0:02

Welcome to the VergeCast, the flagship podcast of

0:05

corporate infighting. I'm your friend David Pierce and

0:07

I am sitting on my back patio getting

0:09

the grill ready because it is July 4th

0:11

weekend and that's just what you do. This

0:14

is America, it's July 4th, it's also my

0:16

birthday on July 4th and so we sit

0:18

outside and we grill even though it's very

0:20

hot and there's mosquitoes everywhere. And would I

0:22

rather be inside in the air conditioning looking

0:25

at my television? Yes, but

0:27

it's July 4th so we're grilling stuff.

0:30

Anyway, we have an awesome episode coming up for

0:32

you today. We are going to basically start a

0:34

tech company together. Neil Eppesel, Alex

0:36

Kranz and I are going to, as

0:38

a group of CEOs, which couldn't possibly

0:40

go poorly, figure out how we would

0:42

build a tech company out of the

0:44

tech industry as it exists now. It

0:47

sounds a little complicated but I'll explain the rules when we

0:49

get into it. It'll all make sense. But

0:51

basically I wanted to see if you were to

0:53

start from scratch and say, okay, what are the

0:55

best products in tech? What can I take? What

0:57

can I put together? What can I build that

0:59

would be cool and different and that we could

1:01

make awesome? How would we do that? We had

1:03

a lot of fun putting this together and figured this would be a

1:06

fun time to do it. It's July. The

1:08

news is a little bit slow. We're about to get

1:10

into crazy gadget season again but it felt like a

1:13

fun way to take a different kind of look at

1:15

the tech industry. I should also say some

1:17

credit for this whole concept goes to a

1:19

podcast I really like called The Big Picture.

1:22

Really good show about movies and they did

1:24

one recently where the two of them started

1:27

their own studios together and they

1:29

kind of did a draft and picked actors and writers

1:31

and it was a very fun episode. I

1:33

just kind of stole that concept and we're going

1:35

to take it and turn it and do something

1:37

similar on the show today. We're going to start

1:39

a tech company. I'm very curious what

1:41

you think as you listen to it. If you think

1:43

we made bad decisions, if you think we made good

1:46

decisions, if you think we're monsters, I want to hear

1:48

everything. Call the hotline 866-VERS-11. Email

1:51

us, vergecastatheverge.com. Tell us how you'd

1:53

start a tech company. Maybe between

1:55

us we're going to take over the tech industry.

1:57

It's going to be awesome. Anyway, all of that is

1:59

coming. up in just a second. But first,

2:01

I just noticed that I turned the grill

2:03

on without actually turning the propane on. So

2:06

this is how good I am at grilling. I'm gonna go fix

2:08

that problem. This is the VergeCast. We'll be right back. Support

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for the show comes from AWS. As

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part of a $230 million commitment to generative AI

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startups, Amazon Web Services launched their

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global generative AI accelerator. This program

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is designed to accelerate the next

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3:18

All right, we're back. Let's go.

3:20

Neela Patel. Hello. Hello. Alex Kranz. Hello.

3:22

Hello. I'm excited to be a CEO

3:24

today, right? Thank you both for coming

3:27

to maybe the most convoluted, insane game

3:29

I have yet devised on the broadcast,

3:32

but I'm very excited about this. The

3:34

structure of this is basically as follows.

3:37

The three hosts are now co-CEO's of

3:40

a tech company because I would say

3:42

historically speaking, companies with three CEOs tend

3:44

to be the most successful. Yeah, it's

3:46

like Blackberry a little bit more. Just

3:48

like what if you added one more

3:50

person who had some weird ideas

3:52

and wanted to own a hockey team? It could

3:55

be great. And we are going to build our

3:57

own company out of parts of other companies. how

4:00

this is gonna work. So I have, I think

4:02

it's either 10 or 11 categories here that we

4:04

as a tech company are going to enter by

4:07

taking that product from another company. There

4:09

are several rules. Again, this is

4:11

very convoluted, but it's gonna work.

4:13

It's gonna be fine once we get into

4:15

it. Everything we take from a tech company,

4:17

we get as it exists right now, whatever

4:19

it's selling, whoever it is that makes it

4:21

all the factory deals, all the marketing stuff,

4:23

everything. We can change it as we like,

4:25

but we don't get the idea of it.

4:27

We get the thing as it is right

4:29

now. We only care about things up to

4:31

2030. After that, who

4:33

knows? We're all gonna live on Mars. So

4:35

we're playing like a six year long game

4:37

here. And frankly, if we as the triumvirative

4:39

CEOs last until 2030, we will have

4:42

been wildly successful. I'm banking out really

4:44

fast. Yeah. As soon as we IPO, I'm gone.

4:46

Alex is resting investing from like day one

4:48

here. It's gonna be great. We can spend as

4:50

much money as we want, but making

4:52

money is not the point. We're actually not gonna

4:55

talk about money at all on this show. Okay.

4:57

We don't wanna go out of business, but our

4:59

main goal is just to build the greatest tech

5:01

company in the history of the universe. Like that

5:03

is what we're after here, because this is like,

5:06

if we start talking about the money side of

5:08

things, it just gets weird and complicated in ways

5:10

that we don't have time for. That's what we're

5:12

gonna tell our investors. We're just gonna be like,

5:14

look guys, if we talk about money, this is

5:17

gonna get weird and complicated. You just relax. We're

5:19

just out to make an AGI. Don't worry about it

5:21

guys. Yeah. Like for 20 years, Jeff Bezos was like, I

5:23

can make money whenever I feel like it. For now, I'm

5:26

just gonna like make cool stuff. Like that's the vibe. That's

5:29

our tech company. And I would say

5:31

the two most important things as we

5:33

pick here are we can only take

5:36

one product from each company. So once

5:38

we have used something from Apple, we

5:40

cannot use anything else from Apple or

5:42

Samsung or Google or whoever else, one

5:44

product per company, which I

5:46

think is going to be very complicated. That product

5:48

also cannot be the whole company. So if there

5:50

is a company that makes a single product with

5:52

its name, like I originally had

5:55

Figma in one of our categories. There's like a

5:57

thing we might wanna take, but if you take

5:59

Figma from Figma, there is no Figma anymore,

6:01

so that doesn't count. Well, what about FigJam?

6:05

Sure. No. Moving right

6:07

along. Yes, sure. That's actually, I'll give you

6:09

that. Another one I had

6:12

is like, oh, here's a good example. We can't

6:14

take Salesforce from Salesforce, but we could take Slack

6:16

from Salesforce. Oh, I see. So if Apple had

6:18

a product called Apple, you would just be like,

6:20

no. That accounted for 98% of its revenue, yeah.

6:24

So sure, I guess under that rule, we can take FigJam. I'll

6:28

add FigJam back to the list. Most

6:30

importantly, this is not competitive. We are three CEOs.

6:32

We are doing this together, and so we have

6:34

to agree on everything that we're going to take,

6:37

which I assume means this is going to take

6:39

12 hours. Is there

6:41

such thing as a hung jury in this situation?

6:43

No, because there are three of us, and if

6:45

it comes to it, we will vote, and two

6:47

to one will win. This is why we have

6:49

three CEOs. It's a perfect, I

6:51

can't believe no one has thought of this.

6:53

Yeah, why are people doing one and two?

6:56

Odd number CEOs solves all your problems. Yeah.

6:58

Yeah. Okay, here are the categories. We're gonna

7:00

do smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Then

7:02

we're gonna take a break. We're gonna do

7:04

wearables, headphones, app platforms, which

7:06

is not specific apps, but think of

7:09

app businesses, like Microsoft Office is one

7:11

of the options in that category. And

7:14

then we're going to do what I have called boring B2B money

7:16

faucets, which is the thing that makes you all the money that

7:18

nobody ever wants to talk about. Then we're gonna take another break,

7:21

and then we're gonna do messaging, streaming service, wildcard

7:23

gadgets, and wildcard everything else. And then we're gonna

7:25

get out of here, and we're gonna go be

7:27

filthy rich. Sound good? I'm so excited to be

7:30

rich. All right, category number one

7:32

is smartphones. This to me is maybe the easiest,

7:34

but also maybe the most difficult one to do

7:36

first, which is why I wanted it to do

7:38

it first. See, I also agree with you, because

7:40

I think we're probably along the same lines for

7:43

what the phone should be. Well, the

7:45

only thing that makes it different is David told

7:47

us not to worry about money. Oh, interesting. We

7:49

don't worry about money. Well, if you give one

7:51

wit about money, you take the iPhone. Yes. Right?

7:53

Because then now you've funded whatever other boondoggles you

7:56

wanna get on. Then we can

7:58

pick the Kobo for tablets and it's fine.

8:00

That's what we should do. Exactly. You're right

8:02

on the same way, Link. But if you

8:04

don't care about money, then you might have

8:06

a substantive discussion about what phone you want.

8:08

Well, so, okay, let me frame this slightly

8:10

differently. We don't care. We are not spending

8:12

our time thinking about quarterly earnings and shareholder

8:14

value, but we do want to win, right?

8:16

And like big picture win. Then we're taking

8:18

the iPhone. Yeah. I've crushed you.

8:21

We're taking the iPhone. We win. I

8:23

think that's right. I think the only reason for me that

8:25

the iPhone is challenging is that there are a lot of

8:27

categories here in which Apple is also very good and some

8:29

in which it has a lot less competition. Oh,

8:32

no, no, I can, every other category,

8:34

I can, I can defeat everyone else

8:36

with the power of the iPhone's lock-in.

8:38

Oh, interesting. Do you trust me? You

8:40

just wait. And I'm allowed to change

8:42

stuff? Yeah, we're good. We nailed

8:44

it. It's fine. Oh my

8:46

God. I just realized we're going to speed

8:48

run building an app tax. Yeah, it's

8:50

going to go so fast. You think I

8:52

don't care about money, David? Yeah,

8:57

somewhere, Lena Khan just started listening to this and she's like, this

9:00

is, she's like, this isn't the tech company I would have built.

9:02

We're not even going to be allowed to make a company. Lena

9:05

Khan's like, nope, no, not this. Your fake company is illegal, sir.

9:08

Okay, but just for this, for the sake of

9:10

argument, the other nominees that I had here were

9:13

Samsung, which I think is probably the only other

9:15

reasonable competitor here, the Google Pixel, if you're, you

9:17

know, feeling good about yourself, the Nothing phone, which

9:19

is a fun, like, dark horse if you want

9:21

to, like, bet on doing something weird and cool

9:24

in the next six years until Interesting

9:27

bet. Huawei OnePlus, Asus, Motorola, like

9:29

it gets bleak pretty fast. Real

9:32

fast. Were you hoping that one of

9:35

us would be like, Motorola? I was hoping one

9:37

of you would fight for Samsung, to be honest,

9:39

just because I think it's possible to maybe want

9:41

to pick an Apple product in another one. Because

9:43

we've now ruled out every other Apple product. No,

9:45

because I'm looking at through the rest and I'm

9:47

like, I'm like, there's other really good competitors in

9:50

these other places. Like the iPhone,

9:52

if you're if the phone is like

9:54

the engine of the business, which

9:57

it feels like probably is true, then we

9:59

want the iPhone. I mean alternatively the one

10:01

that I would have argued for would have

10:03

been the pixel because then the one thing

10:05

you would change about It would be caring

10:08

and then and then it would be good.

10:10

Yeah, but the iPhone We've got like the

10:12

people who are making the good processors on

10:14

the iPhone. Whereas the pixel we've got not

10:16

that sure But you know a little

10:18

a little caring goes on. Yeah, that's like also

10:20

trying to market the phone would be Useful.

10:23

I mean, yeah, like in terms of raw

10:26

upside the ROI I think for the pixel would

10:28

be huge. Whereas the iPhone I've a hard time

10:30

imagining making the iPhone more successful But it's also

10:32

very successful. I think the answer is just the

10:34

iPhone I don't know that we need to talk

10:36

about this much longer. It's gonna solve every other

10:38

problem on this list So again, I would I

10:41

would remind you that one of the things we

10:43

are not trying to do here is build a

10:45

services business or a monopoly Wait,

10:47

we're not trying to build a monopoly. We want

10:49

to win. So you're saying this

10:51

collection of three CEOs Has to

10:53

have some values. Yeah, we want to like be

10:55

cool. Our main value is like be cool Okay,

10:58

I want to have a monopoly in a cool

11:00

way. Yeah We

11:03

can move on. All right. So the iPhone

11:05

next up tablets Which is ironically

11:07

a very similar set of companies But I

11:09

would say that we can't pick the iPad

11:11

so the iPad is out which leaves us

11:14

with the four nominees I picked so far

11:16

were the Samsung Galaxy tabs the Google

11:18

pixel tablet such as it is Amazon's whole

11:20

Kindle lineup, which I think counts as a

11:22

tablet Kobo you could do one plus There's

11:24

a lot of tablets out there We could

11:26

argue about the Microsoft Surface as a tablet

11:28

line, but I think I won't count that

11:30

we'll get to that in a minute What

11:32

do you guys think who's favorite here? I think

11:35

we go with the books and then

11:37

we have the Apple the iPhone team

11:39

make the operating system good Wait,

11:41

is that can you can you make that choice? Can I

11:43

pick the galaxy but it runs iPad OS? No,

11:46

but it but if we don't take the iPad we don't get iPad OS

11:48

We're gonna use iOS to put out put

11:50

that on the books. Oh, and then I didn't

11:52

we didn't take Mac OS Which are in the real move. We

11:55

can't we? Huh? Yeah,

11:57

see so you wait. It was a

11:59

little one wind this week. You put

12:01

a wreck on all of this to get an

12:03

iPad running Mac OS. I have to like take

12:05

the pixel So I can take the MacBook so

12:07

I can take the Samsung Galaxy and make it

12:09

run Mac OS To

12:12

get to a Galaxy pad running Mac OS. I have

12:14

to take the pixel and then a MacBook. That would

12:16

be the way I'm gonna be honest. I don't hate

12:18

that strategy. I Feel

12:20

like this board of directors meeting will be very confusing

12:24

No, I'm with I'm with Krantz I think

12:26

you take the Kindle lineup did jazz up

12:28

the software a little bit people are happy

12:30

I wanted to go books to escape the

12:32

lock-in because I feel like we saved some

12:34

money with that acquisition But we

12:36

can solve the lock-in remember Android is open source.

12:39

So Android is fair game No matter what we

12:41

do. We can just have Android we can on

12:43

DRM the books as well Yeah Yeah and I

12:45

think so then the real question is like who

12:47

who is better at making the hardware that we

12:49

can take and have a Pretty solid lead on

12:51

and I feel like I feel like it's Amazon

12:54

like books does cool stuff But I feel like

12:56

if we we just steal the Amazon team and

12:58

we're like, what if we did a good job

13:00

again Yeah, because we get we get panos. Oh,

13:02

yeah, we get panos. Yeah, we're doing the Kindle.

13:04

That's right I feel good about that. Yeah, we're

13:06

doing the Kindle. We're gonna make it good now.

13:08

It's a real culture higher right there Yeah, do

13:11

we immediately kill the whole Kindle Fireline and we

13:13

just focus on E Inc. No, no, no, that's

13:15

good for kids Okay So actually I would say

13:17

we take the the tablet thing we're taking is

13:19

like the extended Kindle the Kindle universe we get

13:21

Yeah All this class of cat tablets is accomplishing

13:23

for anyone is Playing

13:26

Disney Plus for your children. So we're

13:28

just like the Kindle Fire kids is

13:30

the centerpiece of our tablet strategy And then we also

13:32

just make a nice e-reader on the side that runs

13:35

iOS Yeah, and then I can go to a very

13:37

state capital So I mean like you want you want

13:39

to make laws protecting kids make a

13:41

law saying you have to buy a Kindle fire Yeah,

13:44

there we go. I mean, I love

13:46

how we're like making a really good

13:48

culturally important company that also doesn't break

13:50

laws I'm not trying to break the

13:52

laws. I'm trying to make the law. Yeah, I'm trying to be

13:54

the law If

13:56

you don't buy a Kindle Fire you will be

13:58

arrested Here is my

14:00

question, is do we reboot the Fire

14:03

Phone with our iPhone team? Yeah. Yeah.

14:06

Which part? Are we like- The 3D display. We've

14:08

already added 50 cameras to the phone. What if

14:11

we had four more to make it 3D? Yeah,

14:14

and it's one of them is just for barcodes.

14:16

Yeah. Amazon Kindle, easy choice.

14:18

Next up is PCs. And I think

14:20

the list of folks is fairly familiar

14:22

here. Alex, what do you got? Okay,

14:24

so the list is, we can't do

14:27

Apple, we got Microsoft, Lenovo, ASUS, Acer,

14:29

HP, Razor, Dell. I think we should

14:31

go Lenovo. Because if you get rid

14:33

of all of the spamware that

14:36

they like automatically install, you have some

14:38

really nice laptops. You've got really nice

14:40

hardware. Yeah, you got really nice hardware.

14:42

And then we make the iOS team,

14:44

they're gonna be working nights, but

14:47

they're gonna have to basically like reinvent

14:50

macOS. Like they can figure it out. You

14:52

just get back into it. iOS

14:54

started with macOS and they're like, go the other way.

14:57

I fully believe in them. If

14:59

we can make PC clones, we can do this too. But

15:02

we don't have the chips. I guess we do because we have the

15:04

iPhone. So now we just put a hinge and a lid on an

15:06

iPhone. Like that's a laptop.

15:09

Yeah. Which is more or less the iPad. I

15:11

just wanna be very clear about what we're discussing.

15:13

We're like, we make iPads now. But it's also

15:15

got the little, it's got the little dot. Oh

15:17

yeah, the little, the trackpad guy. Yeah. See,

15:20

I was gonna say Microsoft because I want

15:22

control of the operating system. That's where I

15:25

go to. Right. And

15:27

I want the Surface line. I don't. Now

15:29

I've pulled the tablet ecosystem bigger, right? I've

15:31

got my kindles and my Kindle fires. And

15:33

I've got the Surface Pro and

15:35

I've got a whole range of products. Tell

15:37

us about all of the really good laptops

15:40

and all in ones that we're gonna get

15:42

with our Microsoft acquisition. So here, again, a

15:44

lot of my strategy is just try hard.

15:46

Okay. Right? Just to be clear. So

15:48

they have a Surface Studio, but like what if you

15:50

put a real chip in it? Mm. Huh?

15:53

And that's just me in meetings. What if

15:56

circle this on the whiteboard and then write

15:58

try hard and then three exclamation. points, then

16:00

that's my whole surface strategy. We can make

16:02

it all run RISC-V. The

16:06

power of one Raspberry Pi 4. Yeah,

16:09

my vote, David, you're the

16:11

tiebreaker here. It's between Microsoft and Lenovo. I

16:13

agree, Lenovo makes some of the better hardware

16:15

here. You make a compelling point about being

16:17

able to have Windows and make it good.

16:20

The one wrench I would like to throw

16:22

in is that if we get Dell, we

16:24

just instantly have the best lineup of Windows

16:26

PCs that exists. But we don't

16:28

have Windows. We don't have Windows. Do we want

16:31

Windows? You know, like, for example, like, I would

16:33

like to walk up to the box that says

16:35

like security and try hard. I will

16:37

say, though, under the rules of this game, though, I

16:39

don't we I think what we're getting is like a

16:41

perpetual license to Windows. I don't think we're getting even

16:43

inside. That's probably how the service. Yeah, I don't think

16:46

we get to run Windows. But so when we took

16:48

the iPhone, we don't get to run iOS. No, we

16:50

do. That one counts. It does.

16:52

It feels different. I can't describe to you

16:54

why. No, it's because it's one device to

16:56

one operating system. This is not one device

16:59

to one operating system. We are a partner

17:01

to the operating system, not the only venue

17:03

for the operating system. Even if we're Microsoft,

17:05

we're not, but we're the surface team. We

17:07

aren't Microsoft. We're VergeCast Incorporated. We're not taking

17:10

Windows from Microsoft. I

17:12

still think it's Microsoft just because

17:14

I think we're clearly building a

17:17

luxury thing here. And I

17:19

think getting there with Lenovo is going

17:21

to be challenging. Like, I don't I don't know how

17:23

we're going to convince everybody that Lenovo is like kickass

17:25

cool again. I think we can get there with Surface.

17:27

Well, no, we're not we're not Lenovo. We're just we're

17:29

just taking the product. We're doing a little rebrand. We

17:31

got the ThinkPad. Yeah, you're right. A little coat of

17:33

paint on there. Get the yogas. You guys

17:36

want some yogas? Yeah, they do

17:38

the flippy things. I'm going to make tent mode

17:40

happen for America. OK, I'm I'm going Lenovo because

17:42

I think we're going to want Microsoft later. I

17:44

think there are other things in this list that

17:47

are going to be more useful to have for

17:49

Microsoft. So I think we should pick Lenovo. You're

17:51

right. That's true. I'm dying to

17:53

know what you think those things are, but we'll come

17:55

back to it. Think of all the boring things that

17:57

make you the most valuable company on planet Earth. And

18:01

that's what Microsoft does so well. It's

18:03

not the Surface team. Yeah, I think, all

18:05

right, so we're picking Lenovo. Welcome

18:08

to the team, the little nub.

18:11

What's that thing called? The track point? Is that what

18:13

that's called? Track point, track point. Love that thing. We just

18:15

call it a nub. We're rebranding it

18:18

immediately. Just immediately. That's the first

18:20

thing we do, day one. Yeah, I love

18:22

this. All right, so just to recap

18:24

so far, we're gonna take a quick break. We have,

18:27

as VergeCast Incorporated, we now make

18:29

the Apple iPhone, the Amazon Kindle,

18:31

and Lenovo's set of PCs. I feel like we're

18:33

doing very well so far. I'm excited about this.

18:35

Yeah, we're doing well. All right, we're gonna take

18:37

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18:39

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21:58

We haven't talked about our payback. structure, by the way,

22:00

as co-CEOs. But we'll come back to that. It's going

22:03

to be very lucrative for us because again, we're only

22:05

going to be in this job for six years, so

22:07

we got to, we got to do it and get

22:09

out. Yeah. Next category. I think this

22:11

might be the richest and sort of

22:13

most evenly competitive category of all the ones we're about

22:15

to do is wearables. And I'm

22:17

defining wearables deliberately, broadly, anything that

22:19

you wear on your body counts.

22:22

We can't do things like the

22:24

Apple watch or the vision pro.

22:26

We can't do all of Amazon's

22:28

weird Alexa wearable stuff, but I

22:30

would say mostly we're still

22:32

pretty wide open. You have X real on

22:34

here. Yeah, I do have X real on

22:36

here. I'm not saying we should pick

22:38

it. I'm just saying it's a company I thought of when I

22:40

said wearable out loud to myself. What

22:42

do you guys think? Any, any jump out to you

22:45

that we should definitely get into? I

22:47

have a clear favorite here. Out the gate, I'm going

22:49

bold and taking meta for the Ray-Bans. Oh,

22:51

okay. Oh, that's a good point. I wasn't even, I

22:53

was thinking of the headset. I forgot

22:55

about the glasses. Yeah. Okay. On that front, do

22:58

we get one or the other or do we

23:00

get both? Like if we, if we say quest,

23:02

we get all the quests in

23:04

one product, but I feel like the smart glasses are

23:06

a different thing. Get your face computers away from me.

23:08

You know what I mean? Just that. No, no, no.

23:11

Other, what are three bands? You

23:13

just want the smart glasses. I just want the glass.

23:15

Even if we get the whole team, we're immediately killing

23:17

the quest line and we're just going smart glasses. That's

23:19

what he was dead. I just want to, that's what

23:21

meta just said. Mark fist reorganized that team. So

23:24

I'm saying the glasses are the future.

23:26

Okay. And we're putting, we're putting our

23:29

excess iPhone profits into the glasses. Interesting.

23:31

I mean, if the glasses like ran

23:34

a really good AI,

23:36

well, no, we don't have one of those, we have Siri.

23:38

Although on a six year time horizon, it's like, Hmm,

23:41

maybe I just want to take Samsung's watches and do a lot.

23:46

I mean, that is, that is actually an

23:48

interesting question, right? I guess are we betting

23:50

that smart glasses are going to be sufficiently

23:52

huge by 2030 that this is like worth

23:54

it for us, or are we just taking

23:56

like a nerd gadget for the next six

23:59

years? No, this makes sense. for us because

24:01

we're cool, we're luxury. What's

24:03

this luxury like a pair of Ray-Bans? Fair,

24:05

okay, I have two others I'd like to throw at you. An Aura ring.

24:08

That is one of the things I was gonna

24:10

throw at you. I think Aura is like a

24:12

sneakily fascinating company and they're way ahead in smart

24:15

rings. Smart rings are a lot of people think,

24:17

including our own V song, About to Be a

24:19

Real Thing. I think, especially if

24:21

you're betting that this like health and fitness

24:23

thing is gonna keep growing really fast, that's

24:25

a place to go. I also

24:27

think Garmin for kind of the same reasons, what

24:29

if we can redesign Garmin's watches so that they

24:32

don't look dumb, but they have all the cool

24:34

stuff that Garmin already has that people really like.

24:36

I feel like you could make something

24:38

out of Garmin. I also, my immediate reaction

24:40

when we did this was snap because I

24:43

want the spectacles line, but I think we

24:45

go Ray-Ban meta, smart glasses, and that gets

24:47

us everywhere we're going probably significantly faster. Yeah,

24:50

it's basically do we wanna go watch

24:52

ring or glasses? Totally. But if

24:54

we go Samsung, we do watch and ring,

24:56

right? Well, so the thing that this

24:58

I think makes very clear is

25:00

you can take any of the watches and

25:03

you can do iPhone lock-in and now you have

25:05

a realistic competitor to the Apple Watch. Right,

25:08

like that's the thing that actually

25:10

holds a bunch of these companies back is

25:12

they cannot communicate with the iPhone. Right.

25:15

Yeah, but be cool, Neelai. It's

25:18

written at the top of the building of

25:20

our headquarters. It just says be cool. What's

25:22

cooler than lock-in? What's cooler than lock-in?

25:24

Yeah, the change I make is being like, all

25:27

right, whoop, you're in, like let's go, you know? Yeah. Like

25:30

you can now more directly figure out Apple

25:32

integrations. Buy a ThinkPad, get a whoop, let's

25:34

go. But I'm saying if

25:36

that, on a six year time horizon,

25:38

maybe that is a better move

25:41

than take the meta

25:43

Ray-Bans and figure out how

25:45

glasses work, which by the way, glasses also

25:48

held back because they cannot properly integrate with

25:50

your phone. Yeah. This

25:52

is like a real problem for all these products. But

25:54

yeah, that's why the glasses,

25:56

we get them properly integrating with the phone,

25:59

then we... We also have like an

26:01

additional audio solution. When you say an

26:04

additional audio solution, that means some headphones.

26:06

Well, you know, headphones, the headphones coming

26:08

up next. So. You've been

26:10

a CEO for 20 minutes. You are already super

26:12

corporate. Yeah, we need more than

26:15

one audio solution for our company, guys. I've

26:17

prepared a deck to talk about this. We

26:19

need to be diversified in our audio. It's

26:22

good, it happens to everybody. It happens, just

26:24

the media, yeah. But the

26:26

Garmin, like the Garmin has so much cool stuff

26:29

in it. They just look so ugly. And

26:31

we've got the Apple team now, right? They can like make it

26:33

look good. That team, that poor

26:36

team in Panos Panay just chained to their desk. We

26:38

need that team to keep making iPhones though. I don't

26:40

know. It's not like they're doing a lot. They're like,

26:42

take the buttons off it. Yeah. That's

26:47

true, it's thinner next time. We

26:49

did it. I think you're the tiebreaker.

26:51

I think it's between Garmin and Meta.

26:53

Once again, David, you have to pull

26:55

apart this corporate battle. I think we

26:57

should pick Meta. Ooh. Because I

27:00

think the Ray-Ban Meta

27:02

partnership is cool. I

27:05

think the glasses are awesome and people really like

27:07

them. And I think our ability

27:09

to like integrate them a little and make

27:11

them way better for people, instant

27:14

victory. Like I think with the other picks that

27:16

we have here, we have a chance to like

27:18

immediately make these things much cooler in a way

27:20

that I feel like we're gonna have to basically

27:23

like tear down the Garmin hardware team and build

27:25

it back up. And I feel like that's gonna

27:27

take us a while. Yeah, that's gonna be more

27:29

than six years. Garmin, please know that I love

27:32

you and you make cool things just like make

27:34

them cooler. Garmin, if you'd like to integrate with

27:36

Vergast Incorporated's iPhone, you can pass 55%. Yeah,

27:39

we'd love to have you. We've got some really good

27:41

audio solutions for you. The developer program

27:43

is open and it will only be slightly more than

27:45

half of your revenue. Yeah, also

27:48

the smart glasses are just like cool and

27:50

I love using them and I wanna have

27:52

them. So we're going with that. I feel

27:54

good about it. I don't love that we

27:56

just hire a hardware team out of Meta,

27:58

which makes me feel good. feel a lot

28:00

of feelings in general, but it's

28:02

okay. We're doing it. We now

28:04

know everything about you. Our

28:07

privacy policy, by the way, is dope. Like,

28:09

let's just take that for granted. Because you're

28:11

wondering about our privacy policy, it is sick.

28:13

The EU never gets mad at us. No,

28:15

it's like not a problem at all. I

28:17

should have said at the beginning, by the

28:19

way, by picking the iPhone, we did just

28:21

bring ourselves a delightful antitrust case that I'm

28:23

not super psyched about, but I

28:25

feel like it's one of those that's coming anyway.

28:28

Right, like we might as well. We're gonna call

28:30

us. Neelai has been begging to fight an antitrust

28:32

case. So like, it's time. From this side. That's

28:34

really what I've been after this whole time, is

28:37

let me be the monopolist. It's

28:39

perfect. I'm just saying we're raising rents. If we're going

28:41

down, we're going down rich. Yeah,

28:43

and by the time any of this comes out, it'll be

28:46

past 2030, we'll be out anyway. It's fine, I'm not

28:48

worried about it. All right, next category is

28:50

headphones. And here again, we're pretty wide open.

28:52

Apple is off the board, but I'm gonna

28:54

allow Beats to stay on the board because

28:56

it is different enough that I

28:58

think we'll allow it. Because they don't care

29:00

about it. Yeah, pretty much. Like, I don't

29:02

know if Apple knows that it owns Beats,

29:04

so we're just gonna let it ride. But

29:07

there's also obvious players here, Bose and Sony,

29:09

and Sonos is a new one. Just headphones

29:11

though. Well, no, we'll make this headphone slash

29:13

speakers. We'll go audio solutions. Oh my gosh.

29:15

In Alex Granz. I think you know exactly

29:17

where we're going with this. Neelai is gonna

29:19

advocate for the party speaker. Yeah, I'm taking

29:21

Sony. Now that's audio solutions.

29:24

Yeah, we got a wider range. It's

29:27

the ULT era. I mean, you want luxury. What

29:30

screams luxury more than the words a megabase?

29:33

A seven foot tall speaker. By the way,

29:35

shout out to the Vertch Ass listeners who

29:37

just send me pictures of it in the

29:39

wild. Amazing. It's like they're birding, you know,

29:41

but like only one person cares about birds.

29:43

And it's me. How

29:46

does it feel to be known for the

29:48

Cybertruck Wiper and Sony party speakers? Like, is

29:50

this a good legacy that you're happy about?

29:52

Is that on the Lyc, Cybertruck Wiper? On

29:55

the Wild Card Gadgets Cybertruck Wiper? We have

29:57

two Wild Card options, so don't worry. For

29:59

me. I want Sonos real bad because again, we're in this

30:02

like, we want to build cool stuff that's integrated.

30:05

Sonos makes good products. They know how to make good audio products. I

30:07

feel like we could take Sonos and be like, just

30:09

learn how to make software. Everything's going to be

30:11

fine. Just learn this easy part. Yeah. Like,

30:14

have you heard of apps? What if we did that?

30:16

This could be fine. So again, I would actually take

30:18

Sony here, not just because of the

30:20

party speaker situation. I think our headphones

30:22

are really good. They are. My Sony noise

30:24

cancelers are really good. I think they compete with Bose to be the

30:26

top of the world. Then

30:28

they've got an actual audio solutions catalog, like

30:32

an actual array of speakers. And like,

30:34

what is one product I want desperately from

30:36

Sonos that they won't sell is like a receiver, right?

30:38

Like there's a huge array of those audio products that

30:42

you can ruthlessly integrate with a phone in a way

30:44

that even Sonos can't right now. That's why they have

30:46

the software problems. Like their app platform has to support

30:48

a bunch of stuff because they

30:50

can't just put it on your phone directly. And

30:52

also Megabase, I would just get it. I

30:55

would have it. Alex, I'm going to get it. I

30:57

would have it. Alex, what do you think? I

30:59

just really like the Sony headphones. They

31:01

just have such a nice wider range. Like

31:04

Sonos just got into headphones. They don't have

31:06

any in-ear monitors. They don't have any buds.

31:09

Also tough time to be taking over Sonos, like

31:11

real kind of reputation hit. Oh, you know what

31:14

you don't have on here? What's that? And again,

31:16

I'm just going to point this out for everyone.

31:18

I think the age of televisions is coming to

31:20

an end because David made a list of gadgets

31:23

and didn't put TVs on them. Yeah, I don't

31:25

care. No part of me wants to

31:27

build televisions. Well, I'll just remind everyone that I asked

31:29

the CEO of Netflix about the Samsung Frame TV. And

31:31

he was like, why are you just stuck talking to

31:33

me? I was like,

31:35

do you think this is a harbinger of doom? And he was

31:37

like, I don't know what you're saying. I own one. But

31:40

I'm just saying, you made an entire list of gadgets and you didn't

31:42

put TVs on here. It's a

31:44

prophecy. Because he knew you were going to say we're

31:47

going to acquire the Samsung Frame and fix it. To

31:49

be clear, not an oversight. We are not

31:51

getting in the television business. What if we

31:53

made no money and everything was impossible and

31:55

we had to spy on our users? All

31:57

I'm saying is if TV's around here anywhere,

32:00

I would change my headphones back. If

32:02

you're giving me audio solutions but not

32:04

TVs, then it's Sony.

32:06

If your TVs are back on

32:08

the list, then I'm required by

32:11

blood and heritage to take Sony televisions.

32:14

And then I would change my headphones back. So

32:16

we do have a wildcard round coming later. And

32:18

if you think you can win the fight for

32:21

us to get Sony TVs, you can hold your

32:23

fire for them. I'm gonna fight for TCL so

32:25

hard. Yeah, I don't think you're gonna win the

32:27

Sony TVs. I just don't think we

32:29

wanna be in the TV business. Well, if I take them off

32:31

the board here, it's a big decision. How

32:33

do I get Mac OS in the tablet? It's

32:35

kind of the, you know, I gotta play three

32:37

moves ahead. I will be down with Sony here.

32:39

By the way, tough beat for Bose that none

32:41

of us are even attempting to take Bose. They're

32:44

fine. Well, you made it audio solutions. If

32:46

it was just headphones, I would

32:48

immediately go Bose so I could win the Sony

32:51

fight later. Interesting, okay. Yeah, and

32:53

I don't, it's just like a bunch of weird scientists

32:55

in Massachusetts. Like, we don't need that. I'll

32:58

go Sony under one stipulation, which is that

33:00

we immediately rename every single product they make

33:02

to something not stupid. No, with more letters.

33:06

Twice as many letters. And

33:08

another dash in the middle for no reason. Just

33:12

get in there. Okay, I think

33:14

it's Sony. Okay. I feel good

33:16

about this. I think we're aligned. I can

33:18

figure something out for TVs. I feel now obligated to

33:21

take something from Samsung just so that you can't argue

33:23

for the frame TV because I don't need this in

33:25

my life. That's not what I was gonna take.

33:28

Again, I believe it's a harbinger of doom. Okay,

33:31

so the next two things on here are,

33:33

I would say the sneaky places we're gonna

33:35

make a lot of money. This is what

33:38

pays for everything else that the

33:40

shareholders are gonna love and we're probably never gonna

33:42

talk about again. The first one

33:44

is app platforms, which I suppose could be a

33:46

single app if we wanted a single app,

33:48

but I'm thinking more along the lines of like

33:51

big groups of things. So like I had

33:53

Adobe Creative Cloud as an option here and Microsoft

33:55

Office and Google Workspace. This is like probably B2B

33:57

software that is going to make it. us

33:59

just a tremendous amount of money. What do we

34:01

think? So I have to go

34:04

with office. Okay. Only for one small reason.

34:06

And I can't believe you didn't think of

34:08

it first, David. We cannot run this company

34:10

without Microsoft Excel. Oh, that's interesting. No company

34:12

can be run without Microsoft Excel, like just

34:15

for our own survival. You know, you can

34:17

just like pay for a license. We'll have

34:19

so much money. We can just pay for

34:21

a license for Excel. But what if other

34:24

people paid us for licenses? Yeah, I'm just

34:26

saying you want you want to you want

34:28

to dog food? You know, you're on work.

34:30

Yeah, but we can have Adobe Creative Cloud

34:32

and just have a stranglehold on the entire

34:35

industry. You want people to hate us. We

34:37

can just like I love a monopoly. I'm

34:39

on this side of things now. Another antitrust

34:41

fight that I'm really excited about. Yeah. We're

34:44

only going to be there six years. By

34:46

the time that stuff all hits, we'll be

34:48

long gone. So I think the upside of

34:50

Creative Cloud is we take Creative Cloud, we

34:53

make the pricing better and we're legends.

34:55

Right. Like instantly best possible PR win

34:57

is we just like give

35:00

away Premier. We're just like here, you can

35:02

have it. No, we sell like rather than

35:04

the cloud license. We're like, okay, you can

35:06

just buy Premier, but it'll cost a thousand

35:08

dollars. Yeah. Then we make a

35:10

lot of money and people are happy because they can

35:12

just own it for six years. Yeah, for six years.

35:15

And then it's gone. And then, and then, you know,

35:17

whoever follows us, Panos, I'm sorry,

35:19

you're taking over the company from us. Good

35:21

luck. A lot of our ideas are like,

35:23

what if we made slightly less money? But

35:25

that's fine. Whereas my ideas are what if

35:27

we made a lot more money? Yeah.

35:30

This says a lot about the distinct

35:32

vibes of the Vergecast incorporated team. I

35:34

would say it's either office or

35:36

it's Creative Cloud. Right. I feel like there's

35:38

nothing else you like. We could go try

35:40

to get like Oracle's weird business or like

35:42

IBM's consulting arm or whatever, but we haven't

35:45

picked a Google thing. Do we not want

35:47

Google workspace? Do we just take Google

35:49

workspace and go kill this? So my

35:51

idea here, again, you know, our company's

35:53

mission is try hard. Yeah. And workspace

35:55

is a ripe target for trying hard.

35:57

Yeah. This is also where you could

35:59

do. You could walk in the room

36:01

and be like, make a list of all

36:03

the messaging products and then walk out. And six months

36:05

later, you come back in and look at the list

36:08

and circle like this one. We're just doing this one.

36:11

And we're gonna name it G-chat. That's a

36:13

thing you could do here. It is, it is. Messaging,

36:15

I would point out, is a separate category. So we're gonna get

36:17

to messaging. But if we, whatever company we pick here, we can't

36:19

pick there. Which

36:21

is a case for and against some

36:23

folks here. And if we pick Microsoft

36:25

Office, we can't pick Azure. If

36:28

we pick Google Workspace, we can't pick

36:30

Google Cloud. That's right. No, I'm

36:32

just picking Google Cloud. Come on. Okay,

36:34

I will concede and say we should pick Creative

36:36

Cloud. And our mission here is to make people

36:39

not hate us. Yeah, I think this is

36:41

where we win over all the

36:43

people to use our hardware because they're gonna love,

36:45

this is how we sell Lenovo Thinkpads. Because of

36:48

55% lock-in. You

36:50

can run Creative Cloud on someone else's

36:52

laptop. It'll just cost four times as

36:55

much money. Yeah. I don't

36:57

make the rules. Yeah. Except for

36:59

that one. We just like the more your

37:01

company makes, we charge you more. Like just

37:03

a sliding scale. Oh, I like that. You

37:05

pay per YouTube subscriber instead of per. Yeah.

37:08

I'm not so evil. Exactly.

37:11

Oh, you're just getting out in this industry.

37:13

You basically get it for free. Right, yeah.

37:15

I love this. The minute you start making

37:17

success that we come for our cut. And

37:19

if you're wearing our wearable, we

37:21

can track your general burnout level as a creator.

37:24

And we start bringing the price back down. Yeah.

37:26

I love that. See? Oh my God. Synergy. We

37:29

actually turn the app off when you need a rest

37:31

day. And then we'll get it back. Calm down, Jimmy.

37:33

You're gonna be like, whoa. All right. So

37:37

we're good on Creative Cloud? All right. I mean,

37:39

sure. I think it's the right answer. That's okay.

37:42

I know I'm the one who has to deal

37:44

with like whatever terms of service, conflagration. It's like,

37:46

I'm fine. I'll do it. Yeah. David

37:49

and I work four days a year. Oh yeah.

37:51

Kranz and I are the ones who like go to

37:54

canned lions and like meet with advertisers. You have to

37:56

actually like do the things. I have to write the

37:58

blog post. It's like, all right, we changed our terms

38:00

of service. All right, exactly. It's true that we're gonna

38:02

take your firstborn child, but we're

38:04

doing this for the good of all humanity. This

38:07

is beautiful, I love this for you. All right,

38:09

next category is the boring B2B

38:11

money faucets. This is where we get to

38:14

pick our cloud provider. We can make B2B

38:16

chips that we sell. I was gonna put

38:18

ARM in here, but we can't have ARM

38:20

because ARM's only thing is ARM, so that

38:22

doesn't really work. We can, this

38:25

is where we make all of our money, but

38:27

we try to never talk about in public because

38:29

no one cares. Can we take TSMC? What

38:32

would you wanna take from TSMC? Making

38:34

the chips for everybody? No, that's their whole thing.

38:36

That's what you can't. But they don't make a

38:38

product called TSMC. They don't

38:40

ship TSMCs around the world. That would be then just

38:42

buying the company, which is not what we're doing. We're

38:44

taking products. You get like one

38:46

TSMC factory. This is like an expansion

38:48

draft in sports, right? We get to like pick

38:51

from your roster, but we can't have your team.

38:53

What about that one company in Europe that actually

38:55

makes the lithography machine that TSMC

38:57

relies on? That like $23 million machine. Yeah,

39:00

there's only what's the name of that company? ASML.

39:03

I think we should take ASML. I think we should

39:05

take the machine that makes the fabs. The machine that

39:07

makes the fabs, okay. Not like

39:09

Azure? Yeah, but like, you know,

39:11

I'm already defending Creative Cloud. Like I'm not trying

39:13

to be out of here. I just wanna

39:16

print all the money. Like this is our

39:18

money printer. Who gets mad

39:20

at Azure lately? No

39:22

one, but it's also in second place, right? You have

39:25

to go make the AI case. You

39:27

gotta do the AI CRM thing to

39:29

grow Azure. I guess we're just milking it

39:31

for profits and walking away, right? Right, we're

39:33

only here for six years. And we can't

39:35

take AWS because we took the Kindle. Right. Yeah.

39:38

Which is a very funny trade to have made if

39:41

you're trying to build a business. Ooh,

39:44

we could take Whisper from OpenAI. Whisper's

39:47

open source, we're good there. Oh yeah. And

39:49

also OpenAI, it's on this list as a money

39:52

faucet, but it is not. It's like a reverse,

39:54

it's a drain. Oh, true. I meant to write

39:56

this as basically like, if we want, we can

39:58

take like G. from OpenAI.

40:01

Which still, which they are now in

40:03

a stunning business judo move are giving

40:05

away for free to Apple. Yeah, no,

40:07

I'm not. I

40:10

don't think that's the winner, but I just I wanted to have

40:12

an AI option here. Let's take Nvidia GeForce now. Yes.

40:16

So this is the thing. How do we get something from

40:18

Nvidia? This is this is my question. What do we take

40:20

from Nvidia? Is it just the H100 business? Do

40:24

we just we just take Nvidia's whole

40:26

AI chip situation? I'm

40:29

telling you, do you buy ASML and

40:32

then you're like, if you use these machines to

40:34

make H100s, 55%. That

40:40

is a pretty good funny faucet. I

40:42

feel like we will be ripe for

40:44

disruption there. Yeah, I

40:46

think taking the Nvidia AI

40:49

chip business is like a strong move because

40:51

now you're selling to Google Cloud and Azure

40:53

and on a six year horizon, they

40:55

all want to disrupt you, but they won't be able to. So I

40:57

was about to say, do we worry that every other chip

41:00

maker on Earth is going to start making

41:02

these and this becomes a bad bet pretty

41:04

soon? That's Panos's problem in six years. Yeah,

41:06

not in six years, baby. OK, six years,

41:08

I'm on a boat. I

41:10

mean, the other the other problem here is

41:12

that if we if we take that the

41:14

bubble bursts and we become the poster child

41:16

of the A.I. bubble that just burst. And

41:19

that's going to happen in less than six years. That's true.

41:21

This is why I'm saying we should take ASML, the chip

41:23

company. That is like the

41:25

least sexy business you could possibly imagine in that.

41:28

I doubt there's as much money

41:30

in it because I don't think they can make all that

41:32

many of those. It's like Samsung and their battery business. Actually,

41:35

maybe this is a good idea where Samsung just makes a

41:37

bunch of random stuff that makes them a ton of money.

41:40

We could take LG display right. Oh,

41:42

that's good. Right. You

41:44

want you want to put it all in your

41:46

phone? Come talk to Lucky Gold Star. You

41:49

know, wait, I like that a lot. I was

41:51

like, LG display that that feels like it the

41:53

way we all were just like, yeah. And

41:56

it that feels that feels sticky. They're going to make screens for a

41:58

long time. And that's

42:01

easy, it runs itself, we're good. All right, I love

42:03

this. And we love talking about it. We

42:05

do. You wanna talk about dual

42:07

layer OLEDs, let's go. Do you feel like this

42:09

gets you close enough to the TV business that

42:11

you're happy now, Eli? They

42:13

make the panels that go in your Sony's. It's true, they do

42:15

make the panels. That's where we're at.

42:17

All right, fine, I got myself a monitor

42:19

in TV business. We're gonna take LG display

42:22

and we're gonna make TVs. And

42:24

then we're just gonna bolt two Sony Party

42:27

speakers to it, boom. You think we won't

42:29

sell these tomorrow? Come on. Some

42:32

little pulsing lights at the bottom. Yeah. Okay.

42:34

All right, nailed it. That's good. LG display, this is great. Beautiful.

42:37

I'm in. All right, we're gonna take one more break and then

42:39

we're gonna come back. We got four more to do. We're

42:41

gonna build virtual casting. We'll be right back. We'll be

42:43

right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

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44:57

We can take, again, not a company,

44:59

so we can't take Signal from Signal

45:01

or Telegram from Telegram, but we can

45:03

take and reinvent any messaging app or

45:05

platform or ecosystem that we want. We

45:07

can't take from Meta, which I just

45:10

realized, because we took the Rayvan smart

45:12

glasses, which I now slightly regret because

45:14

I would like to have taken WhatsApp.

45:16

So we can take all of the different Google chats

45:18

that have existed and finally make

45:20

one? Yeah, this is our opportunity. Yeah,

45:23

we can make G-chat. Done,

45:25

done. All

45:27

right, I can solve this. I

45:30

mean, again, on the list of do it

45:32

and be legends, finally making G-chat is way

45:34

up there. Just making G-chat and then I

45:37

got the phone, so

45:39

your blue bubble problems are

45:41

solved. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, we don't have

45:43

to worry about messaging. We just put blue bubbles on the iPhone.

45:45

Yeah, super, done. Whoa. This

45:47

isn't even why we're even in G-chat, baby. I

45:49

met my wife in there. That's a real story,

45:51

by the way. That's not just a case of

45:53

you. That is a real thing, yeah. Becky and

45:55

I spent years of our early relationship in G-chat

45:57

and nowhere else. Do you ever randomly find... like

46:00

the transcripts of those chats when you're searching for

46:02

something in your Gmail. This is a thing that

46:04

happens to me occasionally. I'll search for like pizza

46:06

in my Gmail and it'll be like, did you

46:08

mean this conversation you had with your ex 11

46:10

years ago that we saved in Gmail? I

46:13

haven't thought about that. And now I'm worried about looking.

46:17

We're going to set that aside. It's

46:19

probably for the best. All of those

46:22

G-chat conversations were before we were dating. So

46:24

they were just conversations about the things we

46:26

had gotten up to at night,

46:28

which is a lot of things. I love it.

46:30

Yeah. It's very good. Yeah. All right. The only

46:32

other one I would throw in is Slack, which

46:34

I think is like a forever

46:36

unrealized potential that or discord. So,

46:38

but we can't take discord because

46:40

discord is discord. Right. Like, oh,

46:43

that's right. That's it's off the I thought somebody

46:45

else on discord now. No, they almost sold, but

46:47

it's still just discord. Microsoft was gonna, but then

46:50

they were like, this seems like a disaster, which

46:53

probably reasonable call G-chat being

46:55

good. Like we're going

46:57

to kind of win people over

46:59

with, with Adobe, but eventually we

47:01

will jack up the prices on

47:03

them and having like, yeah, just

47:05

having G-chat there as like instant

47:07

win. Oh yeah. All right.

47:09

I feel good about this. It's G-chat and we're,

47:11

we're agreed that we're scrapping all the other nonsense

47:14

and we're calling it G-chat. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Without

47:16

easily. We are building the G-chat that always should have

47:18

existed. Next one is streaming service, which

47:21

is actually fun because again, we can't steal

47:23

a company. So like Netflix is out. Oh

47:25

shit. We just traded G-chat for you. Oh

47:30

no. Can we go back? No,

47:32

we should take talk. Oh, we can

47:34

take, take, talk. Yeah, you're right. We can take, take, talk

47:37

for now. It's on by chance. So

47:39

we can buy, we are it. We're going

47:41

to save America. Yeah. We buy it.

47:44

Oh, very, oh my God. Well, dude, the

47:46

wildcard around here is amazing. We're going to,

47:48

we're going to be heroes of G-chat and

47:50

we're going to save America's youth. Oh wow.

47:52

We just did it. This is, this is,

47:54

we're now the coolest company on earth. Okay.

47:57

Yeah. Yeah. And the good news is this one isn't even

47:59

going to be very exciting. because they're desperately trying to get

48:01

rid of it. Yeah, eat your

48:03

heart out Oracle. We do have to fight the

48:05

Chinese government and Larry Ellison. It'll be fine. Do

48:07

you think at the end to buy TikTok you

48:09

have to win a boat race against Larry Ellison?

48:12

He's like, I'll do this if you can beat me

48:14

in the America's Cup. Let's yacht about it. Yeah. Yeah.

48:17

Yeah. OK, so

48:19

I will just say there's a bunch of Disney

48:22

streaming services that are interesting. ESPN would make us

48:24

an awful lot of money for a pretty long

48:26

time. Hulu exists. Disney

48:29

Plus exists. We could have Apple TV

48:31

Plus and have all the good shows.

48:33

Yeah, but those are also dependent on

48:35

external licenses that we might not acquire.

48:38

True. With our streaming service acquisition, right? We're

48:40

not getting the rights to Star Wars. We

48:42

get all the existing contracts. Yeah. But I

48:45

think you're right. If we get Disney Plus,

48:47

we don't get to own Star Wars. You're

48:49

right. The economics of streaming are very simple.

48:52

There's a handful of companies who

48:54

think the Samsung Frame TV will continue to exist.

48:57

Their business model is they pay a lot of

48:59

money for content and then try to make

49:02

people pay money for it. The

49:04

other model is TikTok gets

49:06

free content from America's teenagers and then

49:08

sells ads against it. And

49:11

not for nothing, an infinite array

49:13

of pirated movies from the idiots who are paying

49:15

for content. Yeah. It's got to

49:17

be TikTok. You just throw the economics of the business.

49:19

Do you want to have costs or not costs? But

49:21

again, TikTok not famously making a ton of money right

49:23

now. Well, because we'll fix that. We

49:29

do something like deal with Adobe Creative Cloud

49:31

where we somehow charge our own creators. Well,

49:33

we're going to have to because if we

49:35

get TikTok, we don't get CapCut. So we're

49:37

going to have to immediately put the Creative

49:39

Cloud team on building CapCut so that

49:41

people will use. But the TikTok video editor is CapCut. So

49:43

we just spin it out. It's good enough. Yeah. It'll work.

49:45

And we call it CutCap. We can probably cut Cap. There

49:47

we go. All right. TikTok and CutCap. We've

49:50

done it. All right. I think that's right. I

49:52

feel good about it. I briefly wanted to fight

49:54

for Prime Video just because it's another

49:56

one that is like try harder.

49:59

Oh, no, we took it. Kindle, God. Yeah,

50:01

we do Kindle. The amount of money that

50:03

taking Kindle has cost us, good Lord. I

50:06

mean, it is very funny that we took Kindle and Google

50:08

Chat. That's

50:10

what we took from those companies. I will

50:12

say, if we wanna go back and take Slack

50:14

and YouTube, we have a chance. No,

50:17

we're committed. Is there anything cooler than fixing G-Chat?

50:19

Like, that might be the single most important thing

50:22

we do at this company. I feel really good

50:24

about it. I mean, the teens will prefer us

50:26

for TikTok. That's true. Yes,

50:28

we have two more categories, one of which

50:30

I just changed two minutes ago and I'm

50:32

very excited about it. So far, we have

50:34

the iPhone business from Apple. We have

50:37

the Kindle business from Amazon, the

50:39

PC business from Lenovo. We're

50:41

doing all of Meta's wearables. We haven't decided yet if

50:43

we're killing the Quest, but we're probably killing the Quest.

50:46

We're all in on the smart glasses. We're

50:48

taking Sony's audio solutions. We're

50:51

taking Adobe Creative Cloud. We're taking

50:53

LG Display. And we're taking

50:55

G-Chat. Well, we're taking the

50:57

mess of Google's messaging systems, which I think actually

50:59

probably means we hire most of Google because everybody's

51:01

working on messaging and more and more. And

51:04

we're making G-Chat. And then we are

51:06

saving America and taking over TikTok. How

51:09

do we feel so far? Feel good? Just how many

51:11

rules? I really feel like it does. Lenovo

51:13

is still very much the weird one

51:15

out, but we're gonna make Lenovo cool

51:17

again. It's gonna be great. Yeah, we'll

51:19

fix it. Okay, so we have two

51:21

left, which one is wildcard gadgets, which

51:23

is I think the rules still

51:26

apply. So we can't take from a company we've

51:28

already taken from, but we can take from any

51:30

category, including categories we have not talked about. So

51:32

it's some other product that Vergecast

51:34

Inc. is going to make that is not

51:36

off limits because we've already taken from another

51:38

company. We can do TVs. This

51:41

is where we take the Cybertruck, if we wanna take the Cybertruck.

51:44

Anything you guys want. Any initial thoughts, anything you're

51:46

excited about? Well, so this is where I was

51:48

gonna back into taking LG's TVs. Okay, too

51:51

late. But then we already have LG Display. I think this

51:53

is better. We have the part

51:55

of the business that's like good and not the part of

51:57

the business that is webOS. I feel really good about LG

51:59

Display. and not object-to-vis. Have you guys

52:01

heard of a company called Stores and Bickle?

52:03

Is this how we get into like bespoke

52:06

whiskey? No, this is how we get

52:08

in, we just get the volcano. They make a whole

52:10

bunch of different vapes. We just get the volcano business.

52:12

Okay. And then we like, we

52:14

make one that looks really, really cool. We

52:16

put a big screen on it. We

52:19

put some big speakers on the side, just

52:21

a whole one-stop party business. Just for Alex

52:23

Kranz. It was just, you know, legalization is

52:25

coming for this country. We gotta be there

52:28

at the start. I'm not

52:30

feeling that, I gotta tell you. I just feel like

52:32

if we were in this till 2040. Yeah,

52:34

that makes sense. I'd be down. 2030 feels iffy,

52:37

and that's just like a lot of legislation stuff.

52:40

All right, I'm just, I'm throwing this

52:42

out there. The Nvidia Shield. We didn't

52:45

do Nvidia, did we? We didn't take it,

52:47

we took LG Display over Nvidia's GPU business.

52:50

We're doing really well. This gets us

52:52

the T-GRUH. Yeah. Why this?

52:54

Because I think between Kranz and I, we can

52:56

communicate with an audience of TV. We can bring

52:58

the Shield back to prom. This is a try

53:01

harder move. Look, if you look on the forums

53:03

right now, people are like, the Shield isn't it

53:05

anymore. It's true, and it was for a long

53:07

time. There's a lot of people who are like,

53:09

what you wanna do is run Infuse on Apple

53:11

TV. And I think that's a

53:14

shame. Interesting. Yeah, we're not getting Infuse. Do we

53:16

wanna get into the car business, is my big

53:18

question here. No, because to be

53:20

a successful car maker, you gotta make a

53:22

shoe. You gotta make a mid-size crossover, and

53:24

that's just not for us. Okay. But

53:26

again, we would take all the infrastructure required

53:29

to do it. So we'd be up and

53:31

running making Kia Forte's tomorrow. We're not buying

53:33

Kia. We're not, we're just taking the Forte.

53:35

I mean. Gosh. I was like, I don't

53:37

want any part of the Kia Hyundai business.

53:40

They keep that. Nila, you don't want the

53:42

Mustang Mach-E. This is your moment. Take the

53:44

Mach-E, man. It's a shoe. I'm just telling

53:46

you, I'm not making a mid-size crossover. All

53:48

right. Thank you. Like,

53:50

if you're gonna let me be like crazy about

53:53

it, you know, what's good? Nuts. That

53:56

business is too wackadoo. I talk to a lot of...

54:00

of course it is, they're all insane. Like

54:02

that's what will tear us apart. Okay. Wait,

54:04

I thought of it. Okay. Samsung's barely

54:07

a live digital camera business. Oh,

54:09

I like getting into the camera

54:11

business. Ooh, and then we can

54:14

actually make them smartphones, right? Yeah. We

54:16

actually take, you do the thing where you make the

54:18

smartphone mirrorless camera. Exactly. Interesting. The

54:20

Samsungs still make cameras. Do we want Samsungs

54:22

though, or do we want like Fuji's X100

54:25

business? Yeah, and

54:27

then the solution is you just make them.

54:29

Make more of them. Let people buy them

54:31

who would like them. I

54:33

like that. I like taking the camera. That's actually

54:35

a great idea. Yeah, and then we fix the

54:38

software so that it like doesn't take you 12

54:40

hours just to change the

54:42

setting. Yeah, Sony cameras, but with

54:44

menus that humans beings can navigate.

54:47

Yeah. But I do think Fuji is like a good, in

54:49

terms of wild card gadget for our brand especially.

54:51

And then we do like a limited release of

54:54

the iPhone and the Fuji and they have like

54:56

the same look to them. We'd

54:58

sell a lot of money. That's pretty good. All

55:00

right, so we're taking Fuji's X100. All

55:03

right. Yeah. Yeah. I

55:06

like it. And then last category, the one

55:08

I just added a minute ago. I had another

55:10

non-gadget wild card, but I think that's boring. So

55:12

what we're gonna do instead is we're gonna buy

55:14

a startup. Yeah, I know my answer right

55:16

away. Really? I really hope it's the same

55:18

one. It's Rivian. Oh, so you

55:21

wanna get into the car business? Yeah,

55:23

yeah, yeah. It was, cause they don't

55:25

make a shoe. Yeah. They

55:27

also famously lose all the money in the world.

55:29

Sure, but 55%, I can fix it. If

55:32

you want a Rivian, you have to buy an

55:35

iPhone. Rivians are now

55:37

in-app purchases on iPhones. What

55:41

about like, we could get SSI. We could

55:43

have like just the AI guy. It's just

55:45

one guy. We're already. I mean, in

55:47

that case, is OpenAI still a startup? Cause that would

55:50

be another. I was just about to say, I think

55:52

OpenAI counts. But you want something, you want like a

55:54

startup. You want like an earthy. So

55:56

my vote, if we're buying an AI company,

55:58

I wanna buy Anthropic. Yeah. Which

56:01

is, I would say, less valued,

56:03

but also way less problematic. And

56:06

they're actually making products, right? Their

56:08

product is moving along fast. They're like kind of

56:10

right in the mix with Google and OpenAI. I

56:13

don't know that I want to deal with the,

56:15

like Sam Altman of it all, if I'm being

56:17

honest. SEO is notoriously

56:19

difficult here. Yeah, exactly.

56:22

So if we're going AI, and

56:24

that was one of my instincts, my vote

56:26

would be anthropic. I also think a

56:29

company like Notion would be an interesting one for

56:31

us to buy, potentially a lot of money there.

56:33

Is Notion a startup? They've been around for a

56:35

long time. This gets us into what is a

56:37

startup zone? Yeah. Like is Stripe still a startup?

56:39

They're doing pretty well. I like the idea of

56:42

anthropic though. That is firmly a startup.

56:44

Yeah, anthropic counts, I think. Rivian

56:47

has factories. Is that a startup when it

56:49

has factories? Fair. It

56:52

is just a fair point. It's pretty much a car company. But,

56:55

Neillight, the problem is if we buy Rivian, we

56:58

have six years to convince you to make a shoe. We

57:00

will convince you to make a shoe. Look, the R3X

57:02

is very close to a shoe, but it's

57:05

a cool shoe. That's

57:07

all I got for you. So, okay, the other anthropic question

57:09

is, do we want to be in the AI game? Like

57:11

are we? No. We don't need

57:13

a move. Not really, because then we have

57:15

to do with copyright stuff. Neillight's got

57:17

a lot of blogs he's gonna have to write

57:20

already, like apology blogs. I don't, we don't need

57:22

more. Yeah, Neillight is definitely the one

57:24

testifying in Congress, right? We're all on the

57:26

same page about that. Yeah. I

57:28

have several other options for you. Can I throw

57:30

some options at you? I love an option. We

57:32

could buy DJI, another company that might need some

57:35

saving in America that does some interesting stuff. But

57:37

not a startup. So, this is not just

57:39

companies we could buy. Is it

57:41

not a startup? It's super not a startup. Yeah, you're

57:43

probably right. Okay, fine, that doesn't count. There's the like

57:46

canvas and figmas of the world that also are

57:48

kind of iffy on whether they're startups, but like

57:50

if we're in the creator world with Creative Cloud,

57:52

we fold that in. The FTC

57:55

won't allow it, but these aren't the rules.

57:57

Canva is 10 years old and has a $26 billion.

58:00

Like it's just like not a startup. Like

58:04

you want to go, you need some

58:06

installer shit. Like what's some like weird

58:08

two person app? Oh, interesting. Let's get

58:10

carrot. Does discord count? No, not

58:13

a startup. Like if Rivian isn't a

58:15

startup, none of these other things are startups that you're

58:17

mentioning. Okay, fair enough. I think

58:19

Anthropic is the best AD I have. Yeah, Anthropic

58:21

is good. I think I'm buying Anthropic. Yeah. It's

58:24

like, we're gonna like run them off to the side though. We're

58:27

gonna sort of Instagram Anthropic where it's like, you

58:29

do your thing and if you become really successful,

58:31

we'll ruin it for you eventually. But until then,

58:34

like you're kind of, this is like your problem.

58:36

And like if you get in trouble,

58:38

that's your problem and not ours. We're

58:41

gonna call them like the moonshot factory or

58:43

whatever. Well, I think just having them collab

58:45

on making Syria not suck would be like

58:47

huge. Yeah, oh yeah. Cause we do need

58:49

Syria to not suck. That's pretty important. Big,

58:51

big change for us. Okay, all

58:54

right, Anthropic it is. Welcome to the team,

58:56

Anthropic people. How do you feel about

58:59

party speakers, Anthropic? How can

59:01

you make AI accelerated? Make

59:03

these LEDs blink smarter than ever.

59:05

We have a lot of audio solutions that are

59:07

ready for you. Okay, I feel

59:10

like we've done this. Can I

59:12

recap for you? Yes. At VergeCast Incorporated,

59:14

here are the things that we make

59:17

now. We have the iPhone business, we

59:19

have the Kindle business and all that that entails. Lenovo

59:22

PCs are now VergeCast PCs, metas

59:25

whole wearables thing,

59:28

the Quest and the Ray-Ban smart glasses.

59:30

That's us now. Sony's audio solutions,

59:32

headphones, party speakers, the whole jam, that's ours

59:34

now. Yes. Adobe Creative Cloud

59:37

is our big software app platform

59:39

play. LG display is now

59:41

ours. We are just fabbing it up

59:43

for everybody. If you want a TV,

59:46

hit up the VergeCast. I love this. That feels

59:48

right. We are taking over all of

59:50

Google's messaging shenanigans and turning them into G-chat, which

59:52

might be the single hardest thing we've signed ourselves

59:54

up for here. This is what kills us. I

59:56

want to be clear. Yeah, I think that's right.

59:58

It's like the guitarist and the singer start arguing.

1:00:00

and then Oasis breaks up, that's messaging.

1:00:03

Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

1:00:06

Joe Biden just gave us TikTok. Congrats

1:00:08

to us, big day. We now have

1:00:10

Fujifilm's X100 business, and

1:00:13

Anthropic is now part of a VergeCast Incorporated.

1:00:16

How do we feel? This feels good. This feels

1:00:18

great. This is the right combo of things. We're

1:00:20

doing a little bit of good. We're doing a

1:00:22

little bit more evil. We're

1:00:24

making some money, and then we're gonna fix messages. We

1:00:27

are incredibly deep into hardware.

1:00:30

My only worry is should we not have

1:00:32

done LG display and pick something that is

1:00:34

more like cloud, software, AI-y? No,

1:00:36

no, no, because if we own the hardware, then

1:00:38

they all have to do, we've done AI, we

1:00:40

got Anthropic. Yeah. We got Anthropic

1:00:42

and the iPhone. We have all

1:00:44

the power. And Anthropic is, their whole

1:00:47

thing is they want to be a

1:00:49

B2B thing, so that could eventually pay

1:00:51

dividends for us. And we have most

1:00:53

of Google, because we acquired all of

1:00:55

Google messaging. And we're just printing money

1:00:57

on increasing creative cloud fees. Just

1:01:00

to be clear. Right, Microsoft is gonna be paying

1:01:02

us so much money for their creative cloud. I

1:01:05

think there's money to be had. Again, TikTok's business

1:01:07

model is they pirate content. What are

1:01:09

we gonna do with the TikTok shop? What's our

1:01:11

first move with the TikTok shop? Oh, we are

1:01:13

55%. Yeah.

1:01:16

Straight up. You wanna transact in

1:01:18

the TikTok shop? We're taking the fees. Yeah,

1:01:20

we just charge outrageous fees there, except for

1:01:22

our own products, in which case we

1:01:25

give them, we don't charge a fee at all. Oh

1:01:27

yeah, the self-preferencing is going to be out of control.

1:01:30

On all of these. Do you want good Photoshop? You

1:01:32

have to use our X100 camera, otherwise

1:01:34

you get bad Photoshop. Really sorry. This

1:01:36

is actually great. It's like, why do these companies act

1:01:39

like this? And it's like, we're pretending we run the

1:01:41

company. And we're like, we are gonna be so evil.

1:01:43

We started out trying to do a good job, and

1:01:45

now we're doing this. We're just the most evil. Lena

1:01:47

Khan just waiting behind us

1:01:49

all right now. All right,

1:01:51

well I think we've solved it. I feel like

1:01:53

we're easily a trillion dollar company right off the

1:01:55

bat here. Immediately. Our website is gonna be sick,

1:01:58

by the way. That's very important to me. We're

1:02:00

gonna give all our products cool names, and our

1:02:02

website is gonna be so tight with

1:02:04

a good, understandable URL scheme.

1:02:07

These are the things I care about. I'm

1:02:09

gonna run the naming of everything. You guys can run the company,

1:02:12

but I'm in charge of names. The speakers

1:02:14

will have real names. Yeah. More

1:02:16

letters. Just to continue to

1:02:19

say this, there's only one solution. But

1:02:21

I think it's right. It's no more numbers, it's just all

1:02:23

letters, and you have to guess what the letters mean. Because

1:02:26

they're in no order, it's just consonants, and you have

1:02:29

to guess. That's all of our products from now on.

1:02:31

I love it. I'm very excited. And I

1:02:33

promise the people, Megabase is coming back. Oh,

1:02:35

absolutely. Megabase is coming to many new products.

1:02:37

We have new places to put Megabase. The

1:02:39

iPhone is gonna have a hardware Megabase button.

1:02:41

We're going to rattle your head off with

1:02:43

the smart glasses with Megabase. We

1:02:46

will give you and solve your

1:02:48

migraines all at once. G-chat Megabase.

1:02:51

Yeah. Every time you type,

1:02:53

just a. All right,

1:02:55

well, it's been an honor. Thank you for joining

1:02:57

this company with me. This is wonderful. This

1:03:00

is gonna be a wild six years. Yeah, we're gonna make

1:03:02

so much money, panos have fun. And

1:03:04

then go to jail. No, panos

1:03:07

goes to jail. We're out, we're out. Lena

1:03:09

Khan, you know how to reach us. Yeah. All

1:03:11

right, thank you guys. We'll do this again soon. Thank you.

1:03:15

All right, that is it for the Vergecast today.

1:03:17

Thanks to Neelai and Alex for doing this weird

1:03:19

thing with me and thank you, as always, for

1:03:21

listening. As you can tell, we have a lot

1:03:23

of thoughts on all of this, but I wanna

1:03:26

hear yours too. We're gonna put some links in

1:03:28

the show notes to coverage we've done of these

1:03:30

companies, but I really wanna know what you think.

1:03:32

What did we pick wrong? What did we pick

1:03:34

right? What would you have picked differently? How would

1:03:36

you build your tech company? You can always email

1:03:38

us at vergecast at theverge.com. Call the hotline 866-VIRG-11.

1:03:42

Tell us all your thoughts on Vergecast Inc. If

1:03:44

you have thoughts on anything else, hit up the

1:03:46

hotline, send us an email. We love hearing from

1:03:49

you. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam

1:03:51

James, and Will Poore. The Vergecast is a Verge

1:03:53

production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

1:03:55

Neelai, Alex, and I will be back on Friday

1:03:57

to talk about all of the upcoming news. There's

1:04:00

a lot of gadgets about to come, plus

1:04:02

some more weirdness in the AI world and

1:04:04

lots more. We'll see you then. Rock and

1:04:07

roll. Have

1:04:18

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1:04:21

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