How ‘TBPN’ Became Silicon Valley’s Newest Obsession

Technology|What if SportsCenter and LinkedIn Merged?

Inside a film studio lot in Hollywood on a Tuesday morning in August, Jordi Hays, a 29-year-old entrepreneur, ran into the frame of a live shot, waving a giant red flag. Dressed in what can be described only as Patrick Bateman-core — gray bespoke suit, button-down oxford, polished black wingtips, with a slicked-back swoop to his hair — Mr. Hays was shouting into the camera.

“The timeline is in turmoil!” he yelped, rattling off a series of references that only those obsessively glued to the tech industry corners of the social media site X would understand. “Perplexity has made an offer to buy Chrome!”

John Coogan, Mr. Hays’ 36-year-old business partner, dressed nearly identically, looked on with a smirk. Mr. Coogan, who at 6-foot-8 towers over everyone he meets, was slouched in his chair to fit into the frame of the shot. The two sat at a table piled high with tech company swag, copies of that morning’s Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, a dozen half-empty cans of Yerba Mate and Diet Coke, and microphones and laptops.

At 11 a.m. on the dot each weekday, they begin livestreaming “TBPN” — “Technology Business Programming Network” — a three-hour-long chat show of boosterish commentary on the worlds of tech and business.

The “TBPN” formula is simple: Two self-aware fellas who treat techno-capitalism like a Fantasy Football league, chronicling a ticker-tape dribble of executive moves, corporate acquisitions, initial public offerings and venture capital funding. Call it SportsCenter for the terminally online M.B.A. grad.

Mr. Coogan and Mr. Hays (who have also been known to film the show in Miami Vice-style white suits; they have a predilection for the trappings of 1980s wealth) spend the live broadcast multitasking, obsessively scrolling through X as if they were traders staring at a Bloomberg terminal, spinning up graphics for social media designed to go locally viral:

— “Jian Zhang POACHED from Apple to go to Meta and work on artificial intelligence”

— “BREAKING: Ilya Sutskever, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, has updated his profile pic”