Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we

unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. I'm Natasha Masqueranas and

this is our Wednesday show where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and

unpack the rest. Today we're talking about ego on what recent news has taught us

about it and its impact on the tech and venture ecosystem and to end the year we're bringing it right back to basics and I am joined by the

wonderful in imitable Alex Wilhelm. Alex how the heck are you? Well I'm good and

we're doing this kind of in a cheap fashion because we're we recording this intro after having done the show because we kind of wanted to tell people that this ended up being I'm going to say self-indulgent.

To say the least I think the goal of the show, the goal of the

one's the show in general is to show my favorite word which is nuance behind the

headlines. I do think though this one is really two reporters sitting down who have been covering a

daily news cycle for years but for this year specifically trying to

understand how to connect the dots between Elizabeth Holmes, SBF, Adam

Newman, Ryan Breslow, Zuckerberg.

I mean, there are so many big names

that created news this year.

And this episode is really trying to understand

what these stories told us,

and if they connect and should be in the same

sentence. So I don't think there's a big takeaway other than it's very complicated.

Yes and you know in the old days we would have gone to Bar Basic and Soma and

gone out back where you can still smoke and had a couple of drinks and shared a back of camels and talked it through but we don't get to do that because hashtag health.

And so we're doing all the podcast. So sit down with us and let's have a chat. Have some

...