ACQ Sessions: Jason Calacanis

**Ben Gilbert** (0:09)
So, wait, it was a magazine?

**Jason Calacanis** (0:10)
Magazine, yeah. That's how I started, yeah.
Magazines was like the original platform for... Wait, have we started?

**David Rosenthal** (0:16)
Silicon Valley.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:17)
I guess we started.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:17)
This is the trick we've just been recording the whole time.

**David Rosenthal** (0:20)
Yeah, but then...

**Ben Gilbert** (0:21)
Welcome to Acquired Sessions.

**David Rosenthal** (0:22)
All that stuff that you said beforehand, that like is really juicy, I don't think we should put that in.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:26)
No, definitely not, definitely not. We don't want to tell people where the bodies are buried. Well, cheers, boys.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:30)
Cheers.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:30)
Here we go. Is this the first one, or?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:33)
This is the first in real life, but I think this is our ninth, tenth together, or something like that.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:39)
A lot between the two pods, yeah, for sure. Great to know you, boys.

**David Rosenthal** (0:42)
So this is the first Acquired Sessions.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:44)
Acquired Sessions. I feel like I should get out with guitar here and just play some Dylan.

**David Rosenthal** (0:50)
This is your baby. What is Acquired Sessions?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:52)
Acquired Sessions is, normally on the show, we are so scripted.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:56)
Yeah, you are.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:57)
And we have a great time. We do four-hour episodes. It's awesome. But really for folks like you, who we know really well, what happens if we throw out the script?

**Jason Calacanis** (1:07)
And just chop it up.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:07)
And we just chop it up.

**David Rosenthal** (1:08)
David Rosenthal unplugged.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:10)
Wow.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:10)
Love it.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:11)
This is the literally MTV unplugged.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:13)
Literally.

**David Rosenthal** (1:14)
This is a great time to tell you about one of our very favorite companies, Crusoe.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:20)
So Crusoe, as listeners know by now, is a clean compute cloud provider specifically built for AI workloads. NVIDIA is one of their major partners, and literally Crusoe's data centers are nothing but racks and racks of A100s and H100s. And because Crusoe's cloud is purpose-built for AI and run on wasted, stranded, or clean energy, they can provide significantly better performance per dollar than traditional cloud providers.

**David Rosenthal** (1:45)
Yes, we talked about that on our ACQ2 episode with Crusoe CEO, Chase Lockmiller.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:51)
The other element that makes Crusoe special is the environmental angle. Crusoe, of course, locates their data centers at stranded energy sites. So think oil flares, wind farms that can't use all the energy they generate, etc. And uses that power that would otherwise be wasted to run your AI workloads instead.

**David Rosenthal** (2:09)
Yeah. Obviously, it's a huge benefit for the environment and for customers on costs since Crusoe doesn't rely on the energy grid. Energy is the second largest cost of running AI after, of course, the price you pay NVIDIA for the chips. And these lower energy costs get passed on to customers.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:25)
It's super cool that they can put their data centers out there in these remote locations where quote-unquote energy happens, as opposed to the other hyperscalers such as AWS, Google, and Azure, who need to build their data centers close to major traffic hubs where the Internet happens because they are doing everything in their clouds.

**David Rosenthal** (2:41)
Yep. If you, your company, or your portfolio companies would like to use the lower cost and more performant infrastructure for your AI workloads, go to crusoecloud.com/acquired, that's crusoecloud.com/acquired, or click the link in the show notes.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:58)
That's great.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:59)
So, well, we have no agenda obviously, but-

**David Rosenthal** (3:03)
Wait.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:05)
Where do you want to start?

**David Rosenthal** (3:05)
We got to thank Vanta.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:06)
Oh, yes.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:08)
Oh, Vanta. I'm an investor.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:09)
We're investors too.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:10)
Well, great. They're an awesome company, big supporter of podcasts. So yeah, go Vanta.

**David Rosenthal** (3:15)
We are huge fans of Vanta and their approach to the whole compliance process SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and more. And we've got CEO and co-founder, Christina Cassioppo, back with us today.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:28)
Vanta was already the best place to check the box and get security compliance certified. But now you've just launched Vanta Trust Reports, which take things even further. Tell us about that and how they can help companies deepen their relationships and trust with their customers and partners over time.

**Christina Cassioppo** (3:46)
I'm really excited about these. They're actually a bit of not yet told Vanta history, but something like Vanta Trust Reports, honestly, a much worse, much more poorly designed version, but yours truly, which is why I can tell you that, were launched in the very early days of Vanta when we wanted to help companies get secure and prove that security, but weren't yet convinced we wanted to or had to go all through the nuances of what a SOC 2 was. So we figured, hey, let's just make this report of the best security practices, let's check companies against those practices all the time, and make this live and updating visible and transparent. This should help these companies prove their security and grow their business, and it should also help them be more secure because they've got this report, like this kind of security status page, out in the wild. So 2017, Vanta tried this and found out that no one really knew what a Vanta report was, and everyone wanted to suck too. So flash forward to 2022, and it's actually really exciting.