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E156: Ivy League antisemitism, macro, SaaS recovery, Gemini, Figma deal delay + big Friedberg update

December 08, 2023 / 01:32:29

This episode covers the viral aftermath of the Tucker Carlson interview, anti-Semitism hearings at prestigious universities, and the state of the economy. Guests include David Sachs, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg.

The discussion begins with the success of the Tucker Carlson episode, where Sachs and Palihapitiya share their thoughts on Carlson's intellectual curiosity and the backlash they received for not pushing back harder during the interview.

They then transition to the recent anti-Semitism hearings involving university presidents from Harvard, Penn, and MIT, where they faced criticism for their responses to questions about free speech and anti-Semitic chants on campus. Sachs, who identifies as Jewish, expresses concern about the treatment of Jewish people in the context of woke identity politics.

Friedberg adds to the conversation by discussing the implications of these events for Jewish students and the broader political landscape, suggesting that many may feel they no longer have a home on the left.

The episode concludes with a discussion on the economy, highlighting mixed signals in consumer sentiment and the implications of rising credit card debt, while also touching on the potential for a rebound in the software sector.

TL;DR

The episode discusses the Tucker Carlson interview's impact, university anti-Semitism hearings, and current economic conditions.

Video

00:00:00
Sach how are you doing with your Tucker
00:00:02
Afterglow was an amazing episode the
00:00:04
feedback has been great it's the number
00:00:06
one episode of the year after vake I
00:00:09
think and trending to be maybe a million
00:00:11
views on YouTube so how's the Afterglow
00:00:14
yeah I did notice there's one particular
00:00:16
clip that's going viral where he calls
00:00:18
you stupid yes there's that one do you
00:00:22
see that one I thought Tucker was
00:00:24
incredible I found him so intellectually
00:00:26
interesting and it's not always the case
00:00:29
that great
00:00:30
moderators and interviewers make great
00:00:32
guests but he is so intellectually
00:00:35
curious and has unique points of view
00:00:38
that you want to hear them out and his
00:00:40
style of talking I find also like very
00:00:43
easy to listen to I thought he was
00:00:45
really impressive really really
00:00:47
impressive you don't have to agree with
00:00:48
everything he says quite honestly and
00:00:51
some people probably won't but I found
00:00:53
him really compelling I don't agree with
00:00:55
half of stuff he said or maybe a third
00:00:58
but I too enjoyed it very much
00:01:00
I thought he was great saxs I got you
00:01:02
know as the person people believe has
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Trump derangement syndrome thank you for
00:01:06
your Tweet you know or the person people
00:01:09
consider like the farle they're like why
00:01:10
aren't you pushing back why aren't you
00:01:12
pushing back and this has become a Maga
00:01:14
takeover you had Jared kusher he didn't
00:01:16
get pushed back you didn't get push back
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to Tucker you know one of the things
00:01:19
we're trying to do here I'm speaking for
00:01:21
myself is to let people talk let them
00:01:23
put out their position and if you do
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that and we did that with the
00:01:27
presidential candidates exceptionally I
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think then you can decide for yourself
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and yes we'll ask a hard question here
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or there or maybe you know push them a
00:01:35
little bit but we don't want to make it
00:01:37
uncomfortable to come here and make it
00:01:39
like they come here and we take the 10
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worst things about the person or the 10
00:01:43
criticisms and run through them you can
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get that on cable news you can get that
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on either side of the aisle what I want
00:01:48
to do is let them talk and then actually
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interesting things come up why do you
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always get this feedback because people
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perceive me because you say I have Trump
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derangement syndrome as the token left
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guy that's all and I'm a moderate and I
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try to keep saying that but people keep
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wanting to say I'm like far left I just
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want folks to realize that we're going
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to go and have more guests especially if
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we can learn from those folks and
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especially if hearing them out can
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expand how we think about what's going
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on in the world so get over it and it's
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about learning and being curious hard
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conversations will be the norm here on
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the Pod we're going to have any guests
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we damn well please and some people will
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choose to not ask hard questions I will
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choose to ask hard questions but I won't
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hijack the show and so please don't
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email me and tell me I didn't do my job
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fighting for the left or whatever that's
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not my job I'm going to ask a hard
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question when I want to on the show but
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I'm not going to hijack the show with 20
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of them Bravo to you I suspect you're
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getting a lot of pressure from the
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private Equity wives
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yes I mean what a great moment what a
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great moment people on ssris Jason are
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blowing up your
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inbox let your winners
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ride Rainman David
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S and instead we open sources to the
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fans and they've just gone crazy with
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[Music]
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it well the conversation that
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everybody's going wild with so let's
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just get into it is these college
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anti-Semitism hearings on Tuesday the
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house education committee spoke with the
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presidents of Harvard pen
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MIT uh and they faced a lot of tough
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questions many of the videos went viral
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and and I guess the the part that
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specifically went most viral was the
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presidents of these organizations
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refusing to specify whether or not the
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cause for mass murder of a particular
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group
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genocide of students were or were not
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against the codes of conduct against
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bullying and harassment at places like
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Harvard Claud and gay specifically was
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asked over and over again whether chance
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of inata were violations of Harvard's
00:03:56
code of conduct she didn't give a great
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answer I'm just curious Sachs obviously
00:04:01
you're Jewish you went to the IV League
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passionate about free
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speech and you've talked about Surplus
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politics he is what's your take here
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should students be allowed to March
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around
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campus chanting from The River To The
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Sea into F Etc because of free speech or
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you know did these code of conducts come
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into play and what was your reaction
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when you saw their answers because
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obviously this a nuanced issue well look
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I mean I have a very high bar for free
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speech so I would allow you know almost
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everything the problem that these
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University presidents have is that's not
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their position they're trying to wrap
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themselves in the cloak of freedom of
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speech and academic freedom but that has
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not been their practice on campus for
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many years on a previous program we
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talked about that fire survey which
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pulled students about how free they feel
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to express opinions on campus the
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results were dismal for the IV League
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the Ivy League scored way worse wor than
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State schools and in fact remember that
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Harvard got the blue tari a
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0.0 yes they were last place students
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there reported that speakers were
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shouted down they weren't even invited
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they weren't allowed to to continue and
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finish their speeches so Harvard has an
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abysmal record on freedom of speech so
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it's hard to believe the president of
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Harvard when she claims that she's to
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standing up for freedom of speech and in
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fact if you were to apply that same
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standard to other groups do you really
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believe I mean imagine if the
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representatives at that hearing had said
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to the president of
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Harvard you know are you allowed to
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advocate for genocide of black people or
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trans people I mean would the answer
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have been the same I don't think so I
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agree I think absolutely not so the
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question is why are Jews being treated
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differently than these other groups and
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I think this all goes back to kind of
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woke identity politics where in the woke
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ideology there are certain groups that
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are victim groups and there are certain
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groups that are oppressor groups and if
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you're in a victim group then you get
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special protections and if you're in an
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oppressor group then it's just assumed
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that you can't really suffer
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discrimination or you know Injustice in
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that same way and I think
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that Jews have basically been put in an
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oppressor group they basically are being
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put in the same group as as as all white
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people and I think this has come as a
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great surprise to a lot of donors to
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these University campuses who I think
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were okay with woke identity politics to
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some degree when they
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believed that Jewish people were a
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potential victim group and that
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anti-Semitism was being treated as real
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and lo and behold they have found out
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that no they're an oppressor group and
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they're not protected and even very
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explicit cases of anti-Semitism are not
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being recognized by these universities
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because again it doesn't match up with
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this woke ideology I think it would have
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been a lot better for a lot of these
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donors to realize that woke identity
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politics was a culde saac it was
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something that they should not have
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wanted to participate in but I think
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they're now waking up to the realization
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that that in this again oppressor
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oppressed dichotomy they're on the wrong
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side of that I think you're exactly and
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they don't like that realization exactly
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correct identity politics rad to Nowhere
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freeberg you gave a passionate speech
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here about being forced to pick a side
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when we're talking about the conflict in
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the Middle East and I guess there's
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underpinnings here of your
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discussion anti-zionism
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anti-Semitism and where's the line
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between he just caring about humans and
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children being killed versus maybe
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harassment Etc I'm curious when you saw
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these answers what was your reaction and
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yeah how do you feel about
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it I was surprised that
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the Congress people didn't ask the
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university presidents what would your
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reaction
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be if they started to burn crosses and
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say something
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about white
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supremacy black people don't belong in
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the US immigrants don't belong in the US
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if you picked another ethnic
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group and made statements that have
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traditionally been deemed threatening
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and harassing would they have made a
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difference of judgment and if so what's
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the difference between what's gone on
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this week or in recent weeks weeks and
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what's gone
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on in other civil rights actions that
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have taken place in educational
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institutions and I think that would have
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been like a really kind of telling
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understanding of the discernment that's
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that's being made on campus today versus
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in the
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past it is interesting to see that
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there's clearly a sense of being
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torn with respect to allowing the
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freedom of
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expression about groups that feel
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oppressed to be allowed to happen on
00:09:36
campus because that is probably a
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majority opinion and that's why I think
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this is particularly difficult for these
00:09:44
presidents to handle the situation and
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I'm not excusing their behavior or their
00:09:48
actions or their comments yesterday but
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there's clearly something underlying
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this that I think we need to just
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acknowledge which is that there is a
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large number number of people perhaps
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the majority of people that feel that
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there is some oppression going on and
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that that oppression has a right to be
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spoken for and that this behavior is the
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only way the Boston Tea Party did not
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follow convention the Boston Tea Party
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was a rebellion against an institution
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that was oppressive and the Boston Tea
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Party was the only action that was going
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to make a change that could have driven
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a change and
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Rebellion against an institution or an
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establish M that causes
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oppression isn't supposed to have rules
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it isn't supposed to follow convention
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it isn't supposed to be a discourse and
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so I think that that sentiment is where
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a lot of
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this conflict is coming from for the
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presidents in making these decisions
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that they see that the majority of
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people truly believe that there's
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oppression that this is the course to
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speak up for that oppression and that
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they can't step on that because if they
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did they would be causing more
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disruption to more people than allowing
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it then it's a very difficult situation
00:11:01
that they find themselves in so I'm not
00:11:03
excusing it but I'm trying to frame up
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why I
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think yeah otherwise smart people might
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be acting this way frankly I think it's
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worth asking what would be the case if
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this were
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other ethnic groups or other people that
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were being kind of you know told hey
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we're going to have an inata against X
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or Y or Z would the actions have been
00:11:24
the same chabat if they were asked that
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same question is calling for the
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genocide of black Americans
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asian-americans
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indian-americans trans
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Americans harassment or
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bullying what do you think their answers
00:11:39
would have been and then where do you
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think this is going I don't know what
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their answers would have been but
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obviously it's morally unacceptable as
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best as I can tell they were coached by
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lawyers before they appeared in front of
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Congress and they found some verbal
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gymnastics maybe to try to defend their
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point of
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view and in it they lost all moral
00:12:03
Clarity because to your point Jason if
00:12:06
and to freedberg point if you just
00:12:07
replaced the Jewish people with any
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other cohort of people maybe in this
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moment it was harder to see but it's
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like the these should not be debatable
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difficult moral questions
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so how did we get
00:12:23
here I think that over the last 40 years
00:12:28
and to be honest it started when the US
00:12:30
News and World Report started to rank
00:12:36
universities they
00:12:40
gamified the desire for these
00:12:42
universities to get at the top of a list
00:12:44
which allowed them to theoretically get
00:12:47
better recruits but really what it did
00:12:49
was allowed them to build massive asset
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management
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businesses that ultimately consumed
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these
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schools and now what you find is that
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the learning process has gotten totally
00:13:03
perverted because it became a second
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order priority to being able to raise
00:13:09
money and to manage assets I think
00:13:12
Harvard management company at one point
00:13:14
was one of the largest owners of
00:13:16
Forestry in America you know the other
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large owner was John Malone a rapacious
00:13:22
capitalist so what this shows you is
00:13:25
that the mission of these universities
00:13:26
which is to actually celebrate free
00:13:29
speech and to teach kids to think
00:13:32
critically has been lost and I think
00:13:34
that this was a
00:13:36
very simple way of seeing it and it
00:13:39
should be disturbing to people that this
00:13:42
happened that the places where you send
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our 18 and 19 and 20 year old
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kids cannot at a very simple level teach
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the moral Clarity to say teaching or
00:13:54
supporting even the concept of genocide
00:13:57
should is wrong
00:13:59
can you teach it in a historical context
00:14:01
obviously but that's not what they even
00:14:03
said there right so they got into a
00:14:05
level of verbal gymnastics which I think
00:14:07
is really it should be viewed by
00:14:09
everybody as pretty morally unacceptable
00:14:11
I think it's well said and it's clearly
00:14:13
bullying or harassment if you're going
00:14:15
to chase Jewish students around campus
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and I think that's what we saw now if
00:14:20
you were to chamath or saxs or maybe
00:14:23
Sachs best since you're super have a
00:14:26
super high Benchmark for freedom of
00:14:27
speech if these were students in a
00:14:30
debate club or in a lecture hall giving
00:14:33
their position taking hard questions
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people opting into it wouldn't feel like
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bullying
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harassment
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yet the hypocrisy is so thick that they
00:14:43
you know they chase people like Ben
00:14:44
Shapiro off- campus Etc when they had
00:14:48
something controversial to say at many
00:14:49
of these
00:14:50
schools but I think we can all agree
00:14:53
chanting about genocide and chasing
00:14:55
students around campus and disrupting
00:14:57
the campus that feels like bullying or
00:14:59
harassment I don't know that and I agree
00:15:01
with you chamat this mental gymnastics
00:15:02
that they went through with these
00:15:04
statements it's just very easy to say
00:15:05
yes that's harassment yes that's
00:15:07
bullying now if you did it in a lecture
00:15:10
hall and you or you wrote a paper Sachs
00:15:13
maybe doesn't feel like bullying or
00:15:14
harassment feels like freedom of speech
00:15:16
yeah yeah look I mean we can you can
00:15:19
always debate the the hard cases and in
00:15:23
free speech and where the lines should
00:15:24
be and again I would draw the lines in a
00:15:27
way that make makes most speech
00:15:30
permissible but when you're talking
00:15:32
about chasing students around campus to
00:15:34
yell in their face that clearly is
00:15:35
bullying and harassment and there's no
00:15:38
reason to ever allow something like that
00:15:40
but again the point I would make is that
00:15:42
what you're going to see in the wake of
00:15:43
this is that a lot of Jewish people are
00:15:48
realizing that they don't have a home on
00:15:50
the left anymore and I expect that many
00:15:53
Jews are going to start shifting right
00:15:55
and enter the Republican party to a
00:15:58
place where I've been for a while and
00:16:00
and I think this goes back a long way so
00:16:02
if you go all the way back to the
00:16:03
original civil rights movement in the
00:16:05
1960s I think that many Jews were an
00:16:08
integral part of that movement and they
00:16:10
felt a great solidarity with the
00:16:12
original Civil Rights Movement civil
00:16:14
rights leaders because they felt like
00:16:16
they had a shared history of persecution
00:16:19
that blacks in America had suffered from
00:16:21
racism Jews around the world felt like
00:16:23
they had suffer from anti-Semitism and
00:16:26
they basically believe that all peals
00:16:27
should be treated equally that we should
00:16:29
have individual rights and and basically
00:16:31
they were advocating for a colorblind
00:16:34
standard right a colorblind treatment of
00:16:36
all people and so I think that Jews
00:16:38
historically have wanted to be on the
00:16:41
left for that reason but I think what's
00:16:43
happened over the last few decades is
00:16:45
that the civil rights movement in
00:16:47
particular and the left have moved to
00:16:49
this woke ideology where it's no longer
00:16:52
about colorblindness it's more about
00:16:55
identity groups and instead of trying to
00:16:58
get past racial differences it's been
00:17:01
about accentuating them and so we've had
00:17:04
this whole Equity agenda which is really
00:17:06
defined as redistribution from one
00:17:09
racial group to another racial group I
00:17:11
think that for whatever reason a lot of
00:17:13
Jews just hadn't confronted the reality
00:17:16
that the left had really changed in this
00:17:18
way and again I think it goes back to
00:17:20
the fact that they thought that oh well
00:17:22
if we're going to be defining identity
00:17:25
groups in this you know woke way you
00:17:27
know Jews obviously should be one of
00:17:29
these victim groups but they're waking
00:17:31
up to the fact that Jews are not you
00:17:33
know Jews are just in the in the minds
00:17:35
of kind of woke ideology Jews are just
00:17:37
white people okay successful white
00:17:40
people with too much powerful white
00:17:41
people with a Jewish background and as a
00:17:44
result they're part of an oppressor
00:17:46
class and I think that for a lot of
00:17:50
Jewish people who are waking up to this
00:17:51
they're realizing way to Second this is
00:17:53
actually a very destructive
00:17:55
ideology and it makes us the bad guys
00:17:58
and so I would expect that again a lot
00:18:01
of Jewish people are waking up to the
00:18:04
ways in which the left has changed and
00:18:07
they're realizing that that is not a
00:18:09
hospitable place in the political
00:18:11
Spectrum for them to be and I would
00:18:13
expect there to be kind of a a
00:18:16
pilgrimage now of more Jews in America
00:18:19
towards the right as opposed to
00:18:21
remaining on the left where they've
00:18:22
always been yeah the left needs to
00:18:25
remember people should be judged not by
00:18:28
the color of their skin or their
00:18:29
ethnicity but the content of their
00:18:33
character uh it's like quoting MLK could
00:18:35
get you cancelled right now I think to
00:18:38
actually say that people should be
00:18:39
judged by their character color
00:18:40
blindness is
00:18:42
considered you know a lot of people call
00:18:43
that racism now that's like that by the
00:18:45
way that that is the mainstream
00:18:47
conservative view on civil rights
00:18:50
related issues is that color blindness
00:18:52
should be the standard right you want to
00:18:53
treat everyone individuals yes exactly
00:18:57
but that it was the liberal point of
00:18:58
view this was the Civil Rights
00:18:59
movement's basic tenant yeah we've lost
00:19:02
it all by the way I think there is just
00:19:05
one other caveat we have to say about
00:19:06
this whole issue which is that it should
00:19:09
be possible to criticize the state of
00:19:12
Israel or netanyahu's government or the
00:19:14
bombing campaign they're conducting in
00:19:16
Gaza or the actions that led up to this
00:19:19
event there should be room to criticize
00:19:22
Israel without being called an
00:19:23
anti-semite I want to be like really
00:19:25
clear about that and there needs to be a
00:19:28
pretty wide latitude to have that
00:19:31
conversation and I do think that one of
00:19:34
the mistakes that's
00:19:36
happened for a while now is that Jewish
00:19:40
groups have been a little too quick on
00:19:41
the trigger to call people anti-semites
00:19:44
for
00:19:45
criticizing the policies of the Israeli
00:19:47
government and again I think there needs
00:19:49
to be wide latitude to do that however I
00:19:52
don't think that's the type of speech
00:19:54
that we're talking about here Jason I
00:19:55
think you framed it up pretty well this
00:19:57
is people who have veered off of
00:20:01
legitimate criticism whether you agree
00:20:04
with it or not the legitimate criticism
00:20:05
about the Israeli government's action
00:20:07
into this sort of genocidal rhetoric and
00:20:11
that's what we're talking about here
00:20:13
absolutely any final thoughts from the
00:20:15
rest of the panelists before we move on
00:20:16
to business topic you guys think that
00:20:18
they're going to get fired or what do
00:20:19
you think is the right consequence for
00:20:21
this I think they're getting fired I
00:20:23
think the money as you pointed out in
00:20:25
your Tweet storm is going to cause that
00:20:27
they're going to a lot of donations what
00:20:29
do you think free I'm not tied into
00:20:31
these like donor groups it's the donor
00:20:33
groups that are going to drive the
00:20:34
decision because they're going to call
00:20:35
the boards and so I think it's really
00:20:37
board dependent obviously Amman is a big
00:20:40
donor at Harvard and he's been very
00:20:41
vocal about what he wants to see
00:20:44
Harvard's board
00:20:46
do I think this is going to drive a big
00:20:50
change whether individuals get fired I
00:20:53
really don't know I think of the four if
00:20:56
I were to just have to make a bet I'd
00:20:57
say probably at least one of them's
00:20:58
getting fired I don't know it's like but
00:21:01
it's certainly going to change a lot Jam
00:21:03
you think they're G to get fired what do
00:21:04
you think as you WP final word Jam yeah
00:21:06
I think I think freeberg was right you
00:21:07
have to follow the money and I think the
00:21:09
money has been very clear that this
00:21:11
can't stand and I think that that's good
00:21:12
because I think the people who've been
00:21:15
donating have enough moral Clarity on
00:21:17
these kinds of topics to say this is
00:21:19
unacceptable so how long will it take to
00:21:21
filter through the decision- making I
00:21:23
don't know because I I also don't know
00:21:24
how this Machinery works but I think
00:21:26
what people have to decide immediately
00:21:29
right now
00:21:30
is all the kids that are applying for
00:21:32
Early Access and early decision do you
00:21:35
really want to go to these
00:21:37
schools and the parents do you want your
00:21:40
kids to be going to these schools so I
00:21:42
think that's that's a kind of a a
00:21:44
decision that can probably happen right
00:21:46
now or needs to happen right
00:21:48
now while all of this other kind of like
00:21:51
donation driven asset manager driven
00:21:53
decision- making takes shape all right
00:21:55
let's get into the state of the economy
00:21:58
there a really interesting story I sent
00:22:00
to the group chat from the financial
00:22:02
times about tribalism now impacting how
00:22:05
people view the economy it's called
00:22:08
expressive responding basically how you
00:22:10
feel about the economy is based on which
00:22:12
tribe you're in here's a a quick
00:22:15
snapshot of what's going on if you're a
00:22:17
Republican and you were doing really
00:22:20
well under Biden you're going to say
00:22:22
things are terrible in the economy
00:22:23
during Trump Dems were doing awesome
00:22:25
like everybody else but because they
00:22:27
hated Trump they said economy was trash
00:22:29
here's the chart that explains that and
00:22:33
then I'll give you a couple quick bullet
00:22:34
points of where the economy is but you
00:22:36
see the Divergent there in the charts
00:22:38
and based on the different
00:22:41
administrations being in power and if
00:22:42
you look at the second chart it's pretty
00:22:44
telling this isn't happening this
00:22:46
tribalism is not happening in other
00:22:48
countries you can see France Germany UK
00:22:50
people feel about the economy how the
00:22:53
economy is actually doing pretty wild
00:22:56
data and I'll let you respond to that in
00:22:58
just a second I'm just going to give you
00:23:00
eight quick hits on what's going on in
00:23:02
the economy credit card debt it's
00:23:03
reaching all-time highs we surpassed one
00:23:06
trillion back in July keeps Rising
00:23:08
people are taking money out of their
00:23:10
401ks hardship distributions increased
00:23:12
13% between Q2 and Q3 super spending
00:23:15
just claped in October growing only. 2%
00:23:18
last month versus 7% in September but
00:23:21
November year-over-year increases in
00:23:23
Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending
00:23:25
so maybe that's a head fake I don't know
00:23:27
maybe people bargain hunting hunting
00:23:29
consumer Prices rose just 3.2% year-over
00:23:32
year in October versus 99.1% in June of
00:23:36
20122 Home sell 13year low in October
00:23:40
most folks are betting interest rate
00:23:42
increases are over and summer betting
00:23:44
interest rate Cuts will start as early
00:23:46
as q1 ki's forecast say we should expect
00:23:49
to see and that's a prediction Market
00:23:51
two quarter point cuts by July Sachs
00:23:54
you've been bearish on consumers and all
00:23:57
this crazy debt
00:23:58
is this the beginning of the end is this
00:24:01
the end where are we at in the consumer
00:24:03
spending cycle it's hard to know because
00:24:06
there's so many mixed
00:24:08
signals kobay letter had a great tweet
00:24:11
on this there's a lot of mixed economic
00:24:13
data right now but I mean the economy
00:24:15
seems to be doing fairly well but the
00:24:18
electorate doesn't feel it and you're
00:24:20
seeing in recent weeks you're seeing a
00:24:23
lot of commentary by pundits trying to
00:24:27
convince the American people that the
00:24:29
economy is better than people evidently
00:24:32
feel that it is and I think that one of
00:24:35
the big reasons
00:24:37
for this Gap is that over the last few
00:24:41
years we've had a lot of
00:24:43
inflation
00:24:45
and the rise in price levels has not
00:24:47
been matched by the rise in people's
00:24:49
incomes so people simply feel worse off
00:24:52
because their spending Powers diminish
00:24:55
now it's true that the current inflation
00:24:57
rate is going down but all that means is
00:25:01
that the price level now is growing at
00:25:03
call it 3% is a year it's still growing
00:25:06
it's not like prices have come down
00:25:08
they're just rising at a slower rate so
00:25:11
you know last year we had a 9% in
00:25:14
inflation and inflation's been high the
00:25:17
last couple of years the rate of
00:25:19
increase is slowing down but people's
00:25:21
wages if you're workingclass have simply
00:25:24
not kept up with the price of goods and
00:25:27
services is and so I think people feel
00:25:30
worse off than they did a few years ago
00:25:33
and you can try to convince them till
00:25:36
you're blue in the face that actually
00:25:38
the economic data is great but if you're
00:25:40
somebody whose wages have not kept pace
00:25:43
with price levels you're not going to
00:25:44
feel better off chamach on your first
00:25:47
point I think that there
00:25:50
is this thing that we've grown
00:25:52
accustomed to which
00:25:55
is how you feel about what's happening
00:25:58
versus what the data may say and I think
00:26:01
that the press and
00:26:04
journalists in a pretty untrustworthy
00:26:08
way amplify this separation so we hear
00:26:12
about the economy doing well maybe it's
00:26:15
not doing well we hear how the economy
00:26:17
is not doing well and it actually is
00:26:19
doing well nobody wants to write about
00:26:21
the data people want to write about
00:26:23
their feelings and their feelings
00:26:25
largely are more defined by the people
00:26:27
around them and what they feel so simple
00:26:29
example Nick if you just want to throw
00:26:31
this up but there was a this is the
00:26:32
Federal Reserve data this is not anybody
00:26:34
else's data but you would think that the
00:26:36
wealth Gap is being exacerbated and you
00:26:39
would think that wealth gains are going
00:26:41
to a few and again without having an
00:26:43
opinion the data shows something truly
00:26:46
incredible which is that the American
00:26:48
dream is not hanging on by a Lifeline
00:26:51
but more and more American families are
00:26:54
achieving it you know 12% of American
00:26:57
families are now considered millionaire
00:26:59
households 8% are considered
00:27:01
multi-millionaire households that's
00:27:03
incredible but what's even more
00:27:04
impressive is that even as they do well
00:27:08
the cohort underneath them the folks
00:27:10
that make 150 to 250k a
00:27:13
year are the ones that are absolutely
00:27:15
crushing and they're making
00:27:17
more than the top 10% of all families so
00:27:21
I think Jason the the broader economic
00:27:24
takeaway I have is unless you're willing
00:27:26
to look at the raw data
00:27:29
the risk is high that you will be fed an
00:27:34
emotional perspective that amplifies
00:27:36
your
00:27:37
bias or causes you to reject that view
00:27:40
because it just seems so untrustworthy
00:27:41
and it doesn't map to what you're seeing
00:27:43
it's very very hard to tell the truth
00:27:45
that is Federal Reserve data that tells
00:27:47
the truth about the US economy and it
00:27:49
turns out that you know the economy is
00:27:51
pretty good and doing a lot for a lot of
00:27:54
people freeberg where you said you've
00:27:57
brought up
00:27:58
the issue of credit card debt as a
00:28:00
leading indicator it's continues to
00:28:02
Surge but there is some inkling that
00:28:05
consumers may be tapped Out I.E tapping
00:28:07
their
00:28:08
401ks so what's your take on the
00:28:11
consumer and this tribalism that we're
00:28:14
seeing in the interpretation of data and
00:28:16
how people feel about the economy no I
00:28:18
mean I think if people don't feel like
00:28:20
they're progressing on the order of 10%
00:28:22
a
00:28:23
year in terms of income adjusted for
00:28:27
purchasing
00:28:29
power they're generally going to be
00:28:31
unhappy and they're going to project
00:28:32
that as a general statement about quote
00:28:34
the
00:28:35
economy and so the more people that
00:28:37
that's the case the more you see that
00:28:39
happening and so while there may be you
00:28:41
know a minority of people that are
00:28:43
seeing great economic
00:28:46
Mobility if a large enough percentage of
00:28:48
people I don't see it roughly call it
00:28:50
10% increase in lifestyle ability year
00:28:55
toe that's going to you know catch up to
00:28:58
these overall scores of consumer
00:28:59
sentiment I think the way that
00:29:01
economists measure the economy is a lot
00:29:02
different than the average person
00:29:03
measures the economy which is really
00:29:05
their own you know purchasing power and
00:29:07
income sa sure that's look at the end of
00:29:09
the day the question that people ask
00:29:12
themselves which is the question that
00:29:13
Ronald Reagan asked voters in 1980 is
00:29:16
are you better off than you were four
00:29:17
years ago and I think that a lot of
00:29:19
people particularly workingclass people
00:29:21
don't feel better off because mainly
00:29:23
their wages have not kept pace with the
00:29:26
overall
00:29:27
inflation level not just measured on a
00:29:29
one-year basis but Over a four-year
00:29:32
basis and I do think this could explain
00:29:34
some of the tribalism Jason is that
00:29:36
we've talked about this before that the
00:29:38
biggest Gap in the electorate is between
00:29:40
professional class and working class if
00:29:43
you're a professional class meaning you
00:29:44
have a at least one college
00:29:46
degree by more than 30 points you're
00:29:49
likely to be a Democrat and if you're a
00:29:51
working class which just means you know
00:29:53
no college degree let's say High School
00:29:55
educated you're much more likely to be a
00:29:56
Republican the parties have sort of
00:29:58
flipped the Republican party is now a
00:29:59
working-class party I think a lot of
00:30:01
people find that very surprising it's
00:30:03
not the party of you know fatat Bankers
00:30:05
anymore and and you know the Fortune 500
00:30:08
it's so the parties have really flipped
00:30:10
and I do think that workingclass people
00:30:13
are most impacted by
00:30:15
inflation if you're kind of in lower to
00:30:18
Mid income and your wages the wages of
00:30:21
Labor have not gone up and prices have
00:30:24
then you're going to be worse off I do
00:30:26
think that is a big part of it
00:30:28
and I think the media is sort of working
00:30:29
on overdrive right now to convince
00:30:31
people that they should think that their
00:30:33
circumstances are better than they
00:30:35
actually are and um and may look maybe
00:30:38
the overall economic data right now is
00:30:41
mixed to positive I'll certainly concede
00:30:45
that but I think for the average person
00:30:47
what they care about is their pocketbook
00:30:48
and it's far from clear that they're
00:30:50
better off now than they were four years
00:30:51
ago Jason what do you think I think it's
00:30:53
a very important segment because your
00:30:55
correct sack in a very nuanced Point
00:30:58
multiple things through it once here
00:31:00
there is still sticker shock from
00:31:01
inflation I went to buy birthday cake it
00:31:04
was $47 for a cake I was shocked how
00:31:07
does birthday cake go $47 is it made of
00:31:09
cocaine well no no I just put the
00:31:11
cocaine all over the top but yeah that's
00:31:13
you know I think I got truffle shaved on
00:31:15
it I literally felt like it was a white
00:31:16
truffle cake and this was a small cake
00:31:18
it was nuts anyway there is sticker
00:31:21
shock the truth is though wages are very
00:31:24
strong right now and wages are slightly
00:31:26
out pacing inflation but that is a new
00:31:28
phenomenon correct Sachs that is a new
00:31:30
phenomenon so people are still feeling
00:31:33
the sticker shock but at the same time
00:31:35
unemployment and wages Drive how people
00:31:38
feel and people are feeling obviously
00:31:40
very confident as you see in the credit
00:31:42
card debt when you're confident to
00:31:44
chat's point about just follow the money
00:31:46
and look at the actual numbers people
00:31:47
would not be taking out credit card debt
00:31:49
they wouldn't tap the 401K if they felt
00:31:51
they've got great job prospects they
00:31:53
have options for jobs it's a 50-year low
00:31:56
in unemployment which is is unbelievable
00:31:58
that that's continued and wages are
00:32:00
increasing Uber drivers are now making
00:32:02
$34 $36 and listen I've been tracking
00:32:05
how much they make from the beginning it
00:32:07
was $15 then $20 and
00:32:09
$25 so wages are increasing massively
00:32:12
the GDP is 5% or something like that and
00:32:15
unemployment is low so the economy is
00:32:17
actually doing extraordinary that's just
00:32:19
the fact but the sticker shock is very
00:32:22
very real so I think we can wrap it
00:32:24
there unless anybody wants to add
00:32:25
anything by the way just
00:32:28
over the last month there's been a huge
00:32:29
rally in stocks especially gross stocks
00:32:31
Bitcoin has now rallied to
00:32:33
44,000 what yeah that's nuts a firm is
00:32:37
up like 20% today that's you know the
00:32:39
buy now pay later companyc on strong
00:32:43
Christmas spending like you're saying
00:32:44
all the stocks sacks that bottomed
00:32:47
because of interest rates have now just
00:32:49
started to massively rally massively so
00:32:52
all the secular this is all based on
00:32:55
expectations of rate Cuts coming sooner
00:32:56
than people thought and I think Bill
00:32:58
Amman has really LED this trade and he
00:33:01
timed it perfectly apparently
00:33:04
by basically going long the bomb market
00:33:07
like a month ago 10 years at 417 411
00:33:10
sorry I mean we're we're off like you
00:33:13
know 80 basis points in like a couple
00:33:15
months it's nuts right but all all this
00:33:17
Euphoria we've gone from Fear to Greed
00:33:19
and you know really in one or two months
00:33:22
it's all driven by rate expectations
00:33:24
that people are expecting a rate cut in
00:33:27
q1 and so far that's not really
00:33:29
justified by the fed's hawkish rhetoric
00:33:33
but people nevertheless seem to think
00:33:34
it's coming I think that this could be
00:33:37
oh do you want to put on my tinfoil e
00:33:40
conspiracy
00:33:42
conspiracy a
00:33:46
sound I I think I think there will be a
00:33:48
ray cut in q1 and I think this is the
00:33:50
Biden bailout let's go I think this is I
00:33:53
think this is a Biden bailout by the FED
00:33:56
because if they cut rates in q1 that's
00:33:58
going to make everyone feel really flush
00:34:00
it takes about six months to work its
00:34:01
way into the system but that's going to
00:34:03
give a big boost to the Biden campaign
00:34:05
if you see a quartero rate cut in
00:34:07
q1 a trillion of the 5.7 trillion in
00:34:11
money market accounts will rip into the
00:34:14
market oh wow that'll be nuts just
00:34:17
people knowing that they're on the way
00:34:19
down that they peaked and on the way
00:34:21
down is going to unlock a lot of capital
00:34:22
it's going to unlock a lot of capital
00:34:24
and to be clear it's a small group of
00:34:26
people who believe it's coming in the
00:34:27
first quarter Bill Amman and David Sachs
00:34:30
the majority according to prediction
00:34:32
markets think we'll have two of them you
00:34:33
know by the summer without debating
00:34:36
whether it happens in first quarter or
00:34:38
second quarter the more fundamental
00:34:40
thing is if you look two years out you
00:34:42
probably see rates around 2 and a half%
00:34:46
and
00:34:47
that's 160 basis points from here that's
00:34:50
the big big change that I think helps
00:34:53
all of us quite honestly yeah and let's
00:34:56
segue here here great segment by the way
00:34:59
gentlemen because in our backyard what
00:35:01
we do every day in terms of capital
00:35:03
allocation and building companies the
00:35:06
cleanup work continues it was a rager
00:35:08
folks people partied well into the next
00:35:11
day and we're still seeing seeing the
00:35:13
cleanup carda uh has some great data and
00:35:16
this is data amongst Carta users which
00:35:18
is a subset of users willing to pay an
00:35:21
expensive price to manage their cap
00:35:23
tables the number of companies that shut
00:35:25
down after raising 10 million which is a
00:35:27
very high Benchmark that's up
00:35:29
238% in 2023 from 47 companies last year
00:35:34
to 112 this year also VC firms and I'm
00:35:38
seeing this very quietly happening this
00:35:40
isn't reported on VC firms are very
00:35:42
opaque about laying people off or
00:35:44
reshuffling the deck but a firm called
00:35:46
open view out of Boston just abruptly
00:35:49
shut down they had 70 plus employees
00:35:51
they just raised about 600 million of an
00:35:54
$800 million Target for their fund
00:35:57
there were reports about grof not
00:35:59
hitting their target and reshuffling a
00:36:01
bit that might have been overstated to
00:36:02
be
00:36:03
honest but on the bright side we're
00:36:05
seeing some rebounding in ARR of the
00:36:08
public SAS companies that started to
00:36:10
Rebound in Q3 here's the chart from
00:36:12
altimer looks like we hit bottom in q1
00:36:16
of 2023 another bright spot public firms
00:36:19
that are continuing to downsize are
00:36:21
getting rewarded by the public market
00:36:22
Spotify just did a third layoff 177%
00:36:26
it's around 1,500 employees so I guess
00:36:29
Sachs everybody was thinking SAS was
00:36:32
over it was the end of days we talked
00:36:34
about not a a a recession in SAS but a
00:36:37
depression and I think that was accurate
00:36:39
how are you feeling about the private
00:36:41
company market and maybe stabilization
00:36:44
or the return of growth in in SAS
00:36:46
companies well what I've been saying for
00:36:49
the past year year and a half is that
00:36:51
we've been in a software recession the
00:36:53
overall economy may not have been in a
00:36:56
recession because the consumer has
00:36:58
stayed strong as you said consumer
00:37:00
spending has stayed strong so the B to C
00:37:02
part has held up the economy but I think
00:37:04
in B2B and particularly in software
00:37:07
there has absolutely been a recession it
00:37:09
started in the first half of 2022 with
00:37:12
rate hikes there was a huge revaluation
00:37:16
of grow stocks and you saw multiples
00:37:20
come down on SAS valuations from in the
00:37:23
public markets as high as 35 down to
00:37:26
seven or eight something like that in
00:37:29
private VC world we saw valuations go
00:37:33
from call it 100 times AR to something
00:37:35
more like 30 times AR so the first half
00:37:37
of 2022 we saw valuation correction but
00:37:40
then around mid 2022 what I started
00:37:43
seeing in all my board meetings was
00:37:44
every startup started missing its sales
00:37:47
forecast and they started reforecasting
00:37:49
down and that process really continued
00:37:51
for a year and we saw the exact same
00:37:53
thing in the public markets and public
00:37:56
SAS companies as well and it's really
00:37:58
remarkable how the data from the public
00:38:01
stocks that our friend jam and ball from
00:38:05
altimer has been
00:38:07
publishing you know regularly how that
00:38:10
has matched up with what I've seen kind
00:38:12
of anecdotally in board meetings and you
00:38:15
know in conversations that's super cor
00:38:19
that the the CEOs and the boards
00:38:22
understand hey these private Market
00:38:23
valuations have to in some way be
00:38:26
informed by public this is a very sure
00:38:28
because the public stocks are the exit
00:38:29
comps right so you know if the public
00:38:32
stocks are worth I don't know a third of
00:38:35
what they used to be then private
00:38:37
valuations have to reflect that but in
00:38:39
any event I want to go beyond just
00:38:40
talking about valuations here I want to
00:38:41
talk about the business results and
00:38:44
again for this time period from call it
00:38:47
mid 2022 to Mid
00:38:50
2023 there was a software recession
00:38:53
software companies were cutting jobs
00:38:55
they were reforecasting DT down they
00:38:57
were growing slower in many cases they
00:38:59
were actually shrinking I mean some
00:39:00
companies lost
00:39:03
ARR because of churn you know a lot of
00:39:06
their customers were shutting down or
00:39:08
sharpening their pencils they were
00:39:09
consolidating vendors the last year has
00:39:12
been a really really tough time in the
00:39:14
software space but I think now we've
00:39:16
turned a corner I started seeing in the
00:39:19
last couple of months I started seeing
00:39:20
green shoots in some of my board
00:39:22
meetings and now here we have this chart
00:39:24
from jam and can you just put this on
00:39:26
the screen again where we saw that
00:39:28
finally in
00:39:29
Q3 we went from four quarters of
00:39:32
negative growth in net new AR to finally
00:39:36
a quarter of Positive Growth now 2% is
00:39:39
not a great number but at least we are
00:39:41
finally positive as opposed to negative
00:39:44
which means that n new AR was shrinking
00:39:46
I think again the the software assession
00:39:48
I'm calling an end to the software
00:39:50
recession and officially is it an
00:39:52
official breaking breaking news saxs has
00:39:55
called an end so let let the party begin
00:39:58
I think software revenues are going to
00:40:00
rebound I think the open question that's
00:40:03
remaining then is Will valuations
00:40:05
rebound or will you have to grow into
00:40:08
the last valuation or some truncated
00:40:11
valuation and this is where you know
00:40:14
even if rates go to
00:40:15
2% are people going to be as excited
00:40:18
again to bring the public markets back
00:40:20
to 15 and 20 times for ARR and that's an
00:40:24
open question I think the market says no
00:40:27
which means that even as growth comes
00:40:29
back you still have a valuation reset
00:40:32
that may actually explain why startups
00:40:35
are shutting down why Venture firms that
00:40:38
you know if you looked at that firm in
00:40:40
in Boston that shut down they had some
00:40:42
seemingly very good companies in their
00:40:43
portfolio so there should be nothing
00:40:45
stopping them from continuing to raise
00:40:47
capital and invest but I just suspect
00:40:49
the the End Market that they operate in
00:40:52
is going to be value constrainted if
00:40:54
they pay top dollar for things that
00:40:57
are now just worth a lot less even if
00:40:59
they double Revenue I'll give you an
00:41:01
example we talk to the private Equity
00:41:03
guys a lot just because we try to
00:41:04
understand where they are buyers right
00:41:07
why is that important shath explain why
00:41:08
private Equity versus public markets and
00:41:10
how they think about businesses because
00:41:11
I think it's a very important point that
00:41:13
you've made to me privately I think that
00:41:15
when you look at the ecosystem the
00:41:18
ecosystem doesn't work if you never get
00:41:22
liquidity to your employees and to your
00:41:25
shareholders ERS so liquidity happens in
00:41:28
one of two
00:41:30
ways it can go in the public markets or
00:41:32
you can transact to private Equity why
00:41:34
because they have almost as much money
00:41:37
and frankly more in many cases to pay
00:41:40
than a public market can give you via a
00:41:43
traditional IPO so I think that they are
00:41:45
a pretty rational buyer and they do a
00:41:48
very good job because they are a
00:41:50
concentrated buyer of finding a very
00:41:53
fair price what is the real honest
00:41:55
market clearing price and so if you
00:41:57
don't want to look at the market through
00:41:59
rose-colored glasses and you want
00:42:01
sobriety ask a private Equity investor
00:42:04
what they would buy your position for
00:42:06
that's why I spend a lot of time talking
00:42:07
to them because I want to know what this
00:42:09
stuff is really worth and what I would
00:42:11
tell you is that even for companies that
00:42:13
are in the hundreds of millions of
00:42:16
ARR the premiums that they're willing to
00:42:19
pay are between three and five times ARR
00:42:22
at the highend and that a lot of deals
00:42:25
get transacted between one and three
00:42:26
times AR that may not be what people
00:42:28
want to hear but that's because when you
00:42:30
look at the underlying ability to
00:42:32
generate cash flow many of these
00:42:34
businesses haven't proved it
00:42:36
yet and so they want to buy things in a
00:42:39
margin of safety where they can come in
00:42:41
and cut certain expenses while still
00:42:45
helping to grow in certain markets all
00:42:48
of that used to be a 10x multiple in the
00:42:51
public markets so if private Equity is
00:42:52
buying for three to five times and
00:42:54
really one to three times
00:42:57
it's going to be hard for the public
00:42:59
market buyer to be paying a lot more
00:43:01
than that got it can I build on that
00:43:02
this is a chart that was published on
00:43:04
December 1st by Jamon at altimeter and I
00:43:08
do think it speaks to the valuation
00:43:11
question quite well you can see here
00:43:14
that there's this line at 7.8 times
00:43:19
which I think refers to 7.8 times next
00:43:21
12 months Revenue uh that is the
00:43:24
long-term pre-co average so that is
00:43:26
where the average SAS stock has traded
00:43:30
over a long period of time we're
00:43:32
currently as of December 1st we're at
00:43:34
5.8 I think it's probably a little
00:43:36
higher now because the Market's pretty
00:43:38
much rallied over the last five days but
00:43:41
you can see that we're still trading
00:43:43
below the long-term average in terms of
00:43:47
multiples and part of that is because
00:43:49
interest the 10- year is still at 4.3%
00:43:52
although it's come down quite a bit you
00:43:54
can see a peak there around 5%
00:43:56
now it's at 4.3 if you believe that the
00:44:01
10 years is going to go back down to I
00:44:03
don't know this 2 and a half 3% range
00:44:05
and if you believe that growth is
00:44:08
reaccelerating then I think there is
00:44:11
room you know for this number the 5.8
00:44:15
number to at least grow into the
00:44:19
long-term average which is
00:44:21
7.8 so there there is room there I think
00:44:24
that as the St are priced today it
00:44:28
doesn't feel like they're overpriced
00:44:30
let's put it that way and I never want
00:44:32
to tell anyone what to buy but you can
00:44:35
see here that we are still trending
00:44:36
below the long-term average he should
00:44:38
pull this number back to 2010 uh
00:44:40
interesting so at the start of the super
00:44:42
cycle yeah after the Great Recession
00:44:44
yeah yeah it's not a bad point and
00:44:46
probably pull it back frankly all the
00:44:47
way to 2005 2006 because you had enough
00:44:50
companies there that were public that
00:44:52
were sassy software companies including
00:44:54
Salesforce might be a six and set 7.8
00:44:56
and we might be at the 20-y year average
00:44:58
that's a really good point I'll ask BR
00:44:59
to do that freeberg switching to you you
00:45:02
have been a capital allocator and
00:45:04
Company
00:45:05
formation executive for the last well
00:45:08
close getting close to a decade and you
00:45:10
made big news this week instead of doing
00:45:13
more funds which I know you had a lot of
00:45:15
people interested in backing your funds
00:45:17
you decided you're going all in and that
00:45:20
you are choosing to take the highest
00:45:23
performer most promising company in your
00:45:24
portfolio and become CEO of that company
00:45:27
explain your decision because I think it
00:45:29
does relate exactly because you're got
00:45:31
skin in the game here the most skin
00:45:33
possible which is your time you've
00:45:35
decided to go the CEO out put all your
00:45:36
eggs in one basket explain your thinking
00:45:38
we started a business at the production
00:45:40
board which is my
00:45:42
firm four years ago with Jud Ward who's
00:45:46
the CTO and co-founder of this business
00:45:48
who came up with some pretty novel ideas
00:45:51
on how we could use Gene editing to make
00:45:55
incredible transfer an agriculture
00:45:57
reality the conversation originally
00:45:59
started from a paper I read in January
00:46:01
of 2019 I reached out to Jud and said
00:46:04
hey we should talk about this paper and
00:46:06
we started brainstorming and Jud came up
00:46:08
with this concept for this business and
00:46:10
it was really a you know call it a
00:46:14
moonshot that they undertook and we've
00:46:16
put tens of millions of dollars of
00:46:19
capital into this project over the last
00:46:20
four years and been operating it in
00:46:22
stealth and the team had some pretty
00:46:24
significant breakthroughs this year that
00:46:26
make the whole thing a reality now the
00:46:28
potential of the business is so
00:46:30
significant that I really don't have a
00:46:33
choice but to go all in on this it's a
00:46:36
no-brainer as I said in the tweet I put
00:46:38
out I could spend a bunch of my time as
00:46:40
you said like starting other businesses
00:46:42
or making Investments but at the end of
00:46:44
the
00:46:46
day you know investing a cruise to a a
00:46:50
power law where if you have something
00:46:52
that's going to be transformative it
00:46:54
could be many multiple
00:46:57
on all the other St you do and so it
00:46:59
only made sense for me to say look I've
00:47:01
got toate my time attention and energy
00:47:03
to making sure that this business
00:47:05
realizes its potential I'm going to go
00:47:07
in full-time as CEO so it's pretty
00:47:09
exciting you know Gene editing I'll talk
00:47:11
a little bit about it but I can't share
00:47:12
too many details Gene editing as you
00:47:15
guys know was discovered it's
00:47:17
controversial whether it was discovered
00:47:19
first by George church and the group at
00:47:21
the at the broad in Harvard or Jennifer
00:47:23
dowon and her group at Berkeley
00:47:26
but crisper cast 9 is the system that
00:47:30
allowed us for the first time ever to go
00:47:32
in and make specific edits to DNA uh
00:47:36
historically any work we've
00:47:37
done in the genome has been you know
00:47:40
very ad hoc halfhazard throwing large
00:47:43
amounts of DNA into a cell to try and
00:47:45
get that cell to do something but
00:47:47
crisper really unlocked this call it
00:47:49
search and replace function in DNA and
00:47:53
that capability has allowed researchers
00:47:56
to make novel Therapeutics to create
00:47:58
have new discoveries in biology and it's
00:48:01
really unlocked an entirely new era in
00:48:04
Biology one application of Gene editing
00:48:06
is in agriculture where we can look
00:48:08
specifically at the genes in plants and
00:48:10
what they do to the plant and if we can
00:48:13
make specific changes that you would
00:48:15
otherwise see in nature through
00:48:18
traditional plant breeding and mutations
00:48:20
happen over time through plant breeding
00:48:22
can you accelerate those changes and can
00:48:24
you make a set of changes rather than
00:48:26
spend Millennia breeding plantss can you
00:48:28
make a specific set of changes that will
00:48:30
cause the plant to do something very
00:48:31
novel and as a result get the plant to
00:48:34
be more successful and by editing the
00:48:36
DNA of the plant to make it more
00:48:38
successful its yield goes up it can
00:48:40
generate more food with less water more
00:48:42
food with less land more food with less
00:48:44
labor etc etc that's the general premise
00:48:47
on how we can use Gene editing to drive
00:48:50
productivity in agriculture amazing and
00:48:53
you could I assume make the straw
00:48:55
berries taste more delicious like those
00:48:57
ones from haido in Japan as opposed to
00:49:00
just making them giant flavorless
00:49:02
softballs the weight Gene editing has
00:49:04
been thought about in agriculture over
00:49:06
the last decade has been exactly what
00:49:08
you're saying which is to make a
00:49:10
specific trait edit which is one edit in
00:49:12
one gene that does one specific thing to
00:49:14
the plan and what Jud and the team came
00:49:17
up with was starting with the problem
00:49:19
rather than starting with this you know
00:49:21
kind of very specific thing that we
00:49:23
could do and they said how do we get
00:49:24
yield to go up significantly in plants
00:49:27
and they came up with this creative idea
00:49:30
which is doing a series of edits which
00:49:32
is called Multiplex editing multiple
00:49:33
edits across multiple genes that would
00:49:36
actually change the biology of a plant
00:49:38
in a fundamentally understandable way
00:49:41
but that would ultimately Drive such a
00:49:43
transformative increase in yield it
00:49:45
would open up entirely new opportunities
00:49:47
in agriculture and so that was the
00:49:49
moonshot was the series of edits that
00:49:51
could you know change how
00:49:53
plants you know do a specific set of
00:49:56
things that makes their yield go up
00:49:57
significantly and we weren't sure if it
00:49:59
would work first of all we weren't sure
00:50:00
if it was possible to do the
00:50:02
edits editing plants is very hard the
00:50:04
cell wall of plants has to be dissolved
00:50:07
then you have to get the editing
00:50:08
Machinery into the plant into the cell
00:50:10
and then you have to get that cell to
00:50:12
edit the right Gene and not have other
00:50:14
edits and then you have to get the cell
00:50:15
to grow back into a plant there's so
00:50:17
many complicated difficult steps you
00:50:19
have to get all of them to work and then
00:50:21
we weren't even sure if making all those
00:50:22
edits would cause the outcome that we
00:50:24
expected and it turns out
00:50:25
that it does and that happened as of a
00:50:27
few weeks ago this company and that's
00:50:29
why I decided to step in because
00:50:31
Suddenly It's like oh my gosh the
00:50:32
moonshot is working we put in a lot of
00:50:34
capital we spent years funding the
00:50:36
exercise it's real and now we're going
00:50:39
to take off um and that's why I'm going
00:50:40
all on on this I so I'm being a little
00:50:42
Cy with respect to the details as I
00:50:44
understand it's top secret stuff that's
00:50:46
fine I definitely want to talk more
00:50:48
specifically about what the team's done
00:50:49
and what we're going to do with the
00:50:51
business which I will happily do in a
00:50:53
few months when some some things become
00:50:55
public
00:50:56
but in the meantime I'm excited to do it
00:50:57
I got to tell you the last SE it's been
00:51:00
seven years since I've been an operating
00:51:02
CEO and you know to some degree there's
00:51:06
always been a piece missing for me in
00:51:08
what I do every day that I haven't felt
00:51:10
like I've had the ability to have the
00:51:11
influence and make the decisions that I
00:51:14
think need to be made you're advising
00:51:15
the CEO you're sitting in a board seat
00:51:17
kind of encouraging them to do certain
00:51:19
things but then sometimes they listen
00:51:21
and sometimes they don't so to actually
00:51:23
be in the seat feels to me the right
00:51:26
place it's the right place where I can
00:51:27
have the influence and drive the change
00:51:29
that I want to see and I haven't done
00:51:31
that in a very long time and so it's
00:51:33
also personally I think the right
00:51:35
decision for me to find you know
00:51:37
satisfaction in the work I'm doing not
00:51:38
to mention the excitement I get out of
00:51:39
the business and you and I have talked
00:51:41
about this privately you know the the
00:51:43
world has too much Capital there's just
00:51:45
tons of money there's too many problems
00:51:47
to be solved the real issue especially
00:51:50
when you're running an incubator or uh a
00:51:54
stu you know a startup Studio like some
00:51:55
of the startup Studios is who is going
00:51:58
to Pilot this very fast jet fighter and
00:52:03
the number of people who are ambitious
00:52:05
and technically know how to fly one of
00:52:08
these planes and do it at high speed and
00:52:10
you know want to take on that dangerous
00:52:12
cockpit is very low and so I think it's
00:52:15
very courageous of you to jump on and do
00:52:16
this so congratulations the point you're
00:52:18
making is a really good one worth
00:52:19
talking about just for a second there's
00:52:21
been this criticism in Silicon Valley
00:52:24
and I'd love your guys's point of view
00:52:26
on this too jamath and saaks but like
00:52:28
and Jal but like there's been this
00:52:30
criticism in Silicon Valley which is
00:52:31
that you know we do too much of the easy
00:52:34
stuff and to all the capital goes into
00:52:36
the apps and stuff the things that are
00:52:38
the path of least resistance to making
00:52:40
money not into the hard things that are
00:52:42
low probability require a lot of capital
00:52:44
it's not universally true but it's
00:52:45
generally true with respect to how
00:52:47
capital is allocated and you know I was
00:52:50
kind of talking with a bunch of people
00:52:51
last week about
00:52:53
this and I I kind of realize that like
00:52:56
there's only if you're going to do a
00:52:59
difficult project that requires a lot of
00:53:00
capital you're going to want to entrust
00:53:02
that Capital to someone that has proven
00:53:05
themselves someone who's proven
00:53:07
themselves is generally going to have
00:53:10
the choice of things they're going to
00:53:11
want to do with their life and if
00:53:13
they've proven themselves it usually
00:53:14
means they've had some exit event or
00:53:15
some liquidity event that discourages
00:53:18
them from doing a very difficult thing
00:53:20
and taking on a lot of risk and burning
00:53:21
themselves to death again when they've
00:53:23
already made it and the people that have
00:53:25
made it usually make it in software the
00:53:27
first time around because software
00:53:28
creates a path of least resistance to
00:53:31
generating returns and then the
00:53:34
challenging question for them is do you
00:53:36
do it again and you make easy money you
00:53:38
know how to do it or do you take a five%
00:53:41
shot or 2% shot of success 98% chance of
00:53:44
failure going after a very hard project
00:53:47
that takes a very long period of time so
00:53:48
I think that the challenge
00:53:50
with difficult technology being
00:53:53
developed in Silicon Valley is less
00:53:54
about
00:53:56
a dir of capital or a dir of ideas or a
00:53:58
dir of opportunities it's more about a
00:54:00
dir of talent that finding the right
00:54:02
folks who have the capabilities and have
00:54:05
done this before to want to step back
00:54:08
into the saddle and take on a very large
00:54:10
low probability
00:54:12
problem is really the challenge that I
00:54:14
see a lot of in getting a lot of these
00:54:16
things kind of going and funded hard to
00:54:18
get people to be in the arena yes Jam
00:54:20
you've seen this in your portfolio on a
00:54:22
hard problem is what I'm saying like a
00:54:24
2% chance of suc kind of problem like
00:54:26
why would I do that when I can go do
00:54:27
something that's I'm 60% likely to
00:54:29
succeed at and do really well doing
00:54:31
it I find that most companies are very
00:54:35
undermanaged and undere experienced and
00:54:39
it's surprising for me it it lacks a
00:54:41
level of sophistication that I just
00:54:44
assumed existed and I guess that's
00:54:46
because my last experience was when I
00:54:48
was helping to build a company that
00:54:50
frankly coming out of the great
00:54:52
financial crisis we were recruiting
00:54:54
people at Facebook from Google for the
00:54:56
most part and then building an entire
00:54:59
core of young people and grooming from
00:55:01
within it was we had a pretty good go of
00:55:05
it fast forward to 2023 and I must admit
00:55:09
that the companies that I interact with
00:55:11
when I get into the
00:55:14
weeds I think the real talent at freed
00:55:16
br's point is spread too thin across too
00:55:18
many businesses and so there are pockets
00:55:21
of greatness in every company but
00:55:22
there's no real gravitational pull for
00:55:26
any of them as a result of that this is
00:55:27
an excellent point as well when we had a
00:55:29
zurp environment so many companies got
00:55:31
funded that an amazing CMO CTO VP of Ops
00:55:37
started their own company and they were
00:55:40
just their natural position was the
00:55:41
sixth man on the bench you know on the
00:55:43
Knicks or The Warriors not the primary
00:55:45
scorer they weren't Steph Curry they
00:55:47
shouldn't be in that position they
00:55:48
should be coming off the bench and being
00:55:50
an amazing contributor this is I've
00:55:52
concluded the best time in the world to
00:55:53
start a new company I I
00:55:55
am uh absolutely Amazed by the companies
00:55:59
coming and applying for funding for us I
00:56:01
understand because that's your business
00:56:02
model but what about encouraging people
00:56:04
to actually join a good company and
00:56:05
learn how to be a good manager
00:56:07
absolutely these are two the two best
00:56:09
options I think if you have two of three
00:56:11
really great Builders you actually know
00:56:14
how to build in the two of three you
00:56:16
have a great idea and you want to do it
00:56:18
I encourage to start a startup if you
00:56:20
don't have a great idea you don't have
00:56:21
two or three co-founders you don't want
00:56:22
to lead the thing find somebody who's
00:56:25
just getting onto the Launchpad or just
00:56:26
getting a little escape velocity in
00:56:28
their rocket which would be defined as
00:56:30
10 to 30 employees maybe having raised
00:56:34
two to20 million that's an ideal time to
00:56:37
get on the rocket and just any seat you
00:56:40
can get as Cheryl Samberg said famously
00:56:43
any seat on the rocket ship is a seat on
00:56:45
the rocket ship you just want to get on
00:56:47
board yeah jaman I just agree with the
00:56:49
first part of what you said oh okay
00:56:51
explain
00:56:52
why I run into two and three person
00:56:55
teams every day that I think are
00:56:58
exceptionally talented who should be
00:56:59
inside of a company and instead they
00:57:01
found somebody to give them money and so
00:57:03
instead they're starting something and
00:57:04
they're just Meandering and the problem
00:57:06
with these two and three person teams is
00:57:08
that even now if you stick the right
00:57:11
label on it like AI you'll find five or
00:57:13
six or seven million doar of money it
00:57:17
won't be led by any single investor so
00:57:20
it's all done in a safe none of these
00:57:22
folks have boards and so they come in
00:57:24
check in with me time to time and I ask
00:57:26
them about their progress and it's a
00:57:28
mess and I'm shocked and I'm like why
00:57:31
are you guys wasting your time like you
00:57:32
should be at a startup that's winning
00:57:35
and part of it is that they think it's
00:57:36
the right thing to do and I don't think
00:57:38
there's any Valor in being a a Founder I
00:57:41
think there's a lot of Valor in building
00:57:43
something that's really valuable for
00:57:45
people and if that means being a
00:57:46
director of marketing go do that instead
00:57:49
it's a valid point I think your most
00:57:51
valid point in that is that there is not
00:57:54
governance and mentorship for during the
00:57:57
peak Zer era we created something called
00:57:59
founder University to kind of it's a
00:58:02
12we course where we teach people how to
00:58:03
do this stuff and then we wind up
00:58:04
investing in about 10% of those
00:58:06
companies and it's nuts how many people
00:58:09
are applying and we tell people when you
00:58:11
hit $2,500,000 in Revenue we'll start
00:58:15
doing quarterly board meetings with you
00:58:18
and they don't even have to be
00:58:19
officially board meetings they just
00:58:20
mentoring sessions for one hour where
00:58:21
you present as if it's a board and so I
00:58:25
largely the passing of the hat and doing
00:58:27
a party round and having no mentorship
00:58:30
is a weakness in the system in our firm
00:58:33
we fixed it with founder University yeah
00:58:34
but isn't Jam make a slightly different
00:58:36
point Jason with respect well I think
00:58:40
that when you have bubbly funding
00:58:42
conditions it leads to an over
00:58:44
fragmentation of talent sure I mean
00:58:46
isn't that the point yes I mean it takes
00:58:49
a certain concentration of outstanding
00:58:53
people not just Founders but also like
00:58:55
early employees to create a great
00:58:56
company and you know with PayPal right I
00:58:58
mean that was the greatest concentration
00:59:00
of talent in history stacked with Talent
00:59:02
right you have that and Google would be
00:59:03
the two best examples yeah yeah so one
00:59:06
of the reasons why you can end up with
00:59:09
again an over fragmentation is if there
00:59:11
is too much funding in the system and
00:59:13
everybody's getting funded for really
00:59:16
you know mid
00:59:17
ideas and it prevents a congealing of
00:59:21
great talent to come together at
00:59:24
companies where have a really big idea
00:59:26
if you believe that the startup
00:59:28
ecosystem was overfunded during the Zer
00:59:30
bubble which it clearly was I mean you
00:59:33
don't just get bubbly valuations you
00:59:35
also get bubbly funding conditions then
00:59:38
by definition there are companies at the
00:59:40
margins are getting funded that
00:59:41
shouldn't get funded and that leads to
00:59:44
an over fragmentation of talent here's
00:59:46
what's happening on the
00:59:47
ground we used to see a lot of solo
00:59:50
Founders Outsourcing their Tech what
00:59:52
we're seeing now is usually two three
00:59:53
four Founders get getting together to do
00:59:55
a company and one of the counter
00:59:59
prevailing forces here is what we saw
01:00:01
with Spotify just laying off 1,700
01:00:03
people Google laying off 20,000 Facebook
01:00:06
laying off I think 25 or 30,000
01:00:08
Microsoft Uber all these companies have
01:00:10
laid off so massively they're all on
01:00:12
hiring freezes so then what happens is
01:00:14
there's massive amounts of talent at
01:00:16
reasonable prices joining together after
01:00:18
having worked at those companies and so
01:00:21
I would say the companies we're funding
01:00:22
at this early stage we're never doing
01:00:25
solo Founders I mean unless it's a
01:00:27
Serial entrepreneur and we're seeing two
01:00:28
or three people who worked at Uber or
01:00:30
Google or
01:00:31
Airbnb you know who have like this
01:00:33
really great uh product velocity coming
01:00:35
together and they have to be Builders so
01:00:38
I think it's two things are true at once
01:00:39
that the number of companies being
01:00:40
funded has plummeted I think about 75%
01:00:43
sacks but the quality and the amount of
01:00:46
concentration of talent even in those
01:00:47
startup cohorts is really high and they
01:00:50
don't have four job offers from Big Tech
01:00:52
they're not having like a sales for for
01:00:54
$300,000 offer coming in or a Google
01:00:56
$400,000 offer coming in so I I think
01:00:59
this is going to be the best vintage
01:01:00
Adventure in our lifetimes that's my
01:01:02
personal belief I invested in 100
01:01:04
companies this
01:01:05
year but I could be wrong we should talk
01:01:08
about the Google Gemini launch Google
01:01:11
just dropped their chat GPT killer and
01:01:14
uh from my perspective it's a awesome
01:01:16
just two quick videos here it does have
01:01:19
very strong multimodal mode if you don't
01:01:21
know what that is just means you can use
01:01:23
images video text input and output in
01:01:27
this demo that you're seeing on the
01:01:28
screen if you're watching the show they
01:01:30
take a picture of a physics test that
01:01:32
somebody took in handwriting they find
01:01:35
which answers are wrong they explain it
01:01:37
lots of reasoning going on in here and
01:01:39
obviously the moti modal means you're
01:01:41
seeing an image and you're getting text
01:01:43
back second video they showed and they
01:01:46
and they they launched a lot of stuff
01:01:47
today with this Gemini
01:01:49
brand they're using the classic example
01:01:52
of doing a party uh planning a party
01:01:55
they Ed my likeness in the Google video
01:01:56
wait what's and here it is there's
01:01:58
there's chubby chamama oh sorry I can't
01:02:00
body sh people sorry about that folks
01:02:03
there's chubby chth I please strike that
01:02:05
oh my God I shouldn't have said that I
01:02:06
thought Vinnie lingam was fat chth
01:02:09
Vinnie Lingham has claimed fat sh I was
01:02:11
that's why I went for chubby I didn't
01:02:12
want to infringe on his
01:02:13
IP but any oh no I'm gonna get cancelled
01:02:18
so in this video the person asks to do a
01:02:20
kids party what's very unique here is
01:02:22
that it does the follow-up questions
01:02:23
which is you know really interesting it
01:02:25
understands reasoning and context but it
01:02:26
built a dynamic interface for this use
01:02:30
case and it did like a pin board and a
01:02:32
kind of um Google esque task list and
01:02:36
kpis and all this other nonsense but
01:02:38
behind all of this in the Gemini
01:02:41
exceptionalism I think is that they did
01:02:43
all these benchmarks against a bunch of
01:02:46
there's a bunch of tests and batteries
01:02:47
of tests that language models use to
01:02:50
prove how strong they are and Google
01:02:52
says Gemini beat gp4 the latest from
01:02:54
open AI in 30 out of 32 benchmarks this
01:02:57
is going to come in three flavors ultr
01:02:59
Pro and Nano that's basically cost and
01:03:02
strength and there's a lot more behind
01:03:04
this but based on what I'm seeing in my
01:03:06
opinion I've been looking at this stuff
01:03:08
every week with snd d and looking at all
01:03:12
of the latest and greatest this feels
01:03:15
like it is a Lea Frog by about 20 or 30%
01:03:19
if this is true but freeberg you looked
01:03:21
at the original papers what are your
01:03:23
thoughts on the underpinnings I talked
01:03:24
about the ux and some of the reasoning
01:03:26
what are you seeing and and we'll
01:03:27
consider this a a flash on thefly
01:03:30
science corner for all those freedberg
01:03:33
stands out there I haven't read the
01:03:36
whole 60 pages but I looked at the
01:03:39
performance charts and it's pretty damn
01:03:41
impressive I feel I use the the demo a
01:03:44
bit I feel like you're interacting with
01:03:46
data from Star Trek you guys ever
01:03:48
watched Star Trek next smile on your
01:03:50
face you are so happy your dream has
01:03:52
come true from your child was like this
01:03:54
lifelong dream I can finally have a chat
01:03:56
with data it's like conversational it's
01:03:59
um predictable in the sense that it kind
01:04:02
of predicts the the details that I might
01:04:04
ask or might otherwise forget to ask
01:04:06
fills them in there's some I think
01:04:09
really smart features of it and I think
01:04:12
it says a lot that
01:04:15
Google truly does have the muscle to
01:04:18
compete and now is showing the wos to do
01:04:22
so that they're actually putting this
01:04:24
out there that they're willing to
01:04:26
disrupt themselves cannibalize their own
01:04:28
search business
01:04:30
potentially in a way that everyone's
01:04:32
been worried they wouldn't be willing or
01:04:34
able to do they'll figure out a way to
01:04:37
monetize it later but they really are
01:04:38
showing that they're willing to try and
01:04:39
make the best product for users which
01:04:42
has always been a core mantra for Google
01:04:45
from you know the origins of the
01:04:47
business focus on the user and all else
01:04:49
will follow and they everyone's been
01:04:51
saying the last couple years they're too
01:04:52
focused on profit they're squeezing
01:04:54
every nickel and dime out of every click
01:04:57
and showing that they're willing to put
01:04:58
this out there says a lot about the
01:05:00
Strategic imperative of the board and
01:05:01
the leadership there so that that makes
01:05:03
a big difference the product seems
01:05:05
really good the scoring data seems
01:05:06
incredible uh against GPT 4 which is I
01:05:09
think the key Benchmark as we know open
01:05:11
AI has some new models that are coming
01:05:13
to Market um here let's pull up the
01:05:15
table of results but this shows Gemini's
01:05:17
performance against gp4 using a number
01:05:20
of well-known metrics I'll say that
01:05:23
there there is no business on Earth that
01:05:26
has more data than Google YouTube is the
01:05:29
richest data repository Digital Data
01:05:31
repository on Earth the YouTube data set
01:05:34
gives Google an extraordinary advantage
01:05:37
in training and clearly we're seeing
01:05:39
that in the results are getting on
01:05:40
Imaging and video here so you know big
01:05:43
big big announcement for Google I think
01:05:44
it's definitely worth saying that
01:05:46
they're in the game and it's going to be
01:05:48
pretty powerful to watch Pretty I think
01:05:50
pretty important to watch saxis freeberg
01:05:52
said the are on the table now
01:05:54
sindar has dropped the wos what's your
01:05:57
take I think it's pretty clear that
01:05:59
Google's be a major player in AI but the
01:06:02
question is are they going to be
01:06:03
dominant in Ai and I think one of the
01:06:05
points that our friend Brad gersner
01:06:07
makes that's well taken about Google's
01:06:09
market position is that if you look at
01:06:11
their position in search which is
01:06:13
gradually being replaced by AI they're
01:06:16
absolutely dominant in search so even if
01:06:19
they turn out to be good or great in AI
01:06:23
their AI franchises is never going to be
01:06:25
as dominant as their search Franchise
01:06:28
was in that market and so to the extent
01:06:30
that AI is replacing search and I think
01:06:34
we're seeing that more and more right if
01:06:36
you can get the AI just to give you the
01:06:37
answer instead of a list of 10 Blue
01:06:39
Links that's a better user experience so
01:06:42
I think as more and more searches get
01:06:44
replaced with AI it's just impossible
01:06:46
that they're going to maintain that same
01:06:48
dominant
01:06:49
share moreover it's really unclear how
01:06:52
you monetize those let's call them AI
01:06:55
searches where it just gives you the
01:06:56
answer because nobody wants to get three
01:07:00
ad links up at the top of their answer
01:07:02
no one's going to click on those so I
01:07:03
think look Google is going to be a
01:07:05
player in AI but as AI displaces search
01:07:09
it's going to be a real challenge for
01:07:10
them as a company I think I have the
01:07:12
opposite position I'll explain sax while
01:07:14
I do think you're right their dominance
01:07:17
won't be the same having used the Google
01:07:21
flights AI integration Google shopping
01:07:24
AI integration that's in bar right now
01:07:26
which is very like 1.0 or even 0.1 I
01:07:29
think the number of searches or the
01:07:31
number of interactions the number of
01:07:32
queries let's call them questions asked
01:07:34
is going to go like 10 20 50 100x I
01:07:37
think people are going to be talking to
01:07:39
their AIS all day long and where I think
01:07:41
you might be wrong is I think actually
01:07:43
the clicks are going to fit in certain
01:07:45
categories perfectly into the response
01:07:47
so in this birthday one if you had a
01:07:49
bunch of ideas of what you could click
01:07:52
on to purchase if it said hey great idea
01:07:54
for the birthday did you think about
01:07:55
these hats did you think about these
01:07:57
piñatas did you think about these places
01:07:58
to get cake and those were all paid and
01:08:01
AI informed them because you wanted to
01:08:02
do an animal based jungle party and it
01:08:05
showed you those it's going to make
01:08:08
unbelievable ad targeting that is right
01:08:11
into your planning hey get these hats
01:08:13
here get this get this flight here book
01:08:15
this restaurant I think it could be a
01:08:17
gold mine and I think the the the
01:08:20
clickstream and and the ad network is
01:08:22
going to fit perfectly into to it same
01:08:24
thing with those questions being asked
01:08:27
you know hey do you want to get a math
01:08:29
tutor do you want to buy this book Etc
01:08:31
so I'm going to take the other side of
01:08:33
it shath where do you land are you short
01:08:35
long or neutral Google based on this I
01:08:38
think that there's two important things
01:08:42
to notice about this the first is who is
01:08:45
in charge of this
01:08:47
project and this is I think after they
01:08:49
did that reorg the most important person
01:08:52
in all of this is Jeff Dean who if you
01:08:54
look back is the one of the most
01:08:58
preeminent technical lights frankly of
01:09:00
the internet but
01:09:02
within Google is just a giant right so
01:09:05
tensorflow map ruce big table spanner
01:09:08
the guy is just an absolute animal he's
01:09:11
proven an ability to not just
01:09:13
conceptualize big ideas but then get
01:09:15
them to Market in a way that can work at
01:09:17
scale right that's the first thing the
01:09:19
second thing is that this Gemini is a
01:09:21
collaboration between Deep Mind for the
01:09:23
first time and Google research and a
01:09:25
bunch of other people at Google so I
01:09:27
think freeberg mentioned this before the
01:09:29
test for Google is not their technical
01:09:31
capacity but their ability to organize
01:09:34
everybody and get them to row in the
01:09:35
same
01:09:36
direction so I think that
01:09:39
that's that's really important my
01:09:42
takeaway is what
01:09:44
I kind of put out on Twitter which is
01:09:47
that I think all of this is one more
01:09:51
brick in the wall on this theme of
01:09:54
commoditization so we have all of these
01:09:57
really interesting foundational models
01:09:59
if you just look back a little bit lat
01:10:01
2's advances have been pretty
01:10:04
amazing out of the UAE Abu
01:10:07
Dhabi the government there showed some
01:10:10
Falcon which showed some really
01:10:12
interesting
01:10:13
promise obviously open AI is doing some
01:10:16
great work with gp4 and GPT 5 now you
01:10:19
see Gemini and and the results that
01:10:22
they're generating
01:10:25
there's going to be a proliferation of
01:10:26
foundational models the cost of those
01:10:29
models will go to
01:10:31
zero and so why is why is that an
01:10:34
important thing well one it's good for
01:10:36
the
01:10:36
ecosystem two it's really good for
01:10:39
developers and three it allows us to
01:10:42
then figure out where the real value is
01:10:44
going to be made and I think the value
01:10:46
is in taking these models and wrapping
01:10:48
them with cheap abstracted Hardware
01:10:51
right you can't have an economy get
01:10:54
built in AI when you have year-long
01:10:56
waiting lists for h100s and A1 100s from
01:10:59
Nvidia that's not possible so that
01:11:02
entire layer as well will get
01:11:03
commoditized so the folks that are the
01:11:05
aws's the azures and the gcps of the
01:11:07
world or these next Generation entrance
01:11:11
who are building AI clouds those folks I
01:11:15
think will make money and then the apps
01:11:16
will make money so I think it's a very
01:11:19
good thing I think that you don't want a
01:11:21
lot of the lock in that Nvidia was
01:11:23
trying to create they were trying to
01:11:24
create essentially a wall Garden where
01:11:26
you had to use Cuda in order to
01:11:28
basically compile to these these miles
01:11:30
to their chips it's going to break all
01:11:32
of that so I'm generally quite
01:11:34
constructive I think that this is a
01:11:37
really good step in democratizing this
01:11:39
whole thing and letting the value
01:11:42
accrete To The Ends it's a barbell
01:11:45
infrastructure providers and app
01:11:47
Builders that's my best guess of where
01:11:48
money gets made here all right adobe's
01:11:51
$20 billion acquisition of figma is
01:11:53
installed right now UK's
01:11:56
CMA stands for competition and markets
01:11:58
Authority has effectively blocked this
01:12:01
acquisition for uh couple of obvious
01:12:04
reasons one reduces Innovation two it
01:12:07
eliminates competition between two top
01:12:09
competitors in product design and three
01:12:12
removes figma as a threat to adobe's
01:12:14
photoshop in illustrator products cmia
01:12:19
mentioned some potential remedies
01:12:20
divesting of overlapping operations in
01:12:23
Market where the deal could cause less
01:12:26
competition or just prohibiting the
01:12:29
merger entirely feels like that's what's
01:12:32
going to
01:12:33
happen and also a peak Zer right that
01:12:37
was a peak Zer deal I have to take issue
01:12:39
with you said that they are doing this
01:12:41
for obvious reasons I don't think these
01:12:44
reasons are obvious in the sense that I
01:12:46
don't think I don't think they speak for
01:12:47
themselves I think they have to be
01:12:49
defended and I I don't think these are
01:12:51
good reasons oh yeah no I the when I say
01:12:55
obvious reasons I'm not endorsing them
01:12:57
I'm just saying the the standard reasons
01:12:59
of lack of competition and consolidation
01:13:03
of competitors so but yeah expand on
01:13:06
your point and you think it should not
01:13:09
be stopped this merger well first of all
01:13:13
this merger was originally announced I
01:13:15
think back on September 15th of 2022
01:13:18
over a year ago what is that that's uh
01:13:22
almost 15 months ago
01:13:24
yeah so this is a ridiculous amount of
01:13:26
time for Regulators to take to figure
01:13:28
out whether they're going to improve the
01:13:29
deal that's no good for anybody I think
01:13:32
businesses whether you're Adobe whether
01:13:34
you're figma have a right to have these
01:13:36
questions answered much more quickly so
01:13:38
what are The Regulators is doing so
01:13:40
that's Point number one point number two
01:13:42
is that it's mostly the UK regulator
01:13:45
which is called the CMA or competition
01:13:47
of markets Authority they're the ones
01:13:50
who are dragging their feet and holding
01:13:52
this up so figman Adobe have to get the
01:13:55
approval of three different regulatory
01:13:58
bodies they have to get approval in the
01:13:59
United States from I think the doj they
01:14:02
have to get approval from the EU with
01:14:05
Brussels and now because of thanks to
01:14:07
brexit they also have to get approved by
01:14:10
the UK and to me it's a little crazy
01:14:14
that one country's you know competition
01:14:17
Authority the UK which is not in the
01:14:18
grand scheme of things that big a market
01:14:21
can hold up this entire deal you know it
01:14:24
should be faster of course right they
01:14:26
should I question whether like one
01:14:29
country the UK should be able to hold up
01:14:31
a deal if the US and the EU approve it
01:14:34
and one thing I would say to startups is
01:14:36
if the CMA is going to start holding up
01:14:39
deals for a bunch of Novel reasons
01:14:42
meaning you know reasons that haven't
01:14:44
previously been articulated before in an
01:14:46
antitrust law why in the world would you
01:14:48
want to create Nexus with the UK I think
01:14:51
this pertains to all the startup
01:14:52
ecosystem because look I remember when I
01:14:54
was doing Amber we decided to open an
01:14:56
office in Europe and we decided to
01:14:58
settle in London and we created a pretty
01:15:00
big office in London we thought that was
01:15:02
the best place for a starup to locate if
01:15:05
you had told me at the time that that
01:15:08
would subject our acquisition by
01:15:10
Microsoft to the CMA over there and that
01:15:13
they would take some novel
01:15:14
interpretation and go hold up my deal
01:15:16
there's no way I would have wanted to
01:15:18
open an office in the UK so let's be
01:15:21
clear about that now I want to move on
01:15:23
just quickly to the argument that the
01:15:25
CMA is making and I do think it's a
01:15:27
novel argument they're not saying that
01:15:30
adobi and figma are competitive today
01:15:33
and actually I think they are operating
01:15:35
in different markets figma is a product
01:15:38
for web designers and web developers and
01:15:42
the end state of a figma design is code
01:15:45
if you look at adobe's products like
01:15:47
Photoshop the end state is marketing
01:15:49
collateral it's it's a marketing design
01:15:52
product nobody uses figma to create
01:15:56
marketing collateral they use Photoshop
01:15:59
and nobody who's using Photoshop is
01:16:02
using that to uh build websites okay
01:16:05
these are in practice pretty distinct
01:16:07
markets and I think the CMA has conceded
01:16:11
that they're distinct and separate
01:16:13
markets but what the CMA is trying to
01:16:15
say is that at some point in the future
01:16:18
if we block this deal figma might
01:16:21
compete um might compete with Adobe they
01:16:25
might create a competitor to photoshop
01:16:28
and that is a bogus rationale for
01:16:30
blocking a deal because first of all I
01:16:32
think we all know that figma has no
01:16:34
interest in competing with Photoshop
01:16:36
they're not going to compete they
01:16:38
they're much more interested in AI
01:16:40
they're much more interested in doing
01:16:41
things like prompt to design to code
01:16:44
they're not interested in building you
01:16:46
know a Photoshop competitor and there's
01:16:49
no reason to believe that they would do
01:16:50
that moreover that is not an objective
01:16:52
standard think about it if you can block
01:16:54
a deal on the grounds that these two
01:16:57
companies don't compete today but might
01:16:59
one day compete in the future it gives
01:17:01
The Regulators a veto over any deal and
01:17:04
that is not the way antitrust is
01:17:05
supposed to work the way that antitrust
01:17:07
is historically worked is you define
01:17:10
what Market these companies are in and
01:17:13
you add their market share together if
01:17:15
they're both in the same Market to see
01:17:17
if it would create an undue Monopoly or
01:17:21
oligopoly something some dynamic like
01:17:23
that it was a market share test which is
01:17:25
an objective test this is not an
01:17:27
objective test this is a regulator
01:17:29
saying hm you know we know you don't
01:17:31
compete today but like one day in the
01:17:33
future you might that is bogus so if you
01:17:36
allow the CMA to block this deal on that
01:17:38
ground they can block any deal for any
01:17:39
reason and then on top of it they've
01:17:41
taken 15 months to come down with this
01:17:44
opinion I think this is going to have a
01:17:46
very chilling effect on m&a activity for
01:17:49
for not a good reason for not a good
01:17:51
reason and that is the last thing the
01:17:53
star ecosystem needs right
01:17:55
now I'm going to agree about the time
01:17:59
I'm going to
01:18:00
agree that we should let a little more
01:18:03
m&a happen I'll disagree Adobe has a
01:18:05
product XD competes directly with figma
01:18:08
and then I've gotten multiple designers
01:18:10
who have included me in figma designs
01:18:13
for things that are other than
01:18:14
interfaces they're using it for decks
01:18:16
they're using it for marketing
01:18:18
collateral and if you go look at figma's
01:18:21
templates offering they are all
01:18:23
Photoshop illustrator key function so in
01:18:26
the market even though the products were
01:18:27
not designed as competitors designers
01:18:29
are starting with figma for many design
01:18:31
projects in my direct experience and by
01:18:33
looking at the templates so I'll
01:18:35
disagree on that third Point jamaath
01:18:36
your take well hold on I got to do a
01:18:38
fact check on one thing you're right
01:18:40
that adobe had a competitive product to
01:18:42
figma called XD they shut it down they
01:18:45
shut it down yeah is it was a failure so
01:18:48
they are out of the market for a web
01:18:50
design tool they're out so that argument
01:18:53
no longer exists and I don't know if
01:18:55
they shut it down because of this deal
01:18:56
or because it was failing anyway but
01:18:58
they solved that problem now with
01:19:00
respect to these use cases where okay
01:19:03
yeah you're you're talking anecdotally
01:19:05
Jason about you've seen
01:19:07
some web designer no I'm talking go look
01:19:11
at the templates I just put the link in
01:19:12
there it's still anecdotal it's not
01:19:14
based on a market share test if you want
01:19:15
to make this argument that figma and
01:19:19
Photoshop are competitive products break
01:19:21
it down in terms of market share that's
01:19:23
my point add up figma's market share in
01:19:25
the market for marketing collateral and
01:19:27
see if that would create undue
01:19:29
concentration fair enough my objection
01:19:31
is that they're not basing this decision
01:19:34
if it can even be called a decision I
01:19:36
think it's more like just concerns and
01:19:38
dragging their feet but they are basing
01:19:41
their concerns on something that's
01:19:44
unquantifiable and I do think that anti
01:19:46
trust decisions should be quantifiable
01:19:49
the concerning thing here is that this
01:19:52
is on the heels of Activision in
01:19:53
Microsoft which was equally protracted
01:19:55
and drawn out I don't I think it's bad
01:19:58
for Capital markets when deals that are
01:20:01
offered up just linger for 15 18 months
01:20:05
I don't think that that's healthy it
01:20:08
causes a lot of
01:20:09
pause amongst investors and it probably
01:20:13
freezes both Adobe and figma from
01:20:16
investing the way that they would if
01:20:18
they knew that this thing was voted up
01:20:19
or down in three months or whatever so I
01:20:21
I think that I totally agree with you
01:20:24
that there needs to be an SLA around
01:20:26
these things and you can't take this
01:20:29
much time I breezed through the CMA
01:20:33
report my gosh it's 400 Pages which is
01:20:37
like that's insane a 400 page document
01:20:39
is like it's a little outlandish but I
01:20:41
wanted to call out two parts of that
01:20:43
document one is in support saxs of what
01:20:47
you said Nick you can just throw it up
01:20:49
here what they said was that in
01:20:50
assessing the competitive effects of the
01:20:52
merger we must decide whether there is
01:20:54
an expectation I.E more than 50% chance
01:20:57
that the merger will result in
01:20:59
diminished competition now that's like a
01:21:02
little nuts because David as you said
01:21:03
it's like we're going to take an
01:21:05
expected probability and a guess into
01:21:07
the future about what we think will
01:21:09
happen and I think that that's not a
01:21:12
fair way of doing business I think that
01:21:14
you have to look at what will happen
01:21:15
when this happens and judge on its face
01:21:19
you can't say well also by the way I
01:21:21
expect that you guys will be in
01:21:22
intelligent and really execute so
01:21:24
that'll just increase the odds that's
01:21:25
not right that's that's what business is
01:21:28
so if I had to steal man the pro figma
01:21:30
side I would say that that's
01:21:32
unreasonable the second side on the pro
01:21:34
figma side is there's this Long Point
01:21:36
here I think it's like number 27 or 28
01:21:38
in this document and this is what's
01:21:40
crazy it's it basically says like hey we
01:21:43
went through document Discovery we found
01:21:45
some emails that basically said by Adobe
01:21:49
that said we did Market analyses we
01:21:52
didn't think we were doing very well and
01:21:54
I think it's important to note for the
01:21:56
CMA that this is what a hundred years of
01:21:59
MBA classes have taught people to do I
01:22:02
mean you teach Executives that go work
01:22:04
at companies to do what's called the
01:22:07
SWAT analysis to figure out what are the
01:22:09
risks and opportunities for your
01:22:10
business and then to go and invest to
01:22:13
fix them that's capitalism and that's
01:22:16
business Theory and we've taught
01:22:18
Executives at every single company to do
01:22:21
this that can't be legal meaning to use
01:22:24
your brain inside of a business to
01:22:25
realize that what you did isn't working
01:22:27
so that would that's also I would say
01:22:29
sacks in support of what you're saying
01:22:31
which is it's taking too long it's
01:22:34
speculative and you're punishing people
01:22:36
for actually being good business people
01:22:38
and I don't think that makes sense
01:22:39
what's the number six months just to add
01:22:41
to that you know again you like an
01:22:44
important overlay here is that the CMA
01:22:47
is the UK's regulator and they're the
01:22:50
smallest Market the GDP of the UK is 3
01:22:53
trillion the GDP of the EU is 16
01:22:55
trillion the GDP of the US is I forget
01:22:58
it's in the 2025 trillion range so
01:23:01
you've got the toughest regulator who is
01:23:04
coming up with the most novel legal
01:23:06
Theory I think it's worth exploring that
01:23:08
these Regulators I think are working in
01:23:12
conjunction and those fingerprints
01:23:15
looked a little bit more obvious I'm not
01:23:16
playing conspiracy theorists but it
01:23:18
looks like the EU the FTC and the CMA
01:23:23
did work together I don't know how
01:23:25
officially or not in Microsoft
01:23:27
Activision it looked relatively
01:23:29
coordinated I suspect that it stands to
01:23:32
reason that they're in touch and they
01:23:33
talk about these deals and their
01:23:35
combined perspectives I don't know how
01:23:37
else you just generate a 400 page Report
01:23:39
with this kind of specificity unless
01:23:41
there's some amount of collaboration and
01:23:43
and sharing which by the way I think
01:23:44
does make sense I think it does make
01:23:46
sense to coordinate your point of
01:23:48
view but I think I agree with you David
01:23:51
the but we don't know that for sure sure
01:23:52
I mean like all I know is that in the
01:23:55
Press reports it's been about the CMA
01:23:57
it's possible that the EU or I don't
01:23:59
think us will do this because that would
01:24:01
just be like inventing holy new
01:24:03
antitrust law right where no I I
01:24:05
understand I I'm I'm just saying that my
01:24:07
my point of view is that as a business
01:24:09
owner my response to this would be to
01:24:11
gatekeep the app in these geographies so
01:24:15
that I don't create an Nexus if I ever
01:24:16
get bought Bingo that's my point that's
01:24:18
exactly my point is that the smallest
01:24:20
Market is creating the most problem for
01:24:22
this merger so assuming they're kind of
01:24:26
on their own in this and the EU doesn't
01:24:28
just copy it if if you're right if they
01:24:30
copy it then figman Adobe have a bigger
01:24:32
problem but I think that's what's going
01:24:34
to happen right then maybe the EU does
01:24:36
copy it but right now the CMA is way
01:24:38
ahead of any other regulator in terms of
01:24:41
a novel Theory so so what I'm saying is
01:24:43
if you're a company why would you
01:24:44
subject yourself to that when it's so
01:24:46
easy to avoid their Market no I think I
01:24:47
think it fundamentally hurts UK
01:24:50
productivity over the long run because I
01:24:52
don't see how companies if they can't a
01:24:55
get a reasonable SLA for a response and
01:24:58
then B get a reasonable document that's
01:25:01
not going to require $50 million of of
01:25:04
lawyers and Consultants to read to do
01:25:07
business in a country just goes down the
01:25:08
incentives to do a business so now if
01:25:11
you Steelman the other side I actually
01:25:15
think it's very difficult to Steelman
01:25:17
why this is bad for competition I think
01:25:19
the only Steelman is more from the
01:25:21
economic shareholder perspective of
01:25:22
adobe which is could they had paid a
01:25:24
different price what does that because I
01:25:26
think it's a mixture of cash and stock
01:25:27
so that's changed because adobe's
01:25:29
rallied a lot and is that price worth it
01:25:31
but that's again not a reason to use a
01:25:35
regulator to run a deal to the ground
01:25:38
right Adobe should just man up and talk
01:25:40
to Dylan and say Here's the new price
01:25:42
otherwise here's a billion dollars I
01:25:44
don't think adobe's driving it in that
01:25:45
way I mean by all accounts figma as a
01:25:48
business is still doing very well even
01:25:49
if they paid too high a price 15 months
01:25:52
ago they've grown they've partially
01:25:54
grown into that valuation already I
01:25:56
don't think Adobe is driving this I
01:25:57
really think that the CMA is driving
01:25:59
this I think there's a regulator who
01:26:01
wants to Pioneer a novel legal Theory
01:26:03
and in a weird way I mean it's not have
01:26:06
you ever seen like a pack of dogs where
01:26:08
you've got like a Great Dane and a
01:26:10
doberman and then a Chihuahua and the
01:26:12
Chihuahua is trying to lead the pack the
01:26:14
CMA is
01:26:15
like and it's like barking the loudest
01:26:18
and trying to shepher all the other
01:26:20
dogs you got a yappy
01:26:24
the issue that you bring up is a Great
01:26:26
Dane and the EU is a is a is a big dog
01:26:29
and yeah yeah but it is if the EU and
01:26:33
the United States follow suit it will
01:26:35
it's just Death By A Thousand Cuts
01:26:37
meaning it will require a Brad Smith
01:26:39
like
01:26:40
character inside of this company who can
01:26:43
go and work with Regulators to really
01:26:45
get it done and this is the Brilliance
01:26:48
of of him at Microsoft is if when you
01:26:52
look at the track record of his ability
01:26:55
post this consent decree to get deals
01:26:57
done inside of Microsoft it's truly
01:27:00
incredible there is nothing that they've
01:27:02
really tried to buy whether it's Nuance
01:27:05
or whether it's Mojang or whether it's
01:27:09
GitHub Activision they've Linked In
01:27:12
they've got they ran the table do we
01:27:15
really want to create an economic system
01:27:17
where whether a deal gets through is
01:27:19
completely arbitrary because there's no
01:27:21
longer a quantitative test and The
01:27:22
Regulators can just pause it that at
01:27:24
some point in the future these companies
01:27:25
may be competitive the and it takes and
01:27:28
furthermore in order to get past the
01:27:30
Regulators who have a completely
01:27:33
subjective standard you need like a
01:27:35
political Genius Like A Brad Smith I
01:27:37
mean that is like the definition of
01:27:40
crony capitalism right is that you get
01:27:42
your deal done if you got a Brad Smith
01:27:44
and you don't get it done if you're a
01:27:46
startup like figma that's not the system
01:27:48
we want to be in absolutely not three
01:27:51
important things one future competition
01:27:53
is a stupid test number two just put six
01:27:56
months on this it's not it's not even
01:27:57
future it's their assessment of the
01:27:59
probability of future competition which
01:28:01
is just dumb it's it's this is precogs
01:28:04
in Minority Report figma could sign an
01:28:06
affidavit today saying that we're not
01:28:11
illustrator we're not building it yeah
01:28:12
it's not our it's not our road map it's
01:28:14
not even an affidavit it's you could go
01:28:16
through you could conduct discovery on
01:28:19
the question of whether figma has ever
01:28:21
even and discuss internally whether they
01:28:24
should compete with Photoshop right
01:28:25
because you don't just launch a
01:28:26
Photoshop competitor out of the blue you
01:28:28
probably discuss it for a while so they
01:28:30
could conduct discovery on that question
01:28:33
I guarantee you figma does not have
01:28:35
robust conversations in Discovery about
01:28:38
competing with Photoshop that's not
01:28:39
where their interest is and then also
01:28:42
they should be just have a six they
01:28:44
should have a six-month clock to do this
01:28:45
and then if I'm Adobe and figma I would
01:28:49
say I would pull a Zuck when they came
01:28:52
at Zuck and said you have to pay for
01:28:53
news in Australia you have to pay for
01:28:55
news in Canada remember these two
01:28:57
government overreaches that you could
01:28:59
even put a link to a news story he's
01:29:01
like okay fine we're just going to not
01:29:02
include links to the New York Times and
01:29:04
feeds that's not allowed they should
01:29:06
just say anybody who's in the UK you can
01:29:09
no longer we're going to look at your IP
01:29:10
addresses we're going to look at your
01:29:11
address you can't buy figma you can't
01:29:13
buy Adobe we're going through with this
01:29:15
so if you don't want consumers to have
01:29:17
this product you don't have to have it
01:29:18
and then people have to get a VPN to use
01:29:20
these products like I would call their
01:29:21
BL on it it's kind of overreaching I
01:29:24
agree okay freeberg any last thoughts as
01:29:27
we wrap up here Jal in order to have a
01:29:29
healthy starup ecosystem we need exits
01:29:31
that's the bot line we do that's the big
01:29:33
picture yes when you put this kind of
01:29:35
chilling effect on m&a because think
01:29:37
about it if you're either an acquirer or
01:29:39
you're a Target you're thinking about
01:29:41
doing a deal and you know that it will
01:29:44
take you at least or it could take you
01:29:45
15 months to get you're not going to do
01:29:47
it's not worth it you chilled it and the
01:29:49
standard for whether it gets approved is
01:29:51
completely arbitrary
01:29:52
that's going to have a dampening or
01:29:54
chilling effect on m&a activity which
01:29:56
means fewer good exits for the ecosystem
01:29:58
which means that less risk Capital will
01:30:00
want to go into the ecosystem to begin
01:30:02
with and a fairer thing I I'll run this
01:30:04
up to flag pull see what you think Sach
01:30:06
why don't they say if they're really
01:30:07
concerned about the top 10 companies hey
01:30:09
the top 10 companies the trillion dollar
01:30:11
crowd right the Microsoft the Google Etc
01:30:14
Apple they have a different standard
01:30:16
than the mid-market so if you really
01:30:18
were concerned about consolidation in
01:30:20
the in the top 10 companies just say
01:30:22
they're not allowed to buy these
01:30:24
companies without going through the
01:30:25
scrutiny but anybody under $250 billion
01:30:28
they can merge they can buy each other
01:30:30
they can do whatever they want they're
01:30:32
exempt from this kind of review and just
01:30:34
let the free market decide because then
01:30:35
that would build up the midm market
01:30:37
right SX I'm concerned about the power
01:30:39
of big tech companies okay but I would
01:30:42
deal with that by targeting
01:30:44
anti-competitive tactics
01:30:46
interoperability yeah require
01:30:47
interoperability don't let them bundle
01:30:49
things like that don't invent some
01:30:52
wholly new arbitrary subjective tests
01:30:55
for whether a company can be acquired we
01:30:57
have a good standard around that which
01:30:59
has to do with market share hey shout
01:31:01
out Lena Khan come on the podt anytime
01:31:02
all right everybody this has been an and
01:31:06
sincerely Lena Khan come on the Pod
01:31:07
let's talk about it this has been
01:31:08
another amazing episode of the all-in
01:31:10
podcast for the dictator trath potia the
01:31:13
Rainman David Sachs and El Capitan the
01:31:18
pilot consultant of Science and CEO
01:31:21
David fre
01:31:22
I am the world's greatest moderator love
01:31:24
you besties we'll see you next time back
01:31:27
at you at
01:31:29
bye we let your winners
01:31:32
ride Rainman
01:31:36
David said we open source it to the fans
01:31:39
and they've just gone crazy with it love
01:31:42
queen
01:31:46
[Music]
01:31:49
of Besties are
01:31:53
that's my dog taking your driveway wait
01:31:57
man oh man myit meet we should all just
01:32:01
get a room and just have one big huge
01:32:03
orgy cuz they're all this useless it's
01:32:04
like this like sexual tension that they
01:32:06
just need to release
01:32:07
[Music]
01:32:13
somehow we need to get
01:32:20
mer
01:32:23
I'm going all
01:32:25
[Music]
01:32:27
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Episode Highlights

  • Free Speech on Campus
    Discussion on the challenges of free speech at universities, particularly regarding anti-Semitism.
    “Harvard has an abysmal record on freedom of speech.”
    @ 05m 19s
    December 08, 2023
  • Woke Identity Politics
    The conversation highlights the shift in how Jewish identity is perceived in political discourse.
    “Jews are being put in the same group as all white people.”
    @ 06m 30s
    December 08, 2023
  • Economic Tribalism
    How political affiliation shapes perceptions of the economy, regardless of actual data.
    “If you're a Republican doing well under Biden, you'll say things are terrible.”
    @ 22m 20s
    December 08, 2023
  • Credit Card Debt Surges
    Credit card debt reaches all-time highs, indicating consumer financial stress.
    “Credit card debt is reaching all-time highs, surpassing one trillion in July.”
    @ 23m 03s
    December 08, 2023
  • Software Recession Ends?
    Signs of recovery in the software sector as new AR growth turns positive.
    “I think I've called an end to the software recession.”
    @ 39m 50s
    December 08, 2023
  • Valuation Reset in Startups
    Startups are facing a valuation reset, impacting their ability to raise capital.
    “The market says no to high valuations.”
    @ 40m 24s
    December 08, 2023
  • Gene Editing's Potential
    Gene editing could revolutionize agriculture by significantly increasing crop yields.
    “We can make specific changes that will cause the plant to do something very novel.”
    @ 48m 20s
    December 08, 2023
  • Google's Gemini Launch
    Google unveils Gemini, a powerful AI model that excels in multimodal tasks.
    “Gemini beat GPT-4 in 30 out of 32 benchmarks!”
    @ 01h 02m 52s
    December 08, 2023
  • Adobe's Acquisition of Figma
    The UK's CMA blocks Adobe's $20 billion acquisition of Figma, citing competition concerns.
    “This merger was originally announced over a year ago.”
    @ 01h 13m 13s
    December 08, 2023
  • The Role of Regulators
    The CMA is seen as pioneering a novel legal theory that could impact future mergers.
    “The CMA is barking the loudest and trying to shepherd all the other dogs.”
    @ 01h 26m 15s
    December 08, 2023
  • The Future of Competition
    The assessment of future competition is deemed unreasonable and speculative.
    “Future competition is a stupid test.”
    @ 01h 27m 53s
    December 08, 2023
  • Regulatory Challenges
    The CMA's lengthy review process is causing delays and uncertainty in the market.
    “It takes 15 months to get a deal approved, which is not worth it.”
    @ 01h 29m 41s
    December 08, 2023

Episode Quotes

Key Moments

  • Viral Clip00:16
  • Intellectual Impressions00:24
  • Open Dialogue02:18
  • Software Recovery39:50
  • Startup Advice56:47
  • Talent Fragmentation59:44
  • AI Competition1:06:02
  • Market Competition1:19:49

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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