All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E68: Trudeau invokes emergency powers, Bitcoin vs. government, Tiger Global's new strategy & more

Episode Date: February 19, 2022

0:00 Sacks needs the ball 1:43 Trudeau invokes emergency powers to try and stop the truckers protest 13:45 Bitcoin's role in decentralizing currency away from potentially hostile governments 25:37 San... Francisco Board of Education recall: what this means for the boundaries of progressivism 42:02 Assessing Tiger Global's new strategy: less late-stage private companies, more Series A and B rounds, more compressed public tech stocks 1:11:24 HIV stem cell breakthrough, Sacks gives some hot takes on Fauci 1:24:59 Sacks' vendetta corner: Sacks vs. Paul Graham Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-17/police-begin-financial-squeeze-trudeau-defends-emergency-edict https://www.thecountersignal.com/news/rcmp-ban-34-crypto-wallets-from-working-in-canada https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/get-ready-for-the-no-buy-list?utm_source=url https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1494534850090442752 https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/1491757167308902405 https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/1491789181428715521 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/us/san-francisco-school-board-recall.html https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1493876167085944834 https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/05/24/covid-funding-loophole-san-francisco-school-reopening https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-18/wokeism-has-peaked-in-america-but-is-still-globally-influential https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1493860336713097218 https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1494009394257870848 https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democrats-coming-asian-voter https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tiger-global-d1-capital-signal-pullback-from-big-private-tech-deals-amid-market-rout https://www.wsj.com/articles/woman-appears-cured-of-hiv-after-umbilical-cord-blood-transplant-11644945720 https://twitter.com/phil_hellmuth/status/1494144604555206656 https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1493296369796202496

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 So, Saks, are we gonna talk with each other today or, you know, or... Is it ISO player? He turned into an ISO player. He's like the Carmelo Anthony of the s**t squad. He's the Carmelo Anthony of the All-In pub. Saks, you wanna pass the ball? Or you just wanna... You wanna clank it off the room. Raymond! Clank! I think we should have a focus on having a dialogue with each other today. Several points and a thing as opposed to all standing up, saying our piece and then off the...
Starting point is 00:00:20 Saks, we lost a little bit of the fiber of this team here. There's three people playing as a team and then they're like... Saks, I would love to ask you questions and I would love to ask the ball. Jake Al, you're in the f***ing guard. You passed the ball. I'm supposed to score. Oh, really? No, what Shaq used to say when he wasn't getting the ball, he gets really unhappy.
Starting point is 00:00:37 He said, pass the ball to the big dog, you'll score. I'm Shaq. Sure. You know, you're not Kobe. Who is the Shadylul like all of you? Yeah, your character, for sure. Make sure the big the Shadylul like all of you? Are you a picture? Yeah, you're a direct picture. Make sure the big dog gets the ball,
Starting point is 00:00:48 and it won't be any problem. I'm Bob Koozy, okay? I'm Gary Payton in this fucking night. I'm a good guy, okay. I'm gonna let your winners ride. Bring man David Saq. I'm going to win. And I said we open-source it to the fans,
Starting point is 00:01:03 and they've just got a lot of easy wins. Love you guys, nice. Queen of King Wob. I'm going to win. We open source. Hey everybody, welcome to the all in podcast where three besties talk about a range of topics, topics and one monologues about Biden to range. Man syndrome with you again this week, the Sultan of science and the dictator, Chimapala, Hapataya, David Friedberg, and playing ISO Ball somewhere in the wing is your political commentator. Talk your junior. David Sachs. It's an active perception.
Starting point is 00:01:34 All right, in a first story, which Sachs is going to lose his mind over. He's got two monologues prepared. Justin Trudeau has invoked an emergency order to freeze bank accounts linked to trucker protests in Canada. On Monday, Trudeau invoked an emergency law that requires financial institutions in Canada to examine customer records and take action against people involved with or aiding in the protest. Here's Trudeau's tweet from yesterday, if you're watching on the video streams, illegal blockades and occupations are not peaceful protests.
Starting point is 00:02:10 They're a threat to jobs and communities and they cannot continue in the House of Commons earlier today. I joined members of the parliament to speak about that and about the need to invoke the Emergencies Act. The Counter-Signal, which is a right-leaning Canadian digital publication reported that 34 different crypto wallets were also being targeted by Canadian officials.
Starting point is 00:02:31 This law grants the government extraordinary powers, like the right to ban public assembly in certain locations, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association set a plan to challenge the government's decision in court. Remember, SACs wrote a piece on financial de-platforming for Bari Weiss' common sense about a year ago, the piece was about the private sector financial platforms de-platforming folks.
Starting point is 00:02:55 So your thoughts, SACs, you have 90 seconds on the uninterrupted clock. On the shot clock, Ari, thank you, Jake. That's true. Last summer, I wrote a piece for Barry Weiss as a sub-stack talking about how financial a deplot for me the next wave of online censorship. And here we are. It's actually happened.
Starting point is 00:03:13 What I could not have predicted is that it would occur in our mild manner, neighbor to the north, and that the reprisals would be directed by the government itself, not just a consortium of private actors. And what Trudeau has done is he didn't just employ the emergency act against the truckers so that he could basically arrest them and break up the protest. They have now directed banks and any financial institution, even cryptocurrency wallets, to freeze the accounts, not just to the truckers,
Starting point is 00:03:45 but to anybody who's contributed to them. Basically, anyone who's contributed $25 or more. There were two crowdfunding sites that they raised money from all those people, the thousands of ordinary Canadians who did nothing more than contribute to an anti-government protest. They are now at risk of financial ruin because their bank councilman frozen. And you have to wonder, what is the end here that justifies the means? COVID, you know, Omurkhan is on the way, it's on its way out, at the same time
Starting point is 00:04:16 that Trudeau was announcing these dictatorial measures for the guy who runs Ontario, the largest province. 15 seconds. Ford was out there saying that he was going to, that COVID mandates were going to be over. So why exactly are they doing this? We, you know, we're at the end of COVID and. Sack, let me ask you a question.
Starting point is 00:04:37 Go for it. If there were people online making donations to the criminals who loot and kill people in San Francisco, which you've railed against, being criminals who are breaking the law and should all be put behind bars. Do you think that it would be appropriate in that context for the government
Starting point is 00:04:54 to block their donations to supporting criminal activity and a criminal ring that I think we all agree, shouldn't be transpiring. Well, but the implication there is that the truckers are using violence or something like that, and they're not. I mean, it's been largely a peaceful protest. It's been very annoying to people who's, you know, but isn't the case being made that they are actually breaking the law by blocking streets?
Starting point is 00:05:19 And that's not, you know, there's a peaceful protest where you can go and get a permit and actually go in a public zone and peacefully protest within the confines of the law and what's allowed in that jurisdiction. Look. But what these folks are doing is civil disobedience, which is not a peaceful protest. It is, you know, kind of breaking the law to make a point. It is peaceful because there's been no violence. If you look at actual, but they're breaking the law, right? Well, let me ask the question for Freeberg Ben, sex.
Starting point is 00:05:45 If a group of truckers were shutting down the Bay Bridge with three lanes of traffic and then shut down the 280 and the 101, and it impacted this, if they in fact are shutting down roads, and picked out our businesses, and ambulance can't get through, would you want them to be towed? Would you want their cars to be towed?
Starting point is 00:06:05 Listen, here's the thing, the ambassador bridge, this vital choke point of commerce between the US and Canada, that was blocked and that was creating a serious problem. But it had already been cleared on Monday by the time that Trudeau invoked the Emergency's Act. And then on Tuesday, he then invoked this financial act. Your opinion sacks, if they block roads and bridges, would you?
Starting point is 00:06:27 If they're breaking the law. Yeah, if they're breaking the law in that way, it's not just one lane. It's all three lengths. Damage of society. I'm just trying to understand the standard here because just zooming out to last year in the year before, right? There was a protest happening with BLM and those BLM protests resulted in damage to private property, to burning cars.
Starting point is 00:06:49 There were protests at the Capitol that involved folks trespassing into federal land and federal buildings. And now there's protests that are blocking vital trade routes and access to emergency vehicles and all this sort of stuff. To me, and also people in San Francisco breaking the law and not being put in jail, my personal opinion is anyone that's breaking the law, we should stop them from breaking the law. And anyone that wants to follow a peaceful protest or make a point should make the point.
Starting point is 00:07:18 But if the law is the law, shouldn't there be a universal standard to hold up the law? And if the case is people are giving money to aid in breaking the law, shouldn't we stop the- Hold on, you know, transmission. Let's go to Shema. Hold on, hold on a second. Look, I think you're conflating a bunch of really important things there.
Starting point is 00:07:35 Aiding and abetting criminals is already illegal. There are Rico statutes that allow the authorities to go after people that are aiding and abetting through monetary support, criminal behavior. Separately, there is a whole body of law at the federal, state, local level that allows you to deal with protests, okay? The real question is why did you have to go and invoke emergency powers at the tail end of a pandemic for what is effectively
Starting point is 00:08:06 nonviolent protests. Again, that's the key question, right? So just to give you some Canadian history, has a Canadian citizen what I can tell you, is that we've invoked this emergency powers act three times in the past. The first was for World War Two. The second, sorry, World War One, the second was for World War Two, and the third was the World War I. The second was for World War II. And the third was the FLQ crisis, which was a domestic terrorist organization in Quebec that was fighting for a separate homeland. Those are the three other times in the past
Starting point is 00:08:35 that a sitting prime minister has invoked these broad sweeping emergency powers. And they did it because you exhaust the natural body of law and the constitution and the bill, the bill of the charter of rights that governs the normal behavior of a democratic society. What this was is not any of those things. I don't think anybody could claim that a bunch of non-violent protests, yes, they were annoying, yes, they basically stopped some commerce, but I don't think it was on the order of World War I, World War II, or a domestic
Starting point is 00:09:05 terrorism issue like the FLQ crisis. So why invoke this basically get out of jail free card where you can behave without any checks and balance? This is the confound. Hold on a second. Did we exhaust the current body of normal governing law? And if we didn't, why is this example okay? And the counterfactuals are so many. Imagine Trump invoked this thing during BLM. Imagine Biden did this right now. You would be up in arms.
Starting point is 00:09:35 I think that's well said. It means that's much that the emergency act that Trudeau invoked requires something like an act of espionage against the country or Syria the word serious violence or in the law or the threat of serious violence those conditions were simply not met Yeah, and then on top of that to go after people who contribute as little 25 dollars to these truckers who are trying to support them because these guys are not making any money You know, they have very they're living under very harsh conditions. So you make a small check. You write a small donation to support these people to aid them. They're simple working class people who are protesting for normalcy and they get their freedom back.
Starting point is 00:10:17 And now all of a sudden, your bank account gets frozen. It is basically creating a, it's kind of a chilling effect because it's essentially creating a cast of untouchables because Noah is going to want to associate with, transact with, or donate to this group of people, these designated people. Now, under the emergency's act, who you're bank-counting it frozen, if you deal with them. I think it's going to have the opposite effect. I think there's going to blow up in Trudeau's face.
Starting point is 00:10:41 This is the worst decision making by any major political leader in a long time to go after a group of people as Chimotset in the in the waning days of a pandemic. What is the point? Why are we picking this? Why is he picking this? Why do you guys so why make sense? But why is he doing it? And Chimots why why did the police not break?
Starting point is 00:11:00 So I totally hear your point. Why did the police not break up these protests? Why did he need to invoke the emergency? No, I haven't. Because look, it happened. I think that the police in some cases did. In some cases didn't. There were probably a lot of police sympathizers. There were probably a lot of sympathizers in general.
Starting point is 00:11:16 As there were a lot of people who were detractors. Are you saying there were police who were complicit? It's the nature of a protest. You have people for, you have people against. But the point is, I think what's really clear is, Are you seeing the police? You're seeing there were police that were complicit? It's the nature of a protest. You have people for, you have people against. But the point is, I think what's really clear is Justin Trudeau first basically said, these people are racists and misogynists. Then he said, they just hold views that are just unacceptable to me.
Starting point is 00:11:41 And then like a totalitarian dictator invoked an emergency measure act that allows him to do what he wants. That's the fact pattern. He painted it himself into a political corner and then tried to give, successfully, he gave himself absolute power for some period of time. And the real question I think is, why should this be allowed to happen in a democratic country, with democratic norms against people that haven't done as far as I can tell a shred of violent behavior.
Starting point is 00:12:08 No, it hasn't been violent. Do you guys think? And where it's clear that the body of normal governing law hasn't been exhausted yet, meaning the minute that these people were asked to actually empty the ambassador bridge, they did. Guys, we're Canadians, that's what we do. Yes, we just ask. Exactly. No, you're right. Trudeau, never try talking to them. I mean, why wouldn't he just try and negotiate with them? Instead, he demonized their rival that bad as white supremacists and Nazis and even, you know, Confederates, which I don't even understand in the context of Canada. This is a yet another example of the dying death right in front of us of the woke playbook,
Starting point is 00:12:50 right? We talked about this last week. I think it's related to the San Francisco board of ed recall that's now national and probably even international news. You can go to the reaction to Rogan, the reaction to Dave Chappelle. It's all part and parcel of this thing where people up and down the spectrum have learned what the mechanism of action is
Starting point is 00:13:11 of this cancel culture and they don't fall for it anymore. Should have been a person. There's a person that's able to escalate it because he's actually in a seat of power and that's what I think people should be debating. You mean shutting down dissenting voices from a position of power? Just because, and he went on the record.
Starting point is 00:13:26 Unnecessarily. He went on the record and he said, guys, these views are unacceptable to me. Well, in a democratic society, that's not how you're choice. Yeah, not your choice, Justin. I mean, can I be against the views on all kinds of topics all the time? Unacceptable is not the threshold of World War II,
Starting point is 00:13:43 World War I and the FLQ crisis. Do you guys think that there is a moment here that also is a mile marker on the road towards the state versus crypto given the actions that were taken in the GIFs? 100% Bitcoin wallets because that seems to be like a big trend that's going to play out over the next decade or two. There is inevitably crypto is the threat to the state, right? And so, you're going to see skirmishes like this that kind of, you know, hey, wallets that donate are illegal and, you know, free.
Starting point is 00:14:11 But this is one of the best points you've made. If you look at what this is done for Bitcoin and you look at what it's done for other cryptocurrencies, this will do more than McDonald's accepting Bitcoin because this is the first time like a Western democratic state is seizing people's funds like in an incredibly unfair, unnecessary way, which is just going to have more people say, you know what, maybe I should keep some of my network out of the government's purview if they're going to seize it anyway. And then now people are going to start looking into the coins that allow people to. Can't conflate having an enemy with having a different view.
Starting point is 00:14:43 Those aren't the same thing. Having an enemy is a a different view. It's not the same thing. Having an enemy is a serious deal, right? Whether that's domestic or international, that's what we had to do in World War I, World War II and the FLQ crisis. This is just somebody who has a different opinion. I don't agree in mask mandates is what one person says. I want to mask mandate is what the other person says.
Starting point is 00:15:02 The idea that you can de-platform one or the other or fire them from their job or prevent them from having access to the money that they've earned or preventing other people from donating money, that's really, it's a really low bar. And I think when you normalize this kind of behavior, it's a very slippery slope. And so if, if somebody else were to do it, they now have, like it's, again, going back to the renage
Starting point is 00:15:25 or sort of philosophical discussion from last week. One of the things about, you know, the stoning rituals, right, that Sats talked about, that we talked about last week. One of the things that renage or Tats about is, it is always hardest for that first person, right? The first person that throws the stone, right? That's how Jesus was able to diffuse that incident as described in the book of John. But in a different example, the first person that throws a stone all of a sudden normalizes it for everybody else
Starting point is 00:15:55 after them, and then these stoneings become commonplace or became commonplace. So similarly, it's like, if you're a sitting Democratic person who just decides this doesn't work for you, you can't flip the script and basically remove everybody's Democratic rights. That's really crazy. So, actually, you had a closing point you wanted to make? Well, okay, to start on this point about Bitcoin, the reason why Bitcoin is necessary is because the tactics that you're doing is using is essentially to starve these truckers out. To not only basically arrest them, but these also taking away their insurance licenses, he's basically preventing them from ever working again.
Starting point is 00:16:32 He's talked about that. We're gonna give you a criminal record. It's gonna make it hard for you to get a job. And then most importantly, on top of that, he's preventing anyone from helping them by contributing to them, by making a donation. So he's essentially starving these guys out. And that's the reason why Bitcoin is potentially helpful,
Starting point is 00:16:48 is it allows people using non-custodial waltz to make an unrun around that and donate and help these people who are being persecuted essentially. I mean, he could have just simply chosen to do what Sax's favorite president Obama did with Occupy Wall Street, which is say, great, you have something you want to voice. Here's where you can do it. Just no guns, no violence.
Starting point is 00:17:10 But how long did Occupy Wall Street last in downtown Wall Street and in Oakland in other places, like a year or two? And you just wait them out. That's it. I think when you encounter a sincere protest movement, the first thing you should do as a leader is actually listen, and try to understand what it is that they're protesting on behalf of. And Trudeau never did that.
Starting point is 00:17:29 You went straight to 11 with this. And I think part of the reason why, I mean, Jacob, you asked, why is it that, that there seems to be a common denominator with this and with the Ukraine issue, that the leaders are immediately escalating these situations instead of looking for a way to de-escalate it, and they're doing it with the media egging them on. And so, as harsh as Trudeau's rhetoric has been, the media's rhetoric around this has
Starting point is 00:17:54 been even worse. You have this CNN contributor, Juliet Kayam, who's also a Harvard professor, who basically tweeted that Trudeau needed to slash their tires empty the gas tanks, arrest the drivers, making it unclear how you never get the trucks off the bridge. But then she said, cancel their insurance, suspend their driver's license, prohibit any future regulatory verification. She says, trust me, I will not run out of ways to make this hurt. You know, so you have the media cheering this on, egging on true dough, they're doing
Starting point is 00:18:26 the same thing, beating the drums of war on Ukraine. What is wrong with these people? Yeah, deescalate, and where's the off ramp? I think the biggest story is this Bitcoin thing, because, you know, if you guys think about like pre-1960s, like capital wasn't digitized, it was like physical, like you had to own like a stock certificate or cash or gold or a bearer bond. To today, everything is digitized, right? Like there's a digital record of, you know, who owns what stock and who,
Starting point is 00:18:56 how much is in your bank account and none of it is tied to your having a physical asset. And ultimately, the law was able to reach into these digital systems and have greater oversight and ultimately control over accounts and so on. And it's had a digitization of capital assets. It's had an incredible ability to drive economic growth and investment and ease of transaction. But it's also significantly increased the centralization of assets or the central influence over assets.
Starting point is 00:19:26 Bitcoin seems to be the resolution to that. And now you're seeing the ultimate challenge to Bitcoin and the challenge to decentralized systems like Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. And so I don't want to speak specifically to anyone. But there seems to be like this trend line over the last 60 years that's now being challenged because you could have your accounts frozen any moment for breaking the law or because emergency actors are induced. And I think you're right, it's probably going to accelerate interest in these kind of
Starting point is 00:19:54 off-government chain into some separate chain. Anyone who can do it. Anybody can do it. They're doing it in China, right? And I don't know if you just... I don't know if you just, it's the point of it. The digital yuan is like this incredible whole point. It's like absolute centralization of every capital asset.
Starting point is 00:20:11 Here's where you get scared. Think of how dangerous the digital yuan is. The minute you say something that GZMPing doesn't like, it's a stroke of a keyboard key. And all your assets are locked away. It's a database entry and you just basically reroute who belongs to it. Or it could be it could happen in America. They say, you know what?
Starting point is 00:20:28 California now wants to have a wealth tax. Anybody who's got money, we're just going to take your money at a counter. Do you guys think automatically? Do you guys think we sound like a right-wing politics show at this point? This isn't a right-wing politics thing. I mean, I think that we have so jumped the shark, there are things that are happening today every day that, you know, if you had said an isolation two or three years ago, would any of these things ever happen? We all would have just looked at each other and said,
Starting point is 00:20:51 it's impossible that these things could happen. But the problem is fast forward two years of a pandemic. I think we have led a lot of our civil liberties decay right under our nose. And we're not willing to fight for it because it's become too tribal and rights have been politicized. So the idea of having rights, you know, and then standing out for your rights, all of a sudden has to be a decision between whether you're left or right. That's crazy. I don't think that liberties in the sense of government oversight have decayed as in addition to that, liberties in the sense of a social setting have decayed.
Starting point is 00:21:27 Because of cancel culture, we've normalized the ability to silence minority or dissenting voices. And this is both in the private enterprise setting as well as in the public setting. And it's, I don't know, I don't consider myself a right wing conservative person by any stretch, but I do consider myself a person who believes in individual freedom and liberty. That's called an American, by the way.
Starting point is 00:21:52 It's basically being an American. I think as we move on to this recall in San Francisco, I think, sax made a really good point. What are our political leaders doing here? Are they trying to stir the pot and antagonize the situations? If you look, Clinton, Obama, a lot of people previously were trying to defuse these situations, and then Biden seems to be stirring the pot just in Trudeau, and then if you look at Trump with BLM and the immigration stuff, he'd never sat down and met with him, and he arguably antagonized them. I think this is a perfect segue into what happened.
Starting point is 00:22:26 And you know, so we should expect a little more from our political leaders, great point from SACS. You just brought up something incredible. You know, Trump reeled against these BLM folks, but at no point did he try to shut down their bank accounts and take their money away. And Trudeau, you know, this was not even near in the scale of BLM.
Starting point is 00:22:43 Yeah, who's the bigger authoritarian? Yeah, I mean, it's clearly, if you objectively, it's Tr even near in the scale of BLM. Yeah, who's the bigger authoritarian? Yeah, I mean, it's clearly, if you objectively, it's true down in this situation. The scary authoritarianism, as we talked about in previous pods tends to come from the left. At least the right, you see it coming. I just want to say it's veiled under moral virtue signaling. That's right.
Starting point is 00:22:58 They're very sanctimonious. They claim to be the defenders of the working class while they're actually prosecuting them. Such an unforeseen era, like, so dumb. He's gonna lose, right? He's gonna lose. If a DA was elected and a police office and police chief were elected to San Francisco, that said, we are gonna freeze the bank accounts and, you know, demobilize the criminals that are
Starting point is 00:23:23 ransacking our city, our people, our stores, would you support that? No, not if it's an officer in extra-digital use of power. I mean, the law specifies what you're allowed to do. Do you think San Francisco's in an emergency situation? I mean, would you support the mayor taking on emergency authority to go and fix the problem, which he just did, by the way, in a tender way? Yeah, but that doesn't give her the power to go to
Starting point is 00:23:46 Wells Fargo and say to Wells Fargo We want you to freeze all these accounts with no due process of law That's basically what true that that's the overreach that's the line you think is like go and see that You're sure to go through a court proceeding to free someone's bank account period Can't just free so it's bank account the law allows you to do this now. It's called RICO. So you follow the due process of the law, and you can do all those things, free, that you just mentioned.
Starting point is 00:24:13 If you want to free somebody's bank account, you can actually do that. The government has the ability to do that. They don't need to pass this basically get out of jail free card to do whatever you want without any oversight. And to Jermot's point earlier, have you exhausted the regular law here? They have not arrested people.
Starting point is 00:24:30 They haven't even tried. You can buy a fence and offer five bucks on, you know, the tender one. And meanwhile, all the provinces are ending COVID mandates anyway, so this whole issue is moot. So dumb. It's, this is like the stupidest behavior at the end of a pandemic that we've ever seen. Shout out to George Lucas for getting it right. I mean, if you look at the theme of Star Wars, it was like, Oh, I just need emergency powers for a minute because of a trade
Starting point is 00:24:54 federation blockade. And here we go. But crisis, a fake crisis. Yeah, that was in George Lucas, by the way, I mean, that goes back to the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Star Wars films. All right, they're aging well, the prequels. Three members of San Francisco's Board of Education were... They were the worst, just to be clear, but go on. Sorry. Not compared to the three just huge dumps
Starting point is 00:25:33 that Disney took on our childhoods with the sequels. Three members of the San Francisco Board of Education were called this week massively. They lost by between 72% and 79%. These were the virtue signaling maniacs who wanted to change the names of all the schools, wouldn't reopen the schools, Yada Yada, and this really frustrated, and they wanted to get rid of elite AP classes. All of this. They did, Jason. They did. They did. Yeah, and these three board members are out so London breed in the middle of the pandemic I think my understanding is that instead of figuring out how to get these kids back in class
Starting point is 00:26:15 how to figure out how they could take off their masks they wanted to drop Abraham Lincoln and George Washington's name from schools because it was it was too regressive yep they canceled the gifted program because it was it was too regressive. Yep. They canceled the gifted program because it made other kids feel bad and a gentleman that wanted to serve on a committee who I think was gay but not minority was excluded because he wasn't a minority enough for them. So these are the three people that 76% of San Francisco citizens or residents just recalled. And if you're not following this, the tech industry had a major part in
Starting point is 00:26:52 this in terms of backing it, there was a lot of claims, which all it sacks address in a moment, that this was a Republican driven out of state movement. But if you look, there are not 100,000 Republicans in San Francisco in all likelihood. This was actually a parents, and in a lot of cases based on the geography of San Francisco and the density of certain populations. A lot of Asian Americans came out in force, and some neighborhoods 90% were voting to house these people. Gary Tan, who is a product of the San Francisco public education system and a great entrepreneur and venture capitalist, was a leader in this movement. So congratulations to him. And this
Starting point is 00:27:30 all is going to culminate, I think in May or June, saxo, correct me, with the recall effort for Chesa Boudin, this killer DA, who won't prosecute anybody. Sax, where are your thoughts on this victory and full disclosure? You were a major donor to this. How was the second largest donor and I was the largest donor under age 90. Arthur Rock was the biggest donor. What a badass by the way. The guy's 95 years old he donated to $400,000 to this recall. You know, he was a... In fairness, you live in San Francisco. This is a back door issue for you. You care for him. Yeah, look, I think crime and schools are the key quality of
Starting point is 00:28:04 life issues in any community and that transcends partisan boundaries. If your kids cannot get a quality education and you cannot be safe in your community, nothing else matters. And that matters to Democrats just as much sort of those are Republicans. And that's why like you said, three quarters of San Francisco voters for this recall, even though 85% of them voted for Biden, it's not, basically a 90% Democrat city. So, you know, all these claims that was a Republican recall turned out to be nonsense. This was something that was broadly supported.
Starting point is 00:28:33 And, you know, look, it's the same reason that young can flip a, you know, plus 10 Democrat state in Virginia, which is that, you know, it had a lot to do with school closures. They kept the schools closed for a year and a half. And then when they were supposed to have a PTA meeting about reopening it, like Jamasco said, they spent five hours debating whether to allow this beloved gay parent onto a voluntary school board, they didn't. They spent all their time, you know, talking about changing the names of the schools and saying how to reopen them. They also, there's chronic mismanagement.
Starting point is 00:29:07 I mean, the school's something like $125 million in debt, despite, you know, being in a very rich city. They open for one day. That's right. Just so that they could get a state piece of the state budget pie. So these kids clamored back to school just so that they could technically say, yeah, we were open. And to get, I think it was a $12 or $13 million check and then they shut the schools down again. Right. And you probably keep pointing to Jason which is that the Asian American community in San Francisco has been absolutely galvanized by this issue because this school board also,
Starting point is 00:29:37 you know, low high school is one of the best schools in the city and it was merit-based and it had great advanced math programs and And this this board basically got rid of all of that stuff. And it infuriated the Asian American community, many of whose most prominent members have basically risen out of poverty because of the education they got at low. And so this war on merit that's happening is something that is going to flip the, you know, Asian American community, I think, to... When I, when I was growing up, I grew up in a French ghetto of Ottawa. And I was supposed to go to a local high school. That was just plainly trash. And I was able to go to an equivalent of law. This public magnet high school that had
Starting point is 00:30:26 able to go to an equivalent of low, this public magnet high school that had advanced classes in everything, a gifted program, and it really did change my life. And so I really understand what people are saying, which is like when you're in poverty, the only way out is through an education, really. You may get accidentally lucky, but the only really predictable, sustainable pattern here is through school. And so when you deprive folks from being able to get a decent education, and there's no real, you know, orderly logic to it, it's a really ridiculous kind of an idea. The other thing is I think that this speaks very powerfully, as SAC said, as a non, as
Starting point is 00:31:03 a bipartisan issue that these Democrats have to get right, because you saw this also in Virginia, where Democrats basically went down this one-tack, and the Republican, Glandi-Junkin basically said, hey, listen, the schools are broken. It's completely doesn't make any sense. We oppose a lot of what's going on, the watering down and the critical race theory, et cetera, et cetera. And he put it to a vote. And a lot of people cross the aisle there as well where typically, our Democrats basically voted
Starting point is 00:31:33 for the Republican governor. I think the point is that there are just several issues that are just so transcend, like they're just they transcend all party lines. And this is an anchor issue that we have to get right. Friedberg, any thoughts on this? Do you think this is the start of maybe a turnaround for San Francisco?
Starting point is 00:31:52 Because Chesa boon is way more hated. And safety isn't even bigger issue, I think, for a lot of people right now in San Francisco. And it dovetails with Asian hate and the number of Asian people targeted in crimes. So he's got a, I mean, if these people got out by 75% on average, he's going to be out by 95%. Is this a tipping point? A San Francisco is going to make a read.
Starting point is 00:32:14 I don't know. I think there's generally a broader trend and momentum around what we classify as wokeism, which I think is a little bit disparaging to the intention of social justice and recognizing the primary points of social justice through action and behavior in civic discourse and government behavior. And this, like the election of several DAs around the country, who take a different stance to prosecution of crime to try and create better options for rehab and so on, I think is
Starting point is 00:32:54 not a movement that's going to go away overnight. I think there's certainly a hefty amount of resistance. But what we're really doing right now is I think we're learning and realizing the boundaries of this movement and of this moment. The one boundary that I think San Francisco is or two bad San Francisco, like, you know, it was in the case in tech has always been so progressive in terms of, you know, doing these things faster than anyone else. But what we're realizing in San Francisco is non-prosicution of criminals as the DA has undertaken over the past couple of years,
Starting point is 00:33:26 leads to really heinous crime and rampant crime. And this kind of social justice movement within the education system causes a decline in the value of our education system. Those are two really important learnings that San Francisco has had over the past couple of years with this very important and momentous kind of social justice movement, but it doesn't mean that the movement is over, it doesn't
Starting point is 00:33:50 mean that quote unquote, wokeism is over. It means that that social justice intent is still there, but we're realizing where the boundaries are and how far things can and maybe should go. I posted this article, Tyler Cohen, who's a pretty well-known economist, he wrote this op-ed for Bloomberg. And what he said is that wokism has peaked. And there's just these two passages that the builds on what Friedberg said. Quote, by wokism, I refer to a movement that on the positive side is highly aware of racism and social injustice, and is galvanized towards raising awareness. On the negative side, it can be preachy, alienating,
Starting point is 00:34:26 overly concerned with symbols and self-righteous, unquote. And I think that that probably does summarize sort of like where it starts, which is I think rooted in a very good place, but unfortunately, all too often where it ends, which is that sort of moral, absolutist, judgment, cancel culture around it.
Starting point is 00:34:44 And then the second quote that he said was the following. He said, Quocaism is likely to evolve into a sub-culture that is highly educated, highly white, and fairly feminine. That is still a large mass of people, but not enough to run the country or all its major institutions. In the San Francisco school Board recall, for instance, the role of Asian Americans was especially prominent, unquote. So I don't know, I just think that all these things sort of, people are looking for affiliation and you start with labels that bring you in and then you have to sort out, are all these labels really true and how true are they? And I think we're in this moment now where, now we know the mechanism of action of focus, I just don't think it works anymore.
Starting point is 00:35:28 And I think a lot of people will say, I believe in the high order of deals of racial and social justice, but I don't believe in the mechanism of action. And so, the pendulum swung too far, but the core intent of a generation of change is underway, which is social justice and climate change. I think those are the two big points
Starting point is 00:35:45 of concern. It just won't be done with this cohort under this fact. Well, it won't be done to this extreme, this fact, right? And I think that the pendulum went too fast too far, and there are boundary effects that are causing recourse right now. And we're seeing this across the country, especially in New York with the election of the mayor, and San Francisco, the DA recalls happening in the next couple of months. So, what's your prediction on the DA recall, by the way? Well, that's 95 percent, but I mean, it's a build on your point. They were talking about 10 percent of the people in the United States who are involved
Starting point is 00:36:15 in this, you know, retweeting and virtual signaling and, you know, is Twitter a real place? Well, no, a city's a real place. People have to live in San Francisco. And when these ideologies result in unlivable conditions for people, well, they're going to say, you know what, there's reality here. How do we get competent people to take the positions, sacks that are being vacated now? Who should London breed put in these three positions? And maybe tech people need to, I mean, this is what I think has to happen. I think some number of tech people have to get off the bench and say, you know what? I'm
Starting point is 00:36:48 going to do a tour of duty as politicians in San Francisco to take back the city. What should happen here in terms of who takes these positions? Because Republicans can't win in San Francisco. So you're going to need moderate Democrats, right, Sacks? So before Sacks goes, can I just say something? Because I think I just want to say something that's really important, Sacks. I'm sorry to jump in, but, Jake, I think the point you're making about the tech people implies the tech people are effective and good at doing this, but that's not necessarily the fabric of San Francisco. I've lived in San Francisco since 2001.
Starting point is 00:37:18 The number of people in San Francisco in 2001 that were in the tech industry was a minority since that time it became a significant size, And over the last two years, since the pandemic, it's decreased significantly. But San Francisco's a city with decades and generations of history. My wife's family is multi-generational San Francisco. And I don't think that traditionally San Francisco's view tech people as the right people
Starting point is 00:37:39 to solve these problems for them. That the intention of that city is not necessarily about let's get tech people to solve our problems. They have a different set of values, perhaps. And so we often overstate and assume that tech people are the right people and are the problem solvers. But I don't think that that's necessarily the right problems that people want to solve.
Starting point is 00:37:57 So I just wanted to interview and say, who should take these positions? Because people that care, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really far left people are motivated to take these positions. I don't see business people writ large across all political, because people that care. Right. People that care. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:09 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:17 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:15 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:23 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. up to basically oppose these crazy school board members. And that is who London breach you talk to. I mean, she needs to go talk to the people who are successful in organizing this recall because they understand the issues obviously and the people are with them. So either appoint them to the board or ask them for their recommendations. And I think what you see consistently, whether it's with this SF school board or the school boards that we saw in Virginia, that Youngkin very effectively ran against, is that they don't believe the parents matter. Terry McCallis fatal that his last gap was basically saying that the parents shouldn't
Starting point is 00:38:58 get to decide what is taught in the schools. He basically said the quiet part out loud. But that is what's still across the country the teachers unions believe and most The Democratic Party the activists believe and until they start losing elections, you're not gonna see a change in that belief Oh my god, how awesome would it be if saxor on the school board? Oh my god Yeah, and just to put a pin in this and the cherry on top. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted seven to four to send a recall reform bill. So their reaction to all of this is to do a recall
Starting point is 00:39:33 of recalls and say, now you can't recall somebody in their first year and the people who are placed in these positions can't run again. So now the speculation is that three people who got voted off are gonna run again. So there's a lot more to come on this. Yeah, and also part so they're putting just to to sat that they're putting that on the ballot on June 7th the same day that we vote on the recall of Jason booting the board of survivors not put in this measure that would make it far harder to recall people.
Starting point is 00:39:59 One of the provisions of that is whoever London breed appoints as the successor, like you're talking about, they cannot run after that. So it is designed to, for no, that makes no sense. They're basically just doing a great job. Exactly. It makes no sense. So you have the board of supervisors trying to throw a wrench into the democratic process. Meanwhile, these are people who claim to be preserving democracy, saving democracy. They are trying to throw a wrench in their...
Starting point is 00:40:26 The thing is, underlying it, David, is they think they know better. That's what a fundamentally comes down to. They are willing to have democracy up to a point, and when that point is an unacceptable view by somebody else, they feel like they know better, and they're willing to be really draconian in whatever they do to decide. Yeah. And shout out to Mike Bloomberg. I'll pull up the tweet for everybody.
Starting point is 00:40:50 He hasn't been very vocal or been on the stage much, but obviously he did a great job in New York on reforming schools. The San Francisco school board recalls should be a wake up call to elected officials, especially Democrats across the nation. Parents are fed up with the status quo, and that puts adults, that puts adults ahead of kids. Yeah, well, an ideology ahead of results. Well said, Mike.
Starting point is 00:41:11 Yes, well said, Mr. Bloomberg. Yes, that was very good. And Bloomberg has been very good on calling out the Democrat. The Democratic Party is blind little to the teachers unions. And until they're willing to break with the teachers unions who are their biggest donor, we're not going to get any real progress on school reform. And this is the issue. My favorite political comment here, one of them is, Roy Tashara, who's a Democrat,
Starting point is 00:41:33 he wrote the emerging Democratic majority, he wrote a blog post talking about how the Asian, how Asian-American voters are going to swing away from the Democratic party because of issues like this, because of the decline in the state and school and safety. And the Asian community, I think, is galvanized on this chase of the issue because they have seen in all these cases of Asian hate where elders in their community have been violently assaulted. Chase of the routine has done nothing except release the perpetrators. Hawkers.
Starting point is 00:42:01 All right. Well, listen, this seems like a good turning point. Let's, we talked about on this podcast over and over again, about the compression in SaaS multiples in the public market valuations, something that we're still working through in the stock market, which has been choppy at best over the last couple of months.
Starting point is 00:42:19 An information story came out just this week, major crossover funds like Tiger and D1 are slowing down their investments in late-stage private companies. And I was talking to some folks who said the multiple compression is here now. They're not doing the deals at 75 or 100X revenue. This was reported in an article by the information Tiger Global told their LPs in a webinar earlier this month that it would no longer focus on backing late-stage startups preparing to go public instead
Starting point is 00:42:46 They will focus on two things going even earlier into series hands. There is B rounds and buying shares of public tech companies That have sunk in value compared to the all-time highs Obviously, no Twelo Zoom block all down over 60% from their one year highs I could get into more details here, but let's stop for a second and schmoth what are your thoughts in? The dot com bubble It took somewhere between three to five years for most stocks to bottom and They bottomed I think peak to trough summer, you know towards 80% of where they were in 2000, right? So it took three to five years to go basically minus 80%.
Starting point is 00:43:26 We did that in three months, maybe four months. And so the markets have become a lot more efficient over time. So now that we have that reset, it's pretty natural that there's going to be a very quick reset on the private market side. And you have to go where the bodies are buried. And what I mean by that, in this case, is that overwhelming misvaluation of late-stage private companies. And so these folks don't have much of a choice. They have a lot of money that they've raised before all of
Starting point is 00:44:00 this happened. They have a huge portfolio of stuff that they've marked up or have been marked up by others. And they don't want to go through the pain now of resetting. So part of the easy strategic decision there is to say, you know what, we know this is a little bit radioactive, but instead of really figuring out what the mark on these companies are, we'll go to a different sort of part of the playground and play there because we don't have to go and deal with these issues and we can do 10, 15, 20 million dollar checks into early stage businesses. Pretty normal reactions strategically, but I think the reality is that at some point in the next year or two, these other companies
Starting point is 00:44:42 have to get public. The hope is that the market catches back up so that you can defend the last valuation. And that's the way that this stuff doesn't require a lot of pain. The problem is if you're high-burned and you were counting on yet another successive round or you're at a point in your life cycle where you need to go public, in the next two years if you go public, you will get taken to the woodshed. Take the woodshed being your valuation might be half of what it is in your last round. So there's going to be medicine that has to be taken. Sacks, there'll be medicine.
Starting point is 00:45:13 Some people are going to have to take some medicine. Sacks, what's your best advice being one of the great operators in the history of Silicon Valley as a CEO of PayPal? Thank you. Well, I'm happy to jump there with Sherry. I mean, I think everybody agreed the top four people can correct me here. Tim Cuck. I'm a good operator. I mean, I saw what you did to I see Q. Man, you were riding that bad boy down. That wasn't easy.
Starting point is 00:45:35 I delivered a billion fucking users to a company. I'm pretty decent. You did pretty good at Facebook. I'll say that. But if I would think most people would say, Saks, Cheryl, Tim Cook, Keith Roboi, we'll put that aside for the debate in terms of operating. Oh, the thermal little dark spicy barbecue pork here. Come on, give me a give you a little.
Starting point is 00:45:52 I'll put you in the top 25, Jamath. I'll put you in the top 25, Jamath. Okay, okay, okay. But I mean, it wasn't your, wasn't your chosen career, it's a bit of a mess. A little dark meat, nice chicken. He's don't get me in trouble. It'll bring me into your,
Starting point is 00:46:02 dark meat, bro. You're a little bit stupid. I'm stepping back bit stupid, but, which, who are your top four? Cheryl, I'm in my top four in this order. I'll give it an order. So basically four white people when, basically, Asian and Indian CEOs run most of the tech companies
Starting point is 00:46:17 and so on. I'm talking about number two COO is not CEOs. Just for the CEO position to be clear, I'm not talking CEO, I'm talking to COO. I would say Tim Cook when he was Steve Jobs. That's my number one operator last 23 years. Number two, I put Cheryl Sandberg Who did obviously amazing things for Google and then Facebook, right? Those two would be my top two and then I tie my top two sacks as a PayPal and
Starting point is 00:46:42 Zenefits even though they don't work out, it was still a great run at the time. And then I put Keith Roboi, Square, and a couple of other companies he did. Those are my top four. Anybody else want to come at me? Go ahead, I don't know how complete data set on COOs. What way would you put SACs? Did I put you?
Starting point is 00:46:58 Who might have disagreed? Who might have disagreed? Oh, and Roboi, was it Keith Ad? LinkedIn, it. I mean, it's not really you, R.J. Cal, lately. That's a love fast now, is it? Oh, and was it Keith Adam? LinkedIn it. I mean, it's not really you are, Jake Al, lately. That's a love fest now. Yeah, that's okay. There we go.
Starting point is 00:47:11 So there we go. They're back together. You were advising, that's the thing forever. You and Friedberg are at each other's throats, so I'll just let you guys fight it out and I'll be all about the love. Yeah, Friedberg, why are you attacking Jake Al? Yeah, Friedberg. Be quiet over there.
Starting point is 00:47:24 No one's asking you. Stay in your lane, freeber. So, Saks, as an operator, extra on air, what's your best advice to the company that raised a hundred million, and let's say their valuation is now not a billion, it's 500 million. What are the steps you take? You got 14 months of runway in the bank.
Starting point is 00:47:38 Do you lay people on? Do you extend it to 24? What are your thoughts? You must be dealing with this with companies in your portfolio. Well, there's a few things going on. First of all, I think Tiger built a great business and providing a late stage sort of passive non-delete of capital to companies.
Starting point is 00:47:53 SaaS companies, we have a bunch of SaaS businesses that they provided later stage financing. I think those valuations are going to come down. I don't know that they're going to be such a great partner for Series A firms because they are passive. What we see is that Series A companies need a lot of help. They need a lot of advice. They need a lot of help with recruiting. Governance. Governance. They need, you know, when they're going from, say, 20 employees to 100, they need to know what that or chart looks like. Anon, anon, anon. So I don't know that if this report, I don't know if this reporting is actually true, but if the goal is all of a sudden for Tyred to become a Series A investor that competes with craft or Sequoia or these other firms that are not very hands on, that doesn't seem like a
Starting point is 00:48:33 great strategy to me. I do think that for our later stage companies, they have to realize that, you know, if they raise the... Wait, did I take the other side of this? Sorry, David, I just want your reaction to this. I think it is going to work, but not for the right reasons. The reason it will work is there are way more entrepreneurs now than there are great entrepreneurs. And so of all of these entrepreneurs that exist, the idea of getting passive money where you won't get fired, where there is that. Remember, remember when we were growing up in Silicon Valley,
Starting point is 00:49:05 the risk is always like, if you take Sequoia, Benchmark, social cap like, there's a high bar for that capital, which means we are helping you run this business effectively. And there's a cost where if you don't perform, you'll get fired. There's always been that risk. It's true, and I guess that's the argument they could make. But the flip side is that there's a lot of these. So the CEO now
Starting point is 00:49:26 Why would you take a 15 million dollar series H check from Sequoia where they could fire you? Whereas 15 million dollars from Tiger. They'll may never call you We address that by doing look if a founder is really worried about that We address that by giving them three board seats, you know, we might have one they might have three I Mean my view on it is you just never fire a founder unless he does something criminal. This is that simple. But so look, I think there's ways of addressing
Starting point is 00:49:50 the governance where you can get the help or the value out of an early stage firm without giving up the control. So yeah, I mean, look, that's the pitch that Ty would make, but I think that's addressable. What do you think of that pitch, Freeberg? We'll give you the $15 million series A. You don't have to have a board. You can just be passive and let us know how it goes.
Starting point is 00:50:11 Give us a quarterly report. We'll look at the PNL. That's all of crypto now, anyways. That's true. Well, I mean, that's a fair point. No governance in crypto is leading to a lot of weird stuff. I can tell you. I tell people this a lot.
Starting point is 00:50:21 So I had three term sheets for my series B. It was from Andreson Horowitz, Coastal Adventures and Founders Fund. And Founders Fund came in kind of last minute. But I went with Coastal, even though it was a lower valuation because Vinod was pretty insistent. Like let me put someone that could be useful,
Starting point is 00:50:39 some government person, because we're doing a lot of work lobbying in DC. On your board, we won DC, on your board, we won't be on your board, we won't bother you, and I took the round. And then my series C, I took from Founders Fund, because Brian Cingerman, who's obviously a good friend, you know, made the case like, look, our model at Founders Fund is we let Founders run the business. We're not here to tell you how to run your business.
Starting point is 00:50:59 And they were both great fits, and you know, it worked out well. I had, I have had experience with antagonistic VCs on boards and it generally creates a pretty negative dynamic. Now, when I was the worst story without the person's name, I don't think I wanna go public with it, so I'm not gonna do that. But when I was on, give us an idea of what the behavior would be,
Starting point is 00:51:18 because there are people in the audience who wanna know what is bad behavior of VC. Just give us a composite. When you're an entrepreneur or CEO running an early stage business, you live that business 20 hours a day. You know the details. If you're smart, you're thorough, you're analytical,
Starting point is 00:51:31 you're creative, there is no one that's gonna come in the boardroom for two hours a quarter and suggest things to you that you haven't thought of. There's no one that's gonna come in the room and be smarter than you at your own business. And so more often than not, Vinod's been exceptional at defining this problem. The problem is VCs join a board
Starting point is 00:51:48 and they think that they have to quote add value. So they come in and they make a bunch of suggestions and recommendations and push you to do a bunch of things. And as Vinod has said correctly many times, they more often than not add negative value. They can actually destroy and damage a business because they need to feel like they're exerting some degree of influence over the business. And as a result, they push
Starting point is 00:52:07 the business to do things that the CEO or founder otherwise wouldn't be doing. And that often ends up in a kind of weird sticky kind of place. So I just validated the tiger picture right there. I think that's right. And by the way, it's why founders fund. Founders fund is fantastic. I don't know if you guys are LPs, but their investment returns are so far beyond what I think anyone really realizes. They're incredible investors. And a big part of it is they try and find the entrepreneur that doesn't want and doesn't need the help. And then they give them the capital to go and execute and they leave them the heck alone.
Starting point is 00:52:36 And they are just so good at finding those folks, identifying them, and then literally being passive in how they kind of manage and operate their business. And that's why they were so freaking good. I think that people you're talking about are a lot of rookie VCs who come in and then they think they're not just rookie and just experience X operators even. People who ran businesses who say I know how to run a business and look, no two businesses are alike. So maybe the way they ran their business with their team and their market and their industry work well for them.
Starting point is 00:53:02 But now when they got to come in and do it with someone else's business and some other space with some completely different team, you know, they try and exert influence. And really it's just, you know, not wanted. Let me go to SACS, SACS, hold on. I want to just get one from you. Give us an idea because you've been in the business for over 20 years. I mean, by the looks of it, maybe 40, but 20 years are just crushing it in the business. What's the worst behavior you've seen on a board?
Starting point is 00:53:27 You can make a composite of like a VC to being destructive on a board. Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's an IVCs will have sort of hobby horses and they'll keep pushing for things that the founder doesn't want. That's not productive. But what I would say is, first of all,
Starting point is 00:53:43 I mean to say like, I'm not somebody who likes to take board seats. And I do it as, it's like, I see it as a cost, not a benefit to me, because it takes it my time. If I didn't have to ever take a board seat, that'd be a great, as far as I'm concerned, that'd be a good thing. I'm not somebody who wants to, you know, insert myself and get on these boards, you know. Robert, as an incentive, no? I only take a board. Close deals. Yeah, the only reason I'll ever take a board sees
Starting point is 00:54:09 because I have to do it because the founder insists that otherwise they won't go with. I've seen it with offers. Exactly. So that you'll do it for one year, right? You'll say, hey, I'll do it for a year. I always time limit it now because I just can't, I mean, I can't make a 10 year obligation.
Starting point is 00:54:21 It's typically like one or two years, and then we'll see. It doesn't mean I'll roll off in two years, but I need to have the expectation set up. And the reality is if the company can perform well for another two years, they'll be at a different stage, and maybe they won't need my help as much.
Starting point is 00:54:39 So, Timoth, the two most valuable pieces of private equity that I own is a company called DCG and it's a company called Netscope. And collectively it's like $1 billion worth of stock that I own. What? I'm on the board of one. I'm not on the board of the other anymore. And I text with these guys maybe once every two or three months at best.
Starting point is 00:55:02 So completely confirming David David, your point, that great founders are just end of one individuals. Barry Silver, Sanjay Barry, next level, guys. But that's very different than the Series A Playbook. Because when I ran institutional money, I'm telling you there is a pressure to be involved and show some value. And I do think that there is a pressure to be involved and show some value. I do think that there is a level of judgment on the CEO that has happened.
Starting point is 00:55:30 Now maybe that's changed historically, but I think that's the single biggest pivot that one would exploit if you were Tiger or Co2 or D1 stepping into the early stage game, which is to essentially make it a feature. It's not dissimilar to when DST and Yuri Milner entered the late stage round. You know, what was his big differentiation? I'll take common stock and I won't take a board seat. And it does not seem to be so.
Starting point is 00:55:53 It does not seem to be influential. It seems so counterintuitive and so against the grain, but he acknowledged what was this thing that up until that point was true, which is common and preferred converged in price per share. So buying common in a late stage company was the same as buying preferred. You know, that's how you should explain.
Starting point is 00:56:13 I trim off for a second. People don't know that. So when you set up an IPO, well, that's certain that so when you set up a company, you have a price per share of the common stock and then a price per share that the Series A investor has. The Series A investor is buying preferred shares that actually looks more like debt than equity. And what I mean by that is there's typically a coupon, there's a rate of return, there's
Starting point is 00:56:33 accumulated dividends, all these features give it a certain price for share. And the common has none of those features. And so it has a lot of different provisions. And that gap is typically around 20 to one when you set up a company. Okay. And that's what allows you to hire employees and give them very, very cheap options within bettered upside. Then what happens is you raise more and more of these series B series C series D, these preference stack right prefer purchase build up. But the value of the comment keeps rising to and by the time you go public, the gap converges. What Yuri realized was, hey, wait a minute, I'm buying a company a
Starting point is 00:57:11 year or 18 months before it goes public. The price of the comment and the price of the prefer to roughly the same. And so I'm just going to, you know, do that. And I'm not going to take a board seat because it's clear this company is successful. So similarly, for Tiger D1 and Cotu, I would just observe the obvious and kind of put everything that we've just said on the table, which is, hey guys, I'll give you the money. You're either end of one or not. I'm making a guess that you are, and I'm just going to get out here and leave you alone. So I'm bundling governance and unbundling the governance and advice piece from the capital piece, but you can still need that governance and advice piece, I think.
Starting point is 00:57:44 I think it could work. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a lot of great founders or there are founders who start young and experienced become great. And the smart ones listen to advice on the way and they seek out people who've done it before. And so, you know, yes, they may be an end of one business by the growth stage, but that doesn't mean they don't need any help whatsoever at the Series A stage. Such a good observation.
Starting point is 00:58:05 Yeah, and look, I think there's been an evolution in Silicon Valley and actually say there's been like three distinct phases in the venture capital world, and I remember all of them. So you go back to the late 90s, okay, when you had this mentality on the part of VCs that if a company became successful, you would just automatically replace the founders, right? You go bring in the Fescial CEO. official CEO upgrade that was a disaster okay and and that's when founders fund Peter came in I think founded founders fund in 2003 and the reason they called it founders fund is to indicate they were going to be a pro founder and they would never replace the founder and they would let you do whatever
Starting point is 00:58:39 you wanted and I think is I can tell the backstory of the Sean Parker stuff and how that happened. Yeah, I mean, so basically both Peter and Sean Parker had, you know, experiences they felt were very negative with Sequoia. And by the way, I've great relations with Sequoia. Roll off through work with us at PayPal. Is there? And I think they've evolved as a firm. So I'm not calling them out or anything. But both Sean, Parker and Peter felt like Sequoia pushed out from replaced.
Starting point is 00:59:05 And so when- Blacks, I was specifically. There are a couple of different companies involved, but when Peter was CEO of PayPal as well, that, you know, he felt that pressure as well. So when they then founded as two of the four founding partners of founder from back in 2003, the whole point was, we are going to be a pro founder, you're never going to replace you will let you do whatever you want. I think that was phase two and that became I think the dominant model and so becoming
Starting point is 00:59:30 profound or was now table stakes and I think the third phase has been what in recent harvest is now done with this massive like the services and the value add, which is that we're going to basically not only be profound orer, but we're going to bring all these resources to help you. And that's the year we're in right now. I mean, from our perspective, as craft, I mean, look, it's not in our interest to get into any dispute with a founder.
Starting point is 00:59:56 And if we feel like our advice isn't being taken well, we just back off. Of course, we're profounder. Like, we don't want the control. We're not control investors. If it's become a fictional, we'd rather just get out of the way. It's just not worth it. The underlying thing that you're not saying, though, is because you have enough of a fund
Starting point is 01:00:16 that's large enough where you can have enough bets, where any of these things to the upside is a total needle mover, but anything that goes to zero doesn't actually diminish the fund or imperative meaningfully. So there is no upside to getting engaged in really being non-anti-founder. So I think it's a part of a business model. One thing I'm going to tell you about Parker, Parker was single-handedly incredibly responsible for keeping suck in the seat when he was president of Facebook, because Parker wrote this structure that really allowed Mark to keep control. Super voting shares. Sacks to add onto your point.
Starting point is 01:00:49 I think that there's been, so there seems to be a bifurcation around the services model or not. But the fourth thing that seems to have happened, and you guys tell me if I'm wrong on this, but it plays into the Tiger Global story, when I got that term sheet for my Series B at Climate Core, market in recent,
Starting point is 01:01:08 I was trying to raise like $25 to $30 million. And market in recent was like, we're gonna give you a term sheet for $40 million. More than you were asking for. Because we want you to use that extra capital to go faster, to go harder, to grab the market. Because we've this big goal in business is that grabbing the market.
Starting point is 01:01:23 And that seems to have also become a bit of a mainstay, but not just a mainstay, but now almost like the kind of standard pitch that a lot of the later stage guys are taking, which is like here's so much capital that it helps you make the market. And then the SoftBank Vision Fund kind of took that to the extreme with a $100 billion range
Starting point is 01:01:41 and Tiger Global, I think last year, have publicly said they deployed about $15 billion into startups, where startups may in a natural cycle kind of evolved to needing $70 million raise or $100 million raise, and they're like writing checks for $250 or $300. And saying this extra capital gives you the ability to move faster. And the reason is, the faster a business moves, the higher the multiple they get on their revenue. So the higher the growth rate, the higher the multiple. So if you can deploy capital faster, we can find a business where we can
Starting point is 01:02:09 pump money through you to get it out the door faster. Your multiple goes up and Tiger's model was let's just get the multiples up. There's multiple expansion and growth. So we'll make money two ways when the company goes public in 18 to 24 months. Obviously when the markets end up tanking into all those multiples compress, no growth rate is gonna solve that problem for you. But having more capital than maybe you were thinking or asking for, also seems to have become kind of a attack. I don't know if that, if you view that as kind of this fourth evolution, but that certainly wasn't the case
Starting point is 01:02:39 20 years ago when VCs were being careful about, is it a $6 million dollar round or $8 million dollar round? What's the right amount of capital? And nowadays it's much more about take more than you need. I'll say there was a 3.5 in there, which is you saw a little bit of lack of governance or superpowers on the part of like some incompetent founders or bad founders, just, you know, whether it's we work, there are no, so whatever, too much control, not enough governance, things go off the rail, but, you know, based on this discussion, I really think this bifurcates when it's a first-time founder
Starting point is 01:03:07 versus a second-time founder in what I see because I have been doing board training for seed companies where I will just have three founders sit in on each other's first board meetings. We do one board meeting each and I train them on how board meetings works and what I experienced with Sequoia on my board and other boards. And first-time founders, like the tactical stuff, had a run of board meeting legal, HR, hiring, partnerships, go to market strategy, it is all tactical all the time. And then when I've been on with second and third time founders, you know, they really
Starting point is 01:03:38 are like, here's all the materials, here's what I'm thinking about. What do we think strategically? So they go from the tactical level to the strategic and mission level awfully quick. And they actually seem to enjoy having those four meetings a year, whereas the first time founders really need to have six to ten a year in those in that first, you know, well, a year two of a company. That's my experience. I realized in this discussion that the market has really meaningfully changed, meaning when I was actively investing, even in the early 2000s,
Starting point is 01:04:06 or sorry, in the, you know, 2011, 12, 13, there was a culture where if you underperformed, you would get replaced. And I think David, what you just spoke about, which I guess is true, has really changed, which is if you're running a multi-multibillion dollar fund, where every check is $20 million, the upside is billions, but the downside is negative 20.
Starting point is 01:04:28 There's just no point. So, you know, Sequoia used to be known as a very, very, very tough, tough, tough place for CEOs that were underperforming. Now they got a $9 billion fund. Now, yeah, maybe 20 years ago. It doesn't matter anymore. No, even less than 10 years ago. I think it was known as a very tough demanding place. I think it was known as a very tough demanding place.
Starting point is 01:04:46 I think benchmark was known as a very tough demanding place because the money was much more finite, right? Benchmark still that case. I mean, high expectation culture. They never grew their fun size. No, Jason, you're not hearing me. I am. I think what's happening is listen,
Starting point is 01:05:01 I had Sequoia on my board and I worked at Sequoia so. There's difference between high expectations which I think all these folks have to have. And the willingness to replace the founder as CEO. And what I'm saying is every VC claims this, but there were a handful of VCs that had the courage to do this. I mean, famously Mike Morrison, John Dorr, you know, had it out with Larry at the right, right after this round, like either Goat Public, you know, get your business model or give us your money back, famously at Google. So, they're not, they're willing to draw a line in this end.
Starting point is 01:05:32 I think that that has fundamentally changed at all these organizations because the fun sizes have gone up and the mathematical reality of venture capital has changed. Something else you're missing, which is you got to remember, Maritz and Doar were not operators and now these companies are being run. Rule off his running Sequoia and he's an operator and he was there. So the changing of the guard and Mark and Dreson and Ben Horowitz were operators.
Starting point is 01:05:55 So the operator class behaves very differently. Then, I disagree with you. I think I did fun or respectfully. Disate. No, hold on, I think that fun size dictates his behavior more than any singular other feature. When you're running a $9 billion fund, you just don't sweat that changing of the CEO
Starting point is 01:06:11 and David said it really well. You just say, okay, I'll cut our losses and move on. We don't lose any brand. I think it's more about the culture change in Silicon Valley of a bunch of MBA finance people who have never run a company now moving and running companies. But let's move on to the next, any closing thoughts on this one?
Starting point is 01:06:27 Well, just, I mean, Jason, you start to make this point that if you're a founder and you want to eventually run a great public company, when you IPO, guess what, you're going to have governments. And what I've seen big time, right? I mean, there's just Delaware law. There's just a lot of like expectations around being a public company. And so if you don't have a board, you know, and you're not constituting one until you go public, there's going to be a massive amount of cleanup that you have to do.
Starting point is 01:06:54 I mean, that's what I've seen. And so, you'll end up scrambling to create a board. I think that a board serves so many purposes early on of giving you advice, of giving you structure of providing support, help, services, you can still remain in control while getting those things. And I'm just skeptical that like if you form a company with completely passive VCs, you don't even serve on a board, like you're gonna have to do a lot of cleanup later,
Starting point is 01:07:22 I'd say add a minimum. Totally. I think that that's true too. Totally. By the way, I'm not saying I advocate this, but I just think that the reality is that if these large late-stage crossover firms really step into the early-stage, I think they could really build a big book of business. I do think there are a lot of founders who would love to just be given the money and just to be left alone. I'm not saying that they think they know that it's better for them, but on the margin, just to be able to be left alone. Now, what has changed, maybe those, everybody's
Starting point is 01:07:53 going to be wearing hands off just because all the fun sizes have exploded. So at that point, then, you know, what is the difference between Sequoia and D1? Time will tell. I just know that like what I see a founder doing something that I think could risk the company going off the rails, I'll say so. And then, you know, if it keeps happening and the situation gets worse, I'll say so again, I might mention in third time or might not. At a certain point I'm just like, maybe after like two times,
Starting point is 01:08:19 I'm just like, they don't want all this to be, that's fine. It's their decision. They're a company, they're a decision, they go off the rails, they're a problem. You know, we'll move on to the next one. I mean, that's the, it's their decision. Their company, their decision, they go off the rails, their problem, we'll move on to the next one. I mean, that's realeby. Sometimes founders have to learn by doing it, like sometimes they're intent,
Starting point is 01:08:31 and you know what, they could be right, and you could be wrong too. So it's hard as a board member, that's why I'm very judicious in giving advice as a board member now, and I'm on a bunch of boards and do a board training, because when the rule of was on my board, and he still is, he would ask great questions,
Starting point is 01:08:48 and he would be very thoughtful about, hey, have you thought about this, or when I got advice from Doug or Michael Moritz directly, Doug would say, hey, well, can you share the two-year plan with me? And I'd say, you know, we haven't built a plan. And he said, well, Jason, hope is not a plan. Let's make a plan, and let's discuss the milestones
Starting point is 01:09:03 along here, and it was amazing to have that level of thoughtfulness around division as a founder. I love, I mean, as a founder, I love getting advice. And I think I'd be really dumb not to seek it out. I mean, I was a founder. I would, even though I was sort of competing with any off, I would meet with him and I would like get amazing tidbits. Just recently, we did, it wasn't like an official board meeting because we're off isn't on our our board but he's a big investor in one of my incubations Colin and we just did a meeting with him and and and gets it in every time not to be confused with all in but no no we had a trademark it was it was me and Axel who's the co-founder of Paulin and Roloth.
Starting point is 01:09:45 We had an amazing meeting where we got, I'd say, amazing advice from Roloth that focused us. It wasn't that I didn't know these things, but it's just like when you're in the weeds sometimes, you don't actually crystallize on focusing the most important thing. I came out of that meeting feeling like, okay, Rulof just refocused us on the most important thing. And it was immensely valuable. And you've got to be like dumb not to seek that out, no matter what stage you're at. Because I seek it out today. Yeah, and think about this, David, you're in the thick of things. He's on Squares board.
Starting point is 01:10:18 He's on other boards. He's got a picture of the entire playing field. It's like somebody who's the coach of 15 NBA teams. And you're like the coach of one. He's got a picture of the entire playing field. It's like somebody who's the coach of 15 NBA teams and you're like the coach of one. He's seeing things on other NBA teams that they're doing in methodologies and best practices that you're just not going to see. So, I mean, again, and then if you look at the great founders, TK used to come to me and say, hey, you know, this is the thing I'm going to be doing at the next board meeting or here's the thing, can we jam out? And he was just asked for a jam session. He came up with that term and three or four people would get together and just jam and talk for five hours about the product.
Starting point is 01:10:51 It was awesome. All right, let's go on to David Sacks' favorite section of the show, science with the Sultan of Science himself. Oh, I thought you were going to say his favorite program. Oh, enough with that. We can't talk about that. That was so good. Stop fighting. You have to, you, if you are engaged in the science segment, David Sachs and Peter here in a fight. Alright, let's cover it. Here's the deal. If David Sachs is engaged during the science portion of the class, we will let him have his fight
Starting point is 01:11:22 as the as the teacher here. Tell us a little bit about stem cells and this HIV story. I was going to tell SACs that the Earth is round. Okay, it's not flat. I don't care. Yeah. How does that affect Selena? Sorry, the story that I think we wanted to, you guys wanted to cover today with the HIV story, which incredible.
Starting point is 01:11:42 I suggested this topic, so I I'm interested explain it to us. HIV is a retro virus meaning once you get infected it doesn't go away. He doesn't care. He's better. We better come back to TG. He's flipping through his political notes to figure out what he missed saying that he was supposed to say today. He just flipped over to Ben Shapiro on two episodes. He's listening to Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris in conversation. Go ahead, so I guess I'll do that. The HIV being cured headline, we can dive into it for two minutes, but HIV is a retro
Starting point is 01:12:16 virus when you get infected with HIV. It stays in your body forever. It actually ends up living inside of your immune cells. That's what makes it such an interesting, challenging virus. And it destroys those immune cells. So over time, you end up getting eights. And the way it enters the immune cells is through a specific protein. Some people have a genetic mutation where if there's a change in their DNA and that protein is different, HIV cannot enter their immune cells and they can actually they are naturally immune to HIV. CCR 5. Yeah and so what's happened is found apparently in white northern Europeans. Yeah like Norwegians I think.
Starting point is 01:12:54 Oh, Norwegians exactly. And anyway so what's the interesting study that was done, all immune cells are made from stem cells in your bone marrow. And so, you know, all the white blood cells that we have that fight off our diseases come from our bone marrow. And when you get a blood cancer, sometimes you end up getting so severe that you have to actually wipe out
Starting point is 01:13:17 all the immune cells in your body and you end up with a bone marrow transplant. So you get new bone marrow put in, you blood cells put in. And hopefully, if you can survive the therapy and survive that treatment, that new bone marrow will produce new immune cells and your body will recover
Starting point is 01:13:33 and you will be cured of your blood cancer. So what happened is people had HIV. And when you get this bone marrow transplant, you end up, they give you radiation and chemo and they wipe out all your blood cells. And then they give you this bone marrow transplant. So they selectively chose bone marrow stem cells that came from people that have the genetic mutation that prevents HIV. So then when these HIV patients that got blood cancer got a bone marrow transplant with this mutation in it, they were cured of HIV.
Starting point is 01:14:08 And so it's a pretty profound kind of demonstration of what we already knew, which is that this genetic mutation can can prevent HIV. And there are a lot of therapies that are underway right now to actually use gene editing to induce that mutation in people's blood cells and in their bone marrow without needing the whole transplant. The first guy that did it, the first guy that did it was German, right? Or he was in Germany, I think, and he unfortunately passed away. They cured his HIV AIDS, but he unfortunately had a relapse of the leukemia that killed him. But I think all three cases of people that have been quote unquote cured have been these leukemia patients.
Starting point is 01:14:55 But I'll say two things about the future of this kind of possibility. Number one is you don't need to get a bone marrow transplant to have this mutation induced in your cells to prevent this infection from occurring in your body. You can use gene editing tools to do that. And so we are now developing gene editing therapies. We're rather than going to get a whole bone marrow transplant to cure your HIV. We can actually edit your cells. Those edited cells will now be resistant and you will be resolved to HIV. The second thing is the way that they gave people the bone marrow transplant, the way they created those stem cells
Starting point is 01:15:27 for the bone marrow transplant, was from a Biblical cord blood from newborns, which is very rich in stem cells. And this is a traditional way of kind of giving people stem cell-based therapies, is you go and source stem cells from another body, or your own body, which are called autologous stem cells.
Starting point is 01:15:44 But like, I just wanna say one thing, what's really interesting in the future is not gonna be about pulling other people's stem cells into your body and finding them from, you know, fetal blood or what have you. We now have the technology, which I've talked about multiple times on the show called Yamannaka factors,
Starting point is 01:15:59 where theoretically we can take your cells from your own body, turn them into stem cells, grow them in a lab, and use that as the therapy. That's called autologous stem cell therapy. And rather than use stem cells or trying to find them and figure them out where they are in your body and pull them out, we can actually induce stem cells from your body. And that's like 15 years out is autologous induced stem cell therapy. We actually make your own stem cells and then give yourself all sorts of therapies,
Starting point is 01:16:26 not just bone marrow transplants, but you can heal lots of tissue in the body using these stem cell systems. We don't really hear about HIV AIDS anymore, and that article, I think it said that there's about 37 million people around the world that have HIV AIDS. And it's incredible actually the amount of progress that science has made in this disease.
Starting point is 01:16:42 I remember when I was growing up, it was made to be like this incredible boogie man. Yeah. And it really governed a lot of social norms at the time because we were still discovering what HIV-H was and how do you think about sexual promiscuity from a moral and ethical perspective? I think it had a huge impact on my generation. Absolutely, it did. It was a death sentence. They made us paranoid. So here's what's happened.
Starting point is 01:17:11 Therapy's have gotten so good at suppressing the virus. If the virus is suppressed far enough, even though you're always gonna be infected, if it's suppressed far enough, the WHO and the FDA have both said, you can still have unprotected sex and not transmit HIV And so even though there are plenty of people out there that might be having unprotected sex with HIV The therapies have suppressed the viral load to the point that they're not transmitting it actively
Starting point is 01:17:35 It's an act in the break break through in science over the last decade And then they also had these prep pills right which people could take proactively if they thought they might You know find themselves, but I mean schema, you and I lived in a generation where I mean, it doesn't have to happen. It was the end of things. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was the end of days, and they're like, I don't know, you got to have this.
Starting point is 01:17:53 It was a single, big of a thing that I was taught in sex ed classes to be afraid of. Really scary at all costs. And then the problem that it created was like, in countries that had a large Catholic population, the Catholic church was so evil. They were undecided on the opposite side. They told people in Africa to not use condoms.
Starting point is 01:18:18 When AIDS was rampant, it was the second biggest evil the Catholic Church did in modern history obviously the first we know. I have a contribution to the segment. I'll go. Yeah. What? He's a great. Here we go. Move on. I know. I know. I'm a sister. I'm in my best relationship. Look, I remember how scared people were of AIDS, you know, back in the 1980s when this came up. And I remember that there was a head of the NIH who even whipped to people's fear. Hold on. The people's fear by saying that even casual, even casual contact with them the same household can spread it. And you know who that had an age gap? Yes, we know. Faculty dedicated his life to trying to solve and reduce the suffering of, solve for
Starting point is 01:19:05 AIDS in HIV. No. In the 1980s, in the 1980s, he was the face of government and difference towards AIDS, and he spread fear and was medically wrong about it. Go check the records. He was a scruel, then, and he's a scruel now on it. He worked tirelessly on it. He worked tirelessly on it.
Starting point is 01:19:21 It worked tirelessly on it. I think Saks is right in the sense sense that what we thought we knew back then turned out to be wrong, and I think that's a really important point. Particularly in science, it's a process of discovery. What we thought we knew back then turned out to be all a hypothesis, it's all a thesis until it's proven or disproven, and that's the case. Reed Andrew Sullivan, I mean, Fauci was absolutely the enemy, public enemy number one of the gay movement.
Starting point is 01:19:47 Who is it, Tony Krueger? Tony, yeah, well, it was a Tony, Tony Parkinson, there was actually a debate that Fauci was in on AIDS where a gay actress literally said to him, I hate you. And if you read Andrew Sullivan's blog, you will talk about how you're remembers back in the 1980s that Fauci was sort of public enemy number one in the gate community because of his position on this during the Reagan administration. And so it is. And so it is.
Starting point is 01:20:14 And so he responded by putting massive resources into this. So I think, you know, if he was not listening to Andrew listen to andry selvin on this the he is andry selvin of the is not that right now wait andry selvin is the reason why more than any other public intellectual why we have marriage equality today he is number one he advocate from from a rick paulian in the new republic made the case for it before anybody else and popularize that i'm a fan of his writing let's not don't try and portray him as a far right wing or whatever. portray foul.
Starting point is 01:20:47 You're going to Fauci's intent. Anyway, you want to believe that Fauci's an evil person. I think I think you and many other people have mysteriously forgotten who Fauci really is. Okay. You think I know the conspiracy that you think Fauci's intent is to, you know, cover up the sex. You intentionally was working against
Starting point is 01:21:05 uh... solve for HIV that you think potentially you think that she had good intentions in few infertile that sex do you think that she had good intentions i don't really care about his intentions as well look at his actions it's amazing it's amazing to me it's amazing to me that
Starting point is 01:21:21 a public official who was so wrong that a public official who was so wrong back then in the 1990s on the public health rights of our time would just be giving a free pass and a long comes a new public health crisis in the last couple of years and he's been completely wrong about that too. So why are you giving this guy a free pass? I don't get it.
Starting point is 01:21:39 Hey, Saks, in a clout of uncertainty, in a time of war, do you think that leaders need to show strong intent and clear signals or do you think that leaders need to show strong intent and clear signals, or do you think that they should be wishy-washy because they don't know enough? I think they should be right. And if they're trying the best with what they have, with the information they have at the time of the day. Okay, well, yeah, there's some forgiveness
Starting point is 01:21:59 for making mistakes, but when you're constantly wrong, maybe it's time to get somebody else in there. That's true. But maybe- and Fauci, by the way, Fauci, with respect to COVID, we talked about it before, 100% participated in a suppression of the investigation into the origins of COVID. There was an active attempt to suppress that. Come on, you know that, the FOIA'd email show it.
Starting point is 01:22:23 It's a good science segment. I do want to give a shout out to the researchers who actually did this with this woman in New York. It's pretty freaking incredible. What's incredible is that they did it with HIV patients who had blood cancer and it was a really kind of like thoughtfully designed experiment. Incredibly thoughtful. Yeah. It's been four years. So, I mean, this has been baking for a long time. By the way, as I zoom out and hear you guys talk about
Starting point is 01:22:49 what HIV was like, you know, back in the day and the fear around it, I do think that 30, 40 years from now given the tools we have with induced stem cells and cell-based therapies, and there are hundreds of cell-based therapies coming to market over the next few years. They're all in late-stage clinical trials as well as gene editing.
Starting point is 01:23:04 I think hopefully, and I'm optimistic that one day we will look back at cancer and aging in the same way that we're talking about HIV today, and that both of those diseases can and will be resolved with the tools that we're developing through science. And there's gonna be bumps along the road, but man, it's so clear that these little sacks go. Look, I think what Freeberg just said actually is really important and inspiring.
Starting point is 01:23:28 And I think it's great. And I was kind of joking around with the Fauci thing. I didn't expect it to become a tangent. So I don't need to keep going on. We got a good way to see him try to do it. Well, what do you see him in editing? Try to change his position. No, I'm not going to change anything in editing.
Starting point is 01:23:39 Keep that only segment. I'm just saying I didn't. Can you use a voice? Check out. If you had it become so argumentative, We wouldn't have spent five minutes on it. If I correct your incorrect position that she's in 10 please because I got to fly to Europe. Go. Okay, here we go.
Starting point is 01:23:52 David Sacks and Paul Graham have gotten into it. It's a battle for the ages and the stakes are so low. The stakes are so high and the animosity is so high because the stakes are so low. Here we go. David Sacks. Before this, does Phil Helmuth qualify this as a billionaire battle or a... Billionaire battle.
Starting point is 01:24:16 Billionaire battle. Literally, he revealed the billionaire. If you follow Phil Helmuth's account, it's being D.A. greatest, being done greatest on Twitter, following D.A. greatest to get that fill. No, Phil Hamill outed on his Twitter. His new billionaire, Bestie, is his bill, which he stole Bestie from me. I used to call everybody bestie and he just co-opted it. Like he co-opted me calling, trim off the dictator, but I'll tell the dictator origins later.
Starting point is 01:24:46 Is Stanley from DoorDesh? Stanley Tank. Co-founder, chief product officer of DoorDesh. Great guy. Really? Great job. You're still hummus later, it's truffle. Exactly.
Starting point is 01:24:57 You got that other status truffle. He found it. Okay. Here we go. So you can introduce him to Paul Graham. Go ahead, sex. All right. Here's the issue. You have to pick what's your beef?
Starting point is 01:25:05 Here we go. Actually, I did not seek out this beef sex vendetta section of the problem. No, no, no, listen. PG waited into my tweets. He came after me. He waited. He did. He waited. I love it. Please. Any billionaires out there want to like debate like come waiting in because it's great. Here's what's basically happened is I tweeted a video of all these multi-millionaire celebrity hypocrites, partying massless at the Super Bowl. And then me, while the next day my three kids have to go to school in California wearing their masks.
Starting point is 01:25:45 That is ridiculous. Okay, it makes no sense. We all know that. Okay, any sane person knows that. That's what I tweeted about. I don't know why of all issues that was triggering the P.G. But he had to come in and say, well, they were all parting outdoors. It's like, really?
Starting point is 01:26:02 It looks to me like they're in a sky box and if it has three walls in the ceiling, I call that a room. But in any event, that was it, he was misinformed because the rule of the Super Bowl was that if you were not eating and drinking anyone under over the age of two after you were in a mask. So, you know, my point stands. I just want to air. So here's where things kind of went south is, so that I tweeted, blink twice, you know, Paul.
Starting point is 01:26:31 And here's the thing, I wasn't totally trying to be snarky with that comment. Here's why I said that is because- You're starting to explain what that means. I didn't understand that. What does that mean blink twice? Well, it means like, are you- You're a captor.
Starting point is 01:26:43 You're being held kidnapped by these concepts that you have to wear a mask. You're being held hostage by somebody. And the reason why I said that is because it's, look, if PG had just been some crazy dumb person, I never would have said that. The fact is that PG is smart. He writes extremely well, publishes a lot of interesting things. He's an independent thinker. So it almost seemed to me like somebody
Starting point is 01:27:05 is holding him hostage here because out in this really smart person be making this case. Anyway, it kind of went south from there. So I have no desire to continue that. And meanwhile, Kendall Jenner wore North Face shoes to Justin Bieber's... What?
Starting point is 01:27:22 Yeah, can you believe it? How dare she knows that he has a North Face. How did he do that? Gossip gossip gossip. Alright, so this has been Saxx's Vendex No, bad luck.
Starting point is 01:27:33 For the week Can we make a circular segment? That's what I just did on the segment. Saxx is a corner I want to stay on the main issue here which is Oh, please let's do it every week
Starting point is 01:27:44 But But look Am I wrong about this mask hypocrisy that's going on? How in the world are kids since? I'm not a picture of sacks in the mask. No, I'm not a picture of sacks in the mask. Jekyll, Jekyll, stop. I want to air 100% support for sacks on this statement. I totally agree with you on the mask, hypocrisy as well as the mask mandates in schools.
Starting point is 01:28:02 I think it's ridiculous. We pivoted. We've pivoted so far away from first principle thinking on this stuff. It's nuts. I totally agree with you completely. And on this point, on you wasting your time fighting with people on Twitter, my personal advice to you
Starting point is 01:28:16 as a friend is just cut it out, but. You know what you got it, everybody. But totally agree. Oh, it's entertainment. All right, everybody. For the dictator himself, Chimoff Polly Hoppatea. Rainman, yeah, David Sacks, and the Sultan of Science. If you see him out and about, as for a selfie,
Starting point is 01:28:36 the Sultan of Science loves selfies. He does. Love you, boys. Bye. See you all next time on The All In Pod. Bye, bye. Love you, besties. Bye, bye.
Starting point is 01:28:44 What? We'll let your winners ride. See you all next time on the All in Pod! What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What??? What? What? What? What? What?? What?? What? What? What?? It's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release that out What your, that beat beat What your, your, your beat Beat your, your beat We need to get merch I'm doing all this I'm doing all this Please!

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