John Coogan

LinkedIn finds out about tech news a week after we all talk about it on 𝕏. If our plan works, we could shorten that to as little as 5 days.

we talked about predicting rotten tomatoes scores, susquehanna, how awesome Notion is, foreign elections, cargo ships and so much more. always so fun chatting with @johncoogan and @jordihays!

bernt is genuinely such a special guy its sick how hes 100% going to go down as one of the great inventors of our time lol

OpenAI's @thsottiaux explains what they look for when choosing who gets early access to new models: "When we give access to folks outside of OpenAI, [we look for someone with] high-bandwidth engagement, good feedback, and someone who's shown to be unbiased in the past. Someone who has talked honestly about all sorts of model harnesses."

.@eric_seufert of Mobile Dev Demo absolutely goes off on Meta for getting into prediction markets: "It's just a totally misdirected move. Is that really the space you want to go into right now? [A space] that is so politically fraught, that is such a political hot potato. Why do you even want to touch that? I would steer clear of that." "I really have no idea why they're even talking about that. It doesn't make any sense. They said they're going to publish a lot more apps. They've got the new Pocket app. Maybe some of this stuff sticks. But why would you touch the most politically toxic area right now when you could just be touching anything else?"

Inventory planning = solved. @Seanfrank, CEO of Ridge, says AI has basically automated the demand forecasting, factory coordination, shipping timelines, and Excel work that used to require huge teams and bankrupt companies who got it wrong.

Cult Holdings Co-Founder @willhmayer, who led the Rick Rubin-Polymarket ad, shares the five core tenets of how to build a brand with a cult following: "First is doctrine. Having identity before features, what is the sacred text that everybody abides by? Most brands have a tagline, but what can truly be enforced and felt by the community? @bryan_johnson's done this incredibly well. Most religions have commandments or tenets. Brands have slogans like, 'Think Different' or 'Just Do It.' You have longer forms of doctrine, like the Technological Republic by Alex Karp or Zero to One." "Second is ritual. Bryan, through the Don't Die Dinner series, did such a beautiful job. You guys have a ritual here every day, five days a week. But what are the initiations into your brand or community? It's about forming a ritual that becomes a habit that becomes identity over time." "Third is symbols and language. How can you take elements to create in-groups versus out-groups? What are the key features that signal people who are insiders versus outsiders to your brand? CrossFit doesn't call them workouts, they're WODs. With Equinox, we never said gyms, we would say clubs. The Catholic Church used stained glass windows to educate an overwhelmingly illiterate population in the 12th century to indoctrinate them into the Church." "Fourth is a charismatic leader, which, again, you have in Bryan. You have in folks like @PalmerLuckey, where you almost icon yourself with the goatee, Hawaiian shirts, flip-flops, things like that are so incredibly important." "Fifth is an enemy. Every brand needs a nemesis. A lot of people use competitors. Apple's enemy started with IBM in its 1984 campaign. But over time, it evolved to the concept of conformity. Because when you get bigger than your competition, that enemy loses power. But if it's like an overwhelming thought that can never truly be defeated, the enemy always keeps power."

Not a day goes by where I don’t hear about @tbpn and next thing I know they are up on billboards in Hollywood… !

Eric Seufert's been working on a unique bull case for why AI will lead to a prosperous society. It's one you almost definitely haven't heard it before. @eric_seufert: "My sense is that a lot of AI investments are going to push the economic constraints away from production and toward distribution. They're going to make distribution the binding constraint. Because you have a flourishing of content creation [with AI]." "When that becomes the actual problem with distribution, and these AI investments go into things like ads platforms, digital advertising, and recommendation systems, then commerce and the economy become much more efficient." "Then, as a result, you get a lot more heterogeneous product development, because you can actually reach people economically." "Like, what is the constraint right now? It's, 'Can I reach a big enough audience to support a business? I've only got this blunt tool.'" (Eric's talking about the paradigm of needing to build a huge audience as a precursor to being able to survive economically as a consumer business here.) "But if these AI investments go into making these recommendation systems and digital ad systems better — reaching these pockets of people that have these very specific interests that were totally unserved before — then you enable a lot more commerce. And you support this flourishing of people making this wide, diverse variety of goods. And you get rid of this idea of, like, the Pareto principle where you have to serve the 20% that supply 80% of the commerce." "No, now you can serve *everybody*. And they can pay what they're willing to pay for these things. You create this flourishing of everyone getting exactly what they want." "We don't have a homogenized society anymore. We don't have people who need homogenized goods anymore. And we have a lot more particular, specific media right now." "And we can reach people and advertise to them the things that they have demand for, for products that weren't economically viable prior to these distribution systems." "That is the prosperous society. Being able to reach people to meet the demands that they have with the products that they couldn't access before with ads they wouldn't otherwise see absent these systems." "You can make a very credible AI bull case that that's what AI delivers to us."

I'm going live on @tbpn today to discuss The Prosperous Society.

Don't think anyone has done a proper studio tour of @tbpn with @johncoogan and @jordihays. And so we did it. Jordi hangs from the rafters and everything. We got into the studio and some TBPN history and lore. @tylercosgrove got some love. Perfect. Full episode right here. corememory.com/p/inside-the-m…

"The whole XBOX saga is filled with regrets." "The stated goals, which made sense from a corporate perspective, were not achieved. And it is continuing to exist because it exists." Stratechery's @benthompson gives the history of Microsoft's utter failure with XBOX: "Their corporate strategy was 'three screens and the cloud.' It was the idea that they were going to own the desktop (via PC), the pocket (via the mobile phone)... and the third screen was the living room." 'How do we get in the living room?' 'Well, people have consoles plugged into their TVs. If we can own the consoles, we can own the living room. We will do that by creating the XBOX.' "This is a strategy that *totally failed*. People buy consoles to play games, not to have a portal to the internet in their living room. So you're selling a multi-hundred dollar console to people who want to play games. People who don't want to play games aren't going to randomly start buying consoles."

My full conversation with @benthompson - lots of XBOX talk but we went all over the place. Enjoy!

HOT TAKE from @benthompson: Rockstar is charging *way too little* for GTA 6, the $80 price tag is "ridiculous" Ben: "They should be charging like $200 for this game! GTA 6 is like, the last great game." "It was mostly all made pre-AI. It is the pinnacle of AAA craftsmanship. Years and years and years of blood, sweat, and tears. To the extent where you have the Twitter analysts like, counting cigarette butts outside Rockstar's offices to see how much crunch they're in." "I feel compelled to buy GTA 6, just in honor of it existing. Even if I don't know if I'm ever going to play it. I'd be happy to pay $200. $80 is ridiculous. They should charge more." John: "You're going to get canceled for this. This is a nuclear take."

Before listening to this, I encourage everyone to do a full playthrough of JEREMY GIFFON SIMULATOR to make sure they fully understand his first appearance giffonsimulator.com

.@alexhormozi is super bullish on med spas as a business category. It's squarely within the zeitgeist and is extremely supply-constrained. And people in the industry don't seem to know it. "There's this aging population that has more money than anyone else. They don't want to age. They see the Bryan Johnsons — it is the zeitgeist of right now. 'I want to live forever, I want to look young forever.' And they have all the money. So the demand side of that is huge." "If you look at the supply, med spas are still wildly understaffed. And I know this because I see the business owners every week." "@bryanjohnson had 1,000 people apply to his $1M/year thing. Do that math. And there was a $60,000/year thing underneath that... wildly underestimated." "It's super fragmented. No one has really gobbled it up well, that I've seen... They're in a completely supply-constrained environment, they just don't know it."

We had a fun conversation with @jordihays and @johncoogan on @tbpn last week

Alex Hormozi (@AlexHormozi) says he doesn't care about what his living space is like. He only cares that it's whatever his wife wants it to be. "When I'm not working, it's whatever Layla wants. I don't care. If she's 10% happier, it's a percent-to-percent correlation to my happiness. And me being more comfortable has no correlation back. So whatever she's good with, I'm good with." But his personal workspace is engineered for total control: no windows, soundproofing, and earbuds. He says he needs *zero* potential for distraction. "When I work, I'm very intentional about that space... it's about how to eliminate every sense of distraction, for me personally. I don't like having windows. I don't think there's anything wrong with them. But for me, I need *no* stimulation. Because I'm very distractible. I have earplugs in, no natural light, all artificial. Soundproofing. And then I can focus on what I'm trying to work on."

Canada v USA in the podcast World Cup today.

So you’re saying there’s a chance…

My second conversation with @jeremygiffon. His first episode became one of the most popular we've ever done. Since then he's become a friend I talk to every day, so this is a taste of one of those conversations. We discuss: - The billion dollar PDF - Why billionaires have become subservient to the "poaster" class - The philosophers who secretly shaped Silicon Valley - Lessons from the last 18 months in private markets - East v. West coast finance - Buffett + beating the market - and much more Enjoy! 0:00 Intro 5:50 The Billion Dollar PDF 11:31 Algorithms and Power Laws 20:28 Peak Guy 31:19 Opting Out of the Timeline 36:14 AI and White-Collar Jobs 43:31 The Next Era of Finance 53:56 The New Economics of Software 1:03:22 Underwriting Emerging Managers 1:18:17 Silicon Valley’s Hidden Philosophy