Cheeky Pint

Toto Wolff, Team Principal and Co-Owner of the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team, joins John Collison for a pint to discuss the engineering, management, and economics behind modern Formula 1. Toto breaks down how Mercedes spots generational driver talent as early as age eight, why they enforce a strict "No Dickheads" hiring policy across 2,500 employees, and how the F1 cost cap transformed racing teams into $1B+ assets. He also shares his early career as a dot-com investor, the team’s "Navy SEALs" approach to car development, and why he believes live sports are immune to AI disruption.

Timestamps
(00:00:22) Spotting driver talent
(00:06:24) Engineering and team selection
(00:09:11) The F1 cost cap
(00:25:21) Toto’s early investing career
(00:38:15) Running Mercedes as an owner
(00:46:47) Why F1 team values exploded
(01:08:24) Succession planning

Will O'Brien, founder and CEO of Ulysses, joins John and Chris Sacca for a pint to discuss how underwater autonomous robots are scaling up to solve critical ocean challenges.
They cover the technical history of Guinness (including the math breakthrough that created Student's t-test), why seagrass is an overlooked super-sequester of carbon, and the engineering required to operate robots thousands of meters beneath the surface. Will also breaks down Ulysses' vertical integration strategy, the reality of eco-pragmatism versus "green tape," and what it takes to sell hard tech to defense and offshore energy sectors.

Timestamps
(00:00:30) R&D at Guinness
(00:05:43) Planting seagrass with robots
(00:16:53) Lowering the cost of doing things in the ocean
(00:19:00) Landing in a Chinese prison
(00:20:38) Works in Progress
(00:27:53) Building robots to withstand saltwater
(00:31:08) Live use cases for underwater robots
(00:46:03) The undersea cable vulnerability

Resources:
Guinness Quality Standards: https://www.guinnesscelebrate.com/our-quality/quality-standards
No Great Stagnation in Guinness by Will O’Brien: https://www.thefitzwilliam.com/p/no-great-stagnation-in-guinness

As Meta scales its AI infrastructure past five gigawatts, Mark Zuckerberg (founder and CEO, Meta) and Alexandr Wang (Chief AI Officer, Meta Superintelligence Labs) join John for a pint to discuss the launch of Muse Wonder and the future of personal AI agents.
In this episode, Mark and Alex open up about the creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), the decision to execute a complete talent reboot, and what it really feels like to make a $100B+ CapEx commitment before knowing if the model will work. They dive deep into the architecture of Muse Wonder—including active memory, multimodal perception, and frontier coding—while laying out their vision for agentic commerce, hardware form factors like smart glasses, and why superintelligence belongs in the hands of billions.

Timestamps
(00:00:24) Muse’s breakout use cases
(00:07:28) Why the model is the product
(00:14:35) Meet Muse Wonder
(00:24:56) How frontier models are actually built
(00:48:26) Betting $100B
(01:07:21) Agentic commerce
(01:19:34) OpenRouter 
(01:20:06) Beyond the smartphone
(01:27:00) Funding
(01:34:06) Why AI won’t be winner-take-all
(01:40:46) Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL)
(02:08:11) Working for Mark Zuckerberg

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel joins John at the pub for a deep dive into Snap's "crucible moment" of 2026: the long-awaited consumer launch of Spectacles. Evan explains why he believes the smartphone has become an isolating legacy device and how true AR glasses represent the first step toward making computing human again. They discuss the technical hurdles of fitting a spatial computer into a glasses form factor, why Snap built its own OS from scratch, and how Claude is transforming their software development, with over two-thirds of Snap’s new code now written by AI. Plus, the pair dig into the complex reality of teen phone usage, the distinction between social and media, and why Norway was the first country to embrace Snapchat.

Timestamps
(00:00:15) Snap’s crucible moment
(00:01:05) Specs
(00:09:12) AR as the right form factor
(00:20:45) Stablecoin payouts on Stripe
(00:21:46) Monetizing the camera
(00:28:13) Social media vs messaging
(00:47:37) Content moderation
(00:59:49) Snap’s evolution

Tony Xu, cofounder and CEO of DoorDash, joins John for a pint to discuss how they won a crowded market by obsessing over retention and the reality of fighting fraud in the physical world. They cover the harsh economics of the restaurant industry, why DoorDash succeeded where Google failed, and the harrowing story of spending 40% of their remaining cash on refunds to save the company’s reputation. Tony introduces Dot, their new autonomous delivery robot, and explains why true autonomy requires solving for the “last two feet” of delivery. Finally, he shares lessons from the early days, including why customer obsession sometimes means baking cookies.

Timestamps
(00:00:25) Why did DoorDash win?
(00:10:50) China
(00:17:10) Restaurant trends
(00:27:59) Loyalty
(00:30:40) Stripe Issuing
(00:44:09) Delivery modalities
(00:51:11) Fraud
(00:58:32) New products
(01:13:26) Dot