.

It was more like a, okay. If you're trying to be contrary to what the Biden administration did, which I think is kind of principle number one, um, an obvious pattern matching opportunity here is we've got a physician, right, who is heading up CMS and the Biden administration just spent, you know, years diverting physician pay to all these other areas, community health workers, behavioral health, on and on and on and on and on.

And, you know, meanwhile, we've got a dearth of physicians, you know, um, and, and the space is shrinking, especially in some of the most important, but, but least well paying specialties. That's right. Yeah. Not, not dermatology. Yeah, right. Yeah. I don't forget where we cut that in. I want to get to that. But yeah, I mean, primary care or geriatric care.

I mean, [00:25:00] there's, there's a lot of. going to be in huge demand that we just don't have a lot of people going into. So, so, uh, yes, I, I do expect physician pay to be kind of a key focus area for, for Dr. Oz. Um, I was talking to a guy over the weekend who's really worried about, um, policy around contracting and reimbursement rates.

I don't think that. Dr. Oz is going to change that direction that much. I mean, I think Medicare Advantage is already on track to get more and more of the share. And Medicaid is taking care of kids and poor people. I just don't think that our policy around that is going to change that much. It's not going to be.

Uh, politically astute in any way, shape or form to make huge, massive sweeping changes, especially in year one at the intersection of providers and payers. Yeah, pharma is a much safer area to target and kind of [00:26:00] go deep in because it doesn't touch as much of the general public and it doesn't employ as many people.

Providers employ a lot of people, you know, you're not going to go around screwing with that. And the providers touch the patients and they are vocal when they talk to the patients. And so I, I just, I do not expect a whole lot of, uh, changes that will drive the industry broadly to think negatively of Trump in year one.

I just, that just doesn't make sense to me. You know, they have to line things up. With the mindset that the midterms are around the corner. Yeah, you know, so they have to get quick wins that are largely popular. That's right. That's right. Quick wins that are largely popular. That's right. From the guardian.

Okay. This actually, I was surprised I didn't, I didn't hear this. I was busy all day today and I found this. Um, but Trump is likely to choose surgeon and writer, Marty McCary as a FDA chief. Yeah. So he hasn't actually chosen it yet. This could be wrong. I think it would be a great pick if he does. [00:27:00] Man, Marty is like the real deal.

So he came to, I guess it sounds like he did not go to your fellows class, but he went to our fellows class. This guy is sharp. This guy is really, really sharp. And yes, he is contrarian, um, but he's sharp. Well, and he brings, he brings like reams of evidence. I mean, so I bought his book this morning. So I, of course I haven't read it yet, but, but it's, it's called blind spots and it's talking about the medical healthcare profession of being a physician and things that docs have done that really don't have evidence or now we have studied and they have negative effects.

So the example that he was citing just on the cover of the book is peanut allergies and for like 20 years, Pediatricians were recommending that parents keep your kid away from peanuts for the first three years in with good intentions. Sure. [00:28:00] But that there was no study done. And then when they did a study of a controlled study where they introduced peanuts and didn't introduce peanuts, if you, if you keep your kid away from peanuts, it's 86 percent more likely that they'll have an allergy.

And so the, the well intentioned thing that physicians did that seemed intuitively to make sense actually made it worse. And so I, I'm going to put in the show notes a link to the book. It just came out a month ago, so pretty new. It's his third book. But it seems like he has a lot of data. I haven't read the full book, but a lot of data behind it.

Look, he is contrarian, but he's well researched. He's thoughtful. He communicates well. Uh, he's funny. Uh, which I think is, is helpful. It's important and helpful. Um, And he's at John Hopkins. I mean, it's not that much. Better you can get that. Listen, I'm just telling you, like, if this actually goes through, this is, this is, this is pretty good.

This is pretty [00:29:00] good. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm pretty excited about this. Uh, Elon Ramaswamy, the Doge team, uh, wrote an op ed in the Wall Street Journal, which I think is so interesting, right? Because like, they're always like railing against, uh, you know, yeah, the journal, they rail against the journal generally speaking, but they wrote an op ed, um, which I think is actually, uh, good faith.

This is good faith, uh, to see that they're not solely communicating on X. Um, but they basically talk about, this is their plan to reform government. And I'll just tell you my quick read of it is basically, they are clearly not a real department. Um, They're effectively like a think tank, um, where they are going to do research and they're going to come up with the recommendations and going to make those recommendations.

But, you know, unlike most think tanks, they have a direct line into the president of the United States. The president and the cabinet member of whatever department that they are talking about at the time. Yes. Most think [00:30:00] tanks, you know, they have to throw events and they have to, you know, pass their stuff off to lobbyists and all this other kind of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. No, Elon and Vivek are just going to, like, mainline recommendations directly into the White House, you know, and say, with priority order, write an executive order for this. Yes. Right. Yeah, that's right. And I think it's worth reading. It's not that long because the way they frame it is really interesting.

Right. So they are anticipating. The pushback they're likely to get and then preparing for that. Right. So there is lots of existing infrastructure in DC and across the country and all of these departments you pick any one, right? Like EPA, Department of Education, Department of Defense, et cetera. And they are prepared for how they would make a case that is reasonable to an American citizen of why we should cut.[00:31:00] 

These programs or these jobs, and they're really framing it around the chevron doctrine, you know, going away because that gives them and they quote five or six Supreme Court cases, um, it gives them, I think, the legal status to say, okay, if this, um, regulation wasn't passed in law in Congress. Then there's no legal basis for EPA or Department of Education or DOD to do it any longer.

And whether you agree with that or not, I think it, it is not to kind of, uh, social media guys just flying off and saying, we're going to cut all these people. They have a pretty well thought out legal plan of how they can implement this. So anyway, I was not expecting it to be that grounded in the, like the legal and all the infrastructure stuff.

Well, it's not on X. [00:32:00] Yeah, yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. You know, they, they speak to the, to the audience that they. You know, that they, that they're designing for. So, um, anyway, it's, it's worth a read. It's worth a read. Cause I, I, I do think the reality is they, they will be active. Um, if anything, Elon has proven is, uh, he is prolific in his activity.

And, uh, I think, I think he's real. Uh, when it comes to what he's going to do with Doge, uh, I have no idea when this guy sleeps though. Yeah, I know. You know, uh, 2. 3 million jobs. The federal workforce in charts is from the Wall Street Journal and shows that Trump and Musk want to slash government employees.

Uh, 70 percent of civilian workers are military related agencies. Yeah. So I wasn't sure if this story would be worth talking about or not until the op ed came out. Yeah. But now that it has, I think it's pretty interesting. It shows, like, and really Bush. started this executive order thing. So it, it's interesting that they, uh, [00:33:00] you know, I, I believe the Wall Street Journal knew the op ed was coming and Bush was the first president to really start using executive orders.

And then it, everyone has sense. So, you know, it started with the Republican, but both sides have done a lot of executive orders that then end up creating infrastructure. And it, it shows where the employees were brought in. And then if you go down, it shows it by department. And how it's changed over time.

And it, it's pretty interesting. Like, so if you're going to try to cut costs, you know, the VA is the, is the biggest employer now there's a lot of health care, I mean, that's all health care and taking care of veterans is going to be hard to cut, um, but that's the number one employer and then you go down the list and you can see homeland security, army, Navy, air force defense.

Yeah. One of the things they said in the op ed is the. Pentagon hasn't been able to pass an audit [00:34:00] for seven years. So like, they don't know where money is spent. Wow. And then you see, like, they employ a lot of people and we want our defense. To be really strong, but I think it is probably good to be able to do an audit and know where things go.

Yep. Yep. No question. Uh, Trump picks Brendan Carr as FCC chair. He vows to challenge a big tech cartel. I've said for a while, uh, you know, just tracking the vendetta that I believe many, you know, Conservatives, uh, have developed specifically with Google, but maybe you could say more broadly with big tech.

Uh, I really saw it fundamentally flare up during the pandemic Mm-Hmm. because, um, as many people were sort of against the vaccines, uh, and all the tagging of, of content and yeah, the misinformation and the fact checking and the throwing up a. A covid vaccine, you know, [00:35:00] overlay on a video or whatever, um, that kind of really started it.

And then people started analyzing search results and kind of coming up when Musk bought Twitter, he released all the Twitter files and there was Twitter files that happened. So, you know, there, there is, uh, there's a lot of animosity. There, uh, you know, from, from the right, as it pertains to big tech, it's interesting.

Big tech has not made a whole lot of friends really at all, but I, I actually think that, that the, the right is going to be, um, be more harsh. Yeah. It's interesting to deal with probably specifically Google. It's the only thing that the Republicans and Democrats can agree on is they don't like Google.

Yeah. That's almost one of the, maybe, maybe big tech in general, but that's, and maybe TikTok as well. Like, uh, so I think. of the few things that there's broad consensus, it's that. And so I think there's going to be some changes there. Yeah. Matt gets rewards withdraws from consideration as attorney general, uh, seems pretty [00:36:00] predictable.

Yeah, this is good. The faster, the better. Well, but also, you know, what was the calculus here, right? Was it to throw this guy? So everyone just focuses on him while you maybe, you know, You then you breathe a sigh of relief and then you're not paying attention to who gets brought in next, right? I mean, it's hard to hard to really say because it just seems so ridiculous, you know, given the nature of the Accusations that he was defending himself against.

I mean, yeah, I mean sex with a minor dude That's right. That's like and paid he paid I think he I think the allegations were also paid for sex. I mean, you know, I, I hate to say, but stories like that, I just kind of turn away from, so I don't know the details of it, but you know, he just seems absolutely, uh, just, just not serious.

This is like a not serious, uh, you know, candidate for the job. And so to me, it felt like there was some calculus, like, okay, we're going to sacrifice him real quick. And then, you [00:37:00] know, that will help us get somebody else. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. All the behind the scenes stuff, but it's something like that.

He also was about to go into his investigation in the house the day before, so it may have been Almost like a favor. Let me get you out of that. And then you can resign from the house or whatever. Maybe a little delay, but either way, he's not going to be attorney general, which is good. Yeah. Uh, Gensler is leaving, uh, basically once Trump comes in office, which we kind of knew, but, but it's good that he has announced it, you know, on inauguration day, he'll be done and Bitcoin runs, which is, you know, good for the Bitcoin holders, but I think it is.

It's time to have someone just create a policy around how should we treat these things? Yeah, this, this is going to end up being such a black eye for the Democrats that they're not going to be able to get over for a long time because, [00:38:00] um, crypto is starting to get useful. Yeah, it's, you know, it's like the tech is really getting there and, um, the idea that we sent off companies that could have been the leaders in this to other countries where they were willing to create regulations for this and the technology was basically inevitable.

I mean, it's, it's like, what were we really talking about here? You know, we're talking about swift. We're talking about ACH. Have you, has anyone like looked into what the current financial infrastructure of the United States is? It is trash. Yeah, it's absolute trash. And everyone's so busy thinking about like funneling, whatever funds to North Korea or something like you're missing.

All of the innovations that are happening in payments. Yeah. And the, and the existing systems are also used for nefarious purposes. I mean, it's not like this, this bad stuff didn't happen before crypto. [00:39:00] Any technology can be used for good and evil. And that's certainly true about. Blockchain and crypto, but we should control it, regulate it, have it in the U.

3. and steer it towards the positive. This position that it was just inherently bad. It's wrong. Oh, awful, awful. Technology is not inherently anything. Apple faces a 3. 8 billion antitrust legal claim over iCloud. What's going on here? There's a whole bunch of, um, I think we have three stories in a row here where the Democratic, uh, well, one is a European story, but the Dems are trying to take out all of their thoughts before they lose power.

Um, it's not going to actually happen. Um, so anyway, that's, I'm jumping to the Google one. This is in the UK. They lost their, uh, appeal. So you know, they're going to have to pay. What part? I [00:40:00] don't, I'm sitting here. I'm like Apple customers are owed nearly 3 billion pounds as a result of the tech giant forcing it's iCloud services on customers and cutting off competition from rival services.

Well, they do for, you can't use another cloud provider. That's what they're upset about. What do you mean? I've got Dropbox on my phone. I've got Box on my phone. I've got Google Photos on my phone. I use those all the time. I don't have it. I don't have an iPhone, so I don't know. I use Google Photos to back up the photos on my phone.

I don't, I don't use iCloud for that. Okay. I have no idea what this is, what this is about. Well, that's the argument from the UK that the That you can't do that. You have to use iCloud. Okay. This is, this is stupid. That's I don't have a free reference cause I don't have an iPhone. So I don't know. I mean, I trust you.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I don't, I actually don't use iCloud for like anything. I don't use it for mail. I don't. And, and I, I pay for it. You know, it, like it backs up like my apps and it backs up my overall phone. Yeah. So you have to [00:41:00] pay for iCloud. Even though you don't use it. Well, no, no. I pay for it willingly. I, cause, cause like, I mean, I use it, but it's not like my intention.

I don't use it for anything for business. Right. Nothing for business. It doesn't back up my photos. So I'm like, I've got all sorts of optionality and in the files app in Apple, they like, they load up all the other cloud storage services. I'm talking like Microsoft, Dropbox, Google Drive, all of them sit in a, in a, in a, um, in a menu and you can turn them on and off.

What is this lawsuit about? I, but I think maybe it is. You still have to pay for iCloud. Even if you don't use it, that's the files interface. Can you stop paying iCloud? I mean, yeah, I think so. I don't think you have to have iCloud. Okay, well, I mean, the argument is that they cut off competition for [00:42:00] rival cloud services by forcing people to buy iCloud.

I don't know. I mean, this, you know. But it happened in 2015. They have appealed and they have lost the appeals now. Okay, whatever. Um, I mean, this is the kind of stuff that, you know, it's, it's really interesting, right? Because there's all these different dimensions. of politics, right? There's all these different dimensions of politics.

And there are certainly dimensions for me where, um, I just can't sort of abide by the, um, what, what the Republicans sort of, Stand for right there are dimensions social issues. That's how I feel mostly on this mostly social issues mostly social issues This tech stuff is getting like ridiculous and I realize we're talking about the UK But the UK tends to kind of align with the Democratic Party in the United States when it comes to like how they're gonna regulate Tech that they tend [00:43:00] to be pretty aligned in Yeah, in that, and this kind of stuff is, this is just stupid, you know, I, I'm all for finding real places where companies have been anti competitive.

This is not one of them, you know, this is not actually one of them to me. This just feels like you're just trying to get 4 billion of taxes out of out of apple. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I didn't have that reaction. So I don't use it. So I don't really like it's hard for me to say, but I believe you. It just makes me.

Uh, Mad because I don't want, uh, the democratic party or progressive leaning political parties to be anti tech and anti business. That is a losing formula. You are not going to win elections. You know what I'm saying? You're not going to win elections being anti tech and anti business. This is not, it's not where, it's not where humanity is heading.

Like it's not [00:44:00] stop doing it. Yes, and the reason why it makes me upset is because like you're sacrificing social progress, right? Yes, you lose your ability to do anything on a social program because you because you do these you lose You lose the moral high ground. Yes, you know, you might have better ideas socially, but your business ideas are total trash Yes, total trash metta find eight hundred and forty three million dollars by EU over marketplace ads platform They do this, they share data across their platform, Instagram, WhatsApp, and I think everyone knows that, but the EU doesn't.

Allow it? Allow it. Doesn't, doesn't allow, even though they own all the different platforms, sharing data between the different platforms is not allowed? They can't tie their ad platform across, across all those, which is not, it's not what would happen in America. [00:45:00] Let's just move on. But then the next one is, is the DOJ put in their requests for remedies in the Google case that they won.

Okay, and this is Biden's DOJ. This is Biden's DOJ, and they're asking for the breakup of Google to sell off the Chrome browser and also provide enough data on all the search metrics so that a competitor could spin up another search platform. Okay, so who gets to buy Chrome? I don't know who would buy Chrome.

That's what I'm saying. Who buys Chrome? Because like, how does Chrome make money? Chrome doesn't make money right now. I mean, firefox, it's a, it's a data hoover. Yes. It sucks in data, right? But if you can't use that data to power search, dude, this is, this is the kind of stuff that I'm talking about. They're going to spin it out and who, who can buy it.

I don't know that I can't think of anyone who buys the only thing to talk about with Google in terms of [00:46:00] spinning out is YouTube. Yeah, that is the thing to talk about. Okay, and I'm not advocating for it. I'm just saying if you're serious. Yes, if you're serious You spin out the thing that is bigger than Netflix.

Yes. Yes YouTube is a very strong company on its own It would be a very Relevant competitor in the space, and then it would create all kinds of other stuff, dude, it would immediately be the biggest biggest company. Yes, immediately. Yes. Right. So chrome. This is another. This is another one of those things where it's like, if you don't know how.

How the business works. And you don't understand like what Chrome actually is. They might be like, Oh, that's kind of cool because they have like all these downloads and have a pretty big user base. It's a big, it is the biggest browser, you know, in terms of install base. There's no question about it, but like, how does it make money?

It doesn't make money now. [00:47:00] More importantly, there are competitors. Of course it's growing. Well, yes, there are competitors to make it not necessarily important to spin it out, but Firefox is struggling to make money and how they make money is they partner with Google to. Get paid to send all the search business there.

And that is the main thing that they can't do any longer. So that's definitely going to be in the remedies that you can like, so it's going to be worse for Apple. Apple can no longer get the billions of dollars they get to send all their search to Google. Well, I mean, I'm not going to cry over Apple, you know, losing a revenue stream.

It, you know, the important thing I think is that at least in my recollection, Chrome and Android, both were. Defensive things to make sure that Google didn't get disintermediated by Apple and Microsoft one. Right, right. Yes. And [00:48:00] so they're, they're kind of loss leaders. I mean, they are, that's right. That we're talking about them.

Yes. They're not the thing to talk about. And if you spin it out, I don't know who's going to buy it. People are talking about open AI buying it. Okay. Maybe cause they have too much money, but like, I don't know how that helps. I mean, I mean, it gives them an install base. It gives them an instant install base.

Yeah. Yeah. So anyone who wants an install base Could but then they're gonna use that how is that fair? They're gonna use that to monetize some other business, which is what Google's doing now Yeah, and also you're gonna you're gonna give one competitor in an undetermined winner space Chrome. Yeah Yeah, really?

That's what you're gonna do. It's just yeah, it doesn't make sense So I agree with you that three stories in a row that I'm just like Yes, God, get the government out of tech. Yes, seriously. This is like they don't [00:49:00] understand it. And maybe it needs to be broken. I think Google will be attacked by the Republicans.

They don't do the things I want them to do, right? The things I want them to do actually protect users, protect users with their data, protect kids from, you know, getting all these crazy things on Instagram, like do the, do the real things, protect the citizens, you know, so I think the Republicans are going to throw this out, but they'll come back at Google with something else.

I agree that they don't like Google. I just, I think it'll be different. On the health systems, Michigan Hospital loses Medicare funding. That's crazy, uh, and plans 248 layoffs. I mean, wow. I mean, basically you lose Medicare funding. Yeah, you're going to plan a lot of layoffs, right? Yeah. So in in Pontiac, Michigan, Pontiac General Hospital got this notice that I had never seen before.

I've been doing this 25 years where Medicare is no longer allowing them to. [00:50:00] See new patients and bill now the patients that are in the hospital can continue. Mm hmm. There's no new patient. No new patients And so they laid off 248 people they're claiming that this will be a temporary this hospital said they think this will be a less than six month Lay off.

I've never seen this before that. I think you have to do a lot of really Bad things to get to this point. So I'm making a bit of a leap here based on the name of the hospital, but it sounds like it's a safety net. I think so. Essential. That's what I believe it is. Which is even more sad, right? Because this is hospital last resort for many, many people.

Um, and I think you're right. I, I don't think that, uh, CMS would cut off payments unless there was something really wrong going on. Uh, [00:51:00] at least you, you hope, right? You hope that everyone involved would understand the situation here. Um, but, but safety net hospitals are up against a lot, truly up against a lot.

The economics do not work very well. Yeah, that's right. But you can't, and I don't know that they did, we don't, we don't know the deal. We don't know the details. You can't cheat. So if they did do things that are not appropriate, they can't do that. Yeah. And yeah. But yeah, it's not, but it's also the kind of thing where you would hope rather than punishing that community, you find a way to punish the administrators, you know, and, and how, how might you quickly replace those administrators if in fact it is a safety in a hospital where there's no other options, right?

Yeah. Uh, Calvin Hall, uh, big consultant. Performance stable, but high labor costs challenge hospitals. Yeah, so volume and acuity continues to be really [00:52:00] good. across the country. Of course, particular hospitals have different situations. But for the most part, we have really strong patient volumes and pretty good acuity levels.

So the revenue side is fairly strong with health systems. But the labor costs are, I think it's 86 percent of the overall spending. And it's growing roughly at the rate of inflation, a little bit over inflation. And the reimbursement Amounts are not changing at that same rate. So they're just systematically losing ground, right?

And Kaufman Hall studied this. Which has, we have been watching this since the pandemic, it's not surprising, but it's still the same. Yeah, it's becoming a sticky problem for sure. Uh, Mercer, uh, big employer, employer broker. Uh, as costs rise, employers are pursuing benefit enhancements. So, sounds like they're really looking at the important role that GLP 1s [00:53:00] are playing in healthcare and how that's impact, uh, impacting cost.

Yeah, that's right. So, um, that's the major driver of costs that Mercer found. And it's pretty interesting. Uh, most employers. Are willing to pay for reimburse for allow GLP ones if you have diabetes, but when you, when you go to obesity only, they're not willing to do it. And so that's where, that's where the fight is now, or that's where the debate is that, um, I think we might have a story later with the actual drug companies are trying to get out in front of that and educate.

employers about the value over a medium to long term of getting obesity down. But right now they're not so far allowing that for that use case. Employers get pressure to pay for drugs like Wegovy. Yeah. Lilly and Nova Nordics are investing in Marketing, [00:54:00] education, people, what you used to call a physician education.

Yeah, yeah. They've sort of taken that playbook and they're working it with employers now. Yeah, yeah. Um, which I haven't really seen before, but it's such a big revenue. It's a big fulcrum. And it's really about, are you going to cover it or you're not going to cover it? Right. I mean, and that, that has massive, you know, which is, which is really sort of a health economics, uh, you know, play.

That's true. And I think it's also true that there's going to be a lot of pricing pressure, more, these aren't, these aren't impossible to create competitors in. Now we see people compounding it right now. Of course, of course. I think they're going to teach employers how valuable this is at the same time that they're getting a lot of new entry from other competitors.

Yep. Yep. Fair play. [00:55:00] Three quarters of U. S. adults are now overweight or obese. Vic, is that you? It's definitely me. It is me. Yeah. I'm on the edge. I'm a BMI of 26. Uh, which is, you know, close to obese. It might be the one before obese. I'm going to tell you mine. Hold on. I know it's over 30. Yeah, I know. It's definitely over 30.

Um, even though you're in the best shape of your life, probably, or maybe not, maybe not when you were 25, but, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm in, I'm in decent shape for sure. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Here, here we go. Okay. 32. 3 is my current, uh, BMI. At last weigh in November 19th, I was, uh, two 51, uh, at six two. So yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So the definition maybe needs to be, um, worked on, but I mean, look, it's, it's just like muscle is not really counted in a way that like my dad, [00:56:00] who's a little shorter than me played football at Harvard. Yeah. Um, he avoided the Vietnam draft because he was obese. as he was the starting running back at Harvard, his, his junior year to, it just doesn't make sense.

And it's been like this forever. I mean, like, why wouldn't the army or whoever the draft was? And he was happy to not get drafted. So this is one of those things that you're just like, it is 2024 about 2025. Are you serious? Right. Like, are you kidding me? Can't we do some other measurement that would make more sense?

Like, because it, I don't know, I will say I walked through the airports. Because I travel a decent amount. There's plenty of people that are obese, and however you define it, they're obese. No, look, there's no question about it. But, I, I, I guess, I guess here's my problem with it. Okay? It entirely focuses on the number on the scale.

Okay? And [00:57:00] I think that there are many people who, maybe they don't love cardio. Okay? But they might really dig cardio. Weightlifting, they might really dig the idea of just getting strong and they're not encouraged to do that, you know, and you know, it would really help their health a lot. Yeah, there's a lot of people if they turn me that if they turn more strength and less cardio, if they turned, I need to do more cardio than than, you know, than I'm currently doing.

But if, but if you turned that fat mass into lean, Muscle mass like the overall health when it's a huge win. And I guess it's just we're not meeting. We're not creating a landscape of metrics that allows us to meet people where they where they might be. You don't even know where they are. But I think I think there's a lot of people who maybe are obese with, you know, a very unhealthy.

Uh, body fat [00:58:00] percentage, right? Because I think that's the caveat. It's like, yes, you're obese with a very unhealthy body fat percentage. Who if you said, hey, let's just, let's go lift heavy stuff. They might be like, that sounds cool. You know, it might be hard, but it's more fun than like running five miles or whatever.

So anyway, to me, those are the kinds of unintended consequences that we don't realize when we only focus on the number on the scale. Yeah, and I think you also, I mean, Yeah. You just lose credibility, right? When that you and I are both obese and we're very focused on our health. And so I don't care. Right.

I don't care. And so then that just loses. And I probably should care more, you know, but like I don't, because yeah, cause it doesn't tell me anything, right. You know, yeah. The metric doesn't tell me anything. Lily sues us to change hospital drug discount payments. Uh, this article was in the wall street journal.

And you can tell it's not in modern health care because either the headline or the sub headline would have had [00:59:00] 340B in it. Uh, but they just talk about drug discount payments for hospitals. Yeah. Johnson and Johnson a couple weeks ago, literally this week are attacking the 340B program and I don't blame them.

I mean, it is. It has good intentions when it was created to get medications to poor people that need it. But it has grown in a way that, um, it's become a funding source for nonprofit hospitals. And I don't think that was the intention. And, and certainly it's being challenged. And so I think it's going to be That's going to be one of the topics for the next year in the Trump administration.

It just goes back to that conversation we were having last week around, you know, the Robin Peter, Robin Peter Hall kind of thing, you know, and I do sympathize with nonprofit hospitals because They do often not always, but often, um, have a burden that many for profit hospitals [01:00:00] don't necessarily have, uh, in terms of the payer mix that they have to accept and the things that they have to do by their charter and by, you know, expectation of community, etc.

Nonprofit, right? Yeah, but let's solve that problem. More directly, let's solve that more directly and I realize I'm talking about something that's a macro level thing and it's not an easy thing to do when you're fighting in the trenches on a day to day, week to week basis, but somebody has has to try to hit the reset button on this thing because we're going to keep having these ridiculous turf wars.

That, uh, you know, are not really any of them getting at the core issue, right? Yeah. I mean, I would be very happy if there was some deal that changed three, four to be dramatically, but then cemented the, the raising of the, the Medicaid cap at commercial rates. Because that's, that really, I think goes much more directly to, if you're serving Medicaid patients, by definition, you're in [01:01:00] an area that.

That has a different economic model than other areas, and it should be reimbursed higher because we need more people covering that more systems covering that come here rolls out AI scribe for tenant health care after year long customized build. So starting off our AI rundown, um, come here recently acquired automatics, like what, a month and a half ago or something like that.

Yeah. Um, Commier is, is General Catalyst's big tech platform play. Uh, Augmetics had already signed HCA and now Commier on the AI scribe side now has Tenet. So two largest for profit hospitals now under contract, uh, with, uh, General Catalyst's Commier. And they didn't give it a lot of detail, but it looks like Commier has built a customized scribing.

System for tenant. I mean, yeah, and so why'd they buy Augmatics? Right? Well, I think what I was going to say is a combination of those two, whatever they build for tenant and Augmatics is going to be a pretty, pretty strong [01:02:00] competitor and pretty good product in the scribes. Yeah, I mean, Augmatics, once we dug, dug into it was a pretty small cap.

Publicly traded company. I mean, sub 200 million market cap, um, but they were the one racking up all the names, uh, left and right. And so this, this is a really interesting, um, potential angle for comm year to get past the epic challenge, uh, in terms of breaking into the health system space. Um, if you get the physician notes, First of all, it's before you get into that's right.

You're first and then you have a lot of what you need To do revenue cycle to do the referrals to do a lot of things. Yeah, you're pretty good place Yeah, you're first if you're at the at the Listening right layer, right? Yeah, our friend Ambar Bhattacharya from maverick ventures put out part two that he does along [01:03:00] with some of his friends Of his, uh, reimagining the healthcare delivery journey with generative AI.

So he does these great, um, uh, four by fours, uh, sort of on the, on the vertical axis at the top technological simplicity at the bottom technological complexity, uh, left to right visionary stage versus signs of early adoption. And he and his friends do a great job of laying out the different categories.

And also tracking progress kind of from episode to episode. So I just think I'm bar. I've told you this before. He's the first person before catchy PT even came out to, you know, tell me, Hey, AI is going to be a massive player and in healthcare. So he's, he's a person who I really trust and I want to make sure, you know, we've had him on the show.

I want to get him back on the show, but I want to make sure we're sharing his, uh, his roadmaps with, with folks because I think they're, they're unique. Thank you. Yeah, and so the first one kind of introduced this two by two matrix with, you know, obviously, if it's [01:04:00] simple. Relatively simple technology and early people are adopting it.

That's the best quadrant. Um, and, but now with the update, it's really powerful to see like, okay, how is it changing over time? Yeah. And so, yeah, I think he does a good job with this. All right. Uh, Nvidia sales soar as AI spending boom barrels ahead. What was the quarterly revenue in their recent? Quarterly investor call 37 and a half billion in a quarter, which is incredible.

I mean, it's just like, how do you even wrap your head around that? Yeah, I mean, 7. 5 billion 94 percent from last year. I mean, so it's, it's a huge number. It's also growing at not a hundred percent, but almost a hundred percent. Um, and I think it's, they have shortages. So like, it's not like they couldn't, they could sell more.

They just don't, [01:05:00] they can't make enough of the. We call them chips, but they're like the size of a coffee table. Yeah, they're huge. Just what an incredible company. Yeah. This, this, this Nvidia has become. Yeah. And then the next story is they're doing a really smart move in, in robotics. Yeah. Yeah. The Jetson Thor.

Yeah. To not create their own robot, but more empower. All of the robots. They're building platforms. Yes. They're building platforms for everyone else. Right. You know, and they just want to be the platform builder. Yeah. Which is great. I mean, selling picks in the gold rush is a good strategy. It's incredible what these guys are doing.

I appreciate you bringing this story to the table. New AI Entertainment Studio gets backing from Peter Chernin and Andreessen Horowitz. So this is an AI first content studio. Yeah. Right. So we're not trying to retrofit. We're not trying to, you know, explain to writers why AI is good. Right. We're just AI first.

Yeah. And they're going to do movies and TV shows. AI first. [01:06:00] It just is going to be a catalyst for the whole industry. I mean, once this is out there and then they have their first hit show, everyone else is going to have to follow. And it's going to be. You either adopt AI across the whole thing, or you get left behind.

I, I think the thing I, I am thinking about here is how smart it is going to be to work on the supply chain. You know, your AI supply chain to create this content. And then once you've worked on your supply chain, the volume You're going to be able to put out. I mean, we already are like drowning in content.

It's just so much right now. Can you imagine when this becomes the standard AI for studios are the standard. This is the first one that we're hearing about. But like, I mean, Vic, it's just like, it's going to, what kind of filters are we going to need? [01:07:00] Yeah, that's right. Like someone needs to start working on the filters right now.

That's the thing to work on. Well, what I'm, I don't know if worried about, but what I'm trying to figure out is Um, content marketing is probably half. Roughly half of my portfolio, like, you know, all the portfolio companies, how they get leads. Yeah. With the other half being direct, direct outreach or referrals.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's going to be just so much content, I think you're not going to get benefit from it, or it's going to be very different. It's gonna be very hard. Yeah. Yeah. And so I don't exactly know how to navigate that, but that's what I'm trying to think about for a year from now. We're gonna have just oceans of average to slightly below average content.

But good enough that it's going to hit your inbox, hit your LinkedIn profile, hit your Twitter feed, and it's going to be hard to cut through that. You know, the one, [01:08:00] I think we can take a bit of a lesson from music. You know, this is where music has diverged from Hollywood, which is. The live performance has, has helped the musician endure, right?

And has consequently kept the musician front and center on social media. And in terms of like music videos on YouTube and things of that nature, you know, I think content is. Will not be enough if people can't touch or engage with you. Right. So I think it's probably going to be content plus conferences, plus convening, plus speaking that that combination, uh, will help you differentiate because, you know, the one thing that we're going to talk about this here, you know, what, what Dario, uh, I'm a day.

Is that, I think it's on my day on my day. Yeah. talks about is that AI is not embodied. Yeah, right. So, so the place where we can def where we will really be able to differentiate for [01:09:00] the foreseeable future. Now, obviously, we just talked about Jetson Thor and robotics, but those are not going to be replacing sort of the emotional value that humans provide anytime soon.

Yeah, I think that's right. So my thought is that humans. are embodied, we exist in the world, we can in health care. We can put an IV in and we can hold someone's hand and hold. Yeah, right. So then the next thing is we, the empathy of listening to someone and understanding their point of view, AI is going to get better at that, but humans are going to be, I think, good at that.

Compared to AI for a long time. We're good at it in ways we don't even understand. That's right. And the fact that we don't even understand it means it's going to be hard for us to help. It's hard to encode it and train it. Yeah. Um, not that it'll never get there, but I think in healthcare, because you have to, eventually you have to [01:10:00] lay hands on a patient, help them with their care journey.

Yeah. And there's just a lot of physical aspects of health care and then the empathy side and talking to someone about their cancer diagnosis and what the choices are and seeing how their face responds physicians and nurses and caregivers. Do that in a way that they don't, it's intuitive. They don't really fully appreciate.

Right. And so I think that's where we need to lean in how we do that in content marketing for one of my startups. I got to think through. Yeah. Yeah. But yes. Uh, okay. I'm gonna let you take the final story here. Cause, uh, you, you put in the work to listen to a two and a half hour Lex Friedman interview with this gentleman.

And, uh, you also have read this. So, uh, the floor is yours. Yeah. So, uh, anthropic is. One of the frontier LLM models, I think everyone, most listeners probably realize that, um, [01:11:00] and they really have a different approach from all the other models. And so they are trying to win, but they're trying to win this race to this, um, artificial general intelligence, AGI, in a way that, you know, Helps humanity in a very broad kind of good for the world good for our global society point of view and I knew that before listening to this interview, but I didn't really understand how it how it was going to be or why I would care.

It just seemed like a marketing spin that differentiated them, but was not going to. matter. Um, and there were two aspects of this that I thought were really good. One is, um, he defined much more explicitly what, um, what he means or what anthropic means by super powerful AI. [01:12:00] He does not use the term AGI.

Because it's not defined and everyone means something different by that. And it's just too nebulous. And so he has five or six components, um, maybe go down. Cause we should read a couple of them, but it is, um, from a, from a, keep going, it's, it's, um, from an intelligence, just like raw intelligence point of view right there, um, the AI is smarter than every Nobel prize winner.

in every field. Right? So it is today. Well, no, this is when we get to his super powerful AI, which he does not have today. Importantly. Got it. Okay. Um, he's saying roughly two to four years, he thinks we'll be here. But then a lot of people will say we'll get to AGI in two to four years with the scaling laws and things.

And there's a lot of interesting stuff about the scaling [01:13:00] laws that we don't have time for. But the, this article and then the, the podcast with Lex is the scaling laws are pretty interesting. But, um, he defined what he means by super powerful AI. And so we're not there yet, but it is, um, as smart as every Nobel winner combined in every field and can solve mathematical theorems, write very good novels, create new code bases from scratch.

So that's the intelligence level, but it also has interfaces, which I've been, I've been complaining about it. What it doesn't have at all today is interfaces to get To be able to email me, or do a blog post, or transact on Amazon Mechanical Turk, or whatever, like, it can interface with all of those and pay for things.

Um, so, that's the next thing, that it's, it's as smart as any, um, [01:14:00] Nobel, but it can also make a video, post it on YouTube, charge people to do work, and it is functional out there. People call that the term agents, but he's defining it much more like explicitly. And then it can go away for, um, a period of time to do projects.

So you could say, I want to address, uh, Lyme disease, go research all the different possibilities for Lyme disease, then come back and it will be gone for 30 days and come back with a full proposal of how we would address it. Uh, so anyway, um, he's saying in a couple of years, we'll have this. And then the last one that, um, I was surprised by is you, you can multiply it by millions of times.

And so this isn't going to be like this one clawed, anthropic, master, super powerful [01:15:00] AI. There will be 300 million that are simultaneously deployed and can be doing all kinds of stuff. So, so that's the first thing he, he much more clearly than I've heard anyone define what AGI would be like. Yep. Because, because when you just say like, it's gonna, Be smarter than a human and going to be hard to control and might kill everyone.

That might be true, but it's so nebulous. It's hard to really interact with. And then the second thing that I got excited about is his, his culture. He calls it race to the top, which is sort of exposing what Anthropic has learned and challenging others, open AI, Gemini, uh, Amazon meta to compete with them in that.

So. They spend a lot of time, effort, money on determining how the AI is working, like getting inside and understanding how it works. And then they expose that, um, [01:16:00] in papers into the world. And that is really helpful in, Making the models better and making them more aligned and figuring out how can we interface with YouTube so it can post things and so in the interview, Lex was asking him, well, doesn't that then hurt your competitive stance?

Because people copy it and he has raised a lot of money like all these people. Guys have yep, but he's done it with the full transparency. This is what we're gonna do right right and yes, we will then lose competitive Advantage in that space and that will force us to go find the next thing and we're gonna be transparent about that, too So that if people copy it it ends up like this Pushing everyone to to shape this new powerful thing in a way that helps humanity, right?

And so I don't know I have not been a customer of anthropic because I'm cheap and I didn't want to pay for them But but I might be a customer now because it [01:17:00] seems like that's a good thing to do So anyway, um, it's a decent, uh, read. It's kind of long. We'll post it in there. Well, thanks for that rundown.

Um, I, my understanding, I'm definitely a layman in this space, but my understanding is that they have the number one model. They have the number one model on it. The number one model. Sonnet 3. 5 is the number one model for coding. Definitely. And then there's lots of debate about other uses, but they have a very good model.

Um, it's the number one in some areas. I mean, if you have the number one model in any areas in the world right now, probably worth listening to you. Yeah. I think the, uh, the thing that I was attracted to is he's going to, he's going to pull in employees. and corporate partners. Yeah. More that want to really make an impact and they'll make plenty of money too.

But, but it's um, it's like a double bottom [01:18:00] line thing or something that I think is, is pretty smart and will be good humanity. All right. Well, you've convinced me. of his five impact areas. Yep. So when we get this in a couple of years, there'll be five areas that really changed the world. Two of them are health.

Yeah. So that, that's kind of interesting too, that he's not a healthcare guy, but as he just thinks about this, health is, is going to be, Really impacted positively, but all of us, all of our listeners, the whole industry, we have an opportunity to benefit from that, but it took me a lot of change. Yeah. All right.

Um, well, you've convinced me I'm going to find time to listen to the two and a half hour Lex Freeman interview. Yeah. When you pull it up, it's five hours, but. The first two and a half are him. And then there's a product woman who's also good, but she's the second two and a half hours. So it looks like five hours, but it's not really, no, but it is two and a half.

Okay. I'm, I'm used to two and a half hour Lex Rubin interview. So that that's fine. [01:19:00] Um, so I will listen to that. I will read this at least, Portions of it. Um, and, uh, thanks for, thanks for running it down. It, it does give me something, uh, to, to think about differently, uh, in terms of AI, like giving these more specific examples of, of what we mean when we say super intelligence, um, that you can like create a, uh, a scaffolding for projecting into the future against that, right?

And then you can think, okay, well. What am I doing then? What, what is our company doing then? What are our portfolio companies doing then? What is that? What the health system is doing then? What are payers doing then? Right? Yeah. So, so, yeah, when I started to think about, well, what are the signs, what would happen six months from now that would say we're on this two year trajectory?

Yeah, so that we can be more prepared. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. But without any definition. It's just too vague, like hand wavy, like, okay, we don't, we're not at AGI yet. And we'll tell you when we get there. That's kind [01:20:00] of hard. Yeah. All right, man. Thanks for another great show. Yeah. Next week is Thanksgiving.

So we'll be recording on Wednesday. Yep. But we will be recording. Yes. All right. Looking forward to it. Thank you.