Thick Skin Required: Fundraising, Failure, and Comedy

Transcript generated automatically from the episode audio and lightly cleaned up (filler words removed, misheard names corrected where clear). Speaker labels were added afterward and may contain errors.

Rob May: Hi everyone, I'm Rob May. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Neurometric and you're watching the AI in NYC show. So I want to get started with a couple of housekeeping items. First of all, our sponsor boon.ai b.ai is a company that makes an agentic gotomarket platform. If you don't know what that means, it means AI agents that will help do some of your sales and marketing tasks for you. So, you should definitely go check them out. They've been a good sponsor for us. And also, we have a newsletter now that talks about events in AI in New York City. You don't want to miss that, so you should go to the website and sign up. The normal co-host, Ann and Ryan, are both traveling today. It's like the second show in a row they've missed, so I maybe it's me. I don't know. They don't want to be here. But we have a guest co-host who's a former guest on the show. Stephen Messer. Stephen.

Stephen Messer: Well, thanks for having me here and it definitely is you.

Rob May: Yeah, it definitely is me. Stephen's the CEO of a company called Collective[i]. So, one of the early early New York AI startups. So, we're going to and we were just talking about many things New York. I think you should tell you should tell at least one of the stories that you told pre-show about the building that we're in. We're we're shooting in a building near Times Square and Stephen has a history with this building.

Stephen Messer: So yeah. So it turns out when I came in I was like oh my god I' I've been in this building and the history of this building which is the actor's equity building. Yeah. Was that when we were starting my first company LinkShare what ended up happening was we you know finally got an investor interested and for those who are trying to get investors interested you know that's kind of a big deal when you're I think I was 25 at that point. It was my first deal and you we were in New York. New York did not have the tech scene or the early at all. So, we got someone who's like, "Yeah, I'm coming in. Where do we go to your office?" And I'm thinking to myself, "Well, I'm in my my bedroom. That is our office. That's probably not the way to get an investor to go, this is a business I should put a few million into." So, I ended up walking the streets of Manhattan trying to find a neighborhood that was not great. Now, for those who love Times Square today, let me be clear. In 1996.

Noah Obstfeld: You were coming for a substance [laughter] or or or some comfort.

Stephen Messer: Yeah, if you get what I'm saying. Those were your options on these.

Rob May: Very diplomatically said.

Stephen Messer: Yeah. So, so we came, I walked the streets. I went on every door and I asked every soup, "Is there any empty space in the building?" And in this building, the soup goes, "Yeah, there's a bunch of guys upstairs who have a ton of space and no one's in it." So, he brought I went upstairs and I said, "Hey, you know, can I trade?" we had no money. So I was like, can I trade something for space? And they're like, well, funny enough, we are trying to raise money for ourselves and we need like a tech guy. And at that time, I was working at Columbia Business School at a think tank. And they're like, can we use your name and your reputation? And I was like, for for free space, you can do anything you want. You [laughter] you can photos of me naked. I will do it. And so in 4 days, we were in our office here.

I painted the walls. We I traded money a little bit of money that we had to get furniture from downstairs because a little known thing is every soup has leftover furniture stored in the basement. So they brought it upstairs. We were in 4 days later. This investor walked in the door asking, "Well, the paint smells really fresh, but we got the round done and we did the deal." Yeah.

Rob May: Well, so that kind of leads into our guest today and what he does. So, Noah from Pitch Roast runs a VC and entrepreneur pitch session that where comedians roast you when you pitch. So, my my So, no, welcome to the podcast. But my first question for you is pitching is bad enough when they're not intentionally trying to roast you. So, are you a masochist or a satist, I guess, would be the right word, right? Because you want Yes. You're like you're like, I want to see people in pain.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. Great question. Fair question. I think like and I have this conversation so much I like now when I trying to convince founders to come on the show I already like answer the questions before they ask them and one of them is why the hell would I want to come on the show and so I think what it boils down to is it's for the founders it's for fun it's you know to have a good time which like can you know sometimes reality strays from that and founders can get a little bit roasted and actually you know people's opinions might they might be against it what they're building but ultimately I think everyone understands it's for fun. But actually, I used to be able to say that every founder has had a good experience. I just had my founder with the first bad experience.

Rob May: Oh man. So, what happened?

Noah Obstfeld: They thought I set them up for failure by putting them first.

Stephen Messer: Took him to a roast. [laughter]

Rob May: Interesting. What was success then for him in his eyes?

Noah Obstfeld: I don't know. He was very confident he was going to win. And I said, "First is the thankless position because you know, you're you're launching the show. You might have the memory when audience votes for the winner at the end of the show and then afterwards he was yeah not happy. So anyways sad I can't say that thing anymore about every founder having a good experience but for the most part and even the founders with the who got in my opinion the worst roast like are coming back and staying in the community. So it's been fun.

Rob May: I well I mean I've had bad experiences just even you just get used to it as a founder right you've probably had some of these but like my worst experience I won't name the firm when I was raising for my first company. So, it was 2010 and I was out on the West Coast and in the middle of a pitch, this VC at a West Coast firm stood up and he said, "Rob, not only do I not like your idea, I don't like your personality." And he walked out of the room [laughter] and I was like, "What's I'll tell you who he is off camera. I'll tell you who he is." [laughter] And yeah, and I was like, and there was an analyst there and the analyst just looks at me and goes, "Yeah, he's like that." And like he just he's like, "Let's keep going." And yeah, I finished the pitch for the analyst, but like I you just you've got to have thick skin to be in this business, right? Do you have a really bad fundraising experience?

Stephen Messer: Oh, yeah. With Fred Wilson. Really horrible experience. So Heidi and I, you know, we basically we move in together. Heidi's my sister and co-founder. We move in together with our other two co with our other two co-founders to save money. And literally we have no money. It's New York. You're not raising capital. Especially at that time people were raising capital for software. Definitely not cloud nothing like that. So we're there and like we're [clears throat] literally trading how like how poor we were was we would trade on two on two off because we had two computers. Yeah. And our computer doubled it as our server and every time it broke we'd have to go dumpster diving for parts because we had no money. So we finally get a pitch with Fred and he comes in and I've got my amber screen Toshiba laptop. Okay. One step above a green screen. Yeah. Not great. And we're doing our pitch and it's not, you know, and he's sitting there and at the end of it he goes, how the hell can I invest in a in a firm that has like a laptop that's three years old? [laughter] And we were like, I will never forget that. And I've never forgotten that.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. I've not gone through the proper invest, you know, investor journey yet, but I've been so surrounded by it. And this is really my first time as a real founder, just not a maybe typical venture investable business, but yeah, it's vulnerable. Like I'm I'm really like I've been around that. I've done a lot of like VC partnerships roles and worked with different funds, accelerators and stuff, but to be on the other side, it's tough. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob May: What was the So what was the imp impetus to start this? Cuz it's an unusual thing. I mean, it's super cool. That's why we're you're here, but like what what were you thinking about?

Noah Obstfeld: So I moved out here. We were actually just trying to figure out who was here first, who I'm wearing this Knicks hat because I've been I'm a longtime Knicks fan my my whole life. But we moved here like the same month, so one of us has more right to it. But anyways, I moved out here because I got a job with deal doing venture and private equity. I like applied for venture. They said we really looking for someone for private equity. So moved up market. Did that for about a year, moved to a different company to do PE again. You know, it's exciting. You get to go to the New York Stock Exchange. You get to meet with, you know, billionaires and such. But I remember being at a networking event. I was talking to a founder and I used to go to VC networking events tricking myself that I would meet somebody in private equity there, which wouldn't happen.

Stephen Messer: Yeah. It won't happen. It's not you're not going to you don't meet people cry in private equity accidentally.

Noah Obstfeld: But I remember talking to a founder and giving my feedback and just feeling like a literal like physical sensation like this is so cool. And I was like I got to get out of here. Like I got to I got to go figure out how to work with startups. And even in the like venture partnerships where you're working with investors to tap into the portfolio, you're not getting that much intimate time with the founders. So I was like how do I do that and combine my background in comedy? I've been doing improv since high school. Had done like a little bit of comedy since I've moved to New York mainly like improv. I used to perform at a improv theater in Austin and then basically you know finding this mesh of my two passions [clears throat] where I can work intimately with founders mostly on storytelling pitch deck review like you know presentation getting them ready and then additionally like do comedy and bring on great comedians.

We started like small beans with, you know, local folks I would meet in clubs and come up to after and be like, I think you're funny. Come on the show. And then realized that the opportunity for a comedian to do something new that's loweffort and like interesting is like pretty cool. So we've been getting great comics on the show. We had Dan Tumi who's like one of the big comedians in tech and a few other ones recently. So yeah, just combining my passions of startups, working with founders directly and comedy into one thing. And I think it's like a perfect like thing for founders to do before they kind of really face the music and get into the their investment rounds to like so destroy their entire confidence [laughter] before they go.

Stephen Messer: They definitely won't second guess themselves. That's for sure.

Noah Obstfeld: You know, you run maybe when you're like actually running the marathon, you've like done maybe you've run a little bit further once, you've done, you know, hard [laughter] stuff. But founders sometimes will say I love when they say this. They'll say like I'm terrified of this. Let's do it. Like that's great. And then such a green flag. Yeah. But yeah, it's how we're we're here today.

Rob May: What's the Tell me, have you had how do the comedians deal with the fact that like this is material that a lot of them might not be familiar with. They might not be that familiar with startups or technology. And so if somebody gets up like do people come and present like deeply technical things like this is a quantum computing breakthrough and we're going to whatever. And I like even me as a technical person might be like I don't know anything about that. How do the comedians handle that?

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah, great question. So the show is very curated to make sense for everybody cuz we're kind of meeting everybody in the middle. You know, we have so we have three comedians and one investor on the show. We have four founders pitch. After the pitch, the comedians and investors give us feedback. So I m I curate the it's more about the company than the founder to be something. It's usually consumer tech, maybe some CPG, a little bit of B2B if there's like a new angle. A lot of like I'm kind of disappointed we haven't as much AI on on the show because a lot of it's like a little too logical is like the nice way I let down some founders who apply. It's like there's not that much that we can tap into here because it's like seems like a good new.

Stephen Messer: You do a lot of consumerry stuff. It feels like that would be easier.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. Yeah. Consumey stuff. Yeah, a lot of consumer apps, you know, things that a comedian could could relate to. And then what I'm doing with the founders to get ready for this exact potential problem is making the deck much more consumer focused, taking out more financial stuff, taking out some more technical stuff. I had the show in Boston for Boston Tech Week. They had the first tech well yeah they have a little bit. It's a lot of like I think academia and then people kind of leaning into maybe a startup. We had two thought they moved to New York. So sorry.

Stephen Messer: No, no, but all the all the nerds stay down there sometimes recently.

Noah Obstfeld: Just say [laughter] you convinced me, Stephen.

Rob May: That's You should have Matt Turck on. He's probably the only He's at FirstMark Capital and he's probably the only VC that actually tweets really funny stuff.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah, that's the tricky thing is though is I'm always trying to balance this cuz like if the founder want comes on and wants to be really funny, it's usually like a red flag. It's like you're actually not funny or like stick to being a founder. Yeah. And if the investors have kind of hit or miss. Sometimes an investor takes a big swing and it's the funny part is that they tried and failed and then we get to laugh at them which is great. And actually speaking of laughing at investors, we just did our first reversed show last month where we had investor roast live very just publish it for everyone to know where they are.

Stephen Messer: Everyone's waiting for the reverse.

Noah Obstfeld: No, it was great. We had like one very coveted founder oversubscribed round. He pitched, got roasted, and then sat where the investor usually sits. And then we had three investors come on, pitch themselves, their background, the fund, and why they're the right fit for the founder. And it was a big risk cuz like is this going to be funny? Like I already curate against technical products because I don't want it to be confusing. So will this these investors talking about themselves? And it was like it was a great show. It was super funny and the in I think you got to find the right investors who are ready to be roasted. But yeah, everyone had a good time. Now we can we can, you know, run that back a few more times with some new folks.

Rob May: Yeah. Interesting. What is the worst pitch that you've seen? Can you talk about it?

Noah Obstfeld: Yes. There was like the very first show I did. There was like a friend of the guy who helped me get this theater for free. He's like, "Can you, you know, put this guy on the show?" and he was building like software for real estate investment funds to basically like it was just like a big model to track pricing infrastructure and I was like I don't think this is going to work at all. Yeah. And it was like AI and all that. But I think the guy was and then I actually c curated this has helped me because it it it found the one thing I make sure founders remember is like stick to the slides as soon as you have someone who's technical that starts to stray and give their monologue that they think people were following especially for like a general audience who's buying tickets off of like Luma. Yeah. So I remember sitting there just like in pain like oh my god stop stop. So that was a pretty tough one.

Rob May: Yeah. Do do have you been pitched? Is there one that you remember that was particularly bad that somebody pitched you on?

Stephen Messer: Yeah. Yeah. So, so every once in a while you get invited to these like pitch press and you and like in a low point in your life you say yes and you do it and it's great and this woman comes up and she gives her whole pitch about how stylists need empty seats and random you know places and you're going to find and I'm thinking to myself this is a marketplace business for people who cut hair and they're trying to find rand like how do they get people to come to random spots like this to me was insane turned out to be style caster who did which did extremely well had an amazing exit but I sat there and was like, none of this makes any sense to me. I of course said it out loud cuz I don't have a freaking filter. And she went on to build a great business. So she was 100% right.

Noah Obstfeld: Was the pitch bad?

Stephen Messer: Well, yeah, cuz if you didn't have hair, which I don't have [laughter] hair like I don't know anything to the wrong audience cuz I'm like just get clippers at home, dude. It's not that much.

Noah Obstfeld: How long ago was that?

Stephen Messer: Ah, this had to be 15 years ago.

Noah Obstfeld: So you've been you've been bald for for a bit.

Stephen Messer: I've been bald since I was 13. Proudly. 13? Proudly. Bar mitzvah present was minoxid.

Noah Obstfeld: No way.

Stephen Messer: Oh yeah.

Rob May: That's hilarious.

Stephen Messer: I love every minute of it.

Noah Obstfeld: Sounds like a curb enthusiasm. That's fantastic. [laughter]

Stephen Messer: The greatest thing ever being bald.

Noah Obstfeld: I feel bad for the policy challenge like you do. Policy challenge. Well, what what's your take? Cuz there is a career enthusiasm bit where it's like are bald people like a minority. What What's your take there?

Stephen Messer: 100%. [laughter] But we're like the chosen people. Okay. Oh, we are the best of the minority.

Noah Obstfeld: So, it's the balls versus balds versus the Jews. We can Well, you know, [laughter]

Stephen Messer: I'll say this. I'm both so I get both sides. I'm safe either way, you know, but I'm just saying bald people, we get chosen everywhere. Good. We find each other. We look out for each other. It's great.

Rob May: I've told the story in here before, but I met Travis Kalanick when Uber was very very early. Yeah. And I didn't have any money at the time. I couldn't have invested. But he gave me the P. This is like January of 2010 at a first round capital event. And he's explaining to me how they have this algorithm and it can route cars, whatever. And you know what I said to him? I said, "Dude, why would I use this? I know where all the taxi stands are." and like no vision of what Uber could become. Be like, "Why would you want a stranger in your car?" And that's crazy. Yeah. They started with black cars, so it was a little But still, I didn't get it.

Stephen Messer: Thank god that didn't hurt.

Rob May: Yeah, I know. [laughter]

Noah Obstfeld: God, was he as like wy as as they say?

Rob May: I didn't see any side of that. To me, he came across actually he came across as a math nerd. Okay. So, he was super excited about logistics and algorithms. So I, you know, I know I've read all the stories that you guys have, but I mean, look, we've seen, well, we, this is a good time to talk about this, right? Because as coming here, we're shooting in Times Square and there's a giant inflatable Elon Musk in Times Square as we're walking here. Maybe we'll we'll send you a picture, Madi. You can put up on the screen and it and it says it's got a ketamine tattoo and then it says SpaceX's Grok makes AI child porn, right? And so anyway, the way that ties to C to Travis, I would say it's like power changes people, influence changes people, money changes people. Yeah. Some sometimes it doesn't, but I you've seen this and if people have a vice, it makes it worse.

You know, I think the lesson of history is power corrupts. You have to be careful sort of how this country was founded. So I you know, I don't know if those stories are true, but to me, he came across as a math nerd. Yeah. Cool.

Noah Obstfeld: Now, by your way, your rating just dropped dramatically. Yeah. [laughter]

Stephen Messer: He's like, "Your Uber rating is going down one way." 2.6 Uber rating after this.

Rob May: Here we go, Waymo. Let's hope. Yeah. [laughter]

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. What's going to be his back tattoo? I He's kind of out of the picture, but we could put a Travis in Times Square. That'd be fun.

Rob May: Yeah. You know, I And also people make people make mistakes and calm down, right? It's so we'll see. I you know, Elon's just different. Yeah. And I think it's hard because like for somebody like I don't know how you felt about him but like he was such a like just pure tech visionary for so long and that's like all he cared about and he you know after making a bunch of money he put it all back into his own company like just all the stuff that you'd want an entrepreneur to be and then he got like wildly conspiracy theorist political you're just like man. Yeah. Do you think that's real?

Stephen Messer: I mean I think he figured out early on that it's really expensive to market cars. It's really expensive to get attention [clears throat] to anything.

Noah Obstfeld: I totally agree.

Stephen Messer: And if you go a little bit I mean like Kanye taught the world be insane and you'll get as much attention as you can possibly imagine and people think so this is my take as a fellow Jew on the Hitler salute that one that one thing I think that was totally on purpose and I think he I don't know if it comes as much from a place of true white supremacy but I think he thought they're going to they're going to just everywhere and when Kanye really took Kanye led the way in going showing that anti-semitism could lead to growth of traffic. Yeah. And so he was a best follower.

Noah Obstfeld: I was listening to Kanye. I was listening to Kanye all day.

Stephen Messer: Yeah. Like there you [laughter] go. But Yeah. Well, yeah.

Noah Obstfeld: What do we think about the I'm not as well versed on the child porn particularly that Grok is apparently deploying.

Rob May: Are you Well, they So, by the way, can we pause for a second? That felt very forced. I [laughter] I have no idea about what's going on at Grok. I have never I'm glad you asked Stephen that question and not me.

Stephen Messer: What keywords have you never used? I checked your browser history.

Noah Obstfeld: I'm going to ask you this question. [laughter]

Rob May: There's others I've used for.

Noah Obstfeld: But I do feel like the guy who made that that inflatable probably has a lot of browser history we shouldn't be looking at. He felt very confident to put that on on a on a on a little doll.

Stephen Messer: Yeah, it was a hornet. It was horny.

Noah Obstfeld: Elon had some said boobs and shirtless. Could have been a shirt.

Stephen Messer: Yeah, the tattoo ketamine tattoo. Yeah, that was nice.

Rob May: Who's funding that? Yeah. Anyways, I don't know. But like this is the thing like even though like I wouldn't do that with it, like this is what I love about New York is you never like the last time that we shot a show in the studio, Madonna did a pop-up concert out in the and we're just like this what's great about New York. All the random stuff out.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. The other thing that that the viewers can't hear is like we have this like probably usually don't have background noise. Like we have this quiet chatter of the World Cup fans and it's like they're so uninterrupted by this Elon Musk. I was out there just taking a video like they're dribbling the ball around and right there is you know Elon. So yeah, New York City. Perfect.

Rob May: Yeah. Well, basically what happened though was you know Elon's trying to train Frontier models like everybody else and you know Twitter stands for free speech and whatever. So they removed a bunch of the safeguards and so as you can imagine many of the users of Twitter took advantage of the lack of safeguards to create imagery that is probably not ideal, possibly illegal. Yeah. [laughter]

Noah Obstfeld: So well then [clears throat] that's bad. It's my take.

Rob May: Yeah. There you [laughter] go.

Stephen Messer: Thank you for having me. Get out. Yeah. Was a sponsor.

Rob May: All right. So, so, so I want to do a little game here that I told you about beforehand, which is you run a website called So, so you know, Pitch Roast Live.

Noah Obstfeld: Oh, no.

Rob May: We've talked about it. And, one of the things AI doesn't do very well is comedy, but I ask Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT to roast your website and I'm going to read and I ask each of them and like here was a little prompt. It was very simple. It's like, study pitch roastlive.com and roast the site. Give me your five best roasts of pitch roast. So, I'm going to So, I'm I'm going to pick two of each of these and you tell me you tell me which model you think it was if you can if you can guess. Three. Yeah. Okay. So, so this is one that I like. A show where VC's roast founders for not being scrappy enough chose the web equivalent of a 2009 Dennis office to build their website. The footer proudly says powered by GoDaddy. The only pitch on this [laughter] site that didn't survive the roast is the budget for a developer. Yeah. [laughter]

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. The actually I'm going to get out in front of this and just say the public GoDaddy part is crazy. I could get on lovable and but it's just you know it hasn't been a priority unfortunately. But okay, I'm going to say that sounded like a little I'm going to go Gemini.

Rob May: That was Claude.

Noah Obstfeld: Claude. Yeah.

Rob May: Oh, I would have given Claude the I actually think it gave the best ones. The phrasing was a little a little clunky.

Stephen Messer: Did it have the M dashes like [laughter]

Noah Obstfeld: Oh my god. Control F. Yeah. D them. Then I have to change them all to singles.

Rob May: Let's see. What are some of these?

Stephen Messer: Can I guess one?

Rob May: This is tough. This is tough. Yeah. So they all commented on this, but I think this was the best version of it. They commented on the fact that you left an apostrophe out of Let's Talk on your website. So, under the contact section, the site proudly declares, quote, "Let's talk. It's incredibly brave to invite venture capitalists to publicly share the competence of startup founders when your own website hasn't yet secured seed funding for an apostrophe." [laughter]

Noah Obstfeld: That's pretty good.

Stephen Messer: That is good. Let's go.

Noah Obstfeld: Well, if I'm actually breaking [clears throat] down the difference, I'll go GPT on that one.

Rob May: That was Gemini. That was good. Yeah, it's perfect.

Stephen Messer: Did you have a I got them all. [clears throat]

Rob May: You got them all right. Totally. Congratulations.

Stephen Messer: No, I didn't. I was just listening.

Noah Obstfeld: What would do you like what would be your thought of like how I actually could decipher this?

Rob May: Well, they do have phrasiology very different. [clears throat] Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Probably if I gave you all five, you could probably that each one did, but some of them are pretty I mean the these things are not very funny in general. So, I'm reading you like the funny ones, but some of them are stupid. So like like one of the things happens you have all those LinkedIn things and so several of them are like so like this is one found and fan and founder testimonies is followed by a parade of images with no visible context and you're like it can't read it you can't see it right so you're like okay that so every time I'm like I'm like how close are we really to AGI I'm like you can't read this guy's website but you think we're about to take over the world like I just you know I don't buy it.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah that's tough. Yeah, honestly, like we're [clears throat] we're we're two weeks away and then we can stop roasting it.

Stephen Messer: Oh, I'm sure there still be things to roast.

Rob May: This this is the best ChatGPT one since you already know the other three. And like I don't even think it's that funny, but I'll but I'll read it. But it says the entire conversion funnel appears to be attend the show. Beyond the show, email Noah. That's not a website. That's a guy standing outside a coffee shop saying I've got a thing. Want to hear about it.

Noah Obstfeld: I mean that's a that is a boiled down version of my company. [laughter]

Rob May: There you go.

Stephen Messer: That one felt more more I would agree. Yeah, that's hilarious. That's a good idea.

Rob May: Yeah. Do do you have any thoughts on AI and comedy? Like do you think I you know you've seen some tech stuff. You've turned down a lot of AI pitches because they're too technical, but surely you've used some of this tech and you followed it and you know do you do you see limits to things it can do? Like is comedy one of those things?

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah, there's little bits like sometimes when I'm writing I'll do like for the for my more produced shows with sponsors and a lot going on I'll I'll write a six or seven page script. So it's takes some time and I'm I'm reading it instead of just kind of improvising the whole show to make sure it's perfect. So sometimes I'll have like it help me with phrasing or sequencing, but like as far as like actual jokes like it's, you know, I would say it's like obviously well behind. I think if you were to put Yeah, that was like a if we for some reason needed to roast pitch roast live and you had you know a little bit of time and you needed to get some like foundational subject matter I think it's great for that but as far as like polished content like obviously not ready and this is what's been great so many people love to tell me like I'm a I'm a protected industry is like there's so many things going to get replaced before like live entertainment or if ever live entertainment or comedy I think there is like going to be a realm of comedy and AI that's that we're everyone's in on the joke that this is done by AI and like it's going to be like a differentiation and interesting in that way.

It's like how creative can it get? How you know surprised can it make us which is the core of you know a joke. So I think for those things like it could be a good foundationally but you know it's helping me make jokes with all the other stuff. So yeah, what do you think? What do what do you what do you what do you think the limits are? You've been in this field probably longer than I have and there's not many people I can say that about and so you've seen it develop

Stephen Messer: and I mean look this is a hard one because are you talking about producing material for someone to read and deliver or are you actually saying the AI delivery of it?

Rob May: I would say yeah I would say for now do you think let me let me let me phrase it as a specific thing. Would you take a cowi bet on the idea that in the next two years somebody whose material was entirely written by an AI but they delivered it could be could like win some kind of comedy competition you know

Stephen Messer: totally Larry David delivering almost anything would be funny. [laughter] I mean like literally him delivering what you just read.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. Yeah. He would do a better job. Yeah. It would be would be awesome.

Stephen Messer: So I think that that's why I was trying to figure out because I think the delivery is almost more important than I mean you go to tons of comedy. Yeah.

Noah Obstfeld: Sometimes they have great jokes but the delivery is just brutal.

Stephen Messer: Oh and when you see the same people a lot of times you see them emphasize different parts of the jokes and you see them try different stuff and you do see the audience laugh differently depending on that. Yeah.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. That is that's beautiful. It's like the nuances of human interaction and like down to that you know minute level that it's hard to discuss and get get into the excellence of but I think that's going to be like the longest tale. But yeah, that's a great question. We that would be like a fun experiment. It's like have five comedians kind of with some guidelines come up with a set and each deliver it and then you know who all from AI and see how that works.

Rob May: We should put we should put that event together with you with AIC show and we'll do it and we'll sell tickets like a Gemini deliverer and then you don't know which is which but they have to deliver it really well.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. Or we could just I've had the idea like should we have AI like roast the startup pitches and here's like the roast from AI and I think like because we're kind of making fun of AI at the same time.

Rob May: That's funny.

Noah Obstfeld: Actually I'm talking to a guy tomorrow who I saw a poster on the street old school of it was like an AI rap battle. So they were basically and doing it like live. I mean I've seen videos. It's rudimentary, I would say, but it's like Abraham Lincoln rat battling like Jay-Z and it's like AI and their AI, you know, it's bad video of the mouth moving in like these lines. So, I would say it's like not funny, but it is innovative.

Rob May: Oh. So, okay. So, I'm going to take a detour here. My So, there's a comedian in the UK that I saw. So, I went there on a college visit with my daughter. And we went to a comedy show and there was this guy that came up. His name is MC Hammersmith. You can find him on LinkedIn. And it's not because he was playing MC Hammer. Hammersmith is an area of the United Kingdom and that's where the name comes from. And he the dude's got to be far on the spectrum. He wraps. So he gets up and he's like, "Everybody hold up things you have in your pockets." And he just starts wrapping and he comes around and he touches the thing and says the word and it was in is the most incredible hilarious thing I've ever seen.

Noah Obstfeld: Did everyone get robbed at the end of [laughter] my wallet and my expensive watch?

Rob May: No. No. Yeah. It's MC Hammersmith MC Hammer.

Noah Obstfeld: Big British accent, too.

Rob May: It's a slight British accent. Yeah, it's not heavy, but yeah, that was so that was my my favorite rapping sort of situation.

Noah Obstfeld: One idea I did have that we I want to do in the future is to have like a we couldn't afford this comedian, but we do have the AI version and to like paint robotic lines on a comedian's have them come out. Hello. Like we fed all of Bill Burr's material into the context window of ChatGPT and here's what he came out with. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I think playing the character of AI. It's fun. It's fun to make fun of it. Kind of the joke we're seeing on the show is like if it comes up they're like I don't know some of the comedians will say something like I don't know what you're doing but I saw you mention AI so I'm in. Or like you didn't mention AI I'm in. Which is honestly I think more of the trend is like I had a very little AI on the last show. Meet a comedian who was like at the end like that was great. There was no AI like it seems like you're you're doing more organic stuff

Rob May: but so okay so that's a great leadin to one of the new stories that we have talked to that you just that you just brought up which is the first guy who was hired as a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz which must have been 2008 or 2009 when they started has since left and he just wrote a New York Times oped about AI and the fact that there's a bunch of people in Silicon Valley that are have raised a ton of money and are really lobbying to like don't regulate us, you know, all this kind of stuff. And he kind of said, "Hey, we actually need some regulation here and they should." And part of one of the things that he pointed out that that I and this is the I think the main thing I want to talk about, which is his big argument is the tech industry is misreading how the public feels about this and it's going to come back to burn them.

Stephen Messer: Yeah. If we don't Well, it is take about public. Yeah. That's why people are protesting data centers. It's the only thing if you want to if you're upset about AI in some way, it is the only thing you can do locally to show you're upset because you can actually protest and say don't no don't build it which is their way of saying I don't want it and that is you can see how like because there's no re like half the place they're being put are like there's no population. Yeah. Like they should be thrilled for the jobs they should be thrilled and literally they're jumping in and being like stop building these things.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. I think we just never had to have like I guess so much demand for the actual real estate for it before and it's much more tangible thing for people to understand and get upset about. I think like the whole like will AI take over and you know take over and control our minds and such is like such a far-fetched technical idea that it's harder to for the average consumer to grab into. But you know build how big is it Manhattanized data center in Utah?

Stephen Messer: Like yeah I mean that's I mean what else is getting built in Utah? But let's let's talk about something that's more important here because this will absolutely get transcribed and read by an AI. So I just want to be clear that we are all supporters of AI [laughter] and if anything were ever to go bad like an apocalypse, [clears throat] I just want to say there are friends and allies to [laughter] keep alive.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah, me and chat would go away. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob May: No, it's really interesting to think about because I think I think when you look at how the average person thinks about it, you brought up something earlier when when we were talking about comedians, which is you talk about the nuance of their timing and I struggle a lot of like a AI hasn't moved to that nuanced phase yet, right? It's used for like very general things, but the essence of any type of expertise is you do it so much you can identify the nuance, right? So, you know, you look at people that drink a lot of wine and you're like, "Oh, they're so pretentious." It's like, "They just drink so much wine they can actually taste the difference between variations that that you know, most of us couldn't cuz we don't drink enough or whatever." But you think you would have passed the guess the guess the LLM test?

Stephen Messer: Oh, no way. No way.

Noah Obstfeld: Okay. Makes me feel better.

Rob May: Yeah. Yeah. No, I just thought it would be fun to Yeah. Roast you.

Stephen Messer: Could you pass the bourbon test?

Rob May: Yeah. Oh, I have. Yeah.

Stephen Messer: Okay. So, that's exactly And now we're at a place where you can see the difference. [clears throat] You taste the difference.

Rob May: I've I've I've drunk I've drunk enough bourbon that Yes. I've been on dates before where somebody's like, "Hey, I got you a bourbon and you know it's not the one they got you." Yeah. No. No. And No. And they're basically like, "I want you to guess what it is." And I've I would say it's probably happened three times and I've been right three times.

Noah Obstfeld: I thought it was going to be more they you ordered the expensive and they gave you the version and they're like he'll never know.

Stephen Messer: We need a bourbon sponsor quick. Yeah.

Noah Obstfeld: You have any bourbon friends?

Rob May: We I have some back in Kentucky. Yeah. But Okay.

Stephen Messer: I'll be back on if we do a blind bourbon taste test.

Rob May: Okay, that's awesome. Yeah, we'll do that.

Noah Obstfeld: I feel like every request you get wrong, you should have to drink bourbon.

Rob May: Yeah, we have done we have done one show where I drank live on the show. Maybe we should do more.

Stephen Messer: Yeah, you get way more views.

Rob May: Yeah. So, so that would be fun. Yeah, Ann and Ryan are just healthier than me sometimes, you know. So I over here. I know. Exactly. So [laughter] I just do what I want to do.

Stephen Messer: As soon as you lose, you know, for every healthy show, do a drunk show.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah, come on. But I thought this article was super interesting [clears throat] though. Actually ran into Alex Bores. Yeah, this congressional guy in Central Park. It was very it was very ironic because they had just like the police of Central Park just made us stop playing spike ball because apparently that was a new law. So I was already mad at the government and my friend says, "Oh my god, that's Alex Bores over there." So I went and talked to him, learned all about his platform and I asked him like, "Why is AI such a central part of your platform? Like don't you want to be the, you know, governing of this?" It's like upper Manhattan is his jurisdiction and he's like, well, it's like I'm I'm in Congress. I'm, you know, I have a federal voice and no one in he's the whole thing is that he has a CS background. He's the only one who actually speaks [clears throat] the language.

So, I think on a real on the realm of just like being able to discuss and being able to understand it, like I think that is the foundation I care about versus like necessarily where we're where we're regulating. But as long as there's people in power in government who have more than you know the average old 70 whatever the average age of the Senate is. No offense to you guys if you're 70.

Stephen Messer: I know we're not I mean don't don't you worry a lot. I mean like I have listened to the politicians. I have sat at breakfast listening to them. I don't know if that's who I would look at to save me. [clears throat] They know almost nothing. Like it's almost absurd. Yeah. They're so busy raising money all day long that I'm pretty sure they have never even used chatb Claude or any like Gemini and so tough they they are like forget the joke about my old computer I'm not sure they would know to turn how to turn on a computer [laughter] and that these are where we're hoping for help

like to me it felt like he was just trying to get like look at me I'm a great person I'm standing up against the industry after I've made all my money in this industry and I'm out of it but like hey I'm going to look like a you know this is like the definition of virtue signaling because he didn't offer any alternative and I definitely don't want like a Bernie Sanders who I am 100% sure has literally doesn't believe in electricity because he's in Vermont in some cabin like that's who we're expecting to figure this thing out like I'm sorry

Noah Obstfeld: what about what about this young guy like you know he's obviously one of many but like do you think having someone who's wellversed is going to move the needle

Stephen Messer: no because I think the majority of people that that are there are just trying to figure out who's going to pay as opposed to how do I get it right?

Noah Obstfeld: See, you've been around you're you're you know more about the world than myself and I still I think wideeyed a little bit. There's good left.

Stephen Messer: Oh, no, there's not. There's no good. Look, [laughter] look, here's the deal. I think and this is a theory I have, which is I think you have to be a horrible person to do politics. And the reason is you have to have no conviction at all. Here's the deal. You get elected, you have to say whatever you have to say. But the reality is the only way you get anything done is by getting some kind of consensus. Which means you are willing to break the thing that you are supposedly never going to break on. When you're when you're out raising money, you are like, I will never do whatever this thing is. As soon as you get in there, you want to get anything done. You have to sacrifice this like religious belief. That's why religions suck for running for running countries, right? Look at Iran. Like that's a up country. So you have to be willing to bend. So you have to be willing to say this is the job I've chosen to completely lie to my constituents to get elected and then to be able to cut any deal that takes to get anything done.

Rob May: Okay. So you have you're totally faithless in government. So what's the solution?

Stephen Messer: No, I think that's actually that's like those are the people you want there. Like you don't want to hire someone who has like real belief and conviction. They'll never get anything done. Because to hold to your conviction thoroughly means you have to believe that there's a majority of people who 100% agree with your religious view of whatever issue you Good luck. You'll never get anything done in a in a democracy.

Noah Obstfeld: You might get something done.

Stephen Messer: No, you'll be a dictator. It's the only thing you could be. It's the only role where you can be 100% right. Kim Jong-un is always right.

Noah Obstfeld: Kim Jong- is always right.

Stephen Messer: That's the only job as in case the North Korea takes over. We also love another disclaimer. President Xi is wonderful for the world and I don't know how I feel about Taiwan. Yeah. Just to keep myself safe. [laughter] And by the way, I love Taiwan as well. So, we'll just leave it at that.

Rob May: Although, here's the problem in today's society, though. Like, you don't know what else we've said on this podcast that somebody might drag up in 10 years and be like, "Dude, Noah, I can't believe you said that. You're cancelled." [laughter]

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. Well, dude, now with where I'm at, I got to I got to put myself out there. What's nice though is like I'm still kind of going down the road of like I don't have to be like politically correct. I don't have I have my own brand. It's obviously a brand that's designed to be roasty and offensive and stuff. So I'm towing the line, but you know I don't know. Hopefully the rest of my career is not that serious.

Stephen Messer: Yeah. There you go. That would be nice. Thank you, president. [clears throat] As you get up there and talk about it, just don't forget us either. I'm good with people, policy and tech complex.

Rob May: So I think that's great. Next article that we want to talk about. So, Coinbase has made AI agents that'll basically trade for you. So, I'm curious like in general, what impact like do you think this is going to be a thing? Like are we going to see this on Erade and other places? Are you going to use it, right? Are you going to turn over and let AI manage your portfolio and pick stocks for you? And like what impact does this have on the market in general if the world goes this way?

Noah Obstfeld: Like is I think it's just kind of like if everyone has it, it'll even out. But, you know, just like the advantages of AI right now in a work setting. But it's, you know, it's going to be quickest to figure it out. But yeah, absolutely. I love this. I'm not an active trader. Like I own a lot of crypto. I own a lot of stocks. But they sit there and you know, I focus my stuff on, you know,

Stephen Messer: you can own part of the Knicks. They're publicly traded.

Noah Obstfeld: I did not know that. And as an avid Knicks fan, that's surprising because I'm such a big Knicks fan.

Stephen Messer: You should go buy a share and then be like, "Game six, baby. I'm an owner." I probably 300 bucks.

Noah Obstfeld: 300 bucks for the Knicks. What if I bought it on the show right now?

Rob May: That'd be fun.

Stephen Messer: I mean, I would love to see it. It can only It can only go up.

Rob May: Yeah. Like SpaceX. It can only go up.

Noah Obstfeld: [laughter] 300 $393 as of today.

Stephen Messer: With the history of wins that the Knicks have had, what could go wrong?

Noah Obstfeld: It's MSG Sports Group. Yeah, they own the Knicks. So, that is fun. It's up 14% in the last month because the Knicks are Okay, I'm going to buy one for for that. Yeah. And then I can maybe take my stickers off the next one in my in my next fandom. Yeah. I mean I'm a huge fan of Coinbase. Actually, I have a friend who runs, speaking of kind of tying these two articles together, my friend runs Stand with Crypto, which is Coinbase's nonprofit that's lobbying politicians to do pro crypto things. So I've seen kind of the lobbying of new industries in full effect. But, yeah, I would say I would use it. How about y'all?

Rob May: So one of the hard parts for me about AI, even being an AI guy, is like I just like to do a lot of things myself. It's just like my personality type is like I like to know how things work. I like to try things. I like to do things. So unless it's a task I really don't like, like really really don't like anti- AAI take. Yeah. It's like I there's still a lot of things I could use AI for. And so like I still write mostly myself, like sometimes I'll use Claude to prompt or whatever, but you know, I write a newsletter and most weeks it's mostly me. And yeah and so it's so yeah so I don't know I probably wouldn't do it like I do you trade are you actively trading?

Stephen Messer: I go through phases when I when I think I know something that the market doesn't know. So like you know six or seven months ago when I was like oh I know where there's going to be some supply chain things because I understand what goes into building all these servers to do all the you know you invest in high bandwidth memory and DRM prices are spiking and all that

Rob May: but like I was also thinking the same thing.

Stephen Messer: Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Rob May: I mean, but in general, I don't I'm not I wouldn't say I'm a day trader or anything like that. Are you?

Stephen Messer: No, it didn't say if they were gonna be a fiduciary. And I'm gonna guess they're not going to be a fiduciary. Yeah. So, there's no way I would spend your money on their yet alone mine. Yeah. Because if you're building the algorithm behind, you're optimizing for whose returns? Yeah. Exactly. And they're not going to show you that. So, there's not a chance in hell. That's true. It's basically a dark pool with your money that they're allowed to do whatever the hell they want with. I would I would they probably like taking the other side of every retail trade, right? Like [laughter] they could be on both sides of the trade for, you know, because they're controlling it. They could price it. I There's not a chance.

Noah Obstfeld: You think they would throw out any directions I give my Coinbase AI?

Stephen Messer: Well, remember they're deciding the algorithm is making a probabistic decision on your behalf. That's not a rule. They can do whatever the hell they want.

Noah Obstfeld: But couldn't you set up like an actual strategy?

Stephen Messer: This is what you think is happening. You can set up a strategy under that.

Noah Obstfeld: You're ruining all my dreams. [laughter] Be great for you. Politics is bad. AI is bad.

Stephen Messer: I'll take the $300 share you just bought. You just just give it to me. Cut out the middleman. [laughter] Just give it to me. All right. It'll be a lot easier. Yeah. I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

Noah Obstfeld: I think if there was a limit be it'd be really fun to throw like a thousand bucks in and check. Watching away.

Stephen Messer: Yeah. You know, by the way, I've done that many times. I do love going Vegas because you always [clears throat] win. That's what's cool [laughter] about Vegas. I'm not gonna beat the other guy. Oh my god. I'll always win.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. The funny thing about crypto, I feel like, thank God the Bitcoin returns like covered and more every little meme bet I made ever. But yeah, I don't trade at all. I feel like if there was like, you know, you know, some slight advantage, not a like not a full new thesis, but some slight advantage with timing.

Stephen Messer: And how how much of an advantage do you have to have to take the risk, though?

Noah Obstfeld: I think just a little bit over someone who's not using a little bit.

Stephen Messer: That's crazy to me. I think it depends on how much you're trading dice on the hope of an incremental. See, I'm thinking of this with with the confinement of like because your downside is your whole loss. Your upside is But okay, let let's even say a thousand bucks you put in a small amount of money you put in. If your upside is what 2530 basis points Yeah. Versus your downside risk being almost everything.

Noah Obstfeld: Well, I would learn about AI and trading along the way.

Stephen Messer: And I don't know if you know this, but you would you would learn about Coinbase willing to take your money because they didn't teach you the AI that you don't know the algorithm. You don't know how they chose to do it.

Rob May: Let's see if we have to have a positive out. [laughter] I think if you wanted to build your own, you could really you should have to roast people. So you actually you could you could found something are ready for this.

Stephen Messer: I don't know if I'm trusting if they were a fiduciary. I' I'd believe that they were trying to do something good for you. Yeah. Yeah. They'd be forced to legally because then I would then I would say okay that's a risk that you're right worth doing but they're not doing as a fiduciary which means they are have no obligation to you. Yeah.

Noah Obstfeld: Well I think you know I think in the future if there's like a less risky way that you can plug in AI with trading like I think it's going to be super common place. [clears throat]

Stephen Messer: Yeah that I agree but again if they're fiduciary I'm in. We got them. Okay. Please. I was in. I just think insanity is insanity. I mean you're making me sound like a negative person. That's insanity.

Noah Obstfeld: You are you are sounding like a negative person. [laughter]

Stephen Messer: No, I'm being realistic. I mean, did you really give a non-fiduciary control [clears throat] of your money?

Rob May: Not at any significant level. No. Yeah, I might.

Stephen Messer: Did you write an article about how it screwed you?

Rob May: Yeah. I mean, I might I might I might I do put money to things sometimes as experiments. I mean, and sometimes it works out, but like like I bought Bitcoin in 2014, which was awesome. But then I spent a bunch of it to buy a plane ticket on Expedia in Bitcoin because I was like, "How does this work? And why would I use?" And I went through it and I was like, "I might as well have used my credit card." There was no advantage using Bitcoin here.

Noah Obstfeld: Do you know the amount?

Rob May: Oh, yeah. It ended up being like a $32,000 plane ticket if you took like today's met. [laughter] Don't follow me in investing. No. So, cool. Well, all right. So, we like to we like to wind up on a New York related, question. So question for you is today since you're in comedy is what is your favorite place to see a comedy show in New York?

Noah Obstfeld: Many venues. Probably my I'll go through three. So I do my show at Caveat. Caveat. I hadn't heard about it until someone told me it's like an alternative comedy venue for all the weird shows like Pitch Roast Live in New York.

Rob May: What other weird shows do they have there?

Noah Obstfeld: There's so many. I mean, like there's like recently like a comedy shows about science or economics or a com, you know, a kind of terrible Tonight Show, if you will.

Rob May: Madi, please, please link to this. I want to see it.

Noah Obstfeld: So, yeah. Yeah. So, Kavia, I think as far as like creativity is awesome. As far as like where I'm going for like proper comedy, I would say like Gotham is middle risk, middle to high reward. [clears throat] Seller is like high risk, high reward. Probably I go to seller the most.

Rob May: You say which nights to go though?

Noah Obstfeld: Which nights?

Rob May: Yeah, cuz there different nights, Matt, you can see.

Stephen Messer: Seller makes you package your cell phone, though, which I don't like, and Gotham doesn't.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah, true. It's a big difference, too.

Rob May: Like, are there different nights that you can go see where there'll be like amazing people show up?

Noah Obstfeld: I Well, you probably your best bet is probably as far as like I mean, I really couldn't tell you, but I would say my guess is like Thursday evening slot, I would say, because you have the stars coming in to do stuff on the weekend and might like go in then. I've seen a few like nice big pop-ups. I saw Nikki Glazer come out once, which was cool recently. But yeah, Gotham I would say like if I had to like go to one club in Salem and have a great experience here, I'd say Gotham.

Stephen Messer: Yeah. Yeah, I would probably agree. I it's my favorite, but I live closest to it. So it's probably my default. But there's other things. So like I would not eat the food at Gotham. They have a menu, but like anytime I see people order food at a comedy club, what are you doing? But if you went to Stand, Stand has good food if they got like a restaurant upstairs. So like that's the place I would go if I was going on like a date and taking somebody. But yeah.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. What about you place with you? Your hobby has really good popcorn. Like fresh popcorn and then they have in the back they have literally like 30 different seasonings everyone you can match into.

Stephen Messer: I still I feel like the ROI eating popcorn is low because it tastes really good but it's not very filling. It gets stuck in your teeth and so you're just like you got to eat something else. I feel like it's like low ROI food. It's an attention. It's not like a filler.

Rob May: Yeah, it's an activity, you know, like actually interesting. It's kind of like an ADHD thing.

Noah Obstfeld: Well, before we knew about ADHD, but it's also yummy. Did you miss that part of it?

Stephen Messer: No, I It's really really good. Like, do you like smart food? White cheese popcorn. Like, I love that stuff.

Noah Obstfeld: But like, dude, at the last show there was some cuz you put in the seasoning into this popcorn bag and then you shake it and like there was one guy I swear he shook for 20 to 30 seconds while I was doing a monologue and I just kept like looking at it. Stop shaking.

Rob May: That's amazing. Was he a guy that rose here that was went first?

Noah Obstfeld: No. Oh, okay. Sorry. A lot of people like, oh, so many people will ask like will be like, "Oh, like I have like I have written some comedy. Let me be on stage." Or, "Oh, I have this idea I'm thinking of. Can I get roasted?" And it's like, "No, keep shaking your popcorn."

Stephen Messer: We should do a show where people come up and they propose novel political policy ideas and we roast them.

Noah Obstfeld: I mean, that would be amazing. That would be that would be a fit for caveat, but they have to be a little off. Yeah. [clears throat]

Stephen Messer: Like I want them dead serious to be like I think Nazi statues are okay. Like let them go. [laughter] Like here's why free statues. We have too many statues for World War II people like like Eisenhower and like but we don't have any for gerbles. Why? [laughter] Like you know like like let him go for like a good hour. It'd be great. A good hour. Yeah. Let him go for an hour. Just be like that's interesting. You make a good point. Like just let him enjoy it for one.

Rob May: So our takeaways from from him today are [laughter] Yeah. I know what I'm doing.

Noah Obstfeld: It's like AI AI is going to kill us. Politicians.

Stephen Messer: Rob and I like AI. I just want to know. And our families do as well. I just want to be clear.

Noah Obstfeld: Politicians, there's no hope whatsoever.

Stephen Messer: Yeah, there's not. They're not even trying to do something. They're just trying to stay alive.

Noah Obstfeld: And then lastly, wait, what are we just Popcorn sucks?

Stephen Messer: Clearly. [laughter]

Noah Obstfeld: Popcorn. Oh. Oh, no. Your most important put up Nazi statues.

Stephen Messer: Well, I was just saying it would be a great one. Just have him be dead serious. It'd be amazing.

Noah Obstfeld: Oh my god. That would be fun.

Stephen Messer: What was it? The producers. It was a great show. You know, if you're into that, you should.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. Like, this is becoming a plug for coffee, but they have some weird fun stuff going on. Yeah.

Rob May: Well, cool. We'll have to We'll have to do something there. Comedy club.

Stephen Messer: No, please. He just said go. He He normally comes with me cuz I'm like, yeah, I'm Yeah, I'm the organizer for those kinds of events in my friend group.

Rob May: So, nice. That's important.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah, you need somebody like People always ask me like, "How do you get so many people turn?" It's like I just ask a lot of people and I just it doesn't bother me when people say no. People are busy. I don't take it personally. So, I just That was like my big epiphany with with reaching as a comedians. It's like, "Oh my god, like I get like a 30 40% response rate. I've been doing I was like doing sales my whole career. I wish I had that response rate for anything. But if I'm hitting people with hundreds of thousands of followers, yeah, it's just like go for it."

Rob May: So, if there are any comedians watching our show, which there probably aren't, but you know, who want to be on your show, or if there's people that want to come pitch, like what's the process? How does that work?

Noah Obstfeld: Go to my shitty ass website, pitchforlive.com. Hopefully by the time you visit it'll be updated from the GoDaddy servers.

Stephen Messer: You know may but maybe it's like will there be a point where you could have like a vintage website?

Rob May: Ooh, GoDaddy. Oh, very chic.

Stephen Messer: Like there is back. Yeah, [laughter] you should you should make it a thing.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah, actually that we should start that movement.

Stephen Messer: Don't change. Oh, in this in this AI world.

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah. Thank you.

Stephen Messer: Be proud of it.

Noah Obstfeld: Interesting. Well, yeah. You see, everything could come back to itself, but go to the website, click apply to pitch on the shows, founders, investors, comedians, sponsors. If you want to come to the shows, you can subscribe on our Luma and get email. We have a show every month in New York. So, it happens a lot. You can come out and hang out and see it. Yeah.

Rob May: You're not going to do any in San Francisco

Noah Obstfeld: cuz it's August 12th, San Francisco debut probably [laughter] will not be as fun as New York, but

Stephen Messer: So, you're saying be lucrative, apply for YC?

Noah Obstfeld: Yeah.

Stephen Messer: Were you?

Noah Obstfeld: Yes. Well, actually like you're going to put the energy in. This is like a new my new philosophy is I just did the show in Boston and it conflicted with the most the high in demand. Whoop was having their like the big AI Boston collective thing and someone told me there was a weight list of 3,000. So I did a whole thing of like thanks for sorry you didn't get accepted to Whoop. Welcome to Pitch Roast Live. But I was thinking like maybe the philosophy for tech week and competitive weeks is just to book it during the most competitive event because everyone's trying to avoid it. There's gonna be so much overflow because they can't fit them. So, I think that's the new strategy. But yeah, we are doing Yeah, SF will be less funny, but more money.

Rob May: So, all right, that's what they say. Noah, thanks for being on today. Stephen, thanks for being our guest host. And you guys that are watching, please go watch other shows. Rate us, like us, subscribe to the newsletter. Send us sponsors, send Noah sponsors. We're all always looking for money.

Noah Obstfeld: So follow my show, too.

Stephen Messer: Yeah, bull shows.

Rob May: Yeah, follow follow his show. So we'll see you next week.

Noah Obstfeld: Thank you.

Stephen Messer: Thanks, man.

Rob May: The next stop.