All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

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E13: SPACsgiving Special! More promising vaccine news, innovation vs. regulation, reforming higher ed, morality of challenge trials & more

by All-In Podcast, LLC
November 25th 2020
01:21:34
Hey, everybody, welcome back. Besties air back and it's a bestie. Spaccia giving congratulations to the Queen of Kin Wah, his second company, David Freeburg, announces today hours before the taping of this special Thanksgiving pod that he is taking metro Mile public threw us back and that best e. C. And here is the quote that has only two meth can tweet. Buffett had Geico. I picked Metro Mile way. Just like to say, I'll tell you, Move markets. LeBron James has three rings. Uh, Freeburg, tell us what is metro mile on Bond? Well, this isn't a self promoting podcast, is it? No, but I think it's just, you know, e started the company in 2011 when I was running climate when I was the CEO there. And

, you know, we were Climate was offering insurance at the time. We learned a lot about the insurance markets and figured like, Hey, you know, telematics or connecting cars to the Internet is gonna be a big deal, and we're gonna be able to completely change the auto insurance industry. So we set up this company. I was the chairman from the founding in 2011, and you know been been chairman, and I've been an active investor in the business and every round since then, eso the business has built some, you know, really compelling value proposition for customers. And, you know, it's got really good unit economics, and it Z, you know, needed its last round of capital to get profitable. And turns out, you know, we were thinking about that this summer that a SPAC was a really good path for the business. Given the inflection point, it's at um on the basic premise of the businesses instead of paying for insurance by month or time period, innovation here is you pay per mile. Insurance today is like, you know, you fill out a form and

you get a price for insurance. You pay that rate for six months of coverage. But you know, depending on when you're driving and how much you're driving, you should be paying a different price, right? So we kind of changed the model to a rate per mile, and so if you don't drive, you save, you know, so the average customer doesn't drive a lot with Metro Mile. They save 47% over what they were paying with like Geico or progressive reassurance on you do that with that O D B pour a plug in device. And increasingly, we're actually doing it directly by connecting two cars direct through a Ford and a couple other big automotive O E M s now have this ability to send the data directly out of the car because they're all Internet connected now. So eso that allows us to just basically, you know, see how many miles you're driving in the rate per miles. What we build you each month times the number of miles you drove on your car and you didn't mention how you drive. I think that was a controversial concept for a while. You know, if you speed if you wear a roadmap or yeah, that that that is part of it today. But frankly

, 70% of the price difference you get in auto insurance is from the number of miles you drive. Only 30% is really in this variance around behavior. You know, most people are generally pretty good drivers, so believe it or not. So the rial variance in terms of you know your risk to the insurance companies. How many miles you drive, so that really is the predominant factors. If we can accurately track that now, what's interesting is like in a world of autonomous cars where you're like turning on the car to be autonomous or fully self driving. At some point, you know it's on and off. You should be getting a different rate for those miles, right? So if the car is, if you're Tesla's on autopilot on the freeway, that should be safer than you on the freeway. You shouldn't be paying as much insurance. You can kind of think about how this moves into a world where everything is dynamically priced and dynamically build usage price and that and also fair. So you know, if you're a good driver and you're driving well, or if you're using autonomous features, you shouldn't pay as much. And ultimately, that translates, You know, into a truly kind of more dynamic service. And that's really where the world has to go because those low mileage drivers or those good drivers

or those drivers using autonomous features, should be paying considerably less so they'll start using our service, and that will force the other guys to raise their rates and it creates this huge, you know, kind of market mode. Um, we're in the very early days. I mean, it's like the first inning. Still So we're you know, we're just getting going. Shame of you. Chose to do a pipe with a SPAC. Explained to the audience what a pipe is. Well, don't know. And what you loved about Metro Mile. Sure e think the what? What is the pipe? The pipe is ah, private investment in a public enterprise. And basically, what that means is that you're making the round bigger, right? So it's kind of like Sequoia does your series A and invest 10 million. I would come in and put another 10 million, and now you're syriza is 20 million. Um, same terms as the sequoias round, Except you're now just grossing up the amount of capital. Why? Why is that helpful? Well, what it does is it allows somebody

to price the deal. So in this case, David SPAC, sponsor price. The deal did the diligence and decided to underwrite Metro Mile at that price. And then they came to me and said, Hey, um, you know, do you want to come and join this round essentially, and I got to know the business. Um, a lot of things that David said basically are true. The thing that I will say is like, you know, everybody talks about the value of machine learning, right? And data oriented learning. Um, the most obvious thing that you can do is if you learn on top of a huge subset of data, especially out in the real world, like driving data or any other kind of information is you should be taking risk on top of it. And this is why sort of these next generation insurance companies to me, are so interesting because it's probably where you're going to see, um, machine learning be used, that just massive, massive scale. Because you're just gonna re price risk and make it as David said, much more dynamic. So anyways, they showed it to me. I really like the

product. The metrics are really amazing. And so I joined. That's great. I'm really excited for I'm really excited for Freeburg. Yeah, congratulations. Great Jamaat And I've never worked on anything together, so it's awesome. We're doing our first project here on the all in podcast together. All right, Well, it sounds. It sounds like a brilliant idea. And I'm just pissed. I'm not part of it, e It's best for me and Sacks. Yeah, Jason, do you know about this? I don't know. Anything I get I'm both got out of a book out of it. I need to get my beak wet. YouTube e. Can't get my beak wet. You, too. Narcissistic besties have been Have been running around all touting every single unicord. You guys have a location And Robin Hood. I missed my allocation. Uber, Whatever new bestie rule, new bestie rule. Everybody gets a slice, even a little taste. IPU. Everybody gets their big question. The old neighborhood like the old neighbor. You

back a little share? Let's Jason, why don't you start an angel? A syndicate for every all in podcast Listener? Yes, all in podcast syndicate. It will be on the syndicate dot com and let the angel list, But we'll do it. We'll do with us syndicate dot com slash all in podcast and then Well, aggregate All these subscribers can I just 20% carry and you guys can suggest that way. We'll do. We'll do zero carry and will allow all the listeners to participate in our deals, which I think would be pretty cool. Listen, I love you. Every time you look my business into this, whether it's podcasting or syndicates, you take out the money and then I tell you what I have an idea. How about we SPAC this week and start ups and you do it for no participation? I'm the father of growth. You know how you grow By making things free, You want to maximize demand, just make it free. By the way, on this topic Sacks IPU had this incredible tweet this week which is basically like, Wow, this is like my 95th unicorn

that went that filed to go public. I mean, literally every single unicorn that filed this week to go public Sacks was an angel investor, which is incredible, says the goodies as an investor. But the best follow up to eat was Zach Weinberg, the co founder of Flatiron Health, whose tweet was. I just want to congratulate myself on nothing for having not been a part of any of these companies. I would like to congratulate myself for making no bets, taking no risk and getting no reward. I thought I thought Zack ST Elizabeth sex. Don't you find it tiring? Like all these investments that you've made like that? Don't these guys call you and want to do meetings and chat all the time? I mean, you know, this is gonna be like, ah, huge amount of effort, right? Well, not not. No, I mean, not really a turnaround. Well, you know, if you're not on the board, your obligation is basically toe respond. When somebody asks you for something and there's an angel investor, it is a little different when you're actually like leading around. And you're a board member. I

was e was making these investments back in 2012. 2013. That's when these seeds were planted, right? These were 50 k 100 k 250 K checks. Right? So the responsibility is proportional to the dollar. Amount somewhere a little bigger than that, actually, but e I've written I've written checks, you know, seven figure checks and some of these companies sex According to your personal balance sheet that we got from your accountants this week will help you sent it way. See here a transaction for house is it true you Did the SYRIZA be of house the entire series B? No, no, I heard it was you lead the Syrian? No, no. Any a lead that round? I mean, I invested a lot as an individual. I did. Khalid. Um, the Siri's B or C of at a part that was one that I did is an individual. That's incredible. Yeah, that's amazing. Gonna be huge. I have no idea what that companies, but

that sounds also they manage funds. I'm software. It's coming up, You know? I'm just kidding. I'm totally kidding. I'm totally getting Let's start the pod Jaeckel, where we're going to start. Wow. I mean, I think now that we've got promoted well, I'm just happy to hear that Jason was cut out of your deal. Is Muchas me when I when I read about it on Twitter? I'm like, I better not be the only best Thio. All right, You're right. You're right. You're right. It is. It is getting awkward now because people who watch this podcast assume that we do everything together, like literally. They're like, Well, you guys go grocery shopping together. You go on vacation together. You guys live in the same talk house. Yeah, that's that's not how it works. I think the first thing we should we should talk about is just

this amazing moment in time when because of science, You know, in this podcast started during the pandemic, we have had, as predicted by Freeburg, who gets to take to victory laps. He said by the end of the year, we have vaccines and they would have because of this m r N A. If I remember correctly 90 95% efficacy. And sure enough, the week after Trump wins, I'm sorry. Loses. Sorry. Sacks He lost, actually, um, week after Trump lost. I know you didn't vote for him, Uh, week after he lost Moderna Pfizer. Then the next week, Madonna. And then the next week, Oxford. And I understand Johnson and Johnson is about to announce something, and all of these have 90 to 95% efficacy and that they're gonna be 40 50 and 60 million doses in December, January February, just from the first two in America alone. So friedberg, if you were to put a number on when herd immunity

hits because probably 20 or 30% of people have had it. 2030% of people have, um, some natural immunity. How long is this going to take? And could we be out to be doing this from, you know, a Warriors game next year? When when are we going to be able to do this in person? I think I don't know. If it was, Yeah. I don't know if it was Fauci or someone that's closer to the operation shared that they do think they could get 70% of Americans immunized by May. So my May? Yeah. So, you know, if you'll remember a few podcasts ago, I think I tried to explain a big part of the budget that went into this operation. Warp speed was to paralyze production of these vaccines while they were being tested. And so we've been scaling up the production and manufacturing these, and if they weren't gonna work, we're just gonna crash him, right? A couple billion dollars. Who cares? It's a good option for the American people. So we've got a ton of doses that have been produced. It's about packaging and distribution now, and that's, you know, supposed to be kind of underway with the plan to be that on December 11th or 12th, when they

give the emergency use authorization, these doses start showing up. Way went all and we basically went all in blind, like we just shove the chips and said, We're gonna make these vaccines even though if there's more like it's more like a a spray and pray Angel investment portfolio. You know, we we bought Ah, but we bought, like, four different things or five different things. We made it bets and all of them. And I hope that one of them pays off and it turns out they're all gonna pay off. So, you know, our chunk of them are gonna pay off and we get toe, have them ready, you know, in time to kind of make a difference here. Now, all that being said, if you look at the case numbers in the U. S. Right now, we could be asshole. I as 30% of the American people have already been infected with coronavirus based on some estimates. So as of the June 30th, paper that was published from those dialysis patients and they did a pretty good statistical interpretation of looking at antibodies in people's blood they have to make. 10% of the American population was infected by coronavirus as of June 30th. And then if you look at the number of people that have been infected

since then, and you apply the similar sort of multiple that you would assume based on tests, you know there's an estimate that we could already be up to 30% of the US population has been infected on and therefore immune on their theoretically mostly immune. Let's just say that right? And so you sure there's anecdotes and so on? But yeah, let's just say generally, yes, immune. And so you combine that with these vaccines starting to roll out, and we get, you know, a pretty kind of comfortable position in terms of the pandemic and hopefully a couple of months here. And that's why the market's going nuts. And that's why everyone. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I got some conference invites this last week for conferences for next year that have been canceled this year and were being put on hold. Yeah, so people are starting toe from what time frame? Third quarter of fourth quarter summer. July? Yeah, People are now assuming that, and they're booking hotel space is based on it. That is extraordinary. Sacks. You shared this New York Times story. Why don't you summarize it for the audience? And I'd love to get your thoughts in addition to this as to what

this recovery might look like. If in fact, we have more vaccine than we need and even, you know, a reasonable number of Americans take it and don't believe that it's a conspiracy theory by Bill Gates to control. And the Illuminati. Yeah. I mean, this New York Times story is pretty remarkable. It's called politics, science and that remarkable race for coronavirus vaccine. This came out, I think, just came out today in The New York Times, actually. Sorry it's published. It published November 21st Updated November 24th. Um, and it's pretty remarkable. It describes the effort by Operation Warp speed by the administration by Pfizer. By modern. It kind of gives you the behind the scenes play by play and reading the article you have toe come away thinking that the Trump Administration did a pretty good job with this whole warp speed project. Um, I don't know if the New York Times, uh, realizes that is making the Trump administration looks so good. Or maybe they don't care

anymore because he's lost the election. But the article does make, um, the administration looked very good. I mean, very confident. First of all, they shoveled money to the right people. They they offered Pfizer money fighter, didn't want it or need it, but modern it did. So they got a few billion dollars. Madonna, Uh, the parallel processed a bunch of different attempts here so that if one company failed, the others might succeed. There was a sort of a Reaganite cutting of bureaucratic red tape wherever they could. Yeah, there were examples in the story of the drug company needing something some supplies or what have you? And they would call the administration, and they would, you know, make it happen. And then finally, the administration didn't do anything to you to kind of mess with the science, you know, In fact, they describe how this the this new experimental Marna technique that they used to generate the vaccine. They had the code for that within two days. They actually had

the vaccine sort of printed, if you will within weeks. And really, what took all this time? Where the human trials, You know, the three stage human trials, which the administration did not do anything to speed up and probably the irony of ironies. The supreme irony is there's a story. There's a is a bit in the story. It actually begins with the, uh, this guy slouchy, who's the head of the Trump Administration's effort to produce the vaccine. He actually slow down the Madonna human trials by about three weeks because they weren't including enough minorities in the, you know, in the in the trial, and that cost him three weeks. If it weren't for those three weeks, Madonna's vaccine would have happened before Pfizer, and it would have come out about a week before the election. So you gotta wonder, like Trump has gotta be pulling out his hair. About what? About about about this twist of fate. David, how does it attribute credit for warp speed? And I'm going someplace with this

, So I'm just asking you the question. Well, I don't The articles, not trying toe attribute credit. They're just kind of describing the behind the scenes of how Pfizer. Madonna came up with their vaccines, and it just But But in describing, you know, Pfizer, Madonna did the work of creating the vaccine. But in describing the ways that warp speed contributed, they did things that were only helpful on nothing that was harmful. And so, in that sense, it made the Trump administration look quite good. Yeah, I I think the point is that the warp speed folks, which is probably the least well known working group working on coronavirus to the rest of the public, is because it was a lot of wonky insiders. It was sign of almost proving the exact opposite of what Trump typically does, which is, you know, some idiotic, nepotistic leaning where it's his daughter or it's the son in law running around. Um, you know, completely ineffectively, you know, doing something where they become sort of front and center for taking credit. Um, in this case, it was just a bunch of policy walks. You never heard about

the project. We only know about work speed because a handful of us have talked about it. Um, and it turns out to actually have been good because they knew what they were doing, and they do enoughto not try to seek the credit and just got out of the way I mean it. It proves almost the antithesis of how the Trump campaign, you know, manage their time in the White House. Well, I mean, you have a point where, you know, it's kind of reading this article wondering, you know, where was Jared Kushner? Because if Kushner knew about this, there's no way he slows down the Madonna vaccine by three weeks. I mean, that might have made the difference right there and whether Trump wins or not. Can you imagine the effect on the election of the vaccine had come out one week before November 3rd decide? I think Trump would have won decidedly if he had a vaccine or two out with 90%. But I think he had no credibility, even though Madonna and Fires were saying late November and he said the vaccines around the corner, his whole tenure was based on so much lying. He was the boy who cried wolf. He was the president who cried

wolf by the time he told the truth and he was telling the truth about the vaccines he was like, Oh, my Lord, he he told the truth in the final three months. Can I give you the opposite David of that? Which is that if Madonna basically says, Hey, guys, we have a vaccine that works for white people and a disease that's, you know, disproportionately killing blacks and, you know, Hispanics and Brown people, Native Americans, Onda. All of a sudden people are like, Wait, what the fuck? Maybe they would have gone into Georgia and they would have just crushed them, even mawr. And then you would have actually had the Senate flip, too, So you could have had a whole kind of distribution of outcomes. They're in a different case because you could have had an angry reaction as well. We don't know. Um, well, yeah. I mean, I think it's ironic that an administration that was constantly accused of white supremacy probably lost the election because they slowed down this vaccine trial group to include more minorities. No, I know

, but I think what we're saying is it wasn't the actual administration. Somebody, somebody way knows what they were doing. We call that redemption in the movie when the person actually loses because they did. The right thing is kind of redemption. Freeburg, When you look at these m r n A. Vaccines you were educating us about them last night. Um, and also for a long time, Uh, tell the audience just one more time How, um, these work briefly and what the potential for them is in the future because I think a lot of us now are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This is gonna be over. We're gonna be a conferences or going traveling to Europe or whatever it is next summer. But we are are all gonna be scarred for life thinking, you know, when is the next coronavirus just like for a decade? We were on pins and needles. When is the next 9 11? So this is gonna be scar tissue for a generation or two of people. When the next cove it comes, How quickly

will warp speed two point I'll go. Yeah, it's it's ah, it's the right question because our approach to doing vaccines may have just changed permanently. Eso You know, every cell has your DNA and DNA basically codes, proteins, every three letters of DNA makes an amino acid codes for a specific amino acid. There's 20 amino acids. The way that DNA turns into proteins is through RNA, so Arna is kind of like a mirror copy of your DNA. It floats into these things called ribosomes in yourselves and outcome proteins on does. It's like a printer, right? And so those those riders films make your proteins. You think those amino acid sequences coded by the Arna. So the way that the vaccines work historically is you'll get a dead virus, which is basically the protein of a virus. Your immune system then learns to kill that Teoh protein man. Jesus, my dog. Your immune system then learns to remove that protein from your body on. That's how you

develop this memory, your immune memory to a specific protein. And so they put this dead are vaccine virus in your body, and hopefully your immune system learns a good response to it. M. R N A. Basically puts the ara in your body that codes for that protein yourselves. Then make that protein and because it's making a lot more of the protein and, um, or consistent in a way, theoretically, the idea is your body develops a much more robust immune memory and immune response. Without it overloading your system with all the immune cells. Try and wipe that protein it right away and so on. The challenges you're putting our DNA in your body and we've always been worried about we don't know what the side effects of mixing RNA in your body would be. Is it gonna change? Your DNA is gonna change. Your genetic makeup is gonna cause other deleterious side effects. So this technology, this capability, this knowledge has been around forever. I'm not forever, but for, you know, a long time. And the idea has always been we could use RNA in this way. But, you know, no one wanted it, and we've used it in animals and we've used it in plants. And we've seen the capabilities of using RNA to do different things like this. But this is a big

leap. And so, you know, we kind of leapt forward here, getting to the point that we felt comfortable with, you know, our DNA is, ah treatment like this and it zits working. So in theory, in the future attacks points out, you could take any virus or any bacteria you could read. Its DNA could do that in an hour. Then you could take chunks of that DNA and code RNA for its that your body makes those proteins have theoretically produced an immune response so that that's the That's the science of, like, How do you How do you create a new E? I think that's the amazing part is the way it's described, you know in this article is that's almost like laser printing or three D printing a vaccine. It's kind of like the equivalent of that. You just take the genome of the virus and, you know, boom, you've got the vaccine, and then all the other delay is about human trials and testing of it. But imagine if that there was the next coronaviruses 10 times as deadly. You know something that's a spreads as contagious Lee as smallpox and, as you know, as deadly as a bowler or something like that, we could

have a vaccine the next day, you know, like you could challenge David would be as we'd have it the next day, like we did here, but we would be going through this three phase trial. And so I want to take a moment here and talk to Chamot about something which is challenge trials. Um, in the UK they will start doing challenge trials for those people who don't know what a challenge trial is, essentially they expose you to something dangerous. I e a virus, like cove it. And then, uh, they give you the vaccine and then they give you the virus as opposed to how we do a three phase trial, which is you give the vaccine to 30,000 people and placebo to 30,000, and then you come back three months later and see how many people got infected. And it takes time and money, whereas challenge trials Onley take risk on the individuals who are part of it. Tomato. Hundreds of people in the science community signed a letter. And in the UK, there going to be doing the first challenge trials in January. The United States is not doing these. I'm certain China is, um

Do you think it's a moment in time where we need to think about the ethics and morality of challenge trials specifically? And then, if so, how do you execute them with that? How do you execute a challenge Trial without it being unfair, Um, or too dangerous for people. Obviously you're not going to just go into a prison and say, Hey, anybody wanna get 10 years off the sentence, join the challenge trial that seems morally bankrupt. But we let people climb mountains without ropes, so Well, I I think this speaks to a whole bunch of other issues that we've talked about on the pod before. You know, another example of this was Section 2 30. Before when we talked about it, we had a body of law that was created in a moment of time that essentially was about framing and understanding a specific pathway and a way to use technologies that today look archaic. And we have to rewrite the laws in order to just compensate and understand for where we are. So if I If you double click on trials as an example, you know, if you have a solution for a rare

disease, you can go in a specific pathway with the FDA and get breakthrough and fast track approval. But if you, for example, have you know a novel immunotherapy, cancer drug, you probably you cannot. You know, you have to do a multi phase trial. A typical three phase trial you have to solve for very to typical things like fatigue, etcetera, etcetera. All these things slow progress down now, In a world where we were somewhat flying blind 40 or 50 years ago, we didn't have, you know, things like crisper. We didn't have, you know, a really understanding of the genome. We didn't have delivery mechanisms like Carty, you would say, OK, yeah, we should be really, really careful. Um, but I would say that the more you know, um, the more you can ease up on the rules because you can actually empower people with a lot of information. And it shouldn't take a disaster scenario for us to be iterative and experimental. So I think the challenge trial is really important. I think the concept of them make a lot of sense

. I think a lot of government should employ incentives to figure out who is eligible and why. But if you're a healthy adult, male or female, and you want to participate in a trial for whatever set of reasons, um, you should be allowed to do so and companies that want to run those trials should be allowed to run them. Similarly, if you want to find a complementary pathway through regulatory agencies to get drugs to the starting line, you should be able to do those two. And I think what we have to do is multi path, um, thes compounds going forward because I think that's where you accelerate all these technologies, his ability to actually solve these diseases. Fribourg. Why is it so controversial that a rocket ship company or, you know, uh, people who want to climb on mountains without ropes or or a rocket ship coming like there are experimental pilots? We have astronauts. They take unbelievable risk. We send thousands of troops into harm's way for many

different reasons, many of which, sadly die and they volunteer for those activities. Those people are volunteering and compensated. But when we look at science and we look a challenge, trial scientists say this is morally reprehensible. To compensate somebody for taking risk when it that's exactly what we do in the army, we do it with police offers, and we do it with astronauts. Help us understand how scientists think so differently than say war. I don't know if it's scientists as much as it is, you know, regulatory framework, like the some people would call it a nanny state. And you know, there are things that the nanny state assumes individuals don't have the capacity to understand the extent of the potential loss or the or the nature of the risk. This is true for Angel investing, right? You have to be a qualified investor to invest in a private company without appropriate disclosures. And it's true in a lot of other context. So, um, you know, Thio, give people the authority

to make decisions like this. It seems like my I have no point of view that I'm kind of making here, but it seems like the government assumes, or the elected officials assume, or the populace assumes that there are things that people aren't really equipped to make decisions on because they can't understand the risk because they're not qualified and that and they get excluded from those activities. But sacks is the how should we? Yeah, well, I think e think assumption of risk is ah is a really good principle. And it is a way for people to engage in potentially harmful behavior because of behavior is potentially harmful doesn't mean you don't get to do it. Um, in the United States, you're allowed to do things that are manifestly harmful to yourself, like smoking, you know, even even worse. If you're in Oregon, you can now do all kinds of hard drugs. I mean, you could assume that risk for yourself. So, you know, if if in Portland, Oregon, you can now take heroin

openly in the street with no consequence. But you can't participate in the trial that could basically cure a cancer. That's insane to me. I'll tell you. Yeah, I'll tell you. I'll tell you the flip side of it. Um, you're allowed in Nevada to play roulette. I mean, what the fuck? Like you know, it's got a negative expected value, statistically factually for individuals. But the individual doesn't have the capacity. Generally speaking, that's playing roulette to recognize that every dollar they're spending at the roulette table is likely going to be Thio, you know, taken away from them like there's some percentage of that that's gonna be taken away. There's a 5% for the house on that on that game, and eso. We make the argument in some cases that people don't have the capacity to understand risk. But in other cases it's okay for them to not have the capacity. Thio take risks. And I think that there is this notion of what some people called regulatory capture that probably encompasses both of these, which is that there is some degree of profiteering that has created some set of laws that kind of manifolds fastly capture that system in a certain way. So there are profitable

casino enterprises that say, Let's get people to spend their money in a risky way that they don't understand and that becomes law and then people in the battle a lot to do that There are also pharmaceutical companies that will say we need to have huge regulatory burdens. So once we make that big investment and we get patent approval and we can lock in that drug, we can charge a lot of money for it. So I would argue to some extent that the regulatory capture associated with the profiteering that happens on the back end in pharmaceuticals has in large part driven the structure around risk taking in drug trials particularly in the US. I mean, you can go get whatever drug you want over the counter in Mexico, right? I mean, we have a very different system. Um, it's the most. It's also happens to be the most expensive in the world. And the rationale is, well, you're the most protected. Well, the drugs and the drug infrastructure here has created to your point because of regulation, the entire, um you know, C R O industry, which is Ah, multi multibillion dollar industry, which basically is essentially a retardant of R and D velocity

, right. Its entire job is to slow things down. Um, create these double blinded studies, by the way, and so many of these studies, they're not even double blinded. They're not even actually scientifically rigorous. They get basically blown apart after the fact. So what are they really in the business of doing? It's because they're they're exploiting a business model that was created by laws, laws that were written by regulators, regulators that were in the hands of lobbyists, none of those folks truly understood at the time. But especially today, what's really possible? So, um, you know, it does not make sense in the United States of America just writ large. Simply put that you can buy alcohol and drink yourself into the ground, buy cigarettes and smoke yourself to death. You know, jumping away your money. Gamble away your money where your negative evey or open, You know, openly do illicit drugs, but you can't participate in a thoughtful trial backed by scientific research. In fairness to meth, you can get away with smoking fentanyl in San Francisco and Oregon

, but it is illegal to use that plastic straw. So be careful, folks. The laws are very clear here. That plastic straw is going to get you in a lot of trouble. I don't know what the fine is, but it is e it. Would it would it be so crazy if it were true? But to your point, like you would actually get arrested for having a plastic bag. Then you will for having fentanyl in San Francisco. Absolutely. They'll they'll arrest you for the bag that the fentanyl is in chess. A. Putin will not arrest you for the fentanyl in the plastic bag. Uh, Sacks. We've totally lost the script, but, uh, mammoth sort of bridge this with the to 30 discussion of common carrier. And, hey, you know, we had great intent with this law, but nobody saw social networks becoming this dominant addictive, etcetera. So we need to be more nimble as a government in changing these regulations, whether it's draws fentanyl challenge trials or 2. 30. You wrote a block post about it. After we had our 2 30

discussion, a lot of people started talking about it. Have you come to some conclusion as to a new exit ramp for 2 30 or a way to maintain it without, you know, throwing the baby with the bath water? Yeah, Well, okay. Just kind of one concluding thought on. Sure, of course. So the reason why innovations happened so fast on the Internet is because of, you know, one word. Permission, Lis, right. Permission list innovation. Nobody who has an idea for a startup used to go get permission from someone in the government. You know, repeatedly that's really what makes a difference. You know, Mark Zuckerberg as a you know, software in college can just build his project. Larry and Sergei is PhD. Students can just build their project ship. It start, you know, getting users, and they don't have to get the permission of the regulator whose incentive, by the way, is just typically not to get fired by approving something that might rebound on them in some, you know, in some bad way job, keep their job. I mean, imagine if you know, imagine. Just take it like a random example. When Ellen launched

Starman, remember where he put the like He launched the Tesla into space and there's like a astronaut in there. And it was like, this kind of really cool moment. I assume he just did it. I assume he didn't get permission from anybody to do it. But could a moment like that have really happened if he did have to get permission, no way. Be like making its way up through the chain or would know what to think of it. No one would know whether they could be the one to approve it. And then what if something goes wrong? What if the test A comes back down to Earth and you know, turns into a media or whatever those the scenarios will be running through their heads. Nobody would have allowed it right. And so when you just let entrepreneurs do things like good things happen, right? And that's why we've had so much progress on the Internet and in some of these other areas we've had much less progress because you know what? What a system like that selects for is your ability to go lobby regulators as opposed to just building your project and shipping it. I think that one of the things that maybe happens is that you

know, we were all expecting or maybe some of us I have definitely some version of a new deal and some grand bargain. And I wonder maybe whether the new deal and are sort of like our version of F d. R over the next. I don't know. 10 years is the person that actually says, guys, we're gonna have a wholesale rewrite off the regulatory infrastructure to account for technology. Just period. We're going to start someplace reasonable and small, and we're gonna make common sense reforms just observing the times as they exist today, right? And we're gonna go and systematically try to make these industries ah, little bit more resilient, a little bit more entrepreneurial, you know, a little bit less corrupted by regulatory capture and lobbyists and laws that just don't make sense. Ah, 100 years later, E. I mean, it'd be great if we could do that. The reason we can't is because how do you reform the law without the lobbyists getting their fingers in it? Right? And And the problem is, there's no There's no lobbyist for the company that doesn't

exist yet, right for the founder, for the entrepreneur who's got an idea in their head. But they haven't built their company yet. There's nobody representing that person in Washington, right? And what happens is you get new regulations in Washington. Some agency gets created, they reach out and touch and industry. Now every player that's affected has to create their own lobbying. Not not true, not true. And David, what do you think about this? What if the the advocate for the entrepreneur or the UN created company and uncreative product is really the same as just individual civil liberties and rights? How are they really that different? Because really, what it's doing and saying the entrenched organizational infrastructure that runs my life gets deconstructed and then power gets pushed down. To me, the individual that's tantamount to the same thing, I think. Well, we we have seen some way, have seen some push back. Well, I mean, there is some silver lining here. If you look right now, the citizens

of California, obviously people have been fleeing, and we've been talking about California and the one party system here causing so many problems. But we did have proper 20 to pass, and we now have 900,000 people have signed to recall Governor Newsome on. And these seem to be some push back against this sort of nanny state where people can't make decisions. And then additionally, uh, today the FCC announced, um, that they will allow gig working companies to give stock two employees as part of their compensation up to 15% of their compensation. In fact, Hester, um, how do you pronounce her last name? It's not Pierce. Um, you can't pronounce Pierce purse. First person? No, it's spelled Pierce, but Hester purse. Is it worth following on the twitter? H e s t e r p e i r c. Hester purse. I

had her on my pocket since we could start ups, and she, um they're really getting aggressive in changing the accreditation law. So anybody's gonna be able to be an accredited investor who's become sophisticated. They were testing mechanism, and now they wanna let gig workers get. But by the way, sorry. Here's a perfect example of a regulatory body and infrastructure that actually has changed with the times. I think the SEC in fact, I think we may be We talked about this a little bit the last time I actually think one of the best Trump appointees has been Jay Clayton. Andi. I actually think Jay Clayton has done an incredibly good job, and a lot of what he's done is just deconstruct this kind of nanny state and say people can become educated and make good decisions for themselves. And because it's in some, it's in an area that's relatively benign. I e. Investing people kind of just let it happen without a lot of pushback, and everybody kind of generally supports it. Democrats supported Republicans supported and the outcomes air Really good to your point, Jason, which is in a world of zero rates. How do you

expect any just, you know, average ordinary Middle American who just works a decent job to save for their retirement toe, actually make enough money while they're gonna have to get educated, and they're gonna have to find a way of putting their money to work and in, uh, in assets that have a better return, which literally was illegal. Up until very recently, you were having your systematically letting the rich stay rich and you were blocking the poor from having the opportunity to advance. Like what if Apple store employees could get their paycheck and say, I want to take my paycheck. 70% cash, 30% you know, restrict restricted stock units at this discount. Like we could let Apple store employees make you know, a million dollars after five or 10 years of working there 10, 20 years from now and have generational wealth changed. David Sacks. You had comment? Well, I was gonna ask her mouth. Do you think this type of deregulation is gonna happen in the Biden administration? Because what you're discussing is like a very, really kind of classical Republican Reaganite idea

, right? I I agree, and I think what's gonna happen is e think you're going to continue to see deregulation in areas that are benign and non controversial. So I think the sec, um, the FCC, I think all of these places, you'll see movement. Um, I think you'll probably actually see a lot more choice on deregulation. Effectively in, um uh, in Medicare and see Mm. I, um I think those places will move first. And then I think it will be up to some leader politician to then really rally the troops on some higher order bits. Um, and one of the biggest higher order bits would be sort of around the broader healthcare infrastructure, Social Security, education, education. Education is probably the biggest one. That's that's like the It's just too sacrosanct for the Democrats. You cannot get elected without the teachers. And so unless there is a start up that completely disrupts teacher

pay and teacher compensation, um, then the public school teachers unions will continue to dominate a lot of the federal and state policy for the worst. Unfortunately, Freeburg, if you had one, um, regulation or Syria's of regulations or regulatory body, you would most like to see change for the good of humanity. And, you know, Americans and the rest of humans on the planet. What would it be a I probably helped. Uh, yeah, probably. The drug process, the drug development process. You know, there was a, um, gene editing, uh, program that ran and someone died. So is what year was this? 97 96 9. And they basically halted all gene editing programs for 13 years. You know, many people died during that time. It was fucking It's a crazy crazy, uh

, fact where, you know, they're the, you know, the one death is too many rules. Um, you know, basically doesn't take into account the kind of broader implications, um, on the downside. So, yeah, I think that was probably pretty important. But, you know, there's a good interview if you want to hear some interesting thoughts and again not trying to be an advocate for any political point of view. But Charles Coke goes on Tim Ferriss. If you guys heard this podcast interview, listen to it. Yeah, and he highlights a couple of really good examples about this regulatory capture problem. Like if you're poor and you want to become a hairdresser and, you know, start a salon or go work in a salon and make money cutting hair. The cost and the burden for you to go get the necessary approvals from the Kozma Titian Association is too burdensome for, you know, the average person who's poor needs to become a hairdresser. And it's just insane that you can't just go be a hairdresser. Uh

, government government needs to ensure that people don't get bad haircut. It's worth thinking about you can you can. You don't need a license to be the engineer that writes the machine learning code that either drives a car autonomously or that, you know, helps propel disinformation in a social network. But you do need to have a license to give someone a buzz cut. Oh, that's a bingo statement right there. Yeah. I mean, in fairness, I'm checking out Saxes New haircut here and E s. There should be more regulation. E can see the results of this e Saks Saks. You're so you're so white and pale you're blending into the background shade. It's impossible to see where your skin ends. Your hair starts and e like the regulatory. If you think about the framework, you know, it extends into education to like you can't go get an entry

level job without a quote unquote college degree. How fucking useful is a college philosophy degree to someone that's trying to get an entry level job working at X Y or Z Bank? Right? Like it za bit absurd that the structure is set up so that there are, whether it's, you know, government or not. But there is effectively a hurdle, which is this alternative to regulatory capture. But it's like call it embedded system, you know, capture like there is a significant kind of hurdle that you have to get through the cost a lot, and the point of entry has gotten too high for most, and it really stalls things out, and it's gonna cause more damage than good. Well, and it's also been completely disconnected from the reality of your employment potential. People are going into debt for $200,000 in a liberal arts degree that provides no scale, that is, Do we all the people that make sense like there's anyone on this in this group argue for meeting a bachelors degree for everyone? E. I. I think I think it's useless. What do you guys think of Esa's income sharing agreements? These have become kind of Lambda School does

them a bunch of other schools. David, you saw startup. We just invested in. That's doing them. And I think you like them at the demo day. We did with craft. Maybe, You know, this idea is who should take the risk for an education. And when you look at a nice and income sharing agreement, what they're saying is, uh, the school takes the risk. They let you come to school for free. They give you what would be the equivalent, Let's say $15,000 coding camp or growth marketer risk. Then you pay double that amount over 567 years as a percentage of your income. But if you don't get income, if you don't break 50 k a year, you don't have to pay it back. And if you decide to go back to school or income drops below 50 you don't have to do it. Can you imagine if ah, college had to make that promise they should do it. They should start in college sports, but they should do it. Imagine you could. You know, Duke basically went recruited kids and said, Listen, we're gonna pay you to come to Duke. We're gonna get you dedicate educated. We're gonna teach you how to play basketball better than anybody else. And we're gonna take 5% of

your future earnings. Yes or no? You're not gonna have to go to boosters. You're not gonna have to take money. You're not gonna have to do any of this stuff on the side. But just be your best. Learn to play the game. We'll get your reasonable education will give you a good infrastructure and we take 5% of the back end. You think you could capture upside? Or maybe there's maybe there's no captain, but why do we always have to care about all of this? Like it's like, you know, it's like, whatever. Maybe it's 5% for the rest of your life. You're gonna pay the government 50%. You get nothing in return. So if you pay 5% and you get Coach K to teach how to shoot a jumper, it's better than that, right? So why why isn't it possible? And I remember how people had this unbelievably paternalistic allergic reaction to income sharing agreements. When they were first talked about, they called them indentured servitude and comparing them to slavery. And it was, Oh, my God. So insulting to the contract. Signing a contract with an agent to represent you When you first start out in any industry, music or or sports or film or whatever, you could sign a agency agreement where the agents your rep for 10, 20 years

, right? I mean, some of those agreements can have long tails on them, And that's effectively the same. You know. Look at what a cap look it Look, a way we can talk about this in a second. But like, you know, did you see what happened with Chapel the last couple of days? Where Chappelle, Let's go. Did you watch the video? I loved it. Video is incredible. Video is incredible. So the quick story on this is Chapel Basically did, um, he had a request. He went to Netflix and he said, Take down Chappelle Show. Netflix took it down and he did a little stand up. It's on his instagram. It's like 18 minutes. It's It's fabulous as most chapel stuff like Chappelle Peak Chappelle, and he basically told this story, which essentially the punch line is like, you know, he signed a contract where he just got completely fucked. And he's like, this is happening every single day in so many markets. And so the idea that then you have actually a different market which disrupts something by actually creating transparency and something reasonable is all of a sudden, completely immoral. Makes no sense to me. So there's

abuse is happening all the time. That is what the contract that Schapelle signed was indentured servitude. He doesn't even have the rights to his name. He cannot between his name and likeness. Right. If you want to create the Dave Chappelle Show again, you have to call the show. I'm sorry somebody owns his name. What the fuck? In perpetuity in all mediums. And I think this is a perfect tie back to the earlier statement about, you know, do you have the appropriate kind of understanding of the risk you're taking or the benefit that you're getting? Um, I think Kanye has been doing this whole thing about he doesn't own the Masters to his music. Originally right at the moment that he signed that contract when he signed over all the masters, you know, the master recordings and all the future revenue rights to his music. He was getting paid a ton of money in his mind. At that time, he said, Oh my gosh, I'm getting whatever it was, Let's say $5 million. I'm getting $5 million most amount of money I've ever seen. It is absolutely worth me giving over the masters of this music and the future royalty rights to this music for 12 songs or whatever. It is for me to get $5

million today, and I could living amazing life that will change everything for me. Who is to say that he was not, You know, of the appropriate sound, mind and understanding to decide in that moment to take that $5 million and give up all future royalties to his music. Chappelle's Chappelle's Argument Waas. The people who are in that ecosystem are all friends. They're all working together and they've commoditized the artist and they collude to do this kind of people died limiting deals and I think what makes Silicon Valley so special is that we collude the other direction. We want people to have equity participation and we want the social contract of Silicon Valley is I'm giving you equity. I hope your your penny stock becomes worth $1500 and that you create multi generational wealth and become an angel. But I don't know. Look, if I if I'm an angel investor or wanna be an angel investor and some Schmo tricks me into investing in his shitty company and I just lose $20,000. But I didn't know how to determine whether that company with shitty or not, because I've never done investing

before in my book Is it for the government to regulate that circumstance and say, You know what? You need to be a quote unquote qualified investor to be able to discern a good company for a bad company or bullshit from not and the same and the same for these contracts, right? Like I mean, so you know, we're making the argument, I think, for the, you know, the regulatory framework for preventing people from being able to have freedom of choice. And I think like earlier, you know, that the case was made like people should be able to make have freedom of choice at any point. Why should the government kind of step in and make a decision for me. I think that there I'm not. I'm not advocating advocating for government intervention. My my only point is that there are morally reprehensible things that are happening today using contracts and that you know, something like an income sharing agreement actually writes the ship in so many ways. That's definitely the burden of capitalism. Ultimately, it devolves to that right where, like, Oh, you're sick, you have cancer. Pay me a million dollars. I'll give you this drug. So Hollywood's a little bit of its own beast, where there's all these gatekeepers and the gatekeepers are always trying to get control over

, you know, the creative product. And so yeah, like, you know, signing contracts with those sharks is always a dangerous thing to Dio. I think Silicon Valley is very different. We have much more of a culture of equity. I think the income share agreements are much more in that vein. And I think there are a great idea for like, any trade that demonstrably increases your earning power. Right? So the beauty of Lambda School is they pay for you to get an education being a coder. It then increases your salary and they get a piece of that. That's like a win win for everybody. I think where this goes, if the's Issa's air successful is that every trade that's valuable will get its own ice a type school and then that gets peeled out of a university education. So what's left for colleges to dio? It's basically, you know, all the stuff that doesn't add value, their museums. They're basically like these monasteries again, right? They go back to being monasteries, not places where you get skills we

need to set. We need to celebrate vocational capability because I think, like, you know, we have. We have so celebrated this mythical bachelor's degree and it just means fucking nothing it like it doesn't learn a trade, and that's just frankly, that should be as respected orm or but in the American culture, you don't do that right now. I've never understood that if you go, for example, to different countries around the world, Europe's a good example actually, of this because it's the closest analog in terms of quality of living to America. There's a real celebration of people who choose vocational tradecraft because there's an entire educational infrastructure that you can onboard yourself into you could become a skilled person, and you can have a really good, decent life and pride in the work. And there's pride in that work. And in America, you know, you covet this piece of paper. The piece of paper is really just a scam that allows, you know, administrators to basically pay themselves millions of dollars and or run in asset management business as a Trojan

horse of that purpose. Um, it just doesn't make any sense. And so, you know, I don't know. I I just think it's I just think the most amazing thing about these companies I've been digging into them because I'm looking for more to invest in. And, um, these companies, these companies that are the trade schools that are basing themselves on isis and there are ones who are doing welding and plumbing and all kinds of different things. And there are Aisa platforms that are providing isis to any school that wants them in doing like the sort of a W s of Isis. Anyway, these for what this firm told me was inside of one of these trade schools. They spend 50% of the time on placement 50% on education and that out of college, they spend 99 point x amount of time on three education in less than 1% on placement, which kinda tracks, right? I mean, when we went to college, I don't if it's changed much. But the Career Services Center was like this to person office, like in the worst part of campus. And they

don't when you're doing an ISA, if you accept more people who are unqualified and can't aren't ready for the education, they're not motivated for it. It works against you because they're not gonna pay back the Aisa. So you then get sharper. You know, you sharpen the blade of who gets accepted. You start accepting the right people thes colleges. They would accept anybody who would come in and take the loans. That was your qualifier is. Did you pass your alone? The ice is a service idea is a brilliant idea. I would invest in that. I like that idea as an investment way better than running one of these schools. You know that that that's basically showing the Isis themselves. But how amazing is that that we live in a country where people are willing thio, you know, as a movement. Now people are willing to fund your education because they know it's going to increase your earning power and then they'll get paid on the back end. That's like, fantastic and like, that's all like happening. All that innovation is happening right now without the government needed to get involved. A big government programs

for people getting saddled. People are calling with the statute, literally like the Vox's is in the New York Times of the world. E servitude is having a $250,000 debt that you've got to pay down. You could never get rid of in bankruptcy for the rest of your life. That's really indentured service. I think the problem is that you know, East Coast, left leaning editorial publications. Um, they have to themselves justify their $190,000 bachelor philosophy from Oberlin College, S o. You know, if you if you you know Oh, Berlin is the number one listener base we have on this podcast. You just lost Kobe. You're right. Once you've taken out every valuable trade and move them from a university where you gotta pay 100,000 year. Thio Anissa where it costs you nothing like what's left. It's just gonna be people Study philosophy. Yeah, intersectionality, intersectionality. They'll be studying the past. They'll be studying

the past. What a disaster to collapse upon itself. All right, as we wrap up here, Um, let's just take a moment to think about what some people are calling the big reset. Um, it's Thanksgiving. We have a change in management, the country, which is obviously polarizing. So I put that aside. But I think what's happened with these vaccines and science is truly miraculously. And let's face it, a lot of people is a lot of pain and suffering this year. Ah, lot of people lost their jobs. A lot of people lost their restaurants. A lot of people are suffering from mental illness. Some people are having to take care of their kids and get to know them. I mean, it's been hard for a lot of people. Sorry about that Sex that wasn't. Do you know your Children's names now? Yeah, David, what's it like to spend three hours with one of your Children? He's got flash cards in front of him right now. Pictures on the back A little. So anyway, I was trying to be sincere. The kids would even occasionally run into my office during Cove

. It, You know, they want to talk to you, you and show affection crazy. Excuse me, sir. Who are you? Your father. Actually, I thought I was just working for my office. And all these kids show up and tell me it's their home so way. I just wanted to announce to the all in audience that we have upgraded Friedberg and Saxes chips Just last week, uh, tomato and I pushed the update for the joy 1.7 update. And how has it been going to the two Davids? Now that you have a third emotion, we now have emotion of joy. Do not use it for feels good and warm inside body. Do not use it all in same day. Spread it out over a month. Hey, David, did you think that Trump actually resigned two days ago? Was that was that? Was that the equivalent of like or the concession tweet it was acceptance of you're talking about when they authorized the G s A t o released transition funds to Biden. Yeah, I mean that that that

that that was his concession right there. Um, that that's that's basically what you're going to get out of him. That's his acceptance of the election result. So after anger, he is now went into bargaining on. Then he was depressed, and now he's accepting. Well, what basically happened is, you know, you had Rudy and Sydney, pal, and you know that legal team going to court to try to challenge all these rules? The backpack? Yeah. Try to go to court to challenge all these rulings. I think Rudy was like, one and 35. Meaning, I think he won one ruling and lost 35. So it was going very, very poorly. So, like you versus you, Go ahead. Yeah, but the zoo whole separate story, we'll get into. But But the thing that really like ended it was when Sydney Pal came out with this elaborate conspiracy theory that actually Trump lost the election because Communist code writers had effectively, you know, infected this the software that was running the election

, and somehow Hugo Chavez was behind this even though he's been dead for seven years on the Republic and the Republican governor of Georgia and Secretary State were in on it anyway. It was so wild and crazy that basically the narrative just cracked. And so then you had, like, Steve Schwarzman come out and then sort of the Republican business community. And Pat Toomey, Republican senator from Pennsylvania, came out and they all just said, Look, this is This is ridiculous And so that that was the moment I think it which this narrative that the election was stolen kind of cracked is. And I think she kinda She did everyone a favor by being so like off the reservation that I just brought the whole thing toe like a meltdown. Sidney Powell. Always. Whenever I see her, I always I just think that she's won second away from her dentures, flying out of her mouth and hitting the camera. I mean, that's your crazy aunt. That's the crazy on Thanksgiving. Like she said, she was going to release the

cracking, and I guess she meant that she was running Rudy's. I think it's the hair dye running down Rudy's face. That's exactly that's the crack. Is that crack? I mean, I'm glad that it was a total meltdown is a total shit show. I'm glad the GOP, finally after Trump's defeat, decided with 55 days left to go that they would take a stand against. Well, let me let me tell you what I think happened. Now, let me tell. What I think is gonna happen now is I think that this New York Times article we talked about the top of the show about the fact this Operation Warp speed that it was a big success. I think that the best narrative for Trump if he wants to maintain this idea that he was robbed is not that he was sort of legally robbed with fake votes or fake voting software, but rather just that if these pharma companies to put out the news a week earlier, it would have immediately changed. Like And I think he has amazing story there. Yeah, and it's kind of like, you know

, when you have, like, a major sporting event, there's like a bad call by the refs, and all the fans basically said, Oh, we were robbed. Well, you can't get that, like result overturned. It is what it is you lost, but you have a talking point forever that you lost. I mean, if you go toe ST Louis or whatever and you members and Asterix, there's an Asterix! Yeah, suspended Draymond when the National Lebron Association suspended Draymond. And that's serious There there are all the sporting events with Asterix is by them. I mean, like, you know, if you go to ST Louis and mentioned the name Don Denkinger, you know, people know what you're talking about. The I think the Cardinals cross he the ST Louis Cardinals lost the 85 World Series because of the first base umpire's call. Or at least that's their view of it, right? And so I think you know what? What Trump can do is is say that look, we were robbed because we never got credit for the vaccine. Now, if I do think the economy's gonna bounce back really strong next year because

of the vaccines, right, I think you got to say that if these vaccines and cove in the next 345 months, 2021 is gonna be a great year. So if Trump hands Biden, these vaccines and the economy does well next year, but something bad happens between now and four years from now. He'll say I handed this guy everything on a silver platter. He screwed it up. And that will be his narrative for four years from now. Good could happen. I'm just saying, What do you What do you think? About What do you guys think about the pick so far? Janet Yellen for Treasury Secretary is great. E do you think the biggest challenge we're gonna face is, um, Is this monetary policy issue? I mean, the dollar is, you know, in decline. We printed 30% of the U. S. Dollars in circulation in the last six months, and everyone's cheering that the Dow is at 30,000. It's like, Well, you know this 30% more dollars, so everything

is going to inflate, So I think there's a lot of work to do. It's great to have someone sitting in that seat who understands economic policy really clearly. And the tighter monetary policy, I think so far have been have been really, really top notch Tony Blinken, friend of a couple of hours for secretary of state. He's a star. Um, Yellen's a dove, which I think is really good for just, you know, Did you guys know the chief of staff sex? Do you know who this guy he's been like Biden aide for a long time. Kind of that a long plane. He was the founder of Revolution with Steve Case. Yeah, he comes from a venture backed a violence. Picks have been people who have been long time washing hands who he's had personal relationships with for a long time. He really seems to value that personal loyalty. And they've also been kind of, you know, nice and boring, safe, efficient picks. I think he's delivering on kind of what he promised toe normally, which is a president we can forget about. Tone it down. That is gonna be a caretaker

president. What do we do without trump to talk about on this podcast? Because it's been about 34%. We're gonna need a new topic to rotate in here. We might need to put in little Netflix, Um, as we wrap here, Um, what do you thankful for and what are you most looking forward to next year? Visa V. Just It's been a rough here. I mean, listen, it's been nice for people's equity portfolios? Of course. Um but it is really What do you hope for America? For humanity, For yourself, Your family, your friends? You know What do you thankful for? Um, I'll let you friedberg It looks like you're processing unit has delivered a result. So let's hear it. Thean motion Bank has been cleared. Uh uh, I look, I don't think that this year was any, uh, any cup of tea for anyone s. So I think like everyone, you kind of value your friendships and your family. So it z it's

been it's been a year, you know, going into cove it. I was in the office every day, spending more time at home, being closer to my Children. I know their names, by the way. Sex, I'll teach you how to learn them there. It's been it's been actually really special, being at home a lot and being with the family a lot and realizing like how much that stuff matters and how being close to everyone matters. Because when you're in the run of the life, before you kind of get knocked back and just put everything in perspective, you miss those moments. So that's been really special and important to me this year in a really kind of personal way and just having friendships, right? I mean, it's great for us to all be ableto talk as we do every day and have people you can kind of connect with. Even if you're not sitting in person. I do think that everyone realizes they need that. So anyway, it's been a It's been a insightful year. Money inside It's I was fucking terrorized. It started this year about money and the end of the year. Here you go following so fucking sold the first company. And now you got the Saigon I p on. Congratulations. Muzzle Sacks. Has your processing unit overloaded with this question, or

are you gonna be able Thio articulate, thankful for and appreciate. I agree with with all the things that Freeburg said, um, you know, the flipside of working from home all this time is you do get to spend a lot more time with the kids. Um, I personally have I like this shift to remote work where I can do a meeting from anywhere. You know, you don't have to go to the office. That's been kinda kinda nice upside, I think I think we probably all learn how self sufficient we can be. I have learned how to give myself a haircut. Apparently, you guys don't think done a very good job with it. But you s Oh, yeah, But look, I mean, I'm thankful for, you know, knock on wood. We all have our health and, you know, and, uh, weirdly, the the economy Silicon Valley is doing still doing great technology is doing great. Still, the future And I think the country is

even though Cove, it is kind of at its worst right now, I do think it's gonna get rapidly better assumes these vaccines come to market. So I do think, Well, I do think 2021 will be a much, much better year. Uh um, in this really crazy way, I actually now I'm pretty thankful, Um, for what I've learned during the pandemic, I mean, I wish we didn't have to go through it, but, um, I think that it was the most psychologically stressful period of my life. Um, just to be so isolated from everybody. Um, and I learned something about myself recently, which is that, uh, in psychology It's called repetitive compulsion, which is sort of like, you know, you repeat the sins of your father or in this way, you know, I repeat thes tired ways of behavior from my teens and my twenties that were just unproductive And

, uh, in the day to day life of just running around and going to meetings. As David said, like flying around, go to a meeting, go to the office, go here, go There. Um, you could make a lot of excuses for shitty behaviors that you carry with you. Um and so what I'm really thankful for is in this lock down, I've been forced to really find the things that that I don't really like about myself and try to fix them. Um, so you know, I'm really thankful for that because I think hopefully everybody has something positive to look at at the end of this. And that's definitely one thing for me. It's very touching and actually quite appropriate as we wrap here because sacks and free broke and I had some things we don't like about you, Jamaat that we wanted Thio one off the list already. So a form Ortio. It's good you're doing this work. It's the Oh, you're planning an intervention for this end of the pot. But you gotta open the door. So here we go. You

know, I'll wrap up was just saying, you know, family and friends or the obvious, you know, things that you appreciate at this time. I am thankful also for the hope that we've seen from, uh, you know what we can do collectively as a society, when we put our minds to something warp speed comes to mind thes frontline workers. I mean, we we really maybe have seen what a global wrecking, challenging problem being solved, Can dio. And hopefully that can translate into something like nuclear disarmament, a sustainable energy, global warming, etcetera. And and so I think, on a on a macro level, the most macro level is the species. Us. Humans, as a species have now had an enlightening moment, just like world wars. And, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki kind of change people's perspective. The entire world. J and I were talking about that at the other day, how people looked at the world differently after those horrific bombs went off. I think after this bomb goes off we're gonna look at the world say, Hey, we could solve problems

, right? And maybe we could be proactive about that. And then finally e think for the people suffering from mental illness who maybe I was callous and made fun of or maybe just didn't relate Thio I could relate to now because I have felt depressed. I have felt anxious. I have felt exhausted from this right? And it's the first time in the 49 years I've been on the planet that I ever would say. I felt depressed. I didn't understand what that meaning was When sacks would tell me how depressed he was. I just never, never hit me. I'm joking. He never said that. But Isa good joke. I am joking, But I you know, I think for people suffering from mental, just get help and, you know, talk to people. And I think this really opened my eyes to that. And of course, this podcast, you know, an office podcast was the best thing that in one of the best things in my life that came out of this whole period, I think for me to Andi, You know, I've heard that from a lot of the people who listen to it. And I'm sure if Sacks and Friedberg had 1/4 emotion, they would Frankly, I think this podcast has been doing

nothing but costing me money, you know, because I painted you as a trump supporter. God knows how many You're not trump support. Yeah, God knows how many deals I've lost. Because Jason Hughes trolling is a supporter. And then on top of it, I could cut out of the only good bestie deal, if you would. I thought at least I get this bestie deal on you guys coming out of it. Okay, listen, I just want to be clear. Sacks is a conservative and a Republican. He is not a trump supporter. He did not vote for Trump this time. Would not vote for Trump last time. He does not support trump behavior. You can't help what? He's voting, dude. Sorry, but he told me he didn't vote for him. Well, he did. Which one? Which one of us, Which one of us is going to try to hire Jared Kushner is a general partner. Definitely not. If you are saying most likely, because now you're reinforcing the theme. That's actually if you had to pick. Actually, if you had to pick a venture fund that is most like the higher generation, there's a GP and raising funds do anything

from Are they still around Founders Fund? I don't think Peter wants to share the spotlight. Okay, I go in, Jason. They'll do anything to get a press release. I don't think that guy needs a fun to go work at. True. You just go by. And you know, he did get three Middle East peace deals done so. But you know who, David actually Booth, by the way, By the way. I mean talk talking about inheriting incredible dividends. But is it the most incredible thing that you can come in and get Middle East peace done? But if you really unpacked Middle East peace, do you think that Middle East peace would have happened if the cost of solar was not cheaper than the cost of oil? Honestly, be like, if if If you if you didn't see an end in sight Toil, do you think that the Middle East peace I'm not saying I don't think so. Well, I know what you're saying. Which is that if the Middle East wasn't becoming less strategically relevant to us, you know that that creates degrees of freedom, I think

. But that's had profound benefits for Silicon Valley to write like, I mean, all the stuff that went into the vision fund and the money from Qatar and the money from like all the sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East has funded. A lot of venture funds has gone into direct late stage rounds and a lot of companies, and it's really been a great boom for Silicon Valley. People could make fun of. The company's getting over funded the nonsense. It's gone on all they want like it. Money coming in. It filters out into mawr Angel investing. It filters out into more venture LPs, and it ultimately gives the motivations ecosystem. So I think that the damage to oil has been great. For Silicon Valley, the most incredible dividend of climate change is peace. Mhm. It's like it's a it is made radical Islam a failed startup, you know. Ah, hyped Siri's A that couldn't raise it. Siri's be. It's made, you know, sworn enemies over thousands of years cooperate together. Um, all for what reason Because you gotta pull the oil out of the ground now and monetize it

. Because otherwise the cost of wind and solar on you have to diversify because otherwise the cost of winning the cost of solar is gonna make pulling the oil out of the ground economically infeasible within three or four years. Yeah, I mean, that's that's why do exactly coat. They took Saudi Aramco public. They started selling off the shares and they invested that capital in tech and other stuff around the world. It's been helpful, but there is. There is, Ah, another factor at work, which is the fear of Iran, is now greater than on the part of Saudi Arabia and Israel that their fear of Iran is now greater than whatever mutual hostility that usedto have. And so it Z kind of bringing people together that way. But you gotta give Kushner credit for still getting those deals done. You know, no one thought he could get do it. Remember, everyone was walking him. He's not. He's not. He's not a moron. And he's not a He's the opposite of an abrasive guy, and he's very thoughtful and apparently very, uh, I don't know if you guys know personally, but he supposed to be very smart. And I'm sure that wherever he ends

up next, he's gonna do very well and he's gonna get invited to be in a lot of places. Yeah, no, it's clear. He did a very good job in the Middle East stuff. By the way, how crazy is it that Trump delivers on hottest economy ever peace in the Middle East and three vaccines for coronavirus and he still lost? Who does go to tell you what people think of character, Character? Hey, tweet himself that if he acted normal sacks, he could actually take those victories if he stopped the personal attacks. If he stopped the grifting, he would have won. He could. He could have been. He actually would have been more than one if he could have been reined in if he could. He could eggs exactly what I was thinking. If he came in in 2016, calm, cool and collected with the team where there was a dial down the insecurity and dial up sort of the intensity of actually calling people out for not passing progressive change, he would have been elected in a landslide, people would have said Well, on the way in, we were afraid. But

after four years, the guy could have been magnanimous is what you're saying. Yeah, and it was a real missed opportunity for him. I still think much of Trump is he's a W W e superstar and that's what people voted for its why Jesse Ventura got elected governor of Minnesota. That's why Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected governor of California, Thea Bridge. You know, person that's looking at that guy versus, you know, the old dude That doesn't talk and, you know, saying some weird stuff about policy. It's like, Oh, man, that guy looks awesome. Let's put him in office like this is gonna be fucking fun. And if he turned it down when he got in office, he'd be much less appealing. I think to a lot of people think Well, then it's a caricature of himself that makes him so, so appealing that I would like to go. I'd like to go on the record with my 15 year projection than or uh, which is that the rock is going to run for president, and I think you know the Iran situation just to put that in perspective, David, if you look at the age distribution on the chart, I just put on the chat. It is just extraordinary how young that country is. The median

ages, I think 28 or 29 years old, and they're barely holding on to power there. And it is going to flip into a much more progressive society, uh, than it is now. They are barely holding on. When you look at how many 25 year olds and 30 year olds there are in that country who are drinking and watching T v and E and you have the Internet and they're watching porn and there gambling, I'm sure and buying Bitcoin and doing all this crazy stuff that country is barely holding on. It's gonna be a crazy civil war. And let's just hope they don't have nuclear bombs When that civil war guys, guys, guys like being being like extremists. It's just like it's just a bad product market fit. Now, you know, it's just like not worth it. There's there's no money to fund it. Nobody cares that much anymore. Everybody's moving low. NPS score. Yeah, Would you recommend extremism to a friend or family member to. All right, Uh

, this has been another all in podcast for bestie. See the Rain Man, David Sacks and the Queen of Kin Wah on his coming out party today I p o coming up for Metro Mile. Congratulations to Friedberg. Congratulations to Jamal on the pipe Sacks. And I were gonna have toe figure out a way to lick our wounds and wet our beaks. Let's start thinking caps on and over the break. Find a deal. We could exclude these two from way. We got to get in early, get 30% of a company, and then we gotta have a mouth SPAC it in Freeburg, Do the late stage deal with all this metro mile money on. We'll see you all next time on the oil in podcast. That was fucking great. Best one yet. You guys want to see something funny? You guys see that video my wife just sent me? That's my dog taking a shit on your driveway. Saks! Oh, man. Where is it? I want to see that. Do show a code 13. 0, my God. Only one person who hasn't code 13. Zach she Can you take a shit

on his model X? Oh, my God. That's what we all have. Code 13 boom E No, Everybody wear rolled over the credit.

E13: SPACsgiving Special! More promising vaccine news, innovation vs. regulation, reforming higher ed, morality of challenge trials & more
E13: SPACsgiving Special! More promising vaccine news, innovation vs. regulation, reforming higher ed, morality of challenge trials & more
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