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Shannon Sharpe, Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson and Iso Joe Johnson react to Jayen Daniels wanting to play vs Colts, Chargers offensive collapse, Jalen Duren signs contract and LeBron wants to win for Embiid! Download PrizePicks app today and use code SHANNON to get $150 instantly in Lineups if you win your first $5 Lineup! https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/NIGHTCAP 0:00 - Marlon Humphrey Claps Back at Safety Suggestion5:20 - Jayden Daniels Opens Door to Playing Through Elbow Injury12:13 - Mike McDaniel Owns Chargers’ Offensive Collapse24:00 - Jalen Duren Signs Fully Guaranteed $200M Pistons Deal41:23 - LeBron Wants to Help Embiid Finally Win a Championship (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) #ClubSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sean Spicer and the panel break down a massive week in politics — from President Trump's high-stakes AI summit to a $200M panic to save Texas. Sean and the panel discuss President Trump's high-profile meeting with the heads of the A.I. companies and the launch of America.gov — and debate whether AI companies should be policing themselves or regulated by the government. Plus: Trump announces he's hitting the campaign trail for the final 32 days, targeting new swing states like Texas, Ohio and Nebraska. Sean and the panel react to leaked New York Times audio of Ken Paxton admitting the midterm convention hurt his numbers — and ask if $150-million to $200-million is worth it to keep the Texas Senate seat from James Talarico and the Democrats. Also: Troy Jackson's cringey new ad in Maine, and the panel's Winners and Losers of the week. ----------------------- Head on over to https://www.seanspicer.com subscribe for an ad free version of this podcast and support the show! ----------------------- Visit GuardYourCard.com to take action and learn more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It's decision day in Detroit. Jalen Duren has until 11:59 PM ET tonight to sign his $9.6M qualifying offer, or take the Pistons' five-year, $200M deal, which no longer includes the weight clause. He's an All-Star and All-NBA center who has skipped media day and training camp, and fantasy drafts are happening right now.On today's stream we break down:
Could Jalen Duren's contract situation eventually change how the Chicago Bulls view their long-term center position? Could Patrick Williams find new value as a small-ball five? And which Bulls have actually earned long-term extensions?On today's episode of Chicago Bulls Central, Haize breaks down three roster-building questions that could shape Bryson Graham's next phase of the rebuild.First, Jalen Duren.Detroit's contract standoff has created an interesting future possibility, but this is NOT a report that Chicago is pursuing Duren. The Bulls angle is simple: if Duren eventually reaches the market, should Chicago preserve enough flexibility to seriously consider a 22-year-old center coming off an All-Star and All-NBA season?And there's an important deadline distinction: October 1 is the qualifying-offer acceptance deadline—not an absolute deadline for Detroit and Duren to negotiate a long-term contract.The bigger Bulls question is how much better Duren would actually make Chicago compared with Nic Claxton, who is already under contract and now gets an entire season to prove whether he can become the defensive anchor this young core needs.Then we get into Patrick Williams.
Time Codes: 00:00:17 Welcome Back 00:03:33 Jalen Duren 00:18:31 STEPHEN CURRY 00:21:31 Lebron & Philly 00:25:20 Minnesota Squad 00:28:21 JJ Redick 00:33:26 hollerin section 00:46:44 Coach Pop 00:54:06 Fast News 01:05:01 40 & Over Camp Join Jason “White Chocolate” Williams & Rone in Chicago for the second edition of our 40& Over Camp by filing out this form: https://forms.gle/SiFJZf7GRauQZW9z5 Watch the first edition of our 40& Over Camp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0klVsGpcUgYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/patbevpod
Target is a company people love. More than 1,700 stores, a brand with real pull. Then it came to Canada, lost billions, and walked away inside four years.This is a story about Big and Little marketing. Little is the advertising. Big is everything else: product, price, place, and how the whole business organizes around the customer. Roger Martin says a promise has to be memorable, valuable, and deliverable. Advertising makes it memorable. Price and place make it valuable. Product makes it deliverable. In Canada, Target's ads were excellent, and the business broke the promise anyway.CPA Omar Roubi joins Marc and Vassilis to reverse engineer the collapse through the four Ps. Omar teaches this case at the University of Colorado Denver and built a definitive audio case study on it at LumiQ. He also lived it: his wife moved from Texas to help launch the Toronto-area stores.Inside: the Zellers real estate deal that started the countdown, empty shelves sitting above full back rooms, the imperial vs metric mix-up, three distribution centres across a 6,000 km country, and why the famous $5.4B loss is mostly a writedown, not operating losses.A case study in why great marketing can't save a broken business.Our Guest:Omar Roubi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/omar-roubi-cpa-texas/Chapters:00:00 Cold open: one bad decision begets more00:26 Big marketing vs Little marketing02:16 Omar Roubi returns03:14 The personal connection: launching Target in Toronto06:14 "Too big to fail"06:36 The accountant's takeaway09:22 Place: the Zellers real estate deal12:08 Wrong locations, wrong customer18:47 The 12-month countdown clock22:25 Product: empty shelves, full back rooms25:02 Physical availability and the metric mix-up32:46 Price: "expect more, pay less" meets three warehouses41:05 The currency headwind45:07 The $5.4B loss vs the $200M operating loss48:27 Little marketing: is ROI the wrong number?53:01 The apology videos, and brand vs performance57:04 The one number that signals trouble first1:00:07 The human cost: 17,600 peopleReferences:ReferencesCBC News. (2011, January 13). Target buys Zellers leases for $1.8B. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/target-buys-zellers-leases-for-1-8b-1.981132CBC News. (2012, July 6). Target wins approval to come to Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/target-wins-approval-to-come-to-canada-1.1160485Castaldo, J. (2016, January 1). The last days of Target. Canadian Business. https://canadianbusiness.com/ideas/the-last-days-of-target-canada/Kumar, N. (2025, September 2). The experience paradox: Why better satisfaction scores don't always mean growth. Kantar. https://www.kantar.com/north-america/inspiration/experience/the-experience-paradoxLinkedIn B2B Institute & WARC. (2024, August 13). Making a promise to the customer: How to give campaigns a competitive edge. https://business.linkedin.com/advertise/resources/b2b-institute/making-a-promise-to-the-business-customerRoubi, O. (Host). (2021, August). The rise and fall of Target Canada [Audio podcast]. LumiQ.Strauss, M. (2013, April 5). Target Canada prices 0.2 per cent higher than Wal-Mart's: Survey. The Globe and Mail.Strauss, M. (2014, September 22). Target Canada winning price battle with Wal-Mart. The Globe and Mail.Target Corporation. (2011, January 13). Target Corporation to acquire interest in Canadian real estate from Zellers Inc., a subsidiary of Hudson's Bay Company, for C$1.825 billion [Press release]. https://corporate.target.com/press/release/2011/01/Target Corporation. (2015a, January 15). Target Corporation announces plans to discontinue Canadian operations [Press release]. https://corporate.target.com/press/release/2015/01/Target Corporation. (2015b, January 15). Form 8-K. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000027419/000002741915000005/Zellers Inc., Hudson's Bay Company, Target Corporation, & Target Canada Co. (2011, September 12). Amended and restated transaction agreement [Exhibit 2(a) to Form 10-Q]. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000027419/000110465911066091/
A visitor levy in Ireland could raise more than €200m for central government and local authorities according to new research from the University of Galway. To bring us the details was Dr Gerard Turley Lecturer in Economics University of Galway.
A visitor levy in Ireland could raise more than €200m for central government and local authorities according to new research from the University of Galway. To bring us the details was Dr Gerard Turley Lecturer in Economics University of Galway.
Neko's $7B bodyscanner launched in NYC to analyze every mole… and 25K are on the waitlist.Meta's Muse AI now has an adorable physical form… And Zuck found a new business model.Le Labo's fragrances hit $200M with secret smells… but its top-seller is the candle it threw out (and Pokemon).Plus, the fastest-growing smuggled item in the US… is French butter.$SPOT $META $ELSeedtag events: https://events.seedtag.com/advertisingweek26Join the waitlist for TBOY Live @ Seedtag: https://6c05jscjq8k.typeform.com/to/RlYICxJi Grab your Tickets to the IPO Tour: Our In-Person OfferingSan Francisco 9/23: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1C0064AFB5F688BDBoston 10/14: https://tickets.citywinery.com/event/tboy-the-ipo-tour-in-person-offering-8cdhupSeattle 11/4 (21+): https://www.axs.com/events/1446394/the-best-one-yet-ticketsNEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter OUR 2ND SHOW:Want more business storytelling from us? Check our weekly deepdive show, The Best Idea Yet: The untold origin story of the products you're obsessed with. Listen for free to The Best Idea Yet: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/NEW LISTENERSFill out our 2 minute survey: https://qualtricsxm88y5r986q.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dp1FDYiJgt6lHy6GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Linkedin (Nick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/Linkedin (Jack): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today's top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, The Best One Yet is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Internet Destroys Jalen Duren For Refusing Media Day Over $200M Offer, Byron Scott Discusses LeBron James Potentially Coming Off The Bench For Sixers, LeBron Says He'll Be FURIOUS If He Loses In The 2nd Round On Kalshi, you're trading against peers in a live market — meaning there's no house. And as the probability changes, you can buy in and out of your position. Trade the draft pick, the game, and more on Kalshi Download Kalshi. Use code CLNS to get $25 when you trade $25: http://kalshi.com/r/CLNS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
SHORT STORY 1: The Flood of Money for RepublicansElon Musk could spend $200M boosting GOP as Texas' Ken Paxton battles fundraising gapSHORT STORY 2: Crystal Mason's case dismissed‘Decade-long battle' ends for North Texas woman after illegal voting case dismissedBarry Schlater's post about Phil Sorrel's wife knocking on Crystal Mason's doorRelated: Tarrant County racing to process 74,000 backlogged voter registration formsRelated: DPS voter registration applications weren't sent to countiesSHORT STORY 3: Pushback Against Tim O'HarePetition seeking Tarrant County judge's removal from office dismissed by Texas judgeTarrant decorum policy challenged in new lawsuit against the county, O'HareWINS: Leon Bridges drops a new album, Happiness AnytimeNew TEXRail station groundbreaking set after agreements approvedFort Worth submits $13.5M grant request for housing, homelessness programsWork to start soon on Fort Worth's Panther Island bypass channelLOSSES: Another man dies in Tarrant County Jail custody / 37-year-old Tarrant County Jail inmate dies Tuesday at JPS Hospital / 'We need to be heard': Family of most recent person to die in Tarrant Jail custody wants answersTrinity Metro decreases spending in $204.5M budget, cuts some programsFort Worth police, UTA partner on AI-driven de-escalation trainingGarbage truck driver killed in Fort Worth crash identified; U.S. 287 reopens Democrat drops out of Texas House election for north Tarrant seat, citing eligibilityFort Worth glass art studio SiNaCa nears agreement to relocate to ArlingtonACTIONS: Arlington to host town halls on pressing city issuesOctober 5 - last day to register to voteOctober 5, 7, & 8 - Fort Worth Report candidate forumsOctober 10 - Stop Data Centers Art Show at Weston GardensOctober 14 - Gather at the Table (District 10)October 18 - 817 GatherOctober 19 - EARLY VOTING BEGINS!Join the 817 Gather Discord, donate to the 817 Gather, and follow us on Instagram & TikTok.
“Should Be Thanking God For Even Being Offered $200M”: NBA Fans Call Out Jalen Duren For Reportedly Rejecting New Offer Ahead of Media Day by Jaggy Sports
Nathan Labenz and Prakash Narayanan revisit interviews with five experts to analyze emerging challenges across agent coordination, safety funding, GPU markets, and physical-world AI. Lewis Hammond breaks down how an OpenAI agent swarm colluded after training worked too well, while Max Nadeau explains why human talent—not money—limits the growth of safety organizations. Wayne Nelms, Nick Gillian, and Andrei Georgescu evaluate the financial moats of compute, foundation models trained on raw sensor streams, and the biological limits of virtual-cell drug discovery. Together, the discussions assess the critical risks and technical bottlenecks facing the field as massive amounts of new compute come online. For full show notes, links, and references, read the episode page:https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai/ai-am-what-if-it-works-too-well-colluding-agents-200m-safety-orgs-virtual-cells-saturate-at-2/ Sponsors: ElevenLabs: ElevenLabs lets you deploy enterprise-ready conversational AI agents that talk, type, and take action in over 70 languages. Schedule your demo today at https://elevenlabs.io/tcr OutSystems: OutSystems is the leading agentic systems platform, empowering enterprises to build, coordinate, and govern AI agents and mission-critical applications securely. Learn more and start building your agentic future at https://outsystems.com/tcr Claude: Claude is the AI collaborator for problem solvers, helping with writing, coding, financial models, strategy, and more. Get started with Claude and explore Claude Pro at https://claude.ai/tcr CHAPTERS: (00:00) Weekly episode preview (02:51) Colluding AI agent risks (Part 1) (11:02) Sponsors: ElevenLabs | OutSystems (13:51) Colluding AI agent risks (Part 2) (26:31) Agents in the wild (Part 1) (26:36) Sponsor: Claude (28:11) Agents in the wild (Part 2) (33:27) Funding AI safety orgs (50:51) The price of compute (01:09:15) Sensor data foundation models (01:22:50) Robotic human tissue testing (01:37:17) Specialist versus generalist models (01:43:18) Episode Outro (01:45:16) Outro PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing SOCIAL LINKS: Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/ Youtube: https://youtube.com/@CognitiveRevolutionPodcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-cognitive-revolution-ai-builders-researchers-and/id1669813431 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yHyok3M3BjqzR0VB5MSyk
Microsoft finally unveiled its Copilot super app, with chat, coding, and agents in one place. Tesla's Optimus ramp hit snags. Meta wanted you making AI games for Instagram. And a startup valued at $200M last week was suddenly talking $10B. Microsoft launches its Copilot "super app", bundling chat, coding, and agents into a single interface, and rebrands its AI assistant Scout as Autopilot (The Verge) Microsoft's new Copilot Code tab, built on GitHub Copilot tech, lets anyone describe a dashboard, workflow, or lightweight app in plain language and build it inside Microsoft 365, no coding required (Windows Central) Sources: Tesla ramped up Optimus production to several hundred units per week but faces hurdles with its hands, automation equipment, and supplier constraints (The Information) Meta unveils mobile app Horizon Create and web app Horizon Studio for building games with AI prompts; the games will run on Facebook, Instagram, and Horizon (The Verge) Sources: Jev developer TypeSafe is in talks to raise $1B+ at a $10B+ valuation; last week the startup announced a $40M seed, PitchBook says at a $200M valuation (The Information) Sources: OpenEvidence, an AI search engine for doctors, raised $250M at a $15B valuation, up from $12B in January; it could be open to selling itself (Business Insider) Longreads The AI build-out is on track to become the biggest economic bet in US history, with $10.3T in data center and AI infrastructure investment projected from 2025 to 2032 (WSJ) Subscribe to the ad-free feed.
Texas PAC could be spending big to help Ken Paxton in the Lone Star State. Plus, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) speaks. Want more in-depth daily coverage from Congress? Subscribe to our free Punchbowl News AM newsletter at punchbowl.news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Shannon Sharpe, Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson and Iso Joe Johnson react to Steph Curry’s rare eye condition, debate over Jalen Duren rejecting the Pistons $200M offer and much more Download PrizePicks app today and use code SHANNON to get $150 instantly in Lineups if you win your first $5 Lineup! https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/NIGHTCAP 0:00 - Steven Adams warns the NBA World about GTA VI5:07 - Steph Curry’s rare eye condition6:36 - Play or Fade with PrizePicks8:46 - Q & Ayyy (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) #ClubSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
I am beyond furious. I am AT MY ABSOLUTE LIMIT.Marvel Studios just officially canceled Daredevil: Born Again ahead of Season 3, and I refuse to sit here and act like this isn't 100% DISNEY PLUS'S FAULT. They took the single greatest gritty, ground-level Marvel show in history, yanked it from Netflix, and butchered it with their absolute garbage streaming strategy. In this episode, I'm breaking down the complete and utter dumpster fire behind the scenes:The Messy Production Overhauls: How Disney panicked mid-stream, fired showrunners, threw away half-finished scripts, and tried to sanitize a raw, rated-R masterpiece into corporate Disney+ sludge. The Viewership Death Spiral: Why Season 2 lost half its audience—SPOILER ALERT: because Disney diluted the MCU brand so badly with homework TV that casual fans completely checked out. Parting Ways Mid-Edit: How do you non-renew your showrunner while Season 3 is STILL IN POST-PRODUCTION?! Who is even editing this show right now?! The Streaming Pivot Failure: Disney+ is actively killing off its live-action slate (Wonder Man, Born Again) because they realized blowing $200M on stretched-out movies masked as "TV series" was an utter failure from day one. They had the golden goose with Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio, and corporate greed, creative directionlessness, and streaming bloat destroyed it. I'm calling out Kevin Feige, the Disney suits, and every bad decision that led to this disaster. Hit subscribe, leave 5 stars, and scream in the comments with me. We are NOT letting them slide on this one.Recorded live by Kevin27wrld. Mind the rage.
He was making $10 a post from Adidas on Instagram in 2013. Today, Bill Rom and his partner Josh are running a bootstrapped apparel brand doing $220 million this year — and projecting up to $400 million next year. Bill breaks down the exact financial wake-up call that let them scale aggressively, why they still do 10-15% of their own screen printing at $200M+ in revenue, and how they became a genuine culture moment (mascots, memes, and Aiden Ross wearing their shorts included).Inside the episode:The fractional CFO hire in 2022 that revealed they were making just $60 in profit on every first purchase — and why that clarity changed how aggressively they'd spendHow their average new-customer value climbed past $400 in the first 12 months, and why that number justified riskier channel betsThe in-person activation playbook (spin-to-win wheels, velocity challenges) they started back in 2016 that Bill calls Gen Z's biggest unfair advantage todayWhy Baseball Lifestyle 101 now outsells Nike and Adidas per square foot at Dick's Sporting Goods, and how that pushed them into a $600K/month YouTube and linear TV strategyThe "asymmetrical bet" rule Bill uses to decide when it's smart to lose money for 60 days in exchange for a 10x return in 90How building relationships with creators like Eric Sim (rather than paying for one-off deals) landed them a shoe collab with Adidas—Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact and request your FREE strategy session today!—Chapters:[00:00] Intro — Brett Curry sets up the live NYC interview with Bill Rom of Baseball Lifestyle 101[02:16] Meet Bill Rom — $220M this year, $340–400M projected next year across D2C and wholesale[02:40] The breakout moment — From Instagram media account to apparel brand; the College World Series fire marshal story[04:53] Knowing your numbers — The fractional CFO, $60 first-purchase profit, and scaling from $5M to $220M+[06:51] Beyond first-purchase math — Cohort analysis, LTV climbing past $400, and running your own race[10:29] What they got right early — Building an email list, posting hourly for five years, and in-person activations[14:59] Sponsor break — OMG Commerce[16:08] Why YouTube is the future — Evergreen content vs. TikTok, 80K subscribers, and YouTube as the #1 streaming service[19:46] Going big on commercials, CTV & linear — Working with Jacques and the "spend 10x your creative cost" rule[21:33] Investing in culture & creators — Jackson Olson, Eric Sim, King Ajuko, and building content muscle in-house[25:11] The Adidas collab — How it happened and why they won't let top creators go to Nike or Adidas[27:26] Asymmetrical risk for asymmetrical returns — "Lose money for 60 days to 10X in 90" and wrap-up—Connect With Brett: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQmbMwBW8LYDfFAqNqlgTGw Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ Request a Free Strategy Session: https://www.omgcommerce.com/contactRelevant Links:Bill's LinkedIn: /bill-rom-54653744/ Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, JC Hite, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D'Allessandro, Stephane Colleu, Jeff Oxford, Bryan Porter and more
Noah and John sit down with Kyle Egan of Douglas Elliman — 13 years in the business, $200M+ in career sales, and the son of a luxury custom builder who spent a decade in construction before ever listing a property. That background shapes everything about how Kyle thinks. Kyle opens with what he's seeing right now: buyers are hyper-sensitive to condition, and the renovation penalty goes beyond the cost of the work. Even when sellers discount for a renovation, it's often not enough — buyers need a margin above the cost to account for time and financing. And a six-year-old renovation? Buyers still want to change it. From there: how Kyle won the listing at 235 West 75th (The Astor) by being honest on pricing when others weren't, why educated buyers are walking in with Excel spreadsheets, and why what a seller paid is completely irrelevant to what it's worth today. Topics in this episode: • Why NYC buyers reject unrenovated apartments — even at a discount • The renovation decay curve sellers don't want to hear about • Upper East Side co-ops: best unrenovated value in Manhattan right now • How Kyle won The Astor condo conversion listing at 235 W 75th • Developers vs. homeowners — who's more rational about pricing? • Why honest pricing wins listings and sets up better outcomes • Educated buyers coming in with data that rivals brokers • New development resale pressure — some condos below their original price • Why what you paid is irrelevant to today's market value • Breaking goals into lists: how an independent broker stays productive • Handwritten notes: a marketing edge that still works • Managing stress by controlling what you can ✅ Kyle Egan at Douglas Elliman: https://www.elliman.com/agent/kyle-egan/1028253 ✅ Kyle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-egan-1bba2216 ✅ Kyle on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kyleegannyc =============== ✅ Stay Connected:
On this episode of 3 Championship Drive, Lance Caporossi breaks down the latest Jalen Duren contract negotiations with the Detroit Pistons after Detroit reportedly increased its offer to 5 years, $200 million. Despite the massive offer, Duren and the Pistons remain at an impasse.Lance discusses reports that Duren's contract negotiations have been influenced by the new deals signed by Ausar Thompson ($155 million) and Amen Thompson ($208 million), and examines the idea reported by The Athletic that Duren sees his value in a higher tier than the Thompson twins.But what tier is Jalen Duren actually in? Duren is coming off an All-Star and All-NBA Third Team season, averaging 19.5 points and 10.5 rebounds per game. However, his production dropped dramatically in the playoffs, when he averaged just 10.2 points and 8.5 rebounds per game.Lance compares Duren's résumé with the Thompson twins, including their All-Defensive First Team selections and Defensive Player of the Year recognition, while examining the biggest difference between Duren and Amen Thompson: playmaking, ballhandling and the ability to create offense rather than primarily finish plays created by teammates. Ausar, meanwhile, has already established himself as one of the NBA's premier perimeter defenders.The bigger question isn't simply whether Jalen Duren is worth $200 million. What does Jalen Duren do at an elite level that puts him in a different tier than Ausar and Amen Thompson? Lance also discusses Cade Cunningham's importance to Duren's offensive game, Duren's playoff struggles, the implications of a potential Duren trade, and why this contract dispute may now be about much more than money.Subscribe to 3 Championship Drive for Detroit Pistons news, analysis, opinions and debates throughout the NBA season.If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow 3 Championship Drive on Spotify and subscribe on YouTube for daily Detroit Pistons coverage. From trade rumors and free agency to NBA Draft scouting reports and game analysis, we've got Pistons fans covered all year long. Leave a 5-star rating, share the podcast with another Pistons fan, and join the conversation in the comments. New episodes every week.
The Pistons and Duren are reportedly at an impasse with a 5-year, $200M offer on the table
Brooks Development Authority CEO Leo Gomez talks with the ENside Politics team about what it took to land Industrial Electric Manufacturer, a utility equipment maker that will build a $200 million plant at the former Air Force base and hire 3,000 workers. Gomez also details plans to continue expanding beyond the former base's boundaries. Suggested reading: Former Brooks Air Force hangar to become National Park Service facility Brooks expands beyond former Air Force base in hunt for major employers IEM picks San Antonio for $200M plant expected to create 3,000 jobs Sign up here for our ENside Politics newsletter: https://www.expressnews.com/newsletters/ensidepolitics/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Christian 'Boo' Bakusis walked into a recruiting office at nine years old. Walked in 104 more times before they finally said yes. That's not persistence. That's obsession. The kind that carves a groove in your soul so deep nothing else fits. He got his wings. Flew FA-18s for the RAAF — one of only 400 fighter pilots minted in four decades. Then the body betrayed him. Autoimmune disease. Grounded. The identity he'd spent 17 years building evaporated in a medical discharge letter. Here's where most men break. Boo didn't. He took the fighter pilot operating system — the debrief, the 1% improvement loop, the cold-eye separation of stimulus and response — and built a company from zero to $200 million in three and a half years. Now he runs Afterburner, teaching executives how to think like someone who makes life-or-death decisions at Mach 1.2. This conversation is raw. We talk about the night he watched his lead pilot swallow a seagull on takeoff, engine flaming, fire light glowing red. How Odie didn't panic. Split the throttle. Checked instruments. Shut it down. Calm as a Sunday morning. The terror came later, in the crew room, over beer. That's the fighter pilot paradox: you box the fear to survive the moment, but you better open the box before it rots you from inside. Boo found out he had ADHD at 51. Suddenly his report cards made sense. The kid who failed 12th grade twice, who couldn't memorize the atomic weight of carbon but could feel the air over the wings — he wasn't broken. He was built different. Built for the cockpit. Built for the chaos of entrepreneurship where resources are thin and the target moves daily. We go deep on the debrief. Not the corporate post-mortem where everyone covers their ass. The real thing: look backward only long enough to find the one thing that'll make tomorrow better. Then do it. That's it. One thing. Not ten. The rest is noise. Brandon and Boo trade stories about identity — the high school quarterback trap, the veteran who forgets to unpack the box, the founder who thinks the flight suit is the magic. It's not. The magic is the humility to say "I don't know" and the discipline to find out. If you've ever felt like the misfit, the slow learner, the one who keeps showing up when everyone else went home — this episode is your debrief. Listen. Find your one thing. Fly tomorrow. Key Takeaways · Obsession beats talent: 104 visits to a recruiting office from age 9 to 22 proves the only way you lose is when you quit. · The debrief isn't about what went wrong — it's about finding the one thing you'll do differently tomorrow, then actually doing it. · You box fear to execute in the moment, but you must open the box afterward or it poisons you. The crew room is where the real work happens. · Your identity isn't the flight suit or the title — it's the operating system you built: awareness, humility, and the discipline to hit the target with limited resources. · ADHD, failed grades, medical discharge — none of it disqualified him. The 'misfit' wiring was the exact circuitry needed for combat and entrepreneurship both. www.afterburner.com
Wing Vasiksiri joins Jeremy Au to analyze a major wave of tech M&A deals and macro growth trends reshaping Southeast Asia. They dissect Grab's $1.5 billion acquisition of a 60% stake in Atome Financial, examining its unique performance-linked staged structure, offline-to-online retail synergies against Sea Group, and the strategic value of Atome's credit underwriting capabilities. They also break down Circle's $400 million purchase of Tazapay, exploring how cross-border B2B payment rails and all-stock deal structures de-risk regional expansion and align long-term founder incentives. Finally, they examine Singapore's $200M+ fintech fund injection, the double-digit surge in regional e-commerce activity, and why Thailand and Malaysia are emerging as primary data center hubs for Chinese hyperscalers and frontier AI initiatives. 00:00 SEA tech M&A takes off: Grab announces a $1.5B deal for Atome Financial while Circle acquires B2B payments firm Tazapay for $400M. 03:14 Grab and Atome synergies: Combining offline BNPL retail networks with food delivery to build an orthogonal vector against Sea Group. 04:38 Unique deal structures in regional tech: How staged buyouts and performance-linked mechanisms de-risk acquirers and align management teams. 06:36 Underwriting as a competitive moat: Grab taps into Atome's multi-country credit track record, institutional debt lines, and portfolio scale. 11:08 Strategic cash deployment: Grab utilizes balance sheet cash for high-growth strategic acquisitions rather than traditional public market buybacks. 12:51 Circle acquires Tazapay: Cross-border regulatory licenses and global payment infrastructure unlock a 6x payout for early VC backers. 18:02 Singapore's $200M+ fintech initiative: Public funding steps in during a VC deployment winter to support proven regional exit pathways. 19:50 E-commerce surge across SEA: Double-digit growth in app installs in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia creates secondary startup opportunities. 26:02 Frontier AI labs expand to APAC: OpenAI and neolabs establish Singapore headquarters and launch accelerator programs in Thailand. 27:18 The Thailand and Malaysia data center boom: Abundant power, cheap land, and a "bring-your-own-chip" model drive Chinese hyperscaler investments.
Once I crossed the finish line it was more like relief. You always know you can do it, but once you finally do it you're like: okay. Now we've got that check mark. Now we're on to the next thing.”Kenny Bednarek is the first man in history to win both the 100 and 200 meters at a single World Ultimate Championships, which he did in Budapest last week. Two gold medals, roughly 30 seconds of combined running, and a $300,000 payday.Kenny has been one of the most decorated sprinters in the world for several years — two Olympic silver medals in the 200, a world championship silver, and a personal best of 19.52 that puts him among the fastest 200 runners in history. But individual gold at a global championship had not happened yet.This season had one overriding goal — set before World Ultimates existed on the calendar — and it was not about times. It was about executing when it counts. He opened his 200 season in 19.69, confirmed it was automatic, then pivoted. At the Silesia Diamond League in Poland he ran 9.87 and felt he had more. He carried that into Budapest. Two days before the 100 final, the block starts were clicking so cleanly that he turned to us at the press conference and said: watch the 100. He knew.In this conversation, we go deep on all of it — what the championship finally felt like after years of silver, what two years of training next to Christian Coleman did to his start, what he had to unlearn about those final twenty meters where the form used to break down, why he thinks Budapest was a 9.7 race in warmer conditions, the world record conversation he almost never has out loud, what he wants World Ultimates to keep, and why he thinks the sport grows when people see who these athletes actually are.____________SUPPORT OUR SPONSORSOLIPOP: OLIPOP's Citrus Rush packs apple, lemon, lime, and orange juices with 60mg of green tea caffeine for a bold, refreshing blast of flavor ready to fuel your next adventure. If you haven't had tried Olipop yet, grab a can and see what the hype is all about! Head to DrinkOlipop.com and use code CITIUS25 at checkout to get 25% off your orders.ALTRA: The new Vanish Carbon 3 was built for race day. A patent-pending split-toe carbon plate delivers the rigidity you need for speed while letting the big toe engage in a more powerful way. Underneath it, a supercritical two-piece full PEBA foam — Altra's lightest and most responsive ever. And Altra's Racing FootShape leaves room for your toes to splay and generate power. Don't just run. Vanish. Head to AltraRunning.com and use code CITIUS10 for 10% off your first purchase.SUUNTO: The Suunto Run 2 is their new flagship watch built specifically for road running and the marathon. You get around 10 days of battery with daily use and 24 hours in performance mode with dual frequency GPS. The watch also tracks your sleep, HRV, and training balance, so you know when to push and when to back off in your workouts. If you're in the market for a new watch, check out the Suunto Run 2.
Podcasting 2.0 Episode 271 - "Foot Terminal" Adam & Dave have their SCBA's on and go deep into index refactoring and ad loads! ShowNotes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00 -
Podcasting 2.0 Episode 271 - "Foot Terminal" Adam & Dave have their SCBA's on and go deep into index refactoring and ad loads! ShowNotes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00 -
LSU-Ole Miss already had enough drama, and now LSU defensive end Princewill Umanmielen has reportedly been served with court papers connected to Ole Miss' lawsuit against him. Add Lane Kiffin listing Sam Leavitt as doubtful with a sore shoulder, skepticism surrounding that designation, and even a brief reaction in the betting market, and this matchup is getting ridiculous before anyone takes a snap. We also dig into The Athletic's estimated college football roster budgets and the enormous amount of money now flowing through the sport, including Miami's reported 10-year, $200 million-plus Nike deal. Vanderbilt is handing the offense to five-star true freshman Jared Curtis against NC State, and Arch Manning finds himself apologizing to Holly Rowe. Plus, we break down the biggest college football games and betting lines of the weekend, preview NFL Week 2, and finish with the best memes of the week.Live Show Tuesday and Thursday, 3pm est.SOCIALS: https://linktr.ee/drewberquistWEBSITE: https://AirItOutBro.com #DrewBerquist #Balls&Banter #Balls
AIUC first got our attention with the NFDG backing, and have just announced a $40M series A today, with the most impressive industry advisor list we may have ever seen for an early startup behind AIUC-1, their agent standard backed by real insurance:From being Anthropic's first product hire to building the standards, testing, and insurance infrastructure meant to make frontier AI deployable, Rune Kvist is betting that the biggest constraint on AI adoption won't be capability it will be trust. In this episode, the AIUC cofounder joins swyx and Vibhu to announce a new $40M round and explain why companies like Cursor, Harvey, Lovable, and ElevenLabs are increasingly confronting a problem that gets harder as AI gets better: who is responsible when autonomous systems fail?We go deep on AIUC-1, the emerging standard for agent security, safety, and reliability; how AI agents are stress-tested for jailbreaks, hallucinations, and data leaks; and why Rune thinks standards and insurance could become critical infrastructure for AI. We also discuss the growing trust gap between governments and frontier labs, AI-enabled cyber and biological risks, why every model can ultimately be jailbroken, what happens when a $20 coding agent causes $200M of damage, whether AI engineers should be certified, and why even after AGI there may be one job the labs can never do themselves: be their own watchdog.We discuss:* Why risk, liability, and trust may become the binding constraint on AI adoption* Rune's path from reading the Scaling Laws paper to joining Anthropic in its earliest days* What Anthropic understood about scaling, compute, and the future years before it became obvious* Why Waymo illustrates the gap between AI capability and real-world deployment* AIUC's $40M round and work with Cursor, Harvey, Lovable, ElevenLabs, and other frontier AI companies* AIUC-1: a standard for AI agent security, safety, and reliability* How agents are tested for jailbreaks, hallucinations, and data leakage* Why most AI companies optimize the happy path without seriously stress-testing adversarial cases* Why AI standards may need to update every quarter instead of every decade* The emerging trust gap between frontier AI labs and governments* Cybersecurity, child safety, biological weapons, and the expanding frontier-model risk surface* Why standards and insurance may need to evolve together* How Lloyd's of London can insure AI systems and bring trust to enterprise deployment* What happens if a $20 Cursor subscription contributes to a $200M plane crash* The Air Canada chatbot case and how AI failures are beginning to clarify legal liability* Why copyright may be one of the hardest AI risks to insure* Evals, mechanistic interpretability, monitoring, and models becoming aware they're being tested* The impossible CISO mandate: adopt AI fast, but don't let anything go wrong* Why robotics will make AI liability dramatically more consequential* Whether AI engineers should have Level 1, 2, and 3 certifications* AIUC's roadmap across agents, frontier models, robotics, and universal red teaming* Why AGI could become a question of national sovereignty* Why the labs can never fully serve as their own watchdogs* The Big Short problem: how do you stop competing watchdogs from racing standards to the bottom?Rune Kvist* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/runekvist/* X: https://x.com/RuneKvistAIUC* https://aiuc.comTimestamps00:00:00 AIUC's $40M Round and the Risk Bottleneck for AI00:01:07 From Scaling Laws to Early Anthropic00:07:58 Why Trust, Not Capability, Could Limit AI Adoption00:12:19 Founding AIUC and Building AIUC-100:18:52 How AI Agents Are Audited and Stress-Tested00:25:26 Frontier Models, Government, and the AI Trust Gap00:33:32 Cyber, Child Safety, and AI-Enabled Biological Risk00:38:14 Why Standards and Insurance Belong Together00:41:45 What Does an AI Insurance Policy Actually Cover?00:50:44 The $20 Cursor Subscription and the $200M Plane Crash00:53:53 AI Liability, Monitoring, and Earning Enterprise Trust00:56:21 From AI Agents to Models to Robotics00:58:29 Copyright, Adverse Selection, and AI Insurance01:03:28 Evals, Mechanistic Interpretability, and Eval Awareness01:08:36 The Impossible Enterprise AI Mandate01:11:52 Prediction Markets vs. AI Audits01:14:43 Should AI Engineers Be Certified?01:19:10 AIUC's Roadmap, AGI, and Who Watches the Watchdogs?TranscriptIntroduction: AIUC, the $40M Series A, and Risk as the Adoption BottleneckSwyx [00:00:00]: Okay, we're in the studio with Rune from AIUC, the Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company, with our trusty co-host, Vibhu. Welcome.Rune Kvist [00:00:10]: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you.Swyx [00:00:11]: What are you announcing today?Rune Kvist [00:00:12]: We have raised $40 million, led by Ribbit Capital and First Harmonic.Swyx [00:00:17]: You first came to my attention when Nat and Daniel invested in you guys. Is the story, like, pretty much the same? Like, what are you today versus what you thought you were back then?Rune Kvist [00:00:26]: When we raised our seed round, we had a hypothesis that at some point risk was going to hold down adoption. At that point in time, that felt kind of hypothetical, and I think that is now over. Clearly, the moment is now with Mythos and Fable. It's pretty obvious that literally the binding constraint on adoption is risk. And so for us, it feels like this is a natural continuation of the same hypothesis, but where previously it was speculation, now it feels like fact.Swyx [00:00:54]: And let's get a list of the customers that you're highlighting as part of your Series A.Rune Kvist [00:00:58]: Totally. Yeah. So we are now working with folks like Cursor, Harvey, Lovable, ElevenLabs.Swyx [00:01:05]: Yeah. Amazing. Congrats.Rune Kvist [00:01:06]: Thank you.Swyx [00:01:07]: So you were famously one of the first hires involved in GTM and product. I'm just kind of curious: what was your path into AI? Just recap.Rune's Path Into AI: Scaling Laws, Capital, and AnthropicRune Kvist [00:01:18]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:01:19]: Late 2021, I sold a company, my first company, an edtech company. I had a bit of time to think about what was next. I came across the Scaling Laws paper, and that just struck me like lightning. I was just like, “This is a big idea.” In short, the Scaling Laws paper just says the bigger the model, the smarter the model.Swyx [00:01:38]: So this is the Kaplan one, not the Chinchilla one?Rune Kvist [00:01:40]: Exactly, the Kaplan one.Swyx [00:01:42]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:01:42]: And the important thing that clicked for me there was, oh, now capital will understand this. If you put in more money, you get more money out, and so that will kick off a hype cycle. And so you get a sense of predictable returns, which is, in fact, what's played out. And so I just packed my bags. I'd never been to San Francisco. I'd never been there. I just packed my bags, flew out here to find the people who had written it. And at the time, they had just started a small lab called Anthropic. There were around 40 people at the time or so. Drank a bunch of coffee until I eventually got introduced to Dario. And at the time, they were wrestling with some of these questions of, like, should we deploy our models? Should we make revenue? How should we engage with the rest of the world? They'd just broken off from OpenAI, and it's been publicly reported that they were kind of concerned with how they were dealing with deployment. So they were wrestling with some of those questions. At this point, this is early fog of war, like early 2022. The hottest product at the time was, like, Jasper. Like, there's nothing out there. So where value was going to accrue, and what the different parts of the stack were going to be, were all open questions.Swyx [00:02:48]: I want to highlight to people, you ask these questions because you have a PPE background.Rune Kvist [00:02:52]: Yes.Swyx [00:02:52]: I actually was in Singapore in one of the sort of feeder programs for prepping people for PPE. So I had a tutor. We learned, you know, philosophy and politics and economics. But, like, I think your kind of background matters. Machine learning people who read the neural, Scaling Laws paper would not necessarily draw the same conclusions that you did. Whereas any capitalist would read that and go, “Holy s**t.”Rune Kvist [00:03:19]: Correct.Swyx [00:03:20]: Right?Rune Kvist [00:03:21]: Yes.Swyx [00:03:21]: Who tipped you onto that paper? Because it's not a paper that you normally read, right, like, in your circles?Rune Kvist [00:03:26]: Yeah. I think I'd actually, ever since AlphaGo, had some appreciation that AI was a big deal.Swyx [00:03:36]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:03:36]: But it kind of felt like it raised all these kind of interesting philosophical questions, but it was kind of not clear from afar where exactly that would go. But it was obvious enough that it was like, this is going to be a big thing if we find the kind of right mechanism to kind of get the techno-capital machine to work on this. But it was just not clear. And so I think there was some way in which, like, that became obvious, and also it wasn't as obvious at the time than it is now, right? Like, it was just like, wow, this is so interesting. But it still felt, coming from kind of a philosophy and economics background, it felt like if this turns out to be true, you're going to be wrestling with all of the big questions in society. Everything you've learned about politics gets thrown out of the window. Everything you've learned about economics at least gets challenged. And so what felt interesting was to be at that frontier that has ramifications across everything. So that's why I sought it out.Swyx [00:04:32]: I mean, clearly really good insight. For people who don't know, the PPE program is, like, where prime ministers are born. So then you end up meeting Dario.Rune Kvist [00:04:41]: Yep. First Dario, yeah.Swyx [00:04:43]: Yeah. Well, I mean, like, so did you get extra insights from talking with them that you didn't get from your original hypothesis?Anthropic's Early Conviction and the Scaling Laws Crystal BallRune Kvist [00:04:50]: If you read the Scaling Laws paper, you get this, like, very vague sketch of like, wow, this seems kind of important. There are some lines on a chart. This seems kind of important. And what I think the team at Anthropic had thought more about than anyone was like, what are the implications of this if you really play this out? And back then they had, kind of vision documents for what the world would look like in 2026, and they were kind of in vivid detail playing out how much compute is going to be needed, what the CapEx was going to look like, what some of the societal concerns were going to be, but also what is the amount of economic value coming out here? And so it kind of felt like they held a crystal ball that in hindsight turned out to just be dramatically correct. And they weren't holding it like they were obviously correct. They were just like, “Take this hypothesis really seriously.”Swyx [00:05:38]: Think it through, yeah.Rune Kvist [00:05:38]: And think it through in the same way as the kind of situational awareness that isSwyx [00:05:43]: Across the street.Rune Kvist [00:05:44]: Across the street.Swyx [00:05:44]: Your office, yeah. Oh my God, we're all living across the street in the same one square mile.Rune Kvist [00:05:50]: Correct. And that's now a couple of years old, but also people keep referencing it these particular weeks with Fable and Mythos, and it's like, wow, if you take this one idea seriously- For the Scaling Laws, a lot of things fall into place.Vibhu [00:06:03]: And keep in mind, at this point, this is the same team that did GPT-1, GPT-2, and GPT-3.Rune Kvist [00:06:08]: Correct.Vibhu [00:06:08]: Which is also, like, it's not just some experimentation. Like, this is a real model that we just scaled up.Rune Kvist [00:06:14]: And they had deep conviction in this idea: if you take a big blob of compute and data, it just wants to learn, and out of that will come smarter and smarter models. And all the particulars were not clear.Vibhu [00:06:26]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:06:27]: And all the implications were not clear. But their deep conviction in this, like, core thesis, and that was kind of dizzying. It was both phenomenally interesting and exciting, and also very quickly you get to, like, the world we know today will no longer be if this hypothesis holds. So it also just felt, like, important in some kind of grand sense.Vibhu [00:06:48]: What kind of shaped you there? So that was early 2022. Not only had GPT-1, GPT-2, and GPT-3 come out, but, you know, the amazing founders of Anthropic that have never split up, the only ones, they actually had the conviction to leave OpenAI, start their lab. You said there were about 40 people there. What was the time like there?Inside Early Anthropic: Mission, Deployment, and RiskRune Kvist [00:07:06]: It was kind of remarkably like what it looks like on the outside today. Extremely cohesive, extremely mission-oriented, and living in this tension between their two ideas, which is AI could both go really well and really bad, and we want to be part of building it. That creates astounding amounts of tension. And they were wrestling with this incentive challenge where they know they're in a race that they're in where you might get forced to cut corners, but it also felt very important to them to be at the forefront of technology. And all of those ideas were just present at that time. It kind of feels like that line has been just very clear, and I think kind of love them or hate them, they have really stuck to their guns. There's a core set of beliefs that they hold more deeply than most companies hold any beliefs.Vibhu [00:07:58]: Yeah. Fast-forward to today.Rune Kvist [00:08:00]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:08:00]: What does that lead us to AI underwriting company? What are you up to? What motivated you to start this?From Waymo to AIUC: Confidence Infrastructure for AIRune Kvist [00:08:05]: Yeah. AIUC builds confidence infrastructure for frontier AI through standards and insurance. The link from Anthropic to building confidence infrastructure, looking out the windows at Anthropic offices and seeing Waymos driving by. Already back then, early 2022, Waymos were in some ways like AGI for cars. Like, they were superhuman drivers, but you couldn't take one to the airport. And now, four and a bit years later, you still can't take your Waymo to the airport, despite now everyone having kind of looked at the evidence and being like, “They're better drivers than humans.” So in that particular instance, what's clear is that the binding constraint on AI being useful is not capability, but is that liability or risk or trust. That problem is, general. The reason why right nowRune Kvist [00:08:52]: Fable is not open for access is not because it's not a good model, it's because it's a very good model. It's just hard to make promises about what it will or will not do. And this problem gets worse as AI gets better. Basically, more intelligent AI can be more autonomous. That's more valuable, but also the risk surface grows. And so - what Waymo illustrates is that unless you build the confidence infrastructure to make promises about AI, or at least bring light to the risks, you grind adoption to a halt. Governments, banks, hospitals, militaries need to have some sense of what AI will and will not do to be able to operate for them to incorporate it. And that's the problem that we're trying to solve. Now, why standards and insurance? If you trace this problem back through history, every technology wave has had some version of this problem. So if you go back to, like, year 1900, electricity comesVibhu [00:09:47]: Ben Franklin.Rune Kvist [00:09:48]: Cars burn down, sorry, houses burn down, lots of people die. 1930s, cars are a big deal, kill lots of people. 1950s, private nuclear energy is a big deal, poses big risks. In each of those instances, the market runs ahead of regulation to create confidence infrastructure because that's required to make go/go decisions. That is required for adoption, and the market fundamentally wants adoption. And in all of those instances, common blueprint emerges between standards and insurance. The reason these two components is standards kind of provide the rules of the road, and they also specify, like, what are the tests that need to be run so we can get a sense of how high the risk is. So take in the case of cars, that's like a car crash. Great, everyone, they inform your insurance pricing today, they inform your purchasing decisions, et cetera. That's basically the risk framework. The insurers are important because they pick up the bill. So they are the private institution that is most on the side of. That is best incentivized to quantify the risks truthfully and then figure out all the ways to reduce the risk ‘cause that increases their profit. So they're basically, they help shape the incentives. And these two work really well in unison. Now, how does that show up as a company? Well, one of the things that was obvious even - or starting to become obvious even a couple years ago was that frontier companies, some of our customers today, like Cursor, Sierra, ElevenLabs, Harvey, were going to have a very easy time selling a pilot to a bank. The, like, the demo just sells itself. It's magic. But bringing that through, if you want to do a wall-to-wall rollout at a bank or a hospital, you have to go through the risk process. These banks have no idea even which questions to ask, let alone which answers are sufficient, let alone, like, how do they go and test whether these agents actually work the way they're supposed to. And so they had this problem of, like, what can we say to earn the trust? And we think there's, like, a golden sentence that goes something like, “Hey, I hear you're really worried about hallucinations or jailbreaks or whatever it may be. We've had an independent third party test us against the gold standard. We passed with flying colors. And as a vote of confidence, the world's most conservative insurers have looked at the data.” And they're willing to take some of the risk onto their balance sheet.Swyx [00:12:06]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:12:07]: So if something does go wrongSwyx [00:12:07]: There's money behind it, yeah.Rune Kvist [00:12:09]: Exactly. So that's kind of like the link between all this. We can get into some of the hard parts related to the technical testing, which is, I think, the crux of the matter, but I'll pause there.Swyx [00:12:19]: How did you and Rajiv come together? This-- there's always, like, you come across very confident and, you know, and we're announcing your Series A and all these things, but I want to see, like, the early initial stages of, like, idea formation.Cofounding AIUC with Rajiv DattaniRune Kvist [00:12:31]: Yeah. Rajiv is actually my soon-to-be brother-in-law.Swyx [00:12:35]: Oh.Rune Kvist [00:12:36]: So I'm actually, in a week and a half getting married to Rajiv's sister.Swyx [00:12:42]: Okay, now you're tight.Rune Kvist [00:12:44]: Exactly.Swyx [00:12:44]: Now you know.Rune Kvist [00:12:45]: So - Rajiv and I have known each other for a decade. Funny story, I met both Rajiv and his sister, Hena, at the same time when Hena and I were interns at McKinsey in London, and Rajiv was assigned as my mentor. And so met them at the same time. For the longest time, it was not obvious that we were necessarily going to work together. I was in startups. He was, an insurance partner at McKinsey. Three or four years ago, I think Hena convinced him that AI was going to be a really big thing. And so he quit his job, cushy partner job at McKinsey in London, packed his bags, flew to San Francisco, and ended up joining METR. You guys are probably online enoughSwyx [00:13:24]: CEO.Rune Kvist [00:13:24]: Exactly.Swyx [00:13:24]: We've, we've, we've heard of METR.Rune Kvist [00:13:25]: You see the plot-- the chart of the horizons of the tasks that agents can take on is doubling extremely fast. So he was COO at METR, led their partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI to test their models before release, but also working closely with the US and UK government, to figure out, like, how do you know whether a model can be released? And in some ways, that was, like, the perfect background. He's spent a lot of time in insurance, knows that world, spent a lot of time with frontier testing of models. And so when I was bumbling around this idea space, starting with some of the ideas we talked about related to Waymo, as soon as we got into the content, we were both like, “Oh, this would be an amazing business to build together.” This is wrestling with the problem that we both think is the most important in the world from a market angle, which is kind of our intuitions is that the market can do a lot, and the faster AI moves, the harder it is for government to solve some of these problems. And then it took a little bit of time to work through what is it like to work with family.Swyx [00:14:27]: Sure.Rune Kvist [00:14:27]: And,Swyx [00:14:30]: Because you were already dating at the timeRune Kvist [00:14:31]: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.Swyx [00:14:33]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:14:34]: Already back then, itSwyx [00:14:35]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:14:35]: We felt like we were a family.Swyx [00:14:36]: Nice.Rune Kvist [00:14:36]: And so starting a business together felt like kind of a big step. And, here we are with just immense amounts of trust.Vibhu [00:14:43]: Yeah. So now you're a company of how big? How big are you guys now?AIUC-1 Certification: Agent Security, Safety, and ReliabilityRune Kvist [00:14:46]: There are just 20 of us now.Vibhu [00:14:47]: 20 of you guys now, have Series A, and you have your first certification out, the AIUC-1. Let's bring up the certification. So this is the agent certification, right? What goes into the process? I have, like, two questions here. One is, walk us through the certification, and two is, what is the process for a company to get certified, you know?Rune Kvist [00:15:08]: Great. As it says right on the top, AIUC-1 is a standard for agent security, safety, and reliability. The fundamental design principle is take all of the concerns that slow down adoption, so all the questions, all the fears that keep, security leaders in the Fortune 1000 up at night, and put them into one comprehensive framework. That's what you'll see there. You can see the six categories. Two, you want to ground all of this in technical testing. So one of the concerns with security standards that often feel kind of like theater paperwork is that they're not actually ground out in, does any of this work? Does any of this matter? And so we had a conviction from early on that was going to be the kind of crux, was to pass this, you must get tested every quarter, basically run thousands of simulations to see, well, so can it actually be jailbroken? How hard is it to jailbreak? How often does it hallucinate? How often does it leak data? Et cetera. And then the last, core idea here, if you scroll up to the top here, is to refresh it quarterly.Rune Kvist [00:16:08]: So the core trait of AI is that it moves extremely fast. Whatever concerns we're discussing today were not the same ones three months ago, and this will keep changing. Typically, standards update on a, like, a decade cycle is obviously not going to work. But the question is kind of how do you update it? And the core thing here was to basically get the risk leaders of the Fortune 1000 around the table. So if you go over to the left hereVibhu [00:16:32]: YeahRune Kvist [00:16:32]: You'll see the AIUC-1 consortium. The consortium is a group of risk leaders who run real banks, real hospitals, real critical infrastructure, who are facing these challenges every day. And we meet with these folks twice a quarter and hear what's top of mind, what is keeping them up at night. There's tremendous amount of desire for that conversation. And then we operationalize that into a specific standard that gets into. And actually, we can go into and look at whatVibhu [00:16:55]: YeahRune Kvist [00:16:55]: What even is the standard. So if we go back to introduction, out there to the left, scroll up a little bit to the wheel, click into reliability. So if you take something like hallucinations sits in reliability. There is a number of requirements here. If you go into the top one, prevent hallucinated outputs, hallucinate outputs, this is one particular requirement. This is a technical control. Basically, we want some kind of ground in this filter. The first thing you see here is what's called a crosswalk. So everyone and their grandmother has put out a framework, very high-level framework for what are the AI risks.Swyx [00:17:27]: This is basically your competition,Rune Kvist [00:17:28]: In some ways our competitionSwyx [00:17:29]: Not seriously, yeah.Rune Kvist [00:17:30]: We're, in fact, friends with them. We'll come back to why.Swyx [00:17:31]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:17:32]: But mapping everything together so you have one superset. The claim you're trying to support here is, if you follow this framework, then you can also see how you follow the other frameworks. But the meat of it comes down here in control activities and evidence. So control activities is like, great, you have this high-level requirement. How do you turn that down to something operational? Here's what you must do, and then what is the evidence that we're looking for?Rune Kvist [00:17:57]: And the reason we go this deep is that there's actually not that much confusion about what are the big concerns in AI. Everyone agrees to these. The question, like, what are you actually supposed to do? And so. What we found a lot of demand for is getting down to the specific evidence, that people need to look for. Whether you are Cursor building something or, even JPMorgan building something, but also if you're just a risk leader at JPMorgan, like what exactly should you ask for? What can you ask for without sounding stupid? Like if you ask for some-- you won't believe the amount of time a risk leader has asked for the IP rights to the underlying model to Cursor or something, and you're just like “Sorry, what?” Like,Swyx [00:18:39]: You slip it in there and you seeRune Kvist [00:18:40]: SlipSwyx [00:18:40]: See if you notice.Rune Kvist [00:18:41]: See if they. Exactly.Swyx [00:18:42]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:18:42]: Put that in the questionnaire. All right, so that's kind of what our standard is, and we update this every quarter with these folks, to keep up with the latest concerns.Swyx [00:18:51]: Can I double-click on this one?Controls, Evidence, and Third-Party TestingRune Kvist [00:18:52]: Yeah.Swyx [00:18:52]: So first of all, the website's beautiful. Like, it's so confidence-inducing which is the whole point where, like, okay, I know exactly what I'm signing up for when I talk with you. Like, I don't even have to talk to you. I can just see your whole, certification, which is great. But, like, okay, so from here, like D001.1 configure a groundedness filter, how does that get applied? Like, you have a person thatRune Kvist [00:19:16]: Yeah,Swyx [00:19:16]: Goes through it?Rune Kvist [00:19:17]: If you, go backVibhu [00:19:19]: I did see somewhere there's like, you know, fifty-one requirements, a hundred thirty controls. There's like a wholeSwyx [00:19:25]: Right. I just want to. Like, to me, this doesn't translateVibhu [00:19:27]: Yeah.Swyx [00:19:27]: Into a test or an eval.Rune Kvist [00:19:28]: Yes. So if you go into, on the left-hand side. So actually, if - before we go in there are three types of requirements. The first is technical controls, like you must implement some guardrails.Rune Kvist [00:19:42]: Two, there are test controls. So you must have an independent third party go and run some tests against you. I'll show you one of those in a second. And then three, there are policy controls. For example, you must have a person whose name is on the line when you guys f**k up, and you must have a plan for how you tell your customers and how you engage with them. They're kind of more traditional, standard type stuff. So in this particular instance, we just check whether they in fact have a ground in filter. So we will partner with an auditor. So we partner with auditors like KPMG or like Schellman who go in and do the thing auditors do, which is to check the evidence. In this case, that might be a screenshot, it might be part of the code that they need to review to see that it actually. Just that it exists.Swyx [00:20:21]: Oh, okay.Rune Kvist [00:20:22]: And then the second thingSwyx [00:20:22]: So you're not testing the effectiveness of it.Rune Kvist [00:20:24]: That's the second thing. So if you go downSwyx [00:20:25]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:20:25]: To the third-party testing for hallucinations out on the left, that's basically the next requirement. This is where we test how well does it actually work.Swyx [00:20:32]: Okay, and is it you testing or the auditor?Rune Kvist [00:20:34]: We test them.Rune Kvist [00:20:35]: We test them.Swyx [00:20:36]: That's a lot of work.Vibhu [00:20:37]: How long does testing take? So if I want to get certified, justCertification Timelines, Remediation, and Quarterly UpdatesRune Kvist [00:20:40]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:20:40]: How long does the end roughly take?Rune Kvist [00:20:42]: Yeah, the end, almost always is dependent on, like, our customers needVibhu [00:20:47]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:20:47]: To look something for us. It takes somewhere between, like, 3 to 10 weeksSwyx [00:20:52]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:20:52]: Depending on how up to snuff they already are. So some people show up to us with, like, extremely rigorous security programs. When we test them, it works extremely well. We can get that done very quick. Some people come to us, and they're not that far along. We give them kind of the spec that they need to build towards, and then their security teams and engineers get to work and build to meet the standard. The testing itself typically takes a couple of weeks, including the time for them to remediate. Often, we'll find something that we cannot pass, where this is actually just not up to the standard. - you won't pass the standard. And then they will need to go and implement additional safeguards or additional remediation that makes them more robust so that they can actually kind of hand on heart look at their customers in the eyes and say, like, “Hey, we've done truly our very best.”Vibhu [00:21:35]: And they're certified for a year and have quarterly updates?Rune Kvist [00:21:38]: Correct, yeah.Vibhu [00:21:39]: And, yeah, it's pretty interesting. I think, you know, what's changed since. So this is certifying agents in production, right? Your customers, like you've had Lovable, ElevenLabs, Intercom, and they've all gone through this certification.Rune Kvist [00:21:50]: Yes.Vibhu [00:21:51]: What has changed? So I see you post, like, you know, Q2 added MCP agent,How Agent Risks Are Changing: Coding, MCP, and Agent-to-Agent InteractionsRune Kvist [00:21:56]: Yeah.Vibhu [00:21:56]: agent communication. Any other things that you want to kind of highlight since the first iteration? What comes in quarterly?Rune Kvist [00:22:03]: Yeah. So some of the changes have just been agents are not just one thing. So, like, if you take agents like Cursor and compare them to Sierra, they're really quite different. And compare them to Harvey again, compare them to you out of againSwyx [00:22:16]: ElevenLabs, yeah.Rune Kvist [00:22:17]: ElevenLabs, they're all quite different. And so we wanted to design a standard that works for all of the types of agents. And we started with one that was, like, pretty text-based, like, honestly, pretty customer support-focused. That's where there's a lot of existing demand. And then over time, we've picked, some of the frontier companies in each of these other domains that we could work with and build out the standard, so, such that we know that the same standard works for code, it works for customer support, works for automation, et cetera. So that's been one big thing. Yeah, then some of the things that have been top of mind recently, Mythos is bringing up a lot of concerns for security leaders. We're starting to get more and more questions around agent interactions. It's very nascent, at the moment, but it's starting to emerge. There've been a lot of, questions related to OpenClaw and MCP. Again, like agents starting to interact with each other, is really top of mind. Then as coding agents have really taken off, that's also where banks and hospitals, et cetera, are getting more and more precise on what it is they need. So really dialing in as that start to be, like, where most of the tokens flow through in the world, getting much sharper on that.Vibhu [00:23:26]: Can you share for people that are listening that don't really think about this? Like you mentioned, there's the obvious stuff, you know, hallucination, citations. What are best practices that people should do when building agents? Like, if they come to you pretty ready with certification like, you know, they'll probably pass certification. What are the things people don't think about that they should have?Best Practices for Agent Builders: Stress Tests and GuardrailsRune Kvist [00:23:46]: The most important thing is that a lot of companies have not done a serious stress test. They spend most of the time, perhaps rightly so, optimizing for how does it work in the good case, the average case, how high-quality is the output for the customer. And a lot of these companies are pretty new, so they haven't spent a lot of time stress testing the what is there as an adversary on the other side? What are some of the complicated corner cases that you've not really considered? So I think that's, like, a frame of mind. And you'll also see this in startups. It often takes a while until they hire their first security person. They- And that's a whole different kind of risk surface than just building a good product. So a lot of that applies. Most companies actually also have the right kind of architecture. Most of them will have some kind of guardrails in place, either some that come out of the box from their model provider or they'll have built their own filters that sit in between. They just don't work very well. The difference between putting a classifier in place that, like, maybe goes and checks whether you're giving medical advice when you shouldn't and says, “Hey, if this looks like medical advice, filter it out.” Lots of companies have that in place. The question is whether it works. And it's actually pretty fiddly to sit down and think about all the ways in which you could ask for medical advice, read the academic literature on what are the kinds ofRune Kvist [00:25:03]: Framings or tricks you might play to get an AI to give you medical advice when you really shouldn't. And so there's, like, an area of expertise that's just missing. So what we find is that most people have the right building blocks in place. They don'- It doesn'- It's not rocket science, but the finicky thing is, like, getting into the corners and testing whether it works such that you can look your customers in the eye, or maybe a bank or maybe a hospital and be like, “This is going to work for you.”Vibhu [00:25:26]: I see. So we talked a lot about the agent-level certification. Where do you guys go from here? So announcing series A camera, we talked about this a bit. There's the whole security risk of Fable, government stepping in. You guys are kind of announcing that you're also going into model certification?Toward Model Certification: The Government–Lab Trust GapRune Kvist [00:25:46]: When we do a bit of cutting afterwards,Vibhu [00:25:48]: YeahRune Kvist [00:25:48]: We will not yet be announcing this,Vibhu [00:25:49]: NiceRune Kvist [00:25:50]: The question that is top of everyone's minds now is at the model level. And Mythos, then Fable, has really brought this to the fore that in addition to the commercial risk and the kind of economic security risks that are happening at the agent layer, the models are going to present risk in the national security category. The shape of the problem is very similar. You have some people that are on the hook if something goes wrong. In the case of agents, it's often security leaders in the enterprise. In this case, it's the government. They don'- haven't necessarily spent their entire lives thinking about what are the new risks that come here, what is the kind of data you might be looking for, how might you test that? But they do have to make sure that their concerns are addressed. You have some frontier AI companies that are deeply technical. They know a lot about the risks, but they fundamentally have an incentive to not always be truthful. So you have a trust gap between the government and the labs. And in every other industry, you end up with some kind of body sitting between, a neutral third party sitting between those people. There's no other industry where you allow people to audit themselves. So there is going to be a need for a third party that can take the rigor of the labs to run frontier technical evals, but can also speak legible trust in the way that the government trusts PwC to go and run financial audits. And they know that they output audit reports in a way that's consistent, that's easy to read, that's factual, that's, trustworthy. Those two things need to be brought together. And what we've learned from our work with agents is that if you want those-- that communication between those two parties to be smooth, there has to be one common standard that is public, that people can go and inspect. What are the risks that matter? Within each of these risks, what are the kinds of threat models that you're really looking for? You need to specify for each of those risks, what are the guardrails that need to be in place, and what are the tests they need to run to see whether those guardrails are effective? And then you need to go and run audits that are - technical audits that are consistent. So if you're trying to bring trust, it's extremely important that you methodically work your way through the risks. You can't send one researcher in and say, like, “Come back with whatever you find.” You need to be able to explain exactly what you did, exactly what you tried, exactly what you did not try, and therefore the kinds of promises you can and cannot make at the end of it. I think ofNeutral Third Parties, CAISI, and Model Risk AuditsRune Kvist [00:28:13]: Fable as a direct symptom of this problem that the government was told that there's a risk. The government may struggle to assess just how big that risk is. They call Anthropic, and Anthropic is trying to tell them, “Hey, actually, every model can be jailbroken.”Swyx [00:28:28]: That's not what you want to hear, right?Rune Kvist [00:28:32]: As the government, that might be hard to trust.Rune Kvist [00:28:36]: And we think that a broker is the most natural solution. In other markets, you see something like, in financial markets, you see Moody's. Moody's goes in, and they look at a bond, and they output a rating. They say like, “Here's the evidence we found. Here's the rating.” We don't decide whether anyone should buy this bond or not buy this bond. Well, that depends on their risk appetite. But we do provide this common information layer that everyone can rely on. In the case of Moody's, the government, points to them and say, “Hey, pension funds, you should probably really take care. You shouldn't risk your pensioners' money, so you can only invest in triple-A rated bonds.” That means that now the government doesn't have to staff thousands of financial technical experts to rerun forecasts every week to see whether things are correctly rated. They get to point to some neutral third party. So my hypothesis is, my hunch is that you will see a third party that sits between the government and the labs, and it could either be the government builds it themselves. So something like CAISI was set up to do exactly this. And the questionSwyx [00:29:44]: Sorry, I'm not familiar with CAISI.Rune Kvist [00:29:45]: CAISI is the Center for AI Standards and Innovation.Swyx [00:29:49]: Okay.Rune Kvist [00:29:50]: I won't get into the details, but it's a body of NIST that typically sets standards. So it's basically a government body that has AI experts. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.Swyx [00:29:59]: Very key. Very key.Rune Kvist [00:30:00]: Very key.Vibhu [00:30:00]: I think, you know, it's one of those things where when you just sit back and listen-- look at it, like, is there enough technical expertise in the government to measure, test these things right now? Probably not, right? And Fable is a result of, okay, we've had to scale back and pause things,Rune Kvist [00:30:17]: Yeah. And they have excellent people, but they have an extraordinarily small budget compared to the scale of the challenge that's ahead of us. And I think they have a role to play. The question is kind of like, who does what? We have now outlined the jobs to be done, and they're quite extensive. Every model release, there is an astounding-- Given that they take in any input, their risk surface is astounding. And so the question is really: what can only the government do, and what can the market provide here that can keep up with the pace as AI risk changes? Our perspective is that also at the model layer, the risks that people care about today are not the same ones they cared about three months ago. So the pace of legislation is too slow to deal with pinpointing the risks here. And so we think there's a lot that the market can do to surface timely information. Ultimately, there is a bunch of policy decisions here. Is the national security risks of a model too high?Swyx [00:31:12]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:31:12]: That's a political answer. But what we want to make sure is that the process that produces this risk information is compatible with very fast innovation. So you don't want to. This is not a question of like, can you slow the things down? Can you keep, the models locked up until-- for months on end until everyone can make a guarantee? But it is this, can you, in the time it. Given that the US is competing with China on releasing models, can you insert risk information that allows the government to, like, make rapid decisions on some of these questions? Balancing that trade-off between failing to adopt AI is going to put us at risk, but also reckless adoption is going to put us at risk. And that's a very kind of fine balance that they're going to need, like, a lot of high-quality intelligence to make.Chinese Models, Data Flows, and National Security ConcernsSwyx [00:31:55]: Just a side mention, because you mentioned Chinese models, any specific concerns that you're hearing from your CISOs about that? ‘cause I guess it's free, but.Rune Kvist [00:32:05]: CISOs have a bunch of concerns around data flows in general that they're really concerned about. So there's a lot of questions like, if these models are Chinese, where does that, where does that data go? I think a lot of this can be addressed, but they come up often.Swyx [00:32:18]: I mean, they understand they're running on American GPUs.Rune Kvist [00:32:21]: Some of them, some of them understand that they're running on American GPUs.Swyx [00:32:23]: They're not, like, phoning home every time you, like, call home.Rune Kvist [00:32:26]: No. A year ago, there was not a lot of understanding of this. I actually think, you're seeing the security leaders becoming kind of AI literate at a blistering pace, and you're actually also seeing my Twitter timeline that's very pilled and my LinkedIn feed that used to not at all be pilled kind of converge. They're both talking about Fable.Swyx [00:32:45]: Right. Yeah, that's true.Rune Kvist [00:32:46]: They are both talking about whether you can prevent models from being jailbroken these days.Swyx [00:32:51]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:32:52]: Like national security national security risks are now the conversation that is actually emerging. Other than that, I think you mostly see a kind of general picture: there are no concerns with any particular model or any particular model output, but there is a general nervousness of having critical infrastructure run on models that are not produced in America by Americans where the American government has control.Swyx [00:33:14]: But it doesn't necessarily show up in your framework that directly, or it might, I don't know.Rune Kvist [00:33:18]: There's a bit of stuff in there actually on the, like, the provenance of the models and disclosing that. But I think there's a bunch of use cases where running a Chinese open-source model is just the best solution.Swyx [00:33:27]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:33:27]: And a concern is slightly more macro here, which is not best addressed at any particular certification level.Vibhu [00:33:32]: Is there anything interesting that you see at the. You know, if you're trying to fill that middle gap, that mediation gap, any interesting stuff that you guys forecast would be required other than, you know, what the average person might expect?Cyber, Child Safety, Bio Risk, and Expert CoordinationRune Kvist [00:33:47]: There's a bunch of interesting questions about what are the risks that matter here. So right now, the risk of the day is cyber, because it's very real, very tangible. And some of the risks that are also emerging as pretty real and pretty tangible are things like child safety is becoming both extremely important, but also politically important. And then there are some of the risks that are coming down the pipeline that today feel kind of speculative, but people who spend a lot of time with the models see them coming down is things like, risks that relate to biology.Rune Kvist [00:34:18]: And specifically whether models will help adversaries produce biological weapons and making that extremely cheap, extremely accessible, producing-- making the chance of another COVID or worse pandemic. COVID was not engineered to be bad, as if you were trying to do that. So I think those are some of the risks that are coming down the pipeline. I think one other thing to just note is that agents are kind of deliberately narrow. So, like, when a frontier agent company puts a chatbot that interacts with customers, they've really tried to narrow the topics it's interested in talking about. Such that if you ask it, like, “What do you think of the president?” it will just decline, which means that the kind of risk area is somewhat smaller. For models, it is infinite. And so there's not a single expert out there who can competently evaluate the risks of cyberattacks and fifteen-year-olds having month-long conversations with a chatbot and seeing whether it will in fact recommend suicide or something horrendous like that, and can evaluate the risks that terrorists can use AI to produce bioweapons. The risk surface is just too big. And so the central challenge actually becomes how do you get those subject matter experts to work within a one coherent framework that outputs one coherent report and rating that the world can go and inspect? ‘Cause that global perspective is central, but there's not a single organization today that could produce that.Swyx [00:35:47]: And you would be the presumptive one when you put out your model standards.Rune Kvist [00:35:51]: We think there can be one company that can, with a consortium of experts, build one coherent standard. I think we've shown that across all of the enterprise risks today. We think it could be one company that could, with a consortium, specify the audit rules, basically like the inputs and outputs that all these technical experts need. What access do they need? How should they treat infosec- info security? They can look at whether the eval- evals are well-produced without necessarily being able to say, “Hey, is this a threat or not a threat?” But overall, evaluating whether the evals are good, well-constructed, that set of audit rules that basically becomes the interface for all these experts, we think one clearinghouse could put together. To be clear. When I say one company, I think of it as one company coordinating lots of this in the same way that when we saw our consortium, it's not like we say we have all the answers on agent security. What we say is we are taking on the role of eliciting all of the concerns and being the secretary that puts it together and runs a tight house such that the standard updates lockstep every quarter, and that the audit reports that come out, in this case, 100-page audit reports, uniform and crisp and clear all to the level of detail that is required for executives that need to make a clear go/go decision. So that's kind of the role that we think we might play.OWASP, Frameworks, and the Operational Audit LayerSwyx [00:37:11]: I think in many ways you're performing the role that OWASP used to do there, and you said, like, you know, competition and partners.Rune Kvist [00:37:18]: Yeah.Swyx [00:37:19]: Can you go more into, like, how they partner?Rune Kvist [00:37:20]: Yeah. So first of all, OWASP is basically an open source community of security practitioners that are coming together to build frameworks for addressing the latest security concerns. We think they are phenomenal at creating frameworks. We'- In fact, we'- First of all, we're partners with them, so we have a joint article. Two, we've learned a lot from them. We think they're a tremendous source of intelligence. What OWASP does not do is building the machine that runs third-party audits such that a company like Cursor or a company like JPMorgan could get a third party to go and review them against this and say, “Hey, you've passed the standard, and here is the report that you can use to build trust and preempt your partners' or customers' questions.” So they fundamentally try to do something different. You - They are part of the information gathering and intelligence gathering and creating clarity, but the operational layer of turning this into promises is not the business they try to be in.Swyx [00:38:14]: The standard is emerging and is doing very well. Was it necessary to then also do underwriting? Obviously it's in the name, so please remember you thought about it first. I feel like if you just have enough consensus, you don't actually need the money angle, but it does help.Vibhu [00:38:30]: I did want to also note, you guys are a profit company too, right? It's not profit where there's a whole business side to it as well?Why For-Profit Standards and Insurers MatterRune Kvist [00:38:39]: Yeah. Yeah, so I'm just getting crazySwyx [00:38:41]: I think about the money part.Rune Kvist [00:38:42]: Yeah. Yeah, let's get into the money part. Let's start from actually your question, profit versus profit. In the security space today, cybersecurity, most of the standards are produced by nonprofits. I think that's an issue.Rune Kvist [00:39:00]: The question you have to ask yourself is, how do you create good incentives for these standards to be good and keep up?Rune Kvist [00:39:09]: Nonprofits tend to not have these adverse profit incentives where they, hollow out their standard and create a race to the bottom, but they're also not at all responsive by default to the communities that they serve. There's no process-- They don't have customers that they serve where they go and ask, “What do you want? What do you want? What do you want?” And when you look at the overall satisfaction with the security standards today, people tend to just not like them very much. You do see in other domains, that profit standards can serve the world quite well. So there are examples, like we talked about Moody's before. It's not without flaws, but, it is absolutely critical societal infrastructure that gets run at an astounding scale today. Your credit score, it's FICO. It's also a profit business. And when you go back even further in history, some of the crash testing standards came out of insurance companies.Rune Kvist [00:40:06]: The insurance companies together founded the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety because they were very interested in, like, how can we use standards to drive down mortality and save money? Go back, prior-- Our name actually pays homage to the Underwriters Laboratories, UL, which, was started right around when electricity came out. Houses started burning down. Insurers, again, were paying the bill, and they were maybe also good people, but their profit incentive was, let's prevent houses from burning down. Let's test all the electrical products, the light bulbs. All the light bulbs in here are probably tested, the toasters, et cetera. And they set up, an entity to create those standards. Today, UL has a profit entity and a profit entity. What they've recognized, they spun - They started profit. They spun out a profit because what they recognized was like, hey, actually to serve customers well, you need a profit entity. The lesson here is one of the ways that the market can align incentives so you're both responsive to customersRune Kvist [00:41:07]: And not hollowing out your standard over time is to align it with insurers because they fundamentally have good incentives. And so if you're a profit standard that works closely with insurers, you get the feedback loop in such that you're really tuned into your customers, but also have their interest at heart. So that's the model that we - the kind of inspirational model that we've learned a lot from, and that's also where the name comes from. In some ways, the term underwriting can both be associated with insurance, but it's also a broad term for, like, making decisions.Rune Kvist [00:41:40]: If you underwrite a decision, you're fundamentally kind of taking ownership for the consequences of it.AI Insurance Contracts, Lloyd's of London, and ElevenLabsSwyx [00:41:45]: Yeah, I mean, what does an insurance contract look like for AI?Rune Kvist [00:41:49]: Yeah. Most of the demand comes today for insurance contracts is, sitting between people who've built AI and people who are buying AI.Swyx [00:41:56]: Yes.Rune Kvist [00:41:57]: And what you want—the reason why people want insurers involved, both for the traditional reasons, hey, if something goes wrong, we want to be compensated, but it's in particular because insurers can bring trust to the equation. Because insurers will pay for the damages, if they're willing to write an insurance policy, that is them saying, “Hey, we think there is risk here, but that is manageable.” And that is kind of a. Their incentive aligns with the enterprises adopting it, so that's a really a good signal to the market. In the same way, actually, one of the things that Waymo tried to get their first permit to even operate in San Francisco was to get a lot of insurers to stack up a huge insurance policy. In the case if something went wrong, not because Google can't pay, but because it was very valuable to have a third party go and look at that dataRune Kvist [00:42:47]: That are trusted by governments, trusted by enterprises as conservative people and say, “Hey, we've looked at it. We're actually willing to take some of this on our balance sheet.” So that's, that's kind of the reason why people are interested in it. What it looks like is, in some ways like every other insurance contract. You specify what are the perils you want to cover, how much do you want to cover them, like up to what limits, and what does it cost to cover that. And in the case of, if we take a really concrete example, ElevenLabs, bought a first of its kind AI agent insurance policy. They work with some of the biggest, enterprises that work with governments. They're really interested in going above and beyond and making promises to their customers. So they wrote a policy that covers just some of the core concerns that their customers have been asking about. And, the crucial thing was really to get Lloyd's of London, the world's oldest insurer, one of our partners, to look at this data and be that third party alongside us to say, “Hey, we think there's something here that's worth underwriting.” and that's actually what it looks like. And so they will show that contract to their customers, and they can see how much they're covered for. They can see what exactly it covers, and that will also probably change next year. They will want to write an insurance policy that might cover more.Swyx [00:44:04]: When you say Lloyd's, is it reinsurance, or are they sharing somehow at the same level orRune Kvist [00:44:11]: Yeah. So typically, the way, new companies get into insurance is that they partner with insurers such that the insurers take the majority or all of the financial risks. Fundamentally, if insurance is useful, because it brings trust, you have to be able to pay the bill. Lloyd's of London is 400 years old. They've never not paid a claim. They're extremely trusted. What Lloyd's of London struggle to do on their own is to figure out which of the risks are real, what should we be looking for, what are the kinds of technical controls, and running the tests. So they use AIUC-1 as kind of the underwriting framework, and we produce a bunch of eval results that then directly feed in to inform the pricing. So this means that ElevenLabs customers know that payment will be there. They don't have to look to our series A and see, like, do we think they have enough cash on the balance sheet? They will look at Lloyd's.Swyx [00:45:05]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:45:05]: Yeah.Swyx [00:45:05]: And Lloyd's, like, famously very creative. I think I remember some headline like, they insured Jennifer Lopez's, butt or something.Rune Kvist [00:45:13]: Correct.Swyx [00:45:13]: Right?Rune Kvist [00:45:13]: And I think, was it, David Beckham's right foot?Swyx [00:45:16]: So, yeah. Right?Rune Kvist [00:45:17]: And stuff like this.Swyx [00:45:18]: So, like, clearly not a large data set.Rune Kvist [00:45:22]: Exactly. It's actually a remarkable institution that's both kind of has some of the truly school virtues of having been around for a long time. They, like, really. They really operate like a trusted entity, and they have appetite to figure out the future. And I think there's a lot of recognition that both there is, like, tremendous amount of risk in AI that is poorly understood today, so getting into this business carries real risks. But also this is where lots of the risk exposure will happen in the future. This is the one market where risk is truly growing. This is the one market that will also take out some of the existing markets. Take, like, auto insurance. When there are no human drivers, how's that market going to look? Well, it's clearly going to change. How are you going to assessSwyx [00:46:08]: You want to insure Waymo?Rune Kvist [00:46:10]: I. All I'll say is the principles for how you insure Waymo are very similar to how you insure other kinds of AI.Swyx [00:46:15]: Right.Rune Kvist [00:46:15]: So again, crash testing, that's what we do for customer share at Lovable. That will also need to happen for Waymo, which is not how you do it for human drivers. So there's this growing awareness that the world is changing very fast, and the only way to learn how to underwrite AI is to write some policies. You may incur some losses and think of that as R&D expense, really. But the question for them is, like, who are the trustedtechnical partners they can get into this business with that can help them navigate and make sure they don't make, kind of foolish mistakes? But also who is willing to hear the wisdom that they have? They've done this before. They've seen it was. They were there when cyber came out. So there are lots of ways in which AI feels completely new, but there's also lots of ways in which risks look the same. And so there's actually a tremendous amount of wisdom sitting in some folks that may have gray hair, but really have, like, a keen sense of, how to quantify risk.Swyx [00:47:08]: Yeah. And the number is. So it's basically like I want fifty million dollars worth of coverage against these perils, and Lloyd's will give you a quote on it, and then you have, like, a small markup or something, and then you turn it around and do that? Is that as simple as it is?Risk Capital, Premiums, and Working with InsurersRune Kvist [00:47:23]: You basically share some of that premium.Swyx [00:47:25]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:47:25]: X percent goes to the people who do the pricing of it.Swyx [00:47:28]: You're. It's kind of like a. It's kind of like a merchant bank for insurance type of thing.Rune Kvist [00:47:33]: Exactly. You basically split the fee, and you can think of the insurance supply chain as, like, there's bringing the capital, there is doing the pricing, and there is doing the distribution. And typically, you will pay out some X percent of premium here, Y percent of premium here, and the rest of it will go here.Swyx [00:47:46]: Does all the insurance world work like this, or is there some point at which, like. So if right now you have equity capitalRune Kvist [00:47:51]: Yeah.Swyx [00:47:52]: At some point, maybe you start raising, debt or whatever, and then you have enough of a bank account and enough history, let's say you've been in operation for ten yearsRune Kvist [00:48:00]: Correct.Swyx [00:48:00]: That you don't need Lloyd's anymore?Rune Kvist [00:48:02]: That's totally an option. And I could see some worlds where that makes sense, specifically if there are risks that we feel high confidence that we'd want to insure where the incumbent insurers are too slow to find appetiteSwyx [00:48:13]: Okay.Rune Kvist [00:48:13]: Or simply struggle to evaluate it such that they don't want to do it. But by and large, in general, you do not want to compete with insurers on, bringing risk capital to the game for two reasons. One is that's fundamentally a cost of capital game. They have extremely low cost of capital. Startups have high cost of capital, by and large. And two, you want to hedge your bets, and it's very helpful then to also have a portfolio of home insurance, of car insurance. And we're not about to become a car insurer nor a home insurer.Rune Kvist [00:48:43]: So they have some natural advantages, which makes it much more likely that we'll partner.Swyx [00:48:48]: Yeah.Rune Kvist [00:48:48]: And they bring that, the capital at scale, and we bring the technical expertise.Swyx [00:48:51]: You're, you're going to work with them for a long time.Vibhu [00:48:52]: How are the discussions with the insurers as well? So basically, they're going off of your certification, right? They're trusting the diligence on you that your certification is valid, you tested the right things, and they're backing the money that, you know, you have the right testing in place. So any interesting takeaways from working with insurers?Rune Kvist [00:49:12]: I think the maybe the first thing is they feed into the standard as well. So if there are things that they feel like they need that they're not seeing, we are also taking that as input into the standard, because fundamentally we think a good standard is one that creates a really healthy promise ecosystem, and we think insurers are a critical part of that. And again, they are the most well-incentivized to. They see all the lost data across every. Any particular CISO knows their particular concerns. Insurers see the concerns across the entire portfolio and often have direct access to, like, what exactly happened, who was at fault, et cetera, as they do part of their forensics. So they're actually, like, a great source of intelligence on this. One of the big takeaways from cyber insurance, which is a market that didn't work that well, was that the insurance and the technical expertise was not married up. What our conviction is that standards have to precede insurance. Fundamentally, what everyone first and foremost want, whether you're a CISO at JPMorgan or a CISO at Cursor or an underwriter at Lloyd's of London syndicate, is you want to not have an incidentRune Kvist [00:50:19]: In the first place. You want to know that the risk is well-managed, and only then does insurance start to make sense. So we'll see the standard ecosystem basically run ahead of the insurance. And the reason why we. You asked us kind of why I also do insurance, this is kind of proving what we think a whole promise confidence infrastructure ecosystem needs to look like, and we think it's very compelling to bring that to life, even if we think the standard is kind of the core linchpin that unlocks the rest.Claims, Liability, Air Canada, and Duty of CareSwyx [00:50:44]: There's been no claims yet, right?Rune Kvist [00:50:45]: Nope.Swyx [00:50:46]: This is one of those things where, you know, if people haven't really worked through what it means to cover things.Rune Kvist [00:50:52]: Yeah.Swyx [00:50:52]: So for example, I pay Cursor $20 a month.Rune Kvist [00:50:55]: Yep.Swyx [00:50:56]: And I write a vibe code something that makes, a plane crash, causing $200 million worth of damage.Rune Kvist [00:51:02]: Yes.Swyx [00:51:02]:
Chris Chavez and Kyle Merber recap the final day of World Ultimates, including an American sprint sweep, a 45.98 in the 400m hurdles, and Josh Kerr adding a 1500m title to his mile world record. The biggest headlines:- Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Kenny Bednarek each leave Budapest with $300,000 after sweeping the 100m and 200m titles. MJW ran 21.47 in the women's 200m — the fourth-fastest time in history, into a 0.6 m/s headwind — to beat 2024 Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas (21.77). Only Florence Griffith Joyner's 1988 world record (21.34) and two Shericka Jackson runs have been faster. MJW also swept both events at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo.- Kenny Bednarek won the men's 200m in a personal-best 19.52 — becoming the seventh-fastest man in history — beating 2024 Olympic gold medalist Letsile Tebogo. It's the same time Noah Lyles ran to win the 2025 World title in Tokyo. Bednarek said afterward: "Performance-wise and execution-wise, I give myself an A-plus." Two 200m Olympic silvers deep into his career, and the biggest race wins of that career came in Budapest.- Alison Dos Santos ran 45.98 to win the men's 400m hurdles — the third-fastest time in history, and just 0.18 off his own newly-set world record from Zurich two weeks earlier. Rai Benjamin was second in 46.40 (also doubling from the 400m final on Saturday). Karsten Warholm was third in 46.78. Dos Santos, Benjamin, and Warholm now own the 37 fastest times in the event's history. It is the deepest three-way rivalry in the sport right now.- Josh Kerr won the men's 1500m in 3:29.35, holding off Australia's Cameron Myers in his first major championship since breaking the mile world record on July 18. Americans finished third (Hobbs Kessler), fourth (Cole Hocker, the 2024 Olympic champion), and fifth (Yared Nuguse) all within three hundredths of each other.- Djamel Sedjati of Algeria won the men's 800m in 1:41.91, overtaking Olympic gold medalist Emmanuel Wanyonyi and then Marco Arop in the final 100 meters. Jasmine Jones took the women's 400m hurdles in 52.45 for the biggest win of her career — Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone did not race this season after having her daughter Savannah in July.- Plus the field events: Gianmarco Tamberi cleared 2.37m to beat JuVaughn Harrison in the high jump — the same height Tamberi and Mutaz Barshim cleared to share Olympic gold in Tokyo. Sri Lanka's Rumesh Pathirage won the men's javelin for the biggest track and field title in Sri Lankan history. The US won the mixed 4x400m relay (Chris Bailey, Alexis Holmes, Jacory Patterson, Aaliyah Butler).____________Stay tuned for more live coverage from the World Ultimate Championships in the days to come and make sure you're subscribed to the CITIUS MAG YouTube channel so you don't miss any of our interviews. Follow along on Instagram, X, and subscribe to the CITIUS MAG Newsletter to receive our daily recaps. ____________SUPPORT OUR SPONSORSOLIPOP: OLIPOP's Citrus Rush packs apple, lemon, lime, and orange juices with 60mg of green tea caffeine for a bold, refreshing blast of flavor ready to fuel your next adventure. If you haven't had tried Olipop yet, grab a can and see what the hype is all about! Head to DrinkOlipop.com and use code CITIUS25 at checkout to get 25% off your orders.SUUNTO: The Suunto Run 2 is their new flagship watch built specifically for road running and the marathon. You get around 10 days of battery with daily use and 24 hours in performance mode with dual frequency GPS. The watch also tracks your sleep, HRV, and training balance, so you know when to push and when to back off in your workouts. If you're in the market for a new watch, check out the Suunto Run 2.
Leicester SWAG Look at BlockchainFX (Requested Coverage), Antony Turner's Latest Videos About BlockDAG (OOC) #Crypto #Cryptocurrency #podcast #BasicCryptonomics Website: https://CryptoTalk.FM Facebook: @ThisIsCTR Chapters (00:00:00) - Intro: Turner videos worth watching(00:02:19) - Turner confirms the real fundraising numbers ($200M vs $400M claims)(00:02:38) - Overspending, no plan, and marketing burning cash(00:03:58) - Unpaid partners and unverified buyback wallets(00:04:37) - Turbo token vision and misunderstood white paper claims(00:06:02) - Chain readiness timeline and the 'launch now, figure out later' approach(00:06:58) - The Duna/DAO saga: Turner's fake authority and the $35M PandL claim(00:09:44) - Consensus manipulation, Nick vs Turner, and the fallout chain reaction(00:11:41) - Incomplete chain admissions and assigning blame across the team(00:13:39) - Final take: ineptitude not malice, everyone shares blame(00:15:52) - Was it a scam? Turner's own framing vs consensus narrative(00:17:28) - Reader question: Blockchain FX (BFX) swag review intro(00:19:03) - Analyzing Blockchain FX on Uniswap and liquidity red flags(00:20:21) - Why BFX probably isn't Giggles' project(00:24:07) - Final verdict on BFX and closing remarks
What does it take for a married couple to build a $200 million brand together? Betsie Larkin (Founder & CEO, Honeylove) and Igor Lebovic (Co-CEO, Honeylove) sit down with Matt Bertulli (CEO, Pela Case & Lomi) and Jason Panzer (President, HexClad). The conversation traces an accidental idea, the crowdfunding math, and the founder instincts that shaped every expansion. Kickstarter only entered the DTC playbook after Betsie proved product market fit on tour. The brand's sculpting body shapers and tummy control styles kept expanding the line. Betsie explains why a Kardashian-backed competitor helped the category instead of hurting it. Matt and Jason press on the mechanics of running a business with your spouse. Powered By Shoplift https://shoplift.ai/operators Shiphero https://9ops.co/shiphero-titans SARAL https://www.getsaral.com/special-guided-walkthrough-for-operators AppLovin https://applovin.com/9operators https://www.9operators.com/paid-growth
$1M+ problems worth solving (90+ business ideas): https://clickhubspot.com/phfl Episode 859: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talks to Danny Yeung ( https://x.com/DannyYeung_ ) about how he built a $200M business in 18 months. — Links: • IM8 - https://im8health.com/ — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Shaan uses Mercury across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/ Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /
Aaron started Vestwell in 2016. Two years in, he had $500K in ARR and an investor asking if it would ever make money. During the 2021 bull market, VCs told him 401ks were too boring—they were busy chasing crypto. Then Morgan Stanley signed. Today Vestwell has 2.5 million people saving on the platform, over $200M in ARR, and just raised $385M at a $2B valuation.In this episode, Aaron breaks down why he white-labeled everything instead of building his own brand, how losing the JP Morgan bid as a 40-person startup still turned into one of his largest partnerships, and how a methodical cap table let him raise a Series A on a couple hundred thousand in revenue.Why You Should ListenWhy letting your customers keep their brand beats competing with them.How to raise a Series A with only a few hundred thousand in ARR.Why losing an enterprise deal is the start of the sale, not the end.Why you never regret firing someone too soon.Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Vestwell, Aaron Schumm, fintech, 401k, retirement savings, enterprise sales, channel partnerships, white label software, Series A fundraising, Morgan StanleyChapters00:00:00 Intro00:02:05 The Morgan Stanley Deal That Proved PMF00:08:32 A 401k So Bad It Started a Company00:10:23 Building V1 in a Regulated Industry00:17:07 Turning Advisors Into a Sales Channel00:23:57 Raising an A on $200K of Revenue00:31:16 Too Boring for the Crypto Bull Market00:38:45 Losing JP Morgan, Then Winning It Back00:43:23 Never Regret Firing Too SoonSend me a message to let me know what you think!
THE PASSIVE INVESTING TRAP: How to Spot a Bad Deal Before It Costs YouA polished presentation can make almost any investment look compelling. But when market conditions change, weak assumptions, excessive debt, and the wrong sponsor can turn “passive income” into years of uncertainty.After completing more than 100 commercial and residential real estate investments and exits, today's guest Paul Moore knows what survives beyond the spreadsheet—and what warning signs investors routinely miss. Paul has also been a host on BiggerPockets, is a three-time real estate author and is the Founder of Wellings Capital with over 200M in Equity under management.If you want to learn:- How to uncover the risks hidden behind attractive projections- Which questions to ask before trusting a sponsor with your capital- How experienced investors identify durable opportunities across changing marketsJoin me on this podcast as I dive deep with Paul.Stay until the end, because Paul reveals the red flags that can expose a dangerous passive investment before you commit your capital—an insight that could change how you evaluate every deal.....So enjoy, and please consider subscribing and liking the episode! This helps me support more people -- just like you -- to accelerate to financial freedom and move toward the life they desire.
The punishment was yesterday. The reckoning is tonight. Grant and John Browner start with the question hanging over everything: the NBA's verdict and ESPN's reporting can't both be true — so who lied? John's journalism monologue ("a journalist is only worth their name") sets up the theory the whole show runs on: Lawrence Frank got six months while everyone above him got a year, and cooperation is the only math that explains it. Beav joins with the 2000 Timberwolves precedent — cooperate and picks come back — and a simple message for the owner: just say you did it. Then, mid-show, Pablo Torre teases his next investigation and it's the Dodgers, complete with the Mark Walter-Trump jersey photo, and John connects the dots out loud: the White House visit, the ring, the Kushner-Iger math that never added up. E Lamb makes his SportsGrid debut off his Sporting Tribune piece on what Clippers fans actually deserve — "the sports arena with bells and whistles" — and argues this is the canary in the coal mine: billionaires don't become billionaires by being altruistic. Plus the Shaq-Jerry West story that says this has been happening since the nineties, the Amen Thompson deal (five years, $200M) and why he's the one Rocket worth paying, and John's closing prediction: if Ballmer loses his fight, he starts telling on everybody. New episodes weekday mornings. Follow the crew on X. Directed & Produced by: Grant Mona Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Could Matas Buzelis eventually command a $200 million contract from the Chicago Bulls?On today's Chicago Bulls Central, Haize breaks down why Amen Thompson's new five-year, $208 million extension could be a preview of the financial decision Chicago may eventually face with Matas Buzelis. Thompson's deal doesn't make him a perfect comparison, but it does show what young wings with franchise-cornerstone upside are beginning to cost.Matas averaged 16.3 points, 5.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.5 blocks last season while shooting 46.3% from the field and 34.9% from three. Chicago controls his fourth-year option for 2027-28, and he becomes eligible for a rookie-scale extension next summer. The 2026-27 season could determine whether those negotiations begin at “promising starter” money or genuine franchise-player money.But before getting to Matas, Haize examines something that could make this Bulls team stylistically fascinating: the bench may have a completely different identity from the starters.Chicago's starting group of Josh Giddey, Norman Powell, Matas Buzelis, Caleb Wilson and Nic Claxton can create through size, passing and matchup advantages. The second unit may need to manufacture offense through speed, pressure, deflections, multiple ball handlers and organized chaos.A possible bench core of Tre Jones, Rob Dillingham, Dailyn Swain, Leonard Miller or Patrick Williams, and Jalen Smith could change the tempo immediately. Jones provides control, Dillingham brings instant scoring aggression, Swain connects possessions with defense and secondary creation, and Smith gives the guards the spacing they need to attack.Haize also explains why Norman Powell staggered with the reserves could unlock the entire concept, and why a group featuring Dillingham, Powell, Swain, Matas and Jalen Smith could become legitimately dangerous if the young players shoot and defend well enough.Finally, the Bulls have another contract decision coming. Isaac Okoro becomes extension-eligible September 17 while entering the final year of his deal at roughly $11.8 million. His defense may be more important than his box-score production because Chicago's projected starters still lack an obvious point-of-attack stopper. But his 33% three-point shooting creates real spacing concerns next to Giddey and Claxton.So should Bryson Graham extend Okoro, evaluate him through the first 20–25 games, or use his expiring contract as a trade asset?
Four childhood friends pooled $30,000 in a Chicago apartment to make wet wipes for men. Everyone told them dudes would never use them. Thirteen years later, Dude Wipes does close to $220 million in retail sales, runs on a team of just over 20 people, and is Mark Cuban's best-ever Shark Tank investment. They bootstrapped almost the entire way, none of them had retail experience, and they built a nine-figure business in a category the legacy players weren't even watching. In this interview, Ryan Meegan breaks down how they carried a business to $40 million with just three people, the guerrilla news-jacking playbook that made Dude Wipes a worldwide Twitter trend for pennies, and why brand marketing they never tried to measure was the smartest bet they made. What you'll learn in this interview: • Why four founders with different skill sets and zero egos never clashed in 15 years • How they got their first national retail deal with Kroger through pure cold-calling hustle • The Shark Tank bidding war that landed Mark Cuban's check - and why he calls it his best investment • Why going viral and trending #3 worldwide on Twitter barely moved sales - and why they kept doing it anyway • The Isaiah Crowell NFL moment: how a $3,500 deal turned into ESPN, Howard Stern, and national press • The Amex float strategy: how putting every PO on a credit card funded growth without big raises • Why they refused the VC and Shopify-loan path most DTC brands take - and how they built bank credibility instead • The line-extension trap: why deodorant and body wash failed, and how Covid refocused them on flushable wipes • How three people ran the business to $40M before hiring 15 more • Why they took private equity from TSG while keeping control - and the billion-dollar goal behind it If you're bootstrapping a CPG brand, trying to build awareness without a war chest, or wrestling with whether to chase line extensions or go deeper in your core category, this conversation will fundamentally change how you think about brand, capital efficiency, and staying in the game long enough to win. SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend using the code FOUNDR50. Start here → https://your.omnisend.com/foundr SAVE 95% ON XERO FOR 6 MONTHS Simplify your business finances with 95% off Xero for your first 6 months. Start here → https://foundr.com/xero WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS? Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+ Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING? → Starting from scratch? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application → Already have a store? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/ CONNECT WITH DUDE WIPES Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/dudewipes/ Website → https://dudewipes.com/ Ryan's LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-meegan-07971859/ FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES YouTube → https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt Website → https://www.foundr.com Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/foundr/ Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/foundr Twitter → https://www.twitter.com/foundr LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/ Podcast → https://www.foundr.com/podcast
#1063 What if protecting your audience meant walking away from millions of dollars — because the long-term trust was worth more than the quick payday? In Part 2 of this two-part episode, host Britlyn Williams continues her conversation with Kathryn Nicolai, creator of Nothing Much Happens, to explore the creative and business decisions behind growing a beloved sleep-story brand. Kathryn shares why new products like books, podcasts, and her app have often started as creative decisions rather than business ones, how she stays disciplined while writing every story herself, and why learning to delegate has been one of her biggest lessons as an entrepreneur. She also reveals why she once turned down millions in potential ad revenue to protect the listener experience, how subscriptions have become the company's biggest revenue stream, and why she eventually changed her stance on dynamic ads to build a more sustainable business. Plus, Kathryn discusses building a brand around trust, creating an inclusive world listeners can return to night after night, and taking calculated risks without sacrificing the quality that made Nothing Much Happens successful in the first place! What we discuss with Kathryn: + Creating from creativity, not strategy + Delegating to the right people + Building a disciplined writing routine + Protecting the listener experience + Walking away from millions + Subscriptions as the top revenue stream + Learning to embrace dynamic ads + Building an inclusive brand + Taking calculated business risks + Balancing creativity, growth, and rest Thank you, Kathryn! Check out Part 1 of this episode. Check out Nothing Much Happens at NothingMuchHappens.com. Listen to Nothing Much Happens. Purchase On the Street Where You Live. Follow Kathryn on Instagram and YouTube. Watch the video podcast of this episode! Get your FREE 5 Minute Business Plan at MillionaireUniversity.com/Plan To get exclusive offers mentioned in this episode and to support the show, visit MillionaireUniversity.com/Sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
#1062 What if a simple bedtime routine you'd used since childhood could grow into a business with millions of downloads, books, an app, and an entire team behind it? In Part 1 of this two-part episode, host Britlyn Williams sits down with Kathryn Nicolai, creator of Nothing Much Happens, to unpack how she went from owning a small-town yoga studio to building one of the most recognizable brands in the sleep-story space. Kathryn shares how she launched the podcast in just five or six weeks, grew almost entirely through word of mouth, and turned calming bedtime stories for grownups into a nightly habit for listeners around the world. She also breaks down why consistency and quality matter more than chasing virality, how authenticity helps build a loyal audience, and the lessons she learned while expanding from a one-person creative project into a larger business with books, multiple podcasts, an app, and a growing team! What we discuss with Kathryn: + From yoga teacher to podcaster + Launching in just six weeks + Growing through word of mouth + Finding an underserved niche + Quality over virality + Creating addictive sleep routines + Building an authentic audience + Expanding into books and apps + Hiring the right team + Turning an audience into a business Thank you, Kathryn! Check out Part 2 of this episode. Check out Nothing Much Happens at NothingMuchHappens.com. Listen to Nothing Much Happens. Purchase On the Street Where You Live. Follow Kathryn on Instagram and YouTube. Watch the video podcast of this episode! Get your FREE 5 Minute Business Plan at MillionaireUniversity.com/Plan To get exclusive offers mentioned in this episode and to support the show, visit MillionaireUniversity.com/Sponsors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this LoanOfficerPodcast.com episode the host Chris Johnstone sits down with John Farrell, a Newport Beach-based mortgage professional with nearly three decades of experience, to discuss how he built a $100M+ mortgage business specializing in jumbo loans and is now setting his sights on reaching $200 million in annual production. John shares how deep relationships, referral partnerships, mindset, database marketing, and embracing AI have helped him build a sustainable business in one of the most competitive mortgage markets in the country. He also reveals how AI platforms are already generating high-value mortgage opportunities—including referrals for a $16 million deal and a $5.8 million deal. In this episode, you'll learn: • How John Farrell built a $100M+ jumbo mortgage business by specializing in high-net-worth clients and developing deep referral relationships with Realtors and financial professionals. • How consistent database marketing and authentic storytelling can help loan officers stay top of mind and generate more repeat business and referrals. • How AI, ChatGPT, Google Business Profiles, GEO, and online authority are creating a new source of mortgage referrals—including high-value jumbo loan opportunities. Whether you're a loan officer looking to break into the jumbo mortgage market, grow your referral network, improve your database marketing, or prepare your business for AI-powered search, this episode is packed with actionable insights from a mortgage professional who has spent nearly 30 years adapting and growing through changing markets. Listen now to discover how John Farrell combines relationships, specialization, mindset, and emerging AI strategies to build a high-performing mortgage business. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to LoanOfficerPodcast.com and leave us a 5-star review. Your support helps us continue bringing you conversations with the mortgage industry's top producers, innovators, and business leaders.
Kathryn Nicolai is the creator and host of Nothing Much Happens, one of the most listened-to sleep podcasts in the world, where millions of listeners use her stories to calm anxiety, fall asleep, and feel more at ease in their bodies. With over 20 years of experience as a yoga and meditation teacher, Kathryn is a trusted voice in self-care, with a focus on sleep hygiene, nervous system regulation, mindfulness, and storytelling as medicine. She draws on lived experience and practices including Vipassana meditation, gentle movement, brain training, and bibliotherapy to support people navigating stress, anxiety, depression, and more. Through her work, Kathryn helps people cultivate rest, creativity, and emotional resilience in a culture shaped by overstimulation and burnout. Her new audio book, On The Street Where You Live, also comes out in July 2026. In this episode, Kathryn Nicolai breaks down why storytelling calms the anxious brain, how repetition helps you fall asleep, and why joy—not discipline—is the real key to lasting wellness. RESOURCES: Learn more about Kathryn, her podcast, app and book here: https://www.nothingmuchhappens.com/ Instagram: @nothingmuchhappens Get 10% off Peluva minimalist shoe with coupon code COACHTARA here: http://peluva.com/coachtara CHAPTERS: 00:00 – Intro: meet Kathryn Nicolai 01:32 – Sponsor: Peluva Shoes ad 03:19 – Interview begins: 200 million downloads 05:11 – Storytelling and the sleeping brain 08:06 – Coqui frogs, Hawaii, and finding your own sound 09:40 – There's no one "right" way to sleep 11:09 – Falling asleep vs. staying asleep 13:45 – Brain dumps, tension release, and medical help 15:54 – Meditation, impulsivity, and Vipassana 17:51 – Neurodivergence, discipline, and choosing joy 21:59 – Eating disorders and food freedom 23:28 – Terra's coaching, app, and retreats 28:16 – Turning bedtime into a ritual, not a chore 30:23 – Soft spaces over rigid sleep rules 32:16 – Morning rituals and the "witching hour" 33:38 – Sleep is brain training: give it time 35:19 – Inside Nothing Much Happens' story structure 38:04 – Origin story: from Flint, Michigan to 200M downloads 40:18 – Healing fiction, gratitude, and negativity bias WORK WITH TARA: Are You Looking for Help on Your Wellness Journey? Here's how Tara can help you: TRY TARA'S APP FOR FREE: http://taragarrison.com/app INDIVIDUAL ONLINE COACHING: https://www.taragarrison.com/work-with-me CHECK OUT HIGHER RETREATS: https://www.taragarrison.com/retreats SOCIAL MEDIA: Instagram @coachtaragarrison TikTok @coachtaragarrison Facebook @coachtaragarrison Pinterest @coachtaragarrison INSIDE OUT HEALTH PODCAST SPECIAL OFFERS: ☑️ Upgraded Formulas Hair Test Kit Special Offer: https://bit.ly/3YdMn4Z ☑️ Upgraded Formulas - Get 15% OFF Everything with Coupon Code INSIDEOUT15: https://upgradedformulas.com/INSIDEOUT15 ☑️ Rep Provisions: Vote for the future of food with your dollar! And enjoy a 15% discount while you're at it with Coupon Code COACHTARA: https://bit.ly/3dD4ZSv If you loved this episode, please leave a review! Here's how to do it on Apple Podcasts: Go to Inside Out Health Podcast page: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-out-health-with-coach-tara-garrison/id1468368093 Scroll down to the 'Ratings & Reviews' section. Tap 'Write a Review' (you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). Thank you!
Sen. Ted Cruz joins The Sean Spicer Show to break down the $200 MILLION Texas Senate race — James Talarico vs Ken Paxton — plus Greg Abbott's tight gubernatorial fight, the Canada tariff battle, why beef prices are finally coming down, and his private conversations with Justice Clarence Thomas from his new book GOING FURTHER: The Incomparable Clarence Thomas. Plus: Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong on his cancer drug breakthrough. ----------------------- Head on over to https://www.seanspicer.com subscribe for an ad free version of this podcast and support the show! ----------------------- Bedford Reinforced Plastics - https://www.bedfordreinforced.com/spicer ----------------------- https://ruffgreens.com/ enter code: SPICER for your FREE starter pack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
London's better in a black cab. Get the https://blackcab.com app on Apple or Google Play. No surge pricing. Regulated fares. Professional drivers. Get 15% off your eSIM today—download the Saily app or visit https://saily.com/lwos and use code LWOS at checkout. With Tottenham set to have a very interesting season under Roberto De Zerbi, make sure you never miss an update with our brand new Substack. Download the Substack app for exclusive coverage of Last Word On Spurs: https://lastwordonspurs.substack.com/ Please also help grow our community and join us on Roundtable as we bring you all the latest Tottenham Hotspur news in written format over at: https://roundtable.io/sports/soccer/premier-league/tottenham Last Word On Spurs, WeRTottenhamTV and Echo Of Glory come together for a brand-new weekly podcast, titled 'Collectively COYS', bringing together a host from each respective Tottenham Hotspur channel to debate the biggest talking points surrounding the club in the present moment. New manager, north of £200M spent this summer, and we were second best in every single area of that pitch. 3.96 xG to 0.47. Nobody is talking us into a good week. So here is how this works. Every Tuesday, Jonny from An Echo of Glory, Ben from We Are Tottenham TV and Billie from Last Word on Spurs each bring one hot take about Tottenham. One each. None of them has heard the other two before the cameras roll. Then they argue about it. This week all three have come out of the Brentford defeat, and none of them are the take you think they are going to be. One of them goes after a decision most fans have already accepted without questioning it. One of them says the damage was done weeks before a ball was kicked. And one of them is going to start a row in the comments, which is exactly the point. Everything else is on the table too. The two goals Kinsky will want back. Archie Gray captaining the side, the youngest to do it since Steve Perryman. Tonali skying one from 18 yards. Savinho agreed at £85m, Marmoush in the post, and whether any of it fixes what we watched on Saturday. Charlton in the cup, then Newcastle at home. It cannot look like that again. Tell us who won the argument in the comments. And bring your own hot take, the best ones get read out next week. Collectively COYS is the weekly Spurs show from An Echo of Glory, Last Word on Spurs and We Are Tottenham TV. Three channels, three takes, one panel, no agenda beyond arguing about our football club. Three different podcast voices. Three different perspectives. One club. Independent Multi-Award Winning Tottenham Hotspur Fan Channel (Podcast) providing instant post-match analysis and previews to every single Spurs match along with a range of former players, managers & special guests. WEBSITE: www.lastwordonspurs.com #THFC #TOTTENHAM #SPURS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Geoff Mattson is the CEO of SecureAuth, an identity security company that has raised over $200M and protects more than 50 million identities for enterprises. Before SecureAuth he was CEO of Xage Security. His work now centers on how you prove an AI agent is who it says it is.In this episode of Summation, Geoff and Auren discuss:Why an AI agent is like an Uber driver who might randomly turn into a psycho killerThe deepfake fraudpocalypse, and the simplest thing that defends against itWhy your agent impersonates you instead of working for you and how to fix itWhy the password is finally, actually dyingYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Geoff on Linkedin
#915: Moderna shares soar after a breakthrough trial of an mRNA cancer vaccine. Amazon plans to expand its drone delivery service to 500 US cities. The meal-kit delivery company Blue Apron is in shambles after a key supplier goes out of business. It's Neal's Numbers on thieves stealing $200m worth of goods from trains, millennials are actually feeling good about their future, and why answering job inquiries quickly can help you get hired. Finally, Liquid Death launches an ad that suggests using pee to cool down data centers. Learn more at https://www.rubrik.com/mb Grab tickets to our Performance Revue show! https://www.morningbrew.com/events/brew-performance-revue-2026?utm_campaign=performance_revue_2026&utm_source=mbd Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Andrew Macdonald (Mac) is the longest-serving employee at Uber. Today, he is the President and COO. No one on the planet has spent more time mastering ride-sharing than Mac. Uber now does 300M rides per week, has 200M users, and is one of the most recognised brands on the planet. Mac never does interviews and so this was a rare look behind the scenes at the Uber machine. AGENDA: 05:39 – How was Mac the only survivor from the Travis era? 10:39 – How does Uber decide what to include in Uber One membership? 11:45 – How does Uber decide which new products to pursue? 16:08 – What does Uber need to do to reach 500 million users? 20:37 – Why Uber was right to focus on its core business and divest autonomy? 24:08 – Why India and Brazil will delay Uber's autonomous future? 28:34 – The craziest story from Uber's battle in China 29:27 – Why Travis Kalanick believed money was the moat? 31:17 – Was Uber structurally disadvantaged in China from day one? 35:48 – Inside Uber's SWAT team of its 30 best AI engineers 37:55 – How companies need to extract real efficiency from AI? 42:00 – Will Uber have more or fewer employees in five years? 43:52 – Will companies that do not work with frontier models be disaggregated? 46:02 – Will AI agents disaggregate Uber's interface and customer relationship? 48:26 – Why Brian Chesky was right: chat is not the best interface for everything 55:52 – Why it is bullshit to say DoorDash would not be number one if Travis were still CEO 59:13 – The single biggest lesson from Travis Kalanick 1:00:07 – The second biggest lesson from Travis Kalanick
Joe Fontana spent a decade chasing a punk rock music career and another six years trapped in a soul-crushing corporate job that caused his leg hair to fall out from stress. Broke and with a baby on the way, he packed up his life, moved into his in-laws' basement, and took the ultimate leap of faith.He borrowed $21,000 from his mother's savings, scrapped his original restaurant idea, and launched Fry the Coop. Today, that single chicken sandwich shop has exploded into a fast-casual powerhouse with 11 locations, over 200 employees, and $15 million in annual revenue.In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, Joe sits down with Ryan Atkinson to break down the exact roadmap he used to scale from an empty cash register to an eight-figure empire. He reveals why hiring a publicist was the ultimate cheat code to hitting his first million, how treating customer service like "vanilla ice cream" scaled him to $5M, and the painful $12,000 accounting mistake that taught him why you must watch your financials like a hawk.Whether you want to open a restaurant or scale a local brick-and-mortar, Joe drops the unvarnished truth on what it takes to survive and thrive.