Speaker 3
I was sitting here like so proud seeing all that. I was like, this is incredible. It was so, looks so professional, so top-notch, so put together. I'm like just proud, proud, proud of
Speaker 2
a distance. Well, you'll be there next year. Our last show, when we did sort of a little bit of a recap, I put it out to Alex. I couldn't quite pinpoint the energy level. Was it excitement or was it desperate energy? I think I'm going to go more towards excitement because it did, upon reflection, feel much more positive and less. I was getting people who were interested in talking to me, but not in a way where I was being stocked and like desperate pleas to please cover their startup. They definitely wanted to connect, but it felt a little different than last year where there was energy, but it was in a darker place. This just felt like real excitement. And what I'm curious is how many of these people are just brand new first-time founders, because maybe that's what it was about, was that these people were here for the first time, and this was like a brand new thing, and they hadn't been in the Silicon Valley Bay Area orb for long enough to become cynical or
Speaker 1
jaded. Good point. Maybe. One thing that blows my mind about what our event has become is how big they've gotten. There was a long conversation in one of our internal Slack channels that I'm going to paraphrase. Essentially, it was like, we can't have basketball next year. It's too loud. And I was reading this thread expecting someone to go just kidding. There wasn't basketball at disrupt. And it turns out there was. And now it's banned because it was too loud. I missed that. How did I miss there being spouts? How did you not
Speaker 2
know? It was in the pitch showcase. So if you didn't go down there, it was quite loud. It was in the recharge lounge. It was a place to relax. It was right in the midst of the hubbub of the battlefield 200, which are the
Speaker 3
200 startups exhibiting.
Speaker 2
And right next to the pitch showcase, which they did push to the side this year, which I was like, great, this is going to be not quite as loud. I was this like, it sounded like construction was happening. So it made the pitches, you know, a little bit more interesting. People had to, you know, express themselves more and project. I mean, we had, of course, amplification.
Speaker 1
But yeah, basketball was happening. Well, I was apparently too cool to go to the second floor because I was on the third floor where my stage was. And also the Tech Whynched Plus Lounge, where we had a breakfast to start. And like, let's be real, whenever we do something in a corporate setting, the question is, does anyone give a shit? Well, he wouldn't come. And they did. It was packed. It was great. So I don't know. I feel edified. But enough about disrupt. There is a lot going on this week that we absolutely have to get to. And I'm talking about open AI, electric boats, post IPO performance, what startups should get out of accelerators? And if they're being a little bit touchy, and then tech layoffs and the current labor market. But Mary Ann, first, we've also heard that the rider strike is over and TechWint, of course, is very interested in the AI component of this. Surprised by what the riders got out of their strike? What do you see here?