AI Powered One Billion Dollar Company

We have some huge news. Uh this is from the OpenAI blog. OpenAI acquires TBPN accelerating the global conversation about AI. This is not an April Fool's joke. April Fool's was yesterday. We didn't do anything for April Fool's Day. This is real. This is a very interesting deal. I think a lot of people will be interested in this. We're very excited about this. We have a bunch of context and information to share about how this ch anges things, what changes, what doesn't. I'm sure there's a million questions. We're trying we're gonna try and get to them all. But then we also have a huge normal show because the first thing is not changing. TV PN's not going away. We're gonna be live every day, three hours, as long as we want. Uh, we have a lot of flexibility, we're gonna do a lot of interesting things. Uh if you are calling me right now, I can't pick up because I'm live. And I think you know it might be time to turn off the phone. I think yes, it might be time to turn off the phones. Yeah, very, very strange. I think this is maybe the first time in history there's been a deal like this, and then uh two people that are a part of it have to go and talk for three hours straight. But uh it's technology business as usual over here. Uh we're very excited about the Artemis two mission going successfully. Hopefully you all watched it. It was a lot of fun. We were watching it here on the uh on the screen and we were gripped as the rocket took off because uh, yeah, we were we were so locked in, we were we were joking around that it should have it felt like it should have been a pay per view. Yeah, like could we turn space into a profit center for the government? Somebody was saying that it was not entertaining. I was extremely entertained. I don't know. Yeah, maybe they may maybe they could do more, but I think it's NASA has a decent e-commerce business too. We were watching, they were selling like ten thousand patches a minute or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we were we were doing the back of the envelope just from the main call to action at the bottom of the YouTube stream. They were selling a patch for, I don't know, tens of dollars, and they'd sold like hundreds of thousands of them. So as we were watching, they were selling like something like $10 million worth of merch. So maybe go get some for yourself. Anyway, let's go over to Fiji Simo's post on the OpenAI blog. She shared this message with the company earlier today. She says, I'm excited to share that we've acquired TBPN. This acquisition brings a team with strong editorial instincts, deep audience understanding, and proven ability to convene influential voices across tech, business, and culture. That's I'm still gonna be hitting the soundboard. Yeah . Yeah, you are. TBPM has built something pretty special A lot of you already watch it and rely on it to stay close to what's going on. As I've been thinking about the future of how we communicate in open AI, one thing that's become clear is that the standard communications playbook just doesn't apply to us. We're not a typical company. We're driving a really big technology technological shift, and the mission of bringing uh and with the mission of bringing AGI to the world comes a responsibility to help create a space for real, constructive conversation about the changes AI creates with builders and people using the technology at the center. And that's exactly what TBPN has built, which is what I was gonna say. This is the next line. Um that is a huge part of the show is making sense of what's going on, how these tools are actually being used, all of the implications we've gone all over the place, and we will continue to go all over the place . Yeah, and over the last over the last year, like you know, multiple years, there's just been so m there's so much uncertainty about AI. Yeah. I don't think we can change that. Yeah. Uh but there's also a lot of fear in just talking through it with the people that are actually helping diffuse AI through the economy across every single industry is something that we've uh enjoyed a tremendous amount and is exactly what we're going to continue to do. If you want to continue. Yeah. So she says so, rather than trying to recreate that ourselves, it made a lot of sense just to bring them in, support what they're doing, and help them scale while keeping what makes them special. A core part of this is editorial independence. We can say whatever we want because we're live and we don't need to run anything through anyone. Uh it's not possible. It would be very difficult to have somebody here. Can we say this? I'm about to say a sentence. Uh TBPN will continue to run their programming, choose their own guests, and make their own editorial decisions . That's foundational to their credibility, and it's something we're explicitly protecting as part of this agreement. And also, we were never in the scoop industry. People were kind of asking like, is this journalism, is it commentary? I think we've always been like, hey, we, you know like to talk to a lot of people, have a conversation, bring in people from the code. Yeah, and even when uh the companies have approached us and said we'll give you the exclusive, we don't have to be a show. But we actually want you to go talk to the journal or the Times or Bloomberg , wherever Bloomberg, et cetera. Yeah. Wherever you want to go. And then come and contextualize it with us and and let us dig in and understand more about the strategy. Uh and so uh TBPN will continue running their programming, choose their guests, and make their own editorial decisions. That's foundational to their credibility and something we're explicitly protecting as part of this agreement. I'm also excited to bring their amazing comms and marketing instincts to the team. We got lots of ideas and we're very excited for this. They've helped many brands market online and because they have a strong pulse on where the industry is going, their comms and marketing ideas have really impressed VGCMO, me. I can't wait to leverage their talent outside of the show to innovate on how we bring AI to the world in a way that helps people understand the full impact of this technology on their daily lives. TBPN will sit within our strategy organization. We're pointing to Chris Lahane. Really excited to welcome Jordy, John, Dylan, and the broader team. And here's a statement from you. Do you want to read just what did you say? Over the past year, we've had a front row seat not just to open AI but to the entire ecosystem covering the daily news announcements and launches in real timeile. we Wh've been critical of the industry at times after getting to know Sam, VG, and the OpenAI team, what stood out the most was their openness to feed Mac, feedback, and commitment to getting this right, uh moving from commentary to real impact and how this technology is distributed and understood globally is incredibly important to us. I contextualize it a little bit more shared. You know, a lot of people are like, is this an April Fool's joke? I've been saying expect the unexpected. This is a plot twist. I'll give you that. It was unexpected. It was unexpected to me, but I'm really happy about it. And when I reflect on my career, it's I think it makes a lot of sense. And I can walk you through some of my career and my experience with OpenAI and with Sam Altman. I've known Sam for maybe 13 years. He invested in my first company in 2013. And then we got in a really serious log jam during a financing, and I wrote him an email. I told this story in Bloomberg a couple years ago. I wrote him an email and said like, hey, like this is getting really rough. I'm a first-time founder. I don't know if we're gonna be able to get this done. Uh and he called me and we hopped on the phone for like five minutes and he was able to completely resolve everything and everyone walked out of the deal uh feeling pretty good. And so that always left this impression on me that like he was founder friendly. Obviously he didn't in in this particular case it was to my benefit, not particularly to his benefit, the way the deals the we the way the deal like wound out. And he was just a great ad uh great addition to the to the negotiation and really uh And you were very young at the time. Yeah, yeah. You were just a wee lad. I was. You were about 23, 24, or something like that, yeah. And then uh when I took my second company through YC, he was president at the time. Uh and then when I joined Founders Fund, uh the very first deal that I saw in motion at FoundersFund was the post-ChatGPT round in OpenAI in late 2022, early 2023. And so I sort of had this like front row seat to all of this, and then once we actually started growing TBPN, he was one of the first people that I texted to you know say, hey, do you want to come on the show? Uh and he was the first lab lead to come on the show. And we're excited to continue having him on the show. Hopefully have other lab leads on the show, have other people from all over the industry. And just generally, I think that when I was at Founders Fund, I was not particularly in the weeds of intra-venture capital fights. I was much more interested in the conversation around technological stagnation, not funding companies, not making great companies happen. I never was in a situation where I was like, oh, like if a different VC firm backs a great company, that's bad, you know? And I think that's the same uh philosophy that I have always taken forward and will continue to believe in, which is that the American AI industry is the most important thing, and that will continue to be the case. And I'm excited for uh all the different competition and everything that's happening in the industry uh to to continue and uh yeah push further. Um Jordy, did you have anything else to say? I just wanted to say some thank yous uh because a lot of people have been a part of this journey to date. It's been I think something like let me do the math here 4 9 6 days roughly, 16 months since we put out the first episode. Yeah. It was just the two of us and Ben sitting in a room, couple cameras, couple microphones. And I will just say I didn't know uh this special of a business relationship was possible. Yeah between you and me. Yeah. Like I think like if you look back on that almost five hundred days , we've had disagreements around strategy or approaches or things like that. But we have like almost universally stayed perfectly aligned on everything that matters every single day, every step of the way. And I think that's somewhat of a miracle given that we went into this not really knowing what it would become and Yeah, we did like one side project together and it took like eight months and it was like not it was like successful, but it was not like, oh yeah, like okay. We were we were working together daily for months, you know. Yeah. Uh it was a lot of uh just just jumping and leap of faith, right? Yeah, and I think uh we've got this question so many times, like do you guys get sick of each other, you know, you just have to talk to each other for three hours a day and like I've said this before, I'll say it again. Uh and uh it it is actually hilarious. The second that we leave the office, we're we both get in the car, we call each other, we end up talking for like another hour on the way home. And so it's just been it's been the the privilege of uh of a lifetime to just build this business with you and the whole team. Uh the team has been absolutely uh incredible. You guys are all truly amazing. Uh and this very much is a this very much is a team, like a team sport, like business is a team sport, but this is like a live team sport. We come in here every single day. And the show doesn't happen if we don't all come in um and uh and make it happen. And so the consistency of the team has been uh just incredible and watching uh everyone's uh individual talents just flourish has been uh incredible. A lot of people came into this, you know, having done uh a thing or two in the past, but learning new things. Brandon has been incr absolutely incredible. Uh just an absolute rock in the organiz ation. Uh Brandon, if if you're not familiar, writes writes our newsletter every day and is just remarkably uh consistent and uh has like you know helped us shape uh our editorial approach and it's been incredible. Dylan uh who joined us uh I guess technically Q4 of last year. Uh you know, I'd worked uh with him at my last company, but uh is truly, truly one of a kind, remarkable. I never want to I never want to do business without him. Um and uh he has just done such an exceptional job working off air. It's like you, know, challenging when you're building a company and you're also having to put on a live performance for three hours every day. So that's true. Ben Ben who's been here uh since since before TV PN. He was working with me on my YouTube channel. What when did we start working new? I was here before Jordy. Yeah. Maybe like uh wait mid-2024, maybe somet,hing like that. That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We we traveled a lot a lot of pelvic cases. No, but it's been it's been absolutely incredible to watch you grow uh from from an an in uh extremely talented individual and two uh very capable uh and talented manager and and building out a team of people that are so hardworking and wonderful and uh you know Michael, Scott, Jackson , you guys uh you know are so uh you know such a joy to to work with even though what we do is uh is not easy and it's changing, you know, day to day. Um to all the guests. Seriously, it's been it's been so much fun. Like uh if you went back and rewound to the beginning of of the show to to we did we started with no guests. We did something like 50 episodes without any guess. Uh we thought that uh there was a time that we thought we would just do that forever. Because that was the only thing that was you know really unique about the show. I wasn't thinking of it as like a media business. I was thinking of it as like a way to just have conversations and meet other people who are building companies. And now we get to do that all day long, which is just a dream come true. Yeah. So so many, so many guests have turned into to dear friends. Yeah. You know, the the Joe Weisenthals, the the Dylan Patels. And I can't wait. Uh to everybody that's tuned in, whether you've watched you know the, RSS feed, uh the live show, uh, the clips, the newsletter, laughing hard. Um you know, we've strive to to create the right product regardless of how much time you have. If you have two minutes a day to read the newsletter, great. If you've got five minutes to watch some clips, if you want to watch the entire podcast, if you want to watch Diet T B P N the Daily Cut Down, thank you. Thank you for tuning in. Uh and uh fortunately pretty much everything is gonna stay exactly the same. Uh to our to our one and only Tyler. Uh Tyler , uh you are truly trul,y incredible, one of the the brightest uh young people I've ever I've ever worked with and uh you have such a bright future. You know, we always we always uh we always knew that uh I I I've felt from the very beginning that you would go on to start your own company. Uh, and we cherish every single minute that we have with you. Uh, and uh we're gonna do our very best to retain you for decades, but uh thank you for everything you've brought to the show, everything you've built, Tyler. Uh if if you're just tuning in now has built uh all the internal software that we r we use to run the show. It's insane stuff. It is a you know fully custom you know content management system CRM. It helps us edit all of our videos, it is the backbone of the show. It's a it's a tool that the entire team uh uses on a daily basis and truly the show would not be possible without it. Um and uh uh yeah your your contributions on air as well it's uh it's so much fun uh to be able to cut over cut over to you. Uh and so it is with great honor that I give you this soundboard. And uh our sponsors. Yeah. We can start with uh with the ramp team, Eric, uh Eric Kareem and uh the whole uh uh uh the whole team over there has just been incredible. They allowed us, you know, at the at the beginning, sorry, the end of 2024, when we had started doing the show, we really loved it. They were they committed to sponsoring the show for a year and that allowed us to do um to do so much uh in terms of investing in all in all the equipment that we use, hiring people, um they they made it possible and have been uh truly, truly exceptional partners and and you know watching ramps growth over the last yeah. Uh over the last couple of years has just been uh phenomenal and they deserve all the all the success. Um and every other sponsor that is that has been a part of this. Yeah. Um shout out Nick as well. Oh, did he not get one? The the lineup every day is uh is crafted by Nick. He is our liaison to ninety-nine percent of the guests that come on the show. Sometimes it starts with an interaction over X or uh a text message or uh there's other intermediaries involved. There's a lot that goes into actually getting someone into the waiting room, into the show, making sure that they understand how the show will work. It's sort of like, you know, you're hot dropping into this live show. That's new for a lot of people and Nick does a great job uh communicating and and parsing all the noise to understand uh what the best news of the day is how we can contextualize it best with the with the optimal guests and uh he's done a fantastic job. And we'll continue. It's an honor. David Senra. Yeah. One of a kind. He literally charger. Yeah, David was our very uh first listener that I 'm aware of. Yeah. He gets sent a lot of uh Google Drive. And uh he listened and uh from that first episode uh even though it was very scrappy, he said, take this, uh take this you know a hundred times more seriously than uh than you than you are right now and we did and it's it's the best advice that I've ever gotten and he has been And we have a picture of him here we couldn't print it full size. And it appears that it was printed on a black and white photo printer, but it's a black and white photo and he's a black and white brand. So uh thank you to David Senera, who's been uh the podcast godfather, truly. And the gong. But the the gong the gong. The chat is asking us to hit the gong. We have to we have to oblige . The gong will remain. The gong will remain. Uh Wilman itas has already chimed in with his take. He says many guy, many people are saying we're in the deal guy Yuga, many are saying, and it means a lot that Wilmanitas the only he is the only guest who has uh co-hosted a full show from start to finish with us. And if you want to go back in the archives, you can uh you can watch that episode. It's a wild one. It was in a hotel room. We had yet to figure out the remote shows fully. Uh the team worked really hard to make that one happen and uh good time. Very chaotic. Uh is there anything else to say about open AI? I mean of of course we'll be in conversation with you uh forever, you know. Uh the anytime on the show, you're welcome to leave a comment or chat in the uh the chat is asking where is Will Manitas right now? I don't know. Probably uh sailing a boat. I don't know. Yeah. And uh yeah, it's it's an it's an honor. Yeah uh to to partner with OpenAI and and every single person on the team that we've had the pleasure of meeting, we've been uh impressed by. They are uh ridiculously talented and uh every single person is committed to getting getting this AI thing right. So uh we're incredibly excited. Great. Well let's move on to the Artemis II uh pictures and images and news. Uh very, very exciting. It made the front of the Wall Street Journal. NASA aims to orbit Moon for first uh for first time since 7 2 to boldly go. The crew of NASA. Chad is asking, is that three Diet Cokes? Yes. I got to go. gotta You you gotta thank you gotta thank Diet Coach. Thank you to the Coca-Cola Corporation for making this possible. Thank you to the uh the human team for the for the Mataina, Yurba Mate's, the podcast in a can. Yes. Uh wouldn't be possible without you guys. And thank you to tailors and suit makers. There's a lot of people that make this possible. The horse, the prop department, there's a million things here. So uh the crew of NASA Ar temis II uh head to Cape Canaveral launch Wednesda uh launchpad Wednesday for the first human spaceflight to the moon in half a century. Uh John Krause hosted an uh incredible photo. Is he is he someone who actually yeah he he he uh special comms assistant special comms assistant he actually goes to the launches and brings special photography gear to get the best possible photos and man he, did he deliver with this one. Uh what an incredible moment. We talked about it a little bit. Um uh there's an article on the watches of NASA Artemis 2. John, we have to thank our lovely wives. Of course. How could we not? Our families. Did you get a text? Maybe . business but they have been uh they are the back they are the the truly the backbones of the show and have put up with um a lot of travel nights a lot of hours uh early mornings yeah a lot of early mornings. I think out of the last out of every single day that we've done the show, I haven't I've I've left the house past uh six a.m. maybe twice, right? Uh it's been it's been a long uh it's been a long road. And and the good news, ladies, is it's uh nothing's gonna change. So uh no. Uh thank you to both of you for uh supporting us and uh allowing us to to do what we do. Can we pull up this picture, Ben, of the in the production chat of the first episode that we recorded in the Jonathan Club in downtown? Uh showing a lot earlier. Oh you did, yeah. Behind the scenes. This is uh yeah, such a such a wild time. Remember that? Yeah, remember that Jordan suitless. Suitless We had the flag. Yeah. But no suits. It looked, it looked it looked pretty good on camera. I was I was happy with the way it came out. But uh yesterday the long-waaited Artemis II mission took to the stars en route to the moon for the first such manned mission since 1972. The chat asked for a flashbang. Yes . The flashbang has been a highlight for sure. Yeah, the sound the soundboard. It's truly it's truly a character on the show. And I have some too now. Its members all had Omega Speedmaster X33 models strapped to their flight suits. Danny Milton just wrote a full article on the site now detailing But there are countless others that have cemented their place in the cosmos. So we can pull up this video now of uh the astronauts uh working on what looks like some type of tablet. Uh so here he is uh typing in most secure password known to man. What is that, 9393 or something? 3933. 3939. Powerful. Powerful. We're going back to the moon. Apparently that video we played yesterday was a little bit of fake news. And says, we're going to the F and Moon. He was he the the real line, I believe, in the community note is that he says we're going to the frickin'. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it had been altered to add the actual F-word. But the sentiment is still the same. It's very exciting, very inspirational. Jared Isaacman on launch day says, oh, this kid is dead That's great. Very cool. There is some there are some wrinkles with the launch. Fortunately, nothing like disastrous or catastrophic or anything, but uh the good news is that we're on our way back to the moon. The bad news is that We're just getting started, he said, when addressing that and some other glitches with the space cla spacecraft. The spirit of Apollo ten lives on. They said one thirty-five. They told us that here's another uh well uh it seems like this is not the first time that this has happened. Um, but we're hoping for the best here. Sounds like there were some other issues with Outlook as well. Uh we can pull up this video from Tom Warren. Yeah, go for it. And then I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working. If you want to remote it and check your those out of the two, like web and desktop? Or you think it's like two separate desktop installations? Join in on your PCD and we'll let you know when we're done. Honestly, this is the best possible failure scenario is Outlook and not the rocket itself. Can they vibe? I think it's a good outcome. There were so many amazing images coming out yesterday. Yeah. Uh Peyton Alexander says this is the real reward for Artemis. This is who we are actually doing this for. They will grow up knowing they can one day work in their country's bases on the moon and Mar s. We are not just abstractly hoping for a better world for them. We are going there. Uh and uh two kids here watching the launch from Orlando. Uh just beautiful. Yeah, my five year old said it was boring, which is not what you want to hear, but we'll have to give some more context to him about how big of a deal it is. He was like, yeah, I don't know, maybe maybe he wants more more flashing lights on the screen. riving uh for the actual launch. Yeah. And it was so funny listening to the audio feed and sitting in traffic and just looking out at everyone. Yeah. And and re and realizing that it felt like the majority of the world still wasn't paying attention or or uh or didn't care. Yeah. I mean like rockets do launch like every day now. I know. SpaceX has normalized it to such a degree. Isn't there isn't there some sort of subplot on the Apollo missions that by the by the th ird or fourth Apollo mission there was no uh like the the actual viewership had dropped off and like the American population had gotten to the first one. Two point six has put subway surfers on it. Yeah. On the NASA feed. Crazy that you actually need to may maybe need to do this. How AI helped one man and his brother build a 1.8 billion dollar company. Who needs more than two employees that when artificial intelligence can do so many corporate tasks, it's super efficient and a little bit lonely. So Aaron Griffith tells the story of Matthew Gallagher, who took just two months, twenty thousand dollars, and a more than a dozen artificial intelligence tools, to get his startup off the ground. From his house in Los Angeles, Mr. Gallagher 41 used AI to write the code for the software that powers his company, produce the website copy, generate the images and videos for ads and handle customer service. He created AI systems to analyze his business's performance and he outsourced the other stuff he couldn't do himself. His startup, Med V, a telehealth provider of GLP 1 weight loss drugs, got 300 customers in its first month. In its second month, it gained more than 1,000 more. In twenty twenty five, MedVee's first year in business, the company generated four or the first full year in business. Uh the company generated four hundred and one million dollars in sales. Mr. Gallagher then hired his only This is absolutely insane because I sp as GLP ones were starting to take off, I had I I remember distinctly talking with somebody that was like, I want to start a telehealth company for GLP ones. Yep. And at that time, I was like, okay, there's a lot of telehealth companies that are at scale. Yep. They're all gonna be they're well aware of this. Yeah, they will immediately introduce this product and other you know similar products to their customer base, and it's gonna be uh incredibly difficult to be uh to be competitive. And it turns out there 's just such overwhelming demand for these products that you could come in as a new company and scale. Like one year in maybe he hires his only employee, his younger brother Elliot, this year they're on track to do $1.8 billion in sales. A $1.8 billion company with just two employees in the age of AI, it's increasingly possible, says Aaron Griffith in the New York Times. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI uh predicted the rise of a new breed of super efficient company in 2024. A one-person business worth one billion dollars would have been unimaginable without AI, he said on a podcast, and now it will happen . Uh now as AI tools spread, entrepreneurs are harnessing the technology to expand their startups to an enormous scale at breathtaking speed with very few human humans. Big companies, uh, especially in tech are getting in on the disruption. T towoo, Pinterest, block and others have cut thousands of workers in recent months. Siting efficiencies enabled by AI. Does this count yet though? Like I feel like to be the one person one billion dollar company, you've got to be able to block you gotta be able to log into your payroll tool and you're the only person there. Oh, so take a walk. The startup which is not raised outside funding also has no official valuation, but many highly valued tech companies can only dream of hitting one billion in revenue Is this a wrapper company? It's all it's like a GLP1 wrapper. But it's AI enabled, but it's not wrapping the AI foundation model. It's like using the tool to wrap another industry and just create the efficiency between the manufacturer and the actual distribution. It really is remarkable that they were able to hoover up so much revenue in such a competitive space. Because you would you would assume that that the other telehealth providers would have significant ad operations and that the margins on customer acquisition would be very, very tricky to crack, but he must have found some unique insight into how to distribute the product, get actual people to the website, because like the the the the AI certainly can build the website and write the copy, but it not it it can't necessarily get people to show up and actually uh put down their hard earned cash for the product. Uh I texted my dad the news he said congratulations.'s That so exciting. Thanks for letting me know. Talk to you soon. Have a great day. So thank you. Thank you, Dad. Oh, it's amazing. Well, if you've texted me or you've called me in the last three hours, there's a good chance that I might respond to you in the next couple hours. Leave us five stars in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribe to our newsletter, TBP .com. Everything is the same. We' seell you on Monday. Next week five shows, fifteen hours. Let's be honest. It'll probably be more like seventeen or eighteen or nineteen. We'll see. Who knows? The world is our oyster. And thank you for being with us along the journey. We appreciate it. Let's get one more gong hit, John. One more gong hit. And we will say It's been an honor. A gong hit . Flashbang. Flashback. Goodbye, everyone. See you soon. We'll see you tomorrow.