Ep: 230 - Boys Club Live: Tech Merch, Clout, Stablecoins, and the Anthropic Code Leak. Sam Broner of Better Money Company and Alli Pope of Vercel Join As Guests

[00:28] Here's this week's show. [00:31] you [00:33] We have a really fun show today. Some great guests. And we have some really exceptional partners who are part of making this live stream possible. Good. Gonna shout them out. [00:45] Octant, Anchorage Digital, and we have two new girlies joining the squad for Q2, Vercel and Polygon. [00:55] Really exciting stuff. [00:57] Love to see it. [00:58] Um, I'm going to tell you a little bit about Vercel. We're also having Ali Pope. [01:04] on [01:05] the live [01:07] today who is also famous on the internet and works at Vercel.

So I'm going to tell you about Vercel. And I have, I got to tell you, have been given copious notes about how to read an ad on this show and we're going to give it a go. Okay. This episode is brought to you by Vercel. [01:24] You've heard of Vibe Coding by now. The thing nobody talks about is that most of its products produce demos that never actually ship. Vercel built VO to fix that. Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company. It's designed to give you all the tools you need to build, run and scale purpose-built agents for your business.

Vercel is a one-stop shop for everything you need to ship in the agentic era. [01:50] Tools. [01:51] Frameworks, computers, it's how modern software should run in the AI era. [01:57] They just launched an open agent skills ecosystem, which basically lets you teach your AI how your team actually works. One install and your agent has your full context. Go check out com. [02:11] genuinely [02:13] Very excited to have Vercel on the ticket here. Very cool stuff they're doing. We're going to hear more about it when Allie comes on. But you're a fan.

[02:21] I am a fan. Yeah. Huge fan of Vercel. Yeah. Vercel is already a part of my agentic vibe coding workflow. Okay. But like what I love about it is that I like low key, I'm not exactly sure what it's doing, which is great because it means it's like been appropriately abstracted away from me because I don't care. Totally. And it sounds like this is taking it even farther away so that I can worry even less about what it's actually doing. And I can just think about what I'm trying to do.

And then it just kind of like does stuff in the background. That's my interpretation of that. Okay, great. I love that. It's just like doing a good job. You don't even have to think about it. [02:51] Yeah, exactly. If you were thinking about it, it probably because it was not working. That's so mentally taxing for me. Yeah, exactly. I need to be focused on like, whatever slop website I'm trying to make. For sure. Oh, and we're gonna talk about slop later today as well. I can't honestly. It's always on the agenda.

Okay, I think the first thing that we should talk about here that is your topic is tech merch. Yeah. Okay. Well, so how do you feel about tech merch just generally? I need to decide like, how I'm gonna approach this. Okay. First, Kate, there is a tweet. [03:19] So I'm giving you a, yep. Oh, she's got it. Okay. You had a tweet. [03:23] that went... [03:24] That had some numbers, like loose numbers. Oh, yeah. I was like saying stuff. You were saying stuff. People were responding. It's on the screen here for the listener who's not watching.

It's a quote tweet of merchandise from Polymarket. [03:39] - And ChatGPT. - Yeah, it's like OpenAI, yeah, ChatGPT merge and then Polymarket merge. - Okay, this is my feeling on tech merge. [03:48] Thank you. [03:51] Oh, it's a photo of their merch. Some t-shirts, some hats. One is ChachiPT basketball. [03:59] Yeah, I think what's notable about like the pictures of the merch is like, okay, so it's the OpenAI or the ChatGPT basketball, which everyone was kind of like, okay, what's going on here? Like, what's the overlap? And then overall, the vibe is like, [04:12] the merch is very simple.

Like it's not Rick Owens. It's not like high fashion. It's just like, okay, here's a t-shirt with a logo. And my sort of take on the situation is like, [04:25] Exactly. Like that's what it should be. We don't need it to be something like really extra and crazy. Okay. And I think like a lot of the people who are commenting on this merchant being like, [04:35] they have so much money, like why don't they make something cooler and better are just kind of like misunderstanding how merch actually functions in technology.

Because like tech companies make tech. [04:46] Right. Like some people forget that. Some people really forget that. Like you have to say it. Yeah. They're not focused necessarily on making merch. Yeah. Merch is like a symbol of association or appreciation. And so it doesn't necessarily need to like have a whole lot of aesthetic merit. It's like what the employees are getting on the offsite. [05:04] Yeah, exactly. And so like people were saying, Oh, this is horrible. Like, how are you treating your brand ambassadors in such a way? Because like, you know, I would assume they have a PR list.

No, no, but this is this is exactly like sort of my what I how I think about it is like people are importing this logic that would that applies well to like, [05:22] Influencer. - Lifestyle brands. - Yeah, like lifestyle brands where it's like, okay, [05:25] I am poppy and no one cares about me because I'm a prebiotic soda or whatever. And there, it doesn't matter. There could be a million of them. And I really have like no moat. And so my only thing is that I'm going to pay people to talk about me.

Okay. And so these influencers now have to tarnish their brand by shilling something that really doesn't fit what they're doing. And so it makes sense. You have to send them good PR to keep them engaged and make them feel good. But like, [05:46] Polymarket and open air are not like that because tech fluencers like us talk about technology literally benefit from discussing these things. We don't need we're talking about open AI and polymarket they don't need to be paying us with merch to do this. Okay, like, [06:01] So we don't need...

Okay, I'm going to let you finish. So the dynamic is not the same. People are going to talk about OpenAI. People are going to talk about Polymarket no matter what. You don't have to pay them with merch to do that. The merch only exists as a clout symbol so that not me, I'm not being sent to the merch, so that someone can be like, hey guys, OpenAI knows who I am and like, [06:22] wants to be affiliated with me, here's a box of merch. That's what it's for. So let's say...

[06:28] you got the box of OpenAI merch. Yes. You got the basketball... [06:32] You got the t-shirt. [06:33] Are you... [06:35] going to show up on the show wearing that? [06:38] - Well, okay, I actually, perfect answer to your question is, - Okay. I knew we were gonna talk about this, so I wore some merch. The shirt that I'm wearing right now is for Dragonfly. - Okay. - And, [06:48] Here's why I'm wearing it. Dragonfly Ventures? Yes. [06:51] Okay, crazy work. Okay, let's hear. Aesthetically, it is literally three text characters on a shirt.

They're not doing anything special. What's the quality? I would say the quality is quite good, although I kind of feel like all my clothes are low quality, so I don't really know. Okay. [07:05] Okay. [07:07] But I'm wearing it because I know people who work at Dragonfly. They're really great. I think they're fun. All of my friends who have investments from Dragonfly speak very positively about them. Okay. And I'm happy to associate myself with them. In a way, I think... [07:20] I'm cloud farming them by wearing the merch. I'm like happy to wear it because I'm like dragonflies really cool and I want to be associated with them.

Okay, that's how tech merch actually works. Okay. [07:28] Like I don't need it to be like drippy. - You don't need it to be drippy. - Yeah. Because it's giving me clout. I see. The clout is what is the drip. [07:36] Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. I feel... [07:41] How do I feel about this? [07:43] So I wrote a newsletter. I sent this to you about like modern defense company merch hitting the timeline with like... [07:51] thotty influencers girls. Right. I respect the game. Like I say that, I say that sentence with respect.

[07:59] where it should be given to these women. Do your thing. Whatever you want to do, go off. [08:04] Very personally, me as an individual, I'm not going to be. [08:09] wearing like an andriol [08:11] Baby T. [08:12] around Williamsburg. [08:14] That's just me. That's my choice. That's up to you. That's totally my choice and my prerogative. But what I do, it is cloud farming. It's like a whistleblow to like a certain type of [08:23] No, not a whistle, a dog whistle to a certain type of... [08:26] person, individual, it's saying these are my values.

These are the things that I care about. I think that there are very, very few... [08:33] tech companies where I'm going to, [08:35] I'm going to say, these are my values. This is what I care about and sport their merch. Having said that, [08:41] anything that boys club has ever put out into the world as merchandise i feel is [08:49] representative of [08:51] a lifestyle. [08:53] a lifestyle. It's saying something. But we're not a software company. Yeah, exactly. That's what I was just going to say is like, that's your whole thing is like, you're a media brand that is you're supposed to be like tasteful and know things and things of that nature.

So it makes sense for you to have like a tasteful, some tasteful garb. What do you think about the Claude hats that were what was what did they say? Do you remember the Claude hats? I don't know. [09:15] -Okay. -Wait, what did they say? It was part of the pop-up. [09:17] -Oh, it said thinking. -Oh, I'm obs-- oh. -You love. -No, I love-- I want to have this as thinker, not thinking. -Okay. -I just love, like, the concept of thinking. Like, I love thinking about stuff. [09:29] *gasp* [09:30] - Yeah, oh, is it not even branded?

- No, but that's kind of cool to me. - Has the, like, the logo or something. - Okay. 'Cause I do think, like, it's an "If you know, you know." Like, the dragonfly, that's like an "If you know, you know." - Right, right. - Yeah. - Like, people are just gonna look at this and think, like, [09:44] Okay. - Symbol. Something. - Yeah, unless you're, like, really, really, like, in the trenches of... [09:49] crypto investment. Then you're going to be like, wow, I need to talk to that guy. He knows everything.

Exceptually niche. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think... [10:00] One other note that I will say here is, let's say you are a software company out there. [10:05] and you're watching. And you think, "Man, I don't have a merch strategy whatsoever. I don't have a swag strategy." [10:11] you could send me an email at partnerships at boys vip. And we will gladly do that for you for a fee. So, [10:18] I just don't want to leave that out of the conversation. Yeah, no, I think that makes sense. I think like... [10:23] companies need to think really critically about whether it's appropriate for them to make merge.

I would say start making merge once people ask for it. Because I think like, I don't know, I'm really narcissistic. Like I understand the impulse to just make [10:34] merch like about yourself or your company or something. But it's like, do people really want it? And then once you figure out that that's the case, then yeah, what was the email again? [10:42] partnerships. [10:44] at vp. It's on the ticker. It's on the banner right now. Give it, give it, just like shoot a little email through, you know what I mean?

Yeah, that's a better bet than trying to do it yourself. Q2 sponsorships now live, just FYI. Okay, really great stuff. [10:58] Speaking of great partners, [11:00] Octant. [11:02] is a partner whom we love. And... [11:08] quasi matt is a fan and going to read the ad i'm really excited for this okay i don't think i've ever read an ad before so [11:16] This is like one of my first shill moments. No, that's not true. Okay. [11:22] Are we ready? Yeah, go. [11:24] Line. Our supporting sponsor, Octin, is well known in Ethereum circles for its tireless contribution to the Ethereum ecosystem through research and millions of dollars in grants and public goods funding.

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[12:11] ETH rewards on their app. [12:14] Okay, hired, hired. You're so much better at it than I am. Well, I mean, I'm happy to do the other ones as well. Okay, great. Great stuff. We love Octon. They are actually very cool. They're at ECC this week in the south of France. And so if you are there, [12:30] doing things. Hit them up. Hit them up. Go talk to them. Okay. I'm [12:35] I'm going to... [12:36] release you for a bit. Okay. And okay. And we are going to have our first guest come on up, Sam.

Sam Bronner in the house. There's some music playing, so we don't have to be stressed about, um, [12:51] anything. The audience is fine. They're cared for. [12:55] - Hi, good. Okay. You can make yourself comfortable here. [13:06] The mic we're going to [13:09] Kate's going to come figure it out. [13:11] Oh, yeah. Yeah. [13:12] Guys, I cannot believe I still have this cough. It's like genuinely... [13:16] You sound fine, by the way. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. That's encouraging. Awesome. [13:22] Thank you. [13:24] Cool. [13:25] Test, test, test. [13:27] How are we sounding?

[13:29] good okay hi how's it going great um okay sam braunner here with us founder of the better money company previously at a16z crypto before that microsoft mit guy s tier resume um but i do think the best thing about you is we are often at the same events places and like if i see you in the [13:59] I can like chill out for five minutes of conversation and talk about real stuff. Yeah, excellent. I can just like go nonverbal if needed. I'm just like, "Hey, what's up?" So really appreciate that about you.

But you came out of stealth yesterday. Very hot get for us. Very excited to have you here. The Better Money Company, super impressive line of partners that you've launched with, raised 10 million from a bunch of world-class investors. [14:26] What are you working on? Tell us about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, no, I'm happy to be here for my first podcast, like among friends like that. It's really a great thing. So we're building a stablecoin clearinghouse. [14:36] Can I give some like editorial on my resume besides what you shared?

Oh, please. Yes, go for it. So I was an engineer for a long time and first got into crypto in like 2016. Okay. And I built more projects. [14:49] with traditional tech, I was just sort of frustrated and confused by how payments worked. And I think a lot of engineers have that feeling. [14:56] I ended up working at the Boston Fed on their stablecoin initiative. Oh, wow. And then I worked at A16Z where I met with hundreds of stablecoin companies, sort of like built a thesis around it. [15:06] The realization is that even though stablecoins work, [15:10] kind of how an engineer wants them to work.

They don't yet work how a payments company would want them to work. And so we're building a stablecoin clearinghouse. And the goal of our product, this is our first step into what we think is the first step into the next generation of money. [15:25] is something that allows you to send one stable coin and have the other person receive one stable coin. And that is surprisingly hard today. Okay. We enable that. Okay. Amazing. Okay. So stable coin clearinghouse. [15:39] Can you just first start with what is a clearinghouse? [15:42] a clearinghouse connects people okay um [15:45] We have clearinghouses for banks.

We have them for cards. The first clearinghouse was a pub called Five Bells in London, where people from various London banks would meet up and they would... [15:57] give each other cash. The goal of it originally is that you don't have to go have a connection with each bank. You've got one place you can go to be connected everywhere. - Okay. - And know that you're going to get a fair deal across all the banks that you're dealing with. - Okay. - And so we're building this stablecoin clearinghouse so that you can come to one place.

[16:13] and send a payment that touches any Genius Bill compliance stablecoin and get the right amount of money on the other side. Okay. So that's specifically what we do. Okay. Yeah. And so part of, I guess, maybe the challenge or the thing that you're building is that we have all of these stablecoins and all of these different chains and all of these people, all these various parties that are producing them and running them, and you're kind of like, what was... [16:37] the role of a clearinghouse for all of these banks you're kind of being for all of these different stable coins that that's exactly right okay um very cool and something that i've heard you talk a lot about is that stable coins [16:49] today do not operate like traditional money or fiat money or whatever you want to call it.

Can you get into that a little bit? 100%. So you maybe bank in Wells Fargo, you bank at Bank of America? [16:59] When you send money to a friend, they... [17:02] get exactly the amount of money you wanted to send and that happens because you're not selling wells fargo dollars to buy bank of america dollars obviously like we all know that's not what we're doing we're just sending the money we transfer it i can tell you behind the scenes there's a few ways that transfer could happen you could use ach maybe it moves to the fed window maybe you know there's a few things that could happen here but you're not selling one bank's dollars to buy another's [17:32] That isn't how payment should work.

You should be able to redeem USDC and receive USDG on the other side in a way where it's one-to-one. You send $1,000, the person should get $1,000. Yeah. Okay. It's so funny because you're saying something that sounds so simple. I'm just like, yeah, totally. But nobody's done it yet. Nobody's done it yet. So why? Everyone accepts like trading is the solution to everything. Yes. But it's really not. Like a lot of crypto grew up around trading. I think that's totally fair. It's fun. [18:02] uh on chain including a lot of trading infrastructure [18:05] But for payments, we need much more fixed guarantees.

We need to know how much it's going to cost. We need to know how much is going to be there when the person receives it. Yeah. And I think people just forgot that because we have all these trading-based solutions. And that's okay. Yeah. Let's build it now. Especially now that the Genius Bill is out there. [18:23] And we have payments companies and just traditional enterprises that are adopting stable coins in a big way. [18:31] they need to know they have these familiar guarantees and we're here to provide them. Totally. So I want to actually talk about the genius bill a little bit and the genius act, because I feel like being in this industry for the past few years, that was like just such a clear turning point from a regulatory perspective.

And so I'm, could you just explain a little bit about what that was and like what it's, I mean, you don't have to like get too deep into it, but just like super high level and like what it has enabled for [18:58] a lot of businesses now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My team makes fun of me because I always tell people to like, just read it. It's seven pages. It's like not actually that hard or ask Chachapi Titoria for you, whatever you want to do. [19:10] But... [19:10] The truth is that...

[19:12] It just says these things are okay. Okay. Like you can use stable coins. And we're going to give you not the total, the full rules and regulations, but the general outline of how the rules and regulations will be made. Those are forthcoming. They're actually being talked about right now. [19:28] But the basic outline is we're going to back these stablecoins. [19:31] which are a bearer asset, [19:33] with the safest form of collateral we know of, so they're easy to regulate and safe to use. That's the genius bill. What it started, though, is a bunch of enterprises saying, oh, I would love to have more control of my payment stack.

[19:44] Right now I'm using a bank in a payments processor. I've got like 30 intermediaries before I can work with my customer to have them pay [19:51] for service and it's so expensive, so complicated. We've got huge teams around it. Why do we have huge teams about it? This should be easy. - Yeah. - And so it was sort of the starting gun where people were like, [20:00] I understand how I can do this in a safe way. I need to use stablecoins. [20:05] Then they realized that. [20:06] stable coins don't actually move the way they expect payments to work.

And that's where we've come in to sort of help them with that transition to using stable coins for payments. Okay. Makes a ton of sense. Why should your average person... [20:20] business owner or me as a consumer care about... [20:24] what you're doing or save a coin generally. Look, I think if you're going about your life and this doesn't come up every day, that's okay. What I want to do is make sure that when you go buy a coffee, that coffee is just a little bit cheaper or your groceries are a little bit cheaper because you're not giving up two, three percent to pay for a credit card that you're not giving [20:45] you don't need in that transaction.

Mm-hmm. [20:47] for i love this fact like the average grocery store [20:52] is spending they make [20:55] they spend two percent of the income they get [20:59] on credit card payments. That's what they give up. The average gross store's margin, their profit is only 2%. They could double their profitability by switching payment techniques. Okay. [21:13] That's basically what I want. Like they should be able to hire more people or maybe they buy nicer produce or maybe they charge lower prices, whatever it is. That's the benefit of switching to a better payment rail.

Okay. Just a little bit more to go around for everyone. Okay. And the reason that 2% or 3% is happening across, I'm paying with my Amex. Yeah. Sweet flex. [21:34] What? You have an Amex. I'm just sort of being funny. [21:39] Oh, I actually have a funny story about it. Okay, great. Yeah. I just didn't know I was here with a baller. It's an Amex platinum. And I got charged for this year and I was like, I'm not paying for this. And I called them and I was like, hey, sorry, like I want out.

And they were like, because I think it's like $700 or something. It's a lot of money. And I was like, this is just like not working for me. And they, you know, they like give me the roll around. I'm [22:04] actually with the person that I want to cancel, I'm like somewhat frustrated at this point. And he's, and I was like, he starts going through all the ways that I've saved that $700 in the last year. And I was like, look, the only thing I really care about is the lounge access.

You've changed the rules. Like, just please release me. And he was like, okay, what if we just gave you $500? And I was like, [22:23] Great. I'll keep it for another year. So that if you just, so people know, um, anyway, so that's how I still have it. Um, and anyway, I'm paying with my index at the grocery store. What, what, [22:37] is happening. Where's that 3% going? Is it all to American Trust or like what's going on? This is a deep topic. Okay. And it's actually worth pointing out that a credit card is a bundled product.

[22:48] you're getting a little loan because you pay the credit card bill at the end of the month. Okay. [22:53] So stablecoins don't replace that. And also you get, I guess, lounge access, which is your most important feature. Like stablecoins don't natively come with lounge access yet. So I'm going to have to build that. Uh-huh. [23:04] But you don't need all of those. There's a few other features they have for unfraud protection, identity, and so forth. You don't need those features when you're buying something at a grocery store. Right. It's a little weird that we've bundled this like loyalty loan product into me buying a couple apples and peanut butter.

Like that just doesn't really need to happen like that. [23:34] pay, they would [23:36] And I think we'd all be happy with that solution. Cool. Yeah. That totally makes sense. Yeah. Okay. So something that... [23:44] I saw that came across my desk this week. [23:48] MasterCard acquired BBNK, a stablecoin settlement company. I think that's a definitive agreement. They haven't fully finished the acquisition, but it's still really exciting news for the industry. Good note. Yeah. Okay, good note. [24:00] $1.8 billion, double its last valuation. - Yeah. [24:06] Alongside that news, it's looking like Visa is rumored to be shopping for a similar acquisition.

Yeah. [24:12] Are these your competitors? Like, how do you think about them? No, no. We actually talk to a lot of the teams that are in that space. And they're interested in using our clearinghouse to make their product better. Okay. Because they want to know that when they do this broader orchestration, they give you wallets, they have relationships with on and off ramps, [24:31] they still need somewhere to go. [24:33] to get one-to-one fungibility between stable coins. - Yeah. - To make sure that when you send a thousand, you get a thousand.

- Okay. - Or you send a million, you get a million, which is harder than a thousand. [24:41] And so we can do these things, and they are interested in working with us on it. [24:46] But what it is, is [24:48] it shows that the sophisticated mature [24:53] public, [24:54] uh payments companies have realized that even though they're great at some things they need help from the outside to build what is ultimately a new technology and get started with it yeah because it does matter to them and they need that jump start to get moving now okay and um that's the main sign that we're okay so you're like love it and we just love to see that like your genius bill happened stable coin adoption is already here it's not even a question totally yeah and uh the only question for a lot of the enterprises we talked to is how do we do it [25:23] How do we get where we need to go and make our business better today?

And so I'm thrilled. Okay, that's awesome. Okay, two more questions here before we will release you. [25:41] in a world where we have AI agents making potentially thousands of transactions for us a day? Like, how does that affect your business? Yeah. So we talked about the grocery store scenario. Yeah. I think, you know, maybe even more interesting is just to say it's hard to build... [25:57] a payments product today. You, there's only one way to do it. Like you go, you check out on a website and like, that's what payments is to most people.

And you've got the ACH and a few other things. [26:06] I like to think about the possibilities of things that we can make if we had a way easier to program. [26:14] type of payments and that's why i see agents gravitating towards stable coins okay it's just like easier to get up and going and and uh have an entrepreneur make something cool and new okay [26:25] So a clearinghouse makes it easier for anyone to do stablecoin payments. I think people trying new and interesting things are going to gravitate towards using a clearinghouse to get that done.

Okay. As opposed to like, [26:37] having to figure out how a credit card payment works and yeah you know grappling with that yeah totally um are you [26:43] Fucking around with AI agents? Yeah, so much. I love it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I used to do a ton of AI stuff when I was at Microsoft. Okay. But anyway, I do that quite a bit. For fun? Like, are you making little... [26:57] I'm box for your dentist appointments or something. I do that kind of stuff. Um, you know, my team, we, we use a decent amount of AI, of course.

Um, [27:06] And I think that there's a lot of interesting, actually, last March, almost a year ago to the day, we built sort of an X402-ish thing over a weekend. I just like messing around with it. I like other stuff. Okay, fun. Okay, last question here. [27:18] You're on the other side. [27:19] team now, your founder instead of investor. How does it feel to be founder mode? Like any thoughts, feelings, feelings? [27:27] Any thoughts? [27:30] being an investor is an amazing thing. And working at A16Z was fantastic. You get to meet so many people.

The team is absolutely, undoubtedly world-class. But I like having my hands on the keyboard. I like writing software. I like... [27:46] building and growing a team with a long-term goal. And it's been incredibly fun. [27:51] I think most importantly, actually, is we've all these early partners who took a bet on us and said, like, let's build together. Yeah. [27:57] And I love building a momentum. And I think we've got a lot more to do and we can make a big impact. Yeah. Nice. This is exciting. Um, so happy to have you on.

So excited for you. Genuinely a fan. Um, and. [28:09] Can't wait to see what happens. Yeah, it's going to be great. Thanks for being here. Of course. Okay. [28:13] See you later. Okay, guys. [28:18] - Quasi, [28:20] Do you want to come on back up? [28:22] Um, [28:25] Okay, great. Thank you so much, guys. Great stuff. Make it easy. Make it easy. Okay. Do you want to settle back in here? Yeah. [28:39] - You can do it. [28:41] Um, [28:45] - Okay. [28:46] Thank you. [28:46] Thank you. [28:47] We can unmute.

[28:53] Oh, great. Okay. Cool. No problem. We're still here. We're here. Okay. So I think my first topic [29:03] For you, that I'm going to share with you. Michael Saylor AI ad. [29:09] Yes. Are you familiar? I mean, I had to watch it because I wasn't caught up. So I took a look-see. I gave you homework. Yeah, yeah. I did my homework. I watched the video and I'm ready to discuss. Okay, great. [29:21] Context, Michael Saylor, he's the founder of MicroStrategy. He is famously a Bitcoin advocate, Bitcoin Maxi. MicroStrategy owns a large portion of the total supply of Bitcoin, I think over three and a half percent of the total supply.

He is known in my book for two things. [29:41] One. [29:42] his Tuscan [29:44] home that harkens back to [29:48] It's up? Okay. So this is what his home... [29:52] in his Zoom calls looks like. And it brings me... [29:56] back to an era of my life that was like kitchens, [30:01] Tuscan style kitchens. Yes. I think we also have a reference photo as well. Coming up here in a second where it's like, I don't know why we've decided that we're going to do like a faux, like a campy faux Italian inspired kitchen in this home in what is probably Cleveland, Ohio.

[30:20] Yeah. Why are we doing this? I mean, I like Tuscan, like I'm sure is the appropriate term, like obviously is the appropriate term to me. That's Olive Garden. Like when I see that, I'm like, I am at Olive Garden. Olive Garden aesthetic. I do love it. It's kind of like maximalist, which I appreciate. I'm like, okay, you committed to something and you did it. Like, okay. Can you imagine if my kitchen looked like this in my apartment in Brooklyn? I would love that. I would clap. You would. Yeah. You would.

Okay. So he's known for that [30:50] kitchen and then second talking his book in a big way. [30:53] Like he's like egregious about talking his book, in my opinion, via his channels. Right. Okay. So that's him. [31:01] This week, [31:02] new addition to the bio just dropped. [31:05] AI slot producer. [31:07] He has gotten... [31:09] I don't know, a login of some kind to some sort of AI tool to produce images and videos. And he's hitting his credits. [31:20] like big time. So he released an AI Slop commercial for what is Ticker Stretch.

[31:26] And I believe we're going to play the video here so that people can really like [31:30] -Sink into it. -You have to get it. Are you on vacation here? I live here. I'm retired. I just don't think I'm meant to live an uncomfortable life. Wow. How did you make it? I worked hard as an engineer to save money. Again. Then I put my savings into Stretch. What is Stretch? Stretch is a stock. Right now, I get about 11% a year in dividends. Nice. [31:55] It's the stretch every stretch, 11%, monthly cash, dividends, tax deferred.

[32:03] Thank you. [32:04] Okay, so that is the video. For people who were just listening and not watching, it's... [32:13] What can only be described as AI slop, where it's a very beautiful woman in what looks to be some sort of Caribbean vacation. She is drinking like a Mai Tai of some kind and being interviewed about how she's there and retired at that age. She is then explaining that she was an engineer and she saved all her money. [32:43] in cuffs which makes absolutely no sense yeah i didn't even notice that but i mean what are we doing here engineers do lots of different things apparently i think what i love about this is that it's actually white coat too she's got a white coat on oh well science clearly yeah she's a doctor yeah um i think there's like two layers of slop which i really like like leaning into the slop i think is very honest because firstly it's marketing slop like oh i want to sell you beer well here's [33:13] And then you take that marketing slop idea and you further slopify it using the AI tool of your choice.

And I just think that doubling down is kind of beautiful. Yeah. Like I would rather see that than see someone like trying to pass some like, [33:26] serious narrative, like he's just doing like very basic [33:30] Psychological manipulation. Yeah, for sure. And okay, so to explain what Stretch is and what is going on here, Stretch is one of Strategies' own preferred stocks. [33:40] Basically, in this context, I've always known preferred stocks in the startup context, which is like you're protected from downside in my understanding. But in this case with a public company, basically what it means is that it's a hybrid...

[33:55] uh asset that is both part bond and part stock and you get less upside generally but more consistent and predictable income and so [34:05] Sailor is like, let's get a hot... [34:08] woman to [34:10] talk her book, [34:12] and share that in buying [34:15] stretch, she is getting 11% a year in dividends paid out monthly. And she put her whole savings into it. And she's doing great. She's retired early from her engineering job with the white coat. And he is doing this to raise money from retail investors to presumably buy more Bitcoin.

So... [34:35] A response on the timeline. [34:37] Pretty not great. Like people... [34:41] I respect your take. People are saying this is like... [34:45] Inappropriate. Inappropriate. [34:48] thing to be doing. I was like, is this legal? [34:50] I can't believe that you can like do that. I don't know. I would, I guess like, it seems like it probably isn't. See, I didn't realize that it was sort of a testimonial style until you like framed it that way. And I think it's really funny to do a testimonial where the person who is supposed to be saying that it impacted them is like not a person.

It's someone that you like vibe coded into existence. Like I think that kind of destroys the value proposition of a testimonial because the testimony is supposed to come from a real person. [35:20] often come from paid actors anyway. Right. So maybe, I think like that's the beauty of AI Slap is that maybe it just reveals what was already wrong with AI. [35:29] advertising in the first place. It's just a relocation of the problem. Okay. Not necessarily the creation of a new one. I can respect that. There is something I agree with you that there's something honest about it.

I agree with you that, um... [35:39] It's... [35:40] It just... [35:41] advertising in and of itself is always a lie. This is just like an additional, more obvious layer to that lie. There's something to me that feels sort of like [35:50] Bernie Madoff adjacent... - Totally. to all of it. And I know that, like, he's legitimate. Bernie Madoff was just, like, full outright fraud. And this is not that. But... [36:02] One note that I did see here was that 80% of stretch is from retail investors. And I don't know, it's just funny to me because I look at this stuff and crypto gets like such a bad rap for a lot of behavior that...

[36:18] It should get a bad rap. Like, I'm not saying. Yeah, but it's not behaviors that are specific to crypto. Exactly. Exactly. There's grifting everywhere for those with eyes to see. Exactly. Open your eyes, take the blinders off, and we can see it. [36:30] anywhere um are you gonna be um is this a buy for you [36:33] um i would have to maybe do a little bit of research i mean based on what i just saw i would say i'm compelled i feel like there's a lot of innovation going on on the like narrative construction front yes and so i yeah i am kind of into that yeah um probably would be more of like a short-term thing for me okay yeah in and out um i did read in my reading uh refreshing of [36:58] Michael Saylor, that MicroStrategies was like, [37:01] Oh.

[37:01] there is a piece of the puzzle around the dot-com boom crash, not boom, crash, that he slash MicroStrategies was... [37:11] played a role in. I think I do a little bit more digging on that front, just as a recommendation, as you're thinking about this. You're saying to be cautious. Your financial advice to me is to be a little more cautious. This is financial advice. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. I do need that advice very often. Great. That can be in your query, your cloud. [37:29] query. Okay. [37:31] Great stuff.

Thanks for hearing from me on this. Okay, we are going to bring up our next guest here, Allie Pope. [37:39] And Matt's gonna stick around for this interview, which is exciting. There she is. Hi! It's so nice to see you IRL. [37:48] So fun. Okay, you are on the shorter side. So we're gonna do a little work here to get you comfortable. Because [37:58] Thank you. [37:58] up. [38:01] and your feet are on the floor. [38:03] or yes. [38:04] How you doing? [38:08] Thank you. [38:09] Is that too far? Do you want to give us a little test test?

[38:24] How are we sounding? [38:27] Okay. So excited to have you. Okay. Allie Pope, head of marketing programs and media at Vercel, leading Vercel's startup developer and creator facing programs and their new media arm. You were previously at Variant. You are an iconic ship poster on X, which in good company here, friend of the pod. This is not your first time here at Boys Club. So happy to have you. I know. It's full circle. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. [38:57] you're back in New York. We can talk about that.

Okay. You're back in New York. How does that feel? It feels great. Okay. Coming from SF. Yes. What is your, back to New York. What's your like SF read? My SF read is, it is definitely where AI is happening the most. I think you're someone that like is super serious and wants to build an AI and be around like the, you know, smartest people [39:27] Uh, it is a little dead. Dead. I might be canceled for saying that. I think that's a pretty... It needs to be said. Yeah, it's... You got to tell the truth sometimes.

No one's talking about it. [39:38] The computer's at the bar a lot for me. Oh my gosh, wait. We do need to get into like actual the meat of who you are and what you're doing. But I love SF. But the Whole Foods Market Street setup. Did you see this on Twitter? You definitely did. No. What? What? [39:54] Oh my gosh, pull it up. Yeah, I don't know. This, oh my God. Okay, you guys. Wait, I'm like so in a different part of Twitter. This is a man at the Market Street Whole Foods in San Francisco.

He has a... We're not seeing it. Oh, you're not seeing it? No, it's right there. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, my bad. Okay, you guys obviously don't have to see. Oh, I did see this. I did see this. Okay, it's a guy with a crazy setup. And the tweet says, someone is completely kitted out at the Market Street Whole Foods. This went supersonic. [40:17] on twitter as it should in my opinion this is deeply inappropriate to me deeply upsetting i mean get an office it's kind of smart if you think about it though no do not do that do not do that wait say more innovative [40:32] you get free wi-fi uh-huh access to hot food bar or like literally anything you want uh-huh and also it's not going to be super crowded because it's not a coffee shop or somewhere that they would expect someone to go okay several points yeah i also think i also think like when you're in public so many people live in like this mind prison of everyone's gonna be mad at me if i do this [40:55] And it's like, you should do whatever you want until people ask you to stop.

The key to that is when they ask you to stop, you should actually consider what they're saying. And you should really take into account that you have negative impact on other people. But until someone says anything. [41:09] Go off, sweetie. Like, do whatever you want. Okay. Okay. [41:14] I have such a high like awareness bar. Like I just feel so often I'm caring emotionally for the people in the room that it's very, very hard. Never care about others. [41:28] Okay. I was at Cafe Colette a few days ago. [41:34] with Ava.

We were there together! Okay, having a great meal. It's late. It's late night at Cafe Colette. The vibes are so good. We're having like a little drink, a little burger, whatever. We look [41:45] down the bar and there is a woman [41:49] On a Zoom call, [41:51] That's not okay. This is not the best. Wait, could you hear her? Could you hear her speaking? [41:55] - It was bizarre. - It was weird. - And she was showing him, [42:02] Okay, he was... The man on the Zoom call was shirtless. [42:05] The woman was showing, they were on a virtual date and I was just like, [42:10] No, I'm so sorry.

Not on my watch. Do you know? Did you ask? [42:15] - What? - There are bars. I saw this on Twitter. - No. - There are bars that are being set up for people who have AI companions. - No! - To have a safe space to talk to their AI-- - No! - Girlfriends and boyfriends. - No! - I'm totally serious. - That is the loneliest epidemic, like, in IRL, in your face. - Yes. - That's sad. - Yeah, like going, relocating yourself into a place with other people so that you can lock into your computer.

[42:39] is a little wild. Well, I mean, that's what everyone's doing at the coffee shops anyway. So I guess, what am I saying? You're not trying to hang out. That's a different lane. Okay. We have not said a word about Vercel. Pivoting back. What are you doing at Vercel? You're working on a bunch of really fun things. Tell us about it. Yes. So I change my job title every time I go on a podcast, which is hilarious. I've been calling myself a member of the technical staff [43:09] team leads our marketing programs at Vercel.

So I joined Vercel about a year and a half ago. I built out our startups program, which we saw a lot of traction with. We have like over 50% of each YC batch building on Vercel, which is super cool. And we've been growing that. And I have a team under me that's like now continuing to build that out. I also have a team that runs our open source program. So Vercel is known for open source. We are the creators and maintainers of js, which is an open source framework. We have our AI SDK.

We're very big in the open [43:39] And so we want to also contribute to the open source ecosystem by giving back to the builders that are utilizing our tools and building really cool things. And then more recently, we've been running our V0 Ambassador and V0 Student Program. So V0 is one of our products, which I was working on for a while doing growth and marketing. Basically, what it does is it allows anybody to create or update websites and apps using plain English. So you can prompt it. I can use it, even though I'm not genuinely technical.

[44:09] it to build and it will start creating that for me using real code. So our ambassadors in that program are people who are active builders on the platform. They want to share what they're doing. We give them credits and some other early access benefits as a result of that. And then students is what it sounds like. We know the future builders are at college campuses. And so we want to give them free or discounted access to all the tools that we're building. Cool. Such a fun job. And I [44:39] or [44:40] in just the right role for them.

It's like really satisfying. So one of the things that you're doing is the Vercel Accelerator. I believe you've done two cohorts. Yes. Like hugely successful. The last group of teams, 40 teams raised over a hundred million dollars since the program wrapped in July. Absolutely insane. I'd love to hear from you. Like these are people who are really actively building very early stage for the most part. Is that right? Yes. Okay. And they're using all these [45:10] And I'd love to hear like, what are you seeing? Like, what are some trends?

What is this current cohort building? [45:16] Yeah, so we started the accelerator because we saw that there were so many teams that were building really, really cool things and needed some extra support to kind of get to that next stage. And so we wanted to bring in really early pre-seed stage teams to build alongside Vercel engineers and Vercel leadership and kind of learn from the other partners that we work with on the accelerator as like the best of the best AI companies and tools. [45:46] a second one right now actually.

And what's been really cool, I always use this example. Last year, one of the winners was this company called Belly AI. [45:54] And they were building something I'm sure like nobody in this room has ever thought about before, where one of them used to work in like air transportation. And so he, one of the founders, actually is building this company to basically use AI to streamline airplane airport operations. So what he told me is that most planes are actually flying like mostly empty or half empty. [46:24] perspective. So this tool that they're building is helping airlines actually be able to use the planes to the full capacity to transport things.

And I thought like people and things, but mostly things. And so I thought that was so interesting because I was like, I never would have thought about this. And it's using AI for this like super specific, unique need that you probably wouldn't have known about unless you worked in that sector. There was another one that was based in Latin [46:54] WhatsApp, because that's the predominant messaging app that's used there, specifically for farmers and people who are working in the field to be able to more accurately and more easily take stock of like their animals or their crops or things like that.

And it automatically updates into the system because they saw that people weren't actually, [47:15] keeping track of things properly because it was really you know manual it was hard to do so now this kind of like solves that problem saves a lot of time so we're seeing more and more companies like that that are like hyper specific on a like in a specific area or like skill and I think that's because you know like we have all these big labs that are building out general purpose agents so those are kind of becoming less and less relevant like smaller companies aren't doing that anymore but there are a lot of people who have really unique knowledge on a specific thing and kind of

[47:45] help automate that. [47:46] That's awesome. So fun. Are you, so when does this cohort wrap? [47:51] This cohort wraps April 16th. So we're having our demo day in San Francisco on April 16th. Okay. Last year, our demo day had like a 700% waitlist. It was like the hottest club in SF. Oh my gosh. That's what brings people together. Yes, exactly. So we're super excited. Yeah. It's going to be April 16th, 3 to 5 PM. Cool. That's exciting. So it sounds like some of the promising projects were coming from people who had like esoteric knowledge of an airline or like [48:18] of like farming.

[48:20] Do you feel like the audience is like these are not like AI people, right? Like, are you trying to attract like these new audiences? Or is that just like something that happened? I think it's something that happened. Like we do have obviously other projects that are building kind of things that are more specific to AI expertise. Like one of the other ones from last year was building agents that help you test your code. [48:39] So there's like projects like that. I think these people show up naturally because A, we have a lot of credits, right?

And it's like a pretty, we're not taking equity in the company. So it's a pretty low stakes situation for them to just like have time and resources to build when other people or other, you know, VCs or programs might not take a bet on them because they are... [49:00] providing equity. But it was really interesting because we got a really good response to a lot of the companies. Like they were able to raise so much after. So I think it opened up people's eyes to things in the AI ecosystem that they may not have thought about before.

Yeah. Wow. Really cool. Okay. So... [49:16] Also want to get your take. I think that. [49:19] Hmm. [49:20] A few other categories here. You're thinking a lot about hiring. You're seeing a lot of these early teams hire. You're deep in the tools, the AI tools. I'm curious, what are some things that you're seeing both positive and negative as you're in, like, I think there's a big conversation right now around hiring. [49:39] jobs, hiring, [49:41] I think, young people coming out of school and trying to get jobs. What is some advice?

What are some things you're seeing? [49:46] I mean, my advice to everybody, I talk to a lot of new grads because I used to work in education before I was in tech at all. And so my advice has been like, utilize the tools, like use the new tools that are coming out every day. Make yourself familiar with that. One, because it's like good to know and just have a knowledge about. Two, because it actually makes you more attractive on the job market, right? All these companies, you see it all over the place.

Like all these execs are having these conversations where it's like, the teams need to be AI native. Everybody needs to be using AI. And yeah. [50:13] some people don't really know what that means, right? Like they're just trying to insert AI into like random stuff and it's not actually beneficial. What I told new grads is like, learn about the tools, try to use them to do things that you hate in your everyday life or that you hate in your current job or whatever. And then that's going to make you more productive.

It's going to teach you about what's happening and how to use the tools. And then more companies are going to want to hire you. When we interview people at Purcell, if they get to the take-home [50:43] you're expected to turn in a project that utilizes v0 and to understand it and to build with it because it is accessible for most people. And so we want people to really learn about the tools. When I interviewed at Vercel, I had to do a technical interview, which made me almost shit my pants. I like called the hiring manager and I was like, guys, I am not an engineer.

What are you doing? Like, whatever. So I spent the whole weekend before prepping. Crying. Yeah, crying and prepping. Honestly, way too much because it was like not that deep. But I spent the whole weekend [51:13] cursor using other tools that were really popular at that time. Yeah. And trying to learn about it so that I could understand a what I was talking about be what we were building. And then also just like [51:23] learn more because that was a big part of why I joined the team in the first place.

I wanted to learn a lot. Yeah. Um, [51:29] I... [51:31] Um... [51:32] this falls nicely into the next question i want to talk to you about is [51:35] the barrier to entry for creating and for building and for shipping is getting every single day lower and lower and easier and easier for, for, um, all types of people. What do you think is, [51:46] if you had a crystal ball, [51:48] that is going to produce in the world. [51:51] I mean, it can go very poorly or very well. And I will choose to be an optimist here.

I'll give you an example from my day-to-day work. So I said I had to do the technical interview. I, you know, was not an engineer in my background. Now, myself and my whole team, we're all shipping PRs. We are contributing to code bases. We're contributing to updating websites and things like that because we have access to tools like V0. Yeah.