00:00:01
[Music]
00:00:12
and they've just gone crazy with them
00:00:18
antonio uh
00:00:20
eulon had a moment of reflection and uh
00:00:23
he was talking about 2008 he's talking
00:00:25
about the
00:00:26
imminent
00:00:28
collapse as he felt it of spacex and
00:00:32
tesla at the same time in december 25th
00:00:33
and he said uh there were just a handful
00:00:36
of people who came out there uh and put
00:00:38
their careers on the line for him at
00:00:40
your shelf and steve jefferson
00:00:41
specifically mentioned uh and it was an
00:00:45
ira and it was a particularly poignant
00:00:47
moment for him he was getting a little
00:00:48
choked up about it tell us about that
00:00:50
bet you made in 2008
00:00:53
and
00:00:54
the potentially career ending bet for
00:00:57
you to bet in an electric car company at
00:00:59
that moment take us back
00:01:01
to that decision yeah um
00:01:03
but before i do that i just want to say
00:01:05
that i left my wallet
00:01:07
uh it backstage because the last time i
00:01:09
was with the four of you i lost a lot of
00:01:11
money
00:01:13
and i realized that i better leave i
00:01:15
better leave all the cash somewhere
00:01:16
where you can't get it and then and you
00:01:18
also made me cry so i don't i i think i
00:01:21
might i might cry again now of joy i
00:01:23
mean no no it was more like humiliation
00:01:25
yeah but uh we were playing poker yeah
00:01:27
we're playing poker you pulled up homer
00:01:29
lucky
00:01:31
yeah no so if i if i if i cry again this
00:01:34
time it will be from uh from a sense of
00:01:36
um
00:01:38
just gratitude for those moments that we
00:01:41
got to share so
00:01:43
the
00:01:44
for us in particular because you know
00:01:46
our strategy is so operational
00:01:48
i was there working on supply chain in
00:01:50
the factory and on sales and those in
00:01:51
that period along with my partner tim
00:01:53
watkins and three or four of our supply
00:01:55
chain people and we had a major problem
00:01:57
in supply chain uh the cost for we had
00:01:59
to control and you know elon was doing
00:02:01
engineering on the very expensive parts
00:02:02
we were doing the i called the b parts
00:02:04
the amb parts
00:02:06
and man it was brutal um
00:02:08
but it was very clear to us that and
00:02:11
remember it was also the middle of
00:02:11
financial crisis right so we had a
00:02:13
treasury portfolio we had to decide we
00:02:15
didn't have a lot of capital time these
00:02:16
are tiny funds
00:02:18
120 300 funds where our capital go where
00:02:20
our people go more importantly where
00:02:22
operating people go
00:02:23
and where i would go
00:02:25
and we decided to focus on tesla because
00:02:27
uh
00:02:28
first we really did believe in elon
00:02:31
when most people didn't
00:02:33
and we saw on him something very special
00:02:35
which i think you probably saw here
00:02:36
yesterday that not only is he is a
00:02:38
brilliant brilliant engineer you know
00:02:40
100-year kind engineer
00:02:42
he's a man of deep conviction and deep
00:02:45
passion
00:02:46
and deep compassion
00:02:48
what he is doing
00:02:49
is really trying to bend the arc of
00:02:51
humanity for all of us
00:02:54
because he really cares
00:02:56
and that came through to us and we
00:02:58
wanted to be on that mission with him
00:02:59
and so we were privileged enough to be
00:03:01
there in a moment time that it mattered
00:03:03
and it was really hard man i mean we had
00:03:05
clients i actually had a client said to
00:03:06
me how do i know this is a delorean and
00:03:08
i said look i can tell you for a fact we
00:03:11
are not selling cocaine out of the back
00:03:12
of the factory in the cars
00:03:15
delorean being the famous back to the
00:03:17
future car exactly where the owner was
00:03:20
trafficking cocaine to underwrite the
00:03:21
car exactly
00:03:22
um i may live in miami being antonio
00:03:24
grazie's board not selling cocaine for
00:03:26
sure that i'm sure
00:03:28
uh yeah but no it was uh it was a very
00:03:30
it was a crew it was a career betting
00:03:31
event for us and it turned out right it
00:03:33
was right thing to do
00:03:34
but yeah for me it was um
00:03:37
i'm just deeply grateful for these
00:03:38
experiences but i mean you really
00:03:40
doubled down because you didn't just do
00:03:41
tesla you also
00:03:43
were there in some really critical
00:03:44
moments at spacex as well we were
00:03:46
although i i tell you um you know we
00:03:48
doubled down at the time and test we put
00:03:49
more money in tesla than the financial
00:03:50
crisis and then helped lead a convert
00:03:52
around there that was really tough for
00:03:53
us to do and then put money in spacex
00:03:55
but i tell you operationally like in
00:03:57
terms of capital stack i think there
00:03:58
were other people around and and spacex
00:04:01
was also running out of money and so we
00:04:02
put money into spacex
00:04:04
operation we were just basically over
00:04:05
the years but it was never as
00:04:06
existential in terms of the operations
00:04:07
it was a tesla i mean tesla was truly i
00:04:09
think truly existential and because we
00:04:11
were operating guys and i myself had
00:04:13
been a factory manager i worked in auto
00:04:14
parts in all parts factory i'd run
00:04:17
industrial facilities myself we could
00:04:19
kind of uniquely add value there in the
00:04:20
rocket factory you know we were just
00:04:22
less valuable
00:04:24
but yeah both these companies were going
00:04:25
down at the same time and you know the
00:04:27
amount of stress we were all under was
00:04:29
extraordinary but you know looking back
00:04:30
on it it's one of the greatest moments
00:04:32
of my career i mean this sense of
00:04:34
fellowship you know one of the i think
00:04:36
the great thing about being in our
00:04:37
business the business we are all in is
00:04:39
that we get to back amazing people are
00:04:40
trying to change the world and in these
00:04:42
dark dark dark deep moments we get to go
00:04:45
to war for them
00:04:46
and it in those moments i call them
00:04:48
these moments of fellowship where you
00:04:50
just care deeply about someone and and
00:04:52
passion about the mission and you get to
00:04:54
make a huge difference like these are
00:04:56
the highlights of my career and if you
00:04:58
ask my partners they tell you the same
00:04:59
thing these are the best moments we've
00:05:01
had some together three of us have had
00:05:02
some together actually we've all had
00:05:03
some together but here on the stage we
00:05:05
had to fight for something you believed
00:05:06
in and it's it's a privilege man to do
00:05:09
it it's a privileged situation it's
00:05:10
privileged to be the elon it's been a
00:05:12
privilege to be there with with all of
00:05:13
you at different moments in my career
00:05:15
and i'm very grateful for it how um
00:05:18
[Music]
00:05:19
do you feel like you come off of a high
00:05:21
after having huge successes like that
00:05:23
like how do you stay
00:05:25
grounded and motivated to try to find
00:05:28
the next one if in the back of your mind
00:05:30
there must be a little piece that says
00:05:31
it's never going to be as good as this
00:05:33
guy or those two things i mean you know
00:05:35
it is it's interesting questions roth i
00:05:37
think that um there's a couple things in
00:05:38
play for us one is we keep going because
00:05:41
we believe in making the world better we
00:05:42
invest in companies that we believe make
00:05:44
a difference with people we respect and
00:05:45
we're values aligned with and that's the
00:05:47
that's the ethos of our firm right so
00:05:49
whether it's large or small we may never
00:05:51
find something that's as important as
00:05:52
tesla spacex again but we will find more
00:05:54
great people we will help them you know
00:05:56
two of our companies here i mean we
00:05:58
invested and roll with palmer we have a
00:06:00
uh a small investment flexport which
00:06:02
should have been one of the biggest
00:06:03
mistakes the last 10 years of my career
00:06:05
is not putting more money in flashboard
00:06:06
yeah i know we we we had it we actually
00:06:08
it's kind of a funny story about we had
00:06:10
um you know i'd say kind of a soft
00:06:12
handshake on a term sheet at say a price
00:06:14
of x and softbait came in like two later
00:06:16
and made it 2x and i had too much price
00:06:18
memory to keep going and co-lead it so
00:06:19
it was an error but you had you have two
00:06:22
people on the stage here they're
00:06:23
extraordinary entrepreneurs they're
00:06:24
trying to make the world better both
00:06:26
both these companies are really are
00:06:27
really great and and making the world
00:06:29
much more pretty now post covet and in
00:06:31
times of war making it much safer for
00:06:33
all of us
00:06:34
there are people like that out there
00:06:35
there's more of them they may not be
00:06:36
elon you know we probably won't elon our
00:06:38
generation but there's lots of great
00:06:40
people and i'm very optimistic about
00:06:42
what's happening now in the economy
00:06:43
we're seeing incredible incredible
00:06:45
innovation with tremendous entrepreneurs
00:06:47
in our pipeline so maybe there's another
00:06:49
one i don't know
00:06:50
antonio how do you think about the
00:06:54
in the businesses you guys invest in
00:06:56
there can sometimes be a very long
00:06:57
capital deployment cycle
00:06:59
before you see any real return in terms
00:07:01
of you know business value
00:07:03
whether it's pharma i know you've done
00:07:04
pharma
00:07:05
some of these hardware companies where
00:07:07
there's a big build cycle how much do
00:07:09
you need to kind of think about and see
00:07:11
a customer and revenue show up before
00:07:13
you're willing to say hey let's build
00:07:14
the big rocket ship to go to the friggin
00:07:16
moon and how do you judge and value that
00:07:19
business and back a team yeah
00:07:21
it's a really good question i think it
00:07:22
depends it depends on this and the
00:07:23
sector rim yeah it depends on
00:07:26
how we we look at the world trip
00:07:28
probabilistically and we're looking for
00:07:29
companies that we call pro-interpret
00:07:31
where the baton roll gets worse so in in
00:07:33
the case of pharma or something like
00:07:34
spacex we'll think about like what is
00:07:36
our problem what's our probability tree
00:07:38
here which probably lost probably a 3x a
00:07:40
5x a 10x 100x and and then we'll think
00:07:42
about when the capital goes in
00:07:44
what is the actual return on capital i
00:07:46
was watching the talk you guys had with
00:07:48
with ryan about what happens to public
00:07:49
markets the reality is that
00:07:52
a business is a machine you put capital
00:07:53
on one side and out the other side comes
00:07:55
return the roic return invested capital
00:07:57
really matters and if you're a client of
00:07:59
a class to be trained investor the way i
00:08:01
am we think about that a lot yeah so
00:08:03
even though we may be putting a lot of
00:08:03
capital in the question is what's the
00:08:05
margin of being in the back end a
00:08:06
company like spacex a lot of capital is
00:08:08
going in but we know that if it works we
00:08:10
believe it will work we're also going to
00:08:11
have a company has tremendous margins
00:08:13
even in the industrial sector because of
00:08:15
the industry structure it's in it lives
00:08:17
in an oligopoly uh inside the u.s and
00:08:19
outside the u.s so it's like building
00:08:21
sterling same thing capital going in but
00:08:23
we know that the the margins and the
00:08:26
profitability that business on the back
00:08:27
end will be very very high and so the
00:08:29
roic will be very good just
00:08:31
sorry are you backing a lot of deep tech
00:08:32
startups like companies
00:08:33
a founder shows up with a powerpoint
00:08:35
they're like i need 50 million bucks to
00:08:36
make our prototype i mean what happens
00:08:38
there it depends on the business so as
00:08:40
an example um you know we have passed on
00:08:43
things uh that are
00:08:45
um our view
00:08:47
going to have margins that are
00:08:48
ultimately compared to a low a low level
00:08:51
right and you know there are i don't
00:08:53
give examples here but there are lots of
00:08:55
examples of people that are doing things
00:08:56
in you know i'll call it electric
00:08:57
aircraft vtols etc we look at this and
00:09:00
say
00:09:00
this is going to be a highly competitive
00:09:02
market these are not nnf1 spacex is an
00:09:04
end of one
00:09:05
if you compare that to someone making an
00:09:07
electric vehicle that say electric
00:09:08
airplane or electric vtol
00:09:10
that will not be nf1 you'll be none of
00:09:11
many and in end of many business you're
00:09:14
ultimately going to have margin
00:09:15
competition that's going to make it the
00:09:16
return on capital goes down to basic
00:09:18
industrial margins you know like it
00:09:20
won't be that much better than boeing's
00:09:21
roc or air buses roic because those will
00:09:24
be ultimate competitors you you said it
00:09:25
a little too
00:09:27
i think superficially so let me just
00:09:28
double click
00:09:30
and i think antonio brings up i think
00:09:32
one of the most important principles of
00:09:34
investing that is so
00:09:36
utterly poorly understood which is roic
00:09:39
roik return on invested capital most
00:09:41
people don't even know what it means how
00:09:43
to calculate it no pat over your
00:09:46
weighted average cost of capital these
00:09:47
are enormously fundamental principles
00:09:49
when you're running a business
00:09:50
especially in a moment like this because
00:09:52
when the rubber meets the road and you
00:09:54
need a lot of money and you run into
00:09:55
somebody as sophisticated as him he's
00:09:57
already worked from first principles to
00:09:58
understand it it's really really really
00:10:01
important to know these things because
00:10:02
these are
00:10:03
the core foundations of valuation you
00:10:06
know so obviously dcfs are one framework
00:10:08
but roik is incredibly incredibly
00:10:10
important especially when you make real
00:10:12
things and you need to spend capex yeah
00:10:14
and look in the world and last ten years
00:10:16
where money is free nobody thinks about
00:10:18
this very much we always have thought
00:10:19
about it which informs our investment
00:10:21
model but yeah jamal's right i mean in
00:10:22
today's world if you're an entrepreneur
00:10:24
and you can show up and say listen i
00:10:25
have a 50 60 70 return on capital every
00:10:28
dollar you give me will yield a 70
00:10:30
return on the back end even though we're
00:10:32
losing money along the way that's a very
00:10:34
compelling case relative to hey we're
00:10:35
losing a bunch of money we're always
00:10:36
sure it's gonna happen which is what we
00:10:37
hear a lot this this also builds on the
00:10:39
question from yesterday which is how do
00:10:41
you present yourself as
00:10:43
you know a young emerging company
00:10:46
and cut through all the noise and
00:10:48
understanding of these things and about
00:10:49
future value creation in a moment like
00:10:51
this becomes really important as well
00:10:53
even if people will debate whether it's
00:10:55
right people give you credit for the
00:10:57
intellectual honesty of actually going
00:10:59
there and understanding these things
00:11:01
really you see it a lot where companies
00:11:03
slip away from first principle so
00:11:05
you know the first principles on a
00:11:07
high margin enterprise software business
00:11:10
you can define arr and assume some and
00:11:12
then people say hey some multiple of ar
00:11:14
is your valuation comp like your you
00:11:16
know your multiple and then another
00:11:18
company shows up and the margins are
00:11:19
different the growth profile is
00:11:21
different the revenue retention is
00:11:22
different it's a services business and
00:11:24
they try and use a similar sort of comp
00:11:25
and all of a sudden everyone's thinking
00:11:27
about valuation as a function of some
00:11:29
industry standard comp as opposed to
00:11:30
going back to understanding how did that
00:11:32
comp get created in the first place and
00:11:34
what's the nature of the business from
00:11:35
which that comp arose and people are
00:11:37
doing things like calling revenue arr
00:11:39
you know it's not even subscription
00:11:40
revenue and so on and i think that
00:11:42
happens
00:11:43
considerably more and then then that
00:11:44
investing cycle just becomes you know
00:11:46
hey well the next round will be this
00:11:47
multiple and you know that's how we'll
00:11:49
get our increment in valuation and
00:11:50
everyone just misses the the core
00:11:53
you know proposition of building a
00:11:54
valuable business it can generate your
00:11:56
what's your look through into the
00:11:57
economy just from your portfolio
00:11:58
companies look we we think i think we're
00:12:00
in our session i mean i don't know if
00:12:02
someone's already said this but we're in
00:12:03
our session we're in recession and this
00:12:04
will be like my i don't know 100 cycle
00:12:06
or something i'm pretty old right like
00:12:07
the rest of us here we've seen it we've
00:12:08
seen it over and over again and you know
00:12:10
i see david's tweets about go raise two
00:12:11
and half years of money this is correct
00:12:12
i mean we're gonna you need enough
00:12:13
capital to get through the problem
00:12:15
uh the good news about this recession
00:12:17
and you know there are there's some good
00:12:18
news here which is
00:12:19
to me if you look at the the macro
00:12:21
picture here it
00:12:23
looks like if you can look look at
00:12:25
the amount of federal debt the the state
00:12:27
of the consumer and kind of what's
00:12:29
happened in the business formation it
00:12:30
actually looks a little like post-world
00:12:31
war ii to me in that in the world in the
00:12:34
world war two period we had the last
00:12:36
massive mobilization or demobilization
00:12:38
of our economy occurred in world war ii
00:12:40
right that happened again in covet when
00:12:42
we change in this case it's like a mini
00:12:44
version of remobilization that we're
00:12:46
restarting the economy we flooded the
00:12:49
system with money to get the to kind of
00:12:51
buffer the problem and restart the
00:12:52
economy and now we have inflation but we
00:12:55
also have lots of business formation and
00:12:57
we have new ways of doing work which is
00:12:59
what happened after world war ii so i'm
00:13:01
i'm i'm very optimistic because most of
00:13:03
these recessions you know to really get
00:13:05
inflation down we're gonna have to uh
00:13:06
reduce consumer demand and or change oil
00:13:08
prices so for sure we should be pumping
00:13:10
on this country i know it's not it's
00:13:12
controversial but that's important um to
00:13:14
lower oil prices to get inflation down
00:13:15
but the reality is underneath the the
00:13:18
numbers there's a lot of innovation
00:13:19
happening and that's what happened kind
00:13:21
of post world war ii so i would say
00:13:23
we're in a bit of a mini retooling it's
00:13:25
going to be a rough year or two uh hang
00:13:27
on it will be a rough year or two but
00:13:29
the consumer's in pretty good shapes
00:13:30
they're not over levered we should come
00:13:32
out okay and the u.s economy is so
00:13:34
resilient man like you know we are all
00:13:36
either one generation from being
00:13:37
immigrants or immigrants here i think
00:13:38
most of us right
00:13:39
it's the best place in the world live
00:13:41
we're the most innovative economy in the
00:13:42
world we should i'm super optimistic
00:13:43
what's happening here because there's so
00:13:45
much innovation so many smart people
00:13:46
working so hard to make things better
00:13:49
i think it's going to be great i think
00:13:50
we get the next couple years it's going
00:13:51
to be great talk about this um
00:13:54
pumping more oil situation obviously
00:13:56
russia's involved in a and we talked
00:13:58
about earlier today had a debate about
00:14:00
ukraine um and then you have maybe
00:14:04
some folks in the middle east not
00:14:05
pumping as much oil as we might like
00:14:07
them to and then
00:14:08
europe decided well we don't want to
00:14:10
frack here we want you to do that over
00:14:11
there and and then we stopped here
00:14:14
and
00:14:15
none of us want to see um environmental
00:14:17
damage done to the planet but we also
00:14:19
don't want to see dictators take over
00:14:21
the planet or the economy come to a halt
00:14:24
what's
00:14:25
a reasonable proposal
00:14:27
for america yeah and american
00:14:29
sovereignty
00:14:31
in terms of green and renewables
00:14:34
and
00:14:35
maybe pumping some oil so look i
00:14:38
we were the first institution investors
00:14:40
as a motors so i think i have enough
00:14:41
benefit to say this i believe in green
00:14:43
technology okay absolute hundred percent
00:14:45
but energy and in the same fund we did
00:14:48
tesla we actually had fracking assets
00:14:50
because energy independence isn't well
00:14:51
that's incredible really yes in the same
00:14:54
fund fund because then as it is today
00:14:57
energy independence is a national
00:14:59
security issue
00:15:00
this is not a partisan issue
00:15:02
extremely important to understand this
00:15:05
extreme importance
00:15:08
yeah
00:15:09
it's not about democrats republicans
00:15:11
it's about wars in the middle east
00:15:13
and the reality is that the saudis are
00:15:15
not pumping opec is not pumping
00:15:17
this is terrible for america and they
00:15:19
know it they're squeezing their economy
00:15:21
in the 70s and it's absolutely being
00:15:23
done on purpose so the answer to that in
00:15:25
my mind is twofold one we should have an
00:15:28
error we should be industrial policy in
00:15:29
this country but the first thing we
00:15:30
should have is an energy policy energy
00:15:32
policy look like this we take all of the
00:15:34
background subsidies literally make them
00:15:36
equal and we give let's say 500 billion
00:15:39
total 250 billion in in low-cost loans
00:15:42
to energy patch for drilling in places
00:15:45
like texas louisiana and an equal amount
00:15:46
to green energy
00:15:48
and we sprint to a green future at the
00:15:50
same time we ensure that this country is
00:15:52
safe and we have energy security in this
00:15:54
country for all the people out there
00:15:55
being hurt behind inflation
00:15:57
it's a security problem
00:16:02
what do you
00:16:03
you guys invest heavily in manufacturing
00:16:04
what do you see in terms of the future
00:16:06
of manufacturing the opportunity for
00:16:07
onshore manufacturing are there
00:16:09
technologies that you guys are excited
00:16:10
about that create an advantage for the
00:16:11
united states to build manufacturing
00:16:13
capacity
00:16:15
um to service industry here and
00:16:17
yeah look i think this thing about we
00:16:18
outsourced the entire
00:16:20
entire manufacturing base in china
00:16:21
because it was cheaper but the reality
00:16:23
is that the if we have been our
00:16:25
the productivity between the kind of u.s
00:16:27
and china right now is about eight to
00:16:28
one so a u.s worker is eight times more
00:16:30
productive than a chinese worker
00:16:32
we found in in cases like tesla where we
00:16:34
actually helped read in terms of gdp per
00:16:36
worker yes okay and
00:16:38
we helped to in-source the supply chain
00:16:40
of tesla why is tesla flooding rated
00:16:42
because i got news for you you actually
00:16:44
can make stuff in america and it's made
00:16:46
well shocking okay shocking let me tell
00:16:49
you
00:16:50
when you put
00:16:51
what is that why do we have this
00:16:53
narrative that it can't be done and then
00:16:55
we go to gigafactory and you see let me
00:16:56
tell you having been done let me tell
00:16:58
you why and boy i mean
00:17:01
here's this i'm probably gonna get
00:17:02
pillory for saying this but great
00:17:04
companies are built by engineers like
00:17:05
elon musk that's a reality of it and
00:17:07
they know they want to control their
00:17:08
manufacturing we do it here so we can
00:17:10
iterate faster and make the product
00:17:11
better the product's good enough you'll
00:17:13
sell it for a great margin they get
00:17:14
optimized by marketing people and
00:17:16
destroyed by the cfo when you put the
00:17:18
finance guy in charge and he's like oh
00:17:19
hey we can get a lower peace bar part by
00:17:21
sending it to china but he doesn't
00:17:22
understand the iteration cycle of making
00:17:24
that product that guy destroys the
00:17:26
company
00:17:27
and that's what happened in america bean
00:17:28
counters yeah we put the cfo's in charge
00:17:30
for god's sake don't do that [ __ ] these
00:17:31
bean counters i mean can i say that
00:17:33
[ __ ] well no and let me say that more
00:17:35
engineers let me say that if you if you
00:17:37
if you calculate return on invested
00:17:38
capital and you think about this
00:17:40
carefully what happens is these long
00:17:41
supply chains to asia they have huge
00:17:43
capital deployed but if capital is cheap
00:17:45
you do that because the peace part price
00:17:46
is cheaper but if you calculate what
00:17:48
happened at tes in particular when you
00:17:49
calculate the overall cost and capital
00:17:51
wasn't free because we didn't get any it
00:17:53
was actually much smarter to bring it
00:17:54
back right so the long term cycle you
00:17:56
make more money the short term cycle you
00:17:58
make less money the short-term cycle you
00:18:00
make more money i mean is that another
00:18:01
way to think about otherwise you
00:18:03
optimize for short-term outcomes you you
00:18:05
improve the you you improve the income
00:18:07
statement because you might improve
00:18:09
profitably in the short term but you
00:18:10
actually hurt the balance sheet because
00:18:12
you set all this capital on the water
00:18:13
over to china you're there bringing it
00:18:14
back and your iteration cycle goes down
00:18:16
right because you you've got so what
00:18:18
you're saying is the product's less
00:18:19
innovative for sure
00:18:21
it is but he's saying something really
00:18:22
important which is that it's the
00:18:23
financialization of the p l
00:18:26
that in some ways led to the decline of
00:18:27
american manufacturing in part meaning
00:18:30
if you're a ceo of a business and you
00:18:32
construct your employment agreement and
00:18:34
it's based on a certain kind of earnings
00:18:36
in a certain period a certain earnings
00:18:39
per share
00:18:40
the incentive to then drive
00:18:42
financialization goes up now the perfect
00:18:44
example of this is if you compare it for
00:18:46
example and you did this
00:18:48
the comp package that you gave elon in
00:18:50
2018 versus the comp package that any
00:18:53
other ceo in america got
00:18:55
it was completely
00:18:58
black and white it was it was it was it
00:19:00
was opposite land yes and you basically
00:19:03
completely said you get nothing now
00:19:05
let's set these extreme
00:19:08
goals and then if you can hit it you'll
00:19:10
get compensated so much so that you know
00:19:12
when you had glass lewis and i said no
00:19:15
right uh the the iss cluster said no but
00:19:18
they use in most things and we're being
00:19:19
sued for it to be careful what i say
00:19:21
about it but um yeah we had a account
00:19:23
package fully boost on equity
00:19:25
appreciation right that required
00:19:27
creation new products and look i'm gonna
00:19:29
i'll pick on apple here apple is the
00:19:30
first stock i ever bought i was 12 years
00:19:32
old my mom actually went to okem bank
00:19:33
and bought me a futures app i still have
00:19:35
it in my account to remind me what it
00:19:37
takes to build a company
00:19:38
steve jobs dies
00:19:40
terrible and look then you know tim cook
00:19:43
takes over typical supply chain guy
00:19:45
i mean they've really optimized
00:19:47
profitability it's unbelievable you know
00:19:49
done a two trillion dollar mark cap or
00:19:51
something now but man when's the last
00:19:52
time they needed a product airpods
00:19:54
airpods
00:19:55
yeah i mean they're pretty great
00:19:57
great products great products but i mean
00:19:59
it's not entertainment
00:20:00
incredible free cash flow yeah and they
00:20:02
aggressively buy back their stuff yes
00:20:03
it's in the financialization of that
00:20:05
company yeah has attracted i mean like
00:20:07
if you look at a com if you could look
00:20:08
at a the largest shareholder is the most
00:20:11
sophisticated financial asset owner in
00:20:13
the world berkshire yes berkshire
00:20:14
doesn't buy technology companies they
00:20:16
buy incredibly well-run financial assets
00:20:18
and it is look at how duck's getting
00:20:20
land-based for the vr investment some
00:20:22
might say that strategically it's not a
00:20:23
great investment but he's saying [ __ ] it
00:20:25
i'm gonna spend 10 billion dollars a
00:20:27
year no no
00:20:28
he he said it for a quarter and then he
00:20:30
had to take it back and cancel it
00:20:32
oh he said that they took it back yeah
00:20:34
yeah but that's what he wanted to do
00:20:35
um and so to your point like it's very
00:20:37
hard to really build
00:20:39
things now yes but it can be done and
00:20:42
look i think one of
00:20:44
i am what is happening in the world
00:20:45
today
00:20:46
geopolitically is tragic the war we are
00:20:48
experiencing ukraine is absolutely
00:20:49
tragic
00:20:50
but from all tragedies come some some
00:20:52
good things there's always a silver
00:20:53
lining and one of the server lines here
00:20:55
i think should be the acceleration of
00:20:57
reshoring of all these products in teal
00:20:59
america to rebuild our industrial base
00:21:01
because we actually can do it i can tell
00:21:03
you i am starting my career basically as
00:21:05
a factory manager in california it can
00:21:08
be done there are americans who want to
00:21:09
make stuff between here mexico canada we
00:21:12
can make pharma we can make high-tech
00:21:14
products yes the price might be a little
00:21:15
higher but i tell you iteration could be
00:21:17
better and your value will be better if
00:21:18
the product is better people will pay
00:21:19
for it and resiliency and resilient
00:21:22
listen for 100
00:21:23
100
00:21:24
all right we uh are setting up a couple
00:21:27
of microphones here antonio's been
00:21:28
gracious enough to join us for some q a
00:21:30
the audience is filled with
00:21:32
entrepreneurs capital allocators artists
00:21:34
and builders so we're going to put a
00:21:35
couple microphones out there hopefully
00:21:37
some lights on the microphones if i can
00:21:39
see them line up and remember the rule
00:21:42
we don't need to know about your company
00:21:43
just a tight concise question
00:21:46
anybody does any marketing or promotion
00:21:49
we're all gonna groan let's practice a
00:21:50
ground three two one
00:21:54
no garnish you could say you could say
00:21:55
your name you could say your favorite so
00:21:57
also wait before we start yeah if chris
00:22:00
is chris malloy
00:22:03
okay uh
00:22:04
everybody you guys may want to just know
00:22:06
chris whenever you're in vegas uh chris
00:22:08
is the guy at carbone in las vegas which
00:22:10
is the most you know best part of our
00:22:12
restaurant reservation to get but chris
00:22:14
bought a bottle of wine for us that we
00:22:16
can open now and drink while we do the
00:22:17
ama yeah oh well bring up a bottle of
00:22:19
wine anyways that's chris malloy say hi
00:22:20
to him get his number and text him if
00:22:22
you're ever in las vegas
00:22:27
would bring the captain of carbone to
00:22:30
our event oh keep the drink let's drink
00:22:32
the wine
00:22:33
that's fantastic oh nice to meet you all
00:22:35
right first question tell us your
00:22:36
favorite bestie and then uh yeah we're
00:22:38
still doing favorite besties right right
00:22:40
bestie and that's a quick tight question
00:22:41
go all right favorite bessie j cal uh
00:22:44
point guard of the sentry to this team
00:22:45
so
00:22:46
hats off to you
00:22:48
um
00:22:49
my question is first of all we've been
00:22:51
here all week uh in last three days
00:22:54
watching these cards fall from the sky
00:22:56
and we all know that you guys center
00:22:58
around this poker table this beautiful
00:22:59
game my question is
00:23:02
how is that game influence both your
00:23:04
relationships and decision making in
00:23:06
business and your personal lives
00:23:08
great question chamath start us off and
00:23:11
you can go to the back and next person
00:23:12
qf how is poker influence a friendship
00:23:15
our lives how is the poker game itself
00:23:18
had an impact on our lives okay i think
00:23:20
i really do believe this but i think
00:23:22
it's the most incredible
00:23:24
game
00:23:25
and training ground for business
00:23:27
because
00:23:28
in any given moment you are forced to
00:23:31
deal with
00:23:32
the spectrum of good information to
00:23:34
moderate information to bad information
00:23:37
good outcomes moderate outcomes bad
00:23:39
outcomes
00:23:40
you're taking risk you're learning
00:23:42
information you're adjusting your style
00:23:45
and the most important thing is you're
00:23:47
forced to
00:23:48
anchor to your core values or not how
00:23:51
you behave at the table is how you
00:23:53
behave in life you know you can take
00:23:55
this
00:23:57
yeah
00:23:57
yeah you can take these wins poorly you
00:24:00
can take these wins well you can take
00:24:01
the losses poorly you can take the loss
00:24:03
as well i i would encourage all of you
00:24:05
to learn to play the game with your
00:24:07
friends it's
00:24:08
it's a beautiful beautiful start a
00:24:09
weekly game saks well the poker game at
00:24:12
chamas south is how i got to be friends
00:24:14
with smoth right i mean
00:24:17
i'm just saying this would you guys tell
00:24:18
your wives why you stay up all night
00:24:19
playing poker because i've been there
00:24:20
with you guys yeah it's pretty freaking
00:24:21
degenerative yeah
00:24:23
we're all holding him exactly talking
00:24:26
about baby it's training it's training
00:24:28
for business no you just need this i'm
00:24:29
kidding you but i've been there i've
00:24:30
been i've been there i've seen the
00:24:31
drinking of the food too
00:24:33
for business we're not degenerates but
00:24:35
that's actually well i was just saying
00:24:38
i mean didn't you invest in yammer after
00:24:41
i started playing in your
00:24:42
weekly poker game yeah and it was
00:24:44
actually so degenerate what really
00:24:46
happened after that was i was in las
00:24:48
vegas in 2011
00:24:50
i had just left facebook i moved to
00:24:52
vegas
00:24:54
and i was on the phone with sax in
00:24:56
between playing tournaments
00:24:58
and he like let me in invest in yammer
00:25:01
literally like and you know you did me
00:25:03
an incredible solid because i put money
00:25:06
in
00:25:06
and you know what this is like nine
00:25:08
months later he sells to microsoft and i
00:25:11
returned a third of my first fund yum
00:25:13
yum and
00:25:15
it really solidified my reputation so i
00:25:17
mean
00:25:18
i owe you a big one for that well i got
00:25:20
to say about this though so david sacks
00:25:23
i've known david for 25 years he did
00:25:24
yammer i want to put money in it he said
00:25:26
no because
00:25:28
[Laughter]
00:25:30
this is a true story it's true sorry he
00:25:31
said no he said he said no because if
00:25:33
this fails you are my backup plan
00:25:37
oh for a job yes
00:25:40
i wanted
00:25:42
i was so afraid of losing everyone's
00:25:43
money when i founded a company you know
00:25:45
you know it took a little bit for me i
00:25:47
wanted to have like one friend who's my
00:25:49
head and i didn't lose but you know that
00:25:51
was the wrong way of thinking about it
00:25:52
we should have should freeburg i mean
00:25:54
how is the game well
00:25:56
before tomorrow are you leaving no i'm
00:25:58
ready no no no no no wait come come come
00:25:59
come back for a sec okay he'll get
00:26:01
glasses okay he's getting one i'll tell
00:26:03
i'll tell you guys one thing chamoth is
00:26:05
one of the most generous people you will
00:26:06
ever meet unbelievable he is
00:26:09
and for all of his
00:26:11
for all of his bluster about his
00:26:13
freaking mink coats and [ __ ] like
00:26:16
chinchilla and chinchilla
00:26:18
he has brought together a group and he
00:26:20
largely is the reason that i think the
00:26:22
game grows and goes on and you saw some
00:26:24
of the amazing people that we've had on
00:26:26
stage here some of our friends are here
00:26:27
that we play in our game with that um
00:26:30
really that that network has been built
00:26:32
and solidified because of chamath and
00:26:34
his generosity and friendship that's
00:26:36
it's really um something i've i've
00:26:37
learned to appreciate in my life and you
00:26:39
know thank you thanks yeah yeah i mean
00:26:41
it's yeah it's a tremendous group and uh
00:26:43
yeah amazing people like amazing people
00:26:46
and yeah
00:26:48
the consistency of it has been amazing
00:26:51
um from the generator chamath had this
00:26:53
like little tiny two million dollar
00:26:54
house with like a one and a half
00:26:56
car garage when he was at facebook and
00:26:58
we we would play in the garage that
00:27:00
little tiny place you had remember
00:27:02
um you know before you bought the two
00:27:04
houses next door and knocked them down
00:27:06
and
00:27:06
gentrified
00:27:08
but
00:27:09
uh
00:27:10
true story um saks uh uh said hey you
00:27:14
know you're doing these conferences you
00:27:15
should invest in the companies and this
00:27:17
is when i put the fix in for him to win
00:27:19
techcrunch 50 at yammer with yammer he
00:27:21
said i have to win and then he his wife
00:27:23
told my wife he has to win so then i
00:27:25
basically got the whole jury to vote for
00:27:27
him with the hammer he wins and he goes
00:27:28
hey schmuck all of my success is due to
00:27:30
j cal you guys understand
00:27:33
it was a good fix i put the fix in for
00:27:35
him but he said listen i want to thank
00:27:37
you for this and
00:27:39
you should start a fund instead of doing
00:27:40
all this work at the conference why
00:27:41
don't you just invest in the companies
00:27:43
i'll put 250k into your fund i'll be the
00:27:45
anchor i said that's incredible really
00:27:46
and he said yeah and then i went to the
00:27:48
poker table i told the story and then
00:27:49
dave goldberg rest in peace one of our
00:27:51
great friends um and and certainly the
00:27:53
the best amongst us thank you um he uh
00:27:57
he said i'll put money into it thank you
00:27:59
and uh he put money in and then billy
00:28:01
said i'll put money in and everybody
00:28:02
said they put money and free break said
00:28:03
i'll take a pass um
00:28:08
but you know we'll put that aside anyway
00:28:10
um thank you i was all locked up and
00:28:12
other stuff yeah he's like i got a
00:28:14
kenwalk barn i've got
00:28:24
and this is a true this is a true story
00:28:26
uh bill lee's there he couldn't make it
00:28:28
to here but he's one of our great
00:28:29
friends and and one of elon's best
00:28:31
friends in the world and um
00:28:33
he said of course i'm in um would you
00:28:35
mind if i if i tell our billionaire
00:28:36
friend um the the co-founder of um
00:28:40
ebay jeff skull
00:28:42
and uh he tells them uh jake how's doing
00:28:44
the fun you should do it
00:28:46
i meet jeff skull's money manager uh
00:28:49
and uh
00:28:50
john and i i said hey here's what i'm
00:28:52
doing i'm a first-time fund manager i
00:28:53
don't know what the [ __ ] i'm doing i'm a
00:28:54
former journalist and he said how much
00:28:56
is the fun i sent 10 million he said
00:28:58
i'll take half
00:28:59
and i said
00:29:02
i'm sorry and he said i'll take five
00:29:03
million
00:29:04
and that was the biggest check i ever
00:29:05
got and it was producibility and
00:29:07
literally that first fund
00:29:09
uh
00:29:10
was raised around the poker table in one
00:29:12
night and that changed the trajectory of
00:29:14
my career and that really is the
00:29:15
fellowship and it started with david and
00:29:17
you hosting and i remember it's like
00:29:19
yesterday and i think maybe also a good
00:29:21
moment to uh just maybe cheers to to
00:29:23
goldie uh
00:29:25
dave goldberg um no longer with and tony
00:29:28
shea who played in the game as well two
00:29:30
incredible man
00:29:32
next question
00:29:33
hey um my name is bobbin favorite bestie
00:29:36
is tremont great too uh thank you
00:29:39
by the way antonio is also our people
00:29:42
too
00:29:43
all right listen we know chemical best
00:29:45
equipped with a question let's go yeah
00:29:46
my main question is like when you guys
00:29:48
actually decided to
00:29:50
manage capital for people like what
00:29:52
really was
00:29:53
the scariest step in taking that leap
00:29:55
and taking that risk i know a lot of you
00:29:58
are gps solo gps so
00:30:02
i mean
00:30:04
sac you made a big leap
00:30:05
was the scariest step well i mean even
00:30:08
as a founder like i mentioned before i
00:30:09
was like so worried about losing
00:30:11
people's money i mean that was like i
00:30:13
mean i don't know if like founders today
00:30:14
even care that much that this seems but
00:30:18
it just seems like oh coming didn't work
00:30:19
move on to the next one um i mean maybe
00:30:21
that'll change now that the
00:30:22
environment's not gonna be as
00:30:23
free-flowing but i was always like
00:30:25
really worried i was gonna lose people's
00:30:27
money yeah and you know with something
00:30:28
like sort of coming up i remember when i
00:30:30
started social capital
00:30:31
i
00:30:32
think i was playing
00:30:34
i was either playing golf or i had
00:30:36
dinner with chase coleman in new york
00:30:38
and chase says to me i'll tell you the
00:30:40
one piece of advice julian gave me when
00:30:41
i started thai girl but i said what was
00:30:43
that this is 2001 and he said this is a
00:30:44
death sentence
00:30:47
and i was like well what does that mean
00:30:49
and he said you're the only person
00:30:51
that's going to live with this because
00:30:52
you're responsible especially based on
00:30:54
who your lps are
00:30:56
for folks that if you really think about
00:30:57
who they are it's just going to create
00:30:59
this
00:31:00
thing there and it's like you know and i
00:31:01
was i was lucky in that moment because
00:31:03
we were we were able to get like the
00:31:04
knight foundation and mayo clinic and
00:31:07
these folks that are doing these good
00:31:08
works but then you're representing their
00:31:10
capital
00:31:12
it's heavy it's heavy because you make
00:31:14
this decision
00:31:15
and if it's wrong you just feel
00:31:18
literally like you're derelict and
00:31:19
you're taking money away from sick
00:31:21
children or you know
00:31:23
free speech i mean it's it was a that's
00:31:25
a brutally stressful thing to lose money
00:31:28
on behalf of people by the way i'll
00:31:30
recommend if any as a founder if you
00:31:32
raise money raise money from your
00:31:33
friends too
00:31:34
and it'll really change how you operate
00:31:36
yeah i mean i i raised the first fund
00:31:38
for my friends and i tell you i took
00:31:40
every single deal very seriously and i
00:31:42
did my diligence and i was very
00:31:43
thoughtful about it how about you
00:31:45
antonia oh man our first fund there are
00:31:47
two fears i had the first one was raised
00:31:49
from
00:31:50
i live in chicago from my friends in
00:31:52
chicago and i literally said to one of
00:31:53
my
00:31:54
partners at the time if this doesn't
00:31:56
work i have to move
00:31:58
i'll have to really do chicago because
00:31:59
in chicago you might get killed if you'd
00:32:01
like something bad
00:32:03
like i thought you didn't mean the
00:32:04
weather no no no i mean these guys are
00:32:05
doing witness protection exactly these
00:32:08
guys lose your money people kind of like
00:32:09
oh i'm sad about it chica would like
00:32:10
break your legs they burn your house
00:32:11
down man that's a whole different whole
00:32:13
different thing all right let's take
00:32:14
another question oh sorry no keep going
00:32:16
now the second thing i mean honestly the
00:32:17
worst thing for me the most scary thing
00:32:18
for me was just the people i had i had
00:32:20
three or four guys to work with building
00:32:21
companies before that and i knew if i
00:32:23
just felt if i disappointed them if we
00:32:24
failed
00:32:25
um i would have felt terrible yeah yeah
00:32:28
yeah it certainly makes you uh focus on
00:32:30
the game it's like being staked in poker
00:32:31
you play better uh
00:32:33
sir i have a question for the 17th most
00:32:36
important person from paypal oh okay
00:32:38
i'm just kidding david obviously
00:32:40
friedberg is my favorite bestie
00:32:43
[Music]
00:32:45
let's go marge
00:32:47
unbelievable the freedbird love
00:32:50
all right freeburg soak it in
00:32:52
uh you've been talking about uh how all
00:32:54
this increased money supply has been
00:32:56
sending the asset prices up and now it's
00:32:58
unwinding i don't think we've heard you
00:33:00
talked about crypto specifically bitcoin
00:33:02
has obviously come down but it's still
00:33:03
over three times uh where it was
00:33:05
pre-pandemic curious what you think will
00:33:07
happen in that world as this unwinds you
00:33:10
you want me to address that sure or
00:33:12
whatever it was for you
00:33:13
most important yeah i mean so the the
00:33:15
thing the thing about the crypto market
00:33:17
to understand is that it's like a
00:33:19
liquidity sponge the more liquidity
00:33:22
there is out there the more people feel
00:33:25
empowered to make speculative
00:33:26
investments and crypto is like the most
00:33:29
speculative now that's not to say
00:33:32
um you know it's not real i actually do
00:33:34
believe in bitcoin i think uh there'll
00:33:37
be a number of other
00:33:38
um sort of alt currencies that work but
00:33:41
probably the vast majority will not and
00:33:43
there's been a tremendous amount of
00:33:45
speculation and inflation there and
00:33:48
so that space is in the process of
00:33:49
correcting you know i've never been able
00:33:51
to say like what the right price levels
00:33:53
for any of this stuff are
00:33:54
um let's say you believe in bitcoin long
00:33:57
term
00:33:58
let's say you believe it's going to be
00:33:59
the first non-fiat currency
00:34:03
what price should that be today you know
00:34:05
i it's it's there's no like discounted
00:34:07
cash flow analysis you can apply to it
00:34:09
so it's always been very hard to know
00:34:11
what the prices of these things should
00:34:12
be and so in practice the price is a
00:34:15
function of how much liquidity is in the
00:34:17
system and when you go through a period
00:34:18
of liquidity getting destroyed it's no
00:34:20
surprise that cryptography goes with it
00:34:23
yeah antonio have you touched i mean you
00:34:25
you were so into physical assets and
00:34:27
building real things like spaceships and
00:34:29
rocket ships
00:34:31
when you watch this crypto bubble you
00:34:33
know grow and burst and grow and burst
00:34:35
and now it's burst again
00:34:38
what's your take
00:34:39
well first i want to tell you i bought
00:34:40
my first crypto uh i mean i think in
00:34:42
2017 because david sacks and bill lee
00:34:44
were pushing the ponzi scheme on me so
00:34:46
they were like they were i was at a
00:34:48
birthday party i think you probably were
00:34:49
there too and they were like they were
00:34:51
they were hawking bitcoin so i bought
00:34:52
something nobody had heard of it at that
00:34:53
point
00:34:54
it was like i think it was like 800
00:34:56
bucks
00:34:56
so here's my general view i actually
00:34:58
think i think that bitcoin in particular
00:35:00
is a bet on rising political risk
00:35:03
and on political freedom
00:35:05
economic freedom
00:35:06
is uh is closer to political freedom and
00:35:10
last time i looked ukrainians are the
00:35:11
third largest holders of bitcoin and if
00:35:13
i were staying in taiwan today i would
00:35:15
have 10 15 essence bitcoin so this this
00:35:17
removes um the ability to control
00:35:20
currency capital controls from
00:35:22
governments i think this is very
00:35:23
important and it should survive price
00:35:25
levels i don't know i do have a you know
00:35:27
the reason why a bitcoin as a hedge to
00:35:29
political risk globally and that's how
00:35:31
we think about it we have invested in
00:35:33
infrastructure assets in and around a
00:35:35
blockchain with dave we have a couple
00:35:37
assets because we believe that
00:35:39
blockchain itself is a platform shift in
00:35:41
the technology of tracking assets this
00:35:43
was a real thing and it's going to
00:35:44
happen it's going to change the way we
00:35:45
do finance so we invest in
00:35:47
infrastructure got it let's take another
00:35:49
question
00:35:50
time mike over there
00:35:52
oh i'm sorry we're going to take one
00:35:53
from here we'll alternate
00:35:55
so um tide is right yeah hi uh carl
00:35:58
muntra ceo of credo um i have to say i'm
00:36:02
a science nerd freedberg but j cal it's
00:36:04
been awesome today
00:36:06
um i and i want to say you guys like
00:36:09
your courage and bravery to do what
00:36:11
you've done with the pod
00:36:13
and watching this today like
00:36:16
thank you
00:36:18
[Applause]
00:36:19
thank you
00:36:20
yeah um you've talked a lot about later
00:36:23
stage i'm wondering if you could like
00:36:24
tune in a little bit more on on pre-seed
00:36:26
and seed and kind of what you're seeing
00:36:29
in terms of valuations and metrics that
00:36:32
you've got to hit in in the earlier
00:36:34
stages it's very simple you know
00:36:36
i invested in
00:36:38
uber thumbtack and com for 15 million
00:36:41
dollars
00:36:42
combined
00:36:43
that was their combined valuation post
00:36:45
money post money and uh those all three
00:36:48
companies had products in the market and
00:36:50
then what we saw over the last five
00:36:52
years is people wanting credit
00:36:55
for a white paper a prototype an mvp to
00:36:58
the tune of 15 to 50 million dollars
00:37:01
and we did sit out some of those and
00:37:02
said listen when the product is ready
00:37:04
let's take a look at the product and
00:37:05
talk to the first two or three customers
00:37:07
to david's point about zero to one
00:37:08
customers is a really hard uh hurdle and
00:37:11
um
00:37:12
now it's back down to uh six to fifteen
00:37:14
million uh for a company that has a
00:37:17
product uh in market
00:37:19
and maybe
00:37:20
fifty to 100 times yearly revenue for
00:37:22
evaluation so to the extent you can get
00:37:25
to 200k in yearly revenue you can get
00:37:28
you know a 10 to 20 million valuation so
00:37:31
i'd say
00:37:32
halfway back to normal and perhaps a
00:37:34
permanent
00:37:35
you know livable reset because the
00:37:37
outcomes have been pretty fantastic so
00:37:39
the early stage you go up the only thing
00:37:41
you really need to raise money
00:37:43
is to build a world-class product and
00:37:45
just get a couple of customers who are
00:37:48
absolutely blown away by what you've
00:37:51
built that's all you need but everybody
00:37:53
gets concerned with the theatrics and
00:37:55
the performative stuff
00:37:57
and their network and nonsense and who
00:37:59
you are where you came from none of it
00:38:01
matters build a world-class product that
00:38:03
two or three people are obsessed with
00:38:05
and you'll get the c check focus
00:38:09
yeah i think right
00:38:11
if brad gerstner had uh sorry interrupt
00:38:12
your applause j cal i know that's
00:38:14
important to you
00:38:15
um
00:38:17
i'll take one little like again
00:38:19
so i think brad gerson made a really
00:38:20
important point on this which is the new
00:38:22
normal is going to look like the old
00:38:23
normal meaning the pre-covet normal we
00:38:27
had the the abnormal period was this
00:38:30
two-year covay period where 10 trillion
00:38:32
liquidity is pumped into the system
00:38:34
things are going back to what they look
00:38:36
like before all that happened and maybe
00:38:38
before the fed started with this zero
00:38:40
interest rate policy so we're actually
00:38:42
getting back to normal understand that
00:38:45
the the environment we're entering now
00:38:47
is is the normality the abnormal period
00:38:50
was the inflation we saw in assets over
00:38:52
the past couple of years that's the like
00:38:55
reset that everyone's gonna have to like
00:38:57
wrap their heads around sex you're my
00:38:58
boy finally yeah finally
00:39:02
one percent i i i think there may be
00:39:04
some preference false falsification
00:39:06
around this because people don't admit
00:39:08
they're conservative all the polling
00:39:10
all the polling shows this so but anyway
00:39:13
thank you sir
00:39:14
and your second favorite bestie is
00:39:16
tucker
00:39:18
uh for early stage sas investors which
00:39:20
most of you are in an increasingly
00:39:23
digital world where are there are large
00:39:25
sas solutions for nearly everything how
00:39:27
do you think about selecting companies
00:39:29
and founders in the early stage that are
00:39:31
coming to market with a small amount of
00:39:33
utility and how do you think about they
00:39:34
compete with companies with already
00:39:36
established customer distribution
00:39:39
yeah so i think you know one of the
00:39:40
things i really like about sas which is
00:39:43
your software as a service basically b2b
00:39:45
software it's business software okay
00:39:46
that's sold
00:39:48
as a subscription
00:39:49
is that the world's never going to run
00:39:51
out of new ideas for business software
00:39:53
business keeps changing so therefore the
00:39:55
software that businesses need will keep
00:39:57
changing and there will always be an
00:39:59
opportunity there for new companies new
00:40:01
verticals new new niches they'll always
00:40:04
be
00:40:04
you know new new ideas
00:40:07
and so i'm never
00:40:09
worried about running out in terms of
00:40:11
how we evaluate the actual idea
00:40:13
you know
00:40:15
we've actually been super transparent
00:40:16
around the metrics that we need to see
00:40:18
it really does start
00:40:20
with
00:40:20
a company hitting the metrics hurdle
00:40:23
that we need to see for for example
00:40:24
series a
00:40:26
um you know it's a call it you're
00:40:27
roughly more or less a million dollars
00:40:29
of arr you want to be growing 15 month
00:40:32
over month certain that dollar retention
00:40:34
certain capital efficiency we've all
00:40:36
we've published it you know on our
00:40:38
website on our blog so
00:40:40
um
00:40:40
it's it starts with that and then once
00:40:43
we know that like our thresholds have
00:40:45
been hit then we get into more
00:40:47
qualitative or subjective factors like
00:40:49
you know what do we think about this
00:40:50
founder in this market
00:40:52
but one thing i like about it is just
00:40:55
it's uh
00:40:56
it's very well defined like what we're
00:40:58
looking for and so
00:41:00
you know just go to our blog you'll see
00:41:02
we'll tell you exactly there's no
00:41:04
outside of productivity tools though
00:41:06
there's not a single company that can
00:41:07
stay in one category and become really
00:41:10
big what does that mean
00:41:12
there's not a single public company that
00:41:13
doesn't have now
00:41:15
an entire strategy that says we sell it
00:41:17
smb mid market and enterprise
00:41:20
and so the thing for sas businesses
00:41:22
unless you're like a really powerful
00:41:23
productivity tool like a slack or an
00:41:25
atlassian
00:41:26
your valuation capped in the mid to high
00:41:29
single digit billions as it currently
00:41:31
stands today that's just the law of the
00:41:34
math in the public markets on how you're
00:41:35
rewarded
00:41:36
though how do you grow out of it you
00:41:38
have to embrace a strategy that actually
00:41:40
does more
00:41:41
where you become a system of record so a
00:41:43
good example is like a zen desk they hit
00:41:45
an upper bound you know there are many
00:41:47
of these examples and so if you're
00:41:49
building a sas business or you're
00:41:50
investing in this ass business the other
00:41:51
thing to think about is
00:41:53
in the absence of being a productivity
00:41:55
tool
00:41:56
of which again there are few
00:42:00
everything else has to find a way of
00:42:02
being applicable
00:42:03
to
00:42:04
larger bodies over time in order to
00:42:06
maintain valuation we're going to try
00:42:08
and move faster so we can get more
00:42:09
people another question here hi there
00:42:10
guys uh favorite besties probably
00:42:12
four-way tie but maybe chamoth edges out
00:42:15
just a bit there we go okay um not a tie
00:42:18
so
00:42:19
ty goes the champ quick question titus
00:42:21
right so um
00:42:24
you know you guys done incredibly well
00:42:25
so
00:42:26
what what would you do if you're dropped
00:42:28
in the middle of say kansas take away
00:42:30
the resource take away the network and
00:42:33
take you back to age 25 what would you
00:42:35
do and why antonio take it
00:42:37
i'm actually from michigan i got dropped
00:42:39
in the middle there with no resources
00:42:41
and not a lot to do
00:42:43
and i wasn't 25 i was in my early 20s um
00:42:46
i would
00:42:47
i would find a way to make it work man
00:42:49
you should get you should actually
00:42:50
whatever scale you want to start at
00:42:52
whatever job you have i would try and
00:42:54
start a little company there's always
00:42:55
people in they listen to a place of
00:42:57
grandma's michigan man you could cut
00:42:58
grass i love a computer company when i
00:42:59
was 12 years old doing like networking
00:43:01
for people in the old days i mean
00:43:02
there's always something you can do if
00:43:03
you had a valuable skill build a skill
00:43:06
start a company and just get started
00:43:08
start moving and make good decisions
00:43:10
along the way one good decision
00:43:12
compounds on top of the other and all
00:43:13
four of these guys what they have done
00:43:14
in their careers has made very good
00:43:16
decisions and they've kept moving when
00:43:18
they've had problems you start early
00:43:20
yeah you got to start early and i
00:43:21
started early they may i just want to
00:43:22
tell you this they may look like super
00:43:24
successful guys now and they are but it
00:43:26
wasn't easy and it wasn't linear they've
00:43:29
all had ups and downs they've all had
00:43:30
problems
00:43:31
and they all and they also do what they
00:43:33
what they do and i have great respect
00:43:35
for all four of them i know them all
00:43:35
well they keep making good decisions
00:43:38
they're highly resilient and they just
00:43:40
keep going
00:43:41
and i would tell you the same thing yeah
00:43:43
you got it the only thing i'd add to
00:43:44
that is to keep is to keep learning i'm
00:43:46
getting i'm getting some closure oh yeah
00:43:47
go
00:43:48
[Applause]
00:43:52
i haven't had any man yeah i just got
00:43:54
here um but i would just say keep
00:43:56
learning as well like one of the biggest
00:43:57
advantages i've had in my career is that
00:43:59
i try to always learn
00:44:01
as new stuff as often as i can and
00:44:03
whenever i find an area of interest i
00:44:04
pursue it in terms of deepening my
00:44:07
understanding of it and that's always
00:44:08
created opportunities for me that i
00:44:10
wouldn't have just stumbled across or
00:44:12
walked my way into it's such a great
00:44:14
opportunity to have you here and tony
00:44:15
when i asked you to do this you had
00:44:16
never been on a podcast before have you
00:44:18
ever done this kind of thing i've never
00:44:20
done this kind of thing and um no it's
00:44:22
awesome thank you i'm only doing it
00:44:23
because it's a four view and i am
00:44:24
usually very private but i'm enjoying an
00:44:26
incredible voice
00:44:28
you know he's like very light very npr
00:44:31
it's very public radio yeah it's like
00:44:33
hey everybody you're listening to the
00:44:36
politics and the culture i'm antonio
00:44:38
gracias people tell me i have a voice
00:44:40
for radio and pornography yeah
00:44:43
it works pretty well
00:44:45
go
00:44:46
hey guys i'm samantha favorite bestie is
00:44:48
freedberg i run the factory automation
00:44:51
team for a large semiconductor
00:44:53
manufacturer in the united states
00:44:56
really unimpressed with the innovation
00:44:59
in industrial automation and so
00:45:02
really interested to hear your thoughts
00:45:03
on where you see the next disruptions in
00:45:06
automation and also maybe a question for
00:45:08
antonio where do you see
00:45:11
the disruptor specifically and how we
00:45:13
get not only the technology but the
00:45:15
economies of scale
00:45:16
for these really capital intensive
00:45:18
businesses in the us this is your guy
00:45:20
cancer yeah for sure and by the way you
00:45:22
should talk about uh automation at i
00:45:24
don't know if you want to but sure tesla
00:45:26
yeah yeah i mean we know a lot of
00:45:27
automation one of my partners is like a
00:45:29
genius engineer in this area and you're
00:45:30
particularly in the chip business you
00:45:31
said right yeah
00:45:33
so you know tsmc basically took the many
00:45:35
this idea of outsourcing manufacturing
00:45:36
assets that intel did with tsmc the
00:45:38
beginning that created that business and
00:45:40
moved most of our high technology and
00:45:42
ships off and offshore into taiwan it's
00:45:44
like a terrible idea and
00:45:46
we do i think we as i said earlier in
00:45:48
the industrial policy in this country i
00:45:49
think we need industrial policy to bring
00:45:51
chief manufacturing back it's very
00:45:52
important and the problem you have in
00:45:55
automation ship manufacturer particular
00:45:56
is you know when you think about where
00:45:58
all the great engineers go today they're
00:45:59
good at automation
00:46:00
they're not going there because they're
00:46:01
competing tsmc so you have you have a
00:46:04
couple info fab still in the us but we
00:46:06
have to have some i think actually it's
00:46:07
going to require industrial policy to
00:46:08
force people like intel amd to want to
00:46:10
bring stuff back into the us and to
00:46:13
really get great talent to want to do it
00:46:15
do you think there's opportunities
00:46:16
outside of greenfield models to kind of
00:46:19
reinvigorate and unlock the capacity
00:46:22
that we have in some of our older
00:46:23
manufacturing here in the us yes i do i
00:46:25
i look i we at tesla took over the free
00:46:27
this freeland factory was a former gm
00:46:30
toyota factory and you know we retooled
00:46:32
it it was look we would have been we had
00:46:34
to do it because any money and it was
00:46:35
free basically um
00:46:37
but if you if you took that approach and
00:46:39
you got the you you've got really great
00:46:41
entrepreneurs to focus on this problem
00:46:43
through industrial policy they need
00:46:44
money to do it i think you'd get great
00:46:46
innovation look nvidia is actually here
00:46:47
in the us this is a reality this is a
00:46:49
great chip company uh and the fabs they
00:46:52
use are spread all over the world but if
00:46:54
you gave nvidia a fab or two who knows
00:46:56
what happens it was the right price
00:46:58
yeah jensen's a great ceo
00:47:00
did you go to that side
00:47:02
favorite bestie jason you keep uh the
00:47:04
ship together you're the glue that keeps
00:47:06
it together uh
00:47:08
my name is chris my friend and i started
00:47:10
all in talk nine months ago uh the fan
00:47:12
page for that thank you cheers to you
00:47:14
yeah it's uh it's really uh
00:47:16
obviously i was at the outdoor mall near
00:47:19
my house and my dog attacked another dog
00:47:21
and the guy was like it's okay i saw you
00:47:22
on
00:47:23
i was like
00:47:24
dude i'm not
00:47:25
so that was because of you but thank you
00:47:28
that was for his quinoa channel it
00:47:30
wasn't your channel that was so my
00:47:32
question is in the 22 2022 predictions
00:47:35
uh episode chamath you talk about uh all
00:47:38
in media idea and starting an all in
00:47:41
media channel maybe
00:47:43
and i wonder if you guys have talked
00:47:44
about that anymore your your goals for
00:47:46
the future on that because i'm pretty
00:47:48
sure everyone would agree here that if
00:47:51
you did start one it would do a whole a
00:47:53
lot better than cnn plus
00:47:55
so
00:47:57
well that that may not be a very high
00:47:59
bar very low bar uh i think it is we
00:48:01
actually we actually did get together
00:48:03
the four of us we sat in freeburg's
00:48:05
office what a [ __ ] show people started
00:48:07
yelling two people walked out
00:48:10
the sacks sacks just started to do this
00:48:12
at the table
00:48:14
yeah i'm definitely a good driver my dad
00:48:16
lets me drive in the driveway it wasn't
00:48:18
a productive conversation it was
00:48:19
completely unproductive like it was
00:48:21
completely impressive that was our first
00:48:23
and only meeting but no but we did take
00:48:26
one key step which is that freeberg said
00:48:29
i'm gonna get my team to draft the llc
00:48:32
agreement for the four of us which we
00:48:34
refused to sign but now no one signed it
00:48:36
but it's in our trust free birth but
00:48:38
it's in our inbox so we're one step
00:48:39
closer to starting it but joking aside i
00:48:42
still think that uh it'll become
00:48:44
inevitable and i think the reason is
00:48:46
the two people
00:48:48
and the robots non-humans that were
00:48:51
uh uncomfortable with human interaction
00:48:54
david's
00:48:55
david smirk
00:48:56
um
00:48:59
once once we do the the recap of this i
00:49:02
think it'll be the i think these two are
00:49:04
probably the most shocked
00:49:06
that no
00:49:07
i'll tell you by the way my observation
00:49:09
i used to go to ted i went to ted from
00:49:10
2008 until 2019 i stopped going to ted
00:49:13
because i thought the content went to
00:49:14
[ __ ] and it basically got overtaken with
00:49:16
like social justice talks and like used
00:49:18
to start like tech and interesting ideas
00:49:20
about where the world's headed and like
00:49:22
i listened to our speakers this week the
00:49:23
last two days and i'm like man like
00:49:25
really fantastic content i'm like this
00:49:27
could be the new ted so i got really
00:49:28
invigorated by that like i really
00:49:29
thought i felt like that was really
00:49:31
messy
00:49:36
and i think and by the way i think i
00:49:37
think it's conversations people don't
00:49:38
really seem to want to have right like
00:49:40
and that and those are well make them
00:49:42
really important and let's just say you
00:49:44
were not
00:49:45
the earliest believer in this was gonna
00:49:47
get pulled off too i cannot tell you how
00:49:50
many times i've considered quitting the
00:49:51
pod and not even showing up for this
00:49:53
event and i give jason props publicly
00:49:56
for doing a great job pulling this thing
00:49:57
off so
00:49:58
[Applause]
00:50:00
go
00:50:01
go
00:50:02
hey guys my name is sarah and i really
00:50:05
love all of you you got me through a
00:50:06
very tough challenging time when i
00:50:08
started listening to you i came here
00:50:10
over a 16-hour flight from abu dhabi
00:50:13
um so thank you wow that's a long flight
00:50:17
we love you we love you
00:50:19
i have a comment and a question the
00:50:21
comment um and maybe david
00:50:25
i have a lot of relatives in sweden and
00:50:28
when the ukraine war started
00:50:30
this is
00:50:31
very amiable innovative beautiful people
00:50:35
haven't had a war over 150 years
00:50:38
and they were putting gas in their car
00:50:40
and
00:50:41
supplying
00:50:42
cans of goods and got really really
00:50:45
nervous about what's happening and we're
00:50:47
watching closely to see what would be
00:50:49
the next step i think if the us did not
00:50:51
step in
00:50:53
there so there was a lot of reality out
00:50:55
there
00:50:56
for the u.s to stay
00:50:59
i don't know like the savior of the
00:51:00
world in a certain way or another
00:51:03
finnish people felt the same way
00:51:05
moldovans
00:51:07
so this is a real big reality out in the
00:51:10
western european world not just eastern
00:51:13
europe
00:51:14
so um that's on my comment so thank you
00:51:17
for the question
00:51:19
and this comes from my husband
00:51:22
uh if you're sitting on excess liquidity
00:51:24
right now and want to invest for a long
00:51:26
time
00:51:30
i'm sorry
00:51:31
[Applause]
00:51:33
sax is raising a fund wait what was that
00:51:36
was that
00:51:37
was that a transition from world war
00:51:39
three to
00:51:40
investment advice stock tips sock tips
00:51:43
yeah money in the market we want to save
00:51:45
that is dynamic range right there yeah
00:51:47
well done well done you want you've gone
00:51:49
from two poles you know i mean you had
00:51:51
us
00:51:52
know the ups and downs of my life so yes
00:51:55
it is like that
00:51:56
why don't we just take the first part
00:51:57
because i think okay it'd be good so so
00:52:00
on ukraine you know i thought it was
00:52:02
important to have this debate today
00:52:04
where we got both sides of the issue and
00:52:06
we got two people who are very
00:52:07
passionate on both sides
00:52:09
and
00:52:10
i tend to agree
00:52:12
more with glenn on it but
00:52:14
but that doesn't mean i don't want to
00:52:16
help ukraine at all i just think we have
00:52:18
to keep a close eye on preventing this
00:52:20
thing from escalating into world war iii
00:52:24
because the russians have 6 000 nuclear
00:52:26
weapons and their military doctrine says
00:52:29
they can use them
00:52:30
if they feel that they're existentially
00:52:32
threatened
00:52:34
and so you know if our objective here
00:52:37
is to help the ukrainians expel the
00:52:40
russians from an invasion that's one
00:52:42
thing but if our objective
00:52:45
if we have mission creep into
00:52:47
destabilizing the russian regime
00:52:49
into basically trying to take back
00:52:51
crimea which they see as theirs
00:52:52
[Music]
00:52:54
if our we're trying to weaken them to
00:52:56
the point where they're no longer a
00:52:57
great power
00:52:58
we're really playing with fire there so
00:53:00
we have to be really careful about our
00:53:02
objectives there and make sure that we
00:53:05
don't let this thing spiral out of
00:53:06
control antonio what do you have
00:53:08
thoughts on ukraine and are we being too
00:53:10
dovish or hawkish or doing it just right
00:53:15
so i think we are there there's a lot
00:53:17
more going on here than me meets the eye
00:53:18
and this question was about sweden
00:53:20
finland and here's what i would say
00:53:21
because i want to focus on that that if
00:53:23
uh our
00:53:25
our friends in particular north western
00:53:27
europe
00:53:28
um should actually be arming themselves
00:53:31
and if they arm themselves we won't have
00:53:32
this problem
00:53:33
that's the reality of it the reason
00:53:35
ukraine yes that's a reality obviously
00:53:38
the time the time for sitting on the
00:53:40
sidelines in central europe is over
00:53:43
if you care about your country you care
00:53:44
about your children care about your
00:53:46
families then you should arm yourselves
00:53:48
period full stop and americans will be
00:53:49
very happy to sell you weapons no
00:53:51
problem with or without nato i think
00:53:52
that's true the reason ukrainians are
00:53:54
able to uh defend themselves is because
00:53:56
they are they have actually been buying
00:53:58
weapons and they bought they built their
00:53:59
own weapons with the turks that the the
00:54:01
the drones are being used to destroy the
00:54:03
russian supply lines are not coming from
00:54:04
america coming from a joint venture with
00:54:06
the turks this is the reality so should
00:54:08
we be drawn into a warrant central
00:54:10
europe no i think could start well worth
00:54:11
free should we help these folks defend
00:54:12
themselves yes i should and in your
00:54:14
particular part of the world yeah for
00:54:16
sure start buying some weapons one
00:54:17
question over here yeah tough to follow
00:54:20
but my name is joanna
00:54:21
favorite bestie
00:54:23
i think friedberg i think you do a good
00:54:25
job of being heard and hearing others
00:54:26
equally so i think that's an important
00:54:28
skill i'm trying to work on it myself
00:54:30
[Applause]
00:54:35
in terms of my question it's a little
00:54:36
more qualitative but some of us were
00:54:39
having an interesting discussion about
00:54:40
first impressions last night and i'm
00:54:42
curious to think one in terms of your
00:54:44
own first impressions how has your the
00:54:47
way that you
00:54:48
introduce yourself to others changed as
00:54:50
you've grown and what have you learned
00:54:52
about that and on the other end what are
00:54:54
some of the most notable first
00:54:55
impressions others have made on you and
00:54:57
why have those stood out to you
00:55:00
that's an interesting question
00:55:05
well
00:55:06
seeing as the only two of us have
00:55:08
emotions maybe we can yeah we can chop
00:55:10
it out sure
00:55:13
i'm gonna go to the bathroom
00:55:16
you won't find any emotions there
00:55:20
turn the mic off please the quinoa oh my
00:55:23
god
00:55:24
well that baba ganoush goes right
00:55:26
through you
00:55:27
continue
00:55:30
i think that when i
00:55:31
was younger
00:55:34
i was more insecure so i had to wear
00:55:37
what few labels i had on my sleeve
00:55:40
and use them as a weapon before others
00:55:42
could use their labels on me i honestly
00:55:45
felt that way
00:55:46
you know and in silicon valley at the
00:55:47
time
00:55:48
you know it really there is a very
00:55:50
monocultural aspect of
00:55:52
you know folks from a few schools you
00:55:54
know folks having worked at a few
00:55:56
companies
00:55:57
um and i had neither you know i worked i
00:56:00
went to waterloo which is in canada and
00:56:02
i worked at aol so i didn't go to
00:56:04
stanford and i didn't work at google
00:56:06
or yahoo and there was a there's a great
00:56:08
lineage and
00:56:09
of of where
00:56:11
you know the really credentialed
00:56:13
credible folks came from and so you do
00:56:17
what any insecure person does you kind
00:56:18
of throw what few things you have out
00:56:20
there very quickly yeah you know trying
00:56:22
to
00:56:24
one-up the person in front of you and
00:56:25
that's calmed down a lot so that's
00:56:27
probably the biggest thing it i think
00:56:29
it's a i have a similar observation i
00:56:32
when i was taking that r train into
00:56:34
manhattan i used to say to myself jason
00:56:36
calacanis editor-in-chief jason
00:56:38
calacanis millionaire and i was like
00:56:41
literally had a 16-page photocopy
00:56:44
magazine called siliconaire reporter and
00:56:45
i was trying to convince myself that
00:56:47
someday i would be somebody and i think
00:56:49
that narrative was important for me and
00:56:52
people when i would give them the
00:56:53
16-page photocopy i'd say here's my
00:56:55
magazine they'd say there's a photocopy
00:56:56
i'd say no it's a magazine it's got a
00:56:57
picture on the cover because for me that
00:56:59
was that why it was a magazine and it
00:57:02
eventually became a very large magazine
00:57:04
in fact
00:57:05
of 300 pages
00:57:06
and today thank you
00:57:09
so i think there is something about
00:57:10
manifesting stuff and just you know
00:57:12
believing that you're going to get there
00:57:14
but today i define myself by
00:57:17
the things i love to do so when people
00:57:19
do ask me now hey what do you do i say
00:57:21
i'm a writer and i have a podcast
00:57:23
and i angel invest and i don't say it's
00:57:25
the number one podcast or i'm one of the
00:57:27
top angel investors all the time i just
00:57:29
i just think about what
00:57:31
i don't say that and i don't say
00:57:33
you know like it's the you know the book
00:57:36
is in 11 languages or whatever i got a
00:57:38
million dollar advance
00:57:39
i just there's no
00:57:41
ego about it
00:57:43
i just say writer
00:57:46
podcaster angel
00:57:50
okay how did it go in there okay david
00:57:52
you're okay what sort of advance are you
00:57:53
getting
00:57:54
a million dollars he said a million
00:57:56
dollar advance i mean the book's in 12
00:57:59
languages now thank you i'll find out if
00:58:01
you have one i'll sign it next question
00:58:03
sometimes sometimes i think jason's just
00:58:05
pimping out all of us to fuel his media
00:58:07
career yeah
00:58:09
you big sometimes
00:58:12
hey david all honesty how is the deal
00:58:14
flow gone since you got this podcast i
00:58:17
think it's down fifty percent
00:58:20
that was the intent that was the
00:58:21
attention more deal coming this way
00:58:25
that's since you
00:58:26
went on tucker go hi
00:58:29
today the crypto world is focused on
00:58:31
decentralization speculation and stores
00:58:33
of value who here is excited about
00:58:35
micropayments and whoever is most
00:58:37
excited which industries do you think
00:58:39
will be most impacted by the newfound
00:58:41
ability to send payments as little as
00:58:43
one hundredth of a penny
00:58:46
great oh favorite besties uh zach you
00:58:48
wanna take it yeah good sex um
00:58:51
so you know this question of
00:58:52
micropayments has come up all the way
00:58:54
since you know back to when i was
00:58:55
working on paypal and one of the
00:58:57
problems with micropayments is as the
00:58:59
name suggests the amounts are very very
00:59:00
small
00:59:01
so you have to do a lot of them to
00:59:04
create enough volume for them to be
00:59:06
meaningful and so there's always sort of
00:59:07
this
00:59:08
market size problem
00:59:10
now for crypto there may be more of an
00:59:12
opportunity there because
00:59:14
um the way that the old credit card
00:59:16
rails network works is there's like a 25
00:59:19
charge per transaction and so like at
00:59:21
paypal it just didn't make sense to
00:59:23
facilitate micropayments because the
00:59:25
cost of that transaction always exceeded
00:59:28
the fee that we could get
00:59:29
so
00:59:30
you're right that
00:59:32
or i think what you're suggesting with
00:59:34
your question is that there is sort of a
00:59:36
crypto
00:59:37
opportunity to do this in a different
00:59:39
way because you can basically do a
00:59:41
costless instantaneous transfer using
00:59:44
a blockchain based currency so
00:59:46
i'm sure someone's going to do something
00:59:48
interesting with that and then the
00:59:49
question is just
00:59:50
how like what does that aggregate into
00:59:52
is it is it going to be big enough to be
00:59:54
by the way there's a there's an interim
00:59:55
step which is also pretty obvious at
00:59:57
least to me which is this idea that you
00:59:59
know for example like if stripe actually
01:00:02
took the time to
01:00:04
embrace one of these stable coins
01:00:06
there's no reason why stripe needs to
01:00:07
actually run on interchange as well
01:00:09
because like you can just basically swap
01:00:10
that dollar in a ledger
01:00:12
into usdc let's just pick that as an
01:00:14
example not tether not to tilt you um
01:00:18
run it on those rails for free and then
01:00:19
basically transfer it back and it's it's
01:00:21
not it's not obvious why people don't
01:00:22
you need the gas cost to come down so
01:00:25
you know like you're running a
01:00:26
transaction on ethereum or certainly
01:00:28
bitcoin is very expensive right now but
01:00:30
other chains yeah yeah you need like a
01:00:33
chain like a salon or something like
01:00:34
something that's like super cheap
01:00:36
and the the cognitive load of the
01:00:40
transaction just the person deciding do
01:00:42
they want to pay a tenth of a penny a
01:00:44
penny is sometimes greater than the
01:00:46
actual value of the money which then
01:00:48
creates
01:00:49
um almost like friction to them wanting
01:00:51
to read the article
01:00:53
let's take another question
01:00:55
hi my name is kate and my favorite
01:00:57
bestie right now is freedberg who often
01:00:59
plays devil's advocate and so forces the
01:01:02
stuff
01:01:08
my lord
01:01:09
how many people did you pay off go ahead
01:01:12
so that we all admired your successes
01:01:15
but we've also been hearing from marr
01:01:16
for instance that we need to be
01:01:18
comfortable with failure and we need to
01:01:20
become resilient so when you look back
01:01:22
on your careers thus far
01:01:24
what have been the toughest moments the
01:01:26
moments when you've made a mistake that
01:01:28
have taught you a lot
01:01:30
i mean i had two huge ones and antonio
01:01:33
just have some too yeah
01:01:35
mistakes my mistakes that you learn the
01:01:37
most from
01:01:39
man
01:01:41
my biggest mistakes in life have been
01:01:42
about people
01:01:44
and i have uh
01:01:46
over the years
01:01:47
um made errors in in judging people and
01:01:50
how honest they were and how good they
01:01:52
were and as i look back on that it's
01:01:54
because i have a weakness for ideas that
01:01:57
are great and sometimes those come with
01:01:59
great people and sometimes they don't
01:02:01
the reality is there are some bad people
01:02:02
out there who are acting really great
01:02:04
and doing interesting things and we have
01:02:06
we've suffered from that i mean i know
01:02:08
david and i were to deal together suffer
01:02:09
from that
01:02:10
and it happens
01:02:12
so i i would be i've learned a lot about
01:02:14
that i've gone deep into neuroscience i
01:02:16
actually have a stat we have a woman
01:02:18
who's got a phd in the neuroscience of
01:02:20
emotion caltech now on staff that helps
01:02:23
us uh learn as you said always learning
01:02:26
about how to assess people and how to
01:02:28
stress their emotional states
01:02:30
that's the most important thing i think
01:02:31
we've updated in our process and in my
01:02:33
own thinking so you loved the idea so
01:02:35
much
01:02:37
that you ignored other data you ignored
01:02:39
the other data that this person was not
01:02:42
honorable
01:02:43
truthful
01:02:44
no i mean so there are times when uh
01:02:46
there are two kinds of of these errors
01:02:48
here one type of error is
01:02:50
we just didn't see it because the person
01:02:52
was so good at being bad they are you
01:02:54
know one of these neuroscientists taught
01:02:55
us is that about five percent the human
01:02:56
population has a brain anomaly they make
01:02:58
them actual psychopaths defined as the
01:03:00
ambiguous fire properly when they do
01:03:02
something bad guilt fear etc and in our
01:03:05
particular industry it's probably like
01:03:06
10
01:03:06
so we raised our base rate forecast to
01:03:08
10 percent and it's gotten better but
01:03:10
there's something so good at it you just
01:03:11
can't see it i mean theranose elizabeth
01:03:13
holmes okay like lots of smart people
01:03:15
pointing that company we didn't but it
01:03:17
was it wasn't obvious to them obviously
01:03:18
then there are then there are moments
01:03:20
earlier on when we had yellow flags we
01:03:22
overrode because we were so emotionally
01:03:23
committed to the idea that we had a
01:03:26
business we did was in the dental space
01:03:27
was it was medicaid dental cleanse for
01:03:28
kids that were black and hispanic and
01:03:30
i'm you know i'm from that demographic
01:03:32
and i wanted to make that great
01:03:34
in the realities we overrode yellow
01:03:35
lights because we wanted to make it
01:03:37
great and we failed
01:03:39
jamatha you were going to add some of
01:03:41
your finances i had two huge fielders
01:03:42
but they were they were more personal
01:03:44
moments of learning for me one was
01:03:46
you know we were in the midst of
01:03:47
building a phone and it didn't come to
01:03:48
pass and if i really think about what i
01:03:50
thought the problem was this was when i
01:03:52
was at facebook
01:03:54
what the problem then versus now then
01:03:57
you know i would have said oh zuck and i
01:03:58
had a huge kind of you know thing and
01:04:00
blah blah blah now what i would have
01:04:02
said is
01:04:03
you know i didn't really understand my
01:04:04
own limitations and what i was really
01:04:06
asking of him in the board in that
01:04:07
moment
01:04:08
and then the second is
01:04:10
there were all these moments
01:04:13
that were people decisions
01:04:14
um
01:04:15
at social capital that ultimately
01:04:17
manifested in
01:04:19
sub-quality
01:04:21
financial and investment decisions
01:04:23
and had i had it to do over again i
01:04:26
would not have ignored some of the red
01:04:27
flags
01:04:29
because i was so desirous to be in the
01:04:31
game
01:04:31
to you know be in it that
01:04:34
uh
01:04:35
i probably you know looked the other way
01:04:37
a little bit on folks that you know i'll
01:04:39
just give you the the practical example
01:04:42
i remember in a 300 million dollar fund
01:04:44
i put
01:04:45
25 or 30 million dollars into bitcoin at
01:04:48
50 bucks a coin
01:04:51
and when the thing went to like 150 or
01:04:53
something just the pressure
01:04:56
to distribute was so high
01:04:58
and i had conviction i had all of these
01:05:01
things i had all the voting control i
01:05:03
had everything to just say
01:05:06
no and i didn't have the courage to
01:05:07
understand my role
01:05:10
as a leader versus something you know my
01:05:13
job as a investment partner
01:05:15
um
01:05:17
and so you learn you know
01:05:19
you learn what you're good at you learn
01:05:21
where your strengths are
01:05:23
and you try to just get better try to
01:05:25
fix those weaknesses i mean at the end
01:05:26
of the day what we're both saying is the
01:05:28
same thing which is ultimately it has
01:05:29
nothing to do with anybody else it still
01:05:31
comes back to you and what your skill
01:05:32
set is in your toolbox and whether
01:05:34
you're upgrading your toolbox every day
01:05:35
freebird sax any mistakes that you're
01:05:38
able to access through your cpus
01:05:43
in your long-term storage
01:05:45
well i think as you get older you learn
01:05:47
how to pick your battles better and you
01:05:49
just have to decide like what are the
01:05:51
occasions that are really worth fighting
01:05:52
for which aren't you know and sometimes
01:05:54
you just let it go and others you have
01:05:57
to fight so and just knowing when you
01:05:59
should choose which path i think is
01:06:00
really important
01:06:01
by the way the guy you really want
01:06:02
behind you in a battle is this guy
01:06:05
so
01:06:06
phenomenal uh investor back when i was
01:06:08
on the founders side of the table so
01:06:11
good brawler yeah for sure that's why i
01:06:13
got him a samurai sword for his birthday
01:06:15
he did yes
01:06:18
the collection of samurai swords you saw
01:06:20
my apartment started with david sacks
01:06:21
and samurai sword ah yeah that's very
01:06:23
nice thank you david very sharp too
01:06:26
was your kids trying to play with it or
01:06:27
something it was not a toy yes
01:06:29
freedberg anything in that long-term
01:06:31
storage tape drives of a
01:06:34
i've made a lot of mistakes um
01:06:37
it's really hard i i'm very hard on
01:06:39
myself
01:06:45
when i was young i always said
01:06:48
there's no limit and i always believed
01:06:49
that and when i hit walls
01:06:52
in my life
01:06:54
it was very um
01:06:56
very difficult because it totally
01:06:58
countered what i what i felt was
01:07:00
possible i always thought everything was
01:07:02
going to be a success uh there's no way
01:07:04
i'm going to let anything [ __ ] fail
01:07:05
there's no way i'm going to let anything
01:07:07
not work
01:07:08
my voice is cracking not because i'm
01:07:09
crying because i'm losing my voice so
01:07:12
um we know that's all we need if you cry
01:07:14
now there everybody's gonna be pleased
01:07:16
now everybody's got free perks
01:07:18
it's all for the vote it's all for the
01:07:20
vote he actually does have emotions see
01:07:23
but i would say um he's smart and kind
01:07:26
yeah
01:07:27
and a vegan yeah
01:07:28
he's perfect the biggest mistake i made
01:07:32
he's my dream boyfriend
01:07:37
maybe coming on the stage with the
01:07:38
biggest mistake i've made
01:07:40
joy in the pot oh man but i think
01:07:43
antonio's point is right uh you know um
01:07:45
you just have to be willing to to learn
01:07:47
and um and evolve it's uh
01:07:49
you know i i now know that my life isn't
01:07:51
about everything i do has to work 100 of
01:07:53
the time
01:07:55
and being so hard on myself caused a lot
01:07:57
of like emotional challenges for me over
01:07:59
time but getting um getting to this
01:08:01
point where i can now be much more
01:08:02
calculated
01:08:04
and just move forward quickly and learn
01:08:05
from it um has been a big evolution for
01:08:07
me um it's just a general statement but
01:08:09
yeah yeah i and i would oh sorry well no
01:08:11
it's okay i just uh
01:08:13
i would i was thinking about it while
01:08:14
these guys were being so candid and i
01:08:16
was immediately gonna punt and go to the
01:08:18
next question but i thought that would
01:08:19
be unfair um
01:08:20
you know i think two things one i think
01:08:22
a lot of my decision making early on was
01:08:25
out of fear uh fear of losing whatever i
01:08:27
had gained up until that point so
01:08:30
although i was a risk taker and i was
01:08:32
being bold in one way i was also
01:08:34
throttling myself because i was just so
01:08:36
scared that i would lose whatever gains
01:08:37
i had and it it made me an imperfect
01:08:40
manager of people an imperfect person uh
01:08:43
maybe on edge a little too much and
01:08:45
maybe not picking my battles to david's
01:08:47
point ever i saw everything as a battle
01:08:49
because those wins were so important to
01:08:51
me because they were so hard fought
01:08:53
and then i think later in my life i
01:08:55
realized i never actually thought about
01:08:57
what i enjoyed i just thought about
01:08:58
winning um to an extent that was not
01:09:02
healthy and
01:09:03
then after dave goldberg died and tony
01:09:05
shea died i really took a
01:09:07
self-assessment of what i enjoyed doing
01:09:09
and i mentioned this yesterday you know
01:09:11
hanging out with these gentlemen and and
01:09:13
to antonio's way of phrasing it which is
01:09:15
just beautiful the fellowship i thought
01:09:17
that's the joy you know my family my
01:09:20
kids my wife and this fellowship with my
01:09:22
friends that i wanted to invest in and i
01:09:24
made a deliberate effort to be a better
01:09:26
friend a better parent a better husband
01:09:28
uh and because of all the gains i got
01:09:31
from that and the joy that i got from it
01:09:32
and i just thought a little bit god i do
01:09:35
like those conversations i do like
01:09:36
writing the book i do like throwing the
01:09:38
events i'm just gonna do things i enjoy
01:09:40
which took me 30 years of my career to
01:09:42
actually assess what is it that i like
01:09:44
and maybe i should enjoy the journey a
01:09:46
little bit more so i think it's a great
01:09:47
question i appreciate it let's take one
01:09:48
more
01:09:50
thank you
01:09:52
enjoy the journey
01:09:54
hi besties my name is arya i was the
01:09:56
third or fourth employee at doordash um
01:09:59
and my question is regarding oh sorry my
01:10:02
favorite bestie yeah that was a joke by
01:10:04
the way my favorite besties chamath and
01:10:06
sax although it's honestly sophie's
01:10:08
choice um
01:10:09
my questions regarding the positive
01:10:11
impact that silicon valley could have on
01:10:15
the political discourse and politics
01:10:17
which i know you know there's typically
01:10:19
an aversion to in tech
01:10:21
you know you all have done a fantastic
01:10:23
job outlining what those problems are as
01:10:25
well as your guests
01:10:26
what i'm wondering is what a viable path
01:10:28
forward looks like you know chamath you
01:10:30
mentioned that people in dc pay close
01:10:31
attention to the podcast sax has
01:10:33
recently endorsed michael schallenberger
01:10:35
which i really hope can save our home
01:10:37
state and i'm wondering is is the
01:10:39
solution
01:10:40
something akin to a third party like
01:10:42
what andrew yang is trying to do or some
01:10:44
new i don't know silicon valley techno
01:10:47
party or you know is there is you know
01:10:49
what does that look like i'm curious
01:10:51
well i don't think it's set up to
01:10:52
actually have a third party structurally
01:10:54
in america so what you have to do
01:10:56
practically speaking is field more
01:10:58
centrist normal people on both sides
01:11:01
whether they're republicans or democrats
01:11:02
that's a practical thing that we can all
01:11:04
do and then we can all show up and vote
01:11:05
for those people so that the the
01:11:08
majority voice is much clearer than it
01:11:09
is today because right now the fringes a
01:11:12
little bit get to hijack the process
01:11:14
um and so we take things that are that
01:11:16
should be common sense and we pervert
01:11:18
them in a way that just makes no
01:11:20
progress possible um
01:11:23
i really do think that we have that
01:11:25
impact i'm not
01:11:27
sure how much can be quan of that can be
01:11:29
quantified but when i spend time in dc i
01:11:33
think it's true what i was told and what
01:11:35
i've heard from people it's basically
01:11:36
required listening or viewing
01:11:39
it helps shapes people's opinions
01:11:40
doesn't mean they follow it but i think
01:11:42
it helps people think about things in a
01:11:44
more normal way
01:11:45
i think what happened today is like a
01:11:46
perfect example like the way that glenn
01:11:48
greenwald and antonio garcia martinez
01:11:51
debate like that's probably for some of
01:11:53
you was really unsettling maybe raise
01:11:55
your hand if you were just like you felt
01:11:57
awkward
01:11:58
honestly just be honest with you okay
01:12:00
well you shouldn't because that's normal
01:12:02
my point is it helps you make it seem
01:12:04
more normal because those guys were not
01:12:05
saying to each other that you're
01:12:07
worthless and you're not they were just
01:12:08
debating by the way we went out for a
01:12:10
beer after that yeah this is my point
01:12:12
the three of us i was like okay we need
01:12:13
to like go out and get a drink and cool
01:12:15
down so i'm not i'm not chastising you
01:12:18
for feeling that way i'm just saying
01:12:19
this is what the culture does to folks
01:12:21
it makes you even afraid to hear people
01:12:24
debate things and still have respect for
01:12:26
each other the way that he and palmer
01:12:28
kind of dealt with that was that's
01:12:30
incredible the courage that palmer had
01:12:32
to say what he did and then for him to
01:12:33
be the first guy to walk out and then to
01:12:35
own that that's a i think those are
01:12:38
really important moments and you have
01:12:40
[Applause]
01:12:43
you
01:12:43
you have 700 more people
01:12:46
capable of being that way because of
01:12:49
what just happened so yeah i think it's
01:12:52
a slow march but i think we're
01:12:54
we're doing we're right we're riding a
01:12:55
small dent in a small way 20 years ago
01:12:57
every political show on tv was a debate
01:13:00
format
01:13:01
like going all the way back to william
01:13:04
buckley versus gore vidal or pat
01:13:06
buchanan versus michael kinsley on
01:13:08
crossfire i mean they were all debates
01:13:10
now like none of them are debates it's
01:13:12
all discs their own little echo chambers
01:13:14
i think it's one of the reasons why this
01:13:15
pod is successful is we actually can
01:13:18
have debates and there is a divergence
01:13:20
of views
01:13:22
what do you think antonio's or is there
01:13:23
some
01:13:24
have you ever listened to this pod
01:13:26
um i i was on one once dancing in the
01:13:28
background oh that's right yes thank you
01:13:30
the dancing bear yeah he did dance
01:13:31
behind me
01:13:32
i recorded an episode from his house
01:13:34
yeah um well i mean you look at politics
01:13:36
any interest there any any any um
01:13:39
you know behind the scenes work you've
01:13:41
done and how do you think about it just
01:13:43
as we get into as gen xers boomers are
01:13:46
going away i mean we're going to kind of
01:13:48
inherit this whether we like it or not
01:13:50
yes i would i would say a couple things
01:13:52
first
01:13:53
whenever you have times you look
01:13:54
historically i think it's important to
01:13:55
contextualize this when you have moments
01:13:57
of large technological change you always
01:14:00
have political disruption
01:14:01
because the means of communication have
01:14:03
changed this the gutenberg press the
01:14:05
tall ship and you just go back and look
01:14:07
it always leads that light disruption
01:14:09
and often to war
01:14:11
and so the question of are those of us
01:14:13
who are technologists at the top of the
01:14:14
system who have a responsibility to
01:14:15
steward this technology responsibly we
01:14:18
absolutely do
01:14:19
i believe we do
01:14:20
and i think that has been forgotten
01:14:22
that's number one number two i have been
01:14:24
involved in campaigns um
01:14:26
and it's interesting right now what i'm
01:14:28
doing is supporting any centrist
01:14:29
candidate that i think is good on either
01:14:30
side of the aisle i'm a registered
01:14:32
democrat i support democrats for most of
01:14:34
my life but the reality is now all i
01:14:37
care about is sensible people that i
01:14:38
think are really good and i'm engaging
01:14:41
in micro targeting efforts across the
01:14:42
spectrum in in primary races and i would
01:14:45
encourage all of you and anyone up here
01:14:47
who cares about the american book system
01:14:49
to engage in the primaries because the
01:14:51
primaries are what determines the
01:14:52
quality of the candidates that actually
01:14:54
are up for election and they're actually
01:14:56
decided by very few people yeah like how
01:14:59
many of us actually voted in the primary
01:15:02
like very few of you very few of you
01:15:04
okay so rather than us just complain
01:15:07
about the divisiveness of american
01:15:09
politics next time please go vote in a
01:15:12
primary and go vote for the center's
01:15:13
candidate
01:15:18
by the way did i hear a lot of support
01:15:20
from michael shellenberger out there
01:15:24
let's have him on the pod maybe yeah hi
01:15:26
favorite bass is chamath i i heard you
01:15:29
speak with vinod khosla at hack the
01:15:31
north at the university of waterloo uh
01:15:34
so my question is ammar talked about
01:15:36
these like startup journey systems like
01:15:38
stanford or
01:15:39
paypal do you see like over the pandemic
01:15:42
do you see any like remote or
01:15:43
distributed systems that have
01:15:46
like appeared or do you see any like
01:15:48
building
01:15:49
that are not just
01:15:50
centered in one geographical location
01:15:53
i'm not a huge believer in this whole
01:15:54
decentralized work movement i don't
01:15:56
think any high quality work can get done
01:15:58
um
01:16:00
on on on difficult problems so i think
01:16:04
that there are types of products and
01:16:06
types of problems that can be solved in
01:16:09
a remote way certain forms of software
01:16:12
for certain kinds of products
01:16:15
but
01:16:16
for example let's just say you're trying
01:16:17
to engineer you know
01:16:19
a co a a pharma drug
01:16:22
i don't believe that unless you're
01:16:24
sitting there collaborating talking
01:16:26
debating you can do that necessarily
01:16:28
over a zoom if you're trying to build
01:16:30
something physical you know we have a
01:16:32
business that 3d prints rockets those
01:16:34
guys can't do that by just you know
01:16:36
zooming around and having a couple calls
01:16:38
that doesn't happen
01:16:40
so i i think it's
01:16:42
too premature
01:16:44
to kind of say
01:16:45
working together has no value i also
01:16:47
think there's a huge cultural divide
01:16:49
that will get created in america between
01:16:52
these companies that come together
01:16:54
and the companies that don't and i think
01:16:56
that the ones that come together have a
01:16:57
chance of having more empathy in the end
01:17:00
because there are moments where you can
01:17:02
actually get to know the people you're
01:17:03
working with every day and i think that
01:17:05
that gives you margin for error because
01:17:07
everybody
01:17:08
sometimes is a little you know dealing
01:17:10
with their own things in their lives
01:17:11
sometimes can be a little rude
01:17:13
and we all have tolerances those
01:17:14
tolerances are higher when you spend
01:17:16
time with people and they're much much
01:17:18
lower when you're just in a zoom so i'm
01:17:21
you know
01:17:22
i'd love to believe that everybody's
01:17:24
gonna be airbnb in a castle and a tent
01:17:26
in a [ __ ] treehouse but i'm just not
01:17:29
sure that that's realistic to really
01:17:31
solve the big problems that america has
01:17:33
you believe in the work from home
01:17:35
antonio you have a strong feeling one
01:17:36
way or the other
01:17:38
um i i'm more on chamos camp than not
01:17:40
but i will say we have some great
01:17:42
companies are fully remote um we have a
01:17:44
coalition example in cyber security it's
01:17:46
fully remote run by a wonderful ceos
01:17:48
under the age of 35
01:17:49
and he's found a way to make it work and
01:17:51
i've learned a lot from him and so i'm
01:17:53
trying to be very open algorithm about
01:17:55
this and i think there are people to
01:17:56
make it work i can't make it work i want
01:17:59
my people in the office we invest in
01:18:00
pharma um we invest in biotech and we
01:18:03
have some biotech companies that have
01:18:04
made it work uh remotely and some that
01:18:06
insist on bringing back people back if
01:18:08
you're in a lab obviously you have to be
01:18:09
back but it i think there'll be a mixed
01:18:11
environment and i also think there's an
01:18:13
interesting retooling going on in
01:18:14
productivity i think the productivity
01:18:15
numbers in american that we're seeing
01:18:16
today are wrong because they're not
01:18:18
capturing what's happening underneath
01:18:19
the technology because these remote
01:18:20
environments so i don't know yet i think
01:18:23
it's gonna depend on the ceo and how
01:18:24
good people are and the type of industry
01:18:26
you're in
01:18:27
yeah i'm keeping an open mind towards it
01:18:30
i know that for investing it was so much
01:18:31
more efficient
01:18:33
you know people could do 20-minute zooms
01:18:35
instead of two-hour meetings but i mean
01:18:36
think of the problem that that created
01:18:38
look at the overhang when you could
01:18:39
raise tens of billions of dollars over
01:18:41
zoom that turned out to not be a good
01:18:43
thing well and but also if you're a
01:18:46
capital allocator being able to meet
01:18:47
with three times as many people you
01:18:49
could find more companies this is my
01:18:50
point yeah so i had a friend of mine who
01:18:53
raised billions of dollars over the last
01:18:55
couple year cycle and he said i was able
01:18:57
to raise 50 million dollar checks in 30
01:18:59
minute meetings now spending five hours
01:19:02
for a 10 million dollar check
01:19:04
and my reaction to him in the back of my
01:19:06
mind was that's probably how it should
01:19:07
be
01:19:08
well part of that that makes the entire
01:19:10
system a little bit healthier yeah i
01:19:12
mean we we raised one point similar
01:19:13
funder in covet and it was all done
01:19:15
doing zoom reason new fun now and i'm
01:19:17
flying around the world taking meetings
01:19:18
but part of that is because people are
01:19:19
coming back the office and the liquidity
01:19:20
cycle's gotten is reversed on us now
01:19:22
right so the denominator has gotten it's
01:19:24
got a heart attack capital but for sure
01:19:26
i think i agree with chamathia like
01:19:27
being able to allocate 10 billion
01:19:28
dollars in a venture fund in two years
01:19:30
over zoom
01:19:32
and and think that's a on just the
01:19:33
metrics and not see people i think
01:19:35
that's a bad idea yeah i'm talking about
01:19:37
two hundred fifty k five hundred checks
01:19:39
okay might be okay take another question
01:19:40
here my name is kenneth brown the third
01:19:42
and my favorite bestie is j-cal the
01:19:44
charisma is legendary um
01:19:47
he's my favorite best you too by the way
01:19:48
don't be offended
01:19:51
and then my question is what advice
01:19:53
would you give to non-technical people
01:19:55
trying to fit into the
01:19:57
tech oriented startup venture world
01:20:00
i'm an econ major but this just seems
01:20:01
exciting like how do i become a part of
01:20:03
it
01:20:04
and tony have thoughts
01:20:06
and i i think that the um the best way
01:20:09
to do this is to find a company you
01:20:11
think is great and get a job
01:20:14
that's a reality i mean i would just i
01:20:15
would associate myself with the business
01:20:16
that i really respect people respecting
01:20:18
if the job is in the mail room or the
01:20:20
bob is the job as a janitor whatever
01:20:22
just figure it out because what happens
01:20:23
with high growth companies is they need
01:20:24
good people and you'll be surprised how
01:20:26
much being the first person in and the
01:20:28
last person to leave if there's an
01:20:30
office and doing the work that he will
01:20:31
ask you to do with a smile and a great
01:20:33
attitude like those people they move up
01:20:35
fast so i would just find a way in man
01:20:37
wherever it is however it is make it
01:20:39
happen and start moving up
01:20:42
by the way you're you're not you're not
01:20:44
non-technical you're not yet technical
01:20:47
and i think that's the opportunity that
01:20:49
sits in front of everyone that you can
01:20:51
become technical i had a my
01:20:54
fam a cousin
01:20:56
who was a music major ucla worked in
01:20:58
music
01:20:59
and then he came back from covid and he
01:21:01
started learning how to program online
01:21:03
taught himself spent six months in his
01:21:05
parents basement teaching himself how to
01:21:07
retool his life and got some contract
01:21:10
jobs on reddit and boards and other
01:21:12
stuff and he got this amazing full-time
01:21:14
job offer a few weeks ago and it was
01:21:16
really amazing that i got to watch him
01:21:17
transform himself and his life over the
01:21:19
last year and a half just by taking that
01:21:21
on himself and he became technical it
01:21:23
wasn't that he had a non-technical
01:21:24
degree it said he just wasn't yet
01:21:26
technical and i think everyone has that
01:21:28
opportunity i'll tell you i'll tell you
01:21:29
a great quick story
01:21:31
he's a minority guy grew up in houston
01:21:35
really wanted to work at tesla couldn't
01:21:36
get a job couldn't get a job couldn't
01:21:38
get a job finally got a job on the line
01:21:42
he was making 16 20 bucks an hour
01:21:44
worked there did well transferred worked
01:21:47
there did well transferred ends up in
01:21:49
the supply chain group ends up working
01:21:50
in battery supply chain
01:21:52
ends up basically being two layers
01:21:55
between him and elon
01:21:57
gets into an mba goes there for a few
01:22:00
years
01:22:01
uh works on the side uh
01:22:03
and he ended up raising a bunch of money
01:22:05
to start a battery business recently and
01:22:08
this is an example of what he just said
01:22:09
which is you know there are these jobs
01:22:12
available
01:22:13
and then it's just you know is your hood
01:22:15
spa and your hustle and he's an example
01:22:18
but it's a very motivating example to me
01:22:19
because it just shows it's so possible
01:22:22
you know and there are phenomenal
01:22:23
organizations that identify talent and
01:22:25
will move you up really quickly and
01:22:27
knowledge is literally free and
01:22:28
experience is up to you
01:22:30
yeah the the
01:22:32
the overriding i think
01:22:34
advice you're getting here is that
01:22:35
skills are acquirable and
01:22:37
my lord getting to 50 60 proficiency on
01:22:40
a skill just given what's on youtube or
01:22:43
mit open courseware or any number of
01:22:44
websites
01:22:46
you can do it in a matter of weeks
01:22:48
and now of course going from 60 70 70 to
01:22:51
80. that might take months and then
01:22:52
eventually years
01:22:54
um but startups are looking for
01:22:56
generalists they're looking for people
01:22:57
who can say i i need somebody who's
01:22:59
going to do the accounting and figure
01:23:00
out how to do an email merge and build a
01:23:03
mailing list and then i need somebody to
01:23:04
help with recruiting if you can just
01:23:06
become 30 40 50 as
01:23:08
you know good at each of those things at
01:23:10
a startup
01:23:11
you know before people get specialized
01:23:13
eventually you'll have 10 people doing
01:23:15
recruiting but in the beginning it's
01:23:17
one-third of somebody's job so i love
01:23:19
startups for the sign of a great culture
01:23:21
of a company
01:23:22
is how little
01:23:24
the obvious labels matter once you're
01:23:26
inside of it
01:23:29
and the best companies like a tesla can
01:23:31
become a trillion dollar market cap
01:23:33
because they find the kid working on the
01:23:35
line and then four years later is
01:23:37
running the battery supply chain how
01:23:39
does that happen
01:23:41
it happens because you're looking at the
01:23:43
quality of the individual and their
01:23:45
potential where they went to school
01:23:47
doesn't matter their gender doesn't
01:23:48
matter their ethnicity doesn't matter
01:23:50
none of it matters because the people
01:23:52
don't see it
01:23:53
they see work ethic
01:23:55
they see results yeah they see episodes
01:23:57
they see integrity
01:23:59
so that's another litmus test for you is
01:24:01
like in the companies even if you're a
01:24:02
ceo and if you're building if every
01:24:04
other day you're reminding everybody
01:24:06
else of like where people need to have
01:24:07
gone to school and where they should
01:24:08
have been
01:24:10
that's a road to nowhere let's give
01:24:12
antonio a big round of applause very
01:24:13
nice
01:24:15
[Applause]
01:24:27
thank you next question hey guys over
01:24:28
here
01:24:39
all right we're gonna just take 14 to 20
01:24:42
more questions go
01:24:44
sunny lambo here um chamoth's my
01:24:46
favorite bestie
01:24:48
yeah there you go huh
01:24:50
because of him
01:24:52
a little dry spell huh because of him i
01:24:54
shop at laura piana only so thank you
01:24:57
so just got a question um for freedberg
01:25:00
i know that you wanted to talk about
01:25:01
this yesterday about this sort of uh
01:25:03
consumer credit crisis on the horizon
01:25:05
that you see as potentially like the
01:25:07
next shoe to drop so um i think you
01:25:09
wanted to mention something yesterday
01:25:10
about it but because of time and stuff
01:25:13
i mean i i don't have anything more to
01:25:15
add than what i said on the pod i'm not
01:25:16
like i don't think this is like
01:25:18
a high certainty i i'm just concerned
01:25:20
there's a lot of loans out there a lot
01:25:21
of buy now pay later a lot of stuff that
01:25:24
has floating rates attached to it
01:25:26
if we're going to have a recession we're
01:25:27
going to see job loss you're going to
01:25:29
see these
01:25:30
and by the way these auto loan
01:25:31
portfolios have like crazy outperformed
01:25:33
over the last few years
01:25:35
and now that these and a lot of those
01:25:36
auto loans are floating rate
01:25:39
those asset values are inflated people
01:25:40
are losing jobs you could see a bunch of
01:25:42
these things start to create a bit of a
01:25:44
cascading effect over the next couple of
01:25:45
quarters depending on how this all goes
01:25:48
um so i i'm not i'm not going to put my
01:25:50
foot down on the ground and say oh my
01:25:51
god consumer credit bubble we're totally
01:25:53
[ __ ] it's going to lead to the great
01:25:54
next great recession
01:25:56
um but i do think it's going to be
01:25:58
pretty kind of surprising by now pay
01:26:00
later i saw stat i don't know if you
01:26:02
guys saw this this week on how a lot of
01:26:04
the people that are going on buy now pay
01:26:06
later sites are actually maxed out on
01:26:08
their credit cards and so they're
01:26:09
actually fully credited out and then all
01:26:11
the smart algorithms are like oh yeah
01:26:13
you're a good credit risk like
01:26:14
here's here's eighteen hundred dollars
01:26:16
somebody's like
01:26:17
whatever lightning round five questions
01:26:18
and we're done one bestie will answer
01:26:20
each question go cool uh
01:26:23
dave freeburger my favorite bestie uh
01:26:25
what problem do you most want to solve
01:26:26
right now
01:26:28
oh binary lifters actually uh edible
01:26:31
quinoa
01:26:34
actually i've been working on the so
01:26:38
look i i've spoken about this publicly i
01:26:40
think it's a big problem i was going to
01:26:41
talk about it in the talk that we
01:26:42
scrapped but i'll do it another time
01:26:44
um which is really the opportunity for
01:26:46
biomanufacturing as a way to replace
01:26:49
a lot of traditional food systems
01:26:51
including olive ag all of animal
01:26:53
agriculture
01:26:55
and a lot of the systems that we use to
01:26:56
basically make our food
01:26:59
it's a it's a big infrastructure play
01:27:01
you know a couple square miles you know
01:27:03
using elon's analogy you could basically
01:27:04
recreate all the food on earth and you
01:27:06
could distribute those systems
01:27:08
um and and so i i think that it can be
01:27:11
extremely carbon negative it sucks
01:27:13
carbon out of the atmosphere
01:27:15
um it will create incredible jobs it's
01:27:16
an incredible infrastructure opportunity
01:27:18
it would return billions of acres of
01:27:20
land back to kind of you know whatever
01:27:22
form natural form we want them to be so
01:27:24
that's an area that i'm spending a lot
01:27:26
of time in and that i'm particularly
01:27:29
excited about awesome thank you okay
01:27:31
number two hi there i'm katie croft nice
01:27:33
to meet you all imagine a parallel
01:27:35
timeline where i say you're all my
01:27:36
favorite uh because it's all true um so
01:27:38
i'm curious kind of an extension of the
01:27:40
media question
01:27:42
have you given much thought to forming a
01:27:43
consortium or community um with the
01:27:46
all-in podcast and kind of what
01:27:48
further applications of that because if
01:27:50
you think about the forced multiplicity
01:27:52
of like any number of these minds in the
01:27:54
same room working towards the problems
01:27:55
we've talked about from
01:27:57
education to entering energy
01:28:00
it could probably be pretty considerable
01:28:02
the impact there because we have such
01:28:03
respect for what you guys do and how
01:28:04
you're doing it and the discourse you're
01:28:06
having that you know we're clearly all
01:28:08
diehards here so i'm just curious if you
01:28:10
thought about it i'm kind of trying to
01:28:11
inception you here you want to take that
01:28:12
yeah i think so i mean uh this is a [ __ ]
01:28:14
ton of work um but
01:28:17
i think it is and we all have day jobs
01:28:19
um you know step one was to try to just
01:28:21
see and i told the best things let's
01:28:23
just see if we can each make
01:28:25
um
01:28:26
getting to the pod each week a priority
01:28:29
and a habit and and that took the first
01:28:31
year or so
01:28:32
so now it is a habit we all value doing
01:28:34
this it has had tremendous impact on our
01:28:36
lives personally and professionally
01:28:38
it's been very inspiring for each of us
01:28:40
so we had to lock into that first doing
01:28:42
this you know uh was a ton of work and
01:28:45
we'll see if it's sustainable and we
01:28:47
have some other ideas we wanted to do a
01:28:48
college tour was the other thing we were
01:28:50
considering which would be like three
01:28:52
thousand seats or four thousand seats
01:28:54
and just an episode of the pod in q a so
01:28:55
i think that could be the next card to
01:28:57
fall
01:28:58
um and then maybe hiring tim urban and
01:29:00
uh nate silver and then having to build
01:29:02
a media company to take on cnn um but
01:29:04
yeah we haven't really given him much
01:29:05
thought but you never know
01:29:07
they were here totally randomly all
01:29:08
right they were here totally around
01:29:09
we're not recruiting or anything but um
01:29:11
you know anything's possible
01:29:12
hi besties again i'm rejoice i run a
01:29:15
talent marketplace for early entry
01:29:16
workers we use gamification to
01:29:19
accelerate their plans remember
01:29:22
i just the question is about the great
01:29:23
resignation which we believe is a
01:29:25
half-told narrative so how can small
01:29:28
businesses which are most sole
01:29:29
proprietors democratize their own labor
01:29:32
supply and demand
01:29:35
wow
01:29:36
um
01:29:38
i think that's a very difficult problem
01:29:41
to solve
01:29:43
i think
01:29:44
again if as a supporter of capitalism
01:29:47
i think one of the biggest things that
01:29:49
we don't get right
01:29:50
is how
01:29:52
money gets to the right problems i've
01:29:55
said this roughly before but
01:29:57
like money is really just a voting way
01:30:00
of deciding what you think is important
01:30:02
in the world and that's why the
01:30:04
accumulation of money as just a
01:30:06
practical matter forget moral or
01:30:08
physical philosophical
01:30:10
is so important because you can vote
01:30:12
what you want
01:30:14
the thing is that aggregation happens
01:30:16
easily distribution is terribly broken
01:30:19
and so the ability for folks to solve
01:30:21
practical problems is very hard because
01:30:23
the roi isn't obvious and getting money
01:30:26
from capital pools like us to
01:30:28
individuals and sole proprietors is a
01:30:29
basic i think it is a very broken
01:30:32
problem
01:30:33
a because the systems don't exist b
01:30:35
because the laws don't allow it
01:30:37
and until that gets solved i'm not
01:30:40
exactly sure how a business who can
01:30:42
actually like build for the future well
01:30:44
or solve their supply forecast or demand
01:30:46
forecast can actually get the capital
01:30:48
you need because the lubricant that
01:30:50
allows you to solve that problem is
01:30:52
money has always been will always be
01:30:55
but getting it to those people
01:30:57
is legally hard and it's
01:30:59
organizationally impractical
01:31:01
um
01:31:02
i don't know if you saw the last spot i
01:31:04
mentioned this thing we tried this thing
01:31:05
called capital as a service it doesn't
01:31:07
get to the sole proprietor level but it
01:31:08
gets to like small five to ten percent
01:31:10
companies
01:31:12
we would send fifty hundred thousand
01:31:13
dollar checks here's how hard it is the
01:31:15
cost of getting a 50 000 check we did
01:31:18
this uh
01:31:19
fishery in indonesia
01:31:21
it cost us 125 000 to give them 50 000.
01:31:25
we still did it because i just wanted to
01:31:27
prove the point they ended up tripling
01:31:29
our money so we barely kind of like
01:31:31
broke even um but it just goes to show
01:31:33
you how really complication in the
01:31:35
system okay fourth question and then one
01:31:37
more after that
01:31:38
hey i'm prem uh as a waterloo poker
01:31:41
player favorite besties to moth
01:31:43
i'm very
01:31:44
into next-gen manufacturing but as a
01:31:46
pre-seed investor my concern is
01:31:48
follow-on financing
01:31:51
how do we get more investors interested
01:31:53
in investing in the physical world
01:31:55
because at least in canada it seems like
01:31:57
most investors only want to invest in
01:31:58
software no i think i think this is what
01:32:00
i'm saying i think there's a very broken
01:32:02
part of the
01:32:03
capitalism right now which is that
01:32:05
technology investors by and large and i
01:32:07
don't mean to disparage anyone here
01:32:09
are not well rooted in the principles of
01:32:12
math and finance
01:32:14
and i think that that's a real problem
01:32:16
because in a moment like this
01:32:18
that is where you can actually make safe
01:32:20
investments of capital you can structure
01:32:22
the money in so that you are capital
01:32:24
protected you have assets to back these
01:32:26
things and the reason why folks don't do
01:32:28
it is they don't understand how to put
01:32:30
together a model to demonstrate it and
01:32:33
then the person that is then receiving
01:32:35
that information
01:32:36
is unfortunately not as well instructed
01:32:38
as they should be to understand how to
01:32:40
make a decision from that that's what we
01:32:42
have today so it's a it's a little bit
01:32:43
of a mis-education problem
01:32:45
and it's going to affect
01:32:47
the non-sexy areas
01:32:49
rockets will always get money
01:32:51
but like 3d manufacturing excel at scale
01:32:53
may not because of this exact issue
01:32:55
because people don't know what roik
01:32:57
means
01:32:57
sir you have the final question
01:32:59
favorite bestie is uh friedberg and i
01:33:02
hate to end on a recession question
01:33:05
but never asking that question again
01:33:07
why do you guys why do let me ask why do
01:33:09
you guys think it upsets you so much
01:33:10
like well because you're the biggest
01:33:12
pain in the ass you are the most [ __ ]
01:33:14
neurotic person every time we post an
01:33:16
episode we should cancel the episode we
01:33:18
[ __ ] everything up again
01:33:21
why do we keep screwing up we're going
01:33:22
to destroy them i read the first
01:33:24
comments and the the down vote i was on
01:33:26
youtube somebody sent the vote at the
01:33:29
following we'll keep going but go ahead
01:33:30
the amount of noise we deal with from
01:33:32
this one we're not going to stop it's
01:33:34
like
01:33:34
literally he doesn't know you should not
01:33:36
reward him
01:33:38
it's like his inner model of feeding
01:33:40
crazy you know if you had a two-year-old
01:33:41
child who you you've given too much
01:33:43
candy to it can you can you shut them up
01:33:45
please yeah
01:33:47
unbelievable this is all right
01:33:48
one guy can shut your mouth up it's phil
01:33:50
deutsch everyone yeah yeah all right so
01:33:53
it seems like a common theme on this
01:33:55
stage these last couple days is you all
01:33:56
feel like we're in a recession or
01:33:58
heading towards a recession but i get a
01:34:00
feeling that you have the confidence
01:34:01
that this could be a quick recession
01:34:02
like a year so my question would be why
01:34:04
do you feel after 13 years of market
01:34:07
manipulation by the fed that it's gonna
01:34:09
be cured in under a year
01:34:11
no i think you're right the average
01:34:12
recession has measured like if you look
01:34:14
back historically is two quarters
01:34:18
um the problem is that we've never
01:34:20
really figured out
01:34:22
what it's going to take with the
01:34:24
distortion of money that never should
01:34:26
have been in the system because if you
01:34:27
think of a supply demand imbalance as
01:34:30
being a naturally self-balancing
01:34:32
phenomenon if you perturb one side of it
01:34:34
by an enormous amount
01:34:36
exactly to your point i think the open
01:34:38
question that the world has right now is
01:34:41
is that really a two-quarter problem
01:34:44
well the fed has told you that they're
01:34:45
gonna take three years to get three
01:34:47
trillion you've heard from david that 10
01:34:49
trillion was put in
01:34:51
probably another three or four trillion
01:34:53
was productively used
01:34:55
but that still leaves another three
01:34:57
trillion of sloshing around money that
01:34:58
we don't know so i think it's an open
01:35:01
question i don't know what you guys
01:35:02
think fredberg how many months
01:35:03
uh how many quarters sacks how many
01:35:05
quarters have you had yes again i just
01:35:07
hate this definition of recession where
01:35:08
it's about gdp decline when we had a lot
01:35:11
of the underlyings in those numbers for
01:35:13
gdp that i feel were like artificially
01:35:15
inflated for a couple of quarters
01:35:16
because of a bunch of the structural
01:35:17
stuff we've talked about
01:35:19
so i don't know like if you look deeper
01:35:21
at economic growth companies signing up
01:35:23
more customers so like a lot of
01:35:25
technology companies are about
01:35:26
increasing productivity with their tools
01:35:28
with their with what they're selling
01:35:29
and um those businesses are going to
01:35:32
continue to do well and to grow and to
01:35:35
increase customers increase revenue
01:35:37
um and i don't think that there's
01:35:39
necessarily a lot of the structural
01:35:41
stuff that we saw with the gfc the one
01:35:43
thing i am concerned about which i've
01:35:44
highlighted is this consumer credit risk
01:35:47
and besides that it seems like
01:35:49
you know things are um
01:35:51
you know on good footing so i don't know
01:35:53
like the the technical recession
01:35:55
definition
01:35:56
probably a couple quarters yeah
01:35:59
um i
01:36:00
you never know and i think the best way
01:36:02
to to look at the future is by doing
01:36:04
scenario planning
01:36:06
so we basically we could say this could
01:36:08
be
01:36:08
a you know short medium or long
01:36:11
recession short would be six months
01:36:13
media might be 18 months and
01:36:16
you know long might be two years plus
01:36:18
and we just say i don't know say one
01:36:20
third one third one third probability
01:36:23
and that kind of gives you
01:36:25
some picture 14 months yeah exactly so
01:36:28
now what we're telling our portfolio
01:36:30
companies is you want to have two and a
01:36:31
half years of runway right now because
01:36:33
you got to go raise six months before
01:36:34
you run out of cash and you really
01:36:36
want to have two years of cushion
01:36:38
because things could be choppy for two
01:36:40
years i'm not saying they're gonna be
01:36:43
but they could be you don't want your
01:36:44
company to run out of money and die just
01:36:47
because of macroeconomic conditions that
01:36:49
are no fault of your own so if you can
01:36:51
try to engineer that amount of runway
01:36:52
that's better
01:36:54
i also think that
01:36:56
here's the thing about a quick recession
01:36:57
is or the the prospect for one we don't
01:37:00
know what other shoes are going to drop
01:37:02
consumer credit is still a shoe that we
01:37:04
don't know if it's going to drop look
01:37:05
six months ago
01:37:06
did we think we'd be talking about tiger
01:37:09
global or
01:37:10
sophomore for that matter potentially
01:37:12
teetering on the verge of being wiped
01:37:14
out yeah redempted out of
01:37:17
coinbase and peloton just so things with
01:37:20
the rings
01:37:20
things can change fast we don't know
01:37:22
what systemic risk is in the system that
01:37:25
hasn't been flushed out yet
01:37:26
and i we won't be out of this until it
01:37:29
feels like everything's been flushed out
01:37:31
and then the market's back and things
01:37:32
are sort of an upward trajectory again
01:37:34
clearly we're not there
01:37:35
real estate in crypto it doesn't feel
01:37:37
like that's rushed out yet either so do
01:37:39
we have a clip to play as an outro i
01:37:41
don't know is this uh was this the clip
01:37:43
of the the cut clip before before we go
01:37:45
can we please say thanks to the yeah
01:37:47
we're gonna have networks here yeah and
01:37:49
the team jason your team at all in yeah
01:37:50
incredible thank you everybody all of
01:37:52
you guys have worked so hard and they
01:37:54
they really put a lot of effort into
01:37:55
this it's pretty incredible
01:37:58
i guess this is a lost clip of us
01:38:00
uh from last week
01:38:03
you did not have like uh dungeon dragon
01:38:05
sleepovers in grade seven and grade
01:38:07
eight i was actually programming pascal
01:38:09
and we made a water moisturizer and it
01:38:12
was a binary lifter much like the ones
01:38:14
you have a tattoo
01:38:16
a complete replica of uncle owen's water
01:38:18
vaporizers on tatooine and that took six
01:38:22
years but it was great
01:38:24
and then i went
01:38:25
hilariously as c-3po
01:38:31
3po to our science fair
01:38:34
you should have seen the look on our
01:38:35
teachers faces
01:38:38
okay you guys have your cold open let's
01:38:40
go
01:38:42
[Music]
01:38:44
rain man
01:38:45
[Music]
01:38:49
david source it to the fans
01:38:52
[Music]
