The Manosphere Report

0:00I don't know if some of you knew I was an angel investor in some

0:02companies. On the count of three, what's my favorite angel investment of all time?

0:08One, two, three. Thank you.

0:10Give it up, Travis Kalanick.

0:20Appreciate you. All right. Wow.

0:24On a big news day, Travis is here on a very big news day.

0:29You spent, wow, I guess like seven years just in the lab building.

0:35Last year, every year I ask you, hey, you want to come to the Women's

0:39Summit? You want to say, nah, it's like, I'm going to just chill.

0:42I'm building. Next year, hey, you know, it's just always available to you.

0:45I'm like, no, you don't understand.

0:45I'm stealth. Yeah, I'm stealth.

0:47I'm stealth. Nobody knows where I am.

0:49Nobody knows what I'm doing.

0:50The employees are not allowed to put the name of the company on their LinkedIn.

0:54LinkedIn. Thousands of employees that weren't allowed to put the company name on LinkedIn.

0:59I mean, incredible. And I'm like, okay.

1:01And their parents thought they worked for the CIA.

1:03Yeah. And then he's like, and by the way, Jake, how you can invest, you

1:07can't announce it and you have to sign in and you can't mention you're an

1:10investor. It's like, okay, no problem.

1:12I'm just happy to be on the cap table.

1:13Is he like, kind of like secret saying what he wasn't supposed to say?

1:20Well, you know, you're out now.

1:22Let's go. You're out. It's out.

1:24You're, you came out of stealth today.

1:26Um, it's so funny. It's so great.

1:29You came out of stealth.

1:30Well, you talked a little bit.

1:31You came to all in summit last year.

1:32Is that fair? You'd say you're coming out of stealth today.

1:35Is that right? Well, look, let's just start with what that meant for our employees.

1:38Because again, imagine if you're at a multi -thousand person company and every single employee

1:46has stealth on their LinkedIn, including salespeople.

1:52Okay. Including recruiters. Like it was, they, they were, they were living life on hard

1:59mode. That's kind of fun too.

2:01Right. I mean, I mean, yeah, it was like, what the, what's good, what is

2:04this? Why are there, why is this massive density of stealth?

2:08Right. Startup people in Los Angeles?

2:12What is happening over there?

2:13Yeah. Yeah. Also, technically the name of the company in different countries was very generic

2:20names of companies. I mean, everything was designed to be stealth, right?

2:25So we operate in 30 countries in the U S the kitchens product is known

2:33as cloud kitchens in Korea.

2:37It's kitchen Valley in the middle East.

2:41It's Namah in Latin America, parts of Latin America.

2:48It's casinos aqueltas. I mean, you get the idea.

2:51You can't even remember all the names and all the code words about it.

2:54Yeah. Think it through. Um, but we have four in China, you know, it's like

2:58all over the place. Yeah.

2:59But things have gone really well and you've been a little acquisitive.

3:02So tell us about the branding today that you're announcing.

3:06And then maybe some of the acquisitions and evolution of the company.

3:10You're not just renting kitchen space.

3:12Those who, I mean, know how I thought about things in the Uber day.

3:17A lot of this stuff's not surprising.

3:19I would often talk about digitizing the physical world.

3:21I think I even did it all at summit the quick version of this.

3:25I'll try to do it quickly, but it's like, uh, we know the bits world,

3:29the computer world, the one that Michael Dell essentially invented for us.

3:33CPU storage network. These are three core computing resources.

3:36When you go to computer science.

3:38last of your first day.

3:39Three core computer resources. CPU manipulates the bits, storage stores the bits, network moves bits

3:44from point A to point B.

3:46But if you're digitizing the physical world, you're treating atoms like bits.

3:51You're building an atoms -based computer.

3:53And I'll explain what I mean this.

3:54I know this is a little out there.

3:57CPU manipulates bits. What manipulates atoms?

3:59Manufacturing. Storage stores bits. What stores atoms?

4:03Real estate. Network moves bits from point A to point B.

4:06What moves atoms? That's transportation or logistics.

4:09So you have these three core computing resources in an atoms -based computer.

4:14The name of my company was very obtuse and purposely designed to be as boring

4:19as hell. It was called City Storage Systems.

4:22So that's digitized real estate in an atoms -based computer.

4:28Our first computer being a food computer.

4:30What does that mean? Manufacturing real estate and logistics for food.

4:36And so you start to get there.

4:38And the idea, the mission was infrastructure for better food.

4:40The idea was, can you get a meal that's prepared and delivered to you so

4:45efficient that it starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store?

4:50If you can do that, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the

4:54car. But in the Uber day, the roads were there.

4:58The cars are unused. You just had to put an app in the app store.

5:01Wasn't that easy, but kind of that easy.

5:04In this world, you can't do this on a restaurant.

5:07Restaurant doesn't have... When I left Uber, 13 % of all San Francisco miles were

5:13Uber miles. You can't get...

5:16And that was 10, 9 years ago.

5:18You can't get there on food, on restaurants.

5:21They have like 20 % capacity.

5:25Uber Eats structure to do high capacity, high scale sort of industrial production is just

5:32not there. And the logistics just not there.

5:35It just doesn't work. That's why on e -commerce, you go through Amazon big ass

5:39warehouses with awesome logistics. You've got to do the same thing when food goes to

5:44e -commerce. That was a lot.

5:46Yeah. Okay. So bottom line is, it's awesome.

5:50We do this food computation stuff.

5:52We're doing more computers now.

5:55And so the name of the company is called Atoms.

5:58And it's... Let's say the mission is physical automation to transform industries and move the

6:07world. And so we have our food computer I talked about.

6:11Then we do... We're doing mining.

6:13Mining as in mining minerals.

6:15Not data mining. We're talking about Atoms, guys.

6:18Yeah. So, well, of course, you do some mining, data mining too.

6:21But the point is, is physical mining.

6:24So automation of mines. And the mission there is more productive mines to power Earth's

6:34industries. Right? So it's got this industrial Atoms vibe to it.

6:39And then on the transport side, it's a wheelbase for robots.

6:44Because if you're doing specialized robots, not humanoids, specialized robots, you need to be able

6:52to move and act in the physical world.

6:54But the minute you're moving, you got to have a wheelbase.

6:58So it's just part of the equation.

7:00And a lot of people go look at Tesla.

7:02That's great. Look at Waymo.

7:05Awesome. They're cruising around Austin, of course.

7:07But there's so many things that move.

7:10It's not just a ride sharing thing.

7:13And so obviously, including mining equipment, it's doing its thing.

7:17So you guys, that's the general sort of idea.

7:20And we acquired a company on the mining stuff, a company called Pronto, or it's

7:26about to close. It's where we're inches from closing is the way to put it.

7:30What were they doing? What was their business?

7:32Pronto? Automating mining equipment. Were they based?

7:35They're based in San Francisco.

7:36So you and I were starting to talk about this backstage, but there's some folks

7:39I talked to in the mining industry who mentioned, you know, like the big issue

7:43with mining, number one is just surveying, like finding the locations, right?

7:48Is there an advantage to be created there?

7:50Because I know there's a couple of startups that are trying to be really smart

7:52about selecting locations to get the targets out of the ground.

7:55And then the other one is like, well, can you go deep?

7:58Because pretty much anywhere on earth, you can get whatever you want if you're willing

8:01to go deep enough, but the cost is distance squared, right?

8:06So the energy cost is like, how deep are you going to the second power?

8:10So it becomes, you know, geometrically more expensive to go deeper, but the deeper you

8:14go, you're the more you're able to kind of not worry about getting the right

8:18location. So does automation unlock that capacity?

8:22I mean, automation definitely does.

8:23I mean, yeah, I mean, also, it's like, man, does boring company have some good

8:28stuff going? Like, I hope we were like, we're doing the mining thing, like, and

8:33boring goes, makes, you know, some good tunnels for, for cars to do the thing.

8:38But like, there's some kind of boring mechanism, automated tunneling to do some of this.

8:44But to be honest, there's, there's, you know, they have this, this thing is like

8:47rare earths. I don't know why they put plural rare earths, isn't it?

8:51Rares earth. I don't know.

8:53But the, but rare, rare, rare, rare earth.

8:59Yeah. But it's not rare.

9:01It's uncommon. It's not rare.

9:03It's what you have to do.

9:04The land is aggressive. And what's rare is the, is, is where the, where are

9:10the places they'll let you do it that you can also sort of get people

9:13to when you automate, you can go to a lot of places.

9:19Well, first is all the mines that exist are way more productive.

9:23And the second is you can then sort of justify going to places you wouldn't

9:28have been able to go before because you don't have as much of a labor

9:32footprint or a safety issue or a whole bunch of other things that then.

9:35So if it's inhospitable, if it's regulated, if it's like, I don't want to live

9:40there, it's the end of the earth.

9:42Yeah. You can send robots and have people monitoring them remotely.

9:47Yeah. And yeah, this is like a future that feels like a little bit like

9:53science fiction. Look, we're here in Austin.

9:55You got to do the shout out to Tesla and all the things, because I

9:59like to sort of break down the physical AI stack includes not just like, oh

10:05yeah, computation. And I've got to have physical AI models and I got to do

10:09all the things you sort of think of.

10:11What about land development that should be in that stack?

10:15What about chemistry that needs to be in the stack?

10:18Manufacturing needs to be a stack.

10:19When you look at the stack, you're like, damn, Tesla's got this.

10:23They are, they are the Google of this era, which is what I mean by

10:28that is in the two thousands.

10:30If you were doing a startup in the two thousands, the first question you would

10:33get is, uh, why isn't, why isn't Google going to kill you?

10:37Or why isn't Google just going to do it?

10:40Then I didn't know that they killed you.

10:42And before that, Microsoft. And before that was Microsoft in the late nineties, Uber had

10:46a time 2010. Yeah. What if Uber puts that in the app?

10:48Come on. It was like, dude, this is Uber.

10:50I'm like, yeah, but you know, I think in the physical AI space, that's a,

10:54that's sort of a Tesla.

10:55thing but there's so many things to do you got to shoot your shot I

11:00got to do some stuff and rumors that hey you might not be done with

11:04self -driving something that you were very early on how do you think about what

11:09you're seeing in the playing field of self -driving because my lord you know waymo's

11:14making great progress Tesla's making great a winner like pick a winner between Tesla Tesla

11:19Waymo Uber or like it might even be the collection seems to be building a

11:24network of stuff yeah I mean the number of pick a winner the number of

11:28players in this space is crazy now right yeah look there's I think there's more

11:33noise if there's more bark than there is bite right now look I think Waymo

11:39obviously is ahead the existence proof is there their issue is manufacturing and scale and

11:47urgency and fierceness like yes come on let's win let's go yeah you know Uber

11:54had an autonomy project back in the day so and they have a different strategy

11:58these days I haven't been there for a while so but the but the point

12:01is is that you so you got Waymo then you've got Tesla fundamentals science hard

12:10mode times a hundred and the question is do they get there in what time

12:17scale if if they didn't like honestly everybody's like could happen tomorrow could happen in

12:22five years and I think that it's like when does the chat GPT moment happen

12:29for vision is basically the thing let's call it vision without other sensors so super

12:34inspiring but like what's the timeline on it yeah those are the base this is

12:39basically the and then there's a lot of other little guys that don't really have

12:43the stuff I believe yet there's nobody standing out just yet of of the others

12:49do you think we're at a point now like obviously now that you're getting into

12:54more of these kind of autonomous systems that move around like do we have these

12:59vision language action models tuned and ready for prime time there's there's been a conversation

13:04like who's gonna have the Android the operating system for vision language action where I

13:10can use my voice tell it to do something and it knows what I'm saying

13:13and then it identifies the objects and does the thing in the physical world do

13:17those models exist today or there's still work and is that like a Google OS

13:22or like where does that OS come from look I think there's a there this

13:25is an area of a lot of energy a mix of research and implementation I

13:30think there's a lot of hope and interesting stuff I mean the high level is

13:34we all remember what happened when you use chat GPT 3 .5 and you're like

13:39holy yeah it's legit whoa and then it went to four and you're like okay

13:45like some stuff just changed the world just changed and I can sort of connect

13:49some dots and getting real is it about to happen is it about to happen

13:57for physical AI and that's what this is about yeah and the fun part about

14:01it is machine learning deep learning this kind of thing for many years decades was

14:06like inscrutable I don't know what the thing is thinking it just spits out an

14:09answer and I know it's correct well now you can have a conversation with it

14:12right like imagine if it's driving your car and there's different agents and one's just

14:20driving the others like yo look out over there yeah it's like oh just like

14:24how we roll it was like somebody does that you're like you're like honey that's

14:29like 200 meters away we're gonna be okay yeah Ethan and I don't call each

14:34other honey, but I got you.

14:36Like, sweetie. You know. Yeah.

14:39Okay. So, anyways, that was odd, wasn't it?

14:41Yeah, that was strange. Okay.

14:42Okay. I didn't mean it that way.

14:44It always does. I didn't mean it.

14:45Yeah. Yeah, you know, I meant it.

14:47Okay. Language is a beautiful compression mechanism that humans use 100 watts of energy.

14:57Like, and you put that in a scheme of things of, like, AI training, AI

15:02energy, the power plants that are built to do the thing that isn't even at

15:06human strength yet. Okay. The Waymo machine takes 100 times more energy to drive a

15:15Waymo than a human does to drive a Waymo.

15:21So, language, there are still things that humans are great at.

15:24And that unbeaten, like, the GOAT.

15:27We're still the GOAT at certain things.

15:29Language is this epic compression.

15:32And we need to find ways to compress.

15:34Because, like, when you think about how we first started looking at the physical world

15:38is we saw everything. And you know what, guys?

15:41And this is sort of obvious.

15:42Like, it doesn't matter what the cloud is doing if I'm driving.

15:47But, like, the car doesn't know that.

15:49It's pulling in every freaking data point and processing everything.

15:53And it's, you know, look, they've been about sort of carving out the things that

15:56don't matter and things like this.

15:58But there's ultra awesome versions of this.

16:00And you can imagine how you can use language or things that look like language

16:04to communicate either amongst agents or sort of safety systems with a driving system to

16:10sort of get very efficient answers and to identify safety issues very efficiently.

16:17People don't know that you've moved to Texas as of, well, most people don't know.

16:23But it's out there. Yeah.

16:25You moved here in December.

16:26So now you're a resident of Austin.

16:29Yeah. Thank you. It's very exciting for me.

16:34We've been getting to play some backgammon.

16:35Backgammon cards. Cards. We're having a good job.

16:38So I've had a place on Lake Austin since 2021.

16:44And I go there. I'm an avid water skier.

16:47Like you're impressive at water skiing.

16:50I have to say like, so I've had a place in Austin for five years.

16:55Frickin love it. It's my weekend.

16:56I would go 15 weekends a year.

16:58What do you think is going to happen in California?

17:00It's pretty messed up. Look, I, I grew up in Cali.

17:03Like I grew up in Los Angeles.

17:06My parents were born and bred in Los Angeles, which basically makes them the founders

17:10of LA. Okay. But, um, so I have a lot of heart, like my whole

17:16family, everything, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty, it's, I don't want to, a lot

17:21of us feel that way.

17:22I don't want to get the violin out, but it just, but it's heartbreaking.

17:25The plate, it totally, it's just a place you grew up as your home, you

17:28know, when you have to leave.

17:30Uh, but it's getting weird out there and, uh, it feels like it's getting weirder.

17:38And at some point that's, it's just too weird.

17:41It's too weird. Do you think everyone's going to leave?

17:44I mean, it started with Elon and it was like, we don't, we don't want

17:48Elon here. And then he's like message received.

17:50It's like cool. Right. And then it kind of worked its way down the tech

17:53industry and in the kind of, you know, world of people building businesses and whatnot.

17:59And now it's kind of gotten so broad in terms of the group of people.

18:04Joe Rogan, comedy, music, New Yorkers, restaurateurs.

18:08I mean, this place is, I'm not even talking about this.

18:11I'm just talking about everyone.

18:12leaving la or sorry leaving california is almost like working down this path of look

18:19my the rest of my team's like we're when are we moving you know they're

18:23like and how are you dealing with that so that was the question was like

18:26gotta buy homes on the lake there are literally dozens of startup ceos of call

18:31it successful or growing companies that i talked to who are like dude i want

18:36to leave but i got employees here i got an office here i got a

18:39facility here i build stuff here yeah how am i gonna leave yeah i totally

18:42get it it's a real thing so look i think like most things uh sort

18:49of when it's time and it feels painful to do something sometimes it's actually not

18:55as bad as you think and you just got to make the move and lead

18:58and do it um and so uh that's kind of what that's kind of the

19:04process almost like a morning process i went through and that's just what it is

19:08and you're setting up a team here yeah of course uh and i got that

19:12office right on the lake did you get that uh it's the one we are

19:18negotiating no it's all good no no it's all good we're negotiating right now okay

19:21but i'm gonna jet ski to work no literally we are is it true story

19:26last year we're like driving up the thing and i was like wow i wonder

19:30who owns that he's like i will and i was like did you look at

19:34he's like i looked at that and i was like that's a that would be

19:37a nice one but the truth is you know and i had a couple people

19:41move here a couple years ago and they all had the same reaction oh my

19:45god i'm living in a place that's twice as big for half as much the

19:49people here are dope the food is dope everybody here has got this sense that

19:54we're building the future and it's just fun and world positive and you know for

19:59me i got to live new york la san francisco i did three of the

20:02great cities in this country this one feels the most like home to me which

20:07is a very strange feeling to me but it feels like everybody here wants to

20:10build the future and it's very diverse you know like all these different industries and

20:16people pursuing stuff i think this is the future yeah here's the thing like you

20:19go to san francisco and i still have a little nostalgia when i go to

20:23san francisco just having built uber there and the whole thing um i still get

20:28the you know the butterflies just i did you know but it does have something

20:32magical you just can't take it away and then you look at all of these

20:37bike lanes and these bus lanes that never have a bus or a bike in

20:41them and cost 400 million dollars to build one mile and it's literally it's sort

20:47of like this subconscious desire to choke the city off now remember i look at

20:53things through roads that's how i think so i'm just like obviously the city is

20:58totally busted yeah they literally took market street and they're like what would be the

21:04optimal way to this up and virtue signal at the same time and they're like

21:08yeah buses and it's like nobody's on the bus nobody takes the bus it's a

21:14beautiful small town that whole street is empty that whole street is empty and it's

21:18painted red okay so okay so we all bitch and complain non -stop okay when

21:23are you like honestly this is like yeah i'm number one i get it but

21:26freeberg when are you leaving okay well on the chat you're the best by the

21:29way i'm like okay so let me just say there's a couple glasses of wine

21:32in public facing friedberg yeah and he's like you know i think there's a better

21:37way to do this and then there's like darth friedberg in group chat he's like

21:41these people these morons they're they're destroying society he is like darth friedberg in group

21:48chat am i lying am i lying is he the most correct especially after a

21:55couple glasses of wine yeah when i start drinking i fall off a cliff he

21:58takes pictures he's like fourth beverage and we're like oh it's worth staying up on

22:03the group chat yeah and then i'm like i'll go and attack this congressman on

22:06twitter which yes delete the tweet yeah don't delete the tweet yeah i delete the

22:12tweets okay so there's a group of people trying to raise 500 million dollars to

22:17create like a tech slash business coalition to go to sacramento which arguably is something

22:23that everyone's left and avoided doing forever because no one wants to spend time in

22:28freaking sacramento fighting politicians but it's almost like we're all falling off a cliff it's

22:33time to do something do you think there's a realistic path pack do you think

22:36that people can actually get their shit together that even if 500 million came in

22:40there's a way to kind of turn around the state fix some of the policies

22:43you think it's too late i don't think that but look i would go i

22:46look anybody who's doing anything to fix things i'm like hell yeah let's do something

22:51the issue is we all grew up in the tech world which was like a

22:56libertarian place where you stay out of politics and that you felt it was that

23:02kind of vibe it was just everybody was like that leave me alone i want

23:05to make stuff yeah i just i'm not i don't do that and that's obviously

23:09there's not a thing anymore in california i think the the ballot initiatives are very

23:15powerful and there's very clean ways to get something on the ballot love that i

23:20think that your da's who have decided we do not enforce crime at all anymore

23:26that's like a sweet spot like i believe that i sort of have this aphorism

23:32is truth and justice are the immune system for society when when the immune system

23:41is suppressed all the social ills flare up so look for the places where truth

23:49and justice are being deteriorated are being degraded and say how do we get at

23:54that because if you get at that everything else downstream will be better so that's

24:01kind of how i look at things and how i also determine whether the world's

24:05getting better or worse when i say weird i'm talking about truth and justice that's

24:10what i mean when i say oh man it's getting weird it's getting weirder which

24:13means it's weird i'm just talking about truth and justice well i mean and you

24:17look at the homeless industrial complex you look at chesa boudin which the all in

24:21pod sacks myself and the pod like we we literally led the recall of him

24:26and then you have the same thing going on in la where they were just

24:29like if somebody gascon yeah gascon i mean we basically lost the script you're running

24:35the city for the criminals it literally is like a batman movie it's like bane

24:39i mean here you want to arrest the criminals look i was born in the

24:46darkness i mean these guys are lunatics yeah look i i know police officers in

24:51los angeles who are no longer police officers and these are lifelong guys who protect

24:57and serve that's in their bloods or dna they want to protect people they want

25:01the bad guys to be dealt with and they they almost have ptsd from what

25:09it is like to want to serve and see bad things happening and not being

25:14allowed to stop it yeah nobody's got their back and they're not allowed to do

25:17their job it's it's crazy and i it's getting weird okay hey i want to

25:21just go back to ai sorry for the darkness i don't know i think it's

25:24good i was trying to induce i'm trying to induce dark free work well i

25:29brought it up yes i mean someone bring me a tequila i'll get going yeah

25:33let's do it can we get a couple to kill it was funny i went

25:35on this podcast yesterday and the guy and the first the guy was like the

25:38first hour was middle of the road i was talking about tech and science and

25:41then like politics came up he's like so socialism and he said like you lost

25:44it and then you were like he's like the energy with 10x and who is

25:47this yeah so it'll come out in a couple weeks but i was like it

25:51got me going okay i want to talk about physically i one more time yeah

25:54so one of now that now that you're doing this i saw a presentation the

25:57other day someone showed like a video of a squirrel jumping from one tree to

26:01another tree and they're like a tenth of a watt or something yeah like like

26:05the biology is tuned and it's so perfect in terms of its efficiency of energy

26:11utilization to do physical things and we're taking these like big things of metal and

26:16motors and like actuators and if you add up or you compound all of the

26:20inefficiencies in the system it's like 1200 watts to get the robot to walk four

26:26foot like yeah like break apart not just the software but the hardware layer and

26:32where are we at in evolving things like actuators and the materials and everything else

26:38that's going to make physical ai work and scale look a lot with the questions

26:43you're asking are going down humanoid lane which is like this thing and and everybody

26:49talks about how do you do the hand it's almost like terminator 2 type obsession

26:53with the hand which is fair like it's a very critical part of it i

26:57mean look at the i like to look at the achilles the quote -unquote achilles

27:00tendon of any of these machines and you're like that's where the action is this

27:04this is a couple other places um look i'm in the non -humanoid space i

27:12mean but mechanical engineers have been dealing with actuators and you know all the sort

27:18of electromechanical sort of interactions that make machines do certain things but like i'm in

27:23the food machine space so i can tell you how to open a paper bag

27:28and put a put a bowl in a paper bag without tearing the paper bag

27:34but i am less into the i forget the name perio they're they're the the

27:41senses to understand awareness and touch um i'm not in that game um so when

27:49you're mining you're like you're not like you know you know you're not threatening and

27:54you're not playing tennis um certain things may be equivalent to tennis so look the

28:00bottom line is we're seeing obviously all you have to do is go online and

28:03look at where the humanoids are going over time and how much better they're getting

28:08um it's wild and it's happening so freaking fast but any humanoid demo starts with

28:17dancing and martial arts yeah and we're sort of down specialized robot lane which is

28:26gainfully employed robots yeah so i know i didn't totally answer the question on like

28:31the technology piece but i just like do you agree that there's probably like a

28:35big opportunity for venture money and like research to go into material science actually yes

28:40yeah for sure because if the physical ai stack manipulation and all of the related

28:47things around it yeah is massive and so if you get the software working it's

28:52almost like the hardware has to catch up yeah we got a lot of investment

28:56there's a lot i do actually it's good that you bring this up you you

29:00know one of the things you pioneered um at uber was um capital as a

29:05weapon and you were very you know one of the things you know one of

29:07the things you know one of the things you know one of the things you