The AI Slowdown Debate | Nico Wittenborn, Scott Keogh, Mitchell Green, David Rosenthal & Ben Gilbert, Faraj Aalaei

**John Coogan** (0:00)
You're watching TBPN.

**Jordi Hays** (0:02)
Today is Monday, September 14th. We are live from the TBPN Altar Dome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital.
Let me tell you about ramp.com. Time is money. Save both easy use corporate cards, bill pay, accounting and a whole lot more, all in one place.

**Jordi Hays** (0:19)
That's right, we're back. Did anything happen over the weekend in tech, or was it kind of mellow?

**Jordi Hays** (0:24)
It was a crazy weekend. There was a lot of news, a lot of back and forth about pacing the AI debate. I was in the hospital because I got rhabdo, it's brutal. But I am recovering, fortunately.

**Jordi Hays** (0:34)
Explain rhabdo because it sounds really scary and it is bad.

**Jordi Hays** (0:38)
It can be very bad. Fortunately, I did okay. I got an IV, I got some medicine, broke a fever, got through it, and I'm healing up. But it happens and it's the dumbest illness you can possibly get. It comes from working out too much and not being hydrated. Very avoidable. Hopefully, AI can find a cure. There's even a 1% chance that AI can find a prevention for rhabdo. I think it's worth any amount of risk.

**Jordi Hays** (1:04)
Pushing forward.

**Jordi Hays** (1:04)
Yeah, we must push forward. No, lots of debate over how fast we should push forward.

**Jordi Hays** (1:09)
We have never missed an episode for being sick.

**John Coogan** (1:13)
Yeah.

**Jordi Hays** (1:14)
I realize that because someone's asking me the other day, what do you guys do when you're sick? We keep going.

**Jordi Hays** (1:20)
I mean, I did talk to the doctor. They said, do you want a doctor's note for work? And I was like, no.
I kind of laughed.
But I do think that this job can be done while sick because you're just sitting in a chair having a conversation. But I might be a little bit slow today. So bear with me if I'm not the sharpest on any of the questions. I will be sharp on the ad reads though. I'll tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that goes through business lets you sell in seconds online, in store, on mobile, on social and on marketplaces and now with AI agents.

**Jordi Hays** (1:53)
We've got a great show today.

**Jordi Hays** (1:54)
Take us through it.

**Jordi Hays** (1:55)
We have Nico Wittenborn from Adjacent. Really incredible episode of Invest Like the Best. I believe it was last year or the year before. One of the first investors in Oura and a bunch of other great companies. We got Scott from the CEO of Scout Motors, which we're very excited to talk to. Mitchell Green, our dear friend from Lead Edge coming in for some hot takes.
We have our friends, David and Ben from Acquired, rounding it out with Faraj from Cognichip.

**Jordi Hays** (2:28)
Yeah, we're excited for this.

**Jordi Hays** (2:29)
Great show.

**Jordi Hays** (2:30)
Before we get into the Pacing AI debate, what happened with the US Open? Give me a little tennis update. What happened?
It's on the cover of the Wall Street Journal, so you know it's important news. Tennis is US Open climaxes and back and forth duel, but there was something interesting.

**Jordi Hays** (2:45)
So Ben Shelton, the American, lost.

**Jordi Hays** (2:48)
Okay.

**Jordi Hays** (2:49)
And what was notable is, hopefully I'm pronouncing his name right.

**John Coogan** (2:54)
Alexander? It's just pronounced Alexander, I think.

**Jordi Hays** (2:56)
Zevrev, Zevrev, Zevrev. Yes.
But anyways, the most notable thing was that when he actually hit the winning shot and won, he went back and was getting ready for the next point. And he starts looking around and everyone is, you can see people in the crowd are standing up and cheering and he slowly realizes that he won. He's just ready to play again. And yeah, it just became very obvious that he was so focused on the next point. He was not actually not looking at the scoreboard at all. It was just like flow state, just playing. That's awesome. And I'm sure a lot of venture capitalists out there were seeing that and they're like, yeah, all that matters is your next investment. If you shouldn't even know when one of your companies, your seed companies are gonna IPO, you should be so focused on the next.

**Jordi Hays** (3:53)
I think a lot of people that don't like VC Victory Labs would appreciate that too. It's like, we get it. There was an acquisition. Let's focus on what you're doing right now.
Also like the cameraman work, I saw a clip of the scoreboard was counting down. There was 0, 0, 7 seconds left. Who did they cut to? Pierce Brosnan, 7 himself. I thought it was nice camera work. Shows you that there's levels to the game of live production. You got those little touches. Clearly, that was just spur of the moment.