The Best One Yet
🪷 “The White Lotus Effect” — HBO’s tourism bump. DeepSeek’s copy/paste. The Bacon IPO.
Fri, 31 Jan 2025
Description: “White Lotus Season 3” is about to debut… and it’ll boost Thailand’s economy by 20%.The biggest IPO of 2025 is a bacon biz… so we devoured the first pureplay pork stock.We now know how DeepSeek caught up to ChatGPT… the ol’ “copy/paste.”Plus, the Utah Hockey Club is choosing a new name… but the fans at the rink decide tonight.$WBD $SFD $MSFTWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Red Bull ⚡Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.“The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: How is 'The White Lotus' boosting Thailand's economy?
It's Specifically, they accused this Chinese app, its new rival, of distillation. According to the Wall Street Journal, distillation is when a new system learns from an existing one by asking it hundreds of thousands of questions and analyzing the answers. Jack, we got to translate on that tech speak over there, please.
In other words, DeepSeek knows as much as ChatGPT does because it's copied ChatGPT's entire brain. Boom! There it is, besties. When we first covered DeepSeek, we could not believe that they built the same artificial intelligence as ChatGPT at 1 100th of the cost. Well, this would explain it. It was distillation. They copied the whole thing. But pause the pod here for a second, Jack.
Are we saying that ChatGPT is accusing China of copying their AI? Yes. When ChatGPT has copied pretty much everyone to create artificial intelligence? They've scraped the entire internet without anyone's permission, basically. I feel like Scarlett Johansson is laughing right now. Good point. Pretty, pretty, pretty ironic.
Now, Yetis, OpenAI did not provide evidence of their accusation, but David Sachs, who is Trump's new AI czar, agrees with their accusation. So OpenAI's new top priority is to make copying their AI a lot harder. But you know what? That's actually really hard. It could be a whack-a-mole situation. As soon as OpenAI closes one vulnerability to copycats, the copycats find another way to copy.
And then if OpenAI and Google fail to stop you from copying their AI tech, well, then they'll have no incentive to keep innovating and building more AI tech. Yeah, this is a really big deal. Are you pausing the pod a second time, Jack? Think of it like building a bridge to artificial intelligence. Constructing that bridge is really expensive.
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Chapter 2: What is the 'White Lotus Effect'?
Right, Jack, because instead of bricks, this AI bridge requires fancy NVIDIA computer chips that cost $100,000 each. So why would OpenAI lead the charge? And build the bridge to artificial intelligence if once they're done, the competition can use it for free. That's the risk of distillation. That's the risk of someone being able to copy and paste your AI. Now, we call this the first mover curse.
Ah, the curse of the first mover. When it makes more economic sense to be second than it does to be first. But that led Jack and I... To a takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies over in tech? The first mover curse is way more prevalent than you think. Yetis, some property simply isn't protectable by law, so it gets copied. For example, in the news industry. Yes.
The Wall Street Journal might invest big money to report on a big scoop, but then any TikToker or any podcast can use all the information from that article for free for their own business. The TikToker is basically a better investment because they didn't have the cost of the journalism. Or another example, Walmart. Sam Walton copied the exact business model of Costco and Costco's predecessor. Why?
Well, because you can't trademark a business model. And of course, we created a special word to describe Mark Zuckerberg's copying. I'm looking in the dictionary under Z and I see zucking, Jack. Distillation is a fancy word, but copying someone else's business goes way back. The first mover curse, you know what? It's more prevalent than you think. Now, a quick word from our sponsor.
From Wondery and At Will Media, I'm Misha Brown, and this is The Big Flop. Every week, comedians join me to chronicle the biggest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time, like Quibi. It's kind of like when you give yourself your own nickname and you try to, like, get other people to do it. and the 2019 movie adaptation of Cats.
Like, if I'm watching the dancing and I'm noticing the feet aren't touching the ground, there's something wrong with the movie. Find out what happens when massive hype turns into major fiasco. Enjoy The Big Flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Big Flop early and ad-free on Wondery+. Get started with your free trial at wondery.com slash plus.
For our third and final story before the weekend, Smithfield, the world's biggest pork producer, brings home the bacon. Literally, they just brought it home. And they just IPO'd thanks to a strategy they took from the car industry. Abe Froman. Jack, does that name mean anything to you? Is that the sausage king of Chicago? That is exactly who that is, Jack.
But Smithfield Foods is the sultan of sausage. It's officially an $8 billion publicly traded pork powerhouse. That's right, Yetis. Smithfield just became the biggest food IPO in the last four years. It is now a pure play publicly traded pork stock. They sell bellies, butts, hams, loins. They raise the whole hog on their 39 farms. That's right.
Actually, we should point out this pork company does make some beef too. Nathan's famous all-beef hot dogs, they're made by Smithfield. But when it comes to this pork company, they are a piggy bank. Jack, let's talk the numbers here. Last year, they did $14 billion in revenue and made a record profit.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of DeepSeek's rise in AI?
Here's what else you need to know today. First, we woke up yesterday in a way you probably did too, seeing horrible news. An American Airlines flight collided with a military helicopter in Washington, D.C. Here's the latest as of this recording. All 64 people on the plane are presumed dead, as well as the three people that were in the helicopter. Including a few elite members of the U.S.
figure skating team also on that flight. It's an awful story. The most fatal aviation disaster on U.S. soil in 23 years since September 11th. The reasons for the collision still under investigation. We'll update you when we know to. And second, overlooked detail from Microsoft's earnings yesterday. LinkedIn. Get this, LinkedIn brings in an estimated $16 billion in revenue each year.
That makes LinkedIn three times bigger in terms of revenue than Snap. True. And three times bigger than Twitter's last revenue announcement. Oh, other tech news, by the way, Apple had record earnings, although their iPhone sales fell. And finally, Super Bowl ads are hitting $8 million a piece. That gets you 30 seconds. That's a record expensive price tag for a Super Bowl commercial.
They're already sold out and we're expecting AI ads just like we saw crypto ads a couple of years ago. The same teams are in this year's Super Bowl, but new tech in the commercials. Great point, Jack. Now time for the best fact yet. This one whipped up by Jack and me because it's our favorite part of the latest episode of The Best Idea Yet. The founder of Red Bull had an incredible growth hack.
This is brilliant. He used to go around parties and leave empty Red Bull cans all around the bar floor. When Red Bull launched in America, they would go to bars at college towns and just leave empty cans so you'd think that people were drinking Red Bull, even though they hadn't drank it yet, and then you'd order more Red Bull.
So then, as you're walking across the dance floor to get a drink at the bar- One more, Tony! You see all these Red Bull cans on the floor, and you're like, yeah, I guess I should get this hot drink that everyone's drinking. But the cans, you know, it was framed. Red Bull vodka. I guess everyone else is having a Jack. It was staged. That's the word, staged.
That was just one of our favorite parts on the true origin story of Red Bull. And you can hear the whole story on The Best Idea Yet, our weekly show. We got a link in the episode description. Check it out. Yetis, you're looking fantastic over there. Jack, for the bachelor party, are we thinking Thailand? I'm thinking Thailand.
No, no, no.
Feeling Thailand. No, no, no. I don't know. Four seasons. I think if we do the four seasons, it's a write-off. Yeah. Okay. Besties, we'll see you in Thailand. Celebrate the wins. Have fun this weekend. And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Yeti Liz down in lovely New York City, partying the night away. And happy birthday to Peter Trinh, who's turning 33 in San Jose, California.
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