welcome to the vergecast the flagship podcast of corporate infighting I'm your friend David Pierce and I am sitting on my back patio getting the grill ready because it is July 4th weekend and that's just what you do this is America it's July 4th it's also my birthday on July 4th and so we sit outside and we grill even though it's very hot and there's mosquitoes everywhere and would I rather be inside in the air conditioning looking at my television yes but it's July 4th so we're grilling stuff anyway we have an awesome episode coming up for you today we are going to basically start a tech company together Neil iel Alex cray and I are going to as a group of CEOs which couldn't possibly go poorly figure out how we would build a tech company out of the tech industry as it exists now it sounds a little complicated but I'll explain the rules when we get into it it'll all make sense but basically I wanted to see if you were to start from scratch and say okay what are the best products in Tech what can I take what can I put together what could we build that would be cool and different and that we could awesome how would we do that we had a lot of fun putting this together and figured this would be a fun time to do it it's July the news is a little bit slow we're about to get into crazy Gadget season again but it felt like a fun way to take a different kind of look at the tech industry I should also say some credit for this whole concept goes to a podcast I really like called the big picture really good show about movies and they did one recently where the two of them started their own Studios together and they kind of did a draft and pied actors and writers and it was a very fun episode and so I just kind of stole that concept and we're going to take it and turn it and do something similar on the show today so we're going to start a tech company I'm very curious what you think as you listen to it if you think we made bad decisions if you think we made good decisions if you think we're monsters I want to hear everything call the hotline 866 Verge one1 email us vergecast verge.com tell us how you'd start a tech company and maybe between us we're going to take over the tech industry it's going to be awesome anyway all of that is coming up in just a second but first I just noticed that I turned the grill on without actually turning the propane on so this is how good I am at grilling I'm going to go fix that problem this is The Verge cast we'll be right back all right we're back let's go NE Patel hello Hello Alex CR hello hello I'm excited to be a CEO today right thank you both for coming to maybe the most convoluted insane game I have yet devised on the first guest but I'm very excited about this so the structure of this is basically as follows we the the three hosts are now co-ceos of a tech company because I would say historically speaking companies with three CEOs tend to be the most successful yeah it's like Blackberry but a little bit more you know like what if you added one more person who had some weird ideas and wanted to own a hockey team it could be great and we are going to build our own company out of parts of other companies is essentially how this is going to work so I have I think it's either 10 or 11 categories here that we as as a tech company are going to enter by taking that product from another company there are several rules again this is very convoluted but it's going to work it's going to be fine once we get into it everything we take from a tech company we get as it exists right now whatever it's selling whoever it is that makes it all the factory deals all the marketing stuff everything we can we can change it as we like but we get we don't get the idea of it we get the thing as it is right now we only care about things up to 2030 after that who knows we're all going to live on Mars so we're we're playing like a six- year long game here and frankly if we as the Triumph ver of CEOs last until 2030 we will have been wildly successful I'm banking out really fast yeah as soon as we IPO I'm gone Sor Alex is resting investing from like day one here it's it's going to be great we can spend as much money as we want but making money is not the point we're actually not going to talk about money at all on this show okay we don't want to go out of business but our main goal is just to build the greatest tech company in the history of the universe like that that is what we're after here because this is like if we start talking about the money side of things it just gets weird and complicated in ways that we don't have time for that's what we're going to tell our investors we're just going to be like look guys if we talk about money this is going to get weird and complicated so just you just relax we're just out to make an AGI don't worry about it guys yeah like for 20 years Jeff Bezos was like I can make money whenever I feel like it for now I'm just going to like make cool stuff like that's the vibe at our tech company and I would say the two most important things as we pick here are we can only take take one product from each company so once once we have used something from Apple we cannot use anything else from Apple or Samsung or Google or whoever else one product per company uh which I think is going to be very complicated that product also cannot be the whole company so if if there is a company that makes a single product with its name uh like I originally had figma in one of our categories as like a thing we might want to take but if you take figma from figma there is no figma anymore so that doesn't count well what about what about fig Jam moving right along yes sure that's actually I'll give you that uh another one I had is like oh here's a good example like we can't take Salesforce from Salesforce but we could take slack from Salesforce oh I see so if Apple had a product called Apple you would just be like no that accounted for you know 98% of its Revenue yeah so sure I guess under that rule we can take fig Jam all that fig Jam back to the list and most importantly this is not competitive we are three CEOs we are doing this together and so we have to agree on everything that we're going to take which I assume means this is going to take 12 hours is there such thing as a hung jury in this situation no because there are three of us and if it comes to it we will vote and two to one will win this is why we have three CEOs this is it's a perfect I can't believe no one has thought of this before yeah why why are people doing one and two odd number CEOs solves all your problems yeah yeah okay here are the categories we're going to do smartphones tablets and PCs then we're going to take a break we're going to do wearable headphones app platforms which is not specific apps but think of like app businesses like Microsoft Office is one of the options in that category uh and then we're going to do what I have called boring B2B money faucets which is the thing that makes you all the money that nobody ever wants to talk about then we're going to take another break and then we're going to do messaging streaming service Wild Card gadgets and wild card everything else and then we're going to get out of here and we're going to go be Filthy Rich sound good I'm so excited to be rich all right category number one is smartphones this to me is May the easiest but also maybe the most difficult one to do first which is why I wanted it to do it first see I I also agree with you cuz I think we're probably along the same lines for what the phone should be well the only thing that makes it different is David told us not to worry about money oh interesting we don't worry about money well if you give one wit about money you take the iPhone yes right because then you then now you funded whatever other boond doggles you want to get on like then we can pick the Cobo for tablets and it's fine that's what we should do exactly you're you're right on the same wave link but if you don't care about money then you might have a substantive discussion about what phone you want well so okay let me let me frame this slightly differently we don't care we are not spending our time thinking about quarterly earnings and shareholder value but we do want to win right in like big picture win then we're taking the iPhone yeah I've already I've crushed you we're taking the iPhone we win I think that's right I think the only reason for me that the iPhone is challenging is that there are a lot of categories here in which apple is also very good and some in which it has a lot less competition oh no no I can every other category I can I can defeat everyone else with the power of the iPhone lock in oh interesting you trust me just wait and I'm allowed to change stuff yeah we're good we nailed it it's fine oh my God I just realized we're going to speedrun building an appx out yeah it's gonna go so fast you think I don't care about money David 45% let's go yeah somewhere l a con just started listening to this and she's like this is she's like this isn't the tech company I would have built you we're not even going to be allowed to make it company L con's like nope company is illegal sorry uh okay but just for this for the sake of argument the other nominees that I had here were Samsung which I think is probably the only other reasonable competitor here the Google pixel if you're you know feeling good about yourself the nothing phone which is a fun like Dark Horse if you want to like bet on doing something weird and cool in the next six years until 2030 interesting bet uh wuwei OnePlus Asus Motorola like it gets Bleak pretty fast real fast were you hoping that one of us to be like Motorola I was hoping one of you would fight for Samsung to be honest just because I think it's possible to maybe want to pick an Apple product in another one because we've now ruled out every other Apple product no cuz I'm looking it through the rest and I'm like I'm like there's other really good competitors in these other places but like the iPhone if you're if if the phone is like the engine of the business which it feels like probably is true then we want the iPhone I mean alternatively the the one that I would have argued for would have been the pixel because then the one thing you would change about it would be caring and then and then it would be good yeah but the iPhone we've got like the people who are making the good processors on the iPhone whereas the pixel we've got not that but sure but you know a little a little caring goes a long way yeah that's true like also trying to market the phone would be uh useful I mean yeah like in terms of raw upside the ROI I think for the pixel would be huge whereas the iPhone I have a hard time imagining making the iPhone more successful but it's also very successful I think the answer is just the iPhone I don't know that we need to talk about this much longer it's gonna solve every other problem on this list so again I would I would remind you that one of the things we are not trying to do here is build a Services business or a monopoly wait we we're not trying to build a monopoly we want to win so you're saying this collection of three CEOs has to have some values yeah we want to like be cool our main value is like be cool okay I want to have a monopoly in a cool way yeah yeah all right Fair okay we can move on all right so the iPhone next up tablets which is ironically a very similar set of companies but I would say that we we can't pick the iPad so the iPad is out which leaves us with the four nominees I picked so far were the Samsung Galaxy Tabs the Google pixel tablet such as it is Amazon's whole Kindle lineup which I think counts as a tablet Cobo you could do OnePlus there's a lot of tablets out there we could argue about the Microsoft Surface as a tablet line but I think I won't count that we'll get to that in a minute what do you guys think who's the favorite here I think we go with the books and then we have the Apple the iPhone team make the operating system good wait is that can you can you make that choice can I pick the Galaxy but it runs iPad OS no but but if we don't take the iPad we don't get iPad OS we're going to use iOS to put on put that on the books oh and then I didn't we didn't take Mac OS which would have been the real move we can't huh yeah see so wait so wait hold on to wind this you want Recon all of this to get an iPad running Mac OS have to like take the pixel so I can take the Macbook so I can take the Samsung Galaxy and make it run Mac OS to get to a Galaxy pad running Mac OS I have to take the pixel and then a Macbook that would be the way I'm going to be honest I don't hate that strategy I feel like this board of directors meeting will be very confusing no I'm with I'm with CR I think you take the Kindle lineup you Jazz up the software a little bit people are happy I wanted to go books to get escape the lock in cuz I feel like we save some money with that acquisition but we can solve the lock in remember Android is open source so Android is fair game no matter what we do we can just have Android we can UND drrm the books is what you're saying yeah and I think so then the real question is like who who is better at making the hardware that we can take and have a pretty solid lead on and I feel like I feel like it's Amazon like books does cool stuff but I feel like if we we just steal the Amazon team and we're like What if we did a good job again yeah because we we get Panos oh yeah we get Panos yeah we're doing the Kindle that's right I feel good about that yeah we're doing the Kindle and we're going to make it good now it's a real culture higher right there yeah do we immediately kill the whole Kindle Fire line and we just focus on eing no no no that's good for kids okay so actually I would say we take the the tablet thing we're taking is like the extended Kindle the Kindle Universe we get yeah all this class of tablets is accomplishing for anyone is playing Disney Plus for your children so we're just like the Kindle Fire kids is the centerpiece of our tablet strategy and then we also just make a nice e-Reader on the side that runs iOS yeah and then I can go to various state capitals and be like you want you want to make laws protecting kids make a law saying you have to buy a Kindle Fire for kids yeah there we go I mean I love how we're like making a really good culturally important company that also doesn't break laws I'm not trying to break the laws I'm trying to make the laws yeah I'm trying to be the laws you understand if you don't buy a Kindle Fire you will be arrested here is my question is do we reboot the fir phone with our iPhone team which part are we like 3D display we've already added 50 cameras to the phone what if we had four more to make it 3D yeah and it's one of them is just for barcodes yeah Amazon Kindle Easy Choice next up is PCS and I think the list of folks is fairly familiar here Alex what do you got okay so the list is it's it's we can't do Apple but we got Microsoft lovo Asus Acer HP Razer Dell I think we should go Lenovo because if we get rid of of all of the spamware that they like automatically install you have some really nice laptops you got really nice Hardware yeah you got really nice hardware and then we make the iOS team they're going to be working nights but they're going to have to basically like reinvent Mac OS like they they can figure it out you back into it you start iOS started with Mac OS and you're like go the other way go the other way I I fully believe in them if we can make PC clones we can do this too well we don't have the chips I guess cuz we have the iPhone so now we're just now we just put a a hinge and a lid on an iPhone we're like that's a laptop yeah which is more or less the iPad I just want to be very clear about what we're discussing we're like we make iPads now but it's also got the little it's got the little the dot oh yeah the little the trackpad guy yeah I see I was going to say Microsoft because you I want control of the operating system that's where I go to right and I want the surface line I don't now I've pulled the tablet ecosystem bigger right I've got my my Kindles and my Kindle Fires and I've got the Surface Pro and I've got a whole range of products tell us about all of the really good laptops and uh all-in ones that that we're going to get with our Microsoft acquisition so here again a lot of my strategy is just try hard okay right just to be clear so yeah the surface Studio but like what if you put a real chip in it huh and that's just me and meetings like what if Circle this on the Whiteboard and then write Tri try hard and then like three exclamation points and that's my whole surface strategy we can make it all run risk V like the power of one Raspberry Pi 4 yeah my vote we David you're the tiebreaker here it's between Microsoft and Lenovo I agree Lenovo makes some of the better Hardware here yeah you make a compelling point about being able to have Windows and make it good the one wrench I would like to throw in is that if we get Dell we just instantly have the best lineup of Windows PCS that exists but we don't have Windows we don't have Windows do we want Windows you know like for example like I would like to walk up the box that says like security and write try hard I will say though under the rules of this game though I don't we I think what we're getting is like a Perpetual license to Windows I don't think we're getting even inside mic that's how probably how the service team yeah I don't think we get to run Windows but so when we took the iPhone we don't get to run iOS no we do that one counts it does it feels different I Can't Describe to you why no it's because it's it's one device to one operating system this is not one device to one operating system we are a partner to the operating system not the only venue for the operating system even if we're Microsoft we're not but we're the surface team we aren't Microsoft we're vergecast Incorporated we're not taking windows from Microsoft ah I still think it's Microsoft just because I think we're we're clearly building a luxury thing here and I think getting there with Lenovo is going to be challenging like I don't I don't know how we're going to convince everybody that Lenovo is like kickass cool again I think we can get there with surface but no but we're not we're we're not Lenovo we're just we're just taking the product we're doing a little Rebrand the think pad you're right little Co paint on there get the yogas you guys want some yogas yeah they do the flippy things I'm going to make tent mode happen for America okay I'm I'm going Lenovo because I think we're going to want Microsoft later I think there are other things in this list that are going to be more useful to have for Microsoft so I think we should pick Lenovo you're right that's true I'm dying to know what you think those things are but we'll come back to it think of all the boring things that make you the most valuable company on planet Earth uh and that's that's what Microsoft does so well it's not the surface team yeah I think all right so we're picking we're picking Lenovo welcome to the team the little nub it's very ex what's that thing called the track point is that what that's called track Point track point we just call it a nub that's we're rebranding it immediately just immediate that's the first thing we do day one yeah I love this all right so just to recap so far we're going to take a quick break we have as vergecast Incorporated we now make the Apple iPhone the Amazon Kindle and lenovo's set of PCS I feel like we're doing very well so far I'm excited about this we're doing well all right we're going to take a really quick break we're going to come back do some more [Music] stuff all right we're back vergecast Incorporated we haven't talked about our pay structure by the way as co-ceos but we'll come back to that it's going to be very lucrative for us because again we're only going to be in this job for six years so we got to we got to do it and get out yeah next category I think this might be the r richest and sort of most evenly competitive category of all the ones we're about to do is wearables and I'm defining wearables deliberately broadly anything that you wear on your body accounts we can't do things like the Apple watch or The Vision Pro we can't do all of Amazon's weird Alexa wearable stuff but I would say mostly we're still pretty wide open you have xre on here yeah I do have xra on here I'm not saying we should pick it I'm just saying it's a company I thought of when I said wearable out loud to myself uh what do you guys think any any jump out to you that we should definitely get into I have a clear favorite here out the gate I'm going bold and taking meta for the ray bands oh okay oh that's a good PL I wasn't even I was thinking of the the the headset I forgot about the glasses yeah okay on that front do we get one or the other or do we get both like if we if we say Quest we get all the quests in one product but I feel like the smart glasses are a different thing get your face computers away from me you know what I mean just no no no other what are three you just want the smart glasses I just want the glasses even if we get the whole team we're immediately killing the quest line and we're just going smart glasses that's what they just did I just want to that's what meta just did Mark just reorganized that team so I'm saying the glasses are the future okay and we're putting we're putting our EXs iPhone profits into the glasses interesting I mean if the glasses like ran a really good AI well no we don't have one of those we have Siri although on a six-year time Horizon it's like maybe I just want to take Samsung's watches and do lock in I mean that is that is actually an interesting question right like is are we betting that smart glasses are going to be sufficiently huge by 2030 that this is like worth it for us or are we just taking like a nerd gadget for the next six years no this makes sense for us because we're we're like we're we're cool we're luxury what's this luxury like a pair of Ray bands Fair okay I have two others I'd like to throw at you an aura ring that is one of the things I was going to throw at you I think Aura is like a sneakily fascinating company and they're way ahead in smart Rings smart rings are a lot of people think including our own vs song about to be a real thing I think especially if you're betting that this like health and fitness thing is going to keep growing really fast that's a place to go uh I also think Garmin for kind of the same reasons like what if we can redesign garmin's watches so that they don't look dumb but they have all the cool stuff that Garmin already has that people really like I feel like you could make something out of Garmin I also my immediate reaction when we did this was snap because I want the spectacles line but I think we go we go rayan meta smart glasses and that gets us everywhere we're going probably significantly faster yeah it's basically do we want to go watch ring or glasses totally but if we go Samsung we do watch and ring right well so the the thing that this I think makes very clear is you can take any of the watches and you can do iPhone lockin and now you have a realist to competitor to the Apple watch right like yeah that's the thing that actually holds a bunch of these companies back is they cannot communicate with the iPhone right yeah but that be cool Nei it's written it's written at the top of the building of our headquarters it just says be cool what's cooler than lock in what's cooler than lock in yeah the change I'm making is being like all right whoop you're in like let's go you know yeah like you can you can now more directly figure out Apple Integrations buy a ThinkPad get a whoop let's go but I'm saying if that on a six-year time Horizon maybe that is a better move than take the meta rayb bands and figure out how glasses work which by the way glasses also held back because they cannot properly integrate with your phone yeah this is like a real problem for all these products but yeah that's why like the glasses we get them properly integrating with the phone then we also have like an additional audio solution when you say an additional audio solution they means some headphones well you know we got headphones is headphones coming up next so you've been a CEO for 20 minutes you are already super yeah we need we need more than one audio solution for our company guys I've prepared a deck to talk about this we we need to be Diversified in our audio it's good it happens to everybody just immediate yeah but the Garmin like the Garmin has so much cool stuff in it they just look so ugly and we've got the Apple team now right they can like make it look good we're that team that poor team in Panos pan just chained to their desk we need that team to keep making iPhones though I don't know it's not like they're doing a lot they're like take the buttons off it that's true it's it's thinner next time like we did it I think you're the tiebreaker I think it's between Garmin and meta once again David you have to you have to pull apart this corporate battle I think we should pick meta o because I think I think the rayan meta partnership is cool I think the glasses are awesome and people really like them and I think our ability to like integrate them a little and make them way better for people instant Victory like I think with the other picks that we have here we have a chance to like immediately make these things much cooler in a way that I feel like we're going to have to basically like tear down the Garmin Hardware team and build it back up and I feel like that's going to take us a while yeah yeah that's going to be more than six years Garmin please know that I love you and you make cool things just like make them cooler Garmin if you'd like to integrate with uh vergecast incorporated's iPhone uh you can pay 55% yeah we'd love to have you we've got some really good Audio Solutions for the the developer program is open and it will only be slightly more than half of your Revenue yeah also the smart glasses are just like cool and I love using them and I want to have them so we're we're going with that I feel good about it I don't love that we just hire a hardware team out of meta which makes me feel a lot of feelings in general but it's okay uh we're doing it we now know everything about you our privacy policy by the way is dope like let's just take that for granted in case you're wondering about our privacy policy it is sick the EU never gets mad at us no it's like not a problem at all I should have said at the beginning by the way by picking the iPhone we did just bring ourselves a delightful antitrust case that I'm not super psyched about but I feel like it's it's one of those was coming anyway right like you might as well Lina call us Nei has been begging to fight an antitrust case so like it's from this side that's really what I've been after this whole time is let me be the monopolist it's it's perfect I'm just saying we're raising rents if we're going down we're going down yeah and by the time any of this comes out it'll be past 2030 we'll be out anyway it's it's fine I'm not worried about it all right next category is headphones and here again we're pretty wide open Apple is off the board but I'm going to allow beats to stay on the board because it is different enough that I think will allow it because they don't care about it yeah pretty much like I don't know if Apple knows that it owns Beats so we're just going to let it ride but there's also obvious players here Bose and Sony and uh Sonos is a new one just headphones though we no we'll make this headphones / speakers we'll go Audio Solutions oh my God in in Alex Grand I think you know exactly where we're going with this Nei is going to advocate for the party speaker yeah I'm taking Sony now that it's Audio Solutions yeah we got a lot a wider range it's the UL Tiara I mean you want luxury what screams luxury more than the words Mega base a s foot tall speaker by the way shout out to the vcast listeners who just send me pictures of it in the wild amazing it's like they're birning you know but like only one person cares about birds and it's me how does it feel to be known for the cybertruck wiper and Sony party speakers like is this a good Legacy that you're happy about is that on the L cyber truck wiper on the Wild Card Gadget cybertruck wiper we have two wild card options so don't don't worry for me it's Sonos on this one interesting I want Sonos real bad because again we're in this like we want to build cool stuff that's integrated Sonos makes good products they know how to make good audio products I feel like we could take Sonos and be like just learn how to make software everything's going to be fine just learn this easy part yeah like have you heard of apps what if we did that this could be fine so again I would actually take Sony here uh not just because of the party speaker situation I think their headphones are really good they are my Sony noise cancellers are really good right I think they compete with Bose to be the top of the market then they've got an actual Audio Solutions catalog like an actual array of speakers and like what is one product I want desperately from Sonos so they won't sell is like a receiver right like there's a huge ug array of those audio products that you can ruthlessly integrate with a phone uh in a way that even Sonos can't right now that's why they have the software problems like their app platform has to support a bunch of stuff because they can't just put it on your phone directly and also me mega base I would just get it okay I would have it Alex what do you think I just really like the Sony headphones okay they just have such a nice wide wider range like Sonos just got into headphones they don't have any in ear monitors they don't have any buds also tough time to be taking over Sonos like real real kind of reputation hit oh you know what you don't have on here and again I'm I'm just going to point this out for everyone I think the age of televisions is coming to an end because David made a list of gadgets and didn't put TVs on them yeah I don't care I no part of me wants to build televisions well I'll just remind everyone that I asked the CEO of Netflix about the Samsung frame TV and he was like what are you stop talking to me I was like do you think this is a harbinger of Doom and he was like I don't know what you're saying I have I own one but I'm just saying you made an entire list of gadgets you didn't put TVs on here it's it's a prophecy cuz he knew you were going to say the Sam we're going to acquire the Samsung frame and fix it to be clear not an oversite we are not getting in the television business what if we made no money and everything was impossible and we had to spy on our users all I'm saying is if TVs are on here anywhere then I would change my headphones pick if you're giving me Audio Solutions but not TVs then it's Sony if you're TVs are back on the list then I I have to I'm required by like blow in Heritage to take Sony televisions and then I would change my headphones back so we do have a Wild Card round coming later and if you if you think you can win the fight for us to get Sony TVs you can you can hold your fire for then I'm going to fight for TCL so hard yeah I don't think you're going to win the Sony TVs F I just don't think we want to be in the TV business well if I take him off the board here it's a big it's a big decision how do I get Mac OS in the tablet is kind of the you know I got to play three moves ahead I will be down with Sony here by the way tough beat for Bose that none of us are even attempting to take Bose they're fine well you made it Audio Solutions right if it was just headphones I would immediately go Bose so I could win the Sony fight later interesting okay yeah and I don't it's just like a bunch of weird scientists in Massachusetts like we don't we don't need that I'll go Sony under one stipulation which is that we immediately rename every single product they make to something not stupid no with more letters yeah twice as many letters and another Dash in the middle for no reason just get in there okay I think it's Sony okay I I feel good about this I think we're I think we're aligned I can figure something out for TVs yeah I feel now obligated to take something from Samsung just so that you can't argue for the frame TV because I don't need this in my life that's not what I was going to take again I believe it's a harbinger of Doom okay so the next two things on here are I would say the sneaky places we're going to make a lot of money this is what pays for everything else that the shareholders are going to love and we're probably never going to talk about again uh the first one is app platforms which I suppose could be a single app if we wanted a single app but I'm thinking more along the lines of like big groups of things so like I had Adobe Creative Cloud as an option here and Microsoft Office and Google workspace this is like probably B2B software that is going to make us just a tremendous amount of money what do we think so I have to go with office okay only for one small reason and I can't believe you didn't think of it first dve it we cannot run this company without Microsoft Excel oh that's interesting no company can be run without Microsoft Excel like just for our own Survival you know you can just like pay for a license we'll have so much money we can just pay for a license for Excel but what if other people paid us for licenses yeah I'm just saying you you want a you want a dog food you know you're your own your own work yeah but we can have Adobe Creative Cloud and just have a strangle hold on the entire industry you want people to hate us we could just like I love a monopoly I'm I'm on this side of things now another antitrust fight that I'm really excited about yeah we're only going to be there six years by the time that stuff all hits we'll be long gone so I think the upside of Creative Cloud is we take Creative Cloud we make the pricing better and we're Legends right like instantly best possible PR win is we just like give away Premiere we're just like here you can have it no we we sell like rather than the cloud license we're like okay you can just buy Premiere but it'll cost $1,000 yeah yeah then we make a lot of money and people are happy because they can just own it for six years yeah for six years and then it's gone and then and then you know whoever follows us Panos I'm sorry you're taking over the company from us um Good Luck a lot of our ideas are like what if we made slightly less money but that's fine whereas my ideas are what if we made lot more money yeah this this says a lot about the the distinct Vibes of the vergecast Incorporated team I would say it's either office or it's Creative Cloud right I feel like there's nothing else you like we could go try to get like oracle's weird business or like IBM's Consulting arm or whatever but we haven't picked a Google thing do we not want Google workspace do we just take Google workspace and go kill office so my my idea here again you know the our our company's mission is try hard yeah and workspace is a ripe Target for trying hard yeah this is also where you could do messaging you could you know you could walk in the room be like make a list of all the messaging products and then walk out and six months later come back in and look at the list and you like Circle one like this one we're just doing this one yeah and we're going to name at g chat that's a real that's a thing you could do here it is it is messaging I would point out is a separate category so we're we're going to get to messaging but if we whatever company we pick here we can't pick there okay which is a case for and against some folks here and if we pick Microsoft Office we can't pick Azure if we pick Google workspace we can't pick Google Cloud that's right no one was picking Google Cloud come on all okay I I'll I will con and say we should pick Creative Cloud and our mission here is to make people not not hate us yeah I think I think this is where we win over all the people to use our Hardware because they're going to love this is how we sell Lenovo think pads because a 55% locking you can run Creative Cloud on someone else's laptop it'll just cost four times as much money I I don't make the rules yeah except for that one we just like the more your company makes we charge you more like just a SC a sliding scale oh I like that you pay per YouTube subscriber instead of per so evil exactly oh you're just getting out of this industry you basically get it for free right yeah I love this the minute you start making success that we we come for our cut and if you're wearing our wearable we can track your general burnout level as a Creator and we start bringing the price back down yeah oh I love that see oh my God Synergy we actually turn the app off when you need a rest day and then and then we'll give it back calm down Jimmy all right so we're we're good on Creative Cloud all right I mean sure I think it's the answer that's like I I know I'm the one who has to deal with like whatever terms of service confguration it's like I fine I'll I'll do it yeah David and I work four days a year oh yeah crayons and I are the ones who like go to canned lions and like meet with advertisers you have to actually like do the things I have to write the blog post it's like all right we changed our terms of service exactly it's true that we're going to take your firstborn child but we're doing this for the good of all Humanity this is beautiful I love this for you um all right next category uh is the boring be B Money facets this is where we get to we get to pick our cloud provider we can make B2B chips that we sell I was going to put arm in here but we can't have arm because arm's only thing is arm so that doesn't really work we can this is this is where we make all of our money but we try to never talk about in public because no one cares can we take tsmc what would you want to take from tsmc making the chips for everybody no that's their whole thing but they don't make a product called tsmc no they don't ship tsmc the that would be then just buying the company which is not what we're doing we're taking products you get like one tsmc Factory this is like an expansion draft in sports right we get to like pick from your roster but we can't have your team what about that one company in Europe that actually makes the lithography machine the tsmc relies on that like $23 million machine yeah there's only what's the name of that company asml I think we should take asml I think we should take the machine that makes the Fabs the machine that makes the Fabs okay not like Azure yeah but like you know I'm already defending Creative Cloud like I'm not trying to be out of here I just want to print all the money like this this is this is our money printer who who gets mad at Asher right lately uh no one but it's also in second place right you have to you have to go make the AI case you got to do the AIC CRM thing to make to grow Asher I guess we're just milking it for profits and walking away right right yeah we're only here for six years and we we can't take AWS cuz we took the Kindle right yeah which is a very funny trade to have made if if you're trying to build a business i o we could take whisper from open AI whisper is open source we're good there oh yeah also open ey it's on this list as a money faucet but it is not it's like a reverse it's a drain oh I true I meant to write this as basically like if we want we can take like GPT 40 from open AI which which still which they are now uh in a one a stunning uh business Judo move are giving away for free to Apple yeah no I I'm not I don't think that's the the winner but I just I wanted to have an AI option here let's take Nvidia GeForce now yes so this is the thing how do we get something from Nvidia this is this is my question what do we take from Nvidia is it just the h100 business do we just we just take nvidia's whole AI chip situation I'm telling you do you buy asml and then you're like if you use these machines to make h100s 55% huh that is a pretty good fun faet I feel like we will be rip for disruption there yeah I think taking the the Nvidia AI chip business is like a strong move because now you're selling to Google cloud and Azure and on a six-year Horizon they all want to disrupt you but they won't be able that's what I was about to say do we worry that every other chip maker on Earth is going to start making these and this becomes a Bad Bet pretty soon that's Pan's problem in six years yeah not in six years baby okay in six years I'm on a boat I mean the other other problem here is that if we if we take that the bubble bursts and we become the poster child of the AI bubble that just burst and that's going to happen in less than six years that's true this is why I'm saying we should take asml the chip company that is like the least sexy business you could possibly imagine in that I doubt there's as much money in it because I don't think they can make all that many of those they really cannot it's like Samsung and their battery business actually maybe this is a good idea where Samsung just makes a bunch of random stuff that makes him a ton of money oh yeah we could take LG display right here oh that's good ooh right like you want you want to put an OLED in your phone come talk to Lucky Gold Star you know wait I like that a lot I was like LG display that that feels like it the way we all were just like yeah see and it that feels that feels sticky they're going to make screens for a long time I feel like we're in and that's like that's easy it runs itself we're good all right I love this and and we love talking about it do you know you want to talk about dual layer oleds let's go do you feel like this gets you close enough to the TV business that you're happy now Eli they make the panels that go in your soul it's true they do make the panels that's we're like we're fine I got my I got myself a monitor in TV business yeah we're going to take l LG display and we're going to we're we're going to make TVs and then we're just going to bolt two Sony party speakers to it boom you think we want to sell these tomorrow come on come on some little pulsing lights at the bottom yeah okay all right that's good LG display this is great I'm in uh all right we're going to take one more break and then we're going to come back we got four more to do we're going to build Verge casting we'll be right [Music] back all right we're back next up for the trium verit at vergecast Incorporated is messaging we can we can take again not a company so we can't take signal from signal or telegram from telegram but we can we can take and reinvent any messaging app or platform or ecosystem that we want we can't take from meta which I just realized because we took the rayan smart classes which I now slightly regret because I would like to have taken WhatsApp so we can take all of the different Google chats that have existed and finally make one yeah this is our opportunity yeah we can make g chat done done I I can solve I can find I can solve this I mean again on the list of like do it and be Legends finally making Gchat is is way up there just making Gchat and then I you know I got the phone so or your blue bubble problems are solved yeah oh yeah we don't have to worry about messenger we just put blue bubbles on the iPhone yeah super done this is even why are we even Gchat baby I met my wife in there that's a real story by the way that's not just the case in that is a real thing Becky and I spent years of our our early relationship in Gchat and no do you ever randomly find like the transcripts of those chats when you're searching for something in your Gmail this is a thing that happens to me occasionally I'll search for like pizza in my Gmail and it'll be like did you mean this conversation you had with your ex 11 years AG that we saved in Gmail oo I haven't thought about that and now I'm worried about looking don't we're going to set that aside it's probably for the best all of those Gchat conversations were before we were dating so they were just conversations about the things we had gotten up to at night which is a lot of things I love it yeah it's very good yeah all right the only other one I would throw in is slack which I think is like a forever unrealized potential that or Discord so but we can't take Discord cuz Discord is Discord right like that's that's it's off the I thought somebody else own Discord now no they almost sold but it's still just Discord Microsoft was gonna but then they were like this seems like a disaster which probably reasonable call Gchat being good like we're going to kind of win people over with with Adobe but eventually we will jack up the prices on them and having like yeah just having Gchat there is like instant win oh yeah all right I feel good about this it's Gchat and we're we're agreed that we're scrapping all the other nonsense and we're calling it Gchat right yeah yeah without EAS we are building the Gchat that always should have existed next one is streaming service uh which is actually fun because again we can't steal a company so like Netflix is out oh we just traded g chat for YouTube did oh no no no can we go back we Tik Tok oh we can take Tik Tok yeah you're right we can take Tik Tok for now it's on by my CH so oh we can buy we're it we're going to save America yeah we we buy it yeah there we oh my God my dude the Wild Card round here is amazing we're going to we're going to be heroes with g chat and we're going to save America's youth oh wow we just did it this is this we're now the coolest company on Earth okay yeah and the good news is this one isn't even going to be very expensive because they're desperately trying to get rid of it uh yeah Eat Your Heart Out Oracle we do have to fight the Chinese government and Larry Ellison it'll be fine do you think at the end to buy Tik Tok you have to win a boat race against Ellison he's like I'll do this if you can beat me in the Americas cup let's yacht about it yeah okay so I will just say there's a bunch of Disney streaming services that are interesting ESPN would make us an awful lot of money for a pretty long time uh Hulu exists Disney plus exists we could have Apple TV plus and have all the good shows yeah but those are all so dependent on external licenses that we might not acquire true with our streaming service acquisition right we're not getting the St rights to Star Wars we get we get all the existing contracts yeah but I think you're right if we get Disney plus we get we don't get to own Star Wars you're right the economics of streaming are very simple there's a handful of companies who think the Samsung frame TV will continue to exist their business model is they pay a lot of money for content and then try to pay make people pay money for it the other model is Tik Tok gets free content from America's teenagers and then sells ads against it and not for nothing an infinite array of pirated movies from the idiots who are paying for Content yeah it's it's got to be Tik Tok just for the the economics of the business like do you want to have costs or not costs but again Tik Tok not famously making a ton of money right now well because they're they're you know we're we'll fix that 55% no no it's it's we we do something like deal with Adobe Creative Cloud where we somehow charge our own creators well we're going to have to because if we get Tik Tok we don't get cap cut so we're going to have to immediately put the Creative Cloud team on building cap cut so the Tik Tok video editor is cap cut so we just spin it out it's good enough yeah like it'll work we call it cut webly cut cap there we go all right Tik Tok and cut we've done it all right I I think that's right I feel good about it I like briefly wanted to fight for Prime video just because it is like it's another one that is like try harder uh oh no we took Kindle God yeah we took Kindle the amount of money that cost that taking Kindle has cost us good Lord I mean it is very funny that we took Kindle in Google Chat that's what we took from those companies I will say if if we want to go back and take slack in YouTube we have a chance no we're committed is there anything cooler than fixing Gchat like that might be the single most important thing we do at this company I feel really good about it I mean the teens will prefer us for Tik Tok that's true okay so we have we have two more categories one of which I just changed two minutes ago and I'm very excited about it so far we have the iPhone business from Apple we have the Kindle business from Amazon the PC business from Lenovo uh we're doing all of meta wearables we haven't decided yet if we're killing the quest but we're probably killing the quest we're all in on the smart glasses we're taking Sony's Audio Solutions we're taking Adobe Creative Cloud we're taking LG display and we're taking Gchat well we're taking the mess of Google's messaging systems which I think actually probably means we hire most of Google because everybody's working on messaging in one way or another uh and we're we're we're making Gchat and then we are saving America and taking over Tik Tok how do we feel so far Feel Good Just rules feel I really feel like it does Lenovo is still very much the like weird one out but we're going to make Lenovo cool again it's going to be great yeah we'll fix it okay so we have we have two left which one is wild card gadgets which is I think the rules still apply so we can't take from a company we've already taken from but we can take from any category including categories we have not talked about so it's some other product that vergecast Inc is going to make that is not off limits because we've already taken from another company we can we can do TVs this is where we take the Cyber truck if we want to take the Cyber truck anything you guys want any initial thoughts anything you're excited about well so this is where I was going to back into taking LG's TVs okay too late but then we already have LG display I think this is better we have the part of the business that's like good and not the part of the business that is web OS I feel really good about LG display and not LG TVs have you guys heard of a company called stores and Bickle is this how we get into like bespoke whiskey no this is how we get in we just get the volcano they make a whole bunch of different Vapes we just get the volcano business okay and then we like we make one that looks really really cool we put a a big screen on it put some big speakers on the side just a whole One-Stop party business it's just for Alex CR it was just you know legalization is coming for this country we go to we got to be there at the at the start I'm not feeling that I got to tell you I just feel like by if if we were in this till 2040 yeah that makes sense I'd be down 2030 feels iffy and that's just like a lot of legislation stuff all right I'm I'm just I'm throwing this out there the Nvidia Shield we we oh yeah we didn't do Invidia we take we took LG display over nvidia's G business we're doing really well this gets us the Tigra yeah why this cuz I I think between cray and I we can communicate with an audience of TV we can we can bring the shield back to prominence this is a try harder move look if you look if you look on the forums right now people are like the shield isn't it anymore it's true and it was for a long time there's a lot of people who are like what you want do is run infus on Apple TV and I think that's that's a shame interesting yeah we're not getting infus do we want to get into the car business is my big question here no because we to be a successful car maker you got to you got to make a shoe you got to make a midsize crossover and I that's just not for us okay but again we we we would take all the infrastructure required to do it so we we'd be up and running making Kia fores tomorrow we're not buying Kia we're not we're we're just taking the Forte I was like I don't want any part of the Kia Hyundai business they keep that Nei you don't want the Mustang Mai this is your moment take the mai man it's a shoe I'm I'm just telling you I'm just not I'm not making a midsize cross all right no thank you like if you're going to let me be like crazy about it you know let's get nuts but I don't that business is too too whackadoo I I talk to a lot of caros they're all insane like that's what will tear us apart okay wait I thought of it okay Samsung's barely alive digital camera business oh I like getting into the camera business o and then we can actually make them smartphones right yeah we actually take you do the thing where you make the smartphone mirrorless camera exactly interesting does Samsung still make cameras do we want Samsung's though or do we want like Fuji's X100 business yeah and and then the solution is you just make them right make more of them let people buy them who would like them yeah I like that I I like taking a camera that's actually a great idea yeah and then we fix the software so that it like doesn't take you 12 hours just to change the setting yeah Sony cameras but with menus that Humans Beings can navigate yeah but I I do think Fuji is like a good in terms of wild card gadget for our brand especially and then we do like a limited release of the iPhone and the Fuji and they have like the same look to them we'd sell a lot of money that's pretty good all right so we're we're taking we're taking Fuji's X100 all right yeah yeah I like it and then last category the one I just added a minute ago I had another non- Gadget wild card but I think that's boring so what we're going to do instead is we're going to buy a startup yeah I I know my answer right away really yeah I really hope it's the same one it's rivan oh so you want to get into the car business I was cuz they don't make a shoe they also famously lose all the money in the world sure but 55% I can fix it if you want a rivan you have to buy an iPhone rivan are now in at purchases on iPhones 55% what about like we could get SSI we could have like just the AI guy there just one guy we're we're all ready I mean in that case uh is open AI still a startup because that would be another I was just about to say I think open AI counts but you want something you want like a startup you want like an earthy so my vote if we're buying an AI company I want to buy anthropic yeah yeah which is I would say less valued but also way less problematic and they're actually making products right their product is is moving along fast they're like kind of right in the mix with Google and open AI I don't know that I want to deal with the like Sam ultman of it all if I'm being honest a CO is notoriously difficult to get rid of yeah exactly so if if we're going Ai and that was one of my instincts my vote would be anthropic I also think like a company like notion would be an interesting one for us to buy potentially a lot of money there is notion a startup they've been around for a long time this gets us into like what is a startup Zone yeah like is stripe still a startup they're doing pretty well I like the idea of anthropic though like that is firmly a startup yeah anthropic counts I think like rivan has factories is that a start up when it has factories yeah Fair it is just pretty much a car company yeah but Nei the
2024-07-17