Naval's $500 VC fund, the Maduro Polymarket scandal, and NYT defends theft and murder | E2280

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent - https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist LinkedIn Jobs - https://LinkedIn.com/twist Today's show: It's a News and Off-Duty weekend roundup! AngelList's USVC fund is open to anyone with $500, but it's getting pushback on social media. Do the critics have a point? A Special Forces soldier made $409K betting on the military's capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Is the world just a big casino now? And a NYT podcast defends shoplifting and explores "social murder." Find out why Jason says they crossed the line. Plus: Why you should teach your kids about investment and more, Off-Duty streaming and book recommendations. Related Links USVC: https://usvc.com/ AngelList: https://www.angellist.com/ Naval Ravikant on X: https://x.com/naval "Don't Listen to the Peanut Gallery; USVC is a Watershed Moment" by Hari Raghavan: https://x.com/haridigresses/status/2047503944839016681 @Covered_Call USVC tweet: https://x.com/covered_call/status/2047020060900733306 Forge Global: https://forgeglobal.com/ Calm: https://www.calm.com/ Full DOJ indictment of Gannon Ken Van Dyke: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-soldier-charged-using-classified-information-profit-prediction-market-bets NYT "The Opinions" podcast: "The Rich Don't Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?" https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010849055/the-rich-dont-play-by-the-rules-so-why-should-i.html Hasn Piker on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/hasanabi New Yorker: Jia Tolentino: https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jia-tolentino NYT: Nadja Spiegelman: https://www.nytimes.com/by/nadja-spiegelman Jia Tolentino on X: https://x.com/jiatolentino Garry Kasparov on X: https://x.com/kasparov63 Prof G Media: https://www.profgmedia.com/ Kids Investment Club: https://www.kidsinvestmentclub.com/ Time stamps:0:00 Intro 1:18 Naval's $500 VC Fund Explained 5:54 Should You Trust Critics With 2K Followers? 7:21 Learn By Betting — Jason's Philosophy 10:10 Northwest Registered Agent - Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist 12:30 The Maduro Polymarket Scandal 13:28 Should the Military Bet on Missions? 19:55 LinkedIn Jobs - Hire right, the first time. Post your first job and get $100 off towards your job post at https://LinkedIn.com/twist 29:32 NYT Defends Theft & "Social Murder" 30:28 There Is No Moral Equivalence 33:41 The Nepo Baby Behind the Article 35:42 Prof G's "Resist & Unsubscribe" Movement 37:54 Walk The Walk — Hasan, Bernie & Performative Outrage 44:49 Teaching Kids About Money 48:21 The Rich Get Richer & The Poor Stay Poor Off Duty Recommendations "The Complete Maus" by Art Spiegelman: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Maus-Art-Spiegelman/dp/0679406417 "Thinking in Bets" by Annie Duke: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decisions/dp/0735216355 "Queen of Chess" trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pmJgtLKBXg Greenlight app: https://greenlight.com/ Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis v Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

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

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  This is disgraceful. You have an obligation to think through what you say. Crazy and deranged behavior that's all being bundled together and violence towards individuals you disagree with. We live in a democracy. All violence is immoral, as Martin Luther King said, as Jesus said. This is an incredible fail by the New York Times. So are we going off duty or you have a news story or two?

• 0:18Speaker 01

  I got one news story. I feel like people are going to want to hear your thoughts about this.

• 0:22Jason Calacanis?

  Angel List. Is this Hassan on New York Times? Are we doing that on off duty?

• 0:26Speaker 01

  We could talk about that. We could talk about that some more if you want to. Sure. Loot maxing. I know you're a big fan of loot maxing. Angel List has a new product out called USVC. They're offering exposure to venture investments with a $500 minimum. No accreditation required. The goal is long-term capital appreciation, not traditional liquidity. It's a little bit like venture for normies, venture for kiddos. That's sort of how people are describing it. There's been a lot, Jason, a lot of discussion over the last 2448 on X about this. Criticism has been really sharp. There's a viral thread from a guy named Mario at covered underscore call.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  He's calling this yet another grift in the world of retail accessible VC. And he says, retail doesn't need access to private markets this badly. A whole laundry list. Here, I'll pull up the tweet so you can see.

• 1:19Jason Calacanis?

  So this is Angel List's new USVC, US venture capital. This is an SEC-registered fund that allows non-accredited retail investors to invest in private pre-IPO companies.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:32Jason Calacanis?

  And my friend Naval is doing it, Ravakant, who's been on the program. And so they've got a bunch of portfolio companies in there that people want. The way this works is these are, I believe they're called closed-end funds. What they allow you to do is You, instead of paying carry, the two and 20 you hear about venture capital, Yeah. 20% carry, 2% fees a year. So if you had a hundred million dollar fund and you turn it into a 300 million dollar fund in returns, that means you had 200 in profits. The VC would get 20% of the 200,

• 2:13Jason Calacanis?

  not the 300, but of the gain, 20% of the 240 million. So that's what VCs are hoping for. They're hoping to triple your money. You're hoping they triple your money because you would double your money in the stock market. Is the theoretical concept here. Once in a while, you get an outlier that pays 5X. Once in a while, you get a dud that pays 0.5X. You lose half your money sometimes. You go 10X sometimes, but you're hoping for 2 and 1/2, 3X. Right. In this one, you just pay a fee, 2.5% annually. So if this became, if it was the same analogy, had a hundred million dollar fund, you would be, as the fund manager, you would get 2.5 million a year. So in 10 years, instead of getting the 40 million in carry, you would get 2.5 million a year guaranteed over 10 years. So you'd

• 2:58Jason Calacanis?

  get 25 million. So it's kind of a wash for either party in terms of the fees. The issue becomes, in one case, the VC is really incented to swing for the fences because the carry is not guaranteed. Right. In this case, the 2.5% fee is guaranteed. So all you're trying to do is increase the assets under management. If you get it to a billion dollars in holdings, you're making 25 million a year, which means you make 250 million over 10 years. You got a pretty great lifestyle, you know, and, okay, there you are. It's a nice

• 3:38Jason Calacanis?

  balance between the two. What's brilliant about what Naval did is this is taking the SPVs, the special purpose vehicles, that I participated in and that I moved my business to the syndicate. Naval and I had like a mini falling out. You know, we, I was a little bit too big for the platform. I was a little too annoying to him, I think, because I wanted to get treated differently. Yeah. So when you run a platform, you're a socialist. You're just like, I don't want to do negotiate one deal with J Cal and another deal with these other angel investors. I was like, well, I'm Michael Jordan. I've got a book, you know, I'm hot, I'm hot stuff. So I want a different deal and we couldn't come to terms, whatever. So I did the syndicate, all good, we're still friends. Uh, but with the brilliance of what Naval did here is the people who have the SPVs on Angel List are, from my understanding, being invited

• 4:23Jason Calacanis?

  to put their shares into this.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 4:25Jason Calacanis?

  So he doesn't have to hunt for shares or go on a, you know, crazy hunt to buy secondary for people. He can just move what's on Angel List there. So I have a position in com.com. I think we own about 5% of com.com. If the company was worth a billion, I could move that 50 million into this fund. I think we would get liquidity, the fund would buy it. And so that would move all of these SaaS companies or, you know, over 10 year old companies. And you could get liquidity and the public could own them and the public wants to own them before they go public.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:56Jason Calacanis?

  So it could be really nice. The other limitation is you can only take 5% out in terms of redemption.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:02Jason Calacanis?

  So each quarter, they're going to target, I think, 5%. But if they can't redeem, if they can't let you redeem, then you're stuck in it. It's not like having public equities where you can just leave an ETF.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Yes. And I, I mean, I think that's a lot of the complaints are, and, and there was another great sort of blog post, Hari Raghavan addressed a lot of the complaints. It was saying, this is basically retail investors who are used to public markets who don't understand how private markets work and are objecting to things that are just part of the nature of how venture capital works. Uh, so yeah, this was his post, don't listen to the peanut gallery, USVC is a watershed moment. I mean, you picked up on a lot of what the complaints are. They're arguing that because the portfolio manager is incentivized based on uh, assets under management rather than performance. He's going to focus on finding new investors rather than taking care of the current shareholders. Making him more like a salesman than a fund manager. That's what the original complaint was saying.

• 5:57Jason Calacanis?

  Who is this saying this? Don't listen to, I know, it's important for us to just, you know, in terms of us calling balls and strikes to know who is doing this and what their motivation might be.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, the criticisms are coming from this guy, Marco S.

• 6:11Jason Calacanis?

  Just in terms of like, always good to know the source.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:15Jason Calacanis?

  He's in a similar business. I think. I wouldn't.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Oh, the other guy, Marco, who's making the complaint, he is a research lead for Artemis, which is an investment research platform. So he's a public investor, researcher, advisor, expert, whatever, what have you.

• 6:32Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, okay, with 2,000 followers. So always go into the peanut gallery, look at how old their account is, when did they make their account?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:40Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, he's been on Twitter for six years. Okay, he's only got 2,000 followers.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  It was really that this, this, this thread that he wrote, or this big tweet that he wrote, it got over 620,000 views, and it became kind of the center place. Ankar Nagpal, the portfolio manager of USBC, is in the comments, discussing it with him. It became kind of the hub for this whole conversation.

• 7:02Jason Calacanis?

  So this is a very important thing. When you're building a business and people come and criticize it, you have to make a decision. Do you want to engage or not? And should you engage? You know, as a person with 2,000 followers, they've been on the internet for six years or whatever, they, they may have a very neophyte view, and just trying to educate them just might not be worth, the Jews may not be worth the squeeze. Here's the great thing about markets. If people look at this and, you know, want the opportunity, and they're not accredited, they're sort of theoretically not sophisticated, if they put their money in this and they lose, the way I look at it as an American who participates in the markets in a very

• 7:46Jason Calacanis?

  vibrant way, public, privates, and everything in between, and once in a while I'll do a wager, play poker a heck of a lot. People need to be able to place bets. They need to be able to try these devices. If you're, and, you know, if you were Juan, and Juan's got a decent nest egg, it's, you know, it's, it's not retiring yet, it's got another 10 years of work in him, maybe 15.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, 15, 20, something like that.

• 8:08Jason Calacanis?

  15, 20. You know, he could buy $500 of this. Learn by betting.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:15Jason Calacanis?

  That's what I do. I place bets to learn. Now, I don't place a giant bet to learn, but if I'm learning PLO, Pot Limit Omaha, you know, the four-card variant of Texas Oldham, you get four cards, not two. So if I want to play PLO, you think I go to the big table? You think I put my entire? No, I would literally, Jason Calacanis played at the like one, $2, $3, $5 PLO table. Last time I was in Vegas, I'm not an expert PLO player. I have some expertise in Nolan Holm, having played for over 10 years. So I'm like, I don't care what table I sit. I just, I just said, sit me at whatever PLO table is open. I don't care if it's, you know, 10, 20, 25, 50, whatever, one, two. I'm just there to have fun and learn. You could just place a $500 bet on this lawn if you wanted to and learn.

• 8:59Jason Calacanis?

  I would encourage you to place $500 bets 10 times in the next month and then learn. I have started this with my daughters. I am now letting my girls, you know, basically invest in the public market. So with my 10 year olds, I was literally talking to them about what stocks to buy. Congratulations to the team over there. If any of my startups, I did my first like 50 SPVs, my first 50 syndicates on Angelus. If they wanted shares of those in this, I would absolutely consider it. And so fantastic, great. I'm happy for them. More liquidity for founders, for investors is a good thing.

• 9:42Jason Calacanis?

  Monetary velocity is very important for an economy. So the fact that people have choices, angel investors, syndicates, incubators, pre-incubators, pre-accelerators, public markets, these closed end funds or whatever they are, you know, ETFs, fantastic. Let a thousand flowers bloom, let the money move around. Anybody who's a participant in this understands, no crying in the casino, you know, and it's your job to protect yourself at all times. That's it. Okay, so you've identified a real problem and you put together a solid solution and a business model that you believe in. So you're all set to launch your new company, right? Not so fast.

• 10:25Jason Calacanis?

  If you want investors and potential customers to take your new business seriously, you need to consider forming a Delaware C corp. And that's where Northwest Registered Agent comes in. They're going to give your new company. A real identity. That means an address for your public filings, a domain, a custom website, a business email, and of course, a phone number. And that's going to take just 10 minutes and 10 clicks. They don't charge hidden fees. Customer service is available around the clock. They're not overwhelming your inbox with spam, and they make it easy to cancel at any time. So get all the advantages of a Delaware C corp, independent, regardless of where in the U.S. you're operating from. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/twist for more details, and the links are in the show notes.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  I think that's pretty straightforward. That don't, don't invest in something unless you understand it and you're aware of the risks is a good rule.

• 11:15Jason Calacanis?

  I'm not buying Mr. Microstrategies.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:20Jason Calacanis?

  You know why? Because I, I understand Bitcoin pretty well. I mean, I read the paper, you know, I've been covering it for, since 2010 on this very podcast, one of the first podcasts I ever covered. When, when Michael Saylor explains these like five different vehicles to get exposure to Bitcoin, I'm like, too confusing.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's no way to talk about what he's doing and not make it sound like a scheme. Like every time somebody is like, I'll explain to you a micro strategy. Okay, first here's what you got to say. It's like, you've already lost me. Once it's that complicated, I'm not interested. I'll go invest in something, something I can figure out. Yeah.

• 11:54Jason Calacanis?

  Well, here's the idea. Just buy Bitcoin directly.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Right. Or Solana, or your, your coin.

• 11:58Jason Calacanis?

  Or Solana, or Tau. Yeah. Well, I mean, you got choices of where to put your stuff. Okay, let's get going.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, there's OpenAI released a GPT 5.5 slash pro setting apparently a new standard for frontier models. We could talk about that a little bit.

• 12:13Jason Calacanis?

  Great. It's just another, yet another model. I don't think the jury's out yet. This week in AI, they will run it through its paces against the previous version and Claude, and you can look for that demo video next week.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 12:24Jason Calacanis?

  They haven't done it already.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  I think we're good with news. I think we're ready for off duty. There was, there was a story here. I did want to talk to you about though. Did you hear about this special forces soldier who apparently bet on the Venezuela Maduro raid on polymark?

• 12:37Jason Calacanis?

  I did. Yeah. It's queued up for the audience here. This is interesting.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Yes. So federal authorities have charged Gan and Ken Van Dyke. on making bets on the raid that removed Venezuela's Maduro from office. Van Dyke allegedly bet $33,000 on Polymarket 13 total bets. Starting in December and going through January, he won $409,000 on these bets. Cause he was, he was in fact betting that the US would invade Venezuela and remove Maduro from office. Which of course then eventually did. So here's the, here's the actual Justice Department quote, following his successful trading relating to Maduro and Venezuela related contracts. Van Dyke allegedly sent most of his proceeds to a foreign cryptocurrency vault before depositing them into a newly created brokerage account.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  So it kind of seems like he knew he was sort of getting away with something and trying to sort of avoid the authorities. The CFTC is about to hit him with civil charges. And Polymarket apparently are the ones who identified him and turned him over to the authorities. Their statement insider trading has no place on Polymarket. Today's arrest is proof that the system works.

• 13:46Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so I'm going to say completely reasonable what's happened here in terms of the action that's taken. However,

• 13:59Jason Calacanis?

  I love the idea of our military placing a bet on themselves.

• 14:08Jason Calacanis?

  So.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  You do want them to feel confident. I am glad that those guys are going in or ladies, I'm glad that they're going in feeling like we got this. That's how I want our military to feel.

• 14:19Jason Calacanis?

  So I think from where I'm sitting.

• 14:25Jason Calacanis?

  When I play blackjack or roulette.

• 14:32Jason Calacanis?

  Or even poker sometimes, I will, if I'm in a funk or I'm feeling frisky, either way, either end of the bell curve. I will move into my patented splashy cashy mode.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:45Jason Calacanis?

  And many people have seen me go splashy cashy. So I will, if I'm betting, you know, a hundred dollar hand, um, blackjack, and I'm playing three hands, I got three hundred dollars going out there. I'm no big wig here, but you know, my friends will put like five thousand dollars a hand, a thousand, but I'm playing three one hundred dollar hands. I will take a twenty-five dollar chip or I'll ask for change. Give me some tens, fives, twenty-fives, whatever. And I put the dealer in.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 15:07Jason Calacanis?

  You can put the dealer in.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:08Jason Calacanis?

  And I splashy cashy it to change the mojo.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Hmm, sure.

• 15:12Jason Calacanis?

  Especially if I got a cooler dealer, you know.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  If they're chatty, if you're enjoying the, the back.

• 15:17Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, when I say cooler, if they're, you know.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Oh, you mean if they're.

• 15:21Jason Calacanis?

  Dealing me back cards, I'm suspicious. But anyway, I go into splashy cashy mode. This is what I think we should do. I think we should take the special forces and we should allow us to place splashy cashy bets for them.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Oh, I see.

• 15:37Jason Calacanis?

  So if they're going in.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:38Jason Calacanis?

  Like, let's say they were going in to get that pilot.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:41Jason Calacanis?

  And let's say there's a hundred guys in the out. I want to be able to put ten K.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:48Jason Calacanis?

  On them succeeding in the mission.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  You want to wager on a live combat situation?

• 15:53Jason Calacanis?

  I want to be able to put ten K. And this is incredibly deranged, I know.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  It's a little thing. I feel like this is a dystopian sci-fi movie.

• 16:00Jason Calacanis?

  It is like a dystopian sci-fi.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Rich guys are betting on the war as it's happening.

• 16:04Jason Calacanis?

  No, I don't want the proceeds from it. I want to put the ten K and let them get the return.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Forward it to the SEALs or yeah, SEAL Team Six.

• 16:10Jason Calacanis?

  Fuck yeah, let's go.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Whoever's like a trust. It's fascinating that you would say that because you and President Trump, he was asked about this. Uh, and you, your perspectives are very aligned. I'm going to share.

• 16:22Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Okay, this is not good. When, when Karen, Karen Swisher calls me mini Trump.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:27Jason Calacanis?

  This is not good that we're so aligned. Oh no.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Here's what our president had to say. Can you guys hear that?

• 16:32Jason Calacanis?

  I like it. He's got a little bit of confidence. I like the fact that he's confident and I love the soldiers making a little bit of chatter.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Was he betting that they would get him or they wouldn't get him?

• 16:41Speaker 03

  It sounds like he was betting on his removal from office, that Maduro would be removed. It just sounds like she was involved in the operation.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  That's like Pedro's betting on his own kings. It's something that he does because they kept him out of the Hall of Fame because he better not. His own team. Now, if he bet against his team, that would be no good. But he bet on his own team. I'll look into it. Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  There you go. He's not upset about it because he's betting on his own team. One more. Here's one more little snippet of Trump's reaction, which I thought this really struck. There's a little bit of a melancholy tone that the president strikes in this second answer. So here he was asked like, well, what do you think about? We hear a lot of these stories about federal employees getting caught insider trading with this information on prediction markets. And they asked him just like, what do you think about that more generally? And here was Trump's answer.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino. And you look at what's going on all over the world and Europe and every place they're doing these betting things. I was never much in favor of it. I don't like it conceptually, but it is what it is. No, I think that I'm not happy with any of that stuff. But they have all these different sites. They have predictive markets. It's a crazy world. It's a much different world than it was.

• 17:56Jason Calacanis?

  All right. They have it, folks.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Ponderous answer from our president. It seems like he's really thinking about this in a way he doesn't always engage with questions from the.

• 18:04Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, listen, he's not into alcohol. He's not into gambling. He is into golf. I don't know if he gambles on his golf or wagers. I heard sometimes he's a little loosey goosey with his gimmies.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yes, that's what they say.

• 18:15Jason Calacanis?

  I think is the term for it.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what they say.

• 18:17Jason Calacanis?

  Like, that's a gimme.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Cheats at golf a little bit.

• 18:20Jason Calacanis?

  They're like, sir, you're 30 yards from the pin. That is not a gimme. Three inches is a gimme. One yard is a gimme.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  When you own the club, you know, who's gonna, who's gonna tell you?

• 18:30Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, whatever. Anyway, listen, he is non alcohol. He is non gambling. Okay, fair enough. I think wagering is an important skill for people to learn. I like Annie Duke's framing of it, thinking in bets.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Poker great Annie.

• 18:43Jason Calacanis?

  I like to, the great Annie Duke. We should have her back on the pod. We actually produced the Annie Duke Show for a while, when she first got into podcasting.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:53Jason Calacanis?

  At the original this weekend, when we were doing it back in the day.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  We had the Charlie Rose set. It was all black behind us.

• 18:59Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, we were way too early on that one. But here we are, rebooting it. Starting this week in venture capital back up. So we'll have three this weekend shows sometime in May, June and timeframe. So just teasing that. But

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Okay for that.

• 19:14Jason Calacanis?

  If thinking in bets, always good. If you're a startup founder, you're going to have to do this if, and we're all doing it all day long. So we do it when we're like, okay, I'm going to go to the airport. How much time do I need? You're placing a bet, you know, in terms of how many minutes. There's the book thinking in bets. It's a quick read. Get the audio book. I think she reads it. Just required reading. So I guess we'll start off duty here.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 19:36Jason Calacanis?

  And I'll give you thinking in bets as a great book from the great Annie Duke. Who was a, you know, real pioneer in poker, in terms of a female in poker who dominated the field.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:49Jason Calacanis?

  In those early days of the poker boom. And now she is a consultant to, I think, venture firms. She might even be working in a venture firm now.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  When I first started watching poker on TV, she was like the one, the one lady who was in the upper echelon, like the championship ring all the time is Annie Duke.

• 20:06Jason Calacanis?

  Hiring can be its own full-time job. And hey, guess what? I already have a full-time job. I make podcasts and I invest. But when you're running a small company, we both know every hire matters. You don't want to waste any of the seats you have at your company. And the best partner you can have is LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Why? There's a billion people using LinkedIn. All of the great talent are there. If you're proud of your work, you build a LinkedIn page and you update it. LinkedIn Hiring Pro is going to streamline and simplify the entire process for you. Nearly 60% of companies using LinkedIn Hiring Pro. You're going to get an incredible candidate to interview in the first week. And, you know, we're looking for a new producer for the pod. We did shout outs here on the show. We posted it on my social media. We asked friends. You know where we found our next great hire? LinkedIn. And it was competitive. We had like three or four really good choices.

• 20:51Jason Calacanis?

  So hire right the first time. Post your first job and get a hundred dollars off towards your post at LinkedIn.com slash hiring pro offer. That's LinkedIn.com slash hiring pro offer. Terms and conditions apply.

• 21:06Jason Calacanis?

  It was at a time when it was pretty misogynistic and like, oh, women don't have intimidation. They don't have bluffs in them.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Right, yes.

• 21:15Jason Calacanis?

  They're not aggro, they're not aggressive, they're not strategic, they're not mathematical. I mean, it was pretty, I remember when I started 25 years ago playing cards or, you know, about that. It, you know, it was, it was not friendly to women and it was not a friendly environment. And people thought, well, you could just bully any woman at the table. And I watched it. People would, you know, you'd have nine guy, you'd have eight, nine guys and a female at a World Series of poker table or at Commerce Casino or Hollywood Park, you'd have eight guys and a woman. And I would watch, the guys would test the women much more. They would raise them, et cetera, which if you're, if that's happening to you and people perceive you as weak and they're betting into you,

• 21:55Jason Calacanis?

  you can exploit that because you can just tighten your range, play stronger hands or re-raise them. There's, there's a lot of ways to effectively counter that, like going all in.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Great Netflix documentary called Queen of Chess that's out there right now. It's about, and it's fascinating because it's exactly the same in the world of chess. When women first started playing in the 60s, 70s, even the 80s, all the male chess players were like, they don't have the right constitution. They're too emotional, they're not logical, they can't do the math, like whatever, whatever. Uh, and it's about, you know, there's this early female chess champion who was playing Gary Kasparov and the top players in the world and was really like pushing back against this.

• 22:34Jason Calacanis?

  Is she the one who Queen's Gambit is based on?

• 22:37Speaker 01

  No, I mean, Queen's Gambit is a, is a fictional story that was like a novel that was just, I guess loosely inspired by some of these stories. But, um.

• 22:45Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, okay. But this isn't like the direct one?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  No, no, this is, this is Judith Polgar. She's a Hungarian chess prodigy. Uh, and oh, starting as a teenager, she was playing against like the, the top competitors in the world. And she had this kind of rivalry with Gary Kasparov, the sort of famous Russian champion who he played Deep Blue famously, the IBM AI computer in those early days. Anyway, this is a great, it's a great documentary that follows her whole.

• 23:10Jason Calacanis?

  She's obviously famous for. Yeah, so Kasparov now very famous for challenging Sacks's support of Putin and Russia. Those two get into it all the time. He's like, I'm from Russia.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  There he is, there's Garry Kasparov in the movie. He's in this film.

• 23:25Jason Calacanis?

  He's like, you cannot trust, you're like, the greatest chess player in the world's telling Sacks you can't trust Putin.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:30Jason Calacanis?

  It's hilarious. Hassan Piker is a streamer who's very far left, socialist left, and has said a bunch of spicy things that people are concerned about, like killing landlords and letting their blood flow in the street, which I thought was a joke of a quote. But it turns out, people very quickly showed me the quote, and he's being bombastic, performative, I guess. But there's been a lot of hand wringing on the left. This isn't a political show, but when we go off duty, we'll delve into things because this is an important one because it speaks to anti corporate sentiment. So I think I'm well within the twist purview to talk a little bit about this now.

• 24:11Jason Calacanis?

  And I'm also on the media executive. The New York Times hosted this discussion on their opinions podcast. And their culture editor hosts it. She is, yeah, here she is.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Nadia Spiegelman, Nadia Spiegelman.

• 24:27Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so she is smiling here, and this is a very jovial podcast. Why is that important? Well, it's three millennials in their mid to late 30s, 36, 37 ish. These are adults who've been in the workforce for 15 years. They're very well educated. One of them works for The New Yorker, one of them works for The New York Times, and one of them is one of the most followed streamers. These are legitimate, you know, seemingly intelligent, well spoken individuals in a discussion here. And the first thing I think as a quote, we should probably start with is the concept of micro looting and then maybe go to macro looting.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  So Jacob, this is the one that starts early on, like 18 seconds in is where she defines micro looting.

• 25:12Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so here, here we go.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  Micro looting.

• 25:15Jason Calacanis?

  I started going into the grocery store. I would pick up the thing that I wanted and then I would go.

• 25:19Speaker 05

  It's a survival technique. Gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  You're paying for that, right?

• 25:24Speaker 03

  No, babe, who does a human right?

• 25:26Speaker 04

  People are taking small things from big corporations and they're feeling justified.

• 25:33Speaker 06

  Like, look, everyone shoplifting them on this on your shopping there.

• 25:37Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so this is micro looting and you can, like, they put that, you know, soundtrack behind it and she's smiling and hamming it up about micro looting. Micro looting is stealing. It's petty crime.

• 25:52Jason Calacanis?

  Putting a new name on it does not make it less abhorrent. You should not steal, but this discussion quickly escalated to loot maxing.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:03Jason Calacanis?

  So let's tee that up if you wouldn't.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  Would you steal from the Louvre?

• 26:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  I would not be logistically capable of executing such a fact, but would I cheer on every news story of people that I see doing it? Absolutely.

• 26:20Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I think it's cool. We gotta, we gotta get back to cool crimes like that, like, you know, bank robberies, right? Stealing, stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature. I feel like that's way cooler than the 7,000th new cryptocurrency scheme that people are engaging with. Okay, so let's stop there.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  I feel like part of it, I feel like what's going on is that they are talking like you would talk on a podcast. Like, that is exactly the sort of thing I would say on like a movie podcast. Not being intended, like, I don't really think you should steal anything, certainly not from.

• 26:56Jason Calacanis?

  No, you wouldn't say this. You wouldn't stay still from the Louvre. You might make a joke about a movie.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  I might be like, you know what? I miss when people were doing cool crimes. Like, I might say something like that, being ironic and flippant, but that doesn't mean I really want to go. I'm never gonna do a bank robbery. I don't think it's actually cool to rob the bank.

• 27:13Jason Calacanis?

  You're giving them far too much cover. This is the New York Times, the paper of record. This is a serious publication. This is not. Just a random podcast.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 27:23Jason Calacanis?

  This is the editorial leader, I believe, of the opinion page. This or one of them.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  She's the opinion. She's the opinion culture editor. So she's the culture editor of the.

• 27:36Jason Calacanis?

  Perfect.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Op-ed page.

• 27:37Jason Calacanis?

  And listen, Hassan is just an individual voice. Okay, more power to him. He's like Fuentes or, you know, Tucker or Alex Jones. Like, these are spicy people. I get it, they're performative.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  That's the job.

• 27:48Jason Calacanis?

  But the other two represent The New Yorker, the 150 IQ legendary, we only hire the best, most thoughtful people to express, you know, important ideas and to drive the culture forward. These are two legendary publications I grew up with that I had in my home from the moment I could read. I was reading these publications and read them for my entire life. For 30, 40 years, I, you know, I've read these publications. This is disgraceful to host a conversation like this where you're seemingly taking it serious. I think there's a large portion of the audience that is going to take this as serious and be inspired by it to go micro loot.

• 28:32Jason Calacanis?

  Now, they might not loot max, but if you're a disturbed person, if you're on the fringe, you might very well take this thinking and this ideology to other places. So when you are a media brand of note, it could be This Week in Startups, it could be All In, it could be New York Times or New Yorker legendary publications. You have an obligation to think through what you say. I have learned this many times when I get clipped and people say, oh, my God, you said this, you said that. Oh, my God, you were wrong about this.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  It happens to us.

• 29:03Jason Calacanis?

  So you have a responsibility. The entire tone here is so off that you're laughing and encouraging people to do it. You're not at a bar, you're not at a birthday party, you're not at a dinner party. You're representing The New Yorker, you're representing The New York Times. Hassan's representing himself. Be more thoughtful and understand you're inspiring people. Because when you look at how people feel about corporations right now, the next bomb drops. And this is where, you know, you have to be incredibly judicious about how you say things. This all ends with a discussion of quote unquote, "social murder" as.

• 29:48Jason Calacanis?

  A subset of murder and assassinations.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:53Jason Calacanis?

  Social murder, let's hear about it.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  People feel that murder is morally justified. And I'm curious how we how we thread that line.

• 30:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. And Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare CEO, was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder. The systematized forms of violence, the the structural violence of poverty, the the for-profit paywalled system of of healthcare in this country. And the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths. And that was a fascinating story from for me, because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment.

• 30:46Speaker 07

  They're very black and white on this issue. And yet, because of the pervasive pain that the private healthcare system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place. Even before they knew who the shooter was or what the motive was, we had universalized this pain, so much so that virtually every American has a similar experience, a shared experience, where they have a loved one that spent their last days, instead of spending them with their family,

• 31:31Speaker 07

  spending it on the phone, talking to their healthcare provider to to maybe get a little bit of economic respite so they don't carry on medical debt for their next generation, for their next of kin.

• 31:45Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  That sums it up. That's that's that's that's pretty much the idea.

• 31:49Jason Calacanis?

  All right. So, listen, I didn't go to graduate school. You can use all the fancy terms you want, social murder, structural violence. You can be as disappointed as you want. You can't encourage or not condemn assassinations and murders. There's no justification for killing the CEO of United Healthcare. It doesn't matter how much you suffered. If United Healthcare caused you suffering, that is not the proper vehicle assassinating people. This is crazy and deranged behavior that's all being bundled together. Stealing, grand stealing, and violence towards individuals you disagree with. We live in a democracy.

• 32:32Jason Calacanis?

  You can very easily, as we've seen, elect Mondami to pursue socialist versions of the healthcare system and deprecate, say, a capitalist version of it. They've got him in office right now. He's going to make socialist grocery stores instead of capitalist grocery stores. You're going to make buses free. That's the proper channel. You just, under no circumstances, can start to normalize the murder of anybody, whether it's, you know, cops murdering somebody, ICE beating people up on that side, or killing of CEOs. There is no moral equivalence here. All violence is immoral, as Martin Luther King said, as Jesus said, as countless people

• 33:17Jason Calacanis?

  have pointed out. If a person who is destitute steals a loaf of bread and writes an IOU, okay, fine. Their kid's starving, they take a loaf of bread, they write, "I'll pay you back when I get the money." I understand that philosophical debate. But, you know, here, this is an incredible fail by The New York Times. Incredible to not immediately say and disclaim and discredit

• 33:46Jason Calacanis?

  A person murdering a father, a CEO, because they disagree with how they provide a product or service. I'll just leave it there.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  I don't think, yes, there's no justification for murder, for shooting a guy on the street in the back. I mean, to me, I always come back to the, you know, if you're embarking on a plan of revenge, dig two graves. Like, violence is this endless cycle. It doesn't ever solve the problem. It just, now people are killing each other on top of this problem already existing. I believe that. I do think at the same time, I think that we're in this place because people do feel a little bit justifiably helpless. Like, you could say, sure, you could elect a guy like Mumdani, but we've been trying to elect people in this country to fix the healthcare system for most of my lifetime. I mean, remember, Hillary Care was the 90s, when we were begging the Clintons, like,

• 34:39Speaker 01

  please do something about this.

• 34:40Jason Calacanis?

  It is a seemingly intractable problem in the United States, where we pay twice as much per person for healthcare. People feel disappointed in it, but yet we have the best healthcare in the world.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Right, we have the best healthcare system.

• 34:52Jason Calacanis?

  In terms of people coming here, if you can afford it.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  We have the best technology, agreed. And that's the frustration, I think, is people looking through the window, seeing this amazing healthcare system that we can't all get equal access to. So I do, I think you do have to acknowledge the frustration. I think it's kind of the same thing with the data centers. Like, Americans hate AI. They see these endless AI deals happening, these 10 billion, 20 billion dollar deals every day.

• 35:16Jason Calacanis?

  Huge numbers.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  In the newspaper, people getting fired, and they feel helpless. And the data centers are the one thing that's like, oh, I could do something about this. I could, like, stop a data center in my town. It's my way of taking back a little power. So I think you have to acknowledge those feelings, while at the same time pointing out murders not the answer.

• 35:34Jason Calacanis?

  Nor is stealing.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  I don't think stealing from a store, no matter what the store is, is not the answer. Stealing from the Louvre clearly isn't the answer, because that's the property of the French people.

• 35:46Jason Calacanis?

  But, I mean, if you were gonna make that analogy, oh, by the way, that woman from The New Yorker, turns out, her last name is Spiegelman. And I was like, okay, let me figure that out. Like, that doesn't seem like her ethnicity. Turns out, her dad... Is the author of Mouse, the amazing graphic novel. Art Spiegelman is her dad. She's a massive Nepo baby. Her dad is probably, she's a Nepo baby.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  That was Art Spiegelman's kid.

• 36:16Jason Calacanis?

  I literally have had 20 people DM me. I went to Yale with her. This is like a massive person of privilege. And I'm like, oh, my God. So, all right, let's unpack this a little bit.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  If you haven't read the graphic novel Mouse, please, like, that's an off duty recommendation.

• 36:31Jason Calacanis?

  Unbelievable, just chef's kiss, incredible. Buy it and yeah, read it with your kids. Unbelievable piece of art.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:39Jason Calacanis?

  All right, so there's, okay, so for off duty in our thing here, we've got, go watch this opinions podcast and understand that. Go buy Mouse, the graphic novel. You will just keep it forever.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 36:50Jason Calacanis?

  You got Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets and you got this chess documentary called.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Queen of Chess on Netflix.

• 36:55Jason Calacanis?

  So we're moving here through it. Let me address your helplessness.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 37:00Jason Calacanis?

  Issue. If you feel helpless, you need to reassess some things. You live in one of the great economies in the world where you can move to different states or you can leave the country. People in China cannot leave the country. People in India, by and large, cannot leave the country and go somewhere else. You can go to Spain. I've had family members go to Spain, move to Canada, move to other places where they have universal healthcare and they get access to the universal healthcare very quickly, by the way. You can opt out of the system here without murdering a CEO. You can, and you know, listen, I don't want to give credit to Karen Swisher and Prof G, Professor Coltaes.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Professor G, yeah.

• 37:44Jason Calacanis?

  Which, by the way, I'm going to be on Prof G Markets. I'm doing a debate with Ro Khanna on the wealth tax. So the kid who runs it with him, his co-host, asked me to be on. I was like, okay, yeah, that sounds like it would be entertaining.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Fantastic, yeah, that'll be good.

• 37:56Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that should be pretty funny. Well, we'll have to you and I do some debate prep for Ro Khanna and the versus the asset seizure wealth tax. Anyway, he did a thing on his podcast where he said, resist and unsubscribe. He, like me, thought this ICE violence was crazy. He said, here's a way to get Trump's attention. Tank the stock market. How do you tank the stock market? You unsubscribe and pull up resist and unsubscribe in the list of companies. He basically said, I'm going to ask my audience, which is large, to unsubscribe from these companies. And he was asking, unsubscribe from Uber, unsubscribe from Amazon Prime, unsubscribe from ChatGPT.

• 38:38Jason Calacanis?

  There's a list here of all the different companies, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Paramount, and Meta, Uber, OpenAI, AT&T. So he literally is taking, by the way, I think this list, if you held it up and you held up the sponsors of the Prof G pod, FedEx, Dell, I mean, I'll give, I'll give Prof G, Prof G, or as we call him, Prof Cold Takes, because he thought Tesla was going to zero and he thought Macy's was going to be at Amazon. He's got some pretty weird takes. Putting all that aside, putting aside, you know, that he trashes me and my friends incessantly,

• 39:22Jason Calacanis?

  he's correct. If you want to, you have economic power in this country. You simply stop going to Whole Foods. You simply opt out of these subscriptions. There are ways to do this that are nonviolent and not stealing. You are under no obligation to have 20 services. You could share your Netflix password. You could go over your friend's house and watch Netflix. You can opt out of this and that sends the best message. The problem is, people who even have these feelings, they're consumers like everybody else. They love capitalism's output. They love the fact that you can go on Amazon and buy anything.

• 40:05Jason Calacanis?

  They're all Amazon. If you actually don't feel this way, take six months to stop buying things. It's easy to do. I've done it. I am a person of privilege. I have said to myself, I'm not buying anything on Amazon for a month and I have kept myself to it. I have, because I'm just like, you know, I have too many boxes around. I'm buying too much stuff. Let me absorb what I've already bought. And I go through an unsubscribe binge every year. He's right. There is such a clean message you can give to people through protesting, through unsubscribing. Now, I don't understand why people are still. Buying ads on a podcast where they're telling you to unsubscribe from the product. That to me is a little bizarre.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  You gotta keep that funnel going, you know, you need new users.

• 40:47Jason Calacanis?

  What's going on here? You're sending Prof G, you know, 15 million dollars in advertising, he said, in order for him to tell people to unsubscribe from your thing. You guys have Stockholm syndrome.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  It's interesting that for him, unsubscribe does not mean stop accepting their advertising revenue. It just means stop buying their products in only one way.

• 41:05Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, there you go.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  The other guys are still okay, yeah.

• 41:07Jason Calacanis?

  But anyway, this is the simplest way to do it. It's the simplest way to do it. That's all.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I-

• 41:12Jason Calacanis?

  Just opt out.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  That's what I always come back to. It's like when I, when an influencer podcaster goes on the air and starts telling me, you know, quoting Engels and quote the Communist Manifesto and he's like, well, like, are you a communist or not? Like a Bolshevik would be like, what are you doing sitting in that studio? Get out there and start lighting government buildings on fire, you know, like have a revolution.

• 41:34Jason Calacanis?

  Dangerous. We are not advocating this.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  I'm not a, I'm not advocating, of course, I don't, I'm not a communist. I don't want a communist revolution. But I'm saying if you did, if that was your perspective, that capitalism is corrupt, we have to tear down the entire system and, and make a new system. That's not what these people are doing. They're not invested in overthrowing a, they're, they all seem very comfortable. So I think-

• 41:54Jason Calacanis?

  You gotta walk the walk.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  You always have to take that with a grain of salt. If somebody is like, firebrand, radical, we have to like upset the system and like, we have to have a revolution and get rid of capitalism in this country. Like, okay, but it's hard to take that seriously when you're in a New York Times studio, shooting a podcast and you're usually like streaming live on the internet for five hours a day in your nice house. And it's like, I don't, I don't know-

• 42:20Jason Calacanis?

  This is how I felt about environmental, the environmental movement. There was a guy, Ed Helms, I think was his name, the actor.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:26Jason Calacanis?

  Who was on Same Elsewhere. Ed Begley Jr., sorry. I just, I was trying to-

• 42:30Speaker 01

  He's an environmentalist. He, he, yes, yes.

• 42:33Jason Calacanis?

  He did not own a car.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Right. He took the bus. He took bicycles everywhere. Yes.

• 42:36Jason Calacanis?

  Bicycles everywhere. He has a, a gray water system at his house.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 42:40Jason Calacanis?

  He uses solar. He will not buy packaged stuff. He buys unpackaged stuff. He lives the life.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's very.

• 42:48Jason Calacanis?

  Then, we had people coming to Ted crying on stage about the environment and they flew there on a G six fifty.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:58Jason Calacanis?

  And they own seven homes and each of the homes is twenty thousand feet and it's air conditioned when they're not there. Like, if you really actually feel this way and you're, let's say Bernie Sanders, who owns, I think he owns four homes or something like that, like, okay, that seems like you're not walking the walk, bro. And if you're in first class, like, you're not a man of the people. And if you're spending money on all this crazy stuff for your campaign, you're not walking the walk. So if you're gonna be pious like this, if you're gonna be Hassan, if you're gonna be, you know, Spiegelman, whatever, like, and you believe in stealing stuff, well, maybe start at home. Like, what can you give up to the people who are poor and can't afford food?

• 43:43Jason Calacanis?

  Like, I would just like to see some on balance behavior that actually means you're walking the walk. And there are examples of this everywhere. You can opt out. I live in the great state of Texas. I don't know if you know the place, Lon.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  I'm familiar.

• 43:58Jason Calacanis?

  In this great state, there are people who homeschool. They're like, I don't believe in the education system, I don't like what they're teaching, I wanna teach it at home, I'm religious, I have my own ideas, I think I can do a better job. They homeschool. They are like, you know what, I'm gonna hunt deer, I know this sounds crazy, and I'm gonna have a chicken coop, and I'm gonna have a well, and I'm gonna put solar on my ranch. Like, I'm part of that community of be self-sustaining, live off the land, have chickens, I have chickens, I have eggs, I haven't bought eggs for a couple of years now. I don't hunt yet, but I'm going to, I'm gonna learn how to hunt, I wanna learn how to, you know, kill my own meat, whatever. I think at a certain point, walk the walk, is what I would say to these folks.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. In fairness to Bernie, not a communist, a social, democratic socialist, so he's not saying we should go, you know, like, light all the buildings on fire and overthrow the government. He does own three homes, though. I mean, and his net worth is like thirty or forty million, I think. Yeah, certainly, yeah. He's got a home in Burlington, Vermont, in a middle-class neighborhood, he's got a home in DC, cause he's a senator, and he's got a summer camp on Lake Champlain in Vermont.

• 45:01Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that's the. The one.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 45:03Jason Calacanis?

  That's the one I've seen pictures of and you're like, come on, bro.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Purchased for about $575,000.

• 45:10Jason Calacanis?

  In like 1972, I think.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, presumably very long.

• 45:13Jason Calacanis?

  I think it's a $50 million house now.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 45:15Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, all right, listen, last thing here, greenlight.com. Again, not a sponsor, uh, but I'm teaching my kids about money.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 45:22Jason Calacanis?

  And, uh, I want to do this kidsinvestmentclub.com.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 45:26Jason Calacanis?

  Where we teach kids about betting, uh, and, and back to Annie Duke's book on betting and just the gambling culture in general. Bet greenlight.com allows you to give a credit card to your kids, but you can also let them, uh, invest in, um, companies as well. So we are, you know, doing the, um, allowance thing and giving money for chores and you get like, uh, savings goals and you can, uh, use this credit card to go buy stuff and, um, it just teaches you, um, how to invest chores and allowance, uh, cash back savings.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Um, yeah.

• 46:06Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. And it's got a bunch of like family safety things. It's Robin Hood for kids. It's basically for financial literacy.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's great. That's very clever. I wish something like, I wish this existed. When I was a kid, nobody was like, you should teach your kids how to invest in anything, or you should teach your kids about banking. Like I was learning three words in like 18 different languages when I was a kid. That was.

• 46:28Jason Calacanis?

  This should be the first thing we teach kids.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 46:31Jason Calacanis?

  Kids need to understand about money and like, check out this, they have a game in this. There's a game.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  All right.

• 46:38Jason Calacanis?

  Level up where they like quiz you on stuff and I am super interested in the space. In fact, um, I started, so yeah, if you pull that up, Lon, kids investment club. So, um, I'm sorry, this is, uh, the green light one. And listen, they're not sponsors or anything, but I just think it's a cool product. And then there's kids investment club. So I was looking for a CEO or a general manager for this. If anybody wants to be the CEO or general manager of kidsinvestmentclub.com, I have the domain name. I have teen investment club, et cetera. So, and I've got probably 2,000 people who gave me their emails. Uh, so if you pull up kidsinvestmentclub.com, you'll see it there.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Right now. There we go.

• 47:17Jason Calacanis?

  If somebody has, uh, wants a job, I would start this with you. My idea is to charge like. $500 a year for parents and their kids to be part of this and then have 50 weeks of programming, two weeks off, or maybe 52 weeks of programming and make it a live Zoom and then, you know, 52 lessons in finance and then have different finance people come in and you can come to a live Zoom. And I think we could have 10,000 people paying 25 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month for their kids. And then all the archives, so to be part of the live thing and like, maybe you do it like a course, I don't know. But there's some way to do this to make it sustainable and

• 47:58Jason Calacanis?

  hire a team of five or 10 people to like actually do this at scale and make it a for-profit business. And then all the videos eventually come out for free for everybody. Just, you know, if you don't have money, but if you want to be part of it, you pay 500 bucks to be part of it. You take the course, you get a certificate. Now your kid's graduating high school or elementary school with a certificate in personal finance.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  It's just so important to know and I know there's no effort in public school ever. They just send you out into the world at 18 and it's like, there you go, figure out money. There's no effort to educate kids into how, how to be smart about credit cards, investing, how to even save, just the basics of how to make a budget that you can follow.

• 48:42Jason Calacanis?

  You know who gets taught this? I realized and I learned in my life. You know who gets taught this?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  The children of wealthy people?

• 48:47Jason Calacanis?

  Correct. You know who doesn't get taught this?

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Every, everyone.

• 48:50Jason Calacanis?

  Kids who go to public school.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:52Jason Calacanis?

  If you go to public school, this, this doesn't come up. If you've, if you come from a rich family, they're like, let me explain to you corporate debt. Let me explain to you margin loans. Let me explain to you ETFs. You just sit there with your mom or dad and they explain all this stuff to you. And then you got some finance person in your family office, you got some rich uncle and they sit you down and they, they teach you all this. They teach you all of it. And they tell you what to do and what not to do. And the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. I'm, I, listen, I'm gonna start sounding like Hassan Piker and Miss Spiegelman and Gia Spiegelman.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  I think the answer is micro looting, Jason.

• 49:27Jason Calacanis?

  No, it's, it's macro looting the lube and selling the Venus de Milo and then putting that into crypto. No, it's just like, you can get educated and we have Invest America. All right. Listen, we did a lot of show today. I have an idea here. Did we do enough show to not have off-duty part of the main show?

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, we could save it for Monday or something. You want to say?

• 49:48Jason Calacanis?

  Well, no, I have an idea. What if off duty, we release as a separate episode, just take one of the sponsors and add them to it for the weekend or something? If we have like any sponsor that needs a little extra love, we'll see you all on Monday on This Week in Startups. Bye bye. Do me a favor. Check out thisweekinai.ai. Sign up for the email, follow us. You know, we got to wake up the YouTube channel. So any comments you put under there, you subscribe, you put on alerts. If you thumbs up a video, if you save a video to a playlist to watch later, all of that gives a little signal that YouTube should pay attention to what we're doing and we'll see you all on Monday. Bye bye.