The guys, @mrbenja and @therealtheoharvey, discuss the recent Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) bank run disaster and what it means for business and entertainment. Hint: It won’t be pretty. They discuss what happened, how it happened, and what happens next.
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Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.
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The guys, @mrbenja and @therealtheoharvey, discuss the recent Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) bank run disaster and what it means for business and entertainment. Hint: It won’t be pretty. They discuss what happened, how it happened, and what happens next.
----------
Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.
----------
Follow us on Instagram - https://instagram.com/show_vs_business
Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/showvsbusiness
Like us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShowVsBusiness
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwni8la5WRGj25uqjbRwdQ/featured
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Theo: Mr. Benja, man, I was sitting around last weekend working out, and all of a sudden my phone blew up and it was Grant Cardone all over my Twitter timeline talking about cash is trash. Take your money out the bank. Yes, , but
Mr Benja: what's he, what's he go, what's he going on about this time with cash
Theo: or. Man, it was way more urgency this time, way more urgency.
It was almost freakishly, almost like end of the world type of thing. And he was joined by all these VCs who were complaining about this thing that happened earlier that week with Silicon Valley Bank collapsing basically. And so it was kind of a, kind of interesting to kind of hear them talk on Twitter timeline.
Were you, did you, did you did you hear about all that Silicon Valley mess last week? And how, how involved did you get into the deep dive of all that? So I
Mr Benja: didn't get too deep into it. You know, I used to live out in Silicon Valley. I was out in San Jose area of Berlin game San Mateo, all that stuff where Sega three, dio and all those guys were.
So, you know, it, that information's gonna come back around. It's say, Hey, you know, one of your old stomping grounds is effing up. And I was like, oh, what's going on here? Same thing, man. I got on Twitter and saw. And I saw grant card. What's funny is when you said Grant Cardone was talking noise, you said it like four hours before I checked Twitter, if he was still on there,
So I was like, okay, this might be something. What's going on? Yeah man, so much noise about this bank crash enough that we're gonna do a pod on it.
Theo: Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Let's, let's, let's talk about this. We haven't done a, a business heavy pod in a minute, but it's important to kind of understand a little bit of how this all reflects entertainment and what's happening at this show versus business.
And so I have a startup and I, you know we didn't bank with Silicon Valley Bank but I do know some of the other companies in my investors portfolio have. And so, you know, just speaking to them and just doing some deep dive, I have a good, good sense of kind of what went down. But it was definitely last weekend around this time, you know, for those that had money in the bank when you have a bank that fails like that and you can't get access to your money and you have payroll to make next week, that's a scary time.
as a business owner. Yeah. Let alone a startup money startup company. And so yeah, a lot of people are sweating, you know, and I've been there, you're just feeling like, oh man, I'm gonna make payroll and all this stuff. And so it was a scary time. You know, Spoiler alert, the government, if you didn't know, kind of stepped in on Sunday night and said they would you know, make all the depositors whole.
But yeah. Mr. Benja, it was definitely interesting time for a lot of people last weekend. So you know, did you know of anybody that got affected by
Mr Benja: this? Not directly. You know, most of the people I know are kind of in relatively stable jobs now, and I don't know too many people in the startup space or the smaller, smaller outfit space out there anymore.
I think that area has become kind of, I don't wanna say unsafe, but it's just so wild, you know what I mean? Where every couple weeks it's like new technology, you know, everybody gets fired from this one company moves to these other two companies and there was so much volatility in the, in that market of just startups and all that VC cash which.
Which, you know, we'll probably get into a little bit of how that played into it. And yeah, like you said, payroll, there was even a payroll company affected, which slowed other companies down. Yes, exactly. Hey, payroll company, what are you doing? And the payroll company's like, I don't have the money to get the money for you to get your money out.
So it's like, it was a kind of a cascading thing, so. We'll,
Theo: bananas. Bananas. Yeah, man, it was a crazy time. Yeah, man. It's, it's not for the faint at heart, man. So let's, let's high level, let's, let's kind of break it down before we get into like, what happened specifically. I think the big themes to kind of, for, for everyone to kind of realize here overall economic policy in the United States has been about what they call zero interest rates.
Right? And so for the long time, the cost of borrowing money was basically 0% ever since 2008 financial crisis. And for those that don't know, basically it was a meltdown. A whole financial system due. Mortgage backed securities for lack of bad term housing market and all that stuff kind of messed everything up a little bit.
And so the markets were crashing and so the federal Reserve had to do something to kind of stabilize everything. And when that was kind of my, I, you know, back in 2008, I was like shoot. I think that was, yeah, my first year of marriage. It was weird time, man. Cuz I was in, I was actually playing around with real estate too at the time, and Oh really?
I could remember when I was doing mortgages and stuff, it was like hard to start closing mortgages because everything kind of collapsed. You couldn't get access to the, what they call the bond market to kind of make these mortgages because it was, it was all crap. It was based on nothing. Yeah. And that's when I realized that, you know what man, this whole bank system, you know what's based.
Nice. Pretty much Fugazi, just whatever man, just, just whatever you believe, man. That's what, and, and, and, and that's when you realize it is based on faith and confidence and trust. You know, that's why it says, you know, it says on the money, on dollar bill and God we trust, but it's really just. is, is really propped up on faith that this will, you know, your money will be where it said it will be, and if it's not, then you'll freak out.
And so, and that's kind of some of the things we'll talk about later with Silicon Valley Bank. But yeah, so it was like a time where they had to do something. And then, so by keeping interest rate low, the goal is to ease the, the flow of money. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, money likes to flow. And so if.
interest rate's pretty low at 0%, basically I can borrow money. Mm-hmm. Pretty low , you know, and, you know, maybe it's a couple of percentage points that the whoever, you know, the broker who lends me the money is making on it. But I mean, that means it's easier to get access to capital. And so we had this since 2008.
I mean, shoot man you know, that's what over what, 2013 years or so, you know, of, of just getting access to, to free capital. You know, and, and that gave rise to a lot of these startups, man. You know, like you know, you see, because what happens is if you're an investor, Mr. Benches, so think about it. If you you know, you put your money in a bank and you making 0% interest, does that make you happy?
I'm happy you, you. But if you had an opportunity, I'll present to you opportunity. Say, Hey, do you wanna invest in something that can make you more money instead of your money just sitting there in the bank making no interest. Oh, right. Yeah. You know, take that risk. Oh
Mr Benja: yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, I mean the, if, if it's gonna be, cause what if you put it in, you know, if you're just thinking about a regular investor or whatever not investor, regular person trying to invest and you know, you're hearing about, well you gotta put it away.
You can't move it, it's gonna accrue at some, you know, really small value, you know, around 1%, 2% maybe. And you know, someone tells you, Hey, you can put it in this company. And, you know, I was hearing we're people were talk throwing around terms of like, if you're talking about on like the Peter Theo level, you know, he was like, you know, hey, I'm gonna bank on.
one of these five companies and I can expect one of them to go 10 x and if we're lucky, one of them can go a hundred x. And I was like, wait a minute. That sounds crazy. But like you were saying with the whole Fugazi thing, it's like they've got structures in place to do that.
Theo: Absolutely. And I think that's the whole thing is you have to be aware that there's an opportunity you.
You know, for, for bigger returns, you know, if you put it into something, you know, maybe a little bit more riskier, but the money sitting in there is just not doing anything for you. And that was the consequence of you know, zero interest rates because now people had to search for finding more money.
So that's why we, I mean, to be honest with you, it probably gave rise to the crypto market, right. You know, because people just looking for something to put money in. And then, you know, we remember during the pandemic, you know, the stock market took off because there was extra cash and so could lead the extra cash you were sitting at home get unemployment check, right?
You know, nothing to do. You know, the money was, if you sit, put the money in a bank, it wasn't gonna do anything for you. You couldn't spend it. So you like, oh, well let me try this stock market thing cuz may I can make some extra money off of that. And that's when the stock market kind of took off, you know, during, you know, 2000, 2020 and 2021.
So, you know, it's like people, you know, money is always searching for, it has to flow. It's always searching for a bigger return. Yeah. It has. It's, you know, be like watcher my friend, right? Yeah. Isn't that a famous sign? Yeah. That's, that's what, that's what money is. It's looking for better returns is sitting there is just not doing this any good.
And so, so I think that's kind of what the, the consequence. So because of that, to your point, you had all these investors like a Peter Thiel and bigger investors like Sequoia and Jason Horowitz and a 16 z you know, they had tons of money flowing in because what happens is they're what they call general partners, right?
They control the access to the money and they can kind of, you know, pick the portfolio companies, but then they get money from what they call limb partners. These are like, you know, Big institutions, pension funds, whatever. Mm-hmm. , they had nowhere else to put their money. So look, we trust Adreen Horowitz.
You guys picked Uber to make all this money and went public. You picked you know, other big companies, Google and other companies, right? Yeah. So we're invest our money in you. So here's a check for a hundred million dollars. So you can invest that into, you know, picking at the winners. Yeah,
Mr Benja: and that's a, that's actually a good point that you bring up with you, you said all those tech companies this rise.
If we, you know, look back before, you know, they were talking about the the previous 2008 era hit to the economy. I don't want, I was about to say recession, but some people argue at that point. Mm-hmm. Recession depression of 2008. Now we come to, that was mortgages. Now we come to this era and it's like all happening on the backs of tech.
Hmm. So you had all this money flowing through companies like as you said, Google. , Uber, Twitter you know, air, Airbnb Facebook, you know, just all these, all these huge, huge companies with huge amounts of money flowing into it. And the tech sector has been booming for a long time. And what's funny is you know, the, it, it's like the last thing they tried was crypto.
And it's like, well, hey, what about this crypto thing? That's tech too, right? Yeah, yeah. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And suddenly you have. , S B F, you know, happening right before SVB and all this nonsense happening.
Theo: Sam Bakeman Freed. Yep. . Yeah, man, it's funny, you're right. It's like you know, like I said, money flows, man.
I mean, you, I mean, literally in the last, like, you could see how it flowed in the last three years, right? Went from like, you know, stock market, crypto, NFTs, you know, now it's trying to flow into ai, right? So anything that's just popping up, you know, it's trying to flow to where they can get the greatest return.
And so, all these. Going back to my original thought, you know, all these you know, limited partners, you know, they're just, you know, regular people sometimes pinch, you know, but they, they represent bigger funds. They just say, Hey, here's, here's a chunk of our money. Cause we have to show a return.
Everybody's gotta show a return on money. And so the limited partners control these access to like hundreds of million dollars. They say, well I gotta take some of this money and make a return somewhere and we're gonna come back to this with Silicon Valley Bank. So we're gonna take this and give this to, you know, Jason Horowitz or Sequoia or you know, or, or you know, founders Fund, right?
These big, you know, institutionalized VC companies who've proven that they know how to pick winners. So there's just so much money out there. And then 2020, during the pandemic, it was even more money. Cuz remember we thought everything was gonna go to. a a remote world, right? I mean, we had Clubhouse that, an app that blew up.
We talked about previously they got a billion dollars in like less than 30 days because everybody's like, oh, this is the way people are gonna do it. , I communicate and tech and talk. Well let me,
Mr Benja: let me ask you this real quick. Do they really pick winners or do they decide who the winners are going to be?
Theo: That's, that's, that's the point. So, and you know, who came up with this theory was well it's always been there it is. You know, it's, it's, it is basically you know, saturate the market and then, you know, own the market no matter what it costs, you know? Mm-hmm. just, you know, so basically lose money as much fast as possible cuz you're accumulating market share.
Can we
Mr Benja: use Amazon
Theo: as an example? Well, I was gonna get to that and I said Amazon perfected that, right? I mean that was all, there was a theory on that, right? To try that and, but, you know, no one's done it to the scale that Amazon did it. Right? Amazon kind of came in there, you know, selling books online. And did.
And then, you know, Jeff Bezos, to his credit, he came up with this theory. He said, Hey look, I mean, not this theory, but he, he perfected it. Look, all we gotta do is just win the market. You know, we're gonna keep losing money. And he set, he set the expectation to the market, to you know, stock market to Wall Street, everybody, that this is what we're gonna do for foreseeable future.
And they got away with it. They were able to lose so much money cuz they were trying to get market share and eventually they could turn the spigot on and that's when they had billions of dollars. And so, to your point, I think a lot of these startups were doing the same thing cuz they could in the zero interest rate because they're like, look Uber.
no matter, even if it takes you you know, a hundred million dollars to win over New York or El Las Vegas, which were tough, tough markets for them. Imagine the taxi fights that the, you know, the government fights had to go through. I saw mm-hmm. , this TV show super pumped. It, it was talking about the Uber story, like how they had to literally you know, fight the market.
Cre, like public campaigns, like a political campaign to win win opportunity to have public private drivers, you know pick up people versus taxis in New York and places like Los Las Vegas. Mm-hmm. so. That's not cheap. . Yeah. But if you can do it, if you have the capital, and that's to your point, they were encouraged by these VC dolls and they were, they were picking winners.
Say, look, we believe, you know, between you and Lyft, we think Uber you can win. Cuz you know, we just believe in you more. So we're gonna give you more money to lose money faster. Because in our, in, in our thesis, you know, you will gain the market share faster. And so to your point, they are picking winners that way whoever gets the most cash, it's kind of like a, a political campaign, right?
You remember how they always said, oh, look how much money he's raised,
Mr Benja: right? Yes. Versus this person. That was interesting the way you said that. You know, like, I, I don't want to mess up how you said it exactly, but you know, they're rewarding you for losing money faster. Yes. And getting the market share, the mind share.
just that market penetration and that overall dominance. Yeah. So then once you dominate, you can kind of do whatever you want. Right?
Theo: Exactly. To mark you know, monopolies make, you know, or make the market right. I mean, that's why monopolies are so big back in in the day because you, you can set your own price, right?
Yeah. There's no competition. And so that's, you know, look at Google. That's why they're so scared of AI now in Microsoft, because that's going to get into their monopoly, which is search. They own what, 80% of search, except for Mr. Benja who uses Bing, but everyone else, is using Google, Google search and, and they're killing it.
Yeah. And so now they have to, they have to respond because this is a threat. Cuz if being starts taking market share from them, that's their cash cow. Right? I mean I think they, they make, I think they say they make about 80% of their, their money in search off of like maybe you know what, four keywords like travel, things like that.
So it's like mm-hmm. they know and people complain. They know the product's not good. Cuz every time you go Google and search for something that it is taking you like two, like a minute to find out exactly what you were looking for. Cuz they have all these ads and crap. So if, if AI can, you know, create a better product for you, then Google's like shaking their boots because they don't have a monopoly anymore on search.
Mr Benja: Right, right. Exactly. Quick, quick little story. I was in Santa Monica and I think Santa Monica's got the biggest, I mean like by a landslide, the, the biggest rate of , Uber and GrubHub, one of those Uber GrubHub, something it's like nine times bigger than anybody else because nobody wants to go stand in line, hang out at these restaurants and deal with all the parking costs and everything.
So, and it's, it's kind of pricey out there as far as living in parking. So it makes sense. And I was out there one day and I'm driving around and all of a sudden I see all these bird scooters. Like a lot of them, you know, the bird, you know, the little scooters you find inside. I mean, there was just a lot of them.
I'm like, why is there one of these at every block? And I saw these flyer up and the flyer said, you know, hey, we're, you know, we're bird scooter. We're here to do this and that, and. . So I broke, broke up my phone and looked into it and yes, like you said, they were fighting, they were doing that whole, they were campaigning like the city of Santa Monica, cuz they wanted in on some of that action where it's like mm-hmm.
you know, hey, parking's a problem around here. Oh, maybe we can penetrate with Bird and have people scooting around and, you know, safety is our concern. And it was like a big, big deal. And when I, they they were losing money like fast. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . But, but yeah, they were trying to change the landscape and it that whole, that whole thing just like was kind of snapped to reality when I was there with like, literally two bird scooters at every corner of every block that you walk down.
Theo: And you know what? I think zero. interest rates played into all this man, I mean, you know what? What? You know, and the more I think about it, cuz you're right, a lot of these companies were losing money so fast to try to win back opportunities. I mean, even bur Burr blew up, right? Cuz the pandemic and, you know, and all that they were there was, I could remember reading this guy's blog of vbc.
He was so mark Schuster, he was so proud of me. He said, oh yeah, we invested in Bird, we knew it was gonna take off. It's gonna change, transform how we do transportation in the city. , now you don't hear nothing about it, right? Cuz it blew up and, you know, imploded. I mean, I think they're trying to just sell like scooters to people, you know, to the home.
But you, you see what I'm saying? It's just like, it's so fast mentality is like, look, we're just gonna take a hundred million dollars and just transform how we're going to, you know, give money to everybody, you know, and transform this whole thing. So I think, you know, that's kind of one of the things that you know, that's really.
Amazing to folks that like how fast this stuff moves. And we're getting to that second with Silicon Valley Bank, but it's like, you know, these people are trying to pick winners and it just, and they had so much cash that they could Right. But I think those days are go, are going away soon. And so so that's kind of one of the issues of zero zero interest rates.
The other thing I wanna kind of cover real quick is just the banking system in general, people didn't really understand. , guess what? We're in the, what they call a fractional fraction patient system. Yeah. So basically, you know, if you put a hundred dollars in your bank, guess what? You may not be able to pull that a hundred dollars tomorrow because that money is gone.
That bank is taking your money and sending out to so many people and so they can make money off of it. Right? A bank is still, you know, it's still a company. It's not nonprofit, so it has to make a profit off that money. So it's taking that money and lending it to other folks, you know, for a fair what they can, you know, they they acquire money short and they lend it long, right?
So the goal is to kind of make it up, you know, with the margin. Of what they lend for. So people forget if you have millions and millions of dollars in your bank, you may not be able to pull it. That's why you remember you, you know, if you ever tried to pull out a large sum of money outta the bank, sometimes you gotta go to the bank, gotta sign some paperwork, you gotta show your id.
But guess what? When you try to put that money in, did they, did they ask you for all that? Hell no. Yeah, they just said, oh, here's a check. Thank you, .
Mr Benja: Oh, man, I've, I had a, a messed up check one time. You know, I wrote the wrong little, wrote the wrong little number on it. They asked for like a, an ID number of some sort, and I wrote it on the check.
I was like, okay, well okay. On the back, you know, and I was really tired and I was just trying to, I didn't want to go to the bank. I had to get up, put on my shoes and everything because it required me to be in person to talk to this lady, right? Mm-hmm. . So I was like, I was like, listen something happened with the online deal and I need to come in to do this now, so that's why I'm here at the bank at all.
And she's like, okay. I started filling out this check and everything, and man, I was so tired that I endorsed the back of my own check for some reason, and I'm like, oh, wait, I didn't mean to do that. I endorsed it. And she's like, no, no, no. There's no problem here. This other lady came over and took out some paper and they signed it and said he accidentally did this on the check and da, da, da.
Don't worry about it. We'll take the money now. And I was just like, oh, it's just that easy to give money. . I thought, yeah. Don't worry about, don't worry about starting over, just give
Theo: around. Nah, man. But if you try to take that money out, brother, man, they say, Hey what's your name again? What's your last name?
What's your middle name? Who's your mom from what's your cousin? Yeah. Who are you? You know, put your fingerprint here. Yeah. Because that money's gone man. And I think people forget. And that's where that trust comes in. And also, you know, that gets into like the regulations that kind of came about from 2018.
You know, I've been thinking about this. Like, you know, there are certain things they have to do. They have to have a minimum amount in the bank, right. Just in case something like that happened. And so they did some calculations and said, okay, the minimum amount you should have, you know, we should, we could ensure.
I think at one time it was nothing they would ensure for. So the federal, basically the, the banking system, they created a way for people to ensure how much they would give back, right. For any case, the people. So yeah, it was insured. And so I think initially it was like, you know, Couple, like a couple thousand, then it was like a hundred thousand mm-hmm.
And recently it's up to 250,000 as insured. So basically if you look, if you, whatever reason, you know, the bank fails or whatever, and you had $250,000, the bank, you gonna get that because the, the government is going to pay you that money, right? Yeah. And so, so that's kind of, you know, where people were, you know, say, okay, you know, we have that insurance, right?
And, and that's where, that's why the Central bank was created back in 1913 because what they call the lender of last resort, so that they could backstop these depositors, right? So if you put 250,000 in the bank, you can get that two 50,000 out because you have the Federal Reserve. Who can basically just, just open up the spigot and just provide, be money to banks.
Now a lot of times they don't like doing that but they kind of had to be created cuz you know, before this pod I did research. How many panics and stock market crashes do you think they had prior to in, in 18 hundreds when things are starting to roll prior to the creation of the central Bank?
Just throw a guess out there.
Mr Benja: Geez, I don't know, man, I'd, I'd be making a bad guess.
Theo: So they had one in 18 19 18, 13, 18 30, 18 37, excuse me, 1857. 1873. 1893. 1896. 19 0 1, 19 0 7 . So, okay. What was that about? Eight. So it was like every two years because you know, there. The trust factor, right? Yeah.
Okay. People get spooked if somebody starts, you know, like for instance, I say, Hey, Mr. Ben, take your money out, you know, of Bank of America. Then you say, oh, why? He said, man, I don't know, but, or you saw people standing in line at the bank. There, there was a story one time there was a a a a, a bank that crashed because someone rode by, they people rode by the street and they saw a long line and people said, oh, I gotta go to that bank and get my money out.
So they ran Oh, yeah, yeah. End up being a bakery shop. . . Because people thought people were taking their money out. Yeah. And so be,
Mr Benja: go ahead. Yeah, no, I, I was gonna say, so this whole you know, they called the, the run on banks. If you, if you would've asked, by the way I would've said every eight years or so, every five to six years.
But you said every, that happened around every two years back then. Yeah. But yeah, the, the whole thing with people in line at the bank , you know, run on banks, you know, everybody's like, well, crap, I gotta get what money out of the bank I can while, you know, because this bank is going bad or going bust.
And basically everybody's doing that at the same time. So it causes a line. People get queued up. That's what you'd see in those old time pictures. Yep. Now you can look up pictures not look at pictures, look up stories of people who were, you know, dealing with the Silicon Valley Bank and they were saying, well, hey, my login stopped working.
You know, and you look at the, you look at these forms on Reddit, it's like, yeah, my login stopped working. They said I'd have to call in or I'd have to come in, you know, in person. And I'm like okay. So they have a whole system in place now of prioritizing who can log in and who can't, which is really.
Theo: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that's the other thing why I probably, and we'll talk about that because the, you know, back in the day you have to go to the bank, stand along, you know, fill out the paperwork, all that stuff. Now, you know, it was mobile banking, right? And so that's probably what facilitated things moving so fast with Silicon Valley Bank.
But famously run on the bank is, is depicted in the movie. You know, it's a wonderful life, right? You remember George Bailey, everybody was running, trying to, you know, trying to get the money out the bank. And he was, he was about to kill himself, let's be honest, right? on the bridge because the bank he created was failing.
And so he, he thought he, everybody would be better off of Adam. And so that's, that's basically everybody visually kind of knows that, that, that run on bank. But it's just like anything, you know, because you know, you have to have faith that your money's gonna be there. If you don't, man, then you know, everybody's going, you know, then that's the end, right?
People were like, ah, why even put money in the bank? So the Federal Reserve is there to kind of. Keep that trust in check, right? Say, look, if in case everything else fails, we're the, you know, we're the United States government, right? You know, now the chances of us failing, you know it is Neil, right? You know, very low percentage.
So that's why, you know, you can trust that you put the money in the bank cuz we'll backstop that in case of something like this happens, right? So, so that's the only thing that's keeping this thing afloat. Man. , at the end of the day, man, it's like, if the, if the, the central bank wasn't there, the US government, you know, didn't back that yeah man, we would be sitting in, you know, this is us, you know, I mean, the last of us, excuse me, , this is us, the last of us
Mr Benja: kind of.
So wait a minute. They said so they said the bank is going to, you know, cover somebody said they didn't want call it a bailout because. . They're coming in and they're saying, okay, you know, we're gonna make sure you have all your money, but people have still lost money because of what? How did they put it?
Help me fill in the answers here because I don't have all the details. .
Theo: Yeah. Yeah. Let's walk through like, you know, kind of what happened during that period of time. So so Silicon Valley Bank, right? I mean, ha. History, you know, like you said, you were in the Silicon Valley. I mean, it was the bank of Silicon Valley, right?
I mean, you know, basically they would get the depositors. So basically people put money in the bank, you know, and used it to help, you know, pay payroll, run a business, but because you put money in a bank, now they're gonna offer you other services like loans. You know, some of the founders actually had.
Mortgages with Silicon Valley banks, so they could, you know, cuz they, they say, Hey look, you know, we're gonna be, you know, unique to this ecosystem because we understand them so well. And they got so good at that they were able to attract even the big you know, venture capitalist money. So they put their money in there, like billions of dollars, like Sequoia, Dreesen Horowitz, these big, you know, founders fund these big, big, you know bcs, they put billions of dollars in there because they say, Hey, we trust them.
And now, now the, the other dirty little secret they don't wanna tell you is that they were also doing other things right to help. , you know, prop it up like, hey do you need a way to get access to debt? You know, with very low interest okay, we'll lend you some money. Like, you know, I mean, even if the interest rate was like, you know, 4% or whatever, they'll lend you like, you know, a hundred thousand dollars for like, you know, 0.5%.
So you know what they call debt venture, right? Just give you some money. Mm-hmm. , you gotta keep things flowing. And what they would do, what they were doing sometimes see this, this dirty little secret. So even venture capitalists, what they would do is like, Hey Silicon Valley Bank lend us some money.
and then they lent them the money and they made it look like they had more returns on their books. Right. For some of the portfolio companies. Cuz now they extra cash sitting on their balance sheet. So everybody's like, oh, oh wow. You know you know, X, Y, z startup, they're doing really well. Look at their balance sheet.
You're so strong and robust. That was on borrowed money, man, . So it was all kinds of shenanigans that they were doing. Right. And they re required that people, if you're going to, you know, if you want all these extras, you gotta put all your money, you know, from revenues and, and your, and your in some, in some cases, if you got capital from a vc, the requirement was as a founder to put your money in Silicon Valley Bank.
You had to. So it was, that's the reason why they was. 50% of, of all startups put money into Silicon Valley Bank, you know, something like 30,000. You know, so it was, it was crazy. So they, they, they had coined that market. So anyway, so what happened was, what happened was they were so flush with cash.
We talked about this during the pandemic. Everybody's making money, right? I mean, you know, everybody's going remote work. You know, we thought that was a wave of the future. Amazon was making money, Facebook was making money, you know, people were on YouTube all the time. Tons of money was coming in. So Silicon Valley Bank had like tons of, tons of depositors putting their cash in.
I think they went from 9 billion in 2013 to something like 140 billion in 2021. So it was like tons of money. , we talked about this money needs to move. So they had to figure out a way, how are we gonna make some, some, some money off of this money? We can't just have this money sitting here . So they, they made the big,
Mr Benja: that, that sounds, that sounds to the lay person.
That sounds the way you put it just sounds funny to me. It's like, wow, we went from 9 billion to 140. . We can't just sit around, we gotta make more.
Theo: Well, you, well, you know, they're, they're, they're this publicly traded company too, right? Yeah. Yeah. So when you have to show if you're growing, you gotta show you're growing, right?
Mm-hmm. . And so if you, and the only way to show you're growing is if you take that money and you're making more money with that money, right? And then you say, Hey, look how much revenue we made. So I think their stock was at a hard time high too. It was like going up, it was like at the 200 s at the time, be right before it ca crashed.
So people were investing in the bank as in, in equity as well as, you know, bank was trying to make money off of the money they were getting from depositors. People put their money in, in the bank to do banking things. So make a long story short, you know, they were like, okay, we have to, you know, invest this money somewhere.
So what they did was, you know, they said, Hey, we're going, we're gonna invest in something. , that's not that risky. No. Could invest in crypto. They didn't. They could, did the FTX move and, you know, have a hedge fund and put all their deposited money into a hedge fund, which, you know, which is investing in very risky stuff.
They didn't do that, but they made a critical mistake. They put their money into treasury bonds at a time where you know, the interest rates were were low. And the challenge with that is once they, once they did that, they, they said, okay, we want more. We want, you know, some more revenue off of that.
So if you just like if you buy something and it's like say, you know, like CDs for instance. You have, you, have you ever did CDs before? No. So CDs are cash deposits. And so basically if you do like a two year cd, you say, Hey, here's I pay like, you know, $50 in, in two years, I'm gonna get 5% of my money.
Right? Whoa. If you've bought $50 CD and like keep it for five years, , then you'll get more interest rate because you know you're holding it long, you know they're holding your money longer, so they'll give you more interest rate for it. So that's what Silicon Valley did. They went after like, you know, dead instruments, like CDs in instance.
For a long time. They say, Hey, these 0% bonds that we have now we wanna hold for 10 years, so you gonna give us more interest rate, right for that? And they said, okay, that's fine. . But what was the challenge with that? They got the interest rates so low. So what happened was when the interest rates start going up, that that little 5% they were gonna make on it was worth nothing.
They could have been making 20, 30%. And so now the money that they, they were supposed to get later, it worth, worth nothing almost. So you had to sell those at a loss. So they get those higher bonds. So that's what happened. They, they basically, their balance sheet looked like crap. And balance sheet basically is just how much cash you have.
You know, basically your assets minus your liability. So you know, all these things like cash and, you know, you know cars, you know CDs, cash deposits that you have, their balance sheet went down cause they had to sell all those other bonds that they had at loss. So instantaneously they were basically you know, outta cash, right?
And then when people heard that , this is the second part of that, when people heard they were outta cash and the way they, they, they did communicate. That was last Wednesday, they said, Hey guys you know, we have a little cash issue here. , we're probably gonna have to you know, raise some money. Right?
We need some more cash, you know, just so they can meet the minimum requirements of having, when we talked about fractional banking, yeah, they
Mr Benja: need to have a minimum amount of cash. Cash on
Theo: payment. Yeah. Just in case. Just in case. So they were just like, Hey guys, don't worry about nothing to see here, but we just need to raise some more capital here.
Okay. Then, you know, of course these VC tech bros, you know, they got wind of that, what? That don't smell right? And so hey,
Mr Benja: VC tech bro, one, let me call it VC tech bro. Two, Hey, did you hear
Theo: about this? Oh, what they did was they did you, you know, the, you know prisoners' dilemma. Yes. Are you familiar with that concept?
Refresh me, so you have two prisoners, right? Mm-hmm. If you both say that I don't know who did it mm-hmm. , then guess what? You know, you will both get minimal synthesis, right? But if you, you know, if I, if I cop out on you and say, you know, no, Mr. Bender did it, and you still don't say who, you don't say who did it, then I get no synthesis.
Yeah. But if we, you know, so it's like, you know, it's better for you to do what's best for you. Oh, but let, but, but the other alternative, if you, both, all, both of you are committed than you both get the maximum sentence, right? So, right. So it's better for you to say, you know, if you look at yourself only, it's better for you.
Right? Because then I, I don't get no sentences, but if you col collaborate, You know, then you both get lesser sentences than you would if you both got committed. So it's better for us to kind of like, you know, work together if we collectively wanna do better, but it's better for me individually. , drop, drop a dime on you so you can, so I can get out Scott free.
So it, it is a way. It is, it is, it is. It's a challenge. As a, as a, as a you know, and this is a business philosophy too, right? You know, sometimes it's better for the ecosystem, for everyone to col collaborate, right? So that we can make sure that, you know, the whole ecosystem still survives and is a long-term play.
And Silicon Valley, we just talked about it, they did so much for the Silicon Valley. By them. They screwed themselves because by them saying, Hey, you know, this bank is going under, we have to kill this bank. , we can take your money out. Now they don't have an ecosystem partner that's helping you with all these loans.
We talked about it, the debt, they were getting these, these, these founders, all this stuff. So it was one of those things where, you know, these individual angel, these individual BC guys, they just said pretty much, Hey portfolio companies take all your money off the bank. And so once that happened, that's became a classic bank run, you know social media style, right?
Where they basically just like, once you got wind of that and you saw the emails, everybody went and they said one day 42 billion was taken out our Silicon Valley Bank. Because of this bank run. And so that's why it collapsed so fast. It just got ro you know, the ecosystem was so tight. One person heard about they had a cash, they didn't have enough money on their balance sheet and they may not be able to, you know, get the money in time cuz people mm-hmm.
you know, need access to their money. Then it was a bank run. If they just had, if the, the Silicon Valley bros and, you know, VCs to just calm down and say, Hey look, let's just see how this plays out. They probably would've been fine. But because they started making that bank run collapsed, Silicon Valley said they have even more money.
And then now you had to get the F D I C or the Federal Reserve involved to kind of backstop that. So, so that was a whole lot, you know, kind of cover. But my, my, my point is that they just. They, they, they crashed that bank because they didn't have any trust in what it could do anymore for them. And I think that was a challenge and that's why the contagion had to be stopped because don't know if you saw, but other banks would be infected too.
Mm-hmm. people are worried that a lot of what they call regional banks, not like the big guys like JP Morgan or bank of America are being affected like this cuz they got so much money, you know, it's too big to fail. But they're worried these small regional banks, they just don't have enough cash on hand to kind of, if people decide to run on the bank.
And what's showing that out is the stock markets. The stock market is, is ping these stocks now. So, so is this, is this the end of, you know, this or is it's just the beginning that's, that's people, what people don't know.
Mr Benja: Okay. So I kind of have two questions on that. Let me, lemme start with this one though.
If you have a bank and this is based on an argument I saw online people were arguing over this article and. One person brought up Elizabeth Warren saying that banks should be boring. She said, yeah, banks should just be basically, you know, you put your money in, you try to keep safe, you know and all this, and it, it's a contrast to the other idea that, you know, banking should be about, you know, investment and you know, there should be a, you want a better return for the people who are, are banking with you.
And it's like, these are two kind of competing ideas, right? Where you have an investment bank and then a, a bank that's about, you know just saving and moving money around and a controlled pool, I guess you could call it. And then I was like, wait a minute. And looked into it. And that brought me all the way back to the whole savings and loans thing, which I don't wanna get into.
There's a lot going on the savings and loan crisis, but is that a fair kind of thought direction of, you know, like wire, are banks doing this much speculation with money anyway?
Theo: Well, but then that, that brings a good point. Then. What's the benefit of a bank? It might as well just be a utility if all they're doing is just hone your money and loan it out.
Right. I mean, how much, how much business acumen do you need for that ?
Mr Benja: Well, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, you know, how, how together or separate should they be? I mean,
Theo: I don't know. No, I think that's the question that people all kind of wonder now. It's like if these banks can't, you know, control, I mean, is this supposed to be risk managers?
Right? They're supposed to control how much risk they can sustain so they can have enough capital in case, you know, people make around the bank. But if you can't control that risk and that, that, a lot goes into that, right? It's the way you communicate, you know, just how you manage things. I mean, the bonehead decision that, you know, everyone's saying from what I'm reading is that they.
These, these, these, these safe, you know, debt instruments at 0% interest. Yeah. But they were safe. They were gonna get their money. Mm-hmm. , but they bought 'em long. So it's like, okay, we talked about this. 0% interest rates weren't gonna stay long, right. With, you know, recession and everything falling apart.
So why would you buy these things at 0% interest? We knew the interest rates are gonna rise here in the next, you know, year or two. And, you know, I don't know how long these interest, these bonds that Silicon Valley bought for, but they had to be longer than three years or something like that. So, so they probably were sitting there just like, you know, they had to make a return for, for whatever reason.
And you know what the suspicious thing was, you know, the C C F O and to think of someone else, they took out millions of dollars in stock prior, like back in like February, in January, January, February. So they knew this was. So it's not like they didn't know that they were gonna be not insolvent, but they knew that they were going to hit a cash issue.
They just thought they could play it off a little bit longer, you know, so they can get more cash and fusion. But they knew that, that the money, that because of the interest rates were rising so fast they knew that what they had on their books was trash. I mean, you know, so
Mr Benja: Well. Okay. And that's awesome.
Thank you for that. The second part of this is what you know, kind of goes back to what we started with with Grant Cardone. All these gurus Cardone, Kiosaki, Vayner, Chuck, I'm trying to think of who else said it exactly. Patrick met David, they've been talking about, you know, Hey, this is, this is coming, you know, you better get ready.
But these aren't like, you know they're not like bankers or anything. So coming from their point of view, what have what, what's. What's, what's going on there? What, what were, what were they talking about? And is this it?
Theo: Yeah. I don't know, man. I mean, you know, maybe you might know a little bit more.
I just know you know, they're coming from their, their perspective is, you know, moving money, right? I think that's, especially Grant Cardone, he's like, you gotta take the cash and put into assets, right? Mm-hmm. , which is real estate for him. I don't know exactly. David be pat pet, what is it?
Patrick bet David, I don't know what he's specifically kind of advocating, but you know, it's just considered a source, right? What's their agenda? Right? And so you know, he's advocating, putting in real estate cuz you think that's better, you know investment long term. And so obviously that, that kind of makes sense.
Yeah. One of the guys I listened to, Ron Panda, he's the same way, right? So, you know, put your real estate right, , you know, so Yeah. And change your hair color. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. . So everybody's got their own little angle. I don't know, man. I mean, you tell me what you think these gurs are kind of after. I mean, you know, obviously Yes, we knew.
, you know, what's Gary V talking about? I guess, what's his angle on this whole thing? I'm sure he had an opinion. Did, did you hear anything about what he said about this?
Mr Benja: Well, no actually not on this in particular, but you know, he's been, you know, he kind of talked about the money, you know, he said, he's been saying that it's easy right now.
He's like, Hey, listen, you're in this, you're in this weird tech social media era. It's easy right now. Be careful because at one point, at some point it's not gonna be easy. Hmm. And I mentioned that because we're talking about trickle down effects and, you know, making moves in a creator economy or whatever.
And you've got like, Facebook just got rid of another 10,000 workers and it's like, wow, okay. So now suddenly my garage sailing thing, which used to be a little side hustle, that's my only hustle. You know, you know, somebody, somebody at Facebook who's got a degree, he can't just go get another job because he's gotta contend with, you know, people who've been laid off from Uber, Twitter and all these other places.
Really smart individuals and everybody's hungry out there. So that's the angle that Gary View is coming from. And, you know, I, hi, his, his game is just to talk to the people and find out where the people's attention is going so he can maximize that, which is an interesting angle. But
Theo: no, he's not wrong.
I mean, you know, I think we're definitely, you know, entering age where he is not gonna be as easy anymore, right? I mean, people gonna have to be profitable. I mean, cuz you're not gonna get access. I mean, it goes back to my original conversation around access to capital is not gonna be easy to get, you know, either from the tech bros or, you know, equity or, you know venture or even debt even.
It's gonna be hard. So those are the two ways you can get extra capital, right? From debt and inequity and those dry up. How is you gonna grow a company with no, you know? So you gonna have to be a lot smarter. Even my business, right? You know, we got some capital and you know, some investment and I told my in invest, I'm like, we're trying to get profitable, man.
Sorry, , I saw this, you know, right on the wall months ago. And so, you know, we're, yeah, I'm really watching, like, you know, how we spend our capital. Yes. You know, we, you know, we have some debt that we're using, but I really don't want to. do that too much more, because I know these interest rates are changing all the time, and so it is gonna be hard and harder to do that.
And so I'm just trying to build a profitable business because I think that's, that's the only way you can, I mean, you know, survive, if you can be profitable and you could eek it out, then you know you'll be fine. So it's just business one-on-one, which is been like that way for business. For what, thousands of years.
So the only change has been, oh, we got a new remix. Right? All you gotta do is get some capital and lose money faster. That's how you do it. , man, that, that, that, that, that dog won't hunt as, you know, after a while, man, that thing gotta die, man. I mean, they may try to figure out some kind of way to bring it back.
I mean, I, I don't know how though, right now, I mean, you know, it's, it's gonna be interesting times, man. I think everybody's gonna realize, I mean, I already seen some startups kind of, you know, that I've known that like raised some money that. , doa you know, they just see the right on the wall. And so I think you know, which is, I think it's a good thing.
I mean, you know, it needs to be a reset. People need to kind of think through like exactly what they're building and how to be profitable with that. And that's how you survive. Yeah. , and you know, so this circles back into entertainment, you know, so do we wanna kind of talk a little bit about like how this would affect entertainment?
I I tell you a little bit. I think, you know, and maybe you can talk a little bit about the other companies that got got, you know, affected by this. Now, let's be honest, none of 'em are gonna be affected in the short term because, you know, right now, number one, they probably move their money into JP Morgan , the bigger, more secure banks.
So that's fine. And number two, you know, Janet Yellen and the, the Fed, they just pretty much said, Hey, you know, you can get all your money, so if you put 30 billion into, or $30 million into Silicon Valley Bank, you will get, you've probably got your money back already. Right? So, because the, the, the government, you know, opened a spigot to allow that to happen.
So does that mean, you know, there's no more limit on 250,000 anymore. It's just like, you know, just put your money in a bank, put 50 million in the bank. Guess what? The government will protect it. I don't know. I don't know if that's the case, but we're gonna see what happens. But so my take real quick, I think so, you know, we always talk about Amazon and apple, you know, kind of like, Hey, there's gonna be any streaming wars for the long term.
People know that's losing money. That's why we see WB dying, you know, not killing off a lot of streaming stuff. Even Disney plus, I don't know if you saw that they got rid of Willow recently. I don't know if you saw that the first Yeah. Season. That's, that's like, wait a minute. They owned that property.
why is it, was it that expensive? , but I mean, Disney is like cutting stuff on streaming. But you always thought Apple and Amazon would be okay, right? They make so much money off of tech. Right? But could that be in jeopardy now, right? Because you know, Amazon has made some layoffs. Apple not as many yet, but who's to say that next version of Apple phone, who's gonna have this disposable income to buy that, right?
And so, yeah, that's gonna be interesting. See if Apple and Amazon are gonna be long in the streaming game, are just putting money out. Like, you know, they have been. Cuz we always said, okay, you know, Netflix, everybody else is changing their models a little bit, but Amazon, apple, oh, they're just gonna keep putting money into this.
It's, it's, it's, it's it's couch change for them, right? They don't care. But now it may, they may start caring and so we may see them canceling stuff a little bit faster, be more discriminate, or maybe even not even staying this for the long term anyway. Right? So we'll see, even though I did send you that post about Amazon, what they're doing with A Black Friday football game.
Prime.
Mr Benja: Yeah. Yeah. Genius. That's, that's kind of nice. That's genius. You know what, that's one of those things where you can, you can pull from another you know, you're talking about entertainment and, and media that gets put out there. And there's always, you know, where does it connect? It's the platforms, right?
So if they've spent all this money, like we were talking about before, building these platforms, getting this attention like we were talking about with Amazon and getting all the mind share and the usage, it's like, okay, this stuff has been making money. So once they've done that, that means they're starting to push back on the other platforms, the older platforms, the smaller platforms.
Now you have to come over to this new area of, of let's say streaming, you know, since we were just talking about that. . Now it's like, okay, now that everybody has to deal with streaming, how can we maximize on that? How can we build a better product for that? And these companies are gonna start making requests of, I'm sorry, the, the platform companies are gonna start making requests of the development companies.
So like, you've got people like the console makers you know, the, the, the movie studios, the music studios, et cetera. They've gotta put stuff out on YouTube. If YouTube turns around and says, Hey, listen you know, we, we don't like the way these videos are done anymore. You're gonna have to do 'em this way.
What are you gonna do? Get mad . You know, I'm so, it's like a creators we've been giving you all this money, but if you want to access to this program, you're gonna have to pay $5 a month. You know, and they're, people are gonna get mad. What are they gonna do? Go to Vimeo. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Go for it. And I've seen these little, little tweaks here and there where, where some of the affiliate programs are paying out a little less, or they're tightening restrictions and they're like, Hey, you used to only need a thousand subscribers to get access to these tools.
Now you need 2,500 subscribers to access these tools. Mm-hmm. . So you're starting to. The trickle down effect into, I shouldn't use that term. You're starting to see the cascading, cascading effect where now creators have to change to match the medium because the messages, the medium, whole thing like that.
Right.
Theo: Yeah. You know, and just the general economic terms. Right. What's happening holistically is just affecting, you know, these tech startups even. I mean, I saw. YouTube, they ran up on YouTube tv. I don't know if you saw that. It's, it's, it's more money now. So they're, they're raising their fees. So yeah.
So it's, it's, it's all becoming affecting everything. You know, we already said streaming was a bad business, you know, for, that's what they realized. They're losing so much money. So now with, you know, for even for them, right? Think about it. Yes. They, they, they, when they borrow money, it's like, you know, billions.
But those interest rates, those cap that, that went up for them for, for, for them as well, for Apple. And so, for instance, one of the big concerns that Disney Plus has to think about is you know, do they purchase Hulu or not? So in this rising interest rate environment, you know, getting actually the capital a bit harder, I don't know if they do it.
I mean, people are saying they probably should, because, you know, it gives them differentiated content. But I don't know if they will. Cause right now they co-own it with Comcast, right. Universal. So they're trying to figure out if they wanna own it whole. Right. But I, you know, The way Iger is talking, I think he'd rather sell it and use that capital for something else, right?
Pay off debt, you know make more money in cruises. Jack up the prices more at Disney pl at at Disney theme parks, you know, . So it's just like, you know, he trying to find money elsewhere, man. The streaming ain't it No more, ain't it? So so anyway, so it is, it's, it's, it's gonna be interesting to see how these, you know, these folks get affected and then the small guys like, you know, you can forget it.
You a small guy man. I mean, you know, you might as well just, you know, figure out if you're gonna be profitable or not. If not, right. You don't need to do this right now.
Mr Benja: Hey speaking of Disney Plus, I haven't gotten back on yet even with the Mandalorian, but have they integrated the sales thing that they said they were gonna do?
Oh, you know
Theo: what they have? Man, I was gonna send you that picture. I thought I sent it to you. Yeah man, we gotta do that. So yeah, so we gotta figure that out, man, cuz they, they actually were . So when you watch Mandalorian, they even stay there. I'll send you the screenshot. Me will share it on on our socials.
Oh, I'll, and they show you a screenshot. They show you like, Hey, you know, interested in some of the content here. You know, here, click your hand. And I tried to find it, I didn't see it right away. I'm gonna have to do some more digging. But yeah, they are doing an integration. I'm sure they're gonna do more of that, you know, as we go along, because it just makes sense.
I mean, Disney's in the, in the market of merchandising experiences at the theme parks, the cruises. So why wouldn't they use Disney Plus as a, as a gateway to that? So it just makes sense. Yeah.
Mr Benja: Remember they had it scheduled, but as I said, I jumped off Disney Plus for a while. I gotta get off Hulu.
I'm done with that for the moment. .
Theo: Yeah, I gotta do that too. So, but yeah, man, it's gonna be an interesting time. I mean what's happening here, I mean, you know, with the Roblox, Vox Media, ro, kudos, some of the other entertainment companies that affected with this, you know, S V B Silicon Valley Bank, fallout.
Yeah, man, I think it's just I don't know. So I feel like you know, this is an interesting time, but I love it, man. This is, this is, this is what they, you know, what's it pressure makes diamonds, man. So I wanna see what comes out is the, the, the play of Easy Money is gone. But it's gonna be interesting to see what comes out of this man.
I mean, cuz. , you'd be surprised. Like remember during 2000 during the financial crisis, that's when we got Twitter. Twitter, remember that? That got, that, that blew up. Mm-hmm. . You know, so it's gonna be interesting to see what, what kind of new innovations there's going, you know, be powered by this. My, my take is it's probably gonna be a lot of AI stuff, which I don't think the AI itself is gonna be unique and different cuz the algorithm's gonna be the same, you know, between Google.
Open AI slash Microsoft, but maybe how people implement it. Right. You know, I saw one company that's already using it too. They said, here's a doc. Download your, your legal documents. You can chat with your legal document, . I don't know how useful that is, but, you know, say, Hey, you know, tell me tell me, Hey, document, tell me how you feeling today.
You know, but, or tell me ,
Mr Benja: That, that's a, that's actually very good. You know, if you have a, if you have a written contract and people are doing this already, if you have a written contract, you could upload the text and be like, Does this, you know, does this allow such and such to happen in these circumstances?
And it's like, actually according to section four you can be held liable and you're like, oh, really?
Theo: So mm-hmm. . Yeah. So that's one, that's one use. I'm seeing, you know, folks talk to your legal document, . Yeah. Good morning. Well, you know, and then I obviously they open ai open their API up for a lot of you know, technology companies.
And so SNAP is using it. Other companies are already starting using it. So so yeah, so I think they're gonna be some inventive ways to use it. But I guess the challenge is, is that, so is that gonna create enough value? I always think about the hermo value equation, right? You know, does it get you the outcome you want?
You know, and do you know other people that have the similar outcome? And is it easy to do so, no effort from you? And does it give you the result quickly, quickly. . And so I just don't know. You know, I think AI helps with convenience, right? Can give you answers quickly. You know, so, I don't know, I gotta think through it.
Like, you know, what can AI really bring, you know, it seems like a lot of playing around with it right now, but I mean, I do you get a sense that, hey, this is, this is gonna be a killer app for anything. Ai. You have to be able, you know,
Mr Benja: so, you know, a killer app, not necessarily, but with over a hundred or something AI tools recommended by this one website.
I just saw a list of, here's AI for this, here's AI for that. Here's AI for that. If you start using technology like Zier or something like that to connect all these technologies, then you start getting into really interesting places, and that's where you start seeing the killer apps come out, right?
Mm-hmm. You know
Theo: it's. Well, it's, you know what? It's amazing what you can do, man. I, I did play it around some techno, I can't remember what it is. I gotta find it. But it recorded my voice. So now mm-hmm. , I think I told you this. I could no, I, yeah, I could. Now do a podcast and just type it in Beta ba ba basically I can have chat, e p t write me a podcast and I can just put it into the software and then have me talk and do the podcast for me.
Wait,
Mr Benja: is this the same software we were talking about before that we use? Not the
Theo: script. No. It's someone else , but it does that, but Oh, it does that too. Yeah. I didn't know that. It can record your, it can not record your voice, but capture your voice so it can make you say anything. Yeah,
Mr Benja: so we've done enough, we, we've done enough of these podcasts where we can actually say, you know what, let's take a vacation, , write a podcast in our style based on these past podcasts.
Theo: Dumb question. So, so are we on vacation now, guys? I don't know.
Oh, I, I did not, I was not aware. So I was like, yeah, we should try that one time. See how that goes. do comparison. Maybe we'll do on our AI review. Maybe we'll do that here. And that'll be another pod we do. So we're,
Mr Benja: we're coming back to ai? Definitely.
Theo: Yeah. All right. Well, man, Mr. Benja, anything else man?
How's your, what's your, what you got going for the week? Oh,
Mr Benja: what do I have going? Man, every so often, man, I just need to stop and like soak in something. And I haven't taken like a good solid week or two weeks to just super deep dive into some of this new AI stuff. I mean, I've been, I've been in there, but I haven't done a super dive where I can come back and be like, watch me do this.
So it's a little technic thing I got from Bill Gates where it's like every, every so often, just take two weeks off and go super heavy on one topic and then come back out and you're like, I'm better than all of you.
Theo: Okay. Are you done, are you still in it? I, I'm,
Mr Benja: I'm still in it. I haven't, nah, as I said, I haven't done the super, super deep dive because I'm still writing and hitting up social media doing the podcast.
So I haven't done the super deep AI dive.
Theo: Nice. Nice. Well send me what you got, man. I would love to compare notes, man, cuz we're, we're in it maybe gonna integrate into our software. I already got, you know, Options. I have my social media team, they're using it to write some of our posts. Yeah man, we're, we're, I'm in it cuz I, yeah, just, I just wanna be ease, you know, just, it's a tool, right?
Just learning the tools. So if you got other tools you recommend, I'll, I'll do the same. And I'm playing with 'em all too cuz you never know . So, so guys, we are ending this pod on a positive note, so, so look. . It sucks right now in banking. It sucks to get capital, but guess what? You gotta think about the positive.
Keep your eyes on the positive, and guess what? There's some new stuff, new technologies, new tools coming out that can help you grow and build your business, whether it's in business or in entertainment. So me and Mitch, me and Mr. Benja, we got you guys. So that's all I wanna say there, man. Gotcha. , we got you.
So, hey everyone. Thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe and comment at show versus business on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Listen to us at Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcast. Also, if you'd like to show our check out our website, go check out show versus business. All right, Mr.
Benja. Take care. Peace.