Rolling Fun #6: Investing in Robotic Prosthetics, 10x Batteries. Al meets MrBeast
Al and Bo are back again for some fun talking about Rolling Fun.
Rolling Fun is our rolling fund where we invest in early-stage startups focused on world-changing technology. Side effects include silly podcast episodes.
This is our 6th pod episode together sharing our antics and investment updates. If you want to feel pre-rich like Al, accredited investors can join us through AngelList.
Due to a brief podcasting hiatus, we are chatting about both Q2 and Q3. And we’ll be back soon for Q4 and beyond. In this episode, we share our adventures (and misadventures) while on hiatus. We also have plenty of investing updates for Q2 and Q3 companies.
Links to Platforms:
Here’s what we explored in the episode:
Al starts us off with an analogy for entrepreneurship from Mt. Everest: You can get to the peak; most injuries happen on the descent.
Ouros, by founder and former podcast guest Ethan Loosbrock, is one of our Q2 investments. Ethan’s getting ready to change the world by changing what’s physically possible with lithium-ion batteries.
AltHQ, another Q2 investment, is by founder Mike Zhang. At age 14, Mike had successfully grown a company to tens of millions of dollars. The dude is smart. He has since done a bunch of companies, CEOed lots of things, and now he’s working on making PE investments searchable, reportable, and standardized.
The other Q2 investment we talk about is Zencastr. Zencastr is a podcasting software that helps creators record and create podcasts and audio on the internet. They are also working on making advertising on podcasts easier and more dynamic.
The first Q3 investment we talk about is Atom Limbs. Atom Limbs is changing the world by building the I, Robot version of prosthetics.
Also a Q3 investment, General Fabrication Company is working to change the world by revolutionizing 3D printing. Almost like VonNeumann probes for Earth.
Invest your money into high-growth startups at the earliest stages
When new technologies meet the market, the world changes for the better. That's why we invest our money into the best founders in our network.
We write small checks to 15-20 very different startups each year. Previous investments include Aalo, Gently.com, Omella, Driv.ly, Weavechain, Stell Engineering, Ouros, Solve Data, and more.
Our Website has background on the fund, our past deals, and more.
Accredited Investors: send me an email, I'll send you our deck, and we'll get you into our deals starting this quarter.
Learn more about Al Doan, Bo Fishback, and Rolling Fun:
Additional episodes if you enjoyed:
Rolling Fun #4: Q4 Portfolio Recap, Crypto Long-view, Uncapped Notes, and Fund Growth
Scaling Nuclear Energy, Saving The World – Bret Kugelmass of Last Energy
Startup To Scale, What CEOs Learn - Austen Allred (Bloomtech) and Al Doan (Missouri Star Quilt Co)
Rolling Fun #5: Investing in Nuclear, Ecommerce Data, and AI Productivity
Episode Transcript:
Eric Jorgenson: This podcast was brought to you by Meat Sweats.
Al Doan: We're all up from our nap. Dude, that was like...
Eric Jorgenson: Oklahoma Joes will take it out of you.
Al Doan: I'm very glad I did not have a robust breakfast. It was a protein shake on the drive down and like...
Bo Fishback: Rocket pig, rocket pig for the win.
Eric Jorgenson: You got to know when we're going to have a meeting, there’s going to be calories.
Al Doan: We murdered the KC Joes.
Eric Jorgenson: It's going to be calories. We've been out of the game for a minute. It's very good to be reunited.
Al Doan: Yeah, people are asking, like, hey, what's the deal with the podcast?
Eric Jorgenson: It's been inundated by an email.
Al Doan: Listener, listener, I know you want this. And, listener, if I may, we want it also. So, we're happy to be here.
Eric Jorgenson: We do owe you an explanation about our absence from your ears which is that Al moved to Hawaii for the summer.
Al Doan: Listener, I was in Hawaii. Yeah, we're remodeling the house, so I went to Hawaii for a couple of months and then literally from sea level, took a flight 27 hours on Air India, which I didn't know was the Ryanair of the Eastern world. It is the Ryanair of the Eastern world. My first class seat, I don't know. Anyway, from sea level to 14,000 feet and then hiked for 12 days up to 18,000 feet, which is not as easy as it sounds. I know you're hearing this, listener. You're hearing this thinking 18,000, that's easy. That's not easy. That's base camp Everest. It's exactly right. I hiked to the base camp of Mount Everest. I didn't even try and go up, and it was still hard.
Eric Jorgenson: This was the plan. The plan was base camp.
Al Doan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to go see the big mama. I didn't want to die. You pass these things.
Bo Fishback: You didn't want to die?
Al Doan: They're like, here lies Peter, father of four. He loved doing hard things. And I'm like, why would Peter ever-? Why would he climb Mount Everest? And then you look around and you're like, there are thousands of these monuments of here lies Jimmy. Take the world by the horns. Father of four kids and very loving husband. Jimmy, what are you doing, my man?
Eric Jorgenson: Are they still- I hear the bodies are still like frozen there.
Al Doan: This season, I was talking to them. They're like, oh yeah, last season 20 people died. 20 people died. It's like a meaningful- I think it's like 13% of hikers don't make it down or something.
Eric Jorgenson: To the peak?
Al Doan: No, they’ll make it to the peak. Most of them make it to the peak. Well, I think a lot of it's more packed now than it ever has been, but like coming down is where you die. There's an analogy in this, listener. There's an analogy in this for entrepreneurship. You can get to the peak. Most injuries will happen on the descent. On the descent. If you know a founder that sold their company and stepped back, give them a hug, will ya? Give them a hug. They have nothing to do now, and they feel like they're losers because they used to be important. But give them a hug. They're stepping carefully. They're tired. They're making mistakes. They're off the edge.
Eric Jorgenson: That was a better analogy than I thought we were going to get out of that. How much more compared to Kilimanjaro?
Al Doan: Yeah, Kilimanjaro was higher. You go to like 20,000 feet in Kili. But you start in the rainforest at the base, and you climb up, because you've done it too, right? You climb up and then you have like two days where it's kind of crappy, like a night or two of sleep. On the base camp trek, I was on this trail for like 12 days and you're like, it's just cold, and the food sucks, and I'm not sleeping great, and it compounds. And you're like, my brain is swelling. That's what I guess altitude sickness is, your head swells. And you're like, my whole body hurts, and you're dry heaving and puking your guts out with ginger soup and one hard-boiled egg for breakfast. No, honestly, it's a beautiful trek. Everybody should do it. You'll love it. It's great.
Bo Fishback: Great sell, unbelievable sell. I can't wait.
Al Doan: I'm trying to do a hard thing a year, like one big audacious hike or something. Because I'm much better at working out when I have a thing. If I don't have a thing, I cannot convince myself to go to the gym because my wife loves me anyway. It's her fault. I'm like, I don't have to do pushups. She's already into it. But like if I have a thing coming up, I'm like, okay, it's worth a gym. Let's go. I got to stay healthy. Got to be ready because I don't want to get out there and die.
Eric Jorgenson: You're a lucky man. My wife has been extremely clear to me that her love is conditional on my incredible physical condition.
Al Doan: You go bald, you're on a flight to Turkey tomorrow. Just getting that scalp fixed up, brother. There is no chance.
Eric Jorgenson: You get hair plugs annually just to be sure.
Al Doan: I'm overseeding the scalp just to make sure the stuff grows in good. So, I was gone for a little bit.
Bo Fishback: And then you came back, and Eric had a job.
Eric Jorgenson: No, our last podcast was in March. So since then, you've done time in Hawaii, climbed Everest, I had my lung collapse, then I was in Michigan for the summer, then-
Al Doan: You almost died.
Eric Jorgenson: Then the Scribe job. I almost died for no reason. You at least have a cool photo.
Al Doan: We just got a message from your wife, it was like, no big deal, Eric's almost dead, we've got him coming back. Don't send photos. Don't send flowers. That was it. We were like, should we come see him? She's like, he does this all the time.
Eric Jorgenson: It did reaffirm for me that if this was my last day on earth, I'd still want to do this podcast with you guys.
Bo Fishback: From the hospital bed, you were messaging us with actual work relevant things. Not just I'm alive, but get to work, clowns. I was impressed.
Eric Jorgenson: I got some very good founder DMs when I was in that hospital. I feel like I was rewarded.
Bo Fishback: Our deal flow is primarily driven by close to death situations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes sense.
Al Doan: It's a great lever though, because you're like, please.
Bo Fishback: I'm looking to make a last investment.
Al Doan: You wouldn't refuse a wounded soldier. I fought our country nobly.
Eric Jorgenson: I'm sorry I didn't respond to your stupid email. I was in the hospital. I almost died.
Bo Fishback: I will be the most low maintenance investor you've ever had. I will be dead. No updates required.
Al Doan: I will take your money because you're going to be dead anyway.
Eric Jorgenson: Do it for my kids, for my family. So it was a busy summer. It was a busy summer.
Al Doan: You're lowest stress investor. There's a 30% chance I'm dead. Please take my money.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. We were all in different places geographically for a while. I think we managed to do some good work on the portfolio side. We just didn't get a lot of podcasting done until we were all in the same place.
Bo Fishback: Yeah. We just didn't do podcasting.
Al Doan: Listener, we've been investing. We've been doing our jobs.
Eric Jorgenson: Which we're going to catch everybody up on. I feel like there's at least, there's probably going to be two episodes because we’ve got like three quarters worth of investments to catch up on in podcast language.
Al Doan: Allegedly.
Eric Jorgenson: Allegedly. And Al's had some cool- I don't know, we've learned some things, we've been reflecting, we've been growing. And we're going to go through all of it. Should we start with Q2? Do we have any other life update things? Or we should just start with Q2?
Al Doan: How is CEOing?
Eric Jorgenson: CEOing's good. I feel like I'm greatly increasing the empathy for operators, always. And we are now a full three CEO fund. I don't have to qualify that anymore. A lot of meetings, as it turns out.
Al Doan: Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes the idea of CEO is sexier than being CEO.
Eric Jorgenson: Look, I had a front row seat to CEOing for a long time.
Al Doan: You were not naïve to this.
Eric Jorgenson: I was under no delusion that this was going to be fun or easy.
Al Doan: I feel like I still am under a bit of a delusion. Like, I don't remember it ever being hard. I'm like, I could be a CEO again. I should do that one more time. And then I'm like, I'm sorry, you want me to work Thursdays? Thursday's my day. That's the me day.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, you just peek at that calendar. You're like, no, hard no on that. Yeah. A lot of meetings, a lot of moving parts. Like almost everybody I know who is CEO has built their companies around them. And so, they're an expert in every domain. They've like slowly accrued it. So, the experience of onboarding as a CEO was kind of wild.
Al Doan: Do you want to talk about like what Scribe is?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I can do that.
Al Doan: Give me a two sentence summary.
Eric Jorgenson: Scribe is a professional publisher, which is basically the opposite model of a traditional publishing company. We will support anyone who wants to publish their book. We are basically a professional services firm to help them write, edit, publish, and grow, promote their book.
Al Doan: And yeah, like Goggins is your claim to fame, right? Like that guy used you guys, didn't he?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, Goggins has sold like five million books.
Al Doan: And by doing it himself and owning the publishing rights, you pay like your tens of thousands up front for the writer and all the editing and everything, and then you own everything and whatever you sell, you keep, right?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, so we are the path for authors to keep 100% of their ownership rights, royalties, all their creative decisions. If you go to a traditional publisher, you get an advance of like $50, 100,000, maybe 200,000. If you're a huge writer, you'll get a million bucks, but you also give up your creative control, final cut, and like 85% of your royalties. So, if you think of it like a business, you're giving up most of your equity before you even build the thing.
Al Doan: It's been funny, my mom just wrote, we did a book deal for her because my mom's a famous YouTube quilter. Talk to your moms, they know about her. And so we did a book deal, and it was funny because my idea- I feel like raising venture money is a lot of the same thing, where like the idea of it validating you and all this stuff, like it carries so much cache, and then you talk to somebody that's just done it, and they're like, oh, I'll never do this again. It's terrible. But like, not us, we're almost dead. We're not going to be- we're great. I'm talking other guys. But in the book writing world, yeah. So she gets an advance, which is very nice, and then we write this book. They give her an author that she pays for out of her advance. Like it's a cut of all this that goes towards paying the author. We write the book. The book is great. And then, in my mind, I'm like, I see these guys on the Today Show and stuff talking about their books all the time. It's probably what- we got a publisher; we're going to do this. And we launched and they're like, all right, can you email your list one more time? I'm like, I'm doing all the sales. And then they want me to send the people to Amazon so we can get on the Amazon bestseller. And I'm like, I don't even get to keep the margin on the books that we're doing, like this is silly. And it's literally like all the promo comes from us, all that like- everything is supposed- like they put it all back on you and then they're like, oh and we got you on St. Joe KQET 2 Channel News and I’m like that's not helping me, you guys. It was very disappointing, or very disillusioned on traditional publishing because yeah, outside of the advance, she's made zero dollars on it. And it's like, in your world, we would eat what we kill and if we have high confidence in what we can do.
Eric Jorgenson: And you get what you pay for, right? Like their model is that like the cost, the PR, the marketing, like those are line items. And the conceit of the whole thing is like, well, most of these books are going to fail. So, we're just going to place a hundred bets, tell all the authors to go for it, and then we'll have some breakouts in the portfolio. And ours is like, no, every book, like the author is the CEO of that book. They should get the majority or all of the few dollars per book that they sell, not cents on the dollar. And then they'll have the resources and motivation to invest on their own. And they'll get the PR they pay for. They'll get the marketing that they pay for. They'll send people to Amazon. They'll go get the reviews. Like they'll have the reason to do the work instead of-
Al Doan: I'm increasingly a fan of your model.
Eric Jorgenson: Thank you. We would love to do Jenny's next book.
Al Doan: But when do we get the analog or the anthology of a youth basketball…? When does this happen?
Bo Fishback: I could write a great book on youth basketball. I don't know if there's a lot of readers for it, so I think that they may not-
Al Doan: Just bring more drama, bring more drama.
Bo Fishback: The highly dramatized youth basketball version. Yeah, I still think low readers.
Eric Jorgenson: Are there good- I'm sure like, I don't know.
Al Doan: That was the whole premise of the Babysitters Club, dude. That was it. Millions of readers.
Eric Jorgenson: Like Serena and Venus’ dad write a book or like there was a movie, but I don't know if it's based on a book.
Bo Fishback: I don't either, but the movie was awesome.
Al Doan: We need Pierce to become an all-star superstar so you can write. This is all just a long con so that Eric can get a sale, and you'll write a book with him.
Eric Jorgenson: We got to edit that out. This is a secret weapon.
Bo Fishback: I would never put that pressure on Pierce.
Eric Jorgenson: We're not publicizing. Yeah, we're not publicizing. There are many secrets we must keep until the appropriate time.
Al Doan: Understood. I don't know which secrets.
Eric Jorgenson: We all thrive on low expectations.
Al Doan: The self-degradation – we will never, we’re never going to be good. We don't- we invest in some companies, we dabble, it's fine. Oh no, we're leading the frontier of nuclear technology. No, it's nothing. That is literally how I pitch like LPs. I'm like, we got some energy investments, we got some stuff, we're doing some cool things.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I think our like Midwestern humility is really working against us in the LP pitching department. Very reasonable, like measured messaging about it. It's an unfortunate part of the like VC game theory that being a braggadocious D bag actually accelerates the-
Al Doan: You go back to like your first introduction letter to this. It's like you shouldn't invest in us if you don't want to wait 12 years for returns. And we make no promises that there will even be returns. We are investing in the future of humanity.
Eric Jorgenson: Yes, in a highly speculative fashion. Past performance does not indicate future results.
Al Doan: You compare that to Sequoia and stuff like that, we will almost guarantee a return.
Eric Jorgenson: I should put more unicorn emojis in my Twitter bio.
Bo Fishback: I disagree.
Eric Jorgenson: Or we can say we like ourselves the way we are and just keep plugging.
Al Doan: It's all just like affirmations and stuff. In a room full of balloons, we're a pin. Anyway, enough banter. Let's get to the juice.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. We have many investments to catch y'all up on, every one of which we are proud of. We love all of our children equally.
Al Doan: I don't care for Joe.
Eric Jorgenson: Excellent callback. So, we're going to pick up in Q2, I believe is where we left off from March. So, we’re going to go through Q2 investments and that starts with Ouros and a founder Ethan Loosbrock. If you are a dedicated listener of this podcast, you may have already heard my interview with Ethan and Eli Dorado because we had him come do a full episode. But I love this dude. I love this idea. I think it's a perfect example of the kind of deep tech that sort of our taste is evolving towards, which is the like, there's a very obvious, huge demand. This is a brand new capability for humanity if it is buildable. And Ethan's been chasing this idea for 10 years or so. He read papers about all these different battery chemistry innovations in undergrad, very specifically positioned himself to work in the lab that these things were coming out of.
Al Doan: This is a long con.
Eric Jorgenson: This is a long con. He's like, I am going to... I think he said this at my very first meeting with him, he’s like, I want to be the John D. Rockefeller of batteries. I was like, please explain that to me. An hour later, I was like, yep, this is fantastic. Innovation is a chemistry piece of the lithium ion battery manufacturing process, and he wants to perfect this, dramatically increase the energy density of lithium ion batteries from 5 to 10X, which is huge. My layman's understanding is that it increases like the molecular surface area between the cathode and anode. So, you can transfer much more, you store much more energy much more quickly and dispatch it much more quickly. But the upshot would mean like your phone battery would last for a week or your Tesla could drive across the country, or your solar panel could keep you off the grid for months.
Al Doan: I remember the stuff we were worried about was like, if we were talking ourselves out of this, it was like, man, the number of people that have had the idea of let's make a better battery is many people. And honestly, that's the biggest strike against investing in something like this, is that the bodies littered along the road are so many, but it does not mean that you should stop trying to innovate in that space and see that future. And these guys, I mean, they've got, it's a unique tech. It's something that hasn't been developed yet that they very much believe has that potential. And to what you're saying, like if they're right and we can make one tenth the number of batteries that we need, we are able to do a dramatic improvement for humanity.
Eric Jorgenson: It totally changes what's physically possible. Electric jets become a thing, like vertical takeoff and landing, which is-
Al Doan: I mean, that's really what we're trying to get. Yeah. Like I want to... have you seen that Jetson Aero?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, you said you already got a pre-order in.
Al Doan: No, I sent him an email. I was like, I know it says max weight 215. What does 245 look like? They were like, it will dramatically reduce the airtime. I was like, okay, well, call me when the battery gets better. Because I want it. $92,000, $96,000, I'm in. I just want to be the first person in Hamilton that flies his quadcopter and parks it right- I'd like a donut, please.
Eric Jorgenson: They're like, is that thing going to take off on the way home?
Al Doan: It's like 80% of the reason I drive a Tesla, just because I wanted the novelty of the X-wing doors. Now it's just a car with goofy doors. But in the beginning, I was like, hey guys, it'll dance too. You want to see? And I just need that Jetson Aer. For the first couple of flights in, they'd be like, who the crap is this?
Eric Jorgenson: It'd be so awesome on the farm too.
Al Doan: Dude, yeah. Oh man, not having to drive down roads, going over old guys' farms, they're like shooting at me like a drone. I have a vision. Anyway, so that's really why we're investing in battery tech, so the big guys get the chance to fly in the air on these personalized aircrafts. That's what we're doing.
Eric Jorgenson: I'm very excited about this one. It is like not a typical startup. It's just battery chemistry engineers in the lab building prototypes.
Al Doan: Right now, their updates are like, hey, we’ve got this cell to hold this thing. And like, neat. Keep going.
Bo Fishback: Yeah, it is that. It is like real missionaries who are very proud of like, here is a bag of battery. And it's like, oh, that's pretty awesome, I think.
Al Doan: Here is a bag of battery.
Bo Fishback: A bag of battery. It's pretty neat.
Eric Jorgenson: Remind me how close we are to this being world changing. Okay. Almost there. Getting there. We were talking about this a little before we started recording, that like the difference between technology chasing a market and a technology just like unlocking a very obvious market, and this is one- I've heard Elon Musk on interviews be like, as soon as you have a battery, if you have one battery prototype cell that can demonstrate higher than like this energy density, which is currently the Tesla state of the art, send it to me and I will send you millions of dollars, like buy your company, invest in your company, like we will- There is infinite demand for this immediately. And it is a cool- there's a huge graveyard of batteries, lots of insane claims, but we like it.
Al Doan: Needless to say, we hope they're right.
Eric Jorgenson: We hope they're right.
Al Doan: We placed our bet. We hope they're right.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, they're early. They're chugging along. I’m super excited to see where that one goes. The next is redacted. We cannot- this startup is still in stealth. We invested in it.
Al Doan: What, come on. We can’t even say the name?
Eric Jorgenson: No, the name isn’t public. I checked the founder’s LinkedIn, like still in stealth.
Al Doan: Which one is it, is it Billy Bob?
Bo Fishback: Row 48 what I believe we can refer to it as.
Al Doan: What does row 48 do?
Eric Jorgenson: Also can't disclose that.
Al Doan: What industry?
Bo Fishback: Let's just go human health.
Eric Jorgenson: Technology.
Al Doan: See, I honestly didn’t even know which one we were talking about.
Eric Jorgenson: We've kept it a secret from Al also. That should be public this year. But they have been making great progress. It is new technology that's getting packaged and rolled out. It's awesome.
Al Doan: I want to work on a startup that's so valuable that I can't even say the name. I just want to do that one time and be like, if people knew the name of the startup I was building, they would flip out. I'm not there yet. I'm not as cool as these guys.
Eric Jorgenson: So more updates to come on that one when we're allowed to share it. Next is altHQ.
Al Doan: AltHQ is this very, very cool founder, Mike Zhang. Mike Zhang, I know through, we're like the top 100 entrepreneurs under 28 or something.
Eric Jorgenson: Where'd you meet him?
Al Doan: At the White House. We were hanging at the White House. Mike's story is rad, though.
Eric Jorgenson: Is this Obama's White House? Is this Clinton's White House? What are we talking about?
Al Doan: I think it was Obama. I think it was Obama's White House, and he couldn't be there for Small Business Day because he had to go to Nike or something. I mean, real douche, that guy, didn't even hang out with the random tour that came through. So Mike's story I love, because when he was 14, he started the Airsoft Mega Superstore. And this dude, as a 14-year-old, was in import-exporting, grew his company to like $40 million a year, $50 million a year as a 14, 15-year-old. This is wild.
Eric Jorgenson: He said his immigrant family, his parents like bet their life-saving on his business as a 14-year-old.
Al Doan: And they all started working for him. Yeah, dude, the guy is so, so sharp. So anyway, he's done a bunch of companies, CEOed a bunch of stuff, and he came to us with an idea that he's working on right now in the sort of aftermarket private equity spaces. So, like investments in private equity, letting that be searchable, digestible, reportable, standardized. It's another one of those things where like, oh yeah, there's a bunch of bodies along the way, a bunch of people that have tried to do this. Anybody that actually does figure this out is sitting on a gold mine, and it's going to be brilliant. Why you? And his thing is he's got a couple of people that are very engaged, that are the people that can make it happen. So he's got investors on the cap table and his first couple of use cases that he's got using the product are the people that you'd want using the product. They are trying it out.
Eric Jorgenson: Big family offices with more than 100 private, maybe more than 50 like active private investments I think he says is like the sweet spot where the tools really start to make a difference.
Al Doan: And it's cool because some of his early stuff, the tech overlap to stuff that we've done was interesting where we're able to provide some value pretty quick. So he's great. I actually need to check in with him. I sent him some popcorn at Christmas. Need to go say hi, see how he's doing. But super smart guy. I mean, you bet on these crazy smart like savant dudes every time. And so, he's one of those that we love and are excited to see what he does.
Eric Jorgenson: The timing of his idea is good, too, in the sense of like the capability of a smart AI software to extract all of this data and actually have it be correct and not need a ton of cleanup and proactively surface the right information could save a ton of time and money.
Al Doan: We have a smart model and say, how would you categorize this? Help me tag this so that it's searchable and falls in the right spaces and stuff. Like that kind of thing just has never been possible until like a year ago. And all of a sudden, there's a real swing at it.
Eric Jorgenson: And I know some of the people who we have as LPs who listen are good fits for this and could be good early beta testers. Like if you manage a bunch of private investments, let us put you in touch with Mike Zhang and you can pilot this thing.
Al Doan: First, first invest in our fund, and then we'll take your call. Don't LinkedIn message us without being in.
Eric Jorgenson: It's a good time to double down on Rolling Fun. We've got the- all right, that's Q- Oh no, we’ve got one more, one more, one more. Also Al.
Al Doan: Oh yeah, yeah, Zencastr. So Zencastr is a buddy of mine, Josh Nielsen, who know and love, very smart guy, great story. He built- honestly, I think he's the world's greatest audiophile on the internet. He's the guy that like, oh, I fixed the audio drift in Node because Node had a thing where like when you're recording on the internet, you can have, they call it like an audio drift. And he's like, yeah, Spotify called, their engineers called me and asked me how I did it. And I don't know. He's like that kind of guy. It's like, the dude has thought about and worked in audio more in the JavaScript, sort of Python world than anybody else out there. And got some smart dudes on the team that are really solving some stuff. So Zencastr is a podcasting software helping creators easily record and create podcasts and audio on the internet. They've added a ton of features, done a bunch of really cool stuff. And what they're working on right now, which I think is great, is they're helping monetize small creators. And so, we've had as part of our thesis for a long time that somebody is going to solve the ability for me to go and advertise on podcasts in a very dynamic, easy way. It should be as easy as like placing Facebook ads. And it's not. It's all done with brokers. And then, you have like these broad ones where Audible can buy for a penny, put their ad on a bunch of trash stuff. But they don't know where it's going. They don't know- The data and stuff that needs to exist for that to be a real advertising thing for people to sink millions into hasn't existed. These guys are cracking that nut. So that's what they're staring very hard at. And it's one of those things that like, they have a profitable business as is, and they have all the time in the world to just solve this problem and keep banging their heads on it. And so, they've got, they introduced the monetization product, we got pretty excited about it. I don't know the fervor that it's rolling out right now because onboarding was taking some time, but they will continue to just stare at this problem until podcasting and advertising on podcasting is seamless and big grants can come in and place big bets on this stuff, and they'll just take a cut of that space. And honestly, you probably end up getting bought by Spotify or some giant audio thing, like a Netflix or something or YouTube would be very smart to like be a part of their world in the end. So that's what we're investing in, that big long shot of like the advertising on audio being solved in this very programmatic way.
Eric Jorgenson: They make sense to me from both a podcaster's perspective and an advertiser’s.
Al Doan: They're great software for podcasters.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it's good software for podcasters. And to have one solution to go all the way from microphone to monetization as a podcaster is huge. And I'm a huge believer in the audio movement that those ads can have really, both be really accurate based on if you have good data on what the show is and who's listening to it and be highly effective. And so, I am excited to use their ad product at Scribe because I think it's a perfect way to reach a very specific group of people.
Al Doan: Anyway, on to the next quarter, gentlemen.
Eric Jorgenson: Oh yeah, I'm excited about all this. I think this is going to be a great quarter. Those updates have been coming in, coming in hot. Q3, oh, these are both so good.
Al Doan: You guys are excited for Q3.
Bo Fishback: Q3 was pretty sweet.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, as I look at everything actually from-
Al Doan: Wait, before we get into it, can we say the names? Can we say- Oh, talk about Atom Limbs. Well, you were excited about this one.
Bo Fishback: I was and remain extremely excited about Atom Limb's.
Al Doan: I believe the phrase was like, you guys can invest if you want, I'm investing.
Bo Fishback: Yeah. Atom Limb's is doing the thing from the future where they make prostheses that really work. They're robotic prostheses. I grew up with a dad with one hand and spent a lot of time from the time I was a kid realizing how that changes your interaction with the world. And they are building the I, Robot version of prostheses roughly with, I think, inarguably the smartest people in the world, like who do what they do. And it is one of these, like we've all seen what they are building in sci-fi movies and read about it in books, and they're like doing the real thing. And it is also one that they've already overcome I think so many technical hurdles that it is really in execution mode. It was, I think, a relatively expensive deal for us in terms of what we invest in, but also there's basically no limit on how big the company could be that owns that space. And so, if you go to their website, you will immediately see why it is exciting for somebody who grew up with a dad with one hand. It looks like magic that is going to exist in our lifetime. And that is pretty awesome.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. A T O M, Atomlimbs.com.
Al Doan: And the big swing is like, if they can solve this for like a human hand, that really should be every robot's hand also. Right?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, as you see all the human, the crazy humanoid robotic stuff coming out, like through Figure and the Tesla bot and stuff, I think they are probably farther along in like the mechanics of the hand because they've been trying to perfectly recreate a human hand with a very light touch. So the whole thing is only like a few pounds because it has to be really light, and it's got to be really delicate, so you can grab a wine glass or like hold like a little hamster without-
Al Doan: What's funny is like for all the big swing in there, like to have a dude, some human that is missing a hand all of a sudden have a very elegant solution to that instead of the- like our hardware guy growing up had a hook, and it's just like that changes how you interact with the world when you don't have the fingers, like to give that individual that probably means more to that community than anything else.
Eric Jorgenson: It's crazy, which is why they have huge demand, waitlists of demand. The way the community has kind of like supported them, they've done at least one crowdfunding round, maybe two. They've got a huge list of people who are like ready for that thing to be commercialized. I love that they started with the full arm because it's the hardest one. So, if they've got full arm, they can do a hand, no problem. It's already baked in. Legs are way easier than arms. Like they have a whole roadmap to basically do super high quality robotic prosthetics.
Al Doan: I hate when people say that – oh, you've lost a leg? That's the easiest one. Everybody says that. Pisses me off.
Eric Jorgenson: But yeah, a ton of like ex Apple, IEO, Oculus neuro people.
Al Doan: When we got in, it was like a $100 million valuation, right?
Eric Jorgenson: No, it was lower than that.
Al Doan: But the thesis, like our filter of can it 100X from here remains true of like, if they've solved human limbs, this is a great investment at whatever price we're getting it right now, right?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it's a much bigger market than you might think. So, it may sound niche, but yeah, prosthetics is a bigger market than you might think.
Al Doan: Prosthetics plus humanoid robots in the next 20 years is bigger-
Eric Jorgenson: Incredibly enormous. And you've got not just prosthetics, but also kind of either voluntary augmentation or replacement.
Al Doan: Voluntary augmentation, talk to me about that. Is that like the tattoo of the future?
Eric Jorgenson: If you're like getting older and more feeble, perhaps.
Al Doan: Dude, could you imagine swapping out the hand for a new hand?
Eric Jorgenson: Or legs if you're like- yeah. That's part of what I love about-
Al Doan: My dad just got a new hip, dude. He's like, no, no, no.
Eric Jorgenson: He's got a new everything.
Al Doan: Give me Brett Favre in the prime leagues. That's what I want.
Eric Jorgenson: I want those Ronnie Colemans.
Bo Fishback: The thing that I thought when we were first looking at this was like where these guys are doing stuff that is just very special is around like the mind-body interface. And they're like, hey, the first thing we'll do if your dad is interested is we'll put this cap on his head and we'll have him do these different things. Because even my dad, he lost his hand when he was seven years old. His entire life, he felt like he could still feel his fingers in his hands, even though it was not there. And so being able to figure out how to really manage that mind body interface and then turn it into what it was. Like the pick up a grape thing that they've shown and stuff is like, this is one of those things, it is extremely obvious that someone is going to do it at some point. And with guys like this working on it, it will be in our lifetime. And if people don't pick it up and run with it, it will be in 500 years. And it's like, well, let's do that now. Like, let’s invest in those things that drag that future to the present. And that's these guys. It's pretty awesome.
Eric Jorgenson: Tyler is amazing at this. And he's got a great- he's a very like future thinking person. He's got an amazing vision about this. And when you talk to him, he's so animated about the fact that like all this stuff has been- the individual technologies have been invented for a long time. Like they've been in labs that just like languished or they've been researched but not built. And he's like, it just took somebody to put all these things together, package it, commercialize it, and-
Al Doan: Hire sexy Apple engineers.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I mean, make a beautiful, beautiful slide deck, collect the humans that inspire them. And yeah, I think the noninvasive mind control robotic thing, that's actually a huge part of their value. There's a cuff that monitors what muscles fire as the person mentally manipulates their ghost limb. And that is what trains the robot. It's so cool. It's just... It's so cool. I'm so psyched about it. I think that it's an amazing mission, an amazing technology and amazing team. And there are so many enormous adjacent markets, like even if prosthetics is as big as it gets, that'll still be an amazing company. But it is one of these things that seems like such a small leap to go from that to-
Al Doan: If you're building a humanoid robot, like just call and license the tech. Why would you ever try and build your own hand if that exists, right? That's so cool.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it's awesome. I love that one. I'm very excited and grateful to kind of be supporting and part of that thing. Those guys are going to do some very cool stuff. I can't wait to start seeing the like productized versions out in the world on people. Those testimony videos are going to be insane.
Al Doan: I feel pre rich right now. I don't know if you guys feel pre rich, but I feel pre rich.
Eric Jorgenson: You feel pre rich, and we got a number of companies to go. So, this is great news. Maybe we should always do three quarters at a time. Really like a rapid fire, rapid fire, make it pile up. Another one, so General Fab Co, General Fabrication Company and Matt Palmer. This one is a little more abstract, but still very bad-ass, very deep tech, much earlier. So, this is like, I love the starting of this story. Matt is a manufacturing nerd, started during COVID, was at home in his apartment and built an open source 3D printer to start building N95 masks. That's how this thing... And he got frustrated with how it was going and the state of the art in 3D printing. He's like, this is so much worse than it should be or could be. And so, he started modding together all of these different open source technology projects and created what he calls like the world building 3D printer. So, this is like the fastest and it can replicate stuff like hard plastic products like camera, phone cases or palm grips, like these recorders and stuff like that. And he's like, his vision is to build like this self replicating factory, like build modular manufacturing equipment that can- like he's using his products to build the products that he's selling.
Al Doan: What's the term for that? Like in space where they fly out.
Eric Jorgenson: The von Neumann probes.
Al Doan: Von Neumann probes, yeah. Fly out, build your space building station, generate another one and keep going. We invested in von Neumann probes for Earth?
Bo Fishback: Well, it's interesting. It's like in the 3D printing world, this is a thing, even on these open source products and stuff that exist. When you get a product, if they're going to buy the new product, they send you a third of it. And then they say, and here are the instructions to print the other two thirds.
Al Doan: No way.
Bo Fishback: Yeah. And so, it is like you start to take the best of all of those pieces and say like, hey, we're going to like professionalize this and really turn it into something that can work, like that won't happen unless somebody goes to do the work. And so, it's cool. It is cool.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. He's got a vision for how the future of manufacturing can get a lot less huge line, manufacturing line, like massive manufacturing equipment and much more like modular and fast and a ton of small kind of individual components getting processed along. Sharp, sharp dude. Building and selling these things already on like a shoestring budget. I'm excited to see what he can do with a little bit of capital and see how fast these things grow and a vision for not just this fast, super fast 3D printing product, but also some other similar modular manufacturing products as we go.
Al Doan: Why are you whispering that?
Eric Jorgenson: I don't know. It's hard to know when you're talking to founders what is a thing they're sharing with you in confidence about their long-term vision and a thing that's like, hey, go talk about that on a podcast. So, I'm being slightly cagey about his five to 10 year plan. I'm just like mentally sifting through his Twitter to be like, only talk about things that he's already tweeted about.
Al Doan: It's hard, it's hard. See, I just have a big mouth. And you’ve got to know, if you tell me.
Bo Fishback: This is why we keep some things secret from you, Al.
Al Doan: Oh yeah, man, that makes sense. Yeah, all right. I'm in the future also. I see it now. I don't fault you guys.
Bo Fishback: We'll tell Al about it like three podcasts from now on. He'll love it so much.
Al Doan: My mind is blown. We invested in what?
Eric Jorgenson: Those are happy surprises.
Al Doan: I'm excited to read these updates too.
Eric Jorgenson: We do get good feedback on our investor updates. I like to- I think we pride ourselves on that. Should feel a little like peeking into the future. Feel like you’ve got a little skin in the game. And we share some stuff there that's more-
Al Doan: Secret.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, more secret.
Al Doan: You'll know names of companies. See, if you're an LP, there's things we can tell you that we can't tell everybody.
Eric Jorgenson: Not to gatekeep or anything, but. Al, speaking of gatekeeping, do you want to talk about your celebrity interactions recently? I feel like this would be good-
Al Doan: Which ones? I just like that I have to ask that question.
Eric Jorgenson: He big timed us.
Bo Fishback: He did just big time us.
Eric Jorgenson: I was thinking about the Beast.
Al Doan: Oh, Jimmy. Now, well, it's funny because now it's an annual tradition. Every year we get together with- I don't know how I even got myself into this group, but it's a great group of guys. We get together and play basketball for three days. And typically, we'll hire or we'll invite a trainer that's like, oh, and he trains Kyrie Irving and he's going to come, Alex. And it's like, oh, that's neat. And it's very bizarre because I don't know if you guys-
Eric Jorgenson: I bet you really blow his mind.
Al Doan: I haven't tried to be better at basketball in 25 years. I go to play and they're like, all right, run this drill. We're going to run again. I'm like, my leg hurts now. This isn’t how my body moves. I don't shift like that.
Eric Jorgenson: I don't do lateral movements.
Al Doan: And yeah, so we'll end up with like a bunch of- it's very nice because it's like, I make 60% of the layups I take, and it's that caliber of basketball, and I like that. We're all very comfortable in that space. And being a big guy, I'll tell you what, man, I just feel very dominant against these sort of nerdy, tall guys. They'll send it against me. Andrew Wilkinson, he's out there.
Eric Jorgenson: He's Canadian. He doesn't stand a chance.
Al Doan: He is soft in the paint. I dominated that guy. I was just yelling, mismatch! I didn't even see him when I turned around. He's my size. I didn't even see him. I just went right through him.
Bo Fishback: That's amazing, Al.
Al Doan: But yeah, what’s funny is it's a bunch of guys. It's a bunch of great guys that all have done very impressive things. I mean, the fact that Mr. Beast, he brings his own chocolate, which is kind of a fun, that's a fun thing to be known for when you show up to a party with your own boxes of chocolate. But that dude gets so zeroed in on what he's tagging, like he is 1000% focused. And so, it's a fun dude to chat with, and then we just go play basketball. And bunch of- everybody is very rich and then you step on the basketball court. It's like, in my mind, I think about this all the time, where like celebrities, like surely, Angelina Jolie lives a blessed life, and it's like, oh no man, that chick wakes up and steps on Legos and kicks the shoes by the door and like wishes somebody had taken the trash out already and has to get the dishwasher loaded just like everybody else. Well, probably. And it's nice to be reminded of that because you build people up, like personas up in your mind. It turns out they're just people out there showing up trying to do good things. And so, yeah. I don't know how that was pertinent to all this, but I'm excited to have eaten Jimmy's chocolate and played basketball with him as well as a number of other people. Sean and Sam that do the, My First Million guys, it's their group that puts it together. Very fun dudes, a lot of fun personalities. And it's nice to talk to people not on the podcast. See, if you guys ever meet us in person, we're not like this. This is a persona we do, okay? Like, if you could just get us one-on-one, we're fine, we're nice people. This abrasiveness, this anger that we fuel the podcast with, it's a show. It's a shtick.
Eric Jorgenson: Did you, and I hate to ask, learn anything?
Al Doan: No. Well, not yet. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I see, you're leading me to the thing we talked about an hour ago that I completely forgot about. No, so there's this guy, Zach, who was like a founder’s fund investor guy for a lot of years, and now he invests on his own for, like he's got a cool gig where he's like I just make investments and then everybody believes in me so much, they all try and pile on money behind me and so I control billions.
Eric Jorgenson: I know exactly how they feel.
Al Doan: I was like yeah same, bro, yeah absolutely. But it's funny because he's like you think about- I was asking him like what are you investing in right now as as we play poker, which by the way, never a worse poker player on planet earth than all in Doan every hand. All I know about how to play poker is from what I've seen on movies, which is not representative of how poker goes. I'm like, this one could be it and you don't know what I have. And they just eat me alive. I'm out by the third hand every time. So we're sitting there playing poker in a very short-lived stint. And I was like, what are you investing in? He’s like honestly, man, I have a Mount Rushmore of death. So, there's cancer, there's diabetes, there's neuro stuff of dementia and Alzheimer's and stuff, and then heart disease. And he's like, if you can cure cancer, you only extend the average lifespan by three years because one of these other ones will take it. If we want longevity, we have to be tackling all these. He's like, so I'm actively looking for opportunities in each of these four. And if any of those can solve a thing, like I've done a great thing. I'm placing bets in those. And it was interesting to me because I was like, yeah, that's kind of reassuring for and a good reminder for us as we sort of fine tune our investment thesis. It's like, as long- we don't want to be placing bets on stuff that if we're right still kind of doesn't matter. And we've probably, I mean, you could argue that we've made a few investments that would fall in that world of like we liked it, it was fun, it was a thing. And even if we're 1000% right, we haven't like cured cancer. We haven't solved a major thing. And so, you see more and more of our investments go towards like energy, they go toward the future of computing, they go toward- It's like, it's cool future stuff that if we're right, we've helped change the pace of humanity. But I thought it was just a great way of looking at something and being like what are the four things? And you should have a Mount Rushmore of finance, and a Mount Rushmore of energy, and a Mount Rushmore of quilting, obviously. What do you need? Like, if you're right in one of these, it's going to make a big difference, and just distilling it down to those. And it was a lot of fun chats in there.
Eric Jorgenson: I think that is a great way to put our ever-evolving thesis, as like tackling ever bigger problems. Hopefully we get them early, but it's more important, I think, to find a big problem than to be early. Like we started doing a few later investments that are close, I don't know, closer to 50 or 100 million valuation. They're more baked companies. But there's also like, I have no doubt that this is a large problem, a huge market. And we're on the way to something. The difference between a $10 million and a $50 million entry price for a $10, 50, 100 billion outcome is like not massive.
Al Doan: That's what we were talking about earlier. A lot of the deals that happen with a lot of fervor around them, oftentimes you're just like, they're bust because you accelerate due diligence, you're arguing for allocation, all that stuff. But then there's a bunch of, I mean, if you get a chance to put money in Uber, this is what Bo was saying earlier, like put money in Uber. You were right, you're going to- And Zach had a play that went into Ozempic, and I'm like, how did you get in on it? He's like, when you see an Ozempic, you get in on Ozempic. Like it's going to cure addiction and diabetes, and that's a drug you want to be behind. And you put money in no matter where you get a chance to put money into it. And there's maybe six of those deals in the last 10 years that are like, oh yeah, 100%, anything you can do to be a part of that, that solves- that is it, that's the thing. And so, there's both those that you do anything to be a part of, and then also, you need to ignore everything that's not those because they're all wrong.
Eric Jorgenson: This is actually a part of, I like the adage, like your fund size is your strategy. Your fund size is your fund strategy. Some LPs I talk to, there's a hesitation to invest in smaller funds. They're like, oh, we need a $75 million fund at least because we've got some requirements. And I'm like, yo, on a cash basis, you just want to get exposure, get some amount of money into those potentially absolutely incredible outcomes. And there's way more spots for a $50,000 to $200,000 check in a $2 million or $5 million round than there is a $3 million check.
Al Doan: There's one $3 million check and then a bunch of the other ones that get you access in future rounds.
Eric Jorgenson: So our theory in being a smaller fund writing minority checks is like it will always- we have a better shot at getting money into those 100X, 1000X, 10,000X investments.
Al Doan: And if you want to follow on, now, you got a guy. We know him.
Eric Jorgenson: It makes it easier to follow on and get more- double down on them as we see them evolving.
Al Doan: Really, listener, what we're trying to say is if you're not backing our fund, this is the last time we're coming to you, please.
Bo Fishback: I just want all of these.
Al Doan: We need your donations. We need your donations.
Eric Jorgenson: Welcome to the Rolling Fun Pledge Drive.
Al Doan: Jerry's kids need your donations, people.
Eric Jorgenson: That's episode one, caught up on Q2, Q3. We'll be back extremely shortly with a Q4 and beyond.