Eight in ten Peacock subscribers are on the tier that carries commercials. Matt Strauss, chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, told Decoder he thinks almost no other streaming service has a mix that heavy in advertising.

Strauss was one of 10 people quoted in this issue. The others ranged from Shiv Verma, who said retail investors are 25% of the equities market and should get a large share of new listings, to Brian Neider, who said many companies report positive EBITDA for years without producing a dollar of cash, to Josh Gruenstein, who said developers would move all their demand to factory-built homes if those homes were even 1% cheaper.

"Eighty percent of the subscribers on Peacock are on our ad tier, which is a higher mix of advertising subs than I think almost any other streaming service." — Matt Strauss, Chairman at NBCUniversal Media Group, on Decoder (Read summary)

We scanned 814 shows and 7 hours of audio, wrote 8 summaries, and pulled 30 quotes into this 14-minute read.

Here is what mattered.

Financials

Robinhood is telling companies that retail investors deserve a large share of their IPOs

Shiv Verma, CFO of Robinhood, said the firm has amended its filing to take part in Anthropic's IPO, which he expects to be a bellwether for the market. He gave no details of the allocation because the deal is in its quiet period, when the companies and banks involved are restricted in what they can say.

"We are making sure companies know that retail is here... and given they are 25% of the equities market, they should consider a large allocation." — Shiv Verma, CFO at Robinhood, on Bloomberg Podcasts (Read summary)

Robinhood gave 20% of its own IPO to retail investors

Verma said individual investors used to receive 1% to 5% of the shares in a typical IPO. SpaceX is aiming for 15% to 20%.

"When we did our own IPO, we gave 20% to retail, which was the highest in history. That is how you get a good allocation." — Shiv Verma, CFO at Robinhood, on Bloomberg Podcasts (Read summary)

Verma says most of Robinhood's deposits are up 50% from a year ago

Robinhood cannot take orders for a listing before the deal opens. Verma reads the growth in deposits as an early sign of demand for a coming run of large IPOs, with Anthropic and OpenAI among them.

"We are seeing incredibly strong engagement. Customers are depositing more and trading more. Most of our deposits are up 50% year over year." — Shiv Verma, CFO at Robinhood, on Bloomberg Podcasts (Read summary)

Non-sports contracts are now about 30% of Robinhood's prediction-market trading, up from 15%

Prediction markets let customers trade contracts that pay out on the result of an event. Verma said Robinhood will add contracts tied to a company's reported business figures, so a customer can trade the stock, a derivative on it, or a contract on the figure itself.

"As of this quarter, about 30% is non-sports. That is up from 15% a quarter ago. They are using it for the midterm elections." — Shiv Verma, CFO at Robinhood, on Bloomberg Podcasts (Read summary)

About 200,000 customers have also opened Robinhood Agents accounts, in which an AI agent trades and does research for them, holding about $250M in all. Verma said those accounts are kept apart from customers' investment and retirement accounts.

Australians hold tens of billions of dollars in deposits that earn no interest, says Betashares' CEO

Alex Vynokur founded Betashares, an Australian manager of exchange-traded funds, in 2009. The hosts of Equity Mates said its assets under management were $90B a few days before the interview and $95B by the time of the live interview.

"In Australia we have tens of billions of dollars worth of deposits that are earning zero interest rate. Inertia... the banks obviously benefit from that inertia." — Alex Vynokur, Founder and CEO at Betashares, on Equity Mates (Read summary)

Vynokur expects an AI agent to tell customers when they are overpaying on a mortgage

He expects that within a few years each investor will have an AI financial agent working only in their interest. Once people are comfortable with it, he said, the agent could refinance on its own, within limits the customer sets.

"If you are in a mortgage and you're paying more than you have to, your agent will proactively tell you that you're paying too much for your mortgage, and it will suggest where you should refinance." — Alex Vynokur, Founder and CEO at Betashares, on Equity Mates (Read summary)

Crypto and Digital Assets

Rival countries would try to buy ahead of any US Bitcoin purchases, says Alloc Init's co-founder

Misha Komarov co-founded Alloc Init, a research lab building a way to send Bitcoin privately. If the US government began adding Bitcoin to its balance sheet, he said, anyone who could see the purchases coming would buy first. In his view governments and institutions are the next large group of holders, and they will need privacy the network does not offer today.

"There will be countries who will be trying to front run the US Treasury." — Misha Komarov, Co-Founder at Alloc Init, on What Bitcoin Did (Read summary)

Shielded Bitcoin hides the sender, the receiver and the amount without changing Bitcoin's rules

Clara Shikhelman, head of protocol research at Alloc Init, said the system needs no fork, the kind of rule change that splits a blockchain in two. It borrows its design from Zcash, a separate private cryptocurrency whose underlying idea was first meant to run on Bitcoin.

"I think in the heart of it is the ability to send Bitcoin, our regular good old Bitcoin, just without revealing the sender, the receiver, and the amount. You can do it to parties of your choosing." — Clara Shikhelman, Head of Protocol Research at Alloc Init, on What Bitcoin Did (Read summary)

Shielded Bitcoin can be no safer from quantum computers than Bitcoin itself

A shielded transaction takes up about four to five times the space of an ordinary one. The design can be upgraded for quantum computers, but only as far as Bitcoin's own signatures are.

"As long as Bitcoin is not quantum secure, we can't be quantum secure." — Clara Shikhelman, Head of Protocol Research at Alloc Init, on What Bitcoin Did (Read summary)

Samourai Wallet's developers were prosecuted though they never held customer funds, Komarov says

Komarov said prosecutors went after Samourai Wallet, a Bitcoin privacy app, essentially for acting as the central party that coordinated users' pooled transactions. Alloc Init designed its system so that no such party exists.

"I don't think that is true with Samourai's case — they never touched any users' funds and they believed they were inside the regulatory requirements. But they still decided to come after them." — Misha Komarov, Co-Founder at Alloc Init, on What Bitcoin Did (Read summary)

Shielded Bitcoin has no operator for regulators to pursue

No company, Alloc Init included, runs the system. Both guests described the project as open-source research rather than a service.

"It's all self-custodial. It's all on the user side. A user can do it — if you have enough storage at home... you can go through the whole process just yourself. You don't need anybody." — Misha Komarov, Co-Founder at Alloc Init, on What Bitcoin Did (Read summary)

Alternatives and PE

Lead Edge's Brian Neider sees companies report positive EBITDA for years without producing cash

EBITDA is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Brian Neider, managing partner at Lead Edge Capital, said the cash in these companies gets tied up in working capital, the money a business needs for inventory and unpaid customer bills, while the reported profit looks clean.

"You see a lot of companies that are not levered and they had significantly positive EBITDA metrics for like years, but they've never produced a dollar of cash and they've never issued a dividend... it's like wonky accounting." — Brian Neider, Managing Partner at Lead Edge Capital, on Run the Numbers (Read summary)

Neider says investors accept weak EBITDA adjustments to get deals approved

One company he wrote about could be described as a $58M business on cash EBITDA, $38M on adjusted EBITDA, or $25M after subtracting costs it had capitalized, meaning recorded as assets rather than expenses. Neider starts from EBITDA, takes off only the add-backs he considers legitimate, and then subtracts capitalized spending. Add-backs are costs a seller asks a buyer to treat as one-time.

"A lot of investors want to suspend disbelief to some regard, and it allows them to kind of jam things through their investment committees." — Brian Neider, Managing Partner at Lead Edge Capital, on Run the Numbers (Read summary)

The worst add-backs are recurring costs presented as one-time, Neider says

His example is a company that adds back a year of unusually high recruiting fees, though it will keep hiring as it grows. Legal and deal costs at a company that grows by acquisition recur the same way. A founder's boat on the books bothers him less, because that spending stops once an investor takes over.

"The ones that are the hardest to kind of swallow are recurring expenses that the company's going to add back and argue that it's more of a one-time thing." — Brian Neider, Managing Partner at Lead Edge Capital, on Run the Numbers (Read summary)

Run the Numbers' host says growth above 30% earns a revenue multiple

CJ Gustafson, CFO of PartsTech and host of the show, offered his rule for when a profitable company should be valued on its revenue and when on its EBITDA. Neider called it a good framing.

"My rough mental framework is if a company's over $100 million in revenue and they have profitability, if you're growing at more than 30% year-on-year, you have the right to trade at your revenue multiple. But if you're growing at, say, 20%, 15%... that's probably more indicative of an EBITDA multiple." — CJ Gustafson, CFO at PartsTech, on Run the Numbers

Consumer

Sports and streaming now bring in probably about 60% of NBCUniversal's ad revenue, up from 30%

Strauss runs programming, marketing, product and ad sales for NBC, Bravo, Peacock, NBC Sports, NBC News and Telemundo as one group. Comcast plans to spin NBCUniversal off as a standalone company next year.

"I think about 30 percent of our advertising revenue six years ago came from sports and streaming. Now it's probably closer to 60 percent." — Matt Strauss, Chairman at NBCUniversal Media Group, on Decoder (Read summary)

Peacock's ad-supported tier will be bundled with YouTube Premium next year

Strauss predicted that within a year Peacock will be one of the most widely distributed streaming services in the US.

"There's going to be a bundle launched next year with the ad-supported tier of Peacock and a tier of YouTube Premium... we believe that these are mostly incremental subscribers." — Matt Strauss, Chairman at NBCUniversal Media Group, on Decoder (Read summary)

Strauss says NBCUniversal draws viewers that other platforms keep

Clips of shows such as Saturday Night Live and Love Island find large audiences on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram among people who do not subscribe to Peacock. NBCUniversal plans to recut shows as vertical video inside Peacock, in the format those viewers already watch on their phones.

"We are creating this demand, but I would argue we're not doing a good enough job super-serving them. Then we are fueling this what I would call 'dark matter engagement' on these other platforms." — Matt Strauss, Chairman at NBCUniversal Media Group, on Decoder (Read summary)

Chesky says Airbnb grew before the pandemic because of its business model, not his leadership

Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, said it took him 12 to 13 years to become an effective CEO. The change came after Airbnb lost about 80% of its business within weeks of COVID arriving.

"In probably in spite of my leadership, not because of my leadership... We had the curse of having too good of a business model." — Brian Chesky, Co-Founder and CEO at Airbnb, on How I Built This (Read summary)

Airbnb now plans to house people for free for a million nights a year over the next five years, at a cost of about $500M, through its nonprofit, Airbnb.org.

Technology & AI

Legora's CTO says some companies are considering buying a law firm to get legal data

Legora sells AI agents that draft and review legal documents, and has about 100 engineers. Jacob Lauritzen, its CTO, said Legora cannot see what its agent does for a lawyer, because the documents belong to the law firm's clients. A firm's finished documents would also show only the result, not how the lawyers reached it.

"One version of this is you buy a law firm, which some people are considering. But there's some stuff there on whether their data is actually their data or if it's the client's data." — Jacob Lauritzen, CTO at Legora, on Latent Space (Read summary)

Lauritzen says law firms are partnerships because people are their only capital

He wants Legora to help firms turn their way of working into a system the firm owns, which stays when a partner leaves. That would require paying partners for recording what they know, and not only for bringing in clients.

"The partnership model kind of exists because the only type of capital that these companies have is human capital... you can't own human capital. You can't own people. But you can rent them." — Jacob Lauritzen, CTO at Legora, on Latent Space (Read summary)

Lauritzen says companies gain by tuning the models that search their own documents

Embeddings turn text into numbers so software can find related passages. In a RAG system the AI model looks up documents before it answers, and MTEB is a public leaderboard that ranks embedding models.

"There's a lot of alpha left on embeddings. If you're a RAG-heavy workload... you're just looking at MTEB and you're taking the top model, you're leaving a lot on the table... customize your embeddings." — Jacob Lauritzen, CTO at Legora, on Latent Space (Read summary)

Neider says token counts are the AI industry's version of page views

Tokens are the units of text an AI model reads and writes. Neider said a company that makes real cash profit talks about its cash profit, and one that does not reaches for other figures, down to page views and app downloads.

"In the AI world today, the page view sort of equivalent is probably this token maxing stuff... it really just sort of induces spend without looking at efficiency." — Brian Neider, Managing Partner at Lead Edge Capital, on Run the Numbers (Read summary)

Industrials and Transport

Most of Tutor Intelligence's customers have never bought a robot before

Josh Gruenstein co-founded Tutor Intelligence about five and a half years ago. It has about 160 employees, mostly in Boston, and he said its robots have helped make and ship more than a quarter of a billion products. When a robot gets stuck, a remote human operator steps in, and that work becomes data to train the robot's software.

"Almost everybody we're selling a robot to has never purchased a robot before. Almost all of the market is greenfield." — Josh Gruenstein, Co-Founder and CEO at Tutor Intelligence, on The a16z Show (Read summary)

A 1% cost advantage would move all developer demand to factory-built homes, Gruenstein says

Homes built in a factory now cost about 5% more than ones built on site, he said. He applies the same logic to robots: a small cost advantage over human labor can move a whole market.

"If these houses were even just 1% cheaper than the equivalent quality of house manufactured or constructed on site in the traditional way, all of the demand from developers would immediately go to that other shape of building these homes in a factory." — Josh Gruenstein, Co-Founder and CEO at Tutor Intelligence, on The a16z Show (Read summary)

China will have to tear out its older factory automation, Gruenstein says, while the US starts fresh

China invested heavily in the previous generation of factory automation. Gruenstein said the US gets to build its base of general-purpose robots from scratch.

"In China they're going to have to tear down. We're not going to have to do that in the United States in the same way." — Josh Gruenstein, Co-Founder and CEO at Tutor Intelligence, on The a16z Show (Read summary)

Nuggets of Wisdom

Chesky studied how Steve Jobs rescued Apple when Airbnb's own survival was in doubt

He spoke with Hiroki Asai, Apple's former creative director, and hired Jony Ive as a consultant.

"What I realized is he got in all the details. He cut a bunch of projects... He was present. Leadership was present, not absence." — Brian Chesky, Co-Founder and CEO at Airbnb, on How I Built This (Read summary)

Chesky says a CEO should know as much detail as the board's audit committee

He also talks to employees two or three levels down to hear what is happening without a filter, over objections from executives who felt undermined.

"You see every board of a public company has an audit committee. The word audit is key... If the board audit committee knows every detail, why wouldn't the CEO know every detail? And by the way, with AI now you can." — Brian Chesky, Co-Founder and CEO at Airbnb, on How I Built This (Read summary)

Betashares' founder says good investing and good entrepreneurship call for opposite habits

Vynokur mortgaged his house to start Betashares, shortly after his first child was born.

"What it takes to be a great investor is the exact opposite of what it takes to be a crazy entrepreneur... as an investor, I definitely would not recommend the all-in strategy. But as an entrepreneur, absolutely, that's the only way to go." — Alex Vynokur, Founder and CEO at Betashares, on Equity Mates (Read summary)

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With Alex Vynokur, CEO and Founder of Betashares

Photo via rampart.news

Alex Vynokur founded Betashares in 2009 after mortgaging his house shortly after his first child was born, and the firm's assets under management climbed from $90 billion to $95 billion in the days between when Equity Mates wrote its own show notes and when the interview actually aired. Alex told hosts Bryce and Alec that the business grew not on rapid early traction but on a simple discipline he's kept for more than 15 years.

"My approach personally... [is] to always under promise and over deliver. And as a business we've really been now for over 15 years consistently aiming to over deliver to our investors." — Alex Vynokur

Alex has spent the years since building Betashares into one of Australia's largest financial services providers, after early investors assumed "ETF" stood for "electronic funds transfer."

The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 27 minutes of audio, 6 minutes of reading.

Here are the 5 takeaways that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Betashares' AUM jumped from $90 billion to $95 billion in days, Alex says

• Alex's long-run philosophy: "under promise and over deliver"

• He predicts an always-on AI financial agent, a "money personal trainer in your pocket"

• He's lobbying for a tax-free investing threshold for young Australians, floating $25,000 to $100,000

• Good investing and good entrepreneurship are nearly opposite skill sets, he says

1. A $90-to-$95-Billion Week

Betashares' scale moved during the gap between its own show notes and the live interview, Alex said, growing from $90 billion in assets under management to $95 billion in just a few days.

Betashares' AUM climbed from $90 billion to $95 billion in a matter of days, Bryce and Alec noted on air

"We have that it has 90 billion dollars assets under management. Since we wrote these a few days ago, it's actually 95 now." — Bryce/Ren, Equity Mates host

Alex founded the firm in 2009 after mortgaging his house shortly after his first child was born, at a time when early investors didn't understand the product category at all: he says people assumed "ETF" stood for electronic funds transfer, not exchange traded funds. He credits the growth since then to one consistent discipline rather than early hype.

Alex's long-run philosophy is to "under promise and over deliver," he says

"My approach personally... [is] to always under promise and over deliver. And as a business we've really been now for over 15 years consistently aiming to over deliver to our investors." — Alex Vynokur

2. Where He'd Look Now

Read more

With Josh Gruenstein, Co-Founder and CEO of Tutor Intelligence

Tutor Intelligence's robots have shipped more than a quarter of a billion products to American consumers, and Josh Gruenstein says almost every customer buying one has never purchased a robot before. Josh told a16z's Martin Casado and Raghu Raghuram that Tutor's edge comes from deploying robots into real workplaces first, rather than perfecting a model before anything ships.

"There are 8 billion people on Earth who all have this baseline physical intelligence that we want our robots to have." — Josh Gruenstein

Josh has spent roughly five and a half years building that thesis into a company now 160 people strong, mostly based in Boston.

The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 45 minutes of audio, 5 minutes of reading.

Here are the 6 takeaways that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Tutor's robots have shipped over a quarter of a billion products to American consumers

• Almost the entire market is greenfield: most customers have never bought a robot before

• Human "tutors" direct robots through tasks, and that work becomes the training data that replaces them

• Even a 1% cost edge can flip an entire market to the cheaper, factory-built alternative

• Tutor built a 100-robot fleet in Boston, the largest data-collection operation of its kind in the US

• The current moment is a "great equalizer" between the US and China on industrial robotics

1. The Job, Not the Model

Josh started Tutor about five and a half years ago on a contrarian premise: deploying robots directly into real workplaces generates the labeled, real-world data needed to train capable robot AI, rather than perfecting a model first and deploying it later.

Almost all of Tutor's market is greenfield, with most buyers new to robots entirely, Josh says

"Almost everybody we're selling a robot to has never purchased a robot before. Almost all of the market is greenfield." — Josh Gruenstein

The company is roughly 160 people, based primarily in Boston, and its robots work across small businesses up through Fortune 50 and 100 companies.

Tutor's robots have shipped over a quarter of a billion products to American consumers, Josh says

"Tutor robots have manufactured and shipped over a quarter of a billion products to American consumers." — Josh Gruenstein

2. Why "Tutor"

Read more

With Brian Neider, Managing Partner at Lead Edge Capital

Photo via leadedge.com

Brian Neider wrote a widely shared piece about the metrics companies lean on when they don't have real cash profit to brag about, and he told Run the Numbers host CJ Gustafson the hierarchy runs all the way down to app downloads and "best place to work" lists. Brian's firm, Lead Edge Capital, underwrites growth companies on exactly the kind of adjusted numbers he says investors too often take on faith.

"You're relying on evaluation relative to an EBITDA multiple, but the EBITDA... isn't real. It's just sort of a made-up number." — Brian Neider

The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 55 minutes of audio, 5 minutes of reading.

Here are the 4 takeaways that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Companies without real cash profit reach for a weaker metric, all the way down to page views and "best place to work" lists

• "Token maxing" is Brian's AI-era version of the old page-view metric

• The same business can be pitched as a $58M, $38M or $25M EBITDA company, depending which add-backs an investor accepts

• Companies can post positive EBITDA for years and never generate cash, which Brian calls "wonky accounting"

• The worst add-backs are recurring costs disguised as one-time items, like a year of unusually high recruiting fees

1. The Hierarchy of Metrics BS

Brian's thesis, built out in a piece that went viral among investors, is simple: a company with real cash profit talks about its cash profit, and a company without one reaches for something else to brag about instead.

Companies without real cash profit reach for a weaker metric, all the way down to page views, Brian says

He frames the descent as a hierarchy, ending in outright vanity metrics like app downloads or being named a regional "best place to work." He draws a direct line from that old pattern to a new one in AI.

"Token maxing" is the AI-era version of the old page-view metric, Brian says

"In the AI world today, the page view sort of equivalent is probably this token maxing stuff... it really just sort of induces spend without looking at efficiency." — Brian Neider

2. Three EBITDAs, One Company

Read more

With Shiv Verma, CFO of Robinhood

Robinhood has amended its own filing to get on Anthropic's IPO, and its CFO, Shiv Verma, says the AI company "will be a bellwether for the market." Shiv told Bloomberg Businessweek Daily's Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec that retail investors make up roughly a quarter of the entire equities market, which is his case for why they deserve a far bigger slice of a deal like Anthropic's than Wall Street has traditionally handed out.

"When we did our own IPO, we gave 20% to retail, which was the highest in history. That is how you get a good allocation." — Shiv Verma

Shiv runs finance at a company that just gave retail investors the largest allocation of any IPO on record, and is now lobbying issuers to do the same for themselves.

The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.

Here are the 5 takeaways that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Robinhood amended its filing to join Anthropic's IPO, which Shiv calls a "bellwether for the market"

• Retail investors are about 25% of the equities market, Shiv's case for bigger allocations

• Deposits are up roughly 50% year over year, a signal of demand ahead of a wave of mega-IPOs

• About 200,000 customers hold $250 million in Robinhood's new agentic trading accounts

• Non-sports prediction markets grew to 30% of volume, up from 15% a quarter ago

1. Going Big on Anthropic

Robinhood has amended its filing to be on Anthropic's IPO, Shiv confirmed, though he said the firm cannot disclose specifics while in the quiet period.

Anthropic's IPO will be a market bellwether, Shiv says

"Anthropic will be a bellwether for the market. We amended to show Robinhood will be on the deal. We are excited to help customers get access." — Shiv Verma

Shiv argues retail deserves a large allocation on a deal of that size, pointing to how much of the market retail investors already represent.

Retail is about a quarter of the entire equities market, which Shiv uses to argue for bigger IPO allocations

"If you look at the equities market, about 25% is retail. That shows how powerful retail is." — Shiv Verma

2. Reading the Demand Early

Read more

With Jacob Lauritzen, CTO of Legora

Legora now runs on about 100 engineers, and Jacob Lauritzen, the company's CTO, still says that isn't enough. Jacob told Latent Space's swyx and Basil Chatha of Forward Deployed that the legal-AI company he helps run cannot read a single trace of what its own agent does for a client, because the work product belongs to the law firm's client, not to Legora or even the law firm.

"Legora can't read a single trace of what its agent does for a lawyer. The data belongs to the law firm's clients. How do you build and test an agent when you can't see its work?" — framing stated in the episode's own show notes

Jacob previously founded Firmnav, a company later acquired, before joining Legora (Y Combinator, 2024) as CTO.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 67 minutes of audio, 7 minutes of reading.

Here are the 5 takeaways that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Legora grew from a Stockholm basement assistant into an agent with about 100 engineers, and Jacob still "feels like we're way too small"

• Legora's "Tabular Review" feature name is now used industry-wide, including by "Claude for legal"

• The company can't see its own agent's traces, so it tests on internal environments modeled on customer work

• "Buying a law firm" is one option Jacob says "some people are considering" to get real training data

• AI is forcing law firms to build durable, firm-specific IP instead of relying only on partners who can walk out the door

1. From Assistant to Agent

Jacob described Legora's origin as a simple tool for drafting and editing legal documents, built by a small team using ChatGPT and Swedish law. The product has since become an agent that drafts and edits Word files, runs document analysis, and coordinates work between lawyers, clients and other agents through three products: Lists, a Linear-style tracker; Intake, for client collaboration; and Portal, for lawyer-to-lawyer and lawyer-to-agent work.

Legora switched from "assistant" to "agent" framing about a year before this interview, Jacob says

"We basically had to switch from the assistant to the agent... I wanna say a year ago probably." — Jacob Lauritzen

The company is now roughly 100 engineers, which Jacob said still "feels like we're way too small." One of Legora's features, Tabular Review, bulk extraction and review across many agreements at once, has become a term of art other legal-AI products now use, name included.

"One of our features is called Tabular Review, which is... now a name that's being used in industry, and we're very happy to see Claude for legal using our terminology for what they're building." — Jacob Lauritzen

2. A Blind Spot by Design

Read more

With Matt Strauss, Chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group

Photo via nbcuniversal.com

NBC's "Legendary February" reached more than 225 million viewers in 17 days, across the Super Bowl, the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and the NBA All-Star Game. Matt Strauss, chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, told Nilay Patel on Decoder that the internal fear going into that stretch was that streaming every event live on Peacock would cannibalize NBC's own primetime audience. It did the opposite.

"In 17 days, we reached over 225 million viewers" — Matt Strauss

Matt now runs one unified programming, marketing, product and ad-sales organization across NBC, Bravo, Peacock, NBC Sports, NBC News and Telemundo, put in place about 18 months ago ahead of Comcast's planned spinoff of NBCUniversal into a standalone company next year.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 67 minutes of audio, 7 minutes of reading.

Here are the 5 takeaways that matter.

Key Takeaways

• NBC was the most-watched network of 2026 by total viewers, Matt says

  • "Legendary February" drew over 225 million viewers across the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the NBA All-Star Game

• Streaming the Olympics live doubled Peacock's digital minutes and ad revenue, instead of hurting NBC

  • The Milan Cortina ratings ran 96%-97% higher than Beijing's

• 80% of Peacock's subscribers are on its ad-supported tier, a higher mix than almost any rival

  • Sports and streaming now make up about 60% of NBCUniversal's ad revenue, up from 30% six years ago

• A Peacock-YouTube Premium bundle launches next year, which Matt expects to be mostly incremental subscribers

  • He predicts Peacock becomes "one of the top distributed streaming services in the United States" within a year

• NBCUniversal is reformatting shows like Saturday Night Live into vertical video to capture viewing it says is leaking to other platforms

1. One Job Ahead of the Spinoff

Nilay opened on how Matt's role changed. Matt described a structural shift from separate broadcast and streaming programming teams to one organization covering every NBCUniversal platform.

Matt now runs one programming, marketing, product and ad-sales team across all of NBCUniversal's networks

"NBC has been like a megaphone... As things have gotten more fragmented, having a broadcast network is actually a superpower because we're continuing to see ratings growth." — Matt Strauss

The change, which he calls "content first, platform second," went into place about 18 months ago, ahead of Comcast's planned full spinoff of NBCUniversal into a standalone company next year, following last year's Versant spinoff of CNBC, MS Now and other cable channels.

2. NBC's Record Year

Read more

With Misha Komarov, Co-Founder of [alloc] init · Clara Shikhelman, Head of Protocol Research at [alloc] init

If a government starts buying Bitcoin for its treasury, the trade is no secret for long. Misha Komarov, co-founder of the cryptography research firm [alloc] init, told Danny Knowles on What Bitcoin Did that once a transaction like that is visible on-chain, rival states and speculators alike will race to get ahead of it.

Most of Bitcoin's privacy debate has been about individual users hiding their wallets. Misha and his colleague Clara Shikhelman, [alloc] init's head of protocol research, argue the more urgent case is institutional: central banks and sovereigns about to become Bitcoin's next big holders, with no way to transact privately on the base protocol.

"Imagine tomorrow you hear that the US government started putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet. Guess what happens next? Everybody tries to front[-run] it. Everybody and their mother tries to front[-run] it." — Misha Komarov

Misha and Clara are the researchers behind Shielded Bitcoin, a proposal to bring Zcash-style privacy to ordinary Bitcoin transactions without changing Bitcoin's protocol at all.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 72 minutes of audio, 6 minutes of reading.

Here are the 5 takeaways that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Governments buying Bitcoin will be front-run the moment the trade is visible, Misha says

  • He expects rival states specifically trying to front-run the US Treasury

• Shielded Bitcoin hides the sender, receiver and amount with no fork required

  • Clara calls it "our regular good old Bitcoin," just sent privately to a chosen party

• The idea behind it predates Zcash itself

  • It was originally meant for Bitcoin before its authors, Sean Bowe and Zooko Wilcox, built Zcash as its own chain instead

• The design has no operator for regulators to target, unlike Samourai Wallet

  • Misha says a user with enough storage could run the whole process alone

• Shielded Bitcoin's quantum resistance is capped by Bitcoin's own cryptography

  • Clara says it can't be more quantum-secure than Bitcoin's underlying signature scheme

1. Governments Need Privacy

Danny opened on why Bitcoin needs privacy tools at all, given how long the network has run without them. Misha's answer centered on who is about to start using Bitcoin, not who already does.

Rival states will specifically try to front-run the US Treasury, Misha says

"There will be countries who will be trying to front run the US Treasury." — Misha Komarov

He argued Bitcoin's resistance to protocol change is part of what makes it trusted as a "safe harbor" for governments and institutions, and that this next wave of holders will need transaction privacy the base protocol doesn't offer today.

2. What Shielded Bitcoin Does

Read more

With Brian Chesky, Co-Founder and CEO of Airbnb

Photo via how I built this / NPR

Airbnb's IPO in December 2020 valued the company at more than $100 billion in a single day, done over Zoom with no bell to ring because of the pandemic. Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, told Guy Raz on How I Built This that the day after should have been the best of his life. Instead it was the loneliest.

"I went to bed CEO of a hundred billion dollar public company, never imagining I'd be CEO of a ten-person company. And I woke up the next day and no one's in my house." — Brian Chesky

Brian co-founded Airbnb with Joe Gebbia and Nate Blecharczyk as classmates at the Rhode Island School of Design, took it public at a $100 billion valuation, and pulled the company back from the edge when COVID wiped out roughly 80% of its business within weeks.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 66 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.

Here are the 5 takeaways that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Reaching the IPO goal did not change how he felt the next morning

  • He traces the post-IPO crash to loneliness, not to the pressure of running a public company

• President Obama told him directly: "you're really lonely"

  • Obama said he keeps about 15 old friends he never has to catch up with on his life

• Brian was the founder most resistant to Airbnb having a real business model

  • He wanted the "purity" of a project with no business model until his co-founders talked him out of it

• COVID and studying Steve Jobs turned him into a hands-on CEO who skip-levels

  • He talks two or three layers down the org chart and credits AI with letting him know every detail an audit committee would

• Airbnb.org is now committing $500 million a year to free housing nights

  • The idea traces to a 2008 email, before Airbnb had even launched

1. Lonelier After the IPO

Brian told Guy the rush of hitting the goal wore off almost immediately. He realized the next morning that reaching the thing he had organized his adult life around did not change how he felt inside.

Success did not make Brian any happier, and he noticed it right away

"I had this crisis of realizing, okay, now that I've gone, at my life really isn't any different. I don't feel that much happier than I did the day before." — Brian Chesky

He said the isolation came from becoming CEO, not from the public markets themselves. As a co-founder among friends he had never felt cut off; running the company changed that, because the people around him worked for him.

"The job of a CEO can be so lonely... Your employees have families, so they're not going to hang out with you... and you feel like the walls are caving in." — Brian Chesky

By his own account, he had let his own friendships go dormant on the way to the IPO, leaving him with almost no one outside the company to call.

2. Obama's Blunt Diagnosis

Read more

With Joseph Kim, Head of Financial Services at OpenAI

OpenAI tested well-known data connectors for ChatGPT and found some returned errors more than 40% of the time, Joseph Kim, Head of Financial Services at OpenAI, told swyx on Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast.

Most companies building on a model provider assume the provider holds an advantage they cannot copy. Joseph said nearly everything his team shipped could be built by an outside startup on the same public tools, and the part that decides success is the last 20%.

"I really do think that there's going to be a billion-dollar business built on top of a ChatGPT plugin. But 95% of what we built was something that absolutely a startup could do, another company could do." — Joseph Kim

Joseph runs the team that launched ChatGPT for Financial Services the month before this interview, with Morgan Stanley and Evercore as design partners. The conversation was recorded on the sidelines of his keynote at AI Engineer New York.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 28 minutes of audio, 9 minutes of reading.

Here are the 10 insights that matter.

This Scuttlebutt Summary is available in full to premium subscribers. If you're not one already, please consider subscribing to keep reading.

Key Takeaways

• A startup could build 95% of ChatGPT for Financial Services on the same public plugin tools

  • The base model gets about 80% of the way; the last 20% decides whether it fails

• Some well-known data connectors showed error rates above 40%, so OpenAI licensed the data itself

• Financial reasoning goes into OpenAI's main model training run, not a separate finance model

• Factual errors that change a conclusion are the career-ending mistakes, and models are making fewer of them

  • What models still lack is taste, like knowing when a slide looks ugly

• Humans voting on pairs of slides trained ChatGPT's slide taste, and humans beat models at it

• OpenAI's own financial evals were broken, not the model

  • Flat GPT-6 scores traced back to wrong answer keys

1. What OpenAI Launched

ChatGPT for Financial Services adds firm-specific templates and licensed data on top of the tools ChatGPT already offers consumers. Joseph named S&P and Daloopa among the data sources.

Morgan Stanley and Evercore worked with OpenAI as design partners. Joseph said customer reception has been strong, and licensed data is the feature customers mention most.

2. Finance in the Main Model

Read more

With Emma Grede, Co-Founder and CEO of Good American and Founding Partner of Skims

Photo: Janeirohy, CC BY 4.0 via Wikipedia

Good American did $1 million in sales on its first day, and Emma Grede, its co-founder and CEO and a founding partner of Skims, told Daniel Robbins and Kate Hancock on Founder's Story that the number hurt the company.

Most founders treat a record launch as proof the business works. Emma said the praise turned into an expectation of growth no apparel company could meet, and the brand lost staff and money chasing it.

"That growth was impossible to keep up with. You can't do that type of growth year over year over year." — Emma Grede

Emma dropped out of school in East London at 16, sold sponsorship deals before she sold clothes, and built Good American with Khloé Kardashian into a company she says still employs 120 people a decade on.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 47 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.

Here are the 11 lessons that matter.

This Scuttlebutt Summary is available in full to premium subscribers. If you're not one already, please consider subscribing to keep reading.

Key Takeaways

• A $1M first day created expectations Good American could not meet

  • Retailers and investors kept asking what came next

• Rival employers poached staff with $150K pay bumps she could not match

• Good American fell on its face in active, swim and shoes

  • Customers were buying denim fit and fabric, not inclusivity as a category

• The company still does hundreds of millions in revenue, but it is not a unicorn

• The risk was staying put, not dropping out of school at 16

• Emma calls personal branding the single biggest waste of time for women founders

  • A byproduct of success, she said, not a way to build one

• Founders succeed only when they stop lying to themselves about what they want

1. A $1M Day That Backfired

Emma opened on Good American's launch with Khloé Kardashian, which did $1 million in sales on day one. At the time the brand was hailed as a change in how fashion handled sizing and inclusivity.

Good American's $1M launch day created a standard the company could not hold

"It set me up to fail in a way, because it was so huge and amazing out of the gate." — Emma Grede

Being called "visionaries" from the start meant retailers and investors kept asking "what's next." Internally, the company could not invent new categories at that pace.

Emma Grede said the early praise became a burden on the business

"Everybody was saying, 'You've changed fashion, you guys are visionaries'... and all of the great things that everybody said to us became thorns in the side of the company." — Emma Grede

2. Staff Poached for $150K More

Read more

Ferrari was one of 11 people quoted in this issue. The others ranged from Jesse Pollak, who said tokenized stocks on Coinbase's Base network traded about $100M in one day, eight weeks after launch, to Michael Batko, who said a $100M seed valuation leaves only a 10x return even if the company reaches $1B, to Noland Langford, who said Honeywell broke his case for owning it when it cut its aerospace growth outlook from 8%-10% to 4%-5%.

"Coding, of course, we were at 0% written by AI two years ago. We're now... at 94%... no good company should be... below 70% right now, in my view." — Luca Ferrari, Co-Founder and CEO at Bending Spoons, on The a16z Show (Read summary)

We scanned 820 shows and 3 hours of audio, wrote 4 summaries, and pulled 30 quotes into this 13-minute read.

Here is what mattered.

Macro

Senda's CIO names three causes of the recent rise in rates

Tania Reif, founder and CIO of Senda Digital Assets, said the third cause, a higher risk premium for fiscal worries, has stayed small.

"We have seen rates rise for... three reasons: oil prices... the AI trade, the capex spend... and... concerns about fiscal sustainability and risk premium." — Tania Reif, Founder and CIO at Senda Digital Assets, on Real Vision

Spreads are widening on French bonds and on cloud giants' credit at the same time

André Dragosch, head of European research at Bitwise, said France carries debt above 100% of GDP against about 60% for Germany, but the larger story is global. The spread on US triple-C bonds is widening too, as is the cost of insuring the largest cloud companies' debt against default. He said the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan have all raised rates on balance over the past six months.

"French bond spreads are rising... hyperscaler CDS spreads are rising — all of these phenomena have one thing in common: tightening financial conditions." — André Dragosch, Head of European Research at Bitwise, on Bitcoin Magazine Podcast

Crypto and Digital Assets

Pollak says less than 1% of the world's dollars and stocks move on blockchains today

Jesse Pollak created Base, the blockchain network Coinbase runs. He said Base serves neobanks, online brokers and traditional banks rather than competing with them for retail customers.

"We have less than 1% of the world's dollars, less than 1% of the world's equities moving on these new rails... over the next 5 years, 10 years, it's going to be about going from less than 1% to 10% to 50% to 90%." — Jesse Pollak, Creator of Base at Coinbase, on The Wolf Of All Streets (Read summary)

Tokenized stocks on Base traded about $100M in one day, 8 weeks after launch

Pollak said trading is concentrated outside the US, where neobanks and brokers in markets such as Indonesia, Nigeria, Korea and Japan are adding round-the-clock access to US stocks.

"We just launched tokenized equities on Base with Coinbase about 8 weeks ago... yesterday was about 100 million dollars of trading volume of these equities." — Jesse Pollak, Creator of Base at Coinbase, on The Wolf Of All Streets (Read summary)

The tokens on Base carry voting rights and dividends

Each token is a fully backed share, not a derivative that only tracks the price, Pollak said. A lending market for the tokens opened about two and a half weeks before the interview and holds about $20M, letting holders borrow USDC, a dollar-backed stablecoin, at 3% to 4% against their shares.

"We really wanted to make sure that we did it right... it is a fully backed security that gives the holders voting rights, that gives them dividends." — Jesse Pollak, Creator of Base at Coinbase, on The Wolf Of All Streets (Read summary)

Most tokenized assets still settle the old way, Ethereum Institutional's US head says

David Duong left Coinbase Institutional to head US business at Ethereum Institutional, a nonprofit spun out of the Ethereum Foundation to help banks and funds use the network. He said years of pilots have raised the value of assets recorded on blockchains without changing how most institutions settle trades.

"Assets get represented on chain and that's great... but then the fund or the bank doesn't necessarily do much with it. So settlement still kind of happens the old way." — David Duong, Head of US at Ethereum Institutional, on Real Vision

Crypto held up because rates fell when the AI trade wobbled, Reif says

Reif said yields dropped as credit tied to AI companies came under pressure, which weakened the dollar. She said crypto as a whole has rallied about 40% since August.

"Since the AI trade began to wobble... we have actually seen the rates come lower as opposed to higher... and that has been supportive for the crypto space." — Tania Reif, Founder and CIO at Senda Digital Assets, on Real Vision

The dollar has driven Bitcoin while growth expectations drove the S&P 500, Bitwise's research head says

Dragosch said that split explains why Bitcoin has held up better than stocks as investors lower their growth forecasts. A stronger dollar hurts Bitcoin in the near term, he said, while a weaker one over many years would help it.

"The US dollar has actually been the most dominant macro factor for Bitcoin, while global growth expectations have been the most dominant macro factor for the S&P 500." — André Dragosch, Head of European Research at Bitwise, on Bitcoin Magazine Podcast

Dragosch's money-supply model puts Bitcoin's fair value at $197K

He said the gap between Bitcoin's price and the model is the widest on record, and he expects it to close as money moves out of gold and semiconductor stocks. Bitcoin has drawn more money than gold into exchange-traded products worldwide, he said.

"This kind of model based on global money supply implies an equilibrium price, fair value, of $197,000 right now for Bitcoin." — André Dragosch, Head of European Research at Bitwise, on Bitcoin Magazine Podcast

Alternatives and PE

A family office's back office is part of its return, Alexandra Cook says

Alexandra Cook, a CPA, runs her family's 50-year-old single family office, now called Dynastillion. She said one common mistake is housing the office inside an operating company, where family reporting comes second to the company's needs.

"I am a big proponent of viewing the back office as... part of the investment structure and therefore part of the investment return generation mechanism... not a cost center." — Alexandra Cook, Principal and Managing Director at Dynastillion, on Centimillionaire Strategies

Families worth $200M to $300M often try to run their office on $250K to $500K

Richard C. Wilson, who founded the Family Office Club and hosts the show, said the bad deals and poor structuring that follow can cost a family 5% to 10% of its net worth.

"So many times I see a family with two to 300 million dollars in wealth, and then they're trying to spend quarter million and a half a million on their family office team... it would have saved them 5 or 10% of their net worth being lost." — Richard C. Wilson, Founder at Family Office Club, on Centimillionaire Strategies

Cook screens out companies that rename themselves as AI to raise money

Cook's family invests mostly in early-stage AI and robotics companies, and she looks for founders who know the industry they are selling into.

"If I were selling bananas and then I named my company banana AI, I could go to these conferences and try to raise capital... you have to be careful weeding through those things." — Alexandra Cook, Principal and Managing Director at Dynastillion, on Centimillionaire Strategies

Technology & AI

Bending Spoons' CEO says software valuations assumed 12% growth for 15 years

Ferrari said the sell-off in software-as-a-service stocks was a reasonable correction of prices that were already too high, not a verdict that AI will replace the software.

"I think the valuations for SaaS historically were for the most part absurdly high... often based on assuming that the current 12% organic growth would last for 15 years." — Luca Ferrari, Co-Founder and CEO at Bending Spoons, on The a16z Show (Read summary)

Most Airtable customers pay under $20K a year, too little to justify rebuilding it with AI

Bending Spoons owns Airtable, Eventbrite, Vimeo and WeTransfer among 50 to 60 acquisitions. Ferrari said software rarely wins because it is expensive to copy. It wins on being first, on habit, on network size and on data no one else has.

"Most customers pay Airtable less than $20,000 a year... even if you get to a point where you can ask your AI agent... to replicate the code for Airtable pretty much perfectly... you'll still want someone... responsible for making sure that code seems legit." — Luca Ferrari, Co-Founder and CEO at Bending Spoons, on The a16z Show (Read summary)

Bending Spoons hedges all of its debt against interest-rate moves

The company borrows to fund each larger acquisition. Ferrari said it keeps its leverage ratio well below 3x, about 2.4x to 2.5x today, and refinances most of its debt each year so that maturities stay at least five years away. He put its risk of default close to zero.

"We hedge 100% of our debt against interest rate fluctuations, so we know exactly how much interest we will pay in the future." — Luca Ferrari, Co-Founder and CEO at Bending Spoons, on The a16z Show (Read summary)

Cal.com stopped publishing its full source code because of the risk of AI-driven hacking

Cal.com makes scheduling software that competes with Calendly. Peer Richelsen, its co-founder, said the company now publishes only a do-it-yourself version of its code, because it handles financial, healthcare and meeting data. He still favors open source for frameworks and libraries.

"As a tech community, we haven't really grasped the impact of AI on security... if large labs accidentally hack software, just imagine what happens on the lower tiers of hacking." — Peer Richelsen, Co-Founder at Cal.com, on opencompany (Read summary)

Engineers who only follow instructions are being overtaken by AI, Richelsen says

Richelsen said hiring has become harder. The engineers worth hiring now decide what to build and how to structure it, and let AI do more of the implementation.

"If you quote unquote are a trained full stack engineer, but you just do what somebody else tells you to do, you're basically just being leapfrogged by AI." — Peer Richelsen, Co-Founder at Cal.com, on opencompany (Read summary)

Left Brain's CIO says many AI spenders already earn profits and free cash flow

Noland Langford, founder and CIO of Left Brain Wealth Management, rejected the comparison with the telecom overbuild of the dot-com era. He said some companies have order books funded and sold out through 2028 to 2031, so today's building is meeting demand that already exists.

"I can show you many businesses that currently not only have revenue, they have profits and they have free cash flow." — Noland Langford, Founder and CIO at Left Brain Wealth Management, on The Disciplined Investor

Dragosch says many of the cloud giants now spend more cash than they bring in

That leaves the largest cloud companies, which Dragosch calls hyperscalers, borrowing to pay for data centers. He expects their capital spending to slow as credit gets harder to raise, just as the cost of chips that become obsolete in about two years starts to weigh on profits.

"Many of these... major hyperscalers are now free cash flow negative... so they depend on external financing... that's why tightening financial conditions are so toxic." — André Dragosch, Head of European Research at Bitwise, on Bitcoin Magazine Podcast

VC & Startups

Cal.com grows 2.5x to 3x a year, mostly from customers who sign up on their own

Richelsen said Cal.com has 1.3M to 1.4M total signups. Most growth comes from the product itself and from search, not from a sales team. He publishes the numbers partly because more than 100 community members became shareholders in the seed and Series A rounds.

"We grow between 2.5 and 3x a year... primarily PLG self-serve." — Peer Richelsen, Co-Founder at Cal.com, on opencompany (Read summary)

AI startups may never need venture money, Startmate's former CEO says

Michael Batko ran Startmate, an Australian accelerator that backed more than 220 companies, before founding Hourglass AI, which builds AI systems for businesses. He said AI-native startups reach revenue with far fewer staff and far lower costs.

"Because your expenses are so low and you can actually make way more revenue way faster... those AI companies in particular, they actually might not need funding, which is a bit weird." — Michael Batko, Founder at Hourglass AI, on Fintech Chatter (Read summary)

A $100M seed valuation limits a $1B outcome to 10x, Batko says

Because such a company may never raise again, investors fear missing its one round, which pushes seed valuations for companies with no revenue to $50M to $100M. A 10x on one company returns only 30% to 40% of a fund built to return 3x, Batko said, so the fund needs a much rarer 20x to 40x outcome.

"You do get high valuations of a company which has no revenue at 50 or 100 mil seed rounds or higher... if you invest in a company at 100 mil, even if they become a billion-dollar company, that's only a 10x return on that one company." — Michael Batko, Founder at Hourglass AI, on Fintech Chatter (Read summary)

Australian funds spread first investments of $1M to $3M across 20 to 30 companies

Batko said a $1B Australian fund sets aside about 20%, or $200M, for first-round investments and keeps the rest for later rounds. Australian companies still go to US investors for Series B rounds and beyond.

"So what you usually do is deploy like one to $3 million into 20 to 30 companies and then hold back like 30 or 40% of the fund to then double down." — Michael Batko, Founder at Hourglass AI, on Fintech Chatter (Read summary)

Industrials and Transport

Honeywell's aerospace growth outlook fell from 8%-10% to 4%-5% after its split, breaking Langford's case for it

Langford said he sells when the reason for owning a stock changes, not after one weak quarter. Honeywell separated its building-controls business from aerospace this year, following General Electric's three-way breakup.

"Earlier this year we really liked Honeywell... the first earnings report comes out and... they say, 'Hey, instead of an eight to 10% grower, we think we're going to be four to 5% on the growth.'" — Noland Langford, Founder and CIO at Left Brain Wealth Management, on The Disciplined Investor

Materials & Energy

The energy fund XLE is up 48% this year, and Left Brain was underweight

Langford said the firm is taking a fresh look at energy, a sector it usually avoids because profits rise and fall with commodity prices.

"The... XLE is up 48% this year... We were underweight. I bet you probably most people were because it came out of left field." — Noland Langford, Founder and CIO at Left Brain Wealth Management, on The Disciplined Investor

Policy

Crypto is getting its rules from regulators using existing law, Franklin Templeton's crypto head says

Christopher Perkins, head of Franklin Crypto at Franklin Templeton, said market-structure legislation stalled in Congress, but regulators moved ahead with formal rulemaking. Institutions will take market risk, he said, but not regulatory risk.

"We never asked years ago for legislative clarity. We asked for regulatory clarity. And we're getting that based on existing laws." — Christopher Perkins, Head of Franklin Crypto at Franklin Templeton, on Real Vision

Two and a half years of precedent would be hard for a new administration to undo, Perkins says

Regulators must follow the Administrative Procedure Act's notice-and-comment process whoever is in power, Perkins said. Without the legislation, he said, there is no federal preemption, so commodities stay regulated by the states.

"It's very hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube once you have two and a half years of precedent... that institutions are building around." — Christopher Perkins, Head of Franklin Crypto at Franklin Templeton, on Real Vision

Nuggets of Wisdom

A stock that does not rise on a beat-and-raise quarter is a warning, Langford says

The reverse holds too, Langford said: a stock that does not fall when the company cuts its guidance can be a signal to buy.

"Some stock... says, 'We've told you we're going to grow at 15. Now we're growing at 18,' but the stock doesn't move up. That's a tell." — Noland Langford, Founder and CIO at Left Brain Wealth Management, on The Disciplined Investor

A venture fund is one more money manager answering to its investors, Batko says

Batko said the picture of venture capital as mission-driven money is mostly a sales story. A fund's duty is to its limited partners, the investors who put up the money.

"It is just another investor, just another manager at the end of the day. What matters to VC is to make the LPs happy, who gave you money to essentially turn $1 into $3, $10 10 years down the line." — Michael Batko, Founder at Hourglass AI, on Fintech Chatter (Read summary)

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With Peer Richelsen, Co-Founder of Cal.com

Cal.com, the scheduling company, has passed about 1.3 million signups and grows 2.5 to 3 times a year, mostly from customers who sign themselves up. Peer Richelsen, co-founder of Cal.com, told opencompany that the company is now moving away from the open-source model it was built on.

Cal.com started as an open-source alternative to Calendly. In April 2026 it stopped publishing its full application and kept only a do-it-yourself version open, because Peer and his team concluded AI has made open code far easier to attack.

"The whole way we've done open source in the past 20 years is not going to be the next 20 years. Zero chance." — Peer Richelsen

Peer built the first version over a weekend while running a different startup, and handed it to the stranger who became his co-founder. Community members who invested in the seed and Series A rounds can check the company's numbers for themselves.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 19 minutes of audio, 7 minutes of reading.

Here are the 9 takeaways that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Cal.com grows 2.5-3x a year, mostly through self-serve signups rather than sales

  • About 1.3 to 1.4 million people have signed up

• Cal.com closed its full app's source code in April 2026, citing AI-driven security risk

  • It handles financial, healthcare and meeting data

• AI favors the engineer who decides what to build, not the one who only carries out orders

• There is no single finish line like an IPO, Peer says, because the running is the part

• The missing piece for most AI apps is the network and data behind them, not the interface

• Cal.com began as a weekend project after a search for an open-source Calendly found nothing

1. A Weekend Calendly Clone

Peer's first company traded Magic and Pokémon cards and collapsed when COVID hit that market in 2020. He moved on to LeanHire.com, a marketplace for hiring contractors, and needed a scheduling tool for it.

Peer built the first Cal.com in a weekend because no open-source Calendly existed

"I did just some basic research and literally went on Google, like 'Calendly open source'... and was just met with no results. And I think that weekend I just started building it." — Peer Richelsen

The first version worked only with Google Calendar and sat on GitHub as a side project.

2. A Co-Founder in 4 Minutes

Read more

With Michael Batko, Founder of Hourglass AI and former CEO of Startmate

AI-native startups can now reach revenue with so few staff and so little spending that some may never raise venture capital at all. Michael Batko, founder of Hourglass AI and for eight years CEO of the Australian accelerator Startmate, told Fintech Chatter that this shift is breaking the math venture funds are built on.

Venture investors have long held the power in a funding round. Michael's view is that it has moved back to founders, and that the seed prices that result leave little room for the large returns a fund needs.

"You do get high valuations of a company which has no revenue at 50 or 100 mil seed rounds or higher... if you invest in a company at 100 mil, even if they become a billion-dollar company, that's only a 10x return on that one company." — Michael Batko

Michael backed about 250 companies at Startmate before stepping down in December 2025. His new company, Hourglass AI, builds AI systems inside businesses from venture funds to a meat processor.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 41 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.

Here are the 10 takeaways that matter.

Key Takeaways

• AI-native startups may never need venture funding, because their costs are so low and revenue comes faster

• Seed rounds at $50M-$100M with no revenue leave a billion-dollar outcome as only a 10x return

  • A 20-30 company portfolio built that way returns only 30-40% of the fund

• A $1B Australian fund puts about $1M-$3M into each first check, holding back 30-40% for winners

• Australian VC is only about 13 years old, which is part of why it passed on Zip and Afterpay

• Startmate's $50M fund raise froze overnight when tech stocks fell in 2022

• A venture fund is "just another manager", paid to turn $1 into a multiple for its investors

1. Eight Years at Startmate

Dexter Cousins, founder of Tier One People, who hosts Fintech Chatter, opened on Michael's record: Startmate backed more than 220 companies, by Dexter's count, and about 250 over Michael's time there by his own. Startmate pairs each company with mentors who invest, often former founders, and they work with the founders every day for three months.

Michael says venture investors give money but have little contact with the companies they back

"Venture capital essentially you give companies money, but you can't really help them that much... because you often just sit on the board and you have very limited touch points." — Michael Batko

The mentors' money is pooled into a fund that makes a fixed investment in each company.

"Most invest between 10 to $50,000 every six months. And that money then is invested into roughly 15 companies every six months. Those companies receive $120,000." — Michael Batko

2. Why VC Missed Zip, Afterpay

Read more

With Jesse Pollak, Creator of Base at Coinbase

Photo via fortune.com

Base, the blockchain Coinbase built, launched tokenized US stocks about eight weeks ago, and the day before this interview they traded about $100 million. Jesse Pollak, the creator of Base at Coinbase, told The Wolf Of All Streets that crypto has found its market in banking, trading and payments.

For most of its 13 years crypto was sold as a store of value or a speculative bet. Jesse's view is that the larger business is moving the world's dollars and stocks onto faster, cheaper, always-open systems, and that almost none of that has happened yet.

"We have less than 1% of the world's dollars, less than 1% of the world's equities moving on these new rails... over the next 5 years, 10 years, it's going to be about going from less than 1% to 10% to 50% to 90%." — Jesse Pollak

Jesse has spent ten years at Coinbase, five of them running engineering for its consumer products, and built the first version of Base in a one-week sprint. It now works with JPMorgan, Citi and Shopify.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 55 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.

Here are the 10 calls that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Crypto's real market is financial services, not only Bitcoin as a store of value

  • Less than 1% of the world's dollars and stocks move on these systems today

• Tokenized stocks on Base traded about $100M in a day, eight weeks after launch

  • They are fully backed securities with voting rights and dividends

• JPMorgan and Citi now move customer money on crypto rails, around the clock

• AI coding tools have doubled how fast Coinbase and Base ship, and Jesse trades code with Brian Armstrong

• Companies opting out of tokenization are moving slowly, not saying no, Jesse says

• 2027 will be the year agentic finance emerges, after agentic payments in 2026

1. A Decade at Coinbase

Scott Melker, who hosts The Wolf Of All Streets, opened on how Jesse got to Coinbase. His startup, built on two-factor authentication, did not work, but it brought him into the company.

Jesse joined Coinbase in 2017 when it acquired his startup's one-person team

"I have been now in the Coinbase orbit for 10 years... that business ultimately didn't work, but it led to Coinbase acquiring the team, which was really just me, in the year of 2017." — Jesse Pollak

He spent five years leading engineering for Coinbase's consumer products, Coinbase, Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Wallet. In 2021 and 2022 he tried several new ventures of his own, and most of them failed.

2. Base Was Built in a Week

Read more

With Luca Ferrari, Co-Founder and CEO of Bending Spoons

Photo via Reuters

Two years ago none of the code at Bending Spoons was written by AI. Luca Ferrari, co-founder and CEO of Bending Spoons, told The a16z Show that the share is now about 94%, and that he would hold any well-run company to at least 70%.

Most software buyers worry that cheap AI-written code will let anyone clone their products. Luca's view is that writing software was always cheap, and that the companies he buys survive for other reasons.

"Mostly software or digital products do not succeed because it's very expensive to replicate them... They mostly succeed because of other factors. First mover advantage... network effects... proprietary data." — Luca Ferrari

Luca has done 50 to 60 acquisitions, among them Airtable, AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Komoot and WeTransfer, each moved onto one shared technology base and run for cash. He started the company with what was left of a failed startup in Denmark.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 44 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.

Here are the 10 lessons that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Bending Spoons buys companies, raises their cash flow, then borrows against it to buy bigger ones

  • 50 to 60 acquisitions so far, including Airtable, AOL, Vimeo and WeTransfer

• Luca picked long-run free cash flow over a better valuation, more than once

• Leverage stays well below 3x, and all of the debt is hedged against rate moves

  • Luca puts the risk of default "close to zero"

• SaaS multiples were already too high before AI, priced for 12% organic growth over 15 years

• What protects software is rarely the cost of copying it: network effects, data and habit do

  • Eventbrite has 90 million people a month looking for tickets

• AI now writes about 94% of Bending Spoons' code, up from 0% two years ago

1. Buy, Integrate, Lever Up

Anish Acharya, a general partner at a16z, asked Luca to explain the model. Bending Spoons buys technology companies, moves them onto its own platform and team, and spends about ten years changing their economics so they produce far more cash.

Bending Spoons runs every acquisition on the same technology and the same core team

"We buy technology companies where we see an opportunity to make them a lot more successful. And then we integrate them into our platform, same foundational technology, same core team, and try to transform them." — Luca Ferrari

The extra cash is then used as the base for debt, and the debt pays for the next deal. Luca put the count at 50 to 60 acquisitions.

"If we do that right, we take the extra earnings, and lever them up and buy more, bigger companies. Rinse and repeat." — Luca Ferrari

2. Bonds, Options, the iPhone

Read more

Seed funds that make a few large bets say they win 90% of the deals they want, according to David Tisch, managing partner at BoxGroup. He told 20VC he thinks the real figure is closer to 20%.

Tisch was one of 17 people quoted in this issue. The others ranged from Philip Johnston, who said data centers in orbit become cheaper than ones on the ground once launch costs fall below about $500 a kilo, to Joseph Kim, who said financial-data connectors from some well-known providers returned errors more than 40% of the time in OpenAI's tests, to Himanshu Sahay, who said Arch was lending against Bitcoin at 16% two and a half years ago.

"Every concentrated manager will say that we win 90% of the deals we want to win. And I think that's total BS. I think it's like 20%." — David Tisch, Managing Partner at BoxGroup, on 20VC (Read summary)

We scanned 819 shows and 13 hours of audio, wrote 14 summaries, and pulled 39 quotes into this 17-minute read.

Here is what mattered.

Macro

A 60/40 portfolio still took a large loss in 1987, when stocks and bonds moved in opposite directions

Alan Dunne, founder and CEO of Archive Capital Advisors, said the correlation between stocks and bonds says little on its own about where either ends up. In the 1987 crash, investors fled to Treasuries, but not in the size a portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds needed.

"Bond yields went from 7% to 10%. The equity market went up 35% between January and August... negative correlation by itself isn't enough to prepare a portfolio." — Alan Dunne, Founder and CEO at Archive Capital Advisors, on Top Traders Unplugged (Read summary)

Dunne would hold fewer bonds and let trend-following funds trade the rest

Dunne said the 60/40 debate has split into all-or-nothing positions on bonds. He would keep a core bond holding smaller than 40% and hand more of the bond exposure to trend-following or macro managers, who buy and sell bonds as prices move.

"If you allocate to something like trend or macro, you're still getting fixed income exposure in a managed way... you've effectively got a passive core bond exposure complemented with a tactically managed bond exposure." — Alan Dunne, Founder and CEO at Archive Capital Advisors, on Top Traders Unplugged (Read summary)

Lance Roberts says bonds are there for stability, so swapping them for Bitcoin or gold defeats the purpose

Lance Roberts, chief investment strategist at RIA Advisors, said bonds held their value while stocks fell this week. He trimmed his firm's longer-dated bonds after their rally, with the 10-year Treasury yield near 4.95%.

"The reason you own bonds is because they lack volatility... adding volatility to your safety money becomes very problematic in a downturn." — Lance Roberts, Chief Investment Strategist at RIA Advisors, on Thoughtful Money (Read summary)

RIA Advisors moved money from growth stocks to value stocks on October 5

Roberts said this week's losses in Google, Amazon and Meta came from investors rotating into value stocks such as Walmart, Costco and Berkshire Hathaway, not from a broad sell-off. His firm made the same move four weeks earlier.

"Go back four weeks, October the 5th, we talked about that we had sold our growth, reduced our growth allocation and added to our value allocation." — Lance Roberts, Chief Investment Strategist at RIA Advisors, on Thoughtful Money (Read summary)

The firm holds 10% to 15% of its portfolios in cash and plans to raise its stock allocation from 60% to about 65% before year-end.

Financials

Arca, a wealth manager, gives AI agents all the work except advising clients

Arca recently raised $48.5M in a round led by General Catalyst. Its agents prepare analysis, track deadlines and send recommendations to human advisors without being asked.

"The role of AI at Arca is not to replace the advisor. It is to replace all of the work around the advisor." — Aman Singh, Lead AI Engineer at Arca, on Latent Space (Read summary)

Arca's agents can propose trades but cannot place them

Aman Singh said any rule touching money movement, trading or client messages is fixed in code, so the agent has no discretion over it. A person with the proper authority places the trade through Arca's custodian.

"At the moment, we are not doing autonomous trading with agents... the agents will propose that we make trades, and it is fully up to our experts to figure out if that is the right trade to be making." — Aman Singh, Lead AI Engineer at Arca, on Latent Space (Read summary)

Stig Brodersen bought S&P Global at $399 for its ratings business

S&P Global holds about 45% of the credit-ratings market, against 40% for Moody's. Stig Brodersen bought the stock the morning of the show, his first new position in more than a year. In his account, an issuer is better off paying for a second rating than going without one.

"If you have a Moody's rating, you also need an S&P rating... it's actually mandated... but also there's adverse selection here." — Stig Brodersen, Host at The Investor's Podcast

Hari Ramachandra says S&P Global's real earnings multiple is closer to 39 than 23

Hari Ramachandra pushed back. AI startups such as AlphaSense, funded by S&P's own bank customers, are going after its Market Intelligence data business. Strip most of that business out, he said, and the stock trades near 39 times earnings, not 23.

"If you deduct 80% of their market intelligence revenue and translate it into earnings, then they will be at 39... almost in my calculation." — Hari Ramachandra of The Investor's Podcast Network, on The Investor's Podcast

Apollo and Brookfield own large insurers that benefit from favorable private credit ratings

Private ratings, issued by agencies including Moody's, S&P and Kroll, can lower an insurer's cost of capital. Chris Whalen, chairman of Whalen Global Advisors, said the asset managers that own insurers gain from favorable ones.

"The wolf is already in the hen house... the Apollos and the rest of them, the Brookfields, for example, all of them have very large insurance company strategies." — Chris Whalen, Chairman at Whalen Global Advisors, on The Julia La Roche Show (Read summary)

Insurance regulators backed down on private ratings after the industry threatened to sue

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners had asked how private ratings were reached. Whalen said no one now reviews an insurer's ratings or assets until the company fails, and he expects that to bring federal regulation of insurance.

"If you have life insurance or if you have an annuity that's issued by one of these companies, there's nobody looking out for you." — Chris Whalen, Chairman at Whalen Global Advisors, on The Julia La Roche Show (Read summary)

Chase bought about $1B of mortgage-servicing rights from United Wholesale Mortgage, Whalen says

Servicing rights are the right to collect payments on a pool of mortgages for a fee. Whalen said UWM needed the cash to repay a $1.5B capital infusion from Oaktree.

"We had a nice little scoop. We found out... that Chase had bought a big chunk of conventional servicing from United Wholesale Mortgage." — Chris Whalen, Chairman at Whalen Global Advisors, on The Julia La Roche Show (Read summary)

He called UWM's target of $1.8B in asset sales a little ambitious.

Crypto and Digital Assets

Arch lent against Bitcoin at 16% two and a half years ago; its retail loans now cost about 10.49%

Himanshu Sahay, co-founder of Arch, said loans under $250,000 now carry an annual percentage rate of about 10.49%, including the origination fee. Larger loans go as low as 7.25%.

"Two and a half years ago we were lending at 16%, and that was market at the time." — Himanshu Sahay, Co-Founder at Arch, on Onramp Bitcoin Media (Read summary)

Arch keeps each borrower's Bitcoin at a separate address the borrower can see

Sahay said proof of reserves, the snapshot many crypto lenders publish of one pooled wallet, says nothing about a given client's coins at a given moment.

"We do not hold assets ourselves. We hold everything in qualified custody at Anchorage... we go one step beyond that: we segregate the client assets and then we share the address with the borrower." — Himanshu Sahay, Co-Founder at Arch, on Onramp Bitcoin Media (Read summary)

Sahay's test for a Bitcoin lender: ask how its rate can be so low

Arch never lends out the Bitcoin its borrowers pledge, a practice known as rehypothecation. The lenders that did it, Celsius and BlockFi among them, failed in 2022 when depositors all asked for their money at once.

"If the interest rate is artificially lower, always ask how and why. And if a lender declines to answer that, then there's probably something going on with your assets in the back end that helped them bring that rate down." — Himanshu Sahay, Co-Founder at Arch, on Onramp Bitcoin Media (Read summary)

Chainlink's co-founder says a tokenized asset adds nothing unless it beats the original

Sergey Nazarov said a better product means markets that trade every day of the year, fund values updated every minute instead of monthly, and yield on tokenized gold.

"Tokenization in and of itself is not enough to create value for real-world assets as a trend. What you need is for the tokenization to create an onchain financial product or asset that's better than the traditional version." — Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder at Chainlink, on The Rollup (Read summary)

Nazarov expects the largest volume from linking markets outside the US

Nazarov named Dubai, Singapore, Euroclear and SGX, the Singapore Exchange, as places to connect so that money held abroad can reach US stocks and bonds.

"Where I think the really huge volume is, is not even going to be something like Swift and DTCC, which are already heavily ingrained in the US system. I think it's actually going to be a lot of international." — Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder at Chainlink, on The Rollup (Read summary)

No DeFi protocol is built for a stablecoin issuer freezing its balance, Leshner says

Binance lost an estimated $5B in a hack about three hours before The Chopping Block taped. About half of it was in stablecoins, and Tether and Circle froze a large share of those within hours. Robert Leshner, co-founder and CEO of Superstate, said the lending and trading protocols that hold USDC have no plan for the day an issuer freezes their own balance.

"I don't think the DeFi protocols on the aggregate have solved for this issue yet... most protocols still don't necessarily know how to account for it. Has anyone ever frozen a protocol's USDC balance? Not really." — Robert Leshner, Co-Founder and CEO at Superstate, on Unchained (Read summary)

Circle had rehearsed freezing stolen funds long before Binance was hacked

Nemil Dalal ran USDC at Coinbase before joining Y Combinator. He said Circle acts fastest on a court order or on a hack the victim itself confirms, as Binance could.

"When I was running USDC at Coinbase, we and the Circle team literally practiced for moments like this. We would have exercises where we would say, 'Something has been attacked. How do we manage it?'" — Nemil Dalal, Visiting Partner at Y Combinator, on Unchained

Leshner says perpetual futures beat dated futures for every use

Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the NYSE, signed an agreement with trade.xyz to offer regulated perpetual futures to US customers, pending approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Perpetual futures never expire, so a holder does not have to roll into a new contract. Leshner conceded that institutions dislike the funding payments that keep their price in line.

"My view is perps are a superior form factor versus dated futures. They are superior... for everything." — Robert Leshner, Co-Founder and CEO at Superstate, on Unchained (Read summary)

Dragonfly's Rob Hadick says institutions still rely on dated futures and options

Rob Hadick said institutions care most about credit risk and a trusted clearing house on the other side of the trade, and that their focus on both has sharpened since FTX failed.

"I have a perspective that perps are still very much a retail product... dated futures and options still serve a lot of the derivative needs of the institutions." — Rob Hadick, Managing Partner at Dragonfly, on Unchained

Consumer

Good American's $1M first day set it up to fail, its co-founder says

Good American, the denim brand Emma Grede co-founded with Khloé Kardashian, sold about $1M in its first 24 hours. Investors and retailers then kept asking what came next, and often the answer was more jeans.

"It set me up to fail in a way because it was so huge and like amazing out of the gate." — Emma Grede, Co-Founder and CEO at Good American, on Founder's Story (Read summary)

Good American overreached into swimwear, activewear and shoes

Grede said the company assumed its wide size range would sell any product. Customers came for the fit and the fabric. Ten years on, Good American has 120 employees and revenue in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Whatever we did turned to gold until it didn't." — Emma Grede, Co-Founder and CEO at Good American, on Founder's Story (Read summary)

Tobias Carlisle says Deckers, at $77, is priced for no growth

Deckers owns Hoka running shoes and UGG boots. Tobias Carlisle, founder of The Acquirer's Fund, said it has a $10.6B market value, $1.6B in net cash, no debt and a share price of 11 times earnings, after trading above $200 before April's tariffs. Revenue rose 10% to $5.5B in the year to March 2026.

"At $77, this is being priced as if it has no growth." — Tobias Carlisle, Founder at The Acquirer's Fund, on The Investor's Podcast (Read summary)

Deckers spends 80% of its free cash flow buying back its own shares

The buybacks so far were done at $102 to $104 a share, above today's price. Carlisle said buying at the current price still adds value for the shareholders who stay, even if the company stops growing.

"Buybacks are 80% of free cash flow... share count fell 7% year-over-year." — Tobias Carlisle, Founder at The Acquirer's Fund, on The Investor's Podcast (Read summary)

Hari Ramachandra says Novo Nordisk's price assumes it will never produce another successful drug

Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, is down about 40% from its 52-week high and trades near 12 times forward earnings. Eli Lilly now holds about 60% of the market for GLP-1 drugs, the class that includes Ozempic. Ramachandra said success for amycretin, Novo's drug in late-stage trials, could lift returns to 18% to 22%.

"What we are paying for is... an assumption that they'll not be able to innovate and come up with something new." — Hari Ramachandra of The Investor's Podcast Network, on The Investor's Podcast

Jordi Visser prefers Eli Lilly's health-care revenue to the AI infrastructure trade

Jordi Visser, a macro investor at VisserLabs, cited Lilly's latest quarter: revenue of $24.4B, up 39% and about $2B above analysts' estimates.

"The great thing about Eli Lilly in this world of AI infrastructure trades is they are making money on the health care problems in the United States where the spending... is guaranteed every year. It is non-cyclical." — Jordi Visser, Macro Investor at VisserLabs, on The Pomp Podcast (Read summary)

Technology & AI

Starcloud's CEO puts the breakeven for orbital data centers at a $500/kg launch cost

Launching on SpaceX's Falcon 9 costs about $5,000 a kilo today. Philip Johnston said a satellite gets sunlight around the clock and needs about eight times fewer solar cells per watt, with no land permits or batteries to pay for. He expects SpaceX's own cost on Starship to fall to $20 to $40 a kilo.

"If the launch cost gets below around $500 a kilo, then it will be much cheaper to do this in space than terrestrially." — Philip Johnston, CEO and Co-Founder at Starcloud, on Sourcery with Molly O'Shea (Read summary)

Starcloud built its first satellite for about $2.5M against a $75M to $100M quote

Starcloud 1 reached orbit 21 months after the company was founded, carrying the first Nvidia H100 chip flown in space. Starcloud has raised $450M in total.

"They told us it would cost $75 million to $100 million to do StarCloud 1. We did it for about $2.5 million." — Philip Johnston, CEO and Co-Founder at Starcloud, on Sourcery with Molly O'Shea (Read summary)

Chip failures, not cooling, are the bigger risk to Starcloud's economics

The chips are the largest single cost. Before launching Starcloud 2, the company ran its chips hot for three months to catch the failures that cluster early in a part's life.

"If the chips have... like a 10 or 20% higher failure rate in space than they do on the ground, then the whole economics of the model fall apart." — Philip Johnston, CEO and Co-Founder at Starcloud, on Sourcery with Molly O'Shea (Read summary)

OpenAI found error rates above 40% in some outside financial-data connectors

The connectors use MCP, the Model Context Protocol, a standard way for an AI model to pull data from an outside service. Joseph Kim, head of financial services at OpenAI, said the results are why ChatGPT for Financial Services bundles earnings transcripts and other data itself, at an extra cost to customers.

"We tested all these MCPs. And what we found was the error rates were really really high. Some of the MCPs that we connected, some big names, 40% plus error rate on their MCPs." — Joseph Kim, Head of Financial Services at OpenAI, on Latent Space (Read summary)

OpenAI's finance head expects a $1B business to be built on a single ChatGPT plugin

Kim said his team built on the same plugin tools available to any outside company. What a startup would add is the last 20%: its own data, design or integrations.

"I really do think that there's going to be a billion-dollar business built on top of a ChatGPT plugin. But 95% of what we built was something that absolutely a startup could do, another company could do." — Joseph Kim, Head of Financial Services at OpenAI, on Latent Space (Read summary)

Visser says Microsoft's buyout offer to 27% of its staff is a fight between labor and capital

Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees. Visser put the pay and benefits at roughly $400,000 a person, or about $24B a year in savings while revenue keeps growing.

"I think this is becoming a labor versus capital story that is much, much bigger than people realize because we're just entering the productivity boom." — Jordi Visser, Macro Investor at VisserLabs, on The Pomp Podcast (Read summary)

Whalen thinks about half of the planned data centers will not get built

Whalen pointed to the shortage of electricity and to towns organizing against new data centers. He also said Nvidia is financing customers who buy chips they cannot yet use.

"Probably half of the data centers that are currently planned can't happen. We just don't have the resources to do it." — Chris Whalen, Chairman at Whalen Global Advisors, on The Julia La Roche Show (Read summary)

VC & Startups

Tisch says a concentrated seed fund courts 120 to 150 companies to land 30

A concentrated fund makes a few large bets and asks for a big ownership stake in each. Tisch said such a fund has to offer terms to far more companies than it ends up backing, and the companies that accept skew toward the ones other investors wanted less.

"There is an adverse selection in the concentrated model... I think you actually offer that deal to upwards of 120, maybe 150 companies to get your 30." — David Tisch, Managing Partner at BoxGroup, on 20VC (Read summary)

The fastest-growing startups now give up 3% to 8% per later round, not 12% to 20%

That is one reason Tisch said BoxGroup's small stakes matter less than critics think: they shrink less on the way to an exit. He said he was wrong years ago to doubt BoxGroup's own model, because he did not see exits getting bigger.

"In the companies that tend to hockey-stick very quickly, the Series B, C, D are dramatically less dilutive... they are raising these later-stage rounds at 3 to 8% dilution instead of 12 to 20%." — David Tisch, Managing Partner at BoxGroup, on 20VC (Read summary)

Rogo was turned down by 39 of the 40 Series A investors it approached

BoxGroup backed Rogo, which builds AI tools for finance, at the seed stage. Its founder, Gabe Stengel, then went out to raise a Series A. Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins invested after the one investor who said yes led the round.

"We sent it out to 40 Series A lead investors. He got fully passed on by 39 of them." — David Tisch, Managing Partner at BoxGroup, on 20VC (Read summary)

Other appearances:

• a16z New Media team on Cosign, a professional network built for AI agents to search, on a16z

Nuggets of Wisdom

Grede says a personal brand is probably the biggest waste of an early founder's time

Grede said a brand formed around her only after the company existed. She makes an exception for creators whose content is the business.

"Personal brand in the female entrepreneurship circle is as overrated as it comes and is probably the single biggest waste of time." — Emma Grede, Co-Founder and CEO at Good American, on Founder's Story (Read summary)

Dunne's lesson from Arini: investors extrapolate short track records

Arini Capital Management, a credit hedge fund, raised about $7.5B in a short time on strong early returns. Dunne said it is now down 22% to 25% for the year.

"It shows you how people tend to extrapolate relatively short track records and assume they'll continue." — Alan Dunne, Founder and CEO at Archive Capital Advisors, on Top Traders Unplugged (Read summary)

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With Chris Whalen, Chairman of Whalen Global Advisors and author of The Institutional Risk Analyst

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has backed off policing the private credit ratings that insurers use, after the industry threatened to sue, Chris Whalen, Chairman of Whalen Global Advisors, told The Julia La Roche Show.

A regulator is supposed to stand between policyholders and the companies that sell them annuities. Chris said private-credit firms such as Apollo and Brookfield now own large insurers that depend on favorable private ratings to lower their capital costs, and that no one reviews those ratings or assets until an insurer actually fails.

"If you have life insurance or if you have an annuity that's issued by one of these companies, there's nobody looking out for you." — Chris Whalen

Chris once worked at Kroll, one of the agencies that issues these private ratings, and he publishes The Institutional Risk Analyst. He joins Julia La Roche each week for the show's segment The Wrap, and this week he also brought a scoop on United Wholesale Mortgage.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 35 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.

Here are the 10 calls that matter.

Key Takeaways

• Kevin Warsh's inaction is starting to erode his credibility, and a symbolic quarter-point cut would have helped

• Big tech will be forced to issue stock after trying to fund the AI buildout almost entirely with debt

  • "Probably half of the data centers that are currently planned can't happen"

• Insurance regulators retreated from private credit ratings once the industry threatened to sue

• Chris expects federal regulation of insurance to police the worst of private credit

• Mortgage delinquencies will rise, most of all in government-backed loans

• Chase bought a big chunk of conventional servicing from United Wholesale Mortgage, Chris reported

• Diesel is up 25% from a year ago, a sign that war-driven inflation has not finished working through the economy

1. Warsh Should Have Cut

Chris opened The Wrap on the Federal Open Market Committee's 10-2 vote to hold rates. He thinks Fed Chair Kevin Warsh should have moved anyway.

Chris says a small cut this month would have been the right signal

"War[sh] should have acted this month, even in a symbolic way. A quarter of a point on Fed funds would be a good thing." — Chris Whalen

Warsh has also talked about reforming the gap between Fed funds and repo rates and what the Fed pays banks on their reserves, without acting on it. Chris thinks the waiting has a cost.

Chris says the Fed chair is losing credibility by not acting

"His lack of action, I think, is starting to erode his credibility." — Chris Whalen

2. Volcker Played Politics Too

Read more

With Robert Leshner, Co-Founder and CEO of Superstate · Nemil Dalal, Visiting Partner at Y Combinator and former head of USDC at Coinbase · Tom Schmidt, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

Photo via superstate.com

Binance lost an estimated $5 billion to a hack about three hours before the panel taped, more than three times the largest crypto theft on record. Robert Leshner, co-founder and CEO of Superstate, used Unchained's The Chopping Block to press a harder question: whether DeFi is any better prepared for the next one.

Tether and Circle froze a large share of the stolen stablecoins within hours. Robert's point was that four and a half years after FTX, no team has shipped a genuinely different DeFi design, and almost no protocol is built for the day its own stablecoins are frozen.

"I don't think the DeFi protocols on the aggregate have solved for this issue yet... most protocols still don't necessarily know how to account for it. Has anyone ever frozen a protocol's USDC balance? Not really." — Robert Leshner

Robert co-founded Compound Labs before starting Superstate, which moves funds and stocks onto blockchains. Beside him were Nemil Dalal, who ran USDC at Coinbase before joining Y Combinator as a visiting partner, and Tom Schmidt, Managing Partner at Dragonfly. Rob Hadick, also a Managing Partner at Dragonfly, guest-hosted for a second week.

The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 57 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.

Here are the 9 insights that matter.

Key Takeaways

• An estimated $5 billion left Binance, more than triple the largest crypto hack before it

• Circle rehearsed for a hack like this one, with responses running from pausing a whole stablecoin to blacklisting single addresses

• Almost no DeFi protocol is built to handle a frozen stablecoin balance, Robert Leshner said

• Every financial crisis has been about interconnection, and Nemil warns Binance is big enough to start one

• Y Combinator's crypto wishlist puts tokenization, agent payments and AI capital raising at the top

  • "If you're a dev tools company today, in a year your buyer has changed from a human developer to an agent developer"

• ICE's deal with trade.xyz reminds Tom of Larry Fink endorsing the Bitcoin ETF

• Robert Leshner calls perps "a superior form factor" to dated futures, and Rob Hadick says they are still a retail product

1. A $5B Hack at Binance

The panel had agreed to skip security news this week. Then Binance was hit, roughly three hours before taping, and Tom opened with what was known.

Tom says the Binance hack is the largest in crypto by a wide margin

"Right now it looks like Binance has had some sort of compromise. People are estimating about 5 billion in assets has been swept off the platform... right now it is three times larger than the largest hack ever in crypto." — Tom Schmidt

The attack was tied to how Binance managed EIP-7702 account delegation, an Ethereum feature that lets one account act on behalf of another. That let the attacker generate signatures and withdraw funds by proxy. Roughly half the stolen assets were stablecoins, and Tether and Circle froze a large share of those within hours. The rest moved into Tornado Cash, a service that obscures where funds came from, or was swapped into other tokens.

2. Circle Drilled for This

Read more

With Lance Roberts, Chief Investment Strategist at RIA Advisors

Photo via riaadvisors.com

About $4 trillion of market value came off the Magnificent Seven in a week, and four of the seven stocks fell into bear-market territory. Lance Roberts, Chief Investment Strategist at RIA Advisors, told Adam Taggart on Thoughtful Money that the drop is mostly money moving from growth stocks to value stocks, not a broad market breakdown.

The headlines measured the damage by the biggest companies. Lance pointed to Eli Lilly, Walmart, Costco and Berkshire Hathaway, which kept rising through the week, and to an equal-weighted index that fell far less.

"Go back four weeks, October the 5th, we talked about that we had sold our growth, reduced our growth allocation and added to our value allocation." — Lance Roberts

Lance manages client portfolios at RIA Advisors and had already made that move. He is now watching for the moment to reverse it.

The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 88 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.

Here are the 10 arguments that matter.

Key Takeaways

• RIA cut growth stocks and added value on October 5, before the tech selloff

• RIA's rotation model is close to flipping back to growth, possibly within a week

• Analysts raised their estimates going into earnings, which made solid results look like misses

  • Lance put margin debt at a record $1.2 trillion

• Google trades at about 18 times forward earnings, which Lance says is cheap next to Costco and Walmart

• Adam expects AI to remove many entry-level jobs, and Lance says internships will go with them

• Bonds are in a portfolio because they are not volatile, so swapping them for Bitcoin or gold defeats the purpose

• RIA holds 10% to 15% cash and plans to raise stocks from 60% to about 65% into year-end

1. Big Tech's $4T Week

Adam opened with the scale of the damage. More than 60% of the stocks in the S&P 500 were down at least 20% from their highs.

Adam counted $4 trillion of lost value in the Magnificent Seven

"Four trillion in market cap has been wiped out from the Magnificent Seven. Four of those seven stocks are in bear market territory right now." — Adam Taggart

Lance's answer was that the selling was concentrated. Google, Amazon, Meta and Intel fell hard after reporting earnings, while the value stocks RIA had bought a month earlier kept rising. That is the rotation RIA had positioned for on October 5.

2. RIA's Model Is Near a Flip

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