Salesforce 收购 Slack、DeepMind 的 AlphaFold 突破与「信托基金社会主义」

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Okay. Besties are back. Besties are back going around the horn. Rainman, David Sachs calling in from an undisclosed location. suffering through 2 code thirteens in one lifetime. And David Friedberg is here the queen of Kinwa spacking everything in sight, living the life calling in from a nondescript Ritz Carlton room. It's supposed to be. And, of course, the dictator himself, Chamath Polyhappatthia, echoing like a fool. Welcome everybody. This is what you pay for with your subscription to the all in podcast brought to you by Slack. If you didn't Own Slack shares, raise your hand. It's been an incredible week. on a number of levels. We're gonna talk this week about Salesforce buying Slack, Trump and Section 230, the Coinbase The ongoing Coinbase saga, Friedberg found some interesting science that could save humanity. And, of course, the trust fund socialists in the New York Times who hate their parents for giving the money. Let's start off. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:16): Let's start with the most important thing. What is that shirt undershirt combo you're wearing? I mean, look. David Friedberg (00:01:22): It's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:23): you have buttons on buttons. It's not incredible. Jason Calacanis (00:01:25): Did I break the layer rule? You can't you can't pull this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:29): If you're gonna layer properly, you can have only one layer of buttons. But to have 2 layers of buttons, Jason Calacanis (00:01:34): It that's not how it works. Speaker 4 (00:01:36): No. Jake Jake David Friedberg (00:01:36): Hale went in and got an Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:37): almond milk. Jason Calacanis (00:01:38): Layers are for players, not me. David Friedberg (00:01:40): Oh, he got, like, an almond milk cabbage Chino, and he's like, I like how that barista dress is, and I'm gonna wear that from now on. Jason Calacanis (00:01:46): Wait a second. Can I ask a technical question? Can can I have buttons? I can't have buttons on buttons because have buttons and then a zipper up like with the -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:01:54): No. You can't do that either. David Sacks (00:01:56): Listen. Chamath Shamatha's had a weird aversion to buttons ever since he spent the time in Italy. Jason Calacanis (00:02:02): Did you was he button shamed in Italy? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:04): I I wasn't I was a little button shamed, but I'm looking at Saks has buttons on his collars, which just makes no sense. Jason Calacanis (00:02:10): Sacks is wearing the same Brooks Brothers shirt that he graduated high school in. at Brooks he owns 17 percent of Brooks Brothers at this point from the number of blazers he's bought there. Alright. Let's get off to it. We've been at each other. I don't think Friedberg taken the brunt of anything yet. Anybody have any chop busting they wanna do with Freeberg or such as sort of built in? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:31): Now Friedberg took the table cloth that I used for a picnic in the summertime and made it into a shirt naturally. Jason Calacanis (00:02:38): You know, You have to be frugal at this time. And also, Friedberg cares about the environment. He's not gonna just laugh a picnic. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:46): Why is it? Jason Calacanis (00:02:47): It was a handpiece. -- go to waste. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:02:48): It was a base table cloth, and so I knew it was gonna get to take it and stolen. Jason Calacanis (00:02:52): I love how I choose to spend my time with you guys. David Friedberg (00:02:55): It just it just pays off. Here we go. Alright. Can we kick this off? Jason Calacanis (00:02:59): Alright. Let's kick it off with our advertisement for nobody because Jabato not let me make any money. off of this podcast. And thanks again for the suggestion that we launch a syndicate with no carry. Now a bunch of dipshits on Twitter are like -- Hey. When is the all in? get starting. I'm like, never. I need to make a living. I need to get my beak wet. And this week -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:03:21): I'm sorry. But I think an all in syndicate would be super, super disruptive and cool. Jason Calacanis (00:03:27): I'm totally fine with running it as long as we can have the 20% carry. and I'll manage the whole thing. We got four people on the call, 4 or 5 we each get 5% carry, but we gotta make a living here. Not everybody's made a Chamath, not everybody's got specs a through z or had all of their Slack shares bought. I think we'll kick it off with that. Chamath we saw this week. In fact, just 2 days ago, Salesforce in a record transaction for a SaaS company think it's the highest ever paid for a SaaS company, $27,000,000,000, $27,700,000,000 for Slack. -- which has only been public for just over a year, I think. You were, I think, did the series b in Slack right after they did the pivot at Social Capital. I don't know if that was in part 102, but Phil Halmuth keeps talking about it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:14): It was a series b and tiny spec, but it was the series a in Slack. And there's a really important story, which is that myself and Rayko, who's my partner in Social Capital, we've worked together now for My gosh. I think it's probably 15 years wrote a really great memo justifying the investment in Slack. And it had to do with one thing and one thing only. We ignored the revenue and ARR. I mean, it was fine and nice and good. But the single biggest thing that we were attracted to was something that we looked at and which was called intercompany edges. And even back in 2015 or 16 when we did this original investment, there was this dynamic where people across companies were communicating via Slack channels. And I was completely stunned by this idea because that was effectively a substitution for email. Because the only way you communicate across companies today is by email, you know, david is atkraftventures.comedy emails me at socialcapital.com, and I email jason@insight.com. That's how we communicate across across businesses. except now all of a sudden, you could be messaging and having a much more real time interface. That to me was incredibly disruptive, and it justified the entirety of the real forward looking investment thesis. Now fast forward 5 years later and these guys have more usage on a daily basis than Facebook, which is stunning because, you know, these guys have 10,000,000 DAUs and Facebook has 2,000,000,000. So it just goes to show you the quantity of traffic and and the the volume of information and theoretically, you know, productivity that's happening on Slack. And so I am not sure what Salesforce bought. I actually think that, you know, you can make a case why it's a shame that it got bought. a very strong one in fact. But what they did get whether they know it or not is an intercompany edge effect, which is the most disruptive thing to email. And in the hands of Salesforce and that sales team, I think it has the ability to really be a very disruptive force for good in enterprise software. Jason Calacanis (00:06:29): Alright. So, Saks, this is a natural passing of the ball to you and the baton because you did Yammer sold it to Microsoft for a $1,000,000,000. And obviously, Slack was the mobile successor to the desktop version of Yamarin. You got a lot of your fingerprints all over this. But the fact is you did a tweet storm about it. Slack is an unbelievable success. Stewart is a great founder. You know, he sold his first company Flickr for 30,000,000. This one for almost 30,000,000,000, so that's pretty nice. But There was one failure and you pointed out in your tweet storm. Explain what the one failure if you could pick out of the hundreds of things 1000 of things they did right. It's one thing they did wrong that, to Tremont's point, would have resulted in them remaining an independent company that could have become worth more than 27,000,000,000. David Sacks (00:07:18): Yeah. It was it was a slowness to embrace the idea of enterprise sales. And and by the way, let's put this in context. I mean, Stewart and the Slack team did a phenomenal job, Jason Calacanis (00:07:30): $30,000,000,000 David Sacks (00:07:31): exit. 7 years of just about flawless execution. So I don't wanna and and also, you know, I was an investor in the company, so thank you to serve for letting me invest. I definitely don't wanna sound like an ingrate or a critic. I mean, they just they did a phenomenal job. But if you were to nitpick just one one little thing, that I think they coulda done faster. It would have been embracing enterprise sales. The big learning from Yammer, you know, we learned this at Yammer from 2008, 2012, is that enterprises don't self serve. Right? They don't self close. Bottom up SaaS products are phenomenal for generating top of funnel, basically generating leads. But you have to have salespeople close the deals. And enterprises don't just kinda pull out a credit card and and self serve. You they'd need a salesperson. And I think there was something in the d f DNA of snap Slack that actually I see really, very commonly, in the DNA of of sort of product y SaaS companies, product y SaaS founders, which is they kinda have a reflexive dislike or distaste for sales, and they resist the idea of sales. And they wanna believe that they can just be entirely product driven. And and what what I see in across the board is they all come to the same realization that that we had at Yammer, which is we have to have a sales team. And I do remember, you know, back in 2014, the whole Yammer sales team was basically rolling off because of, you know, my acquired the company in 2012, and that was an integration period. And by 2013, 2014, they were all looking for jobs. And I remember, you know, my my former CRO, I think, was interviewing at Slack, and it would have been such a perfect thing for them. because he had just learned all the lessons of how you layer on kind of an enterprise sale on top of a of a bottom up product. And They just weren't ready to to make that higher yet. And so, look, if you're gonna nitpick, look, $30,000,000,000 outcome. No one's criticizing, but if you're to nitpick you know, it's it's an a plus regardless, but, you know, this would be the one thing you could you could say. Jason Calacanis (00:09:46): Well, congratulations all around to everybody involved, especially Phil Helmut, who was an LP in one of Jamath's funds. So If you need insights on Slack or anything inside information, you can just follow fill out mute on Twitter at being the greatest I am the greatest or I'll always be the greatest. One of those Twitter handles is his. David Sacks (00:10:05): But but but, Jason, I mean, you you basically came to the same conclusion in your emergency pod, right? I mean Jason Calacanis (00:10:11): -I did. I hadn't seen your I think your tweet came after the emergency pod. But yeah, it just seemed to me this company Unlike Zoom should have been able to grow quicker. And if you look at their numbers, they had 87 companies that had were spending over a $1,000,000. you put a rabid sales team on that product and they go in like Benioff does with his sales team. I mean, He was just hyper aggressive at just putting huge numbers out there and saying you have to pass this much money so much so that if you remember Elon getting into a public spat with him where he's like, Salesforce is horrible software. Get it out of the organization. He basically banned it because they came to him with the bottom of people using of Salesforce and said, hey. You owe us this amount of money. And Elon was like, f u, banned forever from inside of our organization, we'll build our own software. We don't need it. And and they didn't have somebody, and Stewart didn't have that DNA, I think, to say aggressively we need to charge what this product is worth. And you saw that in, I think, one of their strengths and weaknesses, which was they only billed you for people who were actively using the product. Now that's a beautiful awesome feature and makes you not scared to use it. But on the enterprise level, I mean, That seemed to be like maybe one of those non cutthroat things that maybe were holding them back, David. Do you have any insights on this, or should we go on to alphafol? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:32): It's really important to remember the the mechanics and the game theory around m and a, especially, you know, big game hunting when you're doing $30,000,000,000 acquisitions. It's also kind of true at $1,000,000,000 levels, but less so. But the bigger the acquisition gets, you have to remember that there's an asymmetry of information between buyers and sellers. And the question is, who does the asymmetry favor? Right? Because you could look at this acquisition and say, wow. Salesforce is crazy for spending $30,000,000,000 And somebody else may say, wow, Slack was really stupid for selling it for Jason Calacanis (00:12:06): $30,000,000,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:07): Right? The reality is that I think that there was asymmetries on both sides. I think that what Slack probably saw and I don't know because I've been off the board now for more than a year, But I think what they saw was, as David said, just, you know, a level of sophistication and scale and ability to cross sell and upsell that was needed Speaker 4 (00:12:29): for Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:29): enterprise scale. Either you overcome it with precision and speed or you overcome it by going the same pace as somebody like Microsoft but with an equivalent product portfolio. So that's that's sort of one realization that that that Slack had. But in in the case of, you know, Salesforce, what they probably had was a realization that they couldn't go wall to wall inside of a customer because they didn't really have a product that was useful or usable to every single individual inside of an enterprise. And so both of those 2 things create asymmetries. There's a level of fear inside of Slack and there's a level of fear inside of Salesforce. Both of them are about the fear of disruption. And then the question is who gets the better of the other person in the middle of the acquisition? Right? So the deal could have probably gotten done it 22,000,000,000, it probably could have also gotten done at Jason Calacanis (00:13:21): 45,000,000,000. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:23): And that's, again, to a combination of how well you play poker in that moment. Right? Who blinks first and the quality of the bankers? Jason Calacanis (00:13:31): This is like two people having top hair on a very textured board. It's like -- Yeah. And they're just raising versus each other. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:38): Yeah. It's who up plays them. because, like, it's similar also to, like, how Microsoft on LinkedIn. Right? because if you think about what happened in LinkedIn, if you remember when that happened, it was almost to a t very much like Slack. LinkedIn had a one bad quarter. they got decapitated by I you know, and then I owned it at the time in the in our public fund. It got decapitated by, like, Jason Calacanis (00:13:57): 50, 60, 70%. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:59): I mean, something insane for missing numbers by, like, a few pennies. Okay? And all of a sudden, it took a lot of the wind out of their sales internally. It didn't change the user momentum at all because you know, the users that were signing up for LinkedIn didn't care what the stock price was yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But it all of a sudden created a fear And I think Microsoft was able to exploit that fear. And within a year, this company was bought for $25,000,000,000. Not dissimilar, you know, Slack had, you know, a hiccup and they got rerated, the stock bounced back. But I think that if Salesforce was smart, they probably created you know, sort of like a white knight kind of bid that said, listen. You need enterprise scale and the ability to cross sell and up sell. I can give it to you. And Slack probably said, listen, you need to go wall to wall so I understand why you need me and, you know, the price is what the price is. Jason Calacanis (00:14:49): Go ahead, Friedberg. David Friedberg (00:14:50): If you look at the pricing, right, so Slack normally, the way these big m and a you know, public company m and a deals get done is the board has to approve the price, and they have say this was the right deal for us relative to other options. And one of the ways you you assess that is you look at where the share price has been historically. And if you're getting premium to where the share price has been historically, let's say, 30, 40% higher than it's ever been, then the board says, great. That's a good deal. We should take it because we've got a long way to grow into that value. In this case, the deal was done not at a very high premium to where Slack traded just in the summer. Is that right? Chamatsu, it looked like it peaked Jason Calacanis (00:15:28): It's basically if you look at the -- David Friedberg (00:15:30): It's a 10% premium. Right? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:31): Yeah. 10% premium. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:15:32): 10% David Friedberg (00:15:33): premium. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:15:33): We we opened the direct listing at 40 or 41, and then this was at 45. Right. David Friedberg (00:15:39): And so there there clearly was a a sense of weakness from the board, which is, I think, why this Salesforce stock trade down afterwards. Because if they were willing to sell at that small of a premium, the forecast internally is probably feeling not that strong And then people translate that into, hey. Salesforce bought something that's not that strong. You know, there's there's something a little bit amiss, but obviously, to your point, they're missing a lot of the cross selling and the synergy that that that that will Jason Calacanis (00:16:04): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:16:04): I think it's a huge slam dunk acquisition, and I go back to the this idea of intercompany network effects, I think they exist, and I think they're real. And I think that the Slack the the Slack product team's ability to innovate around that was not as fast as it could have been, but it was still very unique And I think it was it was a true moat. And, you know, the the tragedy is we won't see what the terminal value is if they were left alone to execute. And in in this weird way, like, I've always struggled with why Microsoft's was so overly obsessed with Slack because If you looked at the team's product, it was much more directly competitive with Zoom. And to this day still remains much more directly competitive with Zoom than Slack. But, you know, there we have it. Jason Calacanis (00:16:55): And if you look at the revenue, Slack was doing 800,000,000 run rates. So, anyway, rounded up to a 1,000,000,000. and yet Salesforce at 20,000,000,000. So 5 percent revenue to revenue. And then they got 10% of the company. So in that way, if you look at it on a percentage basis, which is, you know, how you might look at the Facebook, Instagram, and and WhatsApp is what percentage of the existing entity did they get? David Sacks (00:17:21): Side scoring size scoring about Jason Calacanis (00:17:23): 60% David Sacks (00:17:24): a year, and Salesforce is growing about 22% swing like that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:27): The other thing is the president of Salesforce is Brett Taylor, who was our CTO at Facebook, who I worked with. And so I think Brett also understands network effects really well. And, you know, by the way, in in this interesting twist of fate, Benioff was the underbitter, I think, for LinkedIn. And so -- Yes. Jason Calacanis (00:17:45): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:17:45): you know, we've we've seen Mark around the hoop on these, you know, social network network effect business tool acquisitions before, and finally They Jason Calacanis (00:17:54): also Twitter. He was running he was signing around the basket with Twitter, and then they also brought his name up for TikTok, which made no sense. So I think Benioff is just looking at this like, if if Google and Microsoft and Apple are too scared to buy things because of antitrust, Well, I'm under the radar of the antitrust $1,000,000,000,000. So I'm I'm the only David Sacks (00:18:14): game in town. Right? He's on he's under the radar because he doesn't have a play in this sort of communication or collaboration space. And so, therefore, there are no antitrust issues. If Microsoft were to do it, it would definitely scrutinized because you could argue that they're adding to their existing dominant market share and and collaboration. But Benio Stream has always been, at least since he you know, launch Chatter to compete with with us when we were doing Yammer. This was back in Jason Calacanis (00:18:42): 2010, 2011. David Sacks (00:18:44): is he his dream has always been to have a product that could get him onto every seat in the enterprise. You know? His current product set has is departmental. I mean, you've got kind of the CRM product for sales, and they've got the support cloud for customer support, and they've got the marketing cloud for marketing. And so he's gone department by department, but he's never really had a sort of pan like, sort of cross company. Yeah. Something that the entire company would use. Jason Calacanis (00:19:10): Like, a central login system. Right? And Slack is that central login system. But when you when he came up against you, it was very you know Benioff. Your friendly with Benioff. Benioff came at you so hard. He threw 300 or 400 engineers at Chatter. He took out full page Wall Street Journal Ads. He tried to poach your people. He tried to make the product free. He made it personal against you after you would not sell to him true or false David Sacks. David Sacks (00:19:41): I don't I don't think he made it personal, but it was Do you Jason Calacanis (00:19:44): feel personal? David Sacks (00:19:46): Did he hurt your nose? No. No. No. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:49): He he did. That's I David Sacks (00:19:51): understood he was trying to do. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:52): That's your way of saying that. David Sacks (00:19:53): No. I mean, if we had sold to Salesforce, like, we we ended up so what I would say is, yeah, we gotten, like, a very it was a very competitive situation. he didn't beat us. You know? I I what's that? Jason Calacanis (00:20:05): He fell. Does that product even exist? David Sacks (00:20:07): Yeah. It it's sort of like a feed inside of the the CRM product. It it didn't really succeed as a standalone collaboration product. And so we won that battle, but it definitely I would say it scared us enough to sell to Microsoft because, you know, the Jason Calacanis (00:20:23): What did he offer you? David Sacks (00:20:24): We were about to enter a new stage of competition. So here's what happened is he launched his product to kinda be a clone of Yammer inside of Salesforce, but he was initially charging $15 per seat, we were charging, like, 5. And so they massively overpriced it. And and the event and then they they were on this, like, slippery slipper. They kept lowering the price to compete better with us. And then finally, they realized that they should just give it a thing way for free as a strategic move And that was when we decided to sell to to Microsoft is we didn't know we we knew we had a better product than Chatter, but we didn't know how it would go if we were up against a free chat. Jason Calacanis (00:20:59): Tell us honestly -- Yeah. -- how much did you offer? What was the meeting like where you made you the offer? David Sacks (00:21:05): We Yeah. So Jason Calacanis (00:21:07): -- Take a look. David Sacks (00:21:08): Yeah. The so here's I'll tell you the backstory. I mean, this hasn't been public publicly revealed, but Jason Calacanis (00:21:15): Here we go. David Sacks (00:21:18): In in service of the in service of the all in podcast Jason Calacanis (00:21:22): Go ahead. Go ahead. and Speaker 4 (00:21:24): get us some rings. David Sacks (00:21:26): Yeah. So trying and service is trying to get us from number 3 to number 1 on the charts. No. You know, it's funny. We launched Yammer at the TechCrunch Forty conference that Jason, as you know, you're the cofounder of. And Benioff was, like, a judge. He was a panelist, and he was raving about it. And you could just, you know, from from the moment we launched, he was raving about it. You could see the light bulb go off with him. And he realized that, like, social was gonna be it was you know, at the time, socials big with consumer social networks, but he saw the potential social or collaboration inside the enterprise. And so I mean, like, I think a year later or something, they were interested in buying the company for around Jason Calacanis (00:22:07): $250,000,000. David Sacks (00:22:09): The big issue for them though was that Benioff had a bunch of, like, engineers who wanted to build it in house. And so they they they actually I I don't know what would've happened if if they you know, didn't wanna build it themselves. But but, basically, they vetoed doing a deal. And so they ended up building Chatter. and they threw the 300 engineers at it, and they basically spun their wheels for a few years. And, anyway, it turned be much better for us because we end up selling the company for five times as much to Microsoft. You know, if we had sold to Salesforce in, like, 2010, it would have been a much smaller deal. But, yeah, that I mean, he was very abstinent from the from the get go. Jason Calacanis (00:22:53): Alright, folks. So you have it breaking news in the background on what actually happened. Congratulations to Stewart and the team. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:22:59): Right. Wait. I wanna I wanna ask a question, Shamab and Saks. Did you guys keep all of the shares you you originally invested in? to the exit here just to set the context for folks. You know, you you invest in a company. It's a small start up. It's actually for Jason Calacanis (00:23:14): 30,000,000,000. David Friedberg (00:23:15): Yeah. For Jason Calacanis (00:23:16): -- -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:16): oldest for every share that I owned, half of it were half no. Yeah. For for of of of a 100 shares that I owned per every 100 that I owned. Jason Calacanis (00:23:32): 10 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:23:33): of them I sold at 38 right at the direct listing. I wanna say 40 of them I sold in the mid twenties, and the rest of it just got taken out at this price. Jason Calacanis (00:23:47): So your dollar cost average to the, you know, whatever high thirties, maybe 40 or something. David Friedberg (00:23:51): So I -- Yeah. I don't know David Sacks (00:23:52): my exact I mean, I I I sold some and I still own some. So, you know, I definitely got my my beak wet from this acquisition. Oh, you mean? But No. But, look, I I I think I probably sold, you know, more than half of them, you know, and that was a mistake. And, you know, one of my biggest learnings as an investor has been to let your winners ride. You know? My biggest mistake as an investor has not been the losers. It's all it's been selling the winners prematurely. David Friedberg (00:24:21): Yeah. You did Jason Calacanis (00:24:21): that with Uber as well, David. And I sold some Uber before, but I kept a lot of my Uber maybe most of it. or half of it, I think. David Sacks (00:24:30): Anyway Uber or Facebook. I mean, Facebook, you know, when they IPOed, it was worth 50,000,000,000. We all thought that was, like, unbelievable. I mean, because it was over a 50 x return. But Jason Calacanis (00:24:40): -- What's the lesson for you, Zach? David Sacks (00:24:42): Just never sell anything if you can help it. David Friedberg (00:24:45): I I sold someone to Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:46): my Facebook in 2014 and bought Amazon and Tesla. I think that you have to be able to sell for 2 reasons. Liquidity and moral obligation. David Sacks (00:24:57): Yeah. I mean, that's an exaggeration. I mean, you can never it's it's it's people need to be able to sell. But to the extent you can hold on Just don't sell everything. You know? Always, you know, keep Jason Calacanis (00:25:10): Yeah. Keep talking. Think about the people who were Apple in the eighties or Microsoft in the eighties or Amazon in the nineties. A lot of those people got frustrated holding the shares for so long, and I think keeping at least 20% of your shares forever you know, could be amazing. There was somebody told me -- had never sold a single share of -- I don't know if that's a true story Speaker 4 (00:25:29): or not. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:29): I I told you that. You can't be leaking David Friedberg (00:25:31): that information. Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:25:32): Anyway, I didn't know Speaker 4 (00:25:33): that was a leak. David Friedberg (00:25:37): Okay. David Sacks (00:25:38): More breaking news. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:39): Let's let's move down the David Friedberg (00:25:42): phone. Let's move down Speaker 4 (00:25:43): the phone number. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:43): I'll pick her Jason Calacanis (00:25:45): up. Let's -- -- all in podcast. Oh my god. David Friedberg (00:25:50): same may or may not be true with -- and his shares. Speaker 4 (00:25:52): You know Jason Calacanis (00:25:52): what we should do is we should do a we should put beeps in there, Nick. I was told had never sold a share of -- and then we just let everybody react to it. This way nobody knows what we're talking about. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:07): I I I do know that has not sold a single share, and it has only sold shares of the fund capital calls, which is an incredible statement to fortitude and vision. Incredible, lore, incredible. David Friedberg (00:26:19): It's by the way by the way, it's it's not always worked out because he did the same with Jason Calacanis (00:26:23): -- David Friedberg (00:26:23): and those didn't go as well. Jason Calacanis (00:26:26): Yeah. I mean, look. You you you have David Sacks (00:26:27): to diversify when when you've got all your eggs in one basket in one company. Obviously, you have to sell some shares. But You know, one of the things I've just learned over the last 20 years is prob you know, people ask me what's your biggest regret or learning or whatever. It's just selling too early is, like, one of the biggest mistakes you can make. look at PayPal. PayPal is now a $250,000,000,000 company. We sold it in Jason Calacanis (00:26:47): 2002 David Sacks (00:26:48): for 1,500,000,000. We thought that was a great deal at the time, and we sold it for less than 1% of what is worth today. And the product's basically the same. You know? It's just compounding. Jason Calacanis (00:26:58): -- is the lesson. Never sell. If it's a winner, ride it. You can pair it. Speaker 4 (00:27:02): Okay. Hold Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:03): on. Hold on. I'm gonna put a final nail on this coffin, then we're gonna go to Alpha Fold. There's a great quote by Warren Buffett, which is If you know what you're doing, the best thing you can do is be as concentrated as possible. Nobody ever got rich in their 7th best idea. And I think that that basically sums it up. But you have to be in a position to have the ability to have that kind of portfolio allocation, and I think that's Friedberg bird, explain alpha fold, please. David Friedberg (00:27:30): Okay. Let's explain give me 2 minutes on I'll explain proteins and then the important of proteins and then alpha folds. So the numbers to remember are Jason Calacanis (00:27:39): 4, 320. David Friedberg (00:27:42): There are 4 nucleic acids that make up your DNA. We all learned this in high school biology. Sets of Jason Calacanis (00:27:47): 3 David Friedberg (00:27:48): ACTNG combinations define an amino acid. there are 20 amino acids. And a protein is a string of amino acids. So in your body and every cell, there are these organelles. They make proteins by reading the DNA, taking out a copy of it, and turning it into amino acid chains, and that's what we kinda call proteins. But what's interesting is when you make a chain of amino acids, so there's 20 of them that you could put in each point in the chain, it doesn't come out as a long chain. What happens is those amino acids, the whole thing collapses, and it turns into a very specific shape. And the shape of that protein is what defines a function. So pretty much every biological function across all life is is undertaken by protein doing something. Some proteins like hemoglobin in our red blood cells will have a very specific little pocket where oxygen molecules stick into the pocket and then it moves the oxygen from your lungs to your cells. It's a pretty amazing protein to exist, and it it specifically is shaped to do that exact function. There are other proteins that can, for example, rip apart other molecules, break a molecular bond, There are other proteins, for example, that can take nitrogen out of the atmosphere and put it into plants cells that the plants can then use to grow. There's an incredible, you know, a set of potential on the nano scale of what you can do with proteins, and we see that in life, and we're just chopped and odd and amazed by it every day. But in order to figure out how to create proteins that that do specific things, you have to know how do those amino acids turn into the shape that the protein ultimately takes, and that's what's called protein folding. And so the the hard thing is and and and, you know, why is important. It's important because we can easily read DNA, and therefore, we can figure out what amino acid sequence is being made to define that protein. But what we don't know really well is what is the shape of that protein, and therefore, how does it undertake the function that we see it taking in biology? And if you think about the reverse of this the reverse of this, if you have a function you wanna undertake in biology, you can design a protein to do that function for you. For example, bind to a specific point on a cancer cell or, you know, take carbon out of the atmosphere or pretty much anything else your your mind can kind of imagine on the nano scale, proteins can be designed to do. The challenge is how do you write the code, which is the DNA, to make the protein, that does that thing, well, we don't know how the code turns into the shape, and that's what folding the folding problem is. David Friedberg (00:30:24): So the folding problem, there's a dataset. And the dataset is what's the three-dimensional shape of a protein? And then what's the DNA code that defines the amino acid sequence that makes that protein? And how do you figure out how to predict the shape of the protein from the amino acid sequence? It has been an impossibility. And again, if you think about this chain of amino acids, they each have little, you know, electrical spaces and and the way that they bind to each other very complicated. You can't just deterministically define it. You know, we don't have that level of understanding on a quantum scale. So what alpha fold has done as they have now been able to predict from a sequence of amino acids, what the protein shake will ultimately become. by learning from a database of 100 of 1000 of structural protein shapes that have been defined through really, really, really difficult, you know, scanning microscopes and other techniques to really try and scan a protein on a microscopic scale And then looking at the the DNA sequence and figuring out, okay, what's the relationship? And the accuracy of their predictive model now is within the range of error of the microscopes that are you being used to actually scan and measure those proteins. So that's incredible because now, theoretically, you could come up with a design for a protein, and you could actually build that protein by writing the amino it sequence, and that protein can do any number of things you wanna do. And this has been a difficult problem that's been intractable by humanity, and we've been challenged by it for decades. for this machine learning breakthrough to to kind of be realized, in literally less than 3 years, I mean, the the these guys were at a score of 40 last year. And this year, they're at, like, nearly 90, which is incredible. David Friedberg (00:32:11): Yeah. And so now, you know, we can now predict what the shape will be from the from the DNA sequence and And this is gonna unlock this ability. Everyone's now gonna take their model if they license it or whatever they do with it, or people are gonna go learn using the same techniques that that DeepMind use. But it just means that it's possible. And then scientists will go away, and they'll say, you know what? I wanna do this particular thing on a micro up a scale. Let me design in in three-dimensional space of protein to do that thing. Okay. Now let me go figure out how to make that protein writing the DNA code, which is really easy if you can use this algorithm to solve that for you. And it is literally dollars and pennies to make proteins. We can write DNA on a computer, we can get printed DNA sent to us in 48 hours in a FedEx envelope for a DNA printing facility. We can put it in a in a microbe, and we can get that microbe to make the protein for us in a day. the lab cost, any high school biology class can do this now. So by being able to actually figure out what DNA to write, based on the objective function of what do we want the protein to do, it's gonna unlock this universe of things we can do in medicine, in environmental science. We could do things like break apart PET Plastics. We could do things like fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere and getting rid of fertilizer plants. We can create all sorts of new, you know, food solutions, health solutions, environmental solutions. Jason Calacanis (00:33:28): Any chance you can make a pizza that doesn't have carbohydrates? because that's what I'm thinking about here is is there a way David Friedberg (00:33:33): we can make Jason Calacanis (00:33:34): a healthy pasta or a pizza? something like that. But in all seriousness, what do you think the early wins will be out of this technology? And and is this a theoretical win that will benefit from in 20 years? Or is this a serious breakthrough that we're going to benefit from in the near term No. I think -- 1 to 5 years. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:53): both are true. This is an incredibly important advancement in machine learning. But the reality is that, you know, Google will still have to spend a deep mind. We'll have to spend a lot of time refining it. And then they have some really big ethical challenges ahead of it. How do you expose this technology to whom and under what conditions? And it's the same situation that OpenAI has with GPT 3. Although a a lot of people, I think, you know, the the scale of the computer science challenge maybe was a a bigger win in GPT 3 because it was a much more open space. And I think this is a much more specific sort of almost expert system in a way. But the the downstream commercial implications of this is just enormous. And so the just think about this. Like, this is where, like, you gotta you gotta love companies like Google the fact that they exist because from, you know, Page rank in 1999, to CPC ads in 2000 and Jason Calacanis (00:34:45): 34, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:34:46): we have alpha fold in 2020. And that to me is just that's This Speaker 4 (00:34:50): is an Jason Calacanis (00:34:50): argument against breaking up tech because only a tech company with this amount of resource knowledge can then go spend a $1,000,000,000 on DeepMind. David Friedberg (00:34:59): I mean, alphabet's burning $4,000,000,000 a year on their, quote, unquote, other bets line, and people give them a lot of shit for it. But, I mean, you hit any one of these things, and it's a $100,000,000,000 payday. I mean, look at YouTube. YouTube's easily a $100,000,000,000 payday on a $1,000,000,000 bet, Jason Calacanis (00:35:14): 1,000,000,000 6, Oh, no. That's a that's a 250 David Friedberg (00:35:17): to $500,000,000,000 company. -- semantics. A lot of people missed this, but Applied semantics was a $100,000,000 bet, and that's the entirety of sense initially. Android. Android. You know? Speaker 4 (00:35:27): And Jason Calacanis (00:35:27): -- David Sacks (00:35:27): Is this is this the 1st commercial application of DeepMind? because until now, you know, they've had alpha zeroes, but Jason Calacanis (00:35:34): -- David Friedberg (00:35:34): So there were there was a period of time. A lot of people I don't know if Let let me just think about this for a second. David Sacks (00:35:41): Alright. because that's -- Alpha 0 Alpha 0 was really good. David Friedberg (00:35:44): I wanna be careful about this, but I do think that Jason Calacanis (00:35:46): -- -- to not disclose No. David Friedberg (00:35:47): But I I I do think I do think it was disclosed that they've used DeepMind to improve ads quality and -- Yeah. -- improve YouTube viewing. And as a result of that, you get the number of hours per day of the average user on YouTube to double or triple, ad revenue goes by 3 x. And I think in 1 quarter, Google was able to generate something like an incremental 15,000,000,000 annualized revenue from DeepMind's algorithm. Jason Calacanis (00:36:10): And you know what that DeepMind actually did on YouTube? It sent everybody to the outright info and Ben Shapiro. Congratulations. Be careful what you said people's minds with artificial intelligence. Maybe you just argued to break them up. David Friedberg (00:36:24): Yeah. But I I I understand Saks that it's being used broadly across the products at Google in a in a in a in a now now in a much more careful way, is my understanding. Look. I'm a I'm a I'm I'm a big ally of Alphabet. I'm a big fan, and I love -- You Jason Calacanis (00:36:37): know, they were -- David Friedberg (00:36:38): And I used to work there, and I'm very close to people there. So Jason Calacanis (00:36:40): -- David Friedberg (00:36:41): You know who to be on the board Jason Calacanis (00:36:42): and was the major backer of that company, DeepMind? David Sacks (00:36:45): Found their son. David Friedberg (00:36:45): That was fun. Jason Calacanis (00:36:46): Elon Musk, too. And he begged them to not sell to Google because I think 400,000,000 $400,000,000 David Friedberg (00:36:52): exit was a steal for Google. Jason Calacanis (00:36:54): -- or 50 scientists, I think. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:36:56): Absolute steal. David Sacks (00:36:57): No. Elon I mean, Elon is public said that he thinks deep mind is, like, the greatest threat to well, he thinks AI is the greatest threat to humanity. And of the people working on AI, deep mind is the furthest along and therefore most dangerous. Jason Calacanis (00:37:10): He he tried to stop. He I mean, he told me straight up. Like, he's been very public about this since. that he he said, I'll give you an unlimited amount of money to not sell to Google. He's friends with Larry Page too. But he said, don't sell. I want you to be independent. I want you to keep working on this, but He said that when he saw the AI there become aware that it was an AI, that that was when he was, like, wait a second. David Sacks (00:37:30): No. Anyway, deep deep mind is not Alpha's alpha fold or alpha 0 is not self aware. Jason Calacanis (00:37:36): That's it has -- -- felt it was becoming self aware that it knew what it was. Speaker 4 (00:37:40): I I Jason Calacanis (00:37:40): don't know if that was just Elon, you know, just sort of -- Speaker 4 (00:37:43): No. David Sacks (00:37:43): It's not it's not self aware. So, I mean, I've Jason Calacanis (00:37:45): I've watched -- -- amazing. David Sacks (00:37:47): Yeah. I mean, the the amazing things that DeepMind has released prior to this were games. Right? They had this chest. Jason Calacanis (00:37:55): -- David Sacks (00:37:55): publicly. this chess AI called Alpha Zero, which rapidly became not just the best chess it only beat every human in the world. It also beat every chess engine because computers became more, you know, better at chess than humans a long time ago because of their sheer computational power. But Alpha 0 plays like a human but with kind of that same computational power. And so that created a whole revolution in chess engines. And then they also did that with a game called Go, the Accredited Alpha Go. And basically, every single game that you can think of, deep minds created, you know, an alpha whatever alpha version that destroys both humans and computers. But this is the first thing they've publicly announced that that seems like it will be available to others eventually that could have tremendous social in packed. Jason Calacanis (00:38:48): Imagine the government trying to understand this. Can you imagine them being brought before, like -- Sadender is Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:53): a congressman. These are these are these are the new weapons of mess destruction. I mean, let's be honest. Like, if if somebody else had had alpha fold and probably somebody does and just hasn't said, you know, I mean, Google actually values transparency, so that's the only reason why we know. Imagine what they could do as Friedberg said. It's like, you know, the the opposite of this is basically to design a specific protein that basically, you know, destroys organs or David Friedberg (00:39:20): There there are proteins called prions, which are the scariest thing known in biology, in my opinion. A a prion is a protein that it it actually finds similar proteins and based on its shape, it gets those proteins to change, and it becomes like a virus. And prions actually are there's an extremely sad series of diseases that are related to prions where your body expresses a protein in the wrong way. And then that protein itself gets other proteins to change and creates copies of itself, and it spreads. It is a fascinatingly scary biological phenomenon But, you know, there there are extremely scary things you can do with the designer protein capability Jason Calacanis (00:39:59): -- Basically, you can make a bioweapon that would be similar to what the aliens and Prometheus and and aliens were doing the engineers. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:06): Even much worse, even much worse. This is why I think they're gonna spend years before so this is why back to that earlier question, it'll be years before this sees the light of day because they're they're smart enough to know what they've uncovered. And I think they did they did the right thing by talking about it because I think there's a lot of really amazing r and d. But the reality is that Google for the next 20 or 30 years will have layers and layers of oversight because, you know, it's not like you're gonna allow a company to enrich uranium. in Mountain View without oversight, and this is the equivalent. It's just to we're we're buying time until governments realize that they have to that they have to David Friedberg (00:40:45): do it. But let's also remember the protein dataset they trained on is publicly available. You know, anyone can access this. And with the, you know, a catch up in machine learning, you know, capability to deep mind infrastructure wise, theoretically, you know, someone could could I I think it's it's an inevitability that in the 24 months, someone else will will replicate this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:04): Right now, I think what DeepMind has done is show that specific techniques of learning can overcome limitations in compute. But to your point, David, like, we're accelerating silicon at a fast enough speed where You know, if, like, if you can throw 5, 10, 50, a Jason Calacanis (00:41:20): 100, 500 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:21): pet ops at a problem, you're you know, you can run you know, some really, really old version of TensorFlow and probably get to the same answer. David Friedberg (00:41:29): Yeah. I actually think they published. I'm I'm gonna find it while you guys are chatting, but they published what the compute needs were on running this. I'll find it in a second and tell you. David Sacks (00:41:40): Because -- I Let me make one sort of slightly descending point on the whole WMD thing. I mean, look, obviously, the you know, who who has access to this technology needs to be controlled? We we do have to make sure it doesn't get into the hands of bad actors. But the reality is there's plenty of existing WMDs out there that have been around for a long time that bad actors could get their hands on. They could already make you know, extremely dangerous viruses in a lab. They could, you know, take something that's as contagious as smallpox and make it as deadly as a bowl or something like that. And it's these new technologies that provide a way for us to combat those those WMDs because you know, technology has a tendency to become democratized. You know? Was it 75 years ago, the US was the only country that had an atomic weapon now what? Like, close to 10 have, you know, nuclear atomic weapons. And so You know, these these sort of nefarious technologies get democratized anyway, and we really need some of these new technologies and new abilities as a way to combat them. So, like, last week, we were talking about the ability now to basically print, you know, a VAC seen using this mRNA technique within 2 days. You know, you could imagine, you know, if if if someone tried to use a bioweapon and create a new virus, we could print a vaccine the next day. Those are the kinds of capabilities we're gonna need to fight as part of WMD. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:08): I think you're right. It's just that you then have a law of large numbers problem, meaning you know, the previous problem before is you had a 180, a Jason Calacanis (00:43:15): 190, 200 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:17): state sponsored actors. So if you had a 1%, you know, rate of people who are just bad, you're talking about 2 states. Now when you talk about 5 billion people getting access to code that's based run-in an AWS or GCP instance someplace, and you have a 1%, you know, bad guy rate. All of a sudden, that 1% really matters. And I think that's the problem. It's just the law of large numbers David applied to very, very small rates of immorality. David Friedberg (00:43:44): But, I mean, you can already do very scary things with, you know, recombinant DNA, taking DNA from one organism, putting in another, and sending that organism out, and, you know, theoretically, you could have designed a a virus that would spread throughout humanity and cause a lot of death. Right? I mean, there's a lot of this capability of that. Jason Calacanis (00:44:01): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:01): that people would have found that out because, like, you can't run these labs, and you're not gonna get, you know, monkey models or mouse models. It's like there's there's a trail of breadcrumbs there that is easier to track wouldn't you agree that just running an instance and a simulation on GCP, sending it someplace to then have a protein printed that comes into FedEx envelope too. Jason Calacanis (00:44:18): And you have to hire people. She saw in Iran with, you know, their chief scientist being whacked by whoever accidentally whacked him with sixty people. Like, you need to have the brain power to do this. Once you have the brain power to do it, you can track that brain power. And we had, for the last, I think it's like since we even tested nuclear bombs. We've had these special planes flying around the globe looking for the signature of nuclear detonations or any kind of nuclear fallout. And we've been flying those forever. I think also -- David Friedberg (00:44:51): I think I think biodefense is gonna become probably one of the biggest industries on planet are starting in the latter half of the century. because you're you're gonna get to a point where digital biology is like a tool just like software was in the eighties where suddenly everyone could access it. Everyone could use it. Everyone could do stuff with it. You have this ubiquity of scary shit happening, hackers everywhere. Jason Calacanis (00:45:09): Hold on, Freeport. Didn't we have that as well in those same claims about nuclear power, and we have been able to for a 100 years. David Friedberg (00:45:16): Look. With nuclear in particular -- With nuclear in particular Jason Calacanis (00:45:20): -- David Friedberg (00:45:20): With nuclear in particular, there is a material problem. You have to source and refine material to do something scary. With biology, you don't. You can do this anywhere. You can do it on your desktop at home. And, you know, it's getting easier, cheaper, faster, and you can use software and a printer, and know, a a cheap sequencer and do stuff. Jason Calacanis (00:45:37): Do we believe that China has this Friedberg? David Friedberg (00:45:39): Yes. China, for sure. Yeah. I mean, look, this is yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:45:42): I think head of DeepMind or 100 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:45): percent 100 percent. David Friedberg (00:45:46): So here here's the stats that DeepMind put out. It took the equivalent of a 100 to 200 GPUs run over a few weeks. to build this model. That is -- I don't I don't care how advanced DeepMind is at this point. That's interesting. So, you know, if that's the the model, then someone else can replicate that. you know, someone David Sacks (00:46:02): will pull Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:02): up with that. David Sacks (00:46:02): That's what happened to to Alpha 0, the demarc chess engine. After they proved it, now there's a whole bunch of chess AIs. And -- I Jason Calacanis (00:46:11): think you discussed it. David Friedberg (00:46:12): I think we're within within 1 year, Jay Kal, of a lot of startups replicating this alpha fold technique And then using that to go do drug discovery, and you'll see 50 startups getting funded 12 to 18 months from now based on some novel protein idea. And I think that this -- Alright. Jason Calacanis (00:46:28): We gotta get our beach wet on this on the ISS. So everything go to this is getting ridiculous. Everybody's great. The citykitchen.com/all in. but I David Sacks (00:46:36): don't Yeah. We should create a protein folding syndicate. Jason Calacanis (00:46:41): Yeah. Absolutely. Here it David Friedberg (00:46:43): is. Everybody go to Jason Calacanis (00:46:44): the syndicate dot com slash all in. If we do this, I'm collecting the emails now. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:49): No. But I I David Friedberg (00:46:50): I will I will I will make my first series of bets less on the application and more on the the protection. I think biodefense 30 years from now is gonna be so important. Alright. Jason Calacanis (00:46:58): If you want to invest with the best ease, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:47:01): Can there is there gonna be a protein that prevents Rudy Giuliani from farting? Jason Calacanis (00:47:07): I mean, what is going on, Saks? Let's throw to you as our resident right wing, joking, joking, facts. Don't take it so personal. We know you didn't vote for Trump. We know you did a right in vote for for Tucker Carlson. Speaker 4 (00:47:22): Let me David Sacks (00:47:22): ask you. Jason Calacanis (00:47:23): Have you have you or have you not had dinner with Tucker Carlson? That's a big pause. I call ball in. David Sacks (00:47:33): I I've actually yeah. I I no. I don't think I've had to know with But -- You've Jason Calacanis (00:47:37): been to a party with Tucker Colson at David Sacks (00:47:39): the Churchill's house. No. But let me let me let me get to here's what's happening is well, I feel my dream of gridlock in Washington for the next 4 years is slipping away. You know, the the the you know, I described this as sort of like it was kind of a dream scenario that you would have a a divided congress. And the Republicans, you know, they won fifty they won fifty seats in the Senate in November. And then, you know, because of the stupid rule in Georgia that you have to you can't just win. You have to win by having over 50%. The republicans would have had 51 But now these there's a runoff for these 2 open seats. And the Republicans were ahead in the polls at the time. They were the more I I think it was mostly just based on the candidates being more popular than the Democratic candidates. But now because of all these antics around the election, the Democrats of both Democratic candidates have pulled ahead. Speaker 4 (00:48:36): Why? David Sacks (00:48:36): And so it's yeah. They are now both democratic kin in the last couple of last week or so. Aussup is ahead of Purdue by about two points, which is a stunner because Purdue has already beaten him before. He beat him in the November election. He's I think a man came Jason Calacanis (00:48:53): in -- -- though. Right? And the and the margin -- -- margin -- -- but worn off. -- republican. David Sacks (00:48:57): Right. But worn off, is 7 points ahead of Loffler. So that one is outside the margin of error. He's clearly beating her. And it you know, and now it looks like Purdue's in danger too. The Republicans just need to win one of those in order for us to have you know, divided government in Washington, which I think tends to produce better results than giving one party all the levers of power. But but this is this is the crazy thing. And so I think even from Trump's point of view, you know, I think this is a branding exercise to, you know, prove that he didn't lose. The problem is Jason Calacanis (00:49:35): -- Yeah. How's that going? David Sacks (00:49:37): Well, not working, and it looks like it's gonna cost Republicans the senate, which is something that I think he won't come back from. So if I was advising the president, I would tell him to drop this, you know, these these legal challenges. They fired Sydney Powell from the legal team, which I think was a good decision because of her crazy wild allegations. But now Rudy's out there doing the same stuff. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:57): Judy Giuliani. Oh, no. Judy Giuliani. Speaker 4 (00:50:02): The answer that I gave you is didn't bother to interview a single witness. Jason Calacanis (00:50:06): Toody Giuliani. He was adjusting. He wasn't waking up the genie. He was a he was tucking his pants and laying down in room having a drink with a Russian underage. David Sacks (00:50:15): I mean, Rudy is just I mean, fresh off his his guest starring appearance in the Borat movies. I mean, it's like he's Jason Calacanis (00:50:21): re -- Uncredited. David Friedberg (00:50:22): He can hit it. David Sacks (00:50:23): Yeah. It's like he's reenacting my cousin Vinny or something in these in these hearings. Jason Calacanis (00:50:29): Yeah. How many things am I holding up? -- David Sacks (00:50:31): the Senate. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:33): Yeah. I think they're it's so amazing. Like, the Democrats basically now have a stone cold free roll because there's a very good chance that these guys are going to win these 2 Senate seats, which would just be absolutely incredible. Absolutely. David Sacks (00:50:47): So so Republicans are definitely figuring this out. Rich Lowry had a great call. He's a editor of national review. He's on the right, but I think provides very good objective political analysis. He sound his last column sounded the alarm bells about what was happening in Georgia. And look, if the if the issue in the Georgia runoff is are these antics? If it's Rudy at Sydney Powell, the public is gonna lose the seat. the both seats. If the question of the election is whether Democrats should have a free hand to ram through whatever legislation they want, then I think the Republicans win. So the question is what is that election gonna be about? And the longer that Rudy stays on the stage, making these crazy wild allegations the worse it gets for Republicans. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:29): When is the Georgia runoff election? David Sacks (00:51:31): I think it's January 5th or 10th. It's it's one of those 2. January 5th, I think. Jason Calacanis (00:51:37): My gosh. Would anybody here if they had gray hair? And I know we have 3 gentlemen on the call who have Gray Hair. Friedberg, somehow you're you might be maybe I've answered this question already. Speaker 4 (00:51:50): Howard Bauchner: Just Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:50): not on his side to Jason Calacanis (00:51:51): Just put on a second. -- any of you die your hair if you were a seventy nine, eighty seven year old Rudy Giuliani Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:00): No. My hair is white and getting whiter. It's like it is what it is. It's a passage of time I would just move on. Jason Calacanis (00:52:06): David, would you consider? just taking that gray right out of your hair? because you have the pure Silver Fox as it stands. Would you ever consider it? David Sacks (00:52:15): You can see the man back, mate. You you can see the decision I've made. But, look, that's not I mean, it's yeah. I mean, that was just like a meltdown. I mean Jason Calacanis (00:52:24): -- A a literal meltdown. David Sacks (00:52:26): A a literal meltdown. And -- It Jason Calacanis (00:52:28): was so, like, representative of the moment. David Sacks (00:52:31): The the congressional Republicans wanna use a hook to get Rudy off the stage. I mean, they cannot wait to get them off the stage. And but if Jason Calacanis (00:52:39): they do it -- -- stand Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:40): up and just tell Trump to shut this down. David Sacks (00:52:43): I think I think it's coming. It's coming. So Jason Calacanis (00:52:46): -- Yeah. Oh, wow. So the Republicans are stand up to Trump with 4 weeks left in office. Wow. What a profile encourage. Friedberg, are you dying your hair? Do you have gray hair on it? You actually dying it, or have you not hit gray yet? Just tell us right now. It's an emergency pot. No. What's the truth? David, are you dying? Are you hearing? Yes or no? David Friedberg (00:53:05): This is it. Oh, is it? that's real, baby. Jason Calacanis (00:53:08): There's so many ways -- -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:10): have an opinion on whether Trump is allowed to pre pardon himself and his kids. Jason Calacanis (00:53:15): It's exactly where I was going. David Friedberg (00:53:16): Yeah. Saks. David Sacks (00:53:18): Well -- Yes, Saks. Jason Calacanis (00:53:19): Our right wing car David Sacks (00:53:20): He can definitely pardon his kids. I don't know. The there's a open legal question whether David Friedberg (00:53:23): he can pardon himself. you prepart in? Jason Calacanis (00:53:26): What does it mean preparting in this definition? You mean Speaker 4 (00:53:28): I don't David Sacks (00:53:29): I you can't. Jason Calacanis (00:53:30): You can only you can David Friedberg (00:53:31): only pardon for a committed crime. Right? I mean, that's you Speaker 4 (00:53:34): can part it for Jason Calacanis (00:53:34): things that happen in the past. David Sacks (00:53:35): I don't think you can part it for things that happened in the past. I don't think you can part it for things that happen in the future, and you can all tiny. Jason Calacanis (00:53:42): You can get a blanket pardon. No. David Sacks (00:53:44): I don't think you have to define that. I think you could just do a blanket pardon. Yes. The I would advise Trump not to do it if I were one of his advisers. And the reason is that he can only part in for federal. And the big problem that Trump Chamath has right now Chamath Palihapitiya (00:53:59): is, you know, David Sacks (00:54:00): the the southern district of New York, these mad dog prosecutors who are Democrats. This is you know, I don't approve of it. Jason Calacanis (00:54:07): This is this is to me, David Sacks (00:54:08): this is the to me, this is the criminalization of political differences. I don't I think it'd be great if he could pardon because I do think that those guys are again, they're trying to criminalize political differences. But but pardoning doesn't solve the problem with the Southern District of New York. And Biden has already said that he doesn't believe in having any having these having a a federal investigation of Trump. And so I don't think I don't think Trump has anything to worry about federally. I think the problem is God, Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:39): can I just say Biden is just so fucking decent and classy? Like, isn't it refreshing? It's actually boring, but isn't it just wait. Who Jason Calacanis (00:54:47): are you talking about? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:48): Biden is just so decent. Jason Calacanis (00:54:49): Who's Biden? Like, I haven't seen that guy. Does he work for us? Oh, he's been great. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:55): No. I mean, well. He's disappeared. David Sacks (00:54:57): Look. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:57): He he doesn't disappear. He's just not crazy? David Sacks (00:55:00): He's Biden Biden has done a really has done a few really smart things. I mean, in his acceptance speech, he did what Churchill advises you to do in victory, which is b, make an animus. He has made the right sort of sounds towards reconciliation. I think saying that he didn't believe in going after Trump criminally I mean, look. I I don't think that would have been a good political move anyway because it would have created a a backlash, but it was a smart Jason Calacanis (00:55:25): -- David Sacks (00:55:26): Yeah. -- thing to say. Jason Calacanis (00:55:27): And so he and then I think the other smart David Sacks (00:55:29): thing he's done is which is very Biden anyway, which is he's got an establishment all the way for his cabinet. He has not put He hasn't named any totally crazy progressives to his cabinet yet that the Republicans could latch on to for the Georgia runoff. And so Biden's doing a very good job right now of appearing nonthreatening and doing nothing to nothing to blow up his honeymoon. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:52): He and his visors have run a perfect, perfect Jason Calacanis (00:55:55): -- Flawless. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:56): flaw it's been flawless. I mean, David, you just nailed it. Like, all of all the things he could have done to potentially put the Senate at risk, or to potentially give Republicans sort of something to hang their hats on, he has given zero space. Right? Like, he has not created a single opening. And so you you would have thought that coming into this election cycle, the way that Trump tried to paint Biden, was like this, you know, gaffaholic. And instead, he has just been picture pitch perfect. Jason Calacanis (00:56:25): Rocks off. David Sacks (00:56:25): Well, I think I think I think he's a he's a Gaff when he speaks spontaneously, which he has not done. I mean, every time I've seen him speak since the elections be reading off a teleprompter, But I think that his campaign has run a really good they they have run a good strategy. And look, it helps that the press doesn't really challenge Speaker 4 (00:56:43): it. This is David Friedberg (00:56:44): like the it's, like, weekend at Bernie's, except it's, like, presidency at Bernie's. You know, it's, like, 4 years. Jason Calacanis (00:56:48): They hit him in a basement. David Friedberg (00:56:50): He only reads up the telephone there, hold him up, put him in the, you know, the stage, Speaker 4 (00:56:53): put him David Friedberg (00:56:53): back Yeah. The press let David Sacks (00:56:54): the press let him get away with it. I mean, no no other candidate could have gotten away with the basement strategy. But the press was so determined to go after Trump that they really gave him a free pass on what Biden believed and what he was gonna do. But look, Biden has run Biden has run a very good campaign and a very good transition. And really, I think the biggest mistake he made during the campaign was not declaring definitively that he would not try to pack the Street report. Right. That was his big mistake. And what happened, the voters split the ticket to give the Senate to the Republicans so that Biden wouldn't be able to pack the court. And so he wouldn't be able to do it anyway. And I think maybe his administration has learned from that mistake which is don't do anything or say anything that's gonna give Republicans somebody to latch on to to say that Biden is really radical. We gotta stop him. And, anyway, so to now, George is in play, Jason Calacanis (00:57:44): and Biden David Sacks (00:57:45): could win the Senate. Jason Calacanis (00:57:46): That's a perfect insight, Saxx. because what you haven't seen as well is you haven't seen Kamala Harris out there all that much because that's something Republicans could glom onto. And you haven't seen AOC Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. They are persona Nagrada. They are involved in this. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:01): Wow. They are MIA. Jason Calacanis (00:58:03): They are MIA. And they the Democrats won't bring them up, and you have Bernie Sanders, like, Wasn't he supposed to be? No. I'm not sure why -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:11): Elon Omar wants to cancel rent and mortgages. I mean, they're throwing his classic. And and they're throwing everything out there just to see if anything sticks right now. David Sacks (00:58:19): Yeah. Biden Biden has really given Bernie Sanders in that wing of the party the high hat. in the in these cabinet choices. In fact, he just named a woman to to be the head of the of OMB, the the, you know, the budget director. who has a huge Twitter feud with Bernie Sanders, and the Bernie the Bernie folks are up in arms about it. I don't think she's gonna get through. But but yeah. I mean, Biden has really stiff armed a lot of the progressives in So Jason Calacanis (00:58:48): wanna be associated with the historic left. I mean, it's a why would you wanna I just want I David Friedberg (00:58:52): also think it's historical left. I think it's an appeal to the right. Jason Calacanis (00:58:55): up the right. David Friedberg (00:58:56): I mean, he he is he is appealing to the right to some extent. Right? I mean, like, by by not putting those people in place, I think all parties have it right or David Sacks (00:59:03): He's never gonna be able to appeal to the Trump base, but what he's gonna be able to do is prevent the Republicans from from sort of labeling him as a radical, and and therefore and therefore, you know, went over those independence that he needs. And -- By Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:16): the way, to back to Trump for one second. I apologize because I wanted to ask you, David. I mean, the other thing that could tip Georgia is this whole craziness where Speaker 4 (00:59:26): Trump is like, I'm gonna veto Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:26): the the defense bill unless we repeal section 230. And if you're you know, a military person in Georgia, you're like, wait a second. You're gonna leave my brothers and sisters in arms basically lollygagging without any financial support because you don't like Twitter's tweet policy, it's gonna seem kind of crazy. David Sacks (00:59:50): Yeah. It was it was one of these, like, classic Trump moves where you feel like I I think he does have a good point with respect to the social media companies. I do think they've been engaging in censorship. They've overstepped their bounds. They are they they do deserve some sort of cup comeuppance or control I personally don't think that repealing Jason Calacanis (01:00:11): 22 David Sacks (01:00:13): was it 280, is the section 230 is the way to go. it's for a bunch of reasons that we could get into if you want. But but but, yeah, it was one of these, like, reflective Trump Trump you know, tweets. And you you heard Republicans in in the Senate were very, very quick to shoot it down. And, you know, there was an article in Politico where Republicans were quoted while anonymously saying they're pretty sick of this shit. That was the quote. And so yeah. I mean, I think that Republicans on Capitol Hill are kinda ready for for for those types of antics to be over. Jason Calacanis (01:00:51): Okay. Should he or will he pardon himself and the kids? Like, I mean, guess that's what it comes down to. And then I think we should move. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:59): I don't I don't I don't think so. And I don't think it'll matter because I think Biden will leave him alone, and it will not help his biggest risk. And this is, by the way, why they Friedberg to Jay Clayton to resign from the SEC and move over to the Southern District of New York because they thought maybe he could run some kind of interference. But I mean, I think the state AGs will want a pound of fleshier. Jason Calacanis (01:01:20): And and so just -- If I were if I were advising -- -- move on. David Sacks (01:01:24): Yeah. Just if I were advising Trump and and advising him on how to maximize his legacy, it would be, you know, pardon pardon people in the administration have been treated fairly. There's no need to pardon yourself. I don't I don't think he has federal exposure. And I would and I would tell him that you know, if Republicans lose these Georgia senate seats, that he will be blamed for among the base for a long time. And that, I think, will be hard for him to get past in 4 years. And so it's very important, I think, for him to make sure that that at least Purdue wins his election. Jason Calacanis (01:02:03): Yeah. What David Friedberg (01:02:05): do you guys can I ask can I ask another question? What do you think is gonna happen with so Trump is trying to make his case but no one's listening. Twitter keeps putting up his fraudulent, you know -- This is disputed. Jason Calacanis (01:02:19): -- David Friedberg (01:02:19): claims disputed claims thing. And he's been pushing Newsmax and OANN. Do you think those become viable and real kind of media businesses now? are they actually gonna steal an audience away from Fox News? David Sacks (01:02:32): A 100%. It's already happened. It's just the increasing fragmentation of media. Right? -- cable networks David Friedberg (01:02:38): don't them up, do they? The the cable companies? David Sacks (01:02:43): I've seen I've seen Newsmax. Newsmax has a cable channel. Jason Calacanis (01:02:45): My theory is this entire twisted, like, crazy right Alright, mania just fades into oblivion, and then nobody reinvents itself. No. No. because they can't win. They can't win, David. They can't win with this brand. Speaker 4 (01:03:00): They did. David Sacks (01:03:00): They did win. The the Jason Calacanis (01:03:01): -- -- did, and they will not in the future because they just lost. David Sacks (01:03:04): There there Republicans won, like, 10 or twelve seats in the house. They've almost got the majority back in the house. They almost certainly will win back the house and retire Nancy Pelosi in 2 years during the midterm election. I'll put money on that right now. They held the senate. Jason Calacanis (01:03:19): local elections. They held the senate. presidency again with this strategy. You think we can win with the demographic shift? Trump in 2024, really? David Sacks (01:03:28): Yeah. Do you think people Jason Calacanis (01:03:30): wanna go back to that level of crazy? People actually in the 4 years -- Speaker 4 (01:03:33): People don't want David Sacks (01:03:33): the they don't went the crazy, but this idea that the issue set that Trump ran on and went on is dead. I don't I don't agree with that. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:44): Yeah. I mean Jason Calacanis (01:03:44): -- David Sacks (01:03:44): Those issues are still there. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:46): You'll have a better branded face and a standard bearer for those issues. And if you say it in a less crazy way, and you're generally less crazy. I think that it will resonate with a lot more people than have already proven that it resonates with. It already resonates with 70,000,000. Could it resonate 75, and could they overtake the White House? It's not inconceivable. So I think I think we can't, all of a sudden, say this is signed sealed and delivered. It's a and all a sudden, it's just Democrats the rest of the way. David's right. The down ballot results for the Democrats were not good. And it's a sign that moderate Sentriism is the only winning strategy. If you really have a strategy where it's like, I really wanna win and not just me, but my party and generations of people after me, You have to run a centrist campaign, Jason Calacanis (01:04:30): which is why they're retiring the AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Boerne, Boerne, contingency. Right? So if David Sacks (01:04:35): Well, yeah. There's There's a house member. Jason Calacanis (01:04:37): -- that group of crazy. David Sacks (01:04:39): Right. There was a there was a Democratic house member, I think Elizabeth Spanberger. who almost lost her seat. I think in a, like, a Virginia like, kind of a swing Virginia district, there there was a big call of the Democratic House caucus And she was just laying into Pelosi and the leadership there because she was basically saying, don't ever mention defund the police again. You know? If you want me to win my my swing district next time, do not mention this ever again. And she was just this was all in the Washington Post. You know? They the the call was leaked by about a dozen different press out outlets, which tells you, there was a lot of unhappiness among the house members who almost lost their seat because of these, like, radical ideas. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:23): The other the other thing is and, you know, unless all of a sudden the the folks that are in their twenties thirties are radically different than many, many generations before them. The reality is they will, as they get older and wealthier, generally speaking, get more conservative. And we are about to go through over the next 20 years Jason Calacanis (01:05:45): $30,000,000,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:46): of wealth transfer. And so, you know, I mean, you can wear Jason Calacanis (01:05:49): -- Good segue. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:50): but buttons on buttons on flannel. But at the end of the day, when you're, you know, mom and dad pass pass away and all of a sudden, you know, you have 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,000,000 bucks and you have to think about your children and your children's children I tend to think people generally do very predictably, get more conservative. And so, again, another reason why you can't count on a a state interpretation of progressivism. It there will be progressivism. I think it just will be a different form a policy and it'll just be more moderate and centrist and it'll be normal. Jason Calacanis (01:06:26): Which is a perfect segue to the New York Times story that came out on Friday after Thanksgiving, November 27th. The rich kids who want to tear down capitalism, socialist minded millennials millennial heirs are trying to live their values by getting rid of their money. Lately, Sam Jacobs, and I'll read just a little bit of it, has been having a lot of stations with his family's lawyers. He's trying to gain access to his trust of 30 his $30,000,000 trust fund. At 25, he's hit the age where errors can blow their money on hairbrained businesses or a stable of sports cards. He doesn't want to do that. But by Wealth Management standards, his plans are just as bad. He wants to give it all away. I wanna build a world where someone like me, a young person who controls tens of $1,000,000 is possible. A socialist is college, Mister Jacob, sees his family's extreme Plutocratic wealth as both a moral and economic failure. His parents must be very proud of Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:14): him. First of all, Sam Jacobs sounds like an idiot, and he shouldn't have anybody. So, hopefully, he gets wishing. Why did Jason Calacanis (01:07:20): his parents give him $30,000,000? This trust fund should be, like, given to somebody who deserves it. Like -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:24): Yeah. But but what what Sam -- Different what Sam Jacobs wants doesn't mean that Sam Jacobs gets to decide for everybody else. And just because that he wants to live in a communist country, he can go and find one. And the reality is, like, you know, we just talked about alpha fold. Well, guess what? You know, there's four of us on this on this podcast today that over the next 20 or 30 years, are more than likely going to invest 100 of Jason Calacanis (01:07:48): 1,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:48): of dollars in protein design. And I don't do that with any sense of shame. And I'm glad that Stewart Butterfield made me, you know, a lot of money because it's gonna go go back into the world and pop ways. And, you know, maybe if my children are taught properly, they'll be able to take a small piece of that and they'll decide that, you know, there's something else that's important to them. But the reality is that everybody should be allowed to make their own decisions. And I don't want somebody like him, especially a twenty five year old dipshit, telling me or my kids who even though they're, you know, under the age of fifteen are probably smarter than him, what to do? Jason Calacanis (01:08:27): David, when you read this article, If you did read it, what were your thoughts, especially in regards to parenting and thinking about our own kids? because that's what I started thinking about. I was like, oh my god. What if one of my daughters wants to take our trust fund and just throw it into the wind? I I really don't want -- Yeah. -- caught apart. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:44): Wait. Hold on. I just wanna David Sacks (01:08:45): say something. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:46): The part that's completely reasonable and that I respect is Speaker 4 (01:08:49): this this twenty five year old seems Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:49): to have come to a decision. What I find completely unreasonable and, you know, just completely laddered with insecurity is his need to then project it and say it has to be true for everybody as well. And and the the grand arcing statements of how it should never be just completely portrays you know, what we've learned in how society functionally works. Like, if you want democracy, the only sort of economic philosophy that's been partnered with with democracy to work well as capitalism. And so if you wanna change one, you're gonna have to change the other. And just that, you know, with all of his education, the 100 of Jason Calacanis (01:09:28): 1,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (01:09:28): of dollars, you know, didn't get a course in civics to understand that is kind of set. Jason Calacanis (01:09:33): I just before you go, David, I have to read one comment because it's so deranged that it almost seems like it was part of a script to, like, some 1,000,000,000 or secession. Ayers whose wealth have come from specific sources sometimes use that history to guide their giving. That's the New York Times saying that. Pure's still a hunt. A thirty two year old, socialist anarchist, Marx's communist, or all of the above, has a trust fund that was financed by their former stepfather's outlet Mall Empire. When I and this is mister mister I'm sorry, m x I've never seen that before. Della Hunt. How do you pronounce Max Hunt? How do you pronounce m x? MX Della Hunt takes non gendered pronouns. Has anybody seen MX? I've never seen that. David Sacks (01:10:25): That was the first time. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:10:27): that's the first for me. So I guess if you're not gonna answer. David Sacks (01:10:29): So you don't have to say mister or miss or miss or whatever. Jason Calacanis (01:10:33): It's like Latinx where you just can Speaker 4 (01:10:35): group Jason Calacanis (01:10:35): a bunch of people into one thing. I got it. Right. This is what MX Della Hunt says. I'm just trying to figure out how it's pronounced. Maxus Hunt Della Hunt. When taking a shot. David Sacks (01:10:50): You're Jason, you're you're not showing respect for his pronouns. Jason Calacanis (01:10:54): I don't wanna get canceled. It just is kinda hard to pronounce m x, absolutely. I don't mean to laugh, but I need I need somebody to tell me how to pronounce mx.com. But this is the quote that is so insane. When I think about outlet malls and I think this is what we all think about when we think about outlet malls When I think about outlet malls, I think about intersectional oppression. What's the first thing that comes to mind, Freeman, when you think of an outlet mall? Oh my certainly it's intersexual oppression or a subway -- No. David Friedberg (01:11:29): Look. I just can I just point out, like, the the New York Times has become a little bit cessationist. Like, you know, if you were to ask statistically, what percentage of people that are inheriting wealth are gonna be stupid like this, the answer would probably be pretty low. But they find the 1 or 2 characters like this, and they build the story around them, and then people accolate that as if that is the persona of the entire population of people that are gonna inherit some degree of wealth, and that becomes the story. And I'm just so sick of it. Like, I don't read in your times anymore. And, look, I loved in your times. I would read it every single day. I still have it on my phone. I still pay for my subscription, but I'm so sick of the narrative being written by author's objective, and then they go and find 1 or 2 facts that meet that narrative. And rather than speaking about it statistically and saying we surveyed a hundred people that were wealthy, this is how many and if it if it was 60% of them saying, I'm gonna go give away all my wealth and do crazy shit. Great. Like, that's the story. Jason Calacanis (01:12:23): But again David Friedberg (01:12:23): But but picking picking a picking an individual and building the narrative around that individual as if that is the whole Jason Calacanis (01:12:28): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:12:28): But David -- But David, and that's the point. It's like, what they do is they don't even talk about people who wanna give their money away. What they do is they create these caricatures around this, like, judge judgment. It's it's all about this, like, judgment. It's, like, Speaker 4 (01:12:41): I am Chamath Palihapitiya (01:12:41): it's virgin it's like, I am holier than everybody else because of these decisions that I made, and I just find it so offensive. Now Here's can I just tell you, I had my physical last week, and I have a doctor in LA who's superb. And he's he's in many ways sort of a philosopher king to me. He's been incredibly important in my life. And, you know, I talked to Jason Calacanis (01:13:00): -- Talk to -- -- I talked Chamath Palihapitiya (01:13:01): to his name his name is Christian Renna at Life Penn Medicine. But, anyways, And here's what you're and I talked to Chris about raising kids and Chris has seen, you know, thousands of people over the course of his, you know, journey as a primary care physician and he's seen the kids of these folks and etcetera. And, you know, he he boiled it down to me. It's like, you know, your job is apparent. is to make sure that your children have incredible tools, married with incredible habits, And so some of these things are very simple like food and, you know, how to eat and self care and exercise, but some of these things are really important, which is a worldview, empathy and he uses this word which is called awareness. And awareness is this idea that you understand the world around you. And that's an incredibly difficult thing for parents to be able to teach their kids, but it seems like if you could give them that, that's independent of anything other than time and care. Right? It doesn't matter whether you're rich or you're poor. It doesn't really matter whether you're black or you're white. You can really teach the concept of awareness and empathy. And then the other thing that he taught me was, you know, there's a really big difference between folks like you, meet meeting guys like me, who grew up poor and who were focused on the generation of money. Right? Meaning making money. And some of you make it, some of you don't but you're living in this existential threat that you feel is hanging over you. And so you go out and you make it, and a lot of it is driven by this insecurity you've had since you were young. But make no mistake, your children's lives is harder than yours, and it's about the utilization of money. And whether they wanna give it away or whether they wanna use it, you have a responsibility to teach them. Whether you're giving them a dollar, a $1,000,000 or a $1,000,000,000. And this is where I think somewhere along the way, these kids as parents, you know, may or may not have done the best maybe they did the best they could. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:57): But somewhere along the way, these gaps are are obvious at least in the telling of the article. And this is where I go back to if you're really gonna talk to about something like this, which actually is quite important because, again, we're gonna go through the the most enormous wealth transfer in the history of the world in the next 20 years, $30,000,000,000,000. That could so talk about that. If if enough people took their inheritance and decide to eradicate student debt, it would be 3% of what's gonna be inherited over the next 20 years. Think about it. So, obviously, you can do some incredible things. but it's not framed in the right way. It doesn't promote the right kind of discussion, and all it is is salacious reporting that makes these kids look like caricatures. David Friedberg (01:15:37): And by the way, remember that money today is invested somewhere. So to pull that 3% out would have a kind of triple kind of rippling and kind of probably deleterious effect on on -- Yeah. These are because they're Jason Calacanis (01:15:51): not going to lower. No. No. Forget about that. It's a Chamath Palihapitiya (01:15:54): factory's family owned business. David Friedberg (01:15:56): This is my point also is I think that there's a responsibility to these stewards of capital. Right? They they they made you can call them wealthy all you want, but they really are the people that pull the strings that are where money's moving. And there's a, I think, you know, to your point, kind of a a degree of responsibility that inevitably have to kind of sit with this this group because that Apple will stay somewhere. David Sacks (01:16:16): Here's the problem with it is if they just want to give their money away to a charity that they thought was worthy and that and they were willing to live, like, you know, monks or something and not need money, That'd be fine. You know, we could respect that. But the reason why they're in such a hurry to get rid of this wealth is because they feel like money itself is ill gotten, that wealth itself, it's self is is by definition ill gotten. It must have come from at the expense of somebody else. Right? You only could have gotten that wealth by ripping people off. And that is the thing that that's the idea that's really pernicious about this sort of, like, socialism movement is they don't really understand that the way Calacanis works, you only get rich by selling something to somebody that they want that makes their life better. Right? I mean, all of us are engaged in the creation of new technologies and new products. And that makes the world better, and people are willing to pay for that. And that's what creates value. And and that's what creates wealth. And it's really just kinda sad that people, you know, are and it's it goes beyond this article in these trust fund kids, but this whole condemnation of Capitalism and this attack on any you know, billionaires or whatever. The problem with it is it doesn't recognize the way that value is created for everybody. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:33): Can I can I give you a quote -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:17:35): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:35): from Walter Williams who just passed away who's a very famous economists. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering, and enslaving their fellow men, Calacanis made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow men. And that's really true. And some are along David Friedberg (01:17:54): the way -- Exactly. Jason Calacanis (01:17:54): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:54): folks folks have lost the script. and have all of a sudden gone back to prehistoric capitals times. And I I think that we don't have enough good examples of constructive Calacanis that prove that this is not a bad word. David Sacks (01:18:09): Yeah. And and -- I give it to you. -- give it Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. The I love the Walter William's quote. Just to give another example, Jeff Bezos just gave $10,000,000,000 to climate change. Jason Calacanis (01:18:20): And you know what? This kid Teddy what's the kid's name, Teddy Schafer or something like that, the journalist, has been riding him on Twitter I think he works for Vox or something. Like, they have basically been attacking Bezos since he made the announcement that he hasn't done enough. And it's like, $10,000,000,000 is the largest contribution ever made to a single cause. I mean, obviously -- Speaker 4 (01:18:42): Right. Jason Calacanis (01:18:42): -- Bill Gates -- And how did he do that? -- do that? David Sacks (01:18:45): Right. And how did he do that? Because he created Amazon, which has created enormous value for all of us. Imagine if one of these kids in the article instead of just giving their money away. They by the way, it looks like there's a bunch of organizations that have sprung up to scam these kids out of their trust fund and sort of you know, a fool of their money or a fool of their money are soon parted. There's a whole bunch of of of scam artists who are trying to scam these kids, but Yeah. I mean, they're definitely getting scammed. But imagine if instead of just getting scammed out of their money, they were to use it to create a business that created a new product or technology that serve people then maybe they could turn that 30,000,000 into 10,000,000,000 like Bezos did. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:21): And and if they lost it, they would have done it in the pursuit of something really grand. And so nobody would actually Jason Calacanis (01:19:26): -- Instead of virtue signaling. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:28): Instead of virtue signaling on the New York Times. Jason Calacanis (01:19:30): Yeah. Like, these guys were so glad to be in the New York Times to dunk on capital and dunk and literally dunk on their own parents. Think about that. You hate your parents so much. You have to go to the New York Times and tell them how much you hate them. I mean, I don't know how this changes Well, David Sacks (01:19:43): by the way, speaking of virtue signaling the New York Times, can we talk about the New York Times writing that hit piece on Coinbase? Jason Calacanis (01:19:50): Alright. I mean, if you wanna go there, I mean, this is the -- What is -- -- Rell of the podcast, but we've been talking about Brian Armstrong to set the table here. Brian Armstrong wrote a memo. He said, no David Friedberg (01:20:00): politics at work. By the way, Jay Kal, I just posted an image. for Nick to put up here. Just to to to -- Don't don't tell Jason Calacanis (01:20:06): me it's a code 13 at Sakses again. David Friedberg (01:20:08): This is not a code 13. It's to reinforce your point about the you know, the virtue of capitalism, you know, this kinda dates back to these are 33 images, 3 charts from the year 1500 to today. And Jason Calacanis (01:20:21): -- Energy use has grown a 115 times. David Friedberg (01:20:23): Well, so this is basically a a measure of population, consumption, and production. Right? And so the the capitalist incentives has driven the ability while population has grown 14x over the last 500 years. It's driven a nearly 10 x increment in what is available for humans to consume per capita during that period of time. I mean, think about that. That was driven entirely by industry. And so industry has enable and and production has increased by 240x. So we have a surplus of goods on planet Earth and a surplus of access to goods because of the capital that's incentive over the last 500 years. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:02): And whose right is it to say that that was wrong? And all of the people that are employed by it and live within that mechanism Jason Calacanis (01:21:08): -- They're making more no longer living in poverty who are no longer slaves. Speaker 4 (01:21:11): All of Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:11): a sudden, 50 and people convert you signal because they're sitting in their warm homes in America telling everybody else to fuck off. I mean, I find it kind of Jason Calacanis (01:21:19): a joke. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:19): I mean, I I would like you to go and live you know, where I was supposed to live before I emigrated. David Friedberg (01:21:24): Right. Jason Calacanis (01:21:25): Sri Lanka. David Friedberg (01:21:26): No heater, no roof, no food, etcetera. You Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:31): go come to see, look. I can show you. You you go to an outhouse. Okay? You sit there. You squat to go to the bathroom. Okay? There's no fucking 3 ply, you know, bamboo, you know, press free toilet workers to deal with. You know, you you you literally what you know, you clean yourself with your hand. You brush your teeth with coal. I remember we used to brush our teeth with fucking coal. Okay? We have a well for water. And so you you have all these people in these situations where all we wanted was to just get a chance to run the race And the people that were born with a silver spoon in their mouth who had the chance to run the race turns around and tells guys like me, no, you can't, and it fucking infuriates me. Jason Calacanis (01:22:13): Yeah. I wanna blow up the racetrack, by the way. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:15): I I Jason Calacanis (01:22:15): wanna just get rid of the entire -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:17): Fuck you. Jason Calacanis (01:22:19): It's a serious fuck you to these to these like, they were they profited and they benefited from democracy and capitalism. and now they wanna revert back to a system where everybody who's in that system is trying to get into this system. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:32): They don't understand what feudalism is. because there are so many layers removed through their fucking filtered lenses and, you know, country clubs and bullshit vacations and all this crap. that they have no idea what it's like. And I'm telling you, I am 1st generation of having escaped that shit, and I don't want anything to do with it. David Friedberg (01:22:49): But the point is Capitalism has allowed not just the US, but many other countries to change their course in life Stephen Pigner's for all of the controversy he creates his books on, you know, what humans have really achieved during this great kind of era of capitalism and industrialism and how we've changed our course on planet Earth, improved human health, improved longevity, improved calorie access to calories, improved access to shelter, to medicine. It's all because of a an incentive, a market based incentive system. And it is very, very powerful. It is the most powerful force we know as a species, and it's allowed this incredible acceleration, exponential acceleration of possibility. for our species. Jason Calacanis (01:23:32): Also from the article, a great quote, Elizabeth Baldwin, a thirty four year old Democratic socialist from Cambridge, Mass Kansas. She plans to keep enough of her inheritance to buy an apartment and raise a family, enjoying the sort of pleasant middle class existence denied to many people of color in the United States. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:55): What does that mean? That's I don't know. I just I I don't see let's just move on. David Friedberg (01:23:59): Let's talk about Brian on Jason Calacanis (01:24:00): the draw. So dumb. David Sacks (01:24:01): They they they they they see they see the world in a 0 sum way. where, you know, anything they have means that somebody else must it must have been taken away from somebody else. They don't really understand the way that value is created by an exchange and by people creating new things. And, you know, and and that's what technology is all about. You know? It's creating Speaker 4 (01:24:22): new things. Jason Calacanis (01:24:22): There was a time when everybody didn't have access to clean water. Now we take that for granted. There's a time when everybody didn't have access to affordable food and time and electricity. David Friedberg (01:24:30): by the way, look at how we started look. All of Jason Calacanis (01:24:32): this is driven by capitalism. David Friedberg (01:24:33): And look at how we started the conversation today. Alpha Fold, I I think, is the realization of one of the greatest Capitalist Enterprises in history. It's not the greatest, you know, alphabet. Jason Calacanis (01:24:43): And you're still getting started? David Friedberg (01:24:44): And the output of that is gonna be an incredible new tool for drug discovery that is gonna extend human lifespan in an incredible way. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:51): There was a window of time where folks who are really, really good at bitching and complaining had a window of opportunity to bitching complaint. And what happened was they were not able to seize power. And then just in the last few months literally, I think we are nailing that coffin shut. Because as you said, David, you're gonna have to all of a sudden, like, look at companies like, Google and look at things like Alpha Fold and reject them. And I don't know how people do because everyone will need something that that company will create now. and that alpha fold will be responsible for. We are all gonna need a vaccine. These are all coming from for profit companies that thrived on top of R&D. You know, all of it was funded by past drug profits from other things. And so, you know, we're gonna have to really look at ourselves in the mirror and say, did we not want that? Did we wanna just die on the street to prove a point? And I don't think anybody actually wants that. Jason Calacanis (01:25:44): I mean, what is your what is the ultimate criticism of Amazon They made, you know, iPhone charger is $5. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:51): It was the point that you can't Jason Calacanis (01:25:53): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:53): You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't actually, you know, complain about Amazon on the one hand, complain about no action on climate change on the other, complain about this, complain about that, complain about the other thing, then you're just a fucking whiner, and nobody wants a whiner around because they're not additive. They're not useful. You don't learn anything from a whiner. Jason Calacanis (01:26:14): Alright. So looking at the New York Times versus Coinbase, the foul New York Times fake news, Sorry. I'm just generally Trump. Okay. Fell, New York Times. Fake. David Sacks (01:26:24): Well, talk about talk about whining. This is more virtue signaling whining. by The New York Times. And, actually, the the the look. This was clearly a hit piece because they don't like Brian Armstrong's decision. to make Coinbase in a political workplace. If any workplace has chosen to be political, it's the New York Times. There's a lot of examples of that. the fact that Jason Calacanis (01:26:46): they -- They ran Marty Weiss out of there. They They David Sacks (01:26:47): ran Marty Weiss out of the the newsroom. I mean, this is these are the most -- -- header Jason Calacanis (01:26:51): page out. David Sacks (01:26:52): That's right. I mean, they they they ran James spent it out of there for publishing an op ed by Tom Cotton. Remember that? He got kicked out. He got forced to resign because he published one op ed by our Republican senator. Okay? This is the most close minded group, the most close minded political workplace. And here they are, lecturing a Silicon Valley company that in their view isn't tolerant enough. I mean, it's ridiculous. But the but the and it was obvious that a hit piece. The stories the the examples in the article where years old, you know, the they weren't even reported to HR as violations at the time. So there's you know, it's it's people cooking up things that weren't reported as problems at the time. But the but the really interesting thing about the story, I think, is that coin is the way Coinbase reacted to it by preemptively announcing that it was coming, which really made the New York Times reporters really irate You know, they called it extremely unprofessional. Jason Calacanis (01:27:54): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:27:54): reporters were upset, Jason Calacanis (01:27:55): and they threatened that they would no longer the journalist said, if you guys are gonna front run our stories, We are not gonna call you when we have a story. And I responded to that, and I was like, are you serious? Like, you're a little you're gonna lose what little integrity you have left -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:09): Crazy. Jason Calacanis (01:28:10): -- about back checking David Sacks (01:28:11): because -- There there's an amazing Jason Calacanis (01:28:13): -- -- wrote a preemptive blog post about -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:15): I'll say this about I'll say this about Brian strong. I have a lot of respect for him for making a stand. I think every CEO has that right, and I'm glad that at the end of the day, the employees at Coinbase were given a humane way of making a decision to be on the same page with him or not. I will also say that I thought that yesterday was not handwritten and that given the chance, I could have rewritten that for him in a much better way. I I maintained this the whole time, but I I I think he's in the right here. Jason Calacanis (01:28:43): wrap it Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:43): up for Jason Calacanis (01:28:43): you to tell us what you think. David Sacks (01:28:45): Well, okay. That's that's that's interesting that that Shamaz is is essentially to hear hear your support for Brian. So we've talked this has become a recurring topic on the pod. But, anyway, I I think, you know, the the important thing is the way that I think the tech community fought back against this hit piece. And it was the like you said, Jason, the front running of the story, somebody a a a a a a a a wag on Twitter had a had a great comments saying, you know, basically said, you know, I try to walk up I agree with the New York Times on this. I try to walk up to somebody. and kick them in the nuts. And they covered their groin. You know, how dare they? You know? That how I'm How unprofessional of that? Jason Calacanis (01:29:28): It was a slow motion kick Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:29): to the nuts. David Sacks (01:29:30): Yeah. Exactly. Jason Calacanis (01:29:31): And so -- Coming Sunday. David Sacks (01:29:33): It's -- Right. But it was -- -- day. Jason Calacanis (01:29:34): But on Sunday, we're kicking you on the nuts. David Sacks (01:29:37): So, yeah, the New York Times is the coin base just covered as groin so the New Speaker 4 (01:29:41): York Times can cover kick them David Sacks (01:29:42): in the nuts. And and, of course, the reporters all went hysterical about that. But it you know? But but but it was a really brilliant PR tactic by Coinbase because What it did is it almost, like, released a spike protein, you know, by by sort of an preannouncing New York Times story, it created this spike protein that trained the immune system of Silicon Valley to be ready for this pathogenic New York Times story. And the the the story just really fell flat. It didn't go anywhere. Jason Calacanis (01:30:11): Yeah. It was and and they they did the same with the Away CEO. She was too hard on people in Slack. All of these stories to to go full circle involve some leak from a Slack room. So if you're a CEO or you're managing anybody, don't have any difficult or legal issues discussed on Slack. Go for a walk when somebody talked to them face to face. because you're gonna get destroyed. Alright. Listen, everybody. This has been another amazing episode. We had 10 more stories we wanted to get to that we weren't able to get to. But while we were doing this, I asked my crack team Sorry, at the syndicate. David Friedberg (01:30:48): Woah. What was that? Jason Calacanis (01:30:50): to set up the syndicate dot com slash all in. So I'm not saying we're doing a syndicate. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:57): Yes. We are. We're not figuring out how to do something. We're gonna do something to let the people who listen, invest alongside us. We're gonna figure it out in 2021 at some point. Jason Calacanis (01:31:06): But you have to write a review on iTunes. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:08): No. You just gotta sign up. Jason Calacanis (01:31:10): Just gotta sign up atthesyndicate.com/allin. If we do a folding protein company or a unicorn in the ISA space, maybe everybody who listens to the all in podcast gets to wet their beak for the rain ended Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:23): in sack. -- beak. Jason Calacanis (01:31:24): What You're the peak beak. Wet. Your -- -- David Sacks (01:31:27): beak. Beak. Jason Calacanis (01:31:28): What? What? Where did you get merch? Wet? Wet my I can't wet my beak. He's, like, demurts. The t shirt the t shirt guy -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:36): The t shirt guy that listens to us, we love you. There's a code that was the courtesy. But wet your beak or wet the beak, we have to figure out which one's better. Speaker 4 (01:31:43): I think we Jason Calacanis (01:31:44): have a new I think we have David Sacks (01:31:45): a new tagline for the pod. Jason Calacanis (01:31:46): Wet your beak. David Sacks (01:31:47): Wet your beak. Jason Calacanis (01:31:48): encode 13. These are great merch opportunities for anybody who wants to go do merch. You can go do merch on your own. We don't care. We're not in the merch business. Put it up on your own website. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:31:58): Love you besties. Jason Calacanis (01:31:59): Love you besties. So for bestie rain man, the dictator, Chamath, Palihapitiya, and the queen of Kinwa himself, Metro mile founder, spacker, Piper, lay pipe and specs everywhere. I'm Jason Calacanis for the besties. We'll see you next time, which could be in a week or a month. Who knows? on the all in podcast. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:32:21): Love you, Betsy.