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E162: Live from Davos! Milei goes viral, Adam Neumann's headwinds, streaming's broken model & more

January 19, 2024 / 01:38:29

This episode covers the 54th annual World Economic Forum in Davos, featuring discussions on elite culture, notable speeches, and the evolving perception of the event. Guests include Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Sacks.

The hosts share their experiences attending the World Economic Forum, highlighting the mix of entertainment and serious discussions. They mention various performances, including a musical act that involved an air flute, and the absurdity of some events.

Key speeches from Argentine President Javier Milei and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon are discussed. Milei criticized collectivism and socialism, while Dimon acknowledged the validity of some of former President Trump's policies, both remarks resonating with the audience.

The hosts reflect on the changing reputation of Davos, noting how attendees now feel the need to apologize for participating in elite gatherings amid rising populism. They discuss the irony of elites advocating for socialism while flying in on private jets.

Finally, the episode touches on the topic of regulatory capture in industries like aviation, using Boeing as a case study, and the implications of microplastics in consumer products, emphasizing the need for accountability and innovation in addressing environmental issues.

TLDR

The episode discusses the World Economic Forum in Davos, notable speeches, elite culture, and issues like regulatory capture and microplastics.

Episode

1:38:29
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all right everybody Welcome to the 54th annual World economic Forum here in Davos you guys didn't know this but as
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Elites ourselves we were invited to kick off the festivities Surplus elit yeah you know the all-in podcast very popular
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and so they wanted us to come and represent the Pod and our audience there and uh it's been amazing if you haven't
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seen some of the great musical performances this year I mean they're so notable let's just start off here I mean
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guys we were here for this live soak it in I mean on the better on the replay soak it there's the air
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flute so wait wait there's a great moment where she really starts vibing wait for
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the head shake the eyebrows are grit but the head shake comes in and about there there it
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is I like I like your moomo I like her mumo have you ever played the air flute or just a skin flute Jam skin
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flute went there it's like it's like a high school but guys guys this isn't it there there were other uh there was a
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witch doctor or something I'm not sure exactly what's going on here I'm going to just apologize in advance for mocking
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this or for sax mocking it I should say this was incredible I don't know exactly what's going on here with the
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blowing of the hair but from that's for sure so they're blowing the co on each person's forehead here to spread the co
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they've all taken the MRNA vaccine but you know uh we each have a speaking gig each of us is speaking and so I thought
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to kick us off here gentlemen instead of us just telling everybody our schedule I
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would sing our schedule and so let me just grab a let me see if I got my guitar here hold on have a guitar here
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let me grab it here oh here it is okay hold on I happened to have the guitar here is that air guitar or a real guitar
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guar actually real guitar here so but I thought you know everybody is really excited about each of our speaking gigs
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so I thought we would just kick it off here let me just see if it's in tune you guys hear
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that oh okay all right was I think we got it kumay my Lord K sax is interviewing Putin my Lord
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AUM in the dictator Lounge at noon a kumay conquering Europe kumbai and now I'm going to there a
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little audience participation in here besties I need you each to sing with me okay it's uh we're going to start here
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it's going to be just listen one time and then you're going to repeat okay here we
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go it's hard to keep it together oh Davos kumay so just o Davos Kumbaya ready 3 2
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oos K okay very good very good okay now we go to the next verse hereo hosting Steve Bannon at 1 p.m.
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AUM free bgs at 2 p.m. bill ion Aire bunker panel Lum teal just bought one goombay Hunter Biden after party at a 1
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a.m. eight balls and escorts for everyone brought to you by barisa that's for you sex and now you
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all sing ohos Kum wow fabulous you really are the world's greatest moderator let your winners
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[Music] ride and instead we open sourc it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it
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love queen of all right everybody yes the uh World economic forum is wrapping up in Davos
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uh if you don't know what the wef is I'll just give you the brief overview 3,000 people 5 days tons of parties
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happens in Davos Switzerland it's run by a foundation uh they call these non-government organizations NOS uh you
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can think of it kind of like the Ted conference topic this year was rebuilding trust it's politicians
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Business Leaders economists journalists all the elites the mission statement of the WF improving the state of the World
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by engaging business political academic and other leaders of society to shape Global Regional and
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Industry agendas it's money printing machine I'll give you a funny backstory later if you care to know but basically
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they try to shake it down for about 40 Grand a year to go to this thing tons of notable moments that we can get to on
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the docket here free break any highlights for you watching this you know get mocked on social media this
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year it's it's been a slow unraveling from this being something that people used to flex about going to Davos
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now people are literally apologizing on social media X Twitter Etc explaining why they're going because
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they're kind of feeling shame in going to this event so what are your thoughts on the sort of whole flipping of this
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from being a flex to requiring an apology in advance you guys know Andrew Ross sorin the journalist for
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CNBC I think he posted on Twitter you know I know I know forgive me I got to go to Davos it's almost like
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embarrassing now that you are associating yourself with the elite cabal in the Swiss Alps during a time of
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rising Global populism and all the criticism that's been raining down on Davos in the last couple of years and
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then Davos is trying to adapt by trying to be more cool and appeal to the the populist Notions uh that have criticized
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them thus the fluke playing thus the Shamanism you know and and thus I think a lot of what Javier mle has called a
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general economic support for what he defines as collectivism which I'd love to talk about but why don't we just say
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that so I think there's generally been like a response from the community that attends to AOS but there there's a lot
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of conflict here with the fact that folks are flying in on private jets and telling everyone to stop producing
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carbon the F the fact that they're all dining and spending lots of money and telling everyone that we should move to
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more towards socialist conditions and higher taxation it's all a lot of irony wound up in this whole thing it's almost
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like a like a like a Simpsons show it's what it's become well and the theme rebuilding trust is kind
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of insulting at its face at least to me like we we don't trust you you don't need to rebuild trust with us we're not
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going to trust you there's no way for you to do that especially after what happened with covid sax did you have any
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sort of reaction to this year's Davos and just how people are reacting to it you heard freberg sort of thoughts on it
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well doas has become a of itself and that's why you saw these clips go viral of these ridiculous antics of the
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Priestess doing I don't know what she was doing but the only two sets of remarks that actually were taken
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seriously on their own terms was the speech by Malay from Argentina and then also comments by Jamie Diamond and the
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reason why they went viral is because they were actually saying sensible things that
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contradicted the sort of established wisdom or consensus at Davos I mean they were effectively subtweeting the other
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Elites at Davos I mean M gets up there and I think he was introduced by CLA Schwab and he immediately starts
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denouncing collectivist experiments and says that the West is in danger because its Elites have been co-opted by a
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vision of the world which leads inexorably to socialism and thereby to Poverty so melee basically says this
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right in front of CLA Schwab I mean he describing the the people at Davos that's why that took off and went viral
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it was incredible I mean yeah yeah in a similar way and he flew their commercial I didn't know that yeah yeah
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kudos to him Jamie diaman gave this interview I think it was on CNBC where he basically went full chth
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you know he basically admitted that Trump had been right and that you know a lot of the criticism of trump and all
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the derogatory comments for years were were basically just lazy and he said that you know Trump was largely right on
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NATO on immigration on tax reform he grew the economy immigration immigration he was mostly right on China he said
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Diamond said he didn't always like how Trump said things or talked about people but he said his policies were largely
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sound and only look better in time since we've abandoned them and and he's basically saying that you know look at
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where we are right now now and he questioned the kind of everything is hunky dory narrative that the Biden
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campaign is pushing out so he really went off script there and like I said I think Chamas said it first here on this
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pod three months ago and now jimie diamond is accepting that so that was a huge sub tweet you could say of all the
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elites of Davos and the accepted wisdom and you know the narrative that they're all pushing out so you know that was the
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other big interview that went viral and I think that's really saying something that you know that the elites now have
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parody themselves to the point where Davos has become a joke and the only talks or remarks out of Davos that
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people pay attention to are the ones talking sense to the people at Davos because they're not
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listening chath your thoughts look everything has a season and I think that when there was a much more singular
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hierarchy of status Davos played a very important role to signal to other people
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that you had made it but you know these things come and go and I think that this is sort of in the
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the back half of its usefulness and halflife what is it probably more than anything else now a glorified enterprise
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software sales conference where the reason to go to these conferences for a lot of these companies I suspect ECT is
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that it allows you to close very big deals multi-million dollar licenses of this that and the other thing where you
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can get the leaders of that counterparty across a table from you and hammer out a
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deal and I think you pay 40 Grand a ticket for the right to get everybody together to do that so I think they want
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to pretend that it's a lot more than what it is and I think what it is is that and I think whenever you have the
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ability to convene people to close business that's valuable beyond that I think it's sort of in the eye of the
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beholder and it used to be that the beholder thought that this was important and now I think we realize it's much of
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nothing it's shame in and air flutes and all kinds of stupidity which is why people have the courage to go and mock
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it and I think that malle's comments and Jamie Diamond's comments exemplify that
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the only other thing I would say is that I had heard although I haven't seen it so I don't know is that Alex karp
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apparently did a very thoughtful speech about anti-Semitism and which was also which
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was also very countercultural to the established logic that the the Surplus Elites at Davos want to believe which is
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the anti-israel pro Palestine line I haven't heard it though so I don't know yeah how impactful that was but those
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are the three things that I that I've Just Seen on Twitter just kind of the M speech I think is the one that everybody
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is keying on and correctly so you know obviously he's the he's the new president of Argentina and this speech
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was amazing people might not people might not also know that he was uh an economics teacher and so this talk about
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collectivism leading to suffering and Regulatory capture and bloat which we'll talk a little bit about when we talk
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about Boeing today was incredibly powerful it's super basic you know listen free markets work
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there are people opting into either side of it he went over essentially without saying it the rule of 72 and like 200
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years of GDP growth and how GDP growth under capitalism Rises everybody up and then collectivism AKA
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socialism is a bit of a disaster but it's well worth watching it there was a really cool thing that a
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company called hen did Hy genen with their AI tool they just immediately took his speech put it in his own words and
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um published it and translated it as if he was speaking English cuz he was he was speaking his native tongue so really
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worth checking it out and yeah it was super notable it's very basic but I think it's everybody wants
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to hear this right now which is if you're picking collectivism and socialism and redistribution of wealth
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Argentina has like a really good history of watching this faou and now they're in
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the process of dismantling and I'll say something else before freeberg says something here which I think is going to
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be very thoughtful Jason the other reason why Argentina is a really good example to use is that
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what does Davos represent at a different level well what it is is Old Europe getting together in
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a way that allows them to continue to coales power and what's interesting is if you had presented the case of any
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other country trying collectivism and failing it wouldn't get nearly the same attention as Argentina and the reason is
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that Argentina has so many ethnic Europeans and I think that's another reason which is like when present people
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that are telling you it didn't work that frankly look like you speak the same language as you I think it actually goes
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further in making the point than if you found somebody in South Asia or Africa that said the same thing to these folks
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which they have which they've not listened to and so this is why I think Malay is so interesting and important
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because he looks the part of a western leader and I think that that unfortunately is what it's going to take
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for some of these folks to listen yeah and everyone's acutely aware I mean I'll say three things on this one is just
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talking to your point Jam about the history of Argentina and how it relates to this position that mle holds in being
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able to speak credibly to this second is what he said which I think is really important and third is how it relates to
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the United States but this was clearly to my for my view one of the most important media events of the year I do
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think that anyone that's listening to us right now should go watch it and go listen to the entirety of the speech it
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is so important I hope everyone really takes in what he said just briefly on Argentina in the mid 19th century
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Argentina was a Col nation very agricultural but a lot of free market Pioneer going on businesses
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were built and an economy flourished in Argentina um this photo I put up here is
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from 19113 buos arees which at the time was called Paris of the West I was about to
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say it looks like Paris right the architecture and everything it's beautiful stunning but here's here's
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some statistics a lot of people don't know Argentina at this time was wealthier than France or Germany twice
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as wealthy as Spain and had one of the top 10 highest GDP per Capas of Any Nation on Earth in 1913 and so it was
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this flourishing vibrant economy with a lot of innovation a lot of Arts a lot of building a lot of um
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employment a lot of immigration and then the series of military coups began I don't know if you guys are aware but
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there was a military coup in 1930 1943 1955 1962 1966 1976 and in every one of these cases the
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essence of the coup was one of relativism which is some people have benefited more than others as a result
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we need to change the way that the government and the social structure is functioning and it had to be taken by
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force and I think this is the big story of Argentina that says so much more than
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any other nation of the past Century Century and a half which is that these Cycles happen based on not absolutism
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but on relativism and I'll just give you what I mean by that mle made this point which is so
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important from the year 1800 to the year 2020 in the year 1800 we saw 95% of the
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world's population in extreme poverty by 2020 it was less than 5% and this was driven by free market
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capitalism democracies that allowed people individuals to pursue their own self-interest and as a result deliver
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products into a Marketplace that people wanted and were willing to pay for and that incentive that market-based
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system allowed the entire world to move forward the relativism problem is that some people mooved forward faster than
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others and that causes this great cycle of what some people might call Envy or jealousy and Malay said it best the West
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is in Jeopardy which is the key statement he was trying to make in his point that countries are no longer
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defending free markets this is a quote private property and other institutions of Liber libertarianism due to errors in
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their theoretical framework and ambition for power opening doors to socialism and
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condemning us to Poverty misery and stagnation socialism has failed in all countries where it was attempted and
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then he started to harp on about neoclassical economic theory and the issues with that but I want to show you
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one last image which speaks so clearly to the point that he's making which is as these governments that are
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well-intentioned and the people that elect the governments and put them in power are well-intentioned then try to
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redistribute wealth by getting the governments to step in and play a market role
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the market role that they play causes inflation causes degradation and Economic Opportunity economic mobility
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and prosperity for most people and you can see this in this chart which we've looked at many times but everything on
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the top of this chart this is a chart that shows the 20 years of price changes of various goods and services in the
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United States everything that's gone up in price is something that the US government has a role in buying or
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paying for yeah controlling yeah and everything that's gone down in price is where there is a free market that has
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allowed people to access goods and services at a lower price over time as opposed to a higher price over time and
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while the intention is that the government is doing good for people by making Education Health Care and other
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uh goods and services available to them the government stepping in and intervening in the free market causes
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the price to go up and ultimately you end up in a really negative cycle that reses in this collectivism approach that
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he's talking about and that's why just wanted to tie back what he said to what's going on in the US today and the
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and I've harped on this a lot but the growing role that the federal government is playing and the intention is good but
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the impact is bad over time and that's really I think why it was such an important speech he was so clear it was
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so important for me to hear it I'm sorry I harped on but I just really thought that was the highlight the key of his
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speech is hey good intentions can lead to to a bad outcome here yeah you want everybody to have Healthcare you want
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everybody to have education the government is providing it and there's no customer and there's no Market
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there's no competition and the products and services that you are referring to they include medicine they include
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College they include tutoring they they don't just incl and they include air conditioning they include refrigerators
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and televisions smartphones all of that and um picking which system and which set of problems you want to have I guess
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is what societies need to do and and free markets it's a weird reflexive Loop though for governments because these
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people what he also said was these aren't just well-intentioned people they're also a small class of Elites
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that wanted to feel like they were better than everybody else by implementing things at worked and so
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there is a dark part of this as well which is their desire for power and I think it's important to not gloss that
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over so this wasn't just a bunch of bumbling do gooders that screwed things up this was also a bunch of folks that
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that irrespective of the data had an opportunity to gain influence and power and I think that that's that's an
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important thing to acknowledge because it created a very negative reflexive Loop that government used meaning if you
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look at freeberg charts why did that happen well part of what happened was the administrative
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state became more and more powerful they were able to pass laws they were there to decide who the winners and losers
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were that is a drug and that drug is very addictive and so what happened as this happened was the laws went and
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reinforce those dynamics of those people being able to decide winners and losers
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the thing that it has that has not happened yet though and maybe we're beginning to see it in some of these
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markets that the government is too involved in is that it is bred a level of incompetence and
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incapability that we now have to unwind because the average everyday Citizen's lives are either at risk or these
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services are just so expensive that it's just untenable and I think that's where
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we are now it's a great segue I think into this Boeing issue that we've seen because here's an issue of Regulation
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and safety where you want the government and you want safe planes and you want some level of Regulation but then you
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get regulatory capture so maybe but the government the government has not been the supporter of the safety agenda that
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citizens think yes meaning when you look at what has happened in the US airline industry there are a handful of enduser
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providers but those are all using OEM equipment from one of two vendors Boeing or Airbus so it's a duop but in many
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ways it's a monopoly the way that these folks fight with respect to tariffs and imports and incentives so the United
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States airline industry is a monopoly of one company now if you look at what's happened what they would say is well
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planes have become safer and safer and safer yes but they've become safer in some ways in in the most simple and
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obvious ways but they've become unsafe in that you have these fleets of planes that are now behaving very unpredictably
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and if you look under the hood what happens is Boeing as an example in like the last four years how much money do
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you think they've spent on lobbyists and packs I'll tell you $65 million how much
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have they spent just in the last year almost $1 million they're like the 15th most active spender in in politics in
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Washington now what did they use that money for while that's also documented see the crazy thing is this stuff
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happens in plain in plain sight so they able to water down the safety regulations what does that allow you to
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do it allows you to have a situation like this unfold and then on the other side the pilots unions can Lobby those
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same politicians who are taking money from Boeing and prevent systems that would actually make these
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planes safer you can have more improvements in the guide by wire technology you can have more
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improvements in GPS you can have more improvements in a computer's ability to help improve and augment the capability
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of the pilot unfortunately that would result either in fewer Pilots or less pay and so that doesn't happen nearly as
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fast and obviously as it should it's the same for air traffic control and all of
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these issues build up because we've allowed monopolies to build up so as much as we think we are a capitalist
00:24:18
Society we have veered into this collectivism in certain markets and where it's measurable and obvious we
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need to point at it and say let's go fix it yeah and this be let me just tea up a
00:24:29
little bit of what you're referring to in case people don't know but everybody probably saw the news that on January
00:24:34
5th the door blew off of a one of these Boeing 737 Max Jets if you've heard that
00:24:39
name before it's because this isn't the first time that the max Jets have had problems this plane safely landed thank
00:24:46
God and there was nobody sitting in the row with the door blew off and this has to do with some bolts on the doors but
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this is just the start of problems with the 737 Max there's an incredible doc mentary if you haven't seen it we'll
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we'll put it in the show notes Boeing's fatal flaw and the version before this the 737 Max 9 is the one that had the
00:25:05
the bolts come off jth the max 8 if you remember there were two really harrowing
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uh instances where tragically 346 people died in these two instances because the
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plane literally the software on the plane which is called Max maneuvering characteristics augmentation system
00:25:22
which was designed because they were trying to get more fuel efficiency and they had
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positioned the engines in a weird way on on the wings so they had to kind of help
00:25:33
Pilots level the stuff into your point about regulatory capture there was all this behind the
00:25:39
scenes manipulation of the market to try to get these planes built to try to get
00:25:44
them out the door because there was so much money at stake well on these two terrible accidents the plane the nose
00:25:50
literally Dove and the pilots were fighting it in both cases right they they just crashed and everybody on board
00:25:56
died and for 20 months the the 737 Max models were grounded and that cost the company over $21 billion so there is no
00:26:07
competition to your point and then in a free market if there were 10 providers would this be much different tooth and
00:26:12
absolutely yeah so I think that's what you have to realize here is that these duopolies you think there's competition
00:26:17
in a doopy there isn't competition no I mean like for example like if you look at the car market how many instances I
00:26:23
think the last big incidence that I remember was I think Ford had an issue with the fuel tanks of some cars that
00:26:29
were exploding right yeah but the reality is when that happens there are alternatives one is that there's a legal
00:26:37
requirement for Ford to just fix these things quickly there were lawsuits that happened there was class actions there
00:26:43
was settlements but there's also the ability for folks that can afford it is just to switch vendor and of which there
00:26:48
are 50 other vendors to choose from that is a healthy Dynamic so today when you look at the auto market what do you see
00:26:55
a plethora of choice and when you see fatalities or safety issues they are overwhelmingly driver error yes and we
00:27:04
assume that and we get insurance to deal with that when you look at airplanes you have
00:27:09
these three sections of risk that each are compounding because there is no competition number one is that the
00:27:15
Monopoly vendor has zero pressure to actually test these things adequately because on the other side of building
00:27:23
something well is shareholder pressure to deliver something sooner and faster so that they can reap more profits then
00:27:31
second is you have a regulatory infrastructure that puts rules on top of rules but then will bend the rules if
00:27:36
you donate to them right and that's measured and known and then the third are the folks that actually operate the
00:27:42
planes who have this actual incentive to not see technical improvements because it defends their job for
00:27:49
longer and in all of these cases there isn't enough competition to shine a light on this to say how does society
00:27:56
actually want this Market to operate this is collectivism it's not working freeberg you have thoughts on this
00:28:03
Boeing regulatory capture and the issue of only having two vendors there and the complexity of these
00:28:10
machines now in relation to that Nick you can pull this up this is an audit of the business model for a company called
00:28:18
trans group trans group is a aircraft Aerospace parts manufacturer they sell certified
00:28:28
regulated uh aircraft parts to Aviation companies as well as to Airlines private
00:28:35
pilots and also the government and they do about 7 billion in Revenue three and a half billion in IB so off TI point a
00:28:44
couple weeks ago about what's the appropriate competitive IAH margin that a company can ultimately achieve they
00:28:51
eiton margins 53% this company insane better than Facebook insane on 7 billion of Revenue growing Nick if you want to
00:28:58
pull up their stock chart and you guys can see how the business has performed over the years and their business model
00:29:03
has been relatively simple they've acquired aerospace companies got that have certified Parts they drop the cost
00:29:10
and raise the price and they do that over and over again and here's the business over the last 10 years this
00:29:15
thing is um you know a roughly 10 bagger 8 to 10 bagger in the last 10 years the market cap is 60 billion today
00:29:25
no end in sight and so there was a government audit done of the business by using uncertified cost data which is one
00:29:32
of the most reliable sources of information to perform cost analysis we found that trans earned excess profit
00:29:38
profit of at least $21 million on 105 spare parts on 150 contracts so they're selling spare parts into the government
00:29:46
the government auditor came in audited them and identified because there's no real audit there's no real
00:29:52
accountability in government as purchasers but there is regulatory Authority UND deciding who are the
00:29:57
winners and who are the losers in the market trans time has been elected a winner because they have regulatory
00:30:03
approval to make and sell these parts the cost to get approval to make and sell these parts is so high that it
00:30:09
makes it prohibitive for startups to come in and compete in this Marketplace and now that they're a preferred
00:30:14
supplier and they get these single contracts where there's no competition to be a supplier they can raise the
00:30:21
price every year multiple audit reports over the last 23 years have highlighted the problem of the Department of Defense
00:30:26
paying exess profits on Soul Source contracts where cost analysis was not used to determine fair and reasonable
00:30:32
prices and this problem continues to occur now I'm not necessarily saying that this is a negative on trans time
00:30:38
it's a fantastic business it's well-run it's one of the best-run public companies with a multi10 billion dollar
00:30:43
market cap in the world but the condition is that the US government comes in and picks and chooses through
00:30:48
its regulatory Authority which companies can make products the cost to enter and
00:30:53
compete becomes prohibitively high and then the company has complete pricing power and there's very little
00:30:58
accountability in the overall system and I think that this plays out not just with this company but obviously also
00:31:03
with Boeing and the fact that we've narrowed down the competitive market space to just a few Soul Source
00:31:08
providers that have very little accountability and eventually these sorts of conditions arise either prices
00:31:13
get too high quality degrades all the other things that Natural Market forces would keep a check on yeah and in in
00:31:19
terms of competition chamath the I guess the only thing you could say is consumers could potentially Maybe try to
00:31:27
avoid the 737 Max I know I did when all these accidents happen I just told you know my my person who books the flights
00:31:34
hey do not put me on a 737 Max period full stop and you know what you're going to wind up paying a lot more you're
00:31:41
going to have a hard time getting certain routes you're going to reduce it because you know most Airlines I think
00:31:46
have these 737 Maxes in there so you when you have such a few number of providers to your point about it's not
00:31:52
like cars it's not fragmented like that you can't avoid a certain car type a plane type the way you can avoid a car
00:31:58
type so just wrapping up here chth what changes should we see in terms of late stage capitalism something in the
00:32:06
example like air travel and and manufacturers is there any way to unwind this reasonably or is it too late because
00:32:14
we're at thisy I I I go back to some of the examples that we've made fun of before you have to rely on the
00:32:23
government to actually be competent in key moments in time I think this is one of them the organization that could do
00:32:31
something about it for example take the FTC or even take the doj we are investigating
00:32:40
Amazon's purchase of the portable vacuum cleaner Roomba right critically important issue and that is apparently
00:32:50
for the American people higher than the sclerosis that the government has enabled enabled in the airline industry
00:32:59
which affects everybody so could the right government agencies choose to actually focus on
00:33:05
something important here and actually figure out H why is this happening because I think the door plugs
00:33:14
issue is endemic of a much bigger problem this is a company that's rotting because there is no accountability and
00:33:20
the reason there's no accountability is there's no real functional competition and I have not seen any good answer
00:33:27
to accountability other than competition yeah I mean the the good news uh is the
00:33:33
FAA really took quick action to ground these 171 Boeing 7379 Max a planes but they don't they do not understand the
00:33:43
scope of the problem if they let them back in the fleet and this is happening the bigger picture problem of lack of
00:33:48
competition yeah they they're no no Noy of these my point is like you had to adjudicate the interaction of very
00:33:57
complicated hardware and software in that first go around here is just a pure systemic Hardware
00:34:05
failure so the point is that whether it's them or their suppliers there's just a some
00:34:13
complacency that sets in when you know you will always have the business to Freed Burke's point it is a very
00:34:19
corrosive thing in running a business trying to have motivated employees when they know on the back end of it
00:34:30
that they could make anything in the world and they'll just be able to sell it to somebody and they'll have to take
00:34:35
it that's that example that freeberg just cited 20 odd million dollars for just random stuff for what is it 15
00:34:42
pieces that's crazy that's just straight up theft and so when you have that how do you expect the employees of that
00:34:50
organization to give a I don't see how I don't see how you could expect that and so my point point
00:34:57
is the FAA has a much bigger problem so for example like the doe has a loan program to try to create a diverse
00:35:03
energy infrastructure in the United States maybe we need to look at some of these sectors and instead of building
00:35:08
the administrative State take some of that money instead and just create programs to get more competition all
00:35:15
right in other news Adam Newman you remember from wew work infamy Fame has a new startup you may have heard of it Flo
00:35:23
they've raised a ton of money he started buying a bunch of apartment builds bus the idea people can rent nice apartments
00:35:29
and cool cities that focus more on social interaction and hanging out comment spaces all that great stuff and
00:35:36
there's also allegedly or reportedly some sort of rent to own where renters can receive equity in the company over
00:35:44
time and I don't think this has ever been released but the idea would be maybe you own shares in flow flow
00:35:50
manages around 3,000 units most of which were purchased by Newman after he left wework and you know he took down a
00:35:56
windfall as an exit package and so according to the real deal this a real estate publication Newman had a 60
00:36:02
million variable rate mortgage on one of these properties in June sax maybe you could explain to us what's going on here
00:36:08
since you have a lot of experience in real estate well it's pretty simple he can't make his interest
00:36:14
payments Okay the reason is is because he had floating rate debt so if he had locked in his debt over say 10 years
00:36:22
back in when he bought this building in 2021 or whenever it was when interest rates were extremely low you know that
00:36:29
was during the the Zer period probably could have locked in long-term debt at maybe even 3% three or 4% and instead he
00:36:38
got floating rate debt and if you look at where commercial debt is now I mean it's 78
00:36:43
9% if you can get it which is pretty hard so he maxed out on debt when he bought these buildings he bought them
00:36:50
top of Market it sounds like in 2021 because real estate like a lot of things moves
00:36:56
inversely to interest rates so when interest rates spiked over the last year or so then real estate valuations went
00:37:04
down so he bought a bunch of buildings top of Market using a lot of debt that was floating rate interest rates spiked
00:37:11
Perfect Storm now he can't make his interest payments the crazy part about this when I was watching it happen jth
00:37:17
and we talked about it I think on the program at the time was in recent harowitz put in like over 300 million at
00:37:23
a billion dollar valuation but they didn't do that in Peak Zer they did that in 2022 when the writing was on the wall
00:37:29
what what are your thoughts on why they would make a bet like that and uh yeah just Tech VC's betting on real estate
00:37:38
for a second time how does that occur well I don't think it occurs because they cared about real estate I
00:37:44
think it allows them to take $300 million of committed capital and put it out there so that
00:37:51
they're $300 million less available which means that they're $300 million closer to raising a new fund which means
00:37:58
that they can raise they can charge 2% on more money that's why they did it got it yeah so just keep the money train
00:38:06
deploying Capital it's a place where you can put a big huge check and you can raise your next fund and yeah yeah why
00:38:12
not yeah okay well there you have let let me let me offer I mean I don't disagree I think that candidly what
00:38:18
you've said is exactly how Mega funds are thinking about we have to deploy Capital to raise our next fund and if we
00:38:23
still have capital in our last fund then we can't deploy if you're going to have to deploy large
00:38:29
amounts of capital wouldn't you feel better deploying that Capital with an entrepreneur who's actually run a big
00:38:37
business before even though the business failed no no no if you if you if you if
00:38:41
you were not optimized for fees you would do what Peter teal did and just have the fund and return the
00:38:45
money right he and for for for does that because he's already won but for everybody else that's trying to win the
00:38:52
only way to win in a world where your your exits are not that great rate is to actually generate money via fees even
00:39:00
though that fees are tax at current income that's the way to win inventure it's not carry it's by fees and so it's
00:39:07
and and I don't blame andreon I think like that's that's smart for them to do and if they have folks that are willing
00:39:13
to enable that by giving them money they should do it but are they going to generate huge rates of return probably
00:39:20
not because that's not what real estate is known for Real Estate is known for long steady tax arbs that's slowly
00:39:27
compound for the for the owner of the company over 20 or or the owner of the business over 25 to 35 years that's not
00:39:33
what a venture fund is supposed to be doing for a 10 year 12E return cycle so obviously they're doing it for fees
00:39:39
that's okay I think that's capitalism what are the LPS then think Sachs if we look at this you know you're
00:39:45
an LP and a technology firm I'll take andreon out of it for a second but let's just say some giant LP gives giant
00:39:50
amounts of money to a venture capital firm and then they're deployed in real estate
00:39:57
what happens you know in their minds and is there any kind of tension that would
00:40:00
occur well handicapping the situation you can never judge a VC based on one investment if we were to do that every
00:40:08
VC would have a lot of egg on their face because we're supposed to take big swings and swing for the fences and
00:40:14
trying to hit home runs and grand slams and a lot of them are going to make you look foolish you have to look at an
00:40:19
Investment Portfolio and track returns over time so I wouldn't judge any particular investor based on one
00:40:26
investment so I don't think that's fair now in the case of this investment if you want me to explain what I think went
00:40:34
wrong I think Adam Newman had a compelling Vision his vision was to create a new experience in in I guess
00:40:41
you call it apartment living and that people would be willing to pay more for that because he would create this
00:40:48
National brand in apartments and right now apartments are super local and there's there is no brand in you know
00:40:54
apartment living so I think as a entrepreneur as an operator he had a a great vision and I think he actually
00:41:02
achieved his vision if you read these articles carefully what they say is that his occupancy was high and people were
00:41:08
willing to pay at least a little bit more for the experience of being in a flow apartment the problem for Adam
00:41:15
Newman is that at the end of the day his plan to raise rents by creating experience even though it worked it just
00:41:23
didn't raise rents that much and what ended being much more important were the moves and interest rates and how he
00:41:31
capitalized these Acquisitions and the price he paid on the Acquisitions so there's an old saying in real estate
00:41:38
that you make money based on the buy not on the sell meaning that you know when you go and sell your apartment building
00:41:45
office building or whatever you're monetizing an acquisition that you did correctly and if you don't buy at the
00:41:51
right price you're never going to be able to make money on the sale and I think this is a really good example of
00:41:55
this where where he bought at top of Market his Capital stack was over reliant on debt and he had floating rate
00:42:04
debt I mean those are just Financial mistakes and timing mistakes that you can't make up for no matter how good an
00:42:11
operator you are in real estate and in a way I mean this is the same thing that happened with we work which is he
00:42:18
delivered an excellent product I mean people love we work offices absolutely yeah they they pick them over other
00:42:25
offices because The Vibes because of the culture because of the community so he he is a ma he has some Mastery of that
00:42:32
but to your point entry price matters and the economics matter if you look at wework it didn't fail because the
00:42:38
product wasn't good it was because he didn't pay enough attention to the financial aspects of the business with
00:42:43
Wei work he leased a bunch of offices at the absolute top of the market and then
00:42:48
overinvestment with Flo he bought a bunch of real estate at the top of the market and sort of did it with the wrong
00:42:55
Capital stack so this is the problem is that when you get into a real estate business it doesn't really matter how
00:43:02
great you are as an entrepreneur operator if you're not good at like sort of the Legacy old school real estate
00:43:11
part of it and the the old school real estate guys were were saying during Wei work this is not going to work you know
00:43:17
this is this is regious but with a bad capital structure and the old school real estate guys were saying something
00:43:24
similar about this and you know it just goes to show that if you are going to try and disrupt a legacy industry you do
00:43:31
have to kind of understand the ins and outs of of that Legacy industry and the great Paradox of this Sachs was when he
00:43:37
did Green desk which was the precursor to Wei work when he did the first Wei Works in San Francisco and other places
00:43:43
his Playbook was find a building that's empty that cannot be leased so he got 25
00:43:48
Taylor Street like six then Market the worst area by the tenderloin and we had an office there for a little bit and I
00:43:54
had my podcasting Studio there for a little bit this was a terrible off this was a terrible area but he made it hip
00:43:59
and cool and it was really cheap and man it sold out and it was packed and The Vibes were great but then as you're
00:44:06
saying then he moved all of a sudden to Soma and he started opening up these glass filled ones and you know the he
00:44:12
was renting them for Less with all their giveaways and six months free and all the stuff than they could ever afford so
00:44:18
right he he kind of had Mission drift right the Playbook they just they changed the Playbook and it economically
00:44:24
was not viable well the timing the timing got really bad and again they didn't pay attention to the financial
00:44:30
aspects as much as they should in this case I think that if he was trying to execute this play today and doing his
00:44:38
Acquisitions today he could actually make it he would he would need a lot more Equity because he wouldn't be able
00:44:43
to get as much debt financing but if he had the equity and could do more of an acquisition based on Equity the prices
00:44:48
he'd pay right now would be much lower and then his interest rates come down he could ride that wave he could refi pull
00:44:55
his Equity out and put debt on it that is cheaper as the price goes down so there was a way to maybe make this work
00:45:04
but you know with real estate the timing is just so important again your cost basis of when you get in the investment
00:45:11
is probably the most important thing in terms of whether you make money or not did you see this by Chance the real
00:45:17
estate piece in 60 minutes the package they did last week sax it was basically what we were talking about here a year
00:45:23
ago super compelling uh if you haven't seen it it's basically the all in podcast from 12 or 18 months ago has
00:45:28
anything changed on the field in terms of commercial real estate or is it just continuing to I mean nothing's changed I
00:45:35
think that the all the commercial real estate guys the the sponsors and the dealmakers and so forth they're all kind
00:45:42
of hanging on by their fingernails waiting for interest rates to come down and all the leases are still coming off
00:45:48
right like people are still who had six seven eight year leases that were signed
00:45:51
preo before depends on the market I mean some of the some of the markets are are
00:45:56
coming back but again what this flow news show this Adam Newman news shows is that you could be fully occupied and you
00:46:06
could still default and the reason is because of your capital structure the interest rates have spiked up you're now
00:46:12
paying you know all of your operating income is being eaten up by your debt service the only way to to make it
00:46:20
through that is you you go to your bank who is one of these Regional Banks and you work out a to extend you know they
00:46:27
call it pretend and extend and they let you hang on there you'll like you know extend the term of your Kick the Can
00:46:34
down the road yeah yeah they'll they'll lower your debt payments and exchange for more term and you just try to get to
00:46:39
the other side of these high interest rates and then once you get to the other side again you're hanging on you're not
00:46:45
defaulting that's what everyone's doing so if rates don't come down as expected this year you know I think the Market's
00:46:52
expecting 150 basis points of of rate Cuts if that doesn't actually happen there's a lot of real estate sponsors
00:46:59
who are in trouble and in turn there's a lot of regional Banks who are in trouble
00:47:03
because they're the ones who made all these loans to these sponsors so everyone's trying to like you said Kick
00:47:08
the Can down the road yeah and I the the 60 Minutes piece also talked about how there's some emergency resoning going on
00:47:16
in New York specifically where they take the floor plate in the middle which I think you talked about sa you you have
00:47:21
to have Windows if you want to convert to residential and they just make an space the void they call it in the
00:47:28
middle of the building that you know they'll deal with in the future but they just have this empty space in the middle
00:47:33
of the building that's not going to get used and then the rest that has Windows gets used to be converted into Lofts Etc
00:47:39
in New York so people are starting to think creatively uh if people don't come back to office okay let me ask you a
00:47:45
question just based on that com the set of comments given Adam Newman's experience as an investor in this space
00:47:52
and this General opportunity wouldn't you rather back a known some someone who knows and has been through the market
00:47:57
and has experience versus some founder who shows up and has never run a business in this space I mean this guy
00:48:02
has more experience it's such a great don't know that well here's the thing freeberg the great point about that is
00:48:09
you don't see a lot of Founders who explicitly come out and say I want to build a hundred billion dollar business
00:48:13
I want to build a giant business they're so rare that VCS who have a lot of chips
00:48:19
they would like to back those you know swing for the fences folks and so I do understand why people would back him
00:48:25
again and they've run at it before they've done it to some degree failed learned from mistakes and this time
00:48:30
around he he learned from exact same mistake so therefore they made the Bad Bet I'm not advocating by the way I'm
00:48:37
just asking no I understand to your point freeberg I can understand people want to bet on somebody who is crazy and
00:48:42
swings for the fences this entrepreneur clearly does not learn from their mistakes I think both of those things
00:48:48
could be true right shouth what I would say is that I think that where I've made
00:48:53
the biggest mistakes in my investing career is when I confused what I was investing in for one thing when it was
00:49:00
the other and so when I look back and I had a small doans in biotech because I thought oh this is going to be more
00:49:09
computational biology and I understand computation so this gives me an edge turned out I was wrong there was another
00:49:16
time where I've invested in certain sectors of the economy because I thought they were technology businesses and at
00:49:21
best they were Tech enabled versions of an existing industry and when I look at those Investments the thing that I got
00:49:28
wrong was not listening to the very experienced investors in those sectors and why they
00:49:37
passed and that has caused me no shortage of headache and grief and so if I had to learn anything from all of this
00:49:46
it would be that if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it's a duck it's not a tech company and so if that
00:49:53
duck means it's a real estate business I would talk to a real estate investor and and wonder to myself why they
00:49:59
wouldn't have done this deal similarly you know when it's a biotech business I have to ask myself why wouldn't they
00:50:06
have done it they know more than I ever will in this space and so similarly I kind of look at this as an example of
00:50:13
that which is could be a very talented person in an industry I think just it's important for us to be very clear and
00:50:20
lucid and intellectually honest about what industry that is I think it's a great point I mean look I whenever
00:50:25
you're dealing with a tech enabled business which I would Define as a more traditional business model with some
00:50:33
sort of software layer you know on top of it you have to kind of assess like how much of a difference does that
00:50:42
software really make at the end of the day in this case this is a real estate business with a very thin kind of
00:50:50
software slash operating technology of yeah the experience layer is a very small part of the overall
00:50:59
let's call it p&l of this business such a great Point sax I mean the Perfect Analogy would be like if you have if
00:51:06
you're taking a flight on United the United app is delightful now it's a really good app I you this is a
00:51:11
commercial airline it's called United Airlines sex you pay for one ticket instead of the whole plan but have you
00:51:15
been to McDonald's recently I actually went to McDonald's yeah you order through an app now and there's a big
00:51:20
screen the point is you walk in there and it's probably not the McDonald's you knew 15 or 20 years ago it's not about
00:51:26
waiting in line and ordering and it that's not how it works anymore there so the point is is that a tech enabled
00:51:32
business or is that still a restaurant well if you spend a lot of your time intellectually contorting yourself to
00:51:38
try to justify why the next version of McDonald's is a tech enabled business you're just going to lose a lot of money
00:51:44
it's a restaurant now all restaurants need technology and what you see by McDonald's is even the oldest and most
00:51:50
established are running forward very quickly to implement technology ology because they know that it creates
00:51:57
efficiency which then flows to the bottom line for them yeah so the reality is that we have lived in this
00:52:03
Wonderland where we've looked at these software businesses that have 80 and 90% gross margins and imposed that
00:52:09
expectation on other markets and then made investment Decisions by trying to justify how that it's a tech enabled
00:52:15
real estate business a tech enabled Healthcare business a tech enabled energy business without being honest
00:52:21
with ourselves that those businesses have over decades because of lots of competition found a consistent
00:52:29
and reliable resting place in terms of gross margins far below 80 and 90% And so
00:52:36
instead of willing Tech enabled businesses to be at 80 and 90 and tricking on I think it's more realistic
00:52:43
to ask yourself why aren't 80 and 90% gross margin businesses decaying to 30 and 40% gross margins like every other
00:52:49
part of the economy when everything will be technology enabled I think that that's a very reasonable question and
00:52:55
and I think the answer is there is no safe SP I don't think that you can justify 80 and 90% gross margins in
00:53:00
software when you can use a model and whip up a competitor I just think that we are all going to a place where
00:53:07
everything is a tech enabled version of something yeah marketplaces would be a notable exception there with network
00:53:12
effects so door Dash versus the tech enabled restaurant asset light marketplaces you and N Soxs have been
00:53:18
involved in a bunch of different marketplaces together sometimes they're asset heavy sometimes they're asset
00:53:23
light when they're asset heavy man it's really hard to make those businesses for
00:53:26
our cax yeah I mean I think we should differentiate between gross margin and then the net operating margin or or or
00:53:36
profit right and so you know gross margin is what is the cost on the margin of providing one incremental unit and
00:53:45
the thing about pure software businesses is that on the margin you can provision
00:53:49
another instance of the product almost for free I mean there's a little bit of Hosting cost at AWS or whatever so so on
00:53:55
the margins it's you know it's like the perfect gross margin business as opposed
00:53:59
to a hamburger as opposed to a yeah a restaurant is going to have very large cost of goods sold or cogs the simple
00:54:08
heris that I use is just does this company have large cogs cost of good sold and are they physical world
00:54:17
cogs if they are it's not a software business it's at best a tech enabled business so just look for
00:54:26
that you know does this business have large physical world cogs now what I would say is if the cogs are virtual
00:54:34
like you know it could be hosting cost or it could be paying twilio for telefony or something like that then
00:54:42
at least it's still not like as good a business because the the margins aren't as good but it's very scalable right
00:54:48
because you're you're not you don't have that like huge friction of needing to scale up physical world infrastructure
00:54:53
physical world Supply chains that kind of stuff so I like virtual cogs a lot better or digital cogs a lot better than
00:55:01
physical cogs I I love it when marketplaces though I mean we could speak to that too you know when I had
00:55:06
Dar on the Pod the other week and when he launches an adjacency hey we're going to sell alcohol hey we're going to sell
00:55:12
groceries hey we're going to add this thing that's right next to the already you know portfolio of of uber offerings
00:55:18
doesn't cost them much right they just have to get the supply side up and running but they already have the demand
00:55:23
side and I think that's where like these super apps are do really well or Airbnb
00:55:26
adding you know some inventory in a new city that they unlock right well true true marketplaces are perfect gross
00:55:33
margin businesses as well because they don't have fiscal inventory that they themselves own what you'll see is with a
00:55:39
lot of marketplaces they'll cheat by buying the inventory themselves at least to jump start the market and then
00:55:47
selling it yeah and so when you see that line item on the p&l the you know that they have real cost of goods sold you
00:55:54
know oh wait a second this isn't a true Marketplace they're providing the service yeah and so again it's just a
00:56:01
way to like catch whether the business is truly one of these great high gross margin businesses or whether it's more
00:56:09
of a tech enabled business that's pretending to be a pure software business yeah direct consumer got people
00:56:14
in a lot of trouble during the last cycle in Venture Capital if you look at a lot of these
00:56:22
companies even the best SAS businesses have seen their gross margins erode by about
00:56:28
15 to 20% it used to be that best-in-class software business can generate 90 90 1% 80 high 80s to low 90s
00:56:38
gross margins now that's not true you see a lot of these best-in-class companies that are in the high 60s low
00:56:42
70s so it already just shows you that that pressure has has come upon the market and so is it that the software
00:56:49
enabled business goes towards 85 or is that the 85% gross margin business goes towards 30 it looks like it's the ladder
00:56:55
that's just what the data says well maybe I'm just categorizing certain costs differently than you are but I
00:57:00
don't know why a software business would go all the way to 30 right because again
00:57:03
sales and marketing don't count in the gross margin GNA doesn't count even R&D doesn't count in the gross margin it has
00:57:10
to be you know a unit cost that you can attribute on the margin to that incremental instance of the product so
00:57:18
things like again paying twio for meter telefony or paying open AI for like metered API access all of that is
00:57:27
definitely in cogs and I think some customer support costs that can be attributed on kind of a per instance
00:57:34
basis that goes in there but if if sales and marketing and R&D and GNA aren't going in there I mean I just I don't
00:57:41
know why it go all the way to 30 I guess I'm just saying that I still think software businesses and marketplaces for
00:57:47
that matter are still the best kinds of businesses on a margin profile basis the
00:57:52
problem is that there's a lot of fake software businesses or fake marketplaces out there that are pretending to be pure
00:58:00
Tech businesses when actually they're they're more like old school businesses that have the veneer of technology and I
00:58:07
think to your point there like the trick of saying I'm an 80% gross margin business but having no profitability is
00:58:14
then who cares so you true when you look at the profitability of these businesses
00:58:20
again you'll be in the the 20 to 30% that's why when you see companies that are in the high 30s to low 50s they're a
00:58:29
very unique and B you should expect that there is something fundamentally monopolistic about them and that is a
00:58:39
simplest way to filter out these companies because in a highly competitive market you cannot extract
00:58:44
those kinds of profit dollars cap capitalism says you can't do that so you can only do it when when you have an N
00:58:50
of one or n of two kind of competitive Dynamic where there's essent a mutual toon with your biggest
00:58:57
competitor yeah it is it is a good point that just because you have good union economics or good gross margins doesn't
00:59:03
mean that the business is profitable at the end of the day good yeah could be mean you could have 80% gross margins
00:59:08
and still be losing a ton of money because you've got too much overhead you've got too much sales and marketing
00:59:13
you've got too much R&D yes so you're selling to customers who don't really need it and then they eventually cancel
00:59:18
right like we see that a lot look at the streamers look at the streamers that's just a big recycling it's just like
00:59:25
people come to the top of the funnel they use the product and then they leave and then you have to reacquire them over
00:59:30
and over again and it and it could be the case that SAS actually looks a little bit like that too at the bottom
00:59:34
line level well when you hit your natural audience it it does get challenging yeah well this is why in in
00:59:39
SAS there's a herisa called the rule of 40 which is for public market SAS companies you want to see that their
00:59:47
operating margin plus their growth rate equals 40 or is greater than 40 ideally so in other words you could have a SAS
00:59:55
business with a 20% operating margin and a 20% growth rate and that would hit rule of 40 and that would be a very
01:00:02
attractive business or you could have I don't know it could be growing 50% year-over-year and its operating margin
01:00:09
could be negative 10% and that'd be okay too because they're losing money but at
01:00:14
least the investment is leading to AB well above average growth you know or you could be growing you could you know
01:00:22
be growing slower you could have a 10% growth rate and have a 30% operating margin and that would also be hitting
01:00:27
the rule of 40 so it's just a simple way of like tracking whether this is a a good business at scale I don't think
01:00:35
stups have to worry about this until they get to kind of the later growth stage yeah when you're in your BC round
01:00:40
you're making 50 100 million yeah you got to be really thoughtful about this in the beginning you're trying to get
01:00:44
product Market fit triangulate on something so shth just mentioned streaming NBC Universal if you didn't
01:00:51
know it paid the NFL $100 million for for the exclusive streaming rights to one that's right one first round playoff
01:00:58
game for the NFL that happened last weekend between the Chiefs and the Dolphins that was on their service
01:01:04
peacock NBC's app basically their version of Netflix or Disney plus it guarded 23 million viewers which makes
01:01:11
it uh the most streamed live event in US history even so that's almost half of what you the Packers and Cowboys had
01:01:21
about 40 million Lions versus Rams same weekend 36 million and so this has brought into question what's going on
01:01:29
with streaming have these businesses gotten ahead of their skis just give you a couple of charts Disney plus took off
01:01:35
like a massive rocket peaked in Q4 of 2022 at 164 million subscribers they're now at 150 million here's a chart I mean
01:01:43
just amazing how uh quickly they got to Netflix is numbers here's Netflix's chart again this is quarterly they're up
01:01:52
to now an all-time high 24 47 million subscribers and the annual growth rate all the way back to 2001 still pretty
01:02:00
spectacular and their revenue also uh very respectable for Netflix however they overspent massively during the peak
01:02:09
streaming era 2019 to 2022 and that's when subscriber growth started to slow obviously they were spending way too
01:02:16
much and other entrance came in like apple plus and Amazon Prime where they really didn't even think that they had
01:02:22
to make a profit they were using streaming maybe to sell more iPhones or to get more Amazon Prime subscribers so
01:02:30
here is the major problem here's the churn chart basically churn means people cancel right and so as these Services
01:02:38
have cut what they're offering the number of Marvel shows or Disney you know having Star Wars shows the churn
01:02:45
goes way up people are also having subscription overload I don't know how many of these I subscrib to but I think
01:02:51
it's all of them or maybe out of these 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 n on the chart I think I'm
01:02:58
I have seven of these so there is definitely some unbelievable subscription burnout and the streamers
01:03:06
in order to get these businesses above water have raised their prices we all know that you've probably seen your
01:03:10
streaming bills you know have three four five bucks added to them every month and
01:03:14
at the same time they're cutting how much they're spending so you're paying more for last chth your thoughts on this
01:03:20
Dynamic if you bring the chart back up here's the most important thing that's worth noting let's take stars as an
01:03:26
example it turns 12% of their users every month which means that over a year they've ched 144% of their user base
01:03:34
that means that they have to basically turn their entire membership base one and a half
01:03:41
times in order just to tread water right so if you start with 100 it's a lot of money that you have to
01:03:48
spend to make sure you end the year at 100 forget about growing if you look at peacock they're
01:03:54
going to lose 100% of their subscribers in a year if you look at Discovery they're going to lose 75% if you look at
01:04:03
max they're going to lose 50 odd percent Apple TV same Hulu and Disney plus will
01:04:09
lose 60% Netflix will lose almost 40% so the only winner in all of this is Facebook and Google The Only Winners are
01:04:20
Facebook and Google because that's where the ads will appear to try to reacquire
01:04:25
these folks right so I guess that's a positive indication but the reality is that money
01:04:30
isn't infinite and so what happens in a dynamic where you have a category where there's just a lot of consumer churn I
01:04:37
think what happens is it evolves in phases and in phase one which is sort of where we are now where there's a bunch
01:04:43
of relatively wellestablished folks is that they are going to initially overspend on content because they are
01:04:50
going to try to differentiate the cost of acquisition based on on content right which makes sense I have a tent pole
01:04:57
come and watch it here you can't watch it anywhere else and I think that was the peacock example where they had this
01:05:03
football game and all these people showed up and they thought this is exactly why we're paying so much money
01:05:09
for these rights because people will show up I think the problem is that when everybody is doing it everybody's doing
01:05:16
it and so you don't know how to differentiate Even in our group chat look at the number of times when
01:05:22
somebody randomly says is there something to watch and everybody's got 50 recommendations guess what I do I
01:05:27
tune it all out because I'm like 50 across six different Services I have no way to track it and then I lose interest
01:05:34
and I'm like you know I'll just stick to YouTube so I think what happens is in Phase One folks spend a lot of content
01:05:41
in phase two they realize that actually what you need to do is spend on a long taale of content
01:05:48
in a much more disciplined way so there's a company that that I know about for example they just signed a
01:05:55
pretty big deal with Amazon hundreds of millions of dollars and I was trying to figure out
01:06:04
is that a lot or a little and it turns out that Amazon's trying to get three or four or five versions of these
01:06:11
going which means that before we probably could have gotten five or 600 million and instead you get two or 300
01:06:17
million it's still an incredible thing but it just goes to show you that there's a lot of competition and so
01:06:21
instead of having a single mode right if you were to graph something where there's a few
01:06:27
pieces that just get all the money now you're smearing this content across all kinds of stuff and I think that that
01:06:35
makes it very difficult to keep folks so I suspect that you're just going to see
01:06:39
a lot of turn I don't I don't like this category at all as an investor so clearly there's been an overspend here
01:06:45
but consolidation is coming freeberg any thoughts on the streaming space I just think this is the opposite of what we
01:06:51
were talking about earlier where there's a free market Market competing and it's
01:06:55
benefiting consumers I mean the point that you made is a really good one that there's a lot of great content to watch
01:07:01
folks that raise prices people cancel so you got to drop prices you got to offer
01:07:05
good content and I actually think this is a really good and healthy thing to see happen is competition that benefits
01:07:12
consumers and there'll be some set of winners here and some set of losers but I think ultimately it's just really good
01:07:18
to see this how it all shakes out who's willing to put up the big bucks who's got the smarter algorithm that predicts
01:07:24
how fresh your content has to be and how unique it has to be relative to other platforms to keep the audience attention
01:07:31
I would argue if you look at those numbers and you look at the performance over time Netflix absolutely rules the
01:07:35
roof in this sense they're an incredible operating team they have an incredible capability of predicting what content
01:07:41
will work how how quickly they have to refresh content how much they should be investing in content per quarter per
01:07:46
month and they're clearly retaining users and making money and others maybe that are newer to the game haven't
01:07:52
figured that out yet but it's just very good to to see the competition so I don't know how to predict what's going
01:07:56
to happen here but it's good to see it's clearly going to be massive consolidation also these folks are
01:08:00
launching Advertising based version so you probably saw Netflix has an advertising tier and so a lot of these
01:08:06
folks uh didn't have those Disney plus I think is going to have one as well you know what no one's paying attention to
01:08:11
is YouTube TV I don't know you guys subscribe to YouTube TV I'm a Hulu person yeah I think it's fantastic if
01:08:18
you look at some third party data on YouTube TV the subscriptions are going through the fraking roof and it's really
01:08:24
interesting to see because with YouTube TV you're basically rebundling the unbundling that happened in cable except
01:08:30
you're doing it over the internet you can access it anywhere so they've basically converted the pipe as the
01:08:35
value to the service itself as the value which you can access anywhere you want on any TV and any room without boxes
01:08:41
while you're on the road on your phone on your laptop and it seems to be kind of highlighting that maybe it wasn't
01:08:47
necessarily the bundling that was the problem but the way that the service was being offered so who knows maybe
01:08:54
bundling versus all of this part and parcel you got to pick five different providers and buy content on the Fly
01:09:00
maybe that's not what consumers want young people don't care about the live channels old people do but yeah Hulu and
01:09:06
YouTube TV are really wonderful products because they work really well on Apple TV the apps work great but they also
01:09:12
work great on your iPhone your iPad so yeah you know they're really spectacular in that way sax well just tie this
01:09:20
conversation back to what we were talking about with margins s and Tech enabled versus real software businesses
01:09:27
I personally have never seen a BTO C subscription business that works the churn is just too high I mean what I've
01:09:34
seen is that the monthly churn rates on a software subscription for consumers is
01:09:40
somewhere in the 5 to 10% range so on a full year basis you're retaining maybe 50% of your customer base you're
01:09:46
effectively rebuilding your business from scratch every two years it's a very tough place to be this is why I
01:09:51
basically skewed towards B2B SAS is because a good B2B SAS business will have net expansion instead of 50% churn
01:10:00
you'll do 120% expansion and so you're actually building a subscriber base with long-term value now how did Netflix do
01:10:08
it I mean Netflix avoided that prohibitive level of churn by spending literally billions of dollars on content
01:10:15
and original programming and again it goes back to the point this is not a pure software pure Tech business it
01:10:22
includes an old school Studio which is very Capital intensive and they financed a lot of the content
01:10:32
acquisition with billions and billions of dollars raised during that Zer period from I think both equity and debt and
01:10:40
you have to wonder if that could be done again in this post Zer period where capital is just a lot scarcer I think
01:10:47
this is going to work really well though for Netflix and Disney man these huge archives that they own these libraries
01:10:52
are going to get them to 3 four 500 million Global subs and this become money printing machines that I
01:10:58
don't think they're going to need a ton of new content the question is whether you could recreate an archive of that
01:11:03
level today given how much more expensive capital is my point is that Zer help Netflix catch up to these
01:11:10
Studios and create this huge library but still I think that what the streaming services have shown in their churn is
01:11:18
that if you don't provide original content and original programming then users will turn off that so you have to
01:11:25
kind of have both you kind of have like the library as filler but if you don't have a hot show come along every so
01:11:32
often the subscribers will turn off that yeah you need to have some new content depending on how deep the library is
01:11:38
feels like Netflix and Disney Plus have done a great job with their libraries just to give you an idea revenue for
01:11:43
Netflix for 2023 33.5 billion 247 million Subs that's a arpo yearly revenue for those folks 136 bucks
01:11:54
a year now the reason you're seeing that uh number not Mak sense if you're paying
01:11:58
15 bucks a month is because internationally Netflix is a lot a lot cheaper but I I love those two
01:12:04
businesses I think they're going to be extraordinary over time Netflix has to acquire a 100 million people a year just
01:12:11
to stay even what's their turn rate 4% a month I think it's fine right so they're
01:12:16
turning half their customer base every year that's my point 100 million people they're rebuilding their customer base
01:12:24
from scratch every two years how does that make sense it's totally fine because what happens is you have people
01:12:29
coming off their parents plan getting their own people go through a bad beat they don't like it you know whatever
01:12:34
they unsubscribe but they all come back back and forth back and forth and then it just keeps growing over time I think
01:12:41
you're describing something that's true I think David is describing why it's a business I mean if they if they
01:12:48
make more money than they spend and I don't think they need to do a ton of advertising eventually you turn through
01:12:53
so much of the market that actually you can't maintain that growth rate I mean if you reactivate maybe you can do it
01:13:00
but I I think that's what's happening from a business perspective the only logical thing that I would do if I was
01:13:06
running one of these businesses is attach it to another business where you can think about it in terms of LTV so
01:13:13
the only obvious example of that I think is Amazon video because you can stick it
01:13:18
beside Prime and a bunch of other things and now you have a very different way of
01:13:22
justifying LTV and minimizing churn and that seems like a I buy that argument Jason I don't
01:13:29
buy like a standalone business like this trying to do it yucky I I no sorry real
01:13:34
quick have you guys dug into Netflix's business I mean they're still growing Top Line the eiton margin continues to
01:13:41
expand I mean all those facts might be true but that churn engine and that recapture engine seems to be working in
01:13:47
a way that they're printing cash and growing it's pretty impressive I don't know if there's a limit there but I mean
01:13:52
I I haven't looked at I think that is the key question yeah to the bundling Point apple plus which is
01:13:59
the TV component not the hardware product is bundled as part of this apple one program which is kind of like Amazon
01:14:06
Prime and so I think you're seeing a little bundling there Netflix also added video games to make it even more sticky
01:14:12
so I think there's like a subscription super app coming which the New York Times has kind of done right with Wordle
01:14:17
crosswords the athletic wire cutter and the New York Times so I think you're going to start to see
01:14:23
honestly you just had a jumble of names that went in one year and out the other I don't remember a single one you said
01:14:28
this is my point for most people Jason not a media fish AO New York Times is doing fantastic doing this bundling some
01:14:34
people come for the crosswords and Wordle and that's why they subscribe and they like the news other people come for
01:14:38
the news they discover crosswords and wire cutter and the athletic and they stay for that so I I do think there's
01:14:43
going to be an incredible business here I'll take the other side of it yeah they
01:14:47
spent a lot on content though during that period where Disney plus came in and I think everybody's now has a little
01:14:53
more discipline and the budgets came way down if you didn't know the Hulk cost 250 million or something the She-Hulk
01:14:59
rather that cost 225 million for Nine episodes what the first Avengers 225 million wait sorry 225 250 million for
01:15:06
for Nine episodes of the shek and people criticize it for having bad CGI so it's
01:15:12
I think there's like new discipline coming to was this a Netflix show a Disney Plus show a Disney Plus show yeah
01:15:17
I I don't know about you guys I've been rewatching The Sopranos I find some of the content on HBO Max to be the best
01:15:22
content out there oh my god I've there's so much rewatchability on it Disney doesn't have that much rewatchability I
01:15:28
don't know the only reason I keep my Max subcription is cuz I'm waiting for House
01:15:31
of the Dragon season two yeah I mean if they didn't have that one show I'd be like yeah cut it you know yeah I do
01:15:37
think this could help Netflix because a lot of these streaming services came along we had way too many right we got
01:15:43
saturated with streaming services and most of them you subscribe to you may not even remember subscribing you may
01:15:50
just subscribe to a free trial to get an NFL game and then you get build because
01:15:54
you forgot to cancel it by the way yeah have you guys ever gone into Apple iCloud settings and looked at your
01:16:02
subscriptions oh boy yeah get in there and guys just RI go go if you have like an extra five minutes you will save so
01:16:11
much money by going into subscriptions in your settings and just turning them all off I was shocked I was shocked I
01:16:18
mean this is part of your austerity measure absolutely you know how many subscriptions to Disney plus I had how
01:16:23
many well this is what's so gross is why they even let me do this I had three what
01:16:31
three how's it even possible one for the plane one for kids I had three I had three I had two hpos I had two Netflix
01:16:42
Oh no Netflix keeps sending me message saying hey you need to update your payment information but then I'm
01:16:47
watching Netflix on my Apple TV so I'm like I'm clearly playing for paying for it somehow so confusing and I have the
01:16:56
perfect solution for you there are credit cards now where you can set a spending limit and so what I do is every
01:17:02
year I just turn off the limit on that credit card I just take it from unlimited or uncapped down to zero and I
01:17:08
do this for business as well and then all the subcriptions time out you know what I call that what Jeff Jeff does
01:17:15
that for me Jeff does it yeah but I mean having somebody go in there I have a Jeff I have a Jeff know but it's very
01:17:21
simple you only use one card for subscriptions and then you turn it off every year to see which ones you want to
01:17:25
keep going it works really well and then you move the other ones to a new I don't
01:17:28
even want to say how many thousands of dollars I was wasting on like dual lingo I was like I'm paying for dual lingo and
01:17:35
then I was paying for your Italian it's still terrible yeah terrible and then I I had I had have a Cas against them no
01:17:40
then I had dual lingo and I had Babble and I had Rosetta Stone so I'm like my Italian is not improving because of any
01:17:47
of these three apps but I was paying them collectively like $400 I had a whoop subscription I don't even have a
01:17:52
whoop when Rick Thompson started manscaped I was I signed up for manscaped I get all
01:17:59
this ball deodorant I've never used it once we know we know we sit next to in poker we know it's not working bro just
01:18:06
a message to manscaped I have tried to cancel I have called I have emailed I took it upon myself to try it's
01:18:14
impossible to cancel they won't even let you reset your account so you can get a
01:18:17
link to cancel it's so hard and still your balls are terrible yeah my balls are phenomenal no I've sat next to you
01:18:26
in poker man not real okay let's get into Plastics and get off chamat balls I mean how did we get here uh
01:18:35
subscription Services subscription Services yes streaming is at a cross wordss AC Crossroads apparently so
01:18:42
they're really trying to make that ball deodorant happen aren't they they're trying to make it happen well they're
01:18:46
trying to make fetch happen ball deodorant is not happening I'm sorry I mean what are you supposed to do Squat
01:18:51
and swipe how does this work is it a spray are you lifting and spraying is it you got to give him
01:18:57
points for creativity trying to create like a new thing but yeah I was trying to support my friend in signing up for a
01:19:03
subscription service and now I can't cancel that's my problem that's my predicament could you also take a shower
01:19:09
and your soap I don't know just putting it out there I I'm I it's what's there does it have to do with the product I
01:19:16
signed up because Rick was the Venture investor that seated it and started I supported my friend yes
01:19:23
and now I want out and I cannot get out you can't get out every every time I try
01:19:27
to get out they pull me back in I'm just going to say when it comes to manscape no no testimonials please no
01:19:32
testimonials the worst part is like you you know it comes to the house and oh somebody opens your ball deodorant and
01:19:39
puts it on your desk they do no they put it staff knows you have saky balls well
01:19:44
that's what's so funny they put it right on the kitchen counter so as I walk through the
01:19:49
everybody I grab it and I'm like who's seen this bottle ah there it is what is it there bottle going shaving
01:19:58
[Music] Bal oh my God so how do you apply it is it just a little dabble do you no I mean
01:20:08
you know it's not a spray it's apparently an ointment sax it's an ointment this is far too much
01:20:14
information yeah I'll try it don't I'll try it it'sing you know what I'm going to
01:20:21
give you my my subscription it's got a why not oh man use the promo code shth for 10% off your use the promo code
01:20:35
dictator you get 10% you can never cancel but it's d i k Tater dick Tater yeah use S promo
01:20:47
dictator get 10% off your ball deodorant at manscape all right freeberg it's your
01:20:52
turn to to shine no not ball deodorant we wanted to talk about micro Plastics a study came out it's terrifying we've
01:20:59
known Plastics have been terrible for years obvious turned into some sort of political discourse with straws and
01:21:04
everything but Plastics are horrible we shouldn't be using them but this study confirms a bunch about drinking
01:21:10
microplastics educate us on this study that everybody's talking about right now Dr freedberg I I wouldn't start with the
01:21:18
statement that Plastics are awful Plastics are polymers which are long chains of what
01:21:25
are called monomers this is hydrogen carbon and oxygen that comes together to form these specific molecules and then
01:21:32
we can kind of bake them into crystall likee structures and the reason the Plastic industry took off is because it
01:21:38
ended up being very cheap to create materials that we could turn into chairs that we could turn into bottles to move
01:21:43
stuff around a lot of applications everything from solar photovoltaics to our computers to our laptops to our
01:21:50
phones everything has some form of these polymers in it the polymers that are commonly used for making uh bottles that
01:21:59
we consume beverages out of are a pet uh Plastics these pet Plastics are made from a combination of natural gas and
01:22:07
crude oil so we kind of have a production process where we get the carbon hydrogen and oxygen that's
01:22:13
naturally found in natural gas and crude oil convert it into these molecules that
01:22:18
we turn into long chains and we turn them into bottles and fill those bottles and they end up being
01:22:23
a lower carbon footprint than using glass about 5x the carbon footprint to use glass instead of plastic in in um in
01:22:33
making a bottle to store stuff and move liquids around 40% cheaper and a lot of other kind of reasons why the industry
01:22:41
and the world adopted Plastics not just for bottle beverages but for other applications so in Bottle beverages
01:22:47
because these are polymers there're these long chains of little molecules that are stuck together some of those
01:22:53
chains break and then some of those little chunks of those molecules end up floating around in the liquid that we're
01:22:59
consuming and what this study did that kind of highlighted a a set of data that hadn't really been studied well before
01:23:06
is they used a form of spectroscopy so kind of a multispectral light system Shining Light at different wavelengths
01:23:13
on the liquid in a bottle in a plastic bottle to figure out how many of these little plastic particles there were in
01:23:19
the liquid and in doing that they found that there was on the order of 10,000 little plastic particles per
01:23:27
liter of water or per liter of soda or drink or Gatorade or whatever the beverage is that you're drinking the
01:23:33
real question then is well how risky is that so if you look at a lot of the the health agency studies the kind of well
01:23:41
adopted and and well researched efforts on is there toxicity associated with pet
01:23:46
Plastics on its own they find that there's very little genotoxicity or no genotoxicity meaning it do doesn't
01:23:51
change your DNA there's no carcinogenicity so it doesn't cause cancer but there are other studies
01:23:57
recently that have shown different mechanisms by which these little tiny microplastics might end up in your cells
01:24:04
because they absorb into your body and they're small enough that they can cross into barriers they can get into your
01:24:09
brain they can get into your cells when they're in your cells there are other mechanistic studies that are done in a
01:24:14
Petri dish as opposed to being studied in the body where they've demonstrated that they could actually disrupt the
01:24:19
function of organel like mitochondria endo plasmic reticulum so all these little things that operate in your cell
01:24:25
they can cause irritation they can trigger chemicals to be produced that might cause allergies that might cause
01:24:30
inflammation and so on and so forth so while the general molecule of pet itself isn't known or shown in any way to cause
01:24:38
cancer or to cause changes in your DNA there are other mechanisms by which these little tiny Plastics might be
01:24:44
disrupting cellular function might be causing other health issues and that's now going to open up a big area of
01:24:50
research that that's going to be predicated I think on the fact that this study now shows that there are thousands
01:24:56
hundreds of thousands of little pieces of tiny plastic in these plastic bottles that we're drinking water and soda and
01:25:02
juice from that are getting into our body and into ourselves 240,000 little pieces in in the average
01:25:08
one liter plastic bottle it's a pretty scary statistic when you hear that small enough to cross the blood brain barrier
01:25:16
right and in rats and mice they've shown that these little microplastics can actually accumulate in the brain if they
01:25:23
consume enough of them now the reason this hasn't been well understood or studied in the past is we kind of look
01:25:28
at the aggregate amount of plastic that's in a liquid and it's like oh the amount is so small it doesn't matter but
01:25:33
when you start to look at how small these little pieces of plastic are and add them up the cumulative effect over
01:25:40
time that they can actually cross into cells cross the blood B brain barrier maybe are not getting removed from the
01:25:45
body that's opening up a whole lot of research because there's no easy way to just scan a body and say is there
01:25:50
plastic in it how much plastic is there because there isn't a good chemical signature for it and what these guys did
01:25:55
is they used light to look in the liquid to find the Plastics which we can't easily do in the body today so freberg
01:26:01
are you going to drink plastic bottle water anymore I'm not okay Jamal I've already stopped this started for me
01:26:08
about four months ago my wife basically said we're getting rid of all plastic and at first I really pushed back and
01:26:14
I'm like this is crazy and she just kept talking to me about it and showing me all this data and yeah about a month ago
01:26:21
I would say I switch so now I use glass and a cff like this yeah much better we got rid of all of the plastic in our in
01:26:29
our house in the gym no more bottles it's wasteful anyway like why not if you have beautiful filtered water at home
01:26:35
put it in a craft sure but the the scary thing I mean it's a little bit more inconvenient I'll be honest with you but
01:26:41
it is very scary and I think that it does alter the phenotype of the human body over time
01:26:48
and I think you would have to be insane to bet against against that and I suspect when you look at the rates of
01:26:55
depression and autism and Alzheimer's and Dementia and autoimmune diseases Crohn's rheumatoid arthritis to think
01:27:02
that all of these environmental factors have no impact I think is is taking a very scary bet here's what I do I buy
01:27:10
these glass bottles on Amazon you know two or three cases of them I have the best water filter system at home we fill
01:27:17
them we put them in the refrigerator and we haven't bought plastic in years uh sacks wow in years in years only because
01:27:25
I care about the environment because I'm a good person good for you good for you
01:27:30
Jason I'll also say like that that application is a pretty small like I think on the order if I'm right 80% of
01:27:36
bottled beverages are drunk outside the home so people are buying stuff at convenience stores at gas stations at
01:27:43
markets taking them with them to work and that's how a lot of plastic bottles are consumed by way remember the US is
01:27:50
such a small percentage of the global population you go to Africa you go to Brazil you go to China there isn't a
01:27:56
great like people don't have these amenities that we have in our upper and middle class America that plastic
01:28:01
bottles have provided access to products that consumers around the world otherwise wouldn't be able to afford so
01:28:07
there's a reason they exist but by the way I I also want to just be really clear there isn't conclusive evidence or
01:28:12
science that shows these plastic micro particles or nanoparticles are causing these health effects there's certainly a
01:28:19
lot of questions that it brings on well what is the cumulative effect of these little things getting into sales do they
01:28:24
get into sales what they do when they're why would anybody bet that it's zero right so that's theide right well the
01:28:30
upside is that people get to access cheap beverages on the street that otherwise people that are living on
01:28:34
$113,000 a year that can buy a you know a plastic soda for 25 cents you can also
01:28:41
buy can though yeah so that's that's definitely an alternative they're a little more expensive generally plastic
01:28:46
just became the cheapest container Sachs your thoughts sorry all right guys I stepped
01:28:52
out to get a a drink here did I miss anything it would be better if you had put a straw in your water bottle that we
01:29:01
drinking now I understand your level of depression was causing it sax just killing those Arrow water bottles yeah
01:29:10
did I miss something that was a science cor I stepped out also I I use uh these beautiful
01:29:16
contigos I think some people use yetis or other kind of things and uh I actually carry them with me only because
01:29:22
I try to like think about the environment just the amount of plastic being created I don't know if you've
01:29:28
seen this but like you go to Whole Foods now or you go to any supermarket and you
01:29:32
see this wall of salads freberg like this is unconscionable like the we're literally giving people salad in a giant
01:29:41
plastic box first yeah let me just say a couple things about this because there's
01:29:46
this conception that this is just awful awful awful but Plastics there there is a degradation of these pets when they're
01:29:53
exposed to sunlight there's a recycling system that many of much of this material ends up in
01:29:59
much of it yeah I I think that's actually correct not a lot but what would the alternative be right so the
01:30:04
alternative is you put in a glass thing and you charge people $15 for a couple pieces of lettuce the reason the reason
01:30:10
plast the Plastic industry emerged is because it provided a lowcost way to transport materials and that we're we're
01:30:16
all very wealthy so we have to just step outside of our bubble for a second and recognize that most people you know the
01:30:22
the dollar difference is a huge difference for most consumers they're not going to make that dollar leap so
01:30:27
you know the fact that Plastics emerged is to support a consumer Market that's grown up all over the world yeah but how
01:30:33
how does this make sense look at these bananas just as an example to give people an idea bananas already come with
01:30:38
a case called czy and they're literally wrapping bananas in plastic now and you know this is where regulation makes
01:30:47
sense there must be a there must be a gas in here or something cuz they're trying to keep the bananas from going
01:30:52
bad that's why put in I want to shout out like this is where I think regulations actually do work France
01:30:58
Spain a lot of countries now are just saying you know what for fruits and vegetables like yeah don't put them in
01:31:03
plastic please we're not going to allow you to do that and and I think I'm not pro plastic by the way I'm not drinking
01:31:08
plastic from plastic bottles but we have to be cognizant of where this industry emerged from what the science says about
01:31:14
it like I I don't want to just be flipping plastic what doing in the oceans freeberg is unconscionable like
01:31:22
this is not like a do good or thing it's just there's no reason that we need to have Plastics as a should be I'll give
01:31:29
you some good optimism around this there's a lot of efforts right now to develop microbes that can actually
01:31:35
biodegrade these pet Plastics so there's so we're engineering these microbes that
01:31:41
will produce enzymes these are little bacteria that'll produce enzymes those enzymes can then be made in the plastic
01:31:48
itself so then the plastic will biodegrade within a year or after you use it so there's a lot of this kind of
01:31:54
effort on how do you make naturally biodegrading Plastics using biosources and biological molecules as part of the
01:31:59
production process and a lot of big plastic um packaging companies and Industrial biotech companies are
01:32:05
investing in this area this is where collectivism can do good you know like if we actually as a society say we want
01:32:12
to do sustainable packaging like because of the tragedy of the commons like you're saying freeberg because it's
01:32:17
cheaper capitalism like there's no floor here you know to stop people from doing
01:32:22
this uh and stop from using Plastics unnecessarily like wrapping bananas Etc all right listen this been an amazing
01:32:28
episode of the Allin podcast for the dictator wish me luck today boys wish me luck use the promo
01:32:35
code dick we'll be following the live stream on the chat following the live stream use promo code dick to get 20%
01:32:41
off your ball deodorant hey what do you guys think about actually like running some poker tournaments through the year
01:32:47
called Allin 100% that would be super fun no 100% I think we could replace the WSOP pretty quick I mean it' be pretty
01:32:57
rep the WSOP I'm not kidding we we have Phil helmuth on our Squad I think Jason's right and but not just helth I
01:33:03
think you could get all the pros because I think the problem is like those championships have been so watered down
01:33:08
right there's 52 of them just in Vegas in June and July and then now you have like these circuit rings so that there's
01:33:16
bracelets and rings and then there's the European one then there's this one there's the Bahamas
01:33:22
you you can't have I think in order to be a world champion can you really have like 150 winners a year sax are you
01:33:30
bored with hold him well I'll I'll play with you guys but yeah I'm kind of bored
01:33:34
with it yeah I played a tournament yesterday Big O 37 players I came in first I don't know if you play B where
01:33:41
did you play I had a speaking gig yesterday in La after the speaking gig I was going to the airport I had a little
01:33:46
time and I just stopped by Hollywood Park where stop you did I wanted to see the new one you're the
01:33:54
best I don't know there's nothing more boring playing a tournament with people you don't know oh it was great it was
01:34:01
great there was like a fight tourament last forever I mean I did the WSOP a couple of times and you know I think I
01:34:06
lasted like three days it's a long time to be playing poker table people I got to the final table and they wanted to
01:34:14
chop and I was the short stack I was like well you know my flights in for in a couple hours I'd rather not Chop and
01:34:19
this woman like I got in a fight at the casino almost this woman was wearing a mask and she goes this mother effer
01:34:27
won't chop and I said ma'am I it's my option to not shop Madam Madam I said ma'am Madam whatever they them and she
01:34:39
went crazy and the floor came over said ma'am you have to sit down she called me
01:34:43
a mother fer twice to my face you went on to win and I was the short stack and I went on to win the
01:34:49
tournament I kid you not how much did you win 1 1400 bucks so the hourly rate on that you make like
01:34:56
$14 an hour it was $100 buying so yeah it was uh 200 bucks an hour but here's what happened so I had this guy
01:35:02
massively you play for seven hours six hours maybe it was awesome it was great I was I had the time of my life it was
01:35:08
the first time I played in a tournament for like since we played the one drop that time I haven't played in a
01:35:13
tournament since then it was so much fun Jason goes from playing the 100K buy to
01:35:19
the $100 buer I had a time of my life because I've never played Big O before it's where you have five cards and it
01:35:26
was high low it was so Dynamic and fun oh yeah yeah big oh yeah yeah big is so fun pole cards and it's high low so I I
01:35:33
was like I'll learn Big O I've never I've literally not played one orbit of Big O I won the tournament it was
01:35:38
awesome and so then it's me and this one guy and you know I've got like I've got
01:35:43
him like three to one or whatever and uh he's like listen I got to go please I got my kids I was like no problem I'll
01:35:49
chop it with you if we take 400 off the top for the dealers the dealer cries she
01:35:54
was like what and I was like yeah just I'll chop it with you evenly and so I won and I I just chopped it up and gave
01:36:00
a big tip what what did you did you get like a a certificate or like I think they put you on the website or something
01:36:05
like that like for let's it up yeah it's on the poker Classic website that I I uh
01:36:09
or I don't know if it's called the poker Classic whatever it is but my point is we would have a great tournament we do
01:36:14
each of the games each of us gets a free roll into the game and then everybody else Buys in I like it saak do you like
01:36:19
PLO or you just like chestn no I like hold them but I'm just saying I wouldn't play with a bunch of
01:36:26
strangers you know I like playing with friends you know but to goof off and have fun yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
01:36:32
like sitting the problem with tournaments you RSVP to my game to show up at six show at 8:30 yeah and then
01:36:39
listen to yourself on the Pod and then leave yeah he's editing the Pod at the table there's a lot of things you can do
01:36:44
while at a poker game U you can watch your podcast you can edit your podcast for the Sultan of science the king of
01:36:52
beep David freeberg and yeah definitely the Rainman himself we're live from Davos we'll see you next year byebye
01:36:59
wait did you give me the shout out am I I did for the dictator himself use the promoe chairman dict no chairman dict
01:37:05
dictator chairman dictator use the promo code chair man or dick to get 10 20 or 30% off can somebody from manscape
01:37:15
please let me cancel please please it's like 10 bucks a month it's just bucks a month I'll give you the
01:37:22
money I just don't want to get I want to be able to C I'll pay you 10 bucks a month to not send
01:37:30
deodorant let your winners ride Rainman David and instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy
01:37:41
with it love you queen [Music] of best these are that's my dog taking driveways oh man my will meet me at we
01:38:01
should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy cuz they're all this useless it's like this like sexual
01:38:06
tension that they just need to release your we need to get merch our [Music] I'm going all
01:38:26
[Music] in

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This episode stands out for the following:

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  • 70
    Most unserious (in a good way)
  • 65
    Most quotable
  • 65
    Best overall

Episode Highlights

  • Davos 2023: A Shift in Perception
    The World Economic Forum has transformed from a prestigious event to one requiring apologies for attendance.
    “It's almost like embarrassing now that you are associating yourself with the elite cabal.”
    @ 06m 07s
    January 19, 2024
  • Milei's Powerful Speech
    Javier Milei's speech at Davos challenges collectivism and advocates for free markets, resonating widely.
    “The West is in Jeopardy.”
    @ 17m 43s
    January 19, 2024
  • Boeing's Regulatory Capture
    The discussion highlights how regulatory capture has compromised safety in the airline industry.
    “The government has not been the supporter of the safety agenda that citizens think.”
    @ 22m 06s
    January 19, 2024
  • Trans Group's Excess Profits
    An audit reveals Trans Group's excessive profits due to lack of competition in the aerospace parts market.
    “Trans earned excess profit of at least $21 million on spare parts.”
    @ 29m 38s
    January 19, 2024
  • Adam Newman's Vision
    Adam Newman had a compelling vision for apartment living, but execution faltered.
    “He had a great vision and achieved it, but financial aspects were overlooked.”
    @ 41m 15s
    January 19, 2024
  • Commercial Real Estate Challenges
    The commercial real estate market is struggling, with many waiting for interest rates to drop.
    “All the commercial real estate guys are hanging on by their fingernails.”
    @ 45m 42s
    January 19, 2024
  • The Rule of 40 for SaaS
    A simple metric for evaluating SaaS businesses: operating margin plus growth rate should equal 40.
    “You could have a SaaS business with a 20% operating margin and a 20% growth rate and that would hit the rule of 40.”
    @ 59m 42s
    January 19, 2024
  • Streaming Wars: The Churn Problem
    As streaming services cut offerings, churn rates skyrocket, leading to subscription burnout.
    “Subscription overload is real; I think I have seven of these!”
    @ 01h 02m 51s
    January 19, 2024
  • The Streaming Landscape Shift
    Streaming services face challenges with subscriber retention and rising costs, leading to a potential consolidation.
    “Clearly there's been an overspend here but consolidation is coming.”
    @ 01h 06m 44s
    January 19, 2024
  • Subscription Struggles
    Navigating the complexities of subscription services can be a nightmare!
    “It's impossible to cancel, they won't even let you reset your account!”
    @ 01h 18m 11s
    January 19, 2024
  • Microplastics in Beverages
    A shocking study reveals thousands of microplastics in our drinks.
    “It's a pretty scary statistic when you hear that small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier.”
    @ 01h 25m 11s
    January 19, 2024
  • The Thrill of Big O
    Experiencing the excitement of playing Big O for the first time.
    “I've never played Big O before!”
    @ 01h 35m 22s
    January 19, 2024

Episode Quotes

  • Davos has become a joke.
    E162: Live from Davos! Milei goes viral, Adam Neumann's headwinds, streaming's broken model & more
  • We've allowed monopolies to build up.
    E162: Live from Davos! Milei goes viral, Adam Neumann's headwinds, streaming's broken model & more
  • You can never judge a VC based on one investment.
    E162: Live from Davos! Milei goes viral, Adam Neumann's headwinds, streaming's broken model & more
  • Just because you have good margins doesn't mean the business is profitable.
    E162: Live from Davos! Milei goes viral, Adam Neumann's headwinds, streaming's broken model & more
  • You will save so much money by turning off subscriptions!
    E162: Live from Davos! Milei goes viral, Adam Neumann's headwinds, streaming's broken model & more
  • I had the time of my life!
    E162: Live from Davos! Milei goes viral, Adam Neumann's headwinds, streaming's broken model & more

Key Moments

  • Air Flute Performance00:58
  • Davos Critique05:31
  • Collectivism vs. Capitalism13:07
  • Accountability Crisis33:16
  • Churn Rates1:02:33
  • Content Spending1:10:12
  • Subscription Woes1:18:11
  • Big O Adventure1:35:22

Tension Over Time

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