TBPN Benchmark's Future, SpaceX IPO, RIP Sora | Mike Knoop, Nathan Benaich, Rohin Dhar, Eric Jorgenson, Jenny Just, and Matt Hulsizer
22 snips
Mar 25, 2026 
Guest
Matt Hulsizer
Guest
Jenny Just
Guest
Eric Jorgenson
Guest
Rohin Dhar
Guest
Nathan Benaich
Guest
Mike Knoop
Mike Knoop, Zapier co-founder and ARC Prize builder, joins Nathan Benaich, AI investor behind Air Street, Rohin Dhar, Bay Area real estate adviser, Eric Jorgenson, author of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, plus PEAK6 leaders Jenny Just and Matt Hulsizer. They get into Benchmark’s identity crisis, Sora’s fate, SpaceX IPO rumors, China drama around Manus, San Francisco housing shifts, and how Apex rose from a broken clearing firm.
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Sora Failed More As A Network Than A Model
- OpenAI killing the Sora app suggests AI video is consolidating into core products because standalone creative networks are hard to sustain.
- John Coogan said creators will post great AI videos to Instagram or TikTok anyway, while rate limits and expensive compute crush retention inside dedicated apps.
Fiverr Still Faces The Old Disintermediation Trap
- Fiverr's AI-director billboard is bold, but it exposes the core weakness of freelance marketplaces because top talent can be hired directly.
- Jordy Hayes noted Billy Bowman has his own site and Instagram, so the ad may help creators bypass Fiverr after a successful first project.
SpaceX IPO Could Reveal xAI Unit Economics
- A SpaceX IPO could expose rare public financials for xAI and offer clues about frontier-model inference economics.
- John Coogan said broken-out revenue, pricing, and costs could reveal whether Grok-style serving economics work, even if xAI's scale and strategy differ from rivals.