2025 Year In Review

Michael Seibel 0:00 Hot take, depopulation. Is humanity gonna make it, Dalton? And will it be too few people or too many?

Dalton Caldwell 0:08 Yeah. I mean-

Michael Seibel 0:09 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 0:09 ... the graphs look bad.

Michael Seibel 0:11 [laughs] They look really bad.

Dalton Caldwell 0:12 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 0:13 [upbeat music] This is Dalton + Michael, and, uh, this feels gonna be a little different. We're gonna do a little bit of a 2025 in review. What are hot takes from 2025?

Dalton Caldwell 0:27 The hottest of takes, Michael.

Michael Seibel 0:28 The hottest of takes. Dalton was inspired by the Colin Jost, Michael Che end of the year SNL skit-

Dalton Caldwell 0:36 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 0:36 ... where they give each other extremely challenging jokes to say out loud that will get themselves canceled.

Dalton Caldwell 0:41 Let's not do that.

Michael Seibel 0:42 We're not gonna do that, no.

Dalton Caldwell 0:43 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 0:43 But it's a cool idea. Maybe next year.

Dalton Caldwell 0:46 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 0:46 Anyways, where do you wanna start? Where, where, what's the first, first hot take topic?

Dalton Caldwell 0:49 So let's start with, um, San Francisco, Michael. Let's start at the, the hottest of-

Michael Seibel 0:54 Ooh, yes

Dalton Caldwell 0:54 ... hot takes. So what's your hot take on the status of the city and politics and, like, the whole shebang?

Michael Seibel 0:59 My hot take is, like, if you're reading it on Twitter, it's like, it, it's, there's a greater than 50% chance it, it's wrong.

Dalton Caldwell 1:07 In what way?

Michael Seibel 1:07 Just, just wrong. Just, like, just assume anything that is meme-ing about San Francisco, either positive or negative, on Twitter is wrong.

Dalton Caldwell 1:16 So is it better? You're just saying it's different.

Michael Seibel 1:18 It's just different. It's just, like, it's just, like-

Dalton Caldwell 1:20 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 1:20 ... there's no signal. Like, the signal that you're getting on the things that are meme-ing is, like, you should ignore that signal. It's the fuzz. It's not real signal.

Dalton Caldwell 1:29 I'm sure they're all gonna listen to you. You sol- you solved it, Michael.

Michael Seibel 1:32 Solved the problem.

Dalton Caldwell 1:32 Thank you. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 1:33 Nothing's gonna trend re: San Francisco.

Dalton Caldwell 1:35 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 1:36 I think my second hot take, people give politicians way too much agency. I don't care who the people leading San Francisco were, if you have COVID, if you have the emptying of downtown's office spaces, and if you have, um, a defund the police movement, you're gonna be in a challenging situation. I don't care who's leading a city, if you're emerging from those things [laughs] -

Dalton Caldwell 2:05 Yep

Michael Seibel 2:05 ... [laughs] you're gonna be in a better situation. And all too often I feel like humans need, like, viral narratives to explain simple things. And, like, yes, there are, you know, there's more work to be done and blah, blah, blah, all these things, but, like, those two trends are generally gonna hold, and probably the people running the city are just trying to do best with the general [laughs] situation that they're in. What's that phrase where, like, the king goes down to the thing and Charles is, "I'm gonna show all of my citizens how powerful I am, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna command the tide to go out." [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 2:42 [laughs]

Michael Seibel 2:42 And the tide doesn't move. And he's like, "That's, that's my power." [laughs] That's what I-

Dalton Caldwell 2:47 I don't know that one. All right.

Michael Seibel 2:48 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 2:48 Tell me.

Michael Seibel 2:48 Those are my moves. So anyways, I think that's my hot take on San Francisco.

Dalton Caldwell 2:52 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 2:52 The, the Twitter narrative is basically completely incorrect. All right.

Dalton Caldwell 2:55 What do you got for me?

Michael Seibel 2:56 Um, hot take, depopulation. Is humanity gonna make it, Dalton? And will it be too few people or too many?

Dalton Caldwell 3:05 Yeah. I mean-

Michael Seibel 3:06 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 3:06 ... the graphs look bad.

Michael Seibel 3:08 [laughs] They look really bad.

Dalton Caldwell 3:10 [laughs] I remember a long time ago when I was a, like, an undergrad at Stanford, I remember seeing a building on the campus.

Michael Seibel 3:19 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 3:20 And there was a dumpster next to it.

Michael Seibel 3:21 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 3:22 And it was full of books that had clearly been thrown out of the building.

Michael Seibel 3:26 Interesting.

Dalton Caldwell 3:26 And of course this evoke my natural curiosity-

Michael Seibel 3:29 Stanford throwing books. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 3:30 ... to like, why would you throw a bunch of books-

Michael Seibel 3:33 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 3:33 ... and journals into a dumpster?

Michael Seibel 3:35 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 3:36 And it was all, uh, from something called, I think the Stanford Food Research Institute.

Michael Seibel 3:42 Okay.

Dalton Caldwell 3:42 And I looked into it a little bit at the time, and basically it was a whole department/think tank-

Michael Seibel 3:47 Mm-hmm

Dalton Caldwell 3:48 ... that as far as I could tell, again, I could m- maybe get some of the subtlety wrong-

Michael Seibel 3:51 Sure

Dalton Caldwell 3:51 ... but it was basically encouraging people to stop having children because there wasn't enough food to feed people in the world.

Michael Seibel 3:57 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 3:57 So there may be more to it than that, but-

Michael Seibel 3:59 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 4:00 ... I guess Stanford shut that down, which is why all the journals that were studying the, like, theory of this ended up getting shut down. Obviously, this theory became very popular in certain countries. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 4:12 I might argue it became part of public policy-

Dalton Caldwell 4:14 It did

Michael Seibel 4:15 ... globally. [laughs] Interesting.

Dalton Caldwell 4:17 And so I think if you read a lot of books in, what, like, the '60s and '70s-

Michael Seibel 4:22 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 4:22 ... this was like-

Michael Seibel 4:22 Population bomb. This was-

Dalton Caldwell 4:23 If you were really into, like, environmentalism and trying to save the world-

Michael Seibel 4:26 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 4:27 ... trying to slow the rate of population was, like, the coolest thing you could be.

Michael Seibel 4:32 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 4:32 Wow, is that different now.

Michael Seibel 4:34 And by the way, I think the evidence that this wasn't the problem was a bit hiding in plain sight.

Dalton Caldwell 4:39 Well, it's almost like it was-

Michael Seibel 4:40 Which is interesting

Dalton Caldwell 4:40 ... so effective of raising living standards in places that that, it all kinda solved itself. Like, basically the-

Michael Seibel 4:47 Yes. Yes

Dalton Caldwell 4:47 ... abund- the abundance of, uh, raising standard of living ca- fixed all this stuff.

Michael Seibel 4:53 It was almost as if we have an equilibrium, and we thought we had to manage the... Like, that's a very human perspe- like, obviously we have to manage our population equilibrium.

Dalton Caldwell 5:03 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 5:04 We've never done that ever until this point, and we've been around for a while, but obviously now we're smart.

Dalton Caldwell 5:09 It looks bad. It looks bad for Japan. I mean, I don't know. Look, I, I'm not-

Michael Seibel 5:12 It looks not my level of work.

Dalton Caldwell 5:13 Let me- crazy, it looks bad for Amer-

Michael Seibel 5:15 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 5:15 Like, I love how it's like y- I, I see these graphs where it's like China popul- depopulation is gonna, like, kill everything, right?

Michael Seibel 5:21 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 5:22 And then, like, America, fine, and then it's like America fine includes immigration. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 5:27 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 5:27 And you're like, well, g- great. Like, that's not-

Michael Seibel 5:30 Yep

Dalton Caldwell 5:30 ... repopulating, uh, the world. That's just [laughs] -

Michael Seibel 5:33 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 5:34 ... us opening our doors, which I love immigration, but, like, it's not solving the larger problem. I, I wanna give PG a little bit of credit here. I think that, you know, going to Yale and kinda seeing people talking about ideas who didn't always seem that smart, I think I kinda just dismissed the power of ideas a little bit.

Michael Seibel 5:54 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 5:54 And I think I dismissed academia a little too much.

Michael Seibel 5:57 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 5:58 And I remember kind of, you know, PG talking about some things around, like, hey, this stuff happened. Like, I, I just feel like, oh, we just ignore college campuses. Just ignore that. That's like, you know, whatever. Who cares?And like, it's like there's some ideas that when they take hold, they can have a lot of power.

Michael Seibel 6:15 Mm.

Dalton Caldwell 6:15 And I think this is one of them.

Michael Seibel 6:17 You would assume at some point someone would do the math and be like, "No. No, folks." Like, I think there's still people who aren't having kids today-

Dalton Caldwell 6:23 Yeah

Michael Seibel 6:23 ... 'cause they believe that we are, like, gonna overpopulate. It's bad for the environment.

Dalton Caldwell 6:27 Yeah, like environmentalism.

Michael Seibel 6:28 Yeah. And it's like-

Dalton Caldwell 6:30 Well-

Michael Seibel 6:30 ... wow, that's a powerful idea.

Dalton Caldwell 6:32 And what's crazy is, like, the solutions are all kind of random from government. So like, "Well, we'll give people a tax credit." Like-

Michael Seibel 6:37 The solutions are not good [laughs] .

Dalton Caldwell 6:39 The, the solutions are-

Michael Seibel 6:40 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 6:40 ... basically tax credits.

Michael Seibel 6:42 No.

Dalton Caldwell 6:42 And I, I think I read that in all the attempts thus far to do those, it's, like, 0% effective.

Michael Seibel 6:48 I read that basically when you do it, you basically push up the people who are gonna have kids-

Dalton Caldwell 6:53 Yeah

Michael Seibel 6:53 ... into getting the incentive, and then you have this, like, fall-off because like, "Well, I had my kids early," like, uh...

Dalton Caldwell 7:00 I, well, I'm, I'm shocked that government isn't great at figuring out incentives for humans to do things.

Michael Seibel 7:04 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 7:05 And then it's like, wow, shock- especially things that involve watching something for 18 years.

Michael Seibel 7:08 Oh, yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 7:09 That's, like, a big one. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 7:10 All right. So that's one. Um, next one, AGI, Dalton. January 1, 2025, did you think we were gonna be closer or further from AGI than you believe today?

Dalton Caldwell 7:22 I think it depends on how you define it.

Michael Seibel 7:24 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 7:24 I think the models improved faster than I would've expected January 1, 2025.

Michael Seibel 7:30 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 7:31 Just in the past two or three weeks-

Michael Seibel 7:33 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 7:33 ... there have been a bunch of new models that dropped. Literally in the past two weeks-

Michael Seibel 7:37 Google's coming on strong

Dalton Caldwell 7:37 ... everyone put out new models-

Michael Seibel 7:39 Yep

Dalton Caldwell 7:40 ... and they all seem pretty good. And the other funny thing about the new models is it takes a while to know how good they are.

Michael Seibel 7:45 Yep.

Dalton Caldwell 7:46 You can't just run the benchmark and automatically know if they're good.

Michael Seibel 7:49 No.

Dalton Caldwell 7:49 And so I think the rate of improvement is higher than I expected.

Michael Seibel 7:54 Okay.

Dalton Caldwell 7:55 But I'm not sure, depending on how you define AGI, this is way better than I would've expected at the beginning of the year. I still think the timelines are similar-

Michael Seibel 8:03 Okay

Dalton Caldwell 8:03 ... to where we started the year.

Michael Seibel 8:05 I'll answer the same way, but I think because I was skeptical of AGI in January, and I'm skeptical now.

Dalton Caldwell 8:09 Okay.

Michael Seibel 8:10 Yeah. I think that, like, AGI is such a cool and almost viral idea, and such an impactful idea, that it can, it can suck up all the oxygen in the room.

Dalton Caldwell 8:22 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 8:23 I remember talking to a founder August, and she was like, "Oh, you know, I talked to all the people working on this stuff," and they're like, "Yeah. You know, we're, like, six to no more than 18 months away-

Dalton Caldwell 8:33 Yep

Michael Seibel 8:33 ... from just super intelligence." And you know, they were sitting there just imagining what the world would be like as if they're making plans, you know? [laughs] Like-

Dalton Caldwell 8:42 Oh, I'm there

Michael Seibel 8:42 ... near-term plans, right? It's weird. I feel like that did not help this founder at all. One, I think that those people, while making their plans, were not operating their businesses as if AGI was six months away. So it was, like-

Dalton Caldwell 8:57 Mm

Michael Seibel 8:57 ... this weird kind of duality that's hard to capture. But two, I think that, like, I'm always skeptical of ideas that take all the oxygen out of the room.

Dalton Caldwell 9:06 I think this is related to our next hot-take topic-

Michael Seibel 9:09 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 9:09 ... which is self-driving.

Michael Seibel 9:10 Yep.

Dalton Caldwell 9:10 And so let's start by, by what I think the parallels are-

Michael Seibel 9:13 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 9:14 ... is, man, in 2015-

Michael Seibel 9:16 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 9:16 ... it felt like we were at the precipice of self-driving working.

Michael Seibel 9:19 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 9:19 And I spent a lot of time being like, "Man, my kids are never gonna need to learn how to drive." [laughs]

Michael Seibel 9:25 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 9:25 Like, it's like, like... And, and remember, we had a colleague who didn't know how to drive.

Michael Seibel 9:28 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 9:29 And he pre-ordered a Tesla full self-driving in, like, 2016-

Michael Seibel 9:33 Yeah, 'cause-

Dalton Caldwell 9:34 'Cause he was like, "Oh, well, this-

Michael Seibel 9:35 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 9:35 ... is gonna self-drive in, like, 2017."

Michael Seibel 9:37 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 9:37 And so I think we were living in an environment where it really did seem like ubiquitous self-driving would happen in 2017, 2018.

Michael Seibel 9:47 Yep.

Dalton Caldwell 9:48 Your former co-founder, Kyle, was the founder of Cruise.

Michael Seibel 9:50 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 9:50 And, and so I just, I think we were, like, really drinking the Kool-Aid.

Michael Seibel 9:53 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 9:54 I think with hindsight, we were totally right.

Michael Seibel 9:56 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 9:57 And I think in hindsight, it took longer than we thought.

Michael Seibel 10:00 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 10:00 [laughs] Like, the thing that we thought was gonna happen in 2017 is now happening in 2025.

Michael Seibel 10:05 The tricky thing though is, like, I would say it's, like, it's, it's not, it's happening. It's started to happen.

Dalton Caldwell 10:10 It's happening in the Bay Area.

Michael Seibel 10:12 Yeah. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 10:13 Not across the US.

Michael Seibel 10:14 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 10:14 I took a-

Michael Seibel 10:15 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 10:15 I'm in the Tesla Robotaxi beta.

Michael Seibel 10:18 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 10:18 I took one here.

Michael Seibel 10:19 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 10:19 And I take Waymo constantly.

Michael Seibel 10:21 Yes. Yes. I would still give that a maybe. What is the ratio of teleoperators to cars on the road at Waymo?

Dalton Caldwell 10:28 Yeah. I still think this would've been within the range of what we would've satisfied us in 2017. I'm not saying I know the number.

Michael Seibel 10:35 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 10:36 You don't think it is?

Michael Seibel 10:36 I-

Dalton Caldwell 10:37 I think it is.

Michael Seibel 10:37 I think that in 2015 to '17, I... No, no, I think I thought self-driving was going to be a solved problem. There are no humans in the loop when I'm doing Google Search.

Dalton Caldwell 10:47 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 10:48 And then to your point, and then of course, have we rolled it out to yet any, like, to-

Dalton Caldwell 10:52 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 10:52 Yeah. Right. So to me-

Dalton Caldwell 10:53 And, and actually there was a technical bottleneck. Again, this is the other parallel-

Michael Seibel 10:56 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 10:56 ... of AI. It's my, my understanding of people that work on this, when I've spoken with them, is that they ended up deleting a lot of, like, hard-coded C++ rules, and it's just all ML stuff that wasn't even invented.

Michael Seibel 11:06 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 11:06 Computer science had to catch up is my understanding. Again, maybe someone in the comments will disagree, but that is my understanding from people that work on this stuff.

Michael Seibel 11:12 I think that's what kind of frustrates me about these topics is that, like, if we're dex- directionally correct, but the timeframe's off, it really impacts how you should, like, operate your life. There's a meaningful difference between an AI model that can do a lot of work for you that, like, makes you a superpower, a meaningful difference between, like, let's say an AI model or a foundation model company that can make every person feel like they get the value that Cursor gives an engineer. There's so much distance between that and super intelligence.

Dalton Caldwell 11:43 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 11:44 I wouldn't be surprised if we had a whole new job of teleoperators, and there wouldn't be hundreds of thousands of teleoperators that are helping manage self-driving fleets as they expand across the country, and we would call that self-driving. And it, it would work. It, for a, as a user, it would feel like, right, I'm not driving. To me, there's a parallel there, right?

Dalton Caldwell 12:02 Mm.

Michael Seibel 12:02 Like, versus, like, AGI super intelligence, I think we have to define it kind of cross the line.

Dalton Caldwell 12:08 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 12:08 And I think, like, we could be way further away.

Dalton Caldwell 12:12 I think that's fair. But again, I think the parallel is-The crazy utopians I think were right about self-driving. I would basically make the bet that the wacky AGI people are right- Mm-hmm ... just on a longer timeline. Do you, do you know what I'm trying to say? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like- Like, I think they'll probably be right about... Every, every wacky thing we're hearing I think is gonna end up being true. I- That's my bet ... I think long enough timeline, I would completely agree with you. Yeah. I just think that when I start seeing people making strategies about their startups or making

Dalton Caldwell 12:42 strategies about their life- Yes ... assuming we're on an 18-month timeline- Yeah, delaying having kids, say. [laughs] Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Yeah. I'm like, eh, like... [laughs] The timeline caveat's a large caveat, [laughs] I would say. Yeah. I would say. All right. What's the next one? Space. It's been an interesting year for space. We have seen Starlink basically go mainstream. Yep. We've seen a lot more space startups being funded. Yep. We've seen space defense kinda take a little bit. What's your space- Yeah. I, um, I think I put out a, a YC video request for startups about this. Yes. But basically, as a side effect of SpaceX working- Yes ... the cost per pound to get something into space- Yes ... is dropping rapidly. It's like Moore's law, where remember the number of transistors in a chip was doing this, the cost to send something to space is doing this. Yes. So it's getting exponentially cheaper. Yes. So now you can do all sorts of wacky stuff 'cause you can get- Yes ... things in space. Sounds like the SpaceX IPO is real. Yeah. So I think this is a really exciting time. My space hot take is very similar, which is, like, we haven't experienced cheap launch yet. Yeah. People who've been in the space industry for a while are like, "Oh my God, we finally have cheap launch," and I think we're gonna look at, back at this time and be like, "God, that was expensive launch." [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] If you told me we've reached the iPhone moment where it makes sense to start building iPhone apps, I would believe you. Mm. If you told me that we haven't yet, I think I still might believe... Like- Yeah ... I still might believe Starship is the iPhone moment. I'll give you another one that was interesting, though, re: space. What

Dalton Caldwell 14:13 do you think about space companies having to compete with SpaceX for launch space, right? It's a tricky- Sounds hard. I have multiple companies now that have gotten bumped off their launches, and I'm like, "Oh, can you, like, negotiate, like, who was it?" And they're like, "It was, it was SpaceX." [laughs] "It was Starlink." Wow. And I was like, "Yeah, I guess you can't really negotiate, can you?" So what you're saying is we should buy SpaceX stock at IPO? No, no. There's no- This is not Investment Advice. [laughs] It's not Investment Advice, no.

Dalton Caldwell 14:43 No. Another big topic from the COVID days, what's your hot take on in-person versus remote? Obviously in person is better, and it's depressing how much of big company stuff is putting the toothpaste back in the tube and when they went remote. I do think there's stuff that stuck from that era that was probably good, where people are way more willing to do Zoom meetings now. I think the norms changed in some ways in a positive, where imagine how weird it would have been to try to do nothing over Zoom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That wouldn't... Like, I'm glad I can just, like, hop on Zooms- Yes ... and do certain types of meetings. I agree. It got... That's way better. Yep. Real-time communication, chat got way more popularized. Yeah. I am torn about this in-person versus remote. I think this is what I've come to believe. I think large companies are always remote. You know, you get over some number of employees, and the chances that the three people you work with most closely are... have their desks next to you basically goes to zero. Yeah. So I never really thought this was a fair debate, 'cause I think the debate was really for startups. It always seemed obvious that, like, you should be in person. Yep. And so I felt like this was a fight that we had to fight for a while, which was just kinda silly, and now it's like, okay, can we go back to the normal? [laughs] Like... Have we not run this experiment involuntarily? Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. But to me, I think that was the shocking thing was that, like, a bunch of startups that did not want

Dalton Caldwell 16:14 to run like big companies were copying the best practices of big companies. Yep. What do we have left? Are we in a bubble, Michael? I think that, like, as long as there's another bubble that keeps whatever bubble's going inflated- Keeps it r- yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's always gonna be a new bubble. Yeah. I'm gonna say no, and I'm usually the skeptic. I don't think we know the amount of impact that even today's AI tools can have in business. Yeah. I think we are so early in the adoption cycle that even if all AI development stopped today- Like, we would still get, like, tons of improvement, 'cause, like, adoption is- Yeah ... very, very small. I think my nuanced take is the following. As a founder, I learned that debt is bad, because debt, like, causes startups to blow up. I ask PG about this, right? This is one of his, like, evergreen topics, which is never put debt on your startup. Yes. It feels like free money. It feels like cheap money. Yeah. There's all these covenants in the contract that comes when you take debt- Yeah ... so that when debt goes bad, it goes really bad, and you lose your company. Super fast. Yep. Okay? So debt in startups is, like, a bad mix. Yes. And then if you look at prior bad economic cycles- Yes ... debt is in there somewhere. Yep. Like, I think if you go all the way back to, like, the 1929 stock market crash, people were, like, taking out loans to buy equity. Yep. So taking out debt to buy equity I think we can say is probably a bad idea if you don't know what you're doing. I mean, the, the great financial crisis was very similar. [laughs] Right? It was, it was debt-driven. Yes. And so my nuance here is of all the things that I see that kind of concern me- Yes ... it would be debt issuance to finance data center spend to finance buying graphics cards, and that is downwind of all the stuff we do. Again, we're not in that business, man. Yeah. But if you look at the whole machine-There's a lot of debt that's being issued right now

Michael Seibel 18:07 If we were to reframe it, like, was the internet a bubble? No. Was there a bubble in the deployment of-

Dalton Caldwell 18:13 Fiber optic cables?

Michael Seibel 18:15 Yes [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 18:15 Did the people in the business of laying the fiber optic cable lose their asses?

Michael Seibel 18:20 Yes. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 18:20 Yes. They definitely did.

Michael Seibel 18:21 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 18:21 And we, as consumers, benefited-

Michael Seibel 18:23 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 18:24 ... from the fiber optic cables getting laid. You know, hooray. Our startups benefited-

Michael Seibel 18:27 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 18:27 ... from these things. We're all downwind of it.

Michael Seibel 18:28 Yes.

Dalton Caldwell 18:29 But the actual people that were in the business-

Michael Seibel 18:31 Yes

Dalton Caldwell 18:31 ... of financing that fiber optic ca- cable, that was, that was bad.

Michael Seibel 18:34 I am quite positive that somebody is over-building or inefficiently building at some level-

Dalton Caldwell 18:40 Yeah

Michael Seibel 18:40 ... of the AI stack. Like, it seems like a- almost impossible-

Dalton Caldwell 18:43 Yeah

Michael Seibel 18:43 ... that wouldn't be the case.

Dalton Caldwell 18:44 And so that does worry me, but that doesn't mean that the stuff doesn't work and isn't solving problems for customers and all that-

Michael Seibel 18:50 No

Dalton Caldwell 18:50 ... on the, like-

Michael Seibel 18:51 No, no

Dalton Caldwell 18:52 ... user-facing stuff. But I do wonder how much debt is actually in this thing. That worries me, man.

Michael Seibel 18:57 I mean, from the perspective of a participant in the stock market, those kinds of things can have short-term negative impacts on the stock market.

Dalton Caldwell 19:05 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 19:05 But in terms of the long-

Dalton Caldwell 19:06 Well, and I do wonder, let's say all the AI stuff works, which again, I, I think it will.

Michael Seibel 19:11 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 19:11 The value of a lot of the legacy software companies that are gonna get killed goes down. There's gonna be some churn, man. You're-

Michael Seibel 19:18 It's so funny. You- [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 19:19 This is nuance

Michael Seibel 19:20 ... you're defining bubble in a, like, how someone might experience the world way. I think I'm defining [laughs] it in a very narrowly-

Dalton Caldwell 19:26 Yeah, yeah.

Michael Seibel 19:27 But yeah. Could there be a lot of AI-caused m- turmoil in public markets? Probably there will be. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 19:36 [laughs] Sure. If you define bubbles like that. [laughs]

Michael Seibel 19:39 Yeah. Who am I to-

Dalton Caldwell 19:40 [laughs] Yeah

Michael Seibel 19:41 ... use the actual definition, Michael? Um-

Dalton Caldwell 19:43 But if you define this as like, is this a hoax?

Michael Seibel 19:47 No.

Dalton Caldwell 19:47 Like-

Michael Seibel 19:47 You know, when we were giving out, like, mortgages to people who couldn't afford mortgages because-

Dalton Caldwell 19:52 Yeah

Michael Seibel 19:52 ... you could resell them before anyone would figure it out.

Dalton Caldwell 19:54 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 19:55 That's like a hoax. Like, that's, there- there is no value creation happening.

Dalton Caldwell 19:58 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 19:59 I think in this situation we definitely have ha- value creation, but like, public market turmoil could be caused for all kinds of reasons.

Dalton Caldwell 20:03 That is, that is fair.

Michael Seibel 20:05 Right? So... And anyway, that's the thing that, like, of all the things I've seen in the past, in the 2025, what has worried me-

Dalton Caldwell 20:10 Sure

Michael Seibel 20:10 ... some of this data center stuff seems a little scary, man.

Dalton Caldwell 20:12 Yeah. Uh, public market turmoil.

Michael Seibel 20:14 All right. And the last one, this is probably secretly my favorite. Uh, abundance versus affordability. Let me, let me set this up. The Democratic Party is searching for a message. The Trump era, theoretically, is coming to a close or a change, and it seems like there's two competing messages. There is more of a moderate abundance, can we make government work better? And there is more of a progressive affordability, what are the things that happen in the economy or amongst business or even in the government that makes it harder for you to pay for everyday things? How do you think about this dichotomy here?

Dalton Caldwell 20:57 Technology has consistently delivered us, um, abundance.

Michael Seibel 21:02 Sure.

Dalton Caldwell 21:02 And if you just think about all the cool stuff we get, like smartphones and-

Michael Seibel 21:07 Sure

Dalton Caldwell 21:07 ... good healthcare and cheap clothes, like, all this good stuff, we live in an age of abundance, and it's only, um, increasing.

Michael Seibel 21:15 It's funny you say that, 'cause like, I think somebody that was, like, examining the fossil record would obvi- I think would agree with you. [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 21:23 Yeah. If you're like, like, what kind of-

Michael Seibel 21:24 [laughs]

Dalton Caldwell 21:25 What was life in the 1930s like?

Michael Seibel 21:27 Yeah, yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 21:28 Well, I don't think they had all this stuff, man. I, I don't think- [laughs]

Michael Seibel 21:31 [laughs] Objectively, I... [laughs] But like, what's weird is that, like, isn't it interesting the idea, like, what percentage of the population of America would say, "I feel like I'm living in a time of abundance"?

Dalton Caldwell 21:41 I think stuff used to be cheaper. And again, this isn't, this isn't my area of expertise, but-

Michael Seibel 21:48 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 21:48 ... the housing stuff-

Michael Seibel 21:49 It's not great

Dalton Caldwell 21:50 ... is clearly an affordability type... There is not an abundance of cheap housing.

Michael Seibel 21:53 Nope.

Dalton Caldwell 21:53 And I think it's easy to look at the past with, with rose-colored glasses and gloss. Remember when gas used to cost whatever a per gallon-

Michael Seibel 22:00 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 22:01 ... and when a house cost $100,000-

Michael Seibel 22:04 Yeah

Dalton Caldwell 22:04 ... and not admit that there's a trade-off that you had to live without the internet or... You know?

Michael Seibel 22:11 Yeah.

Dalton Caldwell 22:11 Like, there's all these other trade-off you... [laughs]

Michael Seibel 22:13 Yes, yes.

Dalton Caldwell 22:14 I think it's easy to, like, forget that there was a trade that we all implicitly taken. Maybe some people would say, "I don't wanna make that trade. I'd love to go live in-

Michael Seibel 22:21 Well, like-

Dalton Caldwell 22:21 ... 1986 again," right? Uh-

Michael Seibel 22:23 Well, as soon as you go back to the physics, a big trade is, like, the number of employed women in the mark- in the workforce.

Dalton Caldwell 22:27 Yeah. That's a trade.

Michael Seibel 22:28 There's, like, big trades. Like, yeah. Like-

Dalton Caldwell 22:29 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 22:30 I think what scares me about this question is that, like, and this is what kind of bo- both scares me but comforts me about politics and government, affordability is clearly the short-term campaign message that is, like, a better campaign me- Like, if you ask me, "Hey, Michael, you can run," and they'll be like, "Well, your banner can either say abundance or affordability," we're like, "D- done. Affordability." Abundance is clearly the good governance. Like, if we actually want our government to deliver goods and services, we, we should be doing the abundance work. I think the problem that I have, but then also with a hopeful side, is like, I just don't think we do long-term planning well. I think abundance is like a, "Hey, you know, if you eat your vegetables, when you're 70, you'll live another 10 years." [laughs] And I think affordability is like, "Hey, do you wanna go to the movies and, like, do something, like, this weekend?" And I think that as humans, and therefore a society's built of humans, we don't do long term well. However, we made it. Something about this, like, what seems like awkwardly short-term optimization-

Dalton Caldwell 23:30 Seems to somehow keep working?

Michael Seibel 23:32 Yeah. And so it's like, I can sit back and judge academically and was like, "Well, you're not, you're not eating your peas and carrots."

Dalton Caldwell 23:39 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 23:39 Like, da, da, da, da, da. But, like, maybe we should take a second and not shit on a system that is kinda working, right? Like, I think that's been my experience just even locally in San Francisco. Like, at first you're like, "You do it this way? Like, how could that work?" And then you're like, "Well, it is kind of working." Like, I was looking at, like, the Department of Public Works, like, they pick up tons of trash every day. [laughs] Like, if you were to say, "Michael, would you design it like that?" I'm like, "Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't," but, like, it's kinda working.

Dalton Caldwell 24:07 Yeah.

Michael Seibel 24:07 Let's not just shit on it 'cause, like-No, I mean, that's not the way I would have done it. So I don't know. For this abundance versus affordability, I'm kind of like, oh man, my heart is in abundance, but like I think my brain is in affordability, and that's what kind of scares me a little. My brain is in the campaign message over the governance. That's like, that's a little scary for me.

24:30 Yeah.

24:30 But maybe that's just kind of like a deep-seated, like, lack of faith that we will do good government quickly.

Michael Seibel 24:37 We're talking about '25. What does that mean for 2026? What does that look like in practice?

24:41 That means I believe the Democratic Party will have a populist message that, like, bad people make things too expensive.

24:50 Wow.

24:51 Just like I think the Republican Party has had a bit of a populist message that immigrants make the country worse.

24:56 Mm.

24:57 And it's a little scary that we're gonna have kind of two populist messages kind of fighting each other that I think are, like, kind of hiding the real facts. But, uh, you know, it's not the first time we've had populist messages [laughs] right? Like, you know, it's like, it's like, yeah, we've gotten through this stuff before.

25:16 Yeah.

25:17 When people are like, "Oh my God, social media's making things horrible," like Amer- there's never been a worse time in America. Like, I'm like, eh, is that ... Eh. [laughs] Like, just pick a buck.

25:28 I don't wanna be that guy, but-

25:30 [laughs] Like, you know, it's like I know these are problems, but like we, we've dealt with worse problems. [laughs] Like-

25:37 That one's hard. It's, it's, uh ... Especially for a process-oriented person like me.

25:42 Yeah, you're on the fair lines, man.

25:43 [laughs]

25:44 I'm, I'm glad this is not my ... Yeah, I don't have to go fix this one. Well, I guess that was 2025. We'll see what happens when, uh, AGI takes us over. This will be produced by AGI in 2026. [laughs]

25:57 They have enough footage of us. They can definitely replicate it.

25:59 They do. They do. And I've been saying thank you every time I use a foundation model, so we'll be safe. [laughs]

26:04 [laughs] Great chat, Dalton.

26:06 All right. Thanks, man. [upbeat music]