E29: Coinbase goes public, direct listings vs. IPOs, portfolio management, unions & more with Bestie Guestie Brad Gerstner

Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg https://twitter.com/altcap Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Referenced in the show: Statista - Death rates from coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state Tweets: https://twitter.com/bgurley/status/1382737752794353664 https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1382874547179950082 https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1382466963885199362 https://twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/1382477293797400581 https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1383073577386201094 Show Notes: 0:00 Bestie intro & crowning a new SPAC king 3:01 Coinbase's direct listing, comparing vehicles to go public & lockup periods, Sacks on Coinbase vs. NYT 12:06 David Sacks on running for governor 15:21 Brad & the besties react to the crazy Q1 in the markets, a16z's savvy buying moves with Coinbase, issues with short-term behavioral lock-in 32:37 Top insights from Bezos' letter to shareholders, Amazon employees reject the union in Alabama 50:27 Reacting to Drew Holden's recent thread on media double standards in covering each party 54:28 Federalism's benefits throughout COVID, State-by-state results reveal lockdowns didn't work, vaccine incentives and PR due to J&J decision 1:04:20 Degradation of faith in institutions accelerated by COVID 1:09:26 Republican Senator Josh Hawley calls for big tech antitrust reform, bypassing institutions for progress

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  Any word from the dictator or should we just do a?

• 0:02David Friedberg?

  I don't know, man. I gotta, I, I cannot spend my whole day sitting on Zoom waiting for Chamath.

• 0:07Jason Calacanis?

  Or I could have Brad Gerson come on and sit in for.

• 0:09Brad Gerstner?

  Isn't he richer than Chamath?

• 0:10David Friedberg?

  He is now.

• 0:11Jason Calacanis?

  The largest SPAC in the world. Should we do that? Should I just have Brad come on the pod?

• 0:14David Friedberg?

  Oh my God, yes.

• 0:17David Friedberg?

  Start it now. Get him on. Start it.

• 0:21David Friedberg?

  Chamath comes in later. He's like, what the fuck? We're like, we'll replace you with the new SPAC king.

• 0:25Brad Gerstner?

  Oh my God.

• 0:25David Friedberg?

  Oh my God, get him on.

• 0:26Brad Gerstner?

  Is this like a kidnapping and you guys are gonna take me out, drop me out behind the, behind the railroad cars? What's going on here?

• 0:34Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. Here we go.

• 0:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm good. Is it? How's the game?

• 0:38Jason Calacanis?

  Game is great.

• 0:39David Friedberg?

  Good.

• 0:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Game. Game two.

• 0:43Jason Calacanis?

  One.

• 0:48Jason Calacanis?

  Rain Man David Sacks.

• 0:56Jason Calacanis?

  Love you, besties.

• 1:01Jason Calacanis?

  Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. It's another episode of the All In Podcast. We took last week off because it was spring break and we all needed a break. Hope you had a great one, too. With us today, of course, the Queen of Kinwa from an undisclosed sunny location, David Friedberg.

• 1:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It looks like Redwood City. Is it Redwood City?

• 1:18Jason Calacanis?

  The Rain Man himself, David Sacks, ready for governorsacks.com. And of course, the King of all SPACs, Brad Gerson is with us again, the new dictator, uh, filling in for Chamath Poli-Hapatia, the dictator. Oh, wait, Chamath Poli-Hapatia, the dictator is here as well. And special bestie guestie.

• 1:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Jason, Jason.

• 1:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Not when you.

• 1:45Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know what that means, but we're editing that out of the show. That's a bunch of beeps. Uh, but welcome Brad, sitting in, uh, just for a moment here, because Chamath was gonna blow us off.

• 1:57David Friedberg?

  He was a no-show. We needed a SPAC king.

• 1:59Jason Calacanis?

  Sorry, guys.

• 2:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I apologize. Emergency.

• 2:03Brad Gerstner?

  It's just, it's just a little flattery for Chamath. The truth of the matter is Chamath, uh, Chamath is pioneering. And you know, I think it's been incredible to watch the competition in choice. And as Chamath knows, I participated in a couple of the deals that he's done. And I think we all share the same feeling, which is, you know, there's been a a system that is pretty Byzantine, that wasn't serving the founders who we all, you know, care deeply about. And so I'm just, I'm thrilled, whether it's direct list, like Roblox did a few weeks ago that we we helped do and, you know, or whether it's Chamath and the incredible innovation that

• 2:45Brad Gerstner?

  that he's helping to do, or, you know, we're lucky, we've been, we've invested, you know, building a capital markets business on top of this, this back and and then, you know, worked with Grab to bring a great public company out this week.

• 3:01Jason Calacanis?

  So let's get to the direct listing. Good segue. Clearly, the biggest news of the week is Coinbase, the largest direct listing ever. Bill Gurley somewhere is smiling. And that's on top of Roblox, which I think was the second biggest. Twenty twenty revenue, one point two billion.

• 3:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sorry, Brad, did did Snowflake direct list or that was a traditional?

• 3:22Brad Gerstner?

  No, that's traditional IPO.

• 3:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Traditional IPO.

• 3:24Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know who got their bet week, their wet their beaks on this one. Sax, did you have a little bit?

• 3:31David Sacks?

  I had a little tasty poo.

• 3:32Jason Calacanis?

  Little tasty poo.

• 3:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I had, I had a lot showered upon me.

• 3:38Jason Calacanis?

  Explain, boys.

• 3:39David Sacks?

  Because you're, because you're in Ribbit, right?

• 3:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I am, I was Mickey's, one of Mickey's largest LPs.

• 3:44Jason Calacanis?

  Who's Mickey for the audience who doesn't know?

• 3:45Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Mickey Malka, who runs Ribbit Capital, who owns seven percent or 10% or seven or eight percent of Coinbase. And what was incredible was I got distributed all of it yesterday, which, by the way, I think for direct listing, the strategy to me makes a lot of sense. I made a mistake. In hindsight, if I think about my distribution strategy, because myself, Excel and Andreessen, when we did the Slack direct listing, we distributed probably five, 10%, and then we waited and then we trickled it out over time. But by definition, I think the price action on direct listings shows you that you top tick the top price at in the moment on the open print. And so, you know, if you're going to sell,

• 4:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  you're probably better off selling absolutely right away. And if you look at the price action on direct listings, it's basically been one way direction down from the point of the direct listing. Spotify did that for two years, it kind of languished, you know, Slack did that until the Salesforce acquisition.

• 4:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So in general, I think if a direct listing happens, when you get distributed the stock, you should probably sell it right away.

• 4:47Jason Calacanis?

  And that means it was priced correctly as opposed to underpriced? Is that what we should take from that?

• 4:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, no, because I think what's TBD is what is the morale hit to the company to see a one-way direction down in, you know, a stairway down on the stock price? So maybe it was good for selling shareholders, it's not necessarily good for the morale of employees, which then could impact the long-term enterprise value that's being built at a company. So I think there's a bunch of TBDs. I do think that direct listings are administratively clean in some ways, but company building may not necessarily win.

• 5:22David Friedberg?

  But Chumak, you had a point of view, I think it was last year or two years ago, about how, you know, and I read some papers that one of the analysts at Wall Street put out showing that there isn't much of a benefit to lockups with respect to short or long-term price volatility. Do you still hold that point of view?

• 5:40Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think lockups are really unfair because they're attacks on the people that have been there the longest, which are the employees. So, you know, the idea that somebody that comes in at the absolute last minute, you know, Brad and I have done a bunch of IPOs recently where like you get allocations in a book. He and I had nothing to do with companies, but we get its shares and we sell it day one. Then there are people that have been in that company for six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years who sit around, you know, twiddling their thumbs, watching all these other people generate one day returns. There was a tweet that Bill Gurley had yesterday that says, "There's a well-known crossover fund that over the last year has printed a billion dollars of one-day share gains." Well, that's crazy.

• 6:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So I think that lockups are kind of a regressive tax on the people that do the work and they are just rewarding people that have nothing to do with companies.

• 6:32David Friedberg?

  Brad, what are you doing in Grab? Because you locked yourself up, right, for a couple of years? And is there a lockup for the existing shareholders in Grab?

• 6:39Brad Gerstner?

  Yeah, so first, I totally agree with Chamath. Lockups are one of the most insidious things, I think, about the traditional IPO process. You know, the fact that DoorDash employees are sitting there watching the stock go from 100 to 200, and then, you know, all these other folks are selling while they'll watch the stock go from 200 back to 100. I would think it's incredibly demoralizing. And it doesn't, here's the thing, it doesn't need to exist. In Roblox, there was no lockup. The employees were free to sell, but guess what? A lot of them chose not to sell. Right? It's fairer and quicker price discovery when you actually allow the supply and demand to exist in balance.

• 7:17Brad Gerstner?

  So what we did at Grab was we fought hard for the most open unlocked, right? Day one, we could possibly get. In that case, there are a lot of big shareholders who are on the board. So they're deemed affiliates under Section 60 of securities laws. So they can't sell, right? They're deemed to be insiders, right? And but we, at the end of the day, all employees can sell. There is a group of senior management that said, hey, we want to voluntarily lock. It's a signal to the market, but all other employees in the company can sell. So there are over 5,000 employees in the company.

• 7:53Brad Gerstner?

  And all of the early shareholders can sell on day one. And I think this was the first time I've seen this in, you know, this alternative IPO. So we have almost a third of the entire share base of the company that is available for sale on day one.

• 8:08David Friedberg?

  Incredible. Hey, Brad, can I ask one more question? The economics for Grab, are they better under your structure than they would have been for a traditional IPO to get the same amount of capital and they're paying 7% to the underwriting banks?

• 8:23Brad Gerstner?

  You know, as you, as we all know, you know, Bill Gurley has

• 8:29Brad Gerstner?

  Has laboriously pointed out and documented that there are two expenses to a traditional IPO. Right, there's the upfront fee, five and a half, six percent, whatever they're paying on the amount of capital raised. Uh, but he would argue the much bigger expense, right, is the indirect cost of the structural underpricing. Right. Right. So in a traditional IPO, let's say you have a $10 billion enterprise value raising a billion dollars. If it's being underpriced, he would argue structurally by 40%. We can all debate that, but that's $400 million of dilution to employees and to existing shareholders. I, I think everybody in the grab process, um, both the buy-side portfolio managers from Fidelity, Janus, T. Rowe, et cetera,

• 9:11Brad Gerstner?

  as well as the company, believe that we got a 20 to 30% higher price than a bank would have got because of the conviction the portfolio's managers had as a result of the significant investment we were making in the company. As a result of the fact that we were locking up our promote shares or sponsor shares for three years. Um, and so if you say it's 30% on a $4 billion raise, that's over a billion dollars of savings. Right. Over a billion dollars of indirect cost savings to the employees and the shareholders. And like, for me, our North Star is founders. And so we literally have deconstructed the IPO at every step of the value chain. And to say, you know, like Rich Barton, my, my thought partner in this, he's taken,

• 9:56Brad Gerstner?

  he's on the board of Netflix when it went public, took Zillow public, took Expedia public. And he said, like, we can make this better at every step of the value chain. And so we've thought about it like a product and we build in a capital markets business that says, part of it, right, is eliminating the commission. Part of it is getting a fairer price, but part of it is curating that day one cap table. Right. Because these companies are stepping into the public markets. And, you know, as Rich has said and others have said, think about all the curation that goes into a private cap table. Now, when you go public, Rich calls it a cap table randomization event.

• 10:34Brad Gerstner?

  Right? You lose total control over your cap table. Right? Whereas in the case of Grab, we hand-selected what we think are the world's best public market shareholders to be their day one cap table. So it's a very different outcome. And it's not just about cost savings. It's not just about trying to get a fairer price. It's actually making the process better at each step of the value chain.

• 10:55Jason Calacanis?

  All right. So we were talking about Coinbase last year when they had a big brouhaha and Brian Armstrong said, "We are not going to talk about politics inside the company. You can have political views, but not inside the company." Sax, you did some tweets about this. What are your thoughts?

• 11:11David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, apparently Coinbase's ban on politics in the workplace and their refusal to submit to New York Times interviews did not prevent them from creating an $85 billion company. You know, I'm shocked, shocked that they were able to do that. That's basically what I tweeted. And, you know, just shows that founders can do things their own way. They don't have to submit to, you know, the woke mob. And that's basically what I tweeted. And then, you know, of course, well, the first, it's been interesting to see the reactions. The first day, I got like 10,000 likes. And then the second day, it seemed like some sort of SOS went out. And now I've been sort of surrounded. There's been this like outcry.

• 11:55David Sacks?

  And my takeaway is that the woke mob really doesn't like to be called out as a woke mob. And they're sort of, they're sort of surrounding me with pitchforks now, saying, "How dare you call us a mob."

• 12:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sax, are you running for governor? Because it looks like you've taken botox. Did you know when he did get botox? Did you take botox?

• 12:14Jason Calacanis?

  He's in Miami, so it's probably...

• 12:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What is going on with your cheeks and your face?

• 12:18Jason Calacanis?

  Lay some odds on the botox.

• 12:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Your lips are incredibly swollen. I mean, they look very succulent. It's unbelievable.

• 12:25David Sacks?

  I've got a new lens. I've got five different technologies making me, slimming me here.

• 12:30Jason Calacanis?

  But you do have your pin on today, and you do look very gubernatorial. And I noticed that you bought...

• 12:36David Sacks?

  I'm wearing my Miami pin. This is my city of Miami pin.

• 12:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Francis gave you that pin?

• 12:40David Sacks?

  Francis gave me the pin.

• 12:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's fantastic. Did he tell you, "Never call me Francis"?

• 12:47David Friedberg?

  What is the big announcement today?

• 12:48David Sacks?

  I work for you guys.

• 12:48David Friedberg?

  We're really excited to hear it.

• 12:50Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, tell us, governor sachs.com. What do you got on deck?

• 12:54David Sacks?

  There, there's nothing. This is a, this is a Jason construction. I don't want to get

• 12:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do we, do we have a, do we have an exploratory committee set up yet?

• 13:02Jason Calacanis?

  Let's get Sachs out of the game. I need that deal.

• 13:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, guys, guys, obviously, if this comes to pass, we're going to rewrite history as David Sacks was our Manchurian candidate. You know, I floated the trial balloon. There was a layup for David Sacks to come in alley-oop and dunk on Gavin Newsom.

• 13:17Jason Calacanis?

  No luck. Oh, come on, Sachs, do it. The world needs.

• 13:20David Sacks?

  I tell you, Newsom is doing everything in his power to, to, to blow this recall because, I mean, timing is working in his favor. I mean, he's done a horrible job on everything vaccine related, but the reality is COVID is winding down. It's going to be over. So even though he delayed, um, everyone getting the vaccine by, by weeks, if not months.

• 13:39Jason Calacanis?

  Months.

• 13:40David Sacks?

  Probably, yeah, by months. We've got seven million unused doses sitting on the shelf in California because of all of his crazy eligibility requirements. Despite all of that, by the time we actually get around to the recall, which will be in about five or six months, uh, the, the recall election, you know, the economy is going to be booming again. COVID is going to be over. People will probably forget. But, but for the fact that he is now saying that he cannot guarantee that schools will reopen in the fall. So we now have, we now have schools reopen in, you know, every, public schools reopen basically in every other state. You now have private schools are all reopened in California and he still cannot guarantee that schools will be reopened. Not, not now, but in the fall.

• 14:21Brad Gerstner?

  David, throw down the gauntlet.

• 14:24Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 14:24Brad Gerstner?

  Make the guarantee that if governor, you will open all the public schools when they open in fall, day one.

• 14:30Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 14:31Brad Gerstner?

  And, uh,

• 14:31David Sacks?

  Well, I'm not.

• 14:32Jason Calacanis?

  This is the window, David, now or never.

• 14:34David Sacks?

  I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying that, that I'm running, but one thing I would say is that whoever does.

• 14:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What, what about if you ran?

• 14:40David Sacks?

  If I, if I ran, I would 100% absolutely guarantee that school was opened in the fall. What we need, what we need is a governor who will go to the teachers unions and say, listen, you will either report for your duty the first day of school, five days a week, no exceptions, or you go look for another career. That is what we need.

• 15:01Jason Calacanis?

  David Sacks.

• 15:05Jason Calacanis?

  More, more, more, more.

• 15:07David Sacks?

  I'm not running. I'm not running. I'm not running, guys.

• 15:09David Friedberg?

  Let's go, let's go, let's go. Can you make all the vending machines free?

• 15:13Brad Gerstner?

  Yeah, sure. We can do that, too.

• 15:14David Friedberg?

  Okay, can you can you get rid of all my debt?

• 15:17Brad Gerstner?

  Yeah, why not?

• 15:18David Friedberg?

  Okay, I'm in.

• 15:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can we go back to the to the markets just for one second? Because I just want to I want to ask a couple of questions. Brad, Q1 was nuts. Let's get some color commentary from a big player in the capital markets. You talk us through us, talk to us through what factor rotation was. Talk to us about your reactions to this Archegos capital thing about inflation.

• 15:46Jason Calacanis?

  Also gut check.

• 15:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Like, what is the what is what is the rest of the year look like? Like, talk just how what's your sentiment? How are you feeling? Just give us a reaction on just the economy.

• 15:55Jason Calacanis?

  And the gut check, Brad, on weren't you like the biggest shareholder in United at some point?

• 16:00Brad Gerstner?

  Oh, yeah, that was a bad way to start off 2020.

• 16:03Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I want to hear about that.

• 16:04Brad Gerstner?

  It was a bad way to start off 2020. However, I would say that it ended up being the best year in the history of the firm. And so, you know, like, we, like everybody else, had to reinvent a lot of things about our business last year. And and we learned a lot from that moment. And and the courage that a lot of people at at United showed through through that period of time, without a lot of help, a lot of people think the government was helpful. There's a lot of unhelpful things that were being done. But notwithstanding that fact, to to Chima's point, Chima, I think I went on CNBC in November and just said, like, when we normalize, there's no reason that the 10-year shouldn't be back at the level it was in January 20. Right? And for every 1% move in the 10-year,

• 16:46Brad Gerstner?

  you've got a 10 to a 20% drawdown in growth multiples. And the reason for that is very simple. They're long-duration assets. You discount them back at a higher rate, and so you have multiple compression. And so we were starting at an all-time high in terms of growth equity multiples for both software and internet. When you look at October, November of last year, we've seen about Thirty to forty percent retracement or, you know, give back in terms of those multiples, right? In some names it's bigger and some names it's less. I suspect that there's another ten to twenty percent to go, right? For a tenure that's going to be sitting here at one eight. I just got done talking as part of this roadshow, as you know, to all the biggest growth equity portfolio managers

• 17:31Brad Gerstner?

  on the on the public buy side. I can tell you they're all deleveraging growth. They are not adding, they're not looking to add dollars to growth. And these are the biggest managers in the world. And so we're not through that process. There are some people who've anchored themselves to the fact that Zoom was just at five hundred. They're like, oh, my God, it's going straight back to five hundred. You're like, no, five hundred was the outlier event. That was the all time high multiple event. It will get there in the fullness of time, but it's going to have to get there through

• 17:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  earnings. So what do you think then happens in the privates? And, you know, there's a lot of talk about certain firms, some of your competitors in the growth stage side ripping capital into companies every twenty four hours or forty eight hours. Where does that then normalize? Because aren't we setting up a dynamic where if you have a bunch of growth firms pricing crazy rounds, whose valuations can then will not be able to be held up in the public markets? Aren't we creating a different kind of problem?

• 18:28Brad Gerstner?

  Well, you know, you and I've watched this dynamic play out probably four or five times over the course of last fifteen years where there's this inversion, private capital markets, private markets are actually overvalued relative to public markets. I just look at a few IPOs this week or over the last couple of weeks. Deliveroo, hot private company, down thirty percent in the IPO. AppLovin came out this week, twenty percent down in the IPO. Right? At the end of the day, the great day, you know, as Munger likes to say, you know, the markets are a voting machine and the public markets are a brutal voting machine. And so, you know, it just is going to take, remember when Groupon got done that last private round at twenty billion? And then about nine months later, it's trading at five billion or Zynga? I mean, you and I can

• 19:12Brad Gerstner?

  go through the list. We've watched this, you know, so it just takes the smackdown and people losing actual money. And however, so that's the one side, right? This is a temporary dynamic. Markets will clear. I think it is possible. You referenced, you know, a good friend of mine, you know, who's supposedly writing a term sheet every two days, you know, at Tiger. The truth of the matter is you can hold simultaneous truths. You can believe the next three months that we're likely to have more multiple compression in the public markets, right? You could hedge your public book in a variety of ways against that, like we did and announced last December.

• 19:54Brad Gerstner?

  And at the same time, you can believe that the secular trend in technology has never been more potent, right? And I believe that if you own an index of the top 30% of technology companies in the world today, and you're willing to hold them for five to 10 years, you will be incredibly well rewarded. The most asymmetric bet maybe in the history of all of investing is having a golden ticket to have access to the best technology companies in the world today. It's like unfair play. And everybody on this call is playing in what is a highly asymmetric and unfair game stacked in our favor. Now, we can screw that up by trying to think we're good at short-term trading or doing a bunch of other stuff.

• 20:35Brad Gerstner?

  We can get individual things wrong. But if you bet on the top quartile of technology companies on a global basis like Tiger and others are doing, and you have time on your side, you're going to be well rewarded.

• 20:48Jason Calacanis?

  We talked about the mid-market, late-stage venture space being a no man's land, a vortex, the value being created in the late stage and value being created in the early stage, but the money in the middle becoming a commodity because of Tiger, Co., and others coming in and just coming over the top. Do you subscribe to that, Brad? Do you think that's just a financial transaction in the middle and not a lot of value to be made there? Or do you think?

• 21:13Brad Gerstner?

  No, I mean, you know, listen, it doesn't matter in Snowflake whether you invested in the $100 million round, the $200 million round, the $500 million round, the billion-dollar round where Sequoia came in. You know, if the company's going to $200, $300, $400 billion, right? All of those are extraordinary returns. So Altimeter has described itself often as a lifecycle investor. Right. I represent the biggest portion of the capital in the firm. Some long-term endowments are number two and number three, and we have a multi-decade view on the world. And our view is the one that I just articulated. I want to have maximum dollars. I don't care that it's all in the B or the C or the D or the IPO or, you know, I want to have maximum dollars behind our best ideas.

• 21:55Brad Gerstner?

  And I want to be an incredible partner to these companies as they move through the lifecycle. And part of the reason we build a capital markets business to help founders in a better way, step into the public markets is it's part of our mission, right? Like I want to, you know how frustrating it was to me, Jason, to be pre-IPO in Mongo or Twilio or Okta? And then when it came to the IPO, I have to go to the banks and grovel, right? And grovel for an allocation and they dribble five or 10 million. And I see them handing big, you know, big allocations to people who I know are going to flip it. And I actually want to own this stuff. It's very frustrating. And so we think there's a better way. And when those companies come public in the future.

• 22:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You said something which I want to use as a question to Friedberg and Sacks and Jason, because these guys are involved very since in one way in what I'm going to say, which is you said gross tonnage of dollars. One of the most incredible things that I thought about the Coinbase S1 was the amount of unbelievably smart buying that Andreessen did. And I thought to myself, Andreessen just out Sequoia, Sequoia. And what do you guys think about sort of how they've been able to, to actually execute? It just seems like Andreessen has done an incredible, incredible job.

• 23:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't want to, I mean, Jason, you're close to Sequoia. So are you Friedberg. I just want you to react to that.

• 23:24David Sacks?

  No, you gotta, you gotta give them credit on Coinbase because I think they made the, they made the most money. I guess Ribbit and Gary Tan and Initialized may have made the highest ROI because they invested a smaller amount of dollars earlier.

• 23:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My return, my return in Ribbit, the Maya from Iconic told me was 506x.

• 23:45David Sacks?

  Right, exactly. So, so Ribbit made the 500x and I guess.

• 23:50David Sacks?

  Andreessen, but Andreessen made like 20 billion of returns of which, you know, they're probably getting 25, 30%. So they, they made the most money. Uh, may not have been the highest IRR, but it was the most money. And you're right, they doubled down in this like 2018, 2019 period. It sounded like they were doing a bunch of secondary buying.

• 24:10Jason Calacanis?

  They were buying the stock at 25 bucks?

• 24:12David Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 24:12Jason Calacanis?

  They bought it all from Fred Wilson in Union Square.

• 24:15David Sacks?

  Right, they were buying it from other investors.

• 24:17Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, they were just, they did what Sacks did with Twitter, right? And with Uber and started buying off people's positions.

• 24:22David Sacks?

  But they did it, but they did it at a time where people were losing faith in crypto. There was like, you remember there was like this big crypto boom?

• 24:29Jason Calacanis?

  Crypto winter.

• 24:29David Sacks?

  Yeah, there was a big crypto boom in like, I'd say December of 2017, January 2018, and then it kind of collapsed and that, you know, it mirrors the price of Bitcoin. You had Bitcoin reach a peak of about 20,000 that crashed all the way down to four, to three or 4,000. Obviously that wasn't a great time to buy Bitcoin, but it sounds like these guys were also buying Coinbase at that time. So that was a pretty, that was a remarkable doubling down.

• 24:52David Friedberg?

  By the way, it's a, it's a, it's a good validation of Brad's point about, you know, market perturbations being fairly independent of value creation over the long run. And, you know, if you have faith that this is where value will be created over a period of 10 plus years, um, you know, you're, you're, when you have an opportunity to buy in, buy in and don't let the market perturbations drive your decision-making, or else you end up in this market trading trap. Um, I think, I think we've, we've talked about this a lot. Warren Buffett talks about it a lot. I think Chamath, you've made the point about, uh, not timing the markets, but your time in the markets and this notion that when you have conviction in a business or an idea or a thesis, uh, you know, you can continue to, to double down on that conviction regardless of whether you think relative valuations are appropriate or, or kind of disjointed at the time.

• 25:37Brad Gerstner?

  It's even more acute because what happens is we make short-term decisions and then those short-term decisions oftentimes to prove to be right in the short term. And let me give you an example.

• 25:47David Friedberg?

  Right, exactly.

• 25:48Brad Gerstner?

  And then it leads to behavioral lock-in. So at the end of 2014, Bitcoin's at $1,100 a share. We get, I get very interested in crypto. I think this is one of the most asymmetric bets I see in the world. Right? I have, I think it's a low probability event, but if you win, the size of the prize is absolutely gigantic. Right? So we're looking at a deal with, um, Andreessen, uh, because I thought Balaji was one of the smartest people in the space. The company was called 21.co. Idea of mining for Bitcoin on a chip. On the eve of the deal, my partner and I, I said, you know what? I believe that we should place our bet in Bitcoin because I'm not sure whether or not this mining company is actually going to work out. Okay.

• 26:33Brad Gerstner?

  So we pass on the deal. Crypto Bitcoin goes from 1,200 to 300 in like a straight line down. And what was my takeaway? My takeaway is like, man, I'm so smart. I'm so smart. We passed on that deal. Okay. Rather than being curious, rather than learning more, rather than developing it. And what Andreessen did during that period of time is they stuck to their belief that this could be a highly asymmetric outcome. Ultimately, I ran into Katie Hahn, a board member at Coinbase, the night of the IPO. And she said, Brad, you know, um, do you remember, you know, 21.co? I was like, yeah. She goes, those were some of our original shares in Coinbase. We sold that company to Coinbase. Wow. Right?

• 27:18Brad Gerstner?

  And, and, you know, it's just for me, I sent this note to our team because I said, you know what, guys? In the face of having some good wins, I want to remind you of some really potent near near wins and misses. And my mistake at that point in time was I lacked mental flexibility. I got locked in to this idea that I was really smart by having missed 21.co rather than learning from that moment and saying, listen, when I started to see it move and then it moved pretty quickly and I was like, oh, I missed it. It's just like a stock. We do the same thing. The reality is you should allocate to things that you think are thematically highly asymmetric and great ideas. And, and this was one of them and one we missed.

• 28:03David Sacks?

  Can I just kind of add something to that? I was in 21, it was 21 E6. I don't remember getting any Coinbase shares, so. So somebody, somebody, you did not own the preferred. Yeah. You did not own the preferred. I did own preferred. Then you did not clear the prep stack. You were in the wrong series.

• 28:24Jason Calacanis?

  With one thing I'll add to that is you have to look at the mandate of these funds. If you're an early stage fund and you have the ability to sell at 500X or 1,000X or 2,000X, sometimes you've got to lock that in and give something to your LPs. And I think this is where, you know, thinking full life cycle, you said, Chamath, like, what did you learn from all this?

• 28:43David Friedberg?

  Well, if you're, if you're building a business, right?

• 28:45Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, one of the things I learned is I didn't even know what Pro Rata really was when I started my career. I didn't do Pro Rata in Uber or anything. And now my position is I am going super Pro Rata in our winners. So not only holding winners, I'm trying to get to 10, 15% ownership in these companies. And it's starting to happen, you know, with companies that are worth 500 or 700 million. And so that, that is the, that's the change in behavior I'm doing, which is, you know, to your point, if you bought Snowflake at any time, you feel great about it. But then you have to have buy-in from your LPs that they agree with that and that they're okay with you taking a longer strategy. And then at some point you want to return capital and that becomes super problematic. You're in seven, eight, nine, 10 of your funds. You want to take some chips off the table.

• 29:30Jason Calacanis?

  And so what I'm going to do now is I think I'm going to try to do both where I have a group of LPs who want to buy shares. And I don't know how to figure this out. And maybe somebody could advise me here. Cause I have had other venture firms who had this challenge where the

• 29:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't, I don't want, I don't want anything you own.

• 29:49Jason Calacanis?

  Well, no, no, I know that.

• 29:53Jason Calacanis?

  Be careful, be careful.

• 29:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Why do you set yourself up like that?

• 29:58Jason Calacanis?

  No, I'm looking for advice here. But the whole point of this podcast is for me to draft off people who are smarter than me. Mission accomplished. So here we go.

• 30:07David Sacks?

  Yeah, we still have to teach you how to set up an LLC to buy your house.

• 30:10Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, it's unbelievable.

• 30:13Jason Calacanis?

  The process. Sorry, I'm an idiot. Nuva Rish. But here's the issue. Can I be an angel investor in Uber and then be selling shares in Uber to my other LPs? And creating that stock a secondary market or is that conflicted? You know what I'm saying?

• 30:28David Friedberg?

  Well, I'll tell you, you know, um, uh, I think this is public. I don't know if it's public. I will say it anyway, because I think it's well known, but um, Founders Fund had early SpaceX shares that they thought it was prudent to sell in the early funds, those SpaceX shares. The later fund was buying SpaceX shares in that round. Um, and so they were in a circumstance where they had such a big markup on the early round, the early fund. Um, that they had to kind of distribute and liquidate those SpaceX shares. Meanwhile, they're Some with a good overlap of LPs were buying in the other fund at that at that higher price.

• 31:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You are speaking to something I lived out in the early venture funds of social capital because when it was not entirely my own capital base, I felt that pressure and I did similar things because I was like, oh, wow, we're in year seven, eight, nine. You know, I had and I had great LPs. It's like, wait, I how can I not give capital back to the broad or Mayo? These are phenomenal institutions. They weren't pressuring me at all, but I felt internal pressure and I started to make suboptimal decisions for myself. I couldn't make really, you know, clearly the best optimized decision, which would have been to hold everything as long as possible. You know, to your point, like if you're in the top quartile of things, the best thing is to never sell.

• 31:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it's an incredibly special place where you can actually have that freedom to do it. The it's what's interesting is I actually think that the folks that are in the best position to do are actually employees. And you I actually think that they're they're randomly doing this when you look at the churn rates of employees today. Like I saw this crazy stat, the average tenure at Uber is 1.8 years.

• 32:05David Friedberg?

  That's crazy.

• 32:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The average tenure at Tesla is 2.1 years. The average tenure at Google is 3.2 years. So if you think about a traditional tenure career in the valley, you have somewhere between, you know, three and five, three and five different baskets of shares that you're getting. And, you know, those are those are costless options effectively. That's actually an incredible form of portfolio construction for these people because if you never have to sell those things, you can wait till they go public and you can underwrite them forever. That's probably what a lot of employees in Silicon Valley have figured out implicitly. I have a question I want to ask you guys as well, which is, I just want to go back to the public markets for a second. I tweeted out some of these amazing things I learned from the Bezos.

• 32:45Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, my God, this is demented.

• 32:47Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Did you guys see what I what I tweeted?

• 32:48Jason Calacanis?

  I saw your tweet and I and I've been reading it. It's unbelievable.

• 32:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's been. Do you have it in front of you, Jason?

• 32:53Jason Calacanis?

  I do. I'll just give you the Chamath tweet here, high level. 28% of purchases on Amazon are completed in less than three minutes. I think we've all done that. 50% of purchase is on Amazon are completed in less than 15. And if you actually look at that, and I think this is a really, I don't know if you made this calculation.

• 33:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, this is Bezos wrote it in the letter. All of these things are.

• 33:14Jason Calacanis?

  So if you value your time at $10 an hour, a very low one. That's $750 a year, and that means your Prime is free of $120 a year.

• 33:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, let me say.

• 33:25Jason Calacanis?

  Six hundred and thirty in profit.

• 33:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Let me say it differently. The average trip to the store, driving, buying, coming back is an hour. So what Bezos said is that typically we will save you 75 hours because we can make all of that more efficient for you. At 10 bucks an hour, that's worth $750. We only charge you 120 for Prime, which means you get $630 of savings. But then he goes on to say, and we have 200 million customers on Prime. So we're saving them 126 billion dollars. My instant reaction was two things. And so the last two points in that tweet are mine. One is, holy fuck, that's more in one year than what most companies are worth in their entire lifetime.

• 34:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And the second is that you can buy Amazon for 13 times one year's worth of savings for a customer. It's just if you look at Prime.

• 34:13Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 34:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Which makes Amazon seem exceptionally cheap. But the reason I brought up Amazon is he also wrote in there about his responsibility to his employees. And we were just talking about employees and churn. And this was incredible to me that 70% of their employees voted down the unionization effort in Alabama. And I just wanted to get Saksipoo.

• 34:32Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Red pill it, crush it, snort it. What do you got to say?

• 34:35Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 34:36David Sacks?

  Well, I mean, what happened is you had in Alabama, there's a Amazon plant there that where they, there basically was an election to decide whether they would go union or not. And there were 2,536 workers who voted in this union election. About 1,800 voted against unionization versus 738 who voted to unionize. And then ballots from another 505 workers were either, were challenged by either Amazon or the unions. So we don't know yet what they mean, but those votes won't change the outcomes. The election is over. Now, this was a heavily lobbied election. I mean, Amazon was lobbying employees, but so were the unions.

• 35:20David Sacks?

  And it looks like the unions at the end of the day or lost and the employees voted to, you know, remain unionless.

• 35:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Brad, what do you think?

• 35:30Brad Gerstner?

  I thought it was a beautiful defense of capitalism that's very much needed right now.

• 35:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah.

• 35:35Brad Gerstner?

  You know, um, it reminded me a lot frankly of the Gates Foundation annual letter. You know, where Bill Gates is saying, you know, capitalism is far from perfect, but it's resulted in the most important era of prosperity and health and wellness in the history of the planet. And, you know, as I said on CNBC this week, you know, we live at a moment where capitalism is absolutely under attack. Um, and I truly believe it's the greatest force, the greatest potential force for good in the world. It brought us a vaccine, right? It brings us innovation that pulls people out of poverty,

• 36:15Brad Gerstner?

  that makes people healthier, that gives an opportunity for people in rural areas that are impoverished to be educated. But I do think it's incumbent upon Bezos, I think this was very much a robber baron sort of defense of building railroads. And I thought it was brilliant in its execution, but I think it's important in it for all of us to stand up, not defensively, but to say, what are our obligations to make capitalism the greatest force for good? You know, Chamath, whether it's you and I talking about Invest America on CNBC and giving every child in this country a participation in the ownership society, right?

• 36:56Brad Gerstner?

  Or all the other initiatives that we need to work on to, you know, to, to make the case, we need to make it better.

• 37:02Jason Calacanis?

  And I think one of the issues here is, you know, what we see on Twitter, being part of the Twitterati, is, you know, people who are super woke, socialist, whatever, talking about this. But in reality, the workers don't want it. And I was talking to somebody in the media space.

• 37:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, no, hold on. Can I just say something slightly different, Jason? I think what workers don't want is the version 1.0 of unions.

• 37:26Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 37:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Because I think what they see that as is a tax that then goes and fills the coffers of certain people. I think you've seen like, you know, a bunch of waste, a bunch of graft, a bunch of corruption. People have been arrested. Unions are not effective anymore in collective bargaining. They are not. They don't have any data. They don't have any facts. They're not.

• 37:48Jason Calacanis?

  They don't have any power.

• 37:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But they're not set up to win. So I think, in my opinion, I think unions have an important role. But you need a version 2.0. You need some young, smart, bright people to reframe what unions are. And then I think you would see everybody collectively organized, which is it's not about dues. You don't need hundreds of millions of dollars to, to all of a sudden like use to then elect certain people. And that old model is breaking. It's breaking every day. Instead, I think what people need to do is like, if you come together and like you understand what are the products we make? What are the margins we have? How is my contribution measured? You know, and then you're able to use data and fact to really collectively bargain? That hasn't happened yet. So I think what it was was a-

• 38:32Jason Calacanis?

  Or it could be, or it could be a free market and people could go work at Starbucks or for Postmates and get paid more.

• 38:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But capitalism allows both to exist.

• 38:40David Friedberg?

  Yeah. If you, if you think about what a union is, you could almost make an argument that it is the ultimate manifestation of a free market system because it is basically like a bunch of people spinning out to have their own startup. And so, you know, that, that group of people are saying, we're not charging enough for our product or service today. The value that we are creating is worth more. Therefore, we should go create a, you know, a different business and charge more and effectively compete in the marketplace with a higher quality product at a higher, at a higher price point. And I think that that may be kind of, you know, the, the distinction between what people kind of view to be regulatory capture around unions, where there have, has been government involvement in the past versus what may be possible. I think I've heard some people talk about how, you know, at some point in the world, we end up with, you know,

• 39:25David Friedberg?

  at some point in the evolution of capitalism, you end up in a place where there are no employees. There's just a ton of independent contractors doing independent work. And maybe there is an organization of people around doing the same work over and over together as a group, where you charge one kind of, you know, aggregated fixed rate for that service.

• 39:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The other, the other thing to me was like, all of a sudden it brought into such a stark contrast. This wasn't like 55, 45. This was 70, 30 and probably it could have been 80, 20 or 90, 10. And so it said to me, wait a minute, there's a very small vocal group of people who are screaming from the mountain tops about this level of unionization and organization.

• 40:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And then the people that are actually the participants of that system are like, no, thank you.

• 40:07David Friedberg?

  Yeah, well, I mean, it shows that Amazon does a great job managing, right? I mean, they create enough value and they've bid enough for the service that people don't feel like they're being underbid.

• 40:15Jason Calacanis?

  Media companies have been going through a unionization process from Gawker to Vox. The New York Times has already had one, and you're starting to see a bunch of folks voting on that. I was speaking to somebody who runs one of these companies, and they said, in the short term, it's fabulous because they set the prices of employees. So when somebody comes to you and says, I want to raise, they say, well, we can't because here's the pay scale that you negotiated, so we have to stick to that. And I can't give you more than other people because one of the things you fought for as a union was pay parity. And so you've got five years. Here's what it says on the chart, five years. So it made everything predictable. And they said they like that. They said the problem is, over the long term, when you get to year 10 of a union, in order

• 40:58Jason Calacanis?

  to fire somebody who's not doing a great job, you have negotiated with the union that they have to get all these warnings, and it's uncomfortable. So then the managers don't do the performance plans, they don't do that. And then eventually, who's left in the organization? The lower performers. And then who leaves? The higher performers who can command more money. So, once you get this union thing going inside of a media company, in the short term, it controls costs, in the long term, it kills excellence. This was what somebody told me.

• 41:27David Sacks?

  Have you guys seen the movie American Factory? I think this was on Netflix. It was actually created by, it was the first film produced by Barack and Michelle Obama's production company. But it's a very interesting film about, there's a Chinese billionaire who goes to kind of the Rust Belt, to a little city outside Dayton, Ohio. And there's, and basically opens a factory producing glass windshields for cars. And this factory had been shut down, the whole town was kind of out of work, they were kind of down in the dumps. And so this crazy Chinese billionaire comes in there and reopens the factory. And all he, and it creates like-

• 42:13David Sacks?

  Two thousand jobs for for people in this town. And everything starts off great. There's these really interesting sort of culture clashes between the American workers and the Chinese executives and some of it's kind of comical and they showed in the movie. But then about halfway through the movie, and and by the way, like, these are people who are out of work and, you know, this Chinese company comes in and they they do things kind of their way, but they pay people pretty well and creating a lot of jobs. And initially, everybody's very happy with it and the politicians are all encouraging it. And then about halfway through the movie, the unions come in. And the unions start agitating and they start telling all the workers that you're underpaid, you're mistreated. They start, you know, there's there's sort of intimidation tactics being used.

• 42:57David Sacks?

  And then the politicians come in and, you know, these politicians are sort of, you know, this is Ohio, right? And so the politicians start telling the the workers at this plant that they should get unionized. And it turns into this giant battle because and and the Chinese company basically threatens to leave because they came into this town and made a something like a $500 million investment in this plant based on an understanding of a certain cost structure. And now all of a sudden, the union wants to change that. And, you know, it turns into this giant conflict and you realize that, look, that workers in this town had a good deal. And then the unions are about to like blow the whole thing and and wreck it. And they're about to drive this Chinese company out of the town.

• 43:42David Sacks?

  And then they do this election, kind of like what Amazon did. And ultimately, the Chinese company wins and the voters choose not to go with the union. But you just feel like you can, it's just so frustrating to see this. Because it's it's not like the the this particular union is benefiting the workers. It's about benefiting these union representatives.

• 44:03Jason Calacanis?

  Or then paying off the politicians, which gets back to our discussion in your little speech for your governorial run, that you're going to fire all the teachers come September 1st if they don't show up for work.

• 44:15Brad Gerstner?

  No, but look, it's a really interesting movie because I think what it does is it highlights that what's in the interest of these labor union leaders is not necessarily what's in the interest of the employees.

• 44:26Jason Calacanis?

  Anybody watch?

• 44:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, no, no, they're this guys, look, that this is like the simplest form of incentives to understand you pay dues as a union member. Those revenues get allocated and controlled by a handful of people in union leadership. So this is, this shouldn't be a surprise that their incentives get misaligned, especially when you go from a small effective union to a broad, you know, union that represents all kinds of different workers. It's an impossible infrastructure to manage and it becomes unwieldy. Unions can be effective. There is a value and a place for them. They need to get reinvented.

• 44:59David Friedberg?

  By the way, I looked this up, you know, the average wage, the average fee is to be in a union across all unions in the United States as a percent of labor? Anyone got a guess? It's one and a half percent.

• 45:11Jason Calacanis?

  I said two.

• 45:12David Friedberg?

  Yeah. So the argument is if they can increase wages net to those employees by more than one and a half percent, it pays for itself. Right? That's the argument.

• 45:21Jason Calacanis?

  Think about their incentive.

• 45:22David Friedberg?

  I totally get it.

• 45:23Jason Calacanis?

  They are a startup in and of themselves.

• 45:25David Friedberg?

  They are an asset manager, right? Their goal is to grow assets.

• 45:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Their goal is to grow assets.

• 45:30David Friedberg?

  So, so the more assets they grow, um, you know, the, the bigger their business.

• 45:35Brad Gerstner?

  The, the, the way in which, you know, relating this back to Bezos's annual letter, right? We've been presented this false choice for two decades between some form of Randian capitalism and a nanny state.

• 45:49David Friedberg?

  Right, right.

• 45:50Brad Gerstner?

  Right? The, the, either everything's unionized or we have no intervention at all. What I love about this moment in time, what I love about the leadership of Benioff or Bezos or Gates or even Anthony Tan, this incredible mission, values-driven leader who's using the power of capitalism to uplift tens of millions of people in Southeast Asia, is that I see a totally new generation of leaders that understand the responsibility like they're charting the middle way, right? And we can equally reject Lorena Gonzalez, right? And at the same time, want to have $15 minimum wage in the state of California. Like those

• 46:31Brad Gerstner?

  two things are mutually compatible. And so that's why Sacks has to run. He's got to chart the third way.

• 46:38Jason Calacanis?

  Let me ask you this, Brad. Would you put up 250K for an exploratory fund, Brad? Sack, do you put, do you, do you believe in a $15 minimum wage? Oh.

• 46:47David Sacks?

  I'd be fine, I'd be fine with it. It's not, that's not, that's.

• 46:51Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, it's on. He took a blue pill. He took a blue pill.

• 46:55David Sacks?

  Give everyone everything. Certainly in the state of California, I think that makes sense. You know, I think, look, there might be some parts of the country where the standard of living is much cheaper. I mean, I think probably the, the middle wage should be a state issue because there's such a disparity in different, uh, costs of living in different states. So I'm not sure I'd federalize it, but I'm, but certainly in California, I think 15 bucks makes sense.

• 47:15Brad Gerstner?

  What about 20 bucks, David?

• 47:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, David.

• 47:17Brad Gerstner?

  20 bucks in California.

• 47:18David Sacks?

  Why not, why not a thousand?

• 47:19Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 47:20David Sacks?

  I love that. A thousand. I love that. Can everyone get a free Tesla? No, but look, can I make, can we make the point about unions in California? I think there's a huge difference between private sector unions and public sector unions. So it, look, I'm not against collective bargaining when it comes to these private sector unions, okay? Because the, the workers do have, you know, the, these, these, uh, plants involve, can involve very tough working conditions. It's physically dangerous. Um, you know, there, before there were labor reforms, they were working really long insane hours or safety issues. Okay. I think it makes sense to have some sort of collective bargaining and there's somebody to negotiate with. There's, the management of the company has an incentive

• 48:03David Sacks?

  and so you have some give and take and you have a negotiation that produces an outcome. Public sector unions are completely different, right? Because when the teachers' union goes to negotiate, who are they negotiating with? They're negotiating with Gavin Newsom and the teachers' union is his biggest contributor. So who, who has an incentive to oppose their demands? There's no market. There's no market. And so it, at a minimum, takes a politician who has a lot of integrity to stand up to the teachers' unions because.

• 48:34David Friedberg?

  He did it in New York. Bloomberg did do it. By the way, this is a true market dynamic for everything as it relates to government spending. If you think about when the government says it's going to spend something on someone, on something, legislation passes and it mandates that something needs to be bought. When that happens, there is no negotiating power because there is no marketplace to achieve that objective. They have to spend the money on the thing that they said they were going to spend it on. And at that point, there is a seller who sells that thing who says, oh shit, these guys have to buy it. I'll double the price. Okay, great. That's just the natural law of government inflation that happens. It's happened with everything that we've seen inflate in this country. Education, healthcare is all because it's a government mandated service.

• 49:16David Friedberg?

  And so then the service providers to the government have a single captive customer who has to spend the money. And so the same is true of education. The government has to educate. Therefore, I can show up as an education union and say, I'm going to double my price to educate your people because you have to do it by law. And you've passed all these laws that say you have to do it. And there is nothing the government can do about it. And so, you know, I think it is worth highlighting that the lack of a marketplace, meaning if you were to negotiate with a company, let's say a company had to buy productivity software for its employees, it could decide whether or not buying that productivity software generated a positive return at the price point that the sellers are negotiating against them. And they could say, no, you know what? I'm not going to buy it. Everything's too expensive. I'm going to go find another way.

• 49:59David Friedberg?

  The problem is governments are mandated to spend that money on that particular service. And therefore, there is no room. And so, unions are a manifestation of this fundamental problem with giving governments large budgets and relying on the government to provide the service to us outside of a market-driven context. So I think the question really is, can healthcare, can education, can these things that have been inflated with the government having such an active role be provided in a way that the government facilitates their provisioning without the government being the customer?

• 50:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is a good jumping off point to one very, to the next then topic. There is a bunch of things happening in government that I just want to get your guys' reaction to. One, which was the crazy summary that somebody did about the reaction to Biden pulling out of Afghanistan. Okay, the second is unfortunately Biden reiterated Trump's decision on refugee numbers just today. So he's not, he had a pledge that he would, you know, go back to the, the original numbers, the Obama level numbers, and he said he's not going to, he's going to keep it at the Trump level, which basically says, you know, very nominal refugees. And then the third is the growing frustration and perceived incompetence of the CDC.

• 51:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And now you have the entire business community starting to push back. Those are three completely different things, but they just speak about some government things. I'm curious about your reactions to anybody.

• 51:21Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, the thing that that highlights for me is the media double standard. And I think this is why a lot of people are going to centrism and why this podcast has become a purple podcast and a rational podcast because AOC was going down to the border hysterical crying. You remember the photos, they were all dressed in white. And is there any difference between what Trump did at the border and what's happening now? Doesn't feel like it feels like it's a problem that they're both trying to solve. And it's 90% the same outcome. And then you look at Afghanistan, you know, Trump's like, we got to get out of here. And then the press dunks on him like, how could you do that? And now Biden's doing it and he's getting high fives. And so I would just like to see some consistency from the press and the reaction and Americans on these issues which seem to be non-winnable or, you know,

• 52:06Jason Calacanis?

  how much do you lose in these instances? Like Afghanistan's a lose-lose and the border is a lose-lose. Like there's, there's no winning, I don't think in these, in some, in some situations that a president has to face. I'm interested what Sacks has to say.

• 52:19David Sacks?

  Well, yeah, I saw that. I saw that tweet storm on the media double standard around Afghanistan. We should show that and link to it in the show notes because whoever it was.

• 52:26Jason Calacanis?

  It's incredible.

• 52:27David Sacks?

  It's incredible.

• 52:28Jason Calacanis?

  Incredible.

• 52:29David Sacks?

  This is like definitive proof of the media double standard where he goes literally, he does a side by side of every single major prestige media outlet, their coverage on Trump versus Biden's drawdown in Afghanistan. You know, Trump, Trump did a major drawdown and I think got us down to maybe like 1,500 troops there. I think he missed a political opportunity not to just go all the way down to zero. Then he could have taken credit for ending the war, which I think he wanted to do for whatever reason, he didn't get it done. And he basically handed Biden a beautiful opportunity just to kind of end the war once and for all. I think it's very popular. People are, we've been there for 20 years. I think people want to get out. So I think Biden's decision was politically correct and I think it was the, the, the, the right decision as well.

• 53:13David Sacks?

  I think we've, it's, it's, it's time to be out of there. But yeah, the, the coverage in the press was just completely hysterical about Trump doing it. It was predicting all sorts of negative consequences. Um, and then when Biden did it, like, like Jason's saying, it was, um, nothing but kudos. So.

• 53:28Jason Calacanis?

  Well.

• 53:28David Sacks?

  Not, not, not, not only is a press not objective and not impartial, but they changed their mind about a particular issue based on which team is doing it.

• 53:39Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. I mean, if you look at the two quotes, they have a CNN tweet that they, he just screen grabbed CNN on the same issue. Says, this is reckless and it's really risky of Trump's plan to withdraw troops. And then the next CNN tweet from this administration, President Obama praised President Biden's bold leadership to withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11th.

• 53:59David Friedberg?

  And there's dozens of these NPR, CNN, New York Times.

• 54:03Jason Calacanis?

  Over and over and over again. And then I think this is why Americans hate the media.

• 54:07David Sacks?

  Absolutely. I mean, the, the, this is the, you know, what the, what the conservatives, I would call the mainstream media, you know, MSN. I mean, but they are proving their bias right here. I mean, and they're increasing irrelevance. This is why the American public don't trust them, don't listen to them and don't care what they have to say.

• 54:23Jason Calacanis?

  Brad, what do you think?

• 54:24Brad Gerstner?

  Well, I, I, I wanted to, you know, at a federal level, we really can't opt out of any of this, right? We're not going to leave the country. We got an election every four years. So we're just talking about market failures in the state of California. And one of the most beautiful designs of our system of federalism, back to this idea of markets, right? Is the fact that you get to choose what state you want to live in. And in a post-COVID world, we have the greatest A/B testing in the history of federalism. Because now you can live and work from anywhere. And the differences between state policies have never been greater.

• 55:06Brad Gerstner?

  And so we've never had this incubation that we can all watch and live tweet about on Twitter. And so now Texas and Florida, they get to make choices, California gets to make its choices. And then we get to see. And political scientists are going to have a field day in five to 10 years. And people are voting with their wallet today, the A/B test in real time. We have the largest economic migration in the history of this country occurring right now. And Gavin Newsom and Lorena Gonzalez, they're going to have to be held accountable for the conditions in San Francisco, for the decisions with respect to companies leaving the state, people leaving the state. And frankly, it's not about lower taxes.

• 55:52Brad Gerstner?

  I would contend the even bigger issue is the contempt for capitalism. The contempt for entrepreneurialism and innovation that exists in California. And I have no intention to leave, but I will tell you this, like, I'm gonna fight like hell for a third way, right, that actually says capitalism can be a force for good in California. And that's why Sacks needs to run.

• 56:17David Sacks?

  Well, I love, I love this idea of a state-by-state A/B test. I mean, what was the old line I get? It was, it was FDR's line that, or federalism is the laboratory, the states are the laboratory of democracy.

• 56:30Brad Gerstner?

  Yeah.

• 56:30David Sacks?

  So I want to show this, I just posted a link in the chat of COVID death rates in the US by state. And it's really remarkable because every state has very, has, we've seen a lot of very different COVID policies by state. What we see is that California and Florida have almost the same death rate. I think California is like 154 per 10,000 and Florida is like 159. It's a very, very small gap. Despite the fact that California has had the longest and most severe lockdowns in the country. And California has been the most open. And then meanwhile, you look at states like like Michigan, which has also had very severe lockdowns and has had a much higher death rate.

• 57:09David Sacks?

  And so you see that there's, there's really no correlation between death rates for COVID per capita and the severity of lockdowns. Basically, the data shows that lockdowns don't have an impact on a state's success in battling COVID. And, you know, it's just remarkable that we still are, despite this data, despite the fact that, you know, science is now showing us, we still have lockdowns in the state of California. We've loosened up a little bit, but we're still talking about orange tiers. And it's just, and I'm here in Florida right now. There, there, it's open, it's open. And, you know, Florida has a lot more old people than California.

• 57:52David Sacks?

  And the death rate is just about the same as California. So it's just remarkable to me that we are stuck in this mentality of lockdown. And I think it's because Newsom has bought into this savior myth that he has. I think he's remembering all this press that he and Cuomo got at the beginning of COVID about what great saviors they were and how they protected the population from COVID.

• 58:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But it's also been compounded by federal failure because the CDC basically said, or not said, they revealed themselves to be incompetent. You know, the same person that we all thought was an incredible genius Fauci increasingly looks like somewhat of an idiot and, you know, not completely informed on the topics that he should be informed about. And then, you know, you have these federal agencies. So for example, when you put the CDC and the FDA together, some of their decisions are just complete head scratchers. Like, for example, this past week, you know, the FDA stopped the use of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine because seven women between the ages of 18 and 48 got a blood clot and one passed away. And if you think of over seven million doses, right?

• 59:01David Sacks?

  One in a million.

• 59:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What it's, it's literally One in seven million for fatality. One in seven million for fatality.

• 59:06David Sacks?

  And actually, here's the crazy thing about that.

• 59:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  More people died in car accidents on the way to getting those vaccinations and actually died from a blood clot. And so More enlightening strikes.

• 59:16David Sacks?

  It's bad risk assessment, but it's also been very bad PR for the vaccine. So in the wake of that, the polling on vaccines went down by like 15 points. And so they're scaring people away from getting vaccines. I don't know if that polling was just on J and J or whether it applies to other vaccines as well. But the most important thing that the health officials could do is just convince people to get vaccinated. And the decision they made on rolling back J and J has really hurt that. And then also this, you know, the Fauci comments that even if you're vaccinated, you can't go to movies, you can't go to sporting events, you still have to wear a mask. You still can't, you know, get together in groups or indoor spaces. Well, then why would you get vaccinated? Why would you take that chance?

• 59:58Jason Calacanis?

  That is so critical. Friedberg, do you think if you get a vaccine, you should be allowed to take the mask off? Like that could be a reward?

• 1:00:04David Friedberg?

  Look, I mean, it's a, it's a bigger question than the science question, right? But I certainly don't think that there's any risk to you or people around you once you've been vaccinated with respect to your wearing a mask. And so, you know, this, the mask mandate, I think, as you guys pointed out, is a little bit more kind of political and social posturing than it is kind of, you know, scientifically reducing the, the, the spread of the, of the virus. Once you've been vaccinated, once you've been vaccinated, you're in the clear. Theoretically can do what you want to do.

• 1:00:36David Sacks?

  Of course. So, so I mean, let's just be really clear. Once you get vaccinated, there's no reason to wear a mask. Remember, the reason for the mask mandates was source control, right?

• 1:00:45David Friedberg?

  That's right.

• 1:00:46David Sacks?

  To prevent other people from getting the virus. Well, if you're not carrying the virus and you're not emitting the virus, there's no need for you to wear a mask. And to, and to, and to insist that people wear a mask after they've been vaccinated is performatively anti-vax because you're sending the message that the vaccines can't be trusted.

• 1:01:05Jason Calacanis?

  You agree with that, Friedberg?

• 1:01:07David Friedberg?

  Yeah, it's a fair point. I totally, I mean, I think it's a, it's a really fair point. And, um, and you know, the, the, the whole counter argument to that, which is counterfactual is, you know, hey, you know, you can still transmit the virus. We don't know that you can't transmit the virus, but you know, you could theoretically say that about anything. We know deterministically, we don't have imperative. evidence that we can say statistically here's how likely you are to transfer the virus but we know deterministically this is the process by which a vaccine works you're not going to be having replicating virus viral loads in your body therefore you're not going to have a high viral load coming out of your nasal passages of your mouth therefore you know and this is the case with all these kind of vaccines like the flu we you know you shouldn't be or be needing to to wear a mask so like um you know it totally makes sense and

• 1:01:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  what's the upper bound Friedberg of the number of people that are that are going to get vaccinated in the US are we going to get to sixty percent

• 1:01:58David Friedberg?

  I think sixty percent probably yeah I would guess sixty sixty sixty five percent I mean because remember what percent of uh people are under sixteen twenty percent I think is that right

• 1:02:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  yeah yeah

• 1:02:07David Sacks?

  I think we've really we've really we've really botched this I think we've totally botched this vaccine rollout

• 1:02:12David Friedberg?

  by the way I I will tell you because of the the upper bound being where it is I I I still think we'll end up at a point where we're going to have a lot of people um that are going to be immune because they already had covid coupled with the vaccine we're going to have extremely low numbers but the reality is the numbers are not going to get to zero and we talked about zeroism a couple podcasts ago because we're not going to get to zero I think this is a really important thing to remember the way that we've tuned ourselves to react to covid it it was initially remember it was initially about you know minimize the surge and by minimizing the surge we will keep the healthcare system from being overwhelmed now we've transitioned into the we can't let covid spread but as we've seen the reality is cannot stop covid from spreading no matter how many lockdowns you put in place asideally

• 1:02:57David Friedberg?

  people still get together in their homes and they'll give each other covid and because some number of people will continue to have covid we're going to have covid in the United States for years to come it is not going to go to zero and the question we have to ask ourselves is how are we going to allow ourselves to operate how are we going to live our lives if the covid risk is non-zero and it will always be non-zero and by the way the measles risk is non-zero the chickenpox risk is non-zero there are already non-zero um you know transmissible um infectious diseases out there that have some degree of fatality rate to them but um I think the biggest thing we should all be concerned about is this notion that we are like shifting into a new normal that will last for Many years because we will never be at zero.

• 1:03:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So can I?

• 1:03:39Jason Calacanis?

  I'm moving out of California if that's the case. I'm literally going to Texas.

• 1:03:42Brad Gerstner?

  There will be mutinies. There will be mutinies.

• 1:03:44Jason Calacanis?

  I'm done. I got my vaccine. I'm done.

• 1:03:46Brad Gerstner?

  People, people, that nobody's going to stand for that. Um, we already see it, you know, Chesky went on CNBC this morning. And, you know, basically said, you know, they are battening down all the hatches because there's no, like, the demand for travel is literally going to blow the roof off the building.

• 1:04:05David Friedberg?

  Totally.

• 1:04:06Brad Gerstner?

  Right? Like, people are too smart. People make risk reward decisions in their personal lives every day. And if the government tries to lock them down, they're going to tear down the gates. Like, it's not going to happen.

• 1:04:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But what you, what you're saying, though, is that what the implicit thing about what you're saying, which is scary, is unlike times before about measles or chickenpox, you, we now are basically debasing the credibility that these government institutions have about anything they say. That's the real enemy in the room when this is all said and done. So now you have people that are acting on their own. So the CDC says you can't fill the middle seat. The airlines say, no, go fuck yourself. We're going to fill whatever seat we want. And nobody's going to complain. Back to what Brad said, because they're risk underwriting for themselves and saying, wait, you don't know what you're talking about anymore. And so where does it leave us?

• 1:04:53Jason Calacanis?

  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

• 1:04:55Brad Gerstner?

  You know, one of the ways states, even democracies maintain power was information control.

• 1:05:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 1:05:01Brad Gerstner?

  Right? And there is no information control today, anywhere. In fact, we have frictionless information, which means that by definition, I think there's a greater chance for decentralization. I mean, remember, you know, the Arab Spring, governments were overthrown on the basis of Twitter. Right? I don't believe we live in a Hobbesian state, uh, you know, of suffering in, in the natural order of things. Right? But I certainly believe that government has a role to play to help organize us and, uh, you know, because there are big issues that we face in the future. And, you know, I just hope we can find a balance. Uh, you know, uh, in the path forward.

• 1:05:40Jason Calacanis?

  But this, I think, Tramath, this is an inoculation, I think, to bad institutions. If you look at people who spent $250,000 going into debt at some big expensive college, these young folks are saying, "I'm not going to do that anymore." Now those colleges have to react and change. And now we're seeing it with the teachers.

• 1:05:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But I think, Jason, it's actually more extreme to that. Like, we're learning that institutions aren't reliable, number one. And then the second is that we're learning that those institutions are static. So, meaning, like, today, there's, I think that there's a lot, there's a big case to be made that the CDC doesn't really know what they were doing. And that, in some cases, the FDA has been a little overreactive, okay? Now, what can we do about these things? It's not like we can have a new CDC that we all create and believe in, or a new FDA. These are the laws of the government. Those laws won't change because there's a bunch of incentives for folks who are currently in power that oversee those things to remain that way.

• 1:06:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So now, you know, exactly as Sacks said, on the whim of, frankly, like, you know, maybe an overreaction, we pull vaccines off, then we pull them back on, then we pull them off. You know, the reaction to the AstraZeneca vaccine was kind of a little awe-inspiring. You know, "Oh, it's bad." "No, it's okay." "Oh, it's good." "No, it's bad." "Take it off, take it on, put it on." And that's been a global reaction. So, you add all of these things up, I think the takeaway is what Friedberg said. Institutions are broken because the incentives of the people that run them are not aligned to the people that actually expect output from them.

• 1:07:18David Friedberg?

  I'll say two things to this. That's an important point. One is institutions, to me, are like any living organism. They want to grow. And so, you know, every government wants to add laws, spend more money, grow its budget. Every company wants to have more power, grow its top line. Even every university, Harvard's endowment, wants to grow over time. It wants to do more research, it wants to have more classes, it wants to have the bigger campus. Every institution, as a result, is then trying to aggregate more resources and more power and more authority. And so, you know, then when you have these moments where the institution doesn't serve the stakeholders that it is meant to serve, you have this breakdown of trust in the institution and institutional fallout begins, whether that's the financial system

• 1:08:01David Friedberg?

  and the evolution towards decentralized finance and Bitcoin and so on, or the failure of government and the ignorance against laws and what the government is telling us to do and so on, or in companies. And so, the big question for this century is going to be, are we going to allow that to happen? Now, I mentioned this a few pods ago, what I'm most concerned about is the absolute alternative to an institution is a mob rule. And a mob rule, as we've seen, where you get cancel culture, and you get, you know, GameStop going through the roof, and you get trial before, without a jury, and trial without a judge, can be really ugly and can be really nasty. And so, the original intention of many of these institutions was to create a system by which there are rules and values

• 1:08:46David Friedberg?

  that we all ascribe to, and those values go out the window when those institutions fail. So, the big, the big challenge, you know, we as, as a, as a, as a humanity are going to face this century is this, this dichotomy between the failure of institutions and the need for institutions to constantly grow, versus the challenge of not having institutions with respect to how do we operate societally with mob rule and distributed rule. And it's going to be interesting to kind of see, there's going to be a lot of back and forths over the next couple of decades, I would imagine, with respect to how do we make economic, government, and business decisions and how they play, and whether institutions or kind of distributed decision-making plays a role.

• 1:09:24Jason Calacanis?

  I think it's a good segue here to your pal Josh Hawley, Sax. I never thought I would see the day that a Republican wanted to bust all the big companies, but he says no acquisitions by companies with a market cap over 100 billion. Putting aside the fact that this wasn't Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders proposing this, this was your bestie, your Josh Hawley, Sax. Have you met him or donated to him?

• 1:09:53David Sacks?

  I haven't met him. I haven't met him.

• 1:09:55Jason Calacanis?

  The second question, you make a little donation there to Hawley?

• 1:09:59David Sacks?

  Uh, maybe, maybe one day we'll see, you know.

• 1:10:01Jason Calacanis?

  We'll see. Okay. What do you think about this concept?

• 1:10:04David Sacks?

  Uh, two, two points. Okay. Number one, you're right that this is showing, you know, there's, there's a big political realignment underway. Uh, this legislation could have come from Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. I think they would have justified it in different ways. I think what Hall is concerned about is a concentration of power by big tech companies who are then using that power to censor people. So that's kind of the impetus there. I think Sanders and Warren, their impetus would be around more of a concentration of wealth and money and the power that that creates. So slightly different motivations, but I think they're probably on the same page here. It's kind of this populous wildfire that's, uh, that's kind of burning in, in both parties. So I think that's sort of the first observation is, is, is it's kind of this new populist realignment of our politics.

• 1:10:49David Sacks?

  The second point I'd make about this is that this legislation is, is what I would call sort of performative legislating. I mean, I don't think this bill is a serious proposal to become law. Um, it's too much of a sledgehammer. I think that, you know, if the goal here is to try and rein in big tech, I think just banning, you know, any acquisition by firms over a hundred billion dollar market cap, it is way too much of a, um, it's just not, you know, it's just not crafted enough. I mean, it would have.

• 1:11:18Jason Calacanis?

  Is there any merit to it? And how would you change it, Sax?

• 1:11:20David Sacks?

  It would have tons of unintended consequences for, you know, what we do. I mean, we've talked about this before.

• 1:11:25Jason Calacanis?

  Isn't it good for what we do though? I mean, if companies stopped selling early, if Instagram and YouTube stayed independent, wouldn't this have been much better for the investors?

• 1:11:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was a blanket, it was a blanket statement that said, any company can't do it if they were over a hundred billion.

• 1:11:39Jason Calacanis?

  Right.

• 1:11:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So Berkshire Hathaway's business, boop, done, gone to zero.

• 1:11:42David Sacks?

  Right.

• 1:11:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean.

• 1:11:43David Sacks?

  It's too much of a blunt instrument. And, and look, even for us, right? There's only, you know, three, I guess, two or three good outcomes, right? There's IPOs, direct listings, or SPACs, let's put them in a category of a company going public.

• 1:11:54Jason Calacanis?

  Secondary sales, yeah.

• 1:11:55David Sacks?

  Then there's M and A. Okay. And then the third outcome is basically the company goes under, it goes bankrupt, right? So if you take M and A off the table, you are basically denying a lot of attractive exits for risk capital. And that's going to ultimately. Hurt the returns for risk capital and lead to less of it. There are a lot of, there are a lot of companies where, you know, founders create a technology that's valuable and interesting, but it can't monetize and it needs to be part of something larger. And if you deprive every, I guess, big company of being able to buy of R and D acquisitions, it's sort of crippling the economy for no reason. I don't think it really addresses the issue that Holly really wants to address, which is censorship. So, my point is, I would find a different way to address it. I think that at the end of the day, this legislation

• 1:12:40David Sacks?

  is not meant to become law, is meant to make a statement.

• 1:12:45Brad Gerstner?

  Start a pot.

• 1:12:46David Sacks?

  And to be a warning to big tech. And to get, you know, and Holly's trying to appeal to a constituency on his side of the aisle, and I think it's sort of

• 1:12:54Brad Gerstner?

  It's disgusting.

• 1:12:55David Sacks?

  It's performative in that regard.

• 1:12:57Brad Gerstner?

  I mean, Holly, like, he votes against the election. He comes out with this asinine solution to his censorship beef. You know, like, this is the problem, the grandstanding of these politicians on both sides that aren't focused on like, how do we make sure that everybody's participating in the ownership society? How do we deal with, you know, you know, issues of diversity? It, you know, it's so far removed from actual pragmatic solutions to the real problems facing us that it just drives me insane. And so, um, he will most certainly not be getting a donation from

• 1:13:38Brad Gerstner?

  and, um, you know, like, but what I am going to invest aggressively in, uh, you know, and what I think we ought to be doing, and I, I, I hope Chamath will take me up on this. Right? I don't want to go spend 10 million in Washington to lobby them to create the Invest America account. Let you and I put up the money. Let's incubate this. Let's hire a CEO. Let's, you know, let's, let's put up 10, 10, 15 million bucks. Let's distribute it to families, 2,000 bucks at a pop. Let's build a proof of concept, hire a great CEO. That's what we do and prove that it works.

• 1:14:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, that's better. That's actually a more practical giving pledge than the giving pledge.

• 1:14:16Jason Calacanis?

  Oh my God, what a great idea, Chamath.

• 1:14:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, we should, if we should just do that right now and basically name and shame everybody that doesn't want to contribute who's made money because the reality is we all have been extraordinarily lucky. Yes, we've worked hard, but frankly, you know, none of us deserve any of this. We've been lucky. And so whatever representative share that you could contribute and what it does, it gives, you know, a low income person of color, minority person in America, somebody who's, you know, disadvantaged, a $2,000 head start when they're born is a fucking amazing.

• 1:14:47Brad Gerstner?

  We could raise a hundred million dollars in the next three months. Because, do you know the reason? People, people are like, I don't want to pay taxes because they don't believe government is going to use the money wisely. If we went out and told all these folks that we're going to use it to give $2,000 directly, right, to create a sense of ownership and participation in the American dream, their little slice of Tesla, of Walmart, of Amazon, of Google, like, the money will come in from all the folks that you mentioned. And I would love to see this crew get on board with that. I think we could do it over the course of the next six months.

• 1:15:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm in. Let's do it.

• 1:15:22Jason Calacanis?

  The audience who doesn't understand what we're talking about, imagine we put $1,000 into a 401k or 2,000 401k for an American, every American born. What would that look like when they're 65 years old? And what if 500 of the 2,000 was in a 529? What would that look like when they're 18 years old and go to college? So that was my little punch up, Chamath, is, you know, put half of it in retirement, half, half in education.

• 1:15:46David Friedberg?

  It turns out if you put your stimulus check out of each of the last three stimulus checks into Dogecoin, you would have $300,000. Okay. So there, there may be, there may be alternative investment accounts that.

• 1:15:57Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely. All right. Listen, this has been another amazing.

• 1:15:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sorry, just so you know, the $2,000 by the time you're 65, at, at 8%, which is, you know, if you just buy the S and P ETF, would be about 300,000, 297,000.

• 1:16:08Jason Calacanis?

  So more than enough to comfortably retire in style. And if you were to put 500 of it into an account for college, maybe you get 25K or something. I'm not sure what it equals in 18 years, but.

• 1:16:18Brad Gerstner?

  As Buffett has talked about in Snowball, the behavioral economics are if you have savings, you save more, right? Well, this is about making people, yeah, people feel part of the system, feel like they're part of the game.

• 1:16:31Jason Calacanis?

  All right, listen, another amazing episode.

• 1:16:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Brad, thanks, man. Thanks for coming on.

• 1:16:35Jason Calacanis?

  Thanks for coming on. We don't have a nickname for Brad. We never.

• 1:16:38David Friedberg?

  King of Sacks. Oh, just kidding.

• 1:16:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm happy to hand the crown. Oh.

• 1:16:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I just want to be called king.

• 1:16:53Jason Calacanis?

  Alright, boys. Somebody pick me up and let's go have a guys' trip. What are we doing here, guys? Where are we going?

• 1:17:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I just want to say, well, since David is in Miami. Since David's in Miami, I'm going to tell you guys that my favorite prime number has always been

• 1:17:11Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know what it means. What's the joke?

• 1:17:15Jason Calacanis?

  It's in Miami. Oh. Believe that out.

• 1:17:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Believe that out.

• 1:17:21Jason Calacanis?

  Alright, we'll go to Miami. Let's go.

• 1:17:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Love you besties.

• 1:17:24Jason Calacanis?

  Next, I love you besties. Love you, Brad.

• 1:17:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Love you.

• 1:17:27Jason Calacanis?

  Love you, Brad. Brad, say love you to Sax. See what happens. Go ahead, Brad, you try it. Keep it up. Brad, say love you to Sax. See what happens. Love you, Sax. Back at you.

• 1:17:36Jason Calacanis?

  There you go. See you all next time on the All In Podcast. Bye-bye.