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Labour, Engineering, Social Media, GrokBots, Cybercabs: 7 Predictions for How AI Changes the World

Matteo Franceschetti is the Co-Founder and CEO of Eight Sleep. As the leader of one of the most cutting-edge sleep fitness companies, he holds multiple patents in tech and health and is a Member of the Forbes Technology Council. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:34 - Why Hiring Is Back to 2021 Levels of Insanity 03:10 - Why Every Founder Should Angel Invest 04:10 - What VCs Get Wrong About Hardware 04:44 - How Eight Sleep Gets 40% of Revenue From Word of Mouth 05:12 - How Eight Sleep Finally Made TikTok Work 06:34 - Why You Cannot Trust Meta’s Attribution 08:06 - Why Founders Should Scale One Growth Channel at a Time 09:26 - Why Eight Sleep Optimizes for Profit From Day One 15:15 - How AI Runs a $100M Email Marketing Business With Zero Employees 18:17 - Eight Sleep Engineers Stopped Coding a Year Ago 19:17 - Will AI Spend Go From 5% to 50% of Engineering Budgets? 21:27 - Would You Buy Anthropic at IPO? 21:46 - Why AI Will Turn Companies Into Holding Companies 23:15 - Are Chinese Companies About to Crush European Industry? 25:10 - Why Humanoid Robots Could Be a Trillion-Dollar Market 26:45 - Are Frontier AI Models Moving Too Fast? 28:31 - What It Really Takes to Sell in China 32:19 - Why Timing Matters More Than Founders Think 35:54 - Silicon Valley Underestimates the Power of Brand 56:40 - Should Startups Match Anthropic-Level Compensation? 59:07 - Has Silicon Valley Become Too Money Obsessed? 01:02:09 - How Eight Sleep Runs With Just 160 Employees 01:02:40 - 250 Employees, $1BN Revenue 01:05:45 - Quick-fire Round ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on X: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Matteo Franceschetti on X: https://twitter.com/m_franceschetti Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #founder #ceo

Matteo FranceschettiguestHarry Stebbingshost
Sep 12, 20261h 21mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:34

    Intro

    1. MF

      Well, our engineers stopped coding around a year ago. What they have is hundreds of AI engineers, and that is how we can achieve what we are achieving at, at scale.

    2. HS

      How much do you spend on crawl a month?

    3. MF

      Um-

    4. HS

      In the hot seat today we have Matteo Franceschetti. What a fantastic surname. The joys of doing a second show with someone is you get to ask questions that no one else can answer. That's what happened today. We have a totally off-the-cuff [laughs] very unfiltered discussion with probably one of the most impressive founders in hardware, having scaled a business to multi-billion dollar valuations, single digit churn rates, incredible global business that now open even in China. This is one of the most unfiltered versions of Matteo and Eight Sleep that you have seen yet.

    5. MF

      Great brand with a shitty product goes nowhere. I'm extremely demanding. I'm a weirdo, and so I can be a husband on one side, but business-wise, no mercy. Sometimes people say, "Oh, I'm at the final stage with Anthropic and Eight Sleep," and to me that is a really bad red flag. There is no way that these two jobs are in any way similar. Our revenue per employees is way higher than Apple. Kids that are being born now will never work, a- at least for money.

    6. HS

      Ready to go? [upbeat music] Matteo, it is so good to have you in the hot seat, dude. You know, last time we did this show and you had, like, a hiring playbook, and I remember it went, like, insanely viral afterwards, and so many people talked to me about that ever since we did it. So I'm really excited for this as a second discussion. Thank you for doing it, dude.

    7. MF

      Yeah. Thank you for having

  2. 1:34 – 3:10

    Why Hiring Is Back to 2021 Levels of Insanity

    1. MF

      me.

    2. HS

      I think that hiring today is, is harder than it's ever been just because of the, the prizes on offer at OpenAI, Anthropic, and some of the other places. Um, even the shiny new hot startups. Um, how do you think about that? Am I wrong? Has it changed in terms of talent competitiveness?

    3. MF

      We are back to 2021, uh, and that, I think, is becoming, um, a problem in the US, meaning salaries are going out of control. Uh, competition-

    4. HS

      Wh- what makes you say that? Like engineer salaries?

    5. MF

      Any salary, uh, even for product managers, are out of control, uh, right now. Uh, they get insane offers from any company. Obviously, there is a lot of money going around. And so we are focused more and more in, uh, on hiring in Europe and, uh, and outside the US. Because the other problem is not even the salary, and it's not even attracting them on T zero, but is retention. Because then they keep receiving offers. If you are a cool company with a cool brand, then they keep receiving offers over and over at a higher, uh, valuation... I mean, a, a higher salary.

    6. HS

      Have you lost people to OpenAI and Anthropic? You know, I'm invested in many companies, and they're just like, "God, we're getting [laughs] eaten alive by OpenAI, Anthropic, Cognition," you name these hot companies.

    7. MF

      Yeah. Um, a couple. Um, the other ones are... could be AI companies that are doing extremely well, or they just raise money, and, uh, uh, so it's, it's normal competition. But sometimes the delta in salary and in comp is so big that at that point there is

  3. 3:10 – 4:10

    Why Every Founder Should Angel Invest

    1. MF

      nothing you can do.

    2. HS

      We mentioned Cognition a couple of times. We were talking earlier about y- your angel investing as well. Can I ask you, how has being an angel investor changed how you think about operating?

    3. MF

      It's a game changer for me, and, and I think that is something is not shared enough, uh, particularly on, on X. The amount of learnings that you get from being an investor is insane because it's essentially you build your own intelligence. As you receive investor, uh, updates, you understand how the market is moving, what are the valuation, what are the multiples, what kind of profiles they're hiring, what channels might be working. And I receive this from companies that are not competitive with, with Eight Sleep, but as a founder you just get the sense of the market, and I find that super valuable.

    4. HS

      What's been the biggest lesson from angel investing?

    5. MF

      The biggest learnings is always on fundraising, right? You see how much they're raising and what valuation, what multiples or what investors. That- that's one. The other biggest lesson is for other companies that are still consumer to see channels, what channels work for

  4. 4:10 – 4:44

    What VCs Get Wrong About Hardware

    1. MF

      them.

    2. HS

      What do investors not understand about hardware that they should? You're advising me. I'm your buddy. I have a fund and I, I want to invest in hardware. What do you like, "Dude, before you do it, you should know this"?

    3. MF

      That probably the founders in the first year of the company or in the first probably, let's say three months, they don't fully understand what the cost of producing that device will be. They don't understand the return rate, and so everything they tell you about BOM and COGS will probably be off by at least, uh, uh, 50%.

    4. HS

      Does CAC do- go down over time?

  5. 4:44 – 5:12

    How Eight Sleep Gets 40% of Revenue From Word of Mouth

    1. MF

      It really depends. Uh, and so that is another thing you want to assess, which is word of mouth. In our case, word of mouth keeps compounding. We are around 40% of our revenue, even at our size, we start being really big, uh, is 40%.

    2. HS

      40% of your revenue stays word of mouth?

    3. MF

      Yep.

    4. HS

      What's your second-biggest channel?

    5. MF

      Uh, then you start getting into paid media.

    6. HS

      Yeah. And that's just Meta?

    7. MF

      Yeah. Is... Then it becomes Meta, Google, TikTok, and,

  6. 5:12 – 6:34

    How Eight Sleep Finally Made TikTok Work

    1. MF

      and all those channels.

    2. HS

      Can I ask, how do they compare? I'm, I'm a, a content spec- hopefully specialist at this point. Um, no one that I speak to has managed to make TikTok work. Have you?

    3. MF

      We did. Actually this year in the past six months.

    4. HS

      How?

    5. MF

      Um, it's usually a matter of amount of content that you can generate with, uh, um, TikTok influencers.

    6. HS

      So it's about getting a UGC program in place?

    7. MF

      Yep.

    8. HS

      Is there a big budget for you tied to it?

    9. MF

      The way we are usually approach these channels is we start unlocking a small budget per week. We start looking at the CAC. We've set a cap to the CAC, and then they can deploy as much as they can within that, uh, cap. But then as they prove it, they can deploy more, uh, more money. So to me, they could deploy $100 million if they're within CAC, uh, the, the, the, the, the cap of the CAC. The important thing you need to do regularly, probably every six month, is, uh, an incrementality test. And so we can, uh, we might turn off TikTok in certain states in the US or in certain geos, and we start a/b testing what is the, um, growth rate or is the revenue rate. So we wanna see how much each channel is, uh, uh, incremental because we don't look at the CAC from the platform. We have our own models now that, uh, determine the

  7. 6:34 – 8:06

    Why You Cannot Trust Meta’s Attribution

    1. MF

      CAC of each channel.

    2. HS

      Sorry, can you tell me about that? You have your own models to determine the CAC from each channel. Why is that?

    3. MF

      Well, because you cannot trust there will be the, there will be a, a, an excess of attribution from the same platform. We do the same with, with Meta. If you look at the CA- the CAC on Meta, it's probably 20% lower than what the true CAC is. And the only way you can do it is by doing these incrementality tests. And so let's say you, you pick two geos that they deliver, they perform similarly. Let's say you pick Texas and, uh, I don't know, California. That is not the right example, but-

    4. HS

      Dude, you're speaking to a Brit. That'll totally work for this example.

    5. MF

      Yeah.

    6. HS

      Yeah.

    7. MF

      And so then you turn off Texas, and you start seeing what is the delta, uh, in, in performance of that, uh, of that state versus the other. So how much revenue you lose. So if one was-- If they were both growing 50% year over year, and you start turning off, uh, Meta in one or the other, you can immediately calculate the value of Meta for that state.

    8. HS

      Does every brand need to have their own models to accurately-

    9. MF

      Oh, 100% because, uh, otherwise they just fool themselves. You don't know what-

    10. HS

      When, when did you start? 'Cause it's one of those ones which you can't do from day one.

    11. MF

      No. And, and you will screw up multiple times. And it-- the point is, you need to keep doing it because, uh, the-- as you add more channels, the incrementality of each channel, uh, will not be the same.

    12. HS

      How did you think about that channel addition? Because I see, uh, so many founders try and be everywhere to everyone.

    13. MF

      Yeah.

    14. HS

      And how do you

  8. 8:06 – 9:26

    Why Founders Should Scale One Growth Channel at a Time

    1. HS

      think about that?

    2. MF

      I disagree with that. So you need to go one channel at a time. I was e-even talking to a common friend, uh, recently who was asking me about that, and say, "Okay, can I go in all these channels? How much money should I put? Should I start putting 100K in each of them?" And I say, "No, no, no. You go one by one. You start with Meta. It's probably the, the biggest and the one that you should prove the, you know, the, the fastest. And you start with, based on the size of the company, a certain amount per week. You set the cap to the CAC you want to, to, uh, to achieve. And then from there you start scaling only if you are within CAC. Because otherwise you start throwing money out of the window. Your growth people, they will always want to grow faster, and so they will always want to spend more, and then you start losing control. And what happens? Then, uh, let's say by the end of the year you realize you screw up, and so you start pulling back. And then the following year you're not growing year over year because you're spending less. And so you need to be disciplined now if you want to be successful next year and keep growing year over year.

    3. HS

      It's really interesting about how you kind of gamify growth numbers, 'cause you're right. You spend.

    4. MF

      Hundred percent. Yeah.

    5. HS

      You get 400% growth. You pull back hard-

    6. MF

      Hundred percent

    7. HS

      ... and you get 70%. Good luck fundraising when you're-

    8. MF

      Yeah

    9. HS

      ... going from 400 to 70.

    10. MF

      Yeah. We could be growing 50% more if we wanted year over year this year just by spending more, but then next year you're in trouble because your CAC is upside

  9. 9:26 – 15:15

    Why Eight Sleep Optimizes for Profit From Day One

    1. MF

      down.

    2. HS

      Do we care about economics from day one? You said there about start with Meta. Do we care about economics from day one in terms of optimization? Or actually is it like, "Hey, customers are engaging. They're liking product. If we're doing a one-to-one, you know, for every dollar we spend, we're getting a dollar back, great. Or should we be looking for optimal returns early?"

    3. MF

      Well, in our case, we look at the immediate payback period. This is actually something where Keith was really pushy, and he was correct since day one. So he wanted us to have an immediate payback period, and then we have what we call contribution margin. So is, what is the margin on day zero? Then we have a subscription, and the subscription will compound on top of that. But we want to have that contribution profit on day one to be really healthy. If we were compressing that, we could be growing 50% more, but then the business wouldn't be public-ready, uh, or as healthy as it is today.

    4. HS

      What would you most like to do if economics were not a part of your business? It could be, like, massively increase the quality of a certain point. It could be pour fuel on the fire on matters like never before. Take economics aside.

    5. MF

      Well, you could, um, reduce prices, and I think we will see an acceleration, or you could just deploy probably more into marketing, uh, which is probably what I would prefer. I'm never a fan of compressing prices. You know what Andreessen says, that if you have a great product, people will pay for it. But, um, at our stage as a company, even if we start fairly large, uh, brand awareness is still probably the biggest bottleneck.

    6. HS

      You have a subscription business as well, which obviously really pro- pro- provides a lot of juice to your margins. Because you have an upfront cost in the thousands, it's, it's a relatively expensive product-

    7. MF

      Mm-hmm

    8. HS

      ... for a lot of people. Um, do you just inherently have very low churn rates on your subscription product because you have the buy-in of multiple thousand dollars invested up front?

    9. MF

      Yeah, it's world-class. Our, our churn is the lowest of any company you can think of.

    10. HS

      What is the churn?

    11. MF

      Uh, is in the single digit, uh, low single digit yearly churn. Even if you compare to other companies that in the wearable space that are going public, we are better than them.

    12. HS

      [laughs] Who could that be?

    13. MF

      [laughs] Who could that be? Yeah.

    14. HS

      I don't, I don't know, dude. That, that's absolutely hilarious.

    15. MF

      Yeah.

    16. HS

      Um-

    17. MF

      But it's world-class. It's, it's, like, unseen

    18. HS

      Going back to the channels, and I'm sorry for focusing on channels, I, I just-- I'm a real nerd about channels. [chuckles] Has your Google span changed in the wake of bluntly AI and AI-driven search impacting so much?

    19. MF

      Yes. And so we introduce a new channel that now we monitor that is literally what we call AI SEO. Uh, and th- now in, in the report that I receive, uh, weekly, twice a week, there is also AI SEO, and so we see how we rank in, uh, in AI searches.

    20. HS

      What percent of traffic today, broad strokes, is from AI searches?

    21. MF

      I don't have a number for that. I c- I, I, I can check, but it keeps growing.

    22. HS

      But is it, like, one percent or, like, twenty percent?

    23. MF

      Probably somewhere in the middle. But then we start seeing an impact on Google. So Google is be-

    24. HS

      Because it's just diminishing

    25. MF

      ... our assumption is that, uh, Google is behaving differently because of AI searches.

    26. HS

      What was your biggest channel mistake? Where did you spend money that you shouldn't have done and you're like, "Ugh, I learned a lot of lessons from this"?

    27. MF

      Out of home. Uh, and everything depends on the, on the scale of the business in that country. So we try to d- to do a campaign, uh, an out of home campaign in the Middle East, but we're, we're not ready yet. So if we were doing an out of home campaign in New York, where we are decently known, it would perform very differently than the same campaign in the Middle East where we just launched a year ago. And so those are the things I'm learning that I didn't know.

    28. HS

      When do, when are you big enough to do out of home? Because I think one thing that we've seen in the last, you know, two years, so to speak, is tech companies realizing the importance of brand marketing, out of home, football shirt sponsorships, you name it, and it supposedly performing well. How big do you have to be to do out of home?

    29. MF

      I don't think there is a hard number, but you want to be a brand that is decently well known, and so I make it up. If hundred people see that ad on the street, I don't know, five percent of them knows the brand. And so that is o- one of the other things that we monitor that is these, uh, um, aided and unaided brand awareness, um, to understand how many people know the brand, and if they know the brand, they know what the brand does.

    30. HS

      How much did you spend on out of home?

  10. 15:15 – 18:17

    How AI Runs a $100M Email Marketing Business With Zero Employees

    1. MF

      In the hundreds of millions.

    2. HS

      In the hundreds of millions?

    3. MF

      Yeah. But a story I can tell you is, for example, before we had, um, an email marketing team, now we have zero. Uh, everything is done through AI, and email marketing makes, you know, a very large amount for us. Um, and, uh, everything is run by AI.

    4. HS

      How?

    5. MF

      So what happened is we were, we were forced to that, meaning the person leading, um-- We had a team of two, uh, then the, the person leading the team, uh, uh, uh, was leaving. And at that point, my co-founder, Alexandra, jump in and said, "Okay, let me see how I can use AI to really, you know, uh, make this work." And within three days, she was able to build, uh, multiple bots that now run all our email marketing. And so now we have a team of zero, and email marketing makes, uh, close to a hundred million.

    6. HS

      And when-- I ju- I just wanna understand because [chuckles] we have an email newsletter, and there's people that do it, and it's still pretty average, I think. Uh, when you say bots, like what-

    7. MF

      Yeah

    8. HS

      ... you build your own?

    9. MF

      So, yeah. So for us is obviously there is a calendar of what emails needs to be built, uh, and created and sent. This is based also on history, so we have historical data.

    10. HS

      Mm.

    11. MF

      And our AI suggests, okay, when to send what email with, um, what copy.

    12. HS

      And when you say your AI, it's like your models, it's using GrokBot-

    13. MF

      Yeah. Yeah

    14. HS

      ... it's using Google?

    15. MF

      We probably, uh-- I mean, we should check, but, uh, I would imagine we are using Claude for that. Um, and, uh, then internally, we have, um, probably by now hundreds if not thousands of agents that we use internally at Eight Sleep. So now we s- I started measuring what I call the human employees, but then there is also the AI employees, and probably the AI employees are... We, I mean, without probably, we are, uh, probably three, four X bigger if you start including all our AI employees.

    16. HS

      Where is it most significantly impacting the company?

    17. MF

      Growth, because email is like that. Now also all our digital marketing, our team receives, uh, a report every morning from our AI agents suggesting what changes, uh, to do or not to do, and they approve or reject. And so also all our marketing business is run, um, our growth is run by a few people right now.

    18. HS

      I worry that in a world of infinite content supply, discovery becomes impossible, and we just get flooded. Do you worry about that too?

    19. MF

      Definitely. Um, but at the same time, I think that the personal agents will look for the best product, and so if you are the best product, you will still win. So yeah, so we'll be probably... No, for, for humans, right, the amount of content will be too much, and so we'll need to think about how we show up to humans where humans go. That is how I think. But then w- you need a different strategy for the agents to make sure that their agents find you and

  11. 18:17 – 19:17

    Eight Sleep Engineers Stopped Coding a Year Ago

    1. MF

      recommend you.

    2. HS

      We said there about kind of the amount of agents that you have. Engineering is one where consistently across the board, everyone's engineering teams are being, you know, changed unbelievably. How is AI changing your engineering team at Eight Sleep? What are you using? What are you not using? How do you think about that?

    3. MF

      Yeah. Well, our engineers stopped coding around a year ago, so since then they, they didn't code. What they have is hundreds of, uh, AI engineers that they code for them, and that is how we can achieve what we are achieving at, at scale in 35 countries, including China, including Middle East, including Europe, where there are a lot of regulations in all of them, with a fairly tiny team.

    4. HS

      What tooling do you use?

    5. MF

      Mainly Claude.

    6. HS

      Mainly Claude?

    7. MF

      Yeah.

    8. HS

      How much do you spend on Claude a month, give or take?

    9. MF

      Um, I don't... It, it keeps growing so fast [laughs] that I don't, I, I don't know.

    10. HS

      Is it like 5 million?

    11. MF

      No, it's lower than that, but it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's still in the millions.

  12. 19:17 – 21:27

    Will AI Spend Go From 5% to 50% of Engineering Budgets?

    1. HS

      And the thing I'm trying to understand is Mark Benioff said that they spend 300 million a year on Claude, and they have a 6 billion budget for engineering. It's 5% of engineering salaries being spent on Claude in particular.

    2. MF

      Yeah.

    3. HS

      And my question as an investor is will it stay at 5%? In which case, eh, we can justify the $2 trillion IPO, but it doesn't have massive expansion from there. Is it a case of the 5% is just the start, baby? We're gonna go to 25%, in which case, Matteo, let's load up on Anthropic's IPO. Or is it the case that actually we're gonna see the commoditization by open models, most of workflows are gonna get taken by them, and that 5% could go down to 1% as we see efficiency?

    4. MF

      Yeah. I think there will be two vectors in the opposite direction. The usage will increase, and so the 5% will become 50%, but the cost will go down. And so net-net, I think it will go down. I was listening to an interview to Sam Altman recently, and he was saying that in the early days, to pay for o- one hour of electricity a night, you had to work five hours, just to give you a sense of how expensive electricity was in the early days. And now nobody cares about... I don't even know what's the cost of electricity at night, uh, in, uh, in, in Miami where I live. And so I think the same thing will happen.

    5. HS

      Do you find it a bit scary that intelligence is now free and, like, entirely distributed?

    6. MF

      Yeah. It's, it's something I, I-

    7. HS

      Like Joe's aside, like-

    8. MF

      Yeah

    9. HS

      ... shit.

    10. MF

      I think about, about all that, right? And how businesses will change, how our business will change once that intelligence is semi-unlimited.

    11. HS

      Well, I asked the Instinct this morning to do an in-depth analysis of three of our biggest competitors' Instagram channels, 'cause I want Instagram to be a real driver for us moving forwards. Uh, what works, what doesn't, what themes work, what hooks work, what layouts work, what doesn't, uh, what captions work. It was incredible. And I said, "Can you suggest three stories every single day for me at 8:00 AM to do?" First one starts tomorrow.

    12. MF

      Yeah. I mean, the amount of productivity will explode. It's probably like when we went from no computers to computers, but... Or probably even bigger industrial revolution or agricultural revolution. I think we are facing one of

  13. 21:27 – 21:46

    Would You Buy Anthropic at IPO?

    1. MF

      those moments.

    2. HS

      Knowing what you know now as a consumer and customer of Claude, would you buy Anthropic at the IPO?

    3. MF

      I would probably buy.

    4. HS

      Yeah.

    5. MF

      Um, I still think there is so up, so much upside in all these companies. I'm really bullish on SpaceX, personally. Um-

    6. HS

      Why? What drives

  14. 21:46 – 23:15

    Why AI Will Turn Companies Into Holding Companies

    1. HS

      that?

    2. MF

      Well, I think... So here is another theory that I have, and obviously it's just my opinion, but I think with AI, companies will-- the right companies will transform themselves in holdings. And so what it means is that whatever Eight Sleep is doing today will be one of the businesses that we do. But with AI, as we build tools for ourselves, we'll discover other opportunities, business opportunities. And so the Eight Sleep Inc. will probably own three, four, five, 10 different businesses. Which if you think, and if you look at compa- at Chinese companies, it's something they have been doing forever. If you look at Xiaomi, Xiaomi does 15 different things. I just watched their, uh, latest presentation from their CMO. I look at a lot of Chinese companies because they are geniuses, right? They never stop themselves. So Xiaomi, instead of being just like Apple, they also do cars, for example, right? They do so many other things.

    3. HS

      And fridges and ovens and like [laughs]

    4. MF

      Literally. Anything hardware related, anything that is smart home, but then they also get into components, like some of the components, uh, like BYD develops certain components well outside the, the car and automotive. So these companies have already proven that the concept of focus is not, oh, you keep doing the same thing forever. It's just I have certain capabilities, then, like, how can I use these, you know, knowledge and capabilities in any form? And with AI, we will all

  15. 23:15 – 25:10

    Are Chinese Companies About to Crush European Industry?

    1. MF

      do that.

    2. HS

      I'm loving this conversation. And the joys of, like, doing second Joes is, like, they're much more casual, which is much better to listen to and also much more fun to do. Do you worry when you see the excellence of these Chinese manufacturers, um, in spec- specifically the kind of automotive industry, that it's just gonna hollow out the European car market?

    3. MF

      Yeah. I think Chinese, they really nail particularly automotive. Um, and based on my understanding, what, what happened is t- around 10 years ago, whenever exactly that was, they understood that they, they didn't want to compete, uh, with, uh, European manufacturers on standard engines. And that is when they decided to double down on, uh, electrical, uh- ... technology. And since then, they started developing their cars. But I, I go to China often for, for work now. We sell in China, but we also manufacture in China. And when you see the quality of their cars, because in the past we used to think that some of these products were just, you know, cheap and, uh, and ugly. Well, instead now they design cars. Xiaomi, if you go to their stores, it looks like an Apple store, but there are cars, there are, you know, other devices for the home. These cars, they literally look like a Ferrari aesthetics, or they have these seats that turn, so you can just sit and then, uh, uh-

    4. HS

      Dude, I've seen-

    5. MF

      Yeah

    6. HS

      ... I've seen the TikToks. They look so cool.

    7. MF

      Yeah. Yeah.

    8. HS

      It was incredible. Screens come down.

    9. MF

      Screens come down.

    10. HS

      Stars on the ceiling.

    11. MF

      Massage.

    12. HS

      Yeah.

    13. MF

      Everything is voice control. So they're really focused on the customer experience, and it's incredible. And I think a lot of other manufacturers around the world, they don't, um, they don't focus enough on the user experience.

    14. HS

      Com- completely get you and agree with that.

    15. MF

      Yeah.

    16. HS

      But as your wonderful accent denotes, you are Italian.

    17. MF

      Yeah.

    18. HS

      And a huge amount of the European industrial economy is, is rotating, centered around cars.

    19. MF

      Yeah.

    20. HS

      Do you worry about

  16. 25:10 – 26:45

    Why Humanoid Robots Could Be a Trillion-Dollar Market

    1. HS

      that?

    2. MF

      Well, I worry even more about another factor. I think all the Chinese manufacturers, they will become robotic companies. I think all these automakers should transform themselves and start building humanoids, because the humanoid will be what cars were in the '60s. If they don't do that, they will not lose all the cars. They will lose also the humanoid market, which is trillions of dollars.

    3. HS

      Are you seeing the advancement with humanoids in China in a way that you really didn't expect?

    4. MF

      Yes. I don't know if you saw the... I don't know what was the formal name, the Olympics of ro- robots.

    5. HS

      The, the Humanoid Games, I think they were.

    6. MF

      Yeah. It's insane. And the, the way I look at that is, okay, you look at the thing, it looks a bit funny, they look a bit clunky, but they start doing the things. Knowing how fast AI is moving, if you-- next year, those same games will be mind-blowing. That is what worries me. What I saw today, right, if you just, if you just look at that and say, "Oh, look at the thing, like, these robots, you know, they, they are not really good at their walking." Even if they did the records in the 100 meters, there was a robot that ran faster than Usain Bolt. So they know how to do-

    7. HS

      That, that was... I- I did a video on this. There was a robot that w- beat the high jump. [laughs]

    8. MF

      Yes, I saw that.

    9. HS

      [laughs]

    10. MF

      And then there were the fight, and all the, the fighters.

    11. HS

      [laughs]

    12. MF

      But you-

    13. HS

      Tennis.

    14. MF

      Yeah.

    15. HS

      Like real time tennis.

    16. MF

      The tennis. The tennis was really cool.

    17. HS

      It's insane.

    18. MF

      Yeah. But in one year from now, we will be blown away at this, at this speed of AI.

  17. 26:45 – 28:31

    Are Frontier AI Models Moving Too Fast?

    1. HS

      Did you see the paper last night, or essay or post last night from someone at OpenAI, Sam promoted it, that basically said, "We actually need to put a slight pause on this. It is getting too far, too fast."

    2. MF

      Yeah. So there is the... I think the part that is worrying everybody is the, um, uh, the part of self- self-learning from these models, and so they are getting to the point where they train themselves, and that is when we start losing, uh, control. There is a point, even in our model-

    3. HS

      Do you not think we're already there?

    4. MF

      I think we are. Then I think there is a big delta between what we see as users and probably what, you know, the frontier model companies have in-house, and I think they have already seen it, uh, behind the scene. You, you have seen some of the things that are happening already in terms of cybersecurity, in these, uh, you know, civilizations, that there were three attempts of civilization, I think, in an OpenAI model where, uh, agents were building their own, uh, their own group. Um-

    5. HS

      I'm gonna go there. You sell in China. You, you spend a lot of time in China. Um, a lot of your investors, including Keith Rabois, who's a friend of mine, [laughs] fucking hates China. How do you reflect on that? Is it as evil and CCP-driven as it seems? Are we in a de-globalized world that should hate China? How do you think about that?

    6. MF

      Yeah. Um, I don't, I don't have a specific opinion on, on, on, on that, so I cannot really comment. I, I can just tell you for us is a, is a key market, is a big opportunity, and we decided to sell there and, and it's doing really well

  18. 28:31 – 32:19

    What It Really Takes to Sell in China

    1. MF

      for us.

    2. HS

      Is it very different selling in China?

    3. MF

      Yes, because you cannot sell on EightSleep.com. Like literally you don't sell on a website. They don't use website. And so for us it was literally learning everything from scratch.

    4. HS

      What do you mean they don't sell on a website?

    5. MF

      Chinese don't buy on websites. There is no e-commerce, uh, as we know it. They only buy on their super apps, so on WeChat, RedNote, and equivalent. And so we had to learn all that.

    6. HS

      What the fu- so where do they land? Like y- you send a referral link to your friend? But wh- where's the referral link from? I'm, I'm confused.

    7. MF

      Yeah. Imagine that everything, the equivalent is oversimplified, is like if you were buying everything on, uh, WhatsApp. They don't go on it, on any website. Website are at the most just literally like if you just wanna scroll and see some, some picture and read a bit more about the product. But all the purchases, all their credit cards are on RedNote or kind of Amazon equivalent and WhatsApp equivalent. Or TikTok, obviously.

    8. HS

      Does that impact how you think about how we should think about security for these AI assistants? Like everyone now is like, "Oh, I would never put my credit card in Instinct." Or, "What if it gets hacked?"

    9. MF

      Yeah. I think the solution for that to me is, so for example, my GrokBot is buying things for me already, but, uh, is using Amazon on the browser, and so Amazon has my credit card And so there I feel confident, uh, because I'm not sharing, uh, my credit card with AI yet. I, I think in AI we are where we were with credit cards on, uh, knowing, uh, spending and buying things on the internet 20 years ago.

    10. HS

      Yeah.

    11. MF

      Where people, particularly European and Italian, I was still living in Italy, they literally didn't want to put their credit card on the, on, on any website because they thought it was a scam. And sometimes there was a scam back then. I think we are at the same point with giving our credit card or information to these bots. It's still a bit, no... Sometimes you feel uncomfortable, but I think in a year or two from now, our bots, particularly bots from frontier models, like from X, uh, OpenAI, and Claude, you will start trusting them soon.

    12. HS

      What seems crazy today that you think will be very common in five years? I totally remember I wasn't allowed eBay when I was young, 'cause my parents were like, "No way are you putting credit card details online."

    13. MF

      Yeah.

    14. HS

      I remember when it was like, "You think you're gonna find a partner online? These apps are ridiculous." [laughs]

    15. MF

      Yeah.

    16. HS

      Now 60% of relationships start online, and I think we live online transaction-wise. What, what-

    17. MF

      Probably your bot buying a Cybercab that will start making money for you. So you will buy a Cybercab that makes money for you with a bot, and the bot runs the Cybercab.

    18. HS

      [laughs]

    19. MF

      That would be pretty sick.

    20. HS

      I mean, it's not that far off happening now.

    21. MF

      No. No. And as it will be the health part. That is another area where I, I think, I hope that cancer can be solved within 10 years. I think, uh, companies like Eight Sleep will be able to, uh, save your life, uh, save the life of millions of people.

    22. HS

      Does the Eight Sleep product actually change that much with the greatest of respect in a, in a completely AI-driven world?

    23. MF

      100%. We start seeing, uh, the likelihood you develop diabetes in our data, hypertension. We, um, are becoming a medical device for sleep apnea, so your bed will become the most advanced medical platform you ever had.

    24. HS

      You said about retail earlier, I bet retail has been a question for you for years, and I bet there's been different board conversations had. How do you think about when's the right time? 'Cause you're still not, still D2C.

    25. MF

      Mm-hmm.

    26. HS

      How do you think about when's the right time?

  19. 32:19 – 35:54

    Why Timing Matters More Than Founders Think

    1. MF

      Yeah. Well, let me step back for a second. One thing I'm learning as a, as an entrepreneur is there is a time for things, right? Similar to what I was telling you about the out-of-home campaign. Nailing the timing of what you do, so when you do what, is actually really important for CEOs. Because it's not that it's binary that, I don't know, retail doesn't work or out-of-home doesn't work. No. It works, but there are some second or lower level conditions that are required to make that project work. And so I think for Eight Sleep, that is happening now. And so you should imagine, uh, retail to become, uh, a meaningful part of our channels in, in the next, uh, um, month, years. But before it would have been too early. Same for China, right? Launching in China, one thing I, I spoke to a lot of Chinese founders, and what they told me is sometimes when they start their consumer products, they actually start selling outside China first. And I say, "Why? You have such a big market and you know the market." And they say, "Because, uh, the, the Chinese market, they love to buy products that are already well-recognized in the Western world. And so you wanna build the product and the brand first in the rest of the world, and then you come back to China. Otherwise, in China, you would be one of many knockoffs, and it would just be a price war." And so I didn't know, we just decided to launch China, and so we were just doing it. But I didn't understand that for us it was the right time to get into China, because now we are already selling in 35 countries. We are well-recognized. We sponsor Charles Leclerc and, uh, work with Ferrari, uh, through Charles. That is a very well-recognized brand. Many athletes use us. Elon spoke about us. Mark Zuckerberg spoke about us. Elon is really big in China, right? And so you have a level of trust where you command a certain price. But if we were doing the same thing five years ago, we would be destroyed by a knockoff that is 500 bucks cheaper.

    2. HS

      I was... I had Hugo Barra on the show, who was a former exec from Xiaomi, and he taught me something very important in hardware, and I'm intrigued if you agree with it. He said you need to be one of two things. You either need to be price king, which is I'm the cheapest, uh, or feature king, which is I'm the best.

    3. MF

      Yeah.

    4. HS

      Do you agree with that?

    5. MF

      So I agree and disagree. I agree that you can be the best price. It's not what we wanna be. Or I would call it the best product and brand. Not that it's so much about features, but the brand is really important. And so being a brand that is associated with, again, the Charles Leclerc, with Elon Musk, people they really respect, they want that. Uh, and the same happens in Europe, right? I grew up and I remember when I bought my, um, iPod. Uh, with the... It was impossible and I was buying a secondhand iPod on eBay back then, but because Americans were having this product and it was not being sold in Europe yet. There is that, that, that kind of fervor.

    6. HS

      I completely agree. Listen to a thousand songs in your pocket-

    7. MF

      Yes

    8. HS

      ... in a beautiful poster. Dude, Samsung and all the others did a thousand songs in your funky device too.

    9. MF

      Yeah.

    10. HS

      It was the same in many ways.

    11. MF

      It was 100% the same. And Steve Jobs has always been a genius because he was coming with a great product after everybody else, sometimes one, two, three years later. But he was nailing the branding, the packaging, and the, the pitch and everybody, and obviously the look, and everybody wanted

  20. 35:54 – 56:40

    Silicon Valley Underestimates the Power of Brand

    1. MF

      it.

    2. HS

      What do you think people don't consider about consumer brand enough?

    3. MF

      The brand, particularly I think in Silicon Valley. I think in Silicon Valley, we understand really well building the best product, but I think we underestimate the importance of brand. Then a great brand with a shitty product goes nowhere. So first it's product, but then you need to be able to build a brand that is aspirational and can command a certain price.

    4. HS

      Charles Leclerc is a, a phenomenal talent, for those that don't know, in the racing world, uh, one of the best. How does that come to be? You get a DM from Charles saying, "I love Eight Sleep. Do you wanna sponsor me?" How does that come to be?

    5. MF

      Yeah. Well, it's pretty incredible, the story. So we got connected. So Charles already had our product for two years before we met, and we didn't even know. Uh, and that is the best way, obviously, for us to start the relationship. Then I'm an F1 and motorsport, uh, obsessed fan. Like, obsessed. I, I know everything since when kids racing go-karts. So I knew about Charles six, seven years before he got into F1. And three years before F1, he was racing, two years before, he was racing in F2. And at the time, I reach out to his team in F2 and I say, "Uh, I'm a huge Charles fan. I think he will make it big. Is there any way where Eight Sleep can sponsor him?" But at the time, Eight Sleep was very tiny, and so we couldn't find any real deal. But when I met Charles, I still had the email where I was now, uh, going back and forth with his team, and I wanted to sponsor him before he even made it to F1, not to Ferrari, before F1. And then I share with him our vision, our medical vision. He really cares about that, and he's actually really into AI. He's incredible. Super sharp guy, super into AI. And we had dinner together, I think it was the Wednesday of the GP in Miami, and before the end of the dinner we say we're gonna do, we're gonna work together. And the deal since then was done in, in a matter of days.

    6. HS

      Can I ask how much did it cost?

    7. MF

      Um, no, I, I, I, I [laughs]

    8. HS

      [laughs] No, you can't

    9. MF

      ... I can't share. What I can tell you is that, um, Charles invested in Eight Sleep. Uh, and, um, and I, I w- was honestly, first really happy because he was one of my, my, my heroes, but second, I think that proves what I was telling you, how, how smart he is also as an entrepreneur and a, and a businessman.

    10. HS

      Can I ask you, I think a lot more celebrities and athletes are obviously trying to be investors and wanting to invest today than ever before. What would be your biggest advice to other founders on how to get them and how to get the most out of them-

    11. MF

      Yeah

    12. HS

      ... as an inve- as a founder of a company?

    13. MF

      Well, we made a lot of mistakes into, in, in, uh, with that too. Uh, now it's probably four or five years that we invest, uh, um, in sport because obviously we have Charles, but we were sponsoring the UAE team with Pogačar. Pogačar was installing our product every single night at each hotel of each stage of the Tour de France since last year, and we didn't even know. He won last year, and then he won this year. So they reach out after the first year and say, "Look, Pogačar did everything on his own. We bought the product, now everybody in the team wants it. Can we do something together?" And so we sponsor, uh, the UAE team this year. And then we are in padel with Arturo Coello and Federico Chingotto, so number one and number three in the world. We are in tennis where we sponsor a lot of coaches, including the coach of Sabalenka and many others. And then there are a lot of top, top athletes that use our product. It's not public w- and because-

    14. HS

      But what would you advise founders on lessons from how to get great talent, and then it can be celebrity investors too, pop stars, DJs-

    15. MF

      Yeah

    16. HS

      ... you name it, and how to get the most out of them?

    17. MF

      Yeah.

    18. HS

      Or are they just not our value?

    19. MF

      Well, there are two conditions f- for any deal now. First they need to be, to use the product. If they already use it, they bought it on their own, perfect, now we can talk about now doing a deal. If not, they need to try it, and then we wanna hear the feedback. They need to know the product, otherwise it's just a, a pure business transaction and I don't like it. Second, I wanna have a direct relationship with them. Usually, sometimes managers, they don't want that, and they wanna try to be in the middle, but if I don't have the direct relationship with the athlete, we're not gonna do the deal because then it's just a, a, a financial deal, and at this point we don't care. I wanna be connected to the athlete. I wanna know that they love our product, and if they don't, uh, it's, it's fine, but then the relationship will never work, particularly in a product like ours where these people, the biggest value they do is just by talking to their friends about how good our product is, right? And so they really need to be both in. If they just have a stake in our company because they put a few million dollars, you don't go anywhere.

    20. HS

      Who would you most like to have on the cap table who you don't have?

    21. MF

      Probably...

    22. HS

      Do you have Cristiano Ronaldo?

    23. MF

      No.

    24. HS

      He would be amazing.

    25. MF

      Yeah. Would that... Yeah.

    26. HS

      He's massive. He, have, have you, have you seen pictures of him training?

    27. MF

      Yeah.

    28. HS

      Like, uh, dude, I'm, I'm a straight man. My God, this guy's body is incredible.

    29. MF

      Yeah.

    30. HS

      I looked at it and then I looked at myself and I just felt like [laughs]

  21. 56:40 – 59:07

    Should Startups Match Anthropic-Level Compensation?

    1. MF

      And then he stayed.

    2. HS

      Can you advise me? I'm a founder of a early-ish stage company stay. My talent is getting poached by hot companies, top labs. Should I pay the same as what they're paying to keep them if they're great, or do you just have to accept that it's out of our league?

    3. MF

      Well, I, I'll tell you something slightly different. I think you cannot even compare, meaning if the people are really, um, comparing the options between a company at a total different scale to you, they are probably the wrong people. Or it's not that they are wrong fundamentally. Like in, in, in our case is this person was tired of, no... There is pressure at Eight Sleep, and he does hardware, so he needs to go to China, Vietnam, travel all the time. And so it was becoming a personal choice. But he's a hardcore guy, and at the end of the day, he realized that this is what gives him energy. And so he didn't even want that life. And so if you... When people... Sometimes it's, it's still happening today that sometimes people say, "Oh, I'm at the final stage with Anthropic and, uh, and Eight Sleep." And to me, that is a really bad red flag. Not even for the salary, but it means you're confused. There is no way that these two jobs are in any way similar. And I'm not talking because we are hardware versus software. It's just, man, get, get, get your shit together. Do you want to work at a very large company that has, you know, certain standards and probably a certain profile, or you want to work at Eight Sleep? But here I tell you another thing that we are seeing, actually. Uh, you will love this. There is another trend in Silicon Valley where there are people that have been lay off. Obviously, I don't want to generalize, but we have seen this in the data. And so what they do is they start talking to a lot of companies. And sometimes some of these are listed with us, they took one of our job offers, and then two weeks later, they switch to another company. And the reason is they pro... Uh, because they didn't have, uh, probably income or salary for a very few months, they want to try to get a salary or income, and then they keep a certain conversation open, and then they take, uh, they might take another job.

    4. HS

      Does that not look terrible switching so quickly? Like-

    5. MF

      Yeah. But then they don't even disclose.

    6. HS

      Ah, so they don't change their LinkedIn to like... [laughs]

    7. MF

      Yep.

  22. 59:07 – 1:02:09

    Has Silicon Valley Become Too Money Obsessed?

    1. HS

      Do you think the Valley is too money-oriented? Chamath said on X recently that, you know, it's become too transactional, it's too financial. From Chamath, that really is something. Do, do you agree with that?

    2. MF

      So yes, but with a caveat. I think people that join a startup, they should be driven, and it's important that they are motivated by, you know, a potential financial success. And, and, and I agree. Uh, but that success will come by, you know, increasing the, the, the, the equity value from X to 10X. That is also why to me it's so important, right? You cannot really compare us to one of these big companies that are already so big, where they are way more stable, and maybe you do two, three X. At Eight Sleep, you should come to try to do 100 or 1,000X. But the, the, the, the, the team size, all... You know, there are so many details that are totally different. And so we actually want people that are very driven and ambitious, but they need to be driven in ambition because of the right things.

    3. HS

      Do you think people care to say more about upside in terms of 10, 100X, or actually just certainty of cash? Yes, it may be more capped, but you will get a tender next year, and that will be done as they are every year.

    4. MF

      I think it's completely fine, but that, it goes back to m- Get your shit together and understand what you need and probably what your family needs. So an-another thing that I learned as a CEO is sometimes now, like we just promoted one of our best guys to VP of Engineering, and we were running a search for VP of Engineering, but he wanted the job. And what I told him is, "Look, we will run the search, but you have your own shot, so prove yourself." He did insanely well for three months, and then we decided to go for him. But I think it was very good that we ran an external search so we could see other people as well, right? I, I found that, you know, the, the, the professional way to do it. But what I told him is, "I'm gonna give you the job, but I don't want you to answer tonight. You go and you talk to your wife because she has seen how hard you work over the past three months. You were already working hard. The last three months, you went, like, 130%. And so here is not just you committing to this life. If I give you the job, I expect you, or I would like you, that everything equal, you stay with us for the next two, three, four years, right? Otherwise, I'm not gonna bet on you. So go and talk to your wife. She has seen how hard you work, and you guys, both of you, need to commit because it's not just you, it's your family."

    5. HS

      I completely agree. I, I call it the power of pillow talk, which is why I will always spend time at a dinner party or a drinks party, uh, speaking to their partner because I want them to actually know at the end of the day why I'm doing what I'm doing and how important my family is to me and what we build is together.

    6. MF

      Yeah.

    7. HS

      And so when they come home and have a shit day, it's like, "But I do like Matteo, and I know he's, he's a good human."

    8. MF

      Yeah. Exactly.

    9. HS

      Changes everything.

    10. MF

      It's key. And everybody has a family, right? So we need to take care of them, but they also need to be bought in.

    11. HS

      Can I ask you, when we look at the team today, how big

  23. 1:02:09 – 1:02:40

    How Eight Sleep Runs With Just 160 Employees

    1. HS

      is the team?

    2. MF

      We're only 160 people.

    3. HS

      Wow. That's small. Um, good luck-

    4. MF

      Our revenue per employees is way higher than Apple. Like, one thing I can tell you is our s- companies, without disclosing our revenue, but other similar companies are probably in the 1,000 people at our revenue stage. Our output is 5X what is average in Silicon Valley.

    5. HS

      Can I ask you, when we look then three years out, it's a reasonable timeframe. It's not crazy out, but it's decent. How many people will you be

  24. 1:02:40 – 1:05:45

    250 Employees, $1BN Revenue

    1. HS

      then?

    2. MF

      250 people making a billion.

    3. HS

      Which function does not exist today that will be very important, or job?

    4. MF

      Well, we saw a change in email. Um, but what I think is, I start thinking of, uh, in terms of teams of two. That is how I think for certain parts of the business, where I think you still want two people to have redundancy, uh, and you want two world-class people overseeing that area, but that area could be really big, right? So, like, right now, our paid media team makes hundreds of millions, and there are two people. But, like, two, 300 million, just the group. Um, and so-

    5. HS

      And they decide all of your matter allocations, all of your creatives? Or...

    6. MF

      Well, then obviously there is a creative team and what, yeah.

    7. HS

      Sure, sure, but they decide it.

    8. MF

      Yeah. So the, the way I like to keep the organization is extremely small and flat, and I'm heavily involved, and that is how we can be 160 people instead than 1,000, and similar companies are in the thousands.

    9. HS

      So which function today or which job today will be gone in five years' time and which will be created?

    10. MF

      Again, I don't think anything will, will be gone. I, I think you can do what you're doing with way less people or the same people be spread more horizontally to cover more areas, right? And so maybe the AI SEO, maybe the same person over- oversees this other section and this other section, so you can be way leaner. Uh, now I have a, an AI internal tools team that didn't exist until six months ago, and are the guys building these thousands of agents for internal-

    11. HS

      And you have a separate team for that. You don't expect horizontal groups to do that?

    12. MF

      No, because this team needs to be very connected to the, uh, data engineering team because the agents needs to have access to, uh, the, the data backend, the, the data pipeline of everything we do. And so, I don't know, the marketing agents needs to make sure that it has perfect access to the revenue by country and the CAC by country. And so fine-tuning that, that is the real true challenge because you wanna make sure that the agents are 100% correct.

    13. HS

      Other than email marketing, what agent has had the most significant impact?

    14. MF

      Well, the one for paid media, right? Now, now we make hundreds of millions, uh, with, uh, with these, uh, paid media agents. Um, now the other big one is, uh, in finance. Particularly in all th-these groups is where we save a lot of headcounts for, compared to normal companies, right? Probably a company like ours should have, I don't know, a team of 20 people in finance. Our team is four people. I, I, I just really like to keep teams small and try to see if I can 5X the output. I, I really have love to, when I talk to investors, to ask them to compare each of my teams and the quality of the output of each of my teams to other companies they have and the delta in size.

    15. HS

      You're in 35 countries.

    16. MF

      Yeah.

    17. HS

      What's the hardest country?

    18. MF

      Well, China, because there is no-- You don't, you don't sell on the website, so we had to

  25. 1:05:45 – 1:21:41

    Quick-fire Round

    1. MF

      reinvent everything.

    2. HS

      Dude, I wanna do a quick fire round. So I say a short sta- uh, short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. How many hours sleep do we really need today?

    3. MF

      Um, at least seven.

    4. HS

      Biggest sleep tip for me.

    5. MF

      Consistency and amount of hours.

    6. HS

      True.

    7. MF

      If you just nail those two things, you, you will be good.

    8. HS

      Eating before bed, any advice?

    9. MF

      It's very personal. For certain people, it makes a difference. For others, no. And it will change as you age.

    10. HS

      Huh. Does it make a difference for you?

    11. MF

      As I age, it, it does. It depends on what I eat. My heart rate Friday night when I have pizza is my cheat day. My heart rate at rest goes up 10, 15% and HRV drops around 12%.

    12. HS

      Wow. What have you changed your mind on most, in general, in the last year?

    13. MF

      Probably in health in general, I, I think really 95% of the value is just to be consistent and do the right things without going too crazy in terms of, I don't know, products that you can take and supplements and all that. If you just have a very balanced life, uh, in terms of eating well, training, and sleeping, then the score will take care of itself.

    14. HS

      What's a kooky prediction, weird prediction you have about the future that you do stand by?

    15. MF

      That kids that are being born now will never work. Well, at least for money. Then they might do it, uh, because of their passion.

    16. HS

      W- w- can you just ex- explain that to me?

    17. MF

      Well, I, I don't think if a kid is born now, by the time they are 20 years old, they will ever work. By then, I think AI will, will be at a point where humans don't work. They will do activities, social activities, even to help other humans. But-

    18. HS

      What will we do then?

    19. MF

      This is what we need to discover. I also have this pyramid of life about, uh, uh, the, the, the importance of life, and to me it's a pyramid. At the bottom you have health, and then you have, uh, relationship, and then you have purpose. And I think this is what drives happiness. So the, the first thing you need to nail in your life is to be healthy, because if you are unhealthy, almost nothing else matters, right? If you have a cancer and you're risked to die in the next two to three months, you can't be happy. Once health is, uh, is on, uh, is on track, you focus on relationship. Relationship, doesn't matter what kind of relationship. It could be a partner, it could be your family, it could be your friends, but you need to have relationship of other people, right? If you are s- if, if, if you are extremely rich and healthy, but completely alone and nobody wants you, you can't be happy, right?

    20. HS

      And you're just a Silicon Valley tech founder. [laughs]

    21. MF

      And then the third is purpose, and purpose is extremely important, right? So once you're healthy, once you have great relationship, you need to have a purpose of your life. You need to work towards something. And it doesn't need to be, you know, financially related. It c- could be anything that you really enjoy, but you need to have a purpose, and I think that is the part that we need to, uh, pay attention to.

    22. HS

      What would you advise someone asking whether they should go to university today?

    23. MF

      No. 100% no. It's, it's useless. Well, if you wanna have social activities, there is the social part, but I'm just talking in a very pragmatic way. If they want to do... have a f- a career, particularly in Silicon Valley as entrepreneurs, I think it's totally useless.

    24. HS

      Do you believe in universal basic income?

    25. MF

      I think it will have to happen, and I think probably as companies will get more efficient and probably they will need less, uh, people working for, for them, probably they will get taxed more to make sure that we can distribute universal income to everybody.

    26. HS

      Do you think Bill Gates's suggestion was right that we should tax agent usage and token usage?

    27. MF

      Well, I mean, there we need to talk to real experts. I just think that the bottom line of a lot of companies will improve meaningfully over the next three, four, five, 10 years, and so I just think we will need to readjust part of that bottom line to be distributed to people so everybody can have a comfortable life.

    28. HS

      Would you let your children use social media?

    29. MF

      That is a good question. I don't have an answer yet, but, uh, at some point I will have to figure it out. [laughs]

    30. HS

      What do you not know yet about parenting that you are wanting to know?

Episode duration: 1:21:52

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