955 - Building The Personal Agentic Computing Stack w/ Simp4Satoshi (Truffle)

Mat Sherman (00:01.244)
All right, we are recording. We are here with Simp4Satoshi. How are you doing today? Welcome to the pod.

Simp4satoshi (00:09.71)
good first day of the year for us for like getting back to work and stuff so a bunch of assembly a bunch of like yeah getting off to a good start hopefully

Mat Sherman (00:22.718)
Totally, yeah, was, it feels good. This is the first holiday season that I've had that I wasn't running my own company in about eight years. So it was quite intriguing because I felt like for the first time I got to take the holiday break and just not worry about anything and just kind of take time off. And I'm kind of back on the second refresh and I'm like, getting work done for, know, my day job is product hunt, but I have to.

Simp4satoshi (00:32.814)
you

Mat Sherman (00:48.826)
Guess like was your holiday like do you have much of a break over the holidays? You just shipping all holiday through or like did you get some time off? Like how do you think about the holidays for you?

Simp4satoshi (00:57.602)
Yeah, I mean, I mean, we so so like the team had a break, but like three of us were still in the office and kind of like doing assembly and everything. So I don't know. I would say like we did, you know, Christmas Day, we kind of like, you know, me and me and three others, we kind of cook food at home and got a bit drunk and, you know, that that's our like time off basically. But like back to it. Yeah, I don't mean to sound cringe like it is kind of cringe.

when you know you see the whole like grindmas kind of like I'm just like grinding through the holidays and something but like we actually have so much to do that it's like yeah I don't know if we can take time off and not feel bad about

Mat Sherman (01:43.537)
Yeah, well, mean, have historically been able to relate, which is why this last holiday season was such an interesting feeling for me, because I took time off and I'm just like, this is fine. I don't have a company to like, I my function of my job to worry about, but not a whole company. And it was an interesting feeling. Did I like it? I don't know. I kind of liked being on.

you know, because I like work. I like when I'm working on something interesting and something that I enjoy and is helpful to people. I like to do that as much as I can. So I'm learning, learning a different feeling. But tell us, what are you, what are you cranking on? I know you're working on truffle. What is truffle for people that are not familiar with what you're doing? Can you kind of give us a high level?

Simp4satoshi (02:09.101)
No.

Simp4satoshi (02:22.048)
Yeah, so high level is basically we are building like a device that does local inference. So you load, we build a model, you load it up on the device and then you can infer locally. The sort of like the grand ideology behind the product is like really just.

Have you ever seen like Ex Machina? It's like a low budget kind of like yeah, okay, so Ex Machina basically has this like, you know at one point he takes him into a room and he shows him this like orb This kind of like glowing orb and he calls it like wetware It was basically like the brain powering like Ava and such

And like that's kind of like the the direction or the trajectory we want to be in is like, you know, we're I think I'm pretty confident that like

Most humanoid robotics will kind of the market will end up like sort of like the car market where you have like cars in their final form are really just like these commodities that a Thousand different companies are gonna make so you'll have like your Tesla bought your figure bought whatever But then at the end of the day very few there'll be very few like engine companies or like, you know You know, like Mercedes-Benz makes a lot of these engines right and other car companies like use Mercedes engines

To like power the their vehicles. They just kind of make the chassis and like all a bunch of other stuff So yeah, I think like that'll eventually become this sort of market. It'll be this sort of You know once once a GI comes and passes you'll have like humanoid robotics, which humanoid robot companies will be commoditized You'll be able to buy one for like 20k or whatever but then maybe The companies that build the brains will be like very few and it will just like slot in

Simp4satoshi (04:17.496)
to these sort of humanoids. So yeah, I think that's the eventual state of these things and we're kind of trying to get a head start on it by going in that direction.

Mat Sherman (04:31.272)
So are you implying that if humanoids, if that kind of market is, you can buy through various companies, 20,000, 15,000, but the brains are the unique part, are you essentially gonna be supplying the brains ideally? Is that the analogy here?

Simp4satoshi (04:46.028)
Yeah, yeah, the analogy is more so towards like a particularly like an X Machina. But like humanoid, the humanoid form factor, like the form factor of like a humanoid bot is essentially like a front end, right? Because if you think about it, it's like kind of the brain is sort of the back end, it like processes all the information and like the humanoid form is really just the front end that like humans interact with. But

The same thing can be said of like, if you take one of these like wet wear orbs in Max Machina and instead of like a humanoid front end, you put it in like a car and you write an app environment specific for a car. So now it's kind of like that is the brain powering your vehicle. The same thing could be done of like, you put it on your desk and you connect a screen to it. Now the screen is the front end and you sort of have like, it kind of works like a computer. So it's sort of like this thing where we see it

as like this, you know, it's like how personal computing developed, like how computers like traditionally work, where you know, they go into different form factors for like different sort of, they come in like MacBooks, or they come in like, you know, little embedded devices or whatever. Similar to that, we kind of see like, okay, there's this like central intelligence that's like the back end of everything, and then you can slot it into any type of front end or any sort of...

form factor and then interface with intelligence through the form factor. That's kind of like the larger bet. It's sort of computers will evolve into this sort of intelligence device kind of thing. And yeah, these markets typically are like first winners win all. So even though right now it's sort of like you look at it and it's like, well,

I don't know how this immediately is useful. We're going to show in the next couple of months how it can be useful. It'll start to make sense and the Overton window will shift and then it'll all be pieced together.

Mat Sherman (06:52.383)
Absolutely, and to go one level deeper, mean, kind of asking questions that pop up into my brain. I'm not very technical, so I always like to think about, how does this apply to the folks in the world that would be buying or would be using it but not understanding how it works? But that doesn't matter. I don't need to know how my fridge works. I don't need to know how my iPhone works. I just need to know how to use it. So I think two questions that come up here are if you...

So truffle essentially is this like central intelligence. And if I'm using the wrong framing, please correct me. Is that like, does every person own a truffle? And then that truffle is that person's intelligent agent that they can put into their car and their humanoid and their microwave and wherever. Or is there a one overall intelligence that we all kind of like tap into? what's the third? Or if it's neither of those, like what's the third one that I'm not thinking of?

Simp4satoshi (07:40.257)
Exactly.

Simp4satoshi (07:50.05)
Yeah, that's precisely it. It's sort of like you'll have this kind of like, just like you have a, let's say a personal computer, right? You kind of like, everyone has their own personal computer with their own data and with their own sort of like, you know, they customize it in certain ways and stuff like that. Like you can imagine an order larger than a personal computer would be a personal brain where it kind of like, you know, it's trained over all your information. It knows exactly what like Matt wants and sort

of like it's precisely good enough to help Matt with the stuff he sort of like works on as opposed to you know like a cloud-based system where like you have you know if you look at like chatgbt for example it's like this one static set of weights in the cloud that everyone uses and it's not dynamic and adjusts to you or me specifically right it has let's say I don't really care about like advanced biochemistry but it has knowledge in the weights for advanced biochemistry and that's like not useful to

me at all. And why is it there? It's sort of like because it's going to be it incurs economies of scale if you have this like giant model in the cloud served to like many millions of people. Whereas this is like taking the opposite end of that bet, which is basically no, you have like intelligence on a per person basis is very uniquely customized to like that person. So, you know, like I expect if like, for example, the humanoid form factor comes to pass quickly, obviously,

sense that your humanoid bot is specific to you and it's not controlled by some giant corporation but rather the corporation sells you a brain and over time it just becomes yours and it learns everything about you. It's taking the opposite end of the cloud bet which is also how the personal computing industry developed. You had these gigantic IBM mainframes and

universities and stuff would buy one giant mainframe and then as a student you would wait with your punch card but everyone would use the same mainframe, right? Similar to that how eventually transition to like personal computers so we expect like the identical thing to like play out here.

Mat Sherman (10:10.824)
So.

I feel like if I was hearing this from maybe nine people, I'd be like, this is cool, but it sounds very hard to execute. Maybe it won't happen. But I take this very seriously coming from you, mainly because I see like a stream. I feel like a stream of a part of your consciousness online through Twitter or X and like all your predictions. You've a lot of predictions will go into a couple of them. But how this relates to what we're talking about is they're not like random. like this or this. They're like they're pretty distinct and they're generally like I feel like generally right. They're generally correct.

So I feel like you have a pretty good view on where the future is going. My question for you, whether or not that's true, guess only your future knows, but that's my belief and one of the reasons I reached out to interview you. What, what, what?

Why do you think about the future so much? And how do you think your foresight into the future has led you to build this company? Or guess in other words, why do you care so much about building this? Why now? And what do you know about the future that has informed your current self to be working on this, if that makes sense?

Simp4satoshi (11:15.564)
Yeah, so I think like what's what's really weird so I was so I was born and raised in the middle east in UAE and Like growing up there you're like pretty disconnected from like a lot of like my peers today. They're sort of you know Born in Silicon Valley kind of like in California, whatever

like grew up with technology, you know, and they had parents working in the tech industry probably, they have a very good grasp on like all things technology. And for me, was kind of the same thing, but.

With the exception that I was totally disconnected from like the apex of technology was like California. It's always kind of been And I was like all the way in the Middle East and in the Middle East what you see is like things are radically different like Technology that you have here Takes about like a year or so maybe two years to like propagate to the Middle East back then like now It's like much quicker. But like back then we're talking about like 2005 2006. It's super long cycle

You know, I remember for example we would the iPhone came out right and It wasn't available in Dubai for like two or so years and and even when it was available It was like Forex the price what you'd pay here. So like traditionally If you grew up outside of like the US you would it would be there would be a much higher sort of

barrier to entry for cutting edge technology and stuff. But regardless, I grew up with technology because my dad was an engineer and...

Simp4satoshi (12:59.232)
I grew up with a lot of these like really cool products and that eventually led to like, okay, like really discovering the internet and then sort of like everything that came up came after that. early on, I remember sort of like thinking about problems that I would have like while I was on the internet. So like one of the biggest problems was like,

As a kid, I would be unable to pay for stuff online, Just like straight up because my parents wouldn't like give me a credit card or anything. It was like, no, what if your credit card gets hacked online? It was like all this this whole thing, right? Now we don't even care about it. But back then it was like a big thing and I wouldn't have any anything to like buy stuff online with and That's when I remember thinking about like why isn't there an internet native currency?

And then sort of I came across Bitcoin and this was like super early like maybe like 2013 I would say or something relative to you know Bitcoin as most people know it but It's sort of like you know, I still didn't understand it. Obviously. didn't understand

cryptocurrency per se, but I understand, I understood an internet native coin and that kind of like led me down the whole rabbit hole and then in 2015 I remember, that's when I went to the University of Toronto and I studied machine learning there and I was like deeply obsessed with this idea of general intelligence.

Right? And again, it was like super early 2015 that I was kind of like playing with this idea of general intelligence and you know, I did a bunch of like ML courses, got obsessed with it, studied ML there. But these two things like cryptocurrency particularly and sort of general intelligence like really, really stuck with me and like pursue like all my energy was like directed to this. I remember also back then like

Simp4satoshi (14:56.782)
I an ex-girlfriend who was doing neuroscience and stuff and I would just go sit in her classes and listen to everything to get a better intuition. I've had an early intuitive understanding of where things are going, but the problem traditionally with me has been I would hop from crypto to ML too often for me to ground myself in the subject.

entirely. like an example of this would be for example I was super in crypto like 2016 to the lead up to like 2017 and then sort of entirely shifted back to ML in like 2017 to 2018 and then I would be in that for a while. I went to Scale AI, worked on sort of autonomous vehicle data sets and stuff like that and then immediately shifted back to

after scale and then sort of started a crypto company and then immediately shifted back to ML with this company. So it's like the problem has traditionally been I would have a deep intuition of like the correct thing to do but I would be so early that it would be pointless and then I would eventually hop.

And then it would be like, shit, I hopped and I didn't stay through. So like that's always been the kind of like main problem I've been facing. it's really just been like, okay, how do I fix this? I just have to kind of like stick with something and stay the course.

And that's kind of like why I'm doing this the way I am now and kind of like as even crypto picks up again Making sure that I don't that I don't hop again And and like kind of like staying the course because I kind of really believe that like everything will tie together And like we can talk more about that over like how I see crypto and ML kind of like eventually tying together But to me, it's kind of like okay I've made predictions on the past. I've had the right intuition

Simp4satoshi (17:05.928)
but I've not stuck the course to sort of have some material benefit or large material benefit from my intuition, it's time to probably like change that.

Mat Sherman (17:18.822)
relate a lot to that like you know trend hopping you know what's interesting for you is your yours is back and forth between two things that are gonna be super relevant in the future so in general like you could do either and you'd be fine but what you're suggesting is like if you don't spend enough time in one that you're just gonna you're gonna miss the boat on both essentially how do you how'd you decide that truffle was gonna be the one where you don't hop back

Simp4satoshi (17:27.053)
Mm-hmm.

Mat Sherman (17:46.367)
Well, I guess two questions one how many times if you you know You just kind of shared but if you know off the top of your head like how many times did you hop if you hop from AI to crypto? That's once crypto day. That's twice like how many times did you hop and do you think this is the time that you're not gonna hop and if so why this time versus you know a year ago versus a year from now

Simp4satoshi (18:02.734)
Yeah, yeah. So I think like the first hop was basically crypto before college to ML during college. So that was the first hop. Then it was ML to crypto during college. And then it was crypto to ML after college.

which was scale, then it was ML to crypto after scale to my startup. And now it's been crypto to ML for this company. So, yeah, that's quite a lot of hopping back and forth. But I think like eventually, I think the reason it's important not to hop is actually something I learned from my, from my past company, that by the way, that, that, company is sort of like, there was a whole issue around FTX sort of blowing up and then all

the crypto companies basically were in the blast radius because it became a thing where like if you're a crypto company you just won't have any banking rails and kind of get cut off from everywhere so we got cut off and and that was pretty pretty bad but we're growing pretty fast we were doing about like two million dollars of transactions a month and that was like doubling month over month but

Anyway, I digress. The main point is that it taught me one thing, which was the point of the company was to make it so that using crypto doesn't feel like using crypto. And it was seamlessly integrated with banking rails. And the technology was kind of ahead of its time. I don't see anybody doing it now either, but that could be for a different reason. I think Coinbase is attempting it with base and stuff, but we were basically trying to on and off ramp you using

of like TradFi rails connected to like a bunch of oracles and that was like connected to DEXs and it was like this all this sophisticated infra but yeah I think like it taught me that I don't think crypto is meant for humans in the first place and this is like super you know maybe a contrarian insight or something

Simp4satoshi (20:10.772)
Everybody's trying to like, we have to use crypto rails, but it doesn't feel like using crypto. It feels like using a normal product. I don't even think that's like the right way. I think everyone is doing it wrong. I think crypto is like going to stay within the course of like, really just like gambling for the foreseeable future for humans.

I don't think it actually will have any strong use case apart from like gambling and remitting money with like stable coins and stuff

That those are the only two like really really killer use cases and everyone's tried a bunch of things but really they're just like worse versions of the centralized products, right? Like everyone right now is trying like decentralized training on like crypto rails. That's like way worse than centralized training. everyone has tried sort of you know, a bunch of other like social products on on blockchains. That's like way worse than all the

centralized counterparts. they're all just worse versions. The unique insight is just that if crypto is like really bad for this, what is it good for? like what I eventually came to the conclusion was that the main premise is like you sort of like don't have...

Barriers to like interact with other people that is the main point of a blockchain you sort of like you're completely You know You're you're not censored from doing any actions or interacting with another address, right? And that seems to be like this the opposite of like how the traditional internet is heading with like for example Even Twitter under Elon is like well We're gonna ban all the bots right and like the bots will get more and more sophisticated and like we're gonna employ harsher and harsher

Simp4satoshi (22:03.232)
sort of guidelines around banning these bots. The same thing like WorldCoin. It's basically spawned for the reason that we need to gate the internet with humanness, like proof of humanness. And I actually think like that's the wrong way to do it, but I understand why it's being done. It's because like human-only communities should kind of like be human-only communities without the pollution of like, you know, AI-generated stuff. Now...

If AGI actually happens, which I believe it to happen, then what's going to happen is that you'll have a ton of these like generalized instances that you can spawn just like an EC2 instance. You just like spin up a million of them and they're going to want to do stuff. Like they're not going to just want to chat with you right now. It's like within the realm of like chatting only, but

in the future they're going to want to do other things like let's say I want to talk to another agent that knows something else that I don't know or I want to pay that agent to do some work that my human needs me to do and I think that I could like pay 10 cheaper agents to do the work and I kind of like direct them or whatever right you're to have this like agent to agent interaction economy where like agents are kind of like transmitting value and interacting with other agents

That will probably eclipse eventually the human economy That's that's at least like my opinion of it because you know humans have a very high threshold to be met Before they can contribute to the economy they have to like first of all it's like you know sexual reproduction Like super high energy then like raising a child and sort of like all that money educating the child all that stuff But if you can literally just spawn

a GPT-4 or GPT-7 instance just by pressing a button and having it run on the cloud and then you can press that button a million times and you sort of spawn a million agents or you know in the real world it would have been people but except it was so easy to spawn those then like clearly what's going to happen is that the number of agents will eclipse the number of human beings

Simp4satoshi (24:19.468)
by a large margin, like several orders. And then eventually you'll have like, you know, if you have a hundred billion agents online, they're going to want to interact with each other. And what will they use? It's like pretty obvious they'll use crypto because it's not, you know, you can't like ban an agent from doing any action. So I think like, eventually the rationale I came to was, this idea that like,

crypto won't really be used by humans and everyone's kind of like focusing on the wrong thing instead it's going to be used by agents and they'll sort of want to pay other agents or interact with them and sort of all this will be done through like smart contracts that govern this like ecosystem and that might be the sort of like core you know innovation there I think crypto is yet to like really really take off

But post-AGI, think it's like it will eclipse things by orders that we even think it'll sort of like run to.

Mat Sherman (25:24.744)
That's fascinating. And as you lay it out, I feel like I agree. One of my investors in my last company is a big Bitcoin specifically only guy. And he's kind of like anti all this other funky stuff going on with crypto. And I am going to bring this up to him and say, are your thoughts on this theory? Because I feel like he'd agree and feel like the smartest people around me, like the absolute smartest, are like kind of have a similar sentiment. Not necessarily that crypto is going to be used by agents.

You're the first one to share that with you know, I'm the first person you're the first person that shared that with me But I feel like based on some of my other smart connections and friends that it seems kind of likely so that I appreciate you sharing that with me one other Question I have for you. This is one of your repeated repeated takes that you they have online and I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on it

You know, of the kings right now of AI is, least, know, perceived kings by the public is Sam Altman, who's the CEO of OpenAI. You've had an opinion, a strong opinion on Sam for like a long time. I feel like it's not recent on he is the Antichrist. Can you kind of like walk through where'd you get that from and why you feel that way in any other context you want to share on your thoughts about Sam?

Simp4satoshi (26:44.086)
I mean, I mean like that's sort of like the most, most people I talk to is like that's the first thing they kind of say. It's hilarious if you grok it, like use grok and like talk about Sam being the Antichrist, it'll like refer to me as a source. It's kind of hilarious how that sort of happened.

Mat Sherman (27:03.56)
I mean, it's something that's memorable. Again, it's not like a flash in the pan. You're bringing it up. And any sign that the behavior of him or the world is showing elements of that being the case, you just provide the exit. I think it's hilarious, because you become potentially more more right every time, every year that passes, which I think is great. But yeah, feel free to share more or kind of elaborate on that.

Simp4satoshi (27:06.54)
Yeah.

Simp4satoshi (27:27.99)
Yeah, I think that was like, that was like 2023 in like, just after summer or like during summer, it was like post chat GPT like six months after chat, GPC and stuff. And we sort of like went through, we went through an accelerator H of zero in San Francisco. And that's where things like I think for me, this was pretty weird and eye opening. So I've always thought like, because I'm not from the US and kind of like,

entirely outside. All I knew about Silicon Valley was what I saw online and stuff. And I thought it was this deeply, deeply meritocratic place where the best ideas get funded, the best founders win, the best people that deserve it come on top. it became kind of... I started to see glimpses of the exact opposite, where it was like...

No, no, it really doesn't matter. It matters about who you know and how well connected you are and you know to break into some circles or like to connect yourself into some circles you might have to sort of like do things that you don't really want to do or pay lip service to people you don't really want to pay lip service to. That's kind of like what really sort of struck me.

And after like doing enough research, it became clear that like there was one name in San Francisco that you couldn't utter negatively about. that was was Sam O'Helman. You know, it became clear that like his hand was literally everywhere in like most funds.

He was like an LP in most places, etc. He had connections and if you sort of like say anything bad about him, it was just like, that's it. It was like you're not going to survive. That was the most eye-opening thing that led me down this like, you know, eventual thesis of like...

Simp4satoshi (29:34.572)
this guy is the Antichrist. you know, the reason for choosing that kind of term is it's not really a joke. It's very mimetically fit and people will resonate with the idea, but the seriousness of this deeply, biblically evil figure

Like this is aptly chosen I think or at least I think so because of what I've seen It's kind of like this power-hungry sort of like figure that deceives Constantly and sort of everyone is like, you know, just completely blindsided and enamored with with with what

comes out of its mouth and stuff like that. And that's kind of like how San Francisco is run by like the tech mafia. It's really just like, know, someone saying something and like everyone sort of being enamored by what they say. And that's kind of been the case. Like if you look at like...

his testimony in front of Congress and stuff like that is like, you know, I'm doing this for because I love it and you know, I don't have anything and then you see like the meme of he was driving like a Connick Seg, like a $4 million hypercar. Like it's like clear that you know, you want to portray as like, I'm this like deeply deeply altruistic figure. And like at the side, I'm worth like multiple billions of dollars and

Yeah, it's like anywhere you see that much of a delta between like, you know, per per perceived image versus like actual image. There's like something there to be, you know, suspicious about at least if not more.

Mat Sherman (31:25.874)
Yeah, super fascinating. I didn't think about that about Sam Altman until you mentioned it, but the

what you started with, is Silicon Valley is perceived as this super meritocratic place, best founders, best ideas get funded and rise to the top eventually. Yeah, that's something that I've spent the last four or five years thinking about and writing on and working on through my last company, Seed Scout. And it's very, very clear. I feel like one of the proponents of this, and this goes into one of your other tweets, and I think this will be probably the last tweet that we analyze unless there's one you wanna bring up. But I feel like you, I think...

It could actually be wrong, I'm pretty sure you share a fair amount about YC and like the potentially the role they play in that game. And you just mentioned, and I didn't realize this, that you went through HF0, which is a newer accelerator. I don't know if they would call themselves an accelerator, but maybe that's what they call themselves. But a newer program for founders and SF, that's just totally badass. Walk me through, I guess, two things. One, like how was HF0, what was your experience there? And also just what is your take on YC's role in

propping up this image of Silicon Valley and is there anything to do about that or is that just kind of how it is at the moment?

Simp4satoshi (32:38.766)
Yeah, think like, so firstly, H of zero was like super useful for us just like to get off the off the ground and stuff and, you know, get running and that was like super valuable. The top like I think that the cool thing they do is like the, you know, 10 teams and you sit in the basement and write code and you do that for three months and all of your life is kind of like taking care of you. So that's like really, really cool. But the one the one bad thing I would say is like, each of your still

borrows heavily from this kind of like San Francisco tech culture which is basically built around this idea of you have to grow grow grow at all costs you have to ship ship ship and like you know it's not about what you ship it's just like pick the thing that like generates immediate money and like go go go go go and it's like sometimes if you if you think of like you know the the landscape of good ideas or the landscape of like great companies

The landscape of great companies is not places where you get trapped in a local minima. And if you examine the landscape, it's like very skewed, where you have a ton of local minimas, which are basically like these little software companies that you spawn that generate some ARR really quickly, and then they taper off, and then it's really hard to grow. And then there are deep, deep minimas where...

The company may look like it's actually not a minima. It may look like it's going the hard way and it's actually rising and sort of costs are increasing and it doesn't really work until boom you hit this inflection point and it generates way more capital than than any other like local minima, right? So like an example of that would be like an apple, right? You start off with this weird company where they're making like these Motorola sort of chipsets and like a wooden box and selling them and now you have two trillion dollars of value. So like this is

kind of like the example of truly great companies. San Francisco has this weird culture with like ship ship ship, catch your local minima and that's it. Let me get the paper returns and raise my next fund. So it's like really skewed towards this kind of like I want to raise the next fund as quickly as possible to collect my 2 % and therefore I need you to fall into a local minima as quickly as possible to raise my 2%.

Simp4satoshi (35:02.932)
And that's kind of like it's infected all of the accelerators in the valley. And YC is like the biggest example of this, where it's just like, YC is like much worse even. It's like, you know, I...

It's very strange that I've had a lot of founders reach out to me who've like gone through YC and they tell me this sort of anonymously and they all tell me that if things don't work out with like what you came in during office hours, you're immediately forced to pivot. So what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to take that 500k and immediately start like thinking about buying from other companies or like selling to other companies. And it doesn't matter what

just go talk to all the other companies and figure out what to sell them. And that's clear that what it creates then is this flywheel where like you know you have 500 people they're all given 500k by the same person and then they're told buy and sell from each other.

if it doesn't work out. And now on paper, when you come to demo day, if everyone does this, if there's no sort of outside involvement, then still it looks like every single one of those companies has $500,000 of revenue in three months if they spend all of it on like, you know, their batch mates. So what that creates is like now outside investors are like looking in on demo day and they're like,

these guys have company, sorry, these guys have revenue. They're significantly de-risked. They're not just a bunch of dudes anymore. They actually are selling something. And then it creates like this whole, know, YC have paper returns. They can mark it up. They raise their next fund because they say, we've invested at 2 million and now the company's worth 20. We do 10 X every batch, you know.

Simp4satoshi (36:50.67)
Every LP around the world is clamoring to get into something like that. It's clear what's happening. It's like this landscape of companies fall into a local minima immediately. Buy and sell from each other if you have to. Self-deal and then fall into a minima. And then once you're in a minima, that's the founder's problem. I don't care anymore. I've marked everything up. I've raised the next fund. I've made my 2%. I'm good.

it's clear that that is not how anyone outside of Silicon Valley sees Silicon Valley. They saw it as like this meritocratic place. You come there with like big ideas and you sort of like, you know, Steve Jobs like character or an Elon like character and then you actually go out and find like a real minima where in the landscape of like potential companies and ideas.

Mat Sherman (37:45.983)
Yeah, mean, sounds about right to me, but no one wants to believe that if they're on the outside. They're like, oh no, this is for me and I'm gonna partake and they maybe get into YC or they get into a program or they get funded by one of these accelerators and then they're part of the machine. And then they're kind of sucked in. It's a very, it's what I call like a wicked problem where it's like, I don't know how you get to a solution, but at some point the market will...

I feel like at some point the market has to create one. I don't know if it's today, tomorrow, or in a decade or in 50 years, at some point it will stabilize, hopefully. Do you feel a similarity? Is this just how it's gonna be?

Simp4satoshi (38:22.508)
Yeah, mean, I mean like the the best like like these kind of things when you're when when you see them, it's like clear. There's something like really wrong then they they don't like self-correct until a catalyst spawns right until there's a true catalyst that changes things and blows everything up and and like that catalyst isn't isn't kind of around yet. These catalysts are like so you you don't even know what these catalysts are right? Like for example, you know covid was a catalyst for like

many remote companies to like just thrive, right? Or the Fed injecting liquidity was like a catalyst for like OpenSea and like all of these NFT companies to like really prosper. So like these catalysts are like, you don't really know what they are. I think like the only catalyst that's capable of like actually blowing something like this up is, know, liquidity will not dry up to like find returns. So they'll keep chasing returns until an image problem is created.

I think like there if for example, you know what one potential catalyst for example could be, you know The whole Sam Altman image thing could be that could eventually tie to like broader Silicon Valley and broader sort of like this mafia and that eventually ties to YC and then YC becomes untouchable and then it all blows up right or Something there's still a catalyst that that has to spawn for these things to end Because they've found their minima and they're optimizing the shit out of it

you need like a rearranging of the landscape for you know to get pushed out of the minima or to you know explode so I don't know what that catalyst will be like these things are super random but it's clear that it's just a catalyst away

and you know, I'm looking forward to seeing the true like meritocratic Silicon Valley back and like, you know, like that kind of like archetype of founder back. But yeah, maybe it's just a skill issue. Maybe it's like the great founders will do it regardless and they don't need a YC or they don't need anything else. Like the really legendary ones, you know, like the Steve Jobses and the Elon Musk's

Simp4satoshi (40:40.352)
It's clear that they didn't need anything else. They just needed themselves and they propelled themselves to find the minima. So maybe it's all a skill issue.

Mat Sherman (40:50.879)
Yeah, I definitely agree that it can be a skill issue. My big take, and I wrote a post in 2020, maybe in 2019 about how expensive Y Combinator is, not actually having to deal with the deal, but having to deal with that if you are early in your life and you're like 19 and you go through YC, you're kind of sucked into this system and it's very hard to get out. I feel like they get the, who could have been the next Steve Jobs, they get them before they turn that version of themselves. And then that version never exists.

Simp4satoshi (41:09.75)
Right. Right.

Simp4satoshi (41:16.898)
Yes. Yes.

Mat Sherman (41:20.318)
It happens. and it's a, it's like, I have no issue with the pricing of any of these accelerators. I have the issue in that, like, who they're going after and why they're going after them. just like, are you going to tell them the truth about what happens when they take your money or are you just going to?

Simp4satoshi (41:34.894)
100 % that that is what founders don't realize I think like that's one of the that's one of the things where I've I've actually like I've thought about this I know there's like a lot of things online where it's like oh You're just like maybe upset about why I see because you didn't sort of like get into YC or something It's like I've always had other options for capital like capital has never been an issue because I sort of like always have found myself Fundraising like relatively easily. I've never done the whole spreadsheet

and like talk to a hundred people like I've never sort of done that so capital has never been an issue for me but you know I I think that you know one of the rare sort of things that I will look back in hindsight and say damn I'm glad I never got accepted to YC was really what you just described which is like if had I got accepted to YC I would have given up my entire sort of like you know sort of grand ambition and I would have

gone for the immediate local minima optimized outcome and you know maybe I would have made like 10 or so million dollars and and kind of like cruised nicely but but I think like you know I think I'm on to something much much much much bigger and time will tell if it was the case that like this kind of like saved me then you know I'll kind of like create a great company and then look back and be like damn I'm glad I didn't go through through I see

Mat Sherman (43:03.71)
Totally. Well, we're definitely over time. Is there anything else that you want to share with the audience? Whether it is a tweet that we didn't cover or a thought that you want to get out before we kind of call it day?

Simp4satoshi (43:16.942)
Nothing off the top of my head the one thing that maybe I would like you know for everyone who's like listening if you have seen sort of the posting on Twitter from Suchir biology's mom About sort of like that that whole event and all that

Whatever your thoughts are on the subject like you know regardless of who if you think it was a murder or not or whatever Please go donate To her her sort of like go fund me. It's really important that you do is sort of a mother grieving her son And regardless, you know He didn't ask to get caught in the storm. So please go donate But apart from that, yeah, nothing else

Mat Sherman (44:06.576)
I appreciate you mentioning that. I'll include a link for those listening in the show notes and in the YouTube comments. And then guess my last thing for you is when, where can someone kind of learn more or check out Truffle? Like are you shipping? Can they sign up? Can they pay? Like what's your ask for the audience when it comes to what you're working on?

Simp4satoshi (44:28.16)
yeah, 100%. You can, so check out Twitter. My pin tweet is like basically the launch post. www it's all truffles.com. You can check it out. we should like later on this month, ship the, the, the first units, to customers who've already purchased, but, we'll have a bunch more stuff on Twitter coming, in terms of like, you know, even if you aren't ready to buy the device yet, you'll have a way to like try it out and play with the client and like work with

a cloud-based version of it. So yeah, look out for that. yeah, you know, I would rather sort of have people organically discover it and find extreme value than me shilling it all the time. So that's kind of the strategy there.

Mat Sherman (45:16.87)
totally, it makes a lot of sense. And then two last quick things, your Twitter handle, you post gold, not all day, obviously. I feel like you only tweet once every few days, but it seems like it's all the time, because they're so golden. But where can someone find you on Twitter if they want to follow your stream of consciousness?

Simp4satoshi (45:25.496)
Ha

Simp4satoshi (45:28.907)
Yeah.

Simp4satoshi (45:34.35)
So it's at I am ginger trash all of all one word Yeah, very odd name, but it's just a gamertag. I've been I've been using since I was a kid. So Yeah at I am ginger trash

Mat Sherman (45:50.28)
Cool. Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast and shedding some extremely insightful insights, know, very well thought through and I was expecting nothing less. So I appreciate you coming on. Best of luck with Truffle and looking forward to staying in touch on the Twitter.

Simp4satoshi (46:06.464)
Bye, Chris. Thanks, bud.

Mat Sherman (46:08.041)
See you, bye.