Pod Insights All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg E15: "The Besties" All-In's inaugural award show covering the best, worst & most memorable of 2020 About this episode Follow the crew:
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https://twitter.com/friedberg
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Intro Music Credit:
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Show Notes:
0:00 The besties discuss some recent beak wetting, open source merch & more
6:31 Chamath tells the "192.5" weight loss bet story
10:54 Biggest Winner - Politics
13:08 Biggest Loser - Politics
16:24 Biggest Winner - Business
19:47 Biggest Loser - Business
23:22 Biggest Winner - Culture
26:24 Biggest Loser - Culture
32:31 Biggest Turnaround
34:49 Biggest Flash in the Pan
39:32 Biggest Breakthrough
43:51 Smartest Move - Business
49:58 Dumbest Move - Business
56:25 Smartest Move - Politics
1:00:20 Dumbest Move - Politics
1:04:22 Best/Worst Political Theatre
1:12:57 Best Memes
Transcript 13,775 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:13 Jason Calacanis? Hey everybody, welcome back. Besties are back for the All In Podcast. The queen of quinoa, Friedberg is here, the dictator Chamath, and of course Rain Man David Sacks. And it's been a big week here in Silicon Valley with Airbnb and Wish both going public for over a hundred billion dollars combined. Anybody get their beak wet on that one?
0:36 David Sacks? Oh, hey guys.
0:42 Jason Calacanis? How are you David?
0:44 David Sacks? Yeah, I might have gotten my beak wet on a couple of those, so.
0:49 Jason Calacanis? Oh, a little beak wet. Well, you know what, in celebration of your recent victory with Airbnb and Wish, I will, oh no, I can't zoom in on my merch, but I've got my unofficial wet your beak mug. So for those of you wondering, we have to get a little bit of housekeeping out of the way at first here. The merch has gone crazy. Have you guys been watching merch on Twitter?
1:18 David Sacks? Of course.
1:20 Jason Calacanis? Anybody got favorite merch or thoughts?
1:22 David Friedberg? I got some of those mugs. I think they arrived today. They look great.
1:27 David Sacks? It's amazing. And you know, the best decision we made was not to let you sell t-shirts, Jason, because you would have, you would have, you would have milked this for every nickel you could. And instead, and instead, we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.
1:45 Jason Calacanis? I mean, they're literally-
1:46 David Sacks? I know that hurt you. I know that hurt you a little bit.
1:49 Jason Calacanis? I mean, the problem I'm having here, no advertising, I'm picking up all the production costs here. I'm sending you guys equipment. You maniacs lose the equipment every time. You go from one of your estates to another estate. I'm sending equipment to four different places. Anyway, we've got a special, very special episode for you today. We are doing-
2:11 Jason Calacanis? Drumroll please. We're gonna add some sound effects to this afterwards. We're gonna do the Bestie Awards today. So we're gonna go through the biggest winners in politics and business and cultures and of course, the losers, the flashes in the pan, the best business moves, the stupidest business moves. We got a lot to get through. But just in terms of housekeeping, again, the All In Syndicate is up and running. I think there's 4,000 people have applied in 10 days.
2:35 David Sacks? Let's just talk about the market cap of Airbnb, or Wish for that matter.
2:41 David Friedberg? What round did you invest in Airbnb?
2:43 David Sacks? Uh, series C.
2:44 David Friedberg? Was that the Founder's Fund round?
2:47 David Sacks? Yeah, yeah.
2:47 David Friedberg? Congratulations.
2:49 David Sacks? Thanks.
2:49 Jason Calacanis? Oh, that's so yummy. But to be honest, that was already over a billion dollar valuation, correct?
2:54 David Sacks? Yeah, it was. It was. I mean, still like-
2:57 Jason Calacanis? It's still an 80 or 100X, right?
2:58 David Friedberg? It's like a 40X, right?
2:59 David Sacks? It's like a 40, it's like a 40X or something like that. So, thank you. Thank you, Brian Chesky. Thank you, Peter Thiel. Peter led that round and Brian was looking to include founders in the round, in addition to it being led by Founder's Fund. And so Peter introduced me and that's how it happened.
3:17 Jason Calacanis? Wow, fantastic. I did not get my big wet on that, but I did mention Airbnb on my podcast and that, you know, I've been trying to get Brian on the podcast for, I don't know, a decade. And I think, you know, I know you guys want to have him on the pod. I've asked him like literally every year for 10 years, but I don't think he likes me. And then he emailed me, said, I listen to the podcast. I like you. I was like, oh, okay, great. Will you come on? He's like, I'll come on. So he's gonna come on this year, I think, which will be great for this week in startups.
3:44 David Sacks? Well, I think, I think Brian and the whole team really did a masterful job of navigating through the whole COVID crisis. I mean, everybody forgets how negative the publicity was. People were talking about Airbnb as COVID roadkill back in April. I tweeted a CNBC headline from back in April, wondering whether Airbnb was even gonna survive. And they navigated the crisis. They did have to cut headcount, but they made the company much more profitable. But they also did great things for both the renters and the hosts. At the company's expense, they refunded something
4:26 David Sacks? like $250 million to the, to users who had canceled reservations, but they gave the money to the host to keep them afloat. So they really did a great job navigating this whole crisis.
4:40 Jason Calacanis? It's a pretty great company. He obviously cares deeply. It was very hard, I think, for him to cut all that staff at that time. It was kind of a tough decision.
4:51 David Sacks? But they were very generous in how they did it. Yeah.
4:53 Jason Calacanis? So congratulations on getting the Beak Wet Sacks. And Chamath, I got a bunch of inbound. You had filed to sell some shares of Virgin Galactic. I saw you tweeted about it and you wanted to be transparent. People asked for you to address it upfront on the show. So go ahead.
5:08 Chamath Palihapitiya? Yeah, I have a lot of projects that I intend to fund in 2021. I'm probably going to put another, I don't know, I think the forecast was almost $2 billion to work. And I needed to manage my liquidity for this year and make sure that, you know, I could continue to make all those investments and fund my, fund all of the other things that I need to do. And that's why I did it.
5:39 Jason Calacanis? And you're still a significant shareholder, I assume, and you believe in the company?
5:44 Chamath Palihapitiya? Yeah, I mean, I remain completely committed to that business. You know, I, it would have been better if I could have sold something else, but it's not quite possible. And when we're entering, when we, when you leave the tax year, you just have to make these decisions to lock in some gains against other losses. And would have loved to have not had to do it, but I needed to manage my liquidity. And so I sold, you know, it's a small portion of what I own. So
6:08 Jason Calacanis? Yeah, that was sort of my point. This is a small, small portion of what you own. And I mean, this is something that, you know, in poker and in business, you got to manage your chip stack and you got to manage your bankroll. So today, we're going to do the besties. This is our first attempt at talking about, it's our award show for 2020. Let's leave it at that. Let's start out with the biggest winner.
6:31 Chamath Palihapitiya? Before, hold on, hold on a second. How much weight did you lose? Because it's either that you're still fat and you have a, wait, wait, it's either you're still fat and you have an incredible camera, or you've actually lost weight. And this reminds me, by the way, I would like to tell a story.
6:47 Jason Calacanis? No, no, no, no.
6:48 Chamath Palihapitiya? Four years ago.
6:50 Jason Calacanis? Oh, my God. Here we go.
6:52 Chamath Palihapitiya? Jason, Jason and I make a weight bet.
6:55 Jason Calacanis? Okay, just don't say the dollar amount.
6:57 Chamath Palihapitiya? It was like, you know, it was like, I think it was like $10,000 a pound. And Jason, Jason, he would get 10th, he was about to do, and this is incredible. Jason comes to us five years ago and says, guys, you won't believe it. I'm doing a show on NBC. A reality TV show. That's true. A pilot and with. Not.
7:22 Chamath Palihapitiya? Please beep that out. Okay, beep that up. Beep that out so I don't get canceled. Oh, my God, that guy, that guy seems like a train wreck. But okay, that's fine. You're gonna do this pilot with.
7:34 Chamath Palihapitiya? Beep beep. And NBC. And NBC, and don't you need to, you know, be in fighting shape? And he said, yes, I need motivation. So I said, here's motivation. Let's make a weight bet. You need to be under 190 pounds and I'll pay you 10,000, $10,000 a pound that you're underneath. You pay me 10,000 a pound over. Yeah. It was like six months later and we're hosting, I'm hosting a poker game. And I realized, oh, my God, this is the last, this is the last day of the bet. The day before. Oh, so we started the day before and then the last day of the bet is midnight. I wait till midnight and I jump up and I'm like, wait, Ben.
8:19 Chamath Palihapitiya? And so I say, Jason, you gotta be under 190, 192.5 or 193 pounds. He literally goes Ashen White. And he says. More white than I have now, because I just ate and I was maintaining my weight. He says, he says, okay, okay, that's fine. He had been eating pizza, nachos, a pizza. You sandbagged me. You sandbagged me. He ate a brick, he ate a brick of brie. I swear to God, that. And then he says, he says, Friedberg, you won't believe this. He goes, guys, I just need five minutes before the weigh in. And then he goes to our guest bedroom and calls to take a shit. That's not true. What is that? It is absolutely true. There was no code 13 in this story. You're fabricating now.
9:04 Chamath Palihapitiya? He tried, he tried to shit out five pounds. I took a leak. Who could do, who could do that at midnight? After, after eating all that pizza and cheese and nachos and everything. Anyways, he loses the weight bet and he says, Jamar, this is completely unfair. I'm not gonna pay you. He was like 196 pounds. I'm not paying you this money. It was like one pound over.
9:27 Chamath Palihapitiya? And he said, uh, this bet is not over until midnight the fall, obviously.
9:32 Jason Calacanis? Yes, obviously. Yes. Yes. Fair enough.
9:34 Chamath Palihapitiya? So I said, all right, fine, Jake, I'll find. He goes home. He literally takes every diuretic known to man.
9:43 Jason Calacanis? Come on.
9:44 Chamath Palihapitiya? And then he loses, he doesn't eat the whole day.
9:47 Jason Calacanis? I did go for a walk in two pairs of sweatpants and sweated it out.
9:51 Chamath Palihapitiya? I checked in with this guy 10 times this day. He walked like 12 miles. He took four shits, you know.
9:59 Jason Calacanis? I sweated it out. Steam room, hot bath.
10:03 Chamath Palihapitiya? Saxi.
10:03 David Sacks? He did, uh, he did a colonoscopy.
10:06 Chamath Palihapitiya? He did a colonoscopy. To his credit, he lost five pounds by midnight and he won the bet.
10:12 Jason Calacanis? But then I said, then I said, you know what? Because there were two different weigh-ins, uh, we were gonna go play in a poker tournament. So we went and played in the poker tournament. I said, Chamath, buy me into the poker tournament. Well, whatever we win, we'll chop it up if it happens. So we just made it into a friendly thing.
10:27 Chamath Palihapitiya? Um, and obviously.
10:28 Jason Calacanis? But great. Now that story is out there and now I'm gonna, everybody's gonna be on Twitter with the code their t-shirt.
10:36 Chamath Palihapitiya? And I hope somebody in the All-In Army does the t-shirt that just says 192.5 and we'll all know what it means, which is the weight that.
10:43 Jason Calacanis? The 190, it was 193.
10:46 Chamath Palihapitiya? 193.
10:47 Jason Calacanis? Which is crazy that I'm one, it was 193. Anyway, here we go. Getting into the categories. Our first category is the biggest winner in politics, biggest winner in politics. I'm gonna ask you gentlemen to raise your hand if you have a strong feeling on this. I'll call on one of you. Who's got a, a big winner in politics? Go ahead, Chamath.
11:08 Chamath Palihapitiya? Joe Biden.
11:10 Jason Calacanis? Joe Biden. Okay, going out on a limb there. Joe Biden.
11:13 Chamath Palihapitiya? I mean, let's be honest, there's nobody bigger. And actually, if you wanted to abstract it, what I would say is centrism was the big winner. And, uh, and it kind of feeds the losers, which is sort of the extreme left and the extreme right. But I would say that centrism and Joe Biden were the huge, huge, huge winners.
11:30 David Sacks? Well, I'll give a, I'll give a, um, an orthodox pick, which is Xi Jinping, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. You would have thought he would have had a bad year, starting off with, you know, COVID, uh, starting in his country at the beginning of the year, but he was able, they, you know, the, the global plague came from China, but they were able to kinda, uh, they were able to use a very gullible WHO to launder responsibility for the catastrophe. And they took advantage of the crisis to build more client states in Asia and Africa with promises of vaccines and, and money. And finally, his biggest global
12:11 David Sacks? nemesis, uh, Trump, and then, you know, Pompeo lost in the election. So you have to say he came out on top at the end of this year.
12:20 David Friedberg? Free burn? I, I, um, I put, I have the exact same answer as Sax. I put the Chinese Communist Party as a whole, actually. And I feel like, um, on the world stage, they're, uh, they're strengthened, uh, in, in the post-COVID world. So.
12:33 Jason Calacanis? I had Kamala.
12:36 David Friedberg? Yeah.
12:36 Jason Calacanis? Because she went from the famous quote in the debates, there was a little girl in California who was bused to school, that little girl was me, where she took on Joe Biden, and then she winds up getting the VP slot, and I think she winds up actually becoming president and will be the first female president of the year of the, of, of, in the history of the United States. And that could happen in the first term, or if Joe Biden doesn't run for a second term and they do a halfway decent job. Kamala plus Pete Buttigieg is a pretty great ticket as well. Who's the biggest loser? Who's your biggest loser, Chamath?
13:14 Jason Calacanis? In politics?
13:15 Chamath Palihapitiya? Donald J. Trump.
13:17 Jason Calacanis? Okay, the obvious answer.
13:18 Chamath Palihapitiya? And the extreme left, the extreme left and the extreme right.
13:22 Jason Calacanis? Got it.
13:22 David Sacks? I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll agree with that, but I'd also add Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House. Uh, her impeachment of Trump at the beginning of the year went absolutely nowhere. It wasn't even an issue in the election. And her majority in the House has almost completely disappeared. She lost a dozen seats. I think the, um, the, the, I think she's down to about four or five seats as a razor thin majority in the House. And she's set to lose more in the midterm elections. I predict that she is set to not be Speaker anymore in two years and headed for retirement.
13:58 Jason Calacanis? Okay, Friedberg, you got one? Biggest loser?
14:00 David Friedberg? I have, I have the institution of American democracy is the biggest loser of 2020. I feel like we're coming out of this year with like no belief that our election was valid for a vast majority, for a sizable minority of this country that, um, that the whole system-
14:19 Jason Calacanis? Well, actually, some Democrats believe that the election was fraudulent now, too.
14:22 David Friedberg? I mean, if you say something enough times, everyone believes it. So, um, you know, here we are, coming out of this year, we're with a crippling, um, lack of faith in our electoral system, and it's scary that American democracy is being fundamentally questioned by its own constituents. So, um, so I think that's the biggest loser of the-
14:41 Jason Calacanis? I had, I had, uh, two choices here. One of them was already said. I said the hysterical left as my runner-up. Bernie and Warren, just dismissed by Biden and Kamala. They, they are not even part of the discussion anymore, and they didn't even get cabinet positions. So, the hysterical left and the socialist Communist Party is out of the Democratic Party, thank the Lord. But my biggest loser, I have to say that this is the worst run of any politician I've ever seen in a year, which is Rudy Giuliani, under investigation for Les Parnas and Igor Fromm, then the bogus lawsuit elections, then farting during a hearing, then doing the Barat Chertuk. I don't know if we have feelings on if that was a tuck, or if he was trying to wake up
15:26 Jason Calacanis? the genie, and then he bleeds hair dye.
15:31 Jason Calacanis? Then he starts bleeding hair dye. Wake up the genie, bud.
15:34 Chamath Palihapitiya? Andy got COVID, no?
15:36 David Friedberg? Andy got COVID.
15:36 Chamath Palihapitiya? Wait.
15:38 David Friedberg? Andy's in the hospital with COVID.
15:41 Jason Calacanis? I mean, just think.
15:44 David Friedberg? If you think you had a shitty year.
15:47 Jason Calacanis? I think there's gonna be- The fans of the show are now registering domain names of things we say.
15:54 David Friedberg? The upside for him is that Donald Trump's campaign is paying him $20,000 a day in legal fees.
15:59 Jason Calacanis? Oh, no, I think it was 200.
16:01 David Friedberg? No, it was 20 grand a day.
16:02 Jason Calacanis? Oh, it was only 20?
16:03 David Friedberg? That's his going rate for making a fool of himself.
16:07 David Sacks? I have a, I have a feeling that rate was adjusted when Rudy couldn't get the case to the Supreme Court.
16:14 Jason Calacanis? Well, we all know that Trump pays his bills on time, so it shouldn't be a problem, right? All right, now we're gonna have some more fun. Biggest winner in business, biggest winner in business, Friedberg, you want to lead us off? You haven't led us off yet.
16:29 David Friedberg? I'll, I'll take this one. I think that the biggest winner in business this year is a company that started a few years ago called Moderna. This company had a IPO in December of 18 at $7.5 billion market cap. It traded between 4 and 5 billion throughout 2019. And all of a sudden, COVID hits, and this becomes a vaccine candidate driver for Moderna. And the stock shoots up, it's worth 60 billion today. This company has not had a product that's gone to market prior to COVID. And they struggled getting this business. I wouldn't say struggled, but they, they never really had a, an application for their mRNA technology. They looked at it for years, iterating and pivoting this business. And COVID, like a lot of other businesses, really gave them an unbelievable kick.
17:13 Jason Calacanis? What am I even saying, a shot in the arm?
17:15 David Friedberg? A shot in the arm. And tonight they got approval from the FDA and they're gonna be shipping certain to, on Monday, I think.
17:20 Jason Calacanis? Sacks, who you got for the biggest winner in business? We're moving at a good pace here.
17:24 David Sacks? Elon Musk, our friend. Rose to become the second richest man in the world, ahead of Bill Gates. And, you know, right on the heels of Jeff Bezos. His company Tesla had something like an 8 or 10x gains, over a $500 billion company. Of course, the products are awesome, it joined the S and P 500, and SpaceX is doing amazing as well. We saw the launch of Starship the other day, and I have just been mesmerized by all these unboxing videos for Starlink, which you can see on YouTube. And it is just magic that you can unbox this little satellite dish, plug it in, and you have broadband internet from space.
18:04 David Sacks? So I think, you know, Elon seems to be on track to be not only the world's richest man, but the world's first trillionaire.
18:13 Jason Calacanis? Wow, big ups there to E. Chamath, what do you got for the biggest winner in business of 2020?
18:22 Chamath Palihapitiya? Yeah, I have to agree with SaxiPoo. Elon is the... Elon basically has had, over the last 10 or 15 years, an incredible amount of challenges that he's overcome. He's had an incredible amount of haters. He's had, probably had to deal with stuff that most of us would have broken under. And he just fought through it. And the guy just basically bended all the haters until he crushed their souls. And I just think that that's incredible. And so Elon Musk is the, hands down, the biggest, biggest, most obvious winner of 2020.
18:57 Jason Calacanis? That's the obvious winner. I'll give a couple of runner-ups here. I thought also on the runner-ups, after Elon, Zoom beating Skype, Slack video, Google Hangouts, and fixing all their China issues and getting to $100 billion valuation is notable. Obviously, Amazon did a great job because of the pandemic. And then, just as an oddball out there, I just thought Adam Silver and the NBA bubble was an incredibly bold project that was executed so well and was such a delightful business moment and also a cultural moment that, you know, you had the NBA shutting down during the pandemic. Remember that dramatic night on a Thursday night? And they canceled the games, and then they do the bubble and it works.
19:42 Jason Calacanis? And that gave me hope that we could get through the virus. So those were some of my other runners-up. All right, the biggest loser in business in 2020. Go ahead, Chamath.
19:52 Chamath Palihapitiya? Facebook and Google. Exiting the year with umpteen antitrust lawsuits. I think morale must be pretty brutal over there. There's no amount of money at some point that people are willing to get paid to walk in the door every day and just have to do, have to deal with those kinds of accusations. And so, for all the good in the world that they do, which, so it just must be really tough that they have to deal with it. But those guys, I think, are the biggest losers in business.
20:21 Jason Calacanis? Who do you got, Sax?
20:23 David Sacks? The small business person. You know, whether it's restaurants, retail, hospitality, what have you. Small business people really took it on the chin this year.
20:33 David Sacks? I agree with Tomoth about, you know, companies like Google and Facebook losing esteem in the eyes of the public for good reason, censorship, so on. But tech still are, you know, stocks are at all time highs. The politicians got to keep eating at French Laundry, but it was the small business people who got absolutely decimated by these lockdowns, which don't even work. And so they are the big loser of 2020.
20:56 Jason Calacanis? Free Burger, what you got?
20:58 David Friedberg? I'm a little more vanilla than the rest of you guys. I went with AMC Entertainment Holdings. Talk about a fuck business in COVID. Restaurants, at least, you can do takeout. You can't take out a movie from AMC. They're shut down all over the country. Their creditors are telling them to declare bankruptcy. It's a total shit show. No one's gonna go back to the movie theater.
21:16 Jason Calacanis? You don't think they go back?
21:18 David Friedberg? I don't think they go. I don't know what the hell like AMC is gonna do. What do you do with all those theaters? They're awesome. I love going to the movies, but I'm not going to the movies for at least another year. So, and it's sad because honestly, like, movies are a big part of my life, always have been. And it's sad to see movie theaters, you know.
21:33 Jason Calacanis? They're gonna come back stronger. They're gonna come back stronger. I think Amazon will buy one chain. I think Netflix buys the other. And then with your membership, you get to go and see all the range of stuff and maybe even see like Queen's Gambit in the theater.
21:46 David Friedberg? It's such a, it's such a great experience, right? Yeah.
21:48 Jason Calacanis? Yeah, I would have loved to see Queen's Gambit in a theater.
21:50 David Friedberg? Totally. There's so much you could do with theaters. And I think there's an opportunity. But man, did those guys get screwed this year.
21:55 Jason Calacanis? Well, I always thought they should do an extended edition. So imagine if when HBO or one of those did, you know, Game of Thrones, if they had it out the day before in movie theaters or the week before, or two days before, and they did an extra 10 minutes, people would love that. My biggest loser was, of course, same as David, real world businesses, absolutely demolished. And the government, after that first stimulus, which was incredible, Trump did an amazing job of just dropping buckets of money, whether it was that PP loans and PPE loans, whatever the PPP loans, PPP loans. All this stuff was incredible. And then what complete utter bullshit and incompetence from our government that they couldn't get the second one done. It's absolutely fucking infuriating that the Democrats and
22:40 Jason Calacanis? the Republicans, these selfish...
22:44 Jason Calacanis? Fuckers couldn't get another billion dollars dropped on people's head and here we are in December. That shit needed to drop in August or September, not December. It's just absolutely disgraceful. It's they're I'm just disgusted that they couldn't even get some more money to people who are suffering unemployment and these restaurants, 100,000 restaurant closures by the end of 2020. It's just unconscionable that the the stock market is ripping and we can't get just some money in people's pockets. Just drop the money. It's infuriating. We're sitting here at the taping of this that it might actually happen. Okay, biggest winner in culture. Who's got a big winner in culture? Anybody got one?
23:28 David Friedberg? I got the um, the Black Lives Matter movement and I think it um, I think it was such a like meaningful um, and impactful uh, um, kind of shift in how people were thinking fundamentally about behavior in society. It's still persisting. You know, there's corporate action, there's state action, there's regulatory action. Um, and I think it's a, it's a meaningful movement that's going to persist. I think it came at a time when we all felt like, you know, a lot of people felt locked up in their homes. People were angry. People were frustrated with the system and um, just uh, it just was a very poignant moment, especially occurring during COVID that it really took hold. Um, and I think it's gonna last and I think that
24:12 David Friedberg? the uh, um, the movement itself is gonna spawn a lot of change.
24:17 Jason Calacanis? Yeah, I think it's well said. David, who do you got in culture?
24:21 David Sacks? Baby Yoda, uh, star.
24:23 Jason Calacanis? So you went pop culture on that one?
24:26 David Sacks? Yeah, star, star of the Mandalorian show, uh, that his, his ascent to icon status, uh, helped Disney get 86 million subscribers.
24:35 Jason Calacanis? Grogu.
24:36 David Sacks? For, for Disney Plus, uh, which just blew expectations and uh, has established Disney Plus as the main rival to Netflix.
24:45 Jason Calacanis? Do you think Netflix, uh, you think Disney will pass Netflix, correct?
24:49 David Sacks? I don't know if they'll pass them, but they're now certainly going to be a major rival to them.
24:53 Jason Calacanis? I think that I think they pass them. Okay, Chamath, what do you got?
24:56 Chamath Palihapitiya? I would pick a combination of Fortnite, Roblox and Among Me, which I think has for at least um,
25:08 Chamath Palihapitiya? A lot of high school and middle school kids, but I maybe a lot of adults, the only form of social interaction that we've had for an entire year.
25:18 Jason Calacanis? What a great, what a great selection.
25:20 Chamath Palihapitiya? And, and I think it's important to understand how much lonelier we all would have been and how much more mental illness and depression we all would have dealt with if we couldn't have even just talked to our friends. And I think that there's something really beautiful that those games did for people.
25:35 Jason Calacanis? That's a good one. That's a good one. I, I went with podcasting. I think on a cultural basis, Joe Rogan and what's happening in podcasting, these long-form discussions, even this podcast has become just an amazing, amazing movement. And people are having better discussions and I consider it the antidote to what's happening on social media. When people hear us discussing stuff on this podcast, they feel like they ate something nutritious. They had a great salad. They had some healthy food. And then when they're on social media and they consume the same tweets that we're doing, they feel like it's junk food, right? And so I think that podcasting, long-form discussions, listening to each other, maybe, you know, Republicans and Democrats, left, right, everybody, listening to each other and podcasting is just such
26:20 Jason Calacanis? a great meeting medium for discussion. Who is the biggest loser on a cultural basis in 2020, Mr. David Sacks?
26:30 David Sacks? The media, starting with the New York Times and other sort of elite media, they ripped the umpire jersey off their backs to go after Trump. Well, they got him, but at what cost? Half the country will never trust them again. This makes conspiracy theories more likely. It makes cultural divides deeper. And they've been revealed to be corporate journalists, journalists who subscribe to and serve an agenda of their corporate masters. They've lost the public's trust.
26:58 Jason Calacanis? Friedberg, what do you got on the biggest cultural loser?
27:03 David Friedberg? Climate change took a backseat this year. It, you know, it had momentum as a, as a cultural meme. It's, it's lost its, its luster and it's been shadowed a little bit this year with BLM and, and COVID and lack of faith in institutions and all the other stuff that's been going on.
27:24 Jason Calacanis? Do you think that people now, when they see the collective response to COVID and the, the vaccines and us, our ability with science and technology to solve the pandemic, we will have a newfound appreciation for coordinated global action on global warming, David?
27:41 David Friedberg? I think, are you asking me? I think, I think the, I think the faith in institutions has eroded tremendously this year. The WHO telling people not to wear masks and then telling them, hey, masks are good. The FDA.
27:55 Jason Calacanis? So you think that, that hits the, um, the global warming movement as well?
28:00 David Friedberg? Yeah, I think the, the lack of faith in institutions as well as in the media makes it really difficult for things that require a coordinated effort and a coordinated cultural shift to take hold, um, you know, are really challenged in this new kind of model where, where you don't know what to believe and you don't believe institutions and you don't believe old school and you don't believe states and you don't believe, you know, anything structural anymore. So it's, it's a scary, it's a scary kind of moment. I don't know. I think climate change is going to have momentum with the new administration, at least coming into office in the U.S. But, but generally like institutional guidance is, is lost its luster.
28:37 Jason Calacanis? Tramath, what do you got?
28:39 Chamath Palihapitiya? Wokeness. Wokeness. And I, I think when you now look at the realization of what we've gone through, um, people have realized that, you know, you can, you can be extremely anti-racist and think Latinx is just a stupid label. You know, you can be an entirely complete 100,000 million percent supporter of LGBTQ, but think that, you know, all these complicated pronouns aren't really necessary. Um, and I think that people are coming to a point where you can have nuance. Um, and I think that that's really important.
29:19 Chamath Palihapitiya? I think that this whole cancel culture and wokeness was incredibly corrosive. Um, and I think that, that they lost.
29:28 Jason Calacanis? I think it's actually a great, um, I think it's, I think it's a great point you're making, Chamath, because on the last episode, I fumbled the word MX, which none of us had ever seen. We all laughed about it. And then I just had this little thing. I was like, okay, I guess this is when I get canceled because I laughed at the fact that, or I mispronounced it, right? And the fact that I thought even for a second, that mispronouncing this term MX, which I then did research on, and I said, does anybody know how to pronounce word MX on Twitter? So I figured I would preempt the, the dropping of the, um, podcast by bringing it up on my Twitter. And people are like, are you trolling? I'm like, no, I'm asking. And I found videos
30:10 Jason Calacanis? and it turns out, there is an actual controversy in the trans community, where MX, some people believe means mixed, M I X E D. Other people think it's, um, MX as X, the variable, as in the variable X. And so they're having their own debate. They're figuring it out. That's great. Everybody loves them. Everybody supports them. But the fact that I mispronounce it, you know, should I be canceled for mispronouncing?
30:36 Chamath Palihapitiya? People that are struggling with that?
30:36 Jason Calacanis? Yeah.
30:37 Chamath Palihapitiya? Well, Jason, can I tell you, can I tell those people that are struggling with whether X equals anything or X equals mixed? Just to touch upon Friedberg's point, um, the human race has caused 8% of all the species in the world to go extinct. And we have put another 22% of every single other species at the, at the brink of extinction. At the same time, we have now expanded our footprint to touch 75% of the earth's land surface. So until somebody fixes those problems, I don't actually want to know what the X stands for.
31:14 Jason Calacanis? Yeah. I mean, we were, this idea that we're going to cancel each other.
31:18 Chamath Palihapitiya? Until we put stimulus checks.
31:21 Chamath Palihapitiya? Put the fucking stimulus checks into people's hands. Get these small businesses back to work. Then you can tell me what the X stands for.
31:27 Jason Calacanis? Yeah, okay. My biggest loser on culture was the same exact as you, David. We're thinking similar. I have taken the red pill you gave me. I crushed it up. I've been snorting these, the red pill like crazy. People think I'm turning into a Republican, but I thought mainstream media and late-stage journalism sacrificed objectivity specifically to get subscriptions and they used the anti-Trump feelings and they worked them and got the the ratings from them and they literally used that New York Times is the, is the, the best example. I think the work you guys use for best example is canonical of like using their anti-Trump feelings to get people to take out their wallets and subscribe.
32:07 Jason Calacanis? Everybody realizes it. They drove out Bari Weiss. They drove out their editor of the page for making people feel unsafe with their words. And then New York Magazine drove out Andrew Sullivan and then Glenn Greenwald gets, leaves his publication. I mean, anybody who dissents inside of one of these publications, they canceled them inside of a publication for an opinion on an opinion page. It's crazy. Okay, let's keep everything moving here. Biggest turnaround in, I guess this is biggest turnaround
32:38 Jason Calacanis? anything, but I did business. I'll lead off with mine. My best turnaround was Airbnb. They laid off 25% of the company in July. 1900 of 7,500 employees, they cut their marketing budget by 800 million and then they IPO five months later. And they had raised a billion dollars at an 18 billion dollar valuation, according to PitchBook and now worth 88 billion a week after the IPO. That is a turnaround of all turnarounds. David, who did you have?
33:08 David Sacks? This is where I had Joe Biden. He finished fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire. No candidate has ever bombed that badly in the first two contests and gone on to win the nomination. Biden roared back in South Carolina and then won big on Super Tuesday and wrapped up the party nomination by March. Biggest political comeback ever.
33:28 Jason Calacanis? Who do you got, Friedberg?
33:31 David Friedberg? I got Airbnb as well. I mean, from, yeah. And here's the, here's one of the craziest stats. They're sitting there in Q1 with a great business. Revenue dropped 67% in Q2. Can you just imagine the experience of 67% of your revenue going away in one quarter? Cash burn, skyrocket and just having to respond quickly and still maintain integrity with your customers and your employees as a leadership team. I mean, it was incredible leadership demonstration.
33:59 Jason Calacanis? It's a five alarm, it's a five alarm fire, right? I mean, it's literally, you gotta get everybody out of the building.
34:04 David Friedberg? Here, here we go.
34:04 David Sacks? I agree with that. I agree with that.
34:07 Jason Calacanis? Sax agrees.
34:12 Jason Calacanis? Who do you got, Chamath? I'm curious. Who is your biggest turnaround? Biggest censorship?
34:18 Chamath Palihapitiya? Censor, censorship. Censorship existed in, in draconian and the dark ages of our, of our journey as a country and in the world. And it came roaring back this year. The amount of people that have been muzzled, stifled, the amount of fact and science that literally just gets judged willy nilly by our distribution points like Facebook and Twitter and Medium. It's really scary. So censorship made a roaring comeback in 2020.
34:46 Jason Calacanis? I, I like it. I like it a lot. Okay. Now we go on to the biggest flash in the pan. You can interpret this any way you like. What do you got, Saxi Poop?
34:59 David Sacks? The WHO, the WHO, nobody knew who, the, the World Health Organization, nobody knew what the WHO was before this year. Then they have become, you know, somehow this global authority on COVID despite getting everything wrong. They initially said that we didn't need to wear masks. They didn't update that until June 5th. This was about 10 weeks after my blog saying that, you know, masks were a good idea. They got the method of transmission wrong. They were saying that transmission mainly occurred through fomites, which is contagious surfaces instead of respiratory particles. They initially said that lockdowns worked, then they modified their policy on that because of its.
35:40 David Sacks? Impact to marginal groups. And so the WHO has just gotten everything wrong this year. And despite that fact, you now have, to Chamath point, Google, YouTube, and even sites like LinkedIn or Nextdoor are now censoring people's statements if they contradict the WHO, apparently without irony, because nobody has contradicted the WHO more than the WHO itself. I look forward to next year when nobody cares about the WHO anymore.
36:11 Jason Calacanis? Great. Friedberg, what do you got? Flash in the pan.
36:16 David Friedberg? Uh, I put hydroxychloroquine. You guys remember?
36:21 Jason Calacanis? Yeah, that was good. Good point.
36:22 David Friedberg? It was gonna, it was gonna save the world for a minute or two. And then, you know, here we are. And so I'm just gonna leave it at that. Yeah.
36:30 Jason Calacanis? Here we, okay. Everybody knows. You may have heard of hydrochloroquine. Okay.
36:38 Jason Calacanis? Some people say it's America. I took it. It's great. Chamath, what do you got?
36:42 Chamath Palihapitiya? It's actually quite, it's actually quite related to this. And I thought that she was marvelous, but I do think she will disappear off the scene, which is Sarah Cooper, which, uh, you know, basically in the last month of the campaign, um, kind of just disappeared. And now is, uh, I don't think, uh, anybody knows who Sarah Cooper is. And probably in a year from now won't. But for, for the period, for the, for those dark months of the pandemic, her mockery of Trump was some of the funniest stuff on Twitter that I'd ever seen.
37:13 Jason Calacanis? Sarah Cooper is amazing. Yeah. She, she got a Netflix and I don't think she'll be a flash in the pan. I think she'll come back. Um, I would have loved to pick, um, who was the press secretary for, um, with the southern accent for, for Trump? Sax?
37:29 David Friedberg? Sarah Huckabee Sanders?
37:31 Jason Calacanis? Yeah, Huckabee. She, but I think she was gone in 20, by 2020. So I can't pick her, but she was amazing at defending Trump. She's like, you all are dumb and Trump is smart and he has 150 IQ and he owns Mar-a-Lago and he has a jet and his jet's bigger than your jet. And you are the fake news media. And I don't care what you say, American public don't care what you say. And Trump is amazing in bed. He was banging porn stars when y'all were jerking. I mean, he's just, she would defend him. I, that's who I want as my PR person. She defended him for all time. My biggest flash in the pan though is-
38:12 David Friedberg? I don't need a PR person.
38:15 Jason Calacanis? I don't need a PR person. I got this, we got this podcast now. We don't need the press or PR. We just go right to the audience.
38:22 Jason Calacanis? Nicola, trading at $34 billion. They took your precious Sacks, Chamath, and they perverted it with a dipshit Milton who was on my podcast and couldn't answer basic questions. It's now worth $6 billion and I predict it will be worth 60 cents. I kid you not, this company will go to zero, is my prediction. If you are buying companies, and I made Jason's really based on this-
38:49 David Friedberg? You're gonna scare all founder, all founder CEOs are gonna avoid coming on your podcast now.
38:53 Jason Calacanis? No, no, no, I'm delightful. But for this kid,
38:59 Jason Calacanis? he's under investigation.
39:01 David Friedberg? Your company is worth nothing.
39:03 Jason Calacanis? You're weak, listen, you're worthless. No, he's under investigation. The thing's a disaster. They're obviously riding on Elon's coattails. He couldn't make a decision if it was hydrogen powered cars or electric trucks or whatever. And the company's in chaos. And I made a rule, which is if a company has not released their product, and it's worth over a billion dollars, be careful because it could be a fraud, or it could be a disaster. That's my biggest flash in the pan, Nicola. Biggest breakthrough? Friedberg, you want to start us off on this one? I have an idea. I think I know what you're gonna say.
39:38 David Friedberg? I'm gonna say AlphaFold, you know that we talked about in the last podcast. I think AlphaFold feels to me like what ARPANET was, which was the origins of the internet, you know, back when it was first installed and no one really kind of grappled with the ramifications of what would emerge. And I think, you know, once we have the ability to design proteins to do things, a lot's gonna change in the world of medicine and human health and longevity and the kind of environment. And it's gonna be pretty powerful. So I'm excited about AlphaFold creating a foundation for humanity's ability to do those things.
40:10 Jason Calacanis? Chamath, what do you got?
40:12 Chamath Palihapitiya? 100%, AlphaFold. By, there's not a close second, to be honest.
40:17 Jason Calacanis? Okay, Sax?
40:20 David Sacks? Well, as a as a close second, I guess I would I would mention the mRNA vaccines, which we talked about on the show, the ability to basically print a vaccine in two days. And hopefully, they will follow our advice about challenge vaccines. The next time we have one of these pandemics.
40:37 Jason Calacanis? Challenge trials.
40:38 David Sacks? Challenge trials, we can we can respond much more quickly. And then just quickly in politics, I thought the biggest breakthrough was Pete Buttigieg. He made the unlikely leap from mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to being the first credible openly gay candidate for president. He won Iowa, sort of, along with Bernie Sanders, and was a very close second in New Hampshire. He's going to be the the he's going to be the director of the Transportation Department in the Biden administration.
41:09 David Friedberg? By the way, I want to just point something out on your sorry, Jake Al, but you know, the mRNA vaccine technology has been around for like 15 years, and regulatory barriers and regulatory constraints have largely kept this stuff from coming to market. And it's interesting how, you know, in a year where we have this pandemic emergency, we can take this technology that has been around and has been available to us for so long. And suddenly, you know, all the regulatory barriers get dropped and things come to market that change the world. I think it's a great highlight of like, what's possible when some regulatory constraints are diminished a little bit, and technology is really allowed to flourish and see the light of day. And, you know, we all act so surprised that this technology
41:50 David Friedberg? works, but it's been here for a while. It's pretty pretty astounding that it hasn't worked or hasn't been allowed to work in the past.
41:56 Jason Calacanis? In a previous episode, Friedberg.
41:58 David Friedberg? Just an observation, I think it's worth noting.
41:59 Jason Calacanis? Yeah, I think it's a really valid one, because it wasn't a breakthrough that occurred this year. The breakthrough was they broke through the regulations. You said you wanted to wait and see some people get the vaccines first. And then that led to some accounts on the Twitter saying, are you still anti vaccination? And I had to correct them that you've never said you were anti vaccination, to be clear.
42:22 David Friedberg? Oh, I'm not anti vax, not at all.
42:24 Jason Calacanis? No.
42:25 David Friedberg? No, no, I said, my point, my point.
42:28 Jason Calacanis? Yes.
42:29 David Friedberg? No, no, I think my point is, I think a lot of people are gonna latch on, sorry, let me just be really clear. I think a lot of people are gonna latch on to the small number of cases that are gonna be amplified of people having adverse reactions to this, you know, new technology vaccine. In Alaska the other day, like two days ago, there was a nurse who got the vaccine and she had a really bad anaphylactic reaction to it. She had to be given epinephrine twice to survive. And she came out and she was fine. But it's that storytelling, that's like, you know, they, they, they assume it should be some small percentage of people will have some reaction to this thing. But that is the storytelling that will keep people from doing this. And I think that is the, the biggest kind of concern. And that's why you've got guys like Mike Pence doing the, the vaccine tomorrow. You know, he's gonna do
43:11 David Friedberg? it on live TV and celebrities like Ian McKellen doing it. They're, they're trying to kind of
43:15 Chamath Palihapitiya? create a little bit of debate around this. Wait, wait, wait, are we gonna see Mike Pence's naked shoulder and bicep on television?
43:21 Jason Calacanis? They're gonna blur it out. They're gonna pixelate it because mom doesn't want to see that. That's not allowed in his.
43:26 Chamath Palihapitiya? No, but is, is mother, is mother gonna be beside him?
43:29 David Friedberg? That's his wife, by the way. He calls his, he calls his wife mother.
43:32 Jason Calacanis? Actually, mother's gonna give it to him because if a, if a woman doctor gave it to him, it would be kind of like cheating because she stuck something in him, you know, and it's just not right. Um, uh, okay. Uh, I can't wait to take it. If anybody doesn't want their vaccine, I will take it because I'm losing my mind in quarantine. I mean, for the love of God. Uh, smartest business move? Chamath?
43:57 Chamath Palihapitiya? I think, uh, 2020 was, uh, the year of the SPAC. I think that it is, uh, in his, it's an incredibly, it's done, it's, it's done something really, really, really important in the capital markets. So that, uh,
44:13 David Friedberg? Can you give Chamath his bestie award now? J Cal?
44:16 Jason Calacanis? Yes. Accepting his bestie award. Give it to him by himself. Would you like an acceptance speech?
44:23 Chamath Palihapitiya? Uh, I would like to thank me.
44:25 Jason Calacanis? The smartest business move. This is classic Chamath. The smartest business move. Me.
44:31 Jason Calacanis? Sax, what was your smartest business move? Or the smartest business move in business?
44:35 David Sacks? Well, I, I'd like to thank Chamath for the SPAC thing too, because I was in open door and, uh, I was in porch and both of them are SPAC-ing this year. So.
44:44 Jason Calacanis? Oh, I'm in desktop metal. I'm gonna go. We have to agree. Chamath is the best in business.
44:49 David Sacks? You've, you've wet, you've wet all of our beaks. So.
44:52 Chamath Palihapitiya? Yeah, I mean, I mean, actually, if you think about it, I, I've done, uh, six deals this year. Are we still talking about me or okay?
45:02 Jason Calacanis? We have to play the music, you know, the walk off music on the Oscars.
45:08 David Friedberg? Oh my god. Excepting his second bestie is Chamorah.
45:12 Jason Calacanis? He's been nominated three times, but this is the only bestie he's won.
45:16 Chamath Palihapitiya? I really wanted to be in that reality show with you and
45:23 Jason Calacanis? I mean, talk about dodging a bullet. We went with this trailer to the top five studios. They all wanted it in the room. NBC says, we'll take it in the room. The head of NBC says, we'll take it. We taped the pilot and then beeps. Whole career life blows up and thank the Lord that show didn't get on TV because it would have been executive produced by beep. And yeah, that would have been bad. So no reality TV for me. I had another smart business move. I just wanted to point out, which was Salesforce buying Slack. I think it's brilliant for them. I think they're going to look back on the 10% they paid of their
46:06 Jason Calacanis? capital for Slack and I think Slack will be more important than Salesforce ultimately in business.
46:13 Chamath Palihapitiya? It's a huge
46:13 Jason Calacanis? The most important brand there.
46:15 Chamath Palihapitiya? What a crown jewel. What a great, what a great move by Benioff and Brett Taylor. And I just think, what a great asset.
46:22 Jason Calacanis? Will it be better for them than YouTube is for Google or Instagram is for?
46:26 Chamath Palihapitiya? I think, I think it's on that level. Actually, I think it's of that order of magnitude. Where the importance of those assets to those companies, Slack will be to Salesforce.
46:35 David Friedberg? Costs 20 times, 30 times as much though.
46:39 David Friedberg? So less upside, but.
46:41 Chamath Palihapitiya? Less upside, but, but in terms of like lock in and value and, you know, the prevention of churn over time, I think it's going to be huge.
46:48 Jason Calacanis? I mean, it could be at some point, the company is Slack Salesforce, like Slack will be the the preeminent brand there. David, did you go for this for smartest business move?
46:59 David Sacks? I I agree. I agree with both the ones you've already done.
47:02 Jason Calacanis? Okay.
47:03 David Friedberg? I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna rattle one off real quick. I got, I think people miss this, but at the bottom of the market, Silver Lake did this massive debt deal into Airbnb, which if you'll remember is reminiscent to me of Warren Buffett, you know, giving $5 billion to Swiss Re and Goldman Sachs, and he earned a 12% coupon and got warrants in both those companies. And it just paid a tremendous return for him. Silver Lake swooped into Airbnb in April, gave him a 12% debt deal for $1 billion, and they got warrants that the warrants today are worth about $1.4 billion. And and this debt is probably worth three times what they put in. So in like five months, six months, these guys have basically turned $1 billion
47:43 David Friedberg? of debt into $4 billion of value. It was an incredible deal, incredibly gutsy. If you think about what we were all feeling in early April about the market and where the world was headed, we had no fucking clue. For these guys to swoop in and do that, I thought was super impressive. The other one, I I had a couple on this because I just, I want to rattle these off. The other one was Bill Ackman bought a fucking S and P put, sorry, bought an S and P put for $27 million that he sold for $2.6 billion.
48:09 Chamath Palihapitiya? He bought, he bought credit default insurance on a whole strip of debt.
48:14 David Friedberg? But he turned a $27 million insurance instrument into 2.6 billion of returns for his fund, and he still didn't sell his portfolio. In fact, he bought at the bottom. And I mean, the the foresight this guy had going into the down market ahead of March, he saw that the market was going to tank because of COVID. He made a bet on it. It was a tiny bet for him. But man, to turn 27 million into 2.6 billion in like 60 days or 90 days, unbelievable. And then he bought stock in his companies at the bottom. What a gutsy investor. And then I
48:45 Jason Calacanis? Was there anything, was there anything fugazi on that with where he had gone on CNBC and talked, and he did this whole big, you know?
48:52 David Friedberg? Yeah.
48:55 Chamath Palihapitiya? He did it afterwards, but I think he's, I think he's great. I think he's great.
48:58 David Friedberg? Yeah, I think it was, it was incredible. And my third one, which we don't talk about a lot is Larry Ellison bought a billion dollars of Tesla stock less than two years ago that is now worth over $10 billion. And he did it and he joined the board and, um, you know, you put your money where your mouth is and you take ownership and, um, you know, I don't know much about Larry, but, uh, there was a lot of naysayers about Tesla saying they were bubbly and overvalued at that time and it was a really
49:25 Jason Calacanis? He did it in the middle of the Tesla Q shorting movement and now he can buy not just Lanai, but he could probably get Kauai to go with it. He could buy another island.
49:34 David Friedberg? Anyway, those were three gutsy bets that I thought were worth highlighting that, that just really impressed me. And, and you know, it's when the markets are down, when you're facing the abyss, when everyone else is telling you, you're wrong and you make a big bet like that, um, and it pays off. That's the kind of stuff that I think returns are made from and characters built and it was, those are, those are just really impressive moves for me that
49:52 Jason Calacanis? Alright, well, so there's a, there was a lot of impressive moves this year. The tide went out and came back in real quick. Uh, so there were some dumb business moves as well. So actually got a dumb business move that was a highlight for 2020?
50:06 David Sacks? The city of San Francisco biting the hand that feeds it. For years, these politicians have been shitting on the tech community, acting like the tech community was somehow a parasite on San Francisco. Well, you know, now because of COVID,
50:23 Jason Calacanis? Congratulations.
50:23 David Sacks? The tech community has the option to leave. You have a lot of people leaving and there are gigantic budget deficits for the city. The schools have giant, uh, budget deficits. It's not clear how they're going to close these things and it's looking that more and more like it wasn't tech that was a parasite. It was the politicians who are the parasites and nobody, uh, knows how to fix the city of San Francisco anymore.
50:50 Jason Calacanis? Yeah.
50:52 Jason Calacanis? Okay. Uh, dumbest business move, Chama?
50:57 Chamath Palihapitiya? I think it was, I think it was probably for me, um, the governor of California's handling of COVID. Um, I guess that's more political than business, but, um,
51:11 Jason Calacanis? Well, no, I mean, it did impact businesses. So I think you're, you're, I'll allow it. I'll allow it.
51:16 Chamath Palihapitiya? I think that, I think that what he showed was how naked partisanship was in decision making that had, that should have been based on science, in fact. And the quality of the decision making just eroded every single decision that he made. And then now, you know, as, as David said, it's kind of like you have this just, just, you know, um, you have this moment where it's like, you know, the just eat cake moment where he's eating at French Laundry and the day after he's basically shutting the whole world down again. It's, it's very frustrating. So, so I think that that-
51:49 Jason Calacanis? And he also was shutting down beaches, right? And then, you know, the stay at home orders and not letting people leave their house and go to a beach or eat outdoors. All that does is send them inside. They're gonna have a party inside their house. So it's so stupid.
52:05 Chamath Palihapitiya? There's a great tweet that said, um, you know, I'm not allowed to go to the store. I'm not allowed to go to the shopping center, but I'm going to take my child on a walk. And if anybody stops me, I'm just going to tell them I'm taking her to the nail salon. And the reason is because you couldn't walk to the park, but you could, you could go to the nail salon. And so, you know, this tweet was just reminiscent of just how arbitrary and random this stuff was. And it had just so many downstream mink packs. So I think that was a huge fail of 2019.
52:32 Jason Calacanis? And nobody loves hypocrisy. I picked my smartest business move with Salesforce buying Slack. Conversely, I'm picking my dumbest business move with Slack's board selling Slack. This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. I understand they felt like maybe, uh, it was a great deal, but I would have much rather them see, seen them do what Jack did at Twilio.
52:51 Chamath Palihapitiya? To be honest with you, I mean, I left the board and I just don't know why. I, I wish I could have gotten the call because I would have bought it.
52:57 Jason Calacanis? Yeah.
52:58 Chamath Palihapitiya? I agree with you. I think network effects are incredibly unique assets. They're very, very rare. I think we've all been around them. We've worked in them. David has, David, the other David has, I have, Jason, you have. It is the single most incredible momentum driver and, you know, sort of tailwind. And when it exists, you just never give it up. And so I agree with you. I would have bought Slack if I could have, if they would have given me a shot.
53:21 Jason Calacanis? We ride our winners and you appreciate network effects. If you look at what Jeff Lawson did at Twilio, he started with much less, I think.
53:33 Chamath Palihapitiya? He started with nothing.
53:34 Jason Calacanis? Started with nothing with Twilio.
53:36 Chamath Palihapitiya? Jeff Lawson is amazing.
53:37 Jason Calacanis? Then he buys SendGrid and Segment. Their market cap has gone 12, it was, it's 12x market cap. They went from $29 a share to $365 a year in three years. They're at 60 billion. Slack should have been buying other companies with their equity and they, and they should have built and rolled up all of the other hub spots or whatever else is out there that they could afford to buy Zendesk, whatever.
54:04 Chamath Palihapitiya? I'm not sure that the M&A strategy was the hard part. I just think that it's, when you're in the bowels of these companies, as we all know, it's super hard, right? So, I mean, I don't think you can fail Stuart and the team, but I think that somewhere along the way, just the realization of how special and unique that network effect was, didn't happen. Because it would have given a different team a level of energy or comfort to kind of really go for the brass ring, as you said. And, but, you know, hopefully they'll be able to execute it at Salesforce.
54:38 Jason Calacanis? Okay. Did I get everybody's dumbest business move?
54:41 David Friedberg? My dumbest business move was myself. So I will take, I will take the chum out style.
54:48 Jason Calacanis? For being a schmuck. Is Friedberg.
54:51 David Friedberg? For me, me and anyone else that fucking hedged or shorted the market or sold during the dip in March, I learnt the most valuable lesson I've learnt in my investing career to date. You just want to invest and hold shares in great businesses and not try and time markets because that's always a loser's game and a fool's errand. And I think, you know, worrying about the market going down or up, as long as you hold shares in great businesses, it doesn't matter. Trading is not for me, it was stupid. And I just feel like a lot of people learnt that lesson this year. I've heard a lot of people that kind of freaked out and got out of the market and then they regretted it and tried to get back in and it was too late and yada yada.
55:30 Chamath Palihapitiya? I read a document that someone wrote for me and she wrote this incredible quote that I had never heard from Buffett and I'll give it to you Friedberg because it's very apropos of this. Buffett had this statement which is that, you know, it's not about timing the market, it is about time in market. And I just think that's so, that's so beautiful because it's so simple, but it basically summarizes exactly what you said, which is get in, close your eyes and if you, if, again, unless for liquidity, you just don't ever sell.
56:08 Jason Calacanis? Yeah. It's a fool's errand to try to time the market, sit on your hands, ride your winners. And he always said, listen, if a business is on, if I own this business and I love it and it's at a discount, I should want to own more of it. I believe that was another Buffett, I don't know the exact quote. But let's go to smartest political move and we'll go to our token Republican David Sacks for that.
56:31 David Sacks? Well, well, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's funny you identifying me that way because my, my smart, the smartest political move goes to Congressman Jim Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, for endorsing Joe Biden just before the South Carolina primary. A number of people on the Biden campaign were panicking, they wanted him to do it early because Biden had bombed in Iowa and New Hampshire. And Clyburn kept his powder dry and endorsed Biden at the absolute perfect time. It caused Biden to win South Carolina and that led him to sweep on Super Tuesday. Jim Clyburn was the kingmaker of 2020. Without him, Joe Biden would not be president.
57:12 Jason Calacanis? Wow, okay. Who you got, Friedberg?
57:15 David Friedberg? Smartest political move of 2020 was Joe Biden staying quiet, hanging out in his bunker, and letting Trump do his own damage. End of story. I feel like, I feel like if, you know, that Biden knew that it wasn't his election to win, it was Trump's election to lose, and I think he let him go out and lose it. And, um, and that to me was, uh, smart advice and and smart action. You know, sometimes the best action is in action.
57:37 Jason Calacanis? He just, he just, he just slow-played aces. He hit a set. He just checked and he watched him fire. Uh, who do you got, Chamath? Smartest political move?
57:46 Chamath Palihapitiya? Smartest political move, which you will not see until 2022 or 23, but laid the groundwork this year, and I thought it was brilliantly done, was Nikki Haley, who I think will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. And she did an unbelievable job of tricking Trump to believe that he was her supporter, then getting distribution, and then basically subtly telling everybody that she thought that he was an idiot. And I thought that she was brilliant in 2024.
58:20 Jason Calacanis? So she didn't look like a rat leaving the ship. She looked like, you know, a rebel or something, getting off the ship.
58:25 Chamath Palihapitiya? I think, I think if you want to find, um, somebody to consolidate center-right politics in 2024, uh, my money would be on Nikki Haley.
58:36 Jason Calacanis? All right. I went with the smartest political move. I also went for the long game. Pete Buttigieg going on Fox recently. I think he did obviously a masterful job. You had that sex earlier, but he started going on Fox and basically being really spicy with them and supporting the hell out of, um, Biden. And then he gets himself this Secretary of Transportation, and I think he's set up to either be the VP or the presidential candidate, uh, in the future. And he's, I think he's going to be one of the bright stars. I also would, uh, I think Andrew Yang, it did, nothing happened for him this year, really. I don't know, but I felt like he also is, my understanding is he's going to run for mayor of New York.
59:17 Jason Calacanis? That was another amazing political winner in all of this. I don't know if anybody has feelings on either of those.
59:25 Chamath Palihapitiya? I love, I love Andrew Yang. I think he's fabulous.
59:29 Jason Calacanis? He's coming on the pod.
59:30 Chamath Palihapitiya? Pragmatic, pragmatic, centrist, smart, capable, competent.
59:37 Jason Calacanis? Good listener.
59:38 Chamath Palihapitiya? He attracts it. He attracts a plurality of people. Yeah.
59:41 David Sacks? And I, and I think he's spoken out against cancel culture. And so, you know, whenever I see somebody in the left speaking out against cancel culture and censorship, like the way Chamath has, that definitely to me elevates them in my book.
59:57 David Friedberg? Are you saying Chamath is someone from the left?
1:00:00 David Sacks? Well, it's amazing how much we agree on, you know?
1:00:03 Jason Calacanis? Well, I mean, I think that there's, you have this left and right definitions, which have become very hard to understand. And I think what we have to get back to is the American principled idea of freedoms and opportunity, right? And, and, and I don't think either of the parties actually were representing that properly. Dumbest political move of the year. I think I know where everybody's going to go with this, but I would like.
1:00:24 Chamath Palihapitiya? Rudy Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani's press conference at the sex shop. I mean, just, I mean, how amateurish is that group of people?
1:00:35 Jason Calacanis? The Four Seasons gardening. We're going to be at the Four. Was they, were they trolling us and trying to get press for it? I don't understand that one.
1:00:42 Chamath Palihapitiya? Unbelievable.
1:00:43 Jason Calacanis? So you go with Rudy Giuliani for the dumbest political move. Sax, what do you got? I have a feeling I know what Sax got.
1:00:47 David Sacks? Well, I got, I got a tie here between, one was defund the police, you know, as a political slogan. The whole country, you know, the BLM movement had the whole country on its side. After the, you know, the, the George Floyd video came out, everybody was in favor of sensible reforms to control the use of force by the police. And then they, they introduced the slogan of defund the police and it scared voters across the country into voting for Republicans in Congress. And it probably cost Joe Biden, not the presidency, but Congress.
1:01:24 David Sacks? And the, my, my tie, the other half of that was Donald Trump refusing to wear a mask or to endorse masks. He finally did it, but it was two or three months too late. If he had just gotten on board with masks, it would have been a very easy thing to do. Politically, personally, that could have made the, the margin of difference. He might still be president if he had gotten on board with masks about three months earlier.
1:01:51 Jason Calacanis? Friedberg, what was your dumbest political move?
1:01:53 David Friedberg? I actually, yeah, I put making masks political more broadly. Both the left and the right pointing fingers about masks. I mean, this is like a human life issue. And, you know, kind of shaming the Republicans for not wearing masks and making it about we're the right guys, you're the wrong guys. Everyone should have avoided pointing fingers and avoided not doing it because the other side was doing it and it should have never, ever been allowed to become political. It was pure science, it was about saving lives. And I think both sides are to blame. For, you know, the Democrats tried to make the Republicans look bad because they were advocating for masks and they shouldn't have done that. And the Republicans should not have tried to avoid wearing masks because the Democrats were telling them to wear masks and it was just a total cluster.
1:02:38 David Friedberg? Really sad and, you know, could have made a big difference for thousands of lives.
1:02:42 Jason Calacanis? I too put Trump not advocating for masks as my dumbest political move. I believe he nailed the stimulus, that first stimulus where he just dropped the $1,200 checks and the PPP and everything. He obviously nailed, you know, the Operation Lightspeed and the vaccines, he didn't get credit for it. I don't know if that was political or not, that they dropped them the week, the weeks after the election, I think it was, I'm a little bit cynical about that. But my God, is there nobody that this man would listen to? And they must have all been telling him in unison, "Hey dipshit, put the mask on, we'll win the election." The, in July and August, the numbers started to go down precipitously and everybody, Fauci,
1:03:27 Jason Calacanis? everybody with half a brain was saying, "Second wave is coming, wear masks." And he refused to take that stance. And not only did that, he doubled down, like the moron he is, and started doing rallies. This person is such a complete idiot, grifter and just...
1:03:45 Jason Calacanis? imbecile that he couldn't see the clear path to victory and he was tempting fate and of course he winds up getting covid. I mean, the idiocracy of the moment is just so profound. He absolutely would have sailed into that second term. We were sitting here on this very podcast and we all believed he was going to sail into the second term when the market started ripping back and the covid numbers went down. And because of the stupidity of not wearing masks, thank God we got him out. But to the families who lost loved ones, he's a murderer, period. We're moving on. Best political theater.
1:04:26 David Friedberg? Trump inhaling covid into his body and then taking the polyclonal antibodies to heal himself and show the American population that it's just not that bad. It was the best stunt, the best act, the best theater I've seen and, you know, I don't know what the hell else could have beaten it this year. I mean, the guy literally
1:04:47 Jason Calacanis? When he went to the balcony and could barely breathe.
1:04:51 David Friedberg? He stormed out, he buckled himself in, he buttoned up his jacket, he stared out the lights in his face, he was glowing, he had the antibodies rushing through his body, he was healing his body.
1:05:01 Jason Calacanis? He was on speed, man, come on.
1:05:03 Chamath Palihapitiya? I thought the best, I thought the best political theater was when the Democratic leadership did like the Colin Kaepernick one knee in kente klotz at the, in the rotunda of Congress.
1:05:19 Chamath Palihapitiya? Can somebody, Nick, could you just throw the picture up there?
1:05:24 Chamath Palihapitiya? I mean, I mean, half of them are, half of them are so old, they couldn't get down on one knee.
1:05:29 Jason Calacanis? Yeah, who picked him back up? They all hit their life alert. They got the life alert, I'm falling, I can't get up. Like 20 life alerts have never gone off in the same room.
1:05:41 Chamath Palihapitiya? But the, but the Kinte class were just so over the top. Like you didn't need the Kinte class.
1:05:46 Jason Calacanis? They really weren't Kinte class.
1:05:48 Chamath Palihapitiya? Oh my lord.
1:05:50 Jason Calacanis? So funny. Alright. My best political theater in a, I'm crying, I'm laughing so much. My best political theater is, um, I, I don't know who this congresswoman is, but I am falling in love with her. Um, her name is Katie Porter.
1:06:09 Chamath Palihapitiya? Oh my god.
1:06:10 Jason Calacanis? She takes out a whiteboard and she just meets.
1:06:15 Chamath Palihapitiya? She's fabulous. No, she's fabulous.
1:06:17 Jason Calacanis? She's so great.
1:06:17 Chamath Palihapitiya? She owns people with that whiteboard.
1:06:19 Jason Calacanis? It's the greatest. She basically does math and people are just, I mean, and she's done this now two or three times where she just takes people down and she did it to Mnuchin. Like, she was like, is today Tuesday? And he's like, you know, today's Tuesday. She's like, can you tell me if today's Tuesday? And she just destroys people. Um, like, I, I just never seen anything like it. Um, and, uh, she's awesome. So best political theater for me. I don't know. Uh, David, did we get yours?
1:06:50 David Sacks? Well, um, yeah, I mean, so I thought the, the, the French Laundry photos, you know, the, the, all these politicians, uh, violating their own lockdown policies, uh, was some, was some pretty good theater.
1:07:04 Jason Calacanis? The actor?
1:07:05 David Sacks? Theater, yeah. You had, you know, you had, you had Gavin Newsom and, and, uh, London, uh, Bree dining at French Laundry. You had Nancy Pelosi going to that hair salon.
1:07:17 Jason Calacanis? Any Republicans do something like that?
1:07:19 David Sacks? Well, um, I, I would, I would tell you if I knew of any, but the Republicans.
1:07:23 Jason Calacanis? Trump rallies?
1:07:24 David Sacks? The Republicans, but yeah, but the Republicans haven't been supporting lockdowns. So, um, you know, look, if there was a Republican who was supporting lockdowns.
1:07:31 Jason Calacanis? How about the Rose Garden, uh, Supreme Court where they had a super spreader event at the White House?
1:07:35 David Sacks? But they weren't, but, but that wasn't political theater because they weren't violating their own policies.
1:07:39 Jason Calacanis? Oh, I see.
1:07:40 David Sacks? They were saying that people could take the risk.
1:07:42 Jason Calacanis? Got it. Okay.
1:07:43 David Sacks? I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm picking these, um, politicians because, because they're hypocri- yeah, it's the, it's the hypocrisy.
1:07:50 Jason Calacanis? Uh, the one I loved the best out of all the hypocritical politicians was the one who was like, please stay, it was the governor of some place, Colorado or something. And he's like, please stay home with your family. Do not travel for Thanksgiving. It's going to be too dangerous. And then they find out he did that tweet. While at a Southwest gate going with his family to Thanksgiving and they literally have pictures of him on his phone and the picture was timed at the timestamp of the tweet. If I have my understanding correct, I forgot the guy's name, but there were so many of
1:08:23 David Sacks? Yeah. Well, let me, let me give you another one. There was LA, the LA County Supervisor, Sheila Cool cast the deciding vote to shut down outdoor dining in Los Angeles, only to be photographed eating at Old Fornayo in Santa Monica two hours later. So it's just completely hypocritical and you know, this is why there could be a big recall next year in California.
1:08:45 Jason Calacanis? I think we have to put political theater as one category of just loathsome political theater because we're going on to worse political theater and the stuff we've seen has been pretty horrific. I'm going to lead us off with my worst political theater, which was the banning of Tik Tok was absolutely the right thing to do. And then they just handed it off as like a gift to Oracle to make money and maybe be their server for them. I don't understand. We were supposed to ban it and get it the fuck out of the app store. And that was just terrible political theater. Anybody else got more political theater that will put in our loathsome political theater?
1:09:20 David Sacks? Well, you, Jason, just so you understand that I'm being politically even handed. This is where I had Rudy Giuliani and his tour of self-immolation.
1:09:36 Jason Calacanis? He didn't melt. He didn't melt.
1:09:37 David Sacks? Right. From, from the press conference in front of the crematorium to the, the hair dye meltdown to the
1:09:47 Jason Calacanis? Just a morat video. All right. We need to hold on, hold on. I'm going to make, I gotta call an audible. I'm calling an audible here. We're going to have a new category. To get a COVID. Worst Rudy Giuliani moment.
1:10:00 David Friedberg? Can we have a Giuliani award? Can we have the Giuliani award next year?
1:10:03 Jason Calacanis? Yeah, Giuliani award for self emulation.
1:10:05 David Friedberg? Yeah.
1:10:06 Jason Calacanis? Yeah, the self emulation award. What is the worst thing? The worst Giuliani moment?
1:10:12 Chamath Palihapitiya? Oh, I think, I think the saddest moment was the, uh, in the Borat thing. That was sad because you just felt, you just felt like this is an old, broken man. Um, it was creepy and it was just sad.
1:10:24 David Friedberg? He was like desperate and he was creepy and it was.
1:10:27 Jason Calacanis? The Rudy Giuliani lifetime award.
1:10:30 Chamath Palihapitiya? The worst though was, was actually if you listen to the testimony when he farted. Uh, it was really terrible. It was really terrible. Actually, if you listen to the testimony, you're just like, what is this guy saying? It's out of control.
1:10:43 Jason Calacanis? Well, the, also, I think we have to cut into here. The poor woman sitting next to him, who's clearly in range. Um, I mean, she's in the blast zone. He, he rips it. He rips it. And she looks him, she gives him side eye, but she is so like scared to react to such an obvious carpet bombing that she just keeps a straight face, but her eyes go boop. That was unforgivable.
1:11:21 David Friedberg? Must have been a stinker.
1:11:22 Jason Calacanis? I mean, it was loud, it had resonance. It, it was, yeah.
1:11:28 David Sacks? Can I, can I, can I give one, can I give one other example? And I don't know whether this is best or worst theater. Um, but, um, but the, the, the congressional hearings with the tech CEOs where the, the senators grilled all of the tech CEOs and it was definitely, it was definitely political theater, but on the other hand, they all deserved it. And there's going to be more of it next year.
1:11:52 Jason Calacanis? Okay, let's do lightning round.
1:11:53 David Friedberg? I put that one as my worst political theater because I thought what was so depressing about it was how little the congressional, the congresspeople actually understood of these businesses. And they went off on rants and tirades about, you know, you're blocking Republican voice on Twitter and you're doing this. And none of it actually focused on, you know, the monopolistic practices that was the intention of the hearing in the first place. When they actually got into those points, when they tried to talk about how the ad networks work and how targeting works, they didn't have any clue.
1:12:23 Jason Calacanis? I mean, the people inside these companies don't even know how it worked and they built it. I mean, these things are complex.
1:12:29 David Friedberg? I know, I'll tell you, like, I just, I just think it's really sad that, that folks in Congress, honestly, are so disconnected from understanding technology and understanding, you know, modern business practices. And they can't actually, you know, tackle the real issues. And it makes me a little scared.
1:12:45 Jason Calacanis? Neither does the Squad. I mean, AOC didn't understand what a tax break was. I mean, so even the young ones don't understand stuff. I mean, we just, we're getting the worst possible representation. Okay, now we're gonna go to lightning round with our final two categories. Best meme? For me, it was the funeral dancers, followed up by Michael Jordan. I took that personally and I of course loved Chamath's mix-up that one of you maniac all-in-army members made. Who do you got for, who got best memes? Anybody got a best meme?
1:13:13 David Sacks? Tubin.
1:13:14 Jason Calacanis? Oh.
1:13:15 David Sacks? Tubin.
1:13:16 Jason Calacanis? Tubin. Yeah, that's it.
1:13:18 David Sacks? Forever a cautionary tale about what not to do on a Zoom call.
1:13:23 Jason Calacanis? Yes. Yes, that would be arguably in political theater? Let's say no. Anybody else got a meme? Best or worst?
1:13:34 Chamath Palihapitiya? I like the funeral dancers, but...
1:13:37 Jason Calacanis? Funeral dancers are pretty great. David, anything for you?
1:13:40 Chamath Palihapitiya? I just want to say to everybody that's listening, I really hope that you guys have an incredible holiday and we can put this year behind us. And I hope for all of you guys that have gone through hard times, just know that, you know, hopefully you got some friends to talk to and family to see and talk to and we love you. And we really appreciate that you take the time to listen. And guys, I just want to say to you guys, I love you guys with all my heart. Thank you for helping me get through a very difficult year.
1:14:12 Jason Calacanis? Back at you and I was very touched by the birthday present you sent me last week. I was just
1:14:18 Chamath Palihapitiya? Oh, you want to tell them what you got? You want to tell them what you got, big boy?
1:14:21 Jason Calacanis? I mean, listen, I don't want to Chamath, I get a big crate at the house. It was, I was born in 1970 and he got some of the best wines from 1970 and put them in a box and, you know, I literally had to put them on a shelf and say, "Do not drink these. These things cost as much as the Teslas in the driveways." I mean, some of these bottles are ridiculous and I hope to crack them all open with you guys at the house in
1:14:50 Chamath Palihapitiya? Happy, honestly, happy, happy 50th birthday, big boy. It's a big, big must.
1:14:54 Jason Calacanis? Well, you know, I was, it was a little bittersweet, obviously, you know, I was going to have some kind of party or anything like that. And then what made it particularly hard and challenging was my birthday was on Saturday and my friend Tony Shay died on Friday on that day and I had been dealing with Tony Shay being in a coma for the five, for the, no, for 10 days before that. And then I found out that that afternoon that they tragically had to pull the plug. Or I assume that's what happened. I shouldn't say that. I don't want to speak out of turn, but this has been a shitty year and I really hope that anybody out there who is suffering from mental illness or struggling in any way, call a friend. And I think the reason this podcast
1:15:40 Jason Calacanis? has resonated with so many people and I hear this from people when they listen to the pod is our friendship and they, and they, they hear us talk and they hear us laugh and they hear us joke and the value of friendship and the love and the joy. And people just can't believe when Chamath says, and men say to each other, they love each other. And they can't believe that Sacks almost is able to say it and they people think by episode 25, Sacks will be able to say it back to us. But we'll try right now. We'll see if we can close 2020, 21. We're all going to say, "I love you, David Sacks." And then let's just see if this can work. "I love you, David Sacks."
1:16:20 Chamath Palihapitiya? I love you, David Sacks.
1:16:22 David Sacks? Back at you.
1:16:25 Jason Calacanis? We'll take it. We'll take it. We'll take it. I love you guys.
1:16:29 Chamath Palihapitiya? Love you guys. Happy holidays.
1:16:30 David Sacks? Love you guys.
1:16:31 Chamath Palihapitiya? See you guys in the new year.
1:16:33 Jason Calacanis? See you in the new year. Bye bye, besties.
Previous E14: Salesforce acquires Slack, DeepMind's AlphaFold breakthrough, Trust Fund Socialists & more Next E16: Reflecting on the riots at the US Capitol, plus: Georgia runoff elections, vaccine distribution & more Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
