Continental Breakfast
Continental Breakfast
What a time to be live. The main thing happening today is unauthorised AI agents turning up inside US bank accounts. Live from 12-3 PM BST, here's your Order of Play, plus a great Op-Ed from Monty on the origins of the VC vest!
12:45 PM - Ross Taylor, Co-Founder & CEO at General Reasoning
1:00 PM - Max Buchan, Co-Founder & CEO at Valarian
1:30 PM - Sean Murray, Head of Special Projects & Crypto Lead at Fuse Energy
1:45 PM - Ali Haddad, Founder & CEO at XRlabs
2:00 PM - Alex Gluchowski, Co-Founder & CEO at Matter Labs
2:15 PM - Richard Starson, Founder & CEO at Stellios Technologies
2:30 PM - Aditya Jayaprakash, Co-Founder & CEO at Blacksmith
What’s Happening Today
AI agents are turning up inside customer accounts without the banks' permission.
Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo are all detecting third-party AI agents accessing customer accounts. Most are logging in with the customer's permission and credentials, but that still breaks the banks' rules. Some agents have also been tracked contacting call centres or acting independently of user instructions.
Bank executives have described the situation as "horrifying". Many banks can't tell whether an agent is following a customer's instructions, or even distinguish one agent from another. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently warned that thousands of rogue agents could be operating across financial platforms.
Morgan Stanley has begun blocking third-party agents, while JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citi are restricting access. Moreover, Chase has warned customers not to share their login details. Most banks are moving towards read-only access, allowing agents to view financial information without taking action, much like budgeting apps such as Quicken.
But while banks are shutting agents out, Stripe is letting them in. It's launched Treasury for agents, allowing startups to give AI agents like ChatGPT and Claude access to business accounts. They can check balances, pay invoices, move money between accounts and convert currencies. Founders decide whether agents can only view information or take action, and when a human needs to approve a payment.
We're getting into all of it on today's show at 12 BST.
Daily Op-Ed — The Origins of the VC Vest
Prelude
At my first startup job, we worked fully remote. Usually I would be in my pants for much of the day. Sometimes, though, we would have a co-working day in a trendy London members’ club. I remember one of the first times I went. Given the opportunity to get dressed, I wore a micro-check blue shirt, some chinos, a brown leather belt, loafers, and a synthetic down vest. I thought I looked good, even somewhat professional.
I saw one of the founders at our usual table.
“You’re giving me PTSD, you look like a VC,” she said.
“Huh? What? Why?” I thought to myself, “Do venture capitalists have a look?”
But reader, you know why. I now know why. The whole outfit was massively VC coded. But the pièce-de-résistance was the vest.
Where did it come from?
The gilet. The sleeveless jacket. The bodywarmer. The waistcoat. The jerkin. The vest. This garment has many names and as many lofty connotations, though apparently humble beginnings: it first appeared in a form we would recognise in the 1500s. European peasants wore cheap leather or coarse wool vests for warmth and range of motion in the fields. Eventually aristocrats appropriated the shape, but made them out of velvet, silk, and sable. Henry VIII was a great champion of them, though he called them “jerkins”.
What has happened in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is remarkably similar. You may know that Patagonia, the makers of the platonic ideal of the VC vest, is an outdoor apparel company. They make clothes for climbers, skiers, hikers, and hippies. When they started coming out with vests in the 80s, these outdoorsy types lapped up the lightweight practicality of a sleeveless layer. You could rock climb in it unencumbered on a brisk morning, easily roll it up and put in your bag when skinning up a hill, recycle in it, etc. But then, much like the jerkin, it became a status symbol.
It is almost a paradox that the company with the strongest pro-environmental governance is so closely associated with financiers. Patagucci attempted to rectify this in 2021 with a ban on branded vests for financial services companies, yet the link lingers.
But why did the VC vest become such a thing? I have some hypotheses:
Why?
1 - Out of Doors
VCs are generally upper middle class. Upper middle class people freaking love the outdoors. Maybe a couple of them came back from Tahoe, forgot their cardigan or quarter zip at home, found the AC a bit nippy, and were the first to don the VC vest in office.
2 - Temperature Regulation
It’s cold in San Francisco, it’s warm in Palo Alto. The vest keeps the core warm and the pits ventilated. It’s…amphibious?
Similarly, here across the pond, you have to be able to survive the underground’s clay furnace and stop the street-level damp getting into your bones. Though vests (cf. gilets) are more associated with The City.
3 - Flattery
Once you spend enough time as a desk-jockey, you start to slouch forward. Your inactivity may also lead to a gut. The vest hides all of this. Vest/rest/digest.
Humans, at the end of the day, are social animals. We like to be part of something. The vest is a uniform that says “I’ve made it.” They are like a hug from the establishment. A comfort blanket for yuppies. But you aren’t a lawyer or accountant. You’re a VC (or maybe Wall Street guy). No one cared who you were until you put on the vest, which makes it so hard to put down.
— Monty
etn. Insight
The Vest Compass plots every gilet from Good Hang to Bad Hang and Doomer to Accelerationist.
Loro Piana and Rab are sitting pretty at the top, Patagonia keeps things sensible in the middle, while Barbour has wandered into doomer territory. Canada Goose, Schoffel, Moncler and Tommy Hilfiger are all bad hangs, with The North Face somehow managing to be a bad-hang accelerationist. And off the chart entirely, a tactical plate carrier is prepping for the apocalypse.
Do you agree or have we insulted your fave vest, reply and let us know!?
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