Welcome to Amsterdam and KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2023. Join John Furrier, Savannah Peterson, Rob Streche, and UPSCOT as the Kube covers the largest conference on Kubernetes, CloudNative, and open source technologies together with developers, engineers, and IT leaders from around the globe. Live coverage of KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2023 is made possible by the support of Red Hat, the CNCF, and its ecosystem partners. Good afternoon, fabulous Kube community, and welcome back to Amsterdam. We are at KubeCon CloudNativeCon EU and it has been a jam-packed week. We've got over 10,000 attendees cruising around. There's 190 projects we've been talking about. There's startups to my right, there's cool companies to my left, and most importantly, John Furrier and I have some very fabulous guests. Rishi and Johnny, welcome to the show. You guys look great for day three. Johnny, how you holding up? Doing good. A lot of conversations, but all good ones. That's great. That's good. Fairly, I've had a few conversations. Rishi, how you holding that? Amazing show for us, as I was telling that for us, it's not the issue of the pipeline but of the wait list, right? So, signed up a lot, a lot of customers here, right? Good. All right. Well, how are you holding up? You sound like, this is our last interview. This, it makes me a little sad, a little happy. I think my vocal cords have maybe had their moment, but enthusiastically and intellectually, I feel great. It's been so fun. Really been getting a lot of energy off of our great guests, as well as the show floor. It's been lovely. And our team. Shout out to the team. Great. This is a great way to end it. Johnny, Dallas, 21-year-old entrepreneur, first company in 14, sold to Amazon. Youngest engineer working at Amazon, congratulations.  Rishi, I know we've known each other for years, going back to the big data world.   You've been doing platform engineering since 14, when it was different kind of platform engineering. And that's the big story here. And I want to get your thoughts on it immediately, is it's now mainstream, but when you were doing it, it was like, you had to write your glue layer, write your cues. It was hardcore. Yeah. I call it prehistoric platform engineering now. We built a first platform, I was 15, 16, at our previous startup, pre-Kubernetes, built everything from scratch, Terraform, some Python, some Jenkins. Well, that's a heavy lift. Good on you. Yeah. That was a fun one. But it worked. I mean, one infrastructure engineer is able to scale 15 developers. Every single AWS region, thousands of concurrent EC2 instances. And now it's awesome to see the category kind of catch up. Platform engineering is a term now. It exists. We've talked about it in almost every panel this week. I'm sure it's been a lot of my conversations as well. What is the new company doing? Give us a quick milestone. I've got 50,000 developers using your stuff. What are you guys doing right now? What's the core product? What's the service? Yeah. So after building that initial platform, what we've done with ZEED is we really want to bring the ideals of platform engineering to teams that can't quite afford to build it themselves. I think everybody loves the idea of the passes, you've got Netlify, you've got Vercel, you've got all these really simple platform as a service companies that make developer experience very simple. But those don't really scale to actual enterprise companies. And so what we're doing with ZEED is that you have that developer experience on top of your own cloud, your own infrastructure, all in one, and then you can pick out pieces as you go to make it your own. Rishi, what's going on with you guys now? You got traction. I remember a couple of years ago, you were scratching this itch. AI comes around the corner. You're right there. Yeah. So for us it was pretty interesting because right before the whole GPT conversation came right. So we were doing end-to-end integration under that whole testing piece using behavioral environments. So there was only one missing piece that we were not generating test cases because it was impossible to do that before JNAI came. It was almost like the element 43 in the periodic table, which was missing for over 100 years. And the moment it came, it was right fit for us. So we jumped on it. Now we have the full support for all three models. I mean the OpenAI, the GPT-4 version. Then we are working very closely with Google Cloud. And then for the customers who are most paranoid, we are curating the open-source models. John, do you remember them? When you say paranoid, the ones that don't want to give away their information, is that what you're referring to? Yes. I mean, something happened with a very large company. Samsung. Samsung. That's been well reported. Yeah. And the stuff going on here, do you know who it is? We know who they are. Yeah. So a large company, they are very paranoid about it. So they are very eager, but they want the model to be on-prem, and they want it to be secure. So that's the piece we are working on. Right? So amazing traction there. Right? But we are working on all three, right? And just real quick, just end-to-end testing, using AI as the core piece of it? Yes. So test generation, test execution, all the way from the user story, all the way to the acceptance testing. Right? That's awesome. So we passed by it a little quick, but I want to make sure the audience gets to hear about this a little bit more. You mentioned starting businesses in 15, 16. How old were you at that point? So I think I joined my first start-up when I was about 14 and came the director- About 14. Just to repeat that for everyone. Yeah. And then entered high school, became the director of operations there and ran all the infrastructure, then on platform engineering, then our company got acquired when I was 17. So four years ago now, it's been a little while, but yeah. Got the cliff there. We're really into inspiring the next generation. We had Cassandra, who teaches the kids' day on our show yesterday. I'm really curious because I love to think of a young, ambitious person sitting at home right now, maybe watching this. How did you get the confidence and decide what you were going to build at 14? Honestly, I think the beautiful thing about software is it's all online and no one knows who you are. I don't know if you've seen that meme of a- Nobody knows you're a dog on the Internet? I got you, Johnny. That exact same thing applies to people. I knew very early that I love creating things. I love innovating, and I love helping people do more as well. I also knew that nobody would really respect me as a 14-year-old. It's not like I can go be a CEO quite like that, but I can write good code, and if I write good code, that can get me accomplished. So I started with development, did that for a little while, caught to an age where people grew a beard, people listen to me now. He already helped in terms of the business perception. Yeah, I can see that. I love that. There's a line that I love. It's so good they can't ignore you. And then as a woman in tech, as a young person in tech, I'm sure we share certain experiences.  Much more so. We've got ways more to go. Yeah. It's better when you start making more money than all the VCs will start with money at you, ten ways from Sunday. Or you don't need their money. Yeah, I'd say no. That's the best part. Yeah, I was going to say more. Why are you going to involve the VCs? Stand in line. Yeah, this guy goes to a company at 17, and I don't think we need any venture backing at this table. I'm my own harshest critic. I've got plenty more to work on them. I'm excited for it. What's the big challenge right now for you at your business right now? Give it a little color commentary on what you're going through right now. Where are you? What's some of the challenges and how you're facing them? Yeah, so we started Z about two years ago now, really focused on, like I said earlier, developer experience. Make it very simple, make it very clean, make it very easy. What we've been doing more and more recently is focusing on the more offside of DevOps, right? How do you give an infrastructure engineer really powerful controls to customize this experience, and suit it to their setup, their devs, their environment? Because no company is the same. Everyone might look similar at a high level, but you get into the details. Customization is really critical. So just last week, actually, we launched a new feature, Blueprints, which is the first big piece of this puzzle, which is allowing you to take any infrastructure as code module and import it into Z. Make it a reusable piece of infrastructure. So if you've got, say, this is how I want to do S3 buckets at my company, bring that in as a blueprint. And now any dev can say, I need a new S3 bucket, and it will always use your template, your interface, and anybody, even an intern, can spin it up that way. And soon the AI, that'll be AI enabled. So much more scalable, too. Exactly. I think that's really the core of what this idea of platform engineering is, is how do you scale expertise? We've had agile, we've had DevOps, we've had all these kind of trends, but you really need software to do this, especially as we have more and more people becoming full stack developers and bringing development. Distributed all across the world. Yeah. I mean, there's so many reasons for that. The complexity is expanding in so many different axes. You need just software. Exactly. There's something about ZX that's going in the back, too. Oh, gosh, yeah. Multiple clouds, I think, is a really big trend that we're on top of, especially as all the AI stuff is picking up. GPUs and GPU portos, massive problem, harder to chat more. You guys are both doing AI. You're doing AI in your plan. Your young AI is going to be a tailwind from sure you're going to lean into it. I'm sure that you will not run away from AI. I can tell by your look. So, guys, share with us your perspective, because we've been trying to frame where AI will land in this ecosystem. I mean, it's not clear directly. Obviously, security is one. Automation is not a foreign concept that infrastructure people. But it's infrastructure. You can't have hose and agents. But AI could be a game changer. So, how do you look at AI in this market? A lot of plumbing, a lot of under the hood, a lot of log files, a lot of machine data. What's your vision of AI? How do you guys see it impacting the good, bad, and the ugly? So, yeah, you've hit it right, the log files. In fact, one of the secret ingredients we have is to use log files iteratively. If you think about it, when you have test cases, it's not that they're going to pass first time, right? Maybe 80% test cases will pass first time, right? In that, then we analyze the logs using gen AI, and then it becomes 85%, 90%, right? Then slowly it gets to 100%. So, it's like debugging in software, right? So, it's not that software doesn't work first time, right? So, it's the same thing here, right? Johnny, how is platform engineering going to evolve? Because you can connect to dots. You can see some things. It's not always clear. What's your take? Great, since you're the OG on the platform engineering side. Into the game before it was mainstream. What's next? It's interesting to see. I really do think multiple clouds is becoming increasingly important here. I mean, the GPU one is one thing here, but more and more we're having specialization of clouds. You have niche cloud providers coming out. You have privacy regulations coming up in Europe. You need to be spread across multiple different locations, and the orchestration of multiple clouds can't happen without a platform on top of that. And so, I think that's a real tailwind there alongside AI. The whole AI world is very interesting. I think the generated infrastructure is kind of one idea that people are very scared of right now. I think it's kind of funny. I think we're kind of already doing it. I mean, we have co-pilot and we have infrastructure as code. We already have lots of Terraform being generated by AI. It's already kind of happening out there, and I feel like people aren't quite seeing it that way, which is surprising to me. Well, I just read on Stack Overflow, they banned chat GPT. That's news. Oh, I didn't see that. They don't want any code pollution out there. So, how do you deal with the good code versus the bad code? I mean, aren't you worried that some bad code is going to come in? I think the evaluation loop is important. Right now, it's a lot of humans, but I think as we get more and more ecosystem built up around AI tooling, we're going to have automated ways of testing these things. I don't know if you've seen any of the auto-GBT examples where you write some code, you run the code, it breaks, you pass the error back into the AI, and it just iterates, iterates, iterates until it succeeds. I imagine you guys are thinking about this a lot with your testing. You have the evaluation loop already in place. Yeah, by the way, we were the first enterprise sponsor of auto-GBT, so I'm a big fan of the project, and we are also planning to contribute there, right? So, yes, absolutely. And as I said, so in fact, the same iterative approach which is using for coding, I will also help them with the testing aspect. What do you think we're going to be saying when we see you guys at KubeCon in Chicago in the fall and we're freezing there? Rishi, let's start with you. Well, I would hope that most of the open-source part has just started, like we talked about auto-GBT right here. So I think by that time, there will be bunch of stable open-source models, right? John can attest to it 10 years back, almost every week, there was a new Hadoop distribution coming out, right? So now, what I'm hoping that every month at least, right? There will be a new LLM which is going to become open-source and then all the training is going to happen on that. I think that is the next biggest thing which is going to happen here, right? Yes, you will have Microsoft, like you will have Google and you'll have all of them. I think you're on to something now. Yeah, I definitely agree. Johnny, you have any thoughts? Yeah, it's definitely interesting to see more and more of these platforms coming out, right? Like I think AI is so new by the systems there. I think from our side, the things that we're talking about are going to have a couple of cloud partnerships hoping to be able to talk about by then that are in the works right now as well as- We're rooting for you. They're going to be exciting. As well as all the tools here, it's very interesting to see what we've really done with this Blueprints functionality. What we just came out with recently is more and more of these specific technologies, like in the AI space, vector databases like Reviate. How does that get deployed? That's kind of still an unanswered question. How do you really scale that? We're going to have a lot more specific technologies to talk about. What do you guys think of KubeCon this year? Obviously the numbers are up. It's great, great numbers. Back to steady state for Europe, they oversubscribed by 50% of this, but it's 5,000 and got 10, 2,000 and they're waiting less. 60% of attendees, first timers, so you got a lot of action. What do you think about the presentation? I know the papers went out in November, so not a lot of AI in the track because it kind of surged on us big time. What's your take? Go ahead. I'm happy to be one of those 60%. This is my first KubeCon. Been to play with everyone. It's been great. Very welcoming. And yeah, very busy, 10,000 people. It's awesome. We had a couple of engineers who wanted to make it and couldn't quite get tickets, so I'm going to get them in next time. But yeah, also first time in Amsterdam, haven't been here in a while. It's been an awesome week so far. What's been the highlight of Amsterdam for you? Honestly, all the water and bikes, I love it. I'm always in the city. There's cars everywhere. I can like walk around. The city has been beautiful. It really does have an energy. And having been in the last few KubeCons, I'm not kidding when I say I'm getting energy off the floor. Everyone's so excited and helpful. I mean, the open source community is known for being a bit helpful. But I think one of the, and this is a vibe thing, one of the things that I've noticed between doing two events in North America versus coming here is it's just so much more inclusive. It feels like a different sort of family. So I'm here, I'll be curious to get your take more in Chicago and see what you're thinking. How's your time been in Amsterdam? What's been your favorite thing? English is not a problem. I mean, so last time we were in Valencia where people had some challenges here. They're like, here, there's zero challenges in speaking English. It's a great point on the language barrier. Very convenient. The other thing is that especially regarding KubeCon, day two, I would say most of the conferences have 30 to 70% strength. Here it was almost like 100%. Day three, no one ever is there. Here day three is about 80, 90%. That's a really good point, Rishi. No, I was curious. And Instagram too, by the way. There's a lot of reason not to be here. Yeah, the reason that things don't start till 1030, I think, around here, this particular event, I think everyone's being a little bit generous. But it's, I mean, it's just been, I don't know, I feel like the city is very much welcomed. I'm curious to see if the same thing happens in Paris next year. It should be great. Paris should be fun. I mean, who doesn't love Paris in the springtime? Can't help myself. It's been a great show. I got to tell you, I love the show. I thought it was dynamic. We had great segments on the Kube. And I think it's more human this year. It feels more inclusive. And they've both been inclusive. And the partnerships have had an opportunity to mature. I think we had a lot of things happening in silos for a few years there. And now everyone's starting to team up and work together and really start to build some very critical stuff. Like I said earlier, when you see data protection on the agenda, you know, it's an enterprise-grade show. I appreciate that that's your benchmark, John. I'm going to have to figure out what mine is. Most of the cutting edge show, no, this is like a benchmark. It's more of an observation. Like, you know, the developer shows are, they're hardcore developer power, you know? And you got coding, clinics, all kinds of deep dives. And sometimes some of these other enterprise topics don't get addressed on those core tech. So when you start to see things like data backup and recovery, data protection, where security's in there, it's like, okay, it's hardening to be enterprise-grade. That's why I kind of like this platform engineering repositioning because platform engineering two years ago isn't what they're talking about right now. It's not, it's a completely different thing. It's more mainstream IT. And to the point of like inclusiveness and dev conferences versus cloud conferences, we're talking so much about developer experience. I mean, Backstage is the new CNCF project that everyone's talking about right now and a lot of focus on. It's really how do we take the stuff that we're talking about here at KubeCon, bring it to developers and help them be a part of the conversation. And I think that's the inclusivity as well. That's a good question. You're the first guest to bring up some of the trending topics. What are some of the other ones? Backstage, the developers of Jazz about, what are some of the other projects that are in the hallways of getting a lot of traction? What would you say? I mean, I think similarly, it's not necessarily as new but GitOps continues to be very interesting. The GitOps con for the first time this year, it's very similar premises. How do you give developers, the end users, the ability to control this stuff? Infrastructure as code, Git, these are the interfaces that developers naturally live in. Now we're pushing more and more of this to the edge while making sure that they don't have to deal with all the complexity of data management in the actual infrastructure. Let's keep that over here and give them control. Well, you're a back end guy so the web assembly is actually hot trend too. We had awesome guys on. Rishi, what are you seeing as the hot developer? What's the catnip for those developers? So, developers, I would segregate them into two categories, right? So, most of the developers are eager to learn, right? Because, I mean, there was a dream for people to become 10X developers, right?  If you're not a 100X developer, you're irrelevant. You're irrelevant. It's a bold claim. Catnip. Yep, there you go. Dog bone, dog whistle. Are you going with the cat and dog in a yang? You referenced in the dog t-shirt from yesterday and I see what you're going, John, don't worry. What's the best swag you've seen? That's a good question. We do a swag segment, so yeah, no, I'm curious. Curious if you agree with me, no, I'm kidding. I don't know if it quite counts as swag but I saw one of the usage-based platforms handing out dollars, handing out free money. Saved cost-natable us. That one was pretty good, I got me. It's clever, it's catchy. What about you? Well, I would say I was swagged at tote bags, I mean, they were, we were out of them very soon, I mean, I think day two itself, right? So everybody was carrying them, but I didn't get a chance to go and check at other places. Well, we had a big debate. Do we like the Oculus Rift and the Legos that IBM had the higher, bigger price but not as creative as your favorite? The Replicated Apron. Apron, yes. The Apron and it's a nice one, it's a utility Apron for the barbecue or whatever, it's got a little leather straps, yeah. And the Hangover Kit, they have a nice little eye mask for the van amongst us, no, the whole thing was great. I got one last question for you guys as we wrap up this fabulous segment and I'm going to start with you, Johnny. What would you say, because you've obviously been a bit of a gateway to people into this space and I can imagine a lot of people look up to you. What would your advice be to someone who's just learning about Kubernetes, KubeCon, the open source community? What would you tell them? I mean, honestly, the space changes so fast, I would very much focus on whatever is brand, brand new. Be at the cutting edge because that's going to be the heart of it all in a few months to a few years. So AI, LASM, platform engineering, backstage, these are the things to focus on because that's going to be all of the conversation for the next several years. LASM is very exciting, I mean, even if we talk about the prehistoric platform that I built back in the day, we had to go to containers, that was a necessary step for us, we couldn't live in the supervisor room. There wasn't another option. And LASM just kind of improves that functionality, like we're going to have more and more of these back-end runtimes that are accessible to developers and usable by infrastructure and I think that's very interesting. We're going to have to start paying you because you pretty much summarized all the topics that we had here on the Kube this week. So I very much appreciate that. You should have put us out of business one second. I'm having a drink with Matt Butcher for me on after this too, so I'll let him know that you're excited about what they're doing. That's very exciting. Rishi, what about you? What are the questions? A question? Nobody knows what's going on anymore. We're off on after this. What would you say to someone who is just learning about the open source community, CNCF, KubeCon? What would you tell them? What would be your invitation or your advice to someone who's just getting ramped up? Yeah, so I would say that, I think we have seen Kubernetes evolving and now it has almost become like an infrastructure play, right? That something which I found most exciting about that all of the new innovation, even in the JANA AI, they are assuming it's going to happen on Kubernetes and containers, right? That that's kind of assumed, right? So I think that's the biggest thing that I mean. And do you think that's going to be real? Yeah. Okay, there it is. Well, Savannah, it's been great run this week. Rob Streche, we have Yop, great team. Yeah, we've had a really, really absolutely killer team. In fact, I want to give them all a shout out. We've got Yop and Rob as my co-host. Noah, thank you very much. We've got Steve. We've got John. We've got Leonard. We've got Rihanna and we've got Kony. None of this is possible without the fabulous production team that is seated over here to my right that you never get to see, but they're beautiful and they're brilliant, which is quite a bang. We are very lucky to be working with all of them. Rishi, Johnny, thank you so much for joining us on the show. John Furrier, thanks for making the magic happen for all of us. And thank you for tuning in to our live coverage all week from Amsterdam. We're at CubeCon Europe. My name is Savannah Peterson and you are watching the Cube, the leading source for emerging tech news.


What's going on guys? We've got a big announcement here on this channel. We're gonna be launching the 5050 show soon We are gonna be talking about current events Asian culture sneakers basketball all the things that you guys love from our channel Except just in a different format, but first Here's a podcast about us basically today. We don't have a topic bass list Uh-oh, or maybe we do but the topic is Is the fong bros perspective? Oh, and we got a list about it We have some explaining to do I think some people are kind of confused about our background where our perspective comes from how we're able to make so Many different videos ten things you need to know about the fong bros that inform our perspective These things will help you understand where we're coming from it may not explain everything But we're gonna try because we've been saying a lot of a lot lately Particularly obviously on Asian issues a lot of a lot. Whoo Okay, David start with number one and we grew up in a very educated family But we weren't spoiled nor would I say that we grew up with a lot of money And we were definitely raised in a more blue-collar town. Basically our family both our parents had graduate degrees Yeah, that a PhD our mom had a JD educated in America through it But we were raised in a town that was more blue-collar in terms of I guess like socioeconomic level or educational level So basically your family stands out sort of like a sore thumb Even though you think Yeah, it's like your family's just misaligned with the city that you grow up in our neighborhood a lot of people in our neighborhood growing up Probably their parents didn't even go to college and I would say even whether they were white black or Asian Actually, it just wasn't the most educated area. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that It's just everybody was hard-working basically We grew up with this nerdy academic Chinese family in sort of like a jock Urban-ish part of town now, I wouldn't say that it was hood, but there was definitely some hood elements No, that's how I would left the hood who moved again, and they kind of brought the hood with them There were some hood stuff that happened. I'll tell you this there are Very particular Apartment complexes that where there's graffiti and everything like that. It feels like the usually educated parents like this would not raise Their kids in a place that end up having you know, some obviously some drug addiction Drug violence all this stuff, you know a lot of like professional sports players come out of here So I think it's just like like you said Our family background just did not align with the environment and that causes for a lot of perspective And actually makes you kind of funny. Yeah, it actually makes you funny because I'll tell you why everything your parents teach You at home does not necessarily vibe with what other kids parents teach you other kids values And even sometimes the teachers at your own school are so like blue-collar centric They can't even help you dream of like whatever your coach to think of it at home Well, you know when our family's expectations, which you know coming forward we come from I feel like we're a little bit maybe you know Overestimated but their expectations were that we kind of go to like really good schools or Ivy League schools But nobody from our area goes to Ivy League schools like it's just hard You know like the even the Toria yeah, yeah, even the valedictorians or the high school Counselors, they don't even understand how to get there So they're just like hoping you get to community college or like the state school Anyways, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying like that was kind of the misalignment that we're having when you kind of grow up in Very blue-collar and some people are even more like maybe lower middle class and stuff like that You you want to be down with the flow because the flow is the flow Like if you're in a certain type of high school that you don't align with you Don't get to come in and be like everybody adapts to you you have to adapt to the current flow I'm gonna change the rules and bring my values to this school. You guys do not value academics enough Well, let me tell you shut up our sister ended up going to Stanford and she really didn't fit in with the vibe in Kent right so she kind of more Did her own thing kept herself obviously, you know, if she had really adapted to the Kent culture probably she honestly she probably wouldn't went to Stanford But for me and you we more tried to adapt and we tried to get in with it And that was a great segue to point number two is pretty much even though we grew up around mostly non-Asians We didn't play the cut. We were very involved. We were out there We were trying to get with the flow and be popular kids of the flow. We're involved in varsity sports a lot of clubs I think well-known but maybe not like Beloved but definitely well-known kids. First of all, there's different schools within a school district It's like slightly different dynamics, by the way, there's schools with more Asians or schools with less Asians We went to a school that particularly had very little Asians and of the Asians that were there Practically know like I guess East Asians. It was mostly like Chinese and Vietnamese and like Filipinos There wasn't that many Chinese people at least when I was no, no, there wasn't there wasn't my year a little bit more Just not that many though in my graduating class of 450 people. There was seven Chinese people And maybe 10 East Asians so yeah out of 450 not a lot That's crazy. We wouldn't grow up around our own kind of running start Yeah, we all we all went to college in high school Basically, it's like we didn't grow up around our own kind or people from an even similar socioeconomic level And we were really trying to be cool at school So we were trying to kind of in a way appeal to all these people who were unlike us not that that was the only thing I mean, I think we thought all that stuff was cool too, you know dressing cool playing ball everything But definitely there was kind of like y'all I'm trying to be cool. Well, you we tried hard to fit it Yeah, without you I think some people would go well That was very foolish of you to try to fit in when you were from this type of family to try to fit into That flow that was very foolish and maybe there's something that people still think we're foolish at the end of the day Things don't make or break you that young, but they definitely affect they have an impact Like some people go to schools where everybody's family is like their family Yeah, and then some people go to schools where it's half-half and some people go to schools like us We're almost nobody at the school Has a similar background even the other Asians didn't necessarily come from a similar background We had we were managed to make some pretty good Asian friends But their family backgrounds were yeah to wrap this point up is I think being in an environment was often times more like a battleground than a Playground growing up where we weren't just around our own kind We weren't super super comfortable and we were out there trying to make it happen trying to adapt to the environment Whether or not we should have but we tried and that's what we did and like we said Everybody has different reactions to it when they don't align with like an immediate environment I do think it made us stronger though overall like for sure for sure and inform our perspective too because a lot of people They go through that process once they hit like 1820 maybe 23 when they're entering their corporate profession. We're going through that at 12 13 this dude from what I hear a lot of the SoCal Asians that grow up in Asian areas out here They they learn that when they go to like go to school in Boston or something then they get You know hit with the American break like hey, man. This is what it's really like Anyways point number three Seattle is one of the most if not the most Educated cities in America, but it's a small place just to give you an example growing up in Seattle We had the Sonics. We had the Mariners We had the Seahawks, but really the big celeb at that time that everybody knew the name of was Bill Gates Yeah, and that's like almost even amongst The non-academically focused people Bill Gates was still the name because he was the richest man in the world I'll say this like obviously because we had this very academic-centric family We did have access to the Seattle infrastructure. So on weekends, we get taken to the Science Center We get taken to the Asian Art Museum all these different exhibits, you know variety of Theater shows that were available because you're still close enough to Seattle You can just drive in for a show. Yeah, you don't necessarily driving in when you're young to go hang out Because it's not like we went to church in Seattle or anything like that, but I'm saying that There it was really a weird Push and pull because your local environment is like everybody's trying to play for the Seahawks or the Sonics growing up mm-hmm and Then on the weekends, you're gonna go see like a talk by like a professor Yeah, you're gonna see the new you're gonna see the new exhibit at the Science Center That's gonna talk about like physics and like the universe and stuff Or you're gonna go see an opera or you're gonna go see a Chinese opera or like a one of those Chinese like circus acts Yeah, I gotta tell you I gotta I gotta add this funny anecdote though for one of my birthdays in sixth grade I don't know if you remember this I had a bunch of the guys over from you know from the school And we were having a sleepover, you know mix there's Richie there and some other people and then one of the presents that dad got me was Steven Hawkins book for my birthday. Oh, yeah, and Not that I didn't like Steven Hawkins at the time But I would say definitely to open that present in front of everybody like it was supposed to be lit I don't know. I felt like a really weird feeling where I was like really embarrassed that dad did that I appreciate it now wanted like a n64 I wanted some shoes or something, but I think dad thought it was gonna be dope to have me open that in front of My friends because that's what he value and at that time of course being a kid I'm just trying to be cool dad. You gonna be open in this book of Steven Hawkins. That was crazy, but I don't think any of the other kids Probably got that for their birthday No, no, but I like I said I appreciate it now, but that was like anyways That's like a funny little story. All right guys basically what we're saying is culture in Seattle is pretty different than culture in other places Okay, it's definitely more similar to I don't think it starts to change to be like this kind of like To me what I call like a middle America culture until about federal way Kent just Kent starts to change too, but you know, I mean like Seattle has a very strong tractor beam of like Yo, if you're smart with computers You could be rich. I mean Bellevue has the highest density of millionaires in the world Or at least in America. That's crazy And a lot of stock option millionaires there. Yeah, and just It's just different man. It's really different. So that's why I that's why we wanted to tell you how educated Seattle was because that Colored our perspective and colored the values and you know, some of the things that we did point number four We grew up deeply influenced by the culture of New York Particularly New York hip-hop and basketball culture. I don't think we need to talk too much about this because I feel like this one's a little bit More obvious for people, but we love New York and we always love New York Literally, you know lower east side. Yeah Chinatown. We love and if you guys know about I think it's funny because I'm Basically South Seattle's kind of like At least with the more closer you get to Seattle. It's very like nozz Yeah, yeah, the South South side, you know why it's like nozz more than like chief Keith It's definitely more nozz than chief Keith because you have this street element, right? Which nozz is very street, but nozz is also a poet and he's very much about reading books Yeah, it's very like nozz most death nozz most death were really big in Seattle Retro open mic is essentially like no, it's a lot of that Revolutionary slam poetry Obviously if you guys know about slam poetry guys Usually if you're a slam poet your favorite rapper is nozz. Yeah, probably right even the point before where we were saying It's so educated it still seeps in to the culture in the urban parts of Seattle where people are a little bit more conscious Conscious, you know who's like that? That's from really close to where we're from Jamal Crawford Yeah, and you know who else is from Seattle is Angela Rye? Yeah, the political Journalist pundit. She and they're all from South Seattle. Yeah Around the Seward Park area. So it's like South. Yeah, we're from South side. I know there's the south end We're not from the south and we're from the south side. Anyway, but yeah I mean, I think basically there's just a if New York hip-hop fit really well into Seattle at that time It's not so much like trap rap. It wasn't really Atlanta rap It really wasn't even la rap. Of course it being West Coast There was a lot of pock being played but I would say pock and nozz and Jay-Z there was like Maybe a little more pock, but it was close people just like lyrical stuff They like lyric and they and they sort of like, you know, if you know nozz he picks a lot of rainy sounding beats His beats sound very like gravelly. I mean, I'm not a minimalistic DJ, you know premier types Guys, I'm not saying Macklemore represents all of Seattle But the fact that Macklemore came from Seattle does mean something Macklemore still really very lyrical and Kind of cheesy but spoken word. Yeah, you're very poetic, you know Like I said, you you got to give Macklemore that I would say the biggest Seattle South Seattle icons in terms of like the urban hip-hop Culture Brandon Roy a Robinson Jamal IT now IT's from Tacoma, but yeah, that still counts Zach Levina is from North Seattle, but people don't really rep Zach like that Anyways, but he does play in the crossover league. He does. Hey, he's one of the greatest dunkers ever I'll give him that point number five that kind of informs our opinion is that we used to be really angry Angrier and more bitter about the position of average Asian guys in America and Although there's always still things to talk about and issues there things are getting better But I feel like we've toned down some of the anger which some people I think might be surprised That we said that because lately we've just been like making some videos complaining not really complaining identifying the issues guys I feel like we're not angry about it. The tone is different. It's way more Looking at it just from a technical How long are you gonna be angry for like that's my question to a lot of people is that of course? It's totally fine. Basically we should rewind that to basically to say this I think if you're not super tall or super good looking or super rich and you're like an Asian guy in America The odds are people are gonna rank your Dragon Ball Z power levels pretty low. I would just say that the average Asian guy in the West the average Asian guy Probably gets ranked pretty low on the depth chart. Yeah unfairly like literally Regardless, so it's like a there of there like built-in skills and talents and thoughts and abilities just straight off them Rip they're like socially ranked kind of low. Yeah, and what I would say is that we knew that early on we kind of learned that we felt that we were on the message boards reading blogs about this long before red it really popped off as like the scene to do that in and then I would say like We we've been talking about these issues for a long time and for me personally I'm just a little bit less angry not because I have everything in my life that I want But just because I'm like, you know, we got to just go out and attack things and do things because I'm like Not as caught up at this point in my life in oh My gosh, this is what happens. You mean Asian guys get ranked lower than other guys like that's not new to me That's just a fact. I've accepted it. So what do we do from here? And we're not talking about the really chiseled beautiful You know sharp nose Asian guys that some of them obviously exist Yeah, I do think they get underrated and I always tell people it's like an exchange machine What you know different people are getting different exchange rates on their efforts. Yeah, what's your exchange rate? What can you do except put more dollars in what's your machine like is your machine working properly is your change machine giving you The full amount one for one or is it kind of janky? It's kind of giving you like Well, obviously, I can see why some guys could be discouraged if they put in a dollar bill, right?  They're getting a dollar 25 on a dollar in terms, you know of exchange rate Guys discouraging. Yeah, it is discouraging, but I don't think the guys should stop trying I don't think that they should Give up. I think the reason why we wanted to share that point is because I basically wanted to let you guys know that We've been there. We've been on the bitter boards if you want to call them the angry Asian man We've kind of been there. I'm not saying that I still don't feel it. It's just that I'm I'm there in a different space now as you should be. Yeah, as we all should be I think that it's really easy to stay in that like rooting Period but at the end of the day your life actually only changes not when you accumulate more knowledge or a more profound understanding of your problems, but actually You as you attack them as you take action So that's what I we want from all the makeover videos and all those things as encourage guys to relentlessly take action Action instead of relentlessly Accumulating a better understanding of the problems are David. Are you active on the activeness? Basically everything in life guys is a balance between attack and analyze I do think Asians in general not just the average Asian guy in the West Could use a lot more attack. Yeah number six as Asian as we are and we're very proud to be Asian and we're very much into Asian history culture food The movement all happened, but we're not that much into like Asian pop things It being Asian pop music gaming Anime like we we keep up with kind of all of it on like a base level. I feel like But we're not like deep in it, right? That's fair. We're not I don't think that's a mystery I don't think people are like shot. I watched the tack on Titan the one movie Yeah, what's the show? No, I know I'm a I'm aware of No, I feel like you know, it's important to understand what's going on the general view But we're I don't spend time. I know enough to get very surface level anime memes But if we were going to like into the anime meme Instagram's yeah a lot of that stuff would go over my no no the memes about anime that pop up on the mainstream Asian Instagram meme pages I Kind of understand but the deeper ones I don't and I think it's funny because we had this one friend this one time It was she was a girl and who she was like, hey guys, you guys aren't really Asian And I was just like what do you mean when I look at us like we talk about Asian food all the time We're very proud like what do you mean? She's like, no, you guys aren't into like gaming and all that stuff You know the typical Asian stuff, so I think it's interesting And I'm not to like downplay that kind of stuff because I know that a lot of our friends are into it too But like I think it's just interesting that we're more into like probably the food culture history aspect of it and the globalization and the Economics behind it then we are necessarily into the pop culture You're talking about yeah, sort of like the teenage pop culture of Asia and I still like Boba though I just think that if you really look at Asian culture in depth There's so many different levels and the pop culture that emerged in the past 20 years It's just one narrow slice of Asian culture. Yeah, and I'm not I like BTS. I'm glad BTS. I really liked the fact that we're able to speak at the UN Garner that type of platform, but I'm not learning k-pop choreo routines. What? Just in the same way. I never learned J-child choreo routine So it's not like a Chinese versus Korean thing like I don't like pop music in general But yeah, I mean I think real quick just to wrap up this point because I don't think we need to explain too much But like why is that different? Well, how does that shape our perspective that we're kind of more? interested into The larger part the thousand-year-old Asian culture rather than diving so deeply and being caught up in like the last 20 Well, first of all, I think the people who actually really understand Asian culture if you had to pick one or the other For sure all the other stuff is more deeper. Yeah, no the history I mean we're talking about hundreds to thousands of years I mean we're talking about products that were created in the last 15 20 years in the pop world We're talking about philosophies that have Lasted the test of time and well a later. Let's just say 2,000 years versus 20 years. I mean guess last word on Asian pop culture that I'm not particularly deep in whether it be anime gaming or Pop music. It's like I think it all is part of the wave. I think generally it's all good number seven I wanted to say share this point is that we never hit our identity of being Chinese And we do believe that Chinese are often misrepresented in a kind of larger sense So I feel like one of our goals of our channel is not that we are not actually we don't have friends of other Asian races We actually are very well-versed. I would say in other Asian cultures But particularly there's kind of this mission that we have to kind of help explain where Chinese are at right now Yeah, I think it's a unique responsibility that only would Fall on people who are Chinese have a passion for it and I think that of all the Asians in America Chinese are probably the most misunderstood yeah, because It's the oldest. It's the oldest Asian. It's the oldest country actually in the world right now That's still a unbroken civilization And the first Asians that came over to America like Egyptians would be up there But guess what Egyptians they ain't Egyptians anymore like from they ain't the pharaoh Egyptians, right? So basically Chinese are sort of like this very esoteric Group of people that a lot of people really struggle to understand. I think even Chinese Americans don't understand it is complicated It's really complicated. There's 56 different languages Within it and actually Genetically Chinese people are mixed with a lot of different things. Yeah, they're not all like what people would say Mostly, huh, they're mostly huh, but they're mixed with a lot of different stuff depending on what region, you know You're I mean China's a big place with a lot of it's grown over the years. So Not as cut and dry as being like an Asian from a small country I think they're complicated in their own way, but it's pretty much like That's the narrative and that's it. You know what it is Chinese It's like they can't even agree on what language to speak I mean, it's a lot easier to kind of have a one-set narrative for For example, like maybe Koreans and Vietnamese people who you know their populations range, you know less than 50 million worldwide But then I'm obviously with Chinese was such a big huge Planet of their own 1.35 billion I mean 1.4 if you count the diaspora people from around the world easily, right? And it's just like that's just a crazy amount of people with a crazy amount of history and Diversity I mean it's like India if you look at India the reason India has had some, you know problems running infrastructure It's because they're all super different from each other and some of them don't even speak the same language Yeah, yeah, and I would say like I think it struck us because I think so many Chinese kids growing Chinese people over the years when we were growing up a lot of Chinese kids Wanted to be Japanese wanted to be Japanese wanted to be Korean or wanted to be white. Yeah Or in the South and in the South and you know, it's more urban wanted to be Filipino Yeah, I mean they wanted to be everything but Chinese. Let's say that Yeah, and this is you guys have to understand this is out of time I think it's like different if you're growing up in Australia right now and you're 15 you're probably really happy you're Chinese I'm just saying like there was a time in the US. I would say a stretch of about 25 30 years Where it was viewed as so uncool to be Chinese. Yeah, no, you know how many Chinese people would just tell us like oh, yeah I'm just Asian. I'm like You know or like even if they are Chinese They're like, oh, yeah, they don't want to they don't want to say which Chinese they are. Oh Yeah, my family's from the South Where in the South like you know, it's like I think just that there is that those people themselves They didn't fully understand how to use it and or how to be proud And I think one of our missions is to this large group of people who maybe don't understand themselves that much And I'm not saying I'm an expert by all means we're not experts I'm definitely not an expert, but I do think that we're trying to figure out a way that Chinese people can be proud without being Ridiculous about it with being fair to everybody else with just representing ourselves just more fully I just think that one of the goals of our channel has always been to be well-balanced Asian guys Show all different Asian cultures, you know not represent them in ourselves personally But put them on camera give them a shot give some give them some shine But to also build up some more kind of like soft power imagery The Chinese culture. Yeah, and I'm not talking about anything geopolitical or anything related to any sort of Simply people just don't Yes Simple as that. It's like what I'm not gonna like my cousin our cousins are growing up over there Yeah, like we have cousins growing up in China Hong Kong China other parts of Asia, too Like I don't want people to feel that way I Theoretically if you made me analyze the reasons why they feel that way. I could break them down for you Yeah, I get it but Somebody's got to just show some highlights them at least some middle ground things Try to show that Chinese people can be nice people, too Yeah, and I get it. I get it Chinese people when you meet them anecdotally in your everyday life unless you meet like kind of like Certain ones that are I guess more Less common. They're not gonna necessarily be like the incredibly like smiley people Basically to wrap up this point is that we're not saying that there's not Reasons for those questions for those debates and those stereotypes stereotypes come from somewhere But I do think just as we do for Asians in general We like to do you know, even especially for Chinese is to just show the other side And show that we're more than those stereotypes number eight We figured out early on that the world was tribal and even though it's changing a bit now it is still Like that basically this kind of understanding that people kind of like things that are similar to them That's not a crazy thought. I think everybody should know that that's kind of true on a macro level I think you're Micro to mid situation like we always talking about we're like boats or like fishes in the ocean and you Are in control of to some extent how big or small or powerful or how your Jeep or how your GPS runs as a boat But then there's also a tide and a gravitational pull from the currents and the moon You know that you as a fish slash vessel in the ocean Have no control over all you have is the control over how strong you are yes And that's what it means to be trapped people are tied to a tribe Here's the thing you don't get a fully pick what type of vessel you were born or what type of fish you were born Why is it that any Asian youtuber that's out there the majority of their fans are Asian? Why is that because that's like literally that's a fact for like 95% Asian youtubers? Well, obviously I would say the only YouTubers that kind of have the benefit of multiple multiple heavy demographics are the white youtubers Yeah, and that's why you see so many Asians or Latinos or even African-Americans dye their hair blonde and wear blue contacts because at the end of the day if you just look at it Let's remove all this sort of like social justice aspects out of it If you want to appeal to the largest amount of demographic pools having blonde hair and blue eyes is still Probably the logical move even if you're Asian or even if you're yeah, if you know if you're not white Yeah, just helps just affect those attributes to look to have white features. Yeah, as far as the world being tribal It's unfortunate. I think you look in 2019 right now and you see that on full display I mean you just take a look at polling numbers across America. It's it's inland versus coastal It's this side versus that side like I just know what someone's race gender and where they're born in America right now And with like 75% accuracy Roughly predict which way they're leaning on a vote. Yeah, yeah I want to say it's just about race and looks though because different tribes They can it can be by socioeconomic and city for example in SF. I think it's a little bit less based on being Asian I think it's more about being from the tech world tech world, you know Obviously Andrew Yang's all of his followers are not Asian. In fact, his biggest supporters are not Asian So it's more about his meaning what he's doing for people people are are able to overlook even in England Which for the longest time was a homogenous society They really segregated themselves based on which type of British accent you had. Oh, do you speak the Queen's English? Do you speak cockney? Yeah, do you have a Birmingham ham accent or whatever? Do you know what I mean? Like humans like to separate people into quadrants and then rank them into a hierarchy I always said like anytime there's more than like six of a person they're gonna start separating themselves somehow You ever seen a group of like ten friends and like they still have a ranking amongst that ten friends They have the girl the guy who's usually in the middle of the group and then you know There's the guy who generally is always caught on the outside of the picture and it's just funny anyways It's like a sorority or a fret. I mean they have there's hierarchy Yeah, but uh, but I just think that that's just the way the world is not that I want it to be that way And not that it should be that way but on a macro level now I'm not saying in the mid and the micro things might not be different though Because it depends on your own individual situation who's around you what neighborhood you're living in what part of that What age you are if you're really young guess what tribes don't mean as much dude Living in different parts of Vancouver could feel like you're living in two different countries. Oh, yeah parts of LA Number nine is that we generally care more about impact and meaning of a video more than income So it's not that we don't value money.  We like making money We do brand deals, but it just doesn't take priority over Kind of the type of videos that we want to make for example Rarely ever hopped on trends. We never did like the mukbang thing. We never did like Parodies really like maybe one or two parodies never really gotten to the reaction game These are things that you do when you're essentially trying to make money off YouTube And I think making money off YouTube is like the number two thing for us But number one is like, what do we want to say you're referring to like the SEO games the SEO games We don't play that and that's nothing wrong.  You have a formula cake But guess what guess what everybody the fun bros channel. I would say lax formula Or the formula is just a lot different. I should say that there's not a lot of internet gaming Like in terms of gaming not gaming video games like gaming the system. No, we don't we don't gain the system It's hard man, you know, we just want to make the content. It's funny because after all this time David Almost eight years in the game of YouTube We're still kind of like making the content that we just want to make so in a way as as I feel like as Impersonal as our channel can be called because we don't talk about ourselves You can see that Topic-wise we just want to talk about the things that we want to talk about whether it's an Asian issue Video one video and then the next video is a food video and the next one's a burger video the next one's about street wear It's like it's very Inconsistent, but it's interesting That's how I say our channel is, you know, obviously you look back and you could say oh man I wish it would have did it that way did it that way. Hey, man If it came if we made it, you know, obviously there's a few vids I wish I could take back or like I don't I don't really grade The journey of the last eight years making Professionally making videos online like a ten out of ten, you know, hey man Who's to say the future couldn't be ten out of ten though or at least striving for that not every video I want to say we've tried our hardest to be meaningful in But if even if you watched a little grocery store videos, you know, we try to tie in a little Deep take away at the end. We never did a cinnamon challenge. We never did ice bucket challenge By the way, we do donate a lot of stuff whether that's like oh clothes It was a micro finance accounts for you know, third world entrepreneurs I got we donate a ton of stuff to Goodwill. Oh, yeah, we'll throw up sneakers all around you You know, New York, you know Indie go-go's and Kickstarter's man. We we uh, oh go fund means when people have a everybody's going everybody's going through it You know on some level or another, you know relative to their own spectrum, but absolutely I mean, you know, we were we were oh one thing we were raised pretty deep in the church I am I'll tell you this. I'm not fully, you know, I don't want to get into that too much They did coach you a lot on being caring. Yes They receive a lot of heavy coaching on caring for your media community your family your friends and even rings that extend From on the tree stump, you know Pluto you still got to enter the Sun Still got to care about Pluto even though Pluto is so many rings removed from the Sun Now is that even fully effective as I'll tell you this one thing I've realized is after meeting a lot of really, you know And there's different types of rich people after meeting some really rich successful people Not every really successful person at least in this game that I've met like entertainment That's the Sun cares about Pluto. You mean they don't care. It's just a ball of ice They don't necessarily care about the little people not more than they have to know no I think there's just different coaching that everybody receives Look at our channel. It's like a it's like Partially like a community chain like I don't want to say we've just worked with so many different people and we've tried to put So many people on and giving them a shot to be on camera when a lot of other people don't want to like don't even imagine that There's talent like there's always we're bringing our friends into videos that really have no aspirations of being a youtuber, right? Even our friends who are trying and it's not working out for them. Yeah, just help, you know And it's not I don't want to say it's just out of like obviously I think we're gonna get good content out of it, too So obviously that still helps, you know David point number 10 So David, what's one last thing you want people to know about the phone bros that might help them understand us better I think the easiest way to put it is that the past eight years professionally doing YouTube. Oh, it's just been Our search for the truth. It's not that we had it figured out eight years ago And it's not that we haven't figured out now There was just a lot more soul-searching than we ever let on and there was a lot more really in-depth discussions And I think now in 2019 moving forward until let me tell you this whoa, I Think and you cannot predict the future you think David thinks until the day I stopped doing this whoa Whether that's when I die or at a previous prior date It's gonna change basically that Wraps it up for our top 10 list of things that you need to know about the fun bros to kind of understand why we make the Videos that we do 2019 season of change a lot of things are moving guys Say no more guys, we're gonna wrap up the podcast here. Thank you so much for watching or listening Hopefully it helped you guys understand us better. You might still have some other burning questions Hopefully the comment section is popping. That's what I'm hoping for. All right, you guys Thank you so much for watching that episode of the hot pot boys hot podcast That was 10 things about What makes us who we are the fun bros? Yo, you guys, thank you so much for watching that podcast about us and what informs our perspectives Hopefully you guys got a better idea Where our minds come from and if you guys liked any part of that podcast definitely check out our 50-show comment soon on this channel. Stay tuned