All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E159: The Bestie Awards! Recapping the best and worst of 2023

Starting point is 00:00:00 All right, everybody, welcome back. It is our fourth annual Best of the Awards. Yes, everybody is incredibly excited to hear the biggest winners and politics and losers in business. Best science breakthrough. So many amazing categories with me again. Chairman dictator, Chimoff, Polly Hoppittia, our billionaire, Pock. Welcome back to the program, Chimoff. Bye, Pock. Bye, Pock. This is is right side, billionaire POC. Billionaire percent color. Yes, please get it right. And running the all-in D.E.I. group, the Rain Man

Starting point is 00:00:32 of South David Sacks, welcome back to the program. Good to be here. OK, and the Sultan of Science, welcome back to the program. Are you ready with your selections, gentlemen? Are we ready to do this? J.K.L., this is the holiday episode. You got to have a little more cheer. This isn't all business, dude. Queue the music, gentlemen. Are we ready to do this? Jake, this is the holiday episode. You gotta have a little more cheer. This isn't all business, dude. Cue the music, Nick.

Starting point is 00:00:49 Three, two. Yes, and here we are, everybody, back again for the 2023 Best The Awards. This is where everybody goes crazy. Oh my god, standing ovation. Hold on, who's drinking some champagne with me? I need some champagne popping. What are you guys drinking? These are the awards. Everybody wants to know who's going to be a winner.

Starting point is 00:01:12 You're right, I need a drink. Hold on. You need to drink for this. I need a drink, too. Can I go get a drink? Hang on. Everybody get drinking, loosening it up. I'm at my office. I'm going to alcohol here.

Starting point is 00:01:21 Look at your second draw. I'm going to drink. I'm going to holder. Look at your second draw. I'm going to drink it. You know, I, people don't know this. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it.

Starting point is 00:01:31 I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it.

Starting point is 00:01:39 I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. I'm going to drink it. Welcome to the Bestie Awards for 2023. What are you drinking? I got a little Vovklico. You know, I love my drink. You know, I people don't know this about me, but that was my beverage of choice. It was the old Vovklico when I would go out in New York. What have you got there, Saks? What are you drinking for the

Starting point is 00:01:58 2023 Bestie Awards? What are you drinking? I'm drinking my classes all repassato and drinking. I'm drinking my classes all repassato in the class with a single big rock and I broke out my patriotic great silly United States class. This is a tribute to the border. You got a little bit of Mexico, a little bit of the United States. And is it flowing between the border and you? Is that it's open border now? Open border for Christmas? I had the border for Christmas. I had the border for Christmas. I really opened it this point. Got you. Okay. I just flooding in. Yeah. Tramatha, you're not drinking you're at the office. Freeberg. I mean, I didn't plan. I brought my props to wish everybody happy holidays.

Starting point is 00:02:34 Oh, nice. Beautiful. And this is this sweater. Amazing. Freeberg, everybody knows that you're a quiet solo drinker and your darkest hours. What are you drinking? There's no surprises there. What are you drinking? It's no surprises there. What are you drinking? I'm always drinking what I got to hang out with you, Jake. I'm drinking Victoria.

Starting point is 00:02:51 Victoria. Victoria. That is true, actually. Yeah. I don't think you hang out with Jake. I'll sober to you. Oh, everybody. There it is.

Starting point is 00:02:59 I do not. We've got the Vovklico. Unfortunately at my ski house, I can't find the flutes. I'm going to put this in a wine glass. Sorry for the sacral age. But cheers, here's to another amazing year of the all-in-a-podcast and the bestie saying your cheers. You want to say a few words? Good to know, Jacob.

Starting point is 00:03:13 I'd like to say a few words. In memoriam of the year. Yes. Working with you guys has been delightful, miserable, and everything in between. Congratulations on all of our success. And here's to an amazing 2024. And hopefully we find a CEO and we can keep this thing going for another 150 or so episodes. Nobody thought we would get here. Everybody hates us for our success

Starting point is 00:03:35 and f*** the mids and the haters. Love you besties. Cheers. Well, I would like to make a toast. Here we go. Here is to three of the most talented, warm, friendly guys, and Jekyll. Yeah, he was coming. I don't know if you're mad for me.

Starting point is 00:03:57 I'm talking to that one. I'm talking to Mr. Action. Don't ever forget him, brother. All right. Well, to three of the most sincere heartfelt intelligent, loving individuals and David Sacks. Welcome to the program. I'm big huge lot of here for you.

Starting point is 00:04:14 And let's just get to it. We're going to give our 2023 award for the biggest winner in politics last year. Chamoth, you said that your prediction for 2023. Now we're going to give the actual award for 2023. But in our predictions episode last year, Chimath, you said that you're a prediction for 2023. Now we're going to give the actual word for 2023, but in our predictions episode, last year, you said you were long, Mickey, Ellie, and short to San, does what a prescient call? What do you have this year? That's bread trade paid off in spades.

Starting point is 00:04:38 Yeah, but spread trade looking back. I think the biggest political winner was Donald Trump. Okay. I think that the documents case galvanized his leadership in the Republican nomination and I think that this moved by the Colorado Supreme Court basically sealed the deal. I think he is going to run away with the Republican nomination and barring some catastrophic meltdown has a better chance to get into the White House than before this Colorado case.

Starting point is 00:05:12 So he was the bookest political winner, I think of 2023. It just seems to me that if I had to really put it in a nutshell, I think that the dem in this weird way actually want Trump back in office more than the Republicans do because everything they've done has been nearsighted and I think has actually galvanized his support and increased his popularity and his ability to fundraise more than anything else. Friedberg, who is your biggest political winner of 20, 23? Who did I give it to last year?

Starting point is 00:05:49 Do you remember? You gave it to MBS and Saudi that they would have, your prediction was, they would have those predictions. That's my prediction. In the monarchy. But in some ways, I think they are center stage. That's what I'm talking about. I am giving my biggest political winner award

Starting point is 00:06:05 to the nation state of Saudi Arabia. Oh, why? They are sitting in the middle of the US, China, Iran, Israel, Russia. They have relations with all of those nations and relations where they are trying to be productive, extraordinary leverage with both their capital, their geographic positioning, and their energy

Starting point is 00:06:25 resourcing, and painting a very positive future on how they want to reinvest their capital and modernize the country. And I think one of the biggest coups that they pulled this year was turning J. Cal to being a big promoter of Saudi after his visit to the Middle East. And so I think they're entering 2024 with great strength and leverage. So I give them credit for writing out many storms this year and coming out ahead. So it's been interesting to watch.

Starting point is 00:06:53 I'm not close or tied to them in any way, but I just think from a global leverage point of view, they seem to be in a very strong place. So that's my reward. I can't disagree with you that the place has made incredible progress personal freedoms economic freedoms the their the country is evolving and embracing every country on the planet right so you have to take that as a win

Starting point is 00:07:19 I have no business interest there but I am impressed with the progress so sacks that means it's your turn to give a shirt 2023 biggest winner. My biggest winner in politics, Jake, how I think you'll like this one is abortion rights. A abortion rights. Half abortion rights. After dobs, abortion rights are winning on every battle where they're at issue. It's one referenda in very red states like Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Ohio. It's swung legislatures to the Dems in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania,

Starting point is 00:07:50 and Virginia. It's swung states from court races in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. I'd go so far to say it's the Democrats only winning issue and they are putting it on the ballot everywhere they can. Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out around 30 years ago that we likely could have reached this resolution decades ago if the courts had stolen the issue from the political process because abortion rights were in the process of being liberalized everywhere. And in my view, the political process is messy, but it's how we finally move past the issue as a nation, which is why I think Dobbs was the right decision, even if it was a difficult one. Huh, interesting.

Starting point is 00:08:26 So you are smoothing over, Trump's taking away the right for women to choose and saying that this is a net positive for the country, if I'm reading it correctly. Well, Trump didn't take anything away. That's extremely poor. He played for me, but he didn't take anything away. That's extremely poor. This is gold. Come on, I just explained it. You're not listening.

Starting point is 00:08:45 The string court gave the issue back to the democratic process. The democratic process is now voting to maintain abortion rights. And that is going to settle the issue once and for all. So interesting for all of your fears that abortion rights would fall by the wayside because that's from court decision have actually proven to be null and void. What we're ending up with is a better solution where the country doesn't need to fight about this anymore because the voters have expressed the will of the people. Fantastic framing. Great save for the Republican party there. Well, it won't be unless they learn how to talk about the issue. Yeah, I mean, the way I would

Starting point is 00:09:22 frame the same issue is that Trump stacked the deck to take away women's right to choose and already get elected. But your framing is pretty good too, and you're a master of framing these things. So I was torn here for mine. I had two different choices. I was either going to go with Nikki Halley, because what an amazing feat for her to even be getting close to Trump in some of these primaries. But I think really the biggest winners in this year of 2023 were non-traditional candidates actually becoming somewhat viable and capturing the imagination of young people, the vague RFK and Dean Phillips being I think the three leading candidates. So I'm going to go with the non-traditional candidates being the big winners for 2023.

Starting point is 00:10:09 And for last year, I had said that my prediction was, for 2023, was that Trump would get indicted, win the nomination, and then agree to not run because he gets a pardon. So I think I've got two or three of those in the parlay in the bag. Let's go on to biggest loser. The biggest loser in politics. When we did our predictions for 2023, Chimath, you said that you were short to Santis. Here we are, we're giving our actual award for

Starting point is 00:10:38 the biggest political loser in 2023. Freeberg, I'll start with you. Who is your biggest political loser for 2023? My biggest political loser is the DEI movement. Oh, I heard obviously post October 7th, the Hamas attacks on Israel, and then the following support for Hamas that came out of what have historically been groups that are aligned with DEI interests and then the DEI-driven leaders of the universities that went in front of Congress to defend their freedom of speech rules around anti-

Starting point is 00:11:15 Semitic protests caused a lot of folks that I know who are very liberal and very influential to wake up to the negative impacts of the DEI movement and it's linkage to potentially anti-semitism, which is masked in this oppressor oppressed ideology, that is the basis of a lot of these DEI protocols. And so I think it really shined a negative light on DEI this year in a way that hasn't been the case in a broader way with very influential people in a very long time. And so I think that that movement is gonna take a big hit and took a big hit at the end of this year

Starting point is 00:11:50 and will continue to, I think, be questioned by donors and supporters of the ideologies of that movement. Okay, SACS, who is your biggest loser in politics for 2023? My biggest loser in politics for this year is Vaughan Mirzalinski, the president of Ukraine. And you can see this pretty clearly by just looking at the cover of Time Magazine. He began the year, fresh off of winning Time Magazine's person of the year. And by the end of the year, the same author at Time Magazine was writing a new cover story,

Starting point is 00:12:23 saying that Zelensky had become delusional, he had become messianic, he was ordering his troops on suicide missions, and his own inner circle had turned on him. And of course, who could forget that other photo from the middle of the year at Villeneas when all those Euro snobs turned the back on Zelensky. That was a brutal image that went viral in social media, literally the European elite turning their backs on a frustrated Zelensky.

Starting point is 00:12:51 Sadly, Zelensky had the opportunity in April of 2022 to make peace to sign a peace deal. And unfortunately, he took Boris Johnson and Joe Biden's advice to pressure Putin rather than make peace. I think that gamble has turned into a disaster for him. Chimath, your biggest political loser in 2023? I had a different choice, but I think game time change. Yeah, hearing David has convinced me.

Starting point is 00:13:19 I will go with the death of the acronyms. It was close for me between that. And I actually think that Joe Biden, unfortunately, had a very difficult run of it in 2023 when you actually think about it. The Ukraine thing was a fiasco. All of this stuff around maybe putting the hand on the scale, whether it's on Elon or against Donald Trump. It's all just very messy, I think for him.

Starting point is 00:13:46 But I do think that Freeberg is right. This is probably the beginning of the end of the acronyms. And if you look at ESG and DEI together, ESG is a little bit more measurable, but sustainable asset ownership and ESG ownership across the world, shrank by 15%, which you may say is at a big number or not. That's $5 trillion. And so where the money goes typically, so goes everything else in modern society. And so when the money starts to scurry, I think that you can pretty much expect

Starting point is 00:14:19 that people's patience and support of these kinds of movements are waning. I'll go with death of the acronyms. Start the biggest political issue. So you started, you were going to say Biden, but you changed it in real time and you went DEI ESG acronyms. acronym. Okay.

Starting point is 00:14:34 Death of the acronyms. You know, I had a lot of talks with folks about this one. People had a lot of input. Some people said DeSantis, some people said Biden. I think the biggest 2023 loser in politics is the American people who are now faced with a Biden Trump rematch, both of those individuals clearly being in different stages of decline, being over 80 and the GOP just can't quit Trump. And it seems like the Democrats can't quit Biden despite 70 80% of the country

Starting point is 00:15:07 not wanting the rematch. So I'm going to give the American people or the biggest political losers of 2023. All right, here we go. Biggest political surprise. This is the biggest political surprise of 2023. Sax, what's your biggest political surprise? Well, I think the biggest political surprise and it was a very negative one was the Hamas attack on Israel on the morning of October 7th which really seemed to come out of nowhere only eight days before Jake Sullivan who's by his national security advisor had declared that the Middle East had been quieter than it had been in two decades and those words obviously proved very old

Starting point is 00:15:44 time but he wasn't alone in thinking that I think almost everybody was really surprised by this attack. I think until then, the Middle East seemed to be on a path of progress with the Abraham Accords being negotiated between Israel and several Gulf monarchies. And I think that October 7th has really changed the political paradigm, certainly in Israel, in the Middle East, and I think even in American politics. Okay.

Starting point is 00:16:13 Free break. It's a little bit of a nuance take on that, but I said the rise of Hamas was the biggest political surprise. You know, Hamas is a self-proclaimed political party that was thrust to the center of geopolitics and domestic social issues across the West after October 7th, which was, I think probably a surprise to many that planned these attacks

Starting point is 00:16:32 as well. Basically, it feels to me like Hamas is the pawn that crossed the chessboard and became a queen. It's an organization that had resourcing and was influenced by many have shown connections to Iran and other wealthy states and had very low attention levels prior to October 7th on a global basis. Post-October 7th now has recognition and sympathy and a great deal of interest in the root cause of their party.

Starting point is 00:17:02 So really incredible surprise. I don't think anyone could have predicted this at the start of the year that not just the attacks happened, but the resulting shift surprises are of Kennedy, Robert of Kennedy, Jr. I don't think anybody would have predicted that he would both drop out of the Democratic Party, run as an independent, and essentially collect, he is in terms of favorability in the polls. He's the leading 2024 candidate right now. It's incredible. People like him. That's for sure. Incredible. terms of favorability in the polls, he's leading 2024 candidate right now. It's incredible. People like them. That's for sure. Incredible. And nobody would have predicted that.

Starting point is 00:17:49 That's a really good one. What do we think he will get if he runs as an independent, just percentage wise, Ross Perot as a third party candidate, 19%. You think better than 19% because the country is much more fragmented today. There's a lot more protest votes today. There's just a lot of reasons where rfk can garner a lot of support and build a plurality among centrist that wasn't possible but when pro was running because when he ran you have to remember like this the country was in a very

Starting point is 00:18:16 different place like logically than it is right now yeah i too had third party candidates as being my biggest surprise i didn't give it to a specific one. I was debating these third-party candidates against the GOP not being able to feel the better option than Trump, but I think I'm going to go again with third-party candidates. But I'll include Dean Phillips in that breaking ranks. I'll include Vivek, just a very young, very smart individual capturing people's imagination. Third-party candidates, for me, is the biggest surprise. And I do think it could have a meaningful impact. If you're right, that he gets over 19%.

Starting point is 00:18:51 Who does that, Chimoff, in your mind? Who does that benefit? And who does it hurt if the candidates are Biden and Trump? It hurts Biden the most. You believe that? Okay. What about you, Sacks? Who do you think it hurts the most?

Starting point is 00:19:05 Unclarer right now. Yeah. I mean, I think on the issues, I can see a lot of populist voters wanting to go with RFK. But on the other hand, maybe he does peel away some Democratic Party voters. So I'm not sure to be honest. I've heard this before. And he thought it's freeberg on that. For the question, if RFK were to get, as Jama think, more than pro, so that's 20% or more of the popular

Starting point is 00:19:28 vote, who is that going to harm and who is it going to hurt? Trump or Biden? I saw a Gallup survey that showed that there's a real shot at more than 40% of Americans being interested in the third party. And so I'm sorry, I could be totally wrong on that, but I pretty sure I saw that and it really kind of resonated with me. And I think our discourse here and, you know, obviously conversations with our friend group, Nick might have something on this. Support for third U.S. political party up to 63%. This is a Gallup data. Yeah, so I was right. I think that this is one of the most kind of profound shifts in American politics, at least in our lifetimes,

Starting point is 00:20:08 that the right has gone very right, the left has gone very left, and they've been so rooted in identity politics that you can't really see any of these issues kind of finding compromise and finding a way to lean across the aisle and get things done, and I think that's where a lot of people are just fed up. So I would love to see a third political party emerge. And if RFK breaks the dam on this, it would be fantastic. It will take, as these things always do, a number of years for a group of independents to coalesce around what that third party looks like and how it's going to be governed

Starting point is 00:20:39 and so on. But this could be a really interesting shift in the dynamics of American politics. So pretty cool. I'm not into politics in the US that much, but pretty cool, I think, opportunity to reframe, you know, how do we want to build America going forward and thinking about using a new party as a way to do that? And we haven't even heard of no labels, the third party platform.

Starting point is 00:21:01 They're probably going to announce Joe Manchin any day now. And so that could change things as well. So that's a very interesting take. The biggest problem that we have, this may sound really dumb, but I think it's true in launching a third party, is a viable name. I think it's the most important boundary condition to have a sustainable third party is a is a good name. I can iconic person. The chairman's party. Like whatever we call this party. All the name of the party, not the person they feel. No labels as a terrible name. That's a terrible name.

Starting point is 00:21:35 The chairman's party is a person. The chairman's party is terrible. The chairman's party is terrible. The chairman's party is freedom party. They're all terrible because they all feel like they're rooted in some, you know, either conservative or liberal cause. There's got to be some element of like, what's the right decision on each topic, not necessarily, you know, how do we fight the identity politics? I think that's the key piece that's missing. I like the rational party, like a party of action that also feels disparaging to integrate, you know, yeah, it's branding, branding, what would you call it? The third party for publicans. People's Republic of, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:22:11 or Sachs stand. Tim, do you have an idea for a name? I'm not going to comment on this. Oh, Tim, what people? Something brewing. Jacob, would you have a name for a third party?

Starting point is 00:22:24 You like the rational party. The rational party or something like that, where it kind of evoked people who are being thoughtful and we're trying to make rational decisions in everybody's best interests, right? Something that was not about us versus them, abortion, or, you know, T.E.I. or is, gee, just something focused more on getting things

Starting point is 00:22:46 done. They're getting things done in party, something like that, getting things done in party. So, it all the nose, but better than the deranged one party. Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's keep going. Let's keep going. Here we go. Oh, man, is that what you're trying to do, Ralph, the show?

Starting point is 00:23:01 I will not engage with something. All right, it's time for our biggest business winner, biggest winner in business. Who you got, you mom? Who's your biggest winner in business? I mean, I don't think this is even close. But I think it's Elon Musk. Oh, three things, obviously, three different companies, but the rebasing of Twitter actually had an even more profound impact,

Starting point is 00:23:26 I think, on Silicon Valley that it necessarily did on Twitter. Second was, I think SpaceX has really turned to corner, Starlink is really at scale, Starship looks like it's viable. And then the third is Tesla really consolidated its leadership in EVs and batteries and battery technology and FST. So I think on the merits, it was not even close. Okay, Sacks, who you got? Who's your biggest business winner?

Starting point is 00:23:57 The Magnificent Seven. These are the seven companies that accounted for almost all of the stock market gains this year. You can see it in this chart. It's about a 63 percent gap between the performance of the top names, top seven names in the S&P 500, and then the other 493 of them. I think that the S&P 493 had a 12 percent gain this year, which isn't bad, but it was dwarfed by the interesting seven, which was almost 80%.

Starting point is 00:24:28 Incredible. All right, SAC says the M7, Freeberg, who you got? Yeah, I'm gonna pick one of the seven, which is Microsoft, just to shot down the middle of the fairway here, despite only seeing, I think roughly 8% top line growth, the business saw its market cap grow by at over $3 trillion,

Starting point is 00:24:45 $1.7 to $2.7 trillion this year. Just an incredible number. I mean, can you imagine if we ever said that 10 years ago, whether anyone would believe it? Consumer enterprise strength and strategic strength, the fact that they were able to close the Activision acquisition in the sort of regulatory environment. And then the strength that Sacha showed,

Starting point is 00:25:03 and the speed at which he acted during the OpenAI weekend debacle where he set up this whole thing where he got Sam on board and was going to retain all this value that he was extracting from OpenAI and partnership was I think great leadership and cemented his position and standing as being a really thoughtful, fast-acting, strategic leader for a business that's been around forever, but amazingly added a trillion of market cap in 12 months. So I just throw it to Microsoft this year. It's very hard to kind of break that business apart

Starting point is 00:25:32 and say, here's all the things that are wrong with it. It's just, you know, it's just moving. All right, very well done. We got Elon Musk in your work. Can you work there for a while? One year. At Twitter? No, in Microsoft.

Starting point is 00:25:44 Microsoft. Oh, Microsoft. One year. Well, I No, in Microsoft. Microsoft. One year. I was locked up for two years in the wake of the Emmer deal. I was a corporate vice president in Microsoft. You like it? Yeah, it was, I mean, it's a high quality company for sure. I mean, I was like super active for one year because I was still in charge of, I still

Starting point is 00:26:00 had a P&L running Amher, but then after one year, Yammer was sort of assimilated into the Borgon. Yeah. And then, if anything to do, I was kind of just like on call. Right. Right. All right. I am going to talk my own book on this one and give it to Dara and the team at Uber.

Starting point is 00:26:16 They got into the S&P 500, became profitable, planning stock buybacks. They resolved almost all of the regulatory, reservoir issues, including getting the taxis in London to be on the app, which was their big adversary. And they were going to get kicked out of London. If you remember, this is a company that five years ago, the press and the fake news were saying could never be profitable and was going to fail. And now it is the most successful new startup in the last cycle, bigger than everybody. And so congratulations to the team over there. All right, biggest loser in business. The biggest loser. It's 2023.

Starting point is 00:26:57 Freeberg, just so you know, last year your prediction was capital intensive series BCs and Ds of growth companies well done on that prediction, but give me freeburg your actual. Who was your biggest loser in 2023? O-Sultan of science. It's sort of tied up. Obviously there's a tail to the effect, but it's VCs who deployed most of their capital in 2021. Obviously it was the year where a venture capital deployments peaked. And what I've heard from institutional peace this year is that, you know, not only will that vintage underperform, but it could torpedo as many as 50% of firms

Starting point is 00:27:34 that are managing capital today in Silicon Valley, and it could switch the capital allocation model that reduces allocation to venture as an asset class significantly because of the torpedo that the 2021 vintage represents in performance. So that was my biggest loser for the year. Good for me in SACs, because we were diligent during that time. All right, let's go to you, SACs.

Starting point is 00:27:58 Is your biggest loser in business in 2023? My biggest business loser is Disney. It seems that ever it's a good one. That's a good one. Disney's business is the bad in 2023? My biggest business loser is Disney. It seems that everyone is a good one. That's a good one. Disney's business is a bad in 2023. I mean, all their majors, the actual releases flopped and missed a conservative backlash against its woke social stances.

Starting point is 00:28:17 You may recall that the actress who played Snow White in the remake accused Prince Charming of being a stalker. I mean, there being a stalker. I mean, there's a million examples. Even their their Marvel franchise suddenly had bombs. They had to fire Jonathan Majors, who was doing a fantastic job playing Kang and an entire franchise arc. They're going to have to reset now because of a criminal conviction involving him. Disney Plus descriptions fell off a cliff, even a tenant said it's theme parks declined

Starting point is 00:28:44 dramatically because they charge way too much for families to visit. And then finally, Bob Eiger picked a fight with Elon Musk over advertising. Remember Elon probably told Eiger to GFY. Good for you. Yep. And tens of thousands of Disney Plus subscribers canceled their subscriptions because of that. And it all makes you wonder if Iger now wishes he had stayed or tired. I too picked Disney. I put Disney and Warner Brothers. Both of them had their comic book franchises,

Starting point is 00:29:13 collapse simultaneously on the, on the Warner Brothers side and the DC side, the flash and justice league. Everything came apart. Streaming was too expensive and you didn't mention these horrific strikes that they had to deal with and it feels like they had to give a ton of concession. So Disney was my biggest loser as well

Starting point is 00:29:32 with Warner Brothers, as their little brother, they are Tramoth. We have a consensus there. Rare consensus between Saxon. I, what did you have for your biggest loser in business? Well, you guys partially win, because I'm gonna have to agree with you guys, win. Okay, because I'm going to have to agree with you guys, but I think the biggest loser in business was the

Starting point is 00:29:54 GoWoke community who tried to synthetically and artificially use all these social movements as a way to drive revenue and just got totally burned. So Disney, Bud, Target, and I think the statement from consumers is, look, just sell a product, stay in your lane, make a better and better product for us at lower and lower prices, and otherwise just let the politicians and the voters decide social issues. And I think that was pretty clear. All right, there you have it folks. If you're gonna make Bud Light, people just wanna drink the damn beer.

Starting point is 00:30:30 They're not interested in your politics. All right, here we go. Biggest business surprise of 2023. Who do you got, Sachs? Who is your biggest business surprise of 2023? I think it was the Fed's bank term funding program or a BTFP in response to the collapse of Silicon Valley bank and the regional banking crisis. As you may recall, it wasn't just SVB.

Starting point is 00:30:53 There were several old dominoes in the regional banking system that fell. It was SVB, signature first republic, and even in Europe, credit suites basically, fell apart all because of the sudden spike in interest rates. A lot of people tried to blame VCs for this, J-Cal. Yeah, even when me took some heat. Yeah. The truth is that if the dominoes had fallen in a slightly different order, no one would have thought to blame VCs for this.

Starting point is 00:31:19 It was obviously the fact that rates had spiked up, and these banks got caught off sides because their deposit base is volatile and they had loaded up on government bonds at a 1% interest and then the value of those bonds plummeted. The Fed then stepped in to prevent this from turning into a contagion. That was where the BTFP came in

Starting point is 00:31:43 and I'm ambivalent about it because I think that we don't know the long-term consequences of the Fed basically providing this liquidity to the banking system. However, it's very clear to me that there was a regional banking crisis underway and the Fed stepping in. I think probably saved us from having a recession this year. Amazing. So the Fed there, I picked Facebook for my biggest surprise this year. They changed the name of the company to Yersuk Ho,

Starting point is 00:32:09 to Meta, they were pouring tens of billions of dollars into VR, which nobody wanted to use. The CEO was focused on the wrong thing, but they turned it around. The stock dropped to 90 and Zuckerberg, I guess, didn't want to lose. And so he laid off tens of thousands of employees, said, no more middle managers. Everybody's got to get to work.

Starting point is 00:32:30 And they doubled down on their existing businesses and they've made some great progress on AI. So my biggest business surprise was the resurgence of Zuckerberg and Facebook. Tremoth, who did you have for your biggest business surprise? I'll pick Jay Powell and the Fed capitulation. I think that I've been saying for a while that rates will be higher for longer for quite a while now. And I was really surprised when Jay Powell had this press conference in December, and just basically capitulated

Starting point is 00:33:05 and just said, you know what, guys, we're going to be cutting probably three times next year. That was effectively the gist of what he said. And immediately the 10 year basically just completely changed course. And it went from almost at 5% to below 4% within a matter of two or a half or three weeks. So, and then the stock market has basically done nothing but goes straight up. That's a huge surprise to me because I think now what the setup is for 2024 is basically we will melt up up until the first cut

Starting point is 00:33:39 and then they'll probably be some real selling. And I would not have predicted that. The markets have become a lot more accommodative as a result. I didn't expect that. So, J. Powell really, I think, surprised a lot of us. He could have been more tempered, but he did essentially decided to give away the playbook in the last month of the year here.

Starting point is 00:34:02 And it's important for everybody to understand the Fed acts independently of the administration. It's just a coincidence, correct, SACs, that their cuts are gonna come just in time for Biden economics. And if it happens to go up in the next nine months, that has nothing to do with the Biden administration. Who might benefit from that if the economy will change back?

Starting point is 00:34:21 Jason, Nick, I have a quote that I sent Nick. This was what Larry Summers said. And I just think it's such an unbelievable quote that is just worth internalizing if you just start reading here. So I prefer the Volcro Green span approach, which is to recognize that the Fed is a little bit like the Delphic oracles.

Starting point is 00:34:41 People regarded them as omniscient and omnipotent, but they were in fact neither. So the oracles kept their pronouncements vague and oracular, not concrete and specific because it was impossible to be concrete and specific without being wrong frequently and undercut credibility. Sure. I mean, that is just the perfect general, yeah, summary of what probably should have happened in these pressers. And this was an example where it was the exact opposite and the market just took it and said, I'm off to the races.

Starting point is 00:35:10 Just to agree with that, and buttersit. It's not only the fact that they gave this kind of this year, as you remember, when we started having inflation, the Fed still stuck to the story that it would not be raising rates for some extended period of time. And a lot of these banks that had problems basically because they bought too many long-term government bonds.

Starting point is 00:35:32 A lot of those bonds were bought during that period when the Fed was assuring them it wasn't going to be jacking up rates. So if the Fed hadn't misled them, maybe they would have made better risk decisions. Yeah. So it works both ways. Freeberg, it's got a business surprise for 2023 for the audience here at the Bestie Awards. The biggest surprise was Sam Altman's

Starting point is 00:35:50 Alster in return all in a weekend. So that was kind of crazy. So I'd just give it to that. Nothing else to be said. Okay, the flip flop, love it. Okay, the best science breakthrough. This is everybody's favorite. Also the time when Sacks goes and takes a leak.

Starting point is 00:36:02 2023, biggest science breakthrough. I've got one. I got it. You got to S leak, 2023 biggest science breakthrough. I've got one. You got to Sacks, you're awake during the... I got one. Second, what's the biggest science breakthrough for you, Sacks? Well, according to NASA, there's a new look at Uranus. That's right, Jacob. That's right, Jacob.

Starting point is 00:36:16 That's right, Jacob. These are never before seen deep penetrating shots of Uranus. How deep penetrating are these? Very. How deep penetrating are these? Very deep, very penetrating from the James Webb Space Telescope. Freeberg, when your anus gets probed this deeply, what's your takeaway? What's the feeling you get in this deep probing of your anus? Oh, wonder. Oh, I wonder.

Starting point is 00:36:43 Well, a space colonoscopy. Something gets moved with it. Absolutely. I'm gonna save you for last rebrok. Tremoth, you have one? Yeah, I think that this unfortunately did not get nearly the attention it deserves, but I'm gonna pick the CRISPR FDA approved CRISPR treatment of sickle cell anemia. I think that this is just an incredibly important breakthrough. And so, you know, sickle cell basically is just a condition where the shape of your red blood cells change. It causes a lot of very painful inflammation and damage. Disproportionally affects the black population, African-American population. And so now there's an approved therapy, which goes in and makes the gene edits and fixes

Starting point is 00:37:23 these folks. So congratulations to Vertex and CRISPR and I think it's just incredible. There was my big breakthrough. Was this brain to code our technology? We didn't talk about it here on the show, but this project was crazy. They did MRI scans or F MRI scans of blood flow to different areas in the brain. They then had people listen to podcasts like the Moth, and they tracked individuals' brain activity with specific words that were said during the podcast, and they had the repeat words. Then they attached it to a language model, GPT-1, I believe, and narrowed down what people were thinking. Then they had people think thoughts, and it started to use the predictive model of

Starting point is 00:38:09 GPT-1 and combined it with what was happening in their brain chemistry. Now, this is a far away from being able to read people's minds, but for somebody who couldn't speak, let's say, the idea that you could think and then have your thoughts and the story you were telling actually come out of a computer just by thinking would be miraculous. Obviously, Neuralink does this with a direct connection, but fast and work. That's not thinking right now. Sex still thinking about your anus. He's going deep into your anus right now. He's reading that paper. I can see it in his eyes.

Starting point is 00:38:35 You guys know I got a colonoscopy. Thank goodness. How was it? I got it on. Did they put you under Tuesday? Yeah, but I got. I didn't get the propa fall. I got Demarol. I think Demarol. You got to go prop. I had like the twilight sedation. Just kind of like, you know, it was great. Don't get me wrong, but it was like 15, 20 minutes.

Starting point is 00:38:54 Like it was not. But you were kind of awake and lucid while they were halfway through. You work up half right through? Yeah. Did they give you a drink, a little red wine, or anything? Nothing. No, it didn't talk give you a drink, a little red wine or anything? Nothing.

Starting point is 00:39:06 No, it didn't talk to me. No, I just saw the screen, I was like, what the earth? And then I just went back to the sleep. Let me tell you, a propa fall, it's drip, drip, drip. And then you wake up four hours later, it's the most restful sleep you ever had. That's the way it goes. No, dude, I had a fish.

Starting point is 00:39:21 I am like a flight attendant. I'm like, maybe it's maybe. It's an hour, yeah. Yeah. I had like a 20 minute flight sedation, that was it. I asked them to go back up in there twice just to make sure. Freeberg, enough about your units. What was your biggest science surprise of 23?

Starting point is 00:39:35 I know it's hard to surprise you. I know you guys wanna hear some crazy specific thing, but I actually just said that there were too many breakthroughs with machine-learn models, with AI this year to list. LLMs that can run on small desktop machines that are open source that outperform all models that were in existence even a few months prior.

Starting point is 00:39:55 It highlights the leaps and bounds of this trajectory of development in models. And there's other specific examples like we talked about DeepMind's Graphcast model, which is a GraphNural network on the show, and obviously all the generative models and imagery and movies and music, but it's just such an extraordinary time to see us leverage our combined capabilities to drive these extraordinary. So your surprise is the pace of language models, the pace of AI development, just all these

Starting point is 00:40:22 breakthroughs in aggregate. I mean, I think it's hard to pay attention to anyone. There's a constellation of change underway. It's incredible. Yeah. Now it's time for our biggest flash in the pan. Who is your biggest flash in the pan, Jamal? Oh my gosh, this is a...

Starting point is 00:40:39 Well, it could be business. It could be society, it could be pop culture. I wrote down SBF. Okay. I think like from what looked like it too good to be WonderKind, frankly just turned out to be an Adderall addicted grifter. You have great user counts.

Starting point is 00:40:58 Saks, I hope that doesn't hit too close to home. Who is yours? Same ballpark. I said effective altruism. That me a movement took a big hit with S.B.F. I would have thought that'd be enough to polish it off, but then we had the open A.I. board oust Sam Altman, like we talked about, apparently that was driven by a couple of their nonprofit board members who were effective altruists, I think the failure of that whole

Starting point is 00:41:25 debacle will put the nail in the coffin of the EA movement. Okay. Freeberg, you got a flash in the pan for 23. The obvious breakthrough in superconducting room temperature material, LK99, it came in it when everyone thought it was going to change the world. A couple of weeks later, it couldn't be replicated, was disproven ultimately, and for a hot minute there, everyone thought the world was going to change the world a couple weeks later, it couldn't be replicated. Was disproven ultimately. And for a hot minute there, everyone thought the world was going to change. So super exciting to see room temperature, superconductivity, and the search for room temperature, superconducting materials.

Starting point is 00:41:56 Get so much attention as I mentioned, it's something I've thought a lot about since I was 13 years old. So super cool, but didn't happen. Came in and went, I went with a wildcard here. I said George Santos, the diva drama queen and congressman who slayed from 2023 to 2023. And electric campaign funds divide us close and get both Botox. So you ask Queen and Sephora.

Starting point is 00:42:24 And so I'm not bad. Ask Queen, Can Sephora. And Sephora. Not bad. Not bad. Ask Queen. Just making bank over at Cameo. Gonna have him come in. He's gonna do a quick cameo here on all in pockets.

Starting point is 00:42:34 All right. Best CEO. You're best CEO. Best CEO. I'll go first. I'll go first. I haven't got first yet. I picked a wild card here.

Starting point is 00:42:44 I went teller Swift, four billion dollars in revenue from the tour and the merchandise and the movie and everything. Each tour stop generates 90 million dollars for the city she lands in. She's getting 85%. She went direct to movie theaters with that concert movie and made a quarter billion dollars. She stands down. the best CEO of 2023 for me. We got you, Muck. Something Adela, CEO of Microsoft. I just think the gross tonnage of market cap dollars he added in 2023,

Starting point is 00:43:16 plus figuring out how to close Activision, plus retaining maximum optionality with OpenAI is just the master class in Head's down management Well done sacks. Who do you got? I? Have Jensen Wang C.O. Vendia and King of the GPU we talked about the magnificent seven, but none was more magnificent than Nvidia who stock is up to an 35% And earnings and forecast keep blowing doors off but none was more magnificent than Nvidia who stock is up to 135%

Starting point is 00:43:45 and earnings and forecast keep blowing doors off. Jensen has been planning this moment for many years before the whole AI frenzy took hold. And Nvidia is now repeating the benefit of that. Who do you got? Friedberg. I give it to Sam Altman because I don't think any individual has generated more attention on a private company and its effect on the world and the future

Starting point is 00:44:08 Then Sam Altman and open AI and I think that he's been aggressive in raising capital This guy can raise like he can raise and then he overbets on people He finds talent. He gives them extraordinary Compackages gets them to come and work on this extraordinary effort, and then gets them to deliver results. He pushes the limits, he pushes the boundaries, even beyond what's comfortable for his board members. Clearly, you know, that comes with the good and the bad. And then even after he got outstored by his board, his entire employee based through a

Starting point is 00:44:39 crew and got him back, and sure everyone's got their economic motivations to see that happen. But I still think that the setup was largely his work. So he does deserve credit for that. So all in, I think it's an incredible year for Sam Alman. Now we move on to 2023, best investor, Trimopp. Who was your best investor for 2023 here at the Best of the Woods? It was a continuation of the last couple of years. But it's the

Starting point is 00:45:05 pot shops and specifically Citadel. So I give that award to Ken Griffin. You know, pot shops, I think have really become the hallway bully of the public capital markets and Citadel is the kingpin. They returned $7 billion to their investors in 23. I think if you go back they returned $7 billion to their investors in 23. I think if you go back since 2020, they've returned more than 20 billion. They generated 15% very steady returns uncorrelated to the market. It's just a machine.

Starting point is 00:45:35 I mean, it's incredible. It's an incredible business that he's built. So he is, there's nobody close. Sac studio. I've got Bill Acman here for timing the bond market perfectly. He shorted bonds for most of the year, making hundreds of millions of dollars. Then on October 23rd, he announced that he was covering his positions and that it was too risky to stay short in bonds and he was going long.

Starting point is 00:45:59 And that very day was the high point of the 10-year bond yield. The market made a bottom on October 27th since then yields plummeted, which means that the value bonds is sort. And the best part of it is that Ackman is using his new FU money to take on Ivy League University presidents for their world DEI double standards, grifting and plagiarism. Well done. All right. Free Brook, we got I also said Ackman for his timing on the Treasury trade. I was right there with you guys, except I wanted to go with a wild card. I am astounded by the growth of TikTok, and I just work backwards.

Starting point is 00:46:33 Arthur Danchick, who I've never met from Cess Quajana International Group, referred to as SIG in the industry, still owns according to sources, 15% of this company, which could be worth $3,400,500 billion when it goes out. And despite all the saber-rattling, the CCP has not divested from it even though Trump and Biden both said they were going to try to do that.

Starting point is 00:46:56 And by dance was caught as buying an American journalist using their TikTok data. So the fact that that investment is still in place to me is extraordinary. So congratulations to them, but I had solid quick. All right. Now we move on. Woman quickly here. 2023. Best turnaround. Who's your best turnaround, Jamal? This was like three years in the making, but I'll give it to Novo Nordisk. I think the amount of attention that Novo has gotten for a Zempic, Wagovie, and Rybelsis in 2023 was incredible. But you have to go back to the last decade where the first five years, there was just not much activity, and they had to maintain their investment, stay strong, stay focused, and then starting in about 2019,

Starting point is 00:47:40 the stock has been about a four or five X in the last four or five years. And I think these semi-glutite GLP ones are here to stay. They're transformational on society. So that was an enormous task of corporate focus. So I'll give the turnaround the word to Nova Nordisk. Sax, what do you got? In light of what's happening right now in the crypto markets. I'm gonna go with Solana. Oh! Wow!

Starting point is 00:48:07 Wow! Wow! I began the year at about $9 a token. It's now at 92 as of this moment. Obviously, it's very volatile, but it's up roughly 10X this year to date. And in light of the fact that various unscrupulous actors on the internet accuse some of us of buying slone at a discount and dumping it on retail without any evidence, and that wasn't true.

Starting point is 00:48:33 Let's just say that those of us who are still holding bags of slone are very happy campers right now. Oh, that's all there. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I've got a holder for the win. Eee, half the bid. Freeberg, who do you got? Biggest business turn around. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, skill in forecasting the sensitivities in that business, by the way. Say more. Say more. And obviously he's seen the market cap just this year grow from 50 billion to 126 billion out of today.

Starting point is 00:49:11 So give it to Dara for the big turnaround. Product sucks though. I will say it's got an expensive card to get an Uber, sit around and wait forever. So Dara, please fix that. Otherwise, good job. Well done. I went with one that you guys gave a words to, and on all the previous words,

Starting point is 00:49:28 Sam Waltman is all over the shares besties. I thought going from being fired for malfeasance to becoming a martyr, and then I'm the captain now, you can throw in the, I'm the captain now, meme right here, Nick, for the pod. In about 10 days, he captured three full new cycles, was named CEO of the year, and the palace entry, raising money

Starting point is 00:49:50 for an Nvidia killer in the Middle East. I mean, this guy is like, James Bond plus a CEO. So what a great turnaround from fired to desired, Sam Altman. All right, let's go to our next one here, 2023. The worst company of the year. This is the company that is low-summon-horrible in our opinions. And that's all it is, folks. It's just four dudes' opinions. Sachs, in your opinion, what was the worst company of 2023?

Starting point is 00:50:20 I'm going to go with Pfizer. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal had an exposé on the InterTurboil at Pfizer as its market cap has lost $140 billion in valuation in 2023. By the way, that headline is ridiculous. Pfizer did not save the world. The reason why they are off so much is because of a massive drop in demand for Pax Lovid and for COVID boosters. Apparently, people do not see the value in those products. They finally figured it out. I would say that the company is also suffering from a credibility crisis by not leveling with the public about the efficacy and safety of their vaccines. The CEO Albert

Starting point is 00:51:05 Burla was confronted in Davos by citizen journalists for this lack of transparency back in January of this year. And what's interesting is that if you read the Wall Street Journal piece, even his own employees are questioning Burla's candor when he announced on a company-wide virtual town hall that the company was embarking on a cost-coding effort. The chatroom erupted in snark. Quote, future is bright, but you might get fired as how one employee characterizes burrless spin. This led another employee to apply, quote, dumpster fires are always bright. All right, Friedberg, worst company of 2023 for you.

Starting point is 00:51:41 You have a worst company, most awesome. I do. I'm going to get through this without getting interrupted. The worst company of 2023 is Mou Yuan Food Stuff. This company is pure evil. It's got 137,000 employees. It's based in China. It's the world's largest slaughterer of pigs. Sloters 2.1 million pigs per year.

Starting point is 00:52:01 With the world's largest pig farm, they're nannying, where they basically take pigs from birth and breed them all the way through to slaughter. During their entire lives, these pigs never get to move more than a few inches. They live in these multi-story housing units that they never get to see sun or the light from the outside. Through their whole lives, they're kept separate from their families. Pigs are as smart as most dogs and even young children. And at the end of their very painful, awful existence is they're slaughtered and fed to a growing population.

Starting point is 00:52:32 China consumes over a billion pigs a year. It's a horrific situation. So that's the most loathsome company of 2023. Sounds delicious. I'm sorry, guys. That's the most low-send company of 2023. Sounds delicious. I'm so proud of that. Dude, you went off camera. You went off camera.

Starting point is 00:52:53 No, Jacob. You started laughing. It's not a fun thing. I saw you laughing. That's why I started laughing. I mean, I had 15 jokes, but I'm not going to make any of them. Yeah, I'm not a surfer factory farmer. It's hard. Who is your worst company, Trimab?

Starting point is 00:53:07 Come on, Trimab, get in the game here. Who is your worst company? It's a tie between FTX and Silicon Valley Bank. One stole customer accounts, and the other one just was run by a CEO and a risk management infrastructure that really imperiled and almost imperiled in an entire industry. There you go. For me, it was Fox News. They deceived their loyal customers by knowingly spreading fake news about voting machines.

Starting point is 00:53:31 They wound up firing their most loved host in our fifth bestie, Tucker Carlson, and they paid record-setting fines for misleading the public and creating massive division in our country. And they're facing an even bigger lawsuit, a $2.7 billion lawsuit with another election technology company that will happen in 2025. Pension funds are now suing this low-sum company because they lost so much money for them. So my worst company of the year is Fox News. All right, actually, I'm just saying, I'm sorry, I'm going for the microphone there.

Starting point is 00:54:09 I'm not going to defend Fox after they fire Tucker. Exactly, exactly. That's why I put it in there for you. I do think the judgments, so the magnitude of the judgments are ridiculous. Okay, now it's time. We have a little bit of fun here. Best meme.

Starting point is 00:54:23 You're best meme. Fun stuff I'll start it off this year. I'd love the Boston cop on a slide I don't have you guys have seen this one, but it went super viral They've made millions of versions of it. This is the cop in Boston going down a slide And the backstory here And the backstory here, bunch of cops were told there's a slide that's too dangerous in Boston. One of them tried to do their duty and confirmed that it was in fact dangerous and he

Starting point is 00:54:52 got injured coming down the slide. And now anytime something is going off the track, whether it's a market or a company, you play that clip. Sax, you're a master of memes. What do you got for us this year in the 2023 Bestie Awards? Well, I think the meme of the year had to be the GFY.

Starting point is 00:55:11 The Iran's answer to Bob Eiger's attempt to blackmail him. Nick, but we need to see this in the gift version. The way the hand motions are it's this, then this, and then it comes back in. Good for you. It's like a conductor of an orchestra. It's just a standard good for you. Jamal, did you have a favorite, Jamal, a favorite meme of 2023? Yeah, if you want to just throw it up there. I'm a journalist and it's a kid.

Starting point is 00:55:40 Yeah, kid. Is that my journalism? I'm sure what is this talking about? I think it's, it's what we all know. And I think it was further exposed this year, just the, the brazen, naked ambition and corrupt nature of the mainstream media. Jason, you said it really well. And I, and I really made an impact on me. So I want to give you credit.

Starting point is 00:56:02 We are all citizen journalists, investigative journalists now. And I think that that's true. I think we all have a responsibility to pick the information source and to that. Yeah. And never been more true than this. You got to have multiple sources triangulate the true through yourself.

Starting point is 00:56:22 But yeah, I wouldn't trust the mainstream media at this point, you know, as but one of many sources. Freeberg, get a favorite meme. Get a favorite meme. No, I didn't put anything on this. Okay, you gave us six minutes and pigs being killed, but you can't come up with one meme, okay. Okay.

Starting point is 00:56:39 Get come up with a meme, come on, man. I think it's kind of funny actually. It's kind of funny. As no memes meme. I have a meme. Come on, man. I think it's kind of funny actually. It's kind of funny. No, he's meme. I have a meme. Wait, we need to play the white way of music. Or. Or.

Starting point is 00:56:51 Right. Best new attack. Best new attack. We got to keep things moving. Last year it was a fusion and GPT across the board. This year, I'll just get a mind out of the way real quick. I'm going to go with something more specific. Chad GPT's app has been extraordinary. It now has 4.0 and it has Dolly in it. I've been making incredible images to go with my, my sub stack and my blog posts. That I would have paid thousands of dollars, you know, for each one of those when I was doing magazines and they have voice chat. If you haven't connected, Chatchy PT's voice app to the new action button on the iPhone 15. There's a button above your volume called action. You can map it to a specific feature inside of any app. I mapped it to voice chat on chat Gbt when I'm driving with my kids to have a question. We put it in and we just started asking questions about history science, whatever it happens to be pop culture music to chat two chatch ABT4, and it is an extraordinary breakthrough app.

Starting point is 00:57:48 And it's been downloaded. I think hundreds of millions of times now, or over a hundred million, incredible, incredible progress there. Chimoff, you got a best tech? Best new tech. I don't think there was anything meaningful in 2023. I think there was a lot of improvements to things that were founded and started in 2020 or 2021 or 2022. Nothing knew that couple. Yeah, this year.

Starting point is 00:58:10 Sacks. I have Starling for Jet Sweet X. I, of course, I've never used it, but I heard it's great. But if you do fly with other humans who you don't know, I'm looking forward to Starlink for private aviation as well, but I've heard it's a real game changer on commercial flights and every kind of flight freeber best new chat My best new tech of this year. I think is really important as we race to keep the promise of AI alive in the face of increasing government regulation, which is open source locally run LLMs. So you can take an LLM and you can run it on your machine. You don't have to be connected to the internet. You don't have to have a third-party service provider making a LLM available to you. And so this allows the continued development and pursuit of productivity gains

Starting point is 00:59:08 and new capabilities that emerge from these LLMs by making them local offline disconnected from the internet and away from the screwability of agencies that want to check your model and make sure it's okay. So this is really important to me. I do think, like, my broader trend right now is I think that there's this really scary, big shift of you're either gonna end up in a new enlightenment or you're gonna end up in a new dark ages. And I think we're seeing this play out in all these conflicts around the world and all of this regulation and all of the technology

Starting point is 00:59:39 that's being deemed either a threat or an opportunity. And so I think any technology capability that allows us to pursue the enlightenment is a winner for me. So anyway, this was a big shift that happened this year. There's multiple models that are publicly available that are free, open source, so you can run. Okay, 2023, best trend. What was the best trend in 2023 for you?

Starting point is 01:00:02 I actually didn't really, couldn't figure one out. Okay, Sachs, you got a best trend for 2023. Something that happened often became a trend. My best trend is the return of colorblindness as the standard and the pushback on DEI. We already talked about the university presidents and what Bill Accomon is doing. I would add to that that the Supreme Court banned race-based affirmative action in University of Michigan in June, and Red State Governor was like Reg Abbott and Ron DeSantis took that as a green light to shut down DEI programs in their public colleges and universities.

Starting point is 01:00:37 I think that this is a good trend and hopefully it continues next year because America should be a color blind meritocracy. Friedberg, what was your best trend of 2023? The profitability focus at young companies, particularly in an age of AI, Copilot Tools for software development. From what I've seen, it's pretty incredible. Single-person efforts can yield what historically

Starting point is 01:01:02 is required six, 12 or more people to do using Copilot tools in AI. Software development is accelerated, new products, and entire companies can be built by single individual at very low cost, building totally customized software. From what I've seen, it's not widely adopted. These capabilities, as you guys probably have seen as well, it's starting to be. But just imagine once the majority of people are using these co-piloting tools to write software and start to learn how to use these tools, it's really going to increase productivity

Starting point is 01:01:34 globally as it finds its way into every business and everyone can become an entrepreneur and so on. So it's incredible to see. I2Saxx was looking at the issue of DEI and I framed mine as DEI dying in meritocracy thriving. That was the best trend for me. So we are once again, Sympathico, you and I, DEI dying in meritocracy thriving. Nicely done. You really are proving you're a centrist.

Starting point is 01:01:57 Yeah, I mean, I think, or I just listened to MLK's speech and I thought that seems like the most logical thing to do. Yeah, you're right. Absolutely. 100%. 100%. We figured this out some time ago. Or I just listened to MLK's speech and I thought, that seems like the most logical thing to do. Yeah, you're right. 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%.

Starting point is 01:02:10 We figured this out some time ago. Yeah, I don't know why we have to rehash it. Okay, 2023. Worst trend. Outly did off. I had three here of Worst Trends. Number one, anti-Semitism. Absolutely disgusting and horrible.

Starting point is 01:02:20 Two, Trump's rehabilitation. We'll just leave it at that. And then three, people of low moral character are using the freedom of speech movement to whitewash their horrible personal behavior. Yes, I'm talking about Alex Jones to all the mids in the comments. Sax, what was the worst trend for you? You had to have three, didn't you?

Starting point is 01:02:38 Well, I'm going to go with anti-Semitism. Those are my two runners. All right, fair enough. Yeah. I think you guys are like my worst trend. It is the metastasizing national debt. This chart really makes it clear. You can see here the national debt as a function of deficit and revenues.

Starting point is 01:02:55 And it's a upside down hockey stick. Jesus. If a company could produce user growth that looked like this, I would invest all day long. However, this is not growth. This is basically how much we owe. And it is a bipartisan problem. It's been going on for really 20 plus years, but it is getting worse and worse under Biden. Yeah. 8 trillion added to the deficit under Trump and looks like five to six trillion under Biden. Well, you know, we did have a COVID. We did have felt down where the economy was down 30% year over year.

Starting point is 01:03:30 So the tax縫, that's the COVID, yeah. Both the party supported that bailout. And in hindsight, it was excessive. Yeah. Biden's quote unquote stimulus was passed on street party lines after COVID was ready over.

Starting point is 01:03:42 Yeah. So I think we should just make sure to apportion the blame correctly. But like I said, bipartisan problem. Yeah, I agree. Bipoderson and Trump did a very ill-timed tax cut before COVID, so it was a double hit. If you want to compare it in eight years,

Starting point is 01:03:56 Obama added eight trillion, so it was one trillion a year. These new guys getting close to two trillion per year. So they doubled the velocity of spending just completely disastrous. Chema, what's the worst trend for you? I just think it's the general state of affairs amongst our young people, our 20-year-olds and our 30-year-olds, I think are really struggling. And it's gotten worse. I'll give you two examples.

Starting point is 01:04:27 struggling. And it's gotten worse. I'll give you two examples. Here, you see on your screen, this year, 158,000 more Americans died than expected, which is more than all the wars combined in Vietnam. And when you look at where those death rates are, those death rates were coming from 35 to 44 year olds, which was up 26% and 25 to 34 year olds, which was up 20% about pre-COVID levels. And all we can point to from the government establishment is that it's smoking at a bad diet, which doesn't really hang together. And then the second trend is when you look at just general marriage rates amongst these same cohort of people, it's meaningfully worse than every cohort above it. So just, societally, these folks are not tracking. In whatever dimension you want to measure,

Starting point is 01:05:12 sort of like happiness, volumance, stability, safety, something is meaningfully wrong in these cohorts of people. And we owe it to them to figure it out. The one thing you missed there, at your mouth, and the Western world, at least 36% increase in suicide over the past two decades. So a lot of this is, it's another one. So that might be the main one I think in this is the mental health issues are acute. Okay, we have Friedberg, you're left for the worst trend, the best of you would for worst trend of 2023. What do you got? I don't know. I had one. I'm going to change it on the fly. I'm going to go with the normalization of spending. I think it's probably the worst friend like it's, you know, it used to be a big deal.

Starting point is 01:05:50 Remember when the tar program happened in08 and it was an incredible single line item of $800 billion to support the troubled asset relief effort to try and keep the economy stable by buying up all of this failing debt and supporting all of these equities and keeping these businesses going. And now it's like $100 billion for Hiddes. Brilliant for that. It's like we've normalized spending and COVID just made it worse. So to your guys' point earlier about the acceleration of spending. Once you spend a dollar, you think it's okay to spend a dollar. And then next time you spend two, it's not that bad, it's only a dollar more,

Starting point is 01:06:27 and then next time you spend five, it's only three bucks more, and suddenly, it becomes normal, and this normalization catches up to us. I've harped on this enough, so I won't go into it too much, but I mean, that's the worst threat. Who did you change from? What was your original? My original was the merging of the oppressor,

Starting point is 01:06:44 oppressed ideologies that are in diametric opposition to each other? I just found this more ironic than the worst trend, I think, which is like LGBTQ groups that were pro-Hamas, that were marching and supporting Hamas, which is anti-LGBTQ. It was just so mind-blowing to me to see some of the behavior over the last couple of months that made absolutely no sense. And it shows how little first principles thinking people are actually doing about the things that they're standing up for. Standing up for a free Palestine is one kind of point, but being pro-Hamas, when Hamas would have a responsibility of eradicating

Starting point is 01:07:27 people like you, it's just nuts to me. So there's just some of the stuff that I've seen where the oppressor oppressed ideology is trained to fit everything, even if it makes absolutely no sense. Yes. So it's just really frustrating to see. Okay. Yes, it's just really frustrating to see. Okay, now we go on to a little casual, the Best of the Awards for 2023, favorite media, favorite media, new things that came out in the media

Starting point is 01:07:51 could be a video game, book, music, or a TV show. I'll leave us off here, just get it out of the way real quick. For me, the Sessession finale, extraordinary, one of the best pieces of television ever made. And my sleeper was the bear season two, very niche show on FX. I think I turned a lot of you onto it. And season two had an episode, episode five, which is the forks episode in which Cammy sends Richie to intern at a very elite restaurant, and he's charged with polishing silverware and Garrett and him get into

Starting point is 01:08:24 it. Why am I doing all this stupid stuff? And he just tells him, listen, every day here is a freaking superbow. And it's just a great, great, amazing episode of Tyler's with extraordinary performances and writing, Chimoff. Did you have any favorite media this year? Anything that Taylor Swift did this year was white, huh? Here are Swiftie. She is a tour de force

Starting point is 01:08:50 She's incredible and she's a genius What can you say nothing's accurate? How many use my spot to draw attention to some podcasts that you may not have heard of Some geopolitics and world affairs podcasts so That probably my number one is the Duran with Alexander McCurris and Alex Christophero. I'd also give honorable mention to Judge Napolitano's podcast and Colonel Daniel Davis. I have found these three podcasts to be quite useful in understanding what's happening in the rest of the world.

Starting point is 01:09:23 And I found they were reporting an analysis to be more accurate than anything you're going to get in the mainstream media. Freiburg, any favorite media for you as we get close to wrapping here? I recently read a book that I liked. I don't know if I talked about it called the Idea Factory on the history of Bell Labs and the great age of American innovation. Strongly recommend it. I had no idea how much this Bell Labs

Starting point is 01:09:46 institution touched modern life from radar to the transistor to the nuclear bomb to computing even information theory was developed inside of Bell Labs. It was an incredible organization that took its roots in an institutionalized monopoly which then enabled them to have one customer that was always a built-in customer, but gave them the freedom and the resourcing to build all of these great things. And for anyone that wants to say that monopolies, stifle innovation, I encourage you to read this book, because it really says the opposite may be true, that a monopoly enables investment in long-term thinking and long-term ideas

Starting point is 01:10:22 that you never otherwise see. So I give it to that. I also had a softer one. Have you guys ever watched Bobby Alltops podcast? I found this so funny this year. You guys have ever seen it? Her interview with Drake is hilarious. It's so funny.

Starting point is 01:10:36 So she interviewed Drake. She's interviewed Cuban. Oh, yes. I know you're talking about the deadpan. Yeah. The deadpan. So she's got this like holy, disinterested persona and it totally encapsulates like a Gen Z like a personality in a way that you don't get in any other media.

Starting point is 01:10:51 It's really, and she's hilarious when she does these interviews. And she's very unique like an Andy Kaufman or Jim Carrey, like in that sense, like unique and how she does this. I just think like, we'll see if the stick lasts like she may end up kind of being tired soon and see if she has a second act But Drake interview was really good the one with Cuban I had to talk about it with it one. They sat on the ground and then two Cubans feet were really dirty Did you see the one with Shaq and so I was like bro like yeah, just keep the shoes on and just you know the Shaq one was hilarious

Starting point is 01:11:19 But anyway, she's she's got great contents It's it's hit or miss by the way. I'll also say. It's not consistent. Hit or miss. But I don't know. I just found her to be a little bit of a unique standout in content that's your, everyone's kind of me to me to, it looks the same. She's stood out of it for me. In that vein, have you seen Zeeway, Z-I-W-E?

Starting point is 01:11:40 She is a woman who interviews people and then she asks people very uncomfortable questions about race Like how many black friends you have named them and it is The greatest bit ever Z show it to Z way see what we went there on who seen it you Sargema yeah, yeah I mean if you're on TikTok. You'll see it because she just had like Yeah, she just has anybody in the George Santos on

Starting point is 01:12:07 She's your center center here. Yeah, wow and it was just so incredible crazy On the podcasting front shout out to our friend Gwen of the pow tro. If you don't listen to the goo podcast She does like interviews every other time really good Red scare another great alternative podcast. I'd like interviews every other time. Really good. RedScare, another great alternative podcast I'd like to listen to. From the dirt bag left as they call it and shout out pre-barraurs cafeinsider.cafe.com. All right, I think is this the end producer neck?

Starting point is 01:12:36 Are we here? Did we make it? Last one. Last one. We have a special award here, the Self-Emolation Award. This has been named after Rudy Giuliani, the Rudy Giuliani Self-immolation Award. And this is a tough one to give this year, SACS.

Starting point is 01:12:53 What do you have? Because it's going to be quite self-reparential here, go. I am going to name Liz McGill, the now former president of the University of Pennsylvania. So well. I had been vomiting on herself for two months in the aftermath of October 7th, before she even appeared at that congressional hearing with the presence of Harvard and MIT. She answered what was clearly a moral question with a tone deaf legalistic answer, saying that advocacy of genocide against Jews depends on

Starting point is 01:13:25 context, falls into question whether one is smart enough to be a university president. It's not a job that demands that much intelligence, but it does require an instinct for knowing when and how to cover your own ass when she was finally forced to step down if felt like a mercy killing. Yeah. Was she the one smirking too? Yeah. She had the awkward smirking.

Starting point is 01:13:44 She was the one I found the most appalling was the one smirking too? Yeah, she had the aqua smirking. That was what I found the most appalling was the aqua smirks. Yep. Chimath, who let themselves on fire most of all this year? Who poured gasoline over their heads and just lit up a stogie? I think it's the brand and reputation of the IVs. I think that there was irreparable harm. Well done. Yes. We've had generations now that have been taught that that is where we send our best and brightest kids. But it turns out that they're getting indoctrinated into some very kind of extreme rhetoric that

Starting point is 01:14:17 then produces these incapable first principles thinkers that will be the destruction of our society if we don't fix it. So I think Harvard applications were down 17% already. I expect that trend across the IVs to go way up. I expect contributions to go down. I expect governments to ratchet down their spending in those schools. And I expect some folks to try to take away their nonprofit status. So I think that we are going to reallocate the brand equity of the IVs to good schools. And we will know what the good schools are based on their independence,

Starting point is 01:15:03 their ability to shurn out first principles thinkers and their respect for freedom of speech without being moral idiots. Friedberg. What do you got? Well, well, Sanchama. I believe presidents. Okay. Well done.

Starting point is 01:15:19 No need to add too much more there, I guess. You know, I was torn here between the namesake of this very award. If you missed it, Rudy Giuliani had a $150 million judgment against him maybe two weeks ago for slandering two poor innocent people in his electoral scam that he ran with Trump. And he, I think, is going to get indicted next year for these fake electorates. So, follow the fake electorates one, but that was a close one for me because Kanye West also lit himself on fire the past year with the Adidas contract and his anti-Semitism getting kicked off Twitter X. But I feel like that was mental illness. And I think Rudy Giuliani is just stupid.

Starting point is 01:15:59 So I give it to Rudy Giuliani, the namesake of this award. And I hope. Yeah, I'm not going to defend him or his actions at all. No, I do think I do think that judgment was excessive. And it's part of a pattern of ridiculous judgments that we see when you have, for example, a DC jury pool judging a conservative or a Republican whose politics they disagree with, the plaintiffs only ask for $48 million. The jury awarded three times that. It's an excessive award. I think a few million dollars as a penalty would have been a perfectly nice award. I think to bankrupt the man, which is what you're talking about

Starting point is 01:16:41 is becoming a bit of a pylon. And I'm all in favor of Rudy being the butt of jokes until the point where really you're talking about destroying his life. I think it's gone way too far. Yeah. These are words are curious and how large they are. They all get appealed though. And they all come down. So I'm sure that'll come down by some massive percentage in the near future. This has been the year and episode. Can you believe it? We made it another year, guys. Here we are at the end of 2023.

Starting point is 01:17:10 We'll do our predictions next week. So you'll get our amazing predictions for 2024 in the next episode. Any closing thoughts on the year we just had? Freeberg, how are you feeling here at the end of the year? Are you hopeful? Are you churrie? Are you sad? Are you excited?

Starting point is 01:17:26 I've been up since 5 a.m. and I just drank beers so I'm pretty tired But with respect that's kind of how the whole year feels actually feel like I exhausted Yeah, I just got up early crank through the day had some beer and I'm ready for a nap but I'm I'm probably more optimistic going into 2024 than I was going into 2023 because that's on a personal basis. And I think, yeah, there's just a lot going on today in the world. Yeah, it's complex.

Starting point is 01:17:56 I do think as long as we embrace the enlightenment and don't embrace the dark ages, we stand a shot at keeping progress alive. And I think that's the defining characteristics of human civilization as progress. And that's, I think ultimately, resolves all the conflict and other things. We just got to keep it alive. Well, so, Tremoth, how are you feeling here as we wrap up 2023 and looking into 2024? I think 2022 and 2023 have been looking back the most important two years of my professional career. I think I benefited like we all, I think all four of us could say this, of just an incredible

Starting point is 01:18:34 set of tailwinds. And 22 and 23 were the first time where I was in a position of influence and capital and power where I had to confront that those tailwinds can quickly become headwinds, and that we are not impervious to them. So, highlight, three burger, I'm looking forward to 24, where I can try to put all these learnings to good use. So, it's been generally good.

Starting point is 01:18:59 And 23 was the most important year of my life in the sense that I got remarried. So that's been a huge personal highlight. Yes, beautiful. Love that you guys all came to that got remarried. So that's been a huge personal highlight. Yes. Beautiful. Love that you guys all came to that as well. Oh, it was a highlight for us too. Absolutely.

Starting point is 01:19:10 Beautiful. But yeah, I'm ready to turn the page on this year and start 24. Sacks and closing dots here. Well, I think one of the biggest surprises of 2023 is that we didn't have a recession. I mean, I think most people were betting on a recession in 23. They thought that a soft landing would be almost impossible. And in fact, the data that soft landings almost never occurred, remember what Larry Summers said to us at our all-in summit this year, which is soft landings are like second marriages. It's the triumph

Starting point is 01:19:40 of hope over experience, meaning they almost never happened. And so the fact that we didn't get that, I think that was basically a pretty important bullet dodge. Now that being said, I do think that the whole B2B software industry definitely went through a recession, but fortunately, I think we bottomed out and are starting to see green shoots now, so things are returning to normal. On the global stage, things are still okay in the sense that the U.S. is not directly in a war, but man, it is pretty scary.

Starting point is 01:20:10 We could be pulled into a dynamic, pretty dynamic. Pretty dynamic. Pretty dynamic. We pulled into a war in the Middle East any time. We still have a proxy war going in Ukraine, so there are a lot of risks still on the horizon. I'll just say for the gentleman, for the audience, it has been wonderful to have all of you the audience the fans of the show and You besties in my life over two really tough years. It was also For a proud of myself going into them. I knew I was built for war and it was a war the last few years. It was difficult. It was hard

Starting point is 01:20:39 But we all I think learned a lot and came out stronger because of it And I just want to give a particular shout out to all of you guys for making this brand extraordinary and taking it to new heights almost all the times. I've built things, brands, and gadget, Slok and I reporter, all in, whatever it is. It was a solo effort. And it's just been really rewarding to be part of a team. And I want to just give a particular note to Freeberg, who I think all of us owe a real debt of gratitude towards he took the All in Summit, which was a very strong start in 2022. And he leveled it up in 2023 amazingly. And I'm just so excited to see what we do in 2024

Starting point is 01:21:19 with this amazing brand, memberships to kill us another 50 episode and a great all in summit next year I hope. So shout out to my guy free bird for the dictator, the Sultan of science, Chairman dictator. Sorry, apologize for getting that correct there. We'll get it right. Chairman dictator. And the Rayman David Sacks, I am the world's greatest moderator and we will see you in 2024. Bye bye. Happy New Year. Love you guys. A new year in bitches.

Starting point is 01:21:48 Bye bye. Love you guys, see you. We're like your winners ride. Brain man David Sack. We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Lombi West, I'd be queen of kinwap. I'm going on a leash. That's fine. What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, We should all just get a room and just have one big hug or two because they're all It's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release that album What your beat beat? What your beat?

Starting point is 01:22:32 Your beat Beat what? That's good, good, good We need to get merch these aren't that bad I'm going all in I'm going all in I'm doing all it.

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - E159: The Bestie Awards! Recapping the best and worst of 2023

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