Down Round

Stacked deck today folks. First we return briefly to Tesla to talk about a Wall Street Journal story which reported the company opened a CEO search to replace Elon Musk. Then we move on to the big tech news story of the week: OpenAI rolling out a ChatGPT update that made it too sycophantic. It was funny, but also shows how these big AI firms are thinking about what their product actually is.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tesla turned in an absolute shocker of an earnings result, which may be related to why Elon Musk announced he would be turning more of his attention to the electric carmaker and less on being Trump's friend. In this ep, we go into the earnings, give a little update on what the EV market is looking like and what Tesla says it wants to do — and a little detour into talking about a Down Under business, GoGet.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Raph has returned from the land of the free, and we're back in the regular studio for some more Down Round. Nvidia has just been slapped with a new restriction on exporting its slightly less than cutting edge H20 chip, which cost it a $5.5 billion charge. We talk about chips and continue our chat from last week's premium episode about how Trump's trade war is affecting tech. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We talked about the new OpenAI image generation platform last week briefly, but we recorded on the day it released and therefore missed the massive amounts of discourse it generated. We're sorry. We'll never miss the discourse again. But it was a great opportunity to take stock of the AI art conversation, which has only become more heated and baroque over the past three to six months. Over this episode and the premium, we dive into the current state of computer pictures and the politics around them.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The chickens have come home to roost for 23andme, the consumer genetic testing company which has gone from making people feel nice about being 4% Italian to languishing in bankruptcy. With the vultures circling the carcass, we reflect on its very weird business model and why it should never have gone public. Then we talk about Google, which has been cooking on the AI front recently, and how it looks like their overall strategy in that space is coming into focus. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

HR SaaS is probably the least sexy topic in the world, but fortunately two of the bigger players have made it interesting through bizarre corporate warfare. Rippling has launched a lawsuit against competitor Deel alleging that they placed a spy deep within. The saga contains a honey-pot Slack channel, a mole in the top ranks, and trying to flush a phone down a toilet. It’s good stuff folks. We get into it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're back with podcast content after a regrettable interruption last week. This ep we've got a stacked deck. First, we are forced by fate to talk about Trump, Elon and Tesla briefly. Then we get into the lawsuit against creator economy platform and OnlyFans lite platform Passes. This gives us an excuse to go on a whirlwind tour of a few things: Scale AI, the AI infrastructure company co-founded by Passes founder Lucy Guo The creator economy, and how that's all going OnlyFans! Yeah, you want to hear all about that, don't you. Good to be back on the tools.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Unfortunately due to circumstances within our control we are unable to record an episode this week. We promise we'll record a really really extra good one next week. Thank you for your patience. Enjoy this AI generated James reading a text message from James.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tech stocks have been having a rough time since December. The Magnificent Seven, the undisputed kings of the market, have slipped 10% since then — even before the DeepSeek moment. But not all are made equal. Meta, for example, is doing basically fine. Apple isn't too terrible. Tesla, on the other hand, has lost 37% of its value since then. In this ep, we discuss the market correction, including a long chat on Tesla and whether its reality distortion field is looking a little shaky.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Plenty of tech industry nonsense to chat about this week, folks. Elon Musk is fathering his 13th child (and a new Grok model) and trying to destroy OpenAI. Everyone is trying to match OpenAI's Deep Research with similar products of their own. The markets are back. As always, Down Round is here to guide you.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We got a few requests last week to talk more about OpenAI's Deep Research feature that everyone's been going wild about. We thought it was a good opportunity to return to a topic that we've touched a few times over the past couple of years — what sort of work is being threatened with change by new systems like this? In this two parter, we look at Deep Research and the current prospects for automating white collar work with AI. To subscribe to Down Round Premium, head here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Apple is worth $3.5 trillion. Trillion with a T. But all is not necessarily well in Tim Cook's kingdom. iPhone sales are slowing and the Apple Intelligence rollout was unimpressive and underwhelming. Now rumours abound that they are abandoning their rescue mission for their VR and AR ambitions. Are Apple floundering? Or just doing things The Apple Way? Who better to discuss than the Down Round boys?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's fair to say things have been a little crazy this week. Thanks to the drop of Chinese AI lab DeepSeek's beautiful, powerful AI reasoning model, tech stocks took an absolute pounding — producing, in no small part because of Nvidia, the largest individual loss of share market value in American history. The freakout wasn't just in markets. AI developers in the US were also going through it. We talked about DeepSeek a little bit last week, but this week we dive into the madness, and spend a bit more time talking about the model itself. If you want to hear us go deeper, sign up for Down Round Premium today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's not even the end of January and there's already so much crap going on in the world of tech. We're spoiled for choice here. In this two-parter, we're tackling the various stories that have sprung up around the inauguration of Donald Trump — everything from TikTok to meme coins to Project Stargate and Chinese AI. In this first part, we're looking at the latest on the TikTok ban, as well as DeepSeek, the Chinese AI shop that has everyone's attention. Want to get the second part? Join Down Round Premium today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The number one social media app in the Apple App Store is currently Xiaohongshu, AKA The Little Red Book, the Chinese social shopping app reminiscent of TikTok but with more shopping. We take a squiz at that, before assessing the latest announcements from Nvidia and what it all means. Strap in, the boys are back for 2025.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the last couple of weeks, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have signalled a shift in the way the company is run — eliminating factcheckers, rolling back internal DEI policies and bringing politics content back to company platforms. On the one hand, you can read it as an obvious sop to the incoming Trump administration. But there's definitely a cultural change in the air when it comes to online platforms and politics, and Zuck is right at the coalface. Joining us for this episode is Mike Isaac, tech correspondent and Meta whisperer at The New York Times. He helped us untangle some of the forces driving Meta's change of heart.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Down Round, we make many predictions. Almost all of them are correct. For this episode, we have used the power of AI to forensically audit a representative sample of episodes over the last year, with the goal of answering the question: just how right were we?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Just like we did last year, we're continuing the silly season with another entry of DOWN ROUND SHARK TANK. On social media and in our Discord, you submitted your startup pitches, and now we're going to decide if we will invest. Joining us on the panel are friends of the pod Becky Lucas and Joyride, who will assist us in the mammoth task of evaluating your very serious startup ideas. This is the first part of the episode. To get part two, sign up at downround.netSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is part two of our annual Xmas spectacular, and we continue to answer your questions. To hear the rest, sign up to premium: downround.netSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is part one of our annual Xmas spectacular, and we are answering your burning questions. Is AI a bust? Why is a company called AppLovin worth more than 100 billion dollars? Has Raph watched any movies in 2024? An insane prank. Subscribe for part 2, which is out now: downround.netSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Apple has been hyping up its late-ish foray into the world of LLMs and artificial intelligence since June. But now a decent range of Apple Intelligence features are available — as long as you have the right device —like writing tools, image generation, notification summaries and so on. In this ep we talk about it, Apple's strategy, and why it all feels a bit weak.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Australia passed legislation banning social media for kids under 16, as we've discussed in previous eps. But in today's episode, we're getting into the nitty gritty. We're joined by Crikey reporter Cam Wilson to tease out some of the specifics of the legislation and how it might be enforced. We also force him to debate the greatest question of our time: should we save Australian children from the evils of social media? Or should we let the megacorps continue to poison the innocent minds of the youth?You be the judge.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. Crypto is back. The industry is excited by the forthcoming Trump presidency and what it means for their little online coins. Bitcoin just hit $100,000. But the mood is a little different this time. There's less pontification on the future of money and finance, less attempts at making art and culture, and a whole lot more brazen bag-pumping and sweaty gambling.  In this ep, we talk about the current crypto surge, and what it means for you and your family.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kickstarter. A gadget head's paradise... and hell. The boys revisit the glory days of crowdfunding, what was the vibe that made it prolific, and the pitfalls that befell it. And, most importantly: what does it tell us about love?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The US Department of Justice wants to force Google to sell Chrome, its browser, for antitrust reasons. It raises the question: who would buy it? Could it live as a standalone company? That opens a whole can of worms for your favourite tech podcast, as we talk about browsers and why they're such a strange business.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The the wake of the US election and the increasingly weird vibe on X, there has been yet another exodus of users to the promised land of "any text-based timeline but Twitter". That means people are talking about Bluesky again. In this episode, we revisit the erstwhile decentralised social media platform and check in on its progress, asking the question on everyone's lips: does it have the juice? Also, prices of Down Round Premium are sensibly increasing in line with Australian PPP. But we're offering the current pricing for yearly subs for the next couple of weeks. Subscribe here.      See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's the first week after the US election, and Down Round is officially making the leap into being an American politics podcast. OK, not really. But there's actually plenty of Down Round relevant themes here. In this ep, we talk briefly about the new state of tech politics now that the conservative side of the industry is on the march. Then, we go into three big tech narratives that got the most attention at the election: podcasts, X and prediction markets.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are joined once again, for our sins, by the Australian Financial Review's Rear Window columnist Mark Di Stefano. A freewheeling episode on everything from smartphones to AI girlfriends, where we all perform some ruthless self-critique and ultimately come out happier, more self assured and about 10 IQ points dumber.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. We're putting on our hazmat suits and going back into the world of crypto. Or, at least, one promising part of it. Stripe recently bought Bridge, a startup which built a stablecoin issuance and settlements API. That sounds boring, and perhaps it is. But one day, it could play a serious role in helping pay the person or bot who replaces you. In this ep, we talk about why one of the biggest payments providers in the world is suddenly enamoured by stablecoins.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's Halloween this week, and we've got an appropriately spooky episode for you. We're looking back at a random selection of some of our favourite dead and/or zombified companies, platforms and products of the past couple of decades. From instant delivery and Google Reader to Adobe Flash and the Microsoft Zune, prepare to be utterly terrified by these terrifying spirits from tech's past.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's ep is the first and last edition of the Down Round Book club. We're talking about Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment, by Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier. It documents the story of Blizzard Entertainment, the developer behind WarCraft, Diablo and StarCraft which is as of last year a subsidiary of Microsoft. James read it last week and felt it hit on some interesting Down Round areas, namely: The evolution of monetisation Why eSports was never going to work The tension between art and commerce in creative businesses Laundry powder, which we discuss for at least 5 minutes See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're lauching a bonus episode this week to officially welcome in the silly season (commences mid October). We're joined by James Chin Moody, CEO of Sendle, a virtual courier service who is quite likely responsible for some proportion of the treats you receive via mail. We discuss the Australia Post monopoly, the funding environment and the future of ecommerce.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's another Tesla event, folks. At the tail end of last week, Elon Musk got up on stage and showed off the CyberCab, the company's attempt at a robotaxi. He also gave us some updates on Tesla's humanoid robot, Optimus, and even had some of these evil computer men walking around the event and serving beers. But there was some digital trickery afoot, and not everything was as it seemed. In this episode, we discuss.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. Fun times create happy people, happy people create lovely times, lovely times create fun people. It's another loose, shot from the hip premium ep, folks. ChatGPT's voice mode is finally here, while OpenAI itself s going through more weird palace intrigue for us to pick through.  A digression into AI podcasts. Meanwhile, all the VCs and founders are arguing about drugs. So we will too.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In last week's premium episode, we sounded off about the state of VR and smart glasses. In true Down Round fashion, Meta had already announced its concept product, a pair of AR-enabled smart glasses named Orion, by the time the ep aired. We will never admit we were wrong. Instead, we press forward. In this ep, we talk about Orion, Meta's plans, and why it seems like everyone is now locked in on the idea that smart glasses are the smartphone successor.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Intel may have more or less invented modern digital computing, but it hasn't been going so crash hot lately. Following decades of strategic missteps and blunders, it's now experiencing weakening earnings and stock price declines as it attempts to engage in the mother of all turnaround jobs with a little help from the US government. Now, the sharks are circling, with Qualcomm popping up as a potential acquirer. In this ep, we discuss what brought Intel to this point, what might happen next, and some general microchip chatter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. After 2 months of cringe-posting references to strawberries, OpenAI have released their latest model: o1. And AI heads are losing their minds. Ostensibly, it's intended for the kind of thorny math and reasoning problems that LLMs tend to struggle with. The guts aren't public, but it seems to use chain-of-reasoning prompts to really force itself to 'think'.  So, is it any good? Is this a huge step change on the path to AGI. We investigate.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We didn't cover the Apple iPhone keynote last week because it wasn't particularly exciting and there were virtually no surprises. But, having been given a week to ruminate on it, we have thoughts. In this ep, we talk about why analysts have been obsessed with an AI-driven iPhone supercycle, why Apple has backed itself into a corner by overcharging for RAM, and the slow death of the smartphone.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. Social media. Is it too dank for the malleable and developing mind? The Australian government seems to think so. Labor has joined the ranks of a number parties and bodies in various jurisdictions in attempting to set a lower age limit for social media.  We consider the following questions: Why? How would it work? Who is to blame for society crumbling?  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For decades, technologists have fantasised about the ultimate prize: a humanoid robot, available to consumers and industry, which can perform a range of humanlike tasks. The recent AI moment has reignited those aspirations, with everyone from Tesla to Apple – and a handful of ambitious startups – either openly or secretly working on humanoid robot projects. In this ep we round up the rumour mill, and talk about what these things could actually be useful for, and why they're suddenly everywhere. (In spirit, if not actuality.)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To subscribe to Down Round Premium and get access, head here. The tech world has been ablaze over the past week or so, both ironically and unironically, about the concept of Founder Mode. Inspired by a short essay by Paul Graham, 'founder mode' vaguely posits that there's a natural point in a startup's existence where it gives up being led by a single founder with a ton of agency, and instead becomes led by professional managers via delegation. Graham, and others, suggest that you don't need to do that, and can keep running even very big tech businesses as a lethal operator calling all the shots. In this freewheeling ep, we discuss.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brazil has slapped a ban on X, as the culmination of a dispute between the platform and the country's judiciary over censorship. It's weird, because Elon Musk's platform has complied with government requests from other countries, like Turkey and India. So what's the deal? In this ep, we talk about Musk's free speech crusade, the Brazilification of the web, and the general vibes around the X business right now.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested over the weekend in France, with prosecutors  accusing him of violations discovered as part of an investigation into child exploitation material, drug trafficking and fraudulent transactions on the platform. It's more than plausible that stuff like that is happening on Telegram. But there's certainly something unusual going on here too. Telegram has evolved from a messaging app into a full-blown social media platform – and one that is relatively uncensored and pretty wild. And despite the discourse over the past few days being focused on end-to-end encryption, that's not really what people use Telegram for. In this ep, we dive into the weird world of Telegram, and engage in some healthy, baseless speculation about Durov's arrest.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Apple's profit from "Services" is set to surpass profits from iPhones within a couple of years, which is pretty crazy, really. Of the ~$80-90b Apple make a year in "Services", around 25% of that comes from Google handing over north of $20 billion per year to be the default search engine in Safari. For years, Google has been freaked out by the prospect of Apple building their own search engine, as outlined in Raph's piece here. A judge has now ruled this is ILLEGAL. What will come of this? What's the deal with seach? Links Judge rules that Google ‘is a monopolist' in US antitrust case – The Verge Raph's piece on Apple Maps and its role. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nike: The brand of brands. When it comes to brands, they're top dog. When it comes to returning money to shareholders, less so. At least this year. As Nike have pursued the quest to become as close as an apparel company can be to a tech business, their share price has tanked – this year by over 30%. A former executive's LinkedIn post went about as viral as a LinkedIn post can go, lamenting Nike's turn to e-commerce and performance marketing thanks to their current CEO, the former head of ServiceNow, and advice from McKinsey. Very Down Round areas. Links: Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction - Massimo Giunco See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's quarterly earnings season, and some of our favourite tech companies are looking a bit shaky. Not because they're not making money – they are – but because they're spending it on new data centres and AI research.  In this episode, we take stock of the current earnings reports, and touch on a few interesting tidbits like Amazon's softness in e-commerce and Intel's moment of reckoning. Also, when we recorded this, markets were teetering on the edge of meltdown. So get ready for some adjacent chat there.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meta this week released the latest update to their LLM, Llama 3.1. It is ostensibly a "frontier model" on par with its OpenAI, Anthropic and Google rivals. The difference i: anyone can download the model and the weights and run it, and build on it wherever and however they want, without paying Meta a cent. Why?  Glowed up Mark Zuckerberg wrote an article to explain his reasoning; the boys dissect: what the hell is going on? Links Open Source AI Is the Path Forward – Mark Zuckerberg See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recently, the eponymous founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz went public in announcing their support for Trump in order to protect what they called "little tech" – as opposed to "big tech" To them, little tech basically means startups, which they believe are under threat from "bad government policies". While big tech is trying to entrench it's advantage with regulatory capture, little tech just wants to party. We discuss the new battlelines, and – crucially – tell you which team to support. Links The Little Tech Agenda – Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You are no doubt aware that the world suffered a fairly significant IT outage at the end of last week, affecting everything from TV broadcasts to supermarkets and airports. Turns out it was because of cybersecurity company CrowdStrike releasing a thoroughly bung update to Windows machines. In this ep, we talk about the incident, how susceptible the world is to single points of IT failure, and other assorted and sundry topics.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A recent political incident involving the former president provide a stress test of X under Elon Musk. It also provides us with an opportunity to do a side-by-side comparison of how it was reported on the various post-twitter clones: Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon.  Additionally, the several loud noises at the Trump rally led to a cascade of Silicon Valley stalwarts to endorse the Republican nominee for president – we examine the profound political shift that has occurred over the past 8 years in our usual cool-headed and analytical manner. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Real estate tech is an underrated part of the broader tech ecosystem. From listing and buying platforms to property management apps and everything in-between, there's a suite of tech solutions for selling, buying, renting, investing and just having a squiz at property. In this ep, we take a little tour through real estate tech, which mostly ends up as a struggle session.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.