🚨 Emergency Pod 🚨 TBPN Acquired by OpenAI, with Theo Browne and Ben Davis

I visited Theo Browne and Ben Davis to break down the monumental TBPN OpenAI acquisition and what this means for all of our favorite buzzwords like new media and AI and technology and culture and such.

Theo thinks I tried too hard writing this but I'm posting it anyways.

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Transcript

Shitposting for money (new media)

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Good evening, gentlemen. What an evening it is.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

It's 2 p.m.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

3:36 p.m. Pacific time.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

I know he's fast at editing, but he's not that fast.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Fair. Okay, yeah. So it is evening, I guess. You say fast at editing? Do you think I edit my stuff?

SPEAKER_00 0:16

You can tell you edit your stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

I mean, um, the drive-bys have already started. This is a very special episode of members of technical staff. What people actually don't realize is I had actually recorded one of these things at 11.30 before I got the text from these guys, and I figured, actually, you know what? Um, it's actually just gonna be way better that way, uh, versus me in my pajama pants eating eggs. Which, you know, sight for sore eyes for some. Um, but I think this is where we'll get in-depth analysis on the news of the day, and that is um your tech media has been acquired by big AI. Uh, and that is, you know, TVPN OpenAI. What does all of this mean? What does all of this mean for people in tech adjacent media, tech media, new media? I don't even know what we're calling this fucking thing anymore. Um it's all the same thing. Posting for money? Don't mind if we do. I mean, I think that's this is that's what I've been trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I want to make sure we don't come off as the like the the way all the YC haters do, where it's clear they just w didn't get into YC. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we're all the OpenAI rejects, actually.

Congrats @tbpn and being likeable

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Exactly, exactly. And I and I think, you know, and I think to that, to that, I think it is uh good to add a disclaimer. Of course, I I personally did a bit of work with TVPN, and so um naturally uh I am responsible for this. Just kidding, just kidding. I actually told Sam to do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

What you're looking at are the people that pulled the strings. Uh but basically what I the way that I wanted to start this off with is um first of all, congrats, John and Geordie. Uh what a deal. Uh I to be, I mean, to be fair, I didn't see this coming. Um it's uh I had to double check that it was April 2nd and not April 1st when I saw John's initial post. And quite frankly, you know, having worked with them, having known them, still knowing them, uh, I think, yeah, I mean, good for them, good for them, and yeah, I look forward to seeing what happens. Uh, two very, very nice guys, the two very, very likable guys. In fact, you know what? I'm gonna start off with one of my own fucking tweets, um, because I was talking exactly about this, and I think it's a good way to start before we get into dissecting what could come of this, what could come of TBPN because of this, what could come of OpenAI because of this, what this does to technology messaging, AI messaging, all of these sorts of things. But first of all, we'll start off with mine. Basically, what I said uh this was a couple of hours ago. I said, in all seriousness, the TBPN acquisition displays the importance of being likable. If John Coogan and Geordie Hayes were in any way portrayed as sketchy or unlikable by even a few, the surface area for bad press and quote tweet dunks from this deal would be immense. The truth is they are likable guys on and off camera. I get texts of encouragement from John every month, and it means a lot to me. This is true actually, he actually does this. They deserve all the success. They built an awesome product in a way that is cool and honest, no rage bait needed, no hit pieces needed, and I do totally stand by that. And I think in the news, and especially in like what I am talking about, it definitely helps to be likable. I think when you guys are talking about soft software and having like very pointed opinions, it can probably go either way. Is that probably fair to say?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Let's be real here. If I wasn't such an asshole, I probably would have been acquired by now. Like, I just I can't it's funny everybody accuses me of being paid. Like, the fact that I'm such an asshole is the proof I'm not paid. When I'm being a dict to anthropic, that's not because I'm on someone else's payroll, it's because I fucking hate them. Understandably so, but you know.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

And so that was a lineup for you, Thea, because I knew you would probably take the other slide of that.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

No, but legitimately, I do think them being acquired makes sense because they are like when you measure the ratio of like awareness of the space, presence in the space, how many people hate your guts, they come out on top with like those numbers in a way that makes them more appetizing. And I also suspect that like this is not meant to be a dunk on the guys. I genuinely really like them and what they're doing. Jordy's been awesome. We've chatted a bunch randomly, like on all sorts of different things. Their sponsor numbers are not sustainable for the numbers that have leaked. I've heard numbers as high as a million dollars for just one of the logos in the back and no additional ad reads for under a year. That's not sustainable with viewership that is in the like thousands to tens of thousands at most, even across all platforms. This is the happy end for them. And in a lot of ways, it kind of felt like they were I don't even know how to put this, it's like uh they were demonstrating what this all could be if we just pretended it was 10 times bigger than it was, up to the finish line. Like they ran straight, like it's they were running a like condensed version of a marathon, and we were all cheering them on like they were actually running 26 miles, and they just got to the end of their kiddie version of a marathon in a way that like they built themselves. This is not meant to like infantilize or downplay them. But since we're not as big as sports, they made their mini version of what ESPN does, ran the whole race, and when they got to the end, they realized, oh, just because we ran the whole thing, that doesn't mean we get the same return ESPN does, and they had it out, so they took it. It makes a lot of sense to me.

Quality of audience vs quantity of audience

SPEAKER_02 5:22

I mean, if I were to challenge that quickly, um, do you think there is any merit to quality of audience versus quantity of audience? I mean, I'm trying to sort of think of who might be the daily listener of something like a TBPN. It's going to be something along the lines of an LP, maybe a senior manager at a tech company that might be more likely to do an enterprise deal because they've seen a logo on somewhere. Uh, do you think there's any merit to that?

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Having done a lot of market analysis of the different media, there's a minimum viewership you have to hit before we can start talking about quality of audience, and I don't think much in tech has hit it. Like, there are very few media sources that are in the space enough that anyone other than VCs listen to it, and I don't trust VCs for anything, anyways. I don't really care what media they consume, they could be watching Teletubbies for all I care. Their picks are still gonna be just a shit. Like, if TVPN is what it takes for a bunch of rich people to feel like they know what's going on in tech when they don't, cool, but they don't have the like they don't have serious buying power, they have temporary cash power, is how I think of it. Like they can do a thing immediately or like mention something to one of their companies, but anybody who takes advice from somebody who listens to TVPN as their main news source isn't going to be around for many, much many more years, generally speaking. And I find that for companies that have like VPs and people listening to stuff, everyone has their like pile of things they go to. The thing that I find missing with a lot of the more newsy type things here is the consistent audience engagement. So one of the things I'm really proud of with both Ben and my audience is that we know that the names of the individuals who show up for every stream, who come to every video, who give us sources, who help us do our stuff. We're both able to run really small teams, not because we are doing like different types of content. Our content is arguably like more effort to produce, but since we have become so close and like embedded in the community directly, that has changed the shape of the content on a fundamental level. And it also means that like the people who are engaging engage in a way that's just fundamentally different. Like the TVPN can bring a guest on the show and have a moment that is cool, and neither of us can do that. But it it's it's instead of like the guests coming in and making the show bigger, we bring the community up and make them big with us. It's just a different way of doing things, like top-down versus bottom-up. And I don't think that makes any difference as to like what the financial value of the thing is, it's just a different style. Their style looks bigger, and I really want to focus on that piece. Is the thing TVPN did looked and felt massive, which is a big part of why this went the way it did. Is that the feeling that it's huge? People weren't necessarily getting their logos on TVPN or sponsoring it because they wanted to get a bunch of customers off it. I don't know a single person who made a buying decision based on something they saw on TVPN. I was told today about 30 different people who signed up for one of my sponsors' products because they heard about it in one of my pieces of content. The status symbol TVPN represents is worth a lot of money and they worked hard to build that. But it really is the symbol of TVPN more so than the value of the content of the audience. Kind of like a billboard on like the 101. Yes. Do you have anything to add to that, Ben?

SPEAKER_00 8:27

I mean, yeah, I'm just looking through their numbers, because exactly what Theo was saying, it's very, very spiky. If you look at something like his YouTube channel, you get a very consistent like 50 to 150,000 plays, sometimes spiking above that. But like there is a core audience that engages and watches every single piece of content. If you scroll through the TVP and Twitter, you can see like a lot of tweets that are down at like 10k views on average, but then you have these big ones that will spike up to five, six million views, and those are the ones that just explode everywhere and everyone sees, which makes them feel really, really big. And yeah, I mean it's it's different, but I think it does work.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

For sure. I mean, I I use a similar playbook for mods. I mean, you know, it's like one of those things. I mean, I, you know, obviously I'm I uh I try and tact slightly differently, and that I, you know, like I mean, I I definitely probably come across as as bigger than I am as well, but I, you know, I I'm a shit poster native. And so like if I can tie everything to my uh incriminating tweets, and you know, so the SFP, their case officers are like sitting outside of my door, like all of those sorts of things. Um, you know, like I it's it's funny, kind of like the mainstream, like whenever I make the mainstream press, people still don't actually know what to call me, um, which I kind of like. You know, there's like an ear aura of inscrutability. Um so you know, I I think it's definitely a playbook. Uh TBPN have created the playbook, uh, you know, and that is like sort of you know, clip-driven growth on x.com, the everything app.

Making @openai feel more human and flipping public sentiment

SPEAKER_01 9:54

I don't know if the clip-driven growth strategy, specifically on Twitter, is as as big as people seem to think. It's I I find that it burns your floor a lot. I think a lot about floors and ceilings. Like, how well does your worst post do? And what's the gap between that and the biggest? Most people are so focused on like how can you the one post that gets millions of views? That's a great strategy when nobody cares about what you're talking about. But we if you can build up the the desire to hear what this person's thoughts are, not about the thing itself, that's much more valuable. I can command an audience on a topic that isn't relevant right now if I have an interesting enough thing to say about it. I can't actually tell you either of the TVPN's hosts' perspective on much. And that's part of why they're so good for this acquisition. Curious what your guys' thoughts are on why this happened, but I think it's a pretty simple attempt to make OpenAI feel more human. Like they they clearly know how to play all sides in a way where nobody's upset. Like I've never heard anyone upset with TBPN at any point.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

And this is kind of exactly what I was trying to get at the likability point, right? And I think uh Kate Clark, who wrote the Wall Street Journal article, I think she said the exact same thing, right? And it's like, I think I didn't actually read the OpenAI press. I mean, I mean, um, you know, well-researched uh podcaster talking on a topic without actually reading the thing. Um I mean Who would ever do that?

SPEAKER_01 11:15

It's just like the headline's actually enough for me. Who would like find a news source, think that it's cool, and then just read that as the video itself? That's a crazy thought. Who would ever that's so low effort?

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Yeah, I mean, I mean, what what people are doing for content nowadays, um it's fucking disgraceful. Um anyway, basically the the Wall Street Journal talking about how uh, you know, obviously like AI has a messaging problem. I mean, I've been really hammering home on this. I I mean I personally think a lot of the other labs are actually kind of fucked from a regulatory standpoint. I actually think a lot of it's kind of too late for them. Um but and you know, I think that's what happens when you for a couple of years market your product as something that will take your job and also maybe literally kill you. Uh not the most compelling uh uh uh narrative for a for a tech company, I would say. Um but I digress. To me, yes, like like it's like a it's a likability thing. Uh I think another another angle, um, and I and I spoke to I spoke to some press about this big big fucking deal here, by the way. Just wanted to say, uh uh me, that is, uh, but I spoke to some press and I said that, you know, if we are looking at the the you know, if I go back to the quality of audience point, I mean, even though, you know, maybe there, maybe there is an appetite for a distribution channel that goes directly towards enterprise, or, you know, what could be perceived as like, you know, senior manager at X big tech company that might want to buy OpenAI enterprise instead of, I don't know, Anthropic, who have been kind of crushing it on the enterprise side.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Uh Did you see who they were reporting under?

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Uh oh, the it was uh the Global Affairs person.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Yes, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Yeah, the person whose job, as far as I understand, is effectively just lobbying. Yeah. Like, if my guess here is correct, it's what you were hinting at earlier around the fears about the regulation stuff. Yes. Yeah, Ben, we were talking yesterday about the security side here a bit.

Safety and security implications of AI and the messaging

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Okay, I have two slightly different things. So, one on what you were talking about earlier with the advertisers. I do not think that this is an advertising play. They are not trying to win enterprise deals with this. Everyone who needs to know about OpenAI in the dev enterprise space already knows who they are, they already get it. The point, I don't think, is that, because the advertising that they currently had is not sustainable on the clips model because of the floor. The spikiness just makes it impossible for advertisers to get a consistent return and for you to sell consistently. This is a great landing for that. And I think the quote from Jordi on OpenAI's blog of it's the last sentence in there moving from commentary to real impact in how this technology is distributed and understood globally is incredibly important to us. This is them trying to explain AI to the masses and them trying to convince regulators and the general public consciousness that tech and AI in Silicon Valley is not this weird, arcane ecosystem that's trying to destroy the world. They want to flip public sentiment with this one. It is the, of all like the tech shows, it is definitely the most approachable to broader audiences. Like I was talking to my uncle when he was in town. He was an ex-Excenture exec. He was a very, very senior partner when they IPO'd in the 90s. Like he really knows his shit. But when he was trying out ChatGPT for the first time, and he went onto the website and he asked it a question, came back a week later, and it remembered that question in a separate chat, he was really freaked out because the memory feature did not make any sense to him. It was this arcane thing, and he was really scared of the AI knowing all these things, even though we, in our little tech bubble, know how that actually works. You know how the agent is working on the ChatGPT web app, the memory tool, the SA memory tool, all that stuff. We get it. Normal people don't. This, I think, is a play to normalize this for normal people.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah, I want to lean on the safety and security side in particular here, because I think this is about to be like the big thing this year. I recently got like my my Doom repill hit hard a few days ago, just thinking about the safety and security implications. Before Opus 4.6 came out, Anthropic did a test with it and found 22 zero days in Firefox and got them fixed before releasing the model, because they were scared once the model was out, anybody can start finding those things. And the labs are putting a lot of effort into making sure their models can't be used to just pwn all of software. But we are my honest guess is that we're three to maybe best case, nine months away from every single piece of software we rely on being pwnable by most models, even open weight ones. Like if we can distill any of the capability of these frontier models to open weight things, even if they can't replicate the security stuff by distilling that directly, a lot of the behavior is seemingly emergent from getting good at code. And we're about to hit a point where every single hospital, every single library, every single local city government in their Google accounts, everything is about to start getting pwned by AI, and there's going to be terrible, terrible legislation proposed as a result. We're about to have a surge of just god-awful laws about how we're gonna ban AI because a local hospital got hacked. And that's that's something that needs to be hedged against. And my honest bet is some meaningful amount of what's going on here is trying to prepare for a future where the way that government officials and the normal people they talk to think about AI has a little more thought put into it because of the danger zone that we're about to enter with these new models.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Right. And that's not even that's not even to mention the uh, you know, the data center narratives, right? Which is what has been going on the last few months, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:45

It's like electricity prices up, water price, I mean water All of that's a tenth of you go to the hospital and they're taking notes on post-its and whiteboards because their computer system got ransomware. That's like the things we're talking about there are all like it's similar to like grocery prices going up 10% for some things and then eggs cost twice as much. People talk about it a lot, but they don't actually care that much, or they would have done something about it. Once you're interfering with their day-to-day in a way that makes them feel at risk like that, it's gonna be a very, very different tune.

Will TBPN remain neutral + @tenobrus and @willccbb reactions

SPEAKER_02 17:14

And midterms are just coming up, so you know, it's uh timely, timely. I think to I think to uh to switch gears just a little bit, I think there's a couple of other things that came out of the discourse today on the timeline. Uh one of them is sort of like, you know, whether we think about it as like journalistic integrity, you know, like like uh the idea that perhaps TBPN will in fact remain independent, right? Have independent thought, uh, even though they are under the guise of OpenAI, and you know, uh supposedly in their contract, they remain completely independent, their branding is independent uh independent, independent, all of these sorts of things. Umbrist, friend of the show, he was like, yeah, he quote tweeted the announcement. He was like, damn, this is great for the team, and I'm super happy for them. But gotta say, this sucks pretty bad for everyone else. There is no public upside in journalists being owned by the companies they report on. One more along these lines, Will Brown. Uh so Will says, I'm not that worried about TBPN maintaining independence for their reporting. So he takes the other side. Um I'm much more concerned about the ads going away. The ads were central to the whole vibe, it won't really be the same without them. Okay. And so obviously, you know, Will's point was not necessarily towards uh independence, but of course, you know, people are talking about it, is what is the point that I wanted to hammer home. Uh, any thoughts on where this goes? I know me personally, if I was bought for say, uh, you know, theoretically$300 million, I'm probably gonna think okay of the person who did that.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

What's your favorite take that either of the hosts from TVPN have about AI stuff? Um, I don't know. Do you know any of their like takes or strong stances on anything?

SPEAKER_02 18:50

No.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Ben? Nope. Not one. If somebody in the comments does, please let us know because as far as I know, there's never been a like meaningful opinion shared by one of the hosts. It's not bad. They're here to report the news, not how they think about things. Yes. So why are we worried about bias? This is part of why they're the right target. If you paid me$300 million to report media at your company, I would have to shut the fuck up. But that's the difference. That's why I'm not the one getting acquired. Because I that you're coming to me not just for the news, but some amount for my opinion, whether you like it or actively dislike it. Doesn't matter. You're there to engage with my thoughts on the thing, not the thing. TVPN you go to for the thing and what's going on. The same way you go to Mots for not just the thing, but like what do other people think about it. Like no other show is putting it. No, you tell people how other people feel and let them, based on those different perspectives, come to their own.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Yeah.

Where will the ads go?

SPEAKER_02 19:45

That's a nice way to put it. I appreciate it. I appreciate the shout-out, quite frankly. Um, but yeah, no, I mean I I I I tend to think the exact same way. I mean, like, obviously, um, you know, I can I can speak for myself in that in that um I I too have a price. Uh Anthropic Mid Journey uh looking at you guys, Google Gemini, I will change my birthday. I'll become a Gemini if you want. Uh that's that's that's that's to the lengths that uh you know members of technical staff will go uh in order to be acquired. Uh I'll literally change my birthday. Um but I just wanted to mention that. Uh it's kind of a side point. Um but you know, I I think um I I think that I think that totally makes sense. And you know, in the contract, again, it mentions pretty clearly that they remain independent, their branding is not impacted, uh, so on and so forth. Uh, which, you know, and again, Will sort of mentioned it in the tweet, brings me to the ads, right, and sponsorship. So we saw today, actually, that they're they're gone. They're done for. Uh what does that what does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Like what happens to them now? I actually don't know. Ben, how much of your time is spent just managing the ads on my channel?

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Like 90% of it. Like, that is the hard part of running a business like this. Like, TBPN had to scale up hard and fast to have like a full like managerial board. Like, I was looking at some pictures they posted. Like, the team is pretty big. Yeah, I don't know the exact number, but it seems like they changed their banner, they no longer have the logos in it. I went to go get them and they don't have them anymore. I just checked now. Oh yeah, that's gonna be rebranded. Yeah, and like a lot of those people were there entirely just to manage the deal flow because it is so much work to get all of the brands signed, to get the key points from them, to be able to put together compelling ads for them and understand how to talk about them. Yeah, the fact that they don't have to do that anymore will probably actually help their operation, just do the news thing. I think what Theo said earlier on the bias angle is entirely correct. It's like I can think of three times where we have gotten in horrible shit storms, like last summer with the GPT-5 drop, where Theo had his first impresses impressions of GPT 5. It wasn't paid for, he just had early access, and he thought it was a really cool model, and that got flamed so hard. The amount of accusations of bias and all this stuff that came in. Have you ever seen that happen with TVPN?

SPEAKER_01 21:55

I remember as early as the Vercel stuff. Yeah. Yeah, that was the original. I've been doing this forever because like actually. Like the thing, and I'm not just reporting on the thing, that's the difference. Is like I don't know if they write code or if they use the tools they're talking about a whole lot beyond like for like general usage. Like for me, the difference between different models or different IDEs significantly impacts me and my team as we build and ship. So I have strong opinions on those things. I've seen what does work and I've seen what doesn't work for me and my team. That's I care a lot about that, but it's funny by being unbiased in not just reporting what I'm told but reporting how I feel, I get accused of more bias whenever my perspective doesn't align with the general world. But if your job is to report on the thing and how the world sees it, I have very little concern about bias. The only thing that would happen here is there's certain topics they probably just won't touch. And even like almost every creator I know has this now. It's funny because before I switched to the model where I had a lot of sponsors doing ads in each video, I only had like the three or four, and there were companies I was close with that I knew I trusted and trusted me, and I could talk about whatever and I trusted them to not care. Now I have to be a little bit more cautious, I have to be careful what video gets what ad, because some brands are more sensitive to controversial ones than others. But another fun thing I learned is that most brands are very down to be put on the controversial video. Like when I covered the Department of War stuff, I hit up three sponsors asking, like, hey, are any of you guys down to be the one on this video? It's a little controversial. All three said yes within 15 minutes. It's like 9 p.m.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

I mean it's the same, it's the same with um, you know, my my sponsors working with me. I mean, I I s I swear on video camera, like I'm like, you know, there's there's probably there's probably a few one-liners there that might, you know, in a in a different era may have may have shut me down. Um but yeah, I mean, more more power to them. I mean superpower, we talk about peptides most of the time. And that's like that's that's kind of like borderline, you know, that's that's really on the border of uh uh uh legality, let's just say that. I mean, you know, important disclaimers, we we both know how to talk about it, but one of those things in which yeah, we've got to walk a walk a fine line. But um, you know, I think that's yeah, it's why why people people end up working with me as well. Uh companies end up working with me. It's like they're they're fine with that, they're a little bit more risk-on, and they they know that I'm going to be willing to take the risk as well. Uh uh be of you know I I think there is beauty in novelty like posting uh uh completely raw clips online in log scale and no audio sync.

So much works goes into managing brands

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Uh I want to really emphasize just how much work it is to deal with the brands though. Like we're at the point now where Ben and I put so much time into this that we're starting an agency to manage the brand deals for other creators because it's just so much like overhead to deal with. And we have spent two years figuring out our system for it. But this, like, this is why broadcast television works, because the network figures out the ads. You just make the content and make sure there's splits in the right places so the network can take care of the rest.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

ESPN means like like the hosts of ESPN and the teams running their shows don't have to worry about the advertisers, they just do the content. TVPN has to worry about this, and it takes up a significant portion of their time. Over half of my time on content is going into the brand deals and management. And I'm trying to run a company separately and trying to manage my portfolio separately and trying to do stuff like this, I'm trying to do all my advisory. Over half of my work time in a given week is going to brand deal management stuff. It's just so much work. And if you offered like almost anybody in the space 2x their current revenue to never have to worry about that again, it makes all the sense in the world they would take that deal because it's just it's so much, especially when you get close to renewal season. Oh, yeah. And I would I would bet my butt that if you went and looked at like when most of their recent sponsors became sponsors, if you went like track like when did the logo appear, we're near either the six month or the one year mark for that. Yes. Because renewal season is hell.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Yep. Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Even I don't like that, and I manage four at a time. I know, like, I was trying to help Jaden get more sponsors, and he just looked at it. It's like, that's too much work to deal with that many companies. I'm gonna stick with my like one to four and just have my core crew of the companies that are in my stuff. I like having a large variety of companies that are doing things that I find interesting, like Venner or I will use the tool and play with it and make sure it actually works and fits what my audience would expect. I've said no to more brands than I've said yes to. I've said no to deals that would have changed the trajectory of my life because they were so big, but I just didn't like the company. And then Higgsfield got shut down on Twitter because they were scamming so much.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Yeah, I was gonna say I'm not gonna say it. I'll say it. We all know, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Yeah, if I lose a deal because I'm willing to call out a scam, then I didn't want the deal either. It was probably also. Even I quote Twick dunk them. Yeah. Yeah. Even even me. Even me. Yeah, you normally just bring the guests on to be controversial so you could spile and wave. Nah, that's right.

unknown 26:37

That's great.

The Negotiations (it seems)

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Exactly. Exactly right. Did you learn that one from Geordi? Uh hmm. Hmm. Nah. I I I think I figured that one out from first principles, actually. Uh let's see, what else? What else? Um, you know what? He was part of the so so he was uh part of the negotiations, it's team. So this was from Rat King a few hours ago. Um so he says, interesting, as part of negotiations with OpenAI, TPPN has a uh, in quotes, commitment to editorial independence written into the contract, which states the following. So I'm kind of bringing this back around, but um mentions TBPN retains full control over its daily programming, editorial decisions, guest selection, and production schedule. TBPN will continue to host a broad range of voices and perspectives. TPPN independently determines its external appearances and commentary. OpenAI will not control TBPN's planning materials or working documents, they will not provide direction on TPPN's editorial calendar, they will not influence who TBPN books or what topics it covers, it will not material alter, discontinue or rebrand TPPN, and does not have rights to TBPN host likeness. Um seems like a pretty decent deal if they don't have to deal with uh uh you know the the constant renewal of ads and brand management.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

And the likeness part in particular is very interesting. Yes. Yeah, there I think it would be worth going over the things that stress out creator and media stuff, because like realistically speaking, the people watching this and looking at you, sir. You probably work at a big tech company or a small tech company that aspires to be a tech company. You've probably written code at some point in your life, you're either good or bad at it, and have adjusted accordingly. As in, if you're bad at it, you probably went full-time as an engineer, and if you were good at it, you probably became a founder instead and stopped writing code. Love all of you, you guys are the reason I make my money, but you guys don't understand media and where the work actually is and where our fear is. The biggest thing you have to worry about as a creator is that people stop watching your stuff, and then as a result, you lose your brand deals. Now imagine people are buying those deals not because of how much viewership you get today, but where they think your viewership is going. Now imagine you don't hit those targets that these brands were expecting, and they look at their numbers and did get some of the return they expected, or maybe not, and now you have to like really fight with the brand to convince them to stay on as a sponsor. And you also at the same time have to be making sure you're steering the content in a way that gets more eyes and more things, but you're also dependent on news cycles to an extent. Like, as silly as this is to say, I don't think it's a coincidence that we had three really dry weeks of news, and then this happened at the end of it. Yeah, like I I haven't checked in because I just haven't been on Twitter much because there's nothing going on. Yeah. What have they been talking about for the past three weeks? There's been jackfucking shit.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Day after April Fools, too, which is a which is a quiet day. I mean, not many launch videos yesterday on April Fools, that's for sure. I was the only one dumb enough to relaunch.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Actually, dumb enough. It was actually smart, but anyway. Only meaningful AI news in the past month has been all the drama around Anthropic with the Cloud Code source leak and the rate limit stuff. Like, there's been nothing else. I I'm also like on the beat having to report on this.

SPEAKER_03 29:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Thankfully, I know about a lot of other things that are appealing to my audience, and I can find topics that are things I care about and want to talk about. We split our content into like three categories. There is priority, which is like this is breaking news right now, we need this out ASAP. There is like general news, which is this thing happened recently. I have like a one to two week window after it happened where it's relevant, and then it's like it hits the point where it's too late to talk about. And then there is evergreen, which is I can put this out effectively whenever, and it's still useful. I've had to spit film nothing but evergreen videos for the past month. I don't know what an evergreen TVPN show is. I don't think it can exist. I don't think that's their nature. They are fully beholden to the news cycle. So if nothing happens in the news, they can't get views, they have nothing to film or talk about, now they have to be stressed about that, and they have to talk to the brands about why they didn't hit the targets they were expecting. All of that is just so stressful and so much work. And if you're trying to raise your floor and like get like bigger content to grow and reach further audiences, you can't do that when you're dependent on the news cycle outside of you. So, what if you could change your business so that your salary, your team stay or status, and like their employment and their pay and all of those things you have to worry about? Because like if I have a bad enough month, I have to lay off up to eight people. That's very, very stressful. They're in an even crazier point where they have 10 people, and they like if I really had to, like, push come to shove, between the profit of my other businesses, the revenue I make from Twitter, from YouTube, and from a few other things, even without sponsors, I could just barely make most of the people's I work with salary happen for a month or two, just with my savings plus all of that. Like we are in a position where push comes to shove, I get canceled, and all my sponsors get taken away from me. I can float things for a bit. I don't know if they're in a similar position, and they have even less control over whether or not people watch their stuff. And they had a button they could press in front of them that said, hey, if you press this button, you never have to deal with brands again, you never have to worry about your viewership again, you never have to be beholden to the news cycle to know if you can make payroll for your team next year. All of the things that make this job stressful, poof, and you just have to press one button, accepting that you can't really grow anymore. Like, let's be real, if TVPN quadruples their viewership, they're not going to make much more money now. Previously they could have, theoretically, but if you overstep where your current audience size is with the contracts you're signing and the deals you pull in, you cap out early. It's similar to when a company fundraises at too high a valuation, you can't raise the next round. TVPN, I would argue, did the equivalent of that for their sponsor deals. They couldn't grow anymore, and they were constantly at risk of if they fall at all, they could lose everything. But a button was put in front where they can press this and never worry about it again. I'd fucking press the button.

SPEAKER_03 32:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Yeah, totally, totally. I mean, it's like it's like you know, part of my thinking in uh not actually hiring anyone for months. I just do it all myself. I mean, fucking clearly, as as we can probably tell. I'm curious to your thoughts on this as well, Ben. I mean, obviously now that now that you've got your YouTube channel up and running, you know, do you think about this the same way when it comes to you know managing your own brand deals, right?

Anthropic vs OpenAI vibes and understanding bias

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Well, because exactly like Theo said, the difference between like there are two types of these media outlets and the new media, quote unquote, whatever the hell you want to call it. Yeah, whatever it is. Some of them are platforms, and that's what TVPN was. It is so dependent on news cycles. And like, I would see TVPN pop up on my feed, not for their opinions or their things. It would be for the TVPN branded post of something happened. It is a news source dependent on external things that they are now free from being dependent on. They just get to work the open AI side of things. I I and the deal, like, I would this deal would be brutally difficult for either of us to take because it would just destroy the credibility we have to deal with. Like, I've seen a lot of posts of people being concerned about, you know, they have all these guarantees in the contracts of like they're allowed to bring on whoever they want, they're allowed to talk about how whoever they want. They are free to run their show as they see fit. But that doesn't there's still going to be probably an inherent bias in here. And this is something I think a lot about with my content, where like I cover a lot of the AI labs and a lot of the AI lab stuff. I am not paid by any lab, but I really like OpenAI because they are very pleasant to work with and they have really good tech. And they're just they're a nice company. Anthropic is a bitch. They are such a pain to deal with. Yeah, they do so many weird shitty things. I love all the individuals I know at Anthropic. I have never met someone in from Anthropic that I disliked. They're all awesome, very smart, clearly trying to do well. But there's something weird deep within that company. I'm not in there, so I don't know what it is. But there's some weird cult mentality inside that makes them unpleasant. And I have these two companies in my head where whenever a new model comes out, I am just naturally biased as a person to almost like not friend, but more just like, you know, if someone you know and like does something, you're just naturally gonna be more favorable to it.

SPEAKER_03 34:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

And they now have that bias at a institutional level where like they are owned by open AI, they are naturally going to be more favorable to whatever the next big model release is, and they're going to cover those things heavier than they just naturally would from the competition because they like them better.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

For sure. Yeah, people are so bad at understanding bias. It's actually it's funny to me because like I always get accused of being paid a paid shell for whatever company, especially with open AI, but reality is actually arguably more embarrassing. Yeah. I like them because they're nice to me. Like they're just pleasant to work with. I recently did a video where it was literally titled Open AI is Lying to You. And it was a video about this awful article they posted about how you can make great front ends with GPT 5.4 if you don't look closely enough. And like the the examples on the page had like text cut off by buttons, and like it was like wouldn't have passed like basic design, like a a freshman in college wouldn't have gotten away with shipping those designs, much less like a frontier lab claiming in an article that the model's good at the thing. So I tore them to fucking shreds, and they're taking it like bros. And employ we had a bug in T3 code where a button was overflowing, and one of the people who recently joined at OpenAI quo-tweeted it with, Thanks for trying GPT 5.4, making fun of the fact the model's bad at front end. Like, if they had made that post a week earlier, I would never have made that video. Because they're just once when you come off as pleasant and self-aware, and I feel like you're fixing the problem, I don't care to talk about it as much. But usually when I bring up the problems in my videos and I go public, it's because I don't feel like they're being heard privately properly.

SPEAKER_03 36:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

For every one drama video I do, I have 10 similar things I try to handle over DMs. And OpenAI is the most receptive to that by far. So I usually don't have to call them out. But when I do, I'll fucking call them out. I have no hesitation there. But I'm nice to them because they're nice to work with, they're nice to me, and as embarrassing as that is, being uh friendly to the people who talk about you does make them more likely to cover you in a reasonable way and assume good faith. And the fact that Anthropix gone as far as sending private investigators after my fucking friends means that I don't fuck with them. And I don't care who they're paying or how much like they could not pay me an amount of money to be nice to them because they're assholes. And that's not like we're gonna see so much. As soon as there's a big news story the TBPN doesn't cover about an open AI controversy, everyone's gonna be saying, oh my god, they got paid off to not talk about this. No, they just are there, they have their opinion about the thing, and they decided to not talk about it. It's not because they were paid to not talk about it, it's because they don't want to anymore. That's an honest perspective they have from a place that is silly, but it's not paid, it's just reality. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Yeah, I mean, it was that was actually also gonna be a point that I would make, is actually the sort of the difference in comms between the labs generally. I mean, I've noticed uh that OpenAI tends to be the most laser fan when it comes to their comms. I mean, you even had a researcher, you know, publicly disagreeing with Sam Altman's association with the Department of War following the Anthropic versus Department of War. And, you know, I think my immediate reaction to that to that was like, wow. I mean, I I I think it would actually be well within OpenAI's rights to at least sit this guy down and be like, come on, like this is a bit far, but clearly he's still working for them actually. I forget exactly, I think it was um Aiden. Uh Aidan? Aiden?

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Yeah, a couple people I saw that were talk, like calling that out. Like, I don't know anybody at OpenAI that's scared to talk about a thing. I don't know anybody in Anthropic that isn't scared to talk about a thing.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

That's right, yes, yeah. Exactly. I mean, I mean, Rune still posts. I mean, thank God. I mean, one of the one of the greatest posters of all time. I mean, it's very, very clear where he works. He still still posts into the void, and that's that's cool. I mean, it kind of does, you know, and it does lead me to believe that, you know, uh uh I I I wouldn't be surprised if what is actually stated in the contract that we just read uh to be true. Uh because it, you know, it is consistent of sort of how they seem to run their comms, actually. Uh which, you know, I'd like to be a fan of. I think um, I mean, unless there's any other uh striking points that you guys want to make, I think we can wrap on a few funny tweets. Any thoughts?

There are only two labs that matter

SPEAKER_00 38:28

I think one last thing, a little more serious that I do want to talk about, is I think it is it's very interesting watching OpenAI keep they've continued to do these very big acquisitions like the Stipete one for OpenClaw and all that stuff a couple months ago. Then now there's this one, and they seem to be acquiring a new company every single week. I don't what was the number on their funding? Uh, the new raise they just did?

SPEAKER_02 38:50

Was it like 120 billion at like nearly a trillion, like 800 and something billion valuation? Yeah, it was it was it was a it was a big number, it was number go up type shit.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

Yeah, absurd number. So these acquisitions, as insane of a number as it is, whatever it actually ended up being, it's just pocket change for them. They don't really care. And I think what a lot of these labs are doing right now is they're just trying to pull any possible lever they can to try and win, because we're in a very weird state right now, and I don't really like being in this state, where there's only two labs that currently matter. It sucks, but it just is the truth. Opus 4.6 and GPT 5.4 are in a class of their own. Every other lab is either Google being Google or currently burning to the ground, or the Chinese labs who are trying really hard and it's admirable, but they're just not going to catch up to Frontier.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

300 under 30s at Moonshot are doing incredible things with the Kimmy models, but they're not gonna catch up to Amphropic or OpenAI, this right?

SPEAKER_00 39:45

They're not. And that means that one of those two, like they're in a death race here. Like, realistically, probably one of those two is gonna win, or at very least, win to such a degree that they are infinitely larger than the other one. It'll be a Microsoft Apple type size difference. And I think that they're just down to just do anything that they possibly can where if this pays off in some weird way in the future, just having it is worth it for them.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

Yeah, I mean, I just want to correct the the number was 122 billion at 852 billion. So I was very close.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

I saw somebody frame this as like if it costs 0.06% of your company's valuation to slightly increase the likelihood people hate SAM less, that's a worthy role to take. And I think that framing is the strongest I've seen. Like it's is the amount of money a lot for any human being on the planet? Absolutely. Yeah. Is it like speaking in terms of the valuation of open AI, is it that much?

@skeptrune reaction

SPEAKER_02 40:36

No. Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. I think that's exactly right. I think um, yeah, to cap this off, a couple of funny tweets. Uh Nick Carmi said, can't believe I learned how to code instead of starting a podcast. Um of us did both, okay?

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Some of us did some of us did both. Yeah, some of us kicked out our roommate to have a podcast studio that they still haven't set up.

unknown 40:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

Drive by on track by myself.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

I drive by myself.

Tech media is hard when you’re not technical

SPEAKER_02 41:02

Yeah. To be fair, also, to be fair to be fair, uh John is quite technical. Uh I believe he I believe he was at Citadel, actually. Um don't quote me on that. He can correct me. Um but he's a technical guy. I mean, you know, um having having done a bunch of work, I mean, I used to I used to, you know, sit, I'd sit through like his interviews with Dylan Patel, and like you could you could talk, man knows how a computer works. And I think actually that's that's a point that I always like to hammer home is that um those that get into tech media, I I think there's there's a couple of mistakes on both sides, from the technical side and the non-technical side. From the technical side, it's the companies that try and spin up a company YouTube channel and they're just kind of technical and it's like not really media native. I think that's a mistake. We can talk for a long time about that when we get there. I've done multiple podcasts about this already. Yeah, yeah. The other the other mistake, the other mistake is the media native thinking they can win tech media because you know they see like a TPP and even a mods to an extent, which you know, we don't necessarily have the most giant audiences in the world, but we can monetize quality of audience. Obviously, I like to monetize a lot of other ways, no, other other than just you know, sheer like logo placement and ad read. Um but you know, I see a lot of media native people come in, it's like, cool, here's the place to monetize a media company. But they can't talk the talk, they don't actually know how a computer works, they don't know what TCP IP is, they don't know what happens when you put Google.com, not Google.com, when you when you when you put anything into the search bar, they don't know what that three-way handshake process actually looks like. Or they can't explain it like I'm five. And you know, I think that is an immediate loss of credibility. Immediate loss of credibility. You're gonna struggle to get guests if you can't actually sort of talk the talk. Getting kind of pointed in uh my opinions here, but you know, I really try and stand by that. You know, I'm really grateful that I spent a couple of years building a software startup. I did the cop out exactly, you know, couldn't get a job, decided to become a founder instead, uh, you know, so I could ship uh JavaScript spaghetti code. Um but you know, now I know what like JavaScript chunks look like, I know what image optimization, how that works, all of those sorts of things, and I can still talk the talk. And so when I get in the room with engineers, there is at least that like, you know, there's a flaw to the level of respect that I have. You know, do I lose it when we start getting into heavy system stuff? Yes, of course. But, you know, at least there's that baseline, cool, you've written code, there is the baseline level of respect.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

And if there's anything more. There's also a really fun problem in tech specifically, where there's a very direct correlation with how good you are at doing tech stuff and how poorly you're able to interact in social scenarios. There's a term for this that I won't drop, but uh there's a very clear like like correlation here where the better you are at solving tech problems, the worse you are at interacting, generally speaking. So I don't think we'll ever see like a 10 out of 10 engineer doing content. Because every 10 out of 10 engineer is at best like a four out of ten at like holding a conversation and making eye contact. So the thing that makes me unique isn't that I'm exceptional at anything, it's that I'm like a solid seven out of ten at three different things that combine really well.

@squirtle_says reaction

SPEAKER_02 43:58

Yep. Always good at yeah. I mean power to the generalist idea guys or whatever the fuck. I mean, as people have been telling me since the release of ChatGPT. It's the time of the idea guys every single year, apparently. One more post. This is from Squirtle says. It was like raking. America First with Nick Fuentes has been acquired by XMI.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

I saw somebody said All in was acquired by Anthropic. It's like, you missed it. Like IBM and Oracle are right there. Yeah, yeah. You could do so much better.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

I know, I know. That that was that was a that that's a low effort one, unfortunately. And also doesn't make sense. It also doesn't make sense at all. In fact, all in would actually that would be a much more uh uh that that would be a much more suitable candidate for XAI as well. Uh all in. I mean, fuck.

unknown 44:42

That would be easy.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

If we want to go down that rabbit hole. Let me see. Do I have anything else? Honestly, I don't think there's much else for me to add on this.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Uh I got two more things. Yep. First thing, I do believe there's about 40 sponsors that were overpaying for spots that no longer exist.

SPEAKER_02 44:58

I've got them all right here. Awesome. Oh, wow. AppLoven, Cisco, Cognition, Console, CrowdStrike, 11 Labs, Figma, Fin, Gemini, Graphite, Gusto, Cal Shear, Labelbox, Lambda Linear, MongoDB, uh, the New York Stock Exchange, uh, Octa, Phantom, Plaid, Public, Railway, Restream, Century, Shopify, Turbo, Puffer, Vanter, and Vibe.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

By having your names mentioned here, you have now gotten a more prominent position than you did being paid or paying a significantly larger amount of money. If you're interested in better positioning, you can hit up any of us to get a much better value in the engineering world per dollar. And also, we might be doing a tier list of all of TVPN's previous sponsors. And if you would like to buy your way to the top, I'm sure nobody here would be opposed.

SPEAKER_02 45:40

I've been selling my biceps. Um, so if anybody wants a I've been selling my permanent tattoo, I mean I could I can think of I mean, I mean, um, you know, I might I might to our friends John and Jordy.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

I know that at the very least John was doing very well financially before, but if you're doing more so now and you're interested in doing more early stage investing and angel investing, I am more than happy to make lots of intros. I help a lot of founders with VC stuff, and I hate most VCs, and I like you guys a hell of a lot more than any VC I've talked to in recent memory. So if you guys want to take some of this very well-earned cash out you got and put it into the cool companies that are going to build the next news cycles for all of us, let me know. I'll gladly put you in touch. I mean, fucking hell.

SPEAKER_02 46:19

Sorry, sorry for all the value. Sorry for all the value uh coming coming out of this. I just wanted to say congrats, John and Geordie and the whole TBPN team. Uh absolute, absolute. I mean, I I had a blast even in, you know, I played the tiniest, tiniest little part there for a couple of months, you know, helping them with some clip stuff. I think that's uh, you know, I keep I keep talking my book all the time, and I I did jack shit for them, really, but in the grand scheme of things, but yeah, it was always a blast.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

Um You did every single thing right and it set a really high bar and a phenomenal example for the industry as a whole. I couldn't be more proud of both John and Geordie for what they built here. It's really awesome to see and inspires me to go way bigger with what we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 46:57

Yeah. Couldn't have said it better myself. Uh, I think that's a great place to wrap. Uh we'll see you again on Members of Technical Software real soon. We'll see you again on the timeline again real soon.