Venture Roundtable: SpaceX IPO, AI's PR Crisis, and the Defense Tech Bubble | E2270

This Week In Startups is made possible by: PaperOS - https://PaperOS.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent- https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Every.io - https://Every.io Plaud - https://Plaud.ai/twist Today's show: Silicon Valley just lined up its biggest liquidity event in years: SpaceX filed confidentially for an IPO that could target a $1.75 trillion valuation — potentially the largest public offering in history. Meanwhile, a new Quinnipiac poll shows that 62% of Americans aren't excited about AI, and 70% think it will destroy their jobs. The disconnect between Sand Hill Road and Main Street has never been wider, and this panel is here to argue about what to do about it. Jason Calacanis and co-host Alex Wilhelm are joined by Delian Asparouhov, Partner at Founders Fund and co-founder of Varda Space Industries; Salen Churi, General Partner at Trust Ventures, focused on regulated industries and physical infrastructure; and Larsen Jensen, Founder and GP of Harpoon Ventures and former Navy SEAL. They dig into the SpaceX IPO and what it means for LP liquidity, founder formation, and venture capital's comeback story; the gap between Silicon Valley's AI optimism and public hostility; whether defense tech is in a bubble after $49 billion flooded the sector in 2025; the Marc Andreessen "zero introspection" thesis for founders; America's reindustrialization challenge and the rare earths supply chain crisis; and Artemis's path to putting boots back on the Moon. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 1:09 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 3:50 SpaceX files confidentially for IPO: $1.75T valuation, June target 9:00 Will the SpaceX IPO reinvigorate venture capital? 10:25 Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io 14:40 Quinnipiac poll: Americans use more AI but trust it less 17:31 AI's PR crisis: Dario vs. Jensen, and who's communicating well 18:02 Jason's "Invest America" proposal: give workers equity stakes 19:55 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://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist 21:39 Larsen: Silicon Valley is walking into the same trap as China offshoring 29:04 PaperOS - Whether you're raising a round, launching a fund, or managing a venture portfolio, PaperOS can unlock simplicity and scale across your empire of capital, contracts, and companies. Claim your $10,000 credit at https://paperos.com/twist 29:50 Polymarket: 24% chance of a federal AI data center moratorium 33:57 Marc Andreessen on zero introspection (David Senra podcast clip) 46:48 Is defense tech in a bubble? 1:10:32 Saronic raises $1.75B for autonomous drone boats 1:25:07 Anthropic vs. OpenAI: where would you put your entire net worth? 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 Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis 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?

  All right, everybody. Welcome back to Twist. It is April 1st, 2026. This is not an April Fool's joke.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  This Week in Startups is brought to you by Paper OS. Building an empire? Paper OS offers the largest library of AI-driven workflows for both founders and fund managers. Whether you're raising capital, launching a fund, or wading through diligence, Paper OS unlocks simplicity and scale for your ever-growing empire. Claim your $10,000 credit at paperos.com/twist. Northwest Registered Agent. Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks in 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/twist. And Every for all your incorporation, banking, payroll,

• 0:51Speaker 01

  benefits, accounting, taxes, or other back office administration needs, visit every.io.

• 1:00Jason Calacanis?

  Delian is back on the program. It's going to be based, folks. With me, my co-host, and who will be the world's second-greatest moderator today, Alex Wilhelm. Alex, let's get started here. But before we do, I always like to applaud Plaud. And I take my Plaud pen, oh, you use it on the wrist, and I press the button. Here we go. Delian, I'm now recording everything, and I have all my action items. Action item: Buy secondary. Buy more secondary

• 1:30Jason Calacanis?

  in Delian's company. What is Varda trading for on the secondary market? I need to increase my ownership.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  2050 a share, baby.

• 1:39Jason Calacanis?

  2050 a share. Okay, I'm coming in at 1925. I'm coming in at 1925 with my bid. Plaud, I applaud you. Is there an offer?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  There is an offer. If you go to plaud.ai/twist, P-L-A-U-D dot A-I slash twist, use the code TWIST, save 10%, and then you won't forget everything you're supposed to do. And then Jason won't send you late-night slacks asking where the thing is that you promised him you'd do, which everyone absolutely loves.

• 2:05Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, well, you took the job, Alex. It was your choice to come work for me.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Look, everyone gets to make a mistake in their life. I've made several, you know, here we are. We also have more guests than just Delian from Founders Fund and Varda. We also have Sal Churey. He is the man over at Trust Ventures, general partner there, Think Regulated Industries, companies like Base Power, Jason, firms that we absolutely love. Sal, thanks for being here.

• 2:27Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:28Jason Calacanis?

  Saul, I love Base Power.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Best company.

• 2:32Jason Calacanis?

  Mmm, yum yum on that one. Just tell us in one sentence or two why you made that bet.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Grid's broken, we need to fix it. You look at US versus China, energy generation, they have 10x in the past 25 years. We're flat. If we don't fix it, we are in big trouble. Everything we want to do requires power. So Base has taken a pretty novel approach to solving that problem. They're putting batteries on people's homes. So you get a battery to back up your house instead of spending, you know, 40, 50,000 bucks on a Tesla power wall or a generator. You get a battery for 500 bucks, which is more like the cost of a plane ticket. Base puts a battery on your house, they back you up when the, when the grid goes down. But lots of benefits to the grid and then Base has basically a distributed arbitrage machine sitting at your house. So all day, it's taking all those intermittent sort of solar, wind, all these incredibly cheap renewables that are amazing.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  We just don't use them and using them. So poles and wires move energy through space. Batteries move energies through time. So Base is just carpet bombing the grid with batteries to lower energy costs and, and kind of help us use some of those renewables that today are really cheap, but mostly underutilized.

• 3:40Jason Calacanis?

  So genius. Love the product, love the entire concept.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  If you want more about Base Power, we did have the founder on, episode 2190 from October 2025. And Jason, we're joined by yet another guest. We have Larsen Jensen from Harpoon Ventures, former SEAL, now backing companies like Robust Intelligence and Merlin Labs. Larson, glad you're here.

• 4:00Speaker 04

  Happy to be here, guys. Thanks for having me.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  All right. So the, the thing that happened right before we jumped on air, everybody, is that Bloomberg reported that SpaceX has filed confidentially to go public. This means they're targeting probably a June IPO. Lots to come on this story, Jason, but finally we're here, we're making steps towards what could be the biggest IPO of all time. No inside information, but were you surprised by the timing?

• 4:22Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, no. Um, I, I have, I don't want to say I have inside information, but everybody in the valley is buzzing about this. There's been tons of secondary and all kinds of transactions for the last three years, where people were either paring their position or building their position in the name. And I think the bigger, most interesting part of this is Elon, Inc. Again, no inside information. I've met Elon a couple of times.

• 4:51Jason Calacanis?

  It's quite possible that this is, you know, the flop and then the turn in the river to come. And if this is the flop and the turn in the river to come, the next discussion's going to be merging with Tesla. And then you're going to be able to buy the stock, dollar sign E L O N and, you know, maybe boring company Neuralink come in next and you can just buy a $10 trillion company that's solving the hardest problems on the planet led by, let's call it what it is. Elon is the greatest entrepreneur of this generation and, you know, top, easily top five of all time. Some people would argue number one, two, three, and I'll leave it up to other people to make that decision. But certainly,

• 5:36Jason Calacanis?

  he's got 20 years left in him and the best is probably yet to come.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Sal, $1.75 trillion theoretically is what the company is targeting. We're also going to possibly see OpenAI and Anthropic list this year. So we could have essentially three, you know, several hundred billion or trillion dollar IPOs this year. Is this a net positive for startup exits? Or is this an entirely different conversation than what we'll be talking about when we discuss smaller company IPOs?

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, look, it's sort of like testing the limits of the term startup, right? The private markets have really developed over the past couple of years and is able to support a company like SpaceX to this point is kind of wild. When it lists, it'll be one of the largest companies in the world. And as Jason points out, you might end up getting a company that is kind of an amalgam of all of Elon's industries, which looks almost like a parallel economy in itself.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  It's kind of an insane, it's an insane thing. I think it's gonna be great. I mean, there's so much, there's so much liquidity tied up in this company. There's so many people who are so convicted on it. But, but I think, you know, it'll be one of the greatest wealth creation events in history. You know, you think about folks who live in Austin, we're all like, oh my goodness, buy a house now because it's about to get ugly. But I think, you know, the same is true for all the folks who have been invested in SpaceX for, you know, a decade now and, you know, even even more recent folks like we're investors in XAI. I think we're all looking at this and sort of thinking about the flop in the river, as Jason says.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  All right. So, Delian, you're the Founder's Fund kid on the show today. If you go to the portfolio page, the first entry, the first thing is SpaceX. So tell us what the firm is thinking. What are you shooting for? And what will your return be on a net IRR basis from your SpaceX checks?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you think it's probably going to be one of the greatest venture investments of all time? Yeah, I think we originally got involved in something there somewhere around like two thousand, yes, or nine or so. We were one of the, you know, first big external checks. And then along the way, you know, sort of continue to, you know, sort of double down across a variety of our funds, including some of our, you know, sort of latest growth funds. Yeah, I mean, what are we expecting? Look, I think, you know, SpaceX is basically built up, you know, the best, you know, sort of telecommunications business, you know, sort of ever, you know, sort of made, you know, through Starlink. And they're obviously using, you know, that advantage to tackle some even broader markets. They also are, you know, probably the only people that have the ability to really take us to like the moon and Mars in a super meaning. You know, who knows what the like sort of uncapped, you

• 7:58Speaker 02

  know, potential upside of that is. Let's see, what are we, you know, sort of expecting? Yeah, it's obviously going to be, you know, sort of huge, you know, wealth creation for basically, you know, all our early, you know, sort of LPs. And, you know, I think we've also proven that we're willing to, you know, sort of have extremely long hold periods. I think, you know, from our very, you know, sort of first, you know, sort of investments today, you know, it's been something like, you know, 18 years of hold. And so we are happy to, you know, sort of be very patient capital.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Larson, you guys are in Astronis, so you're in the satellite game. Do you think that there's going to be real competition on the space internet question in the next couple of years? Because I know Amazon's getting involved, China has a thing going on. I'm just curious if you think that they're going to run away with it?

• 8:39Speaker 04

  They might run away with it, but I also think there's a lot of form factors that are going to make a lot of sense here. Like, you know, I think one thing that Astronis is doing that SpaceX isn't to date, at least, is servicing, you know, specific countries, specific companies. And so if you want your own dedicated broadband access, you can get that through Astronis and not necessarily through SpaceX. But SpaceX is certainly much larger, especially right now. I think there's a lot of other things that are really exciting about SpaceX. So obviously, LP liquidity is something that's been top of mind for every single LP across the board now, given how many of them have, you know, interest in SpaceX right now. Priming the pump, getting some liquidity back to LPs to redeploy it into the venture ecosystem. I think it's going to be a net positive. Also, when you think about the early employees of SpaceX, every early founder, I think, can be more aggressive if they have some cushion in their bank account.

• 9:23Speaker 04

  They can buy a house, they can do these things. They're not pressured to exit early. So founders that we backed that are former SpaceX or the new ones that are going to be starting new companies, I think this is a net positive for them to be more risk-seeking. And I also think that by virtue of SpaceX going to retail now, we have the opportunity for young kids to have access to this in their sort of like, you know, in their brokerage accounts effectively. Like, we have our kids in these brokerage accounts. My kids who are nine and seven don't stop asking about when they can buy SpaceX. And I think this is a net positive for the future generation to also be a part of the most ambitious country, or excuse me, company, probably in world history and all the things that Elon's building. So I think there's a lot of positives that are coming from this IPO that are more than just meets the eye. Super happy for the Founders Fund, guys. You guys are the GOAT. You guys crush it.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  But I also think there's a lot of other beneficiaries out there in the ecosystem that could lead for entrepreneurship to be even better in the decades ahead because of SpaceX.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Jason, you're always talking about, you know, getting more people to start companies and so forth. What do you think the liquidity effect will be on founder formation, if you will, in the next, I don't know, couple of years?

• 10:25Jason Calacanis?

  I've been doing this job for decades now. Not a lot of people have worked with more startups than me. Over 600 investments, but honestly, every .io might be the exception because every .io is working with every new startup. It's the all-in-one finance, banking, and HR app. They understand startups and they're now at over 1,000 startups. And that means first-time founders working on their pre-seed rounds, but also veteran teams who've raised a Series A or beyond. They can partner with every, and they are. And why are they partnering with them? Just to scale up their business, build out their teams, take care of things that are not core to your product or your service. That means banking, payroll, benefits, taxes, compliance. Everything you need to run your company is done in one place by one trusted partner.

• 11:10Jason Calacanis?

  And they're going to give you 3% cash back on all company purchases sent directly to your bank account. So it's time to visit every.io and get back to focusing on what really matters for your business. Every.io is going to help you do that. E V E R Y dot I O. Well, you know, one of the great things about America is the founders are so based and all bought in when it comes to entrepreneurship that the first thing founders do, much to the chagrin of their wealth managers who are dweebs and dorks who get paid 1.0% of your 4% or 5% net after taxes returns, they try to stop them from investing in other startups.

• 11:51Jason Calacanis?

  But that's kind of the reason why America is so great is because entrepreneurs, the second they get any money in their pocket are like, how can I, how can I blow this money? How can I 10x it? How can I 1,000x it? Let's go to Vegas, maybe I'll buy a car. For me, it was buying like, you know, a Corvette and a one-touch espresso machine when I saw Weblog saying in 2005, like too big, you know, $70,000 Corvette and a $3,000 espresso machine were my big purchases. But I was then like, hey, I wonder if I can angel invest in companies. Now you take other countries like Europe slash EPCOT Center, and when a family gets money in EPCOT Center, Italy, France, all they do is try to protect it. I have to protect this.

• 12:36Jason Calacanis?

  I have to protect this. We have to buy castles and build motes and they never recirculate that money. The reason why Australia is doing particularly well is because the founders of Atlassian and the founders of Canva all started venture firms and started to recirculate that. That's what I suspect will happen here. You'll have a bunch of people retire from venture capital. Brian Singerman led a founders fund for a bunch and I think he gave over the reins. So you'll have people who are impacted. I think, I'm sure the SpaceX thing probably had something to do with that. You know, and they'll call in rich or whatever, but then they'll be like, you know what? Doug Leone came back to Sequoia yesterday and it was like the day before April Fools. And I'm like, I was always saying Doug is retired, but every time I go to the office and I hang

• 13:21Jason Calacanis?

  out with the Sequoia boys and gals, Doug's there, walking around. So I don't understand like this retirement. I think it's going to be a massive amount of recirculation. I think it's going to save, you know, these IPOs. If Stripe goes out, Discord goes out, SpaceX, and then these two wild cards, OpenAI and Anthropic. This is going to reinvigorate venture capital, which under Biden's four years of the wrath of Lina Khan was considered the worst asset class. Now, we're going to go back to it being the best asset class, and everybody's going to want to slice after the last five years of this is a complete utter disaster. What fool would ever put their money into venture capital? So if

• 14:03Jason Calacanis?

  you're going to be in the startup game, you need to have like actual true resilience. And man, I got to tell you, that was trying for the four years during Lina Khan to be like, is this even worth it? I heard so many VCs. Is it worth it to be in this? Like, none of these companies are ever going to go public. None can ever merge. And here we are. It's happening, folks. Venture capital is back on the menu.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  That kind of brings us into the first thing I wanted to dig into today, which is the difference between how we talk about AI and technology today here on the show and in similar places in and around the tech scene, and some public polling data that just dropped. I'm a little bit worried that what we're seeing is a lot of technologists building the future and a lot of the public being kind of left behind, in a sense, concerned, worried about job loss. There's a Quinnipiac poll that shows, you know, Americans are using more and more AI, but numbers on trust and so forth are going down. Now, Sal, you wrote a book called The Trust Revolution, literally all about this type of thing. I'm curious, one, how big is the gap between the public and the technology space today? And is it a bridgable chasm before something bad happens at the election box that leads

• 15:13Speaker 01

  to onerous regulation, crimping everyone's fun?

• 15:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I spend all day helping solve regulatory complexity. I'm a recovering law professor. This is like what I focus on all day. I think there's a couple of things to be thinking about with respect to AI data centers. Eighty percent of people in both parties, this is not a partisan thing, are skeptical of or negative on AI and/or data centers, right? If you look at the first industrial revolution as an analog, like, you know, there were, you had the Pinkerton's firing shots alongside Frick, right, at, you know, Carnegie Steel production facility. So we've got trillions of dollars in CapEx sitting behind chain-linked fences effectively undefended. Like, you know, it's a real concern. And then there's another

• 15:59Speaker 03

  dynamic where you've got folks like Sam and Dario, like, they're out there raising like billions and billions of dollars by saying, we're just going to replace people. And, you know, in many ways, it doesn't make them the best spokespeople because the average person hears that and actually thinks things are much further along than they are. And then you've got some CEOs are actually starting to let people go and using AI as an excuse. Now, I actually don't even think that that's really so true yet, but it will become true. And so you're already seeing this kind of preemptive backlash. Now, at the same time, you've got things like robotics that are really starting to take off, the embodied AI stuff. One of the companies that we're most excited about is physical intelligence. It's a visual language action model. So it's sort of bringing

• 16:43Speaker 03

  that LLM concept into the physical world can, you know, pilot a drone, can run a surgery robot, can run an autonomous vehicle. These things are starting to reach into the world of atoms and not just the world of bits. And I think it's going to start touching a lot more people. So I think we're headed into the World War III of regulatory fights. We've already kind of engaged on a lot of these across the states, but there's going to be, there's going to be significant political backlash to this.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  There's this guy named Jason, and he recently had a tweet all about how we've reached AGI, millions of jobs are being lost as we speak, retirement of entire careers, people getting kind of locked out of the economy. Jason, are you to blame for the public sentiment crisis here?

• 17:21Jason Calacanis?

  Putting myself aside, I have my own feelings, but our industry has a terrible communication problem. You know, you have on one side Dario, who is like, it's over, all jobs are over, AGI is almost here, Skynet is going to be revealed, we're blowing everything up. And then you have the other side Jensen, who is like, don't worry, every cab driver is going to be a chauffeur and just carry your bags, which is also kind of a little bit too lovey dovey. Obviously, you know, there's no drivers in Waymos. And his position was the other week, yeah, you'll still have a driver in a Waymo, they'll be serving you coffee or whatever. Like, that's not happening. You know who's done a great job? Michael Dell. You know why Michael Dell has done a great job? Is because he put $6 billion of his own money, which is a fraction of his net worth. Forget about the stupid giving pledge. If you just say to Americans,

• 18:06Jason Calacanis?

  hey, we're going to get the other 40% of people who are not participating in the equity holding of these great companies. If you just change that, everybody's going to feel differently. And you know how you know this? Anybody who's on this call, who has exposure to a venture firm in SpaceX, in Quad, or any of these companies, we feel great about the economy. Any of our family members who have exposure to our venture firms, or, you know, who have a 401k with Google in it or Nvidia in it, they feel great. People who don't feel great? They don't own equities. They don't own a piece of the prize. What we really need to do, in my mind, is be honest with people. There are going to be entire jobs retired, just like phone operators and receptionists are gone. The typing pool is gone. The mailroom is gone.

• 18:51Jason Calacanis?

  Society went on. It's not a big deal. Bad jobs that can be automated always get retired. And it may happen a little faster this time. At the same time, by the way, all of these great entrepreneurs, all of these great philanthropists, instead of putting money into nonprofits, which take 60 cents on the dollar, and they pay these, you know, overpriced mids to, you know, be in $110 office space, which is better than all of our collective office space. And they sit there and, you know, You enter it up and, you know, decide they're going to try to save the world while 70 cents on the dollar goes to their comp in their office space. Just give people directly some goddamn shares of SpaceX and Anthropic and the entire problem is solved and then America will be unstoppable.

• 19:34Jason Calacanis?

  Every American has $10,000 in the market. They're going to look at it totally different. They're going to watch their net worth go up. So I would say we should start a new giving pledge and it should be based on Michael Dell's Trump accounts in America. What do they call them? What were they called before Trump accounts?

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Save America or something like that.

• 19:52Jason Calacanis?

  Invest America?

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Invest America.

• 19:54Jason Calacanis?

  Here's an idea. It's easier than ever to build a great new product and launching a startup, even as a solopreneur, is getting easier and easier. But as my experienced founders already know, there's a lot more to starting a company than just putting up a website or even building a product. If you're serious about going into business, you need a Delaware C corp. That's going to give you a serious leg up on your competition and you can be taken seriously by investors. That's where Northwest Registered Agent comes in. Just a few clicks, they're going to give you the perfect start to your new enterprise. A real identity, a domain, a custom website, a business email, all the public filings done, and even a phone number. And you'll complete this process in under 10 minutes.

• 20:38Jason Calacanis?

  Plus, you're going to get all sorts of free tools and resources from step-to-step guides, compliance reminders, and an online account that's going to keep everything organized even as your business grows. So get all the advantages of a Delaware C corp regardless of where in the US you are operating out of. NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com/Twist. Everybody on, everybody working in Silicon Valley gives 5% of their shares that they make. They get some great tax benefit and they give it to Invest America. If you told me, hey, J Cal, will you pledge 5% of all the Uber and Robinhood shares to Invest America? I'd be like, sure. If it keeps us from having a revolution in socialism, why not? Make it opt-in. And see if you can get 1,000 shareholders in these great companies to join it.

• 21:23Jason Calacanis?

  Solves the entire problem. Because then if there is job displacement and somebody needs to take two years off, they can tap that Invest America account if they're destitute and need to be retrained, or at least they're not going to be scared about retirement. Anyway, that's my TED Talk. Thanks for coming.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  I want to get Delian in here because Founders Fund is relatively outspoken. I was just reading Trey's post in the Free Post, Free Press, sorry, about industrialization and the need for public-private partnership and so forth. Do you guys think about the political issues regarding AI and market sentiment? Because I think if anyone would have a strident opinion, it might be Founders Fund.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Think that, you know, we obviously come from a, you know, sort of more libertarian, you know, sort of point of view where it's, you know, sort of, you know, sort of like technology accelerate and, you know, sort of deal with the societal implications, you know, sort of later. But there was this, you know, sort of famous email between Peter and Zuckerberg that, you know, sort of got leaked out from back in, you know, sort of 2020 that basically articulated this point of, you know, if, you know, more of the, you know, sort of population doesn't get to, you know, participate in the, you know, sort of, you know, growing, you know, sort of economy, you are going to start to see this type of more, you know, sort of socialist, you know, sort of revolution. And it was a discussion about that, plus, you know, Zuckerberg being one of the more prominent millennials in his generation to, you know, try and, you know, sort of figure out how to, you know, sort of fight back against it. Last week I got to be, you know, sort of onstage at the Hill and Valley Forum,

• 22:40Speaker 02

  which is this, you know, sort of I've been organizing for a couple of years. And we do our best to, you know, sort of highlight, you know, sort of both sides of the aisle. And so I highlighted an argument that like, I'm not saying I necessarily agree with, but was kind of interesting to, you know, hear, hear from, which is from this panel with Vinod Khosla and Senator Cantwell. Vinod's, you know, sort of idea was, you know, as a mechanism to, you know, start to, you know, sort of lift up the, you know, sort of, you know, bottom of the, you know, sort of economic, you know, sort of, you know, sort of totem pole, was to, you know, basically, you know, sort of make it so there's a singular tax that is the equivalent tax rate for whether it's capital gains, you know, basically, or income. And if you do that, you actually, you know, can then eliminate the, you know, bottom 125 million from the tax, you know, sort of basis. Anybody that basically makes anything below 100, 125K.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  It's a, I do think you, you, you do need to start to think about how do you make it so that, you know, you know, with these like AI productivity gains, you have a much broader, you know, sort of portion of the population that gets it, you know, participates in this upside. Some of it may come from, you know, things like Invest America where you're getting to participate in the upside. Some of it is remove some of the economic drag of, you know, sort of the lower part of the, you know, sort of population, e.g., you know, sort of taxes.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, just really quickly, here's the email in question and, uh, Teal wrote, uh, when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, the one will have negative capital for a long time. Find it hard to start accumulating capital, one from real estate. And if no one else is taking the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it. I guess we're operationalizing that, Jason, and trying to put it into, into practice. So Larson, are you going to follow Jason and put 5% of your, uh, net worth into other people's accounts so they don't vote for?

• 24:07Speaker 04

  You know, I, I actually, you know, I'll, I'll disagree with Jason on some of this and I, I think this is actually coming. I, I don't live in Silicon Valley. I don't think many people here actually do on the call here today, but some of my friends that I go and see at my kids' birthday parties, like own car dealerships and they're the ones telling me that they're using Claude code and they're replacing workers at their own car dealership. And so I think it's actually happening. And I think the other thing, it's one thing to sort of redistribute wealth through whatever the mechanism is, like universal basic income, some of this, like letting people participate is one thing. But I think, you know, most of us here, and I think most people in life, put a lot of their identity behind what they do. And it's easy for Silicon Valley to trivialize that, you know, some jobs aren't important and you get to go do something else, but these jobs are important to those people.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  And so I think we're walking our way right into a bear trap. And part of the reason why Trump got elected is because he wanted to reshore jobs that are offshore to China. And so China became the boogeyman, and I think rightfully so. And a large part of his base supported Trump because of that. What I'm concerned about now is that the tech industry is walking into the same trap again, that is a Bernie narrative, is an AOC narrative, is an Elizabeth Warren narrative, and tech has aligned itself, like it or not, with the Trump administration. And so here we are, where we're going to walk ourselves into a trap, I think, again, that if we don't do things right and we don't actually think through the consequences of this as a society, we could walk ourselves into a position where AI is taking jobs the same way that China took our jobs and we have a huge disenfranchised

• 25:31Speaker 04

  worker base that isn't like upset about the fact that they're doing a job isn't upset the fact that they're being a cabbie and now all of a sudden they get to carry luggage they might like it they're providing for their family like I can't speak for them but I think everybody that has a job that is providing for their families takes some at least on being a male you take some pride in that and you want to do that and so I think we're walking our way into that sort of like blindly yeah I think it's just too too too simple for silicon valley to say hey we're gonna pay you and everything's gonna be fine I don't think that's gonna happen

• 26:00Jason Calacanis?

  to be clara larson I am with you I am not a fan of ubi because it takes away purpose but I am for taking a look at the disparity in wealth which is incredibly real and it's gonna get we all know

• 26:12Speaker 04

  it's gonna get worse it's gonna get worse like we're gonna have the first time founder who's like a billionaire outcome one dude with sort of like ai agents running his company that's inevitable that's gonna happen and then it feeds into the elizabeth warren aoc stuff again where the wealth disparity is there and so I think especially I think this is already playing into the democrats favor if you know the right somehow can get its act together and put some policies in place and some ideas in place and at least have the conversation I don't even look at it we are

• 26:37Jason Calacanis?

  I don't even look at it as a political issue I look at it as being a thoughtful member of the elite the 1% the 2% the creators if you're a thoughtful person you probably give a bigger tip than a person who's you know part of the 99% or the 90% you probably give huge tips I give absurdly large tips because I'm like well I got lucky in life I think we need to explain to americans that we're all in this together a little more esprit de corps and the problem is entrepreneurs look at the nonprofit sector and they're like the nonprofit industrial complex is a bunch of or maxing who are wasting all this money and they just think well I don't want

• 27:21Jason Calacanis?

  to do that and then they're like the government's corrupt and they're doing fraud so why would I want to pay more taxes or have my seas my wealth sees so there's got to be a third way to give back all of us want to give back like who on this call Raise your hand if you're going to give away at least 5% of your net worth. It's like, everybody.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, everybody is.

• 27:40Jason Calacanis?

  Everybody is. So why don't we just get ahead of it and say, listen, if we all get lucky and we hit these home runs, we're going to give away at least 5%, 10%. And this is how I'm choosing to do it. And I'm going to choose to do it when I'm a little bit younger. And choosing to do it now, before the pitchforks come off and before we get 20 Mundamis in office and before AOC becomes president. I'm thinking very pragmatically Larson, like, I mean, if you have a better suggestion, I don't know, Sal, you want to get in on this?

• 28:07Speaker 04

  I think you got, you know, great points there. Yeah. Here's to yourself.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  It's not just about redistributing the wealth, though, I think is Larson's point. It's not just about, hey, like, you're getting crushed by this big tsunami. I do think it's really important here, though, to, to bring a bit of a dose of historical humility to these things, at least on the side of the equation of like, knowing what's going to happen. At the, at the outset of the Industrial Revolution, when the steam engine was created, people thought no one would ever work in factories again. And of course, then the Industrial Revolution happened, right? It's like, I think we're just like very bad at predicting how these things happen. What I think is, is obvious here is that the world is going to look really different. And so that, that rate of change is going to be greater than it ever has been in the past. But I think it's, it's hard to, like, when, when you start to say, hey, let's, let's,

• 28:53Speaker 03

  let's let someone on a marble dais in Washington just write a law that's going to fix this problem. It's like, I don't know if you're going to like the results of that. It's, it's very hard to predict how these things play themselves out. You don't want to constrain people from being able to build.

• 29:05Jason Calacanis?

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• 29:47Jason Calacanis?

  And they have saved me and my team hundreds, actually now it's probably thousands of hours. Our friends at Paper OS want to give you a complimentary $10,000 credit. Just go to paperos.com/twist and if you prefer price discrimination, you can go to paperos.com/disgrazian.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  I wanted to break up some data, just to kind of put this into context. Here's a poly market we're tracking that goes into the chances of an AI data center moratorium being passed. Bringing this up because I believe AOC and Bernie have both endorsed the idea. Kind of a small market, not a ton of volume yet, but what's really interesting to me is this number isn't zero. Because to me, the chance of this actually happening is zero, but the market's presenting much higher than that.

• 30:28Jason Calacanis?

  How does it reconcile? I gotta know how they reconcile this. Is it a moratorium like in Maine or Vermont where there's no data centers? Or is it?

• 30:35Speaker 01

  No, it's anywhere in the United States.

• 30:36Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  This is a federal ban on.

• 30:39Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, wait, wait. It's a, it's a federal law or it could be a local ban?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  No, this particular market results to yes, if it's a federal ban, national ban.

• 30:48Jason Calacanis?

  It has to be a national ban, okay. Because that's important, because the chances of it being a local ban, I think, are 100%.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:53Jason Calacanis?

  Somebody is going to do something dumb there. What do you think, Delian?

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the likelihood of a federal ban, at least obviously in the current administration, feels like, you know, sort of 0% chance. But I think it was AOC plus Bernie actually did put forth a, you know, sort of bill to try and, you know, sort of, you know, put a, you know, entire federal ban in place. I think there's something like eight or nine states now that have, you know, sort of bills, you know, currently, you know, sort of in work. I think it's like New York, Illinois, Washington, you know, sort of a few others. I do think almost certainly we'll see, you know, probably 15 plus states that have a moratorium on it within the next like 18 years or months. I think the likelihood that like a Texas or a Florida ever put a moratorium on this, you know, sort of zero. And I think it's one of these like self-immolating, more left-leaning, you know, sort of state habits where it's like, yeah, we're not going to have this like economic opportunity. We're not going to like, you know, you know, you know, advance our grid.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  It just seems like a, you know, sort of insane, insane outcome. The one place where this, you know, has a benefit is, you know, I admit that like I may not always be the most, you know, sort of bullish on space-based data centers. But if you can't build them on Earth, then if space is the only option, definitely a good place to do it.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Shout out, shout out Star Cloud, one of my favorite companies in the entire.

• 31:59Jason Calacanis?

  Larson, is this free money? Is this free money, this 26% on poly market?

• 32:04Speaker 04

  Ah, I don't think it's free money. I'd have to read through it a little bit more. I don't know.

• 32:07Jason Calacanis?

  You think there's gonna be a, you think there's a chance of a federal ban?

• 32:10Speaker 04

  I don't think that's what this poly market says. I was looking at it very briefly. I think it's like a ban anywhere in the United States, not at a federal level everywhere in the United States.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  In a democracy where 80% of people in both parties are negative on it, like, I don't think it's a zero. It's hard to conclude that. What, what other thing that 80% of people across the aisle agree about? Would you put it a 0% chance of happening?

• 32:30Jason Calacanis?

  One more time, Alex, let's read, because the devil's in the details here. I'm thinking about wagering here. Because if it is 24% chance, people think it's a 24% chance of a federal ban, I'm putting 100 dimes on this. I'm going to collect my 24K.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so let's just see if my reading comprehension holds up here live. So here is the actual market rules. This market will result to yes, if a bill erecting a qualifying moratorium that prohibits or suspends approvals for new data center construction or major expansions anywhere in the US is passed into law by December 31st, 2026. So my read of that was it is a ban across the entire nation. And I think someone else read that as, as if there's any ban any place. But I, that's just not how I think the whole thing here reads.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  Okay, anywhere versus everywhere. I think that's our arbitrage there. So if we can understand that, we could place a bet.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  All right. It's no your poly markets.

• 33:21Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, I don't mean to hijack the program here, Alex, but I think we should comment as five white men. I'm, Dalian, are you a white guy? I don't know. I think so, kinda.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Somewhere, somewhere like that, you know, definitely broader than your average white white man.

• 33:37Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so as five white men, what do we think of Mark Andreessen's comments on red card maxing? And that self-reflection for entrepreneurs is a terrible idea. I think we have to discuss this. Do we have the clip of him? I mean, it's.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  I'm going to pull up the Mark Andreessen introspection quote right now. From the David Serna podcast presented by Ramp.

• 33:58Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Or not.

• 33:59Jason Calacanis?

  Shout out to Ramp.

• 34:00Speaker 05

  You don't have any levels of introspection.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yes, zero.

• 34:02Speaker 05

  As little as possible.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Why?

• 34:04Speaker 05

  Move forward. Go.

• 34:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't know. I just find people who dwell on the past get stuck in the past. It's a real problem and it's a problem at work and it's a problem at home.

• 34:13Speaker 06

  So I've read, obviously, 400, I think now 10, biography of 50 years old entrepreneurs. And that was one of the most surprising things. Like, what's the most surprising thing that you've learned from this? Like, oh, they have little or zero introspection? Like, Sam Walton didn't wake up thinking about his internal self. He just woke up, he's like, "I like building Walmart. I'm gonna keep building Walmart. I'm gonna make more Walmarts," and just kept doing it over and over again.

• 34:30Speaker 05

  And you probably know, if you go back, 400 years ago, it never would have occurred to anybody to be introspective. Like, the whole idea, I mean, just all of the modern conceptions around introspection and therapy, and all the things that kind of result from that are, you know, kind of manufactured of the 1910s, 1920s.

• 34:43Speaker 06

  Say more about that.

• 34:43Speaker 05

  Great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff at any prior point, right? It's all constructed.

• 34:49Jason Calacanis?

  Who wants to take the first shot at this? I'm gonna back clean up on this one. Okay, Larson, get in there.

• 34:54Speaker 04

  My buddy actually sent him the YouTube channels on [BLEEP] maxing. Actually, somebody who works with me here at Harpoon. And so that's how Mark found out about [BLEEP] maxing. He's like, "Hey, what you're trying to say is actually this," and it actually took off from there. Obviously, my buddy didn't coin [BLEEP] maxing, neither did Mark. But ultimately, that's what, you know, Mark's been running with in recent interviews. And I think that, you know, it's an interesting point. I mean, I'd be curious, is Elon being introspective, or is he just going and building and waking up and, you know, moving forward? So I think it's an interesting way to think about things.

• 35:21Jason Calacanis?

  I think Elon's been pretty clear about this. Move forward, yeah. Ruminatiion is like very, it turns out, ruminatiion, which he mentions, I thought the key quote here, Delian, was,

• 35:34Jason Calacanis?

  "It's a problem at work, and it's a problem at home." And that was the tell for me. Ruminatiion is a very unique way, and dwelling on the past is a really unique way to make your life miserable. And what I've always found is people who have, like, obsessed about the problems in the past, and who are fearful of the future, and can't live in the present, and, you know, have some purpose in the present, they just don't accomplish a lot. So if you're talking about this extreme pursuit, Delian, if you're gonna sit there and be like, "I made seven mistakes in my startup and my career, I made 14 more,

• 36:14Jason Calacanis?

  and there's 21 mistakes, and then I went home, and my spouse told me I had these other five things that I'm a fuck up on." And then, you know, what if I have another 28 mistakes I make in the future? You're just going to be paralyzed. And there's something magical about just having a purpose and executing. That's, I think, what Mark is talking about, and it's for elite folks. You need only watch Michael Jordan. In a recent interview, they, that famous interviewer from Good Morning, Good Morning America interviewed him about his NASCAR team. And he talks about competition and it's like, yeah, no, no, I'm a miserable person because I'm so competitive. Gayle King. Gayle King. It's awesome interview.

• 36:59Jason Calacanis?

  Anytime Michael Jordan's interview, watch it. If you haven't seen that incredible documentary, Last Dance, like, that's who Mark Andreessen is talking about. Extreme Pursuit, Dalian, requires, do not overthink this. Because if you overthink it, you're going to be like, well, what's the point of bouncing a ball and putting it in the basket more times than the other person? That's meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Your thoughts on retired maxing and rumination, Dalian?

• 37:25Speaker 02

  I literally had this prominent investor last week in DC come up to me and be like, you know, I regret not having invested in the C round of Arda. And I think we just thought ourselves out of it. Because it was just like, if you sat there and thought about it, there are so many ways that you could have like thought yourself to like the failure case. But like, I should have just bet on the fact that you guys would just figure it out day by day and eventually figure out how to turn it into a business. It's like, yeah, I just like had this strong instinct that you are like, wanted to start the business. If you look at our like seed round pitch deck, it looks nothing like, you know, what it is today. If you look at the like early days of SpaceX, it's not like they were talking about Starlink in like the very early days. It was like Elon Klein went on this like exploration trip to like, you know, Russia to like go buy some engines. They sort of spat in his face. He was like, F that. He kind of did it a little bit out of vengeance. He had a chip on his shoulder. He liked, you know, sort of space things.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  But like step by step, you know, sort of figured out how to turn into like the behemoth of a business that it is today. But it was very little to do with like the original chip on his shoulder that he had. And I think a lot of like the best businesses in the world look like this. And so, yeah, do you think the greatest entrepreneurs look like that? And I think the people that are probably happiest at home, you know, sort of look like that too, where it's like, yeah, just don't overthink. You know, follow your instincts and just like, you know, go through what you gotta do. And I think. Partly why I have village idiot in my bio on Twitter. It's like, I originally got called that way back in the day by one of my colleagues. It's like branding of what I do on Twitter. And I was like, yeah, it's actually like a thing that I'm somewhat proud of. Like, yes, I think I'm smart, etc. But I think I trust my instincts and go forward.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  All right, before Sal jumps in, I'm just going to read a definition of introspection. So I feel like we're talking about several different concepts under one umbrella here. Introspection, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is examination of and attention to your own ideas, thoughts, and feelings. It does not demand rumination. It does not really demand backwards looking or overthinking. So are we actually talking about the right thing here, Sal?

• 39:05Speaker 03

  This was exactly what I thought when I saw the video. I think Mark's great and he's brilliant. I would take the other side of this where it's just like, he talks about never looking backwards and only looking forwards. And then he goes on this long historical exposition about Napoleon, which is hilarious, right? I think there's an important distinction here between therapy culture and forced self-doubt and historical, looking back over the last 10 years of your business. You look at the founding fathers obsessing about the Greeks and the Romans. Like, I don't think it's bad to look back. I think looking back grounds us in our past and our heritage and I think is kind of essential to moving forward towards the future. But I also think just sort of like whiny self-help therapy culture is a deleterious thing.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  I think both of those can be true.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  I think that's absolutely right. I think I'm an anxious person by nature, so I have to actively go against my brain spinning its wheels and doing what the investors who missed out on Varda did. But I don't think that is antithetical to also knowing how I'm doing or thinking about why I'm doing something. Because I think that just helps me be more accurate, Jason, just more direct and less frazzled and more focused. So to me, it's a positive in the direction you're describing, if that makes sense.

• 40:14Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. The context here, Larson, is all about execution for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, their partners who are placing the bets. For that group of people... What we've learned over time is making a decision quickly, living with the results of that decision and not, dare I say, overthinking it too much is a much better strategy than spending all your time ruminating and debating and having decision paralysis. So, you know, the reason this one hit a nerve is because it was a bit ambiguous. You know, is this, is he dunking on the therapy or is he talking about what's the best practice? The truth is, the best practice is the person who moves the fastest, who is the shark,

• 40:58Jason Calacanis?

  who is the most cutthroat, who makes quick decisions, iterates fastest, fires anybody who is a ruminator and promotes anybody who's an executor, wins in the game we play. This is a rule set for the game we play. Just like Michael Jordan's advice is a rule set for competitive sports at the highest level. This is not how to have a great life as a parent who's retired and who works to live. This is the advice for 0.1% of the population. That's how I took it. What did you take it as, Larson?

• 41:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, to tie things into what you're saying, we had a saying in the SEAL teams that effectively says that an average plan executed swiftly and aggressively is better than a great plan, you know, executed in the opposite manner.

• 41:40Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, you were a SEAL, Larson?

• 41:41Speaker 04

  I was. You know, I'm the only one that hasn't written a book yet, so I'll get on the, I'll get on the train.

• 41:46Jason Calacanis?

  Thank you for your service, bro.

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Congress is the new, is the new book, so I guess I'm behind. But yeah, so I think that, I think that that actually puts a bow on it for me and how I think about it is like, listen, we can overthink this or at some point you just gotta, you know,

• 41:59Jason Calacanis?

  One more time, give me, give us that quote again. And when you first heard it and when you first implemented it. Tell us the quote.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  First, first heard it in training. So, you know, every, every, it's a common, you know, quote that I'm probably butchering slightly because it's been a while. But effectively, the quote is that, hey, an aggressive plan, or excuse me, an average plan executed violently and aggressively is better than a perfect plan, you know, executed in the opposite manner. So I think that actually works for startups. I think it works for life. I think it works for everything, basically. And there's certain situations where you can be, you know, longer term thinkers. But when you have, when you have a target objective and you have a mission You need to go on and it actually is important. You need to go out there and overwhelm the enemy with overwhelming fire superiority. And it's the same thing in business. I mean, Delian's doing the same thing in his industry. He's overwhelming the industry with overwhelming fire superiority against any competitor, anybody else out there.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  And that's why I respect him so much and the other founders that are out there doing, building audacious things with that mentality.

• 42:56Jason Calacanis?

  Here's the exact quote, "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week." General George S. Patton. I've heard of him.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  Here we go.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Excellent movie if you haven't seen it.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  So with some introspection, we would have known that it was Patton. So I guess we're maybe wrong in terms of like, you know, not doing.

• 43:12Jason Calacanis?

  No, you violently executed the quote here.

• 43:14Speaker 04

  Violently executed, yeah, violently executed. Listen, I'm not worried to look this shit up. I'm retard Maxson.

• 43:20Jason Calacanis?

  Do you know the [BLEEP] Maxson guy? He's my favorite on YouTube. Pull up [BLEEP] Maxson from YouTube for a second. Delian, have you seen him?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  I have only just heard about it from Larson this morning.

• 43:31Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so what I love about this guy is he shares my love of having a stogie at the end of the day sometimes. Go for a hike on the ranch. He's got like his little mini backyard ranch. And sometimes at the end of the day, I'm like, I don't need to ruminate. Just go for a walk with my Bulldogs. I get out a stogie, I smoke a cigar and I'm like, I got a great life. So he sits there with his cigar, with his Weber grill.

• 43:55Jason Calacanis?

  He hits the cigar.

• 44:00Speaker 07

  Friday.

• 44:02Speaker 07

  Friday's one of those days.

• 44:05Speaker 07

  I don't know, I feel, dude, do you feel it? Look at the sun kinda shine. You feel, it's like a sundress.

• 44:14Speaker 07

  There's like a, you could smell the sweat of a, like a sundress.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Wait, people watch this?

• 44:22Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it doesn't matter what he's saying, it's how he's saying it. He's just like, Friday. Friday good.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  I also have friends that smoke a lot of weed and sound like that and they don't even have a YouTube channel.

• 44:35Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know why it makes sense to me, but he's like Friday's good. It's like a sundress. I'm like, sure. I'm in. Fuck it.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Absurdism is in. Okay, I got it.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  All right.

• 44:47Jason Calacanis?

  This, by the way, people are losing their mind on Threads and Blue Sky is falling right now. If you go on Blue Sky right now, literally, it's like, there's, there's two bizarro universes, X and Blue Sky, and you put them together, and the same story is like, on X, it's like a manifesto, it's a, it's a call to arms, and on Blue Sky, it's a, with the greatest philosophers of our time were saying self-reflection, and here's the definition, and, oh my god, it's amazing, like, we should all be like, and I got so much out of therapy, and I went to group therapy, and I went to this therapy, and changed my life, and I had a positive experience. It's so great. I, I recommend that every X user, for every 10 hours you spend on X, you should

• 45:32Jason Calacanis?

  be required to spend 10 minutes on Blue Sky, and vice versa. The two services-

• 45:37Speaker 02

  As a tax.

• 45:39Jason Calacanis?

  It should be, it should be the bubble tax. It's a bubble tax, Sal. Perfectly stated.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  If you want to consume games.

• 45:47Jason Calacanis?

  It's a 14%, we're seizing 5% of your bubble.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  All right.

• 45:53Jason Calacanis?

  Ro Khanna, and AOC, and Tucker Carlson, all agree. Megyn Kelly, 5% asset seizure of your, of your [bleep] maxing slash virtue signaling.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  While, while we're on this very important topic, because you guys-

• 46:06Jason Calacanis?

  Don't drop to a commercial. Don't drop to a commercial.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  All the ads are done. All the ads are done. I blasted them because your face was turning red every time.

• 46:13Jason Calacanis?

  Eight sleep. For, if you're [bleep] maxing, get eight sleep. There's a new, there's a new metric, Dalian. How [bleep] were you during-

• 46:20Speaker 02

  You were during sleep last night.

• 46:22Jason Calacanis?

  Yes. Brought to you by Whoop. Whoop is awesome. Got a new looks maxing score.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Didn't Whoop just raise an enormous round?

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Dude, yeah, $10 billion, yeah. Dude, they're rocking and rolling.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  I was blown away by the so, uh, because Aura Ring also raised an enormous round. They're both looking at, like, what, billion-dollar years in revenue terms? It really feels like hardware is, is back with such a wild vengeance, as the value of software goes down. It feels like hardware is just skyrocketing. Uh, but we are seeing some people, like, uh, Michael Eisenberg from the left, or Aleph, I'm not quite sure to pronounce that, I'm talking about kind of that defense tech hardware bubble. I'm curious what you guys think about the, uh-

• 46:59Jason Calacanis?

  Well, let's, let's stop on your previous question, which we should let the guys answer, which is- In a world of no moats, suddenly, having a hardware device tied to your software has made your company 10 times more appealing to investors, whereas 10 years ago, hardware is hard, I don't invest in hardware. Now, it's the opposite. It's like, there's no moats in software, you better add a hardware component to this product. So, do you know what this Whoop cost a year? I mean, I'm paying for it. I think it's 20, 30 bucks a month. Can somebody look it up? I think I'm paying $300 a year for this, which is a big number. If there's a million people with this, and there's gotta be hundreds of that, they must have

• 47:42Jason Calacanis?

  a million subs by now, right? 2 million, 3 million? Well, how many subs do these services have, Aura and Whoop? If they have 3 million at 300 a year, this is a big number.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  What the frick is this pricing page? You think they'll make this easier to find?

• 47:56Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, this is what Claude's for.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I should have... Why did I even do it the old-fashioned way?

• 48:02Speaker 04

  They don't want it easy to find.

• 48:04Jason Calacanis?

  Cause you're retard maxing.

• 48:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, dude.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  No, I'm just dumb.

• 48:07Jason Calacanis?

  Don't overthink it. Why would you use Google?

• 48:09Speaker 01

  There's three major annual tiers. One, which is 199 a year, or peak, 239, or life, 359. So I presume, Jason, you're on the life plan?

• 48:19Jason Calacanis?

  I don't know. I don't know, man.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  And Whoop has more than 2.5 million members worldwide as of early 2026, heading into its IPO. 2.5 million.

• 48:26Jason Calacanis?

  At 200, 500 million in revenue, 20 times revenue, 10 billion. That makes sense, actually.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  And they're gonna do a billion in revenue this year. That's their target. So, yeah. The numbers make perfectly fine sense. I have no beef with the Whoop or Aura rounds. I just think it's interesting to see how the hardware companies really seem to be just crushing the world right now while we watch software stocks just collapse on the public markets. It's terrifying. Jelian, you're nodding your head. You guys were early on the hardware front with all your annual investments.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, we also originally did the series B of Eight Sleep, you know, sort of back in the day, although like at 100 posts. So like, you know, today that would be a seed round, I guess. But, uh, but yeah, I feel like, you know, we've always had, you know, sort of hardware and like, you know, the portfolio pretty proudly, right? Like, you know, SpaceX early on and early on. I think in my like, you know, set of venture investments that I've done, I think probably something like 85% of them basically have like a material hardware, you know, sort of component, both like consumer and enterprise. And so it's been interesting because I can remember back in the day, my former colleague, now, you know, general partner at Benchmark, Everett Randall, he used to literally always poke fun at me. He was like, whenever there's like high margin, high growth software, like I'll do that if there's ever like super low margin CapEx, CapEx intensive like hardware businesses that are negative gross margin, send this to Dalian. And now it's kind of funny because I feel like, you know, Benchmark

• 49:38Speaker 02

  literally just did like a spiked investment, you know, into Star Cloud, you know, in order to, uh, you know, uh, you know, poke poke back at the bear. So, um, yeah, yeah, I'm definitely, yeah, been been long hardware and it's fun to see the valley come around to it.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Larson, you guys at Harpoon and founders that are both in Northwood, right?

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, Bridget.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Talk to me about about why, what attracted you guys to that company in particular? Because it kind of crosses both the space, American resilience and industrialization.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  Well, I think first of all, Bridget's a force of nature. So I think, you know, any, any great startup needs to have a force of nature founder, and I think she's absolutely one. But ultimately, when you think about, you know, access to space and all the data aspects we're talking about, whether it be data centers in space or just EOIR satellites, we are at a huge, you know, gap in the market in terms of bringing that data down to earth and doing it in an effective, modern way. There's legacy incumbents in the space that just are not modernizing in a way that we need to do, whether that be from a national security or commercially, you know, applicable way. And I think she's, you know, really hitting a very, you know, nice niche in the market that is going to grow very, very, to be very, very large. And if she hits her milestones, I think this is going to be a very big company very quickly.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  You know, same idea.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think what's underappreciated is as much as we're all seeing like Starlink blanket, you know, sort of the, you know, sort of planet with, you know, sort of internet. If you're operating satellites up in space, you actually do not have that same internet access. So, you know, at Varda, for example, we get to talk to our satellites once every like two to three hours roughly for, you know, sort of 15, 20 minutes. And so think of a satellite effectively, and in some ways is like a backend server rack that you have access to, that you, you know, are S H ing into and like communicating with. But you don't get to talk to it 24/7. And so that requires like a lot of autonomy. It's pretty frustrating and like makes operations, you know, sort of relatively difficult. If you're like space exercise, sure, you can go invest into building out a whole ground station network yourself and they've obviously done that. But if you're even Varda, which, you know, you know, you know, even other companies that have like, you know, sort of multi-billion dollar valuations, you're still dependent

• 51:31Speaker 02

  on some of these like super old school providers. The biggest one is this company called Ksat, which is like a Norwegian state owned basically entity. I think it got founded in like 1982. It's like they're like software interfaces, literally like Fortran and FTPing. It's like, it's not like they're like a modern API based system. And so, yeah, when we like, you know, sort of met Northwood, it was just like this thesis that I've been thinking about for a long time, but there just wasn't really like a great entrepreneur, you know, sort of going after it. And she has like the best, you know, latest, you know, she just had her latest round led by Mina at Washington Harbor, who like deeply understands how to think about like these like project financing, CapEx intensive, how do you layer in like public, you know, sort of, you know, funds, you know, debt, you know, capital alongside, you know, sort of venture equity, because this is the type of thing that's going to have to go and build out a lot of basically like physical infrastructure here on the ground.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  But on the other side, hopefully I'll be able to talk to my Varda satellites basically 24/7 rather than, you know, very intermittently right now.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  I'm confused by your lack of connectivity and I presume it's just ignorance, but I know that AWS and Azure run ground control communications setup, so they just not-

• 52:32Speaker 02

  They like announced it and never did anything. Like AWS basically like bailed on their whole like AWS like ground station thing. So, yeah, nobody, nobody's done it. It's kind of crazy. So, you know, maybe some of those companies may or may not, you know, be future, future Northwood partners.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Wow, and then now watching Amazon and Blue Origin chase SpaceX, it really feels like an extra mistake because now they have no base to stand on. What a fuck up.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, obviously like Amazon's, you know, trying to roll out Amazon Leo. They just announced that, you know, sort of deal with Delta, which like, again, I think, you know, Elon tweeted about it earlier today. It's like, yeah, Delta's gonna really take a hit on that. Like, United at the end of the year, I think, has something like 80% of their, like, you know, domestic air, you know, you know, airplanes are going to have Starlink on it. Yeah, at some point, like, I think a lot of us on this call almost certainly would prefer to fly United, even if it's like slightly more expensive or inconvenient timing, if you know they're gonna have Starlink internet on board.

• 53:15Jason Calacanis?

  Hundred percent, I'm making my decision on what, who to fly, based on this. Like, 1,000%, and United said they're gonna be 100%. I think JetBlue also said they're gonna be 100%. And I think Delta just announced they're gonna use the Amazon Starlink competitor. So, I, I, I have a thesis that business travel is going to 2X, 2X, because of this technology. I know it sounds crazy, and I think people would pay, I know they're making it free. I think people would pay for a Starlink subscription, even if they didn't have Starlink at home. This is how it should be deployed. If you get on a plane, you get a low bandwidth for free, like, no video, like, whatever, you get one megabit.

• 54:00Jason Calacanis?

  But if you pay for a Starlink subscription of 20 bucks a month, 40 bucks a month, or you have Starlink at home, you have the 60 to 120 version, then you get the high speed on the plane, this would take Starlink subscriptions to the moon. I mean, I guess they don't need to, because United's picking it up, but I will, I will only fly United, or especially on international, where you're four hours over the ocean, and they're like, oh, by the way, you can't work for four hours, we're gonna just dribble in your texts randomly. It's, it's nuts.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Sal, Sal, can you put, uh, Starlink on your jet, your private jet?

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Um, I don't have a private jet, so I can't answer that question.

• 54:37Jason Calacanis?

  Didn't fall for the classic journalistic technique.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't talk to poor people.

• 54:42Jason Calacanis?

  Dalian, go ahead, you were gonna say something.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Oh, I was gonna say, just like, uh, you know, we're not that far away, I think, from, you know, Apple eventually just putting in a phase ray antenna on one of these things, and now you have Starlink coverage, basically, on your phone, literally no matter where you are. So you could be on your, you know, sort of PJ that has Starlink installed, or there's a world, you know, I haven't done the exact physics on this, but like, you know, I think if you, like, have a window seat, basically, and you have, you know, a phase ray antenna on one of these. Even if the jet doesn't have it, your phone still basically has access to, you know, basically Starlink. And that is true whether or not you're on a jet or you're like, I don't know, middle of the Mediterranean.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Where are they gonna charge like three bucks a month to a carrier for this? Two bucks a month? That's the rumor I'm hearing.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a little bit of a cabal, like the first carrier to drop in some ways, like there, you know, it's always, it's kind of bad for T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, et cetera. Cause like their sort of mode is like their physical infrastructure here on the ground. And so the moment that one of them starts to offer this, in some ways, they kind of break their like entire mode to like valuation. And so, you know, I think it's more likely than not that like if you add up all of the carriers in the United States and their valuations today, I think that all gets transferred to SpaceX over the course of like the next, you know, basically 10 years. But it's a question of like, how long can they hold off until then?

• 55:47Speaker 03

  And if you, if you, oh, sorry, go ahead.

• 55:50Speaker 03

  If you look at the, if you look at the broader infrastructure picture, the ultimate mode is infrastructure, right? So like all these, all these cell towers are just being leapfrogged by things like Starlink. You're seeing this kind of happen throughout the economy. So I think base power is sort of like a modern take on how you distribute power. You've got all these nuclear companies. We were an early O'Klo investor, for example, that are, that are out there kind of generating energy. All these pieces of infrastructure are kind of being rethought. And to your point, I think we're in this moment where where hardware is in vogue, but I think it's also like we're coming back into contact with reality in a lot of ways. All of a sudden, it matters that we need to be able to generate a lot of energy really quickly. And so all of a sudden, people are thinking about generation and distribution of energy in a way they haven't in a hundred years. I think to your,

• 56:33Speaker 03

  to your kind of point, your question, Alex, around military, all of a sudden, we're thinking an awful lot more about this after Russia, Ukraine, after Iran, like all these, all these kind of old, old realities are coming back up to the surface. And I think we're, we're moving back towards reconsidering these, these kind of critical industries, which are actually the biggest industries. So like energy is the largest market in the world, right? But, but largely very, very little innovation. And so I think it's a huge opportunity for us to, you know, reopen all these, all these sectors that we have kind of ceded to inertia for the last, you know, several decades, even among the tech industry.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Have we improved the government procurement process enough to support a rapid enough purchase cycle for defense tech companies so they don't get stuck somewhere in, in like delay hell? Cause that's what I consider with companies like Sironic. Like I love what they're building. I love that they raise capital, but they're selling, no offense, largely to the Navy, which is an enormous bureaucracy, uh, which is part of a larger bureaucracy, which is run by Congress. And so that just scares me from a customer profile point.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  I think that we are and everyone throws barbs at the acquisition process, but the fact of the matter is, is that companies have been doing it for the longest time, like forever effectively. A lot of our companies that we actually take for granted now, whether it be AWS, started as GovCloud with the CIA and other things like that. These things have happened and it's part of the reason why we started our firm is that we didn't think that modernization in the public sector was necessarily required acquisition reform. That said, we definitely need acquisition reform. We definitely need to get through the Valley of Death, but I think that the people that criticize the Valley of the Death probably aren't the founders of [BLEEP] maxing and finding a way to get through to it in the first place. And so I think that we do need it. It is a good thing. We do need to solve for it, but that said, I think there's always been an opportunity here. And that was one of the confounding things to me when I first moved to the Valley, first started

• 58:14Speaker 04

  working in venture, is like this budget exists. There is a playbook to do it. It is ugly. It requires lobbyists. It takes all these things that are difficult and a different muscle movement from a go-to-market versus like PLG and things like that, that everyone got spoiled with in the dot-com boom coming out of Silicon Valley. And I think there is some ways to go out there and get big, lumpy contractual opportunities. And you have to inform these requirements and build technologies, and make sure the government knows about it before it's pre-wired for somebody else out there. And so it does take more capital. It does take more patience, but I think it's always been an opportunity. And hopefully, it's becoming even more an addressable opportunity for our young founders to go out there and achieve more efficiently.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want to get an answer to this question though, Lawrence. I'm really curious about the Harpoon perspective. People were talking about how Androel shares with the hardest things to get in the world, that they were the number one thing people wanted to find in secondary markets, valuations are getting pretty hot. We've seen a number of multi-billion dollar rounds go into American defense tech companies. Essentially, are we seeing too much capital go into quickly? Now that I'm opposed to them, I'm just curious if we're in a bit of a defense tech bubble.

• 59:16Speaker 04

  I think that we are. And I think that it's, but to frame it, I think that we are always in a pseudo-bubble anytime anything gets topical and hot in Silicon Valley or in the venture capital or tech community. I don't think this is any different than the dot-com wave, the mobile wave, SaaS, crypto, so on and so forth. I think there's people that were early to it, like Founders Fund and others, and there's people that are sort of later to it. And I think that price is what you pay, value is what you get. I think that right now there is an oversupply of capital going in here and paying very, very high prices for things that may not pencil at the end of the day. But that said, we are going to see more winners coming out of this space. Um, it is my belief. I think we're not only going to see the annuals, we're going to see other solutions that are going to be large as well, maybe not the same scale, but I think it depends on, you know, your fund size as well.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  If you have strong ownership at an early stage and you're have a reasonable, you know, fund size, I think you'd be very successful. If you're a multi-billion dollar fund and plowing a lot more money, the upside must be much, much, much higher. So I think that we are sort of like in this competitive pressure and I think venture capital and startups are sort of like real estate. Everyone wants to be have the nice home and the nice neighborhood and the great location. And I think that that's how everyone is infatuated with AI and defense slash hardware right now. And capital is moving in that direction and prices are just going up.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, we need more for the military than just drones, be they in the sky, on the water or underwater Larson. So where, where in defense sector do you think there's not enough attention paid where there's a lot of opportunity today?

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  I, I think something that we're looking at is the supply chain for a lot of these critical components that go into all of these, these systems. So there's subsystems, there's critical components, many of which go all the way back to rare earths that are, you know, in China. That hill and valley that Delian put on, we talked a lot about the pharmaceuticals industry, pharmaceutical precursors and going through trials. And all that stuff is just done much more efficiently and better at scale in China with automations. And so ultimately I think that we're looking at really investors, a lot are looking at the application layer. With the application layer, the things that gets the bazooka contracts, it's the ceramics, et cetera of the world. That's the application layer products. But ultimately I'd be really curious to see how people are reconciling domestic supply chain.

• 1:01:18Speaker 04

  If we really are decoupling from China, we don't have the domestic supply chain to fit into, you know, more recent NDAA and legislative aspects. I'd be curious to get Saul's, you know, take on this in terms of like how, how we sort of like, you know, rebuild that, how we re-industrialize all of that. Because I think that is sort of like the next, the next frontier where we got to solve those problems. Whether the venture backable or not, I'm not sure yet, but we got to solve that problem.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  Sal, you're up. There are alternatives on all these things. So we invested in a company called Whitestone, which is an undersea mining company. And it turns out, we have known how to mine the bottom of the ocean for a long time. Just about everyone signed something called the International Seabed Treaty. Permit me a little bit of like a law professor digression here. The United States never signed this thing. And the admin earlier this year issued an executive order saying, we're going to go do this because G just nuked the global supply chain for rare earths. And it turns out, there's tons of neodymium sitting there on the bottom of the ocean. You don't even have to drill for it. You just dredge. So I think there are a lot of options that are being, you know, sort of considered now that wouldn't

• 1:02:24Speaker 03

  have been considered in previous eras. You've got companies like Vulcan, MP Materials, and a lot of other folks who are out there saying, hey, we just, as a sort of national priority, need to make sure that we have access to these things. And, you know, when those supply chains are stress tested and interrupted, that's when you start to see both innovation and people starting to spend more time on it. So I'm actually optimistic about our ability to get ourselves back onto solid footing here. But it's encouraging to see the quality entrepreneurs taking these problems on. You didn't see that 10 years ago. So I think that's been something that's been, as an investor, really exciting for us.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  I think the important thing, though, is like, these companies do need to stand on their own two feet, like in the commercial market with their unit economics. Like, it cannot be that the only way that you compete against China is with, you know, sort of significant and, you know, sort of like indefinite government support. Like, you know, there's definitely, you know, sort of ecosystems in China where like, you know, the state propped them up for some period of time, but they eventually got to like phenomenal unit economics. I think my fear with some of these like reindustrialization projects that the United States has actually funded even over the past like year, year and a half, is some of them, I think, are just like going down the total wrong tech tree that is just like trying to copy what China did 20 years ago in some ways, just reshoring it back to the United States. First, I think there are certain other projects that, you know, I think are Leapfrogging ahead of China in a way that allows them to, even without government

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  support, ultimately actually be the best commercial player. And so, yeah, similar to both Larson and Sal, it's been an area that we've been pretty actively investing into across the board. And that panel with Alicia Jackson and Zach Weinberg, et cetera, for Hill and Valley was basically my pet project. It was probably the one that I spent the most time making sure to put together. Because I was like, it's just a topic that is not talked about enough. Senator Young is really phenomenal on it. Alicia Jackson's phenomenal on it. Zach's phenomenal on it. There's actually a whole white paper that we put out, same day of the forum, on how to reshore the stuff back in the United States.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Where are we going down the wrong tech tree from a governmental perspective? Because I'm really curious about where we're making these missteps, Delian.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  Not a gotcha question. I'm legitimately curious. You were so confident when you said that. I'm curious where we're making errors so we can correct them. We can't make improvements until we know what we're doing wrong.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  I'm gonna plead the fifth on that one. I don't want to name any names. Slash, I think some of these things will end up turning into huge lawsuits and people get hauled in front of Congress and go to jail.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  It's all retard max until the question's up.

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  I'm gonna plead the fifth.

• 1:04:50Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, give me the question here. More specifically.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  One of the friends of the program says that the government and its industrial policy regarding reshoring and reindustrializing America is taking things down the wrong path. So, Jason, how would you define a positive industrial policy for the government that would accelerate resiliency while also not falling prey to Reagan story capture and waste?

• 1:05:17Jason Calacanis?

  So, give me like, three examples of this. Were you talking about the CHIPS Act?

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Let's do rare earth silicon production and new pharma.

• 1:05:27Jason Calacanis?

  So, rare earth is the simplest one possible. If you can figure out a way for the federal government to work with local states, and we believe in states' rights, it's the United States of America. We have a system of 50 different competing regions, and they get to have some level of sovereignty. I think the best thing to do is for the executive branch to work with the senators and the representatives from the local ones and say, Which five states would like to be the beneficiary of this large low interest loan? That it's a low interest loan with an equity kicker that makes Americans profitable? Like they could have been with the Tesla loans back in the day. Remember Solyndra, Tesla and Fisker?

• 1:06:12Jason Calacanis?

  And one of the companies paid it back? We got paid back with interest from that Obama era incentive. But we didn't get options or warrants in Tesla. And they could have very easily because remember Tesla was on the brink. So a very simple process. Hey, you're a rare earth company. We've got a billion dollars here. You can ask for 10 million to 100 million loan. The states can get involved. If your state, you know, doesn't want to, you know, damage 100 acres in the middle of the forest and you're Maine or Vermont or California and you're precious about it or it's like very dense? By all means, opt out. But if you're Texas, Nevada, you know, Utah, and you want this commerce and you want this tax?

• 1:06:54Jason Calacanis?

  That's the way to do it is just give a loan and then give upside. And then the American populace would own 5% of a, you know, have 5% warrants in a company that becomes worth $10 billion. It's very simple. Incentives matter and states get to opt in and states get to opt out. I don't mind this fact. I have come to the conclusion after Roe v. Wade becoming a state issue, that there is something incredibly important that the founding fathers figured out about keeping a nation from becoming controlled by a king, which is states getting to opt out. And this, I think, leads to the discussion of do states have any rights with AI?

• 1:07:37Jason Calacanis?

  And of course, like California is going to go wild and they're going to regulate AI. I understand that that doesn't fly with our industry, whatever. But living in Texas now and watching people in Nevada and Florida crush it and run the tables on California? It's kind of like this system works really well. It's a better system to have states competing with each other. And the federal government saying, yeah, it's an open competition. And here's some money and yeah, then you don't have to complain if you're California and you're like, we don't want you ripping up this beautiful state. It's going to be perfect and pristine. Great. That's what your populace wants. Awesome. Nevada, how do you feel? Texas, do you want data centers? Texas like, hell, yes, we want data centers. Everything west of Austin is like, there's nobody there.

• 1:08:21Jason Calacanis?

  It's empty. Go for it. Rip it apart. Build data centers. We're already ripping the oil out. Who gives a shit? Go for it. We want the tax revenue. We want the jobs. Awesome. Competition. Great for humanity.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  But under your model, Jason, the states get warrants when they participate. So you would end up with some public ownership of private companies. Yeah?

• 1:08:42Jason Calacanis?

  Non-voting.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:08:45Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, just like they, they own the note, they own the loan.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Jason Calacanis?

  So they own the loan. So what's the difference between owning a loan that gets paid back at 1% or 4% and owning a loan? As well as you get a million warrants for a dollar each. And if that goes public at 100, you make 99 and you.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Oh, because I think the government will screw it up. And I think the government, when they have an interest in a company is going to basically turn it into the state operation in that case and squeeze out other things. I'm going to pull the founders fund libertarian card here and say, I don't like that idea. It's too much intermingling of a public and private money. But, but I like where your head's at and we don't have to solve this today, but this goes back to the top of the show.

• 1:09:23Jason Calacanis?

  Sal, you had something.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  How do we build an economy?

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  It's just, you know, we can't both be in a bubble for like hard tech reindustrialization companies and need the government to be kind of like subsidizing it. I think the way that you sort of get more of this, more of the innovation that you want is by, you know, pulling restrictions out of the way of these entrepreneurs who have incredible capital markets available to them. There, there are people who will fund these things that did not exist in the past. So I think I'm incredibly bullish on this sort of reindustrialism, reindustrialization. And I think the way you get it to go faster is not to just kind of throw government money at it. Cause so often when you throw government money at something, you create a subsidy, but then there's just so much regulation. It's like you give.

• 1:10:05Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, both things have to happen. Shrung. And first is regulation, right? First is regulation, 100%.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Jason Calacanis?

  After regulation, if you still don't have, like if it's still not economically viable, Sal, to build chips in America, and we know Taiwan's getting picked up by China in 27 or 29 or whatever it is.

• 1:10:27Jason Calacanis?

  And the investment community is like, yeah, I don't, I don't want to pay for a money losing fab that can never compete with what's coming out of China, Taiwan and China. Then what do you do? So if you've gotten the regulation done and you still don't have an economic model, then I think.

• 1:10:40Speaker 03

  I'm going to fight both sides of your hypo. One, we have not removed nearly enough regulation.

• 1:10:45Jason Calacanis?

  A hundred percent agree, a hundred percent.

• 1:10:47Speaker 03

  And two, Saronic just raised a couple billion dollars to do exactly what you just said. Like, you know, it's, the money does exist to do this. And we, there, there are sort of a lot of investors who are not only patriotic and care deeply about the future of our country and our ability to defend ourselves and project force. It's also that, you know, we think these things are really valuable, right? Which is why I think you see.

• 1:11:07Jason Calacanis?

  Can we think of another example, like, I don't know, making commodity drugs?

• 1:11:15Jason Calacanis?

  Or something like, is there some other example?

• 1:11:18Speaker 03

  Oh, you're just, you're just saying whatever is the least economic thing. I think the.

• 1:11:21Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I'm just trying to think out loud.

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  The hard case you're, you're speaking to, I think, is places where, you know, there's extreme subsidy in the Chinese government and it forestalls US investment.

• 1:11:32Jason Calacanis?

  Correct.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  Our capital markets won't do it because just like Delian saying, we're looking at and saying there's no way to make money because they're artificially keeping prices low. Either because they're incredibly good at it and have a 20 year head start, or because they subsidize it or both. And so those are, those are tougher calls.

• 1:11:47Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think like, sometimes I like, don't totally, you know, just gonna buy that argument where I think people like, think that the reason that like, you know, sort of Shanghai has such a great place to like, you know, do consumer electronics is like, because of state funding. It's like, no, at this point, they've just built by far the best ecosystem for that type of talent, for that type of, you know, sort of production. I think like, you know, in relation to, you know, sort of bio, you know, so the best, you know, sort of attempted this in the past couple of years was the like ABC, you know, sort of incubation resilience, right? Which was trying to like, you know, reshore and create the like, Wushi Biologics, Wushi Small Molecules, which is like a generic, you know, drug producer in China and bring that, you know, basically back to, you know, back to America. But, you know, I think a lot of why they like, you know, ultimately, you know, sort of didn't end up, you know, sort of working out the way they wanted was like. Both didn't really figure out how to pair, you know, the public and private dollars.

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  But again, there was no like, you know, actually studying China and looking at like, you know, how do you actually get ahead of that? Like a bit of why Wuxi, you know, sort of, you know, works in China is like, they just have infinite low cost labor, you know, basically chemists.

• 1:12:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think there's just some things here that are uneconomical and private venture capital or PE, you know, private debt markets are just not going to finance. And I think that's where Uncle Sam needs to step in and say like, this is imperative to our national prosperity and security. We need to invest in this because, you know, it's sort of like, you know, during TARP, buyer of last resort thing, whether or not that was a good policy. I think we have a similar type of thing that's happening right now. We need to be a funder of, you know, last resort to get things on step, to validate the unit economics and then let the private markets take over.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  What mechanism would you use for that? And what are some target areas to Jason's point where you think that would apply?

• 1:13:17Speaker 04

  I go back to the pharmaceutical industry, I think is a great one. I think it's like not talked a lot enough about. I think it's extremely important to the health and our entire populace. We went through a pandemic. All of these things are really important and I think that's something that we need to, you know, invigorate here. Obviously, you know, semis and TSMC and all that stuff is already talked about a lot. And I think that we're making good progress towards that. But I think, you know, thinking about the health and security of our populace, that's one that's not talked about enough.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Jason, who should lead the nation in getting that done? Do you think, should that be governors or do you think that's a federal question?

• 1:13:47Jason Calacanis?

  If only we had a business focused, you know, chief executive in the White House who wasn't starting endless foreign wars and who was a great negotiator and had all the technology community and business community willing to come to the White House anytime he snapped his fingers. We have like half of that right now. Unfortunately, the entire administration has been distracted by a forever war. If that ends, like Trump is on his way to doing this, you know, and it's, I think, Michael Bloomberg, Trump, you know, my, you know, Jamie Dimon.

• 1:14:22Jason Calacanis?

  Eisner, pick your CEO, Schultz, CEO, former CEO who becomes president, who can explain this to politicians in a very deft way and explain to the American public that this is not grift. That's really the only reason why people get upset about this is they think, oh, they're just giving Intel $10 billion because Intel's a fuck up and they can't make a real business. So they're giving, they're [bleep] maxing tax dollars to the most [bleep] maxed company. When you really just need to make small incentives. Remove, obviously, removing, you know, the regulations, great. And then, this is what I liked about the loan program, is people opted into it, they paid it back, and if

• 1:15:07Jason Calacanis?

  you just put a little warrant coverage in there, then it makes up for all the losses. I'm not saying it should be like the purpose of our government, but in the case of, we don't have pharmaceuticals, you want a private-public partnership. You don't want the government doing anything, except maybe protecting citizens, you know. They suck at whatever they do. Look at the education system, look at our healthcare system. We pay more than, we pay two or three times any other country for healthcare and for education, and we get half the results.

• 1:15:36Speaker 03

  When people propose a government policy, they're always imagining like a philosopher king administering it, but actually you get the DMV. Like, that's the important thing to remember.

• 1:15:45Jason Calacanis?

  This is why Singapore is so interesting to me. Have you guys been to Singapore before? One, you haven't been? I have. It's, it's worth going. And just, in that country, the way it was set up by Lee Kuan

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  Yu.

• 1:16:02Jason Calacanis?

  Yu, Lee Kuan Yu, who is like, that's my government warrior CEO, like, war mode CEO. They have this perfect balance of, anybody who works for the government, that is the most elite job you can have. If you were the equivalent of a Harvard MBA, you came out of Stanford, you go work for the government there, you get paid twice the private sector. So they'll pay $400,000 for somebody to work in, and they're like, we want the government here to be the highest functioning In the world, not the place, people who are looking to work 20 hours a week, take a ton of vacation and, you know, get some pension. It's literally the elites, the elite performers, not elites like in the way we use it here in America. The most elite performers consider working for the government,

• 1:16:46Jason Calacanis?

  this incredible thing. It's kind of like the Navy SEALs Larson, where it's like, you say you're a Navy SEAL, we're all like, whoa. That's legit.

• 1:16:53Speaker 04

  We need all government to have that. You need to have like, you know, 80% of the people that try out for any role in government, don't make it because you're not good enough. And like, there needs to be that level of prestige and like those types of people that are in the seat. And, you know.

• 1:17:05Jason Calacanis?

  As opposed to government being the place where people who, you know, can't cut it.

• 1:17:10Speaker 04

  Don't get another job. Yeah.

• 1:17:11Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. And that's, that's the turnaround we need. I mean, this is why you can say what you want about Doge, but, um, or just making the government smaller. If we're sitting here and our industry is like, you know what? We can do this with 10% less people. Like, our government for the last 50 years, under all types of, you know, Republicans, Democrats, and everybody in between, moderates, et cetera, has been like, you know what the solution here is? Let's, let's build the size of the government. Like, that's never the solution. More of adding more to what's not working is almost never the solution. It's like hitting the accelerator while you're spinning, you know, on ice, coming out of a turn, you're like, that's not what you do. Just hold the steering wheel straight and just ride it out.

• 1:17:56Jason Calacanis?

  Like, just adding more speed never helps a rocket that's off course, right, Delian?

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  No, and then, you know, so speaking of, we are now, you know, sort of L minus, uh, exactly four hours to when, uh, you know, humans go back to the, uh, go back to the moon for the first time in over three years.

• 1:18:10Jason Calacanis?

  I'm so excited. Tell us about this, Delian. What is the story here? Why is this happening? Uh, why is our government doing it? What exactly, they're going to go around the moon for 10 days, with humans on the top of this Artemis rocket. Like, that's what I know. Why? And what are we going to prove by doing this?

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I thought there's this really phenomenal article. Um, I don't know if it makes sense to, you know, sort of bring up, written by this guy, Eric Berger, uh, last night, uh, at Ars Technica, um, uh, talking about like why for the first time, he's, uh, excited about, um, you know, sort of this mission versus he hasn't been for the past couple Artemis's. I would say post like the space shuttle era, right, which got, you know, sort of shut down, um, you know, during, um, uh, you know, the Obama era. NASA just got really lost. Like it was just like a very confusing architecture that they were saying for coming back like the moon and Mars. They're talking about basically putting like a space station in low Earth orbit, uh sorry, in moon orbit.

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  As like a way station on the way down to the surface of the moon, but they didn't really have a plan to get down to the surface. We're going to put a bunch of astronauts orbiting the moon. What's the point? Cause like the whole point is like the moon has resources. You can mine it. You can build things there. But like if you're in orbit around it, you can't you sort of do that. And he was like, this time it finally feels different. And a part of it like Jared has just done some phenomenal work in the past. Like I think he's been, you know, sort of, you know, uh, you know, nominated or, you know, confirmed for the past three months. He shut down all the nonsense, all the things that just felt very confusing and vague and had no clear plan at NASA for the past 15 years. He basically shut down. This is the third time that this, you know, sort of vehicles launched, but it's the first time where it kind of makes sense in a technical tech tree, you know, sort of roadmap. Where we're basically repeating effectively the Apollo nine slash ten missions, which were basically missions that like went to the moon and got close to the moon.

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  But came back, but we're basically testing the system and then we're basically doing that, you know, sort of same thing. Um, this vehicle has basically flown, you know, basically three times. Uh, the first was, I want to say in, uh, 2014. The second time, uh, and that was like really, you know, so low with orbit mission coming back. Uh, the second time was in, uh, 2022 there, the, you know, sort of spacecraft went much further and higher up and we practiced basically re-entering at a faster speed. And this time we're basically going around the moon. Um, the change that he's also made is for the next mission, Artemis three, what we're going to do is rather than going back to the moon again, we're actually going to practice docking with either a starship lunar lander. Or the Blue Origin lunar lander, which is, um, you know, a good practice test for eventually that docking basically happening by the moon.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  And then Artemis four would be ideally the first, you know, basically boots on the moon. And that's currently planned for, I believe, um, you know, late 2028. I, you know, the, the, the rocket and the spacecraft honestly may or may not be the ones that we actually use to go back to the moon. So a bit of this is Jared sort of inheriting the, um, historical architecture. But what he has pushed is like, we are going to start launching this rocket way more frequently. We're going to be flying the spacecraft way more frequently. And I think that gives him the political air cover for like, if in a year, 18 months. This rocket, which right now has flown like, you know, three times in the last 15 years. So not particularly high cadence. If they don't get to Jared's new cadence, he'll probably just shut that program and then pivot fully to some like Starship Dragon, you know, Blue Origin, Blue Lander, et cetera type of, you know, architecture. So I think today is like super, super exciting.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  You know, going very, very close to the moon and, you know, doing a really good practice, basically, you know, for a lunar landing run. And as far as humans have been away from Earth in, you know, 50, 53 years. But also I don't think we have like a super obvious, like here's how we're gonna, you know, to get back to the moon and, you know, put boots on it, you know, immediately.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but we're fricking trying and that makes me so happy. Like this entire Artemis thing, the fact that we're doing it just brings joy to my heart, Julian. I want to go to the moon myself. So the faster we go, the faster I have a small chance. Jason, are you excited? You gonna watch? Show it to the girls?

• 1:21:40Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, I'm, I guess I'm excited. I, I, I think I've become a bit numb to the excitement of launches since Elon has, is doing one every three days and they're so predictable now, which I think says something. It's kind of like, are you impressed when, I don't know, like the, I mean, are people in Japan impressed when they get on a 200 mile per hour bullet train? No. Like, are Americans impressed when you get on one? Yes. You know, like, but this has become the new normal. Like we're able to go to space every day. I mean, what is the cadence right now of hopping on a, on a Falcon?

• 1:22:24Jason Calacanis?

  Like the Falcon is the one that goes up every two or three days now? What is the number of?

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  150, 160 launches a year?

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  And what you'll love, Jason, is in November of last year, for the first time in American history, we had more rocket launches that month than days in the month. And that was the first time that's ever happened in American history. So Falcon 9 and everybody else, but basically daily now.

• 1:22:43Jason Calacanis?

  So basically, basically, it's like the train. It's like getting the B train or something like. It's like, yeah, you can get the bus. You can just show up at Starbase or in Cape Canaveral and hop a flight to space. I mean, that is mind blowing. Where were we 20 years ago? It was like there were 10 a year, 20 a year. I don't, who knows? It was like a couple of months.

• 1:23:07Speaker 03

  So we've now, more time has now elapsed from the first moon landing to today than time between the first flight at Kitty Hawk and the moon landing. So like in another way.

• 1:23:18Jason Calacanis?

  Not quite, not quite. It was 66 years.

• 1:23:20Speaker 03

  Is that wrong or is it close?

• 1:23:21Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, it's very close. It's very close. It was 66 years from Kitty Hawk to, yeah, yeah. But close. I mean, the Concord, like, you know, this is like one of my big regrets is I remember, I didn't have enough money to take a $5,000 Concord flight. But I remember the Concord because I lived, you know, I lived in Brooklyn and it would leave out of JFK and like you would hear it sometimes and you would, you know, you knew people who took it in New York and you could get to London in three fucking hours. Like, come on, folks. And then poor, what's the?

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  Boom.

• 1:23:54Jason Calacanis?

  Boom is like now Boom's on a side quest, not a pivot. I incorrectly called it a pivot, but they're on a side quest to make, you know, energy at data centers. And I'm like, for the love of God, why don't we have the ability to get to Japan in five hours, man? Come on.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Because then you would always be in Japan, Jason.

• 1:24:12Jason Calacanis?

  Yes. Okay, I'm the blocker now. Like, why can't we drive 120 miles an hour on the roads in America? Like, why, there are safe enough cars to have the Autobahn. Why can't we just say the left-hand lane is for cars that have been built in the last 36 months that have these feature sets and go 100 miles an hour? You know, if you're, if you're driving with FSD at 100 miles an hour in the left-hand lane and you don't have junkers and like vans from 1974 in there, it would be completely safe. Like, we just need to be a little more aggressive in terms of like, or like raise the bar in terms of transportation. It's like, it's, we're optimizing for the cheapest possible ticket and the worst possible experience.

• 1:24:55Jason Calacanis?

  Like, I just want to have inspiring transportation.

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  Well, after this conversation, I'm pretty excited about the future in terms of compute and improving Americans' industrial capacity and going back to space. So I'm pretty optimistic, Jason. I think we're making good progress. Don't be so down.

• 1:25:10Jason Calacanis?

  No, I'm just, there's some things that feel like I need right now. My personal, I need to be able to get to Japan faster, or I want to drive faster on the roads. And we're just, come on, I just, the future's got to get here just a little bit faster. If you had to put your money on, if you had to bet on Anthropic or OpenAI at this point, at the same valuation, because they're the same revenue now, Alex, am I, are they?

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  It depends on how you count. OpenAI is about $25 billion run rate. The last Anthropic number was 19 or 20 billion, but there's a lot of questions about how they're doing hyperscaler cuts and if they're counting gross or net revenue. So it's a little bit tricky.

• 1:25:47Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, entire net worth minus your primary residence has to go into one, your entire fund has to go into one bet. Anthropic or OpenAI, go.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  Who's first?

• 1:26:01Speaker 04

  I'm going Anthropic and probably stuff that, I'm going Anthropic because like all the founders I know are using Claude code. I think it's really sort of like taken off. I think that, you know, the excitement of OpenAI also had a lot of, you know, tumult with it, right? With, you know, with Sam almost, you know, being gone. Now he's back, the spat with Elon. I don't want to underestimate Sam Altman, but I also think that Anthropic seems to, you know, have captured lightning in a bottle right now. But they have their own issues, Department of Labor, so on and so forth. So who knows?

• 1:26:28Jason Calacanis?

  Entire net worth has to be, except for your primary residence, has to be put in Anthropic or OpenAI. Three, two, go.

• 1:26:37Speaker 03

  I think it depends what matters next. And so, you know, you force me, I'll say Anthropic. Anthropic sexy this week. Last week it was OpenAI. I think it's like, what I think, what matters though, as between those two is sort of the business model. Like what's more defensible and what's more scalable? You know, what's consumer versus enterprise?

• 1:26:57Jason Calacanis?

  Dalian, I don't know if you've got a bet here.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  We're over a billion at cost in both businesses, so I'm not allowed to say which is my favorite child.

• 1:27:07Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, if your friend, Elian, was asked this question, what would he say?

• 1:27:14Speaker 02

  A little biased towards, let's say, okay, how about this? Pavel Espero, my little brother, who's the CTO of a really cool company in New York, definitely spends a lot more on Anthropic than he does OpenAI.

• 1:27:24Jason Calacanis?

  What is his, what's your little, what's your baby bro's company? Give him a shout out here.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  Uh, Sylna Health. Uh, they basically, uh, make this AI that, uh, helps clinicians with prior authorizations. So basically, uh, back in the day, you used to like, you know, give care to your patient and then you'd submit that treatment plan, you know, back to your insurer and then they would, you know, basically either, you know, accept or deny it. Now they've sort of switched around the, you know, sort of work, you know, uh, you know, uh, process where before you give your care to the patient, you're supposed to do a prior authorization and make sure that the insurance will pay for it ahead of time. And so they help out with that newly mandated, uh, process and get you paid, uh, more accurately and on time. Go Pavel.

• 1:27:57Jason Calacanis?

  All right. This has been an amazing episode of Twist, April 1st. Well done, Sal, Larson, Delian and Alex. Great job. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.