2025년 AI 혁명: 구글도 무너뜨린 인공지능의 미래 전략

Google Adwords and Google search is dead.

 About 15 months ago, I would go to a crowd.

 I'd be like, "Stand up.

" If you were now using chat GPT or whatever instead of what you would use Google for, 10% would stand up and it would shock people.

 We were just in Vegas or Atlanta.

 I don't know where we were, but I asked the same question.

 Actually, stand up.

 Jesus, this is a real number.

 Stand up.

 I need everybody to see this.

 The people that are standing right now use chat GBT or something else to look up stuff they used to use Google for.

 Oh boosted up.

 If Google perfectly executes Gemini, they're still going to lose an extraordinary amount of market share in their biggest financial driver.

 There's nothing they can do.

 Where do you think techn is going? So what is AI going to mean on a practical sense? I mean, I think it means that the robots will kill our children.

 And that's fine cuz the dinosaurs lost.

 Um, I think this is as big as it gets.

 This one's really ch again because I went through one, web one, went web two, web three, and now we're whatever we're going to call this.

 every other time when I understood what email was and I understood what search engines were.

 And that's how I built my daddy's liquor store to a big company with no money.

 I had time.

 I was plotting in 96.

 I was plotting and executing in '97.

 I was plotting and executing in '98, 99, 2000.

 And then somewhere in 2003, like people caught up, technology caught up.

 when Twitter and Facebook and YouTube Today's YouTube's 20th birthday right now.

 So it's April what? 20 what? Think three.

 So April 23, 2005.

 I started Wine Library TV, a 5day a week, 20 minute wine show on YouTube on February 21st, 2006.

 So less than a year of its even existence, I was already full pledge allin.

 And technology was different back then.

 New apps adoption now is fast.

 Back then, you know, like that was crazy fast to go all in.

 And I thought that YouTube was gonna change my life and it did.

 I had time.

 2006, 7 8 I'm in rooms in 2009.

 I'm like this YouTube thing and people are like what? That's 3 years.

 The technology barely changed in those three years.

 this [ __ ] game.

 I'm like [ __ ] down like playing with a new AI thing and they're like this is the craziest LLM ever and I'm like and I'm like this is [ __ ] amazing and like an hour later like that's [ __ ] This just came out and I'm like [ __ ] this is fast.

 The the the general nature of the technology means like almost anything that gets created immediately gets commoditized.

 That's insanity.

 Like we're in some real [ __ ] Like no matter who's most bullish and thinks this is crazy as [ __ ] in the room right now, it's crazier than that.

 So what do I think? I think we've never seen the landscape of the tech change so fast, which makes it very hard.

 The reason I haven't even started investing or signing big deals for my advertising agency, like the second you think it's this, I mean, I'd be petrified to sign a one-year deal with an AI platform that locked me in because I literally know an hour later there might be something that's better and cheaper.

 It's like real [ __ ] So, where do I think it plays out? I think even the best thinkers, I've won on pattern recognition, on my natural skills.

 I know a lot of other people that have as well.

 I I and I'm just watching all of them and myself struggle with making the right key decisions because of the speed in which things get commoditized.

 And I would argue that is the punchline of the whole thing.

 I think the nature of the tech commoditizes everything including critical thinking.

 And so what the [ __ ] does that mean? I have no idea.

 Um but I'm excited to find out.

 You know, I'm not scared of it.

 Like I I believe more than I believe in how powerful the technology of AI is.

 I believe in the human spirit.

 I believe in that in a way that would make your head spin.

 I believe that human beings are the single most underrated thing in the world.

 And I also think it's happening at a time where the last 15 years of propaganda has made most of the people in this room in the world believe the counter.

 And I think that's the actual arbitrage.

 And so that's what I'm going to spend my time on.

 Fun fact, actually Gary and I met because he was using one of SPC's companies that helps people understand how they appear in AI search.

 So you want to be first as we move from Google search to AI search.

 And Gary's one of the first people using the product.

 Yeah.

 And that goes back to patent recognition.

 I I won because I decided that Ask Jeeves and Dogpile and Yahoo and Google were more important than the yellow pages when every small local business thought the yellow pages was life.

 To me, in my brain as I sit here today, Google Adwords and Google search is dead.

 It's not fully dead because it's alive right now, but it's [ __ ] dead.

 The fact that already in my search bar in my little laptop, I no longer by default go to Google.

 But even more interesting, [ __ ] me, I use things fast.

 The fact that I'm speaking at conferences, Dustin, where are you? Dustin, who travels the world with me in films.

 Dustin, you've seen this play out the last year.

 About 15 months ago, I would go to a crowd, especially if it was 40, 50, 60 year olds.

 I'd be like, stand up in this audience right now if you are now using, you know, an chat GPT or whatever.

 I would spit out instead of what you would use Google for and as you know Dust 15 months ago more people than the crowd thought a lot more like 10% would stand up and it would shock people because 15 months ago that crowd hadn't even really heard about it all the way yet we were just in Vegas or Atlanta I don't know where we were but I asked the same question the whole [ __ ] room stood up by the way in advertising land Ben Allison one of our main most important media execut cutives in our 2,000 person company.

 Google [ __ ] search is foundational to every Fortune 5000 company in the world, let alone the longtail, it's dead.

 If Google perfectly executes Gemini perfectly, they're still going to lose an extraordinary amount of market share for that behavior intentbased sales.

 So, like, think about what Google's thinking about.

 Like if everything goes remarkable for the next five years, they're going to lose a ton of market share in their biggest financial driver.

 I don't know how to short stocks, but like these are like there's nothing they can do.

 So to your point, for me, what I learned in 1998 and 99 and when you you know, I bought Google Adwords the day it came out, but that's SEM, that's marketing, SEO.

 all the [ __ ] we did in the H1 and all the [ __ ] I was learning back there in the title and like I got to show up first when people type in wine.

 Well, that's playing out again, isn't it? In a different way.

 And so for me, I'm not romantic or emotional about yesterday.

 I'm obsessed with today.

 I think another mistake I know a lot of you will make is you're going to overb tomorrow.

 A lot of you are so sharp in the tech, you're going to do things that the human consumer is not going to catch up to fast enough and you're going to be too out in front.

 So keep that in mind.

 You're too smart.

 You two get it, but your timings were going to be wrong from a business lens.

 It will happen.

 Uber Uber happened before.

 It was called Magic Cab.

 It just came out 6 years earlier.

 It was too early.

 The iPhone wasn't there yet.

 So one thing I would definitely recommend all of you as you build out your stuff is think about is the consumer there.

 A lot of you will build bit B2B so the consumer will be there but if you're building out B2B ask yourself why they won't buy it cuz you're going to get real ideological and you're going to be like it's a better product that has nothing to do with anything.

 Salesforce is not best product.

 So I think you know these are the things I think about.

 You speak so much about humans and kindness.

 The AI influencer, the AI person that's not real.

 How does that intersect with that? AI influencers are real.

 That's how I don't know if you heard, but we can't tell the difference.

 Obviously, we can still tell.

 Is exactly right.

 There's ones we can tell and there's already ones we can't tell.

 18 months ago, you could tell every time.

 18 months from now, you won't be able to tell anytime.

 And so, we're in this middle transition where everyone is consuming AI influencers right now without knowing it.

 There's still enough average tech that we're seeing the bad versions of it, but [ __ ] we're already here.

 There's And so, everyone in this room has probably consumed an AI influencer with and we're like looking for it cuz we're in it and still didn't know.

 And so the brain will consume it as real.

 Thus, it's real.

 AI influencers are going to do to influencers what influencers did to Hollywood.

 All the, you know, all the influencers that are like, "Oh man, I'm more famous than actors on Netflix.

 This is awesome.

" They're about to be really sad because they're about to be way less in, you know, famous than people that don't even exist, owned by people in this room.

 There's people here who are going to build the next Disney, but it's just going to be 7,000 human beings.

 It's unprecedented times.

 Um, but what do I think about it? I think about it as human itself evolves.

 I would argue that a caveman would look at all of us right now and be like, "This isn't [ __ ] humans.

" [ __ ] changes.

 We just happen to be alive when this change is happening.

 So, to answer your first question, cuz I deviated, I genuinely believe that nice guys finish first.

 I think the reason that kindness is the pillar to my business is why wouldn't it be? If you're trying to build something meaningful and long-term, the number one way to win is continuity in relationships.

 I think most people are transactional.

 I think people want short-term wins.

 My life is a marathon hopefully.

 Actually, I had a full 4-hour checkup today at Atria.

 Looks like I'm going to live for quite a while.

 You know, like, you know, and by the way, everybody who shits on AI, the number one thing I would say is, do you even understand what this is going to do to modern medicine? Like, you're crying about like a designer losing its job, your [ __ ] mother's going to live for 17 years longer because of this [ __ ] Like, like this is profound.

 So, the nicest thing I just think is logical.

 I think if you know, look, this was, by the way, the only time I've ever been aggressively booed on stage in my career was when I started a South by Southwest keynote with [ __ ] Steve Jobs at the height of his popularity.

 And the point I was trying to make was Steve's all-time incredible, especially for someone like me, cuz Steve's a lot more me than he is you, you know, product human.

 But like that's what he brought to the table, right? But he was a dick face, so [ __ ] him.

 And that's how I see the life.

 It's literally how I see life.

 That is not what I admire.

 I'm I respect the living [ __ ] out of what he accomplished professionally, but that's just not how I see life.

 I, you know, I do not believe that like not being nice is a good idea.

 And so that's not what I respect.

 And and I can tell you right now, one of my great goals is to be wildly professionally successful so that other people copy my behavior.

 Because what bothered me about Steve, what led me to say that was I watched a lot of kids like this at Y Combinator, at all these places force themselves to be mean to their team even though it wasn't in their spirit cuz they thought that was cool because everyone was looking up to Steve.

 And so I was trying to make a bigger point.

 It's not even about Steve.

 It's about that humanity and humility and graciousness.

 These are strengths.

 It's easy to be a dick.

 It really is.

 It's hard to be the bigger person when confronted with bad behavior.

 Torcha.

 In Russian superstition, if someone sneezes after you say something, it means it's true.

 So, I thank you, sir.

 So that's the answer to the first question.

 I've heard you talk about how like recommendation engines have made your followers less important and any good content can get picked up.

 So yes, these people probably have never posted before.

 How does a technical person in today's world get started? Well, first they have to decide if they even want to.

 Like I do not believe that building a personal brand is a prerequisite for business success cuz the data is black and white.

 There's a drillion businesses that are crushing that has no face to it.

 I do believe that if you are interested in it or capable of it that it is a moat.

 I would actually argue if we're talking about AI, intellectual property is going to be the only thing left.

 One could argue if you play out the chess moves of all the [ __ ] you're all thinking about that the only thing left is IP.

 Both intellectual property property, hence why I've been building Vfriend friends, my Pokemon, my Marvel, and then ultimately you, the human.

 Like, I don't know.

 You guys know this [ __ ] better than I do.

 Sounds like all this shit's going to do everything.

 So, what's left? And as long as the laws are in place the way they're in place, the only thing left is NIL and IP, name, image, and likeness, intellectual property.

 So, if you're one of these people that believes you want to cuz you think there's value in it, you think it'll help you raise money, you think it'll help you get good employees, these are all real things.

 If you're teched the [ __ ] out, I think you get started on LinkedIn if it's this crew.

 I think LinkedIn, Google shorts because don't forget YouTube is still the second YouTube shorts, excuse me, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world.

 So, you get a lot of longtail and you can go very nerdy.

 You can make a video that is like as nerdy as you want to go.

 Title it that way.

 As you know, there's going to be a small group of people that are going to search that too and they're going to find you.

 So, I think I'm a big fan of YouTube shorts and LinkedIn for this audience.

 If their objectives are to create demand for venture raising, create demand for talent.

 I'm sure a lot of you are thinking every day of like you're in an arms race for the best talent.

 How are you going to outpace a top 10 tech company that is willing to pay a hell of a lot more? You will get lucky slash it will work because some people are ready to own their own thing and that's what you're trading on.

 But the other way is somebody's just going to want to work with you because you said something they liked.

 So those would be places I would go.

 The other thing I would say I think I think people you know even when you said most of these people probably didn't post.

 I think we overgeneralize around tech individuals not being charismatic not having gifted gab.

 Look I've worked with a lot of engineers.

 We can all agree this room right now doesn't look like the Tik Tok creator summit that's going on right now.

 So, yes, there's generalizations that are true, but what I also know is a lot of people here are incredibly incapable of making videos.

 I would also say for the ones here who are most self-deprecating or even not kind to yourself, you do not have to be gift of gab [ __ ] the words flow.

 You definitely don't have to be attractive.

 This is a game of the value.

 If you put a camera down and just spit your [ __ ] game of the [ __ ] you really know, even if it's not dynamically done, it will find the audience that needs it or wants it.

 There are plenty of other [ __ ] nerds who are really excited about your 18 sentences in a row that are grounded in truth of the depths of technology who are going be like, "That's my [ __ ] dude.

" You understand? It's really important to understand like you don't need to be Logan Paul and Charlie D'Amelio and Alex Earl, but when you talk not charismatically, not dynamically, you're going to have to [ __ ] rely on the weight of the strength of the words that are coming out of your mouth.

 So if you if you're not dynamic and your [ __ ] knowledge is surface level, now you're [ __ ] dead.

 But if you've got it like that, in the same way that I made a statement earlier, because I've spent thousands of hours thinking about AI the last two years, and I can say to a room that is deep in it, nothing has any weight.

 if this plays out.

 Besides IP and NIL, my whole career has been going to Y Cominator and Techrunch Disrupt and all these things where I'm the least qualified tech person in the room, but I end up being the most historically correct because tech is the cost of entry to be in the game, right? Like what is always like for all the people that didn't understand how the wiring of social networks was going to work, they were in trouble already.

 But I spend enough time understanding the basic needs of things you need to understand.

 But I then play on a different place which is the human behavior, the multiple steps.

 And the other thing I do well that I would implore all of you to give thought to is the second you're tunnel vision on just the technology, you're dead.

 The second you're tunnel vision on just a consumer, you're dead.

 You have to blend 7 to 12 different dynamics that are playing out including government.

 I've got lots of thoughts on this [ __ ] but it could all be upheld if China, Russia, and the US are like, "Fuck that shit.

" Even though we [ __ ] hate each other, we got to align on this [ __ ] cuz this shit's too big.

 So, there's just a lot to think through.

 But, you know what? Do I think I think half this room can easily crush on making content on the internet.

 My argument is that the way the algorithms are working, we no longer even live in social media.

 We now live in interest media.

 the things you're interested in are coming to you, not who you follow and what they post.

 So, I I would argue social media is fully dead.

 We're fully in interest media.

 And I would say the way that the AI algorithms are working is it's transcribing the words that are coming out of your mouth and putting in front of people who are likely to be interested in what you're talking about.

 So, the deeper you go, it's really, this is a good one.

 It's really no different than prompt engineering.

 If you [ __ ] put out [ __ ] you're going to [ __ ] not attract anything.

 But if you really go there in depths, and it is not based on the surface level part, it's the words.

 It's the words.

 And so I would recommend everyone do it because there's fundamentally little to no downside.

 The little the downside of making content on the internet is that 99% of the people in this room are insecure and people don't like to post when they're insecure because people don't like three views.

 People don't like you're ugly as a comment from an anonymous person on the internet.

 And so most of the people here will not achieve their upside in this medium because of their insecurities.

 And I asked them to stop being insecure because every other person on earth sucks at a lot of things too.

 Thank you.

 My last question before we let you all be insecure is I spoke to a bunch of people that have worked with you and they said the most important value that you hold is kindness and business.

 Why is that the case? I think if you're I for many reason I mean look because I was parented well and I got lucky with DNA.

 That's probably like real to me.

 Like why am I nice? because Tamara Vaynerchuk is nice and she molded me perfectly.

 I also happen to share her DNA so it was an easier thing for her to mold.

 But what also worked out for me is I love business a lot.

 And what that means is I'm going to be one of those individuals who will not retire.

 Like, and what I mean by that is, of course, as I continue to get older and my family dynamics change and things, you know, life, there'll be times where I'm not working 15, 16 hours a day.

 But at 89, if I'm not doing that, I promise you, I wish I was.

 This is my joy.

 This is my craft.

 I would rather be in the office than ski, than surf, than cook.

 Probably outside watching the New York Jets.

 You know, there's not many things.

 maybe the Knicks, but I'm a little bit pissed right now.

 Um, there's just not many things I'd rather do than building companies.

 It is truly my hobby.

 I It is the currency of my brain, my hopes, my dreams.

 It's enjoyable because because I like building them 360.

 There are many people in here who will not achieve their business goals because the main goal is the financial output of the business.

 And that will be directly the reason it doesn't happen.

 Because what will happen is they will take shortcuts.

 They will take investment.

 They will find partners.

 They will even decide their product based on what they think will maximize the financial impact.

 And that is why they will lose.

 This is a lot of fun for me because I've been in this room before.

 Um, and and and this is a really incredible era.

 The reason I'm here selfishly, what I just talked about is this is next.

 Like it's there's no confusion.

 Like I've seen this movie before.

 You know, there's a lot of kids in here.

 One of the few things that's fun about getting older is you've seen the movie before.

 And if you're smart about pattern recognition, you know what to do.

 And this is 1997 Internet 1.

0.

 I I was really there.

 The reason I did so well in web 2.

0 was I watched the whole movie of web 1.

0 and I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] this is 96 all over again.

 It's just 2006.

 I know what to do this time.

 I'm not just going to use AOL and PayPal and Amazon.

 I'm going to invest in these things.

" That's what you just rattled off.

 Web 3 is also real.

 The NFT thing, similar to web one, the greed in NFT land, confused people to the importance of the technology.

 In fact, it's inconceivable to me that the smartest of the group here that thinks about AI doesn't also understand that the blockchain itself is one of the most important components of how the chess moves will play out if AI does all the things it promises to do.

 back to how important intellectual property will be, how important verifying deep fake videos is going to be.

 Like if AI accomplishes everything we all know it will, it only increases the importance of the technology known as blockchain.

 So there's like, you know, so it's just it's a really fun thing to to be here.

 Uh and I'm just really grateful to be here.

 We're all grateful, too.

 Um, thank you.

 Uh, let's open it up to some questions.

 Um, yeah.

 What's your name? My name is Nick.

 Nick.

 Pleasure.

 Um, you're in a room of like founders, builders, entrepreneurs.

 How do you know when you're directionally correct and when you want to drop something? Because yeah, there's so many like how do you you don't want to invest too much time and money, runway, resources.

 When do you know when you're correct and drop something? And how? Yeah.

 How do you judge that perseverance? You don't.

 Once you understand that truth, you go.

 I spent no time thinking about that question.

 You just don't know.

 The amount of people that literally gave up one day before everything was about to turn in the history of the last hundred years on projects is stunningly high.

 only equaled by the amount of people that should have stopped a long time ago.

 You don't you you know one thing I've already referenced one of the great things about experience is you do get pattern recognition but pattern recognition is also not natural to a lot of people you know the truth is brother you don't know what I rely on is feeling comfortable with laying in the bed that I made I make decisions then I move there's been many things that I jumped too early and I was like [ __ ] or didn't see all the way through or my biggest thing I'm so early on a lot stuff that I do a really good job.

 Like I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] it's going to be this orange.

" And I'm right.

 It's a big ass [ __ ] orange.

 And then I squeeze the [ __ ] out of it.

 I'm getting a ton of juice.

 But then I'm like, "Okay, let me go find a grapefruit.

" When meanwhile that orange still had a fuckload in it, but I was so early.

 So I make that mistake a lot.

 Jumping too soon while the orange is still getting squeezed.

 I do it all the time.

 You don't.

 But but the fact that I can even explain to you that orange analogy right now means that I've figured myself out in the last 30 years playing the game.

 So I'm trying to be better at that.

 So what I would say is don't be crippled by that and feel comfortable in your intuition.

 I I will uh here's a good one.

 Here's something I'm pretty positive on that is kind of blurry, but I would like like I I genuinely believe that when I'm chilling in heaven and you and we all figure it out down here, I'm going to be like, I [ __ ] told you.

 Remember when we did that thing in 2000 when we did that fire like in the 100 years? I'm going to find you in heaven.

 Be like, remember I said this? I was right.

 That's how much I believe what I'm about to say.

 I believe one, you know, if you look at the human race and AI is going to accelerate this dramatically.

 There's so much [ __ ] that we know today that humans had no [ __ ] clue about 50 years in health and wellness different things.

 I mean like it do you understand 500 years ago they just found this [ __ ] place? That's like 2 minutes ago.

 You know that, right? Like literally everyone was just chilling in Europe and had no [ __ ] idea New York City was [ __ ] here.

 That's 500 years ago.

 That's nothing.

 So what do I most believe that we have no clue about right now or don't believe that is like in it? like I could feel it is I believe that intuition is the primary brain of a human being and that the brain is secondary but that we've been conditioned to believe this is primary and I would argue many people sitting here have not even thought about this and we finally are starting to understand gut health from a health and wellness standpoint but I believe gut actual as an operating system is the [ __ ] game and I I would argue that that is why I'm comfortable with your question because I'm just willing to bet on my gut.

 And if it's wrong, maybe it wasn't wrong.

 Maybe it was wrong that I should have done that and that would have done better, but that would have changed the course of my life.

 And maybe it was actually right.

 And I think the second you get into that place, you go fast.

 And business, my friends, is sports.

 Speed matters.

 And when you go fast, you can make up for a lot of [ __ ] mistakes.

 Hey, I'm Sam.

 Nice to meet you.

 Um, one of the things I admire about you, or the thing I admire about you is your humanity.

 Frankly, I I don't even know what your businesses do, but like honestly, I just know you're a really cool guy.

 Um, so I wonder like how do you think about preserving your humanity in a world where uh I can just go and scrape all your YouTube videos and create a version of you? And like what is like what is unique about your humanity that isn't possible with AI if anything? Maybe the answer.

 Maybe nothing other than it playing out in environments like this, right? I think probably in my lifetime I think.

 But [ __ ] this shit's moving fast.

 Sam, to your to your answer, it's something I think a lot about because truly, again, I was saying earlier, I'm in I've been in all these rooms where the firepower intellectually on the tech was so advanced to mine, but I've been able to win so much because the emotional intelligence and consumer truth.

 I was in such a why I bet the farm on Zucks.

 Zucks was the first person I'd met that had firepower in tech that when we had dinner in 2007, like I literally called my mom the second I walked out of dinner.

 I'm like, "Holy fuck.

" And literally invested every dollar I had into Facebook, which was a big deal cuz I had no money.

 Um, and it was because I'm like, "Fuck.

" And this was so funny to watch how he was portrayed over the last like he when the whole AOC thing in Congress and he's a [ __ ] robot before he like became cool again.

 Um, that [ __ ] made me laugh cuz I'm like everyone's like, "This guy's a robot.

" I'm like, "He's the only non-root I've met.

" Mark's understanding of humanity is real.

 Real.

 He deployed that into a much more scalable and interesting business than I have.

 But I'd never, you know, it's almost like Star Wars.

 You're like, "Fuck, I feel the force around me.

" It was the only time I'm like, "Fuck, I think this person gets what I get.

" And so I think online, nothing.

 I think that's where this is all going.

 But I think that that's why what we're doing alto together right now actually becomes an incredibly interesting business.

 Literally my favorite businesses to look at this nanocond are experiential in real life businesses because I think as we continue to scale the mapping of humanity digitally I think it's just the pendulums the opportunity for real life is actually going to become remarkably valuable.

 Like there's going to be businesses in 20 years where like people going to charge you to like take a walk with them and you're going to pay real [ __ ] money for it.

 So I get excited about those things.

 But that's what I think.

 But it's a really interesting question because for me my processing power is real.

 Like what I've got is my humanity which is all my mom.

 And that's why like when people are like you're like when you say that feels so nice but I wish you knew why it feels nice to me cuz I feel like you're giving my mom a compliment you know I'm just the byproduct I'm the product when people are like Gary you're the greatest I'm like you know so it's easy to stay humble when you know it's not you um but what I actually have is processing power which I was blind to me because I was such a poor student and I grew up in the 80s and 90s where you're like Like every teacher told me I was going to be a garbage man, which was like the [ __ ] loser job of choice for teachers in the 80s.

 I don't know why.

 They actually make a ton of money.

 But but what I've learned later in my life, I'm like, [ __ ] I process so fast.

 Like, and I process differently.

 But to your point, there are very few people that have put out more logic and thinking online than I have.

 And the mapping of my LMM is really easy.

 So, everyone might be able to think like me and that's, you know, where this [ __ ] gets real interesting real fast.

 Uh, thank you so much for coming.

 Super inspiring.

 Um, I think we just said it with Mark Zuckerberg and yourself is very interesting where like some people are very good at technology.

 Um, and some people are very good at understanding consumer.

 I don't know to code a line of code.

 So, I hope I'm good at the second one as well.

 But I'm curious um like you saw Facebook, you saw Uber, like it's kind of a consumer shift in how consumer engage with technology and think about things.

 Like do you have any tactical advice for how we can get better at like seeing where the consumer mind is going? Yes.

 I got one real tactical one and what's fun is this room's young enough that you're going to watch probably two or three cycles.

 The reason I was so on was because of this.

 The first day I used this, which was the day it came out, I'm like, "Everything's different.

" Because it was just so obvious to me that the jump to distribution had changed forever.

 So, the reason Facebook made sense to me was I understood and in fact, I was the one of the first investors in a startup called Path that was founded by Dave Morren, who was a top 50 executive at Facebook.

 And the reason I invested in it is a little dirty secret for all of Mark who I think is truly and obviously one of the great generational entrepreneurs of all time.

 He was slow to mobile path was actually Instagram and Facebook mobile before either one of them.

 Dave executionally didn't fully get there and Instagram came out pretty quickly after and won that game.

 But what I understood was distribution changes.

 What I'm good at is only trading attention.

 It's my greatest skill.

 So attention changes forever when the distribution changes.

 When the radio went to the television, everything changed.

 When the television was invented, everything changed.

 Geopolitics make sense.

 Business leaders, fame, when we went from radio to television, what an incredible gift I'm giving the few that will take me up on what I'm saying.

 Go spend a hundred hours, 50 hours on understanding what happened in society when this society went from primary radio to primary television and you will understand everything going forward.

 Distribution that's why I understood the internet.

 I'm like [ __ ] The first time I heard that thing I was like wait a minute people are going to be in here not on TV.

 Then I saw this.

 I'm like, people are going to be in here.

 And then several months ago, I saw Project Orion, which is Facebook's glasses that are coming out in 6 years.

 And I said, "Oh [ __ ] this is about to be the television.

" And right now, everyone here is only thinking about life through this.

 And so, one thing you can definitely do is always pay attention to distribution.

 Because when distribution the printing press the first million books printed almost all of them were religious books.

 There is a direct correlation to why religion continues to be foundational in our society and that moment in print in printing press history.

 These are important things to understand.

 And so the stories around the campfires were much more about Zeus than they were about the pope.

 But then the printing press came and that was much more about the Pope than it was about Zeus.

 Every [ __ ] in here and all eight billion of us would be all about astrology.

 You know how people love that [ __ ] They're like blue moon and [ __ ] then rising moon.

 I'm like I don't [ __ ] know.

 They're like, you know, we would all do that if astrology books were first, not religious books.

 And so the one thing you should always pay attention to is distribution.

 There's macro distribution.

 this that radio and then there's micro distribution.

 The reason I spend all my time on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, it is distribution in our society.

 Whoever wins there wins.

 That is why geopolitics has been completely rewritten.

 It's playing out there, not everywhere else.

 And most people don't get it.

 I actually read that you used to look at the top five most popular apps every single day in the app store.

 It's still real.

 I don't understand how people don't understand.

 You literally go to the app store, look at the top 100 free paid apps, and you have a very good read what what's going on in society.

 The answers are in front of us.

 We're just academics and we overthink [ __ ] Too much project management, too much academia, not enough real [ __ ] and common sense.

 Thank you for coming.

 Um, I have a question about distribution.

 So, uh, we haven't talked a ton about how this is going to impact businesses.

 I'd love to hear your perspective on what happens to the office of the CMO, what happens to marketing agencies, what happens to distribution for businesses in the next 10 years.

 I I I mean I think every service business needs to be very very thoughtful in the next 36 months because it's all getting commoditized.

 The only thing that's going to be left is the thinking and the creativity.

 So I think there's a lot of things that will happen.

 I think I think most Fortune 500 companies will take a lot of their marketing inhouse.

 But I also think it what I haven't seen yet is the clarity that humans are not fully needed.

 And as long as there's fully need for humans, humans will make bad decisions.

 And so a lot of things that seemingly look like they'll be dead soon will take a much longer time to be dead.

 Um, but I think anybody in a service-based business, you know, like if you're a media planner, that can be done.

 people are focusing on the creative.

 What about the planning? I mean, and don't forget the social networks that have the distribution, have the ability to have all the data, have the ability to do all the work, but deciding to even put the money into that platform is still going to require a human at least for a period of time.

 And so, I think strategy and creativity dramatically uptick unless back to what we were talking about.

 If everybody can just download Thinking like me, well then I'm commoditized.

 Everyone's commoditized.

 There's a lot to think through, but you know, here's the problem.

 People are very quick to say, "Oh, especially a room like this, oh, the service like agencies are dead.

" If that's true, you're all dead, too, cuz the bigger tech companies are going to out tech you.

 So, what are we talking about? So, I have a lot of buddies who are like, "My startup's going to put your agency out.

" I'm like, "Google's going to put you out.

 The [ __ ] are you talking about?" So, I think, you know, I think that I learned a lot in my 20s and 30s and even 40s about how fast I thought [ __ ] was going to happen.

 And then you learn the real world of like there's a lot of best, let's put it this way, there's a lot of political and financial reasons that everything being replaced by this technology is not going to happen as fast as all of us know the technology is capable of doing, right? And there's still people that [ __ ] use fax machines.

 AOL, do you know how much money AOL makes on dialup right now? 50 million.

 It is that the number? Yeah, 50 million.

 I I know it's a very large number.

 I don't I didn't know it was that.

 I don't know how recently you looked it up.

 I'm sure it declines daily.

 But let's say it's half of that just for fun for five seconds.

 Awol's doing 25 million in revenue on dialup internet.

 We're [ __ ] talking about AI robots eating children in this room and they're making 50 million on dialup.

 So I think for all of us, especially we're sitting here under the gist of a commercial lens, right? We're talking businesses and startups.

 We're not talking societal, you know, impact.

 We're obviously that's all blended in.

 But in the context of this room tonight, we're talking about business.

 I think a couple things will stand out.

 One, I think in a 10-year window, [ __ ] it.

 That should happen, right? But what's really interesting to me is I think the people that most are going to win are the thinkers unless the thinking gets commoditized, which I think is really in play, too.

 That one's going to be interesting, though, because that's where government's going to get involved, right? Because Gary, in that sense, if I'm like, [ __ ] this is my livelihood.

 I'm like, where am I protected from a copyright and IP? And this is goes back to my earlier point.

 There's a very strong argument that if this tech fully plays out, the only business anyone should be is in NIL and IP.

 Hello, I'm Sam.

 Hi Sam.

 Hi.

 How are you doing? Thanks for coming and joining us.

 Uh you sp you speak about IP and you speak about um you know this notion of things getting commoditized.

 Could you talk a little bit more about creatorowned brands? So the Mr.

 Beasts of the world, the Alex Earles of the world, yourself with V friends, right? Can you talk a little bit about like if if IP is what is at the end, how are creator owned brands going to manifest in that and how do people young people set themselves up to own their IP and have you know arms of businesses, arms of products? Well, I think I'm curious how you think about that.

 So, look, it's a space that I've been obsessed with.

 I started Empathy Wines and played that playbook out very quick.

 I sold too soon, but my partners wanted to get married and wanted money.

 Um, and they were two former interns in my company.

 So, I wanted to do right by them.

 But the CPG of the personal brand is one of the great business opportunities as we sit here today.

 What's fun about the AI conversation for me personally is there's a lot of people here who do not have the ability as a human to be Alex Earl or Logan Paul or Mr.

 Beast or me.

 But all of them can create an influencer who can be bigger than all four of those people and then build a shampoo on top of that.

 So that to me is really cool and really of things some people should debate in here.

 Let's make as many famous people as possible and then let's create the businesses.

 I mean I think the cat's very out of the bag.

 It's not a very complicated thing.

 I think everybody should do that because what has happened in consumer packaged goods is the more interesting part.

 The reason this is interesting is less about me or Beast or Earl or Charlie D'Amilio.

 It's that distribution and media have been commoditized.

 If there's no Shopify, Amazon, Tik Tok, and Instagram there for from a like the way it works, forget about the fact that you had to be on it to get the fame.

 There was no opportunity to go into CPG because preocial and pre-Amazon 3PL's and Shopify, there was no way to get into Walmart, right? The the cost to run television commercials and to get into Walmart was tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars and you had no audience.

 Everything's been flipped.

 So the whole entire the Poppy sale for 1.

9 billion to Pepsi is the preview, not the anomaly.

 This is why I have an agency.

 I want to know everything about that world cuz that's the biggest world in the world economically and they're dead.

 I think that for this group, if you're looking from the lens of that product testing, you know, like like just like every variable that I love about social gets enhanced and is more efficient with AI infrastructure underneath it.

 You don't have to guess with creative anymore.

 You don't have to guess on packaging anymore.

 And back to the power of a human personal brand and the moat that it is, you don't even have to be that human anymore.

 You can create her.

 And by the way, beauty is mapped.

 Just so you all know, everything's mapped as you know.

 So if everything's mapped the way you know it, so is beauty.

 Like there is real data around attractiveness of what we're attracted to.

 Which then creates the things I get excited about.

 Once everyone realizes everybody here can create a thousand attractive people.

 Does that then become not the attractive thing? That's going to be the most fun that you're all going to go through given where you're at looking at the crowd age wise.

 I'm so happy that you're going to watch the whole thing.

 You're going to watch the thing that you most believe in right now that because you're in the room fully take over in the next 30 years and then you're going to watch the counter move.

 $5,000 to take a walk with a human.

 All right, last question.

 I I have two main questions.

 Um the first is you know you've built one of the most successful like personal brand and you know media brand and everything and so many people watch our content but arguably speaking you know YouTube take like majority of that profit and uh I've been in crypto for like seven eight years and I traded V friends and made money on it.

 So I was curious how do you think crypto can play into the whole like attention tokenized attention and Suki you already know the answer.

 Yeah, that's why the blockchain is so important.

 Yeah, I agree.

 Like all the economics will be down to it's just it's 100%.

 Again, Suki, what you're if you know that question, if what you just did, you have to understand you're in a position right now where I was in 2003 and you need to understand what to do with it.

 In 2003, I believe that the I thought the internet was the most important thing that had ever happened.

 But the world was [ __ ] on the internet because internet stocks had just collapsed in April 2000 because the greed of Wall Street made companies worth $5 billion even though they had no revenue cuz we understood the promise of the internet but the economics hadn't happened the NFT summer.

 The reason since it sounds like you follow me.

 The reason, thank God I did this in August of 21.

 I started after I was like NFTs, NFTs, NFTs.

 I was the one who started making videos saying 99% of NFTs are going to zero cuz I saw Thank God because the reason I'm able to maintain my personal brand is I would have been flushed out with that as well had I not hedged out of seeing the behavior.

 I'm like, "Fuck, people are just doing [ __ ] scam.

" Like, it was just so much bad behavior.

 Greed short-term, not nice.

 the reverse, running a sprint for a million bucks and ruining your reputation in perpetuity versus building something meaningful.

 But it doesn't change what an NFT is.

 NFTs is going to be one of the most fun things to watch play out.

 Nonfgeible tokens are so important because China, Russia, America, Amazon, and Google can't control it as we go.

 So, for example, every piece of content I make going forward in the next decade will first go on the blockchain, my blockchain, so that when you guys see me on the internet doing all sorts of things that I'm not actually doing, you're going to have a place to validate, did I actually put that out or did somebody else make it? And as far as V friends, I'm going to build the next Pokemon.

 So, my V friend NFTts are going to be valuable.

 But 99% of things won't be valuable.

 99% of sneakers are not valuable.

 1% are.

 99% of watches are not valuable, but 1% are.

 99.

9% of trading cards are worthless, but Pikachu's rookie card and Charizard and Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky's is worth a [ __ ] fortune.

 Where people got confused with NFTs is they decided all NFTs were worth money.

 That would be like saying all art is worth money.

 No, no.

 1% is.

 So it still takes execution and if V friends are going to be worth nothing unless over the next 20 years I get everybody here to fall in love with the characters and that's why I do trading cards and comic books and cartoons and all the traditional stuff but capturing the economics of the value you create.

 But I've been happily giving YouTube and Facebook and everybody else their overcharging cut because without that distribution, I would have had to pay for attention.

 When everyone's like, when creators are like, "Fuck Instagram.

" Like, [ __ ] you wouldn't exist without it.

 And you didn't pay [ __ ] for it.

 You're not paying for Instagram.

 You're trading those economics for global scaled attention, the number one asset in the world.

 I would argue that I owe I owe Meta and YouTube money, not the other way around, because I understand the actual game.

 Because guess what? Now that the blockchain's here, I still have that equity.

 [Music] IP and NIL is the end state.

 [Music]