🦾Tesla Made a Personal Robot You Could Buy for $20K (one day).

Welcome to The Level Ups. Modern business news for the future business leader (explained in plain-Jane English).

Today:

• Tesla unveils their new robot, Optimus (real original name).

• Elon Musk’s texts reveal how rich people throw billions around like no big deal.

• The future of spreadsheets

Let’s get into it.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes & 39 seconds. 

Optimus. Stolen Name, Good Robot? 

For $20k, you could have your own personal robot. So claims Elon Musk, who unveiled Optimus on Friday (AI day). This is all part of a larger plan to create a consumer robot.

A significant upgrade from last year when their robot was just a guy in a suit.

Tesla’s robot uses the same tech as its cars (sensors, cameras, etc). Musk believes their robot products will eventually outshine their automobiles.

It’s a bold claim with the long-term potential of being true. Consumer robots are not necessarily a new idea, and some have shown success already.

• iRobot’s Roomba vacuum is an example of a booming consumer robot. It’s “just” a vacuum, but an essential milestone in consumer robots. This is a big part of why Amazon acquired the company for $1.7B in August.

Optimus can walk and perform basic tasks but not much else, leaving much to be desired. It has a long way to go.

Especially when compared to Boston Dynamics. Their Atlas robot runs obstacle courses and does backflips. This robot parkour is absolutely terrifying.

As for Optimus, the markets didn’t care much.

Tesla’s stock price dropped Monday morning after the announcement on Friday.

It has potential but still feels like a gimmick. Time will tell.

Elon Musk Has Text Messages with Billionaires Revealed.

Musk tried to buy Twitter, backed out of the deal, and so Twitter sued him. As part of the discovery process for the lawsuit, his text messages were opened up and shared publicly. You can read them all here.

I read through most of them and thought they were funny. The Atlantic had a much harsher take.

Here are the highlights:

 Parag Agrawal (current CEO of Twitter) gave Elon sh*t for tweeting out, “Twitter is dying.” The response had me rolling. 

• Elon: “What did you get done this week?”

• A minute later he added “I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private.”

It’s funny because the guy’s trolling Twitter’s CEO as if he’s an intern. He did make that offer, and Twitter accepted it on April 25th. Backing out after the fact is why we have this lawsuit. 

Larry Ellison was another gem. He told Elon he wanted in on the Twitter deal.

• Elon “Roughly what dollar size?”

• Larry: “A billion… or whatever you recommend.”

The three dots make it feel like that time I lowballed a guy on craigslist...

• “Whatever works for you,” Musk responded. “I’d recommend maybe $2b or more.”

• Larry a few days later: “Since you think I should come in for at least $2b...I’m in for $2b.”

You can read more of the details here.

Some of the other big names involved:

• Reid Hoffman - co-founder of LinkedIn.

• Gayle King - CBS (Oprah’s #1).

• Sam Bankman-Friend - founder of FTX.

• Joe Rogan.

It’s an interesting look at how billionaires get deals done. Not just because of the billions. It’s the speed. I had someone take six weeks to confirm a $400 copywriting project (freelancers get it). But here’s Larry’s confirming billions in days.

Feels like a pattern.

It suddenly makes sense how Adam Neumann from WeWork got that $350M cheque from Andreessen Horowitz for a new company with nothing to show for itself. Crazy, but it lines up, right?

Maybe rich people aren’t as sophisticated in real life as in the movies. Maybe people who over-complicate things are the ones who got it all wrong? 

I’ll just leave that there.

Disrupting the spreadsheet business

Millions of jobs rely on spreadsheets, and the industry is worth billions. But it hasn’t changed in decades. Just looking at excel makes me know it’s old. Thankfully, modern apps are changing the game.

For example, one of the biggest challenges comes from copy-pasting data out of other apps. Analysis is essential but tedious. There are ways to patch things together or build custom software, but those can get expensive and take time.

We hired a virtual specific specifically for spreadsheet work. It worked for us, but still subject to human error.

Some solutions can move data from one app to another but not from an actual database. Many small businesses collect a lot of data but either: 

• Can’t organize it, or;

• Don’t have technical people to set up databases.

There’s a new solution that’s changing the game.

Meet Equals.

Equals is a super spreadsheet that immediately pulls data from your database. Companies (big and small), use it to perform all their analysis. 

It's a “no-code” tool that comes with templates (my favourite is the one that helps analyze monthly recurring revenue (MRR)). There's a very smooth connection with databases, and analysts can "show their work." Meaning someone else could perform the same analysis without any technical knowledge. 

The team includes early employees at Intercom (now worth billions), and the testimonials speak for themselves.

Check them out!

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow,

Darwin