Transcript Summary: Early Dinner with Matt Holm and Mike Klein (2025-05-12)

Participants

• Gary Sheng
• Matt Holm (Real Estate Professional)
• Mike Klein

Setting

Early dinner at an unnamed restaurant, prior to Gary's later dinner with Matt Holm. The participants ordered various dishes including steak frites, ceviche, and ribeye.

Key Topics & Revelations

Trump World/Trump City Concept Development

Gary outlined his vision for a Trump-branded city development in more detail:

• Vision Positioning: "Trump has neither a tower or a golf course in all of Texas. Of course, the best location exactly where you said."
• Branding Strategy: "After the Trump City, which by the way, you could make it less threatening and call the Trump World, like Disney World, Trump World, and have entertainment, casinos, everything, right? Manufacturing, just literally like a microcosm."
• Location Strategy: Discussed positioning between Austin and Tesla's factory
• International Expansion Potential: "In China, for example, let's say we had successful Trump world in Austin area, Palestine. It would not be crazy to do one near Beijing, right?"
• Soft Power Implications: "The biggest weakness that China has is its soft power. Its movies are shit, its fashion sucks, its music sucks... South Korea is completely dominating China in terms of soft power."
• Business Scale: "If I want to become a trillionaire, it's not going to be because I created Stripe, it's going to be because I created cities. And not just one city, many cities."

Matt Holm expressed interest in the concept: "It's got a realistic play already."

Gary's Background and Career Path

Gary shared extensive details about his professional background:

• Early Career: "I started my career at Google. Sovereign Air, one of the fastest promoted of my year. Went to school at Duke before that."
• Activism: "I was one of the most successful political activists. I had a page called woke folks before woke was incredibly annoying... For example, Philando Castile. That was why that case went viral."
• Entertainment: "I also threw parties and concerts, had stages at music festivals... I did [Dom Dalla's] first US show. Do you know Output Club back in the day in New York City? I did a 1,300 person, 12 hour rooftop rave with Dom Dalla."
• Non-Profit Work: "I left to co-create a non-profit to train young people to be civic innovators. Got The Rock involved, got Andrew Yang involved, Cory Booker, got Forbes 30 for that."
• Crypto Connections: "The Ethereum Foundation reached out to me and was like, we love what you're doing with these kids, do you want to teach them about Ethereum?... became friends with Vitalik. Hosted one week, two week, sometimes two month long events with Vitalik, co-living experiments."
• Vatican Connection: "This time last year, the Vatican invited me to go to a human flourishing and innovation conference because I had spent the last three years at that point helping them come up with a framework for human flourishing."
• AI Training: "I had gotten into this free AI engineering bootcamp, started my career at Google, but like the way that you code now, you've probably heard, like with Cursor, it's completely different, and way more fun, honestly."

Alpha Schools and Education Innovation

Gary described his work with an innovative education model:

• Two-Hour Learning Model: "This is how my school works. You only spend the first two hours of the day doing the common core stuff. We're meeting the world where it's at. And we've taken median test score students on average and taken them to top 1% on average. Through just drilling them with like AI gamified learning apps."
• Specialized Focus: "The school that's going to be the next IMG, competes with IMG, is going to be drilling kids for the gold. It's, like, an expensive sports school in Florida. And, like, the only way that we compete with them is, like, kids, we get the best coaches and we just practice more, right?"
• Diverse Applications: "This applies to sports schools, this applies to, if Beyonce opened a dance school... so that kids are dancing and choreographing and singing for 30 hours a week."
• Career Trajectory: "I'm on track to be like the CEO like if I just keep delivering results because I'm someone that can think at that in the weeds, but also strategically at the high level."
• Alternative University Model: "I'm actually going to launch Alpha University. Which is basically just getting the smartest fucking kids in the world just to cook on stuff together and then have a fund built in. That's it. It's so fucking simple."
• Critique of Traditional Education: "I think it's trash... The most fundamental issue is that we're wasting our kids' time instead of them actually building cool shit and changing the world. We're forcing them in lectures. That's the bigger issue."

International Development & Shenzhen Architect

Gary revealed a surprising connection to urban development:

• Shenzhen Architect: "This guy that China discovered 20 plus years ago, around 20 years ago, and they flew him out to... this fishing town... they literally just gave him a blank check plus blank resources to create, turn Shenzhen into Shenzhen. So he's the master architect of Shenzhen."
• Return to US: "The U.S. government was like, basically, we'll kill you if you don't come back, because the Cold War was wrapping up... if you don't divest from all of your companies that you created in China during this Cold War, like, we will consider you a traitor."
• Current Location: "He moved back to the U.S. He picked Tulsa because of the symbolic valley, but also because it's a manufacturing hub... he bought all the land of Black Wall Street, where the... white supremacists burned it all down."
• Potential Involvement: "He's literally down to move to Austin to create like the MIT for kids grades 4 through 12, but also like... I have brought up the idea of Trump City to him and he's like I'm down."

Matt Holm's Personal Updates

Matt shared personal information about his impending divorce:

• Marriage Status: "I'm about to be a divorced guy that wants friends... I've been married 28 years. It's been a good relationship."
• Divorce Process: "It's taken my brother a year and a half already... I've thought about this, and I've got some interesting ventures coming up."
• Living Situation: "Loved staying at Adrian's, staying at a friend of mine's house. He's moving to Miami in four months... I don't like living by myself."
• Financial Dynamics: "She's never really contributed in any capacity, in anything, and has not been a good spouse for two years. So I'm afraid of my continued success."

Shared Connections & Austin Ecosystem

The conversation revealed numerous shared connections:

• Mushroom Connection: Both Gary and Matt know the same mushroom supplier named Zach, with Matt saying "He's a good buddy. Oh, really? You've been to one of his steak nights?" and Gary replying "I love him. He's one of my favorite people."
• Austin Growth: Matt noted "The town's already moving here, I mean, people don't understand. Once you've been here a little bit, you see the kind of caliber of people moving here, and then as more move here, more move here."
• Network Value: Matt stated "I have a good amount of connections in Austin across industries. Sometimes I don't think about making the connection, I know the person... What I love is bringing people into town who haven't been here, don't have the experience, don't have the connections, and plugging them into something."
• South Korean Connection: Matt mentioned "Joshu in South Korea... He's connected with the K-pop guys. One of them is his brother."

Business Opportunities & Projects

Several specific business opportunities were mentioned:

• LED Wall Project: Matt mentioned "We have 20,000 square feet of basement space... I want him to interact with the art gallery with digital art" to which Mike replied "I could do a cube."
• Instagram Monetization: Matt noted "It's hugely important because it's an Instagram... That's why they pay 50 bucks to go in there."
• Funding Opportunity: Gary revealed "I have a friend that if things happen the way that they think they will happen, he'll have tens of millions liquid every few months as part of the payout of moving $10 billion of gold overseas."
• Real Estate Equity: Matt responded "Well, if he wants to throw a fractional portion of that in, that's pretty awesome... Ideally, we're keeping our equity positions and just getting across bank. But, you know, the state of lending right now, it's like a big uproar."

Philosophical Approaches & Values

The conversation revealed shared values and philosophies:

• Speed of Execution: Mike asked "Are you guys both able to move very fast?" to which he added "I'm biased in action."
• Connection Value: Gary stated "I quickly assessed that he's very smart. Just hearing him talk and talk to him. I was like, anyone that he introduces me to is probably going to be very smart."
• Inevitability: Gary described his approach: "I create this like air of inevitability. That I don't think other people can do... I'm not just saying shit."
• Co-Living Vision: Gary shared "Let me just paint this picture a little bit more... Why wouldn't we want to set ourselves up where life just keeps getting better and better because every time you go to the local breakfast spot, it's your breakfast spot, and you're meeting with smart-ass bunch of people."

Concluding Observations

The early dinner conversation revealed extensive details about Gary's background, including previously undisclosed connections and career accomplishments. The Trump World concept was discussed in greater detail, including potential international applications and strategic positioning. Matt Holm shared personal updates about his impending divorce and current living situation.

The conversation demonstrated the interconnected nature of their networks, with multiple shared contacts and philosophically aligned approaches to business and relationship building. All three participants appeared to value fast action, leveraging connections, and thinking at scale about opportunities.