特鲁多动用紧急权力、比特币对抗政府，以及老虎环球的新策略

David Friedberg (00:00:00): Sachs, are we gonna talk with each other today or, you know, or -- Jason Calacanis (00:00:02): He's an ISO player. He turned into an ISO player. He's like the Carmelo Anthony of this David Friedberg (00:00:06): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:06): He's the Carmelo Anthony of the all in pod. Sach, you wanna pass the ball, or you you just wanna you wanna clank it off the rim? Jason Calacanis (00:00:13): Raymond. Clank -- I David Friedberg (00:00:14): mean, we should have a focus on having a dialogue with each other today at several points in the thing as opposed to all standing up, saying our piece, and then hopping -- Sacks. Speaker 4 (00:00:20): We we Jason Calacanis (00:00:20): lost a little bit of the fiber of this team here. There's three people playing as a team, and then David Friedberg (00:00:24): there's I would love to ask you questions, and I would love David Sacks (00:00:27): you to ask me questions. David Friedberg (00:00:28): -- David Sacks (00:00:28): the ball, Jay Kal, you're the guard. You passed the ball. I'm supposed to score. Jason Calacanis (00:00:31): Oh, really? David Sacks (00:00:32): You know what? Shaq used to say when he wasn't getting the ball. He gets really unhappy. He said pass the ball to the big dog. He'll score. Yeah. I'm Shaq, sure. You know, you're not Kobe. Who is the the shitty little, like, off guard? Speaker 4 (00:00:44): Eric Fisher? David Sacks (00:00:45): Yeah. You're Derek Fisher. Make sure that big dog gets the ball. There won't be any problems. Jason Calacanis (00:00:49): I'm Bob Cussey. Okay? I'm Gary Payton in this and announce it here. Okay? The weather winter's wide. Rainman, David Sacks. David Sacks (00:01:02): We open source it to fans and they've discovered reason. Jason Calacanis (00:01:09): Hey, everybody. Welcome to the all in podcast where 3 besties talk about a range of talk topics and one monologues about Biden derangement syndrome with you again this week, the Sultan of Science, and the dictator, Chipotle Hopatiya, David Friedberg, and playing ISO ball somewhere in the wing is your political commentator. Talk to the junior. David Friedberg (00:01:33): -- David Sacks (00:01:33): age and an act of rejection. Jason Calacanis (00:01:35): David Sacks. It's an active perception. -- story, which Saks is gonna lose his mind over. He's got 2 monologues prepared. Justin Trudeau has invoked an emergency order to freeze bank accounts linked to trucker protests in Canada on Monday Trudeau invoked an emergency law that requires financial institutions in Canada to examine customer records and take action against people involved with or aiding in the protest, Here's Trudeau's tweet from yesterday, if you're watching on the video streams, illegal blockades, and occupations are not peaceful protests. They're a threat to jobs and communities, and they cannot continue in the House of Commons. Earlier today, I joined members of the parliament. Speak about that and about the need to invoke the emergencies act. The counter signal, which is a right leaning Canadian digital publication, reported that 34 different crypto wallets. We're also being targeted by Canadian officials. This law grants the government, extraordinary powers like the right to ban public assembly in certain locations, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association set a plan to challenge the government's decision in Court, remember, Sachs wrote a piece on financial deplatforming for Barry Weiss's common sense about a year ago, the piece was about the private sector financial platforms, deplatforming folks. So your thoughts Sachs. You have 90 seconds on the uninterrupted clock. David Sacks (00:03:00): On the shot clock. Alright. Thank you, Jake. Yeah. It's true. Last summer, I wrote a piece for Barry Weiss as substack, talking about how financial the platform would be the next wave of online censorship, and here we are. It's actually happened. what I could not have predicted is that it would occur in our mild mannered neighbor to the north and that the reprisals would be directed by the government itself, not just a a consortium of of private actors. And what Trudeau has done is he didn't just employ the Emergency Act against the trucker so that he could basically arrest them and break up the protest They have now directed banks and any financial institution, even cryptocurrency wallets to freeze the accounts, not just of the truckers, But anybody who's contributed to them, basically, anyone has contributed $25 or more. There there were 2 crowdfunding sites that they raise money from all those people the thousands of of just ordinary Canadians who did nothing more than contribute to an anti government protest, they are now at risk of shall ruin because their bank accounts have been frozen. And you have to wonder, what what is the ends here that justifies the means? COVID, you know, Omicron is on the lane. It's on its way out. At the same time, that Trudeau was announcing these dictatorial measures Ford, the the the guy who runs Ontario, the largest province David Friedberg (00:04:24): -- 15 Jason Calacanis (00:04:24): seconds. David Friedberg (00:04:25): -- David Sacks (00:04:25): Ford was out there saying that he was gonna that COVID mandates were gonna be over. So why exactly are they doing this? We you know, we're at the end of COVID, and David Friedberg (00:04:35): Zach, let me ask you a question. David Sacks (00:04:37): Go for it. David Friedberg (00:04:39): If there were people online making donations to the criminals who loot and kill people in San Francisco, which you've railed against being criminals who are breaking the law and should all be put behind bars. do you think that it would be appropriate in that context for the government to block their donations to supporting criminal activity in a criminal ring you know, that I think we all agree, you know, shouldn't shouldn't be transpiring. David Sacks (00:05:03): Well, but the but your the implication there is that truckers are using Wi or or something like that. And they're not. I mean, it's been it's been largely a peaceful protest. It's been very annoying to people who's you know? David Friedberg (00:05:15): But isn't isn't the case being made that they are actually breaking the law by blocking streets, and that's not you know, there's a peaceful protest where you can go and get a permit and actually go in a public zone and peacefully protest within the con the the the confines of the law and what's allowed in that jurisdiction. David Sacks (00:05:28): Look. David Friedberg (00:05:28): But what what these folks are doing is civil disobedience which is not a peaceful protest. It is, you know, kind of breaking the law to make a point. David Sacks (00:05:36): It is peaceful because there's been no violence. If you look at actual David Friedberg (00:05:39): -- But if you're breaking those they're breaking the law. Jason Calacanis (00:05:41): Well, let me let me ask the question for Friedberg then, Sacks. If a group of truckers were shutting down the Bay Bridge with three lanes of traffic and then shut down the 280 and the 101. And it impacted this. If they, in fact, are shutting down roads our family members and our businesses and our emergency household. David Friedberg (00:06:02): -- Jason Calacanis (00:06:02): get through. Would you want them to be towed? Would you want their cars to be towed? David Sacks (00:06:05): Listen. here here's the thing. The ambassador bridge, this vital choke point of commerce between the US and Canada, that was blocked and that was creating a serious problem. But it it had already been cleared on Monday by the time that Trudeau invoked the Emergency Act. And then on Tuesday, he then invokes this financial act. Jason Calacanis (00:06:22): Your opinion, Zach. if they if they block roads and bridges, would you David Friedberg (00:06:27): If they break a charge Jason Calacanis (00:06:28): Yeah. If they're breaking the law in that way, it's not just one lane. It's all three lanes. David Friedberg (00:06:32): Chamath society. I'm just trying to understand the the the standard here because just zooming out to last year and the year before, right, there was a protest happening with BLM. And those BLM protests resulted in damage to private property, to burning cars. There were protests at capital that involve folks trespassing into federal land and federal buildings. And now there's protests that are you know, blocking vital trade routes and, you know, access to emergency vehicles and all this sort of stuff. To me and also, you know, people in San Francisco breaking the law not being put at jail, my personal opinion is anyone that's breaking the law, we should stop them from breaking the law. And anyone that wants to kind of, you know, follow a peaceful protest or or make a point should kinda make the point. But if the law is the law, shouldn't there be a universal standard to hold up the law? And it's the case and it and it's the cases people are giving money to aid in breaking the law, shouldn't we stop the -- Hold on. -- transmission -- Let's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:07:29): go to Shamal. Hold on. Hold on a second. Look. I think you're completing a bunch of really important things there. Aiding and abetting criminals is already illegal. There are Rico statutes that allow the authorities to go after people that are aiding and abetting through monetary support, criminal behavior. Separately, there is a whole body of law at the federal state local level that allows you to deal with protests. Okay? The real question is why did you to go and invoke emergency powers at the tail end of a pandemic for what is effectively nonviolent protest Again, that's the key question. Right? So just to give you some Canadian history, has a Canadian citizen, what I could tell you, is that we've invoked this Emergency Powers Act three times in the past. The first was for World War Two, The second Sorry. World War 1. The second was for World War 2 and the 3rd was the FLQ crisis which was a domestic terrorist organization in Quebec that was fighting for a separate homeland. That's those are the three other times in the past that a sitting prime minister has invoked these broad sweeping emergency powers. and they did it because you exhaust the natural body of law and the constitution and the, you know, the charter of rights that governs the normal behavior of a democratic society. What this was is not any of those things. I don't think anybody could claim that a bunch of nonviolent protests, yes, they were annoying. Yes. They basically, you know, stop some commerce, but I don't think it was on the order of World War 1, World War 2, or domestic terrorism issue like the FLQ crisis. So why invoke this basically get out of jail free card where you can behave without any checks and balance? Jason Calacanis (00:09:13): This is confounding -- Hold on a second. Did we Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:15): exhaust the current body of normal governing law And if we didn't, why is this example okay? And the counterfactuals are so many. Imagine Trump invoked this thing during BLM. Imagine Biden did this right now. You would be up in arms. David Sacks (00:09:35): I think that's well said. And we just add something to that. The the emergencies act that Trudeau invoked acquires something like an act of espionage against the country or the word serious violence or in the law or the threat of serious violence those conditions were simply not met. Yeah. And then on top of that, to go after people who contributed as little as $25 to these truckers, who are trying to support them because these guys are not making any money. You know? They're they have very they're living under very harsh conditions. So you make a small check. You write a small donation to support these people to aid them. They're simple working class people who are protesting normalcy and then get their freedom back. And now all of a sudden, your bank account gets frozen. It is basically creating a it it it's it's gonna have shilling effect because it's essentially creating a cast of untouchables because no one's gonna wanna associate with, transact with, or donate to this group of people, these designated people. Now under the emergency's act who your bank can get frozen if you deal with that. I think Jason Calacanis (00:10:38): it's gonna have the opposite effect. I think there's gonna blow up in Joe's face. This is the worst decision making by any major political leader in a long time to go after a group of people, as Chamad said, in the in the waning days of a pandemic, what is the point? Why are we picking this, or why is he picking this white guy on? David Friedberg (00:10:55): So so why he picks no sense. But why is he doing it? And Chamath, why why did the police not break so I totally hear your point. Why did the police not break up these protests? Why did he need to invoke the emergency? Jason Calacanis (00:11:06): Because look. It happened. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:08): I think that the police, in some cases, did. In some cases, didn't. There were probably a lot of police sympathizers There were probably a lot of sympathizers in general as there were a lot of people who were detractors. David Friedberg (00:11:19): Oh, you think the police were you you're saying there were police that were to place it? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:11:23): it's the nature of a protest. Mhmm. You have people for you have people against. But the point is, I think what's really clear is Justin Trudeau, First basically said, these people are racists and misogynists. Then he said, they just hold views that are just unacceptable to me. And then like a totalitarian dictator, invoked an emergency measures act that allows him to do what he wants. That's the fact pattern. He painted it himself into a political corner and then tried to give successfully. He gave himself absolute power for some period of time. And the real question I think is why should this be allowed to happen in a democratic country with democratic norms against people that haven't done as far as I can tell a shred of violent behavior. Jason Calacanis (00:12:08): No. It hasn't been violated. David Friedberg (00:12:10): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:10): and where it's clear that the body of normal governing law hasn't been exhausted yet. Meaning, The minute that these people were asked to actually empty the ambassador bridge, they did. Guys, we're Canadians. That's what we do. Yes. We love to protect us. But if you just ask them to just go to it. Exactly. David Sacks (00:12:29): No. You're right. Trudeau never tried talking to them. I mean, why wouldn't he just try why why wouldn't he just try and negotiate with them in dead, he demonized their mail at bat as white supremacists and Nazis and even, you know, Confederate hits or which I don't even understand in the context Canada. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:43): This is yet another example of the dying death right in front of us of the woke playbook. Right? We talked about this last week I think it's related to the San Francisco, Board of Ed recall that's now national and probably even international news. You said Rachel. Yeah. the the the reaction to Rogan, the reaction to Dave Chappell. It's all part and parcel of this thing where people up and down the spectrum have learned what the mechanism of action is of this cancer culture, and they don't fall for it anymore. Jason Calacanis (00:13:14): Try you Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:14): don't it's a personal demo. There's a person that's able to escalate it because he's actually in the seat of power, and that's what I think people should be debating. David Friedberg (00:13:22): You mean shutting down dissenting voices from a position of power? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:25): Just because and he went on the record. He he went on the record, and he said, guys, these views are unacceptable to me. Well, in a democratic society, that's not not Jason Calacanis (00:13:33): your choice. Yeah. Not your choice, Justin. I mean -- Yeah. You're not gonna be engaged with them. David Friedberg (00:13:37): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:37): views on all kinds of topics all the time. Unacceptable is not the threshold of World War 2, World War 1 in the FLQ crisis. David Friedberg (00:13:45): Do you guys think that there's a moment here that also is a mile marker on the road towards the state versus crypto given the actions that we're taking against Bitcoin wallets? Because that seems to be, like, a big trend that's gonna play out over the next decade or 2. Jason Calacanis (00:13:59): There there David Friedberg (00:14:00): inevitably, crypto is the threat to the state. Right? And so, you know, you're gonna see skirmishes like this that kind of, you know, hey. wallets that donate are illegal and, you know -- Jason Calacanis (00:14:10): Freeman, this is one of the best points you've made. If you look at what this has done through Bitcoin and you look at what it's done for other cryptocurrencies, this will do more than McDonald's accepting Bitcoin because this is the first time like a Western Democratic state is seizing people's funds like in an incredibly unfair unnecessary way, which is just gonna have more people say, you know what? Maybe I should keep some of my net worth out of the government's purview if they're gonna sees it anyway. And then now people are gonna start looking into the coins that allow people to David Friedberg (00:14:38): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:14:39): You can't conflate having an enemy with having a different view. Because the same thing, having an enemy is a serious deal. Right? Whether that's domestic or international, That's what we had to do in World War 1, World War 2 in the FLQ crisis. This is just somebody who has a different opinion. I don't agree in mask mandates as what one person says. I want to mask mandate is what the other person says. The idea that you can deplatform 1 or the other or fire them from their job or prevent them from having access to the money that they've earned. We're preventing other people from donating money. That's really it's a really low bar. And I think when you normalize this kind of behavior, It's a very slippery slope. And so if if somebody else were to do it, they now have like, it's again, going back to the teenager or sort of philosophical discussion from last week. One of the things about, you know, the stoning rituals, right, that Saks talked about that we talked about last week. One of the things that Renee Gerard talks about is it is always hardest for that first person. Right? The first person that throws the stone, right? That's how Jesus was able to diffuse that that incident as described in the book of John. But in a different example, the first person that throws a stone, all of a sudden, normalizes it for everybody else after them, and then these stonings become commonplace or became commonplace. So similarly, it's like if you're a sitting Democratic person who just decides this doesn't work for you, you can't flip the script and and basically remove everybody's democratic rights. That's really crazy. Jason Calacanis (00:16:12): Saks, you had a closing point you wanna David Sacks (00:16:14): Well, okay. Just on this point about Bitcoin, the the reason why Bitcoin is necessary is because the tactics that Trudeau is using is essentially to starve these truckers out to not only basically arrest them and but he's also taking away their insurance licenses. He's basically preventing them from ever working again. He's talked about that. We're gonna put give you a criminal record. It's gonna make it hard for you to get a job. And then most importantly, on top of that, he's preventing anyone from helping them by contributing to them. by making a donation. So he's essentially starving these guys out. And that's the reason why Bitcoin is potentially helpful is it allows people using noncustertial wallets to make an unrun around that and donate and help these these people who are being persecuted, essentially. Jason Calacanis (00:16:57): I mean, he could have just simply chosen to do what Saks's favorite president Obama did with occupy Wall Street, which is say, great. You have something you want a voice. Here's where you can do it. just, you know, no guns, no violence. But we let how long did occupy Wall Street last in downtown Wall Street and in Oakland and other places? Like, a year or David Friedberg (00:17:17): 2. Jason Calacanis (00:17:17): And you just wait them out, and and that's it. David Sacks (00:17:19): I think when you encounter a sincere protest movement, the first thing you should do as a leader is actually listen and try to understand what it is that they're protesting on behalf. of. And Trudeau never did that. He went straight to to 11 with this. And I think part of the reason why I mean, Jake, how you asked, why why is it that that, you know, there seems to be a common denominator with this and with the Ukraine issue that the leaders are immediately escalating these situations instead of looking for a way to deescalated, and they're doing it with the media egging them on. And so as as harsh as Trudeau's rhetoric has been, The media's rhetoric around this has been even worse. You have this CNN contributor, Juliet Caiyan, who's also a Harvard professor. who basically tweeted that Trudeau's needed to slash their tires, empty the gas tanks, arrest the drivers, you know, making it unclear how you never get the trucks off the bridge. But then she said, cancel their insurance, suspend their driver's license, prohibit any future regulatory verification She says, trust me, I will not run out of ways to make this hurt. You know, and so you have the media cheering this on, egging on Trudeau, They're doing the same thing beating the drums of war on Ukraine. What is wrong with these people? Jason Calacanis (00:18:30): Yeah. Deescalate. And where's the off ramp? David Friedberg (00:18:32): I think the biggest the biggest story is this this Bitcoin thing because, you know, if you guys think about, like, pre 19 sixties like capital wasn't digitized. It was, like, physical. Like, you had to own, like, a stock certificate or cash or gold or a bearer bond. Gotcha. To to today, everything is digitized. Right? Like, there's a digital record of, you know, who owns what stock and who how much is in your bank account and None of it is tied to you're having a physical asset. And, ultimately, the law was able to reach into these digital systems and have greater oversight and ultimately control, you know, over accounts and so on. And it's had a you know, the digitization of of capital assets has had an incredible ability to drive economic growth and investment and ease of transaction, but it's also significantly increased the centralization of assets or or the central influence over assets. Bitcoin seems to be the resolution to that, and now you're seeing the ultimate challenged to Bitcoin and the challenge to decentralize systems like Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and so on. I don't wanna speak specifically to anyone. But there there seems to be like this trend line over the last 60 years that's now being challenged because you could have your accounts frozen at any moment you know, for breaking the law or because emergency actor are induced. And I think you're right. It's probably gonna accelerate interest in these kind of off government chain -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:57): If crude oil can do it. David Friedberg (00:19:58): -- separate chain. Anyone can Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:59): do it. David Friedberg (00:20:00): They're doing it in China. Right? And they're And I I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:03): don't know why do you Jason Calacanis (00:20:04): guys -- It's the point of it. David Friedberg (00:20:05): The digital of Yuan is, like, this incredible -- -- whole point. It's like absolute centralization of every capital asset. Jason Calacanis (00:20:11): Here's a digital scary thing. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:12): Think about dangerous the digital you want is the minute you say something that Xi Jinping doesn't like, it's a it's a stroke of a keyboard key And all David Friedberg (00:20:19): your assets are all your assets are locked away. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:21): It's a a database entry, and you just basically reroute who belong who it belongs to. Jason Calacanis (00:20:25): Or it it could be it could happen in America. They say, you know, California now wants to have a wealth tax, anybody who's got money, we're just gonna take your money out of your account automatically. David Friedberg (00:20:34): Do you guys think we sound like a right wing politics show at this point? Jason Calacanis (00:20:38): No. This isn't a right wing politics thing. No. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:20:39): Because I think I think that we have so jumped the shark. There are things that are happening today, every day, that, you know, if you had said in isolation 2 or 3 years ago, would any of these things ever happen? We all would have just looked at each other and said, it's impossible that these things could happen. In But the problem is fast forward 2 years of the pandemic, I think we have let a lot of our civil liberties decay right under our nose. and we're not willing to fight for it because it's become too tribal and and rights have been politicized. So the idea of having rights you know, and then standing up through your rights. All of a sudden, it has to be a decision between whether you're left or right. That's crazy. David Friedberg (00:21:16): I I don't think that Liberty's in the sense of government oversight have decayed as in addition to that, liberties in the sense of of a social setting have decayed. You know, we've because of cancel culture, we've normalized the ability to silence minority or dissenting voices. And this is both in the private enterprise setting as well as in the public setting. And it's, you know, I don't know. I I I don't consider myself a right wing conservative person by any stretch, but I I do consider myself a person who believes an individual freedom and liberty Jason Calacanis (00:21:50): That's called an American, by the way. David Friedberg (00:21:52): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:21:52): And it's basically being an American. And I think, you know, as we move on to this recall in San Francisco, I think Sachs made a really good point. Like, what are our political leaders doing here? Are they trying to stir the pot and antagonize these situations? If you look, you know, Clinton, Obama, a lot of people previously were trying to defuse these situations. And then Biden seems to be stirring the pot Justin Trudeau, and then if you look at Trump with BLM, you know, and the immigration stuff, he never sat down and met with them. And he and he arguably antagonized them. So I think this is a perfect segue into what happened. And, you know, so we we should expect a little more from our political leaders. Great point from Saks. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:30): You just brought up something incredible. you know, Trump reeled against these BLM folks. But at no point did he try to shut down their bank accounts and take their money away? No. And Trudeau, You know? The the this was not even near in the scale of BLM. Jason Calacanis (00:22:43): Yeah. Who's the bigger authoritarian? Yeah. I mean, clearly, if you objectively, it's down the situation. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:48): The the scary authoritarianism as we talked about in previous pods tends to come from the left. At least the right you see it coming I just wanna Speaker 4 (00:22:55): read it. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:55): It's veiled under moral virtue signaling. That's why -- Right. David Sacks (00:22:58): They're very stentimonious. They claim they claim to be the defenders of the working class. while they're actually prosecuting them. Jason Calacanis (00:23:06): Such an unforced error, like, so dumb. He's gonna lose. Right? You're not gonna lose? David Friedberg (00:23:11): If a DA was elected and a police office and police chief were elected to San Francisco, that said we are gonna freeze the bank accounts and demobilize the criminals that are ransacking our city, our people, our stores. Would you support that? David Sacks (00:23:28): No. Not if it's an not if it's an extrajudicial use of power. I mean, the law specifies what you're allowed to do. David Friedberg (00:23:34): Giving San Francisco's in an emergency situation? I mean, would you support the mayor taking on emergency authority to go and fix the problem, which she just did, by the way, in the tender line? David Sacks (00:23:43): Yeah. But that doesn't give her the power to go to Wells Fargo and say to Wells Fargo, we want you to freeze all these accounts with node due process of law. That's basically what Trudeau David Friedberg (00:23:54): has done. That's the overreach. That's the line, you think, is, like, go and see that. David Sacks (00:23:57): You you should have to go through a court proceeding to to free someone's bank account. period. Can't just freeze someone's bank account. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:04): The law allows you to do this now. It's called Rico. So you follow the due process of the law and you can do all those things free, Burke, that that that you just mentioned. If you wanna free somebody's bank account David Friedberg (00:24:14): -- Speaker 4 (00:24:15): Right. David Friedberg (00:24:15): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:15): you can actually do that. The government has the ability to do that. They don't need to pass This basically get out of jail free card to do whatever you want without any oversight. Jason Calacanis (00:24:24): And to Shamat's point earlier, have you exhausted the regular law here I We're Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:29): not arresting people. -- the regular law. Jason Calacanis (00:24:30): They haven't even tried. It's you can buy fentanyl for five bucks on, you know, the Nintendo anytime you want. David Sacks (00:24:36): And meanwhile, the all the provinces are ending COVID mandates anyway, so this whole issue is moot. Jason Calacanis (00:24:41): So dumb. It's this is like the stupidest behavior at the end of a pandemic. that we've ever seen. And shout out to George Lucas for getting it right. I mean, if you look at the theme of Star Wars, it was like, oh, I just need emergency powers for a a minute. because of a trade federation blockade. And here -- Block David Sacks (00:24:56): a crisis. A fake crisis. David Friedberg (00:24:58): Yeah. That wasn't George Lucas, by the way. I mean, that goes back to the the Roman. Right? Like yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:25:04): Yeah. That was the formation of the empire. David Friedberg (00:25:06): Cesar got Cesar got emergency authority. I mean, this is a tried true. David Sacks (00:25:09): And the poll the poll shows are actually right. And the poll show that most of the public in Canada is applauding. So what was the line from democracy Dice to applause? Jason Calacanis (00:25:19): Exact that's exact. That was Pat May's line in in the Star Wars films. Alright. They're aging well the prequels. David Friedberg (00:25:25): 3 Jason Calacanis (00:25:25): members of San Francisco's board of education were David Friedberg (00:25:27): -- They were the worst just to be clear, but go on. Sorry. Jason Calacanis (00:25:30): Not compared to the 3 just huge dumps that Disney took on the our childhoods with the sequels. 3 members of the San Francisco Border of Education were called this week. Massively, they lost by between David Friedberg (00:25:43): 72% 79 Jason Calacanis (00:25:46): percent. These were the VirTra signaling maniacs who wanted to change the names of all the schools, wouldn't reopen the schools, Yada yada, and this really frustrated. And they wanted to get rid of elite AP classes. All of this David Friedberg (00:26:01): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:01): They they did, Jason. They did. Jason Calacanis (00:26:02): They did. Yeah. And these 3 board members are out. So Lyndon Bried. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:07): In the middle Jason, Jason, just to be clear, in the middle of a pandemic, I think my understanding is that Instead of figuring out how to get these kids back in class, how to figure out how they could take off their masks, they wanted to drop Abraham Lincoln and George Washington's name from schools because it was it was too regressive. Jason Calacanis (00:26:24): Yep. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:25): They canceled the gifted program because it made other kids feel bad. And a gentleman that wanted to serve on a committee who I think was gay but not minority was excluded because he wasn't a minority. enough for them. So these are the three people that 76% of San Francisco citizen or, you know, residents just recalled. Jason Calacanis (00:26:48): And if you're not following this, the tech industry had a a major part in this in terms of backing it. There was a lot of claims, which I'll let Saks address in a moment. that this was a Republican driven out of state movement. But if you look, there are not a 100,000 Republicans in San Francisco in all likelihood. This was actually parents in a lot of cases based on the geography of San Francisco and the density of certain populations. A lot of Asian Americans came out in force, and some neighborhoods 90% were voting to oust these people. Gary Tan, who is a product of the San Francisco Public Education System, and a great entrepreneur venture capitalist. was a leader in this movement. So congratulations to him. And this all is going to culminate, I think, in May or June, so that's what correct me with the recall effort for Chesse Boudin, this killer DA who won't prosecute anybody. Sacks, what are your thoughts on this victory and full disclosure? You were a major donor to this David Sacks (00:27:44): was the 2nd largest donor, and I was the the largest donor under age ninety. Arthur Rock was the biggest donor. What about us, by the way? The guy is ninety five years old. He donated to $400,000 to this recall. You know, he was a -- You Jason Calacanis (00:27:56): in fairness, you live in San Francisco. This is a backdoor issue for you. You care David Sacks (00:28:00): about that. Yeah. Look. I think crime and schools are the key quality of life issues in any community and that transcends partisan boundaries. If your kids cannot get a quality education, And you cannot be safe in your community. Nothing else matters. And that matters to Democrats just much sort of as Republicans. And that's why, like you said, three quarters of San Francisco voted for this recall. even though 85% voted for Biden's not it's basically a 90% Democrat city. So, you know, all these claims that was a Republican recall turned out to be nonsense. This was something that was broadly supported. And and, you know, look, it's the same reason that Youngkin flipped a, you know, plus 10 Democrat State in Virginia, which is that, you know, it had a lot to do with school closures. They kept the schools closed for a year and a half. And then when they were supposed to have a a PTA meeting about reopening it like Jumosimo said they spent 5 hours debating whether to allow this beloved gay parent onto a voluntary school board, they didn't they spent all their time, you know, talking about changing the names of the schools instead of how to reopen them. They also there's chronic mismanagement. I mean, the school is something like a $125,000,000 in debt despite, you know, being in a very rich city. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:13): They open for one day David Friedberg (00:29:14): -- David Sacks (00:29:14): That's right. David Friedberg (00:29:15): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:15): just so that they could get a state piece of the state budget pie. So these kids clamored back to school just so that they could technically say, yeah. We were open. And to get I think it was a 12 or $13,000,000 check, and then they shut the schools down again. David Sacks (00:29:28): Right. And you probably keep on chasing, which is that the the Asian American community and San Francisco have been absolutely galvanized by this issue because the school board also you know, Lowell High School is one of the best schools in the city, and it was merit based. and then had great advanced math programs. And this this board basically got rid of all of that stuff. And it infuriated the Asian community, many of whose most prominent members have basically risen out of poverty because of the education they got at Lowell. And so this war on merit that's happening is something that is going to, you know, flip the, you know, Asian the American community, I think, to David Friedberg (00:30:05): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:30:06): When I when I was growing up, I grew up in a French ghetto bottle. And I was supposed to go to a local high school that was just plainly trash. and I was able to go to an equivalent of Lowell. This a public magnet high school that had advanced classes and everything a gifted program, and it really did change my life. And so I really understand what people are saying, which is, like, when you're in poverty The only way out is through an education, really. You may, you know, get accidentally lucky, but the only really predictable, sustainable pattern here is is through school. And so when you deprive folks from being able to get a decent education, and there's no real, you know, orderly logic to it. It's a really ridiculous kind of an idea. The other thing is I think that this speaks very powerfully. As Saks said, as a non as a bipartisan issue that these Democrats have to get right because, you know, you saw this also in Virginia where Democrats basically went down this one tack. And, you know, the Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin basically said, hey. Listen. The schools are broken. It completely doesn't make any sense. We oppose a lot of what's going on, the watering down and the critical race theory, etcetera, etcetera, and he put it to a vote. And a lot of people cross the aisle there as well where typically ardent Democrats basically voted for their Republican governor. I think the point is that there are just several issues that are just so like, they're just they transcend all party lines. And this is an anchor issue that we have to get right Jason Calacanis (00:31:45): Friedberg, any thoughts on this? Do you think this is the start of maybe a turnaround for San Francisco? because Ches of Putin is way more hated and safety is an even bigger issue, I think, for a lot of people right now in San Francisco. And it dovetails with Asian hate and the number of Asian people targeted in crimes. So he's gotta I mean, if these people got out by 75% on average, he's gonna be out by 95%. Is this a tipping point? A gonna gonna make a read David Friedberg (00:32:13): I don't know. I mean, look, I I think there's generally a broader trend and momentum around what we classify as locusism, which I think is a little bit disparaging to the intention of social justice and recognizing the primary points of social justice through action and behavior in civic discourse and and government behavior. And, you know, this, like the election of several DAs around the country, who take a different stance to prosecution of crime to try and create better options for rehab and and and so on. I think it's not a movement that's gonna go away over I think there's certainly a a a a a hefty amount of resistance. But what we're really doing right now is I think we're learning and realizing the boundaries of this movement and of this moment, the one boundary that I think San Francisco is or 2 San Francisco, like, you know, it does in the case in tech, has always been so progressive in terms of, you know, doing these things faster than than anyone else. But what we're realizing in San Francisco is non prosecution of criminals as the DA has undertaken over the past couple of years leads to really heinous crime and rampant crime. And and and and this kind of social justice movement within the education system causes a decline in the value of our education system. Those are 2 really important learnings that San Francisco has had over the past couple of years with this very important and momentous kind of social justice movement. But it doesn't mean that the movement is over. It doesn't mean that quote unquote, woolkism is over. It means that that social justice intent is still there. but we're realizing where the boundaries are and how far things can and maybe should go. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:33:58): I posted this article, Tyler Cohen, who's a, you know, pretty well known economist. He wrote this Opad for the for Bloomberg. And what he said is that Wolkism has peaked, and there's just these two passages that the builds on what Friedberg said Quote, by walkism, I refer to a movement that on the positive side is highly aware of racism and social injustice. and as galvanized towards raising awareness. On the negative side, it can be preachy, alienating, overly concerned with symbols and self righteous, unquote. And I think that that probably does summarize sort of, like, where it starts, which is I think rooted in a very good place. But, unfortunately, all too often where it ends, which is that sort of moral absoluteist judgment cancel culture around it. And then the second quote, that he said was the following. He said, quote, wokeism is likely to evolve into a subculture that is highly educated, highly white, and fairly feminine. That is still a large mass of people, but not enough to run the country or all its major institutions. In the San Francisco School Board recall, for instance, the role of Asian Americans was especially prominent. So I don't know. I just think that all these things sort of you know, people are looking for affiliation and you start with labels that bring you in, and then you have to sort out are all these labels really true and how true are they? And I think we're in this moment now where now that we know the mechanism of action of autism, I just don't think it works anymore. And I think a lot of people will say, I believe in the high order of deals of racial and social justice, but I don't believe in the mechanism of action. And so David Friedberg (00:35:34): -- The pendulum's won too far, but but but but the core intent of a generation of change is underway, which is social justice and climate change. I think those are the 2 big points of concern. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:46): be done with this cohort under this path. David Friedberg (00:35:47): Well, it won't be done to this extreme, this fast. Right? And and I think that the pendulum went too fast too far, and it's and and there there are boundary effects that are causing recourse right now. And we're we're seeing this across the country, especially in New York, but the election of the mayor or San Francisco, the the DA recalls happening in the next couple of months. So, Zach, what's your prediction on the DA recall, by the way? Jason Calacanis (00:36:08): Well, that's 95%. But, I mean, to build on your point, They they were talking about 10% of the people in the United States who are involved in this, you know, retweeting and virtual signaling. And you know, is Twitter a real place? Well, no. A city is a real place. People have to live in San Francisco. And when these ideologies result in unlivable conditions for people, well, they they're gonna say, you know what? There's reality here. How do we get competent people to take the positions, Saxx, that are being vacated now, who should London breed put in these three positions? And maybe tech people need to I mean, this is what I think has to happen. I think some number of tech people have to get off the bench and say, you know what? I'm gonna do a tour of duty as politicians in San Francisco to to take back the city. What should happen here in terms of who takes these positions? because Republicans can't win in San Francisco, so you're gonna need moderate Democrats. Right, Zach? David Friedberg (00:37:00): Before before Zach, goes. Can I just say something? because I think I I just wanna say something that's really hard to to jump in. But, Jay Kal, I I think the point you're making about the tech people implies the tech people are effective and good at doing this. But that's not necessarily the fabric of San Francisco. I've lived in San Francisco since 2001. The number of people in San Francisco in 2001 in the tech industry was a minority. Speaker 4 (00:37:22): Yep. David Friedberg (00:37:22): Since that time, it became a significant size. And over the last 2 years since the pandemic has decreased significantly. But San Francisco is a city with decades and generations of history. My wife's family is multi generational San Francisco. And I don't think that traditionally San Francisco's view tech people as the right people to solve these problems for them. That the intention of that city is not necessarily about let's get tech people to solve our problems. They have a different set of values perhaps. And so we we often overstate and assume that tech people are the right people and are the the the problem solvers. But I don't think that that's necessarily the right problems that people wanna solve. So I just I just wanted to intervene and Jason Calacanis (00:37:58): say that. Yeah. David Friedberg (00:37:59): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:59): take these positions because -- Right. People Jason Calacanis (00:38:00): that care. David Friedberg (00:38:01): Yeah. Yeah. -- Jason Calacanis (00:38:02): really far left people are motivated to take these positions. I don't see business people writ large across all political, you know, positions. But specifically at San Francisco, don't wanna take these positions. So is this gonna be replayed, sex. David Sacks (00:38:15): The recall effort was led by 2 parents, Autumn Lusion and Siva Raj. They're the ones who led the They're the ones who rose up to basically oppose these crazy school board members. And that is who London brings to talk to. I mean, she needs to go talk to the people who are successful in organizing this recall because they understand the issues, obviously, and the people are with them. So either appoint them to the board or ask them for their recommendations. And I think what you see consistently, whether it's with this SF school board or the the the school boards that we saw in Virginia, the Youngkin very effectively ran against, is that they don't believe the parents matter. Terry McConnell's fatal his last gap was basically saying that the parents shouldn't get to decide what is taught in the schools. He basically said the quiet part out loud. But that is what still across the country, the teachers' unions believe and most of the Democratic Party, the activists believe And until they start losing elections, you're not gonna see a change in that belief. David Friedberg (00:39:13): Oh my god. How awesome would it be of sackler on the school board? Jason Calacanis (00:39:16): Oh my god. Yeah. And just to to put a pin in this and the cherry on top, the San Francisco Board of supervisors voted 7 to 4 to send a recall reform bill. So their reaction to all of this is to do a recall of recalls and say, now you can't recall somebody in their 1st year, and the people who are placed in these positions can't run again. So now the speculation is that three people who got voted off are gonna run again. So there's a lot more to come on this. Yeah. David Sacks (00:39:47): And also part part so so they're they're putting to to to Seth. They're putting that on the ballot on June 7th the same day that we vote on the recall of Jason Boote and the board of supervisors now put in this measure that would make it far harder to recall One of the provisions of that is whoever London breed appoints as the successor like you're Speaker 4 (00:40:05): talking about. They cannot run after that David Sacks (00:40:08): So it is designed to for no that makes no sense. They're basically trouble David Friedberg (00:40:12): -- Jason Calacanis (00:40:12): They do a great job. David Sacks (00:40:13): Right. Exactly. It makes no sense. So you have the board of supervisors trying to throw a wrench into the democratic process. Meanwhile, these are people who claim to be preserving democracy, saving democracy. They are trying to throw a wrench in the The Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:26): thing is underlying it, David, is they think they know better. That's what it fundamentally comes down to. They are willing to have democracy up to a point. And when that point is an unacceptable view by somebody else, they feel like they know better, and they're willing to be really draconian in whatever they do to decide. David Sacks (00:40:44): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:40:45): and shout out to Mike Bloomberg. I'll pull up the the tweet for everybody. He hasn't been very vocal or been on the stage much, but, obviously, he did a great job in New York. on reforming schools. The San Francisco School Board recall should be a wake up call to elected officials, especially Democrats, across the nation parents are fed up with the status quo, and that put adults that puts adults ahead of kids. David Sacks (00:41:08): Yeah. Well David Friedberg (00:41:08): -- Jason Calacanis (00:41:08): An ideology ahead of results. Well said, Mike. David Sacks (00:41:11): Yep. Well said. Jason Calacanis (00:41:12): Mister Bloomberg. David Sacks (00:41:13): Yes. That was very good. And Bloomberg has been very good on calling out the Democrat their democratic party is blind relative to the teachers' unions. And until they're willing to break with the teachers' unions who are their biggest donor, not gonna get any real progress on school reform. And this is the issue. My favorite political commentary, one of them is Roy Teshera, who's a democrat. He wrote the emerging democrat majority. He wrote a blog post talking about how the age how Asian American voters are gonna swing away from the Democratic Party because of issues like this. because of the decline in standards in school and safety. And and and the age in our community, I think, is galvanized on this CHCBD issue because they have seen In all these cases of Asian hate where elders in their community have been violently assaulted, Chase of Woodin has done nothing except release the perpetrators. Jason Calacanis (00:42:00): Honkers. Well, listen. This is it seems like a good turning point. Let let's we talked about on this podcast over and over again about the compression in SaaS multiples in the public market valuations, something that we're still working through in the stock market, which has been choppy at best over the last couple of months. an information story came out just this week. Major crossover funds like Tiger and D1 are slowing down their investments in late stage private companies, and I was talking to some folks. who said the multiple compression is here now. They're not doing the deals at 75 or a100 x revenue. This is reported in an hour by the information Tiger Global told their LPs in a webinar earlier this month that it would no longer focus on backing late stage startups, preparing to go public. Instead, they will focus on 2 things. Going even earlier into series a and series b rounds and buying shares of public tech companies that have sunk in value compared to the all time highs. Obviously, we know Twilow Zoom block all down over 60% from their 1 year as I could get into more details here, but let's stop for a second. And, Shamal, what are your thoughts? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:05): In the dot com bubble, it took somewhere between 3 to 5 years for most stocks to bottom, and they bottomed, I think, peak to trough somewhere, you know, towards David Friedberg (00:43:18): 80% Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:19): of where they were in 2000. Right? So it took 3 to 5 years to go basically minus 80%. We did that in 3 months, you know, maybe 4 months. And so the markets have become a lot more efficient over time. So now that we have that reset, it's pretty natural that there's going to be a very quick reset on the private market side. And, you know, you have to go where the bodies are buried. And what I mean by that in this case is that overwhelming misvaluation of late stage private companies. And so these folks don't have much of a choice. They have a lot of money that they've raised before all of this happened. They have a huge portfolio of stuff that they've marked up or have been marked up by others. and they don't wanna go through the pain now of resetting. So part of the easy strategic decision there is to say, you know what? we know this is a little bit radioactive, but instead of really figuring out what the mark on these companies are, we'll go to a different sort of part of the playground and play there because we don't have to go and deal with these issues. And, you know, we're we can do 10, 15, $20,000,000 checks into early stage businesses. pretty normal reactions strategically, but I think the reality is that at some point in the next year or 2, these other companies have to get public, the hope is that the market catches back up so that you can defend the last valuation, and that's the that's the way that this stuff doesn't work acquire a lot of pain. The problem is if you're high burn and you are counting on yet another successive round or You're at a point in your life cycle where you need to go public. In the next 2 years, if you go public, you will get taken to the woodshed. Jason Calacanis (00:45:05): takes to which Ed being, your valuation might be half of what it is in your last round. So there's gonna be medicine that has to be taken, sex. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:12): There'll be medicine. Jason Calacanis (00:45:13): people are gonna have to take some medicine. Sacks, what's your best advice being one of the great operators in the history of Silicon Valley as a CEO of PayPal? David Sacks (00:45:20): Gee. Thanks, Jacob. Jason Calacanis (00:45:22): Well, I'm gonna push up there with Sherr. I mean, I think this I think everybody agree. The top 4 people can correct me here. Tim -- That's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:28): a good operator? Jason Calacanis (00:45:31): I mean, I I saw what you did to ICCute, man. You were riding that that bad boy down. That wasn't easy. David Friedberg (00:45:35): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:35): delivered a billion fucking users to a company on a phone. It's pretty decent. Jason Calacanis (00:45:39): You did pretty good at Facebook. I'll say that. But if I would think most people would say, Saks, Cheryl, Tim Cook, Keith River Boy, we'll put that aside for the debate in terms of -- Oh, throw throw a little Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:49): the throw a little dark spicy barbecue pork here. Come on. Give me a give you a -- I'll put Jason Calacanis (00:45:52): you in the top 25. Jamoth, sure. Okay. Speaker 4 (00:45:54): But, I Jason Calacanis (00:45:54): mean, it wasn't your wasn't your chosen career? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:45:57): Little dark meat. A little dark meat. Nice, chief guy. Jason Calacanis (00:45:59): He's done getting me a drama meant to bring me into York. David Friedberg (00:46:02): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:46:02): dark meat, bro. Jason Calacanis (00:46:03): your orbit. I'm stepping back. David Friedberg (00:46:05): Wait, Jake. Cal, who were your top 4? Cheryl Tim, by top 4 Jason Calacanis (00:46:08): in this order. I'll give it an order. David Friedberg (00:46:10): So, basically, for white people, when Jason Calacanis (00:46:13): No. No. No. Hold on. Speaker 4 (00:46:14): Hold on. David Friedberg (00:46:14): Asian and Indian CEOs run most of the tech companies and stuff Jason Calacanis (00:46:17): like that. -- about number 2 COOs, not CEOs. just for the CEO position, to be clear, I'm not talking CEO. I'm talking COO. I would say Tim Cook when he was Steve Jobs. That's my number one operator last 23 years. Number 2 at But Cheryl Sandberg who did obviously amazing things for Google and then Facebook. Right? Those 2 would be my top 2. And then I tie my top 2, Saxx, as a PayPal and Zenafits, even though it didn't work out, it was still a great run at the time. And then I put Keith or a boy, Square, and a couple of other companies he did. Those are my top 4. Anybody else wanna come at me? Go ahead. I don't know how complete this dataset on COOs. What way would you put, Saks? You but did I put you -- Who am David Sacks (00:46:58): I to disagree? Jason Calacanis (00:47:00): Who am I to disagree? Oh, and was it Keith at LinkedIn? David Sacks (00:47:04): I'm, like -- It's not brilliant. You are JCal lately. Jason Calacanis (00:47:07): It's a love fest now. Speaker 4 (00:47:08): It's a David Sacks (00:47:09): tough fest. Jason Calacanis (00:47:10): There we go. David Friedberg (00:47:10): There we go. They're back together. -- rising. Wow. That's basically forever. Jason Calacanis (00:47:14): you and Friedberg are at each other's throats, so I'll just let you guys fight it out, and I'll be all about the love. David Sacks (00:47:19): Yeah. Friedberg, why are you attacking Jake Cal? Jason Calacanis (00:47:21): Yeah. FreeBird. Be David Sacks (00:47:23): quiet over there. No one's asking you. David Friedberg (00:47:24): -- Jason Calacanis (00:47:24): stay in your lane, FreeBird. So, Saks, as an operator, extraordinaire, what's your best advice? to the company that raised a 100,000,000, and let's say their valuation is now not a 1,000,000,000. It's 500,000,000. What are the steps you take? You got 14 months of runway in the bank. David Friedberg (00:47:37): Do you lay people off? Speaker 4 (00:47:38): Right. Jason Calacanis (00:47:39): Do you extend it to 24? What are your thoughts? David Sacks (00:47:41): Okay. Jason Calacanis (00:47:41): Who must be dealing with this with companies in your portfolio? David Sacks (00:47:44): Well, there's a few things going on. First of all, I think Tiger built a great business and providing late stage sort of passive non dilutive capital to to companies, SaaS companies. We have a bunch of of SaaS businesses that they provided later stage financing. I think those valuations are gonna come down. I don't know that they're gonna be such a partner for series a Firms because they are passive. And, you know, what we see is that series a companies need a lot of help. They need a lot of advice. They need a lot of help recruiting David Friedberg (00:48:12): -- Jason Calacanis (00:48:12): Governance. David Friedberg (00:48:12): -- David Sacks (00:48:12): governance. They need you know, when they're growing from, say, 20 employees to a 100, they need to know what that org chart looks like and on and on and on. So I don't know that if if this I don't know if this reporting is actually true, but if the goal is all of a sudden for Tyre to become a series a investor that competes, with Craft or Sequoia or these other firms that are David Friedberg (00:48:30): -- Jason Calacanis (00:48:30): They're not happy. David Friedberg (00:48:31): -- David Sacks (00:48:31): very hands on. Doesn't that doesn't seem like a great strategy to me. I do think that for our later stage companies, they have to realize that, you know, if they raised any David Friedberg (00:48:39): -- Speaker 4 (00:48:39): Can I take Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:40): the other side of this? Sorry. David, I just want your reaction to this. I think it'll just gonna work, but not for the right reasons. The reason it'll work is there are way more entrepreneurs now than there are great entrepreneurs And so of all of these entrepreneurs that exist, the idea of getting passive money where you won't get fired where there is that remember, like, remember when we were growing up in Silicon Valley, the risk is always like, if you take Sequoia, benchmark, you know, social capital. There's a high bar for that capital, which means we are helping you run this business effectively, and there's a cost Square. If you don't perform, you will get fired. There's always been that risk. David Sacks (00:49:20): It's true. And and I guess that's the argument they could make, but the flip side is that there's a lot of Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:24): these -- So the CEO now Why would you take a $15,000,000 series a check from Sequoia where they could fire you? Whereas $15,000,000 from Tiger, they may never call you. David Sacks (00:49:33): We we address that by doing look. If a if a founder is really worried about that, we address that by giving them three board seats. You know? We might have one. They might have three. I mean, my my view on it is you just never fire a founder unless it does remain criminal. It's just that simple. But look, I think there's ways of addressing the governance where you can get the help or the value out of an early stage firm without giving up the control. So yeah. I mean, look. That's the pitch that Tiger would make, but I think that's addressable. Jason Calacanis (00:50:02): What do you think of that pitch for you, Bert? We'll give you the $15,000,000 series a. you don't have to have a board. You can just be passive and and let us know how it goes. Give us a quarterly report. We'll look at the p and l. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:13): Anyway, that's all of crypto now anyways. That's true. Jason Calacanis (00:50:16): Well, I mean, that's a fair point. No governance in crypto was leading to a lot of weird stuff I can tell you. David Friedberg (00:50:20): I tell people this a lot. So I had 3 term sheets for my series b. It was from Andreessen Horowitz, Coastal Ventures, and founder's fund. And founder's fund came in kinda last minute. But I went with Khosla even though it was a lower valuation because Vinod was pretty insistent. Like, let me put someone that could be useful, some government person because we were doing a lot of work lobbying in in in DC on your board. We won't be on your board. We won't bother you, and I took the And then my series c, I took from founder's fund because Brian Singerman, who's obviously a good friend, you know, made the case like, look, our model at founders fund is we let founders run the business. We're not here to tell you how to run your business. And they were both great sits, and, you know, it worked out well. I didn't I had I have had experience with antagonistic VCs onboards. And, you know, it generally creates a pretty negative dynamic. Now when I'm Jason Calacanis (00:51:10): on -- -- the worst story without the person's name. David Friedberg (00:51:13): don't think I wanna go public with it, so I'm not gonna do that. But when I was on -- Jason Calacanis (00:51:16): Give us an idea of what the behavior would be because there are people in the audience who wanna know what is bad behavior of VC. Just give us a composite. David Friedberg (00:51:22): When you're entrepreneur or CEO running an early stage business, you live that business 20 hours a day. You know the details. If you're smart, You're thorough, you're analytical, you're creative, there is no one that's gonna come in the boardroom for 2 hours a quarter and suggest to you that you haven't thought of. There's no one that's gonna come in the room and be smarter than you at your own business. And so more often than not, Vinod's been exceptional at defining this problem. The problem is VCs join a board, and they think that they have to quote add value. So they come in and they make a bunch of suggestions and recommendations and push you to do a bunch of things, And as Vinod has said correctly many times, they more often than not add negative value. They can actually destroy and damage a business because they need to feel like they're exerting some degree of influence over the business. And as a result, they push the business to do things that the CEO or founder otherwise wouldn't be doing. and that often ends up in a kinda weird, sticky kind of place. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:52:14): So I just validated the Tiger pitch right there. David Friedberg (00:52:16): I think that's right. And and by the way, it's why founders fund Saturn's fund is fantastic. I I don't know if you guys are LPs, but their investment returns are so far beyond what I think anyone really realizes. They're incredible investors. And a big part of it is they try and find the entrepreneur that doesn't want and doesn't need the help, and then they give them the capital to go and execute, and they leave them the heck alone. And they were just so good at finding those folks, identifying them, and then literally being passive in in in how they kind of manage and operate their business. And that's why they were so freaking good. Jason Calacanis (00:52:45): I think the people you're talking about are a lot of rookie VCs who come in, and then, yeah, they they think they David Friedberg (00:52:50): -- Not just rookie and die. Just experienced ex operators even. People who ran businesses -- Yeah. -- who say, how to run a business. And, look, no two businesses are alike. So maybe the way they ran their business with their team and their market and their industry worked well for them, But now when they gotta come in and do it with someone else's business and some other space, with some completely different team, you know, they try and exert influence. And, really, it's just you know, not want it. Jason Calacanis (00:53:11): Let me go to Saxx. Hold on. I wanna just get one from you. Give us an idea because you've been in the business for over 20 years. I mean, by the looks of it, maybe 40. But 20 years of just crushing it in the business, what's the worst behavior you've seen on a board you can make a composite of, like, a VC being destructive on a board. David Sacks (00:53:31): Yeah. I mean, look. I think sometimes VCs will have sort of hobby horses and they'll keep pushing for things that the founder doesn't want. That's not productive. But what what I would say is, first of all, let me just say, like, I'm not somebody who likes to take board seats. And I I do it as a it's like I see it as a cost, not a benefit to me. because it takes up my time. If I didn't have to ever take a board seat, that'd be a great as far as I'm concerned, that'd be a good thing. I'm not somebody who wants to you know, insert myself and get on these boards. You know? Jason Calacanis (00:54:02): You offered as an incentive? No? David Sacks (00:54:04): I only I only take a board seat. Yeah. The only reason I'll ever take a board seat is because I to do it because the founder insists that otherwise they won't go with David Friedberg (00:54:12): -- David Sacks (00:54:12): I've seen it. -- with our firm. So he's actually David Friedberg (00:54:13): -- Jason Calacanis (00:54:13): Then you'll do it for 1 year. Right? You'll say, hey. I'll do it for a year. David Sacks (00:54:16): I always time limit it now because I just can't I mean, I can't make a 10 year obligation. You know? It's typically, like, 1 or 2 years, and then, you know, we'll it doesn't mean I'll roll off in 2 years, but but I but I need to have the expectation set up. And and the reality is if the company can perform well for another 2 years, they'll be at a different stage, and maybe they won't, you know, need my help as much. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:39): So -- Chamath, the 2 most valuable pieces of private equity that I own is a company called DCG, and it's a company called NetSCO. And collectively, it's like $1,000,000,000 worth of stock that I own. What? I'm on the board of 1. I'm not on the board of the other anymore. and I text with these guys maybe once every 2 or 3 months at best. So, you know, completely confirming, David, your point that great founders are just n of 1 individuals. You know? Barry Silbert, Sanjay Barry, next level, guys. But that's very different than the the series a playbook because when I ran institutional money, I'm telling you there is a pressure to be involved and show some value. And I do think that there is a a level of judgment on the CEO that has happened. Now maybe that's changed historically. But I think that's the single biggest pivot that one would exploit if you were Tiger or a co 2 or d 1 stepping into the early stage game. which is to essentially make it a feature. And it's not dissimilar to when DST and Yuri Milner entered the late stage round. You know, what was his big differentiation? I'll take common stock, and I won't take a board seat. Jason Calacanis (00:55:52): I do not need a board seat to be influential. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:54): It seems so counterintuitive and so against the grain but he acknowledged what was this thing that up until that point was true, which is common and preferred converged in price per share So buying common in a late stage company was the same as buying preferred. Jason Calacanis (00:56:11): You know, that's something you should explain a a Tremont for a second. People don't know this. When you an IPO, actually. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:16): Well, that's certain that so when you set up a company, you have a price per share of the common stock and then a price per share that the series a investor has. The series a investor is buying preferred shares that actually looks more like debt than equity. And what I mean by that is there's typically a coupon. There's a rate of return. There's accumulated dividends. All these features give it a certain price per share, and the common has none of those features, and so it has a lower price Jason Calacanis (00:56:42): per share. -- provisions. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:43): And that gap is typically around 20 to 1 when you set up a company. Okay? And that's what allows you to hire employees and give them very, very cheap options with embedded upside. Then what happens is you raise more and more of these series b, series c, series d, these preference stack, right, preferred shares build up. But the value of the comment keeps rising too. And by the time you go public, the gap converges. What Yuri realized was, hey. Wait a minute. I'm buying a company a year or or 18 months before it goes public. The price of the common and the price of the preferred are roughly the same. And so I'm just gonna, you know, do that. And I'm not gonna take a board seat because it's clear this company is successful. So similarly, for Tiger d 1 and Code 2, I would just observe the obvious and kind of put everything that we've just said on the table, which is, hey, guys. I'll give you the money. You're either end of 1 or not. I'm making a guess that you are, and I'm just gonna get out of your way and leave you alone. Jason Calacanis (00:57:37): So unbundling governance and unbundling the governance and advice piece from the capital piece, but you're gonna still need that an advice piece I think. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:57:44): I think it could work. David Sacks (00:57:45): Yeah. I mean, I think that there's a lot of great founders or they're they're founders who start young and inexperienced have become great And the smart ones listen to advice on the way, and they they seek out people who've done it before. And so, you know, yes, they may be an end of one business by the growth stage, but that doesn't mean they don't need any help whatsoever at the series a stage. Jason Calacanis (00:58:04): Such a good observation. Yeah. David Sacks (00:58:05): And then look. I think there's been I think there's been an evolution in Silicon Valley. I'd actually say there's been 3 distinct phases in the venture capital world. And I remember all of them. So you go back to the the 9 the late nineties. Okay? When you you had this mentality on the part of VCs, that if a company became successful, you would just automatically replace the founders. Right? You go bring professional CEO. Jason Calacanis (00:58:25): Upgrade. That was David Sacks (00:58:25): a disaster. Okay? And and that's when founders fund. Peter came in, I think founded founders fund in David Friedberg (00:58:31): 2003. David Sacks (00:58:32): And the reason they called it founders fund is to indicate they were gonna be pro founder and they would never replace the founder. And they would let you do whatever you wanted. And I think, Zachary -- You Jason Calacanis (00:58:41): wanna tell the backstory of the Sean Parker stuff and how that happened? David Sacks (00:58:43): Well, yeah. I mean, so basically, both Peter and Sean Parker had, you know, experiences they felt were very negative with Sequoia. And and by the way, I have I have great relations Sequaya roll off to work with us at PayPal is there. And I think they've evolved as a firm, so I'm not calling them out or anything. But but both Sean Parker and Peter felt like Sequoia pushed out and replaced. And so David Friedberg (00:59:06): -- Jason Calacanis (00:59:06): With Flaxo specifically? Speaker 4 (00:59:08): There are David Sacks (00:59:08): a couple of different companies involved. But when Peter was CEO of of PayPal as well that you know, he felt he felt that pressure as well. So when they then founded as 2 of the 4 founding partners of founders from back in David Friedberg (00:59:19): 2003, David Sacks (00:59:21): The whole point was we are gonna be a profounder. You're never gonna replace your role, and you do whatever you want. I think that was that was phase 2. And that became, I think, the dominant model. And so becoming Profounder was now table stakes. And I think the 3rd phase has been, you know, what Andreessen Horowitz has now done with this massive like, the services and the value add, which is that we're gonna basically not only be ProFounder, but we're gonna, like, bring all these resources to help you. And that's the era we're in right now. I mean, from the from our perspective, like, as as craft, I mean, look, not in our interest to get into any dispute with a founder. And if we feel like our advice isn't being taken well, we just back off. You know? Of course, we're profounder. Like, we don't want the control. We're not control investors. And, you know, if it's if it if it's if it's becoming frictional, we'd rather just get out of the way. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:11): No. It's just the the underlying thing that you're not saying though is because you have enough of a fund that's large enough where you can have enough bets where any of these any of these things to the upside is a total needle mover, but anything that goes to 0 doesn't actually diminish the fund or impair it meaningfully. So there is no upside to getting engaged in really being non anti founder. So -- Yeah. David Friedberg (01:00:31): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:31): I think it's a I think it's a part of a business model. But one thing I wanna tell you about Parker Parker was single handedly incredibly responsible for keeping Zuck in the seat when he was president of Facebook because Parker wrote, you know, the structure that really allowed Mark to keep control. David Friedberg (01:00:45): Super voting shares. Zach, to to add on to your your point, I think that there's been So so it there seems to be a bifurcation around the services model or not. But the 4th thing that seems to have happened and you guys tell me if I'm wrong on this, but it it plays into the Tiger Global story. When I was when I got that term sheet for my series b, at Chamath corp, Marc Andreessen, I was trying to raise, like, 25 to $30,000,000. And Marc Andreessen was like, we're gonna give you a term sheet for $40,000,000 more than you were asking for. because we want you to use that extra capital to go faster, to go harder to grab the market because we have this big old -- Good pitch. -- businesses grabbing the market. Jason Calacanis (01:01:23): And that seems to David Friedberg (01:01:23): have also become a bit of a mainstay, but not just a mainstay, but now almost like the the the the kind of a standard pitch that a lot of the later stage guys are taking, which is, like, here's so much capital that it helps you make the market. And then the SoftBank Vision Fund kinda took that to the extreme with a $100,000,000,000 and Tiger Global, I think, last year, have publicly said they deployed about $15,000,000,000 into start ups where a start up may, in a natural cycle, kind of, evolved to needing $70,000,000 raise or a $100,000,000 raise, and they're, like, writing checks for 250 or 300. And saying this extra capital gives you the ability to move faster. The reason is the faster a business moves, the higher the multiple they get on their revenue. So the higher the growth rate, the higher the multiple. So if you can deploy capital faster, if we could find a business where we can pump money through you to get it out the door faster. Your multiple goes up, and Tiger's model was, let's just get the multiples up. There's multiple expansion and growth So we'll make money two ways when the company goes public in 18 to 24 months. Obviously, when the markets end up tanking and all those multiples compress, no growth rate is gonna solve that problem for you. But we're having more capital than maybe you were thinking or asking for, also seems to have become kind of a a a tactic. I don't know if that if you view that as kind of this 4th evolution, but that certainly wasn't the case 20 years ago when VCs were being careful about is it a $6,000,000 round or $8,000,000 round? What's the right amount of capital? And nowadays, it's much more about take more than you need. Jason Calacanis (01:02:47): I'll say there was a 3.5 in there, which is you saw a little bit of lack of governance or superpowers on the part of, like, some incompetent founders or bad founders. just, you know, whether it's WeWork, Theranos, whatever. Too much control, not enough governance, things go off the rail. But, you know, based on this discussion, I really think this bifurcates when it's a first time founder versus a second time founder and what I see because I have been doing board training for seed companies where I will just have 3 founders sit in on each other's first board meetings. We do one board meeting each, and I train them how board meetings works and what I experienced with Sequoia on my board and other boards. And first time founders, like, the tactical stuff had to run a board meeting, legal, HR, hiring, partnerships, go to market strategies, man. It it is all tactical all the time. And then when I've been on with second and third time founders, you know, they really are like, here's all the materials. Here's what I'm thinking about. What do we think strategically? So they go from the tactical over to the strategic admission level awfully quick, and they actually seem to enjoy having those 4 meetings a year. Whereas the first time founders really need to have 6 to 10 a year in those in that first, you know, call it, year 2 of a company. That's my experience. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:57): I realized in this discussion, that the market has really meaningfully changed. Meaning, when I was actively investing even in the early 2000 or sorry, in the in the, you know, David Friedberg (01:04:07): 2 11, 12, 13, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:10): there was a culture where if you underperformed, you would get replaced. And I think, David, what you just spoke about, which I guess is true, has really changed, which is if you're running a multi multibillion dollar fund where every check is $20,000,000, the upside is 1,000,000,000, the downside is negative 20, there's just no point. And so, you know, Sequoia used to be known as a very, very, very tough tough, tough place for CEOs that were underperforming. David Friedberg (01:04:36): Now they got a $9,000,000,000 fund. Jason Calacanis (01:04:38): Now you have -- Yeah. Maybe 20 years ago. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:39): It doesn't matter anymore. Not no. Not even even 10 less than 10 years ago. I think it was I think it was known as a very tough demanding place. I think benchmark was known as a very tough demanding place because the money was much more finite. David Friedberg (01:04:51): But bench Benchmark's still still that case. I mean, they Jason Calacanis (01:04:54): they they -- -- expectation culture. David Friedberg (01:04:55): They never they never grew their font size. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:57): No, Jason. You're not you're not hearing me. Jason Calacanis (01:04:59): I am. I I think what's happening is listen. I had Sequoia on my board, and I worked at Sequoia. Speaker 4 (01:05:03): So David Friedberg (01:05:04): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:04): There's difference between high expectations, which I think all these folks have to have. and the willingness to replace the founder as CEO. And what I'm saying is every VC claims this, but there were a handful of VCs that had encouraged to do this. I mean, famously, Mike Morrison, John Doe, you know, had it out with Larry at the you know, right right after this round. Like, either go public know, get your business model or give us our money back famously at Google. So they're not they're willing to draw a line in this end. I think that that has fundamentally changed at all these organizations because the fund sizes have gone up, and the and the mathematical reality of venture capital has changed. Jason Calacanis (01:05:41): Something else you're missing, which is you gotta remember, Maritz and Doer were not operators. And now these companies are being run. Rule off is running Sequoia. and he's an operator, and he was there. So the changing of the guard, and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, were operators. So the operator class behaves very differently Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:58): I disagree with you. I think that it fun David Friedberg (01:06:00): size dictates Chamath Palihapitiya (01:06:01): no. Hold on. I think that fun size dictates this behavior more than any singular other feature. When you're running a $9,000,000,000 fund, you just don't sweat that changing of the CEO, and David said it really well. You just say, okay. I'll cut our losses and move on. We don't lose any brand. David Friedberg (01:06:16): -- Jason Calacanis (01:06:16): more about the culture change in Silicon Valley of a bunch of NBA finance people who have never run a company now moving and running companies. But you know, let's move on to the next any closing thoughts on this one? David Sacks (01:06:27): Well, just I mean, Jason, you start to make this point that if if you're a founder and you wanna run a great public company. When you IPO, guess what? You're gonna have governments. And when I see big time. Right? I mean, there's just Delaware law, there's just a lot of, like, expectations around being a public company. And so if you don't have a board, you know, and you're not constituting one until you go public, there's gonna be a massive amount of cleanup that you have to do. I mean, that's what I've seen. And so, you know, you'll end up scrambling to create a board. I think that a board serves serves so many purposes early on of giving you advice, of giving you structure, of providing support, help, services, you can still remain in control while getting those things. And I'm just I'm just skeptical that, like, if you form a company with completely passive VCs, you don't even serve on a board, like, you're gonna have to do a lot of cleanup later. I'd say at a minimum. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:23): Totally. I think that that's true too. David Friedberg (01:07:25): Totally. I'm Chamath Palihapitiya (01:07:25): not by the way, I I'm not saying I'm I I advocate this, but I'm I I just think that The reality is that if these large late stage crossover firms really step into the early stage, I think they could really build a big book of business. I do think there are a lot of founders who would love to just be given the money and just to be left alone. I'm not saying that they think they know that it's better for them, but on the margin just to be able to be left alone. Now what has changed maybe though is everybody's gonna be very hands off just because all the fun sizes have exploded. So at that point then, you know, what is the difference between Sequoia and and d one time will tell? David Sacks (01:08:01): I just know that. Like, when when I see a founder doing thing that I think could risk the company going off the rails, I'll say so. And then, you know, if it keeps happening and situation gets worse, I'll say so again. I might mentioned it a third time, I might not. At a certain point, I'm just like maybe after, like, two times, I'm just like, they don't wanna listen to me. That's fine. It's their decision. Their company, their decision, they go off the rails, their problem. You know, we'll move on to the next one. I mean, that's the reality. Jason Calacanis (01:08:28): Sometimes founders have to learn by doing it. Like, sometimes they're intent. And you know what? They could be right, and you could be wrong too. So it's it's part of a as a it's hard as a board member. You know? That's why I'm very judicious in giving advice as a board member now, and I'm on a bunch of boards and do a board training. because when the rule off was on my board and he still is, you know, he would ask great questions. And he he would be very thoughtful about, hey. Have you thought about this? Or when I got advice from Doug or Michael Moritz directly, you know, Doug would say, hey. Well, can you share the 2 year plan with me? And I'd say, you know, we haven't built a plan, and he said, well, you know, Jason, you know, hope is not a plan. Let's make a plan, and let's discuss you know, the milestones along here, and it it was amazing to have that level of thoughtfulness around -- Totally. David Friedberg (01:09:08): -- Jason Calacanis (01:09:08): provision as a founder. David Sacks (01:09:09): I love I mean, as as a founder, I love getting advice I think you gotta be really dumb not to seek it out. I mean, I when I was a founder, I would even though I was sort of competing with Benioff, I would meet with him, and I would, like, get amazing tidbits Just recently, we did it wasn't like an official board, meaning because Rolloff isn't on our board, but he's a big investor in one of my incubations, Colin. And we just did a meeting with him and and and the David Friedberg (01:09:34): -- Jason Calacanis (01:09:35): Gets it in every time. David Friedberg (01:09:36): Not to be confused with Olin. But -- No. Jason Calacanis (01:09:38): Yeah. Not to be serious with all that trademark. David Sacks (01:09:40): It was it was me and Axel who's the cofounder to call in and and roll off. And we have, like, an amazing meeting where we got, like, I'd say amazing advice from Roth that, like, focused us And it wasn't that I didn't know these things, but it's just like when you're in the weeds sometimes. You don't obviously crystallize on focus on the most important thing. And I came out of that mean meeting feeling like, okay. Rolloff just refocused us on the most important thing, and it was immensely valuable. And you've gotta be, like, dumb not to see that out no matter what stage you're at. because I seek it out today. Jason Calacanis (01:10:13): Yeah. I'm thinking about this, David. You're in the thick of things He's on Square's board. He's on author boards. He's got a picture Speaker 4 (01:10:20): of the entire playing field. It's like somebody Jason Calacanis (01:10:20): who's the coach of 15 NBA teams, and you're like the coach of 1. He's seeing things on other NBA teams that they're doing in methodologies and best practices that you're just not gonna see. So, I mean, again and then if you look at the great founders, TK used to come to me and say, hey. You know, this is the thing I'm gonna be doing at the next board meeting, or here's can we jam out? And he would just ask for a jam session. He came up with that term, and 3 or 4 people would get together and just jam and talk for 5 hours about the product. It was awesome. Alright. Let's go on to David Sacks' favorite section Speaker 4 (01:10:55): of the show. Science with the Jason Calacanis (01:10:55): Sultan of Science himself -- Oh. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:01): I thought you were gonna say his favorite program. Jason Calacanis (01:11:04): Oh. Enough with that. David Sacks (01:11:06): Oh, we can't talk about that. That was David Friedberg (01:11:08): -- -- Jason Calacanis (01:11:09): fighting. You have that you if you are engaged in science segment -- David Sox and PG are in a fight. David Sacks (01:11:15): Alright. Let's cover it. Jason Calacanis (01:11:16): Here's the deal. If David Sachs is engaged during the science portion of the class, we will let him have his fight as the as the teacher here. Tell us a little bit about stem cells and this HIV. Sorry. David Sacks (01:11:27): I David Friedberg (01:11:28): was gonna tell Saks that the the earth is round. Okay? It's not flat. Jason Calacanis (01:11:32): I don't care. Speaker 4 (01:11:33): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:11:33): How does that affect Lana? David Friedberg (01:11:36): So sorry. The the story that I think we wanted to you guys wanted to cover today with the HIV story, which incredible. David Sacks (01:11:42): I suggested this topic, so I'm interested. explain it to us. David Friedberg (01:11:46): HIV is a retrovirus, meaning once you get infected, it doesn't go away. -- Speaker 4 (01:11:50): doesn't care. David Friedberg (01:11:51): He doesn't care. He's he's he's David Sacks (01:11:53): We better we better come back to teaching you. David Friedberg (01:11:55): -- muted you. He's flipping through his political notes to figure out what did he miss saying that he was supposed to Speaker 4 (01:12:00): say today. He just flipped over Jason Calacanis (01:12:02): to Ben Shapiro at 2 x's. He's listening to Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris in conversation ahead. So -- Okay. Okay. Okay. So then David Friedberg (01:12:10): the the HIV being cured headline, you know, we can dive into it for 2 minutes. But HIV is a retrovirus when you get infected with HIV. stays in your body forever, it actually ends up living inside of your immune cells. That's what makes it such an interesting, challenging virus. and it destroys those immune cells. So over time, you end up getting AIDS. And the way it enters the immune cells is through a specific protein Some people have a genetic mutation where if the there's a change in their DNA and that protein is different, HIV cannot enter their immune cells, and they can actual they are naturally immune to HIV. CCR5. Yeah. And so what's happened is found apparently in white Northern Europeans. Yeah. Like, Norwegians, I think. Norwegians. Yeah. Exactly. And, anyway, so what what's the interesting study that was done, all immune cells are made from stem cells in your bone marrow. And so, you know, all the white blood cells that we have that fight off our diseases come from our bone marrow. And when you get a a blood cancer, Sometimes you end up getting so severe that you have to actually wipe out all the immune cells in your body and give yours and you end up with a bone marrow plants. You get new bone marrow put in, new blood cells put in. And, hopefully, if you can survive the therapy and survive that treatment, those new bone marrow will produce new immune cells and your body will recover, and you will be cured of your blood cancer. So what happened is people had HIV And when you get this this bone marrow transplant, you end up you know, they they give you radiation and chemo, and they wipe out all your blood cells. And and then they give you this bone marrow transplant. So they selectively chose bone marrow stem cells that came Speaker 4 (01:13:53): from people that have the the genetic David Friedberg (01:13:57): mutation. that that prevents HIV. So then when these HIV patients that got blood cancer got a bone marrow transplant with this mutation in it, they were cured of HIV. And so it's a pretty profound kind of demonstration of what we already knew, which is that this genetic mutation can can prevent HIV. And there are a lot of therapies that are underway right now to actually use gene editing to induce that mutation in people's blood cells and in their bone marrow without needing to give them old transcribed. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:14:32): The the first guy that did it the first guy that did it was German. Right? Or he was in Germany, I think, and and he unfortunately passed away They cured his his HIV AIDS, but he, unfortunately, had a relapse of the leukemia that killed him. But I think all three cases of people that that have been, quote unquote cured have app in these leukemia patients. David Friedberg (01:14:55): But I'll say two things two things about the future of this kind of possibility. Number 1 is you don't need to get a bone marrow transplant to have this mutation induced in your cells to prevent this infection from kind of occurring in your body, you can use gene editing tools to do that. And so we are now developing gene editing therapies where rather than go and get a whole bone marrow transplant to cure your HIV, we can actually edit your cells. Those edited cells will now be resistant, and you will be resolved of HIV. The second thing is the way that they gave people the bone marrow transplant, the way they created those stem cells for the bone marrow transplant was from umbilical cord blood from from newborns, which is very rich in stem cells. And this is a traditional way of kind of giving people stem cell based therapies is you go and source stem cells from another body or your own body, which are called autologous stem cells. But, like, I I just wanna say one thing. What's really interesting in the future is not gonna be about pulling other people's stem cells into your body and finding them from, you know, fetal blood or what have you. We now have the technology, which I've talked about multiple times on the show called Yamanaka Factors, where theoretically, we can take your cells from your own body turn them into stem cells, grow them in a lab, and use that as the therapies that's called autologous stem cell therapy. And rather than use stem cells or trying to find them and, you know, figure them out where they are in your body and pull them out, we can actually do stem cells for your body. And that's, like, you know, 15 years out is autologous induced stem cell therapy. We actually make your own stem cells and then give yourself all sorts of therapies, not just bone marrow transplants, but you can heal lots of tissue in the body using these stem cell systems. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:31): We don't really hear about HIV aids anymore. I in that article, I think it said that there's about 37 million people around the world that have HIV aids. And it's incredible actually the amount of progress that science has made in this disease. I remember when I was growing up, it was made to to be like this incredible boogeyman. Yeah. And it really governed, like, a lot of social norms at the time because we were still discovering what HIV AIDS was, and you know, how, you know, how do you think about sexual promiscuity, you know, from a moral and ethical perspective? I think it had a huge impact on my generation. David Friedberg (01:17:06): Absolutely. It did. Jason Calacanis (01:17:06): It was a death sentence. They they made us paranoid. David Friedberg (01:17:09): So so here's what's happened. Therapies have gotten so good. at suppressing suppressing the virus. If the virus is suppressed far enough, even though you are always gonna be infected, if it's suppressed far enough, The WHO and the FDA have both said, you can still have unprotected sex and not transmit HIV. And so even though there are plenty of people out there that might be having unprotected sex with HIV, the therapies have suppressed the viral load to the point that they're not transmitting it actively. And so that's been the breakthrough in science over the last decade. Jason Calacanis (01:17:38): And then they also had this rep pills, right, which people could take proactive. That's right. If they thought they might, you know, find themselves. But, I mean, Shamab, you and I lived in a generation where, Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:46): I mean, doesn't That was the end of David Friedberg (01:17:49): things. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:17:49): Well, I mean, it was the end of days, and they're like, I I don't know if you had that business school. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:17:53): It was a single biggest thing that I was that I was taught in sex ed classes to be afraid of. Speaker 4 (01:17:58): be be really scared at all costs. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:00): And then the problem that it that it created was, like, you know, in countries that had a large Catholic population, You know, the Catholic church was so, you know, David Friedberg (01:18:10): evil. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:10): They had they were undecided on -- No. They were the opposite. Jason Calacanis (01:18:14): I'm sorry. They told people an Africa to not use condoms. When AIDS was rampant, it was the biggest evil 2nd biggest evil Catholic Church did in modern history, obviously, the first. We know. Speaker 4 (01:18:26): I have David Sacks (01:18:26): a contribution to the segment. Speaker 4 (01:18:28): Oh, got you. What? He's watching the egress. David Friedberg (01:18:30): Here we go. Move on. No. That's Chamath Palihapitiya (01:18:31): not mine. David Sacks (01:18:32): I know. I -- I'm Jason Calacanis (01:18:33): a sister. You're married in this relationship. David Sacks (01:18:35): Look, I I remember how scared people were of AIDS, you know, back in the 19 eighties when this came and I remember that there was a head of the NIH who even whipped up people's fear. Speaker 4 (01:18:46): Hold on. David Sacks (01:18:47): Lift up people's fear. by saying that even casual even casual contact within the same household can spread it. And you know who that an HOA? No. He hasn't written HOA? Jason Calacanis (01:18:59): Yes. We know. Fauci dedicated his life to trying to solve and reduce the suffering of soft for aids and HIV? Speaker 4 (01:19:06): No. David Sacks (01:19:06): In the 19 eighties. In the 19 eighties, he was the face of government difference towards aids, and he spread fear and was medically wrong about it. Go check the records. He was a screw up then, and he's a screw Jason Calacanis (01:19:18): up now. David Friedberg (01:19:18): -- Jason Calacanis (01:19:18): on it. He worked tirelessly David Friedberg (01:19:19): -- David Sacks (01:19:20): He didn't work tirelessly on it. David Friedberg (01:19:21): Jay Cal, I think Saks is right in the sense that, like, what we thought we knew back then turned out to be wrong, and I think that's a really important point. you know, particularly in science, it's a process of discovery. What we thought we knew back then turned out it was all a hypothesis. It's all a thesis until it's proven or disproven. And that's the case. David Sacks (01:19:39): Read read Andrew Sullivan. I mean, you know, Fauci was absolutely the enemy. Public enemy number 1 of the of the game movement. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:19:48): Who is it Tony? David Sacks (01:19:49): Tony yeah. Well, it was a Tony Tony Perkins. There was actually a debate that Fauci was in. on AIDS where a gay actress literally said to him, I hate you. And if you read Andrew Sullivan's blog, he will talk about how he remembers back in the 19 eighties that Fauci was sort of public enemy number 1 in the gay community because of his position on this during the Reagan administration. And so it is -- -- a Jason Calacanis (01:20:12): lot of civil disobedience act up, etcetera. Remember? So -- And he responded by putting massive resources into this. So I think, you know, if if he was David Friedberg (01:20:21): -- David Sacks (01:20:21): That's not listen to listen to Andrew Sullivan on this. Speaker 4 (01:20:24): He is David Friedberg (01:20:24): -- -- Jason Calacanis (01:20:24): bring Andrew Sullivan? Okay. David Sacks (01:20:26): He is not that right, Ron. Wait. Andrew Sullivan is the reason why, more than any other public intellectual, why we have marriage equality today. He is number 1. He advocated from from marriage equality and in the New Republic made the case for it before anybody else and popularized that argument. Jason Calacanis (01:20:41): I'm a fan of his writing. Let's not So don't try David Sacks (01:20:43): and portray him as a right wing or whatever. David Friedberg (01:20:45): -- Jason Calacanis (01:20:46): portray foul you're you're going to Fauci's intent. Anyway, you wanna believe that Fauci's an evil person. David Sacks (01:20:50): I think I think I think you and many other people have mysteriously forgotten who Fauci really is. Jason Calacanis (01:20:55): Okay. You think I know. You're a conspiracy. You think Fauci's intent is to, you know, cover up the -- Zach, you Zauci and he intentionally was working against solving for HIV. That's ridiculous. Zach, do you think -- I David Sacks (01:21:07): would say intentionally. David Friedberg (01:21:08): Do you think Zauci had good intentions? Jason Calacanis (01:21:10): Yeah. If you infer it. Zach? David Friedberg (01:21:11): Do you think Fauci had good intentions? David Sacks (01:21:13): I don't I don't really care about his intentions. I just wanna look at his actions. It's amazing it's amazing David Friedberg (01:21:18): to me. David Sacks (01:21:19): It's amazing to me that a public official who was so wrong back then in the 19 eighties 19 nineties on the public health crisis of our time, would just be given a free pass. And along comes a new public health crisis in the last couple of years, and he's been completely wrong about that too. why are you giving this guy a free pass when I get it? David Friedberg (01:21:39): Hey, Saks. In a in a cloud of uncertainty, in a time of war, do you think that leaders need to show strong intent and clear signals, or do you think that they should be wishy washy because they don't know enough? David Sacks (01:21:50): I think they should be right. David Friedberg (01:21:53): And if they're trying the best with what they have with the information they have at the time that David Sacks (01:21:56): they have it. Okay. Well, yeah, there's some forgiveness for for making mistakes, but when you're constantly wrong, maybe it's time to get somebody else in there. David Friedberg (01:22:04): That's true. And but maybe -- -- David Sacks (01:22:05): Fauci, by the way, Fauci app with respect to code. We talked about it before. David Friedberg (01:22:10): 100% David Sacks (01:22:11): participated in a suppression of the investigation into the origins of COVID. There was an active attempt to suppress that. Come on. You know that the the FOIA email show it. David Friedberg (01:22:23): It's a good science segment. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:26): I do wanna give a shout out to the the researchers who actually did this with this woman in New York. It's pretty freaking incredible. David Friedberg (01:22:35): What's incredible is that they did it with HIV patients who had blood cancer, and it was a really kind of, like, awfully designed experiment. Incredibly thoughtful. Yeah. And it's been 4 years. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:22:44): So, I mean, this has been baking for a long time. David Friedberg (01:22:46): By the way, as I zoom out and hear guys talk about what HIV was like, you know, back in the day and the fear around it. I I do think that 30, 40 years from now, given the tools we have with induced stem cells and cell based therapies, and there are hundreds of cell based therapies coming to market over the next few years. They're all in late stage clinical trials as well as gene editing. I think, hopefully and I'm optimistic that one day we will look back at cancer and aging in the same way that we're talking about HIV today, and that both of those diseases can and will be resolved with the tools that we're developing through science. And, you know, there there's there's gonna be bumps along the road, but, man, I you Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:20): know, it's so clear that you think -- The Saks code Speaker 4 (01:23:23): Look. David Sacks (01:23:23): I think I think what Friedberg just said actually is really important and inspiring, and I think it's great. And I was kinda joking around with the Fauci thing. I didn't expect it to become tangents. So I don't need to keep going on and on about that. Jason Calacanis (01:23:34): Where do Speaker 4 (01:23:34): you see him try to where do Jason Calacanis (01:23:35): you see him in editing? Try to change his position. No. David Sacks (01:23:37): I don't gotta change anything in editing. Keep that segment. David Friedberg (01:23:40): I'm just David Sacks (01:23:40): saying I didn't David Friedberg (01:23:41): -- Jason Calacanis (01:23:41): Can you use a can I do a voice mail? David Sacks (01:23:43): Do you have it come so argumentative? We wouldn't have spent 5 minutes on it. Speaker 4 (01:23:46): If I'm Jason Calacanis (01:23:46): correct, you're incorrect. position that found Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:49): you in law -- -- on rap piece because I gotta fly to Europe. Go. Jason Calacanis (01:23:51): Okay. Here we go. David Sacks and Paul Graham have gotten into it. It's a battle for the ages, and the stakes are so low. The stakes are so high. And the animosity is so high because the stakes are so low. Here we go. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:07): David Sachs -- Before wait. We can before this, does Phil Helmith qualify this as a billionaire battle or a quasi billionaire battle? David Friedberg (01:24:16): -- Jason Calacanis (01:24:16): billionaire battle. Literally, he revealed the billionaire if you follow Phil Hamzt's It's being DA greatest. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:25): Being Doug greatest on Twitter. Jason Calacanis (01:24:27): Follow-being DA greatest. Yeah. To get that, Phil. No. Phil Helmut's outed He Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:32): outed it. Jason Calacanis (01:24:33): On his Twitter David Friedberg (01:24:34): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:34): Our friend. David Friedberg (01:24:35): -- Jason Calacanis (01:24:35): his new billionaire, Besty, is his bill which he stole Besty from me. I used to call him really Besty, and he just co opted it. like he co opted me calling Tremont the dictator, but I'll tell the dictator, origin story later, is Stanley from DoorDash. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:48): Stanley Tang. Co founder chief product officer of DoorDash. Great guy. Jason Calacanis (01:24:53): Really? Great -- Joe, David Sacks (01:24:54): how much later is truffle? David Friedberg (01:24:56): Exactly. got the hell to say it's triple -- Jason Calacanis (01:24:58): He found it. Okay. Here we go. So if you can introduce him to Paul Graham David Friedberg (01:25:02): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:02): Go ahead, Sacks. David Sacks (01:25:03): Alright. Here here here here's the issue. David Friedberg (01:25:05): -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:05): to pick. What's your beat? Jason Calacanis (01:25:06): Here we go. David Sacks (01:25:07): actually, I did not seek out the speed. Jason Calacanis (01:25:08): Sacks vendetta section of the pump. Speaker 4 (01:25:10): No. No. David Sacks (01:25:10): No. No. Listen. PG weighted into my tweets. he came after me. David Friedberg (01:25:15): We're waiting. Yeah. David Sacks (01:25:16): You did. We're waiting. You were waiting too. I love it, please. Any billionaires out there who wanna, like, debate, like, waiting into my tweets. Mark Cuban didn't make a bit made a big ass for himself. I don't wanna deter these guys from from waiting in because it's great. Here here's what basically happened is I tweeted a video of all these multimillionaire celebrity hypocrites partying massless at the Super Bowl. And then, meanwhile, the next day, my three kids have to go to school in California wearing their mask. That is ridiculous. Okay? It makes no sense. We all know that. Okay? Any same person knows that. That's what I tweeted about. I don't know why of all issues that was triggering a PG, but he had to come in and say, well, they were all partying outdoors. It's like, really? Looks to me like they're in a skybox. And if it has three walls in the ceiling, I call that a room. But in any event, that wasn't he was he was misinformed because The rule at the Super Bowl was that if you were not eating and drinking, anyone under over the age of two after wearing a mask. So, you know, my point stands. David Friedberg (01:26:22): I just wanna air -- David Sacks (01:26:23): So so here here here's where things kinda went south is is so then I tweeted blink twice. you know, Paul. And and here's the thing. I wasn't totally trying to be snarky with that comment. Here here's why I said that is explain Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:38): what that means. I didn't understand that. What does that mean blink twice? David Sacks (01:26:40): Well, it means, like, are you David Friedberg (01:26:42): -- -- Jason Calacanis (01:26:42): a captor. You're being held kidnapped by these concepts that you have to wear David Sacks (01:26:46): a mask. No. You're being held hostage by somebody. And the and the reason why I said that is because is is look. If if if PG had just been some crazy dumb person, I never would have said that. The fact is that PG is smart. He writes extremely well, publishes a lot of interesting things. He's an independent thinker. So it almost seemed to me like somebody is holding him hostage here because how can this really smart person be making this case? Anyway, it kinda went south from there. So oh, I I have no desire to continue the the debate. David Friedberg (01:27:17): Meanwhile, Kendall Jenner wore North Face shoes to Justin Bieber's What? Yeah. Can you believe it? Jason Calacanis (01:27:23): Dear, she knows that David Friedberg (01:27:25): He hates -- -- face. How did he do that? Gossip gossip. Gossip. Alright. So this has been Saxes, Jason Calacanis (01:27:31): Venkat, Warner, for the week and for Can we Speaker 4 (01:27:34): make this David Sacks (01:27:34): a regular segment? But but but Speaker 4 (01:27:36): but -- -- that I'm making Jason Calacanis (01:27:37): the segment. David Sacks (01:27:37): Sakses me in a corner. But I but I wanna stay I wanna stay on the main issue here, which is Oh, please let's do it every week. But yeah. But look. Am I wrong about this mass hypocrisy that's going on? How in the world Are you listening? -- picture of Saxx Jason Calacanis (01:27:52): in the mess. Let's put a picture of Saxx in the mess. Takeout. David Friedberg (01:27:55): Takeout. Stop. I wanna air a 100% support for Saxx on the statement. I totally agree with you on the mask. hypocrisy as well as the mask mandates in schools. I think it's ridiculous. We've pivoted we've pivoted so far away from 1st principle thinking on this stuff. It's nuts. I totally agree with you completely. And on this point, on you wasting your time fighting with people on Twitter, my personal advice to you as a friend who's just cut it out. But what you gotta have been buddies. But totally agree. David Sacks (01:28:20): Oh, it's entertainment. Jason Calacanis (01:28:22): Alright, everybody. For the dictator himself, Chamathpalihapatia, Rainman yeah. David Sacks and the Sultan of Science. If you see him out and about, As for a selfie, Sultan of Science loves selfies. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:38): He does. Love you, boys. Bye. We'll see you Jason Calacanis (01:28:40): all next time on the all in pod. David Friedberg (01:28:42): Bye bye. Love you, Baski. bye. Jason Calacanis (01:28:45): We'll let your winners ride. Speaker 4 (01:28:48): Rainman, David Saffens. I'm going home. Jason Calacanis (01:28:49): And it said we David Sacks (01:28:53): open sources to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. like, white hair winter's ride. Speaker 4 (01:29:05): Besties are golf. Oh, David Friedberg (01:29:06): 13. That is plenty of dogs thinking about a driveway checks. Oh, Speaker 4 (01:29:13): man. Am I out of Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:14): the Azure media outlets? We should Jason Calacanis (01:29:16): all just get a room and just have a big huge orphan because they're all just useless. It's, like, this, like, sexual tension, and they just need to release her mouth. When you're the b p What? Fire of David Sacks (01:29:27): the earthy. Jason Calacanis (01:29:28): What? That's gonna feel it. Where did you get Mercies are back?