All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E139: Recapping Chamath's wedding, VC surplus, unions vs Hollywood, room-temp superconductors & more

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

(0:00) All-In in Italy!: Recapping Chamath's wedding (11:55) Discourse around obesity and weight loss in the US (21:56) Are there too many VCs? (38:18) Actors/Writers unions vs. Corporate Hollywood, endgame for the modern Hollywood machine (54:07) Equity participations vs. unions, ownership upside vs. downside protections (1:05:04) Potential impact of room-temp superconductors   Special thanks to our Italian audio/video team!: https://twitter.com/domdalmatico https://www.mattiacaruso.com   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://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1684176015948488704 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPelOnd7Sik https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3az9/venture-capital-vcs-existential-too-many https://twitter.com/jason/status/1681985828820766720 https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1679765658517610496 https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1679935918164135936 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.12008.pdf

Love you guys. Hey, if you guys are around, you know, and you want to get a glass of wine and some maybe we'll get a glass of wine later maybe next week or something. Who knows? Maybe we all get together in person, have a glass of wine. I see you soon. I love you guys. I love you guys. You're about to come to Italy and basically you're gonna gain 15 pounds. For sure. Okay, so we were there in Italy. There's a lot of time ago. Is this when we were in Venice?

The quality of Italian white wine is outrageous. Really? It's outrageous. Do they have a men's bikini for you? For when we're in Italy? I would buy that. Let's just say thank you to the amazing people of Italy for having the greatest country for adults

to go on vacation in. What an incredible country. Here we go. In three, two, hey, oh, ah, yeah. Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. So what's going to be really? Hey, everybody, well, motorcycling. Try it again.

Three, two, hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of The All in Podcast. We are here in beautiful Port portofino, Italy, and we have found a new bestie. Introduce yourself. Natalie, is your name? That is my name. I'm not surprised by my surname. Ah, you've got a surname.

What is the surname? Palli angricia. No, sorry. Palli, happy tia. Palli, happy tia. So your cousins, apparently, and you were on a biotech business, I understand here in Italy.

In my spare time. Yes. When somebody else doesn't consume the life out of me. God, OK, so you're dealing drugs in Italy, and welcome to the All in Pod. In all seriousness, we are here in Italy because Tramoth and Natalie got married. Big round of applause. Nice. Nice. because, Tremoth and Natalie got married.

Big round of applause. Nice. And we decided we'd take an episode very quickly. But tell us, what was it like at the wedding, marrying Tremoth, Pauli Hapatia? Tell us about the wedding. It was a lot of work, and T Chamath was, as you can expect, completely utterly useless. In fact, counterproductive. He showed up at times, really, really frustrating,

but I love him nonetheless. So here we are. Very happy. This is the moment I would like to take credit for 30% of the wedding. Ah, and then a number that you can't dispute, you don't really know what it means. Yeah. And then everybody ends up thanking you effusively. Yeah. Because you're like the 30% that they love the most. That was me. Yeah. If you want to make an estimate, 20, 30% chance is, uh, you can't go wrong. Friedberg and Saks are with us. The Don, uh, Saks, you had a lot of clandestine meetings here.

Are we any closer to peace in Ukraine, Russia? I saw you talking to some Russian emissaries. You've been on the continent for a full month. Tell us, how much you go for 12 hours yesterday? Yeah, I know that you've been on some of these crazy yachts out here trying to broker peace, how close are we? And how are you joining your time in Europe this summer? I don't think we're too close but let me say a word about this happy couple here. So Natalie is

brilliant and unstoppable. Tamoth is superficial and plastic. So this was like the wedding of Oppenheimer and Barbie. And in that analogy, Tam's your mouth, your Barbie. Yes, absolutely. Lots of substance and fire over here, and complete garsacism and plastic over here. Also the genitalia, the same size, they can't. Very smooth over, just barely a bump. Yeah, okay. I'm gonna leave you guys.

Okay, we'll do a show. Natalie, congratulations. We love you, sis. Congratulations. Thank you, Jake Okay, we'll do a show. Natalie, congratulations. We love you, sis. Congratulations. Thank you, Jake Hall, because you celebrated her. I'm not gonna, okay, here she goes. I wasn't talking about Chaman, so clear. Oh, yeah, so if you cut you off.

Oh, here we go, here we go. What a great, great week we've had here. Lots of friends came in. Lots of friends. Lots of special friends. Lots of poker. Lots of friends, lots of poker. Lots of special poker lots of friends lots of poker lots of poker players that weren't invited to the wedding. I mean, I mean, we walked into the poker game last night and there were all these guys that I

didn't see at the wedding. And you invited these guys. No, no, no, poker game. No, let's be honest, let's be honest, I think it was the most unbelievably eclectic guest list of any wedding that's ever happened. That's very true. I mean, literally it's like a two by two matrix of villainy, wealth, fame, and infamy. I mean, you had every quadrant covered.

Yes. It was incredible. Guy and I were joking. It's like walking into the bar on Tatooine. Yes. Star Wars. incredible guy and I were joking it's like walking into the bar on Tatooine yeah yeah you know it's your guy I could tell that when I was doing my toast which not told me no holds bar just go for it yes my toast he really meant roast. Roast. Yeah, he roasted.

The Italians did not get the jokes but I got to have the audience was laughing. The poker guys were laughing. Yeah. And then the family section. No, not the audience. I think a lot of them got the jokes and they ran on it. But what an amazing week we've had here. And thank you for hosting us.

It was absolutely wonderful. This really isn't so many ways. We should cut in some shots in the video on where we're sitting right now. This incredible beast club. We're looking out here. I'm trying to put a lot of people sluice it out. I posted a photo of us just meeting out there doing our little board meeting and people immediately sluice out.

You're at Langosteria. Langosteria Paraji. I guess, I guess famous red beach restaurant. I mean Langosteria has these two incredible restaurants in Milano 3. They're just top of the top and they have this incredible beach restaurant here and it's the hotel or sorry it's the restaurant that is beside the beach club that's also owned by the Splendido where we're you guys are all staying so yeah it's, it's been an amazing couple days. This little block is called Paraji.

This part is Paraji and then if you go just a little bit further, you're in Portofino proper. Yeah, amazing. Wonderful food. Incredible food. Unbelievable. We've eaten like kings and queens as the case may be. And just the hospitality in Italy is amazing.

What are my favorite places? I just want to say to all of you guys and to all of our friends, I mean, you guys literally flew halfway around the world for three days. Yeah, you did ruin all our summer plans. I mean, it was incredible. And frankly, we picked the three worst days,

Monday Tuesday, Wednesday. Yeah. If you had a job, Everybody had to work. A certain person had two rooms rented at the Splendido just for meetings and he would just be running back meetings and then trying to go to the, I mean it's incredible.

You guys, I really need a lot. I think this whole thing was a conspiracy to convene a high stakes poker game. We knew you were spending the summer in Italy. There was no poker here. Have I met you? How do I get the poker game to come to Italy? He netted a profit to cover the wedding.

Not, no, not to cover the wedding. But I did win a $1.2 million pot from. That was crazy. That was crazy. My favorite poker story is you got a call out of the blue. F***. Oh, I'm f***ing neighbor. It's the best f***ing get a text.

Oh my God. Need room, Spendido. I like two in the morning. And I was, I looked at my phone and I'm like, why is it texting me at two in the morning? Need room splendido and I said, it's Jamaat, is everything okay? Do you need any help?

Need room splendido and I said, I'm not your fucking travel coordinator. And he goes, can you help me get a room at the splendido hotel? I said, what, you're here? And so I said, well, why don't you just me and her into our game? Yeah.

And so actually came to the wedding. Oh, randomly in the neighborhood. He was in the area. Well, he was spending a night in so he thought he would hop over. Oh, that's such a bad joke. I'm so glad you're trying to tell that joke. You stole it from me. I stole it from you.

That's how it works and how he went. OK, there's a little backstory to all this. What happened was, Chimato me in the spring, hey, listen, J.K.O. I'm finally I'm so excited. I'm going to marry Nat. And I said, oh, there's a little backstory to all this. What happened was, Chimath told me in the spring, hey, listen, J-Cal, I'm finally, I'm so excited, I'm gonna marry Nat. And I said, oh, that's great, you had the kids and now you're getting married. It's not the traditional way to do it, but congratulations.

And he said, yeah, we're gonna have like a little thing with our families in Italy, very bespoke, the kids, parents, that's it. And then, you know, back in Silicon Valley in the Bay Area, we'll have a backyard party for everybody else. And I said, great, that's it. And then back in Silicon Valley in the Bay Area, we'll have a backyard party for everybody else. And I said, great, let me know where in Italy we're going. And Nat said, amore, it's just going to be the immediate family.

And I said, great, where am I going? Tell me the location. And if you need an officiant, I'm in. And then a week later, we get an email. Nat and Tramoff discussed it and they said, you know what? Jake House, right, we should invite everybody to Italy and so thanks for making that decision.

Oh my God, thank you guys for coming, honestly. Yeah, but it was a dream. I didn't tell anyone, Jake House was going to officiate. So we're sitting there, Italian style for like two hours, assembling for the wedding. Nothing happens, you're all just standing around, waiting for something to happen.

And then Chimoff comes in, Natalie comes in, beautiful, dressed amazing. Music is incredible. And they sit there for another 10 minutes. And they turn around and they say, the officiant, we just got to let her, the officiant is sick. We need someone, we need someone to step in. And then Jake out pops up in the back.

I got it. I'll let you in. Knox, the Italian royalty to the right and the left. Blows his way through the audience, makes his way to the top. Holds out his American bow tire, whatever he had. And says, let's do this. And then we had J. Cal officiate. You did it way to surprise me.

And a very J. Cal way. Yeah. Were you surprised? You were surprised. A lot of people were surprised. You got me. Because your original email said, J. Cal is going to officiate, but then we heard nothing for two and a half months.

Yeah, and no one really knew and yeah, but it was a big secret, right? We kept it a big secret. We wanted it to be a surprise and it was just the vows and the poetry. Oh, the poetry. Oh, the poetry. Oh, the poetry. Shared was amazing.

I'm on it. I'm on it. Don't make it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You want to do that? Can you do a dramatic reading of the poem that I wrote for you? Oh, this was a... Jamat wrote a poem for not read and said...

But we'll do this setup that comes before. Well, so the setup was that Nat would read Jamat's poems and Jamat would read Natz poems. And so Nat had this incredible Paulo Quelo poems incredibly well thought out. Nattor. And then Chimaltz wrote a poem from anonymous that he found at a rest stop on the 280 written on the inside of the bathroom stall. R is a red. Violets are...

Go, go ahead, go ahead. Okay, you remember it? You should have a committee to remember. Let me think. Rose is a red. Pickles are green. I love your legs. And what's in between?

Oh, God! It's the embarrassing. It was so embarrassing. It was so embarrassing. And she had to read this. She literally just drawn up all of the Italian air. She was like, this is the American. The American.

The American rolled laughing. Horrific. It really was like, No, no, no, tattoo. Her first poem was a sonnet from William Shakespeare. My first poem was Beyoncé's Cuffet. Yeah, where the where the last line is, will you sit on top of me, which he has to say, looking at her death. It was so awkward. Then her second poem was something by Gregory Hoffman.

Gregory Hoffman, I think it was. Something Hoffman. Yep. And then mine was, this anonymous thing. And then her third was he coming as in mine was Dr. Zeus. But that was, it's charming. This was nice. Dr. Zeus was quite a, kind of. Daniel Hoffman.

Yes. Well, we had a great time. There's been a lot of news. And, yeah, you got here early, right? And weren't you like camping along the coastline? Yes, I went to the I went to the I went to the I went to the I went to the

I went camping. He was decided to bring San Francisco to this beautiful prestige. Yes, defecating everywhere. Leave me a trail of needles in his wake. A separate needle. We're going to have to try.

You were throwing. I did I did post a thirst trap. I'm very proud. I'm down 41 pounds from the peak. 20 pounds with hiking and using the fasting app that Kevin Rose built. And then the other half, zero, great fasting app. And the other half was oz. Epic would go. I understand what is an app do to help you fast?

You just fast. You just don't, you click a button. Do you eat the app? Gives an ad amation and then it counts down my clock. What you're trying to say, whether you don't, you push a button. Should I eat or not? And it says no. It shows you a picture of yourself.

Just a mirror of five pictures. Show us your five pictures of you. Yeah, that's what I did. I took a picture of myself, like fat Jason, and I just every time I open the refrigerator, it's there. Can I ask you a question? Yes. Are you not allowed to talk about, like, fatness now?

Or I have strong feelings on this. I think when I ran Marathons my whole life, I was very shfelt 165 pounds until I was 32. And then I added two, three pounds until you guys knew me. And I hit two, 13 at my peak, I'm 171 now, 172. And you know, I wish more people would have done an intervention. You were very clear with me, hey, you got to lose weight. We didn't mean that.

Oh my God, I have to tell. No, no, no, no, no, I'm telling the story. I can't fucking spike the story. I'm telling the story. I'm talking the story. No, no, no, no, you can't spike the story. Now, this is your wedding present to me. Okay, thank you.

J. Cal is bordering on morbidly obese. I was, this is what I was to 13. And you're half-throwed., five nine, on a good day, five and a half. On a good day. By the way, for all these people on Twitter, everybody who meets me always says, oh, you look so much shorter on camera.

Maybe it's because I slouch, but I'm six foot two just in case everybody's here. On a good day. Anyways, Jake Cal is bordering on morbidly obese, so I make a wait bet with him. Yeah, I was two, third chain. I said I can get to one, 93. Yeah, one, 93.

And I was like, I'll give you 10k a pound or something. Whatever, so 100k bet. There was a hundred thousand dollar bet. And I did, he had a year. He had a year. A year goes by, I put it in my calendar. And what I do is I schedule the poker game for the day before knowing that we're gonna play

through midnight. So I'm like, oh, I'm gonna set this guy up. So I waited a whole year. Unbelievable. We play poker, the clock strikes midnight, and he had been eating pizza, nice drink, and I'm watching him the whole time. I'm doing this $100,000.

I never saw him say, I said, hey, it's 12-0-1. It's time for the wait. He says, one wait bet. And I said, motherfucker, you made a wait bet with me. But now $100,000. I just wanted a few years ago. I have been 192-193 for months. I have hit the thing.

So he says, he starts panicking. He doesn't wait myself in the morning. He says he's panicking. He says, okay, give me a few minutes. He runs into my child's bedroom and takes a shit. No, I just took a lead. I took a lead. He tried to lose the weight.

He tried to lose the weight. Who can poo at midnight? Nobody can poo at midnight. Anyway, I did on the scale. I'm 195. And so he wants me to take all my clothes off. I'm like, no, I'm not taking my clothes off. I say, we have to do the way.

And now in fairness to Jake, I did not pre-agree that I had to, that I could pick the time. So he says, I have until midnight. Which is true. So I said, okay, fine. He goes home. Goes home, I go on this stuff. He does not eat, he puts on a sweatsuit.

I go for a ride. I'm like rocky around San Francisco. He sweats for four hours. He gets like a tenth of. I go for a run. I'm like rocky around San Francisco. He sweats for four hours. He gets like a tenth of a pound under before midnight. Yes. And he's like, you owe me $100,000. No, then he was kind. He said, look, put me in the mini one for one drop, 100 drop.

And we'll both go and we'll pull it. We'll drop it up. We got a great time. Jike lost in the first eight hands. That's not true. I lost the longer than you. 100k. I should have just leaned into eight hands. That's not true. I lost the longer than you. I'm under gay. I should have just leaned in and burned it.

Okay, back to you, but anyway. Anyway, but I would say in terms of weight, it is pernicious in America. I don't think we should be celebrating it or tolerating it. I think we should be compassionate. I think I was Zampic and Wigovie are incredible tools and manjaro.

I don't, I didn't talk about it for the first year, David, you've done it as well and you've been honest that you've tried wagovia or whatever and you lost a lot of weight, so congratulations. These guys have been skinny forever. But I think, take it seriously, it takes a lot of discipline, but it can be done. And I encourage people, the gains I've gotten from being 40 pounds lighter have been tremendous. I feel great, my energy level is different, my thinking is different, my sleep's better, everything's great. And so I just want to be around for a long time so that we can do a thousand episodes of the show for you and the fans. And yeah, being fat sucks, the end.

And if you think... But do you think it's being normalized and do you think that that's healthy? What do you think? I like, I think right into the microphone. No one, no one makes, no one chooses obesity. Obesity is a struggle, just like diabetes. No one chooses diabetes. Diabetes is a struggle.

I've, you know, done some works, made some investments, been on the board of some companies that have been involved in trying to address the needs in this space. And one of the things that we've learned a lot about is how much of a social stigma it feels, people that are struggling with obesity and struggling with diabetes don't feel comfortable actively talking about it. Yeah. Because they hold a deep amount of shame about it.

Yes. They recognize that there's something deeply unhealthy about it. And they feel deep shame because they're often portrayed as having the choice and making the decisions that got them to this point. Yeah. And the truth is, we live in a world with extraordinary abundance in the first world.

We live in a world with extraordinary opportunities for low-cost calorie consumption. We find a lot of joy in our lifestyles. And it, you know, ultimately living a happy life can lead people to a very sad place. And so, generally, I would say that this is not something that should be stigmatized in an open way. It should be treated with compassion, but it should be spoken about openly, which is that there is a challenge that a struggle that people have and we need to help and everyone needs to kind of be cognizant of the fact. And that's the thing we need to help and everyone needs to kind of be cognizant of the fact. That's the thing we need to do. I think we're normalizing it and I think it's wrong.

Yes. When I first came to Canada, you see the pictures when I was like, fresh off the boat, that's what we used to call immigrants. I was real thin skinny, real thin. And then after a year of eating, whatever food it was that we could afford, I became really fat and you could see it in the pictures. And I was fat all through my grade school. I was a little skinny, but skinny fat in the face, but basically fat all through high school. And then I finally started working out

and taking care of myself. And it had a huge impact on myself, a steam and myself confidence. It had a huge impact on my health. I saw it basically kill my father. It's given 7, 11 of my aunts and uncles, diabetes. So I think that like all of this normalization is unhealthy because it actually is killing people.

What I learned from the dieting is portion control in America is just at a control. It is the wrong portion sizes. So you see it here and you see it here when you eat here Here's a little tuna. Here's a small pasta You know, here's some cheese and some grapes for dessert. You're done And so once I got my portion control. I was fine snacking also, but I just wish anybody who's suffering from it You know work with your doctors work with nutrition. You were overweight too for a long time. Where are you? Free bird?

Yeah, I, um, what were you overweight from? I grew up not eating well. I was overweight in college. Right in the microphone. In college is when I really started to get exercise actively. And because it was never part of my upbringing as a kid, was like eat well, get exercise. I was very much self taught at learning how to cook

and learned a lot about nutrition on my own. And, you know, look, I took action on my own in my early 20s. So, but yeah, look, I mean, it's so easy to not know where you find yourself and then you find yourself in this place. And I do agree that being cognizant of where you are and addressing it in an open way, In an active way is the only path. I mean, there's just every every cycle we come around with some new easy solution. You guys remember the what was it? Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend,end, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend,end, Fend, Fend, Fend, Fend,end, Fend, Fend, Fend, you know, one soon. These drugs seem to be very effective. There's some data now that shows as soon as you stop taking it, the average person on it gains the weight right back. No, that didn't happen for me. It creates muscle mass.

Maybe not, but like, yeah, across a large population, there's just data that's showing that there's never going to be an easy path. And it's a very difficult. It's a process. You know, the thing I learned is if you just have like one Oreo a day, where every other day, let's say that's 50 calories, you have one of those every other day, you're going to get two pounds a year for 20 years, now you're 40 pounds overweight. It happens very slowly, you add it, and then you just have to be super disciplined and

you can lose a half a pound or a pound a week, and then it can come off. So, I really think it should be a movement in the United States. So much of our downstream issues, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. seem to be contributed biob What gov for everybody? Everybody who wants it. What gov forever is my platform. Single issue voters are the platform you can. Yeah, that's it.

Single issue platform. All right. So we got some news. I think we can we get touched on. Jack, how you feeling? I got plenty to catch. Let's do this. So there was an article in vice.

I guess that name check the all in podcast has said young people, instead of wanting to become McKinsey consultants now want to become members of the all-in-porkest and be venture capitalist. I did a little tweet storm that I thought and I thought it'd be a great topic for us. I think for young people going into venture early is not a good idea. I think generally speaking 80% of the case cases and I think starting your own company 80% of the cases and I think starting your own company or joining a high growth company or maybe joining a well-run large company or even joining a poorly run large companies you learn what not to do are all better things to do in your 20s learn be in the trenches but I'm curious what you think SACs about this issue because we came to venture and investing in our 40s

I believe, you know, both of us angel investors and then both of us having fun. So what are you advising a young person who's listening to the podcast coming out of Business school, whatever? Yeah, I agree with that. I think the main Value prop that a VC has to offer a founder is advice and if you've never walked in the founder shoes before, if you've never founded a company or at least had a significant operating role, how are you in a position to offer them advice?

Now, I think there's a period of time during the bull market where people stopped thinking that way, stopped thinking that advice was the model. VCs started competing on the basis of who could be the biggest cheerleader for the founder, who could offer the most sort of positive emotional support. Or just valuation. Or the biggest valuation or least governance. The idea of being completely passive, not taking a board seat was actually sold to founders as a positive for them. That like we'll invest in will just like stay completely out of the way.

And all of those ideas sounded really good when the market was booming and everything was up into the right. But now we're in a situation in which we're going through two years of intense turmoil. And a lot of companies aren't going to make it. A lot of companies are restructuring. A lot of companies are going to take down rounds and actually being able to tap your board for advice on how to get through a rough patch Actually, it's pretty important you realize now that like the uninvolved passive investor that was not A positive value prop that was an excuse for not having a value prop And I think at times like this. It's really important to have VCs who've been around the block who saw the last downturn

Who ideally could have warned you that it was coming like we did on this pot Like we did it immediately for you know a year and two months Yeah, and so yeah, I think that We're now seeing the correction and I I'm finally agree with your analysis that there are too many people Who joined the ranks of VCU who familiarly did them a value prop and that's why I mean, in our firm, we require that everyone who joins the investment team have operating experience and ideally found their experience because that is ultimately what you're going to offer founders.

Shemoth was too much of this people larping live action role playing VC with just absolutely no idea how this works. And now what happens to those, you know, actor or VCs who really are faced with portfolios that are upside down and they really have no idea how to weather a storm. This has been a hard 18 months. Let's be honest. Well, I think that it was a symptom of just the fact that there was a lot of free money in the system. And I don't know, the outcome is going to be pretty basic, which is that they're going to lose money for their limited partners and those limited partners. If they're not totally stupid, we'll never give these people money again. And these people will need to just find a new job.

And I don't say that in a celebratory way, it's just a very practical ones and zeros, monetary assessment of the facts. Look, I think that the weird thing that has happened is that it became like this kind of fun thing to be able to say you were doing. A lot of people used to moonlight and do it on the side. Then there were all these services that will allow you to basically like abstract the job.

But the only thing that I would just qualify your statement because I think what you're saying is like 90% right. But I don't think that's where the craziest outcome returns have come from. Because if you look at the two people that are really or the three people that are really generated, just gargantuan home round returns on a consistent basis, one of them, for example, like Mike Moritz really didn't have those bonafides operationally, but I think that what Mike probably has, and I'm saying this not knowing him, is a preter nerd-dural, like, judge of psychology, I think. I think he's an incredibly qualified people-judger. And there are people like that. Now, he's an outlier in order to do that, but the rest of us have to kind of to your point,

do with what we have, which is like, here's our experience and our maturity and you know, we're telling you what we think. So I'm really excited actually for this wave to kind of crash on shore because the number of founders that are gonna get screwed over by folks that don't know what they're talking about, it's very high.

And that needs to come to an end as quickly as possible. Faber Bob. Yeah, I don't think it's just like Moritz. I think that there's a class of successful venture capitalists. Bill Gurley is a great example. Like he was an analyst. Danny Rimer, Index Ventures, was an investment analyst. Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson. Yeah, a lifetime VC. And Moritz, John Gore. I mean, John Dore, some... Dore worked it until. He worked it until. But there are folks who have an incredible analytical capacity, and that analytical capacity translates into incredible selection capability. That selection doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to necessarily be the best advisors,

and I'm not saying that any of those folks are bad advisors. But there are some venture investors. Like Founders Fund is very vocal about this and very public about this, that their objective is not to be your partner in helping you make decisions around your company and recruit people and all the other sort of rigour moral that many VCs go out and tout. They are there to pick the best founders, and the best founders don't need the VC to be successful. And their job then is to have incredible selection capacity.

So if they can select the best founders and get out of their way, they've made a lot of money and their returns are unbelievable. And then there are some VCs who are really incredible partners to their founders. And they're objective. Josh Coppola met at first round, built an entire firm around this practice, which is to partner very closely with founders and to build support and capabilities in recent horror wits was built on the same sort of concept that they would roll all of their fees into building operating support and capacity to support founders and support companies.

Both firms have obviously done well in their own right. And so I don't know if there's necessarily one breed that predicts success when it comes to successful venture capital I will say for my own personal experience. I worked as an investment banker for my first two years out of undergrad I you know worked I had a science background. I worked in a short-standing private equity I worked at Google I did corp dev and M&A there I started a company ran it sold it Did that with another business where I was on the board? So you know, I've I've been on a couple of different places around the table that you know

I think have given me the ability to to provide advice I don't know if I necessarily have the same skill set that the team of founders fund and Mike Moritz and others might have at this astute Extraordinary ability to spot founders and bring them in so I think everyone needs to kind of recognize what they do bring to the table be Very clear about what that is. And I think to your point, there have just been an incredible bull market over the last 15 years.

Since 2008, more money has, I heard an incredible statistic, by the way. I don't want to get it wrong. So maybe we should fact check me after this from someone at your wedding, who I was talking to for a long time. And he was like, he was like basically the top 1% of VCs didn't beat

what would have happened if you just bought the top five public tech companies and effectively did a rebalance over the past 15 years. The bull market and the aggregation of value and technology has largely been 50, 50 to public and private. So you could have just bought a few stocks and held onto them and beat all of the VCs over the last 15 years.

Even though a bunch of VCs have made good money and their IRR looks like 12%, but you have to beat the risk of just returns on venture. Yeah, and this is not to throw shade at even all of those people that you mentioned are fucking terrible. Like you should not have invested in any of those. Because there's no way to ton it in any of those funds

because you get a small allocation, one fund as well. Three funds to crap. Over the past 10 years, or 15 years, I forgot the number, we've seen the public market cap of these top tech companies grow from $1 trillion to $10 trillion. That's a 10x. So all you had to do was buy those and you would have made 10x.

And that works out to north of 25% IRR. And there's very few VC's that have been able to be 25% IRR. They assume now he was telling me his model shows that over the next 10 years it'll be roughly 70-30. So it'll be about 30% and it will grow. And maybe over the next 10 years it's going to go from 10 trillion to 25 trillion. Which is still a great return. Just to build on this.

But it shows how much of a hurdle there is in venture to be successful. I started the business in 2011. So now this is the 12th or 13th year. Just how hard this game is. I had about a 31, 32% gross IRR going into last year. And then my IRR fell off a cliff because I couldn't get into. Obviously, there's like, there's no money to distribute. We're just nothing to distribute.

So my IRR started decay. And then I had this really, really fucked up choice. I have to start selling stuff earlier than I would have otherwise to get the money back out. So to your point, it's a really tough game over one year at a time. A really tough game. I think there's also something going on in the United States and society where there are some idealized jobs. We talked about SACs, elites, surplus elites, and I wanted to tell this

with what's happening in Hollywood, the writer's strike, and the actor's strike, and I was looking at it, there's some unbelievable number of actors in SACs, some unbelievable number of writers. They all make just incredibly small amounts of money on average average and obviously there's some big fish who do well. But it does seem like there's too many people who want too many of these idealized jobs and venture is one of those. And I just would like

young people to understand also be careful what you wish for. This job has seemed easy. Just like it might seem easy for Tom Cruise or Christopher Nolan, when you see them are Tarantino, what you don't see is all of the people who try to become Tarantino, who tried to become Tom Cruise. And there are far too- 10 to 15 years before they realize that they're not. And they did not actually have the fundamental skills

or the work ethic that is required to become Tarantino. I listened to Tarantino's podcast, he does a, have you heard the video archives podcast yet? You have to get on this. It's him and his the co-writer of, who did you write Pulp Fiction with? Roger Avery. So him and Roger Avery,

this is my favorite podcast right now, they just talk about films. Their knowledge of films is so unbelievable. And the detail in which they talk about that is so crisp, they finish each other sentences. In the way with maybe you listen to this podcast, you know, we all go, oh John Doar, oh no, he worked at Intel.

Oh, this person, yeah, Meritz, he was a journalist. We have a deep, deep understanding of this business that comes from 30 years within it, or 20 years. And I think you have to, I know it sounds corny, but you have to pay your dues, you have to put 60, 70 hours in a week to get that at least job. And the problem today, I feel, is, and for people who are listening

or young people coming out of schools, if you're not willing to sacrifice 60, 70, 80 hours a week for a decade or two, you're just not going to be successful in that. By the way, and young people push back on this. And I think the simplest way to reframe it is in the following. Do you really think, for example, let's pick NBA basketball? Do you think you would be really interested or find credible that the best player in the NBA only practiced three hours a week? Is that happen? And past or do you think they're practicing three hours in the morning and then also three hours in the afternoon and they give up their lives? The most incredible thing that I saw in the NBA was all of these men literally gave up their life

to play that game to perfect it and that's true for anything And so I don't understand how whether if you're a filmmaker whether you want to be an investor whether you want to be an athlete whether you want to be an actor a surgeon It's just like it's an immutable law of physics So just get over it which is you need to put in tens of thousands of hours and if you cannot or won't You should not expect the success and you should not complain. And also, because it's not free. Yeah, these guys, you agree with that enough?

Yeah, look, I mean, LeBron, what was it, 2016, when they came back in one and game seven, 2016? Yeah, I don't know, 2016. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. But the next day, his teammates go out and celebrate. you know what LeBron did on Instagram the next day Posted a photo at 7 a.m. Of In the next year. Yeah working out

But look one thing. I'll say LeBron knows what his skill is and he knows what his game is I think every individual needs to figure out what their skill is and what their game is and not to find Glory in what others have found to be their skill and their game. That there is something that comes from mastering any craft that gives an individual joy and purpose in life. And you see this in basketball, you see it when these athletes really find what they love and they do it, and they commit to it. And there are things that we each have realized we are good at, and there are things that we've all certainly realized we are not good at. And identifying that and mastering one's craft is the key to any person being successful

and happy, I believe. I just just assume that there's a thing out there that everyone makes money. Distraction alert. All of our wives are about to go swimming. Oh my lord. They're so hot. My lord. Look at my wife.

Oh, my god. Jesus. God, almighty. I hit the jackpot. It's beauty in the beast. You can relate. Huh? Shama. What was the way I look at it?

We were joking at breakfast today. We were like, my wife must have low self esteem because she's married to me. Sax had the best line. He's like, if you Google, Natalie, don't pay. You find this picture of her holding a tiger by lying by the tail, which is a lot more exciting than holding a Sri Lankan by the Shlong

I was playing epic man for saxophone the rose last night Every time he hit it I just would back the devil you didn't get help you off the cliff I was waiting for that No hell me hell me off the cliff. I mean oh my god I think you know how you know what happened. Cat told me what happened. So the backstory is Phil Hamuth is a narcissist. And if you know Phil Hamuth, you know that.

Yeah, that's implied. And he just cannot give a speech. He's a best friend. He's not my best friend. Spike guys, he's really. But he's he gives horrible speeches. I mean, he or best, every speech. Well, Phil, every speech he gives horrible speeches. I mean, he or best friends, I think every speech, well Phil, every speech he gives at every event,

it's all about himself. That's all about himself. That's why we say seven seconds to fail, but it's incredible because it could be, it could be a wedding, a parmits, a funeral, a birthday. But in our chat, so when Winchamaw said, okay, Phil's gonna give us speech.

Phil's like, of course, I'm gonna give us speech. Every speech I give is amazing The last event I Gave a speech it brought the house down everyone was laughing. I killed it. It was oilbrunson's funeral. Oh my god No, dude, what what you killed that a funeral So I asked, I asked how you to do this toast and I was like, okay, well, we'll do four of them.

But I thought if we start with how you it'll just be so bad. Yeah, you bottom out early. Yeah, you bottom out early and the rest of you guys set the bar. Yeah, but sex crushed it. Saks, I just found it.

Saks, cross crushed it. Do you say, do you say, do you say, I think we're all still amazed at the stairs. It was 400 steps to that. It looks good. It looks pretty impressive.

Yeah. This has been a great episode of the only part. Did anybody see Oppenheimer yet? I'm so excited. I don't see it. It's going to be a barbenheimer double feature. I'm not barbenheimer. I'm not barbenheimer. I'm not barbenheimer. I'm not barbenheimer. I'm not excited. I don't know. It's gonna be a barbenheimer double feature. Barbenheimer.

I am. An honor the barbenheimer wedding. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not, I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it.

I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it.

I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimering it. I'm not barbenheimer should do that. No, we should just rent it. Let's rent it. This week, I've rented it for it's I think it's sold out into a lot of a very limited time. Oh, the theater is we just have to call them and say, Hey, can we rent the thing? They'll do a show. Here's 20 times. I once went to a showing of interstellar there in Christopher Nolan came and spoke and got to meet him and speak to him afterwards. He's a very soft spoken guy and he's not very socially. He doesn't, you know, it's sort of like sex. He doesn't want to make eye contact and

actually talk with you. But, you know, we very socially doesn't you know sort of like sex you don't want to make eye contact and actually talk with you but you know we challenge you're making fun of people with asperers but he was great I mean I know pot it's kettle calling I will say he's what cop three filmmakers of our time top four there was a great for me it's Ridley Scott, Tarantino Nolan. There was a very funny moment. Where's your list, Sacks right now? You got to put Scorsese on that list. Oh, right, of course.

So that's the P.T. Anderson. No, no P.T. Anderson. Dennis Nillin-Nuey. Hit or miss. What do you all have? Can we mention that name? I mean, can't say that, please. It's hard to watch now.

It's hard to watch.. It's hard to watch. The whole spoon name makes it too hard. I like a. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. No, Nick, Nick, believe those. There was a very funny moment on the first dinner.

Yeah. You know, we did this great thing. You can, Nick, beat up the names. When it's sat down. Everybody's like, and I was waiting for David to sit. Yeah. And he just keep talking and talking. Yeah, talking and talking.

And finally, that went to the zoo. Like, sit the fuck down right now and have to get this fucking thing going. So who do you got? You got scores says, yeah, of course. Yeah, I mean, you're talking about, like, currently a live filmmaker is I think that- Acta filmmaker.

Yeah, let's see, mentions pretty good. I don't have to think about like currently a live filmmakers. I think that active filmmakers. Yeah, listen mentions pretty good I have to think about it for Miss Annie body Yeah, really Scott's up there for you. Yeah, yeah, really Scott. Yeah, I mean he's so making Christopher Nolan is pretty excellent. He's very productive That's a thing about every two years Michael Bay versatile it I met Michael Bay in Costa Rica. Can you do that? Did you get that? Did you get that?

Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that?

Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Did you get that? Nice guy. I don't I'm sure he's great. Um, so uh, also on the dot. He's got Napoleon coming out. The trailer looks amazing. Amazing. I'm well, anything with Joaquin Michael Bay is making no, no, no, no, no, no,

really Scott. Oh, Ridley Scott. I've seen him explain Napoleon. It's kind of interesting. I hate to go deep into the, um, do you guys want to talk about zerk bad behavior? Or you want to talk about the resolution of this Hollywood stuff and what it means writ large? Well, the Hollywood stuff. Look, I think it's fascinating. I tweeted about this a couple weeks ago. My observations on this were twofold. One is that it's going to have the exact opposite effect that they want.

If what they want, if what the writers and the actors guild want is to show the owners of the studios how valuable they are, the problem is that this moves the owners and the studios one step closer into the hands of tools that will disintermediate the actors and the writers. They'll embrace that technology. They'll embrace the AI tools that you guys have talked about. You were showing something around even like yesterday or whatever. So the point is I don't see it as very effective. And then my second thought is, I just think unions in general are probably not a very effective way to get these concessions anymore

versus the tax that the union members pay. And you can just see that in terms of the number of people in unions are just kind of decaying pretty quickly. The wage gains are pretty diminimous. It's just not an effective mechanism of negotiation. SACs, the unions are a way for average performers to fight to get a little bit more, but it's the antithesis of having a meritocracy and people fighting for their best possible pay.

And so the conundrum I have is I'm seeing all these marvel actors, superhero actors getting dropped off at the protests. And they're complaining about Bob Iger making 25 million when Tom Cruise or Robert Downey Jr. picked the person, I'm not singling anybody out, but those people who got to the top of the heap after 20, 30, 40 years in the business are getting paid 50 million a picture, 100 million a picture of back ends. And so what's your take on what's going on here because there it seems I don't want to say hypocritical, but it feels like they're talking at a both sides of their mouth. They want to have an auction to the highest bidder for these incredibly talented writers,

directors, producers as it should be. But then they also want to fight for the average. Right. It's confusing to me. Some of the union demands, I think, are reasonable and I understand why they want them. So for example, I think they're arguing for more residuals, for, like you said, the kind of lower level performers, so that they can get health care. Yeah, average ones. Yeah, so I can understand that.

At the same time, they're demanding that writers rooms not use AI software. Which they're already doing. Yeah, which is crazy because AI is going to be incorporated into all software. So to not be able to use the latest features of whatever word or Google docs or whatever screenwriting software. Yes. That's like the king of order to the tides to stop. Yeah. This is the march of technology. It's not going to work. So I think that's like really off base. So I think that's like really off base. So I can surprise with some of the demands, other ones, I think are hard to see in terms of your point about the economics. I mean, look, the basic problem with Hollywood is it's a winner take all business. I mean, you've got a few actors who become big stars.

This is true, actually, with all the creative industries, is there a power law businesses, you know, JK Rowling makes a billion dollars as an author, the 10,000 author, or whatever makes, 1000 fantasy person makes a living. Yeah, exactly. They're living months. Yeah, can't even make a living. And the reason for that, by the way, is because there's a lot of people going to do it for free. Humans are fundamentally creative. There's a lot of people willing to be actors for free or honest subsistence or right or whatever creatively

because they're willing to do their art for free. And so the reality is the reason Hollywood doesn't have to pay these sort of the entry level actors very much is there's a lot of people willing to do that job. There's too many people willing to do that job. And it doesn't need to be in a structured production system anymore. I saw the latest Disney earnings release and Iger said, we are going to consider selling nachio and a bunch of other channels. There may actually be a

spin off because content creation for that mid-tier or that tail no longer makes sense. Not viable. Not viable. Because there's so much content being generated by this very long tail that's accruing a lot of the eyeballs and a lot of the hours of consumers mindset and time. I think that there's a big difference. Yeah, can I connect that idea? So we were talking earlier about career choices. So first of all, I agree with what you guys said about the time can we have to make, but

it's not really about time per se. It's about your obsession level. Can you be obsessed with something so that 60, 70 hours a week feels like nothing to you because you're so immersed, you're so obsessed with it. Right. The way that Tarantino and Avery are obsessed with classic films have the whole database in their head.

So if you want to pursue one of these careers in a winner take all space, like writing, like acting, or whatever, you better just be completely obsessed. You gotta be all in. Yeah, you gotta be all in. I'd say furthermore, you need what makes you novel. Yeah, I mean, even if you are all in, you still have to have luck and scale. Yeah, and furthermore, you have to know where the bar is. So I think a lot of people, this is one of the things I noticed when I was

producing a movie is a lot of people look at like the worst actor or the worst screenwriter and say, I'm better than that person So I'm gonna make it but your bar is not the worst person who's made it your bar is the best person who hasn't made it That's the person you're really competing next up. It's the next up It's the person you're going on auditions and your competing against someone wasn't made yet But they're amazing and you don't necessarily know where that bar is because it's much harder to see. Yeah, but that's where the bar really is. Right. Look, I think there's also a big disruption.

As we well said, yeah, totally. And as we extend the long tail of consumer content creation into what is effectively now the infinite tail of AI generation, AI generated content creation, it is going to totally disrupt and change the game of media of content generally speaking. We're getting to a point now where you can effectively tie together rendering engines with scripting, with scene definition, with directorial lines, all the stuff that goes into pre-production and production can be generated through AI, through scripting, and then tuned and tweaked by

a human. But ultimately it increases the scale, like all technologies do, it increases leverage for humans. And we could see a hundred times more films come out, each of which costs one one hundred the cost. You know, one of the best production companies in LA is Blumhouse. You know, they make a $2 million stream. They make it for $2 million.

And they make a bunch of them because they cost so little to make And if any one of them hits they make a hundred eighty million bucks or two million bucks in the box office to fantastic Business model or films. It's very much a unique model in Hollywood and it's really changed the game quite a bit And I think we're gonna see something similar emerged because of generative AI and the tooling and then people start to question What does it call? But I look, one thing I do want to say, I do think that there's also a change in Hollywood

that's going to be driven as we talked about before by the ability to generate personalized film, personalized content, rather than one piece of content for everyone where you have to make blockbusters, and everyone watches it. There is a question, however, of culture. And culture is, you know, shared experience, stories and beliefs.

Shared experience, stories and beliefs can still be realized through personalized media, through personalized content generation. Think about, you know, an old narrative, an old tale that was told, you know, via people speaking to each other around a campfire. The ethics and the morals of the story are still there, but everyone tells it a little bit differently. I think that's what we may end up seeing Hollywood production or AI generated production. You guys see this. Which is everyone tweaks their content in their own personal way, they consume it in their own way. But the Hollywood studios, how much of a role do they ultimately end up playing? And does this start to go 10 times more what we've seen in YouTube? Content consumption goes way up up and the number of folks that are contributing

to it goes way up by 10 or 100 X. I think this is one of the fundamental things that the unions and Hollywood have not yet groked completely, which is they're not fighting each other. They're fighting TikTok, YouTube podcasts, and people making their own content. They're fighting Jimmy Donaldson. They're fighting Mr. Beast. They're fighting each other over the last scraps of the dark models. Exactly. And they're fighting the people that spend two hours a week listening to us rant on

about stuff, right? They're fighting the boat has to less hours. It's the one thing. It's two less hours of broadcast TV. And then in Mr. Beast, these kids watch his videos five times. They watch. He's probably the only person in recent memory that has rebuilt event-based viewership because people know Saturday mornings at noon Eastern time is when these videos drop hundreds of millions of people. It's appointment television. It's appointment television. Now back by the way when you hear you know the story about Mr. Beast that's a guy that's been doing it since he was 13 years old. He's 24 years old guy that's been doing it since he was 13 years old.

He's 24 years old, so that's 11 years where he's literally only lived and breathed and in the lab, it's all right. High energy iteration, in the lab, down to the very pixel, right? Like when he, for example, like... And the cuts, remember? You watch his cuts on his videos.

Remember he told us about like thumbnails? He has an entire PhD thesis that he's earned just on thumbnails. Yeah, right. And that's a love commitment. I think what Hollywood needs to do just to put it out there is the leadership in Hollywood gets compensated on a corporate level. And then they come up with this, you know, pay and sometimes residual, sometimes not,

and scraps for the talent. I would encourage them to read something like an autobiography by Kurosawa and study the Toho system where everybody was aligned inside the company. If I'm running Disney, I'm hiring the top two or three hundred writers, putting them full-time on staff, giving them equity and getting everybody rowing in the right direction.

They do not have time to fuck around. They need to be in alignment, making great content. But the incentive structure matters. If Bob Eiger is getting compensated by stock options, the actors, Robert Downey Jr., who's the guy, the incredible director of swingers and Fabro. I was talking to Fabro at an event. And I was like, how much like equity in Disney did you get for doing Mandalorian and like launching Disney Plus for them? And he's like zero zero. By the way, why do Disney, did you get for doing Mandalorian and like launching Disney Plus for them? And he's like zero zero. By the way, why do you look back up a hundred million

dollars in equity? And this is what's crazy. If you look at the biggest content producers of that older generation, they locked up the equity. You know, Spielberg owns equity in the movies that he made. George Lucas owns equity in the movie. The own part of the studio is the old Christopher Nolan cut on on Oppenheimer. No, I think he gets 20% of the growth off the first dollar. That's absurd. Yeah, and he got a hundred million dollar budget and a hundred million marketing commit on the deal. Uh, Joker was Todd Phillips. So, well, this is a perfect example. I was talking to Todd Phillips actually. I got to have dinner with him last summer. Great guy. Yeah, great guy. I was talking to Tom Phillips actually I got to have dinner with him last summer great guy Yeah, great guy and he waved his fee on Joker to take a big chunk of the equity because

Hot Phillips is very sad on the hangover and he owned the IP of the hangover he owned the sequels and Hangover one and two amazing hangover three You can miss it. Yeah, yeah, but he made more I think on hangover three Yeah, and he got all those guys, Gallifinakis, etc. They got their biggest payday on number 3. You have to craft, and you know, we have equity. The other crazy deal. But the studio was less bullish than he was on both Hangover and Joker, because they're

both on usual movies. We show you how in public. They allow him to take equity in exchange for giving back. They're like, you only want to spend 50 million on a superhero film. That's never going to work. And then he's like, yeah, it made a billion. Joker made a billion. Right.

But they thought it was too dark. Under estimating audiences, as always, in Hollywood, I'll tell you very funny poker story. So I feel like you're doing your Disney stock. Right now, I'm going to ride it out. I think their IP collection is amazing. I think there's a chance that, you know, depending on how the FTC winds up being run over the long term, that Disney could be selling pieces of that business. And I think

that it could become an acquisition target itself at some point. You want to hear Todd Phillips Walker? Sorry. I play a part with him. Yeah, he's he's a lot of Phillips is a very, very disciplined poker player. Yeah. You know, he's got like a stop loss. He hits the stop loss he's done. And he's very funny and jokes around, you know, bus balls, whatever. And there was a while where he would play in the big game in LA with us. And he didn't say much. He was very focused and tight as right. And then he did this deal and then hang over three comes out and all of a sudden, you

know, he's got chirping chips. Whoa. He's splashing the pot. I bust Phillips in a pot. And he looks at me and he called me slumdog billionaire. After the moon. That's the guy's at the table thought it was so funny because that movie slumdog billionaire had just come out. Yeah.

So then they all started calling me slummy. Slumdog. That's going to stick. It took me a year for them to get, stop calling me that. Yeah, yeah, pretty great. On the union thing, I'll tell you a story. So recently, it just announced that anchor steam shut down. Anchor steam was this beer, this native beer in San Francisco

that's been around forever. Japanese brewery bought them, right? It was bought by Sapporo several years ago. Anchor steam shut down. Anchor steam shut down. Yeah. I used to go there all the time for like work events. You do like an offsite there and go to the brewery. It's like one of the original markers. Yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of like a word-winning beer. I can't. Yeah.

It's how to business now. And the reason is what was losing money. And you want to know why is because three years ago, the workers all voted to unionize. They're only suddenly like 60 workers, 62 workers, and three years ago they voted unionized and they voted themselves big pay increases. Yeah. And so I guess the poor had to go along with it. Three years later, it's part of it's like, yeah, shut the whole thing down. I think that's the thing you gotta be careful what you wish for. This is the player. I really think the thing with unions that they get wrong is unions fight for exactly this, which is this short term increase in current compensation.

And I think what unions do very poorly is actually understanding the long term equity that the employees and members of that union actually create. I tweeted this a few weeks ago as well, but the single biggest reason that motivated me when I sold my piece of the Warriors was obviously just a crazy increase in the valuation. I bought it for you know, 300, 300 and it was worth 5.2 billion at the time of the year. But the second biggest reason was my huge fear was that I as an owner, I just wanted to cash in the chips,

because I think the most right thing to do for the union, like the NBA players association, is to fight for equity. Yeah. Like Michael Jordan single handedly has created $15 billion of equity in the NBA. Yep. How much has he captured one or two billion, but not from the league. He captured it accidentally from shoes, right? How much money is LeBron James actually created for the NBA? It's enormous. Yep. How much is he? He made a capture. They're not trying to get the right piece of the outside. They're not trying to get the right piece of the outside. Also, when the business doesn't do well, then the labor contracts become a source of huge and flexibility. Huge and fun to go in.

You can't make the necessary business changes. So it's your point. The business gets shut down. Don't do your point. The businesses got shut down. So to your point, like when you when what happens now is there's these huge luxury taxes in professional sports. And so folks bloat the payroll. They try to get all these players. But if you don't win and get to the playoffs, you're not selling more merch. You're not getting incremental share of TV revenues. You're not getting ticket revenues. And all of a sudden, you have these massive luxury taxes you have to pay and not enough revenue to pay for it. And so these teams, all of a sudden, now start to gush money, have to make capital calls because these things that sound incredible up front start to become real weights on these businesses. The real thing

all unions in all industries, I would tell you all to do is figure out how to get the equity upside in the business in which your members are working in and are creating value it. Right. In an exchange for that, I'd have more forgiveness on the downside. How the business actually persists here. Whether the storm is supposed to have to shut down. Exactly. Alignment. Alignment of a sensitive, just so critical. I was talking to the head of one of the giant publishers.

I wouldn't say which one. Ibnis Binsider, I don't know which one it was, but they were being unionized. And I said, wow, it's just a disaster for your business. He said, oh, Jacob, great thing ever. I said, why? He's like, now when people come to us and they want to get paid more, we just take out the chart. How many years have you been here? Oh, five.

Okay, yeah, one, two, three, four, five, seventy, two thousand. And there's a well, but I bring more pages. Whatever it's like, yeah, okay. I page you multiplier point one, five. Okay. So you're 70 AK. And then just basically, that's what happens at business inside of. Yeah, but that's kind of who knows why why there are a clickbait business. And then that drives perverse incentives. And it's like, why not align it with what is the profitability of the business? What is the growth of the business a bonus pool of base level of pay? And if the unions are coming in, they are literally rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. And so when you got unions demanding more and more of a shrinking pie, something's going to break. Now look, just to be clear, I'm in favor of unions demanding things like better working conditions and healthcare and just like the basics. But when they try to go for things like I don't know, banning AI and proposals that distort

the cost structure of the business to the point where it's just not feasible, it's not profitable, that doesn't work. Also, the question is, white collar workers who can move so freely between jobs, so elite, why would any white collar worker who is learning and sharpening their blade and increasing their value year after year? Why would they even want to join a union?

There was a podcast union that started in Spotify and Gimlet Media, all of this stuff. And one of the podcasts, I think it was reply all, they didn't want to join the union. Of course, we're over compensated, we're a hit show. And then they were all claimed that they were... Look at what's happening in the schools. But can we steal men? You can't get rid of a bad teacher because they're in the union. So it's like a huge procedure. So they put them in a building where the incompetent teachers... Can we have cross? You can't get rid of a bad teacher because they're in the union. So it's like a huge procedure. So they put them in a building where the incompetent teachers

can we have cross-references? Can we have cross-references? The pro case of joining a union in 2023. I mean, if you could get benefits, like some basic level of benefits. Freebr. Look, I think that the pitch, and Jake, how this is why I asked you this a few episodes ago.

Tell us your experience having grown up in a family that I think unions are pretty proliferent in these cops firemen. Yeah, I mean, if you were, the pitch is you're part of a membership. You have a voice and that voice always is your advocate. And that advocate looks out for benefits, comp, time off, whether or not and how you get fired, all the things that you feel you may be unfairly treated by management. There's nothing novel here. I don't know.

It's a strong appealing point. Yeah. So I don't know if that's the best steel man for it because it's a competitive labor market if you have skills that companies want. So you should be able to negotiate for a lot of these things yourself. I think the steel man case for unions and the reason why they formed in the first place is because American industry was basically owned by an oligopoly. They were themselves monopolies. So if you have a monopoly of

industries like US steel or oil, then there's not a competitive labor market. They just set the price as they set the conditions. That's why the unions got started is you needed a basically monopoly of labor to face off against a monopoly of business. That's how it got started. And I think in those conditions, we're talking about the early 1900s. People are losing limbs in factories. Yeah, of course. It was very different working conditions. But now you're talking about much more competitive industries. But look, there was a right deal of like manual labor needed to get productivity out of businesses and enterprise so You know so much of industry changed where things became automated where they became specialization and differentiation amongst the workforce

And it wasn't everyone is just using their arms to do things and you know that this is obviously now measurable And the idea that you can basically you know capture management or do a hostile takeover of the corporation or the equity, I think is effectively what's happened with a lot of these, these, these, and I'll be honest, knowing what I know about unions, if you were to do a deep dive into, you know, the police unions or the firefighter unions or the sanitation unions or the teacher unions, and you look at their pensions and their overtime, you would see some pretty significant abuse that the unions have built up over years to where people can make three or four hundred thousand dollars a year in the last two or three years. They goose that up because then they base their pension on the average of the last three years.

And what basically happens is all the senior guys say, listen, all over time, go sit, these three guys who are retiring in three years, and none of the junior guys can take any overtime. And when it's your turn, you get all that, and then we're gonna goosher pay. So, and what that does, unreasonably, is the pension calculation, the pay into the pension is based on some assumption of today,

as that starts to happen, the pensions become underfunded, because they no longer have enough capital to make all the disbursements that are supposed to happen. And there's a big argument now that there's probably over a trillion dollars of underfunded pension liabilities in the United States, many of which are based on the fact that these payout principles were defined by some negotiation

or the union. And they're games. And there's a large difference between somebody writing a Listical or rewriting a Washington Post story and business a listicle a listicle Yeah, somebody rewriting a list of a bunch feed or you know somebody rewriting a Wall Street journal paywall story and business insider Then somebody running into a running into a burning building or, you know, having a target on their back as a cop in San Francisco. These are very different jobs. And the white

collar knowledge workers are lasting what? What's the average tenure right now? 36 months, 30 months? I mean, you're obviously moving from place to place. What's the point of the union? It's a competitive labor market. And to your point, it's true that in some cases, the unions do get a better deal for their members. However, there is a dead weight loss for the union itself because the unions representing its own interests. One and a half percent. So they're taking something out of them too.

They're skimming. They got to pay the thing. They're doing that Scorsese movie. Was it the Irishman? Irishman, yeah. You really get a taste of the corruption that was in all. There was some skimming going on. Everybody gets a little skim, all of a sudden, one and a half times.

But then also the pension fund starts getting rolled into mob projects or whatever. I mean, that's like a while ago, but. Yeah, I, I, there was some significant downside. My view of it is we lived in a decade of surplus elites, you know, having these luxury jobs, and I'll put in the luxury jobs being a journalist, being a venture capitalist, you know, these elitist luxury jobs,

and in some of them, they became so wildly overcompensated. I think they wanted to feel oppressed. They wanted to feel like they need representation, and I think they were larping to use the term again, live action role-playing, that they were gonna be in a a union. Like they wanted their larping is being victims. Right. They wanted to like literally the business insider people were putting up pictures of Henry Vlajit and his and their larping grievances. Yes. And they're on the street holding a picket sign up. And I'm like, what's the matter? Is your keyboard not ergonomic enough at home?

You haven't been to an office in three fucking years. They didn't get the latest flavor of kind bars or whatever Yeah, no, they can get the cherry the cranberry There's a kind bar. It's a bit cue you cue you kind bars I mean like leave the unions for the people who are actually on the front lines. It's So I think well we could wrap good. We wrap. It's probably wrapped time Would you want to do a quick science corner update? I got a lot of text. Actually.

Room temp superconductor. Yeah, you see that. There is a, actually, it's a very interesting. You may remember a few episodes ago. If you don't remember, you can go back and watch it. Where I talked a little bit about the effort to try and identify a material that can be superconducting at room temperature,

which means no resistance. Electrons can flow through the material with no resistance, perfect electricity transfer across distance, and also enables the MISNIR effect where magnetic waves can reflect off of the material, which can allow things like levitating trains, which is very low friction transportation. All these benefits of superconducting materials, a quantum computing, etc. So yesterday, and I've gotten literally dozens of emails and notes about this in the last 12 hours, there was a paper published by a team in South Korea who seemed like a very legit team.

There's no reason why they would make a fraudulent claim that there is a material that they've identified and measured to show has superconducting properties at room temperature and ambient pressure where a lot of these efforts historically have been made at room temperature, but they use 200 times atmospheric pressure to compress it. And it turns out that this material that they're using is a lead appetite, which is a hexagonal crystal that uses calcium phosphate and lead and that some of the the lead gets replaced with copper and the copper causes the hexagon, the crystal structure to compress a little bit. That compressed crystal allows the electrons to flow through.

This is their theoretical explanation on what's going on. It will be replicated. People will try and do what they are now claiming. They did to demonstrate this. There was some condensed matter, physics people that sent me an email and said, they don't think that this is real. They have great deal of skepticism.

Oh, let me, but sorry, let me just say two things about this. You can read the paper. You can read the paper. It's on the internet. Yeah, the camera men are asleep. That's what it's glasses on. He's sleeping behind here. He's just horsleeping.

Let me say two things. Firstly, I think it's unlikely that these guys are going to make a fraudulent. Woo! Whoa,'s unlikely that these guys are gonna make a fraudulent claim. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If they did make a fraudulent claim, it would be the end of their career as a reputation would be damaged. So that may happen.

If they did not make a fraudulent claim. Like a president of Stanford. If they did not make a fraudulent claim, and it does turn out to be real, then I do think it'll end up being the most important discovery in physics of this century. Okay, so Complete out of fraud Look I

Joking about it, but we talked about the importance of this material in technology Yes, it's a everyday life and energy. I want to build on top of what you're saying. The thing that you're saying, the more generalized concept is, we have such a poor understanding of the periodic table, just broadly speaking. Of condensed matter, of physics. There's so much about physics and quantum mechanics. And just still, we are just literally poking around. Poking around, trying to figure out what's going on.

And that's what led to this discovery, suppose a discovery. I've made this analogy before, but if you take the periodic table and it actually kind of looks like the United States of America, we have like a really good sense of like the upper northwest and like the east coast. And otherwise, we don't know anything. And I think it was about two and a half years ago, at the beginning of the pandemic, there

are these three guys and I that started with this idea of just building some machine learning to experiment in silica around different materials, right? And can you guess physical properties? And if you think these properties are better at a certain thing, can we then go and actually make samples and figure it out? And we pointed it at batteries. And we said, let's just take the cheapest form of batteries, LFP, lithium, right, that's

used in the Model 3, and let's make better LFP. And what we're finding is holy shit, like we don't know anything. And there are these like really big breakthroughs, one which will probably announce in like the next few weeks, because we just raised a bunch of money around this idea. But it's all just people experimenting better and smarter. And really what you find is that there just aren't enough of those people doing it. And so the cycle time is just too long. Well, and this is where AI can actually have some, it's incredible gain. Transformation.

As AI gets smarter, you put in the inputs, you give it the data set, we don't know what it's gonna come up with and it could profoundly. The better version of, the increase our understanding of this. This Korean team did is they, they had a separate paper that they published talking about

The demonstration of using AI to try and be predictive around quantum mechanics Which is something that people said we can't really do quantum modeling until we get quantum computers And so there has been this this belief that once we get quantum computers will be able to understand the physics Of of the quantum skill and be able to do modeling that will allow us to do more discovery. But we are still very much just poking around and theorizing. And every cycle, by the way, in Superconductor research, there's a different theory on what causes superconductivity and it shows so how little we do actually. So these guys basically, when we were trying to build, so if you look at like a Tesla model S, right, or Model X, these are NMC or NCA batteries, right? Very, very, very energy rich, but also very expensive and

very complicated batteries. That won't scale to the average everyday car. And what was crazy in our attempt to take LFP, which is the cheap version, and make it as, keep the cheapness, but as energy denses, NMC and NCA, we ended up doping it with all kinds of random stuff that you would have never guessed in a million years, given billions of dollars. You needed computers to go off and actually make these guesses. So this idea that we're going to find all this stuff at the periodic table, bumbling around I think is such an interesting part of the physical sciences.

And again, this will lead to infinite energy storage in batteries. Yeah. You can put electricity into a battery if you had a superconducting battery. And it would cycle forever. No resistance. And then you could just plug in and get the energy back out. So imagine infinite storage on batteries. You can read the rest of the circuitry completely.

So you can there are already superconducting circuits that are used in quantum computers and other high-end applications, but because they're so expensive to cool and so expensive to operate, they're not ubiquitous, but the power of having them be ubiquitous would be extraordinary. Right. Computing for discovery, for AI, for modeling, the applications will end up discovering because of the modeling we can now do in a more ubiquitous way. It's going to be incredible. There is a very profound moment when they do and if they do happen We should be

Excited optimistic, but obviously very very cautious about Where and when what happened? Yeah, I really love you What an incredible so thankful that you guys came and showed up really means a lot to me Thank you fantastic. Yeah, incredible. We really love you guys Thank you very very much for that. All right. We'll see everybody at the all in summit. Oh my gosh. Yum yum. It's in like in this is like six weeks more a little more. You have a new party plan. I got a new person. Give a new person to announce. I will announce it and then we'll take it out if it's not okay, but we did confirm Ray Dalio, so we'll add him to the speaker list. We've got a few other guests that were not going announce. That will be last minute fun surprises for everyone. We have always some fun surprises at the end. I'm really excited to have a great

day. We're closing in on the party. Yeah. How the party's going for the summer. Over the parties, we have narrowed down to three things. We think are going to be a lot of fun. Opening night, Sunday night, the day before the event starts September 10th, I think that is. You have locations yet. We are negotiating the final contracts with the locations. We got about a dozen of them and we're gonna now are down to the three that give us The best flexibility will have the floor plans Which is the last step? You know you got like six weeks right? Yeah, no, it's we have more than enough options now

So Sunday night will be take out handling the parties on me. I'm doing the party. She's you're not gonna want to hear a great all-in-summit story Yeah, but let me just go through the three the three party themes So opening night is gonna be bestie Roy, the best you love me. James Bond theme. So what is that? Taxi, why Tuxedo's white taxedos or you could go as a bond girl or you could go as Austin powers anything in that theme. Casino games, but no black Tuxedo. You can go black Tuxedo. You can go white Tuxedo. You can go Daniel Craig. You can go Sean Connery, Roger Moore. You peck. I'm going Sean Connery. You go whatever you like. I like the black tux. I've tried the white tux. It doesn't. You can do it you peck you go Sean Connery you go whatever you like the black Tux I've tried the white tux it doesn't yeah you go for you for me I look like a waiter and so be like I like the

Yacht Club of Spine and Cisco and then Monday night we have a good to wear as a bucket hat Monday night is gonna be bestie club breakfast club big eighties the location is incredible I wouldn, but um, not to be confused with fight club or J. K. L. And I get an array. Not a fight. Not each other to be that wouldn't last very long. Best we worked everything out of the board meeting. Yeah, do we work everything out?

But you know, two of you had everything's good. Boardman is great. We're going to say you're embracing afterwards. I saw the two of you embracing. I of course we had to give him a hug. It was awkward. You didn't fully let me in. It was like you ever see three PO trying to give hands

all the way to like this like oh there's a 472 to one chance that you're my bestie. Oh and then the last night will be Bestie Runner. A Blade Runner send up a cyberpunk theme to where your best cyberpunk. Oh you must have a good like punch up person for this kind of stuff. Like you have a person that he's got a hard director. He's got a starlet. He's got a costume department. Costume department in the...

In the most... Yeah, that's level two in the basement. Sub-level two in the basement is the costumes. Is this next... You know how you haven't been to that level in your elevator? Yeah, you go down there. Level two is costumes. The costume.

Level three is sets. Okay, I'll tell you a quick story all in some. I'm walking in the streets of Milan. Me, Nat. F***ing. And f***ing. I'll tell you a quick story all in summit. I'm walking in the streets of Milan me not And we're what we're walking just on via Montenepeau on in Milan and I hear it Chama and I turn around it's Damian Bertrand the CEO of Laura Piana And so he comes he's a we're so excited to be a part of the all in summit. I'm like oh my god This is oh

Oh, it's not happening. No, no, it is. I know. They're cushioning every seat with, I don't know, I don't know. Don't ruin it. Okay, I'm not gonna ruin it. I don't know. But my team's been working really hard on this.

Anyways, I saw Damien. They're excited. He's coming. Yes, so he is. He's coming. He's coming. He's coming. Do we have, um, Monclerc?

We did. You had every opportunity these last three days to do everything you needed to get a sponsorship All right, I'm on clear is listening What? Guys right there on the beach on the beach You were just there and the person you see the yacht right there. That's his boat. This is his restaurant I can't I can't do enough. I can't do any more than what I just do. Literally, get on the dinghy, go to his boat.

You need to get off your boat. You're sitting right there. You need to pay attention. Yeah. Get playing. Oh my god. Never mind. Stop playing chess.

And you'll be like, oh yeah, I know you. No, the funny. Beep it out, Nick. We'll believe it out. Here's what happens. The guy, free bird comes up, he's in a panic. Oh, we've got a problem, Jake, how the production has got a problem.

They're going to kick us out of the restaurant. The guy goes, ah, I don't think it's going to be a problem. I'm going to fix it. And freeberg's like, how are you going to fix it? He's like, well, I own the restaurant. And so I last had to do not to kick you out. And, sorry. I'm not going to be a problem.

I'm not going to be a problem. And, and he sat not gonna be a problem. It's not gonna be a problem and and He's happy side for a whole day Who is on the board and I said David? She's on the board. So if you this is your moment you sold out their hats and this is David cut to David Bleep out the name hold on oh I Oh, I hold on. I put a lot of stuff Peter Tiel and I are good level four of my base. I'm in a game of blitz with Peter Tiel hold on Woods playing Blitz chess by rating us to go to hangover. Let's get everybody live from Portofino

Four hungover. Thank you guys. Thank you everybody Thank you everyone, see you next time. On the OV-Boyce. Thank you, I love you besties, fresh mom. We're like your winners, ride. Brain man, David Sack. I'm going on, we're going on. And it said we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

I'm going on, we're What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? Besties are gone! Go through! That's my dog taking a wish to drive away! So, wait a minute! Oh man! My ham is a bit asher when we get to the place.

We should all just get a room and just have one big hug. Because they're all just like this like sexual tension that we just need to release that out What you're the big what you're here We need to get my cheese I'm doing all it!