[MUSIC PLAYING]
We have some huge news. This is from the Open AI blog. Open AI acquires TBPN accelerating the global conversation about AI. This is not an April Fool's joke.
April Fool's was yesterday. We didn't do anything for April Fool's Day. This is real. This is a very interesting deal.
“I think a lot of people will be interested in this.”
We're very excited about this. We have a bunch of context and information to share about how this changes things, what changes what doesn't--
I'm sure there's a million questions we're trying.
We're going to try and get to them all. But then we also have a huge normal show. Because normal show, we got Mark Lower. That's the first thing that's not changing. TBPN's not going away.
We're going to be live every day, three hours. As long as we want, we have a lot of flexibility. We're going to do a lot of interesting things. If you are calling me right now, I can't pick up because I'm live. And I think you know it at the time to turn off the phone.
I think, yes, it might be time to turn off the phone. Yeah, very, very strange. I think this is maybe the first time in history. There's been a deal like this. And then two people that are a part of it have to go and talk
for three hours straight. But it's technology, business, as usual over here. We're very excited about the Artemis 2 mission going successfully. Hopefully you all watched it. It was a lot of fun.
We were watching it here on the screen. And we were gripped as the rocket took off because-- Yeah, we were so locked in. We were joking around that it felt like it should have been a paper view.
“Like could we turn space into a profit center for the government?”
Somebody was saying that it was not entertaining. I was extremely entertained. I don't know. Yeah. Maybe it could do more.
But NASA has a decent e-commerce business, too. We were watching. They were selling like 10,000 patches per minute or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we were doing the back of the envelope.
Just from the main call to action at the bottom of the YouTube stream, they were selling a patch for tens of dollars and they'd sold like hundreds of thousands of them.
So as we were watching, they were selling like something like $10 million worth of merch.
So maybe go get some for yourself. Anyway, let's go over to Fiji Simo's post on the OpenAI blog. She shared this message with the company earlier today. She says, "I'm excited to share that we've acquired TPPN. This acquisition brings a team of strong editorial instincts deep audience understanding
and proven ability to convene influential voices across tech, business, and culture." That's-- I'm still going to be hit down. Yeah. Yeah, you are.
TPPN has built something pretty special. It's one of the places where the conversations about AI and builders is actually happening day-to-day. A lot of you already watch it and rely on it to stay close to what's going on. As I've been thinking about the future of how we communicate in OpenAI, one thing that
has become clear is that the standard communications playbook just doesn't apply to us. We're not a typical company. We're driving a really big technological shift and the mission of bringing-- and with the mission of bringing AGI to the world comes a responsibility to help create a space for real, constructive conversation about the changes AI creates with builders and people using
the technology at the center. And that's exactly what TPPN has built, which I was going to say is the next line. That is a huge part of the show is making sense of what's going on, how these tools are actually being used, all of the implications we've gone all over the place and we will continue to go all over the place.
Yeah, and over the last-- over the last year, multiple years, there's just been so much uncertainty about AGI. I don't think we can change that. But there's also a lot of fear just talking through it with the people that are actually helping diffuse AI through the economy across every single industry is something that
we've enjoyed a tremendous amount and is exactly what we're going to continue to do if you want to continue. Yeah. So rather than trying to recreate that ourselves, it made a lot of sense just to bring them in, support what they're doing and help them scale while keeping what makes them special.
A core part of this is editorial independence. We can say whatever we want, because we're live and we don't need to run anything through anyone. It's not possible. It would be very difficult to have somebody here.
Can we say this? I've been back to say a sentence. TPPN will continue to run their programming, choose their own guests and make their own editorial decisions. That's foundational to their credibility and it's something we're explicitly protecting
as part of this agreement.
And also, we were never in the scoop industry, people were kind of asking like, is this journalism?
Is it commentary? I think we've always been like, hey, we like to talk to a lot of people, have a conversation, bring in people. Yeah.
“And even when that's how companies have approached us and said, we'll give you the exclusive.”
We don't. Yeah. We'll say, give it to us. It's like, hey, you can come on the chat. We've got to go.
We actually want you to go talk to the journal, or the Times, or Bloomberg, wherever it's everywhere, etc. Wherever you want to go. And then come and contextualize it with us and let us dig in and understand more about the strategy.
And so, TBPN will continue running their programming, choose their guests and make their own editorial decisions. That's foundational to their credibility and something we're explicitly protecting as part of this agreement. I'm also excited to bring their amazing comms and marketing instincts to the team.
We got lots of ideas, and we're very excited for this.
They've helped many brands market online, and because they have a strong puls...
the industry is going, their comms and marketing ideas have really impressed. Did you see them? I can't wait to leverage their talent outside of the show to innovate on how we bring AI to the world in a way that helps people understand the full impact of this technology on their daily lives.
TBPN will sit within our strategy organization, reporting to Chris LaHane, really excited to welcome Jordan, John, Dylan, and the broader team. And here's a statement from you. Do you want to read just? What did you say?
Over the past year, we've had a front row seat, not just to open AI, but to the entire ecosystem
covering the daily news announcements and launches in real time, while we've been critical
of the industry at times after getting to know Sam, Fiji, and the Open AI team, what stood out the most was their openness to feedback and commitment to getting this right, moving from commentary to real impact and how this technology is distributed and understood globally is incredibly important to us. I contextualize a little bit more shared.
A lot of people are like, "Is this an April Fool's joke?" I've been saying, "Expect the unexpected." This is a plot twist. I'll give you that. Here was unexpected.
It was unexpected to me, but I'm really happy about it.
“And when I reflect on my career, I think it makes a lot of sense, and I can walk you through”
some of my career and my experience with Open AI and with Sam Altman. I've known Sam for maybe 13 years. He invested in my first company in 2013, and then we got in a really serious log jam during a financing, and I wrote him an email. I told the story in Bloomberg a couple of years ago.
I wrote an email and said, "Hey, this is getting really rough. I'm a first time founder. I don't know if we're going to be able to get this done," and he called me, and we hopped on the phone for like five minutes, and he was able to completely resolve everything and everyone walked out of the deal feeling pretty good.
And so that always left this impression on me that he was founder-friendly, obviously.
He didn't, in this particular case, it was to my benefit, not particularly to his benefit, the way the deal, like wound out, and he was just a great addition to the negotiation, really, and you were very young at the same time. Yeah, I was just a wee lad. I was.
I was. I was twenty-three, twenty-four, or something like that. And then when I took my second company through YC, he was president at the time, and then when I joined Founders Fund, the very first deal that I saw in Motion at Founders Fund was the post-Chatch of UT round in Open AI in late 2022, early 2023.
And so I sort of had this front row seat to all of this, and then once we actually started growing TBPN, he was one of the first people that I texted to, you know, say, "Hey, do you want to come on the show?" And he was the first lab lead to come on the show, and we're excited to continue having him on the show.
Hopefully, have other lab leads on the show, have other people from all over the industry.
“And just generally, I think that when I was at Founders Fund, I was not particularly”
in the weeds of intruck venture capital fights. I was much more interested in the conversation around technological stagnation, not funding companies, not making great companies happen.
I never was in a situation where I was like, "Oh, if a different VC firm backs a great
company, that's bad," you know? And I think that's the same philosophy that I have always taken forward and will continue to believe in, which is that the American AI industry is the most important thing, and that will continue to be the case, and I'm excited for all the different competition and everything that's happening in the industry to continue and push further.
Jordie, did you have anything else to say? I just wanted to say some thank yous, because a lot of people have been a part of this journey to date. It's been, I think, something like, let me do the math here, 496 days, roughly 16 months, since we put out the first episode, it was just the two of us in Ben sitting in a room, a couple
cameras, a couple microphones, and I will just say I didn't know this special of a business
“relationship was possible between you and me, like I think like if you look back on that”
almost 500 days, we've had disagreements around strategy or approaches or things like that, but we have almost universally stayed perfectly aligned on everything that matters every single day, every step of the way, and I think that's somewhat of a miracle, given that we went into this, not really knowing what it would become, and we did like one side project together, and it took like eight months, and it was like not, it was like successful, but
it was not like, oh yeah, we were working together daily for months, you know, it was a lot of just just jumping and leap of faith, right? Yeah, and I think we've got this question so many times, like, do you guys get sick of each other, you know, you just have to talk to each other for three hours a day? And like I've said this before, I'll say it again, and it is actually hilarious, the second
that we leave the office, we're both getting the car, we call each other, we're talking
For like another hour on the way home, and so it's just been, it's been the p...
of a lifetime to just build this business with you, and the whole team, the team has been
“absolutely incredible, you guys are all truly amazing, and this very much is a team, like”
a team sport, like business is a team sport, but this is like a live team sport we come in here every single day, and the show doesn't happen if we don't all come in and make it happen, and so the consistency of the team has been just incredible, and watching every one's individual talents, just flourish has been incredible, a lot of people came into this, you know, having done a thing or two in the past, but learning new things, Brandon
has been absolutely incredible, just an absolute rock in the organization, Brandon, if you're not familiar rights, rights are newsletter every day, and is just remarkably consistent, and has helped us shape our editorial approach, and has been incredible Dylan, who joined us, I guess, technically, Q4, of last year, and you know, I'd worked with him at my last
company, but is truly, truly one of a kind, remarkable, I never want to, I never want to do
business without him, and he has just done such an exceptional job, working off there, it's like, you know, challenging when you're building a company, and you're also having to put on a live performance for three hours every day, he wrote the newsletter yesterday, so that's true, he wrote the op-ed, he wrote the op-ed, then Ben, who's been here since day before, TVPN, he was working with me on my YouTube channel, when did we start working
with you? I was here before, Jordy. Yeah, maybe, like, we mid-2024, maybe something like that. That sounds right, that's one of the videos. Yeah, we travel a lot, a lot of places, but it's been
absolutely incredible to watch you grow from an extremely talented individual, and
too, very capable, and talented manager, and building out a team of people that are so hard working, and wonderful, and, you know, Michael Scott Jackson, you guys, you know, are so, you know, such a joy to work with, even though what we do is, is not easy, and it's changing, you know, day-to-day. To all the guests, seriously, it's been, it's been so much fun. Like, if you went back and re-wound to the beginning of the show, we started with
no guests. We did something like 50 episodes, without any guests. We thought that there was
“a time that we thought we would just do that forever. Yes, that was the only thing that was,”
you know, really unique about the show. Like, that's the reason I started creating content in 2020, because it was during COVID, there were no events, there were no places to meet other founders, meet other business people. I wasn't thinking of it as like a media business, I was thinking of it as like a way to just have conversations and meet other people who are building companies, and now we get to do that all day long, which is just after come true.
Yeah, so so many guests have turned into dear friends, you know, the, the Joe Wies and dolls, the Dylan Patel, there's really too many to list, but we will have you all back on the show, as I can't wait. To everybody that's tuned in, whether you've watched, you know, the RSS feed, it's like a live show, the clips, the newsletter, the hard, you know, we've strived to create the right product regardless of how much time you have. If you have two minutes a day to read
“the newsletter, great. If you've got five minutes to watch some clips, if you want to watch the”
entire podcast, if you want to watch diet, TPPN, the daily cut down. Thank you, thank you for tuning in and fortunately, pretty much, everything is going to stay exactly the same. To our one and only Tyler. Tyler, you are truly, truly incredible. One of the brightest young people I've ever,
I've ever worked with, and you have such a bright future, you know, we always, we always knew that
I've felt from the very beginning that you would go on to start your own company, and we cherish every single minute that we have with you, and we're going to do our very best to retain you for decades, but thank you for everything you've brought to the show, everything you've built, Tyler, if you're just tuning in now, is built all of the internal software that we use to run the show. It is a fully custom content management system CRM, it helps us edit all of our videos,
Is the backbone of the show.
the show would not be possible without it, and yeah, your contributions on air as well. It's
“amazing. It's so much fun to be able to cut over to you, and so it is with great honor that I”
give you this sound board. And our sponsors, we can start with with the ramp team, Eric,
Eric Karim, and the whole team over there has just been incredible. They allowed us, you know,
at the end of 2024 when we started doing the show, we really loved it. They committed to sponsoring the show for a year, and that allowed us to do so much in terms of investing in all the equipment that we use, hiring people, they made it possible, and have been truly, truly exceptional partners, and watching ramps grow over the last couple of years has just been phenomenal, and they deserve all the success. And every other sponsor that has been a part of this, truly. Shoutout Nick as well.
Oh, did you not get one? We got to get a direct shoutout over Nick. We got a direct shoutout for Nick.
“We don't know what to call Nick. We can't give his name on air because we'll get 10 times more emails.”
He, the lineup every day is crafted by Nick. He is our liaison to 99% of the guests that come on the show. Sometimes it starts with an interaction over X, or a text message, or there's other intermediaries involved. There's a lot that goes into actually getting someone into the waiting room, into the show, making sure that they understand how the show will work. It's sort of like, you know, you're hot, dropping into this live show. That's new for a lot of people. And Nick does a great
job communicating and parsing all the noise to understand what the best news of the day is, how we can contextualize the best with the optimal guests, and he's done a fantastic job, and we'll continue. It's an honor to David Centra. Yeah. One of the kind...
You literally inspired us. Yeah, David was our very first listener that I'm aware of.
He gets sent a lot of... We sent a link in a Google drive. And he listened, and from that first episode, even though it was very scrappy, he said, "Take this, take this, you know, a hundred times more seriously." Then you are right now, and we did, and it's the best advice that I've ever gotten, and he has been. And we have a picture of him. We have a picture of him here. We couldn't print his full size. I mean, there's a black and white photo printed,
but it's a black and white photo, and he's a black and white brand. So, thank you to David Centra, who's been the podcast godfather, truly. And the gong, the chat is asking us to hit the gong. We have to... We have to rush large. The gong will remain. The gong will remain. Wilmanitis has already chimed in with his take. He says, "Many people are saying
we're in the deal guy Yuga, many are saying, and it means a lot that Wilmanitis, the only he is the only guest who has co-hosted a full show from start to finish with us.
“And if you want to go back in the archives, you can watch that episode. It's a wild one.”
It was in a hotel room. We had to figure out the remote shows fully. The team worked really hard to make that one happen, and very chaotic. Good time, very chaotic. Is there anything else to say about open air? I mean, of course, we'll be in conversation with you forever. Any time on the show, you're welcome to leave a comment or chat in the chat is asking, "Where is Wilmanitis right now?" I don't know. Probably sailing about. I don't know. Yeah, and yeah, it's an honor to partner
with OpenAI and every single person on the team that we've had the pleasure of meeting, we've been impressed by. There are ridiculously talented and every single person is committed to getting this AI thing right. We're incredibly excited. Great. Well, let's move on to the Artemis-2 pictures and images and news. Very, very exciting. It made the front of the Wall Street Journal
and NASA aims to orbit moon for first time since '72 to boldly go the crew of
Natus asking, "Is that three diet co-hosts?" Yes. You got it. You got it. You got it. Thank you to the Coca-Cola Corporation for making this possible. Thank you to the Human Team, the Matei for the Matei, your Matei is the podcast and it can. Yes. Wouldn't be possible without you guys.
Thank you to Taylor's and suitmaker.
horse, the prop department. There's a million things here. It's been a great time. So the crew of NASA
Artemis-2 head to Cape Canaveral, launch pad Wednesday for the first human space flight to the moon in half a century. John Krauss posted a incredible photo. Is he someone who actually, yeah, he, he, he, he special comes a sister. Special comes a sister. He actually goes to the launches and brings special photography gear to get the best possible photos and man he did he deliver with this one. What an incredible moment. We talked about it a little bit. There's an article
on the watches of NASA Artemis-2. John, we have to thank our lovely wives. Of course. How do we know our families? Did you get a text? Maybe. We don't talk about them a lot on the show. Yes. This is a show about technology and business, but they have been, they are the back, they're the, the truly the backbones of the show. I've put up with, I think like a lot of travel.
It's a lot of fun. Incredible hours. A lot of good mornings. A lot of really mornings. I think
out of the last, out of every single day that we've done the show. I haven't, I've, I've left the house past 6 a.m. maybe twice right. It's been, it's been a long, it's been a long road and in the good news ladies is it's nothing's going to change. Now thank you to both of you for supporting us and allowing us to do what we do. Can we pull up this picture, Ben, in the production chat of the first episode that we recorded in the Jonathan Club in downtown, showing a bit of the earlier. Oh, you did.
“This is, yeah, such a, such a wild time. Remember that? Yeah, remember that's right. Suitless suitless. We had the flag.”
Yeah. But no suits. It looked, it looked pretty good on camera. I was happy with the way it came out, but yesterday the long-awaited Artemis 2 mission took to the stars and route to the moon for the first such manned mission since 1972. Oh, we flashback. It's me. Oh, the chat asked for a flashback. Oh, the flashback. Okay, that's good. Yes. The flashback has been a highlight for sure. Both literally. Yeah, the sound, the sound board. It's truly a character on the show.
I have some too now. It's members all had Omega Speedmaster X33 models strapped to their flight seats. Danny Milton just wrote a full article on the site. Now detailing the watch is worn on the wrists of the four astronauts throughout their time as part of this mission. Watches have a long-standing history with space like most notably through the Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch, but there are countless others that have cemented their place in the cosmos. So we can pull up this
video now of the astronauts working on what looks like some type of tablet. So here he is typing in. Most secure password known to man. What is that? 9393 or something? 39393. 9393.
Powerful. Powerful. We're going back to the moon. Apparently that video we played yesterday was a
little bit of fake news. The young man, the adolescent who swears and says we're going to the
“half in moon. He was the real line I believe in the community note is that he says we're going to the”
fricking. Yeah, yeah. And it was all turned to add the actual affords. But the sentiment is still the same. Yeah. It's very exciting. Very inspirational. And Jared Isaacman on launch day says oh this kid is definitely getting a bag of NASA gear. That's great. Very cool. There are some wrinkles with the launch. Fortunately nothing like disasters are catastrophic or anything. But the good news is that we're on our way back to the moon. The bad news is that the toilet's broken apparently. And I believe
this is from the live blog from the New York Times. The NASA associate minister said there is a controller issue with the toilet on the Orion capsule and it would take a few hours to troubleshoot. We're just getting started. He said when addressing that and some other glitches with the space craft. The spirit of Apollo 10 lives on. They said 135. They told us that here's another one. It seems like this is not the first time that this has happened. But we're hoping for the best here. Sounds like there
were some other issues with outlook as well. We can pull up this video from Tom Warren. Yeah, go for it. And then I also see that I have two Microsoft outlooks and either one of those
“or if you want to remote in and check. Why do you have two like web and desktop? Or do you think”
it's like two separate desktop installations? Join in on your PCD and we'll let you know when we're done.
Honestly, this is the best possible failure scenario is outlook.
So can they buy it? I think it's a good outcome. There were so many amazing images coming out
yesterday. Yeah. Peyton Alexander says this is the real reward for Artemis. This is who we are actually doing this for. They will grow up knowing they can one day work in their country's bases on the moon and Mars. We are not just abstractly hoping for a better world for them. We are going there. And two kids here watching the launch from Orlando. That's just beautiful. Yeah, my five-year-old said it was boring, which is what you want to hear. But we'll have to give
some more context to him about how big of a deal it is. Yeah, I don't know, maybe he wants more. More flashing lights on the screen. We were driving for the actual launch. Yeah. And it was so funny listening to the audio feed and sitting in traffic and just looking at it everyone. Yeah. And realizing that it felt like the majority of the world still wasn't paying attention or didn't care. Yeah. I mean, rockets do launch like every day now.
I know, SpaceX has normalized it to such a degree. Isn't there, isn't there some sort of subplot on the Apollo missions that by the by the third or fourth Apollo mission? There was no, like the actual viewership had dropped off and like the American population had been gotten to 2.6 has put subway surfers on it. Yeah. On the NASA feed. Crazy. The actually need to
maybe need to do this. How AI helped one man and his brother build a $1.8 billion company
who needs more than two employees that when artificial intelligence can do so many corporate tasks, it's super efficient and a little bit lonely. So Aaron Griffith tells the story of Matthew Gallagher to took just two months, $20,000 and more than a dozen artificial intelligence tools to get his startup off the ground. From his house in Los Angeles, Mr. Gallagher 41 used AI to write the code for the software that powers his company produced the website copy, generated the images and videos
for ads and handle customer service. He created AI systems to analyze his businesses' performance and he outsourced the other stuff he couldn't do himself. His startup, MedVee, a telehealth provider of GLP-1 weight loss drugs got 300 customers in its first month, you know, second month, gained more than 1,000 more. In 2025, MedVee's first year in business, the company general year,
the first full year in business, the company generated $401 million in sales. Mr. Gallagher
then hired his only- This is absolutely insane because I, as GLP-1s were starting to take off,
“I remember distinctly talking with somebody that was like, I want to start a telehealth company”
for GLP-1s and at that time, I was like, "Okay, there's a lot of telehealth companies that are at scale." Yep. They're well aware of this. They will immediately introduce this product and other, you know, similar products to their customer base and it's going to be incredibly difficult to be competitive and it turns out there's just such overwhelming demand for these products that you could come in as a new company and scale. Like, one year in maybe, he hires his only
employee, his younger brother, Elliott. This year they're on track to do $1.8 billion in sales. A $1.8 billion company with just two employees in the age of AI, it's increasingly possible, so they're in Griffith in the New York Times. Sam Alman, the Chief Executive Open AI predicted the rise of a new breed of super-efficient company in 2024. A one-person business worth $1 billion would have been unimaginable without AI, he said on a podcast, and now it will happen.
Now as AI tools spread entrepreneurs are harnessing the technology to expand their startups to an enormous scale at breathtaking speed with very few human humans. Big companies, especially in tech are getting in on this disruption to Pinterest, block, and others have cut
“thousands of workers in recent months, setting efficiencies enabled by AI. Does this count yet, though?”
Like, I feel like to be the one person, one billion dollar company. You think that's a deal? Well, he's got to be able to log into your payroll tool, and you're the only person there. Oh, so he's got his brother, and sorry, bro. Take a look. The startup, which is not raised outside funding, also has no official valuation, but many highly valued tech companies can only dream of hitting $1 billion in revenue with so few workers. MedVee is also profitable.
It is great, and important if you're bootstrapped. Can't, can't. Is this a wrapper company? It's like a GLP1 wrapper. But it's AI enabled, but it's not wrapping the AI Foundation model. It's like using the tool to wrap another industry and just create the efficiency between the manufacturer and the actual distribution. It really is remarkable that they were able to hover up so much revenue in such a competitive space, because you would assume
that the other telehealth providers would have significant ad operations and that the margins
“on customer acquisition would be very, very tricky to crack, but you must have found some unique”
insight into how to distribute the product, get actual people to the website, because the AI
Certainly can build the website and write the copy, but it can't necessarily ...
up and actually put down their hard earned cash for the product. I thought he would also text
“it. Yeah, I did. The news. He said congratulations. That's so exciting. Thanks for letting me now.”
Talk to you soon. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you, Dad.
Oh, it's amazing. Well, if you've texted me or you've called me in the last three hours,
“there's a good chance that I might respond to you in the next couple hours. Leave us five”
stars in Apple Podcasts and Spotify, subscribe to our newsletter, tvv.com. Everything is the
same we will see you on fun. Fun. We have an answer next week. Five shows, 15 hours. Let's be honest.
“It'll probably be more like 17 or 18 or 19. We'll see you. The world is our oyster. And thank you”
for being with us along the journey. We appreciate it. Let's get one more gong hit, John. It's been an honor. [Music]
