Basic Intelligence: https://basic.in
Kevin Rose left venture capital to start an incubator. Plus: robots outrunning people, Apple's AI miss, and the greatest insurance scam involving a bear suit.
Kevin and Alex hadn't seen each other in over a month and had a lot to catch up on. Kevin walked through why he stepped away from TruVentures after nine years to go back to building full time - and what he's been working on at Basic Intelligence. The short version: he crawled 9 million connections on X and built a recursive ranking system that surfaces the 1,000 people who actually drive AI discovery. The algorithm works so well that Kevin isn't even in his own top 1,000.
They also dug into Apple replacing Tim Cook with John Ternus and whether Tim missed the AI window when he had Siri in every pocket. A bipedal robot beat the human half marathon world record by 7 minutes - one year after the fastest robot took 2 hours and 40 minutes. Amazon dropped another $25 billion into Anthropic, whose Mythos model just found exploits in OpenBSD after 12 years of zero breaches. Alex is hand-building a mechanical watch and won't shut up about it. And they close with the best insurance scam you've ever heard - a guy in a bear suit, barbecue shredders, and a $400,000 Rolls-Royce.
0:00:00 Kevin and Alex catch up over Pliny the Younger
0:01:27 Why Kevin Rose left venture capital to build again
0:04:23 Announcing Basic Intelligence and the future of Digg
0:06:16 Building PageRank for humans with 9 million social connections
0:13:28 Alex is building a mechanical watch from scratch
0:19:31 Alaska road trip north of the Arctic Circle
0:21:31 Tim Cook missed AI and Apple has a new CEO
0:28:14 A robot beat the human half marathon record by 7 minutes
0:31:35 Robot firefighters and buying your first robot at Costco
0:37:53 Amazon bets $25 billion more on Anthropic
0:43:31 Anthropic Mythos cracked the most secure OS after 12 years
0:46:55 App Store submissions up 60% because everyone codes with AI
0:48:04 44% of Deezer music is AI and fake sympathy Shopify scams
0:50:37 Trent Reznor reinvented his sound and crushed Coachella
0:57:29 The bear suit Rolls-Royce insurance scam
Kevin Rose: https://x.com/kevinrose | / kevinrose
Alex Albrecht: https://x.com/alexalbrecht
