AppNexus Founder Brian O'Kelley

Auren Hoffman (00:01.218) Hello fellow data nerds. guest today is Brian O'Kelly. Brian is the co-founder and former CEO of AppNexus, which built core infrastructure for programmatic advertising and was acquired by AT &T for $1.6 billion in 2018. He's now the co-founder and CEO of Scope3, a company working to reduce the carbon footprint in digital advertising. Brian, welcome to World of DaaS.

Brian O'Kelley (00:23.604) Thanks, Auren. Thrilled to be here. As a data nerd, I think I kind of qualify. All right.

Auren Hoffman (00:25.646) Yeah, we, yes, you're, you're definitely a data nerd for sure. And you and I have been friends for a long time, so I'm really excited to dive into all these things. Now, what do you think is like the thing people most misunderstand about how digital advertising works today?

Brian O'Kelley (00:44.135) think that there's a lot of folks who are younger than us who don't realize that programmatic and this idea of auctioning ads was totally arbitrary and that, you know, it's just one way that you can match buyers and sellers and that there's, you know, tons of different ways to think about this. so, you know, anytime there's a dominant paradigm, there's a skeptical part of me that's like, somebody came up with that and that doesn't have to be this way. Like in this case, it definitely

Auren Hoffman (01:09.058) Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (01:12.724) was somebody who came up with it. And I love thinking about different ways to solve the same problem with different tools, algorithms, ideas, concepts.

Auren Hoffman (01:21.582) What would be like an alternative universe? Just like the classic would be like just how people would sell it on a site just like people sold it in magazines and stuff.

Brian O'Kelley (01:32.305) Well, I I look at Amazon and how they do sponsored links. You know, I want to go sell my book. I go give them a thousand bucks and I'm expecting to sell more books. And if I don't, then I don't give them more money. I kind of want to tell them who my audience is. I want to tell them that the people I think will buy my books. I'm like data nerds. The idea is that I want to contribute as much information to help them find me my customers.

And then at some point, the algorithm will pick it up and find more people like that. The problem with programmatic as a paradigm is this auction causes buyers and sellers to fight. It's like a zero sum game. Who pays more, who pays less. And it creates these weird dynamics where I don't want to share information with you because you'll charge me more. Or I don't want to share more because you'll just arm my inventory. And if you read ad tech press, it's always about buyers versus sellers and publishers are getting screwed.

This whole thing is about the economics of the transaction, not about making the pie bigger. And so to me, any paradigm that's zero sum is missing the point.

Auren Hoffman (02:38.178) Now, in some cases you have people like on all sides of the pair, all sides of the ecosystem. So Google will be an example of that. And I know that you testified as an expert witness in the DOJ case against Google. Like what is the, where, where, would, if you had to say the strongest case for their behavior, anti-competitive behavior, what would be the case that you would make?

Brian O'Kelley (03:01.831) think that the challenge of any sort of market leader is that there's a tension between what makes you the most money as the market leader and then what's best for the ecosystem. And so I'll use what's now called GAM, Google Ad Manager, but was previously DoubleClick for publishers. The whole point of that tool was to help publishers monetize their inventory. And if you look at that product and you say, what are the things that were best for publishers?

If you look at the tools that Meta has or that Spotify just rolled out, the tools that publishers built for themselves are dramatically better than the tools that Google is building for publishers. And so something's broken. Why are publishers using Google's tools if they're not the best possible tools? Why is optimization not built in? Why doesn't it have the ability to ingest a CAPI, like a conversion API? Why is there not more order management? I Google shut down their order management product. Like Google actually made the product worse over time.

And so this is when you start wondering if there's self-interest. And of course, Google wants to sell as much as possible through its ad network, through its programmatic platform. I the margin on programmatic or their ad network is dramatically more than the pennies they get for the ad server. And so I think that's when you start wondering what structurally is either preventing a competitor from building a better platform or keeping Google from investing their talent to make that platform more effective. And so that's, that to me is the...

sort of smoking gun, right, is it.

Auren Hoffman (04:33.39) And why do the publishers stay on that platform if they are in some ways like going to have it worse off is because they get better access to inventory from Google.

Brian O'Kelley (04:46.447) I mean, News Corp was an investor in AppNexus and so they had significant reasons to want to migrate. And they said that when they talked to Google about migrating, Google pointed out that 50 or 60 % of their programmatic revenue came from Google and that they would be putting that at risk if they switched. And what News Corp said was, we can't take that risk, even though we know you have a better product, we know that we're investors, it's just too risky because what if we lost that Google money, we would be...

Auren Hoffman (05:07.021) Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (05:16.62) these groups.

Auren Hoffman (05:18.926) Got it. OK, that makes sense. Now, Ad Tech has been a great place to invest. You and I have done a lot of investments in the Ad Tech world. think investors have made more money in Ad Tech in the last 20 years than any other category except for SaaS. Why does it get such a bad investment wrap?

Brian O'Kelley (05:37.349) Well, the problem is that ad tech is very difficult to understand from the outside. And I think the SaaS like, you know, mantra of, you know, CAC and LTV, and there's these really simple like things like companies should have a burn ratio of X, Y, Z. It tried to break companies down into very simple machines, like you hire a growth person and you do this and you should have 52 employees at this revenue level. What you and I both know is that there's so much more

Auren Hoffman (05:48.749) Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (06:07.441) complexity to building businesses than just hitting certain multiples. And ad tech almost exposes the fact that there's agencies that work with brands and that, you know, agencies need to be managed in one way and then brands do other things. there's, you know, global markets and being an ad tech company means you're in one of the most crazy global complicated, fast changing markets in the world. And to me, if you can survive an ad tech, you can do anything.

I think it's a lot like Wall Street. There's more complexity on Wall Street than any place in the world. And it's scary to investors because they don't get the market. And therefore, they're trusting entrepreneurs to build fantastic businesses and to do things that make sense. And they all get confused about net margin versus gross, meaning, I can grow a business to a billion dollars really fast, but I'm only taking pennies on the dollar or...

I'm running some kind of arbitrage scheme that hits the limits of the market. It's just like anything else. Complexity is scary. And I do think investors are waking up to the idea that building a buy the book SaaS business has caused massive expansion of SaaS apps that are going to get made obsolete by AI in many cases or get washed out by a down market. tech's not like that.

And I think there's a lot of value still to be created in the ad tech universe.

Auren Hoffman (07:38.926) I think there's like two things that don't make it hard. I took like one is that just, just, there is a lot of, as you mentioned, a lot of smart people with a lot of competition. Um, and so you just constantly, other people are constantly trying to like, if you find something like they're going to get smart and they're going to try to find it as well. Um, that's out there. And then the second thing is that just like the whole ecosystem changes like every five years. So

You just have a lot of, so I think that's one of the reasons I love investing in it because you can, you can, you can take market share really quickly, but it, I think it's in some ways it's better to be like an angel investor in ad tech than a series B investor. Cause you see these companies that are like 50 million and then they grow to a hundred and then they go back down to 50, like really fast. Right. and so the, you know, so you kind of almost want to be like the

cup, you want to be the investor where you're investing at like 1 million revenue.

Brian O'Kelley (08:37.552) And I think it goes to the problem is there's reasons that that happens, you know, often because you're really good at selling and you have a great execution and then you're in a niche in the category, right? You've found a niche, but the niche is only a hundred and it's so juicy that everyone comes after you. But then you have the breakouts. I think this is the same in any industry. You know, we're AppNexus. If you invested in our Series B, you would have made, I don't know.

50 times your money or something like that. Like it would have been an extraordinary investment. And I think we see that with Trade Desk, which barely raised money. You've got Critio. You do have these breakouts where they found a category, were able to defend it and then crush the competition. And so to me, that's a combination of great entrepreneurs.

and then really savvy strategy to understand both the size of the niche and the structure of the organization to take advantage of it. So I don't know, I think there's some great investments out there, but I think in general, it's not just that you should invest early, it's that companies aren't gonna be massive, that you should be planning for companies that get rolled up and not necessarily get to IPO.

Auren Hoffman (09:44.77) Yep. Yep. Yep. In fact, in Aztec, there's so many companies that get acquired for like between a hundred and four hundred million dollars. There's so many of those companies were actually in sass. It's like a little bit weird. So either you have like the multi billion or you it's like a zero in a way. Now, the you mentioned Tradesk. I love Tradesk. I don't.

I understand why their stock is down over 50 % this year. what, can you break it down for us a little bit?

Brian O'Kelley (10:18.927) Yeah. You still there? Oh, weird. My screen just went totally black. Never seen that. The window just got really small. It's like we were talking, we were big. Hopefully you can. It was so weird. So the question is actually why was trade desk worth so much? Like their stock went from like 50 to 135. And what happened was that they just hit their numbers again and again and again and again and again. And at some point,

Auren Hoffman (10:25.737) Heh.

Auren Hoffman (10:31.384) You

Auren Hoffman (10:38.849) Yeah, okay.

Brian O'Kelley (10:48.781) I think investors were just like, wow, like there's no end to this particular, you know, rainbow. I'm just gonna keep riding it. So I think actually, if you look at this stock historically, there was a bubble that burst, but it didn't change the fundamental nature of trade desk.

Auren Hoffman (10:53.057) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (11:04.812) Yeah, it's still, it's still a 26 billion ish, know, market cap company, which is incredible.

Brian O'Kelley (11:08.175) Yeah, yeah. If it had never gone to 135, we would be like, oh my gosh, Jeff Green's a freaking genius. And so I don't think we should, yeah, yeah, totally. I'm just saying that the issue for them is that once you seem vulnerable and you seem human, then the market is starting to ask a lot of hard questions. And so I think that's the downside is that you look at the stock coming down and people are asking why is it down?

Auren Hoffman (11:15.926) Yeah, yeah, which he is, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (11:33.772) And then they want to go, wait a second, what happened with your TV platform? And then what happened with this? And so I think it actually begs.

Auren Hoffman (11:38.924) Yeah, it's almost just like the bubble was it's really about the bubble, not about the pop.

Brian O'Kelley (11:45.262) Yeah, and if so, if they'd stayed on the plan. So I don't know, it's an interesting lesson for all of us, which is, you know, there's something to be said for like humility and, you know, just being kind of like properly valued versus, you know, trying to justify a crazy multiple.

Auren Hoffman (11:58.029) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (12:01.708) Yeah. Yeah. Cause you can get in this weird treadmill that goes in there. Now the, the, the monster ad tech company is app loving and it's weird because like a lot of people in ad tech don't even know Apple of it. Like it's just like, but they're, mean, at least as of today, they're our caps worth $93 billion. what did they do right?

Brian O'Kelley (12:25.132) Well, mean, I think performance is a different market. It's not ad tech in the same way that we think about it. And they're a performance company and performance is such an obvious category. Mobile gaming, you know, which is gamers game, you know, just selling games to gamers and using that ecosystem. It's just a massive market. Like gaming is a big market and gamers respond to gaming ads and virtual currencies and all these things.

Auren Hoffman (12:34.968) Yep.

Brian O'Kelley (12:54.796) It's a different world and I'm looking at like TikTok shop and a lot of the live commerce stuff as being a similar new category where I don't get it. I wish I did. And I don't think the ad tech companies of today are well positioned for that for a lot of the same structural reasons that we don't get Apple of it.

because it's gonna operate in a totally different context. Basically, it's not a walled garden per se, but these are platforms that are almost self-contained. And I think it's a different, we as older people who've been doing this for four or five decades, it feels like, we have to break our brains and think about a world where...

The surface is no longer web-ish. It's not web-like in any way. Mobile games are not like the web at all, and neither is live commerce. You have to break your brain to understand that this is not, the concepts don't correlate, if that makes any sense.

Auren Hoffman (13:40.931) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (13:53.966) Now you recently joined the board of live around, which is where I used to work. Um, and to public company and I, you know, know you, you don't seem like the kind of guy who, who's like love would love being on a public company board where you have to, you know, there's a lot of process and stuff like that. Like what made you want to join a public company board?

Brian O'Kelley (14:14.699) Well, I mean, first off, AppNexus was almost public. Like we had found the rest of on, had through comments, and I was like, I guess part of my question for myself is, could I?

Auren Hoffman (14:18.636) Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (14:24.452) Stand being a public company CEO like would I get fired after one day or just get fed up? And so how do you know what it's like to be a public company CEO without being one? So, you know, I really admire Scott how because he's been through everything as the CEO of live ramp and I feel like that board which has you know job a tell and

You know, has Omar Talwa call and it has, you know, just these amazing people, right? It's a great way to learn in a place where it's totally different from my everyday experience. It's a big company, global company, but I get the tech. I don't think there's that many people who can understand like a company like LiveRamp. So I can actually be valuable. Like I can get guidance. Yeah. So that was my goal. Like, could I be helpful? And I don't know if I help all the time, but at least I, I

Auren Hoffman (15:09.132) Yeah, yeah, you're one of the very few people who probably could really be valuable there.

Brian O'Kelley (15:18.282) can understand some of the pieces. I love the team. I think the live ramp leadership team and most of employees I've met are just awesome people. It's a heavily regulated environment that's changing a lot. And so I've learned from that. But I'm always trying to learn. And I felt like it was a new experience for me. And yeah, I would love to keep finding new places where I could push my limits. you know, look, following in your footsteps is a great way to do that.

Auren Hoffman (15:45.678) That's very kind. you know, that case, like I'm still a shareholder. And obviously we've had like a not a great stock performance over the last five or 10 years. It's been it's basically been flat. The stock's been flat since I left. Hasn't hasn't moved at all. Like as a public as a fiduciary for the board and the shareholders, like how does one like in a board meeting? I mean, obviously it's a tough

company, there's lots of things going on, but how does one have these conversations internally? Like how does one, cause it's not like it's up into the right. Like it's a, it's a, it's a slog, right? So how does one have these like conversations internally?

Brian O'Kelley (16:28.266) Yeah, well, what's interesting is the company has grown dramatically. Like if you look at the revenue and the scale of business over that time, I mean, they just keep growing and building this company through super chaotic, crazy market times. So if you think about the strategic value of being the data pipes for a trillion dollar industry, I mean, I guess the conversation is partially looking like, well, you know,

Auren Hoffman (16:41.932) Yep. Yep.

Brian O'Kelley (16:54.719) What are we doing? Like, how do we go take advantage of and grow the foundation that we've built? The headwinds have been cookies and privacy regulation and not having consistent national privacy regulation and not having really a final answer to cookies has made it really difficult to see the value of what I think is a extremely ethical organization built on trying to be

privacy compliant in every single place versus a market where if you just throw some crappy fingerprinting, you actually get more spend because you're not restricted to what is I would consider ethical. So it's almost like a negative ethics arb that feels like we're dealing with. And this is not just for LiveRamp. This is broadly as an industry. I don't think we're properly valuing data. I don't think we're properly valuing data pipes. I don't think we understand.

the incredible value of connecting people to media. I look at Wall Street where data is like the most important asset. It's like data plus quant equals profit. I don't think that's the case here. So there's a structural disconnect that I do think will resolve itself. And the answer to your question is a lot of board meetings, we look at ourselves like we're doing all the things.

Auren Hoffman (18:15.958) so you think it's just like, it's just because like the somehow in over the last decade, like they just haven't been able to tell the story. Like it's a, marketing problem in a way, or like, like, is that the thing you think these things are or?

Brian O'Kelley (18:30.485) think it's the Warren Buffett quote. It's like, you know, when the tide goes out, you'll find out who's wearing shorts. And we've been in the longest, craziest bull market ever. We have like 17 years where even through COVID, we've generally seen markets go up and to the right. You've seen digital advertising grow dramatically again and again and again. And I think we're due for a correction. And I mean that in all senses. I think it wouldn't be a bad thing. I don't want...

Auren Hoffman (18:36.812) Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (19:00.105) you know, crazy global market crash. But I don't think it's a bad thing actually to get a little bit of like, let's pull back, let's see what's really here and let's rebuild on a better foundation. You know, look, you can always tell the story better. The numbers can always be better. Like there's always things you could do. But I would just say if you're to grade performance and you were to grade, you know, market conditions really feels like ad tech and this is the VC side of it. It's the market side of it.

you know, with the exception of Trade Desk and to some extent AppLevin, like I don't think people are fully understanding the opportunity broadly in the advertising sector.

Auren Hoffman (19:40.334) Got it. And you don't think they understand it just because it's so complicated or you don't think they understand? Like what's the reason that you think people don't understand? Because obviously investors are smart. they are looking for underpriced things and stuff.

Brian O'Kelley (19:48.5) I think it's.

Brian O'Kelley (19:57.064) Yeah, well, again, I can only speculate, but my sense is, you know, the continued questions about cookies are really challenging. It's like, you know, post, to me, cookies are the tide. And, you know, if the search trial means that Google has to spend Chrome, will an independent Chrome have the same perspective on cookies that Google does? Cause most of Google's cookie decisions are based on, you know, CMA and other regulators. An independent Chrome might look a lot more like Firefox.

Auren Hoffman (20:23.448) Yep.

Brian O'Kelley (20:26.877) And if that's the case, then we would probably not have cookies on by default in the world's biggest browsers. in an AI future, maybe that doesn't matter because, you know, everything's just happening in the, in the AI chat anyway. So to me, what's the bet? You know, the bet is we will survive and I'm going for survival. And then I think the second bet is, you know, is there going to be value in being the data pipes that connect marketers to

all the major platforms and publishers. I mean, that seems pretty darn valuable, like super valuable. So I don't know. That's my take.

Auren Hoffman (21:00.322) Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yep. OK. I love it. Now, the implications for AI for creating ad content is clear. think that's just anything more content related with AI is going to be great. Where else do you think AI is going to play in the ad tech ecosystem?

Brian O'Kelley (21:21.084) Well, what we've been doing at Scope 3 is basically imagining the thing that I think AI is so good at, which is taking a prompt and then using that to understand things. I can say, hey, tell me about the whole web, and it will go out and search and do things. I think things like content classification are perfect out-of-the-box use.

Auren Hoffman (21:43.81) Yep. Yeah, that's a perfect thing. Yep.

Brian O'Kelley (21:46.697) And so we just said, well, why don't we just do this in the most efficient, sustainable way? Why don't we just ask agencies to tell us what their brand is trying to do and then run that on the internet. And it's extraordinary. It's incredibly fun. If you're an agency person, all of a sudden you're a prompt engineer. And if you're a brand, now all of these complex things you're trying to balance across your whole portfolio of needs, you're actually putting into an agent to do it. So what actually built was less.

the agent part, but it's more all the things around it. How do you calibrate that agent to make sure it's making good decisions? How do you get transparency to understand what it's doing? How do you give feedback to the other side, to the publishers and content producers? So it's almost like the wrapper around the agent. And to me, that's how we have to start thinking. It's like, how do we create the conditions for AI to be incredibly successful? And then how do we help humans get really good at instructing agents? So I think that's a

paradigm shift, I can see the same thing happening in sort of the broader media decisioning world. Planning is obvious and every agency is doing it. There's workflow things, but I guess I'm more skeptical about workflow than others because, you know, yeah, okay, fine. I can have an agent like read my email, look for someone asking for a meeting and then send back my calendar. But the thing is like deciding who to meet and how to prioritize that meeting. Like,

I don't know, like that's the heart, that's the most valuable resource in the world is my time. So why would I outsource the thing that's most important? I don't know. So I'm just a little, I keep hitting that wall of like, what are the things I do today that I want those slacks in my brain? You know, I don't want AI responding to my slacks because I'm trying to learn from what my team is doing right now. So I don't know, I'm just skeptical about that for some reason.

Auren Hoffman (23:15.374) Yeah, it's very hard. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (23:40.952) There's this just like today, the way a lot of people are just interacting with AI tools is through some sort of like chat interface, through some sort of quote unquote prompt. And it does seem like that there's like a very specific type of personality that does that well. And that today, today, that is the dominant AI UI is the prompt. And they think that like that only

works for like a very small under 10 % of the population who's like good at that thing. So either more people are going to have to get good at that thing, or we're going to have other UIs that come in of how we should interact with these AIs, which where do think we're going to go?

Brian O'Kelley (24:30.536) I always use my wife as my favorite power user of all tools. And I mean, power user is not the most power user. You know, the way she works, no, she's a psychologist. It's like even worse. What she does is she writes a document in Word or whatever, and then she copies and pastes it into ChatGPT, and then has it clean it up and fix the formatting and all these things. And then she copies and pastes back to Word.

Auren Hoffman (24:39.384) She's not a software developer like you or? Okay. Okay.

Auren Hoffman (24:55.766) Yeah. And then you have to go back into word. Yeah, which is so terrible. Yeah. I do that all the time. Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (24:59.695) And so, so frustrating. And so I was like trying to tell her to use Google docs and use Gemini built in. And it was interesting.

Auren Hoffman (25:06.926) Even within Gemini, it doesn't really work that well. doesn't, it doesn't show you, it's a, it doesn't show the edits within it. And it like, it like, will show it in the box and then you have to click yes. And then it like changes everything. Like why I wanted to change like 90 % of it, but there's still a couple of things I want and it doesn't allow you to edit. It's, still not great. Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (25:18.299) Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (25:24.933) Right, and that's my point is, what is it, side by side, now we have a diff, now we're like lawyer redlining. So I feel like the fundamental,

Auren Hoffman (25:29.698) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (25:33.688) Like it should be like an editor. Yeah. Like you have an editor come in and editor, and then you could like kind of accept or not accept the edits that the, that your, your friend editor does, you know.

Brian O'Kelley (25:42.875) Right, right. And then she's like, well, can you export this to Word? But it only took the first 500 words for some reason. So she's so frustrated with this thing. And it's like, it's so powerful, but, you know, and I think that's what I like using it for is like, you know, I'll throw, I was working on an investor deck and I was like, what do you think about this investor deck? Could you like help me explain this? Like what was your takeaway from this? You know, and it writes a summary and I'd say it's like C minus.

Auren Hoffman (26:08.334) Mm-hmm.

Brian O'Kelley (26:12.442) But there's a couple parts of it where it's like throwing it to the AI as like man on street interview. It's like what would some random person think of this? What is your take on

Auren Hoffman (26:19.458) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you can even say like, hey, assume this personality and then take a look at it or something like that. And you get many different types of takes. Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (26:26.043) Yeah, but it's just catching like logical things. Yeah. It's like, Hey, like, you know, you didn't connect these thoughts or Hey, this slide was confusing. Fine. Like, it's like showing it to my wife and being like, what do you think of my investor deck? It's not like I'm showing it to you, but I don't want that necessarily. So a lot of my ideas are things I'll just like, Hey, tear this apart. And sometimes it won't have a good idea. So I think what we really need is almost like that. do like the copilot or, you know, some kind of thing that's not creepy, but like,

Auren Hoffman (26:45.836) Yeah, totally.

Brian O'Kelley (26:55.566) more like pair programming of somebody who's like looking over your shoulder being like, hey, by the way, you know, maybe more like spell check where it underlines the word or something subtle where it's not just so intrusive and all or nothing, but I don't know.

Auren Hoffman (27:05.495) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (27:11.852) Yeah. I mean, I'm still like shocked that the AI tools within Word or Excel or Google Sheets or Google Docs are still like so bad. And it's like, you would just think for like, like, you know, just in a spreadsheet, you think the spreadsheet stuff would work so well. And it does kind of work, but you have to like, it's the UI is so bad that it sometimes it's just, it doesn't take you, it doesn't, it doesn't save you any time at all to use it.

Brian O'Kelley (27:39.128) even try at this point. so, I'm so, you know, we, tried Slack AI at scope three and we tried notion AI. Then we tried, there's a tool that was like AI of AI's, you know, and like, feel like everyone's trying to just plug it in, but I will say like enterprise search is still broken and AI is not fixing enterprise search and you're like, let's put an MCP server on top of all of our tools. Dude, I don't have time for this. Like, can you just figure it out for me? And this is where Google. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (27:55.746) Yep, for sure.

Auren Hoffman (28:06.242) And even the summary, like it's like they're summarizing my email. Like the summary is so bad. you're like, how do they edit it? But if I put my email, I actually paste my email into chat GPT or perplexity or two, whatever the summary is quite good. So it's like, well, you just didn't want to use the computer. Like, like, is it like, where are you? Are you just giving me an inferior thing or how are you deciding why you're doing this summary? It's very, very odd.

Brian O'Kelley (28:33.732) Yeah, I turned it off on my phone, all the Apple and... So bad. And I was just, it's like, it's solved. Like, I'm with you. So, but this is actually, if you look at BlackBerry, you know, 20 years ago, the dominant device, like everybody had a BlackBerry and they missed, they missed the paradigm. They missed the shift. And yet it took a long time for iPhone to be as effective for like typing as a BlackBerry.

Auren Hoffman (28:36.11) Oh yeah, and the phone, yeah, your iPhone is horrible. It's yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (28:50.242) Yeah, I had one. It was amazing.

Brian O'Kelley (29:02.659) Like the new generation isn't necessarily better than the old generation. It's better enough in certain areas that people switch. Like I didn't switch because of the typing. I switched because of the camera. And I think that's where we are. Exactly. I think we're in a mode where the thing that computers are good at is actually not solved by AI. It's a thing that...

Auren Hoffman (29:14.476) Yes. And the GPS. Yeah. And all those things, the apps.

Auren Hoffman (29:23.918) Yeah, I didn't get a I didn't get an iPhone until 2011. So I was I stayed on I kept on my BlackBerry and then I finally switched in 2011 to to the iPhone. And yes, the iPhone had a lot of things are way better, but just that BlackBerry was so it does these things are sticky to like that BlackBerry was still good enough for in many cases.

Brian O'Kelley (29:42.691) Yeah. Totally. That little scroll wheel. I mean, it was great. I loved it. And so that's my point is I'm just worried that we're in that moment where like AI does some things. It's the camera, it's these pieces, but like most of the stuff I do, I don't want it or need it.

Auren Hoffman (29:48.216) Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (29:59.277) And yet those few use cases are so powerful, it's gonna win. It's gonna be what we do. So yeah, I think the broader point is for everything we do, we should ask the question, is this one of those things where it is uniquely capable? And then maybe we don't have to use it for all the other things.

Auren Hoffman (30:16.438) Now, I would say that most software developers who are at least in startups are already using these AI tools to make them a significantly better software developer. So that has definitely moved pretty quick.

Brian O'Kelley (30:33.188) For sure. I wrote our AI sustainability platform using AI. And I was writing production quality code so much faster than I... I'm not a professional developer, but I am good enough that with AI help, I can ship software.

Auren Hoffman (30:48.95) Yeah. What did you use? What was the tool that you used?

Brian O'Kelley (30:53.796) I was using Claude. I thought Claude did a great job and I tried. Yeah. No, I couldn't figure out how to make the whole thing and I get have go pilot wherever it was like, it was like fine. But Claude was like, give me a function that does X, Y, Z. And it was like 90 % there. So even though I was copying and pasting, it was a dramatically better experience. And that's kind of the same thing we're talking about, which is like why?

Auren Hoffman (30:55.436) Okay. So you use Cloud like on the side, not as part of your IDE.

Auren Hoffman (31:08.087) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (31:11.596) Yes. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (31:20.686) Because like, in like, I mean, cursor is essentially an IDE meets Claude, essentially, right? Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (31:25.815) Yeah, exactly. And so I think today that's what I would do. but broadly speaking, like that's the stuff where AI is amazing and I'm all for it. So that's my point broadly for, for where we are. If you think about ad tech, like the difference between being able to build something and not like it used to be building a real time ad server was like basically impossible. Like you had to be a hardcore, like computer scientists who could write high frequency trading algorithms. And now it's like, you could do it. And that's, it means that

Auren Hoffman (31:32.461) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (31:46.296) Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (31:55.861) all this complexity and all this like spread of things, it's just going to get worse. Like, and the barrier to entry of it's hard. No. So I don't know. I think that's both terrifying and exciting as an investor and as a founder. Like the gap between I can imagine it and I can bring it to market is going down.

Auren Hoffman (32:17.228) Yeah, at least bring into market with like something that's good enough. Maybe it has some scaling problems or some other things or whatever, but it's good enough. Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (32:21.773) early.

Brian O'Kelley (32:26.433) Yeah. So the assets that matter, like distribution, like scope three has a global team that is, you know, able to sell through agencies and brands. We've got amazing brand relationships. We've got holding company deals with all the majors. We've built an incredible marketing engine. I've been building my own brand. Thank you for having me, by the way, this is a big. you know, and, and so we have the ability to take those ideas to market so fast. Like the products we just announced, these weren't like years of development.

Auren Hoffman (32:45.422) Yeah

Brian O'Kelley (32:56.333) These were really six months from idea to ship, but the ability to drop that into our distribution channels to market, to tell the story becomes paramount. And if I have another great idea and I can get it to market in six months on top of my framework, that's why all these acquisitions happen. Because I bought a company in France in November and shipped a product built around it in March and...

I could take it globally, I could bring all this AI expertise, I could plug it into my existing channels. I think that's how we have to think a lot is the building part is not the challenge, it's how do you plug that into all the other assets and other unique or proprietary things we can do that nobody else can do. Nobody else can do becomes a lower bar.

Auren Hoffman (33:47.65) Now you're, I noticed that you mentioned building brand. noticed you are more active in building your brand. Now you're posting these like great, like very deep ad tech insightful things on LinkedIn and really going deep. What made you want to invest in that?

Brian O'Kelley (34:05.366) You know, I, there's a guy named Joe Zappa who is a like, I don't know, marketing consultant to the industry. And, he gave me a hard time and the end of last year, he's like, you have this incredible like following, you've got this great brand, you have a blog that you never write on. Like, what are you doing? He's like, you literally have the asset that everybody else in this industry is killing for. And yet you don't use it. I'm like, well, I post when I feel like it. And he

Basically said to me, he's like, dude, you're a professional. You'll post when I tell you to, and you will freaking go out there and do your damn job, and that is to build this brand. And he's like, I promise you, if you make like a plan to go out there and post and build your brand, it will pay off big time. And I said, no. I said, absolutely no. This is, my brand is not professional CEO. My brand is crazy ad tech dude who wears shorts to board meetings. And he's like, that's fine.

Auren Hoffman (35:03.118) Which you do, by the way.

Brian O'Kelley (35:04.884) I do because nobody knows that he's like people want to hear what you have to say and that voice.

Auren Hoffman (35:09.538) Yeah, they care about and also you have a very deep knowledge and you've been showing this in some ways, very technical knowledge that it's a niche, like a certain people who appreciate that niche find it super interesting.

Brian O'Kelley (35:22.006) Yeah, and he was right. So I went back, I went out for Christmas and I was like, you know what? Damn it, he's right. And I just started posting twice a week and I, you know, put a lot of thought.

Auren Hoffman (35:32.824) So you have like almost on your calendar, like you gotta post something. So you're forcing yourself to write something interesting.

Brian O'Kelley (35:36.47) Yep. Yeah. Monday and Wednesday, I've got a writing block on my calendar and I try to spend 30 minutes and I'll write a post. And these days I'm, you know, maybe a little bit more active because we just shipped this product. And, you know, sometimes I'll weigh in on an issue, but I don't know. just feel like here's the stat. Last year, just sort of idly messing around on LinkedIn. had a thousand, no, I had a million views for the whole year. In Q1, making this a priority,

Auren Hoffman (35:42.785) Okay.

Brian O'Kelley (36:06.336) I did 1.7 million views in the quarter. So that's pretty good. And I touched, I think, think 200,000 or 300,000 people read my post. So you're talking about an industry that's what a million people. And so that's pretty good reach. And especially if you're launching a new product, this is something that people want to hear. And then I noticed also that it helps because I go on a podcast and people know my name and they're like, Brian's talking to Oren. Like that's a can't miss, you know, I went to ramp up this year.

Auren Hoffman (36:10.808) Yeah, so obviously that's a big difference, yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (36:36.523) talked about on LinkedIn, the room was literally packed and there were people outside who couldn't get in because I promoted it on social. Like that's to me the essence of brand building. And so I guess I realized, you know, you can't take it for granted. Even if you're Brian O'Kelly, most people have no idea who that is and the rest of the people just don't care. So you kind of have to be out there talking and sharing your ideas and also

Auren Hoffman (37:02.634) It's a lot of work. Like it's a job. Like it's a huge job to go do this.

Brian O'Kelley (37:06.559) Yeah, and I also comment and I try to participate. I try to amplify people. Like I'm trying to be a good, you know, social connector. What I haven't done is try to go on other platforms. I do my blog. Yeah, but like I can't, I don't have time to go to X and go other places. So was just like.

Auren Hoffman (37:19.138) LinkedIn is your mean one. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You in some ways that's maybe a better strategy is just go all in on one.

Brian O'Kelley (37:28.466) Yeah, exactly. And so it's easy. And it takes me what? Four or five hours a week, probably. So I've basically taken a chunk of my job and said, is my job. But I'll tell you what's cool about it is yesterday I was on the phone outside my house in my little alley over here and this woman walked by and said, hey, you're Scope 3, right? And I was like, yeah. And she's like, yeah, I saw you on LinkedIn. And I was like, cool. Total brand building, right? I did it.

Auren Hoffman (37:53.49) that's cool. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. We go from that year. You're like even the Brooklyn hipsters are following you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Yeah. That's a no. you know, you, you, did write media now. Then you did app nexus. Most people like they're just not going to go back into the grind again. After that, you're doing startups as hard.

Brian O'Kelley (37:58.495) Ha!

Brian O'Kelley (38:03.117) She didn't know my name, I don't think, but she was like Scope3. So was like, that's fine. I'll stick with that.

Auren Hoffman (38:23.118) It's a lot of work. It's a lot of uncertainty. You have to do a lot of like annoying things when you're in the early days and stuff like that. And you are one of the few people who chose to do it yet again. And, and, you could have just become like a, uh, venture capitalist or, know, something or private equity person, you know, whatever, whatever those people normally do or sit on a bunch of boards, et cetera, but you've chose to go into the super grind. What.

What, what do you think did that? Why do you think that did it for you? And is there a way to like predict that and other people.

Brian O'Kelley (39:00.212) Well, I think there's people who are doing this because they want to make money. There's people who are doing it because they have an idea. They want to be famous. There's a lot of motivations and it's okay to have ambition and those motivations. I actually like doing it. I thought about being a VC and I've done enough angel investing. I don't really find money to be a very interesting objective function.

Like, I don't get why you need a billion dollars or two billion dollars or 10, and that's much more about ego, I think, at some point, than it is anything else. And so, I don't know.

Auren Hoffman (39:34.616) Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Most of what most of what drives people has what I wouldn't say most, but a very big portion of what drives people, there's an ego component to it for sure.

Brian O'Kelley (39:46.08) Yeah, and I decided that my ambition was to be ad tech famous and no more. And so I've already achieved that goal. And so then like, you know, once in a while someone will bump into me on the street and be like, you're that app nexus guy. I'm like, yeah, you know, um, but that means I don't, I'm not bound by trying to build my own, you know, personal fame platform. have more than enough money. So I actually get to do what I like. And what I actually like is getting a bunch of smart people together, choosing a really interesting mission.

Auren Hoffman (39:51.34) Yeah, great stuff. Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (40:16.125) and then going absolutely crazy trying to figure out ways to bring an idea into the world to life. And it's addicting when you can say like, well, I had this dumb ass auction idea and all of a sudden it's on every computer and every publisher and every dollar in the world is going. Like, I love that. That to me is like, if you could be an artist of any sort, wouldn't you wanna be a startup artist where you have the canvas of like hundreds of brilliant minds and this

industries of people who are like excited to try new things like to me that's the the most fun scalable way to I mean Create together collaborate with people, you know learn I learn more every day than most people because I'm just throwing myself into these, you know new environments

Auren Hoffman (41:04.327) You've worked with some really talented people over the years. I've met a lot of the people that you've worked with who've gone on to do other incredible things. Do you have any type of like rubric for finding talent or noticing talent that maybe other people don't notice or maybe developing that talent?

Brian O'Kelley (41:24.22) Well, I'm looking for sparkle. and it's hard to define, but it's like, you know, I love it when people have non conventional ideas or non consensus ideas about things that are willing to have hard conversations to debate ideas, you know, whether or not they're, you know, my idea or your idea, like that intellectual curiosity and systems thinking. If I were to give you the

Auren Hoffman (41:49.474) And you think that makes a good employee and a good founder type person or, know, it's just like, yeah. Okay.

Brian O'Kelley (41:55.263) Well, that's part of it. Yeah. It's like ambition plus intellectual curiosity and flexibility plus system thinking plus like willingness to work incredibly hard, you know, and then a deep sense of sort of ethic or, you know, more or principle, something that's deeper than just, want to get rich. To me is the starting point. But if you think about it like an athlete, like there's people out there who athletically like could play any sport.

Auren Hoffman (42:03.447) Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (42:24.006) Like, it's really a question of which board do you love? But those folks, like, I want the brain version of that. I want the people who are so, like, you you just talk to them and you're like, whoa. Like, I just learned something. Like, I spent 10 minutes with you and I feel like, you know, I'm full. That feeling to me is great. And then how you mentor them, in my experience is, you just throw them into stuff, you know, and you are a sounding board and you're an advisor. It's exactly like angel investing in the sense that they're not all gonna work out.

They're gonna need a lot of coaching, networking, opportunities. Like we can throw them a whole bunch of stuff. I've made a lot of bad angel investments, you know? But I've also made some pretty great ones. I feel the same with employees. Like, you we can have an interview and I'll be like, wow.

Auren Hoffman (43:08.142) Yeah, every once in this person becomes like a 100x person, you know, 100x person, right?

Brian O'Kelley (43:11.624) Totally. And so I just keep thinking like fertilizer. How do I fertilize this? What can I do to help this person grow and develop and stay out of their way?

Auren Hoffman (43:19.276) And is it just like giving them more more challenging things to do essentially? is that the simple way of doing it? Define their own. Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (43:28.008) think they find their own. I don't find them the thing to do. There's this guy, Errol Leto at AppNexus, and one day he said, hey, we're gonna open source all of our header bidding code. And I'm like, no we're not. That's our core IP, we invented that. That's one of the few things I've actually done in this world that I invented. He's like, yeah, we're gonna give it away. I've already created the prebid.org website, and just letting you know. I'm like, time out, you're so far ahead of me here, dude. Wait, what?

And obviously we did it and it was brilliant. And now he's the CTO of Cedar that's a multi-billion dollar company, you know, and he's gone on to much greater things than I ever will. But I just stayed out of his way. Like, I can't think of much I ever said to him that was helpful to him. I just kept being like, okay, like, you're so smart, you know, here's five things you might want to throw into your brain. That's the kind of talent.

Auren Hoffman (44:16.706) Yeah. And don't, and don't just, also maybe don't layer that person like as you grow or something like let them grow as the company grows or something.

Brian O'Kelley (44:21.585) Now.

Brian O'Kelley (44:25.317) Yeah, but it's weeds. It's swirl. It's politics. It's drama. It's, you know, bias. It's all the stuff that keeps people from loving their job. It's how do I give you the tools and give you the resources and get rid of the bullshit anytime I feel swirl? Totally. That's the last thing we need. And so I think that's the hardest thing for folks that work with me is, you know, and think a lot of folks are learning this lesson, which is, you know, none of that bullshit adds value.

Auren Hoffman (44:39.896) So the the bureaucracy essentially and yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (44:54.833) I'm not saying that process doesn't add value. I'm just saying fundamentally knowing what matters and figuring out how to get as many resources going in that direction as possible is really the secret to a lot of management. It's just, you know, there's the goal. Go get a goal and I'll be over here or more likely I'll be running there as fast as I freaking can. you know, like giddy up. And I think that's the best way of

Auren Hoffman (44:56.557) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (45:08.877) Yep.

Brian O'Kelley (45:21.744) Just doing it. Don't overthink it. Just go get the ball, kick the ball, make a goal, celebrate for a minute, and let's do it again.

Auren Hoffman (45:30.082) Now you're in the climate world and there's definitely been like a vibe shift around climate over the last year or so. Like how do you navigate that and how do you suggest other people navigate it?

Brian O'Kelley (45:44.144) think that the the sort of virtue signaling part of climate is not happening right now. So there are a lot of people, you know, bragging about how green they were, or, you know, a lot of this conversation. It's funny, because the environmentalists hated it. They're like, this is all greenwashing, you know, bullshit. Yeah, and so now the environmentalists, as always, have gotten their way. And now everyone's like, fine.

Auren Hoffman (45:58.03) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (46:05.196) Yep. There's so much green washing.

Brian O'Kelley (46:13.734) We're not gonna talk about green. And now the environmentalists are like, but wait, go back to the green thing. You know? And so I think that's the problem is we had a great speaker at our conference a few weeks ago, Ayanna Johnson, and she said, look, if you're operating on hope, the problem is you have hopeful days and not so hopeful days. She's like, that's just not gonna get it done. She's like, execution is sexy. Just show up, do your job, fight for the things that matter.

Auren Hoffman (46:15.448) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (46:19.53) Right, right, right, right, because now they might not get funded, right?

Auren Hoffman (46:41.912) Yep.

Brian O'Kelley (46:43.952) And don't worry about whether you're feeling optimistic or not, just do the work. That's kind of how I feel. Like we've consistently been able to paint a picture for the industry that there's a huge amount of waste. That waste is financial and that waste is environmental. And if we fix the waste problem, we'll fix both. And so I don't care if you come for the cost savings or the carbon savings, like just do the damn thing. And so actually we've had a better, I'm actually shocked. Our Q1 was

Auren Hoffman (47:07.544) Yeah. Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (47:13.633) way better than I thought. Coming into Q1, I thought we were going to miss our numbers. was like, this is going to be the worst quarter ever because of Trump, because of all this pushback. know, CSRD got pushed back in Europe. Like everyone's anti-climate. Not the case. We closed massive deals. We had a ton of lean in. All the work we've done for three years to sort of seed the market has made it very exciting and possible.

Auren Hoffman (47:37.176) But what you may have to like position, it's like your position is safe money or something, right? And that's like a slightly different positioning or something.

Brian O'Kelley (47:42.233) Yeah.

Well, it's the answer. reason this new set of solutions is exciting for us is we can bundle more things with the sustainability data. And what clients are saying is we've always wanted to do it. It's just been hard to justify. But if you're just giving us something that, you know, we get huge benefits and it's also super green, we're in and we're so proud and glad to work with you.

Auren Hoffman (47:57.518) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (48:05.058) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, people want to save money. So that's simple. And if it like saves money and does some good, well, that great, great. I'll happy to do that. Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (48:11.471) Yeah, and people are like, you're pivoting. I'm like, no, I'm bundling. And the nice thing about a bundle is, like, I can do all the things, and my competitors can't, and so we're gonna win. And we're also gonna do a ton of good.

Auren Hoffman (48:24.652) Now a couple of personal questions is what if, is there a problem outside of ad tech that you like would love to tackle someday?

Brian O'Kelley (48:32.824) Hmm. Well, I was really excited about real world supply chains and then I found out what real world supply chains are like and I was like, whoa, that's a lot harder than I thought it was. Yeah. And I think the problem is that most of these problems are so complicated in reality that it's hard. like, look, if I could be the guy who got to play with the user experience for AI, like, wouldn't it be super fun?

Auren Hoffman (48:42.178) Right, we had talked about this a few years ago, I remember. Yeah, yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (49:02.245) to be like, hmm, I wanna go figure out how we're gonna make Excel or Word or my phone or like, there's something really cool. The only problem is I have no skillset for that. I would not do a good job. I would like to be the kind of person that could imagine the next paradigm. I think I'm just past my prime. I think I'm like too deep in my own little world and have so much sort of pre-existing knowledge that I'm not sure I'm gonna see the next paradigm. I think the best I can do and maybe YouTube, I know for me,

My job is to get as much of my brain imparted onto the next generation so they make different mistakes than I made and that we do as much of that fertilizing so when they do invent it, maybe it's someone who is like, I was on that podcast with you and Oren and it changed my life. That'd be cool. I get some credit for that. But at this point, I think it's footprints in the sands of time more than it's like, I'm gonna go do the next thing. think I'm...

Auren Hoffman (49:59.854) Well, are, let me push back on that a little bit. historically, you know, as people age, they are, they're, they're less quick on things. Their calculation speed goes down. Their memory call goes down. Right. So these are all like the, the, downsides. Um, but they still, you they have more money to have connections. They've got more ability to get things done and maybe somehow evened out, maybe one side wins one side, the other wins.

But with all of these technology things coming on, like they're all helping everybody calculate better. They're helping everyone recall and do memory better, helping people process stuff better. So maybe somebody like where you and I would almost be over the hill. Once you hit 50 or something like, Oh my God, you guys are so old now. Like maybe, maybe 50 is the new 35. Maybe you're still not inventing anything like massive at 35 or something. Cause maybe you only do that when you're 25, but

You may have the ability to, as long as you still have the energy to go do

Brian O'Kelley (51:05.517) No, no, we're going to have long and productive lives. I just think it's about how do we take those connections and knowledge and systems and make the next generation of innovators better? you know how like, Sergey and Larry had to bring in Eric Schmidt to be the CEO when Google was like scaling up because they were just like kids? Like, I would love to be that for somebody. I would love someone to call me up and be like, Hey, the next big thing, like, can you come like, be the mentor?

Auren Hoffman (51:25.858) Yep.

Brian O'Kelley (51:35.129) you know, I just feel like that's where I am where like, I would be thrilled.

Auren Hoffman (51:35.182) dot in the room.

Auren Hoffman (51:39.704) But Eric wore like a suit, you you and I, like, we dress up still like kids.

Brian O'Kelley (51:46.754) I don't know. think the new suit is, you know, wearing a t-shirt and short, but that's just me. But look, but that's the point is like, I'm never going to be the suit. Like, but I do think like, and maybe I'm just nuts, but like, there's a point where I can get great satisfaction from helping other people achieve what they're trying to achieve. I do that in a little way as a advisor, as an investor, as a CEO, as a dad. I mean, I'm just increasingly like, look, I don't need any more.

Auren Hoffman (51:50.424) shorts. Okay, that might be right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Brian O'Kelley (52:13.451) of the thing. I have everything I've ever wanted or dreamed. Like I don't, it's not about me now. It's about like, how can I just take this incredible energy I have and this creativity, this demonic need to go make things happen, you know, and do as much good and you know, maybe influence and help as many people as possible with the, you know, few decades we have left to, you know, mess around with AI or whatever we're going to do.

Auren Hoffman (52:13.698) Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (52:37.752) love that. Alright, two more questions when we ask all of our guests. What is the conspiracy theory that you believe?

Brian O'Kelley (52:44.932) we're definitely in a simulation.

Auren Hoffman (52:47.766) Okay, so you believe this simulation one.

Brian O'Kelley (52:51.001) 100%. There's no other explanation. There's no other way to understand this universe. It's just a really good simulation.

Auren Hoffman (52:52.056) Okay.

Auren Hoffman (52:57.976) Got it. So essentially, I mean, that means you believe in a deity or creationist.

Brian O'Kelley (53:03.809) I'm basically a Marvel creationist. I just want to know how to get to the next metaverse.

Auren Hoffman (53:09.838) Okay, okay, got it. I like it. like it. All right, last question. We ask all of our guests. What conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Brian O'Kelley (53:20.521) follow your dreams. Never do that. You know?

Auren Hoffman (53:23.598) But this is the most common thing people say is literally like on, on world of deaths. I've asked this question now to over a hundred guests. The most common one is this fall of the dreams is always the bad advice one. And why do you think it's, why do you think it's so bad advice?

Brian O'Kelley (53:35.963) my gosh, like I feel like, because like, believe in strategy. Like don't follow your dreams. Go fucking manifest your dreams. Go figure out how to make your dreams real or figure out if they're even plausible. Like write a business plan, pitch me your dreams. You know, let's figure out what resources you need to get there. You know, I just think it's so abstract. Like, you know, I don't know, there's no destiny.

Auren Hoffman (53:46.178) Uh-huh.

Brian O'Kelley (54:00.15) It's only, you know, like this simulation has rules and those rules are very clear, which is you got to work your ass off. You got to figure out what you're going to do. Get lucky here and there, you know, figure out the simulation. That's my advice.

Auren Hoffman (54:13.294) Yeah. Yep. All right. I love this. Okay. Thank you, Brian O’ Kelly for joining us on the World of DaaS. I follow you both at Bo Kelly on X, but also Brian O'Kelly on LinkedIn where you're very huge content where I love the content there. Um, I definitely encourage our listeners to engage with you. This has been a ton of fun.

Brian O'Kelley (54:31.498) Awesome. Thanks, Auren. Love being on your cast, pod, whatever you call it.

Auren Hoffman (54:35.456) All right, this is great.