John Coogan

Host @TBPN

[John Coogan @johncoogan]

LinkedIn finds out about tech news a week after we all talk about it on 𝕏.

If our plan works, we could shorten that to as little as 5 days.

[TBPN @tbpn]

The Call of Duty Endowment places veterans in jobs for 1/14th of what the government spends.

@dan4vets tells us giving nonprofits money and getting out of the way doesn't work. Instead, his team funds veteran job programs with the rigor of a VC firm.

"You got to be tough-minded and warm-hearted in this business."

Their goal is placing 200,000 veterans into jobs, more veterans than there are in the United States Marine Corps.

[TBPN @tbpn]

"For your hobby to be counted as a hobby, you have to go to a physical store at least once a quarter."

"You have to nerd out about it."

"If the guy at the dirt bike store knows your name, you're in the hobby world.”

@johncoogan

[TBPN @tbpn]

In 2013, @edbolian and two others drove from New York to Los Angeles in 28h50m, moving at an average of 100.3mph in a Mercedes-Benz CL55 AMG.

That crowned him king of the Cannonball Run, an unofficial time-trial for crossing the continental U.S. as fast as possible.

Ed and his co-driver Dave Black, plus Dan Huang along for support, drove a route Ed says he'd been scheming since high school.

To help them out, they had a couple of friends driving hours ahead to flag any upcoming construction or hazards.

(Much more lowkey than the strategy for the 2006 crew whose record of 31h04m they bested, who, per Ed, used a spotter plane.)

"I did not have any friends with airplanes."

Ed's record stood for six years, until a new team in 2019 completed the cross-country drive in 27h25m in a purpose-built Mercedes E63 AMG with an extra 45-gallon fuel tank and scouts staggered ahead of the car.

Then Covid's empty, less-policed roads broke open the Cannonball Run's floodgates. In five weeks, Ed's record was beaten seven times, all the way down to 25h39m, over three hours faster than he drove in 2013.

"The most recent record involved 35 spotter cars, driving at pace with the organizers of the run, with the drivers agreeing to pay tickets for them if they get stopped."

[Jackson Fordyce @Jacksonfordyce]

Today’s the 251st Marine Corps Birthday

My dad and grandfather both served in the Marines

My dad fought in Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War as a machine gunner

My grandfather fought in the Battle of Khe Sanh during the Vietnam War as a sniper

They’re the two greatest men I know

Semper Fi!

[Jonathan Neman @JonnyNemo]

Talking about our new Plates, SG momentum and agentic ordering on @TBPN with @jordihays @johncoogan

Shot out to Chef Mark and Chef Olivia for the amazing work on the new menu

Thanks for having me!

[TBPN @tbpn]

"The old NVIDIA story is aligned with globalism and global capitalism."

"It's easy to look at the last few years and say, 'Of course competition with China is serious. Of course AI is important technology.'"

"But if you go back 10 years, China is in the World Trade Organization."

"For a long time, the mandate and cultural goal of America was to export everything that we have and make all the money you can."

"Only recently has it become obvious, correct, and consensus that maybe we need to be careful about how we do business with our geopolitical rivals."

"It's not that America has always been against selling to China and Jensen's bucking the trend. He's just of the old guard."

@johncoogan

[TBPN @tbpn]

Jensen Secures Top Spot on Naughty List, Rockefeller Christmas Tree Delivered, Timeline in Turmoil https://t.co/w80P6w7HmH

[TBPN @tbpn]

.@dawallach explains why China's rise in drug development could be a bigger disruption to the biopharma industry than AI:

"Over the past 5-10 years, China has both invested tremendously in early stage development, like discovery work, and pre-clinical biotech outsourced labor."

"In China, what they have tried to do is [all the work we do in America] at a quarter of the price. And because the big pharma companies are multinationals, increasingly they've been comfortable doing that work in China."

"Now it also turns out the quality of the work is outstanding because guess who's doing it? A lot of Chinese scientists who got their PhDs in the United States and then we kicked out because we're idiots."

"China is ascendant and now the lifeblood of big pharma, which is buying new drugs from little biotech companies. Now they are buying double-digit percentages of their new drugs from China."

[TBPN @tbpn]

When Demis Hassabis talks about curing all diseases within 10 years, @dawallach says scientists who have spent decades studying these problems aren't necessarily buying it.

"When [scientists] hear AI people say smart things, they go, 'Cool, yeah, let's run it.' Everyone respects Demis."

"But when Demis says we're gonna cure all diseases in 10 years, I think people who have two PhDs and have been doing this for 40 years go, 'Come on, man.'"

"You're giving a sort of false hope to a lot of people who are legitimately out there suffering or have a loved one who's on death's doorstep. That's a little messed up."

[TBPN @tbpn]

.@dawallach explains why the success of GLP-1s, which took decades to develop inside big pharma rather than a startup, shows just how difficult it is to turn drug ideas into treatments, even with AI:

D.A.: "The bottleneck is not ideas... The challenge right now, even before AI, was that we have a superabundance of good ideas for new drugs. You can go look at any university in America or now in China and Europe. Great science everywhere."

John: "Every time a new blockbuster drug comes out, I do the research on where it came from and it's like a guy invented it in the '80s and then it was used for some really small thing in the '90s, and then they finally got it to scale in the 2010s."

D.A.: "The GLPs are one of those stories. It's kind of an indictment of the startup ecosystem. That didn't come from a startup. The story in big pharma has been all the new drugs come from M&A.

But the GLPs are the biggest, and they didn't. They were like a 20-year project inside of big pharma.

AI, from the standpoint of a big pharma company, is going to chip away in incremental ways at a million different things... Maybe a drug's development time goes from 12 years to 11 years and then maybe to 10 years... But is it going to cure cancer overnight? Is it going to solve aging overnight? Those are sales pitches."

[TBPN @tbpn]

FULL INTERVIEW: @dawallach joins the show to discuss AI in drug discovery, GLP-1s, China's rise in biotech, the FDA, peptides, and more:

1:45 - His record label bidding war between Kanye and Pharrell/Jimmy Iovine
5:00 - Introducing Jimmy Iovine to Mark Zuckerberg
6:00 - Investing in Spotify
9:00 - The future of biotech and GLP-1s
11:00 - How AI could transform drug discovery
14:30 - Why GLP-1s came from big pharma rather than startups or M&A
15:30 - How AI could shorten drug development timelines
17:15 - The market for biological data and AI labs' interest in pharma
20:30 - How big pharma views Silicon Valley
22:00 - China's rise in biotech

[John Coogan @johncoogan]

@1PasswordCEO

“Thieves revealed how feeble my digital defences were”

https://t.co/foxZgGua1A

[Latent.Space @latentspacepod]

hey @TBPN you dropped this but we gotchu

[cat @_catwu]

Some news: I’m joining OpenAI to lead product management for Core Products!

I have a lot of respect for OpenAI for showing the world that scaling works, for bringing AI to over a billion people, and for believing great products are core to the mission.

I’m excited to work with @thsottiaux, an incredible PM team, and everyone across OpenAI. Together, we’ll build agents that have your back and your team’s, and keep you in control, so you get more time for the people and work you love.

Lots to learn, and lots to build. Please keep your feedback coming!

[Harley Finkelstein @harleyf]

Shopping with agents is easy, and it's even easier when you connect Shop.

Your entire shopping history comes with you, and Shop Pay keeps every purchase safe, simple and fast.

Loved this story from @johncoogan.

Always a good time on @TBPN. See you for BFCM!

[Jawwwn @Jawwwn]

.@PalmerLuckey on the best time to start a company:

"A lot of people think that starting a company or taking a break from school is this high-risk move."

"But it will never get better. When you are 18 or 19—that's the best time to start a company."

[TBPN @tbpn]

$AAPL + $PLTR, GDPx, Value of a Search, Grok Bot Breaks the Bank https://t.co/eBrI19RR5N

[TBPN @tbpn]

There are now over 260 U.S. cities where starter homes average over $1M, up from 80 pre-COVID, says @RyanSerhant.

"The first-time starter price before COVID — there were 80 cities in the United States where a starter home was $1M and above. And that was a lot."

"Today, it's just over 260 cities. Where a starter home is $1M and above. So $1M no longer means you made it, it's now just the entry price."

He says the real estate market is worse than he previously would have thought possible:

"We're going to do less in home sales this year in the United States than we ever thought. September had fewer pending contracts in any single month in 30 years."

Jordi: "Worse than '08 and 2000?"

"In terms of pending contracts, yeah, absolutely. Because rates have spiked — they're up a hundred basis points YoY."

[John Coogan @johncoogan]

@TheStalwart @tbpn @jordihays We aren’t playing checkers.

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

Always love going on @tbpn with @johncoogan and @jordihays. Not gonna lie, I was completely caught off guard by this question from John and it speaks to how quickly the narrative is changing with regards to data center capacity.