Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Operating in the US and trying to compete on a global stage with companies that are largely state sponsored by and state backed by their governments is kind of an unfair playing field. So you know, regardless of whether you're a free market economist thinker or not, you do have to acknowledge that even if your country is playing by those rules, not everyone else's country is going to be.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Gentlemen, we're back again.
I've got to ask you before we dive into it, it is summer, it's August, late August. We're filming this right now. We're all taking different vacations and things and managing time off. Greg, you just went to the Great north and then Will, I think you went with your family to some parts of Europe, but I got to hear it. Where'd you guys go and how did you manage founder operator mode amid all of this?
[00:00:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I think I went to Canada, a place called Newfoundland where I'm from and grew up. I mean one is like not is having people to depend on, having like a strong team. Like you're not a single point of failure if you're not out for or if you're not in the office for a period of time. I think that's always true for even small companies or larger ones. And I think there's some part of it's nice being responsible and people depending on you, but you also don't want the world shouldn't fall apart when you leave. And so there's some balance of how to do that effectively and then even just delegating properly. I think for that period of time I tried to really clearly just outline what, what I was hoping to get done while I was out and get some help from, from you guys and others to help support during that period of time. I also like remote work like and I think it offers additional flexibility just to get things done. And I think over since COVID I've, you know, you learn this new hybrid work style. I describe it to my dad and he's like, he finds it hard to believe in some ways you're always working, but in other ways you have additional flexibility. Like he just grew up with the traditional, went to work at 8 o' clock and came home at 5 every day. And there's advantages of focus on that that I think I miss sometimes where you kind of separate these worlds. But then there's other parts where I can spend, you know, an extra couple of weeks with family and still be able to get a lot of work done in those periods of time. So I think the Mixture of those things allow a lot of flexibility and to still get a lot of things done.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: I think more importantly Will was the fact that we got endless photos from Greg of his family while he was on vacation. So although Greg wanted to stay off slack, I feel like the photos that we got, one of them was like his, his, his son like squirting a water h something. You know I was kind of expecting Greg to like be on the back of a water ski or something but we didn't get that. And so I think that in itself was more important than any other kind of business updates that were back and forth.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Yeah, a hundred percent.
[00:02:47] Speaker C: The kids and I had a great time is awesome.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Yeah, we kind of memified that picture. That's all of us spraying and praying when we, when we send out our email blast. Greg, I know you also went to go and visit some companies while you were there. Did you get any, any interesting company visits in while you in Canada?
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I just wrote a LinkedIn post about, I spent a week with Colab Software. You know they're in the process of raising a series C round. You know they've over 100 employees and they're really off to the races on building, they finding product market fit and I think you know, I've worked with that company before they form, they even like incorporated and to see them through that eight year journey, like in some ways you just see the highlights if you're on the outside. But I've been advising them since the very beginning and it's just, it's really incredible to see them grow as like they were just young engineers coming out of school to be in like these full you know, business executives that are managing like you know, very sophisticated company now and it's very cool to see that. I also get exposure to a lot. I'm a venture partner for a small fund in my hometown and get exposure to a lot of other like early stage companies. I think the other part is really fascinating is to see AI's impact on all these businesses and it's having real effect. Like we're seeing it across, we have a small portfolio but like it's impacting every business in a really incredible way. And yeah, it's just fascinating to hear those stories directly from, from other founders too.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's very cool. I'll tell you all a little bit about mine. I went on vacation earlier in the summer so the first half in June. We spent some time in the uk, went to a wedding, spent some time in Italy and Then I took a trip to Morocco that was not necessarily pre planned, but I also serve as an advisor to a company called Mitra Chem. And this company does, they do battery materials, iron rich cathodes for, for EV batteries and storage batteries. And we went to visit a, a phosphate manufacturer, ocp. They're based in, in Morocco, kind of outside of Casablanca. And it was one of the largest facilities I've ever been to. It's like it was like 50 million square feet. So you know, we spent a lot of time working in the Tesla factory, which is one of the largest in the country, is a 5 million square foot facility. Imagine that like 10 times over. And there were just lots of different places to collect materials, process materials, store them, convert them.
It was just really interesting. And the whole time I'm also just like a huge equipment geek and just trying to figure out how are they, what type of machines are they using for different aspects of processing? Because I think that, you know, that's, that's something as we are planning to build more capacity for battery materials processing in the US and like this is what it looks like, that's the type of, and stuff, the type of stuff that we need to invest in. So I thought that was a very, very cool trip, very eye opening. I learned a lot and yeah, now I'm ready to kind of get back to work.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: I love it. Both of you went on these amazing vacations. I feel like in different parts of the world, Greg went back to his roots.
Somehow I ended up in Michigan, outside of Detroit, in like a suburb of Detroit. I don't have any Moroccan Casablanca factory to tell stories about Will. Except that I can tell you there was a lot of the traditional Midwest fast food present everywhere. And so I'm still, still working that off as we speak and had my chance to see the great Roman empire that once was of Detroit. But I feel like it is coming back in a lot of ways. So I think now is a good time for us to get into the meat and potatoes of the podcast. All right, gentlemen, we've got a good lineup of topics, but first off, I want to dive into some news.
Ford just announced something, they're calling it the biggest update, the biggest news they've had as a company since the announcement of the Model T line. Greg, I want you to tell us all about this.
[00:06:50] Speaker C: Yeah, they talked about a lot of things. I mean they're, they're going through this reinvention they used in their promotional video. They talk about how their back is against the wall. I Think that the traditional OEMs, GM and Ford and even Toyota, like the other non American companies are all going through this, this transformation. And I think they have these existing businesses around their ICE division and then trying to reinvent both economy and electric electrification. It's just like it's such a monumental change. And I think the nature of these businesses being very capital intensive, traditionally low margin, this is very hard to make these changes. And they're in the innovator's dilemma of, you know, how do we invest and build something new that is a direct threat to their core and underlying business. And so you're seeing that it's not Will and I joked before this that it's like we've seen this announcement a few times from them and other companies and you can tell they're trying to figure it out. They're like, how do we reboot the company in these new ways? And it's not easy. You know, they a lot of their initial EV products didn't work or were either much way too expensive or demand was not great because the way they were designed, they're kind of these Frankenstein together designs of incorporating basically traditional designs. And this is them kind of starting from scratch. And so you see them innovating on the battery side, on the manufacturing side. They're going to this like more branch style assembly lines that Tesla and other others used. The gigacasting, they call it the unicasting which gets rid of a lot of the individual stamp components and reduces the size of the body shop and a bunch of other things. And so it's great to see and you see Tesla and other, more Silicon Valley, like outside of traditional OEMs are really leading that effort for them. But I think it's really hard, I think it's hard for these businesses to reinvent themselves. And we'll talk about Exxon, I went through some of that at ExxonMobil. These big businesses that have been doing the same thing, it's really hard for them to transform their businesses when they go through these tectonic shifts.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Will, I've got to hear your take on this. And I feel like Greg just alluded to the fact that obviously they're drawing some inspiration from some companies that you are all too familiar with. And for those that are listening for the first time, Will, you were boots on the ground, the person responsible for buying pretty much all of the equipment, if not all of the equipment, as you took the old Toyota facility in Fremont and made it what it is now, the Tesla Fremont facility.
So Tell us what your thoughts are on this. Where do you think they're getting inspiration from? What's your perspective here?
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm happy to weigh in for context. Actually. Greg and I used to work for Doug Field. Essentially he wasn't our direct manager, but he actually was responsible for a lot of the redesign of the vehicle and the manufacturing lines that we built. During the Model 3 launch, which at the time was the largest product launch that Tesla had ever done, the largest scale of manufacturing for any electric vehicle ever. So there were lots of things that just needed to be reinvented when it came to different processes for building batteries and making battery packs and things like that.
I think, you know, with, with Doug now being at Ford, I think that this is, is actually really a golden opportunity for, for Ford as a, as a company to reinvent itself. And I'll say maybe I'm just in a good mood, but I'm feeling like pretty optimistic about their ability to be able to innovate through this electric vehicle division of the company.
I think on a large scale it's really difficult for large companies to do this type of reinventing. Even reinventing the manufacturing line, the assembly line and the way they're doing it from a very linear process to a very, let's call it like subsystems coming together for a final assembly isn't something that's unique to just electric vehicles. And so that actually indicates something a little deeper for me that they're using this department not just to test and build for electric vehicles, but to also be a pilot of technologies and processes that they would want to roll out company wide at a company like Ford. So that's the part that seems most interesting to me. I would say that Ford seems like they're the most serious of the big American manufacturers and doing that kind of reinventing. I think we're seeing a lot of like to, to pose a comparison between Ford and gm. GM is doing a lot of their reinventing by way of acquisition. And so they've got like a very strong corporate development team that's looking for different businesses that they can snap up, invest in and bolt onto the company where Ford seems to really be focused on changing the ethos of the company from within and then partnering with other people outside, you know, to provide the technology they need to do it. So I'm really, I'm excited about it. I'm really interested in seeing how the team does this because execution is everything. I think you guys have heard me say this many times, announcements are cheap, but execution is really? Where, where the proof is in the pudding.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: I love that. I'm going to ask then both of you one quick question about this. So with Ford's new EV platform news, for people that are listening to this, whether they're manufacturers, buyers, engineers, what's one lesson or takeaway that you think they can take from this into what they're doing?
[00:12:16] Speaker A: The best thing that you can possibly get out of building up a subdivision that's like the innovation hub for your company is, is to not be afraid to break things. I have seen these types of initiatives go really well and I've seen them go very poorly. I would say when it comes to giving a startup within a big company the initiative to do things, they should be able to change things. Like if they don't like slack, like let them use a different communications platform if they want to book their, their meetings in a different way, if they want to experiment with, you know, just anything new to really just empower those teams to be able to do those things. Because sometimes things as innocuous as a meeting rooms booking system can be something that is an impediment to innovation.
So I think those are like the small things, the bigger things that they can experiment on are just like vehicle and part manufacturing techniques like we've seen them doing with their large casted molds.
Experiment with, you know, a lot of things that you think maybe 9 out of 10 of them don't work, but for that one thing that does, it could end up being a game changer for your company. And I think that's there are too many sacred cows in the industry and so it's time to disrupt.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: All right, I love it. So Will's take is lean into experimenting, lean into making mistakes. I'm just going to give a shout out for the three of us here at Diagon. I joined as the head of marketing and I think quickly have been dabbling in all things AI, a little bit of product, et cetera.
Will, there's not a hat you don't wear. Greg, I think you joined as head of business development and now you're business development and product and also our resident Canadian influencer. And so I think, you know, we can all appreciate the fact that thriving in ambiguity is something you have to do in a smaller organization, especially to startup. It'll be interesting to see if this function within Ford can thrive in the ambiguity and lean into making those kinds of mistakes. Be really interesting. All right, Greg, Ford's EV news. I've got to hear from you. What is the one lesson you want to share with folks who are listening that they can take away from all the articles, the thought pieces, the. The situations that are being monitored on X. What's the one lesson you think people can learn from this 40v news?
[00:14:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's the same. Maybe it's a similar twist. I think risk taking, it's like you have to take risks. But maybe it's like the, the different way of saying it is like change is the only constant that you had to be comfortable. It's like this whole thing needs to change. And it's sort of like in some ways that announcement feels too finite. It's like, this is what we're going to do. And really it's like that's just like a handful of ideas and it's like, okay, you've got to go try them and then try the next thing and then try the next thing and then try the next thing and the next thing and like, half of them are not going to work. And I think it's more of those mentalities that matter much more than coming up with these, like, novel ideas. Like, most of the ideas are like, sort of straightforward or not, not super innovative on their own, but it's like this ability to both come up with them, execute them, and then pivot when they don't work. And so I think that, you know, it's basically, it's the same theme around change, risk taking, and doing it in somewhat of a controlled way. And Jeff Bezos differentiates these things, like, where it's like you have certain parts of the business where you're innovating on something new and it's okay to make mistakes. But he's like, if we're opening up our 101st distribution center that we've done a hundred times, we probably should be pretty great at it and we probably shouldn't mess it up. And so there's some nuance to it. You've got to have certain parts of the company that are risk taking and fast moving and other parts that are executing consistently because you can't, you know, you need elements of both.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: I think this is a great segue. And Greg, only because you were boots on the ground as well, to a bit of news that I think both of us, all three of us, were reading around Exxon's return to Russia, and I think they're in talks to return to Russia. And I think it speaks to organizational change, shifts ways that people need to be adaptable again and learn in different ways.
And I think it's relevant to us both from a geopolitical perspective, what it means to return to a country and enter back into a country and what you need to be thinking about from an equipment and facilities perspective.
So Greg, I'm going to go to you on this and if you can quickly tell everyone who's listening about how you were in Moscow and your perspective on Exxon leaving Russia and what it was like to be there at Exxon during that time. And then what should we be thinking about as we're, we're learning from this now as we start to see this, this return back to a major market for this, this major company. So Greg, I'm going to you on that.
[00:17:09] Speaker C: No, I mean this is a personal story for me. I mean I spent almost 10 years with Exxon and so, you know, spent a lot of my early career there and I did spend a meaningful amount of time working on their, their project in Russia. I didn't live there, but I, you know, worked. I managed the engineering team. I was based in the US Then travele Moscow into eastern Russia, a place called Sakhlin island, which is like north of Japan actually. I mean it was huge. Exxon has like a long history with Rosneft, which is their like state owned oil company. We know the Sakhlin island project was one of the most profitable assets in the company. We had three highly productive oil platform projects that were independently making, you know, huge amounts of money and investing. You know, we had hundreds of people or maybe thousands in country managing and running all those assets. And then we even were doing at the time when I was there, we were drilling some of the most expensive wells in the like ever drilled like in the Russian Arctic as well like above the Arctic Circle. And so, you know, huge investment in the country. And then it was a while after I left the company, but when the invasion of the Ukraine came, like ExxonMobil pulled out pretty quickly. And for me as an outsider at the time, being like I had friends that were still living in Russia at the time and to hear their stories of like effectively being evacuated and, and they were like drilling wells at the time. Like they were actively drilling like high pressure wells and like having to abandon them and then pack up and, and leave the country so quickly, it's incredible how fast these things can change. And I don't know, I think you pulled from an article like they had assets of like $200 billion in country. That doesn't surprise me. So it's incredible to see how fast those things can change.
But then around going back. I mean there's lots of like one comment I made to you over text was like Exxon sort of internally used to sometimes say like governments come and go but ExxonMobil will always be here. And I think it's true. It's like ExxonMobil has been around for like longer than a century. Their CEOs tend to manage like multi decade cycles and they will often just those changes in Russia are I mean they're big in certain contexts but they're like Exxon worked in Africa for a very long time and like these type things are not rare for them to get kicked out of countries to get assets to be nationalized in Venezuela. And so like these style things are not that rare for a company like that to go through. And I think now they're trying to probably figure out how to re enter as like there's potential for like the conflict in Ukraine maybe to end or, or to be de escalated. And so it's complicated and messy. I think my, I don't know anything about it but my suspicion is those assets are either not, not being run because the Russian government made a huge amount of money from those assets as well. And so they probably are either high, they would theoretically be operating them but they, they could not operate those, those assets as well as Exxon could. And so they probably want Exxon back to be honest. And so they're probably trying to figure out a win win for like Exxon obviously wants those assets back.
The Russian government probably wants their help to develop them to their full capacity. But yeah it's, it's this complicated geopolitical for these global businesses. I mean you like these come like Exxon had huge departments of security people, intelligence almost like departments, political advisors, like very sophisticated, you know, almost like state departments. I mean Rex Tillerson went to be the Secretary of State in the first Trump administration. So like they're sort of operating at that in these spheres all the time.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: You know what I think is interesting about this and Will, I'm going to come to you next is we just had on the podcast Patrick McGee, Financial Times journalist, author of Apple in China and it felt like it was the same conversation but instead of oil and Exxon it was talking about Apple and instead of US versus Russia versus other countries it was US and China. And we're talking about this flow of both cash and also facilities and manufacturing.
And I feel like there's lessons here in all of this. And so Will, I'm going to go to you. What do you feel like are some of those parallels and, or lessons that we picked up from Patrick that are applicable here of thinking about how facilities, how revenue, how money, how manufacturing is moving back and forth between these different regions and what US Manufacturers should be doing in these kinds of moments, I.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Think there's a lot that we can take away from it. I think though, it's also important to draw some of the contrasts between the two. While I think in China, Apple's operations in China, the IP was very much being shared with Chinese counterparts, enabling them to then pick up those operations at some point and kind of build their own products.
It's kind of a different scenario than in this one where as Greg describes it, I do believe that even under Russian control, they probably struggle to operate and get the same level of productivity out of those assets as Exxon does. So I think in this case for sure there's interest in Exxon being there. I would say one of the things that I would take away from this and the thing that I find most fascinating is I think that, that Exxon is a kind of a bellwether signal on the interest and openness or willingness to do business in Russia again.
And when we think about companies that are like on the top 10 of like most obvious, okay, sure, they would resume operations there, I'd say ExxonMobil is at the top of that list. And I would be really thinking about this in terms of, well, you know, let's say that Exxon does start to go back and operate in a meaningful way. What does that mean for other company? For. Yeah, for other companies. Are we going to see this just in oil and gas or will there also be interest in semiconductors and other things, technology that the US Is building?
So that's the thing that I think is most intriguing for me. I think that it's a signal and probably also hints at like some of the behind the scenes negotiations that have been done between the Trump administration, Ukraine and Putin with Russia.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: So I'm glad you brought that up and I think that's a good segue to something I know we've all been reading up on a little bit, which is the Trump administration starting to both work between both with countries and also starting to think about other industries. You mentioned semiconductors too. I think intel just had some recent news. So Will tell us about this. And what's your general take about the Trump administration also getting involved in some US Companies and, and giving out some cash?
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Yeah, if you haven't read the news, the headline is that the Trump administration is Planning to invest up to a 10% stake in in Intel. I have lots of chats with people about manufacturing topics like this and I would say, you know, they can be pretty divisive. But my take on this is I would say of course he is like this is totally expected behavior. And considering the dynamics that we currently have with such a huge demand for semiconductors that can run high complexity AI functions and the fact that we've got such limited supply of those in the US and the largest manufacturer of them is Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company tsmc.
Intel really is the largest and the largest of the American manufacturers of chips. So let's not think about Nvidia that designs chips but then has them built by tsmc.
So I think with the build, not build back better, what are we in right now? Make America great again. One beautiful bill. A lot of the language around that in terms of American manufacturing really hints at this idea that there are going to be that that intel was, is the first of probably many direct investments that this administration is going to make in private businesses. I'd say there's probably lots of other things, lots of other considerations like whether this should be direct investment. Is the government crowding out private investors? Should this have come in the form of of grants? Actually a lot of the grants that were administered under the build back better plan are some of those, those same incentives are still available and being used by Intel.
So I'd say that there's a lot of disagreement about how the thing happens but a lot of people would agree that something needs to happen and that there needs to be some presence of American manufacturers in this landscape of companies that are actually making the chips.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Well, I don't know about you guys but the Menezes family group text is basically me telling everyone that now you're shareholders in intel and congratulations. Whether or not you meant to be, you're now shareholders builders in Intel. So congrats. I think that's such a great take. And I know Will, at previous events we put on movers and makers events, just a small plug. We've even had folks talking about intel investments and just how it is. Truly every time we are investing in semiconductor manufacturing in the US it's truly like digging a hole at the edge of the ocean tide where it feels like we're constantly trying to dig deeper but we're playing a catch up game with Chinese manufacturing in so many ways.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you know the, the event that you're referencing was the one that we did where we had Jerry Bautista. He was A former general manager from intel and, and you know in, in our conversation we talked a lot about some of the foreign competitors like TSMC and Samsung and some of these larger corporations in you know, kind of foreign owned corporations. And the thing that was really it should have been obvious to all of us is like the extent to which those companies are state owned and state sponsored entities. To a large degree the government and the economy relies on those companies. But those companies wouldn't be anything without the subsidies for electricity and labor and materials and other things that they get by way of government programs and subsidies for them. And so to be in you know, operating in the US and trying to compete on a global stage with companies that are largely state sponsored by and state backed by their governments is kind of an unfair playing field.
And so you know, regardless of whether you're a free market economist thinker or not, you do have to acknowledge that even if your country is playing by those rules, not everyone else's country is going to be such a good take.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: I love that. Greg, any, any perspective on this at all? Obviously you've been on the front lines of seeing government investment in different ways even in just the, the current news that we're seeing and you're following at your former employer Exxon. So what's your, what's your perspective on things right now when it comes to, to all things intel investment?
[00:28:30] Speaker C: I think it probably there's always how to do these things is really hard. I think there's benefits of like grants where you're effectively giving the money away versus like equity investments are good because you can, the American people could get their money back. You know, the government could get a return and there was some smart ways. This was done during like the great financial crisis in 2008. A lot of the America, the, the bailouts that went to the big banks, although like a lot of people thought they just wired in billions of dollars, like a lot of them had warrants attached to it which they could execute. Basically it was options to buy the stock for basically nothing. And so I think that's smart. And a lot of the money was basically paid back like to the government effectively through these warrants. And so I think it can be, if it's thoughtfully done and executed well it can be very mutually beneficial and I think it's probably necessary. It's like you have to make chips here and it's like this is the only bet you have for an at scale semiconductor that's made in the US and so there's probably in some Ways, no choice. You know, it's like the, the Biden administration sort of have propped it up through the chips act and to be honest, like that doesn't look like it's been executed very well. But it's like you need a successful American chip company. So this is probably, you know, the, a different approach to doing that. And yeah, I think it makes sense. There's obviously risks with it. You can, there's risk, it doesn't work. And the kind of intel still kind of fails long term but you know, I still think it's a strategic thing for all kinds of industries and this probably is necessary.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: All right, mini hot take then on this.
So Trump administration investment in intel, are we bullish, bearish or somewhere in between? Greg, what's your immediate gut?
[00:30:15] Speaker C: I'm bearish on it because I just think it's so hard for these traditional companies that they'll probably be some version of like Nvidia will start to build they're on like their own chips or OpenAI will if, if intel fails they'll just go build their own fabs or something. I just think it's more likely that an upstart that's well capitalized that's doing this from scratch will, will win. I just think it's really hard for these companies to innovate once they're at scale and they're kind of stuck. It's really hard.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: All right, will going to you bullish, bearish or somewhere in between on this?
[00:30:51] Speaker A: This will be my rare disagreement with Greg. I'm kidding. We disagree on things all the time, but I would say I'm bullish on it. I think in the semiconductor market specifically it is a very high capex, high barrier to entry type of industry.
And so I think it's unlikely we're going to see a new entrant of any kind that actually commands the market. I think the question then becomes is it an American company manufacturing in the US or is it a foreign company manufacturing in the US that's going to win this? And I also think that just generally stocks that are invested in by Congress and government officials tend to do very well. And so there are apps out there today that are like political trackers that will essentially build an index on different politicians portfolios because I think at the end of the day if an RFQ comes down to whether company A or company B that is government funded and government invested gets a contract, it's going to government sorry to company B every time. And so I don't think it's Fair. But I, I do think that's the way it's going to go. So that for that reason I'm, I'm bullish on it.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: I'm following Will on X and LinkedIn after this because I feel like you're going to drop like the 1776 index or something. I feel like there's going to be some, something to follow here in regard, in regards to this.
All right, so let's kick things off. Will explain to us in 90 seconds or less what CapEx equipment buying looks.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: Like for intel specifically with this money. I think it's going to be spending it on the capital equipment that's required to make these chips.
You know, there are high powered photolithography machines that are required to make sophisticated chips for use in AI products. And the time consuming part of this is really the information transfer between the design engineers who are designing the chips and the manufacturing engineers that are designing the equipment. And then those manufacturing engineers need to transfer that knowledge to the suppliers, the company like asml that makes these machines.
All told, that process can take up to a year for that information transfer and even longer if you consider the amount of time it takes to build, ship, install and commission those machines. And so I think that, you know, this is actually a great shameless plug for Diagon. You know, for our, our customers, the weeks that they spend on capex procurement could be spent on production. And I think that there's no better case for this than with semiconductors where you want the product today, but you need to spend a lot of time tooling up and building out your factory.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: And you can obviously learn more about Albus at Diagon AI. We've got to mention it there, our new product. And if folks want to play with it or experiment with it, we've got a long wait list of people that we're onboarding daily and we're really excited to share more. So. All right, gentlemen, let's go into what is my favorite part of every podcast. And Greg, I think it's your favorite part as well.
What is your hot take of the week? And Greg, I'm going to go to you first because you've always got a hot take of some sort. So Greg, what's your hot take of the week?
[00:34:08] Speaker C: My hot take is that AI is going to start to plateau, noticeably plateau in its capabilities. Even like my personal experience is ChatGPT5 is a little bit worse than ChatGPT4 and I actually don't think it's, I actually think it's good in some ways and I think there's like the tools are so powerful. I still think there's a lot of innovation that can happen like on top productizing the existing tool set that's out there. So it's not even a pessimistic one. But I think there was this fear mongering also that kind of happened when the ChatGPT moment happened that they called it the fast takeoff, I think with AI and it felt like it was just so transformational. It was just going to lift off and be the super intelligence. And I think that just all felt like overblown a little bit or maybe in hindsight it is. And so I think it's probably starting to plateau and a lot of the gains from here are going to be incremental with some leaps every 18 to 24 months. But that's still, I'm still super optimistic that there's a lot we can do with the existing tool set and productizing it and all the applications and uses of it are still extraordinary. Maybe it's like the iPhone moment is sort of behind us and we're on iPhone2 and we're going to go through the March of like iPhone 2 through 20 is probably what the journey we're on. But maybe the paradigm shift of BlackBerry to iPhone is kind of behind us and now we're kind of on the incremental improvements from here.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: I love it. Good hot take. All right, so we're getting into the iPhone iOS versioning moment of models and OpenAI. I like that. That's a good hot take.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say my hot take on that related to AI is similar but slightly different, I would say. I don't feel that we're plateauing with the technology yet, but I do think that we're going to start to see a commodification of AI.
I remember back when I was a kid in middle school would have debates over who had better Internet. Was it America Online or was it Prodigy? And then Netscape was like the everyone's winner. I think that we're going to start to see a lot of that convergence with the OpenAI's and anthropics of the world. And I think that more emphasis is going to start to be put on the businesses and applications that are built using the AI and I think that's a very healthy evolution of the technology and one that I'm really excited about.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: Will, I don't know what you're talking about. I still get excited about my 30 minute trial CD that literally we would hope for, would Come in the newspaper and we would be doing it every week to parse out our 30 minutes of Internet time. And if someone's under the age of 26 right now listening to this, you probably have zero idea what we're talking about. So I respect that. Yeah.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: What about you? I always really love getting your hot takes on the new AI toys that you've been playing with. Is there any that's caught your interest this week?
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going to say my hot take is that I think we're getting into model obsession quite a bit right now. I think we've got our eyes on the, on the wrong thing actually. I think Getting into the GPT5s, the 4 O's, the Claude Opus 4.1s, et cetera, I think we've got our eyes on the wrong thing. I think we need to get back to basics and focus on what data is differentiating your company. And I think as you think about that data that's differentiating your company, you should be thinking about the first party data that your company has that's influencing your business. That's maybe using whatever the latest and greatest model is. And then also what third party data are you bringing in and how are you the person that's wielding that data? I think that's the exciting piece right now.
My fun tool plug of the week for go to market operators. And honestly anyone who's trying to do some of that data enrichment is a tool called Clay. Really excited about Clay in terms of the ways that you can not just enrich an existing database but also create a net new database of things in general. And so I think as companies in any industry at all are trying to think about how to be differentiated with their data, they should be looking at platforms like Clay to be able to run these massive macros, leveraging the skills and the, the weapons that they have in their quiver to be able to actually enrich and go create that data so that they have that differentiated moment. So I think that's my, my general hot take.
But plus one to you on the commoditization, I would argue of AI in general where I'm excited to stop talking about the different models and start talking about it the way that we do Internet, where we don't discuss what Internet provider we have anymore.
Although I hope that at some point we'll be giving an Albus 30 minute trial CD for people so they can play with it. Thanks so much folks for listening. If this is your first time listening, be sure to go to Diagon AI Join our waitlist for Albus. Albus is basically changing the game in the way that folks are searching and procuring equipment around the world. You can learn more about it there. If you have questions DM me, reach out to Will or Greg across your favorite social media platform. And I'd be remiss to say be sure to like, follow and subscribe across Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining the podcast today and we're excited to come back together again soon. Thanks.
